THE FALL by Sara Lippmann

Last night I passed out as you fucked me for 100 hours for 18 years on the living room floor. The mood was right: kids out, throw pillows deftly arranged, fire doing its snap crackle pop, flames licking the grate. There was wine and weed—an empty house!—so it could’ve been the freedom alone and not the fucking though I believe it was. We all believe something. I also hadn’t eaten and you know how I get (after a day, 100 hours, 18 years.) Your words: A woman needs food, sustenance. 

A woman needs (insert here) 

What I remember: four posts (two hands two knees) on the floor, skin burning wood. In another life this might qualify as harness breaking but I was no horse I was already domesticated we were married this was our kind of violence (our love) on the living room floor there was no breaking free. We fucked so long my head swelled (bloviated!) my body ballooned until it ceased to be a body but a bounce castle to pound and sink into I yielded like a catcher’s mitt you tunneled then I tunneled we mastered the slippage for a period of grace but after eternity images break loose, vision blurs, as a child we watched stations of snow and test patterns we’d watch anything but (snow is a relic) I can no longer work the TV—anyhow, here we were, streaming!—there was no getting off only giving in, a distant cry from the sidelines of tilt-a-whirl: no stopping a moving ride once it’s started.

How easy to lose track of time when things take forever. I am quick. Call it manners. Women are taught. I’ve never made you wait, whereas you were taking your sweet time, well beyond sweet, this was neither prowess nor stamina, this was—who is she, who is he? All I could think: Surely, you’re cheating. It was that long. I may have growled it. I cannot be sure.

Again, maybe it was the wine or weed. It’s not like I’ve ever been fucked unconscious. Poke that feather in your slot, hubs, and puff it.

The fire spat like party snaps, rolling papers pouched with gravel and gunpowder and given to kids by the fist. Not enough to do anything serious. It sounded like a gun going off but nothing went off, least of all you, I grew older I grew a beard I lost myself—sometimes you lose—we were motion not matter we would die here beside the burning hearth until (finally! unceremoniously! Pfft!) you went off and I stood, plugged for the powder room, but when I came to there I was naked and bent like a thief, leaking spoils on cold tile.

Later, there’d be the goose egg the 3 a.m. scare the rainy ride to the ER the throbbing wait the moon rock knocking of the MRI machine you’re in luck it could have been worse the brain scrambles in the aftermath of seizing a mysterious pair of thumb-sized burns stacked on my back like a colon.

But now—

Now, there was only me, swirling, looking up from the living room floor: What happened?

And you, looking down: Oh. Baby, you fell.

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THE COAT by Sheldon Birnie

“Hell yes,” Dave answered when his cousin Lisa asked if he’d like to see something weird.

Dave followed Lisa off the deck and back to where the cars were parked as the sun was sinking in the west, cutting through the trees in brilliant bars of gold. Down by the lake, children shrieked and splashed in the late afternoon heat. He was sick of answering his family’s questions about his dumb job and why his girlfriend, Sandy, hadn’t made the trip out because they’d “sure like to meet her.” Something weird, whatever it was, was certainly a welcome change. 

 “Dave,” Lisa’s husband Rick said, glancing back as he rummaged through boxes of clothing in the back of their Golf with one hand. “Wait till you get a load of this...”

Rick and Lisa ran a vintage clothing store, and Rick had just finished a buying trip to the small town thrift shops in the area. Dave kept up with their latest finds on Instagram. While he could appreciate their taste, he didn’t quite understand how the market for such kitsch actually functioned profitably. But he certainly envied their ability to make a go of it. 

 “Here we go,” Rick put aside his beer and pulled out an old suitcase from beneath the mound of clothes. Carefully, he laid it down on the bed of dried pine needles that covered the rocky ground. Lisa and Dave leaned in to see as Rick popped open the brass clasps. A mosquito buzzed in Dave’s ear. 

Rick checked over his shoulder to see that nobody had drifted over from the deck. Out on the lake, a big engine whined. Then he opened the suitcase and delicately reached inside, pulling out a black fur coat.

“Feel it,” Rick said in a hushed voice, holding the coat out before him as though it were an offering. 

“What is it?” Dave asked, running the long, twisted strands of jet black hair between his fingers. It was soft, almost delicate, yet also thick and grainy. The lining was torn, the pelt cracked at the left shoulder.  The thing had to be a hundred years old. “Bear? Fuckin otter or something?”

“No,” Rick answered with a conspiratorial grin, brown eyes glinting. “Gorilla.”

The hairs on the sleeves danced in rays of sinking sunshine. Repellent as he felt a coat made from the skin of man’s closest evolutionary relation should have been, he was curiously, undeniably drawn to it. What would it be like, he wondered, to pull a gorilla’s skin over his own? 

“Can I try it on?” Dave said.

*

Later that night, Dave slept fitfully while his younger cousin Frank snored like a log on the bunk beneath him. In the morning, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been dreaming, dreaming of gorillas in the damp city streets, their deep bellows and shrill cries echoing off the drab grey buildings. Dreaming he was one of them, proud, noble, and strong.

After returning home following the long weekend festivities, the dreams seemed to follow him. Dave also found himself thinking about the coat more and more as the days of summer flew by. Sitting in his car, in his office, chewing a sandwich at lunch, he thought of the weight of the coat on his shoulders, the way the hair glistened in the setting sunlight. How it felt between his fingers, so unexpectedly soft. 

When he and Sandy first saw each other after the long weekend, they spent the night fucking with vigor that left the both of them breathless and sweating, raw and exhausted.

“What’s gotten into you?” Sandy asked, red faced after their second round. Lately, if they did it at all they did it sporadically and in a desultory, mostly missionary manner. “You’re like a goddamn animal!”

“Dunno,” Dave panted, surprised himself at his own sustained virility. “Must have just really missed you, I guess?”

Yet as he lay next to Sandy, raw, spent and slipping towards sleep after their third round, Dave suspected the uncharacteristic verve he displayed had something to do with the dreams he’d been having where he was a silverback gorilla roaring into the darkness. 

That it had something to do with the coat.

*

 “Yo, careful with those clasps there, Davey,” Rick said.

Startled, Dave realized he had begun to finger the delicate, finely crafted clasps that ran down the front of the coat, from the neckline to the waist, slowly doing them up one by one. The coat fit surprisingly well, though a little tight across the shoulders, the arms perhaps an inch too short. Otherwise, it was perfect. Dave felt as though he could wear the coat forever, summer heat be damned.

“What’s something like this set you back?” he asked Rick.

“Hard to say,” Rick shrugged. “Got a super sweet deal. Estate sale outside of Detroit Lakes. Lady had no idea what it was. Goddamn, eh? Thing’s, like, basically fuckin priceless, right?”

