Short

FALSE PROPHET by Brett Willis

September 9, 2022
About five minutes after merging onto I-95 south, Karl’s mattress flew from the car’s roof. This was despite Tom’s best efforts; he had found a ball of twine in the back of Karl’s ex-girlfriend’s closet and managed a couple of extra loops around. Before its departure, the mattress had flopped on the roof like some overzealous wrestler. As, in the rearview mirror, Karl’s mattress frisbeed over the shoulder, Tom felt the stinging heat of resentment rise at the base of his throat. Once again, Karl would need someone else to help him out of a jam of his own making.Karl had claimed that even the twine wasn’t necessary, that the belts he’d used to strap the bed to the car’s roof were enough. Of note, these weren’t tie-down belts or anything; they were literal pants belts daisy-chained together and shut in the doors. Leather belts secured to hemp belts secured to cloth belts. And then Karl had goaded Tom into skipping a trip to the Home Depot, claiming they were all good. Look how well the mattress was holding already. They’d be fine on the highway.“Stop!” said Karl. “Dude, that’s my only bed.”Tom didn’t stop, not immediately. He looked instead at his brother, willing him to do something embarrassing: cry, jump out, rend his hair. His shaggy, stupid, unwashed hair. Despite what Tom thought, the reality was that his brother was attractively disheveled in a way that seemed to make girls violate their own moral codes. Karl’s latest ex-girlfriend, Jolene, had kicked him out only after he had knocked over her betta fish’s bowl and then stepped on the fish while trying to wrangle it into a mason jar. There had been plenty of infractions before that—leaving food-caked dishes in the sink, being late to virtually any planned event, spending what little money his parents sent him on expensive weed. So now Karl was twenty-three and single and broke and Tom—twenty-seven, a freelance grant writer and video game streamer with a car (most important)—was helping him move his meager possessions back to… somewhere.“Where are we even going, again?” Tom asked.“Dude, my mattress!” said Karl, pointing behind himself unnecessarily. Tom drove for another couple of seconds before pulling over violently—no blinker. The minivan behind them swerved, its bleat of indignation dopplering away.Outside, fallen oak and maple leaves rustled along the shoulder. The mattress was now around two hundred yards back. Karl asked Tom to back up, as if the distance was unable to be covered on foot. Tom threw on the hazard lights and got out of the car.By the time Karl arrived, Tom had already tried to move the mattress to no avail. His attempts had only smeared more mud on the now-waterlogged pillow top.“You got mud on it,” Karl said, pointing at the mud.“We’re never going to get this back on the car,” Tom said.Karl told his older brother to stop being a baby, grabbed a handle and ripped it off. The mattress had probably gained a hundred or so pounds. Tom looked at the dot of his beige Accord, illuminated intermittently by passing cars. Despite the reality of the situation, they tugged at the mattress anyway. After managing to drag/carry it about thirty yards, Karl gave up and flopped onto it.“What the hell are you doing?” said Tom. “We need to move this.”“Naw man, forget it.” Karl star-fished on the mattress, looking up at the light-faded sky.“No, this is like more than littering.”“I’ll stay with it,” said Karl.“Stay with it?”“Yeah, I’ll just like, sleep here. Come back with ropes or whatever in the morning. The Home Depot is definitely closed.”Tom didn’t even know if the Home Depot was closed. All he knew was that he was tired of his brother. Tired of his idiotic laziness. Plus, Tom had his stream coming up; he didn’t want to lose any of the subscribers he’d worked hard to gain.“Fine,” Tom said. “Fine, whatever. I’ll be back in the morning.”“Hey, can you grab my bag, dude?” Karl yelled when Tom was a good ways away. Tom’s fists balled involuntarily. Under his moniker “Xoomster,” Tom streamed speed runs of Mega Man X that evening for roughly one hundred viewers. He would have rather been playing Mega Man X-3, but more people were interested in X, so he ran that to help build his fan base. The goal was to gain a significant number of loyal fans by playing Mega Man X so that he could pepper in runs of X-3 before eventually switching altogether. His main source of income came from writing grants, two of which he was currently neglecting. It didn’t help that he had two grants due in the next couple of days: one for a public swimming pool in Hartford and the other for an environmental nonprofit aiming to save the sea-run fish population of the Gulf of Maine.During his first couple of attempts, Tom lost too much life on Chill Penguin and had to reset. His stream dwindled down to fifty viewers even before he choked on Launch Octopus. It didn’t help that he kept looking at the thermometer in his window, noticing that it was hanging out in the low thirties. After another choke on Launch Octopus, Tom threw his controller and abruptly ended his stream. The next morning, Tom got up early. The guilt he felt about leaving his brother on a mattress by the highway—even beside the cold, a drunk driver could easily swerve and pulp his brother’s body where it slept—had made him toss and turn most of the night.At Dunkin’, Tom grabbed two coffees and two ham-and-egg croissants. He sped past the Home Depot, not wanting to waste any time getting to his brother. Where he’d left Karl, all he could see was a tan pickup truck, parked at an angle. Tom carefully pulled off this time (blinkers, easy on the breaks). “Portland Land Management” had been stenciled neatly onto the truck’s tailgate. Tom got out, expecting to see tire marks running over a ripped mattress, his brother inert in a black bag.Instead, the owner of the municipal vehicle, his back to Tom, and his brother were both struggling to pry the mattress from the frozen ground. They were a brightly colored duo, the owner of the vehicle had on one of those high-vis fluorescent green vests while his brother wore a bright-yellow puffy coat with duct tape holding together the rips on its sleeves.“It’s coming!” The city worker said, his voice too high for his body. The mattress popped up with a ripping noise: a few chunks of frozen grass and dirt stuck to the underside. Tom and the city worker both cheered as if they were buds.Instead of tilting it up on its side, the two of them waddle-walked the mattress further toward the tree line and dropped it just shy of a tall, leaning spruce. Tom followed, paper coffee cups subtly burning his hands.“Sorry about my brother’s mattress.” Despite trying to suppress it, Tom said this with some residual righteousness. Karl said ooo coffee and took a cup.“No, your brother is all good,” said the city worker. He actually looked about Tom’s age and had the sort of dark black stubble that, when freshly shaved, looked like a thin layer of dirt. “I’m Chris Benkoosic, by the way, Secretary of the South Portland Zoning Board of Appeals.” He stuck out a fist for Tom to bump and Tom awkwardly grabbed the fist and shook it. Chris the Secretary and Karl shared a look.