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In walks a Van Gogh salesman, and not the sunflower kind. “No starry nights neither,” he winks at Jen and me as we sit there. Like always. Like Thursdays. Usual coffee and scones. . The barista, a parenthesis of a girl, hunchy and tall, leans across the counter. “Espressos for everyone!” the salesman sings and lines up his prints against the curvy glass of the sandwich case. It’s a gallery of wheat fields and empty rooms. The salesman stands back and nods in approval. He is all bowtie and red-haired bangs. Pen clipped on to his shirt pocket. “He’s cute,” Jen says. And here we go. “You just broke up with Larry,” I say. “You saw how he winked at us,” she says, and then, again, “he’s cute.” There are only two other tables. A guy with a laptop and headphones, the other a mother feeding a cookie into a stroller. The barista has lined up five espressos. “That’s twenty bucks,” she says, “ten for renting the space.” The salesman puffs and releases a loud sigh, starts to gather up his prints. “Change of plans,” he says, looking around. “Not much of a customer base,” he shrugs at me and Jen. The baby in the stroller has started crying. The laptop guy is staring into his screen. “See that?” I say to Jen. “Poof! Gone.” She crumples her napkin and tosses it on her plate. I know she isn’t listening. Out walks the Van Gogh Salesman. The barista is shaking her parenthesis head. Through the window, we can see the salesman arranging his framed prints around his legs. He is looking in every possible direction. Jen stands up and goes over to the window. That’s when he turns and smiles at us, at her. She looks back at him and stands there, watching him for a moment like a giant sunflower eye.

It was no surprise to Dharti that the pedicure would go awry. Being made of solid earth created a habit of clogging drains. Ankle deep in mud, the aesthetician would feverishly rinse her legs with clean water from a hand-held spigot and apologize profusely. It only made matters worse. Dharti knew it wasn't her fault; she was born this way, a bog maiden. There would be no beautification here today. She extracted her brown limbs from the thick silt with an embarrassingly loud sucking noise and watched as the two dark holes filled themselves with pudding-consistency mud. Dharti tracked footprints as she made her way through the salon. Past the desert-warm air of the nail dryers, past the gel-tinted fingernails of gossiping ladies looking up but avoiding catching her eye. Lumps of mud slid down her legs and plopped gently on the floor. The salon owner quickly mopped up behind her, murmuring unveiled criticisms regarding her lack of cleanliness. The heat of embarrassment was a fire kiln that hardened Dharti's flesh again, and she closed the door behind her with a hard push. Its gentle regress into the door frame with the soft, welcoming bell tinkle was infuriating. Her eyes flashed, and her mouth set into a stony grimace. She was trying; she wanted to scream. Dharti strode down the street. The small town was bustling with morning shoppers, bags hanging from elbows, cheeks kissed, lattes in hand, children in tow. She looked down at bare arms composed of long withered roots and thought lonely thoughts. Was she doomed to the periphery, never fitting in? Hugging herself for warmth, her loamy skin soft and inviting, she walked away from the crowd. Perhaps she should just mulch herself amongst the impatiens or get lost in the marshlands. She found herself in the town's park with its memorial gazebo amidst the trim, well-kept lawn, wind whipping an American flag into a frenzy. She could smell salt in the air and caught the faint scent of lavender. She remembered why she rose from her native soil, the dry, harsh environs of her youth, to move where it was green and lush. Where rain danced on asphalt and winds chimed from porches. Where neighbors brought you pie and asked about your landscaping. She'd close them out with polite thanks, fearful of friendship she assumed would inevitably wilt. Awkwardly tried to adapt to her new environs solo but failed to thrive like a neglected orchid. Suddenly it dawned on her that she was no potted plant. Her containment was all her own making. Her toes dug into the soil below the clipped greens, rooting themselves to the town, absorbing its history and role in her life thus far. Vines crept up each leg, leaves opening across her abdomen and whirling around her arms, giving her courage and strength. She opened her palms, and morning glories erupted, unfurling their trumpet-shaped flora with silent fanfare. Their violent purple adorned each finger. She basked in that moment of earthly beautification, decorated in nature. Manifesting her skill with the local flora, a gift she could share with others. She walked back to the nearest Starbucks, ordered a half-caf latte with no sugar and almond milk, and smiled when the barista remembered her name. She sat facing the window to soak up the sun, to be noticed, releasing tendrils of hope that someone would come and join her. This time, she would let relationships grow and friendships blossom. Nina Miller is an Indian-American physician, fencer, and writer. Her work can be found in TL;DR Press's, Mosaic: The Best of the 1,000 Word Herd Flash Fiction Competition 2022, Bright Flash Literary Review, Five South, Five Minutes and more. Find her on Twitter @NinaMD1 or www.ninamillerwrites.com.

It will be dead soon. Poached slowly in sun warmed plastic, steam droplets suspended inches above the waterline, like chandelier pendants on an egg timer of mortality. I lift the bag to my face and confront dull, bulging eyes and a tiny mouth puckering in desperate kisses, little round Os getting faster, losing rhythm; jarring as a badly dubbed film. I copy the movements, my own eyes staring through the pliant barrier, equally unblinking, my lips flapping impotently in reply. I didn’t want the fish, but my reticence was smothered by his peacocked posturing. His validation coming, not from me but from the stall holder, a girl mere years older than myself who pulled strings of pale pink bubble gum from her sticky mouth. As the cheap plastic balls sailed ever closer to their target, a cloud of foreboding settled heavy on my shoulders, boring down to meet the anxiety rising from my belly. With a pop and exaggerated fist pump, my fate was sealed with excited squeals from the girl. She reached behind her and passed the prize to my father, who in turn bestowed it on me. This life, this sentient being, that I would have the privilege to watch die. I cast my eyes around and note how much is discarded at the fair ground. Popcorn kernels, only half eaten, rattle within boxes, trampled by oblivious feet. Thin wooden sticks lie scattered, pink fronds of candy floss hardening darkly on their surface, clinging fast in an onslaught of regimental ants. Disposable joy, temporary, just like me and the fish. He is talking now to another girl, he flicks his dyed hair, basking in his athletic prowess. I stand shuffling beside him, frustration building as hope slips like ether, into the charcoaled nutty fug. He looks in my direction and with feigned benevolence, pushes ride tokens into my free hand until it’s overflowing. The tokens thud onto the dusty ground and I have to crouch down and retrieve them while he rolls his eyes to the girl, giggling at my expense. I look at the creature beside me with resolve and approach the big wheel. I’ve always been afraid of heights but I will put that aside for the fish; now listing on its side. The kisses are slower and wider as I step into the swinging carriage, and with a grasping hand find the seat. Within moments we are rising over buildings, and with trembling hands, I hold the fish aloft. In the distance, golden rays bounce like lightning off the frothing sea. A glimpse of home before death. Within moments the fish swings onto its back, kisses stopped, lips a pinhole. As the wheel descends, I look over to a clearing and the faded blue house on the hill. I picture her crouched low in the garden, tenderly digging the beds. Love spills salt from my eyes as I approach the ground, leaving fish and my mum in the sky. About the author: Marie-Louise is an Irish writer who enjoys writing from a sensory perspective.

Wandering Still The waves roll against an empty shore, each one strong and steady and painful, the sand grating like life across my skin. Here we stand, years gone by, dreams like storybooks from half-remembered childhoods, nothing how we once hoped it would be. Wandering still, my feet carry me here again and again, just as they carry me through life, plodding along like some faithful old mule, despite my questioning that faith with each step, that reason for walking forward when all I know is behind. Grief is the good days: it is sorrow for something good, remembering something good. It is the nothing that hits harder: the lack, the emptiness, the too many reasons to stop. And yet—I return here: I look out at that horizon, memories fading like morning fog in the sharp light of day. I walk, step after step in the roaring silence and wonder still. A Summer Road This road is cracked: baked so long in the sun, flies buzzing languidly; the bushes spark green against the heat. Footsteps steady below me, quietly: like promises made to the sunrise, yet spoken more surely than a name. I wonder if the air I breathe remembers other travellers, pilgrims set upon the same path for different reasons, winding through the trees, never knowing what the end looks like or even if there is one. Dirt sifts in the breeze, light as whispers; leaves tremble before the passing of a truth, the passing of one more set of weary feet, sandals dark with road dust but sturdy, yet. I walk, searching for the glimmer of water, wondering at the questions I have asked, feeling for the heartbeat of home. The Tower The tower stones beneath me are cold as death, crumbling and forgotten, shaped by the wind that grasps at my clothing with bony fingers, whistling through the cracks in us both. The trees shift and sway around us; the sky a cauldron of churning mercury. I brush rough lichen with the soft pads of my fingers, and wait, not knowing who or what I wait for. No life rings its footsteps on the ashy stairs snaking up, no hope sifts out of the gathering dark like sand beneath a desert sunrise; I listen for answers or assurances in this place of ruin, but all I hear are whispers: apologies never spoken, and promises lost to the echoes of the past. A Summer’s Day Lovers walk / shining like exotic butterflies / shimmering in the sunshine of a perfect day. Manicured gardens segment / the park beyond; laughter / is paired in couplets / like the birds / flitting above. A low stone wall / marks the beginning / of dappled shade, of the old watching / the young, of me / waiting by a stone / for only one. Growing Up My bracelet says Believe: not Believe in yourself or Believe humans can be good. I stutter and stop, stumble and run a few steps, always questioning whether a path so strange could be real or worth it. I believed in goodness once, a fairy tale to hold onto through the long years of abandonment. Believe I didn’t need to tell myself then. Believe back then was the air I breathed, not the bracelet I wore. FRANCES KOZIAR has published over 70 poems in 40+ different literary magazines, including Vallum, Acta Victoriana, and Dreamers Magazine. She is a young (disabled) retiree and a social justice advocate, and she lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Author website: https://franceskoziar.wixsite.com/author

it’s just a different sunrise in the fall the sun is bright but muted the clouds are dense and low and I am thinking about the future about how there is no manual for it no all-knowing oracle to show me the way I have taken the first step with a gentle nudge but now I stand frozen one leg firmly in the future, one leg in the now stiff with fear unable to move forward or back my mind trembling like a newborn fawn unaware if I am walking into the land of milk and honey or the spinning blades of a woodchipper and like the spider in the bouncing web on this cool windy day I am merely hanging on Ken Tomaro is a writer living in Cleveland Ohio whose work reflects everyday life with depression. His poetry has appeared in several online and print journals and explores the common themes we all experience in life. Sometimes blunt, often dark but always grounded in reality. He has 4 full-length collections of poetry, most recently, Potholes and Perogies available on Amazon.

