Flash

BIRDS AREN’T REAL by D.T. ROBBINS

February 24, 2021

My girlfriend tells me something’s off in our relationship. Says we’re missing a spark or magic or whatever she calls it.

I go, Oh, you wanna see magic?

She goes, Yeah, idiot, I just said that.

So, I wrap an old t-shirt around her eyes and lead her out into the field behind our apartment. It’s all a big surprise. The ice chest is full of beers and pastrami sandwiches and the chocolate cookies she baked last month. I put a slice of bread in a Ziplock bag with the cookies to keep them fresh. The cookies stay moist and soft, and the bread gets dry and ugly. Success!

We’re walking for a while when she says her feet hurt. There’s always something to complain about, isn’t there? A little foot pain never killed anyone. Sometimes you’ve gotta pay the price. Magic ain’t free, you know. The hum of electricity gets louder, ricocheting off the clouds the closer we get.

I tell her we’re here and take the shirt off her eyes. See? There they are, I say, pointing. Just look at those things—all perched up on the powerlines without a goddamn care in the world. Dozens of them in rows, twisting their necks and heads, fluttering their wings, cooing, cooing and cawing, cawing.

She goes, The fuck is this?

I go, It’s magic!

Those are just birds.

I drop the ice chest, hear one of the cans spray open inside. Just birds? There’s no way you’re serious. If you’re being serious, you’re out of your mind.

She stares at me, then the birds, then me.

I put my hands on her shoulders, look at her real seriously, and drop the motherfucking truth bomb: Birds aren’t real.

A hawk circles above us. It swoops down, grabs a rat or snake or something, flies off with it into the blue picture screen above us.

Wait, she says. You mean, like, we’re living in a simulation—the Matrix or something?

I shake my head no, gulping one of the beers that busted open in the ice chest. Not at all, I tell her. People who think shit like that are just weird. I mean the birds aren’t real.

She reaches in the ice chest, grabs the Ziplock bag of cookies, and walks back toward our apartment. So much for magic, I yell.

I’m six or seven beers deep, watching the birds chill on the powerlines, watching the clouds pass, listening to the wind and the electricity intertwine and envelop me in my own little cocoon.

One of the birds asks, What’s your problem, dude?

I sit up, swig my beer. I don’t have a problem, I say.

Thirty or so of them all turn their heads to me like the ticking of the long hand on a clock.

The powerlines stop humming.

They go, Oh yeah? Then why’d you tell her we’re not real? All their beaks move, one voice, stereo, super cool. What’s your angle, friend? We’re as real as you.

Horse shit! I’m flesh and blood. My heart beats like a steady drum. There’s poison in my veins. When I sleep, I dream, I nightmare. You, you’re a fraud. And you know it. You’re an illusion of the mind. And you can’t convince me otherwise.

The birds levitate from the wires, fly in a furious circle. Their feathers fling from their bodies, become liquid, like hot magma, forming an ooey-gooey black blanket, snuffing out the sun. They cover me, a big bubble of darkness and energy. It sort of reminds me of that Pauly Shore movie, Bio-Dome, but better. A hologram of my girlfriend rises beneath me. She looks super pissed. Very realistic. Her hips start shaking and her eyes roll into the back of her head, shine bright neon pink. I’m into it.

Dance with me, she says.

I throw my hands in the air, I don’t even care. My legs move this way and that, shaking my shit like I know what to do with it.

She smiles wide, wide, wider. Birds with wings of fire fly out from behind her teeth, straight at me like bullets. I duck and cover. The echo of their screeching—radio static. I look up at my hologram girlfriend. She flaps her arms, flies away.

I stand there, not knowing who I like better: my hologram girlfriend or my real girlfriend. My feet are warm. I look down, I’m standing on a powerline. It sizzles like a plate of fajitas. My tennis shoes are melting. The skin around my toes goes drip, drip, drip. I watch it fall into the abyss below. A tornado of birds surrounds me, screaming: It’s not real. You’re not real. They’re not real. It’s so not, not! We’re not real. What is real? Are you really surely real? Who, then? For reals?

One of the birds comes and sits on my shoulder. It’s heavy. Like, weighs-as-much-as-I-weigh kind of heavy. I can’t hold my balance, slip, and fall into the abyss. I land on a giant slice of white bread, sink inside. A giant hand reaches for me, grabs a giant cookie, retracts. I’m in the Ziplock bag. Light expands and I see my real girlfriend sitting at our white IKEA kitchen table, crying, with chocolate smeared at the corners of her mouth. I never noticed how messy of an eater she is. I shout her name. She doesn’t hear me. My insides shrivel, dry out. My tongue turns to crust. I am dry, dead bread. Her hand reaches in, grabs me. Our kitchen walls scroll by like a movie in fast-forward, then I’m falling down, down, down. I reach the bottom of the trashcan. The lid closes and it’s back to black.

I can’t open my eyes because one of the birds crapped on my face. It smells like a nursing home or a bar right after closing. I wipe it away with the shirt my girlfriend left before she went back to the apartment. The ice chest is upside down, ice spilled over and melted. Empty beer cans everywhere, suds on the lips. Sandwiches gone. The powerlines hum quietly. Stars shine down on the wet grass. And those fucking birds? They’re still there. I pick up my things, head home.

There’s a note on the counter. It says, I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. There’s leftovers in the fridge. Take care of yourself.

I crumple the note, throw it in the trash, next to the rotten piece of bread. And there I am.

THE PURPLE TREE by Alienor Bombarde

February 21, 2021

It was not her favorite tree. It was simply where the children met. The tree was tall, its purple leaves like curtains, shielding its trunk. It was where, when she was four years old, she first saw Pasang.

Pasang was the first and only newcomer the children ever knew. His father had come to work on construction plans. Pasang had a round face and a soft pink mouth. Even before she knew that people could use mouths for anything other than eating and drinking, she liked the look of it, its softness and slight downward turn.

