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I ran into a kiwi bird while hiking up the sledge track, early morning. It had news from my dad. He says he has made friends with Chester Bennington, Kurt Cobain, and Curtis Mayfield. All the music icons I look up to. He says he has finally taught himself how to play the piano and is finishing up a song dedicated to Remedios Varo. I gently picked up the kiwi bird with my wounded fingers and brought it closer to me. My dad says he has also been appointed to hunt down the beasts that frequently ambush the paradise! I found that amusing, reminiscing what a tender and humble being he actually was. All of a sudden, the bird took its flight, before announcing aloud how proud my dad was when I shielded my prose from the Hellhound, the other night. And I thought kiwi birds were flightless! Indranil Ghosh is a Ph.D. student in applied mathematics from India, currently living in New Zealand. Highly inspired by Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, and Robert Frost, whenever he is not working, one may find him either reading classic poems or listening to music from the 70s and 80s. He has his poems published in The Unconventional Courier, Aphelion Webzine, Sixpence Society Literary Magazine, etc.

Matt hoped to God he wasn't wearing the Cookie Monster T-shirt. While he might be able to afford one or two minor embarrassments today, he doubted such a lapse in taste would be forgiven by his colleagues on the committee. Particularly on the day he ascended to the Chairmanship. It was bad enough that he was soaking wet. The rain had begun at the precise moment he identified his turn. Matt had walked some distance to find the building, en route checking at least three promising looking sign boards which turned out to be, in not at all short order, a printing firm, a football club for disabled children and a kennel for elderly dogs. He'd then had approximately five to ten seconds of elation when he found the conference centre right at the end of the road before the bruised sky ruptured above him. His new shirt – the better to suit his new professional and personal position in life – was quickly soaked through to his already sweat soaked skin. And the threat of the Cookie Monster beneath. It was not a warm day. The sweat was not the result of the weather. It was more that the motorway had been heaving and driving really was not his thing. Matt had told Sheila as much only last week, when she had asked if he might be able to give her a lift to the meeting, and he had reached for the lie that he wouldn’t be coming in from home this morning. And Sheila had believed him, because she’d heard his stories in the office about his nights away from home and his new life. Because he couldn’t help himself. Because maybe he was hoping somebody might stop him. The Cookie Monster might stop him. Matt looked back up the road to the car, sitting there, engine still running, lights slicing through the stair rod rain. He’d arrived early, the better to ensure he wasn’t going to get lost, because – heaven alone knew – he had form when it came to getting lost. Because Sheila would worry about him getting lost. He thought he’d have at least an hour before the other members of the committee showed up, but he still had to fetch the car, get into the building, and find the most powerful warm air hand dryer to dry himself out. Matt risked a glance down at his shirt front. There was a definite hint of blue through the material. A definite hint of the Muppet’s googly eyes. If he closed his own eyes and concentrated really hard over the downpour and the sound of the motorway in the distance, he could even hear the monster making its demands known. “Cookie!” He could. This, Matt knew, would not do in front of his new colleagues. This would not do when he was giving it the professional act as Chair. The agenda could not be disrupted by cries of “Cookie!” The AOB must not be derailed by acknowledgements of the monster’s overweening appetite. The Cookie Monster was meant to be his special secret. Like the photos in his phone of his weekend activities. Of his new part-time, evenings and weekends, family life. The T-shirt, bought for him as a joke because he just “wasn’t the type” and he needed to “lighten up a bit” now he was going to be spending time around the kid, was there to remind him what he was doing this all for. His hair slathered across his face with the driving rain, Matt heaved himself away from the contemplation of his shirt front and back up the road to the still chuntering car. There was a moment or several when he couldn’t find his keys. When he remembered that he had left them in the ignition. When he cursed himself for his inability as an adult. But hadn’t he proved that he was an adult? With Cyn, every other weekend when Simon was away with his dad. Until that one weekend, last weekend, when she’d told him she had to have the boy for the weekend because Ray wasn’t free. Matt stalled the car. Matt swore precisely as the old him used to swear. He wiped the rain from his eyes, dried his hands on his trousers, told himself that surely now he had proved he was capable of anything, he could make it to the car park and ensure he was presentable for both Sheila and the meeting. “Mr. Button!” Sheila was waiting for him at the entrance. Of course she was. She’d made her own way perfectly well without his assistance. She’d brought the agendas and the minutes from the last meeting, and she looked, as she always looked, the very definition of “the business.” “I wouldn’t ask,” he said, as he attempted to make his way past her. He’d put his dry jacket on over the soaked shirt. If there was a glimpse of blue or googly Muppet eyes to be seen on his chest front, he hoped his smile might distract Sheila from making it out. She wasn’t looking at his shirt front. “What happened to you?” she asked. “The car broke down,” he lied. If she had come by taxi, as he suspected, she must have arrived before he’d