X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine | Fiction

STRAWBERRY by James Jacob Hatfield

August 12, 2021 · Fiction

It’s not because I have Alzheimer’s, I’ve always been like this. The most fun I get nowadays is when I find things I lost.

But I do remember her journal is underneath the couch. Before I’d never think to read her journal. But now that she’s gone I’d better retrieve it or else I’d forget about her completely.

Reaching under our couch is like sticking your hand into that ominous hole in the wall of a cave. Feeling for a lever. Pencils. Dog toys. Remotes. Items that are sorely missed only when they’re needed. And are treasured only for the moments after they’re found and used. Then start their journey on being lost again. My hand grazes the profile edge of a gun trigger and my heart makes an excited lurch into my sinuses.

Henry appears and says there’s some strawberries in the kitchen. My lips get cold.

Henry is on the opposite side of the island in the kitchen that we’re standing in now. He looks at me and rolls his lips in and tries to smile.

Henry holds the pseudosmile. Points to his lips.

I hear a noise resembling a yawn and realize it’s my own voice going “Huh?”

“You have something on your lips.” Henry says.

One lick and my tongue detects strawberries. I’m allergic, I think. Something happens when I eat something. Pretty sure it’s strawberries.

My hand keeps sending food to my mouth.

“What are you doing here, Henry?” I ask.

Henry leans his lower back against the counter. Presses his palms down to push up his shoulders and does that little head shake that says “I dunno.”

Henry, he hasn’t aged a day since we left for college. Dresses the same too. Tight black hoodie. One time right before graduation I almost killed him. I think it’s what galvanized our friendship. If you go down Lake Wheeler Road, past some of the old monstrous farmer estates, you’ll see an enormous oak tree with a huge patch of bark damaged like a gorilla is covered with hair except its chest. A blemish made by Henry and me. My Volkswagen Golf got wrapped around it. It was a manual. Diesel. I guess I got distracted. Didn’t keep my eyes on the road. Because I couldn’t. Mainly because it wouldn’t stop moving. God, I loved that car.

“I don’t remember what I did today.” I tell Henry in my kitchen.

“Funeral.” Henry says.

“Whose?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t go. But you seemed real upset about it.” Henry says.

I’m trying to forget something that’s begging to be remembered, from some other realm or reality. I know when I’m forgetting because my mind goes blank and all I see is a dream of a silhouette. There’s shape and there’s sound but nothing distinct. I pull up my hand and see the bottom of the strawberry I was eating.

Strawberries … are yummy … it’s a green hat with the pale, uneatable part of the berry pinched between my fingers. It looks like bloodstained brain matter on the back of the head of someone who swallowed the business end of a revolver.

I feel self-conscious and look up to see if Henry notices I’m taking too long and acting weird.

“Wait. Hey Henry, did you say funeral?” I shout.

My heart horse-kicks my ribs and there’s a heat of color funneling behind my eyes. I erupt from within. As if pixelated light was exploding out of my body. That’s why the gun felt so delicious. There’s an electric freedom in knowing I don’t have to stay alive if I don’t want to.

“What?” Henry says as he came out of the downstairs bathroom.

My fight-or-flight senses tear out the back of my head, like a bunch of wires unplugged in one violent yank. I suddenly have no needs.

The birds chime in the wind while watching the unique angle of the sun this good Earth gives us every single day … man, this is how I should have spent all my time … God, I feel weird. Is this what it is to be present? Am I dying? I can’t remember what my wife Irene looked like but … or was it Iris? Irene-Iris. Ireneiris. Yeah. That was her name. She was my wife. This is getting worse really quick. If I don’t get a hold of my thoughts I’ll forget about her forever. The microwave clock says it’s two on the dot. How many more hours until I can go to bed and not feel worried? Where’s Ireneiris? Where’s Henry?

“Henry!”

“What? I’m right here.”

It sounds as if he is saying it right into my ear, but he’s standing at the back of the property. I spot him as a dot through the window above the kitchen sink. I still feel weird. I need my ears to pop. It’s two forty-seven on the microwave.

“Let’s walk.” Henry says. His words tickle and vibrate my ear bones.

It’s still the afternoon, but grey storm clouds have formed. The temperature drops a couple. The wind is stale and humid. I touch the back of my head and feel nothing. Henry’s been quiet while we’ve been walking. I want to ask if we took drugs but won’t. Because if he says no that would mean I’m actually going crazy. Bad thought. Bad thought.

Calm down. Breath normal. You’re not going to feel like this forever.

Henry pivots right on Lake Wheeler Road. He looks like he’s wearing eye shadow.

“Henry, have you been eating?” I ask.

“No, man.” Henry whispers. Then folds his arms and shivers. He sounds irritated like I should have already known that. Like I forgot something.

I see him stumble. And it starts to rain. And he does this performance dance piece: falls, then gets up halfway, then slips, then repeat. I pull him up by the shoulders. And his tight black hoodie unanchored from his body which was no longer there. In the distance I hear the sounds of metallic bone-folding chaos drenched in diesel. There’s my Golf. Bad thought. Manual. Bad thought. Two door. Slouched like a wet towel around the tree’s trunk. Bad thought. Police car. Bad thought. Paramedics run right past me like I’m not even there. I remember this.

Past and present tense became one another like water washes water. I’m witnessing my own memories.

I try to peek over and see what my younger self looked like but my mind can’t process it. The area where my face should be is a warped blind spot. I see the EMTs moving a crash test dummy with a wig with hair styled like Henry’s. The cop takes the crash test dummy and puts it in the trunk of his squad car and leaves. Henry emerged from behind the tree when everyone else left. He waved me over as he turned around.

Everything past the tree is desolate. Lifetimes pass. Parched and exhausted, I’m following Henry on my hands and knees crawling through the desert. I see a mirage of a tiny dancing city appearing out of red canyons in the distance. Henry ventured forward. I give up and collapse.

I shout at Henry, but he doesn’t hear me. As he walks away his footprints immediately filled in with red desert sand. My insides wretch at the thought of open casket funerals. Ireneiris requested no cosmetic changes to her appearance for her funeral. The further the distance between Henry and me grew, the more I felt a separation not unlike a spirit and a body divorcing. Either he or I were fading away. The elusive Other being forgotten. I must be hallucinating, or dying.

With my knees in the sand and the figure of the figment of Henry eroding in the blowing curtain of sand. I only felt brief relief in knowing what is impossible. Lost in the transiency of spirits who are everactive. Now I desire only clarity.

I need to be with her again in some form. I need to go home.

I turn toward the tiny dancing oasis in the sunset, away from Henry. The city on the dune turned out to be a bunch of whack jobs living in tents in the middle of the desert. And what they drew from their wells may look like water, but last time I checked water shouldn’t smell like mangy rotten dog dick and have an iridescent shimmer. The first time I drank it I passed out. Then I shot myself in a scary dream and woke up feeling selfish. So I drank it a second time.

And I dreamt I was back in my childhood backyard. It was the time of day where the bottom of the sky was a rosy peach neon exploding up above faint magenta. My favorite weather. Paradise.

