Fiction

dear the eartH by JP Vallières

February 12, 2019

dear the eartH

sendar saying maybe the earth help sendaR sendar in quest of the earth habitatioN sendar from nodaN nodians now gone inexplicably removed from galaxY

dear the eartH

maybe help sendaR sendar last one current in nodaN big day of reckoninG only sendar livinG

dear the eartH

sendar an artisT before big day of reckoning fatherman saying sendar not be artisT

dear the eartH

when existing fatherman saying sendar achieve license for galaxy rideR sendar saying galaxy rider does not fit into artist incarnatioN

dear the eartH

sendar now shameful not knowing how to fly galaxy rideR could come in handy in pursuit of the earth habitatioN fatherman maybe precisE sendar trying not to think about fathermaN fatherman departeD sendar truthfully wearisomE

dear the eartH

artist forbids practicalitieS comrade once saying sendar get no femalian without galaxy rideR sendar write stunning poem of nodan for many femalians but poems transporting no appreciatioN

dear the eartH

femalians affectioning those with galaxy rider licensE sendar stuck on regreT sendar trying to forget nodianS maybe the earth help sendaR maybe the earth fly galaxy rider to nodan for pickuP maybe the earth teach sendar the ways of meN

dear the eartH

sendar wait long-sufferingly for the earth solutioN

dear the eartH

sendar noticing distances in galaxY meaning sendar dreading lonesome infinitieS meaning agony magnifies in light of daY

dear the eartH

does the earth-artist bring femalian delighT does the earth femalian agree to artist like-abilitieS

dear the eartH

when existing fatherman looking northway pointing to the eartH blue light meaning the eartH fatherman saying it is where men abidE

dear the eartH

when existing fatherman saying achieve galaxy rider licensE fatherman saying license engages practicalitieS sendar saying fatherman neglecting comprehension of artisT sendar so youthful and rageful with fathermaN sendar then going off finding hole in rocK

dear the eartH

in time sendar crawling out of hole in rocK sendar finding nodan empty of habitatioN sendar waiting good-naturedly for emerging nodianS waiting for merriment of big jest on sendaR no jibe no jest on sendaR sendar finding only silence under starS

dear the eartH

now sendar seeking the earth assistancE now sendar waiting hopeful for successful deliverancE

dear the eartH

sendar expecting increase in communicationS eons pass sendaR maybe men of the earth grasping all sendar sayinG maybe men of the earth reflecting on ways of nodaN

dear the eartH

maybe men of the earth will save sendaR maybe men of the earth will relate communications back to sendaR

dear the eartH

if only femalian in hole with sendar on big day of reckoninG sendar thinking femalian would then transport appreciation of poeM femalian with no other possibilities bringing affections to sendaR femalian would then have no objection to sendar artistrY

dear the eartH

if only licensed femalian in hole with sendar on big day of reckoninG sendar thinking licensed femalian gliding sendar and poem to the earth like shooting staR

dear the eartH

sendar giving in to ways of the losT femalians no morE fatherman no morE galaxy rider possibilities no morE sendar fading in to the sands of nodaN meaning sendar facing finalitieS

dear the eartH

sendar keen-sighteD sendar observing the earth blue light diminishinG

dear the eartH

sendar sending one last star corE one final communicatioN does the earth retain inhabitantS does the earth remain existinG

dear the sands of nodaN

nodan longstanding and graY no more blue in the galaxY darkness occupying immensitieS under three moons sendar dreaming of femalianS sendar remembering femaliaN her body curving identical to ray of lighT

WITH NO. 27 by Gregg Williard

February 11, 2019

Specialist Hatfield had just finished No. 26. Her boots thudded over the pine and plywood walkway, springy as a playground. Near the inside gate she hopped off onto sand and crushed coral, took a few steps and stopped to jot something down on her clipboard and to check the bruises and blood on her knuckles. The two nearest perimeter guards saw a conscientious professional taking care of details. She kept her boonie hat down. She worked hard and was up for promotion. She felt lucky to be at the camp, far away from combat duty. She followed the Army imperative: stay in your lane. Her lane was Mental Health Technician from the Wisconsin Reserves, assigned to an interrogation team. A wobbly Star Spangled Banner played over the P.A. and she stood at attention and saluted, the clipboard tucked in her armpit and getting damp.

