Flash

DROP SHOT by Louis Dickins

September 18, 2018

Sonia is ashamed of her husband.

She’s sitting with a crowd of people at the local tennis courts in horror, as her husband Paul prepares to serve. He hasn’t won a game, and he and his opponent are deep into the third and final set.

It’s a hot, windy day at the South Morang Tennis Club. There’s a barbeque sizzling in the corner and cups of cordial set up for the kids. It’s the quarterfinals of the local tournament, and Paul’s lifelong dream of winning the cup is being violently dismantled.

At 48 years old, Paul is seriously overweight and has onset emphysema from years of chain smoking. Paul’s heritage is Albanian, immigrating to Australia as a ten-year-old, he loved the place immediately and connected to the nation’s love of sport.

Unfortunately, he’s being torn apart today by a much younger opponent.

His wooden McEnroe racquet has seen better days - it’s tired and wants to die. His Dunlop volley runners are undone and overcome by depression. Paul is out of breath, his sweat-drenched polo shirt clings against his skin.

He lifts the tennis ball into the air and connects with a powerful serve - off spin, curling into the court. A perfect serve, he thinks, until his opponent hammers it down the line. ‘Christ,’ Paul calls out as he throws his racquet against the artificial grass, ‘I can’t do anything right!’

Paul is a butcher by profession, he’s owned a shop in Richmond since the mid-eighties. His lamb chops are acclaimed by the locals, and he’s well-liked because of his social, happy disposition. His aspiration, though, has always leaned toward tennis and becoming a champion. As a boy, posters of his idols like Rod Laver and Fred Perry hung on his bedroom walls. At night he dreamt of aces and topspin backhands.

What was the defining moment of your life in tennis?

PAUL- Pat Cash’s 1987 victory over Ivan Lendl at Wimbledon. Boy, he played a magnificent match. Wonderful, graceful groundstrokes, ripper serve, and a killer drop shot. And he had presence. Something indefinable… he was magic. I sat transfixed as he played Lendl in ’87, I couldn’t look away. When he won, I started crying, real, physical tears. It changed my life. See, Pat Cash and I are around the same age, and we both grew up in Melbourne, so in a way, it was like I won Wimbledon, truly.

What is it about tennis you love?

PAUL- I’m into the unpredictable nature of the game. I thrive on its sense of competitiveness, and I like the community aspect of it. But, really I love the way the ball moves through the air, the sensation of movement. To me, there’s nothing better than hitting the ball with the sweet spot of the racquet, right in the middle. It’s wonderful.

Paul’s down three match points. It’s over. Even Paul’s resilient sense of determination has conceded defeat. He lifts the ball into the air and hits it with his dejected racquet. It lands in but is crushed back cross-court, Paul watching helplessly as the ball bounces away. Done, disappointed, his head sunken, he walks toward the net and shakes his opponent's hand.

‘Good game, mate,’ Paul says.

‘Yeah, Thanks.’

Defeat never changes. It hurts Paul in the same way it did when he was six. His whole life he’s dreamt of winning, the praise and adulation of being the best. Not just trophies and confetti, Paul wants admiration.

On quiet days at his butcher shop, Paul would rest his arms purposefully on the counter, close his eyes and daydream. He could see the shots, the pattern of the rallies, drop shots and smashes. He could see them. Seizing each moment, he could hear the roar of the crowd. He was the man, and this was his game.

In the months he spent preparing for the South Morang Tennis Tournament, he never considered not winning. It didn’t dawn on him that he could lose, it just wasn’t his destiny.

But now, as he shuffles off the court, his racquet packed up across his shoulder, sipping at an orange Gatorade, defeat hits Paul like a pile of bricks. He wasn’t good enough, not even close. Reality hasn’t lived up to his expectations, losing hurts like nothing else.

Inside the clubhouse, Paul walks straight toward the men’s bathroom. He turns on a tap and splashes cold water onto his tired face. He lights up a low-tar cigarette and looks at his reflection in the mirror.

Obscured by his heavy eye bags and grey hair he can still see the ambitious, dream-induced kid he used to be.

As a teenager, Paul had a wonderful tennis coach. They trained together every Thursday night for close to eight years. His name was Frank Price. Unbelievably overweight, he insisted on wearing track suits two or three sizes too small. He had dark black hair, slicked back. Frank was a part-time drug dealer, he supplemented his income as a tennis coach by selling crack cocaine from his car. His dedication to tennis was tremendous. He was not a preacher of push-ups, of weights and treadmills; instead, he was a believer in the beauty and spirit of the game.

Can you describe the influence Frank Price had on you as a young man?

PAUL- Frank believed in me, he understood me. He sat me down one day and told me the most important thing about competitive tennis was eye contact. You could size up and intimidate your opponent by looking at them directly in the eyes, their weaknesses, their insecurities, it was all in the eyes. In terms of style of play, he told me to be creative, to be original in your shot selection. Whatever shot, a lob or a drop shot, you had to hit it with conviction. Don’t doubt yourself, he’d say, don’t second guess your instincts, have belief… I was shattered when he was convicted of drug trafficking, I lost someone very special.

Paul reaches for some paper towel from the dispenser to dry his face, but it’s empty. He sighs and heads outside toward the carpark. Sitting in the passenger seat of their Holden hatchback is his wife Sonia. As he approaches the car, she gives him a smile.

Paul sits down and closes the door.

‘I’m sorry Paul, bad luck.’

Paul doesn’t respond, he sits in silence looking at the steering wheel.

‘It’s ok, Paul.’

Outside Paul can hear kids laughing and locals chatting. The summer wind whistles through the trees as cars go by on the highway. All Sonia can see is a sad, disappointed man.

‘I’m so ashamed,’ Paul says quietly.

‘… Why?’ Sonia asks.

