A Word Commonly Used in Awkward Social Situations

Jules Archer is the author of the chapbook, All the Ghosts We've Always Had (Thirty West Publishing, 2018) and the short story collection, Little Feasts (Thirty West Publishing, 2020). Her writing has appeared in various journals, including SmokeLong Quarterly, Pank, Maudlin House, and elsewhere.

Go-ahead: (adj). ˈgō-ə-ˌhed  1. A phrase muttered by your mother as your father packs his leather duffel bag. She flings her arm like a pro and you will remember that arm fling for the rest of your life. You will practice it often. 2. The word you say to Tracy Marchini (with a smug smile on your face) right before she grabs your long blonde hair and you lean in to head butt her. 3. Go-ahead you tell the doctor when you get pregnant at seventeen. You keep your eyes shut. Go go go. 4. The word your mother throws at you when you announce your move to Hollywood (it's always Hollywood or bust) only she is smiling, she is passing you cold hard cash, and she is making your heart tremble like a thankful rabbit's. 5. The phrase you repeat to the casting director holding the door open for you because you want him to enter first. Because you have never seen jeans look that good. 6. Without reservation, the fantastic way you told your father to go-ahead and go fuck himself when he showed up on your front porch without the keys to his wife's house in Coldwater Canyon. You use the arm fling here, too. 7. The only exclamation you're able to make when the man you met at the library unbuttons your shirt and kisses the hollow of your throat with lips warm like sunshine, and you hope your strangled gasp is enough for consent because he is properly beautiful and it's been a real long time since you've pulsed way down below. 

Balance the Books

Henry Bladon is based in Somerset in the UK. He is a writer of short fiction and poetry with a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Birmingham. He is the author of several poetry collections and his work can be seen in Poetica Review, Pure Slush, Truth Serum Press, Lunate, and O:JA&L, among other places.

One day, out of the blue, Hannah announced that she had decided to drop the final ‘h’ from her name. She was trying to open a jar of pickled onions at the time and seemed to take her anger out on the lid. She slammed the jar onto the side. ‘I’m sick of being palindromic,’ she yelled. I wanted to say that I thought she was being palindromatic, but not only is that not a real word and so not technically anything to do with a palindrome, but she would probably have thumped me in the mouth and stormed out, so I said nothing. It reminded me of another girl I knew called Sara who added an ‘h’ to her name. There was a certain symmetry in this connection, as if it had balanced the books, so to speak. I didn’t mention this either. For a while, things were okay, but then I began to feel that there was something missing from my new Hanna, something more than just the ‘h’, so after about two weeks of discomfort I told Hanna that I would no longer be able to continue seeing her. When she asked why I confessed ‘there’s something missing in our relationship.’ She thumped me in the mouth and stormed out. I’m now seeing a girl called Barbara.

It’s Not the Scent, It’s the Sensation

Timothy Boudreau's recent work appears at Milk Candy Review, X-R-A-Y, Third Point Press, Spelk and Fiction Southeast, . His collection Saturday Night and other Short Stories is available through Hobblebush Books. Find him on Twitter at @tcboudreau or at timothyboudreau.com.

“I think it’s cow shit.” In the Granite State Savings lobby Ellen bent over the entryway rug. “What the hell?”

Trudy looked beside her, glasses sliding down her nose as she sniffed. “Definitely.” She straightened, nudging up her glasses to look once more at the crumbly brown smears. “I grew up on a farm, so I know it when I smell it.”

Ellen pushed through the front door into the ATM vestibule. “Tracked in!” she shouted back. “There’s even more out here. Must’ve come off someone when they used the ATM.”

Later they rolled up the rug, tossed it outside and mopped the floor. At four it was time to balance the vault.

“Me and my sister used to go into the field early in the mornings. The grass was taller than we were.” Trudy peered into the coin vault. “You knew it was a fresh one when it was still steaming.”

Ellen penciled $1500 in quarters on the balance sheet. “How big were they?”

“Wider than a dinner plate—BIG. Mounded up. When we found a fresh one we’d kick off our shoes and step right in. It felt so warm squishing between your toes…”

“Gross. You just walked around with shitty feet all day?”

“We washed them off in the stream.”

“I’m sorry, that’s just too weird.”

“We walked back through the meadow with bare feet.”

“Interesting childhood.”

“That was the favorite time of my life,” Trudy said.

Trudy drove out after work with her carton of chicken fingers and fries on the passenger seat beside her. She steered and held her cigarette with her left hand while she fed herself with her right: bite of chicken finger, three fries, mouthful of vanilla shake. Drag on the cigarette, flick the ash out the window into the warm summer air.

When she arrived at the farm stand she popped in a stick of gum, wiping her hands on the front of her dress. The chickens scattered as she walked through them to the shed, jangling her keys. The cow fragrance from the west pasture blew across light, fresh and sweet on the breeze from the river on the other side of the road.

In the shed Russell was behind the counter packaging some greens. He smiled when he saw her. “What brings you out here?”

“Did you come to the bank today?”

“Just the ATM. We didn’t have any cash for lunch.”

“There was cow shit everywhere,” she laughed.

“I’m sorry.”

“No worries.” He still had on his cap and overalls; there were dark smudges on his cheeks and forehead. “Why didn’t you come in and say hi?”

“I was a mess. I don’t like you ladies to see me that way.”

“If I wasn’t married, I’d probably kiss you,” she told him. He was pressing his belly against the counter where he packaged up swiss chard. His eyes were blue as a child’s marbles. “Not sure how you’d taste though.”

He didn’t come out from behind the counter. “Got a bag of greens with your name on it.”

“Sure let me have it.” She made sure her fingers brushed his when she handed him the money. “Well I gotta go,” she said, pushing back her glasses. “You know, helpless husband and two kids at home, they’ve got no idea what to eat until I tell them. Gotta get them a pizza or something.”

“Sorry again about the smell,” he said as she turned away.

She didn’t look back on her way out. “You know I love it.”

****

She drove through town with the pizza boxes on the passenger’s seat, feeding herself a slice with her right hand, radio blasting Today’s Top Country, windows down in the still warm air. Past the bank was the right onto Cross, followed by the left onto Spruce, their ranch the fourth in a row of five, swing-set in front like three of the others, their lawn neatly mown like the rest.

Before turning off the engine she switched the radio back to NHPR, tucked her pack of Newports in her pocketbook. On her way up the walkway with the greens and the pizzas she heard her husband and the kids playing Xbox. “You can’t level up now, that’s not fair!” She stepped onto the porch, straightened her glasses and slipped in a piece of gum. She kicked off her shoes as she opened the door.

For Every Thing, A Season

Dan Brotzel’s first collection of short stories, Hotel du Jack, is published by Sandstone. He is also co-author of a comic novel with Unbound, Kitten on a Fatberg. Two of his stories have recently received Pushcart nominations. He won the 2019 Riptide Journal short story competition, was runner-up in the 2019 Leicester Writes contest, and was highly commended in the Manchester Writing School competition 2018. He has words in places like Pithead Chapel, Ellipsis, Reflex Fiction, Cabinet of Heed, Bending Genres, The Esthetic Apostle, Spelk, Ginger Collect and Fiction Pool. 

I got up early and raced down to peek at my presents, even though in our house you had to wait till after lunch to open them, and I was 80, and I was just a twinkle in my mum’s eye. Christmas meant something again now that I had children of my own, and it was true what they said about them preferring the wrapping to the toys, at least when they were little. When they were teenagers they were grabby and sullen, same as me. And when I was an old man they fought bitter little furtive wars about whose turn it was to put up with me drooling in front of the telly.

