Fiction

TAKE HEART by Sean Craypo

August 14, 2024

The human heart on the street wasn’t mine. It came from the crumpled body thirty feet away. Another thirty feet behind the body was a pair of boots, which may or may not have had feet in them. Just behind the boots was the sedan. The bumper was barely dented from where it had struck the man.A severed vein sticking out of the heart looked big enough to stick my thumb into. Black skid marks streaked the fat on the lower part, as if someone had plucked out the heart and skipped it like a stone across the street. A few flecks of goo dotted the concrete around it and there was a smear where it slid to a stop. Somehow the heart had sailed all that distance and stayed intact.We hadn’t slept at all that night. There’d been one medical call after another, and fire watch from three to five A.M. (Fire watch is one of the cruelest assignments an engine can get. We sat around making sure a fire that other crews had put out didn’t rekindle). After that, the heart called me here.“Mantis,” said a voice.It startled me. “What?” I looked up. “This mess isn’t going to sweep up itself. Get the kitty litter.” The voice came from behind me. My driver, Jimmy.I got the absorbent from the fire engine and dumped it on the pools and streams of car juice. “How did it stay in one piece? I can make out the vena cava,” Jimmy said as he started spreading out the absorbent with a push broom brush-side up so the absorbent could be ground into the street with the flat wooden bar. I picked up the other broom. I wished every person who’d ever written a song about a broken heart could see this. A heart doesn’t break. Everything around it mangles and disintegrates until the heart lies alone on starless asphalt.“The heart is one tough muscle,” I said.“I want to take it and put it in a jar. Do you think anyone would notice?” Jimmy said.“The owner might want it back,” I said.“I doubt it.” Jimmy flipped his broom and used the bristle side to push the used absorbent into a pile. I got the shovel and industrial trash bag.“How did it get out?” I said when I got back.“I don’t know. I tried to check. But it’s like the guy is missing half his bones. He’s just a pile of meat.” Jimmy grabbed the trash bag and I started shoveling the absorbent into it.“You’re not really going to take it, are you?” I asked.It was gross. It wasn’t his. Someone would notice it missing. The saint of lost hearts would come for us both.“I’ve got to.”“No, you don’t got to.” Sometimes it could be hard to know if Jimmy said something because he believed it or because he was worming me. Not this time; I could tell he wanted it by the way he didn’t pause to enjoy my outrage. I wasn’t going to let him have the heart. “How badass would that be,” he said as he tied up the bag.I put the shovel and brooms back on the engine and then came back to Jimmy, who stood by the heart.“It would make the best conversation piece. Maybe I could put it in a lava lamp. I’m gonna get a bag.”“You can’t take the heart.”“Why not?”“Because it’s wrong.” Because it wasn’t his. Because it had done its part.“It’s not like he needs it. I’ll be putting it to good use. Reduce, re-use, recycle.” He made for the engine. Everything was cleaned up and we were ready to go but he didn’t pull the chock blocks from the tires. Instead, he opened a compartment.I had one last moment to listen to what the heart had to tell me. Maybe it would tell me what to do, tell me how to save it. As I waited for instruction, I started to become one with the wrecked car, the deflated body, the grief of those who knew him, the sorrow of the person who’d struck the man and tore his heart from his chest. The heart had grown and I’d stepped inside it.The sound of two paramedics and a cop talking pulled me from this vision. Jimmy took a bag from the engine and came towards me. “Y’all aren’t going to believe this,” I shouted to the paramedics as I waved them over. The cop and the paramedics were standing by the body. They looked at me but didn’t move. If Jimmy could have shot lasers out of his eyes, he would have torched me right there. He walked faster. If he could get to the heart before they did, he knew I wouldn’t proactively rat him out. “It’s the dude’s heart!” I shouted. That got their attention. They trotted over, arriving just after Jimmy did. There was no way for Jimmy to get it now and I was sure that no one else was going to trap it in a lava lamp. There wasn’t anything more I could do for it. Although it would remain free a little longer, the heart would soon be incinerated. Back to ash. After a lifetime of service, that seemed a better fate. Dawn came and sunlight fell on the heart for the first time.

AN ELEGY FOR COACH by Ravi Mangla

August 12, 2024

We shook on it.If we won the final game of the season, Coach would run fifty laps around the gym. Some time around the eighth lap he collapsed and died.Some of us cried. Others stood in monastic silence. McClusky threw up in the Gatorade cooler. Coach’s death was relayed on the morning announcements after news that the cafeteria was out of waffle fries. This was not, we believed, the memorial Coach would have wanted. He loved waffle fries.We felt an obligation then, a hefty responsibility, to give Coach the send-off he would have wanted. After all, Coach made us who we are. He taught us you could beat a breathalyzer by swallowing a roll full of quarters. That any bowel troubles could be remedied with an egg cream in the morning. And that laws proscribing gambling on youth sports were antiquated and in need of legislative reform.Baumiller proposed planting a ficus tree. Coach was partial to the natural world. He often referred to the forest as earth’s dampest of pleasures. Many of us knew him to steal away to the woods after a particularly stinging loss. Once, after going missing for three days, a jogger found him at the forest’s edge, naked and covered in sheep’s blood.There were rumors that Coach had children of his own. Connelly, who worked at the mall food court, once saw what looked like Coach with a child in tow berating a Smoothie King employee. But for all practical purposes, we were his children, and we wouldn’t let his memory perish in the crucible of time. Coach wasn’t perfect, but he was our coach.Chakravarti said we should set a dove loose in the gym rafters. But where does one even acquire a dove? Someone suggested wrangling a pigeon from the parking lot, but we felt that a pigeon lacked commensurate gravitas.We were drinking our egg creams when Roskowick proposed burning an effigy. No objections were raised.Shapiro nicked a set of Coach’s clothes from his office. Ramirez found a mesh bag of half-deflated volleyballs. We filled Coach’s trademark polo and khakis to a generous girth. In the cold light of dawn, we propped his body against the visitor’s goal post.Markelson took out his clarinet and played a beautiful rendition of a Brahms sonata. Stuart-Byrd read a sestina by the English poet W. H. Auden.We tried to hang his beloved orange whistle from his shoulders, finally losing patience and stuffing it in his shirt pocket.Roskowick doused the effigy with rubbing alcohol from the team manager’s first aid kit, then set it alight.We watched the flames consume his body, smoke filling the air. It spread to the rest of the field: a great orange blaze that turned seedling to ash.Markelson quietly uncoupled his clarinet and packed it in its case.The flames rose, swallowing the equipment shed and bleachers, lapping at the painted scoreboard with our school crest.When we heard the sirens behind us, the voices calling our names, we didn’t turn our heads. We didn’t run or flee. We knew we’d done nothing wrong.

A HOLE TO DIE IN by Sarah Butler

August 7, 2024

The Yucca Valley had plenty of pool cleaners, but none as good as him. Jeb started cleaning pools because he didn’t want to sell meth like his cousins Rob, Kyle, Tyler, and Clay. He liked the roteness of skimming the surface of the water with his net, the reading of pH strips, and the satisfaction of a job well done. He’d cleaned some of the most beautiful pools in the desert – he even did the one at Sinatra’s house once. But what he really wanted to do was own a vintage cowboy boot store. He was born and raised in the sand. He knew there was demand from city-slicking Angelenos who came to bake in the sun and dip in his pristine pools. Jeb’s dad had skin like leather. He’d raised Jeb in several different RV parks across the valley – Apache Mobile Park was the one they lived in the longest. Jeb suspected this was because his father was always something of a ladies man, and the girls had been prettiest at Apache. The year Jeb was set to graduate from high school there had been at least three “desert tens” who lived there with emotionally absent or physically abusive boyfriends. This was also the year that the prettiest of them all, Winnie Lynn, helped Jeb realize his dream of small business ownership. She was tattoo artist and unofficial babysitter to the park’s families. She was 19 and loved being her own boss. “If I worked in some gay-ass office, I’d have to cover all my tats, dye my hair brown, use an ashtray… I’d be miserable! And for what? $11.50 an hour? Please.”She held a Michelob Ultra and a menthol in her decorated hands, which were illuminated by the small campfire Jeb had taken to building between their neighboring trailers on Thursday nights. When she saw the fire, she’d come out and chill with him before her boyfriend – this asshole Kyle – came to pick her up and take her away for the weekend. This week, he was running particularly late. So they kept talking.“You could do it too, Jeb,” she’d said. “Why give anyone the right to tell you what to do? Let them tell you how much you're worth? Fuckin’... yeah, right. It’s your time! It’s your life! It’s the most valuable thing you got. You’re so much better than that.” She meant better than his father, who was always getting fired from one hard labor gig or another for showing up drunk or fucking the boss’ girlfriend. She took another swig and stared into the flames.“Thanks, Winn,” he’d finally said, distracted by the shadow her plump upper lip cast below her perfect little nose. “I love you.”She took his virginity on one of the dilapidated lawn chairs by the park pool shortly thereafter. To this day, nothing got him harder than the smell of chlorine and Camels.Winnie moved to LA to do tattoos on TV and Jeb stayed with his father at Apache, in a trailer of his own. Inspired by recent events, De-Luxe Pool Maintenance was born.At night he would ride his black with lime green dirt bike out to where he wanted to put the store, between Oasis Dentistry and the Eagle Club on route 60, cutting across wide swaths of desert, past the nice houses that multiplied every year. He never got too close. He was just trying to stay sober. Going fast helped with that.