“No, I happened to see your brother having trouble with the mattress and, like I told him, this is public land, actually. This triangle right here.” He pointed vaguely from the side of the highway to the forest. “Your brother said he wanted to stay, so we’re just moving him to a safer spot. Further from the road.”“Really?” Tom said. “He can just stay?”“Yeah,” said Chris the Secretary, sticking his chin out slightly and cocking his head. “It’s public land.” “You can’t just stay here,” Tom said once the secretary of whatever had departed with a salute.“Yeah man,” said Karl. “I’ve got warm clothes and stuff. I can hang out in the woods. It’s free land, that dude said. A ‘little-known public space.’”Tom rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Even if that is true—that you can squat here for free—what about food?”Karl raised the ham-and-egg croissant and winked.“That’s one meal,” Tom threw his hands in the air.“Where else was I going?” Karl said, serious now. “Back to mom and dad’s to live above the garage? Have them ask me what I’m doing all day? Fuck that.”It was too ridiculous to contemplate. Hanging out on a mattress by the highway with a Maine winter on the horizon? Tom gave up. At Karl’s request, Tom got a whole bunch of water, beef jerky, and some snoballs (the strawberry coconut kind, not the chocolate ones) from a too-brightly-lit Citgo just off the Scarborough exit. Tom felt silly paying with Karl’s wadded-up fivers, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to buy the supplies with his own money. Tom thought of it as a parting gift, the delivery of these last rations.When Tom returned, a white van with a satellite dish on the roof had parked by his brother’s mattress. A reporter with eyebrows that looked as though they were attempting to summit her forehead pointed a microphone in Karl’s face. Karl had managed to wedge some sticks into a teepee over his bed and had covered them with a queen-sized, royal-blue-and-white gingham fitted sheet. He was framed in his yellow jacket by a rip he’d made for the tent’s door.“So, is this a demonstration?” the reporter asked. The cameraman waved Tom back when he got close.“It’s more like, I quit,” said Karl.“But, help me understand here. Quit what?” the young reporter made it sound like Karl had just said posed some Sphinxian riddle.“Just like,” Karl looked around and pointed randomly at a Range Rover traveling south. “That.”“Taking a stand, or rather, a seat against modern life.” The reporter turned to the camera. “This legal encampment one mile shy of the Scarborough exit on I-95 southbound was started by a lone Portland man who would not give his name. Its impact on society remains to be seen. This is Jemma Parkswell for WGBH, your Maine news, mainly made for me and you.”Once the news crew had packed up and left, Tom couldn’t help staying to pose questions to Karl.How long would he stay? Karl didn’t know.What would he do in winter? Bundle up. He had warm stuff.Was there any plan beyond just sitting there? Why did there always have to be a plan?After about ten minutes, a taxi pulled up and a young woman, shouldering a stuffed hiking backpack, stepped out. She was probably in her early forties and wore a thick sea foam-colored sweatshirt and black yoga pants.“I saw you on the news,” she said with hesitation in her voice. She asked Tom if he was camping there too. Tom shook his head very hard.“My name is Amanda. I heard this was like a movement against everything and I wanted to know if I could, like, also be in it? Oh and I brought some food,” she lifted a reusable shopping bag filled with granola bars and water bottles. Karl nodded his head. Back in his apartment, Tom roamed around. He opened the grant proposal for the Greater Hartford Aquatic Center and wrote a single sentence before closing it. He streamed Super Mario Odyssey, to switch things up and hopefully gain some new fans. After a terrible time on Sand and an even worse time on Lake, Tom threw down his headphones—had a bit of a freakout if he was being honest—and ended that stream with ten people watching. He ate leftover mac and cheese without heating it up.Nothing could get his mind off of his brother and that girl. And it wasn’t just because he had been on a date recently with a small girl with long black hair who had requested to meet in front of the police station (Tom, of course, had agreed). They had grabbed coffee and enjoyed, what Tom thought, was a really nice conversation about the types of birds around Portland. It had been two weeks since he’d sent her a text, just one, about hanging out again, with no response. But his brother could sit on the freakin’ side of the highway and girls pulled up in taxis.Tom just wanted to work hard and find success doing something that he actually enjoyed. He had a five-year plan. But his brother could sit on a dirty mattress and…Tom looked at the temperature, it was down into the low thirties and the sun hadn’t even set. Tom got his keys, jacket, and some supplies. There were now maybe sixty people gathered on the side of the highway. They had brought fire pits, constructed a big shack out of plywood and tarps. Generators hummed amidst the boisterous crowd. A group of children, none of whom looked older than seven, sat on the roofs of a row of port-a-potties. And off to the side, a circle of roughnecks with goatees and vests were even roasting a whole pig. The crowd’s numbers abutted the tree line and some had even put up deer blinds in the trees as if to get a better view. But a better view of what?“Please move your car,” said Chris the Secretary when Tom drove up. He was wearing a Bruins jersey and now had even more stubble on his face. When Tom got closer, Chris the Secretary did that I-recognize-you-now point and slapped his thigh. “You’re his brother, right? This area isn’t zoned to have cars parked along the highway, so anyone looking to stay needs to arrange for their car to be picked up.”“You’re living here now?” asked Tom. It seemed too quick for this many people to show up.“Yeah,” said Chris the Secretary, nodding his head vigorously. “Yeah.”“Do you know where Karl is?”“Oh, he’s just about to send out a decree.”“A decree?”A bullhorn bleated twice and everyone turned.At the front of the crowd, Karl stood up on the plywood roof of what Tom had mistaken for a shed. It was actually a stage. A pulpit. Bright lights, powered by the generators, blasted on, illuminating Karl’s tall, gangly body against the cloud-strewn evening sky.“I have one decree,” shouted Karl. He raised his puffy yellow arms and silence swept across the crowd. Chris the secretary craned his neck and even did a couple little hops to get a better view.“You should,” said Karl, in a loud voice that sounded ridiculous to Tom, “Uh… you should, like, not care. That’s it.” The crowd erupted in one ululating roar; the vibration of so many unified voices scared a turkey out of a white pine. Tom watched the turkey struggle to the ground, its body a ball of feathers in mad motion.“Wow,” said Chris the Secretary, shaking his head. “So simple and so powerful.” He clapped his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “But seriously,” his voice went flat. “You need to move your car.” Tom drove home in the dark, the supplies he’d brought for his brother—wet wipes, a headlamp, ketchup—jittered on the passenger’s seat. He went directly to sleep.In the morning, his mother called.