Flash

THE PASSENGER by Anthony Dragonetti

May 24, 2019

When I can’t think of what to do, I have no choice but to go fast. I grab my car keys from under a pile of crumpled receipts by the door. I’d throw them out, but what if I need them someday? I could be audited. I could need an alibi. I focus back on the keys. It’s important to avoid rabbit holes. I can feel my tongue in my mouth. It’s time to go.

I get in my car and fly out of my condo development’s parking lot in reverse and swing forward towards the ramp to I-295. It’s a little after midnight, 25 degrees out, and I love New Jersey. I should open the windows. The cold air might straighten me out a bit. My instincts are taking me to the Turnpike. Okay, I tell my instincts, that is where we will go.

I’m cruising up 295, but not too fast, not yet. The cops have nothing to do and they like to sit on the median. I think I see a cop car up ahead and glide over into the right lane, slowing down, signal on like I’m preparing to exit. Good evening, officer. I’m on my way home from work. Late shift, you know how it is. Newborn at home. Me and the little lady haven’t been sleeping much, as you can imagine. You got kids? I’m still working out the script when I roll by the shadow that I thought was a cruiser. I say goodbye to my new wife and child.

Fate is funny. I mean like a joke. The shadow cop sends me towards the offramp where my headlights catch a stoned looking teenager on the side of the road with a thumb sticking out half-assed. He isn’t even looking in the direction of traffic. For a second, I think this is part two of my imagining things, but he is quite real as he jumps out of the way after I almost bump him with my fender. I roll to a stop alongside him.

He vaguely looks pissed, more confused. I lean over towards the passenger side window to talk to him.

Man, what are you doing out here? Who even hitchhikes anymore? It’s the middle of the night.

He tries to focus on my face and process my words. He says he got into a fight with his girlfriend and she kicked him out. He’s seriously fucked up and can’t get himself home. His phone is dead, and he’s broke. I tell him to get in before he freezes to death or someone decides to chop him up.

We’re riding up 295 in awkward silence for a bit. I realize I forgot to ask him where he’s headed, and it doesn’t seem to dawn on him he should be asking where I’m going.

Uh, where should I be taking you? Your parents live nearby or something?

“No, I don’t live with my parents. I’ve got a friend a few miles up the road I can crash with, if he’s home. Got to get off at 36.”

Providing that information seems to have used up his brain reserves and he slips back into half-consciousness. We’ve got a little time together and sitting in silence with another person in close quarters makes me nervous. I turn on a playlist of classic hardcore to keep my energy up. GBH kicks on and my mood stabilizes while the opening chords of Sick Boy scream out of dying speakers. I feel electric again, licking my lips.

My passenger rouses out of his stupor, agitated by the metallic noise. He’s looking closer to being part of this universe.

“Come on, dude. Can’t you put on something chill? I’m dying here.”

Hey, I’m the one giving you a ride out of the goodness of my own heart. You’d still be standing out there in the cold or a cop would have picked you up by now. Then where would you be?

“I’ve been arrested before. Who cares? They throw you in rehab. Juvenile records are sealed. At least I could sleep there.”

I lower the music as a compromise because now I feel bad, but I need to keep it on to maintain. My cortisol is on a steady drip. The road is empty ahead, so I take the kid in all sullen, skinny, and hooded. Painfully typical and therefore someone I want to protect. I ask him what his name is, and he says Tommy.

Tommy, Tommy, I say.

“Yeah, man. What’s yours?”

So, I tell him.

Then we sit quietly again until he blurts out that he wants to die. I turn the music off completely and ask him what he said. He repeats his wish. My brain is white lightning.

I say Tommy. Tommy, you can’t think like that. You’re just a kid. Shit isn’t even bad, yet.

“You don’t know anything about me. My parents are fucked up. I don’t talk to them. School sucks. I’m failing. I just ruined things with my girlfriend, who is basically the only thing in my life that isn’t trash. I make things worse for everybody. Seriously. Who would want to deal with me? I don’t blame her.”

“Okay, that sounds bad. But that doesn’t mean things will stay bad. You can turn it around. You seem like a smart guy.”

“Dude, I’m stupid. Smart guy. I wish I was dead. I’m so sick of this.”

You don’t.

“I do.”

Are you absolutely sure of this, says the heat rising in my chest.

He nods at me.

If you say so, man. And then I floor it.

We’re hurtling down a dark 295. There are a few cars on the road, but they stay away from the left lane when they see me coming. I look briefly over at the kid and notice traces of concern. I decide to commit. The engine is trying to kick back but forget it. The machine will hold up because I need it to. I’ve never needed anything so badly. Tommy squeaks.

“36 is coming up!”

I peel over across 2 lanes and brake tightly to make the offramp. The kid’s holding onto the dashboard.

“What are you doing!”

I know this whole area. I know every backroad. This entire state is mine. Everything you see is mine. We’re flying through the streets. I’m getting lucky with the lights. No one is out around here at this hour and I know where the cops usually wait. The elementary school isn’t too far now.