‘Weren’t you watching, Sonia, he smashed me. All those people watched me lose. They saw a delusional old man embarrass himself. Nothing worked for me out there. From the start it was a total train wreck’ Paul removes his tearful headband, ‘All that work and all that preparation and all I did was disappoint myself. I was going to put the trophy up in the window of the butcher shop, I told everyone about this tournament, and I let them down. I let you down.’

‘Paul, no. You didn’t let me down. I’m so proud of you.'

‘What are you talking about,’ Paul says sharply.

‘You gave that match everything you had. You had it all on the line, and you had a crack. Listen to me Paul, the only losers in life are the people who don’t try. Who aren’t willing to have a go, who give up on their dreams. I don’t care about the score, you’re a ripper for trying, you’re a real champion.'

Paul turns to Sonia. Her blue eyes and tied back blonde hair.

‘Ok,’ he says.

He turns the key in the ignition, puts the car in gear and heads back home. It’s a quiet ride as Paul thinks over the match and his opponent. He can’t get over what Sonia just said to him; those beautiful words have slowly lifted his soul. As he puts the indicator on and pulls up at the driveway to their house, his resolution and commitment to tennis have come back. He’s no longer bitter or upset about how the match turned out, he’s starting to move on.

What motivates you?

Paul- You know, for a long time it was emulating the champs like Lendl or Pat Rafter. As a kid, my old coach Frank Price really pushed my buttons. But right now, really it’s Sonia, she just lights me up. She makes me want to be a better tennis player, a better butcher. The best me I can be. I can’t help but be excited about next year’s tournament, I’m already signed up. I can’t wait. And, you know with some hard work, a favourable draw, maybe a new racquet and with Sonia on my side, I think I’m in with a chance of clinching the trophy. Bit of luck here or there and who knows? I’m in love with the possibility of it all.

GRANDMOTHER by R.E. Hengsterman

September 17, 2018

A low metal growl rises, and I leap from the bed.

Ten... nine.

By seven, she's reached the cornered hill of Fletcher and Fields. Her brakes protest with a tinny squeal. By five, I'm half dressed. At three, the throaty rumble of the eight-cylinder engine grows.

By the time I reach zero, Grandmother has arrived. She slides from the bench seat of her station wagon and navigates the piles of dog shit left by our beagle.

Her pink, black-strapped handbag drapes her forearm. Her coifed hair is motionless. She has pressed her clothing into fine lines of order.

Mother, Father, and Grandmother have a silent, transitory meeting on the lawn amongst the dog shit.

***

In the kitchen, Grandmother unpacks her handbag; Kleenex, three pieces of bread, Pop Tarts®, a small change purse, cheese and crackers, a sleeve of thin mints, and a handful of peppermint candies. She is squat heavy and gray but determined to ignore the angry pop of gas trapped within her arthritic joints as she prepares my breakfast. On school days, Grandmother feeds me Pop Tarts® or Thomas’ English Muffins® slathered in butter. On the weekends, when without Grandmother, I resort to sneaking dry oatmeal from the kitchen cabinet.

While I am at school Grandmother tackles the laundry and cleans the house with meticulous detail. In the afternoon, with her chores complete, she appoints herself to the living room couch to watch General Hospital. After school, Grandmother chatters nonstop. She's upset that Mikkos Cassadine has a plan to freeze the world using a weather machine.

***

The following Monday Grandmother was ill. There was no rumble. No tinny squeal. No announcement. Just Mother heavy-footing her way around the kitchen, slamming cabinets and cursing.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Grandmother is unreliable. I’m going to be late for work.”

Mother goes on to tell me Grandmother had visited Grandfather in the Army when they were dating and never left.

“Hung around,” Mother says. “Like a stray dog.”

Your Father says Grandmother is the reason he gets angry. But I believe Father enjoys being angry.

Mother tosses some crackers in my lunch box and says that years back Grandmother drove a red convertible, smoked cigarettes and killed her unborn baby in a car crash. The Grandmother I know is wrinkled and kind. Not a baby killer.

Mother talks all the way to school.

The next day, when Grandmother is feeling better, I tell her what Mother told me. Grandmother says Father is an asshole and Mother is clueless. I’ve never heard Grandmother be foul-mouthed.

Grandmother never missed another day for the entire school year.

***

In the summer Grandmother and I take the old, ugly wagon everywhere. I sit in the rear facing, third-row way-back seat and watch the faces of terrified drivers who follow to close behind Grandmother, and her sudden, unplanned stops. I lip-read as their blood drains. Sometimes a smile jostled by fear escapes my lips. Most don’t smile back. Instead, they honk, shake their fists and flip me the bird. Grandmother flashes a wolfish grin in the rearview before tapping the brakes again.

“Keep them off my rear,” Grandmother says.

***

Today we have lunch at the Apple Knockers on Pawling. Grandmother and I are regulars. They have the best battered, deep-fried fish in town with large pieces of naked Cod poking from the tiny bun. Apple Knockers should buy bigger buns.

Grandmother likes the house-made tartar sauce with her fish. I order the semi-sweet tangy chili sauce, a milkshake, side of homemade cinnamon-flavored applesauce and unsalted fries (you have to salt your own).

We sit in our favorite corner both varnished with a permanent layer of vegetable grease. As Grandmother wipes tartar sauce from her lips, I realize how ordinary we are.

After lunch, we shop at the Price Chopper. For Grandmother, it has the better coupons. For me, the better toy aisle; filled with jacks and paddle balls and weird gum that you stick to the end of a straw and blow into lopsided, ugly bubbles.

On the way home, Grandmother and I pass the Pentecostal Church. Grandmother says I attended daycare there when I was younger, and she still worked at the department store. There’s sadness in her voice. I search my memory but have no recollection of daycare or God or Grandmother working.

“I don’t remember,” I say, and her face brightens.

***

We arrive home in time for Grandmother to settle into her soap. As General Hospital demands her attention, I sneak into the basement and unlock the metal door housing the water well pump. The pump sits in a small stone room cut into the earth. The air inside is dank and reeks of musty dishwater. Using my father’s wrench, I loosen a valve and let water spill onto the dirt floor.