“Did you see your brother on TV?”“On the news?” Karl rolled his eyes. “About his protest?”“No,” said his mother, her Massachusetts accent hitting the o like an aw. “No, he’s doing really well with all of those people. He has a channel.”“A channel? Like a way to express his inaction?”“No,” Tom’s mother said again. “It’s on the TV. Channel 44 here.” Tom re-scanned channels with the antenna that hung out of his apartment’s window. He flipped until Karl appeared on the screen, a still photograph over organ music. The screen slowly panned in on an image of Karl being crowd-surfed by a group of beaming adherents. Karl’s hands were crossed over his chest like a pharaoh being led to his sarcophagus. Over the music, Karl’s voice spoke softly and slowly. “You have to like, let that ish go. Just like, whoosh. And bam, that’s it. Don’t worry about it, y’know. Just chill out.” Tom made a little aggravated screech. “Mom, you’re not worried about him? Dad isn’t?”“I think your brother has found a passion.”“Sitting on the side of the highway?” Then, after a pause. “Mom, it looks like a cult.”“All those people really do seem to like him.” Then a concerned lilt entered the corner of her voice. “What about you? How’s your video game club going?”“Mom, you’re not going to do something? Call a P.I. or something?“I’ll ask your father.” His mother shouted to ask if Karl was leading a cult. Tom heard his father say something from the living room and his mother harrumphed her approval.“They all seem very relaxed.”Tom’s father’s voice came on the other line. “Tommy, your brother is an adult. He needs to learn how to do things for himself.” The tone of his father’s voice threw Tom’s mind back to when he and his brother had been at camp in Waterville. His father had been crouching in front of him on the tilted wooden deck of the camp director’s cottage. The night before, Karl, then a J-9, had snuck out during the session-end dance to smoke weed with a group of J-13s from Darien. Tom, a J-12, learned about it a half-hour too late and had run out to look for him. He had found Karl at the tennis courts, jackknifed over the net, his wrists bound by his shoelaces; the J-13s were taking turns smashing tennis balls at Karl’s bare ass. Tom had yelled, immediately regretted not calling the councilors first, and then had gotten beaten up too.“Tommy,” said his father. “It’s not your job to fix your brother’s mistakes.” But Tom had remembered thinking that was beside the point. What about his, Tom’s, mistakes? Tom opened his laptop to find that the conservation folks had given the sea-run fish grant to another freelancer, due, they explained, to the impending deadline and Tom’s lack of response. In a fit of self-directed anger, Tom went and deleted his Xoomster account entirely. Even with that done, he still couldn’t get himself to open up the document for the aquatic center grant.Tom tossed and turned in bed that night, thinking of his brother surrounded by all of those people. Nothing good could come of it, but what could he do? And just like that, it was nearly morning and Tom found himself putting on his jacket, grabbing his keys, and getting in the car.The encampment itself stood empty—remnants of tents, mud-covered blankets, and plastic cups all littered the area. In the place of the stage from only a day earlier, a towering plywood structure stretched up past the treetops, backlit by a peach sky.Tom knocked on plywood front doors that stretched nearly twelve feet high. Both doors creaked open at once, pulled by wild-haired adherents—each dressed in yellow puffy coats with duct tape on the sleeves.“Chill be with you,” The angular woman on the left said.“Um, thanks,” said Tom. “I’d like to see my brother, Karl.”“Oh,” said the woman, somehow pronouncing the exclamation without any surprise. “Come in.” The room she ushered Tom into felt as large as Grand Central Terminal. Spray-painted Murals of his brother in various states of repose covered the walls. Hanging from the center of the ceiling was a giant plywood sculpture of a flattened, upside-down betta fish.The man on the right, small eyes and a big chin with a body shaped like a coffin, asked if Tom was here for the moment of supreme chillaxation. Tom told them he was Karl’s brother. The coffin-shaped man produced a walky-talky: “We have a relative.”In moments, at the top of the palatial staircase that dominated the front of the room, the news reporter with the eyebrows appeared. She was dressed like Jolene: flannel shirt unbuttoned to nearly the sternum, pink bra, sleeves rolled up, ripped jeans and motorcycle boots.“Come,” she said. “He is pumped to see you.” All the way up the spiraling staircase, adherents in puffy yellow jackets stood. One line of them circled up the stairs while another line snaked back down as if they were in one long procession. Tom and the former news reporter walked through the middle. The people had unwashed hair and stubble on their faces, if possible. The smell of deodorant just covered the chicken soup aroma of armpits. But on their collective faces was a sort of happiness that Tom couldn’t mistake. To a person, they looked sublimely relaxed. “You got here at a great time,” the reporter said to Tom, twice, as they ascended.At the top of the tower, the line looped around in front of an entryway hung with beaded curtains. One by one, adherents were entering the room and walking back out. The reporter pushed past, ushering Tom into what she called the den of sweetness.The bright, trippy tapestries Karl never let go of after college had been stapled over what few crooked windows had been cut out of the walls—the fabric billowed in and out with the breeze. His retinue lounged on beanbags: one played the hang drum while Chris the Secretary noodled on a mandolin.In the center of the room, Karl lay upon his soiled mattress. His head, propped up on pillows, didn’t even rise for Tom’s entrance. The former reporter rushed to Karl’s side and he whispered into her ear.“Hey dude,” the reporter said, amplifying Karl’s whispers.“Why isn’t he talking?” Tom asked. “Why aren’t you talking?”Again, Karl whispered into the reporter’s ear and she nodded. “I’m just chilling, y’know?” The reporter even mimicked his intonation.Tom closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He should have been writing the aquatic center grant. What was he doing here, again?“What’s the deal?” Karl asked through the former reporter. “Did you come by to see me fully chill out?”“What?” said Tom. This was weird phrasing, even for his brother. It made Tom take a mental step back. He looked around and notice a cup full of bright-red liquid sitting on the floor by the mattress.“What is that?” Tom said, pointing.“That’s the vehicle to supreme chillaxation. My friends whipped it up for me.”“Supreme chillaxation?” Tom’s confusion turned to dread. “Wait, what is that drink again?”“I’m going to head out, dude. To show my friends how to relax in the most serious way that exists.” As the former reporter said the word “exists,” Karl lifted himself up on his elbows. The retinue gasped and whispered to each other “he moves… he moves!”