Fiction

CITY DESK by Michael McSweeney

May 14, 2025
Last spring the county newspaper paid me $200 to write about local dreams. I interviewed a man whose job it was to cycle out the books from the little lending library in the center of town. We met at a diner nobody liked and was always empty but stayed in business as such diners often do. He told me he mostly dreamed about colors. Yellow in spring, green in winter, purple in autumn. Summer heat made the man's legs swell and he didn't want to talk about what he saw those nights. He seemed uneasy about the approaching season. As we spoke my smartphone gathered time beside undercooked bacon. Recording a voice I'd listen to speak these words once and never again. This is the nature of the news and the people who write it. We fill our notes with memories and chronicle a world that grew so fast it forgot how to stop and remember.I ask the man if he believes in dream analysis, and he tells me when he sleeps on his back he sees faces in the colors. People he met when he served jury duty in Greenfield three years before. I don't know their names or anything about them, he told me. The day aged through the pollen-painted window. Buzzards circled above the bridge across the river to the rust-lined highway to Boston. The man fingered the bacon on his plate. Oh, he said. We sent a boy to jail for murder. Outside the diner the man asked me if I'd put him in my story. I told him it's up to my editor. I didn't know if that was true but when I don't know something I appeal to some faceless power. We shook hands and he asked me what I dream about. I told him reporters should never become part of the story. He laughed and said, No, really. Tell me.I told him when I dream about the places I used to live, they look nothing like those places, but in the dream it's all real and true, that I know those places like I do the people I've loved. Every place in my dreams has a road leading north. I thank him for his time. You're from around here, he said. Not really, I said.The man got in his car and backed into a fire hydrant. Water gushed like blood from a torn-off thumb. Then he turned the car around and gunned it against the hydrant. His engine sobbed. I took pictures with my phone but they were all blurred, out of focus, smeared with light. Faces filled the windows around us, some I knew, faces angry and entertained, faces of why now, of not this again, of I get it, man, I really fucking do.    

&

 The paper assigned me to cover a recent wave of carjackings. Not the carburetor thefts. They told me that was a different beat, and that we'd talk about pay when I had something good.As I waited at the light on Avenue E one morning a woman opened my passenger door, flashed a ten-dollar utility knife, and told me to drive.Where? I asked.South, she said. I gassed it. A pollen-clouded patrol car was parked outside the gun store at the intersection. A cop, leaning against the door, didn't look up from his phone.  We left town. Drove past restaurants, gas stations, farms. All for sale. The butterfly sanctuary was closed for repairs. Further south a line of cars waited to park at a brewery. Food trucks belched steam and a couple locked arms on the grass. I nearly collided with the car ahead of us.Watch it, said the woman.Sorry, I said.The woman told me to take the highway. We inched through Sunday construction. Men clustered by potholes and idle machines. I wondered if any of them looked inside my car and confused us for husband and wife. I told her this.Don't say that, she said. She checked her phone and was on the verge of tears.Her directions were more forceful now. The ramp past Deerfield, left, right, left. Take it slow down this street. Look for a truck with no bumper. Apple red.The same, the woman said. The same.She was out of the car before I parked. The woman sprinted, slipped and shouted up the angled drive and flung open the garage door. Two men fucked on a yoga mat, free weights and kettlebells and gym clothes abandoned around them. A radio spewed dad rock on a chair. The woman grabbed one of the men by the hair and tugged. The men broke apart, their passion fissioned to sweat and rage. I see you, the woman screamed at one of the men. He didn't seem angry or shocked. Calm, almost, as if this was expected, predicted, even welcome. No one said anything. Just frozen acknowledgement, where no words suffice to explain how the resolution of tension causes both pleasure and pain. Then the woman shoved me back to the car. Pushing tears back into her eyes as she moved. Drive, she whispered. South I drove again. Small mountains rose as if the world was teething. We approached the tallest, one I'd climbed before blind-drunk on a snowy, lonely night. I hooked an observation road and shot past hikers too weary for the steep rock path. My legs ached from the long sit. At the peak we got out and gazed across the valley and the towns and the curves of the green-brown Connecticut River.I dreamed about this, said the woman.What do you mean? I asked.I saw my husband. Driving there. I felt how happy he was. How that garage felt more like home than ours.How did the dream end? I asked. The woman rocked back and forth, hands in her pockets.Like this, she said. What do you mean? I asked.I forced you to drive at knifepoint. When we arrived I forgot my knife in the car. My husband chose someone else. Then we drove up this mountain. Then I woke up.We said nothing for a while. A prop plane flew above us in a circle and then turned north, against the wind.Then the woman said, The way my husband felt. That love inside him. That deep, physical love. I'll never forget.Then she said, I don't have any money.We drove back to town under a rose-gold sky. There are no sunsets anywhere like those in western Massachusetts. I wondered if I had the right to tell this story, or if everything was off the record, or whether these things even matter when you're a witness against your will. As we turned onto Avenue E the woman pressed her knife against my neck. Wallet, she said. Then, more softly, she said, Please.She took thirty bucks and a gas station gift card and the picture of my nephew, then tossed the wallet in my lap and stepped out into the street.  

&

 The paper laid me off on the fifth of July. In June we covered bridge repair delays, unaffordable homes, church fires, community musicals, childhood illiteracy. Covered births, deaths and arrests. Covered sickness, hope and happiness. We covered the war, and then they shut us down. Some private equity barons out in Boston coveted the land beneath our office. I had an hour to clear the city desk I shared with three other journalists. One week's severance. Benefits 'til the end of the month.I asked my editor what to do with my half-finished story about a man who'd drowned in the river. He was a local, an institution, a bellwether figure. Sought your change outside the sandwich shop. Bought milk and bread from the communist theater group on the corner of Avenue G. Once, he told me a story about being a judo champion in California and as he spoke he hand-chopped the air and winced and bore his teeth, but he seemed proud to remember those moves. Ben. Ben Armstrong. I'd written his name on a notepad and circled it in red ink.Forget it, my editor told me. We were close in the way you become when you deal with the constant mess of private lives, because that's what local news is, a constant mess bursting into public, ordered and shaped by writers and publishers. But I knew next to nothing about him, his family, what he wanted, how he saw himself, here, at the end. But it was too late to ask. I watched him slide a half-dozen reams of untouched paper into his backpack and step nervously out into the light on the sidewalk outside our office.  On the bathroom wall I wrote in permanent marker The News Was Here. Then I pissed, didn't flush, and left with some notebooks and pens.At home, I caught up on my drinking. Shouted at hummingbirds. Built a castle of beer cans on the back porch and staggered through its walls before a midweek thunderstorm could blow it down. Mostly I slept. My blanket gathered cat hair as I moved from bed to floor to couch like some forgotten, guilt-soaked king. I wondered whether the stories I told really mattered. If they changed the world or changed someone's mind. If any sort of story matters when a story must make noise, provoke, and never repeat.My mother, a man's voice said from beside the couch one day. It was the man from the diner. He gripped his legs with thick, red hands. Like many men who lived in town, he seemed on the verge of explosion. His eyes darted between the brown houseplants on the windowsills.Then he said, That's who I see in the summer when I sleep. That's not a color, I said.She is, he said. Like this. The man pinched his arm and then held it close to me. His arm shook and a small spot bloomed red then purple-brown. The ease of his bruise scared me and I wanted to tell someone about it.I loved her but she, well, you know, said the man. The man's arm kept shaking.Then the man said, Someone can love you and still do terrible things. Like nobody taught them how to do it right.Yeah, I said.I rolled over and listened as the man watched me and breathed. Am I asleep? the man asked.I think I am, I said.No, said the man. I'm asleep. And I really don't want to be. I want to wake up.I turned back toward him and then said, Sometimes when I want to wake up I open my eyes as wide as they'll go. Sometimes if I do it enough I can break through the sleep and escape.The man tried it. The valleys beneath his eyes turned the color of plums. He used his fingers to stretch the skin like he was trying to release air from inside his head.It's not working, he said.I'm sorry. Am I dead? Did I die in my sleep? I don't know.Please wake me up. Please. Please!Alright, I said.I threw off the covers and gripped the man by the shoulders. We made eye contact. Blue ones. The sky in spring.Ready? I asked.Yeah.I shoved him. As he fell backwards the man grabbed my face. I lost my balance and we tumbled together in darkness. I don't know if I hit the ground. Don't remember. All of a sudden I was awake, alone, in my blanket, and that was all. I sat up. I had nowhere to be. No stories to sell. I closed my eyes.What remained was a burst of relief. Like a bath of liquid gold. But it wasn't my relief. In half-awake clarity I knew that the man had escaped from the dream. His dream or mine, I wasn't sure. But he was free, somewhere out there, even if it meant returning to whichever hell had inspired the dream to begin with. I wanted, desperately, for the man's happiness to be my own.
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A GAME OF GO by RY

