Flash

WOLF IT DOWN by Billie Chang

March 31, 2025

I push Ally’s note clean into the corners of my mouth, the motion wet and slow, the ink kissing molar. Finn is in the shower. The bathroom door splintered last week after Mr. Rutabaga ran into it, full force and head-on, in pursuit of a fast spider. We drove him to the on-call vet. He sits now in his doghouse with one less tooth and a tender snout. I can hear Finn’s motions through the wood-chipped cracks: the stumbling as he raises his leg to wash the bottom of his foot, the collapse of water after he pools the drops and cups them to his face. I swallow. The wad is thin, mushed-through, tickles my esophagus. Binder paper goes down smoother than, say, cardstock. And when lined with a three-hole punch, I like to start by pressing my tongue clean through the holes, make a game of it. The shower squeaks off. Steam erupts, slowly escaping.Finn is not technically my boyfriend. The neon “O” in JOHNSON’S BAR was flickering in and out, one night a month or so ago, and he was there standing under it. The glow made the stubble on his chin shift from dark to light. Feeling bold and bright from the pregame and in want of the cig in his hand, I’d gone up to him. Now we see each other intermittently: He knows my roommate by name but I’ve never been introduced to his. We’re doing a dance, where we both don’t talk about the unspoken thing, and I don’t ask because I’m scared to lose the attention. But if someone new were to come up to me, their head halo-d by the club lights, and press their face close to mine, I’d turn away. I feel loyal to Finn. When casualty becomes punctuated by nakedness, it morphs into something else entirely. The intimacy of a mark, sleeping skin-to-skin. It’s a mower to lawn, all my fine prickles picked and collected. The door unlocks downstairs. Must be Gloria with the cake. It’s her birthday today, 23. She’s always been particular about her cake, an 8-inch tres leches from a quiet market in Rockridge. Louis, the baker, delights in this annual cycle. Every year since I’ve known her, she returns with a Happy Birthday, Beautiful Gloria, iced on the cake in Louis’s thin cursive. Gloria sleeps next to me, two twin beds separated by a desk, in a cramped one-bedroom. We’ve been roommates since the 49ers won the Super Bowl, an event which, coupled with Mom’s death, catalyzed my move to SF.Gloria and I have only fought once, after my last boyfriend. He was hard to forget. He left me his childhood stuffed teddy, brown and made of pilling cotton. It took Gloria and I five days to finish and a bottle of Frank’s RedHot. The stuffing was bloating, glue-like. Each piece went down in big gulps, lumping together in our throats, like tens of Adam’s apples. I split the teddy with Gloria because she kissed Reef, once, while we were still dating, and regretted it fully. This betrayal was so shocking that when Gloria first confessed, the sidewalk where they’d kissed erupted and split right down the middle.

–

Gloria places the cake on the table. She’s wearing her favorite dress, all-black with polka dots. She glances at the shoe rack. “Finn is here?” she asks. “He came over early to help set up,” I say. I pad over to our standing cabinet, a heavy wooden thing Gloria found on the side of the street. We dragged it to ours, down Rincon Hill, the concrete smoothing the wooden feet out into patchy bulbs. We keep our party decorations in it, a few nice plates and a sword. For intruders, Gloria said, when she unpacked it. “Are you finally done with Ally?” Gloria asks. I nod Yes. Ally is my community theater director. She left me a note, after she’d given the part of Baker’s Wife to Emma Rose, a preppy girl I hate. Sorry, I know you wanted it, she’d written. Fuck her. Down the hatch she went. When I want to forget someone, I eat and digest whatever they’ve left, things they’ve given me. Gloria is the only one who knows. She’s no stranger to the process; sometimes, she’ll do the same. But it gives her hives and makes her throat itchy, so she’s more selective, has more baggage to carry. It must be hard to walk around so heavy.For me, the gut is its own biome, a paradoxical landscape where digestion means complete erasure. My side of the room is white-wall bare. Everything once meaningful exists instead in my stomach, deep down and feathered by acid. Letters, rings, Mom’s photo album. The hardest was a key, one time. The ridges burned all the way down. I hand Gloria the balloons and we take turns blowing air into them. Finn walks in, his hair all wet. He rubs my shoulder and kisses the skin.

–

Evening and the birthday party is in full swing. Gloria is drunk and so am I. The kitchen light is on, but the rest of the apartment stands dark. I’m chatting in the corner with Hanna, a frilly girl with asthma, who’s in Gloria’s roller derby club. “Hannaconda,” she says, pointing to a word on her sock.“What’s that?” “My roller derby name. I had them specially made.” I big-belly laugh, pressing my glass of wine to my forehead. “What would mine be? Wait, no. Do Finn. What would Finn’s be?”“Who’s Finn?” Hanna asks. I smile and look around, trying to point him out. I see two seconds of a man-body rush into the kitchen and have an urge to follow. “Right there. He’s my guy.” “Finndiana Jones,” Hanna decides, and then I giggle-collapse to the floor, too drunk to leave.Thirty minutes later, Hanna presses me about singing and says, "It’s the perfect time. Gloria is in the kitchen." I light the candles and cup the little flames so they stay lit. I lock eyes with the people around. Press a finger to my lips. The quiet spreads and then it’s only breathing. We stalk over in a mass towards the kitchen. The light is still on and a shadowy blob swells on the tiled floor. I hold the cake out in front of me and turn in, Happy Birthday on the tip of my tongue. But then the blob reveals itself and on a chair, Gloria sits straddling Finn, her fingers cupping his face. He’s looking at her, soft. Then the mass begins the chorus and the two pull away from each other, all guilty. Finn’s eyes sweep down to mine, his gaze troubled, and with the candle flames bouncing the light, he looks like he did the night we met, stubble and all.

–

It’s no shock when the apartment splits in two, right down the desk. The plaster separates and the house-bones shake. The rip is so big, it cracks the ground and halves the dirt, all the way to the center of the Earth. If I lie down and lean over, my stomach flat against the second floor’s hardwood, my head peeking out above the cavern, I can see stalagmites, bats, Hell. I’m working on finding a tarp so that I can cover my half of the apartment without having to see Gloria across the ravine. She’s trying to fashion a bridge to mine, already threw a can on a string and missed. I should call my landlord. Maybe my rent will be less.I haven’t talked to Gloria since she untangled herself from Finn. When he left our place, his shoes hanging loose in his hands, I stood tall and still on the doorstep and told him how much I cared for him. "I’m surprised," he said, his voice low. "I feel like I don’t know you at all. You’re all blank."

