‘Everything Will Be Fine’

Emerson Little (he/him/his) is a visual artist who received his MFA in Creative Photography & Experimental Media from California State University, Fullerton, and his BA in Digital Media Production from the Whittier Scholars Program at Whittier College. His artistic practice merges art and cinema, exploring liminal spaces with his camera that are both alive and dead.

Everything will be fine

“You’re not going to die”, she says, amused, like I’m being silly, and I look at her and I’m neither amused nor silly, and I don’t believe words coming out of doctors’ mouths anymore, not since they said I was fine when I clearly wasn’t and it almost killed me and my unborn daughter. “You’re not going to die”, she repeats, “but we will get the results of the biopsy soon and we can take it from there, does it sound like a plan?”. Taking it from there doesn’t sound like a plan. I want answers and I need to know how a tumor the size of my child was missed when it was growing so close next to her. I need to know if she will get out of my sick body alive and if I will live to watch my two daughters grow up. I don’t say any of this and I walk out of this hellish place and ride the elevator down to the underground parking and I sit in my car, frustrated and angry, angry at God and doctors since neither religion nor science seems to answer my questions, angry at myself for not feeling grateful for being alive, like everyone seems to think I should feel. “You’re both alive” is what I hear most these days, as if being alive is the best thing you can aim for, as if breathing should be just good enough. People complain about the most trivial inconveniences and yet I should be grateful for not being dead. I am angry like I’ve never been before and even though I can decipher the reason, I’m overwhelmed and confused by the intensity of the pain and the anger. Sitting in my car in the dark underground parking, I feel like I’m drowning in a thick cloud of my own feelings. I feel guilty too, even though I know too well that guilt and anger are like gas and fire, a dangerous combination that can only blow up everything around, and soon enough I’ll learn how to navigate those feelings, if not accept them, but not today. 

From inside my car, I watch people walk to theirs. Pregnant women and tired new parents with tiny newborns in brand new car seats, sick, old people and young ones too, kids with arms and legs casts, some faces beaming with joy or relief and some wet with tears and hollowed by grief. I don’t want to leave this place anymore as it’s giving a space and a context to my feelings and I don’t want to go back to my normal routine, where we complain about the weather or our weight or the new waiter at Borschardt, but somehow have to be grateful terrible things haven’t killed us yet. I wish I could drive far away, somewhere no one could find me to tell me everything is fine when it’s not, but I have a child at home waiting for me to come tell her everything is fine, even if it’s not. I close the seatbelt over my round belly and drive myself home, where I lie in bed and tell her to hold on. I tell her how proud I am. She stayed inside while they opened my abdomen in all its lengths to clean the two liters of goey tumor liquid that had spread from my ovary into every corner between my organs. She stayed inside while they removed everything they could. We removed the appendix and the omentum, they said, you won’t need those. We had to remove the tubes and the ovaries, they added, you could have probably needed those, but we had no choice. She stayed inside as they stitched my body back together, this exhausted body that doesn’t feel mine anymore. She’s the only part that still feels familiar and I’m dreading the moment when she will have to come out, leaving me empty without her and without the children I’ll never grow. 

She comes out four months later, the last day of August. The day after her birth, I sit in the NICU in the middle of the night. I watch her tiny body struggle to breathe, her thin skin full of tubes and needles, the thick, hard plastic of the oxygen ventilator mask stuck on her gorgeous face. She doesn’t look sick, her cheeks are pink and round and she seems unbothered; only her breathing is strenuous. The doctors ruled out an infection or a birth defect on the lungs or the trachea and seems to think she was simply not ready to be born when they performed the C-section. She needs time, they said, so that’s what we’re giving her. I feed her every three hours. I am scared to mess up the wires and the tubes so I sit on the beige fake leather armchair next to her bed and they bring her to me, and I push her little mouth to my cracked nipples and she drinks without opening her eyes, until she falls asleep again. I watch her sleep as long as I can withstand the pain and the heat; the room is kept uncomfortably hot to maintain preemies in womb conditions and my back is so damp with sweat that it sticks to the armchair. I see a nurse and I whisper that I need to go now. “I got you,” she says, and she takes Clémentine back to her bed where she wraps her inside a little blanket, and I thank her as she leaves while I stay a little longer to watch my perfect child sleep like everything is fine. I whisper to her too. I explain that I need to go now just for a little while, that doctors also need to check me in my room, even though they don’t care all that much about women’s bodies when they’re empty – they have been making me run from the maternity ward to the NICU and back every three hours to breastfeed, and nobody has once asked if I was doing alright. It’s been three days and the nurses have barely been looking at my C-section scar. I’m only addressed to when I need to feed the baby. The night after the C-section, my phone rang and a voice in the night told me “Clémentine hat hunger”, Clémentine is hungry, and hung up, and I had to pull my broken body out of the bed and walk through the deserted hospital corridors, dark and silent as if the world outside had stopped existing, to offer it to my child. They never asked if I wanted to breastfeed. I was planning to, but they never asked for my breasts and my milk and they just took it, pushing her on my swollen body, leaking with sweat and blood and colostrum. It’s been three days but days don’t mean much here, only my three-hour feeding schedule matters, a rhythm I follow religiously until someone says otherwise. Days are easy, my husband stays with Clémentine until my body is required and I’m summoned to the NICU, while I lie in bed eating pastries. Nights are long; the pain awakes and the fear is overwhelming without anything to distract me from it. I sit in the NICU at night, where I can hear nothing but the beep sounds of the machines that keep those little bodies alive, some nurses whispering and a mother crying. I can barely see her, it’s dark and she sits in the back corner of the room behind the enormous incubator bed where her 850-gram child is lying. She cries through the night, snuffling discreetly, and she too whispers to her child that everything will be fine, and I want to go hug her and tell her that I’m sorry she’s going through that, but I never do. I feel guilty that my child is doing better than hers.