“Please, stop! We’re going to crash. Jesus Christ. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. Please, dude.”

I ignore him. It’s hard, I won’t lie. I must stay the course now. We reach the school. It’s one of those long straightaways into a parking lot deep in the property. The lot is empty. Perfect. The car hits the entrance and we’re flying straight towards the school building.

“No! You’re going to kill us! Stop the car!”

Yes. That’s the idea.

“No stop stop please don’t kill me please don’t. I don’t want to die.”

I slam on the brakes and spin the wheel. The tires scream loud enough to shatter glass, I would think, but nothing seems to explode. We’re spinning. I’ve done all I can. It’s luck now, so I close my eyes.

The car stops maybe three feet from the building, facing away from it. I’m so wired I can’t feel my arms. I turn to Tommy and give him a triumphant grin. He starts screaming what aren’t even words. Well, they might be words, but they aren’t forming meaning for me right now. I speak calmly, but loudly, to try to get through to him.

Tommy, you have to understand what I did was for your own good. I believe fate brought us together on this night. You reached a crisis point and I was guided to you by forces that I, frankly, can’t explain. I was brought into your life the moment you needed me most. What are the chances? What are the odds? I did what I had to do. I had to show you that you didn’t really want to die. If I could, I’d show you how your death would affect the world. Unfortunately, my powers are limited. I hope you understand. You have to keep living, Tommy. There is so much more to do. I hope you wake up tomorrow with a new lease on life and cherish this second chance that you have been given.

He’s already left the car by this point, disappearing into the night, a speck that I can still make out at the edges of my headlights. When I crash later, for real, I don’t know if I’ll remember every detail of this. My only hope is that Tommy knows, deep down, I am his friend and I honestly meant everything I said.

MY DAYS by Emily James

May 23, 2019

We hold hands and listen to him read our vows, grey mustache puffing above his breath. I picture him sucking a cigarette outside, a Bible tucked to his body, white robe blowing in the wind. Behind us, my mother's arms hang from the hospital gown, her limp limbs our altar. Her eyes closed, two still coins. Our daughter keeps grabbing the wires. We unclasp our hands again and again. Stop it, we angry whisper. Come back. The beeps are steady, at least. Her moans have subsided, at least. Yes, I will take him, at least in sickness, at most in health. Her body, my life’s centerpiece. Deflated arms dangling, that I watched from the kitchen table kneading dishes in the sink, biceps flexed with the pop of a Budweiser tab, elbows bent so fiercely while sliding open the TV table. And her fingernails that feathered my forehead those nights when the blinds shut out the moon. Now, she is all skin cascading from bone, she is almost remains. I do, I say. I will. His slanted gaze reaching for comfort to hand to me, all sterile pads and latex gloves and Toxic Waste Only bins behind us. She isn’t dressed, I think again. My eyes stay open, wet, but the images still come. Magenta gowns we would have tried on in front of a three-way mirror, I’d sit and argue hot from cheap champagne, no, that’s better for your figure, no, that won’t be easy with a bra. Fat seeping from her sides that we never loved enough.

I like this one, she would’ve said. It’s kind of nice.

It’s my day, Mom, I’d remind her. My day.

But now, here, as I promise myself to him, my daughter pulling rolling curtains open and closed and open and closed, our rental priest with his to-do list in his back pocket, I can see it was never mine, everything that’s mine belonged to her, because I was her, and without her, I’ll be someone else. This world will be someplace new, the kind of place where you say I do as your mother dies in a metal bed behind you, and there will be no magenta, no music, only fluorescent lights beaming on a beige, cushion-less chair. We stand boxed in by corners and cracks, dust-covered and uncared for, three generations becoming two. My little girl squeals and jumps on the linoleum, yellow pigtails flying up and down, up and down, and all the days to come unfold before me, they are all my days, they are decks and decks of cards that have fallen everywhere, cutting my palms, slicing me to pieces.

AJAR by Ankita Banerjee

May 19, 2019

He was at the counter flirting with a pixie cut. My eyes followed him the whole evening and I didn’t know what to do with myself. So I ordered my fifth gin and tonic, and when Sofie asked, “Why don’t you go talk to him?” I sniggered.

It started raining outside – the worst kind. He was now purring to the little black dress at the corner table. She was small, with a little hunch on her back. I went out for a cig and argued with the voice in my head.

“Perhaps it’s life coming to a full circle.”

“Or this is how I will again make a fool of myself if I stay any longer.”

“Perhaps he has changed.”

“He was sniffing the humpy’s hair like a wild bunny prepping up for a restroom quickie. So most likely, no.”

I took a deep drag on cigarette under the parking shade when the Apocalypse came.

He said, “So we meet again”. I said, “Shut up” and we kissed - through the cataclysm and until the end of the cervix of etcetera.

Later when we called an Uber and drove past the old town, the wisps of the night harked back to the old days when our world was lit with a thousand glowing worms. Back in the apartment we fucked, like old times - on the couch, against the door, in the tub, on the desk chair. When we craved food, I popped some corns.

It was the next best thing to cigarette after sex.

