Flash

HAUNTING by Edee James

June 30, 2021

A ghost is a boy who always comes back to you.

We were kissing in his car, which he’d initially parked by the side of the road so we could volley insults at each other responsibly. With his breath sweet and warm on my neck, and his tongue darting in and out of my ear, it was easy to momentarily forget why we were fighting.

It was about another girl.

I grew up learning that a man will stray. You shouldn’t kill yourself just because your man is a community penis, my aunt said. All I had to do was pray he didn’t gift me something incurable. My position in his heart was solid if he had a string of female names on his phone, but it was ‘code red’ if he was focusing on one specific girl.

There was one specific girl.

The boy said it was either me or her whenever he was ready for marriage. The fight wasn’t about the fact that he had options. It was because he wouldn’t spell out my position in his list of eligible women. I told him to go and fix his limp dick, and he told me they were selling oils for my receding hairline. Then we were giggling and kissing, mouths and hands everywhere, stray moans escaping throats, goosebumps like we’d been submerged in ice. An army van screeched to a stop in front of us, tires spraying gravel and sand. Three soldiers leaped out with guns slung over their shoulders to buy roasted corn from a roadside seller. It was then I lost control of my bladder.

There was a pool of urine on my seat when the boy dropped me off.

We didn’t talk about me peeing myself. We didn’t talk about the fact that it wasn’t really about the soldiers--my dad was in the army, so I was quite familiar with officers. We didn’t talk at all.

It was about their guns.

The boy dropped me off without a word. We had been on and off for five years. It was clear we were off again. Inside my house, I stepped out of my soiled skirt and flung my bra and wig against the wall. I shivered under the spray of cold water in the shower, but it was alright because it helped dilute my warm tears.

Right then, I knew two things:

1. The boy and I, currently off, would be on again in about a year2. He was never going to marry me

I knew.

I have always known things. My cousin calls me before he bets on football games. My friend won lots of money after I blurted out winning numbers. When I was younger, my mother took me to a prophet because she couldn’t understand it all. A girl working in my mom’s beauty salon noticed how I always turned up right before my mom started eating lunch on her break. No one believed the girl, so she decided to set a trap for me. She bought ice cream and said my mom couldn’t eat it until a certain time. I appeared as my mother swallowed the first scoop.

A ghost is a dearly departed soul who doesn’t know how to return home.

I was drying plates in the kitchen the first time I saw the ghost. It was running up and down, restive. I told it to stop, then wondered if my insomnia was finally catching up with me. The next day it was back, a figure in white floating around the periphery of my vision. Annoyed, I told it I wasn’t responsible for its death.

I was there the day the ghost died. I had swept his skull fragments into a dustpan with my hands after the kidnappers emptied a clip into his head and spilled his brain. He had come to cut my uncle’s hair at home but stuck around because he wanted to help me clean the house. He owned a barbershop in town, and my uncle was one of his VIP clients. That Sunday, he finished his job and got paid, but he insisted on dusting the furniture before leaving. I pried the cleaning rag out of his grip after the police came and took my statement and his body. An officer scribbled something indecipherable as I recounted the event:

a. I was frying plantains when the kidnappers cameb. They took everyone to my uncle’s bedroomc. They asked us all to lie facedownd. They asked for a pen and a piece of papere. One of them asked if I was the maid, and I said yes because of the way his greedy eyes X-rayed my bodyf. They wrote down the number we had to call to pay the ransomg. They killed the barber on their way out because he recognized someone in the gangh. No, they didn't wear masksi. They kidnapped my uncle

I told my aunt about the restless ghost, and she looked at me funny and asked me how I knew. Apparently, some prophet had told her the same thing. We brought people to pray and bless the house.

A ghost is the first love you will never forget.

The boy came back. He glossed over the urine incident now that a year had passed, telling me how I had squirted and almost ruined his car just because of a little kiss on the neck. He suggested therapy when I told him about the dead barber and the kidnappers and the guns.

The boy and I started sexting back and forth until we had chapters of erotica. I’d wake up to the wicked things he was planning to do to me, and I’d reply, threatening something even more delicious. We threatened each other with ice cubes and whips, fire and handcuffs, lace and blindfold. Yet I knew that everything we wrote and did would only help his sex life when he married his specific girl. I was only helping him build a library.

THE FUCK’S A TUFFET? by Jonathan Cardew

June 25, 2021

Little Miss Muffet took another hit from her Juul. It was Friday, which meant English class all afternoon. Instead of walking towards the Arts building, though, Muffet detoured into the woods so she could do a little pipe before Hawthorne.

When she sat down on a grassy embankment, a spider descended from a nearby tree--a ten-foot wide spider, big enough to hop and skip over a bus.

She tried to light her pipe, but the spider freaked out and hissed at the flame.

“Oh, just piss off,” she said to the spider, and it promptly did.

Once she was high, it crawled back.