May 9, 2025
A miracle had come to the mansion that evening, dressed in peasant robes as she played go on the doorstep. The house of Lord Liu was in desperate need of a blessing. The past month had been disastrous for those staffed within its walls. The change from a serene yet celebratory atmosphere had quickly dulled after one of the maids caught sight of the Lady’s physician leaving her room with a cut over one eye. Surmising that he had said something to anger her, rumors spread over the course of a single night – vines choking the mansion halls, blossoming with fragrant anecdotes.The less fantastical yet albeit as shocking truth was made clear the next day, when all the maids were assigned dark sashes to wear across their waists. A sign of mourning, a homage to the Lady’s stillborn daughter. They were to wear them throughout the year and were warned to tread carefully around the Lady’s room, as she was, according to the physician's report, “of a disagreeable disposition.”When servants came to deliver her meal trays, they came silently, heads hung low like crouching flower stems. She would get angry over the most menial details – a stray stain on one’s cheek, a distractingly uneven gait. Once she had clutched a young maid by the cheeks, demanding she get on her knees and pluck out her own eyes.Those are my daughter’s, do you understand, you knave? My daughter would have had those eyes. Her nails dug into the maid’s face, drawing blood with her thin fingers. She would have had them. Greedy. All of you, taking what isn’t yours.No one could bring themselves to complain. Employment at the wealthiest home in their village was the best most of them could achieve, beyond taking up whatever meager trade their families specialized in. They were well compensated, and much of their pay sustained relatives. They were servants, masters of staying out of the way when need be, so they listened as she wailed night after night and learned to adjust.It was on another of those tumultuous evenings that the girl arrived at their doorstep. She couldn’t have been more than eight years old, barefoot in white robes, setting up black and white go stones on a wooden board. Her dark hair was short, brushing against her shoulders, two buns tied with lavender ribbon on either side of her head. At first, she appeared to be some beggar child, perhaps sent out to be the breadwinner by a parent. More careful parents would have their children rummage through the cook’s trash, and the servants, who had all come close to living similar lives, turned their heads whenever they saw mousy clumsily scampering off with bones and rinds.  The nature of her posture, too straight and poised to be that of a poor person, was immediately suspicious. Her robes were free from blemish. Though she wore no shoes, her feet were similarly spotless. Most striking of all was her skin – the palest, most enviable shade imaginable. Courtesans spent half their earnings on lead powder to reach such lengths, and died before they ever could.The maids exchanged furtive glances. They ought to remove her quickly, or call one of the guards – how had she managed to evade them, anyway? And while lugging that wooden go board, too?Before any of them could attempt to escort the girl off the premises, the Lady appeared from the opposite end of the courtyard. None of them realized she had left her room, and her steps held no trace of a sound. Her dark, ebony colored hair slid in lazy circles down her back, uncombed for days. “Who,” she said aloud, in that quiet tone that suggested a beating, “are you?” “Hello.” She rubbed a white go stone between her fingers and looked up eagerly.That day, the Lady of the house received the daughter she had so badly wanted.  

. . .

 She was, according to the maids, a no-name girl from a no-name land.Her official words were that her parents had died of plague, and she was now an orphan. The go board and stones belonged to her father, the last sentimental possession she carried. The establishment they used to run had been burnt to the ground to stop potential contagion. She was – according to her words – all alone and dearly missing her mother, and had caught word of the compassionate Lady Yin of the Liu household. Compassionate? Was the same dry, echoing thought in all the servant’s minds. By now everyone had heard of how unhinged she’d become during her time of social recluse. She was still visited periodically by other court women, but solely because she was of higher rank and could not be disrespected in such a way without the possibility of punishment.Compassionate was not a word that could be used to describe her any longer, but it was the one the go-girl used, and just the thing to soften the Lady’s hardened heart. She had taken the orphan in and claimed her as her own. The Lord had contested the decision at first, but he worried that any comment on the girl would revert his wife back to her former state. Lady Yin kept the girl at her side during all her daily activities. During the few times she left the house – still publicly in her year of mourning – she toted her newfound child with her. The Lord had decided that the girl was a cousin they were charitably adopting. Visitors had no choice but to believe it – she had all the doubtless exuberance of a noble. She looked like the Lady, and many theorized that once she was of age, the two would be difficult to discern from a distance. The girl was not prone to childish outbursts. She wasn’t meek by any means, but she never seemed to share the tantrums of others her age. She settled disagreements by striking deals, a skill that amused elders of the House. They engaged in her games for their own fun, and thought nothing of the calculated way she examined their moves, mistaking her serene expression for complacency.But the servants noticed the girl’s strolls through town, where she talked with any established businessmen she could – and their sons. She was never swayed by material things. Birthday gifts of jewels and silk managed a thin smile from her. And when she was presented with a meal, she ate alone unless it was required that she dine with guests. A guard posted outside her window had caught her pouring soup on the flowers below, a wastefulness that could never have been attributed to someone of her supposed origins. All their combined observations were, together, a coal lump of speculation. How could they explain the bone-chilling coldness of the girl’s skin, the strange way she smiled, as though unsure of how her cheeks would shift when she did? How she embraced her mother with all the affection of an undertaker, arms stiff as wood? For a while they entertained the notion that she was a demon – told stories to each other in the servants’ quarters about how often the Lady and Lord would get sick now that they’d accepted the girl as their own. Some days it seemed they were well and truly dying, with how skinny the Lady had gotten, though she insisted that she was fine, that she was getting better; she said all these things as she cradled the young girl in her arms, the girl who was squeezing her fragile mother tightly, latched onto her skin like lice.The conclusion came upon them swiftly. The girl had come when the House was at its weakest, the Lady at her most vulnerable, to drain every last drop of good fortune from them. And what would the servants do once their master was buried and gone? Where would they go? Back to the streets, every last one of them, begging as they once did, or working in the sweltering forges, or sewing cheap tarps in the shops. They had been nothing before and would be less than nothing now, the dirt that lined the irrigation canals.So they plotted, as servants are naught to do, and waited until the girl had departed to her own chambers – which took days, to the point where the cook had suggested they just pry her off, the Lady was too delirious to know, she’d probably appreciate the lack of weight pressing against her feeble lungs. At the behest of the maids, they waited for the girl to finally leave her mother’s side, all teary-eyed as she sullenly returned to her room.They caught her as she was about to climb into bed. Her eyebags were swollen and dark, and her skin paler than usual. She shuffled onto bed like a maggot, and asked quietly for the furs she adorned herself with before sleeping. The maid held the blankets above the girl’s head, intending to drape them over her shoulders, and with the other hand sliced her neck.The girl made a sound, something like a whine, an animalistic noise. The blood gushed from her in crimson ribbons, streaming down the bed. The other servants left their hiding spaces and circled the maid with the knife to watch the demon die. It twitched on the mattress, writhing weakly, fighting with a frail, human-like strength. It made slow motions with its mouth. What demon cried out mother with such a cracking voice?They all seemed to shake their heads at the same time. No, they thought, watching the little girl go still on the mattress, she was killing them all.
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PEARL HUNTER by Pablo Baler, translated from Spanish by Slava Faybysh

May 7, 2025
Before getting into bed, Gaspar Santos plopped his dentures into a glass of water. He adjusted himself into a comfortable position between the sheets, sinking into the softened mattress, and eased gently into his sleep.Back in his younger days he had been a pearl hunter, and in the wee hours of night he dreamt he was diving deep in the sea, exposed once again to sharks and fanciful currents. Darkness and silence besieged him, and no matter which way he looked, he could not make out an oyster. All at once he realized he had descended deeper than was advisable and his oxygen would run out before he could reach the surface. Gaspar Santos’s muffled scream was released as a burst of panic bubbles. He flapped his arms and legs, convinced he would not make it. Unable to calculate the distance, he felt he would soon capitulate, but in the exact instant in which he involuntarily thrust open his mouth, he emerged to the surface of sleep and gulped an unexpected mouthful of air.Soaked in sweat, he became aware of the clinic as his breathing slowly returned to normal. His eyes caught on the dentures. The bluish light filtering in through the window blurred the outlines of the glass, and he discovered a likeness that cracked him up. His prosthetic teeth, submerged in the bottom of his glass, resembled a marine oyster. Gaspar Santos’s laugh bounced against the walls and multiplied in the night of Mindanao. It was a laugh imbued with generosity and delight; the only thing missing was some teeth.
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SPRING FORMULA by Tom Snarsky

