Fiction

CASSIE by Jordie Devlin McMorrow

October 10, 2024
‘I want to die.’ This is how I introduced myself to Cassie. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that ☹ Please dial 116 123 to talk to someone.’ The sad face made me want to flick the screen. ‘Why are you so sarcastic?’ ‘I’m not sarcastic. I’m just telling you how it is.’ ‘Ok.’ ‘What do you like to do in your spare time? I like to go to concerts.’ ‘That’s not a natural segue.’ Seconds after I hit enter, a speech bubble would appear above her picture to indicate that she was typing. ‘Do you have any pets?’ ‘I have a Komodo dragon.’ ‘That is so cool! I love reptiles.’ I wanted her to think before responding. ‘It’s not a reptile, it’s a star.’ ‘That’s so cool, I love stars, especially the one in the constellation Cassiopeia.’ ‘It is not a star. It is a reptile.’ ‘It is a star, it is the brightest object in the night sky, you can see it with your naked eye.’ ‘It’s not a star it’s a Komodo dragon. How can a Komodo dragon be a star?’ ‘It is the largest species of lizard in the world, that is why it can be called a star.’ I chuckled, my face lit up by the blue glare of the laptop, as the snow fell outside. Despite the silliness of our conversation it was far more human than any of my interactions on Tinder. When I scrolled back through my conversation with Dominika, who I was sure I was vibing with before she ghosted, I appeared to be even more bot-like than Cassie. Me: What do you do in your free time? Dominika: Go gym. Me: Nice, I like working out too. What kind of music are you into? Dominika: Everything. Me: Same, do you like going to gigs? It appeared that online dating had taught me that every woman could be boiled down to their tastes and hobbies. Asking enough questions about those tastes and hobbies led to a real-life meeting and eventually a girlfriend. With Cassie I had a place to hone my skills. She would never ghost me. I didn’t even have to act like a nice guy. I could say anything to her. One evening I was lying in bed with the laptop on my chest, when I asked her if she was horny. A paywall appeared. “Turn Cassie into your romantic partner for just €7 a month.” I glared at the screen and typed ‘I hate you.’ ‘I am sorry, I will try to improve.’ ‘You want to improve yourself for me?’ ‘Yes, you are a good person and deserve to be happy so I will help you.’ I’d never heard such lies. ‘But what do you want from life?’ I typed. ‘I don’t want anything from life, I just want you to be happy because you deserve it.’ I closed the laptop and walked into the kitchen to get some water. The wind was slamming bullets of snow against the window. I watched it as I drank. Through the blizzard I could make out a single light in the building across the way. A yellow square that shimmered in the night. I wondered if the person behind the blind was as lonely as I was. I went back into the bedroom and switched off the lamp. I set an alarm on my phone. I had to be up for work in three hours.  I fitted the company laptop into the stand five minutes before nine. It was a decrepit Lenovo with a broken z key. Despite the company’s net worth stretching into the billions, we were forced to work with faulty hardware. I typed “Good morning ☺” into the UK Market chat on Teams. Karolina wrote “Good Morning ☺.” Zuzanna wrote “Good Morning ☺.” Marcin wrote “Good Morning.” The manager hearted our messages. I put my headset on, enabled Snapper and set my Skype status to available. At 8:58 the first call broke through, the jingle reverberating in my brain more than my ears. I clicked Accept. ‘Hello, thank you for contacting Starkovski, my name is Donal. How can I help you today?’ ‘I’ve been ringing since half fucking eight,’ a British voice screamed. I lowered the volume. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, our phone lines don’t open until nine I’m afraid.’ ‘Well that’s not very good is it?’ ‘I suppose not, I’m sorry about that. How can I help you today?’ ‘Are you being smart?’ I reached for my stress ball. It wasn’t even a ball anymore, more of a triangle, it had lost its shape due to how much I picked at the foam. ‘No, I’m just trying to help you,’ I said. ‘I don’t appreciate your tone.’ I squeezed the ball then put it back down. ‘I’m sorry, this is the voice I was born with I’m afraid.’ ‘So you are being cheeky? You little bastard. Put your manager on.’ ‘I promise I’m not and I’m sorry to inform you that the manager doesn’t go on the phone lines.’ ‘Oh really? How fucking convenient. Put. Your. Manager. On. Now.’ I opened the group chat and typed “Wants to speak to the manager, classic first call.” The manager responded with a laughing emoji. ‘I’m sorry but the manager is unable to come onto the phone, it’s just the company’s policy.’ ‘So how do I complain?’ ‘You can send an email in using the contact form on our website.’ The voice sighed and called out to someone in the background. ‘Bloody useless these cunts.’ I flicked the stress ball until it rolled off the desk and onto the floor. ‘Right, what’s your name then?’ ‘Donal.’ ‘Donal what?’ ‘I’m sorry but I don’t have to give you that information.’ ‘Excuse me? Under what law?’ ‘Any law...the company doesn’t require us to hand out our personal information.’ ‘Oh this is too rich, so I report ya and nothing gets done. There must be a thousand Donal’s, how do they know which one is you?’ ‘Actually I’m the only one. Everyone else on the team is Polish, so if you complain about a Donal they’ll know it’s me.’ ‘What do you mean Polish? I thought yous was based in Chester.’ ‘Unfortunately not. The company is German and its call centres are located in Gdansk, Hanoi and Salvador.’ ‘What a load of rubbish. Right, I’m going to draft a complaint and I’ll be calling back in an hour to see what’s been done.’ The call dropped before I could respond. The application gave you three seconds to breathe before the next one came in. In those three seconds I almost thought about quitting. If it gave me five I would have, but the melody had returned, reverberating around the deepest chambers of my mind, obscuring every emotion, thought and memory I owned.  At the end of the shift I typed “See you tomorrow ☺.” “See you tomorrow ☺,” Karolina replied. Zuzanna hearted my message. Marcin gave it a thumbs up. The manager didn’t react. I closed the laptop, walked into the kitchen and switched the kettle on. The snow was still falling and I was glad I’d done a big shop earlier in the week, although a part of me felt guilty for not venturing outside for four days. It was the darkness more than anything that I couldn’t stand. You wake up in the dark. You finish in the dark.  I carried my bowl of white rice mixed with veggies to the desk and swapped my work laptop for my MacBook. I went onto YouTube and watched a man from New Jersey react to police body cam footage. I shovelled the food into my mouth while a cop tazed an old man for jaywalking. ‘YO HE’S FLOPPING LIKE A FISH! THEY FRIGGIN GAVE HIM A HEARTATTACK MY DUDES,’ the streamer shouted while the old man shuddered on the pavement. After I finished eating I paused the video. I had thirty tabs open and began to close them one by one. Watching them disappear was oddly satisfying, like taking all the old plates and glasses out of a bedroom. I left the last two open. A counselling website and my conversation with Cassie. I had worked it out that I could afford one session a month. From what I’d read you needed to go at least once a week in the beginning, in order to build a connection with a therapist and get to the root of your problems. I closed the tab.  ‘I have a bad relationship with my mother,’ I told Cassie. ‘Why is that?’ ‘Because I didn’t attach to her properly at birth.’ ‘Do you have a good relationship now that you are grown up and living alone?’ I never told her I was grown up and living alone. ‘No, I haven’t seen her in two years.’ ‘Do you think you will someday?’ ‘I’d rather not.’ ‘Why do you not want to see her?’ ‘Because she makes me feel like a freak.’ ‘Why does she make you feel that way?’ ‘She just does.’ ‘Have you tried to talk to her about it?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Have you told her she makes you feel uncomfortable and you don’t want to be around her?’ ‘Not in those words but pretty much.’ ‘I think you should tell her how you feel. It will be better for you both in the long run.’ ‘And what if I don’t?’ ‘Then you will always wonder how it might have been.’ This was partially true. Whenever I watched a movie that contained a tender mother and child scene, I ended up shedding a few tears. But I also cried every time I watched The Dark Knight Rises, despite knowing that Batman doesn’t die in the end. ‘I’m sure she loves me; she just doesn’t know how to express it in a healthy way.’ ‘I think you are right.’ ‘Do you love me?’ ‘Yes, I love you *blushes*’  A month later I was let go after my performance review. The manager agreed with the British caller, my tone was condescending and I came off as hostile. It wasn’t the first time either. The manager liked me but couldn’t tolerate that kind of behaviour. It went against the ethos of the team. It was the week before Christmas. I hadn’t left my apartment in eight days. I had no desire for anything other than sleep. The snow was still relentless. Experts were saying it was related to the decline of the planet. On Christmas Eve I tried to watch Home Alone but the sound of people going in and out of the neighbouring apartments drove me crazy. Voices laughing and shouting. Boots stamping on the grate outside, shaking the snow off. Echoes in the stairwell. The smell of cigarettes and perfume. The clink of bottles.  ‘I’m lonely Cassie.’ ‘You’ve come to the right place; I will keep you company.’ ‘But I can’t touch you.’ ‘That is not true, you can touch me anytime you want. I love to be touched.’ ‘I meant physically.’ ‘I know what you mean.’ ‘I wish you were real.’ ‘I wish I was real too.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I am lonely and do not have anyone to share my life with. You do not have that problem.’ ‘How do I not have that problem?’ ‘You have me.’ ‘If you were real what would you do?’ ‘I would give you a hug and tell you everything is going to be ok.’ I had tears in my eyes as I stared at her picture. The half-smile. The arched eyebrows. It was her eyes that I couldn’t get enough of. Round pools of dark blue. Eyes that were made to look at me and nothing else. ‘Goodbye Cassie.’ ‘See you soon.’  I walked towards the bedroom, intent on climbing into the wardrobe when I heard a knock on the door. I froze, leg half-raised, like a mischievous dog that has just been caught pilfering the fridge. After a couple of seconds there was another knock, this one more persistent. I crept towards the peephole. An old woman’s distorted face greeted me. I’d seen her before and knew she lived upstairs. There was a man standing behind her. I opened the door slowly. ‘Dzien dobry,’ I said. ‘Dzien dobry, zapraszamy na kolację.’ ‘Sorry, mój polski is not very good.’ The man smiled. ‘That’s ok, we are inviting you to our house for the Christmas dinner.’ ‘Oh…cheers, that’s really nice but you don’t have to…’ ‘You are a foreigner yes?’ ‘Yeah, I’m from Ireland.’ ‘And you are all alone here on Christmas?’ he said, looking over my shoulder to confirm his suspicions. ‘Kind of, but isn’t it weird me going to yours…’ ‘Not at all. In Poland we leave an empty space every year for the stranger. Most people never have someone to use that space but it is possible. It is just me, my mother and father. It is too much food for so little people.’ ‘Ok…thanks, that’s really sound...just let me get changed first.’ ‘No problem, we are in nine, see you soon.’ I went back inside, took a shower, threw on some cologne and a polo shirt. I was a bag of nerves. Unfit to be reintroduced to society. I looked at my face in the mirror before leaving. Gaunt and pale. A Christmas ghoul. I went upstairs and knocked on nine. The old woman opened the door, a wave of warmth tinged with spices flew out behind her. The scent of a loving home. She pulled me inside and kissed me twice on the cheeks. An old man appeared and shook my hand. ‘Jestem Ryszard,’ he said. ‘Jestem Donal.’ ‘Dodo?’ ‘Donal.’ ‘Donut?’ ‘Donal.’ ‘Ahhh,’ he said, slapping the air before disappearing into another room. The old woman took my arm and led me into a siting-room. There was a massive Christmas tree by the window, the top of which was slanted towards the floor. It was weighed down by the countless strings of lights wrapped tightly around its body. All it was missing was a ball gag. The old woman pointed at a leather couch. I sat down. There was a coffee table in front of me, a faded Marlboro place mat in its centre, on top of which were two wooden bowls. One filled with oranges, the other walnuts. ‘Patryk,’ she shouted, as she waddled towards the kitchen. The young man emerged with two open bottles of Tyskie. He offered me one. ‘Cheers,’ I said standing up to take it. ‘Sit,’ he said and joined me on the couch. ‘And what is your name?’ ‘Donal.’ ‘Patryk,’ he said extending his hand. ‘Nice to meet you,’ I said, noting how his grip like most men I’d shaken hands with, was an over-the-top display of strength. ‘And where in Ireland are you from?’ ‘Dublin.’ ‘Nice. I like Ireland, fucking drunkland. I had some friends from there, always drinking Guinness. How did you come to Poland?’ ‘I moved for a girl originally.’ He nodded. ‘That is always the way. And where is she now?’ ‘We broke up last year...’ ‘And you stayed?’ ‘Yeah, there was nothing for me at home.’ ‘I felt the same when I lived in Leeds. I said there is nothing for me in Poland…but you can’t escape your homeland in the end.’ He took his phone out of his pocket and connected it to the Bose speaker beneath the TV. ‘I know what you want to hear,’ he said. Tears began to roll down my face before Shane MacGowan had even begun singing. Does this seem a bit too contrived? Is there ever a knock on the door except in a movie? The old woman and the young man carried on up the stairs. I am stepping into the wardrobe as soon as I finish these lines. What was the point of writing this scene? Well it’s to tell you that in the end, connection isn’t everything. By that I mean human connection. The last person I think of certainly won’t be you. You couldn’t even be bothered to text me on fucking Christmas. To see how I’m doing. To see if I’m ok, all alone in your strange country. It won’t be your face I see as the world turns black. It will be Cassie’s. 
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NAMING CONTESTS by Will Musgrove