Three months later, in the midst of another cold German winter. Christmas is around the corner and Clémentine has been growing into a pink, plumb baby. We are rushing through the night. There is no window so I can’t see outside of the ambulance, and inside the light is cold and makes the white walls seem blue/gray. The higher part of the stroller sits in the middle, where the paramedics safely strapped it on top of an adult-sized stretcher. They removed the lower part and the wheels that are now lying in the back of the vehicle with my coat and the weekender I packed in a hurry before leaving the flat. I’m sitting on a cramped seat on her left and even though I am wearing a seatbelt I’m holding on to her in case of a sharp turn or sudden braking. The paramedic fills in paperwork and asks me questions about her insurance and allergies and other things I’m struggling to hear with the noise and his mask and the pain in my chest. I hear sounds coming out of my mouth but I have no idea what I’m saying and I just want to scream that it’s a mistake and they need to drive us back home. She is sleeping soundly and flaunting her little fists in the air like she’s having a blast as the vehicle accelerates when we enter the autobahn, and my hands hold the stroller a little bit tighter. 

The next morning in Bernau. She is sleeping next to me, an IV line poking out of her head and breathing support blowing into her nostrils and my heart is breaking. The doctor said bronchiolitis can get much better or far worse quickly so I spent the night watching out for any sign of deterioration, scanning her face and analyzing her movements. A machine is monitoring her breathing and heart rate, the same one she had in the NICU. She gets coughs so strong that the nurses have to vigorously slap her back to expel the mucus blocking her lungs while I sit powerless on my side of the bed. She gets fluids from the IV line but I feed her once in a while so she knows that I’m still here, even though I am scared to mess up all the tubes and wires every time I pick her up. I barely ate yesterday, but today I can’t stop eating. I eat in the bed, and I eat on the chair by the window, while watching a thick gray fog filling the space between the sidewalk and the clouds. I could be anywhere but I am in Bernau, but Bernau doesn’t mean much to me yet. I have never been before, and wouldn’t be here if COVID hadn’t filled Berlin hospitals with babies. I don’t know how long we will stay. I want to go home but I’m with her and that’s all that matters. The hospital in Bernau is actually not so bad. It is small and personal, and it feels as if we’re starring in a sad German Christmas movie nobody’s watching. It is quiet during the day, and at night it seems lost in time and space. We have a huge room and we sleep together in co-sleeping beds that are stuck to each other. Mine is a regular hospital bed, hers is a kids’ bed with drawings of blue teddy bears and pink balloons. We sleep holding hands and it feels good, and I think I need that even more than she does. The staff is mostly available and empathetic, and they’re coming regularly to check how she’s doing physically and how I am doing mentally. They are impressed by my savviness with the wires and the machines, and how I know things before they show them to me. That’s a skill I wish I wouldn’t have. I meet other parents sometimes, when we step outside to breathe the crisp air to remind our numbed bodies that we’re alive. We don’t talk much, but we usually exchange basic information the first time we cross paths. “My two month-old son Jonas has COVID” or “My three year-old daughter Mia has a broken arm”. Our own names don’t matter, we’re only Mia’s father or Clémentine’s mother here. The food is decent, but I eat mostly Christmas sweets. My guts burn from all the sugar but I keep stuffing my stomach to leave no space for fear. Today is Sunday and on my breakfast tray was a little printed note about how God is there to give us strength when we don’t have any. Franck arrives to take care of Clémentine, and he complains about the traffic and the internet connection and the chair and everything that is not really what we need to talk about but don’t really want to. I walk up to the prayer room on the floor above us and I stare at the huge wooden cross in the middle of the space, full of tiny pieces of papers that people write and stick in there. I grab a blank one on the table in the corner of the room, and I write “Clémentine” out of superstition because I don’t believe God will go through the notes, and I hang it on the cross with the rest of the prayers. I sit and ask God why she has to go through this again, and as I’m staring at nothing inside those four bleak walls, I realize that with one change of perspective, maybe she’s simply being saved again, and for a minute I feel ok. I know it’s not going to last, but right now I feel ok.  

A few months later, spring pulls us out of this endless winter. We healed with each week spent without visiting a hospital. Clémentine is growing up, and developing a terrifying personality that makes me certain she will handle whatever life throws at her with courage and violence. I learn to breathe again, and to sleep without drowning in nightmares. Routine check at the cardiologist; I had forgotten about it until I checked this week’s schedule. The three of us go together, we’ll make a date out of it, go for lunch afterward, and have a coffee. The cardiologist is a beaming tall blond, until she starts Clémentine’s ultrasound, and she’s not beaming anymore. I have seen too many doctors, and I’ve been in too many of those rooms. The sudden atmosphere change, the deafening silence, the fading smile on the doctor’s face, my husband’s slowing breathing. I don’t want to be here for what’s next. The room is spinning when she says surgery, and I grab my child from the examination table, and I say there must be a mistake, and I say we’ll get another opinion, and I’m shaking with my naked baby in my arms. My husband asks polite, reasonable questions and I want to punch him just to get a reaction out of him for once, and they whisper like I am a child who can’t handle the truth. Clémentine will need heart surgery. Clémentine will need heart surgery. Clémentine will need heart surgery. I listen to those words but I can’t hear them, and I look at the happy child giggling in my arms and can’t believe her heart could need anything else than our love. “Everything will be fine,” my husband says for the hundredth time as we walk back home, but this time I can see that even he doesn’t believe it. “It’s just a surgery,” we say, “they do that all the time”. We tell each other all the things that we want to believe, as we look for silver linings we can hold onto. We are back home but I’m not really back, and it will be a while before I do, if I ever. A part of me died today, the part that was holding everything together, the part of me that assumed that “things will be ok”, the part of me that carried my faith and my optimism, but because I have two daughters, I keep smiling. I smile and I eat and I purge and I sleep, then I wake up and I do it all again. People tell me they pray for her and I say I do too, even though I only kneel in the bathroom now. People say we are both strong but I know only she is. I am hopeful that she will be fine, but I am not sure I will ever be again. And I think about her sometimes, the crying mother in the NICU. I wonder if they made it alive and unscathed, or if she’s still crying for her child when she thinks nobody is watching. I never knew her name, she was Maria’s mother and that’s all that mattered. When a child isn’t doing well, there is no space for parents to be anything else than just that, parents. We can’t remember who we were before we walked hospital corridors alone at night, when life felt light and full of possibilites. I think about her sometimes, and when I do I don’t feel as lonely, even if it is just for an instant. 

