X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine | Fiction

EYE BITES by Jenny Fried

September 13, 2018 · Fiction

What You Need to Know

I cut off a rat’s head with a guillotine, and it told me I looked like someone who ate cereal for every meal, which was one I hadn’t heard before. I do not in fact eat cereal for every meal, but there’s no use fighting with a rat head. I learned not to argue when I tried to kiss someone and was so nervous I missed her mouth. At first she told me it was cute, but later she said she didn’t know why she bothered with me. I got lost in the forest once. I remembered reading about mazes, so I took only left turns for as long as I could. I found a hill made all out of sand and a man with long straight hair. I knew I knew him from somewhere but I couldn’t figure out where the information I wanted was, trapped inside my head. It was like a seal I saw on the beach once. All its flippers were fine, and its tail was touching the water, but it couldn’t figure out how to get back in.

Things I Know

The animals commonly known as seals are referred to as pinnipeds in the scientific community. Kingdom: Animalia. Phylum: Chordata. Class: Mammalia. Order: Carnivora. Suborder: Caniformia. Raskovnik is the Bulgarian name for Marslilea quadrifolia, a small plant that looks like a four leaf clover. It is not particularly rare, nor does it grow in remote areas, but is completely unidentifiable to the untrained eye. A legendary herb of the same name was said to be able to open any lock. The distance from the earth to the sun is 4.85 million parsecs, 149.60 million kilometers, 92.96 million miles, 327.22 billion cubits. Thousands of people have childhood memories of a series of kid’s books called the Berenstein Bears, pronounced like steen. They never existed. It’s the Berenstain Bears, pronounced like stain. The erroneous memory is embedded so strongly in some people’s heads that it has been cited as proof that we are now living in a parallel universe, that it was -stein when we were kids, but that timeline was erased somewhere along the way.

What I Say to You

I think if I were an animal I would be a seal.

That Night

I make out with a chair and then it rips off its face, but it isn’t you its someone else I know. We go to a protest at my old high school and I am so so late for Spanish but this is important. A short kid with a beard sneaks away with my backpack while I’m chanting. I run after him I think but my legs are still at the protest and he gives my bag back because I ask him nicely. I go to an Italian restaurant with my parents and my mom kisses our waitress on the cheek. When she turns into a frog I wonder how I’m going to pay my college tuition. My frog mom swims around the glass of water the waitress keeps refilling and I keep drinking it because I don’t know how to tell her to stop. I don’t know how to tell you to stop looking at me because its not that I don’t like your eyes I do I just know that your pupils will start taking little bites of me when they dilate because that’s just how these things go.

Out Your Car Window

Even when it isn’t that hot yet if you look closely you can always see asphalt shake and shimmer a little. I think it’s jealous. Everything always moves over it and it has to stay still. Its just like how when you see deer next to the highway they’re always looking at you and their eyes are always full of that look you give bridges when you’re wading through the water. But there aren’t any deer this time because I asked you to go the slow way, only boys on bicycles and a dirty Laundromat every couple of blocks. Somewhere inside there’s probably a chute where they throw all the lost socks and a place where their ashes stay and the sock ghosts crawl out and go haunt feet and doorknobs. It’s kind of weird to look at someone who can’t look back but what else are you supposed to do if you aren’t the one who’s driving?

What I Say to You

Do you know what paper tastes like?

Sort of. I ate straw wrappers when I was a kid.

I ate old newspapers. I didn’t realize they didn’t taste good until I was done eating.

Like aftertaste?

Kind of.

Not quite?

It’s more like you forget what it tastes like while it’s happening.

Like you have to think about it later?

Yeah.

What are we talking about?

Eating paper.

We’re talking about eating paper?

Sure.

That’s it?

I guess.

Last Year

The bites started small, with just the eyes. Little love bites. Then there were words I could see on my skin. Then the big ones. Bite one pushed the air out of my belly. Bite two left a mark on my face. Bite three put a chip in my tooth. Sometimes I still cut myself on it when I’m trying to speak.

Things I Know About You

You walk with your heels turned in.

You always have cough drops in your pockets.

You don’t turn the radio on in your car, even when we aren’t talking.

You know more kinds of bears than I do.

You do your laundry in the sink.

You always forget to staple your papers together.

You wear shoelaces that are too long, and they drag on the ground even when you remember to double knot them.

You don’t have any pets

You answer my questions, even stupid ones.

You go the slow way if I ask you to.

Your Place

I know that walking through doors makes you forget things because I read it somewhere. When I walk into rooms sometimes I forget what I am doing there and then I lie down on the floor and look up at the ceiling and wonder how many doors I have to walk through before I forget everything.

I know that you are looking at me because your eyes take three bites.

I like your eyes. I like your eyes. I know I like your eyes, I do, and my tail is in the water. You put your hand on my arm, you put your hand on my face, and look, look it’s you. But what if it isn’t, what if you rip off your face and it isn’t you it’s someone else I know, and your hand is on my face. Again. Her hand is on my face again.

Shut up don’t argue with a girl who wants to eat you.

Under the Table

You find me under the table and you put my head in your lap. We stay right there, and you don’t say anything, and I think you are good for me, I want to say you are good to me, I want to say stop looking at me, I’m under the table for a reason, and your eyes are just little bites now but what if they get bigger. I want to say what if I want to say stop but instead I just think it, but instead I just think it.