Nan and grandad arrived early. Nan came alone, newly widowed. She got to be older than I ever did. Dad went next and then my brother. Mum was domestic drudge, materfamilias, hostess, lonely spinster, reluctant invitee. I looked at my gloves and my alarm clock and my sensible stationery, and I wondered why my parents couldn’t buy any decent stuff. I always wanted something else, and I wanted for nothing, and I couldn’t bear the thought of more things when all my horizons were closing in.

The dog sat staring at the corner, giving off a funny smell. The cat got hit by a car in the night and we had to bury him in the semi-frozen ground before the kids saw. The turkey got stuck in the oven. My little cousin said he was so cross he could have killed it, and everyone laughed, and the joke instantly entered family folklore. And dad’s Ayatollah Must-have-a-pee gag got yet another outing, even though he was dead, even though Rodney at work hadn’t told it him yet. Someone said: ‘Undo me belt – you’re nearer’. There were plastic whistles and plastic combs and a thin, curly fortune-telling fish in the crackers, and auntie Gertie – who wasn’t anyone’s auntie – sat dripping tears into her Christmas pudding, because her Bert was dead and what was the point of anything. And it was the first year without dad, and the first year with a baby, and the first year we were married, and the year I was born. And it was the last time with both cats, and the last year in the old house, and the last year before mum lost her mind. And Bert had been dead for years, and Bert had died yesterday. But Gertie was never anyone’s auntie really.

At church I wore my new Harrington jacket, and I knew it didn’t really fit me because the sleeves all bulged, and then Wendy Pond looked at me and my jacket across the pews, and she sniggered and said something to Karen Greally next to her, and she laughed too, and I knew it was all over for me at school. And I was on the altar and I was in the choir and I wasn’t there at all. And I came straight to midnight mass from the pub, where the right girl had pointedly snogged the wrong boy, to stand swaying and reeking at the back of the church and putting my parents to shame with a big picture of Karl Marx pinned to my denim jacket. And we stayed up all night waiting for my daughter to get back from a party. And her makeup was all messed up, and she wouldn’t speak about it, so we stayed up worrying some more. And in the night, I went to the loo three times and I lost my footing without my walker, and I lay until dawn with my neck wedged against the burning radiator. I said my first words, and I said my last ones.

Outside it was so cold that my sister’s new Levi’s froze to a solid plank on the line, and it was so mild that everyone came out and had a drink on the terrace, even the non-smokers. And there were fireworks, and tantrums, and bad films and good ones, and always the central heating was too high. And the Queen made a speech, and the King did, and the other King, and no one listened to any of them, except mum, who always said they looked tired. And I ended the night unpleasantly full, except when I went right off my food, which was how people first guessed I was poorly.

And the neighbours came, and we had some sherry, and we were home, and we were away. I called you from Patagonia, and our son phoned from Boston; we never did get out to see him, and we found out he’d been back to see his girlfriend but never came to see us.

And through it all the little plastic camel and the little bald donkey sat on the mantelpiece, breathing on an empty crib, looking like all their Christmases had come at once.

The Switch

Dan A. Cardoza’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have met international acceptance. Most recently his work has been featured in Cabinet of Heed, Cleaver, Entropy, Gravel, Montana Mouthful, New Flash Fiction Review and Spelk.

You are a boy. Talking back to an impatient mother is a rite of passage. Today, you enjoy making her angry. She’s not herself. Crossing the thatched, creosote tracks near your home should feel like an adventure, not punishment. It’s damp in the tall grass as you walk toward the stand of black to brown willow. You are part of the changing season. It’s spring. Looking up at the sky, infinitesimal branches witch-finger cumuli. You become the sticks as you reach for something above. The tips of your fingers whisk the wind into a meringue. Time passes. Intermittent clouds flatten and sprinkle. Still, you linger. Summer can wait. After all, your new solstice is as patient as mother. With each birthed minute, welted and bruised rows in the early garden soften. You can feel it. It’s more than a drizzle. Father is hunting cottontails with Lady, your families bird-dog. He doesn’t ask you to go. You’ll contribute nothing to the late supper of stewed fennel rabbit with spinach, and potato. Its ok, your scheme is money. It’s golden. When you return, mother is soundly dreaming under your unwashed blankets. You notice how the bedroom feels right, yet gloomy. All the roller-shades in the windows are down. Later you find yourself in the kitchen. Lay the whip-stick on the Formica. In the spell of the willows, you feel you’ve waited forever. You take a leak. The boys at school say if you shake it more than once, you’ve played with it. Flushing, you quickly turn. Stare at the rubber bag and nozzle looped over the shower curtain. You grow old as an only child. Years later, you comfort someone. You’ve learned your partner’s miscarriage has nothing in common with hunting, magic or the misplaced voodoo of anger in a Salix branch.

Happy New Year

Jennifer Elizabeth Elmslie is an aspiring writer from Aberdeen, Scotland. She has always enjoyed reading books and has always dreamed about becoming a writer. She has finally decided to pursue her dreams and make them a reality. She has her own blog called The Illustrated Writer where she likes to review the second-hand books that she finds from charity shops. She is currently a volunteer writer for Bandit Fiction where she reads submissions and writes articles and reviews. You can find her on twitter and instagram.

The two women sat on the granite stairs outside the dance hall as the New Year’s party raged on inside; the incandescent windows glowing with yellow warmth and drunken laughter. The one on the left was called Letitia – Lettie for short- despite being a highly skilled ballerina, she was incredibly shy and withdrawn; her arms hugging her legs together as if afraid they may fall apart, her chin resting on the top of her knees. Even though the world was dark, the tears falling down her cheeks caught the streaks of light coming from the streetlamps, her skin still retaining the soft, alabaster smoothness that friends and strangers always praised her for; her hair a frail yellow; the same hue as the winter sun peeking over the horizon. Her eyes as blue as a child’s doll. She could be a doll, but her face was too long, her cheeks and chin too defined and her forehead wide. Maybe a statue instead; she was tall enough.

“I didn’t mean it” she said in a meek voice that was not much louder than a mouse.

The woman sitting on her right laughed at her pitiful excuse. Her companion was called Zaelia and she was the opposite of Lettie in every single way. Smoking the cheap cigarettes that she was so fond of; you’d wonder how two women so strikingly different could come to be friends. She was short with plump curves that she proudly showed off with vibrant tight dresses and skirts; her hair a dyed, glossy black cut into a sharp bob that only accentuated the roundness of her face and the redness of her cheeks. Her eyes slanted, her nose upturned and lips full and painted red. Some thought her ugly, others alluring, but you couldn’t call her plain. It depended on who stayed longer in her company and who only saw her from a distance.

“Liar” she uttered, breathing out the smoke, watching it unfurl in the biting, winter air.

“I’m not lying!” Cried Lettie, turning her face away from Zaelia. Her face was streaked with black smudges from her mascara. It made her look as fragile as a watercolour painting. Wiping away the charcoal tears, realising too late she had now sullied the delicate silk of her elbow-high gloves. Zaelia’s smile fell instantly, feeling tempted to remove her mink coat and wrap it around the slender shoulders of her friend. Testing the waters of the atmosphere that felt as frozen solid as a block of ice, she gently kicked her foot against Lettie’s slim ankles. But she didn’t respond, her eyes fixated on the concrete steps sprouting moss and weeds in the cracks. Her bottom lip quivering, but it wasn’t from the frosty night that made them do so.

“Then why say it?” asked Zaelia, but she knew the answer already. She had seen the way Lettie stared at her from across the dance studio, her eyes always catching hers in the quickest of seconds, the way she lingered after saying goodbye, the flush of blossoming pink in her cheeks whenever she embraced her. She knew why and it made something deep inside her chest flutter in and around the rungs of her ribcage as she waited for her answer; inching herself towards the side of Lettie till she could feel the waning heat of her body. But she remained as rigid as the icicles dangling above their heads.