Those were the days, this was the place, where no one was excluded from village games. It was the summer, when children roamed the furthest over the rolling hills. As far as the next village, almost.

Pasang joined in while his parents were still unpacking. When Pasang caught her, he did not pull her hair, or kick or slam her hard against the rough earth. Pasang tapped her arm and ran away.

She decided that, should she ever need a prince, she would choose Pasang. In the stories her mother told, all heroines had princes or pet bears. They seemed a necessary accessory.

When she told Pasang she loved him, he blinked his large, quiet eyes. She imagined he did not know what love was. He said he loved her, too. She accepted it as the appropriate response. For two autumns, Pasang was her prince. Naturally, she made sure he knew his place. Princes should never get too ahead of themselves, or of their Princesses.

One day in December, they went to the river together. She dared him to go in, so he took off his shoes and dipped his toes in the icy water, his jaw clenched. Pasang did not cry out. She took off her shoes, tied her dress around her shoulders, let the water sting her thighs. When he got out of the water, they both knew she had won.

She told him nothing could hurt her. It was January, the air cold and smelling of the cookies his mother was baking. Pasang said she was lying. So she insisted. No one had killed her so far, she said, so it must be impossible for her to die. Her neck was special, she told him.

Pasang reached, curious. He wrapped his fingers around her neck and pressed, gently at first, and then harder, wondering how long she would resist.

“See! See!” she cried, defiantly, determined not to be the first to give in. “It doesn’t hurt.”

Pasang let go. He said he had to go to Goba’s house. Goba was the teacher’s son. He was spoilt and liked no one, except Pasang, who was the only one he did not consider beneath him. When Goba played with Pasang, she would follow the older girls around. These playtimes were interesting, but older girls were scary to copy.

The older girls had invented a game. One had to place a leg inside passageways and slam the door as hard as one could. The girls showed off their bruises. She had never seen any of them shed a tear.

The little girl tried it one day after school. On her own, in case it hurt and she cried. She picked the school’s heaviest door for the bruises. She was small for her age and half the size of the older girls. She still had a lot to prove.

When the door swung shut on her foot, she screamed so loud grown-ups came running. Goba’s mother found her and carried her home.

When the older girls, and Goba and Pasang, came round to look at her swollen, bandaged foot, they looked at her with fascination and grudging respect. Pasang’s mother baked her cookies. Sometimes Pasang would come and draw beside her. Goba and his mother came too, with books and games, but Goba scowled at her and begged Pasang to play outside.

When her foot healed and she could play tag again, Pasang never chased her, though she was one of the smallest and the easiest to catch. This infuriated Goba, who took it as a sign of Pasang’s affection. Goba had a tantrum every time he saw her.

Sometimes they would sit beneath the purple tree, just so Goba wouldn’t see them. They watched the grass shudder in the breeze and held each other’s hand. Once, they kissed each other on the lips. They promised to keep it a secret.

When she was six, and Pasang seven, the construction plans were finished, and Pasang’s father had to move away. He needed to help another village plan. The village children were sad. Their parents said roads were being built all over the country, like the one which would soon allow them to get to the city.

“Once I am sixteen," she told Pasang beneath the purple tree, "I will come to find you."

“Once I am a grown-up, I will come back here and marry you.”

It seemed like an appropriate adventure for a Princess. Pasang gave her a necklace, a gold heart on a chain. It was just the kind of heart-shape she liked. She swore she would never take it off.

After Pasang left, Goba no longer had Pasang to impress, and his hatred of her intensified. He bullied her. Goba was taller and stronger than the other boys, so that they were obliged to bully her, too.

She understood this, for she had known them their whole lives. Likewise, when she bit them until they cried, they understood, too, and never showed their mothers the marks she left.

Roads were built across the country. Grown-ups talked about property value, and the mayor asked some people to sell their land and houses and move away. People had never had money, they had always had homes instead, but they welcomed this change as an inevitability. When she was eight years old, her parents packed all their belongings into boxes. They moved hundreds of miles away, leaving behind the river and trees, green valleys and orange sunrises with streaks of pink. Her school walk became a bus ride. Around her, grey streets and a grey school so tall you could barely see the heavy, grey sky. But she was happy. She never had to bite anyone again.

The city took her in, and soon she forgot the village and Goba and the countryside.

Decades later, one day in April, she was driving, her husband and children in the car. Her husband was a man of the city, his childhood was nothing like hers.

"I used to live here," she said.

She peered out of the window at the harvested land. No one could live here. Not now. The valleys had turned into factories and farms. Everything else was replaced, deserted. Only the church remained, and its cemetery. The river flowed across the valley, still.

She stopped the car to take her children to see. They walked up the hill where she had played. A figure stood beneath a tree, leaning against the trunk and staring at the dried-out grass. The tree’s leaves were purple, veiling the slope.

The stranger saw the family coming. He moved as if to leave, and affected polite embarrassment. Then he stopped in his tracks, his eyes widened and his mouth hung open.

"Lotus?" he called.

She looked at him, bewildered, trying to place this bearded man. How did she know him? Lotus took in his round face, his quiet eyes, and the soft, pink mouth. Love flooded through her.

"Pasang?"

They began to laugh and struggled to stop. They went towards each other and hugged each other’s new and grown up bodies. They collapsed against each other in one long, shocked, unstoppable giggle. He kissed her cheek, then went to shake her husband's hand.

"My, you're all very tall," he said to her children. They blushed, knowing they weren’t tall at all.

Lotus looked at the tree, at the grass. She wanted to talk to Pasang about all that happened since their childhood. She touched the necklace she had always worn, that chain with a gold heart. Pasang saw it and smiled. They both looked back at the tree.

THE BLUE ANGEL by Austin Farber

February 19, 2021

She was cooking dinner when I walked in the door. She had worked all night at the hospital, slept the whole day while I was at work, and was about to leave for another shift after dinner. I usually was relieved when she left, but tonight she looked unusually chipper. When she greeted me, she was dicing up a full rotisserie chicken. She kissed me.

