Flash

CHRISTMAS CHEER IN THREE ACTS by Henry F. Tonn

December 24, 2024

Thesis

He is the big stud with the big arm and the big serve and king of the courts. She is the glitter girl, the glamor queen, the incandescent prodigy of homecoming competitions. She consorts with star basketball players who are six foot eight and academically challenged but cocky because they can dunk blindfolded. However, everything changes the afternoon she looks at him in that certain way through the wire fence of the tennis facility and says something that is lost in the wind. But he rises to the occasion by asking, “what in the world are you doing on this side of campus when the basketball facility is definitely over there,” and points with his racquet. “I like tennis players’ legs,” she says, hooking polished fingernails coyly through the fence. “Yeah,” he says, “and they’re tanned too, not like that anemic white you get from running around in gymnasiums. Those guys might as well be living underground like goddamn Morlocks.” And she laughs. The two of them dine that evening in the university cafeteria and then stroll to the school’s arboretum—that facilitator of budding romances and carnal lust—where they neck for several hours. A month later they are sitting in the student lounge sharing an ice cream cone and discussing his plans to enter the professional tennis ranks. She shakes her head and says, “darling, you’re a wonderful tennis player, but only a few pros make any money on the circuit and I don’t want to be a tennis widow sitting around waiting for you to come home. I want to get married and live a normal life. You need to decide how important I am to you.” He will wonder many years later if he made the right decision. So they marry at a country club during the summer and very soon acquire a home on the eighth fairway of the same club. There follows a nice middle-class existence of friends, social events, theater tickets, and vacations to exotic locations. There is little to complain about

Antithesis

until he is sitting contentedly on the patio one evening with a half-consumed daquiri in hand and she sits down somberly to inform him that she is planning to visit her sister in Philadelphia and would be staying for a while so she has “time to think.” A vague ripple of anxiety passes down his spine and he wonders if perhaps he has not paid sufficient attention to the subtle changes that have been occurring in his marriage over the past year. William Shirer, the writer, once remarked that “time and circumstance take their toll” on marriages, but he never believed this applied to him. The following day he stands mutely in the driveway as she pulls away in her Toyota Avalon with hardly a backward glance, and returns to a home that has suddenly undergone a dramatic transformation. It is silent. In fact, the silence is palpable, infiltrating his mind and body like some poisonous radiation. He realizes for the first time that he has never been alone. In the beginning there was his family and then the dormitory with all the guys horsing around and then the marriage. And now . . . . He stands in the middle of the living room while a knot forms in his stomach. In the next few weeks the knot worsens and he begins walking around slightly bent over like an old man. He visits a physician and complains, but the physician is clueless. He asks, “have you been experiencing any stress lately?” He laughs. His wife phones and informs him that the marriage is over and she is “moving on,” plunging him into a profound depression. For months he goes through the motions of daily necessities but is curiously detached. He is reminded of Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar”: sealed off from the world while everyone else is blithely carrying on their activities. Food is tasteless, relationships don’t matter, work is a boring waste of time. Rage wells up inside him as he struggles to figure out what he has done to deserve this. Christmas eve arrives. He knows getting up in the morning will be a struggle. Why bother? Instead, he decides, take your useless, sorry ass down to Walmart and buy a nice Christmas holiday weapon of your choice and then go home and get your joyous holiday affairs in order and type out a note on the computer that serves as your Last Will and Testament for these wonderful holidays and make sure the cat has enough food and water to last a couple of days in case your sorry, useless ass isn’t discovered while everyone is celebrating the wonderful holidays and then put the gun into your mouth and squeeze the trigger . . . .

Synthesis

but a tennis court materialize before him, the university tennis court, the final match of the season, the conference championship, for all the marbles, with his eternal nemesis Harper Ruff on the other side, serving his last serve, that big kicking monster you can barely return, allowing Harper to volley sharply into the opposite corner, a shot seemingly out of reach, but you anticipate, sprint madly, racquet drawn, wrist cocked, for that final headlong dive to send the ball screaming over the net, just out of Harper’s reach, the ground crashing into your body, watching the ball as it soars down the line, as Harper looks on, as the crowd looks on, as time stands still, as the ball descends, drifts downward, gently, to kiss the outside of the white tape, leaving that glorious mark of victory, and you are, by god, for the first time ever, the conference champion. “Memories are not key to the past, but to the future,” Corrie ten Boom once said. Yes. It is time to move on. There may be a way out of this. Christmas is calling.

CHRISTMAS, CARL. by Michael Costaris

December 22, 2024

She called him a sexually transmitted disease. Carl doesn’t recall who she was, but if he did, he’d send her a bottle of Dom Perignon for Christmas.“I am an STD,” he says.“You say something sir?” Rufus asks. He turns his sweaty face to the back of the car and grimaces at the effort. His thick neck strains and his cheeks, bright red, match the Santa hat Carl has him in. But he smiles through the pain and awaits a response. Carl hits the button. The partition slides shut.

***

The gym is nearly empty. A lone muscle-freak deadlifts in the corner. Rufus, under the air conditioner, greedily sucking down the free bottled waters and Carl, of course.Carl does not sweat. Does not allow himself to: a trick of the rich and one he has mastered. The key lies in comfort, never leaving it. No matter how hot Los Angeles gets, how thick and woolen his suits, he never degrades himself by sweating; unless, of course, it is time to sweat. Then Carl, like everything else he does, will do it to perfection.He decamps the treadmill looking like he swam the English channel.