–

Before this, Gloria meant trumpets blaring and pop music coloring the background – my weak memory placing her onstage in that dark karaoke bar, all confidence and a soft, lilting voice, on our first night out as roommates. I started work at the seafood house early the next morning, a prim and proper waitress, shucking oysters and recommending white wine to pair with Tilapia. Gloria had gotten to the bar early and signed herself up for karaoke in slot #2. It was a few days before Halloween, the 25th or 26th, and so all the windows were colored with cobwebs. Gloria was in a big bedsheet. Ghost Gloria can sing, I said after, my hands buzzing from applause. She stretched her legs out onto my lap, piling the soft points of her heels into my thigh, and smiled big at the attention, establishing then some sort of need to prove herself worthy. “I’m dressed as my mom,” she laughed, her eyes ablaze. “She haunts me.” I stilled, because I had come here to start again, to try and erase my history. But feeling the alcohol snake its way up my chest and knowing, truly, that memory is inevitable, water to a sinking ship, I coughed and said, "I lost my mom too." And then we spilled open, craft scissors to the hippocampus, remembering things we long fought to forget. A few hours later, we both took to mouth our first memory. For me, a picture frame. For Gloria, a pill bottle. Her mother’s.

–

About a week passes and I’ve got the tarp up. But it’s cold in SF, and the wind presses the sheet outwards, making gaps. Eventually, a paper airplane finds its way in. The front says Please forgive me in Gloria’s careful scrawl. I don’t open it, because otherwise I’ll have to sit in the hurt, like I did when Mom died, all the pieces of her life staring empty and back at me: clothes, a toothbrush, her will. God, it’s so much easier to prepare a feast. I take out the seasonings– pepper and salt, some parsley for a green. I go around the house and start the pile. When I’m done, Gloria’s things fill my room. She is in every crevice, from ceiling to floor. I put on a song, let it boom around, and crawl my way to the top. I start with the paper airplane– crumple it up so it’ll sink down smoother. I take big bites and try to forget. Even with the music blaring, I can’t help but listen to the slippery sounds of it all entering my belly. It tastes cozy. Like warm apple pie.The next day, I’m feeling big. I take Mr. Rutabaga on a walk. As we’re climbing up a rounded hill, I feel something grumbling upwards, from deep in the gut. I let go of the leash. Mr. Rutabaga runs ahead, his body disappearing in the tall grass. After a heavy breath, I heave forward and throw it all up. Salmon against the stream.

