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MOUNTAIN MUSIC by Michael Seymour Blake

February 18, 2021

All kinds of warning lights are flashing on the dashboard, and the front bumper is mostly held together with duct tape. Chelsey and I are driving my cousin’s car through the Catskills, searching for a trail that leads to an abandoned hotel at the top of a mountain. It’s supposed to be crumbling and overgrown, a long-ago meeting place for communists.

It’s getting late, but we figure we have time to hike out, see this thing, and get back to the car by sundown.

The GPS has us turn up a narrow, dirt path that circles the mountain in a steady ascent. We tell ourselves all the private property signs are probably just more abandoned relics from a bygone age. Soon, there’s a sheer drop to our right and jagged walls of rock to our left. The car trembles as we gain altitude. It feels like there’s an earthquake under our asses.

“Didn’t your friend come here once?” I ask. “She mention anything about this?”

“Not that I remember.” Chelsey’s chin juts forward with determination, and her red hair is filled with dying sunlight.

Last week, while we ate dinner on the floor in front of the TV, the demons above us in 3B got into another scuffle. Flakes rained from the ceiling as they tumbled around up there, screaming at each other, “I’ll kill you this time. I’ll kill you!” We don’t have the money to move, and they’ve already declared war on some of the other tenants in our building who’ve complained, so our tactic is to huddle down and turn up the volume. “This city has been closing in around us for a long time now,” Chelsey had said. “It’s starting to feel like I can’t even stand up anymore. What the hell is left here for us anyway?”

“We are,” I’d replied.

This afternoon, when the hot water turned off unexpectedly for the fifth time this year, we came up with our last-minute Catskill Mountains escape plan.

We go round and round, creeping up the exposed path at a crawl. Big houses appear now and then on our left, each with chunky-tired, tough-looking vehicles parked on long, rugged driveways. This is no place for a borrowed, beat-up Nissan Versa hatchback.

“This must be a mistake,” I say.

“You think everything is a mistake. Relax for once.”

I turn on the radio. The Doobie Brothers’ “Listen to the Music” is playing.

The path bends to the right and then slopes upwards at what seems like a seventy-degree angle.

“No way,” I yell over the Doobie Brothers.

“What?”

“No way are we making it up this thing.”

“We’ll be fine,” Chelsey says.

And for a short while, we are.

But then the car comes to a rumbling standstill about twenty feet before the path levels out. Up ahead, there’s another one of those long driveways leading to a house that’s all wood and windows with a big balcony overlooking the green treetops and thin, wormy roads below. A man in a silk robe watches us from that balcony. We’re churning up explosions of dust and rocks, not making any progress. Chelsey hits the brakes, but instead of stopping, we start rolling backwards. The gritty sound of dirt against wheels pierces through the music.

Chelsey’s eyes widen. “I don’t like this, I don’t like this,” she says.

I tell her to give it some gas, which she does, but we’re still losing momentum. And the curve in the path below is too sharp to navigate backwards without any traction.

I notice a small, snowflake-like chip near the top right corner of the windshield, and beyond that, the blood-bright leaves of a distant red oak waving in the breeze as if to say, “Bye-bye, dummies!”

I’m struck with the possible reality of us leaping from the car seconds before it plummets down the rock face. This is not an option. The speed of life returns as I realize that no one is going to save us except us.

I jump out, slide down into the cloud of debris, and throw everything I have at the rear bumper. Pebbles ricochet off my skull. With the bitter taste of dirt and dust in my mouth, I yell, “Floor it.”

The man in the robe is gone so I figure he’s on his way over to help. I’m thinking, If this thing goes over with Chelsey inside, I’m jumping after it. Then I realize I’d probably be crushed before I even got the chance to jump.

I attack the car with everything I’ve got as The Brothers continue to belt it out. Even on the verge of physical and financial disaster, some part of my mind is still cognizant of how good this song is.

I give one more big push. Blood surges through my small frame. My temples throb. “Come on you son of a bitch,” I yell. Then the engine roars and the car blasts off like a Roman candle. Chelsey cuts to the left just in time, skidding to a halt at a strange angle across the man’s driveway. I scurry up after it.

Chelsey stares straight ahead, still gripping the wheel. I reach through the window and turn off the music. The man is back on his balcony, but now he’s got a mug.

“You OK?” I ask Chelsey.

“Yeah,” she says. “You?” She places her clean hand over my filthy one.

The man sips whatever’s in his mug.

“Fuckin’ guy would have just casually watched us fly off the mountain,” I say. “Not this time, buddy.” I pat our car’s scalding hood. “Not this time.”

“Now what?” Chelsey asks. “GPS says the trailhead is only ten minutes up that way.”

“The only thing up that way is certain death.”

“That’s it then? After all this?” she says, but I can tell she agrees. We’re done here.

“Want me to drive?”

She climbs across the center console to the passenger seat.

“Hope you enjoyed the show,” I say to the man before getting in.

He makes no indication that he hears me, but as I buckle up and shift to reverse, he raises his mug to us and nods.