turned into the road. She couldn’t have gone by him while he was tromping around looking at signs. She couldn’t. He would have seen. Wouldn’t he? Sheila helped him with his bag, suggesting that he take his jacket off to spare its lining, at the very least, from the damp. He refused this as soundly as he’d refused to contemplate driving her in. He asked where the nearest toilet was. So he could “clean himself up.” Now, there was a thought that he might text Cyn later. This was what passed for a joke in the maybe no longer alternate weekend world he was sharing with her. Sheila didn’t look disappointed at his refusal to take her advice. She had so much practice in not looking disappointed where Matt was concerned. He left her to set up the room while he went to acquaint himself with what turned out to be a very underpowered warm air hand dryer in the gents. The new shirt dried. But it only made the situation worse. “Christ,” he said, because he was the kind of person who could afford to relax his rules on language now. At least with Cyn on evenings and weekends. “Cookie!” the Cookie Monster said, through the shirt. Matt near tore it in his anxiety to take it off and hold it closer to the jet of almost warm air. “Cookie!” the Cookie Monster said, pleased at its liberation. It was Matt’s little secret. Like the band on his wrist – pushed so very far up his wrist – from that festival he’d been to with Cyn some weeks back. Where the teenagers had laughed and pointed at the pair of them doing their thing, and Matt had actually liked being referred to as an “old man.” When he wasn’t. When he hadn’t lived long enough. When he’d not had these moments back when he was supposed to be having these moments. But he was damn well having them now. So, let them laugh. The Cookie Monster was a reminder for him and him alone of what he had waiting for him when he was done here, and when he was done with the working week, too. The Muppet wasn’t there for anyone else. He wasn’t. Which was why it was okay to take the T-shirt off, stuff it in his bag, risk wearing the shirt on bare skin. Now, there was another thought Cyn would have liked. He didn’t take the T-shirt off. “You’re sweating.” Sheila leaned across to Matt with handkerchief in her hand. Everything was working. Everything was fine. He was sitting at the head of that table in front of those people, and they had accepted him as their Chair. He had scrutinized the faces and not a one of them had wrinkled their nose at him as he started the proceedings. If they were a little reticent in coming forward with questions and observations, and if there was a distinct lack of eye contact, then perhaps that was to be expected from a confident performance on his part, too. He himself hadn’t liked to push himself too far forward in meetings of this kind. He understood. He took the handkerchief. And Sheila helped him through the remaining agenda items and AOB and she coughed - how could he not notice? - when one particular rumble of "Cookie!" from the depths of his chest threatened to be altogether too audible in the awkward pause he left for himself when he forgot Tony's item about the Porchester Project. Sheila fielded the questions about the next meeting's venue and timing, and she was the one to thank everyone for attending, taking the compliments at the smoothness of the meeting under its new Chair and Secretary as perhaps, Matt knew, she ought to. "Cookie!" Which only left the question of what to do about the threatened lift back into town she might be expecting. Running out of time to tighten, Matt was saved the need to lie by the message that came in from Cyn. A string of emojis, only some of which were acceptable in public, promised an evening this time without the boy. She suggested the first of the bars,where they might go on to from there, what they might do with the rest of their evening. "Cookie!" "I'm sorry, Sheila, but something's just come up." It was, of course, raining again outside as the delegates heaved their way back to their cars. Cyn would have liked the purple of the sky. It was her favourite colour. They were standing under the porch, watching the puddles deepen. Sheila had the paperwork in her folder, and she'd promised the minutes would be with him by Monday morning. Matt was as grateful to her as he always was. Within reason. "I can get you a taxi," Matt said. "On expenses," he added. And there was that look again. The one he could usually deflect with the smile. If he wasn't in the open like this. If she wasn't already staring at his chest. He'd try for 45 minutes this time, he told himself. The journey to Cyn's was a good hour and a half in bad traffic, but if you knew where to gun that accelerator, and where to slow down again to avoid the speed cameras, it was possible to do it in under an hour. The man he was now would be able to manage the journey in one hour. He didn't need Sat-Nav or, as he'd sometimes joked, Sheila-Nav to help him. "Cookie!" "Thank you, Mr. Button," Sheila said, repeating it to be sure he knew it was for the offer of the taxi. "But," she added, leaning in again in such a fashion that he had to look down, had to glimpse the spreading blue front of a jacket that had surely been grey this morning, "I really would change before you get to your destination, if I were you." Mike Hickman (@MikeHicWriter) is a writer from York, England. He has written for Off the Rock Productions (stage and audio), including 2018's "Not So Funny Now" about Groucho Marx and Erin Fleming. He has recently been published in EllipsisZine, Dwelling Literary, Bandit Fiction, Nymphs, Flash Fiction Magazine, Brown Bag, and Red Fez. His co-written, completed six-part BBC radio sit com remains frustratingly as unproduced as it was the last time he updated this biography. So here it is, line by line (we're going to be here a while): "What happened to your lovely new uniform, then?" "My robes met with a slight accident, if you must know. In the members' entrance." "Ouch. Nasty."

