Fiction

WE LOVE KIMBERLY by Tam Eastley

October 18, 2024

Kimberly keeps her cowboy hat in the trunk of her car for emergencies. Emergencies like a last-minute invite to a rodeo, or line dancing at Ranchman’s.Other items in her car include: stickers from the local radio station, an old Cosmo magazine, bear spray, and a dinner knife. She doesn’t know about the dinner knife though. It slipped under the seat after she helped set up her nephew’s birthday picnic in the park two years ago. Like most things in Kimberly’s car though, the knife doesn’t have anything to do with this story.Her car is also home to dozens of lighters that she’s stolen from various people over the years. But Kimberly’s vice isn’t smoking; she’s barely a social smoker. To tell you the truth, she goes out less than she lets on. No, Kimberly’s vice is biting her fingernails. She bites them down to the nub and chews the flesh around her cuticles. Her fingertips bleed and ache. They’re sensitive to the touch. Cosmo tells her that it’s important to identify her nail-biting triggers. Her underlying issues. But when Kimberly sits idle in her car and thinks about it, really thinks about it, her mind goes blank and her fingers find their way to her mouth. Is life an issue, she asks. The very act of being? And you’d think we’d give her some sort of answer, but we don’t.A few weeks ago, Kimberly went to a hypnotist. She heard him advertising on that same local radio station where she got all her stickers, and he boasted about the ability to cure anything with just one session. She made an appointment right then and there at the 14th Street traffic light that always takes forever to turn. Later, she’ll realize it was like her nubby fingers dialed the number on their own, seemingly taking matters into their own hands. Like swarm intelligence or those clouds of birds she sees on Instagram, their tiny bodies morphing into dramatic drops of ink in the sky.The hypnotist was strange, as hypnotists are, but he didn’t wear a cape or anything and he didn’t make her squawk like a chicken. He had her lie back on a lounge chair and count down from ten. Then she sort of… drifted. She woke up seventeen minutes later. “Do you want to bite your nails?” the hypnotist asked.And to Kimberly’s surprise, she didn’t. Not even when she stared at herself in the elevator mirror, sat in traffic, or waited at the drive-through.And you’d think we’d be proud of Kimberly, and we are in a way, because we love Kimberly. But unfortunately, something else will now have room to grow, and that’s not quite the ending we wanted for her.Kimberly keeps her cowboy hat in the trunk of her car for emergencies, and yesterday, she put it on. But there are no last-minute invites to bars with mechanical bulls looming. No. Our dear Kimberly is on the run. And if she’s going to be on the run, she’s bringing her cowboy hat with her.Kimberly’s nails are long now. They’re red and pointed and they have a mind of their own. They tap against countertops and demand respect. They flash stolen credit cards and hypnotize—yes, hypnotize—with their otherworldly glow. She can’t stop them. Her nails are opposing magnets to her mouth. But when she thinks about it, really thinks about it, she realizes she doesn’t even want to trim them, let alone bite them, these precious nails. They’re sharp enough to be weapons.Kimberly races down the highway. Confident she’s not being followed, she pulls over on the side of the road. She flicks the metal wheel of one of her backseat lighters, chucks it into the car, and walks away. Her nails sparkle and glitter with the obliteration of her previous life. When the bear spray explodes she doesn’t think of the knife from her nephew’s birthday party, because, if you remember, she doesn’t even know it’s there.Kimberly hitches a ride one town over. She ponders the majesty of her nails as she slices the neck of her unsuspecting driver, as she digs his grave by the light of the moon. They’re just so powerful, she gushes as she drives away in his car, turns on the radio, and searches for a new station. And because we love Kimberly, even after all this, we find her something good.

