
NOTHING’S A SURPRISE by Cory Bennet
A key that unlocks many locks is dope but a lock that opens for any key is busted, is how it was explained to me once, but I’m no fucking locksmith. I just liked getting laid.

A key that unlocks many locks is dope but a lock that opens for any key is busted, is how it was explained to me once, but I’m no fucking locksmith. I just liked getting laid.

We were scraping the gum off the underside of a desk when she removed her dress, folded it into a square, and rested it on the teacher’s desk. She said simply that she didn’t need the job of cleaning the gum off her clothes too. I stared at her sandy skin exhaling its own heat. I was sad for her: she was loveless.

The foamless rectangle was greenish-blue, an institutional color, not a tropical one, and it smelled like something meant to clean dishes or toilets or floors, not human hair, not fourteen-year-old girls’ bodies.

Nightstand condom: faint red on latex. Dogman is peeing. I contemplate my residue. Nothing violent about it, just a swift move at an awkward angle. Only now I realize there must be a tear.

A few years back when I’m twelve and old enough to be alone at home while my parents leave and stay out late, I find some cigarettes and smoke them in the house, then I take two sips each from all the liquor bottles we have in the house, and then I get hit over the head with a premonition that my mom and dad are never coming back home. I move to the front window, the one that I can see the farthest down the road, and I stare out the glass and watch for their car. I focus

You remember not really understanding the true meaning of Christmas and not worrying for a moment about your ignorance. It didn’t matter. No one ever checked if you knew.

1.
The master bedroom is on the first floor. It has five walls: four of plaster and one of fire that engulfs our mother. We have been told this violates National Fire Protection Association codes and standards.

He wasn’t afraid to crack a grin, in the most colorful sweater, a bejeweled crown atop his head, raising a glass of his favorite cocktail to let the world know he is still kicking it, even in death’s hallows.

I breathed in the piss scent of the alleyway through the black knit. Then my face emerged from beyond the shirt, and I stood facing the dead end of the alley holding my breasts with one forearm.

She rode her pony here and he stinks like old socks—there’s no bond better than between a woman and her pony. I note she wears striped leotards right up to her loincloth.