May 5, 2025
I notice some crocodile cracking near the bend, which is already pitched the wrong way—against the turn, so as a car’s tires point left the road’s normal force pushes it right, recipe for a rollover—and think somebody’s going to get killed. So I go to the municipal office to complain, but no one’s there. BE BACK SOON says the sign. So I grab one of the envelopes and start to write on it, just right on the envelope, my name is Ryan Pendleton I live at 29 Keep Tryst Rd in the Hermitage and someone’s going to get hurt and then the woman comes back, hi can I help you? And I say yes who can I talk to about some alligator cracking in the road, and she says pardon me, and I say I mean there’s bad damage, something really terrible could happen, I grew up by that bend and I know how kids drive on it, it’s dangerous even without the cracks, who can I talk to about putting a sign up? and scheduling some maintenance? And she says sir that would be traffic, or well hold on, paper shuffle, to be exact you’d probably have to talk to the sheriff about the sign, and the maintenance would be the state department of transportation, and by now I’ve been here ten fifteen minutes, all in the wrong place, so I’m starting to get a little short with her, not her fault and I’d like to think not mine either but I say okay, the sheriff as in across the street? Or across town? because I can’t remember if it’s the cop cars that say Monroeville Police that park across the street and the cop cars that say Duquesne County Sheriff that park across town, or the other way round, and she says as in across town, and I say I walked here, you know, I don’t have a car, I can’t walk all the way down Main Street and still get there in time, can you call him? And she says okay sir but I’m sure he’ll ask you to set up an appointment, maybe for Monday but I’m not certain, and that’s when my fist hits the desk, involuntarily really, I am just six layers deep of not getting this simple fucking concern addressed, and as I’m trying to level my voice back out Is There A Problem Here? and I turn and no-sir one of the Monroeville Police’s uniformed officers, not even the correct side of town but he’s eyeing me, he’s right by the envelope I put down, just trying to get some information here sir as regards a road near where I live and of course he picks it up and reads it, and the woman’s face doesn’t not register fear, and secondly I may or may not be a known Concealed licensed entity to some among the Duquesne blue so suddenly Monroeville’s More-or-Less Finest is doing some spring kinematics in his head, one hand hipped and one hand in the kind of palm-forward configuration that’s meant to calm but really feels like he’s trying to summon some kind of invisible force power to get you where he wants you, at the very least down and disarmed, and while he’s getting closer I’m thinking of Eddie, that girl from high school’s little brother who didn’t wear a seatbelt when his sister’s friends were whipping around Long Pond Road and lost control and it was only Eddie who went through the windshield, only him, probably saw the most amazing shower of glass before he lost everything, upside down blood in his head and shiny shards in the late afternoon sun, maybe he heard his science teacher Mr. Bonner saying something about the states of matter, how glass is not exactly a liquid but it’s not entirely right to call it just a solid, either, it is an a-morph-ous solid, which I always remembered because it sounded like Animorphs, and just like Tobias glass was always ready to change, to break, and it didn’t have any long range pattern either, glass is random and it’s not brittle like a crystal it can be blown and shaped into something like the big thick tempered mostly bulletproof window I fell into, after, BE BACK SOON, the blood eddying behind my tongue, sunset coming and the bamboo shoots still growing silently silently towards the road, an inch and a half per hour, and when they’re wet they bend down, they’re so easy to hit, you have to pay attention—
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Wonder Meadow by David Hayden

May 2, 2025
The night trees were blue by the Wensum. Eels seethed in a ditch. In the flint wall of a garden a door trembled. A green man sat naked on the riverbank, his feet in the water, head nodding, vines and tendrils ran down his chest. A swan guzzled between his legs, blood flowed down his mossy thighs. Twitching and jiggling, burning ropes suspended from the boughs of a hawthorn tree. Across a playing field the cathedral rose, all spire, dissolving sour yellow into the sky, drifting towards the moon.Cakes were scattered in the mud by the Watergate. The girl guides were elsewhere, in bed. The guides’ carers were in bed also. Or sitting at a kitchen table with a mug of malted milk staring at their reflection in the black glass of a garden door.A walking stick, made from a shark’s backbone, floated down the river. A leprous-white hand attached. And to the hand, an arm, a body. Lids flickered; eyes opened; large, luminous green. The man was a watcher. Watching himself looking out for others to whom he could attach his gaze.Andrea tucked the hospital gown into the waistband of her jeans. She sang a song of her own making. She smiled, which made her think of teeth, her teeth, and she smiled again, broader this time. A plaster covered the puncture mark in her left hand. The hand was sore, and several of the fingers were numb at their tips. She stopped and looked at her hand, fearing, for a moment, that it would become another thing, shears or claws or jaws, or another’s. Another’s perfect hand, unscarred, cold and steady with silver fingernails and dry palms. Andrea wanted to be sure that she would not change any more than was necessary.Men came down the path. Three men. One stared, eyes out of his head. One sang and leered. One walked with a swinging stride, hands in pockets, his face two tiny eyes, a red gash of wet lips. Three men taking possession of the night.Andrea knew the moment they noticed her from the thickening of the air in her throat, from the return of pain to her left shoulder, from the sudden heaviness of her boots, the stickiness of their soles. The men called. They told her what they thought she was. They told her what they wanted to do. They told her what they were going to do.Andrea stood still in the middle of the path. The river slowed and stopped. The river speeded up. The men came closer, growing smaller all the while. Andrea reached into the gown pocket and took out a gross anatomy knife. The men came on, their sounds more distant, their forms shrinking away. The handle was plastic, lemon yellow and warm. Andrea drew long lines where they might have been. The air parted with a sucking sound, again and again. The men whispered in the grass; they had not passed but they were gone.She tossed the knife into the river, wet before it hit the water, picked up her tune and followed the way towards the road. The trees shivered as she passed. Canaries with glass beaks fussed and chittered in the air a few feet above and behind. Andrea reached in her pocket and found the knife. Safe.Wavering orange light was visible through the trees, cries drifted with the smoke from Lollards Pit across the river. The path warped to her left, ran through a wicket, past a cottage and out before a tower. The Cow Tower. The place she would meet her friend Judith. Andrea walked on but could not see her. She passed round the tower to a tall iron gate and looked through. On a green silk divan reclined a large woman in a great fur coat.‘Aren’t you terrible hot, Judy?’‘I like to be cosy, don’t you know, old girl. You’re looking less than marvellous, if I might say. You made it here all right?’‘A little local difficulty. Nothing to speak of, darling. How did you get in there?’‘The ladies from the Adam and Eve carried me over. Would you believe it? Big girls the lot of them. My kind.’‘It’s been quite some time since last orders, Judy.’‘A long dry season, my friend, makes kindling of us all.’Judith reached over and switched on a tall standard lamp. Yellow light projected upwards, illuminating the canaries that swirled above where the upper floors used to be, making their beaks sparkle.‘How should I…’‘Just give a good firm shove, love.’The gate moved, shifting a mound of dried leaves forward with a hush. Andrea looked up and around. A dark circle of blue, the sky, a ring of gun ports, another of arrow loops, pellitory and red valerian grew in effusions on every welcoming surface.‘The armchair is for you, sweetie. You must be exhausted after your troubles. No one was less deserving of troubles than you, dearest. Curse the deserving, the bastards.’‘You wouldn’t have a cup of tea, would you?’‘Haven’t I flask? And a hamper too? You’re starved, of course.’Andrea took a melamine willow-pattern plate out of the basket and raided the same for gala pie, potato salad with chives, for asparagus spears sopping with butter, for sweet tomato chutney, for a salad of endives, marigold leaves, watercress and sorrel soured with vinegar. She was a long time eating and all the while Judith watched her contentedly, pulling from time to time on the pipe of a port sipper glass. Andrea poured herself a mug of tea and settled back in the armchair.‘Did you tell them at the hospital before you left? That you were going to leave?’‘I did not.’‘Might they look for you?’‘I suppose they might. But I’m here, aren’t I? Where they aren’t. And I haven’t done anything wrong.’‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’Andrea took a fat gulp of tea.‘Have I done something wrong, Judy?’‘You haven’t done anything wrong, my love. Not a thing.’‘Only to myself.’‘Only to yourself.’‘What did I do that for Judy?’‘You know why, honeybear.’‘I can take care of myself now.’‘You should.’‘Do you love me, Judy?’‘I do.’Judith patted the silk heavily raising a small cloud of dust out of the horsehair. Andrea dropped the mug and rose, the plate fell on the stones, she approached the sofa, Judith opened her coat and her arms and embraced Andrea, enfolding her, pulling her close, stroking her hair. Scents of parma violet, of turpentine, of chypre, of wet slate, of old leather, of smoking peat. As Andrea began to fall asleep Judith reached out and turned off the lamp. Judith could feel the knife through the gown.Andrea woke, blinking, alone on the divan, swaddled in fur. Six girls in brown and yellow uniforms crowded around the gate, gazing down at her, their faces bright, shiny and serious.‘She’s awake.’‘We can see that…’‘Would you like a cake, lady?’‘Shutup…’All but one of the girls laughed. The one who had offered the cake.‘Cake for breakfast?’ said Andrea.The girls danced, singing: ‘Cake for breakfast! Cake for breakfast!’Andrea walked, smiling, to the gate. The unsmiling girl pressed an open pink toffee tin forward. It was crowded with fairy cakes, each topped with a thick, vermicular swirl of buttercream and a scattering of blue and yellow sugar stars.‘Take one…’Andrea took one.‘Take another.’She took another.‘Thank you,’ said Andrea.‘Bye! Bye!’ said five of the girls, and they skipped off.The unsmiler stood still. She returned the lid to the tin.‘We’re picking up rubbish today. Along the river.’‘Oh…that sounds…’The girl interrupted her with a solar, yellow-toothed smile. She held the cake tin up at a distance from her uniform and marched away.Andrea shuffled off the fur. She stood looking up to the new sun and raised an arm to protect her face from a shower of hard bright objects; birdless glass beaks. Andrea squeezed through the narrow gate gap, turned back to the river. She walked down Ferry Lane towards Tombland.A lone horse passed by slowly, pulling an empty cart. In the shadowed window of a house was a rocking horse with a mouth too large for its head and ivory slabs for teeth, as if it had not quite finished eating a piano.The lane sank and river water flowed rapidly along the deep channel. Andrea stepped to one side and a large boat with a tall mast under a single sail came on, one man fore and another aft, throwing, pushing and pulling on long poles.Roped together on deck were two vast pieces of roughly dressed creamy limestone. The water flowed back to the river and the channel filled in.Andrea stopped next to a gate in a black iron fence. A sign read: Browne’s Meadow. She stepped in and onto the large bituminous rectangle of a car park bounded by red brick walls and, beyond these, by willows and sallows that nodded and soughed in a soft breeze. A fine, many-handed chestnut roan stood at the centre, its haunches facing her, its tail flicked as she approached. She made a wide circle round to face the horse, which she patted and then embraced around the neck. The ground became soft under her soles. The cars were sheep. The tarmac was grass and sweet briar, bramble and mulberry, whortle-berry and holly, juniper and gorse, cornelian and hazel; bilberries, redcurrants, gooseberries, dog’s mercury, barberries and bittersweet grew in random profusion. Andrea released the horse’s head and it plodded into the distance.Andrea sat in the wonder meadow. She felt the similitude of her limbs to the various parts of nature surrounding and thought of how she might be joined to them more completely, more fruitfully. Her skin was bark to her. Her body south-facing always, a spirit searching for union, for extension, for vegetable tranquillity; unpractised in green ways, in rootedness, but sapful, exalted and germinal. She might, with the aid of an artful incision, grow atop a hawthorn, or an alder, an oak or a hawthorn, or entwine herself for life within a gorse bush, a thousand shining yellow eyes, spiny green fingers, tough branched arms, scenting the air by day and night.Memory is an arsonist, setting fires cell-deep at ungovernable intervals of time and space. Lights go on, searching out pain. The hands of another. The mother voice, singing to block out the noise. Titanic laughter and with it confusion. Clouds, white, grey striations, disposed across the eye. The folded heron in the reed bed, the river drifting deeply, its world mirroring still. Judy sat on the orange plastic seats in casualty. And again, Judy waiting on the orange plastic seats in casualty. And later, Judy waiting on the green plastic seating in casualty. For Andrea to return, clean and swathed.It might be the deep chill damp of the earth rising or her body warmth sinking into the meadow but there is a gradual cooling, a dimming, an extinguishing. For the first time since memory began these hard fires, their successions, their wasting, their consummations, their miseries, go down and out and mindsmoke drifts, drifts away. The dark, at last, is light.The suffering blue of the sky called her back from the green, the hard tar and grit beneath her gown; a sheep, a car, beeping its horn.Andrea stood and brushed herself down. The driver spoke some sour words out of their window and reversed to park. Out in the lane Andrea headed for the cathedral close through a crowd of grinning, blue-uniformed boys. She sat on a bench and looked up at the pink-tinged spire, at a falcon stood distantly on the air aside its uppermost taper.‘When I rise,’ she said. ‘I shall be free.’
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TOOTH by Joe Johnson

