Fiction

SWIMMERS by Tobi Pledger

July 24, 2025

Doc Raeford lifted the tail and stepped back to avoid the torrent of steaming bull shit. After the last wink of the bull’s anus, he leaned forward and pushed the electroejaculator probe into the rectum, completing the docking maneuver.“Bull’s eye.” Mike would never have imagined that he’d enjoy helping a veterinarian anally penetrate a two-thousand-pound Angus bull, but he did.Raeford shrugged. “It’s a gift.”The bull resisted the intrusion, lunging forward, shoving his chest against the gate of the squeeze chute with a jolt. His nostrils flared, flecks of foamy mucus blowing out on the exhale. The Texas sun heated the black hide, releasing its animal scent.“How’s your wife?” Mike asked.“Good. She’s meeting her sister for a spa day. They’re doing goat yoga, then getting massaged with hot rocks.”“I’ve heard of the down dog, but not—”“This isn’t a position. It’s baby goats standing on your back. Supposed to be relaxing.”Raeford flicked the switch and the bull froze, legs locked straight, the only movement a twitch of skin over his shoulders.“Have you hired a new assistant for the clinic yet?” Sweat dripped from Mike’s chin onto the front of his khaki twill prison-issue shirt. He watched Raeford out of the corner of his eye.The bull sucked breath into his massive lungs and held it for almost five seconds, before releasing it in a snort as his abdominal muscles spasmed, and he ejaculated. Mike was right there with the collection tube.“Yep. He’s starting next week.” “Oh.” Mike tasted something metallic, bitter as an unripened persimmon. “Good deal.” It had been stupid to hope for anything different.Raeford pulled the ejaculator probe out of the bull. Mike removed the loving cup from the end of the collection tube and placed it carefully on the workbench.After pipetting a drop of semen onto a glass slide and studying it under the microscope for a couple of minutes, Doc Raeford said, “Morphology eighty percent, motility seventy percent.”Mike wrote the figures on the bull’s breeding soundness evaluation form. “He’s a keeper.”“Yep. Lots of swimmers.”“So, Doc, I’m getting out in three weeks. I’m going to miss working with you.”“I can speak with the parole board. They may argue for you to stay if I tell them what a big help you are.”“Oh, hell no. No, way.”“I’m messing with you, son.”Mike received the maximum sentence for being in possession of a smidge over two ounces of marijuana, likely because he’d refused to say who’d sold it to him. He smiled wistfully.Raeford palpated the bull’s scrotum and measured its circumference. He wrote the measurement down and gave a thumbs up to Mike, who pulled the lever releasing the head gate. The bull trotted out and was herded from the area by two trustees on horseback.The next bull had a higher body condition score but his sperm were sluggish, resulting in a motility score of only twenty percent. Despite being a handsome animal, he would not be kept for breeding. After the last of the bulls had been examined, Mike tidied the work area. He wiped off the electroejaculator and packed it, and the microscope, in their cases.Raeford sorted the evaluation forms by the bulls’ ear tag numbers. “That was a good day’s work. What do we have for next week?”“We’ll have several new litters of piglets needing iron shots, ear notching, and tail docking. And a batch of male piglets ready for castration.“The whole enchilada. That’ll keep us busy. Thanks for giving me a hand today.”“Yes, sir. Always happy to help.”

***

The following Wednesday, Mike had two tables set up in the farrowing barn, each with a large dog crate on top. One crate held a litter of piglets, the other was empty.Raeford pulled lidocaine, syringes, needles, a V-ear notcher, castration knife, brown glass bottles of iron dextran, and a jug of disinfectant from a black bag.Mike brought out the first piglet, cradling it gently in his calloused hands.“I’m back to square one with the search for an assistant.”Mike blinked and something fluttered in his stomach. “Why?”“The guy never showed up, and he’s not answering his phone. Maybe he got another job and isn’t courteous enough to tell me.” Mike stood mute as Raeford injected iron, punched divots out of the ear margins for identification, and nipped off the end of the piglet’s tail. He hugged the baby piglet to his chest and whispered in its ear before placing it into the empty crate. As he picked up another little one, his mind chewed over this new development. He took a deep breath and spoke fast, before he could change his mind. “Doc, would you consider letting me interview for the job?”Raeford frowned. “I thought you were going back to UPS?”“I’d rather work with animals.”“It probably doesn’t pay as much as UPS, but the job is yours if you want it.”It didn’t feel real. Mike didn’t want to ask but had to. “It’s not a problem, me being an ex-con?”Doc Raeford put down the tail nippers. “You’ve been my assistant for a year and you’re damn good at it. You treat the animals with compassion. I don’t give a good crap about anything else. You hear me?”“Yes, sir. Thank you.”“Now, let’s get going. It’s date night for me and the wife—she’s taking me to goat yoga.”

MUTUAL by Caroline Porter

July 21, 2025

Amelia-Rose followed first. She even had the audacity to message Francis afterwards, as if following real life acquaintances on Tumblr was normal. Hi Francis! It’s nice to see someone else who is as online as me lol. xoxo—AR Francis freaked, of course. She couldn’t picture Amelia-Rose as a fellow Columbiner, not even as one of the fangirls exclusively in it for horny reasons: the ones who posted crime scene photos of Eric’s body captioned idk hes kinda cute without his face, who posted drawings of a shirtless Dylan Klebold, passably rendered in ballpoint pen—not that Francis thought there was any respectability there, with those types of girls. Amelia-Rose’s blog was Lolita models and gifsets of the Sanrio characters and hard-jawed men who were stranded in a meadow of kawaii. Arrayed in tweed, they pinned squirming schoolgirls beneath them, besmirching their mahogany desks with statutory rape. Those posts were hashtagged with TCC.A multipurpose acronym, two types of girl. Read Francis’ way: True Crime Community. Turned on its head: Teacher Crush Community. Francis ignored Amelia-Rose’s message, but clicked the Follow Back! button. And so they were mutuals. A disclosure of degeneracy: I know you, yes, but you know me too.

***

In the hallways they passed each other like strangers. Francis saw Amelia-Rose exclusively through her peripheral vision. Amelia-Rose took on a diffused quality—pinks and yellows, like the kind of sunset Francis saw in the Sunoco parking-lot where she sometimes sat, cross-legged in a fug of cigarette smoke, on the automatic tire pump.What if I talked to her? Francis thought, but she couldn’t withstand the visual: Amelia-Rose, almost six feet tall with her childishly large hairbows; Francis, in a men’s leather trench coat that dragged across the linoleum floors.Despite this, Amelia-Rose liked her reblog of the boys mugging for the camera, liked her selfie in which she wore Eric’s mirror-lensed sunglasses, liked her 1000 word essay, a painfully comprehensive breakdown of a single line from Eric’s journal. What do you think about when you look at the sky at night, when there's no clouds out and you can see all the stars? Francis reblogged a text post: According to autopsy records, Eric’s heart weighed ten grams less than Dylan’s. Alone in her room, she cried. It was Eric she loved best, after all—his verbosity, his skinny limbs in a constant tap dance of agitation. The visibility of his desperation to be loved, like cracks of light shining through the roof of a condemned building. She shut her eyes and held her hands out, trying to feel the weight of a dead boy’s heart. Above her reblog, she added: when i read this, i cried for real.A message appeared in her inbox. Here if you ever want to talk about anything.She imagined telling her, all the trite things Amelia-Rose would say to try to convince her not to. And what advice could that girl offer? A teenage girl in love with her drama teacher. A girl who had answered, unabashed, the anonymous ask Francis had sent her—answered that her wildest fantasy was to be walking home from school in the pouring rain and see the familiar car on the street. To watch as it slowed, as the passenger window rolled down. To see deliberation play across his face, to watch the break in resolve in real time. To be offered a ride.

***

Do I dare disturb the universe? asked a poem Francis studied in AP English. Do I dare? Do I dare? came into her mind often. That intruding, shameful question. Time to turn back and descend the stair.

***

At night she would play through Eric’s Doom WADs. Bricks. KILLER. Hockey.wad. She liked to clear the level of all the demon hordes and then linger there, floating through that labyrinth he had created over twenty years ago. When she tried to sleep she would see the Doom HUD on the back of her eyelids. 50 ammo, 100% health, 0% armor. She dreamt a military-base maze, an endless turning of corners. Eyes shut, the eyeball flicking back and forth underneath the thin skin of her eyelid, searching for someone that was not there.

***

She did theater tech for the spring musical, Little Shop of Horrors. Amelia-Rose was Audrey. Francis watched from high above in the control booth as she sang her solo, a falsetto belt. I’m his December Bride. He’s Father, he knows best. It was a pity, Francis thought, that Amelia-Rose was so talented and still deemed unworthy of love. Francis trained the spotlight down on her, aim steady as Amelia-Rose danced across the stage. Afterwards when she went to smoke she found Amelia-Rose crouched behind the theater, her mascara in wet trails down her cheeks. Francis didn’t know what to say. As she lit up she watched Amelia-Rose out of the corner of her eye. Francis finished her cigarette in silence, crushing the butt under her combat boot.“Do you want to go to the mall?” Amelia-Rose asked suddenly.Francis had never been to the mall. She didn’t have a car and she wouldn’t have wanted to go even if she could get there. Still, she found herself nodding. Found herself saying, “Yeah, okay.”

***

At Southpoint Mall they threaded in and out of stores, compelled to buy nothing, touch nothing, barely speaking. They ended up on a bench behind the mall beside an abandoned fountain.“I guess we should go home,” Amelia-Rose said eventually.Francis nodded. She stared at the fountain. Inside were statues of children, cast in brass. They were disquieting, malformed, their mouths stretched into grimaces meant to be smiles, their teeth individually rendered. They were placed on raised platforms, and underneath them jets of water were supposed to spout up to give the illusion that they were being blasted into the sky, except someone had turned the jets off a long time ago. The fountain was infested with geese; they splashed in the water and leaked white shit through the children’s hair. What if I walked in? Francis thought. What if I did anything at all? The sun came down a parking-lot orange. A tree branch balanced in the open hands of one of the children. It was brittle and five feet tall. The end branched like a forked tongue thrust into the sky. “Do you ever feel scared to do literally anything?” Francis asked Amelia-Rose.“Sometimes it’s good to be scared,” Amelia-Rose said. After a pause, she continued, “It’s like—I made a move on him today. He was helping me do my makeup, blacking out my eye, and his hands were on my face—I grabbed them and held them against my lips. For a second he stayed there, and I thought maybe…” She looked down, fiddling with her bracelets. “He was nice about it—he said he would ignore it this one time.”Francis walked over to the fountain. When she grabbed the stick, it was almost too much sensation: dirt worming beneath her fingernails; the geese’s honks; the slippage of leaves underfoot; the smell of still water. She turned back to Amelia-Rose. She levelled the stick and looked down its barrel, composing the image just so. A face in the crosshairs. “I could kill him for you,” Francis said.Amelia-Rose laughed as if it were a joke. “You wouldn’t dare.”Francis thought: Watch me. Amelia-Rose grabbed the forked end and pulled. The stick cracked like a wishbone between them, the sound dry and startling. Around them the geese screamed, rose into the air, and fled.