Brevity Capsized pyramid, shake the details down. Distilled to facts and nothing more, briefly smudged across the page; dissect in parts by four. Introduction—born, and bridge—we grow. Body—fail and try to mend. Conclusion—ties us back to naught; Full stop. We’ve reached the end. Self-portrait as a Dead Gray Squirrel The car in front didn’t even swerve or attempt to miss the fat, gray ground-rocket. Oblivious, the blue station wagon kicked up a heap of fur and bushy tail. Am I the squirrel? Are my words the nut worth dying for? Is Time the car? Is Life? Is it the World, or is it you? My mouth is full—I’m ready to be pressed to death. Jess Levens lives with his wife, sons and dogs in New England, where he draws inspiration from the region’s landscapes and history. His poetry has been published in Fevers of the Mind, The Dillydoun Review and Prometheus Dreaming, among other literary journals. Jess is a Marine Corps veteran and Northeastern University alum. Follow him on Twitter @levensworks.

Reasons I Cried During Pregnancy Part I and II* Written in 2017 Part I I tend to be a bit of a crybaby already so it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me that I've cried almost every single day of my pregnancy for some reason or other. I am totally aware of how irrational this response is in many of the situations in which I've found myself, but I still can't quite keep the waterworks from turning on. Luckily, in most instances, it passes quickly. My husband has theorized that irrational crying is a way to prepare parents for the magnitude of crying they will be experiencing once baby arrives. Here is a list of some of the reasons I've cried since I found out I was pregnant: 1.) The initial positive pregnancy test - tears of joy. 2.) In Ikea as we perused storage solutions for our apartment, I cried that I won't have a nursery to decorate and this is probably the only baby I will ever have so it's not fair and we should move immediately to a bigger place. 3.) I was tired and went to bed, but my husband stayed up watching episodes of "Big Bang Theory" and didn't come to bed to cuddle me. 4.) I woke up in the morning and my husband was not in bed to cuddle me. 5.) My boss called me right at 5 p.m. and gave me an assignment that made me have to work 30 minutes late. 6.) The first episode of the "Gilmore Girls" revival because Lorelai and Rory are such an awesome pair and I want a daughter so I can have that relationship, too. This was before I realized how bad the four episodes would be (I still haven't finished watching them.) 7.) I tried to make deviled eggs for a party and the eggs did not cook right. 8.) I made lentil soup and it came out too salty. 9.) A homeless man was begging for money at a freeway entrance and I started thinking what would I do if my little bug became homeless someday and it led to hysterical sobbing in my car. 10.) Lori's death on "The Walking Dead" after giving birth to a baby girl. I made my husband promise he wouldn't lose it if I die because he has to take care of our little bug. 11.) I almost lost my phone at The Habit Grill when it fell out of my pocket. To be clear, I did not lose it. I just almost lost it. 12.) I got sick for the second time in two months and cried because it was not fair. 13.) My sister accidentally knocked my favorite chocolate out of my hand onto the floor. 14.) I ate French fries and my blood sugar got too high. 15.) I forgot to test my blood sugar after a meal. Part II My emotions leveled out in the second trimester, but as I started the third trimester some of the irrational responses started to reappear though not yet with quite the same vengeance as the first trimester. Here are a few of the reasons I cried later in pregnancy: 1.) My husband's cousin planned a kid's birthday party for the same day as my baby shower. 2.) We watched "Forrest Gump" and I started crying because I don't want to die and leave Baby Lucas without a mother. 3.) The baby kicked me and I said he was a bad baby—I immediately started bawling and felt like if anything were ever to happen to the baby it would be my fault for saying he was bad. 4.) I read a blog post about a woman whose baby had anencephaly in the middle of the night and bawled uncontrollably. My husband made me swear off reading any community posts on blogs or pregnancy apps about sick or dying babies, especially right before bed. 5.) The jungle-themed wall decal we put up at my parent's house fell down. 6.) We watched an episode of "Futurama" and there was a reference that reminded me of the moving "Hachi" in which a dog faithfully waits for his dead owner to return for years. 7.) I had to create a Google form for work. 8.) At a childbirth class, the health educator told us our bodies are not lemons - I started crying because my body is a lemon. 9.) The perinatology nurse said that numbers over 140 make baby’s pancreas work harder I and I started to worry that I am destroying my baby's pancreas. 10.) A song from the "Juno" soundtrack came up on my iPod and I started thinking about how sad I would be if I had to give my baby up for adoption. 11.) My husband snored too much and I couldn't get to sleep. 12.) I couldn't get the soundbar to work on the television when I was home alone. 13.) I went to a U2 concert and the band took too long to come on stage (they had the audacity not to start until 9 p.m. and I was tired.) 14.) I read the book "The Wonderful Things You Will Be" that I got from my parents at my baby shower. 15.) My husband set up the hand-me-down bassinet and put a Winnie-the-Pooh mobile on it - and it was too fucking cute. And don’t even get me started on the reasons I cried during that postpartum, no sleep, the baby-is-crying-all-the-time months after I gave birth. But eventually, I mellowed back into my normal crybaby ways, and now I only cry at sad movies, sad books, sad songs, well, you get it. Melissa Flores Anderson is a Latinx Californian and an award-winning journalist. Her creative work has been published by Punk Noir Magazine, Livina Press, Variant Lit, Roi Fainéant Press, and is forthcoming in Daily Drunk Magazine and the Write Launch. She served as a co-guest editor of Roi Fainéant Press’ first special issue, HEAT (6.26.22). Follow her on Twitter @melissacuisine or IG @theirishmonths.