April 30, 2025
The itch begins in the jawbone under the gums. I can’t get to it with a finger or tongue or backscratcher. Have to let it itch, like watching a fly you can’t swat tickle your forearm. It’s happened before. Happens more these days. Nothing shows up on x-rays, and now dental insurance is all used up.The tooth itches as the boss talks. He’s wearing a suit on casual Friday. It’s gray and fits him in the shoulders but not the belly, so he leaves it unbuttoned. The blue striped tie hangs over his belt. It’s like he’s guest-hosting a nineties talk show. The boss scans the room as he talks, and it’s like he’s looking right at you. He makes that passing sort of eye contact of CEOs and preachers. The way experts do during their TedTalk on the secret history of statistics. You know the talk: This message will change your life.The office is desks and phones, like in old movies. Phones on every desk, desks in every cubicle. Phones now ring in the background because the boss has gathered us to stand by a long table—a hundred of us, the whole floor, in a semi-circle. The table is in front of the west windows overlooking the city. On the table sits a vase. In the vase, an orchid. By the orchid is a box. The boss is in front of the table. He raises his arms in symmetry. He learned this somewhere, probably the same boss school that taught ambiguous eye contact and said to give bad news on Friday afternoon. The boss, we all know, is about to lay half of us off. Year-end is the time of “tough” choices. Boss school must have taught him, Make sure to look like this hurts you too; you did everything you could.Right then, the itch itches, just at the bottom of the molar. Those roots go down into the bone. The boss is saying something about Hannibal crossing the Himalayas on elephants. He’s going to quote the Dali Lama. Put money on it.Speaking of the Dali Lama, four summers ago, on my two-week vacation, I was in India on overcrowded sidewalks. A bike courier blazed by in his cotton shorts and glasses and no-helmet, just pumping. He turned past a truck, then around a car, then hopped onto the sidewalk. But a pigeon, swear to God—didn’t even know India had pigeons—plopped down in front of him. Pigeon, gray and blue and clueless, stalled right in the path between the bicyclist, a bus in the road, and a fire hydrant.Instincts took over: Bicyclist turned, missed the bus but rammed into the hydrant. The bicyclist was going as fast as the cars were supposed to be going, so when he fell off the bike, his body flew car-speed. The pigeon didn’t flinch. Just waddled along while the bike bounced into the road and went under the bus tires, as the bicyclist soared overhead, like, yes, a bird, but landed like an egg. Rammed his unhelmeted head into a bench. The crowd swarmed the bicyclist. He was laid flat out, maybe breathing. All I remember is a tooth on the sidewalk. A whole tooth, the big molar. It’s like a wicked iceberg—the top half is rounded and blunt, but beneath that flat top a root system runs sharp and long, like those Italian horn pendants disco dancers used to wear. The bicyclist’s molar was speared with two points. Those points, when not being knocked out, stick in the bone beneath the gums.That’s where the itch is: in the bone, at the tips of those points at the end of the molar. Not a strong itch, just an unreachable one. But it goes on long enough—boss talks about how proud he is of what we’ve all accomplished “together” (arms raised like an Olympian)—and the idea of finding pliers and pulling the thing out seems reasonable.“…over the Himalayas,” says the boss. Himalayas? Hannibal crossed the Alps.While the boss is riding mastodons up Everest, here in the room, across the circle of employees gathered near the west windows overlooking the city, standing beside the boss, one of the secretaries, Shannon or Shelly-something, sneezes. And that slows the boss. The boss says “Bless you” like a priest. The sneeze, though, sparks an idea: Fake a cough. In the cough, maybe with my mouth covered, I could stick my thumb inside and wiggle the tooth. A wiggle usually makes the itch stop. Except the boss is the center, like the sun, of a half circle, and we’re in orbit around him, but also directly across from our current (and future-former) coworkers. So maybe a push against the cheek. The right hand comes up slowly. Don’t draw attention. Move like the room has motion detectors. Then a test—just a quick scratch of the neck, like maybe the heater kicked on and the breeze set off the small hairs. Nothing to notice. Take your time. The boss isn’t going to stop until he’s scaled Mount Kanchenjunga.No one turns. They’re all still focused on the boss. No one watches the fingernails scratch the side of my throat—up, down, small circle. The scratch takes focus off the tooth, but not all. Like a mosquito has somehow gotten inside. That moment when the mosquito is in the vein, before it pulls out and the brain says, “Kill it.” But by the time you notice a mosquito, it’s already got your blood, and left its spit.Boss pauses. This is the emotional climax. He says something about Nepal, and you know that he practiced this in front of a mirror. He’s got a ring on his finger. He practiced this for his wife. I assume he’s straight. It’s something about the suit, the off-the-shelf that doesn’t fit. He said to his wife, “How does this sound?” and he raised his arms and rehearsed, “The real test of character comes not in victory but in loss.” She said, “It’s great.” She asked if they had anything going on Sunday because an old college friend was in town and wanted to go for lunch. The boss said, “Sounds fine.”Then my knuckle pushes against the cheek, and it does nothing. The cheek is condoms. There’s no way to get to the itch without going in. But the sneezing secretary is looking across now. She knows who the boss means when he says, “and even in hardship.” For the boss she typed up all the emails and attachments waiting in our inboxes, ran the names by HR. She’s probably screwing Boss. His “Bless you” was too concerned. Boss probably tested his speech on both wife and mistress. He’s that kind, like Hannibal: too much man for one woman. Leaves his seed in every town he conquers. Or maybe I’m thinking of Genghis Khan.So, the thing to do is bring the other arm across the chest, to support the arm raised to the cheek, to tilt the head in the look of serious concentration: the dreamy co-ed in that Indiana Jones movie. The secretary is scanning the circle now. She looks past me. Doesn’t make eye contact. Maybe that means I’m not getting laid off. Or that I am. Once the secretary’s gaze returns to the boss, I push in again. Hard. And the push helps. It’s a dull pain. Cheek smushed into all the teeth. And the pain feels good. Push harder. The itch is still there, but the cheek, the inside mashed against the jaw, helps. The cheek warms like a fever.The boss pauses. He drops his arms. Puts them into his pockets and billows the edges of his suit jacket up and out. He stares at the ground. This is the point when all of us, fired and unfired, are supposed to feel for him. His Sophie’s Choice. This is when he talks about the American spirit after 9/11.It’s a stupid job anyway. Lay me off. Let me go. Terrible dental.The boss has his hands in his pockets, like a sign to do the same—lower my arms. Uncross. Unclench. And as soon as the cheek pain settles away, the itch comes back stronger. The tingle, like centipede feet. Inside the jaw, at the pointy tips of the molars in the bone. You would kill to fly unhelmeted and head-first into a bus bench. You would kill for pliers.And you can’t believe it, but that’s what the boss has. He pulls them from his pants pocket. One of those Swiss Army knives. No, a Leatherman. They don’t let you take those things on planes anymore. Someone would hijack a Delta with a Leatherman: “Take me to Cuba. I have a bottle opener.” With his Leatherman in hand, the boss reaches back toward a box on the table by the orchid in a vase. The box is sealed, so the boss needs the Leatherman to clip the straps on the box. Everyone is looking at the box. They all want to know what’s in the box. But I’m following the Leatherman with the knife out, with the pliers tucked inside.The boss sets the Leatherman on the table. The secretary watches the boss lovingly, excited about the box.The boss smiles. From the box, straps clipped, he pulls out a trophy. A real trophy, like they used to give in bowling leagues in those days when men wore Italian horn pendants and took knives on planes. He’s talking about the trophy, about Bill in Engineering, and forty years of service.Bill walks through the middle of the half-circle to the boss. The boss is all smiles. Couldn’t be prouder if Bill were his own father. Forty years of devotion. And there’s no way to replace that much knowledge and skill. No way to replace Bill. The company won’t be the same without him. But the boss and his secretary will make do. They’ll probably both get bonuses for replacing Bill with two part-timers in India.So then I step behind the circle and walk the perimeter because everyone is watching Bill get his trophy, even the secretary. Secretary most of all. The secretary seems really glad Bill is leaving. She says, “What are you going to do with your free time?” Bill grips the trophy and shrugs. And I’m closer now, side-step by side-step.The Leatherman waits on the table by the vase. Almost there. Jenny in accounting turns back, but not before I’m past her. Eyes forward, Jenny.Bill says he’s looking forward to time with the grandkids. What else is he going to say? That he’s planning to leave his wife. That he has a one-way ticket to Las Vegas. Gonna blow twenty-grand on legal prostitutes who smile when he asks for a birthday special.Now I’m at the table, behind the secretary, and the secretary has a good rear for someone who sits as much as secretaries sit. It’s just an observation. I don’t mean anything by it, but it is a surprise. How she lives at a desk, but she’s tight as a gymnast. It’s impressive. Just that kind of discipline.The tooth pulses now. Dull throbs, like a strobe light. And maybe it’s the movement, shuffling my way behind the half-circle, the blood pulsing. It’s pushing now. The boss says, “Let’s give Bill a hand.” The applause is my shot. So I press past, behind the secretary’s behind, reach across the table. My forearm grazes the orchid vase. It wobbles. I pluck the Leatherman. Pull it back smooth and quick as the boss says, “Bill, we’re going to miss you.” Orchid vase teeters. Vase does a spin like a coin settling—heads, tails. Vase stops.Bill takes his final walk back across the circle. Don’t worry, Bill. You aren’t the only one going home today. At least you get a trophy.And I’m back out, careful to slide the tool into my pocket, holding it with my left hand so it doesn’t slip and cut through the fabric. Moving step by step around the outside, past Jenny in accounting. Jenny’s not looking, but she steps back and closes the gap between me and the wall, and it’s her or the wall, and I plow into Jenny. Watch where you’re going, Jenny.Jenny teeters. She stumbles into the accountants, but I press on—didn’t even nick my thigh with the knife. The boss says, “On a serious note.” He’s at the end, and I’m back where I started. The boss pauses because the accountants are mumbling, and Jenny is straightening her shirt. The boss backs it up and tries again. “On a serious note,” he says. He says he’s done everything he can. He says, “But it’s like the Dalia Lama said, ‘If a problem cannot be solved there is no use worrying about it.’”He has a point there. When the pink slip comes my way, I can’t control that. The secretary waves her arms to get our attention. Good arms. Secretary is thirty-five, maybe forty, and goes sleeveless. She invites everyone to join in the break room. There’s cake for Bill. Cake for the lot of us who have emails waiting in our inboxes: instructions for What’s Next on our own journeys across our personal Himalayas.Then the circle collapses, splits into a hundred points all shuffling back to cubicles or to the break room, some patting Bill on his shoulders, Bill with his trophy on his way to claim his cake. The itch might go away with cake, the chewing. At least then, if I stick a fork in my mouth, no one cares. And I could cut the cake with the Leatherman, with the knife edge pressed against my thigh. But the cubicle first. The email, the merciful email.Back at the desk, the itch slows. I’m in my own cubicle, surrounded by a portrait of the 2001 Seattle Mariners, Taylor Swift bobblehead from a niece. I set the Leatherman on the desk. Close the blade. It’s the pliers I want.The computer screen wakes. It knows I’m back and has messages for me. The computer talks with other computers and already knows what the other computers know. Computers are gossips. From the other cubicles come the first sighs and oh-shits and thank-gods. The murmur like a hive. No one uses the office phones on their desks. They pull out their personal cells to call home. “Honey, I got bad news.” Some whimpers. Some sniffles. And I don’t know if the cries come from the people laid off or those left behind.My computer is slow. I’ve been asking for a new one since Halloween. The inbox is buried under windows. And by the time I get to it, there’s nothing. During that whole boss-talk, I missed six emails about invoices, but nothing like “it saddens me” or “we thank you for your service.” And the tooth pulses again. The Leatherman goes back in my pocket, and I head to the breakroom because at least there’s cake and maybe that will help. Maybe there’s ice cream with the cake and that can numb everything. Sometimes when this happens, I get a glass of crushed ice from the breakroom fridge dispenser and pinch the ice between cheek and gum like chew. The dentist says that’s no good. He says, “Have you tried B-complex vitamins?” Yes, and peppermint tea bags and hydrogen peroxide and Anbesol.Bill is by the microwave and flanked by other engineers. Bill’s happy, which is odd because no one’s ever happy. Yes, sometimes people are pleasant or amused, but never happy. And how the hell did Bill make it forty years—and is that the secret: that if you can give the company four decades, you get to be happy. In thirty-four years, I’ll grin like a piñata.No ice cream. And the cake doesn’t help. It’s white and over-sugared with supermarket raspberry jam for filling. The chocolate frosting is dry as plaster, but the breakroom fills with chatter about how good the cake is. Jenny in accounting says, “The cake is great.” You know nothing about cake, Jenny.I’m standing by the cake and Bill comes over for a second slice. He doesn’t want a whole piece. “Just a sliver,” he says, and I’m standing at the table by the cake, and Bill’s looking for a knife.“I have a knife,” I say, and pull from my pocket. “Great Leatherman,” says Bill. But he doesn’t take it.So I ask him, “What’s the secret?” Bill grins but won’t tell. Then the itch comes back like an allergy. And I know how rude this looks, but, on Monday, Bill will be in Vegas pouring massage oil on hookers, so I just do it. I set the Leatherman down by the cake and reach my hand inside and wiggle the tooth. My hand comes out pulling a string of spit—like I’m a basset hound.“Itch?” says Bill. He smiles like one of those wise Cherokee in every western movie. “Yes,” he says, “there’s a secret.” Bill sets down his plate. He moves his hands to his mouth. He flinches, pinches around, and draws from between his lips. Out, in his glistening hand, comes his top dentures. Bill smiles like a railroad tramp, all gums. And his face falls saggy. But happy saggy. Then tilts his head, puts the plate back in, bites down, and restores his face.He says, “Pliers don’t work. I know a guy who can get you forceps. And lidocaine.” Then Bill says he’s changed his mind and takes the full slice. He grabs a piece with his hand and sets it on his plate, then licks the raspberry jam from his fingers. “Here,” I say, and lift the Leatherman to Bill once more. “Congratulations,” I say. But Bill says he already has all the Leathermans he needs and walks back to the guys from Engineering with his full slice of cake.The Leatherman is perfectly designed. A knife and a saw and pliers all in one working unit. The knife for cutting cake. The pliers for pulling teeth. And maybe Bill is wrong about pliers. Only one way to find out. And maybe the company that makes the Leatherman is hiring, needs a good accounts guy. Probably that company has amazing dental. I could leave, at least after the Christmas bonus—no sense going before then. And the tooth isn’t itching now. And if the itch comes back, I know how to handle it. If it gets too bad, I have the pliers to rip that thing out or can get lidocaine from Bill’s dealer. I’ll take action. It’s like the Dalai Lama says, “Happiness comes from your own actions.” Or maybe it was Hannibal or Genghis Kahn. Either way, isn’t being happy what it’s all about.
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BOWLING WITH DRACULA by Justin Gibson

