Fiction

PURGATORY by Amy DeBellis

July 11, 2024

Julia starts noticing David when he kills the fish in their bio classroom. The class finds it on the floor when they come in, stranded in a too-shallow puddle of water, tiny mouth open in a last desperate gasp. Like everyone else, David wears an expression of puzzled sorrow, his pale eyes wide with sympathy, but nobody besides Julia notices the spots of water on his sleeves. The thin trapdoor of his smile, flickering in and out of existence.So Julia starts noticing other things, too. She registers the curve of his lips, the cupid’s bow as pronounced as those of the girls in Renaissance paintings. She wonders what it might taste like. Rust or moss, maybe, blooming in dark secret places where no one looks.One evening she sees him walking into the field behind their houses. The slim rifle, straight path into the woods, and then a shot. Venison on the neighbors’ table for dinner. He sees her seeing him. On the path between their properties, into the narrow space between their bodies, he says, “I can teach you, if you want.”It’s that sliver of a pause, that hesitation before if you want, that decides her. Because for a second, before he thought to add those words, he didn’t even consider that she might not want it. And in that second she was ready for anything. She wants to live in that second. She wants to pull that second over her like a cloak and walk so far in it that she can’t find her way back home. ___ The next day, in the forest, David stands very close to her. He has to, in order to show her how to hold and load the rifle. There’s a metallic odor seeping from his skin, as though he’s chewed up a bunch of rounds, gritted them to dust between his teeth, digested them and turned them into sweat.“Man, you’ve never even held a gun before,” he says in wonder. “What planet did you come from?”“Some sheltered girl planet, I guess,” Julia replies, and then feels like an idiot.But he doesn’t seem to mind the distinction she’s drawn between the two of them. “Make sure you’ve got it pointed away from your head. That’s the first thing you need to learn.” He’s grinning, his teeth small and chipped in the crescent moon of his smile. He teaches her the anatomy of the rifle, demonstrating with his rough woodblock hands: “This is the action. This is the safety. This is the trigger…” He makes her recite every part until she’s got it memorized as well as the topography of her own skin. Only then will he let her hold it. He says: “Only ever point the rifle at things you are willing to destroy.”She nods seriously. She thinks of aiming it at every tree on her property, at her house, at her mother’s car. Into the open cavern of her own skull. ___ When he lets her start shooting, he stands next to her, as though he can guide her shots just by his presence. She misses and misses until finally she doesn’t. It’s a rabbit, small and delicate when it was making its way across the grass, but when she picks the body up it’s ugly, heavy, waterlogged with death. Nothingness spreads through her. It’s after her first kill that she learns what David tastes like. Not rust, or moss, or even metal. He tastes like what you might find at the bottom of a pond. Like something that was once green but slowly turning liquid, falling apart to rot. She doesn’t hate it. There’s none of that artificial bubblegum flavor she’s tasted on other boys, no chemical chapstick taste, no spearmint mouthwash. It’s realer than life. As real as death. It draws her in, makes her reach out for more, and he pulls away too soon—smiling, knowing. He teaches her how to bring down deer. They’re fast and shy, but a single buck can feed a family for months. Their slim bodies, so elegant in life, lose all their grace at the moment of the bullet’s impact, and what was once a whole animal splinters into a collection of fractures: spasms, synapses blindly firing, intricate circuitry torn apart. Every kill earns her a kiss. The loamy warmth, the taste of decay, is addictive. The nothingness spreads through her like poison or wine. They go to the forest more and more. They take turns, passing the rifle back and forth between them: a deer for Julia, a fox for David. Julia’s mother doesn’t notice her absence because she doesn’t notice anything anymore. Except the TV, and her cans of beer, and cigarettes that she smokes with fingers that grow increasingly thin and whittled down, like brittle sticks of wood. David doesn’t talk about his family, but she knows that he knows about hers. He pulls her close as they hunt frogs in the ponds, not wasting bullets but crouching low to the ground and trapping them in coffee cans, listening to the frantic thump of their bodies, the sound like wet beating hearts. “Should we name them?” he asks. “What’s the point? We’re killing them anyway.”She can tell he’s not fooled by her casual tone. A twinge of disdain crosses his face. “You mean, you could never kill anything with a name.” ___ In the evening the fields turn leaden gray like the skin of her parents. Like her mother with her fingers that will soon be the same size as her cigarettes. Like her father dying sunk full of morphine, painkiller rushing silver through his veins, hospital walls closing in around him like an artificial womb. They stop by the edge of the forest. The wheat is as tall as it will ever be. David is by her side, the cool pale of his eyes reflecting the sky. There aren’t any deer here, just a neighbor’s cat, not even thirty feet away. “See her?” Julia asks. She is the one holding the rifle.“Yes.”The cat doesn’t notice them. Her name is Luna, Julia remembers. Luna or Lulu, something like that. Her tabby pattern blends in with her surroundings, melts her into them like a stripe of paint blurring into a stone-colored background. She slinks through the wheat thinking herself unseen. “Lulu,” David whispers, soft as a thought. Soon she will disappear into the woods. Only a few more steps until she’s in; only a few more seconds left for Julia to make a shot. “Your turn,” David says.The feeling of her own heart beating is what makes her raise the rifle to her shoulder. She aims, stares down the barrel. She thinks about how they both have hearts, her and David, her and Lulu, her and all the things she’s killed. How everything with a heart is fair game. The trigger like a bone under her finger, and then the crack, the nothingness blossoming outward from a central point.The two of them stand motionless in the algal gloom, in the murky raucous dark. David smiles. And although it’s ostensibly an expression of openness, of transparency and warmth, something about it makes her think of a trap twisting shut.