That summer we took your father’s boat Off the coast for sunsets we smoked and called it seaweed. We locked toes, gritty with sand and called it love. Sunkissed and spent we felt a swell. You swore you saw the slick of a giant squid. I thought it was a whale and understood how sailors centuries past could’ve sworn encounters with sea monsters, merfolk, magical things. Who’s to say what made waves beneath the surface? Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York and currently lives in Las Vegas with his wife and son. He is the author of three full-length short story collections and his debut novel, My Grandfather's an Immigrant and So is Yours came out from Cowboy Jamboree Press in 2021. Chin won the 2017-2018 Jean Leiby Chapbook Award from The Florida Review and Bayou Magazine’s 2014 James Knudsen Prize for Fiction. Find him online at miketchin.com and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.

We’re stuck in the drive-thru screaming at each other. Your window’s down ready to order while I fail to hide my wet-sob face from the guy in front of us who’s locking eyes with me from his rearview mirror, or maybe he can’t see me, maybe he’s a million miles away, maybe we’re just another bullshit Big City couple and nobody cares. Maybe nobody should. Here I am, your purveyor of multiple daily blow jobs, and I’m the bad guy, the bad girlfriend, the one your friends warned you about. “Are you collecting points?” asks the newly-landed immigrant forced to stand on their feet for twelve hours w/ no breaks so we can soak our sorrows in trans fats, who to us is no more than a crackling speaker, a repository for our soap box antics. “No. I’ll have a Big Fat Meal and a double-double with an espresso shot. You want anything?” this last query is for me, and I know it’s your feeble white flag, but there’s nothing to say, because this place has nothing I need. They are not in the market for assertive atticism or self-esteem. They’re all out of coupons for love. I’ve had my hand on my seat belt button, the one that says Press or Release, the one we all played with as kids, back when the backseat of our parents’ cars became a spaceship propelling us into a future so much better than the one we got. The DUFF and Hairspray lied to us as much as Disney films. The hot guy doesn’t go for the “chubby little communist girl.” If he does, it never works. Like should stick to like. Pretties should stick to Pretties. The rest of us need to learn to love ourselves. We pull up to the pay window where the newly-landed immigrant is working two jobs for the price of one. She takes your change with a smile, more courteous in the face of injustice than I could ever be. If I was the one driving, I’d turn us right around. We don’t need any more salt in this car. C E Hoffman (they/them) was born, gave birth, and tried to die in Edmonton, AB (not necessarily in that order.) A grant recipient, Writer’s Union of Canada member, and winner of the 2022 Defunct May Day Chapbook contest with their chapbook NO ACTUAL SIN, they’ve been published widely online and in print since 2010, and edited Punk Monk Magazine since 2012. Current releases include their #OwnVoices short story collection SLUTS AND WHORES (Thurston Howl Publications, 2021), BLOOD, BOOZE, AND OTHER THINGS IN NATURE (Alien Buddha Press, 2022), and GHOSTS, TROLLS, AND OTHER THINGS ON THE INTERNET (Bottlecap Press, 2022.) Follow them on Twitter @CEHoffman2, and listen to their podcast Scribbles & Spills.

It wasn’t the venom he spit through his contorted lips that shocked me the most. No, it was the speed at which it all happened. At first, I didn’t notice him, too intent on getting a parking spot behind the bank. Those ones are free, not like the rest of town and there’s no time limit. These things count now since, well, since everything, but I certainly wasn’t thinking about any of that terrible business. No way. I wasn’t thinking about how I was going to explain to the phone shop I needed their help without the receipt either. Sarah left it behind with the rest of her stuff. Nor about sourcing a new school. No, I was zoned out, the increased meds not yet settled. The man pounded his fist on the car roof. I lowered the window to find a raging respectable in a suit. “You stupid fucking bitch!” Sarah woke up in the back seat. “Mam?” “It’s okay, Sarah. This nice gentleman is just angry. We’ll park somewhere else.” I’d seen his likes before, you didn’t poke the bear. He moved to the front of my car, spreading his arms and blocking my path. A fine-looking man, mid-forties, grey around the temples, too thin in a blue shirt and tailored tweed pants. More at home in a board room than threatening a woman and her child. “Get out of the car, now,” he snarled. Sarah whimpered. “Don’t worry, I’ll see what he wants. You wait here.” “I’ll call Dad.” “No. No, don’t do that. I’ll sort it out.” I stepped out of the car, to where a crowd had gathered. Folded-armed tutterers, watching the drama unfold from a safe distance, stocking up on their stories for the day. He stopped inches from me, close enough to smell his coffee breath and black molar. Cars changed people. The kindest, most