Micros
SLUMBER PARTY AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Robert Helfst
We’re nearly there now - lids grow heavy as the sun sets on our species. It’s bittersweet, sleep’s surrender, a warm blanket wrapping around our aching bodies. It’s better this way, a relief to embrace our conclusion without a coda, to no longer carry on. In the end it wasn’t cancer or rising oceans or mass extinctions or other self-inflicted harms but a deep fatigue that hollowed us until there was nothing left to do but rest, finally, now and forever. One last shared sigh, releasing the weight of our communal sins, and then the comfort of an unending slumber.
July 10, 2025
Fiction
NO NAME AND COOL PARTY by Erin Satterthwaite
No NameI looked at her picture to see if she was more attractive than me. I looked up her family’s ancestry to see if they had ever owned slaves. They hadn’t; they were quakers. I looked at the picture of my boyfriend and her when they were in Italy together. I had never even been to Italy and he knew this. Yet there he was four years ago eating gelato with her with his eyes closed and a big grin. He probably wouldn’t take me to Italy because I was dull and uncultured. She worked in academia at a fancy university and had degrees that I would never have. I worked as a preschool teacher and everyone thinks I just finger paint all day. I don’t, and we mostly use colored markers anyways. She was born in a city, a really important one. I was born in a town with no name. It did have a name, but it hardly deserved one. She was not prettier than me, but somehow that made it worse. She must be really special while I am just attractive. Being attractive isn’t special. Anyone would date someone attractive because they assume they're good at sex. I am not good at sex; I just lay there. She probably did really kinky stuff. Like finger stuff. I heard ugly girls do that to compensate. She was not actually ugly, but I needed to say that she was. It was all I had. Cool Party I had finally been invited to a cool party. I was wearing a long skirt. I couldn’t drink because I was on antibiotics so I ordered an apple juice at the bar because I thought it would at least look like a beer but the bartender handed me a bottle shaped like an apple. I was wearing a long skirt and drinking apple juice and everyone thought I was Mormon and they hated me. Nobody had said they hated me, but I could assume they did because nobody was coming up and talking to me. The most popular person at the party had invited me. He was talking to everyone else and everyone wanted to talk to him. I was alone in a corner watching a Youtube video on mute, which probably wasn't helping. Then someone came up and began talking to me. He asked about the Youtube video. I told him it was two really funny guys that play video games and he asked if I played video games and I said no because I didn’t play video games, I just liked watching other people do it. He excused himself and walked away. I was jealous of him because he could walk away. I finished my apple juice and went home.
July 9, 2025
Interviews & Reviews
BURIED PATHOLOGIES AND THE ULTIMATE ‘NO PLACE’: An Anti-Interview with Oli Johns by Ryan Raymond Buell
How many people will read this interview? Will anyone read it? Will exactly three people read it—the writer interviewed, the editor interviewing, the publisher publishing … before a handful of thumbs sends it scrolling offscreen in their search for more content?—so much to read and digest, to form a perspective on … I can’t. I don’t have time. Just swipe to the bottom and see if it leaves a mark. It’s hard to know if I watched this or imagined it, but there is probably a cyberpunk anime where someone plugs a metal cord into their brainstem, and the data download is so huge blood trickles out their nostrils and they die, right there in their bedroom in front of the computer screen. Given the current size and capability of the human brain it seems impossible to read everything on the Internet. What if someone forced you to? What if you were then made to think deeply on absolutely everything you read? When someone thinks a thought that no one else has ever come close to thinking does the universe expand or become denser? What kind of instrument would be used to measure this? How much would it cost? Would it make living and working in a factory on the moon worth it? These are some of the kinds of questions I wish I had asked. Novelist and blogger Oli Johns refused an interview with me. “Ask me questions without asking any questions,” he said. “Let me answer using only lines from Ubik.” Here is our encounter, which took place via email.RYAN RAYMOND BUELL: Your blog [psychoholosuite.com] recently reached a milestone of ten years. What were your spacetime coordinates when you realized your physical existence would be forfeited for that of Psycho Holosuite? OLI JOHNS: 10 years is a farmer’s choice, my failure to grow corn and lemongrass at the same time and growing it anyway. 10 years. That’s the number I tell people in the market when they ask me how long I’ve been in Hong Kong, 10 not 18 cos 18 seems unreal. 10 years of slowly becoming nothing but a WordPress site. The novels may as well be burnt plastic. My Cantonese is quite decent. Is that what you want? I’m not comfortable with this at all. Glen Runciter is dead. Or is he? Someone died in the explosion orchestrated by the funniest SF writer of his time, a rabid anti-Communist, anti-Lemmist. He’s not dead. He can’t die. Ads recycle all. First story I ever wrote for Psycho Holosuite was about a guy coming back from the dead and becoming Psycho Holosuite. This was a mistake. MistAAAAke. The whole thing. Tsuen bo do hai gai. How do you feel about it as someone who once wanted to Exit Reality, who's been here for five minutes, who is not that supernaturalist?RRB: I feel adversarial about it, it doesn’t matter. I’m here to toe-test the waters for a new high, maybe drift intermittently on a friendly basis, we’ll see. But I appreciate the reference to my namesake. Question two: How does studying languages outside of English contribute to your penchant for reconfiguring small art-shaped swathes of reality? OLI: [To escape feeling too trapped by performance/dadaism, let’s put real stuff in brackets. Is everything going to be a question? [it doesn’t have to be]. My aim is to bury my real feelings amongst a lot of nonsense, most of it snatched from old notes, old work, your work, Ubik [as I said before], language guides, Cantonese soft sci-fi etc.] [let’s be desperate friends, not adversaries.]].: : : :When it comes to language, I’m skimming the pages, looking for another landscape with one mother and one threat. It doesn’t happen that often. My mother just wants to be left alone, for psychological reasons. She says she can speak French but I’ve tested her several times and now she’s gone. If she had stuck around, she would’ve understood that surrealism/absurdism hinges on [ ]. Language learning rides on the wing of that. In Cantonese, the spoken and written are often estranged from each other—you shouldn’t write out that which comes from the throat—so I accept that and shove idioms in. Hand write them like a primary school kid, scan them, remove the background [god willing, if there’s substance to it] and just shovel them into my work. It always makes sense despite this, despite me. To be honest, I’m only really competent in Cantonese, Japanese, French, Farsi, Portuguese, Slovene, Urdu, Swahili and Urdu. Six of those are make-believe. I read a book once. You put a guy from Pakistan in front of me, I’ll forget how to say ‘nothing.’ I can’t speak Urdu. The writing system is beautiful. Can’t speak French either, unlike every single person in the UK. Is this answering the question? Too artificial? At some point, this is going to get annoying and I want to stay on top of that. If you come to live in Hong Kong, locals will say, why aren’t you learning Mandarin? I feel contaminated by my choices. Another language I’m not fluent in is the occult. Sorry, Elytron [ and now [x]].Recently, I’ve started learning Yaqui.It all builds up into several thousand different ways of pretending you’re actually expressing yourself.Me a language?I’ve wanted to say this for a long time. In Perma Neon O, there was a page with an extract from Red Moon [Chinese sci-fi, erratic], fully written out in Chinese by my hand, aligned to the right, opposed by white space. It said something about me that no one will ever understand, even those who understand Chinese. Should I have deleted that?RRB: [I don’t see you as a true adversary. But the tone felt that way to me, which I honestly found exciting. But I agree, desperately colliding friends it is. Right now, the way I see it is that the interview starts with questions for the sake of form [there are also some actual thoughts I genuinely want to ask you about] but eventually your chaotic sense-destroying responses draw me into a helpless dialogue, the questions becoming other ends of an equation, or responses to your outputs, until the typical interview structure is imploded … ] [with this next one feel free to respond with simulations and nothing but, when it feels right I’ll respond in kind … provoking me a little might help with this, maybe by my fifth question I’ll have no choice but to give up asking things] What new genres of literature should be invented? OLI: [Never really thought about this before re: inventing genres].One of the below: modernism but 80’s but soft SF but more absurd but semi-real, something unafraid of aesthetics/faculty of association, prole stuff, my stuff, their stuff, Chinese stuff, xeno-esoterica, or not my stuff, I’m just copying Tyson Bley, though it looks like he’s moved on to shriek music now.I’ve moved locations, those kids were irritating.I’m not copying him, I just say it to ground myself.[Aren’t there enough genres already?]I subbed a beautiful picaresque to Solarpunk Magazine last year about an anarchist alone and miserable in the Kuiper Belt, and they didn’t like it. There’s hope in that. I’ll never sub anything to anyone ever again. Not sure they’re even a magazine. What I really wanna do is just keep scrawling out lines from Cinema II // Deleuze and superimposing them on screenshots from Santa Claws and Alienator and Mystics in Bali.[don’t think I have a good answer to this. Trying to analyse why I’m so uncomfortable in this process/reverting to absurdism. It’s not an interview but feels like it is. I’m afraid [terrified maybe] that one of these lines is gonna be extracted and framed in the promo-box, and without context, my work dies. Almost all work does].Is snuff a genre?Or is it core?Solar-, Cyber-, Modernist, aesthetic, synth-, steam-, hard-, soft-, there’s always a camera, always a Liz Short bisected into...this...kind of real out of artifice yet still not real, not even close.I’m Khleb-punk and here’s my manifesto: ‘Japan In White Guy.’[Karina Bush might be a genre, and that would be the end of her. Leave naming to others. Enjoy anonymity + hope it hurts].[you should keep these bits in, I think it might add something].[People want to be confused]RRB: [your responses are meaty and complicated enough that I feel unable to respond without sounding like a dick…I wonder if saying art dies without context is like needing genre conventions through which to view it, which is maybe why it’s difficult to imagine a new one without falling back on variations of what’s already here.][A lot of your work plays off genre, or uses it as a vehicle for what feels like an [un]selfconsciously permeable mind [yours?] open to any information it encounters, considering rejecting revisiting…maybe the thoughts happening in that mind would make no sense without the context of genre [sci-fi for KRV, Perma Neon O, etc.] but they would still exist as a puzzling artifact made out of typed [and scribbled] thoughts, which they seem to be already.] In your novel KRV, the narrator struggles to imagine utopian societies springing up on the dwarf planets of the Kuiper Belt, while in the far backdrop of the story, the 2019-20 Hong Kong protests are taking place. Bliss shifted into low gear—if we had regressed twenty, maybe thirty years the psychological spacewalks extended in a garish mask. “Please, Mr. Runciter.” Those green tumbled stones. The toaster dissolved as a sullen refrigerator perceived her breasts. [Hadn’t cracked my copy of UBIK for a long while. Feels good.]Utopia translates to ‘no place’—is outer space a suitable no place? OLI: I delayed replying to this [to watch Light Shop—not awful but rooted in melodrama, characters are ‘no thing’—with my wife] and lost about 14 good ideas in the process. Actually, I remember one of them, to lift lines from an interview Jung did about the afterlife just before he died and then doctor them a little. I won’t do that now, seems cheap somehow.Your ‘only shown/visible via existing genre conventions’ is very quantum. I don’t disagree. Why worry about inventing something new when you won’t really understand how it came about, where it originated from? I don’t think about ‘the new’ at all cos I have no marketing arm. Scrawling + scanning + shock collage are nothing new. My stuff is new in that no one’s put things in this exact order before. New is paralysing. New is elasticating. New new new new new noo new. KRV is old-new, basically a lost Barry Malzberg piece, a superior alternate to Galaxies, which I struggled with live in one section of KRV cos it performed itself as a new genre within sci-fi + nowhere else + did not go far or quantum enough. It felt playful, philosophical, not desperate or enraged. The first time I read it I never made it to page 98, the 3 cyborgs bit, which it desperately needed. I said ‘superior’ just now and maybe shouldn’t have, but I need to back myself + KRV is rooted in something real and intimate whereas Galaxies is not. Though parts of it lose me a little, parts of KRV, I mean. Some of the writing in the middle is sloppy, the notes can be repetitive past the line of tolerance etc. Last winter, I hated it in a vague way, from my memory of writing and editing it. This winter, it’s ‘pretty good.’ Does Galaxies loop itself like this? [I read that Malzberg has just died. You can delete this part, if you like. Maybe I’ll go and re-read Galaxies, give it more of a chance. Start on page 98, the 3 cyborgs. Should I? Can you will something to be better than it is? Other writers I respect adore it, adore Malzberg. Adore what exactly?]This is getting close to becoming a de-con-struc.Triton is the ultimate ‘no place’ for me to bury my pathologies on. Most of my work visits there at some point. Not visits, situates. [I didn’t know ‘utopia’ translated literally as ‘no place.’ Is that true? [I just checked, it is]. Does that mean ‘place’ is an innately degraded/degrading thing, cannot have replicators or Picard’s dream state? I could never write a utopia, only the failed attempt at one [due to my miserable psyche]. The Kuiper Belt is so tempting to superimpose that on as there are 10,000+ dwarf planets out there, one for each marginal ideology, and the huge distance gaps between them inconveniences imperialist gunships looking to “monitor” things...but also isolates colonists/private interests that could expand their psychopathy, and this is all make-believe anyway. There’s just something comforting about being on an icy moon away from subject-others who will eventually become object-others when my brain turns on me.Is Triton a genre? De-con-struc?That’s what my thoughts—I’m happy you’re reading Ubik again—look like without genre, probably a pathetic way of diverting fromRRB: [Imagining something that cannot be imagined has its appeal for me, though. Not new for the sake of it, but an actual ‘no place’ waiting to be revealed. [I still have religion in me.]Probably the only way to get there though—even tho it’s not possible—is through old methods newly ordered [ and even then it’s only new in that a baby or a cloud doesn’t exist until you see or give birth to one] … ][who knows what this is at this point, maybe I’ll delete everything except the brackets]I wondered about that, how ‘live’ the process of writing was compared to your parallel existence outside the book. KRV feels like a live blog plotted out via improv while the narrator [his name is Gulag?] is next to incapable of writing anything without endlessly outlining and restructuring his screenplay [his own