“Because...” Lettie whimpered, snivelling as she gripped herself even tighter against the winter night. Her eyes stinging red and her lips turning a hue of pale blue.

“Yes?” asked Zaelia, finally removing the coat from her shoulders, the bitter chill needling her skin into goose bumps. She wanted to take her out of the cold and into the sweltering heat of the New Year Ball inside where they could dance, drink, laugh and embrace again and forget the awkward tension that trapped them in its suffocating cage on these concrete steps whilst people hollered inside. But the moment she went to drape the coat over Lettie’s shuddering shoulders, she sharply turned her back towards Zaelia and away from the comforting embrace that the coat offered her. But no longer seeing Zaelia’ brown eyes beseeching her to finish her answer, she was finally able to confess the answer she had kept swallowed up these past few months

“Because you make me so happy and I don’t know why”

It was like someone hit a switch inside Zaelia and a thousand Christmas lights lit up inside of her and for a moment she forgot the cold. She forgot her parents disapproving glares across the dinner table whenever she couldn’t answer why she wasn’t seeing any boys, along with the cruel words of her first crush calling her a perverted freak when she tried to kiss her

But Lettie remained stubbornly distant and Zaelia knew deep down under the shimmering glow beneath her skin that no matter how much she and Lettie reciprocated each other’s feelings for one another, Lettie could not let go of the prejudices that surrounded them.

“There’s nothing wrong with that, Lettie. Nothing at all” She said in a desperate attempt to make the fear that stiffened her rigid soften its grip on her. But Lettie had enough, standing up suddenly, she towered over Zaelia; making her feel insignificant and small.

“There is everything wrong with it and you know it” And with that she began to walk away from into the darkness of the night. Her pallor glowing like a ghost as she faded away into the darkness. Somewhere in the distant the bells chimed, welcoming in the brand-new year. Fireworks shot into the sky and the walls of the village hall reverberated with cheers.

Zaelia flicked the burnt-out cigarette into a puddle and watched it fizzle out.

“Happy New Year” She mumbled to herself.

Maybe the year 1961 might be a little bit kinder to her this time around

AVIATE, NAVIGATE, COMMUNICATE

Sean Ennis the author of CHASE US: Stories (Little A), and his flash fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Passages North, Hobart, Diagram, Bull, and F(r)iction. He lives in Mississippi and more of his work can be found at seanennis.net

When my son first breaks his ankle, we do not go immediately to the emergency room. We say it is not that bad. We leave him with his grandparents while we see this  new movie where, spoilers, love heals all wounds. 

Ah, the cinema. The stirring soundtrack, vast landscapes and the empathetic sweep of quality acting. My wife plays footsie and we get close in the dark.

By now, the shock of the injury has probably worn off (I mean, he fell down playing basketball in the rain) and it's begun to swell. When the movie lets out, I wipe away a tear and text his grandmother, how’s the patient? Not great, she writes back, but baby monkeys prefer soft rags to metal mothers with milk.

I don’t usually cry at movies, but I’m saying the film was that good. We decide to go for a drink afterwards  to discuss. We say, it’s not like we’re going to take him to the doctor at this hour, in this rain. I secretly think my son is being overly dramatic.

He wears only Nike sports clothes, the irony here I won’t torment him with as  he lays sucking down thick purple ibuprofen in his grandmother’s bed. Yes or no question: can you walk? We found one crutch. Elevate.

I like that in basketball, the coaches wear suits. I see myself in this.

At home, he hops. Further humiliation, he cannot swallow pills, and the pain, so my wife crushes naproxen in the mortar and pestle, and mixes it with Gatorade. He is almost thirteen. He cannot ride a bike but he can swim.

He begs us to take him to the doctor. Please God, he says. We say, you know that means a cast, maybe a surgery. We are not mad that he is hurt, but we are disappointed. He never gets the flu or a B. Just after being born he wouldn’t breathe, but he’s been perfect ever since. 

Egg and Pepper

Diane D. Gillette lives, writes, and teaches in Chicago.  Her work has appeared in over 50 literary venues including the Saturday Evening Post and the Maine Review.  You can find more of her published work through www.digillette.com.

We ate fried egg and pepper sandwiches in front of the fireplace our last New Year's Eve together. Cold outside as that date-rape song disguised as holiday cheer always proclaims, we wore our blankets as capes. Holiday instrumentals wrapped us in familiarity. A saxophone moaned when you leaned in to kiss me. Your breath tasted of summer and banana daiquiri. Whiskey with a nail varnish aftertaste in my glass made me giddy. You taught me the Latin name for a pepper plant. Capsicum. The word felt awkward on my tongue, and you started singing it to the tune of Jingle Bells to help me remember. There was patience in your tone that tickled long-forgotten memories.

Maybe it was the whiskey, or maybe time becomes thinner and more slippery during the holidays. I looked into the kitchen and there we were, dancing on the linoleum during our first New Year’s together. Too young to go to the bars, too broke to do anything else. We were both still perfect. The sight of us, ghosts before we’d stopped breathing, gut-punched me. I swallowed more whiskey and tried not to cry at how beautiful we were back then when we didn’t know how to be anything else.

I missed those oblivious kids dancing in the kitchen. Somewhere I’d lost the desire to tumble down and lose myself in you, but I hadn’t even noticed until your kiss at midnight. You couldn’t see those kids dancing there in front of us, so blinded in love.

The second kiss of our last new year I turned my cheek to your lips before rushing outside where the air froze in my lungs. I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders before losing my egg and pepper sandwich into the flowerpot we'd never bothered to bring in before winter. A glance back through the kitchen window confirmed we’d disappeared.

Imaginary Friend

Ron Lavalette is a very widely-published writer living on the Canadian border in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, land of the fur-bearing lake trout and the bilingual stop sign. His first chapbook, Fallen Away, is now available from Finishing Line Press. His poetry and short prose has appeared extensively in journals, reviews, and anthologies ranging alphabetically from Able Muse and the Anthology of New England Poets through the World Haiku Review. A reasonable sample of his published work can be viewed at EGGS OVER TOKYO.

I had an imaginary friend once but, frankly, he was a real jerk. I could barely stand him. He was never really there for me when I needed him, and he only showed up when I was buying an ice cream cone or hooking up with slutty Maria down the block. I always had to buy a second cone or a second or third condom, sometimes both, sometimes more, depending on how things were going. Going for him, I should say. The guy had some appetite.

The idiot could absolutely not remember my mother’s birthday, and he always had something pointless he needed me to do when it came around. I always regretted giving in to him. It’s like he just didn’t give a crap. Same deal with my Exes. All three of them. Look at me now.

“Time to go to work,” I’d say. Time to go fishing, he’d reply, wearing that vapid, shiftless grin. It was like he had some sort of hypnotic power. And don’t get me started on the whole money thing. On top of the lost jobs and un-repaid loans, there’s a mountain of bills he talked me into letting slip into collections, the trunkful of parking tickets, and the boingity-boingity rubber checks bouncing all over town so fast you’ve got to duck one to avoid the other.

I haven’t seen him in a while, but I know he’s out there, just waiting until I get my head above water, maybe get a new girlfriend. He’ll show up. Jerk.

A Touch from the Divine

Mike Lee is an editor, photographer and reporter for a trade union newspaper in New York City. His fiction is published in Bending Genres, The Drabble, Ghost Parachute, Reservoir, The Opiate and others. Website: www.mleephotoart.com. He also blogs for Focus on the Story.

The house held after the storm, but the gales did enough damage that repairs were needed.

This is what Larry thought driving home from work. An hour before he had been subjected to a rant by Tad. With his face screwed up in a near-psychotic rage, Tad told Larry his girlfriend was his retirement, and that he would never find another job. Tad then added that he was a genius and finally, finished off his tirade with a snarky remark about Larry’s daughter.

