Flash

THE ANSWER by Maxfield Francis Goldman

December 10, 2025

“This is the last time I am ever going to do something like this to you,” Casper says as he takes his mom’s hand and kisses it. It tastes like cardboard, and smells like sheetrock. It’s rough on his lips and has this unbearable consistency he can only compare to dried dates. But she is beautiful, and everything about her is disgusting. Per usual, she is really not here, but she’s smiling this kind of absent-minded smile, but not really at him. Not really at anything. He lets his lips linger just a little too long. Hears ambiguous beeping sounds of machines he doesn’t know exactly what they do, and the weird creaking sounds of other people like his mom being wheeled about the hallways. The scratching of his keys in his back pocket against the grainy plastic chair. The hallways make it worse. This pale green linoleum that squawks as the nurses dawdle from one room to another. At home, there is parquet, a thick lacquered maple-syrup-colored wood. A very nice floor, in a very empty home. He closes his eyes now, lips moving about the dorsal side of his mother’s hand, and begins to think: “How can it be empty if I'm there?” and then stops as the answer begins to build like a burp or a hiccup.He pulls away, looks down at his mother. Her salt-peter hair. Her collar bones, almost elegant sticking out of the gray-blue robe they put her in. Looking at her now, as she’s spent all this time on earth without even moving a muscle, it is as though she’s back to being innocent. Like all the times she yelled or lost her temper had simply atrophied, and now, she is just here again, like a brand new being, only different in the fact that she has no more future to receive beyond this. But he doesn’t really have the words for this. And so he stares at her, says one more thing.“I am not a bad person.”The smile persists.“Excuse me?” this little voice says.He feels his heart get big against his chest, like he’d been seen, like the voice knows exactly what he’s done and exactly what he will do. The panicking feeling that she'd been there this whole time. But then there’s squeaking, and he turns around, and this fat little nurse is standing beside him with a clipboard, kind of pushing by him.“Excuse me," she says, as she makes her way over to the ambiguous life machines and writes stuff down. Numbers. He feels through his pockets and feels them filled with numbers. Paper with numbers. Unlucky paper filled with unlucky numbers. The nurse writes quickly, then looks back at him, and says, “You know, she’s not as happy when you’re not around.”Casper stares at her, then at Mom. His vision goes a little out of focus, and then he is staring at the parking lot. The sun is setting, and it's snowing. He takes a deep breath and says, “Okay,” then walks out. A lot of people are in the hallway, in wheelchairs, in blankets. ‘Sleeping’ in that half-state. He begins to smile at the woman at the desk, who is real pretty, but it doesn’t really work. His mom liked this place. Or more so, it had treated her well, and it made him happy. He doesn’t like leaving because he knows what he’s done, and he knows what he’s doing and feels like everyone can almost smell it on him as he walks out to the parking lot. Outside, the snow falls lightly, slowly onto the frozen black asphalt. Some of it seems suspended in the air. The sunset is yellow, then orange, then red. It has freckles, he thinks, then laughs to himself, almost like he’s at the beginning of beginning to cry. He laughs to himself that right now, the sun is like a really cute girl, who’s looking at him with all this brightness and all these freckles. And she’s so there, and she’s so watching over him. And he walks through the snow towards his car, and as he gets in, a pile of unlucky paper falls out the side door and onto the parking lot. He doesn’t pick it up, just sits down. He looks back at the big concrete building into his mom's window, but can’t see that much because of the glare. But he keeps trying to look until he gives up. His feet are cramped because there is too much unlucky paper on the ground. It’s everywhere, and he doesn’t like it, and it feels overwhelming because he thought that it’d work. He thought that instead of using the rest of the money to pay for a little more time, he could turn it around and pay for a lot more time. He knows he’s never been really all that bright, but he thought that the feeling was good enough for it to work anyway.And then he’s staring at the glove box. And he’s thinking that he has to open it because he knows what's inside, and he knows what to do. He’s thinking it won't be too bad because Mom will be there at some point soon. But he’s also scared because not that soon, like it could still be another year or two.And he thinks of all that time of both of them alone in very weird places.And the feeling of beginning to begin to cry turns into the feeling of trying. And with trying comes failing and he just goes back to staring at the sunset.And he reaches over for the glovebox without averting his gaze. Because it is too beautiful, and the snow is so light and kind. And he's feeling around for the handle, and pulls it open. And he's staring into the yellow part because it is his favorite. And he’s thinking to himself to not think about anything he’s done or done wrong. The thoughts just get suggested, then shut down as he feels it, all cold and harsh feeling, waiting there for him. But he doesn’t take it out, just wraps his hand around the part he thinks he’s supposed to and stares at the sun, until the tears come for one reason or another. But they are there, and his eyes get filled with a whole bunch of shining, right when he starts really crying, right to the sun. Then he hears knocking. Repeated fast knocking. And he’s not really looking at anything but the sun because he doesn’t want to and because he’s grateful it’s there. Like he couldn't even begin to think about looking away. But it keeps happening, and eventually, there is talking.“Excuse me,” it says,Then again.And again.Until eventually, it yells.“EXCUSE ME.”And without looking away from the sun, he yells, “WHAT?”And the banging keeps up louder and says, “YOU LEFT YOUR KEYS IN YOUR MOM'S.”And he remembers his mom. And he remembers the nurse, and he realizes it’s her. Because in some weird way, he wasn’t even really thinking about any of that. He was just sort of feeling. Feeling the sun, feeling the thing in the glovebox.And he looks away, over at the nurse, standing at his window, looking real cold, holding his keys in his hand.He didn't really think he’d need them. He looks at her, and there are all these spots in his vision, and she looks a lot bluer than she should be. But nothing is really processing, and he doesn’t really know what to say. And he’s still got his hand just fully in the glove box, wrapped around the thing. And so he looks at her, like as much as another person is capable of really truly looking at another, and says. “I’m sorry.”She scurries and moves the passenger side door, and says, “SIR, I’M TRYING TO GIVE YOU YOUR KEYS.” Then he takes the thing into his hand and goes back to the sun. And he tells himself, staring into the beautiful picture in front of him, “that all my sadness will always end here.” And she gets in, and she’s sitting beside him. And he feels her touching him, and he’s still not looking.But he feels the thing become a different type of thing and he hears it rattle and then a loud sound. And a jangly one right after. And he can feel that the glove box is closed.And he knows she’s there, and she’s so big and she's here for him right now. And he’s really grateful for it, but is really far from beginning to begin how to know how to say it, because maybe there is no way to say something like that. But she takes his hand and brings it to the ignition. And together, they kinda turn it over, going through all the clanking of the gears and that weird feeling so specific to starting a car. And she says, “Are you cold? It’s cold in here.”And he says, “Yes.” Slowly, the heat comes on. And as the car begins to fill with that feeling of artificial warmth, he looks over at her, and she is smiling, and whether he is aware of it or not, he is too. This is what he sees.