LITTLE ARLO by Billy Irving

July 16, 2025

When she found the babe under her woodpile, it was October and already cold on the mountain. Poor thing shivering under the logs with skin blue and veiny. Eyes bulging and pupilless. She scooped it up and swaddled it in a quilt, one long ago rendered by her own knotted hands, and took care to tuck its thin limbs into the folds of the fabric. Thin limbs that twisted like corkscrew worms. She brought the thing into her cottage to warm by the fire and watched as the heat revived it, brought presence to its eyes, a look of health returning to its cheeks. But its skin remained blue. Its skin would remain blue always.She took right away to calling it—him—Little Arlo. Though there were no discernable parts, none that she could find anyway, she felt that the babe was male. She knew men well. And boys. Had been surrounded by them in a past life, a husband and sons. Isn’t that the nature of the world? To be surrounded by a husband, and sons? Men who were always lingering in her effortful recollections, always too high. The tease of a box on a shelf edge. A husband who melted away in startlingly few years, a hoary, coughing soup. And boys. Boys who were also blue, wore blue, wooly blue that became mud caked, and blood soaked. Artillery. Amputation. Consumption. Dry eyes that stared into the sky and would ask for nothing, plucked out by crows, turned to birthing pits for insects. Push that away because here is a child, lovely and innocent. Here is a child, new and yours. Child, who are you? What do you see?Little Arlo had no interest in bread or vegetables, nor what little salted meat there was, but when she opened a jar of rhubarb jam he began to squirm. She scooped it into his triangular mouth, and he sucked the syrup down and cooed. Black tongue wagged, and she obliged, nearly half the jar, and then the boy slipped into a deep sleep. So wonderful to listen to him breathe those long breaths like that. Her own sleep did not come so easily and had not for years. Intervals of unsatisfying beinglessness punctuated by terror, faceless men in the shadows, drumbeat haunts emanating from within the dry air of her cabin. And then, the ringing of church bells, always church bells. Gentle, impossible, far.In the morning, Old Lady Murray sat on the porch and smoked and oscillated on her rocker, swaddled infant in her arms, and watched across the treeless ridge as Mr. Dalton, the postman, trotted in from the direction of Nimbus, giving a loud “Ahoy,” and a “How do you do, Mrs. Murray? I’ve brought you some preserves,” and “What is that you’ve got in your arms there?”“My new babe, Little Arlo.”“Oh? A new babe, then. Little Arlo, then. That’s—how nice I suppose.”“What did you bring me?”“Oh, just some pear and apple preserves, and some bread and—oh, but perhaps I should have a look at Little Arlo? Just to—and where did you say he came from?”“Better to not. Better to just leave the things on the stoop there. And, well I found him outside under the woodpile. He had such a chill, oh, but he’s nearly convalesced now. A terrific appetite for rhubarb jam, and I’m sure he’ll like pear. My boys, you know my boys, how they loved—my boys, oh, oh, and Mr. Dalton, just leave the things on the stoop there, thank you so dearly!”Mr. Dalton obliged, accustomed to the widow’s occasional episodes, and rested the sack of groceries on the rough boards of her porch. Then, giving a little bow, he spun around and trotted back down the mountain path, tut-tutting and shaking his head, and such a shame, really. The woman having completely lost her senses. Changed from the pragmatic schoolteacher of his youth, that formidable manner, and always that soft generosity beneath. And, of course, remembering that day after the meeting in Appomattox, the boys marching back into town and her sons’ not among that procession of shineless eyes. And the supposed babe, just a bundle of straw? Or a bag of flour? Or maybe something, an animal, an injured opossum. I think I saw the swaddle move.

***

Sad intrigue can spread with epidemic ferocity through small mountain hamlets, especially when carried by the lips of an unabashed gossip. Consider the bed bug, whose colonies can multiply by orders of magnitude on a monthly basis. It was in this way that, over the course of remarkably few days, Mr. Dalton had cultivated a general awareness of Little Arlos’ presence within the town of Nimbus.Gossip. Mr. Dalton felt all right about gossip. He felt that it was his employ and currency, his special talent. Gossip was a little distasteful, yes, but only a little. After all, it was gossip that enabled his charitable visits to the old woman. It was through gossip that, besides a certain prideful, self-serving generosity, shopkeeps justified the handouts they provided on her behalf. Without the extraction, and exchange of gossip, what mail, what food, what human interaction would Mrs. Murray receive? Without gossip, there might be three generations of Little Arlos living in that cabin by now. And frankly, most days there was nothing for Mr. Dalton to report. A remarkably boring person, really, just smoking and rocking in toiled remembrance. A hollowed-out woman in a hollowed-out town, drained of its youth by the undertows of war and industry. Nimbus, the unadaptive. Nimbus, monument to obsolescence. Boom and bust. Vestigial limb of a world whose new language was coal— bituminous and anthracite—was rail, land-rights, incorporation. No space for your people and their bald mountain, their total depletion of hemlock, beech, maple, chestnut, now just black shale and grey sandstone, dramatic, exposed bedrock geometries, brittle cliffs that crumbled away into angular shards, pencil lead thin.The morning was just ending as Mr. Dalton returned to Old Lady Murray’s cottage. He stood for a long time and watched as she teetered forward and back and said nothing. Just a mutual watching. He was struck by the way she held the swaddled object to her chest, her ironic resemblance to the Virgin Mary. “Well, Mrs. Murray, did Little Arlo enjoy his preserves?”“Oh yes! You should have seen him suck it all down. So quick, rabbit quick!”“I’m sure. Say, why don’t you let me hold the wee babe?”“Better to not, Mr. Dalton. He’s asleep in my arms here. Better to let a growing boy sleep, don’t you think?”Mr. Dalton climbed the first steps to the porch, leaning in close. “How about you just pull the swaddle back a bit? I’d be so pleased to have a look at him.”“Don’t come close. You’ll wake the poor thing.”There was a suggestion of embarrassment, a subtle loss of confidence appearing in the wrinkles of his forehead. “Of course, pardon me,” he said, blinking hard. “Goodbye, Mrs. Murray, and take care now. I’ll be seeing you.” Following the mountain path back towards Nimbus, Mr. Dalton crooked his neck around for one last look at the woman. He watched her release a plume of white smoke, which formed a rolling puddle of milk caught in the gentle slope of her awning. Strange mother. Blessed Mother. Recall your own mother, the lines in her face, the way her body had once seemed a landscape. Knees like mountaintops, amazed by the whiteness of the scalp where her black hair parted. Her expansive kindness, without horizon. Her resilience in the face of embarrassing, petulant torments, masculinized rage, the way she protected you with that selfsame body. A body that eroded and became wan, and then just pebbles. Just pebbles and silt. Recall how you found the stony thing that had been your mother at the kitchen table. Recall how you felt relieved.

***

After Sunday worship, during the sharing of joys and concerns, Mr. Dalton stood and reported on certain alarming developments as they pertained to the Little Arlo situation. Most congregants, those vectors of gossip, were already familiar with the story of the so-called new babe, but hearing now how the old woman still clung to the delusion, how she still cared for the mysterious swaddle of indeterminate provenance, this was certainly distressing news. Mr. Dalton listed a number of considerations, chiefly, the health threat—should the swaddle contain an animal, even the carcass of one, the widow could be at risk of injury or infection. Otherwise, say a bag of flour or object of similar inertness, she may incur emotional or spiritual harm, poor woman on the brink as it was.“What if we threw a party?” Suggested Edith Wainbridge, as she often did. If you asked Edith, a party might solve any of life’s problems. “But here, let’s throw a party to celebrate the young babe. All that drink and merrymaking, the dancing, Mrs. Murray would show us. She’d simply have to show us.”It seemed to be a good idea, a way to get many eyes on the swaddle at once. With so many well-meaning supplicants, she’d have to pass the babe around. Right away they began adorning the walls of the adjoining social hall with blue paper streamers, made last minute preparations for cold supper foods and desserts, and diluted the dregs in their liquor bottles. As for the old woman who had not stepped foot in a church since the end of the war, Mr. Dalton tasked himself with relaying the invitation. Once again, climbing the disused summit path, he found her rocking with that swaddled infant in her arms. Sun beams filtered through the trees, then the slats of the awning, then fell upon her face, where a circle of pipe smoke portrayed an almost druidic look.“Oh Arlo, won’t that be fabulous?” She said after Mr. Dalton had disappeared back over the ridgeline. “An entire party in your honor. How befitting, how deserved! My beautiful infant, my wonderful savior.” And there he was, staring at nothing in particular, sphincteric mouth clamping hard around the wooden spoon, the heap of golden apple mush.