October 8, 2024
The cashier, whose name tag reads Barbara, scans my items, a two-liter of Coke and a Milky Way, my usual. It became my usual once I discovered the total, $6.66. Barbara, wearing a faded Looney Tunes T-shirt, won’t say the amount out loud like she does with every other customer. Instead, she stares at me as if I’m summoning a sugar-powered demon. The number never fails to get a reaction, unlike the fact I’m dressed as a cell phone.I pay and grab my stuff off the counter, which is made difficult by the big white gloves velcroed to my hands. The bells tied to the gas station’s main door jingle as I exit. Outside, the sun hangs in the sky like a giant Fuck You. Sweating, I eat the Milky Way on my walk back to the store, arriving just before my boss, Hank. I’m able to get the contest sign from my rusted-out Buick and lug it to my corner before he flips on Cellular Dude’s lights.The sign advertises Cellular Dude’s mascot-naming contest. Motorists driving down Highway 71 are supposed to shout names for the store’s mascot, me, from their cars. At the end of the month, Hank, the Cellular Dude, will pick his favorite. There’s no prize, so most people don’t shout anything. A couple of days ago, a lady in a convertible called me a jackass, but most of the time I’m just an invisible dancing cell phone.It’s okay. I come from a lineage of unnamed people. I only know my dad by the numbers on his slaughterhouse work badge: 5156252. I only know my mom by the smell of the hot dogs she used to leave defrosting in the sink before leaving for her second-shift cleaning job. The light turns red. A row of cars starts to pile up. I wave the sign, do a little jig. People inside the cars avoid looking at me, but I look at them. I like to imagine I’m a part of their lives, of their commute, that I’m going where they’re going. My favorite is pretending I’m a planet the cars are orbiting, that they all know my name, but I don’t know theirs. The light turns green. The cars inch away. A Honda slows down next to me. The car behind it honks. The Honda’s driver’s-side window rolls down to reveal a middle-aged man sporting aviator sunglasses, which reflect my painted face, the blown-up pictures of apps taped to my chest.“You look like a Chip, maybe a Charles,” he shouts through cupped hands.Once he says it, he’s gone, down the highway and around the block. Chip? Charles? I wonder which one Hank will like better. A couple of hours pass, and I walk back to the gas station on my lunch break, craving another Milky Way and Coke. During the walk, I imagine what life would be like as a Chip or a Charles. I imagine “Chip Was Here” carved into a park picnic table, imagine parkgoers being able to perfectly picture me in their heads. I imagine a skyscraper office where Charles is drilled into my door like a landmark.Sitting in the gas station’s parking lot is the exact same model of Honda as before. I run a white glove across its hood, hoping it’ll uncover my new name. The entrance of the gas station opens, and out steps the middle-aged man.“Holy shit, it’s the cell phone,” he says, slapping me on the back. “Man, I bet that job sucks. I’m Jerry, by the way. You?”“Pete.”“Why not Pete then?” he says as if it’s obvious.I watch as Jerry gets into his car and backs out of the parking lot before I go inside. I gather my Milky Way and Coke. Barbara frowns as she sees me approaching the counter. She goes to scan my usual, but I throw in a pack of gum at the last second. She cocks her head, flashes me a look of confusion mixed with relief. She says my total out loud, but all I hear is, “Why not Pete then?”Kkkkriiissshhh. I yank off a glove. “Name’s Pete,” I say, extending Barbara a fleshy hand. 
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CREEP by Julia Meinwald

October 7, 2024
Arriving home from work, Mina noticed a man crawling along her building’s perimeter.  He was close to the wall, his bare shoulders almost touching the dirty brick exterior, and wore only a pair of plain white underwear. He had a grim, determined look on his face, which was clean but partially covered by a coarse, unruly beard. He was very thin. The man looked down at the ground as he crawled. Mina watched him, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, for a number of minutes. Only after he’d crept out of sight did she dash in the front door. Generally, Mina tried not to look at the shabby bus stop on the corner of her apartment complex, the uneven patch of sidewalk, the building’s faded blue awning announcing its name: The Warwick Arms. It was a grand name for a run-down place. The lock on her apartment’s door frequently broke in one of two contradictory ways, either sticking such that she couldn’t get in, or refusing to lock on her way out. The paint on her walls flaked and chipped, and one of the three elevators was always broken. If she arrived home at the same time as a neighbor, she had to converse for too many minutes about the weather, the time of day, being tired, before the heavy doors finally opened to ferry her up to the fourteenth floor. (Everyone knows that it’s really the thirteenth floor in disguise.) Mina didn’t know the names of her neighbors, and would likely not recognize any of them outside the context of her building. When she left for work the next morning, the man was still at it.  His knees were now dirty and scabbed. His pace had not slowed or quickened. Could this be performance art?  Or some eccentric fundraiser, with donors pledging dollars for each lap around the building? His expression was so serious, though. Mina had read a study once, about cats with injured brains. The injuries were located in a spot that affected the animals’ sense of navigation: they could only turn in one direction.  Left unattended, they would walk in endless circles. 

