Flash

EVERY DAY IMAGINE DROWNING by Melanie Carlstad

August 4, 2021

I was at work holding onto a trowel and my father wasn’t dead. I argued this point to my colleague, Mary Anne, who was afraid of worms.

Here’s the gist, Mary Anne, I said. We are at work. We are gardening. You are afraid of the worms writhing between your fingers, and on top of that, my dad isn’t dead.

Mary Anne screamed. There was nothing else to do but scream about the ringed pink flesh of the worms.

Everything was drippy from yesterday’s rain. The juniper bush and the ivy leaves strangling it dripped on us. Our feet sank in the wet dirt. We had long hours, so we filled them with talk.

My parents are in an unhappy marriage, but they’re alive and well, Mary Anne said.

Mine aren’t like that, I said. They’re in a happy marriage and ailing slowly.Your dad is all done ailing, said Mary Anne. He’s dead.

I laughed and laughed. The juniper bush dripped, and I deadheaded the agapanthus. We talked about parking lots, hungry children with shiny eyes, and how the sun drowned every evening when it set over the bay. We could see it gasping above the waterline from the hill where we gardened.

Imagine drowning every day! Mary Anne said. We were crouched around the birdbath, hunting for crabgrass. With the rain, it had inched its way through networks of other plants, infiltrating their systems. I had to extract the crabgrass but not the poppies. I didn’t like poppies very much, but we had to preserve them. Our supervisor came out to check on us sometimes.

There’s a dead possum in the green bin, she said when she came out. Please take care of it.

I went to the green bin and kicked it onto its side. Dirty water dribbled out of the corner, wadded-up bundles of weeds slumped at the mouth of the bin, and underneath them I saw a beady eyeball surrounded by fur. I retreated, walking backwards while staring at the eye.

Mary Anne was still under the bird bath. I was starting to resent her for moving so slowly. She picked at crabgrass with a sense of leisure and twirled ivy like long hair when she ripped it out of the juniper.

There’s no dead possum in the green bin, I told her. There’s a possum in there alright, but it’s alive and well, just playing dead until it can make its getaway.

It had better go quick, Mary Anne said. She wrapped her hand around the neck of an invasive plant and yanked it out of the ground. She saw the worms intertwined with the torn roots and flung them away, sending specks of dirt onto my eyelids and cheeks. The sun was getting ready to drown, which meant we had to fill the green bin and clean up. The juniper still dripped on us while we tossed piles of weeds into the bin, which had no possum anymore but was full of new dead things.

This story was published in print only with the title “Worms” in Pratt’s literary magazine, Ubiquitous, in 2018.

THE OPENER by Marissa Higgins

August 3, 2021

Bobby tossed the stuffed chihuahua between his bare hands, Suboxone in his right coat pocket and a picture of Alyssa at two months in his left. Should have worn gloves, he knew. Cape Cod winters tug the cold out of bones. The bus depot, of course, wasn’t heated. What if I can’t find you in the parking lot, he said over the phone when they arranged the meeting. Just stay in one place, Alyssa’s grandmother said, and then she named it. Sharon added: You’ll recognize your blood.

The call went clipped like that: Yeah, he was still at the halfway house, working, wanting to see Alyssa. No, he wasn’t paid on the books or sure about child support. He didn’t have any other kids. Yeah, he was sure.

Sharon and his kid pulled up and Bobby tightened his stomach lips colon toes fingers throat knees jaw. He put the stuffed animal behind his back. He watched Sharon get out and fiddle with the backseat. When Alyssa dropped her feet into the snow, Bobby dropped the chihuahua. He said, Oh, shit. Then Alyssa was upon him.

She said, Hey. They did not hug. As he shook the snow from the toy, he watched her watch him.

This is for you, Bobby said. And hey, yourself.

I’m not allowed to have a dog, she said, brown eyes a story in themselves. Bobby knew better than to point it out, but the kid really looked nothing like him. Carved from clouds, not smoke.

This one is good, he said all slow. Because it’s not real, you know?

Yeah, she said, solemn. I know.

Father and daughter didn’t talk again until the three of them were seated in a booth. The place was packed for lunch hour, all pop radio and pitchy kids. Sharon chatted for them; she caught Bobby up on Alyssa’s flute lessons, three times a week, which Bobby thought sounded like a lot, but shit if he knew.

Bobby nodded nodded nodded and sat straight straight straight. His posture was a knot, he admitted it, but he wanted Sharon to see him as different than the last time. He had been fucked up, yeah. He and Alyssa’s mom were screaming pretty bad. Some shit got broken. Neighbors were pissed about the noise and all, and Bobby couldn’t even tell them to fuck off, on account of them being right. Spine straight, Bobby housed his pizza and was glad to see Alyssa ate like him, big bites, teeth worked as weapons, oil all over the damn place. And why not, he thought, watching his kid suck grease from each of her ten fingers. Why not.

She’s a busy girl, Sharon said. Almost a young lady.

