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BAD SEEDS by Tanya Zilinskas

You were supposed to turn them over to the Department of Agriculture if you received them. Packages without return addresses showed up in mailboxes all over the country, each one containing a single packet of seeds. The official line was inconsistent but grim: they were from China, they were from Russia, they would kill the crops, they would release pests, they were a Sino-Russian hybrid that would release pests that would kill the crops.

When I received the seeds, I planted them. I planted them because I wanted to see what would happen. I planted them because I didn’t trust the government. Because I was bored. Because with this, I was chosen, and because I had nothing else to grow.

The first child came on Monday, scratching at the patio door, naked and covered in earth. I fed him everything in the pantry and after he ate it all he said to me, have you considered how your environment contributes to your mental health? We spent the rest of the day purging. We took down the television that was hung like art, unshelved the books I hadn’t read since college, and gathered the face creams that lacked the alchemy of beauty. We threw it all in the trash and rolled the bin out to the curb. Then we sat on the porch until we were sunburned, eating blackberries from the bushes that had taken over the yard.

On Tuesday the second child came. This is always how creation goes, one new thing a day, one day after another. The second child said nothing until that night when the neighbors’ dog barked itself hoarse. I can’t bear when something’s in pain, the second child said. The children and I went into the neighbors’ yard, unleashed the dog, and opened the gate. We ran after it in the street, barking and howling, darting between the headlights of bleating cars.

Wednesday’s child was already yellow when he came to us, and by noon he had withered away. We buried him under the blackberries so we could eat him next summer. Thursday’s child went straight into my bedroom and refused to come out. Friday’s child was a pyromaniac, so Monday, Tuesday, and I spent the day dousing everything with water. When questioned, Friday said some things needed to be burned. Saturday arrived and said they were the last of the children. They were excruciatingly beautiful; we learned nothing they said could be trusted.

Monday had grown tired of all this. He said there were too many children; this had gone too far. He said we had grown too wild, and I agreed, but there was no putting them back in the box. 

On Sunday, I picked the last of the blackberries and fed them to the children for breakfast. I played Dolly Parton’s Wildflowers and told them to listen to the lyrics—that I was the garden setting them free—but the children didn’t like country music or metaphors. I opened the front door and told them to go forth and multiply. I took a picture of us before they left with the sun just right in the sky. I watched my seeds go out into the world, and then I went back inside and locked the door.

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ARE YOU MY MOTHER? by Allie Zenwirth

A

I used to get these pangs of want, filled with unnamable desires. You would find me jumping. You would find me erratic. I want to make something. I want to dance with somebody… I want to feel the heat with somebody… yeah... With somebody who loves me. Я хочу. I want… I want… I want… I don’t know… I want…  If you were that stranger at the bar you would ask me, “How do you have so much energy?” and I would say, “I don’t know,” and then  jeté away. 

Now I’m drained, all my juice is gone. Instead of yelling at people to, “Wake up!” I’m alone in a desert of darkness, amputated, stuck on scalding asphalt, bleeding as I push myself forward by my stumps one inch at a time into a never-ending nightmare. Nobody’s home inside me. My voice is deeper and flatter, allowing my new apartment-mate to clock me as trans:

New Apartment Mate: Can I ask you a question?

Allie Zenwirth: Sure

New Apartment mate: Your voice is very thick

Allie Zenwirth:

New Apartment Mate: (winks, gives thumbs up)

I am in a manhole of wanting to die. The lid standing between me and the street weighs 249 lbs (as manhole covers are wont).

My therapist points out that my suicidality is reasonable.* That makes me feel better. 

*he phrases it differently.

B

In the beginning of 2020, Corona Time, New York was the epicenter. I stayed with my Russian professor in Yonkers for a month, and during one particular dinner, as I talked everyone’s heads off about the Community, I got a text. 

Father: How are you feeling?

I announced: “Guess who just texted me?” I consumed everyone. “That’s a weird text, right? The first time in months: ‘How are you feeling?’ How should I respond?” 

From my father’s perspective, a concern regarding my health was reasonable. About half of the Chasidic community was infected by the virus. He was. My mom was. His brothers were. My mom’s siblings were. 

I had a follow up call with my father who said he’ll call me back, but he never did. However, the virus gave my mom an excuse to talk with me again. We hadn’t spoken in a year.

C

For a while, her disembodied voice was a grounding presence. She was someone to talk to when I moved back to my room in Jersey City. A windowless basement room in which I couldn’t stand upright, without A/C, and infested with both cockroaches and ants. Housing-wise, things improved when I paid the extra $150 and moved up to the second floor. I was still unemployed, alone, without many friends. 

D

Throughout my years at Sarah Lawrence College, I would be on the verge of homelessness during the winter breaks when the campus closed, relying on the kindness of strangers. During the break my senior year, January of 2019, I called my mother, asking her if she wanted to get together. Just like the year before, she asked if she could think about it and call me back. After three days, she decided she would be down to meet, but just like the year before, it would need to be in secret. We discussed our options and my mom determined it would be as if we were to have an affair. We would book a hotel room.

