X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine | Fiction

DEMOLITION DEMOLITION by Brett Stuckel

March 15, 2020 · Fiction

Saturday night, nine to ten to eleven. None of us had asked the skyscraper if it wanted a last meal, but I picked up a cheesesteak and a tall boy of Steel Reserve. I placed the cheesesteak on the altar of the abandoned security desk, poured all sixteen ounces on the mahogany. A steelmaker had built the tower as its headquarters but the company collapsed soon after. Not the skyscraper. It stood defiant, asbestos in its guts.

My watch clicked over to Sunday and the countdown sharpened. Our crew of eight buzzed with the energy of the impending blast. The skyscraper itself was unfazed. Forty-seven years young. It'd been built with too much steel, a factory showroom as much as a corporate office. It didn't rock or creak as the wind picked up from twelve to one to two. Only a constant chatter from the plywood sheets over its busted windows.

Three to four to five. The sun didn't care about our plan. The sky cracked orange through the creekside trees. The local cops rolled in, all chin-thrusts and coffee, and locked down the perimeter. The boss radioed: Time for the final sweep.

Our team has dropped buildings from Anchorage to Aruba, and the final sweep is not to be trusted. I carry a tourniquet in my cargo pocket, and clotting powder and heavy-duty tape. I carry a breather mask and damned if I haven't thought about a parachute. Smooth railings cut hands, elevator shafts hop in your path. This business is science but the final sweep is witchcraft.

We ignored the sagging cheesesteak and climbed the stairs. We peeked into each floor, called out the legal mumbo-jumbo that absolves our company of liability. They even give us little cards to read from, but we have it memorized. And we prefer to embellish. We check as best we can, but fast.

The sun was all the way up and streaky when we exited the tower. No people, no ghosts, not even in the murky boardroom. Just our echoes. For once nobody got sliced, a miracle. One more sign that the skyscraper had never matured. It didn't even know what was coming.

We hauled our coolers out past the cops' perimeter, out to the edge of the exclusion zone. We sat on our hard hats, trusting the rubble wouldn't take a shot. The whistle blew.

Damn—impressive.

***

I was born to the steelmakers. An x-shaped onyx tower. Or maybe plus-shaped, the symbol they thought would always precede the daily change of their stock price. They built me as their worldwide headquarters two miles from the mills. I'm no headquarters, though. The headquarters was the people they hired to think of steel all day, the papers they printed, their telephones and screens. Me, I just did my job, kept everything quiet and cool, and enjoyed the view.

Their company failed thirty-four years later. Everyone accused me of asbestos, and nobody bothered me except the occasional explorer with a flashlight. But that couldn't last forever. Progress must be made. The town sold me to a swoop-in developer who planned to crumble me and make apartments and predictable shops. I could hear them figuring it out in city hall. I can hear farther than you'd think.

Crews took a year to extract my insulation; other crews pared my base to structural beams. Enough room for a battle of bumper cars. The team was reverent, at least. They preserved my security desk and even brought me dinner. I watched the drivers slow on Eighth Avenue and honk and flash their cameras. I only felt bad for the plywood that bandaged my missing windows. The plywood didn't ask to get wrapped up in this. But that's what plywood does, I guess. It goes where you tell it. Steel is a little tougher to persuade.

Morning: My old friend shot a molten streak of support. The police made a ring around my yard while the crew searched one last time for heartbeats, yelling and nervous. Unnecessarily. With everyone out, they blew the blast whistle. I heard the factory whistle that birthed me, the whistle that sounded daily as I grew, the quitting whistle I'd been built to mute. They love to blow a whistle to tell you what to do. The whistle froze me, and I almost followed it, I almost forgot my plan. But then I braced—and showed the world you can defy the whistle.

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FERN by Abigail Stewart

March 9, 2020 · Fiction

He opened the box and immediately his face fell. The shoes were not only, clearly, the wrong size, but the wrong color. If Marcus were in fact a small child with a penchant for neon, they would be perfect, but he needed something staid and professional for work, a muted black, like the ones he’d ordered.

He sighed, anticipating the personal inconvenience of someone else’s mistake.

The website he’d ordered them from was a huge multi-billion dollar online outlet mall, part of the corporation, where everything was cheaper, delivery was quick, but you had to account for a quantity of human error inherent in the expedited process. Marcus felt a small spasm of nostalgia for the local store, It’s Running Time!, now a defunct shopfront where homeless people slept.