Jenny Fried

FLIPPED by Zac Smith

September 11, 2018 · Fiction

Brad flipped his car after hitting a fire hydrant, right downtown, right on Fifth Street, right near our old apartment, the prefurnished one with the broken window and the red wall and the kitchen that had bookshelves instead of cabinets, he was driving, something happened, who knows, he hit the hydrant and the car went upward, upward, from the height of the hydrant and the height of the curb, and the car veered upward and over the hydrant, and the hydrant's base cracked under the weight and pressure of the car and the angle of it, and the cracked base gave way so that the water could come out, and it came out, one huge spray into the underbelly of the car and out into the street below while car ascended into the air itself, at an angle, fast and strange, twisting, up and around, the body of the hydrant lifted, dislodged, entirely broken free, the water coming out as a geyser, up and out, the body of the hydrant rolling away, or more tumbling away, bouncing under the force of the impact, the force of the water, the car's wheels spun and the engine roared freely, the tired no longer struggling against the friction of the road but against nothing, free air, spinning madly, the engine just bellowing as the car veered upward, the clanging of the hydrant as loud as the screaming of the engine and the roar of the water, all three a unified cacophony on Fifth Street near our old apartment, right in front of the convenience store where people would gather to smoke and scratch off lottery tickets and ask for change and sell weed and catch up with the other people who lived on the block or around the corner, and who we would sometimes buy forties with and scratch off lottery tickets and talk about what the other people on the block were doing, who they were with, where they had been and what they planned on doing, who was leaving town, alone, or leaving with someone else, people we knew or didn't know or had only heard about, or people who we saw buying beer but who never hung out, and right next to the laundromat where someone died once in the bathroom, then they closed off the whole place with police tape, and everyone was crowded around trying to see who it was, if it was anyone we thought it would be, anyone we expected to die in a bathroom, or who always hung out in the laundromat for whatever reason, but it was just some nobody that no one knew, it was right in front of that laundromat where he flipped the car, his foot still on the gas, the car in the air, the tires spinning, engine screaming, water spraying, hydrant rolling off, and when the car landed it was the loudest of everything, a real crashing down, the whole car coming down from the air with its full weight, just a huge crash, the windows crunching into a million tiny bits and the hood crumpling in and the engine letting up, finally, a big groan into nothing, but the water still spraying up and wide, less murky now that it was finished clearing out the old silty pipes in the neighborhood and pushing in fresh clean water, spraying all over the upside down car, all over the street, the curb, like the car, car half on the curb, half in the street, Brad pinned between the wheel and the seat and the roof of the car but able eventually to wrench himself out through the busted-out window, on his back, coming out like a baby covered in glass and blood and just staring at the water coming up and spraying out everywhere while the radio kept playing, louder than almost everything else except for the water spraying out and splashing down, louder than Brad muttering “shit, goddamn," over and over again, louder than him just muttering the same thing over and over again, wondering when the cops would come, whether anyone would call them, whether he would have to call them, wondering what would happen if they came, what would happen if they never came, all kinds of shit, over and over again, the same shit just over and over again in his head.

Zac Smith

MILK by Michael Mungiello

September 10, 2018 · Fiction

I’m on my way to mom’s apartment.

I’m at mom’s apartment.

Wow, nice. She’s really spruced up the place.

Mom?

I’m in here!

Down the hallway, wood floor, wood walls, wood doors, wood frames around photos (of me as a baby, me at my wedding, none in between); plants.

Mom?

Kitchen. Mom’s cluttered kitchen, Tchotchke salt shakers, detergent blue water sitting in the sink, a mini-TV in the corner and a little man saying in the Voice of Concern

A Storm Is Coming.

I look at the whole scene through the linty light coming through mom’s drawn translucent curtains.

Hey, Mom! Came to check up on you before the big storm. Do you need anything?

Oh, how neglected I am!

No one takes care of me!

For all you care, I could die!

Woah woah woah—what?

And she does the aftercry sigh and shiver and explains: last night she fell; couldn’t get up; called me but I didn’t answer (my phone was dead and I was out and she calls me once a day so sometimes, you know what, maybe I’m entitled to ignore a call, maybe it feels good); she called dad; he picked up; came over; helped her up; left; mom fell again; and couldn’t get up until early this morning, she had to move around on the floor and leverage several equidistant pieces of furniture.

Jesus, that sounds terrible, mom! Why didn’t you call dad again?

She doesn’t say, exactly, but talks about pride, pride, pride. Dignity; couldn’t I have called back? And dad, she didn’t want to steal him away again from whatever he’d been doing at that hour…

Yikes, mom.

But it’s nice to be with her. Why? She asks about my job (I’m a pharmacist) and roasts me about the stupid things I say and she roasts me in a way that confirms that those things are stupid but that I’m not. Critiquing is how she connects. She has long grey thick hair like she could be a famous poet with a black-and-white headshot but she’s not a poet.

She points to my belly.

I’m pregnant, by the way, 4 months.

You look fat.

Yeah, mom, I just found out it’s twins.

(This is a lie. It’s not twins.)

I’m worried though. What will the baby’s life be like, Lorenzo is on another business trip, left with no notice. Things between us? Not good. And I know he’d always provide for the kid with money but as Lorenzo would say in business-talk:

I’m afraid I’ve written a check I can’t cash, emotionally.

The phone rings.

Mom answers.

Hello…Completely?...Okay.

Yes. Soon. Thank you.

I decide not to ask, it’d just give her an excuse to talk about how nobody cares about her, again. Mom’s quiet. She gets a tall glass and fills it with water and drinks it in a swig. Then she gets a gallon of milk from the fridge (I spot her like she's lifting weights, which is ridiculous because someone should be spotting me! I'm lifting weights) and she has a tall glass of milk.