***

Air conditioning works on the sweat and Carl feels coated in ice. He watches, comfortably, the discomfort of others. So many lost souls in the traffic. Unhappy, hideous people. Deep grimaces, shining foreheads. Wiping their heads with their arms and doing nothing but transferring the moisture in an infinite loop, amplifying their misery. Carl giggles. Wonders how many of them are in Los Angeles living the dream he sold.

***

Shower is perfect, of course. He doesn’t use a towel. Doesn’t need to. The temperature of the house just one degree warmer than that of his body. The mess made unimportant. Someone to clean it, assuredly. In the bedroom though a problem. Light peeking from behind the curtain, stretching the length of the floor, nearly striking his foot. “Sue,” he says.There in an instant. Doesn’t know how she does it. “Fix that,” he says, pointing to the light.Diligent but confused, she grabs the remote for the electric blinds and raises them. He does not reprimand her though, too amused by her attempts at avoiding eye contact with his exposed, glistening genitalia. Her head bobbles in unison with his cock, always a step ahead. He puppeteers her, spins her around like a dancing ballerina.Sue is fifty. Hair chopped bluntly in the shape of a rainbow. Lower teeth protruding like a chihuahua. She is hideous, by design. Work is work and fun is fun, never to mix again. He has learned this the hard way. Three divorces. Thirteen years of alimony. Payments to exes amounting to the GDP of third world nations. But now, suddenly, there is something desirable in the horridness of this idea, even in Sue’s complete and utter grotesqueness. Sex and Sue so incongruous, repulsive and unimaginable, it actually feels impossible. Out of reach. He must have it.“Sue,” he growls. He grasps her by the elbow and yanks her forward, but is momentarily distracted as the blinds complete their ascent and reveal the snow.Snow. Flurries of it, swirling and dancing outside his window. It is hypnotizing and by the time he remembers Sue, she has slithered free, heels clattering rapidly down the hall.Carl ponders the mystery of snow in Los Angeles for a moment more until he sees the two sour-faced men operating their respective machines and remembers he has paid for this. A memory. Linda, saying this, thinking it would be nice for the kids. It is a distant memory. Linda gone. The kids gone. The water slicking his body has turned, is now unpleasant. Carl closes his eyes. There is a feeling inside him, beneath his detachment and the carefully medicated euphoria. It hovers over his inner life like the sun: omnipresent, coloring everything but never to be looked at lest it burn his eyes. Carl, shivering, does not like this feeling, despite its familiarity.“Sue,” he calls.But she is gone. He knows.Carl, on the brink of something, becomes aware of the eyes on his body. His nude, glistening body. The two men operating the snow machine stare in a mixture of awe and disgust. It is power they see. Power in its truest form, a gleaming wet cock and balls destroying their Christmas morning, for reasons that escape them all. And as their faces show obvious signs of rage, as he notices the rings on their respective fingers, the tapping feet waiting to get back home to their families, the sun inside Carl sets. And now Carl, though painfully cold, cannot retreat. He stands in place, watching nothing for three deliberate minutes until it is certain he is exiting by choice and not bashfulness. And as he departs, showing his dripping wet ass, he is euphoric again.

WINTER IN THREE SCENES by Valerie Visnic

December 21, 2024

FourteenIt’s Friday night. Not 24-hours into winter break. High school, 1994. Me and Simone go to the mall, like normal, although the arresting office will be sure to tell us, What you girls did was not OK. Do you hear me? Stealing is a crime, Girls. And it is a crime, but in my head it’s a normal one. The handcuffs they put on us, those seem normal. My mom’s response as she’s driving us home to face my father? Probably normal and anyway, I can take it from her, she has a right. She’s been overseeing my fuck-ups for a while now. He, though. He’s not allowed. And because I believe my father does not have the right to tell me anything, All of a sudden–now? when we butt heads that night, it’ll be so bad we never will again. Although it’s more than a butting of heads. When he realizes he’s on top of me, both hands around my neck, I can feel him know he’s lost control. His grip is ashamed. And my neck? Brave. Then guilty, for making him do it. When Christmas comes two days later, we exchange gifts like normal and no one says a word about it. Not ever again. Thirty-FiveIt’s the second week of December. I’m 9 weeks pregnant. We haven’t told our kids yet, he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t say those actual words–I don’t want to tell them, he just won’t say the other ones I want him to. It’s early Saturday morning and the fight is big and quiet like we’ve learned to be so the boys don’t hear. They’re playing Xbox in the garage we’ve converted into a room for them.You need to leave, I tell him, shaking and red with hurt. He shrugs, as if helpless. OK, he says. How can you just say it like that? OK!? All calm?! And he says, It's your house, and I say, So that’s it? That’s all you’re gonna say? Tears streaming down my face. Aren’t you even gonna ask what I’m gonna do about it?” I don’t call it a baby. But he simply shakes his head as he folds the clothes he’s packing to take, and I grab my red beanie from off the bed and walk from our bedroom and the quiet yelling, to the garage where the three boys are–his two, my one. Come on, Train, I say. You’re gonna be late for practice. When we get to the beach, Train grabs his surfboard from the back, shutting the trunk behind him. Then walks barefoot across the parking lot like someone who will not be having an abortion in seven days. Sitting in the car, I watch him slog through the sand to the frigid gray waves as I cry, silently. Even though I can be as loud as I want now. After a few minutes, I make the drive back to the house. Hoping that when I pull up, he’ll still be there, packing. But as I make my way up our street, my heart falls through my chest, through the seat, through the floor of the car and clear out into our empty driveway where his car is no longer parked. And as I turn off the engine, car keys in hand, I vow to myself that for as long as I live, I will never call it a baby. No matter what. Forty-TwoIt’s Christmas Eve and Grandma and Train and I have already done the three mile hike up Mt. Roubidoux in the 85 degree December heat and now we’re fresh out of ideas to occupy the next 10 hours together before we can each retire to our own rooms at Grandma’s house and not seem like we’re being rude for wanting to be alone, or just, not together. Train’s visiting from college and me, from the chaos of my new life without him. What about lunch? Grandma asks. Applebees?Train says sure.I say nothing.Before we leave for the restaurant, Train corners me in the hall. Wants to know what’s wrong? I’ve been trying not to cry all morning. Trying not to feel like whatever a mother with a birdless nest might. Looking down at the white 12x12 ceramic floor tiles, I say, I wanna tell you but if I do I’ll just cry. Distracted, he grabs his phone from his back pocket, looks down at it and says plainly, emotionless, OK. At the restaurant after we all order, Train heads to the bathroom. My mother looks at his empty seat, then at me. The Game’s on, or rather, they all are. Kelly Clarkrson’s I’ll be Home for Christmas desperately tries to cut through the din of the many T.V. 's. A few tears laze down my cheek and slip into my tea. Mom takes a sip of hers, trying not to notice. I think it’s going really well, she says, swirling her napkin along the table. Cleaning a mess that isn’t there. I’m in hell, I say. She smiles. Because she doesn’t understand. Well. You’ll always be his mother, she says consolingly. Don’t forget that. I nod. Then why do I feel like just some woman now? I sit stirring my drink that’s already gone. And my mother, she doesn’t have to smile. Because she knows just what I mean.