***

It had passed well into the evening and very perceptibly the time of night when partygoers begin thinking about their own beds. Jaunty music still filled the social hall, plucked out by the fat-fingered hands of John Miller and John MacLeod, but only Edith Wainbridge, by herself, still flatfooting and stomping on the wriggling boards. The few remaining slices of cake were collapsing on the tray, and the watery liquor was very nearly finished. But still, no one had glimpsed the child, Arlo, who was completely swaddled, not a patch exposed. Nothing could breathe in a swaddle like that. There was no stink either, no reek, but a strange odor if you got close. Something botanical, almost bitter. Not entirely unpleasant.Old Lady Murray remained at the center of it all, holding court from her folding wooden chair, humored through the night by the masses. She sat and told meandering, nothing stories that rushed apart and broke, tumbled over cliffs, formed logic eddies, loops of adoration for sons whom she described with increasingly blurry distinction. And still, the kernel of her former self was present tonight, present for the first time in years. That self-sacrificing woman, teacher of a one-room schoolhouse, mother for many. Mrs. Murray, who nourished her students with stories of a world which would never be theirs. One of great kings and prophets, mathematicians, inventors. Students, who would know only the lives of soldiers, the labor of serfs. Where there were gaps in her droning recollection, partygoers took turns descending upon the old woman, asking to hold the babe, to at least have a glimpse beneath the swaddle. “Better to not.” This was her refrain, without variation. Better for his face to be hers alone. His strange features, his blue flesh. To hold his writhing body, to caress his jawless chin, the undulations of the muscles beneath. Gravel through a hopper, a meager but steady stream of attendees bade farewell and departed, hiding their frustration. Mr. Dalton paced. He noticed the spiral of the party, the unspoken, shared desire to end the night. He held onto one final gambit. It had occurred to him days ago, a means to retrieve Little Arlo, to detain and inspect the swaddled object. But a cruel means. Or at least the aesthetic of cruelty, but beneath that it was genuine, kind-hearted concern. Her wellbeing at the forefront of all things. Yes, this was Mr. Dalton’s intention, the old woman’s wellbeing. Good intentions and, in the end, a good outcome. He was counting on a good outcome. Concern for the old woman’s wellbeing. Genuine, real concern. And curiosity? The desire to know? To see? Admit it, how often you think about her all alone in that sad cottage, just memories, and cloying dreams. Phantoms are real in a place like that. You know all about phantoms, don’t you? Recall your own mother, the whispers in the wind that you can still hear. Didn’t you let your own mother down? The surrogate whom you call Old Lady Murray, the care-drive of a son transposed. To help her. To bring her back. To gawk. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You voyeur, you pervert. No, no. Genuine concern. Care. Righteous intent. These are the things that matter. These are the truths at the root of your being, the goodness there, the generosity and charity. These are the things you know to be true about yourself. You need these things to be true about yourself.The drunken music faltered now and went quiet. Mr. Dalton looked up. The crowd had thinned, only a handful of supplicants remaining, the most zealous disciples of morbid fascination. The candles flickering in their puddled, dwarfed stumps. The waning of the grey light filtering through thick window glass and the weakening definition of the clouds beyond, which had become a single, soft sheet. And Old Lady Murray, clearly on her way out, moving across the boards towards him, curtsying to the well-wishers as she went. “Mr. Dalton, I think it’s about time for me to be headed home. It’s Little Arlo, you see, the babe needs his rest. And I’m feeling a bit tired myself, to tell the truth.”“I see. Well, come then, let’s walk you back.”“Thank you, but there’s no need. We can manage.”“I insist, allow me to walk you.”“Little Arlo and I can get by on our own. Isn’t that right, wee one?”“Ah, but please just wait a second,” Mr. Dalton said. “I was thinking about the war, you see, remember the war? Yes, yes, of course. See, it just occurred to me, it just hit me suddenly, you see—and I hadn’t realized it when you asked before, all those years ago—but actually, I woke up this morning with the pang of a memory that, yes—yes, I did see your boys. I did know them. We were comrades, don’t you see?”“My boys?”“Yes, I remember them, three of them, yes? I remember that they always asked after their mother. They worried about you, Mrs. Murray, and they always said how lucky they were to be your sons.”“Oh—”“And they asked me to take care of her, should anything happen to them. And something did happen to them, didn’t it? To each of them.”“Oh, my boys. My boys—” Old Lady Murray swayed and gazed miles away, out beyond the plastered walls of the social hall. Out to where her boys might be. Three of them. She saw them face down in the mud, no bubbles blown into opaque, grey puddles. No more holding them, no more feeling the weight of their heads in her lap, comforting them on a journey to a place that did not exist. I cannot hold you. I cannot throw a party—no parties for you, ever. No weddings. Boys in their blue uniforms with shining brass buttons, their eyes which had once been the eyes of children. To hold your heads, to feel the weight of you, to see your faces again. Never. Not since their farewell waves from half-opened train car windows. Not since the plumes of black smoke, white steam shooting geyser-like from heavy, sooty locomotive wheels. The cold, awesome machinery that rotated them around and around again.The old woman took on a look of syncope and crumpled into a nearby chair, still holding Little Arlo, pulling the swaddled infant inwards. The few remaining partygoers fluttered paper fans in her face, held tins of diluted whiskey to her lips. “Oh, pass me the child,” said Edith Wainbridge, leaning in beside her. “Give Little Arlo to me, Mrs. Murray, before you drop him.” Her aching arms suddenly unburdened, the swaddled object lifted up out her lap, empty fingers curling around nothing, pale eyes held shut, wet-lidded.Edith brought the bundle up into her own chest and was surprised by the heft of the thing. Certainly not just a roll of fabric. Too heavy, it seemed, for even an opossum. She felt a definitive movement within the swaddle, a subtle throb and an occasional twitch. There was something alive in here. The remaining partygoers closed in around her, many hands outstretched, many eyes wide and searching. It struck Edith now, a stab of frightening consideration, that this may indeed be a child. And then, with haunting clarity, she noticed that she was rocking the swaddle, gently bouncing it against her clavicle. Mr. Dalton met her confused, startled eyes and held his arms out, as if the child were the sphere of Atlas, a titanic burden which he would accept without complaint. She passed—nearly tossed—the babe to him and then took a seat beside Old Lady Murray, almost as pale herself now. The onlookers shifted their focus to Mr. Dalton as he unwrapped the quilted pupa. How strange to peel back so many layers and then to keep going, the fabric growing damper, more yellowed as he approached its center. And then that smell, at once acrid and appealing, it caused a tingling in his sinuses.Outside, the early evening became dusk. Crepuscular animals stirred in the forested valleys below. But up here on the bald mountain carved up like a rotten molar, up here it was stone silent. Up here, twilight seemed to last for hours—darker than midnight, when the moon casts its image upon all things. Up here, where there was no shade. A century from now, dark nights would be rarer still, but by then, Nimbus would be a ghost. Its buildings devoured by the first pioneer species of ecological succession. The families who had nested in its once lamp-lit homes, long since dispersed and integrated into the larger cities of the region: Charleston, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Huntington, Cincinnati. The last few layers of swaddling were oil-slick and stuck to themselves, audibly peeling away from the surface beneath. Mr. Dalton was the first to see the babe, its bald, blue head, elongate and ambiguous. The sphincter of its mouth, clenching and unclenching. Its huge, dark eyes that reflected but did not blink. And arms, delicate arms. A number of thin arms, but which number? More than two. They twisted and reached, one of them winding around Mr. Dalton’s wrist, an immense strength apparent despite how slender, how gentle. “My Lord! Wha—God, what is it?”He dropped the thing to the floor with a wet thud, where it made the first sound anyone had heard from it. A sound like a puppy’s sigh, more a whimper than a whine. And then silence again. Deep silence. The small crowd of supplicants staring dumb-eyed, something breaking within each of them, something long fermenting at the center of it all, suppressed by the decades of politeness and boredom. They shrieked and pointed, some of them fainting. It was in this commotion that Old Lady Murray awoke, slowly habituating to consciousness, and then upon seeing her child on the ground, leaped up with a throaty, glottal yelp. A mother’s yelp. She dove forward and hefted the child over her shoulder, bounding out into the twilight, heavy double doors swinging shut behind her. Then just the crowd standing baffled, lingering with confused, dumb eyes, the terror of a deer on the interstate. Some of them mumbling, some of them shutting their eyes and shaking their heads.What words are there to describe that which cannot exist? Mr. Dalton was the first to capture and transform the horror—the first to reach desperately for rage. For violence. “Get it! Devil! Get—God, stop!” his voice buzzed in a new, tinny register. “Go get her! Stop her! Devil!” He pushed through the herd and pulled an oil lamp from the wall, sprinting out after the old woman, the others following quickly behind. They armed themselves however they could, cutlery, long-handled collection baskets, heavy-bound hymnals, bottles, their own pocketknives. They ran out into the dusty streets after the old woman. Only Edith Wainbridge remained, locked to her seat.

***

Follow her past the tavern and up the slope of the bald summit. The vision-fade of twilight, the lactic burn, the stiff and frightening arthritic pangs. Little Arlo clings to her now, blank eyes full of knowing, mouth opening and closing in mollusk fashion. “Hold onto me child, you won’t be harmed. I will not let them. Lord knows they will not lay a finger upon you.” And the jeering mob closing in behind, the cloud churning up beneath their footfalls, their mean noises. “Hold on, Little Arlo, cling tight to Momma,” her words spitting out between laborious pants. “They are the devils and you, an angel.” She rushes past her cottage and continues to the other side of the summit, where she hears faint bells ringing out in the gloaming. A soft chime and deeper, brassy harmonies.The mob gains and corners her against the mountain’s far-facing flank, just the steep valley beneath. They form a wide line and choke in, no choice for her but to descend the harsh slope. She has trouble with the steepness of it, the breakaway shale beneath her feet. Her gown catches on a pathetic hemlock fledgling and she comes down hard on her knees, cries out, but does not drop Little Arlo. She does not even flinch to catch herself, arms in a firm cradle as she tumbles end-over-end, rolling down the talus until she crashes against a sandstone boulder. A phosphene flash in her vision as something—many somethings—shatter within. The feeling of warmth beneath skin. “Help her!” Shouts Mr. Dalton, “Get away from it!” The mob clamors down the slope, shards of loose stone bunching up in mounds beneath their feet, the talus spilling down and burying her bloodied legs, pebbles bouncing up into her face. And all through the hurt, the old woman smiles at her child. Little Arlo, still unharmed. Little Arlo, still protected. “Take me to them, Little Arlo. Take me away, please, you angel, you divine thing. If my boys are somewhere, please take me to them. Please, you’ve been there, you’ve seen them, I can tell by the look in your eye. If they are nowhere, I’d rather be nowhere. But they are somewhere, aren’t they? What place is it? Tell me, is it the place where you’re from? I’m not your mother, I know that. I’m not your mother, but I could be. I could show you what it is to have a mother, to have brothers, to be held, to be worried. Please. I’m ready now.”The child does not nod, but closes his eyes, becomes a mess of limbs that stretch out and wrap themselves around the woman. Her arms and legs now bound in blue helixes. The crowd watching in gape-mouthed horror as the child encompasses and subsumes her. Kudzu on a maple tree, the union of two beings. The old woman then rises to her feet as Little Arlo stands up on her behalf, walks for her, moves each of her limbs in his own. He turns her around and sprints down the slope at a full gallop.“My God!” cries Mr. Dalton. “My Lord, God Almighty!” He has no other language for this. His ears ring, a tightness at the base of his neck, blood rushing past his temples. He’s heard stories from the war, strange lights in the night, wounded bodies that emit a green glow and are healed, but nothing like this. His head pounds and his body trembles, shaking without his permission—an angry body with a frothing mouth—the reptile inside him cursing and yelling, grieving for itself. And beneath it all, genuine concern. Genuine guilt. An expanding thought loop that would not cease until his death three years later. The distinctions of memory collapsing, subjects losing their referents. There is a gestalt that precipitates from this soup of recollection: the woman who raised him, the woman who taught him, the woman who bore God. His mouth hangs open as he cries out, “Mother!” “Little Arlo,” says Old Lady Murray, her voice weak now. “I’m ready,” and then her body goes limp inside his. She is carried down the mountain at panicked speeds, eyes closed, smiling, listening to the bells that are so much louder now. The same bells she has heard each night for the last forty years, but never so loud, never so clear as this. And something else, too, something so quiet, interpolated over the percussion. Something like the voices of young men. No words. Only meaning. Little Arlo carries the old woman into a small cave, nestled beneath a curving, gable-like syncline that is etched with glimmering veins of quartzite. Nobody watching as mother and child disappear into the mouth of the Earth. Then there is a sharp green flash and a sound like thunder. Stones break and crash down, burying the entrance. No more cave, no trace ever found.

***

Unseen by anyone out in the deep night, out in the forested isolates that pen the river in, there is a heap of refuse where the waters meet a bend and regurgitate their burden. Here, an opossum searches for her meal. It is bleak, hard winter, when the insects are buried, and berries do not fruit. She eats garbage, bones not stripped of their flesh, whatever smaller creatures have congregated here for the same purpose. She must eat well tonight. Her pouch drags against the ground, sagging under the weight of four babes. She must eat well.