“How was your day, honey?” She asked.

“Good,” I said. “How was your night?”

“Oh, it was something,” she said, stripping the meat. “We had a code blue in ICU. A real stiff.”

“Oh wow,” I said, reaching for the stack of mail.

“I heard he was brought in from some nursing home about a week ago. Some old timer on hospice care or something,” she said. “Well, he coded last night. Alone.”

“Oh,” I said, looking toward the living room. “What made of him?”

“Well, we got the Code Blue call and all hands were on deck. It was an extremely slow night. I mean, nothing much happened besides routine bed checks and some suicidal guy we had to watch, but when the Code Blue hit the intercom, everyone rushed into that old man’s room. Someone said there was no DNR paperwork, so the doctor said to go at him and all. Alright, bring him back. Those were his exact words. The doctors. And he left the room,” she said. “Will you want a breast?”

"A what?” I asked.

“A breast,” she said. “One of the chicken breasts?”

“Sure,” I said.

I looked over at her. She had cleared the chest of the chicken, setting the pieces into a large red bowl. She licked her fingers. “So, anyway. The doctor left us, even the damn interns, to have this old guy. This blue old guy. The male nurse hopped right up on him and started compressions. Didn’t even give us a shot at him he just hopped right up. All I could do was watch. Watch,” she said, detaching a chicken leg. “How are we to learn if we just watch?”

I walked over to the window and looked down from our sixth floor. A couple was walking their dog on the sidewalk. The dog was pulling hard on the man holding the leash. He just smiled at it while the girl looked on across the street. The three of them disappeared behind the pillar holding up our apartment.

“Are you listening,” she asked. “This is a good story, are you paying attention?”

“Yes,” I said, looking up at the sky.

“So anyway. This blue old guy was gone. Just stone dead. The male nurse was at him. Pressing in as deep as he could to bring him back. All the blue old man’s ribs were cracking like a crunched-up bag of chips. One of the nurses called for Epi and I went for it. I went fast but an intern made it and loaded it up. An intern, can you believe it? She plunged it into his line and the male nurse called for a clear and shocked him hard. I didn’t even see him jump off the blue old man, he was so fast. Shocked him and all and still nothing. The old man looked like a train hit him, all sprawled out and limp. It was something,” she said, scraping the meat onto the dinner plates.

A small child appeared on the grass about a block up. He was running around in circles, like he was tracing an infinity sign below his feet. A woman entered the scene and picked him up, hoisting him off the earth and into the air.

“The second shock did it. We had a heartbeat. A wonderful heartbeat. We had him back,” she said, plopping a leg into her plate. “Want any gravy or potatoes or anything? I think there are some leftovers in the fridge.”

“Where was he?” I asked, still looking out the window.

“What?” she asked.

“You said you had him back,” I said. “But he was laying right there in front of you, on the operating table?”

“You don’t have to be so smart,” she said.

“I’m not,” I said. “I just want to know where he was.”

“What are you talking about where he was?” She said.

“To come back means you went somewhere, else,” I said.

“Don’t ask such silly questions like that,” she said. “What matters is we had a pulse, that’s what matters.”

A blue bird flew in and perched itself on the deck. It blinked and flew off. “It is just like if I said I’ll be back soon if I go to the store or something like that,” I said, turning to her. “I just wonder where his old heartbeat was in those minutes it was gone, that’s all.”

“It was just stopped,” she said. “Like if a river dries up during a drought, but then suddenly a big downpour hits and it flows up again. That’s all.” She bit into her chicken leg and waved it at the dinner plates she had placed on the table. “This is going to get cold,” she said, smiling.

I turned away from her and looked back out the window, wishing to go outside. I ran my hand throughout my hair then placed it over my mouth. The blue bird was back on its perch. It looked at me. I took my hand off my mouth and checked my pulse like some physician does during a physical examination. I felt it pump and pump and pump and pump, like some ancient mantra. I felt like it must be the same in the blue bird, too. It bowed its head and flew off.

“What are you looking at honey, dinner is over here,” she said.

I walked over and took her hand. It was warm with life. I tried to feel her pulse on her wrist, too, but I couldn’t quite feel it. I looked down at the carcass she prepared us for dinner. “I’m not hungry,” I said. “I may go run a bath.”

“I’ll be leaving soon, honey,” she said. “I have to be clocked in at seven.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ll heat it up when I’m ready.”

“I’ll box it up for you,” she said, with a slight eye roll.

“Don’t bother,” I said, walking to the bathroom.

I locked the door and started the bath. I undressed and stared at the mirror. I looked fit and healthy with hardly any gut. I imagined myself as someone old, flabby, and blue. I got close to the mirror and looked into my eyes. I hadn’t thought of leaving until today. I’ll pack what I can and leave, I said in my head to my eyes. I opened my mouth and looked and looked. I glanced down at my torso in the mirror and imagined it being thrusted back to life like some dried river with a thunderstorm of strangers pouring down on me. I stepped into the tub with the water still running. I grabbed onto my legs and held them, placing my head on my chin. I’ll leave and not come back, I assured myself, and sank down into the stream.

PET by Danielle Chelosky

February 15, 2021

The night we met, I showed up at your apartment with fishnets shoved inside my bag. I was too nervous to wear them as I walked from my car to your door. I got catcalled three times anyway.

Catcalling is really bad over here, you told me while we ascended the stairs. You took the lead; I followed timidly. I couldn’t take in your apartment as we stepped inside because I had too much going on in my mind. Your room, though, came across as beautiful—the light soft and careful, your bed sheets floral and muted, your walls white with art strewn about. I complimented the painting above your desk; it’s overtaken by a brown so dark it looks black, and two figures stand in the bottom left corner, hidden but visceral. You thanked me and said no one ever noticed it. I looked at the books stacked on your shelf against your wall. I was still awkward and scared, but I was at home.