When my parents return home from work that evening, and Grandmother has darted from the house, I ask why they are so mean to Grandmother. Mother brushes me aside, and Father swats at the air above my head.

They prattle. Work this. Work that. There’s no mention of the spotless house, the folded laundry or waxed linoleum floors. I wait several minutes and then interrupt.

“I think I hear water in the basement. Come quick.” I say.

Father rushes into the basement while Mother grabs a handful of laundered towels. It’s the most excitement our house has seen in weeks. Standing at the top of the stairs, I hear wet cotton socks slapping the concrete floor.

“Where’s my wrench,” Father yells.

I say nothing.

Mother and Father submarine into the low-slung pump room. The stone tomb muffles their cursing.

“Come here,” Father screams.

I slip to the threshold of the pump room door, and Father tosses me a flashlight.

“Shine the light here,” he says.

I position the light. “Not there, here!”

As Mother and Father scramble to stop the water, my hand hovers over the brass lock.

***

Days later, Grandmother and I are on the couch. Mikkos Cassadine and his brothers Victor and Tony are held up at Wyndemere Castle on Spoon Island. Luke, Laura, and Robert Scorpio are desperate to stop the weather machine.

Grandmother pinches her eyebrow into a curious arc, smiles, and turns up the volume as Mikkos is seconds away from flipping the switch and destroying the world.

THE HYPOCHONDRIAC SOCIETY by Michael Prihoda

September 14, 2018

The Hypochondriac Society met every Thursday night in the basement of Knox Presbyterian Church.

The church was like a Russian nesting doll: the Presbyterians on Sunday morning, some Mennonites on Sunday night; a children’s Montessori school met in part of the basement during the week or whenever the hell kids attended school nowadays and for a while I think Paul, this one guy I knew from somewhere (maybe he served me food at Shish, that Mediterranean deli on Grand near the university that I generally avoided because, well, undergrads) said Monday nights were AA meetings but I didn’t buy that. For some reason. Maybe it was the shape of Paul’s face. Who am I kidding, I can’t remember his face.

But so the hypochondriacs got it on Thursday nights from 6:30 to 8:00, officially, though some of us lingered after that, as if every Thursday were a wretched party we couldn’t help prolong, knowing the hors d'oeuvres, so to speak, wouldn’t be as good back home.

There were ten of us for the most part. But if you count the people I talked to, it was four: Trey, Tull, Diogenes. Shit, that’s three. Whatever.

We brought our maladies like the shitty nephew brings a ring down an aisle toward a semi-entranced couple, the male counterpart of which probably harbors resentment and not a bit too little of put-offishness at having to tolerate this dweeb carrying potentially the most expensive piece of anything he’s ever purchased for anyone, excepting that Camaro he may or may not have purchased back in LA but whose payments he quickly defaulted before prestidigitating a new life with a family containing one of these trite extras: i.e. said punk nephew of bride.

Each week was the same but different. I’d had rumors of testicular cancer brewing for seven months now and every time I whispered this fear Diogenes would puff her cheeks, the same as certain fishes; her eyes would go all blurry and crosshatched and outsiders would think she wasn’t paying attention but really she was like an anti-muse, absorbing all our shit through her nostrils to pack away somewhere deep until her time as oracle might be called upon.

She always looked that way except for this time when a new guy came, threading some story about constant jaundice, MS, atherosclerosis, arthritis, tonsillitis, two bum knees, chronic shoulder pain, halitosis (a dead give away for a faker, since no such malady exists, I mean, c’mon, do your homework, as Trey would say), but so the list goes on and finally, after his lungs fully unwound his sails, Diogenes gets this feral look on her face, so bad I thought Vesuvius had reincarnated itself in the form of a 5’5’’, Greek-yogurt-eating self-proclaimed virgin who had dreams of being the first celibate porn star in history (don’t ask…). By the time she had picked up a chair (roughly shoving some guy, whose name may or may not have been Marvin, from said chair; the one operative detail I knew about him was the shape and expenditure of his glasses, overheard amidst the meandering exchanges of post-meeting time: oracular, the frames alone running him a morbid $340, “and that’s not counted in yen…”) the new guy skedaddled, dropping three paper clips, two rubber bands, a plastic clip like for a bag of chips, four number two wooden pencils (not the cheapo kind you see on sale at K-Mart in early August), and a grape sucker. I felt bad because that was classic hypo repertoire, the junkies’ toolkit.

The next time somebody new showed up, everyone kept shooting wry side glances at Diogenes for the first ten minutes as someone named Chris(?) said the usual.

Then it got to the new girl. We tensed.

So far she’d been calm as a nonexistent ocean breaker so when she up and Mt. St. Helens-ed us by whipping off her cardigan, t-shirt, and bra, exposing her breasts, and then pointing at a point near-ish her right aureole, only to scream, “SEE THIS!?” you could say we more or less had not seen it coming.

Well, sure, we saw. We saw a decently attractive woman whip off her top(s) and jab an index into the flesh of her right/left breast. But we didn’t see.

“BREAST CANCER.”

Then she sat down.

It made us uncomfortable. This was not at all procedure.

I looked at Trey. Trey looked at Tull. Tull looked at the floor, ceiling, Chris(?), then me. Then we all looked at her.

The older woman who walked with a cane some days to play up her failing hips happened to be sitting next to the new, breast-exposed woman. She patted her gently on the leg, which up ended up awkwardly landing somewhere around her thigh/butt cheek/hamstring since the woman was sitting and the half-naked girl was standing. “What’s your name dear?”

“Did you hear me?” her voice had rumbled into a lower register, less scream, more molasses to it. Considerably more mortality.

Something was wrong.

