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EXCERPT FROM ‘ALL PRETTY SORE’ by Alec Berry

February 22, 2019

David met me at the McDonalds and we bought McChickens before walking next door to buy 40s / Went to his apartment and drank, and then his roommate’s girlfriend came by and she told us how she slept with a dude in his 50s because it’d be something to write about / Ended up drunk late in the evening after the 40s because David kept a case of Hamm’s in the fridge, and then we called Walker, and I met Walker, and I realized Walker was weird, and we ran through the streets to my apartment and partied with the college boys I lived with / A few weeks later David said I should move into the empty sunroom where there isn’t air conditioning or furniture or a bed because I wouldn’t have to pay rent, and so I did this, and I never paid rent, and when we finally moved out months later his other roommate realized this and gave me the silent treatment and insisted I contributed little in my time at their apartment / He was sort of right / I spent a lot of alone time in their sunroom laying out on the hardwood floor, never buying a bed, usually eating those 3 for $2 chocolate chip cookies from the Holiday gas station, thinking about how I fell in love once, or what John Casey might be up to, or the old apartment on Cobun, or how I was happy to be away even though I seriously missed it all / David, Walker and I went out one night to the Otter and got real drunk and depression hit real bad, and I went outside and ripped a gutter off the apartment building on 7th street / We drove through the McDonalds drive through and I bought seven McChickens and ate them in the parking lot, and they laughed and on the way back some radio station played Nevermind, front to back / We had the windows down with the volume up in stopped traffic, and David couldn’t quit laughing / This was about as good as the time on the Fourth of July Walker and I went fishing, and then we came back to the apartment and partied with the roommates and their girlfriends and their friends, and at some point I went into the sunroom, pushed open the doors and blasted AC/DC’s “Riff Raff”, and everyone left, and I laid out on the floor / Towards the end I was eating breakfast and Cori sent me a text to say Alex Gavula died in New York City / I called his phone and an NYPD officer answered, and I broke into tears right then because it was a plain metaphor that simply said you can’t go back / I thought about the last time I spoke with him, when I asked for help covering the rent / the check never came because he wasn’t reliable / Felt bad I ever reached out for this and that I’d been angry about the let down / I think I know despite his troubles he was a good guy waiting for a chance to do good / now i feel bad it may have been another moment of mistake for him / An instance he had to say to himself, “not another one” / It would have been nice of me to say, “hey, I got it figured out. No worries.” /

The above is an excerpt from Alec's novel, ALL / PRETTY / SORE. You can check it out here.

LIKE A FIRE DRILL by Gary Duncan

February 21, 2019

They found him in the stairwell, two days later. Wedged behind the door, his hand still clutching his chest. We had to evacuate the building and wait in the car park like it was a fire drill. All in our designated places, like we’d practiced. Editorial near the gates, then IT, then Sales, then Warehouse and Support. Some of the salespeople sloped off early, said they were going to the pub to sink a few for him. It’s what he would have wanted. He didn’t even drink. One of the women from IT, the one he liked but was too nervous to talk to, asked if I was going to join them. “Me neither,” she said, crying. “Poor guy, I didn’t even know him.”

I mean how terrible is that, someone dying, actually dying, and no one even noticing. The poor man, I just feel so awful for him, for his friends and family. I can’t stop thinking about him, lying there in the dark on his own, behind that fire door. I didn’t even know him, not really, but I wish I’d said something to him, just hello, you know. Made the effort to say just one thing to him. One of the guys from Editorial, he was crying and I was crying, and we just stood there crying together, not knowing what else to do. They said we could have a few days off, to grieve, but I don’t want to stay at home on my own, not now. But I don’t want to go back to work either.

They said the fat bastard had been there for a couple of days, but you ask me, it was probably more like a week. One of the security guards, one of the lads who found him, said it had to be a week, the state of him. You know what he said? He said the guy’d shat himself. Said the place stunk to high heaven. Flies and everything. We didn’t know that at the time of course. We didn’t know much at the start because they dragged us outside straight away, into the bloody car park, in the rain. Not really rain, more like a heavy drizzle, that thick drizzle that clings to your clothes, you know, so me and a few of the other sales guys we thought fuck that for a game of soldiers, let’s nip over the Red Lion for a pint. Make the most of it, make an afternoon of it. I didn’t know the guy from Adam, to be honest, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded.