SWORDFISH STRIPS by Michael Brooks

March 24, 2025

Emily spots her strutting up to the hostess stand: a willowy curl of a woman, Asian and raven-haired, white blouse tucked into a black pencil skirt at her narrow waist. Her eyes are sharp as blades, bright as the silver chain about her neck. She grips a Prada handbag that fins from her side and points with a slender finger to a table at the wide bow window, in Emily’s section. Nothing in her face or posture wavers.A man strides in behind her—maybe fifteen years her senior—a graying swoop of hair roofing a scrunched face and thin-framed glasses. He lacks the woman’s flash, sporting a blue button down, slacks, and simple leather shoes. Pocketing the keys to a BMW, he puts a hand on her lithe lower back. It remains there as the hostess weaves them through the sea of green-checkered tables, the woman’s jet stilettos clacking against the herringbone floor. Only once they’re seated does Emily note the vacant space on his wedding-ring finger.She lets the clumsy busboy fill their waters, waits for the ice to settle before gathering herself and approaching. The bow window overlooks a bluff beyond which sand dunes stretch like bloated bellies skyward. Past them are the liquid plain of Lake Michigan and a lowering sun that honeys the crossed thigh poking from the side slit of the woman’s skirt. The leg is smooth and lean-muscled, making Emily remember the donut she downed for breakfast, the way the jeans she’s worn since sophomore year have tightened as of late.She greets them, offers her name, asks, “Anything I can get you folks besides water to drink?”“The demi sec,” the woman says without hesitating. Her voice is low, even. Outside a mass of clouds swells over the lake. “And you, sir?”The man surveys the menu before glancing up at Emily. His cheeks flush when he does, but without wavering, he says, “Do you recommend one merlot over the other?”The woman gives a curt laugh. “Tom, you see how young she is. I bet you can’t even drink yet, honey, can you?” She bores her gaze into Emily, who looks away and feels her face warm. Emily is nineteen. A year out of high school with no more direction than she had last June when deciding to delay the college decision. She dreamt of going into business, growing chic and commanding, like the woman before her. But she never left southwest Michigan. The comment peels her confidence away like the thin shell of a boiled egg. “The 14 Hands blend is popular with our guests,” Emily says when she lifts her chin again.“I’ll have that,” Tom says.Emily nods. “I’ll go put those drink orders in for you.” She starts to turn, but the woman says, “We know what we want to eat.” Emily takes a silent breath. She laces her fingers together and looks at Tom.“You go first, Annie,” he says, scooping a menu from the table.“The swordfish strips,” she says. “Light on the butter. Make sure there’s a lemon on the side. And a garden salad too. Aren’t you gonna write this down?”Emily crosses her arms. “I have a good memory.”“I’ll have the lake perch,” Tom says.“Chips or fries?”He adjusts his glasses. “Do you have sweet potato fries?”“Just the ordinary kind,” Emily says. “Yellow, thin, and crisped.”She feels Annie’s scathing gaze upon her but doesn’t break eye contact with Tom.He gives a bored half-shrug. “That works I guess.”Emily nods and collects the menus. She brings the drinks out minutes later and sets them on the table. Neither of them acknowledges her. Annie rolls up her sleeves, revealing an indigo birthmark on the inside of one forearm, the only blemish on her otherwise flawless skin. Far over the lake, curtains of rain begin to fall.Emily attends to her other table, asking a young couple what they think of the Angus burgers they ordered. “They’re perfect,” the dark-haired man says. His wife offers Emily a kind smile. Their green-eyed daughter mashes the remains of a French fry over the wooden table of her high chair. When Emily waves at her, she gives a high and bell-like laugh.Emily braves a glance at Tom and Annie. The sun has lowered, hovering just above the advancing rain clouds. It casts Annie in a citrus aura and turns the blacktop before the bluff’s edge to dark marble. Their wines trap the light. Annie’s glows like tree resin, Tom’s like blood collected. A tiny lamp stands between the glasses, its shade like an umbrella, unable to shelter more than the salt and pepper shakers. The clouds outside swirl and seem to ripen.Later in the kitchen, Emily retrieves the couple’s plates, ensuring Annie’s holds a cloven lemon. She shoulders them on a serving tray across the dining area to an old stand whose black straps sink from the food’s weight. She serves Tom first, sliding the perch between his flatware. Annie’s swordfish strips encircle a creamy dip in a small, porcelain bowl. Sear marks stripe the lean strips of meat. Sour fruit halves flank them. Emily places the dish before her then offsets the salad plate.“Why didn’t you bring this out first?” Annie demands looking at the crisp arugula. “And where’s the dressing?”Emily’s mouth dries. “My apologies for the delay, ma’am. What kind of dressing can I bring you?”“Honey mustard. But I don’t want it on the side.”“Very well. I’ll take that back.” Emily reaches to retrieve the salad, but Annie slides it from her reach, toward Tom.“This one’ll be on the house then, right?”Emily bites a corner of her lip. Tom ignores them both, forking into his perch. It takes Emily a moment to muster, “Of course.” At her other table, the baby cries, two spaced out sobs that give way to wailing.When Emily passes, the dark-haired man says, “Sorry about the noise.” His wife scoops their daughter from the chair. “Can we snag the check when you have a second?” Mauve shadows show beneath his otherwise gentle eyes. “Thanks!”By the time Emily rings up their orders, pockets a generous twenty-percent tip, and brings Annie her dressed salad, the sun has disappeared, swallowed by the approaching storm. The first fat drops of rain cast liquid streaks across the windows. Annie has already devoured the swordfish strips and cleaned the last of the creamy dip from the cup.“Much better,” Annie says, eyeing the golden-glazed arugula. “With that kind of follow-through, you’ll be more than a server someday, won’t you?” A crooked smile lingers on her face. “I’ll have another glass of wine. And we’ll split the chocolate ganache for dessert.”Emily manages a nod. Her hands start to shake. She wanders through the kitchen and into the walk-in freezer, letting the door clamp shut behind her. She takes two deep breaths and feels the air’s chill. Vanilla ice cream tubs engulf the top shelves. Thick cuts of meat slump across remaining racks. The stainless steel door reflects her blurred figure. Her hips and waist look wider than she remembers.When she emerges, there is the sous chef, scraping silver scales from a fresh-caught walleye, fillet blade tight against the gills. “What the hell were you doing in there?” he demands, already galled about the extra salad. His cheeks stay as red as the raspberries on the chocolate ganache she carries out minutes later with a second glass of demi sec. She sets them both before Annie. Gooey chocolate oozes from the crinkled lava cake. The dining room is quiet now, without the crying baby.“Enjoy,” Emily says without eye contact. She wanders to a corner. The busboy clears the kind couple’s burger plates and hefts away the high chair. The storm outside spews rain. Tom clicks on the tiny lamp, which reflects in Annie’s necklace. She eases her thin figure back in the chair, tracing a pearl nail along the bony shoulder of her blouse. Emily bites her lip.They clean the dessert plate in minutes. Annie takes generous gulps of the sweet wine. Emily stares between her model-thin waist and the crumbling remains of the lava cake. Tom tongues the last of the dark cream with a spoon. With her front teeth, Annie bites a scarlet berry.“Anything else I can get you folks?” Emily asks when she approaches minutes later.Tom’s wine glass is empty, but a rogue tint colors its curved bowl. His eyelids have a slight droop. He looks at Emily’s face and then other parts of her.“The check,” Annie says.When later they saunter toward the door, Tom’s hand rests upon her rear. He gives it a squeeze. On the table, chocolate crumbs pepper their dessert plates. The wine glasses are empty, and the untouched waters condense, forming liquid rings on the checkered cover. Past the undressed salad neither of them touched, Emily discovers the receipt and the too-small tip—not even in cash. She grinds her teeth together. The sky outside is crow-colored. Clouds obscure the moon and stars. Rain patters on the roof with a sound like a hornet swarm.Not wanting to brave the sous chef’s wrath, Emily ventures to the bathroom near the front of the house. She looses a pent-up breath when she finds herself alone, the two stall doors slightly cracked. She thinks about rich Tom pawing Annie’s slim hips and studies herself in the mirror. Her straw-colored hair looks unkempt and her plastic earrings cheap, childish. She tries to stand with Annie’s poise, but instead of a sleek pencil skirt, she wears a server’s apron over broad hips. Blue pens poke from it like hairs from a mole. She grimaces, reapplying lip gloss, when she hears a guttural kecking.“Hello?” she says.The noise sounds again. Emily peers through the far stall’s open door. She sees the stilettos first, pointed like brandished knives toward her. Past an onyx skirt, a ringless hand pulls a mass of dark hair fin-like back from a thin body. A line of vomit needles from cracked lips. Then animal eyes, zipping back and forth, like those of a fish forced from the water. Kneeling, Annie writhes and twists looking sickly. She slides two hooked fingers from her mouth.“Are... are you ok?” Emily asks.Annie leans against the toilet paper dispenser to pull herself upright. When she does her necklace unclasps, peeling from her paling skin, sliding to the tile. There it stays, its tiny links glinting as the gaunt woman stumbles from the stall.“Wait!” Emily calls pointing at the floor.Annie ignores her. She missteps in her stilettos, catching herself on the vanity. She gasps for breath and angles away from Emily and the wide mirror, floundering out the bathroom door.Emily scoops up the shimmering string and follows Annie’s skeletal figure, crying, “Your necklace! You lost your necklace!”Annie doesn’t look back. Her handbag thumps against her ribs as she rushes out the restaurant’s front and leaps into the passenger seat of a waiting BMW. It loops along the bluff’s edge before speeding into the dark and soaking night, leaving Emily in the vestibule, clinging to the cold silver chain.