thoughts] into what ends up feeling like a [maybe] permanent stasis. [VOID ROOM 9]You mention the difficulty of achieving this kind of non-development or regression of character at the end of your de-con-struc of I Saw the TV Glow. Is this where the desperation and rage ends up, forced to live? OLI: RRB: When I first encountered your work, I tried to understand the images. Now, I think I try and let them resonate. But it’s an interesting question, RE: trying to understand. It feels like an important part of your nature as a creator: What’s this guy’s internal monologue like anyway? Must have a non-stop de-con-struc going off all the time—brushing his teeth, chewing plant matter [vegetarian?], drawing spaceships—does he ever get a break? What is the relationship between your writing and your images? Do you see them coming from the same place? Ejaz was my favorite character in KRV. I’m glad he has a press named after him. What kinds of writing [besides notes-only novellas] do they specialize in? [You don’t have to answer any of these. I hope you know.]And lastly, is time travel possible outside of sci-fi? [Don’t worry, I think we’ve crescendoed…just need to find our way to a vanishing point.]OLI: [RE: 50+ Q's: you can always edit them in later, I don't mind].[I’m running out of ideas. Maybe I should try to be more direct, tell you about the time I nearly snapped my arm off while arm-wrestling? Or make up a story about killing a piglet? This is already genuine, I’m not masking—much of—anything].To be honest, I do not 100% understand what a noosign is, or a lectosign, but I still went ahead and used it in several of my novels. Or I did understand it and now I forget. Maybe no one understands it [100%].Talk about discipline?My shot at a cento [Black Hole Cento] had about 27 quotes and only 4 of them could be bothered to fit [into each other].Why would anyone do this to themselves?If I was shit at it, they must be too.I think it was Parmenides who said, people who go to Oxford and Yale are smart in an academic sense but can’t wrap a present properly, can’t interpret Total Recall without being told beforehand what it means by a superior interpreter [same with me and Lost Highway, I had to be led by the hand by KB Toys—Bill Pullman doubles as the devil, Patty Arquette is half-Thai surprise], can’t speak Cantonese, can’t do collage the way I can.[Time travel? I don't know]. I won’t be a pedant and say we’re travelling through time right now, or time is just a construct. I know what you’re asking of me. If it does/can happen, will there be chaos or a collection of master-editors trying to fix all incursions e.g. Timecop. If it can/does happen, it is happening now].Any philosophical insight I possess is purely accidental, I’ve barely read anyone + have no desire to.[I started writing this answer before you sent me the question. I’m sorry for putting us both through this, I thought it was a good idea but now I’m not so sure. Feels like I’m actively draining 2 separate brains. Was gonna mix in lines from interviews by Karina Bush + Gary J. Shipley + others, but now that I’m describing it...][On the other hand, I’m sure there are some good answers in here somewhere, just need to sift out the dirt].[My mood might be bad cos I got a rejection yesterday [my birthday!] from a sci-fi mag I have never read, a mag that pays. I need to make money out of this at some point].[RE: my brain: I know my friends don’t self-analyse/self-castigate like I do, but I assume at least some artists do/did. Don’t you [do it]? I know you said that, when writing Exit Reality, you wanted to disassociate from yourself/reality. Did you stop wanting to do that? Or did you succeed to a certain degree?RRB: [[[[Happy [belated] birthday!]]] I also recently got rejected from a sci-fi mag I have never read [one that pays]—within 24 hours of submitting, too. It felt refreshing to not have to wait six months, though.]Most of my writer friends are neurotic as hell. I’m no different. But your work seems unique in that those self-analyses and -castigations are almost a stand-in for narrative or a protagonist. That may not be the most accurate characterization of all your writing [I haven’t read everything], but it’s a mode that seems effortless, natural to you.I can imagine a novel from you that pushes this tendency to such extremes as to becomeutopic. [I feel like you’re kind of on fire at this point, I wanna give the black hole room to expand.]RE: money making: Would you take a job [well-paying] in which neuro and computer scientists study and map your consciousness while you do nothing but consume and create art, but their research helps addict billions of unborn children to destructive technologies? [This can be the last question[s].]OLI: The TV had receded back a long way; he found himself confronted by a dark, wood-cabinet, Atwater-Kent, tuned radio-frequency oldtime AM radio, complete with antenna and ground wires. God in heaven, he said to himself, appalled, elated. Just one more answer to try and hold it all together. But why hadn’t the TV set reverted instead to formless metals and plastics? I just remembered, a reporter for Ming Bo [Newspaper in HK] interviewed me about 16 years ago. Those, after all, were its constituents; it had been constructed out of them, not out of an earlier radio. He’d found a copy of The Atheism Jab [a collection of not very good short stories, my first stab at writing] in a local info-shop [now long gone] and wanted to know why someone would do that. Perhaps this weirdly verified a discarded ancient philosophy, that of Plato’s idea objects, the universals which, in each class, were real. Can’t picture what I said to him, it was too far back, but he did say afterwards that I sounded angry. The form TV set had been a template imposed as successor to other templates, like the procession of frames in a movie sequence. I hope I don’t sound that way today. Prior forms, he reflected, must carry on an invisible, residual life in every object. I hope I’ve managed to hide it a little, at least, or bury it deep inside the de-con-strucs. The past is latent, is submerged, but still there, capable of rising to the surface once the later imprinting unfortunately—and against ordinary experience—vanishes. Or it could be that I don’t hope that. The man contains—not the boy—but earlier men, he thought. Anger should drive me. History began a long time ago. Shouldn’t it?[Yes, UBIK, again. Without design. I randomly flicked, first time, to page 139 and the words were already there, awkwardly perfect. This is the satan-wave of experimentalism, I believe].Was the sci-fi mag [that rejected you] Clarkesworld? They have a fast turnaround. I must’ve been ‘rejected within 2 days’ around 50 times for them. I’m pretty sure I’ve tried everything, every type of story. You’ll never get in there, comrade. You'll never get past their network of AI elves. You = WE.[btw, I said I hadn’t read that other SF mag [that I got rejected from], but I do read stories sometimes, to see what kind of standard they’re looking for, that I can later fail to emulate. I liked one Clarkesworld story, by Kij Johnson, ‘SPAR’ [not the supermarket]. The rest-...I don’t want to rant. Just wish they’d loosen their guidelines a bit, or hire my mum as a first reader]. I'm an anarchist, I would never sign up to anything large scale.I'm an anarchist, I would never sign up to anything large scale.I'm an anarchist, I would never sign up to anything scaly.I'm an anarchist, I would never sex up anything large scale.As an anarchist, I would never sign up to anything large scale.I'm the Bye Bye Man, I would never sign up to anything large scale.I'm an antichrist, I would never sign up to anything large scale.I'm an anarchist, I would never sign up to anything like this.I'm an anarchist, I would never sign up to anything large scale.I love kids and they love me, the more unborn the better.If this is the end then thanks cos I would never speak like this in real life. No one would ask me.[RE: UBIK + random page: thinking back a bit, it wasn't that random, I knew the latter half of the book would have parts where objects and the environment started to regress to an earlier form, and I aimed for roughly that area. Within that, it was random [my second flick - the first didn't go deep enough]. Perhaps a neat example of my "method" overall]]]].[Ubik is great to read, I miss books like this]