The following Wednesday morning, after eating two egg and cheese English Muffins I had gotten from Dunkin’ the night before, I looked out the window of a room in Hotel Le Blu and watched as a woman approached the hotel. She had gained weight. As usual she was wearing body-covering dark-colored clothing and false hair.

My mother entered the hotel and came up the elevator. I found her in the hallway, looking lost. I hugged her as if she were a pillow. Going into the room she put down her bags of Greek yogurt for herself and homemade cookies for me and we sat down on chairs facing each other. She got straight down to what she wanted to tell me.

Mom: I love you.

Me: I love you too.

Mom: I like talking with you on the phone.

Me: I like talking with you too. 

Mom: I know you are well intentioned, but you writing a memoir has been incredibly hurtful to me. I know you think you’re doing it for the right reasons, but I don’t think it’s ok that you expect me to keep talking with you.

Me: Is it because I am writing about you? I could use a pseudonym. 

Mom: Being written about is part of it. You know I’m a private person. 

Me: (nods unsure)

Mom: But...

The real problem? I would be writing negatively about the Community.

E

Talking with my mother in the bowels of my basement room was not all bliss. We would argue in almost hour-long bursts. Strangers would look at me strangely as I broke the silence of the night, making laps around my neighborhood, raising my voice in vehemence. She argued that I wasn’t Paul Revere rousing the colonials, that my memoir was not whistleblowing, that I was sharing with the world a warped version of the Chasidic Community, one driven by hatred and personal grievance. 

I argued that the Chasidic Community was a place where human rights were being violated. 

In August of 2020, when my mother recruited an aunt and an uncle to help refute my claims, when three people telling me that my experience in the Community was my own fault* became too much, I told my mother so. I told her we could continue to speak but I will not be gaslighted. She stopped calling me. 

*My mother will laugh. How predictable: another conversation that I warp and misconstrue. What else is new?

F

So now here I am in September of 2020, isolated, with a deadness all too familiar. My feelings blend with those of my still-in-Community-self, the mirage of pain I left behind in 2016, when I escaped. An experience I hoped would never return.

G

In 2011, when I was thirteen, I would sit beside Halberstam, a rabbi who was also a therapist, in the uncomfortable chair besides his desk, waiting. The darkness that had surrounded me since the age of five had turned into a throbbing pain. I was waiting for Halberstam to tell me why. To prescribe me some Advil. 

Like a pediatrician walking into a room saying, “Hi, how are you doing?” who would hear a few symptoms then confidently declare, “So here is what I’m going to do,” Halberstam found the problem: it was my parents. They had been putting “interjections” in my brain, programming me to believe that I deserved to be miserable. He implied that I was abused. I had never liked my parents, but I never realized their terribleness. “Oh boy, poor me.”

Halberstam’s abuse theory was not based on anything I said. I found out later that my mother had been seeing him as a patient as well. He must have based it on what my mother told him during her therapy. Something real. Unwilling and unable to tell me the truth, he turned it into something vague, which turned into “my parents are abusing me.” He didn’t bother to check in and see if that was my lived experience. He didn’t bother to check in and see if that was what made me unable to see anything but bleakness.

H

In 2014, after my second hospitalization in a psych ward, at sixteen, my mother and I became friends. Prison inmates. My mother shared that she never wanted me to be born. I was grateful she told me as it meant I wasn’t making things up. For a while, that was all that was mentioned of it. Then, in 2020, during the few months we resumed talking, my mother added that she didn’t want to get married either. She described her increasing dread as the wedding date had drawn nearer.

I

In 2020, when we would be on the phone, I argued that the Community was to blame for her marriage and my birth. The Community made her get married to someone she didn’t know at 18, and made her pump out one kid after the other. But in her mind the fault was her own. She could have decided not to get married and be ostracized. She chose to get married because deep down she wanted to. “We all need connection.” She could have gone on birth control even though she wasn’t allowed to without permission from a judge. She chose to have kids to prove to the world that you can have kids and not love them.

J

Sister Cathleen (Margaret Qualley) is a novice in training at a nunnery in Novitiate (2017).  She is intimacy repressed to the extent that she can’t bear hearing the object of her desire, Sister Emmanuelle (Rebecca Dyan), read the bible. One night, Sister Emmanuelle wakes up to a knock on her door. She opens it a crack.

Sister Emmanuelle: (whispers) You can’t be here

Sister Cathleen: (inaudible pleading)

Sister Emmanuelle: Okay

They both sit down on the bed nervous. LONG pause.

Sister Cathleen: Do you remember… Do you remember when you asked what I was starving for? I just want to be comforted… please will you just comfort me… please… please will you just… please will you just… please I just want to be comforted… please will you just comfort me... Please… Please… Please… Please will you just comfort me… Please will you just comfort me…

Unable to shut up until she is held, kissed, smothered, and eaten. 

I feel that.