BECKETTIAN by Shane Kowalski

November 10, 2025

Murphy was visiting Malone. It had been a while since they had seen each other. Murphy being busy in the city, while Malone had lingered in the countryside. Murphy remembered those dark country roads, whizzing down them in the nights as a youth. No noise. But at the same time, all the noise in the world. The humming shadows. Malone was always the type to leave enough room between himself and other people. Murphy, on the other hand, had become a successful C-AWP II, a thing he so frequently had to explain to new acquaintances that it had lost all meaning. He no longer truly knew what the acronym stood for, nor the nature of the work. More recently he had taken to going into the office—a large high rise in the city with a long elevator ride—and sitting there confused as to what to do. The confusion was so wrought he thought he was having a stroke one day, even going so far as to say to a passing coworker, “I think I’m having a stroke.” But the coworker took this to be yet another slice of dark humor common to the world of the office. Murphy frequently went home with a headache. He had begun distancing himself from his girlfriend, Molly. It was a slow, painful process that would irrevocably damage their default modes in relationships going forward. Murphy felt bad about it. It was nothing Molly did or didn’t do. He felt it was connected to his confusion at work, but he couldn’t say in what way. On the other end, Molly was beginning to think Murphy needed help. It pained and angered her to feel pushed away, but she also felt like Murphy was spinning down a dark road, without light or guide, and would sure enough find himself crashed into a large tree. Part of this feeling was informed by a recent event she had witnessed on a ferry to the cliffs. It was very cold and the choppy ocean sprayed the deck from time to time. A young man, very well dressed considering the casual nature of the occasion, had gotten up and started stripping off his clothes. Soon he was naked and screaming that someone named Molly was down there, pointing to the ocean. This struck Molly for obvious reasons. The young, naked man had begun trying to climb the ferry’s rail to hurl himself over when a group of men pulled him back at last. They threw him to the deck, where he flopped like a fish. It all lingered for Molly, although she told nobody about it, least of all Murphy. And it was only a moment, nights later, when Murphy stayed over and was stripping off his clothes in preparation for a moment of intimacy, that she felt like she had witnessed an omen or premonition. That, somehow, Murphy was that young man, naked and flopping on the deck of the ferry. Murphy, of course, knew none of this. He had everything one could seem to want and yet felt fraught over all of it. It wasn’t until he got the letter from Malone that he thought maybe this was the answer. Going to see Malone! Malone was always a dissident, in every possible way. His life, in the country, the hardscrabble hew of it, just seeing it, would straighten Murphy out. He thought of that old children’s book about mice, one being from the city and the other the country. He couldn’t remember anything else about them. It seemed like the last book he had ever read. He had stopped after that one. The mice. The city one and the country one. Whatever their conflict was. When he finally made it to the tiny house in the country, after a six-hour train ride and then another hour and a half car ride there, Murphy was surprised to find a note at the door. It said: Friend, when you arrive, please just come in. I’m sorry. Murphy thought this was strange. He went in. There he found a neat and orderly house. Malone had done well for himself. Yes, he had stayed in the country, but he had made it nice. It seemed he had invested something into his solitary life. This warmed Murphy’s heart and made him feel guilty over the discontent he felt at his own life. Friendship, he thought, was a viaduct from one loneliness to another. When he went into the living room he found Malone. He was sitting in his rocking chair, very still, holding a large shotgun in such a manner that it pointed directly at his face. He seemed upset, perhaps had even been crying a little. He looked disappointed to see Murphy. “Oh,” Malone said. “I was supposed to have done it already. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. You weren’t supposed to see me living like this!”