Kyle Denner is from Tucson, AZ. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Blue Collar Review, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, and Manastash.

at once, I feel it all suspending permanent arteries the weight of helplessness captured in foreign memories not unlike a dream come back to me with crusted eyes to show me the way you used to hold me pacify me wait for me to soften arms waiting maybe it’s not quite enough charming angry thoughts pen tips dragging along marring pages indelicately what an unlikely place to fall apart About the poet: Mikayla Elias They/Them Engineer, Crybaby Audio Technical Producer, This is Nashville, WPLN News Author, Bending Toward the Light

Sam Szanto lives in Durham, UK. Her debut short story collection “If No One Speaks” was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2022. Over 50 of her stories and poems have been published/ listed in competitions. In April 2022, she won the Shooter Flash Fiction Contest, placed second in the 2022 Writer’s Mastermind Short Story Contest, third in the 2021 Erewash Open Competition, second in the 2019 Doris Gooderson Competition, and was also a winner in the 2020 Literary Taxidermy Competition. Her short story collection was a finalist in the 2021 St Lawrence Book Awards. As a poet, she won the 2020 Charroux Prize for Poetry and the First Writers International Poetry Prize, and her poetry has appeared in a number of international literary journals, including “The North.” Sam can be found at: Twitter: @sam_szanto Facebook: sam-szanto Instagram: samszantowriter *** NF: What drew you into writing? What was your journey to a published writer? SS: I’ve always written. It’s in my blood as my dad is a published author too, and my parents and school teachers always encouraged me to write. I had my first book published in infant school – I wrote about the elves and fairies I imagined living in my garden and my headteacher printed and bound it! I then had a poem published when I was about 16, and carried on writing, but didn’t really get much published until I did an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University – that really honed my technique and I got feedback from writers for the first time, which was so helpful. NF: What, if anything, do you do to get feedback from other writers before you publish? SS: I don't get much feedback on short stories these days; I wish I had a writer's circle locally, but I've not been here long enough to find one. I do have one writer friend I will occasionally email a story to, and she'll give me her thoughts, but rarely these days. I get feedback on my poetry because I'm doing a course in that now - that's always really useful, especially as it comes from a range of poets who all see the same poem very differently. Rejections are also feedback! NF: What do you like about writing short stories/flash? SS: I’ve got a fairly low boredom threshold, so I like the fact that I can write a short story or a poem and then move on to another – harder work with a novel! I also like the way that you don’t have to say everything in a short story; I like to follow Ernest Hemingway’s suggestion of omitting the true ending of a piece to leave the reader wanting more. People often tell me what they think the ‘real’ ending of my story should be; often it’s one I hadn’t considered! NF: What do you like about writing poetry? SS: I love creating images, and writing metaphorically. I do this in my short stories, but it has to be sparing or it distracts from the characters and plot. Poems don’t have to have a plot, they can be a succession of images, a stream of loveliness, like looking at a row of stained-glass windows. NF: What makes you decide whether to write short stories or poetry? When is one medium better than the other? SS: I’m doing a Masters in Writing Poetry with the Poetry School London / Newcastle University at the moment, so I have to write a certain number of poems for that. If I do too many, though, I miss short stories. I like to play with genres, so I often write a short story and turn it into a poem, and vice versa. Sometimes an idea will fall flat as a story but work well as a prose poem. Sometimes a poem won’t have any life but will work as a story. NF: Did you always want to put together a collection of short stories, or was it an idea that grew over time? SS: No, it wasn’t something I thought of. I always felt I had to write novels, that that was the only way to get published and be a ‘real’ writer. I had also never thought there was much of a market for short story collections, which is true in traditional publishing (although I hope that changes). It was only recently that I considered becoming an independent author, and I’m glad I did! NF: I used to write short stories. When I had enough to put together a short story anthology, I approached some publishers. They all told me I had to write at least one novel before they would consider publishing an anthology. Have you ever run into that attitude? If so, what did you do? SS: That’s pretty much what I meant in my previous answer. I think traditional booksellers have this belief that people won’t buy short story collections – but how can they, if the big bookstores don’t sell them? Also, short story collections are rarely focused on in schools’ or universities’ curricula. There needs to be a perceptual change. I also don’t think it’s true that the novel has to come first. Tessa Hadley, one of the best-known UK literary fiction writers at the moment, who taught me short-story writing on the Bath Spa MA, published collections of short stories before publishing her novels. NF: When you put together “If No One Speaks,” did you have a theme in mind to tie the stories together? How did you choose the stories you included in this book? SS: Yes, the themes of voicelessness and displacement were uppermost in my mind, although with some of the stories, that’s more apparent than in others. I wanted the stories to have a dialogue with each other, for them to speak to each other in terms of tone or content – so, for example, a story about a woman who has to literally and figuratively let go of her daughter in a towerblock fire (“Letting Go”) is followed by another about a woman who is letting go of her father’s ashes on a mountain (“The Thought of Death Sits Easy on the Man”). NF: Many people write stories based on their own experiences. However, your stories appear to come from somewhere else beyond you. Your imagination? Things you heard? Things you read? Do you imbue any of your characters with your personality, such as in “Quiet Love?” Where do your stories, and their sometimes-exotic settings, come from? Were locations based on places you visited, or did you choose them another way? SS: I don’t often write about things I’ve experienced personally, but when I’ve finished the stories, I often realize that what I was writing about is a recurring preoccupation. For example, with “Letting Go,” I only thought I was creating a story based on the real-life Grenfell Tower fire, which was a major disaster in London while I lived there, but not one that I was actually involved with. But retrospectively, I realized that what I was writing about was the fear of losing a child: very much present in my life as I have young children, who were very little at the time of creating the story. I also write a lot of stories in the ephemeral tradition, from a news story I’ve read. What I try to do is ask myself “What if?” – so what if the actual ending was very different, what if other characters were involved, what if it took place in another country etc. This is where “125,” a story that was a winner in the 2020 Literary Taxidermy Competition and is also in the collection, came from. I read a news story about women living in Bangladeshi brothels and imagined one particular woman living there, and thought “What if?” a client was kind enough to her that she fell in love with him? Bangladesh is not a country that I’ve visited, nor have I visited a brothel, but thanks to the internet I was able to find enough material to bring the location to life. Other locations in the collection are places that I really have visited – Thailand, America, the Lake District, etc. NF: What is the ephemeral tradition? SS: Perhaps it's not actually a tradition, more a term - used by the poet W.H (Bill) Herbert in a Craft Poetry class I took with him to describe a means of creating poetry from the scraps of writing that accrue around you. He has boxes of news articles that he uses as source material for poetry. I find The Guardian newspaper a rich source of inspiration - many of the stories I've written have been inspired by their Experiences column, which is about ordinary people's very strange and unusual experiences. One of the most recent ones: “I was attacked by a wild boar while surfing.” NF: Some of your stories seem to revolve around confinement, self-imposed, or imposed from the outside, sometimes to the point of having no control over one’s circumstances (“If No One Speaks,” “Quiet Love,” “I25,” “Making Memories”). If this has been an issue in your life, please describe how, if you don’t mind. SS: I spent three of my teenage years at an English boarding school in the 1990s, when there was little pastoral care. I didn’t fit in very well and I felt very confined; there was almost nothing to do except lessons and we had almost no freedom, at an age when people need to start becoming more independent. Stephen Fry, who has been to prison, said that if you’ve been to boarding school you can survive in jail! I think that was one of the experiences that made me interested in the idea of confinement. Mental confinement is a big preoccupation for me as well. I have often felt unable to say how I feel, that I will be punished in some way for doing it. Literally, when I was younger, I had a bad stammer – so I really often couldn’t say how I felt. Writing about these things is a kind of therapy, because the women in the stories usually do manage to speak out in some way, even if it is just to other people who can’t change the situation they’re in (as in the title story of the collection, “If No One Speaks,” when the protagonist who is in prison writes letters and talks to her cellmates about what’s happened). NF: Some of your stories involve chance meetings with death (“Letting Go,” “John,” “My Sister the Murderer,” “Palimpsest”). Have you ever had a near-death experience, and if so, can you describe it? What attracts you to this theme? SS: I think it’s something most people are interested in, hence the obsession with thrillers and crime dramas. We’re all frail and mortal, aren’t we? I suppose for me that’s another thing that’s come with having children, the sense of needing to stay around for them. Also, having elderly parents in my 40s, when my friends are losing theirs, death seems more real than it did 10 or 20 years ago, when I didn’t know many people who had experienced loss. I guess I am fascinated by what death represents, which is not knowing; it’s a different story for everyone and not one that we can ever second-guess. I met a man on a train a couple of months ago, a very, very ordinary-looking man, who told me after about ten minutes of conversation that he’d recently been in a coma and had visited the gates of heaven and hell – that he’d been turned away from both as it wasn’t his time, and when he came out of his coma the nurse said “I can tell from your face you’ve been to the gates, it often happens to those who nearly pass.” Wow – I got off the train, ran home, and wrote a poem about that as soon as I could! NF: Some of your stories are graphic and brutal (“If No One Speaks,” “A Good Boy”). What was the genesis of these stories? SS: “A Good Boy” (about someone who has a lobotomy) is a true story – the character isn’t real, but everything that happens to him is. I’m interested in mental illness, my mum used to be a psychiatric nurse so has told me some things, and about what used to happen to patients – treatments were often barbaric. “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath was an influence on me in that respect too. “If No One Speaks” is also based on truth; the Russian prison system is incredibly brutal – as are many prison systems. Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina have spoken up about what happens in Russia, and people are starting to listen, but I’m not sure much has changed. NF: What are you writing now? Do you have any new projects in mind, and if so, what are they? SS: I’m writing more poetry, and hope to have a chapbook (which we call a pamphlet in the UK) out in the next year. I’m also writing a novel about a mother and a daughter – no title yet! Here are links to some of my recent poetry: “Night-light” won first prize in the First Writer International Poetry Competition: https://www.firstwriter.com/competitions/poetry_competition/winners/12thpoetry.shtml “On Screen” was only published last month, in Impostor Lit: https://online.fliphtml5.com/ixptq/gxpb/#p=12 NF: Do you have any plans or dreams to live somewhere else? To do something totally different? If so, please share. SS: In April 2021, I uprooted my family from London to Durham, which involved my kids having to leave their schools, so I want to stay here for the rest of their childhoods at least. I would like to travel more widely – I’d love to see more of America, and visit Canada. I do a lot of traveling in my mind at the moment! ~~~~~~ Colin Gee (@ColinMGee, he/him) is the founder and editor of The Gorko Gazette (@GorkoThe), a humor daily that publishes headlines, cartoons, reviews, and poetry. Fiction in Misery Tourism, Expat Press, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Bear Creek Gazette, Exacting Clam, and elsewhere. *** NF: When you accepted my first submission, you told me I could claim my first pizza as a reward. I asked if you could send virtual pizza, since I live in Wyoming, and you live in Mexico. A sourdough starter and fresh ingredients sound just yummy. When am I going to get my pizza? CG: Whenever you get your lazy ass down to Mexico. Of course, I have since moved and threw my starter out (tragedy and comedy often collide), so I would need probably a few days’ notice. Naw, like 2 hours’ notice, we could improv. I hear the tacos are excellent in Mexico, too. NF: How did you end up in Mexico? Did you ever live in Peoria and do you have an Uncle Toby? How did you fall into teaching? Please tell me about your life journey. CG: I have lived outside the US since I graduated college, with a brief stint back for grad school. I like the simplicity of life outside of the first world, as they call it, and the relative independence from big gov. Poor but free. And the weather helps seasonal affective issues that I remember all too well. Uncles I think are great targets for humor, and they generally know it. My paternal grandmother was from Peoria, they say, also the phrase “But will it play in Peoria.” Running joke, feeble. I am currently the director of a very good English as a Second Language program in Oaxaca, Mexico, in which we are trying to get students to B1-B2 level fluency in productive skills, despite these students coming in often with no English, or even with Spanish as their second language. NF: What made you decide to start The Gorko Gazette? When did you start it? Was it always electronic, or was it ever a paper gazette? Was it daily when you first started it? Have you always had contributors, or are contributors a more recent phenomenon? And where do you get your ideas for some of the off-the-wall daily posts? If you have a secret repository for the weird and insane, I want in. CG: I guess I do call it a daily even though that just means we publish new stuff daily, not a new edition. The Gorko is just me, so I cannot put together a whole zine every day, though I could if that was all I did. My parents encouraged me to pursue creative writing when I was a kid, and then helped me start putting out zines for friends and extremely embarrassed relatives when I was like 10 or 11. The first name of The Gorko Gazette, I think, was The Pencil’s End or something. The earliest contributors were my friends Kyle, Jake, and I think even Josh, even though poor Josh had never even read a book, but he gave it a try. I still remember the look on his face when he handed me his submission at the bowling alley, it was like a first kiss. They all have grown-up jobs now. Not sure what you mean by off-the-wall, how dare you. Everything in The Gorko is completely serious. NF: Where did the name Raddy come from? CG: I used to run my neologisms by Jake, who went to MIT on full scholarship at the age of 16, to whom I proved once and forever that Macs ARE superior to IBMs in an arm-wrestling match, and he would always shoot them down. That word already exists! he would say, doing code with one hand. Raddy is an embarrassing thing that happened, but I like to stuff my face in my own stupidity and egotism sometimes because I think our memories shouldn’t hurt us as much as they do. NF: We’ve talked about food a bit. You mention you have a dairy sensitivity. How did you finally figure out what was wrong? And how do you deal with that in a country where everything is coated in cheese (even the cheese)? CG: I was sick for about 2 years in high school and finally my mom suggested isolating food items, and it was the dairy. My dairy issues included cheese, milk, cream, and almost all commercial snacks and desserts (whey and other dairy lurking in there). I still don't eat snacks. In Mexico, I buy fresh vegetables and meat at reasonable prices and then cook them to make delicious food. Cheese or cheese products rarely enter the equation. NF: You mention in your bio that you write fiction. However, I’ve seen at least one of your published poems, and I suspect you’re Captain B, although I can’t prove it. Is poetry a closet thing for you? What do you like about writing poetry, and what do you like about writing fiction? CG: Yeah, people think that I am Captain B! I am not. Captain B is my greatest and oldest friend Nacho Puro, a teacher and imbiber of words who in fact is sitting on an iceberg tip of archived poetry and fiction that would sink Kate Winslet. He used to publish musings daily on his own blog but took them down per agreement when he published his novels, but I asked him to join The Gorko with new offerings to give it some flavor. Thanks to Captain B, we are now publishing good, edgy poetry and art from the likes of Colin James, Oliver Baer, Adam Van Winkle, Mark Blickley, Adora Williams, Laszlo Aranyi, Nolcha Fox, and others! It is great fun. I dislike most contemporary poetry. It is mostly embarrassingly bad. I was reading classical Latin, Greek, and English poetry when I was a teenager, so sorry, but I know what is good. To get into modernist poetry, I forced myself to research the Dadaists and Cubists of the early 20th century and write “Misanthropology,” a satirical commentary on the collected works of the fictional Gulliver S. Gulliver, modernist poet and chump. (A running feature on The Gorko uses the same satirical concept. See, for example, https://thegorkogazette.com/2022/02/20/gazelle-of-unfended-laatsi-by-guy-duvet/.) I am glad I did because there is a lot of amazing modernist and contemporary poetry out there. Yes, I was wrong, it is only mostly bad, while some of it is great. For contemporary indie lit poetry, I recommend anything that comes out of Outcast Press Poetry, helmed by H.L.R. and Amy-Jean Muller. Cajun Mutt Press puts out good stuff, too, and of course the three big dogs I mention below… NF: What are your future literary plans (books, podcasts, whatever)? Do you ever see yourself giving up The Gorko Gazette, or do you think it will always follow you around like a bad cold? CG: Yeah, it has been great to get into the lit underground scene and publish some short things with people who publish things I like, Misery Tourism and Expat Lit and A Thin Slice of Anxiety especially. I actually read with William and Rudy on Misery Loves Company a few weeks back, my first reading which I guess I botched, but William just eats up words, he is the best. Viva Misery Tourism. Hopefully, someday people will enjoy reading my “Battlerof Beowulf,” the only honest WTF reading of the Old English poem, sorry Seamus Heaney, and yes, I read/translated the Old English syllable by syllable, but I guess non-historical, tongue-in-cheek battle fiction may have to wait until The Gorko Press exists. NF: Do you have any plans or dreams to live somewhere else? To do something totally different? CG: Nope, this is fine. Ha ha. NF: How can people submit to The Gorko Gazette? CG: https://thegorkogazette.com/submit/ ~~~~~~ Bonnie is a British writer who mainly writes flash fiction, with the occasional short story or poem. She also has book-length publications in non-fiction, fiction, and memoir. Her flash fiction has appeared or is in publication with several literary magazines and anthologies, including those by Reflex Press, Ad Hoc Fiction, Briefly Zine, and Dribble Drabble, and she has been listed for competitions by King Lear and Reflex Press. She lives in Greater Manchester, where she shares a house with an unpredictable number of family members. Website: https://bonniemeekums.weebly.com/ Twitter: @bonniemeekums Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063482439601 *** NF: What influenced you to start writing creatively? Have you always written? BM: Hmmm. Well, as a child I remember writing a poem at school. I must have been about ten years old, I guess. I was writing about ‘The dinosaur’, and for some reason, I decided to make that the end line of each stanza. I think the other lines were probably dedum, dedum, dedum, dedum, and there were three lines to each stanza. I had my very own book of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson called “A child’s garden of verse.” I treasured that book and knew many of the poems by heart. I think that’s where I got my love of rhythmic structure. Then, in high school, I started writing short stories and my English teacher kinda liked them. But I didn’t keep it up, despite a diploma in dance, theatre, and writing in my twenties that taught me zilch about writing. Fast forward to my late fifties. It’s 2011, and I’m a lecturer in counseling and psychotherapy at a major UK university. The wonderful staff center offers a writing course with a local writer called Ian Clayton, and that is when I rekindle my love of writing. After retiring, I also did an online course with Open University. In 2019, my creative memoir The Story Hunter was published by Dear Damsels. Then, my debut novel, “A Kind of Family,” was published in 2020 by Between the Lines publishing. Around the same time, I got into flash fiction, which is where I put a lot of my energies these days. I’ve also self-published my second novel “My Upside Down World,” set in WW2, and co-authored a working-class memoir, “Remnants of War,” with my sister, Jackie Hales. NF: You mentioned that you had polio when you were younger. How did that impact you and your writing? BM: I was three. I wasn’t writing much at the time. But I have written about that traumatic experience, as part of an autoethnography published in the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, which included some of my poems. I suspect being paralyzed and having to learn to walk again might have influenced my career focus on embodiment (I am a Dance Movement Therapist), and that, in turn, has influenced my creative writing. NF: What kind of writing do you like to do best? BM: Definitely flash fiction (though poetry is growing on me again). I love the succinctness - I’m a bit of a nerd, and I love getting down to the essence of something. Plus, I like to find out what my story is about and go back after the first draft, to find a core metaphor. That means it can get a bit surreal as I mine that metaphor, telling