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NEW THING KISSES by Robin Zlotnick

They breathed each other in for ten years before they married, and then they were married for forty years, and the whole time, they needed to know every bit of each other, not just know but suck in and taste, so they had this thing, a sort of game: any time she noticed something new about him, a wrinkle on his forehead or a mole on his wrist, she would kiss it and vice versa, like when a pie-baking burn bubbled on her hand, he kissed each blistered bump, and when her chin grew a hair he kissed that too, and when she yanked the hair out with tweezers and blew it away, he kissed her chin once more because it was new again since the hair was gone. Together they kissed their new things for fifty years, and then it got so they knew every piece of each other, or else they started predicting the changes, or else they didn’t want to see them anymore. In any case, the new thing kisses mostly stopped, and then one night he decided he wanted to stay up later but she wanted to go to bed at the regular time, so he did and she did, and when she got up in the morning she kissed the top of his head because that was new, coming to bed at different times, and he asked What was that for? like he didn’t know, so she kissed him again because he’d never asked that before. Soon they never got into bed together and he kept changing, like one day he came to bed and his left foot was shorter than his right, not by a lot, but she noticed it and she kissed it because that was new, then the next night he had one less finger, a pinky was gone, and she kissed the shiny stub because that was new too, and then the next night his eyes when he opened them were green and fearful but they had always been brown and kind so she, trembling, kissed those too. Every night she kissed his new thing until he was unrecognizable to her and then she could do nothing but kiss him—she didn’t think she had a choice—so that’s what she did; she kissed him and kissed him and kissed him and then she died.

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THE COLLAPSE OF A STAR by Jamie Etheridge

We sit in the van parked on the railroad tracks not knowing if the train is coming, or if you are going. You want to die. You said so and we believe you. Momma cries out, “Bill, please,” over and over and we wait, inhale then hold, for you to decide.

 It was always like that. Random moments of drama; life or death, on the side of the road. That time in Texas in the middle of the worst blizzard in thirty years. The truck’s engine exploded and we were stuck, freezing, as semis whooshed past on the highway and the truck rocked in the aftertow. ‘Bill, please,” she pleaded as the baby cried in her lap and we huddled in the back of the cab, fingers crackling in the cold. 

The FBI mailed out wanted posters. Later, when I finally got the files: thick black lines redacting my childhood alongside the names of the agents who’d tracked you. I found facsimiles of your face, eyes front, turned to the left, turned to the right, and your aliases, pages and pages of them. You were always a good storyteller, a natural whipsaw with a lie. 

There were pills and booze and cons. And days when you could hardly get out of the bed in whatever cheap motel and whatever cheap town we’d drifted to, and Momma had to scratch out breakfast, lunch and dinner for us on the $10 she had hidden in her wallet.

There were joys. You driving us through the looming hush of the redwoods of northern California, explaining how the dinosaurs scratched their bellies against the Cretaceous bark. Or the sound of your cowboy boots crunching on the gravel as we followed you to the edge of a cliff in the Cherokee National Forest, your smile wide as the vista over the valley below. 

The melancholy of Willie Nelson singing about angels flying too close and your voice, melodic and on key, despondent as a star in an empty universe. 

I can still smell the smoke from your Winston King trailing out the open window as we children slept folded against each other like paper bags. The infinite hours, days, weeks, months and years we cruised I-10, each mile bringing us closer to, or taking us further away from, what you couldn’t face. 

Then the time in Vegas when you disappeared for two or maybe three days, I can’t remember. We ate cereal and milk and watched endless episodes of Knight Rider and Three’s Company on the small, staticky TV in the motel room. We knew you’d come back. We hoped you’d come back rich or at least with enough money to buy food. 

You almost died in Arkansas. 

Why do they call it that? I always think of the ark of the Covenant and the followers of Moses. Here are some rules to follow: Never tell anyone your real name (I didn’t know mine until I was nine years old.) Help your mother take care of the little ones. Always stay close in case we have to leave in a hurry. Don’t sass your father or you’ll get a slap. One day when I’m gone, you’ll be sorry. 

I’m sorry, Daddy. 

The heart attack came on so swiftly that your face turned blue with the pain, and your eyes, already bulging, bugged out and scared us all. The nitroglycerin pills weren’t working and Momma called the ambulance and they took forever to come. Seven children left behind in the motel room, too terrified to talk, hungry and squabbling over the television because at least that was something we could control. They airlifted you to Tulsa and Momma said there would be an operation. They would slit open your heart, chip away at the blockages the way miners dig for gold. 

But in the night you stripped the IV from your arm, ripped out the catheter, painting the ICU floor and walls with your blood until they called security and Momma, and she flew to the hospital with your clothes and boots. We woke up in the morning with you in the bed, in the motel room, smoking, your skin like drain water after a fierce storm. We knew nothing and yet understood that everything, everything, was wrong.

You said you dreamed you would die on that table, an open heart at 5am and so you kept it closed. The doctor yelled after you that you wouldn’t live to see tomorrow. 365 tomorrows are what you got instead.  