The sweat still turned the top of his ear bright pink. He still swirled his tongue clockwise inside the mouth like a broken down washing machine. I still felt clouds forming in my belly when he watched me getting off.

I knew him, he knew me, and at that point it was all that mattered.

When the rain softened outside he pulled up the blinds a little and carried me in front of the mirror. In the sodium lights from down the street he glistened like a gorgeous tornado and I melted in his clasp. He lifted my hair and whispered softly, “Are you real?” I think he asked that to the girl in the mirror, hence I said nothing. I wasn’t sure if I knew her.

For the brief moments we slept – on and off – I saw fragments of a dream that never reached its finish line. But he was there, making the same old grunting noises while asleep, and at that point it was all that mattered.

In the morning he left without kissing goodbye, just like old times. Later I found his note on my desk.

When Sofie asked, “Are you going to see him again?” I simply shrugged.

The following year I heard he had joined a cult. One day he just left home and hitchhiked down South to find faith, or drugs, or a secret subway to the heaven.

Sofie smirked. “Who knew he could find a different obsession?” I took a long chug of my beer and pushed down the lump in my throat.

I wondered how he is managing in the cold. He had always been a beach guy after all. I wondered if he has shaved his head now. I wondered if we could find each other across the room ever again.

When I wake up in the middle of the day, feeling like a spurned ashtray, I go back to his note over and over again.

“Until next time”, it said.

But how long is one exasecond anyway?

GOOD BOY by Kailash Srinivasan

May 17, 2019

It was a mistake trusting your parents will come back to get you. It was a mistake turning your back to them, clapping idiot-like at the spinning top that lit up red in the dark. They left for Bombay, leaving you behind in Delhi with your grandma, your paati.

Its summer—the city is a furnace, everything is melting. Your paati slips in the bathroom and fractures both her legs. With weights, pulleys, her legs hang in the air, like the hands of a clock: 2.10 p.m. Her loose, burnt-brown flesh hangs loose from her thighs.

In brown shorts and a white t-shirt with stripes, you have your music notebook in your clammy hand, revealing wet phantom finger-prints around its spine when you change hands. A Donald Duck label in the front has your details:

Name: Sethumohan;

Class: III;

Age: 8 yrs old.

She wants to pee. You slide the aluminium dish between her legs, her thigh-flesh jiggles. You wait for her bladder to empty. When she grunts, you carefully pull it out with both your hands, carry it to the door. You hold your breath and drain the dish, watching the piss form black globules on the dry earth.

She hands you her metal ruler, which you bury deep between her cast and her skin and scratch her calf, her ankle, and with your nails between her toes that wiggle. You follow her instructions: left, no, no, right, up, up, down...ah!

“Okay, leave. You’re late,” she says. “Leave the door open.”

You hesitate.

“Run,” she barks and you’re out the door.

“Look everyone, Sethu finally decided to show up to class.” Arun, your vocal teacher, tells the rest of the students, stretching the vowels in your name like a chewing gum. He moves his limp wrists and motions for you to sit next to him. You sing for a bit. Then he asks, as always, for the other students to leave. The house is empty. You know what this means. But still, you try. You get up to follow them. You can’t go yet he tells you. He smiles, his hand is on your thigh. You walk to his bedroom.

Arun turns off the lights and pulls close the curtains, bolts the door. The sudden withdrawal of light, gives the room the cold, dark look of night.

“Let’s begin,” he says. He means the game. He calls it, ‘Adventures of the Night Explorer’: the goal is to identify different parts of each other’s bodies by touching. You know the drill, you know where everything is on his body; however, pretense is a big part of the game.

It’s your turn first so you feel your way in the darkness. Your tiny hands land on his mouth.

“Your lips.”

“Correct. My turn,” says Arun.

You lay still on the bed, trying your best to not make a sound. Arun places his sticky, fleshy palm on your stomach.

“Your bum.”

“No, my tummy,” you say, in a condescending tone. He likes it.

“Your stomach?” Arun says and lifts your shirt. He tickles you until you beg him to stop. You have to laugh, you have to enjoy it. Else, he gets mad.

“My turn.” Your eyes have adjusted to the light and you’re able to see clearly, but you continue to pretend like you have a secret. You also reach for his stomach but to make it more believable, you pretend to think.

“You give up?” he says.

“It’s your— .”

Before you can answer, Arun pulls your hand and slips it into his pyjamas, whose strings are already loose.

It swells in your hand until it’s a Popsicle. You know what it is, not by its official name yet, by what your grandma calls it: Choochoo. You have held yours many times, moving it like a hose to see how far up the wall your pee can go. You know it’s wrong, it’s something you aren’t supposed to be doing. If you tell your grandma, she won’t believe you. You could tell your parents, though your letter will end up like the rest, somewhere under a pile of old newspapers? You know they don’t read them. You know this because once they were visiting and you sat next to your dad, smiling shyly, giddy with excitement, and then blinked at your mum. Surely, they must have got you the latest Superman comic book. But the morning bled into noon and noon melted into night and a whole week went by. They hadn’t, and you never asked.