“Are you eating fire?” asked the spider, sheepishly, motioning to the pipe with one hairy leg.

“Go away,” said Muffet.

“I just want to sit with you on that tuffet,” said the spider. “Seems like a perfect spot.”

Miss Muffet enjoyed smoking so much—getting high was her new normal, filling herself with fumes was her new way.

“A tuffet?”

She laughed. She coughed out smoke.

Spiders were not her new way.

…

When she arrived at school, things were baffling.

Two freshmen rushed up to her and flapped their traps about Mr. Karman making out with one of the seniors and getting caught by the principal.

Miss Muffet took a surreptitious draw from her Juul, eating the vape so that it leaked out of her nose.

“Ewww, gross,” she said, but she wasn’t really grossed out; Mr. Karman had a tush like two boiled eggs joined in holy matrimony.

“In the Biology room,” said one of the freshmen, with an exaggerated wink.

Little Miss Muffet thought about the spider.

She mouthed the word, “tuffet.”

Tuffet.

Tuff-it.

She entered the school via the Sciences wing.

…

It was dark in the Biology room, except for the hydroponic lights in one corner.

Little Miss Muffet peered through the little glass window and could just about make out the hunched figure of Mr. Karman at his desk.

It looked like he was bent over his grading, but surely he was staring down into the chasm of his bad choices.

Little Miss Muffet knocked on the window—rat-a-tat-tat.

No response.

She tried again, but figured she might as well just open the door.

The room was eerily quiet—never was it quiet during class time since Mr. Karman operated on a ‘do what you will’ kind of vibe.

She walked toward him.

He looked up from his chasm.

“Muffet…” he said. “Don’t you have class now?”

“Free period,” she lied, sitting down on one of the student seats.

“Oh,” he said, letting out a sigh.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Karman, but I had a question…”

“Now's not a great time for questions,” he said.

Little Miss Muffet leant back in the seat so it groaned, getting out her Juul device and giving it a quick pull.

She guessed Mr. Karman wouldn’t notice, let alone care.

“Now’s not a great time for anything.”

Mr. Karman looked sexy in the wan light, like a figure from an oil painting, all anguish and doom, haggard.

…

When the bell rang, Little Miss Muffet was already deep in the woods again.

Hawthorne could wait until Wednesday.

Hawthorne and his scarlet letter could go screw themselves, 1600s style.

“You’re back,” said the spider, who was in the same general vicinity as before.

The spider was one of those fat spiders with tiny legs. Pointless. Dragging its hairy-ass belly across the ground when it moved.

A sorry, sorry sight.

“I’m back,” said Little Miss Muffet, using her fingers to simulate quote marks.

She took her place on the small, grassy hill and got out her pipe again.

“Can I?” said the spider, pointing to the same spot as before.

“Can you what?”

It blinked its dozen eyes.

“Sit down beside you,” it said. “On that tuffet.”

Little Miss Muffet sighed, channeling Mr. Karman.

“Look,” she said. “It’s a free country.”

She pushed a nub of weed into the pipe end and lit it, drawing a perfect crackle.

“Can I ask you a question?”

RUSSIAN ADVICE by Joshua Hebburn

June 23, 2021

The only tenderable advice Mom had given him was if a woman threatens to throw a plate at your head, she might, but if she takes her shoes off first, she's going to kill you. Mom said she learned this while reading Turgenev. In college.

He started taking magnesium supplements for better sleep. His therapist recommended it when he mentioned his disturbances in his sleep and insomnia. He Googled magnesium. He learned that magnesium burns especially hot, and that bad people—child pornographers, hackers, drug cartel accountants—used magnesium-based flip-switch ignition setups to melt their hard drives full of illegal information when the men in heavy gear and gas masks stormed in. He learned about nutritional magnesium. He went to Target. His dreams became vivid from the magnesium. The dead and the lost things in his life returned to him in everyday settings, and the famous people—politicians and actors and actresses—all articulated together into nonsense. The people were speaking out of character, sometimes in a language that was almost decipherable. The settings flowed into the wrong next one. They committed unconjoined, sometimes tender, sometimes disgusting acts. These would be disturbing. This isn’t speaking of the objects and other nouns. That is if they weren't, as memories, faint, thin, and rapidly fading. But maybe they wouldn't: they don't wake him up in their progress. He thinks of these as his magnesium dreams. He has magnesium dreams almost every night now. He didn’t dream this much before, either. He likes it even if it makes him feel bad.

The other advice Mom gave was—for instance, only eat cake after thirty if you’re not married, women like plump guys but don't keep them—it was stuff that made only surface sense, made too complete a feeling, was calculated to imply a kind of person, it was like a magazine ad.

