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

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

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

Becky watched her father for the usual signs of anger as he ducked back into the still running 1976 Maverick. She’d know he knew if the vein above his right temple was jumping around like it wanted to come out. It was still. Good. He was whistling a little tune through his teeth, and he winked at her as he slid onto the fake leather seat. She breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t seen her peeking over the door frame. He didn’t know she’d seen what he did. She refused to smile for him when he lead-footed the accelerator and spun the car into her favorite doughnut move to point away from the river. He didn’t notice. She didn’t speak as they turned off the dirt and gravel river road onto the paved highway. Her brain was a jumble of thoughts, none of them anything she could figure out how to say. He didn’t notice that either. He turned the radio up and sang loudly off-key with George Jones, “He stopped loving her today.” “Ready to go home and watch Georgia whoop Ole Miss, Beck?” he asked when George shifted to talking about the old man’s funeral. He was looking at her now, so she nodded once and turned toward the window to sort out her thoughts. They usually spent fall Saturday afternoons together, watching SEC football, him guzzling Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and grousing about the officiating to her, her drinking Grape Nehi and reveling in the attention. Her mother herded Becky’s two sisters to trudge behind her at the Piggly Wiggly on Saturdays, but she had long since given up on trying to force Becky to act like a girl. She contented herself nowadays with making Becky shuck her usual overalls for a dress on Sundays. They had reached an uneasy truce, where Becky wore the dress to church without complaint, and her mother pretended not to notice the shorts underneath the dress. Becky had preferred her father’s company for as long as anyone could remember. She went fishing with him and insisted on baiting her own hook. She knew all the penalties and their corresponding yardages in college football. And this summer, she’d finally convinced him to teach her how to use the pop-rivet gun. When they went in the hardware store together, Curtis Milen, the WD-40 smelly old proprietor, winked and asked him if he’d brought his boy with him. Her father pushed the bill of her Braves cap down and said, “Yep, I reckon she’ll have to carry on the family name.” She would pretend she needed to look at the cap to straighten it while she waited for the blush of pleasure to fade from her cheeks. But now, her head and her heart were struggling to reconcile all that with what she’d seen a few minutes ago. She didn’t understand why her father, who she’d always thought of as good and kind, killed those little pups. Confusion was about to drown her from inside. It built on itself until she couldn’t stand it anymore. FM-95 took a commercial break and she blurted out, “Daddy, why’d you drown them dogs?” He pounded the steering wheel with a leathery fist. “Dammit, Becky! I told you not to look! That’s five when we get home!” The same hand extended toward her, stretching all five fingers to their full length like they were anger unfurling. Becky was shocked. He’d never promised a whipping so quickly before. She must have done something really bad this time. The vein in his temple danced. She shuddered and looked at the window to consider the coming punishment. She hated whippings, the sobbing indignity of them. She hated the anticipation of them more. They were infrequent, but they usually came when her curiosity got the better of her, and she disobeyed him. He always waited until they were home and out of the public eye, and she always wished he’d just get it over with. For a few moments, she fidgeted and tried to decide whether her need to know outweighed the risk of more licks. He always went in increments of five, proportionate to the amount of aggravation she’d caused. She decided she could handle five more. “But Daddy, why’d you kill the dogs?” Her father sighed and eyed her out of the corner of his eye. He flipped the signal on and turned onto the rutted clay of Gopher Tortoise Road. “You’re not gonna understand, child.” She looked at him expectantly. “I had to take care of the dogs...” he cleared his throat. “I had to take care of the dogs, ‘cause we can’t have a bunch of girl dogs runnin’ around the house,” he said. She only hesitated a beat this time, her brow furrowing. “Why, Daddy? What’s wrong with girl dogs?” It looked like she was past the point of licks being added; the vein was quiet again, although his jaw was clenching and unclenching. She wasn’t sure what to make of that. Her father shifted in his seat and looked straight ahead. “’Cause they don’t do anything but make babies we can’t afford to feed.” He looked at her sideways again. “You wouldn’t want ‘em to take over the house and eat your food, would you?” He changed the radio station and started in on Hank Williams’ “Family Tradition.” “We could give ‘em away, couldn’t we?” the girl continued, raising her voice over his singing. “Nobody takes girl dogs, Becky. They’re too much trouble.” The girl fumbled with her overall strap and tried to do the math in her head. If Sally had eleven puppies every year, in five years, that would be… . She shook her head in frustration. Those dang multiplication tables. It would be a lot of puppies, anyway. She fingered a fresh hole in her overall knee and imagined