***

Valerie went to the hot tub every night while Liam talked shop, doing lines or smoking Js with Micheal, Mike, and Wesley. On these desert trips, she preferred a glass of vino and the company of her own womanly thoughts to talking to the boys all in a group. It was just the 5 of them, for miles. The guys had no wives or serious girlfriends, probably on account of their emotional immaturity and erectile dysfunction from the Adderall dependency that had originally bonded them at Berkeley. Their group had met while ironically attending a Communist Society meeting to find bisexual young women with unnaturally colored hair – something Liam had playfully admitted to Valerie while describing his “best bros” on their second date. Sometimes the other men brought OnlyFans models they were dating, or baristas they were toying with, but never anything real. Being the only constant feminine presence had felt unsafe in an exciting way, but after Liam proposed, that changed. It was fun to be the hot girlfriend. She could be gone tomorrow. She could be a house mother to all the boys, maybe even get in a drunken flirt here and there.. She was embarrassed and bored as the hot fiancé. Judging by the number of times Liam had accidentally knocked her up premaritally, she’d probably be pregnant soon after the wedding, and then all this really had to stop. In the intoxicating heat of the tub, she willed her stream of consciousness to slow to a dribble and sipped her wine. It would be dark soon. She surveyed her beige legs floating passively, waving against the jets. Her phone dinged. Liam had texted her from inside. “b-storming again tonight before investor meeting tomo, wanna hit the slopes with us?”“All good babe plz don’t go too crazy tho lol. Don’t u leave for Vegas lowkey early?”“So fucking annoying fucking cocksucking loser” she whispered into the water. It didn’t matter that their little fraternity were the majority stakeholders and founders of Bossi, the third-most utilized AI-powered KPI measuring application on the market or whatever. She was a beautiful mermaid with long black hair that floated like she was on an album cover in the clear, steamy water that held every inch of her body. And so no, she wasn’t going to get fucked up with her husband-to-be and his boys. Every time they did coke, Wesley did a Jamaican accent for the rest of the night. She could be pregnant, for fucks sake. She looked up to the stars and searched for constellations. The wine and heat made her dizzy, possibly hallucinatory, and she was seeing ones she hadn’t before. She heard a dirtbike in the distance and got the sudden urge to show her tits to whoever was driving it.

***

“Nice boots,” said a man’s voice behind her.She turned from her place in the checkout line to face a young man – he couldn’t have been older than 30 – holding a six-pack of double zero Heinekens. He had thick eyebrows, sun-damaged skin, and a buzzcut that made his nose look extra pointy. “Oh! Thanks,” Valerie said, looking down and planting the toe of her old leather cowboy boots into the tile, extending her leg and twisting it ever so slightly to show off the custom embroidery. “They were my moms. Her feet got too big when she was pregnant with me. I guess I wanted them for myself even then,” she said with a polite laugh. The severity of his features had caused her to overshare. He smiled.“Jeb,” he said, using his free hand to point his thumb at his chest. Like a monkey. Jesus Christ. You’re a goddamn moron, he thought.“Layla,” Valerie lied, for no reason other than vanity.“Pretty,” Jeb said.“Next!” the clerk demanded. Valerie dutifully unloaded her cart full of chicken breast, white wine, and bagged Cesar salad. She felt the man’s eyes on her backside as she bent over into the cart to retrieve her items for scanning. He knew that she felt him looking, his pupils boring a hole into the ass off her denim cutoffs, but he refused to avert his gaze. Her burning face twisted into a smile. He liked how her earrings moved with her center of gravity. He liked making her nervous.“Have a goodun’,” the clerk sighed, waving Jeb up the queue. He paid for his six-pack with a ten dollar bill, watching Valerie wrangle her plastic bags of booze and raw meat. “Want a hand with those?”

***

Pretty blonde women and men in distressed jeans lauded Valley Boots for their “Silverlake cowboy aesthetic”, which brought more entitled clients, which brought more psychological pain. Jeb still rode his dirtbike late at night, even though Valerie was pregnant and she wanted him to hold her, and tell her she was as beautiful as the day they met. Her boots – her mother’s boots – didn’t fit anymore. She kept them behind the counter and denied their sale to women who were younger and smaller than her as a way of taking back her power.Valerie was better with the clients at Valley Boots. They were obnoxious like her dead fiancé. He, Michael, Mike, and Wesley had been drunk driving the Cybertruck back to California from Vegas, which would’ve been fine had they not been struck by a regular, drunker truck driver. She treated everyone that walked through the beaded curtain off route 60 with kindness, mostly out of guilt. Had Jeb not brought her to orgasm on the ledge of the hot tub that day, would God have willed Liam to live? Would he have been pulled from the twisted aluminum, battered, but still as beautiful as he was? The paramedics said the metal had turned molten in the resulting fire, their melted skin had to be carefully separated from the seats and their caskets welded shut, for their mothers’ sakes. One month later, Jeb’s father got drunk and drowned in the Apache pool. Jeb had just cleaned it, too.

FRUIT AND FRACTIONS by Taleen V.

August 5, 2024

On the table apricots blush, sliced to their stony seeds. A faded bowl of walnut brains sits untouched and long wet spears of cucumber sweat beside them. Goods grown right here in Fresno, just like you. The professor picks you up by the waist and sets you next to the spread.His beard is silver spangled and his brows touch. He resembles your uncle Varouj who plays the piano at Christmastime, except this man doesn’t smile as much. Until his grab, it had not crossed your mind to be afraid.“You can always trust Armenians, they’re family,” your mom once promised. “But Turks and Azeris, you must never speak to. They cut your great grandfather in half. In. Half.” That was third grade.The man rips free the hard pit and holds a piece of apricot in his fingers, where hair sprouts above the knuckle. “The mother tree is from Hayastan,” he tells you, so you’re aware it is special. His wife, who is tutoring you in pre-algebra so you can earn a scholarship to a private high school, so you can get into an elite American university, so you can break the barrier into sky-high economic mobility, is supposed to be home. She ran out when she got a call that her son broke his leg on the parallel bars. Her husband, the history professor, stepped in and said he could tutor you instead—how hard could pre-algebra be? First though, he insists, we must nourish the stomach before we can nourish the mind. He sounded so fobby with his accent that you dismissed him.“Eat,” he demands, and pushes the orange pink flesh into your mouth. You expect summer sweet, but the apricot is sour and tough and you feel like a fool, knowing you’ll never be able to swallow it. When his finger broaches your lips, fingernail scraping your tongue, you are thankful there is no extra taste but the apricot. Perhaps a light salting. Your eyes fix upon a thickly framed painting of Khor Virap Monastery, the peaks of Medz Masis and Pokr Masis looming above the lone cloister. You remember seeing the real thing two years ago on that charity religious trip to Armenia. Wandering the fruit market, your mother bought carton after carton with a moneyed hunger, collecting fragrant raspberries from a pail, larval mulberries in black and beige, and a pound of the treasured golden orbs. This is what a real apricot tastes like, she said, mouth full, eyes half closed. You weren’t sure what to make of the foreign fruit. Flavorful, sure, but so soft your mind feared rot. Picked too close to the beginning of death. Americans were terrified of letting anything spoil and you’ve grown accustomed to eating produce before its prime.That afternoon in Yerevan, you and your mother gorged yourselves in the art-less hotel room save for the window giving you a full view of biblical Mount Ararat. You had washed the fruits with tap water, so the following day you developed a fever and vomited every sweet thing you’d eaten. Your mother screamed at you for wasting her hard earned cash.Paused, awaiting your reaction, the man stares past his finger into your split mouth. He seems to be giving you a choice. You are too ugly to have been kissed before. You are, honestly, equal parts frightened and flattered. With your tongue, you roll his sandpapery digit to your teeth and chew to test, like a puppy. He appears delighted. Last month, your class watched The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, and you forgot most of it except the little boy who was stretched apart on the bed, then the clink of Talaat Pasha’s belt unbuckling. A traitorous part of your heart always wondered if the horrors of the genocide were exaggerated, but today you realize, they weren’t. Few believed them, none will believe you. His finger swims against your budding wisdom teeth, expectant, moving toward an answer. The apricot mush sags in your cheeks.You vaguely wonder if your great-grandfather died quick enough not to feel anything. He did not have the option to run away and pretend to forget. This man who moments ago squeezed his hands into your nonexistent hips and lifted you up, his ancestors were also tortured or killed or escaped. Every Armenian has a similar sad story. Even when you are betrayed, you are lucky.Your eyes wander again to the eternally icy caps of Ararat. Miss Froonjian’s Tuesday pop quiz may have revealed you do not understand fractions, but now you feel you have received new insight.Fruit is meant to be picked at, taken apart: halved, quartered, devoured. You reassure yourself, that’s the only way a new seed can grow. Still, like the math problems on paper, you cannot solve this one.