I pull out of the driveway, and we begin our sliding descent down the path, past the boulders and out of the woods, back to our world of nightmare neighbors and crumbling ceilings and shitty jobs. But we still have rolling wheels and a working engine and oxygen in our lungs and bones that aren’t crushed. Things could be worse. Duct tape can work wonders, and we’re not finished yet.

Windows down, we watch the sun cut into the horizon and the sky burn orange.

OUT OF JOINT by Miranda González

February 17, 2021

Edgar was a man with a peculiar malady. It wasn’t just that he had a voracious appetite for all things internet and a quick temper. No, it was that when he read something online that upset him, his nose became, quite literally, out of joint. Each time he furiously disagreed with a news article or a post from an opinionated relative, the cartilage of his nose would turn ever so slightly—imperceptibly—counter-clockwise.

The phenomenon seemed to begin following a particularly distressing piece of journalism about an out-of-state investor buying up his favorite Texas burger joint. (He could never enjoy his patty melt now, knowing that some suit in Chicago was profiting.) Over the course of the next several months, irritating digital content nudged Edgar’s nose along in its rotation: newspaper op-eds by unqualified authors, videos of senators pounding the table about the debt ceiling, and a downright unreasonable number of pet and baby photos.

The overall change had been so gradual that he, and even those in his neighborhood and the software development company where he worked, didn’t notice. Nobody had the habit of looking Edgar directly in the face, but some did observe that he sneezed more often and more loudly than the average person, especially if someone turned on a dusty ceiling fan. To his credit, he always carried a handkerchief and remembered to cover his blowholes when a fit struck.

Then, one day, just as mysteriously as it had begun, the nasal movement stopped. It could have been the article about the Iranian gasoline export to Venezuela—or the one on opera singers performing to an audience of plants. It might have been both. But whatever the case, Edgar’s nose locked in at a one-hundred-and-eighty degree angle from its congenital placement. There it inexplicably stayed, nostrils pointed at the sky. In the months that followed, the nose never again resumed its axial migration, no matter how many times his cousin Lily spammed his newsfeed with inflammatory Paul Rudd memes.

Edgar did notice that he was constantly battling sinus infections, but he could have sworn he had always suffered from them—particularly around cedar and oak season. It was his damned allergies to blame, of that he was sure, even though the skin prick test at the allergist had come out negative. So he found himself again and again at his general practitioners’ office.

Eventually, after prescribing yet another round of penicillin, Dr. Galgani spoke up.

“Listen, Edgar,” he said. “Your sinus problems could be solved by a rhinoplasty.”

Edgar nearly choked on his mucous backflow. “Are you suggesting I get a nose job, Doctor?”

The doctor squinted. “You do realize your nose has a, let’s call it, unusual orientation?”

“Unusual orientation!” Edgar shouted. He snatched the prescription from the doctor’s hand, stormed out, and drove to the pharmacy, snorting all the way. There he bought some overpriced yogurt and ate it sitting at the blood pressure machine while waiting for his medication. (The antibiotics always did a number on his intestines.)

At last, he made it home, orange bottle in hand. After dropping his keys on the hallway table, he flicked on the bathroom light. From every possible angle, he examined his nose in the mirror. It looked perhaps a little red, he thought. Shrugging, he grabbed a glass of water and swallowed his pills.

PET by Danielle Chelosky

February 15, 2021

The night we met, I showed up at your apartment with fishnets shoved inside my bag. I was too nervous to wear them as I walked from my car to your door. I got catcalled three times anyway.

Catcalling is really bad over here, you told me while we ascended the stairs. You took the lead; I followed timidly. I couldn’t take in your apartment as we stepped inside because I had too much going on in my mind. Your room, though, came across as beautiful—the light soft and careful, your bed sheets floral and muted, your walls white with art strewn about. I complimented the painting above your desk; it’s overtaken by a brown so dark it looks black, and two figures stand in the bottom left corner, hidden but visceral. You thanked me and said no one ever noticed it. I looked at the books stacked on your shelf against your wall. I was still awkward and scared, but I was at home.

***

You said I was like a cat—the way my eyes wandered, my attention small. I laid my legs on top of yours, and you smiled.

***

We stayed inside. Our love remained within the walls of your room, though I would never say it was restricted or confined. In the summer, I wore denim shorts and tank tops. I found closer parking spots. I got catcalled by a man skating one day but I didn’t mind. I smiled. I’d sweat on the forty minute drive to you; my car’s AC was broken and I’d decided that was fine.

I sat on your floor, painting on a canvas. It was for my art class. I looked at the corner where your bed met the walls. I stared at it, perplexed, trying to understand the geometrics. I was never good at compositions or technicalities. My professor called my work funny, so misshapen things became my style, unintentional or not.

You laughed at me sitting on your floor with all of my supplies set up. You look like my pet, you said, in your little nook.

***

I was a stray cat who frequented your home. You fed me, quenched my thirst, offered your affection as treats. I got dopamine rushes when you pet my hair or stroked my cheek. You bought us bottles of wine when I was used to liquor. Suddenly, the whole summer eluded me—the sunny days, the hot air, the sweaty freedom—and it morphed into a Yellow Tail blur.