I wanted Diogenes to pick up a chair and make to hurl it. I wanted Tull to squeak so I could start talking about how I swear those mosquitoes from that weekend I spent camping with my cousins three weeks ago were carrying Zika virus. It wasn’t even my turn. There was procedure. But this was no good. I felt people shifting in their chairs.

The girl broke the spell by snapping her bra back into place, then putting her t-shirt on, then her cardigan. Very diligent, almost business-like. As if she had tried something on at Gap and found it not entirely agreeable.

She sat down. Her demonstration having birthed enough ghosts to fill Iceland.

Next Thursday four people showed up: me, Tull, Trey, and some other rando. Diogenes had come down with the flu, or so her text to Tull had said, which she’d half-related to us in malformed sentences lacking adhesion to the English language. I saw breast-cancer girl outside Knox on my way in, just standing near the steps to the door, in a pool of approaching darkness. I couldn’t/didn’t meet her eyes.

The meeting didn’t last until 8 that night. She wasn’t there when we left.

The week after, Trey and I were the only ones who showed up. Diogenes’ flu had progressed into full-blown malaria and Tull’s text also indicated house-arrest Ebola might be in her system.

Trey and I tried to have a normal session but the point was sharing, not talking tete-a-tete, mono-a-mono. That was too personal. Hell, if we wanted that, we wouldn’t meet in a church. The person we really spoke to at these things was the space between the circle of chairs. The god in the room. Breast-cancer girl showed us what we worshiped and it got embarrassing.

I helped Trey stack the chairs and we barely raised a hand to say goodbye.

At home, I took my shirt off and stared at myself in the mirror, squeezing my pectorals to make the aureole bulge, wondering what lay beneath.

I had nothing.

EYE BITES by Jenny Fried

September 13, 2018

What You Need to Know

I cut off a rat’s head with a guillotine, and it told me I looked like someone who ate cereal for every meal, which was one I hadn’t heard before. I do not in fact eat cereal for every meal, but there’s no use fighting with a rat head. I learned not to argue when I tried to kiss someone and was so nervous I missed her mouth. At first she told me it was cute, but later she said she didn’t know why she bothered with me. I got lost in the forest once. I remembered reading about mazes, so I took only left turns for as long as I could. I found a hill made all out of sand and a man with long straight hair. I knew I knew him from somewhere but I couldn’t figure out where the information I wanted was, trapped inside my head. It was like a seal I saw on the beach once. All its flippers were fine, and its tail was touching the water, but it couldn’t figure out how to get back in.

Things I Know

The animals commonly known as seals are referred to as pinnipeds in the scientific community. Kingdom: Animalia. Phylum: Chordata. Class: Mammalia. Order: Carnivora. Suborder: Caniformia. Raskovnik is the Bulgarian name for Marslilea quadrifolia, a small plant that looks like a four leaf clover. It is not particularly rare, nor does it grow in remote areas, but is completely unidentifiable to the untrained eye. A legendary herb of the same name was said to be able to open any lock. The distance from the earth to the sun is 4.85 million parsecs, 149.60 million kilometers, 92.96 million miles, 327.22 billion cubits. Thousands of people have childhood memories of a series of kid’s books called the Berenstein Bears, pronounced like steen. They never existed. It’s the Berenstain Bears, pronounced like stain. The erroneous memory is embedded so strongly in some people’s heads that it has been cited as proof that we are now living in a parallel universe, that it was -stein when we were kids, but that timeline was erased somewhere along the way.

What I Say to You

I think if I were an animal I would be a seal.

That Night

I make out with a chair and then it rips off its face, but it isn’t you its someone else I know. We go to a protest at my old high school and I am so so late for Spanish but this is important. A short kid with a beard sneaks away with my backpack while I’m chanting. I run after him I think but my legs are still at the protest and he gives my bag back because I ask him nicely. I go to an Italian restaurant with my parents and my mom kisses our waitress on the cheek. When she turns into a frog I wonder how I’m going to pay my college tuition. My frog mom swims around the glass of water the waitress keeps refilling and I keep drinking it because I don’t know how to tell her to stop. I don’t know how to tell you to stop looking at me because its not that I don’t like your eyes I do I just know that your pupils will start taking little bites of me when they dilate because that’s just how these things go.

Out Your Car Window

Even when it isn’t that hot yet if you look closely you can always see asphalt shake and shimmer a little. I think it’s jealous. Everything always moves over it and it has to stay still. Its just like how when you see deer next to the highway they’re always looking at you and their eyes are always full of that look you give bridges when you’re wading through the water. But there aren’t any deer this time because I asked you to go the slow way, only boys on bicycles and a dirty Laundromat every couple of blocks. Somewhere inside there’s probably a chute where they throw all the lost socks and a place where their ashes stay and the sock ghosts crawl out and go haunt feet and doorknobs. It’s kind of weird to look at someone who can’t look back but what else are you supposed to do if you aren’t the one who’s driving?

What I Say to You

Do you know what paper tastes like?

Sort of. I ate straw wrappers when I was a kid.

I ate old newspapers. I didn’t realize they didn’t taste good until I was done eating.

Like aftertaste?

Kind of.

Not quite?

It’s more like you forget what it tastes like while it’s happening.

Like you have to think about it later?

Yeah.

What are we talking about?

Eating paper.

We’re talking about eating paper?

Sure.

That’s it?

I guess.

Last Year

The bites started small, with just the eyes. Little love bites. Then there were words I could see on my skin. Then the big ones. Bite one pushed the air out of my belly. Bite two left a mark on my face. Bite three put a chip in my tooth. Sometimes I still cut myself on it when I’m trying to speak.

Things I Know About You

You walk with your heels turned in.

You always have cough drops in your pockets.

You don’t turn the radio on in your car, even when we aren’t talking.

You know more kinds of bears than I do.

You do your laundry in the sink.

You always forget to staple your papers together.

You wear shoelaces that are too long, and they drag on the ground even when you remember to double knot them.