VISIONS: A Beautiful Poisoned Addiction by SDL, with words by Adedapo Adeniyi

August 4, 2024

…

BUD SMITH by Z.H. Gill

August 2, 2024

My brother Max told me about Bud Smith. The writer, not the baseball player, the one who’d pitched a no-hitter in his rookie year for the St. Louis Cards.For a brief time, I thought he was the baseball player, who’d pitched a no-hitter in his rookie year—on 9/3/01, eight days before fair Seth MacFarlane missed his plane at solemn Boston Logan—for the St. Louis Cards. But he was not him. Who else was he not? Bud Smith was not Indiana Jones*. He was not Jerry Springer, Bud Smith. He was not Josh Hartnett, nor Josh Hartnett’s character, Captain Danny Walker, from the film Pearl Harbor, which my parents brought me to on Christmas Day at CityWalk, in Universal City, CA—not so long before this other Bud pitched his no-no. (Do you think he saw Pearl Harbor in theaters, too? Bud Smith?)Back in the present, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bud Smith. The writer, Bud Smith. The author. Bud Smith. Bud. Smith. I looked up and ordered his novel on Amazon dot com, the book Teenager by Bud Smith. Bill Callahan—Smog himself!—had blurbed the book. He must have been thrilled about this, Bud Smith. I began talking to him in my sleep, Bud Smith. I asked him, Do you approve of me, Bud Smith? Back in New York City, Bud Smith’s apartment began to quake/shake. He stuck his head out the window and realized it was only his place quake/shaking, not the whole world, nor the city around him. He looked up at the ceiling, and he saw me, and I said, Bud Smith? Who’s asking? asked Bud Smith. I’m Z.H., I told Bud Smith. You’re a floating head, Z.H., said Bud Smith. Amazon dot com said your book’s coming tomorrow, I let Bud Smith know, Your book Teenager? Oh hey that’s nice to hear, Bud Smith replied. I’m sure I’ll like it, I declared to Bud Smith. Let me know if you do, Bud Smith said, Perhaps through more conventional means? My brother Max says you’re the nicest dude, I told Bud Smith. You know Max? He’s a lovely guy, said Bud Smith. If you’re ever in LA, could we have a catch, maybe? I wondered aloud, though I couldn’t hide my jittery excitement from Bud Smith. Catch? Can I think about it? requested Bud Smith.You know, I’m not the baseball player Bud Smith, he added, That young buck who pitched that no-hitter days before—I know, I acknowledged, Trust me, I know. And could you maybe send me a PDF of Work? It’s way out of print. Sure, kid, decided Bud Smith, Why not? I gave him my email, and then I said I’d check back in. Expect my floating head, Bud Smith, I said.I'll await it eagerly. Now if you don’t mind, I must get back to bed—and he turned to his side and fell asleep in an instant, Bud Smith. (Bud.)(Smith.) I did the same.__[*Later on, Bud Smith will tweet about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny being the 2nd best Indiana Jones movie. This will be the only time I disagree with Bud Smith. This will be, as far as I’m aware, the only time Bud Smith has ever been wrong.]

NINE by Matthew Feasley

August 1, 2024

A week before mom’s clinic burned to the ground, my older brother Sam brought home an octopus from the Greek grocery where he worked. After his shift, he had set the octopus on one of the shiny tables in the back and studied it beneath a wash of fluorescent lights. He looked at its hollow head, its body, and its missing eyes. Everything seemed ‘normal’ until he noticed its arms. Sam counted them again and again to be sure. Then he threaded the animal carefully into his backpack and hobbled out of the store to catch his bus.At home he staggered in a hurry toward the bathroom and I followed, certain something was up. I watched while he filled our tub and poured in the salt he’d retrieved from our pantry. He stirred the water with one hand and adjusted the hot and cold with the other, finally tasting a finger he’d dunked into the brine. Satisfied, he lowered the octopus gently into the water and it settled on the bottom. Sam rested his chin over the edge of the tub and waited. Later he slept there, snoring, both arms limp at his sides. I snuck away to the garage. I pulled Dad’s fishing net away from its hook, thinking I would fetch the limp creature from the tub, toss it into a trash bag and dump it into one of the neighbors’ cans. When Sam woke and it was no longer there, I would say he must have revived it. I would tell him that it probably escaped down the drain, that I had read this could happen with them sometimes, however unbelievable. But when I returned to the bathroom, Sam was no longer there. I stared at the octopus beneath the water before I heard a familiar sound behind me––it was Sam’s twisted foot as it dragged across the linoleum floor, followed by his good one coming down in its dull thump. Hissss...thump. Hissss...thump. The kitchen light sparked on overhead as I turned. Sam stood beneath it and rubbed both eyes clear with his large but frail hands. He gave an awful look, trying to figure why I held the garbage bag, dad’s net. Then without a word he shuffled slowly past me and up to our room.Sam slept through the morning and the next couple that followed. No one could wake him. The grocery owner called and our parents offered the excuse they had settled upon. “Well either way, he’s done here...and not sure we’ll hire another of them anytime soon.” He was still talking when dad hung up. A few days later, finally out of bed, Sam demanded to see it but dad told him he’d already buried it in the back. There was a mound of freshly turned soil in the garden but I wasn’t convinced he had. In any case, Sam drove a wooden stake through the ground there and painted the number ‘9’ onto a styrofoam plate he’d asked me to attach to it. Rain would wash the number gone only a few nights later as we slept. “A lot can come from messing with a wish or prayer or whatever you wanna call what your brother was doing with that thing,” mom told me in her car later that week. We were parked at her work, or what was left of it. Mom told dad she wanted to see it for herself and I asked to tag along. The metal parking signs were curled from the heat and letters that once spelled her name had bubbled and peeled away onto the asphalt. News trucks surrounded the blackened rubble while a large group waved signs and droned-on like insects. The news said someone had entered by smashing the front window with a large rock. Then there were kerosene-soaked rags stuffed into the open mouths of gasoline containers––eight in all. “Even if you meant well?” I asked.Mom rolled down her window. The swells of the opposing crowds filled her car as she lit the only cigarette I would ever see her smoke. The way she did it, I was sure it wasn’t her first. “Especially if you did.”