And I felt a soft voice taze me: Enter through! The door of the morning mist to the afterbirth of defined things. This is where you go. A cold wet field damp with sky.

And I whip around. The voice chimes and sparkles with dew. And I whip around. The memory of the cold dew is sharp on my feet. Standing still, I let my body heat melt the water which allows me to acclimate to this terrestrial plain. That excitement of combing an expensive rug with your toes. Borderline orgasm; euphoria. The world compresses into a tube-like shape that I am ushered through. It’s as if I’m walking through the shoot of a playground slide, as if my world is forming around me each step and Longleaf Pines start springing out of the sand dunes until desert and forest are one. I remember this city. I have a house here with my wife.

Oh God. Irene? … Iris? … I really … I miss her more than I can handle. The moment she left this world I could feel my life being sucked away. And as if that thought was a magic spell, I’m in my living room with feet freezing cold and clammy.

I feel lost in my own house.

I shuffle, barely lifting my feet on the carpet.

It’s like her spirit disintegrated into every corner of every wall in this house. Every blemish, every unfolded blanket, every mismatched coffee mug. Everything.

I don’t know how I can live like this. All freedom curdles into a demand for sacrifice. It feels like someone else’s bad thoughts got planted in my head.

I reach underneath the couch. Feel for something heavy.

With the gun in my hand, I roll my wrist like I’m opening a book to point it at my face. Look down.

And I realize what I’m really holding on to.

I let the pages of her journal fall open into my hands. There are words written across the middle in her script. Damn. She’s good.

It says “Keep going.”

And it all clicks. I was never alive and never will

be dead. I do not exist but I feel like I do. And I

disassemble at an atomic level clearing the

psychic real estate required to lay back

and suffer the natural exitance of my natural flesh. It was

an honor and a privilege to love you.

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SIMPLE ANSWERS TO ESSENCE QUESTIONS AT THE INTERNATIONAL PAPERWEIGHT FESTIVAL by Pat Foran

August 10, 2021 · Fiction

Long before the wildness of fire engulfed their town, and well after self-winding watches had become a thing, the townspeople thought of themselves as a simple people who enjoyed simple pleasures.

They saw light in paper moons and love in the soft ridges of the infinite arrowing of the universal “recycling” logo. They believed in paper planes and in the notion of shared paper routes. They spent their evenings pressing paper roses between the pages of 1959 Buick Le Sabre brochures.

The townspeople took particular pride in the International Paperweight Festival they hosted each summer in the paper mill parking lot. The pigs-in-blankets delivered to festival goers via origami blimp. The newspaper-hatted fortune teller who told onion-skin truths in songs she composed on the spot. All those paperweight appreciators. All those paperweights. In one place.

Then things, doing what things do, got hard.

Demand for the printed word declined precipitously. Publishers stopped buying paper. The paper mill lost customers. The townspeople lost jobs. Homes. Pets. Spouses.

It even got hard to put themselves in current context. Their self-winding watches got cute and played tricks with time. In addition to being a literal question, What time is it? became a symbolic one.

It got hard, very hard, for the townspeople to continue to see themselves as a simple people. To enjoy their simple pleasures.

It got hard, very hard, for them to see light. Or love. Or to believe.

And when the fingers of fire touched their crepe-paper town, reaching and then curling around the papier-mâché Ferris wheel spinning in the paper mill parking lot, the townspeople felt like giving up. They also had questions.

What is happening? said the town rumor control czar.

Where even are we? said the town cartographer.

Who even are we? said the town cryer.

What time is it? said the town horologist.

You’re asking me? the fortune teller asked-sang-said, hustling to her festival booth near the smoldering Ferris wheel. Okay, the Soothsayer, as they say, is REAL in.

The townspeople tagged along. The evening sun did, too. The sky pulled up a chair. The wild fire, sitting in a gondola atop the now-not-spinning wheel, lent an ear. The fortune teller cleared her throat and began to sing:

What in hell is happening, you say,Like Donald Sutherland says in that anything-but-simple 'Ordinary People' wayWhat's happening NOW, like Raj and Rerun say,Is the next beginning, the next new day.

Cheering, the evening sun slid on the spectrum from red-yellow to yellow-green. The townspeople leaned in for a closer listen.

And where are we now? It’s not where we were—it’s not where we will be or even where we ARE, the fortune teller sang, adding something mostly inaudible about paper moons, gift-wrapped stars and pigs-in-blankets. If anything, where we are is no-where, children, she sang.

Laughing, the sky unearthed the “Welcome to Our Town” sign and presented it to the town cartographer as if it were a paper rose.

The fortune teller unfolded her newspaper hat and rapped the news:

Who even are we? Who even, even?

This self-examined life? Who even, even?

Light and love and logos, even?

Recycle what? Recycle this

Infinite what? Infinite this

Get off it, get with it, get over yourselves

Put paper-pressed evenings back on the shelves

(next to the urns containing Ferris wheel ashes, of course)

Swooping down from the motionless spinning wheel, the wild fire high-fived the fortune teller, who didn’t miss a beat:

What time is it, what time it is

Anything more is all show biz

Ditch your self-winding watches

Ditch your Le Sabre swatches

Ditch your pretty-to-think-so simple pleasures

Hug something a bit harder to measure

Hug this regenerative burnHug these songs you’ve learned

Hug the possible, the *if* ‘til its eyes fillEmbrace this moment now or you never will

The townspeople turned to watch the wild fire, which had spread to the paper mill and the International Paperweight Festival museum. All those paperweights, imperiled. In danger of not being appreciated.

Embrace what now? cried the town cryer.

Embrace ‘next’! Don’t let these paperweights hold you down! the fortune teller trilled. Let them go! And let yourselves go. Let this moment lift you—up, like those popsters sing, where we belong.

Hey—don’t spread THAT one around, said the town rumor control czar.

As the festival museum burned, the paperweights paraded, single file, toward the next town. Leaving their pigs-in-blankets behind, the origami blimps navigated the confettied sky. Paper planes carrying self-winding watches sailed into the evening sun. Under a paper moon, the wild fire celebrated the swirl of infinity and the possibility of resurrected love in the soft ridges of ruin.

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PLUCKERS by Amanda Anderson

August 9, 2021 · Fiction

I was in the bathroom that fateful day, my butt cheek hoisted up in one hand, tweezers zeroing in on the mole with the other, when my boyfriend walked in. His eyebrows pinched together in disapproval. He asked me what I was doing. I stuttered, searching for a more attractive explanation, then finally told him I was plucking the hair out of the mole on my ass. He asked cheerfully if he could step in and take over. I handed him the tweezers, glad he wasn’t repulsed, only to see a sizable boner emerge in his pants.

And so a monthly trend was born. But it wasn’t that many months before the sizable boner went floppy noodle and the boyfriend began bemoaning the boredom of his life and our relationship. He suggested we were lacking another dimension. Life was short, he said. People are dead. Who? I asked. People, he said. We couldn’t spend what little time we had like this. Like this? Like just waking up and doing shit and going to bed. Being under the impression that this man was my last chance for love, I agreed with a sultry, ok.