mannerly people became wild animals behind the wheel. I glanced sideways at my parking spot. “I don’t see the problem. I’m inside the lines.” He laughed so hard I thought he would pass out then stopped abruptly. “This has nothing to do with your parking, May.” “How do you know my name?” His eyes burned red. “You don’t even know me?! Oh my God!” Reaching into his tweed jacket pocket, he pulled a worn photograph from his wallet. “Do you remember him?” My hand flew to my mouth. Shane Matthews. “My Shane was seven years old, seven, when your husband mowed him down in cold blood.” He ran the tips of his fingers over the image of Shane. There were shadows of the Richard Matthews I remembered but he was only in his late twenties. The man in front of me was at least fifteen years older. Sarah stepped out of the car. “What’s going on?” “Get back in the car, if you know what’s good for you,” he demanded, his voice controlled and low. Sarah did what she was told. “What do you want from us?” I asked. “The truth. Why did you lie for your husband that night? Why did you say you were with him in the car and Shane ran out in front of you? You know he was driving erratically and there was only one person in that car. I saw the bloody car screech away for fuck’s sake.” “Please leave us alone,” I cried. “I can’t – I can’t do this anymore.” Richard grabbed me by the throat and pushed me against the pebble dashed grey wall behind the car. “Why did you lie? I mean, my boy he…he … he was just playing. He didn’t deserve to die.” He let me go, then staggered backwards and fell sobbing to the ground. “Why? Just tell me why.” I put my arm around him, and he didn’t shrug me away so I took him into a hug. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “It was a tragic accident. Your boy ran out in front of Victor’s car. The sun was low in the sky, he couldn’t be seen. He was too fast. It was so fast—" He raised his head, his eyes searching mine until I broke his stare. “Oh my God. How did I not see it? Your husband, the Detective Inspector was drunk! Oh shit, he was drunk and killed my son and you lied for him.” He was getting to his feet. Sarah was glued to the passenger seat, her eyes like saucers. What good would it have done to say what really happened? I’d have gone to prison and she’d have been sent back to Victor, the man we were running from. I’d had a bottle of wine, but I didn’t know he would go out and leave the keys of his car at home. He never did that. We had to take our chance. It was self-preservation. I wanted to tell the police when I hit the boy but Victor, the DI Victor Mortell, persuaded me to tell a different story, one that kept me from prison, but indebted to him for life. One that would make sure we never left. But today, we did just that. I looked from my daughter, dearest Sarah, sweet and kind, to the tall man in the good suit, broken and crying and it was clear what I needed to do – for Richard, for Shane, but most of all for Sarah. “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t honest in court. Victor was alone in the car that day and he had been drinking. Victor killed your son.” A Note from the Author: I'm the author of Into the Woods, a psychological fiction novel, published by Inkubator Books and available on Amazon. I have just sold the audiobook rights to that book while working away on my next thriller.

Doll Country In doll country we are building a miniature replica of our home, a nutshell study of rooms and hallways forensically scaled and measured. There is hot and cold water and a garage with cars with running motors. The locks on the doors and windows work with the mimed precision of a Black Forest cuckoo clock, its bird call and woodland scene of hares and deer like the summer diorama we watch from our backyard patio, the moon as small as a penknife in a polymer sky. In the miniature replica of our home in doll country, tiny felt tiebacks hold open a repository stage-set with unburials— like hunger stones revealed in a drought ravaged river, they tell us to weep. Our visitors are entertained and delighted by our small sufferings. And to think that the parch marks suggest something more— a nesting doll persisting, outliving us and returning with the dark force of sleeping giants. Frogspawn The hunted prince is born from a necklace of eggs fastened in the hollow of the pond’s blue throat. She collars the secrets of transformation and spits tail and gill from her ephemeral mouth. He rises, crowns the water like a nautilus; the ooze of earth lungs and the double-hull drag force like blood thickening in a tunnel. . Crickets scrape and file their wing-bows. The wart men lunge at the pond’s soft throat, coursing a quarry long disappeared— change fixed like a periscope to the polestar. Damon Hubbs is a writer and poet living in New England. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Book of Matches, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Dawntreader, Otoliths, Synchronized Chaos, Don’t Submit!, Bruiser, The Chamber Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy and others. He’s interested in microgreens, futurism, mansard roofs and vintage ceramic pie birds.