***

You said I was like a cat—the way my eyes wandered, my attention small. I laid my legs on top of yours, and you smiled.

***

We stayed inside. Our love remained within the walls of your room, though I would never say it was restricted or confined. In the summer, I wore denim shorts and tank tops. I found closer parking spots. I got catcalled by a man skating one day but I didn’t mind. I smiled. I’d sweat on the forty minute drive to you; my car’s AC was broken and I’d decided that was fine.

I sat on your floor, painting on a canvas. It was for my art class. I looked at the corner where your bed met the walls. I stared at it, perplexed, trying to understand the geometrics. I was never good at compositions or technicalities. My professor called my work funny, so misshapen things became my style, unintentional or not.

You laughed at me sitting on your floor with all of my supplies set up. You look like my pet, you said, in your little nook.

***

I was a stray cat who frequented your home. You fed me, quenched my thirst, offered your affection as treats. I got dopamine rushes when you pet my hair or stroked my cheek. You bought us bottles of wine when I was used to liquor. Suddenly, the whole summer eluded me—the sunny days, the hot air, the sweaty freedom—and it morphed into a Yellow Tail blur.

You were eleven years older than me. I wanted to know what it felt like to be taken care of—to follow, to be someone’s shadow, to be given love that was bigger than what I knew. Once I felt it, I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t be on my own. I wanted to forever keep my head in the crook of your neck, your hands wherever they want to be on me.

***

You got me my first toy. Your present came in, you said. I felt so small, so silly. I wasn’t going to let you use it on me; I wanted to be the first for myself. And then we got drunk. And then I was on the edge of your bed open and curious like a butterfly. You pleasured me in new ways—you were solidifying your authority, securing our bond, hypnotizing me into being yours. I curled up and rolled around in ecstasy, purring.

***

I’m gonna get you a cage, you said, fucking me, and a collar and a leash.

The reward of your love and attention eclipsed the pain of trying desperately to elicit it. Mornings without you, I was with you—only in a one-sided kind of way. I lived in my head where I played moments of us over and over. I brought dead memories to life. I clung onto what I could from the nights that didn’t turn into a black haze.

***

One of those summer painting afternoons, I leaned on your windowsill looking out onto the street. You’re like a cat, you said again. I waited for people walking to look up and see me. I was naked. No one did. You came up behind me, touched my shoulders.

***

I don’t know if you know, but you do this thing, you said. You’ll wake up and start making these noises, and if I touch you then you’re quiet and you go to sleep. It happens every time you’re here. You were upset, not well-rested. I apologized; you said that you’re just trying to find out what’s wrong with me. What was that term you used, you asked, which I thought just applied to dogs when their owners are away at work and they bark a lot? I said: Separation anxiety? You said: yeah.

***

I am sitting on the edge of your bed and, without turning your head, you tell me to stop looking at you. I am waiting, I am begging—I am thinking of what trick I could do for you to give me a treat.

Still, in this restless desperation I find pleasure. I like when you tease me, when you’re mean to me. I love when you pay no attention to me, I love when you hit me. I love the one-sided tunnel vision I have for you, I love the pain and the neglect.

It’s winter now. I think I will spend most days wandering around in the snow.

BURN THE SHIPS by John Darcy

February 12, 2021

The first scam was parking outside the bank, mobile-depositing a check, running inside to cash it with the teller. He dubbed it The Double Derring-Do. Loopholes find fault in failures of imagination. It’s about outsmarting, round-abouting.

Okay, he did end up with two years for wire fraud.

Watching a scumbag stoner conman movie, he whispers, “That’s not what it’s like.” On his computer are two hundred years of pirated movie soundtracks. He’s working his way through them. Also the first two acts of a five-act play, stellar dialogue but lacks compelling conflict. Policies in triplicate because it never hurts to be over-insured. A scanned draft of his last will and testament, the first line of which reads: I sure made a mess of this, didn’t I?

Never has he ever flown on airplane, seen ocean, met-cute, punched wall in heartbroke anger. Personal goals are fingers pointed at the moon. Mostly these days he feels recycled, amalgamed, trauma-tinged.

Lately he’s got this ache in his head like a cold front. He guesses the trouble began with his mother. Don’t even get him started on reincarnation.

He wants to get into the burning-down buildings for money business. There’s a word for it. His plan is to bring in a companion, accomplice, compatriot. Good listening skills are a must.

First interview:

“Name?”

“Man.”

“Pardon?”

“My name is Man.”

“Any interest in becoming partners in crime?”

“We’ll never make it out of this alive.”

“You mean life?” he asks Man. “I was under the impression that was part of the deal.”

Man looks lived-in, city-dwelled. Hair that’s airplane-mode yellow. Caution-tape eyes. Second thought it could be jaundice.

“Well, Man, the job is yours, man.”

“Anything else?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have anyone you could set me up with, would you?”

He wants to do stand-up comedy, open his tight-five with something along the lines of: What’s the deal with dads, am I right? See, my old man only had one hand. I know, right? He’d say, Well, on the one hand...

Still workshopping it.

The actual story is all dark and stormy night. The year is 1974, the sun a faded smile behind the clouds. Adopted Father is at his workbench, trying to construct a crib, thinking that if he builds said crib the universe will have to assent, agree, sort of just let him have a win for once. Upon hearing his wife yell through the house that, yes, no, seriously, this was it, the adoption had been approved, Adopted Father cuts his left hand off with a table saw. The amount of blood is simply tremendous. Looks more like low-budget slasher movie blood than hardcore realism blood. It spurts from his open wrist to the beat of his beating heart. His hand is inches from his forearm, the distance so small and simple that it crunches his brain. Adopted Father is reminded of the boardwalk carnival trick where a person’s hand and a prop hand are separated by a curtain as someone strokes the real hand with a feather, then comes down on the fake one with a hammer or mallet, and the game’s participant flinches and winces and retracts even though no contact was made with the real thing. Adopted Father is already getting phantom feelings. Woozy go the lights, the workbench and his body like a different body as a grayness comes over him, the fainting and the floor, and the pain begins a courtship with his limb, and sleep.