The anthem finished and she again returned to her notes. Her hand moved the way a hand does when writing a brief afterthought of a note, but she had no afterthought and it was not a note, or even writing but a drawing of writing, not just scribbles but a cursive pattern throwing shadows and a chiaroscuro forms across the page, straight up and down, rich with loops, dots, and scalloped peaks like a child’s depiction of ocean waves, the pen on paper sound of a distant sea, or trickle of sand.

The writing resembled Arabic. She’s learned to read a few words for road and warning signs. Maybe not so much Arabic as a code.

Her own writing was like this. When they did her personality profile they said straight up and down meant she was independent, not unfriendly but not exactly a people person either. Doesn’t socialize much. Prefers to keep to herself. They got it about right. Everybody was surprised she joined up. For crissake there’s easier ways to pay for school and, you’ll never have any time alone. Later on, of course, there were better reasons to call it a mistake.

Ahead was a long row of white plastic and metal boxes resembling porta potties. Their doors were numbered 1 through 30. The camp personnel had some fun imagining bungalows, playhouses, dog houses. They called this section of the camp The Bates Motel, The Roach Hotel, The Hood, The Kennels or, Dogtown. When she reached No. 27, she banged on the door twice with the flat of her hand. She opened the slot and said, “Sit down, turn around, don’t show face.” She slipped the clipboard under her arm, opened her velcroed left hip pocket and removed a gray cloth hood with a square breathing vent. She opened the opposite pocket and took out a black ski mask and pulled it over her head. She checked through the slot that 27 was sitting and turned with his back to her. She opened the door and in an affect-less monotone she recited, “We’re coming in if you turn around we kick your ass do you understand” and without waiting for 27’s mumbled “understand” she entered the cell and slipped the gray hood over his head. She cinched and locked the plastic cuff around the throat.

She sat and removed her mask. She said, “Turn. Tell me about Mustafa.” He turned and she watched his hood cave in and out with his breath.

“I don’t know any Mustafa.”

“Kabul. Mustafa. You met him at the bus stop. You went into the mountains with him. He took you to the camp. You learned about guns, explosives, tactics.”

“I don’t know this Mustafa. I never went to the mountains with Mustafa.”

“Tell me about Mustafa.”

“I tell you again, I don’t know any Mustafa.”

“Tell me about Mustafa.” She flipped pages in her notebook.

“I don’t know this Mustafa.”

Pages of doodles. Flipping them helped create the appropriate interrogation atmosphere. Her mission was atmosphere.

“Tell me about Mustafa.”

“I don’t know this Mustafa.”

“Tell me about that Mustafa.”

“I don’t know this, that or any Mustafa!”

She flipped more pages. It was silent enough to hear the surf.

She said, “After my first tour I went home. One of my favorite things had always been trash picking. See, where I come from, there’s a university. A big one. Back home every August 16^th the students move out of their apartments. They throw out all their stuff. On the sidewalk.”

“What stuff?”

“All kinds. Lamps, mirrors, tea pots. I even found a forty-gallon tropical fish tank, full of Convict Julies and Puffers.”

“Convict Julies.”

“My idea of heaven.”

“Convict Julies in Heaven.” He leaned forward. “Please. Take off the hood.”

“Anyway, that was the worst thing, because once you get in a combat zone the first thing you learn is…”

“Please, take off the hood.”

“That’s not possible.”

He slumped back against the wall and sighed. After a few seconds the hood did an infinitesimal nod.

She said, “Once you get in a combat zone the first thing you learn is street trash might be wired with explosive devices.””

The hood nodded.

“The things Mustafa taught you how to make.”

“No.”

