Short

HIS BODY by Amy DeBellis

June 16, 2025

We’re brushing our teeth side by side at the sink, like we do every night, when I see it. A spot of bright red on my husband’s face, peeking through the bangs that have been out of fashion for years, but which he refuses to grow out because I adore them. It’s no bigger than the tip of my pinky. But it’s definitely not a pimple. It’s flat and even and there are ripples in the skin around it, like the imprint left by a tiny elephant’s foot.I get less than a second’s glimpse before my husband bends over the sink, spits out toothpaste, rinses with water. Then he turns and heads for bed. I’m still brushing, brushing, brushing. Still thinking about the spot. Hazily I wonder if, given enough time, the repeated motion of the toothbrush would eventually grind my teeth clean away. The news has been calling it SL-29. The SL stands for Spot Lesions: they resemble flesh peeled off in a perfect circle to reveal the raw redness of the meat underneath. Except they never heal. They never go away. Instead, they spread all over the body. The spots are often itchy, and weep a strange fluid—sometimes clear, sometimes yellow, sometimes black—that doctors have still not been able to identify. Sometimes they crust, like herpes sores, and then the pain is said to be immense.A better name for the disease would probably be something to do with pox, but that word would alarm the population, and the most important thing with any disease outbreak now is to avoid any alarm. After all, we saw what happened with the “Covid Crazies” and their masks, their stockpiling, the way they wanted to stay inside all day and sacrifice the economy for their delusions. The Vice President referred to them as “Gollums” the other day, and his fanbase (which regrettably overlaps significantly with the Lord of the Rings fanbase) praised him on social media with an avalanche of memes. The administration loves SL-29. It’s sexually transmitted, so what better punishment for the whores and sluts and single mothers than to have our loose morals branded on our faces forever? There are even rumors that the official SL title doesn’t stand for Spot Lesion at all, but for Scarlet Letter. Most people call them the Scarlet Spots. I finally rinse my mouth and head to bed. My tongue feels cold from toothpaste, a heavy slug resting against the slick backs of my teeth. My husband, facing away from me, seems to already be asleep, but that’s impossible. He never drifts off this quickly. Does he know I’ve seen his spot? Has he even seen it? Of course he has. For all the grief he gives me about admiring myself in the mirror so much, he could never miss something so striking. It really is scarlet. As I get into bed, he continues to breathe slowly and deeply. The steady rhythm remains uninterrupted even as I fluff my pillow and lay down, as though he truly is asleep. But he could be faking it. He could be praying I fall asleep without asking anything. But they don’t fucking disappear, my love, I think, clenching my jaw as I glare at his shape in the darkness. Are you going to shellac your bangs to your forehead? Use foundation so I never, ever see?And what about when the spots start spreading? What then? Yes, the only trouble with the spots is that men get them too. That’s why SL-29 is at the top of every STD screening test. Before chlamydia, HIV, gonorrhea, and everything else that can, in some way, be managed or treated or cured.

***

In the middle of the night, when I’m sure he really is asleep, I creep to the bathroom. I close the door quietly, flick on the lights, and examine every inch of my body. I have to use a hand mirror for the more hidden spots, but after a while, I conclude that my skin is SL-29 free. For now, at least. My mouth tastes rank, like I’ve been licking the floor and my own armpits. I go back to bed and try to sleep but my dreams are hallucinogenic, liquid, slipping through my brain like slick poisoned water.

***

Monday morning. Subway car rattling uptown, my sleep-blurred eyes, that odd gnawing hunger that always comes with not getting enough sleep. I brushed my teeth before leaving—alone, this time; my husband goes to work an hour later than I do—but my breath is stale inside my mask. I’m one of the few who still wear them, and my husband would be ashamed of me if he saw, ashamed and angry enough to shout, but he’s not here right now. Just a few other early-morning commuters, still mostly mired in the fog of recollected dreams, who couldn’t clearly give two fucks about my mask. Across from my seat, there’s an ad: “One night with Venus, a lifetime of SL-29.” Next to the bubbly words is a cartoon of an embarrassed man, face covered in red spots. I wonder how many people will catch the centuries-old reference to syphilis. When the subway gets to my stop, I stand up and walk past the sign, glancing at it one last time. Now that I’m closer, I can see the vandalism I would’ve caught earlier if the vandal had the presence of mind to use a Sharpie instead of a pencil. The word Venus has been crossed out in thin, barely-visible graphite. And above it, scratched deep into the shiny plastic, as if he could already tell that the pencil wasn’t going to be sufficiently discernible: A WHORE.

***

As soon as I sit down at my desk, the fogginess leaves me. It’s a sudden, destabilizing rush, like coming down out of the clouds on an airplane at night. Suddenly you’re seeing civilization spread out below you in all of its greedy, multiplied glory: city lights glittering like insect shells, spangling clear across the globe like earthbound stars. At least my resting bitch face comes in handy today. I’m left in peace as I boot up my monitor, open my email, scroll through my new tasks for the day. I don’t actually read any of it. Instead, I’m thinking of my husband. His way of saying “Only with you” when I ask him to do something he doesn’t really want to do—clean the bathroom, sign petitions, scrub the crusted stovetop. It’s true that there’s some romance in the teamwork, in both of us bettering our living space side by side. Once, we made eye contact over our flooded bathroom floor, flashed each other twin grossed-out grins: We’re in this together.The way he promised, using almost the same language, that he’d always be mine. It was just after he proposed, and he was holding my hands carefully. Like they were birds, hollow-boned and nervous, that might at any moment fly away. Most men make a big deal out of a woman being theirs and only theirs, but my husband seemed to find the idea of him being mine equally scintillating. At the time, I found it touching. Now I wonder if it was something he read online. One of those tricks guaranteed to lower the female guard. I think of my husband’s wide, toothy, childish smile. His complexion is so pale that even his teeth, which are actually fairly white, look yellow. Soon the spots will cover his entire face, astonishingly bright on his skin—not melting into one another like confluent smallpox, but just barely managing not to touch. So that each spot preserves its own perfect roundness. Almost as though it’s intentional. I once saw an interview where a doctor squinted at a patient’s face and pronounced them “the most perfect circles I have ever seen in nature.” He even took photographs, and other people measured the circles, confirmed that they were indeed mathematically perfect. “The good news is it’s not fatal,” the doctor said as he concluded the interview. “The bad news is it’s not fatal,” I muttered to myself, watching, because the suicides were rising by then and have continued to increase ever since. What the fuck do I do now?I check my wrists and forearms again. I fight the urge to march to the bathroom and strip down in a stall, twist until my body is covered in sweat and I’ve pulled a muscle in my back from trying to see every inch of my skin. I can’t panic. Panic won’t make any of this any better. According to the guidelines, the disease is 80% transmissible before any spots appear—that’s why we need expensive SL-29 STD tests, rather than a simple strip search. But once a spot has appeared, that person’s transmission rate climbs to 100%. Anyone they have intercourse with will get the disease too. And once a spot has appeared on someone you’ve been having sex with, you have forty-eight hours to see whether they’ve infected you during their asymptomatic phase. Forty-eight hours from last night. I just need to make it till Tuesday night, and I’ll know. For better or worse. And then I can…then I can…At this point my brain stops. Like a webpage that won’t load. I simply can’t think of what I’m going to do after the forty-eight hours is up. Almost with relief, I recognize another problem: I can’t know how long that spot has been there. Was it there the day before yesterday? I can’t be sure—I barely glanced at my husband all day on Saturday, preferring instead to read and separate myself from him and his video games, the way he cursed at the screen whenever he made a mistake. A flat red spot hiding behind his bangs would have been easy to miss. And of course there’s the question of how he got it. Where he got it. Who gave it to him. Only with you. I feel like I’m breathing through a rolled-up piece of paper. A hollow plastic cylinder. A straw. The ad from the subway flashes back into my mind. The slogan, the humiliated cartoon man, the crossed-out Venus. And then that other word, etched into the plastic, with such determination and fury, like a scar. Earlier, I thought of the vandal as a man. Now I no longer do.

***

My husband gets home an hour after me. His bangs are perfectly in place, and he’s smiling: his teeth the color of weak chamomile tea, his lips stretched and rubbery. “I got your favorite,” he says, holding aloft some bags from the nearby Korean restaurant. “Excited?”I blink at him. Does he think that he can use bibimbap and glass noodles to, what, bribe me to stay with him? That, supposing I’m clean, I’ll willingly let him infect me so that we can be scarlet-lettered together? Ha. Only with you, babe, right? Red circles clustering on our faces and then trailing down across our bodies, so bright we can’t cover them even with the thickest foundation. Maybe he’s even dreaming that I’ll come with him to live in one of the communities where the SL-29 social outcasts live as shut-ins: spending their worst days soaking in cool water, spending all the other days hiding behind thick curtains. Only venturing outside in the darkness, like suicidal, hideous vampires. I almost laugh at the idea. He takes my sardonic grin as a sign of pleasure. “I knew you’d be! It’s always better when it’s a surprise, right?”“Oh yeah, definitely,” I say, trying not to let the sarcasm seep too deeply into my voice. “Surprises are always better.” Only twenty-four more hours to go, I think. And it’s now that I decide. If I don’t have any spots on my body by tomorrow night, I’ll get out. I’ll tell everyone the truth and leave him to pick up the pieces by himself. It doesn’t matter that I can’t divorce him—I’ll run. And if I do have a spot on my body by tomorrow night….But the thought of that turns my guts into snakes. It makes my head so heavy that that I have to bow over, gripping it in my hands, and the next thing I hear from my husband, coming close and speaking in a voice that I could swear is more fearful than it ought to be: “Is everything okay?”In bed, he reaches for me. “Sorry, babe, not tonight,” I say, trying to sound as regretful as possible. “My stomach’s cramping…I think it’s from eating too much spicy food.”“But you love spicy food.” His hand is on my waist, stroking gently but insistently. I fight the urge to jerk away from him. “Yeah, but I’m not used to it anymore. We haven’t gotten from that place in a while. Or any of my favorite restaurants, for that matter,” I add, unable to keep the resentment out of my voice. “We’ve mostly just been eating the bland American food you seem to constantly crave.” In the silence that follows this, I hold my breath, letting it live high and shallow in my nostrils and the tops of my lungs. But, finally: “Huh, okay.” I can hear the shrug in his voice. I never rebuff his sexual advances unless I’m on my period or have a migraine, but he just moves to the other side of the bed. My body relaxes in relief. At the same time my mind spirals, trying to determine whether he’s given up so easily because he knows he already infected me last week, or because he thinks he’ll have another chance tomorrow.I want to ask Who was she? Was she hot? Did she refuse a test, or did you just not care enough to even ask for one?I want to ask Was it worth a lifetime of spots marring your whole body? Flesh pepperoni peeking out all over your cheese-curd-colored skin, skin the color of milk gone sour, skin like that of a corpse just before it stiffens and turns blue?But I don’t want to make him angry. Ever since the Domestic Violence shelters have all been closed down. Ever since the Domestic Assault hotline has been disconnected. Ever since calling the cops on your husband is the quickest way to get yourself dragged down to the station for “inciting the violence” yourself. Ever since new, privately funded studies came out showing that women are indeed the more emotional sex and that their manipulation can easily be used to paint good men as “abusive.” Ever since no-fault divorce was eliminated. Ever since. Ever since. Ever since. Ever since the dawn of fucking time because men have always been physically stronger than women and always will be.

***

In the end, I don’t even have to wait forty-eight hours. The spot is there on the back of my knee when I go to the bathroom the next morning, peeking out at me like a knowing eye. I stare at it like I’m waiting for it to wink. Heat unfurls across my body—a panicked rush of blood, a silent roar. My vision goes black at the corners, as though smoke is closing in, and I curl forward over my knees, muffling my wail in my hands. A crazy idea flashes through my mind: cut my leg off. But that wouldn’t work, not even if I took it off at the hip. The disease has already spread throughout my body. It’s like mold: glimpsing a little bit on the surface only means that the roots have long since claimed what’s underneath. There’s no stopping it now. The panic gives me tunnel vision, and I’m standing up now, staring into the bathroom mirror, staring at my face which is now unblemished but which will soon—who can say how soon—show a spot. Maybe with me, the disease will creep upwards. My husband’s will progress downwards, and mine will follow the reverse course. We’ll fit together perfectly.I turn the shower on full blast and scream into a towel. Swallowed up by the terrycloth, it’s more vibration than sound, and it shudders through me, shakes my arms and legs until I’m a trembling strand in the corner of the bathroom, looking towards the door with wild eyes, praying he didn’t hear anything. Because…because…Why? Why the fuck not?To get my answer, as I always have, I need the clarity that comes with pain. So I step into the shower. I gasp; the cold is a physical force, ripping the air from my lungs. Needles of icy water rain down on me, shocking, splintering me into a million particles like television static. A numb buzzing in my brain. Pain, pain, pain—And then, clarity. I slam the shower closed, panting and trembling. The facts are simple, clear as ice as they march out before me: He fucked someone recently. He got SL-29 from her. He returned home. By now he’s sure, by now he must be sure, that he is infected. He hasn’t told me. I’m infected too. Probably from when we fucked on Thursday or Friday. I’m in the same boat as him. We’re in this together. But it’s not a boat I’ve joined willingly. It’s a boat he’s dragged me into, without my knowledge or consent, a boat that could bind us together for a lifetime. If he were more possessive, I’d even suspect he’s done this deliberately, binding me to him so I can never escape. But he’s not like that. He’s never been possessive. And he loves himself far too much to ever destroy his appearance just to have me by his side for the rest of our lives. I clench my fists on the shower wall and get myself back to the row of facts. Okay: yes, I am infected too. I skip to the next one before my legs can start shaking again, quickly, onto the next fact: he needs to be punished. My husband can do so much to me. He can cheat on me. He can put his hands on me as many times as he wants—smack me across the face for speaking in the wrong tone of voice, pinch my lip between his sharp nails as a punishment for accidentally stepping on his foot—as long as there are fewer than two witnesses. He can stop me from voting. He can even impregnate me and force me to keep the baby (although what other option would I even have? a coat hanger? a handful of toxic weeds?). Although, in his defense, he has never done that last. He doesn’t want children either. It was one of the things we agreed on at the very beginning, one of the things that bound us together in a world where other couples were constantly fighting and breaking up over the issue. We simply looked at each other and said, “Nope.” Smirking, like we were in on some grand inside joke. A secret held like a jewel between the two of us. Funny how it’s always the wives who are paraded like a spectacle for bringing the Scarlet Spots into their homes. Sluts infecting their unsuspecting husbands. Funny how it’s never, ever the other way around. I think again of the ad on the subway. The original saying was One night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury: a phrase intended to sway young men away from prostitutes, because syphilis was treated with mercury in those days. But what about the phrases to sway young women away from the Johns who would later pass that disfiguring disease onto them? Those phrases did not exist. They never do.I step out of the shower stall, run the shower hot for a few minutes, and then emerge from the bathroom. Using my weakest voice, I tell my husband I’m coming down with a cold. “I just took a steaming hot shower,” I say mournfully. “I think I’ll take it easy in bed today.”He gives me a sympathetic nod and tells me to feel better. Before he leaves, I notice another spot, just below his chin. He turns away from me quickly, not wanting me to see. I want to tell him that I already know. But that would ruin the surprise. And surprises are always best, aren’t they, love?