Rick maintained that while it technically wasn’t illegal to buy the pelt of an endangered animal, had the lady who’d sold it to him known what it really was, she could have found herself in some hot water. 

“Don’t ask, don’t tell, man,” he’d said. “Fucked eh?”

Dave just nodded, lost in a misty day dream.

*

At work, Dave became increasingly distracted. When he was in front of the computer, he found himself drifting into Google searches, keywords: “gorilla + coats.” He’d wade through fashion op-eds decrying some celeb or another for sporting one to some event or other, animal rights sites calling for the heads of anyone who’d even think to buy or sell one, blogs extolling the virtues of faux fur over the real deal, whatever, so long as there were photos of the coats in question embedded in the post. 

Hours disappeared. He shuffled between work and home in a haze, thinking, coveting the coat. Evenings in his empty apartment it was more of the same. Dave stared at the blue screen as light faded from the summer sky outside, imagining how it would be to live within the gorilla’s skin, to live as a silverback among the misty mountains.

As August long weekend approached, Dave casually mentioned to Sandy that it might be fun to take a little day trip to the zoo. 

“Why?” Sandy scoffed. 

“Why not?” Dave suggested, feigning nonchalance. Of course, he hadn’t told her about the coat. He couldn’t exactly place or explain the fascination the coat held to himself, let alone to Sandy. Instead, he kept his budding obsession private. He wasn’t sure she’d understand. Then again, she hadn’t really seemed to notice, anyway. During the week, she was either working, at her parents, or out with her friends. The few hours they did spend together over the weekend mostly involved eating, sleeping, bickering and the occasional fuck. “When’s the last time you went to the zoo?”

Sandy had rolled her eyes, yet when Saturday morning came around they drove to the zoo. The day was a hot one, the air at the zoo humid and pungent. Dave and Sandy saw bears, wildcats, muskox, all manner of exotic rodents, and a tiger lolling in the shade. There were monkeys -- zany macaques and bored chimps -- but no gorillas. 

On the way home, after a lunch of chip truck burgers and fries, Sandy coyly suggested they pull over into a nearby park so they could make it, hot and heavy, in the backseat. 

“How about a bit of that jungle love?” she said.

But Dave just shook his head and kept driving.

“Not really in the mood,” he sulked.

*

Later that night, as Sandy lay sleeping while the oscillating fan moved the muggy air in the apartment around, Dave lay wide awake. Sure, they’d gotten it on, but the spark that had been there that first night back from the lake and those first few nights that had followed had already faded away. 

Hours later, when Dave finally fell into a fitful, sweaty sleep, he dreamed yet again of great apes and mountains shrouded in mist, of big guns blazing and the belching of a steam-engine chugging full throttle up a dark river. 

*

When Sandy left the next morning, back to her parents’ house, Dave shuffled into the shower, hoping a cool blast off would clear his muddy mind. Instead, he wondered if gorillas ever luxuriated in the midst of a tropical downpour. Did they enjoy the respite from the sweltering jungle heat? Or was it just another meaningless change in the weather they had no choice but to endure? Dave rubbed shampoo into his hair, thought about the soft, thick gorilla hair that had hung from his arms, the odd golden lock that caught the fading sunlight off the lake. 

He wondered if Rick still had the coat. 

Why, it occurred to Dave, don’t I just ask him?

A moment later, he sprang from the shower, leaving the cold water running. He grabbed his phone, scrolled madly through his contacts until he found Rick’s number. His wet thumb hovered over the screen. 

What would Rick and Lisa think of him, Dave worried fleetingly, obsessing over some dusty old coat? 

What did he care, though? Really. He only ever saw them once or twice a year, anyway. 

If he had the coat, what did he care what Rick or Lisa, or Sandy, or Simon or anybody, really thought of him? At the end of the day, he would be the king of the jungle, or as close to it as you could expect to become in muggy old Ottawa after 5 p.m. What does the noblest of beasts care for the opinions of others?

Not a goddamn bit. 

 Fuck it. Dave pressed the green call button.

“Dave?” Rick voice crackled after a couple rings. “What’s up my man?”

“That coat,” Dave said, stumbling over his words in haste. Shampoo ran down his face, burning his eyes. “The gorilla? I know you said you can’t, like, sell it or whatever. But I was hoping, maybe, we could, like, come to an arrangement or something?”

“Oh man,” Rick laughed. “That old thing? Sorry bud. No can do.”

“Why not?” Dave stammered. “I got some money. I’ll pay whatever.”

“No, no,” Rick continued. “It’s not that. I don’t have it anymore.”

“What?” Despite the swampy heat of his apartment, a chill ran up Dave’s back. “But you said, you know, you couldn’t sell it, or whatever. Right?”

“Didn’t sell it. Made a trade with a buddy of mine out west. He collects weird shit. Freaky stuff. Had him in mind when I first picked it up. Sorry man.”

Dave stood staring in his bathroom mirror. A pathetic, pale and mostly hairless monkey stared back at him. His bottom lip quivered. 

“Dave?” Rick’s tinny voice chimed from the forgotten phone in his hand. “You still there, buddy? Dave?”

Tears ran down Dave’s cheeks, softly at first, then following fits of wracking sobs. The tear had nothing to do with the shampoo in his eyes. Nothing whatsoever.

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PISS SHORTS by Doug Ross

Kyle got his piss shorts ready. They were his last pair, he would have to wear jeans for rafting.

He took the bag that held his snacks. Dumped them onto his sleeping bag. Stuffed the shorts in. He couldn’t do knots so he spun it until the handles wrapped around themselves. 

He left the tent, looked outside. The timing was right. The boys had eaten breakfast. They were all watching smoke on the one mounted TV, listening to the teachers talk about how they would get home now, if they would need buses. 

Kyle walked away from the campground and into the trees. 

*

He passed the rotted log, the strange white tube left in the dirt. It was a good sign that no one had come for it.

At the edge of the hill Kyle re-spun the bag. The plastic was stretched clear in places, but nothing soaked through.

He descended, using roots as footholds. His pants slipped without a belt. He had no underwear. He went handless to pull the jeans to his waist. The snacks were supposed to make him heavier; he’d left granola back in the tent and chocolate chips and special bars with men on the wrapper.

*

The tree was straight ahead. No tag on its trunk. One branch stuck out so low and separate it looked about to break. 

He got the shorts out. They hadn’t dried at all. He thought, as always, that it was too much, that another boy must have helped piss them. He carried them by the drawstrings towards the tree. They sagged, lengthened with the weight, like a puppet trying to get free of him. 

As he went around the base of the tree something stepped out.

--Sorry, Kyle said.

It was a soldier. He wore green and black camouflage, the stripes flowing sideways.

--As you were.

The soldier turned and gave Kyle space. He wasn’t very tall. His belly spread the middle of his shirt open. 

Kyle continued to the spot.