July 8, 2025
Fiction
THE CONSULTATION by Zac Smith
So a vasectomy isn't actually reversible. I like to start off with that. Because for some guys that's all they need to hear before they decide they need some more time to think about it. I know people say that a vasectomy is reversible, but it's not. You really need to be done having kids if you're going to do this, because it's permanent. But I see you already have some kids so I'm less worried about that in this case. You have three, is that right? That's great. Makes sense you'd want a vasectomy. I have three kids, so I get it. I had three and thought woah there, that's enough of that! Time for a vasectomy! And did it myself. I mean, I didn't do it to myself, but you know what I mean. I got the procedure done myself. By my colleague Dr. Askildsen, actually. Although, to be fair, I could've probably done it to myself. I've done, well, yeah, let's see, I've done probably five hundred vasectomies now with no complications. Maybe one or two complications. Or at least no complications from anything I did, uh, well, not wrong, but, you know, most complications are due to the patient not resting properly or tending to the incision site correctly. Which is partly why we like to have consultations like this first and then schedule the vasectomy procedure itself for a later date – and we'll get into this more later – because there are some things that we like to go over before the actual procedure. But like I said I've had a pretty excellent record. I'm pretty good at vasectomies, basically. I feel confident that I could have done my own procedure, actually, if you want the truth. It's all I do at the clinic, really. And a successfully completed vasectomy has a ninety-nine point nine five percent chance efficacy rate at preventing pregnancy. That's effectively one hundred percent. I could probably do the vasectomy procedure blindfolded at this point, too, to be honest. And we'll get into this more later, but it only takes about an hour, usually less, from start to finish. So some days I do five or six vasectomies in a row, like that's just my whole day, maybe one consult, like this, in the morning, you know, and then I pick up the bulk of the procedures for Dr. Askildsen, usually. Some days it's just back to back procedures and I clock out. There isn't really a clock to punch, but you know what I mean, you know, but it is nice, like, if my schedule's empty after that I can just go home. But most days, yeah, it's like, one or two consultations, a couple vasectomies, lunch, then maybe three or four more vasectomies, then some paperwork. And it's all very smooth and predictable because I am very experienced. You've picked a good clinic to come to, basically, if you'd let me brag a bit, because I am proud of the work we do here. So I appreciate you coming in. Like I said, I could have done my own procedure, blindfolded, I imagine, too, with no complications. But the main goal of this consultation is to get you up to speed on what to expect. So, in a bit, with your permission – and we'll get into this more later – I'd like to take a look and have a feel to make sure everything's alright down there, and that you're aware of, sort of, like, what to expect, in terms of how the procedure goes and, like I said, like which parts of your body I may need to manually manipulate, what to expect in terms of pressure or discomfort, that kind of thing. It's all very straightforward, but I do find that it helps to walk through how it all works prior to the actual procedure. And I should say here that I wouldn't actually do it blindfolded, to you, or to anyone, or even myself, although I definitely could, I'm pretty sure. But legally speaking I probably shouldn't. Definitely couldn't do that. But I could easily do it. Blindfolded, I mean. Or to myself. Both, really. I basically do it blind now, in a way. I mean, we'll get into this more later, but the whole procedure pretty much goes by feel. I'll take a look I guess to make sure there's nothing strange going on down there, you know, that might lead to a complication, like I said, and then I need to deliver the local anaesthetic, but then from there it's pretty much by feel. And I guess the first part is more like a formality, really, to make sure there isn't anything that could lead to an infection of the incision site, like I mentioned. That's generally what we mean by a complication: it's generally something that would pose a risk of infection or impede recovery which would make me not want to proceed. But you don't see that much out here in Weston. You get that more over in Wellsborough, in my experience. I imagine you're familiar with Wellsborough, with it being so close to Weston. Cute little town. But you get some people who really don't know how to take care of themselves. Which, and we'll get into this more later, is what a visual and physical inspection during a consultation helps identify. And usually I don't have to deal with this type of patient much here in Weston, but there's still a lot of ignorance, or discomfort, maybe, when it comes to the body, especially this region of the body, in general, like, for anyone, you know, anywhere in the country. You don't go out to a restaurant and ask people how their genitals are, you know? Which, again, can complicate the procedure. But I remember being surprised about what kind of problems people are just dealing with without realizing it, especially in Wellsborough. At my first clinic we saw some really interesting guys come in, is all I'll say, some guys who seemed to suffer this kind of terror of their own body, I guess is a good way to put it. Well, maybe that's not how others would put it, but it makes sense to me to put it that way. I don't want to go into this too much, but sometimes you can really get a sense of it when they come in. You start talking about things – and we'll get into this more later– you know, like scrotum and perineum, and they sort of recoil. I'd talk about semen, you know, and, really, yeah, the best I can describe it, really, is just terror. A deep fear. Very deep. So I call it terror. You would think it'd be more of like a disgust, or revulsion, maybe, or some kind of general discomfort, you know, because of the association with urine or excrement, but no, it's really just a sort of, well, shocked, fearful. I call it terror, really, that's the best way I can describe it. You start a consultation and then you really see it: terror. The physical nature of fear, really, of terror. You know, you can see it. They get a little pale, maybe they sweat a bit. It's very physical, really a drastic change, and very immediate. Some guys might shiver, even, I remember. But it's really in the eyes. Some guys, you know, most of these guys, their eyes start to get wide, and their pupils dilate. And they sort of, well, cower, I guess, too, in the chair, and I'm not doing anything else than what we're doing here, you and me, you know, just calmly talking about the procedure, talking about what I'll need to manipulate, how a vasectomy actually works, physically, you know, biologically. At the time, when it was happening, I would think they were just afraid of the procedure because they didn't understand it, you know, and this was back when we didn't have these consultations as much. They'd come for the procedure and immediately they start cowering on the table, and I assumed they were thinking it was more like castration, or something, you know, which I get, because there's a lot of ignorance out there, and I get how that would maybe scare you a bit. I mean, it doesn't make sense at all, really, if you think about it, but I don't know, I was trying to figure it out. And I wanted to see how to make things easier for these guys. So then I started, you know, first thing in the consultation, which has a few parts to it – and we'll get into this more later – I would start with just very simply saying Hello, a vasectomy is very simple, and I'm not gonna remove a single part of your body, I'm just making a small snip in a little