LOOK FOR A WHILE by Lamb

July 31, 2024

LILING, 66It is not wise to swim so soon after a meal, I know, but I have never experienced anything quite like the sensation of floating in a swimming pool with a full belly, which is—and I didn’t realize this until I lay here pushing my pale legs down into the water, watching them spring back up like ice—in essence, just another pool containing smaller bits of floating flesh. And all this occurring on the deck of a cruise ship floating in the Pacific, Earth’s largest body of water? Well. I may go again tomorrow after lunch.DAN, 37When I get to the pool there’s still some vomit on the surface. I was planning on draining the whole thing at port tomorrow, but Yuri said the guests are complaining, so I need to have it ready by five. Complaining. On a cruise.The lido deck is already closed for cleaning, so I throw Europe ’72 on the system while I search for the treatment protocol in the stack of loose manual sheets in the maintenance closet. When I asked the last guy how much chlorine solution to use for this kind of situation, he said to just blast it. “He’s Gone” comes on. I love this song. It reminds me of my father, the one I never knew but feel close to in this job, in any hard job, really. His image in my mind is always my age.Excuse me, says a small voice that hits me like a big one.A kid stands in the doorway with a bigass Shirley Temple. He’s shirtless and completely bald.I say, What’s going on, boss?Is the pool closed? he says. Kids do this—ask questions they already have answers to. I think it means they just want to talk. I’ve never been good with kids, but if the kid wants to talk, I can do that.Yeah, I say, should be good in a few hours.What’d he eat? he says.What? I say.The guy who ranched, he says.Oh, I say, I don’t know.Well, could you find out? he says.Sure, I say.The kid sucks down his soda as I attach the arm to the skimmer. I catch myself staring at his shiny head. In these situations, it’s best to just assume it’s cancer. “China Cat Sunflower” plays as we walk the pool’s edge to the deep end, where the juice is. I feel suddenly aware that I’m over thirty, working a summer job, listening to The Dead. I’m embarrassed. I don’t even like The Dead that much. I do, but not so much.I use the skimmer to push the water just behind the spill, directing it closer to the edge. Take a look, I say. He hands me his cup and gives me this look like, Don’t drink my friggen Shirley Temple. He lies with his belly on the sun-warmed tile, pulls himself forward till his head is just over the water. His face is solemn as he studies these remnants of a meal: a cream-streaked swirl, oily and orange, bits of unchewed chicken skin, translucent strings of celery spinning slowly outward.It’s beautiful, he says.It really is, I say.Like a galaxy, he says. BENJI, 11I’m taking a shower when Mom and David get back to our cabin. The bathroom door is shut, but I can hear them right on the other side, so I try to be quiet as I wash the shampoo out of my hair, drink some water from the shower head, dry off. I wish this was a tub. I asked David why they can’t have tubs instead, and he said they are too big for the bathrooms, and I said the shower is almost as long as the tub at home, and he said even a few inches longer would mean they couldn’t have as many passengers, and I asked what’s wrong with that, and he said it costs a lot of money to power a cruise ship like this one, to pay the staff, to feed everyone, and he asked if I liked the food and the entertainment and the clean facilities, and when I said I did, he said then I should be grateful that the showers are the size they are. I wish I didn’t ask. I’m quiet, but I’m mad. Well, not mad, just disappointed because David said he’d take me up to the pool after lunch, but that was two hours ago and now they’re fighting, Mom and David, so I probably won’t even get to swim on our last day. Which is today. Technically tomorrow is, but we get back to San Diego around noon, and Mom wants to go to two standup comedy shows in a row tomorrow morning. One of the comedians is a dwarf, David says, like a midget, but he’s got a big personality and he says the wildest stuff when he roasts the crowd. I can tell David wants to get roasted. I hope he does. Mom keeps saying they will be appropriate for me, the shows, but I don’t care if they’re appropriate. I just don’t want to spend my last hours at sea doing something I can do on land. I mean, I can swim on land, but not in a pool out on the open ocean. And I can’t go anywhere on the ship without one of them, not even the buffet, or the arcade, or Kidtopia, which is for five-year-olds. And Mom put our phones in the safe and said she wouldn’t tell us the combination, so we could be more in the moment, present, she kept saying, but somehow David got his phone because he said he had a work emergency, and when I asked him how he knew about the emergency before he checked his phone, he called me a smartass. I turn off the water and just sit on the hard floor of the shower waiting for them to calm down so I can come out and get dressed, but it’s a pretty bad one. The fight. I make a mohawk with my wet hair, then I shake it out, then I do it again, but it doesn’t hold for very long, so I smell all the soaps. I taste the one that smells like pineapple, but it tastes like original soap. I look under the sink for mouthwash, but I can’t find any, just some small bottles of body wash, bath salt … what do you even do with that? Like, to make it drugs … some toilet paper, and a black plastic case with a cutter inside. Like, a nice haircutter. It’s David’s, I think. I see some curly gray hairs caught in the little teeth on the blade. It’s 100% David’s. I wash the cutter in the sink till I can’t find any more of his hairs, don’t worry, I didn’t plug it in yet, I’m not stupid, then I wash the soap taste from my mouth, then I plug in the cutter to see if it works. When I turn it on it shakes my whole body, and my wiener tickles a little bit, and it feels kinda good, kinda weird. It struggles for a second like it’s choking on the water, the cutter, then it runs fast and smooth and vibrates even harder. Then I do something savage. I shave my whole head. I just go for it. My hair falls into the sink in big wet chunks. The thing sounds like it’s eating. Sometimes it stops working, but it’s not broken, you just have to clean out the hair that’s jammed in there and keep going. Mom cuts my hair in the tub at home, or she used to, and she told me that. She always said my hair was so hard to cut. She always said it’s coarse, and I always said just buzz it, and she always said I have no idea how much money people pay to get hair as blonde as mine, and it’s not right to just cut it all off. I finish a pretty good first pass on my head, but there are still a bunch of little strips of hair like when you think you’re done mowing the lawn and you look and see a bunch of little strips of uncut grass you didn’t see before. Even with the cutter buzzing in my ears and through my head, I still hear Mom crying to David. She’s hyperventilating too. David keeps saying, Seriously? Which is rude, and pisses me off, but forreal, I get it. Mom does this when she’s too lazy to make a good argument for why she’s right, or why Dad is delusional, or why David isn’t trying hard enough. It’s a lot. But I think she thinks she needs to do it. I do another pass, then I do one more until the cutter makes the same smooth sound all over my head. When I accidentally go at a different angle, it makes a different sound, because it’s cutting, and I realize that not all hair grows in the same direction, which makes sense, and which I already knew, but I guess I forgot. I turn off the cutter and run my hand over my head, and it’s giving velcro, I love it, and I sweep up all the hair I can with my hands and I throw it in the garbage can that doesn’t have a bag in it. There’s a bunch of shiny square wrappers in there, from condoms, and I wonder if David wears a condom when he sleeps. I look under the sink to see if there are any condoms to see what one would feel like on my wiener, but there’s not. I stand up and look in the mirror for a second, then I do something really savage. I go in Mom’s black zip-up bag sitting by the faucet and get her curvy razor and her mini can of shave gel. I pump some into my hands and rub them together till they’re foaming white, then I make my whole head creamy. Then I start to shave it. Only I’m very careful. I go over every part of my head very slow and I’m soft because my head is a weird shape in the back, like, it feels like there’s nothing between my skull and my hair. I cut myself when I’m curving it around my ear, and I touch where it stings with my fingers, and there’s hella blood, so I press the towel hard on it till it stops. I cut myself again where my hair meets my forehead, but no, there’s barely any blood this time. I double-check my work because it’s hard to see if you missed spots. You have to rub your fingers all over and if it’s not 100% smooth, like, if you feel any scratchy parts, you know you have to do it again, with the shaving cream and everything, just running the whole thing back from the beginning. It’s smooth, so I wash and dry the razor, then I put everything back. I look in the mirror. I look kinda weird, kinda sick. I didn’t know my ears were that big. Mom calls David an asshole really loud, then I hear the door slam, then it’s quiet, then I hear the TV turn on. I open the door. David’s on the bed choosing a show. I ask where’s my mom. He says she left. He doesn’t even look at me, so he doesn’t see my bald head. I ask if I can go swimming. He says to ask my mom and I say, Okay I will, thanks, David! but I’m lying. I put on my trunks and leave the cabin. I think I’ll stop by the bar and get a Shirley Temple before I hit the pool. Yeah, that’ll be good.

ON THE OFF CHANCE THERE ARE BONES IN THE SOUP by Emilee Prado

July 29, 2024

Last month, Robert Ladlo was accidentally promoted at work. He’d been standing in the empty head office, glancing around covetously when one of the new employees asked if he’d be taking over for the boss who was away exploring concerns about early onset dementia. Ladlo said yes. When everyone began treating Ladlo as if he were the new boss, it became true.Ladlo took this stroke of luck as divine right, a fated ascent. Over the next few weeks, he began to stir the pot just to see if anyone would stop him. Once, he spat his gum into the bushes in the courtyard even though a trash can was right beside him. He farted in the elevator, blamed it on a stranger, and everyone believed him. When he autographed a napkin and gave it to a barista, she blushed and said thanks. Ladlo began internalizing that if he acted with enough conviction, people wouldn’t question him or challenge his destiny.When the old boss returned to announce her official retirement, she assumed that higher-ups had Ladlo filling in. She left him with her blessing as he basked in the slotted sun that streamed through the blinds in his new permanent office.

***

Robert Ladlo brought his rise to autogenic glory home with him and began frequently boasting about his success to his husband, João. But Ladlo’s office-related-pot-stirring soon reached their home too. João’s expression slid from pride down through dubiousness and landed somewhere near disgust when he chatted with Edna, a mutual friend who was also now one of Ladlo’s subordinates.One evening, the couple idled on their apartment’s balcony, listening to thunder murmur in the distance. João sat unusually far from Ladlo, and eventually, he set down the copy of A História Trágica do Doutor Fausto. He turned to regard his husband.“Berto,” said João. “I don’t know how else you’ll listen unless I just say it, all of it, right out. First, I am so proud of your hard work. Second. Second, amor, you’re being—and I think a few people would agree with me on this—a big fat jerk. You never used to be like this. What happened?”Ladlo blinked. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I am not a jerk.”“I see your new aura. And I’ve talked with our friend, Edna. You have been stirring the pot, no? And for what purpose—to show that you can?”Ladlo doubled down. “You have to take what you want in this life. You of all people know that. You picked up, left your home country, put yourself through university here, and took. That’s how you conjured success.”“No, that is where you are wrong. Taking is not the same thing as creating. I built my architecture firm—well, metaphorically. We work from a rented space. Oh, you know what I mean—I created something that wasn’t there before, and I’m still indebted to everyone who helped me get here. Plus, I once experienced this too, this ego. After I designed the national aviary and I got to be a bit of a star at the opening gala, I got—well—a big head and all puffed up. And what I’m sensing around you now is a noxious poison cloud, Berto. I can barely come close. Soon, I worry, it will poison you and its effect will be permanent.”Ladlo’s expression collapsed. “Do you really see me that way? As a contaminant?”“Wait here,” said João. He stood and kissed Ladlo on the forehead, coughed, and went inside.When João returned, he handed Ladlo a wriggling fish. It looked to be a salmon in its spawning phase, but instead of being powered by life, Ladlo saw a 9-volt battery inside its mouth. Ladlo raised an eyebrow at his husband.“You have to take it to the address printed on the tail. It’s a different experience for everyone, so I cannot say what you should expect, but they’ll tell you what to do.”“The Warehouse of Contentment,” Ladlo read from the tail. “I take it there and they will cure me of being a big fat jerk and dispel this noxious cloud I have around me?”“I hope so, amor.”

***

Ladlo’s GPS indicated that the Warehouse of Contentment was that enormous building in the distance, but on the road in front of him was a gate and security booth that prevented him from entering. He slowed the car and pulled up to the window.It slid open.“Good evening, I’m The Fisherman. How can I assist you?”“Fisherperson, you mean,” said Ladlo.“I haven’t gotten the okay to change my job title yet, but I’m thinking something like Reelcaster, Lineleader, Luredangler, or maybe Chumchucker? Anyway, what can I do you for? Do you have a fish with you?”The spawning phase salmon lay wriggling on the passenger seat. Ladlo handed it over.The Fisherman said she’d be right back.Ladlo saw the back door of the booth open. The Fisherman emerged. She held Ladlo’s fish in one hand and steered a kick-pedal scooter with the other, heading in the direction of the warehouse.Fifteen minutes later, she returned in the same manner, except instead of holding the fish, she held a small cardboard box.“Your bosses should look into a more efficient mode of transportation. A golf cart, or a conveyor belt even,” said Ladlo after the Fisherman returned to the window.“That’s why it’s called fishing, not catching.”“What?”The Fisherman didn’t respond. Instead, she opened the box and pulled out a handheld mirror. It was the cheap plastic-backed kind that could be bought at a dollar store. She handed it to Ladlo.Ladlo took the mirror, looked it over, looked at his reflection, looked it over again. Ladlo asked if it was a magic mirror. The Fisherman laughed, called Ladlo silly, and said that magic doesn’t exist.“How is this going to fix my problem?” said Ladlo. “And don’t you even want to hear my circumstances?”“We got them from the fish.”“It was my husband’s fish.”“But you brought it here.”“I—”“I’m sorry, there is a car waiting behind you. And remember, I’m just The Fisherman, I don’t have any answers to give you.”Not knowing what else to do, Ladlo pulled forward until the lane U-turned toward the exit, which led him back to the road.At home, Ladlo showed the mirror to João who looked it over and had no advice to offer other than that Ladlo should carry it with him and wait and see.