“I was there in the beginning. The looting. Ancient Persian urns and Babylonian sculptures mixed in with beer cans and old tires. That’s how my patrol got messed up. We stopped to trash pick. Next thing I’m upside down in my vehicle. I remember sand pouring down on my arm. I was sent home. Come August 16^th, there it is: amazing retro kitchen table with sparkly red chairs, laminated table top with red boomerang pattern in perfect condition, and it’s right there, on the sidewalk, in the trash, right there. Home. ”

“Right there.”

“And all I needed to do is stop my truck, open the back and put it in. Just take it.”

Their tandem breathing slowed, matched.

She said, “I couldn’t do it.”

A spot of sweat or saliva grew from behind his hood. He said, “No more treasures. All right. I confess. It was Mustafa and me. We planted all the roadside bombs. We did 9-11. Now we are ready to detonate thousands of dirty bombs in all your infidel cities, starting with your home. Mustafa and I also claim responsibility for the secret assassination of President Bush, and his replacement with an Al-Quida impostor. Mustafa and I are ready to launch drones armed with magnetic pulse weapons over your key cities, destroying all internet and computer systems. Mustafa and I are also responsible for your hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and Irene, which we artificially enhanced with our Secret Islamic Weather Weapons. Mustafa and I will also introduce anthrax into your school lunch programs, and a plague of nanorobots into your water supply, which will bond with the stomach linings of all overfed Americans and explode when combined with your fast food, creating a nation of surprise suicide bombers, martyrs to the Happy Meal. Are you getting all this?”

She took in the sound of her pen point scurrying, tapping, swooping across the page. She was getting all the facts, catching the full confession, the whole enchilada in graphic cavalcade: a report in dancing loops like old style school girl cursive, or the John Hancocks of narcissist Generals or Presidents or CEO’s, deadbeat dads on a bi-polar check-forging spree, or Arabic, beautiful Arabic, or the slosh of forty gallon tanks holding Convict Julies, their scurries in the algae mapped across her reporting form.

She released the cuff and took off the hood. She opened the door and he ran past her toward the fence. Beyond it was the shore and the waves. He staggered in the sand. His legs must have been weak from his long captivity. The perimeter guards barked commands to halt. They closed on him from three directions. She noted the time, their location, their rank, the tide. It was high. Coming in.

ELSA LANCHESTER’S ABORTION by J. Edward Kruft

February 10, 2019

Her own parents never married – an intentional thumbing of the nose to Victorian-era London – and she wondered, as she watched her husband padding off toward the pool, leaving his statuette on the piano, if she hadn’t best done the same. She loved Charles, and she was relatively certain he loved her – at the very least he adored her – but after four years as Mrs. Charles Laughton, Elsa was well aware of her husband’s preferences and proclivities and while on the surface it didn’t bother her to the degree a wife should be bothered, things changed that morning.

Kate approached, clutching her own golden statue (clutching it, thought Elsa, as though it were made of solid gold as opposed to merely plated). She was not overly fond of Kate, but she tried to smile as though she were.

“Elsa, why the long face?” asked Kate. “I should think you’d be very pleased on Charles’ behalf. It’s a marvelous little trophy, don’t you think?” Elsa lifted her husband’s statuette from the piano. It was only then that she noticed it was not yet engraved, and something about that felt empty, and that triggered a sudden and dizzying fear of what the rest of her life might very well be like.

She excused herself without comment (causing Kate’s face to draw) and walked in the direction she’d seen her husband make his exit. He was there, by the pool, smoking with Walter and George (whose gorgeous house this was, high above Sunset Strip). Elsa walked to the edge of the blue lawn to where three evenly spaced palms swayed in the cool mid-March breeze. And as she went to adjust her stole to cover her bare shoulders, a sudden and violent wave of nausea swept from her toes to her throat and nearly without warning, she vomited into the ivy that covered the raised beds, and in doing so, she unwittingly encouraged a rat to come out of hiding. Elsa screamed. And just like in the movies, the low hum of party conversation came to a screeching halt. Looking up, she saw Charles charging toward her, calling: “Elsa. Are you all right? Are you all right, my darling?” In that moment, despite it all, she was certain they would be together for many years to come (it would be, in fact, until his death, almost thirty years hence). At her side now, Charles lifted her stole to cover her shoulders and then took both of her hands in his. “Elsa?” he asked.