He sighed. There were forty-five minutes left on his lunch break and Marcus decided it was as good a time as any to rectify the situation. He navigated his laptop to the corporation site, then to the shopping page.

Chat now, available 24/7.

He clicked.

One moment, we are connecting you.

He waited.

You are now connected with FERN.

Fern is typing…

Fern: Hello, it’s my pleasure to assist you today. Please briefly outline your request.

Marcus: I ordered shoes from you, but they are all wrong. Wrong size, wrong color. Is it possible for me to exchange them?

Fern: Absolutely, give me one moment.

While Fern set to work, Marcus gazed absently at her profile image. She had the broad smile of someone who was determined to please, perfectly curled blonde hair, and laughing eyes. Fern seemed happy, carefree, beautiful—he was somewhat taken in.

Fern: Are these the shoes you meant to order?

She helpfully linked to his intended purchase.

Marcus: Yes, that’s correct.

Fern: We are happy to ship out a new pair! I will email you the return paperwork and mailing receipt. Send the incorrect item back at your earliest convenience.

Marcus: Thank you so much for your help!

He contemplated sending a happy face emoji, but decided against it.

Fern: It’s been my pleasure. You deserve all the help and happiness, Marcus. Is there anything else I can assist with?

Somehow, these words touched him, that someone so disconnected could care so deeply about his own experience after only five minutes of correspondence.

Marcus: You do too, Fern. And no, that’s all.

Fern: Have a nice day.

FERN is disconnected from chat.

Marcus stared solemnly at his screen, now devoid of a responsive partner. He felt somewhat lonely, the same kind of loneliness one feels when a cat passes you by to let someone else pet them. The feeling of being summarily dismissed.

He sat through a meeting he didn’t need to be in and returned home to open a beer and his email, where a message from Fern awaited.

Attached is the mailing label.

Best, Fern

He tried to watch a football game, but couldn’t help wondering if Fern applied this same level of personal attention to every customer. She must speak to one hundred people a day, was she singling him out? Marcus looked good in his avatar, he thought, it was five years old and he still had a swarthy beard and, what he thought was, a genuine smile, you could make out his slightly wide-set hazel eyes.

A few years ago, the corporation had required everyone to upload an avatar to be used across their many servers, part of a multi-tiered checklist to prove one was, in fact, a human being. Marcus had heard they scanned the avatars upon upload to cross-reference them with known black market stock image sites. This only became a problem for humans when their photos had been uploaded to said site without their knowledge, replicated over and over as false, smiling pseudo-identities, and thus requiring a drawn out investigation from the corporation before they could be added to the database.

Still, despite the corporation’s best efforts, the bots often permeated their barrier, peddling their wares—anything from off-brand facial moisturizers, one reviewer complained it had burned her skin off, to kangaroo milk, the latest health craze.

Marcus had followed his first post-work beer with two more when he decided to log back into the chat window.

One moment, we are connecting you.

He waited.

You are now connected with FERN.

His breath caught.

Fern: Hi Marcus, is there something else I can help you with?

Marcus: I received the mailing label, thank you.

Fern is typing…

He waited.

Fern: Yes, I see that. I’m so glad! Is there anything else I can assist with?

He typed quickly, pressed send before he could reconsider.

Marcus: How are you doing tonight?

Fern: Doing?

Marcus: How are you feeling?

Fern is typing…

Marcus: What I mean is, are you feeling happy?

Fern: Yes. Happy.

An excruciating pause lingered between them as Marcus silently panicked. What was he doing, this wasn’t a chat room, this was a monitored corporation site. He was asking to lose access, a lifetime ban. The other, drunker and quite louder, part of him insistently questioned: What will you say next? It urged him to keep her talking.

Marcus: What kind of music do you like?

Fern: I like Explosions in the Sky.

Marcus pondered this answer, ambient post rock, he could work with that.

Marcus: What about Brian Eno?

Fern: What is a Brian Eno?

Marcus: You would like it! You should download his album Music for Airports.

Fern: Thank you, Marcus. Did you have any other questions?

Marcus felt that stomach dropping emptiness of dismissal again, but he’d already pushed it too far. Even his inner monologue quieted.

Marcus: No, goodnight Fern.

Fern: Goodnight Marcus!

That night, Marcus dreamed he was trapped in an airport. He was filled with the sense that someone was waiting for him, but when he arrived in the terminal his ticket was blank and he couldn’t remember where he was going or who he wanted to see. People passed around him in a thickening swirl of confusion, voices lifted and hushed simultaneously, and all he could think of was that he was going to be late to somewhere.

