Fiction

THE CONSULTATION by Zac Smith

So a vasectomy isn't actually reversible. I like to start off with that. Because for some guys that's all they need to hear before they decide they need some more time to think about it. I know people say that a vasectomy is reversible, but it's not. You really need to be done having kids if you're going to do this, because it's permanent. But I see you already have some kids so I'm less worried about that in this case. You have three, is that right? That's great. Makes sense you'd want a vasectomy. I have three kids, so I get it. I had three and thought woah there, that's enough of that! Time for a vasectomy! And did it myself. I mean, I didn't do it to myself, but you know what I mean. I got the procedure done myself. By my colleague Dr. Askildsen, actually. Although, to be fair, I could've probably done it to myself. I've done, well, yeah, let's see, I've done probably five hundred vasectomies now with no complications. Maybe one or two complications. Or at least no complications from anything I did, uh, well, not wrong, but, you know, most complications are due to the patient not resting properly or tending to the incision site correctly. Which is partly why we like to have consultations like this first and then schedule the vasectomy procedure itself for a later date – and we'll get into this more later – because there are some things that we like to go over before the actual procedure. But like I said I've had a pretty excellent record. I'm pretty good at vasectomies, basically. I feel confident that I could have done my own procedure, actually, if you want the truth. It's all I do at the clinic, really. And a successfully completed vasectomy has a ninety-nine point nine five percent chance efficacy rate at preventing pregnancy. That's effectively one hundred percent. I could probably do the vasectomy procedure blindfolded at this point, too, to be honest. And we'll get into this more later, but it only takes about an hour, usually less, from start to finish. So some days I do five or six vasectomies in a row, like that's just my whole day, maybe one consult, like this, in the morning, you know, and then I pick up the bulk of the procedures for Dr. Askildsen, usually. Some days it's just back to back procedures and I clock out. There isn't really a clock to punch, but you know what I mean, you know, but it is nice, like, if my schedule's empty after that I can just go home. But most days, yeah, it's like, one or two consultations, a couple vasectomies, lunch, then maybe three or four more vasectomies, then some paperwork. And it's all very smooth and predictable because I am very experienced. You've picked a good clinic to come to, basically, if you'd let me brag a bit, because I am proud of the work we do here. So I appreciate you coming in. Like I said, I could have done my own procedure, blindfolded, I imagine, too, with no complications. But the main goal of this consultation is to get you up to speed on what to expect. So, in a bit, with your permission – and we'll get into this more later – I'd like to take a look and have a feel to make sure everything's alright down there, and that you're aware of, sort of, like, what to expect, in terms of how the procedure goes and, like I said, like which parts of your body I may need to manually manipulate, what to expect in terms of pressure or discomfort, that kind of thing. It's all very straightforward, but I do find that it helps to walk through how it all works prior to the actual procedure. And I should say here that I wouldn't actually do it blindfolded, to you, or to anyone, or even myself, although I definitely could, I'm pretty sure. But legally speaking I probably shouldn't. Definitely couldn't do that. But I could easily do it.  Blindfolded, I mean. Or to myself. Both, really. I basically do it blind now, in a way. I mean, we'll get into this more later, but the whole procedure pretty much goes by feel. I'll take a look I guess to make sure there's nothing strange going on down there, you know, that might lead to a complication, like I said, and then I need to deliver the local anaesthetic, but then from there it's pretty much by feel. And I guess the first part is more like a formality, really, to make sure there isn't anything that could lead to an infection of the incision site, like I mentioned. That's generally what we mean by a complication: it's generally something that would pose a risk of infection or impede recovery which would make me not want to proceed. But you don't see that much out here in Weston. You get that more over in Wellsborough, in my experience. I imagine you're familiar with Wellsborough, with it being so close to Weston. Cute little town. But you get some people who really don't know how to take care of themselves. Which, and we'll get into this more later, is what a visual and physical inspection during a consultation helps identify. And usually I don't have to deal with this type of patient much here in Weston, but there's still a lot of ignorance, or discomfort, maybe, when it comes to the body, especially this region of the body, in general, like, for anyone, you know, anywhere in the country. You don't go out to a restaurant and ask people how their genitals are, you know? Which, again, can complicate the procedure. But I remember being surprised about what kind of problems people are just dealing with without realizing it, especially in Wellsborough. At my first clinic we saw some really interesting guys come in, is all I'll say, some guys who seemed to suffer this kind of terror of their own body, I guess is a good way to put it. Well, maybe that's not how others would put it, but it makes sense to me to put it that way. I don't want to go into this too much, but sometimes you can really get a sense of it when they come in. You start talking about things – and we'll get into this more later– you know, like scrotum and perineum, and they sort of recoil. I'd talk about semen, you know, and, really, yeah, the best I can describe it, really, is just terror. A deep fear. Very deep. So I call it terror. You would think it'd be more of like a disgust, or revulsion, maybe, or some kind of general discomfort, you know, because of the association with urine or excrement, but no, it's really just a sort of, well, shocked, fearful. I call it terror, really, that's the best way I can describe it. You start a consultation and then you really see it: terror. The physical nature of fear, really, of terror. You know, you can see it. They get a little pale, maybe they sweat a bit. It's very physical, really a drastic change, and very immediate. Some guys might shiver, even, I remember. But it's really in the eyes. Some guys, you know, most of these guys, their eyes start to get wide, and their pupils dilate. And they sort of, well, cower, I guess, too, in the chair, and I'm not doing anything else than what we're doing here, you and me, you know, just calmly talking about the procedure, talking about what I'll need to manipulate, how a vasectomy actually works, physically, you know, biologically. At the time, when it was happening, I would think they were just afraid of the procedure because they didn't understand it, you know, and this was back when we didn't have these consultations as much. They'd come for the procedure and immediately they start cowering on the table, and I assumed they were thinking it was more like castration, or something, you know, which I get, because there's a lot of ignorance out there, and I get how that would maybe scare you a bit. I mean, it doesn't make sense at all, really, if you think about it, but I don't know, I was trying to figure it out. And I wanted to see how to make things easier for these guys. So then I started, you know, first thing in the consultation, which has a few parts to it – and we'll get into this more later – I would start with just very simply saying Hello, a vasectomy is very simple, and I'm not gonna remove a single part of your body, I'm just making a small snip in a little tube and you won't even notice a difference in three days' time. But I was foolish, in retrospect, thinking that way. It didn't make a difference. They still just cowered in the chair, eyes wide, pupils dilated, little blobs of sweat peeking out from under their hair. Terror. But I was stubborn, you know, and I wanted to be the best, one of the best, if possible, is what I wanted at the time, which I kind of am now, to be honest – so know you're in good hands here, expert hands – and so I kept trying to improve, I wanted to figure out how to help them, and I thought, okay, let's have consultations, and during the consultation, right at the start of it, even, I can reassure them. I thought I just had to be more clear. Concise. I figured I could work out a perfect introduction that would just prevent it right off the bat, you know: the terror. So, like, I tried saying, very first thing: Your penis won't be touched. Your testicles won't be touched. I mean, okay, maybe I wouldn't say it exactly that way, because I do have to manually manipulate the testicles, and sometimes the penis, if it's large enough to get in the way, which can make the procedure much more difficult, as you can imagine – and we'll get into this more later – but I intended that line to just mean I'm not going to injure you, you know, I'm not going to cut off your penis. That's very straightforward but I tried out all kinds of phrasing. I even tried just saying that: I'm not going to cut off your penis. And I even pulled out a diagram, or I'd have it propped right up here when they came in, before they even came in, actually, and I'd point, you know, first thing: None of this stuff is going anywhere. I promise. And I'd point to the penis and the testicles. But no, that wasn't it, that wasn't the problem at all, of course. I know that now. I was wrong. I thought maybe it was just, I don't know how to say it, the association of the whole thing. These guys had a deep fear of the urology clinic, or what the word implied, I guess, I thought: urine, penis, testicles, semen. They had a fear of those things. Or more like a fear of the parts of the body, of what the body does or can do. They had a fear of these things, but, well, I realized it was even simpler than that: the body. These guys were coming in terrified of their own bodies. That's what it was. The body. The self, the physical self. They were being confronted with their own bodies, the reality of their beings, I guess, all the wires and bolts and tubes and screws. Not literally, I mean, not literal wires and screws – and we'll get into this more later – but the whole physicality of it made them uneasy. Now, again, uneasy isn't the right word, it's beyond that, deeper than that. Like I said, it's terror. I was telling them that they had a thing called a penis, a thing called a scrotum, but then that was it, that was all it took, because that opens it all up. Sitting here and saying the word penis was like leading them to Medusa and telling them to look right in her eyes. Everything else was just the predictable aftermath of that little glance, that little glance at the truth, I thought, you know, after really thinking about it. After really trying to understand and work through it, these consultations I'd have and what happened in them, what went wrong, working through when they really began to cower, all that, and asking myself What set them off? Man, I'd ask myself this and think on it for a long time after, I'd think about it at home, you know, or in the car, and I'd come back the next day with a new theory, some new idea of what was doing it, what was igniting it, this real terror. I mean, I should clarify, they weren't running out of the office screaming. Nothing like that. But I know that look. I could see it. The terror. I could see it in their eyes, in their whole being, really, this deep dread opening up in them and draining them, right in front of me, sitting where you're sitting now, basically, and they would sort of gasp for air a little bit, gasping like a fish or something, you know? Have you ever been fishing? Then, right, you know what I'm talking about, how a fish will sort of gasp, sort of open and close its mouth, almost like a reflex. Well I guess it is a reflex, I don't know. You assume they're gasping for air, but fish have gills, right? That doesn't make sense, really, no, so it's something else. I never thought of it that way before, but that's what it is: terror. These men were terrified, just like the fish is terrified. The fish isn't trying to breathe the air, it's simply reacting, it's just a reflex, an autonomous movement. It's feeling out of control, and it doesn't know what to do, so it does that, for some reason. That's how these guys would look at me as soon as I said the word scrotum or the word ejaculate or something like that, as soon as I pointed at the diagram, as soon as I even gesticulated toward their lap, sometimes, even. Little fish mouths opening and closing. Gasping. And I realized that ultimately it was just whatever finally caused them to really understand that: Yes, yes, I have a body, and my body has genitals, and my genitals do things, they make things, they shoot things out, sometimes, even, and I have to sit with that understanding, I have to really confront it, really accept it, and I'm not prepared, I can't do it. Or maybe it's just the body, that simple reminder: I have a body, that's it, isn't it, I'm not just a floating, like, ghost, I guess, but I'm real, I'm a body, or I'm in a body, and my body functions, or, well, it functions for now, and maybe it won't always do that, maybe it's already falling apart, and, you know, someday that will end, and so will I. And that's terrifying. I can understand that, now. I didn't understand that early on, doing these consultations. But I understand it now. And not everyone reacts that way, obviously. Maybe it's just something about Wellsborough, even. I don't know. I thought I could just walk in and be frank, talk to an adult like another adult. And it didn't work. I didn't understand it then. Sometimes I'd get so frustrated, you know, and I'd daydream, even, about, like, walking in and saying Hi there, I'm Dr. Razzle, and hey, listen, one: you have a penis, and two: you're gonna die. And I have a penis and I'm going to die. And there's nothing either of us can do about that. And everyone with a penis is gonna die, and everyone without a penis is gonna die, because we're all just bodies, we're just blood and guts and we have like a hundred years max and then it's over forever and we need to be adults about this because I'm here to help you get a vasectomy. So I'm gonna step out and do some paperwork, and you can think about that for a minute, and when you're ready, I'll come back in and we'll talk about the procedure and what to expect. Isn't that ridiculous? I never did that, obviously. And maybe it wouldn't have helped anyone. Or maybe it would have. I don't know. But I was feeling so desperate, I remember, that it felt good to imagine it, to just think of these extremes, to work through some really out there idea and picture it, you know, close my eyes and feel it, live in that moment, and I think it helped me, too. It really helped me think it through and really understand it. I stopped myself once and thought, Alright, why am I imagining this? What am I trying to solve, really? It was the terror. It was always the terror, in the end, and that wasn't about me. It wasn't about the procedure. It wasn't even about the guy's perineum or prostate or vas deferens. It wasn't about pee or poop or jizz or blood or anything else so common and trivial as that. But it was about something even more simple, even more central to everything, the most common thing, the most simple thing, I guess, really. It was about death. They were afraid of death. That's what terror is. It's not just any fear, no, it's the fear of death. And I thought about that and thought about that, you know, sometimes angrily, sometimes frustrated, I guess, and sometimes desperate, just so over it, just so willing to do anything to help these guys move past it, and sometimes it made me sad, too, of course, thinking about all these guys coming in and of all things I have to be the guy who reminds them of their own death. All these guys, you know, who never had to confront it, never gave a thought to their own end, it seemed like, until of all things they step into my urology clinic office and sit on my chair and of all the things in the world it was me saying the word scrotum and bam! There it is: You're gonna die! And It wrecked me, in a way, for a long time. I felt stuck. It felt impossible to move beyond that. But eventually, you know, thankfully, I realized there was nothing I could do. Nothing! It's nothing anyone can do, really. It's something that not even religion can do, if you think about it, and, hey, that's religion's whole thing, isn't it? To prepare you for death? To explain death? To help you come to terms with death? I don't actually know, but that's how I think of it, anyway. And yet, I thought, you know, everyone is still afraid of dying, even religious people. Despite having religion, they're still afraid. The most ardent believer, convinced, fully sold on life after death in Heaven, even, still at the end: afraid. And if it really is everyone, then maybe the Pope is afraid of death, even. Maybe all the Popes were afraid of death, still, right at the end. And it's so obvious, right? Of course they would be afraid of dying. How could they not be afraid? But of all people, you would think, you know, maybe the Pope could accept his own demise, I mean. But I believe it, I truly believe it, that even the Pope fears death. He has to. And I bet if the Pope were from Wellsborough, and he came into my old clinic, he'd be the same as anyone else. He'd be terrified. He'd feel it. He'd feel the terror. That's death. That's what death does. Even Jesus was afraid. I remember that, from church, I don't know if you're religious, but I remember that. Jesus on the cross: Why have you forsaken me? He felt it. Jesus felt the terror. The son of God, or God himself, right? God incarnate, God walking on the Earth, and it's still the same. The terror was the same. It's all the same. And I thought about that and I realized I had no other option. I had to give it up. I had to accept it. I mean, it was death. Everyone has to accept it. Not just their own death, I realized, but everything else that death does. Death was doing this to my clinic. I couldn't help these guys. I mean, I could help them stop having kids, but that was about it. If even Jesus Christ himself, God on Earth, were afraid of dying on the fucking cross then I certainly have no business making anyone feel better about dying. So I gave up. But, like I said, it's not really an issue around here in Weston. And now I can just focus on just using the consultation to say okay, we can do the procedure, and we'll get into this more later, but here's what it's gonna involve: there's a visual inspection, some manual manipulation, some lidocaine to numb the area, a small incision, a snip, and some minimal stitches. But again, if I were doing it blindfolded, I could pretty confidently skip the visual inspection, especially if I were doing it to myself, obviously. So that would just leave the anaesthetic, which, again, is local, it's like, you know, procaine, like at the dentist, and you just need to inject it into the scrotum without penetrating the testicle. Which, I mean, that's pretty straightforward. So the blindfold wouldn't really impact anything. And, thinking about it now, I've found better results standing next to the patient, you know, facing the same direction, like this, which for some people makes things easier, or at least feel less invasive, less clinical, so, yeah, no, I could do it. I could do it easily. Send me back five years and hand me a blindfold and I'd do it, probably in under twenty minutes. Bam! Anyway, why don't you hop off the table here and, if you feel comfortable, pull down your bottoms. I'll close the blinds. Thank you. Ah, okay. This one'll be easy.
July 7, 2025
Fiction

