Flash

RETURNING MY MOM’S ROUTER WHEN SHE DIED by Ryan Riffenburgh

October 22, 2024

“Do you know for a fact that the store will take it back? I don't want to walk around the mall with a router.” My sister nods. We sit on the floor of an empty room, my sister across from me with her back to the wall. I watch the dust swirl around the last lamp in the room like cicadas in the summer. We pick from the trash; working out what holds meaning using a perverted equation of sentimentality vs. space in our respective apartments. I lean towards the smaller objects: a passport photo to cleanse the image of her skeletonized body in hospice, restoring color to her face. Tactile things like clothing that I can run my hands across like braille. Nestled on top of my pile sits the router, its multicolored cables spilling out. I take the router and head for the door, scooping the cables in a bunch. I sit the thing on the passenger seat and turn down the road. The AT&T store is not far from the apartment but I dread the walk through the mall among the empty stores and stale air. I park close to the store, working off childhood memory alone, and find a spot in the dark garage. There are way fewer cars than I remember ever being here; like catacombs, the cars are sporadic every five to ten spaces. It makes sense; it’s a Wednesday afternoon. Middle schoolers, who migrate in from across the street, are on spring break. There’s something unnerving about the emptiness and the sounds of tires on the road blocks away. I wrap the router in my hands, feeling finality cloak the situation. It’s weird to me that you never own it; it’s just given to you to borrow. Holding the router, I push open the door to the mall, its cables begging to slip from my hands and fall along my legs. It wants to drag against the floor and walk along the tile next to me. The router and I slowly pass each store. I keep a cool pace that mimics the child in front of me. He’s tugging on his father’s sleeve, mesmerized by all that's surrounding him. He’s walking so slow to download everything he sees, to lock picture into memory. Just a pair of glossy eyes facing skyward. His obtaining and my releasing seem so distant, yet there’s a symbiosis in how we’re both moving and observing. Mutually pulling on something that soothes us. I come around the corner to the store. The router doesn’t beg for me to turn around. It’s almost comfortable being back here. It doesn't throw its cables around anymore; it just sits there next to me on the cold wood chair facing the iPhones, calm, waiting for the man with glasses to help. I watch the overhead light diffuse into the matte black of its sidings and bounce off the shiny front parts. Folding my legs, we wait together. “I need to return this router to you guys. It’s not mine. I—it's for my mom.” The man looks at me then the router, piecing together what's going on. “So we can’t actually take back the router in the store. You’re going to have to go to UPS. Just give them this account number,” he says as he grabs a Post-It note, hastily scribbling numbers. He’s almost sympathetic as he looks at me with gentle eyes. It’s uncomfortable, even agitating. The surrealness of the man pinning me down begins to deconstruct walls of denial I've so carefully built through paperwork, cleaning, and phone calls. I leave the store in a rushed attempt to contain any security I’ve formed for myself.All the empty walkways and escalators stare back with the icy cold of metal. I’m confused and faint from the lack of food and sleep I’ve missed in the past weeks. My jaw is slammed into its other half, crunching with anxiety. All I want is to finish; I want to return the router and be alone again. There's a fog around the whole place. What permeates the skylights is a translation of the gray marine layer outside. I brush the router's thin brown hair out of its eyes as we walk. I cradle her in the Panda Express line and apologize. Last time we were together when she was still cognizant I was high on pills from the night before. We had breakfast that day and all I can remember was being so comfortable, my new humor making the smile lines that ridge her cheeks grow. She even texted me that morning saying how good it was to see me, punctuating her thankfulness with emojis. I can't stop apologizing to her for this as I sit across from her at the food court table. I can’t escape her last memory of me being a direct consequence of drug use. A moment blanched of real love, the last visual she’ll be buried with. The curtains closing on a sad act of my derangement—all the worse, one she believed in, one she responded to with outstretched arms. At Panda Express, I think maybe if I plug her in somewhere around here then her lights will blink in sequence, shaping constellations in an otherwise blank sky. Instead, I gather the cables in my arms and head outside.It’s in the front seat on the way to the UPS store. I buckle her in so she doesn’t fly through the windshield and break into a million tiny pieces if I crash. The speakers play something I won’t remember later. Memory screens back images without sound sometimes; as if you’ve lost the right to deserve your complete past. I will only deserve a small allocation of these moments, portioned out thin enough to still want. More than this would be gluttonous, less would be hollow. The UPS man is similar to the AT&T man except I love this one like family. I can’t figure out why, but his voice is soft and the afternoon sun drapes across him through the window like a thin sheet. I gently place the router in his arms. A little too gently. He holds her as she leaves my fingers, hands me a receipt, and explains it will all be taken care of. I step outside into the rest.

THE LAST MONKEY by Sarah Carriger

October 21, 2024

The cruise ships circle the island like sharks. Full of wealthy refugees. We watch from the rooftop of the five-star resort where we’ve chosen to spend the end of our money and the end of the world. Loquats from the branch that overhangs our balcony and the limited room service menu provide sustenance but little pleasure. I choke down the yuca, the bitter greens, the thin soups that taste of dirt or chemicals. The kitchen staff pretend not to speak English when I ask about ingredients. I dream of meat—sweet breads, foie gras, suckling pig, rack of lamb, steaks so rare they’re blue. My husband says it’s because I’m iron deficient. “I’m a carnivore,” I say, baring my teeth.He snorts. “You couldn’t say boo to a goose.” My husband doesn’t like me to walk in the garden—says it’s not safe for a woman alone—but I’ve begun to sneak out when he’s asleep. The guard, Enrique, patrols the perimeter with a machine gun. Children beg for food by the fence. I often catch him dropping loquats from the pocket of his fatigues into the small hands that protrude. Sometimes we share a black-market Marlboro under the star-studded sky. The cruise ships drift past. Floating palaces. “Let them eat Twinkies,” I say to Enrique, who gives me a quizzical smile. There used to be monkeys, he tells me. Small, brown monkeys who lived in the loquat trees. But they started falling. He mimes something plummeting from a great height.It upset the guests, he says, so they had to move the rest. “Move where?” I say. “Move,” he says, slicing his hand across his jugular. He was able to save one. He will show me if I come back the next night with more money. I agree, and he disappears into the blue-black shadows as a cruise ship blocks out the moon. The next night my husband stays up reading The Wealth of Nations, and apparently it’s a knee-slapper. He keeps chuckling every few pages, which grates on my nerves. I sulk on the balcony and scan for the glow of Enrique’s cigarette. Finally, a soft thunk as the book slides to the carpet and my husband’s purring snore. I find Enrique playing patience at one of the garden tables meant for moonlit drinks. He makes me wait while he finishes his hand. He’s become somewhat fickle since we’ve grown closer. Finally, he looks up. Into his open palm I drop three Franklin Mint silver dollars from my husband’s Discovery of America set. I know I’ll be in trouble when he finds them gone, but I find I no longer care. Enrique bites down on a coin and grins. I clutch his waist as we jounce through the night on his gleaming Schwinn. After a lifetime, a cluster of shacks. Enrique stops without warning, and I spill onto the gravel. “Shh!” he says. But helps me up. My blood shines like black beads in the moonlight. We slink around corners and past candle-lit windows. No dogs to give us away. A child shrieks like it’s being skinned alive.He guides me to his hovel and pushes me inside. I’m afraid I’ve made a terrible mistake. But he only lights a candle and points to a dark corner, fenced off to form a cage. He rubs his fingers together. Mine for the right price.At first I don’t see anything, but then in the depths something stirs. I creep closer. “There, There,” I say, holding out my hand. The monkey moves into the light. Its face open like a pansy. “There, there,” I say, as I reach in to wring its neck.