He thought of the way she would turn her hand palm up when she talked. She curled her index finger in towards the palm. It alarmed him that he couldn’t think of the hand beyond the gesture. In his mind’s eye it was a smudge, like the limb of one of the figures in the background of a painting, exactly what came into his mind when he thought generically of a “woman’s palm,” or “woman’s index finger.” He could look at his own hand and observe the fold of flesh in the groin between his thumb and his pointer. He wished he could see a picture of the same place on her hand, or, if he could only consult a reference to jar his memory into particulars. He imaged some library that contained volumes of photographs of human hands, human wrists, human arms, and all of the other parts, photographs made in hard light and printed in large format on thick, smooth art book paper. It would be forgotten, the form of any human hand, her hand was going to be forgotten, and even his own hand as it was now because it would be another hand in the future, a hand with different creases.

Nobody's home. He went to her room and applied her makeup from the crowded table. He does it in the same way you might invert your shirt and go bongos on your belly, or sing a song loudly and badly, inserting cusses and slurs, or the way you pretend to be Jim Carrey in The Mask. Hummanahummana! Because you can. First a metallic dusting. Then an outline with a wet black pen. An oyster colored, oyster cool cream on the hands that smells like lavender, and salt. The satisfying twist of the plastic gold tube to raise the ruby worn down by Mom's lips. I'm a glamorita, a glamourpuss. I look divine.

He was occasioned for all of this. He thought while he sat beside his second wife, who he knew he didn't love recently, or maybe never. His hands were folded into his hands. The pew was hard. Everyone wears black. The pastor said the pastor's scripture of love, God, and death. The light passed through the stained glass windows and it filled the enormous room with color.

He thinks of Mom smacking the bottom of the bear shaped bottle of pure clover honey, then looking at Dad at the kitchen table, and moving her hand to the hollowed bear rump, patting and laughing. Later, she would throw something at Dad, and for a reason. He couldn't remember if she was wearing shoes, she often did or didn't inside the house. How did she feel?

Like a duel, he supposed, you make a commitment and do it out of some idea that you will feel some way after you've gone through. They say, go through with it. You go to the dentist. You go to the funeral. You snort cocaine. You divorce a wife. You say Jesus Christ.

BACCHUS AT LARGE by Avee Chaudhuri

June 21, 2021

For six straight days we drank bourbon with delighted urgency: men, women, and children above the age of twelve. The preacher was horrified of course. The Mayor betrayed no emotions. He simply knew what must be done to save the town. Twelve-year-olds were dancing in the streets and exposing themselves to livestock and wild animals. Many of the women had embraced the ancient, sapphic ways under this new regimen. The men were livid but the Mayor kept the peace. “It’s the whiskey, fellas. That’s all,” he said, knowing he was a liar. The Mayor was a man of the world and had been educated in France, then had practiced law and medicine and silversmithing in Brazil before an intense hankering for peaches brought him back to Texas.

For six straight days we drank, and Providence smiled briefly because on the seventh day we were assured that Addison himself, the dread distiller, would ride in from Kentucky and burn everything in sight, and then in the smoldering wreckage he would murder Jason Faulkner with his bare hands. Faulkner had worked at the distillery in Shively, and stolen from Addison about one hundred cases of whiskey, simply because he could. Then he came down to Texas on a wagon loaded with whiskey and books and seed packets for some land and privacy. He was a horticulturalist by trade and set himself up in consultation, in a house off the main square. The whiskey was stored in his basement.

Faulkner was a womanizer too and something of an exhibitionist. He slept with Molly Ibsen under a canopy of blue azaleas in the public gardens, and that’s what set the whole thing off. Molly came home that afternoon without her usual despondent look and her husband was immediately suspicious. He followed her the next day and saw her screwing Faulkner in all these poses facing earthward. He was incensed, then aroused, then briefly conciliatory, and then even more pissed off. Intending to stab Faulkner in the eyes and groin, Tom Ibsen broke into his house through the basement, where he noticed the many cases of whiskey, all stamped with the famous Addison logo: a horse trampling a Delaware Indian. He decided not to kill Faulkner that night, and as it happened Faulkner wasn’t even at home. He was with the preacher’s wife high above town on the roof of the Hotel Sam Houston.

The next day, Tom Ibsen wrote to Addison describing what he had seen in Faulkner’s basement. In a week he received a reply that Addison was on his way to murder Jason Faulkner and destroy the town which had harbored him. Only Ibsen’s home would be spared. Ibsen was so goddamn petty that the news from Addison struck him as fair and equitable. Ibsen drank a toast to himself and fell asleep at his desk. When trying to rouse her husband for dinner, Molly Ibsen saw the letter from Addison and took it to Faulkner. She was inconsolable.

“Calm yourself, Molly,” said Faulkner. Faulkner told the Mayor a little of what transpired and asked him to hold a town meeting and the Mayor agreed because things had been far too peaceful and civil and he was getting fucking bored with it all and restless. Once in Okinawa, a man he had disgraced with his fists had told him that every crisis is an opportunity. But for so long there had been no crisis here on account of fair weather and steady trade.

“Send forth the crier,” the Mayor said dramatically. Then he did a bump of cocaine.

