Fiction

NOTHING IS EVER MISSING IN THE TOWN OF MISSING GIRLS by Meghan Phillips

There is a town where all the missing girls end up. They wander in from the surrounding woods, dark-eyed and dirty, holding one bloody tennis shoe like a prayer. They thump in the trunks of parked cars, duct taped wrists sticky and raw. They appear in grocery store aisles, storm cellars. It always takes time to convince them they’ve been found.

There is a town where no one can sleep. A terrible smell seeps into the homes at night, finds sleepers in their bed. No one cannot find the source.

There is a town with a lake. Things wash up on its shore. Fish skeletons and bundles of vegetation. Car tires. Tennis shoes. Bottle upon bottles, green and brown and clear as a cry. Once, an antique pearl necklace. Once, a cloth bag stuffed with severed human hands.

There’s a town where every girl is given a whistle, useless as a bell on a house cat’s collar. By the time someone hears the shrieking, it is already too late.

There is a town surrounded by fields of wheat. A town surrounded by fields of corn. A town with a stone altar at its center where people leave apples and pebbles and little corn husk dolls, the names of the chosen tucked under their skirts.

Sometimes other missing things show up in the town of missing girls. Usually just socks without mates or small toys or the backs of earrings. Sometimes keys or rings. Dogs and cats will wander down the main street, hackles raised. The missing girls sooth them, feed them, take them in. The missing know how to care for their own. 

There’s a town where everyone is missing a hand. 

There is a town that holds the gates to Hell. Only the first gate is visible in daylight. The other six appear in darkness. The people of the town don’t like the Hell gates or the hell-seekers that tramp through their gardens or the satanic cults that burn rings in their fields performing dark masses. They have taken down the daylight gate, and a group of volunteers has promised to seek the other six and destroy them. 

At night by the lake in the town with a lake, beautiful girls line the road that hugs its shore. They wait in their taffeta skirts and grandmother’s pearls for a ride. Sit with hands in laps and look out the window at the moon bobbing on the water, a perfect golden apple, and when the driver stops to let them out, there’s nothing but the damp outline of a skirt, the sweet-rot of dried apple blossom.

There is a town underwater. There’s a town that’s been burning for sixty years. 

There is a town where the radio only plays one song no matter the frequency. One where televisions only play one film. There’s one where all broadcasts stop in the night, and the awake listen for messages in the static, watch for signs in the electric snow. 

In the town of missing girls, the streets are wide and lush with trees. Sidewalks are even and lit by streetlamps that never burn out. Missing girls walk home alone at night. They don’t look behind them or start at the crunch of leaves under their shoes. They don’t curl their hands around keys spiked through fingers or pucker lips around plastic whistles. They know no one will follow. They are already missing. They are already home. 

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ROOM 321 by K.C. Mead-Brewer

You’re late. That’s what he says when she sits down at the crowded hotel bar. She doesn’t recognize him, but his smile, well. All women recognize that smile. She smiles back, a curve plucked from a well-worn catalogue of Please Leave Me Alone Please Don’t Ruin My Night Please Stop Please 

You’re late, he says again, leaning closer. But don’t worry, your ice hasn’t melted yet

He slides a sweating glass of something red as a red red rose in front of her. The drink leaves a slime trail in its path that makes her think of slugs and snakes, though she knows—lord, her sister never let her forget—snakes aren’t slimy, they’re just smooth. Smooth like feathers, smooth like lace, smooth like the pillow pressed down on your 

Shit. She hasn’t turned away fast enough, hasn’t demurred with Sorry not interested or waved across to a stranger Honey, there you are, so now he’s smiling wider at her, showing teeth. He’s got something black caught between two of them. 

She can already smell his offered cocktail, candied and cloying, clogging the air like the stink of Bluebeard’s lilies. Bluebeard would’ve had a time, a time, a time at a hotel this fine. So many heavy wooden doors with so many old-fashioned skeleton keys. A misting of soft, shushed maids to clean up the messes. 

He nudges the drink closer. It isn’t poison, Alice, don’t worry. Just something to make you feel small, so small. I could fit you in my pocket, my sweet little doll.

Sometimes she wonders about things that make no sense, like maybe she really did have a date with this guy but contracted amnesia, and can people even “contract” amnesia, is that the right word? A headache buds just between her eyes. 

Thank you, she says, hating herself because THANK YOU, really? Thank you, she says again, but I don’t drink. 

Great. Smooth. Now he can lean in even closer, his breath on her cheek, and say, But you came to a bar? 

She lies, I’m waiting for someone.

And you’re sure it isn’t me? He smells worse than the drink, sliding the glass in closer, himself, the glass, himself, until they both threaten to fall into her lap. 