JACOBSON’S ORGAN by Marc Tweed

December 20, 2024

Jacobson's organ is an olfactory organ that helps animals detect chemicals in their environment. Located near the roof of the mouth, it’s present in many mammals, reptiles, and amphibians.*“Keep your distance from the river,” I told her. I ran my tongue along the roof of my mouth and felt the old, corrugated tin shed hidden up there with no tools in it to speak of, only a panting, half-dead snowbird. I was in love for the fifth or sixth time that week and my apartment was very cold. She went under the counter looking for another bottle of vodka, the pom-pom and point of her Santa hat bobbing along the bar’s sticky, tinseled horizon like a hand puppet. “Distance from what?” I stepped off the bar stool, then thought better of it, immediately repossessed the hunched posture no one ever seemed to want me to escape. I was always misunderstanding her—the important part was I wasn’t alone. One more. She was always asking about what happened to me as a kid, as a man, as a state senator and then saying oh wow under her breath like she felt sort of sorry for me while she counted bottles and flapped her wet hands at clouds of drain flies, squinting. She poured another one. I said, “Farmhouse. Falling apart.” I told her my childhood home was abandoned. I talked slow to make sure I was saying it right and not changing any details from the last time I told it. Where was she going again? I drove by it with my sister last year, the farmhouse. We got whoopings in there and worse. The bartender said, Ahhhhhhhh in a pouting way, then lit up when a guy walked in, a torturously duded guy in a billowing mustard-and-red sports outfit. He had a flattop and a smeared lobster or scorpion tattooed on his forehead in faded black ink, faded like he’d tried to rub it off with sandpaper. Randy! She ran from behind the bar, a bottle opener jutting out of the back pocket of her elf pants, and jumped into the man named Randy. I always struggle with this. The boyfriend is—okay, okay—Randy, and I know they both make fun of me when I’m not planted squarely in front of them. Though they do give each other little looks, I think, from time to time when I’m explaining something I feel is important. So maybe even then, too. Every outfit is a sports outfit for Randy and it corresponds with the seasons. It’s nice to see young(ish?) love…but what about me? Donna took off quite a while ago, right about when I got voted out and, after a few months of moping in the basement or garage, I started coming here and a few other dark places to do my moping. Randy held her by the waist and his mouth was open and his eyes were dead. I told them I used to be the Speaker of the House and they both laughed a little like I’d never said that exact thing and she took my fifty dollar bill. Randy was my signal to go.I went into the cold sunlight and the other one, other bartender, was out there, still smoking. We watched an extra-long Christmas stocking writhe in the breeze, squirm crazily across the parking lot like a crimson serpent until it wrapped itself around a parking meter and gave up. She squeezed my arm lightly and shivered back deeper into her long red-and-green sweater. Lisa? I think it’s Lisa.“Headed home, Senator?”There we were, two vertebrates shivering under an ice-drooped awning. “Next place,” I told her. Lisa. They know where I go. Hell if I’m going home at one o’clock in the afternoon. I walked to the bus stop. Chemical reactions filled every seat when the time came. The snow bird’s broken call was just a whisper, not nearly loud enough to cut through the chatter of people’s bodily functions and sparse applause. I kept my hands to myself. There was a time my hands wandered everywhere, over forbidden lands navigated by the most immaterial of senses.Senator Jacobson may now address the assembly.I bet Randy never passed a bipartisan appropriations bill or helped build a casino out in the middle of fucking nowhere. To be honest, I could never remember if her name was Maria or Marie or Mary. And perhaps his name isn’t Randy. I wished I had a piece of gum. I wished I had Donna. Memories. Growing up, our farmhouse had miles of flat sunflower fields around it on all sides. They had us surrounded back then! Long, uneven lines of spindly trees gave no encouragement and the little lackluster gravel road we all hated the sound of became an unanticipated benefactor: I ran and ran and ran. It turned out I had gone to seed. Fortunate things occurred that I struggle to understand, pheromones be damned, undecoded specters of possibility. Love wrapped its greedy mind around me. Respect came my way by way of Donna’s father, a State Supreme Court Judge. My constituents seemed to me to be androids assembled from unnatural components but I loved them—how couldn’t I? Service was my middle name. I voted with my subconscious to great effect. Intersections were scolded, freeway tolls burned alive screaming like children on a canyon-plunging field trip bus. I could smell the suffering and death. Bleeding. Stuffed animals. “Pass this or else!” I’d cry. At the end of my duties—the day some hidden things clamored, white and bleary into sunshine—the whole chamber echoed with a singular gasp when I collapsed at the podium, limbs folded underneath me like a chain-link fence in a windstorm. The whole tool shed was on full display: Ken Jacobson, State Senator. We knew he had issues.I remembered! She said Randy(?) wanted to take her sledding on the river!I pulled the string and the snowbird went ding.At the next place—a little dive with a circle bar and a statue of Elvis—the man at the curving counter said plainly with a new neon moustache, “No. Remember. We’re done here, Ken.” On to another bar a block down, I shoveled myself into the future past the shops with their windows dressed merrily and I thought, at the end of the day, I just don’t want that nice girl to drown. Not this time of year. The thing about the river in late December is it’s tricky. You can’t tell if its solid just by looking at it. You’re taking your chances. Will it bear your weight, bide its time, or split open laughing to leave you clawing and clamoring beneath its long, frozen tongue? At the next spot, Belinda or Becky had my drink made before I even sat down.“Merry Christmas, Senator. We close in half an hour.”