“Wait, you’re going to kill yourself?” Tom looked from his brother to the red drink. “Isn’t it normally the other way around? Like everyone else does it but you?”Karl shrugged. “It was Chris’ idea and everyone thought it sounded good.” Chris the Secretary gave a thumbs up over his head.“Wait, are you serious?” said Tom. But apparently, Karl was; he had already stood up and was holding the cup with both hands in front of him. Reality felt like it was tumbling downhill.Behind Tom, in the room and all the way down the towering staircase, came the creaking of wood as all of the puffy-coated people genuflected.Tom’s mind raced: he had to stop this. There were too many people for Tom to physically drag his brother out. And he couldn’t just knock the drink from Karl’s hand because if they made one, they could just make another. No, to actually put a halt to this, he had to do something drastic. Something simple.Tom walked up to his brother, snatched the plastic cup from his hands, and drank it. The liquid was cool and chalky. After swallowing, Tom looked around. Karl had stopped talking but his lips were still slightly parted; the adherents, foreheads still to the ground, hadn’t seen what Tom had done. Tom smelled a mixture of fruit punch and almonds while an intense bitterness stuck to the root of his tongue. Inside, warmth had already started to bloom. Not a searing, burning heat, but more like a benevolent glow. And then came the pain.A staggering, searing schism opened in his gut. Tom curled to the ground, dimly aware of the fact that nobody was moving. Time, it seemed, had finally slowed. Karl just stood and stared, not doing anything, yet, to help his brother.Faced with grim reality, Tom’s brain set itself to riffling through scenes from the past: his mother and father waving from the doorstep as he drove off to college alone, how the water on the lake had turned dark blue when he realized the wind had gotten too strong for him to paddle back, the flutter of the torn parrot-shaped kite hanging in the dogwood tree. It was there, reaching for the kite and then losing his footing, that his mind snagged. He had fallen sideways and gotten his ankle wedged between two branches. Tom saw his upside-down childhood home down to the chipped paint of the blue shutters, the maroon door with the old wrought-iron latch. Karl, shirtless and in a grass-stained diaper, was standing below, looking up at him. Tom was crying in this memory—or was it now?—salty snot and tears running hot up his face. He was asking Karl for help. But Karl was just standing there, thumb in his mouth, watching Tom claw at the ankle that the tree’s rough bark refused to release. Each time Tom yelled, it felt as though some limited essence inside of him was evaporating. He couldn’t even remember the moment when somebody came, because obviously, they did. His mind was stuck on the feeling of the tears running up his forehead and the anger and shame that consumed him as he waited and waited for somebody, anybody, to help him.
Read More »

TRAPPED AIR by Corey Miller

July 18, 2022
I stand naked at my bedroom window as the community arrives, unhitching buggies next to the barn and freeing their horses within the pasture fencing. It’s Father’s turn to host church.My hands find the tumbled smooth surface of the yellow citrine, amplifying the power of the sun, torrential and vitalizing. My altar, the top of the maple dresser Father built, is aligned with crystals. Each one unique, delivering its effects to the possessor. The dresser stores my bonnets and dresses, different hues of pink and gray. Sundays are always black. None with pockets; Amish don’t believe in secrets. The Radiant Rider-Waite tarot deck is stacked. Everyone has their preferred way to read the cards; I shuffle the seventy-eight prophecies as fast as I can, allowing each card that falls out of my palms while intermixing to be read. The last tarot card drops—the Four of Wands. It brings pleasure, harmony, new beginnings. Today will be glorious. I collect my favorite crystals, tie thread around them, then drag the pointed ends across my ribs. My skin awakens. I move the rose quartz, obsidian, and bloodstone down to my pelvis, inserting them inside me.My sisters, Samantha and Mary Ann, take longer to get ready which will delay the sermon. No one woke Samantha. Being deaf, she can’t hear us rustling around. Mary Ann gargles with hydrogen peroxide. She coughs and the foam coats the bathroom mirror. She wipes it clean, fingers her dentures out of the overnight solution, and pastes them onto her gummy ridges. I rattle Samantha until she stirs awake. Tapping my wrist, universal sign language for We’re fucking late. The kerosene heater in her room has depleted, revealing how cold the autumn nights have become. Father waits in the kitchen, head hung low. He could yell at us for making the entire community wait. Instead, he opens the back door for us to join them, the only noise a squeaky hinge.We navigate through the scooters left in the immaculate yard. The reflective tapes and shiny battery lights on the scooters are the only form of self expression we’re permitted to show. Drivers wait in their vans, paid to chauffeur Amish families around for church and groceries—living life in the fast lane. Creepy Larry sits in his dusty white van and grins at us three girls. He used to be Amish, but he Yanked over after Rumspringa. Now he drives us to our destinations, unable to escape the community. He got busted for organizing an Amish brothel on the other side of Middlefield but wasn’t in jail more than a night. That’s because he eats breakfast with the mayor every Monday. He gives us what I call the Amish Finger, lazily holding up an index finger instead of a full wave, sign language for Wait a moment while I pretend to give a shit.Despite morning frost, the barn is warm with bodies formed into a crop circle—Father as the nucleus. He stands at the podium, arms free to sign the sermon for Samantha, otherwise she would fall asleep, unable to decipher mumbling lips. Father’s the only elder in the community who knows the language.“I thought I’d read from Matthew 16:18 today,” Father says, his breath like a smokestack. Everyone presents their bible, most of them Scotch-taped and falling apart, flipping to the page out of instinct. Father speaks like he wrote the damn book, ranting about foundations and how Jesus is our rock—the core for all of our beliefs. Father’s hands swoop and cut through the air, fists clenched and pounding into each other when he signs “rock.” I pinch my wrists to keep from nodding off. Maybe the Bible is open to interpretation, like reading tarot cards.I found The Beginners Guide to Witchery at the Nauvoo Flea Market after Mother died. It showed ways to communicate with the dead, ways to get what you wanted. It showed how to make bad people suffer. The community peers at one another across the circle, our lives exposed. The crystals shift inside me and I tug the hem of my dress up to my knees. I stare at Norman across the circle from me, thinking about snakes and Jesus mounted on the cross. Norman is tan and boasts sturdy arms. His face is nearly symmetrical besides a thin crooked nose. We both graduated this summer, thrown into the real world at sixteen. His eyes on Father have a glaze like a fresh pot out of the kiln—not