After that you wouldn’t leave the South but circled in a meandering loop between Florida, Georgia and Alabama, between your parents, her parents and other relatives. Life being relative, we knew by then. We stayed close to ‘home’ in case something happened. 

Only you were our home, the blazing, burning sun of our universe and when you collapsed finally, sinking in upon yourself, the morphine dimming the light in your eyes, the doctor shaking his head slowly from the doorway, our world went dark. And like planets long orbiting a dying star, we were freed to float away, off into the silent, empty universe, or to collapse ourselves into the hole at the center of the world. 

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EILEEN GETS A LITTLE BIT DRUNK by Natalie Warther

My sons were watching a movie in the living room and I was upstairs, rummaging through their bathroom. I’m not really sure why, I almost never go in there, but there I was, and I’d had some wine, and we hadn’t left the house for twelve days, for Christ’s sake, so what else was I supposed to do? I looked in the drawers, looked in the shower, looked in the trash can, looked in the mirror and I looked old. I stuck my finger out like a cane, pointed it at the mirror, furrowed my eyebrows, and whispered at my reflection, “You pick up this hallway right this instant.” It was odd at first, seeing what my boys see. I thought about leaving, turning off the light, and joining them in the living room. But it felt a little bit good, mi petite performánce, so I tried, “You think I like being the bad guy?” And that felt a little bit more natural, so I kept going; I kept scolding that mirror.“That’s it, no phone for a week.”“Cut the shit, young man.”“You get your ass back up those stairs, NOW.” I was getting braver, the boys were in the living room, I was sure they were, so I gave my voice a slightly longer leash, “This is the last time I’m going to tell you to put that mother fucking phone down,” and “Hit your brother again and I’ll give you something to cry about,” and, yelling now, I mean, really pushing it, “You’ll drive me to suicide, Eileen!” Just how my mother used to say it. And then I turned the light off and left. But before I did, I used my oldest son’s toothbrush, because I missed him dearly, even though he was there, just down the stairs, watching a movie in the living room.
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WHITEBOARD by James Kramer

Jon scowled at the wall. Chaotic and pastel Post-it notes fluttered like some mad lepidopterist’s daydream. Glue gave way and they fell slowly enough that it made him angry, in a vague and indefinable sort of way. The wall had become an armadillo. Bristled and cold. 

Jon came down the stairs in a flurry. He found Lu in the kitchen. His chest inexplicably hurt. He drank water. Held onto the sink. His wrists grew pale and cod-like. Lu studied her phone. Her toes played with the edges of the kitchen table. They explored crumbs and spidery calyces on a finished plate.

“Whiteboard,” Jon said. “I need a whiteboard for work.”

“You work from home,” Lu replied. 

“For the wall at home. The home office wall. Home work. I need a whiteboard for the home office wall. For work. Serious business.” 

Lu teased at her phone. Jon nodded. He made a sound he felt was conclusive. A guttural squirt. He felt he’d achieved something. Though he wasn’t sure exactly what. 

He returned to his desk and tapped at an imaginary piano on his legs. He willed his hands to type. To do actual work. He started to fantasize about learning the actual piano. His phone vibrated. Lu sent him a Taobao page. It was a whiteboard. The whiteboard was large and pristine. Intelligent, bright-eyed Chinese children gazed at it in wonder. They were fascinated, intrigued. There was nothing on the whiteboard, but still, the children were wrapped in awe. It was both a powerful and highly stupid advertisement.  

Jon tried to angrily descend the stairs. He tried to make his feet sound important. He re-entered the kitchen. 

“Can we not?” He said. 

Lu looked up. Her fingers autonomously continued. They didn’t need her. They flowed like ballet pins. Her phone made desperate, clawing sounds. 

“I know it will be cheaper in China,” Jon said. “But it’s in China and we’re not. We are not in China. We are presently not where the whiteboard is.” 

He went back upstairs. His knees hurt. Trying to stomp angrily had been dumb. He sat stiff and immobile. His phone rumbled across the desk. Lu linked him to a global dispatch company. The company promised to deliver 10kg for £52, Guangzhou to Brighton. 

Jon steadied himself on the stair rail. He almost fell and blamed his socks. They had significant holes. They were mostly non-present. They failed to be socks. In the kitchen his heart beat faster, rapid and tense. “Should we not use the Chinese order for stuff you actually need? Food, clothing? General comfort? Stuff we can’t get in England. Authentic Chinese stuff. That dried bamboo, the black vegetable that I don’t understand?” 

Lu looked through him. 

“Of course, Everything is cheaper in China. And if we were back there, we wouldn’t even be having this argument. But we’re here.” Jon started to leave. He felt immediately his strange, little victory escaping. 

“I’m tired,” Lu whispered. She curled her crimson toes. “I don’t see why you wouldn’t want a better one for less money.” She made her whole body disappear. Became somewhere else. 

“It’s a waste,” Jon said, softening. 

“Fine. Sorry,” Lu snapped shut. She held a piece of skin from her nails. Translucent, the color of jellyfish. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. Can we just message instead, please?”