tube and you won't even notice a difference in three days' time. But I was foolish, in retrospect, thinking that way. It didn't make a difference. They still just cowered in the chair, eyes wide, pupils dilated, little blobs of sweat peeking out from under their hair. Terror. But I was stubborn, you know, and I wanted to be the best, one of the best, if possible, is what I wanted at the time, which I kind of am now, to be honest – so know you're in good hands here, expert hands – and so I kept trying to improve, I wanted to figure out how to help them, and I thought, okay, let's have consultations, and during the consultation, right at the start of it, even, I can reassure them. I thought I just had to be more clear. Concise. I figured I could work out a perfect introduction that would just prevent it right off the bat, you know: the terror. So, like, I tried saying, very first thing: Your penis won't be touched. Your testicles won't be touched. I mean, okay, maybe I wouldn't say it exactly that way, because I do have to manually manipulate the testicles, and sometimes the penis, if it's large enough to get in the way, which can make the procedure much more difficult, as you can imagine – and we'll get into this more later – but I intended that line to just mean I'm not going to injure you, you know, I'm not going to cut off your penis. That's very straightforward but I tried out all kinds of phrasing. I even tried just saying that: I'm not going to cut off your penis. And I even pulled out a diagram, or I'd have it propped right up here when they came in, before they even came in, actually, and I'd point, you know, first thing: None of this stuff is going anywhere. I promise. And I'd point to the penis and the testicles. But no, that wasn't it, that wasn't the problem at all, of course. I know that now. I was wrong. I thought maybe it was just, I don't know how to say it, the association of the whole thing. These guys had a deep fear of the urology clinic, or what the word implied, I guess, I thought: urine, penis, testicles, semen. They had a fear of those things. Or more like a fear of the parts of the body, of what the body does or can do. They had a fear of these things, but, well, I realized it was even simpler than that: the body. These guys were coming in terrified of their own bodies. That's what it was. The body. The self, the physical self. They were being confronted with their own bodies, the reality of their beings, I guess, all the wires and bolts and tubes and screws. Not literally, I mean, not literal wires and screws – and we'll get into this more later – but the whole physicality of it made them uneasy. Now, again, uneasy isn't the right word, it's beyond that, deeper than that. Like I said, it's terror. I was telling them that they had a thing called a penis, a thing called a scrotum, but then that was it, that was all it took, because that opens it all up. Sitting here and saying the word penis was like leading them to Medusa and telling them to look right in her eyes. Everything else was just the predictable aftermath of that little glance, that little glance at the truth, I thought, you know, after really thinking about it. After really trying to understand and work through it, these consultations I'd have and what happened in them, what went wrong, working through when they really began to cower, all that, and asking myself What set them off? Man, I'd ask myself this and think on it for a long time after, I'd think about it at home, you know, or in the car, and I'd come back the next day with a new theory, some new idea of what was doing it, what was igniting it, this real terror. I mean, I should clarify, they weren't running out of the office screaming. Nothing like that. But I know that look. I could see it. The terror. I could see it in their eyes, in their whole being, really, this deep dread opening up in them and draining them, right in front of me, sitting where you're sitting now, basically, and they would sort of gasp for air a little bit, gasping like a fish or something, you know? Have you ever been fishing? Then, right, you know what I'm talking about, how a fish will sort of gasp, sort of open and close its mouth, almost like a reflex. Well I guess it is a reflex, I don't know. You assume they're gasping for air, but fish have gills, right? That doesn't make sense, really, no, so it's something else. I never thought of it that way before, but that's what it is: terror. These men were terrified, just like the fish is terrified. The fish isn't trying to breathe the air, it's simply reacting, it's just a reflex, an autonomous movement. It's feeling out of control, and it doesn't know what to do, so it does that, for some reason. That's how these guys would look at me as soon as I said the word scrotum or the word ejaculate or something like that, as soon as I pointed at the diagram, as soon as I even gesticulated toward their lap, sometimes, even. Little fish mouths opening and closing. Gasping. And I realized that ultimately it was just whatever finally caused them to really understand that: Yes, yes, I have a body, and my body has genitals, and my genitals do things, they make things, they shoot things out, sometimes, even, and I have to sit with that understanding, I have to really confront it, really accept it, and I'm not prepared, I can't do it. Or maybe it's just the body, that simple reminder: I have a body, that's it, isn't it, I'm not just a floating, like, ghost, I guess, but I'm real, I'm a body, or I'm in a body, and my body functions, or, well, it functions for now, and maybe it won't always do that, maybe it's already falling apart, and, you know, someday that will end, and so will I. And that's terrifying. I can understand that, now. I didn't understand that early on, doing these consultations. But I understand it now. And not everyone reacts that way, obviously. Maybe it's just something about Wellsborough, even. I don't know. I thought I could just walk in and be frank, talk to an adult like another adult. And it didn't work. I didn't understand it then. Sometimes I'd get so frustrated, you know, and I'd daydream, even, about, like, walking in and saying Hi there, I'm Dr. Razzle, and hey, listen, one: you have a penis, and two: you're gonna die. And I have a penis and I'm going to die. And there's nothing either of us can do about that. And everyone with a penis is gonna die, and everyone without a penis is gonna die, because we're all just bodies, we're just blood and guts and we have like a hundred years max and then it's over forever and we need to be adults about this because I'm here to help you get a vasectomy. So I'm gonna step out and do some paperwork, and you can think about that for a minute, and when you're ready, I'll come back in and we'll talk about the procedure and what to expect. Isn't that ridiculous? I never did that, obviously. And maybe it wouldn't have helped anyone. Or maybe it would have. I don't know. But I was feeling so desperate, I remember, that it felt good to imagine it, to just think of these extremes, to work through some really out there idea and picture it, you know, close my eyes and feel it, live in that moment, and I think it helped me, too. It really helped me think it through and really understand it. I stopped myself once and thought, Alright, why am I imagining this? What am I trying to solve, really? It was the terror. It was always the terror, in the end, and that wasn't about me. It wasn't about the procedure. It wasn't even about the guy's perineum or prostate or vas deferens. It wasn't about pee or poop or jizz or blood or anything else so common and trivial as that. But it was about something even more simple, even more central to everything, the most common thing, the most simple thing, I guess, really. It was about death. They were afraid of death. That's what terror is. It's not just any fear, no, it's the fear of death. And I thought about that and thought about that, you know, sometimes angrily, sometimes frustrated, I guess, and sometimes desperate, just so over it, just so willing to do anything to help these guys move past it, and sometimes it made me sad, too, of course, thinking about all these guys coming in and of all