what her mama would say. She could see her now, scrunching up her face, and hollering, “We ain’t made of money, young’un!” It was what she always said when a question of new stuff came up. Becky knew her mama was right. She’d worn enough of her sisters’ faded hand-me-down church dresses to know money was tight. Still, it didn’t seem right to let Sally keep having babies if they were just going to take them to the river and drown them. She chewed on the inside of her lip and thought about what they could do. “But Daddy, Tommy Johnson said they could be fixed where they wouldn’t keep having babies.” She leaned toward him and tugged on his sleeve, excited that she might have hit on the solution. Her daddy took his cap off and rubbed his head. “What’s fixed, Daddy? Can we get Sally fixed?” He snapped the radio off and jerked the window down in a series of little cranks, jamming the cap back on his head. “Somethin’ we can’t afford and somethin’ good little girls don’t talk about.” He pushed his side vent window out, and she knew from his tone he was close to shifting back to lick-adding mode. Becky rolled her window down too and reached up to play with the vent. It was still hot in southern Georgia, and the clay dust rose up from the road as they passed, dragging a red scrim over the pines. Normally, she’d watch it billow and whirl in the car’s wake, but today she was preoccupied. It wasn’t fair. Those dogs didn’t do anything to anybody, they were just born. She felt a familiar heaviness well up in that spot between her chest and stomach and quickly shifted her thoughts to school, their pond, football, anything to head off the tears. But it was too late. They came like the first drops of a summer thunderstorm, big and full and heavy, plopping down on the dusty seat to leave clear spots on the vinyl. “Well, Jesus Christ, Becky,” her father said. “Aw, honey, it’s okay.” He reached across the seat to pet her head. She slid over to make herself smaller against the door. He tried again. “Sally’s still got two puppies at home, you know, and you can play with them. Besides, she’ll make more puppies soon, and you’ll forget all about these.” But she didn’t hear him. She was remembering her favorite puppy, the spunky little polka-dotted runt, how the crown of her round black head fit perfectly into Becky’s hand. How the sharp little nubs of teeth were just now able to gnaw through the jibbled up pieces of wiener she snuck out of the refrigerator to take to the dogs in the washroom across the yard. She buried her face in her arm on the window sill and cried harder. Her father flipped the radio back on and waved at her back helplessly. “Oh for Chrissake, Becky, they’re just dogs.” When they got home, Becky knew she had to wait for her whipping before she went anywhere. It would be worse it she tried to put it off. She hung around the house a few minutes, droop-faced and tense, scuffing her ragged sneaker toes in the dirt, waiting for her Dad to pull out the paint stir stick he used to dole out punishment for minor offenses. But her father had apparently forgotten the whipping. She kept an eye peeled through the open living room window until she saw him pop open a beer and plop heavily onto the couch in front of the television. She could just hear Verne Lundquist announcing the starting offense for the Bulldogs, but she didn’t stop to say their names the way she usually did. Her shoulders dropped, the tension relieved, and she skipped across the yard to the washroom. She wanted to see Sally and watch her wolf down the wiener she’d taken from the fridge that morning. When she creaked open the wooden door, Sally got up from the washroom floor where she lay with her two remaining puppies and waddled toward Becky, wagging her tail. Becky knelt to hug her, whispering fiercely. “I’m sorry ‘bout your babies, girl. When I get big, I’ll get us both fixed.” The dog licked Becky’s face, her tongue rough-smoothing the salty remains of earlier tears. The puppies toddled over to Sally and latched onto her overflowing teats. Becky pulled out the wiener from her pocket and unwrapped it from its paper towel. She squatted on the washroom floor, watching Sally swallow the wiener almost whole, marveling that the whole time she was eating, the puppies’ tiny mouths pulled on her teats. “I don’t know how you stand that girl,” Becky told her. “It looks like they’re gonna suck you up.” She watched in silence for a few more minutes. The only sound she could hear was the puppies sucking and smacking. When they were round-bellied full, they burrowed into their mother’s stomach, yawned and stretched, and slept. Watching them made Becky tired, too. The morning’s events tugged her eyelids downward, as she rubbed Sally’s black and white side, slowly and more slowly. Finally, her hand stopped, and she sank down to lie on Sally’s haunch. She woke to the sound of her father’s voice. “Becky, where you at, girl?” he called. “It’s halftime already. Don’t you want to know who’s winnin’?” Disoriented, Becky raised up and looked around. She realized where she was when she spotted the shiny surface of the washer knob. She lay back down, her face pressed against Sally, one arm flung around the dog’s neck, and pretended to sleep. She didn’t move when the door opened wide, or when her father picked her up and carried her in the house, or when his beer-streaked breath brushed her cheek in a kiss. The author, Kristy Bell, is a poet and fiction writer living on a farm in rural south Georgia with a menagerie of animals, two of whom are girl dogs. She has work forthcoming in Hallaren Literary Magazine.