Bobby got her point. He crumpled a napkin, cleared his diet Pepsi, asked if they wanted refills. Sharon said no thank you and Alyssa eyed her cup, almost drained. At the drink fountain, he was small, cramped. He knew, but did he? Last he’d seen Alyssa, she was in diapers, drinking milk. He gambled. He filled hers to the top with cherry Coke and plenty of ice.

Under Sharon’s gaze, Alyssa mumbled thanks and gulped gulped gulped. Soda drizzled down her chin and onto her lap napkins. She and Bobby shared a look. Happy, happy.

Back in the parking lot, Bobby considered what they hadn’t talked about. Visitation, supervised or not. Alyssa’s mom—if she was dating anybody or if she was still working at the diner by the bay. If Alyssa was gonna be allowed to come over his apartment, once he got one, once he finished up the program. Holiday photos would be cool, he’d been thinking. Family portraits, the kind they take at the mall. Corny, he thought, but shit. Why not.

To Sharon, he said, Thank you. She didn’t ask him what for, which he appreciated. Later, in his bunk, Bobby would think about what he owed her, and how the debt made him feel weak and also relieved. Ever since Sharon became Alyssa’s guardian, he knew his daughter was good. He trusted she went to school and had enough to eat. That her hair was clean. That she wore socks under her boots. That she didn’t miss him much, because why would she? He only recently started to miss himself.

With Alyssa, he held out the chihuahua, mostly dry from sitting on a heater in the back of the restaurant. Its glass eyes were warmer than he expected when he rooted through the discount bin at the outlet across town. That’s special, he thought.

Alyssa said, Thank you, and took the dog. Against her pink puffer, the chihuahua looked cozy. She asked if Bobby would bring her a real dog next time.

That’s up to your grandma, he said. Around them, crows convened low, indifferent. If Sharon said sure, bring the girl a dog? Bobby would steal one, he guessed. He’d make it work.

Alyssa rolled her eyes, letting Bobby know grandma was the big no in the game. She asked if he wanted a hug goodbye.

When he stooped to her level, Bobby thought his back would splinter. Hamstrings were fists. Knees shuddered. His case worker told him he had to let go of his rage, that he couldn’t carry stress around the way he did. Bobby wanted to put his fear into a box or a closet or a bag. Wouldn’t the sadness open in another place, he wondered? Waiting for him, waiting to find fresh light. Still: He wanted, he wanted.

While they hugged, Bobby noticed a lot. Alyssa’s hair smelled like fruit. Her face was soft, not like skin, but pillows; the nice ones, the department store kind. When she coughed into his shoulder, unabashed, he smelled her breath: all hot cheese and pepperoncini. My kid, he thought. My kid. In his throat, a hummingbird.

"The Opener" previously appeared in Popshot Quarterly Magazine.

PATTY by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

August 2, 2021

The problem with dolls who can do things is that they get bored, you have to keep them busy. If you don’t they get clingy, and it’s so easy to forget to keep the little gold chain on around their neck. They say if you forget about the little gold chain the dolls will chase you everywhere, and then it’s stab, stab, stab.

But mostly they’re just you, only smaller, which is gross in its own way. As you get older, they become more childish, until finally you have to put them in a shoebox and bury them in the yard. You tell yourself you’re growing up and this is what grownups always eventually do. Look carefully in the backyard of your grandparents’ house if you don’t believe.

But your little brother, when you’re over at your best friend Cindy’s house, he digs your doll up, he throws it like a stick to the dog, he plays fetch with your doll, and when it’s all chewed up and slobbered on, he hides it in your room, where it moans in a voice only you can hear. There’s going to be some curses: on you, your brother, that dog. You buried your doll where he could find it, you didn’t bury your doll deep enough, you didn’t do right by your doll. You’re going to have to rescue what you abandoned, that’s a curse in itself you don’t know just yet.

But you don’t have to be that sort of person, you don’t have to be a jerk. You clean the doll up, you make invisible tea, you bring together all your other dolls, the ones who can’t do things, and you pour out all your apologies. It’s going to take a while to work everything out, so you keep your door locked. “Why should I trust you?” the doll says. “Look me in the eye,” she says, when you promise to be nicer. “Take this gold chain off me,” she says.

You take a big breath and you do it.

“When I go to sleep,” you say, “you’re not going to stab me, right?”

“Why do you think I would ever want to hurt you?” If she could cry she would, but she’s not that kind of doll.

You and your doll are practically vibrating—this is something raw and new. It feels like you’ve been sobbing for hours, as you tell her everything in your heart and she tells you everything back. You feel a light inside you, a secret light you can’t tell anyone because they won’t know what it’s like and they’ll just laugh and say you’re a kid, what do you know?

She promises to lift all of her curses. To mark this new turn, you give your doll a new name, Patty.

“I like that name,” Patty says.

You and Patty track down your brother. He looks at Patty and notices she’s not wearing her necklace. “That’s right,” you say, as you knock him over and climb on top of him. “Someone owes Patty an apology, or someone is going to get stabbed in the eye.”