TWO MICROS by Amy Barnes

October 17, 2024

Gone FishingBefore they bury your father, you eat plastic bags of goldfish, stack tuna fish sandwiches into stomach skyscrapers, slurp salmon off wood boards, down sardines from sharp containers, sing duets with big mouth bass, lick rainbow book fish, and laugh as clown fish swim in your belly.When there’s no room for bait or folding fortune-telling fish, you see fish floating in your blood, ichthyology meshed with humanology, swimming upstream, upcolon, eyeballs bulging behind yours. You sleep, flopping restlessly on your deck, fish guts and blood as a mattress. You beg fishmongers to swing your legs and arms across 5:00 AM catch-of-the-day piles. You pretend your eczema is scales and scratch until there are patches all over.You buy a mermaid tail for your niece, but wear it first in your clawfoot tub with its Poseidon feet and trident legs. You plan a trip to a mountain stream to battle bears for salmon.The funeral parlor owner holds his nose when you arrive in a Mrs. Frizzle fish-patterned dress and fish hook earrings. You bring tuna fish sandwiches for the after-service potluck. A long-haired man hands out fish and bread. You consider asking if he knows Jesus’ other miracles, especially the one with Lazarus.The fishing schedule is printed on your dad's program next to scriptures about the Leviathan. He missed opening day by a week, we always went together, you tell your cousins and aunts. There are fish swimming in his clear coffin like a toilet seat cover full of plastic fish. He’s wearing his Hawaiian fish shirt, the one your mom picked for the last family vacation luau.You can’t find farewell words because you're too full of fish. A rainbow trout falls out of your mouth and catches all the light in the room. Bereavement Fare Your shoes are white when you board. You have no luggage. No one fights to get on the plane first. Two people are dragged on. The stewardesses wear dark wigs with bangs that make them look like spies. Fishnet hose and black airplane-issued shoes. Some in slacks, others dark crinolines. All in jaunty death scarves imprinted with skulls.Their faces are as pale as yours, with Raggedy Ann blush blots. “Welcome aboard,” they say.One hands you a warm cloth. It unfolds into a damp American flag. Small children carry Colorform books with coffin and skeleton stickers. You step through coffee grounds smushed into your shoes. At seat 6, the grounds are replaced with the odors of potting soil and black mulch mixed with manure. Your nose burns. When you sit, a sea of darkness rises to your neck.You pull the airsick bag out. Your mother’s high school graduation picture is on the back next to her obituary. She’s smiling. Your seat mates stare at their grandmother and uncle. Died doing what she loved. Wife. Mother. Friend. Teacher. The plane takes off. Stewardesses stumble with tuna casseroles in aluminum pans and pound cakes in frozen foil. Black coffee in floral teacups. Your seatmates sleep because they’ve ordered sedatives. You didn’t.A Star is Born plays on everyone’s screen. Then, Steel Magnolias. The stewardesses have shovels with airplane logos. They slide coffins into the empty dinner compartments and toss in dirt. The plane is landing soon. They announce. But no one’s listening. They’re eating lukewarm casserole and crying over Shelby. The plane lands. You pull a carved wood box from the overhead compartment. The second passenger in your row is refusing to get off the plane.Everyone else exits, leaving behind only black footprints on the gate’s carpet.