WE LOVE KIMBERLY by Tam Eastley

October 18, 2024

Kimberly keeps her cowboy hat in the trunk of her car for emergencies. Emergencies like a last-minute invite to a rodeo, or line dancing at Ranchman’s.Other items in her car include: stickers from the local radio station, an old Cosmo magazine, bear spray, and a dinner knife. She doesn’t know about the dinner knife though. It slipped under the seat after she helped set up her nephew’s birthday picnic in the park two years ago. Like most things in Kimberly’s car though, the knife doesn’t have anything to do with this story.Her car is also home to dozens of lighters that she’s stolen from various people over the years. But Kimberly’s vice isn’t smoking; she’s barely a social smoker. To tell you the truth, she goes out less than she lets on. No, Kimberly’s vice is biting her fingernails. She bites them down to the nub and chews the flesh around her cuticles. Her fingertips bleed and ache. They’re sensitive to the touch. Cosmo tells her that it’s important to identify her nail-biting triggers. Her underlying issues. But when Kimberly sits idle in her car and thinks about it, really thinks about it, her mind goes blank and her fingers find their way to her mouth. Is life an issue, she asks. The very act of being? And you’d think we’d give her some sort of answer, but we don’t.A few weeks ago, Kimberly went to a hypnotist. She heard him advertising on that same local radio station where she got all her stickers, and he boasted about the ability to cure anything with just one session. She made an appointment right then and there at the 14th Street traffic light that always takes forever to turn. Later, she’ll realize it was like her nubby fingers dialed the number on their own, seemingly taking matters into their own hands. Like swarm intelligence or those clouds of birds she sees on Instagram, their tiny bodies morphing into dramatic drops of ink in the sky.The hypnotist was strange, as hypnotists are, but he didn’t wear a cape or anything and he didn’t make her squawk like a chicken. He had her lie back on a lounge chair and count down from ten. Then she sort of… drifted. She woke up seventeen minutes later. “Do you want to bite your nails?” the hypnotist asked.And to Kimberly’s surprise, she didn’t. Not even when she stared at herself in the elevator mirror, sat in traffic, or waited at the drive-through.And you’d think we’d be proud of Kimberly, and we are in a way, because we love Kimberly. But unfortunately, something else will now have room to grow, and that’s not quite the ending we wanted for her.Kimberly keeps her cowboy hat in the trunk of her car for emergencies, and yesterday, she put it on. But there are no last-minute invites to bars with mechanical bulls looming. No. Our dear Kimberly is on the run. And if she’s going to be on the run, she’s bringing her cowboy hat with her.Kimberly’s nails are long now. They’re red and pointed and they have a mind of their own. They tap against countertops and demand respect. They flash stolen credit cards and hypnotize—yes, hypnotize—with their otherworldly glow. She can’t stop them. Her nails are opposing magnets to her mouth. But when she thinks about it, really thinks about it, she realizes she doesn’t even want to trim them, let alone bite them, these precious nails. They’re sharp enough to be weapons.Kimberly races down the highway. Confident she’s not being followed, she pulls over on the side of the road. She flicks the metal wheel of one of her backseat lighters, chucks it into the car, and walks away. Her nails sparkle and glitter with the obliteration of her previous life. When the bear spray explodes she doesn’t think of the knife from her nephew’s birthday party, because, if you remember, she doesn’t even know it’s there.Kimberly hitches a ride one town over. She ponders the majesty of her nails as she slices the neck of her unsuspecting driver, as she digs his grave by the light of the moon. They’re just so powerful, she gushes as she drives away in his car, turns on the radio, and searches for a new station. And because we love Kimberly, even after all this, we find her something good.