THE BROKEN TOWER by Kaden Griggs

November 5, 2025

The hulk of the Orizaba lulled hugely in the calm spring water as if the waves were tongues tasting the air in broad gulps like old hounds lapping water from ground puddles. Not much moved. The poet was drinking and avoiding his beloved. His father had died and he was very sad tonight. He had never felt emptier within. Lust enters when the hollowness leaves nothing else behind. He makes the mistake of believing again that the drinking will bury the lust and set things aright but it only invigorates the lust. Lust for all things. Lust for the remembrance of those moments of past that once made life seem worthwhile, as if one’s existence were some abstract word on the tip of the tongue never recalled.He drank some more. He stared at the bartender and mumbled for another and he saw the uneasiness in the bartender’s gaze returning his dim, dead one. The poet’s face was straight and his eyes were stones in their sockets. The drunkenness was failing to save him like it had before. The poet got his drink and stood at the railing overlooking the water and the faraway lights beyond glittering like the wavering of dirty gems in torchlight. His thoughts grew tangled and dissolved like salt. They used to dissolve like sugar. He didn’t know what happened.He turned around with his back against the railing, against the water, and looked at the people mingling, the people coming and going, the people wandering about in confidence, the people smiling and the people whose eyes glowed as they forged a good memory. His expression never altered.A crewman came by. The poet’s eyes followed him as the crewman, dressed in a white shirt and brown pants, went to the bar and got a beer and took a swig and looked about. The crewman didn’t seem to recognize anyone in the crowd. He wandered over the poet’s way and leaned on the railing beside him. The poet stared at him. You would never think the poet drunk. If he were lying down you’d check his pulse. “Nice night here,” the crewman said.The poet did not comment. The crewman swigged his beer. “Where you headed to?” The crewman said.The poet did not comment. The crewman swigged his beer.“Not a talker, huh? That’s alright. Some are talkers and some are thinkers, I suppose.”The poet had been staring at the crewman’s pants. He could weep at every crevasse unironed, the silver of his zipper like a tear in the moonlight, the brown pigment of the fabric like his wife’s skin. Transfusing love from one thing to another. Perhaps that would solve things. The old desperation lurched within like a sick person’s soul escaping. He licked his lips and reached out in a jerk and grabbed the crewman’s crotch. He did not even look the man in the eye. He studied his own groping hand instead.“Hey! What are you doing?”“Love.”The crewman punched him twice. The poet fell. The crewman kept hitting, kicking, hitting. Someone finally pulled him off. The poet retained the same expression throughout, even as he picked himself up and stumbled back to his cabin as the onlookers gazed upon him with curiosity and mild disgust.When he got back to his cabin, his wife raped him. The same expression.The next morning he awoke with the same dread. By lunch he was drunk. When he leapt overboard, no one noticed until hours afterward. They couldn’t find his body. They looked and it was not there. It was a bright wide day. A tall, commodious, decorous sky unsealed.