Jon felt a strong impulse to continue fighting. By the time he registered this, he had already begun. “Does everything have to be about being here?” 

Lu left the table. She came towards Jon with a force that made his knees buckle. 

“I know we are!” Lu ran upstairs. Her feet slammed on every step. 

That’s how you angrily climb steps, Jon thought. 

In the home office, the open window littered Post-it notes to the floor. They stuck to his feet through his absent socks. 

“I don’t want this,” Lu messaged. 

“I know,” Jon replied. 

“No, you don’t.” 

“I’m not going to buy the whiteboard.” 

“I don’t care,” Lu replied. 

Jon watched Post-it notes escape via the window. He wondered if they said anything substantial. He sat there and realized that none of them did.

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THE SIDE DOOR by Michael Farfel

Wendy wore black. He loved that most about her. She made her way over, careful, slow steps, like a deer, like he was extending bits of food. “Your arms are smaller than mine. I just need to loosen that nut. But I can't reach it,” Carl said over the exposed engine.“Smaller,” she repeated and made a show of flexing her arms. He laughed, “You're just more compact, is all. Come on, sweetheart. Give it a throw?”She pulled her hair into a ponytail. Maybe it was her hair he loved most. She bent over the engine and maneuvered the socket into place. She had to stand on her toes. He leaned back and watched. Maybe it was her ass he loved most. She worked cautiously at first. One hand resting on the carburetor for balance. She held the wrench awkwardly—difficult to find leverage in such a small space.“Fucking thing,” said Carl.  Wendy looked at him, sad-eyed. “It’s not a big deal. Can’t we just take it to the shop?”Carl shook his head and smiled, “Let me back in there. I’ll get the fucker off.”“Patience, Carl. Patience.”She adjusted the socket wrench so that she could get both hands to it. With one elbow framed against the air filter she was able to apply more torque.  “Careful,” Carl said. Her face turned red as she put more of her body weight into the push.“Careful,” Carl repeated, leaning over the far side of the engine.With one more deep breath the nut broke loose and Wendy’s hand punched through to the engine block. She jumped back and let out a feral yelp. “God dammit,” Carl said. “Are you okay?”She held the new wound to her lips and a line of blood crept down her chin. Her wide, watery eyes glared with unwavering intensity. “Let's go to the sink and have a look.” He handed her a clean rag and she pulled her hand away from her mouth. Carl’s heart skipped a beat when he saw how much it was bleeding. They made it to the sink and she placed it under the cool water.“What the fuck?” he said. She didn’t dare look. The blood ceased its flow abruptly and you could see bone, as clear as day and white as snow. “What the fuck?” Carl repeated. “Is it bad?” she asked through clenched teeth.“We just need to get you to a doctor. Jesus. Oh God.” They took his work truck and he punched it out of the driveway. He couldn’t look at her. Her complexion pallored as shadows of street signs danced across her face. Occasionally she'd touch her hand to her lips.“Turn on the radio or something,” she said. “I can’t bear to listen to the throbbing.”He fumbled with the radio dial. Country music blared.

My love was deep for this Mexican maiden, 

He moved to turn it down, but she shook her head. 

One night a wild young cowboy came in,

He dared a quick glance at her hand. The wound had grown to twice its size—more and more bone.“Don’t pick,” he cried out. “We’re almost there, just a few more miles.”

with wicked Felina, the girl that I loved.