He draws up a contract for Man to keep things above board.

He says, “I did that New Year screw up on your contract. Earth to me, it’s not 2018 anymore.”

Man answers, “Life is attachment. Attachment is suffering. Life is suffering”

“But the food isn’t half bad.”

“Pointless bodies on a pointless rock, convinced we matter. Birth is a terminal disease.”

“Ever thought about therapy?” he asks. Man doesn’t answer. “Anyway, I did a strikethrough and initial. You’re supposed to on official things.”

Man says, “I want to burn something down.”

“Did you get a chance to read my play yet?”

“There’s a lot working but I want to know more about the main character.”

Meaning Man wants to know more about himself. The play being as it were autobiographical. A lip-smacking development.

They stroll the streets together. He tells himself take it easy or you’ll scare him off. The sun circles a Miller Lite sky, clouds made of gout and gauze and dust. He tells himself take it easy or you’ll scare him off.

He asks, “Do you want to be best friends?”

“I don’t see why not,” Man says.

“Cool. Yeah.”

Is there a word for something beyond happiness?

Man says, “Joy, rapture, bliss, death.”

They watch the fire all glue-eyed, the fall of Rome from nosebleed seats. First job for the duo came from the insurance company. Burn down abandoned warehouse before the owner does, please. Use lots of accelerant to prompt investigation, if you would. Pay out claim denied.

He asks Man, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

The blaze sounds like a brass band. A crackling roll of popping joints. Boards of flame lick the walls outside, falling upward. Heat. Very smoky, very true.

“In this exact spot,” Man says. “Returning as a meditation on the flatness of time.”

“Me too,” he says. “I was going to say the exact same thing.”

“We’re really in it now,” Man says.

A brightly dark night, gray stars and the moon. The fire makes his headache go away like a cure.

“I meant to ask,” he says to Man, “do you have any hobbies?”

“Postponing my suicide.”

“Been thinking of getting into model airplanes myself.”

They move in together, balance the TV on a stack of pizza boxes. He says to Man, ‘I can’t help but notice you don’t have a bed.’

“I sleep in a coffin,” Man says. “As a reminder.”

“Don’t forget it’s your turn to do the dishes.”

“Where will we go from here?” Man asks.

He thinks about saying, well, we could soften up, find our way to the straight and hallowed narrow. We could throw on a movie, shovel down ice cream like the freezer’s busted. Start a band, get into birding, walk the streets and catcall catcallers. One hundred eighty degree ourselves. Decide to something or other, dust that hard-to-reach place. Floss more. Colorize our lives and come to a conclusion. Maybe this whole thing just isn’t for us. Or maybe we got the world we deserve.

THAT’S ALL YOLKS by Alex Juarez

February 11, 2021

I think about crawling into Arizona’s skin. It would be easiest to go through her eyes. A few years ago, I read an article about a girl who while on meth performed self-enucleation. Her pastor found her screaming, “I want to see the light,” while holding her eyes in her hands. I don’t want to hurt Arizona, but I think if I could slip inside, we would be easier.

Before our alarms go off, she has a headache, so she presses her palms against her face and groans. I mirror it to make her feel like our emotional bond is strong.

“Do you want some Advil?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

We don’t say anything else because maybe, after eight months, there is nothing left to say. Instead, we lay down shoulder to shoulder and try to not touch each other.

Outside, the flowers are coming back to the trees, and I watch them without moving. If we were forced to stay in bed like this forever, it wouldn’t be terrible, but I wouldn’t volunteer to do it. An alarm is waiting to make us move in a few minutes. Tomorrow, I will get on a plane and then we will never be in love again.

I turn to look at her. If I could get to her core, I could grab the headache and pluck it out. Back when we were more in love than this, I would place my head in her lap and she would tweeze my eyebrows. When I shower at her place, I leave long strings of my hair all over her apartment, so that she’ll have to remember me.

Last night, we watched a horror movie and she closed her eyes the entire time. As the girl on screen chewed on a finger like a drumstick, she said that we don’t have any of the same interests. I asked if that was a bad thing.

After the alarms, Arizona’s headache stops, and she asks if I want something to eat. I kiss her cheek, just under her eye.

“No, I’m okay. I don’t really want to get up.”

She nods and unsticks the mess our legs have made; our skin peeling apart with sweat.

“I’m going to make eggs.”

She gets up and walks into the kitchen. I roll over onto her side of the bed and imagine how warm I would be inside of her. I wonder where we could hide the zipper that I would use to get in and out; how I could shrink for the extra three inches.

On our third date, we sat in a pierogi shop until 4 am. Over blue cups of sour cream and onions, I told her about my murdered uncles. I said, “It’s twenty years this month and I feel like I am supposed to be more upset, but I didn’t even know them.” She didn’t say anything, and at the time, I imagined that meant that she was digesting me completely.

When I don’t hear anything from the kitchen besides the bursts of hot oil and the fridge opening and closing, I get up.

I bite her shoulder as she cooks. I am supposed to be in love to the point that I can’t help but want to put my teeth around her.

Arizona shrugs herself out of my mouth and makes her eggs, scrambled.

“Do you ever think about how yolks are fetuses?” I say into her hair.

I want her to want me like this. Or for her to pretend to want me like this. My deep desire to amalgamate controlling everything and every thought. I want to see what the reciprocation feels like.

“No.”

After tomorrow, Arizona and I are not going to see each other for two months. I know that she won’t write me any letters. A dull, persistent pang births at the base of my throat and seeps into the rest of me. I move to the table.

“Would you ever eat your own body?” I ask her.

“What?” She turns away from the frying pan. Her invitation to crawl into me is open. “Why would you even think of that?”