“I’m fine, Charles. Just tired.”

“But my dear, you screamed.”

“Oh yes,” she said, having already forgotten. “There was a rat.”

“How hideous,” he said, moving her away from the ivy.

“I hate to ruin your night, Charles,” began Elsa.

“Don’t be silly, my dear,” said Charles. “I shall take you home at once. I’ve tired of the crowds at any rate. It will be nice to be just the two of us again.”

“Yes,” agreed Elsa. “Just the two of us.”

She had made up her mind.

ROBOT MOTHER by Brittany Weeks

February 8, 2019

How is Raptor. Who is Raptor. I forgot your boyfriend’s name. Raptor sent me an article about the water temple in Ocarina of Time. The article is from 2007.

Everly’s warmth is calculated. In her eyes I might be God too. Everly is asking for help strategically, she is earning love. My throat is tight and small and my arms weigh into the ground, Everly is amused by my amusement. When her voice becomes sticky sweet and high and she innocently dances on doe legs that look shaky but move quickly around Raptor, her eyes light up as he struts directly into her trap, Everly’s eyes meet mine, I taste metallic and then I taste sweet, I have bit my own tongue.

Raptor needs: small frequent rewards; task completion; he needs challenges that are flattering but not impossible. Everly knows how to monitor his brain chemistry. She keeps his serotonin fluctuation at the perfect rate to induce addiction. Everly is not a psychologist.

After pressing SPF 50 into my skin Everly balances club masters over my face and I swat her away when she attempts to fix the brim of my hat. Everly told me once that she dove head first into icy water and that immersion in cold shocked and stopped her from having her period forever. I heard Raptor once on the phone telling someone about an article he read about techno-fundamentalism. He said Everly has a metal screw in her left knee from an accident when she was a child and I am certain that is not true and I can’t shake the image of Everly with mechanical valves in her heart medical metal arteries and veins and I imagine that Everly watches me from the ceiling while I sleep and reads my mind and somehow instead of making me feel guilty this fantasy makes me feel safe and warm and calm like being wrapped in an electric blanket. I point to the oranges packed in the Tupperware that Everly and I had prepared earlier that day when Raptor was doing work in the yard and she removes the peel and passes over an innocuous slice. As my hands shake and messages are fired from my brain and lost in a fog that grows suspended between my mind and my body she watches without judgment, and when I look at her forehead and look out to other parts of the beach she reaches over and takes the orange slice and effortlessly feeds it to me, relieving my hands, who still make the motion as though the orange slice is still there, as though they might still accomplish the job. I taste metallic and then sweet, Everly wets a paper towel and dabs my mouth, her lips have pruned and a faint line appears between her brows, she is concerned, I have bit my own tongue.

Raptor watches her every move and moves a beach bag so that she can have a seat and he stands to go and grill a vegan patty on top of a blood-stained meat rack, gently browning each side, her faithful servant. He tells the audience about an article he read about transhumanism and gauges her reaction expertly. Raptor, a meteorologist. He adjusts his take on the article carefully, micro correcting his course according to the reading of her brow. It was an interesting article, and as a slight ruffle appears it was a far reaching article, and as the ruffle melts into amusement it was well written and insightful, Raptor reaches blindly in every direction to explore this new assertion and we watch him generate a beautiful bespoke narrative custom tailored on the spot with slight frayed edges but seams tight and the functionality that is still sound, still there, it is a dependable textile and he surveys it with pride and slight bewilderment at his own skill or luck, he holds it up like a trophy, there is a drop of sweat on his lip, it is sunny, Raptor is athletic and sharp and he is tan and he looks like a God he is naive and boyish and powerful.

ARMILUSTRIUM by Rebecca Otter

February 7, 2019

My dad plays chess like a mathematician. Each of his turns stretch on while he contemplates the board from every angle and I forget my grand strategy. To entertain myself in these gaps, I look where his gaze falls. When he mutters to himself, is he frustrated with my playing? Or is that another tactic meant to confuse me further?