You don’t have any pets

You answer my questions, even stupid ones.

You go the slow way if I ask you to.

Your Place

I know that walking through doors makes you forget things because I read it somewhere. When I walk into rooms sometimes I forget what I am doing there and then I lie down on the floor and look up at the ceiling and wonder how many doors I have to walk through before I forget everything.

I know that you are looking at me because your eyes take three bites.

I like your eyes. I like your eyes. I know I like your eyes, I do, and my tail is in the water. You put your hand on my arm, you put your hand on my face, and look, look it’s you. But what if it isn’t, what if you rip off your face and it isn’t you it’s someone else I know, and your hand is on my face. Again. Her hand is on my face again.

Shut up don’t argue with a girl who wants to eat you.

Under the Table

You find me under the table and you put my head in your lap. We stay right there, and you don’t say anything, and I think you are good for me, I want to say you are good to me, I want to say stop looking at me, I’m under the table for a reason, and your eyes are just little bites now but what if they get bigger. I want to say what if I want to say stop but instead I just think it, but instead I just think it.

BUS PORTRAITS by Kai Ming McKenzie

September 12, 2018

A man on a bus is writing in his day plannerThere is a slender man who spends every morning bus ride one winter scratching out notes to himself in a little day planner. He looks so busy that we who are seated near him are tempted to try to read over his shoulder to see what he is writing about. He has tiny and meticulous handwriting, and he writes straight through the delineated intervals of his days with a fine-tipped pen.Everything is done with quick and efficient motions, which paradoxically give the impression that there is something wrong, a neurological syndrome of some kind at work. Perhaps it's just that he never seems to have to pause to wait for the next word to come — if those tiny marks even are words. Maybe they are symbols forming some other kind of record.When he gets close to his stop his busy hands loudly rip apart the velco straps of his insulated, soft-sided lunch container and put the pen and the planner back into the front pocket. Then he pulls his knit hat down over his ears and carefully rewraps his scarf around his neck, three times. It is eight o'clock in the morning, but the page of his day is completely inked over.We want to know where he will record the rest of his hours, since his day is already filled in.A kind of fastidious graphomania or sheer nervous energy channeled out through the fingertips — that's how I described it when I wrote about it in my own little book, while I was sitting in the seat behind him, looking on. One bus rider draws portraits of anotherA woman is sitting near the front of the bus. She can't stop waving her arms. Her crooked fingers brush her black nylon kerchief and catch in it; her head bobs left and right with the ruts in the road. She is making gestures that seem devotional or beseeching, but may be meaningless. There is a white crust around her lips. Her face is gaunt, her muscles taut and ropy under her warm, dark brown skin. Naturally we do not look directly at her, but around her, carefully.Seated further back is a white man in his fifties who got on earlier. He is balding, but retains a ponytail; he is dressed casually; he is not on his way to work. He has a large newsprint sketchpad propped on the seatback in front of him and he is drawing this woman with soft vine charcoal which he pulls from a ziplock bag in the pocket of his leather vest. He spends about a minute on a portrait, then turns the sheet over with a quick flourish and starts again. They are pretty good gestural sketches. She is shown in profile, since she is in the handicapped seats and he is facing forward. He pays attention to the face.This is what this guy does — we see him on the bus all the time. He pays his fare and rides around for a couple of circuits, drawing the passengers, then when he gets bored of us he puts his pad under his arm and gets off at the coffee shop near the university.After the fourth or fifth portrait she seems to notice he’s drawing her and she grows agitated, but can't seem to turn to him to communicate, can only glare at him out of the corner of her eye. His sketches begin to show her evolving rictus of distress. If she wanted to get him to stop, she would have to rely on help from someone who could read that this was a new and different kind of distress than her default state. Actually, we do understand — but we are trying to look away. None of us tells the artist to stop.Eventually, and with some trouble, she produces a ballpoint pen and grasps it in the air before her, making parodic, palsied sketch-strokes in the air, still not looking at him directly. Now her expressions are genuinely ugly. Then she finds a piece of paper and slashes at it with great effort, producing some marks — a portrait of the artist — which she clumsily rips up and tosses to the floor.We do our best to ignore this exchange. We have ridden with the artist before. Those who have sat in front of him have been annoyed; those who have sat behind him have mostly just watched him draw. A woman writes a note in the stairwell of a busThe bus lurches down a dark street, behind schedule by a few minutes. Although it is night, there are still plenty of us riding, headed towards downtown. At the stop at the corner, a woman is waiting in a dull yellow pool of light with a two- or three-year old girl in a stroller. The bus stops in front of them and the doors open, but instead of getting on, the woman tries to ask the driver something. She doesn't seem to be able to move her lips and tongue in order to form words; she can only gesture and make loud, inarticulate noises.While she does this the bus driver is half-yelling, what? where? to her while keeping both hands on the steering wheel. She can only respond with more blocked sounds.We passengers sit listening to her moaning and the bus driver yelling back for a while, seemingly in a stalemate. The engine has an irregular idle, and it rocks us gently. Finally someone from the back of the bus says in frustration, for fuck sake, give her something to write with, and everyone comes back to life, fumbling for pen and paper to take to her. We are glad to have something we can do.She gratefully takes the pen and the scrap of paper from a passenger and writes something down and passes it up to the driver, who says, with an emphatic head nod, yes, I stop there, get on. So she stands her daughter up on the sidewalk for a moment, then collapses the spindly stroller and tucks the U-shaped handles over one arm while gathering her daughter in the other. She mounts the steps and takes a seat at the front, quickly unfolding the stroller, setting the brake, and getting the child buckled back into it.As the bus pulls back into the street she starts to take off her coat and, while doing so, finds that she is still holding the pen and the scrap of paper that she wrote her destination on. She folds the paper up and pockets it — she might need to show it again when she gets off at the other end. Then she looks up at us, holding out the pen to return it, scanning our faces to find the owner, showing no emotion that we can see. Keep it, keep it, we say, shaking our heads.From the stroller on the floor the child is turning her head to catch her mother's every movement, looking mutely up at her with love in her bright eyes. She fidgets against her seat belt, looking like she's got something to say, as if she is getting ready to speak for the first time, to say I know what it’s like.