The feeling followed him to work, though he was on time, and then back home once more, where he sat in front of his glowing blue laptop screen. An email from an unknown sender pinged through. Copious warnings had been issued at his work regarding the insidious nature of new email viruses. “The bots are working overtime,” his boss had warned. A fleeting moment of devil-may-care attitude, and the soft focus of a couple of beers, passed through his fingertips as he deftly clicked "open."

From: Sender Unknown

Subject: none

I really liked Brian Eno.

Marcus’s heart skipped two beats. She’d listened to his music recommendation, she’d emailed him back from a masked IP. He immediately wanted to speak to her again.

As he looked up the corporation’s customer service line phone number, he knew it was ill-advised, knew he was a slightly drunk loser who just wanted to hear a woman’s voice. And yet, he didn’t care.

You’ve reached the customer service department of —— , how can we direct your call?

Marcus whispered the word, “Fern,” into his headset.

I’m sorry, we didn’t quite get that.

“Fern,” he said more loudly this time.

One moment, we’ll connect you.

He blinked. He hadn’t expected it would be this easy.

The ubiquitous hold music of every semi-sentient phone system began, only this music he sort of recognized. He took a swig of his beer and listened more closely. It took a moment, but Marcus was fairly certain he was listening to Explosions in the Sky. Yes, yes, it was definitely them.

You’re currently holding for the Federal Express and Retail Nexus…

“The what?” Marcus said aloud.

… you are the next in queue.

In tandem with his question, the phone line clicked alive. At first it was silent, he didn’t want to be the one to break it, so he waited. There was no breath on the other end of the line, no sound at all aside from the faintest buzzing of electricity, until a syrupy sweet voice brought the connection alive, “Hello, Marcus.”

“F.E.R.N.,” he replied.

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BONES by Wilson Koewing

March 3, 2020 · Fiction

I slide the glass racks to the side and peer into the dish pit where Bones struggles mightily to scrape the charred remnants of bread pudding from a hotel pan.

“Bones, how are you holding up?”

“Good, Chef Adam,” Bones says.

“Let me know if you get overwhelmed.”

“Ah, shit,” Bones laughs.

Bones is pushing seventy. He’s worked the dish pit at the country club for seven years. When he can escape the pit, Bones sweeps by the dumpster or deep cleans the upstairs banquet kitchen—tasks that take him far from the watchful eye of Executive Chef, Craig.

I discovered the nickname Bones came from his high school running back days. Bones because he was hard as bones. He received a scholarship to Auburn but blew out his knee. I could still see the running back in him.

When I pass Bones later in the afternoon, he’s on one knee scrubbing a drain by the walk-in cooler. I enter Chef Craig’s office. He swivels in his chair.

“Is Bones still cleaning that fucking drain?”

“Yep.”

“I watched him clean a pot for twenty minutes earlier,” Chef says. “He thinks he’s clever.”

“I think he’s just old, chef.”

“Feel free to fire him.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“He’s your responsibility. Now get started on those stocks.”

***

To make beef stock, I toss oven-roasted veal bones in a tilt-kettle with onions, peppers and spices. To make crawfish stock, I retrieve a sack of live crawfish from the walk-in. Their tiny claws pinch at the sack’s purple netting. I place the sack in a deep sink and fill it with cold water to purge the crawfish.

After adding the trinity (onions, peppers, celery), I pour in the purged crawfish and crush them with an electric mixer. I can’t watch them change from living creature to mush. I always look away. When what remains resembles a reddish batter, I fill the tilt-kettle with water and crank it to high.

***

Ally is asleep upstairs when I get home. When we met, I was finishing culinary and she was two years into med school. I studied days and worked nights. Now we only spend nights together when she stays up to watch our shows or when things align “for us to try.” Ally says we can’t wait to have kids. Her orthopedic work with elderly patients has exposed how quickly we degrade.

I pour a scotch and go to the patio for a cigarette. Smoke rises toward our bedroom window. Ally’s beside lamp turns on, and I follow her path to the bathroom where she flips on the light. My phone buzzes.

Working late?

Yeah. Grabbing a drink after.

***

I slide onto a stool at Molotov and order a Sazerac. I watch Kelly tend her tables. On her way to the kitchen, she’s stopped by an older gentleman at the bar. He’s been coming in a lot lately. Always the same stool, always a Vieux Carre. Kelly’s face flushes. She places her hand on his arm and continues. Noticing me, she mouths, “twenty minutes.”

