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The following is excerpted from Grevious by H. S. Cross. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux April 9th 2019. Copyright © 2019 by H. S. Cross. All rights reserved.

From Grievous (coming out April 9, 2019):

At breakfast in Ely, John could hear himself being cold to Owain though Meg seemed not to notice. It was her birthday; she ate with pleasure, and her cheeks glowed. As if to make a point, Owain kept reaching across the table to kiss her. Of course, it was his right, but to break off conversation repeatedly and murmur My darling little girl was overdoing it, surely.

—Now, John, Owain was saying, you mustn’t hurry this afternoon, not in the slightest.

John and Meg had planned an afternoon in Saffron Walden, to visit the graveyard and to collect Cordelia after school for tea with Mrs. Kneesworth.

—You three have a grand old natter with Mrs. K, the old battle-axe.

Another kiss.

—My darling girl.

It would be sickening if it weren’t so transparent: husbands only overdid it when they had something to hide. Likely Owain had not so much started over with her as he had moved the wife to a different town so he could carry on with his pieces in the first. More obvious was Owain’s hostile maneuver in buying a house without a spare room. By many measures the new house was better than the old, but there was no place for John in it. Cordelia had decamped to a cupboard-cum-sewing room and given him her bed, but his neck had begun to ache as soon as he arrived, necessitating another drop.

As they left for the station, Meg put her arm through his. She had been chattering about the new house and town, and now she began to describe the Meeting in Ely, though it sounded as though she’d gone only once. Tradesmen where shouting across the road, and the unsaid pressed like the weight of the scrum.

—Darling, she said, closing her hand around his. Let’s not speak of it. Let’s agree, shall we, not to?

He tried to stop, but she pulled him along.

—You know, don’t you, darling, how grateful I am?

She used the voice that repelled every protest.

—We’re all grateful, for everything you did and are doing.

—I can’t think what you mean.

—Darling.

Sweet, shaming. He sounded like a child and knew it.

—We’ve such a beautiful day. Don’t let’s spoil it.

He followed her, chastened, into the carriage and smiled as she, through a stray association, began to reminisce about the production of Patience they’d both been part of at Cambridge. He’d almost forgotten it, but she conjured every detail.

—Knee breeches vermillion!

A man such as Jamie would simply insist. I’m afraid this won’t do. I’m afraid we must speak of it. It being the madcap string of—what to call them even? Travels? Consultations? Dramatics?—adventures you followed from the moment I left you until the end of August, one hundred and twenty- five interminable days later, when you wrote from Liverpool that We were coming home All of Us, that Everything Was Splendid, that you were, no explanation, Cured. And as for the Splendid New House, it’s plain our holiday arrangements will have to change. But if he said those things, her eyes would overflow, she’d begin coughing, and it would all come around to his spoiling things again.

In Saffron Walden, Meg bought chrysanthemums to put on Delia’s grave. It was something they did every holiday, but this time they found weeds grown up around the headstone. Meg pulled them out with horror and apology, and John realized she was treating him as if he required consolation, presumably for the distress of seeing his wife’s grave untended, this woman dead ten times longer than he’d even known her. Meg was acting as if she were the one whose life was satisfactory, whereas he—wife in the ground, life held hostage by some wretched school— were the one deserving solace. For a moment he froze in fear that she might suggest, obscenely, he marry again.

—It doesn’t seem so long ago, she was saying, does it?

—On the contrary.

—Oh, darling!

He had always believed Delia was pregnant when she died. He’d found markings in her diary that suggested it, and to his shame, rather than grieve at the notion, John had felt only relief that the child had died with her. What sort of creature would it have been, he’d told himself, a child conceived while in his heart he made love to another? He’d always believed it had been a boy, who would now be Cordelia’s age, just old enough to come to the Academy. Now as he carried the grave weeds over to the rough, it occurred to him that the child, if it had indeed existed, would exist still in this very grave, inside her, without name or headstone or even a prayer. Was it wrong to pray for a child you’d no proof existed? Perhaps it was even sacrilegious. This was the kind of question Jamie’s father could answer. You could ask, and he’d listen, and all the embarrassment would vanish as he told you decisively: Yes, pray this; or No, and here is why. Was writing the man so far out of the question? Yet if the Bishop’s portcullis were to raise again for him, Meg would accuse him of backsliding to the superstitions of his childhood.

Did it go against the point of love to keep chambers of one’s self sealed from one’s beloved? Of course it was all hypothetical, wildly so, but if it ever ceased to be hypothetical, he vowed he would renounce the church and conform himself to the Testimonies they affirmed. As they left the cemetery by the far side, he drew a cross in his hand with his middle finger, This is my solemn vow.

✦

John had always been a favorite with Mrs. Kneesworth, and he realized as she welcomed them that he’d neglected her. After everything she’d done to help in March, he’d sent her updates from Paris, but since then not a word. She appeared not to hold it against him and kissed them all repeatedly. Since the Líohts returned, she had seen them only once, when the removers came. Since then she had been trying to get them to pay her a visit, but ah, she understood how very busy they’d been. And Mr. Grieves, dear Mr. Grieves, he knew he was always welcome in her spare room should he ever need accommodation in Saffron Walden. Of course, her room would be nothing to the rooms in the grand new house in Ely. John glanced at Cordelia, who returned an expression roughly equivalent to boys kicking one another under the table.

Mrs. K had made a tower of sandwiches, and although she obviously had a tower of questions, she allowed the conversation to unfold in the customary way: what John was getting up to (a book; an intriguing new boy in his House), how Meg was keeping in Ely (splendidly; plans for next spring’s garden; service with the housebound), how Cordelia was finding the long journey to school (quite short, actually), whether she didn’t after all fancy Mrs. Kneesworth’s spare bedroom (so kind, but no), just how churchy was Ely (rather), how in any case it wasn’t Saffron Walden (never), what the bachelor who’d bought their house was getting up to (travesties).

—And you still haven’t told me about your Grand Tour.

Meg glanced at the clock:

—Your da will be wondering where we’ve got to.

—It’s only five, Cordelia replied. He said not to hurry.

—You mustn’t dash off yet.

And so a monologue was undertaken about their Grand Tour, first by Meg, who put quite a gloss on it, and then by Cordelia. To hear the two of them tell it, the whole thing had been one lark after another, ridiculous foreigners alternating with marvelous foreigners, the account peppered with quaint foreign phrases and their confident assessments of The Germans, The Hungarians, The Swiss, The French, The Italians, The Americans, The Irish.

—And how is Mr. Líoht?

John thought Mrs. K’s voice had turned sour. Shouldn’t she try harder to conceal it? But Mr. Líoht, Meg assured her, had never been better. Business was thriving, and he was compelled to travel less than previously, scarcely at all. In short, there was nothing under the sun that could be judged unsatisfactory.

Mrs. K turned to Cordelia:

—And whatever became of your correspondent, dear?

Cordelia blanched, and John saw her gaze flit to the clock.

—Pardon?

—The person who wrote to me in the summer, Mrs. K said. I always assumed it was a young man, but I was never certain.

The girl’s face was flushing, her cup was being set on the table, and a polite smile was forming, one plainly false, yet one John realized he had seen before and taken as true.

—The one you asked to write to me, dear.

—I feel queer.

John had never seen his goddaughter be rude, yet here she was not only interrupting Mrs. K but refusing her mother’s help and now actually pulling Mrs. K into the kitchen.

—Whatever was that? Meg asked.

They’d closed the door, and John could glean nothing through it. The mantel clock ticked louder than a galloping horse and then commenced an elaborate chiming.

—I ought to stay with Mrs. K next time, he said.

—Darling. Don’t be that way.

She flexed her fingers as if they were stiff. He set his cup on the table and took her hand in his. The edge left her face. She sat back on the settee and closed her eyes. His lips beat. He could see the pulse in her throat. It wasn’t too late, couldn’t be. If Christ were to be believed, it never was, not until the end, and that wasn’t yet.

✦

—It was only a young man I met in Budapest, a medical student.

Mrs. K raised her brow.

—It was entirely gallant, but you can understand, can’t you, why I didn’t want to bother my mother with it?

Mrs. K could certainly understand. She’d had a German suitor herself once. This Cordelia had heard many times, but she smiled as if she hadn’t. (Had Tommy Gray not received the update telling him not to write Mrs. K? She’d written it right after the first, at least she’d thought of writing it . . . had she really lost the thread once her father had . . . train, Lourdes—)

—But, Cordelia dear, why would you ask this man to write to me rather than writing yourself?

She pretended to cough again, and Mrs. K fetched some water.

—It’s such a tedious story.

Mrs. K settled into a chair.

Oh, dear, the truth was that they’d been in a rush. Their train was earlier than they thought, and this boy—the medical student?—yes, this poor boy was simply in love with her, and she felt ever so sorry for him and so she’d tried to make him feel useful and asked him to write to Mrs. K for her. But she hadn’t said America! She’d said Austria.

But what about the rest? Mrs. K persisted. He mentioned a doctor, Mr. Felix Rush in Asheville, North Carolina? She took down a tin and produced a letter.

Oh, dear!—she snatched it—What a misunderstanding! There had been an article in a journal about such a man. The boy must have somehow confused it with Austria. He was foreign and tearful and she needed to be rid of him. It had been unwise, she knew, but no harm had come of it.

But what if the young man turned up at her door? He sounded unstable.

But Mrs. K needn’t worry! He was Hungarian and penniless and couldn’t afford to leave Budapest.

Then why had the letter been postmarked Kent? It was an English letter from an English correspondent. It didn’t look foreign and neither did the penmanship.

Was that so? Could she see the envelope? How curious. How entirely curious! But . . . ah, now see, she knew exactly what had happened. What a circus! This penniless Hungarian doctor-in-training had a friend, a kind older doctor from England who was in Budapest at the time lecturing at the medical school. They had spent time together. No, he hadn’t examined her mother, he was a dental doctor. But . . . what must have happened was that her Hungarian—his name was Stefan—Stefan must have been overwhelmed by the prospect of writing in English, even though he so desperately wanted to help, and so he must have got the English dentist to write it for him. And to save the postage, the dentist must have taken it back with him to England and sent it from there. What an adventure! Wasn’t life funny?  

**

H. S. Cross was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She was educated at Harvard College and has taught at Friends Seminary, among other schools. She lives in New York.

The following story is published with permission of BlazeVOX [books] and Andrew Farkas. The story originally appeared in Denver Quarterly 49.1.

The City of the Sunsphere

At Heliopolis, we saw ruined buildings where the priests had lived.  For it is said, anciently, this was the principle residence of the priests who studied philosophy and astronomy.  But there are no longer such a body of persons or such pursuits. No one was pointed out to us on the spot as presiding over these studies, but only persons who repeated sacred rites, and those who explained to strangers the peculiarities of the obelisk*.

– Strabo, Geographica (XVII.1:29) [*slightly altered]

And now the new Sunsphere is the cynosure of Knoxville. Standing 6,520 feet tall, its base is a black, cylindrical tower capped by a circular crown that extends well past the parameters of the column accentuated by equally black spires which carry the eye to the orb. The orb is a perfect globe of gold hovering twenty feet above the crown. It rotates thirty times per second, 108,000 times per hour precisely as does the Crab Pulsar, located 6,520 light years away near the constellation Taurus in the center of the Crab Nebula. The Crab Nebula and the Crab Pulsar were created by the Supernova of 1054 (SN1054), although the exact date of the event is unknown. The Crab Pulsar is a neutron star six miles in diameter, far smaller yet much denser than the Earth’s sun.  Again, mimicking the Crab Pulsar, the Sunsphere’s orb emits a concentrated beam of light that makes the sphere appear to pulse because of its rotations. If the orb could be decelerated, the light beam would match that of a lighthouse or emergency vehicle. The Sunsphere and the Crab Pulsar also emit radio pulses and X-rays, but only the X-rays are susceptible to Quasi-Periodic Oscillations (QPOs); hence the X-ray emissions vary, the light waves and the radio pulses remain constant. Once the Sunsphere was 266 feet tall, consisting of a green, girder-supported tower and a golden sphere made of connected hexagons. It did not pulse with light. It did not emit radio waves. It did not emit X-rays. It had a red light on a pole at the zenith to warn airplane pilots. On July 4, 2054, an explosion erupted around the Sunsphere, engulfing the structure in red, yellow, green, and blue flames. After the blast, a crimson and cobalt cloud was left behind. When the smoke dispersed, the new Sunsphere stood in place of the former. The orb began spinning. The city filled with light.