Arun wants you to move your hand up and down. How many times does he need to teach you? He makes these little sounds, takes these short breaths, before finally your fingers are wet like you’d just dipped them in a bottle of glue.

“You still haven’t guessed. You lose”

“Choochoo,” you say. It’s a game and you still want to win.

“Is that what you call yours?” Arun chuckles. “Let’s see if you have one.”

When you’re leaving he says, “See you tomorrow.” He expects you to bob your head, so you bob your head.

Grandma wants to know about your class, what you learned.

“Sing me something,” she says. You say you have to wash your hands first.

“Good boy,” she calls you. She says you should always wash your hands when you come home from outside. “Wash your feet, too.”

GNOSTIC BAPTISTE by Gregg Williard

May 16, 2019

“I found him.”

“Him who?”

“Gnostic Baptiste!”

“The spam tag?”

“It’s not just a tag! I wasn’t even running a simple traceroute function before I get a local postal address. So I go there…”

“Wait a second. I need a beer for this.” Alex and I had worked together for 3 years out of the Attorney General’s Office, doing tech consulting for an anti-spam task force. Alex was one of the best systems designers I knew, parlaying hacker-honed skills into the legit and the lucrative. But the thankless and poorly- paid search for spammers had become his holy grail. I thought I’d seen him at his most weirdly obsessive, but this was different. I popped two beers and handed him one, but he just put it on the table and kept pacing.

“You’re saying there’s a person named Gnostic Baptiste?”

He stopped and his eyes got too bright. “A…’person’?”

He finally fell onto the couch and rubbed his hands through his hair.

“…I find the place. An abandoned warehouse by the yards. Not a computer in sight. No phones. No jacks. No Wi-Fi. Nothing. Zip. Except this fat kid in a swivel chair. When I get close he stands up and says, ‘I am Gnostic Baptiste. Spread the word.”

I reached out to pat him on the arm. He shrank back. “Don’t touch me! I’m infected!”

“Infected?”

He sprang off the couch and bent over, clutching his crotch. “Here. Look.” He booted his computer and tapped the keys. “You see?” The screen showed a word document. Alex was typing out a solid block of spam:

BIGGER AND THICKER WITH GNOSTIC BAPTISTE!

GIGANTIC ORGAN COCK FROM GNOSTIC BAPTISTE!

BOOST HER WET HAPPY WITH VIAGRA PENIS PATCH

FOR ULTRA HARD PENILE SEXUAL WITH 100 MG

X 10 PILLS PRICE CHEAPER MASSIVE COCK WITH

75% OFF ROLEX, MORADO GUCCI VACHERON

WATCHES WITH EXTRA LONG COCK FOR HER

PLEASURE FROM MR. GNOSTIC BAPTISTE!

“I don’t get it.”

“Shit, Rob! Look at the keys I’m hitting!” He slowed down so I could see:

t-h-e q-u-i-c-k b-r-o-w-n f-o-x j-u-m-p-e-d o-v-e-r t-h-e

“Wow. Something with the keyboard?”

“It’s not the keys!” He went to my desktop. The same thing happened. We tried the four other computers in my apartment.

They only showed spam.

“Effing weird. We’ll run diagnostics. Entangled zombie shit. “

He grabbed between his legs and crawled into a corner, rocking and whispering to himself. I went to him but he waved me away and staggered back to his feet, bent over and clutching his crotch again. “Gotta’ show you.” He undid his belt and pulled down his jeans and tattered underwear. A hot, yeasty smell filled the room. His penis heaved out of his pants, drooping low from his pubic hair to coil around his leg all the way to his ankle. Even limp it was thick and solid enough to hold a dozen or more silver wristwatches along its impossible length. We both stared, breathless, as it unwound and thudded to the floor. Despite the weight of the watches, it reared up five feet into the air and stayed there, swaying. The glans was round and fat as a grapefruit, like an orchid starved for heat. Alex finally looked at me and I could see the same thought behind his eyes: and he’s not even hard. He went rigid reciting a spam rant in whispers.

“’…massive cock growth for ultra-hard and thick penile enlargement with 75% off all Rolex, Gucci, Vacheron Viagra watches from Mr. Gnostic Baptiste…”

“Alex…!”

“You understand now, Rob? I’m the tangled zombie. I’m fucking spam.” He hefted his cock in both hands and swung it against his leg. After cursing through several floppy misses the weighted organ wrapped itself tightly back around his thigh and down to his shoe. He tugged his jeans up over the pulsing coil and limped to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I gotta’ find him.”

“Wait.”

“Don’t touch me, Rob! You’ll spend every cent you’ve got on shit watches or Viagra or West African gold ingots or horny Russian mail-order brides or pictures of teen girls having sex with horses or…”

I blocked the door. “You bought the Ultra Viagra, or some shit, and took it?”