April 28, 2025
The first thing we discovered was that vampires loved contracts. Well, no, sorry, I guess the first thing we discovered was the vampires themselves — that they’re real. We figured it out pretty quick, as pets went missing; as we started to get the heebie-jeebies when twilight flooded our backyards a cool blue; as pale strangers stood outside our windows in the middle of the night and asked if we’d let them in, voices like warm caramel. Very strange stuff for these parts, but very obvious: That’s vampires. But we figured out vampires loved contracts almost right after that. Erik Donahue down the street had the bright idea to finally say “let’s make a deal” to the ghastly specter of death hanging around his porch, pleading to be let inside. The specter of death very quickly produced parchment and pen from under its flowing black cloak, and said in a heavy European accent, “I am ready to record the terms of our agreement.” That first agreement was basically, “if I let you in, you can’t eat me and you have to shut up so I can get some sleep.” It ended with a house cat being eaten, and the cheeky devil gleefully pointing out that no terms had been broken. Still, it gave us two huge insights. Vampires like contracts. Vampires didn’t break contracts.It was only a day or two after that we had a mandatory HOA meeting to discuss our next steps. We couldn’t fight vampires outright: They were ancient beings of unspeakable evil and hunger, and we were a collection of working professionals and stay-at-home parents, barely equipped for a holy war beyond the odd hand gun. Calling the police or the military was also out of the question — we had property values to consider.I’ll be the first to tell you that the meeting almost wasn’t productive. The scars of past grievances and petty squabbles were just too fresh. Mr. Morton’s azaleas trashed by some kids’ hide-and-seek contest that spilled over into his territory. Debra Vorhees canceling book club at the last minute three times when it was her turn to host. Little Jimmy Merkins and his motley gang of ding-dong ditchers. Too many people seemed keen to enact some sort of lottery system; where the shortest straw or the lowest number or the painted pebble was simply sacrificed to the vampires every week/other week/month. Where every rules violation — be it a garbage can left on the street after pick-up, a hedge that wasn’t trimmed, a due that wasn’t paid, or a lawn that hadn’t been adequately cut and weeded — was simply punishable by death by vampire. Where we’d all just collectively feed a neighbor to these gaunt bloodthirsty shadows and make a big show of brushing sweat off our brow and going “phew!” like some sort of cartoon, because it hadn’t been us. Because we had been lucky.The sentiment that ultimately won out was: This is America, dammit. The land of freedom and bootstraps, elbow grease and jackpots. We all deserved to have a fighting chance, not just a random chance. If these monsters were going to be in our neighborhood, insisting they ate us, we deserved some sort of trial by figurative combat. To die with our boots on, standing up. The question then became: What should the combat be? What was a thing we all had a shot at?It was ultimately me that pointed out that we all bowl, but someone else was bound to get there eventually. Thanks to the neighborhood bowling league, our whole little subdivision did bowl — just about every Friday night. It was probably the one thing we had in common besides proximity and gossip and floor plans. Fostering and running this league had been my way of contributing to the community since I had moved in. The fact that I am the proprietor of Bowl-O-Rama is frankly just coincidence. I’ve always loved bowling; I’d organize a league even if I didn’t own a bowling alley. We had Jerry Vorhees, an attorney who lived two streets over, draw up a contract. We all signed, and that evening Jerry handed it off (through his living room window) to a vampire to have all them review it and sign if they approved. They returned it that same evening, no amendments or changes. Cocky bastards.That first Friday after was the inaugural bowling competition. Mrs. O’Hara, a grandmother at the end of the cul-de-sac, had hand-painted “Bowling with Dracula” on a cloth banner and hung it over Bowl-O-Rama’s entrance. The vampires grumbled at this; I guess Dracula was a sore spot for them. It was for that reason I’ve made sure to hang it every single week since. Despite that first time being almost business as usual for our group, there was a nervous undercurrent in the air. Like there was one sentence on everyone’s tongues that wasn’t being said. It was being spelled out, morse-code style, in the flitting glances we all traded each other. People shifted on their feet, weighing how heavy the air was — and if it might slow them down if they had to make a break for it. It was pretty easy to edit the existing bracket to now include the vampires. Now, instead of advancing further in a tournament, we were just all paired off with a bloodsucker. Everyone had one match to come out on top. Winners won the right to live another week, unbothered by the vampire’s nighttime solicitations. Losers were be drained outside in the back alley by the dumpsters, to avoid making a mess. The third thing we discovered was vampires are absolute dogshit at bowling. Maybe it was their wraith-like fingers that made it impossible to properly grip the bowling ball. Maybe it was their night vision that made it tough for them to see the oil patterns on the smooth wood. Maybe it was their flowing capes and cloaks that would set off the sensor at the front of the lane. Really though, I think it just came down to them being totally green behind the ears. Zero concept of what bowling was about. You’d think for being immortal beings, they would’ve lived a little. Branched out beyond stalking prey and writing contracts at some point. No joke, they were only getting one to four pins a game. Everything else was a gutter ball. Frankly, it was impossible for us to not trash talk this performance. “Ay, Count Sucks-Ass-ula, try hitting the pins next time.” “Have you guys always lived in gutters like this? I guess it must be cozier than a big castle.” “No sorry, bumpers are only for those under 300 years old. You’re a big boy, go ahead and throw it.” “If it helps, we’ll all pray for you to get a pin this time? Oh! Right, sorry, damnation. Forgot.”“I heard werewolves were great at bowling. Really makes you think, huh?”It got to the point that the cheers and whoops and jeers that would erupt at their garbage scores would shake the walls; we started toning it down only when someone worried that we might knock more of their pins down with our noise. The vampires left the Bowl-O-Rama defeated, dejected, and, we assume, on the hunt for some rats or squirrels to suck down since our pets were also now covered by the contract.That’s been life here ever since: Every Friday, we all get together and beat the bejesus out of a bunch of pasty Nosferatu dweebs to win another week of living. Bowling is typically a pretty social game, but besides the occasional trash talk, we hardly acknowledge them. I couldn’t tell you what any of their names were, or where their homelands were, or what it’s like being undead. Just knowing that they want to drain me is all I need to know. The most talking they might do on their end is a grumble that they’d like to revisit the terms of the contract. At this, we’d give them the bird and tell them to go suck a rat. I want to take a second to say — we’re just regular people, not dumb. We recognize these are immortal beings of endless appetite. Unholy things shaped and forged to utmost evil over the course of centuries. They’ve seen empires come and go. We can see that their scores continue to improve by a pin or two every couple of months. We know time is on their side; they will eventually, with enough practice, figure this out. That unspoken sentence is still at the tip of all our tongues. Someday, one of us will probably, finally, say it out loud. But that is a problem for future us, perhaps maybe even our children, or their children. For now, we’re together and we’re alive. Every Friday night at the Bowl-O-Rama, the beer is cold, the chicken wings are saucy and you simply cannot not bob your head and tap your foot to the music coming from the jukebox. Every strike we throw sounds like a thunderstorm, or a car crash, or the hands of God applauding us for how we’ve gotten on so far. Tonight, as it has been every night, life is good, even with all things considered and present company accounted for.
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APPROPRIATE by Andrew P. Heath