The town gathered and Faulkner addressed the citizens:

“Friends, lovers and enemies. You know me as Jason Faulkner. That is indeed my name on the census but I have been known by many names over many lifetimes: Bacchus, Hanuman, Reynard the Fox.”

“What the fuck is your point!” someone shouted.

“Goddammit,” Faulkner continued, “I am the god of wine and mischief. A terrible disaster awaits. I stole one hundred cases of whiskey from Brody Addison and he will think you all complicit and burn the town. Unless we drink all the whiskey.”

“Seems to me,” said Colonel Bright, “that we oughta dump that whiskey in the river and that you oughta move along.”

“And waste the wisdom of Solomon, the secret pleasure of Agamemnon?” Faulkner said. “We can drink it together in the spirit of fellowship. We can show that evil goddamn maniac that revelry will always triumph over murder and arrogance.”

Faulkner repeated the claim that he was a living god and this upset quite a few people, particularly the preacher.

“You’re simply a man. You fucked my wife and she didn’t come home smelling like ambrosia. In fact, she reeked of horse shit,” the preacher complained.

The townspeople prevailed on their mayor to say something:

Why the hell not, said the Mayor. This is the time for spectacle and revelation. Atrocities in the Belgian Congo, the telephone, the phonograph, a transatlantic cable. They’ve discovered the lost city of Troy and canals on Mars. In about one hundred years, the millennium will be upon us and the world will surely end. The sea will swallow Texas, and we may or may not survive in the coming ether as unlimbered gnats. For so long, the Mayor sighed, all we’ve really known how to do together is kill, so why shouldn’t the king of satyrs appear in these woods and tell us otherwise.

“Fuck it, I’m in. Faulkner, put me down for a case,” said the Mayor.

Not to be outdone, Colonel Bright demanded two cases of whiskey, and soon everyone was clamoring to help hide the evidence of Faulkner’s crimes. Thirty or forty good men and women had come forward and the Mayor issued an emergency order that the children could drink. We started drinking in a concerted fashion. Musicians played day and night in the main square. The drunk children started using cocaine in vast quantities in order to stay awake so they could keep drinking. Old blood feuds were resolved and outstanding gambling debts were forgiven. Tom Ibsen even tried to reconcile with his wife, but by then, in her state of sublime drunkenness, Molly decided she didn’t need Tom or Jason or carnal knowledge of any man or woman. She wanted to be a gunfighter. The Mayor, seated beneath a statue of General Sam Houston, watched it all and thought to himself: somewhere, that old Samurai bastard is smiling upon us.

Late on the sixth day we smashed up and burned all the empty bottles and crates from the Addison Distillery. The Mayor and his valets performed Pagliacci, a rough English translation that had us in tears. The point is it sobered us up. The musicians disbanded. The brothel, which in those six days had served as a hospital for victims of alcohol poisoning, was redecorated in its usual satin and silk finery, in its traditional arabesque. It was business as usual when Addison rolled up. The peach farmers were in the main square arguing with the monocled peach commissioner, threatening to form a co-operative. In the middle of it all, the Mayor wore his finest sable coat and twirled his walking stick, saying, “Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen!”

Addison was gaunt and high-legged.

“Where is he? Where is Faulkner?” Addison asked.

“Faulkner, we know no Faulkner,” said the Mayor. “we know a Bacchus, Bismarck, Hanuman, Cleopatra, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, and good old George Washington Gomez.” The Mayor kept going for minutes, fueled as he was by cocaine and insolence.

“Enough!” Addison shouted. Then he brandished his pistol.

“Hey there, Addison!” Faulkner cried from his front porch.

The two men met in the center of the main square.

“You are a thief. Where is my whiskey?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve ridden all this way for no reason.”

“The day after you left, I discovered one hundred cases of my whiskey missing. I have a letter from a man named Ibsen claiming to have seen one hundred cases of my whiskey in your cellar.”

“That man Ibsen is a congenital liar. There is no whiskey here,” said Faulkner.

Addison sighed and smiled wistfully, sensing Faulkner had outsmarted him in some way, and then he shot him right in the gut and then once more in the right temple. Faulkner’s blood crested in the wind, splattering among the peaches.

“I am a Colonel of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. I will ride freely,” said Addison.

We buried Faulkner later that day in a shallow grave, and the Mayor spoke a eulogy in a variety of modern and ancient languages. Whenever Faulkner is ready, whenever the horn blows or the raven circles the mountain, what little we have laid on top of him, mere twigs and branches, and some handfuls of dirt, may be easily traversed.

UNFINISHED by David Osgood

June 17, 2021

My wife brushes her teeth in the shower and doesn’t spit, so the toothpaste foams around her mouth and drips down her chin onto her breasts. It reminds me of the two people I fear the most: my mother and my dentist. Tonya oversleeps again. She is starting to look like her mother. I burn my wife’s sprouted grains toast because I hate her new Vegan diet. She doesn’t notice because it is covered with half-ripe avocado. I crisp up a whole package of uncured maple bacon to give her something to complain about.