The leaves had been cleared since yesterday. The hole, which he’d only managed to dig a few inches with a stick, was even deeper now, but empty. He stood over it with a drop of piss crawling down his forearm.

--You can let those down. That’s fine, the soldier said.

Kyle dropped them. They fell fast to the dirt. 

The soldier came near. He stared down at the hole and said something Kyle couldn’t understand. Then passed in front of him. There was a backpack leaning on another part of the trunk, the soldier took a can of football chili out and tore the lid and ate with his hands. He offered some to Kyle. The can said HUNGRY across the top. Kyle did as the soldier did, but the ground meat slid off his fingers, he could only get beans. 

--They’ll clear the whole place soon, the soldier said. He hit his knuckles on the bark. --Wipe it out. Are you ready for that? 

Kyle wasn’t sure. --Yeah.

--Won’t get scared?

Kyle shook his head. Not far away, he saw his other clothes lying on a white bedsheet. The cargo shorts and the madras and the velcro swim suit and the samurai boxers, first to be buried. Everything looked smoothed out and unwrinkled.

The soldier noticed him. He stood, marched to the sheet. He set his legs wide and bent down, considering each piece thoughtfully, without touching it. Eventually he settled on the madras. A pair of underwear. He folded them in three moves. Before returning to Kyle he stopped at the edge of the hole and pointed down.

--These stay, he said. --But that’s one less. Do you understand?

Kyle did.

*

The rafting was canceled and the canyon and the dam. Kyle’s track coach said they would be sleeping in a parking lot tonight. 

During lunch it started raining. It didn’t stop so they canceled the parking lot as well. 

They were told to pack and be ready by seven a.m. Everyone got a payphone call before bed; Kyle left a message. 

*

He woke up. Usually that meant piss but he was catching himself, the first squirt of it warming his thigh. He dabbed it with the shorts. Got up on one elbow. Clenched. 

Rain picked up again. The bathroom was on the other end of the campground, by the teachers. He knew he would have to walk in the dark and be heard. 

Then there was movement outside the tent. Footsteps on wet ground.

Kyle watched the zipper trace along the yellow flap.

It peeled open. The soldier stuck his head in. He had a cap on now and leafy makeup, almost like the stripes had grown since that morning.

The other boys kept sleeping. Kyle had gone to bed early so they could slap cards on their bags.

The soldier held out his hand. He moved it back and forth. 

When he met Kyle’s eyes he didn’t stop right away. But his expression changed. He lowered his hand. Nodded at him. Slowly, he backed out, zipping the flap shut.

Kyle lay down. He unbuttoned his shorts. They slipped easily off him, and his boxers. He was bare against the nylon. He listened to the rain, for the footsteps to reach the next tent over. Then he went back to sleep.

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CUL-DE-SAC by Christopher Linforth

In the backyard, firecrackers fizz in our hands. We dare each other to throw first. We draw the firecrackers to our mouths, chomp on them like cigars. Watch the fuses burn. Blue smoke drifts up our noses, down our throats. We hold the smoke inside of us, blackening our lungs, exhaling when we feel sick. Then we hear the gruff voice of our neighbor and the bark of his dog. He threatens to call our parents, CPS, the police. As we withdraw the firecrackers from our mouths, they bang. Fine gray powder coats our still-intact fingers. We laugh and throw the charred remains over the fence. Our neighbor peers over the top rail; his eyes and shiny pate glint in the midday sun. We know he is on tiptoes, even standing on a brick. Where are your mom and dad? he asks. They are gone, but we do not let on. They left days ago. A trip, they said. To visit relatives. They didn’t fool us—our family is close with no one. Our parents always said that was our fault. But we care little for what our neighbors think about us. This is our neighborhood, our street, we decide what we do here. We light more firecrackers, wave them above our heads. Our neighbor steps back, disappears from view. We lob the firecrackers over the fence, hear them explode in midair. An animal whimpers, then a soft voice speaks. We lie in the grass, try to glimpse our neighbor through the gap at the bottom of the fence. In the dirt lies a mound of tan fur. The retriever lolls on its side, legs shaking unnaturally, its watery black eyes rolled back. Our neighbor hunches over his dog, drives the brick into its skull.

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LUCY by Paul Nevin

Lucy saw me first, so I didn’t have a chance to avoid her this time. 

We were standing on opposite sides of the narrow road that ran along the beach, her by the sea and me in front of the shops. She had one hand at her hip, thumb up and forefinger pointed at me. 'Hey Craig!' she shouted, and when I looked over she pretended to shoot me with her finger and blow imaginary smoke from its tip.

I clutched at my chest, which was the accepted response to this little in-joke of ours, while Lucy laughed and mimed holstering her hand-gun. With her other hand she pulled her sunglasses off big bee-eye frames that covered half her face and she waved at me with them.

Lucy stepped off the curb and dashed over to me through a break in the traffic. She jumped up and hugged me, kissing my cheek and swinging from my neck, perfume and sunscreen rubbing into my tee-shirt, her too-big beach bag crushed between us. She was twenty six, five years older than me, but in her excitement she seemed almost childlike.

She let go and stepped back. There was a navy blue lock in her hair. That was new. Even with hair as dark as hers it stood out, and I wondered how you got away with that working in a bank. 

'They let you out of head office?' I said. 

She smiled and nodded. 'They let me come back here at night and weekends. It's been ages, Craig,' she said. 'I miss you.' There was a pause, just a beat, and then she said 'I mean, I miss all of you guys.'

'Yeah, me too,' I said, and then played the same game back at her: 'Everyone misses you too.' I hadn't seen her since Christmas, when she'd left our local branch of the bank to work in London. We said we'd keep in touch, but I'd put a wedge of distance between us as soon as she left.

I nodded towards the Starbucks on the corner. 'Have you got time for a coffee?' I asked, thinking that she would say no, that she was on her way to the beach, and we would say how nice it was to bump into each other and leave it at that. I could carry on with avoiding her, and forgetting about her. But instead Lucy blinked in the sun, dark blue eye shadow over light blue eyes, and nodded to The Ship on the other corner. 

‘Or a proper drink?' she said.

***

We bought drinks and sat on high stools in the window, looking out to sea around a barrel that had been converted into a table, and I realised that the last time we were here alone was the night she had kissed me. 

That was payday drinks, a year ago. One minute it was eight o'clock. What felt like half an hour later it was closing time, my head was spinning, and only Lucy and I were left in the pub. There's a gap in my memory. I can't recall leaving, but I remember the two of us standing at the bus stop just outside. Lucy leaned in to me and said 'see you tomorrow, Craig,' when her bus turned the corner onto the seafront. But then she pressed her lips onto mine, one hand cupping the back of my neck, one grabbing the front of my sweater, guiding me toward her, keeping me in place, both of us drunk and unsteady. I kissed her back, my fingers curling around the toggle buttons of her coat, but she pulled away. 