LONE WOLVES by Anna Pele

December 18, 2024

There you lie, lifeless on your back, plastic eyes staring, smile stitched between felt beard and moustache…it’s not awkward; it’s a perfect morning after.I've missed wrapping my arm around another body in bed. Hugging my hot water bottle from October to March, holding its slop-slop to my chest, while soothing, makes a lonely picture. It’s like hugging water: you can’t hug love. It slips past your fingers, steals pieces of yourself as it trickles or rushes away. I’ve learned to hold myself. But when Christmas clutters city streets and people’s minds, when the nights grow long and deep, that’s when I crave the warmth of someone wanting to be with me, long for a beating heart in bed with me. You’re the perfect Julklapp gift for us. Mhm, I figured you out at sunrise; the way you said, sleep tight. Your voice—that rumble lipping my neck—it ghosts into the wound Finn left in the back of my chest. Fills it, rubs it warm, smooths the tension between my shoulder blades—Does hugging you make me more or less pathetic?Last night at the restaurant, I laughed so hard when I unpacked you, saw black boots, no trousers: blue boxer shorts with bright yellow stars. I swore to throw you away. Someone, Levik surely, tied the jute bag you came in to the straps of my handbag.And now, here you lie, red faux coat over a rotund bulge—I like that you have a belly when you turn man. Your velvety hat’s torn askew from where I clung to you as you set off an avalanche with your tongue and fingers. You promised more of this every night of the season. If I kept you. Ugh, look at this bruise—ah, you can’t see. Not until sunset? You could’ve arrived sooner, you know…could’ve prevented my somersault in front of the restaurant, placed Levik close enough to catch me. I could’ve landed on you, not an icy patch of snowy pavement. Might’ve softened the blow; back-planting before the entire office, agh.Levik’s voice was first to register after my viewpoint flipped. There’s something about that voice. The rumbling of an approaching storm—not the dangerous kind—I mean there is something foreboding about the sound of his words rolling up his chest, but then it softens, turns liquid, travels down my spine, like warm water…that temperature that’s just right for a bath? A bath, that’ll help the soreness from my fall. And our night. Meh, too cold outside of bed. The bath can wait. Besides, it’s Sunday, first Advent—Families at breakfast tables, kids reciting “Advent, Advent, ein Lichtlein brennt,” parents guiding tentative fingers to light the first candle—might as well stay in bed. Cuddle you. Christmas season goes from 1st Advent til January 6th, but you said that’s not true. A stereotypical Santa—one without trousers, that is—saying Christmas magic has nothing to do with Santa or even Christmas. You deepened your voice to say: My magic is older than the peregrination and coalescence of myths and customs; it’s the Sun’s magic in its Winter expression. A recitation, surely. Then you declared: I will warm you as the sun slips from the days until she reshapes them with her ever-brightening light. Grr, give me dates! Your voice rumbled like a growl when I kept asking. Then it rippled, laved my ear, my neck. And that was that. But really, how long will we have these nights? I’ve promised myself to singlehood, but sometimes it absolutely sucks. I thought one-night stands would patch the void, but they’re too troublesome. Either they demand more than was agreed—desperate to be wanted more than they want themselves—or it turns out they’re cheating. But sex isn’t the only void. Last night, after thudding the pavement and confusing the street’s fairy lights with myriad stars, after registering Levik’s, “You OK?” and someone’s “Have another Glühwein!”, the thing my eyes focused on were sneakers. Levik always wears them—black or brown. Never other shoes, not even to court. I think it’s because he moves so much. Whenever his lean figure, shirt sleeves rolled up, prowls the corridors, I know he’s on a tough case, and it’s time for a mutual lunch or dinner. I wonder what my tell is.I swear you just leered. So we enjoy each other’s counsel, a few times a week. Nothing hedonistic about discussing cases over food and a glass of wine. It’s not dating. He’s brilliant, but dating in the office?Once, I’d have rolled my eyes at someone transferring after a breakup, but that July night when Levik told me why he left the Stockholm office, I understood. We were celebrating our first win, playing round after round of Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, our pawns jumping over or kicking the other’s pawns out, neither willing to end the night in defeat. My response was: “Coupledom makes us needy and gormless,” and then I spoke about Finn. I’m not sure why…it was an unusually warm night.Your eyes didn’t leave my lips—you were biting your bottom lip, revealing the most enticing row of teeth. I wanted to run the tip of my tongue over them, nip that plump lip. “We’re lone wolves,” you said. Then you raised your glass, red liquid sloshing halfway up one side, and said, “To our pack of two”. I clinked with my white. “Let’s not shit where we eat,” I said. You sipped and nodded.Lone wolves. And you, little Santa? Let the office believe you’re a gag gift to the office’s Christmas grouch. We know you’re a doorway for water to flow through unpossessed. You’re the comfort of a filled bathtub, outside the rumbling approach of thunder, but knowing I’m safely grounded…Who cares if I’m being sappy; I can’t wait for his voice to trickle from your lips, pebble my skin, submerge me in hot…steaming…bathwater.