You were eleven years older than me. I wanted to know what it felt like to be taken care of—to follow, to be someone’s shadow, to be given love that was bigger than what I knew. Once I felt it, I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t be on my own. I wanted to forever keep my head in the crook of your neck, your hands wherever they want to be on me.

***

You got me my first toy. Your present came in, you said. I felt so small, so silly. I wasn’t going to let you use it on me; I wanted to be the first for myself. And then we got drunk. And then I was on the edge of your bed open and curious like a butterfly. You pleasured me in new ways—you were solidifying your authority, securing our bond, hypnotizing me into being yours. I curled up and rolled around in ecstasy, purring.

***

I’m gonna get you a cage, you said, fucking me, and a collar and a leash.

The reward of your love and attention eclipsed the pain of trying desperately to elicit it. Mornings without you, I was with you—only in a one-sided kind of way. I lived in my head where I played moments of us over and over. I brought dead memories to life. I clung onto what I could from the nights that didn’t turn into a black haze.

***

One of those summer painting afternoons, I leaned on your windowsill looking out onto the street. You’re like a cat, you said again. I waited for people walking to look up and see me. I was naked. No one did. You came up behind me, touched my shoulders.

***

I don’t know if you know, but you do this thing, you said. You’ll wake up and start making these noises, and if I touch you then you’re quiet and you go to sleep. It happens every time you’re here. You were upset, not well-rested. I apologized; you said that you’re just trying to find out what’s wrong with me. What was that term you used, you asked, which I thought just applied to dogs when their owners are away at work and they bark a lot? I said: Separation anxiety? You said: yeah.

***

I am sitting on the edge of your bed and, without turning your head, you tell me to stop looking at you. I am waiting, I am begging—I am thinking of what trick I could do for you to give me a treat.

Still, in this restless desperation I find pleasure. I like when you tease me, when you’re mean to me. I love when you pay no attention to me, I love when you hit me. I love the one-sided tunnel vision I have for you, I love the pain and the neglect.

It’s winter now. I think I will spend most days wandering around in the snow.

BURN THE SHIPS by John Darcy

February 12, 2021

The first scam was parking outside the bank, mobile-depositing a check, running inside to cash it with the teller. He dubbed it The Double Derring-Do. Loopholes find fault in failures of imagination. It’s about outsmarting, round-abouting.

Okay, he did end up with two years for wire fraud.

Watching a scumbag stoner conman movie, he whispers, “That’s not what it’s like.” On his computer are two hundred years of pirated movie soundtracks. He’s working his way through them. Also the first two acts of a five-act play, stellar dialogue but lacks compelling conflict. Policies in triplicate because it never hurts to be over-insured. A scanned draft of his last will and testament, the first line of which reads: I sure made a mess of this, didn’t I?

Never has he ever flown on airplane, seen ocean, met-cute, punched wall in heartbroke anger. Personal goals are fingers pointed at the moon. Mostly these days he feels recycled, amalgamed, trauma-tinged.

Lately he’s got this ache in his head like a cold front. He guesses the trouble began with his mother. Don’t even get him started on reincarnation.

He wants to get into the burning-down buildings for money business. There’s a word for it. His plan is to bring in a companion, accomplice, compatriot. Good listening skills are a must.

First interview:

“Name?”

“Man.”

“Pardon?”

“My name is Man.”

“Any interest in becoming partners in crime?”

“We’ll never make it out of this alive.”

“You mean life?” he asks Man. “I was under the impression that was part of the deal.”

Man looks lived-in, city-dwelled. Hair that’s airplane-mode yellow. Caution-tape eyes. Second thought it could be jaundice.

“Well, Man, the job is yours, man.”

“Anything else?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have anyone you could set me up with, would you?”

He wants to do stand-up comedy, open his tight-five with something along the lines of: What’s the deal with dads, am I right? See, my old man only had one hand. I know, right? He’d say, Well, on the one hand...

Still workshopping it.

The actual story is all dark and stormy night. The year is 1974, the sun a faded smile behind the clouds. Adopted Father is at his workbench, trying to construct a crib, thinking that if he builds said crib the universe will have to assent, agree, sort of just let him have a win for once. Upon hearing his wife yell through the house that, yes, no, seriously, this was it, the adoption had been approved, Adopted Father cuts his left hand off with a table saw. The amount of blood is simply tremendous. Looks more like low-budget slasher movie blood than hardcore realism blood. It spurts from his open wrist to the beat of his beating heart. His hand is inches from his forearm, the distance so small and simple that it crunches his brain. Adopted Father is reminded of the boardwalk carnival trick where a person’s hand and a prop hand are separated by a curtain as someone strokes the real hand with a feather, then comes down on the fake one with a hammer or mallet, and the game’s participant flinches and winces and retracts even though no contact was made with the real thing. Adopted Father is already getting phantom feelings. Woozy go the lights, the workbench and his body like a different body as a grayness comes over him, the fainting and the floor, and the pain begins a courtship with his limb, and sleep.