She should stand up and leave, and she almost does, she almost does, except she sees then what she missed upstairs in her room. 

That crust around her fingernails, down deep in the cuticles, coiled and red and how did I miss this? She scrubbed everything so carefully. 

She’s always thought fingernails looked like scales, a wink from some distant reptilian ancestor no one dares acknowledge. She curls them into her palms as calmly as she can. Snakes are vital, her sister told her. They keep rodents from overrunning the world. 

I’m sorry, she says for the second time tonight, I’d really rather be alone.

But here he is leaning in closer with his smile and his drink and that thing between his teeth, and she wonders, she really does, how much more she can swallow.  

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TOOAFRAIDTOASK by Steve Gergley

Posted by u/samuraijake14 - 2 hours ago

Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me?

ok so i know this is going to sound super weird and stuff but please just try to bear with me becuase ive never asked strangers on reddit for advice like this but i swear this is a serious question and im not trolling because this is a real thing that happens to me all the time now and i dont know how to fix it and im too scared to ask my friends or parents about it because of what they might say. Ok so what i wanted to ask is if anyone else gets too scared to poop because they are afraid that a snake will crawl up out of the toilet hole while their sitting there with nothing to protect their bits. im asking because a few days ago i saw a story online (it was on msn or yahoo or someother place that talks about real news, so i think its true) about this woman who was in the bathroom of her house in florida and then she lifted up the toilet lid to do her business but before she sat down she saw a big snake crawling up out of the hole in her toilet where the poop gets flushed away and it turns out that something had happened to the pipes under her house and the snake got in from there and then it crawled all the way up into her toilet from the back. so i guess my question is if anyone else ever sees something like that and gets so scared and cant stop thinking about it to the point that they now cant do even the most normal things in their life like pooping because ever since i read that story i get really scared when i feel the need to poop because what if something like that happens to me? BTW im 14M and i live in northern florida (tallahassee area) so its not like i live right next door to the toilet snake lady, but i do live in the same state so i cant stop thinking that if something so scary like that can happen to a random lady who lives kind of close, then whats stopping something like that from happening to me? now anytime i even think about pooping my mind goes crazy on its own and instantly imagines the most horrible thing that could possibly happen like the other day when i was at my friend terrys house and i needed to go to the bathroom, but then right after i got there and closed the door i saw a mind movie of me sitting on the toilet and getting bitten on the butt by a snake coming up out of the toilet hole and it was really scary because my mind showed me all the horrible details even tho i didnt want it to and even after i tried really hard to think about something else i couldnt and instead i just kept seeing the horrible mind movie of me getting bitten and my body starting to shake and jerk from the poison and me smashing my face against the hard floor and my teeth hitting the tiles really hard and breaking all over the place and it seemed so real that i could almost feel it happening and then in the mind movie i started throwing up uncontrollably and blood was everywhere and in the movie i knew i was dying so i started yelling for my mom because i was so scared and then no matter how hard the real me tried to think of something else, like fortnite or the new slipknot song or that awesome fight with levi from attack on titan, i couldnt stop seeing myself dying horribly and it was so awful to the point that in real life i started crying and i could barely breathe and it was so embarrassing because terry had to call my mom and ask her to come pick me up and even after mom was there i couldnt stop my body from shaking so i just spent the rest of the day in bed and i didnt go to school the next day. i only ask these things because that day was one of the worst in my entire life and im shaking right now just thinking about it but a similar thing happens now every time i have to poop and i dont know what to do or how to make it go away. i know this post has been rambling on for a while and im sorry about that but i just get so incredibly scared sometimes about all the awful stuff in the news and about all the terrible things that could happen to me and my friends and family and i cant stop wondering why everyone is always arguing so much about stuff that seems really obvious like how the other day when my english teacher mrs collins told the class that men and women are exactly the same in every single way, but how is that even possible when girls have lady bits and guys have dongs and girls can get pregnant and guys cant? literally everyone already knows that stuff so why would she even say something that everyone already knows is wrong? so i guess my real question is just why is everything in the world so confusing and scary? also any tips re: my pooping dilemma would be cool thx

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THE HEFT OF IT by Lisa Kenway

‘Any questions, Mrs Brown?’ 

Doctors were all so young these days. So full of talk. I shook my head. Malignant. How much more did I need to know?

Dr Wong smiled quietly, as though sharing a secret, and slid a purple cardboard box across the desk. I half-expected her to offer me an assortment of macarons. Those powdery spaceships that melt on your tongue and stick to the roof of your mouth. And aren’t a patch on the chewy coconut biscuits Grandma used to make. Macaroons, they were called—what a difference a single o made. 