§§

To the southeast of the Sunsphere, windows reflecting golden beams, is Knoxville City Hospital. In OR 1058, Yang Wie-Te, a second-generation Chinese-American, a physicist and astronomer, is in critical condition. He proved that the Crab Pulsar and the new Sunsphere are in synchronicity with each other. He is supposed to deduce the meaning of the cosmic alignment. He is supposed to translate the messages being transmitted through the radio waves, light emissions, and X-rays. He lies prone on an operating table. Whether he has solved the mystery of the Sunsphere and the Crab Pulsar is unknown. The operating room, contrary to the rest of the hospital, is painted white and the tables are stainless steel.  The doctors, nurses, and assistants surrounding the astronomer wear suits of aquamarine, including facemasks, caps, and gloves. Their hands move rapidly. They speak in curt, terse commands or laconic repetitions. From the celeritous and ever-increasing activity, it can be deduced that the physicist is in a worsening state of dissolution. Should Mr. Yang die, he would be subject to the following penalizations: a $250,000 fine, the incarceration of his entire family in health resorts for the despondent and valetudinary located in Farragut (or Far West Knoxville), the marking of his entire family with the sign of the Theta (theta for thanatos, the death imprint). Yang Wie-Te’s descendants will also be liable for any destruction caused by the physicist’s death which could reach upwards of one hundred billion dollars to assorted insurance companies, banks, law firms, and other public and private interests.  Ultimately, Mr. Yang’s family may face the severest sentence: expulsion from the City of Knoxville. These sanctions, and perhaps more, would be effected if the astronomer should pass away because of City Code 529: Thou shalt not die, lest ye release a shock wave. And it is true, whenever a human passes away the corpse immediately releases a shock wave that ranges in power from a quarter ton nuclear weapon to a one megaton hydrogen bomb. On account of these puissant bursts, death is prohibited. With modern medicine, however, aging and dying are purely voluntary.  Hence, no one has died in Knoxville in over twenty years. Yet a question arises: how could Yang Wie-Te allow himself to degenerate to his current status? No matter the reason, the penalties and fines to be exacted on Mr. Yang’s family are theoretical, superfluous. At Knoxville’s current population, and given the physicist’s enthalpy and exergy readings, the shock wave from his body would be the genesis of a chain reaction of shock waves that would obliterate each building, that would eradicate the entire population of 100,000,000 Knoxvillians, if not the entire world.

§§

Second only to the Sunsphere, Knoxville City Hospital is the tallest manmade structure in the city (since the aforementioned tower can no longer be considered manmade).  From the roof of the sanatorium, the entire megalopolis is viewable, with the exception of parts of the Northern Wasteland blocked by the former World’s Fair tower. Here one can see that the majority of the population has clogged the streets, parks, bridges, sidewalks, riverbanks, and other open spaces of the city. Although the Knoxville Health Commission (KHC) inundates the airwaves, satellite signals, Internet, newspapers, magazines, etc. with calming broadcasts and Public Placation Announcements (PPAs), the news of Yang Wie-Te’s condition has been disseminated by some means. Utterly docile, the citizens understand that if Mr. Yang expires, Knoxville, but more importantly the Sunsphere, will cease to exist. Yet the soothing tones, the conciliating reports, and the optimistic premonitions do nothing to alleviate the tension. In spite of the danger, such masses of people moved to Knoxville because of the new Sunsphere.  Being a neutron star (although comparatively infinitesimal) like the Crab Pulsar, it supplies the megalopolis with an almighty source of energy. Hence electricity is inexpensive. The citizens, however, are also filled with this vigor. No one in Knoxville needs to sleep any longer than three or four hours per night; only those who fight against their own inherent vivacity (which is also illegal) go without exercise; only those who eschew their intrinsic verve fail to accomplish their goals. Lassitude, as are aging and death, is a voluntary condition. Moreover, the Sunsphere provides the city with a constant heat source. The mean temperature in Knoxville is 85º F. Finally, much as neutron stars generate the most powerful magnetic fields in the universe, the Sunsphere’s magnetism is due to its mystery and the mystery inherent in its connection to the Crab Pulsar. The answer to this enigma is what each citizen of Knoxville hopes to learn. Yang Wie-Te had been attempting to deduce the answer for over eight years when he was checked into Knoxville City Hospital by his assistant. He was found on the outskirts of the Northern Wasteland.

East of the Sunsphere, along Summit Hill, are Market Square and the Old City, until Summit Hill becomes Martin Luther King (MLK).  Market Square and the Old City are an entertainment district composed of subterranean clubs: literally subterranean. Aboveground, this recreational zone is constructed almost uniformly of red brick. The streets are older, still molded from asphalt in most places down to limestone in others. Meticulous care has been taken in this borough to preserve an aged appearance of no particular year.  Gas lights line Gay Street. South Central is made of brick. Advertisements for products no longer in use, whose use is no longer remembered are still prevalent. A structure rumored to be a saloon and a bordello in the middle to late 1800s continues to be both to this day. Past the Old City, the houses are concatenated, and yet most Eastern Knoxvillians still live underground. Whereas the citizens of Knoxville hope to solve the mystery of the Sunsphere, or to have the mystery solved for them, there are three cults whose beliefs find their origins in the exact date of the occurrence of SN1054, which explain their interest in the World’s Fair Tower. The East is home to the Believers, also known as the Doomsdayers or the Apocryphites.  They believe SN1054 was first observed by Sadiae Fujiwara, a Japanese poet, on May 29, 1054. Astronomers have proven that such a viewing would have been impossible because Zeta Tauri, the closest observable star before the supernova, was in direct proximity to the sun, therefore invisible. Furthermore, Sadiae Fujiwara was not yet born in 1054, since he made his astronomical hypothesis in 1235. Although the evidence is against their claim, the Apocryphites continue to believe that Fujiwara was teleported back in time to a position where he could witness SN1054. Along with this belief, the Apocryphites assert that whatever the pulsar message may be, it will encourage humans to die and be transported to Paradise, located in the Crab Nebula, to live with Sadiae Fujiwara and James Agee. The reason humans began erupting into shock waves and the reason the old Sunsphere became the new: so more earthlings would die simultaneously and be delivered to Arcadia. At this hour, while the city of Knoxville awaits the outcome of Yang Wie-Te’s surgery, the Apocryphites have concluded that Mr. Yang induced from the X-rays what the Believers themselves already knew. Yang, who perambulated in the direction of the Old City about once or twice per month, was aiming to bring about the apocalypse when his turncoat assistant committed him. Asked how they are keen to such information, Believers will say that the X-ray QPOs “told me so.” They will also say that the number 529 in City Code 529 is no coincidence. It signifies that the Apocryphite belief in May 29 is correct, that their convictions are also correct. Because of their obsession with death, Apocryphite temples are the aforementioned underground speakeasies. Here they lure Tellers, Ramponans, and their own kind to dine on deleterious cuisine, imbibe alcohol and other drugs, fornicate randomly, smoke cigarettes, brawl with their fellow citizens, etc. With their goals they are successful, although modern medicine, if consulted soon enough, can cure all of the effects of these activities. On occasion, since the diversions in these clubs are prohibited, the police launch cleansing campaigns, sending those who are found to health resorts; the subterranean caves, however, are labyrinthine and the Apocryphites have never been completely reeducated. Instead, they continue their rebellion, speaking of their apocalyptic revolution in hushed, deferential tones, pointing to the new Sunsphere which they feel was created when the ghost of James Agee rose from his grave to make possible the transfer of all humankind to Paradise. The QPOs told them so.

The Northern Wasteland was demolished by the only shock waves that have occurred. It is composed, solely, of rubble.  There are no brick buildings. There are no skyscrapers. There are no cinderblock structures. There are no actual streets.  There are no people. There is nothing but the reminder of what happens when a human being expires. There are sections where the detritus has been itself destroyed, leaving a view of the Appalachian Mountains far in the distance. The shock waves did not obliterate all of Knoxville because there were fewer people living in the city at the time. Before the explosions, the North was home to a fourth Sunsphere Cult: the Free Thinkers, also known as the Sunsphere Haters. Even with the radiating charm of the propaganda and the menace of death, the other Knoxvillian groups despised the Free Thinkers to an almost self-destructive degree. The reason the Free Thinkers were hated, the reason they were called the Sunsphere Haters: they claimed the message the Sunsphere was emitting meant nothing at all, that the alignment of the Crab Pulsar and the World’s Fair Tower was a cosmic event of astounding, yet nonsensical proportions. The light waves, radio pulses, and X-rays were not a code to be decrypted, but even if they were they could be studied from the antipodes where there was no peril. The date of SN1054 is inconsequential, or was so to them. The Free Thinkers, therefore, worked to get Knoxvillians to apostatize, proclaiming there would be no revelation from the Sunsphere, that it was merely beautiful and dangerous. A scandal would have arisen if any of the Free Thinkers had lived: who caused the shock waves? Since the Sunsphere Haters were eradicated, they were blamed. The Tower, according to the other groups, had its vengeance. The one surviving invention the Free Thinkers imparted on Knoxvillian society is the Enthalpy/Exergy Meter (EEM). Exergy is the amount of energy that can be extracted from a system. Since this energy is ejected as a shock wave when a human perishes, exergy is the measure of a person’s explosive potential. Enthalpy calculates internal energy, pressure, and volume (in the case of humans, weight). Keeping enthalpy low is the goal of all human beings who are not Apocryphites. A high enthalpy score means your body contains too much energy, too much pressure, or too much weight. Energy and pressure can add to exergy, increasing explosive potential. Weight cannot add to exergy, but an obese individual could still erupt into a shock wave equivalent to a quarter ton nuclear device. Furthermore, a corpulent human probably has a high energy reserve (since the Sunsphere energizes all), probably is under excessive physical stress, and both of these properties lead to a higher exergy rating. When enthalpy reaches a predetermined level (calculated by doctors for each individual) a person will either go into cardiac arrest or will immediately die; Yang Wie-Te was in cardiac arrest when he was discovered. The Free Thinkers, to simplify the EEM, wrote a song to explain its value:

Enthalpy and exergy work together to instill harmony,

Without them your deaths would destroy this here fine city.

The Sunsphere Haters hoped to preserve as many humans as possible until they could remove them from Knoxville.  Members of the other cults now walk to the edge of Henley Street, which used to become Broadway in the North, whenever they question their own beliefs, whenever they lose hope in the Sunsphere. These questioners stand at the extremity of the city and ponder the expanse of the wastes beyond. In the distance, there are the mountains.

Fort Sanders, the University of Tennessee campus, and parts West are home to the Tellers of the Truth. Here there are mostly skyscrapers made of steel, aluminum, and prismatic windows which cast kaleidoscopic patterns. The streets are made of an advanced polymer that transmogrifies according to the climate to instill optimal traction. Along Kingston Pike, the largest thoroughfare in the megalopolis, are uplifting aphoristic billboards, appeasing colors, and tranquil professionally landscaped gardens. On each street corner is a speaker that broadcasts confidence-building adages and PPAs.  Far West Knoxville is home to the mammoth KHC building, the third largest structure in the city. Contrary to the East, most Westerners live aboveground, as far aboveground as humanly possible, in order to be closer to the Crab Pulsar. The Tellers of the Truth, simply called the Tellers (or the Tattletales, depending on who one asks), believe the original Yang Wie-Te was correct (the Yang Wie-Te being attended to by rapidly moving, aquamarine-clad doctors is a far distant relative). He claimed that SN1054 took place on July 4, 1054. Since this date is widely accepted by the scientific community, the Tellers are completely confident in their assessment. They are also confident that, whatever the message may turn out to be, it will undoubtedly be found in the radio waves and it will undoubtedly encourage humans to live longer and longer. The radio waves hold the secret because they are the most easily deciphered. The secret is obviously to live longer because of the destruction corpses cause. Furthermore, the Tellers hold that their conclusions are correct because the old Sunsphere became the new on July 4: the date, they claim, of SN1054. They also claim that the Sunsphere metamorphosis was caused by a blast from the Crab Pulsar itself. The fact that such a blast would have taken 6,520 years to reach earth from the Crab Nebula does not deter their doctrines. While the prognostication becomes grimmer for Yang Wie-Te, a one-time native of the West (who departed after the Northern Wasteland was formed), the Tellers believe he had yet to deduce the answer to the World’s Fair Tower Enigma. He had been working too hard. He had worn himself down. What Mr. Yang needs to do, once he has convalesced, is to check into one of the health resorts, which are also the Teller temples. Citizens either choose to enter these sanitariums for their own fitness related reasons, or they are incarcerated into them when caught engaging in harmful activities often in insalubrious parts of town (the East). The propaganda from the city address system and the consumption of attitude adjustment pills, both Teller inventions, are not militarily enforced. A human who remains morose for an extended period of time, however, is considered to be engaging in antisocial (and therefore dangerous) behavior and may be subject to surveillance by the Knoxville Police Department (KPD). On this day, the propaganda and the pills appear to be inoperative, insufficient, since the general mood is one of consternation. Yet perhaps the propaganda is working, since the message transmitted for the past two days has been that the mystery of the Sunsphere was about to be solved.