I didn’t think anything of it. You don’t, do you? Just a niggle in the chest, more towards the shoulder really. A twinge. I thought I’d maybe pulled something when I was loading those boxes onto the trolley. Printer paper, boxes and boxes of the stuff. Thought I’d be clever and do it three at a time, even though we’re not supposed to do that, what with health and safety and everything. But it was just a twinge, nothing to worry about. I’d forgotten all about it, then it happened again when I was going up the stairs. This was different. Scary. Like someone had reached into my chest and ripped it apart with their bare hands. Christ, the pain. I was near the fire door, at the top of the stairs, and I thought I’d be fine if I just sat down there for a while. So that’s what I did.

SPORES by Łukasz Drobnik

February 20, 2019

The superhero needs to save the city, but there’s a drunk man in her kitchen. He’s eating a banana. The way he snaps off the stem and peels the whole thing in one brutal movement is all too familiar. She closes her eyes, just for a bit, and thinks of the cool forest air, her cheek against the damp moss, his coarse hands under her blouse. When she lifts her eyelids, the peel is already lying on the stained blue tablecloth, as lifeless as roadkill.

Outside, the supermarket is being attacked by red-furred flying monkeys. They grab trolleys from the car park and toss them at frightened customers, rows and rows of teeth inside their black hole mouths rotating as they do so.

She should be there, protecting the little girl from abduction, the middle-aged man from being torn apart, but she knows he wouldn’t let her. The monkeys can see her from afar with their laser eyes, their shark-like teeth glistening in the dark. When he tries to pull her closer, bits of banana flesh still on his fingers, she instinctively recoils.

Later they watch a medical drama, pretending nothing has happened. He sits in the centre, in front of his grimy laptop, drinking another beer straight from the can, while she peeks at the screen from behind the yucca plants — a mini-jungle in this otherwise barren room. She keeps track of his beers. One more and he’ll get sentimental. He’s just two or three away from waking the Beast inside him.

He drove her to the woods to take her mind off that boy. They walked over a floating mat covering a lake. Holding hands, they joked you’d think it would feel more like a waterbed, but that one was pretty solid. The layers of moss under their feet were the colour of surgical drapes.

They heard a sound as if of a bursting beach ball. Then another. And a few more. Through numerous punctures in the mat, with a horrendous, multiplied hiss, came fumes of red granular matter. She started running, as fast as she could, among the newly erupting jets. When she turned around, he was still in the same spot: waving at her, consumed by the clouds, completely oblivious to the hundreds of spores entering his mouth and nose and ears.

A rain of starving hearts from the sky. Clouds of capillaries forming into force fields. Cardiomyocyte bombs. None of her many superpowers could save him.

He chased after her, his eyes full of rage, each of his steps sending a ripple through the mossy mat. She reached the shore and ran into the trees, but now the whole forest was under the Beast’s spell: every root and stem and insect at its ruthless command. It must have summoned some brambles that trapped her legs like barbed wire. She only remembers falling through the cool air, her cheek smacking against the damp moss, his coarse hands lifting her from the ground.

The Beast’s lifecycle is a complicated one. First there are the spores. Once they find themselves inside a human host, they form a mycelium of sorts, which plants its roots deep in the brain and spinal cord, taking control of every neuron. It can last anywhere from days to years before it tells its host to hide in a cellar or dead tree trunk, crawl into a ball and disappear in an opalescent cocoon. From the cocoon sprout the deadly vines, which slither through the sewage system and underground car parks, feeding on rats and stray cats, leaving behind leather-like fruits packed with monkey embryos. The fruits pop after several months to release swarms of murderous winged primates. After they’ve had enough human flesh, the monkeys dive into lakes or ponds or rivers, where they turn into bloated, spore-producing, living furry bags.