IN ANOTHER LIFE, I AM A DIRECT DESCENDANT OF SHARKS by Bethany Cutkomp

October 30, 2025

And if I do not keep moving, I will pass away. They call this ram ventilation, a shark’s way of breathing. My invisible gills demand the same method of survival. Since hatching from your womb, I have been burdened to forward momentum, a squirming force to be reckoned with. Raised in a realm above sea-level, however, the current has always worked against my nature.Most mornings, you barely squeeze in the chance to slather sunscreen over my ampullae of Lorenzini—freckles, you insist I call them—before I'm out of the door and down the street, bike pedals whirling, thrusting through the stagnant humidity. I may not bear fins like my aquatic ancestors, but the sweat I shed tastes of the sea. Marine familiarity, a restless scene. Inherent muscle memory urges me to continue on, past the front of the school, past the park, and past the fast food joints. Past the gas stations, past the woods, and past the town border. On and on, beyond state lines, never stopping until my toe-shaped fins touch the fizzy surf.Logic is a habit you’ve instilled in me, however. I settle for circling the perimeter of the building until my muscles scream for mercy or until security guards scream after me.In the classroom, society expects me to conform to anthropocentric ideologies: sit still—a manner my species physically cannot obey. Doesn’t matter that I’ve just biked the scenic route to school. For a shark, it’s move or die. I’m a fish out of water, floundering at my graffitied desk after exhausting all bathroom privileges to wander the hallways.From what I’ve overheard you whispering to neighbors and folks at our church, my teachers exchange concerns about the pacing, the rocking, the bouncing, claiming my fidgety movements are a detriment to my development and too much of a distraction to my peers. They’ve got it all wrong. The girls sporting dolphin cackles in the corner are the ones to be wary of.“See that kid over there? Yeah, that one. The boy that can’t sit still,” I make out of their clique-exclusive echolocation. “Stay away from him. Guy’s got issues.”If it were socially acceptable to bite, I would.That is a common misconception about my kind, though. I may bear a sharp-toothed grimace, but I am not violent-natured unless provoked. Even then, sharks are more afraid of humans than humans are of sharks. Often you prompt me to suck it up, to conform to warm-blooded standards out of my comfort zone for the sake of making friends. You don’t get it. My ancestors have roamed this planet solo, hundreds of millions of years before any mammal, and they’ve managed well enough.Y’know, you yourself aren’t the best at showing affection. I get my skin takes on an abrasive texture, but a bit of compassion here and there won’t hurt. Just a few kind words to validate my existence.Deep in the night, I thrash under sweaty bed sheets. The only way you get me to fall asleep is by dangling me from the edge of the mattress, flipping me head-side-down and feet-side-up, evoking a trance of tonic immobility. Assuming I’ve surrendered to human dreams, you admit to my father that it may be time to seek professional help for my condition.What condition is that? Do you not see traces of shark in yourself? Through weary slits of nictitating membrane, I watch your shadow roam back and forth past my bedroom door.

STRANGE IS THE MEAT by Brittany Terwilliger

October 27, 2025

As his bolt pierced the deer’s flesh, Nathan felt himself reduce, his body contracting into a dark, wet mass. He clenched against the blinding light, choking on snorts as he plopped onto a leafy patch of moss and lay feeble and disoriented. Something licked him, eyes darting. Liquid warmth filled his mouth, his belly. He drifted off to sleep.His mother (but that wasn’t his mother! His mother was a chain smoker with Betty White hair) nudged him to stand. And he found that he could, although he didn’t want to. He preferred his leafy bed, the green smell of damp earth mounded around him. He liked it when she went away and left him there alone with his thoughts, and he could huff that florid vegetal perfume and stare at the stars. He wondered if every other deer he saw had formerly been human. Even the ants in the ground could be former humans. He wondered if this transformation had been a cosmic punishment or a cosmic reward.Time passed slowly in this body. He could spend all day contemplating the texture of an acorn between his teeth, the way it snaps at first bite, the residual cap crunch, the meaty center. And trying to remember his human life, that took up a lot of his time, too. Most of it was foggy, fleeting, and he wanted to pin the memories so they’d stay put. “Son, deer are prey,” his father had said. “They’re born to be prey.” This was one memory that kept landing. When he was feasting on the greenest grass, he thought: prey. What is prey? He couldn’t remember the whole of it, only that prey means run. Prey. Once the concept began to take hold, it entered his mind day and night. The rustle of a chipmunk skittering through leaves. Prey. A crow fluttering between clackety branches. Prey. Every gust of wind, even the shudder of a dragonfly landing on the surface of a puddle, triggered Nathan into flight. He made up his mind to find the most remote and unknown forest in which to start fresh, to rid himself of this anxiety forever. Never before had a deer been so stealthy. Sometimes he stood for hours just listening, barely breathing, not moving a muscle, sorting familiars from threats. He bedded down in late afternoons and traveled in the early morning hours when the world’s creatures still slumbered. When he finally found a tranquil and secluded patch of trees, he could barely contain his triumph. But his secluded patch of trees didn’t fix it. Every night came the terrors. Sometimes he dreamed he was the prey and sometimes he dreamed he was the predator, hungry and quiet in the dark, and what he wanted to be was a secret third thing that was neither hunter nor hunted. There must be a place, he thought, unspoiled by the laws of consumption, where such creatures existed. That was the place he needed to find.He searched and searched, not knowing exactly what he was looking for but knowing he would recognize it when he found it. Along the way he met many creatures, most of them kind but all of them bound to the same old truth. Prey. Actually, they seemed resigned to it, unbothered as they went about their daily business, and he grew furious as he watched them. They were complicit, every skitter and scatter contributing to this vicious cycle. Sometimes as he made his way through a copse he stepped a heavy hoof on the occasional toad or baby bunny just to teach them a lesson. He had no way of knowing how much ground he covered or what part of the world he was in at any given time, but after traversing what felt like endless forests, highways, rivers, streams, fences, groves, thickets, and farms, he entered a woodland that looked vaguely familiar. Of course, most woodlands were a bit similar, but this one had a smell that reminded him pleasantly of the place where he’d been born. The grass here was so luscious and green, the acorns so plentiful, he decided to stop for a snack and rest. That’s when he saw him. It was the moment he’d most feared, and yet he could do nothing but stare, catching flickers of the vicious nonchalance with which his human self had extinguished this body he now inhabited. He saw the crossbow, the bolt aimed at his face by this Nathan whose features he’d seen in every mirror for 33 years. As the bolt pierced his flesh, he felt himself reduce, his body contracting into a dark, wet mass.