Along Chapman Highway, south of the Sunsphere, live the Ramponans. The vast majority of their structures are made of cinderblock, but there is no architectural consistency. The roads are made of polymers, asphalt, cement, brick, and other substances. Some Southerners live underground, while an equal number live above to far aboveground.  In sections their buildings are concatenated, in others they are sparse. The Ramponan ideology is that human beings can never really know anything at all. Facetiously, they uphold the SN1054 date “discovered” by Giovanni Lupoato, who backs the only Western recording of the occurrence which appears in the admittedly questionable Rampona Chronicle. The Rampona Chronicle itself includes an error, accidentally listing the supernova year as MLVIII (1058), instead of MLIV (1054). If this document can otherwise be trusted, and according to the Ramponans no one knows if it can, then the date of the supernova was June 24, 1054. Since irrefutable knowledge is solely mythical, however, the Ramponans proclaim they are ignorant of the actual date, but that the rest of humanity is also ignorant. Yang Wie-Te, vying to display his exergetic reserve, was equally benighted but had yet to construct a nihilistic detachment from his situation when his assistant committed him. Since nescience is the controlling factor for Ramponans, they have no theories as to what the mystery behind the Sunsphere could be, any more than it is possible to infer the exact date of SN1054 (which might not have occurred in 1054). Moreover, while discussing humanity’s witlessness, Ramponans will often declare that a doctrine of utter ignorance is itself a dogma, so humans cannot aver peremptorily their de facto state of naïveté. When dealing with Apocryphites or Tellers, Ramponans will frequently dismiss the X-rays (especially the QPOs) and the radio waves and point to the light, asserting that it is Morse Code. When asked what the Morse Code means they answer that no one will ever know. Often lacking congruity, the Ramponans feel their system is correct at this hour because Mr. Yang, who last resided in South Knoxville, is in OR 1058: a strictly ironic coincidence. The Ramponans remain in Knoxville to harass the other cults, to sow discord.  Mockingly, they broadcast the radio waves emanating from the Crab Pulsar and the new Sunsphere. The sound, which is repeated ad infinitum, is a chopping sound, the sound of a helicopter, the sound of an overturned lawnmower. They intersperse these transmissions with belittling pleas of what it could all mean. In spite of their nihilistic detachment, the Ramponans also await the outcome of Yang Wie-Te’s operation.

§§

6,520 light years away, shrouded in a cloud of gases extant from SN1054, the Crab Pulsar sends forth its message encrypted in X-rays, radio waves, and light. For now, the Sunsphere relays its esoteric message, not yet deciphered, perhaps indecipherable. Yang Wie-Te was often known to gaze in the direction of the Crab Nebula. When asked what he was pondering, Yang would say that he was imagining himself near the Pulsar, he was imagining himself as an antenna, he was preparing to disseminate the directive that would one day surge forth from his brain. He claimed the Pulsar and the World’s Fair Tower were made to speak through him. And they would. But now Mr. Yang is in the hospital, silent, perhaps awaiting his explosive transubstantiation. Yet in the Crab Nebula, the neutron star’s nature does not change. It continues to pulse. It continues to transmit.

And now the new Sunsphere. Even below the structure, in what was once World’s Fair Park, and what is now Sunsphere Place, people are compacted and waiting. They wait to learn of Mr. Yang’s condition. They wait to learn about the mystery behind the new Sunsphere and the Crab Pulsar. They search for answers. They are told over a loudspeaker by a soothing, relaxing voice that the physicist, the astronomer is fine, that the mystery will soon be solved.  Above them all the orb of the Sunsphere pulses signifying doom, nothing, joy, nescience. Like the eye of a god it sees them all, the tower beneath standing as if a monolith to someone or something’s past or possibly future demise.

**

Andrew Farkas is the author of two short fiction collections: Sunsphere (BlazeVOX Books) and Self-Titled Debut (Subito Press), and a novel: The Big Red Herring (KERNPUNKT Press). His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, North American Review, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere. He had a Special Mention in Pushcart Prize XXXV and a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2013. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Washburn University.

**

Image: Flickr / Jacob Ian Wall

The Other Stories has 7.13 Books’ permission to publish “Dorian Vandercleef” which appears in Not Everyone Is Special by Josh Denslow

Dorian Vandercleef

When you’re a failure at everything else, write a novel. That was the first line of my novel, spoken by Dorian Vandercleef – musician, artist, and social provocateur. My main character would never achieve fame, but I was confident this novel was my ticket to literary stardom.

I wrote the last few pages while staying in the garage of my periodic friend from high school and his obnoxiously nice family. Not a converted garage or anything. It was a sleeping-on-an-air-mattress-next-to-boxes-of-Christmas-decorations-and-two-empty-gas-cans-that-still-emanated-the-ghosts-of-fillings-past type of situation. My friend felt he owed me because my family had taken him in for a few months during our freshman year when his parents were going through a nasty divorce that involved private investigators, secret bank accounts, and a sex toy called The Mint Julep.

After some mild cajoling one night at dinner, I let my friend’s wife read my novel. She hadn’t struck me as all that insightful in our previous conversations, but she fancied herself an expert on the English language because she’d written the manuals that accompanied a popular brand of digital cameras.

That night as I slumbered in the garage (which at the time was the temperature of a meat locker), she shook me awake, her face dangerously close to mine. There was a moment when I thought she’d been so overcome by my prose that she was going to engage me in a bit of sexual escapades. I’m ashamed to admit that I wouldn’t have stopped her. But luckily for everyone, especially my high school friend, that’s not what she had in mind.

“How do you know Dorian?” she asked me urgently.

“I made him up,” I said with pride. “He’s a figment of my imagination.”

“I know this guy. Personally. He’s even writing this same book. Except his is in first person.”

“First person?”

“Like when you say ‘I’ and ‘we’ instead of ‘he’ and ‘they’.”

“I know what first person is,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out what you’re telling me here.”

She took a deep breath. “I’ve known Dorian Vandercleef since I was a girl. We even tried to date once in college. I’m the Tina in your book.”

I realized I hadn’t bothered to remember my friend’s wife’s name (or the names of any of his children) even though I’d been staying with them for a few days. And now she was looming over me, and somehow, even with my stunning powers of observation, I’d missed that she was exactly as I’d described Tina in the novel. Slightly plump with an alluring overbite and honey-colored hair that she tucked behind her tiny ears.

I sat up on the air mattress and my ass sunk all the way to the cement floor. “I don’t understand,” I said.

“You’ve written my friend Dorian’s story. Perfectly.” She looked scared.

“I must meet this man.”

Which is exactly what we did. Right then. Using their family minivan.

When Dorian opened the door to his apartment (which I’d also described in my novel down to the lopsided number), I knew that everything my friend’s wife said was true. There he was in the robe from the downtown Radisson which I’d had him steal as a reminder of his conquest of the maid-of-honor at his sister’s wedding.

“What’s going on, Tina?” Dorian’s voice was just as mellifluous as I’d written on page three. His leather jacket was thrown over the back of the couch (page ten). The lamp with bird feet he’d found while riding a motorcycle across Bali was on dim (chapter six).

“Do you know this guy?” she said.

They were both staring at me like I was the weird one here. Had I become a character in my book? Or more frightening, was I now going to be a character in his? Standing there between them I was suddenly aware of my burgeoning double chin and the striking whiteness of my bare arms. I couldn’t help but think how we’d each write this scene and how unattractive I would become when reduced to words.

“I don’t know,” Dorian said. “Is he important?”

He wasn’t asking my friend’s wife; he was asking me. He wanted to know if I was going to make it into his book. Would I thrust his narrative forward?

I didn’t need to say anything. We all knew the answer. It was fine for me to write about Dorian because he was interesting whether he was in first or third person. But no one needed to write about me. I’d never been to Bali or slept with the maid-of-honor. I didn’t want Dorian to know my name. I didn’t want this moment to become memorable. I did not want to be part of his plot.

They were waiting for my answer. It was a test of my fortitude. I had to do something unexpected. Something that no reader would see coming.

So I ran like hell.

My feet slammed on the asphalt outside Dorian’s apartment complex, but I didn’t slow until I was out of sight. Hunched over and gasping for breath, one thing was certain.

I had never, ever, meant to tell the truth.

**

Josh Denslow’s debut collection Not Everyone Is Special will be published in March by 7.13 Books. It contains stories that originally appeared in Third Coast, Cutbank, Black Clock and other fine places. When he’s not building elaborate Lego sets with his three boys (all under five-years-old!), he plays the drums in the band Borrisokane and edits at SmokeLong Quarterly.

**

Image: Flickr / Micah Baldwin

“Relatable Objects” by Anita Goveas originally appeared in Porridge.

Relatable Objects

The man is small and thin, like a washed-out finger chili. Anjali sits next to him gingerly, rubs her back, then spots the bookbag. Another happy parent, the world is saturated with them, six at least on this bus. Meanwhile, her back is aching, her hips are sore, with nothing to show for it. He notices Anjali’s awkward position and grins. She smiles back warily.

“How many weeks are you?”

Anjali blinks, follows his questioning gaze. There is a gentle curve to her wool-covered belly. She places her hands on the ghost of five months ago.

“Um, eight?” She purses her lips too late to swallow the lie. It slips out more easily than responding to muttered sympathies, mutually blushed with embarrassment.

“Enjoy it while it lasts! I’m on the way to pick up the oldest, haven’t slept a wink for four years!”

Her second smile is wider. Darren-proud-father-of-two, as he introduces himself, elaborates about baby-led weaning ( ridiculous), toddler-baby jealousy (not a myth) and the importance of choosing a good nursery as soon as they’ve popped out (sets them up for life). Darren says she should definitely find out the baby’s sex, who wants hundreds of yellow baby-grows. The conversation flows until she misses her stop at Old Kent Road.

Home finally, she explores the site of misunderstanding. One of the fluffy grey socks she’s made for Haroon was caught in her jumper, an illusion of fertility. She balls it up and places it over her belly-button, a small orb of potency. The muscles in her back relax slightly.

Dinner is simple, cumin-scented daal, rice, crisp fish-fry. Comfort food. She can’t swallow mango chutney after eating it with everything for weeks, but it’s Haroon’s favourite. She watches it plop on his plate in syrupy yellow mounds.

“Did you make it to see Mr Foster? He’s being kind, keeping your job open.” he says, pulling out the bones from his piece of mackerel and mashing flakes of flesh into his rice.

She tears away from his ravaging of her perfectly-cooked offering to his hopeful eyebrows, and twitches her shoulders.

“I didn’t feel up to it today.” She should have put his dinner in a blender, saved him the trouble of all that destruction. His eyebrows retreat to their usual place, hovering above his watery cow eyes and lashes meant for their daughter. “But I do need to get out more. I might try the library next week.”

Night-time is when she goes through the should-haves, while Haroon dribbles and snorts into his pillow. Worked less, drunk more water, been more aware. Now there are other considerations.

This time she hovers eagerly next to the toned-looking woman in navy-blue trainers with the green and grey jogging stroller. She’s oval-faced, with a sleek black bob with purplish high-lights, like squeezed-out tamarind. Her wide-faced infant is drinking juice from a sippy cup, wearing a t-shirt covered in fuschia ducks.

Anjali has tried several outfits before venturing out, settling on leggings and a grey thigh-length kurtha. The socks are wrapped in a clean linen pillow-case and secured with a chiffon scarf, the swell approximating four months. She’s jiggled the reproduction to ensure its stability against unexpected traffic-stops. The only thing she’s not practised is how to start the conversation.

The other woman nods, moves her lime-green Puma backpack, and gestures to the empty seat. Luisa is her first, that’s her with her favourite bear, this is when she first walked, this one’s when she started nursery. Her sister says if she waits too long to have another, they’ll fight. Her husband says she should eat more. Her father says she won’t be promoted now, her mother says Luisa cries for an hour when she leaves. Exercise is her saviour, but more sleep would be lovely, eyes closing as she smirks. Elena works part-time now, there aren’t enough hours in the day, but of course Luisa is worth it.

Anjali is hiding the bundle in her beside-table drawer, when Haroon ambles in, scratching his curly head.

“Where are my grey socks, sweetheart? Did you wash them?”

She pushes the corner of the pillow-case down, closes her eyes, shakes her head.

“Haroon Chabra, is that all I am to you now? A maid-servant?”

His gaze follows her as she brushes past him. The fluttering in her gut could be satisfaction.

She waits nine days before the next outing. Her hands and feet went hot and cold every morning and the tingling made her nauseous, then wistful. She swapped the socks for folded teal-blue cotton hand-towels, an old wedding present hidden in the loft because they don’t match the bathroom. They’re layered into a six months belly, skimming her area of previous knowledge, and silky against her stomach like an extra skin.

The woman’s cropped beige hair is edged with grey, like a mouldering samosa. There are folds between her mouth and chin and above her thin, straight nose. Something about the way she stares as Anjali eases into the seat causes her to clasp her creation. The red-faced baby in the lollipop-printed blue pram coos intermittently, and gets an instant response. White lacy blanket straightened, buggy book adjusted, Burberry-checked babygrow smoothed. They sit together in nose-scratching, head-twitching silence from Champion Hill to Camberwell Green before the baby tries to eat his right foot and they mutually beam.

Claire says, I bet you thought I was his grandmother, didn’t you? Claire says, what’s wrong with wanting a career first? Bradley’s important to me, but he’s not my only legacy. Why don’t people wake up to the 21st century? We have choices, our bodies belong to us.

She’s ironing their cream damask table-cloth when Haroon folds up the Times and plays the messages on the answerphone. They listen together to Mr Foster’s message in head-twitching silence. The office is fake sympathy, averted eyes, abrupt changes of subject. She won’t go back.

Haroon rolls towards her in his sleep that night, and she shoves at his heavy arm.

“I won’t try again yet, I’m not ready, ” she says with her hands clenched. He grunts as she rubs her taut abdomen, fingers tracing the ugly scar.