CASSIE by Jordie Devlin McMorrow

December 16, 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.

GHOST STORY by Shae Sennett

December 13, 2024

Being a girl inside Blue Park is insanely humiliating, but I am prepared to weather the storm. I am cased in my androgynous armor of enormous jorts from the early aughts and a baggy N-Sync shirt that subtly signals irony in an overtly post-ironic way — the mustache finger tattoo of my generation. God bless me, I am positively swimming in a sea of cute boys. I feel like I am in a fanfiction, but I am way too ugly to be Y/N and no one here even cares that I am reading Nietzsche’s Collected Works. Nonetheless, I am doing my best to project an effortless cool, the kind that all guy’s girls have, like the one in sexy clothing who is offering me a hit of her blunt right now. It is an act of solidarity, not friendship, because she is not my friend, just my friend’s girlfriend. I no longer have girlfriends after what happened to Dasha. I also don’t go into the ocean.After I watch the boys skateboard in the concrete park I follow them to Joe’s concrete apartment building, where I am allowed to watch them watch skate videos or even watch them play Tony Hawk’s Skate 3 on Xbox 360, or possibly PS2, I’m not really sure. It’s part of my research as I build an internal lexicon of tricks like bean-plant and sex-change and Casper, like the ghost. I perform my silent assimilation ritual secretly on the couch and before anyone notices I’m one of the freaking boys. I can smoke weed if I throw in, I can do a line if I Venmo Joe $5, I can have a Coors Banquet tall boy if I steal it myself and quickly enough that I don’t keep them waiting. I don’t think about Dasha or the ocean or the ghost and the boys don’t think about me. Sometimes they sleep with me and sometimes they don’t and sometimes they get it up and sometimes they don’t and for some reason none of them ask me to be their girlfriend, even though I am doing such a good job of being just like them. I’m pretty sure it’s because they somehow found out I’ve seen every single episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, even though I wipe my web history every time I watch it, but it could also be that I’m ugly. It also could be that they think I’m a lesbian simply because I bite my nails and have a strong jawline and can’t afford to buy weed and shaving cream at the same time so I keep choosing weed for five years, but I kinda don’t think it’s that.The “third space” is the basement called Heck, where people with dyed hair and gender troubles play the sounds of rattling chains and creaking door hinges off of sub-bass speakers that got broken from being left out in the rain. The boys throw their bodies at each other and I throw my body at their bodies and we all laugh because violence is funny, especially with your friends (they taught me this). A girl dressed like me is there and she makes all the boys laugh and I wonder what her secret is until one of the boys says she’s a lesbian. Figures — everything good happens to people who don’t want it anyway. She asks me to bum a cigarette and I pretend I don’t have one and I turn red hot with embarrassment from lying and also maybe from all the body heat. One of the boys gives her a cigarette and she doesn’t even have to Venmo them $1, which is insane. They are monkey-fucking and my heart swells with jealousy and also maybe some other unparsable passion, I’m not sure. The lesbian is breezier than a windchime and laughs twice as loud and I swear I’m not that funny. She wants to smoke weed after the punk show together in my apartment, nearby and covered in dust and ash and socks that smell bad. I say yes because saying no is harder and also I’m out of weed. I’m probably not a lesbian but I’m sure it will be fine. She rolls us a spliff raw dog on my Amazon plywood coffee table and she explains to me an episode of 30 Rock and all her favorite jokes in it and I say “Wow that’s crazy” seven times and by the eighth time I realize I should probably say something else so I say “Wow, that’s… insane.” It’s here that she decides to kiss me.“Her lips are so soft,” I narrate along in my head, preparing for how I will describe this to the boys at Blue Park. I figure if we can talk about fucking pussy together I will be better girlfriend material. I am choosing which boy I want the most in my head when suddenly the lesbian pulls her lips away from my lips. I am worried for a second that I did something wrong, but also kind of relieved that I won’t be munching box or whatever, until she looks at me with that’s amore eyes and says: “Have you ever seen a ghost?”I haven’t seen a ghost but I have seen all one million thousand episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race in shameful secret. I haven’t seen a ghost but I have seen Dasha follow one into the ocean and never come back. “I haven’t seen a ghost, but I’m sure you have, so… what’s the story?”Usually “the story” is a painting that fell off the wall in your great aunt’s house, or a shadow that passed by your bedroom window of a childhood vacation home and the floorboard creaked from the weight of its absolute spookiness, and every once in a blue moon the story is that a ghost with my name and my haircut is drowning you in the ocean and you are swallowed by the water and the night and all the void-like things that haunt them. But the lesbian doesn’t have a story. “I see ghosts all the time,” the lesbian is like. “There’s like two ghosts in your apartment right now, and they’re both girls. One of them looks kind of Russian. The other one looks kind of like you.”Then she tries to kiss me again, but I am too busy being haunted by Dasha and the ghost that once replaced me in her life. The lesbian calls herself an Uber, muttering under her breath about how expensive it is to sail just halfway across Brooklyn until, finally, she leaves me alone with my ghosts. The Google search “Do lesbians have higher rates of schizophrenia” yields unsatisfying results. Thankfully RuPaul’s Drag Race is already open in another tab, God bless me, and I drift into the ocean of the night, the sea of sleep, and dream of ghosts.