After Tad was done, Larry took a mental health walk around the building. He wished he could lapse into a dream. This was not a thought borne from desperation; getting spewed with offensive non-sequiturs is a temporary horror. The edge of spring was near, the air smelled of hope, and Larry had faith in the Divine.

Where did this faith come from? Decades before, in seventh grade, was when Larry first felt the touch from the Divine.

In eighth grade Larry stole a carton of Marlboros from a tobacco wholesaler. The following Monday, he was in school, selling the cigarettes at 50 cents a pack.

That was until he was threatened by Kyle, a very angry boy two inches taller than Larry. He carried a buck knife he liked to show off to his friends.

Before they went out to physical education to play softball, Kyle cornered Larry under the stairwell.

“Gimmie your cigarettes,” he said.

Kyle had gray eyes that appeared demonic when in a rage. He had that gaze while Larry watched him smash a wooden desk with a karate kick during Social Studies.

Larry also recalled the buck knife. So Larry reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out four packs of Marlboros soft packs to hand over to Kyle.

This happened 43 years ago, in March, Larry recalled. He thought the incident occurred on the fifteenth. On a Friday.

Larry drove with both hands gripped tightly on the steering wheel.

“March fifteenth,” he murmured.

Larry then remembered that in junior year Kyle died in the river. Lost in the rapids, raging gray eyes and all. After the kayak flipped over he failed to cut the cords of his safety harness while dragged underwater. Kyle hit the rocks hard, killed instantly, his useless buck knife dropped to the granular riverbed.

While he could never rightly recall what day it was when Kyle died, Larry never forgot Friday, March 15. Breezy, the sun came out over the softball field and Larry hit an opposite field triple. As he stood on third base, he spied Kyle hanging out with his fake hoodlum friends on the nearby hillside. Selling his cigarettes.

Larry wished for a higher, all-encompassing power to strike down Kyle, a godhead of wrath.

“Whatever, Kyle,” Larry said, and smiled.

He arrived home to see the crew finishing up for the evening. They had cut up and cleared the fallen tree from the backyard. According to Fermin, the contractor, the roof damage was slight, assuring Larry the repairs would be completed by mid-afternoon.

****

The following morning, when Larry arrived at work, Tad’s office door was closed. Larry did not find this unusual. Although Tad always arrived an hour earlier than the other staff, including management, he was not a flawless predictor, despite his self-proclaimed brilliance.

Larry sat and turned on his computer. He read a reminder to change his password. He accomplished this by typing in the name of his second girlfriend in all caps, and added the year his daughter was born. He recalled both fondly, and since this was a work computer, the password was simple for him to remember, and doubtful to hack.

He sipped his coffee while checking his email. Nothing of interest, mostly updates from Indeed and other job search firms.

The telephone buzzed. Stephanie, the front office secretary, was very upset.

Of course this would happen on March 15, Larry thought.

Also, this happened to be a Friday.

Such is the touch of the Divine working its righteous mojo.

“Whatever, Tad,” Larry said.

An hour later Stephanie came by with the card. He put in ten dollars for the flower collection.

Prophecy

Linda Lowe's poems and stories have appeared in Gone Lawn, Crack the Spine, Outlook Springs, A Story in 100 Words, New Verse News, Star 82 Review, and others.

Before Mom passed out on the couch, she yelled at my brother for looking at the sun: “You’ll go blind, you brat!” And he did. After that, all he could talk about was how in the world could she know? He kept shouting, Mom’s a prognosticator!” At the top of his fifteen-year-old lungs. The neighbors said he had a great tenor voice, that he turned talking into a song. That he could be a famous opera singer by now. One I don’t hear about because I’m ten. Because Dad said, “What I don’t understand, has got to go.”

Spying Machines

James McAdams’ debut short story collection, Ambushing the Void, will be published in May 2020 by Frayed Edge Press. He teaches literature at the University of South Florida, Ringling College of Art+Design, and Keep St. Pete Lit. He is Flash Fiction editor of Barren Magazine. 

Every morning they took smoothies to the jacuzzi for the Revise our Lives session. They sat along the perimeter, bicycling through the heated bubbles and flexing pool noodles awkwardly. Dr. Nguyen presided.

Sadonna said, “Using all I did was sit alone in the dark and watch Intervention.” She sat by herself in a hoodie and jeans rolled up to her knees. “I always rooted for the addicts.”

Dr. Nguyen clicked his pen’s nub out and wrote in his binder. He reclined on a pool chair and wore aviator sunglasses. “We’re not here to talk about TV. What was your intervention like? People, places, events.”

I had heard this story before, in her digital file, which had a video of the intervention. We Spying Machines called it “The Bunny Intervention.” In the Nerd Cave, we watched interventions (real ones, not the TV ones) for the laughs, with six-packs, popcorn, edible brownies, vegan burritos.

“Y’know.” Sadonna was in her 30s, like me, and from Philly, like me: that’s why I selected her. “They made Lady, my bunny rabbit, sit in a cage in the Intervention Circle. There was an Animal Empath who said Lady felt betrayed. But she was just playing with alfalfa like normal.”

“Your rabbit was at your intervention?” Paige snickered. Her water bottle said LEGALIZE MARINARA.

Dr Nguyen pointed to a sign over by the kayaks and Manatee Riding Dolls that read: “Judgement-Free Zone.”

Sadonna played with the strings on her hoodie, trying to make them even. “Definitely my rock bottom, y’know? This small precious thing, life, Lady, a prisoner of love. Bunting it’s called, when rabbits nudge. They said if I don’t get clean they’d put me on a No Pet list.”

We saw everything: flat screens mounted on the wall, monitors buzzing; we looked into their souls as if through binoculars. But only I could hear the screams they chased through the checklist days and medicated nights. For those in recovery, long-repressed memories attack, lurid, accusatory, in burning acid waves of regret. If you can’t imagine God Bless You.

The Fall

Roopa Menon is from Mumbai, India. Currently, she lives in Dubai, UAE. Some of her short stories have been published in Corium, Haunted Waters Press, Page & Spine, and Down in the dirt. She has also written an MG fiction titled 'The Adventures of Chandu and the Super Set of Parents' (forthcoming 2020, Regal House Publishing/Fitzroy Books.)

Neel was about to pull on his socks when he noticed his big toe on his right leg. In the morning sun that drizzled through the windows, its chalky white cuticle glinted. It was fully formed and firm. Neel touched the toe, feeling the nail bed. Like a doctor feeling a patient’s pulse. It had been 365 days since the last time. Something stirred inside him. As he removed his hand, he noticed that a pinkish spot had appeared on the toe. Like a clumsy splat of rouge on a clown’s face.

Neel set his left foot down and contemplated for a few seconds. He wanted to celebrate this moment. It was his. So, he decided to slip into his open toe sandals where he could keep a close watch on the big toe on his right leg. As he drove his car, he muttered to himself, ‘Why can’t it be Casual Thursdays instead of Casual Fridays? So idiotic.’

The journey to his office was long. Long enough for him to contemplate and mull over his past. Long enough to congratulate himself for having made it to one whole year. Yes, he had put his addiction to rest. It was hardly easy. Well, according to some bloke at the newspaper office, addiction to nail-biting or pulling was similar to that of being addicted to alcohol and drugs, with a higher potential of relapse. Neel remembered scoffing at the report. Now as he stole a glance at the big toe, he chuckled again. ‘He didn’t know a thing, did he? I am certain that he must have been some intern who was putting together some report to impress his boss. Look at me, yea. I am doing well. And so is my big toe, yea. Look at us,’ he wanted to shout out into the wind.

As he parked his car in the parking lot and took the elevator to his office, there were quite a few stares. Heads turned and nodded as he brandished his sandal-clad feet. He must have looked odd in his suit and sandals. Finally, when he caught his secretary looking at his feet longer than normal, Neel squirmed and snapped at her. “Can’t a man just enjoy a Casual Thursday?”