Tonya yells at her mom like a teenager, though she is only twelve. I cannot imagine what the house will be like when I leave and she doesn’t have an audience. She and I lock rolled eyes. It’s the only thing we have in common that keeps us from falling apart.

On the way to school, Tonya mentions drugs. I tell her I smoked pot in college, but that’s about it. I try to remember what it was like when I was her age. I feel bad for Tonya, having a mentally vacant dad and an emotionally unstable mom. No wonder she is doing drugs already. I picture Drew Barrymore doing a line of cocaine off a Tiger Beat magazine with Jonathan Taylor Thomas on the cover. Maybe I just wasn’t as cool as the other kids, sweaty palms and counting down from ten to muster up the courage to kiss my girlfriend. She broke up with me and the other kids called me a prude. I entered high school with the enormous false sense of confidence that I would sleep with every girl in my class. When that didn’t happen, I drank to feel something, then drank not to feel anything, then just drank.

Tonya opens her car door before I come to a complete stop. She runs up to a group of girls and hugs them all at the same time, showing off what looks like a tattoo on her backside. I drive away thinking I should be upset or disappointed or concerned in some way. I wave begrudgingly at an over-caffeinated school mom tipping her oversized coffee cup to my obvious right of way like she is performing a humanitarian feat. I fantasize about her tailing me home where we drink mimosas and cheat.

I locate the piece of oversized luggage we used to take on family vacations and pull it down from the closet shelf; I find a tampon, a trial-size body lotion, and a foldable toothbrush in the bottom of it. I pack up everything I can fit into it, sit on top of the full suitcase, and get lost in a ceiling stain.

Tonya and her mother come home, furious I missed their calls and voicemails and texts. They stomp up the stairs like walking temper tantrums, following the noises to the bedroom. I look down at them from the attic through a large hole in the ceiling where the stain used to be. “I cut a stain out,” I manage to utter. “I’ll replace it.” They look up at me as if to confirm my suspicions that the father-daughter dance was not, in fact, cancelled this year.

My wife makes curry for dinner and Tonya stays at the table for the entire meal. She asks if we are getting a divorce and I tell her no I just hate my life and she says join the club and we smile like a familiar pain masking a deeper one. She looks high but I don’t say anything. My wife doesn’t talk to me for the rest of the night, even when I am unpacking the enormous suitcase and cleaning plaster off the bedroom floor. I pretend to sleep while she cries; she sleeps and I get up to pay bills in the dark.

MY LAST DINNER WITH THE CARPENTERS by Alyssa Asquith

June 16, 2021

The dinner invitation had not come at a convenient time. In any event, I wasn’t dressed; I couldn’t remember when I’d last been dressed. Most of my clothing had been eaten by moths or rats years ago, and the stuff that remained—leather, mostly—was brittle and dry, like old toast.

Besides, my teeth had begun to fall out. I’d lost one the day before, and two more by the morning. I think I must have swallowed them.

But I couldn’t refuse the Carpenters. The fact of the matter was that Mr. Carpenter had been looking forward to the evening all week, at least according to Mrs. Carpenter, and they were old friends of mine—perhaps the oldest—and it had been too long (much too long, as Mrs. Carpenter so kindly put it) since I’d paid them a visit. So I dressed myself in my very best curtain—a soft, delicate thing, made of cotton—and set out as soon as I could.

The world outside was ugly and crowded. Seagulls waited on chimneys and terraces, eyeing the brown rats that swarmed underfoot. Lines of old men stood on street corners, begging. Some begged for food; some begged for money. Some begged for teeth. I walked with my jaw clenched and my lips sealed. When I arrived, Mrs. Carpenter had already set the dinner out on the table. I was late.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Time must have gotten away from me.”

Mrs. Carpenter’s expression was tired, but not unkind. Since our last visit, her hair had turned from black to gray. “It’s been getting away from all of us,” she said.

From the corner, I could see Mr. Carpenter watching me. His eyes were round and large, like a bird’s.

We started on dinner at once. Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter sat on one side of the table, while I sat on the other. This seemed proper. As I took my first bite, I found that the turkey was cold and hard, like ice.

“How long were you waiting?” I asked Mrs. Carpenter.

She waved a hand. “Don’t give it a second thought,” she said.

Both Carpenters, I noticed, had filled their plates, though neither had begun to eat. I lifted another forkful to my mouth, then paused. Mrs. Carpenter was smiling at me.

“How’s your cat?” she asked.

“Dead,” I said. “Dead for quite some time, actually.” I lowered my fork. “How’s your daughter?”

“Gone,” Mrs. Carpenter said.

There was a long silence.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

Mrs. Carpenter’s smile had vanished.

I took another bite of turkey. One of my front teeth broke off and landed on the plate with an audible, tinkling sound.