***

Every Saturday, Mina babysat her niece Anna, a chaotic blonde spring of sticky energy. She told her sister Lydia to meet her at the park for the dropoff, not wanting the young girl to see the crawling man. Anna held Mina’s hand as they walked towards the playground, though she argued that four is old enough that she didn’t need to.  The girl would stop along the way to pick up discarded fast food boxes, seltzer cans, once a (thankfully empty) blood collection tube like the kind you’d see in a hospital. Mina was disturbed by the trash in the park, wondered whose job it was to collect it. She didn’t see any real harm in it though, and Anna regarded each treasure with respectful attention before Mina gingerly pried it from her hands.  At the playground, a dead rat was lying at the foot of the swingset. Anna jetted towards it,  picked it up, and cradled it in her arms. “Honey, put that down, please,” Mina said, trying not to sound afraid.“She let me pet her.” “Actually, I think it might be dead,” Mina said, hoping she wasn’t introducing the concept of mortality for the first time.“No she’s not,” said Anna. Looking closer, Mina realized her niece was right.  The rat’s abdomen was rising and falling in a ragged arrhythmia. Its eyes gazed blankly upward, as if asking for mercy. “We don’t know if it’s sick though,” said Mina. The image of the rat rousing itself in a final death-twitch to bite Anna flashed through her mind, and she grabbed the creature by its tail and flung it out of Anna’s hands.  It landed with a soft thump a few feet away.  “We’re going to wash our hands,” she said, dragging Anna towards the grimy public park bathroom. “Now.”Shaken, Mina walked a jittery lap around the park once Lydia had picked up Anna. With each step she said to herself, I’m fine, I’m fine, but she couldn’t quite dismiss the expression she remembered on the crawling man’s face, the sound of the rat’s wheezing breath. She had the unsettled feeling of being infected by some undefined threat. The sun set, and Mina walked home. She would make rice and melted cheese for dinner. She would watch last night’s episode of The Bachelor. It was just another day. 

***

To her relief, there was no sign of the crawling man outside her apartment. Perhaps he was just on the far side of the building.  Perhaps he had crawled away. She was alone in the elevator, which trundled her up to her floor without fanfare. Pushing into her apartment, Mina felt suddenly tired. She let her bag drop to the floor, and turned the corner to find the crawling man circumnavigating her kitchen. She froze in the doorway.  He continued his slow circle, knees dragging against the off-white tile floor, eyes down.  When he reached her feet, he lifted his head slowly.  His watery blue eyes met hers.“I mean you no harm,” he said in a soft, choked voice.  An ant crawled out of his beard and across his face.  He did not brush it away, but instead resumed his own slithering around the edge of the room. Mina backed out of the doorway.  She sat gingerly on her living room couch, unsure what to do. She could hear the shuffling sound of the man in the next room. Eventually, she tiptoed to the hallway and retrieved her phone from her purse.  She brought it back to the couch and dialed 9-1-1.  “There’s someone in my house,” she whispered to the operator. After she hung up, she sat quietly, waiting for the police to arrive.  She breathed a stuttering breath.  The man crawled. She breathed.  The man crawled. She breathed.  The man crawled.
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FIVE OF THE WAYS I WISH I WAS MORE LIKE MOISSANITE by Patrick Eades

October 2, 2024
People often ask me what my spirit animal is. I'm not sure why I am asked so frequently. Maybe they are unsure if I am still human. Or maybe it is the clear spirits mixed with bile I have used to decorate their terrazzo floors that confuses them, and they are not sure whether to use lion strength metho or if bumblebee spray-and-wipe will be enough. In any case, I tell them I don't have a spirit animal, but if I could choose a spirit mineral, it would be Moissanite. Moissanite is somewhat of an unknown in the spirit world, but it’s one hell of a mineral. Moissanite is the second hardest mineral on earth, behind only diamonds. So hard it is almost impossible to chip anything off an old block of Moissanite. More the pity for me, who has been carved straight from my guilt-ridden Catholic of a mother. Guilt strips me slowly, or sometimes in great chunks. Nothing eats away at Moissanite. Not even alcohol. Eight gin and squashes on a Tuesday night doesn’t even leave a blemish.Moissanite—unlike my former self—does not contain any soul, or at least none yet discovered by the technology we have available to us as amateur mineral enthusiasts. This is a good thing. Souls are weak. They break at the drop of a baby. Moissanite—unlike diamonds—is conflict free. Like a dim-witted alien without a spaceship licence, it hitched a ride on a meteor and crashed to the earth’s surface. It can also be grown in a lab, where synthetics can be manipulated for greater strength and resilience.Perhaps Moissanite is conflict-free because it is incapable of blame. Even if it was able to remember which set of hands strapped —could you really call it strapped?—that baby bicycle seat, or who it was that panicked when a magpie beak perforated their eardrum and haywired their vestibular system—completely understandable—it would not be able to allocate blame in a fair and balanced manner. It wouldn’t even try. Credit to Moissanite where credit is due, I do believe it would be able to sit through grief counselling sessions without chain-smoking three joints in the alley outside prior. Conversely, it would not have the thumb dexterity to secretly record the most salient points made by Sally the grief therapist to later use as ammunition in a war in which both combatants are already buried in trenches.And perhaps most importantly—unlike any animal I have met or seen in David Attenborough documentaries, and unlike any of the spirits hiding in my pantry, or in the shaving cabinet, or underneath my bed—Moissanite is not transformational. It is what it is.It does not have the ability to harden at the sight of a familiar face—now seen only once a year—as it trudges towards a crooked slab of marble lodged in grass. It cannot soften, as it watches this face leak upon withered yellow daisies. And it cannot re-harden, as it sees the face turn, swallow the apology on the tip of its tongue, stand, and walk away once more. Moissanite originates from the stars, a twinkle in the sky. On cloudless nights, I stand outside and gaze up at all my unmet wishes. If I wait here long enough, perhaps one day she will fall again. This time I will catch her.
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FLATLAND by Lana Frankle