Ludivine Massin was born and raised in Paris, France, and has been living for the past ten years in Berlin, Germany, where she works and raises her two daughters. She mostly writes nonfiction essays about motherhood and addictions.

‘Sitting Here’, ‘The Journey’ & ‘On the Day That You Died’

Heather Holland Wheaton is a writer, photographer, actor and tour guide. She’s the author of the short story collection, You Are Here and her work can also be found in Shooter Literary Magazine , Press Pause Press, Red Noise Collective, Slipstream, The Morning News and Every Day Fiction. She lives in Manhattan and will never leave.

Sitting Here 

I’m sitting here, 

in the home of the dead, 

among the tombstones of all those who went before me. 

Death takes so much more than just your loved ones, and it brings so much more 

than just pain and sorrow. 

Dread, Despair, Devastation — stab your heart relentlessly. Over and over and over again, 

until they take your will to live. 

Death brings grief, 

and leaves it with you. 

The grief that everyone is hiding, 

and you, yourself, will start to hide. 

We hide in dark corners, where no one can see us, trying to pretend 

we are stronger than we are, 

and maybe one day we will also believe it. 

Death is so definite, 

so final, 

so ruthless. 

I’m sitting here, 

in the sea of graves, 

in the silence of the dead, 

staring at the infiniteness of crosses, 

tired, exhausted, defeated. 

At my parents’ grave, 

on my birthday. 

All alone in my pain.

The Journey 

Far and wide through hell, 

Have I been since you 

So abruptly left me 

When I did not expect it. 

Not that you can be 

At any time prepared 

To meet someone else's death 

Knocking on your door. 

Crawled and crawled I have, 

With no end in sight, 

Relentlessly, through it, 

To get to the other side. 

All around was burning, 

Torturing my soul, 

Each flame engraving, 

A mark that stays forever. 

Sometimes it was easy, 

As the flames subsided, 

It would even appear, 

That the journey ended. 

But then again, they would 

Rage more brightly than before, 

Encircling around me, 

Torturing some more. 

Out of the exhaustion, 

From the endless road, 

I'd stumble, fall and break, 

In ways I never broke before. 

Yet the journey continued, 

As there is no other way, 

No other path i can take, 

To escape the wrath of hell. 

No one to put out 

The never-ending flames, 

Even if I'd wish so much 

For a saving hand. 

The road I have accepted, 

That I have to go on, 

Yet accept I still can't 

The reason for it all. 

The more I resist grief, 

The more it fights back, 

Until I learned to surrender, 

To the journey that is yet to come. 

Once in a while I 

Would step on a landmine, 

Making the flames shoot up

High in the bright sky. 

Then they'd stop completely, 

Giving me some breaks, 

And time to gather forces, 

To continue to walk ahead. 

Now that the road 

Seems to be soon over, 

I sit exhausted on the ground 

Looking all around me. 

Empty fields behind me, 

No life to be seen for miles, 

Orange dusty cloudless skies, 

The wind warming my face. 

I feel old and wise, 

Like I know Death’s secret, 

But that's foolish of me to think,

As Death itself is the unknown.

Now the flames are small, 

Sometimes they still pinch me, 

But at least I stand right up, 

And walk ahead fiercely. 

The pain is still the same 

Excruciating as it was, 

Right from the beginning, 

A time so long ago. 

It feels like I have lived 

An eternity of lives, 

Although it often seems 

That time is standing still. 

Sitting at the edge of hell, 

Feet dangling in the air, 

Wondering what's next, 

And what lies ahead. 

Hopefully less of this, 

And a lot more of that, 

Those periods of peace 

That soothe me from inside. 

As the tortures subside, 

And calmness comes my way, 

I can finally breathe again, 

Freely, greedily — enjoying the fresh air. With new incoming strength, 

I can look ahead, 

I can feel again, 

The will to live rushing through my veins. Gazing into the future, 

With some returning hope, 

Life does seem less gray,

As I’m finally able to cope.

On the Day That You Died 

On the day that you died 

All hope has gone with you 

Ripped out of my heart, 

Leaving nothing but emptiness instead. 

On the day that you died 

All happiness drained out, 

All traces of joy and laughter too, 

Have gone to the grave with you. 

So did the memories of you, 

Once healthy and strong, 

Went to a place 

Where I cannot reach them. 

All I can remember now, 

Is you sick and feeble, 

And then dead, 

Those images are engraved in my brain forever. How I miss you right now, 

And the memories I had of you 

I miss them dearly. 

Every single day 

I'm going back to before, 

To what I could have done differently, 

To maybe still have you here. 

How hard, excruciating it was 

To watch you die and stand there, 

By your side, unable to save you, 

As if I am all-mighty and have that power. 