CATFISHING by Bridge Lower

July 4, 2024

Catfishing happens at night and the bait smells like blood and cheese. We fished for what felt like hours in a cloud of mosquitoes, and we only caught one fish. We pulled it to the floor of the boat, and I couldn’t believe it actually looked like a cat. It fought hard, flailing wildly. The man called it a beastly motherfucker, his foul language thrilling my sister Ellen and me. “You know catfish got tastebuds all over their bodies?” he said. “They’re just swimmin’ tongues. You lick one and he’s lickin’ you right back.”“Gross!” we screamed. “Why would you lick a catfish?” He laughed. “Knowin’ that, why wouldn’t you?”When the fish finally succumbed, we laid it in a cooler full of ice, its glassy eyes cold and detached. The man promised us fried catfish sandwiches the next day, which I’d never had and didn’t know I wanted until right then. To eat this very fish would be primitive in a way for which, at age ten, I didn’t possess words or experience. Every fish I’d ever eaten had come from a blue Styrofoam tray, wrapped in layers of plastic that encased a dozen different smells, all of them factory and none of them sea.We slept in the car, something I don’t think was planned because there was only one blanket. The man made do with a thick canvas coat, putting the driver's seat down as far as it would go and resting his hat over his face. Ellen and I curled up in the backseat and held hands all night, the way otters do to keep from floating apart. She couldn’t sleep so I whispered to her everything I knew about dogs, making friends, black holes, puberty, Christmas, Egyptian mummies, different types of candy, and kissing.In the morning, we sat up and saw two deer, a mother and a baby. The man told us to be still, don’t make a sound. The pair walked past the rear window, their soft dappled fur nearly brushing the glass. On the way home, the man dropped us at a Wendy’s and said he was going to find a payphone. “Let’s get your mom on the line,” he said. I was happy to have a break from the car. The smell of the catfish was beginning to leak in from the trunk. Even on ice it was starting to spoil. He handed me a twenty-dollar bill. “That’s ten each,” he said. “More than enough, but don’t spend it all.” Wendy’s had recently launched a ninety-nine cent menu. We ordered modestly, just a burger and small fries each, and a Frosty to share. We didn’t want to get into more trouble. Then we went outside and looked for the man, for his car, and found neither. We stayed there for hours, spending the rest of the money. First, Ellen was thirsty, so I bought her a soda. Then she was hungry, so I bought her some chicken nuggets. Then she was scared, so I bought us both another Frosty. On our table grew a mountain of sweating yellow cups, cardboard boxes, and greasy wrappers. We somehow knew not to draw attention to ourselves, sitting out of view of the employees and moving tables every half hour. Each time I ordered more food, I told the cashier, “My mom said to buy this”, but the employees didn’t care. They weren’t thinking about us at all. We quietly sang Bruce Springsteen songs, avoiding eye contact during “I’m On Fire.” Hey little girl is your daddy home, did he go and leave you all alone mmmm-hmmm.“Darlington County” felt better, full of references to things like union connections and World Trade Centers, things we didn’t understand but flew off our tongues with less self-awareness. I told Ellen the man was coming back, of course he was, he probably had trouble finding a phone. She gulped and nodded. I looked out the wide windows to see if there was somewhere else to go, but everything outside held much more uncertainty than the Wendy’s booth. There, in the plastic refuge, we were safe.I told Ellen that Dave Thomas was a real person and he named Wendy’s for his daughter, also real. I wasn’t sure if she really looked like the grinning, freckled girl who stared up at us from our pile of trash. She was almost certainly never left behind at a Wendy’s, or anywhere for that matter. She was loved. I told Ellen everything I knew about leprechauns, monkeys, Garbage Pail Kids, dreams, Hawaii, Helen Keller, bras, weddings, and secret diaries with locks and tiny keys. We spoke about the doe and the fawn we’d seen when we woke up that morning, walking past the car, oblivious to our presence. We named them after ourselves.We ran out of things to talk about and began to eat whatever was left, picking at the smooth edge of a hamburger bun, the skin of a baked potato. Ellen ran her tongue around the inside of a fry box and I was jealous I’d never thought to do that.Then she whimpered. Our eyes met; her mouth twisted terribly. She had an accident – too much stress, too much grease. I took her into the bathroom, which smelled of lemon disinfectant and urine, and in the stall, I helped her remove her shoes, socks, and pants. We threw her underwear into the trash and buried them. The stink of feces persisted, filling the tight space. Ellen cried hot tears while I wiped her legs with wet paper towels oozing with electric blue soap that rubbed her skin until it stung. I removed my own shoes, socks, and pants and gave my underwear to her. I was fine without them, but she would not be. She needed them to feel safe, a thin shield against the world. It was getting dark when the man came back. I watched his wiry frame move across the parking lot, silhouetted against an astonishing pink and purple sunset. He walked with purpose until we locked eyes through the glass, and then he hesitated. I suppose there are things in life that feel right in the moment but will grate at your being over time, leaving you porous. You become a sieve, unable to hold anything for any amount of time without remembering the awful things you did. Maybe he came back because he didn’t want to be a sieve for the rest of his life and leaving two young girls at a Wendy’s will do that to you. He saw us through that window and knew he was nothing but fucked. Many years later, I entered this Wendy’s into Mapquest and found it was over two hundred miles from home. To get to the catfishing lake, we had gone up and over the Rocky Mountains, passing several ski resorts. On the drive, in each direction, when we approached Hot Sulphur Springs, the car filled with the stench of rotten eggs, and both times, Ellen opened her eyes and asked who farted. We’d laughed on the way there, but no one laughed on the way back. The man raged as he drove, telling us how our mom had tricked him, said she had an emergency and could he take us for a night. He said she begged and cried, and having no kids of his own, he didn’t know what to do with children, didn’t know how much attention we required. He said he’d do anything for her, move mountains, drain the widest river. He kept referring to her little rendezvous, which I made a note to look up later, but I couldn’t find it in the dictionary because it’s not spelled how it sounds. Over and over, he said he should have known. He never stopped talking, comparing her to all sorts of animals: snake, dog, cow, pig. He used other words too: bitch, whore, liar. He called her a fucking slut and then apologized for swearing. I dozed off with Ellen’s head in my lap and woke to see a roadside sign with reflective white letters that said Denver 87 miles. Ellen snored loudly, the seatbelt tight under her chin. The man was still talking circles, though quieter, hissing to himself. It was darkest night by the time we got home. Our unwashed hair absorbed the smell of oil and the char of beef hung on our coats. He dropped us at the end of our cul-de-sac, told us to go up to our own house and ring the bell. We climbed from his car, bedraggled and drowsy, and before we slammed the door, his last words came floating out.“I didn’t touch you. I didn’t touch neither of you. You be sure to let her know. I ain’t going down for something I didn’t do.”I woke up in my own bedroom, the cheap blinds no match for the bright Colorado sun. I rolled over and faced my sister, searching for the night in her hot morning breath.