I could picture a plate of macaroons alongside the crochet coaster under Dr Wong’s mug. The coaster had a scalloped edge, like the fine linen Grandma brought out of storage for tea parties when I was a girl. I must have been about five when I snuck into the quiet of her bedroom with one of those precious doilies, held the delicate French lace up to the light, poked my fingers through the petals. And marvelled at the beauty of a bouquet made out of holes. Grandma had seemed ancient then, but couldn’t have been more than fifty. The clink of bone china and the music of Vivaldi soared in my ears. Refined. Contained. Immaculate.

Instead of a macaron, Dr Wong reached into the box and pulled out what looked like a jellyfish. The weight of the implant surprised me. I didn’t expect this alien creature, this giant gelatinous eyeball, not that I had given it any thought. What was the point of vanity at my age? I prodded its smooth surface, pressed my finger in as hard as I could then let go to watch the depression spring back into place. Shuffled the dense hemisphere from hand to hand. 

The surgeon sighed. She had kind eyes. ‘We don’t have to do immediate recon. If you’re not sure, I can do a staged procedure.’ 

I rolled the implant back into the box and she closed the lid. Raised lettering on top spelled out the word ‘Motiva’. Why would anyone choose that name for a line of fake bosoms? Was it meant to be uplifting? To motivate recovery? It sounded like a brand of sanitary napkins. Or shapewear. Singlets and spencers came to mind, and my five-year-old self, hiding in Grandma’s wardrobe while she undressed, hoping to catch a glimpse of cotton and lace. And underneath, the angry scar that ran diagonally across her flat chest. 

‘I can give you time, if you need it. But no more than a week or two.’ The surgeon cradled my gnarled fist in her hands. Her voice was soothing, unhurried, but outside the door another ten women waited, clutching handkerchiefs and trailing support people. 

‘Do whatever you think’s best, Doctor.’

In the waiting room, darling Becca tugged at a loose thread on her sweater and rose to her feet. ‘Ready to go, Nanna?’

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EMPATHY! by Janice Kang

X MARKS THE SPOT. your larynx and syntax are open-winded, words flitting downwards like a map ever-expanding. here is the way to diamond treasure, to sparrow bones and mud. and thus these words are splintered halfway through: cherubic and chthonic — the diary of a child with a knife down their warm pulse. for, in an inventory of dreams, there is no spare air which you can hold in your palms.

SHE REACHES THE X. she takes the other half. grey neutrality, she dons a grey turtleneck and sits among lone wolf sighs, wading in strange breaths. she cannot speak. she is the penumbra of what you cut free in 2016, sun soaked.

you smile against winds. the maiden in velvet pats along the bow around your torso, holding together all of your organs like a corset. you must conform, she seems to say, but hazes lull over you, incohesive fragments. your smile is warm, her hands traversing your body map of thorns and whimsies asunder to the way your lashes point downwards. naught of you can be whole . . . in tonight's dream, you are a ballerina breaking your toes for the first time. when you wake, you are feral nerve damage. you think: trauma conceives something strange. you think: it stains your teeth and dances to eulogies in minor chords.

in another dream, cast in the in-betweens, for you are never fully awake, you are watching a performance, and the maiden leads you into a dark corridor. it turns into a blue field. you remember a piece of something. a bee kills itself on your skin. you wake up and scream, paralyzed like vitrification has overcome the bout of you.

YOU CHASE AFTER HER. the maiden covers you in papercuts made up of love. honey-naught and honey-rot. it is morning. she finds you tucked under your soft wood table, a camerashutter going off in tandem with the rain showers and your breaths. her gaze is light upon your bowed crown, blue and quiet. you never turn off your computer, because there is an itch wholly interlaced in the dip of your chest. i feel that — but she is gone. you await the next moonrise. a friend tries to speak to you from outside the inventory, faces covered by sheer drapes. rulers of the sun and moon, they say, you think, you fall asleep on the tiles. you have created a kingdom where the trauma brews, a malediction inside your throat. it seems that you must have taken someone's poisoned apple for your own.

SHE CONFESSES TO YOU WITH HER NOSE ON YOUR SHOULDER, THAT YOU ARE ONE. that i am you. it is her fingers that glue your eyes together so that you are always asleep. so that you are always filled with rotten cigars in alleys, laughter stuck inside your larynx — someone else's, full and acoustic. she wants the rest of your diamond treasures, though she is but the fig skin against your heels. you chase yourself in circles, compeers and giggling comrades within one soft body, one slipping from a torn viscera. you are out of breath.

when you stare at yourself in the mirror, there is drip-drop agony, but she holds you close and mouths that she is sorry.