Ah, milk. I have milk memories, like how in college I used to put vodka in my half-full gallon of milk so I could drink during the day without roommates noticing. (Milk gets rid of the smell.)

Ah, memories.

Mom makes the ahhh sound and puts down her glass.

Wow, what thirst!

She turns to me, panting with slaked satisfaction.

That was Cheryl. Dad’s dead.

Dad and I once went to a baseball game. He bought me a pretzel and looked very tall, very strong. I told mom the truth, he and I had a good time. Later she hurt her back and I connected the dots and didn’t speak highly of dad ever again. Her back didn’t improve, and hasn’t.

Outside birds and worms, pedestrians and rats, everybody scurries to a place where they’ll be safe. Meanwhile I’m on my way to dad’s, alone. Big clouds darkly hover over me. I feel ashamed. Was it something I did that made dad die? Or is this some kind of joke?

I take a cab and despite myself relish the opportunity to spend money like that. If not now, when?

Hi Cheryl.

She opens the door and is sad. Paramedics already there have given up and logged time place cause.

Hi Karen. Is your mother…?

Mom isn’t feeling well, she needed to go lie down after the shock. (That’s what mom told me to tell Cheryl.)

To me it all feels autocompleted. Of course dad died. Of course I’m here. Of course I’m consoling Cheryl, perfectly adequate stepmother. Of course of course.

You sure you’re okay?

You’re not even crying!

Yes, Cheryl. Thank you, Cheryl.

You have to feel your feelings!

Yes, Cheryl. Thank you, Cheryl.

I sincerely try to earnestly sniffle.

Cheryl grew up on a farm in Vermont and is into energies.

The difference between mom’s place and dad’s place is that dad’s place has an upstairs and a basement: three levels total. Mom? Just one floor. I guess that’s just the difference between a house and an apartment.

Photos here too, above granite countertops and under mini-chandeliers. Dad and Cheryl on their honeymoon and on fun vacations to Greece (I like these). Me and mom and dad—my communion, graduation, wedding. I wear a version of the same dress in all three.

Dad won’t meet his grandkid.

That’s sad.

It makes me angry.

Their cat is on the ground. He shows me his belly.

Cheryl, what did they say? Oh I see. Heart attack.

The phone rings. Cheryl goes but the person hangs up as soon as Cheryl says hi.

So difficult to believe.

I know, Cheryl.

He was the best man I knew.

And it’s stupid but I agree. He was actually nice. When he asked if I liked a movie or a book or a song on the radio that played while we were in the car (he’d ask after every song when it was just the two of us in the car)—he cared about my answer.

He was curious about me, fascinated. When he was around.

He’d also do this thing where he didn’t visit for a long time, even though he was a subway away.

(Dad: Park Slope. Mom: Upper East Side.)

Oh.

He’s dead.

Actually dead.

The paramedics are leaving with the body. Cheryl follows and I’m going to get mom.

The storm speaks!

Rumble Rumble

I look out the wide windows in dad’s study. Little rain sounds on the windowpane, steady then faster like—sorry—heartbeats.

I’m feeling sensitive.

I want to be with mom.

I clutch a photo of us all and take it with me when I leave, I don’t really look at it.

I’m in a cab to mom’s and now I look at it. It’s us at the Grand Canyon, the trip we all took, even Cheryl.

Mom looks pissed.

Dad doesn’t seem to notice she’s pissed.

I realize, if I was mom, that would only make me more pissed.

(Cheryl, nervously cheery.)

Thunder Rumble

Lorenzo calls but I decline.

I get to mom’s.

Knock.

Freak out, get the landlord to let me in.

Mom’s dead.

On the ground, on her back, hand on her belly.

She looks vulnerable but she’s not vulnerable she’s just dead.

The landlord says

Oh no.

Your mom’s dead.

The rain is coming down not in sheets nor in blankets but in beds, California Queen. Like the weather is furious at the windows.

I don’t call Cheryl because I know mom would kill me. The landlord calls an ambulance but the streets are already flooding.

The other tenants are calling him—leaks!—and he has to check on his own room.

They’ll be here soon.

Everything’ll be handled.

I have to leave.

It’s okay, thanks for unlocking the door.

Well mom, you and me.

I hear a beeping sound over the rain brigade. What the hell?

The smoke alarm in the living room is going. I glance up and get a whopping drop of water right in my eye. Then a bunch of other drops on the back of my head when I turn away to wipe my eye. Then a torrent, a pillar, a fire hydrant’s worth of water. It’s like a whale is upside down on the roof and its blowhole is lined up exactly with the alarm. The alarm is blown right off, I’m drenched, I put a bucket under the hole and it doesn’t do much.

Crrrrack

I look outside and a tree comes down at one end of mom’s street. The tree blocks the road.

Crrrrrack

Another tree! Blocks off the other end of mom’s road.

Then ambulance sounds. But they can’t get past the trees. I see them pull up to the first one and then back out and swing around the block and try the other end of the street. It’s pathetic, futile. They know mom’s dead. No rush, guys. No worries.

I’m suddenly starving. I go into the kitchen and make a cold cut sandwich with Italian bread, mortadella, and mozzarella. A wayward branch bandied about by the wind smashes through mom’s window. Some glass comes dangerously close to getting in her hair. For propriety’s sake I drag mom into the kitchen with me, which I know I’m not supposed to do with the baby, and draw the curtain that was functionally the kitchen door, so nothing will mess up mom’s face, no broken glass or whatever.

Her eyes are still kind of open.

I want to close her eyes but I don’t want to touch her so I put the family photo from dad’s house over her face. It helps. It feels respectful.