ACREMONIUM by Shira Moolten

March 18, 2025

Gina didn’t believe Sam when he said he’d discovered mold inside the air duct. “What do you mean, mold?” she said from the couch, not looking up from her phone. “It’s probably dust.”Sam got down from his perch on the bar stool. “I’m going out,” he said, then went to Walmart and bought painting masks and rubber gloves and vinegar. Within 20 minutes he was back, reexamining the duct in their condo with a flashlight. “It’s everywhere,” Sam said. “Come look.”“That’s okay,” Gina said. She was reading a really interesting New York Times article. Besides, Sam was always on about something. If it wasn’t mold it was chemicals, or bacteria, some foreign agent that would consume his brain and make him unrecognizable to the people he loved if he didn’t root it out and kill it first. He’d recently stopped kissing Gina because she didn’t use mouthwash. Her mouth was a bacteria incubator, he explained. She hadn’t wanted to do anything about it. “No kissing, fine by me,” she’d said, then shut her incubator mouth and went to sleep.Sam put on the white mask and gloves and took off his shirt so it didn’t get contaminated. He looked like a sexed up exterminator. He asked Gina to hand him paper towels, which she did without looking up. Then he scraped mounds of white dust into a trash bag before dousing the whole duct with vinegar. Finally he returned to the ground from up above, sweat glistening on his forehead.“Phew,” Gina said. “Glad it’s over.”“It’s not,” Sam said. The remaining mold was now volatile, loosened from where it had clung to the walls. If he turned the air conditioning back on, it was going to shoot out everywhere and fill their lungs. Did she not realize how dangerous that was? So he left it off. The whole condo became hot and began to smell like vinegar. Finally, Gina looked up from her phone.“Can you turn the air on?”“I just explained why we can’t do that,” Sam said. “We need to get a hotel.”“I’m sure it’s fine,” Gina replied. “If it’s mold then it’s probably not the toxic kind. Most mold is harmless.”“Okay,” Sam said. He went to the bedroom and began to fill his suitcase with clothes.“So you’re leaving me to die then?” Gina said, for even though she had no inclination to join him, she felt vaguely that this was not how boyfriends should behave.“You don’t want to live, you just want me to die with you,” Sam said, then walked out into the night, alone. Gina got up and turned the air on. Nothing flew out, of course. She settled back into her article, where a scientist was explaining why moose numbers were dwindling in Vermont. Even if there is mold, she told herself, I’d rather breathe it in alone than share a hotel bed with him, have another argument and not get any sleep.Sometimes Gina wondered how things had gotten so drab. Sam used to kiss her like he was eating a dense piece of chocolate cake, take her on walks and lift up rocks and show her salamanders he had found, cupping them in his hands as they breathed rapidly, afraid. As she reminisced, her throat began to itch. Psychosomatic, she thought.The next day, Sam came back with a mold remediator, a muscly guy in a wifebeater who seemed like the no-nonsense type.“Oh good,” Gina said. “Are you going to fix it? My boyfriend won’t spend the night until it’s gone.”“A little mold never killed anybody,” the mold remediator said. Finally, someone with sense, Gina thought.The mold remediator told them to leave for an hour while he sprayed a chemical into the duct that would slowly starve the mold. Then it would be good as new.Relieved, they waited, walking around the neighborhood. It was October and still extremely hot. They talked about the lack of seasons, how that made Gina sad but Sam didn’t mind.When they returned, the mold remediator was gone and the condo smelled violently chemical, like a Sharpie.“Please just try,” Gina said to Sam, though the smell had already given her a headache.“I can’t,” Sam replied.Gina opened her mouth to speak again, but before she could, something lurched inside the walls and the air conditioning came on with so much force that the grate flew off. Chunks of white dust shot out all around them like snow, snow that tasted bitter, burning their lungs and eyes. Sam lunged for Gina, who stood frozen under the duct, white flecks landing in her eyelashes and hair. She blinked as if just waking up, then followed him, coughing, down the stairs, into the car, all the way to the hotel, where they showered until they were red and raw and brushed their teeth and gargled mouthwash and spat it out again and again like a lifetime of nightly rituals. Then they put on fresh white hotel bathrobes and closed the curtains and got into bed even though it was the middle of the afternoon. The sheets felt good on their bare, clean skin. After a little while, Sam gave Gina a kiss. As he leaned over her, his minty breath cool against her lips, she wondered for a second if she should refuse him, give him a taste of his own medicine. Oh, what the hell, she thought. There wasn’t much else to do in the dark room. They had no home to go back to and nothing else to destroy, only each other’s bodies, breathing, like the beginning.

TICK by J. Eagleson

March 17, 2025

You are a tick. You fly through the air on an arc of static electricity, in hopes of landing on something alive and real. Your travel is always a courtesy of others, or an unexpected spark of nature. Purgatory for you is a blade of grass or a dark sock that renders you a shadow in the night as you crawl towards your heaven of soft flesh. You latch onto the shadow of her ankle, monosyllabic in name and purpose. People around here tend to wear socks — she does not. A waft of odor floats up from her shoes, but you are not picky. (It is, in fact, almost attractive to you.)Feared for your promiscuity, you extend the two rods slowly from your mouth — the left with its two hooks, the right with its three. You lost one in a final confrontation with your last lover, a testy deer, who in its final moments, blind and searching, kept trying to scrape its remaining teeth against you, largely in vain (except for your lost hook.) But you only left when you were good and ready.It is difficult to love life so much, or to be so strongly motivated by the primal urges you were born with, that you risk your life with every expression of it, at risk of being burned to a crisp by a lighter, smothered in vaseline, or scraped off and left precariously dangling. To cling, to follow, to have their life in you — there is no more intimate connection. But you are also feared for the intensity of your love.There is a sonic boom in the air that shakes you. You feel the two of you - you and her - falling towards the ground. There is some soft sensation in your body screaming that there is life nearby — she is not alone. There is someone else there. The hope of a new love. You feel a warm shroud of air cover you as he gets closer. Yes, yes! Your body vibrates — there are spikes coming from his mouth too, but they are words, not hooks. Though perhaps you are both embedded in her in some way.For you, time is measured by the number of your lovers. A new life to take on each time- their body, plus you. You do not care for gender or age or species— you love all equally.Sprinkles of dark fall across your body like rain. They are all around you as well — on the floor, on the edge of the light chair. There is one drop dribbling down across the corner of your eye. But they do not smell like the sterile sand that you were born in — they smell hopeful. Beautiful. They smell of life. Of life leaving her. The drop teases you as it caresses your face. If only you had that pink and fatty organ that the animals do, that they lick things up with. At least the taste lingers in your mouth for longer— the taste of love. You imagine her and you swimming in it, swimming in love, kin forever. Your brown shell glistening with it. You will never need to risk your life again for another host, another partner. She will always be there waiting for you. But there is always an urge to move on, always a feeling at some point that it’s been too long. Your little half-a-centimeter body is not big enough to contain and drink in the love of the whole world, but it will try.There are sharp and bright noises coming from her now, buried somewhere deep within her neck, exiting quickly and piercing the air. Maybe there is something else latched inside of her? She is beginning to move now. Quickly. She is beautiful and large with soft steps. She has learned to camouflage herself as well, to disappear. Her presence echoes against the hollow steps as she quickly makes her way up them — you are jostled frantically up and down. She secrets herself away in another room, reflexively, loudly, defiantly slapping the door closed. You hear a click. Just the two of you now. Her blood is thicker now, sweeter now, rushing more quickly. You wish it could always be this way, but soon it slows and she sleeps. Her silence and unknowing lulls you to sleep as well.There is the sound of fumbling and then that high-pitched click again whose sound hurts your body. He is here. You can smell him. Your body begins to loosen, the hooks move back slowly into your mouth and away from her, as they always seem to eventually. They reluctantly linger as they cherish their last grazing of her ankle.There is a softness now, little movements of her mouth are creating suctions of air. Whispers or kisses or something else. The man’s voice is not spiky anymore— it is low and dark and deep. Barely there, but his presence fills the room. (To you, he is the edge of the universe.) She is there too, breathing slower now, blood pumping slower now. (This is what you know from your last taste of her.) Her light ankle is resting on his now as they sprawl across the dark sheets. They remind you of the vein of moonlight cast on the beach that you were born under many lovers ago. (You are full of her now. You do not hunger for her anymore.) You crawl across the desert between them, pulling yourself towards him. You detect some delectable beads of sweat buried within his seagrass hair. In the dull sound of his exhales, you have found the ocean again. You have found someone new to love. (Love is in your nature.)