The women at the babyshower are all very beautiful. They hold bagels and pink, slimy lox on porcelain plates. They sip mimosas out of delicately decorated teacups. I’m only somewhat acquainted with most of the guests, except for Ingrid, the woman about to become a mother for the first time. Ingrid and I lived together in college. I used to so often see her holding Pabst or $2 margaritas, but now, across the patio, she’s holding a teacup of orange juice while the other hand rests on her enormously pregnant belly. It’s especially surreal because it couldn’t have been that long ago that I drove her to Rite Aid for Plan B after her shitty boyfriend slipped his condom off during sex. But, it actually is that long ago, because now she’s with Martin (who is—as far as I can tell—stable and trustworthy). They have luxurious things like retirement accounts and money to decorate a nursery with all those fancy Scandinavian baby brands made with blonde wood and organic cotton. Today, we aren’t as close as we were in college. The babyshower is hosted on the patio of a sprawling, mid-century house in Silverlake that one of Ingrid’s friends, Meredith, owns. It clings to the hillside on long, spindly legs, and I wonder how it survives earthquakes without crumbling into the shady ravine below. From the patio, there’s a wide view of the hills with streets zig-zagging up their sides and more big houses that look like they could collapse at any moment. Below that is the Silverlake Reservoir, glistening in the sunlight but tantalizingly out of reach, a chain-link fence encircling its waters. It’s one of those warm Los Angeles winter days. Blue skies and trees on the verge of blooming, except that it’s January. All the seasons melt into each other to create an everlasting spring. I think it’s part of the reason why people who live in this city can’t tell they’re aging: there’s no seasonal change to remind them of passing time. It’s easy to begin to believe that you’re immortal. “Helloooo ladies,” Meredith raps her fork on the side of her teacup. “Thanks for being here today to celebrate our sweet Ingrid’s new baby girl. Who’s excited to meet the little one?” The group of women cheer enthusiastically. Mimosas slosh out of the teacups, sticky sweet on the slats of the deck. “We still have a whole month before we meet our new B.F.F.,” Meredith makes a pouting face. “But in the meantime, we can have some fun! Let’s play a game!” The women cheer again but this time with noticeably less enthusiasm. They all want to pour another mimosa and sit in the warm winter sun and not remember the rules for this silly game. Meredith forges ahead with a game called Watch the Baby. According to the rules of Watch the Baby, each of the guests receives a small, plastic Kewpie Baby doll to hold throughout the party. If you put your Kewpie Baby down for even a minute, another guest can snatch it up. You have to protect your Kewpie Baby at all costs. Whoever has the most Kewpie Babies by the end of the party wins. The winner, presumably, is the most attentive Kewpie Mommy of them all. The Kewpie Baby in my hand stares blankly into the middle distance with blue eyes framed by long, drawn-on lashes. Its plastic, rosy-peach skin is smooth and unblemished, except for a cute belly button in the center of its plump abdomen. Its arms are outstretched as if it’s saying, Carry me, Kewpie Mommy! I acquiesce. In my freshman psychology class in college—in fact, it was around the time when I met Ingrid—I learned about the Kewpie Doll effect. The theory states that the more attractive a baby is (the more it resembles the perfect plastic doll in my hand), the more attention it will receive from its mother. Alternatively, if a baby is unattractive (the less it resembles the perfect plastic doll in my hand), the less attention it will receive from its mother. I don’t know why I remember the Kewpie Doll effect study and not others, but it’s probably because my mom likes to tell anyone who will listen (including romantic partners, and on a particularly embarrassing occasion, my employer) that I was an ugly baby. My nickname for the first week of my life was Popeye because I busted my face on her tailbone on the way out. In the earliest photos of me, I’m mostly bald, except for a shock of black hair that eventually fell out and grew back dishwater blonde. My face is smooshy, like a sun-dried tomato, and there’s a glossy bruise on my right eye, which is puffy and closed. “You mostly grew into your features, honey,” Mom tells me when I ask her politely to not use my baby photo as the butt of a joke. I received a solid B minus in the psychology class. We all cling to our beautiful Kewpie Babies and conversation resumes. The women ask me what I do and I tell them that I write. They’re excited because they think I mean movie scripts (which is often what people mean when they say they write in Los Angeles), but when I explain that no, I’m a copywriter, they can’t help but look devastated by how boring that is. “Sometimes I write short stories!” I tack on, eager to please and to be seen as creative and interesting. I fill my mouth with a doughy bagel, chewing determinedly. “And what do you do?” I ask the woman to my right after I wash the bagel down with a swig of my mimosa. “I’m an injector,” she says, as if that makes any sense to me. I think of all the things she could be injecting. Vaccines. Insulin. Heroin. Before I can ask what an injector is, another woman jumps in: “And she’s uhhh-mazing! Which reminds me…I need to make an appointment with you soon.” I’m still not sure what type of injector she is when several of the baby shower guests gather around in a dizzying crowd of florals and expensive perfume and the tacky dried orange juice. “Tell me what I need!” One woman at the front of the throng stands before the injector. She has a charming snaggletooth and freckles across her nose. I think her name is Rose but I’m not sure. She puts her Kewpie Baby on the patio railing and I’m quick to take it before she notices. Ha ha! The injector instructs Rose to make a series of faces, which she films on her cell phone camera. First, a resting face. Then a smile. Then a frown. Then the injector and Rose watch