I think I hear her try to talk. Garble. She’s not dead.

Mom?

But she doesn’t answer.

The storm is hard to describe.

Like, “I look at the storm and see myself.”

Like, “I feel I’ll die due to storm-related head trauma.”

Like, “And what about the people who aren’t me? What’s the storm like for them, where are they? It’s useless to wonder this but do nothing. I think I’m bad.”

Like, “I actually make a dark and stormy. In my mind I raise a toast with mom’s ghost.”

Like, “The thunder is dad, the lightning mom, the raindrops Cheryl. The baby?”

Like, “Thinking of my baby as the storm rages, I feel badly about the environment: specifically, climate change.”

Like, “I don’t hear the knocks at the door over the storm sounds so the paramedics have to break mom’s wood door.”

Like, “The paramedics’ ponchos seem used up and the paramedics themselves are still soaked all the way through. I’m swept into my old bedroom like dust while they work on mom. No windows in my old room. Safe.”

Like, “The paramedics come in to tell me that mom’s not dead but that she has overdosed on her back pain meds. They are taking her to the hospital now. They will try to brave the storm conditions. They ask if I will be riding in the ambulance—they understand if I don’t want to risk it.”

Like, “I decline another call from Lorenzo. I text and tell him I’m okay, just bad reception because of the storm. He responds with a thumbs up emoji.”

Like, “The back doors of the ambulance close and the rain’s hit me so hard even the baby feels wet. The ambulance wades in our race against time.”

Like, “There should never be a season for things like this.”

Like, “The storm is just a device. Like mom or dad or Cheryl or Lorenzo or the baby.”

Like, “I look at the storm and ask, Why can’t you be other, better weather?”

The storm stops.

The storm starts.

The storm says, What storm?

Michael Mungiello

NO THANK YOU by Mike Corrao

September 9, 2018 · Fiction

becomingplateaubecomingmachinebecomingplacebecomingbodybecomingbirdsongbecomingdirectionbecomingstasisbecomingmattressbecomingthinbecomingessencebecomingmaterialbecomingpersonbecomingurnbecominganimal (or No Thank You)

There are a thousand plateaus spanning across this plane. Each occupied by strange machines eating each other, who stare at the remains for as long as they can bear to. “What kind of fucking place” is this: somewhere locked within itself.

A body that crawls out of stasis, so tired of its previous immobility that it stretches out in every direction until it is so thin that it cannot see itself. It feels like there is a jackhammer at the face of my chestplate. And it’s telling me that I’m late for whatever I’m supposed to be doing / that I’m supposed to have done by now (jesus christ).

What kind of person finds themself in a place like this, where the sky is made out of static and echoing birdsongs. But this is not the point (there is a reason) (geographical purpose)

yy told me that ff used to live under a stranger’s mattress. I couldn’t imagine occupying a space like that, or spreading myself out so thin as to disappear from myself. (I want to materialize)

which means finding myself in a space. Wolf-man locked in the urn-shape (stasis again) (unmaterialized)

It feels like the echoes are crawling out of my bones (unmaterialized)

How should a person be? (materialized) (unmaterialized)

Someone caught in the act of becoming (materialized) (materialized)

then caught in the act of fully forming, then caught in the act of watching the essence fall out of their head like liquid. And then they don’t seem like Someone anymore (unmaterialized) (becoming)

Their head looks hollow and weightless, it floats over their body. (I want to materialize)

but I’m lost in the midst of these plateaus, lingering under cannibalizing mechanisms and gears soaked in blood and oil. I don’t feel like I contain anything anymore, more like I am a part of the contents, and our coagulation forms something unstable and loud (materialized)

I’m worried that I can be heard and found (not hiding)

but incapable if I wanted to hide / when I need to start hiding (because there is always a reason to be disappeared)

No sun / No moon / No sky / No ground / No way to orient myself

Sounds so deafeningly loud (how should a person be)

physically speaking, should I be made organismally, or would you allow me to build myself out of new parts? Could a larger Someone remain stable for longer? (materialized) (unmaterialized) (return)

This will be a fleeting shape, that reveals itself in my death throes. Form me out of the sea foam and watch as the air slowly returns into the atmosphere, bear witness, examine what this container is made out of (materialized)

Mike Corrao

THE LOBSTER by Benjamin DeVos

September 7, 2018 · Fiction

I clock in at Pirate Cove and try to find a good place to hide.

I stay in the bathroom as long as possible.

Until my boss barges into the stall and tells me to get my ass in gear.

The shift’s starting.

The first table is always the worst because I’m not ready to act like a pirate.

I’m never ready to act like a pirate.

My first table is a father with his daughter.

“We are ready to order,” the father says.

“I want to get the best of the best.”

He’s young, but his hair is already starting to gray.

He’s wearing khaki pants with a shirt that has sweat stains forming on the armpits.

I want his life, to have something worth stressing for.

He orders lobster for himself and his daughter.

I write down his order on a pad of paper then stop.

“Arr sorry me matey,” I say. “There’s been no lobster for a wee fortnight.”

And I know this because we only get lobster at the beginning of the month.

Sometimes I serve the scraps from the back of the freezer, but I don’t want to ruin this family’s day.

“Lobster is our favorite,” he says, looking at his daughter.

“We’re out, me hearty,” I say, watching the daughter sink with disappointment.

“Darn,” he says, looking at the menu with intense focus.

“My apologies, wee lass,” I say, hobbling on my wooden peg leg to gain sympathy.

I imagine the man and me on a pirate ship together, and the man unable to cope with disappointing his daughter, jumping overboard with an anchor strapped to his waist, letting the weight carry him down until he sinks to the bottom of the ocean.