SUCKLE, SWALLOW by em x. liu

July 3, 2024

In my mouth, your name is silt and sweet freshwater, like the stream that bounded you and yours into that space the rest of the village didn’t dare cross. Yong’en—Yong—En—Yongen. 永 for forever and 恩 for a kindness. It must have meant my kindness; you have never been kind to me, my Yongen. When we were girls you would organize the other kids so that as soon as my attention flagged, they would peel away from me–your long hair and shrill laughter flickering on the wind at the front of the pack. It was a shock every time, a reminder of my own freakishness. Proof of your own belonging. We understood each other in this way, marginal from each other. At the end of the day, we were the two who would sling our patchy knapsacks over our shoulders and trudge the long way down a longer dirt road back to the nothing and nowhere place we came from. You would kick every stray scrap of metal you found, just to see how far it could skitter. Yongen, have you ever loved me as I love you? I love you. I love you like I love the solid handle of an axe in my hands, the surety of its useful violence. I love you the way I love the chick we raised into meat, enough to slit your throat myself. I know now that your mother hired me not because of my inherent talent—although I have learned quickly what is expected of me—but for my unique ability to shoulder a necessary cruelty. Yours, and then later, mine. *We all wondered about the pigs your family kept, away from the rest of the animals. The day your grandmother died, some upperclassman asshole paid off the funeral home to tell him if anyone showed up. And, of course, no one did. What supposedly were her ashes were interred in the community shrine and we dutifully visited every Zhongyuan with our fragrant joss and tacky paper bills that came in stacks, plasticked together straight from the city. We mourned. I stopped trimming the ragged edges of my hair in solidarity with you, close enough to be considered a familiar person by now. Your mother spoke idly about her at dinner, each of us drinking the rich, steaming pork bone broth that fed us that winter. When we got in a childish spat–a pillow fight–we spilled your grandmother’s hair all over the ground. Still speckled pepper and not entirely grey. When your mother hurried into the room, sewing kit in hand and sterner than she’d ever been, I finally understood the peculiarities of your family. Your spirits were stubborn, sticky. Leave anything of the body unused and the soul would never rest, doomed to wander the earth, unaware. Your mother startled at night, when you were too deep in sleep to notice and I was in the kitchen, sharpening her tools. She clutched at my sleeve often, paranoid that she had not done enough, that something of her mother was left behind, her essence congealed in a leftover morsel of her body like meat fibres stuck between her teeth. To leave anything behind was anathema to her–unfilial, ungrateful. She would have eaten clay had it been baked with her mother’s leftover blood, gobbled it down like soup tofu, its dark red delicacy. * I abruptly remembered the first time I had stepped foot on your family’s land—your mother was teaching you how best to butcher: she had your small hand encompassed in hers, fingers wrapped around a wicked blade. One cut, Yongen, she said, and you twisted your face inelegantly, like you were about to cry. But you didn’t flinch when you made the fatal slash. Your mother took the now-dead animal from your hands and drained its thick, dark blood from the clean cut you made so well. That night, we tossed the sweet chicken meat with mala spices, peppercorn and fresh onion; we fried the skin and licked crispy fat off our lips. When we picked the bones clean, we tossed them back into the already steaming broth, meant to last the week. You could never handle your spice, so I carefully scraped all that gritty red off your food, poured just enough soy sauce over to salt it well, and you ate what I fed you. Your mother offered me a job and a place to stay the next day. It was my job to scrub the bleeding basin clean—not a drop left over, she said, and I instinctively knew she meant it literally. I rubbed the little plastic tub until my fingertips hurt and wrinkled, rinsed it out half a dozen times so the water ran out clean and clear as a spring when I was done, and your mother gave me a chicken bone still bursting with marinated flavour to suckle on as reward. Afterward, she told me to chew hard until the pieces splintered under my molars. Swallow. *How did we end up here, Yongen? The branch, splitting you open. The dirt road with its skid marks like regret. I’d fallen beside you, but I was intact, miraculously. Your soft mouth, open in a scream. *“Did your mother make you eat after lao lao’s funeral?” I asked you, my teeth against your skin. You opened your mouth and moaned, low and long. “Don’t make me say it,” you panted, grasping onto my arm. “That’s so fucked up.” “What about Xiao Lu? When he drowned in the river that year?” Your cousin, pearly eyed and dimple-cheeked. Fat rolls still on his chubby arms. It was a strange year. All our crops flooded too, that fatal river overflowing with fresh rain, but our table was plentiful that spring. We feasted. 五花肉 bubbled in wine and dark soy, a rust coloured marinate that swallowed the gritty pieces of rock sugar greedily. A broth so thick and freshsweet it warmed me up inside out for the whole evening.“Don’t,” you said again, but I could see it in your eyes. Saliva flecked your lips. I wondered if you were thinking of that abundance again. Or if you were only scared. *You blinked, one fat tear rolling over your cheek. “You’ll take care of me?” you asked. “After?” I imagined your mother dutifully stuffing her own mother’s hair in that pillow. I imagined myself winding your long hair into braids, bundling branches with it, ready to burn. Carefully, I rubbed my way up your spine. You watched me with wide eyes, your lips parted. Through the blotchy red and your pinked eyes, I thought there was the beginning of some flush suffusing your face. I had left your hair half cleansed; some of it fell across your lips and left behind easy strings of crimson, your own blood streaking your mouth. My fingers found what I was looking for. The branch was thick, twisted, its surface ribbed where it pushed its way into you. The edges of you around it all soft. Skin taut. Slippery with more fluid. I leaned into you and you pulled me in close, your other hand winding in the waist of my shirt. “Please,” you told me, and for the first time, it wasn’t some form of denial, so I hugged you tender and started working you open. I fucked you before I ever kissed you, Yongen. The branch primed you for it, introduced the notion of being open to your body, at once so soft and yet so unyielding, but I was the one who pulled you apart. You clung to me as I eased the tip of my finger into you, crooked so I could find the right angle. Your lips moved soundlessly, your eyes fluttering shut. I slipped in one, then two, rocking slow enough to ease you into it. Your skin was stubborn. Even with the ragged edge, you tore so slowly. “Trust me,” I said, even marred and terrified, you answered me automatically with a soft sound, a nod. I would be grateful to you, Yongen. I would leave no trace behind.