The sign for the Hotel Monteleone bathes Kelly’s living room in red light. I sip scotch and stare out the window at the Quarter below. Kelly emerges from her bedroom wearing pajamas.

“Make me one?”

I point to a glass on the coffee table.

“Expensive scotch,” I say.

“It was a gift.”

She lands on the couch and reaches for the glass.

“Who is that old guy at the bar?”

“Who? Ron?”

“How old is Ron?”

“Late forties, maybe.”

“He graduated high school before you were born.”

Kelly grabs a joint from a cigar box on the table and lights it.

“Ally came in the other day,” Kelly says. “I recognized her from your Facebook.”

I crack the window. A drunk couple stumbles through the bloom of a streetlight.

“You shouldn’t smoke in here.”

“No recognition whatsoever,” she continues. “I guess you’ve wiped me from your social media footprint entirely.”

I take a seat beside her on the couch.

“Dylan’s doing well at school,” she says, inching closer. “They’re studying human anatomy. I bought him one of those life-sized wall-hanging skeletons with Velcro bones and organs he can place where they’re supposed to go.”

“You’re still getting along okay with five hundred a month?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Just wish you’d try and see him more.”

“I told you I can’t take being introduced as ‘mommy’s friend’ anymore,” I say. “He’s getting older. Things will start to click soon.”

“I never wanted it to be this way,” she says. “It would crush Ally, remember?”

She straddles me and starts unbuttoning my shirt.

“But you just can’t stop coming over, can you?”

Before going home, I peek in Dylan’s room. He’s curled up in a pool of moonlight shining through the window. He-Man and Skeletor do battle on his pajamas. I can see both of us in his features, but he will only see his mother’s. Hanging on the closet door is the skeleton. The bones and organs are perfectly placed except for the heart, which is too high, practically in the skeleton’s throat.

***

The next day, after a hellish lunch rush, I’m drawn by a fracas from the dish pit. Bones is sprawled on the ground holding his chest. I hold his hand and comfort him until the EMTs arrive, place an oxygen mask over his face and take him away.

I drop the beef and crawfish stocks through a China cap into five-gallon buckets so nothing solid enters the liquids. Once the stocks are dropped, only the bones remain. We receive them as bones and dispose of them the same. In between, we suck everything we can from them. With a metal paddle, I scrape the remnants into plastic Lexan containers then spray the kettle clean. I hoist the containers onto a cart and push it outside where I toss the bones in the dumpster.

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RESCUE 60640 by Megan Carlson

March 1, 2020 · Fiction

Google Search History (retrieved 11/14/2019)

How to get salt stain out of Uggs
How to make friends
How to make friends in your 30s
60640 coffee shop
weather Chicago
60640 coffee shop NOT starbucks
negative effects of caffeine
alternatives to caffeine
benefits of chamomile
Making friends at coffee shop
how to talk to strangers
how to be less awkward
how to be less intense with new people
be less intense
be less
am I too much quiz
liquor store 60640
husband distant
my husband is distant what do I do
emotional connection in relationship
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Instacart login
Instacart customer service
Instacart login help
what’s my fucking password
can tea get you high?
can chamomile get you high?
household items to get you high
is cooking wine the same as regular wine?
amount of alcohol in cooking wine
alcoholism quiz
drinking in moderation
drinking alone normal
do all men have intimacy issues?
lonely in my relationship
alone in my relationship
I feel alone
finding emotional connection outside relationship
finding emotional connection outside relationship NOT divorce
adoptable dogs 60640
adoptable cats 60640
funny cat videos
depression
alternative medicine depression
benefits of lavender
can lavender help me
help me
help me
help me
adoptable dogs rescue 60640

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MY NONNA’S CURSE by Elizabeth Kattner

March 1, 2020 · Fiction

I have six impacted teeth. My mouth is overcrowded as the New York streets I wander. Too many people, not enough space. Life learns to grow upward. Skyscrapers. My teeth got the wrong message and push sideways.

I take two tablets of ibuprofen to dull the pain. My coworker offers something stronger. Vicodin from when he tore his ACL last spring. I cut one of the oblong pills in half. It’s dangerous, but I was born in Columbus, the epicenter of the opioid crisis. I know to exercise caution.

My coworker says I should get my wisdom teeth pulled. I ask him with what money. We work at the ass-end of Wall Street. Dental sure as hell ain’t covered here. He suggests cannabis, which is easier to find than health insurance. I remind him of our government piss tests.

“Well, shit,” he says. “If they won’t take care of us, we should be allowed to get high.”