things I have to be the guy who reminds them of their own death. All these guys, you know, who never had to confront it, never gave a thought to their own end, it seemed like, until of all things they step into my urology clinic office and sit on my chair and of all the things in the world it was me saying the word scrotum and bam! There it is: You're gonna die! And It wrecked me, in a way, for a long time. I felt stuck. It felt impossible to move beyond that. But eventually, you know, thankfully, I realized there was nothing I could do. Nothing! It's nothing anyone can do, really. It's something that not even religion can do, if you think about it, and, hey, that's religion's whole thing, isn't it? To prepare you for death? To explain death? To help you come to terms with death? I don't actually know, but that's how I think of it, anyway. And yet, I thought, you know, everyone is still afraid of dying, even religious people. Despite having religion, they're still afraid. The most ardent believer, convinced, fully sold on life after death in Heaven, even, still at the end: afraid. And if it really is everyone, then maybe the Pope is afraid of death, even. Maybe all the Popes were afraid of death, still, right at the end. And it's so obvious, right? Of course they would be afraid of dying. How could they not be afraid? But of all people, you would think, you know, maybe the Pope could accept his own demise, I mean. But I believe it, I truly believe it, that even the Pope fears death. He has to. And I bet if the Pope were from Wellsborough, and he came into my old clinic, he'd be the same as anyone else. He'd be terrified. He'd feel it. He'd feel the terror. That's death. That's what death does. Even Jesus was afraid. I remember that, from church, I don't know if you're religious, but I remember that. Jesus on the cross: Why have you forsaken me? He felt it. Jesus felt the terror. The son of God, or God himself, right? God incarnate, God walking on the Earth, and it's still the same. The terror was the same. It's all the same. And I thought about that and I realized I had no other option. I had to give it up. I had to accept it. I mean, it was death. Everyone has to accept it. Not just their own death, I realized, but everything else that death does. Death was doing this to my clinic. I couldn't help these guys. I mean, I could help them stop having kids, but that was about it. If even Jesus Christ himself, God on Earth, were afraid of dying on the fucking cross then I certainly have no business making anyone feel better about dying. So I gave up. But, like I said, it's not really an issue around here in Weston. And now I can just focus on just using the consultation to say okay, we can do the procedure, and we'll get into this more later, but here's what it's gonna involve: there's a visual inspection, some manual manipulation, some lidocaine to numb the area, a small incision, a snip, and some minimal stitches. But again, if I were doing it blindfolded, I could pretty confidently skip the visual inspection, especially if I were doing it to myself, obviously. So that would just leave the anaesthetic, which, again, is local, it's like, you know, procaine, like at the dentist, and you just need to inject it into the scrotum without penetrating the testicle. Which, I mean, that's pretty straightforward. So the blindfold wouldn't really impact anything. And, thinking about it now, I've found better results standing next to the patient, you know, facing the same direction, like this, which for some people makes things easier, or at least feel less invasive, less clinical, so, yeah, no, I could do it. I could do it easily. Send me back five years and hand me a blindfold and I'd do it, probably in under twenty minutes. Bam! Anyway, why don't you hop off the table here and, if you feel comfortable, pull down your bottoms. I'll close the blinds. Thank you. Ah, okay. This one'll be easy.
July 7, 2025
Fiction
THE GROTTO by Jim Ruland
I
Seamus receives a key
“You’re in luck,” the innkeeper said. “The Grotto is available.”The innkeeper was a large man who wore suspenders, wire-rimmed glasses, and a fisherman’s cap. He looked like a builder of model ships. Seamus smiled and waited for the innkeeper to continue.“The Grotto is our most popular room. Usually booked months in advance. We had a cancellation, so it’s yours—if you want it.” “I’ll take it,” Seamus said. “What brings you to the Seaside Inn?” the man asked as Seamus filled out the registration papers. “I was in the city for a conference and decided to stay for a few days.” Seamus felt a tickle in his nose. He hoped there wasn’t a cat on the premises. “Wonderful,” the innkeeper said. “You’ll find plenty of peace and quiet here—if that’s what you’re looking for…” “Yes, yes, peace and quiet,” Seamus felt compelled to respond. “A word to the wise,” the innkeeper said as he handed over the key, an actual key with a bow in the shape of a skull, “if you decide to go exploring, stick to the path. We wouldn’t want you to fall into the sea!” “No,” Seamus said. “We wouldn’t want that.” “Let me know if you run into any trouble in The Grotto!” Seamus was a quiet man who didn’t like to be fussed over. He imagined that all weekend long he was going to have to assure the innkeeper how happy he was with his room. Seamus trudged up the narrow staircase with his suitcase, angling it to avoid banging into the bannister. Although it looked like a grand old house from the outside, there were only two rooms on the second floor. The words THE GROTTO had been painted on the door at the top of the landing. With something like foreboding, Seamus inserted the key and opened the door.II
Seamus contemplates a mural
It was otherwise a simple room. A bed and a dresser with a bench beneath the window. What made the room remarkable was the mural that covered all four walls and gave Seamus the impression of being in a cave. There were stalagmites painted on the baseboards and stalactites descended from the crown molding. Rock formations spread outward onto the adjoining walls. Crystals sprouted in all shapes and sizes. When Seamus closed the door it all but disappeared into the wall. Seamus was not adverse to close spaces. He lived in a small shoebox of an apartment and he had always made do with cramped quarters. He was a writer after all. He didn’t need a lot of space. All he required was his imagination.But the composition of the mural irked him. Lichen grew on the rocks, the walls seemed to gleam with condensation, and rows of bats hung from the uppermost reaches of the cavern. Everywhere he looked there was more information to absorb. His first instinct was to leave the room and go for a long walk along the cliffs, drink in the wind blowing over the waves, but Seamus was tired and hungry and soon it would be dark. He had spent the week walking all over the convention center. He had trod high-traffic carpet with baffling patterns, looking for conference rooms without numbers in hallways without names. He used to like these affairs, looked forward to them even, but each year fewer of his friends and acquaintances attended, and those that did seemed a little older, the disappointment in their faces more pronounced. Then there were the people he used to know who went out of their way to avoid him, as if the stink of his failure was contagious. Seamus kicked off his shoes, opened a granola bar (they were giving them away at the conference; he’d taken seven of them) and chewed without pleasure the dry oats and chalky fruit while staring at a section of the mural that depicted a school of black fish in a dark pool until he swore he saw one of them move.III
Seamus makes a discovery