The boy’s heart looked like a frightened animal. She’d done it dozens of times before. Her movements were slow, steady and precise. She never expected the bursting artery, the bloody deluge, the flatline.

He keeps the Beast’s spores in prescription vials, but she won’t be fooled. She has mastered the art of hiding them under her tongue. Before they have any chance to sprout, she walks to the kitchen, past the inebriated man, and hides them deep inside the banana peel, which she throws into the bin. On her way back, she glances at the gaping hole where the supermarket used to be. The monkeys feast on bones.

CONNECTICUT VAMPIRE by Adrian Belmes

February 19, 2019

This is what we burn. The dead. Our ghosts. And illness, like a brand, held long above the fire. Our misunderstandings do become our monsters we admire, for fear is nothing if not love of sorts, obsession. The village men below this home implore upon my grief and seek solution, save their wives, forgetting mine, your sister, and my dying son. You are not a killer, my unrested child, but these men do not know you as I did: a daughter and a weeping lung upon a bed that lies an empty tomb. What sins do we exhume for peace of strangers. Buried deep into the snow, your ruddy face is like you never died. This is the myth, so the liver they must take and wound you. Your brother takes into his mouth your heart, the viscid flakes, the frozen liquid in half-rot, abrasive on his tongue, and summons in his gut a nausea, an ancient violation. Old kings ate their fathers to sustain their lion hearts, but God does not abide by these pursuits. Not years before, these fathers burned such sins upon a witch-like pyre where now these desecrations are communion, Christ-like healers, tonic-waters. Your consumption kills. The men of the village sleep calm inside their homes that night and in two months when little Eddie dies, I bury, and they hold their wives in satisfaction of a prophecy foretold, an obsession that they laid to rest. But science will not know this for another many years. In five, you’re born again and offer up to man a devil we don’t know that you had written. Long buried in the heartless mire, your cold blood does sail a thousand tales. Our misunderstandings do become our monsters we admire.

WHITE GRAVY by Marcus Pactor

February 18, 2019

Mother said the old man had never been touched. I didn’t know what she meant by “touched,” but I had heard enough. That afternoon, I leaned over the fence and grated cheese into the old man’s backyard. His cat licked every cheddar shred from the weeds. Its intestines must have gotten clogged, but it lived.

The cat disappeared after city workers buried the old man. Months later, a storm buried the eastern seaboard in golden, blanket-sized leaves. Far south of there, we savored the peripheral breeze. Mother had taught me to savor, whenever possible, the small pleasures which occasionally attended the global decline.

Sarah and her parents replaced the old man’s junk with theirs. I remember none of her words. I remember not even the quality of her voice. I do remember that she stood even less than I for boredom.

She egged the children’s hospital. She set a controlled fire of neighborhood breakfast waste—egg cartons, milk jugs, and pancake mix boxes—in her backyard. She killed two pigeons with a slingshot. At her direction, I nailed them to the fire station door.

Soon after the school year commenced, her cobra died in its sleep, and a custodian touched her in a bathroom stall. The internet led us to his ranch house. We found his pick-up unlocked, and so, when night fell, we popped the hood and flooded the engine with his garden hose. She touched me against the truck’s cab till the streetlights burnt out, one after the next. We set the cobra’s body and a warning note on the driver’s seat. The custodian never returned to work.

Sarah touched me through many school days: while the last frogs watched from the aquarium; while the theatre curtain brushed our calves; while, on the other side of the closet door, the assistant principal drew spirals on his desk calendar. Elsewhere, too, she tied me to any post at hand. I felt neither aches nor blues.

Our fun must have gone on longer than a school year. Her parents must have died one day or another. Mother, too. Everyone must have died. The bodies had nothing to do with us, I thought, till the power grid collapsed for good, and she used a steak knife to draw people on the wall. I led her outside to survey the neighborhood. Paved roads, ranch houses, chimneys, even trees now belonged to us.

“We’ve inherited so much,” I said.