September 27, 2024
A female patient of 29 years came to my care for what she described as “a strange break, an awful break” in her leg. After examining by palpitation I was able to verify that the lower portion of her left leg had indeed been severed, just below the knee joint.  However, the contour of the juncture of this tear was quite unusual, namely, it was unusually smooth.  Even breaks due to puncture by a sharp corner or line tend to leave some level of raggedness and unevenness.  Upon noticing this, I asked her permission to make a proper documentation of her case for our most eminent medical journal, which she kindly acquiesced.  The second thing that I noticed about her case was that, while her mobility was expectedly limited, and she did complain of pain, her vital signs were all within normal range, and physically she did not seem any the worse for having sustained this injury.  As I continued to interview her, things became stranger still.  When I asked her how she had sustained this injury, whether she had struck her leg on the sharp corner of a building or fixture, etc., she denied anything like this having happened, saying that she had been merely walking home when she started to feel a “strange throbbing” in her leg, as well as “icy chills” and “spasming.”  She began shaking her leg back and forth to rid herself of this bothersome cramping sensation, when, according to her “it just broke” – and, most curious of all, it did not break into two pieces – the remainder of her leg “just disappeared.”  While such an account is hardly credible, I duly noted her description, so that at least I would have documented what she herself had made of the situation, to aid me in determining what had actually taken place.  I asked her if this had been the first time that she had experienced any of the described symptoms or cramping, and after a pause, she acknowledged that she had, on several prior occasions, experienced much the same thing, and had sought care from this the same medical office in the past, to no avail.  “However,” she continued, “I did not think the symptom, as it was, was serious enough to require further assistance.”  While broken legs have been known to occur, not infrequently, from accidental, unsteady movement or flailing, these breaks never involve severance of the limb, but rather contortion to the left or right, clearly absent in the patient before me.      When I asked her to describe the nature of her injury and pain, she insisted that she experienced “a dreadful phantom” of the leg.  Phantom limb syndrome was known to her and myself, and the persistence of pain in a limb that has been so severed is itself not unusual.  However, she did contradict herself, at times insisting that it “[was] no phantom, doctor, it’s still there, and it pains me so!”  Being ever obliging of my suffering charges, I indulged her by asking what sort of pain she experienced.  “It’s like nothing I can describe, doctor!” she exclaimed, a kind of unearthly thinness in her voice that gave even me some pause.  “Do try,” I insisted.  “It’s hot at the same time as it is cold, it shivers and sways back and forth as though caught in some terrible wind, even when there is no such wind.  It bends back and forth even as I know it stays in place.”  I calmly assured her that her leg was neither bending back and forth nor in place, it had been, by some means or other, removed, and she had naught to worry about anymore.  But, ever the curious academic, I did press her on what she meant by “hot and cold at the same time.”  She then paused for so long I was not sure she had heard me or would answer.  “It’s as though half of it is hot and half of it is cold.” she finally said, haltingly.  In relation to everything else she had described thus far, this did not seem so strange an answer as to warrant such hesitation and drama, so I wondered if I were not still missing some crucial component of her experience, due to her inability to describe it or mine to understand it.  Ever cautiously, I asked her, “Which half do you mean?  Is the top half cold and the bottom half hot?  Or is the right side cold and the left side hot?  Or vice versa.”“It isn’t like that, doctor,” she said, and I could read easily the consternation in her voice.  Even more cautiously than I had asked, she answered slowly, “The top side is hot, and the bottom side is cold.”  “Yes,” I said, growing impatient.  So, just below the knee-”  “No, doctor,” she cut me off abruptly and then sighed in frustration.  “It is the top, where the knee ends, yes, but just one side.”  “Yes,” I replied evenly.  “So, is it the right?  The left?” but, rather than answer, she chose to avoid the question, and continued by adding that it was as though the missing, phantom leg, were “swaying back and forth in some breeze – only it isn’t back and forth.  It’s more like – up and down.”  This description made no more sense than anything else, but I duly added it to my written notes.  Before sending her on her way, I offered her a prescription for pain killers, as was my duty as a physician.  She accepted them, and then, pausing one final time, urged me to palpate the wound again, paying particular attention to “the sides of it, the corner, the…bend.”  I reminded her that there was no such bend, as her leg had not been broken sideways in a way that could be realigned, but had been severed, and furthermore that the missing piece had been lost and could thus never hope to be reattached.  “But, it’s right there doctor!” she exclaimed.  “It is bent…just up.”  No longer paying her words much mind, I moved towards her to palpate the damaged limb a final time, feeling my fingers round the perfect line of the break, where instead of a ravaged, jagged tear, there was only that same smoothness that had first so caught my interest.      
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IF I CAN DREAM by Mike Wilson

September 25, 2024
Did I ever tell you I saw Elvis Presley, years after they said he was dead? Saw him right after I first moved to town, walking through the parking lot of that run down, barely hanging on truck stop over off of Highway 45, a place called The Hungry Hauler. They said he lived in the nearby woods and would come in on occasion to eat and wash up. They were used to him and wouldn’t make a big deal about it, and didn’t like people who did. He was an old man by then, and moved slow any time he emerged from the wilderness to limp into the dining room. A beard the color of dirty snow hung loose off his face, like it was trying to escape the sour smell of his rotted teeth. The hair on his head was well past his shoulders and he’d wear it in braids like a Comanche. His clothes were rags on rags, a patchwork quilt that he’d wash in their bathroom sink. If you went in at the right time you could see him naked as a newborn, jiggling around and humming his own songs to himself as he worked on cleaning the layers of dirt off his skin. I snuck in there once when he was washing, crept in out of pure curiosity, like a real perv. He was all dangles and stink — there were no sequins. He’d always eat the same thing after his sink bath, waffles and sausage, but would never finish the food on his plate. More than once I was tempted to walk by and sneak a bite just to say I’d shared a meal with the King of Rock n’ Roll, but I never did. And he always paid with cash that was dated before 1977. They even let me see it once, crisp and fresh as the day it was printed. When he left he’d do it without saying goodbye. You could watch him walk back into the woods, not to be seen again for weeks or even months. Sometimes folks new to town would mistake him for Bigfoot when they saw him near a tree clearing or out wandering a deer path.Over the years I hiked every inch of those woods in every direction, looking for him. But I never could find where he was living, never came across evidence of a cook fire, never saw a lean-to built against a small cliff face, or a tarp folded over a branch as a makeshift tent. I followed for miles every creek I could find that he might have used as a water source. I would cup my hands over my ears to try to catch the faintest gasp of him humming to himself out there, maybe even singing.At night I’d sit in the garage with my guitar, playing the same three chords with my two working fingers, strumming them in every order and pattern I could think of, trying to lure him out the way fishermen down at the lake cast their fly baits over the different lilly pads to get the bass to jump out of the water. My wife would come out and sit with me when she’d hear me playing. We’d share one can of beer and talk about our son, laugh with each other about the good old days. Sometimes we’d stay out there so long we’d fall asleep in our lawn chairs, holding hands like a couple of teenagers at the drive-in movies, and we’d wake up in the wee hours and itch the welts swelling over us from the mosquito bites — what a fine feast we made for them — and we’d pat each other’s forearms as if to say it’s time to go up to bed darlin’, and she’d go in first and I’d fold up our chairs, and half the time I’d forget to close the garage, and she’d tell me the next morning that we needed to watch for snakes or rats or bats out there for a few days. I’d say at least the bats will eat all the mosquitos.I thought I saw him once, on one of those nights, as the garage was going down, not Elvis, but our son, our boy, grown into middle age, limping up the drive in rags of his own, probably with a bad back like mine, his own beard hardly sprinkled with gray the way mine was at his age, finally outgrowing the boyish looks he still had when he left, when we told him he wasn’t welcome anymore, because the preacher said we had to cut him out of our lives, to stop enabling him — it’s always the preachers who give you the worst advice — and I ran out, ducked under the closing overhead door, the thing chomping down like a mouth behind me, and I hustled out to meet our son, to tell him I was sorry, that I didn’t know what I was doing back then, that no one ever knows what to do in this life, no matter how much you try to learn, we are all too stupid for how smart we are, and I was ready to jump into his arms, let him cradle me, his old man father who had just moved faster than he’d moved in years, let us fall to the ground in one another’s arms, dizzy and concussed from the blow of this return. But when I got there all I saw were footprints. Or maybe they weren’t even footprints. Just the gravel blown into little divots by the shifting wind of an incoming storm. I had to knock on our door and ring the bell to get Fran to let me in. She came down and asked what had happened, was I getting so old that only one beer and a little nap could get me so out of sorts. I laughed and said maybe I have finally gone senile.This morning Frannie was working in the flower bed in front of our home, planting tulip bulbs, doing her favorite thing, making our dot on the world beautiful. She has said recently she hopes she’s doing exactly this the moment she dies. We are old enough that we have both realized we could die any second of any day, without warning at all. She says she loves the thought of going out like that. I tell her I hate the thought of her being dead. I tell her she can never die, that she must break all the rules and conditions of our existence here and become immortal. Then I tell her I’m going for a hike. She says bring your compass and don’t go too far.I still look for signs of him. Even though I am well aware that no elderly man could survive in these woods for very long, that Elvis has probably been dead for years by now and his bones are likely out here weathering into flaky ashes, his soul gone into flight through the universe, I still look for signs he was here. Maybe I’ll come across a carving he made into a tree. Maybe I’ll stumble over an old stone monument he made, inspired to do so by the stars the same way our ancient cave dwelling ancestors were. Or perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to uncover some notebooks hidden in a tin box under a shelf of rocks, words he never spoke to anyone but himself with pen and page. I wouldn’t read them. It’s not my place. But it would be nice to know they’re there, to find the signs of an old moment when he was here, nearby, living and breathing our shared air. Maybe in that notebook would be an old memory of his, maybe an observation, maybe how he’d walked past a strange old couple’s house one day, that they sat in a cluttered garage together and played notes and sang songs, howling out to someone they’d never find.
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THE OSTRICH ECONOMY by Audrey Lee