***

As soon as I hear the elevator doors close in the hallway, I fly into action. I have to get everything set up perfectly by the time he comes home. As I walk to first one hardware shop and then the next, and then a chemist’s shop, and then a kitchen-wares shop, I try to let my thoughts wander. But they don’t want to wander. They keep coming around to tonight’s plan, like a fierce, certain arrow. And I smile. I keep smiling even as I’m aware of that spot on the back of my knee, that barely perceptible itch. What’ll happen tonight, what I’ll turn my husband into…it’s almost enough to make the infection worth it. Almost. I spend the rest of the day setting things up. He’s only got two red spots, but I can add a few more: early ones, surprise ones. Maybe I’ll take some things away, too. I think again of why I didn’t want to make him angry when we lay in bed that night. Yes, on the whole, men have always been physically stronger than women and always will be. But that’s assuming no other factors have been introduced to alter the equation. And a sedated man bound to a bed, tied in five-point restraints like they use at the hospitals for hysterical women—well, all his strength will be useless. As useless as the nipples on his chest. Maybe I’ll start with those. No one’s coming to help him. After all, the Domestic Assault hotline has been disconnected. Tonight it’s his body on the bed. And—finally—my choice.

WHAT I DID FOR LOVE by Catherine Spino

June 9, 2025

I can’t remember his name so I will give him one. Devin. He was 32, blonde, sun kissed, and standing on a dock in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were but if I had to guess, they were blue. I hit “heart” and a few hours later, I felt his “heart” back vibrate against my jeans. It was December 2014 and I was 21. Back then, the OKCupid app was clunky and I always gave out my cell because texting was easier. I gave Devin my number and his texts came in green on my iPhone 5. He tried calling me immediately after and I rejected the call. “Can’t talk now, what’s up?” “Oh, sorry. Just wanted to say hi.”I ignored this and went about my day, already forgetting him.The next time he calls, he calls three times in a row at 9:45pm while I’m cramming for a Bio Anth final in the Philosophy building with two other girls. I pick up on the third, frustrated and already bored. I tell him I’m studying for a final in a flat tone and don’t run with any of the small talk he’s making. Eventually he says, “You know, I was excited to get to know you but I didn’t think you’d be such a bitch.” His words are like a dental drill buzzing too close to my pink gums.I immediately stop breathing, faced with a challenge. I liked challenges, holding my hand over fire to see how long I could last until the burned flesh was too much. I liked stretching my endurance. I was young then, what an excuse.I forgot what I said next, but my voice changed. I remember thinking of a kitten before its first time getting its claws trimmed, unwieldy and meaningless. I petted him with my voice, pressed my hand to its nose for familiarity. Devin told me he worked in entertainment, lived in Jersey but went often to New York for events and premieres. I told him I was an actor and director finishing up college. I told him where I went to school and thought about joining him for premieres. He asked me what I was into sexually, a conversation I was privy to having. Nothing scared me about sex anymore after I lost my virginity in London the year before. Out of all the questions he asked me, the only one I remember is did I like having things stuck up my ass. I forget what I answered but it probably wasn’t the truth. “I wish I could meet you tonight”, his voice like gravel. “I’d love to pick you up and see you in person.” I told him I had to study for my final and he proposed to see me after I was done the next day for coffee before I went home for break. But we kept talking, and at one point, he called me from a different number. A work phone. Devin demanded nudes a couple hours later. I sent him a couple I took weeks ago in the daylight, light pouring into my room as I faced my Macbook, my bottom half covered with my Marimekko duvet but my top exposed, an indie sleeze Rokeby Venus. My nipple piercing on my right breast twinkled as my pupils focused on the spot to the bottom right of my laptop’s digital eye. I remember feeling beautiful, classy, powerful when I took those, thinking they were a gift. Devin responded immediately that these were old photos and that he was insulted that I didn't send him something new. “I want you to go back to your dorm and send me 30 photos of yourself in 15 minutes.”So I did. I sucked myself in, contorted my body and began clicking my iPhone camera. I sent him 30 and he asked to Facetime me. I said yes. I never thought I could say no or ask for photos in return. I don’t know whether I say this to prove I wasn’t asking for this or because I can’t objectively look back at this anymore.He Facetimed me and I answered on my computer. His screen was black, I could not see his face. He told me he turned off all the lights and was too lazy to turn them on. I vaguely remember he said he had a cat or two. Did I see them? I can’t remember. I can’t remember how it happened but I was laid back on my twin sized dorm mattress, pressing my cheap red marbled bullet vibrator from Spencer’s Gifts to my clit, fake moaning but trying to make it real. My eyes were fixed on the high cracked ceiling, avoiding the square of darkness on my laptop but more importantly ignoring my body reflected back to me, a form that felt so foreign and weak to me. I had a pit in my stomach that could’ve been sexual shame but felt coarser than that. I tried to ignore it. Devin’s voice was in my ear as I faked the build of an orgasm. Right before the false peak, he said, “now shove it up your ass.” I didn’t do it. By that point it was 3am and my exam was in five hours. He agreed he’d see me after for coffee and I went to bed with a sour stomach.I woke up and took my exam, running on acidic coffee and adrenaline. I remember passing my friend Carina in the dorms, pink and giddy because I found someone cool. We both always talked about our boy troubles at our small liberal arts school. I remember I imagined I was glowing telling her the news, like a drop of dew on a leaf. Once I realized I had nothing packed, I called Devin and asked if we could reschedule coffee for when I returned in the spring semester. He hung up immediately and five minutes later, I received five texts from an unknown number—his other number I forgot to save. All five texts were photos of a man I didn’t know—a brunette with a dark goatee who looked about 250 pounds. Photos of him standing with friends outside, his arm wrapped around a woman’s waist in a bar, him wearing those wrap around glasses dads wore. Another text came in. “I knew you wouldn’t like me because of how I looked.”I can’t remember how my body felt when I got all of these texts. I called one of his numbers back, I can’t remember which. I could tell I was on speaker phone and asked him what this all meant. “I have a medical condition where I look the way I do but I’m going to have surgery in a couple months. I wanted to find a person who could see beyond what I look like now so that when I look different, I know they will be with me because of who I am.” I pictured a fucked up version of Beauty and the Beast, my childhood VHS tape warped in the sun, all the cartoons twisted. I couldn’t understand why I felt conflicted. He kept talking.“Well, I’m already on my way to your college.” “What?”I only then recognized the fact that his voice sounded slightly farther away, in a tunnel. He was on speaker phone. I imagined his chubby hands on his steering wheel, every minute a couple feet closer to me.“I’m getting off at your exit now, it’s too late for me to turn around.”That’s when I remember how my body felt. It felt like glass.I thought it would be easier to handle all of this on my own. I didn’t think to get campus police involved or anyone else. Devin had my nudes. It felt like I had already signed over my rights and my body and there was nothing I could do. I told him where to go after he passed through the entrance, campus police probably waved him in without looking up from their phones. His black minivan circling the campus like a vulture over a bunny with a broken leg, too stunned to move. He pulled into the small parking lot of my dorm building. It was one of the older buildings on campus and the 4th floor was supposedly haunted by a girl who jumped out the window because some boy broke her heart. He got out of his van as I stood on the gravel. He had the same wrap around sunglasses, red adidas shorts that hit right at his knee, and adidas slides. I didn’t look at his toes for too long. My plan was to say hello and send him on his way. But once his soft, sweaty flesh enveloped me, he said, “I thought I’d get to see your dorm.”I remember walking him up to the second floor of the dorm, my shoes pressing into the grey carpeting, thinking “I have a loud scream, I have a loud scream.” Because even though I knew this wouldn’t end well, I thought I could handle it. Devin sat on my bed, his flesh resting on the same Marimekko bedding in the photo I sent that he hated.I buzzed around the room packing. He wouldn’t stop talking. About New York, about events, about how he worked on Lord of the Rings—a fact I checked on IMDB later and his name wasn’t listed on any of the projects. As he kept going on, I kept checking the clock, seeing time constrict as my Dad drove closer and closer to me. At one point, I remember telling him he needed to leave, that I didn’t want my father to meet him like this. He asked me to sit on the bed with him, my worn stuffed elephant as the only witness as he said, “I’m not leaving until you kiss me.”I wish I had taken the time to think, to slow down, to pause time. To rewind, to enter this dorm room as I am now, to grab my hand and run screaming down my hall. Knocking on doors until someone came out. I picture this now and my screams are silent. She lets go of my hand because no one comes out, no one hears me, and she returns to her dorm room, sits down, and kisses him.I have never felt my body shake as violently as it did then. Every muscle in me was alive, knocking against my skin like bees in a hive of flesh. I pulled away and remember seeing this booger, this gleaming moist pea green lump of rejected bacteria hanging from his right nostril and being disgusted. “I could tell you wanted more.” He said with a grin.He left shortly after because I said my dad was nearby. I forget if I kissed him again, and my dad arrived 30 minutes later with my sister in tow. We packed the car and drove back to Rhode Island. Right before my dad came, Devin called me again on speaker phone. “I know your dad wasn’t almost there. Don’t you ever lie to me again.”That night, I went to the 99 with my high school friends. After three five dollar margaritas, I told them numbly that I was catfished. I told the story like it was a joke, looking for laughs along the way. Three of my guy friends looked stunned, one of them saying, “Christ, are you alright?”The only thing that comes back clearly is what my only girlfriend said, “Are you sure you didn’t do anything enticing?”I called my therapist the next day and told her what happened. “I need you to block both of his numbers. This man has done this before, he has a story and a system to manipulate women.” she said. “Once you return to school, you need to report this to campus police.”But I didn’t heed this advice. I thought I could fix this. I texted him a couple days later and explained to him that I really couldn’t get into anything serious with my senior thesis coming up in the spring. It really wasn’t him or his looks (or his lie), it was all me.What came next was a large paragraph, jumbled and clearly voice to text, but the one thing that stands like a monument in my mind was that “he didn’t want to be my friend he would find a way to fuck me he would.” I blocked both of his numbers. I deleted my OKCupid account and never redownload it.I told some of my good friends what happened to me when I returned in the spring semester, always when I was drunk or stoned. I figured it was a good party trick, like my nipple piercing—something initially painful that turns into a cheap novelty. There was something about seeing people react to the story. How they laughed at the term “catfish” and then their faces shifted and landed in a place of concern. I watched this happen time and time again, hoping that concern would rub off on me. It never did. I graduated in May 2015, age 22. I packed up my parents' car and stayed in a hotel with my best friend for our last night in Jersey. “The Graduate” was on TV, Katherine Ross in her wedding gown and Dustin Hoffman staring straight ahead into a world we never see. It is now February 2017. I have forgotten about Devin. I live in Brooklyn and work as an executive receptionist for a luxury real estate company. I get a text from an unknown number around 3pm, nothing atypical as a girl who goes on a lot of first and only dates. “Hey beautiful.” “Who is this?” “Devin.”“Sorry I don’t know of a Devin.” “From December 2014.”Just as my brain made the connection, I received a photo of myself. Nude from the tip of my breasts up, a small smile painted on my face. My eyes locked with the digital eye of my phone.Another text. “I just wanted to see if this girl was still single.”I can’t remember how I thought of it but I texted back, “So sorry! I think you have the wrong number! Best of luck finding her.” And blocked the number. All I can remember was sitting in a packed L train during rush hour, feeling like I was being hunted, that he saw me hiding in Brooklyn. He knew where I was at every moment. I called both my Providence based therapist and my new New York based therapist as I walked home in the park. One said she was impressed by my text to him and the other said this had nothing to do with me, that this was some indication that he was flailing and reaching out to older situations. I pictured him in some basement in his same red adidas shorts and adidas slides, a single booger hanging from his nostril, the only light coming from a laptop as he shot off messages like bullets from a sniper rifle into the void. “You could be in Africa for all he knows.” I tried to believe that as I struggled to find sleep that night.Devin never tried to contact me again. I grew up thinking that love could be served up on a spoon or a knife, but it was love just the same. I had no concept of what negging was, what manipulation could look like, the idea of revenge porn was just whispers and nothing legitimate. For years I looked back and thought what an incredible idiot I was. How I got out by the skin of my teeth. How it really wasn’t that bad, all he did was kiss me in a small dorm I invited him into. How I should’ve known better. I retold this story countless times and I guess I was waiting for someone to ask why I did what I did so I could finally say that I did it for love.

CITY DESK by Michael McSweeney

May 14, 2025

Last spring the county newspaper paid me $200 to write about local dreams. I interviewed a man whose job it was to cycle out the books from the little lending library in the center of town. We met at a diner nobody liked and was always empty but stayed in business as such diners often do. He told me he mostly dreamed about colors. Yellow in spring, green in winter, purple in autumn. Summer heat made the man's legs swell and he didn't want to talk about what he saw those nights. He seemed uneasy about the approaching season. As we spoke my smartphone gathered time beside undercooked bacon. Recording a voice I'd listen to speak these words once and never again. This is the nature of the news and the people who write it. We fill our notes with memories and chronicle a world that grew so fast it forgot how to stop and remember.I ask the man if he believes in dream analysis, and he tells me when he sleeps on his back he sees faces in the colors. People he met when he served jury duty in Greenfield three years before. I don't know their names or anything about them, he told me. The day aged through the pollen-painted window. Buzzards circled above the bridge across the river to the rust-lined highway to Boston. The man fingered the bacon on his plate. Oh, he said. We sent a boy to jail for murder. Outside the diner the man asked me if I'd put him in my story. I told him it's up to my editor. I didn't know if that was true but when I don't know something I appeal to some faceless power. We shook hands and he asked me what I dream about. I told him reporters should never become part of the story. He laughed and said, No, really. Tell me.I told him when I dream about the places I used to live, they look nothing like those places, but in the dream it's all real and true, that I know those places like I do the people I've loved. Every place in my dreams has a road leading north. I thank him for his time. You're from around here, he said. Not really, I said.The man got in his car and backed into a fire hydrant. Water gushed like blood from a torn-off thumb. Then he turned the car around and gunned it against the hydrant. His engine sobbed. I took pictures with my phone but they were all blurred, out of focus, smeared with light. Faces filled the windows around us, some I knew, faces angry and entertained, faces of why now, of not this again, of I get it, man, I really fucking do.