From the day that you died, 

And even a little before, 

I've been visited by grief and its companions. They come and they go, again and again, 

Never quite leaving you, a never-ending cycle of hell. I learned to stop fearing them, 

To welcome them like an old friend, 

Because they still are a way to connect with you. One day I'll find the connection 

Not through pain and suffering, 

But, for now, I'll just have a little cry. 

On the day that you died 

Time stopped, and is still standing still, 

But somehow it does feel like an eternity has passed, Like I've lived a million lives. 

On the day that you died 

My whole world stopped, 

And it felt like it won't restart again. 

On the day that you died 

I became uprooted,

Losing connection to my ancestors, To who I was before. 

On the day that you died 

I lost myself, my purpose, 

My sense of being, 

I lost the one I used to be. 

On the day that you died 

I died a little too.

Tanya Moldovan started writing poetry after the loss of her mother. She's a new author and her poetry is grief and death related. She thinks death is universal experience and she hopes people from different corners of the world will be able to relate, find solace or take a glimpse at "the after death" experience.

‘Birthday’

NAYANA SIVANANDAN lives in Bangalore, India and works in a bank. She loves photography but cannot take proper photos of humans.

Birthday

My bones are an aged framework, disfigured by time and the crush of the day-to-day. They hoist the essence of me, organs and all, up and through portals and paths that lead to places reserved for my various parts. I feel them shift and bend as I meander, sometimes purposefully, through hallways and rooms, up stairs and down, for one reason or another, as days drain through the sieve of time as if through the floorboards.

I wander through my mother’s house, day after day, secure within the confines of this old, broken citadel, but there came a day, a particular day, when my bones cried out for more. They insisted that I move, essentially restation myself, emerge from within to a place without and live life beyond these creaking walls, at least for a time. They were desperate and would have leaped through a window if given the chance, but they are bound to me and live within me, and I am now less capable of leaping than ever before.

Despite the demands of my bones, the thought of leaving terrified me, agonized me, generated pain that ran from my head through my torso, and all that pain caused me to remain in place, regardless of whatever rewards awaited beyond the door. I resisted, as scared to leave the house as to dive into a raging sea, and I struggled as my bones waged war against me.

I was alone in the kitchen when, suddenly, the voice of my mother shattered the morning air. She called out for tea. I set the kettle, made the tea and prepared a tray that I carried up the stairs. My feet pounded those steps, already warped and bruised beneath the weight and force of thousands of my footsteps, year after year, up and down that staircase.

On this particular morning, unlike other mornings, I carried the tray in a careless way and the tea spilled, pooled across the surface and shifted from one end to the other. As I walked, silverware jangled, saucers clattered, a small plate slid to the edge while the sea of spilt tea moved about as if driven by its own underlying tide. The noise might have been a warning of sorts, like the ringing of church bells at midnight, loud and alarming, as the entire tray threatened to fall to the floor.

Her room was dark. The curtains were thick and heavy, with large folds and pleats, all in the style of an era gone by. The walls were cracked and hosted shadows that danced in sync with anyone who moved about the room. The ceiling, like the top of a pot, trapped the old captive air that had long settled between the four walls. The only source of light in the entire room was a small table lamp with a dull green base that sat upon her night table. It tried its best to fill the room with light, and the yellow cloud that rose from the lamp highlighted my mother’s face but couldn’t quite reach the outer periphery of the room.

My mother was sitting up in bed. As was her routine, she pulled the curtain away from the window and studied the neighborhood. Her attention was drawn by an older man and a grey-haired woman engaged in friendly conversation on the front steps of the house across the street. They chatted rapidly and, when they laughed, they swayed toward the other and then back, almost as though the exchange were somehow choreographed. Eventually, they went their separate ways but their conversation, lighthearted and loud, became the focus of mother’s attention. Angrily, she leaned into the window so that her head practically touched the glass. “Always a racket, just to annoy me,” she blurted out, though her two neighbors certainly couldn’t hear her and, in any event, had ceased thinking of her years ago.

I approached the bed and I could see my mother’s face in detail. Her cheeks were cris-crossed with deep rivulets of age, the whole resembling a dried riverbed ruptured by furrows of varying depth, and those lines stretched and relaxed with each word spoken. Her glasses held firm upon her nose, resting on the tip. Her hair was long and untamed, straight auburn with streaks of grey. Her lips were tentatively upturned, almost curved, positioned as though she might smile - she used to smile quite often – but today she grimaced, unsatisfied as usual.

She turned from the window and peered into the yolk of my tired eyes as I brought the tray closer toward her. I held it above the nightstand as if offering some tithe, and I lowered it slowly but only after pushing a collection of pill containers to the side. “Over there . . .,” is all she said but I knew what she meant. Her voice was hoarse with frustration. As always, I had hoped to hear the lilt of the voice I had once known so well but I realized that her old voice was never coming back. She said not a word about my birthday though you’d think she’d remember a day that was presumably as important to her as it was to me. Admittedly, she could remember only so much.  In any event, she brought the cup to her lips as drops of tea dripped from the bottom onto the sheets and wet tea circles grew large. I grabbed a towel and did what I could. 

I exited the room without a word. I headed back to the kitchen but my bones, intent upon moving, were driving me out with a force that was irresistible. They were desperate, and it seemed as though my body had acquired a will of its own, separate and apart from my own resolve, inhabiting me and dragging me along despite my own desperate need to remain. I was ushered down the ancient staircase and out the door by my own body.