He apologizes and apologizes and apologizes. You tell him you don’t believe him and it’s only a matter of time until Patty sneaks into his room with a kitchen knife. “If you mean it,” you say, “You’ll eat dirt. You’ll eat worms.”

You put your knee on one of his arms. You point to the hole he dug Patty out of.

“I’m sorry,” he wails.

“Shake hands with Patty and tell her you’ll never do it again.”

When it’s dinnertime, you bring Patty down with you, and when your mom looks at you with that aren’t you too old to play with dolls look, you put Patty right in the middle of the table, where everyone can see who’s no longer wearing their golden necklace. Patty cuts loose, leaping from the table to do cartwheels around on the floor. Your dad gives your mom the let’s just put up with it for now look, and while the dog is keeping her distance, everyone else goes back to chatting about their day and eating.

The problem with dolls who can do things is that they hate doing chores, just like you, but it’s your turn to wash the dishes, so you grab Patty. You put on your dishwashing gloves, then carefully slip a pair of dolly gloves on Patty’s little hands.

“We’re friends, right?”

The dishes, glasses and pans, it’s all so disgusting. “It has everybody’s spit on it,” Patty says, shakily.

“If we both do it,” you say, “then it’ll be over with quicker and it’ll be alright.”

“But I’m going to get spit all over me! It’s going to leak through these gloves and then it’s going to get on my skin and it will be like I was back inside your dog’s mouth!”

Patty’s holding her knees with her little dolly gloves and rocking back and forth.

“I was wearing my necklace and I couldn’t do anything to make it stop.”

“It’s ok, you don’t have to do the dishes,” you say.

You put Patty on the windowsill and do all the dishes yourself. You sing her a couple of Taylor Swift songs and soon the two of you are singing together. Together, you and Patty ease.

You make a note to remember this—that it’s ok just to sing, that this is something you know how to do, when someone is frightened so badly they don’t even know how scared they are.

The kitchen knives sit on the drying rack, all in a row, sharp and clean.

THE FUNHOUSE by Matt Lee

July 28, 2021

My first and only job during a disastrous year in New York was at the DVD Funhouse. Little storefront on 6th avenue between 21st and 22nd street. Flatiron District.

The place sold bootleg DVDs, Canadian imports mostly, with the ISBN barcodes scratched off. The first floor was for walk-in customers, people coming off the street to peruse the racks.

I worked in the basement. The place stretched on forever. Pallets and pallets of junk. Crates of old Blockbuster rentals. Books on tape. Useless novelties galore.

I was in charge of online sales. I turned the place around. When Victor hired me, there were two sales a week. By the time I finished, we were selling hundreds of units daily.

Every day I took the J train from Bed-Stuy into Manhattan. I’d buy a coffee at a corner stall for a dollar. I’d get to the Funhouse, print packing slips, pull the orders, stuff them into envelopes, and cart everything to the post office around the corner.

I got pretty friendly with the old guy who worked the dock at the post office. Thirty years with USPS, he told me. A few more years and he could retire. Wonder if he made good on his word.

I had a few guys working for me. Eli was a wannabe stand-up comedian. He’d practice his routine. “My buddy’s wife had a miscarriage after they baby-proofed the house. It worked. A baby didn’t get in.” I started wearing headphones.

Then there was Eric. He had a beard. He was a die hard Giants fan. All I remember.

A kid named Jose ran the register upstairs. “New York City is the greatest place on earth,” he’d say. “Cleanest tap water in America.”

Victor’s older brother Mike was the manager. He never did much besides sit in the bathroom playing games on his BlackBerry.

I worked with another guy named Mark Kamins. His apartment had been leveled during 9/11. He got a big settlement check from the government. The money ran out. So he worked for me at the DVD Funhouse.

Victor told me Mark used to be a bigshot in the music industry. I didn’t buy it until I googled his name. Turned out Mark produced Madonna’s first single, “Everybody.” Launched her to fame. The two even used to be a couple.

I asked Mark about Madonna while we were shelving DVDs one day. I wanted to know what she was like in bed. He thought about it for a minute. “Her pussy hairs were like a brillo pad.”

Mark was a terrible employee. Couldn’t do anything right. Didn’t know how to work a computer. He kept fucking up so much I demanded Victor fire him or I’d quit.

I got what I wanted.

I never knew what happened to Mark until I started writing this. He moved to Guadalajara, Mexico. Started teaching. Died 2013. Heart attack. Fifty-seven years old.

In Mark’s obituary, Madonna says, “If it weren't for him, I might not have had a singing career. He was the first DJ to play my demos before I had a record deal. He believed in me before anyone else did. I owe him a lot.”

The Funhouse was full of rats and roaches. Biggest roaches I’ve ever seen. We’d set glue traps and sprinkle green poison pellets along holes in the walls. It got to be like a game, killing roaches. We’d fling discs that were too scratched for sale trying to slice the pests in two. I got pretty good after a while. Joey was the best.

Joey was the only guy I worked with who I had any respect for. He used to make fun of my shoes, a pair of boots that clacked when I walked. He’d laugh and say, “You sound like a chick.”