The paper assigned me to cover a recent wave of carjackings. Not the carburetor thefts. They told me that was a different beat, and that we'd talk about pay when I had something good.As I waited at the light on Avenue E one morning a woman opened my passenger door, flashed a ten-dollar utility knife, and told me to drive.Where? I asked.South, she said. I gassed it. A pollen-clouded patrol car was parked outside the gun store at the intersection. A cop, leaning against the door, didn't look up from his phone. We left town. Drove past restaurants, gas stations, farms. All for sale. The butterfly sanctuary was closed for repairs. Further south a line of cars waited to park at a brewery. Food trucks belched steam and a couple locked arms on the grass. I nearly collided with the car ahead of us.Watch it, said the woman.Sorry, I said.The woman told me to take the highway. We inched through Sunday construction. Men clustered by potholes and idle machines. I wondered if any of them looked inside my car and confused us for husband and wife. I told her this.Don't say that, she said. She checked her phone and was on the verge of tears.Her directions were more forceful now. The ramp past Deerfield, left, right, left. Take it slow down this street. Look for a truck with no bumper. Apple red.The same, the woman said. The same.She was out of the car before I parked. The woman sprinted, slipped and shouted up the angled drive and flung open the garage door. Two men fucked on a yoga mat, free weights and kettlebells and gym clothes abandoned around them. A radio spewed dad rock on a chair. The woman grabbed one of the men by the hair and tugged. The men broke apart, their passion fissioned to sweat and rage. I see you, the woman screamed at one of the men. He didn't seem angry or shocked. Calm, almost, as if this was expected, predicted, even welcome. No one said anything. Just frozen acknowledgement, where no words suffice to explain how the resolution of tension causes both pleasure and pain. Then the woman shoved me back to the car. Pushing tears back into her eyes as she moved. Drive, she whispered. South I drove again. Small mountains rose as if the world was teething. We approached the tallest, one I'd climbed before blind-drunk on a snowy, lonely night. I hooked an observation road and shot past hikers too weary for the steep rock path. My legs ached from the long sit. At the peak we got out and gazed across the valley and the towns and the curves of the green-brown Connecticut River.I dreamed about this, said the woman.What do you mean? I asked.I saw my husband. Driving there. I felt how happy he was. How that garage felt more like home than ours.How did the dream end? I asked. The woman rocked back and forth, hands in her pockets.Like this, she said. What do you mean? I asked.I forced you to drive at knifepoint. When we arrived I forgot my knife in the car. My husband chose someone else. Then we drove up this mountain. Then I woke up.We said nothing for a while. A prop plane flew above us in a circle and then turned north, against the wind.Then the woman said, The way my husband felt. That love inside him. That deep, physical love. I'll never forget.Then she said, I don't have any money.We drove back to town under a rose-gold sky. There are no sunsets anywhere like those in western Massachusetts. I wondered if I had the right to tell this story, or if everything was off the record, or whether these things even matter when you're a witness against your will. As we turned onto Avenue E the woman pressed her knife against my neck. Wallet, she said. Then, more softly, she said, Please.She took thirty bucks and a gas station gift card and the picture of my nephew, then tossed the wallet in my lap and stepped out into the street.

The paper laid me off on the fifth of July. In June we covered bridge repair delays, unaffordable homes, church fires, community musicals, childhood illiteracy. Covered births, deaths and arrests. Covered sickness, hope and happiness. We covered the war, and then they shut us down. Some private equity barons out in Boston coveted the land beneath our office. I had an hour to clear the city desk I shared with three other journalists. One week's severance. Benefits 'til the end of the month.I asked my editor what to do with my half-finished story about a man who'd drowned in the river. He was a local, an institution, a bellwether figure. Sought your change outside the sandwich shop. Bought milk and bread from the communist theater group on the corner of Avenue G. Once, he told me a story about being a judo champion in California and as he spoke he hand-chopped the air and winced and bore his teeth, but he seemed proud to remember those moves. Ben. Ben Armstrong. I'd written his name on a notepad and circled it in red ink.Forget it, my editor told me. We were close in the way you become when you deal with the constant mess of private lives, because that's what local news is, a constant mess bursting into public, ordered and shaped by writers and publishers. But I knew next to nothing about him, his family, what he wanted, how he saw himself, here, at the end. But it was too late to ask. I watched him slide a half-dozen reams of untouched paper into his backpack and step nervously out into the light on the sidewalk outside our office. On the bathroom wall I wrote in permanent marker The News Was Here. Then I pissed, didn't flush, and left with some notebooks and pens.At home, I caught up on my drinking. Shouted at hummingbirds. Built a castle of beer cans on the back porch and staggered through its walls before a midweek thunderstorm could blow it down. Mostly I slept. My blanket gathered cat hair as I moved from bed to floor to couch like some forgotten, guilt-soaked king. I wondered whether the stories I told really mattered. If they changed the world or changed someone's mind. If any sort of story matters when a story must make noise, provoke, and never repeat.My mother, a man's voice said from beside the couch one day. It was the man from the diner. He gripped his legs with thick, red hands. Like many men who lived in town, he seemed on the verge of explosion. His eyes darted between the brown houseplants on the windowsills.Then he said, That's who I see in the summer when I sleep. That's not a color, I said.She is, he said. Like this. The man pinched his arm and then held it close to me. His arm shook and a small spot bloomed red then purple-brown. The ease of his bruise scared me and I wanted to tell someone about it.I loved her but she, well, you know, said the man. The man's arm kept shaking.Then the man said, Someone can love you and still do terrible things. Like nobody taught them how to do it right.Yeah, I said.I rolled over and listened as the man watched me and breathed. Am I asleep? the man asked.I think I am, I said.No, said the man. I'm asleep. And I really don't want to be. I want to wake up.I turned back toward him and then said, Sometimes when I want to wake up I open my eyes as wide as they'll go. Sometimes if I do it enough I can break through the sleep and escape.The man tried it. The valleys beneath his eyes turned the color of plums. He used his fingers to stretch the skin like he was trying to release air from inside his head.It's not working, he said.I'm sorry. Am I dead? Did I die in my sleep? I don't know.Please wake me up. Please. Please!Alright, I said.I threw off the covers and gripped the man by the shoulders. We made eye contact. Blue ones. The sky in spring.Ready? I asked.Yeah.I shoved him. As he fell backwards the man grabbed my face. I lost my balance and we tumbled together in darkness. I don't know if I hit the ground. Don't remember. All of a sudden I was awake, alone, in my blanket, and that was all. I sat up. I had nowhere to be. No stories to sell. I closed my eyes.What remained was a burst of relief. Like a bath of liquid gold. But it wasn't my relief. In half-awake clarity I knew that the man had escaped from the dream. His dream or mine, I wasn't sure. But he was free, somewhere out there, even if it meant returning to whichever hell had inspired the dream to begin with. I wanted, desperately, for the man's happiness to be my own.

Wonder Meadow by David Hayden

May 2, 2025

The night trees were blue by the Wensum. Eels seethed in a ditch. In the flint wall of a garden a door trembled. A green man sat naked on the riverbank, his feet in the water, head nodding, vines and tendrils ran down his chest. A swan guzzled between his legs, blood flowed down his mossy thighs. Twitching and jiggling, burning ropes suspended from the boughs of a hawthorn tree. Across a playing field the cathedral rose, all spire, dissolving sour yellow into the sky, drifting towards the moon.Cakes were scattered in the mud by the Watergate. The girl guides were elsewhere, in bed. The guides’ carers were in bed also. Or sitting at a kitchen table with a mug of malted milk staring at their reflection in the black glass of a garden door.A walking stick, made from a shark’s backbone, floated down the river. A leprous-white hand attached. And to the hand, an arm, a body. Lids flickered; eyes opened; large, luminous green. The man was a watcher. Watching himself looking out for others to whom he could attach his gaze.Andrea tucked the hospital gown into the waistband of her jeans. She sang a song of her own making. She smiled, which made her think of teeth, her teeth, and she smiled again, broader this time. A plaster covered the puncture mark in her left hand. The hand was sore, and several of the fingers were numb at their tips. She stopped and looked at her hand, fearing, for a moment, that it would become another thing, shears or claws or jaws, or another’s. Another’s perfect hand, unscarred, cold and steady with silver fingernails and dry palms. Andrea wanted to be sure that she would not change any more than was necessary.Men came down the path. Three men. One stared, eyes out of his head. One sang and leered. One walked with a swinging stride, hands in pockets, his face two tiny eyes, a red gash of wet lips. Three men taking possession of the night.Andrea knew the moment they noticed her from the thickening of the air in her throat, from the return of pain to her left shoulder, from the sudden heaviness of her boots, the stickiness of their soles. The men called. They told her what they thought she was. They told her what they wanted to do. They told her what they were going to do.Andrea stood still in the middle of the path. The river slowed and stopped. The river speeded up. The men came closer, growing smaller all the while. Andrea reached into the gown pocket and took out a gross anatomy knife. The men came on, their sounds more distant, their forms shrinking away. The handle was plastic, lemon yellow and warm. Andrea drew long lines where they might have been. The air parted with a sucking sound, again and again. The men whispered in the grass; they had not passed but they were gone.She tossed the knife into the river, wet before it hit the water, picked up her tune and followed the way towards the road. The trees shivered as she passed. Canaries with glass beaks fussed and chittered in the air a few feet above and behind. Andrea reached in her pocket and found the knife. Safe.Wavering orange light was visible through the trees, cries drifted with the smoke from Lollards Pit across the river. The path warped to her left, ran through a wicket, past a cottage and out before a tower. The Cow Tower. The place she would meet her friend Judith. Andrea walked on but could not see her. She passed round the tower to a tall iron gate and looked through. On a green silk divan reclined a large woman in a great fur coat.‘Aren’t you terrible hot, Judy?’‘I like to be cosy, don’t you know, old girl. You’re looking less than marvellous, if I might say. You made it here all right?’‘A little local difficulty. Nothing to speak of, darling. How did you get in there?’‘The ladies from the Adam and Eve carried me over. Would you believe it? Big girls the lot of them. My kind.’‘It’s been quite some time since last orders, Judy.’‘A long dry season, my friend, makes kindling of us all.’Judith reached over and switched on a tall standard lamp. Yellow light projected upwards, illuminating the canaries that swirled above where the upper floors used to be, making their beaks sparkle.‘How should I…’‘Just give a good firm shove, love.’The gate moved, shifting a mound of dried leaves forward with a hush. Andrea looked up and around. A dark circle of blue, the sky, a ring of gun ports, another of arrow loops, pellitory and red valerian grew in effusions on every welcoming surface.‘The armchair is for you, sweetie. You must be exhausted after your troubles. No one was less deserving of troubles than you, dearest. Curse the deserving, the bastards.’‘You wouldn’t have a cup of tea, would you?’‘Haven’t I flask? And a hamper too? You’re starved, of course.’Andrea took a melamine willow-pattern plate out of the basket and raided the same for gala pie, potato salad with chives, for asparagus spears sopping with butter, for sweet tomato chutney, for a salad of endives, marigold leaves, watercress and sorrel soured with vinegar. She was a long time eating and all the while Judith watched her contentedly, pulling from time to time on the pipe of a port sipper glass. Andrea poured herself a mug of tea and settled back in the armchair.‘Did you tell them at the hospital before you left? That you were going to leave?’‘I did not.’‘Might they look for you?’‘I suppose they might. But I’m here, aren’t I? Where they aren’t. And I haven’t done anything wrong.’‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’Andrea took a fat gulp of tea.‘Have I done something wrong, Judy?’‘You haven’t done anything wrong, my love. Not a thing.’‘Only to myself.’‘Only to yourself.’‘What did I do that for Judy?’‘You know why, honeybear.’‘I can take care of myself now.’‘You should.’‘Do you love me, Judy?’‘I do.’Judith patted the silk heavily raising a small cloud of dust out of the horsehair. Andrea dropped the mug and rose, the plate fell on the stones, she approached the sofa, Judith opened her coat and her arms and embraced Andrea, enfolding her, pulling her close, stroking her hair. Scents of parma violet, of turpentine, of chypre, of wet slate, of old leather, of smoking peat. As Andrea began to fall asleep Judith reached out and turned off the lamp. Judith could feel the knife through the gown.Andrea woke, blinking, alone on the divan, swaddled in fur. Six girls in brown and yellow uniforms crowded around the gate, gazing down at her, their faces bright, shiny and serious.‘She’s awake.’‘We can see that…’‘Would you like a cake, lady?’‘Shutup…’All but one of the girls laughed. The one who had offered the cake.‘Cake for breakfast?’ said Andrea.The girls danced, singing: ‘Cake for breakfast! Cake for breakfast!’Andrea walked, smiling, to the gate. The unsmiling girl pressed an open pink toffee tin forward. It was crowded with fairy cakes, each topped with a thick, vermicular swirl of buttercream and a scattering of blue and yellow sugar stars.‘Take one…’Andrea took one.‘Take another.’She took another.‘Thank you,’ said Andrea.‘Bye! Bye!’ said five of the girls, and they skipped off.The unsmiler stood still. She returned the lid to the tin.‘We’re picking up rubbish today. Along the river.’‘Oh…that sounds…’The girl interrupted her with a solar, yellow-toothed smile. She held the cake tin up at a distance from her uniform and marched away.Andrea shuffled off the fur. She stood looking up to the new sun and raised an arm to protect her face from a shower of hard bright objects; birdless glass beaks. Andrea squeezed through the narrow gate gap, turned back to the river. She walked down Ferry Lane towards Tombland.A lone horse passed by slowly, pulling an empty cart. In the shadowed window of a house was a rocking horse with a mouth too large for its head and ivory slabs for teeth, as if it had not quite finished eating a piano.The lane sank and river water flowed rapidly along the deep channel. Andrea stepped to one side and a large boat with a tall mast under a single sail came on, one man fore and another aft, throwing, pushing and pulling on long poles.Roped together on deck were two vast pieces of roughly dressed creamy limestone. The water flowed back to the river and the channel filled in.Andrea stopped next to a gate in a black iron fence. A sign read: Browne’s Meadow. She stepped in and onto the large bituminous rectangle of a car park bounded by red brick walls and, beyond these, by willows and sallows that nodded and soughed in a soft breeze. A fine, many-handed chestnut roan stood at the centre, its haunches facing her, its tail flicked as she approached. She made a wide circle round to face the horse, which she patted and then embraced around the neck. The ground became soft under her soles. The cars were sheep. The tarmac was grass and sweet briar, bramble and mulberry, whortle-berry and holly, juniper and gorse, cornelian and hazel; bilberries, redcurrants, gooseberries, dog’s mercury, barberries and bittersweet grew in random profusion. Andrea released the horse’s head and it plodded into the distance.Andrea sat in the wonder meadow. She felt the similitude of her limbs to the various parts of nature surrounding and thought of how she might be joined to them more completely, more fruitfully. Her skin was bark to her. Her body south-facing always, a spirit searching for union, for extension, for vegetable tranquillity; unpractised in green ways, in rootedness, but sapful, exalted and germinal. She might, with the aid of an artful incision, grow atop a hawthorn, or an alder, an oak or a hawthorn, or entwine herself for life within a gorse bush, a thousand shining yellow eyes, spiny green fingers, tough branched arms, scenting the air by day and night.Memory is an arsonist, setting fires cell-deep at ungovernable intervals of time and space. Lights go on, searching out pain. The hands of another. The mother voice, singing to block out the noise. Titanic laughter and with it confusion. Clouds, white, grey striations, disposed across the eye. The folded heron in the reed bed, the river drifting deeply, its world mirroring still. Judy sat on the orange plastic seats in casualty. And again, Judy waiting on the orange plastic seats in casualty. And later, Judy waiting on the green plastic seating in casualty. For Andrea to return, clean and swathed.It might be the deep chill damp of the earth rising or her body warmth sinking into the meadow but there is a gradual cooling, a dimming, an extinguishing. For the first time since memory began these hard fires, their successions, their wasting, their consummations, their miseries, go down and out and mindsmoke drifts, drifts away. The dark, at last, is light.The suffering blue of the sky called her back from the green, the hard tar and grit beneath her gown; a sheep, a car, beeping its horn.Andrea stood and brushed herself down. The driver spoke some sour words out of their window and reversed to park. Out in the lane Andrea headed for the cathedral close through a crowd of grinning, blue-uniformed boys. She sat on a bench and looked up at the pink-tinged spire, at a falcon stood distantly on the air aside its uppermost taper.‘When I rise,’ she said. ‘I shall be free.’