THE COPY by Lana Frankle

July 1, 2024

Delusion of control has long been a fascinating yet unnerving symptom of schizophrenia and other psychoses, as well as derealization and depersonalization disorders. While some antipsychotics do show promise in treating this symptom, treatment resistance is common and can be stymying, and no therapy specific to it exists. The inventive paradigm described here will be a game-changer for people with this condition. The inspiration for our intervention comes from the famous, decades-old experiments by Benjamin Libet, who observed using electrophysiological techniques that the neural impulse that generates motor actions occurs several hundred milliseconds prior to the action, and more importantly, a few hundred milliseconds prior to one's own awareness of the intention to move. This occurs in stark contrast to the commonsense and foundational notions of individual agency and free will. The explanation proposed at the time and largely accepted since is that efference copies generated by the motor cortex lead to a retrodicted sense of ownership, known henceforth as antedating. In a small subset of psychiatric patients, this efference copy appears to be absent (confirmed using EEG data, see figure 1) leading to a lack of felt ownership of one's actions. This explanatory gap then often sadly leads to fabricated explanations and delusions, such as that one's actions are being controlled by a third party, be it a demon, machine, alien entity or mad scientist. Fortunately due to the simplicity of the mechanism at work, rectifying the feeling which serves as the initial trigger for such thoughts becomes fairly straightforward. While Libet himself did not anticipate such an application of his work, or even make the connection between his observed data and psychotic experience, in more recent decades, researchers and clinicians have pioneered the use of non-invasive ways to use electromagnetic waves not only to measure but also to induce or suppress human neural activity. One such method, gaining in popularity as a treatment for medication-resistant depression, is transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). This technique uses electrodes attached to the scalp to administer magnetic pulses to various brain regions, most commonly the left frontal cortex. Its effectiveness has had a huge impact within the field and on patients' lives, financial cost of the treatments notwithstanding. The mechanism behind this treatment, that of activating or suppressing any superficial brain area, gives it enormous and broad potential, potential which has largely gone under-utilized. In addition to its use in research studies focusing on decision-making, it has also been applied to the treatment of depression and other disorders. This study marks the first of its kind using tDCS to treat delusion of control, by simulating the missing efference copy. As a pilot study we used only one patient, with the intention of following up with a larger study using a sample test group. Our reasons for this are technical but also include some difficulty in recruitment for a therapy this novel and ambitious, despite its total safety. Persons with severe psychiatric disorders are a category for which many legal and logistical protections exist within experimental research, even when the research concerns topics of interest to that group specifically. Furthermore, psychotic patients who are not wards of the state or under the care of other legal guardians who act as medical representatives for them (and most of them are not) may be apprehensive to engage in an experimental study this different from existing approved treatments. This hesitancy, far from paranoia, can be understood empathically as a reaction to systematic marginalization and dismissiveness in a world that is perhaps already seen as confusing and hostile through the lens of disorganized perception and cognition. However, it is lamentable that the potential benefits of our treatment are difficult for this population to realize even when explained clearly, as our attempt to help mitigate the differences in processing and ease the fluency with which they interact with the world and with others is most definitely an admirable goal. Our hope is that with the positive data from this pilot study we will gain traction in recruiting volunteers, and that any further studies will cement the benefits of this therapy as well as the complete lack of ill effects. The participant, a 28-year-old Asian male diagnosed with schizophrenia four years previously and on antipsychotic medication, had recurrent, near-constant delusions of control. He acted as his own control by completing some routine physical tasks both with and without applied magnetic stimulation, and completing a semi structured interview before and after the tDCS. The physical tasks were given by instructions: bend your arm at the elbow, open and close your hand five times, pick up a ball and throw it at a target. The interview contained standard assessment criteria for positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia, although the particular focus of our lab centered on the questions concerning the symptom of interest. "Do you ever feel as though someone else, or something else, is controlling your actions for you?" In the first interview, the patient answered "Yes, most of the time." and then went on to give an elaborate description of aliens from Venus beaming electric rays into his arms and legs. We asked him if he felt this way during the tasks he'd just completed, and he answered in the affirmative. We then applied the electrodes to target the motor cortex and re-issued the same set of instructions. The patient complied, his face still blank and affectless, but beneath that mask, mild surprise. We removed the electrodes and sat him down in a different room, where we'd done the first interview, and asked him the same set of questions. His answers were the same, uncannily so, the same wording, as though he had it memorized. But the shifting tone in his voice, which parts lilted and how, made it different enough from the first time so as not to be strange. Then we got back to "Do you ever feel as though someone else, or something else, is controlling your actions for you?” The patient paused, almost furrowed his brow a little. "Did you feel like this during the last set of tasks?" I prodded. "No," he said. "I guess I didn't." The exit interview he gave subsequently provided ample assurance of the safety and comfort of the procedure. While repeat administration over multiple sessions would likely be necessary in order to have a lasting effect, observing whether this can occur is one of our future directions for this research. With adequate insurance coverage, these sessions could be made accessible and affordable for anyone who can be convinced of the benefits. The success of this therapy is no trivial accomplishment applying merely to the treatment of a miscellaneous fringe symptom, as ultimately the core of our very humanity stems from our subjective experience of acting as free agents in the world, capable of making deliberate choices when interacting with our surroundings. When we are cruelly robbed of this liberty by the malfunctioning of our brains, we are reduced to the status of mere automatons living a flattened and colorless existence. In restoring the sense of agency to these lost souls, physicians are doing no less than reigniting the spark of purpose, and reinvigorating the animus that has dulled. The current that flows from the electrodes placed in the wearable cap can thus fundamentally restore the ghost in the machine.