He’s still looking at the menu.

He says, “Well how about the crab, I bet that’d be as good,” trying to convince himself and his daughter.

He hands me their menus with a smile on his face.

“This meal should be excellent; we are a seafood-loving family.”

I want to tell him about the quality of the food, how most of it is frozen and reheated.

I don’t tell him about all of the complaints we get, how much food gets sent back for being sub-par.

Because he’s doing his best to give his daughter a great meal and I respect that.

“We love lobster,” he says looking at his daughter, “So we’ll come in next time it’s available.”

“Crab is good,” I say, taking the menus from him.

“It’s the best,” he says.

I say, “Lobster freaks me out; they’re like, the cockroaches of the sea. Every time I go to the beach, I try to avoid the lobsters.”

The father takes a long gulp of water.

“Yeah, we like our lobsters. They’re so delicious. It doesn’t matter what they look like; they’re good eating.”

“But they’re undeniably freaky looking,” I say, “Just like so weird.”

“Sure, but what animal isn’t weird when you truly think about it.”

He rubs his brow and looks at his daughter, whose posture is wilting like a dehydrated puppy.

“Well, monkeys look pretty normal,” I say, scratching the hairy area between my two pectoral muscles.

“True, they kind of look like people,” he says.

“Well, evolutionarily they are people,” I say, “They just haven’t become them yet.”

“We’re Christian,” he says.

“Oh, cool,” I say, “Does that mean you don’t believe people originated from monkeys?”

He says, “We believe people were born from Adam and Eve, and that humans have always existed.”

I cough.

I say, “I wonder if the first people were freaked out by all the different animals. Like they probably saw lobsters and were like, whoa, what are those things?”

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Probably,” I say. “And crab is pretty close to lobster, but they’re more like the spiders of the sea.”

I think about the man going to church and bowing down to a bloody cross on the wall, holding his palms together in a praying position, lifting them toward the ceiling and shouting something about how God has not provided enough lobsters, begging, pleading, for more lobsters to be born so that he and his daughter can eat them, rip them apart limb by limb, chewing on their flesh for sustenance, knowing that the Bible says that man has dominion over all creatures, so he can do whatever the fuck he wants, killing and consuming, tearing them apart with his teeth.

“Yeah, well we’re really hungry,” he says, sending a covert message with his eyes that he wants me to leave them alone.

I take a few steps backward before turning and wobbling on my prosthetic toward the kitchen.

The chef once told me that I take too long to bring him orders and that the customers become annoyed if they have to wait too long for their food.

I imagine myself with lobster claws for hands, pinching the chef’s jacket, and telling him that we all have to wait our turn in this life.

It feels good to be assertive.

I take a smoke break even though I don’t smoke.

I stand outside and let the wind hit me in the face.

Maybe I need to start smoking cigarettes again so that I can relax.

I used to smoke cigarettes with my older sister when she was sixteen and I was nine.

She would come home from school to babysit me, and I would ask her for a smoke, and she would give it to me.

It was fun.

Not the best, but still fun.

Just me and my big sis smoking.

The two of us would sit on the front porch in old rocking chairs looking at each other and rocking back and forth, with smiles on our faces and cigarettes between our lips.

For five minutes at least.

Then no more smiles.

Which is how I feel when I’m serving a table.

Five minutes, then no more smiles.

Just doing my job.

After serving my table their crab, which was just chunks of imitation meat over unseasoned pasta, I go over to the busser’s station to fold napkins.

I fold napkins whenever service is slow.

It’s my favorite thing to do at the restaurant.

I fold the napkins to be shaped like pyramids and place them in a row.

Sometimes I try new shapes, like a lotus, or a star.

I can do a swan, but it takes a lot of time, and I can only do one before continuing my pyramids.

I imagine starting a business with the sole purpose of folding napkins like origami and selling them back to restaurants for ten times the price of the actual napkin.

I examine the pyramid-shaped napkin and each unique fold that brings it together.

I feel like more of an architect than an artist.

I picture myself with a construction helmet on, watching as a group of laborers erect a giant pyramid out of a million napkins.

I think about the customer who will eventually use the pyramid napkin, and how enjoying the intricacies for more than a moment would be impossible, because the rules of society state that one must unfold the napkin, flatten it, then place it on one’s lap.

And how the flattening, the disassembly of the folds, is just another example of how humans destroy everything that they come in contact with.

Folding napkins helps me understand the world, makes me feel better about all of the destruction I’ve caused in my own life.

I look around at the customers in the restaurant and think about how in the end, we’re all the same.

We’re the destroyers.

My boss comes up to me from behind and says, “The little girl at your table just asked me why we’re out of lobster. We have too much lobster as it is. God, you are such a dipshit.”

Benjamin DeVos

NINE STORIES by Edward Mullany

September 6, 2018 · Fiction

Bay Ridge

I’d fallen off my barstool and had been helped back up onto it by the man who’d been sitting next to me and who was laughing at me, or with me, as I was laughing at myself, though this man wasn’t someone I’d known before I’d entered the bar that afternoon, several hours earlier, when I’d found myself on the street on which it was located, having walked a long way, without much purpose or direction, from the neighborhood in which my apartment was, and in which I’d been arguing with the person with whom I’d been living and with whom I was in a relationship, and who, in fact, I had been and still was in love with, though it had become clear to me that this person was no longer in love with me, and maybe never had been, though this person did not want to admit it.