BELLYBUTTON BABY by Dilys Wyndham Thomas

October 23, 2025

I have this recurring nightmare in which I swim through amniotic fluid. Poppies litter the fluid, and a baby is lost somewhere amongst all the falling flowers, out of reach, beyond my thrashing hands. To keep the nightmare at bay, I lay awake in yet another hotel room, avoiding sleep. The man in bed with me has his back turned, constellations of freckles scattered on sunburnt skin. It’s obvious from the way his body teeters on the edge of the mattress that he has decided I am a one-night stand. I run my fingers along the map that is this new back, find a replica of Cassiopeia on his shoulder. I will remember his skin long after I have forgotten everything else about him. Slowly, I reach for the discarded condom on the floor, cup it in my palm. It is satisfyingly heavy. I tie another knot into the latex and slip out of bed. I find the next man in the Gare du Nord. The French have a lovely term for train station waiting halls: salles des pas perdus, rooms of lost footsteps. I am sitting at a crowded cafe, smoking a kretek — you know, one of those honey-tipped clove cigarettes — pretending to read the novel that last week’s man told me would be life-changing. It is not. I spot the next man through the throngs of passengers scurrying for their trains, and watch him slip off a wedding ring as he approaches to ask for a light. I can picture it, the conventionality of his life: the flat in some sleeper suburb, the overweight Labrador, the sad potted plants, the mortgage he can barely afford. He asks if he can sit down. There are no other free tables, and he has been stood up, he says with a little too much of a smirk in his voice. It is an obvious fib, which makes him more likeable. I don’t trust utterly honest people. They don’t see through my lies. The man asks about the book I am reading, and proceeds to tell me he found one of the author’s earlier novels had really opened his eyes to life’s possibilities. I apparently have specific tastes when it comes to lovers. So I tell him what he wants to hear, repeating what last week’s man thought of the book, opinions lifted from some newspaper review, no doubt. I tell him how seminal the book was during the Velvet Revolution in Czechia, how the writing burns with twentieth-century urgency. I’m not entirely sure what the Velvet Revolution is, but that hardly matters. It sounds violent and sensual, a metaphor for sex. The man orders an espresso. I blow clove smoke out of the corner of my lips and decide he looks like he has good genes. He will do. But this man wants to play pretend, makes us talk for hours to the lullaby of announcements, our heads and elbows creeping closer. By the time he finally offers to walk me home, I have watched two trains leave without me. I would tell him, but he might think it romantic. We fuck to the sound of traffic crawling along the Boulevard de Magenta. He runs his fingers over every inch of my skin, hesitating when he reaches the bump above my belly button, a healed piercing scar. “What’s this?” he asks, not looking up.“I don’t know,” I reply, making sure he knows this is not true. “It’s always just been there.” “A second bellybutton,” the man whispers, “A baby bellybutton.”He flicks the tip of his tongue over the hardened skin again and again. I have to restrain myself from curling up into a foetal ball, from nestling into his chest. I bury my face into the pillows instead, calming myself with the intermingled smells of sweat, dry-cleaning chemicals and dust. He works his way all around my body: right buttock, pubic hair, outer labia, inner thigh. When he reaches my kneecaps, I close my eyes and almost manage to imagine myself in love with him, caught in the cobweb of untruths we have spun. We fall asleep in each other’s arms. It takes all of my strength not to cry. I dream of poppies again, swimming, desperately trying to locate my unborn daughter. I dare not open my mouth for fear I might swallow her. Then, there is a sudden pull, a tug, a collapsing inwards. The red poppies scrunch into confetti and spiral down. Time slows to a slurry. Somewhere in the blood-flecked celebration, my baby is drowning. I know she is probably dead, but still, I search for her, that little bundle of me. The possibility that she could be alive, floating and calling out, is more terrifying than death. I scare myself awake, my nightmare baby screaming inside my head. The building groans deep within its foundations: the first underground freight train rattling below, or an empty metro. This means it is around four, four-thirty at the latest. Soon enough, rubbish trucks will clank down the boulevard, followed by an army of green-clad cleaners hosing down the pavements, drenching the city clean. I notice that this man has no moles, no blemishes. His skin is an anonymous wasteland. I lay perfectly still, trying to decide how long is too long to get up, gather my things and leave. Through the gaps in the curtains, aerials and pigeons fight for space. The sky has lost its pink glow—perhaps it is nearer five. I am already lonely. In the cramped bathroom, I bend down, still naked, to retrieve the full condom from the wastepaper basket. Under the flicker of fluorescent light, my piercing scar looks like a fish gill, breathing in and out and in again. My mother once told me fetuses have gills, some remnant of our reptilian past. I imagine my baby hungrily sucking oxygen from amniotic fluid, its umbilical cord linking us with love.

MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE PROJECTING ACROSS THE UNIVERSE IN BILLOWS OF GLITTER, CONFETTI, AND FLUSTERED GIGGLES by Sophie Kearing

October 22, 2025

At the intersection between the Many-Worlds Interpretation and the Law of Assumption, you can bow out of the shitty life you’ve created for yourself and slip into an existence that’s basically your own personal heaven. People call this place your “desired reality.” Let me give you some reference points here.In my old reality, moving house was always an exercise in abject misery.But.Let me tell you how things unfolded after one night I used the “state akin to sleep” to visualize stepping through a doorway into a magical world of miracles and ease. On Monday morning I received notice that a distant relative had passed away and left me 90K.Ninety. Thousand. Dollars. I’d never had that much money. I was terrified, actually. All night I tossed and turned, grabbing my phone to research proper money management. Imagine—spending so much of my life plagued by a lack of money, then being blessed with a random windfall and suffering just as much anxiety if not more.But I needn’t have stressed myself. Because on Tuesday, I received a job offer. A very lucrative, very exiting job offer that was ridiculously up my alley: creative, remote, and part-time with, get this: full-time pay and benefits. FINALLY! A money-making opportunity I actually wanted! I accepted faster than I’d ever accepted anything. No hemming and hawing for days. Just a resounding YES from my very soul. And as soon as I accepted the job, I immediately felt better about the inheritance. I knew that no matter what happened, I’d still have plenty of money coming in. I was on cloud nine and didn’t think things could get better.But then they did. On Wednesday, I received a wire transfer from a previous employer that had failed to pay me. It was only $875, but it was a relief she finally did the right thing. And it was immediate money.On Thursday the trend continued. A talented artist reached out wondering if we could collaborate on a project. As he described it, I became more and more excited. I would have done it for free, but he offered me 15K up front. When he sent me the contract, I noticed I’d be receiving royalties as well. I was so happy I almost exploded, my entire existence projecting across the universe in billows of glitter, confetti, and flustered giggles. By Friday, my inheritance deposited into my account. I had no clue inheritance money could come so fast, but it did. And I was no longer afraid of it. This is when I embarked on the most joyful moving experience of my life: one in which I could just pick a rental and move there. Luckily, the city I had in mind was also the city where my project mate resided, so if we ever wanted to meet up, it would be easy.Easy.What a relaxing word.On Saturday. I found two quarters on the stairs. A paltry sum, I know, but I ended up needing exactly two quarters later that day. Easy.On Sunday, an ex showed up at my apartment out of the blue. He took me to brunch and gave me a care package filled with a soft plaid blanket, Illy ground coffee, a pack of hand-drawn tarot cards, a scented candle, and a dark academia novel. I was touched he knew me so thoroughly. Inside the book was five hundred dollars cash. Startled, I looked at him. He shrugged and kissed me. “I just want you to remember me.”“I will, always.”After brunch he drove me back to my apartment and opened my door for me so I wouldn’t have to juggle my care package and keys.Easy.It was still a new word to me, but I was growing quite fond of it.As I packed boxes, a task that usually felt like it took months and often culminated in a harried moving day, I was delighted to find that I did it all in a week. Never in my life had I packed that fast. The funny thing is, I didn’t rush. I didn’t beat myself up for having so many Christmas decorations. I didn’t fret about everything making it to the other side in one piece. In fact, several times I caught myself smiling and—gasp—humming some jaunty tune. I knew that no matter what, I’d be fine.Moving day was interesting. As I watched the moving truck ramble away, I imagined my boxes and furniture arranged in a snug Tetris formation, shifting only slightly as they traversed bumpy roads, wide turns, and all that distance. I got my cats set up with their beds, food, water, and litter box in the back of my friend Woody’s conversion van. Then I hopped into the passenger seat, where we listened to Billy Joel and Jhene Aiko and Chapelle Roan and Eric Church. We drank coffee from Starbucks and Dunkin and BP and Cracker Barrel. We stopped to pee often, though the ride was so consistently flat that our bladders probably wouldn’t have bothered us much if we didn’t. We coasted down perfectly paved highways. There were very few people on the road, and the ones that were seemed to just glide into the next lane, allowing Woods and I to continue our smooth trajectory the entire way.Finally, we pulled into the driveway. I savored the feeling of my legs carrying me up the porch stairs, the beautiful weight of my cat in my arms. Woody carried my other cat, and we smiled at each other before entering the house, an adorable little Victorian with a woodburning fireplace and a pantry and a clawfoot tub and a tall wooden fence completely enclosing the sunny, grassy backyard. Yes, everything was exactly as I hoped it would be. A miracle, considering I never saw the place in person before signing the lease. I’d done everything remotely and hoped for the best. And this house is the best. It’s hands-down the most peaceful place I’ve ever lived. Thank goodness for my real estate agent, who made the whole process, well…Easy.To this day, it seems the universe is conspiring to deliver me money, ease, and convenience. I don’t even worry anymore that I’ll randomly wake up back in my old shit heap of a life. My desired reality would never let me go like that. It cradles me to its bosom like a devoted mother, this absurd thing of happiness and ease, and for that I am profoundly grateful.