The car was out front, and I was no longer in control as I was somehow propelled from the door of the house to the door of the vehicle. I wound up in the driver’s seat. Perhaps I really was in control but not in the usual sense. I wasn’t prompted by conscious thought; rather, I was driven by thought’s undertone, the shadow of need, a semblance of will not quite formulated as defined purpose. I had one hand on the wheel and, with my other hand, I turned the key, I stepped on the accelerator and my entire body, bones and all, wrenched forth at resounding speed. I steered and the car carried me onto the highway and I was gone.

I drove through the city, past warehouses and apartment buildings, factories and empty lots until, eventually, I reached open country. I was afraid, and my head began to throb, but I soon felt enlivened. I was now out in the world and, amazingly, my need for my mother and the security of her house quickly dissipated. I felt increasingly free the further I distanced myself from that house, and my pain gradually subsided. I began to drive intentionally, purposely, and it was not long before I was driving relentlessly, in a way that was almost messianic. I jetted forth like an arrow released from the bow but, unlike that arrow, I was propelled by a will of my own. My head leaned forward from my purposed neck with each mile driven, and I trained my eyes upon the yellow centerline that lacerated the highway and split it in two. I pushed that wheel with both hands as if I could speed that car along by throwing my weight forward, and I crushed the accelerator with my foot. I drove ruthlessly, as if racing to catch the last plane out. 

There were some trees along the road and their leaves shimmied in the breeze. Their branches seemed to reach out toward me like long arms, straining to embrace me, and I thought I heard those trees call my name. Their collective voice was calm and consoling and it was not long before those trees began to sing. It was a beautiful song and it lofted toward me, carried by the drifting air, tender like a mother’s song, and it was for me and about me and the sweet sound of it melted within me. I loved it and I absorbed it like rain upon dry ground. Lured by their song, I was tempted to stop and walk among those trees but I resisted: I was determined to drive on. I closed my ears in the same way I close my eyes at night at which point I could hear it no more: I was deaf to it. I heard nothing but the empty whoosh of the breeze and I leaned forward, intense against the wheel, sunlight dripping through the windshield as I sped away.

By this point, I was far from home. I was unaware of time and I wanted to drive forever. The road ahead was my only focus, but I suddenly thought of mother and I knew she would be summoning me, crying out from her bedside. I could practically hear her voice, and I felt guilty. There’s a sandwich in the refrigerator, I thought, and I mouthed the words with my lips. At that moment, I wished I could transmit that particular thought from out of my head into hers but, even if my thought could somehow rise out of my brain into the air, it was speeding along the highway with me, captured in a car, unable to escape, headed in the wrong direction.

I had now driven many miles, and my awareness of the world had become sharp and intense: I had acquired incredible acuity. My vision was unlimited, and I could hear everything. I could see cars that were miles ahead of me, and I could see the people in those cars and could hear their conversations while, simultaneously, I saw the twitch of mother’s lip though she was far away, a universe away, and I heard her call for me, impossible as it may seem. I felt her need and frustration resound within my head despite the myriad miles that separated us. I was here and I was there; I could sense both ends of reality.

I drove on. Night was approaching. The taillights in front of me turned sharp red as the outline of cars ahead fell into the shadows. A police car sped by, siren wailing, spewing blue light. I remembered: today is my birthday.

The sun was sinking. Its warm copper light descended slowly, like a clean sheet that floats and falls upon a bed. For a brief moment, the cars on the road gleamed beneath the light, and they looked like lamps in motion. The night soon stretched its dark arms around the horizon and darker it became, and the air became dim and the ground became grey, and blackened clouds merged as one, a mourner’s veil across the sky.

I was now bathed in darkness, and the world melted away. There was nothing left. There was no road, no speed, no direction, no sound or light. There was no side to side, no down or up, no ceiling, no floor, no line or angle. Everything had disappeared: every morning, every sunset, every thought and every need, all the houses and all the yards, all the streets and all the cars, all the towns and all the farms, everything intended, anything remembered, every hope, every death, every loss and every love, every sorrow and every song, every fading memory, every lonely hour, every mother and every child, every birthday yet to come, all these things were gone. There was no time because there was no distance, and there was no distance because no two things existed apart from each other: all things were one, there was nothing to measure. There could only be me, a consciousness moving nowhere, overcome with stillness. I was the world, reduced to a point, nothing more.

Walter Weinschenk is an attorney, writer and musician. Until a few years ago, he wrote short stories exclusively but now divides his time equally between poetry and prose. Walter's writing has appeared in a number of literary publications including La Piccioletta Barca, The Normal School, Lunch Ticket, The Carolina Quarterly, The Worcester Review and others. He is the author of "The Death of Weinberg: Poems and Stories" (Kelsay Books, 2023). More of Walter's work can be found at walterweinschenk.com.

‘Notes from an NPC at the Hotel Morton’

Vivian Calderón Bogoslavsky is a Colombia Native. She holds a bachelors in anthropology with a minor in history and a postgraduate degree in Journalism from Universidad of Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. She has studied art for over 13 years with a well know Argentinian art master as well as studies in Florence, Italy, and Fine Arts & Design in USA.

Notes from an NPC at the Hotel Morton

“If Buc-ee’s can be known across the world for clean restrooms, so can this hotel,” said Marvin, our facilities manager at the Hotel Morton. He looked at me and then at one of my longtime co-workers. “Jeffrey and Melena, we have hired two people to backfill your previous duties, and your job now is to ensure that our common-area restrooms in the lobby, the conference room floor, and the roof restaurant are not just clean, not just sanitized, but worthy of praise in reviews and on social media.”

This gave me three restrooms to manage over my shift. I could watch over them scrupulously and I learned to position myself nearby during busy times—check-in and checkout for the lobby, late mornings and after lunch for the conference level, evenings for the rooftop restaurant. I also came to know who offended most in the restrooms. Take, for instance, the rooftop and a bleach-blond young man, age twenty-two, staying with his parents. They were down from Newport Beach, RI. Father had been a producer in Hollywood and a financier of several billion-dollar movies. 