THE GROTTO by Jim Ruland

I

Seamus receives a key

“You’re in luck,” the innkeeper said. “The Grotto is available.”The innkeeper was a large man who wore suspenders, wire-rimmed glasses, and a fisherman’s cap. He looked like a builder of model ships. Seamus smiled and waited for the innkeeper to continue.“The Grotto is our most popular room. Usually booked months in advance. We had a cancellation, so it’s yours—if you want it.” “I’ll take it,” Seamus said. “What brings you to the Seaside Inn?” the man asked as Seamus filled out the registration papers. “I was in the city for a conference and decided to stay for a few days.” Seamus felt a tickle in his nose. He hoped there wasn’t a cat on the premises. “Wonderful,” the innkeeper said. “You’ll find plenty of peace and quiet here—if that’s what you’re looking for…” “Yes, yes, peace and quiet,” Seamus felt compelled to respond. “A word to the wise,” the innkeeper said as he handed over the key, an actual key with a bow in the shape of a skull, “if you decide to go exploring, stick to the path. We wouldn’t want you to fall into the sea!” “No,” Seamus said. “We wouldn’t want that.” “Let me know if you run into any trouble in The Grotto!” Seamus was a quiet man who didn’t like to be fussed over. He imagined that all weekend long he was going to have to assure the innkeeper how happy he was with his room. Seamus trudged up the narrow staircase with his suitcase, angling it to avoid banging into the bannister. Although it looked like a grand old house from the outside, there were only two rooms on the second floor. The words THE GROTTO had been painted on the door at the top of the landing. With something like foreboding, Seamus inserted the key and opened the door.  

II

Seamus contemplates a mural

It was otherwise a simple room. A bed and a dresser with a bench beneath the window. What made the room remarkable was the mural that covered all four walls and gave Seamus the impression of being in a cave. There were stalagmites painted on the baseboards and stalactites descended from the crown molding. Rock formations spread outward onto the adjoining walls. Crystals sprouted in all shapes and sizes. When Seamus closed the door it all but disappeared into the wall. Seamus was not adverse to close spaces. He lived in a small shoebox of an apartment and he had always made do with cramped quarters. He was a writer after all. He didn’t need a lot of space. All he required was his imagination.But the composition of the mural irked him. Lichen grew on the rocks, the walls seemed to gleam with condensation, and rows of bats hung from the uppermost reaches of the cavern. Everywhere he looked there was more information to absorb. His first instinct was to leave the room and go for a long walk along the cliffs, drink in the wind blowing over the waves, but Seamus was tired and hungry and soon it would be dark. He had spent the week walking all over the convention center. He had trod high-traffic carpet with baffling patterns, looking for conference rooms without numbers in hallways without names. He used to like these affairs, looked forward to them even, but each year fewer of his friends and acquaintances attended, and those that did seemed a little older, the disappointment in their faces more pronounced. Then there were the people he used to know who went out of their way to avoid him, as if the stink of his failure was contagious. Seamus kicked off his shoes, opened a granola bar (they were giving them away at the conference; he’d taken seven of them) and chewed without pleasure the dry oats and chalky fruit while staring at a section of the mural that depicted a school of black fish in a dark pool until he swore he saw one of them move.  