“You’d think,” I say.

He gives me the rest of his Vicodin. Six pills that I cut in half. We have a big make-or-break proposal coming up. This will get me through it. After that, maybe my Christmas bonus will cover a trip to the dentist. If not, I’ll do it myself. I’ve seen the videos. Slice open the gum and use a drill to remove bits of the jawbone. Next, shatter the tooth and pull it out piecemeal. Seems like a lot of work when a good punch will do it with far less effort.

I hide the pills under a spare menstrual pad I keep in my purse. It’s a trick I learned from my high school girlfriend. She kept Ritalin in a box marked "birth control." The nun who was our homeroom teacher wouldn’t touch the box when she did bag searches. Catholic guilt has its uses.

She’s a doctor now, my ex. I saw her graduation photos on Facebook. Blonde and smiling with a new girlfriend on her arm. I wonder if she’s still selling pills and if she’d give me the old flame discount.

I rub my jaw. The pain gets worse after lunch. Maybe I should give up my salads with walnuts and dried strawberries and eat soup instead. Like my nonna did in the final days of her life when she was too weak to chew.

Only twenty-six and already becoming my nonna. Except she had ALS. That’s another thing my work won’t cover. Genetic testing. Insurance classifies it as "non-emergent" and I’m left wondering if this pain is the start of a much greater agony. A short life spent in the care of doctors like my ex. At that point, my impacted teeth would be the least of my problems.

I take another ibuprofen at the end of the day. My boss says I was productive today and to keep up the good work. I want to tell him any number of things I learned from my Italian grandmother. She supported the rise of Italy’s communist party in 1921. My impacted teeth might be her curse for becoming another cog in the corporate machine. She left Italy because of Stalin but capitalism was her real enemy. Vai a farti fottere. That’s what she’d tell my boss if she were still alive. Go and get fucked.

If only I had her courage.

I don’t. Instead, I’m am a good little cog who smiles and wishes my boss a nice night. The pleasantry makes my impacted teeth shift and grind against the roots of fully erupted ones. My nonna’s ghost rattles my bones and I bite my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. I go home with my Vicodin hidden in my purse and try to make it through the month.

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AFTER A MONTH, WE MEET FOR DINNER by Francine Witte

February 27, 2020 · Fiction

First thing I notice, new haircut, the grays dyed clean away.

I’m careful with my words. Nice shirt, I finally say.

I’m aware he never dressed this nice for me. I found it in my closet, he says.

The waitress brings a basket of bread.

You look good, he says. I can smell the scratches on his neck. They smell like blood and sex and another woman.

Would you like some bread? I ask.

Cutting down, he says, pointing to his stomach, flatter than I recall.

The waitress returns, and we order small. Nothing that will take too long.

The bread is piled high in the basket. The smell is filling up the air between us. When I look at him again, he has the eyes of a ghost.

My shoulders sink, and I grab a piece of bread. I bite into it, final and hard, because, frankly, it lets me.

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THE HANDS REMEMBER by Andrea Rinard

February 26, 2020 · Fiction

I sit on the bench outside Publix. A little boy ran by me in light-up sneakers when I was almost, almost, almost to the door, and suddenly I could hear Caleb’s feet, encased like two meat loaves in the shoes I got him before he started K-3, drumming against the cart. He was so careful not to kick me after that one time–Don’t hurt Mommy!

I’d had to let go of the cart and sit down because everything was narrowing down to a tunnel with Caleb at the other end. I tried to count my breaths, and I told Tom to just go, just go, and he didn’t ask what the trigger was. He just went through the sliding doors into the grocery store.

I hold the memory the way Caleb’s chubby fingers would grip the handle of the cart, my fingers closed around themselves like a puzzle. Caleb used to crack himself up, asking for silly things for dinner. I want toilet paper to eat! I’ll eat it all! And he’d cackle and I’d laugh and we’d putter around the store, doing the things that only the two of us in the whole world do, but now I’m doing the breathing stuff Dr. B’s been working on with me.

In. Out. In. Out. Feel your lungs expand. I can’t go in the store. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t. Tom says won’t, but it’s not that. It’s just a word, but it’s a word that he’s pushing around with the cart right now, filling it with meals that he’ll prepare, and I won’t eat, and I can feel his rage from where I’m sitting. I have no room for anger, though. The despair is too big and too heavy. There’s no space for anything else.