the story by staying as close to it as possible. NF: You mentioned that you also write longer, book-length fiction and memoir. Tell me about them. BM: My first novel, “A Kind of Family,” follows a psychotherapist and academic called Rachel who feels alone in the world, despite having some good friends. She falls in love with community artist Fran, and shortly after this, an older woman called Aggie, who looks like she is straight out of the sixties, pays Rachel a visit. Aggie seems very interested in Rachel and Fran, and she keeps turning up. But it soon becomes apparent to Rachel that only she can see and hear Aggie. Rachel and Fran marry, and eventually, Fran gives birth to a baby boy using Rachel’s eggs and sperm donated by Richard, one of Rachel’s colleagues from the university. But disaster strikes. In the process of piecing herself together afterward, Rachel realizes who her family really is. For anyone wanting to read “A Kind of Family,” you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook and DM me for a signed copy, or it is also available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kind-Family-Bonnie-Meekums/dp/1950502074/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1HA5UEWZDZR3M&keywords=A+kind+of+family+meekums&qid=1661796477&s=books&sprefix=a+kind+of+family+meekums%2Cstripbooks%2C74&sr=1-1 My second novel, “My Upside Down World,” which I self-published, is written as Lily’s diary during World War Two. Lily is a working-class Londoner who was not born in London, but she has never told anyone the true story of her origins. What’s more, she tells no one that she regularly travels in time and space, to visit her birth mother. Lily’s biggest fear is being left, which is what she has to face when her husband, Stan, is called up. Shortly after meeting Hilda, a Quaker who makes Lily question the wisdom of war and the ideas she has been fed about some people being better than others, she makes the difficult decision to be evacuated with her children, to Stan’s family in the North of England. Once there, and with Stan killed after being convicted of murder, she has to find a way to contribute financially. And what’s more, she has to find a way to clear Stan’s name. On her return to London after the Blitz, she faces an even bigger challenge when she encounters racism. “My Upside Down World” is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Upside-Down-World-uplifting-injustice-ebook/dp/B09L686NWP/ And lastly, “Remnants of War” is a collaboration with my writer-sister, Jackie Hales. It follows our development in the 1950s from the era of make-do-and-mend to the time when working-class people in Britain were told we had ‘never had it so good.’ It also traces the importance of education both formal and informal, in helping us both to break out of the traditional roles delineated for girls. You can read “Remnants of War” here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Remnants-War-working-class-post-war-childhood/dp/B091DNJDV7/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1661796292&sr=1-1 NF: Our first flash/poetry collaboration will be published by Moss Puppy Magazine in November. Why did you decide to invite people to collaborate? BM: That’s a really interesting question. I was inspired by Meg Pokrass, an amazing flash fiction writer who does collaborative as well as individual writing. I wanted also to explore hybrid forms. I had read a novella-in-flash, “Gaps in the Light,” by Iona Winter, in which she uses both poetry and flash fiction, often within the same short chapter. I thought it would be fun to work with a poet on creating a collaborative, hybrid piece. I had already collaborated with my sister on our book-length memoir, so I went for it. NF: While I hope to continue writing, even when I’m on my deathbed, as I age, I worry about the horrors that might end my writing career (a colorful illness, the zombie apocalypse, or an attack of space aliens). Has this ever crossed your mind, and what might you see happening that would move your life in a different direction? BM: Well, that’s interesting. I started writing in part because I love all the arts, but I’m primarily a dancer. I figured writing could go on longer, but I was probably wrong in that regard because sitting for any length of time (like typing this) hurts my arthritic hip. I have to move, to avoid getting too stiff and in pain. So that might be the thing that stops me. But if it does, I’ll find another way to engage with the arts. There is so much left to explore. And one day, the lights will go out, but I know I will have left a trace, should anyone wish to follow it. *** Nolcha has written all her life, starting with poop and crayons on the walls. Her poems have been published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Alien Buddha Zine, Medusa’s Kitchen, and others. Her chapbooks, “My Father’s Ghost Hates Cats” and “The Big Unda” are available on Amazon. Nominee for 2023 Best of The Net. Editor for Kiss My Poetry. Website: https://bit.ly/3bT9tYu Twitter: @NolchaF Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nolcha.fox/ “My Father’s Ghost Hates Cats” https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QP1XY3X “The Big Unda” https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B55P2F7L

“The air’s so thick tonight.” The taxi driver shouts, head twisted towards her, turning the steering wheel with one hand, veering out from the airport terminal into a row of scarlet tail lights, zigzagging between lanes, making her stomach lurch with each acceleration and she clings, fingers tight, wrapped around the seatbelt to steady herself until he brakes. Sudden. Sharp. Bouncing her forward, into the anonymous hotel entrance. * * * “The air’s real thick here in November.” She has reached the front of the check-in queue, shuffled her way along the swirled carpet soaking up sounds of footsteps. Read the gaudily illustrated offers for corporate Christmas gatherings posted around the beige lobby. The receptionist frowns down, taps at the keyboard as she speaks. Clicks a blank rectangle of plastic masquerading as a room key onto the counter, kohl-lined eyes already flicked towards the next client in the queue. * * * “The air is thick out there this morning – you better wrap up warm. Don’t want to get sick.” The waiter in the breakfast room gestures at the looming clouds gathering over the city skyline beyond the plate glass window, placing a basket of pastries in front of her. She sips the cappuccino, drawing hot coffee through a cloud of foam, feels a freckle of chocolate dust her lip. The brioche crackles as she lifts it, fresh and warm on her tongue, a sweet slick of apricot jam leaking from its heart. Loosening her looped scarf, she waterfalls it in a silky heap onto her knee. Her fingers graze the bare skin on her neck. Right now, far away from home and him and her life, she inhales the light air of freedom. Denise Bayes writes flash fiction and has had work published in places including Ellipsis zine and Firewords Magazine. Denise is from the North of England and now lives in Barcelona.

Does a Bear shit in the woods? Sometimes. Usually, even; but not today and not this Bear. I’m going to break into this cabin and shit in a drawer. I might shit upon the sharpest knife in there. I might also shit upon a knife that is not the sharpest. Once you’ve accepted this drawer-shitting conceit, said drawer’s contents (let alone the relative sharpness of utensils therein) fade into the vague peripheries of interest and relevance. Let's be honest. It’s going to be a Bear shit apocalypse for the contents of this drawer. I will pollute spoons, forks, spatulas, and garlic presses along with any knives in there. I’ve been holding it for half the day, and I’ll be leaving the cabin a few pounds lighter than when I entered. Half measures are for lesser beasts. The Hunter who lived in this cabin had much in common with the least-sharp knife in the drawer. He had a low cunning that made him periodically effective in his travails, but nothing more. The Hunter’s mate had complained of his dullness, at great length and at great volume, when she departed months ago. Her viperous shouts had filled the valley and brought many animals around to spy on the drama of her leaving. I know a Squirrel that does a passable imitation of her infamous rant, chittering away and stalking back and forth. In contrast to The Hunter, I am smarter than the average Bear. However, gaining stealthy access to the cabin (let alone opening a drawer with a smooth plastic handle) were daunting tasks for a shaggy beast with no opposable thumbs. I had tried and failed to gain entrance on my own; the battered brass doorknob resisted the efforts of my paws and teeth, forcing a haunch-clenching retreat to consider my options. For such a jape, a Bear needs an accomplice. Fortunately, I am on good terms with a Raccoon whose name I can’t pronounce but who owes me a favor. I made a point of eating a Coyote that was giving his family trouble; as a result, this Raccoon is rather well disposed towards me. He speaks passable Bear and we chat occasionally about the weather and how to find the finest garbage for scavenging. He’s more acquaintance than friend, but close relationships are scarce when you’re an apex predator. I located my neighbor the Raccoon and explained the jape; he agreed to put his clever paws to work on my behalf. In a trice, we were in the cabin with the cutlery drawer opened. There were indeed many knives (both sharp and less so) in there. My excitement at the thought of a successful caper layered upon the ongoing, overpowering urge to void. Imagine an eight hundred pound Bear climbing onto a narrow countertop in a tiny kitchen. Then, envision the geometry of aligning said Bear’s posterior above a drawer. Several minutes of careful clambering were required. After three false starts and much Bearish grunting, I got into position. Nothing happened. I put forth considerable effort, straining and pushing. Still nothing. I bore down harder, a basso growl escaping my throat. The Raccoon wisely fled. Anxious thoughts chased one another through my mind. What if I couldn’t go? What if the Hunter came back early? What if I slipped and fell? Crouched awkwardly on the counter, I tried to relax. I envisioned the first fat Fish of the season, knocked out of the creek while I stood belly-deep in icy spring runoff. My favorite knotty pine tree beckoned to me with its coarse bark, perfect for an itchy back. I imagined the serene heaviness of head and limb that descends as you begin hibernation. That did it. I trembled for a solid minute and then enjoyed a gloriously powerful loosening of my sphincter. I struggled to hold still over the open drawer. This was better than fishing. Better than an epic back scratching. Better even than covering a willing female after defeating her other suitors. Afterwards, I was lighter both in body and in spirit. I shuffled sideways and began another awkward climb to get down. With a gentle paw, I eased shut the (very) full drawer. I had not felt such pride since my first kill as a yearling. Raccoons are gossipy at the best of times and the news of a Bear invading The Hunter’s home for comedic defecatory purposes was far too juicy a morsel. By the time I ambled up to my intended observation point overlooking the cabin, the valley was teeming with hidden wildlife. Despite his incompetence, most animals had lost a friend or a family member to the man’s traps, baits, and (less commonly) to his indifferent aim with the rifle. When The Hunter returned home and discovered my gift, his cries and antics provided fodder for generations of clever Squirrel mimicry. He cursed and ranted and shot at stumps he thought were lurking Bears. Scores of hidden animals watched him run back and forth across the valley; their quiet laughter warmed my heart. The Hunter stumbled on the porch steps while carrying the full and still-steaming drawer out for disposal. Don’t let the Squirrels embellish the tale; he did not land face-first in the drawer. He did, however, trip and spill it all over his porch. His slung rifle scraped against a wooden porch-post and bit deeply into the weathered pine, leaving a bright gouge in the gray wood. Eventually the scar faded, but now and then I go look at the grooved wood post that bears mute witness to my jape, and I smile. My shenanigans bought me a measure of goodwill among the other animals. Still no close friends for this apex predator, of course, but more Squirrels and Marmots and even the odd brave Rabbit are apt to greet me while I roam. When they’d ask me why I did it, I took to replying, “Well, sometimes a turd in the drawer is worth two in the bush.” Scott O'Neill works hard, plays hard, and writes speculative fiction in Canada. He once saw a real bear in a real house having a bowel movement. Not in a drawer, though. Just like, on the floor. Then he ran (Scott, not the bear). He tweets as @wererooster. (Scott, not the bear)