WE COEXIST. there is so much space between my arms and sides. i think that there are violent couplet galaxies trying to wrap around my indigo bones, colliding only because she tells them to. i want to put my computer to deep sleep tonight, for this empty epiphany is so dear to my open heart. i hold hands with myself and lay to rest against the dents in my walls. i glue my lashes into one. i wish to be so one that i cannot taste the remnants of anger and aches — so that my dreams are my own, not a labwork of wide-eyed empaths making me blue with windpipe lacks.

(i wake up without a voice.)

X MARKS THE SPOT. SHE REACHES THE X. YOU CHASE AFTER HER. SHE CONFESSES TO YOU WITH HER NOSE ON YOUR SHOULDER, THAT YOU ARE ONE. WE COEXIST

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FAREWELL PROTECTION by Jordan Clark

The still sweltering sun’s kitty-corner to the late afternoon moon—similar to yesterday, but we didn’t go inside then either. Gravel crunches under the weight of a wheeling propane tank behind the brittle fence; little shuffles treading alongside it. There’s chatter, glasses clinking through a screen door, and a white folding table aggressively flipping and clipping into place. We listen to its prongs scuttle and then a grill igniting shortly after. 

Standing in our dying grass, setting my paper plate down as I offer to smear her white from top to bottom. But she tells me it was chunky—cottage cheese-y. 

She finagled a mealy group of noodles into a skeletal chaise; two cup the nape of her neck and coddle her shoulder blades while another bears the brunt of it all—sinking beneath her crossed ankles. Wincing, she searches—unrelentingly—for the sweet spot. Her armpits are being rubbed tender. Flecks of foam flake off; sprinkling the slightly sloshing water like dead ants after a spray. Some get caught in her spatchcocked hair, some near the barren jacuzzi. 

Lounging, playing her mirror—though my supports far less potent, dull even—I scope between my toes to pity hers and her thickly cracked calluses. They’re encrusted in asphalt as if she’d eternally misplaced her shoes. Her plush skin’s discoloring around the open slots of her nylon bathing suit—the one she’d bought on a whim, the one that’s hiding her full bladder, the one she’ll incontestably drape over and let drip from the curtain rod tonight. Little beads of sweat caviar hang in her arms incoming buds. 

I teased her a bit; saying how she’s going to turn into the membrane of a tangerine, how she’ll peel, and how I’ll twiddle her snakeskin until it disintegrates. But it’s moot. Her stubbornness is to be adored.

She should’ve gone to war. All too simply could she have withstood the most brutal waterboardings. Cinch her down, wrench a towel over her face—let her nooks and crannies flourish—then pour; gallon after gallon, and she’d be fine. No gasp. No whimper.

The rippling water entrances me as she continues wiggling. I watch it marble and listen to the party revving up next door. 

Content and gooey; I pluck and pry at the clotted sunscreen braided in my chest hair. 

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LINOLEUM FLOOR by Mark Tulin

It’s morning. Circa 1972. I turn over in bed and gaze down at my gray marble linoleum floor. It’s coming up around the edges, and there are all sorts of dirty stains, punctures, and dried bubblegum spots on it.  I remember when it was new. My father laid it down himself. He brushed on glue, applied the linoleum, trimmed the corners with a sharp razor so it could snugly fit against the walls, and hammered the baseboards in with long, skinny nails.  

The window shade over my bed hangs crooked off to the right with one of its brackets dangling on a thread. If I try to pull it up, the window shade will collapse, and I don’t want people to look in my room at night. 

The room is in the shape of a small rectangle and tends to get very stuffy in the summer. I turn on the little rotating fan that sits on the metal desk, even though the fan just circulates hot air. My mother found the desk on trash day. She gave a neighbor five-bucks to haul it up the stairs to my room. My mother quickly put a bunch of crap on it, like a green rotary phone, a 13-inch TV, a grimy fan, and a small reading lamp.  Now I can’t use the desk to do my homework because there’s no space to put down my spiral binder and books.

Inside the desk drawer are my old baby records like DPT, Polio, and Smallpox vaccinations. My mother listed the dates and times of every shot and chronicled every doctor I saw. She documented that I was 6 pounds and 7 ounces at birth, and that I had hazel eyes and a little tuft of brown hair on the crown of my head. I pretty much look the same but lost most of my baby fat.

Old report cards are also stuffed in the drawer. They are yellowing and stuck together with small pieces of tape. All my evil deeds are thoroughly noted in red ink, my poor math skills emphasized with capital Ds, and my inability to pay attention in Mr. Fisher’s Science Class had labeled me a major class disturbance.