FLIPPED by Zac Smith

September 11, 2018

Brad flipped his car after hitting a fire hydrant, right downtown, right on Fifth Street, right near our old apartment, the prefurnished one with the broken window and the red wall and the kitchen that had bookshelves instead of cabinets, he was driving, something happened, who knows, he hit the hydrant and the car went upward, upward, from the height of the hydrant and the height of the curb, and the car veered upward and over the hydrant, and the hydrant's base cracked under the weight and pressure of the car and the angle of it, and the cracked base gave way so that the water could come out, and it came out, one huge spray into the underbelly of the car and out into the street below while car ascended into the air itself, at an angle, fast and strange, twisting, up and around, the body of the hydrant lifted, dislodged, entirely broken free, the water coming out as a geyser, up and out, the body of the hydrant rolling away, or more tumbling away, bouncing under the force of the impact, the force of the water, the car's wheels spun and the engine roared freely, the tired no longer struggling against the friction of the road but against nothing, free air, spinning madly, the engine just bellowing as the car veered upward, the clanging of the hydrant as loud as the screaming of the engine and the roar of the water, all three a unified cacophony on Fifth Street near our old apartment, right in front of the convenience store where people would gather to smoke and scratch off lottery tickets and ask for change and sell weed and catch up with the other people who lived on the block or around the corner, and who we would sometimes buy forties with and scratch off lottery tickets and talk about what the other people on the block were doing, who they were with, where they had been and what they planned on doing, who was leaving town, alone, or leaving with someone else, people we knew or didn't know or had only heard about, or people who we saw buying beer but who never hung out, and right next to the laundromat where someone died once in the bathroom, then they closed off the whole place with police tape, and everyone was crowded around trying to see who it was, if it was anyone we thought it would be, anyone we expected to die in a bathroom, or who always hung out in the laundromat for whatever reason, but it was just some nobody that no one knew, it was right in front of that laundromat where he flipped the car, his foot still on the gas, the car in the air, the tires spinning, engine screaming, water spraying, hydrant rolling off, and when the car landed it was the loudest of everything, a real crashing down, the whole car coming down from the air with its full weight, just a huge crash, the windows crunching into a million tiny bits and the hood crumpling in and the engine letting up, finally, a big groan into nothing, but the water still spraying up and wide, less murky now that it was finished clearing out the old silty pipes in the neighborhood and pushing in fresh clean water, spraying all over the upside down car, all over the street, the curb, like the car, car half on the curb, half in the street, Brad pinned between the wheel and the seat and the roof of the car but able eventually to wrench himself out through the busted-out window, on his back, coming out like a baby covered in glass and blood and just staring at the water coming up and spraying out everywhere while the radio kept playing, louder than almost everything else except for the water spraying out and splashing down, louder than Brad muttering “shit, goddamn," over and over again, louder than him just muttering the same thing over and over again, wondering when the cops would come, whether anyone would call them, whether he would have to call them, wondering what would happen if they came, what would happen if they never came, all kinds of shit, over and over again, the same shit just over and over again in his head.

NO THANK YOU by Mike Corrao

September 9, 2018

becomingplateaubecomingmachinebecomingplacebecomingbodybecomingbirdsongbecomingdirectionbecomingstasisbecomingmattressbecomingthinbecomingessencebecomingmaterialbecomingpersonbecomingurnbecominganimal (or No Thank You)

There are a thousand plateaus spanning across this plane. Each occupied by strange machines eating each other, who stare at the remains for as long as they can bear to. “What kind of fucking place” is this: somewhere locked within itself.

A body that crawls out of stasis, so tired of its previous immobility that it stretches out in every direction until it is so thin that it cannot see itself. It feels like there is a jackhammer at the face of my chestplate. And it’s telling me that I’m late for whatever I’m supposed to be doing / that I’m supposed to have done by now (jesus christ).

What kind of person finds themself in a place like this, where the sky is made out of static and echoing birdsongs. But this is not the point (there is a reason) (geographical purpose)

yy told me that ff used to live under a stranger’s mattress. I couldn’t imagine occupying a space like that, or spreading myself out so thin as to disappear from myself. (I want to materialize)

which means finding myself in a space. Wolf-man locked in the urn-shape (stasis again) (unmaterialized)

It feels like the echoes are crawling out of my bones (unmaterialized)

How should a person be? (materialized) (unmaterialized)

Someone caught in the act of becoming (materialized) (materialized)

then caught in the act of fully forming, then caught in the act of watching the essence fall out of their head like liquid. And then they don’t seem like Someone anymore (unmaterialized) (becoming)

Their head looks hollow and weightless, it floats over their body. (I want to materialize)

but I’m lost in the midst of these plateaus, lingering under cannibalizing mechanisms and gears soaked in blood and oil. I don’t feel like I contain anything anymore, more like I am a part of the contents, and our coagulation forms something unstable and loud (materialized)

I’m worried that I can be heard and found (not hiding)

but incapable if I wanted to hide / when I need to start hiding (because there is always a reason to be disappeared)

No sun / No moon / No sky / No ground / No way to orient myself

Sounds so deafeningly loud (how should a person be)

physically speaking, should I be made organismally, or would you allow me to build myself out of new parts? Could a larger Someone remain stable for longer? (materialized) (unmaterialized) (return)

This will be a fleeting shape, that reveals itself in my death throes. Form me out of the sea foam and watch as the air slowly returns into the atmosphere, bear witness, examine what this container is made out of (materialized)

THE LOBSTER by Benjamin DeVos

September 7, 2018

I clock in at Pirate Cove and try to find a good place to hide.