fully conscious, allowing the spoken words to burn away his sins from party day. Norman and his friends party Thursday nights during summer. I’ve never been invited, I’ve only overheard the stories, seen the black eyes from boxing.When church has ended, the girls play volleyball and the boys play baseball while the elders sit and quilt and plan. They discuss our futures, how to sustain the community. Kids my age are starting to find suitors. I’ve asked the universe for children, maybe even a garden for my herbs. I failed Father, not being a boy. He only had three daughters with Mother before she died four years ago. We aren’t the prettiest girls in the community. Most men wouldn’t take the time to work with Samantha’s disability and Mary Ann’s dentures make it hard for her to eat solid meals. I’m taller than most women. Taller than most boys too. Towering over people makes me unapproachable, but I am still the most likely to make Father proud.I don’t play games with the others. I stand in a line of blue spruce, on a mound where our cat, Sebastian, is buried. Norman takes his shirt off as he steps up to the pitcher’s mound. He can throw a ball as fast as our horse, Blaze, can kick out in fright when hearing coyotes yip. Luck is a limited resource on this planet, something that can deplete and never return. Mine has been scarce, but I’ve found a way to control it. Tomorrow, level two of my spell series will arrive with the Bookmobile. It depicts ways to bend and shape fate: White and Black Magick. The law of attraction states positive thoughts will conjure positive experiences, for we are Pure Energy. Sweat droplets on Norman’s chest clump together and sprinkle to the ground. He winds up and throws the baseball with all his might. It hits the batter in the shoulder and walks them to first base.Plans fizzle out at the picnic: elders ready to leave, horses tacked, vans loaded, scooters revived. I lift my skirt to run, approach Norman, and make my existence known. He gets into Creepy Larry’s van with the rest of his family. “Hey, that was a great game you pitched,” I say. He turns and it’s like he’s never met me before. His parents wait for him to thank me. They nibble their lips and fidget at buttons on their shirts.“What the fuck?” Creepy Larry says. “Where did those come from?”My favorite crystals have slid out of me, fallen in a path from the spruce to where I now stand. Pink amethyst for cleansing spaces and moving towards emotional balance, charcoal agate to ease anxiety, and forest green bloodstone for exceptional circulation, dropped in a direct line to my crush. I attempt to back-pedal over them to hide under my dress, but Norman and his entire family have witnessed.Samantha plucks one of the slick gems up and holds it to the sun. The glare flickers across my eyes, so bright it leaves dark blank spots in my vision. 

* * *

It takes fifteen minutes to tack Blaze up to the buggy and forty-five minutes to ride into town for groceries. Renting a driver and van would cost $30, but Father claims it a waste when we have all the time in the world and time is free. Another currency for Amish girls is blowjobs. I’ve heard the stories. It’s how most our age ride for free. There’s a branch of the Cleveland Library which drives a Bookmobile through all of the Amish communities. It’s how we get our school textbooks. Mary Ann and Samantha have a few more years left, but have today off for Columbus Day. I’m not a good example for them, but they need to be pushed outside their comfort zone.The three of us huddle together like a raft of ducks in the back cab of the buggy, watching the Yankee cars speed towards us, praying they’ll see us and pass with caution. We stare at each one and create stories for their lives. Lives that can go anywhere and do anything. Horses have two sets of vision which can view 350 degrees around them. We attach blinders onto Blaze so he’ll focus forward on the road. A dusty van approaches and we giggle, recognizing it immediately. It’s Creepy Larry driving our neighbors to the grocery store. Creepy Larry stares at us as we cover our mouths to hide. “He’s always watching us. I think he wants to drive us somewhere.” Mary Ann says it hushed so Father won’t hear but with enough animation so Samantha can read her lips. Samantha shakes in fits, trying to suppress her laughter. She nods her head, keeping her eyes wide open for conversation.Walmart has gotten weird. Yankees have begun to wear masks, talking about a virus spreading. Our community hasn’t noticed anything different yet. We’ve had several weddings this summer. I’m coerced into attending each one, listening to Father’s comments: “Another boy your age stolen. I bet he drives cart well.”I envision stealing the televisions from the electronics section. Other Amish gather here to role-play for a brief moment. There are so many screens lining a wall with the same images moving in sync with each other. It’s a show about girls our age, 16 and pregnant. Their bedroom walls filled with cutouts of magazines, boys hanging up on display.We browse the makeup section: two full aisles to change your appearance. Different shades for different skins, moisturizers and creams to keep your skin young. I crack open a vile of nail polish: Crimson Red. Mary Ann and Samantha watch in awe as I decorate myself. My nails turn a glossy deep red as Father passes by, pushing a cart full of toilet paper, batteries, and ibuprofen. He swivels his head, breaking eye contact with me, avoiding our sins. I return the vial and grab a bag of cotton balls, pushing my finger against the plastic until a hole forms. I unscrew the nail polish remover and swab my nails back to normal. I could have all of this if I wasn’t Amish. Sometimes I question the faith, how I would lose my family if I ran away.There’s a picture of a supermodel wearing a new series of expensive mascara. The container is smooth and slender. I’m amazed how easy it disappears up my sleeve without anyone noticing. We leave the store quicker than it takes Blaze to trot here. When we get back home the Bookmobile is parked at the farm across the street. I let Father and my sisters finish untacking Blaze in the barn while I rush over for my book. Several women are there, returning their Amish romance novels and getting the next in the series. The first woman who gapes down at my feet doesn’t bother me, it’s when I realize that each of them is gawking that I know they’re expecting the ground to glimmer where I walk. “Name?” the Yankee clerk asks.“Beth Yoder.”“Oh, we’ve been talking about this one,” she gets out Witchcraft: Advanced Level and reads the title aloud. She’s old and I’d wager she spends most of her time sitting in front of a television, bingeing shows about housewives. “An odd book for a young Amish girl to reserve.”The other women in the mobile library keep glancing my way. Each of them attend church with us. They spread stories like wildfire.“You know it’s all fake, right?” the Yankee clerk says this as if I’m a toddler first learning about the Salem witch trials. She taps her temple. “The magic is all in your head.” “Um—it’s for school. To cite for a history project,” I say.The clerk doesn’t snoop any further, but the others in the bus seem to suspect what ploy I’m conceiving.