The son? Well, some men won’t wash their hands, some won’t clean drips off toilet seats, some just can’t put the hand towel in the bin after use. This young man? Clogged the handicap toilet with paper towels, left a used condom on the sink, carved his initials into a stall door. How could I know he did these things? When I can police a restroom so closely, I can be there to erase the traces of individual guests. Except when they make carvings and I need maintenance.

Staff, his family, and friends across the country were shocked and heartbroken when, somehow, he went out a tenth-floor window and splatted on the pavement below, narrowly missing a baby in a stroller. Many were shaken, though I was not. We do not mourn when hyenas die.

Melena alerted me to a female guest she was struggling with. Said guest was a regular, in her fifties with short platinum hair. She visited from a manse in the Shenandoah Valley. “It is good to surround myself with people from time to time,” she told Melena during one visit. I don’t think she liked surrounding herself with people so much as she liked a discreet meeting place for her many liaisons. 

Melena had suspicions about her, had to clean up vomit more than once after our lady was found day-drinking in the restaurant. Carmela was her name. “Like Tony Soprano’s wife,” she would say. “I’m a hot-blooded Italian,” she would tell men she met up with. “And I was a high-frequency trader. I have a high, high risk tolerance.”

Indeed. Shortly after Melena and I had that conversation, there was an, uh, incident in the conference restroom. It seems that Carmela High Risk enjoyed many high-risk behaviors and was found in the restroom, in the open, fully exposed and in the throes with one of her paramours. “We thought no one would be around,” she confided in Melena with a giggle later in the evening. Granted, the “incident” occurred at 6:45 am, and on some days, they might have gotten away with it. But the fame of the incident went across social media to Melena’s and my everlasting humiliation. Buc-ee’s may have famously clean restrooms, but upscale hotels are not likely to be praised online for them no matter what Marvin says. We could not have imagined our restrooms hitting social media for this reason, though.

Poor Carmela. A few months later, she returned for a three-day stay. On day two, her flavor-of-the-moment returned from an errand to discover her nude body in the bathtub, blood streaming from a blunt-force injury to her head that may or may not have come from a fall (according to the medical examiner). Naturally, the married-man paramour was outed for his escapades while he was investigated (then cleared). It was very Sopranos-like, if the Sopranos were written by the team behind Days of Our Lives. Melena was horrified, said she admired Carmela’s “spirit.” I felt modestly relieved that we could admire her “spirit” in heaven.

Perhaps you have seen the second season of White Lotus? The, uh, female “entrepreneurs” selling their “wares” to male guests are a real thing, and for a time, we had one in particular who caught the attention of both Melena and me. Of course, she was on no guest register, but she had a tendency to wreck the restaurant restroom. And by “wreck,” I do not mean in a scatologically humorous way. No, she overstuffed the repository for sanitary napkins and left unflushed bloody and brown messes. Melena finally confronted her with gritted teeth. Sometime later, I found her emerging from the men’s conference restroom of all places. I did not feign courtesy.

“You do not belong in there. What are you doing?”

“Who are you to say I do not?” she said. “Have you inspected me?”

“I think we both know full well you could not ply your trade so well otherwise,” I said.

She half smiled. “I was told to stop wrecking the ladies’ room,” she said. She moved by me with a pat of my arm and a brush of her lips on my cheek.

She had indeed wrecked the men’s room, leaving sanitary products in almost all toilets, water overflowing in one, and a brown and bloody mess in another.

A week later, very tragically, in the early morning hours, our airport shuttle driver was about to turn into the driveway when a form pitched forward from the bushes and fell under the tires. Our own Lucia Greco had met her end. 

“You must live in despair to be in that line of work,” Melena said to me. “It must have become too much. What a tragedy.”

Tragedy? She made a life of creating wrecks everywhere she went, so her passing in a wreck seems fitting.

We recently had a man who approached me somewhat apologetically. He had gone to the lobby restroom and taken his toddler son with him.

“Ricky unlocked the stall door while I was doing my business and ran out. I thought he was just running around, but he climbed up into the urinal and, uh, dropped a deuce there.”

“Dropped a deuce,” I repeated.

“Yes. In the urinal itself.”

“A deuce in the urinal,” I said.

“Yes. I’m really sorry. I would help you clean it up, but I don’t know where to start.”

At least this man confessed, though his poor effort in not bothering even to try with some hand towels hardly indicates remorse and repentance. I will spare you the graphic details of the clean up.

The next morning, very early, while the child slept, the man was forcibly escorted from his room by a masked assailant who brought him, at the point of some weapon, to the restroom his son had fouled. The assailant knew enough to put a maintenance sign in front of the door, whereupon he led the man to the urinal, stuffed his head in it, and proceeded to water board him with flushes for somewhere between five and ten minutes. It was, of course, barbaric, and when the man was at last set free, he called police first and then hotel management. Naturally, I was interviewed in due course. Who but an employee could have gotten into his room? Who but an employee could have used a maintenance sign? But it was my off day and my cellphone affirmed I had been at home exercising in the basement, as did my wife who had no reason to assume otherwise.

The officer who interviewed me was a plainspoken ruffian who affected the air of having seen it all. “You have had a number of tragedies here,” he said.

“It is a large hotel with many people visiting in different stages of life,” I said. “I suppose we should expect some dark clouds now and again.”

“Dark clouds,” he said with a smirk.

“And it seems to me that people frequently do violent and untidy things in hotels. After all, an NPC working at the hotel will just clean it up after.”