PARROT by László Darvasi, translated from Hungarian by Ági Bori

July 15, 2025

As was his habit, he lay down for an afternoon nap, although next door they were building a church. The sounds of drills, hammers, and other tools kept waking him up. He fumbled his way to the kitchen, drank two glasses of absinthe in quick little swigs, plopped back in the armchair, and stared at the ceiling. Up there, the light was moving back and forth, forming streaks and patches, devouring itself. They were puttering around next door, and he remembered that the foreman had once said to the workers that not all of them would live long enough to see the completion of the church. He was a slim and sinewy man; he smoked while he talked; he lit up a few cigarettes. He watched him from the balcony, then eventually he reached for a cigarette, too. The workers should remember, the foreman explained, that there are sanctuaries and churches whose construction lasted five hundred years. Think of the many churches in the world that are up and running, but they’ll never be finished. They’re not yet finished, but services are already taking place in them. The workers should remember that a church might never be truly finished. And when it is finished, does everyone get there in the end? No. Not everyone gets to the church they plan to go to. Because along the way they get lost, find another church, take a different path, get sick, die.The workers then began to ask questions.“Then why bother building it?”“I don’t know,” the foreman said. “They’re paying us, aren’t they?”They are. That’s true. If they weren’t paying, they would quit for sure. But because they’re paying them, they’re working. Then one of the workers asked a strange question:“Could a prayer be ever finished?!”“Perhaps if it’s genuinely heard,” the foreman replied, but he already regretted saying it.The man thought that once services were being held, he’d go over there to pray too, perhaps get down on his knees, and ask the Lord not to let the bird land on his windowsill anymore. Is that what he really wanted though? The window was open, and if he were to close the window panes, he’d suffocate. The heat was unbearable. At least with the window open, there was a small draft. He got up from the armchair, and looked back to see what kind of imprint his body left behind. He turned the radio on, and the scratchy sounds, emitted with each turn of the button, also sounded like a prayer. He listened to the news. Another catastrophic mine accident somewhere. The hot spell was here to stay. A protest was underway. The man turned the radio off. He drank another glass of absinthe, opened a can of beer, and watched the slowly disappearing brownish foam; by then, the bird was already standing on the windowsill. Truth be told, it usually dirtied it up and, once again, it pooped right there.The men below were puttering around.The bird was the town’s parrot, it flew from window to window, no one knew who its owner was, whose cage it escaped from. Someone might have let him go, shoo, fly away, we don’t want you anymore, bird. He thought it might have stayed around this area because of the construction of the church; maybe it was fascinated by the sounds of drills, chisels, hammers. The temperature was so high that the dripping sweat boiled on the temples. The city was suffocating, windows everywhere were wide open, as if they were human mouths. Large, hungry mouths, breathing in the heat and exhaling human vapor, the scent of dust falling from the leaves of indoor plants, the stale smell of furniture. The curtains, like souls ready to escape their imprisonment, swayed back and forth. The parrot was an exceptionally intelligent being.Its small colorful head tilted left and right, it listened, it eavesdropped. It picked up and learned the intimate whispers and shouts that circulated in each home, then it moved on. In the next home it repeated what it heard earlier. Sometimes the parrot told the man, stay with me.“Stay with me.”“Go away.”“You’re not enough.”“You’re too much.”The parrot whispered, be nice, be nice.“Let’s dance, darling.”The bird acted out how the church was being built. It imitated the drilling, the chiseling, the loud hammering, as though it were an echo. After a while it flew away, the man wiped off the yellow poop from the windowsill, and emptied another glass of absinthe down his gullet. He sat down, stared upward, and gave names to the cracks on the ceiling. He spotted a spider. He might have even dozed off. That’s when the doorbell rang. It was the foreman from the construction site, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. His face looked tormented. They had exchanged a few words before, back when the construction started. He was now holding a bag in his hand, said hello, and asked to come in for a moment. He had something to say. The man nodded, of course, and stepped aside. The foreman accepted the glass of absinthe and lit up another cigarette. “This is how we pray,” he said “during work.” “We never get to the end of our work, but we pray regardless.”The bag was still in his hand.“I see,” the man nodded. “Did the parrot used to visit you, too?”“I never chased it away. Sometimes I might have even waited for it,” the man nodded.“Do you know what one of my workers said? He said that the bird is the voice of history.”“That might be a bit of an exaggeration,” the man said, and he poured another glass. They clinked their small, but thick glasses.“While we were working on our construction site,” the foreman said, “the bird kept repeating a woman’s name. In your voice. We couldn’t work because of it.”“You couldn’t work because of a name?”The foreman didn’t answer.“It was so ridiculous. The youngsters, the younger workers, they kept laughing,” he said as he wiped his forehead. “Don’t be angry with me, but it couldn’t go on any longer.”“I see,” the man nodded. “Don’t be angry with me, you all.”“Here you go,” the foreman said, and he slowly lowered the bag on the table. He chugged another glass of absinthe and left. He didn’t say goodbye. His steps echoed in the stairway, although during such heat waves stairway noises usually sound muffled. Blood seeped through the brown pastry bag. They must have caught it by hand, and then wrung its neck. The man placed the carcass on the windowsill, right where it pooped a few hours ago, and then, as had been his habit for some time, he began to talk to it.

POCKET UNIVERSE by D.T. Robbins

July 14, 2025

I find a pocket universe in my apartment building. A whole ass other universe two floors below me! On the 23rd floor to be exact. You’d never know it was a pocket universe by looking at it. From the outside, it just looks like another normal door to another normal apartment. The pocket universe feels like it’s made for me. Like its dark energy and matter and various particles all exploded from the nethermost parts of my soul during its creation or my creation, or maybe they happened simultaneously and that’s how love works. The first night that I’m in my pocket universe, I sleep. That’s it. I sleep the best sleep I’ve had in years. No alarms. No construction outside my window. No neighbors fucking so loudly that I get a little jealous but also a little horny. Just the purest form of rest known to man. I wake up to a fresh cup of coffee just the way I like it on the nightstand with a little note that says: Good morning. I love you. At sunset, I walk through the field of black velvet petunias and watch how the rays of light bounce off the petals and bounce upward to illuminate the coming stars and my heart bounces around in my chest and wow wow wow, look at how beautiful everything is!I tell my pocket universe everything: how stupid my boss is, why I chose to wear whatever I chose to wear that particular day, how my diet is/isn’t going, my working theory that anyone who drives a KIA is a bad driver and anyone who drives a BMW is an asshole—everything! My pocket universe listens and laughs and through signs and wonders lets me know if I'm right or if I’m being judgmental. It’s not long until I pack up most of my shit and move into my pocket universe, only going back to my home universe when I need to water my plants or get a haircut or see how the San Diego Padres are doing this season or something. I work remotely, and my pocket universe has great WiFi, so I’m still able to make money even though I don’t have to pay for rent or gas or groceries anymore. My pocket universe provides everything for me free of charge. Nights are spent by the ocean, drinking coffee stouts with the dolphins. Mornings are spent having friendly debates on various topics with the redwood trees and the skyscrapers while scarfing down the best fucking breakfast burritos I’ve ever had. In the fleeting moments, I stare at the sun because here it doesn’t blind you. Here, it illuminates the version of you that you’ve always wanted to be. The version of you you’d always hoped was somewhere inside of you. It shines its light on that part of you like a miracle, and you start to believe.

***

I notice it in the sky first, like slender cracks in glass slowly crawling from one end of the horizon to the other. My pocket universe tries to convince me that everything is fine. That it’s not a big deal, nothing to worry about. The water is next. Once clear and pure, it muddles and is soon overrun with leeches. The sun dims from brilliant gold to a metallic gray. Still, my pocket universe tells me it’s okay. That it will pass soon enough, that it’s just grateful I’m here. I tell it I’m just as grateful. That I love it too. That I love it more than words can express. That no story or song or poem or picture or suicide pact or anything could ever express. That’s when the crimson in my veins turns black. My skin pales as the dark lines stretch along every inch of my body. I lose sight in one eye, and my lungs only take half their normal amount of air. Every breath feels suffocating. “I’m killing you by staying here,” I say. “Maybe I don’t belong here. Maybe I was wrong. What did I do? Why is this happening?”The mountains explode. Fire mushrooms up and rolls out like tidal waves across the canvas of sky, setting my pocket universe itself on fire. Stars crash down around me. My pocket universe whispers in my ear, “I’m so sorry,” and I black out. I’m lying on the floor of the hallway, covered head to toe in ash and soot. The door to my pocket universe expands and retracts as though taking its last breaths. I reach for the doorknob, try to force myself back in. I’m thrown into the air like a fucking rag doll, past the other doors in the hallway that lead to regular apartments and not pocket universes, and into the elevator. The doors slam shut, and I’m sent back to my floor.

***

Every morning and night, I walk past the door that leads to my pocket universe. The cracks in the wood heal in a matter of days, weeks, months until it’s as good as new. I heal, too. But I know I can never go back to my pocket universe. That if I do, it’ll kill us both. For whatever reason. It doesn’t matter, I guess. It just is. Instead, I lie in bed at night and dream of my pocket universe. Of its beauty and its brilliance and its whole ass existence being a miracle. And in my dreams, in my mind, I find a new pocket universe for me and my pocket universe to be together. One that hopefully won’t kill us both.

JITTERBUG JOHNNY by Grey Traynor

July 11, 2025

Jitterbug Johnny made it to the back of a dozen trucks and sports utility vehicles in the form of a sticker: “Jitterbug Johnny 1965-2023 – ‘Drive faster than an eagle takes flight!’” Jitterbug said the phrase any chance he could: before and after taking a shot, getting out of cold above-ground pools, even while receiving the toothiest blow job.However, it was a phrase that bothered some folks, sticking in their ear like a stubborn wad of wax. Did eagles take to flight faster than most other birds, they would wonder, shouldn’t this pithy encouragement have more to do with eagles soaring unparalleled heights rather than the immediacy with which they took off?These were understandable questions to ask of a man who also drove a beat-up sedan that couldn’t reach 30 miles per hour without shuddering and shaking across the land it traversed. And shit cars aside, Jitterbug usually preferred to stumble home most nights, the pounding tread of his unsteady boots his only company at 2:30 AM.After his death, choking on a chicken wing alone in his studio apartment with no curtains and a crunchy carpet that would scare even the bravest set of bare feet, the truly unspectacular mystery of Jitterbug Johnny’s motto that, without realizing it, garnered years of mental estate by those who knew him, rose to the surface, ready to be evaluated.Bored by their regular brews, Jitterbug’s bar buddies, a comingling from two different, dimly-lit establishments, met in an agreed upon abandoned parking lot to speculate over who “Jitterbug Johnny” really was and why he proselytized about driving faster than an eagle takes flight.First, the bar buddies decided to bust down Jitterbug’s front door, a place, they all discovered, they had never been invited back to.Their first batch of clues was the adornments: a Mexican flag on one wall, just to the side of the bulby TV, and, on the other, just above the couch, hung a life-sized poster of Howie Mandel wearing a burgundy suit—official 2007 promo for the show Deal or No Deal.The buddies stopped in their tracks, thankful for the safe, cleanish confines of their work boots traversing across the crackling carpet, their feet inside burdened enough, sore, weary, from working their hauls, their men, and their minds throughout the day.With fewer answers and more questions, the breeze drifting over the felled front door, the bar buddies scratched their beards and polished their bald heads shiny, forgetting why they felt so compelled to come, until the leering face of Howie Mandel sparked a discussion, a speculating as to why Johnny, a live alone bachelor, would have a poster of a sharp-dressed man and not a woman with honeyed hair and cleavage like an overstuffed couch?What, ultimately, they didn’t say (“Johnny was a queer!”), out of reverence for the dead, screamed louder than what they did (“Deal or No Deal? Solid network TV!”)Then the baked-in smell of spicy chicken soup, advancing from the hallway, comforted their searching minds and, together, without further debate, they realized Howie Mandel, at heart, was a stand-up comedian, an uncovered masculine aspect to the poster and the dead man who had tacked it up with three rusty nails and one bobby pin (“Certainly a souvenir from one wild nooner,” the bar buddies nudged each another with a grin.)But the Mexican flag they still cut their eyes at, wanting Jitterbug to be a full-blooded American. That is until one of the buddies, either the one a full inch shorter than the rest or the one who was always “pickin’ his seat,” chimed in, “I remember Jitterbug sayin’ his dad was half Mexican? Or…Maybe…It was his grandfather?”Ah yes, the bar buddies nodded. They too had a half-Mexican father and/or grandpa.The buddies split up, combing through the rest of the apartment, hoping to turn over the right “shell” and gain more clarity, more understanding so they could get back to their respective bars and nod with added certainty whenever someone spoke Jitterbug’s name.Drawers opened, cabinets closed, and fingers of the buddies gripped, tousled, and upturned what they could find only to come up short of filling in the deep gaps of just who all these men had considered a friend.Was Jitterbug the broken comb wedged under the one recliner, not the one with the blood stain but the one that smelled like box? Was he the TV, stuck on the weather channel for a different state? And where was the car manuals or bird ephemera for all that talk of driving eagles and flying cars. What was the saying again, the buddies shrugged, the permeating soup smell now a given, no longer a comfort.Tired, the buddies scratched themselves a final time, resting their other available hand on their hip until that posture felt too feminine and they all quickly shoved their hands in their pockets and left.Back at the bar, a new one, but as divey as the ones they had known, floors sticky, the beer cheap and shitty, the buddies sighed collectively.“Remember the time Johnny chipped his tooth?”Yes, they remembered, their smiles flat and foamy. Jitterbug had gotten blackout drunk and smashed his face into the pinball table just because no one had ever thought to give it a try.“Remember the time Johnny shit his pants?”Yes, that too they remembered until a bar buddy said, “Which time?”They all laughed over their beers, promising they’d learn from Jitterbug’s mistake, stopping at three, rushing to the toilet if they felt any “hot chocolate” coming on.Then a lull settled and the bar buddies noticed the football game blaring from the many screens and the two women playing pool who, yes, did have smaller breasts than they would normally hope for but it would be rude not to chat them up after the next round brought out the courage.It was this kind of casual moment of nothing, before that chicken wing refused to budge, when Jitterbug Johnny would’ve appeared, telling them all to drive faster than an eagle takes flight. The bar buddies acknowledged his absence with back slaps and mug raises. They didn’t have more any information about their dead, beloved friend. And they still didn’t understand his confounding catchphrase, but one thing was clear: you can argue with your boss for sticking you with the night shift, you can argue with your girlfriend on how best to shut that newborn up, but you can’t argue with the dead.“Hear, hear!” The bar buddies cried, clinking their glasses, letting the beer spill over the rim as it pooled on the bar top. “To Jitterbug Johnny!”