As if in answer his penis pressed, then strained against the side of his jeans. “So, what if I did? It was that or be sucked in. I told you—I’m fucking spam! You have no conception of what it feels like! To actually fuck spam! “

His erection was so stiff now that Alex could no longer bend his leg. The denim swelled. The seams popped in low, hectoring snicks. The glans wiggled and squeezed out the bottom of his jeans, white and loamy as dough. The material gave way with a shrieking rent, and his penis sprang across the room. I felt like I’d been hit by a bus. When I came to the door was on one hinge and Alex was gone.

Who, or what, was Gnostic Baptiste? I never saw any trace of him, or of Alex, either. But I know that the moment I get back online again they’ll both be there, selling watches, Nigerian gold ingots, low cost Viagra or Russian teen brides. And waiting for me. And whatever it was that Alex was powerless to resist – the promise of sex beyond any sex he’d ever known, the fucking of spam incarnate with a penis of freaks – will be popping up or dancing across or seeping into every move I make online. The only sanctuary is in silence, and cunning; an electronic chastity that will leave me alone under GPS dumb stars. Now when I walk through L.A.N. parties and Wi-Fi fields I can almost feel a tingling along the back of my hands and up and down my spine. And sometimes it even makes me hard.

THE HEART OF MORALITY by Austin Ross

May 13, 2019

Daddy’s monster is back. That slightly musky scent of sawgrass wafts in across the Everglades as he slides a single bullet into the revolver. This is what I remember, all these years later. This incident with the revolver is familiar to me, a nightly ritual to cap off our evenings of foil-wrapped TV dinners and, for him, nearly a third of a bottle of whiskey. I have learned by now to keep silent during the ritual.

As he examines the revolver in his hands, polishes the silver of the barrel with his sleeve, I think: he isn’t such a bad Daddy. His monster is one that only I can see. He still takes me for bike rides, sometimes, through St. Mary’s Park after school, still holds my hand as we sit in the church pew in our Sunday best. The monster inside him has slowly eaten away at what makes him Daddy. It reminds me of the alligators that I can occasionally hear through my bedroom window during the long summer nights. I can forgive Daddy for what he’s become, I think—if only because it is sadness, and not anger, that made him this way.

Tonight feels different to me, though. We are both sweaty from the oppressive Everglade heat. He has stripped to a pair of pants and an undershirt. I am still in my dress, my feet hot from wearing the shoes and socks of my school uniform. My legs dangle from the chair. I wish I was taller, older. Daddy looks at me and sips from the whiskey bottle. He spins the chamber of the revolver, clicks it shut, presses the tip of the barrel to his temple. He looks me in the eye, smiles sadly, and pulls the trigger. Click. No bullet this time. My heart is beating so fast I think it might burst, but I don’t cry. Crying makes it worse.

This is our ritual—Daddy will now press the tip of the barrel to my head, pull the trigger, and afterwards we will watch I Love Lucy, neither of us speaking in the quiet, desperate aftermath. Which of us did he want to die more? The girl with her mother’s eyes, or the widowed father? I don’t know.

Daddy slowly exhales, and I am brought back to this moment, now. Tonight is different: he slides the revolver across the table, removes his hand slowly. He looks at me, his eyes curious, like a wild animal’s, as though to ask: what are you going to do?

“Go ahead,” he says. The sound is deafening in the silence. “Pick it up.”

The revolver gleams on the kitchen table. I stare at it, my heart beating faster with each second.

“This is the heart of morality,” Daddy says, tapping the kitchen table with his finger. “A loaded gun.”

I look Daddy in the eye, carefully examine him. His face is expressionless as he watches me carefully, and I wonder: if I pick it up, will it make things worse?

I sense Daddy’s monster behind his eyes. It had come to live with us after Momma died—slumped over the kitchen table one day, her own monster—bowel cancer—having devoured her quickly and unexpectedly. Over the years, Daddy had learned to chain the monster up. When others saw him, it was manageable and tame. But I know it’s neither of those things. It will destroy him if he lets it.

I pick up the revolver, feel the weight of it in my hands, the authority it brings. I open the chamber, see the single bullet resting inside. Tears are streaming down my cheeks. I can sense Daddy’s immense sorrow. As the tears well and my vision blurs, Daddy shimmers and splits into two.

“Do it,” they both say as the monster grows. The lights above us flicker as their black tendrils stretch across the table towards me.

I slide the chamber closed again and pick one of the Daddy’s, squeeze the trigger, and in the explosion of sound, something leaves the room, some massive presence, and I wipe my eyes clear and see Daddy crouched on the floor, crying but unharmed, and I run to him, apologizing, but all he does is say I’m sorry over and over and over as he hugs me tightly. In the distance, I can just hear the rumbling growl of an alligator, or perhaps a monster, retreating to the swamps.

SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY LIFE by Meeah Williams

April 26, 2019

I could sense it coming like a mule senses thunder.I had his cock in my mouth and I was trying to keep my neck from being too traumatized when he bucked his hips in short hard thrusts. It was like being a passenger in a car whose driver proceeded down the street by slamming on the brakes every three seconds. I'm getting whiplash just thinking about it. I watched people on the sidewalk stop, stare, and the expressions on their faces said "What the hell is that all about?"I leaned out the window and threw confetti at the parade-goers lining the pavement, smiling like a prom queen, my teeth gnashing together. What I mean is that I smiled like a porn star, a cock thrust balls-deep in my ass."It's okay, ok-k-k-k-kkay," I cry, throwing more confetti, which is actually colored rice, crying, my mascara running, thinking "isn't this over yet?"Thinking, when the birds swallow this rice it's gonna bloat up in their little bellies and they'll explode and die. This bed is like a raft in the middle of the ocean and I'm looking for an island, a tanker, a helicopter, anything to wave my arms at. You're in the helicopter, hovering, but all you're doing is watching. Yes, I'm talking to YOU, the watcher, the reader, whoever. YOU!When you cum--or get bored--you hit the off button. It's even worse when you hit "pause," and there I am, eyes shut, mouth black-ovaled, looking like I'm in pain, the thick shiny thing half in and half out of me, almost human-looking, human plumbing, clogged, and I'm waiting, waiting waiting either for the thrust or the withdrawal and getting neither. Just that clogged plumbing with no flow..."Fuck you!" we both shout, you and I. No, I'm not going through all that again. We're going mad with thirst anyway. It can't be long now. I'm going to test my luck in the choppy water, whatever that means. I'm going to commit myself to the waves.Hello Ocean!"Certain death," he ventures a guess. But he's already commandeered the machete, don't think I don't know it. He's figuring he'll clobber me on the head, cut open some part of me, drink my blood. He's bearded now, maniacal, looking like a two-legged Ahab."Thar she blows," he says and with his pirate telescope points up to the sky which looks like the aftermath of a flash photograph--a flash photograph of nothing—or everything.I slip into the water, where the sharks are slouching about in their leather jackets, cigarettes dangling from their louche lips, posing with self-conscious nonchalance in a way they're well aware shows off their new tattoos to best advantage.Oh the sharks aren't as bad as reported. Fake news, you see. I meet one with a Brooklyn accent and a history of trumped-up mayhem. But he's ready to turn a new clam shell, so he says. I can be a trusting soul, when I'm desperate enough. I jump on the back of his jet-ski and wheeeeeee...We're bouncing over the waves now. My hair flowing out behind me like a banner that says "Welcome home, Johnny!" There's a desert island with your name on it somewhere. But it's not on any map and you have to put your name on it yourself."Who's Johnny?" I yell into the shark's non-existent ear. He doesn't answer. His body is thick, smooth, one big chunk of remorseless muscle built by a lifetime of endless swimming and fed by murdered mermaids. He smells like Brut, not fishy at all. He's got about 300 teeth in that mouth of his. Sure they can reduce me to a bloody hash within seconds. But, wow, when he's in the mood, you should see him smile.

LET ME SHOW YOU WHERE YOU’LL BE SITTING by Jeffrey Yamaguchi

April 25, 2019

We walk through a corridor, then down a flight of steps. Elevator doors open to receive us as if they had been waiting. We get in and my guide, a woman in perfect business attire, pushes the only button. The doors close. There is no sound. I can’t tell if we are moving up or down, and then I realize I can’t tell if we are moving at all. Suddenly there is a slight lift, and then feathery fall, of the woman’s hair above her eyes, which are staring right through me.

*****

There is a painting on the wall. Two large swaths of dark storm cloudiness on a moonless night, surrounded by a multitude of colors – the blue of the bluest sky, the red of a lollipop savored with impossible patience, the purple of a bruise that came by way of invitation. I stopped noticing the painting until someone new began work in our area. She mentioned the richness of the pools of darkness – unnerving, but also inviting. I looked at the painting again and saw not two streaks of starless black surrounded by colors, but now, just countless blotches of a deep and unforgiving darkness. Was I misremembering? Or was someone fucking with me?

I turned away and made a point of not looking at the painting ever again. So I saw it every day, countless times. The darkness continued to grow.

*****

The phone rings. I answer it immediately. I want to show how present I am, how assertive I am about getting things done. I say hello and hear a familiar old man’s voice on the other side of the line.

“Is Mr. Neal available?”

I explain that he no longer works here and hasn’t for some time, as I have done many times before.

“But that’s impossible. I just spoke to him yesterday. It is imperative that I speak to him at once.”

I know how this conversation will continue. So I tell the old man that I will deliver his message to Mr. Neal as soon as possible.

“Thank you, sir. I look forward to hearing from him shortly. Please do tell him it is urgent.” I hang up. A few minutes later, the phone rings. I answer it immediately.

*****

Everyone else has left. The echoes of a vacuum from the other side of the office fill the air. I look outside at all those empty offices in the looming tombstone landscape. Just a few lights on in a scattering of windows here and there. One by one, as I continue to reach beyond my own reflection into the swamp dark murkiness of night, the lights go out. Eventually, I am holding my gaze on the very last light which is rising and falling, as if it is lost at sea, not because it is moving, but because my breathing has become more labored and anxious. With absolutely no fanfare whatsoever, the last light is extinguished.