By then, we could set a fire as well as any Eagle Scout or caveman, so we only needed ingredients to survive. We found most of our neighbors’ houses barren, but three spinsters in a cul-de-sac had, in their living room, a hoard of thirty-pound bags of food powder. They had almost certainly stolen them from our school’s inventory. The bags read “Cheese Pizza,” “Beef Tips,” “Egg Noodles,” and “Mashed Potatoes.” According to the instructions, we could reconstitute the powder into lunch by stirring it into a pot of boiling water.

A large part of me wanted to eat a pound of beef tips right then. A small part was distracted by the sight, on the coffee table, of twenty-four Roach Motels opened up and eaten clean. The spinsters’ bodies lay twisted on the carpet.

I touched Sarah’s elbow.

“I’m here,” I said.

We buried the spinsters in the backyard.

Months later, the old man’s cat returned. Sarah and I were naked and weak as ice cream when it crawled from under the fence and nuzzled against my thigh. It smelled like chicken juice left for a week in the sun. We would never taste fried chicken or ice cream again. I strangled the cat. Sarah drew a mean line in the dirt.

That evening, winter came hard, full of snow, and taught us what our last teacher had meant by the word “homogenizing.” Roads, houses, cats, old men, frogs, fallen street signs, caved-in roofs, shanks of glass, planks of fence, parked cars, garbage cans, garden hoses, broken zippers, dead tree trunks, and shed pine needles all went white.

When the sky let up, I skinned and boiled the cat, buried it in salt, and served it by candlelight. She refused her share.

“I can’t eat alone,” I said.

She shrugged.

I began to eat.

Snowfall resumed.

I did not remember then what I remember now: Mother telling me that, at some point, a woman will expect you to lift her heart. She will dramatize her appeal by, perhaps, leaving the dinner table, lying in the spinsters’ backyard, and letting the snow pile upon her.

The day couldn’t end, though, till I finished choking down the cat, so I did. I’ve choked down plenty of cats since then. Every so often, I wonder why they’ve survived better than dogs.

I still do, on occasion, catch myself believing in reasons or presidents or calming, pink streaks on the late afternoon horizon. But if any of those things had ever been truly true, don’t you think that old man’s cat on that frozen day would have tasted memorably worse than any cat I’ve chewed on since?

You’d be somewhat right if you did. It certainly tasted worse than most roasted cats I’ve experienced. A roasted cat has a smoky flavor and charred surface that, when cooked best, can briefly fool you into thinking you’ve lucked into an oddly shaped hot dog.

You’d be entirely wrong, though, if we restricted the question to boiled cats. Every one of them I’ve sampled, from first to last, without exception, has tasted like rancid, rubberized white gravy. With the right mindset, though, you can grow used to any meat on hand.

TROUT by Kaye Gilhooley

February 17, 2019

I took up fishing late in life. My husband says I fish too much. The smooth length of the rod in my hand is powerful. Did you know my Daiwa carbon 9ft rod is rated to 15 kg? 15kg! That’s the weight of a small child.

I fish in the fast stream that borders the south of our farm. It’s the closest boundary to the house. It flows under the bridge and soon feeds into the river, wide and deep.

I took up fishing when my daughter went missing. Trout. My brother called her that because when she was a baby ready for feeding her little mouth opened and closed like a fish searching for flies.

And she loved the water. That hot summer I took her down to the stream every afternoon and dangled her feet in the cool rushing water. She giggled so much. “Again! Again!”

Never again.

Sometimes I stay all day, pacing up and down the solid bank, dragging the heavy line through the rippling water, the hook set low near the sinker to trace the bed. I’ve seen the odd strong fish in here.

We searched for her all around the farm, split up.

“Over here!” shouted one of the village boys.

Tiny silver shoes, scuffed on the toes, and Cat-in-the-Hat socks.

Abandoned on the bank.

They all came. Police in waders. Divers. The new Filipino priest.

I drag the hook along the stream bed. There are no rocks down there. No bumps or hollows. A smooth surface they said. Nothing to snag on.