This agreement resulted in a number of surprises. First, the new dimension was not a woman, but a man. Second, that man was there for a hair-plucking session. Obviously I was hesitant. I’d been plucking that thing alone in bathrooms for years because it was disgusting. To now find it a point of sexual interest was more than a little disconcerting. But to be embarrassed is not particularly sexy, so I smiled coyly and bent over the edge of the bed.

Eventually, the plucker changed and changed and changed again, and we began to charge a fee. I was accustomed to it by this time, and able to reduce my other job hours. It was a specialized fetish, the sort of thing for which you can charge a lot of money. A rather large waiting list formed. So long in fact, that after a time, the pluckers were asked to submit applications. We received up to 200 applications a month which included age, first name, occupation, hobbies (my boyfriend’s request). Referrals were preferred. So, once a month a lucky candidate was allowed to pluck the single dark hair out of the mole on my ass.

Then my boyfriend took off with a cowboy from Vermont whose hobbies included drinking milk and bringing joy to those around him. He did not provide any references. I didn’t think there were cowboys in Vermont. Which is why I thought we chose him—wasn’t this man funny and interesting, saying he brought joy, drank milk and was a cowboy from Vermont. But it was true. He was a cowboy, and he lived in Vermont. I also didn’t know that this was what my boyfriend had been looking for all his life.

Now I was left alone with my only means of support being a stranger entering my home under potentially dangerous circumstances. But I didn’t care. I was hopeless. In despair. The kind of despair that happens when the boyfriend you thought was your last chance for love and life is gone. So the first choice I made alone was the most dangerous I could muster: a doctor. Anyone who claimed to be a doctor was not a doctor, but someone who daydreams of death and dying, of perfecting a particular kind of violence.

The doctor arrived in a white lab coat with a black bag, the kind of bag doctors carried when they came to the sick at their homes. Had my boyfriend been there, he would have requested the doctor leave the bag outside. The doctor was rather handsome. Which had historically been a bad sign. Handsome men, it seems, believe their handsomeness puts an acceptable shine on savagery. A voice in my head strongly advised against letting him in. It doesn’t matter how much you hate your life, it said (I heard the low chime of fear which warmed my head), you don’t want to be sliced up and thrown in a dumpster with your head and hands in a different bag from your legs. But I’d received a postcard that day from the boyfriend. A cartoon skeleton wearing a wide-brimmed sombrero sat at the base of a cactus, his elbow resting on his knee. But It’s A Dry Heat, the arching caption said, ARIZONA. The boyfriend’s handwriting, appearing as crowded cuneiform marks, overran the open space on the back—across and over, up and around, cleaving the edges of the card. The doctor and his bag were welcomed inside with a kind yet sensuous smile.

He started in right away. Sighed as he put his bag down, slumped into the living room chair uninvited. He asked for water. Sighed again. I tipped my ass in his direction, asked him in a low voice if he was ready to get started. He took in a seven second breath before telling me things have really been hard for him lately. So many people sick and dying. Men his age are jumping off buildings. Brand new buildings that were meant to be architectural wonders now tainted reminders of mortality. Every day he drove by on his way to work and cursed the man who jumped to his death. Then pitied him. Then cursed him. He finished his water, held up the glass for me to take away and began to cry. Then he pounded his fist on the coffee table. I would understand, he said, once I was his age and your balls and chin start to sag and everyone is jumping off buildings and not inviting you to parties. He let out a low, pitiful noise and put his head in his hands. Then screamed at me to get him a drink. I brought him another glass of water. He looked up at me with a jutted jaw. A drink, he said.

I brought him a whiskey which he gripped like a candle in a church vigil. While he continued whining with his eyes closed I went into the hallway and opened his bag. There were six pairs of socks and a candy bar. I had no idea what this man wanted.

When I got back to where he was sitting he looked at me with bloodshot eyes and asked if I knew what he was saying. I nodded. He shook the empty glass at me, asked me to get him a pair of fresh socks from his bag before asking if I knew what it was like to go through life as a man with overly sweaty feet. I shook my head. He nestled deeper into the chair.

He eventually requested the candy bar and a third pair of socks. After I handed the candy to him he asked if I knew what it was like to go through life as a man who gets faint from low blood sugar. I shook my head. He frowned, then informed me through his teeth that some people think getting tired from low blood sugar isn’t very manly. I told him that sounded very difficult. He nodded and tore into the candy like his life depended on it.

After a few hours, I found the courage to tap on my wrist, apologize, and tell him our time was up. He got up quicker than a drunk man normally would. Melted chocolate ringed his mouth. I stood my ground. He reached into his back pocket. Then pulled out an enormous roll of money, licked his finger and peeled off the bills, licked his finger again for the tip. By far the most money I’d ever made on a visit.

I locked the door behind him and went to the bathroom and threw up. The mole hair turned gray shortly after. Then I bought a scalpel and removed the thing myself.

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NOVELS_IM_GOING_TO_WRITE.DOCX by Aatif Rashid