Seamus woke in the middle of the night. He thought he heard a noise, a faint droning sound, and now he couldn’t get back to sleep. An incident at the conference earlier that week had been troubling Seamus, and apparently it wasn’t done with him.He’d been invited to sit on a panel called “Exploring the Edge.” The other two writers on the panel were a novelist named S.W. Sidewinder who wrote Westerns set in deep space, and Angela Danbury, a former adult film actress who’d written a series of erotic detective thrillers. Unfortunately, Danbury, whose books were wildly popular, had to cancel, and the panel was moved to a smaller room. This struck Seamus as reasonable until the young man who’d been assigned as his minder led Seamus and Sidewinder to the lobby where a shuttle waited to take them to a satellite location. “It’s not far,” the minder assured them. “This is for your comfort.”“This is a load of horse shit,” Sidewinder said. Sidewinder was right. The satellite location turned out to be a branch of the local library that had stayed open to host the event. Sidewinder became agitated when he was told the box of books he’d shipped hadn’t arrived and he stormed off in a huff. Seamus set out a small selection of his own books that he’d brought with him. Some of them were quite old and showed wear and tear from having been carted around the country, from conference to conference. In lieu of a discussion—since there were no other panelists—he read a short story from his most recent collection. No one attended the reading, but afterward, one of the ladies who worked at the library told him how much she liked the story. She asked him if he had a card. He didn’t, so he simply handed her the book, which embarrassed them both. Outside, there was no sign of his minder, just the driver, who urged him to hurry aboard because he had another run to make. On the way back to the hotel, Seamus thought of all the things he’d say to the conference administrators, but he was thunderstruck with shame over the whole sad affair and he spent the remainder of the evening sitting in his room. . Whether it was this memory or something else that stirred him he couldn’t say, but now Seamus was wide awake with little hope of going back to sleep. There it was again, the unusual noise that had roused him, only this time it seemed to be coming from underneath the bed. Seamus slowly swung his legs around and slid his feet into his slippers, which he always brought with him when he traveled. He went to the door and flipped the switch. The lights came on and the mural rose up out of the gloom—he’d forgotten all about it. He got down on all fours and looked under the bed. A white cat with icy blue eyes peered at him from a rug underneath the bed. The cat regarded him with the impertinent expression of a rich old woman who’d been caught dozing during a play. Seamus stood and opened the door. The cat stuck its head out, slowly crossed the room, and went out on to the landing. Seamus shut the door, turned off the light, and climbed back into bed. Well, that’s one mystery solved, but as soon as that thought left his head another took its place: Why was there a rug underneath the bed?IV
Seamus solves a mystery
The rug was small, but elaborate. If Seamus stretched out his arm, he could just barely reach its tasseled edge with the tips of his fingers. He thrust his arm under the bed until his thumb grazed the carpet and he yanked it like a stage magician performing a trick. The carpet came away but what it revealed was difficult to say. The room was just too dark.Seamus was not a large man, nor was he particularly strong, but once he set his mind to something he was determined to see it through to the end. There had been times in his life when this imperative had felt like a curse. Some mistook his commitment as bullheadedness or even a deficiency of intelligence, but the years had taught him this quality might very well be his best attribute. If he said he would do something, whether it was writing a book no one wanted, or giving a reading no one attended, he did it. No one could say Seamus had broken his word.The bed lifted easily, and before he could give much thought to what he was doing he swung the foot of the bed toward the window. The headboard protested with a squeak. There was a groove in the floorboards where the bed had been and when he ran his hands along the seam he found a place where he could grab hold of the trapdoor—for that’s what it was—and give it a quick tug. The trapdoor swung open. Seamus felt a gust of cool air, invigorating and inviting. The opening revealed a tunnel that was large enough to pass through and as soon as Seamus saw the iron ladder bolted to the stone, he knew he was going down. But that was crazy. He couldn’t go exploring secret tunnels in the middle of the night. Who did he think he was? Nancy Drew? Seamus pulled open a drawer in the nightstand and grabbed a flashlight, as if he had known it would be there. The torch felt good in his hand, solid and cool to the touch, and when he clicked the switch it sent a strong beam across the room, illuminating the mouth of the tunnel at his feet like a spotlight.V
Seamus impersonates a childhood hero
The tunnel was like a well, a hole in the earth that shot straight down, a tower pulled inside out. He focused on lowering his body into the hole one rung at a time. He didn’t look down and he didn’t look up. He’d made up his mind to see where the tunnel took him. The ladder was in excellent condition, especially considering that his room was on the second floor. How did that work exactly? Was there a tube between the walls that allowed him to bypass the rest of the house somehow? Seamus didn’t know, but he saw no reason why he should stop, so down he went. The farther he descended, the stronger the scent of the ocean became. He thought he could hear wave noise and imagined he was tunneling into the cliffs that overlooked the sea. At any moment he expected to plunge his feet into an icy pool of seawater, but after several minutes of steady climbing he reached the bottom. He took the flashlight out of his pocket and shined the light. A single passageway led away from the bottom of the ladder in what he guessed was the direction of the sea. Seamus set off at once. The tunnel was narrow and curved this way and that so that he couldn’t gauge how far he had to travel to reach the end. Seamus felt certain it would be a short walk. With each step the sound of the ocean grew louder as the waves smashed on the rocks. Underneath all that noise was another sound, faint yet persistent, a droning that might be the wind whistling through these chambers of the cliff like blood moving through a body. He imagined a large undersea cave with pools of crystal clear water and chandeliers of gypsum that hung down from above. That must be why his room was called The Grotto, he reasoned. As above, so below. Seamus hurried along, pleased with where his curiosity had taken him and thrilled to discover what was around the next curve of the tunnel.When he rounded the corner, the tunnel abruptly came to an end. It wasn’t blocked off or closed up. It simply stopped. It looked to Seamus as if whoever had dug the tunnel had simply abandoned the job and gone no farther.The rough stone registered as a taunt. He wasn’t heartbroken exactly, but he was greatly disappointed. He’d tricked himself into thinking he was on a grand adventure and he’d stumbled into a dead end. How was that any different from the rest of his life?Interlude
“Your cat was in my room last night,” Seamus said to the innkeeper the following morning as he checked out of the inn a few days earlier than planned. After his disappointment in the tunnel, he’d decided to go home.“Cat?” the innkeeper asked. “Yes, white with—”“We don’t have a cat,” the innkeeper interrupted, looking down his nose and over the rim of his glasses. He seemed annoyed that Seamus was cutting his trip short. Seamus decided not to bring up the matter of the tunnel when he turned in his key.VI
Seamus receives an unexpected invitation