Joey and I were the same age, about twenty. That’s where the similarities ended. He was an ex-con who’d served time for dealing coke. Nearly died after some punks he’d robbed decided to get even. They jumped him, bashed Joey’s head in with an aluminum baseball bat. He showed me the dent in his shaved head.

He lived in Queens with his father, who was a bus driver. Joey had to share a room with his sister. I always thought that was weird, but Joey didn’t mind. When he wasn’t at the Funhouse, Joey was at the gym. He was always giving me tips about weight lifting. I never listened.

Joey’s dream was to join the Navy. We both knew with his criminal record there was no chance in hell of Joey becoming a sailor. The dream kept him going.

On our lunch break, Joey and I would go to McDonald’s across the street. He loved putting BBQ sauce on his McChicken. “I’m a fast food connoisseur,” he’d say, lips smeared deep red.

Joey was so strong. He’d move whole pallets single-handedly, carry hundred-pound boxes on his shoulders like it was nothing. Sometimes we’d take our rolly chairs from the desks and send each other rocketing down the endless concrete floor. If Joey was the one pushing, you’d always win the race.

I remember his biceps bulging with veins. I remember him chugging protein shakes and energy drinks. I remember him encouraging me to quit smoking. I remember him breaking wooden boards with his bare hands.

I don’t remember Joey’s last name. I can’t look him up, see what he’s done with himself this past decade. I like to imagine he’s on an aircraft carrier somewhere in the Pacific, off the coast of Polynesia maybe, or the Port of Siam. He’s got a chest full of medals and a girl waiting for him back home. He’s asleep in his bunk, dreaming about a ten-story funhouse mirror. He smashes the massive glass monolith with his fist. He laughs, cracks his knuckles, and says, “Punk ass bitch.”

AIR QUALITY INDEX by Mike Nagel

July 12, 2021

Sunday morning my phone warns me that the air quality in Carrollton is low. I step outside and take a few deep breaths. I can see what my phone means. Not great. Most things leave something to be desired. Let me put it this way. There seems to be some room for improvement. Recently J showed me a graph and the line was going straight down.

"Well," I say. "I can't say I'm surprised."

"Actually," she says. "In this case, down is a good thing."

Lately I've been drinking this low ABV cider from the Stella Artois beer company. It's called Cidre. That's French for cider. 4.5% ABV. Basically apple juice.

I can drink four or five of them before I start to feel a buzz. Then I can drink another four or five before I start to feel kind of sick. Then I can drink another three or four before I've made a huge mistake. Then maybe another one or two after that. Then maybe just one more.

Life, I think, is all about finding your limits.

Or, I don't know, maybe it's about something else. I'm usually wrong about what things are about. When I first read Animal Farm I thought it was about an animal farm. I thought Gone with the Wind was going to be a weather movie, like Twister.

To be safe, J and I and the animals spend Sunday inside. We breathe the inside air. It's triple filtered. Passed through brick, drywall, and that pink insulation stuff that looks like cotton candy.

Funny story. My grandpa used to work in a cotton candy factory. I mean an insulation factory. They say that breathing in that pink crap all day is probably what killed him. One of the things. A contributing factor.

Outside, the air looks OK to me. It looks like air.

"It's more of an invisible threat," J says.

She shows me a graph and the line is going straight down.

"Oh good," I say.

"Actually," she says. "In this case, down is bad again."

Sometimes when I can't sleep I watch these YouTube videos of this guy who picks bike locks. The videos are like twelve seconds long. That's how long it takes to pick a bike lock. Bike safety is mostly an illusion.

Other types of safety too.

At night, when the wind blows, I can hear air getting into the duplex. Between the dried-out window seals. Underneath the doors. I've read that the air inside our homes is two to one hundred times more polluted than the air outside. And the air outside wasn't great to begin with. There's no such thing as a breath of fresh air. I think you have to go to Antarctica for something like that.

Last night while the wind was blowing and the air was getting in I was in the bathroom throwing up apple cider into the sink. I prefer throwing up into sinks. I don't know why so many people throw up into toilets.

"Better out than in I always say," my grandpa always used to say, the one who died of cotton candy poisoning at age seventy (at his funeral my brothers and I were shocked to learn that he had “died young”). He really did use to say that too. But even all these years later, twenty-some or whatever it is, I can't for the life of me figure out what that’s supposed to mean.

THE WASP by Tyler Engström

July 8, 2021

I look out the kitchen window and wonder why the flowers won’t grow. I can’t even remember what I planted, what sort of beauty I’m disappointed in not receiving. I’ve given them plenty of water. Was it too much water? I don’t know. I’ve never known. What life does water make, anyway?

Anyway, a wasp comes up to the window and lands on what would be my nose, if not for the window. I lovingly watch his little hands scrape against each other. Adorable! “You look like a fly,” I tell him, “like all the little flies that crowd every rotting meal.”