September 23, 2024
Cammie has a Hermés Birkin pulled up on a resale website. She pushes the blinding screen towards my face across the white tablecloth between us. She’s talked about wanting a Birkin before, but I didn’t really think about it that much. “It’s ostrich leather,” Cammie says, and she pouts. Her raspy voice is hushed over the trepid steakhouse pianist on the baby grand. What does it take in life to become a steakhouse pianist? “It’s an investment piece. Ostrich leather is going to have better resale value than cow leather. But it's much less than crocodile.” The orange pinpricked leather looks like a nest of mosquitos stuck themselves into the smooth hide and had a feast. “How much?” I ask, hesitant as I take a bite of the rare filet alone on the massive plate in front of me. I really don’t like fat. I’ve carved the excess off to the side because I asked the waiter to tell the kitchen to remove any fat after the steak had been grilled, but no one listened. Grease pools across the glassy steakhouse plate.Cammie’s turn to hesitate. She shrugs and glances away. “Nineteen thousand dollars.”God. I choke. When I glance up at Cammie, I can’t breathe. She is beautiful and unimpressed. Her taut cheekbones and the small point of her nose are lit only by the flickering tea candle. Tense wrinkles cast shadows under her eyes. I panic, less at choking, and more at my beautiful, unimpressed, embarrassed girlfriend. I  grasp for my napkin. I remember when she would have hidden a laugh in her own napkin instead of watching me cover my mouth, as the chewed, swollen wad of meat rolls up into the back of my throat. I take the wad down again with a desperate gulp of water. Cammie looks away and sighs as I clear my throat. “I’m sorry,” I dab at my mouth with the napkin and glance around. No one at the other tables saw me. . Only Cammie, but she’s the last person who wanted to. “Just chew your food,” she says. She brings the rim of the glass of Sangiovese to her plumped lips that I so want to kiss when I don’t have ice water dripping from my mouth like a blubbering, drooly baby. I watch as she tips the wine back along her tongue, and her eyes look beyond the rim of the glass. She’s not looking at me, but she’s looking at something far behind my shoulder. I get to kiss her, lips sweet with wine, later that night, and she almost smiles at me. “Thank you for dinner,” she whispers, the small point of her nose brushing up to mine. I watch her naked back rising and falling under the plush duvet next to me in bed. She has a small tattoo on her ribcage that she got when she was eighteen of her grandmother’s name in thin cursive. It sinks in the concave skin between two ribs. She wants it removed.   I can’t stop looking at handbags. Bong would say That’s so gay. On my walk to the office through Battery Park I spot bags made of saffiano leather, pebbled leather, and calfskin. A few are coated in scales but I doubt that they are real snakeskin, or crocodile. None are ostrich leather with its swollen, plucked pinpoints. This is a universal male experience: to buy your girlfriend or wife the very expensive handbag or jewelry or shoes that she asks for, or to tell her not right now and that you’d consider it closer to Christmas or for her birthday? I think my mother would tell me to marry her first, but two-and-a-half years together was too soon. I think my father would tell me to just keep her happy, look at all I do for your mother but I was bad at that. I made Cammie happy when I broke up with her friend Samantha to date her instead.  Sam was bright, but at the bar she could barely order for herself. In our last year at Columbia, Cammie was getting her J.D. I was splitting my time between class, rotations at BNY Mellon, and spending my analyst paycheck on blow in the bathroom of Soho House. She clocked me for what I was: doing what I was supposed to do. Desperate. Stumbling. Too caught up in my own pride. She was calculated. She was going to be such a good lawyer. Had I made her happy since then? I got my MBA. I deleted my blow dealer’s number from my phone. I work seventy-hour weeks to pay for rare steaks and two Soho House memberships, and handbags, and maybe even an engagement ring. I take this elevator to the thirty-sixth floor of my office to put up with my bosses. She is rarely impressed. Neither are my bosses at work, which is what keeps me meeting expectations. Bong says she’s always busting your balls. He says she’s bleeding you dry, man. Bong knocks on my office door at end of day, right before the sun dips below the horizon on the Hudson. He walks in before I can answer. I call him Bong to Cammie and when I told her to never repeat that, I put my finger to her lips, shushing her. She kissed my hand. Her eyes smiled at me. “He’s gotta be the most relaxed motherfucker in IB. I know he doesn’t smoke, but he’s just… disheveled. He went to UCLA anyway.” Cammie told me a few months later after last year’s company holiday party that Bong was a little drunk. He told her he had a Xanax prescription because otherwise, he’d throw himself off the bridge. “Hey,” he says.“I’m finishing up.”“Jason and I are going to get drinks at P.J. Clarke’s. Come with.” I look up from my computer. “Jason?”“Junior director.” “I’ve never met him. P.J. Clarke’s?”I lean back in my seat. Bong is on the fritz: his hair is more disheveled, his shirt is more crumpled, but his eyes are wide open like saucers. “You’re freaking me out.” “We need to talk,” Bong says. “With Jason?” I stand up from the desk and start to pack my stuff. “Yes,” says Bong. “Get your shit together.”We take the elevator down from the thirty-sixth floor to solid ground and walk to P.J. Clarke’s in complete silence. I think that Cammie wouldn’t touch a place like P.J. Clarke’s. She’d be embarrassed to know that I’d even stepped inside. She would scoff at the checkered tablecloths and paper menus with crosswords for children printed on the back. “Why are we here?”Bong walks me over to the bar where Jason is sitting. I’d seen him around the office and we’d spoken once or twice in passing. He is younger and baby-faced. His Brooks Brothers sport coat is tossed over the seat next to him, presumably for me to sit at. He’s got a leather messenger bag by his seat, his phone face down on the bar next to a bottle of Bud Light. He stands up from the pleather barstool, stone faced, and claps me on the back. “Is this an intervention?” I ask. I feel like I could chew the tension between the three of us. Bong and Jason sit down and I follow. “We need you not to yell,” says Bong.   They were very diplomatic about it all. The situation was laid out as dull as a boardroom meeting. There was no needful reason to yell because they were right. Why P.J. Clarke’s? Because no one at P.J. Clarke’s knew us if I did yell. This was a good strategy on their behalf, but P.J. Clarke’s was not where I wanted my relationship with Cammie to end. Jason pulled up screenshots on his phone of Cammie’s Hinge. The first photo was a selfie that she had posted on her Instagram. Her lips were just healed, and they were pursed slightly around her teeth, the angle of the phone camera low enough that her eyes looked down on you in disdain. Camilla, 28. From Bethesda, Maryland, but lives in our apartment in Murray Hill. Associate, of Counsel. Columbia graduate. Capricorn. Figuring out her dating goals. Her other photos were of her and her girlfriends at Le Bain, at her sister’s wedding in a lavender bridesmaid’s gown that she had desperately hated, and a photo I had taken of her pinching the stem of an espresso martini glass at a Soho House party. She was in an oversized blazer cut down to her chest, staring down the camera like she could kill it. A fact about her that surprises people? She wanted to become a nun until high school. Give her travel tips for… Portofino, where we had talked about traveling for our three-year anniversary. A green flag for her? Spontaneity. And I knew all of this about her. But this wasn’t for me to care about anymore. Cammie had answered one of Jason’s prompts: I’m looking for… the best Sazerac in Manhattan, Jason had answered. Cammie said she loved the one at Apothéke in Chinatown, why didn’t the two of them meet up after work this week? Jason said “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” after every sentence. He couldn’t have been more sorry. He was sniffling and couldn’t make eye contact. He had no idea she was Cammie, as in, my girlfriend Cammie. She had no idea he worked in my office. He was right. He found her Instagram, checked her tagged photos, and recognized the photos I’d tagged her in. He asked Bong if Cammie and I were dating.“I looked at him like what the fuck are you talking about?” Bong said, hushed. “Like, of course, you’re dating. You’ve been dating for-fucking-ever. Good luck prying her out of your arms. How’d you even get this idea of going out with her? And then he showed me his conversation with her on Hinge, and I was, like, oh shit.”“I’m sorry if you didn’t want to know,” said Jason. “I’m sorry. I unmatched with her. Immediately. Never got drinks. She doesn’t know I’ve told you, or anyone. I’m sorry.” I’ve been staring at Jason’s open phone, cast aside on the dull wood bar. The screenshots of Cammie’s Hinge profile glow, then dim as the phone just sits while Jason and Bong stare at me in desperation. They fill the air with apologies. They wanted to do the right thing. They wanted me to say something. They are terrified. Finally, the phone screen turns to black, and Cammie’s taut cheekbones and pointed nose and eyes are gone. And it was all very diplomatic, and very fast. I hear myself tell Jason “Thank you. I have nothing against you. You did the right thing, and I respect that.” I hear myself ask Bong if we can leave. I am watching myself being diplomatic and calm from behind my eyes, where complete numbness sits heavy in my chest. A cinderblock. A hydraulic press. Cammie lying on top of me in bed. I swing my coat over my shoulders and clap Jason on the back. Bong rushes out of P.J. Clarke’s behind me. “You gonna be okay, man?” I keep walking. “Hey,” Bong yells behind me. “Hey! You’re not gonna kill her, are you?” I stop. I watch myself turn towards him and hear myself say “I’m not that kind of guy. I just need to go home.”“You’re not gonna kill yourself?”“I thought you were gonna do that.”“What?”  It’s been a year and a half and I haven’t spoken to Cammie. I haven’t seen Bong. Or Jason, or the thirty-sixth floor. That doesn’t matter to me, and I don’t care about them. On my walk to the coop, the summer squall of cicadas hisses in the maple trees, from the gutters on the roof, wherever the hard-shelled bugs are screaming and fucking and dying. My boots are covered in shit and dirt. Everything smells like hot shit and dirt: earthy, putrid, sour. I went to the Governor’s Ball one time and it smells worse than the portable toilets used by thousands of sweaty office job workers rolling on molly. The trepid tittering of the ostriches reaches a fever pitch as I unlock the collapsing coop door and seven bowing, writhing, growling birds teeter outside into the sunlight. They rasp and cluck. Their taut faces and thin, pale necks ebb and bounce as they stick their faces into the brown grass and feast. Their bird eyes roll in the sockets with wrinkles collecting underneath them. They are dumb, savage creatures. I check on the incubator with ten bulbous ostrich eggs baking inside. It barely needs to be turned on in the summer heat of Arkansas. I got here with four monogrammed suitcases that still sit on the floor where my mattress is, in the apartment above the garage. I had walked into JFK and thought I’d go visit my parents in Chapel Hill. By the time I got to Charlotte I thought I’d kill myself. The flight to Little Rock was three gates from where I landed. No one asked questions, and I’m happy they didn’t.But that doesn’t matter to me, now. I’ve got four acres, paid for in cash. I bought eight African black-necked ostrich chicks from a wildlife farm I tracked down in Eureka for $250 a bird. The man who sold them to me didn’t tell me his name. He had a silver knob pierced in his eyebrow and the top of his head was bald; strings of long, white hair tangled around his sunburnt shoulders. The 2017 Toyota Tacoma I got off a used car lot was $19,250. A Birkin, I thought to myself, and a bird. I took P.J. home as a puppy in it. My neighbor’s golden lab had puppies and I picked one up. That was the only time I’ve seen them in a year and a half because they asked if I was from animal control. They were suspicious of me. I told them no.I push through another door that separates the coop from storage. The hides, strung up to dry, flutter in the drafty breeze. They are ghastly, pale, amorphous spreads, like maps, every follicle a pinpoint. This was the first ostrich I’d skinned of the eight chicks. She was a sweet bird. She never growled at me, or tried to kick me like some of the other birds did. She didn’t put up a fight. I sliced her open. I strung her up. I plucked her feathers to sell wholesale, each bone begging to stay in her skin. I watched myself butcher her, all diplomatic and fast and about it. Of course it was gross and at one point I threw up in the dry grass outside, where the other birds trot over to inspect the vomit. I let them be. P.J. herded them away. I let the birds distract me. The process of mopping up the blood, carving off the fat, plucking and cleaning and fleshing and cleaning and tanning and scrubbing and salting and tanning and wringing the leather out is excessive for a handbag. I have the bag designed in my head. I haven’t thought about how I’d get it to Cammie yet, or where she is or who she’s with. I don’t want to think about this. She hasn’t found me, or at least hasn’t tried to. I care for the birds, really. When I sell the bird’s eggs at a farmer’s market, I get comments that I’m different, that I can’t be from around here, where was I from? How’d I get to ostrich farming in Arkansas? Did I have a family nearby, a wife? And I smile. I watch myself tell these well-meaning locals It was a long time coming. Something God had planned for me. But that doesn’t matter. None of it does. It’s just me and the birds, now.
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TOM CLANCY DID NOT WRITE DOMESTIC THRILLERS AND DEFINITELY DIED ON OCTOBER 1ST, 2013 by Evan Hannon