LIES ABOUT THE WORST WAY TO DIE by Dawson Kiser

April 24, 2019

There are a lot of shitty ways to die. A quick Google search of the worst ways to die will lead you down a not so wonderful rabbit hole of people drowning, burning, being eaten by animals, even falling in volcanoes. Not that I’m an expert on dying, but I’m walking into the hospital right now for my third year of chemotherapy and I’d argue this must be on the top 10 shittiest ways to die. Burning? That sounds horrific but from my limited research I found out you black out within 20 to 30 seconds. Your worst 30 seconds alive. This has been my worst 3 years alive. Slowly being eaten away by the ravenous monster inside my single lung. My left lung was cut out during my first year. Empty promises of a quick fix. “The tumor is only in your left lung,” they said. “We think you’re in remission,” they said. That month spent in remission ended with me face down in the busy Chicago intersection. Blood flowing from my nose and mouth. Shit and piss down my leg. A crowd of people. Some taking pictures with their phones. Others rushing to my aid but hesitating when their noses reached the stench. Took a half an hour for the ambulance to come. Now they say, “there’s cancerous cell growth around your right lung.” As if they have to specify which lung it is.

The other cancer patients look at me with dreadful eyes. One young woman, who is still very much pretty, is looking at me wondering, “will I look like that in a few years?” Sorry, you probably will. You will probably throw up, shit, and piss more than you thought was humanly possible. You will have no appetite and will shrivel up more with each day that passes, leaving you looking like a stray dog living in a dumpster in a back alley. In your worst moments, you will compare yourself to Jesus Christ as you sweat blood down your jagged face. I pass her and say, “you’ll be alright.” and use all my strength to give her an encouraging smile and a pat on her (soon to be bony) back.

I’m running a little late so most of the good beds and chairs have been taken. I sit down in an old wooden chair with a penny thin cushion that allows the hard seat to grate on my fucked tailbone. The same nurse as always goes around and draws the curtains. This way you can’t see the other poor bastards turn into zombies. Not that this does much. The noises people make can be just as bad as seeing them turn into the living dead. The first year I tried to sleep through the “therapy” but the visceral nightmarish imagery that flooded my dreams made it unbearable. Now I bring a stack of mindless magazines to read. I tried novels but I’d get bored too easily.

I have managed to get comfortable with the needles and tubes in me. At first, you feel like the patient in the game Operation. It’s been about an hour. Family members of patients are starting to visit now. The support by family and friends in the early stages make you feel like you’re a celebrity. Your brother’s daughter’s girl scout troop sells cookies to raise money for your surgeries. Your mom’s church holds a healing service. Your best friend from high school that you haven’t talked to in years, except for the occasional Facebook message, stops by your house with a casserole and hallmark card. Your siblings and parents come to every chemo session. You get used to their company. But after a year or so the hype around your death begins to fade and less people visit. I haven’t had a visitation in a full year. Not that I care. I can’t even speak during the sessions anymore.

A few curtain rows down I hear sobbing. A young voice. A kid voice. A little girl whimpers, “mommy it hurts,” again and again. Her mother’s voice can be heard trying to comfort her dying daughter. “I know baby, I know. The medicine will help baby,” she says. That’s what we all hope. In my three years of chemo I’ve never shared a session with a kid. I’m focusing on my magazine trying to distract myself from the poor child. Brad Pitt in trouble again. The new Marvel movie broke another box office record. Nameless actress had a nip slip on the red carpet. These are the things that occupy your mind in these circumstances. Mindless pop culture magazines spreading gossip like you’re back in high school. Don’t pretend you don’t like it. You live for it.

My reading is interrupted by the sound of the little girl screaming. I hear the man closest to me ask a nurse for earplugs. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t want a pair as well. You’d want them too.

“Mommy I can’t,” she screams. “Yes, you can Claire,” her mother says with a trembling voice. She has a name. Claire. I feel the devil in my chest clawing at my heart. A name solidifies. It completes. It makes someone’s suffering tangible. A little girl isn’t dying of cancer. A little girl named Claire is dying of cancer.

I unplug all the needles and tubes inside of me. The monitor begins beeping in a fast-steady gallop. The nurse rushes to my assistance. “What are you doing? Where are you going? Are you alright?” she says. I extend my skinny-ass legs until they reach the floor. Using the chair as support I push myself up. I head down the room ignoring the nurse’s plea to sit back down. I shuffle my feet like a toddler learning to walk. All 70 pounds of me walking past all the other patients towards the sound of Claire’s cries. I turn to face her laying in her uncomfortable piss-soaked hospital bed. Her mother stands surprised to see anyone who isn’t the nurse. I fall to my knees next to Claire’s bed. I reach out both of my hands. One towards Claire and one towards her mother. Claire takes my hand and her mother hesitates a little before doing the same. “You’ve got this Claire,” I say, “you’re gonna kick cancers ass.”

I know the pain won’t stop but Claire’s cries and screams did. Another hour has passed and I’m still kneeling next to her bedside with her mother and their hands in mine. The only thing to be heard is the rhythmic beep of her monitor.