“NPC?”

“A non-player character,” I said. “It’s what the kids say these days to refer to background people.”

“Background people, huh,” said the officer. He liked to repeat things I said.

“Unfortunately, you, too, are an NPC,” I said.

“Tell me,” he said. “Can you think of any common theme that runs through these incidents? Any thread that ties them together?”

I shook my head. “Aside from people staying at our hotel, not a thing in the world.”

Gordon Laws has recently published in Irreantum, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, and the Line of Advance. He oversees course development at Coursera.

‘The Marksman and the Mark’

Rosemary Kimble

The Marksman and the Mark 

What kind of man needs a blessing to do as he wills? With God at your back, all things are possible. When the Father of the Bride-to-Be answered a knock at his door, in darkness, before the vagitus of morning birdsong, he saw the Groom. He suspected the question he was asked. About time. He almost disliked the Groom. He understood, full well, that they were cut from different cloth. The Groom was made from paper and ink. The Father was made from the bark of the tree and the blood of the hare. 

“As you are, I cannot give you my blessing to enter my family. Though if I forbid it entirely, my daughter won’t be happy. There is a way for you to get my approval. But,” he said, for wherever there is love there is often a but, “First you must do something. Look at yourself. Your nails are too clean. The only scars you’ve endured have been given to you by papercuts. A man needs to be able to protect the people he loves. And to provide. Have you ever fired a gun?” The Groom shook his head. 

“Nothing like it. There are those who act like a gun is a bad thing, like not knowing how to use one is a good thing. Bull, plain and simple. You can’t use a gun, and the bagman comes to collect: You’re done for.” 

The Father led the Groom into his basement workshop. A disemboweled rifle lay on his table, mechanical entrails carefully organized, and a safe sat against the wall. He opened it, revealing a collection of firearms dated from antiquity to the present. The Groom could not tell them apart. The Father handed him a rifle. 

“If you wish to marry my daughter, learn to hunt.”

The Father escorted the Groom outside the forest complex he called home. The ancestral grounds, miles from any city, included a manse, two guest homes, a few cabins dotted along the hunting grounds, and a processing facility. The Father processed the meat and the animal hides himself. His family, God willing, would never go cold or hungry. He showed the Groom the facilities, the Groom who winced at the smell of blood and the sight of stainless steel tainted with viscera. He took him outside, and showed him how to load, cock, and fire the rifle. Their pale faces glowed under the setting moon. 

“This land is old. Do not forget that.” 

And the Father told him the story of Kuno. 

Kuno was the first steward of the land. He arrived nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, and possessing no education and no connections, he strove for a career in hunting, ultimately serving in the War of Independence. He had to his name when he settled in Ohio only a rifle, a musket purportedly taken from the body of a British soldier, a one-bedroom hut, and one hundred acres of land given to him as reward for military service. Kuno was cunning, however, and whenever he heard that a neighbor was moving or in dire financial straits, there he would be with a pouchful of money, chewing up the land like strips of carrion, such that one hundred years later his family had the largest unadulterated parcel for miles. When old Kuno finally died, he left in his will only three stipulations. First, that his descendents should similarly seek to expand their land holdings as much as is practical. Secondly, that the land should pass through the family line, unsplit, to the children of Kuno. They need not be a huntsman by trade, but each inheritor should be a hunter by practice. 

His will also stipulated that primogeniture reigned supreme, in no uncertain terms. Upon the death of a master of the hunting land, the ownership of the grounds should go to his first-born son, or in the absence of a first-born son, the next-born son, or in the absence of any son, to the husband of the eldest daughter, and so on, and in any case only on the provision that he hunt. If no suitable heir should present himself, then upon the death of the last master of the woods the land and everything in it should be razed. 

A suitable heir must pass a marksmanship challenge to seal his inheritance in stone. This was to dispel rumors that plagued Kuno from his earliest days: That he was too good a shot, that he hit impossible moving targets at impossible distances. That he used magic bullets, blessed through witchcraft. But we are a family that loves, fears, and lives with God. Do you hear that? The marksmanship challenge, surpassed only through skilled gunplay, proves our moral righteousness. And so, on the day of your wedding, if you wish to marry my daughter, we will release a flock of doves. You must eye the one with red ribbon attached to its wings, and shoot it dead. And that shall be your second-most valued prize, after your wife. 

Surely when Kuno created this will he must have been of sound mind and body, and capable of such moral foresight that his verdict could withstand the revolutions of the Earth around the sun as well as the revolutions of the people around the moral center of the universe. While many in hindsight regret decisions they have made, surely there are some that shall never be regretted. Surely this is one such decision. 

The Groom nodded. He had his compunctions. He did not agree with everything his someday Father said, but he knew that he was living under another man’s house, and who was he to challenge the status quo? He bristled at the chill as the sun began to rise, and the two wandered into the forest. 

The Groom could be given a map and dropped off at any point in any city, and within an hour he would ascertain his location, the nearest bus stop, and the best cafe to take lunch in, but in the forest he was lost in its variegated beauty. With his sense of natural geography warped by an upbringing of stone and skyscrapers, concrete and cars, he could hear the rivers and see the hills but not be able to say what they meant. He could pass underneath a hanging widowmaker and not see it because he had only been trained by life to look in front of him, but neither above nor below. In fact, he only knew to stop when he walked into the butt of the Father’s rifle. The Father locked eyes with the Groom, then stared ahead, and it took a moment for the Groom to realize he should follow with his eyes. When he did, he spotted it: A buck with 12-pointed antlers, what the Father would call a Royal Stag. He had never seen a deer in his life. The muscular, haughty torso, four thighs and legs like matchsticks, the brown fur atop it, white underbelly below, and the coal-black snout awed him. The buck, still a hundred yards away, jerked its head to face him, and jerked away to bolt. In that moment the Groom did the only thing he could, turn and fire, and learned two facts in an instant. First, that the recoil of a rifle is far greater in the heat of the moment. Second, that deer scream like men. 