I tap gently on the window and say, “Little wasp, I love you!” and the wasp zips off. I lose sight of him and miss him already. Has anyone ever kept a wasp as their own? I would’ve been the first. How about an equal? There’s potential there. I think about all the things we could’ve been together and hear a pop against the window. The wasp is back, but this time as a lifeless little Rorschach test exploded against the window. The kind you only ever see on your windshield driving Highway 9 in the middle of July, but I wasn’t going anywhere just now.

If you love something, you’re supposed to let it go, and if it comes back, it’s yours forever. It’s something that doesn’t have to be true to feel good, so what remains of the wasp was my responsibility now. I owe him that much.

I step outside and pick the pieces off the grass. His head, thorax, other parts I’m sure I learned the names of in school, but some things are so easy to forget. Most things are like that, I guess. I wash everything that was once inside of the wasp off the window and place the wet tissue and his little body in the bin. “Back to the earth where you came from,” I say. I throw a handful of dirt in the bin with him for good measure. He was a very good wasp, as wasps go. We had a great time, once.

My neighbor notices my funeral procession and walks over. The down trip must be palpable from across the street, I figure. He asks what I’m doing. “Well,” I say, “I’m tending to the garden and doing what mother nature never had the guts to do, no pun intended. Do you think the wasp would be offended by that? God, I hope not.” He stares through me and I can tell I’ve shared more than I care to. There are no shadows on the ground and the air is damp. His eyes are so glassy, and he looks like he’d been crying. “What’s this about a wasp?” he asks. “The one in the compost, and never mind about that, anyway.”

He starts telling me about my flowers, “They need water,” he says. But what does he know about it? What does he know about the life water gives? What does he know about smashing your head through the glass pane of the world?

BIG DINKY ENERGY by Josh Sherman

July 5, 2021

You really need to figure out how to stop drinking so much. You could ask your doctor to refer a therapist or join some 12-step program. But you’ve got a better idea. It’ll just have to wait until the weekend, when you aren’t busy writing marketing copy for real-estate developers.

***

‘The Mulberry Estates are a charming collection of spacious single-family homes in leafy Elgin County.’

‘Set to rise in Toronto’s vibrant Entertainment District, the Foxtrot is a luxurious 45-storey condo tower by the award-winning Mango Development Corporation.’

These are the sentences you’re paid to write eight hours a day, Monday to Friday, from an office downtown.

You wish AI would hurry up and make your job redundant.

***

Saturday morning you’ve got a raging headache. You don’t even throw up when hungover anymore. It’s like your body has tapped out from the constant abuse, or maybe it’s just your natural state now.

Though you’re resolved to stick to your plan no matter how shitty you feel, you’re also nervous and pace your apartment for an indeterminate length of time. A small part of you wants to back out while you still can.

***

It’s so bright out as you walk across a bridge to your destination. You want to capture the brightness — put it in a package like a light bulb so you can use it later. Someone has spray painted RUTHLESS LOWLIFE on a cement barrier. Seeing the graffiti tag, which is all over your neighbourhood, brings you joy. You consider RUTHLESS LOWLIFE to be your favourite street artist. You think of RUTHLESS LOWLIFE as a kind of light bulb.

***

Automatic doors usher you into Canadian Tire. You haven’t been in a hardware store in a long time — probably not since you were a little kid, when your mom made you wear that colourful leash thing so you wouldn’t wander away and get abducted. Recently, while helping your mom move, you found the leash in a box in the crawlspace of her old place. You wanted her boyfriend to take a picture of you two tethered at the wrists once again, but neither he nor your mom were willing to participate for some reason.

Weird.

***

It doesn’t take long for you to get your bearings. There’s a comforting logic to the store’s layout, and you sense intuitively where the aisle you’re looking for is located. Just in case, you’ve rehearsed a backstory for what you’re about to do.

And then you see it, what you came here for: the dinky-car display.

***

Suddenly you’re eight years old again.

You’ve never had alcohol.

Your organs are pink and healthy.

You wake up early to watch cartoons.

Your main concern is your Hot Wheels collection.

You are safe and secure on your leash.

If you could just recapture something of that lost time, even at 1:64 scale, you might find a way out of your predicament. These die-cast toy cars haven’t changed in decades. Something of your childhood remains static, sealed in plastic, and perfect.

So you flip through the packages, picking out a couple models: an ’85 Honda City Turbo, a ’68 Mazda Cosmo Sport, a Nissan Silvia.

You’re already making plans for an Instagram account to post pictures of your toy-car collection. You’ll create it when you get home. The username will be @bigdinkyenergy.

***

You stand in line feeling like you did the first time you bought condoms. You hope the cashier is an old person, someone whose judgment you don’t give a fuck about.

Instead, you end up with a hot 20-something ringing through and bagging your items. You feel totally castrated.

“Just picking these up for my nephew,” you say.

“He really… loves Japanese cars,” you add.

The cashier avoids eye contact when she hands you the bag.

***

As you walk back over the bridge on your way home, there’s a City of Toronto truck pulled up to the curb. Someone in a City of Toronto uniform is power-washing RUTHLESS LOWLIFE off the cement barrier. You just wish some things wouldn’t change, and you’re reminded of the versatility of grief, of all its variants.