***

Later in the workweek, Ladlo was washing his hands when he caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He shook the water from his hands and pulled the handheld mirror from his satchel. He held it near the large mirror until he could see himself from several angles. Then he understood how he could unstir the pot.What he was lacking was self-awareness.Ladlo tested his theory when the shorter of the two Tonys came into his office. Ladlo held out the mirror to where he could catch his own expression with a sideways glance. After Ladlo explained what he was doing, Short Tony got on with his question. Ladlo noticed that the mirror was reflecting a beam of sunlight down onto Tony’s papers, so he adjusted the beam away. How self-aware of him. And when Ladlo saw that his face was growing harsh and critical in response to Short Tony saying something less than competent, Ladlo knew to change his expression.Then it hit him: this sort of awareness was too limited. He could see the front of Short Tony’s face, and with the mirror, he could glimpse his own profile, but he could not see Tony’s profile. Surely there would be micro-expressions he was missing. This made him worry he was limiting his access to observation and thus thwarting his capacity for total self-awareness. After work, Ladlo went and bought three more cheap plastic mirrors. They came in neon colors.

***

As he navigated his day-to-day life with two mirrors in each hand, Ladlo understandably ran into some difficulties with doors, utensils, and gestures—and, well—most daily activities. But worse was the continued lack of angles; there were points of view that were still hidden from him.Determined that self-awareness would be his, Ladlo bought dozens of colorful mirrors and he linked them together using duct tape and wire until what he held became wing-like. Mirrors atop mirrors, all angled in slightly different directions, branching from his two arms and curving toward the front so they enveloped whomever Ladlo was talking to.When Ladlo met with the head of another department, and several times he bonked and jostled the poor woman with his spread and reflective plastic feathers, he decided to re-work the self-awareness thing again. She was irritated with him; he could see it from a dozen angles. Ladlo also saw that his own face was not apologetic, that is until he and his reflections adjusted their expressions. Still, the whole thing was a nuisance because he had to constantly set down one of the wings to use a pen and he couldn’t use them at all while typing. This caused him both blind spots and exasperation.Ladlo went into the storage unit below his apartment and found the boxes they had been storing for João’s nephew. From one of the boxes labeled Sports Stuff, Ladlo pulled out a pair of American football shoulder pads. He attached his colorful mirrors to the skeletal plastic. He was so busy sitting on the concrete outside the storage unit, using more tape and wire and other supports, and adjusting the angles of the mirrors, and being so totally focused on being one hundred percent self-aware that it got very late. He finally set the wings aside until morning and went to join his husband in bed, but João was already asleep.

***

Ladlo arrived at work wearing his new wings and as he rode the elevator, he appreciated the metaphor of rising to new heights—perhaps to ultra-cognizance, maybe even enlightenment. He thought that this just might be the peak of self-awareness. He did a tap dance glide out of the elevator and that’s when he was caught. His right wing hadn’t cleared the elevator when the door closed. Some sort of mechanical sensor was completely un-self-aware and utterly unengaged at the exact moment he needed it to sense him.The elevator began to descend, hailed by someone below and Ladlo let out little yelps of panic. He face-planted with a whump, but then the elevator stopped. His wing was wedged between the inner roof of the elevator and his floor’s floor. Ladlo could neither stand nor wriggle out of the shoulder pads, so he remained there on his belly on the ground.The intern had seen all this from his desk and was holding out his phone, presumably recording. Soon all of Ladlo’s subordinates gathered and stood looking down at Ladlo.Ladlo could see every one of their faces in his bent left wing and after he finished yelling and swearing at those faces, he began to cry.Ladlo saw his former friend Edna make a phone call, but still, no one moved to help him.He lay there for a long time and then a sob caught in his throat as he heard the stairwell door bang open behind him. It was his husband. In his wing, two dozen Joãos appeared, each of them holding a toolbox. In his head, Ladlo fought hard to find the right words as all of the Joãos began to pry him free.

IN SPITE OF THE OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE, MAYBE IT WAS LONELINESS THAT KILLED THE DINOSAURS by Tyler Fleser

July 24, 2024

The first day at Triassic Land, my Spinosaurus tail got torn off in the door of my dead grandad’s old Camry. I left home because I was sick of Mom babying me. I was single. Grown up. I was like a twenty-four-year-old boo-boo she wouldn’t let heal. I’d typed up a fake acceptance letter and showed it to her a month ago. Told her I was starting at Central Michigan University’s summer business program early and that a buddy I used to play video games with had a room. She gave me a hundred dollars, a kiss on the cheek, and said she was proud.I could see all the coasters I’d grown up riding over the barbed-wire security fence. Mad Meteor, Cretaceous Coroner, Chicxulub Impactor—Quivering Timbers had always been my favorite though. No loops, but the wood shook your head like a speed bag. It held all that thrill without any worry of slipping through the harness and falling into the inevitable. I was considering how long it would take to hit the ground when a giant red Silverado pulled up next to me.“Well guy,” the old driver said, hobbling out of his 4x4 chariot, “that tail’s dangling like a dingleberry.” He looked like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino if Clint Eastwood had been addicted to Diet Coke. When he squinted, he looked older instead of meaner. “I—”“I’ll fix y’up don’t worry. I should’ave some duct tape…somewhere ‘n here.” He heaved his duffel bag out and dropped it on the cracked pavement like a treasure.“It’s really okay, I’ll fix it later,” I said.He pulled out some duct tape and shoved it in my face like a trophy.“Only’ll be a minute and you’ll thank me,” he said.It was easier to let him do it in the end. Last thing I wanted was a fight with a geriatric Dirty Harry on my first day. When he was finished, he slapped my pleather ass and fondled the Camry to stand back up.“Name’s Pat. You Gordy’s replacement?” I’d seen it on the news with Mom one morning. Mom’d said, How is anyone supposed to feel safe anymore? and I’d said, you can do that for a living? The posting online had read: Dinosaurs wanted! 12/hr + meals!“Yeah. I’m Mortimer.” “Jordan?”“Mor-tih-mur!” He reached out and squeezed my hand, like he was trying to juice me.“Or Mort. Either’s fine.” I’ve never had a good talking voice either. I mumble or I feel like I’m yelling.“Suit yerself,” Pat nodded towards the park, “Welp, we don’t want to keep the ‘missus’ waitin’ do we?” His back bent under the weight of his tool bag. I thought to offer help, but I could tell Pat had that old man syndrome where he didn’t let anyone help him, even if it meant he was going to hurt himself.

***

I remember taking photos with Sal the Spinosaurus as a kid. There was a photograph I’d left at home of me crossing my legs thinking it made me look cool only to realize I looked like I had to piss, Mom oblivious, grandad tight-lipped because of his broken teeth, my older brother and his perfect smile. Besides those memories, I knew next to nothing about being a dinosaur. They’d given me no training, just the rule that I couldn’t let people see me with the suit off, which was fine. I was a solid 5, on a good day. On a bad day? Captain Neckbeard. Sal the Spinosaurus suited me.There was a yellowed, stained fridge in the break room with a picture of someone’s family and shitty motivational posters. Plastic employee of the week plaques littered one wall, each staff member holding up some gift card to Chili’s or Olive Garden. I saw a man with my outfit, the Spinosaurus head roaring under his arm. He didn’t smile. When I saw Pat on my route, I asked him if that was Gordy.“Scalies used to be able to get away with stuff. Pouncing on people. Gnawing on their bags. People came here to feel something. To get an experience. Now you so much as tap someone with yer tail and you’ll get a bunch of lawyers bearing down on us, again.” A hammer jangled at Pat’s side like a big iron, sweat collecting in the wrinkles of his gray uniform and forehead.“Guy, the world’s gone soft.”Someone next us on the Pterodactyl Terror Shot screamed—a bungee type thing over the pond filled with swan boats in the middle of the park. You sign a contract for “liability” sake and pay extra for it. I’d never done it, but I’d watched my brother launch over the pond. Saw the worry on mom’s face as he soared.“So you fix things?” I asked Pat, really quiet and real close, my plastic teeth scraping his waxy ear. I waved at kids like I’d seen people do on the floats for the 4th of July parade back home. “Fix things? Guy!” He swatted at my maw. “If you’re being simple about it, sure, but I notice things. Things no one else notices.” In front of us, a little girl tugged her dad’s arm. Mad Meteor careened in a corkscrew above.“Some stupid soccer mom bust the turnstile? My job. Plank hanging low on a coaster? My job. The freezer in the Dippin’ Dots cart overheats? My job. If there’s too much shit for me to do? I tell the ne'er do wells mannin’ the rides what needs fixin’. And customer-staff relations? Oh, I track that too Martin.”“Um, what’s—it’s Mortimer—”“Yup, I’ve been around long enough to know how people are. See her?” he pointed at the little girl and the two men holding her hands. “She’s only been listening to her uncle and her dad hates that.”“How do you know they’re brothers?”“What else would they be?”I didn’t respond.“Them three come here a lot, yeah. The girl loves it when yuh scalies fall over. Saw Gordy faceplant last year and that little girl laughed so hard she almost gave me an ulcer.” I could fall. Did it all the time. Tripping over nothing. Hesitating whenever I rounded a corner or stopped at a 4-way. I was an expert at making mistakes for no good reason, and now I had one.I ran out in front of the family and stumbled into a trash can. Melted ice cream and soiled paper bowls full of crusty chili like dry blood spilled all over the baked concrete. The men glared. The little girl shrieked. For some reason the Peanuts theme song was playing over the speakers. “Stupid stupid! Isn’t he stupid?”“Come on Olivia,” one man said.“We don’t call people stupid,” said the other. He whispered, “...in front of them.” I remembered how I felt when I was a kid. How I knew there was someone in the suit but how it was more fun to imagine something else was making them stomp and roar and make their way through the world.“Stupid, stuuuupid!” The girl pointed.I wriggled on the ground until the girl’s giggles were out of earshot, then stood up, cotton candy stuck to my mesh eye holes so it was hard to see. Pat came over and wiped it off. “You’re a natch-u-ral Mikey!” Everything is a bit when you’re wearing a dinosaur suit. No matter what stupid shit I did, someone would want me.