A week after the conference, Seamus received an email from Belinda Barnes, the vice president of a booksellers’ organization. She wanted Seamus to know that she’d read his most recent book and loved it. Would he be interested in attending a luncheon the following month? In subsequent emails Ms. Barnes explained that it was a showcase for hidden gems—books that didn’t get a lot of attention, or the right attention when they were released, despite their considerable merit. They’d have plenty of copies of his books to sign and they’d pay for his travel and accommodations. It turned out that Ms. Barnes had seen him read at the conference. In fact, she was the lady at the library to whom Seamus had given a book. She confessed that she’d been profoundly moved by his short story and couldn’t get it out of her mind. She recounted to him how the story reminded her of a dream she’d had as a little girl, a dream she’d thought about often but couldn’t recall exactly, its meaning graspable but just out of reach. Seamus’s story, she admitted, inhabited her imagination in much the same way.Seamus accepted the invitation. Even if the event fell through, as these things often did, it felt nice to be appreciated. Ms. Barnes, however, was true to her word and the luncheon was a success. The house was packed and he signed so many books he used up all the ink in his pen. Ms. Barnes introduced him to representatives from other regions who wanted Seamus to read at their luncheons, dinners, and galas. The next morning, an agent called offering to represent him. Then another the following afternoon, and two more the day after that. This is strange, Seamus thought, but he met with the agents and ate shrimp cocktail every day for a week. One of the agents, a young woman who was an acquaintance of Ms. Barnes, had read many of his books, including some that were long out of print. She laid out a plan for reacquiring the rights to his work and reissuing them as a series.Seamus gave her the green light and it was done. His books appeared in actual bookstores. He had money in his bank account again. He flew in airplanes. He bought new shoes. Once a month he allowed himself to shop at the expensive new grocery store down the block instead of taking the bus to the market he’d been going to all his life. When his books came out, they were written about in magazines and newspapers and he received charming letters from readers all over the world. After all these years of eking out an existence as an underground writer, his stories had finally found their audience—although it felt like the other way around. His newfound fame, such as it was, introduced a host of new headaches that revolved around trying to be in as many places in as little time as possible, but even that wasn’t entirely awful. People were mostly nice and his fellow travelers told him interesting stories. The odd rude flight attendant or indifferent concierge reassured Seamus it wasn’t all a wonderful dream.VII
Success at last
A few years later, Seamus found himself back in the city on the coast where the conference that changed his life had been held. He was wrapping up a multi-city book tour for a new collection of stories. When his publicist presented the itinerary, Seamus requested an extra day at the end of the tour to rest up and he impulsively booked a night in The Grotto at the Seaside Inn. He hadn’t given the inn much thought during the tour, but now it was all he could think about. His career had undergone such a swift and sudden change that he’d scarcely had time to reflect on how unusual that night in The Grotto had been, creeping along the secret subterranean passage like a detective in an adventure book. Had that actually happened? Seamus was certain it had. He recalled the way the stone looked damp in the glare of the electric light but when he brushed his fingers against the rough-hewn rock it was cold and dry. The rich smell of the tunnel was both bracing and fecund, an ancient reminder of the things that stirred in the briny deep. And there was that sound, mechanical in its persistence, but when he remembered his room at the inn was located on the second floor, he doubted himself all over again.VIII
Trouble in the grotto
After he checked into his room, Seamus peered under the bed: the cat was gone, but the rug was still there. As he moved the bed and opened the trapdoor, all his doubts deserted him. He grabbed the flashlight from the drawer and checked to see if it worked. He breathed in the familiar scent of the ocean and scampered down the ladder with the joy of a boy returning to a childhood haunt after a long time away. Seamus didn’t understand this compulsion to descend into the tunnel again, but he’d learned long ago to trust his instruments, and down he went.At the bottom of the ladder, Seamus clicked on the light and shined it down the passageway. Everything was exactly the way he remembered it. The pungent sea air, the rumble of the waves, the cold rough stone—it all filled him with happiness—but after walking for several minutes the flashlight flickered and so did his confidence. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. Shouldn’t he have reached the end of the tunnel by now? The air seemed colder and the distant rumble was now a roar. The walls were damp to the touch and when he shined the light at his feet he discovered he was standing in a shallow puddle. Had the tunnel lengthened in his absence? The tunnel took a sharp turn. As he went around the bend he beheld a widening of the shaft and realized he was standing in the mouth of a vast cave. The mural in his room was an exact replica of the cavern. The sound of bats and birds wheeling overhead filled the air and water trickled from a dozen hidden places. Great mounds of rock rose from the water and columns of stone dripped from the upper vaults. In some places, the two came together, dividing the cave into compartments. Most of what he could see of the grotto’s floor was covered in pools of clear water inhabited by tiny black fish.On the other side of the cavern walls the ocean thundered and he could detect a faint droning. Seamus shined the light around but he couldn’t locate the source of the sound. Seamus thought he caught a flicker of movement in the center of the grotto where a formation resembled a creature that crouched like a cat, but as he moved closer he realized it was just a rock, and the sound that blended into the background and sat in the forefront of his mind went up the slightest sliver of an octave. Seamus turned around but he could no longer discern the entrance to the tunnel. The droning grew louder, a difference so subtle he could almost talk himself into believing he was imagining it. Seawater lapped at his feet and the white foam filled his shoes as the water in the grotto began to rise. He frantically searched the folds in the rock for the entrance to the tunnel but it simply wasn’t there, like a riddle he couldn’t solve. The water rose past his knees and then his waist, and the cold water dispelled the faint hope that he was dreaming, that this was all a product of his imagination.Seamus thought how different his life had been the last time he ventured down the tunnel and how much better it was now. What if all the success he’d enjoyed since then wasn’t luck that had transformed his old life but a different life that he’d somehow stumbled into? What if there wasn’t a single tunnel beneath the Seaside Inn but many and each of them led to an alternate future? Seamus felt as though he’d wandered into one of his stories, and if that was the case he knew without having to be told that everything would be different when he went back to his room because he wouldn’t be returning to his new life, the life he’d always wanted, but venturing into an altogether different future.The water was at his neck now and lifted him off his feet. The grotto filled with wave noise and sea spray and the loud booming of unseen forces. As he slipped beneath the waves the droning stopped as if a great machine had been switched off. July 4, 2025
Micros
THE ROOSTER THAT SCREAMS by Laura Shell
So there is one rooster in the neighborhood that sounds normal, emmits the typical cock-a-doodle-doo cry in the wee hours of the morning. Then there is the other rooster, the one that submits a scream like someone is holding a hand around its throat. It's like an "Ehhhhhhh," sound. And it's much louder than the other rooster's call.So every morning, I hear the rooster that screams and wish I knew where it lived so I could find out exactly why it screams.
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The rooster belts out its usual "Ehhhhhhh," sound, then scratches at the scar on its throat. July 3, 2025
by Mike Topp
$25 | Perfect bound | 72 pages
Paperback | Die-cut matte cover | 7×7″
Mike Topp’s poems defy categorization. That’s why they are beloved by seamstresses, pathologists, blackmailers and art collectors.
–Sparrow