He draws up a contract for Man to keep things above board.

He says, “I did that New Year screw up on your contract. Earth to me, it’s not 2018 anymore.”

Man answers, “Life is attachment. Attachment is suffering. Life is suffering”

“But the food isn’t half bad.”

“Pointless bodies on a pointless rock, convinced we matter. Birth is a terminal disease.”

“Ever thought about therapy?” he asks. Man doesn’t answer. “Anyway, I did a strikethrough and initial. You’re supposed to on official things.”

Man says, “I want to burn something down.”

“Did you get a chance to read my play yet?”

“There’s a lot working but I want to know more about the main character.”

Meaning Man wants to know more about himself. The play being as it were autobiographical. A lip-smacking development.

They stroll the streets together. He tells himself take it easy or you’ll scare him off. The sun circles a Miller Lite sky, clouds made of gout and gauze and dust. He tells himself take it easy or you’ll scare him off.

He asks, “Do you want to be best friends?”

“I don’t see why not,” Man says.

“Cool. Yeah.”

Is there a word for something beyond happiness?

Man says, “Joy, rapture, bliss, death.”

They watch the fire all glue-eyed, the fall of Rome from nosebleed seats. First job for the duo came from the insurance company. Burn down abandoned warehouse before the owner does, please. Use lots of accelerant to prompt investigation, if you would. Pay out claim denied.

He asks Man, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

The blaze sounds like a brass band. A crackling roll of popping joints. Boards of flame lick the walls outside, falling upward. Heat. Very smoky, very true.

“In this exact spot,” Man says. “Returning as a meditation on the flatness of time.”

“Me too,” he says. “I was going to say the exact same thing.”

“We’re really in it now,” Man says.

A brightly dark night, gray stars and the moon. The fire makes his headache go away like a cure.

“I meant to ask,” he says to Man, “do you have any hobbies?”

“Postponing my suicide.”

“Been thinking of getting into model airplanes myself.”

They move in together, balance the TV on a stack of pizza boxes. He says to Man, ‘I can’t help but notice you don’t have a bed.’

“I sleep in a coffin,” Man says. “As a reminder.”

“Don’t forget it’s your turn to do the dishes.”

“Where will we go from here?” Man asks.

He thinks about saying, well, we could soften up, find our way to the straight and hallowed narrow. We could throw on a movie, shovel down ice cream like the freezer’s busted. Start a band, get into birding, walk the streets and catcall catcallers. One hundred eighty degree ourselves. Decide to something or other, dust that hard-to-reach place. Floss more. Colorize our lives and come to a conclusion. Maybe this whole thing just isn’t for us. Or maybe we got the world we deserve.

THAT’S ALL YOLKS by Alex Juarez

February 11, 2021

I think about crawling into Arizona’s skin. It would be easiest to go through her eyes. A few years ago, I read an article about a girl who while on meth performed self-enucleation. Her pastor found her screaming, “I want to see the light,” while holding her eyes in her hands. I don’t want to hurt Arizona, but I think if I could slip inside, we would be easier.

Before our alarms go off, she has a headache, so she presses her palms against her face and groans. I mirror it to make her feel like our emotional bond is strong.

“Do you want some Advil?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

We don’t say anything else because maybe, after eight months, there is nothing left to say. Instead, we lay down shoulder to shoulder and try to not touch each other.

Outside, the flowers are coming back to the trees, and I watch them without moving. If we were forced to stay in bed like this forever, it wouldn’t be terrible, but I wouldn’t volunteer to do it. An alarm is waiting to make us move in a few minutes. Tomorrow, I will get on a plane and then we will never be in love again.

I turn to look at her. If I could get to her core, I could grab the headache and pluck it out. Back when we were more in love than this, I would place my head in her lap and she would tweeze my eyebrows. When I shower at her place, I leave long strings of my hair all over her apartment, so that she’ll have to remember me.

Last night, we watched a horror movie and she closed her eyes the entire time. As the girl on screen chewed on a finger like a drumstick, she said that we don’t have any of the same interests. I asked if that was a bad thing.

After the alarms, Arizona’s headache stops, and she asks if I want something to eat. I kiss her cheek, just under her eye.

“No, I’m okay. I don’t really want to get up.”

She nods and unsticks the mess our legs have made; our skin peeling apart with sweat.

“I’m going to make eggs.”

She gets up and walks into the kitchen. I roll over onto her side of the bed and imagine how warm I would be inside of her. I wonder where we could hide the zipper that I would use to get in and out; how I could shrink for the extra three inches.

On our third date, we sat in a pierogi shop until 4 am. Over blue cups of sour cream and onions, I told her about my murdered uncles. I said, “It’s twenty years this month and I feel like I am supposed to be more upset, but I didn’t even know them.” She didn’t say anything, and at the time, I imagined that meant that she was digesting me completely.

When I don’t hear anything from the kitchen besides the bursts of hot oil and the fridge opening and closing, I get up.