She’s on an almost empty bus, post school-run, sat automatically by the space for the pram. In recognition of the last time she’ll do this, she’s wrapped the socks in the hand-towels and the table- cloth. Rain is streaking the window, and the distension is obscured behind a navy-blue raincoat. But the pressure is comforting, and she’s rubbing it in circles, branding the feel over her skin.

Her meditation is disturbed by a plastic car bouncing off her black ankle boots, and a murmured apology in a soft accented voice.

The space is filled by a red double-stroller, holding a sleeping chubby-cheeked baby and a wide-awake black-haired toddler. The woman sitting next to her has curly auburn hair, dark shadows under her eyes, and lightly pock-marked wheatish skin, like a perfectly-cooked chapati. They all smell like cardamom and chocolate.

Nour is on her way to the park while her oldest Delisha is in school. Bahir is a handful, doesn’t start nursery for five months, but Leila sleeps through anything. Listen to him singing ‘Wheels on the bus’ and she’s quiet as an angel. They’ll visit her real angel, Shaheen, who came before Bahir, in the cemetary tomorrow. The singing, and the reading, the park, and the school-run fill the ache in the daytime but it’s at night you remember, don’t you?

Anjali moves to help the stroller off the bus, and Nour waves her away.

“You need to think more of yourself, but thank you. Good luck with the baby! This is my card, we’ll do coffee some time?”

She stands by the doors, watching them recede, clutching the cardboard until it leaves a thin red line on her palm. What brought them together is an invention, a barrier to further shared sympathies.

When Haroon rolls to her rigid body, she doesn’t move away. She grabs his wrist, counts the strong regular pulsebeats.

“Do you think about Rupa? She’d be three months old now.”

He shuffles his head toward her shoulder, splays a long-fingered hand over her belly,

“Every day, sweetheart. Every day.”

It’s a risk to look for Nour again, wearing the bulkiest accessory, but speeches sound rehearsed and she deserves full disclosure. If she can find the words to tell Nour, perhaps this can all make sense again. She hears her name and smiles, then her knees stop working and her throat dries up.

Jasminder shouldn’t be on this bus, her neighbour has a car. They’re frozen in consternation, Jasminder’s eyes on the hideous, alien protuberance. Until they jerk to a stop, and Anjali bolts through the doors.

She cuts up every shred of fabric with scissors, flushes it down the toilet. The damask is expensively dense, blocks up the pipe. Water gushes onto the black and white tiled floor. She lies down in the shambles, back aching, hips sore. She was too weak to keep her baby, too consumed to move on. There are no words for Nour, for Haroon, for herself. This is her legacy.

**

Anita Goveas is British-Asian, based in London, and fueled by strong coffee and paneer jalfrezi. She was first published in the 2016 London Short Story Prize anthology, most recently in JMWW, OkayDonkey and X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine. She’s on the editorial team at Flashback Fiction, an editor at Mythic Picnic’s Twitter zine, a reader for Bare Fiction and tweets erratically.

**

Image: Flickr / GollyGforce

The following excerpt is from Sugar Land by tammy lynne stoner, published on October 23, 2018 by Red Hen Press Copyright (c) 2018 by tammy lynne stoner.

Sugar Land – excerpt

My step-daughter, Edna—who wanted to be called Eddie, pushed open the door. I watched a moment of realization pass through her as she saw how big I’d gotten—my size no doubt highlighted by my yellow T-shirt and matching sweat pants. It must’ve looked like I was merging with my mustard-colored couch, as if it was just a puddle of me.

Eddie’s hair was a little longer now and could maybe be a bob if she didn’t keep it so far back behind her ears. It made me wonder if she did that in case there were times when she had to wear a bob to feminize herself. It’s tough living so consciously all the time.

“Come on in.”

She took a few steps in and looked around as if she expected to be attacked by a giant pan of fudge.

“Don’t worry. I’m working on my weight—I’m turning it around.” I took in a breath. “And I want to tell you something I should have told you all those years ago on the night you didn’t go to your prom.”

“Which prom that I didn’t go to?”

“The first one.”

“Alright.”

“Ah… well…”

While I stammered, Eddie sat down on the rickety chair with her legs spread and her hands locked in the middle, like she was watching football. When she looked up at me, she broke out in a big smile. “Why don’t you let me guess what you are going to tell me?”

I lit a cigarette. “Sure.”

“You’re a lover of Sappho.”

“What now?” I asked.

She clarified: “You’re a lesbian.”

I nearly dropped my cigarette. “How did you know?”

“Other than the shoes you wear? Miss Debbie.”

“That girl leaks more than a wooden bucket of termites.”

“She called and read me the act—said it was my doing, that I had ‘poisoned the waters of our family well.’”

“Lord.” I leaned back.

Eddie smiled. “She goes crazy sometimes, Nana Dara, usually after Bible study or her third gin and tonic—or both.”

“Eddie,” I said, staying on track, “all of your pain is my fault. I should have been there for you. I should have been a role model for you. It’s my fault you suffered.”

“What?”

“I had chances—like prom night—to tell you about me so you wouldn’t feel so alone.”

She sighed. “That is even crazier than your rampages about aliens.”

“Well, they are breedin’ with us-”

“Oh, here we go! Between you and Miss Debbie, I’m looking like the sanest one out there—me, a woman with a bow tie collection.”

Eddie had a new ease to her, I noticed. She even smiled without hiding her teeth and just made a joke about her ties, something we never even addressed before much less joked about.

I hoped there was someone out there thinking about her right now.

“Seriously now, I should have told you earlier. I should have said something. Instead I made you hide and be someone you weren’t and then you did dangerous things and got pregnant and had to give up your baby-”

She looked down at her trimmed, plain fingernails. “You really taking all that on, Nana Dara?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

Eddie took the cigarette from my smiley face ashtray and sat back down. “I did what I did. I didn’t love the man who got me pregnant, but he was fun and when my friends and their boyfriends went out, I had someone to take along. Then he enlisted. I slept with him because I wanted to, not because of anything you did or anyone I wasn’t yet able to be.”

I nodded, unconvinced but trying to look the opposite.

Eddie stared down through her knees at my stained and worn carpet. Her face grew dark. “But I will tell you this—the pregnancy sealed it for me. Made it all clear what I could and could not do. I love my daughter, you know I do, but I hated it, Nana Dara. I hated being pregnant. I didn’t really want the body I’d been given and there I was with it in its highest female form. And the doctor visits. Do you know what they do to check on the baby? Oh, I could barely handle it. And I was alone.”

“Honey, I’m so sorry.”

“I finally told Miss Debbie in the second trimester. I told her because I didn’t know if I could keep on going. I didn’t know if I could do labor. I needed some reason to keep on…”

I tried to catch her eye, but she kept her head down.

“Once I told her I wanted to give her the baby, she drove me to every doctor’s appointment and bought me all my clothes and didn’t say a word when I cut all my hair off. She said I was in ‘the crazy point’ of pregnant. She’d read it in a book.”

I smiled. “If you got Miss Debbie to read, you know it’s serious.”

“She told me all about the stages and made me write down what I was eating every day. It was Miss Debbie in the room with me when I found out it was a girl. We had some wine later that night to celebrate and I asked her if I could name the baby. At that point I could have told her I wanted everything she owned—and her husband—and she would have given it to me.”

“You could probably still have him, I imagine.”

Eddie met my eyes. “Nana Dara, we both know I’d never want him.”

“Me neither.”

She smiled—beamed really—and took another drag off my cigarette.

I said, “Can I ask you something?”

She nodded.

“I don’t quite get how you don’t want to have a woman’s body—I mean, what does that mean?”

“It took me so many nights, many of them more than a little dark, for me to come to understand that. And by understand I am not saying I understand but, rather, that I just accept. It’s like what you learn in Eastern Religions, like Buddhism.”

“What now?”

“Buddhism.” She smiled. “I learned about it when I was in California. It’s just like a different religion, only they don’t like to call it a religion—they call it a philosophy.”

“Alright,” I said, wary.

“Buddhism teaches a lot about self-acceptance, or at least that was the focus when I was studying it, seeing that I needed a lot of self-acceptance. I learned to stop asking ‘why’ and start accepting the fact that I have these strange yearnings, which put me somewhere between the two genders, and having something is enough—you don’t always need to know why.”

I didn’t say anything, my mind playing a tug of war between how I’d been raised and how I truly felt.

She went on: “There’s a saying I repeated to myself fifty times a day, every day for three months: ‘What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you’ll do now.’ Buddha said it.”

“Buddha?”

“He’s like Jesus—actually a lot like Jesus, only not Jesus.”

I smiled. No one in Sugar Land, Texas sits around talking about an alternative to Jesus.

“Nana Dara, the way I’ve come to love myself as I am in every moment, is the way I want you to love yourself. Start by giving away all those notions that who I am is your fault. Maybe even thank yourself for who I am.”

It hit me then: I had just apologized to Eddie for being the way she was, which means that I thought her being this way was wrong—but I didn’t, did I?

“I’m just sorry you felt so bad for so long,” I said.

“I know.” She smiled like someone who didn’t mind waiting five hours on a lake for one measly bite. “Thank you, Nana Dara.”

I took in a breath and recollected, hitting the maximum of new information I could process in one day. I pulled us back to our original topic, letting Eddie know she had to ease off or my head would pop. “OK, so then you had the baby…”

She nodded, telling me she got it. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Was that hard for you, given what we just talked about?”

“I came to think of it like this, Nana Dara: It’s what needed to happen, for a million reasons. A million.”

“That’s a big number.”

“Yes.” Her dark eyes dulled to a far away place. “Yes it is.”

“Oh honey.”

“And now there’s my little girl.”

I said “Yes, yes there is” all the while wondering if she gave up California and their crazy philosophies that seem to suit her so she could be near her daughter.

“Well,” she said, clearly also at her limit for the day, “it’s time for me to head out.”

I pushed myself up with arms, which were getting stronger every day. “You think you might want to have a visit again some time this week?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” I said.

“Are you fine with Miss Debbie—with the way her mind goes?”

“I just hope it passes.”

“Most storms do,” she said.

“Even on Jupiter.”

Eddie tucked her shirt in and headed for the door. She turned back to me. “So, you have a girlfriend?”

“What? No, no.”

She laughed. “Why not?”

“I’m an old woman!”

“So?”

“So, that’s nasty.”

She stepped outside. “That so?”

“No,” I said, taking a minute in our safe space to consider the words I’d just used. “No, it isn’t nasty. It’s just not available.”

“Well,” Eddie said, looking feisty and proud, “I’ve found that it’s more available than folks think.”

**

tammy lynne stoner was born in Midland, Texas. Her work has been selected for more than a dozen anthologies and literary journals. She was nominated for a Million Writers Award and earned her MFA from Antioch University. tammy has lived in 15 cities, working as a biscuit maker, a medical experimentee, a forklift operator, a gas station attendant, and a college instructor, among other odd jobs. She is the creator of Dottie’s Magic Pockets and the publisher of Gertrude. She lives in Portland, OR and Basel, Switzerland with her lady-friend, Karena, and their three kids. Learn more at her website.

The following text is excerpted from Marilla of Green Gables by Sarah McCoy. Copyright © 2018 by Sarah McCoy. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

VI.

Introducing John Blythe

The snows had melted and the rains had come, making everything and everyone in Avonlea sticky. Water seemed to come from every direction, even up from the ground where the drops splashed in puddles. You couldn’t walk a yard without being soaked through.

Marilla had run over to Rachel’s while one storm was moving off to Newfoundland and another was approaching from New Brunswick. She had barely made it to the Whites’ when the clouds broke open again. From the shelter of their porch, she turned to look out over Avonlea: the gulf in the distance roared; the wind was scented with melted icecaps and blew the trees like stalks of kelp; the rain fell faster and faster until it looked as if a veil had been drawn over the island, tinting everything wet gray. She hardly recognized Avonlea as home. From someone else’s front door, it looked so different.

“Come on, before you’re drenched!” Rachel pulled her inside. “I’ve done it! See here—I’ve perfected the rosette. Every bridal pattern from Paris to London is using it. They say the future Queen Victoria will have at least ten thousand rosettes on her coronation gown. I can’t even imagine!”

Rachel proudly held up her circular for admiration. The rosette chain didn’t look terribly different from the standard cable stitch, but Marilla kept silent.

“It’s exceedingly difficult. I can teach you,” Rachel offered. “But don’t be disheartened if you don’t pick it up as quickly as I did. It takes some years if they haven’t the God-given knack.”

Rachel had determined on their second meeting that Marilla didn’t share her “God-given knack,” but her work showed potential, Rachel thought, if Marilla diligently applied herself.

“I’d be very glad to learn,” said Marilla.

“Let’s get our prayer shawl stitching done first. Mother counted my rows before she and father left for White Sands.” Rachel pulled the skein of thick, fleecy yarn from her hamper. “They took my cousins some of Ella’s cooking. Poor dears. It’s the chicken pox. All five children broke out at the same time.” She started to loop her crochet needle around and through, around and through. Marilla joined her, working on the opposite end of the shawl.