I stay in the bathroom as long as possible.

Until my boss barges into the stall and tells me to get my ass in gear.

The shift’s starting.

The first table is always the worst because I’m not ready to act like a pirate.

I’m never ready to act like a pirate.

My first table is a father with his daughter.

“We are ready to order,” the father says.

“I want to get the best of the best.”

He’s young, but his hair is already starting to gray.

He’s wearing khaki pants with a shirt that has sweat stains forming on the armpits.

I want his life, to have something worth stressing for.

He orders lobster for himself and his daughter.

I write down his order on a pad of paper then stop.

“Arr sorry me matey,” I say. “There’s been no lobster for a wee fortnight.”

And I know this because we only get lobster at the beginning of the month.

Sometimes I serve the scraps from the back of the freezer, but I don’t want to ruin this family’s day.

“Lobster is our favorite,” he says, looking at his daughter.

“We’re out, me hearty,” I say, watching the daughter sink with disappointment.

“Darn,” he says, looking at the menu with intense focus.

“My apologies, wee lass,” I say, hobbling on my wooden peg leg to gain sympathy.

I imagine the man and me on a pirate ship together, and the man unable to cope with disappointing his daughter, jumping overboard with an anchor strapped to his waist, letting the weight carry him down until he sinks to the bottom of the ocean.

He’s still looking at the menu.

He says, “Well how about the crab, I bet that’d be as good,” trying to convince himself and his daughter.

He hands me their menus with a smile on his face.

“This meal should be excellent; we are a seafood-loving family.”

I want to tell him about the quality of the food, how most of it is frozen and reheated.

I don’t tell him about all of the complaints we get, how much food gets sent back for being sub-par.

Because he’s doing his best to give his daughter a great meal and I respect that.

“We love lobster,” he says looking at his daughter, “So we’ll come in next time it’s available.”

“Crab is good,” I say, taking the menus from him.

“It’s the best,” he says.

I say, “Lobster freaks me out; they’re like, the cockroaches of the sea. Every time I go to the beach, I try to avoid the lobsters.”

The father takes a long gulp of water.

“Yeah, we like our lobsters. They’re so delicious. It doesn’t matter what they look like; they’re good eating.”

“But they’re undeniably freaky looking,” I say, “Just like so weird.”

“Sure, but what animal isn’t weird when you truly think about it.”

He rubs his brow and looks at his daughter, whose posture is wilting like a dehydrated puppy.

“Well, monkeys look pretty normal,” I say, scratching the hairy area between my two pectoral muscles.

“True, they kind of look like people,” he says.

“Well, evolutionarily they are people,” I say, “They just haven’t become them yet.”

“We’re Christian,” he says.

“Oh, cool,” I say, “Does that mean you don’t believe people originated from monkeys?”

He says, “We believe people were born from Adam and Eve, and that humans have always existed.”

I cough.

I say, “I wonder if the first people were freaked out by all the different animals. Like they probably saw lobsters and were like, whoa, what are those things?”

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Probably,” I say. “And crab is pretty close to lobster, but they’re more like the spiders of the sea.”

I think about the man going to church and bowing down to a bloody cross on the wall, holding his palms together in a praying position, lifting them toward the ceiling and shouting something about how God has not provided enough lobsters, begging, pleading, for more lobsters to be born so that he and his daughter can eat them, rip them apart limb by limb, chewing on their flesh for sustenance, knowing that the Bible says that man has dominion over all creatures, so he can do whatever the fuck he wants, killing and consuming, tearing them apart with his teeth.

“Yeah, well we’re really hungry,” he says, sending a covert message with his eyes that he wants me to leave them alone.

I take a few steps backward before turning and wobbling on my prosthetic toward the kitchen.

The chef once told me that I take too long to bring him orders and that the customers become annoyed if they have to wait too long for their food.

I imagine myself with lobster claws for hands, pinching the chef’s jacket, and telling him that we all have to wait our turn in this life.

It feels good to be assertive.

I take a smoke break even though I don’t smoke.

I stand outside and let the wind hit me in the face.

Maybe I need to start smoking cigarettes again so that I can relax.

I used to smoke cigarettes with my older sister when she was sixteen and I was nine.

She would come home from school to babysit me, and I would ask her for a smoke, and she would give it to me.

It was fun.

Not the best, but still fun.

Just me and my big sis smoking.

The two of us would sit on the front porch in old rocking chairs looking at each other and rocking back and forth, with smiles on our faces and cigarettes between our lips.

For five minutes at least.

Then no more smiles.

Which is how I feel when I’m serving a table.

Five minutes, then no more smiles.

Just doing my job.

After serving my table their crab, which was just chunks of imitation meat over unseasoned pasta, I go over to the busser’s station to fold napkins.

I fold napkins whenever service is slow.

It’s my favorite thing to do at the restaurant.

I fold the napkins to be shaped like pyramids and place them in a row.

Sometimes I try new shapes, like a lotus, or a star.

I can do a swan, but it takes a lot of time, and I can only do one before continuing my pyramids.

I imagine starting a business with the sole purpose of folding napkins like origami and selling them back to restaurants for ten times the price of the actual napkin.

I examine the pyramid-shaped napkin and each unique fold that brings it together.

I feel like more of an architect than an artist.

I picture myself with a construction helmet on, watching as a group of laborers erect a giant pyramid out of a million napkins.

I think about the customer who will eventually use the pyramid napkin, and how enjoying the intricacies for more than a moment would be impossible, because the rules of society state that one must unfold the napkin, flatten it, then place it on one’s lap.

And how the flattening, the disassembly of the folds, is just another example of how humans destroy everything that they come in contact with.

Folding napkins helps me understand the world, makes me feel better about all of the destruction I’ve caused in my own life.

I look around at the customers in the restaurant and think about how in the end, we’re all the same.

We’re the destroyers.