***

Home feels different when you get back after a new job, and my studio apartment in Mt. Pleasant didn’t feel like much of a home to begin with. I had a lawn chair in front of the TV, a mattress I’d spent an hour contorting to fit in the Camry for the drive from the west side, a bunch of Faygo varieties in the vegetable tray of the fridge, and a series of Stouffer's frozen casseroles.It didn't make any sense why the city I was in was called Mt. Pleasant either. There aren’t any real mountains in Michigan, and all the best parts, all the big lakes were about as far away as they could be. The only water in walking distance was a tiny stream behind my apartment complex flanked by two golf courses and a strip mall containing a Subway, a Family Fare, and a pole-dancing studio. The walls of the apartment were thin, but sometimes that made life more exciting. Guessing that banging sound next door gave me something else to do besides playing Halo and watching Jurassic Park—you gotta enmesh yourself in your life in the character, or at least, that’s what people like Daniel Day Lewis do, right? He’s a good actor, I’d heard. It was a small space, but that was okay. Too much space and you start to feel like you should have more stuff, or even moreso, someone to share that space with.After I’d get back every day, I’d shed my suit and drape it on the lawn chair in the living room. I’d crack open a cold Red Pop Faygo and sit down. Boot up my Xbox. My brother always gave me shit for the living room lawn chair at Mom’s house. I say having cupholders is important, and I couldn’t afford a full-ass recliner on a dino salary.During the first few weeks Mom texted me a lot. Eventually, because she kept asking the same questions, I started calling her instead of texting back.“Hey.”“So, how'd today go?”“It went fine.”“...and?”“That’s it. Nothing to report.”“The apartment okay?”“It’s alright. Kinda small, but you know, I like that.”“How’re classes?”“Couldn’t tell you Mom. Still feeling them out.”“Are you looking for a job? You know your brother says he has a job in a warehouse over there he could get you, right?”“I know Mom.”“I’m just saying, it pays good.”“I’ll figure it out.”“I know. I know. I just hate, y’know, seeing you…y’know.”That’s how most of our conversations went. Tip-toeing around each other until either of us had the stomach to bear our grievances, then backing down anyway. Our family was easy that way. Life was easier that way.

***

By the end of the first month, I was the Mickey Fucking Mouse of dinosaurs, stalking people on all fours, bobbing my floppy muzzle like a bird. I became a skilled practitioner of Cretaceous Cardio, started looking at myself naked in the busted bathroom mirror, watching those little love handles I’d earned doing nothing with my life and dating no one melt away. Even better, they announced a year-round initiative. They’d have a winter carnival in the off months and build an event space to make up lost revenue from the Gordy incident. I’d have a stable gig where I didn’t have to man a register and put on a face. No one would have to see my crooked smile. My yellow teeth.Once my routes became ritual, I realized everything at Triassic from when I was a kid was still there. The horses-dressed-as-ankylosaurs. The viking-boat-turned-megalodon. A random Harley Davidson they still had on display, because why not. The park proved that time doesn’t actually change everything like Mom was telling me more and more every year. I kept pictures saved of every ride for when I was ready to tell her what I was really doing in Mt. Pleasant. Once I’d proven I could make it here on my own. Maybe, once I’d found someone to share the apartment with.Besides Pat, none of the other staff talked to me, so I didn’t talk to them. From the conversations I overheard in the break room or behind the rides, they treated the place like it was just a stepping stone on the way to their next big thing. As if everyone can have the next big thing. You know what was a big thing? Dinosaurs. To be a dinosaur is to embrace nostalgia for a time we can’t be sure even existed the way we imagine. What’s wrong with that? With Pat’s tips about regulars, and late nights watching every dinosaur movie I could get my hands on, I started pulling five-star reviews. I broke in the hard plastic of the claws. Figured out how to piss without taking it off. By June, the break room was littered with pictures of Sal the Spinosaurus holding Chili’s and Olive Garden gift cards. People asked why I kept the suit on. “You don’t get anywhere without some extra commitment,” I said. Pat had told me that one day.There was this one girl though. She started the month after me. A new “scalie” called Rachel Raptor. I told Mom about her over the phone. Told her Rachel was in a class on entrepreneurship, or whatever business classes were called.Rachel and I weren’t supposed to be in the same place at the same time, but sometimes we’d cross paths in front of Coroner, right under the loop. I studied her. Waited for her to say something. She didn’t walk with the weight of her life in each step like I did. She didn’t hesitate before she did anything. She was gentle to the concrete and knelt down to let kids pet her. I wondered what she looked like underneath. I hoped she hadn’t noticed me watching. Whenever people notice me looking at them, I feel like I’ve been shot. Like one of those dreams where you’re naked and you don’t know how you ended up where or why you even are.

***

Mom called to offer a trip to Florida my brother and his fiancé were going on. I held the phone to my ear while I was playing Halo, some kid shouting about how gay I was in the background. Telling me to touch grass. That I probably had no bitches.“I don’t like the beach, Mom.”“What are you doing instead?”“I told you, I’m in the campus cafeteria.” I wondered what the most convincing job was. Burrito wrapper? Sandwich crafter? Everything seemed perfectly menial.“The warehouse job pays pretty good Mort. I could talk to your broth—”“I’m good at this and I’m paid enough Mom.”“I know…what about that girl?”“I’ll keep you updated. I’m going to ask her to get coffee soon.”