Then you notice something else. The bag you’re carrying is so much lighter than what you lug home every day from the liquor store around the corner. And you think maybe you’re more excited to open its contents, too.

SERPENT WITH FIREWORK by Harris Lahti

July 4, 2021

The sunburnt man climbs the steep bank of the lake, dragging a large plastic cooler packed with the last beers of his life. And then? Redemption. Stone-cold sobriety. Through his speed shades, the remains of the abandoned luxury resort rise in nuclear yellow—the shattered windows and graffitied cabins, the crooked doors and cracked tennis courts, the moist volleyball sand where he first slid against his wife and jizzed his teenaged blue jeans. Boy, it sure is nice to discover everything where he left it.

Or not exactly.

From the shallow end of the pool, three skateboarders stare up at him—at his yellow Polo and high-visibility boardshorts, his wraparound reflective sunglasses—hoping against hope the irradiated yuppie doesn’t intend to kick them out. The weekend boating crowd, they know, love nothing more than to report any ruckus that wasn’t of their own making. Especially on the Fourth of July! And so the moment hangs. And hang there—the skateboarders not wanting to rub him the wrong way, lest this lobster call the cops and prematurely end their session—until, with a sudden dart of his tongue, the sunburnt man shaves the foam from his blistered upper lip and declares to them:

“It’s cool, yo!” he slurs. “I used to skate!” All the time back in the day, this sunburnt man and his friends used to lug a generator back here, a sump pump. Gasoline. Fucking mops and towels to soak up the grime. Nets to catch the bullfrogs, snakes, and salamanders living in the sludge. They’d skate this pool until there was nothing left but a crater. “Utter destruction!” he says.

The skateboards stare throughout his summary, blinking back a code that anyone with a dry slab of brain could decipher to mean: Yeah, fuck-o, that’s exactly what we’re doing, just look around, where’s the crater? the utter destruction? the pool’s right here, bro until, apropos of nothing, the sunburnt man cuts off to make a shotgun reloading sound with his mouth, “Kirch-kirch,” and slides another beer from the cooler into his neon yellow koozie. From which, he swigs deeply, damn near polishing off the twenty-seventh beer in a single draught.

Or was it his twenty-eighth? His twenty-ninth, perhaps?

He continues to teeter there at the edge of the pool for some time, his sunglasses flashing sharp blades of sun, as all but one of the skateboarders resume their session—the one with the walking cast on his leg who’s setup on the stairs of the shallow end grilling hamburgers. “Ayo, chief,” this grill master says. “Happy fourth. You want a burger?” All morning, he’d been grilling them, breathing coal and meat smoke out of his toolbox-sized barbeque while watching his friends enjoy the emptied pool as the skin inside his walking cast popping and aching like beaded burger fat. “Medium? Medium-rare?”

“With a pulse,” this sunburnt man responds before draining off his maybe twenty-seventh/eighth/ninth beer with conviction. His throat bobs and knuckles as the beer flows into his purplish neck. However, on this day, unlike others, no shame accompanies this chugging. Instead, a sense of achievement, self-betterment, as if each cracked beer tab opens another door in his mind. After passing through all thirty of them, a new life will begin. A life in which, he’ll return home, apologize. Listen. Just listen. Take the garbage out, load the laundry, then mow the lawn while his wife watches him out the kitchen window, her heart thawing with love.

The grill master proffers the bloody burger. “You want this or what?”

The sunburnt man peers down through the metallic glasses: “I didn’t order that.”

To which the grill master gives a half-hearted grumble and tosses the burger onto the paper plates, adding to the other gray and shriveled patties his buddies refused throughout the morning, to this greasy leaning tower that has grown into a metaphor for his life—because, once upon a time, not even a year ago, this grill master would’ve found solace in a well-cooked burger, would’ve enjoyed a day spent simply watching his buddies skate. But his string of recent injuries has been too long, too suffering, and at the ripe old age of twenty-five, this master of char and broil has taken a hard look at his life: the future he’s stepped into is old and hurting. Just like this radioactive drunk, he thinks. This boozed up kook who won’t stop word salading at me like I could give a fuck: What do I care about his good old days? His wife? The way they used to roll around over in the volleyball court? How her red hair used to spark in the sun? How she’d moan like Medusa when they fucked?

“You’d understand if you saw her,” the sunburnt man tells him. “Matter fact,” he says, fishing a large cell phone from his cargo pocket.

The grill master glances at his friends, trying to transmit a call for help, a refocusing of social responsibility. But their skateboarding only continues, as if it was now up to the grill master, and him alone, to run interference with this drunkard, to sacrifice himself for their opportunity to slash at the pool coping with their skateboard’s metal trucks. To carve over the light fixture in the deep end with a poetry he felt he’d never again be able to write. Then: this spit sucking sound. “What the fuck?”