* * *

When we ride scooters to Middlefield there’s East Branch Park. It’s miles of hiking trails next to the buggy path that cuts through the woods by the reservoir. East Branch has these sort of half cabins where the other half is exposed to the wilderness around a fireplace, like a fancy tent contractors forgot to finish building. The restroom for these tenants is a luxury outhouse equipped with a chimney to evacuate the smell. Workers prop the door open as they steam clean the inside. I considered applying for work here, but the season is coming to an end.Mary Ann, Samantha, and I find a spot in the woods where no one will discover us. This spell needed help, and although they don’t practice witchcraft, I threatened to stop helping with their math homework. The Geauga Park District linked the forest with sap lines, an interconnected spiderweb of blue tubes tapped into maple trees. It flows downhill into a collection tub for the sugar shack to produce maple syrup. It requires two cords of firewood to boil over a twelve hour period for Grade A Amber syrup.We build our fire with foraged branches, prop stones in a circle containment, and rest the cauldron in the center. We fill it with stolen maple sap, intact cicada husks, blood red hibiscus petals, devil’s shoestring, and my wishing nickel—minted the year I was born. A rolling boil forms as the sun descends. We unscrew the lid on the mason jar containing the suffocated fireflies, smacking the bottom to drop their lights in. We chant. The bubbling potion is like road apple soup—all sorts of shit shades coagulating. We untie our hair and let it fall to our knees. Evaporated water wafts through each strand and split end, lungs filling with vapor. Our fingers interlock as we pyramid around the fire. We’re fluent in English and Dutch but right now we are chanting in memorized Latin—a dead language, torn into pieces and buried throughout the world. It sounds like a church hymnal, but we aren’t worshipping God. I don’t tell my sisters what to do, but we naturally get louder and louder. Samantha mouths words to her own beat and time until I pump a pulse through her palm, we follow her, squeezing tighter. I don’t dare peek at my sisters for fear the spell will break upon itself, a wave we ride together. The ground spasms and something crunches leaves behind the maple trees. We should be casting a protection spell to guard us from this risky life we were dealt. Instead I’m fishing. Casting a line out into the shallow waters in hopes of hooking a boy with my selfishness. I think of Mother, what she would say. I bet she’d support us. She might even have joined her daughters. She wouldn’t turn an eye and make believe we didn’t exist. My eyes remain tight. I picture her, feeding Blaze his joint supplements in his stable. Such a massive creature doesn’t know its own strength, the sudden shift pinning her body against the stall, no one near as her last breath escaped. Every meal father forgets to season, every corn seed I sow, every silent night in the living room, I evoke her presence. Blaze stole her from us, yet he remains an essential part of our family. The ground shakes, the planets align, goddesses show me the way. I sense the exit to a maze I’ve been searching for since birth.“I don’t think it’s working,” Mary Ann says. I open my eyes. My sisters appear bored, like I’m the only one who felt a temblor. My skin tingles, returning to reality. I release Samantha’s hand and she understands play time is over. Mary Ann kicks the cauldron and extinguishes the flame. Leaves crunch again, somewhere in the forest a creature might be watching us. Or a spirit ready to lead the way. We take the path back home, where Father is tending chores alone. The parking lot for East Branch is overflowing with people. Recently, more have been out exploring the park systems, flooding our territory. Creepy Larry pulls up in his dusty white van, transporting a crew of Amish boys on lunch from barnraising. His front passenger-side tire looks low. Our scooters have solid tires made of layers of rubber because trapped air is against our religion, yet we use air compressors for nail guns. Anything is allowed for jobs. There’s something exploitative about needing to work to live and ignoring your beliefs to do so. Norman steps out and his head turns like a valve handle, attention streaming in my direction. He gives me the Amish Finger and approaches.“What are you girls doing Thursday?” he says, running his hands through his sandy blonde bowl cut. It takes me a moment to realize he’s talking to us. “Oh, uh, we usually have game night with Father after chores. Why?”“I was thinking, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you at any of our parties before. You should come.” He doesn’t take his eyes off of me. Like I’m the sun and he doesn’t give a fuck if it burns. I pinch myself and may have drawn blood. Rain starts pouring hard, washing away the grime from Creepy Larry’s van, forming a prismatic puddle. 