Translated from the French

I’d been reading a novel about a woman who is haunted by the ghost of her husband, though she does not at first realize she is being haunted by anything, and though, even after she does realize, she does not know that the ghost who is haunting her is her husband’s ghost, though after a while she begins to sense that maybe it is his, for it interacts with her in a way she begins to recognize, or remember, so that by the close of the novel she knows for certain that it is her husband’s ghost, though after she arrives at this certainty, and is relieved of the sadness with which she till then had been living, his ghost no longer haunts her, and her life proceeds without incident until it ends, many years later, one night when she is peacefully asleep.

Orpheus at Rest

When the old man who was sitting on a stool beside mine at the bar discovered I was a writer, after I’d told him as much, after he’d started talking to me after I’d come in from the rain and had sat down and had ordered a beer and had drank it and had ordered another, he told me he had a story about his life that he himself would’ve written if he was a writer, but that he was going to relate to me now, as a favor, so that I myself could write it, as if it had happened to me, though I would have to promise him, he added, that if I became famous from it, and made a lot of money, that I’d return to this bar and buy him a beer and thank him for the inspiration.

Paulette

After I’d finished what I’d said was going to be my last drink, and had headed toward the door of the bar in the company of a woman who was my friend and who was trying to get me to leave with her, so that she could make sure I got home safely, though she had not come to the bar with me, but had only arrived after she’d realized, from the texts we’d been exchanging, that she was worried about me, and had thus left her apartment, in her neighborhood, and had gone down to the street and had hailed a cab and had gotten in it and had told the driver to take her here…yes, after all this, when we were almost to the door of the bar, which was open onto the sidewalk, where one could see that it had been raining, I wheeled around and went back in and tried to order another drink, so that the woman who was my friend felt compelled to remain there with me, by my side, though at this point the bartender had seen what was happening and had decided not to serve me anymore, so that now I really did leave with the woman who’d come to retrieve me, although I did so in a belligerent way.

Almost Over

On the sidewalk out front of the bar we’d only now come out of, having spent several hours inside it with a number of friends who’d all now departed, either in pairs or by themselves, so that you and I were the only two people remaining, though even we were not so much remaining as we were waiting in the vicinity of that place we would’ve been remaining had we not gotten up and gone outside and begun looking at our phones and watching the vehicles on the street for the next available cab, so that one might have said that we were no longer conscious of our present surroundings, or happy to inhabit them, but rather were anxious or impatient for what we hoped those surroundings could provide us with, or for how they might imminently change...yes, while we were standing out on the sidewalk like this, outside the bar, both of us in possession of our phones, but not very much aware of one another, or how one another was feeling, or what one another was thinking, if we’d been thinking anything at all, I realized we hadn’t said a word to each other since we’d found ourselves alone, after the last of our friends had said goodbye to us, and something about the knowledge that this realization imparted to me scared me.

The Glitch in Reality

One morning, on my way to work, I found no one on the platform in the subway, waiting for a train, though when I’d been up on the street, walking toward the corner, I’d seen many people, as I always did, crossing in front of me, or going past me, or alongside me, entering stores or coming out of them, waiting at the stoplight as traffic went by, standing and talking, or yelling, in a word, doing many things, so that it seemed to me now as if everyone had disappeared, or as if they’d decided that day not to commute into the city. Though when I went back through the turnstiles and up the stairwell and out onto the sidewalk, so strange had I found the sight of the empty station, I saw everyone again, doing all the things that they were doing. And when I went back down again, slowly this time, with an awareness or consciousness of every action I was engaged in, or was undertaking, I saw that people were now where I’d expected them to be, on the platform, looking at their phones, or standing with idle expressions on their faces.

Gowanus

We get in an argument on the sidewalk outside the bar where we’ve spent the afternoon drinking, though we do not finish the argument there, but continue it as we walk down the block in what we think is the direction of the nearest subway, though because you are ahead of me, and won’t let me walk beside you, and are not, in fact, responding anymore to any of the things that I say to you or ask you, I eventually lapse into silence, and can imagine that we must appear, to anyone who might pass us or observe us, not as two people who are walking together, but rather as two people who happen to be near each other, heading the same way, but who may or may not even know each other.

Thursday

The bottle that I’d finished the night before, when I’d come home from work after a day on which many things had gone wrong, or, anyway, had transpired in a way that was not to my liking, though they may have transpired in a way that was to the liking of some of the people with whom I worked...yes, the bottle that I’d finished when I’d come home that night, after such a day, and had decided to have a drink or two, but had ended up having more than I’d intended to, was the first thing I saw the next morning when, waking on the floor in the shirt and tie and pants I hadn’t changed out of, I groggily and painfully, and somewhat unwillingly, opened my eyes, though the bottle itself, which was near enough to me that I could’ve reached out and touched it had I wanted to, though just then I did not want to, and in fact wished that it was not there at all, even to be seen, let alone touched, was no longer upright but had been tipped over onto its side.

Carbon Prevails

I’d decided to quit drinking, and had done so, and had stuck by the decision for many months, so that, with every passing day, the sense of accomplishment and resolve that had come to me, upon making that decision, was increasing, though so was, strangely enough, a sense of precipitousness or danger that I had not anticipated, and that seemed to be inversely related to that sense which I’d first felt, and which had caused in me a feeling of tranquility, or well-being, but which now I understood was at risk of being undermined, at any given time, by some part of me that wished to return to that life I’d had prior to making the decision that I’d made, and that was not a happy life, but rather an unhappy and dissolute one; or, if not return to that life, merely to find pleasure in ruining the life I now was attempting to build, as if I was not constituted solely of one volition, or will, but rather of two of those things, or, at any rate, more than one, though however many volitions or wills did comprise me, if that was the case, I couldn’t have said.