August 6, 2021 · Fiction

Space Battles (1999)
- Like Star Wars, but from the perspective of a ten-year-old kid. He has a sword and a laser gun, and he and his friend save the galaxy from a group of evil aliens.
Space Battles II (2000)
- Sequel to Space Battles I. The kid is now eleven, and he saves the galaxy again from an even bigger group of aliens.
Space Battles III (2001)
- Sequel to Space Battles I and Space Battles II. The kid is now twelve, and he and his friend have a falling out. The first group of aliens comes back, though, so they reconcile in order to save the galaxy again.
The Lord of the Scepter (2002)
- An epic fantasy set in a Lord of the Rings style world where Dwarves, Elves, Humans, and Wizards battle over a magical scepter. The main character is a fourteen-year-old elf who’s secretly the son of the Elf king and will one day inherit the throne.
Sacrifices (2004)
- A dark dystopian novel set in a world where humans are regularly sacrificed by a tyrannical government to keep the population stable, and about a group of teenage revolutionaries who try to overthrow the system. The main character is a fifteen-year-old guy who leads the group. There’s a girl in the group too, and he’s in love with her but doesn’t want to admit it.
A World of Kingdoms (2005)
- A dark, epic fantasy novel set on a continent of warring kingdoms, about a group of children whose parents are killed and who have to make their way through the dangerous world. The main character is the oldest in the family, a sixteen-year-old who’s studying to be a mage. At one point, he meets a girl, the daughter of one of the kings, and they fall in love even though she’s engaged to another prince.
Untitled High School Coming of Age Story (2007)
- A nerdy high school kid in a small suburban town falls in with a new group of friends and experiences the wonders of drugs, sex, and partying. He also falls in love with a girl in his grade, a dark-haired, half-Asian girl, super smart, into literature and art like him, but they break up after she decides to go to college in New York instead of U.C. Berkeley, where he’s going. When this happens, it’s late at night, and they’re sitting in a car in the Safeway parking lot, and he feels like crying but tries his hardest not to. They try to have sex one last time in the backseat, but it’s awkward and he doesn’t feel like it, and so they just lie in each other’s arms on the felt seat, and he listens to her heartbeat, and he wonders if he’ll ever feel this way about someone again.
Untitled Edgy College Novel (2010)
- An experimental novel about a kid from a suburb who comes to college and finds a new group of cool artsy friends. Make sure it has a cool, hipster vibe, everyone saying ironic things, drinking PBR, smoking European cigarettes, talking about Jean Baudrillard and Michel Foucault.
- The novel shouldn’t really have a plot, but maybe make it center on a romance between the main guy and a girl—a cool, blonde girl who studies French and Art History and wants to be a writer too. They have lots of sex, but then get bored of each other and wander into increasingly separate, dissolute pursuits, and maybe after a few years, after they’ve been humbled in some way and feel low and down, they meet each other again on the quad in Berkeley, maybe she’s smoking a cigarette and he’s holding a Thomas Pynchon novel under his arm, and they reminisce about the good times they had and how it had been a lot of fun and how they miss those days, before saying goodbye and never seeing each other again.
The Postmodern Prometheus (2011)
- A novel about a twenty-two-year-old guy who’s just graduated college and is traveling through Asia on some money he’s saved up. Each chapter should be set in a different city, and instead of focusing on plot, make it more about the vibe, the people he meets, the bars he drinks at, the clubs he goes to, the women he sleeps with, interspersed with his reflections on art and history.
- He’s also a writer, so maybe make the frame of the book a novel he’s writing (maybe make super meta so it’s the book we’re reading). Ultimately, it should be about the main character finding himself and feeling a sense of fulfillment.
The Boomerang Generation (2013)
- After failing to find a job, a young man moves back in with his parents in the California suburb where he grew up. He reconnects with old high school friends, all of whom are likewise unemployed and depressed, and they drink a lot at the town’s one bar, or else play old video games (mainly Super Smash Brothers on N64) in one of their basements. Make it about generational listlessness, and have the main character reflect on the socioeconomic forces that have led him to become such a failure.
- The style should be terse, with short sentences, and a spare, Hemingway rhythm to match the lifelessness he feels inside.
Untitled Multigenerational Family Saga (2014)
- A novel about three generations of a Pakistani-American family. Start with grandfather’s generation in British India: they’re part of the nationalist movement, they witness Partition, etc. Then move on to parents’ generation: born into an independent Pakistan, immigrate to America, struggle, work hard, become doctors and engineers, etc. Finally, my generation: ungrateful, shitty kids who fail to live up to their parents’ expectations and fail to make anything of themselves in America. End with the eldest son of the family living at home after college, twenty-five years old and working as a waiter for minimum wage.
- Make it all an ironic commentary on the American Dream and subvert the tropes of the optimistic American immigrant story.
Untitled Campus Novel Satire (2016)
- A novel set at a low-ranked creative writing MFA program that follows a group of fiction writers struggling to make Art (make sure to capitalize it whenever they say it). Satirize their pretensions by highlighting the massive gap between their literary ideals (David Foster Wallace, etc.) and their own work, which is middling and subpar. Also, make fun of the teachers, who don’t really seem happy either. Above all, try and get at the feeling that literary success is impossible in late capitalism, that no one reads books anymore, and that these fiction writers are like easel painters or classical musicians trying to work with outdated forms.
- At some point, the main character should have a meeting with an agent in New York. The meeting doesn’t go well—he’s out of his depth, fails to make an impression, and thus loses what he feels like was his one chance.
Untitled Millennial Love Story (2018)
- A novel about two young people living in New York who meet at a party and start dating. He’s a twenty-nine-year-old (unpublished) writer and a part-time bartender, and she’s a twenty-four-year-old actress trying to make it in theater. They fall in love and grow close, but after a few years, they start to drift apart, mostly because he’s very depressed about his writing, how it’s not going anywhere, and how the dreams he had in childhood seem so far away now. Every day he wakes up and feels like a failure, and this rubs off on her, because she’s a little younger than him and still optimistic about things and doesn’t share his exhausting nihilism. Eventually, she leaves for Paris to be in a friend’s indie movie, and he gets an email a few weeks later saying they should break up and that she’s been seeing Emile (the indie director friend) for about a month now. He’s sitting in their shared apartment, a tiny studio in Queens, and when he hears the news, he throws his laptop at the wall and then goes out and buys a bottle of whiskey and drinks it from a paper bag while walking around the city, before returning home, masturbating to some porn (something demeaning probably, like a man getting choked and slapped and maybe even pissed on), and then passing out on his couch.
The Solitary City (2019)
- A first-person, autofiction novel about a failed thirty-year-old writer living by himself in New York City. Aside from working as a bartender to try and make ends meet, he takes long walks, reflects on the city’s buildings and history, occasionally sees art shows and readings put on by his friends, smokes and drinks a lot, sits in cafes and tries to write. He’s estranged from his parents, who tell him he has to get a real job and get his life together, and his attempts at relationships always go nowhere, as he feels no connection at all with the people he meets. He starts to resent his own generation, and he wishes he lived in an earlier time, in the 1960s, or the 1920s, or the 1890s, when people still read books and the world was still exciting.
Confessions (2020)
- As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps across the world, a thirty-one-year-old man comes down with symptoms and is admitted to the hospital. Even though he’s young, he’s smoked and drank a lot throughout his short life, so he’s not in great health, and the virus affects him severely. He has to be hooked up to a ventilator, and he feels pain all over his body, his chest, his arms, his back, and especially his head. Worst of all, his vision gets so blurry that he can’t read books—the text gets jumbled and he can’t make sense of it, as if he’s dyslexic. He tries listening to audiobooks, but the sound from his headphones makes his headache unbearable. And so he finds himself in a literature-less state. It may be the first time since he was a child that he hasn’t been reading a book. When he is lucid, he spends his hours thinking, about his life and what it meant and whether he accomplished the things he wanted. He contacts his parents, but they’re not allowed to come and see him for fear of contamination, so he has to talk to them on Zoom. His mother is crying, and while his father tries to smile and keep things optimistic and talk to him about books and “what he’s been writing,” he can see even in his eyes despair hiding behind the cheery disposition. He texts his ex-girlfriend, and she sends her condolences, and they even chat once over Zoom. She’s no longer seeing Emile the director, and she’s living in New York again, and he feels a sense of pain in his chest when he sees her face on the screen lit up by light from a window behind her, like the one in their old apartment. It might be COVID-induced synesthesia, but he feels like he can smell her hair again, feel her skin against his, her body through the sheets whenever he would wake up in the morning, the taste of coffee on her lips when he kissed her in their kitchen. Eventually, he’s left to himself, in the darkening hospital room, the beeping of machines of the older patients nearby, the distant sound of a nurse sighing in the hallway. He thinks about his failed writing career, all those novels he wanted to write but never finished. He imagines one final novel, something earnest and authentic that could justify his existence. He doesn’t know what style he’d write it in—postmodern, realist, dystopian, autoficion—and he doesn’t even know which events it would include, who the characters would be, how the plot would unfold. Still, he has a profound sense of it, a burning presence at the edges of his vision, and he knows that if he could write it, it would be absolutely perfect—everything he’d sought to capture since he first came up with Space Battles back in 1999, a representation that solved the riddle of literary mimesis, a document, ultimately, of what it had meant to him to be alive. The last scene before he dies would be him reaching out at something with his aching hand.