SWELL by Lamb

June 30, 2024

We went 0-fer at the tournament, but La Jolla Sports Park has this insanely soft grass, these big ol triangle canopies with shade for days that make it hard to not feel like a winner. But, yeah, on the ride back it was getting dark, and since Jesús and the busdriver are chill, a few of us, just the boys, really, we went to the very back and kicked it, stretched ourselves across the aisle to just vibe for a while, each in his own row. By the way the busdriver smiled at us in his mirror, you could tell he’d have joined us if he didn’t have to drive the bus. Like I said, he’s chill with Jesús. We were a few flat stanleys back there, relaxing, half-sleeping as we listened to the road gentle in our backs. Then Douggie folded himself over the back of his seat, so his arms were loose and swaying, and told us the entire plot of Rosemary’s Baby.Now, as I lie in bed trying to unfocus my eyes to stop a hundred faces from appearing in the ceiling, what doesn’t make sense is how someone like Douggie, nice guy, nice parents, Christian, I’m pretty sure, ends up watching a movie like that, and why he’d bring it up on the bus, when everything was perfectly quiet, just as we’d finished forgetting about our big loss. How could you have something so evil inside of you and not know? I don’t know how that’s possible. Then again, as I rub my swollen shins together, I don’t know why some bruises are dark purple, and others orange.

THE TEST by Arpita Roy

June 29, 2024

A man is pelting stones at a dog. In this story, because it is an old story, the dog is going to become a secret test for his humanity. The man is going to think to himself, if only I had known that this was a secret test, I would’ve chosen to keep the stones hidden inside my shoes. But the man doesn’t know and cannot choose, so he chooses stones and well, the dog was already there. As a child, the man had been a boy, small, and as a small boy, the man had seen his big father pelt stones at a dog and that dog had never turned out to be a test. It was a good ol’ non-test, regular dog with a regular bark, howling, when the pelted stones hit its body. A thwap and then the twin stones thwap thwap; the dog’s howl a mix of wince and surprise. But this dog on this day is a test dog, so when the man pelts his second stone – he would’ve anyway stopped after three – the test dog transforms into a god. God says son you failed and in reality the stones, too, were disguises of time, like I am, and thus for every stone cast, you’ve now lost a decade of your life. The man looks at god and wonders how he is going to break this news to his wife or his kids – or his landowner who will ask him to pay his debt. And what about his daughter’s surgery. And what about that mango tree he had planted. In ten years, he was going to hold their delicious flesh. And what about – At the end of this long thought, the man looks at god and says okay. He swallows the last stone.

KEY FRAME by Graham Techler

June 26, 2024

Five years I’ve been in animation. The doctor at the walk-in clinic says I have the wrists of an eighty-year-old. I’m not an eighty-year-old. He says by the time I’m actually an eighty-year-old, you wouldn’t be able to sell my wrists on the black market. According to the doctor, a black market buyer would say “you call that a wrist? This is not what I come to the black market for.” The doctor doesn’t have a very good bedside manner but that’s what you get at the walk-in clinic. Suffice it to say that when you meet me at the beginning of this story, I’m looking at my career the way a professional baseball player would: something one should try and enjoy while it lasts, while it’s a job the body can still do it, before it makes the body crumple in on itself to cries of “belly itcher,” “broken ladder,” etc. Only I don’t earn four million dollars a year. I earn seven hundred and sixty-nine dollars a week. I never work less than fifty hours a week. I do not have sick days. I do not take vacations. And for the last six months, it’s something I’ve failed even to enjoy whilst bringing to life the following section of Dustin Down the Drain.

INT. THE DRAIN - CONTINUOUS
Dustin, now fully shrunken down to the size of his action figure, wails as he slides down the drain, through a series of forks in the pipe, before being deposited in a pool of scummy water.

DUSTIN
UM, this is not what I signed up for, dude!

Dustin Down the Drain is due in theaters next Summer. Dustin Down the Drain is budgeted at one hundred and fifty million dollars. In order to break even, after marketing costs, Dustin Down the Drain will need to gross three hundred million dollars. After the breakout success of Dustin Gets Big a couple years ago, the studio thinks Dustin Down the Drain has the potential to earn more than nine hundred million dollars. If you’re not in the industry, just trust me: nine hundred million dollars is a lot. Oh, for context:

“Dustin is an ordinary kid who is tired of his ordinary life and wishes he could get big again like he did last Summer. But when his wish gets misinterpreted by the wish machine on the boardwalk and he shrinks down to the size of an action figure, Dustin gets more adventure than he bargained for. Next Summer, Dustin is going: Down the Drain.”