“Of course, of course, sir,” she nodded. In her head, she whispered, “Casual Shoe Thursday perhaps?’ But she dared not say it aloud.

Neel gathered his files and headed to the conference room. He slumped back in his chair. The euphoria of the morning seemed to have dissipated. Even the sunlight, now a curdled white, had become dense and stuffy.

“Somebody shut the curtains, please! This sunlight is choking me.” he barked at his team.

The team exchanged enquiring glances. One of the young sales executives jumped to his feet and pulled the blinds.

“Ok, so, where were we?” Neel began as he rested back in his chair and crossed his legs. From this angle, he could see his big toe. Its white cuticle looking promising and ripe. Neel’s mouth watered a little and he licked his lips. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead and he pulled out a couple of tissues from the tissue box on the table and mopped his forehead.

The team droned on about the sales plan. Neel was scarcely listening to them. He kept glancing at his big toe. He just couldn’t stop looking. Just then the blinds rustled and a chink of light passed through it and fell on his big toe. And that’s when he spotted it. A single strand of the nail. It was waving at him. Like a loose sheet of paper sticking out of a notebook. Neel’s restlessness increased and he could feel his heart racing. He tried to close his eyes and look away but then he saw the big toe in his mind. Its single nail strand was still waving.

Finally, slapping his hands on the table, he said, “I am not keeping well. I need to head back home.”

“You are shaking, Mr. Neel. Are you ok?” One of his team members asked.

Neel shrugged his shoulders and gathered his papers and told his secretary that he was taking a day off and rushed out of the office.

The car ride back home was less memorable. He kept glancing at his big toe and tugging at his tie. His suit was soaked in sweat and it clung to his body like a tape. At home, he threw his sandals, peeled off his clothes and stood in his knickers. Then he bent down and looked at his nail and touched it gently. As his fingers grazed that single strand of nail, he felt a familiar thrill of excitement rush down his spine. It had been 365 days since he felt that. Should he or should he not? He touched the single strand of the nail again. This time his hands were shaking as he gently pulled out that single strand. Then he fell on the floor, let out a gentle gasp and closed his eyes in utter satisfaction. When he opened his eyes, he knew he had done it. He had just crossed that threshold. And there was nothing more to be done. So, he walked to the kitchen and pulled out his knife and sat on the kitchen floor, his legs splayed in front of him. Then he started to carve his nail. Blood, warm and comforting, oozed as Neel continued to cut his nail. Just as he had finished peeling most of his nail, he thought of the boy who wrote that newspaper report on nail-biting and pulling. Neel smiled. ‘Maybe I could give him some insights. Yes, maybe… well, maybe...maybe right after this…’ He thought as he curled his tongue, leaned forward, and stroked his big toe with the kitchen knife.

You Ever Fallen In Love, Etc.

Giles Montgomery lives near London. He writes ads for a living and fiction for joy. He wishes he had discovered the whole flash fiction thing years ago, but better late than never, right? Find him on Twitter: @gilesmon 

He must be some kind of magician, because he can turn any situation to shit.

Like right now, after a lovely meal, clearing up the kitchen together, an old song comes on the radio, that one about falling in love with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with by that punky Irish band, and she makes an offhand remark, something along the lines of, “God knows I’ve done that,” meaning she’d fallen in love with someone she shouldn’t have fallen in love with, just an offhand remark that he should answer with a knowing laugh, like, ‘sure, haven’t we all’, so they can continue their pleasant evening – another glass of wine, another episode of that show they both enjoy and, if they aren’t too tired, maybe a little something before sleep – but instead what he does is go silent for a few seconds, then say:

“What do you mean?” Trying to sound light, but totally failing to disguise the weight of it, like an elephant in slippers.

“Oh, you know…”

She’s always been vague about her past loves, wary of sharing too many specifics because, well, you know how men can be. Not him specifically… Okay, him specifically. In fact, even now she’s regretting that offhand remark, but at the same time she’s resenting him for making her regret it, because really why shouldn’t she be able to make offhand remarks? It’s what normal people do, isn’t it? It’s certainly what she does with her female friends. In fact, conversation with them is riddled with offhand remarks, which are simply met with laughter, nobody questioning them, interrogating them for deeper meanings, just enjoying the moment and moving on. But a husband isn’t a friend. At least, not that kind of friend. A friend with complications, let’s say. For example, not being able to make an offhand remark about past loves without getting drawn into a tiresome conversation.

“No,” he says. “I don’t know. Who have you fallen in love with that you shouldn’t have?”

She clatters a fistful of cutlery into the dishwasher.

“Nobody! Forget it.”

But the wine has riddled his brakes and now he can’t stop.

“You mean your practice husband?”

One of their many inside jokes. Her first husband was by all accounts – not just hers, but those of her friends and family, too – bad news. Arrogant, angry, maybe even violent. The marriage only lasted a few months before she escaped, lessons learned. Not serious, just practice.

She keeps wiping down the sink even though it’s already spotless, to give herself time to think. Which answer will defuse, which will trigger? And does she really care?

“Yes, him.”

She squeezes out the sponge and dries her hands on one of their Egyptian cotton tea towels.

He frowns and purses his lips, like he’s struggling to understand.

“But I thought he was just a silly mistake. I mean, that’s how you always portrayed it. I didn’t realise you actually loved him.”

She lets out a long sigh to let him know how painful this is. Then she faces him, hands on hips, and says:

“Well, of course I loved him, that’s why I married him. But I quickly realised I’d made a silly mistake, so I left him. Because he was the very definition of someone I shouldn’t have fallen in love with, thus my identification with the sentiment of the song. Whereas you are someone I should have fallen in love with, though right now I’m starting to wonder. So, do you have any more stupid questions, or shall we go watch telly?”

He sways a little. Maybe it’s the wine or maybe it’s her.

Then he smiles sheepishly and leads the way to the sofa.

Magician? He’s just an apprentice.

Jubilee

Niles Reddick is author of the novel Drifting too far from the Shore, two collections Reading the Coffee Grounds and Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in eleven anthologies and in over two hundred literary magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, PIF, New Reader Magazine, Forth Magazine, Cheap Pop, Flash Fiction Magazine, With Painted Words, among many others.

Website. Twitter. Facebook. Instagram: nilesreddick@memphisedu

A realtor named Peter Floyd invited me to visit to the Susquehanna River Hunting Club in Elizabethtown. It was their fiftieth anniversary, a jubilee. The only time I’d heard the word “jubilee” had been in a TV show on Sunday mornings our grandmother had forced us to watch as children growing up in Virginia titled The Gospel Singing Jubilee with the Florida Boys, The Dixie Echoes, and The Happy Goodman’s that featured Vestal Goodman who looked like my grandmother, big boned and a beehive hair style.

The hunting club met in a back room at a diner on the outskirts of town, just a short drive from Three Mile Island, the site of the infamous nuclear accident in the 1970s. The men-only group gathered for the fried catfish supper with slaw, onion rings, fries, baked beans, and hush puppies. After a social hour with movers and shakers in town, and a few stiff drinks, the group lined up, filled their plates, and sat with friends, ate and told jokes.

Peter hosted that meeting, and on the drive out to the diner, having been newly transplanted to the Quaker state, I asked him about effects from the nuclear disaster. Peter shared he and his siblings had all been born with fused toes and that two of them had an appendage above their buttocks that looked like tails, but their mother had the toes cut, and the tails removed when they were infants, told the doctor and nurses it wasn’t genetic in their families, and that it must have been something from the nuclear plant. I felt like that was more information than I needed, like a Facebook feed full of incontinence underwear, hair loss products, and skin tag removal.