NO NAME AND COOL PARTY by Erin Satterthwaite

July 9, 2025

No NameI looked at her picture to see if she was more attractive than me. I looked up her family’s ancestry to see if they had ever owned slaves. They hadn’t; they were quakers. I looked at the picture of my boyfriend and her when they were in Italy together. I had never even been to Italy and he knew this. Yet there he was four years ago eating gelato with her with his eyes closed and a big grin. He probably wouldn’t take me to Italy because I was dull and uncultured. She worked in academia at a fancy university and had degrees that I would never have. I worked as a preschool teacher and everyone thinks I just finger paint all day. I don’t, and we mostly use colored markers anyways. She was born in a city, a really important one. I was born in a town with no name. It did have a name, but it hardly deserved one. She was not prettier than me, but somehow that made it worse. She must be really special while I am just attractive. Being attractive isn’t special. Anyone would date someone attractive because they assume they're good at sex. I am not good at sex; I just lay there. She probably did really kinky stuff. Like finger stuff. I heard ugly girls do that to compensate. She was not actually ugly, but I needed to say that she was. It was all I had. Cool Party I had finally been invited to a cool party. I was wearing a long skirt. I couldn’t drink because I was on antibiotics so I ordered an apple juice at the bar because I thought it would at least look like a beer but the bartender handed me a bottle shaped like an apple. I was wearing a long skirt and drinking apple juice and everyone thought I was Mormon and they hated me. Nobody had said they hated me, but I could assume they did because nobody was coming up and talking to me. The most popular person at the party had invited me. He was talking to everyone else and everyone wanted to talk to him. I was alone in a corner watching a Youtube video on mute, which probably wasn't helping. Then someone came up and began talking to me. He asked about the Youtube video. I told him it was two really funny guys that play video games and he asked if I played video games and I said no because I didn’t play video games, I just liked watching other people do it. He excused himself and walked away. I was jealous of him because he could walk away. I finished my apple juice and went home.