I bite her shoulder as she cooks. I am supposed to be in love to the point that I can’t help but want to put my teeth around her.

Arizona shrugs herself out of my mouth and makes her eggs, scrambled.

“Do you ever think about how yolks are fetuses?” I say into her hair.

I want her to want me like this. Or for her to pretend to want me like this. My deep desire to amalgamate controlling everything and every thought. I want to see what the reciprocation feels like.

“No.”

After tomorrow, Arizona and I are not going to see each other for two months. I know that she won’t write me any letters. A dull, persistent pang births at the base of my throat and seeps into the rest of me. I move to the table.

“Would you ever eat your own body?” I ask her.

“What?” She turns away from the frying pan. Her invitation to crawl into me is open. “Why would you even think of that?”

I tell her that I read an article about a man who had his leg amputated and he kept it to make tacos. He invited his friends over, and they all ate him. I add that I wouldn’t do it, but I don’t believe myself.

She turns around and flips off the heat.

There is a cup of juice from the day before on the table and I want it inside of me. Last night, I asked Arizona to put her fingers in my mouth or around my neck; she didn’t and then we both cried.

In a few months, in a bathtub in Cheyenne, she will tell me, “You said we were soulmates, and I wanted to believe you. But I think I’m just someone who loved you without being mean.”

She slides the eggs onto a plate and squeezes some ketchup on the side. Then, she sits down at the table with me and looks into me. I put my feet on her thighs to see if she will do anything.

CUTTING ROOM by Tex Gresham

February 10, 2021

The woods stopped being an enchanted place where the sound of animals scurrying through undiscovered territory felt light and natural. Sunlight blocked, trees strangling the brassy tones into a steel-tinged umber. A fluorescence coated every surface, something we’d walked into, a transition from scene to setting. Maybe it was the deer that brought this change––maybe it was something else. Limp and drained, the deer’s face was a shocked mask of deadness. Blood spumed out its crooked mouth like seafoam on the surf of a slaughterhouse floor.

I was a boy out hunting with his dad and uncle in the humid forests near the Gulf. Water alive with the exhalations of hidden gators, trees swaying with the weight of varmints. And the deer.

My uncle wrangled one off the four-wheeler, grunting from somewhere deep inside his rock-biting interior. The deer’s flesh slammed onto the ground, resonating up my legs. My dad stood behind me, his hands on my shoulder.

My uncle hunched down, pulled a six-foot knife from his pack. He looked back at me, a hideously hydrocephalic troll guarding its last desperate meal. His eyes rang like a hollow bell, inside them the history of Hell experienced on battlefields in tropical forests against unseen foreign boys. Fire gurgled from this deep place, ran the engine inside his hunter heart.

He said, “Come closer. Watch. This is how you do it.”

I shook my head. My dad gripped my shoulders tighter.

Before I could turn away, my uncle plunged the saw-toothed knife deep into the deer’s still-warm chest. Steam erupted like a hot pan under cold water. He jerked the knife down the deer’s chest and stomach. Not a surgeon’s incisions, but a demon’s jagged strike to kill the last victim before the end credits. The deer’s innards hissed and popped, tires over gravel. Hearty, long farting noises vibrated out of the messy slit my uncle carved in the deer’s skin. A charred-crimson mist refracting rainbow light rose from the cavity in the deer’s body, snaking its way up to my uncle’s nostrils. He breathed it in, dilating every cell in his body.

He said, “All the way to the asshole.”

And with a final tug, he ripped the knife through the asshole. Still-throbbing guts spilled out like groceries from a weak shopping bag. The innards were marbled with a white-pink oil that pulsed in time with my heartbeat.

My dad’s grip on my shoulders loosened. He turned away. I couldn’t.

My uncle plunged his hand into the cavity, sliding elbow deep, digging around with the sloppy, silly attitude of a drunk sailor. He smiled and yanked his hand out with a clothy rip. In his hand: the deer’s twitching heart. His gaping maw of a trash compactor mouth stretched open, jagged yellow teeth like crumbling tombstones stamped in his purple gums. And like a starved and stark-mad animal, he took a tearing bite out of the deer’s heart. Before chewing, another bite. A mouth full of bloody, tough flesh. Chewing, gnashing. Tendinous goo oozed down his chin.

From around the chewed up heart, he said, “Normalize killing your enemy.”

I turned to look back at my dad, but all I saw was his cowardly fleeting feet, his hunched back. Over the sound of my uncle’s smacking lips, I could hear my dad’s fearful, infantile breaths.

My uncle saw this and jumped up. His face pinched inward, eyes casting red rays that targeted my dad. He screamed, “Cowards will be punished and cleansed in blood.”

The rifle was in his hands, materialized by his surge of atavistic rage. Rooted out from his flesh like a tumorous appendage. The barrel focused on my fleeing father.

This is where the film skips, where the missing footage was spliced together with the footage still coded in my brain data.