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SHAGGING FLIES IN BALLARD by Alexandrine Ogundimu

August 5, 2021 · Fiction

I resolve to confess my feelings on Saturday. You take me to the batting cage up in Mountlake Terrace but the machines are so awful they eat our tokens and give us nothing back, no high-arching softballs or baseball bullets. I would never say anything because I am meek and unmasculine but you get a refund because you are handsome and friendly and always get what you want and I am jealous—of your confidence and looks and talents and physicality and how much sex you have.

There’s a bucket of baseballs in your trunk so we drive to a park in Ballard and grab the bats and bucket and I’m way out of shape and can’t pitch for shit. You whack more than a few out into the home run range and we shag them together and take turns, pitcher and hitter, the innuendo not lost on me though you are oblivious to it, as I admire your form and feel a certain kind of carefree peace and joy, just two guys hitting baseballs, and it makes me wish you were my boyfriend in a way I find embarrassing, and I will tell you, hyper-straight you, college-baseball-player you, writer you, talented-in-more-than-every-way you.

This isn’t the right moment to say anything because it’s too perfect, as if I have already gotten exactly what I want, and having had it, there is no reason for me to seek it.

We catch the Mariners game at a pizza place and you drink a beer while I drink a Diet Coke because I’m scared of what comes out of me while I’m drunk. You ask me how the date with that guy went and I say Fine when it wasn’t fine because he wasn’t you, and I don’t care unless I care and you make me care in spite of myself.

We lock eyes as you say Yeah, just fine? And your voice is so warm and your eyes are crystal, your Henley revealing just a bit of your chest and I am an animal, my higher functions suspended even as I can feel your thoughts move, and I realize that this is my moment, my time to confess, and as I prepare the words Zunino blasts one and the bar goes wild and we high-five and really is it worth it to complicate a friendship when it’s so much easier to let your heart break.

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EVERY DAY IMAGINE DROWNING by Melanie Carlstad

August 4, 2021 · Fiction

I was at work holding onto a trowel and my father wasn’t dead. I argued this point to my colleague, Mary Anne, who was afraid of worms.

Here’s the gist, Mary Anne, I said. We are at work. We are gardening. You are afraid of the worms writhing between your fingers, and on top of that, my dad isn’t dead.

Mary Anne screamed. There was nothing else to do but scream about the ringed pink flesh of the worms.

Everything was drippy from yesterday’s rain. The juniper bush and the ivy leaves strangling it dripped on us. Our feet sank in the wet dirt. We had long hours, so we filled them with talk.

My parents are in an unhappy marriage, but they’re alive and well, Mary Anne said.

Mine aren’t like that, I said. They’re in a happy marriage and ailing slowly.Your dad is all done ailing, said Mary Anne. He’s dead.

I laughed and laughed. The juniper bush dripped, and I deadheaded the agapanthus. We talked about parking lots, hungry children with shiny eyes, and how the sun drowned every evening when it set over the bay. We could see it gasping above the waterline from the hill where we gardened.

Imagine drowning every day! Mary Anne said. We were crouched around the birdbath, hunting for crabgrass. With the rain, it had inched its way through networks of other plants, infiltrating their systems. I had to extract the crabgrass but not the poppies. I didn’t like poppies very much, but we had to preserve them. Our supervisor came out to check on us sometimes.

There’s a dead possum in the green bin, she said when she came out. Please take care of it.

I went to the green bin and kicked it onto its side. Dirty water dribbled out of the corner, wadded-up bundles of weeds slumped at the mouth of the bin, and underneath them I saw a beady eyeball surrounded by fur. I retreated, walking backwards while staring at the eye.

Mary Anne was still under the bird bath. I was starting to resent her for moving so slowly. She picked at crabgrass with a sense of leisure and twirled ivy like long hair when she ripped it out of the juniper.

There’s no dead possum in the green bin, I told her. There’s a possum in there alright, but it’s alive and well, just playing dead until it can make its getaway.

It had better go quick, Mary Anne said. She wrapped her hand around the neck of an invasive plant and yanked it out of the ground. She saw the worms intertwined with the torn roots and flung them away, sending specks of dirt onto my eyelids and cheeks. The sun was getting ready to drown, which meant we had to fill the green bin and clean up. The juniper still dripped on us while we tossed piles of weeds into the bin, which had no possum anymore but was full of new dead things.

This story was published in print only with the title “Worms” in Pratt’s literary magazine, Ubiquitous, in 2018.

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THE OPENER by Marissa Higgins

August 3, 2021 · Fiction

Bobby tossed the stuffed chihuahua between his bare hands, Suboxone in his right coat pocket and a picture of Alyssa at two months in his left. Should have worn gloves, he knew. Cape Cod winters tug the cold out of bones. The bus depot, of course, wasn’t heated. What if I can’t find you in the parking lot, he said over the phone when they arranged the meeting. Just stay in one place, Alyssa’s grandmother said, and then she named it. Sharon added: You’ll recognize your blood.

The call went clipped like that: Yeah, he was still at the halfway house, working, wanting to see Alyssa. No, he wasn’t paid on the books or sure about child support. He didn’t have any other kids. Yeah, he was sure.

Sharon and his kid pulled up and Bobby tightened his stomach lips colon toes fingers throat knees jaw. He put the stuffed animal behind his back. He watched Sharon get out and fiddle with the backseat. When Alyssa dropped her feet into the snow, Bobby dropped the chihuahua. He said, Oh, shit. Then Alyssa was upon him.

She said, Hey. They did not hug. As he shook the snow from the toy, he watched her watch him.

This is for you, Bobby said. And hey, yourself.

I’m not allowed to have a dog, she said, brown eyes a story in themselves. Bobby knew better than to point it out, but the kid really looked nothing like him. Carved from clouds, not smoke.

This one is good, he said all slow. Because it’s not real, you know?

Yeah, she said, solemn. I know.

Father and daughter didn’t talk again until the three of them were seated in a booth. The place was packed for lunch hour, all pop radio and pitchy kids. Sharon chatted for them; she caught Bobby up on Alyssa’s flute lessons, three times a week, which Bobby thought sounded like a lot, but shit if he knew.

Bobby nodded nodded nodded and sat straight straight straight. His posture was a knot, he admitted it, but he wanted Sharon to see him as different than the last time. He had been fucked up, yeah. He and Alyssa’s mom were screaming pretty bad. Some shit got broken. Neighbors were pissed about the noise and all, and Bobby couldn’t even tell them to fuck off, on account of them being right. Spine straight, Bobby housed his pizza and was glad to see Alyssa ate like him, big bites, teeth worked as weapons, oil all over the damn place. And why not, he thought, watching his kid suck grease from each of her ten fingers. Why not.

She’s a busy girl, Sharon said. Almost a young lady.

Bobby got her point. He crumpled a napkin, cleared his diet Pepsi, asked if they wanted refills. Sharon said no thank you and Alyssa eyed her cup, almost drained. At the drink fountain, he was small, cramped. He knew, but did he? Last he’d seen Alyssa, she was in diapers, drinking milk. He gambled. He filled hers to the top with cherry Coke and plenty of ice.