TOOTH by Joe Johnson

April 30, 2025

The itch begins in the jawbone under the gums. I can’t get to it with a finger or tongue or backscratcher. Have to let it itch, like watching a fly you can’t swat tickle your forearm. It’s happened before. Happens more these days. Nothing shows up on x-rays, and now dental insurance is all used up.The tooth itches as the boss talks. He’s wearing a suit on casual Friday. It’s gray and fits him in the shoulders but not the belly, so he leaves it unbuttoned. The blue striped tie hangs over his belt. It’s like he’s guest-hosting a nineties talk show. The boss scans the room as he talks, and it’s like he’s looking right at you. He makes that passing sort of eye contact of CEOs and preachers. The way experts do during their TedTalk on the secret history of statistics. You know the talk: This message will change your life.The office is desks and phones, like in old movies. Phones on every desk, desks in every cubicle. Phones now ring in the background because the boss has gathered us to stand by a long table—a hundred of us, the whole floor, in a semi-circle. The table is in front of the west windows overlooking the city. On the table sits a vase. In the vase, an orchid. By the orchid is a box. The boss is in front of the table. He raises his arms in symmetry. He learned this somewhere, probably the same boss school that taught ambiguous eye contact and said to give bad news on Friday afternoon. The boss, we all know, is about to lay half of us off. Year-end is the time of “tough” choices. Boss school must have taught him, Make sure to look like this hurts you too; you did everything you could.Right then, the itch itches, just at the bottom of the molar. Those roots go down into the bone. The boss is saying something about Hannibal crossing the Himalayas on elephants. He’s going to quote the Dali Lama. Put money on it.Speaking of the Dali Lama, four summers ago, on my two-week vacation, I was in India on overcrowded sidewalks. A bike courier blazed by in his cotton shorts and glasses and no-helmet, just pumping. He turned past a truck, then around a car, then hopped onto the sidewalk. But a pigeon, swear to God—didn’t even know India had pigeons—plopped down in front of him. Pigeon, gray and blue and clueless, stalled right in the path between the bicyclist, a bus in the road, and a fire hydrant.Instincts took over: Bicyclist turned, missed the bus but rammed into the hydrant. The bicyclist was going as fast as the cars were supposed to be going, so when he fell off the bike, his body flew car-speed. The pigeon didn’t flinch. Just waddled along while the bike bounced into the road and went under the bus tires, as the bicyclist soared overhead, like, yes, a bird, but landed like an egg. Rammed his unhelmeted head into a bench. The crowd swarmed the bicyclist. He was laid flat out, maybe breathing. All I remember is a tooth on the sidewalk. A whole tooth, the big molar. It’s like a wicked iceberg—the top half is rounded and blunt, but beneath that flat top a root system runs sharp and long, like those Italian horn pendants disco dancers used to wear. The bicyclist’s molar was speared with two points. Those points, when not being knocked out, stick in the bone beneath the gums.That’s where the itch is: in the bone, at the tips of those points at the end of the molar. Not a strong itch, just an unreachable one. But it goes on long enough—boss talks about how proud he is of what we’ve all accomplished “together” (arms raised like an Olympian)—and the idea of finding pliers and pulling the thing out seems reasonable.“…over the Himalayas,” says the boss. Himalayas? Hannibal crossed the Alps.While the boss is riding mastodons up Everest, here in the room, across the circle of employees gathered near the west windows overlooking the city, standing beside the boss, one of the secretaries, Shannon or Shelly-something, sneezes. And that slows the boss. The boss says “Bless you” like a priest. The sneeze, though, sparks an idea: Fake a cough. In the cough, maybe with my mouth covered, I could stick my thumb inside and wiggle the tooth. A wiggle usually makes the itch stop. Except the boss is the center, like the sun, of a half circle, and we’re in orbit around him, but also directly across from our current (and future-former) coworkers. So maybe a push against the cheek. The right hand comes up slowly. Don’t draw attention. Move like the room has motion detectors. Then a test—just a quick scratch of the neck, like maybe the heater kicked on and the breeze set off the small hairs. Nothing to notice. Take your time. The boss isn’t going to stop until he’s scaled Mount Kanchenjunga.No one turns. They’re all still focused on the boss. No one watches the fingernails scratch the side of my throat—up, down, small circle. The scratch takes focus off the tooth, but not all. Like a mosquito has somehow gotten inside. That moment when the mosquito is in the vein, before it pulls out and the brain says, “Kill it.” But by the time you notice a mosquito, it’s already got your blood, and left its spit.Boss pauses. This is the emotional climax. He says something about Nepal, and you know that he practiced this in front of a mirror. He’s got a ring on his finger. He practiced this for his wife. I assume he’s straight. It’s something about the suit, the off-the-shelf that doesn’t fit. He said to his wife, “How does this sound?” and he raised his arms and rehearsed, “The real test of character comes not in victory but in loss.” She said, “It’s great.” She asked if they had anything going on Sunday because an old college friend was in town and wanted to go for lunch. The boss said, “Sounds fine.”Then my knuckle pushes against the cheek, and it does nothing. The cheek is condoms. There’s no way to get to the itch without going in. But the sneezing secretary is looking across now. She knows who the boss means when he says, “and even in hardship.” For the boss she typed up all the emails and attachments waiting in our inboxes, ran the names by HR. She’s probably screwing Boss. His “Bless you” was too concerned. Boss probably tested his speech on both wife and mistress. He’s that kind, like Hannibal: too much man for one woman. Leaves his seed in every town he conquers. Or maybe I’m thinking of Genghis Khan.So, the thing to do is bring the other arm across the chest, to support the arm raised to the cheek, to tilt the head in the look of serious concentration: the dreamy co-ed in that Indiana Jones movie. The secretary is scanning the circle now. She looks past me. Doesn’t make eye contact. Maybe that means I’m not getting laid off. Or that I am. Once the secretary’s gaze returns to the boss, I push in again. Hard. And the push helps. It’s a dull pain. Cheek smushed into all the teeth. And the pain feels good. Push harder. The itch is still there, but the cheek, the inside mashed against the jaw, helps. The cheek warms like a fever.The boss pauses. He drops his arms. Puts them into his pockets and billows the edges of his suit jacket up and out. He stares at the ground. This is the point when all of us, fired and unfired, are supposed to feel for him. His Sophie’s Choice. This is when he talks about the American spirit after 9/11.It’s a stupid job anyway. Lay me off. Let me go. Terrible dental.The boss has his hands in his pockets, like a sign to do the same—lower my arms. Uncross. Unclench. And as soon as the cheek pain settles away, the itch comes back stronger. The tingle, like centipede feet. Inside the jaw, at the pointy tips of the molars in the bone. You would kill to fly unhelmeted and head-first into a bus bench. You would kill for pliers.And you can’t believe it, but that’s what the boss has. He pulls them from his pants pocket. One of those Swiss Army knives. No, a Leatherman. They don’t let you take those things on planes anymore. Someone would hijack a Delta with a Leatherman: “Take me to Cuba. I have a bottle opener.” With his Leatherman in hand, the boss reaches back toward a box on the table by the orchid in a vase. The box is sealed, so the boss needs the Leatherman to clip the straps on the box. Everyone is looking at the box. They all want to know what’s in the box. But I’m following the Leatherman with the knife out, with the pliers tucked inside.The boss sets the Leatherman on the table. The secretary watches the boss lovingly, excited about the box.The boss smiles. From the box, straps clipped, he pulls out a trophy. A real trophy, like they used to give in bowling leagues in those days when men wore Italian horn pendants and took knives on planes. He’s talking about the trophy, about Bill in Engineering, and forty years of service.Bill walks through the middle of the half-circle to the boss. The boss is all smiles. Couldn’t be prouder if Bill were his own father. Forty years of devotion. And there’s no way to replace that much knowledge and skill. No way to replace Bill. The company won’t be the same without him. But the boss and his secretary will make do. They’ll probably both get bonuses for replacing Bill with two part-timers in India.So then I step behind the circle and walk the perimeter because everyone is watching Bill get his trophy, even the secretary. Secretary most of all. The secretary seems really glad Bill is leaving. She says, “What are you going to do with your free time?” Bill grips the trophy and shrugs. And I’m closer now, side-step by side-step.The Leatherman waits on the table by the vase. Almost there. Jenny in accounting turns back, but not before I’m past her. Eyes forward, Jenny.Bill says he’s looking forward to time with the grandkids. What else is he going to say? That he’s planning to leave his wife. That he has a one-way ticket to Las Vegas. Gonna blow twenty-grand on legal prostitutes who smile when he asks for a birthday special.Now I’m at the table, behind the secretary, and the secretary has a good rear for someone who sits as much as secretaries sit. It’s just an observation. I don’t mean anything by it, but it is a surprise. How she lives at a desk, but she’s tight as a gymnast. It’s impressive. Just that kind of discipline.The tooth pulses now. Dull throbs, like a strobe light. And maybe it’s the movement, shuffling my way behind the half-circle, the blood pulsing. It’s pushing now. The boss says, “Let’s give Bill a hand.” The applause is my shot. So I press past, behind the secretary’s behind, reach across the table. My forearm grazes the orchid vase. It wobbles. I pluck the Leatherman. Pull it back smooth and quick as the boss says, “Bill, we’re going to miss you.” Orchid vase teeters. Vase does a spin like a coin settling—heads, tails. Vase stops.Bill takes his final walk back across the circle. Don’t worry, Bill. You aren’t the only one going home today. At least you get a trophy.And I’m back out, careful to slide the tool into my pocket, holding it with my left hand so it doesn’t slip and cut through the fabric. Moving step by step around the outside, past Jenny in accounting. Jenny’s not looking, but she steps back and closes the gap between me and the wall, and it’s her or the wall, and I plow into Jenny. Watch where you’re going, Jenny.Jenny teeters. She stumbles into the accountants, but I press on—didn’t even nick my thigh with the knife. The boss says, “On a serious note.” He’s at the end, and I’m back where I started. The boss pauses because the accountants are mumbling, and Jenny is straightening her shirt. The boss backs it up and tries again. “On a serious note,” he says. He says he’s done everything he can. He says, “But it’s like the Dalia Lama said, ‘If a problem cannot be solved there is no use worrying about it.’”He has a point there. When the pink slip comes my way, I can’t control that. The secretary waves her arms to get our attention. Good arms. Secretary is thirty-five, maybe forty, and goes sleeveless. She invites everyone to join in the break room. There’s cake for Bill. Cake for the lot of us who have emails waiting in our inboxes: instructions for What’s Next on our own journeys across our personal Himalayas.Then the circle collapses, splits into a hundred points all shuffling back to cubicles or to the break room, some patting Bill on his shoulders, Bill with his trophy on his way to claim his cake. The itch might go away with cake, the chewing. At least then, if I stick a fork in my mouth, no one cares. And I could cut the cake with the Leatherman, with the knife edge pressed against my thigh. But the cubicle first. The email, the merciful email.Back at the desk, the itch slows. I’m in my own cubicle, surrounded by a portrait of the 2001 Seattle Mariners, Taylor Swift bobblehead from a niece. I set the Leatherman on the desk. Close the blade. It’s the pliers I want.The computer screen wakes. It knows I’m back and has messages for me. The computer talks with other computers and already knows what the other computers know. Computers are gossips. From the other cubicles come the first sighs and oh-shits and thank-gods. The murmur like a hive. No one uses the office phones on their desks. They pull out their personal cells to call home. “Honey, I got bad news.” Some whimpers. Some sniffles. And I don’t know if the cries come from the people laid off or those left behind.My computer is slow. I’ve been asking for a new one since Halloween. The inbox is buried under windows. And by the time I get to it, there’s nothing. During that whole boss-talk, I missed six emails about invoices, but nothing like “it saddens me” or “we thank you for your service.” And the tooth pulses again. The Leatherman goes back in my pocket, and I head to the breakroom because at least there’s cake and maybe that will help. Maybe there’s ice cream with the cake and that can numb everything. Sometimes when this happens, I get a glass of crushed ice from the breakroom fridge dispenser and pinch the ice between cheek and gum like chew. The dentist says that’s no good. He says, “Have you tried B-complex vitamins?” Yes, and peppermint tea bags and hydrogen peroxide and Anbesol.Bill is by the microwave and flanked by other engineers. Bill’s happy, which is odd because no one’s ever happy. Yes, sometimes people are pleasant or amused, but never happy. And how the hell did Bill make it forty years—and is that the secret: that if you can give the company four decades, you get to be happy. In thirty-four years, I’ll grin like a piñata.No ice cream. And the cake doesn’t help. It’s white and over-sugared with supermarket raspberry jam for filling. The chocolate frosting is dry as plaster, but the breakroom fills with chatter about how good the cake is. Jenny in accounting says, “The cake is great.” You know nothing about cake, Jenny.I’m standing by the cake and Bill comes over for a second slice. He doesn’t want a whole piece. “Just a sliver,” he says, and I’m standing at the table by the cake, and Bill’s looking for a knife.“I have a knife,” I say, and pull from my pocket. “Great Leatherman,” says Bill. But he doesn’t take it.So I ask him, “What’s the secret?” Bill grins but won’t tell. Then the itch comes back like an allergy. And I know how rude this looks, but, on Monday, Bill will be in Vegas pouring massage oil on hookers, so I just do it. I set the Leatherman down by the cake and reach my hand inside and wiggle the tooth. My hand comes out pulling a string of spit—like I’m a basset hound.“Itch?” says Bill. He smiles like one of those wise Cherokee in every western movie. “Yes,” he says, “there’s a secret.” Bill sets down his plate. He moves his hands to his mouth. He flinches, pinches around, and draws from between his lips. Out, in his glistening hand, comes his top dentures. Bill smiles like a railroad tramp, all gums. And his face falls saggy. But happy saggy. Then tilts his head, puts the plate back in, bites down, and restores his face.He says, “Pliers don’t work. I know a guy who can get you forceps. And lidocaine.” Then Bill says he’s changed his mind and takes the full slice. He grabs a piece with his hand and sets it on his plate, then licks the raspberry jam from his fingers. “Here,” I say, and lift the Leatherman to Bill once more. “Congratulations,” I say. But Bill says he already has all the Leathermans he needs and walks back to the guys from Engineering with his full slice of cake.The Leatherman is perfectly designed. A knife and a saw and pliers all in one working unit. The knife for cutting cake. The pliers for pulling teeth. And maybe Bill is wrong about pliers. Only one way to find out. And maybe the company that makes the Leatherman is hiring, needs a good accounts guy. Probably that company has amazing dental. I could leave, at least after the Christmas bonus—no sense going before then. And the tooth isn’t itching now. And if the itch comes back, I know how to handle it. If it gets too bad, I have the pliers to rip that thing out or can get lidocaine from Bill’s dealer. I’ll take action. It’s like the Dalai Lama says, “Happiness comes from your own actions.” Or maybe it was Hannibal or Genghis Kahn. Either way, isn’t being happy what it’s all about.