She smiled and stepped onto the bus. She didn't look back,  just walked to the back and sat down on the far side. She wiped condensation from the window with her sleeve and stared out at the sea as the bus pulled away, but it was so late and so dark that she must have seen only her reflection staring back at her. 

I stood at the bus stop with my mouth still open, swaying and shocked at a little kiss, as if it had changed my whole world.

The next day I suggested a drink after work. Lucy said no, and joked that after last night she was never drinking again. There was no awkwardness, but also no mention of what had happened between us, and I wondered if she even remembered it.

***

I shook the memory away.

'and the people are really nice,' Lucy said. She was talking about her promotion, something to do with managing the accounts of the bank's wealthiest customers. 'It's so corporate though,' she said. 'Not like here.'

I looked at her hair again, and that blue band of dye running through it like the shine on an old vinyl record. 

‘And how are things with you?’ she said.

'My contract comes to an end in August,' I said, and I realised as soon as I said it that this was like a rumble of thunder, rolling in to rain on the good mood we were both in.

There was a pause, and then Lucy said: ‘Well, once you finish up you can do anything you want.’ She had suggested a proper drink, but while I’d ordered a pint, Lucy was drinking lime and soda through a straw, the bee-eye sunglasses lying upside down on a beermat on the barrel-table between us. She had slipped her sandals off, and was tapping her naked feet on the sides of the barrel.

'Yeah, I suppose I could travel,' I said.

Lucy put her drink down. 'You could,’ she said. 'There'll still be some summer left here, but you could go on a big trip like you always wanted to. Chase the sun!' She grabbed her glass again and smiled as she put the straw between her teeth.

'Chase the sun,' I repeated. I liked that. I liked the way that Lucy put things. And she was right. I could see out the contract and then have an adventure chasing the sun wherever I wanted. But was that true? My job didn't pay well, and I'd have to get another one quickly.

Lucy shook her head, as if she could read my mind. 'You don't have to go on a round-the-world cruise,' she said. 'But you can afford to go away somewhere, and it'll do you the world of good!' She nodded on the last word, as if that settled the matter.

I'd forgotten about this, her infectious enthusiasm, and the way she could turn the bad things in life on their head, as if they couldn't touch her. It made her seem carefree, years younger than me instead of years older. 

'You could come with me!' I said, and I cringed as soon as I said it, my toes curling into fists in my shoes. This felt very much like we were headed back into the territory of Making A Pass.

Lucy shook her head, still holding the straw between her lips. She gulped and put the glass down. 'I'll be away myself then,' she said.

'Where to?' I tried to appear casually curious, but my voice sounded high-pitched and needy.

Lucy stared out of the window, to the sea beyond. I didn't follow her gaze, but looked at her instead. She seemed serious now, the high spirits evaporated. 'Just away for a week or two,' she said. She added nothing else, no mention of where she was going, or who with. 

I’d forgotten about this, toothe way she could seesaw between being over-friendly and aloof, when the focus shifted to her, when there was the chance that I might get a foot in the door of her life.

'Oh, how lovely,' was all I said back. It was as bland and lifeless as what she'd said to me, and it sounded almost sarcastic, as if I was making light of having just stepped in dogshit.

A song came on through the speaker above usEvery Little Thing She Does Is Magic by The Police. 'I love this song,’ Lucy said. She sounded relieved, saved by the music and back on safe ground, talking about things that didn't really matter and wouldn't make either of us uncomfortable.

We'd heard this song before, Lucy and me, on the radio in her car, when she gave me a lift home from work one random rainy night, a few weeks after that kiss outside the pub.

Lucy had bounced along to the music in the driving seat as her Corsa inched through heavy traffic. While she stared at the road, I stared at her, watching her singing, rain drumming on the roof like a rapid heartbeat, almost drowning her and the radio out.

'Do you want to go for a drink?' I said.

She glanced over. ‘I’m driving,’ she said.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Not now. Another time.’

‘After work?’

‘Yes.’

Lucy frowned, as if mulling it over. ‘It’s payday drinks next week,’ she said.

‘No, not payday drinks,’ I said, worried that I hadn’t been clear, that I hadn’t been unequivocal. ‘Just you and me, on a date.’

We stopped at traffic lights, and Lucy turned the radio down and faced me. She smiled, but it wasn't the kind of smile you want in response to being asked out on a date. It had pity in it. Embarrassment too. The smile you give your dog when the vet is about to put him to sleep; a smile that says sorry, this is going to be awful, but we're going to get through this. We're going to be okay.

‘Craig, we work together,’ she said.

‘I’ll resign,’ I said. I meant it as a joke, but it didn’t sound funnyit sounded desperate.

Lucy said nothing, just smiled that benign and pitying smile.

‘But you kissed me,’ I added. Now I sounded petulant, and entitled.

The traffic lights changed from red to green, and Lucy turned back to the road. She wasn’t smiling anymore. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But it was just a drunken kiss Craig. Just something that happened in the moment.’ She glanced over, nibbling her lip, worried how I might react to being rejected. ‘It doesn’t have to mean anything more than that, you know?’

I smiled and nodded. ‘I know,’ I said, shifting to damage control mode, ready to downplay what I’d said and walk it all back. ‘It’s really fine. It was just an idea.’

Lucy smiled back, relieved. ‘Let’s just get you home,’ she said. ‘And maybe we can have that drink another time.' 

It sounded like a gentle let down, and maybe it was, or maybe the timing was just off. I never got to find out, because a month later she was promoted to head office, a sudden departure, and I found myself promising to keep in touch at farewell drinks in The Ship, the conversation in the car never mentioned again.

***

Lucy finished her drink, mining the last of the lime and soda from the bottom of the glass with her straw.  She put the bee-eye frames back on. ‘The beach awaits!’ she said.

We walked out into the sunshine, past the bus stop where we had kissed.

‘It was good to see you Craig,’ she said. She leaned in, hugging me goodbye, hands around my neck again, perfume and sunscreen on my tee-shirt. Then she kissed me, aiming for the cheek, but catching the side of my mouth. ‘Next time you see me,’ she said, ‘stop and say hello.’

I watched her walk towards the beach, wondering if she might turn around, but she didn’t look back. As she reached the steps leading to the sand she lifted one arm and flapped it behind her. It could have been a wave, but she didn’t turn her head, and I thought afterwards that maybe she had just been swatting a fly.

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JUMP by Neil McDonald

Arlene had felt like a criminal the first time.

You’re thirty-seven, she thought to herself.  

Don’t remind me, she’d say in jest, whenever her age came up in conversation.

But here she was again, sneaking into the back yard in the dark. The first time she had done it on a whim, its strangeness a thrill in itself. It gave her a rush that was illicit, maybe? She wasn’t sure if that was the word. Now it was almost second nature, though she might still freeze a moment before beginning, not sure whether anyone could see her, wondering if there were any neighbours’ eyes out there peering from behind almost-closed blinds in some darkened bedroom nearby. Not to mention the joggers and the dog walkers, who would half-look as they passed the back fence, unable to help themselves. They never broke stride, though, not fully. They just went on their way and pretended they hadn’t seen a grown woman bouncing on a child’s trampoline in the dark.

At first, the jumping had been a release, a girlish fancy that became a form of what her friend Jackie called mindfulness, which was some kind of meditation she had heard about on Oprah. Initially, Arlene had felt this to be true, the night air and the silence of the neighbourhood punctured only by the sound of her feet meeting the trampoline with every gravitational descent, a sound akin to a mantra repeated over and over and over again. After a while her thoughts would become muffled as she rose and fell, the physical exertion coupled with the sensation of falling through the air barefoot, producing a kind of childish joy at being alive. 

Lately, though, the feeling produced by jumping had started to change, curdling slowly from innocent release into a nightly compulsion that had replaced her sneaked cigarettes after the kids had gone to bed or, to be more accurate, after they had closed their doors for the night. Who knew when they actually went to bed. 

Now she found herself unable to dissociate as she jumped, and instead her worries and regrets, her ‘tendency toward drama,’ as her husband Brad had put it during one typically orderly disagreement, were unmuffled and seemed to grow louder each night as she leapt. What does Breanne do after she closes her door at night, Arlene would wonder, her hair flipped upside down mid-descent. Is she on her phone with someone, some inappropriately older someone, or sending those pictures you hear about, or texting her friends the latest crime of embarrassment caused by her mother’s chronic misunderstanding. 

Arlene worried about Breanne, it felt like 24/7, each day a torture of guessing her whereabouts or mood, unable to stop visualizing her 15-year-old daughter as the six-year-old girl who had made her a Christmas card that said ‘Merry Mama, Xmas’ on the front, in her earnest crayon scrawl. 

And Jayson, that was another story. Her adorable, cheeky little Jay now a sullen 13-year-old from whose room came foul outbursts as he played that awful war video game online with who knows who. He had quit volleyball, diving, and band, all in the last year. He no longer wanted to do anything with Brad and her, and answered the playful queries of family members at Christmas and Easter with monosyllabic responses or vacant shrugs, trends that felt somewhere between normal pre-teen boy and future inmate. 

Was it something she had done? 

Bounce. 

She had yelled at Jay so awfully that time when he was three. 

Bounce. 

And his face had crumpled, then straightened out into defiance, a sequence that had never left her mind and that seemed horrifying in retrospect, and that she had – bounce – watched for carefully ever since, fearful of any lasting damage to his personality she may have inflicted. Had it lain latent since? 

Bounce. 

And now curdled into mistrust and loathing, aided by a hormonal shift that tricked his better nature?

Bounce.

And why, on another topic, had Jackie stopped calling or stopping by? They used to get together for girls nights, drinks down at The Cruise Ship, where they’d talk and confide and roll their eyes when the university boys looked them over. Arlene had always considered herself a guarded person, not one to give herself away too easily. But she had been uncharacteristically disclosive with Jackie, lured in by her friend’s allusive gossip about the teachers at their kids’ school, and her frank assessment of the men of the neighbourhood, including Jackie’s own husband, Dean, whose online activities and struggles with personal hygiene had been both shocking and delicious to hear. 

After a few glasses of wine and tales of this nature, Arlene had let slip some of her own previously unaired opinions about their mutual friends and neighbours, even, worst of all, about her own family, emboldened as she was by the alcohol and how Jackie leaned in when she knew something good was coming. Jackie, too, had been a flatterer, and Arlene was easily flattered, a weakness she now rued as she reviewed nightly the sentences she had spoken aloud to Jackie. And all because, what? Because Jackie had once said that Dean had once said that Brad was the most respected man in Woodlawn? Had he ever even said that, Arlene wondered now as she bounced. Had there ever been any truth to Jackie’s gossip and compliments, or was it all some elaborate long game to get to know the secrets of the quiet mum?

Whatever the case, she didn’t hear from Jackie now. Arlene thought she must have said something to offend Jackie, maybe some thoughtless, half-drunk comment at The Cruise Ship that carried deeper meaning than she’d intended. Who knew. They had drifted and it was over, and Arlene could only assume it was her fault. Sometimes they’d run into each other at the grocery store or at some neighbourhood thing, but it was like they had never even been friends, like they had meant nothing to each other. Jackie was, Arlene noticed, back to her old friends, the ones she had gossiped about, the ones who had once seemed part of Jackie’s past as the two of them looked forward to a lifetime of Cruise Ship nights, maybe even family vacations together. Now, clearly, that was not to be, though the two might half-heartedly resurrect the idea in passing, Arlene imagined, at some future Woodlawn Christmas party, for lack of anything else to talk about in the company of their husbands and the neighbours about whom they had once speculated so cavalierly. 

Some nights, she would try to ignore these thoughts, gulp them down like some necessarily foul medicine, like the kind Brad had to drink before his colonoscopy. She would try to think of other things, like how she liked when people said ‘So long’ instead of goodbye, like in old movies. She also thought about how women don’t name their daughters after themselves. You never hear a woman say, ‘I’m Wendy Smith, Junior,” or whatever, she thought. Only guys do that. 

Other nights, Arlene might take notice of her surroundings as she bounced, and wonder, for example, why she had never learned the names of the plants in her own yard, had never learned them and then taught them to her children, patiently explaining their provenance and import. What were those, anyway, over by the shed? Rhododendrons? No idea. What kind of trees, even, were these in her yard? Oak, maybe? Beech? 

Sometimes, she just titled her head way back as she jumped, so it was perpendicular to the sky, almost so she felt like she might fall over completely, and tried not to think of anything. 

***

Breanne stood at her bedroom window, as she did most nights, and watched her mother bouncing up and down, twisting this way and that under the moon. She never told her mother that she saw her or had seen her, or whatever the right way of saying that was. In her pettiest moments, she considered filming it on her phone and saving it for some kind of child-parent blackmail. However, even though the urge to use her phone to film something unusual was pretty much irresistible, she never did.

She just watched her mother bounce up and down on the trampoline and then finally stop and sit on the edge, Arlene’s shoulders moving a little. With the effort, or whatever.