After supper, Peter recognized their jubilee, and asked the crowd who had jokes to share. A local investor told what would be considered a racial and sexist joke about Cajuns in Louisiana. Most guffawed at the joke, and Peter asked who was next. Simon Broomburg who owned the cleaners raised both arms and flailed them this way and that, and Peter called on him to tell a joke. Simon began to lean into his longtime friend who said, “Something’s wrong,” and held Simon up, shaking him. Two physicians in the group came over, and before most had time to realize what was happening, a banker had the 911 dispatcher on the phone, and the doctors had Simon on the floor and did CPR. One doctor announced, “He’s still with us.”

When the EMT showed, he brought in the stretcher, another brought in the AED, and the doctor used it. The AED worked just like it did on TV shows. His lifeless body flopped on the linoleum floor of the diner and his belly seemed to swell, maybe from fluids. The doctor also gave Broomburg an epi shot. They loaded him in the ambulance, and I turned to Peter and said, “I think he’s already gone” and Peter nodded. One minute, Mr. Broomberg had been eating some of the best fried catfish in the world and listening to an inappropriate joke, and the next minute, he was gone. When his arms had gone into the air, I noticed his eyes rolled back and looked heavenward. Upon reflection, the scene did not seem one where he might have heard Vestal Goodman singing, “Jubilee. You’re invited to this happy Jubilee.” It seemed to me a scene in which he was being pulled into a swirling vortex, caught up and grasping for something to cling to, like a chicken on a farm squawking and flapping only to be sucked into a tornado and being found dead in someone’s yard in other county who didn’t have chickens and wondered where the chicken came from.

Some stood around talking quietly among themselves. One person shared Mr. Broomberg’s wife had Alzheimer’s and they had no children, but he did have a sister in town and someone had called her to meet the ambulance at the emergency room. The funeral home director asked everyone to quietly pray, and I wondered if he had prayed for the business or if he had prayed for Mr. Broomberg’s soul. One person wondered if the cleaners would be sold, if he’d been caught up on bills, and if his employees would quit, be slackers, or continue to get the work done.

After a little more chatter, the crowd dispersed, and everyone headed home to share the news with their own families, to share the quickness and sadness of death, and for those who had been close to Mr. Broomberg in age, I imagined they had a tough time sleeping that night wondering when their own hearts might stop, when their bodies might sling a clot to the brain, or when they might hear one of the docs tighten his jaw, shake his head, and say, “I wish I had better news for you, but it doesn’t look good.”

Pumpkin Seed

S. Craig Renfroe Jr. is the author of the short story collection You Should Get That Looked At. Currently, he is the chair of the English department at Queens University of Charlotte. Also, his work has appeared in Wigleaf, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, PANK, Hobart, New South, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere.

Our son in the winter brought home from school a pumpkin seed planted in a tin can. We placed it in a window to humor him and watered when he insisted. It sprouted. To our surprise it flowered into spring. The vines stretched out from the can, climbing the window frames. It draped the wall. It sent runners along the baseboard.

By the end of summer, little gourds mounded out. We told him we’d take it to the yard but he cried. Vines snaked into other rooms. Soon there were full-grown pumpkins behind the couch. In the hallway. Beneath beds. One centered above the refrigerator like decor.

What nutrients could be left in that can?

The pumpkins plumped, oranging.

Our son started carving them into jack-o-lanterns. We supervised the first one, but he wouldn’t let us cut it from the vine and demanded it stay in his closet.

Then we discovered more and more craved and hollowed out. He had done some of them with his fingernails and his teeth. Their faces geometric grins or rough-hewn holes. He was in trouble. He was going in time out. He was nowhere to be found.

We searched and searched. We yelled. We searched some more. We yelled some more. We cursed.

Ollie ollie oxen free! We might see a rustling, but no boy. Come out, come out, wherever you are! The more angry and frightened we became, the more we were sure we had just missed him.

Some of the pumpkins were large enough for him to hide in once gutted. And as we peeked inside one, we thought we heard giggles from another, maybe from that big one in the bathroom. But there were too many to check, and the plant continued to flower.

The more the vines choked our rooms and the more pumpkins it brought to fruition, the more places for our son to conceal. We called and cajoled. He chortled but wouldn’t come out.

Furious finally, I went to pull the plant up by the roots. I chopped my way to the tin can with a butcher knife.

No, my wife said. This is his growing; these are his faces. He is hidden from us but all around.

What did that matter, I felt but did not say. Instead, I stabbed the jack-o-lantern closest to me—its expression mocking except for a pair of sad seed eyes.

Impulses

Michelle Ross is the author of There's So Much They Haven't Told You (2017), which won the 2016 Moon City Press Short Fiction Award. Her fiction has recently appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, The Pinch, Wigleaf, and other venues. Her work has been selected for Best Microfictions 2020 and the Wigleaf Top 50 2019, as well as been a finalist for Best of the Net 2019 and the Lascaux Prize in short fiction and flash fiction, among other awards. She is fiction editor of Atticus Review. www.michellenross.com

My friend Elana says, “Research studies have found that mothers who don’t work outside the home are no happier than mothers who do.”

We’re at the playground. It’s Saturday afternoon. My kid is throwing handfuls of sand at her kid, which is OK by Elana because she knows her kid has done something to deserve it. Elana’s kid has been a bully pretty much since he slid out of her. When our kids weren’t even crawling yet and we’d set them down next to each other on a blanket, her kid would pick up the nearest thing he could reach and he’d whack my kid on the head with it. “Sorry. Impulse control issues. That’s his Dan half,” Elana would say.

Now I say, “But at least those mothers have time to exercise and sleep and eat.”

My life is paper towels and Cheerios, and I’m not just talking about my kid. Half the week Cheerios is all I have for lunch at the office. If you think I’m being dramatic, you try working full time and spending every other waking minute wrangling a toddler.

I’m exhausted and bitter as hell, but still, I wouldn’t trade any of it to have Luke back, I tell Elana. “That man only ever made things harder.”

Elana says, “Same here. About Dan. In the end, at least. I have to say, though, that there was a time when we were pretty darn happy. Like millions of years ago.”

I feel as though Elana’s just whacked me in the head with a toy block. I picture big, chubby yellow stars swirling around the top of my head like a crown, the way head injuries are often depicted in the cartoons my toddler watches. I wonder: why doesn’t anyone ever depict these suddenly-visible electric nerve impulses as they really look? Icepicks stabbing black wool, fuzzy puncture wounds of light.

Elana’s looking in the direction of the sandbox, only it’s more like she’s looking through the sandbox and through William and Carolyn and through the trees and even through the Walmart on the other side of the trees, into that distant epoch before we were mothers. I look there, too, and what I see is Luke standing in the rain outside my apartment, a boxed pumpkin pie in his hands. This was when we’d been dating barely a month. He’d decided last minute to ditch his family on Thanksgiving and spend the day with me, knowing I’d be home alone.

Sometimes in those cartoons, there’s an initial head injury that makes the character crazy or not themselves somehow, and, curiously, the cure is a second head injury. I remind myself that this rain-drenched, pumpkin-pie-bearing Luke is an example of the first type of injury. He is an errant impulse.

Elana and I are quiet for a while.

Then Elana tells me about another research study she read about: how men who leave their pregnant girlfriends are the unhappiest of all.

Elana should work for one of those tabloid magazines. She’s always making shit up.

A Ballet Without Wings

J.L. Seaton is a queer, African-American writer who hails from the great city of Chicago, Illinois. She is the editor of her school's art and literary magazine EDDA and has plans to pursue creative writing in college. As an emerging writer, she is new to the world of publishing but hopes that her words will be able to leave subtle impressions on those who read them.

On the last day of summer, Amir finds a boy dancing in the empty pool behind Mrs. Harrison’s house.