 He let her out in front of the emergency room doors. By the time he joined her inside she was already sitting.There were four other people waiting: a mother and her son, a short-haired woman and a square-shaped man. Each—except the mother—had injuries similar to Wendy’s. The boy’s outstretched elbow showed a swath of bone the size of an egg. The short-haired woman held her face in her hands, looking forward toward nothing, and under her right eye was the same thing. Bright white. Smaller than the boy’s and in the shape of Illinois. The square-shaped man had a gash across his forehead. The flickering of the fluorescent bulb cast the injury in stuttered light.Carl sat down next to Wendy and touched her good hand, “What’s going on here?”“What do you mean?” she was annoyed with the question and didn’t hide it. “I’m waiting for them to come get me and put me back together, Carl. Because of you.”He blinked his eyes as a sudden headache built above his nose. “But, what about them?” he motioned his head toward the others.She scanned the room then looked at him and shook her head. “That's none of our business Carl. You need to stay focused.”Three of her knuckles were now totally revealed and the injury crept up the back of her hand. He sat with her for what felt like forever. Fifteen minutes. Occasionally the square-shaped man would hum and the short-haired woman would make a show of adjusting in her seat. Carl focused on his feet. Every time he looked up their wounds seemed to grow. His heart thumped in his ears.“I’m going to see what’s taking so long,” he said, mostly to himself as he stood.The nurse working the front desk didn’t acknowledge him immediately, eventually pointing to an intercom button. She was safely tucked behind a plastic window.He pressed, “What’s going on here?”“Excuse me?” she responded.“Wendy. She’s been over there for an eternity. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Her hand, it’s...” he looked back at Wendy and took a deep breath, “... falling apart. It’s a major issue. We need help.” His words knocked together. “Right now, please. Right fucking now.”“Sir, please watch your language. We’ll get to her soon enough.”He looked over his shoulder again. The mother and son both looked at him. The boy’s wound now nearly encompassed his whole arm.“When?” Carl whispered. “Please.”“Sir, I assure you help is on the way.”“She’ll die out here, you stupid bitch.”The mother covered her son’s ears and gasped. Carl felt the eyes of the room dig into him.The nurse smiled and nodded, “Okay sir, I’m gonna call security now.” “I’m so sorry,” said Carl, “I just…” he put his face in his hands. The nurse was already on the phone, still nodding. Before he could turn around security had arrived. Two men. A small man with a small mustache and a much larger man. The smaller man wore the clothes of an hourly security guard with an emblem on his chest reminiscent of Nazi-era aesthetic, meant to strike fear. The larger was an actual police officer. Barrel chested, gun at the ready, super-human smile.“Everything alright here?” asked the officer, never losing eye contact.“Yeah, is everything all right?” repeated the security guard, never making eye contact.Carl nodded. “Fine, fine. Just waiting in the waiting room with Wendy.”“Who’s Wendy?” asked the officer.The security guard opened his mouth, but the officer lifted his hand in protest, always smiling.“What does it matter who? She’s sick and they won’t help her.” He pointed at the nurse. “They lack urgency. There is no urgency here.”“How about we step outside for a minute, Mister… What did you say your name was?”“No,” Carl said. “Wendy needs me.”“Wendy’s fine,” the officer said and motioned for the security guard to move behind Carl. “We’re gonna take this conversation outside. Let the autumn air cool us.” The officer winked.“No,” Carl repeated.The officer's gaze faltered for a quick second, he seemed to be examining something just outside of Carl. “Only two ways, sir. There’s the front door and there’s the side door. Do you understand?” the officer said, eyes refocused. Carl looked back and forth from the guard to the officer.  Nothing was making sense.“You see, I'm the side door,” the officer continued. “I exist as an act of kindness. Pure kindness. Unburdened by evil. You understand?”Carl laughed nervously, “You have the wrong guy. I’m here for Wendy. Her skin is—it’s melting.”In one lightning-fast movement, Carl was on the ground. The officer had pulled Carl’s arm one way and swept his legs the other. Guiding him down in an almost tender embrace.The security guard yipped and clapped his hands together. “Great. Wow,” he yelled out.The officer leaned over Carl, his smile ever wider, and said “The side door, then.”  Carl looked back at Wendy as the officer pushed him down a long hallway. She seemed fine. She smiled a full smile and Carl remembered that that was why he loved her most. Her teeth. Strange that he would’ve forgotten that, he thought. He waved and immediately regretted it because when she waved back he could see that her hand was mostly bone now. He felt himself scream, but couldn’t hear anything.The officer and the guard accompanied Carl all the way to his car.“Now, I’m gonna let you sit out here. Wendy is a beautiful woman. I’d hate for her to be stranded. But just remember what I told you.” “Two ways?” asked Carl looking up from his driver’s seat.“There is only one way, Carl.” The officer finally stopped smiling.The guard did two fast punches in the air and yelled out, “One way, buddy,” and slammed Carl’s door.
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GIRL ON FIRE by Neal Suit

The first of the silvery sequins that grew and dangled from your skin appeared on your left shoulder, forming the shape of a crescent moon. I examined the sparkling protrusions rising near your collar bone, squinting as they glistened under the lamp.You booked an appointment with the dermatologist. They gave you a cream and told you to come back in a week if it hadn’t cleared up. They took pictures to show their colleagues and friends and the internet. They fawned over how you shined.Sequins sprouted on your arms, legs, neck, back, and forehead. Walking made you shimmer. The sequins not only reflected light but generated it, emitting an ethereal radiance. Your light seeped under our doors and billowed from our chimney, its slivers spilled out from our windows. People gathered to see the majestic illumination, took pictures and videos, posted them online and claimed you were a gift from God, a genius, an aspiration.Sequins soon covered your entire body, each of your movements a cacophony of glittering fire wheels, a dancing forest of whirring diamonds. I wore sunglasses everywhere I went, even when I showered or sought refuge in the garage. In the pitch black of midnight, our house remained alight. I covered you in a thick, wool blanket. The glare was still like shards of glass piercing my optic nerves. The blanket burst into orange flame, sputtered into black, and disintegrated into gritty, dark powder. You caught our bed on fire, the heat from your reflection incinerating the wood frame and synthetic fibers of the sheets. I could not hold or touch you for fear of being singed, my skin burned to blisters.Throngs assembled outside our house, hoping for a glimpse of you. When you left the house, crowds followed. Restaurants seated you at their best table without a reservation, a waiter standing by with a fire extinguisher in case your reflection combusted the table, the walls, the wine, the other customers. You were invited to red carpets, after parties, and award shows. Newspaper and television reporters called you a national treasure, a celestial being, a glimmering example of what can be achieved, what all young girls should strive to be. Fashion designers tried to sculpt dresses and gowns and jeans and blouses to simulate your luster, the marvel of your shine. All of them fell short of your grandeur and knew it.You worried that the only reason anyone liked you was for your sequin skin. You worried that the sequins would dull or fall away. You had nightmares that someone grew diamonds for skin, another ruby flesh, overpowering your shine, outdazzling you. Your brilliance grew. Your bright glow created a veil of blindness, even for you. Everyone stood back, averting their eyes, seeing only the blur of light, unable to get close for fear of burning their skin and eyes, being reduced to ash. The most they could hope to see is the remnant of phosphorescence from where you had been, the scorch marks on the concrete where you had stood, the remains of a dying star. All the while they muttered to each other, “Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she perfect?”
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SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE! by Rich Giptar

