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The following excerpt from A Knife in the Fog by Bradley Harper has been reprinted below with permission of the author.

A KNIFE IN THE FOG

Chapter Three: POCKETS

Sunday, September 23, cont.

I

had no firm idea what kind of woman would willingly choose to live amid such squalor, but I envisioned a stern-faced spinster with thick pince-nez glasses; I was skeptical a lady of letters could be of any use to me in this environment. The best I could hope for was a detailed map and some history of the events surrounding the murders; I had no intention of burdening myself with the responsibility for her safety while traveling through the darkened alleyways and courtyards of Whitechapel.

There were no postal boxes or names in the entryway, so I trudged up the dark and slippery stairs to the third floor and knocked on an unassuming door that corresponded with the address 3A.

“One moment,” said a muted voice on the other side. I heard the rattle of a bolt, and an eye peered through the slit allowed by a heavy chain. “Who is it?” asked the same voice, now clearer.

“Doctor Doyle,” I replied.

The door closed, the chain rattled, and the door reopened. The back of a slender figure proceeded ahead of me into the soft light and, without pausing, instructed me to secure the portal behind me.

I fastened the door nervously, unsure of my reception or of who was receiving me, and entered a small and dimly lit sitting room. On the far side, if a room so small can have a “far” side, a woman sat quietly. She could have been anywhere from thirty to sixty-five, the marks upon her face revealing a life of hardship. She held a yellowish, stained rag over her mouth and a partially knitted sock and her needles in her lap. Beside her stood a slender young man of average height, dressed in working man’s clothing, and wearing a battered bowler hat. The woman looked at me with mild interest, but the young man’s piercing gaze apparently found the stout gentleman before him rather amusing, while I perceived him to be quite rude.

“Pardon my interruption,” I said, doing my best to appear calm, “but I understand a young woman named Margaret Harkness lives here. She was expecting me.”

“Quite so,” replied the young man. “I am she.”

My reaction must have been what she was expecting, given the smirk on her face. Nowadays a woman dressed as a man would cause others to stare, but at the time it was scandalous.

“Forgive my bit of fun, Doctor Doyle,” she began, “but my work often requires me to travel these streets at night and alone. I have found that dressed as a man, I can move about unnoticed, thus more safely. Do not be embarrassed by your reaction. I am quite accustomed to it when men first meet me ‘undressed,’ by which I mean not traditionally attired.”

My face must have been quite scarlet by this time, yet she was not the least bothered by my embarrassment. To move our conversation forward and not linger on my discomfort, I turned to the woman beside her.

“And you, madam, you h-have the advantage of me,” I managed to stammer. The woman nodded slowly, lowered the rag from her face, and grimaced a smile, revealing a festering wound on her right jaw.

“Molly,” she replied slowly, taking care to articulate each syllable.

“Miss Jones is my lodger, my touchstone, and friend,” replied Miss Harkness. “She listens to my writing and tells me if it rings true. I in turn grant her a safe place to sleep and a fair share of my meager meals. She worked in the match factories until she developed phossy jaw. We met during the Matchgirls’ Strike in July of this year.”

Miss Harkness and her lodger exchanged glances before continuing. “I cannot afford the surgery required to excise the rotting bone within her jaw, but I can give her shelter and friendship. This is the world you have entered, Doctor Doyle, and I am to be your guide within it.”

She smiled at me, and I wondered if she was having similar thoughts toward me such as I had when I imagined her as a middle-aged spinster in need of my constant protection.

“I am a writer, sir, as I understand you are,” Miss Harkness continued. Perhaps you have heard of my most recent novel, Out of Work, or my work published last year, A City Girl?”

I shook my head, still astounded to find myself casually conversing with a woman attired as a man, as though it were in no way out of the ordinary.

“You are in the majority,” she shrugged. “To expand my circle of readers, I have published my last two works under the nom de plume John Law. It seems most men feel either threatened, contemptuous, or both when confronted by a capable woman with strong opinions. For the most part, I make my living as a journalist, paid piecemeal by various newspapers for reporting on happenings here in the East End, as no ‘respectable’ journalist dares come here. Indeed, there are some streets within Whitechapel even police officers fear to tread if less than four in number, while I, in my poor attire, pass ghostlike among them.

“Be assured Doctor, despite my current attire I have no desire to be a man; the only thing I envy the male gender is the abundance of pockets your fashion allows.” She jutted her chin out as though daring me to criticize her “undress,” but I held my tongue and she continued.

“My experiences here are being stored away for future use in works of a hopefully more enduring nature. Currently I am researching the Salvation Army in preparation for my next novel.” Then she locked eyes with me and challenged me, “And what of you, sir? Are there any of your writings I may have read?”

Her impudent tone soured our initial encounter, I’m afraid. I replied that I had written a crime story, which had led to my being asked to look into the Leather Apron murders. I was unaccustomed to being so roughly cross-examined by a woman, and I felt she was taking undue liberties with a gentleman she had just met. I began to question Mr. Wilkins’s wisdom in choosing her as my navigator, but I resolved to keep the tone civil.

“Leather Apron, eh? That explains it. Mr. Wilkins said only that a gentleman, a writer from outside London, would be working a few weeks in the East End, and that he would pay me two pounds to show you around and introduce you to some of the tarts. I have become acquainted with several streetwalkers while researching my Salvation Army story, and as two pounds is nearly a fortnight’s income for me, I asked no more questions. A lady, or ladies,” she swept her arm to include Molly, “have to eat.”

I started when she mentioned Wilkins’s requirement that I meet with a streetwalker. “What purpose would that serve? I can’t imagine what we’d have to talk about.”

Miss Harkness smiled at my obvious discomfort. “I can’t answer for the man, but you’d be surprised what you’d learn of life in the East End if you listened.”

She adjusted her sleeves. “Well, shall we take a stroll?”

“Now ?” I replied. “It will be getting dark soon, and I would not place you at risk unnecessarily.”

She laughed. “You, dear sir, shall be much more at risk than me. Your accent, comfortable waistline, and well-tended clothes all declare you an outsider. It is rather common for our benevolent neighbors in the West End to visit us for the pleasures of the flesh. Few prosperous gentlemen are willing to explain to their wives how they came to be robbed within our alleys, so they often refuse to report a theft.

“I shall serve as your guide and interpreter, so let me do the talking unless I prompt you. Come!” She beckoned, as though we were about to go to the theater. “The East End at night is the world you must enter if you are to understand the lair of this monster.”

I agreed with reluctance. While not wanting to place a lady into such a dangerous environment, I had to admit she most likely had the right of it as to which of us was in greater peril. Still, while serving as a young ship’s surgeon on the SS Hope during an arctic whale-and seal-hunting expedition, I had earned the respect of seasoned sailors by my ability to blacken their eyes in sparring matches. As I was still not quite thirty years old, I had confidence I could give a good accounting of myself should it become necessary. I was determined not to show any reluctance in the presence of this rather rude woman, and so would follow where she led, if only to show my nerve was equal to hers.

I soon learned what a high standard I was setting for myself.

**

Bradley Harper is a retired US Army Colonel and pathologist with a great deal of experience in autopsies and forensic investigation. A lifelong fan of Sherlock Holmes, he did intensive research for this debut novel, including a trip to London’s East End with noted Jack the Ripper historian Richard Jones. A Knife in the Fog is his first novel.

“Dangling Joe” by Darrin Doyle was first published in Scoundrels Among Us (out now with Tortoise Books) and is reprinted here with permission.

Dangling Joe                                 

You’re a stranger now unto me Lost in the dangling conversation. And the superficial sighs In the borders of our lives. —“The Dangling Conversation”

A man appeared as a speck against the clouds one morning, high above the city. The citizens were amazed and confused. From the ground they squinted, shielding their eyes. Is that a person? they asked. He was so distant he might as well have been a bag of rocks, which would have been equally amazing and confusing, floating in the air. However when witnesses produced binoculars and telescopes, they could distinguish him as a man. He was simply dangling in the sky. They searched above and below and beside him, seeing no wires, no platforms, and no means of support.

Not one person who looked closely at this man would have described him as floating or levitating. With his head upward and his feet pointed toward earth, he was in a standing position. However, the way his legs swayed beneath him (hips swinging gently side-to-side), and the uncomfortable-looking way he held his arms akimbo, gave the distinct impression that an invisible force was holding him like a yo-yo on a string.

The man appeared to be of Asian descent. Speculations were Chinese or Korean, but nobody really knew for sure. Was this fact important? Did his ethnicity make any difference? Maybe, maybe not. People yelled at each other in social media forums about it, criticizing those who noticed or questioned his ethnicity, criticizing those who said it didn’t matter.

Nonetheless, nobody knew where he came from or what he was doing. His photo dominated all media outlets, yet no one came forth to identify him. He was dressed in an expensive-looking business suit, dark gray with subtle pinstripes. His polished loafers sparkling in the sunlight had been one of the first things that caught the attention of the folks on the ground. Chubby cheeks and a nicely combed head of conservatively parted hair rounded out his appearance. Aside from a bit of forehead perspiration sighted by an amateur astronomer, the man seemed untroubled by his bizarre and terrifying situation. His quiet smile exuded contentment and even joy as his legs rocked limply in the sky.

The city whirled into action. Emergency personnel—firefighters, police, paramedics— arrived at the area below him. Crowds gathered, shouting words of encouragement. They snapped photos, formed prayer circles, and set up hot dog carts. On rooftops of tall buildings, folks held signs that said Don’t fall! and We’re here for you! and How are you dangling like that? Even from the highest point in the city, the roof of a 47-story hi- rise apartment, the dangling man was too far to reach or hear. Not that he was talking or trying to communicate—he was just hanging there like laundry! The firefighters had no way to get to him. They needed a helicopter.

Cautiously and with great skill, the chopper pilot navigated near the man. He maneuvered until positioned thirty feet above. The rescuers unfurled a rope ladder, which flailed and flapped and whipped around until settling. Grab it! they shouted through a megaphone. Inexplicably, the man didn’t respond. He didn’t even crane his neck to look up at the chopper. His arms, though, were in a rather awkward position, which they figured made it tough to do much of anything. The poor guy!

A legendary search-and-rescuer by the name of Doc Ready hooked himself to a safety line and climbed down the ladder. In an acrobatic move, he slid his feet through the rungs and hung upside- down just above the man. Below, the crowd erupted into lusty cheers. What a hero! News reporters prepared the dramatic headlines: Gutsy Rescue Dazzles Thousands of Onlookers; Courage in the Heavens; Noble Man Saves Helpless Other Man—Taxpayers Foot the Bill.

But then an unexpected thing happened: The man simply moved, or was moved, sideways in the air, drifting like a leaf skidding along the pavement. He slowed to a stop about fifty yards from where he’d dangled originally. It looked like whatever was dangling him simply dragged him away with minimal effort.

This pissed off the rescuers, big-time. What the hell was going on? Doc Ready ascended the ladder. Carefully the pilot relocated the chopper, which took about eight minutes, since the winds were unpredictable at that altitude. They unfurled the ladder again. Doc clipped himself onto the safety line and descended, recreated his nifty little flip, extended his hand to the Asian man, listened to another burst of applause (more hesitant this time) from the ground.

The rescuers got the same result. Five more times they attempted the maneuver; five times the man slid away to a nearby location in the sky. By then the sun was setting. They were losing light.

“He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t acknowledge us. He hasn’t been identified. Is he even an American? What evidence do we have that he’s one of us?”

This was a pundit on one of the morning news shows, speaking angrily a couple of days after the man was first sighted. The pundit’s name was Hank Hardwood. He was known for his powerful chin, piercing blue eyes, and scathing commentary about anyone he deemed un-American.

“How do we know he’s not a spy for the Chinese government?” His face during this particular broadcast had lost its usual orange glow. In its place was a fiery red that practically emanated heat from people’s TV screens. “He could have cameras and recording devices stuck everywhere on his body, sending classified information to his leaders, and here we are treating him like a damn hero!”

Normally this pundit talked so much that nobody paid attention to what he said. This time, however, people conceded that he might have a point. Wasn’t this a national security issue? You couldn’t just float above a city and expect not to get in trouble. And that smug little expression on his face—what was that all about? It seemed sneaky. And why were us taxpayers paying for these rescue attempts? Where was the FAA during all of this?

The FAA felt the pressure but could do nothing. Their federal aviation regulation stipulated that “over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft—in this case, Joe—must be maintained.” Dangling Joe (as the media had dubbed him) was within these limits and therefore doing nothing illegal. He wasn’t harming anyone and didn’t appear to be in any danger. Civil liberties groups quickly rallied to protect the man’s right to dangle.

“You can get pulled over by the police for having an air freshener dangling from your rearview mirror,” scoffed Hank Hardwood, “but you can’t get in trouble for dangling from the bleep-bleep sky?”

“I think he’s being remotely controlled,” said one livid caller to Hank’s show. “We all saw how he floated away from the rescuers! Somebody explain that to me!”

“How do we know he’s not a weapon of mass destruction?” said another.

“I don’t like his face,” said another.

Society sorted into two distinct camps: 1.) Those who loved Dangling Joe, and 2.) Those who hated him. There was a third camp, too, but it was a pretty small camp. These people didn’t love or hate Joe, but they wanted everyone to please recognize that he was significant. They were pretty sure he was a metaphor for something really interesting, and that’s what they argued about, mostly at independent coffee shops.

T-shirts appeared with a picture of the man inside a red circle with a line through it: Just Say No to Dangling Joe!

Other shirts displayed Joe’s beatific smile with the simple caption: Joe Knows.

Marry me, Joe! was another popular shirt.

The arguments intensified. Throngs of demonstrators, both pro- and anti-Joe, traveled from far corners of the country. They gathered beneath him to wave their signs and chant their chants. Joe, Joe, you’ve got to go! And No Joe! No Joe! And Joe, Joe, he’s our man, from Vietnam, China, or Japan! Yaaaay, JOE! Security was overtaxed. Violence broke out. One guy chucked a rock at another guy, prompting a brawl. Hot dogs were stolen, car windows smashed. Someone was caught readying a high-powered rifle with a scope. The National Guard was deployed. The President issued a statement to Dangling Joe, delivered through a P.A. system in seven languages on a giant video screen set atop the 47- story building:

“Greetings, unknown man. This is the President of the United States. We don’t know where you are from or what your purpose is. Nor do we know how you are dangling like that, defying gravity. We don’t understand why you don’t need food or water, nor why you look so pleased. Your presence, however, has caused us as a nation to do some serious self-reflection about our identity. Are we a country who welcomes strangers, whatever their origin, whatever their dangling preferences? Or are we distrustful and fearful of those who are different? Speak to us, dangling man! Tell us what to do. Remind us who we are.”