“The pox is the most wicked illness,” Rachel continued with a maternal air. “Mother wrapped my fingers in cotton so I couldn’t scratch. Her mother did the same to her. You could scar your face for life if you aren’t cautious. Afterward, I healed without a single blemish. I once read a magazine story about a beautiful girl with a pock perfectly placed on her forehead so that it looked like she’d been anointed with a holy wound. That’s how it was described in the chapter: anointed with a holy wound. I thought it the loveliest thing I’d ever heard. I started drawing a little scar on my forehead with a dab of crushed carmine petals. When Mother forced me to confess what on earth I was doing with her rouge, she said it was wicked foolishness. She took me down to see one of the little French boys living on the wharf row—sorrowful child was pockmarked from ear to ear! A face like a corncob. I was so ashamed. I never wished for such a thing again.” She shook her head. “Have you had the pox?”

Marilla nodded. “When Matthew was nine and I was one year old. Mother said I was the sickest she’s ever seen. I was too young to remember the fever or itching, but Matthew and I have matching scars, so I know it must’ve been.”

“Do you really have a scar?” Rachel set down her crocheting.

Marilla thought it strange that Rachel would have such a morbid fascination. It was a chicken pox scar, as common as a freckle and unsightly as a mole. She couldn’t understand why Rachel would romanticize it. But then, Rachel was an only child and Marilla understood how an imagination left to its own could make the unknown a grand and beastly thing. So in this way, she knew something Rachel didn’t.

“It’s right here.” She rolled up her left sleeve cuff to reveal the inner crook of her elbow, white and soft from hiding. There, in the bony divot between flesh and bone was a teardrop hollow, no bigger than one of the rosettes on Rachel’s circular.

“Yours is the prettiest pock I’ve ever seen! If it’s any consolation,” said Rachel.

“Matthew has one on his right elbow,” Marilla explained. “Mother says it’s often that way with siblings. The pain that one feels, the other does too. When you’ve shared the same womb, it naturally follows that you share your lives.”

Rachel’s eyes softened to a glassy stare. “What if you haven’t siblings?”

Marilla rolled down her sleeve. She’d hurt Rachel, though she hadn’t meant to. “Well, I suppose that’s why God gave us friends.”

Rachel blinked hard and smiled. “Yes. Reverend Patterson gave a right nice sermon on that very subject last week. It’s a proverb: ‘A man with many friends comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother’—or sister in our case, right?”

Marilla nodded.

“Maybe I don’t have a scar on my elbow like you, but I have one right in the middle of my you-know-where after sitting on that stinger last month!” She giggled. “You saved me from eternal humiliation, Marilla Cuthbert. I’m forever grateful.”

Marilla didn’t see the accident or what she’d said as anything worthy of humiliation or gratitude. But again, she was fast learning that how she saw the world and how another did could be entirely dissimilar.

Ella interrupted their sewing. “Mademoiselle Rachel, Monsieur Blythe has come about a barter?”

Rachel tilted her head and frowned. “Mother and Father didn’t mention anything to me.”

“Nor to me. It’s Monsieur John Blythe,” Ella clarified. “Says he’s come on his father’s request regarding a gun.”

“A gun?” Rachel wrapped the yarn she was using back around the skein. “Father must’ve spoken to Mr. Blythe at the town hall meeting last Monday.” She put the sewing things back in the hamper. “Tell him that they aren’t home and to come back later.”

Ella nodded half-heartedly. “I suppose so . . . but he came all the way over in the downpour. Do you think we might offer him a warm drink? A chance to dry some? Seems the charitable thing to do, oui?”

Rachel looked to Marilla, who shrugged. She’d never met John Blythe, but she’d felt the force of the rain. It was enough to cut your nose off. Letting the worst of it pass before sending him back seemed sensible.

“All right then.” Rachel rose, smoothed her skirts, and pinched her cheeks.

Marilla thought that odd. She’d long ago given up on her appearance. She had Hugh’s angular cheekbones that caught the sun too much and so were never the alabaster of fashion but tanned like deerskin. Rouges and pinching only made her look a-splotched. She was just as she was. It didn’t bother her to be plain. Besides, it was only the dairy farmer’s son.

John Blythe sat two grades up from her at the Avonlea School. There weren’t any girls in his grade eight class. Most had left to help raise their younger siblings and do house chores. If anything, they home-studied like she did. So John Blythe had been little more than one of the rumpled dark heads in the crowd of older boys. However, there was a notable difference in Rachel as Ella brought him through the kitchen door. He seemed to have an effect on Ella too. Her tone changed. A jingle under its usual flat inflection.

“S’il vous plaît, come in, Monsieur Blythe. You must be chilled to the bone. Here, let me hang your coat to dry by the stove. I’ll make a tasse de thé. Mademoiselle Rachel and her company are waiting for you in the parlor.”

“Very kind of you,” he said.

Marilla thought it a pleasant voice.

Rachel moved a bang ringlet forward onto her forehead at his footsteps down the hall. Marilla scratched her neck.

The toe of his boot came out of the shadows first, followed by the rest of him. He was tall and muscular. The rain had plastered his shirt to his body like a second skin, revealing the outlines of his chest and arms and back. His wet, dark curls hung low on his forehead, making his hazel eyes look nearly golden in the parlor light. When he changed his gaze, from Rachel to Marilla and back, it was like being in the shine and then in shade.

“Hello, Rachel.”

“Why hello, John Blythe,” said Rachel. “This is my friend, Marilla Cuthbert.”

He nodded. “I know your brother Matthew. We schooled together before he went to work for your father. Nice to meet you.” He smiled, and his eyes gleamed brighter.

Marilla had to look away. It nearly pained her. Like staring into sun. “Nice to meet you.”

“As Ella informed you,” said Rachel with one hand on the curve of her hip, “my parents are not at home. They’ve gone over to visit my cousins at Four Winds. Was there some pressing business you needed?”

A drip of water fell from his temple to the parlor carpet. John pushed his hair back, and Marilla nearly gasped at the little pockmark nestled in his left temple. So small a thing. It would’ve gone unnoticed by everyone except . . . they were just speaking of their scars. Anointed, Rachel had said. Chills ran the length of Marilla’s body.

“My apologies for intruding. We didn’t know they were gone today,” explained John. “We arranged a barter. One of our jersey cows for a Ferguson that Mr. White purchased from a London exporter last year. My father sent me over to appraise the condition of the rifle before we bring over the heifer.”

Rachel cocked her head. “I remember that gun. Father said it was a waste of money. He’s never so much as loaded the thing. Not much to shoot at but bunnies and birds in Avonlea. Father hasn’t the time or bloodthirst for such diversions.”

John nodded. “He said as much to my father.”

“Well, feel free to have a look. He keeps it right over here.” She led them to the hall closet and pointed to the top shelf. “Practically new. Still in the box.”

“May I?” asked John.

“Have at it. I’d hate to think you came across town in a storm for nothing.”

John pulled the box down. His arms flexed beneath the damp cotton. The three found themselves standing too close together in the confinement of the narrow hallway. Marilla could smell the ripeness of wet leather and sea salt on his skin. He opened the box, and they gazed inside at the long, polished wooden barrel.

“I forgot how pretty it looks.” Rachel ran her fingers over the shiny metal trigger. “Almost like a royal scepter.”

“A dangerous one, perhaps,” said John.

Rachel lifted her chin. “Depends on how it’s used. If the aimer hits nothing but blue sky, it might as well be a scepter.” She laughed, a tinny sound that echoed down the tiled foyer.

Marilla had never seen a gun up close. She wasn’t even sure her father owned one. The gunpowder alone was too expensive, never mind the rifle. And as Mr. White had pointed out, there was no use for such a weapon in Avonlea. It was a civilized town on a civilized island. There were no dangers larger than an occasional vermin provoking their livestock, and for that a pitchfork did the job just as well as anything else. Mr. White had obviously bought it on a lark. But now, John had been told to trade a pricey cow for this fancy firearm, and Marilla was curious why.

“What would the Blythes need of a rifle like this?” asked Marilla.

John turned his face to her and her cheeks burned. “For protection.”

“Protection?” scoffed Rachel.

“We haven’t any enemies here,” insisted Marilla. “No wolves or bears. It’s an island.”

“‘No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’”

Mr. Murdock had read that to them once. The author’s name danced on the tip of her tongue . . .

“John Donne,” she said, having come to it.

John smiled at her. “You’re a smart one.”

Marilla felt something pull inside her like sands to the tide.

“Of course it’s an island,” Rachel huffed. “You think you’re so clever because your father lets you study all day. But my mother said there’s more to life than books.” She closed the lid on the rifle box. “You’ve seen it. Now you can go home and say so.”

John’s mouth twitched with a smile. “I’m obliged to you for letting me do the business I was tasked. I am but a lowly farmhand, Mademoiselle White.” He bowed like a liegeman.

“Don’t try to sweet-talk me. I’m immune to highbrow hooey.” Rachel flipped her skirt and went back to the parlor.

Marilla turned to follow, but John stood directly in her path.

“There’s rumor of an insurrection,” he said.

Marilla’s heart quickened to a gallop.

“By whom?”

“Canadian farmers, townsfolk, and tradesmen against the corrupt aristocracy—the Châteaux Clique and the Family Compact.”

Marilla knew of the Americans’ domestic warring, but such conflict had not been Canadian. Canadians were peaceable with their countrymen—or at least, so she’d believed. Seeing her unsettled, John put a hand on her elbow; his fingers wrapped round to the very spot she’d uncovered to Rachel the hour before. She could nearly feel his skin through the muslin sleeve.

“Don’t worry, Marilla. You’ll be safe.”

Marilla dared to meet his stare.

“I will?”

“Of course. I’m sure Matthew and your father are taking precautionary measures. Everyone is. Well . . .” —he looked away to the parlor where Rachel had returned to her sewing—“. . . most everyone. Mr. White told my father that the only reason he’d trade this rifle is because he’s already purchased another. A musket, more suited for targets at a close distance.”

Marilla’s palms went clammy, the danger suddenly all too close.

“Tea?” Ella carried the tray.

John released Marilla’s arm. “Thank you, but I better get going.”

Ella didn’t hide her chagrin. She slumped her way back to the kitchen.

“I’ll be sure to tell my father the rifle is in excellent condition,” John called to Rachel. “I’m sorry for interrupting your afternoon, Mademoiselle White. I hope you can resume your rousing stitchery upon my departure.”

“You are insufferable, Mr. Blythe!” said Rachel, but Marilla heard the giggle in it. So did John.

“Good day, Rachel.”

Rachel gave a mouse huff in reply.

“Good day, Marilla.”

He winked, and she thought it an awfully bold thing to do on their first meeting. Even bolder than taking her by the elbow. “Tell your brother Matthew that I said hello. It’s been too long since I came down to the Cuthbert place. Maybe I should.”

All three of the girls watched John trot away, his horse’s hooves splashing through fresh puddles. The rains had cleared, and the sky had opened up to a shimmering pink sunset.

Ella sighed. “He’s as handsome as the devil.”

Rachel twisted a curl around her finger. “I’ve seen handsomer. Besides, it seems the only one he’s interested in being civil toward is Marilla.”

Marilla shook her head. “Only because he’s friendly with Matthew.”

Rachel raised her eyebrows high. “Surely you would’ve met already if he and your brother were so close.”

Truthfully, Matthew had little time for friends. He and Father were too busy on the farm. And after the drunk fire, he hardly went out socially again. She wondered if John had been at the party that night. Probably not, she decided. Matthew was twenty-one to John’s sixteen. Too far apart in age to share schoolmates. So why then was John so terribly interested in visiting her brother now?

Rachel finished the crocheted row on her prayer shawl. “He’s not my type, but he’s mighty nice to look at. Don’t you agree, Marilla?”

“Handsome is as handsome does. What a person says and thinks are what count.”

It was getting late. Mother and Izzy would have supper waiting, so she packed up her sewing notions. Ella lit the oil lamps while Rachel walked her out to the porch. The air was fresh-scented of earth and mineral with the approach of night.

“So tell me this in truth, Marilla. What would you do if John Blythe showed up at your gable door?”

“I’d welcome him. Just as I would to you or any Avonlea friend.”

Rachel nodded. “Be careful walking. The light’s going quick, and I’d hate for you to fall into a mud hole.”

The whole way home, Marilla thought about the pock scar at John’s temple. It was hard to imagine his face born without it. Such a small feature. A flaw, by most opinions, and yet, to her, it was one of the interesting parts of him. It carried a story, and she understood why Rachel found the idea of a holy wound desirable.