When he finally chooses one lucky piece with a heavy sigh, how that piece gleams in the TV light as he lifts it—slowly, as he does most things. My dad is okay at defense. But he’s ruthless at offense, felling knights who once had no reason to doubt their security, distracting me with someone expendable, all without warning from his cold eyes. After years of losing, I still can’t learn to sacrifice a strong soldier for the good of the army.

After I lose, we sit on the couches for a bit, then the move I always see coming—he packs his computer, laces his shoes, and plants a kiss on my hair. He leaves me with a box of polished wood and returns home to his new queen, unapproachable Venus, the one he readily sacrificed his entire army for. I’ve been watching his strategy for a long time, and so much learning to sacrifice makes it hard to remember when our war should end.

THE SWANS WHO SAY MOM by Amanda Claire Buckley

February 6, 2019

The mother punches a mouth in the wall, and we climb through it. The mother punches a throat in the wall and the father puts a picture of daisies over it. We walk along the linings of the lungs and whisper we love our mother quietly to ourselves. We walk along the wall until it becomes the bottom of a lake. We walk along the bottom of the lake in the wall and we murmur to each other about our situation: our murmurs rise up like captions to cartoons. The bubbles fall out of the mouths of swans—we love our mother they say on the surface.

The mother bakes a soufflé with the father. The mother bakes a scuffle with the father. The soufflé sits on the windowsill until we love our mother too loud from within the walls and it breaks. The mother punches the pore of a sponge in the wall and we absorb the shock of it. The scum from the pan where the soufflé sat cooking in butter is caked on the edges of the holes in the sponge. We stare at the grime and ask innocent is what we’re supposed to suck on? The mother punches a fried egg in the wall and the father puts a hand over it, breaks it like the soufflé. He spackles we love our mother inside and we read it out loud as punishment. We suckle the sun yellow paste dry.

We crab walk with our noses scrapping against the inside of wallpaper towards the kitchen every morning. We crabs, with our translucent baby shells, move within the walls towards the kitchen as if from sand to water. We can’t make it to the table, to the sea, even though the father pulled out the chairs as far as he could—the mother’s lungs get in our way. Even from within the lungs we smell it: burnt toast, oh boy (eyes exploring the underside of our hairline) we love our mother. The house is the mother. We live inside her.

The timer goes off. The mother soufflés and we will be scalped. The wall’s lips purse and ours shut. We’ve learned how to choke from the asbestos. The mother soufflés and her throat runs like yolk and she tosses the sponge into her bag and puts her mouth to the ignition of the SUV don’t tell her, father we dropped her wallet and keys into the batter on accident we swear father and baked it at 375 degrees. She put it on the windowsill herself, though. That wasn’t us. It wasn’t our fault, but now we are hot boxed in the walls. 375 degrees. We are baked within her. We attempt to walk the circumference off. Around and around the bottom of the lake with the creamy water on top of us and the captions to the cartoons are written on the beaks of the swans following us.

We step on a packet of ketchup on the floor in the walls of the lake and it explodes we love our mother and the bubbles of red sugar float up to the top. The swans swim over the innards. Tomato blood trails their belly feathers and when other families visit the lake, they wonder what went wrong with the red belly beauties. The swans respond, mom. The swans honk, mom. Mom. Mom.

BLOOD! by Oliver Zarandi

February 5, 2019

The elderly lady bleeds every day in my favourite cafe. The owner accommodates this and surrounds her with buckets. He mops it up. Sometimes he puts her in a bathtub, right there in the centre of the café, and she fills it up, laughing and bleeding. People applaud and remark on her unique nature.

I hate her, I tell my husband, I hate her with all my heart.

He says nothing because he’s a coward. He carries on reading his newspaper and ignores me. He has beady eyes and untrustworthy hands. He has the bony toes of a medieval Jesus.

I tell him don’t you ignore me. Don’t you remember my life?

I remember, he says. Your life is one filled with tragedies. I may order another soup.