the video together and the injector makes little comments like, “You see here by your eyes?” and “Do you scowl a lot when you’re concentrating?” Rose asks, “Can you keep it natural looking?” The injector smiles and says, “Yes, it will only enhance your natural beauty!” One by one, the baby shower guests repeat this ritual. Resting. Smile. Frown. The video analysis of imperfections. I collect several new Kewpie Babies for my plastic brood, each one identical to the last. The woman who needs to make an appointment with the injector stands next to me. “Have you ever tried Botox?” She asks me conspiratorially. I tell her no, and she explains that it’s probably a good thing because it’s a lot of money and it means you have to go back every few months for another injection because the effects of the muscle relaxant wear off with time. “And I can’t raise my eyebrows!” She points to her forehead. “See? I’m trying!” Sure enough, her eyebrows lay nice and flat across the top of her face. There’s not a single wrinkle in sight. She then tells me about her friend who spent $15,000 on a nose job, ended up hating it, and spent $25,000 getting her nose back to the way it was before. At this point, my arms are full of Kewpie Babies, and no one seems to really care that I’m winning the game. I spy Ingrid through the crowd. She’s sitting in a reclining patio chair, clearly unenthused by the concept of Botox. A floppy sun hat obscures her face. I wish we were as close as we were in college so I could be real with her about the body horror that is birth. I want to ask: Are you worried about the baby’s body ripping your vagina in half? Do you fear shitting the hospital bed when you’re pushing it out? And in another thought: Why hadn’t we stayed close? Reflexively, I hug my Kewpie Babies tighter to my chest. I’ll give them a good life. Dress them up in their tiny Kewpie outfits, feed them miniscule jars of Kewpie Mayo. “And when we turn 30, our bodies change in more ways than one,” the injector is saying to the crowd of entranced baby shower guests. Someone in the group mutters “Amen to that” and there’s a flutter of laughter among the women. “One of those inevitable changes is that our skin stops producing collagen. Our muscles also start to sag. You know, gravity.” “Do you get Botox?” I pipe up from the back. “Actually, no,” the Injector says after a beat. Maybe she considered lying. “It’s such a personal choice. I love helping my clients feel their best. But I know it’s not for me. I’m worried I’d forget what my natural face looks like.” “Well, I think we have a clear winner,” Meredith interrupts, eyeing my handful of dolls. My prize is a $150 gift card to the Koreatown MedSpa where the injector works. I tuck the gift card and my nine flawless, long-lashed Kewpie Babies into my tote bag. “You won!” Ingrid says, waddling over to me as I prepare to leave Meredith’s gorgeous, terrifyingly precarious home. “You’re the Kewpie Mommy.” “I suppose so,” I say. “I can’t wait to meet the new, real baby.” “Trust me, I can’t wait either, I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” she says, patting her belly gently. There are dark circles under her eyes. “I want a beer. And a joint. And I have to pee every five seconds.” “You’re going to be an amazing mom,” I say, sincerely believing it. “Yeah, I fuckin’ hope so,” Ingrid says. “I’m going to have to figure it out.” We hug. I want to hold on to her longer and somehow reclaim the closeness we once had, but I let her go before it gets too weird. I take the long way home, down curvy Micheltorena and Kenilworth, past mid-century mansions, to where it spits you out on West Silverlake Drive. I think about the ways women’s bodies change as we age, or the ways we prevent them from changing. The involuntary ways that we can’t avoid—even in Southern California’s perpetual spring—the sagging, the wrinkling, the thinning, the fattening. And the ways we very much want to see them transform. When I turn onto West Silverlake, the Reservoir is aglow with the setting sun. I really wish they would take that fence down. At the stoplight before turning on to Sunset, I angle the rearview mirror so I can see my face, curious about what features I’d like to freeze in time at the KoreaTown MedSpa. I repeat the ritual, preparing for my own encounter with the injector: Resting. Smile. Frown. I bring my tote bag full of plastic dolls into my apartment where, at some point in the business of everyday life and endless organizing and cleaning up, the tote bag is shoved into the back of my closet. I forget about the Kewpie Babies and the MedSpa gift card, with which I was supposed to perfect my face. One day not too far in the future, Ingrid’s baby is an actual, living, breathing girl who loves being pushed on the swing and sitting on Martin’s shoulders and is going through a phase in which she only eats orange foods: sweet potato, carrots, peeled mandarins. She looks nothing like a Kewpie Baby, with a wild mess of dark curls and big ears that stick out slightly. She has a goofy grin and a hot temper. My prediction from the baby shower rings true: Ingrid is an amazing mom. It’s enough for me. I miss the seasons and that’s why I decide to leave Los Angeles. I have wrinkles around my eyes and mouth, sun-damaged skin, breasts that have given in to gravity, and more than one wiry strand of grey hair that pokes shamelessly out of my scalp. My womb is comfortably empty. The chain-link fence around Silverlake Reservoir is still there, but I find solace in the families of geese and ducks who fly in from the sky to paddle across the rippling water. As I pack up my apartment, I find the tote bag from Ingrid’s baby shower. There’s no MedSpa gift card—lost long ago in the depths of my closet—but nine Kewpie Babies, smelling vaguely of orange juice and looking as perfect as the day I became the Kewpie Mommy. Taylor Haynes is a copywriter by day and fiction writer by night currently based in Los Angeles. She finds inspiration for her writing in everyday interactions that have a hint of surrealism, strange coincidences or conspiracies, cultural myths, the landscapes of the Southwest, and her own experiences as a woman aging in the United States.