***

By the middle of sweat-bucket-summer, the park had spent a lot of money prepping for the new winter initiative, but numbers were down. They made some cuts to the maintenance team. Pat was busy trying to figure out what was wrong with the bolts in Quivering Timbers, whining about how he used to have a whole army of guys with tools at his disposal. I looked up at him from the ground, waiting for some other guests to walk by me. I liked watching him when I could. There’s something about a guy fixing a massive roller coaster that seems divine. The knowledge of what bolt to use, the deftness with a wrench or a drill. I dreamed of the day someone would witness me like that.Pat was asking me for a socket wrench when I heard a group of high-school kids staring at me and whispering evil teenager type shit to each other. I didn’t know what the fuck a socket wrench looked like. Just another thing I felt like I should have learned before Grandad died. I looked through the duffel bag, hoping some manly instinct would kick in. I heard the teenagers hee-haw from behind. “Losersaurus Rex,” one shouted standing in line for the Mammoth Ears.“Pervert.” another said. Despite being far shorter, squatter, and, from what I understood, better at the job than Gordy, people occasionally thought I was the same guy. Some creep. A prehistoric peeper.Pat ignored me asking him what the wrench looked like, climbed down the coaster stairs, and stuck his hand in the duffel bag.“Don’t worry Mort, most of em’ probably won’t stop sucking their mom’s teet till they’re thirty. I tell you, when I was a teenager I wasn’t hanging out at a theme park. I was in a war.” Pat shook his head, patted his hammer on his hip, “I could make an accident happen to em y’know. Rig a ride to go a little too fast when they get on.” He winked.That’s when I felt something hit my back. I’d stopped wearing anything but underwear underneath to cool off; I could feel things better that way anyway. Whatever hit me was damp. Cold. Smelled like the color blue. They’d thrown a fucking slushie at me.I stood still, boiling in my suit. Literally and metaphorically. The ice packs under my armpits had gone lukewarm. I turned to face the teens, careful to maintain my signature Spinosaurus poise; me, Poiseasaurus Rex. I saw a bush the same green-brown as my suit between the teenagers and the corner of the Mammoth Ear stand as an opportunity. All my time spent watching dinosaur movies, being patient playing Halo, listening to Pat and practicing—I had a skill. I could get payback.While the teenagers were ogling some girls coming from the waterpark, I huddled behind the bush. Waited for about three minutes. I was Saunasaurus Rex stalking his prey. When they came up to order, I sprang out and swatted at them with my rubber arms. One fell over so hard it looked like he might have shattered his elbow. He started crying. I squeezed the sound box from Ebay I’d programmed with roar sounds—a fucking steal for $10 plus shipping—over and over, standing above him making eye contact through the mesh in my mouth.The teenager reeled back to punch me, but instead he started crying. I looked back at Pat heh-heh-heh-ing and wheezing, one crooked, hairy thumb up. They ran away. I thought I would feel better.What I hadn’t noticed was the American dream-type family behind the teenagers. One with a girl and a boy and two parents that looked like they ran together at 5 in the morning before work and posted pictures of the sunrise.One of the kids, the little boy, was crying. Scared. Blonde bowl cut like I’d had. Chunky fingers despite the rest of him being a fucking twig. Looks like he’d get bullied. Like he’d play trumpet in middle school and get so angry he can’t hit high notes like the rest of the boys that he’d smash the instrument into his bed post and make his mom pay $200 to fix the rental.I tried to play stupid and ran into a wall. Being stupid’s only funny because I shouldn’t be stupid. A dinosaur should have some instinct that defends against stupidity. Some feeling of where to go and what not to do. An instinct for a successful life. No one wants someone who can’t decide what to do. The kid kept sobbing and the parents pulled him away, looking at everything but me. When I looked back, Pat shrugged. It was as good a time as any to cool down, so I went to the break room to swap out the ice packs. On the way back, I watched the ticketers at the turnstile. Saw the look of death on their faces. One swiped on their phone. I’d thought about getting on a dating app, but that meant I needed pictures. Maybe the suit would be a funny gag.When I pried the screen door open, Rachel Raptor—the girl who played her—was at the lunch table. I still had a little bit of adrenaline left from my ambush, so I sat next to her. She had this short purple hair and freckles I’d never seen on anyone before. She shifted a seat away and put the bottom half of her costume between her and me.She was drawing a cow skull adorned with snapdragons, like the one’s mom kept in her garden. Little flowers I’d spent time sticking my pudgy fingers in, imagining them coming to life. I’d make fire-breathing noises and tell mom each dragon bulb’s name, which ones was mom, dad, and the kids. I’d fabricated a whole family. A comfortable family. “Snapdragons! Right?” I blurted out, forgetting to breathe.She jumped.“Um, yeah. That’s right?”“I’m Mortimer.” I stuck out my hand.“Nice to meet you?” she didn’t grab it.Questions, right, I thought. Grandad always told me to ask questions. People are supposed to enjoy talking about themselves.“So are you doing skulls to say you’re not afraid of death or something?” I tried to mask how I’d forgotten to breathe. I did my best to stay still. To be still was to be stoic. Prehistoically-inclined.“Uh, no. I just think cow skulls are cool.”“They are pretty cool.” I caught my reflection in a mirror, stared at the inhuman eyes. My floppy mouth. Rachel stopped drawing.“So you’re…” she asked, pointing at the employee of the week pictures adorning the walls.“That’s me, yeah.” For the first time since I’d arrived, I wasn’t proud of the pictures.“You really never take off the suit, do you?”“I heard about this thing called method acting. Daniel-Day Lewis did it for—”“Yeah, I know about that. Everyone on set called him an asshole.” She looked at the door across from us for a few seconds. I felt like I was talking to an alien and no one had given me the briefing on first-contact engagement.“Do you uh, what do you do?” I asked.“I’m in art school.”“That’s cool.”“What do you do? Outside of here?”“Uhhh…well I….” I couldn’t tell her I played video games. That was too unimpressive. I thought about telling her I played music, but then she might ask to hear something. Maybe writing?“Sooo, I actually have a specific question for you. Maybe it’s a little personal.”I leaned in, terrified and excited to answer a question. Smelled her coconut shampoo. Felt too close to her. Leaned back.“I’ve got an assignment. Like an art project. I’ve gotta ask people what they’re in awe of and draw something inspired by it.”“Oh. That’s cool.”“Honestly, since you’re a total stranger,” I ground my teeth at the word stranger, “I think this is more interesting. Everyone else here is giving me normal answers.”“Well. I dunno. The ankylosaurus-horses. Pretty cool right?”“No no no, anywhere else but here. Like, you’ve never seen something or thought of someone and you just go, wow?” I thought about the last time I was home, driving on the S-shaped highway that cuts through the city, coming back from the mall movie theater to see Zombieland 2. I’d been swimming through that post-movie existentialism, blasting the jazzy theme song to Halo: ODST, pretending I was in a destroyed civilization, the one living person left behind, a hoard of invading aliens oblivious to me in the camry, swerving left and right with one hand on the wheel like I actually knew what I was doing. I got chills thinking about it. Or maybe that was just my sweat getting cold. I wondered if I smelled.“I really don’t know. Guess I never thought about it.” I said.“That’s kind of sad. I mean—sorry,’ her mouth hung open, “Uh, you should do something! Go somewhere. Everyone should have something.”I thought I was doing something. I had gone somewhere. Bumfuck nowhere.“I’ll let you know when I think of something,” I said. “Cool.” She shrugged.I’d never been so disappointed in myself that I wanted to cry before. I stood up, swapped my ice packs out for the new ones, stashed the sweaty ones next to Pat's brown bag in the fridge, and walked towards the door before Rachel had a chance to leave first. Moments like this were why I kept the suit on.

***

Approaching fall, the park was getting slower. This was normal, Pat told me, like how the dips and peaks of climate change are normal. I spent my free time thinking of something to tell Rachel. Something that would show her I wasn’t just a loser in a suit. I wasn’t artsy. I considered the few times I’d gone camping with my family, watching a storm roll over Lake Michigan from the height of a dune, the view looking down from my first skyscraper in Chicago, the first time I’d nailed a trumpet solo. They all felt too normal or too lame for me to be in awe of. I avoided the break room so that I wouldn’t bump into her before I had the answer. But, when I stopped running into her under Coroner’s loop, I asked Pat if he’d seen her lately.“The weird one with the purple hair? Guy she no-call no-showed twice. No surprise there. No one wants to work any more.”

***

Pat was wrong about the normal dip in park numbers. We were tanking. Management sent an email with the subject line: “WHAT CAN YOU DO TO SAVE THE DINOSAURS?”. It seemed that no amount of good reviews could make up for the worry that staff, that people like me, might be a total creep like Gordy. Not in the age of internet memes and Twitter.Pat and I spent more time by the central pond. He said he’d planted fish in it fifteen years ago to give himself something to do on lunch break.“Ain’t got no mercury poisonin’ in them like the big lakes neither.” All I knew about mercury was that it’s the stuff that they put in thermometers. Did someone dump a bunch of thermometers in the great lakes? People call things like that accidents all the time. Like they’re pretending it isn’t anyone’s fault. But you have to try hard to fuck something up that bad. I suspected a conspiracy somewhere, like how people said Obama turned the frogs gay.“So why are you actually here, Mort?” “I don’t know. I like it. I’m good at it.”“That’s right.” I watched him catch a couple bluegills, or at least, that’s what he called them. I didn’t think their gills looked blue. I never understood catch-and-release. It seemed cruel, especially in a place like this. As if the fish stuck in the theme park pond hadn’t had enough. As if they weren’t doing the best they could with the pond they were stuck in.

***

I stuck with Pat by the pond instead of my routes after the third round of layoffs. A bunch of empty swan boats where normal people who loved each other used to fill up bobbled. Pat had a bouquet of pink work orders tucked in his belt. “Guy, hasn’t been this bad since a guy’s safety belt came loose on Chix—, Chic… Chaclub, oh fuck whatever it’s called.”“Chicxulub?”“Yeah, that one.”He spat on the ground.“You know what Mort? You could be Donald Duck. Go on down to Florida and make them Disney bucks, but you’re here. Doing work that matters in a place that people forgot was good to them.”“I’m too old for Disney Pat.”“Guy, too old like the ocean’s too blue.”“What?”“I was younger ‘n you in ‘n Vietnam.”“I know.”Next to us, one of the few mothers left and her two sons were petting an Ankylosaurus-horse while the handler explained how their tails were clubs. One kid reached for the horse’s exposed leg and his mom yanked him so hard the kid dropped his Dippin’ Dots. He watched them melt. The mom said, “I told you to be careful!” and they walked away, her son reaching back towards his coveted, disposable plastic bowl. The kid started crying. His brother looked up at the sun stupidly. It was Sal’s time to shine.I ran to the ice cream stand and got some more. I stomped over and handed him the cup, holding on with both of my stubby plastic claws. His mom went, “Oh that’s not necessary. Oh, thank you so much.” I pretended to gobble the ice cream the boy had dropped like a predator gnashing at its prey, shoving my face into the concrete and smashing my roar button over and over, like pressing harder would make it sound any different.The kid stopped crying. He pointed and looked at his mom while his older brother fried his eyeballs in the sun. The younger one looked like he had something important to say, like he’d just had an epiphany.Maybe that was it—that look on that kid’s face. The way you can fabricate a good memory out of nothing for someone. That was the closest I’d ever come to being in awe of anything.