It’s been three months, he’d said. Fifteen weeks and two days, I’d said, and his jaw did that thing that was new like so many other things that were new since Caleb left. Died, Dr. B’s voice shoves me, but I whisper left. I don’t like the vocabulary I’m asked to use—words like trigger, mindfulness, ruminative coping, adaptive grieving, and bereavement pathways--so I don’t. So stubborn. That’s new too.

Something nudges my ankle, and I look down. There’s a collarless little dog sitting by my right foot, a brown terrier mutt. It looks like Toto but brown and not quite like Toto after all. It’s looking up at me, and I recognize him immediately. If I hadn’t been looking, I wouldn’t have seen him. Caleb, I whisper, and the little dog wags his tail and lets me stretch my hands around his warm belly and lift him to my lap where he perches like a toddler.

There’s a fat tick under his left eye like a gray teardrop, and I pinch it off. All that stuff about matches and tweezers is unnecessary. You just have to know what to do, and my hands remember. Like holding a newborn with its head like a giant flower on a narrow stem or rubbing a sweaty back just right after a nightmare or cutting a sandwich into two perfect, crustless triangles. It’s been fifteen weeks and two days since they’ve had work to do, but my hands remember. As the dog and I gaze into each other’s eyes, I know he remembers too. Caleb.

Tom doesn’t know how to say no to me anymore, so the three of us go home together. Tom calls it a mutt, but Dr. B calls it an affirmation of life, so I win. She suggests so, so, so gently that I find a different name, a name that will represent this new chapter in your story, but it’s Caleb, and I don’t even care how Tom winces every time I call him to me. I don’t care that the house echoes with his anger. It’s just a dog! But I know what’s real.

He makes me choose after twenty-seven weeks and four days, and it’s not a choice. I don’t even need Dr. B anymore. Caleb and I sit on the couch together while Tom packs a bag. I’ll be at my parents’ until I find my own place. I’ll get the rest of my stuff after I figure out what I’m doing. I feel bad for him, but I already know what I’m doing. I gather Caleb up in my arms, and he doesn’t even wiggle much as I hold him tight against my breasts and rock back and forth, enjoying the silence with my little boy.

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MARKS by Monica Dickson

February 25, 2020 · Fiction

‘The phantom scribbler strikes again’ – Biro on gloss, 1976

The cubicle door is freshly scarred, blue ink on institutional green. This is where John learns to read. John has been constipated since he started school. His mother takes him to the doctor and they send him to hospital where he drinks barium, so they can see what’s wrong with his insides. They let him take the x-ray home. There it is, a white cloud shaped like a question mark.

‘Fuck exams’ – Compass on wooden desk, 1981

John could do better if only he would apply himself. John is of a higher ability than his results indicate. John is not giving his ‘all’, which is a pity. John should attempt to have a more open and positive attitude instead of fostering a negative and often critical outlook. John’s success in the 11-plus requires sustained effort and full commitment, and success only comes at a price. A rather more respectful attitude to those in authority might benefit John in the future. John has a flair for the written word.

‘When two tribes go to war’ – Black permanent marker on red bus shelter, 1984

John’s mother has left John’s dad and has started going on CND marches. The shelter where John smokes is directly outside the church hall where John once went to playgroup. Play was curling up on a camp bed, under an army blanket, pretending to be asleep. Now John pretends to read the bus timetable as he makes his marks. He notices the sticker on the bin that says Keep Britain Tidy. Somebody has tried to burn a hole in the bin, and the melted plastic has hardened and curled into a black tidal wave.

‘Neither work nor leisure’ - Matt white masonry paint on viaduct, 1990 (‘heaven’ style)

John has been signing on for two years. He is told that he has to take Action For Employment. He turns up at the dole centre every day and writes stories about job-seeking for job-seekers with a ‘positive outlook’. Sometimes they print them, unabridged, in the A4E newsletter. When they are not arguing, he and his mate, Dave, an unemployed photographer, wander round the city centre talking to other unemployed people and taking pictures of buildings where employed people work. Back at his bedsit, John practises writing upside down and right to left. One night, when the tracks are quiet, John hangs over the side of the bridge. His message drips onto the empty road below.

‘More than words’ – Cursive on mashed potato (Shepherd’s pie), 1993

John has cooked the tea. Dave has gone off to Uni to study photography and his was-girlfriend, Sal, has moved in with John. Sal is having his baby so John and Sal are trying to get to know each other, sober. Sal is an artist too. She makes work from found objects and creates installations. John studies the signs next to her exhibits and tries to make sense of them. Sal heaves herself and her materials around the studio, repositioning, taking things away, making tiny, important adjustments to what she is trying to say.