The first time I ever heard about Matthew, Mom was filming us on her Nikon D5300 and trying to get us to play this stupid game for her YouTube channel. The previous day she had filmed our reaction to her telling us we were getting a new brother or sister. We had been in a good mood then, ready to whoop and jump in the air and cover our mouths with our hands and run out the room. The bit she was filming that day was meant to be sequential, but Dad, a moron, had put our clothes from yesterday in the washing basket instead of spraying them with Febreze and folding them on top of the vasselier like he was supposed to. I had to wear this stinky, crumpled Ralph Lauren football shirt and Elise had to wear this stinky, crumpled Ralph Lauren pin-striped dress. My parents were very faithful to Ralph Lauren because it was where they got the idea to adopt from overseas in the first place, out of an article about a child model for Ralph Lauren, who had been adopted from India. The article was still on our corkboard. The title of the article was ‘SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE!’ 

Mom shoved a scratch-map towards us with the hand that wasn’t holding the camera and asked us to guess where our little sibling might be from by scratching out different countries. It was laborious. Elise scratched out the UK, and I scratched out Australia, and Elise scratched out Sweden until Mom got irritated. Dad pointed out a country that was the shape of an Airheads candy. Because it was a scratch map, it didn’t have any names on it. 

I was editing with Adobe Premiere on Mom’s computer when she got back from the airport with Matthew. We were going to film the first time we met him, but it was easier if it wasn’t the real first time so we could plan it. Elise ran and opened the front door but something was wrong. My first thought was that he came from a people that was extremely tall, like the Dinka people of South Sudan, because he was taller than Mom. But it turned out that he was just old. It obviously wasn’t what Mom wanted, because toddlers got more clicks, but she had been teasing this for weeks and had a brand deal so in the end she just had to take whatever she could and move on.

‘Hi,’ said Matthew. 

I thought he must be half Black, half Chinese because he wasn’t Black or Chinese. Unless he was…Muslim? Elise and I shook hands with Matthew and then he helped me edit a video of his gender reveal on Adobe Premiere. I was holding a large balloon filled with blue powder which Elise stabbed with craft scissors. When it popped the powder sprinkled over us like a Pokemon stun-spore animation.

Mom was disappointed because she had to scrap a lot of video ideas, like teaching Matthew English. The thing is, Matthew was actually really good at videos. He was spontaneous and could do cool stunts, like fifty cartwheels without getting out of breath. He said it was because he was raised in a mountainous atmosphere so the air down here went in really smooth and easy. Mom said, ‘I’m not trying to be David Dobrik.’ 

Matthew taught me a lot of useful things, the first two of which were how to clean your nose out in the sink and how to make your hand into a boat shape so you could eat without using cutlery. He also showed Elise and me how to play tigers and goats. First, you had to make a grid of thirty-two isosceles triangles. We made a huge grid in the yard out of rope and twenty Ralph Lauren promotional T-shirts. We needed one more tiger. Mom came out into the yard. ‘Be a tiger! We need a tiger!’ Elise yelled at her. 

‘Or you could be a goat,’ I said.

‘What?’ said Mom. She looked angry.

In the end, Dad was a tiger. 

Matthew got a job at the computer repair store so he could save up for community college. He actually had a lot of qualifications already, but they weren’t valid in America. He bought a car and sometimes brought Elise and me along on trips to the Asian supermarket to buy Lao Gan Ma and Bombay mix. 

Timi haru kasta chau?’ the shopkeeper used to say to us.

Hami sanchai chum,’ we said back.

Dad used to be the one who was behind the camera, but after he started going on more weekend work trips, Mom made Matthew the camera man. He was also the donkey-man. One day we were hiking along the Bison trail and Matthew had to carry a colossal backpack with a million changes of clothes in it so Mom could take a lot of photos and eke them out over the next month on her Momstagram. 

Mom found a boulder she want to take some photos with and asked us to climb on top. I could do it easily but Elise looked like a crazy squirrel trying to get up there in Keds, swinging this dumb Barbie-colored baguette bag prop. Mom rolled her eyes. It was funny ‘til it wasn’t because she ended up slipping and crunching her ankle. Matthew had to scoop up Elise and run with her back down the trail with the obese pack still bumping up and down on his back. Mom scooped up the baguette bag before she followed.