#

It’s the afternoon. I smell the sandy, metallic dust in my room, and my eyes follow the little lint balls floating in midair as the sunlight shines through the open window. Sometimes my mother sweeps the linoleum floor, but that’s a waste because the broom just brings up more dust and she rarely gets all the dirt into a dustpan.  

If my mind’s active, I don’t think about dust or about wheezing or if that annoying gurgle at the bottom of my throat will ever stop. But if I’m bored and restless, I notice everything as if my internal organs are on loudspeaker and I have X-ray eyes that can see the minutest details of my existence.  

I try to cough up phlegm periodically to clear my airways, but no matter how much I hawk, the wheeze always remains deep in the bottom of my lungs like a sunken treasure that no one could ever pull out. The doctor tries to help, but he says that there’s no cure. “You have to have good asthma maintenance,” is all he says, and gives me a bunch of steroids like unwrapped presents to take home.

Once, he stuck a long, snaking metal tube down my lungs trying to dislodge a thick glob of phlegm. There was a camera at the end of the tube and a monitor showing the inside of my lungs and what nasty stuff was happening. But I couldn’t look at the screen when the doctor was pointing because he was choking me to death. After my face turned blue and I waved my hands in desperation several times, he pulled the damn thing out. I told him never to try that again or my mother would sue the hell out of him.

I dig into my pocket and feel my emergency inhaler just in case I need it. It’s my life support, and I’m careful not to overuse it. One night I must have taken fifty puffs, and I ended up in the emergency room, which resulted in one week in the hospital with tubes in my arms and up my nostrils. I had lost ten pounds in the hospital that week, couldn’t sleep, and all I thought about was how the hell am I going to get out of there.

It’s days like this with nothing to do that I spend a lot of time thinking in my room.  I wonder what life will have in store for me and what I will become in ten or twenty years. I often get headaches just thinking about it because I have no clue. My father wants me to work for him in his produce store on the highway. I want to be a rock singer like Mick Jagger or a baseball pitcher like Nolan Ryan, something where I can be famous and where girls would notice me. All my mother says about my future is “Get a respectable job selling washers and dryers at Sears & Roebucks so you can wear a shirt and tie.”

#

It’s nighttime. Even though my head feels achy, I lay in bed enjoying the cool breeze coming through the window screen. I turn to the side of the bed where I look out of the window and wait for it to rain. I love watching clouds burst into a million scattered raindrops and hearing the jarring combination of thunder and lightning shake and rattle the night.

I know I should be falling asleep, but I’m wheezy again and pull out my inhaler and take two puffs.  The inhaler makes me hyper, so I walk around the linoleum floor in my bare feet and open my closet. There's my glen plaid bar mitzvah suit hanging along with the plush Hebrew bag stuffed with yarmulkes and prayer shawls.  My old blue cub scout uniform with the badges sewn to the shirt hangs there too, a little dull with age. The Louisville Slugger baseball bat that Uncle Perry bought lays on its side, and my Mickey Mantle glove with a hardball is tucked in the corner. I wonder how long these things will be in my closet. I wonder what new closets that I’ll have when I get older and what different things will be inside of them.  

#

The next morning, I wake to a soaking wet bed.  When I remove the sheets, the stains ingrained in the mattress look like my personal urine signature. They are my emotional wounds, sores that have never healed and seem to linger in this putrid air. They are many times that I unintentionally pissed the bed in my shame-ridden childhood. I try to convince my mother that it’s only spilled water, an accident. Of course, she doesn’t believe me. So, I let the bed dry, sprinkle some Talc Powder on it, and turn the mattress over, as if it were a fresh new start.

About an hour later, I pick up the receiver of the lime-green rotary telephone, and I hear Jeff’s voice. We talk about seeing Godzilla at the Tyson and scheme how much money we can get from our parents for candy and hoagies. I tell him that I really want to see Village of the Damned at the Castor and that I can’t wait to buy a meatball grinder from Dante’s Inferno. I quickly get dressed, and before I know it, I’m walking in the bright sunshine on Longshore Avenue toward my friend’s house with Ticket to Ride playing in my head. The air is super clean from last night's rain.  My body feels energized as I take bouncy steps in my Converse Hi Tops on the cement sidewalk that seems to lead me to the Promise Land. 

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A CARDINAL SEEKS THE ORIGIN OF ITS CAMOUFLAGE by Zach Powers

I posed for weeks as the jacket of a lawn jockey, clutching his back and draping my wings over his shoulders. That was the longest I ever stayed in one place. I felt understood by the jockey and vice versa. Living life as an unwilling decoration. This was long before the mooning gnome’s conical red hat, but after the red-striped lighthouse in the flower bed. I don’t know what drew me first to lawn ornaments. Perhaps the reason for their inexplicable existences would relate to my own. I flew up and away from the lawn jockey, tipping my wing in adieu.