“I’LL DO” by Sacha Francis

March 14, 2025

“I’m not doing a reading for you.”“You do have the cards, though,” Drew sneered. He was laying the deck out in four piles - the way he shuffled Magic.“Yeah,” I said, “but only ‘cause they’re dads.”“And you know how to do it.” He conjoined the sets, his thumbs bending around the feathered edges at first, joking like he wanted to riffle them. I shot him evils and he shot back worse, his nose and eyes scrunching up to mock me. He was like a girl.“Sort of,” I said. I’d never done it for anyone but myself.“‘Cause of your dad,” he reiterated. He positioned the deck on the carpet ceremonially to suggest my position of seer, as if innate.“Go on.” There was a leering satisfaction that flashed on his mouth belonging specifically to the curious and the cruel. “Why not? ‘Cause you can’t or what?”“I don’t appreciate that,” he knew how I was about challenges.In tarot, dad said that the trick is all in the pictures; never to use a book because it makes you look stupid.I laid his old deck the way I remembered: two precise strokes, spreading the cards like butter in two neat lines. I did a halfhearted flourish with my hands after and flushed with embarrassment. I’d performed my little show quite well.Drew told me to wait, got up to lower the dimmer-switch before settling back down, then told me he was ready. I halted him with one hand. I wasn’t. Still seated and without a word I leaned to the side, stretching to root around the rubbish under my bed for a stick of incense. I rarely had a use for the incense I stole from mum, so I never thought to also steal a holder. I balanced the stick in an empty cup and dug up a dirty plate for ashes. Her lighter was already in my blazer. I didn’t smoke. I had it because the idea of being able to provide fire for the kids at school who lit up on their lunch break gave me a bit of a rush.Drew pulled out an inhaler from his own pocket and took a hard-eyed protest puff as the first little flame died off into a steady white plume of patchouli smoke. Ashes started to curve over the plate as the warm curl of orange slowly made its descent. I scrunched up my nose and eyes at Drew like a girl. I told him he had to pick three cards and put them face down and he did. The problem with this game was that I was honestly still too scared to touch dad’s deck, so I also told him that it wouldn’t go right if he wasn’t the one to turn them over. He scoffed.“Why’s that?” he asked.“What do you mean? It’s tradition.” I lied.“Well, ok, but it’s not like it’s going to change the outcome,” he said and flicked the crazy pattern on the back, “the pictures are already in there, aren’t they..? A bit silly, really.”I said if he’s going to be pedantic I wasn’t going to play. Drew flipped his first card, and on it was a drawing of a sweet little pink-nosed cat, all white and sat aside a golden cup with a fish peeking out. The cat was upright for me, which meant its meaning was reversed for Drew. It wasn’t one of the major arcana so I honestly had no fucking idea about it. The title said this cat was the page of chalices. What was cups again? Oh well.“Do I turn the other ones over now or do you do them one by one?” Another quest for the measure of my answer. The mystique relied on the build-up, but I would have seriously preferred to read them all at once. Things never make sense in bits. I thought I might hurt dads feelings if I didn’t do well.“All will be revealed,” I intoned obliquely, and nodded for him to overturn another. Looking up at me was a bent-eared cat pawing the top of a prize-wheel that was dressed in its own strange symbols. This too was reversed.“You’re such a crap fortune teller if you aren’t going to do it one-by-one.”Finally, he turned his last card. It was upright, a tabby falling from a great stone tower in the midst of a raging storm, the deathbound cries seeming to blow from the picture - they echoed and twisted like a banshee around my dark little bedroom.“Fuck my life.”“Fuck your life.”“So what does it mean?” He was looking at the cards instead of me, small eyes seeking, searching. I packed away this expression to keep and open later. I knew it was something he hadn’t meant to do.The essentials were bare. The tower was the only up-facing card, things were not looking up but he knew that, I knew that. Drew was a man of equations and the solutions don’t make themselves. Here we had a science that I had studied. His fate determined an emptied cup and some noxious roulette to spin him to death - possibly. Much of a reading's meaning was in the dressing of it. I thought of the way I was taught these things and placed my hand over Drew’s, where I found it was pressed hard into the carpet. He was as afraid of the mystic as everyone else. With my eyes serious as lit matches and the law in my voice, my finger moved over the cards one by one:“Bad news, bad changes, bad outcome,” I put my face to his. “I’ve just seen into your future. Now you know what’s coming, you know you can change it.”“Bullshit,” he laughed, looking boyish in this low light, “you have not read my future, Liz. It’s a stupid predetermined game made to make money off idiots. Like Ouija boards. It’s confirmation bias, it’s a psychological trick.” He swept that sallow, sweating hand over his lot and adjusted his glasses, “That’s just bad luck, that’s what that is.”“Sure,” I teased, “fine,” and I prodded him on the nose.