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OUR LADY ENTERS THE CITY [IN THREE ATTEMPTS] by Sarah Arantza Amador

1. The caravel moaned as it crept up the wide, drowsy river mouth, and it was met at the city limits by crowds of urchins, prostitutes, and thieves in the early dawn. The city’s soldiers dropped the corroded chain between the twin fortresses on either bank of the river, and the caravel continued its lumbering penetration of the city. The boat finally pulled into port just as the bursars were roused from their beds, brought jostling through the crowds to meet the returning fleet. Down the gangplank came the parade of the king’s bedraggled men, the king’s bags of raw gold dust, the king’s parrots and anemic flamingos, the head of a desiccated royal palm, and select nightshade varietals in moldy hemp sacks. And, finally, her: gift of the Holy Ghost, down the gangplank came she, locked in chains, more valuable than the contents of any war chest.

2. “Watch yourself--don’t get too fucking close to her,” hissed the noseless lieutenant to his men. They were exhausted, shuffling from bare broken foot to bare broken foot, avoiding their superior’s glare and watching impatiently from the deck as the caravel crept through the flotsam and garbage floating down the Guadalquivir. Dawn rose over the minarets in the center of the city, and they were spotted by ruffians camped along the riverbank. “Ring the bells! Ring the bells--by God, they’ve returned!” First it was one scabby boy, and then it was all of them, sniveling and crying. The men sobbed as they hurried down the gangplank and pushed into the crowd of jeering drunks and tavern cheats who met them in port. The lieutenant brought up the rear, his coconut-carved prosthesis sliding roughly over the gaping hole of his exposed nasal cavity. They unloaded the booty and the half-dead and wilted specimens. She was brought out last--as lively as ever--and they kept the chains taut on her, her jaws snapping in her beautiful face.

 

3. They say that a holy light emanated from the caravel as it floated silently up the river--that it sailed like a beautiful angel, its white bosom rising softly over the water lapping at the bow. It appeared in the dawn as though trumpeting the sun’s arrival, and the people cried and cheered, the youngest and strongest walking out into the waters to meet her. They say that the city’s soldiers wept as they lowered the great chain. They placed their hands over their faces and washed their fronts with their tears at the sight of her. When the sailors put down the gangplank and disembarked with the king’s prizes, the last feet to grace the boards were those from which the light shone. The Lady’s brilliance stunned the crowd, the scales along her naked body dazzling them all as they shimmered and pierced their eyes like the cleanest ice, Blessed Mother. Never before had the people beheld such pulchritude, such grace, such magnificent terror. 

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CRACKED by Nick Farriella

Someone who was once very famous, but not so much anymore, said, “Every whole person has ambitions, initiatives, goals,” about a boy who was very particular and wanted to press his lips to every square inch of his own body. This is not about said boy, but a different boy, a peculiar boy who had never read that story and whose goal was to crack every joint, every ligament, every air pocket and poppable piece of cartilage in his body. The boy was seven.

The origins of this habit, to which he simply called “Cracking” were unknown to him, but if given some thought he might be able to discern two instances in his young life that would have acted as trigger events—as in unrelated, seemingly random phenomenon that took place in distinct separate moments of time, the way a few talks behind closed doors in one nation and one act of violence in another, coordinate with bubbling protests in a third-world country, inevitably leading to a world war. That’s what this was for the boy, a war with his body, a war with tightness and pressure. The two aforementioned random and insignificant events that led to this curiosity, if brought to the front of his memory and studied, would be as such:

1. Driving on I-80 heading south in his mother’s minivan, probably somewhere in Virginia—the strip of VA that feels endless—looking out at the passing nothingness and earnest poppy billboards of advertisements remnant of the ’70s from the back seat, the then three or four-year-old boy, out of boredom mostly, had an urge (probably subconscious) to squeeze his index finger down into his palm until the metacarpophalangeal joint, commonly known as the base knuckle, suddenly popped.

2. Since the knuckle popping car incident, the boy began bending, squeezing, twisting, clenching, extending, contorting and pretzeling each of his fingers until he achieved loud pops and high cracks along each of his metacarpophalangeal, proximal interphalangeal, and distal interphalangeal joints, which led to frustration, swollen fingers, and––inevitably––boredom. That was until almost a year later when the boy was four or five and had started playing recreational tee-ball down at Dawson Park every Tuesday and Thursday. At his first practice on an especially wet April evening, he joined the team of boys and girls for stretches. The first of which was a Lumbar Rotation Stretch––lying supine, arms spread, right leg over the left making the shape of a capital P. At first, he felt stupid being crossed and soaked on the grass of the outfield, but after a gentle (probably subconscious) lean into the pose, his spine rattled like a string of firecrackers, consequentially blowing his young mind. Later, he would do research on the internet to discover he had cracked from the L3 or L2 vertebrae of his lumbar spine (lower) all the way up to the T6 or T5 vertebrae range of his thoracic spine (middle), becoming open to the idea that each of his vertebrae were labeled with numbers and letters, wondering if the rest of his joints were labeled, because if so, he could treat his body like a game of Connect-the-Dots, just with cracks instead of ink.

By the age of seven, the boy was Cracking pretty much all day aside from periods of non-cracking to let his joints fill with air, which he liked to imagine as bubbles filling each crevice of bone and tissue. The cracking, which started as a curiosity, had now—after the concept of pain, like human suffering level of psychic pain, which he begun to feel after his parent’s divorce—had now become an obsession. From the time he woke up, he had a routine of Cracking that he would cycle through. First, he started with the back. Supine, he would lift one leg over the other with his arms out and jerk back, twisting upward; this would cause a cracking sensation similar to the baseball stretching incident, a lineage of cracks, but sometimes only a deep thud or worse, no cracks, and he would feel a sense of tightness swelling in his back, which would mean that was a bad day. Next came each finger in six different ways, followed by each toe in three different ways; he found that his toes were harder to crack, because instead of having three joints like the fingers, the toes only had one—the interphalangeal joint. Lastly came the neck. Sitting up in bed, he didn’t crane his neck slowly, as some videos on Youtube had suggested. Instead, he whipped his ear towards his shoulder, getting a consistent slash of cracks on each side. When once witnessed by his mother at breakfast, she had said, “That looks like you’re going to snap your own damn neck.”

Which he did by the winter of that year.

The boy was now ten and after three crack-less years due to snapping his C2, C3, and C4 cervical vertebrae in his neck, he felt tight like all hell and ready and motivated to release every sac and joint that had filled with air and fluid since his accidental injury. Apart from the sullen days of recovery and times in which he could almost feel a part of himself dying inside from seeing his lonely mother float around the house like a ghost, the boy still remained hopeful that one day he could get to a point where he no longer felt the immense pressure build-up, the tightening and squeezing pain he routinely felt not just in his joints, but also in his mind and his heart, that one day, maybe if lucky, he would be able to finally crack and relieve that pressure from deep within and he could, if lucky, go back to how he felt when he first starting cracking, before the divorce, just a loose and curious boy with nothing but a field of happiness in which he could grow.

So, to get better at Cracking he began watching more YouTube videos titled, “Epic Cracks” for inspiration and within three months of having his neck cast off, he was back to cracking every vertebra and joint in his back, neck, fingers, and toes.