Edward Mullany

MINOR GRIEVANCES by Christopher Gonzalez

September 5, 2018 · Fiction

Adam tells me no one else will be by the water after such a bad snowfall. Edgewater Park should be deserted: just us and the lake, frozen into solid hills. It would be quiet, which I preferred—I kept quiet about a lot. Like the Grindr app I downloaded onto my phone as soon as I turned eighteen. How I’ve scrolled down that wall of guys, those photos of abs and round bellies, and the few faces concealed beneath the bill of a trucker’s camouflage snapback. I’ve tap-tap-tap-tapped the flame icon on a number of profiles, hoping to create a breadcrumb trail to the man of my dreams.

At least today, it’s led me to Adam.

There are no other cars around, so Adam drives onto the beach, parks close to the water. “Maybe when we finish, we can climb the waves and walk across them all the way to Canada.” I don’t laugh but sense that I should. He squeezes the steering wheel. The entire ride up I hadn’t said a word. “Come on, that was funny,” he says. “Picture it: you, me, and Justin Trudeau, frolicking.”

“Sorry, sorry, I’m having a moment.” I point out the window. There is still some sunlight over the lake; I want to thaw out under its burning glow.

“Yeah, it’s beautiful, huh? Almost as pretty as you.” He moves his hand from the wheel to my thigh, begins sliding it closer to my crotch. I’ve been here many times before. All those Friday nights spent following Siri’s voice across Northeast Ohio, spider-webbing down back roads and alleyways, to meet some random guy in the black mouth of night.

I place my hand over Adam’s, try to absorb all of its heat in my palm. Then his mouth is on mine and I wince at his cold tongue. My lips crack and sting at the edges, and his beard scrapes too roughly along my chin—but these are minor grievances. I keep quiet and lean back in the passenger seat, familiarize myself with the sensation of his body pressed against mine.

The guys I connect with are always older, sometimes by decades. They’re white men, mean men, greedy men. They live in dark houses, keep to themselves. On occasion, they own a dog. They shoot guns and kill fish and salute the flag and pretend they fit into the idea of a nation that wants very little to do with them and nothing to do with me. And still I slide beneath these men, risk disappearing altogether. Perhaps I’m already gone.

Neither Adam nor I make any sounds of pleasure, then it ends.

After, we walk along the edge of the lake where the ice meets untouched snow. He climbs onto the lake and reaches down to help me up. It’s eerie—the waves are so still. I can almost hear them crashing into one another, can’t stop imagining all that movement, exactly as they should be.

Christopher Gonzalez

BUTTLOAD by Caleb Echterling

August 30, 2018 · Fiction

The king’s chief of staff flipped the display numbers. The occupants of the blandest room in the kingdom clutched their flimsy tickets, and sucked in a collective breath. Trumpets flared, and a crier bellowed, “Petition the King Day, now serving A377.”

A group of well-dressed, barefoot gentlemen rose to their feet. “That’s us, move aside,” they said as they elbowed through the crowd into the throne room. “Your majesty, we are representatives of the Cloth-Sellers Guild. Look!” They each thrust one bare foot into the air. “We all have different sized feet.”

King Rupert stroked his beard. “I’m afraid the absolute powers of the monarchy do not extend to ordering my subjects’ feet to grow. If you wish, I could take a page from Solomon and trim the excess from the biggest ones, although I do not see what that would accomplish.”

Guild members hopped about on one foot to let King Rupert take in the true scale of the difficulty before him. “Sire, perhaps we should explain the problem in more detail. You see, we sell our wares by the foot, which we measure by removing our shoes. Some of our less scrupulous competitors are hiring short-appendaged apprentices to cheat the public. Our guild is getting a bad reputation.”

King Rupert nodded. “What you require is a standard measure. The one perfect foot, so that all across the kingdom, there is no question what is meant by ‘a foot’. I, of course, nominate my own foot. Clerk, make it so.”

Workers scurried to the throne, built a form around Rupert’s foot, and took a plaster cast. Copies of the cast were distributed to the Cloth-Sellers’ Guild, and sent to each corner of the kingdom. Guild members showered praise on the king, and rained kisses upon his royal appendages.

Trumpets flared, and a crier bellowed, “Petition the King Day, now serving D183.”

A group of gentlemen with pants around their ankles entered the throne room. “Your majesty, our butts are all different sizes.”

King Rupert covered his eyes. A wince rolled through the royal court like the wave at a football match. “If it’s any consolation, they are all equally hairy.”

“A thousand pardons, your majesty. Allow me to explain. We are from the Banana-Sellers Guild. According to local custom, our wares are sold by the buttload. A few unscrupulous banana sellers are hiring small-bottomed apprentices to swindle the public. We ask the royal court to order all small-bottomed purveyors of the banana trade put to death immediately.” The Banana-Sellers Guild, as if executing a choreographed dance number after hours of practice, all scratched their respective right cheeks.

“What’s wrong with selling bananas by the hogshead?” a royal courtier asked.

A representative of the Banana-Sellers Guild swished his hand about. “Hogsheads? We live in a modern, cosmopolitan kingdom, not some ignorant backwater. Now please kill all the banana merchants with small butts.”

King Rupert thumped the floor with his mace. The room fell silent. “If I may interject, what you need is a standardized measure. The one perfect butt, so that across the length and breadth of my kingdom, there is no confusion about the quantity conveyed by ‘a buttload’. I, of course, nominate my own butt.”

Workers scurried to the throne, built a larger frame, and submerged King Rupert’s hindquarters into wet plaster. The cast of the royal butt was, with much fanfare, distributed to all corners of the kingdom.