After, thoughts, The sweating swoosh of infatuation, The gripping, ripping, ride Rolling cotton tides beneath us, Its depth unknowing We woke, fearful and aired our dirty linen, Blotting the stains on our character, It became an all-day affair of Drowning, spinning, rinsing, Wringing ourselves dry The billowing bedclothes Cling still to our confessions, Till once more we are wrapped in each other indelibly, suffocating in this cloying warmth, folding and pressing, pressing and folding Fresh sheets, Smoothing the creases Back into the closet Out of sight Out of mind As the clouds darken And the guilt spits and spatters Boiling over the leavings of love Before the coming storm Gavin Turner is a writer and poet from Wigan, England. He has most recently been published in Roi Faineant press, Punk Noir and Voidspace zine amongst others. His debut Chapbook, 'The Round Journey' was released in 2022.

On graduation night, we reveled around clandestine bonfires until the sky purpled and dawn broke. Livers pickled, we slouched back into town to learn which of us would be fed to the ancient presence that lived deep inside the mountain. Stately men in masks with crescent maws greeted us, chanting reverent prayers to civic pride. Our youthful bluster curdled as we lined up to receive our fate. The men reassured us there was dignity in being devoured. They patted our shoulders with well-manicured hands, promising everyone that this was a happy day, that this was how our little town thrived. Keith J. Powell writes fiction, CNF, reviews, and plays. He is a founding editor of Your Impossible Voice and occasionally tweets @KeithJ_Powell. He has recent or forthcoming work in Lunch Ticket, Cloves Literary, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Bending Genres, and New World Writing.

She had a Nose; it was her inherited gift, her genetic curse; scents made their way through her nostrils, to her palate, tongue, throat. She could taste every aroma. That night, the smell woke her. In her slumber, the smoke permeated the papillae of her dehydrated tongue, her teeth transformed into charcoal. Desperate thirst. She slowly roused, eyes lazily shut, her hand blindly seeking the glass of water on her nightstand. She sniffed the air. Suddenly alert, fully awakened, she sat up. Droplets of sweat curled along her weary spine, as mischievous incandescence whirled on her window. Then she heard the crackle, sizzle, snap, roar. She ran to the window, forced the shutters open, and wailed. The barn was ablaze. Flames licked the wooden frame amorously, swelling high into the sky, soaring, twirling, waltzing through the night’s summer breeze. The hay they had lovingly, carefully grown, collected, dried, and stored, curled up into a deformed mass; a bonfire of devotion and labour disintegrating before her eyes. Blue flames swallowed the new tractor, undulating like the Gitanes on the cigarette packets her husband used to smoke. In her transfixed stupor, she faintly heard the other sounds flowing from the farm. The cows in their shed mooed desperately sensing the danger, their hoofs rattling against the old stones as they pranced immovably. The hens peeped, high-pitched and quavering, a tumult of alarm. Closing her eyes, she pictured their ruffled, puffed out feathers, the agitation within the pen. Which would try to run? Which would hide? She exhaled deeply, immobile, and watched, as the men arose and scurried with buckets of water, a line of dark ants rushing into the Olympian fire, the door to hell. She watched, as the burning daze putrefied her mind into a vacant pasture, a contemplation of misty reminiscence, a haze of senseless impressions, a demented realism. She watched as the fire fried her brain into a mush of wounded neurons, evaporating networks, destabilised connections, blurred reality. A meltdown of shrinking cerebral matter. She watched as an inferno of Alzheimer’s burned her perceptiveness, her essence, her existence to the ground, leaving only embers, then ashes. Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos is a Breton writer living in Athens, Greece. She needs coffee, loves butter, is stubborn, and has a weird sense of humour.

On the way home from the funeral, I drive past the guardrail where the accident took place, the striped tape flickering in the wind. I feel the wheels pull towards the spot. Something in me yearns for closure. Crows at the roadside are roosting in a pack, a flock, a murder. Your empty seatbelt snaps back into place like the ghost of a leave-taking. I take it as a caution; not to join you, too soon. I have to live for two of us now. The warning sign, loud in red and white, says ‘no turning back’ but I do.