“Richard, can you tell me why she still smells like urine?” Dr. Paolo asks the orderly. “Um…” “I told you to get her cleaned up. That was yesterday. So why does she still smell like urine?” I look down at my hands. I don’t even smell anything. Apparently, I’m just that accustomed to the stink of my own piss. When Dr. Paolo receives nothing but stunned silence, she barks, “Next time I tell you to clean her up, you’re to do it well.” “Yes, doctor.” Richard bows his head and lets himself out of the office. Dr. Paolo turns to me and proceeds to ask the exact same questions she asked yesterday. I cross my arms over the ridiculous cotton gown I’ve been issued. “Look, I already told you the absolute truth about what happened to me. And legally, you can’t keep me here more than 72 hours. You may not like what I told you, but that doesn’t mean I belong in a place like this.” I gesture at the scene that’s transpiring on the other side of the plate glass window in Dr. Paolo’s office: a writhing, screaming man being carried along by two muscled orderlies. “There are all sorts of different people who stand to benefit from being in here, Ms. Birch. I’ll be the one to decide who stays and who goes. Now, let’s start with Friday night.” I sigh aggressively and gaze up at the ceiling. “I was driving from Colorado Springs up to Denver for a weekend with my friends. At one point, I checked my phone. I looked back up and suddenly I was driving on a desert road. From one second to the next—” I snap my fingers. “—everything had completely changed. And—trust me, I know how crazy this sounds—I…I just knew I was in Utah.” Dr. Paolo regards me coolly. “Utah deserts are hundreds of miles away from Denver, Ms. Birch.” “I…” Every time I tell my story, the details get a little harder to recall, and I’m a little more embarrassed. “I know it sounds wrong.” “It does sound wrong, Ms. Birch. Very wrong. Wrong, wrong. Perhaps you simply ended up in an unfamiliar part of Colorado. Getting lost on the road can be quite disorienting.” I bristle at the doctor’s odd cadence, but I keep mum. Last time I asked her why she kept repeating certain words, she gave me some bullshit line about extreme clarity being essential for a patient suffering a psychotic break. I flew off the handle at the use of such an offensive phrase to describe my situation, and before I knew it, I was being sedated and carried back to my room. My room is a weird, exhausting place. I’d prefer to stay in Dr. Paolo’s office as long as I can, so I offer, “Well, it’s true I was lost.” “I have no doubt, with how tired you must’ve been. Things get blurred when you’ve been driving for so long in the dark. Perhaps you’d put the car on autopilot and fell asleep at the wheel.” “I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel.” Before the doctor can come up with another patronizing hypothesis, I add, “But, I admit…I’ve always been terrible with maps.” This seems to appease her. “Anyway, I didn’t see one damn person or sign or building for a long time. There was a mountain off in the distance and an empty reservoir every now and then. Just when I was about to run out of gas, I came across a gas station.” “Hmm. Very convenient.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Well, it happens, you know. In the desert. Mirages. Sometimes, in the desert, there are mirages. Mirages.” I roll my eyes. It seems Dr. Paolo will grasp at anything except the truth. But I know better than to point this out. “Ms. Birch, if there was a gas station, then you would’ve filled your tank and been on your way. Instead, you ended up missing for weeks.” “I didn’t fill my tank because the place was closed. And even if the place was open, the pumps looked weird. They had clock faces on them.” “A clock face on a gas pump. Doesn’t that seem like your subconscious telling you that it was time to get some shuteye and stop driving around in a confused state?” I grit my teeth. I want to scream, rip this fucking gown off, and cinch it around Dr. Paolo’s dainty little neck until her eyes go flat. It’s by the grace of god I’m able to calmly say, “I’m not sure why you’re even interviewing me again. You’ve clearly got your mind made up about what happened to me.” For ten long seconds, the doctor observes me. “Fine, Ms. Birch. What did you do then?” I allow myself to be reabsorbed by my stint in White Sands. The scene is slightly less vivid than it was yesterday, but salient nonetheless: A dusty Ford Ranchero with unlit headlights flies over the road. But then it slows and pulls into the gas station. In the passenger seat is a woman with a gray strands woven through her braided black hair. “What are you doing out?” she demands. “Curfew started hours ago.” “Curfew…?” I chuckle amicably. “I may look young, but I’m 26. I’m allowed to be out at night, trust me.” The driver, a white man with a flap hat, seems to be keeping watch for something. “She ain’t from here,” he says even though he still hasn’t so much as glanced in my direction. “Then she’s our responsibility.” The woman throws open the door and scoots toward the driver. She beckons me and says, “Quickly, now.” “Oh…I just need some gas is all. Any chance you’ve got a can to spare?” The driver and his passenger make wry sounds. “The best thing we can offer you is a place to sleep until we can drive you back here in the morning,” the woman says. After a few minutes of back and forth, I finally give in. I collect my purse from my car, lock it, and climb into the Ranchero. “Beautiful truck.” “It’s actually a coupe.” The man pulls out of the gas station. “It needs a wash,” the woman says. “But…water rations have gotten to be less and less.” Water rations? I’m curious but I don’t pry. We drive in silence, the heavy night air scented with sagebrush. We enter a tired residential area with single-level adobe houses nestled directly into the coarse blond sand and pull into the driveway of one such house. It isn’t until the woman locks us into the modest but scrubbed home that she introduces herself as Aponi and the man as Red. “I’m Willa,” I say. “Willa, meet our children. Kimana is eight.” Red flicks his head toward a girl with Aponi’s chiseled cheekbones and thick, braided hair. “And Jeb is fourteen.” He claps his hand onto the shoulder of a boy that closely resembles him. The children mumble bashful hellos and cling to their parents. Weird. When I was growing up, I wouldn’t’ve been caught dead cuddling up to my mother or father. “Welp…” Red sighs and turns off a lantern. “Best we all get some sleep.” It sinks in how meager the accommodations are. The home is solely lit by the warm glow of oil lanterns. There’s no sink, only a basin with an empty pitcher next to it. So no electricity, and no running water. As much as I’d love to hit the hay and deal with my problems in the morning, I just can’t tolerate these conditions. I say, “Oh…I thought I’d use your phone and get Triple A out here to help me.” “Triple what?” Red says. Without waiting for an answer, he says, “We don’t have a phone.” “Oh. Well, do you mind if I use your bathroom?” That way I can clear my head and check my cell in peace. Ever since I’ve been in Utah, the screen has been scrambled and I haven’t even been able to let my friends know I probably won’t be joining them this weekend. “The bathroom?” Kimana squawks. “It’s after dark!” She looks up at her mother. Red’s fist connects with the kitchen table, sending the children’s school supplies an inch into the air and my shoulders into my ears. “GOD DAMN IT!” he roars. “We should not have brought her here!” I take a step backward and gulp down a dry knot of trepidation. The man’s eyes blaze at his wife, but she ignores him. “Here.” She hands me a pot. “Do whatever you have to do in this. Then you can sleep on the couch.” Aponi extinguishes the other lanterns and the family disappears into two small bedrooms in the back of the house. I stand in the dark living room, shocked at the absurd trajectory my life has taken in the last few hours. I set the pot aside. I don’t need it. I suppose I’ve gotten exactly what I’d wanted, though: a moment alone—undistracted by the strange people in this strange village—to collect myself. I press the home button on my phone and cool blue light reveals that Red is looming less than a foot away from me. I startle hard. “If I woulda known you had one of those things, girl, I woulda left you at that gas station,” he growls. “I—I’m sorry, I just need to—” “Don’t waste your time. That thing won’t work no matter how hard you try.” “Oh. Is there no service here?” “‘Here.’” Red emits a cold snicker. “It ain’t the place that’s the problem, sweetheart. Now turn that thing off and go to sleep.” Seeing as my screen is still garbled anyway, I do as I’m told. In the morning, I wake up with my clothes sticking to my body and an awful parchedness in my mouth. The children eye me from the kitchen table, where Aponi is schooling them. “You can visit the outhouse now, Willa,” she says. I test my bladder and find that its fullness is surprisingly bearable. I can definitely wait until I find a place more savory than an outhouse. “Oh, that’s okay. Can I just have a glass of water?” Aponi walks to the corner of the kitchen and edges a heavy stone lid off what must be an in-ground compartment. She uses a clay tumbler as a ladle. I can hear the clay scraping against stone. She hands me the tumbler, which bears about an inch of water that tastes like rock. “Thank you—for the water, and for all your hospitality. I’m so sorry to ask for more, but do you think you can give me a ride back to the gas station?” “There’s gas?” Jeb asks excitedly. Aponi says to me, “I’m sorry. Red’s out with the truck.” “Oh…I guess I can just walk. It wasn’t that far away.” The woman studies me for a few seconds, then hesitantly lets me go. Upon leaving the house, I’m stunned by the monstrous heat. Inside the adobe domicile, despite the absence of air conditioning, it was much cooler than it is out here. Not too far up the sun-bleached road, I have serious doubts about whether I’ll make it ten more steps let alone two-and-a-half miles. I soldier through what I’d guess was four city blocks before I spot a flattened rock about ten feet off the road. It’s sparsely shaded by a Joshua tree. As I plop down on the rock, I realize I can smell my own sweaty scalp. Ugh. How is this my life right now? I fiddle with my cell, praying for a miracle. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a subtle movement on the ground. I jerk my gaze toward it, terrified that I’ve happened upon a rattle snake. But what I see instead is an opening. I stretch my neck to get a better view, but I’m punished for my curiosity by a putrid odor. Is this damn heat messing with me so much that I just thought I saw a freakin’ hole in the sand instead of what’s clearly a pool of excrement from some animal whose rapid retreat was what caught my attention in the first place? “That sounds entirely plausible,” Dr. Paolo says. I’m ripped from my immersive recollection. I blink at the doctor. “What?” “It was the heat. The heat was getting to you, making you see things. See things. See things. You were seeing things.” “Yes…. There are mirages in the desert, you know,” I murmur. “Yes. So, what happened after you saw the animal dung in the sand?” “After I saw the dung…” My mind folds back into my time in White Sands. A horn blares loudly. It’s Red idling in his “coupe.” “What the hell’re you doin’ out here?” he calls. “I was walking to the gas station and just stopped for a little break. Think you can give me a ride the rest of the way? Please…. I’m not used to this heat.” “Get in.” Elated, I circle around the front of the car and launch myself into the squeaky cab. When Red doesn’t make a U-turn but continues in the direction from which I came, I panic. “Where are you going?” Red slams the heel of his hand on the steering wheel. “Don’t you get it? There ain’t no gas!” “Still…. There’ll be people who can help me—a phone I can use…” He snatches my purse from my lap, extracts my cell, and pitches it out the window. Mouth agape, I turn and stare, expecting to see a small cloud of dust rise from where the phone landed. I see nothing but unbothered sand meeting hostile sky. “Stop the car right now!” “No can do.” The bill of his hat casts a sinister shadow on his face. “You’ll just go back to get your little gadget, and they can sense those things a mile away.” “Please!” I beg, but at this point there’s no chance in hell I’ll ever be able to find it. “We ain’t in the safety of home right now, girl. We’re out on the main road. You should never let anyone out here see you with one of them gadgets.” “It’s not a fucking ‘gadget,’ you asshole! It’s a cellphone! I don’t know who the hell you think would give a shit I have a phone! You sound like a paranoid freak!” “Is that any way to talk to a man that done saved you twice?” Red spits, the back flap of his hat thrashing in the cross breeze. “I saved you from that gas station—they woulda got at you for sure last night—and today, back there… Shit, that spot was dangerous as hell. Oh, I know it looked convenient. Nice, flat rock to sit on, even a little shade. But I’d bet my life they put a vent there, too, didn’t they?” Red shakes his head bitterly. “That was for their convenience.” A leadenness settles into my stomach. “Who the fuck is ‘they?’ And by ‘vent’ do you mean that hole in the sand?” “Yes, ma’am. They use the vents for air. They live underground, see. Oh, they’re too deep down in there to see ya, but you bet your sweet ass they just got a whiff of ya. And your gadget.” I clutch my stomach. “I’m not supposed to tell you any of this, but I can see you’re gonna be a real big problem if you don’t know what you’re dealing with.” When I don’t reply, Red slows the truck to a casual speed and continues. “They control everything, see? Things you wouldn’t think could be controlled. Like the weather.” I swallow a brackish cascade of saliva. “Anyone who could control the weather here would make it rain.” Red singsongs, “No they wouldn’t.” He erupts into the raucous cackling of a soul who’s lived a life of being defeated so consistently that he’s learned to appreciate his foe’s perfect intelligence. Desperate to put an end to his frightening laughter, I wrack my brain for topics that any man would find agreeable. “I—I really like this car, Red. I like how it’s painted two different colors, how it’s got that classic look to it. Where’d you get such an old car?” “Old? I bought this here Ranchero brand new and sparkling off the lot ’bout, oh, five, six years ago. Back when things were good. ’Fore them monsters set up shop below.” “Brand new? Five years ago? How can that be? They stopped making cars like this a long time ago.” “Well, ’59 was the last year Ford made these full-sized Rancheros, but that’s exactly when I got it. ’59.” “You got this in ’59? It’s 2005.” Red is silent for a few beats. Then he croaks, “God almighty. I knew it.” “Please…this isn’t funny.” “2005. In these parts, that’s 41 years in the future, girl. Don’t let anyone else hear you say things like that. In this village, we don’t talk about all the madness that goes on. No point, really.” Red hears the threatening heave from within me. He pulls over and gets me out of the car so I can vomit on the road instead of all over his dashboard. I wipe my mouth, briefly consider running, then get back into the Ranchero. “Is that why my phone won’t work out here? Because it’s 1964?” “Course it’s 1964.” “And that’s why you call my phone a ‘gadget.’ You’ve never seen one before.” “Oh, I seen two other ones since this whole thing started. On ungrateful out-of-towners like yourself. Although, let’s be honest, at this point, it’s official: They ain’t so much out-of-towners as out-of-timers. It ain’t natural. They carry gadgets that ain’t got no cords, ain’t connected to no phone line. How can they be makin’ calls on a thing like that? …Anyway, these outsiders, they wave them cellphones around, and next thing you know…” “Next thing you know…” “Well, they’re gone. Serves ’em right. They always think they’re above the rules of this place. But, trust me, nobody’s above the rules of this place. I told you—them underground—they control everything. Once, some people I knew tried to pool their gas and drive away. Next day, their bodies were found in the town square. We never did find their heads.” I cover my mouth with my hand. I stare out the window, across the sprawling sand, at the lone black mountain in the distance. *** Aponi, livid that her husband is openly discussing “them underground” in front of the children, comes in from her outdoor cooking fire and deposits a plate of mesquite pancakes on the table with a little more force than necessary. She smiles tightly, then turns to rifle around in the cupboard. “But why?” I implore. “Why the hell would anyone want to live down there?” Red takes a swig of his agave wine. “Our sun.” He points up toward the ceiling. “It burns them, even on the few rainy days we get. Shit, even our moon hurts ’em if they’re out too long. Oh, and pollution. It poisons them.” Jeb and Kimana alternate between exchanging looks of intrigue and casting their eyes down at their school primers. Aponi slides a jar of prickly pear syrup onto the table. “Time for lunch.” After consuming an embarrassing percentage of the food on the table, I sleep. I’m too drained to do anything else. Afterward, the five of us pass the late afternoon playing card games. When the sun begins to lower, the deep baying of a horn sweeps across the desert. “What’s that?” I ask. “Curfew,” Aponi says, rearranging the fan of cards in her hand. A minute later, the quiet is pierced again, this time by a jarring, high-pitched screech. The family volleys around meaningful looks. Kimana starts crying. Jeb rubs his sister on the back and shushes her. “Don’t worry, now, Kimmy.” But soon we’re interrupted yet again by three startling knocks on the back of the house. “No.” Red scrambles out the front door and circles around the house. Through the windows, his words are muffled but audible: “We won’t, you hear me?! WE WON’T!” Red’s assertions are met with nothing but cruel silence. Kimana is in her mother’s lap hyperventilating and Jeb is on the couch, choking back his own guttural yips of panic. Red is out of breath and dripping with sweat when he returns. “The sun is touching the horizon.” “Let’s all get into the truck,” Aponi blurts, holding her daughter’s head to her chest. “Aponi…you know we ain’t had enough gas to make it out of White Sands for years.” “We would if you’d stop driving around all the time, wasting it!” “First of all, if I never drove, they just wouldn’t give me any more. Secondly, woman, I’ve only driven three times since the last gas ration! Once for water, once to fetch the lamp oil and agave—that was the night we picked this one up—” He makes an agitated gesture at me. “And today, because the work was guaranteed. Even if I didn’t do any of those things, all the gas we got at ration still wouldn’t get us outta this desert! Not to mention we’re chipped!” “Just shut up, Red! Just shut up! Look at your son! Use this time to comfort him!” Red pulls Jeb to him, his dirty nails digging into the boy’s freckled skin. Then a look of understanding crosses his face. “Now you wait just a minute. He’s not going.” “Of course he is. He’s practically a man. Kimana’s just a girl.” “Exactly. He’s more polluted. It has to be a child because they want pure, Aponi. And if they’re not satisfied, there’ll be consequences. Bad ones. We can’t let our family get hit twice when once is bad enough. I won’t allow it!” Aponi squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head wildly. Her teeth form an agonized rectangle across her face. Father and son work as a team, Red restraining Aponi, Jeb wrestling his little sister out the door. Thus far, I’ve been paralyzed by shock and confusion, watching this tragedy unfold like it’s a scene in a movie rather than the horrifying reality. But now I make a move to wretch the door open and pull Kimana back into the house. This is when the males turn on me. Red darts over to hold me and Jeb guards the door. Aponi is collapsed on the floor, chest heaving, her eyes already swollen shut from her torrential sobbing. Red forces me into a chair and Jeb ties me to it. “APONI, GET UP! GO GET YOUR DAUGHTER!” I shout. Then I buck in my chair and yell at Red, “You have no right to do this!” “The hell I don’t. You’ve been nothing but trouble since you got here. We do not need the extra burden tonight.” With that, he and Jeb carry Aponi to a back bedroom, where they close the door and attempt to soothe her. I don’t sleep a wink. All night I wait, dread in my belly and an ache in my heart, for Kimana’s bloodcurdling scream. But I hear nothing. When the muted dawn steals into the house, I see something I hadn’t noticed before. It’s a framed photo of Aponi with Kimana and two other children. All three children look like Aponi. I never do see Aponi emerge from the back bedroom. But shortly after dawn, Red builds a cooking fire outside and makes coffee. He unties my hands. “That’s one hell of a mole you got on your neck there, girl. Big as a nipple, for chrissakes.” Scrutinizing my birthmark, he brings his face closer. If I weren’t tied to a chair, the yellow stink of his breath would blow me over. His fingers are so close to my neck I can feel their heat. Alarm courses through me. Would Red sexually assault me with his wife and child in the house? Lord knows he’s capable of anything. I force myself to stare out the window. All Red does is give me a stick of jerky and pour me a mug of black coffee. Blissfully, it isn’t some gross desert version of coffee, but actual coffee. The jerky, however, is revolting. Red notices me wince. “What’s wrong? You ain’t never had coyote?” I’m too hungry to refuse it, so I eat and avoid eye contact. Red shouts for Jeb, who quickly joins us at the table. I can tell he’s been crying. He and his father go about their eating with a somber air, but as soon as they untie my legs and we all file outside, Red’s voice turns uncharacteristically chipper. “Welp, let’s grab as many pots as we can.” We load pottery of varying sizes into the bed of the Ranchero. “What’re these for?” I ask. “You’ll see. But first, let’s get to the gas station.” I nod excitedly and slide into the coupe. Finally, I’m gonna get the fuck out of this godforsaken village. When we arrive, there are cars lined up and officials in army fatigues measuring what’s already in people’s tanks and pumping specific amounts of fuel into their vehicles. The atmosphere is bright and jovial. It makes me sick. I get out of the Ranchero, eager to reunite with my car. I’m obviously not a White Sands resident and should be allowed as much gas as I can pay for. When I can’t find my little four-door anywhere, I return to the Ranchero in tears. “My car,” I whisper. “I