**

Sarah McCoy is a New York Times,USA Today, and international bestselling author. McCoy’s work has been featured in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, Huffington Post and other publications. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. She lives with her husband, an orthopedic sports surgeon, and their dog, Gilbert, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Cistem Bleed Out

1. shoulders. voice. feeling the initial bodily surge almost immediately. awaiting  public confirmation when out of nowhere—Sir, a stranger says to me three days after my first T-shot. i smile; miracles do come in three-letter words.BREAK
2. Sir. this time it’s two plainclothes cops who stop me at the mouth of a busy local subway station downtown. they say i didn’t pay my fare. No, I did i argue, but suddenly stop short of proving my point because i’m nervous my voice hasn’t deepened enough to talk with cis men, especially white ones in authority. both cops could be a gay couple, read: more fascist fuckers than flowery faggots, translation: trigger-happy, subtext: they were assigned to my neighborhood not to serve or protect but to publicly terrorize people who look like me. i police myself, backing away slowly slowly even slower, avoiding eye contact, making me even more suspect in their eyes. but i’m qtpoc, translation: not male enough, not female enough for their rugged binary so how black am i given the circumstances?BREAK
3. handcuffed. not allowed to ask questions. my gender is black. searched, frisked, not allowed to rage. my gender is black. never read my rights. my gender is black. never shown a police badge nor proof the police are who they say they are. my gender is black. by contrast, my driver’s license plus all identification and personal items are confiscated immediately. my gender is black. dumped into a mysterious minivan. not told where i’m going. my gender is black. learn quickly they’ll beat me senseless if i ask, Where are you taking me? my gender is black. unhandcuffed. dumped into a holding tank. my gender is black. rehandcuffed. dumped into a private cell. my gender is black, unhandcuffed, rehandcuffed, unhandcuffed. dumped into a much larger holding tank. all-male presumably cis plus two armed guards sitting at an empty desk nearby watching over us, guns ablaze thanks to light pouring dreamlike from a tiny window up the stairway. i’d say dropped headfirst into a dingy dungeon for limitless confusion to swirl about our heads forever is the desired effect. i’m scared, i’ll admit it, but also excited because A) i’ve never been grouped with so many cis men before, and B) i never went to jail in my other body but it’s what? less than a week into my transition and i’m behind bars locked inside a cage like a wild animal. if this isn’t “black male privilege” then what is, right? i mean, how much more proof do i need to finally claim with confidence i am a black man in America. #celebrationBREAK
4. two black guys who’ve been to prison before tell us step-by-step exactly what to do. Yeah, we get arrested every week, they laugh.
   Every week? someone asks.
   it spins a wild dance bouncing barefoot before swallowed by our dingy echo chamber: Arrested Arrested every week every week every week.
   Yup, they laugh. a mexican kid who hasn’t spoken word one in english only spanish can’t force himself to stop crying.
   We’ll see a judge. You tell that judge you’re guilty.
   What if you’re not?
   eyeroll. it’s delusional questions like those that demean group morale down to drops but both black guys figured eons ago that the rest of us are newborns taking baby-steps down a long, bumpy, mysteriously cruel path so they proceed gently.
   Doesn’t matter if you’re innocent or not, you tell that judge “guilty”.
   And say that shit to the judge with nigger pride, like “GUILTEEEE!”
   everyone but the sobbing mexican laughs.
   Then what happens?
   It stays on your record for six months to a year tops.
   Then what happens?
   They take it off. Expunged. both black guys laugh. Sounds like executed.
   i laugh. the mexican kid looks up, cracks a beautiful smile.BREAK
5. Mom?
   Who is this?
   I’m in jail.
   Who am I talking to?
   i tell her.
   What happened to your voice?
   i tell her Hormones.
   silence.
   You there? Mom?
   long pause then, Yeah?
   Mom I’m in jail.
   she hangs up.
   i call her back. she picks up thank god, screaming into the receiver she says:
   You’re such a fucken asshole, know what you are? A royal asshole, that’s who you are. D’you know how much of an asshole you are?
   I know, alright? I know…
   D’you really?!
   I said I know I’m an asshole Mom but—
   So you admit you’re a pathetic piece of shit on the face of this fucken earth?!
   Will you shut the fuck up for once and just—
   What am I supposed to do, huh? Tell me, what in God’s name do you want from me now?
   I want you to sit still, be quiet ‘n’ listen to whatever I have to say. Then I need you to do what I say because it’s the difference between my life ‘n’ my death. So I’m begging, please Mom, do not hang up on me or—
   
   she hangs up on me. i call her back. she hangs up on me again. i call back again and again and again again again until a chunky female guard strolls over to tell me, Time’s up, so i hold the receiver against my heart for a moment the length of eternity until the guard snatches the phone from my chest, making eye contact as she gently places the receiver down.as god is my witness, i swear on every single one of my queer Ancestors, a huge chunk of me still lives inside that hallway ear stuck to the receiver listening for a ring tone, waiting for Mom to call me back and when she does, guess what? i’ll pick up in an instant to pour my heart into her. 
6. my mom hates me because i’m queer. the cops hate me because i’m black. the black guys in my jail cell trust me because i’m in jail. the mexican trusts me because he’s in jail. i worry their trust will turn deadly when they find out i’m queer. i can’t trust my masculinity as much as my blackness so i become more black to become less queer to become more masculine to become more male to gain more credibility to secure more trust. hard to know the proper amount of blackness for my level of masculinity, especially given my circumstances. to be or not to be the nigger, that is the current question. the next question is: how much of a nigger should the nigger be? there’s such a huge buffet of black masculinity on the menu to perform: there’s black thug, black preppy, black pimp, black baller, 14-inch uncut penis black, black poverty porn, black pride, black victim, black nerd, tragic black, black raised by grandma, black activist, black Barbie, black Becky, black minus the mask, neo-futuristic Kunta Kinte black slave, uncle tom two-point-oh. so many stereotypes. so what’s the healthiest dose of queer faggotry for my current amount of blackness? like—how far have my nostrils flared since my last T-shot? have they preserved their soft-butch-blackness or escalated up to gorilla? are my lips extra juicy? my bubble butt too fluffy? any wispy wooly facial hair yet? am i alpha, read: threatening to white folks? i guess i’m measuring my queerness to see if it still cancels out or at least complicates white supremacy’s impact on my body read: my life. if not, if i read as more queer than black then i’ll have to adjust my blackness to my queerness by monitoring white supremacy. my father, well, i don’t know but i trust his and my mother’s DNA inform my masculinity enough to silence my post-butch-pre-trans identity but i can’t know for sure. and i can’t trust that my cisness will protect, read: erase some of my queer history or at least not reveal that i once walked the planet as a post-butch-pre-trans-tomboi. i don’t know if passing is enough when realness gets you in jail. i’m thinking the judge will hate me because he’s probably an institutional racist and i’m just another black man in his cistem cistem cistem, say it:i am a black man i am a black man i am a black man i am a black man i am a blacBREAK
7. get me before nighttime, i’ll do anything   put on a dress    heels    lipstick    makeup      permission to deadname me granted     i won’t correct you whenever you deliberately use the wrong pronouns     i see the glow in your soulless eyes whenever you revert to my birth-name and this time, promise, i won’t curse you out or fight back    yeah, so, yeah…   i’ll talk boyfriends, titties, fashion, menstrual cycle     no more queer t.v. shows and willingly, i’ll reapply for that fucked-up job with the creepy boss who sexually harasses me for kicks because he thrives whenever a queer black boi squirms at heterosexuality, say thank you Sir when I mean fuck you Sir i’ll endure it all to help with rent, pay bills, be more responsible Mom are you listening? this is what i’m saying: when i go binary i die but i’ll commit suicide for you, okay? take me away. please come get me Mom.BREAK
8. nighttime. even though i sleep on my stomach to hide my vagina, they find it, flip me over. with both hands, i cover my hairy mound, thinking, my T-cock (Transsexual cock) will go mega-penis as an act of resistance. prayer: dear penis, i will not get wet so don’t betray me. listen, do not, i repeat, don’t you dare orgasm during my rape, hear me?, or i will drown in queer shame, understand? in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and my Ancestors, Ase. one guy fucks me in my asshole doggystyle; one guy fucks my mouth; one guy fucks my t-hole-vagina. my rape feels so alive yet unreal. from those depths of numb confusion my revolutionary truth is born, yes, screams powerful as volcanic rupture morph into my chant poetry: I refuse to be a woman for them I refuse to be a woman for them I refuse to have a gender I refuse to have a gender I refuse to have a body I refuse to have a body. I refuse to take ownership of my existence. My body is not their dumping ground, nor is it a grave for their sick, twisted pleasure. My body will not house nor be a sanctuary for toxic masculinity. I refuse to participate, own, or claim their reality. I am not your victim, survivor, warrior, princess, queen, vexin, jezebel. I will not bow to patriarchy. I will not apologize. “No to hate,” I say,  ““yes” to love.” No to stereotype; no to (gender) roles; no to your rigid, inhuman identity compartments. No to the gender police, thought police, border patrol. I refuse to honor concepts of time and space blind to generational trauma. I refuse to cement the power of intimacy with a shared language. The inhuman will not be made human to pervert that which is sacred. Pain is my truth. Failure, helplessness, insanity, vulnerability are my core superpowers. In the affirmative, yes I come from dust and to dust I willingly return. at that point, that moment of complete surrender/ surrender/ surrender, when i know nothing because i am nothing, and because i am nothing all i know is nothing, this is where divine intelligence becomes revelation. i flirt with it. the penis raping my mouth transitions into a hot queer trans-lesbian’s pussy raping my tongue back and forth. s/he sticks hyr fingers inside my asshole, vagina, moving within spatial realities only queers of colour crack open. touch is the real revolution, touch is the other side of grief, touch is the other side of time. dear letter to my lovers. i am we. and we are many genders, as many as there are people on the planet, each orgasm signaling the birth of new nebula. Another cosmic reality, another world, another Self speaking another language yes my black body is not a prison my black body is not a prison my black body is not a prison  queer lesbian fuck-fest was born to transcend, to take back the power stripped from us before time began. such is the manifesto tattooed on my heart.right?i am a black man i am a black man i am a bla—ssssshhhhhhthe cunt deserves a monologue. the penis deserves a monologue. the T-cock, monologue. the body too. but rape = no self. silence, sssshhhhhh.we are actually nothing. and how beautiful that is. because from there, we become infinite. that is how, why queerness saves. ssssh, you are a black man. say nothing. don’t breathe it to a soul.BREAK
9. at this point in the story i am supposed to take care of you. seduce your fragility by quieting my tragic circumstance, removing its scars by issuing a series of content and trigger warnings the way a “good reliable narrative” should. question: who is there for me? and who is there for the millions, billions in the world forced to function among their perpetrators, unheard if not silenced by those privileged enough to captivate a platform as their “voices” impact policies, alter cultures. the ones who occupy white space so oppression operates backwards towards restorative justice. other than the power of narrative to heal silences, who is there for me? not you. never ever you. for years, i will tell myself stories about how ugly i am, how unworthy i am, how i deserved it because i am unwanted. until the story stops. but not in service of you. never ever will i perform for you.BREAK
10. black pastor, black businessman, black entrepreneur, black billionaire… so many stereotypes.BREAK
11. in the shower washing away my blood. it circles round the drain underfoot where my ancestors live, mouths open wide ready to swallow my sacrifice. they’ve tasted century upon century of black pain mine hardly satisfies. i drop to my knees, at the mercy of an unknown queer african god fluent in oppression by the boatloads thanks to the west. these cleansing waters that killed my ancestors will purify me, i pray, rid my life of ugliness. speaking of which, standing naked facing the bathroom mirror, i think to myself, i was gang raped; why am i not shaped by shame? too soon maybe. or maybe there is no explanation. taking two, three steps closer, the silence is queered, mirror image complicated but not shattered. i could easily pass for a twelve year old boy partly because the hormones tighten my skin so, partly because i’m one of those black-don’t-crack prototypes, mostly because the hormone swallows time in reverse for FtMs. 30 going on twelve, 50 going on 25-ish, 20 takes you into single-digit timelines which should play to my advantage with the judge since white folx go absolutely ape-shit over black youth and innocence. i’m thinking a white judge with white guilt has more of a white savior complex for a black boy than a black man—so i better read as black boi.BREAK
12. the judge looks nothing like santa. he’s not a wrinkly, bearded old white guy with rosy cheeks and blood that pumps justice to a heartbeat spiritually in tune with jesus christ like on t.v. during Christmas specials. no. he is a she. she is white, cis, probably het and racist. the first thing she says is in a white man’s voice is: How do you plead? What would happen if I plead “not guilty”? both black guys turn to look at me. the mexican kid stares straight outdoors, searching for a realm beyond this racist, wretched earth. after a shitty lunch of canned rice and cheap dollar-store kidney beans, we were grouped into a straight line then shackled together at the hands and feet, then dumped into a police van to be driven to yet another cell where we met, all five of us, with the same court-appointed lawyer for two minutes each. Plead “not guilty”, and you would need to pay—emphasis here—for a private lawyer—distinct though subtle tonal shift in her delivery—with your own private funds. Think you can afford to do that? at which point i know the judge thinks i’m a nigger, read: poor, young, urban black male, read: criminal, hypersexual, illiterate, subhuman, violent super-predator read: i’m not trans enough, read: black is my gender because it erases everything else, especially my humanity while amplifying the volume on my perceived cisness, read: young, black male, poor, urban, uneducated, no good criminal violent rapist all of which is a lethal cocktail in her whitewashed reality. because she stereotypes me i stereotype her; because i stereotype her, she must be stereotyping me. from the start of this fucked up ordeal i’ve been searching for pockets of salvation, some form of light or hope—from white guilt, or radical black love, or redemptive humor, or black joy, or female cop compassion, or some privileged white bitch willing to side with me by denouncing a cistem she claims has fucked her over too thanks to misogyny or sexism, or maybe from a rage-filled leftist jewish lawyer incensed at the purgatorial loop that is the world’s never-ending injustices—someone, anyone willing to ask the tough questions that disrupt the social order, pop the neo-slave prison narrative, tough questions that crack open my vulnerability so when i finally meet up with my court-appointed lawyer for a private session i trust that my surroundings are safe and secure enough to come out as trans, exercise my exotic trans privilege, use it against the cis men of color who took turns gang raping me, then negotiate a fair deal since i did nothing wrong in the first fucken place. instead, i stand silently shackled at the hands and feet to my rapists, facing a judge staring straight past me at a life-sized photo of our first black president. Plead guilty, the judge says, six months later you have a clean slate with nothing on your record. the caption written in beautiful bold black letters floating above obama’s salt and pepper head reads Yes We Can. i plead guilty.BREAK
13. @ home. facing the mirror, raging @ myself: MOTHER FUCKEN LOSER FAILURE BULLSHIT ASSHOLE DUMBASS PUNK, USELESS NOTHING BULLSHIT—this is how i cry—SHITFACE NIGGER UNGRATEFUL DIRTY BASTARD—black men don’t cry—CUNT, BITCH, WHORE—not allowed to—NASTY ASS PUSSY—bash my head against the wall—NO WONDER THE WORLD CAN’T STAND YOU NIGGER—never ever cry —I CAN BARELY LOOK AT YOU AND I AM YOU—head bashing—PATHETIC—harder—ASSHOLE—blood drips down my face—D’YOU KNOW HOW MANY QUEERS OF COLOR RISKED EVERY—I’M TALKING EVERY FUCKEN THING INCLUDING THEIR PRECIOUS LIVES SO YOU COULD HAVE THIS MOMENT AND WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WITH IT NIGGER YOU THREW THEIR BLOOD AWAY BY GETTING RAPED—IN JAIL NIGGER! THEY DIED FOR YOUR FREEDOM! WHAT KIND OF BLACK MAN ARE YOU?—BLACK ENOUGH? ARE YOU!—MAN ENOUGH?—STRONG ENOUGH—HARD ENOUGH—REAL ENOUGH?—IF YOU’RE A REAL BLACK MAN, WHY WOULD YOU ORGASM?—WHY TAKE PLEASURE FROM MALE RAPE UNLESS YOU’RE UNREAL? UNLESS THERE’S A WOMAN INSIDE YOU?BREAK
14. it’s raining oppression gender=white space   world=white space race=white space  sexuality=white space universal=white space architecture=white space art=white space my body= white space prison=white spaceBREAK
15. dear white supremacy,
    fuuuuuuuuuuck you! why do you have to take up so much space? colonizing the  bathroom, world, my dark-skinned black body, is all white space. what is so wrong with me living outside of stereotype? what is so wrong with celebrating the margins? what is so wrong with living your complexity? what is so wrong with screaming back at a world that keeps screaming at you? because gender, because the binary, because class, because race, it’s all lies. why must penetration = woman? what is so wrong with reaching beyond the body for a self? what is so wrong with being black and unconstructed, raging against a boxed reality that has nothing to do with who you are because it is unreal? what is so wrong with exposing the lies that kill us? what is so wrong with rejecting the interior death that comes with blackness? what is so wrong with holding space for the margins at the centre, making room for vulnerability, helplessness, powerlessness, for failure and freedom? why must my creativity be of service, disciplined, dominated, driven by goals and money to have meaning? what is so wrong with giving birth then putting forward the fullness of my humanity with its messiness, its muck unscripted and illegible? why must i perpetuate the unjust violence in this world to fit in and call that manhood?dear capitalism,
    dear ableism,
    dear ethnocentricity,
    dear afrokitsch,
    dear oppression,
    dear white fragility,
    dear white supremacy,
    when you gawk at my body, looking for clues with unseeing eyes, begin to read me from wherever i am unscripted. permission granted.BREAK
16. @ a meeting with a private lawyer in her upscale office. the lawyer tells the receptionist she won’t see me. i tell the receptionist to tell the lawyer she agreed to an appointment last week then confirmed the meeting with me this morning. Still, the receptionist says, she can’t see you. can’t or won’t? then i tell the receptionist i’m trans and the lawyer magically appears in the hallway.Lawyer: Why didn’t you tell them you were—What are you?
    Me: Trans.
    Lawyer: That means…What does that mean—exactly?
    i don’t know—exactly.
    Me: Female-to-male.
    Lawyer: Why not tell the judge flat out for a deal?
    long pause. i’m more confused than a room full of middleclass hippies. this privileged white bitch overlooking the most affluent part of the city is asking me what would my life look like if i were her? if i could live freely read: fearless in a world tailor-made for me the way she lives as its prize? i look at the long tuffs of hair she tosses over her shoulder as she asks her question. i think of the silent saving grace that is my queerness, of blackness as my gender, the binary as lie, rage as purifying best friend to my unspoken and unheard painful truths, a tool to decolonise for my body to live unmolested, moving through time-space slivers nowhere near her reality despite the present moment.
    Me: Why didn’t I tell the judge I’m trans? Because I feared for my life…?—Bitch.BREAK
17. this is a story about oppressive stereotypes transcended by an individual through  triggering crises as agents of change, or is it? this is a story about an oppressed human trying to see themselves in the mirror for the first time. it’s a story about betrayal, abandonment and the desire to formulate a language despite institutional injustices and cistemic failures. it’s a story about cistemic oppression, the mirror as rapist. it’s about embracing pain as truth. it’s moving from “i” to “I”. no, it’s a story about pain too severe to heal, immune to transformational powers but one functions because trauma is alive. cistem bleedout, is that what this story is about?BREAK
18. back at the doctor’s office for my second (t) shot. pronounced muscles, angular jawline, deep voice that cracks cement blocks, imagine. my doctor looks sick, like he needs a doctor himself. his wife says there are two types of male gynecologists: the ones who adore women and the ones who want to destroy them: My husband is the latter. she turns to her left where the doctor emerges from his bedroom-slash-makeshift-lab, syringe in air. i lower my trousers just enough to expose one butt-cheek. i can feel the needle’s sharpness penetrate through flesh, the slick oil travels fast towards my trauma, will collect over it then gel into a crusty protective shield shaped like the love parents shower on needy orphans. i’m told the syringe is filled with steroids for horses, not hormones for humans; a joke, a dream, fantasy? thanks to pain, i return to my body then exit towards a world where special cruelties await.          