The President broke down in tears. He was mocked for this roundly in the press. Some people liked his display of sensitivity, but most thought it showed weakness. Whether or not you were pro- or anti-Presidential tears, however, the undeniable result was that nobody talked about what the President had said. His message, his questions, his whole speech: ignored and forgotten. When his term expired, the President failed to even get his party’s nomination for re- election.

The President’s crying jag seemed to trigger the end of the mania. It’s possible that he expressed some deep-seated feelings that citizens weren’t even aware they had. Or that his tears represented the catharsis that the nation required in order to move on.

More likely, though, is the fact that even a phenomenon that breaks all known laws of physics gets boring after a while. People’s necks got sore from staring up like that. They forgot he was there. What once seemed like a monumental moment in human history shrank to a blip on the radar of recorded time. The novelty of Dangling Joe soon wore off. Hank Hardwood set his sights on an outrageous new dance craze. Doc Ready, the man who’d come closest to Dangling Joe, stopped getting interviewed on talk shows. He died a couple of years later trying to rescue a moose trapped on a wayward block of ice. At his funeral he was remembered for the many people he had saved rather than the one man he hadn’t.

I want to make it clear: Dangling Joe didn’t go anywhere. He’s still up there, if you look. But you’ve probably got more important things to do.

**

Darrin Doyle has lived in Saginaw, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Cincinnati, Louisville, Osaka (Japan), and Manhattan (Kansas). He has worked as a paperboy, mover, janitor, telemarketer, pizza delivery driver, door-to-door salesman, copy consultant, porn store clerk, freelance writer, and technical writer, among other jobs. After graduating from Western Michigan University with an MFA in fiction, he taught English in Japan for a year. He then earned his PhD from the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of the novels Revenge of the Teacher’s Pet: A Love Story (LSU Press) and The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo (St. Martin’s), and the short story collection The Dark Will End the Dark (Tortoise Books). His short stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, Harpur Palate, Redivider, BULL, and Puerto del Sol, among others. Currently he teaches at Central Michigan University and lives in Mount Pleasant, Michigan with his wife and two sons.

Aesop Lake by Sarah Ward was published July 24th, 2018. © Green Writers Press – reprinted here with author’s permission.

Excerpts from Aesop Lake

Chapter 1

Leda Keogh – The Bully

“Do you think the water will be cold?” I ask.

“Should be cold enough.” He reaches over and pinches my left nipple. My cheeks burn but I don’t move away, just hold my arms in tighter to my sides as he starts laughing. I push the uncomfortable feeling away and let his smile make me feel better.

The gravel under the tires crackles as we pull into the parking lot of the reservoir. Voices are coming from the dark water, and the occasional splash echoes through the trees. Someone is probably jumping off the dam into the thirty-foot black water. I wonder again how cold it is. Probably better to just jump and get it over with, otherwise I might chicken out. The thought of being naked in the icy water makes me blush again, and then I see the other car. Damn.

“Come on, David. Let’s get out of here,” I urge. “I don’t want to take my clothes off in front of people and I didn’t bring a suit.”

“Let’s just see who it is,” he insists, parking the 4×4. David doesn’t acknowledge the silver Beetle parked under the trees, but I know it’s Ricky and Jonathan. I don’t really care that they’re gay, and for the most part it doesn’t really affect me. Ricky and I do labs together. He’s smart, pretty funny, gentle, and very, very gay. When a beautiful doe-eyed boy looks dreamily at his best friend, you can tell they’re not just friends.

“I don’t want to skinny dip with other people around, David, and I don’t have a suit. Let’s just go.” I’m begging now, but he is already out the door, closing it quietly. I climb out and sidle up, grabbing his hand, which he squeezes.

The moonlight strikes the water, lighting up the silhouette of two boys with their arms wrapped tightly around each other. They’re making out near one of the big boulders lining the shore. Ricky’s smaller physique against Jonathan’s makes him look almost feminine, but the squareness of their shoulders, the flat chests and narrow waists, gives them away.

“Let’s go, David,” I whisper. I can see his chest heaving. His anger is a python, squeezing the warmth from the air.

“What the fuck!” he snaps, shifting back and forth on his feet. “Those fucking faggots are messing up our spot! What the fuck are they doing?”

I pull David by the arm back towards the pickup.

“Come on, David, let’s go. I don’t really care if we can’t swim tonight. We can come back another time.”

He lets me drag him away, back down the path and to the truck. I’m relieved. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. Before I know what’s happening, I hear him talking to MJ.

“You gotta get over to the dam, dude. We got ourselves a couple of pansies doing the nasty. . . . Yeah, no shit. Are you coming or what?”

I raise my hand to cover my shocked mouth.

He looks up at me. “What?”

“Why are you doing this?” An urge to scream out to Ricky and Jonathan rises. I know MJ only lives a mile and a half down the road. He’ll be here any minute.

“Why am I doing what? Is one of them your gay BFF?” He raises his voice high and flicks out a pinky.

I stare at David for a long moment, and he stares back, daring me to challenge him. My heart pounds in my chest, and I drop my gaze. David steps closer and places his large hand on the back of my thigh, pulling me close.

“This,” he says, pulling my body up against him, “this is what is meant to happen between a man and a woman.” He leans in, pressing me between his hips and the cold metal of his truck. I don’t move or breathe. I can’t.

I hear tires on gravel and MJ pulls up in his mother’s Suburban. He jumps out. David turns away from me as if nothing is happening. I take a step away from the truck bed, trying to act as if everything is fine. My stomach does a flip as I see what MJ is holding.

“What are you doing?” I ask. MJ looks down at his shotgun.

“This? It’s just for show.” And David starts snickering, his dark hair cutting across his beautiful eyes. David catches my expression, and suddenly he knows exactly what I’m going to do. He grabs me by the arm and digs in his fingers.

“Don’t spoil all our fun,” he whispers. “We aren’t going to hurt them, Leda. No one is going to get hurt. I promise. Get in the truck and wait for us,” he commands. “Can I trust you?” he asks. “Because if I can’t, I’m sure the cops would love to hear about your mom.”

My gut tightens into my chest. I nod, exhaling. He slowly relaxes his grip.

“Just stay here. We won’t take long, just a little scare.” His voice is steady. He and MJ move down to the water.

I back away towards the door of the truck and feel for the cool, worn handle. I clamber up to the passenger’s seat and squint into the darkness.

A shot rings out and someone’s scream breaks through the dense air of the cab. There is splashing, shouting. Then another shot and more screams. My heart is pounding. I pull my phone from my jeans. Tears slide out of the corners of my eyes. I wipe them quickly away and slide to the floor of the truck.

Chapter 2

Jonathan Tanner-Eales – The Lamb

I hear a blast and something ricochets off the rock next to Ricky’s back. I’m so confused. I hear hollering in the distance, and then screaming in my ear. I look down. It’s coming from Ricky. Someone is yelling, something about queers, but I can’t understand it. I can’t make out any faces, just the shape of two people.

I grab Ricky’s hand and pull him out into the water, his legs moving like the tin man.

“Are you okay?” I ask. Ricky’s face is terror-stricken. His eyes are bulging and he stares straight ahead.

“Come on. We have to swim away, now.” I try to pull Ricky into the deeper water. His arms and legs will not move. The white witch has turned him to stone. He just stands there, knee-deep.

“I’m going to teach two queens a lesson,” a voice declares, moving closer.

“Jesus, Ricky, we have to get out of here. Someone is coming. We have to swim away,” I plead, but nothing snaps Ricky out of it. Hot tears run down my cheeks. Desperation clutches my heart. I have seen enough movies to know this is not going to end well.

“Leave us alone!” I shout toward the voices. I reach out and slap Ricky across the face. Maybe it will shake him into action. Another shot, and I feel sharp pain in my thigh and butt, like bee stings. My hands instinctively move over my crotch. My thigh is numb. Ricky begins to shake uncontrollably. He is the lamb waiting for the wolf. Someone stands at the edge of the reservoir and I can see the barrel of a gun pointed in our direction. Another guy moves quickly into the water towards us and reaches out. He grabs Ricky’s arm from his statue of a body.

“No!” I yell, and grab at any part of Ricky I can, trying to keep him away and safe. But I can’t hang on to his wet body, and I can’t let myself be pulled up the embankment with him. He’s being pulled out of my reach. My empty hands swipe the air where Ricky’s body should be.

I turn towards the water. I gulp air and dive deep and far. My mind is racing for an idea of what to do. I can’t fight them. Ricky isn’t here. He has disappeared. I push myself through the water as far from the shore as I can until my lungs feel as if they will explode. My head breaks the surface and I gasp for air.

“So, you’re a faggot and a pussy,” the voice hollers. Another round of pellets sprays the water to my left.

Ricky’s pale body levitates out of the water and lands on the edge of the bank like a mannequin. The shadows move closer. They kick him. He hardly reacts. It looks like they’re pulverizing a log. He doesn’t cry out, or twist away. Their boots thump against him and they laugh.

“Come on out and help your boyfriend, faggot!” a voice yells. “We already fucked him up, there’s not much left for you.” They break into laughter. I keep my legs moving, try to slow my breathing, and swallow the sobs. A light comes on in the distance and I wonder if someone has reported a disturbance.

“Come on, let’s go,” I hear one of them suggest. “If he doesn’t get the message we’ll find him alone.”

“Yeah, okay.” The other is bent over and grabs something off the shoreline. Then his arm flings back and I hear a splash to my left. God, I hope that’s not my phone.

“Did you hear that, fucker? We’ll get you next time!” the first voice yells.

I stay in the water, feeling the milfoil against my legs. Doors slam. There’s more yelling, and then the rip of tires against the gravel. I move through the cold water to the edge of the bank. My body is covered in goosebumps and my legs ache. My mind feels numb, but all my anger is hot in my gut. I know I need to get out of the water, so I find my footing and heave my body onto the grassy slope.

Ricky looks like clay, muted and misshapen. I can’t see any movement, and for a split second I believe the worst. Tears sting my eyes and snot drips from my nose. I reach out to touch his skin. I can feel his chest moving. “Thank god,” I whisper.

“Hey, Ricky. It’s me, Jonathan. Can you hear me? They’re gone.” I want to reassure him. My voice breaks and tears stream down my face. I’m afraid to touch him. I want him to know it’s going to be okay, so I wrap my arms around his shoulders and lean my head against his chest.

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.” My head lifts and drops in time to Ricky’s breathing. He needed me and I didn’t help. I should have tried. I should have forced him into the water with me. Maybe I could have knocked that guy off balance. I feel like I’m going to retch.

Chapter 5

Leda Keogh – Pack Animals

Mom settles back into her seat, clutches her bag close to her chest, and gives me an anxious look. I just shake my head.

“What is David’s relationship with Ricky Norton?” asks Officer Templeton, redirecting the conversation back to me.

I think about this, remembering our fight. Did you study fairy dust today in chemistry, Leda? I see a fairy escaped the lab. This freakin’ school is full of fairies. A few people around us laughed, and I could see Ricky’s shoulders droop and his head tip forward. Where’s your boyfriend, guy? Did you forget your fairy queen? Red splotches formed on the back of Ricky’s neck. With my arm still looped in David’s I dragged my feet, giving him a few paces to escape. Then David took a big step forward and pulled Ricky’s book down from his arms, sending the notes we had just spent an hour working on flying through the hallway.

Leave him alone, David!

Go fuck yourself, Leda.

It took two days of text flirting to get him to forgive me. Then I got the idea to go swimming after he got off from work at his father’s garage. Even though it was a school night, I just wanted us to make up before the weekend.

I hear myself answer. “David doesn’t really have a relationship with Ricky. I don’t even know if he knows who Ricky is.”

“In a small school of only three hundred students, and seventy-five seniors, David doesn’t know him? Doesn’t know the boy who is your lab partner?”

I’m surprised she knows Ricky is my lab partner.

“I’m not saying he doesn’t know who Ricky is, but they hang out in different crowds, you know? Just because we all go to the same school doesn’t mean we’re all best friends.”

“Okay. I’ll ask in a different way. What kind of interactions have you noticed between David and Ricky in school?”

I don’t want to do this anymore. “I haven’t noticed any interactions. I don’t think they really talk to each other.” The officer is writing lots of notes and keeps flipping pages. I want to tell her to get an iPad or something. I look over to my mom, who is biting her lip. It looks like it’s about to start bleeding.

“What about between MJ and Ricky?”

“MJ?” I ask, and suck in my breath. “Why would I know anything about MJ?”

“Isn’t MJ David’s best friend?” Officer Templeton asks.

“Yeah. I mean, they’re good friends. David has other friends too,” I say, hoping this will steer them towards other possible suspects.

“Do you spend time with David and MJ together?”

“I guess. Sometimes.”

“Well, have you ever noticed any interactions between MJ and Ricky?”

“No.” Another nail in my coffin of lies. Officer Templeton looks at me for a long, silent minute. “Are we done yet? I really need to get back to class.”

She looks over her notes, and then pulls a business card out of her front left pocket. She hands the card to me and then stands to go. She shakes my mother’s hand. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Keogh, feel free to call me if your daughter has any further information to share.”

Chapter 6

Jonathan Tanner-Eales – A Bad Excuse

“I think about it all the time too,” I offer. I’m feeling brave after arguing with Anita.

“What do you think about?” she asks.

“That day, what happened, what I could have done differently . . .” I trail off.

Words pour from her mouth. “Do you ever think about before that day? What lead up to that day? Did you ever wonder if it was safe to be off by yourselves? When you knew Ricky was being bullied by those assholes at school?”

I’m stunned at the accusation in her voice. She thinks it’s my fault. There’s a crack of anger she’s barely holding in. Did Anita tell her about our argument?

“No. I mean, I knew, but I didn’t think…”

“That’s right,” she retorts. “You didn’t think about anything but your own libidos.” Her voice is rising and a red flush is moving up her neck. “You . . . for months, Ricky has shown up at home with bruises from being punched in the arm. Or tripped in the hallway. His notebook covers have crude drawings on them. Horrible drawings! And slurs written by idiots who think they’re funny.”