I tell her that I read an article about a man who had his leg amputated and he kept it to make tacos. He invited his friends over, and they all ate him. I add that I wouldn’t do it, but I don’t believe myself.

She turns around and flips off the heat.

There is a cup of juice from the day before on the table and I want it inside of me. Last night, I asked Arizona to put her fingers in my mouth or around my neck; she didn’t and then we both cried.

In a few months, in a bathtub in Cheyenne, she will tell me, “You said we were soulmates, and I wanted to believe you. But I think I’m just someone who loved you without being mean.”

She slides the eggs onto a plate and squeezes some ketchup on the side. Then, she sits down at the table with me and looks into me. I put my feet on her thighs to see if she will do anything.

CUTTING ROOM by Tex Gresham

February 10, 2021

The woods stopped being an enchanted place where the sound of animals scurrying through undiscovered territory felt light and natural. Sunlight blocked, trees strangling the brassy tones into a steel-tinged umber. A fluorescence coated every surface, something we’d walked into, a transition from scene to setting. Maybe it was the deer that brought this change––maybe it was something else. Limp and drained, the deer’s face was a shocked mask of deadness. Blood spumed out its crooked mouth like seafoam on the surf of a slaughterhouse floor.

I was a boy out hunting with his dad and uncle in the humid forests near the Gulf. Water alive with the exhalations of hidden gators, trees swaying with the weight of varmints. And the deer.

My uncle wrangled one off the four-wheeler, grunting from somewhere deep inside his rock-biting interior. The deer’s flesh slammed onto the ground, resonating up my legs. My dad stood behind me, his hands on my shoulder.

My uncle hunched down, pulled a six-foot knife from his pack. He looked back at me, a hideously hydrocephalic troll guarding its last desperate meal. His eyes rang like a hollow bell, inside them the history of Hell experienced on battlefields in tropical forests against unseen foreign boys. Fire gurgled from this deep place, ran the engine inside his hunter heart.

He said, “Come closer. Watch. This is how you do it.”

I shook my head. My dad gripped my shoulders tighter.

Before I could turn away, my uncle plunged the saw-toothed knife deep into the deer’s still-warm chest. Steam erupted like a hot pan under cold water. He jerked the knife down the deer’s chest and stomach. Not a surgeon’s incisions, but a demon’s jagged strike to kill the last victim before the end credits. The deer’s innards hissed and popped, tires over gravel. Hearty, long farting noises vibrated out of the messy slit my uncle carved in the deer’s skin. A charred-crimson mist refracting rainbow light rose from the cavity in the deer’s body, snaking its way up to my uncle’s nostrils. He breathed it in, dilating every cell in his body.

He said, “All the way to the asshole.”

And with a final tug, he ripped the knife through the asshole. Still-throbbing guts spilled out like groceries from a weak shopping bag. The innards were marbled with a white-pink oil that pulsed in time with my heartbeat.

My dad’s grip on my shoulders loosened. He turned away. I couldn’t.

My uncle plunged his hand into the cavity, sliding elbow deep, digging around with the sloppy, silly attitude of a drunk sailor. He smiled and yanked his hand out with a clothy rip. In his hand: the deer’s twitching heart. His gaping maw of a trash compactor mouth stretched open, jagged yellow teeth like crumbling tombstones stamped in his purple gums. And like a starved and stark-mad animal, he took a tearing bite out of the deer’s heart. Before chewing, another bite. A mouth full of bloody, tough flesh. Chewing, gnashing. Tendinous goo oozed down his chin.

From around the chewed up heart, he said, “Normalize killing your enemy.”

I turned to look back at my dad, but all I saw was his cowardly fleeting feet, his hunched back. Over the sound of my uncle’s smacking lips, I could hear my dad’s fearful, infantile breaths.

My uncle saw this and jumped up. His face pinched inward, eyes casting red rays that targeted my dad. He screamed, “Cowards will be punished and cleansed in blood.”

The rifle was in his hands, materialized by his surge of atavistic rage. Rooted out from his flesh like a tumorous appendage. The barrel focused on my fleeing father.

This is where the film skips, where the missing footage was spliced together with the footage still coded in my brain data.

The deer was no longer there. Maybe never was. In its place—in the stain of blood seeping into layers of fallen pine needles and loose sour dirt—was my dad’s body. My uncle tugged at the final remains of skin still clinging to the sinew and gristle and muscle of my dad’s body. The head a rotten pumpkin deflated under the rot of time, blown out. The white-pink oil coated the muscular flesh and fat that looked more like spread butter than body insulation. A whisper, carried by the fluorescences, by the oil, seeped into my brain. A scream of both the deer and my dad, of all the voices of those killed at the hands of my uncle––who tugged the remaining skin off my dad’s body with a primal grunt.

The skin whipped like clothes freshly wet from the washer. He swung my father’s husk around his head, flinging crimson, iron-smelling blood over the trees, the dirt, and me. He screamed, laughed. And his eyes targeted mine, his stare piercing my soul with a toxic heat. The skin flung back, wrapped around my uncle’s back. A shawl, a trophy. The footage skips again, spliced to reject the moments I cannot find in the cutting room floor of the mind.

Light fallen, the fluorescence oozing through the air, a grounded aurora giving everything a radiated glow. A bonfire roared, flames licking trunks, forming the faces of demons on the other side of some thin layer of reality, burning through this world, opening a portal, letting more of the fluorescence through. My uncle danced around the fire, naked but for my dad’s skin draped around him. Where my uncle’s bouncy, limp penis should’ve been was a gaping, oozing wound. He chewed on a handful of my dad’s teeth as he howled, his hollow eyes never severing their attachment to my soul, now eternally trapped in the void.

I looked into the abysmal dark outside the reach of the fire’s hellish glow. The fluorescence throbbed, oil slithering slickly on water’s surface. And on the other side, anything better than right here––if there was an other side. Maybe this is all there is. Maybe I live now in that place on the other side of the fire. Maybe there is no escape. Never was.