Mr. Carpenter watched it fall with rapt attention.

“Again, I’m terribly sorry,” I said. “For being so late. I really do apologize.”

Mrs. Carpenter shook her head. Her eyes were far-off and misty, as if she were thinking of something else. I took the fallen tooth off my plate and slipped it into my pocket.

“You and Clara used to play together,” Mrs. Carpenter said. “Don’t you remember?”

“I remember,” I said.

“You would sit out on the floor,” she said, pointing. “Just right there. Playing cards. Doing magic tricks.”

I nodded, once. Already, I had begun to feel unbearably sad.

Another silence followed. Mr. Carpenter’s gaze was still fixed on my plate, but the whites of his eyes had begun to glisten, as if with tears. I was gripped by an urge to reach out to him, to place my hand on his and leave it there, just for a moment.

Instead, I took another bite of turkey. As I chewed, I felt a second tooth crack; both Carpenters were watching me, their faces tense and unhappy. Slowly, I lifted a hand to my mouth and spit the tooth into my napkin.

My walk home was littered with old furniture, stray animals, and small children. I was saddened to see so many things without homes. Once or twice, I thought I caught a glimpse of my old cat—my wonderful, black-and-white boy, who had spent so many evenings curled up on my chest. It’s too easy to see the dead in the living. The cats I did see would hiss and growl and sometimes bark, like hyenas.

A few blocks from home, I did, by chance, encounter the Carpenters’ young daughter, Clara. We were walking on the same side of the road, heading in opposite directions. Her hair, like her mother’s, had begun to gray, but I recognized her by the way that she moved: rhythmically, and with small, careful steps, like a dancer. When I stopped, she looked up, as if by instinct.

“Clara,” I said.

She ran to me and threw her arms around my waist. I placed a hand on her head. She was smaller than I had remembered.

“My teeth are falling out, Clara,” I said.

She stepped back. For one, breathless moment, I thought she might speak, and a faint memory (the sound of her voice, perhaps) seemed to hang in the silence between us.

Instead, she reached into the back of her mouth—wincing, very briefly, as if from pain—and produced a tiny, shimmering tooth, almost perfectly white. She placed the tooth in my trembling palm and closed my fingers around it, one by one.

Clara’s is the only tooth I have left. All my others have gone.

It’s a little thing—a milk tooth, most likely—and much too easy to swallow. For safekeeping, I have wedged it in between my first and second toe.

I can’t say when my next dinner will come. Outside, the seagulls feed on the rats. The old men have stopped begging.

MY BROTHER, MY MOTHER, MY FATHER, AND I by C. Beston

June 11, 2021

My brother asks if, when he is older, he will grow as big as our father. I tell him the best thing to steal from the supermarket is a glass pint of milk. You drink the milk, then return the bottle for two dollars.

My mother asks me to stack plates and glasses in our high cabinets. Reach for vinegar at the store. Every year she shrinks. I wonder when she won’t be able to push a shopping cart. If I will set her in the child’s seat and hand her tomatoes and oranges to inspect, one by one, before placing them in whispering plastic bags.

My father, in his fine suits, is not bothered by the freezer-cold of the supermarket in summer. He points to cuts of meat as the butcher’s breath fogs the plexiglass. I shiver, my linen dress thin, concrete cold pressing through my sandals. My brother retreats to the dairy case after my nod. The milk bottle he can slip into his sweatshirt pocket, whistling as I pay. My father watches each cent on the screen.

I cradle every paper bag, thoughts of tomatoes crushed and steak exposed through torn plastic and the vinegar bottle shattering. The smell in my sandals, pulling slivers of glass from my feet.

My brother lines ten milk bottles under his bed, which I will return. Twenty dollars. He asks, would I buy him some cigarettes and stamps. A chocolate bar. A can of sardines. And keep the change.

My mother takes the car to the store, readjusting the driver’s seat each time. My father curses when he pushes it back, forgets to fix the side mirrors. Soon my mother will hand me the keys, and I will sit forward, tapping pedals with the end of my shoe.

My father asks me to bring him the milk after dinner. He smooths the waxed cardboard of the carton with his palm – his hand so large his fingers fit around it. He thanks me, and says to put it back where it came from.

I drop the change from my brother’s bottles into an old jam jar. The pennies splash against the glass. I can’t overhear my parents’ conversation.

My brother will not come to the store when I drive. He chases the dog to the backyard instead. His head almost seems to brush the door frame.

My mother lets me borrow her deep straw tote, which I clutter with scarves and receipts. I couldn’t slip a bottle anywhere inside this dress. I could nest it inside the bag.

My father’s face is beet-red when he comes for me, huddled in that back office where the starched-shirt man took phone calls while I pulled threads from the hem of my dress. He takes the car, I walk home. At the front door, my arm arcs higher to fit my key to the lock.

I thought shrinking took longer.

Dinner is being served, my brother the last to arrive. He fills the doorway. Only I turn to see his broken glass smile.