THE CONSULTATION by Zac Smith

July 7, 2025

So a vasectomy isn't actually reversible. I like to start off with that. Because for some guys that's all they need to hear before they decide they need some more time to think about it. I know people say that a vasectomy is reversible, but it's not. You really need to be done having kids if you're going to do this, because it's permanent. But I see you already have some kids so I'm less worried about that in this case. You have three, is that right? That's great. Makes sense you'd want a vasectomy. I have three kids, so I get it. I had three and thought woah there, that's enough of that! Time for a vasectomy! And did it myself. I mean, I didn't do it to myself, but you know what I mean. I got the procedure done myself. By my colleague Dr. Askildsen, actually. Although, to be fair, I could've probably done it to myself. I've done, well, yeah, let's see, I've done probably five hundred vasectomies now with no complications. Maybe one or two complications. Or at least no complications from anything I did, uh, well, not wrong, but, you know, most complications are due to the patient not resting properly or tending to the incision site correctly. Which is partly why we like to have consultations like this first and then schedule the vasectomy procedure itself for a later date – and we'll get into this more later – because there are some things that we like to go over before the actual procedure. But like I said I've had a pretty excellent record. I'm pretty good at vasectomies, basically. I feel confident that I could have done my own procedure, actually, if you want the truth. It's all I do at the clinic, really. And a successfully completed vasectomy has a ninety-nine point nine five percent chance efficacy rate at preventing pregnancy. That's effectively one hundred percent. I could probably do the vasectomy procedure blindfolded at this point, too, to be honest. And we'll get into this more later, but it only takes about an hour, usually less, from start to finish. So some days I do five or six vasectomies in a row, like that's just my whole day, maybe one consult, like this, in the morning, you know, and then I pick up the bulk of the procedures for Dr. Askildsen, usually. Some days it's just back to back procedures and I clock out. There isn't really a clock to punch, but you know what I mean, you know, but it is nice, like, if my schedule's empty after that I can just go home. But most days, yeah, it's like, one or two consultations, a couple vasectomies, lunch, then maybe three or four more vasectomies, then some paperwork. And it's all very smooth and predictable because I am very experienced. You've picked a good clinic to come to, basically, if you'd let me brag a bit, because I am proud of the work we do here. So I appreciate you coming in. Like I said, I could have done my own procedure, blindfolded, I imagine, too, with no complications. But the main goal of this consultation is to get you up to speed on what to expect. So, in a bit, with your permission – and we'll get into this more later – I'd like to take a look and have a feel to make sure everything's alright down there, and that you're aware of, sort of, like, what to expect, in terms of how the procedure goes and, like I said, like which parts of your body I may need to manually manipulate, what to expect in terms of pressure or discomfort, that kind of thing. It's all very straightforward, but I do find that it helps to walk through how it all works prior to the actual procedure. And I should say here that I wouldn't actually do it blindfolded, to you, or to anyone, or even myself, although I definitely could, I'm pretty sure. But legally speaking I probably shouldn't. Definitely couldn't do that. But I could easily do it. Blindfolded, I mean. Or to myself. Both, really. I basically do it blind now, in a way. I mean, we'll get into this more later, but the whole procedure pretty much goes by feel. I'll take a look I guess to make sure there's nothing strange going on down there, you know, that might lead to a complication, like I said, and then I need to deliver the local anaesthetic, but then from there it's pretty much by feel. And I guess the first part is more like a formality, really, to make sure there isn't anything that could lead to an infection of the incision site, like I mentioned. That's generally what we mean by a complication: it's generally something that would pose a risk of infection or impede recovery which would make me not want to proceed. But you don't see that much out here in Weston. You get that more over in Wellsborough, in my experience. I imagine you're familiar with Wellsborough, with it being so close to Weston. Cute little town. But you get some people who really don't know how to take care of themselves. Which, and we'll get into this more later, is what a visual and physical inspection during a consultation helps identify. And usually I don't have to deal with this type of patient much here in Weston, but there's still a lot of ignorance, or discomfort, maybe, when it comes to the body, especially this region of the body, in general, like, for anyone, you know, anywhere in the country. You don't go out to a restaurant and ask people how their genitals are, you know? Which, again, can complicate the procedure. But I remember being surprised about what kind of problems people are just dealing with without realizing it, especially in Wellsborough. At my first clinic we saw some really interesting guys come in, is all I'll say, some guys who seemed to suffer this kind of terror of their own body, I guess is a good way to put it. Well, maybe that's not how others would put it, but it makes sense to me to put it that way. I don't want to go into this too much, but sometimes you can really get a sense of it when they come in. You start talking about things – and we'll get into this more later– you know, like scrotum and perineum, and they sort of recoil. I'd talk about semen, you know, and, really, yeah, the best I can describe it, really, is just terror. A deep fear. Very deep. So I call it terror. You would think it'd be more of like a disgust, or revulsion, maybe, or some kind of general discomfort, you know, because of the association with urine or excrement, but no, it's really just a sort of, well, shocked, fearful. I call it terror, really, that's the best way I can describe it. You start a consultation and then you really see it: terror. The physical nature of fear, really, of terror. You know, you can see it. They get a little pale, maybe they sweat a bit. It's very physical, really a drastic change, and very immediate. Some guys might shiver, even, I remember. But it's really in the eyes. Some guys, you know, most of these guys, their eyes start to get wide, and their pupils dilate. And they sort of, well, cower, I guess, too, in the chair, and I'm not doing anything else than what we're doing here, you and me, you know, just calmly talking about the procedure, talking about what I'll need to manipulate, how a vasectomy actually works, physically, you know, biologically. At the time, when it was happening, I would think they were just afraid of the procedure because they didn't understand it, you know, and this was back when we didn't have these consultations as much. They'd come for the procedure and immediately they start cowering on the table, and I assumed they were thinking it was more like castration, or something, you know, which I get, because there's a lot of ignorance out there, and I get how that would maybe scare you a bit. I mean, it doesn't make sense at all, really, if you think about it, but I don't know, I was trying to figure it out. And I wanted to see how to make things easier for these guys. So then I started, you know, first thing in the consultation, which has a few parts to it – and we'll get into this more later – I would start with just very simply saying Hello, a vasectomy is very simple, and I'm not gonna remove a single part of your body, I'm just making a small snip in a little tube and you won't even notice a difference in three days' time. But I was foolish, in retrospect, thinking that way. It didn't make a difference. They still just cowered in the chair, eyes wide, pupils dilated, little blobs of sweat peeking out from under their hair. Terror. But I was stubborn, you know, and I wanted to be the best, one of the best, if possible, is what I wanted at the time, which I kind of am now, to be honest – so know you're in good hands here, expert hands – and so I kept trying to improve, I wanted to figure out how to help them, and I thought, okay, let's have consultations, and during the consultation, right at the start of it, even, I can reassure them. I thought I just had to be more clear. Concise. I figured I could work out a perfect introduction that would just prevent it right off the bat, you know: the terror. So, like, I tried saying, very first thing: Your penis won't be touched. Your testicles won't be touched. I mean, okay, maybe I wouldn't say it exactly that way, because I do have to manually manipulate the testicles, and sometimes the penis, if it's large enough to get in the way, which can make the procedure much more difficult, as you can imagine – and we'll get into this more later – but I intended that line to just mean I'm not going to injure you, you know, I'm not going to cut off your penis. That's very straightforward but I tried out all kinds of phrasing. I even tried just saying that: I'm not going to cut off your penis. And I even pulled out a diagram, or I'd have it propped right up here when they came in, before they even came in, actually, and I'd point, you know, first thing: None of this stuff is going anywhere. I promise. And I'd point to the penis and the testicles. But no, that wasn't it, that wasn't the problem at all, of course. I know that now. I was wrong. I thought maybe it was just, I don't know how to say it, the association of the whole thing. These guys had a deep fear of the urology clinic, or what the word implied, I guess, I thought: urine, penis, testicles, semen. They had a fear of those things. Or more like a fear of the parts of the body, of what the body does or can do. They had a fear of these things, but, well, I realized it was even simpler than that: the body. These guys were coming in terrified of their own bodies. That's what it was. The body. The self, the physical self. They were being confronted with their own bodies, the reality of their beings, I guess, all the wires and bolts and tubes and screws. Not literally, I mean, not literal wires and screws – and we'll get into this more later – but the whole physicality of it made them uneasy. Now, again, uneasy isn't the right word, it's beyond that, deeper than that. Like I said, it's terror. I was telling them that they had a thing called a penis, a thing called a scrotum, but then that was it, that was all it took, because that opens it all up. Sitting here and saying the word penis was like leading them to Medusa and telling them to look right in her eyes. Everything else was just the predictable aftermath of that little glance, that little glance at the truth, I thought, you know, after really thinking about it. After really trying to understand and work through it, these consultations I'd have and what happened in them, what went wrong, working through when they really began to cower, all that, and asking myself What set them off? Man, I'd ask myself this and think on it for a long time after, I'd think about it at home, you know, or in the car, and I'd come back the next day with a new theory, some new idea of what was doing it, what was igniting it, this real terror. I mean, I should clarify, they weren't running out of the office screaming. Nothing like that. But I know that look. I could see it. The terror. I could see it in their eyes, in their whole being, really, this deep dread opening up in them and draining them, right in front of me, sitting where you're sitting now, basically, and they would sort of gasp for air a little bit, gasping like a fish or something, you know? Have you ever been fishing? Then, right, you know what I'm talking about, how a fish will sort of gasp, sort of open and close its mouth, almost like a reflex. Well I guess it is a reflex, I don't know. You assume they're gasping for air, but fish have gills, right? That doesn't make sense, really, no, so it's something else. I never thought of it that way before, but that's what it is: terror. These men were terrified, just like the fish is terrified. The fish isn't trying to breathe the air, it's simply reacting, it's just a reflex, an autonomous movement. It's feeling out of control, and it doesn't know what to do, so it does that, for some reason. That's how these guys would look at me as soon as I said the word scrotum or the word ejaculate or something like that, as soon as I pointed at the diagram, as soon as I even gesticulated toward their lap, sometimes, even. Little fish mouths opening and closing. Gasping. And I realized that ultimately it was just whatever finally caused them to really understand that: Yes, yes, I have a body, and my body has genitals, and my genitals do things, they make things, they shoot things out, sometimes, even, and I have to sit with that understanding, I have to really confront it, really accept it, and I'm not prepared, I can't do it. Or maybe it's just the body, that simple reminder: I have a body, that's it, isn't it, I'm not just a floating, like, ghost, I guess, but I'm real, I'm a body, or I'm in a body, and my body functions, or, well, it functions for now, and maybe it won't always do that, maybe it's already falling apart, and, you know, someday that will end, and so will I. And that's terrifying. I can understand that, now. I didn't understand that early on, doing these consultations. But I understand it now. And not everyone reacts that way, obviously. Maybe it's just something about Wellsborough, even. I don't know. I thought I could just walk in and be frank, talk to an adult like another adult. And it didn't work. I didn't understand it then. Sometimes I'd get so frustrated, you know, and I'd daydream, even, about, like, walking in and saying Hi there, I'm Dr. Razzle, and hey, listen, one: you have a penis, and two: you're gonna die. And I have a penis and I'm going to die. And there's nothing either of us can do about that. And everyone with a penis is gonna die, and everyone without a penis is gonna die, because we're all just bodies, we're just blood and guts and we have like a hundred years max and then it's over forever and we need to be adults about this because I'm here to help you get a vasectomy. So I'm gonna step out and do some paperwork, and you can think about that for a minute, and when you're ready, I'll come back in and we'll talk about the procedure and what to expect. Isn't that ridiculous? I never did that, obviously. And maybe it wouldn't have helped anyone. Or maybe it would have. I don't know. But I was feeling so desperate, I remember, that it felt good to imagine it, to just think of these extremes, to work through some really out there idea and picture it, you know, close my eyes and feel it, live in that moment, and I think it helped me, too. It really helped me think it through and really understand it. I stopped myself once and thought, Alright, why am I imagining this? What am I trying to solve, really? It was the terror. It was always the terror, in the end, and that wasn't about me. It wasn't about the procedure. It wasn't even about the guy's perineum or prostate or vas deferens. It wasn't about pee or poop or jizz or blood or anything else so common and trivial as that. But it was about something even more simple, even more central to everything, the most common thing, the most simple thing, I guess, really. It was about death. They were afraid of death. That's what terror is. It's not just any fear, no, it's the fear of death. And I thought about that and thought about that, you know, sometimes angrily, sometimes frustrated, I guess, and sometimes desperate, just so over it, just so willing to do anything to help these guys move past it, and sometimes it made me sad, too, of course, thinking about all these guys coming in and of all things I have to be the guy who reminds them of their own death. All these guys, you know, who never had to confront it, never gave a thought to their own end, it seemed like, until of all things they step into my urology clinic office and sit on my chair and of all the things in the world it was me saying the word scrotum and bam! There it is: You're gonna die! And It wrecked me, in a way, for a long time. I felt stuck. It felt impossible to move beyond that. But eventually, you know, thankfully, I realized there was nothing I could do. Nothing! It's nothing anyone can do, really. It's something that not even religion can do, if you think about it, and, hey, that's religion's whole thing, isn't it? To prepare you for death? To explain death? To help you come to terms with death? I don't actually know, but that's how I think of it, anyway. And yet, I thought, you know, everyone is still afraid of dying, even religious people. Despite having religion, they're still afraid. The most ardent believer, convinced, fully sold on life after death in Heaven, even, still at the end: afraid. And if it really is everyone, then maybe the Pope is afraid of death, even. Maybe all the Popes were afraid of death, still, right at the end. And it's so obvious, right? Of course they would be afraid of dying. How could they not be afraid? But of all people, you would think, you know, maybe the Pope could accept his own demise, I mean. But I believe it, I truly believe it, that even the Pope fears death. He has to. And I bet if the Pope were from Wellsborough, and he came into my old clinic, he'd be the same as anyone else. He'd be terrified. He'd feel it. He'd feel the terror. That's death. That's what death does. Even Jesus was afraid. I remember that, from church, I don't know if you're religious, but I remember that. Jesus on the cross: Why have you forsaken me? He felt it. Jesus felt the terror. The son of God, or God himself, right? God incarnate, God walking on the Earth, and it's still the same. The terror was the same. It's all the same. And I thought about that and I realized I had no other option. I had to give it up. I had to accept it. I mean, it was death. Everyone has to accept it. Not just their own death, I realized, but everything else that death does. Death was doing this to my clinic. I couldn't help these guys. I mean, I could help them stop having kids, but that was about it. If even Jesus Christ himself, God on Earth, were afraid of dying on the fucking cross then I certainly have no business making anyone feel better about dying. So I gave up. But, like I said, it's not really an issue around here in Weston. And now I can just focus on just using the consultation to say okay, we can do the procedure, and we'll get into this more later, but here's what it's gonna involve: there's a visual inspection, some manual manipulation, some lidocaine to numb the area, a small incision, a snip, and some minimal stitches. But again, if I were doing it blindfolded, I could pretty confidently skip the visual inspection, especially if I were doing it to myself, obviously. So that would just leave the anaesthetic, which, again, is local, it's like, you know, procaine, like at the dentist, and you just need to inject it into the scrotum without penetrating the testicle. Which, I mean, that's pretty straightforward. So the blindfold wouldn't really impact anything. And, thinking about it now, I've found better results standing next to the patient, you know, facing the same direction, like this, which for some people makes things easier, or at least feel less invasive, less clinical, so, yeah, no, I could do it. I could do it easily. Send me back five years and hand me a blindfold and I'd do it, probably in under twenty minutes. Bam! Anyway, why don't you hop off the table here and, if you feel comfortable, pull down your bottoms. I'll close the blinds. Thank you. Ah, okay. This one'll be easy.

THE GROTTO by Jim Ruland

July 4, 2025

Seamus receives a key

“You’re in luck,” the innkeeper said. “The Grotto is available.”The innkeeper was a large man who wore suspenders, wire-rimmed glasses, and a fisherman’s cap. He looked like a builder of model ships. Seamus smiled and waited for the innkeeper to continue.“The Grotto is our most popular room. Usually booked months in advance. We had a cancellation, so it’s yours—if you want it.” “I’ll take it,” Seamus said. “What brings you to the Seaside Inn?” the man asked as Seamus filled out the registration papers. “I was in the city for a conference and decided to stay for a few days.” Seamus felt a tickle in his nose. He hoped there wasn’t a cat on the premises. “Wonderful,” the innkeeper said. “You’ll find plenty of peace and quiet here—if that’s what you’re looking for…” “Yes, yes, peace and quiet,” Seamus felt compelled to respond. “A word to the wise,” the innkeeper said as he handed over the key, an actual key with a bow in the shape of a skull, “if you decide to go exploring, stick to the path. We wouldn’t want you to fall into the sea!” “No,” Seamus said. “We wouldn’t want that.” “Let me know if you run into any trouble in The Grotto!” Seamus was a quiet man who didn’t like to be fussed over. He imagined that all weekend long he was going to have to assure the innkeeper how happy he was with his room. Seamus trudged up the narrow staircase with his suitcase, angling it to avoid banging into the bannister. Although it looked like a grand old house from the outside, there were only two rooms on the second floor. The words THE GROTTO had been painted on the door at the top of the landing. With something like foreboding, Seamus inserted the key and opened the door.

Seamus contemplates a mural

It was otherwise a simple room. A bed and a dresser with a bench beneath the window. What made the room remarkable was the mural that covered all four walls and gave Seamus the impression of being in a cave. There were stalagmites painted on the baseboards and stalactites descended from the crown molding. Rock formations spread outward onto the adjoining walls. Crystals sprouted in all shapes and sizes. When Seamus closed the door it all but disappeared into the wall. Seamus was not adverse to close spaces. He lived in a small shoebox of an apartment and he had always made do with cramped quarters. He was a writer after all. He didn’t need a lot of space. All he required was his imagination.But the composition of the mural irked him. Lichen grew on the rocks, the walls seemed to gleam with condensation, and rows of bats hung from the uppermost reaches of the cavern. Everywhere he looked there was more information to absorb. His first instinct was to leave the room and go for a long walk along the cliffs, drink in the wind blowing over the waves, but Seamus was tired and hungry and soon it would be dark. He had spent the week walking all over the convention center. He had trod high-traffic carpet with baffling patterns, looking for conference rooms without numbers in hallways without names. He used to like these affairs, looked forward to them even, but each year fewer of his friends and acquaintances attended, and those that did seemed a little older, the disappointment in their faces more pronounced. Then there were the people he used to know who went out of their way to avoid him, as if the stink of his failure was contagious. Seamus kicked off his shoes, opened a granola bar (they were giving them away at the conference; he’d taken seven of them) and chewed without pleasure the dry oats and chalky fruit while staring at a section of the mural that depicted a school of black fish in a dark pool until he swore he saw one of them move.