SCAFFOLDING by Zac Smith

February 5, 2021

I went golfing. I hit the ball. It landed in the hole (=hole in one). I walked 227 yards to the green place where the hole was that the ball went in. I looked in the... the golf hole, the hole where the ball goes, where mine went. But I didn't see my ball. It was dark in the ball hole. I lay down on the green stuff around the ball hole, on my stomach, and put my face up to the hole. I thought maybe it was just really deep or something and I could reach in up to my elbow and get it. I remembered that was a thing some places, ball holes that were like a foot and a half deep for some reason. Someone was telling me about that once, at like a party in college maybe. I remember he leaned back and arced his hand up and then down in front of him with his eyes wide in a look of concentration, like he was reaching into a deep ball hole for his ball. I was thinking about his eyes when I saw a pair of eyes looking up at me from the golf hole. They seemed like a man's eyes, like a human man, not a racoon or anything, so, like, there was a guy was under the green zone, looking up at me through the ball hole. I could hear him breathing. We were really close to each other. It felt good but I was confused. I thought it was all dirt and rocks underneath the green stuff but I guessed I didn’t really have any good reason to believe that. I imagined a series of intricate tunnels, like, what's that stuff...with the railings... like outside of buildings under construction, or in space ships, like in tv shows... like, rails and platforms and stuff.. made of metal... I don’t know, that stuff, lots of it, like a facility under the green stuff, with guys walking around. I thought about him walking on these like sci-fi pathway things under the golf course, and thought, like, maybe the ball holes were vents, or something. It seemed really complex and I felt tired. He said something but I couldn't really hear. It sounded like "front edges", or something, but that didn't make any sense. I said, "What," and he said it again at the same volume. I was confused. I thought, Runt cages? Brunt ledges? I said "what" again, but he just sighed and slid this, like, little shutter or something over the bottom of the ball hole. The hole looked normal then, like small and normal. I wasn't sure whether to worry about my ball or not, if it was ok to leave it there, with the guy or whatever. I thought it was probably ok because I had other balls with me in my briefcase. I stood up and I realized the green zone was really wet. My shirt was completely soaked through.

TREES by Mordecai Martin

February 4, 2021

Sometimes the world falls away. Oh well! So long, World! I have a small house, though not so small that we would call it tiny. It's just a quiet little place where no one but the bank can throw us out, and where we can play host to some friends in need. I look outside my window at the tree shaking in the wind, and I think about it falling down, crashing through my door. I suppose this is what I am most afraid of in a world that has gone wild: that it will intrude upon the small, calm place I call home. The world's cruel sanity will come for my gentle madness.

Madness rules the day here. We stack the dishes willy nilly, and the glasses don't match—my wife insists on washing all the jam and pickle jars. We could drink out of them, she says. So we drink out of them, Baruch Hashem, there's still plenty to drink. We had some trouble with the water bill, but it's all cleared up now, I think. The liquor store doesn't deliver, a sensible if inconvenient policy, so we wander down the street and pick up our bottles and put them down when they are empty. It keeps the pain down if we keep our liquor down.

The other day a friend dropped by and said he wanted to talk about Jewish writing. Very well then, I said, what is there to talk about Jewish writing? I was suspicious because I've known this friend some time, I know when he's hot under the collar about something, and that day, I could have put a kettle on his collarbone and gotten a nice cup of tea going. Well, you're a Jewish writer, he said. Well, I'm a Jew and a writer, I demurred.

Cut the bullshit, Joe, he said, you're a Jewish writer and so am I and what are we going to do about all this?

All what, I asked, innocently enough, but with a sinking feeling that my tree had collapsed.

Cut the bullshit, Joe, all this! He pointed out the window, and I suppose, in a gesture he considered sweeping, to the wide world of horrors.

I shrugged. I can't deny that something needs to be done. But what should we do? I asked my friend. What can we do but write?

But we're JEWISH writers, he insisted. And how are we going to write about this?

I gave it some thought.

Eventually, I spoke up and said, there's a story Rebbe Nachman of Breslau wrote about the son of a sage who can't walk but can stand. That is, the son can't walk but can stand. The sage—

Joe, my friend said, with a less than patient air.

No, listen, I said. The sage is dying. He gathers the son who can't walk but can stand and his brothers and tells them, on his deathbed, that they must water all trees, all the days of their life, whatever else they do. So the brothers go out, they send money back home to their disabled brother. I mean, the story says "crippled" but I don't like that word.

Joe, c'mon, I'm trying to ask for your thoughts.

I looked at my friend a while. He can be impatient with stories from my yeshiva days, like a lot of the friends I have. They'll say, Joe, you're preaching, talk to me, don't preach. And they have a point.

Okay, I shrug. The point is, this son who can't walk, he goes on some adventures. These adventures are difficult to hold in my head, I always think of them as details, mystical details. But ultimately he finds a magical tree in a land of demons. The demons are an allegory for humanity, they squabble and fight. Eventually, the demons distract everyone from watering the magic tree. The world collapses, everyone's killed, and the tree gets watered. Do you see what I'm saying?

My friend was annoyed. Joe, I came over here to talk about the responsibilities of the Jewish writer in these times.

I said, I know, and that's why I told you that story. You know what the responsibility of the Jewish writer is? It is to remember the mystical details. It is to make strange prophecies from the deathbed of sages. It's to squabble and fight and fill time until the world collapses, at which point, it won't matter what we did.

We argued late into the night, but eventually my friend got an answer he liked and left, out into the sour darkness. I looked at my reflection in the dark square of my window and thought about a tree crashing through it. One day the world’s cruel sanity will come for my gentle madness. And the tree gets watered all the same.

ADULT CONTENT by Jamie Kahn

February 3, 2021

My tenth grade biology teacher is the first person to ever tell me that I look like [One Specific Porn Star], though he doesn’t really tell me in his own words. Instead, I inquire about his stares to friends in my class to no avail until one boy claims to have seen porn on his laptop during school hours.