* * *

It’s endless mist until the party. Samantha says it’s God’s spittle, good during the summer months but useless to us now. We’ll walk to the party, even if it takes most of the night to get there.We feign sleepiness and act like we’re going to bed early. Father sits in the living room and studies the Bible, disappointed we didn’t want to play dominoes tonight. Upstairs at my altar, I drop the tarot cards. Cards I adore fall: coins, cups, and wands. It took late nights studying each card by candlelight to comprehend how each one could affect me. The final card that falls this time is the first I learned: The Fool. I allow another card to fall and alter my fate, covering signs from the past.We wait until Father’s lantern is out, then we tiptoe downstairs. Each step creaks and pops like knuckles cracking. We take our time floating across the uneven floorboards as light as sawdust. The back door’s hinges are excruciating; opening the door slow makes it squeal louder. With any luck it’ll be mistaken for Blaze whinnying. The LED porch light is always on, batteries dying and needing replaced every Saturday. We apply the mascara on each other, believing the darkness will conceal how bad we are at adding this new appearance upgrade. We huddle under Mother’s old umbrella, scurrying along the backroads to the East Branch Trail. Headlights turn on as we enter the parking lot. That white van we know so well. “What are you girls doing out here by yourself this late? It’s not safe for cute girls to wander by themselves.” Creepy Larry gets out and slides open his side door, beckoning us inside from the bleak night. Samantha enters before we can make a decision, already needing to sit. “We’re just heading home now, we’ll be fine,” I tell him.“Oh? I thought you were going to that party on the other side of town? You’ll be needing a ride to make it in time. Hop in, it’ll only be twenty minutes for me to drive you girls. I know right where it’s at.”I don’t want to say it, but I do. “We don’t have any money on us.”“Don’t worry about that. I’m sure we can figure something out.”I tell him we will pay whatever it costs the next time he stops over for church. Mary Ann and I join Samantha in the backseat. Driving is so much quicker than taking the horse and buggy. I sit in between my sisters and imagine not being Amish, how Creepy Larry cut all the bullshit and chose his own path. I wonder if my sisters will follow me wherever I end up. Maybe down to Sarasota, Florida where most Amish escape. A paradise to soak up the sun without a dress requirement.Rain taps the metal roof. The worn rubber wipers are slow but efficient, clearing our vision. Empty beer cans clatter on the floor as we pass through town, past the police department, past the fire department, through Middlefield’s main intersection. We pass churches that aren’t barns, past plastic factories that make hunting decoys. Creepy Larry pulls over into the parking lot of a veterinarian clinic. “Why did we stop?” I ask.There was one other time we were here. Our pet cat, Sebastian, ate a thimble and fucked up his insides. This was when Mother was still alive. Sebastian liked to walk on the baby grand piano in the living room when Mother played. We rushed to no avail. Sebastian died on the way. If only we could have gotten here sooner. “I figured now be a good time for my payment,” he says this through the motion of putting the van in park and unzipping his pants. My stomach is a bed of shale, a pit of rocks where a well has run dry. “Well c’mon. It’ll be quick if you’re good,” he says. Samantha examines him on display in the driver’s seat and can’t break away. Her face is stock-still and inquisitive. I start to crawl to the front passenger seat before I overthink it. I place the party to the foreground—an upgrade in social status. Creepy Larry says no. “I want the other one.” He nods to Mary Ann. I’m stunned when she crawls there without hesitation, as if called to the head of class. Is she following my lead, or does she want to do this?“I’ve seen you take your teeth out before,” he says, waiting for her to do so. She wiggles and pries her dentures out. I reach out and she places them in my palm, her saliva coating my fingers. Her dentures look like Stonehenge connected by a pink tarp. Samantha watches the driver’s seat, her eyes unblinking. The rain cuts off the rest of the world outside.Obscured by the driver seat, Mary Ann grunts and her arms are rigid by her side. She tries to cough but it comes out like a duck quacking. Creepy Larry’s seat squeaks, the coils contracting and expanding how our buggy contorts when Blaze navigates tight curves.Mother played piano when she was depressed. The only pieces she’d play were Beethoven’s sonatas. Her favorite was No. 8. The ending would grow louder and louder before finishing, her fingers pulsating up and down the keyboard, pressing each key with clout to strike a note within the body of the baby grand. Creepy Larry doesn’t last as long as Beethoven’s No. 8 sonata. He holds his breath, both hands clamped on the back of Mary Ann’s neck. Her bonnet slides all over, her hair unravels. When he removes his hands from her, we know he’s finished. Mary Ann crawls to the backseat, her mascara pooling beneath her eyelids. She wipes her face and sits there in a ball, contemplating. I elbow her and present her dentures, having kept them safe. Returning from a daze, it takes her a second to realize they were missing.

* * *

It’s a fire the size of Nauvoo Flea Market. Multiple areas for beer—kegs of Miller Lite and coolers like bases—surrounding a giant ring where two boys are fist fighting. We’re in a large corn field tamped down in the middle of nowhere. It’s loud with a generator powering flood lights and speakers, blaring rock music from the 80’s. I link arms with Samantha and Mary Ann as we navigate through boys and girls that are already drunk. They laugh a little too loud, sway a little too wide, and stare a little too long. I recognize the two boys in the fighting ring, brothers who live at the end of Princeton Road and manage the largest farm in the area—brightest carrots at the Geauga County Fair. Is this brotherly love or some way to release their testosterone? Boys forming the circle pass money around placing wagers. The cash collector has one hand fuller than the other, calculating the odds. They duck and dodge, predicting each other’s movements, until one tires enough, slowing reactions for contact. The older, bigger brother knocks his younger sibling out cold. The crowd cheers and rushes to collect the few dollars they’ve earned.Creepy Larry is parked off in the distance chugging Pabst tallboys. His van idles, headlights and heat on. What does it take to bring a vehicle to life? Maybe like a generator, gasoline combusting to power a home in a blackout. Father always jokes about his buggy having a one-horse powered engine. The fire is wild, no bricks to contain it. The rain can’t extinguish the amount of lighter fluid doused onto these branches. Two boys heave a door on top of the bonfire. It diverts the smoke into a nearby blue spruce, singeing the needles.“Fuckin’ Larry said he won’t go out and buy us more beer,” one boy says to another. “We’re out of MGDs and the kegs are gettin’ light.”One of them wobbles and bumps into me, spilling skunky liquid across my yellow dress, making it turn stale shades of maize. I pause in disbelief, waiting for an apology I don’t receive. This must be a part of the ritual—a rite of passage.Norman swaggers on the outskirts of the fighting ring with a handful of boys we don’t recognize. I unlink with my sisters and they pause as if fallen from a train. Norman keeps snapping his suspenders and scratching his groin. I think about the proximity of our community to others. How there are many people in the world, but we orbit the ones closest to us. I hope he’ll notice my makeup and not that my face is beet red. I seize a can labeled Icehouse from a cooler and crack it open. My first sip tastes freezing and bitter acid, like a tomato gone bad.I take a deep breath and clear my head. A quick meditation for positive energy. When I reach Norman, he glimpses me then smacks his buddies, laughing like I tripped and fell in horse shit. “My god, I didn’t think you’d actually show. This is that girl I was telling you guys about!” The others scrutinize me as a painting subject. Norman calls over a few more boys and tells them The Gem Girl came. I hear gasps and murmurs as others hurry over. The party has halted, diverting all of its spirit to me. They pinch my dress, running the polyester through their thumb and index fingers. Hands are touching me from all directions. For the first time, I’m the center of attention. Breathing is arduous, surrounded by boys on the verge of becoming men. I push and plow until I break free. I try my hardest to walk away in an even step. I picture Blaze cantering and wonder how horses keep track of all their limbs. I arrive to relink with Mary Ann and Samantha, but they are a locked gate. They exit, out past the ring and onto the open road. The cold has me frozen on the spot. My siblings. My bloodline. I linger a lifetime to thaw. 