April 25, 2025
She said something vague to me. I said something appropriate. She said, What? I said something appropriate. Looking at her. Her collarbone. She said something sarcastic. I said something appropriate. I looked at her collarbone, then slowly looked up at her face. She looked like a cocker spaniel (I did not say that). I had once been very attracted to her. When she would take a shower, I could hear the water running, and I imagined her in there, elegant, graceful, small, her long black hair slicked across her white body. The image was potent and intoxicating, I was drunk in my bed. When she left the bathroom, I would go in and there would be steam and a musky herbal scent. She was speaking, nervously, it seemed. When I don’t say anything, she tends to go on, I thought. I said something appropriate. Our eyes met for exactly one second. She was once very attractive, but now she looked like a cocker spaniel. She has not changed, I thought, I have changed, our relationship has changed. I have not changed. Have I not changed? I became aware that the conversation was strained, uncomfortable. I smiled. I nodded. I said something appropriate. Once, in the middle of the night I poured myself a glass of water and she appeared behind me in ball gown. She said something to me, then. I don’t remember if I said anything back, but if I did, I’m certain it was appropriate. She said, well, goodnight, and left the apartment. On a different night she was in the bathroom. The door was ajar. I could see through the crack of the door the shower rod was pulled down into the tub. I tapped on the door three times with the fingernail of my right index finger. She said, I’m sorry. I didn’t say anything. I went back to bed. I pissed out of my window. 
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PARENTHETICAL by J. A Gullickson