PARENTHETICAL by J. A Gullickson

April 21, 2025

The floor-to-ceiling windows let in so much light that the office is sweltering. Before the sun emerges from behind the tree line, the HVAC system will turn on. These brisk breaths signal the start of a new day for the company. Graham cycles through the presentation again, sinking deeper into his chair. Each slide features a corporate incantation coldly justifying decisions few care for. Key stakeholders have already made up their minds. This is only a formality.In the center of the cube farm lives Hannah. She stares blankly at the two screens in front of her, cursor gliding back and forth between them. The monitors exist separately, but within the technological sinew is a bridge which allows digital matter to travel between them.Here is Peter, some steps away, behind a closed door. Its frosted glass turns men into shapes from another place. He paces back and forth, waiting for the call. This urgency keeps the machine going.In seven years’ time, Graham will run Creative Services. Nine years from now, in Q2, Hannah will be promoted to SVP of Strategy. Peter will give the company over two decades of his life, eventually becoming Chief Technological Officer, before having an aneurysm at his desk late one Friday evening. He won’t be found until the following Monday morning.They will spend more of their lifetime with the company than their own families. That is to be expected. They owe it to the company who grants them paid time off, who provides them the means to pay for medicine, who needs the drones to exist. Graham and Hannah and Peter are just some of the thousands of employees who put in over 40 hours a week for the good of the company. Their roles are utterly meaningless. They’re all in this together. They’re like a family, after all.The drones don’t know the disease festering within. It started ten weeks ago. A group of kings in department store suits, who are seldom seen by their subjects, committed the unthinkable. At their roundtable, tucked away in the cavernous complex of the company, a meeting was held announcing the purported invasion and takeover of their rival Grant Holdings’ shining star: Parenthetical. The lifeblood of the portfolio, Parenthetical is a SaaS titan with a staggering 73% market share in the programmatic space. AdAge calls it “the last omnichannel platform the industry will ever need”.In Q4, a press release announcing the future of Parenthetical will be blasted out to relevant media outlets. The process begins here. The press release will be written by copywriter Felicia K. and will then be delivered to her creative manager, then submitted to the proofreading vendor, then returned to her creative manager, then reassigned to Felicia K. for edits, then delivered to her creative manager, then resubmitted to the proofreading vendor, then returned to her creative manager, then reviewed by her creative manager, then delivered to the creative director, then approved by the creative director, then submitted to the Chief Creative Officer, then returned to the creative director with massive edits, then rewritten by the creative director, then submitted to the Chief Creative Officer, then approved by the Chief Creative Officer, then submitted to Compliance for approval, then returned to the Chief Creative Officer with some light edits, then reassigned to the creative director with light edits, then submitted to the Chief Creative Officer with revisions, then approved by the Chief Creative Officer, then approved by Compliance, and then submitted to the Board, then it is approved, then it is sent to the public relations agency Stealth in Chicago to be released on Tuesday at 10AM Eastern Standard Time. This is the process. It does not forgive. Felicia K. will not recognize her work when she sees the news on CNN’s homepage. She’ll send a link of the article to Hannah on Microsoft Teams. She’ll tell Hannah she thought she wrote something else entirely. The process always transforms what it receives. At the time of its acquisition, Parenthetical employed close to 800 employees across the country with off-shore teams in the Philippines and India. This does not account for the unknown number of contractors currently working for Parenthetical, whose engagements span from a number of months to several years. The loaded gun Felicia K. thought she wrote would be the start of the swift and merciless gutting. The calendar invite is a death sentence. The words “All Hands Meeting” careens into inboxes companywide. A hushed chorus of uncertainty begins to throb.The impending restructuring awakes something. From the darkest depths of legal teams, parent companies, and non-disclosure agreements, a cruelty is set into motion. It will infect the workforce that once drove Parenthetical. Operations will reorganize. Departments will realign. Generations will cease. Bloodlines will end.The Parenthetical US IT team will unfortunately not be part of the migration. Once the merger is complete, they will be let go with a respectable (four-weeks’ pay) severance package. Two months following the announcement, former Parenthetical Network Architect Reggie C. will get a flat tire while driving to the second round of a job interview, then get hit by a car, then be paralyzed from the neck down for the next 19 years, then, at 58, he will purposefully drive his motorized wheelchair hard enough into the corner of the kitchen counter to split his forehead open. He does this while his wife, Terri, is getting groceries two miles away. He will continue to drive his head into the corner of the kitchen counter until he loses consciousness, then bleed out before Terri returns home. A year and a half after being laid off, former Parenthetical Senior Systems Analyst Erin M. will wrap her minivan around a mighty sycamore .6 miles from her home, then the impact of the collision will cause her daughter’s car seat to fail, then, as Erin slips into a warm endless sleep, she will try to take the glass out of her motionless daughter’s hair.Parenthetical grants its clients access to premium advertising channels, leveraging their catalog of quality inventory from over 170 supply partners to achieve campaign objectives effectively. Clients can harness the transformative power of Parenthetical’s in-platform AI optimization for their ad groups. Users can boost CPMs on top-performing inventory, trim underperforming inventory, and strategically direct spend in real time to their chosen KPIs. Enabled across ten dimensions, Parenthetical’s AI optimization, known as Parrot, revolutionizes efficiency across channels and audiences and unleashes the potential of Parenthetical’s optimization engine for a revamped advertising strategy.The Parenthetical marketing team is let go immediately. They receive a respectable (four-weeks’ pay) severance package. Two years after being laid off, former Parenthetical Marketing Manager Braam C. will become a family annihilator, then extended family members will be on the local news talking about how “there were signs” and how “we should’ve listened.” Six years after this, his life and crimes become the fodder of a bonus episode of a murder podcast for subscribers who pay $5 a month. Former Parenthetical Paid Media Analyst Keiko W. is approached by a headhunter on behalf of Henkel North American Consumer Goods, then is hired to work on the Persil laundry detergent marketing team, then Keiko W. develops acuphagia, a form of pica, then she chokes on a clear thumbtack in her car in the office parking lot. Former Parenthetical Social Media Manager Kevin A. marries his fiancé, Liam, two weeks after being laid off, then the newlyweds take advantage of Kevin A.’s newfound freedom from the workforce and plan a last-minute trip to South Africa as an impromptu honeymoon, then Kevin A. is mauled to death by a Boerboel in an alley while waiting for Liam to finish purchasing fruit from a vendor. Parenthetical bridges the gap between modern marketers and the advanced advertising tech required in today’s dynamic media landscape. It is a proverbial gateway to advertising across top DSP platforms like The Trade Desk, Amazon, and more. Clients can manage campaigns across various channels and devices easily and at their convenience. Clients can elevate their marketing strategies with Parenthetical’s suite of audience-targeting solutions. Digital marketers can benefit from first-party data onboarding, tap into cutting-edge third-party targeting tools, implement precision ABM targeting, and explore a wide array of tailored options. Parenthetical’s award-winning customer service teams playfully boast they are available twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week.The Parenthetical accounts team never stand a chance. They do, however, receive a very respectable (four-weeks’ pay) severance package. In the weeks following her termination, Former Parenthetical Client Success Manager Aubrey E. hires Ji Hwang on Fiverr to perform a resume audit and will quickly discover many of her skills are non-transferable. She still doesn’t have a job 18 months later. She will write one final note that will be added to her connection request on LinkedIn to Senior Recruiter Craig Motton at King Global Staffing Solutions which will read I think I’m done trying now. Cheers! Officer Wilmer Brusch will find her in her apartment bathtub four days later after a wellness check is called in, and Officer Brusch will find she sliced into the interior of her left forearm so deep the knife was stuck in her radius.Parker, Thomas & Associates has an ambitious goal for their client, Therapan: increase online sales by a minimum of 50% within two years. To achieve this, the focus must extend beyond mere visibility to a comprehensive strategy encompassing a broad range of online tactics. Target audiences were meticulously identified based on product categories. This involved a strategic blend of first-party and third-party data to formulate effective targeting strategies. A multifaceted targeting strategy unfolded, incorporating behavioral, retargeting, and contextual targeting. Specific campaigns and creatives were tailored to diverse promotions, strategically boosting sales across different product categories. Despite constituting only 3-5% of the monthly visitor traffic, the traffic driven to the site through the campaign substantially impacted 25-50% of online sales. The Return on Advertising Spend, or ROA for the uninitiated, ranged from 5x to 20x– a testament to the efficiency of the strategy. This outcome was attributed to collecting user data via the Parenthetical Smart Container Tag, consolidating insights from all website visitors driven by various media sources. The online revenue saw a 65% increase over the two-year advertising period, surpassing the initial goal of a 50% boost. This success has paved the way for future expansions, with plans to set even more ambitious goals in the upcoming years. The surge in demand prompted the expansion of the factory’s production to three shifts, underscoring the tangible impact of the advertising efforts on Therapan’s overall business operations.In 1999, Fred Gunnar was a Senior Account Representative at Jones Intercable, based in Georgetown, Colorado. During his 12 years with the company, Fred Gunnar accrued several thousand shares of company stock as part of his elected compensation package. The Comcast Corporation acquired Jones Intercable in 1999. Fred Gunnar received a large lump sum for his shares on top of a respectable (16-weeks’ pay) severance package. Fred Gunnar left Colorado shortly after Jones Intercable was acquired by The Comcast Corporation. Fred Gunnar has not worked in over 25 years. Fred Gunnar is a proud grandfather.The most disturbing aspect of this plague is how indiscriminately it kills. Parenthetical employees believed in their work. They reveled in the chance to become storied titans in the industry. With one indifferent sigh and slash of a pen, everything becomes small. So many creative sprints, workshops, one on ones—insignificant. So goes the acquisition ritual which pumps red through the beating heart of America.It takes 17 weeks for Parenthetical to be completely absorbed. Upon acquisition, Former Chief Executive Officer Martin P. receives a respectable (104-weeks’ pay) contract payout package and then Gold Private Equity offers Martin P. a fractional Chief Marketing Officer role at HanWool Corporation’s English speaking satellite office in Berlin. Former Chief Operating Officer Michael L. receives a respectable (208-weeks’ pay) payout and then retires. He is currently exploring the pharmaceutical industry after gaining interest in the Actiq Lollipop, a delivery device for fentanyl which combines the pain reliever with fillers and sweeteners. After developing diabetes in his mid-forties, Michael L. is interested in developing a sugar-free version. Former Chief Marketing Officer Elias N. receives a respectable (104-weeks’ pay) payout, takes a contract Chief Marketing Officer role with MullenLowe Group and advises the leadership team of both MediaHub and MullenLowe Profero.Graham, Hannah, and Peter don’t have much to say about Parenthetical. Graham is swamped this week. The brainstorming meeting for a holiday campaign was less than fruitful and really set him behind. Hannah needs to finish that deck about last month’s paid digital campaigns. The A/B testing yielded some rather interesting results that the strategy team should see sooner rather than later. Peter has a wedding he’s going to this weekend. He has a blinding headache right now, though. The floor-to-ceiling windows stand like monoliths after sunset. The HVAC system breathes its last breath at 7PM. The air in the office will slowly become stale and acrid over the next two days. On Monday, someone will cry in the handicap bathroom stall and everyone will pretend they don’t hear anything. Maybe a glass of water will help.