The deer was no longer there. Maybe never was. In its place—in the stain of blood seeping into layers of fallen pine needles and loose sour dirt—was my dad’s body. My uncle tugged at the final remains of skin still clinging to the sinew and gristle and muscle of my dad’s body. The head a rotten pumpkin deflated under the rot of time, blown out. The white-pink oil coated the muscular flesh and fat that looked more like spread butter than body insulation. A whisper, carried by the fluorescences, by the oil, seeped into my brain. A scream of both the deer and my dad, of all the voices of those killed at the hands of my uncle––who tugged the remaining skin off my dad’s body with a primal grunt.

The skin whipped like clothes freshly wet from the washer. He swung my father’s husk around his head, flinging crimson, iron-smelling blood over the trees, the dirt, and me. He screamed, laughed. And his eyes targeted mine, his stare piercing my soul with a toxic heat. The skin flung back, wrapped around my uncle’s back. A shawl, a trophy. The footage skips again, spliced to reject the moments I cannot find in the cutting room floor of the mind.

Light fallen, the fluorescence oozing through the air, a grounded aurora giving everything a radiated glow. A bonfire roared, flames licking trunks, forming the faces of demons on the other side of some thin layer of reality, burning through this world, opening a portal, letting more of the fluorescence through. My uncle danced around the fire, naked but for my dad’s skin draped around him. Where my uncle’s bouncy, limp penis should’ve been was a gaping, oozing wound. He chewed on a handful of my dad’s teeth as he howled, his hollow eyes never severing their attachment to my soul, now eternally trapped in the void.

I looked into the abysmal dark outside the reach of the fire’s hellish glow. The fluorescence throbbed, oil slithering slickly on water’s surface. And on the other side, anything better than right here––if there was an other side. Maybe this is all there is. Maybe I live now in that place on the other side of the fire. Maybe there is no escape. Never was.

MOMENT by Chad Redden

February 8, 2021

A little raccoon, more sponsor than mascot, came with the moment, came down the tree. We waited below the tree, Ryan and me. Waited for the racoon that came with the moment, but it was a tall tree, it took some time. For the racoon. For the tree to grow that tall, how many years I cannot speculate. I cannot look at a tree and say how much time it took for a tree to grow. It took some time for the racoon to reach the ground. After a while Ryan had to leave, before the racoon could reach the ground. Ryan could not wait, he was due at work. The bakery department at the grocery store. “Those doughnuts aren’t going to pull themselves out of the freezer. Aren’t going to thaw themselves. Aren’t going to decorate themselves,” Ryan said. "It’s fine," I told him. "I’ll let the racoon know." I did. The racoon understood. I gave the racoon a little pink glass rock from an aquarium I had in my pocket. I stopped by an aquarium earlier in the day. It was on the sidewalk for free. All I took was a little pink glass rock. The racoon was thankful, spun the little pink glass rock around in their little racoon hands. Like a little cloud of cotton candy but shiny, glassy. I said, “I wish Ryan were here to see this, it’s joyful. Guys thawing out doughnuts don’t get a lot of joyful moments, they’re too busy decorating them.” Then I said to the racoon, “I don’t know if you know about doughnuts, but they tend to bring joy to the person eating them.” The racoon dropped the little pink glass rock, then picked it up, spun it around in their little racoon hands again. I said, “That’s alright, it’s fine, it’s yours, try again.”

SCAFFOLDING by Zac Smith

February 5, 2021

I went golfing. I hit the ball. It landed in the hole (=hole in one). I walked 227 yards to the green place where the hole was that the ball went in. I looked in the... the golf hole, the hole where the ball goes, where mine went. But I didn't see my ball. It was dark in the ball hole. I lay down on the green stuff around the ball hole, on my stomach, and put my face up to the hole. I thought maybe it was just really deep or something and I could reach in up to my elbow and get it. I remembered that was a thing some places, ball holes that were like a foot and a half deep for some reason. Someone was telling me about that once, at like a party in college maybe. I remember he leaned back and arced his hand up and then down in front of him with his eyes wide in a look of concentration, like he was reaching into a deep ball hole for his ball. I was thinking about his eyes when I saw a pair of eyes looking up at me from the golf hole. They seemed like a man's eyes, like a human man, not a racoon or anything, so, like, there was a guy was under the green zone, looking up at me through the ball hole. I could hear him breathing. We were really close to each other. It felt good but I was confused. I thought it was all dirt and rocks underneath the green stuff but I guessed I didn’t really have any good reason to believe that. I imagined a series of intricate tunnels, like, what's that stuff...with the railings... like outside of buildings under construction, or in space ships, like in tv shows... like, rails and platforms and stuff.. made of metal... I don’t know, that stuff, lots of it, like a facility under the green stuff, with guys walking around. I thought about him walking on these like sci-fi pathway things under the golf course, and thought, like, maybe the ball holes were vents, or something. It seemed really complex and I felt tired. He said something but I couldn't really hear. It sounded like "front edges", or something, but that didn't make any sense. I said, "What," and he said it again at the same volume. I was confused. I thought, Runt cages? Brunt ledges? I said "what" again, but he just sighed and slid this, like, little shutter or something over the bottom of the ball hole. The hole looked normal then, like small and normal. I wasn't sure whether to worry about my ball or not, if it was ok to leave it there, with the guy or whatever. I thought it was probably ok because I had other balls with me in my briefcase. I stood up and I realized the green zone was really wet. My shirt was completely soaked through.