Under Sharon’s gaze, Alyssa mumbled thanks and gulped gulped gulped. Soda drizzled down her chin and onto her lap napkins. She and Bobby shared a look. Happy, happy.

Back in the parking lot, Bobby considered what they hadn’t talked about. Visitation, supervised or not. Alyssa’s mom—if she was dating anybody or if she was still working at the diner by the bay. If Alyssa was gonna be allowed to come over his apartment, once he got one, once he finished up the program. Holiday photos would be cool, he’d been thinking. Family portraits, the kind they take at the mall. Corny, he thought, but shit. Why not.

To Sharon, he said, Thank you. She didn’t ask him what for, which he appreciated. Later, in his bunk, Bobby would think about what he owed her, and how the debt made him feel weak and also relieved. Ever since Sharon became Alyssa’s guardian, he knew his daughter was good. He trusted she went to school and had enough to eat. That her hair was clean. That she wore socks under her boots. That she didn’t miss him much, because why would she? He only recently started to miss himself.

With Alyssa, he held out the chihuahua, mostly dry from sitting on a heater in the back of the restaurant. Its glass eyes were warmer than he expected when he rooted through the discount bin at the outlet across town. That’s special, he thought.

Alyssa said, Thank you, and took the dog. Against her pink puffer, the chihuahua looked cozy. She asked if Bobby would bring her a real dog next time.

That’s up to your grandma, he said. Around them, crows convened low, indifferent. If Sharon said sure, bring the girl a dog? Bobby would steal one, he guessed. He’d make it work.

Alyssa rolled her eyes, letting Bobby know grandma was the big no in the game. She asked if he wanted a hug goodbye.

When he stooped to her level, Bobby thought his back would splinter. Hamstrings were fists. Knees shuddered. His case worker told him he had to let go of his rage, that he couldn’t carry stress around the way he did. Bobby wanted to put his fear into a box or a closet or a bag. Wouldn’t the sadness open in another place, he wondered? Waiting for him, waiting to find fresh light. Still: He wanted, he wanted.

While they hugged, Bobby noticed a lot. Alyssa’s hair smelled like fruit. Her face was soft, not like skin, but pillows; the nice ones, the department store kind. When she coughed into his shoulder, unabashed, he smelled her breath: all hot cheese and pepperoncini. My kid, he thought. My kid. In his throat, a hummingbird.

"The Opener" previously appeared in Popshot Quarterly Magazine.

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PATTY by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

August 2, 2021 · Fiction

The problem with dolls who can do things is that they get bored, you have to keep them busy. If you don’t they get clingy, and it’s so easy to forget to keep the little gold chain on around their neck. They say if you forget about the little gold chain the dolls will chase you everywhere, and then it’s stab, stab, stab.

But mostly they’re just you, only smaller, which is gross in its own way. As you get older, they become more childish, until finally you have to put them in a shoebox and bury them in the yard. You tell yourself you’re growing up and this is what grownups always eventually do. Look carefully in the backyard of your grandparents’ house if you don’t believe.

But your little brother, when you’re over at your best friend Cindy’s house, he digs your doll up, he throws it like a stick to the dog, he plays fetch with your doll, and when it’s all chewed up and slobbered on, he hides it in your room, where it moans in a voice only you can hear. There’s going to be some curses: on you, your brother, that dog. You buried your doll where he could find it, you didn’t bury your doll deep enough, you didn’t do right by your doll. You’re going to have to rescue what you abandoned, that’s a curse in itself you don’t know just yet.

But you don’t have to be that sort of person, you don’t have to be a jerk. You clean the doll up, you make invisible tea, you bring together all your other dolls, the ones who can’t do things, and you pour out all your apologies. It’s going to take a while to work everything out, so you keep your door locked. “Why should I trust you?” the doll says. “Look me in the eye,” she says, when you promise to be nicer. “Take this gold chain off me,” she says.

You take a big breath and you do it.

“When I go to sleep,” you say, “you’re not going to stab me, right?”

“Why do you think I would ever want to hurt you?” If she could cry she would, but she’s not that kind of doll.

You and your doll are practically vibrating—this is something raw and new. It feels like you’ve been sobbing for hours, as you tell her everything in your heart and she tells you everything back. You feel a light inside you, a secret light you can’t tell anyone because they won’t know what it’s like and they’ll just laugh and say you’re a kid, what do you know?

She promises to lift all of her curses. To mark this new turn, you give your doll a new name, Patty.

“I like that name,” Patty says.

You and Patty track down your brother. He looks at Patty and notices she’s not wearing her necklace. “That’s right,” you say, as you knock him over and climb on top of him. “Someone owes Patty an apology, or someone is going to get stabbed in the eye.”

He apologizes and apologizes and apologizes. You tell him you don’t believe him and it’s only a matter of time until Patty sneaks into his room with a kitchen knife. “If you mean it,” you say, “You’ll eat dirt. You’ll eat worms.”

You put your knee on one of his arms. You point to the hole he dug Patty out of.

“I’m sorry,” he wails.

“Shake hands with Patty and tell her you’ll never do it again.”

When it’s dinnertime, you bring Patty down with you, and when your mom looks at you with that aren’t you too old to play with dolls look, you put Patty right in the middle of the table, where everyone can see who’s no longer wearing their golden necklace. Patty cuts loose, leaping from the table to do cartwheels around on the floor. Your dad gives your mom the let’s just put up with it for now look, and while the dog is keeping her distance, everyone else goes back to chatting about their day and eating.

The problem with dolls who can do things is that they hate doing chores, just like you, but it’s your turn to wash the dishes, so you grab Patty. You put on your dishwashing gloves, then carefully slip a pair of dolly gloves on Patty’s little hands.

“We’re friends, right?”

The dishes, glasses and pans, it’s all so disgusting. “It has everybody’s spit on it,” Patty says, shakily.

“If we both do it,” you say, “then it’ll be over with quicker and it’ll be alright.”

“But I’m going to get spit all over me! It’s going to leak through these gloves and then it’s going to get on my skin and it will be like I was back inside your dog’s mouth!”

Patty’s holding her knees with her little dolly gloves and rocking back and forth.

“I was wearing my necklace and I couldn’t do anything to make it stop.”

“It’s ok, you don’t have to do the dishes,” you say.

You put Patty on the windowsill and do all the dishes yourself. You sing her a couple of Taylor Swift songs and soon the two of you are singing together. Together, you and Patty ease.

You make a note to remember this—that it’s ok just to sing, that this is something you know how to do, when someone is frightened so badly they don’t even know how scared they are.

The kitchen knives sit on the drying rack, all in a row, sharp and clean.