Every animator says they’ve wanted to be one since they were a little kid. I can back it up. When I was six, the projector showing me and my fellow children a cartoon broke five minutes in. The projectionist let me keep a section of the damaged reel. I could see exactly how the cartoon fist went from being cocked one moment to hitting another cartoon’s face the next. I could see the exact frame in which movement started, and the exact frame in which it reached its conclusion. Nice, right? I’ve used this story in every job interview I’ve ever had. It’s a little cute, but you have to tell them something like that. You can’t just tell them that you need a job or else you’ll die, and that (oftentimes) you don’t want to die—no, you have say when you were a kid your house burned down, and your dog ran into the flames to rescue your sketchbook, and you swore that his dog death wouldn’t be in vain, or something. If I told a story like that, I’d have gotten every job I’ve ever applied for. I don’t talk to many children. When I do, and they tell me that they want to do what I do? I try my best to scare them off of it. I ask them if they like having wrists. I let them know that the job I have is twenty-years-worse than the job I dreamed of getting when I was their age, and if they get it, their job will be twenty-years-worse than mine. Then I smack the ice cream cone out of their hand so they know what the world’s really like. I didn’t always feel that way, exactly. At the time, I was just a normal animator: overworked, underpaid, battling a head cold. My immediate superior was in my work space, showing me my own work, and leveling the very serious accusation that I was not making movie magic. “You’ve got Dustin bouncing off this pipe here and then tumbling twice before he hits that pipe there. The line of continuous action is shattered”—he said, using some animator argot so I’d know he knew what he was talking about—“and it’s just busy, busy, busy!”I told him I could clean that up, no problem. “This is not the kinda work a crunch is supposed to produce,” he said. “I can’t pass this up the chain of command, because this is just not the kinda work a crunch is supposed to produce.”They had set up bunk beds for us in our work spaces. They had ping pong tables too. You know, to make it fun. Like a fun little work sleepover where you don’t get any Vitamin D for days on end. I promised him that I was gonna get that line of continuous action looking way more continuous. He paused as he ducked under the bunk bed in my work space. “Oh,” he added. “I heard that you put in a request to take Christmas off to drive to Nevada for one day and spend it with your family? Now, I don’t know exactly what the fuck you meant by that, but that’s not the kind of attitude a crunch can really accommodate. You wanna give your family Christmas presents? You are going to give all four quadrants of the human population the best Christmas present they could ever hope to receive when Dustin Down the Drain arrives in three thousand theaters on July 7th. Alright? I know twenty kids at USC who would kill for the job you have right now. They would kill you if they even thought it might get them your job. They’d kill you just for having a job at all, when so many others don’t. Now, I wouldn’t let them, because we’re a family here. But I need you to start acting like the hills are full of hungry wolves. Because they are.” It was the most hardcore thing I’d ever heard someone say half-crouched under a bunk bed. I’d frequently take my midnight lunches at a diner down the block from the studio called Louie’s Lunch Car Luncherarium. The futuristic hobo train theme was confusing, but the milkshakes were good. I liked to just get a big milkshake for lunch because it’s something you don’t need wrists to consume. That day, I was too angry about my immediate supervisor’s criticisms of Dustin’s line of continuous action to care about my wrists, so I was doodling on my placemat, something I never did anymore unless I was in a terrible mood. I didn’t look up when the hobo boxcar front door slid open and another customer walked in. I didn’t look up until she was sitting in my booth across from me. She was wearing a long red leather coat and sunglasses so skinny I didn’t know what the point of them was. I felt confident she was the most striking customer in the history of Louie’s Lunch Car Luncherarium. The kind of woman who makes you really self-conscious about all the empty milkshakes in front of you. “That looks good,” she said. “Milkshake,” was all I could think to say, so that’s what I said. “No,” she said. “Your drawing. That’s really good.” I looked down at my doodle. It was a character I’d created in my youth, back when I had real convictions about the effect my work could have on the world if it was done with craft, truth, and rigor. His name was Spiggletwit Montpelier. He was a duck who ran a boarding school. I thanked her. “You’re a real talent,” said the stranger. “I’d say you should become an animator or something, but I hear that job is actually really terrible. In fact I hear it sucks shit.”I agreed that it sucked shit. She asked if I was indeed an animator. I told her. Sheasked what kind of work I did. Did I ever do movies? I told her I did do movies. “Well that’s better!” she winked. “More money for them, more money for you.” I disabused her of this. She shook her head in dismay. “This fuckin’ industry,” she said. “This motherfuckin’ goddamn industry.” “Tell me about it,” I said. I liked how often she swore. “You know,” said the stranger. “I’m also in the industry, in a way. “Oh yeah?” I said.“Yeah,” she said. “I represent the interests of a major competitor.” This very weird thing to say hung in the air. “Yeah,” she continued, as if she hated to bore me with all this, “I represent the interests of a major studio competitor who’d really love to hobble the upcoming release of a film called Dustin Down the Drain. They (the major studio competitor whose interests I represent) just won’t shut up about how much they’d love to give someone $50,000 to wipe the hard-drives at the studio producing Dustin Down the Drain, which, if it doesn’t erase the film from existence, will at least damage the workflow so bad that Dustin won’t be able to go down the drain for years and years, probably causing the studio to suffer permanent reputational damage that could be parlayed by someone like my client to the benefit of themselves, and the proprietary, economically competitive artistic content they’re currently developing.” She was being coy as hell, but I had a feeling I knew what she was talking about. It sounded like she was working for the studio behind Mikey and the Shrink Ray: Requiem—an upcoming film with a very similar premise to Dustin Down the Drain (“regular-sized boy becomes tiny”) but not the red hot buzz a sequel to Dustin Gets Big could hope to generate. They had also made a recent major marketing fumble thanks to that subtitle: Requiem. The rumor was that the studio was too embarrassed to admit they’d made a mistake after a press release announcing the year’s slate had mixed up Mikey’s subtitle with the subtitle of a vampire film that had instead been announced as Oathhunter Elegy III: Always Bet on Small! The stranger went on to explain that it was actually so funny but she actually had the $50,000 in a briefcase right that very moment, alongside a stylish two-piece suit lined with extraordinarily powerful magnets. Magnets that could easily annihilate a computer server if someone was to give that computer server a little hug and rub up and down on it a bit. “So,” she said, “my project right now is to tail Dustin’s animators around the city until I find one who wants to take it, hopefully a disgruntled one who wishes their life and wrists had turned out differently.” I felt a briefcase-sized object slide under the table and rest between my legs. I explored this object with my feet. It sure felt like a briefcase full of money and magnets. Still, I hesitated. I had never engaged in corporate espionage before. And nothing in my worldly experience suggested it wasn’t the kind of thing I would probably mess up. I stood. “You haven’t paid for your three milkshakes,” she said. I still didn’t know what to say. So I just said “milkshakes” again. “Actually, allow me.”She put the leather briefcase on the table, popped it open a crack, and placed a hundred dollar bill on the table. All the forks and knives slid over and affixed themselves to the leather. St. Bartholomew’s Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles has, for many years now, partnered with a nonprofit organization called ‘Miracles for Hope,’ which gives the most messed-up children on their saddest wards the opportunity to make their dreams come true before it’s too late. ‘Miracles for Hope’ has shown a kid what it’s like to perform a stadium rock and roll show. They’ve helped a kid experience zero gravity. They’re a really special organization, and we’re glad to help them out whenever we can. At least that’s what my immediate superior told me back at the studio the next morning when he introduced me to Dylan, a smiling, super cute little child decked out in Dustin apparel. “Sorry, who is Dylan?” I asked, distracted. My suit was extremely uncomfortable. There was a good reason most professionals wore suits without magnets in them.“He’s Dylan,” said my immediate superior, pointing at Dylan. “Dylan is here from St. Bartholomew’s Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.” “You’re making my miracle come true,” said Dylan. “For my hope.”My immediate superior explained that Dylan was afflicted with Zweimann’s Syndrome, an extraordinarily rare disease that gave him a small bubble in his brain which, at any moment, could explode, killing Dylan on the spot. “But,” he added, “we’ll be damned if that’s going to happen before Dylan can get a special sneak preview of Dustin Down the Drain.” I turned to the boy: “Are you sure that’s what you want your wish to be, Dustin?”“I’m Dylan,” said Dylan. “This is Dylan,” said my superior. “Dustin is Dustin. Dylan loves Dustin, though.”“I think that Dustin and the drain mouse are going to get married!” said Dylan. “Well, you’ll know for sure in seventy-four minutes” said my immediate superior. “Right this way, Dylan.”I stepped in front of him, impeding his path. “You’re impeding my path,” he said. “You can’t show Dylan Dustin,” I said.“Every moment you impede my path could be the moment Dylan’s brain bubble explodes. You do know that, right?”“This is a security breach,” I pointed out, wiping sweat from my brow. “Next thing you know, that kid is going to be talking to every blogger in town, and then everyone will know what happens to Dustin. Everyone will know whether Dustin marries the drain mouse, or not.”My immediate superior shoved a finger into my chest. “‘Miracles for Hope’ has shown a kid what it’s like to perform in a stadium rock and roll show, buddy. They’ve helped a kid experience zero gravity. And Dylan is going to find out what happens to Dustin when Dustin goes down the drain.”Before Dylan followed my immediate superior down the hall, he turned and smiled some more at me with his big toothy kid mouth. “Hey mister,” he said. “If my brain bubble doesn’t explode too soon, I wanna be just like you when I grow up. I’m gonna draw all the pictures for the movies they make for kids just like me, and I’m gonna win every award in town, and I’m gonna dress like a million bucks, just like you.” “Sure you will, Dylan,” I said. “Sure you will.”This would have been a sweeter exchange if I hadn’t already done it. While the servers that once housed Dustin were quietly inspected, I waited for someone to put the pieces together and find me at my desk. But no one came. No one said anything to me at first. And then no one said anything to me at all. The $50,000 went towards a $70,000 loan I’d taken out to attend the University of Southern California. I’d already paid off $90,000 of it at the time. After the lump sum, I’m still paying off the remaining $120,000. Dylan didn’t get to watch Dustin Down the Drain that day, but thankfully, he’s still waiting to die—much like the rest of us, but different. He no longer harbors pie in the sky fantasies of overcoming Zweimann’s Syndrome and becoming the next great me. If he lives much longer, maybe he’ll thank me for it. The studio quietly moved Dustin Down the Drain’s release to the Fall. When they were sure that the damage was irrevocable, they moved it to the Spring. There was no kind of profit that could justify the cost of making Dustin Down the Drain twice, but nobody in this town will ever admit something’s over when it’s over. They move it to the next Summer. They slowly take people off the project one by one. They move it to the next Fall. Now it’s just a few of us going over the same salvaged frames again and again. Paid a small allowance to keep the work going in the basement forever, just to spare them the embarrassment. It’s going great. It’s almost done. It’s going to do boffo box office numbers. It’ll be out in time for Christmas. I make a sketch of Dustin bounce from pipe to pipe. His line of action is perfectly continuous. It’ll be out next, next Summer. It’ll be out for the twentieth anniversary of Dustin Gets Big. It’ll be out on my eightieth birthday. The muscles in my wrist will keep shrinking somehow, even when it seems like there isn’t any more wrist left. We’re going to celebrate one hundred years of Dustin by finally sending him down the drain. I read it in the trades, so it’s definitely happening. The motion picture event Dustin fans have been waiting two hundred years for. Three hundred years. I bounce him back and forth down the drain for a thousand years. Two thousand years. Ten thousand years I sit at my desk, drawing Dustin bouncing back and forth down the drain for the millionth, two millionth, three millionth time. I have to agree with him. Not what I signed up for, dude.