LADIES OF THE PRIVY CHAMBER by Mark Iosifescu

December 5, 2024

“There was a russet-coloured moon of ominous size too low above the whispering bushes; he danced exuberantly for five minutes beneath it after the click when his neck broke. His bowels opened. What a mess!”—Angela Carter, “Elegy for a Freelance” It was on the basis of his sorry reputation that we arranged for Puccio the ex-valet to desecrate the chapel. When we first arrived in town, we were told by villagers of every description—the lordlings and plainclothesmen, the monastics and innkeepers, the stewards and eelbaiters and whores—that he was a timid man and a coward. Puccio was, they said, bumbling and ineffectual, hopelessly maladroit, constitutionally avoidant of drinking and fights, a slow worker, and a punk around women. The older nuns recalled how, as a child, he’d been too scared to milk the cows. Though he had the body of a nominally grown person, all spotted and hairy, he yet retained the anxious, carping predisposition of a little boy. He was stunted and aggrieved, so pilloried as to justify any counterclaim. He was estranged from creation itself. Mwah. He was perfect.We devised a plan: the town pariah, the dead animal glorified, and the awful village brought low. Whirlwind, heat, and flash.To prepare for the ritual, we camped out in open forest by night. Mornings we entered the village, disguised assiduously, to collect information. Few in town knew where to find the young man, but eventually a pair of pockmarked merchants pointed us in the general direction. These days, they said, Puccio kept mostly out of sight, bivouacked with the sick and unwanted animals in the far field behind the burnt stable.“They say he accidentally started the fire,” one of the merchants told us, clutching his wool wrap against the biting wind. “Since then he’s been a shiftless louse, Mesdames, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”The men were under the impression we were Ladies of the Privy Chamber, maidservants in the household of a regional consort. Though they were determined to play it cool in this regard, they were idiots, and their titillation was obvious.“I’ve seen his type before,” the merchant continued. “Too lazy for a trade, too womanlike for military service.”“And too warped for the church,” the other one said. “Prone to unholy acts, how I’ve heard it put.”The first merchant clucked and shook his head. “You don’t know that, after all.”“What, about his deviant behaviors?” The second man made a lewd gesture and grinned, revealing several broken teeth. “His tendencies contrary-to-nature?”The first merchant covered his ears. “You shouldn’t speak of it, not in front of strangers—”“It’s alright.” We affected clean, girlish accents and placed reassuring hands on their shoulders. “I’m sure we’ve heard worse before.” “Course they have,” the second man said, looking us over, trying to be impressive. “Anyway it’s just how he is, innit? Once a stableboy, always a stableboy.”

***

We emerged from the woods on the third night, rubbed clean and slicked in hot tallow, moonlight catching where it would. Each of us had drunk heavily from the consecrated sacks of wine, and as we sprinted through the dark, our breaths inside our masks resounded like wet slaps. The members of our detachment were giddy, lightheaded by the time we reached the clearing and fixed sights on the ruined stable.It was a four-cornered plot, patchily mown but much neater than what the townspeople had described, at whose center the smolderings of a recent campfire smoked beside some wire-lined animal hutches and a pair of shabby linen tents. Though the intervening distance was largely obscured by darkness, we’d taken care to reconnoiter the whole of the field during the prior days of close observation. We knew exactly where to be.We squinted through the loose, flappy eyeholes, trying to bypass the smoke from the camp while our visions adjusted. Finally, at the clearing’s far edges, we saw them: our Sisters, in all their finery, standing stock still. Shapely forms, angles all glistening, fleshly knots of curve and slick straightaway culminating at their necks, where the fearsome glory of the masks slipped over the top like a churchmaid’s headdress. Gazing at them, noting their formidable bodies against the dark, their towering nakedness, the easy dominance of their stance, we felt rushes of pleasure. We loved the idea that this was how we looked. We howled the signal across the clearing. The other detachment howled back its readiness. And together we moved in.We found Puccio in the larger tent, asleep on a pallet of loose cloth and hay, a small earthenware bowl balanced on his sweaty belly. In the corner, a clatter of personal items: sacks of food, sheep shears and farming utensils, a bridle, a guitar, other pieces of frippery. Beside these, a corpulent sow lay snoring facedown, a dozen or so fussy piglets vying for access to a single exposed teat.“Peace?” When he woke, Puccio’s voice was high, tentative, trembling. He couldn’t see us yet, but he knew someone was there.“Shhh,” we answered.We bound him to the tentpole with his bedclothes. Within a minute or so we’d commandeered the rusty shears and started in on his long, greasy hair. On account of our not having gagged him, he made a lot of noise at first—shrill, ribboning sounds that seemed to aggravate the nearby animals, some of whom we could hear neighing and stomping fitfully from their hutches outside. But everyone soon calmed down, and by the time we completed his shave, Puccio had become docile, accepting, eyes sort of passively unfocused as he gazed into our false faces. It was as though, in feeling the monastic tonsure we’d cut out of his crown, he’d begun to intuit his role.The assault on the chapel and the breaking of the town would require, we knew, another animal of sufficiently encrusted contempt. We asked after the ones in Puccio’s care: their number, the nature of their ailments, the causes of their abandonment. It turned out he kept an ancient pack donkey named Cephas who’d been worked to lameness by a village farmer, beaten badly and left at the edge of town. The creature couldn’t walk or even stand, having developed enormously inflamed hoofs; it also suffered from infections along its flanks, where it frequently worried the flesh and bit itself raw. It would be dead by Sunday.“Can the animal be transported into town?” Our speech flowed slow, slurred almost to indecipherability; the night was heady, and our voices caused the air to warp inside the tent.But Puccio nodded easily. “I can use the old stable van,” he said. “It made it through the fire in good shape. Two horses should be enough to pull it.”We smiled beneath the masks, petting the halo of locks we’d left intact along the rim of his skull. Puccio’s cheeks were clammy, and a steady, obedient pulse could be seen beating out from a notchpoint at his temple while we whispered instructions into his ear. Our little monk.