III

Seamus makes a discovery

Seamus woke in the middle of the night. He thought he heard a noise, a faint droning sound, and now he couldn’t get back to sleep. An incident at the conference earlier that week had been troubling Seamus, and apparently it wasn’t done with him.He’d been invited to sit on a panel called “Exploring the Edge.” The other two writers on the panel were a novelist named S.W. Sidewinder who wrote Westerns set in deep space, and Angela Danbury, a former adult film actress who’d written a series of erotic detective thrillers. Unfortunately, Danbury, whose books were wildly popular, had to cancel, and the panel was moved to a smaller room. This struck Seamus as reasonable until the young man who’d been assigned as his minder led Seamus and Sidewinder to the lobby where a shuttle waited to take them to a satellite location. “It’s not far,” the minder assured them. “This is for your comfort.”“This is a load of horse shit,” Sidewinder said. Sidewinder was right. The satellite location turned out to be a branch of the local library that had stayed open to host the event. Sidewinder became agitated when he was told the box of books he’d shipped hadn’t arrived and he stormed off in a huff. Seamus set out a small selection of his own books that he’d brought with him. Some of them were quite old and showed wear and tear from having been carted around the country, from conference to conference. In lieu of a discussion—since there were no other panelists—he read a short story from his most recent collection. No one attended the reading, but afterward, one of the ladies who worked at the library told him how much she liked the story. She asked him if he had a card. He didn’t, so he simply handed her the book, which embarrassed them both. Outside, there was no sign of his minder, just the driver, who urged him to hurry aboard because he had another run to make. On the way back to the hotel, Seamus thought of all the things he’d say to the conference administrators, but he was thunderstruck with shame over the whole sad affair and he spent the remainder of the evening sitting in his room. . Whether it was this memory or something else that stirred him he couldn’t say, but now Seamus was wide awake with little hope of going back to sleep. There it was again, the unusual noise that had roused him, only this time it seemed to be coming from underneath the bed. Seamus slowly swung his legs around and slid his feet into his slippers, which he always brought with him when he traveled. He went to the door and flipped the switch. The lights came on and the mural rose up out of the gloom—he’d forgotten all about it. He got down on all fours and looked under the bed. A white cat with icy blue eyes peered at him from a rug underneath the bed. The cat regarded him with the impertinent expression of a rich old woman who’d been caught dozing during a play. Seamus stood and opened the door. The cat stuck its head out, slowly crossed the room, and went out on to the landing. Seamus shut the door, turned off the light, and climbed back into bed. Well, that’s one mystery solved, but as soon as that thought left his head another took its place: Why was there a rug underneath the bed?  

IV

Seamus solves a mystery

The rug was small, but elaborate. If Seamus stretched out his arm, he could just barely reach its tasseled edge with the tips of his fingers. He thrust his arm under the bed until his thumb grazed the carpet and he yanked it like a stage magician performing a trick. The carpet came away but what it revealed was difficult to say. The room was just too dark.Seamus was not a large man, nor was he particularly strong, but once he set his mind to something he was determined to see it through to the end. There had been times in his life when this imperative had felt like a curse. Some mistook his commitment as bullheadedness or even a deficiency of intelligence, but the years had taught him this quality might very well be his best attribute. If he said he would do something, whether it was writing a book no one wanted, or giving a reading no one attended, he did it. No one could say Seamus had broken his word.The bed lifted easily, and before he could give much thought to what he was doing he swung the foot of the bed toward the window. The headboard protested with a squeak. There was a groove in the floorboards where the bed had been and when he ran his hands along the seam he found a place where he could grab hold of the trapdoor—for that’s what it was—and give it a quick tug. The trapdoor swung open. Seamus felt a gust of cool air, invigorating and inviting. The opening revealed a tunnel that was large enough to pass through and as soon as Seamus saw the iron ladder bolted to the stone, he knew he was going down. But that was crazy. He couldn’t go exploring secret tunnels in the middle of the night. Who did he think he was? Nancy Drew? Seamus pulled open a drawer in the nightstand and grabbed a flashlight, as if he had known it would be there. The torch felt good in his hand, solid and cool to the touch, and when he clicked the switch it sent a strong beam  across the room, illuminating the mouth of the tunnel at his feet like a spotlight.  

V

Seamus impersonates a childhood hero

The tunnel was like a well, a hole in the earth that shot straight down, a tower pulled inside out. He focused on lowering his body into the hole one rung at a time. He didn’t look down and he didn’t look up. He’d made up his mind to see where the tunnel took him. The ladder was in excellent condition, especially considering that his room was on the second floor. How did that work exactly? Was there a tube between the walls that allowed him to bypass the rest of the house somehow? Seamus didn’t know, but he saw no reason why he should stop, so down he went. The farther he descended, the stronger the scent of the ocean became. He thought he could hear wave noise and imagined he was tunneling into the cliffs that overlooked the sea. At any moment he expected to plunge his feet into an icy pool of seawater, but after several minutes of steady climbing he reached the bottom. He took the flashlight out of his pocket and shined the light. A single passageway led away from the bottom of the ladder in what he guessed was the direction of the sea. Seamus set off at once. The tunnel was narrow and curved this way and that so that he couldn’t gauge how far he had to travel to reach the end. Seamus felt certain it would be a short walk. With each step the sound of the ocean grew louder as the waves smashed on the rocks. Underneath all that noise was another sound, faint yet persistent, a droning that might be the wind whistling through these chambers of the cliff like blood moving through a body. He imagined a large undersea cave with pools of crystal clear water and chandeliers of gypsum that hung down from above. That must be why his room was called The Grotto, he reasoned. As above, so below. Seamus hurried along, pleased with where his curiosity had taken him and thrilled to discover what was around the next curve of the tunnel.When he rounded the corner, the tunnel abruptly came to an end. It wasn’t blocked off or closed up. It simply stopped. It looked to Seamus as if whoever had dug the tunnel had simply abandoned the job and gone no farther.The rough stone registered as a taunt. He wasn’t heartbroken exactly, but he was greatly disappointed. He’d tricked himself into thinking he was on a grand adventure and he’d stumbled into a dead end. How was that any different from the rest of his life?  

Interlude

“Your cat was in my room last night,” Seamus said to the innkeeper the following morning as he checked out of the inn a few days earlier than planned. After his disappointment in the tunnel, he’d decided to go home.“Cat?” the innkeeper asked. “Yes, white with—”“We don’t have a cat,” the innkeeper interrupted, looking down his nose and over the rim of his glasses. He seemed annoyed that Seamus was cutting his trip short. Seamus decided not to bring up the matter of the tunnel when he turned in his key. 

VI

Seamus receives an unexpected invitation

A week after the conference, Seamus received an email from Belinda Barnes, the vice president of a booksellers’ organization. She wanted Seamus to know that she’d read his most recent book and loved it. Would he be interested in attending a luncheon the following month? In subsequent emails Ms. Barnes explained that it was a showcase for hidden gems—books that didn’t get a lot of attention, or the right attention when they were released, despite their considerable merit. They’d have plenty of copies of his books to sign and they’d pay for his travel and accommodations. It turned out that Ms. Barnes had seen him read at the conference. In fact, she was the lady at the library to whom Seamus had given a book. She confessed that she’d been profoundly moved by his short story and couldn’t get it out of her mind. She recounted to him how the story reminded her of a dream she’d had as a little girl, a dream she’d thought about often but couldn’t recall exactly, its meaning graspable but just out of reach. Seamus’s story, she admitted, inhabited her imagination in much the same way.Seamus accepted the invitation. Even if the event fell through, as these things often did, it felt nice to be appreciated. Ms. Barnes, however, was true to her word and the luncheon was a success. The house was packed and he signed so many books he used up all the ink in his pen. Ms. Barnes introduced him to representatives from other regions who wanted Seamus to read at their luncheons, dinners, and galas. The next morning, an agent called offering to represent him. Then another the following afternoon, and two more the day after that. This is strange, Seamus thought, but he met with the agents and ate shrimp cocktail every day for a week. One of the agents, a young woman who was an acquaintance of Ms. Barnes, had read many of his books, including some that were long out of print. She laid out a plan for reacquiring the rights to his work and reissuing them as a series.Seamus gave her the green light and it was done. His books appeared in actual bookstores. He had money in his bank account again. He flew in airplanes. He bought new shoes. Once a month he allowed himself to shop at the expensive new grocery store down the block instead of taking the bus to the market he’d been going to all his life. When his books came out, they were written about in magazines and newspapers and he received charming letters from readers all over the world. After all these years of eking out an existence as an underground writer, his stories had finally found their audience—although it felt like the other way around. His newfound fame, such as it was, introduced a host of new headaches that revolved around trying to be in as many places in as little time as possible, but even that wasn’t entirely awful. People were mostly nice and his fellow travelers told him interesting stories. The odd rude flight attendant or indifferent concierge reassured Seamus it wasn’t all a wonderful dream.  