CLUSTER by Katherine Plumhoff

February 28, 2025

People say they see their dead moms in blue jays and buttercups, robins and rhododendrons, but mine told me she’d never come back as something so abominably dull, and to keep an eye out for spiders. It’s a bright spring day and mown grass, cut by a neighbor, foams at the edges of the yard like a fresh-pulled pint. I am crouched in the corner of the patio, sifting through a 50L sack of soil that’s been slumped here since she lost the strength to stand. Digging for arachnids and coming up short. Two trowels deep. Late and making us later.I’ve found roly polies by the fistful. Swarms of soil mites piled up like tiny sacs of tears. I’m building a pyre of dead wasps, their crumpled yellow-banded bodies curled around their stingers. They can no longer hurt me but I’m careful not to touch them, scooping them up with a dirt-lined plastic pot because I’m up to my eyes in hurt and I don’t think I could take another sting.“Laura, honey, the service is about to start,” calls my mom’s boyfriend Ritchie, “we gotta go.” I dig faster, abandoning the trowels and clawing holes with my hands. Tiny white perlite balls get caught under my nails. Clumps of dirt cling to the black wool of my skirt. There — I win — I’ve found her — a whole knot of spiders, an entire family, a teeming cluster crawling madly back into the damp dark of the bag. I lift them out, cradle them in my hand like I’m holding a blessing, and shout, “Okay, Richie, I’m ready," then whisper, “Good to see you, Mom. Stay a while.”

IDLE ANIMATION by Ryan Petersen

February 7, 2025

I made sure never to start the day. Abstained from True Conscious Hours. And yet, somehow, it went on without me. The sweat underneath my upper thighs became my five o'clock work whistle, an inarguable sign that the day was already over, before it had ever begun. Weeks went by like this. So smooth and easy that I hardly took notice. For I was a junkie, refreshing my feed with abandon, in willful avoidance of the aforementioned True Conscious Hours. YouTube was where I found the good stuff. I let the algorithm swaddle me tight, held in close by its data-driven embrace. Fifteen-to-twenty minute videos filled up my daylight hours without friction. The app analyzed my viewing habits, my click-through rates, average time spent on a page, engagement (likes, dislikes, comments) and explicit feedback submissions, among hundreds of other figures, and then offered up a viral load of For You content. Up Next was left on perpetual autoplay. My Suggested Videos offered up new, pulsating veins to tap into.The algorithm led me to the strange community of glitch hunters. Those who scoured the three-dimensional plane, in search of an errant polygon or invisible wall. They looked for exposed flaws in the game design, ones that opened up new possibilities of play. And exploits, for speedruns. A number of these videos concerned Super Mario 64, a game they treated as a sacred hyperobject, the ur-three-dimensional movement game. The creators’ focus on Mario 64 went beyond mere glitches. They imposed masochistic constraints on themselves, in limiting their button presses to the least amount of jumps theoretically possible; all this within level environments specifically designed around the act of jumping. It was a mindset akin to religious asceticism, achieved through the careful study of mathematical formulas. Equations that led to new modes of movement. And the discovery of parallel worlds. The YouTubers tore apart the fabric of the game and grafted a new reality atop of it, one more pliable to the player’s will. I watched a series of videos in one uninterrupted sitting, a film festival curated by my most destructive viewing habits.

Super Mario 64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated)

Here is a play by play of what I do. First, I use scuttlebug transportation to move a scuttlebug to the corner of the Watch for Rolling Rocks platform. Then, I use scuttlebug raising to raise him to about the height of the platform. Next, I use hyper speed walking to generate massive speed. Finally, I use Parallel Universe movement to navigate to the top of the course, launch to the scuttlebug to bounce on him, and ground pound in the misalignment of the platform to get onto it. And from there, I collect the star.

The TRUE Number of Parallel Universes in SM64, Solved!

Parallel universes in SM64 are a glitch where the memory for a level loops back around, caused by wandering too far from the stage. The glitch manifests as an invisible copy of the level, with varying degrees of bugged collision or objects. This has a strong resemblance to the nature of the 'Minus World' in Super Mario Bros, which is caused by another mathematical memory error.

My usual microphone is broken, so the sound quality might be a bit bad (I'll consider re-dubbing the video at some point). Not 100% sure if anyone has figured this out before, but based on what people have told me I don't believe it's been done.

Super Mario 64 - Go to The Secret Aquarium - 0x A Presses (VC Only) [OUTDATED]

I go to The Secret Aquarium using zero A presses. Unfortunately, this method is only possible on emulator and virtual console, and NOT console. This is because if Mario goes to a Parallel Universe on console without fixing the camera in the main map, the game will freeze.

So what are Parallel Universes? Well, Mario's position is a float, but is treated as a short for testing collisions. Since shorts can only hold up to 2^16 values, some information is lost in this conversion. Following this logic, there isn't just one map, but a grid of near infinite maps spread out by 2^16 intervals. These other maps are invisible, and are called Parallel Universes (PUs). With enough speed, Mario can travel to these PUs.

The Mystery of the 1995 Build of Super Mario 64 (Every Copy of Super Mario 64 is Personalized)

On July 29th, 1995, a Super Mario 64 build was constructed that forever shook the internet. From a ghostly Wario apparition to strange cases of personalized copies of the game, this precursor Super Mario 64 version was full of many different mysteries. Many theories arose surrounding this haunted occurrence and today we'll be doing a deep dive into the bottom of the Mario 64 mystery iceberg.

(Rare) Unseen Footage Of E3 1996 Demo Of SM64 (Wario Apparition)

yep it fake ok ...

Every copy of Mario 64 is personalized?

why the f**k everyone keep saying THIS?

The Wario Apparition is a rare software glitch where an unused game sequence occurs with Wario’s head in a bowser room, in Mario 64. It is commonly mistaken to be a creepypasta. Waluigi apparition is also rumored to be in the game hidden somewhere, fake or not it’s very unsettling.