“Help me Jesus” Lone whispers from the outhouse where he hides amongst the doodlebugs, the cobwebs and the glucose tracks of slugs. He can hear Pa rampaging through the house, can hear his muffled cusses and threats. Lone wills himself small, thinks about the tiniest, most minute things he can, spider eggs cocooned within silk-spun nests, dandelion spores that lift and drift on passing zephyrs like zeppelins, escaping the scrubby patch Pa calls ‘his portion’. “Help me Jesus” Lone thinks as the door creeks and the light pierces the gloom like a laser, hard and intense. Lone can smell sweat and sour breath, can hear the croupy wheeze of Pa’s anger. Lone ain’t sure what he’s done this time, but he sure as shit don’t wanna find out. “Help me Jesus.” “You in there Lone?” Pa calls, lying with the softness of his tone. Lone holds his breath and thinks small thoughts, and pictures Jesus’s supportive eyes, devoted mouth, his honest hands. When the door closes Lone uncoils slowly, stacking his spine, filling the spaces with prairie air. He’s certain now of three fundamental truths – if Ma hadn’t left when she did Pa would have killed her and, if Lone doesn’t find a way Pa’ll kill him instead and, that Pa needs to kill. It’s the only way he’ll be able to hate himself fully, the only way to justify drinking himself to death. Pa used to ask Jesus for help himself. Used to ask for the crops to grow and the cow to calf, and for Mary-Anne to get better. Ma asked Jesus for second chances. Jesus didn’t come then. Lone knows he ain’t coming now. Later, as the shack burns Lone stands beyond the firelight, watching Pa’s soul spin like glitter towards heaven, waiting for the judgement to descend, still waiting for Jesus. Maria Thomas is a middle-aged, apple-shaped mum of two. She has work in EllipsisZine, Funny Pearls, Levatio, Fiery Scribe Review, Paragraph Planet, VirtualZine, Free Flash Fiction, Punk Noir, Roi Faineant Press, Cape Magazine, Story Nook and (upcoming) Punk Monk. Maria won Retreat West’s April 2022 Micro competition. She can be found on Twitter as @AppleWriter.

When I wake up at three in the morning it’s all I can do to not phone Harry. Hello he’d say as if he were trying to fog up the screen. I wouldn’t say it’s me or guess who right away like before. I’d say it’s Sherry – a glitch between the rs – then silence like I’d put the phone in my mouth. Then I’d say it’s me as if I’d swallowed it. At three in the morning I think he would prefer to go back to sleep. Harry used to tell me his dreams and I know listening to people’s dreams can be like listening to a tap drip but not Harry’s. He’d go slow and start with something you’d latch onto almost involuntarily and he’d place a picture in your head like a paint-by-number, all white and portioned out. Then he’d say something like a tiger was in my dream, and before you knew it your picture got seeps of hot orange and when he said it stared at me, a pool would fill with dark liquid and then another would leap to its side. You ran with him, never certain whether you were pursued or pursuing – but you didn’t ask – you knew Harry said what he said purposefully, and left what he left with equal vigilance. The dream would end – he would stop talking – and everything he’d said and given you colours for would crash into place and that dream would be on the edge of you all day like a sharp little planet revolving around you and it wasn’t even your dream but it also sort of was, after all that, in the same way a paint-by-number isn’t really your painting but sort of is, too. Harry’s dreams were strange and beautiful, terrifying but funny, deep and trite at once. Tell me your dream. That’s what I’d say next. That’s what I’d pour into the silence after it’s Sherry it’s me. Sometimes, sleep thick in his throat, he would toss a harrowing situation from his pillow to mine and I would find myself upon an ocean of hollow blue triangles for instance, leaping to safety – and safety, Harry said – is optional in dreams. You can go ahead fuck it up see what happens, he said, but I don’t think he ever did. Harry was not a fuck it up person. He always knew where everything was, replaced the paper towels immediately, portioned his love just so. But Harry was too conscientious for me. Too precise. Too for-every-action-there-is-an equal-and- opposite. Too fucking logical when he was awake. We travelled in a red car all the way to Newfoundland. I remember immense rock and smashed water crowded into sharp little scenes of intense beauty like I was looking through a kaleidoscope. I also remember the urge to get drunk with the red-faced old men who would half-seethe half-sing across sticky tables, their eyes resting on invisible things like cats do, like my father did, until his eyes went from watery to acute, demanding I prove my lineage which I did with a guzzle of whiskey and acute blue eyes of my own. I resisted this urge for the sake of a smooth holiday with Harry but I more than made up for it our last two years together. Me? I am a multi-faulted ruin. Never know where anything is, can’t find my shoes or all those lemons until I find them later so disfigured I think it’s the onions, also missing, the gas bill isn’t paid until I pull the fluorescent note out of the mailbox and even then I pay half and make impatient arrangements over the telephone for the rest (as if). Nothing matches, no reserves. And I don’t dream properly either. There is no gusto. My dreams are like going for an uneventful walk. But I have the words. I can tell you where the wind is pointing the last few maple leaves, one of which is made of lace, another splattered with blood, the third a certain shade of green. I can make you long for the sea – the fog suddenly attached to your memory like an organ. I can fill your head with clouds that have an edge of light but are dark in their centre should you crack them like an egg. I can break your heart if you’ll let me. Sherry is from the wilds of Ontario. She writes the kind of stories she longs for and can rarely find. thestoryparade.ca

Outside we watch tender lime leaves unfurl, new life. A small hand reaches for the copper-threaded can, pours cold water right from the hose, trailing droplets along cornflower-colored morning glories— although they are shuttered by now, closed for business. Their vines never shudder or recede, rather seeking space within vinyl, searching under siding, always climbing taller and longer as if they, too, want to enter the house, a refuge from August humidity but not from sound or shrieks. Kids fighting and tricycles c a r e e n i n g across tan tiles, the grout porous and green as if it, too, is photosynthesizing. A jungle of the domestic— as a mother I’ve learned the contours of the seasons.