VII

Success at last

A few years later, Seamus found himself back in the city on the coast where the conference that changed his life had been held. He was wrapping up a multi-city book tour for a new collection of stories. When his publicist presented the itinerary, Seamus requested an extra day at the end of the tour to rest up and he impulsively booked a night in The Grotto at the Seaside Inn. He hadn’t given the inn much thought during the tour, but now it was all he could think about. His career had undergone such a swift and sudden change that he’d scarcely had time to reflect on how unusual that night in The Grotto had been, creeping along the secret subterranean passage like a detective in an adventure book. Had that actually happened? Seamus was certain it had. He recalled the way the stone looked damp in the glare of the electric light but when he brushed his fingers against the rough-hewn rock it was cold and dry. The rich smell of the tunnel was both bracing and fecund, an ancient reminder of the things that stirred in the briny deep. And there was that sound, mechanical in its persistence, but when he remembered his room at the inn was located on the second floor, he doubted himself all over again.  

VIII

Trouble in the grotto

After he checked into his room, Seamus peered under the bed: the cat was gone, but the rug was still there. As he moved the bed and opened the trapdoor, all his doubts deserted him. He grabbed the flashlight from the drawer and checked to see if it worked. He breathed in the familiar scent of the ocean and scampered down the ladder with the joy of a boy returning to a childhood haunt after a long time away. Seamus didn’t understand this compulsion to descend into the tunnel again, but he’d learned long ago to trust his instruments, and down he went.At the bottom of the ladder, Seamus clicked on the light and shined it down the passageway. Everything was exactly the way he remembered it. The pungent sea air, the rumble of the waves, the cold rough stone—it all filled him with happiness—but after walking for several minutes the flashlight flickered and so did his confidence. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. Shouldn’t he have reached the end of the tunnel by now? The air seemed colder and the distant rumble was now a roar. The walls were damp to the touch and when he shined the light at his feet he discovered he was standing in a shallow puddle. Had the tunnel lengthened in his absence? The tunnel took a sharp turn. As he went around the bend he beheld a widening of the shaft and realized he was standing in the mouth of a vast cave. The mural in his room was an exact replica of the cavern. The sound of bats and birds wheeling overhead filled the air and water trickled from a dozen hidden places. Great mounds of rock rose from the water and columns of stone dripped from the upper vaults. In some places, the two came together, dividing the cave into compartments. Most of what he could see of the grotto’s floor was covered in pools of clear water inhabited by tiny black fish.On the other side of the cavern walls the ocean thundered and he could detect a faint droning. Seamus shined the light around but he couldn’t locate the source of the sound. Seamus thought he caught a flicker of movement in the center of the grotto where a formation resembled a creature that crouched like a cat, but as he moved closer he realized it was just a rock, and the sound that blended into the background and sat in the forefront of his mind went up the slightest sliver of an octave. Seamus turned around but he could no longer discern the entrance to the tunnel. The droning grew louder, a difference so subtle he could almost talk himself into believing he was imagining it. Seawater lapped at his feet and the white foam filled his shoes as the water in the grotto began to rise. He frantically searched the folds in the rock for the entrance to the tunnel but it simply wasn’t there, like a riddle he couldn’t solve. The water rose past his knees and then his waist, and the cold water dispelled the faint hope that he was dreaming, that this was all a product of his imagination.Seamus thought how different his life had been the last time he ventured down the tunnel and how much better it was now. What if all the success he’d enjoyed since then wasn’t luck that had transformed his old life but a different life that he’d somehow stumbled into? What if there wasn’t a single tunnel beneath the Seaside Inn but many and each of them led to an alternate future? Seamus felt as though he’d wandered into one of his stories, and if that was the case he knew without having to be told that everything would be different when he went back to his room because he wouldn’t be returning to his new life, the life he’d always wanted, but venturing into an altogether different future.The water was at his neck now and lifted him off his feet. The grotto filled with wave noise and sea spray and the loud booming of unseen forces. As he slipped beneath the waves the droning stopped as if a great machine had been switched off.
July 4, 2025
Micros

THE ROOSTER THAT SCREAMS by Laura Shell

So there is one rooster in the neighborhood that sounds normal, emmits the typical cock-a-doodle-doo cry in the wee hours of the morning. Then there is the other rooster, the one that submits a scream like someone is holding a hand around its throat. It's like an "Ehhhhhhh," sound. And it's much louder than the other rooster's call.So every morning, I hear the rooster that screams and wish I knew where it lived so I could find out exactly why it screams.

***

The rooster belts out its usual "Ehhhhhhh," sound, then scratches at the scar on its throat.
July 3, 2025
Fiction