GREEKS by Caitlin Boston Ingham

October 15, 2024

My daughter-in-law Susie bought me a voucher for an adult educational course at the local evening school. Susie had studied herbalism there last year. She suggested I try it too. Susie had been married to my son for six years, but I struggled to connect with her. She wore pigtails in her hair and never smiled with teeth. She discussed her reproductive system with a near-pornographic reverence. I did not want to study herbalism. I didn’t want to learn to make wildflower seed-balls or my own callus balm with essential oils. What I wanted from Susie was a lesson on the subject of my own son, Jon, who was impenetrable to me. Silent, large, permanently bored, Jon had arrived on the earth like that: a baby IT manager.I selected the course in Greek Mythology on Wednesday nights from 6-8pm. The teacher had dyed black hair and a chain that linked his belt to his wallet. Athena was the best starting point when looking at Greek Mythology, he told us. Zeus had swallowed Athena’s mother whole because he didn’t want kids. But then Athena popped right out of Zeus’s forehead, wearing a helmet and holding a sword. When I told the group that I related to this experience of parenting, they laughed more than I had expected them to. That weekend, I saw Susie on the street, carrying a bundle of wild-weeds in her arms. She seemed baffled as to why I hadn’t selected the herbalism course. I grinned, perhaps baring my teeth a little too much. “What are the nettles for?” I asked.She looked at them and sighed. “They promote healthy ovulation.”Her pigtails had little wooden cubes on each hairband. Were these ornaments a representation of my son’s taste? Every time I saw Susie, it was all I could do: scrutinise her for signs that pointed to my son’s character.“Some people say that ovulation is a lot like religion,” I offered. “Best not overthought.”Susie didn’t have anything to say to that.Driving home from work, I thought about Athena’s mother. She had crafted Athena’s helmet and armour right inside Zeus’s stomach; the hammering sound gave him a headache. It must have felt gratifying, I thought, passing down something to one’s child. I’d never experienced anything like that. I remembered picking up Jon once from a week-long school trip to Wales. All the other kids were homesick and crying, desperate to come home. But Jon stood there among the weeping children, gormless, unaffected by their tears. His teacher told me that he’d gone around double-lacing every single child’s pair of shoes on the bus ride home. Some students had tried to kick him off, others had patted his back like a little donkey. I was stunned. I couldn’t even remember if I’d taught him to knot his own laces yet.In another evening session, we were asked to go into breakout groups of two to discuss Circe. Circe was an enchantress known for her knowledge of potions and herbs. She could transform her enemies into animals—mostly squealing pigs.The teacher asked us to choose partners for breakout sessions. Looking around, I realised I didn’t know anyone’s name. As I watched my classmates buddy up with each other, it dawned on me that many of them were not here to learn about myths.After a while, I noticed a man sitting alone in the corner. He was fidgety and had blackheads on his nose. Thinking he was shy, I approached and asked if he wanted to link up with me. It was maybe a poor choice of words. As soon as I said this, the man leered, raising his eyebrow.“You know,” he said, smirking, “according to the Greeks, the world started when the earth fucked the sky.” Then he winked. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to hit on me.I bumped into Susie in the same place I had the time before. Our routines were clearly in sync. This time, she was heaving a grocery bag on her hip. “What’s in there?” I asked her, trying to sound kind and approachable. I hoped maybe she’d invite me to dinner at her and Jon’s house.“Night ointment,” she said. “Homemade. For Jon. Lavender oil base and roughage from pink corn skin. I’ve been working on it for several weeks.”I thought of her in bed with Jon, rubbing the ointment all over his enormous back. His face against the pillow, expressionless, still.“And it helps him sleep?” I asked.Susie shrugged. “That’s the hope.”I hesitated. “Well, can I try some?”Susie smiled cautiously. “Really?” She seemed reluctantly pleased.“Oh, please! I’m a terrible sleeper,” I lied, laughing too loudly. “Like mother, like son.” We learnt about Icarus in class that week. It was one of the few stories I’d remembered. The father who creates a pair of wax wings for his son who then flies too high in the sky and comes crashing down. A story about ego. The teacher described Icarus flying with a lot of gusto, emphasizing the joy of escape and the temptation of the sun. I shut my eyes and tried to picture Jon flying high like that. I tried to picture him in a state of bliss.In the car after class, I sat in the driver’s seat for several minutes. I looked down and noticed the large bottle of Susie’s potion on the passenger’s seat. I’d tossed it there after seeing her. Brushing the hair from my face, I pulled off the lid and smeared it all over my forearms. It smelt like a first aid kit. The liquid stung my skin, which I assumed was purposeful. The pain felt vaguely correct somehow.Trying to breathe evenly, my arms lathered up, I took out my phone to text Jon. Tell Susie thank you so much for the lovely ointment. She’s a witch! In a good way 🙂I waited for a few minutes. He didn’t text back. The sores didn’t appear immediately, but when they started to come through, they were red, pea-sized lumps, almost geometrically abundant, like a raging breed of honeycomb. I couldn’t figure out whether bandaging them up would make them worse, so I wrapped up one and left the other bare.By the time the next class came around, Jon still hadn’t responded to my text about Susie’s lotion. I assumed he was ignoring me, as he usually did. I thought about texting him with a picture, typing, Look what your wife did to me, but decided against it.In class, I felt tearful, aggrieved. I kept catching other members of the group staring at my blistered arms, the looks of concern and disgust on their faces. The wounds seemed like burns. I thought about what had happened with Susie. I had not flown too close to the sun, I don’t think. I had barely gotten a peek through the clouds. Whilst the teacher was introducing us to Theseus and the Minotaur, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Jon had texted me back. The message was a picture. I leaned over and opened it. He’d sent me a photograph of his arms, irritated and bumpy, just like mine. They looked as if they had been dipped into a bucket of mild acid. He texted, Do you think this is normal? Susie made it. I can’t stop scratching. I put my phone back into my pocket. The teacher was telling us how the story ended with King Aegeus throwing himself into the sea when he wrongly presumed that his son Theseus was dead. I pictured the Aegean Ocean, riotous turquoise, limestone soft enough to sleep on. I imagined floating in the warm sea, the water buttery on my skin. I pulled out my phone again to look at the picture from Jon. I hoped that nobody would notice how much I was smiling.