**

Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko is trans, queer, non-binary, Tanzania-American looking for a literary agent and publisher for a book of short stories. Nick has published two queer, trans books called Waafrika (Un/CUT Voices Press, 2013) and Waafrika 123 (Un/CUT Voices Press, 2016). If you’d like to get in touch, Nick can be contacted by email.

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Image: Flickr / Gnome J

The story “Backburner” first appeared in Chain Linked: Stories by Michelle Blair Wilker.

Backburner

My friend Michael has a theory. Guys always have several burners going at once. Sometimes you’re on high heat up front, and sometimes they move you to the back to simmer and bubble up slowly. They never focus on just one dish, cooking eggs, bacon, and spaghetti sauce at the same time. Occasionally, they stir and test the temperature, but mostly they’re saving you for later. For when the fry pan up front gets crusty and cools down.

I’m definitely on the backburner. I can feel it. I got shifted up front for a split second. It gave me enough incentive to stay engaged, but it was like the flash of a summer firefly and now I’m on low behind the large soup tureen. Besides, who wants soup on a hot summer day? It’s just an appetizer before the main course.

I try to sip my Mudslide, but the consistency is so dense that it cakes up the straw. I remove it and take a gulp of the creamy tannish liquid. Chocolate streaks line the glass, and it’s chilly and lumpy as it travels down my throat. Mandy convinced me to come to Liars. I wanted to stay home, swing on the hammock, and feel sorry for myself. But here I am listening to her drunk as hell singing Sheryl Crow.

“Tip your fucking bartender,” she chimes in after she screeches out a lyric. You would think it was a line in the song, because she yells it out every other minute.

I have been reduced to Friday-night karaoke at a dive bar in Montauk with the legendary local lesbian. We met Mandy last summer at Liars, where she insisted that we had hung out the previous year. We hadn’t. But she was just nuts enough that we went along. She told me I had great cheekbones and that Harry had a fantastic sense of fashion. She wanted to discuss the Israeli– Palestinian conflict.

“Do you follow it?” she asked.

“Yes,” Harry replied.

“Bullshit. Hey, you’re pretty handsome. High five.”

She smacked his hand, did a shot of bourbon, and went up for more Sheryl Crow.

“Tip your fucking bartender!”

It was like her anthem. The bar smelled of sea salt and beer, and the dark wood was scratched up and sticky. There were wall-to-wall people. The summer season had just begun, and all the Upper East Side douchebags had begun to arrive. Well, they don’t usually come to Liars, but still it was quite crowded. Montauk makes me miss the East Coast. It’s like the real world with genuine live people. Not shiny, blonde, tan humans with bright white teeth. There’s grit, fisherman, loud Brooklyn accents, and beer bellies. You know where you stand. It’s not like swimming in a murky sea of unknown intention and phony sentiment.

It’s nice to sit in the real world, even if it’s only for a few days. I can smell the rain too. Everything is fresh and green and I’m not thinking about my backburner status. I’m calm, I’m comfy, I’m present.

“Rach, c’mon. Let’s do some Go-Go’s. If I hear Mandy squeal out one more Sheryl Crow, I’m literally going to lose it.”

Elisa is facing away from the bar staring at Mandy and attempting to drink her Mudslide. She’s guzzling it down in thick chunks like it’s ice cream. Mandy moves her hips back and forth and jumps up and down as she screams into the microphone. Her short, blonde hair bounces, and her acid-washed jean jacket looks a tad yellowish underneath the dim lights.

“I mean she’s not in tune and making up half the lyrics.”

Elisa was right, but Mandy was having a blast. You could see it in the way she danced, and frankly she didn’t give a shit what anyone thought. She closed her eyes and smiled. The expression on her face said it all.

I visit Montauk every summer to see my old college roommate, Elisa, and her boyfriend, Harry. They live in Brooklyn but come to Montauk on weekends to escape the sweaty city and stench of rotten hot garbage. It’s different out here. It makes you forget. It’s serene and smells sweet. It reminds me of the Cape. All the cedar shake houses and lilac bushes, lobster rolls, clambakes, and families pedaling along on bicycles. It’s quaint and Norman Rockwellish. It’s certainly not Los Angeles. An ocean of traffic jams, smog, and Botoxed flakes. The sun always shines like it’s Groundhog Day. Nothing changes. Montauk makes me feel whole.

“I found ‘We Got the Beat,’” Elisa says. “I signed us up. There are a million people in front, but who cares?” She slams her glass on the bar. It skims the surface and knocks over a saltshaker. Tiny granules sprinkle across the jagged wood like delicate snowflakes.

“Cool,” I nod. Thankfully, we’ll never sing. The queue is too long and if I know Elisa and Harry, they will get sick of waiting and want to go to 7-Eleven for late-night pizza and hot wings. Mudslides always give her the munchies.

I click my phone. No messages. It’s been a week. I don’t know why I care. It’s not like this is the first time I’ve been shifted to the backburner. I got sucked in with sweet words, promises, and three months of daily messages. We were going to surf Lower Trestles and eat fish tacos, go to a Kings of Leon show at the Bowl, and wine taste in Santa Barbara. I wanted to believe it because what was the point? Why say it if you don’t mean it? Meanwhile, he likes my vacation photos on Instagram. See “backburner.”

Finally, we get a break from Sheryl. A tiny preppy redhead starts rapidly rhyming Kris Kross’s “Jump.” She’s actually pretty good. She knows every word by heart and doesn’t even glance at the monitor. The words zoom by so fast, I can’t even read them. The Liars crowd cheers and claps noisily. The French couple next to me starts to hug each other and do some weird dance where they are tangled and hopping. It looks like a potato sack race. Good thing she fixed her shoe with duct tape five minutes ago. She propped her foot on the bar and wrapped six large pieces around the tip of her sneaker.

“It fixes anything.” She lobbed the roll back to the bartender. “Merci.”

Mandy stands to the side bobbing her head, waiting patiently for her next opportunity. The little redhead’s rendition is quite catchy, and I tap my sandal against the base of the stool. How does she even know the words? It looks like she isn’t old enough to have been born when the song was top of the charts. Besides, those Kris Kross kids’ rhyming was pretty complex and dope.

“Rach, stop checking your phone. Who cares about that guy? Not even worth a second thought.”

“I wasn’t checking.” But she knows me. I dot my pinkie into several salt snowflakes, cleaning up some of the scattered flecks.

She’s right, but the worst feeling in the world is to be ignored, disposed of, replaced. I feel worthless. Hollow like a rotting tree stump. Like something’s wrong. Why didn’t I get picked? I know it’s not me, but there is that little voice deep down. That nagging nasty alter ego. The “glass half empty” me. The one that says yup, it is you. I’m not sad, I’m not heartbroken, but it stings a bit. Almost like a pesky mosquito bite.

“Hey there, hot stuff.” Mandy is now pressed up against the bar and has her arm draped around my shoulder. Her face is two inches from mine, and I can smell a combination of smoke and cream on her breath.