The Midwest is a small-talk, large-silences place. Growing up in one of its small towns meant often not knowing the secrets were there, even in ourselves. In 10th grade, the girl who sat in front of me in English class had greasy hair and white skin so dry it flaked. I could see the back of her arms, the scaliness. She lived on a farm. Her dresses were big and homemade. Someone made those dresses for her, but they didn’t make them the right size. They didn’t care about her. Or maybe she made them herself but hadn’t been to 4-H to learn how to do it well. She looked large and baggy. I worried about her skin. Did she know about skin cream? I had Jergens lotion at home, and thought about bringing it in for her. Went back and forth in my mind, decided not to–it would make her feel bad. She kept up in school well enough, otherwise quiet. Maybe she just didn’t like to wash her hair. She seemed miserable. Best to say hi and then say nothing else. Only it wasn’t best. I wonder now, what happened to her at home? My friend D, we re-meet as adults, have coffee. She remembers me from the school bus--clothes always matching, long hair pulled back in a ponytail, very quiet, getting dropped off at the modern house with a flat roof. She is now a retired grade-school teacher, a NASA fan, and has a sewing ministry at her church. Back in grade school, we were both in a 4-H club that met in the basement of that church, although we didn’t talk much there. I see her now when I go back to my hometown to visit my mother. After some time, and a number of coffees, I tell her how strained my relationship with my mom is, how she criticized me much more than she did my brothers. How she was called in one time I was in grade school because I didn’t speak above a whisper. “Oh, I didn’t know,” D said, “I wish I’d known. You could’ve come over to my house. My mother would’ve hugged you.” A word from the author: I'm interested in the silences in Midwestern towns. I love the Midwest, I love the small talk. But a lot gets covered up. This CNF piece uses the lyrical to give a sense of the walls those silences can build. Maud Lavin lives in Chicago where she runs the READINGS series at Printers Row Wine. She has published recently in JAKE, Roi Faineant, Funny Pearls, Red Ogre Review, and Rejection Letters. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and a person with disabilities.

CW: blood Tonight, she rips the skin off the top of her hand exposing each phalange She achieves this through addition not subtraction A layer of latex four cotton swabs and some paper fake blood, red and darker I’m always proud of my daughter’s artistry of violence The attention to detail the hidden ways of tricking reality But tonight she caught me reading about bombs and rubble and fathers fighting while their families flee Tonight, pride is hard to find luck spreads through me as I imagine pulling her from debris and the top of her hand seven layers of skin peeling back caught on a jagged chunk exposing each bone encased in meat and blood and luck turns sour while grateful feels guilty knowing, we’re thousands of miles from explosions and sirens wreckage and loss Tonight, I hate our egos and human need for more Tonight, I tell her WOW It looks great! And I do mean it.

Do you see me? Alone, I am resolute Towering sunflowers, Gran’s churned butter dripping from cobs of field-picked corn, Post-it notes and warning signs and egg yolks, the tang of lemon drops, the deep gold of antiquity. Daffodils are stars over prairie wheat fields that move in waves. Blue is my lover Cloudless skies invite my energy, drawing it upward, then the vast expansion of ocean embraces me at dusk, whispers of promises. If I rebuff, I delight in friends— With Ruby, I’m tiger lilies and painted duck lips and bearded dragons and wedding carrots. Jack-O’-Lanterns on porches keeping houses safe. With Cyan, lush grasses, rebirth in spring. Money, financial freedom. Sibling rivalry, the flecks in my father’s eyes, currency to cling to through years passing like yesterday. Iris hides me in chocolate fudge and chestnuts at county fairs, behind locked wooden doors of lost opportunity which helped mold us into who we are today. Forever enchanted with red and orange, I’m the shade of a day-old bruise, the sacrifice of soldiers, a first prom dress sophisticated and elegant, the leathery skin of a plum protecting its juice. Bold with my magenta ally, I’m ALL CAPS, a raging fire, forbidden words. An unproductive heat people warn is best tamed. But there is something about that burn, rising in the crests and falls of tides, which can be channeled to use in constructive ways. My carousel of emotion has no beginning, no end, omnipresent, patterns ever-changing, At times it unmoors, leaving minds blown, uncertain, lonely and afraid Yet when darkness engulfs, fireworks pierce the night. A silver screech, violet, a brilliant blue pop, vibrant hot white, multicoloured stilettos, As you wait for answers, I’ll reach out to give your hand a little squeeze, gently pushing you forward, small steps of courage, Like air and liquid and atoms and cells, all my iterations filling you with wonder. A fierceness Infinite possibilities. Karen is a thriller writer who lives in Toronto. The Dime Box is a story of a young woman accused of murdering her father. It was selected by Amnesty International as part of its 2021 bookclub to represent women's issues, and has recently been sold to Sharp Point Press in Cite Publishing for distribution in Mandarin. A Thousand Iterations of Yellow is her first poem.

A mother’s hands are black from planting bulbs in the crumbling soil of autumn. A bulb is a promise of tomorrow. Mothers do the planting as a vow to get you through to the spring. A mother’s vow is a robin always returning with the thaw to nest in the burst-bloom branches of lilac in the yard. The ground softens to mud and the soil yields the soul of the planted promise. The mother’s hands are black from tending the spring. Mothers do more, much more than just the planting. A word from the author: "The Gardeners" is a loving poem about the often invisible work of mothers.