We went to the ER and had to wait on this gross foamy line of chairs. Mom started sneaking the camera out and zooming in on Elise’s face and then zooming back out and then zooming in on her twisted ankle. After like an hour of waiting she said ‘Hell,’ and then grabbed Elise’s arm and tried to make her hop over to a ward and lie down in an empty bed for the clickbait. She was dragging Elise and Elise didn’t want to be dragged and was leaning the other way and they ended up crashing onto the floor. A lot of nurses came and stood in a disapproving circle around them like nuns. After that we stopped speaking to Mom and Mom stopped speaking to us. She posted a broken-heart emoji on Twitter and started taking Dad on expensive dates downtown. 

For Matthew’s eighteenth birthday, we pooled our pocket money together and bought him a Canon EOS M6 Mark II. He also had some presents for us. They were adoption papers with our names freshly printed across them, and two airline tickets. We were finally going to be able to leave Trump’s America behind, and pick fresh golden raspberries off wild bushes. We were going back to Matthew’s homeland.

‘Your parents have agreed,’ he said, ‘and they’ll come and visit on vacations.’ We nodded happily. Mom and Dad were away in Guatemala. They were trying to find a new orphan there, a young one, with some modelling potential.

At the airport he bought us chicken nuggets and Capri Suns. Elise propped her ankle up across two chairs and rested her head back in Matthew’s lap. I leaned onto his other side. I felt content and languid, like a dog. 

‘I love you, Matthew,’ I said. 

He put his arm around me. ‘My name isn’t Matthew,’ he said. 

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ON THE STREET CORNER by Lina Lau

To see him again—tall, lean, crinkling eyes, thin lips tugged into a smile, always dry from working outside high up in the trees, a ‘tree doctor,’ he called himself—my stomach drops like it did when we first met at seventeen, him walking into the shoe store where I worked, later returning to ask me out, the first time picked up by a boy meeting my parents and we strolled the boardwalk in and out of circles of lamppost light, illuminating, fingers intertwined, his large hands enveloping, and now two decades later on the street corner in front of his parked work truck, white instead of black like the one he bought when we were together, so big he hoisted me up at the used car dealership, chuckling, the first truck I ever drove, perched and squinting out too-dark tinted windows, picking him up downtown at the end of his serving shift when his tip money was stolen out of his locker, a weekend job to save cash for our daydreamed trip to Belize, we catch up—his wife’s new hospital job, high daycare costs for his kids (I don’t reveal I know about his wife and kids from curious social media searches over the years), and my recent engagement (I keep the ring hidden under my gloves, he doesn’t ask)—then reminisce, his downcast embarrassment when his car ran out of gas on our third date, trekking the highway shoulder together carrying a red plastic gas can, the stocking I made for his first Christmas celebration, having renounced his mother’s religion just before we met, his name sewed in bold block white felt letters like the ones from my own  childhood, eating soggy sandwiches under flat-bottom clouds in Saskatchewan during a cross-country drive, slurping warm chicken noodle soup on New Year’s Eve while he sprawled under a navy blanket on the couch sick with shingles, how I watched the X-Files through outstretched fingers covering my face curled beside him, always seeking his protection, stuck at the top of Blackcomb mountain, scared on a double-black diamond run in my stiff snowboard and boots, him holding me and coaxing me down, stripping mint-green paint from an old dresser, a thrift store find, sanding it bare and refinishing in hazelnut, something hearty and new, a dresser I still use, and now our belly laughter deep and full, talking over each other, words tumbling, so we don’t notice the crisp November air but shove hands deeper into pockets and step closer, my chattering teeth overlooked, work appointments ignored, my chest tightening as he removes his work helmet, tousling greying hair, and then a pause—his lowered voice asking, “Why did we break up again?”— and we remembered me leaning against the kitchen counter while he paced the grey speckled tiles, looking everywhere but at me, voice cracking, that after nearly nine years he didn’t want to settle down, he wasn’t ready, not in his mid-twenties, reasons now evaporated, and then for years, out-of-the-blue phone calls, dinners and concerts, pinkies linked, new boyfriends compared, each time wondering if this was it, hopeful, surprised at details he remembered about me that even I forgot, his memories a tether, getting tattoos, two colorful swallows on his chest facing each other, the crest of a blue wave on the inside of my left ankle, ebb and flow of tides, permanent reminders, and yet another night together, entangled and familiar, falling asleep as always with one leg draped over his, bodies warm and clinging together with sweat, hot breath in my neck, after he hosted a going away get-together before I moved away for grad school, grilling burgers for my friends, and I remember not our first kiss, but the one when I first knew, outside his sister’s apartment door, his back against the wall, me leaning in on tiptoes, him pulling me close, the weight of his clasped hands behind my back, the taste of cigarettes, and now we gaze at each other across a long silence, and when we hug goodbye, we each hold tight before letting go.

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