His mother, bless her big southern heart, started to get worried about the boy again when he would grow agitated at not being able to crack certain parts of himself. He would tantrum—crying, swinging fists, throwing his clothes off at a jammed knuckle that wouldn’t budge. She considered taking to him to see the town therapist to have her run some tests, as she saw all this cracking as a possible manifestation of some internal strife—what her mother, the boy’s grandmother, would call, “The Devil’s Innards.” But she was not her mother; she was more of her father that didn’t believe in the devil or the psychiatric arts, for that matter. Not to mention that she probably felt a little guilty for the so claimed internal strife for the epic meltdown that was her marriage. So, she let the boy fuss and pop and crack, figuring it was just a weird phase, like all young boys go through to navigate their world.

The Cracking seemed to mean more to the boy than just a routine or phase because over time he had learned how to contort himself in all strange ways to crack more and more advanced spots in his frail, thin body, as if the cracking itself, meaning the act of cracking and the short time in which he was relieved of tension, became his sole purpose for living, like he was living for the few minutes of relief at a time. He would snap his wrists back like he was revving a motorcycle for a good crack; twist his arms to crack his elbow and shoulder joints; spread his legs out in a horse stance and thrust his hip to each side until both flexors popped; spin his ankles like pinwheels; press his hands along his shins, forearms, ribcage, collar bones, and femurs looking for cracks; collapse his knees, tucking both legs underneath him, bounce until each gave the sound of victory. Craaaaaack. 

One night, after the boy had used his desk chair to dig into his lumbar spine for a few good cracks, the boy felt a strange new pressure in the center of his chest. It had felt like gas had seeped in and was causing him to feel bloated and tight. He felt that he needed to crack there. Unsure of how he could get it done, he first pressed his chest up against the side of his bed frame. Instead of a crack, the wooden post just dug into his sternum and made the pain worse. He then went over to his medicine ball and laid on his back and stretched while gently rolling back and forth, but the pressure just would not budge. Next, he thought he could press down each vertebra in his sternum using his thumb, the way he had discovered places to crack on the top of his foot. But, with each press, he felt more and more pain, until finally, in agitated surrender, the boy stretched his arms far-out and reached each behind his back with a jolt, until the tips of his fingers nearly touched in a Sistine-like way. Alas, a massive crack shuddered through his chest and released a wave of tingles through his ribs, up across his shoulder blades, and down his arms to his fingertips. He fell back onto the floor, frozen like a mannequin that had been pushed over. A wave of cold sensitivity rushed through him and soon he felt nothing, just stillness, free of pressure and tightness. He had done it; he had cracked his way into eternal bliss, never having to feel anything ever again.

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MURMURATION by Daniel Fraser

Chip Disco hated chips, and disco. He only ever danced alone. Chip worked the skeletons in the Blackpool Ghost House and had done for three years. Four rooms in, the skeletons crept out from a false cupboard that looked like it wasn't part of the house at all. Everyone said it was the best bit.  

The timing was everything; the timing was Chip's special skill. Just when the customers thought they were safe, after fleeing from the slime pit and the array of plastic bats, Chip would catch them unawares. A camera hidden in a pumpkin took a picture of their faces distorted with fear. There were three photo points in the Ghost House but Chip's sold the best. He always knew the perfect time. 

The Ghost House was part of Adventureland, a complex of amusements and arcades knocked-up in the shadow of the tower for those who couldn't afford the Pleasure Beach. The owners were too cheap to buy a sensor, but Chip's boss Graham still threatened every now and then to replace him with a little red light.

'More reliable too,' Graham would tell him, and then laugh like any of this was new.

They weren't allowed to call them customers, in the park they were always referred to as adventurers, 'to make it seem more real,' Graham said, 'a fully immersive experience'. Chip and Sally, who dressed as a clown and came down the last corridor with a kitchen knife, smirked at one another.

'An immersive experience,' said Sally afterwards, with a face that said sarcasm but also said help.

'Like sticking your head in a toilet is an immersive experience,' said Chip, grinning.

Chip and Sally were friends. They watched DVDs in bed together and sometimes had sex.  Sally liked to watch a whole series in one night and Chip slept badly so they got on just fine. They had another friend named Benny who worked as a dolphin in Splash Town, the place for the under fives. Benny worked part time and employed two boys, both inexplicably called Jason, to sell drugs in nightclubs on Friday and Saturday nights. Benny never paid entry in to anywhere and said he did the dolphin thing 'just for fun'.

It was a bad week in the Ghost House; the season should not be ending so soon. Graham was dragging everyone to team talks and going on about the ‘Adventureland family’. One evening when they were in bed Chip caressed Sally's head and kissed her dark neck softly and sweetly. She asked if they were 'becoming more real,' and Chip said 'maybe'. They put the TV on low and held one another in the fuzzy light.

The next day Chip and Sally met for lunch at the Blue Dragon Chinese buffet. Benny joined them with the dolphin folded up inside a big sports bag.

'How are you?' Sally asked.

'Kweeeh,' said Benny. He had to stay in character all day in Splash Town so he didn't spoil the magic for the children. Sometimes he kept it going for a laugh. The first time Chip called him 'Marlon-fucking-Brando' and Benny did a version of the dolphin noise mixed with the Godfather and they laughed so hard that Sally nearly choked on a fried tiger prawn.

'It's bad today,' said Chip, 'I feel down or something.'

'I know,' said Sally, 'I feel it too.' She was staring at a piece of sesame toast like it was a playing card.

'This place,' said Chip.

'Yeah,' said Sally with a vague kind of long-term sadness.

'An immersive experience,' said Chip.

'Kweeeh,' said Benny. They laughed and went to get a second plate of spring rolls.

Benny asked if they wanted to meet up on Friday and go to the big hotel. There were bands playing and Benny could put them on the guest list. They both said they would see later on. Benny nodded and clicked his tongue. They paid £5.95 each and Sally held Chip's hand. Benny went to the bathroom with his bag and came out dressed as the dolphin. The waitress in the buffet shrieked with laughter and the owner pretended to chop Benny into pieces with a meat cleaver. Then they went back to work. 

It was early afternoon. The day was cloudy. A mother and son had just gone in. Chip sat in the dark booth waiting for them to enter the skeleton room. He waited. The woman and the boy did not come through. Chip checked the camera in the slime pit but found no one. He used the intercom to ask the vampire (an acne-ridden teenager called Joseph with a deformed hand following an accident with a deep-fat fryer) if he had seen anyone pass through. Joseph said he hadn't.