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CRISP EDGES by Helena Pantsis

July 30, 2021 · Fiction

Bud reached into the chip bag. It crinkled, loud and coarse by the cheap, jagged foil. He dug his hand around the salt-covered potatoes, angling for the perfect one. You never want to start too big. You have to aim for those mid-range chips, the ones the size of a beer bottle’s bottom. He pulled one out, smacked his lips around it, and sucked on the tips of his fingers before going in for another. He couldn’t stop. That’s how they get you, the chip companies, the corporate potato pigs, by drowning their spuds in moreish delicacies that rot your teeth and erode your stomach lining. Bud was a sucker for anything with vinegar on it, anything that made his teeth vibrate, thin and on the verge of shattering. Pulling out another chip, he paused to look at it. It was familiar. He spun it around, tilted it forward, and Jesus Christ, there he was.

Martin Short.

“Jesus Christ, look at this,” Bud spat the crumbs of the half-chewed potato chip from his mouth.

Sitting across the sofa, Denise leaned towards Bud with her eyes half-lidded. She’d had enough of his bullshit.

“What?” she said.

Bud flung the chip closer to her, tilting it upwards so she could see it in better light.

“It’s a potato chip,” she said. “And?”

“That’s Martin Fucking Short.”

“Who?”

Sometimes the age gap between Bud and Denise wasn’t so bad. As long as you didn’t think about the fact that when she was born, he was graduating high school, and when she was applying to universities, he was in the middle of his first divorce. And as long as you didn’t think about the fact she didn’t know who Martin Fucking Short was.

“Martin Short!” he spoke louder, as if the volume would awaken something in her.

“Three Amigos? Father of the Bride? Legend of Saturday Night Live?”

Her face remained blank, unfazed by his manic spiraling into filmography recitation. Bud scoffed, gently placed his chip on the coffee table, and pulled up a photo on his phone.

“Oh!” Denise chimed with recognition. “He was Jack Frost! In the third Santa Clause.”

Bud didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

“Okay,” he picked up the chip again, holding it alongside his phone. “See?”

Denise stopped for a moment to consider. The salt built up triangular in the middle, emulating what could be a nose, and the chip had burn lines resembling what could be eyes along its top. She supposed it could be him.

“I guess,” she said. “It just looks like a random face.”

Bud was flabbergasted.

“You’re kidding!” he said. “It’s a spitting image.”

“I don’t really see what the big deal is,” Denise went to grab for it, intent on eating it.

“Woah! No way,” Bud placed the chip on the far side of the table, away from her.

“What are you gonna do with it?” she asked, confounded.

“This has gotta be worth something,” Bud spoke confidently, picking the chip up and waving it in the air as he made to leave the room. “Just you see.”

Bud set his chip up in the study. Laying down a crisp, white page of A4 paper where the sun shone. He placed his chip in the middle, positioning it to the ideal angle, and opened the camera on his phone. Bud took a series of photos, all those which best captured the Martin Short of the chip. Bud uploaded the pictures to eBay, setting a starting price for auction at $50.

“You’re fucking kidding,” Denise said upon finding the stagnant bidding war on Bud’s computer. “No one’s gonna pay fifty bucks for a chip.”

“Not just a chip,” Bud said. “An exact fried potato replica of beloved actor Martin Short.” He pointed to the description he’d keyed into the item information.

“I think those are baked,” Denise said.

Bud kept the chip in a ziplock bag tucked in the back of the ice cube drawer in the freezer. They never went in there. The pair of them were accustomed to the summer heat and dealt with it better by removing layers. He’d looked up the best way to preserve a chip—he didn’t want Martin to go stale.

When Marl and Sue came over for drinks and a chat Bud told them about Martin the chip. About how he had put the chip on eBay, and about how you wouldn’t believe the likeness! And here’s the photos to prove it.

“I guess I see it,” Marl said, even though they couldn’t really. “So people actually buy that type of thing?”

“All the time!” Bud’s voice rose in excitement. “It’s practically memorabilia!”

Bud had spent hours staring at the glowing screen of his phone in their bed at night, his back turned to Denise. People were inclined to buy all kinds of things if they were attached to a celebrity. A piece of lint from Lindsay Lohan’s sweater from the 2005 Teen Choice Awards. A leaf in the shape of Javier Bardem’s head. Hair from David Schwimmer found on the set of ER circa 1996. A tile in the shape of an airborne Christina Applegate, if you squinted your eyes hard enough. And here he had Martin Fucking Short. A legend. A comedic genius. A star of stage and screen. Of course it was going to sell.

“Enough about that stupid chip,” Denise groaned, standing up abruptly to refill her guests’ coffee cups.

Sue sat awkwardly between them, gazing back and forth between the pair and then to Marl with her eyebrows raised.

“It’s really okay,” She said. “Um, maybe we could see it.”

“Oh no,” Bud shook his head, ignoring Denise, “I don’t want anything to happen to it.”

“Oh my God, Bud. Give it a rest, it’s a potato.” Denise rolled her eyes, dropping back down into her seat. “You haven’t even got a single bid on it.”

In the weeks after, Bud joined multiple online forums and Facebook groups, and signed up for innumerable newsletters on celebrities and Martin Short and selling memorabilia. He watched auctions on eBay, noting the number of watchers and bidders and starting and selling prices. Bud also stopped making love to Denise entirely.

When his auction ended, unsold, Bud re-uploaded his chip with the tips and tricks he’d learned from his research. He shared the link to his auction across Martin Short fan blogs and Facebook pages on celebrity collectables and subreddits on potatoes with faces. Slowly, starting his Martin chip at a price of $10, severely below retail value, Bud began to get some interest. One bid, then two, then the two going back and forth, then a third, and a forth, and suddenly, over twenty bids. With four days still left on the chip’s sale, the bidding price had skyrocketed to over $400.

Bud considered all the things he’d do with the money. He’d get a full back tattoo. He’d take all his friends out for a meal. He’d drink ’til his skin turned yellow. He’d fix the radio in his car. No, he thought, he’d save it, put it towards moving out of this dump.

Bud approached Denise returning home from work, ecstatic by the new interest in his Martin chip and his newfound wealth. She looked tired, moody, unapproachable. Bud considered for a moment not telling her. She’d probably use it to fix the heater or retile the bathroom. Besides, she’d never believed in him to begin with.

“What?” she spoke roughly in response to his vague stare, dropping her bag onto the counter.

“Four-hundred dollars,” he blurted out.

“You’re not buying any more blow right now, we can’t afford it.”

Bud hadn’t thought about that in weeks. He shook his head.

“No, I don’t need it. That’s how much the chip’s at. The auction.”

Denise furrowed her brows, sliding her jacket off and removing her shoes.

“What?” she asked, half paying attention.

Bud took his phone out, opening eBay and seeing the bid had risen to $530. He thrust the phone towards Denise. Her mouth fell open and she dropped her shoes so she could hold the phone closer.

“What the fuck?” she gasped, then began laughing. She stomped her feet like a child and threw her arms around Bud. “Five hundred fucking dollars!”

Things were really looking up. Denise let Bud choose the movie at night, and the pair of them would sit laughing at whatever crazy antic Martin Short got himself into. Bud dyed his hair a dusty brown, fixed his front teeth, and began putting on a wonky American accent at times to rise a laugh from Denise. The pair of them had never gotten along so well. Denise kept an eye on Bud’s eBay like it was the stock market, and boy were her shares climbing.