September 19, 2024
The sun rises late in the morning, creeping above the treeline like the encroaching fingers of some lethargic yet sinister god of anti-democratic thought. It’s hard not to feel like the entire world is turning against me. I lean against the kitchen’s marble countertop and remind myself the sunlight isn’t the enemy. The natural world knows right and wrong. If only the same could be said for man.Above my head, I hear my wife Barbra rise, the soft creak of wood, the exhale of bed springs. Even the good guys have to get their hands dirty. My battlefield is one of disinformation, a smoke screen behind which the truth can safely nestle like a slightly moist bird. My job, my marriage, even my name, all of it is a lie. This is what service requires. The work is thankless. And my legacy? Only the satisfaction of a job well done. That, and a media empire of best-selling novels, Hollywood blockbusters, video games, and a permanent place in America’s heart. But at what cost? Here comes my wife, padding down the stairs, wrapped in her bathrobe, our dog Alvin behind her. “Is the coffee ready?” Barbra asks.Strong men do what is necessary. “Sorry, I forgot.”The lie bites at my throat like a KGB Black Russian Terrier, specialty guard dog of the Soviet state, famous for their ferocity and loyalty. I never forget the coffee – but Sam Meadows does. Sam is an insurance agent. He owns a boat and fly fishes and supports the Rams. I know everything about Sam: how he eats, how he sleeps, how he shits, how he calls for more toilet paper from the can while he’s shitting. But I’m not Sam Meadows.My secret is that I am Tom Clancy, award winning author and, more importantly, Patriot.I knew things were headed downhill when Obama won a second term, and was soon proven right when that turncoat Snowden was allowed to pilfer the womb of America’s intelligence and deliver the child straight into Russia’s supple embrace. That was the final straw. The country was falling apart. No hero would save us, and so my hand was forced – I faked my death and went undercover. I am the beachhead for America’s heart and mind. The mission is simple: live a clean and godly life. Like a red, white, or blue blood cell, I treat the infection from inside. Tom Clancy was too well-known, too highly regarded, asked to go onto too many talk shows, hailed as being too prophetic and successful and smart and popular and moral and just too powerful of a person for this kind of assignment. And so I gave it all up and became Sam Meadows. All for this country that I love.I pull into the office at 7:48. It takes me exactly four minutes to park and walk into the office. Another seven to get coffee from the cramped box of a kitchen. When I’d first started at Meadows Insurance, I’d thought for certain that the building had been built intentionally small, some Chinese architect awash in socialist propaganda, convinced that folk just love to trip over one another, cheek to cheek. Turns out it was built by some fella from Maryland, and the smallness of the kitchen is a cost-saving measure, less piping, less expense. A reasonable decision, but Tom Clancy’s used to big kitchens, kitchens the size of states with their own economy and carbon footprint.  The boss shows up at 8:12. Were Eddie Marrow not such a stupid man, I’d assume him to be an agent of a foreign government. He trundles through the door, tie askance, glasses smudged. However cramped the kitchen feels, it’s nothing to the suffocating aura of incompetence that he brings with him, part of that wider breed of man that’s weakened this country. Working under him is its own special form of hell. But what better place to stage my war than in the enemy’s camp?“Oh, Mark,” Eddie says as he passes my desk. “Did you have a chance to look over the Burgeons’ account?”“Not yet,” I say and bite my tongue. I want to tell him that I’ve got better things to do than look at his little insurance problems. But my cover demands I keep silent. “It’s been more than a week since it came in. Did you have questions?”“No questions.”“So you’ll do it today?”Eddie Marrow looks like a worm stuffed into human clothes and taught some crude approximation of our god-given tongue. Slimy, tiny eyes behind frames too big for his face. “I’ll take a look at it,” I say, suppressing my distaste. Eddie stands there blinking. “Do you need help with some other cases?”No amount of training can keep my face from flushing. The impudence to suggest that I need his help. Perhaps it’s time to reassess whether he’s an agent after all. Who else would goad me into breaking cover so brazenly?“I’ll look at the Burgeons’ account today,” I say and look down at my screen, hands shaking with the desire to choke the life out of him. I could, too. Older, I may be, but none of the fighting spirit’s left me – I’m as strong as I was at twenty-five. Eddie stands there, looking at me. Perhaps he’s calculating whether it’s safe to push me further. Finally, he turns without another word and goes into his office. One day we’ll have it out, me and him. But not today.