III

Seamus makes a discovery

Seamus woke in the middle of the night. He thought he heard a noise, a faint droning sound, and now he couldn’t get back to sleep. An incident at the conference earlier that week had been troubling Seamus, and apparently it wasn’t done with him.He’d been invited to sit on a panel called “Exploring the Edge.” The other two writers on the panel were a novelist named S.W. Sidewinder who wrote Westerns set in deep space, and Angela Danbury, a former adult film actress who’d written a series of erotic detective thrillers. Unfortunately, Danbury, whose books were wildly popular, had to cancel, and the panel was moved to a smaller room. This struck Seamus as reasonable until the young man who’d been assigned as his minder led Seamus and Sidewinder to the lobby where a shuttle waited to take them to a satellite location. “It’s not far,” the minder assured them. “This is for your comfort.”“This is a load of horse shit,” Sidewinder said. Sidewinder was right. The satellite location turned out to be a branch of the local library that had stayed open to host the event. Sidewinder became agitated when he was told the box of books he’d shipped hadn’t arrived and he stormed off in a huff. Seamus set out a small selection of his own books that he’d brought with him. Some of them were quite old and showed wear and tear from having been carted around the country, from conference to conference. In lieu of a discussion—since there were no other panelists—he read a short story from his most recent collection. No one attended the reading, but afterward, one of the ladies who worked at the library told him how much she liked the story. She asked him if he had a card. He didn’t, so he simply handed her the book, which embarrassed them both. Outside, there was no sign of his minder, just the driver, who urged him to hurry aboard because he had another run to make. On the way back to the hotel, Seamus thought of all the things he’d say to the conference administrators, but he was thunderstruck with shame over the whole sad affair and he spent the remainder of the evening sitting in his room. . Whether it was this memory or something else that stirred him he couldn’t say, but now Seamus was wide awake with little hope of going back to sleep. There it was again, the unusual noise that had roused him, only this time it seemed to be coming from underneath the bed. Seamus slowly swung his legs around and slid his feet into his slippers, which he always brought with him when he traveled. He went to the door and flipped the switch. The lights came on and the mural rose up out of the gloom—he’d forgotten all about it. He got down on all fours and looked under the bed. A white cat with icy blue eyes peered at him from a rug underneath the bed. The cat regarded him with the impertinent expression of a rich old woman who’d been caught dozing during a play. Seamus stood and opened the door. The cat stuck its head out, slowly crossed the room, and went out on to the landing. Seamus shut the door, turned off the light, and climbed back into bed. Well, that’s one mystery solved, but as soon as that thought left his head another took its place: Why was there a rug underneath the bed?

Seamus solves a mystery

The rug was small, but elaborate. If Seamus stretched out his arm, he could just barely reach its tasseled edge with the tips of his fingers. He thrust his arm under the bed until his thumb grazed the carpet and he yanked it like a stage magician performing a trick. The carpet came away but what it revealed was difficult to say. The room was just too dark.Seamus was not a large man, nor was he particularly strong, but once he set his mind to something he was determined to see it through to the end. There had been times in his life when this imperative had felt like a curse. Some mistook his commitment as bullheadedness or even a deficiency of intelligence, but the years had taught him this quality might very well be his best attribute. If he said he would do something, whether it was writing a book no one wanted, or giving a reading no one attended, he did it. No one could say Seamus had broken his word.The bed lifted easily, and before he could give much thought to what he was doing he swung the foot of the bed toward the window. The headboard protested with a squeak. There was a groove in the floorboards where the bed had been and when he ran his hands along the seam he found a place where he could grab hold of the trapdoor—for that’s what it was—and give it a quick tug. The trapdoor swung open. Seamus felt a gust of cool air, invigorating and inviting. The opening revealed a tunnel that was large enough to pass through and as soon as Seamus saw the iron ladder bolted to the stone, he knew he was going down. But that was crazy. He couldn’t go exploring secret tunnels in the middle of the night. Who did he think he was? Nancy Drew? Seamus pulled open a drawer in the nightstand and grabbed a flashlight, as if he had known it would be there. The torch felt good in his hand, solid and cool to the touch, and when he clicked the switch it sent a strong beam across the room, illuminating the mouth of the tunnel at his feet like a spotlight.

Seamus impersonates a childhood hero

The tunnel was like a well, a hole in the earth that shot straight down, a tower pulled inside out. He focused on lowering his body into the hole one rung at a time. He didn’t look down and he didn’t look up. He’d made up his mind to see where the tunnel took him. The ladder was in excellent condition, especially considering that his room was on the second floor. How did that work exactly? Was there a tube between the walls that allowed him to bypass the rest of the house somehow? Seamus didn’t know, but he saw no reason why he should stop, so down he went. The farther he descended, the stronger the scent of the ocean became. He thought he could hear wave noise and imagined he was tunneling into the cliffs that overlooked the sea. At any moment he expected to plunge his feet into an icy pool of seawater, but after several minutes of steady climbing he reached the bottom. He took the flashlight out of his pocket and shined the light. A single passageway led away from the bottom of the ladder in what he guessed was the direction of the sea. Seamus set off at once. The tunnel was narrow and curved this way and that so that he couldn’t gauge how far he had to travel to reach the end. Seamus felt certain it would be a short walk. With each step the sound of the ocean grew louder as the waves smashed on the rocks. Underneath all that noise was another sound, faint yet persistent, a droning that might be the wind whistling through these chambers of the cliff like blood moving through a body. He imagined a large undersea cave with pools of crystal clear water and chandeliers of gypsum that hung down from above. That must be why his room was called The Grotto, he reasoned. As above, so below. Seamus hurried along, pleased with where his curiosity had taken him and thrilled to discover what was around the next curve of the tunnel.When he rounded the corner, the tunnel abruptly came to an end. It wasn’t blocked off or closed up. It simply stopped. It looked to Seamus as if whoever had dug the tunnel had simply abandoned the job and gone no farther.The rough stone registered as a taunt. He wasn’t heartbroken exactly, but he was greatly disappointed. He’d tricked himself into thinking he was on a grand adventure and he’d stumbled into a dead end. How was that any different from the rest of his life?

Interlude

“Your cat was in my room last night,” Seamus said to the innkeeper the following morning as he checked out of the inn a few days earlier than planned. After his disappointment in the tunnel, he’d decided to go home.“Cat?” the innkeeper asked. “Yes, white with—”“We don’t have a cat,” the innkeeper interrupted, looking down his nose and over the rim of his glasses. He seemed annoyed that Seamus was cutting his trip short. Seamus decided not to bring up the matter of the tunnel when he turned in his key.

Seamus receives an unexpected invitation

A week after the conference, Seamus received an email from Belinda Barnes, the vice president of a booksellers’ organization. She wanted Seamus to know that she’d read his most recent book and loved it. Would he be interested in attending a luncheon the following month? In subsequent emails Ms. Barnes explained that it was a showcase for hidden gems—books that didn’t get a lot of attention, or the right attention when they were released, despite their considerable merit. They’d have plenty of copies of his books to sign and they’d pay for his travel and accommodations. It turned out that Ms. Barnes had seen him read at the conference. In fact, she was the lady at the library to whom Seamus had given a book. She confessed that she’d been profoundly moved by his short story and couldn’t get it out of her mind. She recounted to him how the story reminded her of a dream she’d had as a little girl, a dream she’d thought about often but couldn’t recall exactly, its meaning graspable but just out of reach. Seamus’s story, she admitted, inhabited her imagination in much the same way.Seamus accepted the invitation. Even if the event fell through, as these things often did, it felt nice to be appreciated. Ms. Barnes, however, was true to her word and the luncheon was a success. The house was packed and he signed so many books he used up all the ink in his pen. Ms. Barnes introduced him to representatives from other regions who wanted Seamus to read at their luncheons, dinners, and galas. The next morning, an agent called offering to represent him. Then another the following afternoon, and two more the day after that. This is strange, Seamus thought, but he met with the agents and ate shrimp cocktail every day for a week. One of the agents, a young woman who was an acquaintance of Ms. Barnes, had read many of his books, including some that were long out of print. She laid out a plan for reacquiring the rights to his work and reissuing them as a series.Seamus gave her the green light and it was done. His books appeared in actual bookstores. He had money in his bank account again. He flew in airplanes. He bought new shoes. Once a month he allowed himself to shop at the expensive new grocery store down the block instead of taking the bus to the market he’d been going to all his life. When his books came out, they were written about in magazines and newspapers and he received charming letters from readers all over the world. After all these years of eking out an existence as an underground writer, his stories had finally found their audience—although it felt like the other way around. His newfound fame, such as it was, introduced a host of new headaches that revolved around trying to be in as many places in as little time as possible, but even that wasn’t entirely awful. People were mostly nice and his fellow travelers told him interesting stories. The odd rude flight attendant or indifferent concierge reassured Seamus it wasn’t all a wonderful dream.

VII

Success at last

A few years later, Seamus found himself back in the city on the coast where the conference that changed his life had been held. He was wrapping up a multi-city book tour for a new collection of stories. When his publicist presented the itinerary, Seamus requested an extra day at the end of the tour to rest up and he impulsively booked a night in The Grotto at the Seaside Inn. He hadn’t given the inn much thought during the tour, but now it was all he could think about. His career had undergone such a swift and sudden change that he’d scarcely had time to reflect on how unusual that night in The Grotto had been, creeping along the secret subterranean passage like a detective in an adventure book. Had that actually happened? Seamus was certain it had. He recalled the way the stone looked damp in the glare of the electric light but when he brushed his fingers against the rough-hewn rock it was cold and dry. The rich smell of the tunnel was both bracing and fecund, an ancient reminder of the things that stirred in the briny deep. And there was that sound, mechanical in its persistence, but when he remembered his room at the inn was located on the second floor, he doubted himself all over again.