It was nice at first, then she began to speak about it as if the chip was theirs, as if Martin was their inside joke, their little secret. Denise was so happy about it, it made Bud’s skin crawl. She hadn’t even heard of Martin Short, yet now she was beyond ecstatic that this man’s face was making them money in leaps and bounds. She started to shop with less regard for home brand and sale items and began leaving late for work and arriving home before her shift ended. She was the breadwinner of the pair, or at least she was before Martin chip started pitching in.

The price rose: $900, $1000, $1100, $2000. It gave Bud goosebumps mainly, before anything else, because he was right. He knew it and Denise knew it, but the anticipation in her eyes was delight not reluctant resignation. God, why did he want it so bad?

The chip bag crinkled as Bud's hand swan dove to the bottom, him slouching on the living room sofa and gorging on salt as he did routinely. He filled his mouth with palmful after palmful of chips while glued to eBay on his phone. He emitted an auction-and-potato-chip-induced sweat. He stank of salt and chin fat. The price soared beyond anything the pair of them had ever imagined: $3000, $3500, $3900, $4300. He put the phone down, his heartbeat quickening. Denise came rushing in, her own phone glowing.

“Four fucking thousand!” she yelled.

Martin Short was his celebrity, his chip, but the reward was theirs together. He considered the money. It’d be nice to have. He could settle debts. He could pay for the veneers and hair job he’d gotten. He could get that back tat. Sure, the money would be nice. Bud put his phone down and watched the price rise and the countdown drop. He drifted backward towards the refrigerator. Denise called from the other room, relaying information he could see for himself.

Bud bent down, opened the freezer drawer, and pulled the little ice tray drawer where Martin chip lay. He grabbed the ziplock bag, slid the chip out, and stared at it. Martin’s eyes were screaming.

“Five-thousand dollars!” Denise yelled.

Bud held the chip gently. It was cold and crisp as the day he’d found it. Then he laid the chip on his tongue. He felt a chill run through him. The countdown on the auction ended. The price read $5200. Denise came rushing in, eyes wide and smile cracking. Bud closed his mouth and swallowed the chip swiftly without chewing. He felt the potato’s edges scratch the inside of his throat. Denise looked confused, then horrified.

“What the fuck did you do?” she said.

And Bud didn’t know. But he wanted to say, “I told you so.”

Crow Jonah Norlander

THE FUNHOUSE by Matt Lee

July 28, 2021 · Fiction

My first and only job during a disastrous year in New York was at the DVD Funhouse. Little storefront on 6th avenue between 21st and 22nd street. Flatiron District.

The place sold bootleg DVDs, Canadian imports mostly, with the ISBN barcodes scratched off. The first floor was for walk-in customers, people coming off the street to peruse the racks.

I worked in the basement. The place stretched on forever. Pallets and pallets of junk. Crates of old Blockbuster rentals. Books on tape. Useless novelties galore.

I was in charge of online sales. I turned the place around. When Victor hired me, there were two sales a week. By the time I finished, we were selling hundreds of units daily.

Every day I took the J train from Bed-Stuy into Manhattan. I’d buy a coffee at a corner stall for a dollar. I’d get to the Funhouse, print packing slips, pull the orders, stuff them into envelopes, and cart everything to the post office around the corner.

I got pretty friendly with the old guy who worked the dock at the post office. Thirty years with USPS, he told me. A few more years and he could retire. Wonder if he made good on his word.

I had a few guys working for me. Eli was a wannabe stand-up comedian. He’d practice his routine. “My buddy’s wife had a miscarriage after they baby-proofed the house. It worked. A baby didn’t get in.” I started wearing headphones.

Then there was Eric. He had a beard. He was a die hard Giants fan. All I remember.

A kid named Jose ran the register upstairs. “New York City is the greatest place on earth,” he’d say. “Cleanest tap water in America.”

Victor’s older brother Mike was the manager. He never did much besides sit in the bathroom playing games on his BlackBerry.

I worked with another guy named Mark Kamins. His apartment had been leveled during 9/11. He got a big settlement check from the government. The money ran out. So he worked for me at the DVD Funhouse.

Victor told me Mark used to be a bigshot in the music industry. I didn’t buy it until I googled his name. Turned out Mark produced Madonna’s first single, “Everybody.” Launched her to fame. The two even used to be a couple.

I asked Mark about Madonna while we were shelving DVDs one day. I wanted to know what she was like in bed. He thought about it for a minute. “Her pussy hairs were like a brillo pad.”

Mark was a terrible employee. Couldn’t do anything right. Didn’t know how to work a computer. He kept fucking up so much I demanded Victor fire him or I’d quit.

I got what I wanted.

I never knew what happened to Mark until I started writing this. He moved to Guadalajara, Mexico. Started teaching. Died 2013. Heart attack. Fifty-seven years old.

In Mark’s obituary, Madonna says, “If it weren't for him, I might not have had a singing career. He was the first DJ to play my demos before I had a record deal. He believed in me before anyone else did. I owe him a lot.”

The Funhouse was full of rats and roaches. Biggest roaches I’ve ever seen. We’d set glue traps and sprinkle green poison pellets along holes in the walls. It got to be like a game, killing roaches. We’d fling discs that were too scratched for sale trying to slice the pests in two. I got pretty good after a while. Joey was the best.

Joey was the only guy I worked with who I had any respect for. He used to make fun of my shoes, a pair of boots that clacked when I walked. He’d laugh and say, “You sound like a chick.”

Joey and I were the same age, about twenty. That’s where the similarities ended. He was an ex-con who’d served time for dealing coke. Nearly died after some punks he’d robbed decided to get even. They jumped him, bashed Joey’s head in with an aluminum baseball bat. He showed me the dent in his shaved head.

He lived in Queens with his father, who was a bus driver. Joey had to share a room with his sister. I always thought that was weird, but Joey didn’t mind. When he wasn’t at the Funhouse, Joey was at the gym. He was always giving me tips about weight lifting. I never listened.

Joey’s dream was to join the Navy. We both knew with his criminal record there was no chance in hell of Joey becoming a sailor. The dream kept him going.

On our lunch break, Joey and I would go to McDonald’s across the street. He loved putting BBQ sauce on his McChicken. “I’m a fast food connoisseur,” he’d say, lips smeared deep red.

Joey was so strong. He’d move whole pallets single-handedly, carry hundred-pound boxes on his shoulders like it was nothing. Sometimes we’d take our rolly chairs from the desks and send each other rocketing down the endless concrete floor. If Joey was the one pushing, you’d always win the race.

I remember his biceps bulging with veins. I remember him chugging protein shakes and energy drinks. I remember him encouraging me to quit smoking. I remember him breaking wooden boards with his bare hands.

I don’t remember Joey’s last name. I can’t look him up, see what he’s done with himself this past decade. I like to imagine he’s on an aircraft carrier somewhere in the Pacific, off the coast of Polynesia maybe, or the Port of Siam. He’s got a chest full of medals and a girl waiting for him back home. He’s asleep in his bunk, dreaming about a ten-story funhouse mirror. He smashes the massive glass monolith with his fist. He laughs, cracks his knuckles, and says, “Punk ass bitch.”

Crow Jonah Norlander

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