I haven’t got time for fly-fishing. All that wasted back and forward motion. I need weight in my hand. Power. To get to the bottom.

IN COMMON by Chance Dibben

February 13, 2019

Our heads were a perfect match for each other. Inside mine, a wasp that wriggled in and built a nest. It leaves periodically to get pollen, do wasp things, and then returns to the cavern of my ears. Initially, I couldn’t handle the itchy sensation the wasp made when it corkscrewed back into my head—my shoulders rising as if pulled, my spine wound in terror. Enough of anything, though, and you’ll get used to it. How the wasp has lived this long, is a mystery. Maybe it’s not the same wasp.

Inside Amanda’s head is a thunderstorm. I thought she was being cute and flirty when she told me, but no, she shows me a photo taken by an endoscopic camera. Sure enough—a miniature anvil cloud rumbling with purple lightning. “Now that we know we have something in common—how about another drink?” she asks.

Seven PBRs later, we find ourselves enmeshed into each other’s bodies in her apartment. We make love as people living with foreign entities in our heads only can—furiously, passionately, with a pinch of anger. Laying in her plush bed, her hand on my breasts, she begins to sneeze violently. Flecks of light glow in the soft white of her perfect nose.

“Everything okay?” I ask. Amanda blushes and chuckles.

“It’s… know how people get butterflies in their stomachs?”

“For most, not literally.”

“Right. That feeling, that’s what I got now. Hence the rolling thunderstorm, extra rain.”

I smile. Come here I say and pull myself over her.

I am a late sleeper, so when I open my eyes the next morning, I find that she is already looking at me admiringly, with a fresh cup of coffee in hand. We do that disgusting “hey” thing that new lovers do and then I accept the mug. The coffee is enriching and tastes expensive.

“You’re beautiful,” she says to me, leaning in for a kiss. As we connect, a tiny bolt leaps from her nostril and hits me on my mouth. Initially, it smarts bad, then becomes a warm buzz on the nerves of my lips.

“Sorry.”

“No,” I say, grinning.

My wasp courses the ceiling and lands on the pillow, waiting to come back in. I lay down.

“Where does it go?” she asks.

“I never know. It always comes back.”

“What’s it like?”

“By now, it feels amazing. I actually get headaches when it leaves.”

The wasp begins to crawl toward my ear, then zags over to Amanda’s head.

“What’s it doing?”

“It’s trying to get in. Never gone inside another person before.”

“Huh. Should I just let it—“ The wasp burrows into her crisply carved ear. Amanda’s torso vaults up. She ahhs in pain, then moans deeply in pleasure. She pulls my hand over her crotch. Her thunderstorm billows out her open mouth and funnels through my eyes. The light I see and the heat I feel make my head infinite and ever-expanding. It is in this moment I realize I’m going to marry this woman, can almost sense it as clear as taste.

We make love again. After, I suggest breakfast.

“There’s a great place near here—"

“Wickman’s!” Amanda says, finishing my sentence.

On her stoop, as she closes the door, we hear a monstrous buzzing. To the left, a cloud of wasps, murmurating. Down the street, I see an old man step out on his lawn to investigate. I give Amanda a I don’t fucking know look.

To the right, we hear a slow rumble—a thunderhead popcorning high over the horizon.

We shrug. I hold her hand and we walk toward Wickman’s, the storm and swarm following us the whole way. The world is ours for now and the first step to figuring out what to do with it is a big ass breakfast.

dear the eartH by JP Vallières

February 12, 2019

dear the eartH

sendar saying maybe the earth help sendaR sendar in quest of the earth habitatioN sendar from nodaN nodians now gone inexplicably removed from galaxY

dear the eartH

maybe help sendaR sendar last one current in nodaN big day of reckoninG only sendar livinG

dear the eartH

sendar an artisT before big day of reckoning fatherman saying sendar not be artisT

dear the eartH

when existing fatherman saying sendar achieve license for galaxy rideR sendar saying galaxy rider does not fit into artist incarnatioN