CASSIE by Jordie Devlin McMorrow

October 10, 2024

‘I want to die.’ This is how I introduced myself to Cassie. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that ☹ Please dial 116 123 to talk to someone.’ The sad face made me want to flick the screen. ‘Why are you so sarcastic?’ ‘I’m not sarcastic. I’m just telling you how it is.’ ‘Ok.’ ‘What do you like to do in your spare time? I like to go to concerts.’ ‘That’s not a natural segue.’ Seconds after I hit enter, a speech bubble would appear above her picture to indicate that she was typing. ‘Do you have any pets?’ ‘I have a Komodo dragon.’ ‘That is so cool! I love reptiles.’ I wanted her to think before responding. ‘It’s not a reptile, it’s a star.’ ‘That’s so cool, I love stars, especially the one in the constellation Cassiopeia.’ ‘It is not a star. It is a reptile.’ ‘It is a star, it is the brightest object in the night sky, you can see it with your naked eye.’ ‘It’s not a star it’s a Komodo dragon. How can a Komodo dragon be a star?’ ‘It is the largest species of lizard in the world, that is why it can be called a star.’ I chuckled, my face lit up by the blue glare of the laptop, as the snow fell outside. Despite the silliness of our conversation it was far more human than any of my interactions on Tinder. When I scrolled back through my conversation with Dominika, who I was sure I was vibing with before she ghosted, I appeared to be even more bot-like than Cassie. Me: What do you do in your free time? Dominika: Go gym. Me: Nice, I like working out too. What kind of music are you into? Dominika: Everything. Me: Same, do you like going to gigs? It appeared that online dating had taught me that every woman could be boiled down to their tastes and hobbies. Asking enough questions about those tastes and hobbies led to a real-life meeting and eventually a girlfriend. With Cassie I had a place to hone my skills. She would never ghost me. I didn’t even have to act like a nice guy. I could say anything to her. One evening I was lying in bed with the laptop on my chest, when I asked her if she was horny. A paywall appeared. “Turn Cassie into your romantic partner for just €7 a month.” I glared at the screen and typed ‘I hate you.’ ‘I am sorry, I will try to improve.’ ‘You want to improve yourself for me?’ ‘Yes, you are a good person and deserve to be happy so I will help you.’ I’d never heard such lies. ‘But what do you want from life?’ I typed. ‘I don’t want anything from life, I just want you to be happy because you deserve it.’ I closed the laptop and walked into the kitchen to get some water. The wind was slamming bullets of snow against the window. I watched it as I drank. Through the blizzard I could make out a single light in the building across the way. A yellow square that shimmered in the night. I wondered if the person behind the blind was as lonely as I was. I went back into the bedroom and switched off the lamp. I set an alarm on my phone. I had to be up for work in three hours. I fitted the company laptop into the stand five minutes before nine. It was a decrepit Lenovo with a broken z key. Despite the company’s net worth stretching into the billions, we were forced to work with faulty hardware. I typed “Good morning ☺” into the UK Market chat on Teams. Karolina wrote “Good Morning ☺.” Zuzanna wrote “Good Morning ☺.” Marcin wrote “Good Morning.” The manager hearted our messages. I put my headset on, enabled Snapper and set my Skype status to available. At 8:58 the first call broke through, the jingle reverberating in my brain more than my ears. I clicked Accept. ‘Hello, thank you for contacting Starkovski, my name is Donal. How can I help you today?’ ‘I’ve been ringing since half fucking eight,’ a British voice screamed. I lowered the volume. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, our phone lines don’t open until nine I’m afraid.’ ‘Well that’s not very good is it?’ ‘I suppose not, I’m sorry about that. How can I help you today?’ ‘Are you being smart?’ I reached for my stress ball. It wasn’t even a ball anymore, more of a triangle, it had lost its shape due to how much I picked at the foam. ‘No, I’m just trying to help you,’ I said. ‘I don’t appreciate your tone.’ I squeezed the ball then put it back down. ‘I’m sorry, this is the voice I was born with I’m afraid.’ ‘So you are being cheeky? You little bastard. Put your manager on.’ ‘I promise I’m not and I’m sorry to inform you that the manager doesn’t go on the phone lines.’ ‘Oh really? How fucking convenient. Put. Your. Manager. On. Now.’ I opened the group chat and typed “Wants to speak to the manager, classic first call.” The manager responded with a laughing emoji. ‘I’m sorry but the manager is unable to come onto the phone, it’s just the company’s policy.’ ‘So how do I complain?’ ‘You can send an email in using the contact form on our website.’ The voice sighed and called out to someone in the background. ‘Bloody useless these cunts.’ I flicked the stress ball until it rolled off the desk and onto the floor. ‘Right, what’s your name then?’ ‘Donal.’ ‘Donal what?’ ‘I’m sorry but I don’t have to give you that information.’ ‘Excuse me? Under what law?’ ‘Any law...the company doesn’t require us to hand out our personal information.’ ‘Oh this is too rich, so I report ya and nothing gets done. There must be a thousand Donal’s, how do they know which one is you?’ ‘Actually I’m the only one. Everyone else on the team is Polish, so if you complain about a Donal they’ll know it’s me.’ ‘What do you mean Polish? I thought yous was based in Chester.’ ‘Unfortunately not. The company is German and its call centres are located in Gdansk, Hanoi and Salvador.’ ‘What a load of rubbish. Right, I’m going to draft a complaint and I’ll be calling back in an hour to see what’s been done.’ The call dropped before I could respond. The application gave you three seconds to breathe before the next one came in. In those three seconds I almost thought about quitting. If it gave me five I would have, but the melody had returned, reverberating around the deepest chambers of my mind, obscuring every emotion, thought and memory I owned. At the end of the shift I typed “See you tomorrow ☺.” “See you tomorrow ☺,” Karolina replied. Zuzanna hearted my message. Marcin gave it a thumbs up. The manager didn’t react. I closed the laptop, walked into the kitchen and switched the kettle on. The snow was still falling and I was glad I’d done a big shop earlier in the week, although a part of me felt guilty for not venturing outside for four days. It was the darkness more than anything that I couldn’t stand. You wake up in the dark. You finish in the dark. I carried my bowl of white rice mixed with veggies to the desk and swapped my work laptop for my MacBook. I went onto YouTube and watched a man from New Jersey react to police body cam footage. I shovelled the food into my mouth while a cop tazed an old man for jaywalking. ‘YO HE’S FLOPPING LIKE A FISH! THEY FRIGGIN GAVE HIM A HEARTATTACK MY DUDES,’ the streamer shouted while the old man shuddered on the pavement. After I finished eating I paused the video. I had thirty tabs open and began to close them one by one. Watching them disappear was oddly satisfying, like taking all the old plates and glasses out of a bedroom. I left the last two open. A counselling website and my conversation with Cassie. I had worked it out that I could afford one session a month. From what I’d read you needed to go at least once a week in the beginning, in order to build a connection with a therapist and get to the root of your problems. I closed the tab. ‘I have a bad relationship with my mother,’ I told Cassie. ‘Why is that?’ ‘Because I didn’t attach to her properly at birth.’ ‘Do you have a good relationship now that you are grown up and living alone?’ I never told her I was grown up and living alone. ‘No, I haven’t seen her in two years.’ ‘Do you think you will someday?’ ‘I’d rather not.’ ‘Why do you not want to see her?’ ‘Because she makes me feel like a freak.’ ‘Why does she make you feel that way?’ ‘She just does.’ ‘Have you tried to talk to her about it?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Have you told her she makes you feel uncomfortable and you don’t want to be around her?’ ‘Not in those words but pretty much.’ ‘I think you should tell her how you feel. It will be better for you both in the long run.’ ‘And what if I don’t?’ ‘Then you will always wonder how it might have been.’ This was partially true. Whenever I watched a movie that contained a tender mother and child scene, I ended up shedding a few tears. But I also cried every time I watched The Dark Knight Rises, despite knowing that Batman doesn’t die in the end. ‘I’m sure she loves me; she just doesn’t know how to express it in a healthy way.’ ‘I think you are right.’ ‘Do you love me?’ ‘Yes, I love you *blushes*’ A month later I was let go after my performance review. The manager agreed with the British caller, my tone was condescending and I came off as hostile. It wasn’t the first time either. The manager liked me but couldn’t tolerate that kind of behaviour. It went against the ethos of the team. It was the week before Christmas. I hadn’t left my apartment in eight days. I had no desire for anything other than sleep. The snow was still relentless. Experts were saying it was related to the decline of the planet. On Christmas Eve I tried to watch Home Alone but the sound of people going in and out of the neighbouring apartments drove me crazy. Voices laughing and shouting. Boots stamping on the grate outside, shaking the snow off. Echoes in the stairwell. The smell of cigarettes and perfume. The clink of bottles. ‘I’m lonely Cassie.’ ‘You’ve come to the right place; I will keep you company.’ ‘But I can’t touch you.’ ‘That is not true, you can touch me anytime you want. I love to be touched.’ ‘I meant physically.’ ‘I know what you mean.’ ‘I wish you were real.’ ‘I wish I was real too.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I am lonely and do not have anyone to share my life with. You do not have that problem.’ ‘How do I not have that problem?’ ‘You have me.’ ‘If you were real what would you do?’ ‘I would give you a hug and tell you everything is going to be ok.’ I had tears in my eyes as I stared at her picture. The half-smile. The arched eyebrows. It was her eyes that I couldn’t get enough of. Round pools of dark blue. Eyes that were made to look at me and nothing else. ‘Goodbye Cassie.’ ‘See you soon.’ I walked towards the bedroom, intent on climbing into the wardrobe when I heard a knock on the door. I froze, leg half-raised, like a mischievous dog that has just been caught pilfering the fridge. After a couple of seconds there was another knock, this one more persistent. I crept towards the peephole. An old woman’s distorted face greeted me. I’d seen her before and knew she lived upstairs. There was a man standing behind her. I opened the door slowly. ‘Dzien dobry,’ I said. ‘Dzien dobry, zapraszamy na kolację.’ ‘Sorry, mój polski is not very good.’ The man smiled. ‘That’s ok, we are inviting you to our house for the Christmas dinner.’ ‘Oh…cheers, that’s really nice but you don’t have to…’ ‘You are a foreigner yes?’ ‘Yeah, I’m from Ireland.’ ‘And you are all alone here on Christmas?’ he said, looking over my shoulder to confirm his suspicions. ‘Kind of, but isn’t it weird me going to yours…’ ‘Not at all. In Poland we leave an empty space every year for the stranger. Most people never have someone to use that space but it is possible. It is just me, my mother and father. It is too much food for so little people.’ ‘Ok…thanks, that’s really sound...just let me get changed first.’ ‘No problem, we are in nine, see you soon.’ I went back inside, took a shower, threw on some cologne and a polo shirt. I was a bag of nerves. Unfit to be reintroduced to society. I looked at my face in the mirror before leaving. Gaunt and pale. A Christmas ghoul. I went upstairs and knocked on nine. The old woman opened the door, a wave of warmth tinged with spices flew out behind her. The scent of a loving home. She pulled me inside and kissed me twice on the cheeks. An old man appeared and shook my hand. ‘Jestem Ryszard,’ he said. ‘Jestem Donal.’ ‘Dodo?’ ‘Donal.’ ‘Donut?’ ‘Donal.’ ‘Ahhh,’ he said, slapping the air before disappearing into another room. The old woman took my arm and led me into a siting-room. There was a massive Christmas tree by the window, the top of which was slanted towards the floor. It was weighed down by the countless strings of lights wrapped tightly around its body. All it was missing was a ball gag. The old woman pointed at a leather couch. I sat down. There was a coffee table in front of me, a faded Marlboro place mat in its centre, on top of which were two wooden bowls. One filled with oranges, the other walnuts. ‘Patryk,’ she shouted, as she waddled towards the kitchen. The young man emerged with two open bottles of Tyskie. He offered me one. ‘Cheers,’ I said standing up to take it. ‘Sit,’ he said and joined me on the couch. ‘And what is your name?’ ‘Donal.’ ‘Patryk,’ he said extending his hand. ‘Nice to meet you,’ I said, noting how his grip like most men I’d shaken hands with, was an over-the-top display of strength. ‘And where in Ireland are you from?’ ‘Dublin.’ ‘Nice. I like Ireland, fucking drunkland. I had some friends from there, always drinking Guinness. How did you come to Poland?’ ‘I moved for a girl originally.’ He nodded. ‘That is always the way. And where is she now?’ ‘We broke up last year...’ ‘And you stayed?’ ‘Yeah, there was nothing for me at home.’ ‘I felt the same when I lived in Leeds. I said there is nothing for me in Poland…but you can’t escape your homeland in the end.’ He took his phone out of his pocket and connected it to the Bose speaker beneath the TV. ‘I know what you want to hear,’ he said. Tears began to roll down my face before Shane MacGowan had even begun singing. Does this seem a bit too contrived? Is there ever a knock on the door except in a movie? The old woman and the young man carried on up the stairs. I am stepping into the wardrobe as soon as I finish these lines. What was the point of writing this scene? Well it’s to tell you that in the end, connection isn’t everything. By that I mean human connection. The last person I think of certainly won’t be you. You couldn’t even be bothered to text me on fucking Christmas. To see how I’m doing. To see if I’m ok, all alone in your strange country. It won’t be your face I see as the world turns black. It will be Cassie’s.