THE BACKYARD GRAVE by Marina Manoukian

October 20, 2025

My father dug his own grave. But he didn’t use it right away. For years, the grave lay unfilled and inviting. All he would do was visit it once in a while, stand by its empty feet, and sigh. I don’t know if it was a sigh of relief or impatience. He made us promise to leave the grave unmarked once everything was in its place. Everything has its place. I slept in the grave once. But not on purpose. It’s ill-advised to read meaning into sleepwalking so I won’t try. All I know is that I woke up surrounded by the peeling dirt and I didn’t feel scared. Whenever my mother and I asked him why he dug the grave, he would only say “everything in its place.” He never bothered to change the subject. He’d let the phrase punctuate his conclusion and shrug silently against our repeated retorts. No desire to fan any spark back into life. Every time the same dance—we’d either give up gracelessly and leave the room or let our irritation move us to another conversation topic. I told myself I’d never be like him. But when I woke up in the grave I didn’t get up right away. The walls fit my shoulders well. For a moment my tinnitus almost ceased. I didn’t feel safe but there wasn’t any fear either. There was space to rest, blue sky seeping in through my periphery as I inhaled the earth-soaked dew. I don’t know how long I stayed down there. I like to think that I would’ve felt days pass by, but let’s be honest. It can give purpose to dig a grave. That’s what I thought to myself when he first started to dig. Stabbing violently at the ground instead of yourself. To carve away at something new. And when there’s nothing left but a hole in the ground maybe the first thought is, “Finally, a place for me.” But then why not immediately jump in? Why leave the gap to scab and grow stale? Perhaps the digging is a merely a reminder. That in order to fill a grave one has to dig first. And perhaps by the time you’re done the callouses that have grown make everything a little easier to handle. And you remember that no matter how much you dig, you’re going to die anyway.

A PRAYER FOR THE FISH IN THE TUB by Zoë Rose

October 16, 2025

With just enough water in the tub to sluice through its gills as it thumps its caudal fin and arches its spine the carp could stay there for far longer than it will take to prepare the vegetables for the stock which the carp’s head and bones and skin and any parts not reserved will be joining the next morning. Its jelly eye fixes on the water stained ceiling which it doesn’t see as anything but part of what is above because the carp has never seen water stain or been even wet before the tub. When its head seizes up it catches the silver of the drain the carp knows as the moon because the moon controls the tides of the river where it lived as the drain controls the water into the tub. A ring of reddish soap scum circles the drain and if the carp could turn a bit it would see the same ring lining the upper third of the tub but the carp has never been on its side or front or back or anything because until the tub it wasn’t even but in the tub it is now the carp in the tub. All of this the carp tells the boy in the plaid pajama set. In his bed under the itchy wool blanket layered over the duvet over the kicked down flat sheet the boy thinks he is awake because he can hear the carp’s ceaseless thumping. He is awake because the carp is in the tub and would be awake even if the tub was far away like Hackensack or Ontario. Cocooned in the itchy wool blanket he creeps to the bathroom. It is dark except for the moon silvering everything inside. The carp thumps.Water slaps against the sides of the tub and beads across its scales.The boy places a finger on its side, retreating at the feel of its twitch. The carp thumps, unregistering.He places his finger again, stroking its dorsal fin. It is smooth against the pad of his index. He moves to put his palm on its abdomen, feeling the flex and roll of its muscles. Thump. Thump. Thump.Tomorrow they will use a rolling pin. Slit its gills to bleed and become water. The boy in the plaid pajama set feels the itchy wool blanket start to slip off his shoulders. One of his hands is white knuckled on the edge of the tub. The other wet on the carp. The blanket puddles on the ground.The carp’s thumping up and down a prayer to the tub and the water and the moon and the hands that plucked it from the water and the hands that placed it and the hands that will kill it. He presses, feels its bones. He will have to help pick them out of the meat tomorrow before they grind it.The carp has not known pressure like this. And it won’t. Because to know it it has to exist on the other side of it and the carp won’t. The pressure is now and so is the carp and when the pressure is gone the carp will not feel absence. The carp is where it is and takes no meaning from it. It is drowning and it is tight but as soon as it is not it won’t be.The edge of the tub is cold on his cheek. He wants to sleep but he is crying now.He doesn’t think the carp is sad. Or scared. But it is thumping in the tub because of him. In five years he will become a Bar-Mitzvah and with every step towards the Bimah he will think, Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the Universe may the fire alarm go off before I get to the Torah. Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the Universe may the ceiling fall before I get to the Torah. Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the Universe may Aunt Harriet have a heart attack before I get to the Torah. But God will let him get up on the Bimah and let his voice crack during his parshah and so he will learn lesson one: God is a bullshit artist.