THE LAST GREAT NORTH AMERICAN HOCKEY TEAM by Eric Subpar

I awake on a Saturday. It is my birthday. All my friends are here. My wife is telling me about the preseason. Kevin is still coming. Don't blow out the candles until Kevin arrives. I won't, dear. Her father tells me about the Los Angeles Kings. I unwrap a Los Angeles Kings jersey. I’m a fan of the L.A Kings. My son asks if we can throw the puck around a bit outside after the party. That'd be great, son. My wife's father asks me about the roster. Think we got a shot this year? That rookie's a phenom. Sure as hell is. The candles burn, and Kevin arrives. Hello. My wife embraces Kevin. My son embraces Kevin. I embrace Kevin. I am jealous of Kevin. His ability to enter a room. He tells me to make a wish and I make a wish and I blow out the candles. Tell us what you wished for, Dad! Can't or it won't come true. We all laugh. I bet you wished for something like this. Kevin hands me a present. No bigger than my hand. I open the present. Season tickets for the Los Angeles Kings. For you and the whole family, Kevin says. My wish has come true. I wake up on the first day of the season. Time for the hockey game. I pull on my gift jersey. I help my son into his jersey. My wife puts on a Kings sweater. It fits tightly. I drive to the hockey game. My son sings the Canadian National Anthem. Do you think the Kings got a shot this year? We got a rookie. Do you think the other teams think their rookie is a real phenom? I try not to think about it. But it's our rookie who is a real phenom. First class potential, right? Right, son. I feel bad for the other teams. Me too.Great seats. Kevin spared no expense. He's quite a friend, isn't he? The best. Right near the penalty box. But our guys won't spend too much time there. Not our guys. During the American anthem, the players of the Los Angeles Kings and the players of the away team stand at attention. This is the first time I lay eyes on the rookie. His hair is styled in a rolling black mullet. He has a thick beard. His smile lights up a room. He has bright green tape on his stick. Hank Bang. Number 11. That's the rookie. I see someone in the crowd holding up a sign, Will You Marry Me, Hank?! A bit premature, I think. But I don't tell anyone. The puck is dropped. The Los Angeles Kings are dressed in all black uniforms. The other team in white. Nobody scores across the first couple of lines, but their play is exhilarating. Hypnotic. As though sourced from a dream. I smile. I bang on the glass with my fists. My son waves an inflatable noise maker and bashes it against another inflatable noise maker. Then Bang's line enters the ice. The rookie on the fourth line. Right Wing. The Center passes the puck along the edge of the ice, but Bang is laid out by the opposing Defense Man. Slow to get up. Following the action, Bang returns a hellish hit upon the opposing Center cutting through the middle. The Defense Man, the Bruiser throws down his gloves. Bang follows suit and the two tussle, before Bang unceremoniously levels his fist across the Bruiser's jaw and sends him to the ice. I howl in delight. Bang is ushered to the penalty box and I've never felt closer to God. After his five penalty minutes are up, the game is all Hank Bang, laying hits and scoring goals. Ending his first NHL game with eight points. A rookie record. The Los Angeles Kings Have Found Their Star all the papers say. On my drive home, I am ecstatic. Excitement pulses through me like electricity. I sense my son loves me more. So does my wife. Revelatory. This is one of the greatest days of my life, and I can't wait for the next game, my fingers fidgeting over the pages of the book I read to my son just before bed. With such a tremendous initial outing, I expect even better from the rookie phenom as his skills grow. The sky is the limit. First Class potential.The days fly by. I again awaken on game day, buzzing with excitement. I put on my jersey. I help my son. My wife wears her sweater. We drive. They wear their black jerseys again. The other team in whites, but different whites, or perhaps the same whites with different accent colors. The puck is dropped and our team scores ten goals to the opposing team’s two and they win another one. Two and Oh. Helluva a start to the season. Exhilarating. Bang is awarded First Star again. He records his first hat trick. And is already appearing in the radio sports chatter for the Calder Trophy, the award awarded to the most phenomenal rookie each year. A bit premature, wouldn't you say? I don't know, my wife answers. Kevin seems to think he has a shot. When did you see Kevin? The day after the last game. After work. I told you. I don't remember, I say. Well, it was a busy week. I carry my son's sleeping body in from the car. Poor guy. Tuckered out.By the end of the first month of the season, Hank Bang is a front runner for the Calder. Bang is also starting Right Wing for the Los Angeles Kings, who have yet to record a loss. My team is like an extension of me. They are winning. I am happy. I couldn't be happier, in fact. When the zamboni runs its circles, I try to think of what could make me happier, and that makes me sad, but then my son arrives with the popcorn and the Los Angeles Kings return to the ice to lay down another thrashing.For weeks, the same. The Los Angeles Kings in their black uniforms. The other team in their uniforms. A walloping ensues. Hank Bang leads the league in minutes played, goals, assists, penalties, plus/minus, hits, penalty minutes, short handed goals, power play goals, hat tricks, fights, and blocked shots. He's a real phenom for sure, dad. Sure is, son. Say where'd your Mom run off to? Don't you remember, Dad? She had her dinner tonight with Kevin. Oh yes. He's a real pal. The best a dad could have, ain't that right? Think they'll win tonight, son? If the Goalie stays true. Can't outscore Bang though. On the car ride home, I listen to sports radio. Hank Bang is a generational talent, they say. A bit premature, I tell my son but my son is asleep. He should win the Calder.  At home, my wife isn’t there. Dinner must have gone late with Kevin. He’s a real talker. And a hell of a listener to boot. I tuck my son into his bed. I ask if he wants me to read to him but he shakes his head no. And before I know it, it is already the NHL playoffs. The Los Angeles Kings exited the regular season without a single loss. Top of their division. Top of the league. Eighty-Two and Oh. Forty-one of those wins, I was present for. Never missed a single home game. The team has broken every statistical team record, while Hank Bang has broken every individual record. Two hundred more goals than the previous record. A plus/minus above 500. I am so proud of him. I wear his jersey to every game. I feel instrumental to his success. My jersey makes a contribution. I turn to ask my son if he thinks they will win the Stanley Cup, but his seat is empty. Oh, that’s correct. He didn't come with me to the game. He must have had a prior engagement. Season tickets are a full-time commitment. Not for the faint of heart. Not everyone can love the Los Angeles Kings like I love the Los Angeles Kings. Not everyone can love Hank Bang.The Los Angeles Kings have won their first playoff game. A real shellackin', sports radio called it. I drive home faster than the speed limit to share with my family. The excitement. But my family is not home. My family hasn't been home since I left for the game. When was the last time they were? They’re missing an all-time season. Sports radio says the playoffs are another beast entirely, but the Los Angeles Kings beat their opponent handedly. Perhaps, this round's opponent just isn’t up to snuff. But there must be a challenging opponent coming up, right? The beast awaits. I begin to wonder what the other playoff rounds look like. I turn on the tv. It is a game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lightning players are dressed all in white. The same uniforms he'd seen them play in, but the Montreal Canadiens, to my shock, are not wearing their usual white uniforms with red and blue flourishes, but instead their entire uniforms are made up of that garish red and blue. It hurts my eyes to see. I watch the game, nonetheless. The Montreal Canadiens’ Center scores a goal. The camera zooms around the arena and settles on a trio of celebrating fans. They look strangely familiar, and as I stare longer at the family, I recognize them to be my son, my wife, and Kevin. All three in garish red Canadiens gear. I am upset. I go to bed. The Los Angeles Kings have made it to the Stanley Cup. I admit I was doubtful, but I knew we had a phenom for a rookie. And Hank Bang is absolutely that. The other team in the Finals are the Montreal Canadiens. I hope to see my family attend the game. But they only attend the home games when their team wears that red and blue. I almost vomit. But the Montreal Canadiens aren't a good team. Same as the other teams. No match for the Los Angeles Kings. No match for Hank Bang. The Los Angeles Kings win the first three games of the series by a wide margin, but the final game of the season is in Montreal. I watch the game on TV. Sure enough, my wife and my son and Kevin are at the game. My son in a Montreal Canadiens jersey. My wife in a Montreal Canadiens sweater. Kevin in a Montreal Canadiens jersey. My son banging red and blue inflatable noise makers. How can they not see that it is in fact the Los Angeles Kings that is the greatest North American hockey team of all time? How can they smile and laugh rooting for the Montreal Canadiens when the Los Angeles Kings will clearly win the game? A travesty. I feel good watching the Los Angeles Kings demolish the Montreal Canadiens. The Kings, led by Hank Bang slice agile lines across the ice, lay a succession of glass-rattling hits along the boards, and unleash a firestorm of shots upon the opposing goalie. Pure domination. Never even close. And as the players celebrate, I look in the crowd for my wife and my son. I want to see the distraught look on their faces. A look they never would have had if they’d stayed loyal to the Los Angeles Kings. But they aren't present. They must have driven to their home already. A different home than the one I sit in, watching the game on the television. Still, I await their arrival. Perhaps, now that the season is over, I can figure out where it all went wrong. But when I check the mailbox, I find an envelope from Kevin. Inside are tickets to the upcoming season of Los Angeles Kings hockey. Another season. I can't imagine what improvements the rookie phenom will make in his sophomore season. How much better could it get?
July 2, 2025
Interviews & Reviews

BOOKS THAT NEEDED TO BE SAID: I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT. Recommends by Shane Jesse Christmass