I looked up from the blue light of my laptop screen. Soon I would be called down for dinner. And have to do the dishes afterwards. Then I would eat a low-calorie yogurt cup while I watched an episode of Shark Tank upstairs. Finally, I would lay in bed for five hours. Stare at the ceiling as I listened to a podcast. Fall asleep with my fluorescent light still on. My teeth unbrushed, my face unwashed. Another day completed with little-to-no resistance. I wondered how long my desecration of Time could continue. Obscene enjoyment was derived from my days spent staring at the loading screen. The internal mantra of you were bad today, you were bad, you were very very bad—a vesper delivered with an implied smirk. From the outside looking in, I could see I was locked into a game of chicken, secretly yearning for someone to come nail me down and call me on my bluff. To finally force my hand. I wanted to be taken down so fucking bad. To be shown for the heretic that I was. But no one wanted to go there with me. Those in my general vicinity danced on eggshells.There isn't just one map, but a grid of near infinite maps, spread out in multitudes of intervals. The videos got stuck in my head. I let the Parallel Universes form in my mind, then disintegrate and rebuild, unsure of their resonance. There was a certain poetry in the Youtuber’s voice over. My position is a float. But treated as a short. I nodded along in agreement. The coordinates of my spirit. Manifested as an invisible copy, with varying degrees of bugged collision or objects. The hidden realm was left largely untapped. How did I make use of the unseen copies, the glitches in my own memory loop? There was an effort, on my part, to create meaning. With minimal button presses. The apparition’s head in the room. A ghost, trapped within the RAM of a Nintendo 64 cartridge, our names already written in the code, before we’ve had the thought of purchasing the game. An old TV screen flickered, with washed out, red-green colors. It played back the graphical abstractions. But they were cruder than I’d remembered, with flattened water textures, and a pixelated tree that stuttered in and out of existence. Yeah, it’s fake. Ok?A voice called out for me. And yet I couldn't move. I was paralyzed, caught in the thick ooze of Wasted Time. My eyes scanned the room in a panic, searching for a stray platform, a scuttlebug, anything to launch me into the next map, towards an alternate grid. I longed for an invisible place, where zero presses would be enough.

HOUSE FLY by Megan Nichols

February 6, 2025

Superstition slipped in with the last of the September flies. My hands were full and I couldn't get the door shut fast enough behind me. There was a clog in the bathroom sink where drain flies had nested. Something about my slowness made me wonder if we didn’t deserve it. Jake said to get hot vinegar if I was too damn scared of store bought bug killer. The sour smell drove him out all afternoon and when he came back he saw I had let the vinegar boil out. He headed upstairs with a bottle of bleach but found the bathroom door locked. He shook the handle, his mad rattling brass on brass. I kept the bathroom key hidden in a bag of bread flour and started buying loaves from Ms. Debbie. On Tuesday she said I had autumn all over me and could I please take off my sleeves because the sun wasn’t done yet. I told her I didn’t feel him. On Wednesday, Jake worked late so I cooked nothing and peered under the bathroom door. I heard more than I could see, a buzz louder than his engine in the drive. He came up behind me, a shock I can’t blame him for. I was captivated. A fly crawled under the door and then beside me on the floor, until it was under Jake's boot. On Thursday, I realized there was nothing in the drain but bar soap and toilet water. I wondered what they were eating. Jake left early the next morning, not mumbling like I thought, but shouting. Neighbor Mitchell came over with jam, said he’d seen all the bread I’d been carrying in and heard the yelling. I couldn’t think of what to reply because I hadn’t heard anything. On Saturday, I combed the crumbs from Jake's beard, wiped the jelly from his lips and stored the scraps in a paper napkin. He was late for the river yet drank his Busch slow while we waited for what, I wasn’t sure. When he left, he said the forest service would be burning the woods down and not to be afraid of any ash the wind might carry. I didn’t catch his meaning. I was busy shutting the front door behind him, then fishing the key out of the flour. At the flies’ door, I sprinkled the collected crumbs on the ground and blew them into the bathroom. There was no obvious reason for me to have grabbed the key. I knew from the first larvae floating under the faucet that I would never let the flies free, but I knew it in the way one knows a lie they like better than the truth. Playing pretend, I put the key in the lock and let it rest a while, imagining what it’d mean to open the doorand see what I’d let grow. The outside air was cooler now, no flies swarming picnics or slipping through windows. The neighbors had already begun to eat a little slower; begun to keep the lids off butter dishes. What would it mean to unleash the end of their ease? I pulled the key out knowing I could not open it and felt sick. A million flies thrashed inside that locked room. I pushed my forehead to the floor and the house vibrated in a familiar pattern, till I knew his boots were beside me. His hands didn’t notice the key still in the door; they carried a drill and went for the hinges. He didn’t notice how easy it could have been to open. I hollered, Jake, Jake we don’t want to know but the drill was in his ear and the screws fell to the carpet. At once the door laid him out flat, or rather the flies pushed the door down with him under it. I pulled the neck of my dress over my mouth and nose, sealed my eyes and through the pulsing air, felt my way to him. Flies were in my ears and over my body, the force of them so thick the air resisted as I pushed the door away. The flies did not disperse but were a continuous flood, layering over each other and on top of us, so that it took my roaming hands minutes before I found the key sticking out of the top of Jake’s leg. His hands found mine and pushed them away. He did not hear me as I said no, don’t make room for them in you. He pulled the metal out. Instinctively, I dug my fingers into the wound trying to fill the space but he didn’t understand. He pushed me out and I came back and he pushed me out again. In seconds the flies found their way into the flesh, eggs were buried close to bone. Seconds more and the larva was spilling out of his thigh, growing wings, laying more eggs. Maggots hatched the infection in his blood, then sped the decay. The flies forced the rot and ate it up and then they went for the blood on my fingers and the crumbs on my dress. They ate the wishes out of my belly and the lies out of my mouth and by the end of it all I understood superstition had just been a false name for knowing.