She raises her right arm in front of her and yanks her sleeve down towards her elbow. “I wondered why he was using up so many notebooks. Until I found them under his bed. I told his father months ago that we should talk with the principal about the way he was being treated, but he said Ricky needed to learn to fight his own battles. But you!” Her tone rises higher. “You knew what was happening! Why didn’t you help him? Why did you take him off to a secluded place where he could be attacked?”

She grabs her mouth to stop herself from yelling more, and the tears stream from the slits of her closed eyes. I stare at her anguished face, feeling remorse for all of it, and remember the many times I saw the bruises on Ricky’s arms, the cut on his lip after being pushed up the stairs by a group of football players who treated him worse than pigskin. Ricky didn’t fight back because he didn’t stand a chance against them. And he was afraid.

**

Sarah Ward writes young adult fiction, poetry and journal articles in the field of child welfare. Over a twenty-five-year career as a social worker, Sarah has worked with young adults and families with harrowing backgrounds. She won the 2007 Editor’s Choice Award for the New England Anthology of Poetry for her poem, “Warmer Waters”; and she has been a member of the League of Vermont Writers since 2008. In her limited spare time, Sarah enjoys a good book, a little yoga, and a cup of tea at her home in Williston, Vermont.

**

Image: Flickr / Mark Leary

The following excerpt is  from The Shortest Way Home by Miriam Parker, published by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC, and is reprinted here with permission. Copyright (c) 2018 by Miriam Parker. 

The Shortest Way Home – excerpt

On the way back to town, I started chewing on the cuticles of my free hand. A nervous habit.

“You’re doing it,” Ethan said. He took my hand; usually that was a gentle gesture, but now it felt antagonistic. To be fair, my cuticle chewing drove Ethan crazy. I kept my hand in his for a few minutes, to appease him and also to quiet my mind, which was reeling.

“I know,” I said.

“I’m just trying—”

“I know!”

“Hannah.”

I gritted my teeth and walked in silence for a few minutes.

“Ugh,” I said. “I’m starving.”

“We  might as well have lunch,” he said. “We’re  a little late for our reservation, but I’m sure they’ll seat us.” It was after two p.m.

We were both hungry. Maybe that was it.

By the time we got to the restaurant, we were not really speaking. And before they could offer us a table, Ethan sat at the bar. He always did that when we were fighting. He preferred having serious conversations at bars rather than across tables. Maybe because it seemed less confrontational.

A kind older bartender with gray hair to his shoulders came over to greet us.

“I’m Reed,” he said. “I’ll be at your service today.” He gave us wet lavender-scented towels for our hands and put a big bowl of rolls in front of us.

“Hi, Reed,” I said, grabbing  a roll from the basket. It was already in my mouth when I thanked him.

“Nice to meet you,” he said. “How do you like Sonoma?”

“We just had a wine tasting at Bellosguardo,” I said, well into my second roll. “It was beautiful and the wine was perfect.”

“So you’re ready for some sustenance,” he said. He presented us with menus. “I spent thirty years toiling away for the Chicago Public Schools, living in that frozen town, teaching children, and every night before I went to sleep, I told myself that one day I’d live in wine country and I would never use a snow shovel again. I used to come out here every summer and help out on farms and in restaurants. I even managed to buy a little piece of land that I would set up camp on for the summer. Solar shower and everything.  Now I have a little  cottage on that land that I built with my own two hands and I can walk to work. And that snow shovel? I turned it into a piece of art that hangs over my mantelpiece. Whenever I feel a little sad, I look at that shovel and think, ‘I’m living the dream.’ This is a special place; only a certain kind of person can live here.”

“What does that mean?” Ethan asked.

“You know, it’s just . . .” He gestured to the room. “It takes a certain kind of person.” Reed winked at me.

“I’m jealous that you get to live here,” I said. Ethan shot me a look.

We both glanced at the menu. I was too hungry to really make decisions. I was pretty sure Ethan had predecided what he was going to order based on TripAdvisor recommendations, but I hadn’t.

“Reed,” I said, “I’m going to need your help. What’s your favorite thing on the menu?”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard about the crème brûlée, but my favorite thing right now is the pasta in brown butter sauce. The menu changes every week, based on what’s available seasonally, but this is pretty special.”

“Sold,” I said. I looked at Ethan. “Do you want to share the pasta and something else? Maybe the duck breast?” Ethan hated sharing with me, but I always asked.

This time, he didn’t even have the courtesy to say no. He just said, “I’ll have the steak frites, medium well.”

“Medium well? Are you sure?” Reed asked.

“Medium well,” Ethan said.

Reed nodded and recorded the order. He then brought us each a glass of Pinot Noir and a bottle of water. We clinked glasses in silence. I wondered what Reed was thinking about us. It was a game that we played when we were in restaurants that I liked to call Unhappy Couple. We  would judge each couple in the restaurant based on how they interacted with each other, if they smiled, if they talked (so many people didn’t even talk to each other in restaurants, I wondered why they went out at all), if he stood up when she went to the bathroom or returned. If they were courteous to the waitstaff. It made us feel like our relationship was the good one.

Now, all of a sudden, we were the bickering couple in the restaurant. If Reed played Unhappy Couple in his mind, he had a lot of material. Certainly, he was judging Ethan’s steak order. Waiters always did.

Perhaps  as a peace offering,  perhaps as a house specialty,  he brought us a dish of olives, the kind that melt in your mouth. I had never had olives this divine before. We sipped our wine in silence and devoured the olives. We each left a little pile of pits in our napkin.

“These olives are incredible,” I said.

“Locally grown, in my backyard, in fact,” Reed said.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said. I could tell that I was embarrassing Ethan. He hated it when I talked to strangers. He preferred to observe rather than interact. But I liked to get to know people; maybe it was  because of my midwestern roots. “It’s impressive,” I said to Ethan when Reed had gone to check on our lunch order.

“The olives?” Ethan asked.

“They’re amazing, but that’s not what I mean,” I said. “Reed. He’s impressive. What he did. Following his dream.”

“Hannah, you can’t dream all the time. Sometimes you have to be practical. He had his career and then he’s doing what he wants in his retirement. He’s probably got a great pension from Chicago and this job just keeps him busy.”

Reed came back and placed our meals in front of us and refilled our wine. I had a taste of pasta, which was sweet and salty and perfectly al dente. Ethan focused on cutting his meat into tiny pieces but ate only one French fry.

“Mine’s good,” I said. “Want a taste?”

He ate another fry and didn’t respond.

“I seem to have lost my appetite,” I said, slamming down my fork.

“Too much bread?” he asked.

“No,” I said. Ethan did know that bread was my vice. More than ice cream or candy or wine or even French fries. I loved bread—all bread—from  artisanal corn bread and focaccia to Wonder Bread. Especially Wonder Bread, actually. The way you can make it into little bread balls. The way it tastes with raspberry jam. It was the one food from my childhood that made me nostalgic  and that I craved. When I was little, both of my parents worked crazy-long hours, my mom as a nurse and my dad as a truck driver. When they got home, all they would do was sleep and watch game shows on television. I remember sitting in the living room with them one night at around six o’clock, watching my dad nap on the recliner and my mom nap on the couch while I flipped through my library book, hoping someone would make me dinner, finally deciding on making  myself a peanut butter and honey sandwich on Wonder Bread. Of course, after everything that happened, I would be nostalgic for those lazy days. “Well, I wouldn’t want to waste my whole life waiting  for a dream to come true when I could seize it right now. Why not have your life be your dream?” I felt tears come to my eyes. All of a sudden, I felt so passionate. I did want my life to be my dream. “Remember that song ‘Working  for the Weekend’? Why not work for the week?” My life in Iowa certainly was not varied and it definitely wasn’t fun. I knew that there was more out there and I went after it.

“What  about other dreams?” he asked. He put his hand over mine, probably trying to remind me of the house with the yard in Bedford where we would build a huge tree house like the one we’d seen on HGTV, so the kids could have sleepovers in it; the Tribeca apartment that I had leased, sight  unseen, with a portion of my signing bonus, where we would live together when we got to New York after graduation.

“Everything happens for a reason,” I said.

“You know I hate that ‘fate’ nonsense,” he said. We had an ongoing debate about the concept of fate. I’d always believed in it, which annoyed him, because he was a firm atheist. It wasn’t a religious thing for me, just kind of a sense.

“Well, I like to believe it’s true,” I said. “Don’t you think it was meant for us to meet?”

“Not right now,” he said. “I feel like we have nothing in common right now.”

That was a punch in the gut. I stood up. “I’m going to the bathroom. Don’t eat the crème brûlée without me.”

Normally, we were totally in sync. We’d be judging the other diners and making up stories about people’s lives—on  a regular day, we’d be inventing an entire backstory for the people at the winery, the history-obsessed dad, the son trying to escape, the overworked mother. On a regular day, we’d even be into figuring out how to fix the place. We often spent hours riffing on marketing ideas for failing businesses. We’d done it in the car on the way up: How do you help the hotel with the crooked sign and one rusty minivan in the parking lot? What draws truckers in to truck stops? Is it a mistake to have a T.J. Maxx next to a Bed Bath & Beyond in a strip mall?

Is it better to start your own sandwich shop or buy a Subway franchise? It was like our business school version of I Spy. But I didn’t feel like inventing stories as I made my way back to the table.

“What is going on with you?” I asked as I cracked the brûlée with the back of my spoon.

“I don’t know,”  he said. “I started to feel worried  about our future.”

“Why?” I asked. “We’ll be in New York together. We can show each other the places we liked when we lived there before. Before we knew each other.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll  both be busy working a million hours. It won’t be like grad school. And I felt something weird at that winery. Like you liked it a little too much. Besides, I know how much you hate New York.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. Although we both knew that he was right.

We were quiet for a minute. Up until this moment, our prospects had felt pretty secure. We  were both thirty, were about to finish graduate school, were about to embark on fruitful careers.

Ethan was going to start a company with his two best friends from MIT. I had this amazing opportunity at Goldman. His company would be super successful. I would move up at Goldman. We could live the American dream. I could have the life I dreamt of growing up—a house from the Luxury Homes and Estates section of the New York Times Magazine (which I later learned was just a real estate advertising section, but I had fallen for it, it seemed editorial to me),  furniture from Town & Country, and two children who would never, ever eat Wonder  Bread, unless I decided to make a from-scratch, organic modernist  take on Wonder Bread and say things like “This is what Mama used to eat when she was a little girl.” It was all rolled out in front of me: the most socially acceptable life I could possibly imagine. I just needed to consent to it.

“What were the other wineries you wanted to go to?” I asked, a little half-heartedly.

He shrugged and handed his credit card to Reed. “I think I’m going to go back to the hotel to take a nap. Why don’t you go without me? There was that one we passed on our way back to town that you can walk to. Ravenswood?”

I guessed he was testing me, to see what I would do. We stood up and said good-bye to Reed, and Ethan kissed me on the forehead, which felt like a more distant gesture than usual.

“I’ll see you later,” I said. “Besides, I think I left my wallet at the winery.”

“Ugh, Hannah.”

He hated when I lost or broke things, which I did with regularity.

He turned and walked back toward the hotel. I stood in front of the restaurant, watching him. Wondering if he would look back. He didn’t.

**

Miriam Parker has worked in book publishing for more than eighteen years, and is currently the Associate Publisher of Ecco. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from UNC Wilmington and a BA in English from Columbia University. Her short stories have been published in The Florida Review and Fourteen Hills. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her spaniel, Leopold Bloom. The Shortest Way Home is her first novel.

Oxygen

By Lynnette Curtis

Shannon’s new poem is about what it’s like to be a feminist with Double D boobs. Its first line goes Eyes up here, and she points at her radiant face when she recites it. The way she purrs her stanzas into the microphone atop the coffee shop’s makeshift stage reminds me of that old clip of Marilyn Monroe wishing President Kennedy a breathy happy birthday. But Shannon feels more like Gloria Steinem, she says, trapped in the body of Jessica Rabbit. Not bad, just drawn that way.

I have long appreciated the way she’s drawn, along with her many other attributes. If she weren’t married to Carlos, I’d sweep her right off her feet. Not literally. She’s nearly six feet tall and probably outweighs me. Her curves can take your mind off anything. I even forget for a moment what’s waiting for me at home. This was the whole point of the evening, but I didn’t expect it to actually work.

The rest of tonight’s open-mike crowd consists of Goth girls, college kids, senior citizens and freelance hipsters in skinny jeans, all clustered around a handful of carved-up tables. A solo Rastafarian squats near the pastry counter, dreadlocks drooping down his back. It’s been days since I’ve interacted with anyone other than Dad, Jimmy the nurse and an occasional hospice worker with a clipboard, so this jumbled patchwork of thrift-store sweaters, tattoos and hairdos feels especially vivid, like I stumbled into the wrong end of a human kaleidoscope.

Shannon concludes with a girlish curtsy, steps offstage and makes her way to where I’m slouching in the corner. People continue to applaud as she grabs my elbow and leads me all the way to the closet-sized unisex bathroom.

“Pretty sure this is meant to be single-serve,” I say as she locks the door behind us. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Mon dieu,” she says, having once spent a semester in Paris. She turns to the side to consider her outstanding profile in the mirror, smoothing the sparkly gold sweater over her stomach. Meanwhile, I examine my scalp, which I recently mowed to a reddish stubble in an effort to disguise my already receding hairline. I look like a pasty Howdy Doody joined the army.  

“That felt good,” she says.

“You were so great,” I say.

“Thanks again for coming along.” She still sounds a little breathless.

“You wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“You needed a break,” she says. “Plus, Carlos wouldn’t be caught dead here.” She shakes her head at me in the mirror, then tilts it to the side and smirks. “You wouldn’t want me to go it alone, would you?”

If I didn’t know better, I’d call this flirty.

“Never,” I say, placing a steadying hand on the bathroom wall. Watching her dark hair float across her shoulders at close range gave me vertigo.

“That’s why I love you.” She jabs a finger into my chest. I feel it in my heart.

“Ah, platonic love,” I say, “the celibate’s consolation prize.”

“Can’t board a ship that’s already sailed, chéri.” She presses a cool palm against my cheek. I wish somebody would toss me a life buoy.

“Story of my life,” I say, and it really is.