COUSIN FRANCINE by Lynn Marie Rossi

April 7, 2025

All my cousin Francine wanted to ask about when I got to Georgia was 9/11. “You probably saw everything,” she said as we sat cross-legged on her bed.“I was seven,” I said. “That was a long time ago.” By then, I was ten, with only vague memories of that day: my mother talking my father out of packing suitcases; the sound of people shouting outside before my mother shut the windows, fearful of dust and chemicals. But Francine wanted falling bodies and clouds of ash. “You’re, like, right next to Ground Zero!” “We live on the Upper West Side,” I said. Geography meant nothing to Francine. She was thirteen and sitting in her bedroom felt like being in the presence of a wild animal. She spoke flatly, tamping down whatever Southern accent she might have, wore bruise-colored eye shadow, and painted her nails matte black. Her bedroom walls were covered with bands I’d only vaguely heard of: Simple Plan, Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance. Their images were cut from magazines or printed from school computers, all held up with Scotch tape, paper trembling in currents of central air conditioning. Below her oversized Taking Back Sunday hoodie, she wore tank tops and already had boobs. On her wrists, she wore jelly sex-bracelets, though I noticed she rolled her sleeves down to hide them whenever she was actually out in public. “Guys grab at the ones that mean the thing they want from you. The black ones mean sex,” she explained to me, “and the blue ones are blowjobs.”“What?”“Blowjobs. Those are when you suck on a guy’s dick.”I was only vaguely certain what a dick was, with little idea of what would happen if you sucked on one. “Have you ever done that?”She shook her head. “Not yet. But I practice.” She didn’t elaborate. After years of refusing the invitations of friends who vacationed in Florida, my parents finally felt obligated to say “Yes,” and left me at my aunt and uncle’s place outside Atlanta on their way. “Less than a week,” my father told me as he lifted my bags from the rental car trunk. My left ear hadn’t unpopped after the plane landed, and I opened and closed my jaw, barely listening.“Just four days,” my mother said. “Four long days.” The whole trip made her antsy and irritable in the same way as waiting in line in the grocery store. She had a native New Yorker’s idea of the South, made nervous by such “conservative” and “backwards” people. Dad pointed out that she’d grown up on Staten Island.My aunt and uncle’s house was a giant McMansion in a neighborhood full of them. Each looked cobbled from scraps of brick and fake stone and vinyl siding. Juliet balconies jutted from two-car garages. Pool pumps harmonized in backyards. The mid-August air was unbearable; nobody had trees and there weren’t any sidewalks.Inside, photographs lined the wall beside the staircase, one of which showed me, fresh-birthed in a hospital crib. “Can’t get over you becoming a young woman!” Aunt Jane stared at me as I dragged my suitcase up the steps. “Me neither!” I didn’t know what to do besides match her breathless energy. She showed me to the guest bedroom, where their dog, Pierre, spent most of the day. He was an old Bichon with perpetually wet, brown fur around his mouth. He hated me immediately, growling from his place on the bed. “Oh, P, stop it! Be nice to your cousin.” Jane shooed him away. He scurried, wheezing, off into the hall. “He’ll get used to it. Maybe he’ll try snuggling with you!”“Here’s hoping!” Within minutes of my uncle returning home from his car dealership, we were gathered at the table, eating Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese. The small crocodile on Uncle Chris’s polo was askew; Francine later told me she’d unstitched every one in his wardrobe after being grounded for downloading music on Kazaa. Jane did her best to reattach them, and Chris still wore the shirts out of spite. After sunset, my mother called to tell me they’d made it to Florida. “There was a snake in the condo. Your father threw a shoe.”“And missed.” They took turns complaining over the phone about their accommodations, never asking how things were with me. After twenty minutes of me saying “oh” or “mm-hmm,” we hung up. I found Francine watching an anime about pirates. “It’s really far along,” she said. “It'd be hard to catch you up on the plot.” Uncle Chris was asleep in front of one of their many other televisions. Aunt Jane sat at the kitchen island with a glass of wine and an issue of Better Homes and Gardens, staring intently at copper pots hanging above the stove.I snuck through the sliding glass doors and out to the back deck. Night was no cooler than day. I pulled up a chair to the edge of the pool and watched a dead frog float from one end to the other. For the first time, I sensed I’d been set up for a lifetime of comparing everything to New York. Once the others went to bed, I ventured back inside. Through the dark, I found my bedroom. I couldn’t figure out how to work the lamp on the bedside table, then cried for a while before realizing I had to pee and had no idea where the upstairs bathroom was. I panicked, shaking below the covers. Finally, seeing no better option, I squatted in a corner of the bedroom and went on the carpet. In the morning, everybody blamed Pierre, who took a scolding from Aunt Jane with his head down, drool dripping from his tiny lips. Uncle Chris scrubbed the carpet with Resolve, leaving a bleachy splotch.Breakfast was microwaved sausage and egg sandwiches, soggy and chewy. Aunt Jane had “so many errands!” so Francine and I got into her PT Cruiser with her and set off. The drive was all six-lane roads and chain restaurants. It wasn’t until we arrived at the mall that I saw a human being outside of a car.Aunt Jane dropped us off at the multiplex entrance. “Napoleon Dynamo starts in twenty minutes—here’s money. France, I’ll text ya.”The instant the car pulled away, Francine walked briskly through the mall doors, going in the opposite direction of the theater, texting on her cherry red Razr. “We’re not going to the movie?” I asked, trying to hide my disappointment. “No,” she said. “I already saw it. Mom just always forgets what I’ve been up to the instant it’s over.”“Oh.”“You can go, though.”“It’s okay. I don’t really want to.”“No, you should go. I’m meeting somebody.”“Can I come?”She sighed. “Look, can you just give me an hour by myself? Maybe a bit more? I can’t have some little kid following me around the whole time. We’ll meet back at this fountain?” She pointed at a bubbling monstrosity at the center of a large atrium nearby. People sat here and there at tables along its rim, eating buttery soft pretzels. I noticed a boy lurking among the fake palm trees. He stood with a hunch and wore baggy, black clothes, his pant legs criss-crossed by straps and a chain wallet. Hair dangled down over his face, but I saw his eyes lock on Francine.“Meeting that guy?” I asked.Francine looked panicked, then put her hand on my shoulder. “Look, I’m not telling you to fuck off because I don’t think you’re cool. I do. You’re my cool, New York cousin. You can handle yourself. But that dumbass doesn’t know that. He’s just gonna see you as a little kid. Though you’re not.”I nodded. “Thanks.”“And because you’re cool, I know you won’t say anything to my parents.”“Of course.”“An hour.”“An hour.”Wandering around, I realized that I’d never set foot in an actual mall. I found an FYE and browsed the CD racks, picking one up now and then and listening to thirty-second song samples at a headphone station. The whole mall smelled like floor wax, burgers, and perfume. Pacsun kids loitered in Pacsun; Hot Topic kids in Hot Topic. For a time, I wandered the dark recesses of an Abercrombie, holding too-big spaghetti-strap shirts up to my torso.In the food court, I spotted Francine and the boy at a table, eating samples of orange chicken from small white cups. He held his hands out to her like he was begging for something. My cousin sighed and looked up at the skylights. Finally, with a tilt of her head, she gestured towards the restrooms, and the two of them walked together in that direction. The boy’s face was a grimace of nervous excitement; his slouch straightened. My first instinct was to follow them, but I didn’t. Instead I walked back towards the fountain. On the way, I saw a group of small children gathered around a Kiwanis Club-sponsored coin funnel, pennies circling as they slowly succumbed to gravity. While my aunt and uncle slept, Francine and I watched Invader Zim in the den. Pierre lay at my feet; I’d brokered peace at dinner by feeding him a chicken nugget under the table. “That boy you were hanging out with,” I said. “How old is he?”“Ha. He’s forty-seven. He’s my math teacher.”“Seriously.”“He’s fifteen. Met him at Chick-fil-A a couple weeks ago.”“I saw you and him going into the bathrooms.” “Yeah?” Francine kept her eyes on the TV, though I could tell she was worried about what I’d ask.“Were you doing drugs?”She laughed. “Drugs? No. Not that it’s your fucking business.”“Sorry.” When the episode ended, Francine flipped to MTV2 in time to watch a Fall Out Boy music video.“If you have to know,” she said when the song was over. “I was showing him my vagina.” My stomach went weightless. “He asked me to shave it for him, and he wanted proof that I did. So we went into a bathroom stall and I showed him.”I knew about pubic hair from everything I’d seen on the internet, and had been wondering about when my own would come in, but hearing someone talk about the subject of their vagina so bluntly threw me off. “Did he show you anything?”“No. He was scared. Told me to trust him, that he has a big dick, blah blah. Typical.” She turned to me. “Look, Marie. If a guy ever asks you to do anything like that, you don’t have to. If you don’t want. Don’t let him make you think it’s something you want, either. Okay? Just want whatever it is you want. Like, the minute I can get my nipples pierced, I’m gonna. But because I want to. Not for anyone else.” It was the most straightforward anybody had been with me about the matter of my body, or of the one I’d soon have.“Alright. Thanks.” I wanted to hug her, demand she teach me more, but stopped myself. Sometime after that, I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up, Francine had wrapped me in a blanket and left a glass of water on the coffee table beside me, which tasted bubbly and odd in the early morning. On my last day in Georgia, it rained. We sat around watching daytime television. Francine scratched at her crotch. Uncle Chris clicked around on the computer doing research for a fantasy football draft, commenting out loud every few minutes about how slow the computer had gotten since it had been used for all that downloading. Aunt Jane puttered around the house.“Alright,” she said just before noon. “We can’t sit around here all day. Summer’s wasting! If we have to stay inside, we can go to Babyland!”“Jesus Christ, Mom,” Francine said, furiously typing text messages.“Don’t.” “Why would we want to do baby stuff?”“Hey! Watch it.”“Right, Marie?” My cousin turned to me. “We’re too old for it?”I shrugged. “I don’t even know what it is.”“Cabbage Patch Kids place. It’s like a theme park of dolls. Out in an even more boring suburb than this one.”I remembered having one of the dolls as a little girl, with yarn hair and a blue dress. Once, I threw it up in the air the way I’d seen adults do with real babies and its plastic face knocked me in the face and split my lip. “I had one of those a while ago,” I said.“See, Mom? We’re too old. It’s creepy.”“What if I said that I wanted to go?” Aunt Jane asked. “Would that be enough? If I asked that you do something for me? Unless you feel like sticking around here with your father, hearing him mutter about pretend football.”Uncle Chris didn’t turn from the monitor. “Please, girls, go. It’ll make her happy.”“And we can have lunch at Bojangles.” Aunt Jane dangled her car keys off her fingers. Francine roused herself from the recliner with a sigh and I followed. Inside Babyland, dolls stared impassively from their shelves. Little girls squealed and ran from place to place, picking up their new toys and bringing them to a small office where a woman dressed as a nurse made them take an adoption oath, fingers raised in the air, swearing they’d take seriously the responsibilities of motherhood.Following the mass of mothers and daughters, we came to a nursery staged behind enormous windows, the glass smudged. . In bassinets, dolls wore cloth diapers. Aunt Jane looked delighted. . A mechanical stork twisted back and forth above our heads, beak chattering. When it faced us head-on, I saw that one eye blinked while the other stayed half shut like it was having a stroke. Finally, we got to the central room. Most of the space was taken up by a fake patch of dirt. Doll’s heads stuck out here and there like ripe cabbages on beds of leaves. In the center of everything was a tree, a plaster monstrosity whose limbs reached up to the ceiling. In its trunk were round television screens where gestating doll fetuses were visible, floating in green-tinted amniotic fluid. Tubing snaked from plastic IV drips into different points in the soil, their sloshing contents labeled IMAGINATION.“Have you been here before?” I asked Francine.“Every couple of years,” she said. “I was into it before I realized how fucked up it all is. Trying to make women okay with becoming, like, breeding cows.”“It’s just toys,” I offered.“Not down here, it’s not.”Another nurse appeared, speaking into a headset microphone. “Mother Cabbage is getting ready to have a baby!” She pulled out a large caliper and measured the tree’s trunk. “She’s five leaves dilated!” The doll heads writhed in place around her as she described a magic dust that fell invisibly from the branches above. “It determines whether she has a girl or a boy. Which are we looking for today?”The crowd of women and girls shouted for a boy. The nurse stuck a plastic speculum into a space in the roots, and with feigned effort pulled from the depths a naked doll with a full head of hair and rosy cheeks. “Looks like this one is gonna get a new home right away. ” She handed the doll to a nearby child who immediately held it close to her chest. Aunt Jane and the other mothers applauded. When the birth was over, we slowly retraced our steps back to the entrance. I followed Francine in a daze while Aunt Jane lingered at the glass cabinets displaying the vintage toys, then insisted on buying me a t-shirt I knew I’d never wear. Out in the lot, a child melted down; somehow, her brand new doll burst a seam somewhere between the shop and the car, and stuffing bled from the hole, blowing in tufts across the asphalt.

* * *

It wasn’t until years later that I saw Francine again. She visited New York for a weekend right before I finished college. I met her at a bar near Penn Station. She dragged a suitcase, ready to head to JFK the moment we finished. Gone were the hoodie and jeans, replaced by a tunic dress and leggings; she’d stopped hiding her accent, giving her words a drawl I found musical.I thought about bringing up that trip to Georgia, but couldn’t fit it into the conversation, not wanting to resurrect those girls we’d been. But I felt I owed her somehow. The advice she’d given me, while imperfect, was the first I’d been offered to guide me. By the time we met as women, I’d stumbled and fucked up plenty, and wanted to share it all with her as we sat, filling one another in on what we’d missed. If she lived closer, I thought, we might’ve been like sisters.I haven’t seen her since, of course. A month after that day in the cafe, she met the man who eventually became her husband. They live in Boulder now with two children. They send me a Christmas card each year.“Oh,” she said as she finished her drink, looking at her phone. “Plane’s delayed.”“Huh. Well. Anything else you wanted to see?” My life, New York City, all I had to offer: it all seemed insufficient.“What would you do with two hours?” Francine smiled, deferring to me, waiting for an answer, for me to open her world up in the way she’d opened mine.

THE COIN by Rose Hollander

April 4, 2025

I spent my twenties working at a bike shop in a midwestern college town. The town was thick with rationality, overflowing from the university. Despite this, I believed in God. The strength of my belief shifted from day to day, but when I stood in church each Sunday my faith was strong again. My boyfriend, Don, agreed to come to church after two months of dating. “I can see it’s important to you,” he said. “So I’ll come. But don’t count on any sudden transformation when I hear the organ music.”And I knew that he was right, that his guard was up too high. To Don, faith was a failing grade in a physics class. “If God wanted me to believe in Him, He wouldn’t have given me the capacity for rational thought,” he would say. Sometimes Don’s lack of faith upset me. I didn’t want to fight, so I just tried to ignore this divide, this one thing we did not, could not share. I knew that trying to convert him would only end badly.Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little giddy that Sunday when he finally came with me to church. We walked hand in hand from my apartment to First Congregational. There was a light drizzle. Halfway there, it turned into a heavy rain. Don had come prepared; he held a purple umbrella over the both of us, and I barely got wet. The service was beautiful. I always find it beautiful. Don fidgeted next to me, and I started to feel like a mother who was dragging her kid around. Then he whispered, “The stained glass is shining right on you. It’s turning you orange, sunset orange. You look incredibly sexy,” he said, and I stopped feeling like a mother who was dragging her kid around.“Is a sunset really that sexy?” I said, barely moving my lips. The pastor was talking about the binding of Isaac. Don thought about that for a while. Then, as the pastor reached the conclusion that the ram was there the whole time, if only Abraham could see it, Don touched my shoulder. “A sunset is beautiful,” he said. “Because it reminds you that you’re not in control. That the Earth will spin no matter how you try to stop it. Even if you want to prolong a moment forever.”I took his hand, and I began to pray in earnest. I prayed for all the usual things: my health, and my mother’s, and my father’s, and Don’s. A promotion at the bike shop. World peace. And, gripping Don’s hand in mine, I prayed for that moment to last just a little bit longer. After the service there was always a small reception. Each week, one family was tasked with bringing pastries and soft drinks for the congregation. This week the Robinsons had set the bar high. On the white plastic tablecloth lay donuts, danishes, bagels, muffins — it was almost too much. I had to look away. “Nice spread,” said Don. He was eyeing an everything bagel. “Find me something, okay?” I said. “I’m going to find a bathroom.”When I got back, Don was nowhere to be found. I saw an abandoned everything bagel on the table. It had one bite taken out of it. Where was he?Someone coughed and I turned. It was Pastor Baumann, with Don at his side. “You’ve got a nice friend here, Miss Brown,” said the pastor. He had a smear of yellow mustard on his upper lip. “Mr. Wilson and I just had a very nice talk.”He gave Don a pat on the shoulder. “I need to thank Mrs. Robinson for this spread. But I’m glad to have met you, Mr. Wilson. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again.” And he was off.“Aw, I’m sorry Pastor Baumann cornered you,” I said, putting my arm around Don. “He can be a little intense.”Don looked at me oddly. “No, I liked him. We had a really interesting talk. I’ll have to tell you about it later.”I thought he would tell me about it when we walked back, but we didn’t talk. The rain stopped and started again, and Don remained deep in thought. We didn’t talk about the trip the rest of the day. Don left for the library to do a problem set, and I made some tea and watched TV. During a commercial break, I got a call from Don.“Marie,” he said. “I’d like to come with you to church again next Sunday. Would that be okay?”“To church?” I said. “I mean, of course that would be okay. But, why?”He was silent for a moment. “I don’t know. I just spent three hours working on an econometrics problem set. The whole problem set, the whole course, is based on the assumption that statistical distributions hold over frequent trials of an experiment. But the pastor…”“Baumann’s not that charismatic,” I said. “I don’t know what he could have said to you…”“It’s not exactly what he said,” Don said. “He showed me something.”“What, his new book?”“No,” said Don. “He showed me that I’ve been wrong. That’s everybody’s wrong, he showed me-”“What the hell,” I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. “He showed me evidence,” Don said, passion rising in his voice. “That statistics, physics, biology — that they all present an incomplete picture of our world.”“Baby, you were with him for ten minutes. What the hell did he show you?”Don sighed. “He flipped a coin. He flipped it again and again, and he knew what it would land on every time.”“Well, it was weighted,” I said, without really thinking about it. “Obviously.”“Marie,” he said. “It was my coin. I had change from when we got coffee the other day…”“Let’s talk about this later,” I said. I hung up. I was shaking a little, but I didn’t know why. Don wanted to go to church again. That was good news, right? Don was realizing that science presented an incomplete picture of the world. This was what I had always known. God controls everything. But (and this was important) God controls it in a consistent way. Not breaking all His worldly patterns for some random pastor from some arbitrary town in the Midwest. And surely He hadn’t. Surely Pastor Baumann had just tricked Don. But why would he do something like that? When I called Pastor Baumann and explained what had happened, he was silent for a moment. Then he laughed. “I’m glad my little explanation had such an effect on the boy,” he said. “But, to be honest, I don’t understand why it works.”“Pastor Baumann, I already come to church every week,” I said. “I already believe. You don’t need to pretend you have magic powers to recruit me.”“Pretend?” said the pastor. “Marie, you hurt me. I never lie. As King David wrote in Psalms, ‘The righteous hates falsehood.’”“So,” I said. “Just to be clear. You’re claiming that you have magic powers over quarters?”Baumann chuckled. “Well, not exactly. But probabilities go a little wonky around me. A 50:50 coin flip turns into 70:30, or a 1:6 dice roll becomes 1:2. I haven’t tested it comprehensively, it’s just something I’ve noticed that newcomers to the church, like your friend, are often interested in.”“I don’t understand,” I said. “How do you know the changed odds?”“Well, I don’t really know,” said the pastor. “But if I call ‘4’ on a dice roll, it usually comes up on the first roll.”“It doesn’t sound like you’ve tested it at all scientifically,” I said.Pastor Baumann laughed again. “Well, Marie, we’re not really in the business of scientific testing here, are we?”The call turned to small talk, and I put up water to boil. When the tea was ready, I turned on the television to watch reruns. There was a small pile of change on the coffee table. “Heads,” I said. I tossed a quarter in the air; it came down sloppily, glancing off my arm and skidding onto the floor. It was heads. My heart beat sped up. Maybe Pastor Baumann was telling the truth, but he didn’t know the full story. Maybe God had temporarily altered the laws of probability for everybody. I flipped the coin again. “Heads!” I caught it neatly on my inner arm. Visions flashed through my head: I could go to the casino, make a thousand dollars. I could buy a new mattress, or take a class at the university. It was tails. Maybe it had been tails for Baumann, too, and he had cheated, somehow. My explanations were getting more pathetic.Don had left one of his physics textbooks on the couch. It weighed about five pounds. I flipped to a page in the middle. “For a point mass moving in a circle of radius r in the xy plane, we have the planar symmetry,” I read, before the rest of the page became blurry. There was nothing in here that was going to help me understand Baumann’s claim. I would have better luck going to the library and looking for books on magic tricks. A small voice inside of me coughed. They said the same about Jesus, it said. They said he was just doing magic tricks. But the pastor wasn’t the younger son of God. I was sure of that, if not much else. Pastor Baumann, with his habit of getting mustard all over his face, had to be mortal. The pastor was just lying. But why would he lie? If he was lying about this, what else was he lying about? This line of thinking gave me a headache, so I was glad when the doorbell rang. It was Don. He was disheveled. His shirt was wrinkled, hair matted; there were bags under his eyes. And he was beaming from ear to ear.“Baby, I’ve been in the library all day,” he said. He took my hand. “I read everything. I read Lewis and Chesterton and Torrey, and God, I get it now.” I took a step back. I didn’t know what to say. “Okay. Okay. Let’s just watch some TV, yeah?”“TV!” He scoffed. “How can I watch TV, when I want to just– go outside and breathe it all in, all of God’s creations. The fresh-cut grass and the new flowers and– and you.” He took me in his arms. “I love you,” he murmured. “I love you I love you I love you. And I love God, for thinking you up.”I leaned into him, unable to speak. We were so close we may as well have one person. Then he stepped back. “Let’s pray now,” he said. “I want to pray with you.”“I’ve always wanted to pray together,” I said, but I didn’t quite know if it was true. It felt odd, kneeling beside him, thanking God in silent sync. How much overlap was there between our prayers? I didn’t know what to believe now — what Don learned in his classes or what I had believed my whole life. Could either system of belief co-exist with the pastor’s professed gift? I felt like Don and I were little kids in daycare, playing next to each other with different toy trucks. But maybe, just maybe, as we knelt together, eyes shut tight, we were asking God the same questions with our silent prayers. Don and I broke up about a month later. He read more and more about Christianity until he wouldn’t talk about anything else. The bylines on his books shifted from Lewis and Chesterton to Scott Hahn and Jerry Falwell. Soon First Congregational, my church, was too laid back for him. He wanted to go to the Catholic church by the river. He wanted me to wear more modest clothing. He didn’t want to have sex. When he stayed over, he would sleep on the couch. If I walked by him in a t-shirt and underwear, he would sigh, or make a big show of covering his eyes. “Thanks a lot, Marie,” he’d say. “You’re really helping me out here.” His tone hurt more than his words. So I moved on. I got a promotion at the bike shop, but I knew I didn’t want to stay in this town forever: constantly meeting new college students in the coffee shops and bars, finding it harder and harder to talk to them the older I got. I didn’t go to First Congregational every Sunday anymore. I didn’t know what to believe. I peeked in from time to time. The people filling the pews looked so confident, so sure of themselves and their God. And Pastor Baumann spoke to them as seriously about the fall from Eden as he had spoken to me about his powers over probability. One foggy April Sunday, about a year after I broke up with Don, I was walking to the coffeeshop. I was on my phone, scrolling through Zillow, when I heard someone call my name. “Marie,” he said again. It was Don, only partially obscured by the fog. He looked different; older. He had a short beard, and wore a suit. “Don,” I said. I didn’t really have any questions for him. “How have you been?”“I’ve been good,” he said softly, and I said the same, and that was that. As I continued walking home, I felt uneasy. It was like speaking with a different person: a stranger. We used to talk all night. We used to share so much. I felt a sudden anger towards Pastor Baumann, as if he had stolen something from me. I stopped short. I wasn’t going home. I crossed the street and began to walk to the church. There was a service going on. I checked my watch; it was 10 o’ clock. Most congregants sat in the first few rows, except for a little boy and his mother. They sat in the last row. The boy sat straight and proud in a stiff little suit. The tie was all wrong. He stared straight ahead, so he didn’t notice his mother’s sideway glances. I could see the pride in her eyes. Her little boy, grown up enough to behave in church. When they got back home she would ask him what he thought of the sermon, and she would act surprised by whatever he said. “I never thought of it like that,” she might say. “I bet Pastor Baumann hasn’t either.” The anger that had reared when I saw Don came up into my throat. It closed up my throat and I couldn’t breathe. Two hours later, I knocked on the door of the pastor’s office. “Marie, what a pleasant surprise,” he said, beaming. “Come in, please.”“I need to know,” I said. “I need to know if you were telling the truth. I lost someone who was important to me. He’s a different person. His life is on a different course. You’ve done so much damage, you don’t even know-”“You’re babbling,” said Baumann. He got up and closed the door behind me. “Sit down, and I will tell you anything you want to know.”“Flip a coin for me,” I said. “Show me that everybody else is wrong.” The pastor raised an eyebrow. I fished in my pocket and handed him a dime. “If you’d like,” he said. “But you shouldn’t take so much meaning from it.”“Just get on with it,” I said, and he looked mildly shocked. “Fine,” said Baumann. “Heads.” He flipped the dime and I craned to look at it, resting on his forearm. Roosevelt grinned back at me.“Again,” I said. The pastor sighed and called tails, it was tails.“Again.” He called heads, and it was heads.“Again, again.” “Tails.” The coin flew through the air and Baumann smacked it on his forearm. I saw an olive branch and started to tear up. “Tails,” he said, and flipped again. It was heads. I thanked God and walked out of that place, into the dense April fog. It started to rain and the droplets fell down into the grass, just like they were supposed to.