My boss comes up to me from behind and says, “The little girl at your table just asked me why we’re out of lobster. We have too much lobster as it is. God, you are such a dipshit.”

MINOR GRIEVANCES by Christopher Gonzalez

September 5, 2018

Adam tells me no one else will be by the water after such a bad snowfall. Edgewater Park should be deserted: just us and the lake, frozen into solid hills. It would be quiet, which I preferred—I kept quiet about a lot. Like the Grindr app I downloaded onto my phone as soon as I turned eighteen. How I’ve scrolled down that wall of guys, those photos of abs and round bellies, and the few faces concealed beneath the bill of a trucker’s camouflage snapback. I’ve tap-tap-tap-tapped the flame icon on a number of profiles, hoping to create a breadcrumb trail to the man of my dreams.

At least today, it’s led me to Adam.

There are no other cars around, so Adam drives onto the beach, parks close to the water. “Maybe when we finish, we can climb the waves and walk across them all the way to Canada.” I don’t laugh but sense that I should. He squeezes the steering wheel. The entire ride up I hadn’t said a word. “Come on, that was funny,” he says. “Picture it: you, me, and Justin Trudeau, frolicking.”

“Sorry, sorry, I’m having a moment.” I point out the window. There is still some sunlight over the lake; I want to thaw out under its burning glow.

“Yeah, it’s beautiful, huh? Almost as pretty as you.” He moves his hand from the wheel to my thigh, begins sliding it closer to my crotch. I’ve been here many times before. All those Friday nights spent following Siri’s voice across Northeast Ohio, spider-webbing down back roads and alleyways, to meet some random guy in the black mouth of night.

I place my hand over Adam’s, try to absorb all of its heat in my palm. Then his mouth is on mine and I wince at his cold tongue. My lips crack and sting at the edges, and his beard scrapes too roughly along my chin—but these are minor grievances. I keep quiet and lean back in the passenger seat, familiarize myself with the sensation of his body pressed against mine.

The guys I connect with are always older, sometimes by decades. They’re white men, mean men, greedy men. They live in dark houses, keep to themselves. On occasion, they own a dog. They shoot guns and kill fish and salute the flag and pretend they fit into the idea of a nation that wants very little to do with them and nothing to do with me. And still I slide beneath these men, risk disappearing altogether. Perhaps I’m already gone.

Neither Adam nor I make any sounds of pleasure, then it ends.

After, we walk along the edge of the lake where the ice meets untouched snow. He climbs onto the lake and reaches down to help me up. It’s eerie—the waves are so still. I can almost hear them crashing into one another, can’t stop imagining all that movement, exactly as they should be.

BUTTLOAD by Caleb Echterling

August 30, 2018

The king’s chief of staff flipped the display numbers. The occupants of the blandest room in the kingdom clutched their flimsy tickets, and sucked in a collective breath. Trumpets flared, and a crier bellowed, “Petition the King Day, now serving A377.”

A group of well-dressed, barefoot gentlemen rose to their feet. “That’s us, move aside,” they said as they elbowed through the crowd into the throne room. “Your majesty, we are representatives of the Cloth-Sellers Guild. Look!” They each thrust one bare foot into the air. “We all have different sized feet.”

King Rupert stroked his beard. “I’m afraid the absolute powers of the monarchy do not extend to ordering my subjects’ feet to grow. If you wish, I could take a page from Solomon and trim the excess from the biggest ones, although I do not see what that would accomplish.”

Guild members hopped about on one foot to let King Rupert take in the true scale of the difficulty before him. “Sire, perhaps we should explain the problem in more detail. You see, we sell our wares by the foot, which we measure by removing our shoes. Some of our less scrupulous competitors are hiring short-appendaged apprentices to cheat the public. Our guild is getting a bad reputation.”

King Rupert nodded. “What you require is a standard measure. The one perfect foot, so that all across the kingdom, there is no question what is meant by ‘a foot’. I, of course, nominate my own foot. Clerk, make it so.”

Workers scurried to the throne, built a form around Rupert’s foot, and took a plaster cast. Copies of the cast were distributed to the Cloth-Sellers’ Guild, and sent to each corner of the kingdom. Guild members showered praise on the king, and rained kisses upon his royal appendages.

Trumpets flared, and a crier bellowed, “Petition the King Day, now serving D183.”

A group of gentlemen with pants around their ankles entered the throne room. “Your majesty, our butts are all different sizes.”

King Rupert covered his eyes. A wince rolled through the royal court like the wave at a football match. “If it’s any consolation, they are all equally hairy.”

“A thousand pardons, your majesty. Allow me to explain. We are from the Banana-Sellers Guild. According to local custom, our wares are sold by the buttload. A few unscrupulous banana sellers are hiring small-bottomed apprentices to swindle the public. We ask the royal court to order all small-bottomed purveyors of the banana trade put to death immediately.” The Banana-Sellers Guild, as if executing a choreographed dance number after hours of practice, all scratched their respective right cheeks.

“What’s wrong with selling bananas by the hogshead?” a royal courtier asked.

A representative of the Banana-Sellers Guild swished his hand about. “Hogsheads? We live in a modern, cosmopolitan kingdom, not some ignorant backwater. Now please kill all the banana merchants with small butts.”

King Rupert thumped the floor with his mace. The room fell silent. “If I may interject, what you need is a standardized measure. The one perfect butt, so that across the length and breadth of my kingdom, there is no confusion about the quantity conveyed by ‘a buttload’. I, of course, nominate my own butt.”

Workers scurried to the throne, built a larger frame, and submerged King Rupert’s hindquarters into wet plaster. The cast of the royal butt was, with much fanfare, distributed to all corners of the kingdom.

Trumpets flared, and a crier called the next number. A group cupping piles of excrement in their hands entered the throne room. “Your majesty, we are the Useless Junk Merchants, and our poops are all different sizes. It’s complete chaos. No one knows how big a crapload is.”