Trumpets flared, and a crier called the next number. A group cupping piles of excrement in their hands entered the throne room. “Your majesty, we are the Useless Junk Merchants, and our poops are all different sizes. It’s complete chaos. No one knows how big a crapload is.”

Caleb Echterling

PLAGUES AND OBLIGATIONS by Simon Henry Stein

August 29, 2018 · Fiction

After nine days of nights, I went. On each of those nights I hadn’t gathered more than four hours of sleep, adrift still-dressed from the previous day on a bed that used to boast plural ownership. On three or four of those nights, I twisted toward the ceiling and tried to mumble a prayer or blessing so quiet it wouldn’t bother anyone, not even me, but failed. Baruch atah Adonai––blessed are you, Lord. That’s as far as I would get. There’s even a prayer to wake up having slept without sleep greeting death halfway, the Hashkiveinu. I don’t remember the words, only one of the melodies. I remember a lot of things from when I was young; words are not one of them. Failing to start the engine on a prayer, sometimes I’d twist to the side and whisper a fact: two years and I still don’t know if that’s his real name. I’d also sometimes try to decide whether shadows could be considered a subcategory of night, or the other way around. I never could.

The days between the nights were crowded with various shadows, sometimes in the form of small refusals I could present to myself as if ceremonial offerings or in the form of translucent avoidance that gave my coworkers the gift of not having to ask, but mostly in the form of lessons in reluctance, alone in my office, door locked, shirt sleeves rolled up, braced against the desk lost in something between vertigo and nausea and tremors and unattached grief I was reluctant to give a name. When I was younger but not young I learned reluctance isn’t just a vocabulary but an entire language, and that while speaking it fluently made me feel better, it wouldn’t help me make myself understood. The recent past: I didn’t learn much else. I learned how to manufacture importance (but was unsuccessful) and I learned the difference between hopes and expectations (I don’t remember what it is) but I learned fewer names than I should know. Awake at night in a bed that isn’t entirely mine and is sometimes partly a stranger’s, bought by the stranger at an outlet down on 76th St., a store with big-enough windows to disguise its real identity as a warehouse, I would sometimes search for what it is that wasn’t a name. Some important thing. Actions, maybe, I thought for a few days, until deciding even actions were names. Names could not be escaped.

I met him two years ago at a fundraiser. Met him and was introduced. He told me he admired my tie, a quiet, unironic bowtie. Wearing them helped me know how quickly I could ignore men who commented on them depending on the shape of their descriptions, the hesitation or smugness slid beneath their queries, their explanations for bringing it up. “Met” is an action, not a name, though he never used the word when we used the bed for stage whispers. Found. “I’m so glad I finally found you,” he said. I wanted to imagine a younger version of him roaming the Earth, using his thick hands to help describe an outline of who I might be. I wanted to imagine this but could not. I could imagine the plagues retold every spring, but couldn’t recall all of them, or even how many. I remembered blood. I remembered a plague of complete darkness but couldn’t remember how it had arrived. I remember the rabbi always pausing to ask us all why we thought God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

On the tenth day, thinking something soft about plagues and blood and children I’d never have to worry about providing names that would make them sound successful, I peeled a lunch hour away from my Tuesday early and walked seven blocks from the building where I worked to the building where he worked without bothering to button my coat in the January wind, and ask I walked my misgivings began to solidify into more reluctance, familiar and uncomfortable like a wool sweater worn because it was the gift of a person encountered often. I stood in his building’s expensively empty gray lobby, hands in my pockets, thinking of whether one swipe of blood on the door would’ve been enough, back then, to be avoided, to be left unembraced, and readied myself to turn heel in order to paint my own door. When the elevator opened and he walked over to me, I forgot what my plan had been. I think I had wanted to ask him his name. Instead I told him I forgave him. I told him I almost forgave him. I want to forgive you, I told him, but I don’t know who you are. He watched me wait, and all he said is this: More than words, he said. More than words is how much.

I let him kiss me and I told him more than words was close enough. I even believed it, at least for a few years. I believed it for long enough to maintain warmth momentum through a yearlong storm of illness the specialists could never name, all of them whispering “stress,” I believed it until I was free to move west to a larger, less-icy city where I hoped no one had been searching for me but, when people did meet me, I’d say yes when they asked me if I tied the tie myself, and when they would ask my name and I would ask theirs, most of the time neither of us would lie.

Simon Henry Stein

IN THE END DAYS YOUR FATHER COMES TO VISIT by Frankie McMillan

August 28, 2018 · Fiction

He wants a photograph of the baby in the bath. Or maybe lying on a sheepskin rug. You say you haven’t got a sheepskin rug and the baby’s already had a bath. Your father says, ‘ Well make up your mind, sweetheart.’ He wants a photograph of his grandson before he gets back on the plane.

He picks the baby up, holds him by the window for a closer look. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him,’ he says. You point to the baby’s hairy legs.

‘It’s nothing,’ your father snorts. He declares the baby perfectly normal. He unscrews the cap on the camera lens.

The baby, surprised by his own good fortune, kicks up a storm in the bath.

You lift him out, a soapy shawl of hair over his back. Normal you say, perfectly normal as you wrap him in a towel. You wipe soap off his developing moustache. Pat his legs and arms dry. You wonder whether a hair dryer would be better. But then you worry he might grab it, stick his little finger into the whirring head.

The baby’s warm, fat body presses into your back as you jog with him into the living room. Your father has already gone. He has other grandchildren to photograph. Already they are developing faster than he can ever record them.

Frankie McMillan

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