TREES by Mordecai Martin

February 4, 2021

Sometimes the world falls away. Oh well! So long, World! I have a small house, though not so small that we would call it tiny. It's just a quiet little place where no one but the bank can throw us out, and where we can play host to some friends in need. I look outside my window at the tree shaking in the wind, and I think about it falling down, crashing through my door. I suppose this is what I am most afraid of in a world that has gone wild: that it will intrude upon the small, calm place I call home. The world's cruel sanity will come for my gentle madness.

Madness rules the day here. We stack the dishes willy nilly, and the glasses don't match—my wife insists on washing all the jam and pickle jars. We could drink out of them, she says. So we drink out of them, Baruch Hashem, there's still plenty to drink. We had some trouble with the water bill, but it's all cleared up now, I think. The liquor store doesn't deliver, a sensible if inconvenient policy, so we wander down the street and pick up our bottles and put them down when they are empty. It keeps the pain down if we keep our liquor down.

The other day a friend dropped by and said he wanted to talk about Jewish writing. Very well then, I said, what is there to talk about Jewish writing? I was suspicious because I've known this friend some time, I know when he's hot under the collar about something, and that day, I could have put a kettle on his collarbone and gotten a nice cup of tea going. Well, you're a Jewish writer, he said. Well, I'm a Jew and a writer, I demurred.

Cut the bullshit, Joe, he said, you're a Jewish writer and so am I and what are we going to do about all this?

All what, I asked, innocently enough, but with a sinking feeling that my tree had collapsed.

Cut the bullshit, Joe, all this! He pointed out the window, and I suppose, in a gesture he considered sweeping, to the wide world of horrors.

I shrugged. I can't deny that something needs to be done. But what should we do? I asked my friend. What can we do but write?

But we're JEWISH writers, he insisted. And how are we going to write about this?

I gave it some thought.

Eventually, I spoke up and said, there's a story Rebbe Nachman of Breslau wrote about the son of a sage who can't walk but can stand. That is, the son can't walk but can stand. The sage—

Joe, my friend said, with a less than patient air.

No, listen, I said. The sage is dying. He gathers the son who can't walk but can stand and his brothers and tells them, on his deathbed, that they must water all trees, all the days of their life, whatever else they do. So the brothers go out, they send money back home to their disabled brother. I mean, the story says "crippled" but I don't like that word.

Joe, c'mon, I'm trying to ask for your thoughts.

I looked at my friend a while. He can be impatient with stories from my yeshiva days, like a lot of the friends I have. They'll say, Joe, you're preaching, talk to me, don't preach. And they have a point.

Okay, I shrug. The point is, this son who can't walk, he goes on some adventures. These adventures are difficult to hold in my head, I always think of them as details, mystical details. But ultimately he finds a magical tree in a land of demons. The demons are an allegory for humanity, they squabble and fight. Eventually, the demons distract everyone from watering the magic tree. The world collapses, everyone's killed, and the tree gets watered. Do you see what I'm saying?

My friend was annoyed. Joe, I came over here to talk about the responsibilities of the Jewish writer in these times.

I said, I know, and that's why I told you that story. You know what the responsibility of the Jewish writer is? It is to remember the mystical details. It is to make strange prophecies from the deathbed of sages. It's to squabble and fight and fill time until the world collapses, at which point, it won't matter what we did.

We argued late into the night, but eventually my friend got an answer he liked and left, out into the sour darkness. I looked at my reflection in the dark square of my window and thought about a tree crashing through it. One day the world’s cruel sanity will come for my gentle madness. And the tree gets watered all the same.

ADULT CONTENT by Jamie Kahn

February 3, 2021

My tenth grade biology teacher is the first person to ever tell me that I look like [One Specific Porn Star], though he doesn’t really tell me in his own words. Instead, I inquire about his stares to friends in my class to no avail until one boy claims to have seen porn on his laptop during school hours.

“What does that have to do with me?” I ask.

He shows me a video during study hall. The resemblance is undeniable.

That night, I fall into the never-ending black hole of videos featuring [One Specific Porn Star]. I see the resemblance from every angle. Periodically, I stop watching her videos to look at my own face in the mirror and go right back to watching again. I stay up all night like this.

The next morning I am tired but even with the bags under my eyes I see nothing but [One Specific Porn Star] when I look in the mirror. I go to class and when my biology teacher hands back my test I avoid touching his hand. I consider for a moment what would happen if I asked him about the porn on his laptop. Would he break down and cry? Beg for forgiveness? Deny everything? Or try to bend me over his desk?

For the rest of the semester I don’t raise my hand and when he rearranges the seats I get the urge to spit on his shoes when he places me right beside his desk. I don’t study for his class. I get a D and am kicked out of the honors program, though I am sure to know just enough material not to get an F. Re-taking the class would mean seeing him again.