dear the eartH

sendar now shameful not knowing how to fly galaxy rideR could come in handy in pursuit of the earth habitatioN fatherman maybe precisE sendar trying not to think about fathermaN fatherman departeD sendar truthfully wearisomE

dear the eartH

artist forbids practicalitieS comrade once saying sendar get no femalian without galaxy rideR sendar write stunning poem of nodan for many femalians but poems transporting no appreciatioN

dear the eartH

femalians affectioning those with galaxy rider licensE sendar stuck on regreT sendar trying to forget nodianS maybe the earth help sendaR maybe the earth fly galaxy rider to nodan for pickuP maybe the earth teach sendar the ways of meN

dear the eartH

sendar wait long-sufferingly for the earth solutioN

dear the eartH

sendar noticing distances in galaxY meaning sendar dreading lonesome infinitieS meaning agony magnifies in light of daY

dear the eartH

does the earth-artist bring femalian delighT does the earth femalian agree to artist like-abilitieS

dear the eartH

when existing fatherman looking northway pointing to the eartH blue light meaning the eartH fatherman saying it is where men abidE

dear the eartH

when existing fatherman saying achieve galaxy rider licensE fatherman saying license engages practicalitieS sendar saying fatherman neglecting comprehension of artisT sendar so youthful and rageful with fathermaN sendar then going off finding hole in rocK

dear the eartH

in time sendar crawling out of hole in rocK sendar finding nodan empty of habitatioN sendar waiting good-naturedly for emerging nodianS waiting for merriment of big jest on sendaR no jibe no jest on sendaR sendar finding only silence under starS

dear the eartH

now sendar seeking the earth assistancE now sendar waiting hopeful for successful deliverancE

dear the eartH

sendar expecting increase in communicationS eons pass sendaR maybe men of the earth grasping all sendar sayinG maybe men of the earth reflecting on ways of nodaN

dear the eartH

maybe men of the earth will save sendaR maybe men of the earth will relate communications back to sendaR

dear the eartH

if only femalian in hole with sendar on big day of reckoninG sendar thinking femalian would then transport appreciation of poeM femalian with no other possibilities bringing affections to sendaR femalian would then have no objection to sendar artistrY

dear the eartH

if only licensed femalian in hole with sendar on big day of reckoninG sendar thinking licensed femalian gliding sendar and poem to the earth like shooting staR

dear the eartH

sendar giving in to ways of the losT femalians no morE fatherman no morE galaxy rider possibilities no morE sendar fading in to the sands of nodaN meaning sendar facing finalitieS

dear the eartH

sendar keen-sighteD sendar observing the earth blue light diminishinG

dear the eartH

sendar sending one last star corE one final communicatioN does the earth retain inhabitantS does the earth remain existinG

dear the sands of nodaN

nodan longstanding and graY no more blue in the galaxY darkness occupying immensitieS under three moons sendar dreaming of femalianS sendar remembering femaliaN her body curving identical to ray of lighT

WITH NO. 27 by Gregg Williard

February 11, 2019

Specialist Hatfield had just finished No. 26. Her boots thudded over the pine and plywood walkway, springy as a playground. Near the inside gate she hopped off onto sand and crushed coral, took a few steps and stopped to jot something down on her clipboard and to check the bruises and blood on her knuckles. The two nearest perimeter guards saw a conscientious professional taking care of details. She kept her boonie hat down. She worked hard and was up for promotion. She felt lucky to be at the camp, far away from combat duty. She followed the Army imperative: stay in your lane. Her lane was Mental Health Technician from the Wisconsin Reserves, assigned to an interrogation team. A wobbly Star Spangled Banner played over the P.A. and she stood at attention and saluted, the clipboard tucked in her armpit and getting damp.

The anthem finished and she again returned to her notes. Her hand moved the way a hand does when writing a brief afterthought of a note, but she had no afterthought and it was not a note, or even writing but a drawing of writing, not just scribbles but a cursive pattern throwing shadows and a chiaroscuro forms across the page, straight up and down, rich with loops, dots, and scalloped peaks like a child’s depiction of ocean waves, the pen on paper sound of a distant sea, or trickle of sand.