VIII

Trouble in the grotto

After he checked into his room, Seamus peered under the bed: the cat was gone, but the rug was still there. As he moved the bed and opened the trapdoor, all his doubts deserted him. He grabbed the flashlight from the drawer and checked to see if it worked. He breathed in the familiar scent of the ocean and scampered down the ladder with the joy of a boy returning to a childhood haunt after a long time away. Seamus didn’t understand this compulsion to descend into the tunnel again, but he’d learned long ago to trust his instruments, and down he went.At the bottom of the ladder, Seamus clicked on the light and shined it down the passageway. Everything was exactly the way he remembered it. The pungent sea air, the rumble of the waves, the cold rough stone—it all filled him with happiness—but after walking for several minutes the flashlight flickered and so did his confidence. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. Shouldn’t he have reached the end of the tunnel by now? The air seemed colder and the distant rumble was now a roar. The walls were damp to the touch and when he shined the light at his feet he discovered he was standing in a shallow puddle. Had the tunnel lengthened in his absence? The tunnel took a sharp turn. As he went around the bend he beheld a widening of the shaft and realized he was standing in the mouth of a vast cave. The mural in his room was an exact replica of the cavern. The sound of bats and birds wheeling overhead filled the air and water trickled from a dozen hidden places. Great mounds of rock rose from the water and columns of stone dripped from the upper vaults. In some places, the two came together, dividing the cave into compartments. Most of what he could see of the grotto’s floor was covered in pools of clear water inhabited by tiny black fish.On the other side of the cavern walls the ocean thundered and he could detect a faint droning. Seamus shined the light around but he couldn’t locate the source of the sound. Seamus thought he caught a flicker of movement in the center of the grotto where a formation resembled a creature that crouched like a cat, but as he moved closer he realized it was just a rock, and the sound that blended into the background and sat in the forefront of his mind went up the slightest sliver of an octave. Seamus turned around but he could no longer discern the entrance to the tunnel. The droning grew louder, a difference so subtle he could almost talk himself into believing he was imagining it. Seawater lapped at his feet and the white foam filled his shoes as the water in the grotto began to rise. He frantically searched the folds in the rock for the entrance to the tunnel but it simply wasn’t there, like a riddle he couldn’t solve. The water rose past his knees and then his waist, and the cold water dispelled the faint hope that he was dreaming, that this was all a product of his imagination.Seamus thought how different his life had been the last time he ventured down the tunnel and how much better it was now. What if all the success he’d enjoyed since then wasn’t luck that had transformed his old life but a different life that he’d somehow stumbled into? What if there wasn’t a single tunnel beneath the Seaside Inn but many and each of them led to an alternate future? Seamus felt as though he’d wandered into one of his stories, and if that was the case he knew without having to be told that everything would be different when he went back to his room because he wouldn’t be returning to his new life, the life he’d always wanted, but venturing into an altogether different future.The water was at his neck now and lifted him off his feet. The grotto filled with wave noise and sea spray and the loud booming of unseen forces. As he slipped beneath the waves the droning stopped as if a great machine had been switched off.

THE LAST GREAT NORTH AMERICAN HOCKEY TEAM by Eric Subpar

July 2, 2025

I awake on a Saturday. It is my birthday. All my friends are here. My wife is telling me about the preseason. Kevin is still coming. Don't blow out the candles until Kevin arrives. I won't, dear. Her father tells me about the Los Angeles Kings. I unwrap a Los Angeles Kings jersey. I’m a fan of the L.A Kings. My son asks if we can throw the puck around a bit outside after the party. That'd be great, son. My wife's father asks me about the roster. Think we got a shot this year? That rookie's a phenom. Sure as hell is. The candles burn, and Kevin arrives. Hello. My wife embraces Kevin. My son embraces Kevin. I embrace Kevin. I am jealous of Kevin. His ability to enter a room. He tells me to make a wish and I make a wish and I blow out the candles. Tell us what you wished for, Dad! Can't or it won't come true. We all laugh. I bet you wished for something like this. Kevin hands me a present. No bigger than my hand. I open the present. Season tickets for the Los Angeles Kings. For you and the whole family, Kevin says. My wish has come true. I wake up on the first day of the season. Time for the hockey game. I pull on my gift jersey. I help my son into his jersey. My wife puts on a Kings sweater. It fits tightly. I drive to the hockey game. My son sings the Canadian National Anthem. Do you think the Kings got a shot this year? We got a rookie. Do you think the other teams think their rookie is a real phenom? I try not to think about it. But it's our rookie who is a real phenom. First class potential, right? Right, son. I feel bad for the other teams. Me too.Great seats. Kevin spared no expense. He's quite a friend, isn't he? The best. Right near the penalty box. But our guys won't spend too much time there. Not our guys. During the American anthem, the players of the Los Angeles Kings and the players of the away team stand at attention. This is the first time I lay eyes on the rookie. His hair is styled in a rolling black mullet. He has a thick beard. His smile lights up a room. He has bright green tape on his stick. Hank Bang. Number 11. That's the rookie. I see someone in the crowd holding up a sign, Will You Marry Me, Hank?! A bit premature, I think. But I don't tell anyone. The puck is dropped. The Los Angeles Kings are dressed in all black uniforms. The other team in white. Nobody scores across the first couple of lines, but their play is exhilarating. Hypnotic. As though sourced from a dream. I smile. I bang on the glass with my fists. My son waves an inflatable noise maker and bashes it against another inflatable noise maker. Then Bang's line enters the ice. The rookie on the fourth line. Right Wing. The Center passes the puck along the edge of the ice, but Bang is laid out by the opposing Defense Man. Slow to get up. Following the action, Bang returns a hellish hit upon the opposing Center cutting through the middle. The Defense Man, the Bruiser throws down his gloves. Bang follows suit and the two tussle, before Bang unceremoniously levels his fist across the Bruiser's jaw and sends him to the ice. I howl in delight. Bang is ushered to the penalty box and I've never felt closer to God. After his five penalty minutes are up, the game is all Hank Bang, laying hits and scoring goals. Ending his first NHL game with eight points. A rookie record. The Los Angeles Kings Have Found Their Star all the papers say. On my drive home, I am ecstatic. Excitement pulses through me like electricity. I sense my son loves me more. So does my wife. Revelatory. This is one of the greatest days of my life, and I can't wait for the next game, my fingers fidgeting over the pages of the book I read to my son just before bed. With such a tremendous initial outing, I expect even better from the rookie phenom as his skills grow. The sky is the limit. First Class potential.The days fly by. I again awaken on game day, buzzing with excitement. I put on my jersey. I help my son. My wife wears her sweater. We drive. They wear their black jerseys again. The other team in whites, but different whites, or perhaps the same whites with different accent colors. The puck is dropped and our team scores ten goals to the opposing team’s two and they win another one. Two and Oh. Helluva a start to the season. Exhilarating. Bang is awarded First Star again. He records his first hat trick. And is already appearing in the radio sports chatter for the Calder Trophy, the award awarded to the most phenomenal rookie each year. A bit premature, wouldn't you say? I don't know, my wife answers. Kevin seems to think he has a shot. When did you see Kevin? The day after the last game. After work. I told you. I don't remember, I say. Well, it was a busy week. I carry my son's sleeping body in from the car. Poor guy. Tuckered out.By the end of the first month of the season, Hank Bang is a front runner for the Calder. Bang is also starting Right Wing for the Los Angeles Kings, who have yet to record a loss. My team is like an extension of me. They are winning. I am happy. I couldn't be happier, in fact. When the zamboni runs its circles, I try to think of what could make me happier, and that makes me sad, but then my son arrives with the popcorn and the Los Angeles Kings return to the ice to lay down another thrashing.For weeks, the same. The Los Angeles Kings in their black uniforms. The other team in their uniforms. A walloping ensues. Hank Bang leads the league in minutes played, goals, assists, penalties, plus/minus, hits, penalty minutes, short handed goals, power play goals, hat tricks, fights, and blocked shots. He's a real phenom for sure, dad. Sure is, son. Say where'd your Mom run off to? Don't you remember, Dad? She had her dinner tonight with Kevin. Oh yes. He's a real pal. The best a dad could have, ain't that right? Think they'll win tonight, son? If the Goalie stays true. Can't outscore Bang though. On the car ride home, I listen to sports radio. Hank Bang is a generational talent, they say. A bit premature, I tell my son but my son is asleep. He should win the Calder. At home, my wife isn’t there. Dinner must have gone late with Kevin. He’s a real talker. And a hell of a listener to boot. I tuck my son into his bed. I ask if he wants me to read to him but he shakes his head no. And before I know it, it is already the NHL playoffs. The Los Angeles Kings exited the regular season without a single loss. Top of their division. Top of the league. Eighty-Two and Oh. Forty-one of those wins, I was present for. Never missed a single home game. The team has broken every statistical team record, while Hank Bang has broken every individual record. Two hundred more goals than the previous record. A plus/minus above 500. I am so proud of him. I wear his jersey to every game. I feel instrumental to his success. My jersey makes a contribution. I turn to ask my son if he thinks they will win the Stanley Cup, but his seat is empty. Oh, that’s correct. He didn't come with me to the game. He must have had a prior engagement. Season tickets are a full-time commitment. Not for the faint of heart. Not everyone can love the Los Angeles Kings like I love the Los Angeles Kings. Not everyone can love Hank Bang.The Los Angeles Kings have won their first playoff game. A real shellackin', sports radio called it. I drive home faster than the speed limit to share with my family. The excitement. But my family is not home. My family hasn't been home since I left for the game. When was the last time they were? They’re missing an all-time season. Sports radio says the playoffs are another beast entirely, but the Los Angeles Kings beat their opponent handedly. Perhaps, this round's opponent just isn’t up to snuff. But there must be a challenging opponent coming up, right? The beast awaits. I begin to wonder what the other playoff rounds look like. I turn on the tv. It is a game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lightning players are dressed all in white. The same uniforms he'd seen them play in, but the Montreal Canadiens, to my shock, are not wearing their usual white uniforms with red and blue flourishes, but instead their entire uniforms are made up of that garish red and blue. It hurts my eyes to see. I watch the game, nonetheless. The Montreal Canadiens’ Center scores a goal. The camera zooms around the arena and settles on a trio of celebrating fans. They look strangely familiar, and as I stare longer at the family, I recognize them to be my son, my wife, and Kevin. All three in garish red Canadiens gear. I am upset. I go to bed. The Los Angeles Kings have made it to the Stanley Cup. I admit I was doubtful, but I knew we had a phenom for a rookie. And Hank Bang is absolutely that. The other team in the Finals are the Montreal Canadiens. I hope to see my family attend the game. But they only attend the home games when their team wears that red and blue. I almost vomit. But the Montreal Canadiens aren't a good team. Same as the other teams. No match for the Los Angeles Kings. No match for Hank Bang. The Los Angeles Kings win the first three games of the series by a wide margin, but the final game of the season is in Montreal. I watch the game on TV. Sure enough, my wife and my son and Kevin are at the game. My son in a Montreal Canadiens jersey. My wife in a Montreal Canadiens sweater. Kevin in a Montreal Canadiens jersey. My son banging red and blue inflatable noise makers. How can they not see that it is in fact the Los Angeles Kings that is the greatest North American hockey team of all time? How can they smile and laugh rooting for the Montreal Canadiens when the Los Angeles Kings will clearly win the game? A travesty. I feel good watching the Los Angeles Kings demolish the Montreal Canadiens. The Kings, led by Hank Bang slice agile lines across the ice, lay a succession of glass-rattling hits along the boards, and unleash a firestorm of shots upon the opposing goalie. Pure domination. Never even close. And as the players celebrate, I look in the crowd for my wife and my son. I want to see the distraught look on their faces. A look they never would have had if they’d stayed loyal to the Los Angeles Kings. But they aren't present. They must have driven to their home already. A different home than the one I sit in, watching the game on the television. Still, I await their arrival. Perhaps, now that the season is over, I can figure out where it all went wrong. But when I check the mailbox, I find an envelope from Kevin. Inside are tickets to the upcoming season of Los Angeles Kings hockey. Another season. I can't imagine what improvements the rookie phenom will make in his sophomore season. How much better could it get?