“Check out the cheekbones on this fox.” Mandy points above my head. “Mudslide for Mandy.” And she bangs a twenty onto the bar.

Elisa has moved on from Mudslides to Coronas and is now sitting on Harry’s lap in the corner. Her legs dangle and don’t quite reach the floor. She’s pretty drunk and flips her dark hair and giggles. Harry squeezes the back of my neck, shrugs, and then continues to watch the hockey game. He looks pretty worn out after spending all day laying Sheetrock in the laundry room. He’s still got smatterings of white dust on the cuffs of his jeans.

Elisa and Harry take care of me and treat me like family. We don’t talk all the time or see each other more than once or twice a year, but when we reunite it’s like we were never apart. We don’t skip a beat.

“Mands, tell Rachel to forget this West Coast asshole and his Real Housewife girlfriend.”

“Forget ’im. You got me. Besides, who has cheekbones like you? Who could pass that up? What an idiot. I’ll fix you up with a real man. What about that hunk in the lobster shorts?”

Mandy nods in the direction of the dock, where a tall guy with salt-and-pepper hair is chatting with friends. The boys are deeply sunburned under their eyes and wear various pastel shorts with scattered random objects. Crabs, tennis rackets, whales, and strawberries. Ray-Ban pilot glasses top their heads like shiny golden crowns.

“Thanks, but no thanks, Mands.” The last thing I needed was Sheryl Crow’s biggest fan to be my wingman.

“Suit yourself. But I got game.”

Elisa and I glance at each other and try not to laugh. I take a large gulp of my Mudslide. I mean, Mandy is the best. You couldn’t make it up if you tried.

“Thanks, lady. You sure do.” I clap her on the back. Her jacket feels a bit damp. She flashes me the “hang ten” sign before heading up front to bully someone into letting her do more Sheryl.

I think I’ve come to terms with my backburner status. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be? Maybe I’m one of those people who is destined to be alone? To be the rainy-day option when it doesn’t work out with the Playboy bunny or cheerleader. Fuck that. I’m not waiting around for when he comes to the realization that the shiny new object is insane. I’m good with it, yeah. Montauk has fixed me. Reminded me of who I am. It tugged at me deep down and said, “Hey, you’re an East Coast girl at heart. Embrace it. You’re real, you’ve got spunk, you’ve got me. Remember my pinky-orange sunsets; lumpy, steep sand dunes; and pebbled rocky shores. My decadent ice cream– filled summer and daily Ditch Plains surf sessions.”

I glance at the front and see Mandy trying to convince the little redhead to do a duet. She’s selling her everything she’s got. She’s making loud gestures and flashing her best “Mandy smile.” The bar is loud, but through the muffled chatting and piercing Journey song I can hear a foghorn in the distance. The moon is a tiny golden sliver, and the sky is clear enough to see some twinkling stars. It’s almost time to drive Harry and Elisa home. I can tell she’s close to craving those hot wings.

My phone buzzes and slides across the salty surface.

Hey Girl! How are you?!?! 😉

I study the energetic text and silly emoticon and without hesitation press Delete. I take a deep breath, my shoulders relax, and that thick, twisted tummy knot loosens. I let out a chuckle.

“Hey, can I buy you a cocktail?” Lobster Shorts is standing next to me and grinning. He’s pretty cute, even with his Ray-Ban crown at 10 p.m. His eyes have tiny creases underneath, and his pink shirt is buttoned all lopsided.

“Sure.”

Mandy’s back to Sheryl again. This time she’s playing a little air guitar and has removed the acid-washed jean jacket. She stops, points at me, and winks before going back to shouting into the microphone. You would think she was playing Madison Square Garden.

“Cheers,” Lobster Shorts says.

“Tip your fucking bartender!”

**

Michelle Blair Wilker is a Los Angeles-writer and producer. Her work has appeared in Across the Margin, Whistlingfire, Unheard LA, Felix Magazine, Storgy, and The Huffington Post. She was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s November 2012 contest for new writers and shortlisted for the Fresher Writing Prize in 2015. In 2017, she attended DISQUIET: Dzanc Books International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, and was featured in The New Short Fiction Series in Los Angeles. Her first book, Chain Linked: Stories was published in June through Post Hill Press and Simon & Schuster. The collection was recently selected for the 2018 Montana Book Festival.

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Image: Flickr / Justin

“Freedom” was first published in Staggerwing, Alice Kaltman’s first short story collection:

Freedom

Oh the burn. That searing pain squeezing his thighs like a vise grip. The supreme feeling. The most validating. Even more affirming than the heaving sensation in his gut. A smaller gut these days. But still a paunch, folded over burning thighs as Danny pedaled fast and furious through the Vermont country side.

Danny had never been a big one for physical pain. But the past few months had changed that. Now he was a glutton for punishment, as long as it came via two wheels, multiple gears and a padded seat. Biking had become his thing. It might smack of mid-life crisis, but no question, it was a healthy outlet. Much better than a trophy wife or sporty car. Not that either of those were viable options for an overweight New York City public school English teacher recently dumped by his high-power executive wife.

The super steep Vermont inclines provided pure bliss. Now another magnificent hill was coming his way. Danny shifted expertly to proper gear. Like the little engine that could, he made his way to the top. I think I can, I think I can…

********

Four months earlier, on a tepidly overcast April afternoon, Danny trudged like a tired refugee towards the subway. Meg had planted the bomb two weeks earlier. Her actual words: It’s not working Danny. Our fighting is bad for Cody. You know it and I know it. I want a divorce. The subtext: I’m having the best sex of my life with Craig Gundersen. I’m not that interested in the whole parenting thing. I’m out of here, you fat fuck.

No question who Cody should end up with as far as Danny was concerned. What the courts decided was another matter.

Before descending the subway stairs, he lifted his eyes momentarily, hoping for a glimmer of sunlight, a ray of something akin to hope. It was then Danny spotted the bike, propped in the window of Urban Cyclist, front wheel slightly elevated, as if to create the illusion of flight. The Kestrel Talon. Maybe it was the name, the implication of speed and slice. Or maybe it was how the weak sunlight reflected off the bicycle’s silver metal while it barely warmed Danny’s disappointed soul. The Kestrel Talon gleamed. It downright beckoned. Danny hadn’t ridden a bike in fifteen years. The damn thing set him back two thousand bucks.

He trained every day. Got up at five a.m., headed to Central Park and did the loop, not just once, not just twice. By mid-May it was often ten times. Danny added extra workouts in the afternoons, snuck out of MS 115 like a cat burglar, skipped the useless faculty meetings, let his perpetually delinquent students off without detention. Why waste his breath?

All rides were cathartic. His earliest ones pointedly so. Danny’s cycling was feriocious, if uncouth and energy inefficient. His pre-divorce imagination went vividly wild. Danny rounded the 110th Street hill and left a long tar-and-pebbled gash across the sloping asphalt which he fantasized was Meg’s formidible ass. The downhill at 72nd Street provided opportunity to hyper-speed along the delicate bridge of Meg’s lovely nose. Danny broke it, deviated her septum. Snap, snap, snap. Ah, but the sweetest musing of all came at the southeast corner of 59th, where Danny pumped his brakes to gouge a repeated pattern along the meat of Craig Gundersen’s overrated cock.

********

Now it was August, with only a few niggling details of shared custody to work out. Danny had arrived at this remote corner of Vermont two days earlier with the Kestrel Talon secured to the roof of his Prius. He checked in to Olaf’s Country Inn, an old farmhouse with a few musty spare rooms near the back entrance. Tomorrow uber-parenting would begin again. Danny would be sitting in the outdoor Arpeggio Lake Music Camp Amphitheatre, trying to covertly swat voracious mosquitoes while his brilliant flute prodigy of a son trilled his way through Mozart. Last year Danny and Meg had come together, sitting closer to each other than they had in years. All for Cody’s benefit. Meg would’ve rather died. She complained about the heat, the uncomfortable, backless outdoor seating, the bugs, the humidity, the other parents. But it was Danny she most abhorred. Danny with his hairy, clammy thigh pressing against her wall of impenetrable smoothness.

But this summer, Danny was in biking heaven. Meg was out at Gundersen’s East Hampton compound doing God knew what. Danny couldn’t care less. He was in stellar cycling form. There was no more need for revenge riding now that he was such a cycling beast. No decline or coasting or resting before he got to the tippy top of this hill. Just. Going. For. The. Burn.

Hill, meet Danny. Danny, meet Hill.

He crested the top and gave himself a silent cheer. No pause, just an easy coast down, taking in the sights. Danny passed beauty, he passed despair. To his left, gold flowers sprouted through the broken window of a derelict home. Vines with deep purple blossoms twisted around yellow hazard tape on a rusted, wire fence. To his right, a gorgeous green field was filled with abandoned car chassis. If Danny still wrote poetry, this contradictory Vermont landscape would provide inspiration. Better than teaching slow-witted eighth graders to churn out their own half-baked verse, that was for sure.

Danny hit a straightaway. Time to pour on the juice. He looked at the speedometer. 40 mph. Not too shabby. He couldn’t help wonder if Craig Gunderson was capable of such a feat. But why think of such things? Danny refocused. Speed was his priority.

There was minor obstacle just ahead, before another magnificent hill. A dog straining on a chain connected to a stake at the end of the straightaway. Imprisoned on a dusty patch of earth at the foot of a beautiful incline. Another countryside paradox. It looked like a mutt. But what did Danny know about dogs? He’d never owned one. His childhood had been petless. His Depression-era parents had had no extra cash floating around their Flatbush apartment to feed a mouth that wasn’t even human. Cody, of course, had always wanted a dog. But Meg was allergic, which was lucky, because Danny was a wee bit scared of dogs.

But Vermont dogs were tolerable, in large part because they were always behind fences, roped to mailboxes, leashed to barns. Or chained to posts like this one. They were shackled, while Danny was free.

The dog edged its front paws on to the asphalt. Toenails click-clacked like castenets as it lurched and howled. It was female, emaciated, but with a bunch of droopy teats.

Danny grunted as he did a clean little loopy loo around the poor, hapless beast. He moved onward and upward. The hill was mighty steep. Danny’s breath was shallow. His gut lurched. His heart pumped. And joy of joys, his thighs were killing him! Perfection, but for the continued, desperate yapping of that dog down the hill.

At the summit, Danny stopped to take a swig of Powerade. He took big gulps of the fresh Vermont air and told himself he was glad to be alive. He gazed behind himself, proud to survey where he’d come from. The dog stared up at him, quiet now. She knew her limits.

“Top o’ the mornin’ to ya, Ma’am,” he called to her with a jaunty and terrible faux-Irish accent.

The dog barked once. Then, with canine decisiveness, she bounded up the hill at quite a clip, the chain and upended stake clanging behind her like tin cans attached to a newlywed’s bumper.

Danny scrambled to reattach his cleats, his entire body quaking. He adjusted his gears and after a wobbly start, he careened down the next decline. His breath was shallow. His gut lurched. His heart pumped. But this was panic, not joy.

The dog raced closer, dragging that damn stake and chain. She was fast, for a scrawny little thing.

Danny willed himself to focus on the road ahead. The dog was gaining on him, galloping like a horse. She was so near, Danny could hear her wheezing breath. There was a gurgle and a catch to it. The dog was determined. Maybe desperate too.

The pothole was an unforeseen conclusion. While Danny flew over his handle bars he thought, who will cut the crusts off Cody’s peanut butter and banana sandwiches?

He landed with a dull thud. Bruised and scraped, but nothing severed. His extra poundage had cushioned the blow. Before he could get up, the dog was upon him, her paws pressed against his chest. She licked his cheeks, his lips. She slobbered all over his bike goggles, his helmet, his neck.

Her collar was so tight her dun colored fur puffed and swelled around it. Yellow crud coated her lower lids. Her breath was swampy and hot. The dangling teats were dried up, crusted over, spent.

Danny lay still, and let the dog kiss him. There was no need for any more fear. Eventually he reached up to unbuckle her collar. Underneath, the bare doggy skin was red and raw. She paused for a moment, registering this new sensation, breeze on flesh. She sniffed the air, considered the empty road ahead. Then she returned her gaze to Danny with eyes dark as tar, and started kissing him again.

Danny rolled out from under her. Instantly she leaned in to him, her ribs pressing against his sopping wet tunic. Olaf’s Inn was less than a quarter mile away. An easy ride. An easy run. There were no other guests. And there was that back entrance after all.

Cody had always wanted a dog.

“Do you know how to keep quiet?” Danny asked.

The dog looked up at him and blinked.

**

Alice Kaltman is the author of the story collection Staggerwing, the novel Wavehouse, and coming in Spring of 2020, the much anticipated mermaid fantasy,The Tantalizing Tale of Grace Minnaugh. Her stories appear in numerous journals including Hobart, Whiskey Paper, Joyland, and BULL: Men’s Fiction, and in the anthologies The Pleasure You Suffer and Feckless Cunt. Her work has twice been selected as Longform Fiction Picks, and was selected as a semifinalist for The Best Small Fictions 2017. Alice lives, writes and surfs in Brooklyn and Montauk, New York.

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Image: Flickr / Michael Cory