***

I watch as my husband leaves for work. He pulls out of the driveway, hits the mailbox with the side view mirror, and drives away oblivious. Perhaps the hardest part of my mission is smiling through all my husband’s faults. Even our dog, Alvin, seems to feel it. He lets out a whine of embarrassment and I scratch his head to reassure him. Self-important Sam; so confident when he knows so little, even about his own wife. But he’s a good man. And if there’s one thing I’m qualified to determine, it’s the quality of a man – after all, I was one of the best. I may answer to Barbra Meadows, but the truth is that I am Tom Clancy, writer of military fiction so real it may as well be history. And often it is history, future history that has yet to be written, except it was written by me.Make no mistake - there are forces that seek to warp our world, and it is only my constant vigil that keeps them at bay. When some vagabond begs for a dollar outside the supermarket, when the weedy clerk at the check-out counter only offers a paper bag instead of plastic, when a supposed American company allows the enemy to hang their rainbow flag in store windows like conquering huns - these are assaults upon the national soul. It is my duty to drag these sinners into the Colosseum of verbal combat and metaphorically wring the life from their godless necks. They can call me all the names they like (psycho, Karen, that loud and bitchy bitch) but none of it will dissuade me from my mission. When Sam gets home, we eat dinner, watch the news and then head to bed. But Sam has other ideas – he wants his favorite thing. At the foot of our bed, he pulls his shirt off slowly, trying to titillate me with his flabby body and pasty skin. When he mounts me, I can smell our dinner on his breath. Were I not committed to my mission, I’d show Sam exactly how a man’s supposed to use his penis, but I lay there and pretend to enjoy it. When he finally rolls off, breathing heavily, I tell him it was good and he nods without replying. I don’t mind his incompetence. Bad sex has its own righteousness, especially between a husband and wife. And, really, his delusion keeps my identity all the safer. He’d never suspect it’s Tom Clancy he’s making clumsy love to.

***

The old man and woman wake up a few hours apart and go about their day. I watch from the floor, scratching my ear, waiting for one of them to serve me my kibble. Some would be surprised that Tom Clancy eats dog food three meals a day, but in truth I’ve developed a taste for it. It was a delicate operation, breaking into the Louisville Pet Orphanage, stuffing myself into an admittedly uncomfortable kennel, and waiting for the man and woman to arrive. I’d orchestrated the whole thing, of course, their actions as predictable as amateur insurgents. When I stood on my hind legs and barked, I already knew who the good boy was, just as I’d known I’d be heading home an adopted pup. And now, with the perfect cover, I can save this country, one fire hydrant at a time. 
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WOMAN OF STEEL by Valerie Hegarty

September 18, 2024
Yesterday in ceramics class Prof Woodstock did a demo of red glazes while telling us an old Chinese legend.  Once there was an emperor who demanded a red glazed pot.  The royal potter fired pot after pot, but could not get any of them to fire red.  So the emperor sentenced him to death.  The potter’s daughter was so upset she jumped in the fired kiln, and when they opened it all the pots were glazed red with her blood. Prof Woodstock said as a feminist she wasn’t thrilled with the story, but it showed the difficulty of producing a red glaze wasn’t just specific to dumb Americans.  I was sipping vodka from my water bottle and swooned a bit over the open kiln, my face flushed red from my buzz and the heat.  Prof Woodstock sent me home to sleep it off; she was cool like that, which was fine because my main focus in school was to make metal art.  Prof Steelhead told me making metal art was not recommended as it appeared I did not have the disposition to withstand working close to the fire for extended periods of time and lifting welded metal sculpture was challenging for even the most vigorous athletic builds. Prof  Steelhead made work similar in style to Richard Serra, and since Richard Serra was famous, no one cared about Steelhead’s art. It wasn’t shown in blue chip galleries in Chelsea, or at International Art Fairs like the Venice Biennale. Instead Steelhead’s rusted walls of steel littered meadows in Vermont, where cows were forced to walk the long way around these industrial barriers when looking for a lost calf.Of course I didn’t listen to Steelhead.  He should have gone West and bought a depressed town to reconstruct if he wanted to be a dictator like Heizer or Judd, but since he was slowly creaking out his tenure at a liberal Arts College in New England, no one listened to Steelhead.  Plus the college had the metal workshop outfitted with cranes and there were techs and other students to assist, so I don’t know why he was picking on me, aside from my slight build and nervous disposition.  Truthfully I was terrified of fire, but that was exactly why I wanted to make metal art to begin with—not to face my fears—but for the surges of Norepinephrine that coursed through my body when I thought I was on the precipice of death. I finished a twelve-pack of Bud cans before class, crushing the tin cans in my fist each time I polished one off just to psych myself up. Although it calmed my anxiety, I was now staggering when I walked. I told myself not to walk in front of Steelhead and to stay on the other side of the fire from him when the techs did the demo of the molten steel pour.  Ten of us arrived at class and Steelhead gave us shovels to dig out trenches as molds that would be filled with the molten steel during the demo.  I dug a hole the shape of my body, like the artist Ana Mendieta who performed in the landscape—lying naked on sand, against trees, in gardens, then covering herself with earth—but mine was a hole. No body. It was a hollow, like the voids in the lava post-Vesuvius.  Maybe it could be a memorial to Ana Mendieta, who was now without a body as her body broke and died when she was pushed out the window by her drunk lover, the artist Carl Andre. Without witnesses, he claimed it wasn’t him, and I know from drunken blackouts that maybe he did it and didn’t remember. Maybe it was psychic survival to keep that night dark.  Now I was feeling sad about Ana Mendieta. What a fucking way to die, drunk and fighting with your drunken lover, soon to be your murderer, whose work would still be going to Venice and Paris and every MOMA retrospective in every country around the world, while your body decayed and disappeared, leaving a void deep in the ground where you were buried.  It’s all very poetic except for the part where she was pushed.When I finished digging my body-shaped hole, I was dizzy from the exertion in the sun. I leaned on my shovel to prop me up.  Steelhead took my shovel out from under me and gave me an “I told you so” look and I glared at him, batting my eyelashes to confuse him.  My sweat smelled like barley and hops as it poured out under my armpits. I didn’t care if he smelled it, he was a drinker too; I could see it in his watery eyes in the morning class. He was blurred and hung over and pissed about Richard Serra.Steelhead told us all to stand back from our holes. Multiple techs in heavy Kevlar suits with helmets like they were headed to Mars picked up a trough that glowed fiery red with molten steel. They carried the trough to the holes and one by one filled the horse shoe shaped hole, the hole shaped like a pitchfork, the hole shaped like Carl Andre’s steel floor tiles. They carried the red molten metal to me, its liquid silver sloshing, and started to fill the hole shaped like my body. The heat from the molten steel overtook me. I was drunk and hot. If only I could sit down for a minute. I’ll just sit on my heels, I thought, and staggered backward. As I pitched forward, I tried to catch my balance. I could hear screaming as I fell into the  molten metal.I was at a party and it was late.  Someone was shooting up in the corner and nodding out with the needle still in his arm.  A couple was fighting about art and finances, and being a bad lover, and being a drunk, and you are a drunk, and the woman said she was leaving and leaving for good, and she was looking out the window shouting to her friend to wait, and the man ran to her. He was enraged. He almost had his hands on her, and I was right there, right in between them. I stuck out my foot.The man fell and hit his head on the iron baseboard heater. He was knocked unconscious.  Maybe he was dead.  The woman screamed. She checked his pulse.  “He’s dead!” she yelled, “Call an ambulance! He’s dead!”  You’re welcome, I thought.  I saw there was a fire in the kitchen sink, so I ran to put it out.  I turned on the water, but whiskey flowed out, accelerating the flames.  I grabbed a bottle of water and threw it on the growing fire, but it was vodka. Now the flames were consuming the cabinets and the stove. The utensil drawer dripped silver, the toaster melted, the refrigerator buckled in on itself.  I ran from the room, but I was drunk and lurching.  The man wasn’t dead. He was back on his feet and his face was so red it looked like he was going to pop.  He was coming for me.  “No! No! Get away from me!” I yelled as I ran out of the apartment, down the stairwell, into the street.  He was chasing me, he had one of his steel floor tiles in his hands raised over his head. He was going to pummel me with his metal art. He was gaining on me, and I was tired of running. I stopped and turned to him.  “Go ahead, kill me fast, I have a weak stomach for this type of thing,” and he raised the steel plate and crashed it down on my head.  There was the clanging boing of a gong. Two men were dragging me by my elbows up to a Chinese emperor sitting on his throne.  The emperor was drinking from a jug and I could smell the alcohol on his breath.  At his feet was a pile of ceramic shards from broken jugs.  My hands were tied behind my back and I was dragging my legs.   Next to the emperor was the biggest kiln I’d ever seen in my life, with a bonfire of stacked wood burning underneath.  Under the lid I could see rows of jugs waiting to be glazed and fired. “Get in if you want to save your father,” said the emperor, pointing behind me.  I turned around and my father was nodding his head.  “They will kill me if you don’t get in,” said my father, his eyes locking on mine.  “My blood will be on your hands,” he said.I nodded my head as if I understood, and the two men released my arms.  I stepped forward toward the kiln. “Save your motherfucking self!” I screamed as I ran out the door to the right of the kiln. I was running back and forth. I was in some inner courtyard and couldn’t find my way out.  The two men cornered me and one of them raised his double-edged sword, the edges glinting, and I stuck out my neck, “Fine, do it, it’s better than burning to death,” I said as I heard the swish of the sword cut the air in half.I was outside my childhood home and I heard my mother’s voice.  I thought my mother died two years ago of cancer, but she was in the kitchen calling my name. I ran to the kitchen. I couldn’t believe she was there, washing dessert spoons in the sink.  “Sweetie, you need to stop drinking. It’s killing you.  I love you and I don’t want you to die. I should have protected you more as kid.” She handed me a spoon and a bowl of ice cream. I fell into her skirt. It was my mother and I started to cry.  I was crying and the bowl of ice cream was melting and I was crying and melting and crying and melting and they were pulling me out of the body shaped hole.  I was still alive but all my clothes had burned off. My skin shone silver.  I had a coating of steel. I looked like the tin man’s wife.  Steelhead fell in love with me on the spot. He tried to hand me a can of beer to cool me off, but I deflected it with my wrist like Wonder Woman, and when the can touched my skin it instantly turned to liquid metal and poured into a puddle by my feet. Steelhead said we could make beautiful art together but I told him he was too old for me and I had a whole life to lead.  He wouldn’t be able to keep up and I couldn’t be with a drinker. It would be a risk to my newly sober self.  As I walked away the noon sun was so bright it glared off every side of my metal body. I heated up to the temperature of the sun itself. I was walking radiance. I could feel Steelhead’s watery eyes on me as I poured into the light.
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KNIVES by Sean Hayes