My parents were two torso-less lugs who beat me silly with rolled up newspapers. They made me eat sharp foods and made me sleep in difficult spaces, cramming me in suitcases, washing machines, dog houses. Of course, my parents were taller than me, so I only remembered their feet. Mother and her painted toenails, father and his cracked ones.

But I grew up. I grew taller, taller than my parents and I came to know them only by the tops of their heads, two dumb scalps that got smaller with time until they both died of a cancer I didn’t care to know more about.

I demanded to know why this old lady was allowed to bleed so freely in the café.

I click my fingers at the owner. Why, I ask, why can she bleed everywhere?

I’m sorry, but she’s a regular.

Everybody was afraid of the old lady, I thought. Today, for example, she bled so hard that it came out of her ears, her mouth and eyes and made several toddlers vomit over their eggs.

I turn to my husband and pity him. He’s smaller than I am. His hair is a badly formed birds nest on his head, a whirl of thin twigs. To carry on the bird comparisons, may I add that he has a pigeon chest?

We do not get along much anymore. He’s a pint sized intellectual and like most men, he doesn’t say he knows more than me, but his eyes do the talking. I sit there and look at him and he can feel me seething at this bleeding old lady and he glances up and blinks twice, slowly, and his lips purse as if to say shush shush my darling wife of mine, don’t cause a scene.

Don’t cause a scene, I say to him. Don’t you know what I’ve been through in my life?

He says he does, but the old lady is old and she’s rich, richer than us, and there are certain times when we have to allow certain things, times when we must concede and just let it happen.

We go home that evening and I look at our house with scorn. Everything in that house was his decision. The bookshelves, the carpets, the sofas, the ottoman and the paintings, the spice racks and kitchen island, everything. Maybe because my wonderful husband is so small, so miniature, the house is an extension of his body. We go to bed inside his body and I sleep thinking of the bleeding lady and how she is celebrated.

The next morning, I decide to see what my own blood looks like, so I take a butter knife and drive it into my arm and twist it this way and that. I’m screaming, but the scream seems so dramatic, so utterly ridiculous that even my husband laughs.

Ha ha! What a terribly witch-like sound, my darling wife, he says as he take the knife and butters a croissant. I realise how ridiculous I’m being and sit down with him at the breakfast table and read the morning news.

A terrorist attack has killed thirteen people at a metro station in Paris.

My bleeding stops but my anger doesn’t. I sit there at the table as my tiny husband wears tiny Trotsky glasses, as he reads and his brain gets fat with facts and there I am, ignored, thinking of those people dead at the metro station, all their blood pooling into some huge jar somewhere in my mind. I feel an agitation in my body and I start shaking. The breakfast table starts to rattle with my convulsions and the toast rack falls down, the eggs on my husband’s plate wobble and jump, the tea pot jerks and the croissants shed their skin entirely.

My husband laughs and shakes his head and says thirteen dead! Trust the French to moan about such a low number! Try a hundred! Try two hundred! Now that’s really dead.

We return to the café for lunch. We order sausages and hash browns, coffee and tea and we sit there and glut ourselves on everything in an attempt, I believe, to fill the void that is our lives.

The waiter today looks like a rat with good clothing.

I’m unhappy with our marriage and I’ve been masturbating next to your face for thirteen years, I say over the sausage to my husband.

That’s just great, he says. I’m happy for you. But he’s engrossed in the bleeding lady. Everybody is. Chairs are positioned to look at her and people even start to touch her.

The more the merrier, she says in a bathtub of blood. She slams her chubby gout hand on the side of the tub. Bring me a mug, friends! The waiter brings her one and she scoops out a mug full of blood and passes it to my husband.

Drink up little leathery man, she says and he does. She repeats this for everybody in the café and there they all are, drinking this fat wenches blood, the centre of attention, finally validated.

I stand up and leave the café.

I’m in the car and I pass other cars, beeping my horn the entire way. Out of way you bastards, I say and my voice is swallowed in the sound of traffic, the sounds of screaming and talking.