“What does that have to do with me?” I ask.

He shows me a video during study hall. The resemblance is undeniable.

That night, I fall into the never-ending black hole of videos featuring [One Specific Porn Star]. I see the resemblance from every angle. Periodically, I stop watching her videos to look at my own face in the mirror and go right back to watching again. I stay up all night like this.

The next morning I am tired but even with the bags under my eyes I see nothing but [One Specific Porn Star] when I look in the mirror. I go to class and when my biology teacher hands back my test I avoid touching his hand. I consider for a moment what would happen if I asked him about the porn on his laptop. Would he break down and cry? Beg for forgiveness? Deny everything? Or try to bend me over his desk?

For the rest of the semester I don’t raise my hand and when he rearranges the seats I get the urge to spit on his shoes when he places me right beside his desk. I don’t study for his class. I get a D and am kicked out of the honors program, though I am sure to know just enough material not to get an F. Re-taking the class would mean seeing him again.

I watch [One Specific Porn Star] so often that she is all I see when I see myself. I am both elated and despairing. What better thing for my teenage self esteem than the knowledge that thousands of people—maybe more—would get off on watching me have sex. But something about it feels imposing. Like a windstorm about to erupt into a tropical rain or a kitchen timer I know will scare me. I try to enjoy being beautiful.

The second time I am told that I look like [One Specific Porn Star] is a bit more direct. I’m nineteen and working at an organic restaurant and juice bar. I’m busy, sweaty, with strawberry and avocado stains drying into the fabric of my shirt.

There is a girl who can’t be much younger than I am and when she gets to the counter to order she pauses in stunned silence for a moment. Her voice stalls like she is studying the menu but her eyes study my body and face instead. “Can I get the blueberry mango smoothie?” Her words sound nervous, like they’re floating on the surface of foaming saltwater.

“Apple or orange juice?”

When I am done blending and hand her the smoothie, she takes a sip and asks quietly, “Is it rude to ask you why you work here?”

“I work here because it’s my job. I need money to live and I like juice.” I try my best to express my confusion but in response I appear to have confused the girl even more.

She whispers a little lower, “Aren’t you [One Specific Porn Star]?” For a moment, I consider saying yes, just to see what it would be like. To see what she would say. “How did you start? Like, what did you do to get into it? Did you know someone?”

When I realize she wants advice I can’t give her, I shake my head and say “Sorry, that’s not me. Good luck, though.” And go back to slicing pineapple on the counter. The juice sticks on my palms, and the girl lingers for a moment. She looks at me like she’s trying to crack my skull open like a walnut. She thinks I am lying. I let her.

The third time I am told that I look like [One Specific Porn Star] it is more like a confessional. I still work at the juice bar, which is where I meet my boyfriend. He comes in all the time, and after we start dating he stops coming in and admits he likes me much more than the juice and the salad wraps. I don’t mind. If given the choice I, too would say I like him more than juice and salad wraps.

He is kind to me. He has light brown hair and a scar on his shoulder from a dog bite. He likes cashews. He has a crystal and rock collection. He likes baseball shirts, though he doesn’t care for baseball.

Together, we wake up early for lake day trips and do Pilates together. We plant hanging tomatoes on the balcony in his apartment because it gets more sunlight than my balcony. We try to make our own red wine blend and it fails miserably. He tells me he enjoys when I wear red lipstick but hates getting it on his face. He teaches me how to drive stick shift. We have sex roughly once a week, sometimes more if the mood calls. We date for seven months.

He is too nice to admit it outright, but I notice that he is bored with our sex life. Some days he is less bored than others, but when things become routine it is sometimes inevitable. This displeases me. I try a few things—blowing him in the middle of the living room, letting him lick whipped cream off my body even though I myself don’t like whipped cream—but they lose their novelty.

One night we are in my bed, swimming in my oatmeal-colored sheets. I kiss his cheek, his neck, his chest. Make my way down. But he grabs by shoulder gently and says, “Hey, can I tell you something?”

“Of course.” I lay back beside him, afraid he is about to break things off with me.

“Honestly, when I first met you, the very first thing I noticed was than you look exactly like [One Specific Porn Star]. Do you know her? You probably don’t. She’s—”

“I know.” I haven’t heard her name out loud since that girl at the juice bar. I haven’t thought about her much since then. I never had to.

“Oh god, you think I’m a pervert. You probably think I’m such a dirtbag.” He gets a sour look on his face and buries his head into my shoulder.

“I don’t. I know what I look like,” I say.

“You’re prettier than her.”

I am not.

“Thanks,” I say.

“I just want you to know you’re prettier than her. You’re beautiful, okay? But I’ve always been into her videos. I used to watch her a ton before we got together.”

“Do you still?” I ask. “I don’t mind if you do.” I mean this. I can’t enforce constant power over his thoughts and desires.

“Recently. Yeah. I have. I’ve been getting back into her a lot.”

“And sleeping with me just isn’t the same?” I ask.

His eyes widen and he shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant at all.” Even in his dopey kindness, I can hell he is lying to save my feelings.

“Then what did you mean?” I ask, and silence follows. “What were you thinking would happen when you brought this up to me?”

He shakes his head and hides his face, and I touch a hand to his shoulder. Try to comfort him in the wake of something that I’m guessing should probably hurt me.

“I don’t know,” he says. And now I am the one who is silent. I rise from bed, and he does not try to argue. I rifle through my bag for my laptop, straining on too many tabs and blinking low battery. Slowly, I find her, for the first time in years. Her face shines sweaty as she bounces on top of some man who doesn’t matter. I turn the volume up and follow her lead.

My boyfriend’s eyes are glued to her, and what’s more—my eyes are glued to her. In this moment, I feel like a little girl staring at the grown woman version of herself, and I wonder if it will always be this way. I tilt my head back and catch the mirror. He is still looking at the screen.