The writing resembled Arabic. She’s learned to read a few words for road and warning signs. Maybe not so much Arabic as a code.

Her own writing was like this. When they did her personality profile they said straight up and down meant she was independent, not unfriendly but not exactly a people person either. Doesn’t socialize much. Prefers to keep to herself. They got it about right. Everybody was surprised she joined up. For crissake there’s easier ways to pay for school and, you’ll never have any time alone. Later on, of course, there were better reasons to call it a mistake.

Ahead was a long row of white plastic and metal boxes resembling porta potties. Their doors were numbered 1 through 30. The camp personnel had some fun imagining bungalows, playhouses, dog houses. They called this section of the camp The Bates Motel, The Roach Hotel, The Hood, The Kennels or, Dogtown. When she reached No. 27, she banged on the door twice with the flat of her hand. She opened the slot and said, “Sit down, turn around, don’t show face.” She slipped the clipboard under her arm, opened her velcroed left hip pocket and removed a gray cloth hood with a square breathing vent. She opened the opposite pocket and took out a black ski mask and pulled it over her head. She checked through the slot that 27 was sitting and turned with his back to her. She opened the door and in an affect-less monotone she recited, “We’re coming in if you turn around we kick your ass do you understand” and without waiting for 27’s mumbled “understand” she entered the cell and slipped the gray hood over his head. She cinched and locked the plastic cuff around the throat.

She sat and removed her mask. She said, “Turn. Tell me about Mustafa.” He turned and she watched his hood cave in and out with his breath.

“I don’t know any Mustafa.”

“Kabul. Mustafa. You met him at the bus stop. You went into the mountains with him. He took you to the camp. You learned about guns, explosives, tactics.”

“I don’t know this Mustafa. I never went to the mountains with Mustafa.”

“Tell me about Mustafa.”

“I tell you again, I don’t know any Mustafa.”

“Tell me about Mustafa.” She flipped pages in her notebook.

“I don’t know this Mustafa.”

Pages of doodles. Flipping them helped create the appropriate interrogation atmosphere. Her mission was atmosphere.

“Tell me about Mustafa.”

“I don’t know this Mustafa.”

“Tell me about that Mustafa.”

“I don’t know this, that or any Mustafa!”

She flipped more pages. It was silent enough to hear the surf.

She said, “After my first tour I went home. One of my favorite things had always been trash picking. See, where I come from, there’s a university. A big one. Back home every August 16^th the students move out of their apartments. They throw out all their stuff. On the sidewalk.”

“What stuff?”

“All kinds. Lamps, mirrors, tea pots. I even found a forty-gallon tropical fish tank, full of Convict Julies and Puffers.”

“Convict Julies.”

“My idea of heaven.”

“Convict Julies in Heaven.” He leaned forward. “Please. Take off the hood.”

“Anyway, that was the worst thing, because once you get in a combat zone the first thing you learn is…”

“Please, take off the hood.”

“That’s not possible.”

He slumped back against the wall and sighed. After a few seconds the hood did an infinitesimal nod.

She said, “Once you get in a combat zone the first thing you learn is street trash might be wired with explosive devices.””

The hood nodded.

“The things Mustafa taught you how to make.”

“No.”

“I was there in the beginning. The looting. Ancient Persian urns and Babylonian sculptures mixed in with beer cans and old tires. That’s how my patrol got messed up. We stopped to trash pick. Next thing I’m upside down in my vehicle. I remember sand pouring down on my arm. I was sent home. Come August 16^th, there it is: amazing retro kitchen table with sparkly red chairs, laminated table top with red boomerang pattern in perfect condition, and it’s right there, on the sidewalk, in the trash, right there. Home. ”

“Right there.”

“And all I needed to do is stop my truck, open the back and put it in. Just take it.”

Their tandem breathing slowed, matched.

She said, “I couldn’t do it.”