Chip wondered where they could be. He snuck out of the booth and up into the place where the mechanism moved the skeletons. From there he pushed through and out into the Ghost House. Chip looked at the pumpkin camera, trying to think if there was a way to take a picture of himself. He went backwards through the slime pit, feeling the strange texture of spider webs and furry bats brushing through his hair. At the entrance Chip saw Sir Spooks-a-Lot manning the ticket booth. Spooks-a-Lot nodded, his plume swayed. Chip nodded then turned back inside the house. He carried on through his own room, climbed back into the skeleton cupboard and left through the staff entrance. Chip walked round to the exit tunnel and waited. No one came. He went to the shop and asked Jenny if anyone had collected any photographs. Jenny said ‘no’ and blew a bubble of yellow gum that inflated and swallowed up her eyes.

Chip went outside and stared at the pin-board covered with photos; a selection of staff favourites mixed with the most recent visitors. He saw the wall of faces, terrified for their lives. Lone adults, limbs distended, shaken white. Little boys and little girls, clinging to their parents for dear life. They seemed twisted with pain, wretched before the skeletal creatures that stood slightly out of frame. Chip looked at the ground. A thick lump of feeling grew inside him, a dark pain or a kind of sickness. He walked away from the Ghost House and through the turnstile exit of Adventureland.

Chip wandered down along the waterfront, following the coast south. A heavy wind was blowing across the grey expanse of sea. A few gulls swept up into the cloud. It felt big, he thought, bigger than anything he could imagine. Some vague stuff about life and death drifted through him and he felt as though the wind might tear up all the land and the ocean and carry it away into the sky. He imagined the Ghost House and the whole of Adventureland breaking up over the Atlantic, the debris swirling like a great murmuration of birds. 

A lone donkey trotted in the damp dunes, unattached to any purpose, its rope bridle dragging in the air. Chip bought candyfloss from a yellow cabin and waved the chewy pink stick in front of him like a lance. Further down he came to a windmill rising from a traffic island. It had been painted white and black. The blades were completely still, like someone had broken it on purpose, to make it just for show. It looked like a sad giant, he thought, frozen and bleached by the cold. He passed by a statue of a footballer, standing with one foot on a copper ball. Chip walked on. He thought maybe he could just keep walking until all the land ran out. The Ghost House, the adventurers, the dolphins, and the flat screaming faces pressed down like a weight against his chest. 

Chip looked up again. It was cloudy—the same cloud as before. The same sky. He wondered if he would feel better if it was blue. Rain started and then stopped. The wind carried on. The big feeling came back, whirling through him like a storm. He felt sad and thought for a moment he might cry. There was a little spark in him—he knew that. Something worthwhile. Everyone had one. On bad days he wanted the spark to go out. Work was easier then.  

One autumn Sally convinced him to go to night classes at the college. He took one on photography and one on literature. When he told the photography students about the pumpkin they all laughed at him but the teacher said Chip had a fantastic sense of time. He liked reading too, especially the old classics, big tales of demons and adventure, but afterwards they all got confused and he couldn't separate them. Even so, there was something inside him then, a spark, another big feeling—different. A kind of moving forward.

Chip realised he had reached another town. He saw it had the same mud, the same grey sea, the same run-down arcades, but all the names had changed. Chip thought about the woman and the boy who had vanished, about whether they might be trapped in the Ghost House, the horror turned real, desperate and unable to get out, or if it would turn out they were just in his head, part of his imagination—a vision of lost innocence, his failed youth—or some other cheap trick. Chip laughed out loud, the heavy feeling was pulling free. He felt loose and light. Sally called and asked if she could stay over. He said he'd like that, and he would buy her dinner. As Chip went to say goodbye the last thing she said was lost to the wind. He ended the call and felt a little warmth rustle in his body.

Chip entered an amusement park called Virgil's with a pirate-alien in a red spacesuit moulded in plastic on the outside. He put a pound in a slot machine and got three back. He played the Evil Claws game and won a level-two prize. Chip took the ticket to the counter. The owner wore an eye-patch but no other pirate clothes. The wind was flicking hot sand into his mouth. He made a halfhearted pirate sound and handed Chip a cuddly leopard. Chip decided he was 'on a roll' and played the ice hockey machine. He won 3-1 against the Devils. Chip went further inside the amusement arcade, grinning at the bright lights and strange games. In the very back was an empty dancehall. Chip ducked through the red curtain and went inside. Down there you could not tell day from night. There was the warmth again, a little spark. As the music pulsed up through his body, Chip began to dance alone.

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GHOST by Alexandra M. Matthews

I rode the roller coasters again today.

I called out sick from work, ate a small breakfast. I pulled my hair back in a tight braid so it wouldn’t whip me in the face on sharp turns.

The park was empty. As long as I didn’t faint or vomit, there was no limit on how many times I could ride the same roller coaster. I nodded to the attendants and they sent me around once more.

My grandfather used to say that roller coasters jumble the insides, cause nose bleeds. Enough scrambling and a person would come off the ride different.

I sat in the front row on every ride. From high up, the other attractions looked like the colorful, oversized toys of a child.

###

I’ve always thought of myself as an interpreter of blood signs, because women understand how blood behaves outside the body. If it appears in our underwear, we analyze. We need a tampon. We’re spotting. We may have cervical cancer. We are not pregnant, we may be pregnant, we are no longer pregnant. It can evoke elation, relief, devastation, ambivalence, or no emotion at all. It depends on the bleeder.

I was eighteen weeks pregnant on the day I found the blood.

It could never survive, the doctors said. I sobbed.

After the hospital, I put my stained underwear in the washing machine by itself on delicate cycle.

###

As I was leaving the amusement park, a teenage girl in one of the ticket booths called out to me. For thrill seekers like me, she said, it would be much cheaper to find people online to join me and get the group rate.

I thanked her for the suggestion without explaining that I preferred to ride the roller coasters by myself. I needed to be alone during that first, terrifying drop. I needed to feel weightless.

The first time I went in my grandfather’s basement was after he died. I was eight. I made it most of the way down the stairs before I got spooked. I’d seen his empty tool wall, where he had painted the outlines of his entire collection in white: saws, hammers, wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers, levels, utility knives. I was afraid the tools had become ghosts. At any moment, they could soar through the dark basement to attack.

###

When he retired, my grandfather converted the space into a workshop, where he repaired vintage Italian bicycles to sell at antique shows. No one was allowed down there, not even my grandmother. There were small parts that we might knock off the table and lose, paint we might spill that was difficult to replace.

###

In his final weeks, my grandfather refused all visitors. My parents lied. They told me it was unsafe for me to be around him. It was as if he had disappeared. No one could bring themselves to say that what drove my grandfather to isolation was shame.

###

I realize now he wasn’t protecting the bicycles. He could drop a tire valve cover on the floor, his hands too stiff to get a firm grip, without being seen. His arms could shake from the tremors, struggling to position the seat on its post, and no one would offer to do it for him. Alone, he was the only witness to his body’s betrayal.

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