***

That weekend, the chapel was full, the sabbath having drawn the attendance of nearly every townsperson: the church officials, of course, but also the midlevel nobles, all manner of working folk, indigent passersby. Sneering shopkeepers lined the benches beside combative drunks, shameless propagandists and wifebeaters, sanctimonious elders and loudmouth zealots. The merchants who’d shown us the way to Puccio’s camp were also visible in a front pew, their skinny, dour families crumpled beside them. They didn’t recognize us in our disguises, but we knew everyone, and as we scanned the room a hot feeling of anticipation moved through our centers.The portly priest stood, and his painted throne heaved a sigh. Though he wore the highly decorated garb of his order—the ornately-woven sackcloth and cuffs, the heavy pendants and jewelry, the bulbous crown of damask and gold cloth—he resembled nothing so much as a bloated pigeon.He began his invocation, turning toward the altar and chanting in a low voice while a pair of punctilious aides bobbed along the perimeter with perfume censers. The congregants picked up their end of the chants indifferently, eventually finding a sort of delicate unison, one filled with subtle desynchronizations and flatnesses of tone, with distracted murmurs and slow lullings. Human voices, shabby and drifting; testaments to impoverished, complicit spirits, to lifetimes of violent disregard. And our miracle, sudden and senseless, coming to free them.We closed our eyes, listening as the crowd thrummed and droned toothily, and thought of the instructions we had given the stableboy, that night in the tent beside the broken stable. “You might imagine it as a doorway,” we’d said, directing his lolled-over head toward the small symbol we’d painted in the dirt: a loose oval, an egg shape, rendered in the darkened purple of our upchucked wine. The ritual, we explained, required that the symbol be wordlessly pondered, fixed on with concentration, revivified in the incorruptible space of one’s steadfast attention and enlarged, slowly and carefully, to a greater and greater stature. To the size of a key. To the size of a knob. To the size of a door.“Carefully look over the door in your imagination.” Puccio’s hands had been tied, fingers outstretched, bloodless white. Tears on his cheeks as he nodded.“Now open the door.”At that moment, a crash was heard from the chapel’s entranceway.We opened our eyes just as an enormous shape skidded across the floor. The broken donkey, lobbed deadweight into the center of the space. A terrible smell filled the air.“If you wish to fatten up on blood,” a voice said, “then spill it in sight of the throne.”A hush had fallen, but as soon as the congregants could see who was speaking, the tone changed again. People scoffed, rolled their eyes. More than one attendee gestured to their neighbor, indicating the speaker’s clerical haircut with ridicule.“Stableboy.” From the altar, the priest snorted. “Are you good?”Puccio entered, his head low. Stubbly patches had begun growing back in across his scalp the last few days, little crusts of dirt and bunchups of dead skin along the crown, along his neck and thin forearms and the furled hideaways beneath his threadbare tunic. He looked beleaguered, filthy, abject, the way they thought of him. But his smile was clean.Looking up, he loosed a stream of curses, of invective, of magic in the old style. Probably he spoke of youth and humiliation, of unspeakable memory made concrete if not quite knowable—the details of what was said being academic, really, where actual practice is concerned. Nothing to relate about his words that isn’t irrelevant, not so much paltry or inadequate as altogether meaningless when conceived in context, amid generations of injustice, of massed mourning, of increments of voltage accumulated, held, and discharged, finally, in a single paroxysmal move. Of what consequence is language, anyway? We’re talking about action here.Instantly, the building itself seemed to slip out of phase. A chair snapped and splintered of its own. A mother wept, staring at her baby. The flames in the censers leapt their containers, and the shocked aides dropped the vessels to the floor. The donkey’s hoofs began to twitch.Puccio had been speaking continuously as he came up the aisle. “If you want to feed your gods on sacrifice,” he said, “then take a look at what it is they actually eat.”Probably nobody heard him. The crowd pressed against itself, flexing and roiling, falling into the walls and the locked doors. The flames from the censers spread slowly, inching themselves along the timber floorplanks, fingering the tassels on the woven rugs. We stood, calmly, irrevocably, and in one move, cast off our disguises and revealed our true faces. Cries, prayers, panic. Behind us, the merchant with the broken teeth, desperately avoidant of our sightline, was trying to climb the masonry, scrambling over his family, knocking over icons and paintings.In the cleared central space of the room, the donkey wiggled a leg, pressed on it tentatively, and rolled onto its feet. It breathed steady amid the building smoke, rocking back and forth for a moment, then reared up on its hind legs and, with an unbidden bray of pleasure, began to cross and uncross its forelimbs. It stood on one hoof then the other, trotting and shuffling, circling the burning chapel decorously. With a stately tempo, it danced a processional for the end of services.