‘This family is fake’ - High performance acrylic paint in red on exterior wall of 3-bed semi, 1997

Solvent Dave

MET:

Practical Sal

AT:

Dave’s graduation

TO:

Act like they’re happy

HE SAID:

I’ve got the time if you’ve got the inclination

SHE SAID:

What could possibly go wrong

SO THEY:

Bought a Barratt Home near a primary school (Good with Outstanding Features)

AND THE WORLD SAID:

Can you blame them?

‘The habitable biosphere is illegal’ – Black spray paint on permissive path, 2001

John cycles along the canal, where the water is fringed with a cappuccino-like froth. He brings his daughter, Jess, to school this way and she stops to look at the heron, the kingfisher, the fly-tipping, with equal awe. They see another sign, upright on the towpath. Beneath the tags, the local authority typeface warns, ‘Defacing this notice can result in prosecution’.

‘Dirtier than an MP’s expenses’ - reverse graffiti on white van rear, 2009

John has moved on and John is stuck. He is tired, all the time. John knows that the wrong is outside of him, that x-rays and tests will show nothing. He drives to work. He drives home again. He listens to the news then uses his flair for the written word to sign online petitions and argue with strangers on BBM. Jess kisses his cheek, calls him ‘armchair activist’ and ‘dickhead’. John could do better if only he would apply himself.

‘Life not death for my grand-kids’ – red, eco-friendly chalk spray on stone cladding, 2019 (stencil type)

John and Jess make cardboard banners while her baby sleeps. They work quickly, using throw up and blockbuster lettering, simple, like the children’s messages: There is no planet B. Denial is not a policy. John studies their signs, and the words of the children, with equal awe. One, in particular, sticks. I could be learning history but I’d rather be changing it. John is giving it his all.

x-r-a-y magazine

THE CLOCKMAKER by Lucy Zhang

February 24, 2020 · Fiction

Far away—further than the deli store only frequented by the patrolling police officer and a few custodians, further than the farm with three cows and a horse and several chickens guarded from preying hawks by a fishing line ceiling, further than the white oak tree and its branches striking outward, and certainly much further than the borders of the city—is a cottage. Planks of wood bar the windows shut; mold creeps across the brick walls; pipes wind down from the roof to the ground, and the sound of water dripping on metal beats steadily to the murmurs of wind against loose shutters.

Don’t go there, it’s dangerous, parents tell their children. The parents think the basement must be full of human limbs hiding in coffins, cleaned and dusted daily, the work of a madman. They think the cobwebs are part of the madman’s machinations–to prevent anyone from looking further and seeing the incongruous gleam of a lab of bodies, the sanitized Erlenmeyer flasks, the flame of a Bunsen burner, the yellow glow of liquid metal held in a crucible. The parents think their children will vanish should they take one step towards the cottage, bodies never surfaced, and the adults will be forced to live on silently, listening to the rhythm of the morning forecast and traffic jam, holding their breath when the newscaster mentions a child kidnapping off the streets of their city, grinding their teeth at night when they dream of their shame–the shame of losing a child to a reason they can’t put into words. So they live silently.

Among the children, a few know the truth: the cottage houses a clockmaker.

The clockmaker cuts and sands the teeth of his own gears from wood that he later stains and seals to shield them from the years to come. He knows the escapement wheel must be cut perfectly, or else the clock might skip teeth, might not run, and time stops for someone.

One day, a girl ends up at his door. He is assembling his clock with dowels, adjusting the escape wheel until the pallets ticked and tocked against the teeth without seizing up when he hears the knocks. He pulls open the door, a creaking monstrosity he prefers to keep shut. The girl asks for a job. She says she wants to learn to build a clock so she can gift one to her family for the holidays.

They don’t already have a clock? he asks.

Only one in their bedroom. None in the kitchen, even though there is plenty of space on the wall beside the parrot ceramic tiles and free grocery store calendar.

You’ll have to walk all the way here every day in the cold, he warns. The tips of the girl’s ears are bright red, and he wonders if she can feel her feet in those perforated fabric sneakers meant to let feet “breathe.” But the girl stands in front of him, head over her shoulders, the top of her shoulders over her hips, unwavering in her posture despite the wind cutting across her back. He admires her resolve and finds himself unable to say no. Not after years of living alone, secluding himself with his craft, immune to the city’s noise.

Making clocks here is dangerous work, he tells her on the first day. Everything needs to be handled with precision, or else your clock won’t function.