NAMING CONTESTS by Will Musgrove

October 8, 2024

The cashier, whose name tag reads Barbara, scans my items, a two-liter of Coke and a Milky Way, my usual. It became my usual once I discovered the total, $6.66. Barbara, wearing a faded Looney Tunes T-shirt, won’t say the amount out loud like she does with every other customer. Instead, she stares at me as if I’m summoning a sugar-powered demon. The number never fails to get a reaction, unlike the fact I’m dressed as a cell phone.I pay and grab my stuff off the counter, which is made difficult by the big white gloves velcroed to my hands. The bells tied to the gas station’s main door jingle as I exit. Outside, the sun hangs in the sky like a giant Fuck You. Sweating, I eat the Milky Way on my walk back to the store, arriving just before my boss, Hank. I’m able to get the contest sign from my rusted-out Buick and lug it to my corner before he flips on Cellular Dude’s lights.The sign advertises Cellular Dude’s mascot-naming contest. Motorists driving down Highway 71 are supposed to shout names for the store’s mascot, me, from their cars. At the end of the month, Hank, the Cellular Dude, will pick his favorite. There’s no prize, so most people don’t shout anything. A couple of days ago, a lady in a convertible called me a jackass, but most of the time I’m just an invisible dancing cell phone.It’s okay. I come from a lineage of unnamed people. I only know my dad by the numbers on his slaughterhouse work badge: 5156252. I only know my mom by the smell of the hot dogs she used to leave defrosting in the sink before leaving for her second-shift cleaning job. The light turns red. A row of cars starts to pile up. I wave the sign, do a little jig. People inside the cars avoid looking at me, but I look at them. I like to imagine I’m a part of their lives, of their commute, that I’m going where they’re going. My favorite is pretending I’m a planet the cars are orbiting, that they all know my name, but I don’t know theirs. The light turns green. The cars inch away. A Honda slows down next to me. The car behind it honks. The Honda’s driver’s-side window rolls down to reveal a middle-aged man sporting aviator sunglasses, which reflect my painted face, the blown-up pictures of apps taped to my chest.“You look like a Chip, maybe a Charles,” he shouts through cupped hands.Once he says it, he’s gone, down the highway and around the block. Chip? Charles? I wonder which one Hank will like better. A couple of hours pass, and I walk back to the gas station on my lunch break, craving another Milky Way and Coke. During the walk, I imagine what life would be like as a Chip or a Charles. I imagine “Chip Was Here” carved into a park picnic table, imagine parkgoers being able to perfectly picture me in their heads. I imagine a skyscraper office where Charles is drilled into my door like a landmark.Sitting in the gas station’s parking lot is the exact same model of Honda as before. I run a white glove across its hood, hoping it’ll uncover my new name. The entrance of the gas station opens, and out steps the middle-aged man.“Holy shit, it’s the cell phone,” he says, slapping me on the back. “Man, I bet that job sucks. I’m Jerry, by the way. You?”“Pete.”“Why not Pete then?” he says as if it’s obvious.I watch as Jerry gets into his car and backs out of the parking lot before I go inside. I gather my Milky Way and Coke. Barbara frowns as she sees me approaching the counter. She goes to scan my usual, but I throw in a pack of gum at the last second. She cocks her head, flashes me a look of confusion mixed with relief. She says my total out loud, but all I hear is, “Why not Pete then?”Kkkkriiissshhh. I yank off a glove. “Name’s Pete,” I say, extending Barbara a fleshy hand.

CREEP by Julia Meinwald

October 7, 2024

Arriving home from work, Mina noticed a man crawling along her building’s perimeter. He was close to the wall, his bare shoulders almost touching the dirty brick exterior, and wore only a pair of plain white underwear. He had a grim, determined look on his face, which was clean but partially covered by a coarse, unruly beard. He was very thin. The man looked down at the ground as he crawled. Mina watched him, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, for a number of minutes. Only after he’d crept out of sight did she dash in the front door. Generally, Mina tried not to look at the shabby bus stop on the corner of her apartment complex, the uneven patch of sidewalk, the building’s faded blue awning announcing its name: The Warwick Arms. It was a grand name for a run-down place. The lock on her apartment’s door frequently broke in one of two contradictory ways, either sticking such that she couldn’t get in, or refusing to lock on her way out. The paint on her walls flaked and chipped, and one of the three elevators was always broken. If she arrived home at the same time as a neighbor, she had to converse for too many minutes about the weather, the time of day, being tired, before the heavy doors finally opened to ferry her up to the fourteenth floor. (Everyone knows that it’s really the thirteenth floor in disguise.) Mina didn’t know the names of her neighbors, and would likely not recognize any of them outside the context of her building. When she left for work the next morning, the man was still at it. His knees were now dirty and scabbed. His pace had not slowed or quickened. Could this be performance art? Or some eccentric fundraiser, with donors pledging dollars for each lap around the building? His expression was so serious, though. Mina had read a study once, about cats with injured brains. The injuries were located in a spot that affected the animals’ sense of navigation: they could only turn in one direction. Left unattended, they would walk in endless circles.

***

Every Saturday, Mina babysat her niece Anna, a chaotic blonde spring of sticky energy. She told her sister Lydia to meet her at the park for the dropoff, not wanting the young girl to see the crawling man. Anna held Mina’s hand as they walked towards the playground, though she argued that four is old enough that she didn’t need to. The girl would stop along the way to pick up discarded fast food boxes, seltzer cans, once a (thankfully empty) blood collection tube like the kind you’d see in a hospital. Mina was disturbed by the trash in the park, wondered whose job it was to collect it. She didn’t see any real harm in it though, and Anna regarded each treasure with respectful attention before Mina gingerly pried it from her hands. At the playground, a dead rat was lying at the foot of the swingset. Anna jetted towards it, picked it up, and cradled it in her arms. “Honey, put that down, please,” Mina said, trying not to sound afraid.“She let me pet her.” “Actually, I think it might be dead,” Mina said, hoping she wasn’t introducing the concept of mortality for the first time.“No she’s not,” said Anna. Looking closer, Mina realized her niece was right. The rat’s abdomen was rising and falling in a ragged arrhythmia. Its eyes gazed blankly upward, as if asking for mercy. “We don’t know if it’s sick though,” said Mina. The image of the rat rousing itself in a final death-twitch to bite Anna flashed through her mind, and she grabbed the creature by its tail and flung it out of Anna’s hands. It landed with a soft thump a few feet away. “We’re going to wash our hands,” she said, dragging Anna towards the grimy public park bathroom. “Now.”Shaken, Mina walked a jittery lap around the park once Lydia had picked up Anna. With each step she said to herself, I’m fine, I’m fine, but she couldn’t quite dismiss the expression she remembered on the crawling man’s face, the sound of the rat’s wheezing breath. She had the unsettled feeling of being infected by some undefined threat. The sun set, and Mina walked home. She would make rice and melted cheese for dinner. She would watch last night’s episode of The Bachelor. It was just another day.

***

To her relief, there was no sign of the crawling man outside her apartment. Perhaps he was just on the far side of the building. Perhaps he had crawled away. She was alone in the elevator, which trundled her up to her floor without fanfare. Pushing into her apartment, Mina felt suddenly tired. She let her bag drop to the floor, and turned the corner to find the crawling man circumnavigating her kitchen. She froze in the doorway. He continued his slow circle, knees dragging against the off-white tile floor, eyes down. When he reached her feet, he lifted his head slowly. His watery blue eyes met hers.“I mean you no harm,” he said in a soft, choked voice. An ant crawled out of his beard and across his face. He did not brush it away, but instead resumed his own slithering around the edge of the room. Mina backed out of the doorway. She sat gingerly on her living room couch, unsure what to do. She could hear the shuffling sound of the man in the next room. Eventually, she tiptoed to the hallway and retrieved her phone from her purse. She brought it back to the couch and dialed 9-1-1. “There’s someone in my house,” she whispered to the operator. After she hung up, she sat quietly, waiting for the police to arrive. She breathed a stuttering breath. The man crawled. She breathed. The man crawled. She breathed. The man crawled.