FOLLOWING THE HEARSE by Carleton Whaley

October 10, 2025

Driving through the Detroit suburbs, cutting through traffic, honking and cursing at other drivers, the brothers make their way to the crematorium. It is difficult to keep up with the long hearse. Traffic seems to move automatically for it just as it blocks the brothers’ car.“I know,” the older says to the younger.“Yeah?” the younger asks. They are still navigating the void which now defines their relationship—the change from middle-and-youngest to older-and-younger.“I was just agreeing that I probably shouldn’t have told Nana to shut the fuck up.”“Coulda been handled better,” the younger says.They pass a Big Boy, but the large, cherubic statue of the eponymous boy is nowhere to be seen.“He could be anywhere.”“If she just,” the older brother continues, “—she wouldn’t stop talking about how hard it was to put on her bra this morning. We’re closing the coffin and that’s what you’re talking about?”“You know how she is. Besides, it was sorta funny,” the younger says.Sirens wail from behind them, and the car lurches onto the shoulder along with the rest of traffic, trying to avoid the glittering pieces of glass and shattered reflectors ground into the curbside. A police cruiser passes, black and emotionless. A few minutes later, more sirens, and another cruiser—this one tailing an ambulance—passes before speeding off to the right through the next intersection. “Nice blinker, asshole,” the older brother shouts, gunning the engine to catch the hearse again. They have the address for the crematorium. It is printed in embossed letters on nondescript business cards in each of their breast pockets. Neither reaches for theirs. Instead, they weave through traffic—cutting off HVAC trucks, minivans ferrying children to soccer games, classic cars taken out for the beautiful weather—unable to bear the thought of the hearse leaving their sight. They have to remain together for the final trip.“I thought you were going to get arrested,” the younger brother says.“It’s fine, those cops were driving worse than me.”“No, I mean a few days ago. When the cops came, after—you know.”“I just don’t see why they need to be involved. It was hospice, not a fucking crime scene.”The younger brother lets silence hang in the air. They both need it, have been entertaining aunts and uncles, cousins they’ve only met once before, friends and acquaintances of tenuous and forgettable relation. It is what they are supposed to do, and maybe if they make themselves useful, they can forget everything else. Like how, as children, the boys used to fight over who got to die first – which of the three in their war games, their cops and robbers, would make the sacrifice so the others could live another day. It always devolved into the two others pulling the dead one up, changing the rules at the last minute—no, you didn’t die, it’s my turn—until they fell on each other in a hilarity of fists and dying breaths, swoons and skinned knees. And always, always they were on the same team, all robbers and rebels, the cops and enemy soldiers hiding in the tall wheatgrass, shadows conjured by the darting eye.At the crematorium, the funeral director reiterates that, per Michigan law, someone must accompany and identify the body before cremation. She says there were issues in the past where people were given anonymous ashes—usually from horses. After all, she tells them—her hands open and upturned as if trying to prove she has nothing to hide—a person just doesn’t leave that much ash. People always expect more. Nothing up this sleeve or that.They follow her into the back room. It is not difficult to identify their brother. They’d just seen him. And then they are ushered out by the director and an attendant, asked to wait for a few minutes please.The brothers make coffee in the waiting room. It is every waiting room, every doctor’s/dentist’s/attorney’s. The magazines and pamphlets differ only in content, not form. Navigating the Steps of Grief. How to Ask for Help. Mourning a Loved One. The younger brother points out that the front of the building doesn’t even say crematorium—just Services. The older brother says that the steps of grief were actually developed for hospice patients, were meant to help people accept their own deaths and not others’, which should be obvious because only the dying have assurance that their grief will end.Then they make more coffee, because really, there’s nothing else to do. Then the younger brother says something that cracks the older one up, sets them both laughing and laughing so hard someone comes from a side room to check in because they must be mistaken, it must be keening cries and not laughter, or perhaps the two men in charcoal suits were tricked by the sign and don’t know where they are, but they assure her it is their brother in the long cardboard box in the back being packed away for a final delivery, and it is ok because they are still laughing, cannot take their minds off of the joke, whatever it was, because then they will think about how the younger brother reached into the casket to trim his brother’s beard before the ceremony, how the older one had screamed at the cops to get their hands off, can’t a man even fucking die, how their little fists had grown into hands that still sought one another, wanting to pull each other up and say no, you didn’t die this time, it’s my turn, how this is the last time their three bodies will be in the same building and then the director comes from the back room saying they’re ready, and of course they thank the man who is waiting for them beside the furnace, not simply because they are supposed to, in fact they really mean it, are deathly serious when they ask how his day has been while he points at the cardboard box on the conveyor belt, instructs them to say their goodbyes and to press the small green button, and the older brother says it’s a shame that it’s a button and not a lever, that this moment should have some more memorable tactile input than a button, and the younger one points out that it’s not even a button, just an image of a button on a touch screen, all signs and simulacra play pretend make believe and then the conveyor is going and the box trundles past with its awful lightness its terrible weightlessness reminding them how easy it was to lift him that last time so light the box must be empty because how could they not expect more not expect the ashes to escape somewhere beyond sight or touch or representation and what was the joke again how did it go?