The sunburnt man nudges him: “Lookit.” And for a split-second dream-moment? this crazy-eyed red-headed woman? she bobs in the grill master’s lap? a fiery mop of hair? right there on the stairs? in the shallow end of the pool? where he’s been all morning? sucking him? giving him the first head he’s gotten in months? a whole year? Only his dick is redder, more curving.

“The only picture I have of her,” the sunburnt man says before slipping his cell phone back into his pocket and opening the lid of the cooler and starting to fish for his maybe twenty-ninth/thirtieth beer—fishing, fishing, fishing—for that maybe final one—the key with which he will crack the final door that lead into his new and sober future, where after completing the lawn, he’ll enter the kitchen to discover his wife overflowing with a pent up a sexuality that says please fuck me, right here on the laminate counter, you sweet animal, I’ve missed you so much—except, no, this final beer, nah-uh, there isn’t a final one. Apparently, he drank that one, already stepped into that future life. Without realization or ceremony. And instead, he comes up with a damp firework: a big red cake he must’ve purchased earlier at the Exxon along with the thirty pack to celebrate this moment. The start of his new life that’ll play from here forth into eternity like a prime-time family comedy. And so, to mark this occasion, he flicks his Bic lighter and holds flame to fuse. He ignites a spark that travels hissing toward the firework’s center clenched in his scorched hand. He cocks his arm and sends the cake flying.

The skateboarders stop to gawk at the pool’s deep end as the grey braids of smoke diffuse up into the thick pines, into the shadows the branches hold down, waiting for an explosion that doesn’t come. Refuses to. (Perhaps, this firework, too, has failed to thrive? the grill master wonders.) But then: explosion! A heat. An unleashed wrath shoots upward and launches off the pool’s curving walls into the pines, where a large bird startles high up in the branches. With a flap of enormous wings, its shadow frees itself, soars over them, a vulture, a hawk, no, a bald eagle—majestic and full of glory—up, up, up into the patches of blue skies above, shrieking its rage, piercing at their eardrums, so loudly that even the sunburnt man stops to watch the thing flap and shrink into nothingness. Into memory.

And in the blast’s wake? Aside from the tattered box and ruined pool slick with charcoal, confetti, and myriad destruction that’d surely bite into the steady roll of any skateboard wheels? There’s something else: this rope: this rattling sound: this glitching movement in the pool that makes no sense: a missing puzzle piece of movement where there should’ve been none: a reptile that must’ve fallen from the eagle’s mouth as it raged against the blast: a snake with a rattle, a diamond-shaped head: red eyes staring back.

“Seriously, what the what?” The skateboarders exchange glances, shrug. Repeat this process again. What do you do in a situation like this? Bash the rattler with a rock? Coax it out with a stick? There were no obvious answers. No other actions to take than to turn toward the sunburnt man with murder in their eyes, as if he’d conjured the snake on purpose. And this drunk dayglo dickhead, you know what he does?

Laughs—because for him, right now, the universe aligns. Its cosmic beer sign arrows blink the fated way: First through the thirty pack, then the firework, and now this rattlesnake, another set of doors inside the other set of doors inside his mind through which he must walk. After capturing the serpent, he’ll skin the thing and gift the hide to his wife as a totem reminder of how far he sunk without her love.

(If it doesn’t make sense to you, I can’t explain his logic.)

The grill master tries to stop him. The two other skateboarders try to stop him. But the sunburnt man moves too quickly toward the rattler, who only continues to amplify and sustain its warning clatter. “Kirch-kirch, kirch-kirch, kirch-krich,” the sunburnt man responds, hoping to confuse the animal—because, boy, this rattle snake is a stupid one. The sunburnt man realizes this right away. Easily distractable. Lacks the reflexes that I possess, he thinks.

Even the sizzle of the grill master’s grill falls silent as if to watch the sunburnt fool close in on the rattler, like he’s done so a thousand times, making it hard not to wonder: Was this sunburnt donkey a snake handler, a reptile wrangler, a herpetologist of some kind? Of course not. Maybe, though?

Drunk as he is, the sunburnt man senses his audience’s captivation and this makes him make the mistake he so often made in the past—his other signature—the one where he says, “Just one more beer,” and attempts to amplify heaven. He lurches. He grabs. Then, before he’s even aware of his success, he’s twirling the rattler by its tail before his belly like a lasso.

“Kirch, kirch, kirch,” he says, repeatedly. The skateboarders say nothing. Just stand in awe. Gawking at the beautiful way this crimson kook gyroscopes the rattle snake, the way this hologram of death blurs before his toasted body. The grill master can’t blink. He can’t breathe. On account of the adrenaline now coursing through his blood, flooding him with a feeling he associates with his own good old days. Remember?

The sunburnt man does, remembers everything. His idealized life moves before him, inside the action of the snake, caged there like rare diamond in a wedding ring. Each time the snake passes, his smile cracks wider, his lip oozes blood.

Meanwhile, the sunlight that snaps off his metallic sunglasses causes the skateboarders to squint, to shield their eyes, not wanting to miss what happens next, as the rattler’s fangs continue to snap and miss him, snap and miss him, until, okay, maybe they haven’t. Maybe the fangs have connected after all.