I survived my days in the hospital scavenging leftover noodles from trays the orderlies set in the halls. The clumpy marinara stuck in the feathers of my face. I snuck moments of preening, dared trips to the clogged drinking fountain for baths. My plan had been for a simple flight through the halls. Reconnaissance. But on my way out, there over the door hung the emergency exit sign, a red that glowed. I hooked my feet at the base of the E and contorted myself to the form of the letter, head and wings extended in profile, a hieroglyph of some forgotten god. The next day the X and then the I and the T. Out of letters, I followed the instructions I had spelled to myself and darted through the automatic door as a gurney rolled in. The woman on the gurney bled from her gut, a wound that gushed so bright I almost turned around and followed.

In the cooler months, I found myself chasing sunsets. For warmth, of course, but also to linger in that moment of perfect red, the instant each day the sky pauses between orange and indigo. If only I could fly faster, keep pace with that color as it circled the Earth. I imagined my forebearers born from chunks of the sky itself.

The most difficult part of the rose bush was avoiding the thorns. I tucked my body behind the leaves and poked out my head as though I were a fresh bud. I chirped at bees to keep them at bay. I sat as still as a scarecrow whenever a person bowed to sniff. No one ever noticed me. Perhaps I smell like a rose, but I can smell the roses and not myself.

I clung to the spoiler of a cherry red Corvette. Trees alongside the highway stretched to green streaks. Farther away, the trees seemed to move more slowly. A radio tower in the distance, red light flashing at the top, barely moved at all.

The decorative shutters on a house, a bold crimson almost too much for me to bear. I started at the top and hopped down one slat at a time. Then from the bottom back to the top. The paint flecked at my touch, revealing an older, fainter red underneath. The shutters were bolted to the brick wall at all four corners.

I joined the cheering crowd at a high school football game, the home team in red and white. Dipping down to the sideline, I claimed a spot on the shoulder pad of the smallest player. He sat on the end of the bench, as far from the coach as possible. He held an empty Gatorade cup for the whole game. A few drops of fruit punch flavor still gathered in the seam at the bottom. After the game, the player crumpled the cup and threw it on the ground. The marching band stomped it into the mud as they took the field for a final rendition of the fight song. 

Stand on a fire hydrant for long enough and you learn to feel the thrum of water through your feet. Nestle in the corner of a fire engine, and you learn that the most it usually moves is to the driveway for a wash.

Signs for shopping. Signs for stopping. Certain stripes of certain flags.

Some days there was hardly any red to be found, at least nothing I hadn’t seen a dozen times before. I soared over the suburbs, dulled by the familiar front doors and generic cars. So many backyard tool-sheds made up to look like barns. The paint on the curbs had faded so badly you couldn’t fault a person for parking along a stretch where parking was forbidden.

I almost missed it, a small tree alone in a front yard, the highest branches barely reaching the peak of the house’s roof. Red leaves, every single one of them. No, the leaves weren’t quite the same color as me. My red is noble, the leaves more brash. I’d seen red leaves on trees each autumn, of course, but always mixed with yellow and orange. Even the slightest jostle sent those leaves fluttering to the ground. This, though, this was spring, the branches full, the color uniform all the way around.

The shock of the sight stopped my wings from flapping. I plummeted, relishing the moments of freefall. Spreading my wings, I caught an updraft and glided the rest of the way down to the tree. The leaves whipped into motion, as if a gust had swept through them, but the only movement to the air was my updraft, nothing that would disturb a leaf more than a little.

I settled on the highest branch, a decoration at the top of the tree. It was covered not with red leaves but with other birds, summer tanagers, distant cousins I’d seen often enough but with whom I seldom spoke. I chirped. The tanagers met me with silence. I shifted awkwardly on the branch, one leg to the other. A shudder passed through the tanagers, from those nearest to those farthest away, an effect like rippling water. The tanagers lifted from the tree as one, as if each were a single feather on a larger bird, spreading in every direction, their color diminishing like smoke. From far enough away, all birds look like dots of black against the sky.

I expected the tree to be bare, but the tanagers had merely obscured the foliage. Small leaves like seven-toed feet grew in clusters at the ends of the branches. Some sort of maple. And these leaves were red, almost the same color as my plumage. It was as if I stood in front of a window that multiplied my reflection into an entire flock.

If I told you I didn’t know why I spent hours scouring every branch of the red-leafed tree, I’d be lying. It’s embarrassing for a grown bird to admit, but I sought the nest I had come from, the shards of the shell from which I hatched. But there was no nest, not even the ugly lump of a squirrel’s.