she transmogrified in my bed by Rylie Farr

January 27, 2025

My girlfriend has started a new regiment this week. She told me after coming home yesterday from work. Supposedly, this is supposed to help her achieve her “ideal form.” Every night now she is supposed to take these fluorescent green pills with her dinner. I don’t mind it too much. She becomes so sleepy afterwards, so I tuck her in our bed before sitting out on the couch for a couple of hours. Our flat is now quieter than usual.It seems the side effects are starting to take place in her body. This morning, she woke up before me squealing in front of the bedroom mirror. Her reflection seemed sickly in color that contrasted her cheerful visage. Grabbing my hands, she drew up my fingers to her cheeks. The skin there felt taut, reflecting the light from the ceiling fan. After we got ready for work, she texted me to go get some food and blankets for the upcoming weeks. Coconut, muskmelon, and vinegar for fruit flies. Her skin has begun to constrict, pulling back to reveal new valleys and canals. I asked her if she should be more concerned about her health, but she says this is natural. It’s harder to watch her stumble around more often around the apartment. I wrap cute bandages around her fingers from all the glasses she drops in the sink. Bruises color her thighs and hips. Her eyes have begun to cloud, a soft chocolate becoming milky blue. I have started to memorize where to run my thumb in circles at the front of her scalp, feeling small bumps under her skin. She asked me to help her this weekend hemming her jeans. When I run my hand along her vertebrae, she shivers while I test the new skin of hers.She quit her job. She told me that she won’t need it anymore. When my arms rest around her waist, foreheads touching, her new antennae curl in an arc and brush my ears. I asked her how much more fruit do we need to go through, and she giggled. She pressed her sharpened fingertips to my chest. Murmuring, she tells me how refreshing it feels now to breathe, to feel in her own skin. Next Tuesday, we’re supposed to get a humidifier in the mail to help her skin break smoother. The pills are starting to run out, so I have to go pick up her refill tomorrow and grab more trash bags.The night her new limbs emerged was the worst. I had just refilled the humidifier the second time while she begged to be held, covered in a cold sweat. Gently, I would roll her over on her side while I switched out the wet towels to toss into a bedside hamper. I would lay down on my side, rubbing her naked back in circles while the skin sloughed off to reveal a set of newly emerged elytra. I lean over to see her tear-streaked face, pressing my lips to her eyelids and her mouth, gently kissing where labrums fought to break out under her top lip. We both smiled. Once she fell asleep, I gathered her shed skin into a pile and shoved it down into trash bags. I got her the lavender scented ones this time.I like to watch her eat now, watching the juice run down her neck as she practices using her new, miniature mandibles. They click while she talks and when she annunciates her S’s. She told me that soon it might be harder for her to speak without proper vocal cords, so I signed up for a subscription to an American sign language course. She sits beside me while I review the alphabet, stroking my back with one of her new, dark legs that jut out from her waist. When we lay together in bed, I like to lay by her back and rub her newly fitted wings between my forefinger and thumb. She becomes more iridescent by the day. The flat has become lively again, with happy chitters reverberating throughout the place. I had to get her a pair of crutches today. Her legs were the next to go, as I watched the marrow into chitin. The thighs I would grip were now small enough to be held in my palm. As her bones start to hollow, it has become easier for me to carry her around the apartment. She covers her face whenever I decide to carry her like a princess from the bed to the kitchen for her meals. Slowly, she asks me what I will do once her transformation is done. I tell her that I will still love and take care of her regardless of her body. Her antennae wiggle in response. That night, I carried her to bed and held her tight to my chest. It felt like I was holding a bird.When I woke up this morning, the other side of the bed had a beetle sitting on her pillow. I put my hand out, watching her crawl up my arm to my nose. I walked her out to the kitchen and sat her by the sink. She spun while I cracked open a jelly from the fridge for her to squish into her mouth. Later, we went to the pet store to pick out a new enclosure. I brought her in her old water glass. She would point out which substrate she liked, what hide aways she wanted. Everyone else there was also carrying their girlfriend in cups. I set up her new enclosure in our bedroom after. She sat on my hands chewing my cuticles. She seems to really like her new spot on our nightstand by the window.My girlfriend died today. One morning when I woke up, the bed felt devoid of her presence. I shot up, running my hands and flipping up blankets and pillows, trying to find her. When I ran over to check her fish tank, I could see her on her back, arms curled up into her chest, bright green peeking out underneath. I scooped her up with my hands, flipping her over while I sat on her side of the bed. She was beautiful. I didn’t even know how to mourn. While I sobbed, cupping my girlfriend to my chest, the humidifier screamed waiting for its tank to be filled again. I decided to put her by the edge of my nightstand afterwards. When I turn in my sleep, I can twist and look into her honeycomb eyes before hiding under another blanket. I like to imagine that she is still there beside me with her cold exoskeleton pressed against my stomach.

THE SLEEPING BANKER by Matthew Binder

January 20, 2025

The factory closed the week before Christmas. The owner had moved his operations to Bangladesh. Emanuel had spent eleven years on the assembly line. It was the only job he knew. Marta, his wife, could no longer cut hair. Her condition made her hands tremble to the point that her clients had begun to complain about nicks on their necks and ears. They were three months behind on rent, the electricity was shut off. Their kids were eating crackers and trekking through the snow with holes in their shoes.Emanuel had once had luck betting on football matches. That ended, as all good things do. He owed Ahmad, his bookie, three thousand francs. The man had already taken his scooter. Now the threats began.“Your wife is very lovely,” he said. “It would be a shame to put her to work, if you know what I mean.” “You know my situation,” Emmanuel said.“Meet me tonight,” Ahmad said, “and your problem will be solved.”Emmanuel tucked the children into bed, kissed his wife, and put on his threadbare coat.A wet snow was falling. Sloshy puddles had appeared on the street. The air was cold enough to make Emmanuel’s teeth chatter. He slipped into a dive bar he had often passed but never entered. Some men were yelling at the barmaid. Emmanuel ordered a glass of whiskey and downed it in a gulp. He ordered two more and found himself quickly drunk. Ahmed was waiting on the street in the posh neighborhood he’d directed Emmanuel to. “What do you want?” Emmanuel said.Ahmad lit a cigarette. “Not far from here lives a banker. You’re going to rob him.”They walked a few blocks and stopped in the shadows of the hedgerows surrounding a grand house.“See that window?” Ahmad said. “Climb in. Go up the stairs. The bedroom is on the right. In the banker’s closet, you’ll find a large, gilded box filled with his dead wife’s jewelry. All you have to do is get the box and bring it here.”“How do you know this?”“In another life, I was a woodworker. I built his cabinets.”Emmanuel clambered through the window. The house was dark but for a sliver of moonlight through the window. In the living room, a portrait of the banker and his wife hung above the mantle. Emmanuel crept up the stairs and snuck into the bedroom. The banker was snoring loudly. There was something ridiculous about the old man’s head on its enormous pillow. Emmanuel knew that if he didn’t take the box this very moment, he never would. Do this for your family, he thought. The box sat glimmering on a shelf. He snatched it quickly, too quickly, and slammed his knee into the closet door.“Who’s there?” the banker said. Emmanuel’s foot snagged on the rug. No sooner had he fallen than the banker punched his back. Somehow in the dark, Emmanuel found the box and smashed the banker’s face. The old man staggered back and crumpled to the floor.“I’m so sorry!” Emmanuel cried. “I’m so sorry!”The banker’s eyes fluttered, his lips bubbling with spittle and blood. “Help me, please!”Emmanuel wanted nothing more than to get away, but the banker gripped his coat. The old man was surprisingly strong. Emmanuel had to wrench himself loose, finger by finger. He ran down the stairs and out the door. Ahmad stood across the street, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Emmanuel thrust the box into his hands. Ahmad opened it and smiled.“Your debt is settled,” he said. Emmanuel stumbled home and collapsed to the bathroom floor. He lay there for a long time, praying that God would not punish a man in this position. After a time, he felt better. He undressed and crawled into bed beside his wife.“Are you okay?” she said.“Go back to sleep,” he said.