A spot of sweat or saliva grew from behind his hood. He said, “No more treasures. All right. I confess. It was Mustafa and me. We planted all the roadside bombs. We did 9-11. Now we are ready to detonate thousands of dirty bombs in all your infidel cities, starting with your home. Mustafa and I also claim responsibility for the secret assassination of President Bush, and his replacement with an Al-Quida impostor. Mustafa and I are ready to launch drones armed with magnetic pulse weapons over your key cities, destroying all internet and computer systems. Mustafa and I are also responsible for your hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and Irene, which we artificially enhanced with our Secret Islamic Weather Weapons. Mustafa and I will also introduce anthrax into your school lunch programs, and a plague of nanorobots into your water supply, which will bond with the stomach linings of all overfed Americans and explode when combined with your fast food, creating a nation of surprise suicide bombers, martyrs to the Happy Meal. Are you getting all this?”

She took in the sound of her pen point scurrying, tapping, swooping across the page. She was getting all the facts, catching the full confession, the whole enchilada in graphic cavalcade: a report in dancing loops like old style school girl cursive, or the John Hancocks of narcissist Generals or Presidents or CEO’s, deadbeat dads on a bi-polar check-forging spree, or Arabic, beautiful Arabic, or the slosh of forty gallon tanks holding Convict Julies, their scurries in the algae mapped across her reporting form.

She released the cuff and took off the hood. She opened the door and he ran past her toward the fence. Beyond it was the shore and the waves. He staggered in the sand. His legs must have been weak from his long captivity. The perimeter guards barked commands to halt. They closed on him from three directions. She noted the time, their location, their rank, the tide. It was high. Coming in.

ELSA LANCHESTER’S ABORTION by J. Edward Kruft

February 10, 2019

Her own parents never married – an intentional thumbing of the nose to Victorian-era London – and she wondered, as she watched her husband padding off toward the pool, leaving his statuette on the piano, if she hadn’t best done the same. She loved Charles, and she was relatively certain he loved her – at the very least he adored her – but after four years as Mrs. Charles Laughton, Elsa was well aware of her husband’s preferences and proclivities and while on the surface it didn’t bother her to the degree a wife should be bothered, things changed that morning.

Kate approached, clutching her own golden statue (clutching it, thought Elsa, as though it were made of solid gold as opposed to merely plated). She was not overly fond of Kate, but she tried to smile as though she were.

“Elsa, why the long face?” asked Kate. “I should think you’d be very pleased on Charles’ behalf. It’s a marvelous little trophy, don’t you think?” Elsa lifted her husband’s statuette from the piano. It was only then that she noticed it was not yet engraved, and something about that felt empty, and that triggered a sudden and dizzying fear of what the rest of her life might very well be like.

She excused herself without comment (causing Kate’s face to draw) and walked in the direction she’d seen her husband make his exit. He was there, by the pool, smoking with Walter and George (whose gorgeous house this was, high above Sunset Strip). Elsa walked to the edge of the blue lawn to where three evenly spaced palms swayed in the cool mid-March breeze. And as she went to adjust her stole to cover her bare shoulders, a sudden and violent wave of nausea swept from her toes to her throat and nearly without warning, she vomited into the ivy that covered the raised beds, and in doing so, she unwittingly encouraged a rat to come out of hiding. Elsa screamed. And just like in the movies, the low hum of party conversation came to a screeching halt. Looking up, she saw Charles charging toward her, calling: “Elsa. Are you all right? Are you all right, my darling?” In that moment, despite it all, she was certain they would be together for many years to come (it would be, in fact, until his death, almost thirty years hence). At her side now, Charles lifted her stole to cover her shoulders and then took both of her hands in his. “Elsa?” he asked.

“I’m fine, Charles. Just tired.”

“But my dear, you screamed.”

“Oh yes,” she said, having already forgotten. “There was a rat.”

“How hideous,” he said, moving her away from the ivy.

“I hate to ruin your night, Charles,” began Elsa.

“Don’t be silly, my dear,” said Charles. “I shall take you home at once. I’ve tired of the crowds at any rate. It will be nice to be just the two of us again.”

“Yes,” agreed Elsa. “Just the two of us.”

She had made up her mind.