I fluttered back to the top of the tree. I’d never been much for nesting, but how often do you find such prime property? Maybe all this time it wasn’t where I’d come from for which I was searching, but for a place to settle down. A home for my own chicks’ first flights, the place they would depart before they were old enough to remember having been there at all.

A human child pedaled past on a red bicycle, sleek and shiny. She rode on the sidewalk, tires buzzing over the concrete. The sun caught the bike’s glossy finish and flashed like the light on a fire truck or atop a tower.

I was aloft before I knew it, pumping my wings in the bike’s wake. The tree would always be there, I told myself. But if I’m honest, I’ll never be able to re-find it. I’ve already forgotten the landmarks nearby, the signposts along the way. Even a fledgling knows the first tree you forget is far from the last.

A car stopped at an intersection to let the girl pass. She rang the bell on her handlebars, a pleasant chirp of a sound. I barely noticed the car’s brake lights wink on and off as it inched over the white line painted on the roadway. On and off. Impatient to make it home at the end of another long day.

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WHAT I THOUGHT WHEN THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN by Rekha Valliappan

The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.

-Margaret Atwood

What I thought when the bear went over the mountain:

How green the earth looked on this side and on the other side too and if I could spot a wee brown movement through the canopy of green how much far less confusing it would be to not mistake the earth for a summer strolling bear;

That the meaningfulness of my life had gotten bleaker when I was no longer the super-human I thought I was, most unwilling as it turns out to join the bear on the other side of the mountain because goodness knows his intentions, or lack of intentions as the case may be in the face of chaos evidenced by irrational animals who are followed;

That all things considered the bear knows his mountain well, especially the side he climbs and over the other side, and that one gets the feeling he is a regular decent sort of fellow, pragmatic even, although hungry at all times, when he grows hard-working;

That in all this 300 square miles of pristine acreage of clean wilderness I was the one who got to the spot where the bear is sighted at the precise moment he grew mindful of maintaining his solid routine of food, fruit, sweet dessert, and river water and climbing up and climbing down productivity maneuvers for his daily needs;

That ironic immunity aside the authorities could have done a better job at signage than these rotted cardboard signs which unimaginably lead to the very exact favorite viewing spot of the great big brown bear;

That bears can and do zip around at a fair rate of speed given their bulk and agility and can and do make Machiavellian progress in life when their sole goal of attainment is to see the other side of the mountain;

That the tentative moment when I am sliding off the rocky overhang because I've worn the wrong footwear and it doesn't give me a toehold on the slippery trail and I have spotted the bear, has arrived, and I no longer care where this goes;

That before the bear arrived to trek to the other side of the mountain I was perfectly happy with my grilled shrimp, barbecued trout, ripe plums and Prosecco, singing to the trees 'The Bear went over the mountain, O/Oh the bear went over the mountain, O/Oh, the bear went over the mountain, To See What It Could See, To See—;"

That the bear is the hungriest creature imaginable when on the other side of the mountain, if stoked, especially if sweet-smelling fishy odors interfere with his olfactory observations;

That it is a universally accepted fact that bears do not have the ability to make political decisions but attack when their libido is stepped up and the backdrop is a steep lonely descent down the mountain on the other side;

That the bear in his eagerness to please himself evaluates his chances of success faster than I can squirm out of a meet-the-bear-face-to-face challenge;

That the mounting pressure from the bear makes me seriously re-think my life and the friendly everyday gestures of hugs, squeezes, air kisses, dainty crushes, empty, fake, true or otherwise;

That death rattles and soft prayers whispered to the fir trees or poetry to the winds and the clouds do not work as expected, when one is caught on the other side of the mountain, however hard one grimaces or growls;

That I developed a healthy respect for all of God's creatures, animals, nature, the universe, especially bears, after my mind dreamed up all the possible thought-provoking bear encounters ever recorded in animal planet history, most of which ended painfully;

That Mr. Grizzly must always be accorded the full benefit of the doubt when one is nose to toe with a curious bear over the mountain, through no fault of one's own, although one's universe is basically ended, but the erstwhile bear does not know this;

That in the rush to hostilities one can hear one's bones crunch into banana splits in the pivotal popping crush of a good bear hug and if one leaks any more bodily fluids in the tall grasses there would not be much of one left anyway except loose skin in tank top and shorts;

That the funny looking ball of dark brown twine wrapped around my fingers is not twine at all but tufts of animal fur;

That behind their tiny gumball eyes bears can actually think like a human and given that generic ability can live in human society with the rest of us;

That existential dread aside, the idiotic notion that I have enough resources to win an encounter with a bear bespeaks my own stupidity in following the bear to the other side of the mountain;