* * *

There’s two bars in Middlefield, both in the center intersection of town. It’s closing time and a bunch of drunkards are hollering at Mary Ann and Samantha from the covered patios as I play catch-up. They slur their words but the message is clear how appetizing we are. We walk by the police department and the white van returns. I feel like a dead animal attracting scavengers. It’s what I deserve. “Girls, get in! It’s not safe for you out here alone.” Creepy Larry rides up against us. Police cars must be out on duty, the station is hibernating. Does he treat them to breakfast like he does the Mayor?“We’re fine! Leave us alone Creepy Larry!” I shout so loud, as if I’m trying to get Samantha to hear me. “Hey now, that’s a bit uncalled for. I’m here to save you.” Not paying attention to where he’s steering, his van drifts into Mary Ann, hard enough to knock her down, thumping onto pavement. Her dress tears and instead of seeing skin it’s maroon that spreads and stains. “Ah, Christ,” he says, parking the van and rushing out to assess the damage. “I didn’t mean to do that. Let me see it.”“You’ve done enough, get away from us!” I grab my sisters arm and hoist her back up to power-walk away. He follows us, calling out to stop and listen to him. We run as fast as our dresses will allow our legs to stretch. It’s pitch black in East Branch Trails, except for the cabins’ bathroom light, guiding bugs together for mating. We’ve been walking for hours, past the plastic factories, through town, along the buggy path,. If Father was awake and knew we were out, there would be no way of knowing if he was searching for us. There’s twigs snapping in the distance. We stop and hold Samantha back, to silence her. It sounds like an animal limping somewhere, possibly hurt. The woods are foggy. We’re close to home now. One moment I see the finish line, the next I’m jolted. I land on the ground, tackled by something—someone. Creepy Larry is holding me down. “Just let me talk without you girls walking away. I’m at least owed that much.”“Get off of me! You’re hurting me!” My braids have come undone and Creepy Larry is pressing my shoulders against the gravel path. Samantha stumbles into the forest, off the trail. I hear her clotheslined by a maple sap line with a whip-like warble vibrating from the pressure. She’s on the ground grunting from the wind being knocked out of her. She slithers through the dead leaves, crinkling beneath her deviating body. Mary Ann pushes Creep Larry with all her might, but it’s not enough to remove him and all of his weight off of me. “Listen! I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m a good guy, let me take care of you.”“Please!” My spine is riding the edge of a rock back and forth. It bends in a way it shouldn’t. I kick him where Mary Ann was forced to go. It’s not hard enough but I do it over and over again until my dress tears, until it hurts him enough for Mary Ann to roll his large body off me, until I’m no longer restrained. We sprint for safety. My dress has a rip torn down the middle as high as my belly button. We can’t find Samantha and have no time to stop. I wish people were still renting these half cabins so someone could hear us screaming. Mary Ann and I flock to the fancy restroom for campers. Once inside, I lock the door. I evaluate the situation—we are not overreacting, this is not something we could laugh about tomorrow. There’s a dripping of water in the sink, pulsing a time signature. The dim bathroom light is shaded by cobwebs filled with moths as wide as a baseball gloves ready for a catch. The animal kingdom has muted, guarding against predators. A shrieking pierces the woods, a young girl’s timbre. I breath Samantha. She finds us and bangs the door thunderous, striking with the meat of her palm. We grant her access, knowing we’ve chosen our base to bunker. I lock the door as soon as her feet cross the threshold. We hear him stomping right behind her. No more running tonight. He knows where we are. “Larry, please listen to me carefully. We just want to get home. We don’t blame you for anything. Please leave us alone.”“Beth, I’ve always admired how different you were. But now it’s starting to annoy me. I just want to face each other and show you that I’m a true gentleman.” His words are slurred and strung together with effort. The door handle slowly rotates but the deadbolt saves us. “I’m better than those guys you know. You should hear the shit they talk about in my van when I drive them. Come out. This talking through a wall is so impersonal, you know?”“Larry,” I speak slow and try to keep my voice even, like I’m balancing on the sap lines, overcoming the swaying tension, “We’re tired. We think you’re a great guy. We can talk about this tomorrow.” I say this although I question if the sun will rise.He pounds at the door. There’s only one answer he’s willing to accept. The one object in here that isn’t anchored into the wall is a large rock used to prop the door open, airing out any moisture when the workers steam clean. My hands swoop and cut, signing the plan without speaking. I herd my sisters into one of the bathroom stalls. He stops pounding when the deadbolt slides back into the door.“That’s more like it.” He opens the door lazily, but instead of hitting the door stopper against the wall, I wait behind it, praying he won’t sense me. Larry walks past me to the first stall and pushes it in—empty. My sisters try to control their breath, but fail, sounding like balloons squeaking. He pushes in the second stall—empty. “C’mon girls, I’ll watch over you.” He pushes the third stall door revealing Mary Ann and Samantha. “Where’s Beth?”Channeling all of my rage I smash the heavy rock against his head. The connection contains everything I possess, all of my hatred. He collapses to the damp bathroom floor with a thud. I’m shocked there isn’t any blood. There are tears though. Samantha and Mary Ann flood out of the stall, crying and hugging me. There’s a pressure relief as we melt into each other’s embrace.We can’t leave him here; his story will be much different than ours. We drag his unwieldy mass out of the bathroom and into the forest. Our angles acute, heels digging into the Earth for movement. There’s a glow drawing us in. The fire we built days ago is still burning despite all of the rain this week. It’s burning without any wood as a fuel source. A stream of colors shine, like the altar Father built me, prehistoric gems left before humans. We drape Larry across the fiery rubble. It reeks rubber and gasoline. He stirs but not with enough energy to yell or gasp. He simply vanishes and ceases to exist. I revolve, shielding my eyes and view a figure pass beyond the maples before disappearing. Unclear if what I witnessed was a ghost or if it was the light of a star beginning ascension.
Read More »