SOLITUDE by Sebastian Castillo

April 2, 2025

The purchasing of books is life’s finest pleasure. And while I often have a stack of them unread, they are read eventually, and therefore this habit does not seem excessive or indulgent to me. It is perhaps a bourgeois affectation—there is something embarrassing of an over-large personal library—but there are certainly less healthy ways to spend one’s money. I am no stranger to that, certainly. If God and constancy may will it, that period of my life is closed shut, like a book I’d like to forget entirely. Those pages are wine-soaked anyhow, grainy with drug-powder, the words to those many stories smudged and barely legible. Yet unfortunately, I had upset an important balance: I was buying too many. If I bought, say, four books, I would read three of them immediately, and leave the last for some later time. But now I was acquiring more than ever. While I am a prodigious reader, I couldn’t keep up. Yes, I am one of the top admirers of literature in the world, currently, and anyone in my life (the few, that is) can attest to that. So, as you can see, this position of mine had gotten the better of me. I could count at least 150 books in my possession I had not yet read. Many of these books were purchased during various publisher’s and bookseller’s flash sales, when a $18 paperback can be purchased for a measly six, shipping included. It’s hard to stop oneself in those moments, erratically clicking on as many attractive titles as memory allowed me to recall. And now, well, 150 books! That’s simply too many left unread in one’s possession, and so I promised myself I would buy no more until that pile had shrunk by half. And, in the case I badly wanted to read a book I did not have access to, very badly wanted to do this, then I would either have to wait, or see if it was available at the public library. God, grant me constancy!I went to the library to acquire Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal. This book had been recommended to me by a well-meaning friend. The recommender, the doorman of my building, said it read to him like something I would dream (I often tell him my dreams, for he is the only friend who tolerates this, always a smile on plump Horacio’s cherubic face). Well, of course I found this comparison flattering, and felt I needed to read it as soon as possible. Sometimes books announce their presence to you, like some vagabond courier knocking haggard upon the castle walls with an important message. Leaving the library with the slim volume (it is a mere 80-page novella, among the best kinds of books there are), I flipped through its pages and was left agog: the prior library patron had annotated it. And not merely lightly annotated—they had underlined, circled, and written words in the margins of almost every page of the book. It is a public book, and they had made it private. My reading, effectively, had doubled: not only would I read Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, but I’d have to read this phantom reader’s version as well. I considered returning it. I did not want this person’s version of Too Loud a Solitude. I didn’t even know them. What if they had very bad ideas? I feared their version of the novella would merge with the one printed by the publisher, and they would, unknowingly, from the past, destroy the effects of this book on me.I tried to ignore this phantom reader’s pointing and gesturing as I read. The plot of the book was simple enough: an old man destroys books using a hydraulic press. It is not clear why. He is completely insane and an alcoholic. But why did this phantom reader insist on underlining the fact that this drunk and insane man had worked at this hydraulic press for 35 years? The narrator repeats this fact, it’s true, yet this reader felt it necessary to highlight the number of years every time. I could not feel anything but contempt for this version of Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal. It does not matter that this old man has been at this work of destroying books for 35 years. It could have been 40 years, or 20. The effect would remain the same. The author had merely made an arbitrary decision. 35 years. Yes, authors enjoy doing a bit of this all the time: the marquis went out at seven in the evening and so on. The curtains in my room are blue (they are white).This phantom reader-cum-writer (for now, they had written their own version of Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, which we could call Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal 2, or perhaps, My Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal by Anonymous) had many things to say about the book in question. Some of their marginal notes said: “love for destruction” and “destruction” and “against common sense” and “discovery” and “loneliness in society” and “weird tenderness to work tools” and “power of books” and “USSR?” and at the end of the book were a series of furious notes, completely and utterly illegible.Was this person fucking stupid? Were they just a fucking complete fucking idiot? A total degenerate moron? They had heavily underlined or added multiple stars (drawn as if the person holding the pen were in fact an illiterate child or a mental invalid) to the following words or phrases: “slaughterhouse” (heavily underlined, starred), “too loud a solitude” (heavily starred, if you can believe it), “the heavens are not humane” (underlined multiple times), “too loud a solitude” again (heavily starred, again). When I had finally reached the end of Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, I felt annihilated. Not by the novel in question, no, but by this phantom reader-cum-writer’s new version of the book. Their stupidity, I found, was so boundless I felt certain then that the human project was completely doomed. Completely, utterly doomed. Nothing would ever get better. Things would only get worse. Every day, I realized, was a testament to this fact: life itself was the experience of being surrounded by entropy, atrophy, and necrosis. But most importantly, it was a testament to boundless stupidity. Nothing should have existed in the first place. And in fact, it was the stupidity of nothingness to have created existence by accident.I realized, then, there was only one thing left for me to do. I would either have to hang myself (the thought of which turned my stomach), or I would have to kill this person. Anonymous. For they had done something of irreparable harm: they had forever damaged Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal which had led me to lose complete faith in the human project. I could not merely go out and buy myself my own copy and read it again, unsullied by this silly and ridiculous and more importantly, very stupid person. That initial phantom reading will have forever imprinted on me, and therefore, completely and utterly destroyed Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal—a book, incidentally, I did not really like, which is in many ways beside the point. The only punishment I could fathom was to end their life. Because then I could say we will truly have had a tit-for-tat: I will have altered the course of their existence (by ending it) in exchange for their having ruined my experience of Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, a book I didn’t like, and more importantly for causing me to lose faith in the human project. It’s possible I would have liked this book much more had I not first encountered it in this fallen state, and perhaps then, I could have gone on living in a satisfactory manner. The human project could have seemed salvageable. I could have continued to eat breakfast and so on, I could have continued to make love with beautiful women and so on, but now I had lost complete faith in the human project, and everything, utterly everything, had become equally ruined.But, of course, I first needed to find out who they were. This proved trickier than I imagined, the more I thought of it: I had assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that it was the previous library patron who had done this. But in fact, it could have been the patron before that one, or the one before that, or the antepenultimate lender. The more I thought of this possibility, the more I felt enraged: they had not only permanently ruined this book for me, but for, perhaps, an entire population of readers. There could, by all rights, be a small city of now permanently damaged readers, who are to walk around for the rest of their lives with this version of Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal residing within their forever diminished personhood. So, in fact, one of the reasons the human project was doomed, utterly and completely doomed, could have been for the fact that—given so many readers had read this version of this version of Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal—they too had given up on the human project, and they too had lost the will to improve the conditions of life in any achievable fashion. And if this were to happen to several people, all from the same source, then that hopelessness would spread like a bacterium. And as we know, when something of that nature goes untreated, it’s over. It’s completely over. In many ways, I thought to myself, it was conceivable that this version of Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal could be the inaugurating gesture of the human apocalypse itself. If I did not do something about it, if I did not stop it right then and there, I would be allowing the annihilation of all that was good and true and meaningful on our planet. I was so overwhelmed by the realization I felt the need to consume my third bowl of chocolate cereal for the day (I would typically admit only two), and this I always did in my study, which I called my suicide den, where I kept all my books, hundreds of them scattered in idiosyncratically designed piles for reasons which I cannot address.It struck me, then, that the passage of my thinking had led me off toward an unexpected detour: while at first I thought I had lost all faith in the human project—and, indeed, I had—I was now, quite ironically, put in the position to save the possibility of the human being by ensuring that no other person would ever read this book. If some of the damage had already been done, and surely it had, I could at the very least stop it dead in its tracks. And so, of course, while some people, a small band of citizens, surely, will have been permanently damaged (and I forever would be one among their number—their leader?), I had the power to prevent this insipid disease from spreading, and in that way, save the possibility of the human being. And yet: I felt a profound sympathy for my fellow comrades. Who were they? Had they all hanged themselves? Perhaps they were spreading their necrosis—no fault of their own—in our little community, irreparably poisoning all with ears to hear. So now, I realized, my labor had not doubled, but grown exponentially: not only would I have to kill Anonymous, this phantom reader-cum-writer, but I would have to kill all who had read this volume—out of pity, and diligence, of course—so that they could not spread their human necrosis as a result of having read Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal by Anonymous.This would be much easier than I had at first anticipated. My only other friend in the world, besides Horacio, was Sherman, the steward of our public library. Now, this might strike one as curious. How could such a prodigious purchaser of books be on good terms with a librarian? Surely, one might think that the average librarian would treat me with a bit of suspicion: I was a profligate and erratic purchaser of books. But no, this was not the case. Sherman was my next-door neighbor. I live in 7-H and he lives in 7-G. In fact, it was Sherman who had convinced me to come to the library in the first place: I was carrying inside a bundle of books that had recently been delivered to me, when I complained about the excess of my habit, in passing. Sherman, ever the perfectly polite neighbor, chuckled and said, “You should stop by the library, then,” he said, “not that you’ll need it, it seems.” I admit to having found this last remark a little distasteful. Not that I would need it? One always needs books. More and more books… For there is nothing but books. (People are disposable. The human project is doomed, after all. But books are something else, and of course literature is better than life.) I forgave him for his careless comment, but I have not forgotten it. In the morning I knocked on Sherman’s door. He had just finished his breakfast and was preparing to leave for work. I sheepishly submitted to him my request: is there any chance he could tell me how many people had rented out Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, and, if so, could he give me their names? I crafted an excuse: I wanted to do an art project, I said (an art project!): I would photograph, and interview each prior patron who had rented the book, and I would have an individual discussion with each of them. This way, I said, all of these prior patrons will have unwittingly been in a book club, in the future, without knowing it; and by sharing their unique perspective on the book, the art project would demonstrate the importance and trans-historical value of literature, that great unifier of the human project, I said. Once finished, I would collect these interviews in a book, which I would call Solitude. “I’m really not supposed to do that sort of thing,” he said. I could see Sherman was chuffed. Bits of flax seed stuck unattractively to his teeth, and I could hear his toddler child sing a dullard song to herself from the living room. She threw her toy at the toy dog. “But that’s such a great idea. I’m sure our director would agree. We’re always trying to find some way to drum up interest in the library. I would have to get his permission. Come by later, and I’ll see what I can do.”I was thrilled. Little did he know, of course, that he had just quite literally signed several people’s death warrants. For indeed I would seek out each one of these patrons, and need to kill them all. My logic was: if I confronted Anonymous about his scribbles, if I approached this strange idiot man at his house with a copy of this version of Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal and, shaking the slim volume, asked, “Did you do this? Did you mark up this library book?” he would naturally lie. There is no denying he would lie. And so, as a safety precaution, I would have to kill each and every single one of these readers of this version of Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, to ensure the success of my plan. I would be the last living being poisoned by this text, I would have to suffer that my whole life, but I will have stopped an inchoate bacterium from spreading any further than it needed to, and by doing so, I will have saved the possibility of the person. I returned to my quarters and took a nap. I no longer had to work, because of my lottery winnings, and subsequently had taken on an irregular schedule: I would wake very early in the morning, read 60 or 80 pages of whatever book was currently on my pile, then take my breakfast and sleep for three or four hours. In the late afternoon I would rise, and either visit the park, read more, or begin my long and slow dinner preparations. Then I would eat, and read even more until I felt my eyes grow heavy in their sockets, and sleep for the evening. But today things would be different: I needed the extra rest to gather my strength for my forthcoming travels and revenge plot.As I was leaving my building, I was struck by a horrific thought: had Horacio—who first recommended this book to me after all—acquired this book from the library? Would I have to kill my poor friend, dear Horacio, a wonderful and cherubic man, a stalwart of all that was valuable in the human project, etc.? And, indeed, if he had read this library copy, and had somehow survived its assault, perhaps my calculations were in error? Perhaps it was only I who had been so damaged by Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal by Anonymous, and my entire revenge plot upon which I was to embark was an unforgivable calumny against these innocent souls (save for, of course, Anonymous, who deserved death no matter what). I stood in my building lobby and wept. Please, no! Horacio was sitting on his stool looking at something on his phone. It was surprisingly sunny outside, despite the time of day, though perhaps I had been indoors for too long. I could barely manage a word to him.“Good afternoon, Mr. Sebastián,” he said to me, bright and cheerful as always.“Horacio,” I said, “I have a very important question to ask you. It is of too much importance I can scarcely tell you… Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal. How did you read this book?”“I started on the first page.”“No, no, Horacio… Where… did you get this copy?”“Oh. My cousin lent it to me. He’s getting his degree and had to read it for a creative writing class. He said it was too crazy and made him laugh too much.”“So, you didn’t get it from the library?”“My cousin lent me his copy. Did you like it?”I embraced Horacio and kissed him on the lips. He would be saved! The human project! Ah! “You’re crazy man!” he said, laughing, and pushed me off him.“Horacio! The human project! Ah! I will make you its king, my good man! I will make you the governor of a little ínsula, just like Sancho Panza! Except actually! Ah!”“Thank you, Mr. Sebastián,” he said, and returned to the endeavor of his phone.My walk to the library felt blissful and light. I was doing something important, finally. I had been reading all this while as preparation, I now realized. Literature was the preparation, and I was preparing myself for something. And finally: here it was. The future of the human project, in my hands. I would have to do something awful, something unbelievably violent, depraved, and disgusting, but it would be for something far, far greater than I could have imagined. The possibility of the human.The library was mostly empty. Though I had been inside it but a few days prior, I had somehow forgotten its incredibly high ceilings, its battered bookshelves and threadbare reading chairs, its trademark musty smell—almost like tobacco, though no patron or worker had smoked a cigarette inside its walls for many decades now. Sherman was by the computers, helping an elderly woman with the device. She was pointing at the screen, and yelling at him. Yet his face was the picture of warmth and composure. Sherman, the human project! Ah! I tarried by the front desk.“Sebastián!” Sherman said, once he was finished, approaching me. “I’m glad you could make it. Unfortunately, I have some bad news.”I feared this possibility. The director was onto me, then. He saw through my ruse. He must have taken a glance at Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, and probably felt sick to his stomach, seeing how marked up it had been, and then realized what an effect something like that could have on a future reader—indeed potentially driving that reader to an unforeseen madness that would transform into bloodlust. He knew what I was after. He had now become my new enemy. The director. I would have to devise a different plan of attack.“I didn’t even have to speak to the director,” Sherman continued. “When I checked the records, it looked like the book had only ever been rented out a single time before you, by one of our long-time regulars, Harold Pinter. Funny about the name. No relation to the writer, of course. Anyway, yeah, Harold sadly passed away last year. He was quite old.”“Passed away?” “Well, he stopped coming in, which we all thought was strange—he was practically here every day—and then Shannon found out he had died in his house. One of his neighbors found him. His wife had died a few years back and he became a real regular, as I was saying. He was pretty lonely. He had a terrible habit of marking up all the books he took out from us. I politely admonished him but he just smiled. I didn’t have the heart to do anything about it. He just wanted to be around people. Poor guy. Don’t know if he had children. Anyway, I double checked and it looks like you were the first person to check out this book since him.”“Are you certain?” I asked. “Sherman, are you absolutely certain no other person has read this copy of Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal?” I was once again nearing tears. The human project. The possibility of the person.“Yeah, it’s a shame,” he said. “No one reads anymore.”