She’s asleep now. Her face soft and smooth. Soon she will be frail. Her skin will drape over her twig-like bones and her muscles will shrink. Her half circle eyes will take up most of her face and the skin around them will begin to darken. Her hair will be gone, and she will cover it up with a Mickey Mouse bandanna. She’ll want to throw punches at God, but her hands will be too weak to be made into fists. But for now, I’ll sit here in silence and comfort both her and her mother. There’s a lot of shitty ways to die but I’ll lie and tell them that cancer isn’t one of them.

THE TROLL BY THE EAST BRIDGE by Helen Armstrong

April 23, 2019

The thing that very many people fail to grasp about city planning is that a lot of planning goes into it: ha ha. This is always my gag at parties and it very often falls upon deaf ears. I’m uncertain whether people don’t want to find me funny, or if they just don’t understand my humor.

When the troll by the East Bridge - creatively named by Richardson, the city planner before me, whose interests included golfing and beer and golf clubs - demanded a sacrifice or he’d torch the town, people certainly weren’t laughing anymore. And they weren’t laughing when I walked right up to the troll and he ate me - in small pieces, of course.

Maybe he had gum disease: ha ha.

The feeling of having your ligaments torn apart from one another and having your guts ingested is unique, as you might imagine. Have you had a root canal? I haven’t, but I’ve heard terrible things.

It’s also interesting how the mind doesn’t simply disappear. Our thoughts float around through and outside of our brains, our whole lives just- humming around inside our skulls. The synapses light up like the fireflies that children like to catch in the dusk at Hawthorne Field after the baseball games have all wrapped up for the evening.

Those summer nights are the best, and perhaps it would be easier to describe this feeling of being torn limb from limb not through comparison but rather, by contrasting it. Example: it does not feel like watching children catch fireflies at Hawthorne Field in the dusk.

Example: it may feel more like being the fireflies, captured in a mason jar and forced to suffocate.

The mind doesn’t simply disappear. It scatters. The thoughts that spend most of their days floating around Hawthorne-Field-my-brain-my-skull-et-cetera just kind of...

So forgive me if I’m a little all over the place.

Let’s see - I got my start as a city planner after I finished my undergrad degree in Business Administration. I loved college and as soon as I landed on the hard pavement of the real world, I wanted to scramble back through the glass doors of academia and into my seat in the front of the class again.

So I applied for a Master’s program, and a few years later wound up on the pavement once more but this time, with a degree in Urban Planning. It didn’t make the landing any softer!

People ask me what I do. I tell them: I gather and analyze data to discover the needs of the population and from there, develop both short- and long-term solutions. I review and solicit plans from developers. I know the zoning laws and other regulations - so that you-don’t-have-to. You see?

Frank thinks it’s a great profession, but he’s an artist, so of course he can think that because it pays the bills. The bills that support his painting and sculpting, and recently he’s been getting into tile-making. Which you can buy at the farmers market which I found the space for.

City planners love sustainability. I love sustainability. I was the one behind the rain gardens you see by the roads and in developments. What is a rain garden?

A rain garden absorbs the runoff rainwater from roofs and driveways and lawns and patios. From the sky. According to some studies, they remove up to 90% of the chemicals and 80% of the sediments from rainwater runoff.

That’s a good thing. It means more water soaks into the ground.

That’s a good thing.

See it sinking down, now.

Frankie also stands up for me because he loves me. I don’t mean, in my last few moments of consciousness on this realm - or, perhaps, any realm - to indicate that he is anything less than a gracious and loving partner. We did not meet at a gay bar. We met in the library. We were both checking out books on gardening.

Neither of us are gardeners.

Go figure, ha ha.

Is there a joke about green thumbs here?

Perhaps. But I don’t have the time.

I’d like to make it clear how important it is to invest in renewable energy and open spaces in our town. I know that it can feel hopeless, at times, to be up against climate change, because there’s Al Gore out there and ice caps melting, sloshing water up onto the land and killing millions of people, like they’re tiny ants. We can drown just as quickly as ants, is a fact-that-is-not-fun.

Their brains must scatter as well but into the ocean, and so the water becomes a vast repository of all the knowledge and experience that everyone whose lives it’s claimed has had. Picture that: krill floating among the memories of prom nights, and a whale may accidentally swallow the whole of a brain surgeon’s knowledge, which she’ll then spout out and fling into the air, careless with it.

Perhaps the troll could become the next city planner.

Wouldn’t that be something? I don’t think he’d fit behind my desk, ha ha.

Frank would think that’s funny, but it’s more you that I’m interested in.

What’s the point? The rain gardens are great, the farmer’s market draws people in from out-of-town-if-you-can-believe-it. Is a legacy only as worthwhile as the people around to make it into one would consider it to be?

I’ll tell you something important. No one cares about local issues.

I’ll tell you something else important because I think I may be running out of time. When they made it the law of the land he proposed to me but we never got married.

We’re still engaged.

I guess I’m old-fashioned. I guess I didn’t want to hear you all talk.

And set to the tune of Simon & Garfunkel as that is what is playing in my head in my last moments: last last last: