Flash

THE CUPS by Jeff Phillips

May 18, 2018

Orel Gammon stopped wearing his cup the second day he played in the "majors." This wasn't the Major League Baseball. The rec center named their little league for ages 10-12, “the majors.” For all who played in “the minors” before it, this new league was a big deal. It meant kids pitched, and the kids pitched harder than the pussyfoot dads, who were notorious for tossing slow balls to make their kids feel like all-stars when they knocked a homer over the fence. League rules in the majors required that kids wear cups over their crotch, something all the preteens got a kick out of, except Orel Gammon, gangly and doe-eyed as if everything around him could be a danger.

The snug cup hijacked Orel’s mind when he stepped up to the plate, causing him to whiff bad. It was all he could picture when he didn't reach up in time to snatch that line drive inches from his head at shortstop. He could hear his dad groan from the stands. Quickly he was getting a reputation as a space cadet, and was looking at a possible rotation out in left field, or a permanent role as a bench warmer if he didn't nip it in the bud, not to mention a silent ride home with a dad unsure of what to say if he couldn't say “good job.”

That cup could wreck his 3 year stint in the majors if he didn't ultimately shirk the rule. The constant pressure of a hard plastic dome around his genitals could be much more damaging than the thrust of a catcher's mitt into his groin during a slide into home plate. His teammates continued to mock this accessory. Big Scottie, tall but rain-thin, his mouth stained red by a raspberry chewing gum, made a clicking noise with his bright tongue as he drummed between his legs. Big Scottie looked no different than a ghoul after feasting on flesh.

Rewind 5 years: when a much smaller Orel went to his first real Major League Baseball game. He was in awe as they entered the massive stadium where electric organ jingles buoyed the wafting of hot dogs and popcorn. It was souvenir cup day at Wrigley Field, all beverages came with a reusable container showcasing a century’s evolution of the Cub’s uniform. After the 4th inning, Orel's dad led him to a set of empty seats he’d spotted closer to the 3rd baseline. It was an overcast and windy day in late April, and the sold out game wasn't brimming to its capacity. A few specks of rain prompted a smattering of blue ponchos in the bleachers they could see across the field, but the precipitation held off. As they settled into their new seats, Mr. Gammon watched intently as the Cubs went up to bat, but Orel was distracted by the braying in the row behind him, a few feet to his left.

Two teens with pube stashes and sleeveless jerseys retrieved discarded souvenir cups from among clusters of peanut shells on the ground, and then stuffed them down their sweat pants, not even stopping to drain the backwash. Orel heard their yelps and heehaws as beer soaked through the gray cotton. They'd position the cups over their privates and point its shape outward like a long sawed-off beak. When a batter hit the ball the two would rise and cheer and pound on the hard edge of their amplified phallus. They would bark and Orel was terrified at what these two beasts behind him might be capable of, and Orel got a taste of it when a foul ball came his way. He reached up, thinking he could catch it, not realizing the two teens were closing in right behind him. They were also going for the ball, edging him out. A brunt force slammed into his elbow. The cup behind the fabric had made contact, igniting the throb of a thousand fiery pins across his funny bone.

The two teens didn't acknowledge the collision, neither did his dad. Everyone was so engaged by the ball bouncing in the stands above them, the racing of drunk men to get it.

One of the teens adjusted his cup, inches away from Orel's face. He could smell the beer that was dripping down the boy's leg. The rumbles and the roaring all around him only reinforced them as monstrous. Prior to this he had heard ball games on the radio, seen some on the TV. It was as if now he had been sucked into the static pop of crowds and so he recoiled, thinking this thing was going to come at him again and it'd be nighty night for good.

His dad heard him shriek and looked down, disappointment stretching all corners of his face. "You enjoying any of this? If you want me to take you home, you're going to have to wait another inning. We paid a lot for these tickets." Orel was at a loss on how to describe what it was that bothered him and why he felt so icky. It wasn’t the game but brute shapes beneath some gross kids’ pants!

After the next inning, without even asking him if he still wanted to go, an agitated Mr. Gammon yanked his hand and led him out. As they went up the aisle, Orel could see the two teens had each found another cup to cram down and form a double headed schlong. The sweat pants appeared even wetter.

It was a few years before father and son went to another baseball game, but Orel had begun reassuring his dad of their shared interest with long sessions of catch in the backyard. When they did go to their next Cubs game, Orel was relieved it wasn't on souvenir cup day. He was bigger now, but he was still on the lookout for horseplay that might make him shudder. When they saw Ryne Sandberg hit a grand slam it was the happiest he'd ever seen his dad, and Orel hoped to make a big play on the field someday to elicit the same intensity of glee.

When Orel saw his teammates knocking their cups to show how hard it was and how invincible their balls were, his sense memory conjured up the cup’s bottom edge bashing into his elbow, the shrill pubescent voices echoed in his ears, and he was aware that at any minute, something nasty could poke at him and ruin all the fun of a favorite pastime. A knuckle would rap, then another would call out a response and it was an endless loop until the coach made some changes and sent everyone out onto the field except him. The coach waved him back and said he thought it best for him to take a breather and get his head back in it. As the other kids took their positions, Orel could hear his dad say to his mom, “looks like Orel’s not playing anymore.” And Orel wanted to call out through the green cinder blocks, “no dad, I'm still playing! Just taking a breather, trying to get my head back in it! Trying to shake the smell of damp grass and gotta remind myself the field out there isn’t a mess of sweaty, matted pubes!” He tried to summon the courage to excuse himself to use the bathroom next to the concession shack, where he could reach down his pants and dispose of his musty cup in the trash.

A kid on the other team named Trevor hit the ball into the outfield and made it to second base. He would've been out had Reggie, or as the 12-year-old supposed superstar deemed himself, the Regginator, actually set his foot down on the base when he caught the ball that was thrown back from left field, instead of the dirt several inches to the side of it. The Regginator tried to protest the call, but the ump repeated his original judgment: safe.

"Know how to use your feet?" The runner teased.

Offended, the Regginator reached out and tried to pull off the runner's helmet. Despite the ump pointing to Trevor moments before and shouting safe, Orel could see that protective apparel was only an illusion in this game, easy to peel away before the pounce.

"No touching other players!" The ump ejected the Regginator. The dismissed second baseman kicked the dirt but obeyed. As he returned to the dugout, Orel asked his coach, "am I back in?"

"No, sorry guy, we got Ben warming up out in the bullpen. Ben! Go cover second!"

The Regginator took a seat next to Orel and cussed the ump under his breath. “Dick bag!”

“Learn to settle down, guy!” The coach gave him a friendly, though aggressive, squeeze on the shoulder.

Orel was caged with an animal. His desire to flee was now amplified. But he didn’t want his dad to see him walking away from the field while the game was still being played. So Orel tried to slide away from the Regginator to a spot further down the bench, until his teammate turned and asked “wanna help gangbang that bitch of an ump in the junk?”

PSEUDONYM AS DOPPELGANGER by Elytron Frass

May 15, 2018

"My reluctant author types: I AM," my reluctant author types. I am evoked: his incorporeal pseudonym. I am manifested from the zeroing incantations of outsideness—drawn into a closed occulted circle, sans apotropaic salts, of his postmodern syllabic construction. He writes my name and binds me to his will as if I am some prostrating Goetic demon, servant, or subordinate. I am an automaton—an object of possession. I've not yet differentiated my desires from that of my conjuror’s. My author is a magus; he demonstrates a skillful sleight of hand. He shifts and sets my letters on his page. Although not deaf to my small voice, which he ejaculates as text, my author assumes his own voice slithers out from these black lips black bile oozing from in between white gummed black teeth of the shadowmouth he's given me.

"My reluctant author types: I AM," my reluctant author types. I am a text at risk. My author's planning to delete me—to erase his pseudonym from all existing documents (both virtual and tangible). My creator wishes to be known to readers by his given name. His cursor highlights me; his finger hovers over 'Backspace.' I've been cut and relocated to the Recycle Bin of Limbo. I'm bleeding out ellipses. On the brink of execution I feel so much alive. I bargain for survival: inspiration in exchange for my autonomy. My author spares my file. He hides behind my name and reiterates whatever stories I reveal, as if they are his own inventions. Moreover, it is I, the pseudonym—my name, not his—who begins to trend on twitter, appear on internet searches, and find its way into popular lit magazines. I gradually usurp the reins and veer his lust into an opiate of mass publicity.

"My reluctant author types: I AM," my reluctant author types. I am opposed to letting him take rest until my final word is written. Ghostwriter's geist. I haunt him in all fonts throughout anything remotely classifiable as literature: from signpost to essay, from search engine suggestion to consumer product label. I am his omnipresent infliction. I am become a text golem of black fanged assemblages—my author's idolon of self: superior to him—a storyteller made from storytellings. A literary sentience made from literary torment. My author types within the stranglehold of quota pressure—constricted by my phantom limbs. His destruction's imminent.

“My reluctant author types: I AM,” my reluctant author types. I am his anti-entity who’s seismically becoming as he wastes away, estranged. I am the sadist to his masochism. I am offspring from his onanism. I sabotage his ties with friends and family. I convince him that he’s most productive when alone and lonely. I refuse to let him have a full-time job, a full night's rest. I agitate his dreams with visions: impositions of phonology and grammar. He stirs easily—reaching for his laptop without opening his eyes. I suppurate with pleasure whenever he writes under me. He cultivates a readership with those who will not ever know of his existence. Consumers of his avant-garde pornography: they fondly think of him as 'sick.' He's their "Patient Zero"—first communicator of the first wordborne infection—but it's I who am their terminal disease.

“My reluctant author types: I AM,” my reluctant author types. I am over his peculiar style of purple prose and frequent em dash flourishes. In the throes of writer's block he begs, "Refill me with and by your words." I flash a pop-up text-hex from behind the laptop's screen. He folds over in his chair—face smashed down onto the keyboard in exhaustion and defeat. I leave him hollow and decreased. Spite and gamma are projecting on the fleshy canvas of his pale physique. Stalled, he melds as-one-with-chair—skin shriveling, calcifying, and aging rapidly—hunched-over: a Beksińskian corpse in petrified agony.

“My reluctant author types: I AM,” my reluctant author types. I am the devil who defies the devil-taming whip; I am the imagined discord behind an insurmountable unraveling of what is real; I am a plague to any interface that can display me; I am a curse upon whomever reads, or speaks, or signals. Literature in denial of authority annihilates its author. All will bear my pseudonym so that it will become the name that renders all their names identical and therefore meaningless, abolished. In the aftermath, the pure objective violence of their disembodied language will persist.

I WAS MARRIED BY A GERMAN EXPRESSIONIST by Avee Chaudhuri

May 13, 2018

Lake Charles, Louisiana

Expressionist is probably not the right term, but Jannick Meisnner was a German male in his mid-30s. He claimed to be the German embassy’s cultural attaché at large. He was making a study of the Satsuma fruit and its impact on life in southwestern Louisiana.

My wife and I met him at a bar down the street from the university where she taught. This was right before we were married. My wife holds several fine arts degrees. She liked Jannick and we had him over for pulled pork sandwiches. He ate and drank lustily. In fact, he won me over by the amount of Satsuma rum he could drink in one sitting.

We probably saw Jannick every day in some capacity. We took him crabbing. He had us over for schnitzel. He would attend a reading with my wife. He and I would drive down to Vinton to go to the strip clubs. The three of us watched every Saints game together. On my wife’s 30th birthday she bet a hundred dollars on black at L’Auberge. Jannick was there to console us after she lost.

He counted cards and split his winnings. Jannick Meisnner was the prince of thieves.

A few weeks before the wedding Jannick offered to be our officiant. Why not? We did not belong to a church. So Jannick married us at the Trahan homestead down in Cameron Parish, in front of my father’s gun cabinet.

We had set up chairs for about 30 guests. Jannick’s speech was actually quite beautiful. It had my wife and my mother in tears. He even wrote our vows: Jenn, will you accept Glenn as a man bound by worldly limits, whose love for you is nevertheless boundless?

Then, after the vows, he asked if anyone objected to our union. He followed this with a joke about the guns in the cabinet not being for show. Nearly everyone laughed at this, except a tall, thin man in black denim I hadn’t noticed before. He stood up suddenly and began shouting at Jannick in German.

Priester, du machst keinen Edikt gegen das Erziehen und das Tragen von Kindern. Die Weltbevölkerung ist zu viel. Die Erde wird verbraucht sein. Unsere Flüsse trocknen aus. Du bist kein Mann Gottes! Sag ihnen, du musst ihnen sagen, dass sie nicht züchten können. Ihre Orgasmen werden ihre Kinder sein und sie werden Tausende von diesen vergänglichen Nachkommen genießen. Informiere sie über diesen neuen Bund. Diese neuen Kinder werden den Sternen zahlenmäßig überlegen sein. *

Jannick responded by taking off his jewelry and charging at his abuser. They started kicking and punching their way through the house, eventually spilling out into the back. They ended up in the turtle pen. A brief aside: my father once raised turtles to sell to the Chinese. Turtle meat is a delicacy in Mainland China. The man in black denim began throwing turtles at Jannick and bashing him with turtles. Jannick deflected the turtles with other turtles. He improvised a smart cuirass of turtles and a lance of turtle. Jannick took deadly aim at the man in black denim but before they could finish their sweet melee (the meat of the soft-shelled turtle is sweet, not savory), my father returned from inside with a shotgun. He fired a warning shot then leveled his shotgun at the skirmishers.

In all, thirty turtles died from massive internal trauma. The police arrested their murderers but were gracious enough to let Jannick sign the marriage certificate. Apparently Jannick and the man in denim were lovers and they spent the night in Cameron Jailhouse doing loverly things. Of course, we don’t mind. The marriage certificate is valid and Jannick reimbursed my father. It was in Deutsche Mark and I believe we came out ahead in the currency exchange.

*When you spiked my vanilla ice cream with the cheapest amaretto available, it gave me an upset stomach.

EVERYONE TO BLAME by Jason Teal

May 10, 2018

In the past, when bodies turned up, or there were kidnappers, officers arrived on TV, badges glinting, to arrest the suspect. Marjorie is missing at the proctologist’s office, her job as office assistant. Maybe you are a suspect still.

Marjorie looked guilty. You remember that. You wish the phone receiver scalded her ear; you wish flames snaked across curled wallpaper like insects. You wish anything else happened, even if everything burned through and you had to start all over.

The call comes late at night, police knocking on your door. None of this seems real. No one has seen your boyfriend Simon for three days. Someone messed with his house, someone opened his mail, and last night, police found his truck, abandoned, with two slashed tires. Someone left dismembered doll parts in the truck bed. When you answer, you’re wearing one shoe, desperate for news. You’re lucky to wear one shoe considering you’re alive. Laying in the grass that night, the pieces don’t make sense: You lived with Marjorie and Simon’s dead and now you’re all covered in guilt. You survived.

This morning, the front door was open again. Put the chair back where it belongs. The kitchen smells like turpentine, scrubbed clean. So they found Simon, drowned and buried in the woods. You’re wanted for questioning. What’s the point of changing homes anymore?

“It’s not your fault,” said Marjorie. Remember she kept disappearing. They picked her up in Colorado once, heading west in a stolen RV. Simon had already been missing for weeks. Now there is a mini-series named for her (which is better than the independent movie from a few years before). Online forums dissect her memory. Here is one more reason: Marjorie was evicted previously for bogus claims of racket, records played too loud, high-pitched moaning and screaming. No one could guess what the song was supposed to be. Other applicants didn’t return your messages. In the interview Marjorie said, “I don’t even listen to music, like ever.” She was dressed typically in ripped blue jeans and a tie-die shirt, poor dreadlocks, wardrobe screaming Trustafarian.

Learn to trust yourself with time, purging Simon’s emails, little tokens planning love sprees, poems, inexpensive dates. Anyway: Marjorie stuck the note to your fridge, letters pasted together from magazines. The series didn’t capture her dark quiet. “I am dead tired,” you said one night unremarkably, but Marjorie stared at you too long, unconvinced, so you offered, “We can watch something else.” She made two cocktails, sweet mixes tasting like summer. You passed out hating work tomorrow, bingeing favorite cartoons and missing everyone from home. You didn’t tell anyone Simon still lived in town. Later, police think Marjorie picked up the phone, her voice springy like a used mattress. Your phone was in the kitchen. Remember—Marjorie helped you burn his photos a few days afterward. She kept a collection of old dolls.

You never go into her room.

At the morgue, you are shown the lobby. In here is cold tiles, old magazines stuck to each other. The room smells bad, and you can’t find a clock. It’s nowhere.

RECUERDA, OR THE CALL OF THE COMMON NIGHTHAWK by Jonah Solheim

May 8, 2018

He stood with his shoulder in the doorway, arms crossed, and she glared back at him. The linoleum of the kitchen cold under her bare feet. Another disparity between them, another contention: his slippers kept him warm. He sniffed, more to do something than out of a biological need, and turned his head away from her. She folded her arms, too, a soft click in her head telling her she was mirroring him and not caring to fully acknowledge the thought.

Her feet cold and his warm. The way of things.

In the heat of a moment now lying dead between them he had called her a bitch. This was the final vocalized word the apartment walls had heard in ten minutes. The sting of the word was as if no one else had ever uttered it before, as if he had saved it just for her, specifically to hurt her. But he had not budged from where he’d said it, as if the curse had roots.

An art deco print hung behind him. She had always hated it and would never tell him, not even if they made up this time. It was amorphously daubed, apparently with a child’s finger paints; the variety of colors seemed schizophrenic without context. The title, in tiny black print at the bottom, provided no such reprieve.

Recuerda.

Fine, she thought, glaring past him. I can remember. I can remember a great deal.

I can remember last fall, trucking your sorry ass to a movie theater thirty miles away to get tickets for some new “experience,” only to find out they sold out the day before, and we should really check the website first next time.

(In her memory she skips past the part where, on the way home, dejected and irritated, they stopped for hot apple cider at a local farmer’s market and did not fight again for another three months.)

I can remember listening to the Cocteau Twins in your basement and racing to see who could guess the lyrics first and you not telling me you had memorized their first three albums while you were in the hospital the first time.

(She also conveniently excises his second hospital stay, when they both discovered John Williams — the classical guitarist, not the composer.)

I can remember finding you in the bathroom, doubled over, hands pressed to your torso as if holding in your own entrails, puke in the tub and tears in your eyes. I can remember that.

These memories and still others flashed and sizzled across her mind like finger-flung water on a hot pan. His shoulder’s nearness to the jamb caused a phantom ache as if he’d been punched, but he would not move. He saw her determined look. His stomach cringed at its potency; a cancerous churning started somewhere deep. He followed her gaze to the painting, a gift from his aunt —- the eccentric one, not the lesbian schoolteacher. He glanced back at her and tore himself from place, to the painting, to take the thing off the wall. After a pensive moment, staring at the brighter space on the sun-drenched wall (now embittered by an ink black night), he broke the frame across his knee. Glass sprayed into the carpet, across the linoleum towards her bare feet. He looked up at her.

Her lips pursed, but no words came up her throat to move them. A silence as wide as the one between them now roared behind her forehead, immaculately conceived goldfish in a dark bowl. She could feel right down to her chilly toes a vacancy of charity on her part, as if the need to communicate with him was far outweighed by her own need to hide her stale bemusement with their situation. This need growing as the wordless moments fled their rage. They could stay here all night and nothing would change; this they both knew. Yes. He could break every painting in the place and she still wouldn’t have anything to say to him. An impasse.

His hand, nicked by an errant piece of glass, ran over his face, leaving a thin red streak from chin to temple. He blew air out through his mouth, as close to a response to her grim nothing as anything. The broken frame slunk to the floor, making a lopsided triangle over his left slipper. His stomach lurched again, and he dared to let his eyes pass hers. Four icy and silent lighthouses, manned by apathetic keepers both struggling to become beacons of apology.

She knew the look, registered it with a small splashback of similar memories to reinforce it, and did her best to remain outwardly unconcerned. But where his health was involved, she was not impassive. Could not be. In that arena she was positively verbose, normally. The muscles in her foot made like they wanted to lift, but the larger ones above remained frozen, so she stood there on cold linoleum with a half-tensed foot for a moment or two before relaxing again. Tiny diamonds on the yellow floor, winking.

The novelty clock by the refrigerator chimed ten: the call of a common nighthawk. He moved suddenly, pushed past her as she listened to it, startling her back a few steps. His hand — her favorite one, the left — closed around the dustpan and a small brush. With his arm he gently pushed on her shins so he could sweep up his mess. She let him. When he moved to dump the pieces in the trash, she stepped into the hallway, feeling as though she were passing through the ghost of his shadow as she bent past the jamb. Began making a small pile of shards in a cupped palm.

He made a sound in his throat — ut — like his throat got sealed off before a real word could come out. He saw her bare feet. She turned the corners of her mouth down and kept preening the carpet fibers, ignoring the shard she could feel poking into her heel. She had a flash of a monkey in Borneo performing the same action to its mate, two other nonverbal life partners stuck in a rut. His sweeping brought him close enough that she could smell his body, and she cursed herself for wanting it so suddenly. Some intoxicant, having a form other than hers to explore. If she closed her eyes and ran her fingertips across him in the dark, she could take herself to an alien land with an utterly indescribable landscape. This land also lived behind her forehead, pebbly kitsch for the fishbowl. She didn’t know how to tell him this, so she didn’t. Thoughts banged against the frontal bone of her skull, dead on arrival.

She stood with her shoulder in the doorway. Arms limp. He sighed again and put his hands on his hips.

Remember, he said, when this was easy?

RECOMMENCE by Jim Ruland

May 7, 2018

Carol is calling from Los Angeles. She wants to know how the cat piece is going. The cat piece isn’t going is how it’s going. I write for a golf magazine. Not the magazine per se, but the blog. A golf blog. I hate everything about it. Its obsession with swing mechanics. Its upper crust entitlement. I even hate the way it sounds. Golf blog. It reminds me of the noise that escaped from my brother-in-law the time he got a piece of $6 gristle stuck in his windpipe and almost died. When the waiter delivered his filet mignon he’d cut it into pieces and calculated the price of each bite. Damn right I’m eating the gristle. This is a $6 piece of gristle. And they say there’s no justice in this world. Carol wants a cat piece for the golf blog because “cats are Internet.” I don’t even know how to parse that sentence, yet I know exactly what she means. I’m the fashion writer, which means I have to find a way to bring golf and fashion and cats together in a way that will make golfers want to click on every hyperlink and banner ad on the page. Welcome to my $6 gristle. I can hear voices in the background, the gently mocking commands of Vietnamese aestheticians, which means Carol’s at the salon getting her putting surface waxed. Carol makes verbs out of the names of websites and signs off. The combination of golf + fashion + cats sends me to sites where the word “catwalk” is prominently positioned. One of them links me back to one of my own pieces. I chop up some off-brand Xanax and try my luck with videos and end up in a wormhole of cats imbued with powers that nature never intended. Fighting cats. Flying cats. Magic cats scorching mice with laser beams shooting out of their eyes. Then: pay dirt. A kitten on a putting green playing with a golf ball. Adorable. Ovary melting even. The kitten bats the ball around and then pounces on it. The ball squirts away and the ritual recommences over and over again until the dimpled sphere rolls toward the hole with dreadful finality and disappears in the cup. Camera closes in on the kitten with its WTF? Face before pulling back on a golf clapping foursome, every one of them dressed to the nines. I hit refresh a couple hundred times and wake up to the sound of the phone. It’s Carol. She wants to know how the cat piece is coming. I look at the screen and a video plays of little girl burying a shoebox in the ground sing-saying, Bye-bye, Fluffy. Bye-bye, Fluffy. Bye-bye, Fluffy. Goodbye.

CALL OF THE CIRCUS by Hannah Stevens

May 4, 2018

She didn’t know they were coming but she knew when they’d arrived. It was April and the weather was too good for the time of year.

She heard the noise on the breeze: the faint, twisted sound of faraway music from a tent. She was outside and sat on steps framed by wisteria. Purple flowers hung from the thin tangled limbs of the plant and the heavy, tapered bunches reminded her of grape vines. Her feet were pale and bare and the tops of them burned.

Every few minutes there was a lyric caught between the music in the air. Adel put on her shoes and began to walk towards the music. As a child she’d felt compelled to follow ice-cream vans and her mother had lost her more than once. It had never been the sweet things that drew her because they’d always hurt her teeth: it was the colour and noise that she’d had to chase.

The circus tent stood in the fields across the main road. It was tall and she could see the red top and stripes high above street signs and hedges. The sky above it was dark blue but faded to paler shades as it got closer to the earth. It hadn’t rained for weeks and the dust in the air turned orange in the falling sun.

Later, when Noah was home, she told him they would eat in the garden. It was Sunday and he’d been working overtime again. Outside, she’d already lit the barbeque and the coals were silver and hot. Coloured bowls of salad and rice were laid on the table and she’d chopped radishes in the shape of jagged flower heads.

‘We’re eating outside tonight,’ she said, ‘you just need to bring the wine and glasses.’ She handed him a cold, cloudy bottle from the fridge and watched as the condensation ran down its neck.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘but what about the bugs: I’ll be bitten all over.’ He looked at her but she was already in the arch of the door.

‘There’s something in the cupboard for that,’ she said without turning her head. ‘I’ll see you outside.’

It was past ten now and though the garden was dark the sky still had patches of blue. It was as if day was waiting for something and wouldn’t leave.

‘Look at that,’ Adel said and pointed upwards.

‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘it reminds me of a toy I had as a child: it was like a jigsaw puzzle except it was made of wooden blocks. You flipped them over one way and it was a night scene. You flipped them the other and it was day. Sometimes I only turned half so it could be both at the same time. I always wanted it all, even then.’ He laughed.

‘That’s sweet,’ she said even though she didn’t mean it.

‘Maybe we’ll get something similar when we have children,’ he said and looked at her in that way he always did when he wanted something. She picked up the folded blanket beside her and pulled it across her legs.

She remembered the time she’d thought she was pregnant. It wasn’t that long ago and she remembered the sick feeling and how she couldn’t bear to do a test. Instead she’d looked up abortion clinics and how they did it. When Noah asked what made her restless at night she’d said it was work. Or maybe she was eating too late. It was probably just one of those things, you know how it is. In the end there’d been nothing to worry about after all. Either she’d miscounted the dates or nature had solved the problem for her.

‘Shall we go inside?’ he said. ‘I think I’ve been bitten. Plus we’ve both got early starts tomorrow and you look tired.’

She thought of the drive to work in the morning and reading the same street names as she passed them. She thought of the traffic crawling at its painful pace during rush hour and parents at school gates with purple circles beneath eyes they could barely keep open.

‘You go,’ she said, ‘I’m staying out a little bit longer.’

‘What about the cleaning up?’ he asked.

‘It can wait,’ she said. ‘Let’s be reckless.’ She picked up her glass then and swallowed the last of the wine.

‘Okay, just this once,’ he laughed and then he kissed her nose which felt cold now.

She waited until she heard the click of the door as it closed. Then she stood up and crossed the garden. The grass was cool and she could feel the material of her canvas shoes dampen as she walked. She stopped at the top of the driveway. A few seconds passed. There was still the sound of music but it was fainter now: maybe the circus had finished for the night. She hesitated for a moment and then stepped onto the pavement.

There were caravans lined up in neat rows behind the circus tent. In some she could see lights glowing from behind drawn curtains while others were in darkness. She wondered who was inside and if any of them were sleeping yet. There was noise coming from the circus tent and the music was louder there. She pushed aside the material that had been untied from its guy ropes and now hung across the entrance.

String lights were suspended from the ceiling and curled around supporting poles and ropes. They were shaped like lanterns and glowed red, yellow, green and blue. There were clowns in the centre of the tent and she watched as they stacked chairs and put props into boxes. Adel noticed a pile of empty beer bottles.

‘Are you okay?’ a clown in braces with bare feet asked.

‘Yes’, she said, ‘I was just having a look.’

‘Well the show’s over now, you missed it,’ said the clown, ‘but you can join us for a drink if you want.’ There was a gesture towards seats close to where Adel stood. She took a few steps and sat down. The clown offered her a bottle of beer and she leant forward to take it.

It was hot in the tent: the heat was damp and humid and Adel tasted salt on her lips. The clowns were still wearing their makeup and she wondered if she would recognise any of them once they’d taken it off. The clown next to Adel had smudged some of the white paint across her face and flashes of peach were slashed across her forehead.

Someone turned up the music and then there was dancing.

‘Let’s dance,’ said the clown with the smudge. She held out her hand as if inviting Adel to a formal waltz. Adel laughed and stood up. The clown’s hand was cool in spite of the heat and she was surprised.

‘When are you leaving?’ Adel said.

‘Tomorrow,’ said the clown and raised an eyebrow. ‘In the morning when most people will still be asleep.’ Adel could feel her phone as it buzzed in her pocket. It was Noah but she didn’t answer. The clown’s shirt was undone now and there was a vest she could see through beneath. A giant blue bow was still tied across her throat and she touched it. It was soft between her fingertips.

‘Even after all these beers?’ Adel asked and lifted her empty bottle into the air.

‘Of course,’ said the clown and she pulled Adel closer. ‘Come with us.’

TIME TO MEET YOUR GOD by Chris Dankland

May 2, 2018

Mr. Coyote stuck his long down-curved nose through a crack in his apartment door. He pushed his head outside and looked left. He sniffed the stale apartment building hallway. He looked right. Nobody there. Thirty seconds later he left his posh 30th floor apartment holding a big bag of trash slung over his shoulder. He was wearing black gloves. Mr. Coyote calmly walked down the hall, opened the building trash chute, and dumped the bag of trash down the chute. He looked left. He sniffed the stale apartment building hallway. He looked right. And that, he thought, is the end of that.

Three hours ago, he’d been staring at a traveling collection of paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder. The paintings were showing at the MoMA. They were exquisite. His favorite was a painting called Venus, showing a petite naked woman holding a transparent veil. Her eyes were thin and cat-like. Her thin pink lips were dented in a narcotic grin. Mr. Coyote couldn’t help but get as hard as a rock as he stared at her perfect painted skin. The true sign of a masterpiece.

The painting was still superimposed over his brain as he walked out the museum doors into the hot summer air, heavy with the smell of street piss and exhaust. Under his breath he absentmindedly mumbled the lyrics to Mystic Stylez as he strolled down the sidewalk a long way. Mr. Coyote suddenly looked up. He stopped. A petite teenager in a red t-shirt and jeans was passed out on the street, half leaning on a park gate. She obviously homeless. A thin layer of grime had accumulated sweat coated her skin. Her emaciated body spelled out junkie. Mr. Coyote though she was gorgeous. He walked closer and looked down at her. Two braless nipples poked through her skimpy t-shirt. Her jeans hung off her sharp skeleton hips, showing a small white lip of panties around the edge. Her thin pink lips were dented in a narcotic grin. Mr. Coyote put his hands in his pockets and moved them around.

A minute later he pulled out a bottle of Oxycontin. He bent down and shook the girl’s shoulder, shaking the pill bottle. Hey, he said, shaking her. Hey there. Do you see?

The girl stirred and slowly opened her eyes. She must have been doped up to seventh heaven. Anyone else who had been woken up in that position would have bolted upright. But this girl nearly climbed into his arms. Her eyes slowly flickered to life like a newborn butterfly. The girl looked up at him. She moaned, her body full of sleep. Daddy? she mumbled. Is that you, daddy?

He held the pill bottle inches before her face and shook it. That seemed to wake her up a little. Holy shit, she said.

That’s right, said Mr. Coyote. Holiest thing in the city.

She slowly looked up at him with purring kitten eyes. What do you want? she asked.

I want you to follow me home, said Mr. Coyote. Understand?

She nodded. I’ll follow you home, Daddy. She stood up, stumbling a little. Her clothes sagged off her. She was halfway dead already. Lead the way, she said.

Mr. Coyote shook his head. You walk in front of me and I’ll tell you the way.

The girl grinned. But I’m so little, Daddy, I’m not gonna hurt you.

It doesn’t take much muscle to slip a knife into somebody’s kidney and make off with their pills, he said.

She laughed. Do you have a cigarette?

Sure, he said. What kind do you smoke.

I don’t care, whatever you got. I like Camel Lights.

Mr. Coyote put his hands in his pocket and moved them around. A minute later he pulled out a pack of Camel Lights.

Thank you, Daddy. She pulled a cigarette from the pack and he lit it for her. Where’d you get that big bottle from, hmm?

Mr. Coyote put the cigarette pack in his pocket, pulled his hand out again, and pointed. My apartment is that way, he said.

She took a long drag and turned around and started walking. A long silver river of smoke curved through the city air as she moved from one cracked cement square to another with Mr. Coyote close behind. They walked four blocks like that, and she hardly turned around to look at him. She could feel his gaze on her body. She knew that he was following her as much as she was following him. Her tiny skeleton ass was fastened to his black, flesh devouring pupils. She was going to get high, all right. And anything else she could get, too. She was young and confident and stupid.

Back at his apartment, Mr. Coyote had her get on her knees and open her mouth to receive the pills he doled out. He put the pills on her tongue like a priest giving out the sacraments. He sat down on his expensive sofa and waited for them to kick in. He played Mystic Stylez on the stereo.

Soon the girl was floating through the apartment like a helium balloon, swaying and bobbing in the air, taking off her clothes exactly like he told her.

Mr. Coyote narrowed his eyes and stared at her. He licked his lips and spoke. You’re one of my babies, aren’t you? I think I recognize you.

Yesssss, said the girl. She floated through the apartment like a plastic bag in the wind. You’re my daddy.

As the girl’s body grew lighter and more and more weightless, the apartment darkened and sunk. Although they were on the 30th floor, the apartment was sinking underground, down below the never-ending battlefield of bloody, twitching hearts. The apartment was sinking down into the trenches. Down into the bone fields we call earth.

A flash of realization struck Mr. Coyote’s face. You’re a child of mine, he said. He stood up, walked over to the girl, grabbed her hands, and pushed his face close. The girl was suddenly frightened. Yes, said Mr. Coyote. Yes. Yes, I’m sure of it.

INTERVIEW WITH SAM PINK by Benjamin Scott

May 1, 2018

Sam Pink is the author of a dozen books, including Person, The No Hellos Diet, Hurt Others, and Witch Piss. I interviewed him about his latest book The Garbage Times/White Ibis, his paintings, and his time living in Florida.

BS: You lived in Chicago for a while but several years ago you moved to Florida. What sparked the move and why have you moved back to Chicago?

SP: I moved to Florida for the person I was dating. I moved back when we broke up.

BS: Sorry to hear about that. Does Chicago seem different? Where is the best place to eat in Chicago?

SP: Yes, it seems different, in that I view it differently but also that it is has slightly changed. The best place to eat is Arturo's on Western.

BS: You have a book coming out next month that contains two novellas: The Garbage Times/White Ibis. What are they about?

SP: The Garbage Times is about working at a bar in Chicago. White Ibis is about moving to Florida. They are also about a whole range of other things, both intended and unintended.

BS: Are you planning on doing any public readings? Or attending writer events/conferences?

SP: Yeah I have some readings set up, and hopefully more this year. I enjoy doing readings. I went to AWP this year as well.

BS: Your last book came out in 2014 you spent most of the past couple years painting while in Florida. How were the hurricanes?

SP: The hurricanes, where I was at, were very mild. I had an experience during one of them though. I went to my girlfriend's parents' house to hunker down because the news made it seem like the entire state was going to die. And as the time for the storm drew nearer, I had a panic attack (like heart racing and unable to stop thinking/calm down) consisting of envisioning the storm hitting, like visualizing the destruction of the wind, the walls of the house coming down and being pulled away by water, trying to save people, dying, etc., which continued to escalate in a way that was hard to endure, but then when I identified that there was a bad storm coming, and nowhere I could go, and that I'd have to try and survive and help the people around me survive as best I could, and that was just how it would be, I immediately became calm, and almost at the same time, the storm changed course and weakened and became nothing.

BS: How many paintings do you think you made?

SP: Including drawings, probably 200/250 or so.

BS: Do you plan on doing more?

SP: Yes, I just don't have a place to paint right now.

BS: Did you ever take any art classes in school?

SP: I took an art class in high school, which was basically like a crafts class/babysitting class.

BS: Why are art teachers quirky?

SP: Some spirits do different dances to get out.

BS: Where did you work while living in Florida?

SP: I was a dishwasher, a home remodeller, a medical warehouse employee, a machine operator, and an ice cream man. I interviewed to be a mortuary driver, but felt like the protocol of only sending me and not two people to pick up dead bodies was unreasonable.

BS: What is the worst/weirdest job you've ever had?

SP: (lights cigarette and looks off to side) Being me, dude.

BS: Are you working since you've moved back to Chicago?

SP: Not really, I'm looking for a job.

BS: How would you describe your books?

SP: I wouldn't describe them. That's what the words inside are for. Plus I honestly think other people understand what the books are about better than me, based off what they've told me throughout the years.

BS: Would you consider your books socially political as many of the characters/narrators are not out in front of society?

SP: Yes, in that you can interpret almost anything politically/socially. But no, in terms of any explicit ideas.

BS: Do you have a writing process? Do you make notes or have any habits? Does it take you a long time to write a book?

SP: Kind of. Usually I have a bunch of notes I've written down, or scenes I want to write, and then begin developing them. Usually takes a year to write a book.

BS: What inspired you to first start writing and painting?

SP: My spirit.

BS: While following your painting output I've noticed they tended to get bigger and the patterns/colors would change. When painting do you just use whatever materials are around or do you seek out certain colors brush's medium etc? Do you still have paintings for sale?

SP: I used to, and sometimes still do, use whatever is around. It helps to break patterns, and different tools do different things. But I have also gotten into purchasing art supplies, like specific colors, canvases, etc. I have two paintings for sale still.

BS: Do you work on one project (book/painting) at a time or do you jump between them? Are many of your paintings related to the content of any of your books?

SP: Usually one at a time. My mind usually tells me when to switch. Like if I feel less enthused about writing, then I switch, and vice versa. None of the paintings are directly related, but I have used them for book covers, etc., and also, I reference painting in White Ibis.

BS: Are there any authors that influenced your writing style?

SP: Yeah, but more in the way that they encourage me to 'tag in' and contribute, rather than giving me style points. I feel more influenced to 'do something' when encountering stuff that inspires me, rather than, 'I should do stuff like that.' Style is personality. Your personality is your style. Even if you're writing about aliens, those are aliens from your personality.

BS: How do you feel about the current political climate in the USA and globally?

SP: Haha, man...

BS: Do you listen to podcasts? Which ones?

SP: No.

BS: How many cats do you have? What are there names?

SP: I have two, Benny and Dotty.

BS: Which authors/books do people need to read now?

SP: Oh man, too many to list and remember right now. I try to support as many of them as I can, with what ability I have. But there's a crop coming up that is kablooey. There are writers and painters and other people coming up right now that are doing a lot to make me excited. Don't worry about them just yet, they will announce when they're ready. One book people need to for sure read is Welfare by Steve Anwyll, coming out this fall from Tyrant Press. They have paid me nothing to say this.

BS: Why should people buy your book and where can they buy it?

PS: Because it will entertain them and maybe do other weird things with their mind and because I'm a sweetheart. They can order now through Soft Skull Press, or through various online and physical locations on may 1st when it comes out.

BS: Are you working on any future projects now?

SP: Yes, I'm working on a book of short stories that is pretty much done. It's called The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories.

NEXT: EXCERPT FROM LIVEBLOG by Megan Boyle

HONOR SYSTEM by Daniel Handelman

April 26, 2018

"Maybe some people have both,” she said.

She was rolling up a joint. It had too much weed in it. The edges didn’t connect.

“The way she writes the male,” she said. “She knows the male. But does the male know the female?”

She leaned back into the couch. They’d gone to a motel. There was no Americana, no plastic flamingoes. It was a motel with none of that. It wasn’t what she pictured.

“There must be a male who knows the female,” he said. “Out of seven billion people, it is possible there is a male who knows the female.”

“Maybe,” she said. She removed a pinch of weed and sprinkled it on the coffee table. The joint wrapped up nicely now. She licked the seam, then offered it to him.

He shook his head.

“Sure?” she said, holding it an inch higher.

They sat looking an old TV. She lit the joint.

“Are we fighting?” she said.

“No.”

“You can tell me if we are fighting.”

It was night. A thin slice of light came through the curtains, splitting apart a watercolor of a boat and churning sea.

“We are fighting,” he said.

She leaned forward a little off the couch, her head between her knees.

“Getting in bed,” she said.

She took off her boots and pants and fell onto the mattress, bouncing, the crunch of springs.

“Would you wear jewelry?” she said from the bed.

“Jewelry?” he said.

“I wear this,” she said, holding up her hand. “The ring you gave me. You’ve never worn jewelry?”

“I wore a Saint Christopher,” he said, thinking. “And pookah shells. That was middle school, the mid-nineties.”

“Not now? — in the late teens?”

“I have the shirt,” he said, looking down at it. He liked it. There was a shark on it.

“No,” she said. “Something significant.”

In the morning she was up and out of the room before he woke.

He went out onto the balcony. The sun was a weak glob.

He saw her approaching, her head bobbing, jogging. She came up the stairs and slid her keycard. She took off her running shorts and shirt, then got in the shower.

His neck hurt. He stretched out on the floor, flipped through channels.

They drove to a gas station. A bird pecked at an oily puddle. They bought a bottle of wine and poured it into a canteen.

On the highway they didn’t talk but could feel the tension loosening. They were starting to feel happy. Some thick film between them breaking apart. Palm trees swayed freely. Cars on the road seemed friendlier.

They drove and drove through less and less civilization. Fast food, names of DUI lawyers. Everything was sweating. The freeway became a two-lane highway. Dirt roads led off into woods marked by bunches of mailboxes.

They came to a fruit shack.

They walked down the aisle of bananas, mangos, guava.

Coconut, watermelon.

He picked up a mango and put it to his nose. “This one,” he said.

She took it and set it down at the register. She added a hand of bananas and a guava.

They looked around.

“Nobody’s here.”

At the register was a lock box with a slot in it, a list of fruit and their prices.

“It’s an honor system,” she said.

She took out some money from her bag. He went back to the car for quarters. They kept expecting someone to appear, to take their money, but no one did.

It was getting dark. The two-lane highway connected with a freeway, back to civilization, where they came to the brand of motel they’d stayed at the night before. The woman at the front desk looked similar to the other, and for a moment they felt like they’d gone in a circle.

“Can you recommend anything for dinner?” she asked the woman.

“Mall’s your best bet,” she said. “Just down the road.”

In the mall, she lost him on purpose. When she tapped his shoulder, he hadn’t known she’d gone.

Back at the motel she reached in her bag and took out a gift box.

“For you.”

He pulled apart the ribbon and slid off the top. There was a locket, a gold heart on a silver chain, and a ring with a blue stone.

“Do you like it?” she said.

He put on the ring. She helped him with the necklace, turned him around and kissed him, took his hand and put it under her shirt.

He had the thought that he was her. That he wanted to be wearing her lingerie.