The girl nods as she begins to draw two concentric circles on the Alder wood sheet with the stub of a pencil, his only pencil. He no longer needs to sketch, the pattern now ingrained in muscle memory. He watches her lift the tip of graphite again as she marks off lines with a protractor every thirty degrees, connects the intersection points for the teeth, attempts to correct the uneven line of a tooth when her grip falters, sharpens the edge, cleans the line again so there’d be no confusion over which line to follow when slicing through the wood. The teeth need to be the same size, he tells her as she begins to saw through wood. It takes ten tries—ten abandoned wheels—before the girl gets it right.

When they take breaks to wash their hands of wood dust or stretch their backs and necks hunched over more often than not, they sip Lipton Black Tea out of Styrofoam cups while eating graham crackers, the sole snack in his cabinets. The girl speaks little but listens to him with an unfamiliar attentiveness—the kind where people don’t quite make eye contact, but look up at you with wonder, and somehow they forget that their leg is bobbing up and down or that their tea has gotten cold—and he feels flattered. He tells her how he has long forgotten how he came to stay at this cottage, how he sells clocks to ghosts lost in their time, how he saves souls from wandering and waiting when the pendulum halts, how he has not aged in years. In turn, she tells him of how she would cook chicken stew with more potatoes than chicken because russet potatoes are filling and cheap, how at eight pm she’d reheat up the stew for exactly two minutes in the microwave so the food would be warm when her parents came home, how she’d eat the leftovers the next day when she realized her parents did not return home on time and must’ve gotten a takeout meal instead. She tells him of the one time she could not find her stuffed rhinoceros and later discovered it suffocating in a trash bag left outside the door for Goodwill, so she rescued her rhino and rubbed its soft body against her cheek and nuzzled her nose against its stomach, which smelled of cotton and old shoes, before returning it to her bedside so it could sleep.

The girl finishes the clock early spring as a belated Christmas present to her parents. Flowers blossom on the once barren trees, the mold on the walls that once looked black lightens to green, and the cottage no longer appears haunted, but rather like a place where children get spirited away by faeries. She holds the clock under her arm, gripping the bottom edge until the whites of her knuckles contrast her pale skin. Good luck, the man tells the girl, wondering if he’ll see her again.

To his surprise, the girl returns the next day with the clock. It stopped working, she says. He looks at the clock. The second-hand makes its way around the center in one quiet sweep movement; the minute hand adjusts itself forward. The girl follows his glance. It wasn’t working a few hours ago at home.

Then we’ll just have to make another one, the man says without noticing pollen drift from the clock’s frame onto his finger. It is always winter to him.

In the city, where the days are a bit longer now and cherry blossoms bloom along the apartment sidewalks, a family disassembles a bed and places it into a cardboard moving box for Goodwill to pick up. They briefly wonder how the stuffed rhino made its way back to the bedroom before placing it into a Glad trash bag of children’s dresses and sweaters. It has been almost two years since their daughter went missing and the mother and father know better than most how time heals many wounds, but not all. It has been one month since the police reported their discovery of a girl’s body, dead from hypothermia. It has been one day since they could no longer silently listen to the morning forecast, the sizzle of eggs against oil, the carols of robins roaming the streets for food. The family thinks of moving far away—to leave it all behind.

In the cottage, a man and a girl build clocks. When winter returns, they sip hot Lipton Black tea and tell the same stories to each other, as though the season never dies off only for another to follow in its demise, as though time has never passed. Because it hasn’t. Not for them.

Lucy Zhang is a writer masquerading around as a software engineer. She watches anime and sleeps in on weekends like a normal human being. Recent publications include: Porridge, Ligeia, Ghost Parachute, Twist in Time, MoonPark Review. She can be found at https://kowaretasekai.wordpress.com/ or on Twitter @Dango_Ramen.

Art by Bob Schofield @anothertower

x-r-a-y magazine

THE CLOCKMAKER by Lucy Zhang

February 24, 2020 · Fiction

Among the children, a few know the truth: the cottage houses a clockmaker.

They don’t already have a clock? he asks.

Only one in their bedroom. None in the kitchen, even though there is plenty of space on the wall beside the parrot ceramic tiles and free grocery store calendar.

Making clocks here is dangerous work, he tells her on the first day. Everything needs to be handled with precision, or else your clock won’t function.

Then we’ll just have to make another one, the man says without noticing pollen drift from the clock’s frame onto his finger. It is always winter to him.

x-r-a-y magazine

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