*

I met her fresh out of college, when I took a job at The Learning Center teaching high school kids how to score better on their SATs. I had just stuffed a handful of vending machine Cheetos into my mouth when she appeared in the employee lounge as if from nowhere, wearing a snug tank top with the words OUT ON BAIL printed across the chest. She smiled and stuck out her hand while I frantically wiped the orange Cheetos dust from my fingers onto my khakis. She said her name but it didn’t register. My lizard brain had hit DEFCON 1 upon noting how mouth-wateringly fertile she looked, all hips and lips and mammary glands, as though God had chosen her to single-handedly overpopulate the planet. My gaze searched for a safe place to land. Her eyes were a disturbing shade of blue. Her tank top was a no. I settled on the one-legged pirate tattooed on her shoulder.

“It’s my first day,” I stammered. Then I gestured toward her top. “Are we allowed to wear that?”
“Oh, it’s my day off,” she said, frowning. “I just forgot to fill out my timecard.” She pretended to pinch a joint between her index finger and thumb and then smoke it, crossing her eyes. “Quel dommage!”

I just stood there staring at her tattoo, the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, until she laughed.

“Your face,” she said, pointing at it.

I looked into her unsettling eyes, then away again. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s always been a problem.”

*

I wonder about the barista. She serves me two free mochas in a row. That’s like giving me ten bucks. Then she laughs at my joke about how she manages to stay so thin with cream cheese pastries surrounding her like insistent lovers. She has a long, supple body, dark pools for eyes, and Levis she must have had to lie flat on her back to zip up. She could eat me alive.

Shannon pays no attention. She sits across from me, ample bottom scooched to the back of a folding chair, and listens politely to one of the hipsters reading a sonnet about losing his virginity on a hayride.

I should check in at home, but decide to measure how long I can stand the guilt and numbing fear that Dad could die while I sit here listening to (mostly) bad poetry and trying not to objectify my best friend. The only one around to hear his last words would be Jimmy the nurse, who is as nonchalant as a teenage babysitter. Dad doesn’t say much anymore, anyway. And he’s mostly incoherent because of the morphine. Sometimes he sees things that aren’t there, curls his thin fingers into fists and swings weakly into the empty air as though he’s punching a ghost. It’s the sort of thing he’d joke about if he were well. “My equations aren’t adding up,” he’d say. He taught high school math for nearly 40 years.

The barista takes a break from brewing coffee to step onstage and deliver an ode to fresh produce. She seems particularly fixated on the smooth textures of banana peels and crookneck squash, how they feel when she strokes them. She closes her eyes to whisper the line, “Naked cucumber skin.” A tiny diamond stud lanced through her right nostril catches the light. When she returns to her station behind the counter, she notices me watching her and smiles. I look away and don’t make eye contact again. The last thing I need right now is another woman who makes me feel like a dog begging for a bite of dinner.

*

We got to know each other over daily lunches at the deli next to The Learning Center. Shannon sat across from me chewing potato salad and stabbing the air with a fork while talking about her obsession with 19th-century French poetry, her intelligence like a current across the table. She was applying to grad school with plans to become a real teacher, and already I felt left behind, having yet to figure out what to do with my unfortunate English degree.

She told me about her childhood spent on a Colorado dairy farm, how her parents had home-schooled her and how she wore nothing but overalls until she was thirteen years old. (I would think about this later, alone in bed, picturing her full-grown but still barefoot and pig-tailed, straddling a white horse and clutching a battered copy of Les Fleurs Du Mal.)

She told me about the bad breakup she went through with her most recent ex-boyfriend. (“He went to jail,” she said flatly.)

She told me she wanted to become a poet.

At work, she wreaked havoc on my fragile male psyche by playfully jabbing my shoulder whenever we passed in the hallway, sprinkling her laughter and pheromones along the way like a trail of invisible breadcrumbs leading the way home.

I liked everything about her, including her mildly criminal quirks. She pirated quarters and candy from everybody’s desk drawers and swiped the Cokes I stowed in the lounge’s mini-fridge. One day I saw her casually shoplift a Cup-a-Soup from the 7-11 next to the deli. One night after class, she convinced me to hop a fence, strip to my underwear and swim with her in somebody’s heated backyard pool. Another night, she talked me into trying mushrooms at the park. (I threw up.)

In short, she both terrified and excited me. As the weeks ticked by, I convinced myself something undeniable had sprouted between us. I considered making my signature move, which involved standing real close to a woman and accidentally brushing her arm, but I wanted to wait for the perfect moment. This felt too important to rush. Then, on the last day of work before Christmas vacation, she beat me to it when I walked her to her car.

“I’m going to miss you, chéri,” she said, planting a lingering smooch on my cheek.

I swallowed hard, staring at a passing airplane, and thought about everything the New Year had in store.

I said, “I’ll see you at the holiday party.”

*

The final poet tonight, a saucer-eyed blond woman in a French maid’s outfit, sashays to the plywood stage, brandishing a feather duster. She takes a moment to collect herself with a series of sighs before launching into a fast-paced number about her lucrative career as a cam girl who lets paying customers watch her clean house in various states of undress.

“I knew she looked familiar!” I whisper to Shannon in mock triumph. But she doesn’t even look at me, just shrugs in my general direction. She fingers her golden anchor necklace and listens intently to the enterprising sex worker, maybe considering a new profession. Grad school doesn’t exactly pay well.

The woman has a thunderous voice that belies her petite body. Her eyes appear haunted as she tells us that she might have killed herself had lust not entered her “dead-end life.” She looks suddenly terrified, scanning the room anxiously as though afraid one of us plans to assassinate her. Then she snaps her dainty fingers and makes a low whooshing noise that makes me think of the oxygen streaming through Dad’s nasal tube. She stares up at the ceiling as if expecting a phantom missile to burst through the air vent. A long moment of silence passes before anyone realizes she’s finished, followed by a spattering of applause. She grins as a couple of people ooh and aah.

One of the hipsters approaches our table and invites us to join him and his friends for cocktails at a bar down the street.

“Thanks,” Shannon tells him, “but we’re on our way to the movies.” This is news to me. It’s getting late. By now, Jimmy the nurse could be drinking liquid morphine from my Disneyland shot glass while Dad thrashes around in pain. But the thought of going home fills me with dread.

“Carlos won’t mind?”

Shannon rolls her eyes at me as if to say, Whatever. On our way to the door, she takes a quick detour to whisper her goodbyes to the sexy barista while I undertake an in-depth study of the pastry counter.

*

My old buddy Carlos, back in town after a stint in the Peace Corps, called to catch up the night of the holiday party and then invited himself along. I should’ve known. In high school, he had stolen most of what I liked to think of as my would-be girlfriends. I couldn’t compete with his chiseled pecs and unblinking sincerity, his ping-pong skills and the true story about how he gave his spare kidney to a third cousin. When I saw the way he and Shannon cocked their Santa hats at precisely the same angle, how purposefully they bumped into each other beneath the mistletoe, I knew I was already too late. They left together that night, without even saying goodbye, and I wound up with the measly consolation prize: best man at the wedding barely six months later.

Then Dad got sick, and I marveled at the many ways a heart can break.

*

The nearest theater is hosting a festival of classic Latin American films. We choose Son of the Bride because it starts the soonest. We buy several boxes of candy to complement our buttered popcorn and take seats in the center of a cool, empty theater. The large space feels intimate because we’re alone. Our fingers slide together as we pass a quart-sized Diet Coke.

The subtitled movie tells the story of Nino, an old Argentinian man whose beloved wife of 44 years, Norma, stricken with Alzheimer’s, lives in a nursing home. Nino enlists the help of his middle-aged son, Rafa, in planning the elaborate church wedding Norma always wanted, hoping that on some level she will understand and appreciate such a ceremony.

Nino wears his best suit to the nursing home to propose to his wife. He carries a bouquet of flowers. Norma, in a lacy shawl, her blond-gray hair pulled back, sits staring at a table, lost in the fading landscape of her own mind. As Nino nervously asks her to marry him again, she turns her wide brown eyes to him. A slow smile of recognition spreads across her still-beautiful face. She strokes his withered cheek with the back of her hand and says, Mi novio. My boyfriend.

I hear Shannon sniffling, so I take her hand, slick with butter, and risk resting my cheek on her shoulder. Her breast is less than an inch from my lips, her sweater soft against my skin, its neckline low and tight. I’d like to curl right up in there. She smells like licorice and lavender skin lotion.

Sitting next to her in the black anonymity of the theater, I wonder whether it’s really possible to continue loving someone you no longer recognize. Does Shannon love Carlos that much? Given the chance, could I feel about her — about anyone — the way the old man feels about his wife? In my vast romantic experience, which consists of exactly three failed short-term relationships, the woman always leaves long before it gets anywhere close to that point. Maybe she senses how shallow my emotional supply is, that I don’t carry a reserve tank in case of emergencies. Maybe her survival instincts kick in.

In my most honest moments, I wonder if I even love my own father enough. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, sitting next to the hospital bed Jimmy the nurse made up for him in the living room, I feel nothing whatsoever. I go completely numb, as though I’m under heavy anesthesia. This really spooks me. So I try to remember Dad as he used to be, strong and goofy and vibrant. I make myself think about the summers he dedicated to me when I was growing up — his penance, I suppose, for moving me away from my mother and subjecting me to a single-parent home. (No matter that we both knew I was better off without Mom’s detached brand of maternal affection.) We spent weeks together on the road, Dad drumming the steering wheel in rhythm to The Rolling Stones, because he wanted to take me hiking in every national park within driving distance. I think about his patience those many nights in junior high when I couldn’t “get” geometry, his voice as calm the hundredth time he explained Pythagoras to me as it had been the first. But sometimes the only memories I manage to muster are the too-recent variety. The daily worsening of his condition, how he has looked like a corpse for weeks now. How often I’ve woken to the sound of him gasping, unable to coax air into his diseased lungs. How many times I’ve leaned close to check that he’s still breathing, shocked at the new, sour smell of him.

Onscreen, Rafa visits his mother in the nursing home, hoping to somehow draw out of her the maternal validation she has long denied him. He sits with her on a white bench for an agonizing moment. “I don’t want to die,” she tells him. My throat seizes up. I clear it noisily. Shannon passes me the popcorn. “Is this OK?” she whispers. “Who knew it would be so … .”

“Apropos?” My voice sounds strange. I toss a handful of popcorn into my mouth.

“Say the word and we’ll go.” I shake my head and smile at her in the dark.

The movie ends with the long-anticipated wedding ceremony, held in the nursing home cafeteria decorated to look like a church. Norma wears her lace shawl as a veil. The officiant asks Nino if he promises to love her until death. “And afterwards,” he replies.

I haven’t cried in years, but I find myself tearing up. Shannon passes me a tissue from her purse. Somehow this doesn’t embarrass me. But I’m glad to be in a dark, empty theater where only she will know. I feel utterly at home with her, as though we ourselves are an old couple with a shared understanding that comes from years of compromise.

We step outside at about 1 a.m. The air has grown cool. Shannon takes my hand in the parking lot.

“I don’t want to go home,” I say. My mind fills with an image of Jimmy the nurse playing solitaire on his laptop while Dad chokes to death on his own blood. An intense stab of guilt hits my stomach for feeling like that might be a relief.

“I know,” Shannon says. She squeezes my hand and looks at me like she really does know.

I’m glad she insisted on driving. I would have had to take Dad’s Buick, still littered with wadded-up tissues stained black with blood from his lungs. I haven’t yet felt up to throwing out these leftovers from before he would admit what was happening, when he could still drive, still stand and sit up by himself.

Through the window of the house, I see the dim kitchen light. “No hearse in the driveway,” I say. “Good sign.” Shannon sighs beside me and shifts her Kia into park. “Hey, thanks so much,” I say. “This was really a relief.” I squeeze her shoulder.

“I should be comforting you,” she says, placing her hand over mine. Her fingers are warm. We sit like that, touching and not looking at each other. I think about how she’s changed since meeting Carlos, mellowed, sworn off drugs and shoplifting, the very definition of settling down. How happy she seems.

Then I think about reaching over to stroke her hair, her cheek. I think about leaning in, wrapping my arms around her and kissing her on the mouth — softly at first, then not so softly. Maybe, at this precise moment, parked in the driveway in front of the house where my father is dying, she wouldn’t mind. Maybe she’d even kiss me back, take my hand and place it encouragingly beneath her sweater. I get that feeling, anyway, from her damp eyes and the uncertain half-smile now playing at her lips. But I think she knows I gave up on all of that a long time ago, and I’m pretty sure she depends on it.

“Better see how they’re doing in there,” I say. “That Jimmy guy seems a little shifty. Probably not long since he was released from custody.” I smile back at her and open the car door.

“Un moment.” Shannon pulls a small piece of paper from her purse. “Almost forgot.” Under the dim roof light, I squint at the torn corner of a napkin from the coffee shop. There’s a phone number, with the name Janie written above it in green. A tiny, hollow heart dots the i. “The barista’s number,” Shannon says. “She said call anytime. She doesn’t sleep.”

I stare at the napkin and shake my head. “You’re amazing.”

“Do it,” she says firmly, her eyes blue flames. She makes her thumb and index finger into a gun and points it at my chest.

“OK,” I say, putting my hands in the air. “I surrender.” I feel a little unsteady, so I step out of the car and shut the door. I can’t see Shannon’s face through the window in the dark, but I wave anyway as she pulls away.

I find Jimmy asleep on the couch, drooling on the afghan my grandmother made. When I poke his shoulder, he bolts upright and looks guilty, as if I’ve caught him raiding the liquor cabinet. He shakes his head and mumbles, “No change.” Then he’s out the door, probably to a wife waiting at home.

Dad’s sleeping — that’s pretty much all he does now. His mouth hangs open and empty. We removed his dentures for good several days ago. His hair has grown long and thin. I press my fingers lightly against his forehead and say, “I’m home, Dad.” His eyelids flutter but he doesn’t otherwise react. It’s hard to believe he’s still anywhere inside that shell of a body. I check his breathing — just as shallow as when I left hours ago.

I sit beside him and try to imagine the color back in his face, the flesh thick on his body, the way he used to look at me with bemused affection. My eyes well up for the second time tonight. What would he say to me if he could? Probably, “Pull yourself together, son.”

The clock on the card table beside his bed reads 1:25 a.m. I stare at it until the numbers become blurry, as though I’m reading them under water. Then I pull my phone from my pocket and dial the numbers written on the coffee shop napkin. By the time it starts to ring, I’m already breathing in whoever will answer my call.

**

Lynnette Curtis is a former daily newspaper reporter and editor who studies fiction in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. She grew up in Utah, Colombia and the Marshall Islands and has lived in Las Vegas, Nevada for more than two decades. She attended UNLV, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English. Her creative work has appeared in New South and the Red Rock Review, and has been anthologized in Fade Sag Crumble: Ten Las Vegas Writers Confront Decay. She is currently at work on a collection of stories set in or linked to Las Vegas.

**

Image: Flickr / Aaron Noble

The Yellow Wrapper

First the bra, now this, Annika thinks as she slowly tears the saturated pad from the crotch of her underwear, positive the sound of the adhesive and the crinkle of soft plastic can be heard all the way down Park Hill to the Piggly Wiggly. When it’s finally out, she sits on the cold porcelain seat and listens, hearing only the sound of her breath.

She pulls the pad’s bright yellow wrapper from the pocket of her jeans. It’s been there all day, a constant reminder—as if the fear of leaking wasn’t enough—and it is damp now and wadded into a boggy lump. She rolls the pad back in the wrapper and clutches it, feeling the warmth, as she tiptoes to her bedroom.

Down the hall thumping bass and howling voices pour out of her brother Ben’s stereo and a slow trickle of smoke escapes despite the dirty T-shirt shoved under the door. The smell reminds Annika of when they hit a skunk driving out to Grandma’s last summer. Ben will be in his room all day with that nasty smell leaking out.

A year ago, in the old house, Ben didn’t spend all day in his bedroom. But a year ago, in the old house, a lot was different.

This duplex—three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a backyard no one uses—had been an early Christmas present for the three of them after Annika’s dad became just a voice on the other end of the phone and a check in the mail. The fights didn’t stop—Annika only hears one side.

Annika hears one now through the wall she shares with Mom as she closes her door quietly and goes to the window that faces the untouched backyard.

The late winter lawn looks crispy and dead. Overgrown brown weeds snake up the fence that separates their yard from the tree line. She can see through the bare trees to Maple Street, cars stopped at red lights.

When she opens the window, a cool breeze blows in, bringing with it the smell of roasting pork from the Piggly Wiggly. She leans out the window into the cool day, away from the rising sound of her mother’s voice, and pitches the pad into the lifeless grass.

⇒⇒⇒⇒⇒⇒ ◊ ⇐⇐⇐⇐⇐⇐

“Match Each Early Explorer with His Country of Origin,” the instructions at the top of the paper read. But Annika can’t concentrate. Instead, she colors in the holes in the letters, feels the uncomfortable trickle in her pants and listens to the whispers of Britney and Madison behind her.

“She looks like a cowgirl in those Levis.”

The girls snicker. At the desk beside Annika, Denise sits in her Levis, pencil to paper, drawing lines between each column.

This semester it is Denise and her Levis. Last semester it was Colby and the paper grocery bag he uses as a backpack.

“Christopher Columbus.” Annika fills in the o, the p, the tiny, oblong hole at the top of the e.

The whispers continue. To Annika, they are as loud as the pad ripping off her panties, but when she looks up, Mrs. Dehughes only yawns and pats the sides of her large hair, which is unnaturally puffy, almost like it was placed on her head in haste and without regard to proportion. Mrs. Dehughes hadn’t stopped them from calling Colby “Paper or Plastic,” either.

She looks back at her paper.

“Ferdinand Magellan.”

The e. The d. The tiny, oblong hole at the bottom of the a.

“Who even wears Levis anymore?”

More giggles.

Another d.

Annika glances at Denise and thinks of Mom, sitting at the kitchen table, bills spread out in front of her and her hands spread over her face, shaking silently, pretending she doesn’t smell the scent of skunk coming from Ben’s room. But it always explodes in loud voices eventually. Annika pretends to be invisible then. She tries not to move or make a peep when it starts, as if her stillness will end it sooner.

Denise puts her pencil to her mouth and considers the page in front of her. Denise is either thinking about Ponce de Leon and his country of origin or she is good at pretending, too.

Annika doesn’t turn or look at Britney and Madison. Their ire could be drawn by motion. But she has to wiggle as the too-large pad is jammed uncomfortably in her butt crack and between the lips of her vagina. Movement brings the odor and for a terrible minute that is all she can think about, all she can smell. She is nearly choking on the rotten stink of dark blood. Denise turns and for a second Annika is sure she can smell it, too.

Denise’s eyes land on a spot somewhere behind Annika and the whispers stop. Annika holds her breath and counts to three.

As Denise turns back to the front their eyes meet and Denise smiles. Annika’s face flushes, warmth wrapping around her neck and climbing to the tops of her ears. With a quick breath, she looks down at the Os, the Ps, the Ds and starts to color as the giggles begin again.

⇒⇒⇒⇒⇒⇒ ◊ ⇐⇐⇐⇐⇐⇐

A year ago, when they were living in the old house, Annika brought home the flowery packet all the girls were given at school after going to the music room and watching the Video. The packet contained a booklet, a calendar, and a single pad. She’d hid it in her room away from her dad and Ben. That night, seated at the foot of her bed, Mom flipped through the little information booklet and asked Annika if she had any questions.

On the Video, a female doctor wearing an authoritative white lab coat had pointed to a graph and said, “The average age is twelve. Or, roughly one to two years after breast development.”

So the Video told Annika all she’d needed to know: she was a ticking time bomb. Mom had already taken her to JC Penney to try on bras, against Annika’s will.

“You really need one, honey,” she’d said gently, pointing to the rack of white lacey bras—some looked like undershirts, some like in the movies.

Now, in the new house, Annika takes out the calendar and draws a circle on the day before and a line through today, just like the nurse told them to do. She thinks of the box of Mom’s pads under the bathroom sink, half full now. She’s been using them as sparingly as possible, making sure one lasts all day, no matter how heavy and drenched they are.

Mom will notice soon.

Annika swallows thickly and walks out to the living room, shaking nervously. Mom is at the kitchen table, smoking, her eyes red-rimmed. The acrid scent of the smoke mixes with the skunk smell coming from under Ben’s door.

Annika wrinkles her nose reflexively and opens her mouth to talk but is cut off by the buzz and pulse from Ben’s room. Mom punches out the cigarette in the glass ashtray and brushes past Annika, pounding on Ben’s door and shouting. “Turn down the goddamn music!”

Back in her bedroom, Annika spreads out her dad’s business cards on the floor and plays grocery store in her mind.

As the pounding and shouting continue, she buys bread, milk, and eggs through blurry vision. The total is $12.45.

“Charge it,” she says, her voice wobbly, wiping at her wet eyes. “No, wait. One more thing.”

Pads. So Mom won’t notice. So Mom won’t have to deal with that, too.

She runs her dad’s card through the imaginary credit card machine, signs the receipt, then goes to the window and looks out at the dead grass, brown but for four spots of bright yellow.

⇒⇒⇒⇒⇒⇒ ◊ ⇐⇐⇐⇐⇐⇐

“Name two reasons settlers came to the new world,” Denise reads in a whisper barely audible. She follows along under the question with her pencil, then puts the eraser back to her lips.

It’s a group assignment. Mrs. Dehughes counted them off in twos and then went back to her desk to pat her hair and file her nails.

“They came for the rodeos,” Britney says behind them. She and Madison laugh. Mrs. Dehughes looks up with a scowl but goes back to her nails.

Annika looks at the side of Denise’s face and tries to read what might be hidden there.

“The New England Colonies were dominated by . . .” Denise reads, turning to face her. Annika shrugs.

“Levis Five-Oh-Ones.”  

The laughter behind them is deafening; it’s all Annika can hear.

“Puritans,” Denise says, cutting through the noise, leaving Annika with only the sound of blood throbbing in her temples. She swallows as Denise fills in the blank with perfect, bubbly writing.

“Do you know they’re making fun of you?” she whispers.

Denise smirks, filling in the next blank without consulting Annika.

“They’ll be mean to anyone. I guess it’s just my turn.”

Annika furrows her brow. She remembers last year, when they were still in the old house, when she first wore her new bra to school under a white shirt. She never made that mistake again.

But then Colby brought his books to school in a grocery bag.

But then Denise wore Levis.

And then . . .

The ding of the intercom cuts off Annika’s racing thoughts and everyone looks up expectantly.

“Attention students,” their principal’s voice comes through full and deep. “A piccolo is missing from the band room. If you have taken it, please return it immediately. Thank you.”

Everyone looks back at their papers and the giggling begins.

“Maybe it’s under Mrs. Dehughes’s wig!”

A snort and more laughter.

Denise shrugs as if to say to Annika, “See?” and continues to fill in the blanks.

“Would you like to spend the night at my house?” Annika asks. “I can ask my Mom.”

⇒⇒⇒⇒⇒⇒ ◊ ⇐⇐⇐⇐⇐⇐

Denise walks into Annika’s room and puts her overnight bag on the floor.

“So this is my room,” Annika says, gesturing weakly around the pristine room, a condition of the sleepover.

“I like it,” Denise says, studying the items on Annika’s desk—her picture of Grandpa’s lakehouse, the bowl of her dad’s business cards. “You have a swing set or anything?”

She throws back the curtains and looks out at the empty yard. Empty except for the yellow pads spread in a semi-circle around Annika’s window.

Annika rushes to the window as blood fills her cheeks. “No. We don’t use the backyard.”

“That’s too bad,” Denise says, staring at the ground and squinting. Annika feels her heart in her throat, beating faster and faster. “Are those . . . pads?”

Annika cannot meet Denise’s eyes. One month, a dozen pads, both her room and Mom’s facing the backyard and it is her new friend who sees them first. She wants to die. Instead, she looks out at the pads, her eyes wide as if seeing them for the first time.

“I don’t know where those came from,” Annika says, her voice constricted, sounding like a liar even to her own ears.

Denise is quiet. In Annika’s mind, Denise has already packed and left. On Monday, Denise’s voice will join the mean whispers. Finally, something to take the place of Denise’s Levis. “She throws her pads in her backyard!”

“I think it’s kind of cool,” Denise says.

Annika can’t breathe. She sits on the edge of her bed and whispers, “I guess.”

“I mean, whoever did that is pretty cool to not care,” Denise says, sitting down next to her. “At least I think so.”

“Like you’re cool,” Annika finally manages. “Like you don’t care what Britney and Madison say about you.”

Denise sticks her hands in the pockets of her Levis.

“But I do care,” Denise says. “What they say hurts.”

They sit in silence for a minute. Then, the phone rings and Ben’s music starts to hammer.

“But I think they’re afraid, too,” Denise says. “I think we’re all just afraid.”

Ben’s music and Mom’s voice fade.

“Maybe we should pick them up?” Denise asks. “I mean, we might want to use that backyard this summer for a camp out.”

Annika stands, feeling lighter.

“I’ll get a trash bag.”

⇒⇒⇒⇒⇒⇒ ◊ ⇐⇐⇐⇐⇐⇐

Annika switches on the bathroom light and catches her reflection in the mirror through sleep-filled eyes. The crotch of her flannel sleep pants is bright red with blood. She thinks of her calendar, knows it can’t have been a month, then remembers the nurse telling them it takes a few months for things to even out.

There are only seven pads left in the box under the sink. She takes one out and pulls down her pants. The blood is everywhere—soaked through her underwear and pooled in her pants. She sits on the toilet and listens to the drips.

It’s Saturday. She and Ben usually sleep in until at least noon while Mom works her weekend job at Wal-Mart. But it’s early. She must have been woken by the wetness in her pants. Mom is still home; there are heavy steps as Mom goes back to her bedroom, probably grabbing the earrings she forgot to put on. On her way past the bathroom, she pauses.

“Annika? Are you okay?”

“Yep,” Annika answers, wiping the thick blood and pulling her soiled pants back up.

“There’s bologna in the fridge for a sandwich when you’re hungry. We’re all out of chips. Sorry.”

Mom sounds sorry. She sounds tired. Annika wonders if that is her way of being afraid.

“I’ll be home at four,” Mom says, walking away, keys jangling.

Annika goes to the hallway.

“Mom?”

Mom turns and comes toward her. Annika’s hands are trembling, fidgeting with soft, yellow wrapper. She should be pretending. Mom needs her to be invisible.

“I gotta go, sweetie, I’m late…” Mom begins.

But Annika can’t be invisible today. Today, she needs Mom to see. Without a word, Annika pulls at the crotch of her pants, flaring them out to expose the red stain, too afraid to look up.

Mom sets her purse and keys on the counter and kneels in front of her and pulling her chin up so they look in each other’s eyes.

“You’ll have to use my pads for today,” Mom says with a sad smile. “But I’ll grab you something better when I leave work, okay?”

As Mom pulls her close for a hug, the pad clutched in Annika’s hand no longer feels so heavy.

**

Erin Smith is a writer, funeral director and shiatsu therapist living in the Twin Cities. Her short stories have appeared in Mount Hope, Liars’ League NYC, Smoky Blue Literary, Arts Magazine and The Writing Disorder. Find our more on her website.

“i-shot-the-sheriff-town” by David Henson was originally published by Problem House Press and won their 2016 Fiction Prize.

Check out Henson’s newly released fiction micro-chapbook, An Explanation, out now with L’Éphémère Review.

I-shot-the-sheriff-town

I.

The treehouse is outgrowing the tree. It leans and sways like the neighborhood pendulum. Inside, the shelves are lined with jars that briefly held glowing bugs each summer night. They lent their light for poring over newly purchased comic books. The light dulls, and dies, and the boy can’t bear to catch more. As summer ends, he sits in the dark, cross-legged on a scrap of shag carpet, and reads the comics plastered to the inside of his skull.

II.

The boy opens an eye. Sun grazes the shag jungle. He sits up and rubs the indentations in his cheek. A new day began without him.

Below the ticktock treehouse, a girl sends a torn baseball to her hulking dad. The dad crouches like a catcher and she winds up big. The boy listens. The dad is pretending he’s a bartender. Every time she fires a strike into the worn leather he sneers, “We don’t serve that here!”

Someone tosses a handheld radio like a grenade into the tall grass. An R&B song escapes. It sounds like it was recorded as the singer was committing suicide. It’s a little over the top. The boy feels embarrassed for everyone involved in the production of such a monstrosity.

The boy peeks out the unevenly cut window. He spots an amusement park behind the yards. Children are strapped to wild animals. So that’s where everyone keeps disappearing to. The boy digs through his chest for binoculars. Upon closer inspection, the animals are ten feet tall and probably puppets, but they are still wild, pouncing on the kids that fall off and dragging them around. He remembers seeing Matt “Manhandler” McGuiness taking off on his dirt bike early in the morning wearing an oversized tiger head. It wasn’t a helmet or some new form of terror. It was a summer job.

For the time being, the future is no further away than tomorrow.

III.

The adults stampede back. Ties are tightened. Garage doors lowered. Things need deciding. Order isn’t so much restored as satanically conjured from the hole it was buried alive in. Voting on issues is immediate and they always vote on whether something is fair or not. Fair to who? the boy wonders. Wooden signs plunged into green lawns display the outcomes of the votes. They vote on whether they can turn the treehouse into a Museum of Wonders. Yes they can. It’s unclear whether the boy is supposed to leave. He did not cast a ballot.

Corporations move in immediately and build everything out of broken down cars. More rooms, entranceways, and a parking garage. The boy can barely sit for all the broken glass. It is not long until he is found, roused and evicted.

IV.

Later, he was younger, it was night. An older friend comes over and brings wine. The light hanging above the kitchen sink is a glowing planet in the solar system of the windowpane. Steam is present independent of food smells. They play a hockey videogame. The characters speak in the boy’s voice. He hears himself trash-talking and grunting on the screen. He thinks it’s very conversational for hockey. Another guest arrives. He’s an even older friend. It is revealed that he drinks all the time. Thirsty even when he isn’t thirsty. They give him the short tour based on his personal interests.

“I know this isn’t your regular wine set up, but damn!” he says.

It’s enough. Teeth are temporarily purpled in real life and blacked-out pixel by pixel onscreen after a bloody scrap. Something inside the boys is glad to erupt. Chaos commences. The boy welcomes an elbow to the temple with a roar and a punch to the thigh. A cacophony of violent joy strolls through the house, awaiting the inevitable misinterpretation.

The parents. The parents are not happy. The children are out of control and the parents are trapped in the house with them. Work was abominable. Now this noise. There’s no room for the parents to discuss problems or solutions. The commute from the brain to the pit of the stomach is always jammed. An expensive safari is booked to hunt elusive me-time. They decide to get drunk and go in the pool. The backdoor slams and the boy half-returns to himself. The bear climbs back over the fence, puts his hat on and pretends to be the zookeeper again.

“We should keep it down,” he says aloud, to appease the exasperated specters still haunting the kitchen.

In the morning the boy walks past the pool. The parents are sound asleep, adrift on inflatable beds.

V.

At the park the boy steals three different flavors from the Sunkist machine. A woman takes off her trench coat to reveal a stunning red dress. A little kid yells, “She’s got huge jugs!” and everyone laughs. At the pavilion there is some sort of presentation about a white-haired lady’s life. It is unclear which decisions were her own. At the picnic table in the back, all of the refreshments are too large to swallow.

The boy and some other people leave before it’s over to go to his old friend Nick Ski’s place. It’s a little shack on a country road in the middle of endless cornfields, close to the boy’s grandma’s house. On the way, the boy tries to convince everyone the ocean will be there. No one believes him. He isn’t surprised. When they arrive, he heads out back through the towering corn and strips down to his shorts. He can hear the party behind him. As he floats on his back he remembers what it’s like to swim alone at sunset, risking death and feeling peaceful.

The boy is finally getting out of the hidden ocean. There are only cricket noises. He pulls his shirt from the drooping stalk. His old friend Michael comes plowing through. A girl has just broken up with him. He is ripping his shirt and rooting around in a bag of groceries. Once, in band class, all of the trombones lost their sheet music for the song “Pharaoh” and the director noticed when they missed the trombone feature. Michael quickly wrote out the melody but still no one played.

In Michael’s convertible that same man is still dying on the radio. They don’t laugh about it. The boy tells Michael about the time his uncles killed some puppies for fun and then played football next to their graves. The boy had tackled the biggest uncle as hard as he could, even though he wasn’t playing. Michael tells the boy his thoughts on charity. He will give out free bottles of water, but not to any nameless people. They both agree that movies with subtitles give them a greater understanding of their souls. Michael keeps missing exits but the boy doesn’t feel lost or late. The two of them are their own exit.

They pull over and explore the woods. The woods are familiar. It’s getting dark. Someone turns on the light and the boy realizes he’s in a basement. The shrubbery was really just a bunch of laundry machines pushed together. Michael never stays forever.

Upstairs the party is still going strong. Jeff Buckley flies up to the second story window and knocks to be let in. The boy was expecting him because apparently he’d done the same thing the last year. He says he’d been knocking for a while, and he was surprised that no one had missed him and no one cared he was there. His boots drip. He asks what kids do these days and the boy says, “Play video games.” He says, “Well what do they write songs about,” and the boy says, “Playing video games.” A few people get murdered at the party and the murderer disappears. It ends like all good parties do—at a funeral.

VI.

During the funeral the boy finds three bullets in his back. They clank on the floor and roll toward the casket. It sounds like the preacher is just making shit up.

Someone rattles a tambourine. The woman sitting next to the boy grabs his hand and puts it on her stomach. There is fierce kicking.

“He wants out of that casket,” she says.

“Not here,” says the boy.

He keeps his hand on her stomach to make sure.

“Does anyone really live in The Hamptons?” she asks no one in particular.

“I think they prefer to call it I-shot-the-sheriff-town these days,” says the man next to her. “Or maybe that’s only amongst themselves.”

The preacher leans over the pulpit with a hand shading his eyes like he’s some kind of goddamned explorer.

The boy somehow ends up at the head of the interstate funeral procession. It goes so slow that he has to abandon his bike and walk. Some kids start throwing snowballs. They hit the green road signs and burst. There is frozen dog poop inside and it bounces off the sign and hits the boy in the throat. He coughs once and marches to the closest kid. Remembering a proper headlock from after-school wrestling, he wraps his arm around the kid’s neck and continues walking. The kid is big but doesn’t put up much of a fight. First thought, worst thought, but the boy won’t prove anything by letting go now.

Everyone passionately hums the song “Pharaoh.” Some people brought kazoos. The high harmony drifts out of the head under his arm.

There is a war between animals in the next county over. It is not captured for reality TV.

VII.

Before all of this, the boy had been to the doctor. He had to pretend to be Lithuanian to receive free care. A big burly male nurse with hieroglyph tattoos on his arms blew zerberts into the boy’s neck and the side of his head for a long time to see what was wrong. When he was done, he said the boy was more like an ancient civilization than a modern one. He was regressing. Other than that, he was fine.

“Bones of an erector set,” he stated proudly.

On the way out, the boy noticed a fresh snowman that looked a lot like himself.

VIII.

Eventually the boy became the town banker. He found it embarrassing to know so much about everyone’s financial transactions. How could upkeep of an indoor pool cost so much? Doesn’t it make you an idiot to pay that much for a car when everyone else in town gets around just fine? The boy got sad. A man came in and asked some questions about how people spent their money. He also seemed to be confused and uncertain about important things. The boy thought the man was a fabled “kindred spirit.” He told the man things. Too many things. The man was a detective. He said the kind of information the boy was giving out was illegal.

“I can’t keep all this to myself,” said the boy.

“It’s your job,” said the detective.

“Do we burn the money now?” asked the boy.

“Not now,” said the detective.

“Do I take it with me?” asked the boy.

“You won’t have anywhere to spend it,” said the detective.

They didn’t put the boy in a cell, just took away his keys. A nurse gave him an experimental shot that let him see people’s energy. That was his sentence, but the real punishment was figuring out why they would do that to him. He sat and thought so hard that old people thought he was a ghost figuring out his next move. Ghosts have all the time in the world, you know.

Energies were roughly the same. Nothing stuck out. The boy wished he would run into a celebrity to see if they were made of something different. When everything is the same there are no clues, just a landscape. It was hard to focus. Night and day mixed and made a tan paste. Some people asked him who was truly happy because they thought he could see it. He stopped noticing. The phone rang and Grandma said the family had buried her again without her permission. The boy thought that was a careless thing to do. He was transforming but no one knew it. He never thought to post on the internet. There was a dark red slide that dropped him off at the hidden ocean in the cornfield. It was so easy to float. The water entered his ears and everything distorted. He felt at risk, but peaceful at the same time.

**
David Henson has previously published work in Queen Mob’s Tea House, Occulum, Philosophical Idiot, and more. He won the 2018 L’éphémère Review Overture to Memory Prize in fiction, the 2017 So Say We All Literary Prize in Fiction, and the 2016 Problem House Press short story contest. He writes and records music under the name Shadows on a River, which can be heard at his bandcamp, and tweets from @davidbhenson.

**

Image: Flickr / Zoë

Just You and Me

The bell rang and class 4G scrambled from their seats. “Excuse me, class! Excuse me!” shouted Miss Rodney. Lara caught her eye and hovered over her seat, but half the class were at the door already. She grabbed her bag. On the clock it read three thirty. Home time.

In the playground shouts and laughter filled the air as the junior school piled from the building. Lara slipped from her classmates to find the toilet. If Miss Rodney saw her, she wouldn’t be allowed. She’d been afraid to ask so near to the end of the day, now she was desperate. The outbuilding was empty, echoey. Through the cement walls the playground sounds were muted, and Lara had the strange sense that it would be dark when she went back out. She rushed to wash her hands in the icy water and go out to join the others.

Her class were gathered round Miss Rodney by the gate. Ethan was walking off with his mum. He waved a pack of crisps, wiggling from foot to foot. When he reached the gate he leapt up to touch the top of the fence and landed facing Lara, stumbling backwards. She waved and he stuck his tongue out at her. Then she found a space to wait out of the way of the families and nannies and pushchairs and in sight of the gate. She couldn’t go back to her class. The teacher would want to know where she’d been.

The playground grew emptier. The remaining children were huddled around parents and childminders, siblings and sports coaches, grappling to receive crisps or sandwiches in their greasy, inky hands. A girl in Lara’s class, Rina, spotted Lara standing alone by the water fountain and skipped over. “Do you want some?” she asked, holding out a bag of Cheesy Whatsits.

Lara stuck her hand into the crinkly bag.

“Where’s your mum?” said Rina.

Lara placed the bright orange Whatsit on her tongue. “My dad’s picking me up,” she said.

Rina screwed up her face. “Your dad?” she said.

“Rina!”

Over by the climbing frame, a man with white hair waved a thin arm and Rina bolted off towards him. “In a while crocodile,” she said.

By now, the teachers had gone inside, though the playground was still busy with  adults chatting and children eating snacks and chasing each other. Lara trailed over to the largest group. Maybe her dad was talking to the other parents. He didn’t know them. He hadn’t met any before. Maybe he’d want to say hello. But then her mum always said he didn’t like Small Talk.

“Hello Lara,” said Joe’s mum, a spherical woman with so many scarves Lara thought her head might roll off.

Lara blinked at her, then at the floor, shoving her hands into the pockets of her bomber jacket.

“Who’s picking you up today then? Rumpelstiltskin?”

The woman peered down at Lara, rolling her eyes at another mum beside them. Lara glared back. She knew there was a joke but she couldn’t find it. Rumpelstiltskin was a liar — small and wrinkled, a hunchback. Her dad didn’t look like that. She kicked the asphalt. “No.”

The mum Lara didn’t recognise frowned and bent down towards her. “Shall we wait with you?” she said.

Lara swung her rucksack around and started to look through it. “I think I forgot something,” she called over her shoulder as she ran back towards the building.

Lara stopped around the corner when she couldn’t see them anymore. She pressed her back against the wall and listened for the sound of the gate. She waited there, tracing the edges of the bricks with her fingers, until the playground was quiet. She tried to think what her dad would be wearing. He’d have on blue jeans, maybe, and a hat. Last time he was wearing a hat.

Lara smoothed her hair and peaked around the edge of the wall. The playground was empty. The only child in sight was trailing her lunchbox behind her mum beyond the fence. Lara walked back towards the gate. He must’ve forgot the time. Her brother sometimes did that.

Maybe he came early and left. Maybe when she was in the toilet.

She bit the nail of her right forefinger. That seemed right. She’d spent too long in there, trying not to let anyone hear her, wasting time testing the soap. He must have come and gone away again. Maybe he went to get her some chocolate.

She hooked her fingers through the wire fence and leant back, heavy on her arms, and tried to walk her feet up the wire. But the flat soles of her trainers slipped on the damp wire and she fell backwards, landed on her hip and cried out.

Scrambling up, she looked around but it was okay — there was no one. She decided to go and wait on the bench.  

Carved into the back was the message In Memory of Joan Rogers 1924-1990. She hadn’t noticed that before. It must’ve been there, but she hadn’t noticed, so how could she be sure? The world moved around, rearranging itself when she wasn’t looking. It wasn’t supposed to, but it did. She realised her legs were cold and then that water had soaked through her tracksuit bottoms.She couldn’t see the gate from here either. He’d miss her. She decided to go back.

Two buses passed. A man in a wheelchair skidded on the pavement. Lara stared through the wire. A broad man with a leather jacket walked passed, but he didn’t look this way. Then another man passed, surely him, with wavy dark hair tucked into a wide-brimmed hat. He smiled at Lara. Lara smiled back, began to wave, but the man kept walking. She pushed her waving hand into her mouth and bit down on her first finger.

Then the foamy drizzle turned to a pummelling of fat raindrops and it was hard to hear anything over the noise of it. The rain was cold and went straight to her skin. She put her hood up. That was better. Then she cursed herself and tugged it off again. He might not recognise her with it up.

By four fifteen the ground was streaming with runoff. Lara’s face was slippy. She had to keep scooping the water from her eyes. She kept thinking she should go inside and then thinking he would turn up right then and staying another minute, in case he thought she’d left without him. She would’ve got a teacher to ring him but she couldn’t remember if he had a phone or what his number was. Her mum always said if you get lost, stay where you are, but she wasn’t lost, but still she didn’t know what else to do. She was afraid that if she moved nobody would ever find her. And anyway, her knees ached. Her feet squelched in her trainers.

“Ah hem!”

Lara jumped, turning around to see where the noise was coming from. It was a man — a man in a hat! A black hat with a narrow peak. Lara ran over and then froze. She did recognise him — he took some children for work in the Blue Room. He was called… something. “What are you doing?” he said. “Bit late isn’t it?”

Lara shook her head. Her face hurt.

“What?” the something shouted. “Speak up.”

Lara dug her hands into her pockets, making tight fists and kneading them into her stomach.

“Why are you still here? Who’s picking you up? What class are you in?”

He had so many questions. They were heavier than rain. Lara tried to unravel them in her head.

“Andy Brecknock,” she said, “my dad.”

“And is he coming now?” said the something man. “Is he late?”

Lara watched her shoes. They were grey with rain. She shrugged.

“Fine. Well wait under the shelter or something. Don’t get too wet.”

Lara shrugged again and continued to watch her feet. Water was climbing her laces. Like they’re drinking, she thought, splashing her toes in a puddle. She heard the gate and let herself breathe.

She didn’t know the punishment for being here so late, but she imagined it must be severe.

At quarter to five Lara realised she couldn’t feel her toes. She rocked back and forth, thinking about her mum. She was working, a new job, something with old people. She’d explained it, but Lara didn’t get it. It annoyed her when Lara asked the same question again. It would annoy her if she got home and Lara wasn’t there. She’d be tired from work. She’d be angry. With Dad, probably, but with Lara too. Then she’d ring him. Then they’d argue. Then he wouldn’t bother ringing again for months. He hated arguments. Lara could understand that. Maybe she should try to get home by herself. She knew which bus to take.

But the bus driver would ask for money and she didn’t have any.

Hot tears poured down her cheeks then, rolling into her mouth. They were warm on her face and she caught them on her tongue, the sweet saltiness a relief from the metallic rain.

He wasn’t coming. She knew that.

Maybe he never had been.

Maybe nobody had.

Then a worse thought, harder, sharp beneath the lungs: maybe nobody ever would.

Lara pictured her mum arriving home. It was late now, getting dark. She would have dinner and sit on the orange sofa, flick the TV on. She would watch the news or that series with the good but angry man, one episode after another, until her eyes hurt. Then she’d start her nightly staring from the window. She’d never tell what she was staring at. She’d stare and stare and think all her secret thoughts and then it would be late and she’d be tired and she’d go to bed and put on her green nighty, glad of all the space and quiet in the room.

And in the morning she would’ve forgotten Lara completely.

Lara grabbed the fence, clinging to it, tugging it and pushing it, rattling it, biting her cheek until the blood came, mixing with the tears and the hotness inside her and she didn’t care anymore, she didn’t care, she’d lie down here and have the puddles for a blanket. In the morning people would come back. Miss Rodney, or Rina. They’d see her, they’d find her. They wouldn’t be happy, but they’d come.

Lara sat down on the asphalt, not caring anymore when the water soaked through her clothes, hugging her knees to her chest. They lost Blake, her brother, once, and now they’d lost Lara too. She banged her head against her knees. Her teeth ached.

“Eh! Who’s that? What are you doing out here?”

A deep voice cut through the rain. Lara looked around and froze. Someone was coming. It was too late to hide. She tucked her head into her knees and held her breath.

Footsteps spattered towards her. A shadow enveloped her. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Hey, kiddo, what are you doing out here?”

She shrugged, not looking up.

“You’re soaked. Come on up here. What’s your name?”

A hand grasped her elbow. She whimpered. She was tugged up. The grip was firm. She yanked her arm away but the hand held on.

“All right, girl. You’re freezing.”

Lara looked up and saw his face. It was square, pock-marked, thick hair covered by a round grey cap. He looked mean. She glared at him.

The man laughed. “I need to lock up,” he said. “You’ll have to come with me.”

She shook her head and he smiled.

“Let’s go inside. Get you dry at least, eh?”

Lara shook her head again but allowed the man to lead her by the wrist across the playground. Her ears were ringing, making it hard to hear or think. But when she saw which entrance they were headed to she stopped, turning her legs to bolts in the ground. She shook her head.

“What’s wrong?”

She’d been through that door before. Too many times. When she got into fights or shouted out in class or the time Nicky Dobson made her so angry that she called him a p-r-i-k. “I’m fine,” she said.

He crouched beside her. “We need to get you picked up,” he said.

Lara’s face burned. The man took her hand and she gripped it, though it was hard to feel anything in her hands.

“Geoff,” he said, pointing at himself. “I’m sure we’ve met before.”

Geoff pushed open the door and ushered Lara inside. The hallway was dark. He flicked a switch and the light buzzed on. Lara followed him down the empty hall, the sugar-paper displays eery in the quiet. Lara trailed her fingers across the paper, soothed by the familiar texture. They stopped at the head teacher’s office and Geoff knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Mrs. Sampson’s thin voice called from within.

Geoff opened the door and pushed Lara through. Mrs. Sampson’s beige hair was knotted above her left shoulder. Her cardigan was buttoned all the way up.

“I found this one outside,” said Geoff. “Nobody’s come for her.”

Mrs. Sampson nodded, gazing down at Lara. “Your name?” she said. “Miss Rodney’s class, isn’t it?”

Lara looked up at Mrs. Sampson and her ears buzzed. She wiped her dripping nose, then clenched her hands into tight fists at her sides. She could not feel her toes. She opened her mouth to speak but her tongue just hung there, lolling. She tried to think, tried to find it in her head. She moaned, as if the right sounds would come out of their own accord. She coughed. But it was no use — she’d forgotten who she was.

“Ahmm,” she said.

“Pardon?” said Mrs. Sampson. “Speak up, please.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, struggling into the dull space inside her.

Nothing.

At last she said, “I don’t know,” and her breath caught, and it seemed to her that she never had done.

Geoff rocked her by the shoulder and she screwed her face up, trying not to cry.

“Right,” said Mrs. Sampson, pursing her lips so her chin puckered. “Let’s have a look, shall we? Can I have your bag?”

Stiffly, Lara unhooked herself from her SpongeBob rucksack and passed it over the table. Mrs. Sampson took it, grimacing as it dripped on her papers. She held it over the bin. Lara watched Mrs. Sampson’s flickering eyes and felt the blood rush to her head. She leant against Geoff’s side. The room was blurring. Lara gulped.

“Lara Winter,” announced Mrs. Sampson. “Oh, of course. I didn’t recognise you with your hair all hung in rat’s tails. You’re a sight.” Mrs. Sampson sighed. “Well what were you doing out there, all on your own? Why didn’t you come and find someone? Why didn’t you tell Miss Rodney? You’ve got yourself into a state. It’s the middle of winter. Really. What a sight.”

Mrs. Sampson laughed, flashing grey teeth and Lara pushed herself away from the desk, staggering backwards. She shook her head. There were so many questions. So many questions, and she didn’t know any of them. The air turned yellow and she thought she would hiccup. She tried to open her mouth but her jaw was clamped shut. There was nothing in her head now but her name. The strange sound of it echoed around the office. Lara Winter, Lara Winter, Lara Winter.  

Then everything went black.

Lara opened her eyes to see Geoff sitting opposite her. She moved and something crunched beneath her. A beanbag. They were in the reception classroom. Lara had a blanket wrapped around her, a towel under her head. She sat up, her lip quivering, frowning at Geoff.

“All right, miss,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”

He held out a purple block and Lara took it. She brought it up to her face to see what it was. Dairy Milk. She blinked at the nodding man. With his hat off, he looked very old. He was sitting on the teacher’s chair, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. “Go on,” he said, “open it.”

Lara nodded, put the corner between her teeth and pulled, tearing the wrapper. The smooth brown chocolate poked out, its curly writing the same as it always was. She put it in her mouth and bit into the solid sweetness.

“I knew it,” said Geoff. “My kids love that.”

Lara sucked the chocolate. She sat up straighter and pushed her hair out of her mouth. “Everyone likes chocolate,” she said. She tugged at her laces. They were still soaked and stung her fingers. “Do they go to this school?” she said.

Geoff laughed. “I knew you were a chatty one,” he said. “No, they don’t. Not anymore.”

“Why not?”     

Geoff sighed. “They live with their mum.”

Lara took another bite of chocolate.

“Lara!”

The door burst open and a blonde woman in a dripping green raincoat stepped into the room.

“Oh God, Lara” she said, “Oh dear. Mummy’s here now, come on, it’s all right. You poor little thing.”

Lara wriggled from the blanket and ran over to her, wrapping her arms around her mum’s hips. She slipped beneath the raincoat and pressed her face into the silky material, gulping the familiar scent.

Ms. Winter turned to Geoff, who had risen from his seat. “Thanks for waiting with her,” she said.

Geoff knelt to retrieve the chocolate Lara had dropped and handed it to the woman. “Take this,” he said. “It’s good for shock.”

Lara reached a hand out to take it but her mum batted it away. “She’s fine, thank you,” she said, pulling Lara to the door.

Outside the rain was still falling and Ms. Winter tugged Lara’s hood up. “Your father,” she said. “Christ. He could’ve called. I had to leave work. I can’t just leave work like that. I’ll be fired. It’s not professional. Christ, he could’ve called earlier. Let the school know at least. He could’ve — it’s nearly seven o’clock.”

Lara shrugged and the rain from inside her hood ran down her neck.

“Not even a call! Just buggers off. As though he doesn’t give a damn about his own daughter. I don’t know. Why didn’t you go and find someone, Lara? What’s wrong with you? Waiting outside for two hours — two hours! In this rain? It’s freezing. You’ll catch your death. What were you thinking? Eh?”

Lara tried to pull her hand from her mum’s but it was gripped tight.

“What will they think of me? I mean, what kind of mother? Standing in the rain like that. Christ.”

Ms. Winter’s spiky monologue went on and Lara pushed her hood down, dropping her head back to taste the rain again. She turned around and saw a man leaving the building — Geoff. She waved at him and he waved back.

Ms. Winter tugged Lara’s arm. “Come on, Lara, please.”

Lara tripped and Ms. Winter swore and tugged her up. Lara yelped. Her arm had been twisted. She started to shudder with tiny, jerking sobs. Finally, just before the gate, Ms. Winter stopped. She crouched down so their faces were level, almost touching.

“Lara,” she said, “oh baby. I’m sorry.”

Her voice cracked and her words choked. She stood up and held Lara close against her side, stroking her daughter’s matted hair.

“It’s okay now, baby. Mama’s here. Let’s go home now. We’ll have a hot chocolate and a cuddle, won’t we? Just you and me.”

**

Xanthi Barker is a writer and primary school mentor in London. Her stories have appeared in Bare Fiction, Mslexia and Litro. She was recently highly commended in Spread the Word’s Life Writing Prize 2018. Her ‘novellette’ One Thing will be published next year by Open Pen. Find her on Twitter @xanthibarker.

**

Image: Flickr / Brian Crawford

Green-Skinned Handsome Man

I sat in the bar of the Sunrise Diner, nursing a key lime pie milkshake and watching the beginning of the Space Age. As Sputnik flashed on the television over the bar, the holo-characters murmured among themselves, sounding, as far the Historion knew, just like the ancient Americans who had seen the event in reality.

Ganymede’s new Federal Party government had decided that the kids of our colony world needed to learn more Earth history, so they’d voted to establish the Historion in the old Harakhtes water plant, as the hyperloop infrastructure to the major arcologies was already there. The plan was to maintain seven “period rooms” that used a mix of holograms and props to create a replica of a typical scene in a past civilization. Between the different rooms, the Historion offered the colony’s kids and anyone else who cared to visit a condensed world history lesson, from the rise of agriculture at Gobekli Tepe around 9000 BCE to the Colonial Revolutions of the 2290s CE, just over a hundred years ago. I was a local history buff, so I was now on the Historion’s payroll as an antiquarian, a fixer, looking for continuity errors in the displays. Today, I was beta-testing the fifth of the seven period rooms: an Iowa diner on October 4th, 1957 CE. The heyday of the American Empire.

I sucked more of the milkshake into my mouth, then tipped my head back and let it run down my throat. This wasn’t the way most people drank, in 1957 or today, but I didn’t have a choice. I was a lóng rén, a dragon man, one of the gengineered soldier races created by the Chinese in World War Four. My ancestors had been modified in utero with DNA from Komodo dragons and the Malagasy giant chameleon. As a result of that, I stood 2.5 meters tall, had green scaly skin (armored like a monitor’s but with a chameleon’s lattice of guanine nanocrystals that allowed me to change color) a long prehensile tail, and a Komodo dragon’s heavy-jawed head with a chameleon’s projectable tongue. The Chinese lost the war, but the peoples they created were still around.  Most lóng rén today lived inside Themis, the asteroid that an international commission had assigned as my people’s homeland after WWIV. Much of the my soldier ancestors’ culture was still dominant there. Even my name, Epaminondas Liú, followed their naming practice, with the first name of a great warrior of history and the family name of one of China’s imperial families. When I’d left Themis on an ice freighter, I’d learned quickly that a pretentious-sounding name didn’t go well with looking like a V-game monster. I mostly went by Ep now, as it was suitably gruff and dull-sounding for a being that everyone thought should be stupid.

But I was getting maudlin. It was time to get to work. The food was good, so I needed to test the conversational parameters. I clicked my fingers, a signal that I was ready to interact with the holo-characters. Within a few seconds, one leaned over to talk to me. The character was a Caucasian male wearing the clothing of the time: blue jeans and an AFL T-shirt. “Whaddya think about that, huh? The Reds have finally done it! Put a machine up into space, just like in Amazing Stories.”

“Hold it,” I said. The holographic components of the room froze: the customers, the TV, and the scene out the window. The chairs and most of the food-preparation equipment remained, and the cook’s hologram flickered off to reveal a kitchenbot. I tapped my datagoggles to activate my edit authority: they were a historical relic themselves in this age of datalenses, but I hadn’t been able to find lenses that fit my reptilian eyes. “Historion, replace all references to American Football League with National Football League-no, better, Major League Baseball. The AFL didn’t exist at this time. Also, new entry for the visitors’ lenses glossary overlay: ‘Reds’ as a synonym for ‘Soviet Empire,’ with tabs to the Vpedia entries on ‘Soviet Empire,’ ‘propaganda,’  and ‘Cold War One.’”

I looked around the still diner. Something else was missing, something I’d read about as an important part of the culture of this era. I snapped my fingers, my stubby claws scraping against each other. “Music! That’s it! Historion, add a jukebox in the corner. Red vinyl, coin-operated. Add an interactive feature so that kids can use it.”

The low-level AI running the facility complied immediately with my request, a jukebox shimmering into existence in a millisecond. “What should the music library be, Ep?”

I hesitated for a moment, then realized there could only be one choice. “Chuck Berry, the greatest musician of this or any age. Upload all of his records that were available at this point in time. Add the B sides as well. And…restart.”

The holocharacters unfroze, and “Maybellene” began to play from microspeakers in the room’s walls. By some trick of holographic ventriloquism, it sounded exactly as if it was coming from the jukebox. I shook my head back and forth in delight: this was my favorite song. When I’d heard it as a youngster in Themis, it had sparked my curiosity about both other ways of living and history. I wanted to know what a V8 Ford was, and what it felt like to drive one up a hill. Or what it felt like to drive anything. Or what a hill was like: the hollowed interior of Themis was almost entirely flat. As I swayed to the beat, I reflected that things could be worse. I had a decent job here, a nice apartment in the Lakhmu Arcology, and enough free time to do my own research and create new educational modules for Vpedia. If only I had a social life…

Then the doors burst open, and I remembered why I didn’t want one.

“What the hell are you doing, Ep?” Nasir Melnyk, prop director for the Historion, was standing in the doorway at the head of a group of visitors. He snapped his fingers angrily, and the holo-characters froze again, the five citizens behind him looking around the room curiously. Oh, gods. People. And Melnyk hated my guts, he’d never liked having one of my people working here. Still, I couldn’t respond angrily to him. If there was one thing I’d learned in my life after leaving Thetis, it was that the giant lizard man was always the bad guy in a conflict.

“What’s the problem, Nasir?” I responded evenly.

“It’s Mister Melnyk to you!” the little man shouted. “And what do you mean, what’s the problem? You’re the problem, dragon man! You call yourself an antiquarian and you sit at a bar in fifties America looking like the period’s conception of an alien while I’m trying to show these good people what their  history looked like? How unrealistic is that? You’re completely breaking period immersion!”

I tried to ignore the anger building up inside me, putting on my fake smile. The one that didn’t show any of my teeth, so as not to alarm bigots like Nasir. “I was beta-testing this bar, Mr. Melnyk. I reprogrammed a few characters, tried the milkshakes, and added a jukebox with some Chuck Berry records-”

Nasir snorted, cutting me off. “Like the opinions of one of your kind matter when it comes to food. And if Chuck Berry is that noise I heard coming in, wipe it from the system immediately. This exhibit focuses on the Space Age, we don’t need trash like that clouding the message.”

Something inside me snapped. The prejudice I was used to, but criticizing Chuck Berry was over the line. “Shut up, Melnyk!” I said. The little man was so shocked that he actually obeyed. “These exhibits aren’t infoslides about one thing, they’re alive, pieces of what the period would actually have been like. Time periods aren’t defined by just one event. At the start of the Space Age, Chuck Berry’s music was taking America by storm. His music sparked rock and roll, and was danced to by generations of teenagers. It belongs here.” Nasir tried to say something, but I rolled right over him. “And another thing that was happening in this period: the beginning of the end of American segregation. In September 1957, one month before Sputnik, the governor of Arkansas deployed the state National Guard to prevent black students from entering a high school. It became such a big deal that the American president at the time-that First Atomic War general, Eisenhower-nationalized the state guard and sent federal troops to make sure the black students could go to school. If you’re going for complete accuracy, non-white people probably wouldn’t even be allowed in a typical American diner of this time period. Which would make all of us here, and most people on Ganymede, be breaking period immersion.” I paused for a moment, taking in the stunned look on Nasir’s face and the interest from the spectactors. Most of them had probably never heard a dragon man speak before. “Chuck Berry’s music was about that, too. He was a minority breaking into mainstream music. He was turned out of concerts booked for him when the organizers realized he wasn’t white.” I stepped forward, looming over Nasir. I wanted this message to sink in. “Just because you’re working on an American Empire exhibit doesn’t mean you have to import that era’s prejudice and hate. Plus, only incompetent historians try to simplify an era down to one ‘message.’ So the Chuck Berry music stays. Okay?”

Nasir only nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat.

“Good. Just wanted to make sure we were clear on that, Nasir.” I stressed his first name.

“Yes, Ep,” he squeaked. He left the room at a pace just short of a jog, the visitors following him.

I turned back to the bar and ordered another milkshake, trying to shake off the sense that my words had fallen on deaf ears. Suddenly, I heard a cough from behind me and turned around.

One of Nasir’s tour group remained, a slight woman wearing the blue jumpsuit of a Ganymede Power Consortium engineer. “I’m Saanvi Cissé,” she said. “I just wanted to say…that was really brave, standing up to him like that. We know what it’s like to be a member of one of the more unusual offshoots of humanity, on a small colony like this.” I noted the slim metal band around her forehead: Saanvi was a Multitude, one carrying the recorded memories of others. “It was also…kind of hot,” she said, smiling. “I was thinking, would you like to go out sometime?”

I smiled back, for real this time. “I know a great nightclub in Ninlil Crater. How about tomorrow at twenty-one hundred?”
“That would be great,” she said. “See you then!” She strolled out of the room.

I snapped my fingers and the holograms restarted. As Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” began to play, my grin widened. Maybe, just for tomorrow, I could be a green-skinned handsome man.

**

Sam Matey is a 17-year old Environmental Science major at the University of Southern Maine, and loves thinking and writing about the future of humanity and its biosphere. He runs a newsletter about our current epoch, The Weekly Anthropocene, where you can learn more about the hopes for humanity’s future.

**

Image: Flickr / belpo

“Musk” is the first chapter in Polis Loizou’s novel Disbanded Kingdom, published on 05 June 2018 by Cloud Lodge Books. Reproduced with the kind permission of permission of Cloud Lodge Books. Copyright ©Polis Loizou 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Musk

Maybe God is the man he needs.

Midnight’s been and gone, left him stranded in a part of the city his feet have never tramped before. An odour with a tang, like the remaining salt in a tub of popcorn, hangs between the blocks of flats. Then there’s the scent of the man himself, tossed back and laid out to guide him, a leather road through the dark. It’s a shaky need taking hold of Oscar, for the stranger to turn around and notice him. One look, then the guy can carry on walking.

The noise of boys ricochets around the streets. A droning rap and a dancehall rhythm, pumping from about the wheels. It comes back to him, that story glimpsed in strangers’ Metros on the tube. A man got stabbed to death in Croydon, waiting for a bus with his kid. Same could go for him tonight — could be scraped off the curb tomorrow with the dog turds and phonecards for Zimbabwe. The thought propels him along.

The stranger’s legs vanish down a side street. They blinked grey in the streetlight and then they were gone. It was those legs that spurred Oscar on in the first place. Caught his eye in Caffè Nero, when the man stood up in his sharp grey suit, tailored to fit, and dragged his eye further up it ‘til Oscar was in Heaven. All other noise in the place had ebbed. That loungy cover of Nobody’s Fault but Mine coming out of the speakers, sung by some chick far from Nina. Woman sang like she was hosting a suburban barbecue, not mourning her soul in a Baptist church. (Water and fire — faith is elemental, essential.) Back in the café, the man in the grey suit looked to his left, his lime eye trapping the sun. Cut Oscar’s breath in half. The guy was hunting, or angry, or horny. Man on a mission. And when he stepped out of the place, Oscar was three steps behind him.

But that was hours ago. The sun has set, the streets have emptied. The stranger’s gone from coffee alone to beer in a pub with friends, and somewhere along the way there was the Central line. Bodies pressed together in the rush-hour clash, a guy with sweat patches in Oscar’s face and a stout woman with fake nails clipping her iPad. A Nigerian voice in the platform speakers, Do not obstruct the doors. There was Charing Cross Road, people with placards decrying something, Tories or terrorists, then Chandos Place and then the Strand, and an old woman with a shawl playing Strauss on a violin as pedestrians passed by. A strand of her hair caught in the breeze, or maybe it was gelled, or so filthy it stood starched and erect in the night.

Now they’re in the post-midnight streets, a far cry from Kensington. Far from Charlotte.

She’ll be in bed already. She’ll’ve checked her watch and turned in. Straightened his duvet and patted it down in lieu of his thigh. The thought of Charlotte, of going back home to her, makes his stomach go cold. It’s not as if anything has happened, other than they forgot how to talk to each other. It used to be easy to play Mother and Son, now it’s an endurance test. The time has come to fly the nest.

Grey-suited man has turned a corner. He’s been prowling all night, an old-world lycanthrope. The Wolf-Man. Leather shoes on his feet, pointed at the ends and pricking the air. Sharp white teeth, flashed once when he answered his phone on the Strand (the noise of buses drowned his voice out). If only Oscar could touch, and be touched, by this body that won’t even glance behind it. There was a moment at the pub earlier, one of those joints made of polished wood and stained glass, where the man turned to his friends and looked in Oscar’s direction. The only time he looked at the boy, and didn’t even see him. Guys used to, before whatever lever was pulled and their dicks fell limp. Should’ve landed a daddy when he had his pick of them. Too late now. The sell-by date sailed by without his even noticing it.

Wolf-Man stood up from his table of buddies. He was going to come over, to flash a grin, punch him, have his way.

Instead, he took his grey-suited self over to the bar to buy another round. His jacket was off, a waistcoat hugged his back. Man was a moving statue, put him on the fourth plinth. Not like his Cityboy buddies back at the table, swigging beers as their shirts cradled man-boobs and bunched at the shoulders.

Wolf-Man’s the sort of man who’ll turn his back and walk away.

Walk away.

Walk away.

What time is it? What day? The Cityboy friends were wearing pink, so it must be a Friday. Or it was, in any case. Saturday’s crept up on them, wherever they are.

No text from Charlotte. She’ll imagine he’s out with friends, Chelsea girls, sipping bubbly in the backs of cars.

The man’s strutting along, who knows where or to whom. Some wench with a beauty vlog, probably. A stylish young bitch in a scarf who’d take it standing up. It makes him cringe. Feminists would slap him, Bella would slap him. But it’s too late. The lust has taken hold, parted Oscar from his mind. A man has got into his head again, an untouchable, and he’s stepping out of his sharp grey suit.

He’s everything Terry wasn’t. Pecs like seat cushions, thick hairy arms. He’ll wear plain black shorts beneath the trousers, not those ironic-pop-art trunks from H&M. He could grow a full beard if he wanted to. His socks are a single colour and they match. His lips are full. He knows you want him. He doesn’t like Shoreditch and he’s never heard of Mumford & Sons. He’ll never write you a song and he’ll never kiss your cheek on the tube. He knows what he’s looking for.

When Oscar’s thoughts turn to Terry, the boy is always cool in a cloud of smoke, on a red leather sofa. He stares at Oscar, like that first time, and he smiles as he sips his G&T. Mother’s Ruin. Then they’re walking along South Bank, hand-in-hand, weaving their way through the crowds and marvelling at the German Christmas markets. The chocolate-covered fruit and coils of bratwurst. Beer in the air, grilled meat. Terry’s black-and-white scarf. His surprisingly deep voice, like a late-night DJ’s. That voice hardening as he stands with a taut back across the room, packing his bags and laying their romance to rest.

Unreal as it sometimes seems, it happened. It was, and then it wasn’t.

There’s nothing in Oscar’s room to remind him of Terry now. All that remained were the parting gifts of Bella, Maya and Lukas, former friends of Terry’s who switched allegiance in the split. But each of them holds a dozen memories, flashbacks to that old romance, spring-loaded to attack at any given moment. Filmstrips loop in Oscar’s head. They play and repeat, and cut, and pause.

Terry in a cloud of smoke on a red leather sofa, smiling as he sips his G&T.

Terry on a red leather sofa.

Terry and his G&T.

A dull ache grinds its way around Oscar’s sternum, feels like a spiral or an opening hand. This must be what a tapeworm is like, slithering through your body, munching you skinny as a cokehead model. Or maybe the hunger’s more basic. Maybe he should stop at a Subway.

Something in the air says the Thames is nearby, but surely they travelled North? Maybe they’ve ended up in Camden, Islington, Little Venice   somewhere with canals. In any case, a territory untouched by Charlotte’s radar. Graffiti on the walls, FUCK THE SYSTEM and YES, as if in conversation. It would scare her.

Oscar’s thoughts must have stayed his pace, ‘cause Wolf-Man is far ahead now.

A voice is drifting through the maze of dim-lit blocks. His. The Wolf-Man’s.

He’s on the phone to someone. Oscar’s whole body tenses, his every hair stands to attention — the thousands, the millions…

‘Yeah, mate, just getting home.’

And with that, the old sadness descends. Wolf-Man’s voice is from a different being. It’s too high, too London for those teeth, and those arms, those legs. Throwing words like awesome and pissed around like an undergrad, when he should’ve had the gruff voice of a fairytale woodcutter. Bark and musk. Terry wins that round.

A car screeches in the distance, makes them both turn around. It’ll be a gang, jumpy-edgy boys with knives. Or Charlotte in a cab, come to take him home.

Neither. It’s gone. The quiet takes hold once more.

And the man is facing his way.

Everything goes still. Oscar’s been caught by those lime eyes. The stranger’s face is hidden in shadows, its expression unclear, but he’s undoubtedly looking in Oscar’s direction. Now’s a time to pray, for faith to do some good.

Oscar’s heart freezes. His body goes into autopilot, leans against a lamp-post, without his having planned it. A body made of fumes, pigeon shit and discount porn. The filth of the city. It’s lucky he looks so down-and-out, faded T-shirt and well-fucked Converse. Lucky that the dye-job has rusted to pastiche. The man will think him a tramp, or a really shit rent boy. He ponders Oscar. He knows. He’s going to come over and slap him, rent him, push him into a canal. Instead he turns his back.

Walks away.

Walks away.

Oscar can’t follow. It’s so much easier to lean against this wall in the dead of night, to feel like a whore rather than to be in love.

**

Polis Loizou is a co-founder of London’s Off-Off-Off Broadway Company, which primarily performs his plays, and has had a series of successes since their first hit at the Buxton Fringe in 2009. His short stories have been featured in The Stockholm Review of Literature and Liars’ League NYC, and he is a frequent contributor to Litro Magazine. Born and raised in Cyprus, Polis is currently based in South London. Disbanded Kingdom is his first published novel.