***

In early fall—that fake fall where you know it’s going to get muggy and shitty again but you try to enjoy the little time you have left anyway, hoping this time it will be different—Pat was fixing the Chicxulub Impactor, arguing with himself about how to pronounce it. The asteroid that was supposed to smash into the plastic-mold crater was broken. It was going too fast. Crashing into the crater with a real force over and over again. No safety breaks.“What happened to the guy who’s harness came off on the coaster?”“Splat,” Pat said, not taking his eyes off the electric panel.“I mean what happened to the park? When did things get better?”“I ever tell you the story about the kid in the rice patty, Mort?”“What?” “We were up in Da Nang.” Pat leaned against a fake stone wall with plastic vines hanging down, wiping the sweat from his stubble with an already-dirty rag. I knew how these war stories went. Those memories had swelled up inside Grandad until he was bloated with them. Told me all about it on his deathbed. Dead friends. Dead kids. Dead dreams. He sent my grandmother a letter and told her to start finding someone else because he didn’t think he’d survive.“Little kid missing half his hair comes up to us asking for candy every single day while we’re working on a bridge over a patty. Even has this little pet monkey who follows him around. Asks if he can sit with us in the jeep.” Pat turned and smacked the meteor so hard it fell off the metal spring. I reached down and picked the plastic rock up as he talked. It was heavier than I expected.“One day, kid walks up and says his monkey has a present for us. Has this thing wrapped in flimsy paper. I thought it was a gift.” Pat took the asteroid out of my hand, held it up to the sun like an offering. “Turns out, it’s one of our grenades. I threw it back in the kid’s direction. Didn’t mean to. Just instinct.” He twisted the asteroid back on the pole. Every problem I had seemed infinitely small. I imagined a young version of Pat. Him and a wife swigging Diet Coke in their kitchen dancing to oldies. Them in a swan boat.“That’s fucked up.”“Guy, that ain’t the worst that happened. Wanna know what’s really funny?”I knew that wasn’t really a question.“The monkey got away. Not a scratch on ‘em.” Pat laughed, and whacked the asteroid again for good measure. That fixed it. We sat there and watched it, the fate of the dinosaurs playing over and over again the way it always had, like a cautionary tale told too many times to mean anything anymore.

***

When I was a kid, my birthday being in early September was good because it’s pretty far from Christmas and I’d get gifts in the middle of the year-ish. Now I was just excited for Labor Day. Despite me not responding to her for a few weeks, Mom had sent me a Visa gift card. We called. She asked about Rachel and I told her she was gone and she’d said something in that Mom voice that made me feel like a boy in the worst way possible. I put on the button-up Mom had gotten me. Took out all the pins and needles knowing I’d never be able to fold it back the way it came. I’d lost weight so the clothes didn’t fit me right. I tried to tuck the shirt in, but it made me look like an old man or one of those churchy kids you knew would turn out to be a sicko one day. I went to the coffee shop I’d planned on going to with Rachel, hoping that I might see her. Argue for why our shared vocation was something deserving of awe.When I got there, the coffee shop was busy. There was a line with people who had the money for good-fitted clothes and who knew how to wear them, but no Rachel. I thought about leaving, but I pictured someone noticing me leaving after walking in—like someone would see a squirrely guy who can’t decide what to do and go what’s his problem?I ordered a mocha latte because I knew mocha means chocolate. I sat down in a cubby. When a woman walked into the cubby, I felt like I was intruding on her space, so I moved to the bar against the wall where people usually set up their laptops, next to a little library. I grabbed a book about dinosaurs—Triassic infected the whole town. There was a chapter listing alternative theories to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs: an ice age, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, all perfectly reasonable things to stop something from living to its full potential. I wondered, who would I hold onto if the world ended like that tomorrow? What would I do? I looked at everyone in the coffee shop. The smiles. The focus. The contentment and normality they exuded. How comfortable they were in their own skin.Rachel hadn’t even been her real name.

***

The nail in the coffin for Triassic was the kid that died on Timbers, just an hour before closing on one of the last days we were going to keep the coasters open. Right when it was getting cool enough for me to stop wearing ice packs. After one of the guys running the coaster saw the bloody body in the cab, he called the ambulance. From what I could overhear, it was a plank that had been dangling too low. Our boss sent a group text saying we can’t talk to anyone, not that I wanted to, reminding us of the NDA we signed. They also mentioned the winter festival was on hold indefinitely. I went back to the swan pond and found Pat fishing like I thought I would. Nothing we could do but wait for the paramedics to get here and pronounce the kid dead. To pronounce the park dead.“I’m a damn good repairman, but I’m not God,” he said. The few guests on the other side were being shooed away, confused and complaining that they’d paid for their tickets, that they’d planned these couple days months in advance, just to bring their families here. “Management cutting my team killed that kid. Not me.”By the time the paramedics had left and the few remaining customers had been ushered out, it was getting dark. The inside of the park looked like a level in a video game without any NPCs walking around. Triassic was going to be one of those abandoned places you see on TruTV with a poorly reenacted story about that kid who died haunting it, or something like that. “You afraid Pat?”“Afraid of living long enough I want to die, maybe.”We could see the reflection of Coroner and Timbers in the pond. It was beautiful. Like two contorted snake-fish water dinosaur things in a mating ritual. I think Rachel would have dug that. I wished she were here so I could tell her about it. She’d probably noticed already, but it’d be something to say.“You ever thought about building one of your own?” I asked. It was a stupid question but anything not about the dead kid was better than nothing.“My own what, Mort?”“Roller coaster.”“Haven’t,” he said. Then he gulped. The coasters wriggled in the pond water. “Fixing things is a helluva lot different than building them.”“It’s getting cold,” I said.“Starting to think I should have worn a suit like you right now,” Pat said, laughed, then coughed.“I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself, Pat.”“Well, guy, I don’t know either. Guess I could do something with the old swingset in my backyard now.”“You have grandkids?”“No.”I stared.“Guy! Something wrong with a grown man having a swingset?”“No. I guess not.”“You could help me fix it up if yuh want.”“Not good with my hands,” I said, flopping my pleather arms.“Just need someone to hammer nails.”“I’d probably break it.”“I’ll pay you a fair wage.”How? I thought, but I didn’t say it.“I’m going to the top of Timbers,” he said. You wanna come?”“Not really.”“Gonna pussy out the last time you could ever do this? Regret’s a bitch Mortimer, trust me.”“Fine.”I followed Pat to the Timbers entrance, to the open air and narrow stairs bolted along the coaster’s track. There was a sign that said “AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY”. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was trespassing.“You gunna keep gawking at me or are you gunna grow some dino-gonads to match yer skin?”I followed him to the stairs.“Told you you wasn’t a loser.” He grinned.Our weight bent the steps. I kept my muzzle pointed up. The costume broke the wind for me mostly, but I could see Pat’s arms shaking as he grasped the splintered handrail. He looked brittle for the first time since I’d met him in the parking lot.When we reached the top Pat was squinting so hard it seemed like the creases would stick together. We sat in the two-by-four box at the top of the first peak, the highest peak, the Triassic Park flag waving wicked beside them. A cartoon version of Sal—of me—flailing next to us. Pat sat down so his legs hung over the side, the swan boats swirling below. It almost looked like they were alive, celebrating their freedom. I pointed my snout at Pat and waited for him to say something, but nothing came out besides guttural sighs and the occasional “yup” or “guy”. I mulled over options for conversation until a question busted out of me like an alien.“You ever been in awe of anything Pat?” I said it so stupidly. Pat didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if he heard me or not. “I mean, have you ever seen something and just gone, like, wow, this is impossible and I can’t explain wh—”“I heard yuh.” Pat looked up, almost shocked, smiling. “Whaddabout this view, eh?” Before us was a sea of trees that surrounded the park grounds. Blinking lights above Chicxulub and Coroner. Headlamps from the final cars blinking through the slants of the trees all around the park. In the corner of my eye, I caught a stray dog pissing on a tree.“Gotta be honest with you Mort.”“What?”“The kid and the monkey,” Pat’s face was a rock, “there was no damn monkey.” He took the hammer off his belt and started tapping it on a loose nail sticking out of the wood posts, then hammering it. He kept hammering after the nail had all but disappeared into the dry, rotted wood. “I just shot that kid cuz he scared me.”We just heard the wind for a while.“It’s a nice view, yeah,” I said. In twilight, the cracks in the parking lot looked like a face. Like it was watching and waiting for us to realize something together. I stood up and crossed my arms. Uncrossed them. Crossed them again. Stared at the plunge down.“Welp.” Pat slapped his knees and groaned as he stood back up. “S’pose it’s time to retire.” He looked at the water below too. The sun dipping behind a cloud was making it harder to see the reflections.“So you’ll come around to help with the swingset?” he asked.“Sure,” I said.I turned and walked down the stairs expecting him to follow me. I heard his tools jangling, then nothing. I didn’t look back. I was too worried he wouldn’t be there. On the way down the steps, I imagined holding Rachel’s hand. When I reached the turnstiles, I stopped. Looked around. Took off the suit and draped it over a ticketing station. I walked back to the camry in nothing but my underwear, keys jangling in my hand. I texted mom that I was coming home. I got in the car, and pretended Rachel was in the passenger seat. Told her everything I was in awe of.