Why did I choose these books? Perhaps because, to me, they represent literature that stands apart from the hegemonic literary marketplace … operating outside the structures of commercial garbage publishing, which prioritises market-driven narratives and commodifiable claptrap stories.They resist assimilation into the literary industrial complex, which often seeks to sanitise or manipulate raw human experience for consumption. Instead, these texts engage in an unapologetic exploration of obsession, identity, and the dissonance between desire and self-destruction. These writers embrace a nonconformist aesthetic, their works subvert the conventional expectations of plot resolution and character redemption. The protagonists are not mere vehicles for moral lessons, but complex figures navigating the contradictions of human existence: power, alienation, and emotional rupture. Their novels interrogate the performative nature of relationships, questioning how much of our identity is shaped by the gaze of others or by societal pressures. Furthermore, the texts address the commodification of identity itself, particularly in the way desire and personal agency become entangled with market-driven forces.Their place … especially Moore, Durbin and Chelosky … outside the conventional literary canon … positions them as crucial, albeit uncomfortable, interventions in the landscape of contemporary thought.And, of course, my choices also prove that I have impeccable taste. Now, let’s begin, motherfuckers. Danielle CheloskyCheat (The Waiting Room, 2022). show me your face (The Waiting Room, 2023). Watching the world get right with itself by reading Pregaming Grief by Danielle Chelosky has been an agreeable thing. That book deserves every bit of its massive audience. Chelosky is one of the rare writers whose work I’ll devour without question … whatever she publishes, I’m there. Her writing is a seismic bomb, a carnal rush, a primordial teenage ooze. Raw, unflinching explorations of youth, desire, the blurred lines between love, obsession, and self-destruction. Bodily attraction is in the dirt, the convenience store-soaked chaos, clubs / bars smeared with lament and sweat. Chelosky doesn’t ask permission. Chelosky’s characters often obsess over others in ways that blur the line between love and control. She pushes us to consider how much of our identity is shaped by the people we fixate on. Chelosky has a new book out, Baby Bruise, but for now, I want you to read her earlier chapbooks. In Cheat, Chelosky crafts a fragmented memoir that reads like a dream-drenched brain-fog … disjointed, urgent, painfully honest. The narrator … caught in the chaos of a love triangle … navigates intimacy, betrayal, and the intoxicating pull of self-destruction, our emotional wreckage laid bare. Where does power lie in relationships, especially in undefined dynamics? Chelosky dissects the fluidity of power … who has it, who loses it, and how it shifts in moments of vulnerability.show me your face pushes this voyeuristic intensity even further, dissecting ambiguous teenage sexual relationships with an unsettling clarity. A collage of encounters, text messages, and confessional prose, Chelosky forces us to sit with the complexities of power, submission, dismissal, sorrow, agency, the murky space between affection and exploitation. It’s uncomfortable in the best way … an unfiltered look at the desperation to be seen, to be wanted, to define oneself through others, to be defined by others moving though you, how we self-destruct in the pursuit of connection. Her work often explores the compulsion to chase intensity, even when it leads to ruin, asking why we crave the pain of wanting. Chelosky suggests that love, in its rawest form, is messy and consuming, and she forces us to sit in that ache.Chelosky strips everything down to goosepimple skin and White Claw-scorched throat, just an aching need for connection, for rejection, extracted in prose that lingers like a somnambulist bruise. I can never remember my own name, nor to whom or when or where I’ve said this, but this … Chelosky’s earlier work, not to be mistaken for lesser work … holds weight, holds thought. The weight of silence in digital communication, the tension of waiting, the power play of who responds to text messages first … her writing magnifies these seemingly minor interactions. She dissects the way intimacy shifts when it’s performed versus when it’s private, exposing the performative nature of some desires. In tangled relationships, her characters wrestle with guilt and responsibility, but not always in a way that leads to redemption. Her fragmented style mimics memory itself—half-formed, fevered, unreliable—forcing us to question how we piece together our own histories.Chelosky isn’t interested in neat answers. She’s interested in the mess, the halfway space. All of it is essential. All of it gets my full, undivided attention. Her writing is a gift. Receive it. No replacement will do. No stand-ins allowed. Only this will work. There’s no one better to capture the chaos of chasing love.    Thomas Moore.A Certain Kind Of Light (Queer Mojo, 2013). In Their Arms (Rebel Satori, 2016).Another writer I’ll read without hesitation, Thomas Moore has a way of capturing the weightlessness of disconnection, the slow drift of a life untethered. For this, again … I’m looking back at some of his earlier work … the first two books of his I read nearly a decade ago. Moore’s settings are often faint spaces … sterile apartments, anonymous bars, strange city streets … where everything feels slightly off, mirroring the protagonist’s emotional state. Dialogue in his work is often stilted or drained of substance, emphasising the disconnect between people who should be close but aren’t. Thomas Moore’s A Certain Kind of Light and In Their Arms are meditations on alienation, identity, and the quiet despair of searching for meaning in a world that offers little in return. Moore has numerous novels released since these two, predominantly on Amphetamine Sulphate, including his newest novel: We’ll Never Be Fragile Again. In A Certain Kind of Light, Moore follows a teenage boy suspended in his own existence, detached from family, friends, even his own interests. The novel distills that eerie sensation of moving through the world as if behind glass … where nothing feels entirely real, and everything remains just out of reach. His prose is sparse yet immersive, drawing the reader into a space where existence isn’t about being seen or understood, but about grasping at any feeling at all. His characters go through the motions … work, socialising, sex … but instead of grounding them, these routines only reinforce their sense of emptiness. Many of his characters look back on their lives with a kind of yearning, but instead of offering comfort, these memories feel like faded versions of something that was never quite real to begin with.In Their Arms deepens this theme, centring on an art journalist suffocating under the weight of his own apathy. Employment, friendships, even desire … all become indistinct, reduced to habit. Seeking solace in fleeting sexual encounters, he only finds the void widening. Moore writes with a cool detachment that mirrors his protagonist’s emotional numbness, making every moment of longing, confusion, and solitude feel starkly real. If we feel disconnected from our own lives, do we still have a self? Or are we just reflections of the things that once mattered to us. His characters seek intimacy, sex, or art to fill the void, but these pursuits often leave them feeling just as vacant as before.These novels refuse resolution. There’s no grand epiphany, no comforting arc of redemption … only the raw, unvarnished truth of what it means to feel lost in your own life. Moore doesn’t just depict alienation … he immerses you in it, makes you sit with it. And that’s why his work lingers … unsettling, inescapable, unforgettable. Moore’s protagonists often move through life like traces, their relationships shallow, their emotions dulled. He asks what happens when life feels less like something we live and more like something we observe. Is meaning something we find, or something we fabricate? His novels suggest that meaning is neither inherent nor easily discovered. Instead, it’s something we desperately try to construct. Thomas Moore’s writing interrogates alienation, identity, and the numb drift of modern existence. His work isn’t about finding answers … it’s about sitting inside the uncertainty, feeling the weight of detachment. Moore’s work doesn’t offer easy catharsis. He forces us to sit inside estrangement, stripped of all the cinematic polish, leaving just the quiet dread and factual weight. It’s detached, it’s weightless, and it’s devastating.I love Thomas Moore’s work because he nails that quiet, suffocating feeling of being stuck in your own life … disconnected from everything and everyone around you, these petty, miserable existences.   Édouard Levé.Suicide (P.O.L., 2008)Suicide by Édouard Levé is less a novel than a quiet, haunting reckoning … a stark and unflinching meditation on despair, alienation, and the slow erosion of self. Written as a confessional monologue, it unfolds in a voice that is both intimate and distant, tracing the contours of a mind unravelling. There is no conventional plot, no external conflict … only the relentless introspection of a man examining his own existence and the quiet inevitability of his decision to end it. Levé examines whether taking one's own life is a surrender to suffering or a final assertion of autonomy … a decision as rational as any other. The novel presents a man not just through his death, but through the fragments of his existence. Levé asks what it means to be remembered … whether a life is defined by its end, or by the details that preceded it.Levé strips away sentimentality, offering a portrait of suicide not as a moment of crisis, but as the culmination of a long, slow drift toward nothingness. The novel is chilling in its simplicity, thought-provoking in its restraint … a work that does not seek to explain or justify, only to lay bare the depths of mental anguish. Levé explores the idea that identity is as much shaped by absence as by presence. How do others hold onto us when we are no longer here to define ourselves?Levé’s Suicide lingers in the quiet, intimate spaces of existence, asking how the smallest details … a hobby, a gesture, a fleeting thought … add up to form a person. The novel subtly questions whether suicide is an act of selfishness or selflessness, leaving the reader to wrestle with the weight of absence. It explores the unsettling coexistence of detachment and suffering, as the narrator speaks of his death with eerie calm, challenging the assumption that deep pain must always be outwardly visible. Silence and omission shape the narrative as much as what is said, forcing us to consider what is left unsaid and what that absence reveals. Ultimately, Suicide questions the very limits of language … can words ever fully capture the complexity of choosing to die, or do they fail in the face of something so final and unknowable? Considering the novel revolves around suicide, it’s also unexpectedly funny.Given Levé’s own suicide shortly after delivering this manuscript, the novel blurs the boundary between fiction and reality, making the reader question whether artistic expression can ever be fully separate from the person creating it. Is this the pinnacle of autofiction, unmatched and never to be surpassed? It’s not just about suicide … it’s about the quiet, slow burn of a life fading, and how the smallest things can shape who we are, even when we’re no longer here.  Derek McCormack.Castle Faggot (Semiotext(e), 2020).Derek McCormack’s Castle Faggot is a mysteriously mocking, deeply unsettling descent into a world of desire, artifice, and excess … a grotesque, glittering funhouse. The novel follows Louie, a man drawn into a surreal, nightmarish wonderland … a castle-like mansion populated by eccentric, twisted figures who reflect and distort the anxieties of gay identity, masculinity, and commodified sexuality. As Louie drifts through this uncanny realm, the boundaries between fantasy and reality collapse, leaving him trapped in a world as seductive as it is suffocating.McCormack’s Castle Faggot probes the uneasy relationship between queerness, consumerism, and spectacle, asking whether identity can ever exist outside the forces that market, regulate, and distort it. He examines the thin, unsettling line between camp and horror, revealing how exaggerated performance can be both a celebration and a trap. Through a world of excess and grotesque artifice, the novel questions whether queer identity is something authentic or something constantly consumed … by culture, by capitalism, by the self. Beneath the satire, Castle Faggot forces us to confront an unsettling possibility … that queerness, in a world obsessed with spectacle, risks becoming just another product … one that entertains, shocks, and sells, but never escapes the systems that define it. Are we bonded to Faggotland, haunted by Count Choc-o-log?McCormack dissects the ways fantasy distorts self-perception, forcing us to question whether our desires shape us or if we are merely chasing illusions. Through Louie’s journey, he explores how performance … whether through camp, drag, or artifice … can be both freeing and suffocating, a means of self-expression that risks turning into a caricature. The novel’s biting humour masks a deeper horror, blurring the line between resilience and denial, making us wonder whether laughter is a shield or just another layer of self-deception. As Louie is pulled deeper into the castle’s bizarre world, the question of escape lingers … whether from the constraints of identity, the expectations of culture, or the endless cycle of spectacle and consumption.McCormack layers his narrative with biting wit, subversive humour, and a queasy blend of camp and horror, crafting a book that feels like a neon-lit carnival ride through the absurdities of desire, self-image, and cultural expectations. Strange, unsettling, and unrelentingly bold, Castle Faggot is both a satire and a spectacle … an exploration of queerness that is at once deeply unsettling and wildly entertaining. I’m here for the suffocating nature of spectacle.Maybe I’ve gotten this all wrong, but this book pulled me into a cavalcade-land where everything about identity and desire got twisted and turned inside out, forcing me to confront how I / we perform ourselves and how easily that performance becomes a deception.  Kate Durbin.Hoarders (Wave Books, 2021). Kate Durbin’s Hoarders is an arresting exploration of compulsion, accumulation, and the emotional weight of objects. Blending poetry and nonfiction, Durbin crafts a series of fragmented narratives that delve into the lives of individuals consumed by the need to collect, revealing how hoarding becomes both a coping mechanism and a source of deep isolation. Through a sharp, empathetic lens, she examines the intersections of mental illness, consumerism, and the personal histories embedded in material possessions.Durbin explores how the act of hoarding reflects broader cultural issues such as consumerism and materialism, questioning whether the compulsion to collect is a deeply personal disorder or a reflection of a society that places value on accumulation. She probes the role of possessions in shaping identity, asking what it means to find meaning in objects and whether they can ever truly satisfy emotional or existential needs. Durbin also examines hoarding as both a symptom of isolation and a way to assert control, exploring whether it’s a desperate attempt to stave off abandonment or a misguided effort to maintain personal autonomy. Ultimately, she raises the question of whether objects can offer meaningful connection, or if they instead create a suffocating prison, leaving individuals trapped in their own attempts to hold onto the past or to make sense of their lives.The book offers a haunting meditation on the ways people attempt to fill emotional voids with things, capturing the desperation, obsession, and quiet heartbreak of those who struggle to let go. With a style that is both poetic and incisive, Hoarders gives voice to a misunderstood disorder while holding up a mirror to a culture obsessed with excess.Durbin’s style is deliberately disjointed, mirroring the fractured lives of those consumed by accumulation. The poetry here functions less as a linear exploration of language and more as a raw, unfiltered examination of human desperation and the psychological toll of hoarding. By employing a fragmented, almost documentary-style approach, Durbin creates an intimacy that transcends typical poetic abstraction, allowing the emotions and struggles of her subjects to resonate deeply. Her work isn’t just poetic in form but in its ability to convey truth and experience through vivid, often painful snapshots of life.The way Durbin mixes poetry and raw storytelling creates this deep, unsettling connection to the emotional wreckage … making you feel the weight of each item and the lives they entrap.
July 1, 2025
Fiction