There are few people in town with skin as dark as his, even fewer with shades that go beyond the medium-brown of his mixed ancestry, so to see someone who glows like African royalty is both strange and miraculous enough to have him leaning out his window in want of more.

Backlit by the setting sun, the boy moves his body moves to a silent beat. Graceful is not the right word. There is a fluidity to his movements reminiscent of flowing water, as if his bones are made of liquid themselves. He spins, palms raised up to the heavens, and leaps through the air with shocking control. Amir is struck with the sudden urge to capture the moment on film. The feeling moves through him like an electric current, starting from his chest and traveling outward to the tips of his fingers. There is an ache, a pull. It would take seconds to retrieve the camera from his bedside.

But he can’t. His eyes are given no choice but to observe, to obey, until the boy decides he can look away.

Understanding dawns on him then, blowing back the curtains of his mind. Amir is but a tiny star at the edge of the galaxy, blinded by the light of the unending sun. Drawn to its beauty. Forever hidden in its shadow.

After seconds that feel like hours or hours that shrink into minutes, the dance comes to an end. The boy holds his ending pose, arms stretched out to reveal their full wingspan.

In that moment, Amir longs for nothing more than the courage to fly.

That Man is a Force of Nature

EC Sorenson is a media producer and writer, freshly transplanted from Toronto to Australia. Her work has been published in several anthologies, most recently MonkeyBicycle and Tiny Essays, with work forthcoming in XRAY and Emerge.

Her website is here.

You’re in a washroom. A family room in Stocklands mall. You walked in through sliding glass doors painted bright with kiddie characters from films you can’t remember. On your left there’s the breastfeeding room, and a family toilet with one small loo and one large, a sitting area with a tv and a bench with a sink and a microwave beside vinyl loungechairs and a gated playpen with next to nothing in it.

Your daughter is four. She’s eaten a punnet of strawberries and she’s making designs on the next. She looks caged sitting in the shopping trolley you’ve wheeled direct from the supermarket but she’s happy not to be walking. You’re happy she’s contained.

Kids TV! She yells. Let’s watch it!

You spin the trolley round so she’s head on, facing the screen, and you smile at a worn looking mother guarding her toddler by the playpen. She half smiles back, a smile like she shouldn’t, like she might get in trouble. Who knows. She might.

Though there’s no sign to say, No Men, there aren’t any in the washroom. You like this.

Another woman enters the family room, her summer dress split at the knees, her legs the colour of a permanent holiday. Her two girls, maybe eight, maybe nine years old, trail behind her as she makes eye contact with you. You imagine she smells vaguely of coconut, some kind of body balm, peachy like fake tan. A latte on her breath. In that moment, you want to be her, in that flowing summer dress. In her skin. Instead, you’re opening the second punnet of strawberries, handing a bunch to your daughter whose little hand reaches out with a confidence that briefly reassures you. The summer dress woman waits as her girls make their way to the end of the room and into two separate loos. She perches on the edge of the chair opposite. Her thighs pressed on vinyl barely splay. She’s a runner. Her hand’s on her phone, scrolling. She’s surfing Facebook, the Zara catalogue, who knows.

Your daughter pulls at your arm. What’s this cartoon, mummy? She asks.

Don’t know, you say. You’ve never come across it. An angry tomato with legs chases two shining blue marbles across the screen. The tomato has wizened eyes; its anger obvious even to a four year old. Steam explodes from the top of what passes for the tomato’s head. It’s trying to hit the marbles but misses - lucky break - every time.

You’re flat out sick of seeing one thing hit another.

The summer dress woman watches your daughter munch on a strawberry. Her girls aren’t back yet. There’s a slight raise of the eyebrows. Your daughter is eating food in a gentrified toilet. It’s true.

But in here, you feel safe. Safer.

Summer dress woman mightn’t get that.

You could tell her all about it, but you won’t. You could tell her how much she’d like him, everyone does - you did - and how he conquered everything in his path. He made things happen. He was successful.

You could tell her how they described him - a force of nature. You agreed, of course, but in a different way. You could explain how when they said that, you shut up. How when they said that, you felt you hadn’t an ally in the world. Because, likely, you didn’t.

Or you could tell her about how you waited, and saved and planned and withstood until he had to travel to one of his mining sites to deal with his staff and you bought a bus ticket for you and for your daughter and left.

You won’t tell her about the cash folded inside three envelopes and a freezer bag, tucked tight in your knapsack. You need it.

You glance at her thighs again. You were an expert at hiding yours. A bruise, a scratch. You explained to people that you liked to cover up. From the sun. No-one ever questioned it.

You could tell this woman about your job - you’re nearly tempted: you ran a team, you made money. You were endlessly capable but you gave it up. You can’t even remember why.

The woman with the toddler, the one you first smiled at when you came in, interrupts your train of thought. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a ready meal. She pierces a hole in the plastic sheath and puts it in the microwave. Chicken tikka masala with jasmine rice. Within seconds the washroom is redolent. You like the smell. You love curry. The woman takes the meal in one hand, toddler cradled on her hip. She sits back on the long sofa and begins to eat like she hasn’t in days.

How far away did you get? You want to ask her.

This family washroom is nicely decked out, new, clean. The mall is three streets back from the beach. Fancy cars fill the carpark, vying for shade beneath beautifully kept palm trees.

Right now, you are 400 kilometres away from that force of nature.

The summer dress woman rises as her girls return. The older girl, all rangy limbs and sunburned skin, makes a face at the smell. Her mother shoo’s her towards the sliding door, towards prosperity.

You’d like to get out there too, once you’re certain you’re safe, once you’re certain he isn’t waiting at the sunglasses shop at the end of the corridor, or by the gourmet butcher three doors down.

You have some planning to do before you step out.

Breathe.

You’re glad your daughter’s transfixed. You’re grateful for screentime. Child guidelines go to hell.

You need to sit a moment. You’ve been moving fast, you think, tracing a line in your minds eye along a google map, up the coast, across a state border with a suitcase and a four year old and a steadfast resolve.

They all say that man is a force of nature.

But so are you.

Robin Egg Blue

Jenny Stalter is a writer and former private chef. Her work appears in Typehouse Literary Magazine, Eunoia Review, New Flash Fiction Review, and X-R-A-Y Literary magazine. She is a 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee.

Luke was a rock star. The honey of his song poured through him, into the microphone and out the speakers. Everyone worshiped him. He reached for the microphone and slowly opened his eyes. What he saw was an empty office building. The mic stand was a mop handle. That bathroom wasn’t going to scrub itself. He sang along to his own album as he mopped scuff marks off the floors and wiped the piss from the sides of toilets.

Luke walked through the front door and into the dim entry way. He hung his jacket and stood on the rug with the barely discernible rosé stain from one of Jane’s wine-soaked afternoons. He always made sure to step directly on the stain, as if he could stamp it out and change something about his life. He kissed his wife emptily. She might have been pretty once but had put on more than a few pounds over the years. Her face was red and something about her thyroid made her neck puffy.

In a tone verging on shrill, Jane told Luke to wash the dishes he'd left in the sink. Then she came over and said no don't do it like that, you have to get everything off of the plate before it goes into the dishwasher. Had she been pretty? Had she been smart or interesting? He didn't know anymore. He didn't care, either. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to drink a beer and work on his music, but she complained that they never spent enough time together so he joined her in the living room to stare at the television. She planted a hand on his thigh. The weight of that hand was like a block of cement pulling him under water. He smiled at her from under the water. What did she do with her days, he wondered. What he really wondered was if she was even a person at all.

Jane hated that Luke wore a hairpiece. She knew he didn’t wear it for her. She’d noticed his dumb giddiness around younger, more attractive women. The sort of thing that is obvious to wives but husbands don’t know about. During acts of perfunctory love making, Luke was unable to get it up unless Jane talked dirty to him. This was actually preferable, she needed another person between them. She would pretend to be someone else. Sometimes it was a stranger in a porn he’d shown her but it was always some variation of young sluts and what he might or might not do to their assholes. He didn’t attempt to hide his excitement at the thought of hopefully young assholes. Jane would come from the humiliation. Afterward, she would get on social media, putting more people between them as they lay together in bed. She’d show him funny animal videos because what was there to say? Their house was built on everything she couldn’t tell him. If she tugged at anything meaningful everything might collapse around them and trap them under the rubble. They could live for days that way, buried alive under unspoken debris breathing plaster dust, dehydrated. She coughed a dry laugh at a panda video.

When Jane was little she'd found a robin egg in the grass. She'd never seen anything like it, it was blue! So small and delicate. She despaired of how to return it to the nest. She imagined the baby bird that must be inside. Precious. She knew she had to keep it warm if it were going to hatch. She held it gently between both hands for a long, long time. She sat in the grass and held it until the sun itself burnt out and turned to dust. The little bird wouldn't come out! She waited so long that she knew nothing important could ever happen on earth again. She couldn't take it anymore, it was too blue, too small. Precious. In the waning light Jane felt nothing could ever go wrong with the perfect egg. She cracked it on the porch. Slimy yellow yolk ran down the side. She knew the sun hadn’t burnt out. She knew important things could still happen. It looked like a tiny, raw breakfast egg. She cried fat tears of shame and tried not to scream.

Jane had been a writer and a painter. Everything had once pulsed with the possibility of existence. The raw possibility of being human. Laughing, crying, chewing bubble gum at a baseball game. Consciousness. Then one day, for no particular reason, the earth cracked open like that robin egg and she saw the slimy yolk of the world. She neatly opened her rib cage, reached inside and held her heart gently between her hands until it stopped beating. After that, she mostly stared at the television.

Jane made fried eggs and bacon for dinner. Luke slopped his biscuit around in the gleaming, neon yolk. Jane was horrified as the stuff dripped from his lips. They competed in the thousand yard stare at the dining table and again in the living room watching TV. It was impossible to know who was winning. Luke broke and looked over at Jane who now had a blue flower for a cheek. It must have been a carnation. He’d seen something like this coming, this was just like Jane. Then her eyes and mouth were flowers, too. They weren't real, they looked like embroidery or cloth. Jane was ecstatic, she knew she could paint the peonies of her eyes. She reached for her paintbrush but instead of moving she continued to bud and flourish and eventually faded into the floral upholstery of the couch. Luke finally had time to work on his music. He tried to get up and walk but his skin slid off his bones. Determined, he took another step and crumbled into a pile of dust on the floor. His cheap synthetic hairpiece flopped on top.

The Edge of the World

E.B. Taylor is a writer and English Literature graduate from The University of Pittsburgh. She lives with her husband, Lee, and menagerie of animals in Brentwood, Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in The After Happy Hour Review.

Yesterday Bo saw a woman pumping gas in her bunny slippers. He stood behind the cash register and watched her shiver beside her Plymouth. She looked like his Norma Jean before bed, eyes bald and puffy, splotches of cold cream around her ears she’d missed scrubbing off. He wondered if she’d cracked and possibly needed help, maybe she was a tired mom who couldn’t handle the crying fits that never ended, diapers smeared with poop, puke that came from nowhere, little sticky hands that grasped your legs and wouldn’t let go.

Norma Jean had gotten into her car while he was at the station and left once. She called him and said that the kids were at home by themselves, that he had better get home and watch them, and hung up. She made it to Phoenix before she turned around. When she got home, all she said was that her tennis shoes had melted right there on the Arizona pavement, which made her feel unsafe, so she came back.

He wondered if the woman pumping gas in her bunny slippers would go back home too, or if she was a goner. He reasoned that she was in her bunny slippers so she couldn’t go far, but she could have an extra pair of Keds in the trunk. Norma Jean kept a “go bag” in the trunk at all times: Jeans, t-shirt, socks, toothbrush, tennis shoes, in case she needed to stay the night somewhere unexpectedly.

She belonged to her sister’s book club in Derby, which was an hour away, could need to stay over if the weather got bad, although her sister usually canceled if the forecast called for too much snow. Or she could come down with a kidney stone when he was at work, not be able to reach him, need to be admitted to the hospital. The doctor always admitted her because her stones passed slowly.

He told her once after sex that the “go bag” made him nervous, like she was going to sprint out the door at any moment, wind up somewhere where things didn’t melt. She sighed, told him that “maybe this was true, but she couldn’t tell the future, so why worry about it?”

He stopped staring at the bunny-slipper woman to ring out a biker. He had giant holes in his ears the size of quarters. A girl at the station had told him the holes got that big from “stretching” a tiny hole until it got bigger and bigger. She said people stretched other parts of their bodies too. Bo shuddered. It seemed like self mutilation to him, but these were not things you could say any longer. Men were flamboyant, women flat chested. The world was tilting helter skelter on its axis, spinning ever closer to the edge.

He told this to Norma Jean, who rolled her eyes.

“The world isn’t flat. It’s round. Edgeless.” He scrubbed harder at the left-over, ossified bits of lasagna on his dinner plate, watched the soap suds creep up to his elbows.

“How would you know? You’ve only left Kansas once. You’re just parroting what you hear on the news.” He didn’t mention that the one time she had escaped Kansas, had been to leave him.

“The news doesn’t report on the earth’s flatness. It reports on current events.” She took the plate from him, submerged it in the soapy water, let it soak.

He stood beside the sink, desperate to say something smart, but he didn’t know anything about science. He knew you shouldn’t see the top of Lincoln’s head when checking tire treads with a penny, that you could use a flashlight to check your air filter, sawdust to soak up oil spills, but not how to prove the earth had edges.

He watched her load the dishwasher. The bony line of her vertebrae pressed against her t-shirt as she bent over, reminded him of the stegosaurus stuck to the bumper of his Firebird.

Ever since Norma Jean had bought their son dinosaur stickers for his birthday, you couldn’t go anywhere without finding a dinosaur stuck to something: walls, tables, appliances, cars. Norma Jean said the sticker gave his car personality, like a tattoo. He didn’t think his car needed any more personality.

He could see its graffitied caboose from where he was standing at the check-out counter. It was parked in front of an Out-of-Service pump, which was next to the bunny-slipper woman's pump.

He stared at the slippers deranged bunny faces, cotton-candy pink fur, black whiskers, glued-on googly eyes, watched the ears flop as she climbed into her car and made a right turn toward Phoenix. He realized with a sinking heart she wouldn’t be back. The soles of her slippers were fabric.

Anyone Can Guess

Meg Tuite is author of four story collections and five chapbooks. She won the Twin Antlers Poetry award for her poetry collection, Bare Bulbs Swinging. She teaches writing retreats and online classes hosted by Bending Genres. She is also the fiction editor of Bending Genres and associate editor at Narrative Magazine. megtuite.com

Sit in a chair, stare at another uplifted eyebrow and wonder what you can add. I’d smack you if you said I am still alive and mapping through 35 more years of therapy. I straggle down this ‘I’m sorry’ path planking the same nightmares trying to find a goddamn unplugged toilet with a stall door. This psychiatrist has family junkyard tomes. The one before fusses with the meds. Does anyone know childhood suffocates as quickly as a bad check? Let’s talk about pancreatic cancer, younger than us, strapped in a car seat stringing its light to the veins. It all secretes hollow history next to that night littering home from a bar when it spirals bloody.

Three more blocks. I say I won’t when metal grazes my neck. The siren pelts over miles of a city in transit. I am coiled on the grimace of a gun. ‘Kill you, bitch,’ is the desperate fabric. Over and over it stinks of cowardice. Could it be? My suicide pact unbeds itself.