I arrive at the top of the mountain that surrounds the city and I think of that fat bleeding bitch and scream loud and hard, hard enough that I feel my chest go raw and for the first time in a while I feel like I’m being heard, even if it is just the wind listening.

HOLD YOUR BREATH by Spencer Litman

February 4, 2019

Meet your wife in the hallway. Do not make the door handle click by turning it with too much force. Avoid kicking the toys scattered like landmines on the carpet. You do not want to wake your daughter, but you need to see her breathing. Walk to the crib rail like a procession of two. Place your hands on your wife’s shoulders in case she melts like she did when she found your son cold-dead in the middle of the night. Repeat this ritual while your daughter sleeps every forty minutes for the first six months of her life.

Try not to blame yourself even though you heard him crying much earlier and rolled over thinking, he’ll go back to sleep. He always does this. Babies are resilient, and I am so tired.

No matter how many times you have gone back and forth reassuring each other that there is no blame to be had, there is a chasm of rumpled sheets on the bed. In this forty-minute reprieve you feel close to her. Maybe if you do this enough, it will be a habit, this closeness, something you both do without thinking.

Your little daughter sleeps on her stomach, face pressed into chevron patterned sheets, butt sticking up into the air, snoring just loud enough to hear it over the soft ocean roar from a white noise machine. Your wife rests her head on your shoulder. Feel her exhalation, her relief when she sees the shallow rise and fall of your daughter’s back, unlabored and steady.

Breathe to this fragile rhythm that only you and your wife know is fleeting, capable of slipping off while no one’s looking to somewhere implacable and permanent.

Leave the room. Close the door, still careful not to catch the mechanism in the handle. Lay in bed. Make your leg a bridge over the chasm and feel your wife’s cold toes against your shin. Hold your breath for thirty-four minutes.

THE GHOST OF 623 LAMPLIGHTER SQUARE by Alex S. French

February 3, 2019

“Good morning,” she says, coffee buzzing in her grip.

“How’s it going,” Mike states, doesn’t ask.

“Living the dream,” Dave quips. Sarcastic? Who can tell.

“Do anything interesting over the weekend?” she tries.

Mike staggers to the bathroom. Door thud her only reply. Dave surveys the break room awkwardly: ceiling panes, Nestea packets, trashcan—anything but her eyes. She sighs and walks away.

Meeting Agenda:

First item: The jokes.

“Happy to gather for another meeting that could have been an email,” Stan chuckles.

“Ope, looks like Greg’s got the Monday face,” Andrew pokes.

“Did I have a hard weekend, or hardly any weekend at all is what I always say,” Jerry says, like always.

Peanut brittle laughter snaps between their jaws, staccato starts finish with chewy, contented murmurs. She never liked such sugar.

Second item: CEO Carl walks in late. Begins meeting with a greedy clap.

“So the numbers, the numbers are looking good. Up 12.4 percent over last March, but that’s counting NB3s like they’re NB1s…” Pinging jargon ricochets round floating clichés. She waits for one to hit. Hopes that it kills. Unreferenced numbers provide the backdrop, a gray curtain of statistical rain. The assault continues for 28 straight minutes.

“Look, our top priority is the bottom line, so trust the metrics, guys. We need to follow the actuaries’ roadmap if we want to land this plane with a boatload of goodies. Questions?”

Third item: Argument.

Jason pipes up, all folded arms and knitted brow, “I need the UWs to lower premiums if I’m going to be able to compete on top level firms.”

“We can’t go lower than our state approved rates,” Chester shrugs.

“That’s true,” she says, “but we can use the new metrics to apply to the state for a transition flex to bring down premiums on business that we really want.”

“What about the flex rate? I know Barry’s used a flex rate before!” Mark yells.

“We need to reapply for the transition rates,” she helps.

“We don’t have a flex rate.” Reggie objects.

“We can get this—we just need to apply!” No matter how she says it, no one seems to hear. She spins around in her chair, but no one seems to notice. She coughs and speaks again, but no one seems to care.