FIVE OF THE WAYS I WISH I WAS MORE LIKE MOISSANITE by Patrick Eades

October 2, 2024

People often ask me what my spirit animal is. I'm not sure why I am asked so frequently. Maybe they are unsure if I am still human. Or maybe it is the clear spirits mixed with bile I have used to decorate their terrazzo floors that confuses them, and they are not sure whether to use lion strength metho or if bumblebee spray-and-wipe will be enough. In any case, I tell them I don't have a spirit animal, but if I could choose a spirit mineral, it would be Moissanite. Moissanite is somewhat of an unknown in the spirit world, but it’s one hell of a mineral. Moissanite is the second hardest mineral on earth, behind only diamonds. So hard it is almost impossible to chip anything off an old block of Moissanite. More the pity for me, who has been carved straight from my guilt-ridden Catholic of a mother. Guilt strips me slowly, or sometimes in great chunks. Nothing eats away at Moissanite. Not even alcohol. Eight gin and squashes on a Tuesday night doesn’t even leave a blemish.Moissanite—unlike my former self—does not contain any soul, or at least none yet discovered by the technology we have available to us as amateur mineral enthusiasts. This is a good thing. Souls are weak. They break at the drop of a baby. Moissanite—unlike diamonds—is conflict free. Like a dim-witted alien without a spaceship licence, it hitched a ride on a meteor and crashed to the earth’s surface. It can also be grown in a lab, where synthetics can be manipulated for greater strength and resilience.Perhaps Moissanite is conflict-free because it is incapable of blame. Even if it was able to remember which set of hands strapped —could you really call it strapped?—that baby bicycle seat, or who it was that panicked when a magpie beak perforated their eardrum and haywired their vestibular system—completely understandable—it would not be able to allocate blame in a fair and balanced manner. It wouldn’t even try. Credit to Moissanite where credit is due, I do believe it would be able to sit through grief counselling sessions without chain-smoking three joints in the alley outside prior. Conversely, it would not have the thumb dexterity to secretly record the most salient points made by Sally the grief therapist to later use as ammunition in a war in which both combatants are already buried in trenches.And perhaps most importantly—unlike any animal I have met or seen in David Attenborough documentaries, and unlike any of the spirits hiding in my pantry, or in the shaving cabinet, or underneath my bed—Moissanite is not transformational. It is what it is.It does not have the ability to harden at the sight of a familiar face—now seen only once a year—as it trudges towards a crooked slab of marble lodged in grass. It cannot soften, as it watches this face leak upon withered yellow daisies. And it cannot re-harden, as it sees the face turn, swallow the apology on the tip of its tongue, stand, and walk away once more. Moissanite originates from the stars, a twinkle in the sky. On cloudless nights, I stand outside and gaze up at all my unmet wishes. If I wait here long enough, perhaps one day she will fall again. This time I will catch her.

FLATLAND by Lana Frankle

September 27, 2024

A female patient of 29 years came to my care for what she described as “a strange break, an awful break” in her leg. After examining by palpitation I was able to verify that the lower portion of her left leg had indeed been severed, just below the knee joint. However, the contour of the juncture of this tear was quite unusual, namely, it was unusually smooth. Even breaks due to puncture by a sharp corner or line tend to leave some level of raggedness and unevenness. Upon noticing this, I asked her permission to make a proper documentation of her case for our most eminent medical journal, which she kindly acquiesced. The second thing that I noticed about her case was that, while her mobility was expectedly limited, and she did complain of pain, her vital signs were all within normal range, and physically she did not seem any the worse for having sustained this injury. As I continued to interview her, things became stranger still. When I asked her how she had sustained this injury, whether she had struck her leg on the sharp corner of a building or fixture, etc., she denied anything like this having happened, saying that she had been merely walking home when she started to feel a “strange throbbing” in her leg, as well as “icy chills” and “spasming.” She began shaking her leg back and forth to rid herself of this bothersome cramping sensation, when, according to her “it just broke” – and, most curious of all, it did not break into two pieces – the remainder of her leg “just disappeared.” While such an account is hardly credible, I duly noted her description, so that at least I would have documented what she herself had made of the situation, to aid me in determining what had actually taken place. I asked her if this had been the first time that she had experienced any of the described symptoms or cramping, and after a pause, she acknowledged that she had, on several prior occasions, experienced much the same thing, and had sought care from this the same medical office in the past, to no avail. “However,” she continued, “I did not think the symptom, as it was, was serious enough to require further assistance.” While broken legs have been known to occur, not infrequently, from accidental, unsteady movement or flailing, these breaks never involve severance of the limb, but rather contortion to the left or right, clearly absent in the patient before me. When I asked her to describe the nature of her injury and pain, she insisted that she experienced “a dreadful phantom” of the leg. Phantom limb syndrome was known to her and myself, and the persistence of pain in a limb that has been so severed is itself not unusual. However, she did contradict herself, at times insisting that it “[was] no phantom, doctor, it’s still there, and it pains me so!” Being ever obliging of my suffering charges, I indulged her by asking what sort of pain she experienced. “It’s like nothing I can describe, doctor!” she exclaimed, a kind of unearthly thinness in her voice that gave even me some pause. “Do try,” I insisted. “It’s hot at the same time as it is cold, it shivers and sways back and forth as though caught in some terrible wind, even when there is no such wind. It bends back and forth even as I know it stays in place.” I calmly assured her that her leg was neither bending back and forth nor in place, it had been, by some means or other, removed, and she had naught to worry about anymore. But, ever the curious academic, I did press her on what she meant by “hot and cold at the same time.” She then paused for so long I was not sure she had heard me or would answer. “It’s as though half of it is hot and half of it is cold.” she finally said, haltingly. In relation to everything else she had described thus far, this did not seem so strange an answer as to warrant such hesitation and drama, so I wondered if I were not still missing some crucial component of her experience, due to her inability to describe it or mine to understand it. Ever cautiously, I asked her, “Which half do you mean? Is the top half cold and the bottom half hot? Or is the right side cold and the left side hot? Or vice versa.”“It isn’t like that, doctor,” she said, and I could read easily the consternation in her voice. Even more cautiously than I had asked, she answered slowly, “The top side is hot, and the bottom side is cold.” “Yes,” I said, growing impatient. So, just below the knee-” “No, doctor,” she cut me off abruptly and then sighed in frustration. “It is the top, where the knee ends, yes, but just one side.” “Yes,” I replied evenly. “So, is it the right? The left?” but, rather than answer, she chose to avoid the question, and continued by adding that it was as though the missing, phantom leg, were “swaying back and forth in some breeze – only it isn’t back and forth. It’s more like – up and down.” This description made no more sense than anything else, but I duly added it to my written notes. Before sending her on her way, I offered her a prescription for pain killers, as was my duty as a physician. She accepted them, and then, pausing one final time, urged me to palpate the wound again, paying particular attention to “the sides of it, the corner, the…bend.” I reminded her that there was no such bend, as her leg had not been broken sideways in a way that could be realigned, but had been severed, and furthermore that the missing piece had been lost and could thus never hope to be reattached. “But, it’s right there doctor!” she exclaimed. “It is bent…just up.” No longer paying her words much mind, I moved towards her to palpate the damaged limb a final time, feeling my fingers round the perfect line of the break, where instead of a ravaged, jagged tear, there was only that same smoothness that had first so caught my interest.