YOUR WIFE’S GYM FRIEND IS DRUNK by Kyle Seibel

June 24, 2024

Your wife’s gym friend is drunk. Not outrageously drunk, but too drunk to drive. According to her, he went to a work happy hour thing that morphed into a dinner thing which became a cocktails thing and now he is stranded somewhere in the city. There are no Ubers apparently or the wait is too long, so he calls your wife and asks for a ride, that is, of course, if it’s alright with you.“I don’t understand,” you say. “He’s getting kicked out of the bar?”She’s standing near the door with car keys in her hand. “No, just drunk. I said that already.” “You’re really going downtown now?” She taps her phone. “It’s not that late.” You turn off the TV and say you’ll come too. Your wife drops her keys and they crash on the tiles. “Perfect,” she says, picking them up.

It’s just after Christmas last year that your wife declares war on her gunt. When you ask her what a gunt is, she lifts up her shirt and pulls down her pants and points to the crepey pouch of tissue on her lower stomach. Say goodbye, she says, grabbing and shaking it. To her credit, she follows through. Your wife wins the war against her gunt. She wins the war and just keeps going.And at first, there’s no issue. Not really. The gym is her space, her time. You’re happy for her, even. You have your places too. Your own gym, for example. Your office friends, you’re close with them. You know intimate things about each other. Brad from account services tried to kill himself in college, for example, and Sue Ann the media planner recently had plastic surgery on her vagina. But they know you as well, know when something’s off. It is Brad, in fact, who brings it up first. Comes over for a beer one night and asks where your wife is.“At the gym,” you say.“Didn’t she go this morning?” Brad says. “Didn’t you mention that?”“That was a class,” you say. “Boot camp or something. This is free weights. Or yoga, I forget.”“Does she do that a lot, go to the gym twice a day?”“Well,” you say. “She usually goes three times.” Brad takes a long drink of beer, wipes his mouth, looks away, and says jesus.

Your wife’s gym friend is wearing an untucked black shirt with the top three buttons undone. He is sitting in the passenger seat and giving you directions to his condo. Your wife follows behind, driving his car, which is some kind of SUV off-road type thing. It’s got a big stovepipe situation coming out of the hood, which he says comes in handy more often than you might think.He talks about work. He asks you what you do. When you tell him, he makes a face and says, “Damn dude!” Looking over, you notice your wife’s gym friend must shave his chest. You can tell because he has stubble. It distracts you for some reason. You roll a yellow light and pull over on the next block to wait for your wife to catch up.“Ah, just keep driving,” your wife’s gym friend says. “She knows where she’s going.”