THREE WORKS by Myles Zavelo

November 20, 2024

My First Cousin Once Removed: Regarding Your Inquiry1. Sure.2. She’s still young, I guess.3. She paints and wishes and likes fancy things.4. Never believes me.5. Teases me mercilessly.6. Canned foods repulse her.7. Pretends she can’t stand me.8. Can't orgasm to save her life.9. Makes everything about herself.10. Suffers from excessive jealousy.11. Doesn’t have a family anymore.12. Acts like she has no choice.13. Knows how to seem extremely polite.14. Has consistently failed to make a dent.15. Always mad and sad and never the same.16. Loves Gatorade (almost every popular flavor).17. Wants a destination wedding — wants elegant wedding moments...18. Growing up, she bullied her younger siblings sadistically.19. Grabbed her mother’s genitals once at the breakfast table.20. Got grounded for six weeks after that.21. Then set a small fire in her father’s study.22. The mother: a successful homemaker who made sure to feel good about herself always.23. The father: a closeted bisexual businessman who thrived in 1980s Manhattan.24. I’ll get to my first cousin once removed’s terrible grief in just a moment.25. She used to have a sense of humor.26. She needed to get a life.27. I needed to get a life, too.28. Want to French kiss her again.29. Want to ejaculate on her face again.30. So sorry that I said that.31. Just really wish I could have sex with her one more time.32. But certainly you don’t want to hear about my mess.33. And now I’ll never get to her terrible, terrible grief.34. We used to get together every now and then.35. Rebecca.

***

CilantroMy ex-wife, she hated cilantro.My father and brother, they hate it too.My mother and I, we love cilantro, we put it in fucking everything.My father, brother, and ex-wife say it tastes like soap.But my mother and I: we severely disagree with them.We raise our voices at them, we wish cardiac arrest on them.Because they are useless freaks with legitimate genetic conditions.And when it comes to useless freaks with legitimate genetic conditions, we must force the worst possible outcomes.Love against hate, good against evil—my mother and I burn alive.

***

What Mom Said This Afternoon About My Emaciated FatherDo you know what it’s like to be married to a man whose bottom is smaller than my face!?Then she pressed PAUSE.What a cautious sip of HOT tea on her part...!In the meantime, my father poured himself a stiff, skinny drink.And? What? When water changes? In the COLD afternoon? What an unholy letdown.Then again, life lets you down like this all the time.Have I neglected to mention the rocks in her throat?Then she pressed PLAY.Will you just look at your Daddy’s little disappearing bottom!

BEAUTY QUEEN by Sam Pink

November 13, 2024

We’re eating chocolate cake for Ronni's bday after work. At a table in the hay barn that serves as my boss’s office. It’s me, Ronni the team lead, my boss, and her two teenage daughters who barback/take out garbage. I’m covered in mud from the waist down because my boss’s youngest daughter took an ill-advised shortcut with the golf cart during a garbage run. So I went out and helped, lifting the back and pushing forward while she gassed it.‘You’re buying him a new pair of pants,’ my boss says, eyebrows up.‘Okayeeee, jeez,’ says her daughter.She’s been crying a little, on account of the embarrassment as well as her sister’s accusations of being stupid. I’d told her multiple times not to worry about it.Ronni puts her feet up on a chair and spreads her legs to ‘air her balls out’ under her skort. She’s wearing a bday girl sash and tiara. She takes a bite of cake with an anguished look and says, ‘Man I feel like a bag of smashed assholes.’ This is her main line, the smashed assholes. A whole sack of them, battered and stinking, amassed from various asses and collected in a single sack as a sign of some greater pain. 'I made out like a bandit though. I knew if I let people know it was muh berfday and had my titties out a little, they'd tip me more.’ She takes a last bite of cake and sets the fork on her plate.I ask my boss's older daughter how her boyfriend’s doing. I met him recently. Bit of a dopey fellow, handshake like someone handing you an oven mitt and all that. 'What’s his name,' I say. 'Ricky?''No it's Walter. He's fine, I guess. I broke up with him tho and he started crying. He's always crying, I literally think maybe he’s gay.''Oh man, I liked him. Seemed like a nice fella. You don't like him anymore.''No he's gross. And his mom saw my texts and started texting me all this angry shit.'My boss says, 'He does have some hygiene issues but he’s a good kid.''He’s literally gay and he stinks,' says her daughter.I eat some more cake. Looking up at the window, high in the barn. A rectangle of bright blue sky. Like something in a video game I’d yet to unlock. The next map, if only I’d the tools. I start thinking about my elderly friend in town, the gunsmith. Hadn’t seen him in a while. He’s like the first character you meet before you go off, in search of other maps. I remember how he described getting into guns/gunsmithing when he was younger. He said he got his first .410 and it was ‘off to the races’––a phrase which I’d heard before many times but only then, and ever since, truly enjoyed and understood, realizing the meaning, to be off to the races, not stuck at the beginning line, somehow already a loser.‘I can’t believe you lifted that thing,’ says my boss. ‘Thank you so much. And again, [her daughter] is gonna buy you new pants.’I look down at the mud, all over my pants and boots. ‘You think these are done?’My boss’s daughters laugh.Ronni says, ‘Hell yeah they’re done, looks like you buttfucked a hippo, son.’The boss's younger daughter is looking at crowns on Amazon. She won runner up in the Ms. [town they're from] beauty pageant and didn't like the crown they'd supplied. 'What about this one,' says the beauty queen, showing her sister, who wrinkles her face, shaking her head. The beauty queen turns her phone to me and asks what I think.Staring at the crown, which has 536 reviews, I say, 'The only way to truly get a crown is to slay the queen currently wearing it. To strike her down. Bring terror to her court.'My boss laughs.Ronni says Jesus, taking her feet down off the chair with a grunt, then says if I want a ride home we have to get going.