A LIVING SOMETHING by David Nutt

My wife looms at the ledge of the bed. The cold meat of my brain, freezer-burned with slumber, is still in defrost mode. Meanwhile, my wife has already risen, showered, powdered, dressed, breakfasted, read the morning news, cried about the morning news, genuflected and regurgitated, and undressed again. Now she stands naked in the middle of the room, like an unflappable art-class model, waiting for her indolent husband to get up and do something meaningful, and maybe felonious, with his life. I can’t fake it anymore. I get up and go to the closet, where we keep the new suit piled atop the canoe cushions we used at four months, the pillows we passed off as five.I try to chirp the theme music from some public-television programming—the kind of children’s show that takes place in a psychotropically colorful wonderland populated by ragged hand-puppets and a smattering of adult actors, always in supporting roles, who teach sensible, low-impact morality lessons while struggling to beat back the melancholy tide of time. I whistle three trilling notes. My wife interrupts me with a dejected sigh of her own and reaches ceilingward. “Just strap the fucking thing on,” she says.I glide the foam mold over her upper body, negotiating its blunt juts and bony angles, her knuckled spine, the curled shrimp of her ribcage. She resembles a famished insect sliding into its shell. Sure, she could do it herself, but it’s the collaboration she needs. A co-conspirator. Someone to share the secret and blame, and maybe, too, some kind of vestigial love. I double-knot the flesh-colored straps and tuck the washing-instructions tag inside the hollow bowl of her armpit. “How do I look?” she asks, draping a floral-print maternity shroud atop the big belly. The shroud is sized extra-large to create a bit of ambiguity about the duration.“Like six months,” I say, a little too hesitantly.My wife fixes herself in the mirror and turns smoothly, like a showroom automobile on a rotating stage, something too glossy to believe, let alone buy. Her face empties. The lower lip starts to jiggle. “I look like I’m nine months,” she says. “I’m ready to rupture.” Me, I am doing my usual hangdog grovel, the one look in my repertoire I do not have to falsify or embellish. “They only had the one size in stock. You still appear ravishing to poor cretins like me.”She takes my loose face in her hands and lifts it, me, to the light. Semi-sweetly, she says, “Who are you fucking kidding?”“There is literally a shell of ice around my brain. If you give me a few minutes to thaw—”“We are so hopeless,” she says.I lie: “I don’t think that at all.”She releases me but holds to her reflection, glaring hard at the boyish hips, the vitamin-deficient skinny and pall. “You’re going to be late for work.”“I’m not going to work.”“You’re still going to be late,” she says.

***

That first slothful winter: I sat in my car, the heat low, the radio off, depriving myself of the commuter life’s few amenities—in lieu of legitimate penance, I suppose—while the car sat in one undistinguished parking lot after another. I wasn’t looking very diligently. I just stared at the slabs of opaque frost my breath left on the windshield. How spectacular, the things the body did when nobody was paying attention, when nobody cared. Instead of music or talk radio, I listened to the clamor of my shivering organs and somatic departments, tabulating the chattiest offenders. Curdled fluids, tired fibers, damaged loins. All my spooky nooks were gossiping about me. I etched my initials in the frosted glass, X’d them out, then wrote different initials. When I returned home at the end of the day, my wife was on the couch, beta-testing a new breed of pout, one that combined compassionate disappointment with compassionate disgust.“What happened?” she asked. “Huh?”“You’re limping.” “My leg got crampy from sitting all day in the car.”“You were in the car? How can you get one when you’re sitting in the car?”The television was muted, flickering in the dark. I tried to flutter my eyelids to synchronize with the strobe. All any of us want, I guess, is an allegiance with something. Even something inane.“It’s like an arctic expedition out there,” I said, peeling off my itchy mittens and wool scarf and false beard. “They’re bundled up and getting pushed in strollers, or they’re leashed up and dragging their parents across the frozen tundra. I’m not fast enough to chase sled dogs. I can’t loaf around the stores like those do-gooders from the Salvation Army.”Her pout solidified, aged, fossilized. I could count the gloomy pocks and cragged ridges now imprinted across her frozen tundra. So many ancient, incredulous creases.“The office called,” she said.“What did you tell them?”“I told them there were complications. I said the doctor sent us to the hospital, and the hospital was sending us to a specialist.”“That’s smart.”“I feel like we’re the stupidest people alive.”“That, too,” I said.I left my goulashes in a puddle of muck by the door, and I joined my wife on the couch. She was watching her wildlife program again. This episode featured a pride of lions gorging on a buffet of eviscerated zebra carcasses. Black-white-red stripes striated the screen like an experimental test pattern. Our clandestine panics and emergencies seemed to be articulated so purely in the wobble. The most unnerving part was the lack of sound. All that ferocious churning, the lazy and thoughtless carnage, zero repentance, not a single groan or complaint or scream of thanks. I turned to my wife and tried to find her face in the dithering half-light. Her lips were stained brownish, as if she had been feasting on chocolate mousse. Better than the wallpaper. She was balancing a mug of hot cocoa on the stuffed koala that was bulging out of her sweatpants—the second of her stomachs. The hand towels kept slipping out.I laid a hand in her lap.“Please don’t touch me,” she said.I nodded. “Because of the complications. We’re going to see the specialist. We are living the role. Just like those TV lions with their talent agents and SAG cards and publicists.”“You should ice that leg.”“I’ve had enough ice for one day. Can I get you anything?”“Yes,” she said. “Please get off the couch.”  “What else?”“Go out.”“Where?”“Try another parking lot. Maybe an elementary school or playground or pediatrician’s office. If you stay here, we’ll never get pregnant.”