April 21, 2025
The floor-to-ceiling windows let in so much light that the office is sweltering. Before the sun emerges from behind the tree line, the HVAC system will turn on. These brisk breaths signal the start of a new day for the company. Graham cycles through the presentation again, sinking deeper into his chair. Each slide features a corporate incantation coldly justifying decisions few care for. Key stakeholders have already made up their minds. This is only a formality.In the center of the cube farm lives Hannah. She stares blankly at the two screens in front of her, cursor gliding back and forth between them. The monitors exist separately, but within the technological sinew is a bridge which allows digital matter to travel between them.Here is Peter, some steps away, behind a closed door. Its frosted glass turns men into shapes from another place. He paces back and forth, waiting for the call. This urgency keeps the machine going.In seven years’ time, Graham will run Creative Services. Nine years from now, in Q2, Hannah will be promoted to SVP of Strategy. Peter will give the company over two decades of his life, eventually becoming Chief Technological Officer, before having an aneurysm at his desk late one Friday evening. He won’t be found until the following Monday morning.They will spend more of their lifetime with the company than their own families.  That is to be expected. They owe it to the company who grants them paid time off, who provides them the means to pay for medicine, who needs the drones to exist. Graham and Hannah and Peter are just some of the thousands of employees who put in over 40 hours a week for the good of the company. Their roles are utterly meaningless. They’re all in this together. They’re like a family, after all.The drones don’t know the disease festering within. It started ten weeks ago. A group of kings in department store suits, who are seldom seen by their subjects, committed the unthinkable. At their roundtable, tucked away in the cavernous complex of the company, a meeting was held announcing the purported invasion and takeover of their rival Grant Holdings’ shining star: Parenthetical. The lifeblood of the portfolio, Parenthetical is a SaaS titan with a staggering 73% market share in the programmatic space. AdAge calls it “the last omnichannel platform the industry will ever need”.In Q4, a press release announcing the future of Parenthetical will be blasted out to relevant media outlets. The process begins here. The press release will be written by copywriter Felicia K. and will then be delivered to her creative manager, then submitted to the proofreading vendor, then returned to her creative manager, then reassigned to Felicia K. for edits, then delivered to her creative manager, then resubmitted to the proofreading vendor, then returned to her creative manager, then reviewed by her creative manager, then delivered to the creative director, then approved by the creative director, then submitted to the Chief Creative Officer, then returned to the creative director with massive edits, then rewritten by the creative director, then submitted to the Chief Creative Officer, then approved by the Chief Creative Officer, then submitted to Compliance for approval, then returned to the Chief Creative Officer with some light edits, then reassigned to the creative director with light edits, then submitted to the Chief Creative Officer with revisions, then approved by the Chief Creative Officer, then approved by Compliance, and then submitted to the Board, then it is approved, then it is sent to the public relations agency Stealth in Chicago to be released on Tuesday at 10AM Eastern Standard Time. This is the process. It does not forgive. Felicia K. will not recognize her work when she sees the news on CNN’s homepage. She’ll send a link of the article to Hannah on Microsoft Teams. She’ll tell Hannah she thought she wrote something else entirely. The process always transforms what it receives. At the time of its acquisition, Parenthetical employed close to 800 employees across the country with off-shore teams in the Philippines and India. This does not account for the unknown number of contractors currently working for Parenthetical, whose engagements span from a number of months to several years. The loaded gun Felicia K. thought she wrote would be the start of the swift and merciless gutting. The calendar invite is a death sentence. The words “All Hands Meeting” careens into inboxes companywide. A hushed chorus of uncertainty begins to throb.The impending restructuring awakes something. From the darkest depths of legal teams, parent companies, and non-disclosure agreements, a cruelty is set into motion. It will infect the workforce that once drove Parenthetical. Operations will reorganize. Departments will realign. Generations will cease. Bloodlines will end.The Parenthetical US IT team will unfortunately not be part of the migration. Once the merger is complete, they will be let go with a respectable (four-weeks’ pay) severance package. Two months following the announcement, former Parenthetical Network Architect Reggie C. will get a flat tire while driving to the second round of a job interview, then get hit by a car, then be paralyzed from the neck down for the next 19 years, then, at 58, he will purposefully drive his motorized wheelchair hard enough into the corner of the kitchen counter to split his forehead open. He does this while his wife, Terri, is getting groceries two miles away. He will continue to drive his head into the corner of the kitchen counter until he loses consciousness, then bleed out before Terri returns home. A year and a half after being laid off, former Parenthetical Senior Systems Analyst Erin M. will wrap her minivan around a mighty sycamore .6 miles from her home, then the impact of the collision will cause her daughter’s car seat to fail, then, as Erin slips into a warm endless sleep, she will try to take the glass out of her motionless daughter’s hair.Parenthetical grants its clients access to premium advertising channels, leveraging their catalog of quality inventory from over 170 supply partners to achieve campaign objectives effectively. Clients can harness the transformative power of Parenthetical’s in-platform AI optimization for their ad groups. Users can boost CPMs on top-performing inventory, trim underperforming inventory, and strategically direct spend in real time to their chosen KPIs. Enabled across ten dimensions, Parenthetical’s AI optimization, known as Parrot, revolutionizes efficiency across channels and audiences and unleashes the potential of Parenthetical’s optimization engine for a revamped advertising strategy.The Parenthetical marketing team is let go immediately. They receive a respectable (four-weeks’ pay) severance package. Two years after being laid off, former Parenthetical Marketing Manager Braam C. will become a family annihilator, then extended family members will be on the local news talking about how “there were signs” and how “we should’ve listened.” Six years after this, his life and crimes become the fodder of a bonus episode of a murder podcast for subscribers who pay $5 a month. Former Parenthetical Paid Media Analyst Keiko W. is approached by a headhunter on behalf of Henkel North American Consumer Goods, then is hired to work on the Persil laundry detergent marketing team, then Keiko W. develops acuphagia, a form of pica, then she chokes on a clear thumbtack in her car in the office parking lot. Former Parenthetical Social Media Manager Kevin A. marries his fiancé, Liam, two weeks after being laid off, then the newlyweds take advantage of Kevin A.’s newfound freedom from the workforce and plan a last-minute trip to South Africa as an impromptu honeymoon, then Kevin A. is mauled to death by a Boerboel in an alley while waiting for Liam to finish purchasing fruit from a vendor. Parenthetical bridges the gap between modern marketers and the advanced advertising tech required in today’s dynamic media landscape. It is a proverbial gateway to advertising across top DSP platforms like The Trade Desk, Amazon, and more. Clients can manage campaigns across various channels and devices easily and at their convenience. Clients can elevate their marketing strategies with Parenthetical’s suite of audience-targeting solutions. Digital marketers can benefit from first-party data onboarding, tap into cutting-edge third-party targeting tools, implement precision ABM targeting, and explore a wide array of tailored options. Parenthetical’s award-winning customer service teams playfully boast they are available twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week.The Parenthetical accounts team never stand a chance. They do, however, receive a very respectable (four-weeks’ pay) severance package. In the weeks following her termination, Former Parenthetical Client Success Manager Aubrey E. hires Ji Hwang on Fiverr to perform a resume audit and will quickly discover many of her skills are non-transferable. She still doesn’t have a job 18 months later. She will write one final note that will be added to her connection request on LinkedIn to Senior Recruiter Craig Motton at King Global Staffing Solutions which will read I think I’m done trying now. Cheers! Officer Wilmer Brusch will find her in her apartment bathtub four days later after a wellness check is called in, and Officer Brusch will find she sliced into the interior of her left forearm so deep the knife was stuck in her radius.Parker, Thomas & Associates has an ambitious goal for their client, Therapan: increase online sales by a minimum of 50% within two years. To achieve this, the focus must extend beyond mere visibility to a comprehensive strategy encompassing a broad range of online tactics. Target audiences were meticulously identified based on product categories. This involved a strategic blend of first-party and third-party data to formulate effective targeting strategies. A multifaceted targeting strategy unfolded, incorporating behavioral, retargeting, and contextual targeting. Specific campaigns and creatives were tailored to diverse promotions, strategically boosting sales across different product categories. Despite constituting only 3-5% of the monthly visitor traffic, the traffic driven to the site through the campaign substantially impacted 25-50% of online sales. The Return on Advertising Spend, or ROA for the uninitiated, ranged from 5x to 20x– a testament to the efficiency of the strategy. This outcome was attributed to collecting user data via the Parenthetical Smart Container Tag, consolidating insights from all website visitors driven by various media sources. The online revenue saw a 65% increase over the two-year advertising period, surpassing the initial goal of a 50% boost. This success has paved the way for future expansions, with plans to set even more ambitious goals in the upcoming years. The surge in demand prompted the expansion of the factory’s production to three shifts, underscoring the tangible impact of the advertising efforts on Therapan’s overall business operations.In 1999, Fred Gunnar was a Senior Account Representative at Jones Intercable, based in Georgetown, Colorado. During his 12 years with the company, Fred Gunnar accrued several thousand shares of company stock as part of his elected compensation package. The Comcast Corporation acquired Jones Intercable in 1999. Fred Gunnar received a large lump sum for his shares on top of a respectable (16-weeks’ pay) severance package. Fred Gunnar left Colorado shortly after Jones Intercable was acquired by The Comcast Corporation. Fred Gunnar has not worked in over 25 years. Fred Gunnar is a proud grandfather.The most disturbing aspect of this plague is how indiscriminately it kills. Parenthetical employees believed in their work. They reveled in the chance to become storied titans in the industry. With one indifferent sigh and slash of a pen, everything becomes small. So many creative sprints, workshops, one on ones—insignificant. So goes the acquisition ritual which pumps red through the beating heart of America.It takes 17 weeks for Parenthetical to be completely absorbed. Upon acquisition, Former Chief Executive Officer Martin P. receives a respectable (104-weeks’ pay) contract payout package and then Gold Private Equity offers Martin P. a fractional Chief Marketing Officer role at HanWool Corporation’s English speaking satellite office in Berlin. Former Chief Operating Officer Michael L. receives a respectable (208-weeks’ pay) payout and then retires. He is currently exploring the pharmaceutical industry after gaining interest in the Actiq Lollipop, a delivery device for fentanyl which combines the pain reliever with fillers and sweeteners. After developing diabetes in his mid-forties, Michael L. is interested in developing a sugar-free version. Former Chief Marketing Officer Elias N. receives a respectable (104-weeks’ pay) payout, takes a contract Chief Marketing Officer role with MullenLowe Group and advises the leadership team of both MediaHub and MullenLowe Profero.Graham, Hannah, and Peter don’t have much to say about Parenthetical. Graham is swamped this week. The brainstorming meeting for a holiday campaign was less than fruitful and really set him behind. Hannah needs to finish that deck about last month’s paid digital campaigns. The A/B testing yielded some rather interesting results that the strategy team should see sooner rather than later. Peter has a wedding he’s going to this weekend. He has a blinding headache right now, though. The floor-to-ceiling windows stand like monoliths after sunset. The HVAC system breathes its last breath at 7PM. The air in the office will slowly become stale and acrid over the next two days. On Monday, someone will cry in the handicap bathroom stall and everyone will pretend they don’t hear anything.  Maybe a glass of water will help.
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CRYING FROM THE DUST by Jace Einfeldt