think someone stole it.” Red’s eyebrows jump with surprise. “Dang, girl. You thought they were gonna let you keep that?” “Who? The soldiers?” He erupts into a cackling fit. I stomp around to the passenger window. “Jeb, is there a place where they take all the things they confiscate?” “What?” “When things get stolen around here, where do they go?” Jeb’s eyes flicker with sadness. “Kimmy’s gone, Willa. You’re not allowed to talk about her anymore.” “No, I—” But I think better of pursuing the topic of my car. I sigh shakily and get back into the Ranchero. Our next stop is a reservoir, which, miraculously, is filled with clear, glittering water. The anticipation of the waiting patrons is palpable. Officials inspect Red’s pots and fill three quarters of them. Red even lets me and Jeb drink to our heart’s content from the spout of a pitcher before we reload the pots. On the way back home, I ask, “How did that reservoir get filled? It didn’t rain last night. I would’ve heard it.” “Same as the gas pumps got filled. Them underground.” “Yeah, but how?” I demand. “I don’t know how they do what they do, girl. Now settle down and don’t draw attention to yourself. Bad enough you let them smell you through the vent. They’ll chip you, you know. You’ll think it’s a dream. But that’s how they make sure you don’t walk right outta here. They control them soldiers, too. So best keep your head down and your mouth shut.” For the next few weeks, I say nothing of Kimana, my car, or the fact that I don’t fucking belong in 1964. I rise with the hateful sun every morning. I do everything Aponi would do if she wasn’t grieving, depressed, and in bed. I bathe with my daily allotment of wash water, which is barely enough to wet a cloth. I make coffee the hard way. When I gather the laundry, I wear Aponi’s heavy boots and gloves in case there are lurking scorpions. I “wash” clothes and dishes with sand. I teach Jeb what in 2005 constitutes fourth grade math. I sweep the house and watch Red make lunch. Every time the curfew horn sounds, I look at Red with pure odium. He never sees me, and if he did, I doubt he’d give a shit. I begin to accompany Red to the tavern each day after lunch. We don’t have much money, so eventually, we take turns going. Sometimes I don’t even buy anything for myself; instead, I use my meager funds to buy a drink for anyone who looks out of place. Soon, I meet a guy named Ernst. He’s a repairman who worked for some company called Pacific Bell. He ended up here after a drive down a California highway in 1980. He leans into me so only I can hear him. “Actually, it was months before I could remember exactly what happened. All that time I thought I had one of those crazy cases of amnesia…like those people who just disappear and start a completely new life somewhere and have no clue that they have a family looking for them back home. I think it’s called a fugue or something like that. Anyway, I finally remembered that I’d stopped to help a woman who had her car pulled onto the shoulder. This lady had a really nice Jaguar—black—but it had a flat. She was crying and neither of us had a spare tire but…” Ernst’s voice fades and Dr. Paulo’s office swims into view. “He gave her a ride even though he normally doesn’t do that sort of thing,” I finish. “What sort of thing?” Dr. Paulo says. “Help people in need? Sounds like a jerk to me.” I frown. The image of a shiny black Jag with a flat tire stirs something in a remote corner of my mind. “Ms. Birch? You were telling me about the man you’d met in the bar? You may proceed.” My surroundings shift to the social clamor of the stuffy tavern. Ernst and I huddle like lovers who find pleasure in being close despite the pervasive heat. What we’re really doing is planning a little rendezvous just outside the village, about an hour after curfew. When we meet, he shows me he’s obtained something of rarity here: a lemon. He cuts it in half with a small saw from his kit, which houses tools and a few loose phone parts. We each take a half and slather our exposed skin in citrus juice. “I know a hooker who makes house calls most nights,” Ernst whispers. “Hasn’t disappeared yet. Swears it’s the lemon juice.” “How the hell does she get so many lemons?” “She grows ’em. Her clients pay her with water.” “And how does she manage to go out after curfew like that? All the villagers are chipped.” “She’s not a villager. She’s from the 90s. Had a bag of groceries in her car when she ended up here. That’s where she got the lemon seeds. She was a lawyer. Likes it here better. Can you imagine?” He lets a chuckle slip. “Sshh!” I hiss. I’m trembling. Ernst takes my hand. We arrive at a phone booth located in a particularly desolate spot. I keep a lookout as my companion begins to salvage the phone. “It’s a miracle this is even out here,” I say. “Yup. There used to be a miners’ camp here. In the 40s, a rotary phone was installed for the miners to call their families. I sure hope my supplies will work on a phone this old.” I look at the oppressive black mass sitting in the distant darkness. “I hate that fucking mountain.” “Actually, it’s a volcano. Scary, right? Anyway, I heard that when those fucks underground took this place over, they cut the electric, confiscated all the radios, and took away the post office and phone lines. But I’ve been coming to visit this phone ever since someone at the tavern mentioned it a week ago, and I think there are lines underground. The villagers have no clue something like that would even be possible, of course. But I think there’s phone and electric down there. This would be the first time I heard of underground lines in the desert, but hey, this place is full of surprises.” Sure enough, three feet under the sand are sleeved utility lines. “I’ve never seen material like this,” Ernst says, examining the sleeve. “Easy enough to cut into, though.” He smiles as he nears the completion of his task with purposeful alacrity. Finally, we hear the most wonderful sound in the world: a dial tone. My pal calls his father, who was a prominent journalist in the 50s and 60s. The first thing Ernst tells his dad is not to ride any elevators on August 9th. He covers the mouthpiece and whispers to me, “My dad died on August 9th of ’64. Come to think of it, isn’t tomorrow August 9th?” I shrug. The older man hangs up on Ernst, who redials right away. When the man picks up again, Ernst begins a rehearsed monologue that proves his identity and reveals the situation that “future Ernst” is in. He implores his father to come find him in White Sands, Utah, but that’s as far as he gets. Dr. Paolo’s voice pulls me back into her office. “You keep saying ‘White Sands.’ Now, I’ve already told you, Ms. Birch: You were found in Black Sands, Utah. The desert there is called Black Sands.” “The sand was white. But then it turned...” Suddenly, I’m with Ernst again. We hear a deafening screech—just like the one that preceded Kimana’s horrible expunging from her home. That the scant contents of my bladder trickle into my jeans. Ernst grabs my arm and turns my attention to a creature standing a mere ten yards away. It’s obviously female, with skin so devoid of melanin that there’s no contrast between her lashless lids and her glazed eye whites. Her pupils are enormous and red. The only reason I don’t cover my nose against her fetid body odor is because I’m paralyzed by abject terror. “Oh my god. That—that’s you!” Ernst stutters. I hear him take a back step. “That’s you, Willa.” Bewildered, I want to tell him to get ahold of himself. But then I take in the creature’s facial structure. And the mole on her neck. Mine is brown and hers is pink, but it’s still the same shape and size. Jesus Christ. Ernst is right. I have no idea how that’s possible, but he’s right. When I hear the sound of Dr. Paolo’s voice—“Send Richard in, please. The patient has urinated.”—I look down. I don’t see my denim-clad legs, but the worn fabric of a hospital gown draped across my thighs. I’m sitting on a seat cushion that’s wet and warm. How the hell does the doctor know I peed? My cushion isn’t visible to her. As if reading my mind, she says, “You always have an accident at this part.” God damn it, she doesn’t have to speak to me this way. I’m not some obstinate toddler who’s refused potty training. I catch sight of the schedule book she’s left open on her desk. It says September 9. “Wait….” Dr. Paulo sees what I’m staring at and closes the book. “Well, that was careless of me.” “What the… How long have I been here?” The doctor purses her lips. “You’ve recounted your story many times. You’re a stubborn one, Willa Birch. You hold on to your truth.” “My truth? Don’t you mean the truth?” The orderly arrives. “Perfect timing. Sedate her and clean her up, please. We’ll begin again tomorrow.” Before I can even stand, a needle is plunged into my arm. My head lolls as I’m loaded into a wheelchair and taken to my room. Although my body refuses to move, my mind replays the harrowing scene of my final night in White Sands. A black Jaguar pulls up on the unpaved road behind the albino creature. “That’s the car from my last night in California!” Ernst, slack jawed, watches as who I now know as Dr. Paolo saunters toward us. I squint at the doctor, at her car. And then I remember. I saw her out on the highway in Colorado. My god, I pulled over to help her just like Ernst did. It was only after she got into my car so I could give her a ride to the next oasis that I somehow ended up in Utah. “What are you waiting for, Miner 2005 Dash One?” Dr. Paolo says to the creature. “We’re sort of on a schedule here.” Ernst claws at my wrist. “Come on.” When I don’t move, he takes off in the opposite direction, a powdery cloud of sand haloing his feet. Miner 2005-1 looks to the doctor. “Let him go. This whole place will be under a nice, toasty blanket of lava soon. No one above ground will survive.” Dr. Paolo directs her icy gaze at me. “Except you, Willa. You will survive this calamity and live to suffer the worst fate I can possibly think of. You earned it.” She winks at me. “You’ve been an unbelievable pain in my ass, and now it’s time for me to return the favor.” Vibrations emanate from the ground and travel up my legs. “Miner, hop to it. We’ve gotta get you back underground so you can help raise the iron vent shafts.” The albino humanoid closes the distance between she and I with dizzying speed. I clamp my eyes shut, but tears still manage to leak down my sunburned cheeks. Dry, bony fingers curve around my neck and compress my windpipe. My eyes fly open. All I see are the miner’s vacant, wideset orbs. My heartbeat thuds in my ears, but I might pass out from shock before lack of oxygen. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Miner?” the doctor barks. “Death is too good for this sneaky little bitch. Get her in the car. Now.” As the creature drags me toward the car, Dr. Paolo rambles zealously. “I brought this miner up here as a special treat for you, Willa. Actually, I guess you’re a treat for her. What she subsists on is human fear. That’s why we needed this village, you see. The miners can easily absorb the negative emotions from the surface without even leaving their tunnels. But you and your little pal ruined all that, didn’t you, with your call to that journalist?” Dr. Paolo supervises Miner 2005-1 forcing me into the car. The miner shuts the door, then starts trekking to some unknown destination. “She can get back down on her own,” Dr. Paolo explains. “She’s not allowed in the car.” The woman puts her Jaguar into gear and drives. “Maybe it was all for the best. If I can be honest, aside from the one night every four weeks they had to sacrifice a child, those darn villagers just didn’t stay as afraid as we needed them to be. They got used to things, you know? They were mostly just bitter and resentful. But when I brought in outsiders like you…oh, the fear—the confusion—was such good eating for the miners.” The doctor watches, a thin smile on her face, as I test the doors and windows. Of course, everything is child-locked. An ominous rumble shakes the desert. Dr. Paolo clears her throat. “Of course, I can’t just stay here in 1964, abducting people left and right. The public would catch on. But a person gone missing from a highway in 2005, 1980, the 90s…. There’s no way anyone could ever put all that together. “Yes, thanks to one of the many projects we have going on underground, I’m able to travel in time. We use a very, very complicated machine. You’d be amazed how much energy it takes to power such a thing. Not all the gas and electricity in the world could do it. We needed something special—something that can only be mined in the vicinity of this volcano. Don’t worry, you’ve never heard of it.” She sighs wistfully. “Of course, in order to prize it from the earth, we need miners. Disposable ones. It’s a deadly job, and frankly, we can’t use workers that can blab all our secrets. So we use a virus that was originally designed for biological warfare but got shelved. We inject it into the random subjects we collect—hookers, druggies…single people…and they transform. They need very little rest or air. They’re incredibly strong and have amazing night vision. They can’t tolerate sun or pollution. They stink something fierce but...thankfully, they can’t talk.” Stomach acid burns the back of my throat. “Don’t you dare throw up in this car.” Dr. Paolo pulls over. She opens her glove compartment, probably to locate a barf bag or some Pepto. But then I feel the painful invasion of a needle in my thigh. As my consciousness leaves me, I hear the doctor call someone and instruct them to “get rid of the old man from the 60s who just took a call from his idiot son. Make it look like an accident.” After that, the next thing I remember is sitting in Dr. Paolo’s office answering the same questions over and over again. I’m disappointed to find myself back in the present moment, trapped in my sedated body. Richard wheels me into my room. It’s stark white except for the ceiling, which is fully comprised of a flat screen. The orderly changes me into a fresh gown, lays me in my bed, and applies my restraints. He presses a button in the wall and the screen comes to life. It’s me. A jumbo version of my talking head. “On Friday, July 8th 2005, I was driving from Colorado Springs to Denver for a weekend with my friends. Even though I’ve made that drive a thousand times, I got off at the wrong exit—I really had to pee and I was looking for a bathroom—and I ended up hopelessly lost. Somehow—this is going to sound insane—I ended up in the desert. Can you believe it?” The huge version of me rambles on about thinking I’d arrived at a gas station and then realizing it was a mirage, finding animal dung in the sand, living in an abandoned hut and being able to collect water in a barrel the one magical night it rained, and being rescued by the military out there. I even speak about how caring and wonderful Dr. Paolo has been in helping me sort fact from fiction and remember what truly happened to me. In my peripheral vision, I see movement. I turn my head to find that Dr. Paolo has let herself into my room. She looks up at the ceiling and smiles. “The crazy thing is, that’s actually a video I snatched from later this year. I tell ya, this time travel stuff really bakes my noodle. I mean, does this video exist because I brainwashed you so well, or was I able to brainwash you so well because of this video?” She shrugs sheepishly. “The world will never know! Anyway, Willa, I’m just checking up on you. Did that Richard wipe you down, or did he just change your clothes?” She’s holding a pack of cleansing wipes, so she already knows the answer to that question. I turn my gaze back to the ceiling. “He was probably just trying to let me rot away with dignity.” “Oh, Willa. Leaving someone to marinate in their own piss is not an act of kindness.” She sits at the edge of my bed and treats me like I’m an infant on a changing table. I grind my teeth so hard I feel pain deep in my ears. “You’re all set, dear,” she says. “And if it makes you feel any better, Willa, I’m doing this for my own sake, not yours.” She boops my nose with her index finger and then practically skips out of the room. “AND I’M THE ONE LOCKED UP IN A PADDED ROOM!” I scream after her. It could be the next day or it could be months later—I have no clue anymore—when Richard escorts me back to the doctor’s office, where she’s finishing up a conversation with a male coworker. “Today must be the last day,” he says. “We’ve all tolerated your personal vendetta against this subject long enough. Your obsession with brainwashing her is a tremendous waste of time and resources. I mean, really, Paula.” Shaking his head, the man walks away. “Paula?” I ask incredulously. “Your name is Paula Paulo?” The doctor smooths down the front of her shirt. “Don’t bother sitting down, Ms. Birch.” I sit in my chair anyway. “Wow. Now I see where you get your sadistic streak. My god, your parents must’ve had a personal vendetta against you.” “Richard,” is all she says. I am devastated when I feel the orderly prick me with a needle. He transfers me to a wheelchair and pushes me through a maze of hallways and elevators. All the while, Dr. Paolo walks a few feet ahead of us, chattering like it’s just an ordinary day. Before I know it, I’m strapped to a table in a cold laboratory. That’s when I get the last injection I will ever receive. Toxic liquid scalds my veins, and I feel everything that makes me Willa Birch slip away quickly. “Name?” a lab worker asks Dr. Paulo, pointing at an electronic identification form. The doctor looks me right in the eye and says, “Miner 2005 Dash Two.” One of my last thoughts is of Miner 2005-1 choking me in the desert. I now realize she was just trying to kill me so I wouldn’t end up like her. Apparently, I’ll still be capable of compassion after my transformation is complete. Great. Dr. Paolo picks up the phone and dials. “Sergei? Please get my machine started. I’ll be down there in ten. Oh, and please swap out the Jag for a van—no, a bus. We’re gonna need to procure at least two dozen ’fraidy cats for the miners. I think I’ll get them from the 70s this time. Obviously they’ll have to live underground with us. One big happy family.” She winks at me and hangs up the phone. As if I’ve issued some sort of comment about being famished, Dr. Paolo says, “Don’t you worry, Miner 2005 Dash Two. Food is on the way.” Sophie is a writer of long tweets and short fiction. Her work has been featured by Lumiere Review, Isele Magazine, Popshot Quarterly, Horror Tree, Litro UK, Sazeracs Smoky Ink, Ellipsis Zine, New Pop Lit, Pigeon Review, and other publications. In 2023 her poem Nothing was spared will be featured in Black Spot Books’ UNDER HER EYE: A Women in Horror Poetry Showcase. She loves coffee in tea cups, clothes with pockets, and Oxford commas. She’d love to connect with you: https://twitter.com/SophieKearing

Elijah is next to climb into the baptistry tank, the kind of tank you would see at a carnival that dunks your obnoxious sister, or dorky dad, or clowns, and he knows his mother is bananas over him being baptized by The Cross and the Switchblade pastor, probably the most famous pastor in the country, probably the whole world, and there is his mother now in the front row, her goofy grin threatening to split the rest of her wide open, with all of her arm waving and glories to God, and Elijah wishes she would stop making a scene, thank you very much, mostly because he notices Heather Dampier a few seats down from his mother in the front row, and realizes he is naked under the long white robe the deacon had given him to wear, along with a new pair of tighty-whities so his own underwear would stay dry, but Elijah hates tighty-whities, only baggy boxers for him, never thinking about how thin the robe is when wet, as it is now floating around his half-submerged naked body like a billowing parachute, or how it will stick to his skin when he climbs out of the water, like it stuck to that old man baptized before Elijah, giving the whole congregation a gross show of the old man’s droopy tighty-whities before the deacon handed him a towel no bigger than a washcloth, or about the possibility that she, Heather Dampier, the only one who calls him Eli and buys him the brand new Bubble Yum at the church bookstore after services, would see everything before Elijah had a chance to grab the towel, realizing what a little kid he is, a little baby, really, and leave the service with the forever image of Elijah’s little baby EVERYTHING, but even worse is that her brother Tony Dampier, a boy constantly bragging about his boner this and boner that, also will see his little baby EVERYTHING from somewhere out in the crowd, and the unmerciful teasing Elijah will endure for eternity is too much, although Tony’s bragging does give Elijah an idea how to stay in the water until Heather and Tony and everyone else goes home, but only if The Cross and the Switchblade pastor cooperates once he is done praying with what his mother calls the smooth, buttery voice before the dunking, but Elijah can not wait another second and interrupts the smooth, buttery voice, calling out, Oh, save me, save me, save me and clutches the pastor’s arm, noticing the most famous pastor in the world wears a hawaiian printed shirt and swim trunks under his flimsy robe, and whispers close to the pastor’s ear that he has popped a boner, a really big one, and no way can anyone see it, especially in a church, and Elijah begs the most famous pastor in the world to Save me, save me, like you saved those gangsters without a gun, or a knife, or anything but a cross, and then Elijah whispers, Please, make them all leave, please, which causes the pastor’s wincing eyes and gleaming smile, the smooth, buttery voice, to turn to the congregation and ask everyone for their Patience and forgiveness but you all need to go out into the foyer so I can minister to the boy, which causes Elijah’s mother to burst out in a thunderous, guttural cry, which causes Heather to wipe her own eyes, which causes everyone in white robes waiting in the super long line behind Elijah to shake their heads and glare at him, which causes Elijah to dunk his own head under the water to escape, hearing only the muffled drone of sin and shame and how Hell will probably sound once he is there, but soon realizes being under the water is not so bad, really, with the warm surroundings bobbing him around like a jellyfish in a smooth, buttery current, his safe place for the rest of his life, sure–then suddenly, cruelly, Elijah is yanked back up to the surface as if caught in a net to face the smooth, buttery voice and wincing eyes, an empty auditorium, a glowering deacon thrusting a tiny towel into his face, and after covering as much as he can, Elijah scrambles into the office and changes back into his dry clothes, hoping to sneak out and maybe hitchhike to another state, or country, any place to avoid his mother’s thundering, guttural cry, but, of course, there she is waiting for him outside the office door, her eyes red-rimmed, her arms reaching and reaching out to grab him, going bananas over the glorious awakening the whole congregation beheld that holy night, how everyone in the foyer buzzed about witnessing the Holy Spirit overcome Elijah, how the most famous pastor in the whole world took the time to minister with the boy in the divine presence of God and Jesus and the angels and My Elijah, my miraculous boy, my Abram transformed and renamed Abraham, prompting Elijah to say he would rather have his name changed to Eli, not Abraham, thank you very much. Dan Crawley is the author of Straight Down the Road (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019) and The Wind, It Swirls (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2021). His writing appears or is forthcoming in Jellyfish Review, Lost Balloon, JMWW, Milk Candy Review, Atticus Review, and elsewhere.