You’d be more concerned if there was more to be concerned about. There’s a thing called trust, you tell Brad and Sue Ann. I trust her, you say. Ten years, you remind them. That’s a long time. But they don’t look convinced. They think it’s weird, all the time at the gym. And it’s not their fault, they just don’t know, don’t understand the extent of the situation. You’re not one of these shithead husbands. You do the dishes, your own cooking. You’re not ignorant or moody. You’re an adult, goddamnit. It’s how you’ve always been. Virtually nothing has changed since the day you were married. Hell, you wore your tux last Halloween and went as James Bond. You tell them you’re exactly the same person you were on your wedding day. The microwave in the breakroom bleats in bursts of three.“So, okay,” Sue Ann says. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

“How does she know where you live?” you ask your wife’s gym friend. You are still pulled over, waiting for the light to change and your wife to join you.“Hmm?” he says.You swallow and repeat the question. Behind you, your wife flashes her brights.“Oh, she’s taken me home from the gym before,” he says.“What?” you say.“Sometimes I jog there,” he says. “Double exercise, you know.”“Right,” you say, putting the car into gear. “Double exercise.”

It’ll take you three weeks to look at your wife’s phone and when you do, you’ll see her gym friend’s penis in the folder for recently deleted photos. You’ll be shocked by its color, its fluorescent redness. You’ll think, did he use a filter? Does he have high blood pressure? Is there something else medical going on here? You’ll look down at your own crotch. So normal looking, so boring. How can you compete with a day-glo dick? You can’t, you think. You can’t, of course.You’ll throw the phone against the wall. You’ll think, I should throw the phone against the wall. Then you’ll realize you already did that. You’ll pick it up and throw it against the wall again. A buzzer will go off in your ears. Your wife will come into the kitchen. She’ll be screaming at you, that was the buzzing. She’ll follow you out to your car, sawing like a cicada. You’ll leave the house and go to Brad’s and against Brad’s advice, you’ll return home a few hours later. For five days, your wife will refuse to go to the gym. She’ll lie in bed sobbing, begging for you to talk to her.On the sixth day, she’ll move in with her gym friend, into the condo where you dropped him off that night. Over the next couple months, she’ll intermittently try to get back together. She’ll text you baby names and call late at night. Your lawyer will advise you to not pick up. Your lawyer will also advise you to not prevent her access to the house, so when she asks to pick up some stuff, you’ll say that it’s fine, just don’t bring her gym friend. He’ll come along anyway.Your wife or whatever she is at this point, will run off upstairs to collect her things and leave you in the kitchen with him.He’ll say that none of this is her fault and that he understands how you’re feeling. He’ll say that neither of them meant for this to happen, but that it’s against nature to deny true love. He’ll say that in a couple years, we’ll laugh about this. You’ll tell him quietly that you’re going to punch him in the face. He’ll do this shitty laugh scoffing thing and shake his head and say he’s trying to have a mature conversation and so that’ll be when you punch him in the face. He’ll fall down, out of surprise mostly, and without thinking, you’ll kick him as hard as you can in the back, the spot where the kidneys are. You’ll do this a great number of times. He’ll writhe around on the ground. You’ll step on his head a little and grind his face against the kitchen floor. Something religious will fill your chest when you hear his nose crunch under your foot. Your wife will hear the yelling and come running and see the blood on the white tile and faint, but when she comes to, she will be looking at you in a whole new way, and it will disturb you, it will turn your stomach, because you’ll realize that somewhere in all this violence, the seeds of your eventual reconciliation have been planted.

You keep the car running as your wife walks her gym friend to his door. Driving him home was your good deed for the day, you reason. There’s really no point in overthinking things. Tomorrow’s Thursday. You can take Friday off. There’s nothing wrong that can’t be fixed by a long weekend. Your wife gets back in the car, turns the heat up full blast, says something you can’t hear. You ask her to repeat it. She says never mind.

###

BREAKING by Emily Rinkema

June 23, 2024

On the designated day for punishing mothers, those of us who got our applications in early enough show up, mothers in tow. Most look like they came willingly, walking ahead of their children, mostly daughters, but not mine. I had to sedate her to get her in the car.I paid for the deluxe package, which includes interrogation. The application allowed three questions. Two were easy: What really happened to the kitten I brought home in third grade? And, Why did you only let me shave my legs to my knees until I was sixteen? The third was harder to decide on, but I went with, How can Kant’s categorical imperative ever truly be a reliable guide to moral obligations if humans lack rational agency?I prop Mom up next to me to wait our turn for interrogation. She puts her head on my shoulder, but only because her neck won’t hold it up. I may have over sedated her. I take a granola bar out of my bag and Mom lifts her head enough to give me the look that says I can’t believe you’re eating again.The door opens after only a few minutes and a mother and daughter come out of the room. They have both been crying. The mother is missing a few teeth and a finger, has bruises on her neck, is soaking wet. For a moment, I wonder if I am overreacting, if maybe it’s not too late to cancel and take Mom home, but then I see her sit up straight, roll her shoulders. I can tell she is judging the other mother for being weak, for breaking. She gives me that smile that says she can’t believe I chose to wear these shoes in public and cracks her knuckles.

LESS DEAD by Samir Sirk Morató

June 22, 2024

When asked, Dad says, Don’t worry about Ximena—she’s just a girl good at running away, but you find a shoebox of condoms, calling cards, Selena CDs, baby name lists, and blush palettes squashed between a bed leg and a wall, the last of Ximena in her whirlwind-emptied room, which reminds you of Diva Fridays:Come on, she’d say, I’ll teach you about eyeshadow, before putting her heavy handed brushstrokes on your lids, which made you miss Marco—who lived in her room before he too fled—all cropped shirts, eyeliner, and laughter mixed with hair oil and truancy.He had a box of condoms too.The animals look like them, you tell Mom. She doesn’t understand that squirrels are gnawing with baby teeth, raccoons developing pink palms, vultures singing raspy cumbia, your beagle watching you through Marco’s eyes rimmed in black skin; she sees only laundry, lunch boxes, and outlines.One Saturday, after you follow these animals into high weeds, burrs on your socks, Dad-tied pigtails on your head, you find the rotted lumps they’re eating: skin and bear paw people-fingers and maggots plated on shattered bones. It smells like basement.Your dad says it’s just deer. Leave it alone.Later, a woman calls you, asking if you’ve seen Ximena. She barely speaks English. You finger landline phone curls, safe and bored, before saying No.No have money to call again, she says, so please—Get more money then.You hang up.Many bad, fun runaways later, when police turn your boneyard into a poppy field of flags and shoot your animals for evidence, Mom weeps, vowing I didn’t know, while you tell yourself that you lied to be good, to be a girl missed, knowing you lied for no reason at all.