SHOPPING AT TARGET WITH MY E̶X̶-̶L̶O̶V̶E̶R̶ FRIEND by Cat Dixon

June 10, 2021

You say you need to find an ointment that your father asked for, so we’re in the pharmacy department: shelves full of pain relief, allergy relief, gas relief, dietary supplements. Last year I heard that big brand companies pay more for eye-level shelf space; someone had studied how we shop, and then schemed and plotted for that cough syrup and nose spray’s spot. You’re searching the shelves closest to the floor, and I keep getting in the way. The aisles are crowded with carts and gray-haired ladies—excuse me—so I wander to the end-cap filled with bandages and Neosporin. I select the pink and white polka dot no-name band-aid box and return to your side to put it in the cart. You raise an eyebrow. For my daughter, I answer, and throw in kid sunscreen—not the expensive kind with the baby’s diaper falling off—lotion that’s thick and blinding white and probably expires before the end of summer. After finding what your father needs, we stroll to the groceries. Again, you’re looking for a sale—cans of chili and soup—and I’m eyeing the refried beans with the green label “Vegetarian.” In the next aisle, I drop a plastic sleeve of gum and a box of gumdrops next to the sunscreen. My items take up most of the cart, for you have placed yours next to the handlebar where a baby would sit, where my purse would normally rest. We go down every aisle with you pushing those squeaky wheels, and after an hour, we head to the registers. We both dislike self-checkout so we wait. At the conveyor belt, you place everything together—unsorted—and insist on paying for my items along with yours. I’ve learned not to argue when a man says he’s paying, but I say thank you five times, and outside I watch as you put the cart back in the corral, rebag, and make sure your items are in their own sack. You carry everything, including my 24-case of Diet Pepsi. We load up my trunk and then yours. You ask if I want to grab a bite to eat, and I say, let me pay. Now we’re in a Dairy Queen booth. You slurp a milkshake, using the straw as a spoon, and I munch on hot French fries and chicken strips. As we shopped, we discussed your father’s health condition, my discipline challenges with the kids, and American consumerism, but now I ask about the past. Why did you respond to that desperate email a dozen years ago when you were six hours away by car and un-tethered to Omaha? Back then, we hadn’t spoken in six months when I sent you that note: I was getting a divorce, my husband arrested, my skin bruised. I expect you to say that you had loved me all along, a city bench at that Dodge Street bus stop that sits undeterred through snow, ice, and wind, waiting for the thaw and all those commuters to return in the spring. You say, pity. You say, friend. I wonder if everything has been done out of pity for I am a pitiful creature who has spent years wandering grocery stores and malls hunting for the best deal, only to fall victim to my flat feet. I want to ask what kind of pity makes a man put his hands down a woman’s pants, finger her till she comes, over and over. But I don’t. Perhaps it’s pride that lifts my head, puts a smile on my face while I nod as if I have known all along that you, with that straw hanging out of your mouth, never intended to take me home. I’ve been left alone to spoil.

AT A LEMON-COLORED HOUSE ON CALLE D by Ray Ball

June 7, 2021

The day before Myradis Guzmán died, the tropical sun boiled off some of the rainwater that shrouded and smoothed the cracks in Havana’s sidewalks. She sorted grains of rice and hung out laundry under the watchful eye of a statuette of Yemayá. She chatted with neighbors on her way to ETECSA. When she arrived, she secured her place as la última and slipped into a wisp of shade to wait her turn. After her heart suddenly stopped, her body remained in her house for over a week, while her brother Yordani navigated bureaucratic tapestries of red tape. Waiting was so much a part of life that it continued after death. In that limbo where the paint continued to shrivel and peel, Yordani opened all the windows as night fell, and friends came by with bottles of rum to toast the departed.

HUNGER PAINS by Lindy Biller

June 3, 2021

Eating nacho-flavored cauliflower chips is like eating the crisp skeletons of dead leaves. Still, there are far worse things I could be doing with my mouth. I sit at a drop-leaf table, grinding the so-called chips between my teeth, and you streak around our apartment, rabbit-like. You’re terrible at acting cool, aloof, whatever you want to call it, and I will always love this about you. You are tender to the bone. “Why am I doing this, what if I fuck the whole thing up?” you say, although you’re not really asking.

I stand up, ignoring the subtle aftertaste of nail polish remover. “What are you looking for?”

You drag a hand through your melting chocolate hair. I want to dip into you like a strawberry. “The cord,” you say. “The good one.”

We have two power cords for your amp and only one of them works. I stand stone-still in the middle of the apartment, mentally retracing our steps. Then I go to the coat closet and dig through the pile of mittens and scarves we threw there a few weeks ago, after the last cold snap.

“Here,” I say, holding out the tangled-up cord.