I watch [One Specific Porn Star] so often that she is all I see when I see myself. I am both elated and despairing. What better thing for my teenage self esteem than the knowledge that thousands of people—maybe more—would get off on watching me have sex. But something about it feels imposing. Like a windstorm about to erupt into a tropical rain or a kitchen timer I know will scare me. I try to enjoy being beautiful.

The second time I am told that I look like [One Specific Porn Star] is a bit more direct. I’m nineteen and working at an organic restaurant and juice bar. I’m busy, sweaty, with strawberry and avocado stains drying into the fabric of my shirt.

There is a girl who can’t be much younger than I am and when she gets to the counter to order she pauses in stunned silence for a moment. Her voice stalls like she is studying the menu but her eyes study my body and face instead. “Can I get the blueberry mango smoothie?” Her words sound nervous, like they’re floating on the surface of foaming saltwater.

“Apple or orange juice?”

When I am done blending and hand her the smoothie, she takes a sip and asks quietly, “Is it rude to ask you why you work here?”

“I work here because it’s my job. I need money to live and I like juice.” I try my best to express my confusion but in response I appear to have confused the girl even more.

She whispers a little lower, “Aren’t you [One Specific Porn Star]?” For a moment, I consider saying yes, just to see what it would be like. To see what she would say. “How did you start? Like, what did you do to get into it? Did you know someone?”

When I realize she wants advice I can’t give her, I shake my head and say “Sorry, that’s not me. Good luck, though.” And go back to slicing pineapple on the counter. The juice sticks on my palms, and the girl lingers for a moment. She looks at me like she’s trying to crack my skull open like a walnut. She thinks I am lying. I let her.

The third time I am told that I look like [One Specific Porn Star] it is more like a confessional. I still work at the juice bar, which is where I meet my boyfriend. He comes in all the time, and after we start dating he stops coming in and admits he likes me much more than the juice and the salad wraps. I don’t mind. If given the choice I, too would say I like him more than juice and salad wraps.

He is kind to me. He has light brown hair and a scar on his shoulder from a dog bite. He likes cashews. He has a crystal and rock collection. He likes baseball shirts, though he doesn’t care for baseball.

Together, we wake up early for lake day trips and do Pilates together. We plant hanging tomatoes on the balcony in his apartment because it gets more sunlight than my balcony. We try to make our own red wine blend and it fails miserably. He tells me he enjoys when I wear red lipstick but hates getting it on his face. He teaches me how to drive stick shift. We have sex roughly once a week, sometimes more if the mood calls. We date for seven months.

He is too nice to admit it outright, but I notice that he is bored with our sex life. Some days he is less bored than others, but when things become routine it is sometimes inevitable. This displeases me. I try a few things—blowing him in the middle of the living room, letting him lick whipped cream off my body even though I myself don’t like whipped cream—but they lose their novelty.

One night we are in my bed, swimming in my oatmeal-colored sheets. I kiss his cheek, his neck, his chest. Make my way down. But he grabs by shoulder gently and says, “Hey, can I tell you something?”

“Of course.” I lay back beside him, afraid he is about to break things off with me.

“Honestly, when I first met you, the very first thing I noticed was than you look exactly like [One Specific Porn Star]. Do you know her? You probably don’t. She’s—”

“I know.” I haven’t heard her name out loud since that girl at the juice bar. I haven’t thought about her much since then. I never had to.

“Oh god, you think I’m a pervert. You probably think I’m such a dirtbag.” He gets a sour look on his face and buries his head into my shoulder.

“I don’t. I know what I look like,” I say.

“You’re prettier than her.”

I am not.

“Thanks,” I say.

“I just want you to know you’re prettier than her. You’re beautiful, okay? But I’ve always been into her videos. I used to watch her a ton before we got together.”

“Do you still?” I ask. “I don’t mind if you do.” I mean this. I can’t enforce constant power over his thoughts and desires.

“Recently. Yeah. I have. I’ve been getting back into her a lot.”

“And sleeping with me just isn’t the same?” I ask.

His eyes widen and he shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant at all.” Even in his dopey kindness, I can hell he is lying to save my feelings.

“Then what did you mean?” I ask, and silence follows. “What were you thinking would happen when you brought this up to me?”

He shakes his head and hides his face, and I touch a hand to his shoulder. Try to comfort him in the wake of something that I’m guessing should probably hurt me.

“I don’t know,” he says. And now I am the one who is silent. I rise from bed, and he does not try to argue. I rifle through my bag for my laptop, straining on too many tabs and blinking low battery. Slowly, I find her, for the first time in years. Her face shines sweaty as she bounces on top of some man who doesn’t matter. I turn the volume up and follow her lead.

My boyfriend’s eyes are glued to her, and what’s more—my eyes are glued to her. In this moment, I feel like a little girl staring at the grown woman version of herself, and I wonder if it will always be this way. I tilt my head back and catch the mirror. He is still looking at the screen.