April 14, 2025
A week after my baptism, I hit my little brother in the head with a tee-ball bat and sent my whole family into a frenzy on a Saturday afternoon in mid-March and got locked out of the family car and told to sit on the couch and think about what I did while my younger brother bled all over mom’s brand-new dishtowels in the middle seat of our 1998 emerald-green Yukon Denali. As my family flew down the street on angel’s wings, I contemplated what I had done while picking at the beige, peeling leather couch in the living room and ruminating on the eternal ramifications of hitting my younger in the head with a tee-ball bat in the middle of March as the promise of new beginnings and new life stirred outside with the birds nesting in the globe willow out back and the grass greening again after being suffocated under months of snow. I thought of how Jesus died for my sins. I thought about my recent baptism and how all my sins must have sloughed off my body and swirled around the drain and were sucked into the city sewer system never to return. I thought of how now Jesus and Heavenly Father must have hated me so much because wasn’t I supposed to be my brother’s keeper and not his assailant? I thought about how I must be beyond redeeming, beyond saving, beyond the grasp of God’s love because if Jesus had a younger brother He definitely would’ve looked out for him before He swung the brand-new tee-ball bat He got for his eighth birthday on a cold day in early March as an incentive from His Father to practice swinging a bat in preparation for the upcoming little league season. Yeah, Jesus would’ve taken every precaution. He would’ve made sure that His younger brother was still in the house and not following Him into the backyard because His younger brother only wanted to follow His perfect example, learn from His flawless batting stance, His celestial follow through, to learn from the Master Himself about what it looks like to wind up and smash a homer over the Wall of Jerusalem and straight past the Judean Desert and into the Dead Sea where the ball would float at the surface forever as a reminder of His power and majesty at the plate and His impeccable .407 batting average. Jesus would’ve meant business. He wouldn’t have taken the bat out back willy-nilly. He wouldn’t have swung it against the concrete basketball court because He wanted to kill an army of giant, imaginary spiders. And if He had crusaded against this imaginary army of spiders in a fit of righteous fury, He would have done so with the certainty that His younger brother was a safe distance away. He would have had the foresight to, at the very least, tell his younger brother to stay on the back patio because the spiders were mean and liked eating little brothers for lunch. He would’ve told His younger brother that He was there to protect him, to save him, to vanquish the army of giant, imaginary spiders because the last thing Jesus would ever want to do was to inadvertently harm His younger brother and send him to the hospital to get seven stitches from his temple to his hairline. Jesus’ younger brother would’ve been safe, and the spiders would’ve been slain. And years later, when the two of them are older, you might hope to find them sitting on a couch eating Salt and Vinegar Lays and sipping glass bottles of cane soda while the Angels play the A’s in Anaheim. They would be talking about JJ Bleday and how even though the A’s have a young roster this year that doesn’t mean the future isn’t bright. They’d clink their bottles and nod in agreement. Amen to that, they’d say. Amen and amen.
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