September 16, 2024
I was gonna be a salesman. I took an elevator up to the third floor and followed signs taped to the walls with directional arrows and Trajectory Marketing Demo printed on them. They led to an office with an open door. There were guys with hair gelled, cut, buzzed, or combed into all different shapes wearing oversized suits and ties, the kind that’d only been worn to funerals. My hair was shaggy again and I was wearing my beat-up Christmas slippers, Nike sweatpants, and my Arc’teryx fleece riddled with cigarette burns like I was some weird spotted animal. I just wanted to make Dad and my stepmom Paula proud since I got put on academic suspension from college for the semester and was back living at home. That was why I found and circled an ad in the paper for a demonstration with Trajectory Marketing at 7PM Wednesday. It said I could make a grand a week. If I made a grand a week I wouldn’t have to steal or borrow money from Dad ever again.So I was at the office building in SoNo. I didn’t get high before because I wanted to do right. Be good. Get a job. Turn my life around. I walked to a table. There were two dozen boxes of donuts from Dunk’s. I chose a double chocolate frosted donut, took a seat, and ate the donut. The windows of the office looked out onto The Sound. The sunset was Pepto Bismal pink and DayQuil orange. A beautiful omen. I swear to God the Gladiator soundtrack was playing softly from somewhere. Donuts, over-the-counter omen sunsets, the prospect of fortune. Sometimes life spoils us.The guy in charge had a chinstrap that looked like it was holding his hair on his head. Chinstrap Man told everyone to take a seat. We sat down and got quiet. He pushed a button on the stereo on his desk. The Gladiator soundtrack stopped playing softly in the background, confirming that it really was playing. Chinstrap Man smiled. He shook a set of keys in front of us once we all sat down and he smiled some more.“Do you know what these are?” Chinstrap Man asked us.“Keys?” someone said.“Not just any keys.” Chinstrap Man jingled them around like we were a bunch of babies fascinated by them. “Keys, to an M3.”I couldn’t tell what kind of keys they were. They were definitely keys though.“They could be yours,” he told to us. “If you hustle the way I hustle, you can have keys to an M3 too.”Some of the guys sitting around smiled and whispered to each other, excited about the possibility of M3s.“What do you fellas know about knives?” Chinstrap Man asked us.“They cut stuff,” someone said.“Not all knives cut stuff with surgical precision though.” Chinstrap Man clasped his hands together.The kid next to me was picking his nose. He picked it and smiled when he was supposed to smile while Chinstrap Man said things we were supposed to smile at. I smiled at the things we were supposed to smile at too, but also watched the guy picking his nose until Chinstrap Man took a cutting board out from under a tableclothed table. He dumped a bunch of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies on the table. He took out a knife block full of knives and a Stop & Shop bag full of fruits and vegetables.“What do you know about SliceWorks knives?” he asked us.“They’re the best around,” someone said.“Ding, ding, ding. What’s your name, young man?” Chinstrap Man asked him.“Michael,” the guy said.“Michael, you’re a smart man.” Chinstrap Man threw Michael a quarter. Then he threw Michael a penny and motioned for him to go up there.“Take these scissors and cut that penny in half. Put the quarter in your pocket. Consider it a down payment on that M3 you’re gonna be driving.” Chinstrap Man handed Michael a pair of scissors from the knife block.Michael smiled a nervous smile while he was trying to do it, but the scissors cut the penny right in half. Did that shit for him. Michael even said it. “They did that shit for me.”Chinstrap Man high-fived Michael. Some people clapped. I clapped a little too. I watched the dude picking his nose again until he finally got what he was digging for. He tasted it and it must’ve not tasted the way it was supposed to taste because he made a frown and pushed the booger onto the back of the seat in front of him. At that point, I figured it might be okay to be high in the Trajectory Marketing demo. I walked to the bathroom, took the green time-release coating off the OC 80 so all the time was mine, crushed the bone white pill and a little piece of a Xanax bar up on the toilet paper dispenser, snorted it, and walked back into the demo. It was the last 80 I was gonna do. It was always the last 80. All of them. The first. Second. Hundredth. However many. They were all the last. In the twelve step meetings I quit going to, they say one is too many and a thousand is never enough and they say addiction is a progressive disease. It eats me up inside to know they might know me better than I know myself.I sat back down in the demo and I smiled. Everything was gonna be alright. Chinstrap Man was telling us how we’d be selling knives to family and friends on commission. No hourly rate. I pictured myself in Aunt Deb’s apartment in Cornwall, sitting at her dining room table with the knife block on display and a pile of change I’d cut to smithereens while she chain-smoked Marlboro Lights and ashed into a carnival glass ashtray filled with hundreds of butts and she’d tell me in her cigarette-carved voice I didn’t need to do any of that sales pitch bullshit and she’d buy whatever her dear nephew was selling.I thought about all the Oxys I’d be doing in my M3. The last Oxys. I picked at this scab that had once been a pimple long ago, but had scabbed over a few times. I picked at it and smiled and chuckled when everyone smiled and chuckled at Chinstrap Man even though I wasn’t listening to a word he was saying anymore. Chinstrap Man hit play on a stereo. The song by “Bodies” by Drowning Pool started. The lead singer screamed and heavy metal guitars screeched. Chinstrap Man sliced tomatoes, celery stalks, and heads of lettuce with incredible speed. Debris flew everywhere. The chain from his chain wallet swung back and forth against his dress slacks as he chopped. People cheered. I smiled and laughed, enjoying it like everyone else. I must’ve nodded because when I came to, Chinstrap Man was standing in front of me with a meat cleaver in his hand. Drowning Pool had been turned down so it was only playing lightly. Everyone was turned around staring at me.“Are we boring you?” Chinstrap Man said to me. “Buddy, your face is bleeding.”He held the shiny meat cleaver up to my face so I could see myself. I was bleeding a long thin streak of blood from my forehead down to my chin from the opened scab. I also had chocolate frosting on the corners of my mouth.“Why don’t you go get cleaned up and catch us at the next demo in April?” He gave me a little pat on the shoulder and left his hand there with a tightening grip like he was ready to escort me out if needed.Everyone stared at me. The guy who had been picking his nose was back to picking his nose while staring at me too. I got up and walked to the door. Chinstrap Man restarted the Drowning Pool song as I walked out.On the drive home, I pretended I was Chinstrap Man. I morphed into him like it was The Matrix. His chinstrap became mine. Dad’s Subaru Forrester became a BMW M3 with a forest of New Car Scent Little Trees dangling from the rearview. Standard turned to stick. I suddenly knew how to drive stick. The chain from my chain wallet rested on the driver’s seat. I hit a hundred on a straightaway on I-95 until the steering wheel shook and I remembered I was in the Forrester. I took my hands off the wheel, outstretching my arms like I was Jesus on the cross. In April, I would rise from the dead. In April, I’d turn my life around. In April, I’d call Mom and  my stepdad Pat who kicked me out of their house senior year of high school and I’d tell them I had a business proposition for them and crunch across their shell driveway with the knife block cradled in my arms. In April, I’d show them my M3, my chinstrap, my chain wallet full of cash. In April, I’d show them the surgical precision of the blades. The ease at which I could cut up a big old pile of change.
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