AN EXCERPT FROM ‘AMERICAN LIT’ by Jennifer Greidus

March 10, 2025

While Ollie and I get stoned in his car every morning before school, I use my phone to take online career quizzes. I think in reverse, responding as I believe Mr. Stewart would. My mission is to find the amalgam of answers that triggers the “teacher” verdict. Only then will I know everything to say and do around him. My favorite quiz—and the most thorough—was created by an Ivy League school to assist its undergrads. I log into that one about once a day. Among others, my hypothetical responses produced these career options: CPA, correctional officer, lawyer, architect, and copy editor. What a prospective correctional officer would be doing attending that school is beyond me. In any case, I have yet to see “twelfth-grade AP English teacher” pop up as the answer. Always grumpy before the first bell of the day, Ollie broods and smokes between bites of a fast-food breakfast burrito. If I bother him with a question or to tell him he’s dropped some hot sauce on his car’s cheap upholstery, all I get are grunts or lazy hand signals; so, lately, I’ve been focusing on these quizzes. You read the instructions before beginning any assembly. Yes. You avoid arguing, even when you know you are right. No. You always let someone know if she has a crumb on her face. Yes.You are usually patient when someone is late to an appointment with you. No. You don’t mind getting your hands dirty. No idea. That last one gets me every time. It might be the one that fucks up the algorithm. During each class, if only for ten or our allotted forty-two minutes, Mr. Stewart, the thirty-something academic genius who corrects me with a verbal whip whenever I say which instead of that, lectures from a post directly in front of my desk. The twenty square inches of zipper and fabric and subtle bumps and lumps inside his pants leave me overheated and dimwitted. If he’s speaking, I don’t know it. My interest lies only in his stretched fly, an ass of granite, and a minimalist leather belt that ties it all together. Never has a single crease spoiled the light starch of his fitted dress shirts. His monthly haircut ensures every deep-brown strand is in place. Premature crow’s feet appear when he squints or graces me with one of his infrequent smiles. From afar, I’d look twice. From this close, I can’t look away. “Dan.” Ollie tosses a wad of paper at my cheek. “Knock it off. You’re sucking your pen like a dick.” Mr. Stewart’s head jerks in our direction. “Daniel. Oliver. I can only imagine you’re interrupting me because you have a question. Otherwise—” “Hey, Mr. Stewart, I have a question.” Ollie and I both look to the right at Jesse, who yawns, his hand half-raised with an index finger pointed at our teacher. He wears the same jeans, hoodies, and T-shirts, sometimes three days in a row. He’s consistently stoned, and he always has a fucking question. “Says here,” Jesse announces, “Mr. Hart Crane got drunk and fell off a boat.” He taps his thumb against the back pages of the poetry anthology we’ve been reading. Mr. Stewart stares him down. “What’s your question, Jesse?” “Well, yeah,” he continues, slowly flipping one of his shoes onto its side with the big toe of a socked foot, “the bios are more interesting than the poems. Can we read those first?” “We can,” Mr. Stewart says, “but we will not.”Mr. Stewart believes grammar should be everyone’s thing. When I think about him, I think, me and him, him and I, he and I, fuck it, forget it. He enjoys saying, “I do not understand why, on the verge of adulthood, none of you knows how to put together a sentence.” There’s more to him than his obsession with grammar. We’ve spent a couple months in brief, after-class conversations concerning my future and books. We talk about tennis. Despite playing hungover, disliking the drills, and hating the parts where I need to run, I’m good at it. Most days, he asks me, “Daniel, how did you fare at tennis practice yesterday?” And I always blather, “Good. Pretty good. Really good.” It’s tough gawking at a stashed but still conspicuous penis for almost an hour and then trying to keep pace in conversation with its owner after the bell. All I want to do this year is have sex with him. It is my single goal. With a speck of effort, I’ll conquer tennis at my club and on my school team, keep one sober eye on my handpicked senior schedule, and slide into one of the two schools of my choice in autumn. Having Mr. Stewart will be the sweetener. Audacity has been my stratagem for months—I’ve even flustered him a few times—but aside from some sideways glances and closed-lipped smiles, the flirting is meager, as difficult as trying to budge a piano with my pinkie. After class, Ollie jostles me and kicks my shin. “Move it. You’re like a girl with him.” At six-foot-three, Ollie’s body eclipses mine by four inches and forty pounds, and I take a second to regain composure before he shoves me again. “Why can’t you want the corduroy Chemistry guy? The one with the brown fingernails? English teacher. Such a cliché, man.” Right on time, Mr. Stewart looks my way. “Daniel? A word.” “Unbelievable.” Ollie snorts. “He asks you to stay like every day now. Hurry up.” Ollie heads for the exit as I pack up and amble to my teacher’s desk. Rather than acknowledge me, Mr. Stewart contemplates whatever’s on his laptop. I’m used to this delay; the silence Mr. Stewart and I share while I wait is the preamble to these afternoon one-acts. At the beginning of the year, I would fidget and cough, uncertain if I should speak while he wordlessly tidied his desk or erased the whiteboard. Now I wait calmly and open a bag of homemade turkey jerky from my pocket. Drying meat on a rack for eight hours on a Sunday is the only way my mom knows how to show me she cares. Other than this gift economy, we are no more than roommates. Mr. Stewart remains seated, and, as always, I stand across from him, the width of the desk keeping him three feet out of my reach. As I chew the dried meat, the aroma of the chalky cinnamon candies he enjoys hits me. I confuse his hold-on-a-moment smile for a speak-your-mind smile and forge ahead. “Great suit today.” He lifts his eyes. “How was tennis practice yesterday?” “You know,” I say, “instead of asking me all the time, you could come. See for yourself. Nobody else does.” “Your parents don’t go?” The wheels of his chair squeak as he pushes back from the desk. He places both hands behind his head, stretching and expanding his chest until the shirt might as well be skin. “My mother’s in a world of her own, and my father—” I am distracted when he crosses his legs, resting an ankle on his knee. The landscape is crotch, all the crotch I could want. I force myself to look at his face. “And my father’s dead.” “Oh.” His hands drop to his lap. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—” My one-knuckled knock against his desk shuts him up. “Anyway. I only play tennis because he wanted me to stick with it. That and a partial scholarship. Really, I just want to sit around at home without pants, but it seems wrong to ditch it now.” “May I ask how he died?” I tear at some more jerky with my teeth, and, as I’ve done every one of the last five-hundred times someone’s asked me that, I grunt and huff. A crumb of jerky falls to his desk. When he winces at the morsel, I swipe it to the floor with my thumb. The smudge from my thumb causes a more pronounced wince, which I ignore. “Everyone knows how he died. Shot? Three years ago? Remember that?” “That’s—you’re that Daniel.” He sucks in a quick breath through pursed lips. “I apologize for being indelicate. Why have you never told me?” I glance to the right as kids in the hallway rush past his open door. “It didn’t come up.” “It must have,” he insists, resting his elbows on his desk and craning his neck toward me, as if he’s inviting me to tell him a secret. I hope to put him onto the scent of a new topic. “So, what have you been reading lately?” He drums his fingers on the desk, holding tight to the matter while pondering how he missed that gruesome part of my biography. “What about your mother? She can’t manage to support you at a few matches?” My mother can’t manage much, except boyfriends, and barely even that. “My mom and I have this unspoken arrangement that lets us have almost nothing to do with each other.” I hold up the plastic bag stuffed with jerky. “But she does make me this. So, you know, not all bad.” The crow’s feet deepen with concern. “You understand you can talk to me about it anytime, right?” “That is never going to happen. No offense.” I’d rather not add my desire for Mr. Stewart to the existing tangled knot of emotions about my dad. For the past three years, I’ve chosen only guys who are nothing like my father. There’s complicated shit there—I know it—and I’ll save it for my twenties. “I understand,” Mr. Stewart says and opens his middle drawer. “On a lighter note, I brought you a book.” He produces an inch thick paperback, pristine, black with cubes of primary colors on its cover. “Please. Take it.” When I hesitate, eyeing it like it might be homework, he shakes it once. “Take it. If you like Wilde, you’ll like this.” With a tilt of my head, I acknowledge what we must both know: Oscar Wilde is the gateway drug to the entire gay canon. Although we talk about literature a lot, this is the first time he’s given me something specific and extracurricular to read. I finger the edges of the book. “Who’s Joe Orton?” “Playwright. Give it a try. Let me know what you think.” He lifts his laptop bag onto his desk, slips a hand into the side pocket, and comes up with a new tin of cinnamon candies. His manicured nails work open the plastic at its corner. I quickly check out my hands. They are dirty and rough, the left one scarred from a battle I had with Ollie in fourth grade; he jammed a ballpoint into the meaty flesh between my thumb and forefinger, all over a bike. “So,” I say, slapping the book against my palm, “is this toilet reading or bedtime reading?” The corner of his mouth twitches, as it does when he refuses to laugh, despite his obvious amusement. I suspect he wants to maintain a humorless teacher-pupil dynamic. This time, he gives in to a brief smile. “Daniel, I have to ask. Are you high right now?” “Nope.” I am. “Just the same, some advice is in order. Use Visine. Get your hair out of your eyes. And whose shirt is that you’re wearing? Who is Greg? Have you absconded with his work shirt? Is Greg a plumber?” I touch the patch on my shirt as if this mysterious plumber is close to my heart. First, I know I’m not going to get eye drops; I’ve long since passed giving a shit if I seem baked. Second, it’s been a few days since I looked in the mirror, and fuck that anyway. Last, this shirt has been my wingman so many times, I owe it a hand job. “Mr. Stewart, do you run?” “Why do you ask?” “Because your body looks like you run.” The muscles of his jaw must ache from all the clenching he’s doing right now. “Tenth period is calling you.” Students for his next class have begun to file in. I grin and turn on my heel. I’m not a foot out of the classroom before Ollie snatches my sleeve and drags me down the hallway. “You sounded like an asshole. Why don’t you spend your time on something that can actually go somewhere?”