GREEKS by Caitlin Boston Ingham

October 15, 2024

My daughter-in-law Susie bought me a voucher for an adult educational course at the local evening school. Susie had studied herbalism there last year. She suggested I try it too. Susie had been married to my son for six years, but I struggled to connect with her. She wore pigtails in her hair and never smiled with teeth. She discussed her reproductive system with a near-pornographic reverence. I did not want to study herbalism. I didn’t want to learn to make wildflower seed-balls or my own callus balm with essential oils. What I wanted from Susie was a lesson on the subject of my own son, Jon, who was impenetrable to me. Silent, large, permanently bored, Jon had arrived on the earth like that: a baby IT manager.I selected the course in Greek Mythology on Wednesday nights from 6-8pm. The teacher had dyed black hair and a chain that linked his belt to his wallet. Athena was the best starting point when looking at Greek Mythology, he told us. Zeus had swallowed Athena’s mother whole because he didn’t want kids. But then Athena popped right out of Zeus’s forehead, wearing a helmet and holding a sword. When I told the group that I related to this experience of parenting, they laughed more than I had expected them to. That weekend, I saw Susie on the street, carrying a bundle of wild-weeds in her arms. She seemed baffled as to why I hadn’t selected the herbalism course. I grinned, perhaps baring my teeth a little too much. “What are the nettles for?” I asked.She looked at them and sighed. “They promote healthy ovulation.”Her pigtails had little wooden cubes on each hairband. Were these ornaments a representation of my son’s taste? Every time I saw Susie, it was all I could do: scrutinise her for signs that pointed to my son’s character.“Some people say that ovulation is a lot like religion,” I offered. “Best not overthought.”Susie didn’t have anything to say to that.Driving home from work, I thought about Athena’s mother. She had crafted Athena’s helmet and armour right inside Zeus’s stomach; the hammering sound gave him a headache. It must have felt gratifying, I thought, passing down something to one’s child. I’d never experienced anything like that. I remembered picking up Jon once from a week-long school trip to Wales. All the other kids were homesick and crying, desperate to come home. But Jon stood there among the weeping children, gormless, unaffected by their tears. His teacher told me that he’d gone around double-lacing every single child’s pair of shoes on the bus ride home. Some students had tried to kick him off, others had patted his back like a little donkey. I was stunned. I couldn’t even remember if I’d taught him to knot his own laces yet.In another evening session, we were asked to go into breakout groups of two to discuss Circe. Circe was an enchantress known for her knowledge of potions and herbs. She could transform her enemies into animals—mostly squealing pigs.The teacher asked us to choose partners for breakout sessions. Looking around, I realised I didn’t know anyone’s name. As I watched my classmates buddy up with each other, it dawned on me that many of them were not here to learn about myths.After a while, I noticed a man sitting alone in the corner. He was fidgety and had blackheads on his nose. Thinking he was shy, I approached and asked if he wanted to link up with me. It was maybe a poor choice of words. As soon as I said this, the man leered, raising his eyebrow.“You know,” he said, smirking, “according to the Greeks, the world started when the earth fucked the sky.” Then he winked. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to hit on me.I bumped into Susie in the same place I had the time before. Our routines were clearly in sync. This time, she was heaving a grocery bag on her hip. “What’s in there?” I asked her, trying to sound kind and approachable. I hoped maybe she’d invite me to dinner at her and Jon’s house.“Night ointment,” she said. “Homemade. For Jon. Lavender oil base and roughage from pink corn skin. I’ve been working on it for several weeks.”I thought of her in bed with Jon, rubbing the ointment all over his enormous back. His face against the pillow, expressionless, still.“And it helps him sleep?” I asked.Susie shrugged. “That’s the hope.”I hesitated. “Well, can I try some?”Susie smiled cautiously. “Really?” She seemed reluctantly pleased.“Oh, please! I’m a terrible sleeper,” I lied, laughing too loudly. “Like mother, like son.” We learnt about Icarus in class that week. It was one of the few stories I’d remembered. The father who creates a pair of wax wings for his son who then flies too high in the sky and comes crashing down. A story about ego. The teacher described Icarus flying with a lot of gusto, emphasizing the joy of escape and the temptation of the sun. I shut my eyes and tried to picture Jon flying high like that. I tried to picture him in a state of bliss.In the car after class, I sat in the driver’s seat for several minutes. I looked down and noticed the large bottle of Susie’s potion on the passenger’s seat. I’d tossed it there after seeing her. Brushing the hair from my face, I pulled off the lid and smeared it all over my forearms. It smelt like a first aid kit. The liquid stung my skin, which I assumed was purposeful. The pain felt vaguely correct somehow.Trying to breathe evenly, my arms lathered up, I took out my phone to text Jon. Tell Susie thank you so much for the lovely ointment. She’s a witch! In a good way 🙂I waited for a few minutes. He didn’t text back. The sores didn’t appear immediately, but when they started to come through, they were red, pea-sized lumps, almost geometrically abundant, like a raging breed of honeycomb. I couldn’t figure out whether bandaging them up would make them worse, so I wrapped up one and left the other bare.By the time the next class came around, Jon still hadn’t responded to my text about Susie’s lotion. I assumed he was ignoring me, as he usually did. I thought about texting him with a picture, typing, Look what your wife did to me, but decided against it.In class, I felt tearful, aggrieved. I kept catching other members of the group staring at my blistered arms, the looks of concern and disgust on their faces. The wounds seemed like burns. I thought about what had happened with Susie. I had not flown too close to the sun, I don’t think. I had barely gotten a peek through the clouds. Whilst the teacher was introducing us to Theseus and the Minotaur, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Jon had texted me back. The message was a picture. I leaned over and opened it. He’d sent me a photograph of his arms, irritated and bumpy, just like mine. They looked as if they had been dipped into a bucket of mild acid. He texted, Do you think this is normal? Susie made it. I can’t stop scratching. I put my phone back into my pocket. The teacher was telling us how the story ended with King Aegeus throwing himself into the sea when he wrongly presumed that his son Theseus was dead. I pictured the Aegean Ocean, riotous turquoise, limestone soft enough to sleep on. I imagined floating in the warm sea, the water buttery on my skin. I pulled out my phone again to look at the picture from Jon. I hoped that nobody would notice how much I was smiling.

NAMING CONTESTS by Will Musgrove

October 8, 2024

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

CREEP by Julia Meinwald

October 7, 2024

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

***

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

***

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

FIVE OF THE WAYS I WISH I WAS MORE LIKE MOISSANITE by Patrick Eades

October 2, 2024

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

FLATLAND by Lana Frankle

September 27, 2024

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

IF I CAN DREAM by Mike Wilson

September 25, 2024

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

THE OSTRICH ECONOMY by Audrey Lee

September 23, 2024

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

TOM CLANCY DID NOT WRITE DOMESTIC THRILLERS AND DEFINITELY DIED ON OCTOBER 1ST, 2013 by Evan Hannon

September 19, 2024

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

***

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

***

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