***

Springtime delivers its own silver platter of ripe disappointments. I spend my mornings loitering on a half-acre of grim, sun-scalded blacktop outside one of five Discount Utopias in the tri-county region. I avoid the popular supermarkets because their parking lots are populated by squads of embittered teenagers in dirty khakis and too-large smocks who tend the shopping-cart corrals and pretend to look competent. Discount Utopia has no such extravagance. The clientele is a mix of whiskered retirees living on fixed incomes and young unwed women who cannot possibly bear the thankless burden of motherhood alone. Best of all, management is too miserly to refurbish the outdoor sodium lamps or install security cameras. This rankles me as a citizen and potential customer, but as a needy, skulky father-to-be, I am content to exploit the lapse.I never venture into actual stores. Sadly, I no longer have the disposable income to make superficial purchases that justify my public sharking. My wife and I live off the dividends of her dead parents’ stock portfolio, which is not as robust as it used to be. I can barely afford to put gas in the car that I can barely afford to lease or insure. I’ve been on alleged paternity leave at work so long, I don’t think I have a job anymore. I also don’t think I have the chutzpah to call up my company’s HR hotline and ask if I can have my old position back, or maybe get a different position, or at least pay the office a perfunctory visit and box up my things. It’s midday. I’m hunched at my car’s front left tire, pretending to fix a flat. Occasionally I stand up and sulk around, scratching at the cheap nylon wig that hugs my head. Nobody stops for me. Nobody offers any help. Certainly no Good Samaritans with small, fledgling Samaritans in tow.After a while, I notice a bagboy with an unflattering flattop and a face of pusillanimous acne, lingering at the corner of the building. He’s sneaking a cigarette on his lunch break. I imagine this violates some stodgy corporate protocol, but I am probably not the best person to lodge a complaint with his shift supervisor. Maybe this makes us allies of a sort? Maybe not. The young guy coolly observes my helplessness charade, his lank fame leaned against the brick wall like a bracket too loosely screwed, his sloughy potato face leaking smoke. The kid’s dawdling makes me nervous, and I decide I better flee. I kick the tire a few times. I shrug like it’s no big deal. But I can’t find the keys to my car. I’ve misplaced them. When I glance up again, the kid has flicked the butt and is wiping the ash off his apron as he strolls over. He wants to give me a few helpful pointers.“That tire isn’t flat.”“Thanks,” I say.“Look at that tread. You’ve barely driven on it.” He has a particular gloat in his voice, but there is something uncertain in his expression, a weird fissure or breach. His eyeballs are skittering in their sockets.“Anything else?” I ask.He scans the expanse of the parking lot, formulating some special notion behind those rootless eyes. He sidles up next to me. “I get it,” he whispers. “Pretending your car is busted and you’re stranded here, so some lusty lady will pick you up, take you home, and serve you a dish of piping-hot poon. It’s a good shtick.”He winks at me.“You’ve got the wrong idea,” I say. “I have a wife.”“That’s cool, man. Did you skeez up on her in a parking lot, too?”The kid flashes a nervous smile. He tries another wink.“Stop winking at me,” I say. “You look diseased.”He slouches against the adjacent car, a station wagon with more rust than paint, and fusses his nametag: Karl. Maybe this is just me, but I find something greatly destabilizing about spelling Karl with a K. He lights another cigarette and tries to smoke in stoic solitude. I can tell the hypotheticals are niggling him.“I met my wonderful heterosexual wife,” I explain, “in one of those comedy improv classes that were all the rage a few years ago. The point had been impressed upon me by several colleagues and supervisors that such a class might help me burnish my social skills, which apparently needed a whole lot of burnishing. I had big dreams of being a normal human being.”“Did it help? The class?”“Of course not. But I met a strange, pretty, shy woman who was just as lonely as me, and just as unfunny, and we started a hopeless, laughless life together.”“My folks met in Al-Anon—” “I’m unspooling a narrative here, Karl-with-a-K.” The seventeen-year-old gives a stiff nod, worldly and resolute, as if bluffing knowledge is the same thing as knowledge itself. Maybe that’s true, and this bagboy career is but a springboard to some loftier trade, like bagel slicer or latte flunky. Either way, he hasn’t traded the agony of adolescence for the agony of adulthood just yet, and those sour teen years bring a wisdom and pain of their own. We’d all do well to heed the lessons of the Karl-with-a-Ks of the republic. They will be the ones, after all, who will usher us into assisted living facilities, ladle out our pills and morphine drips, and launch our ghastly ashes into space.“The narrative?” he says, urging me on.I tell him she wanted a child more than anything, probably more than she wanted a husband. But there was a minor problem. I’d already had the procedure done.I point to my groin.“You got circumscribed?”“Yes,” I say, grinning. “Circumscribed. Exactly.”It had been an extreme course of action, perhaps, but I had been a pitiful bachelor for so long. The loneliness may have deranged me. I wasted most of my twenties and early thirties going to craft fairs, yoga retreats, prochoice rallies, anywhere single women might congregate and need companionship. But they must’ve smelled the desperate pheromones wafting off me, and they stayed away. I thought I’d be alone forever and that’s what I deserved. The vasectomy was a form of revenge against myself. Then I met this sweet woman who suffered a crippling sadness and believed that having children would fix the terrible, broken thing inside her. I didn’t want to disappoint this woman. I didn’t want to lose her. I acted as if everything was fine. Maybe a miracle would stumble along and save me. It had happened already, my meeting her. Maybe it could happen again.The kid rubs his haircut, so short and unforgiving, I can tabulate the dents in his scalp. He also has this weird cauliflowered ear that seems a consequence of some barbaric junior varsity sport.“They can reattach them,” he says.“Huh?”I look down. He’s doing the groin point, the unseemliness of which is now apparent to me.“I wasn’t castrated, Karl. I’m not livestock.”He nods evenly. “Science.”“Anyway I already tried that. There was this dodgy surgeon in a strip mall. I should’ve found someone more reputable, someone with steady hands who wasn’t quivering on gin. This hack was all I could afford. He hacked me up, all right. Now the machinery is totally kaput. I didn’t tell my wife about that, either. What could I say?”I catch him side-eyeing the store entrance. His interest is flagging, but I’m not ready to let him leave. This confession stuff is invigorating. Unfortunately, I can’t speak this way to my wife. Her brittle constitution just couldn’t handle it. Ergo, I need to purge every last ounce of honesty from my system before I get anywhere near hearth and home.“It’s strenuous work, pretending you want a child,” I tell him. “You don’t happen to have any younger siblings or cousins, do you?”The kid chuckles and gives his patchy skull one final rub, then traipses off, back to the store, before I can grab him and wrestle him into the trunk.I locate my car keys, glinting, on the ground. Maybe I have a gaping hole in my pocket, the same size and shape, roughly, of the gaping holes in my head and loins and life. Maybe all of me is one large rupture, too tatty and moist to ever be stitched back together. I grab the ring of keys and—I don’t know why—I pitch them overhand, with mild fury, at a nearby car, not realizing the car isn’t empty. Some haggard guy pops up from the backseat, where he was evidently napping. Is he homeless? Jobless? Familyless? Is he an unfortunate guy or a lucky guy? What are the odds he’s a disgraced genital surgeon looking to redeem himself with a little pro-bono work?I shrug and meekly wave. Then I do my funny, joggy walk of shame to fetch the keys from underneath a battered hatchback. I notice this vehicle is also occupied: an old dowager wielding a pair of scissors, clipping coupons from the local pennysaver. I check another car, and another, and another. Dozens of people are sitting in dozens of vehicles, their postures cramped, their faces vacant, everyone waiting for some miracle or accident or statistical fluke to restore order and comprehension to their day. In the last car, I see a glazy, hunched shape in a rainbow-striped shirt and corduroy dungarees, tiny and alone. I scrunch closer. But it isn’t an abandoned child. It’s a CPR doll that some sadistic prankster has buckled into the backseat. The molded-plastic face looks a thousand years old. The decal eyes gaze back at me, an expression of blank, readymade oblivion—and the awful joy of it.I hustle home.

***

My wife is in our bedroom with four years’ worth of funeral wear spread flat on the bed. I’m not sure what she’s trying to tell me, standing there, silently reviewing all that mournful black. I’m in the doorway with a wine-in-a-box that I’ve been ferrying around in the boot of our car for months. Neither my wife nor I drink. Honestly, we don’t do much of anything aside from bicker and grieve the loss of a future that was never ours to claim. Now she’s afraid of leaving the house, and I’m afraid of her fear. I sometimes wonder how it would look on TV, a wife who likes to play dress-up to baffle her biology, confuse her uterus, into fertility, and a husband who lurks the world’s loneliest parking lots, too cowardly to steal children he doesn’t really want. I don’t know if we’re living a harmless sitcom or one of those vulgar true-crime shows.It’s late evening. Despite a fine selection of morbid clothing, my wife is still wearing her cheetah-spotted bathrobe. No preggers suit, no plush belly. She gives me this tolerant yet terrorized look. There’s a great frenzy of eyelash involved. “What’s going on?” I ask. “Nothing.”“Honey? Baby?”“Don’t call me that.”“Tell me,” I say, trying not to stutter the words. “Is this…another miscarriage?”My wife folds her arms and ekes out a low moan. Near the baseboard behind the bed, where she thinks I won’t bother to look, is a strip of pink sirloinish paint that resembles a living organ, a living something, where the wallpaper has been finagled and peeled away. My emaciated wife is secretly stripping the house bare and cramming it down her digestive tract. Then she vomits up the chewed chunks, along with her meals, her sadness, her spite. I have heard that pica is a risk for pregnant women, but their disconsolate impostors, too? Perhaps there is a special degrading flavor in wallpaper that we all long to taste. Here’s another fear: The more our little prenatal ruse gets drawn out, the sicker and weaker my wife grows, so I must prolong the ruse, if only to protect her from reality, making her even sicker, weaker, etc. The destructive urge? I understand that. It’s the cleanup that confounds me. We bury another bedraggled bath towel in the backyard, and we start again.

***

This morning belongs to a field trip of senior citizens who are bused in from a retirement enclave outside of town. I watch their leisurely parade across the blacktop with their twinkling wheelchairs and chrome walkers, a coagulated mudslide of tweed, pilled flannel, garish polyester. By lunchtime, the housewives arrive in their shapeless muumuus and defeated sweatpants, and several hours after that, the five o’clock business crowd, i.e., my people, their neckties loosened, shirttails untucked, trailing their usual draft of smothered despair. In between the clusters, I spot several truant teenagers, a few runty, genderless individuals of ambiguous age. No children, though. The daylong sun is cooking me into my vehicle’s upholstery, and in a fit of heat-infused delirium, I fantasize about grabbing one of the old folks, lashing it like a Douglas fir to my rooftop, and speeding home. Maybe I could fasten a pink bow around the senior’s skull and make it shout “Mommy!” as I drag the poor thing kicking and crying through the front door. Then, I don’t know, maybe I reward it with a lollipop or pension or something?Eventually, I get so restless I climb out. I walk around the car. I walk around the lot. I walk all the way into the store. I know I should sidestep the one-way mirrors and hidden cameras and loss-prevention experts masquerading as incognito shoppers, but I’m just too tired for any more subterfuge. Assorted customers amble in the aisles, aloof and distracted, trying to desperately suppress their pitiable dreams long deferred, the cravings and nostalgias and wry hopes that have both buttressed and doomed their lives, and mine. I don’t encounter any abandoned carts or deserted offspring. These people have watched too many news programs. They’ve seen too many horror movies. Right now, their children are safely at home, locked in the basement with electronic monitors clamped on their ankles, GPS chips imbedded behind their golden smiles.Then, as I’m standing in the party-supply aisle, mired in reverie, I’m nearly T-boned by a woman navigating an overloaded cart. She grumbles an apology, and I step out of the way, whereupon I notice, rather helplessly, the child slotted in the cart’s foldout seat. I feign interest in a rack of crepe streamers and bend around to get a better look. What I see mortifies me. The toddler has a face so mean and crumpled—red meaty cheeks, wet chin jutting—so utterly judgmental, I could almost be staring at a picture of myself.I’m already sorry it is happening: I clench up, set my feet, rear back, and I smack the child so hard it tumbles sideward into a bin of holiday tinsel. The shouting is instantaneous. They tackle me from all sides. Customers, shelf stockers, managers, cashiers, custodians, the lone security guard waddling out of the restroom with his pants half-hitched. The entire world descends upon the party aisle—upon me, screaming, too, at the bottom of the heap—and everyone begins pulling me apart, ligament by ligament, broken piece by broken piece, and I feel like finally, finally I must have done something right.
June 30, 2025

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American Air

by Mike Topp

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Mike Topp’s poems defy categorization. That’s why they are beloved by seamstresses, pathologists, blackmailers and art collectors.

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