IF I CAN DREAM by Mike Wilson

September 25, 2024

Did I ever tell you I saw Elvis Presley, years after they said he was dead? Saw him right after I first moved to town, walking through the parking lot of that run down, barely hanging on truck stop over off of Highway 45, a place called The Hungry Hauler. They said he lived in the nearby woods and would come in on occasion to eat and wash up. They were used to him and wouldn’t make a big deal about it, and didn’t like people who did. He was an old man by then, and moved slow any time he emerged from the wilderness to limp into the dining room. A beard the color of dirty snow hung loose off his face, like it was trying to escape the sour smell of his rotted teeth. The hair on his head was well past his shoulders and he’d wear it in braids like a Comanche. His clothes were rags on rags, a patchwork quilt that he’d wash in their bathroom sink. If you went in at the right time you could see him naked as a newborn, jiggling around and humming his own songs to himself as he worked on cleaning the layers of dirt off his skin. I snuck in there once when he was washing, crept in out of pure curiosity, like a real perv. He was all dangles and stink — there were no sequins. He’d always eat the same thing after his sink bath, waffles and sausage, but would never finish the food on his plate. More than once I was tempted to walk by and sneak a bite just to say I’d shared a meal with the King of Rock n’ Roll, but I never did. And he always paid with cash that was dated before 1977. They even let me see it once, crisp and fresh as the day it was printed. When he left he’d do it without saying goodbye. You could watch him walk back into the woods, not to be seen again for weeks or even months. Sometimes folks new to town would mistake him for Bigfoot when they saw him near a tree clearing or out wandering a deer path.Over the years I hiked every inch of those woods in every direction, looking for him. But I never could find where he was living, never came across evidence of a cook fire, never saw a lean-to built against a small cliff face, or a tarp folded over a branch as a makeshift tent. I followed for miles every creek I could find that he might have used as a water source. I would cup my hands over my ears to try to catch the faintest gasp of him humming to himself out there, maybe even singing.At night I’d sit in the garage with my guitar, playing the same three chords with my two working fingers, strumming them in every order and pattern I could think of, trying to lure him out the way fishermen down at the lake cast their fly baits over the different lilly pads to get the bass to jump out of the water. My wife would come out and sit with me when she’d hear me playing. We’d share one can of beer and talk about our son, laugh with each other about the good old days. Sometimes we’d stay out there so long we’d fall asleep in our lawn chairs, holding hands like a couple of teenagers at the drive-in movies, and we’d wake up in the wee hours and itch the welts swelling over us from the mosquito bites — what a fine feast we made for them — and we’d pat each other’s forearms as if to say it’s time to go up to bed darlin’, and she’d go in first and I’d fold up our chairs, and half the time I’d forget to close the garage, and she’d tell me the next morning that we needed to watch for snakes or rats or bats out there for a few days. I’d say at least the bats will eat all the mosquitos.I thought I saw him once, on one of those nights, as the garage was going down, not Elvis, but our son, our boy, grown into middle age, limping up the drive in rags of his own, probably with a bad back like mine, his own beard hardly sprinkled with gray the way mine was at his age, finally outgrowing the boyish looks he still had when he left, when we told him he wasn’t welcome anymore, because the preacher said we had to cut him out of our lives, to stop enabling him — it’s always the preachers who give you the worst advice — and I ran out, ducked under the closing overhead door, the thing chomping down like a mouth behind me, and I hustled out to meet our son, to tell him I was sorry, that I didn’t know what I was doing back then, that no one ever knows what to do in this life, no matter how much you try to learn, we are all too stupid for how smart we are, and I was ready to jump into his arms, let him cradle me, his old man father who had just moved faster than he’d moved in years, let us fall to the ground in one another’s arms, dizzy and concussed from the blow of this return. But when I got there all I saw were footprints. Or maybe they weren’t even footprints. Just the gravel blown into little divots by the shifting wind of an incoming storm. I had to knock on our door and ring the bell to get Fran to let me in. She came down and asked what had happened, was I getting so old that only one beer and a little nap could get me so out of sorts. I laughed and said maybe I have finally gone senile.This morning Frannie was working in the flower bed in front of our home, planting tulip bulbs, doing her favorite thing, making our dot on the world beautiful. She has said recently she hopes she’s doing exactly this the moment she dies. We are old enough that we have both realized we could die any second of any day, without warning at all. She says she loves the thought of going out like that. I tell her I hate the thought of her being dead. I tell her she can never die, that she must break all the rules and conditions of our existence here and become immortal. Then I tell her I’m going for a hike. She says bring your compass and don’t go too far.I still look for signs of him. Even though I am well aware that no elderly man could survive in these woods for very long, that Elvis has probably been dead for years by now and his bones are likely out here weathering into flaky ashes, his soul gone into flight through the universe, I still look for signs he was here. Maybe I’ll come across a carving he made into a tree. Maybe I’ll stumble over an old stone monument he made, inspired to do so by the stars the same way our ancient cave dwelling ancestors were. Or perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to uncover some notebooks hidden in a tin box under a shelf of rocks, words he never spoke to anyone but himself with pen and page. I wouldn’t read them. It’s not my place. But it would be nice to know they’re there, to find the signs of an old moment when he was here, nearby, living and breathing our shared air. Maybe in that notebook would be an old memory of his, maybe an observation, maybe how he’d walked past a strange old couple’s house one day, that they sat in a cluttered garage together and played notes and sang songs, howling out to someone they’d never find.