You grab me and kiss me on the mouth, without warning, and don’t seem to mind the cheese dust on my lips. You taste like organic bison jerky and coconut oil chapstick. The idea that anyone could enjoy that combination makes no sense, but oh god do I want a bite of you. I curl my fingernails into the soft fur at the nape of your neck.

“You’ll be great,” I tell you and I mean it. Also, I am ready to go to the venue, where there will be witnesses.

You stow the cord in your bag. I grab my purse, which I have crammed full of foods that supposedly nourish. Raw almonds, plantain chips, two small, armored clementines. What I want is a brownie, what I want is an entire pizza, a sheet cake sagging under clouds of buttercream, a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips, what I really want is none of those things. But I’ve read that when you consume all your calories from sugar, your stomach empties fast. You end up hungrier than before.

Your fingers slip between mine, unsuspecting. I carry your bag of tangled wires out to the car and sneak a dried fig between my lips while you drive.

The show is pretty good. You are amazing, and sexy as hell. I stand toward the front, drinking whiskey sours, smelling the dinner menus and deodorant preferences and body odor of all the people sardined around me. It’s a full house. I’m proud of you, even though the crowd isn’t here for you, exactly. Most of them are here to see the girl who plays the synths and sings with a voice like whipped cream, sweet and smooth and swirled on top of something more substantial. This morning, her bass player apparently woke up with food poisoning from an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet and the whipped-cream girl texted you. Wanna sub in tonight? She included a string of suggestive emojis, peaches and eggplants and drops of water and winking faces, which I noticed before you thought to angle your phone away from me. I can’t remember what her band is called. There are fliers everywhere but I didn’t read any of them. I know it’s something sultry and weird. Foxblush or Labial Wine, maybe. Her music is all airy keys and airy vocals; things floating, ghostlike. It makes me feel a little lost. I need music I can feel between my teeth. At home, you slam chords into the old piano, you sing with a voice like browned butter. I dig through my purse. What was I thinking. Clementines. Plantain chips. None of this will do. I go up to the bar and ask for another whiskey and two full-size Snickers bars, figuring the bartender won’t judge me, and if he does, fuck him.

It takes 75% of the emergency chocolate, peanuts collapsing between my stiff jaws, caramel sticking to the flats of my molars, to feel better. I stuff the remaining half into my purse and sip my whiskey blank-faced, like a good hipster girlfriend of the band. On stage, the girl with the creamy voice says something to you, and you laugh and say something back, leaning close so she can hear, and I lick the chocolate off my teeth.

After the show, you are glowing. You can’t believe how well it went. I help you wind up your cord, the one that still works, and the guitar player invites us out for drinks.

“I want to get home,” I say. “You go ahead.”

“Nah. I want to be with you.”

How sweet you are. Layers upon layers of flaky devotion. Not boring, though. Not uncomplicated. You did angle your phone away from me, you did shoot a furtive glance at my face to see if I’d noticed, and that only makes you more enticing. A slivered almond crust. A hint of cayenne, just enough to burn the back of my throat. You could’ve gone out tonight with that airy dollop of whipped cream and I’m sure she would’ve fucked you, if you wanted. Maybe she would’ve done more. Not because of her sultry band name, or the plunging neckline that showed her sternum, sugar-spun, pressing through milky skin. I’m not trying to stereotype anyone. It’s just, the way she looked at you. I squeeze your hand.

“I need a smoke,” I say. “Meet you at the car?”

You nod, still glowing. “Love you, babe.”

I love you too. That’s why I can’t have you in small plates, unhurried sips, delicate bites at the end of a cocktail fork. Not like the others. I’ll wait and wait until you’re ready for my hunger, until you’re prepared to be swallowed whole and your bones spit back up in random order. I’ll wait if it takes forever. But I hope it doesn’t, because there are only so many ways to trick your body into believing it’s full.

I go out into the alley behind the building, where bands load and unload through a dented garage door, and I light a cigarette, and wait for the creamy voiced girl to come out with her keyboard. There’s no one else around. This is a local show. She doesn’t have roadies or adoring fans or even a friend with her. When she sees me, we recognize each other immediately, even though we’ve never met. I ask her, and she nods, and oh god she’s so good going down, the mouthfeel silkier than expected, the flavor malty and rich. I make a mental list so I can recreate parts of her later, in our tiny galley kitchen, and feed her to you. There are notes of sweet cream, as expected, and salted caramel and tart cherry and raw hazelnut and cold brew coffee. Thankfully, there is no trace of cauliflower. When I’ve had my fill, she takes a turn, and it hurts, the way she cleans her teeth with my rib bones, and I surrender to it. I wonder what she tastes in me. I wonder, if you ever end up fucking her, if you’ll taste it, too.

After she’s finished, I put my bones back together, mostly how they were before. We share a cigarette and go our separate ways. You’re waiting at the car and you hold the door open for me. I can smell your warmth, like bread baking. I can hear your rabbit’s heart. But my lips still taste of sweet cream, and it’s enough to get me home without biting, without even showing my teeth.