CEO Carl interjects, slaps his hands on the table. “Ah, I love this dynamism! This is what it’s all about! A back and forth, to and fro battle that’s going to paddle us forward. Good work, everyone, let’s make this work great!”

Final notes: No solution reached. Circle back on it next week.

(Remember donuts for Jerry’s birthday.)

Taylor from accounting saunters into the cubi-pod. “What-what, you turds—bonuses have arrived! Who’s ready for a li’l Shots Roulette? Bonus picked out of the hat pays the bill! Mike, Dave, Stan, Greg, Andrew, Jerry, Jason, Chester, Mark, Reggie: I know you bronanas are in!”

High fives are exchanged. Coats are grabbed. The digital clock strikes four and the room empties. She is alone. Her bonus envelope lies abandoned on the floor. But when she picks it up, she finds another underneath. Clean of footprints. Uncrumpled. Her coworker Barry’s name printed on the front. He didn’t make it in today. He doesn’t make it in on a lot of Mondays.

It isn’t right; she slices open the bonus letters.

She knows it isn’t right; she looks at her check amount, sees an extra digit in his.

She’s always known; she was right.

She doesn’t even bother resealing the envelopes. Her face falls Zen. A smile flickers at her lips. And sparks alight in the irises of her eyes.

There were lots of stories as to how 623 Lamplighter Square burned down. Electrical fire. That coffee pot was always sketch. Insurance arson. Apparently the business wasn’t doing well; they’d fallen behind the market’s current premiums and rates. Teenagers. Because.

But no one blamed the ghost. How could they blame someone whom they refused to notice?

She’s moved on to a better place now. Some think it’s Canada. Some think it’s the future. She calls it a place her own. Either way, she lives in limbo no more.

HOME by Madeline Anthes

February 1, 2019

You say you’d follow him anywhere, so when he asks you to move across the country, you do. You say you’d do anything for love, and you love him.

He wants you to love your life with him.

You try.

Your rented house has plain beige walls. It’s in a suburb and has a fenced-in yard. You don’t have dogs or children to use it.

The kitchen is tiny. You bump into each other every night as you fix your lunches for the next day. You’re watching infants at a childcare center. You change diapers and clean spills all day. You hate it, but there aren’t any teaching jobs in October.

You say you’ll keep looking for another job. He has his new dream job, after all.

A career. He’s managing a plant, staying late, getting tipsy at corporate dinners. He comes home rosy cheeked and full of stories about men with names like Bill and Frank. You are never invited.

The point is he’s happy. You tell him you’ll keep trying.

He’s heard you tossing at night, seen you staring at the beige walls, watched you bite the inside of your cheek until your mouth fills with the taste of rust.

He asks you over and over what he can do.

You tell him you miss the sound of the ocean, and the feel of salt air through a cracked window. How the ceiling fan would press the air down and make you feel heavy when you were falling asleep.

He buys a machine that plays the sound of crashing waves and plugs in a fan next to your bed.

You tell him you miss how sand piled in the corners of the kitchen. You miss how the wind carried bits of shell and coral, and how you’d find flecks of it stuck to your scalp when you showered. You miss how you could scratch and scratch all day and still find bits of grit under your nails.

You find a bag of potting sand in the hall closet and perfectly-formed piles near the fridge. One night you wake to him sprinkling sand in your hair; it pools on your pillow and sticks to the sheets. It makes your skin itch.

You tell him it’s the air and the smell and the way people dress. You tell him it’s the way you could close your eyes and feel present, alive, like a current connected you to the walls of the house. You miss belonging.

He brings in jars of sea air and wears flip flops around the house. He wears Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirts to the grocery store. He looks like a parody of your old life together.

What more could you want, he asks you. What else can he do?

You tell him you don’t want anything else. There’s nothing else he can do.

You can’t replicate the heartbeat of a town, or the rhythm of a household, or the texture of a life. Even if you went back now, it’d all be different.

So you listen to your sound machine and step over the piles of sand. You tell him it’s time to start a new life.

At night, you run your fingers along your scalp and look under your nails for traces of sand.