It takes a moment, but the sunburnt man feels this venom pooling, too, as an energy, and within this accumulation he senses a fissure, the sudden formation of another door. A final door. One whose edges are flooded with heavenly light. One door at the end of the thirty pack and snake that he hadn’t anticipated or imagined. An emergency exit of sorts. And it’s in this moment, with this realization, that the scene’s energy swells too taut. Too impossible. It needs somewhere to go, too. Anywhere. And so, with no other options left, the energy plunges itself into his burnt body, burrowing behind the venom toward the sunburnt man’s over-cooked heart.

I THINK ABOUT YOUR COCK DURING TIMES OF CRISIS by Lexi Kent-Monning

July 2, 2021

The first thing I thought of during the coup was your cock. I think of it when I need comfort, and what I wanted to remember was the first time it saved me. We were on your bed, a Friday afternoon, both skipping work. I’d been bent over in the shower, but you know I faint easily so you moved us out of the hot water. Our just shampooed hair made dark blotches and streaks on your grey sheets, while stars encroached on my vision and echoes rolled through my ears, the two telltale symptoms I’m about to pass out. Instead of the stars and echoes, I focused on your cock like my life depended on it, and the deeper I plunged it into my throat, the more I kept the fainting at bay. Your cock brought me back to full consciousness, so now when I don’t have my faculties or when my faculties are too present, when I need a jolt or a numbing, it returns me. When I have to wake up in a few hours but haven’t gotten a whisper of sleep, your cock comes faster than sheep into my head and soothes me. When I almost drive off the road and need to stay awake for a few more miles, remembering the taste of the first lick of the head puts me on cruise control until I pull into the garage. When I’m on my knees about to retch into a toilet, I think about swallowing you down, and my stomach immediately stops churning. So when guns and Confederate flags filled the screens again, the first thing I thought of was your cock, and how it’s never been used for violence. When crises arise, I think of your cock and I know how to stay alive.

LOW GAS AND A LION IN THE BACKSEAT by Hannah Gregory

July 1, 2021

My hand lives in her belly. That belly has a tumor the size of a banjo. I like to think my hand keeps her company, playing a soothing song on her tumor banjo whenever she cries in pain. I use my one hand to play my non-tumor banjo for her, my actual banjo, like hum-di-bum-hum-di-dee-hum-di-bum-hum-di-dee. No chords because, hello, one hand over here. My girlfriend Tracy is always yelling at me for getting a lion, but Theory: Is it really about the banjo? Tracy refuses to help me with the chords so she just hears me singing in Open G all day. I tell her that every townie who’s been trapped in the town where they grew up deserves to play banjo for a lion they love. Checkmate. Conclusion: Tracy hates banjos.

My lion breathes heavy these days, breathing the breaths of like… really hard breathing. Tracy doesn’t think I’m a biologist, but what about that online course I took? Checkmate. Theory: Tracy is jealous. She says to stop spending all of my money on that lion. Tracy has had to pick me up because my car ran out of gas. More than once. I spend all of my tips from the bar on the lion’s treatments and we barely make rent. Last night, I did donuts in the high school parking lot until my Low Fuel light popped up, blasting Earl Scruggs with the lion in the backseat as a treat in her final days. Tracy says I’m going to have to start paying for my own AAA if I don’t get rid of that lion. Conclusion: Tracy is jealous. She gives me the silent treatment like she knows how to use it, but there’s a button behind her ear. When I press it eight times, she stops giving me the silent treatment. “Stahp. Staaaaaaahp. Quit it. Please. Okay. Stop now. Ha ha. Okay. Ha ha. You really know how to get on my nerves.” It always goes like that and then we make sweet, salty townie love.

I would cry if this car could run on tears and anxiety instead of gasoline. Theory: If my palm sweats the whole way to the vet’s office, I’ll be able to make it there before my tank runs out of gas. My lion can’t get comfortable in the backseat because of the banjo in her belly. Her brain refuses to quit even though her body is trying to kill her. If I run out of gas, I’ll need to put a sign on the window that says: Careful! Lion in the backseat! She bites but be nice to her. She’s dying! I pass by a gas station, but keep driving because I know where I can get gas two cents cheaper. Conclusion: The car coasts into the vet’s parking lot and it shuts off before I can park. Conclusion: Tracy misjudges my thrift.

My body quakes ugly tears and I rest my head on my lion’s. She licks the tears off my face and she has that smile, that desire to keep living, to keep sleeping, to keep waking up, to keep eating her favorite dinner of fresh carcasses and sweaty hands, to keep listening to my one-handed banjo while I sing her a sweet song about love and heartache.

I sit with her until the vet comes out. We all walk inside together and I walk out alone.

Theory: My heart’s going to fall out and never make its way back home. My lion’s name was Bette, by the way. She was young. Only about five years old. I hum Bette’s favorite song until Tracy comes and picks me up. We leave my car stranded in the vet’s parking lot. Conclusion: I’m going to cry until I die.