That the encounter could end disastrously anyhow even were I to be suitably equipped, which I am not,  in combat gear and adequate tactics and five alarm fire distancing recourse to off-set the terrible bear attack on the other side of the mountain;

That modern analysis of current bears on both sides of the mountain place greater emphasis on what the bear saw and learned from his experiences, than mine, which says a great deal about our indifferent universe, however absurd;

That the sardonic rictus of a smile the bear wears when he comes in close proximity to my face, leaking wetness and satisfying growls, isn't his expression of frozen joy at having found a tasty morsel but his excitement of the view on the other side of the mountain, and the view is expansive;

That I don't look happy when he shakes my head like a rag doll but it is what I would feel hours later when I can look in the mirror is what I am trying my damnedest not to remember, a Confucius conundrum; 

That all bear movies, including Grizzly I once saw in my youth, have taught me nothing, or maybe something but not everything;

That all humans have animal instincts which suggest not all soulful hairy beasts are bears, or maybe some who wear fuzzy brown torsos to pretend human existence, but those that are and have gone over the mountain might very well be the next Camus or Poe or hula dancer or President of a country looking for bears to lead them;

That my frantic soul aside, what could the bear have possibly decided it could see on the other side that wasn't clearer on this side?

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A BILLABLE HOUR by Katherine Heath

In the time that it takes him to park and unload the maintenance van into the freight elevator of the American Angus Journal, I’ve just rolled over to swipe right on the morning alarm. 

The receptionist, Sharon, escorts him past the framed photographs of carved ribeye—gorgeous cuts of glistening and perfectly pink meat—to the malfunctioning Hoshizaki. Normally it produces two-hundred and eighty pounds of ice in twenty-four hours, but this week, in the middle of a Missouri July, Sharon and her coworkers can't keep their sweet teas cool. By the time his hands are tinkering with the organs of the machine, I’ve only made the walk from bed to kitchen table and opened the laptop.  

You must work backwards. You clean it, so you can put it back together to clean it again, he would say if ever asked about his process. To disassemble, he removes the deflector, float device, and pump, placing each in the sink to soak in bleach. He sprays solution on the evaporator plates—where ice forms once the temperature drops. He chisels limescale deposits where water and metal meet. He removes black mold from the tubes with a skinny brush designed for baby bottles. 

As he works backwards to clean, I stare at a blank Powerpoint slide for a presentation I’m building for Toy Brand Inc. entitled, “Life of 5-to-7-year-olds today.” I need an image to pair with the headline, “Generation Alpha, the True Emotive Storytellers.” I google a combination of relevant search terms like “child” + “writing” + “excited,” and scroll through the results: 

“Girl writing letter to father christmas Stock Photo #88415957”

“Boy writing down notes Stock Photo #76758209

“iStock rainbow children drawing art hobby”  

“Supportive father helping his child #939050552” 

All watermarked and licensed for use, meaning out of budget. 

After he reassembles, while he waits for the delimer mix to cycle its way through the nickel-chromium wire cages, he picks up a recent issue of the Beef Bulletin, a publication Sharon and her team produce. This month focuses on selecting cattle at elevation and features real-world bulls from the Connealy farm. One ad promotes a breeding season guarantee. Another offers discounted semen and embryo warehousing from Bovine Elite. Call us today to order! 

“It’s like Playboy with cows…and for farmers,” he will later say in jest as he describes the lighting and sheen of monochromatic hair. 

While he idly flips pages of fertile livestock, I try another tactic and go to my secret image source, the one in which clients can never know. I open my Insta-Photo social media account and type in ‘@midwestMama,’ the profile of a friend from back home. Her bio reminds me that she is into “mindful homemaking~~mothering three,” and “the simple things done with care.” My right index finger glides through hundreds of shots of her family. Each curated with the right mix of plants, flexitarian dishes, and smiling children—props displayed against soft hues of pink and white to convey the lifestyle brand that is @midwestMama. 

I click on the photo of her youngest dressed in costume, a nylon cape draped over the shoulders, holding a wooden shield and sword that look as though they were carved from a tree out in the backyard that morning, an upscale take on homemade. I hit ctrl + C, ctrl + P, then, using the cursor, adjust the placement of the picture to the left under the headline.   

We haven’t spoken in years, but her face and her kids, which easily pass for ages 5-to-7, will soon sparkle on-screen for my clients.   

Polishing the front and side panels with a paper towel, he knows the exterior speaks for the real work inside; his reflection in the stainless-steel signals a job well done. 

As I labor over the next image search for slide twelve of ninety-six, he, Dad, folds up the flimsy aluminum ladder, and before exiting, peeks inside one final time to watch the stream transform into a waterfall of frozen half-moon shapes. 

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