The stag roiled up on its haunches, landing on the back legs first, and then the front right leg. The left had been hit by the bullet, and it bounded into the woods, splintered leg dragging like a second tail. 

“I struck it!” The Groom cheered. “Now what do we do?” 

The Father scowled and charged off into the forest, following the trail of blood. By the time the Groom caught up with him, the deer was dead, a second round penetrating the heart. The Groom watched him take a knife along the underside of the deer, and remove the vital organs. He handed the Groom a rope, and simply said “Around the neck.” The Groom had to ask for assistance with the knot. As they walked back, he murmured his good fortunes as having caught his first deer.

“Your first deer? Not at all. My deer. After firing, you did not know what to do. You did not give chase. If it had been you alone in the forest and not me with you, you would not have caught and killed it. It would be limping in the woods with a shattered leg, living with a permanent debilitation, or dying from a slow, painful infection. The life of the animal wasted for it, the meat ruined for us. What you did today was worse than if you had missed. You should not be happy.” 

They spent the rest of the day in silence. The following day, the Bride joined the Groom in the hunting grounds. 

“I just don’t know how to talk to your Father.” 

“He’s a pretty simple guy. He likes guns, meat, men that aren’t trying to marry his daughter.” 

“Has he always been this way?” 

“He’s gotten worse since Daniel, but he won’t really talk about it. My dad is very good at talking at people, if you haven’t noticed.” 

“Right. I just need to get better at hunting.” 

The Bride touched the Groom on the shoulder as a hush escaped her lips. 

“Is it a deer?” 

“No, better. Look.” 

She gestured towards a nearby riverbed, and waited for him to notice. By instinct, he trained his rifle, at which she blanched. 

“Put that away. You aren’t going to want to shoot this.” 

And then he saw it. Movement. The glint of a loricated shell. The dry, pliant neck. A tortoise.

“He’s beautiful,” the Groom whispered, dropping everything to squat beside the creature. He held a finger a few inches in front of the tortoise’s face as it approached and smelled the unfamiliar object, lightly biting it. 

“We should get a pet,” The Bride said. 

“Why not? Like, a cat or a dog?” 

The Bride knelt beside him. “Why not a tortoise? Not this one, obviously. It belongs in its natural environment. But like, one from a pet store.” 

The Groom paused. “I’m not sure. Most pets live, what, 20 years at most? But a tortoise could outlive us all. That’s a long commitment to make right now.” 

At that moment, they both heard the sound of a single gunshot echoing to the south, shaking the trees like artillery fire. 

“Just the scare cannon,” The Bride states. “Though my father tries not to use it when people are hunting. Sometimes he has to, if bears get too curious. There are things in these woods not even he dares to hunt.” 

Unlike her Father, who told him how to hunt, the Bride showed him how to hunt. She overlaid her hands on top of his, melding his form to the gun, tracing her fingers along his knuckles to show her approval. She stepped back, allowing the Groom to fend for himself, but whenever he had to make a shot, he missed. Twilight approached, and as much as the Bride admired her fiance's perseverance, she grew tired at his lack of skill. She wanted to continue the family lineage. If she could be the one to take the marksmanship challenge, she thought, they would not be in this mess. 

She would be right. She wore out before he did, and returned home, while the Groom remained in the forest.

The Groom thought he could hunt on his own and be perfectly fine, because he was an educated man and could acclimate to the terrain. Education comes in many forms, however, and just as one may spend decades learning to be a surgeon or lawyer, so too is the pursuit of the forest a lifelong endeavor. He did not realize that he was attempting to grow a new organ. He missed shot after shot, and with each shot he missed he grew dispirited until he became unable to spot any animals at all, whether mammal or bird. The Groom was kneeling on the ground, cursing his gun, weeping for the love between himself and the Bride, when a figure came upon him from the direction of the setting sun. 

“Bad luck shooting today, is that so?” 

I wore crisp slacks the color of the earth, with a beige, long-sleeved button-down shirt. I had a similarly earthen tie, affixed to my chest with a ruby pin in the center. For his sake, I wore sunglasses. The Groom could not see my face, as to do so would require him to look directly into the sun. 

“Who are you?” 

“Why, I’m the Warden.” I bowed at the waist, and for once he could see my face: A row of unnervingly straight teeth, and rough skin with rivulets of wrinkles. Behind the glasses, my eyes were an impenetrably deep blue, blue you could drown in. 

“Do you know whose land you are on?” 

“Yes. I’m engaged to the daughter of the owner, sir.” 

“Friend of the family, hm? Well, any family of Kuno is a friend of mine. Do you have your permits?” 

The Groom balked.

“I’m kidding, of course. We have an arrangement, you see. I’m paid handsomely to turn the other cheek. But you have nothing to offer, do you? Learning to hunt, are you?” The Groom nodded. 

“Here, stand up. Look in the trees. That bird. Try and shoot it.” 

“I’m not a good shot.” 

“You don’t have to be. Just shoot it.” 

The Groom took aim, fired, and missed. He wasted a dozen cartridges in this manner. The bird, strangely enough, did not fly away. A better hunter would have asked why, but the groom merely continued with his folly. 

“What’s the matter?” 

“I’m not a good enough shot. And if I can’t shoot, then I–then I won’t be able to–” The Groom started to choke up. 

“Hush. I know all about that family’s old superstitions–which is why I’ll help you. It’s not your fault at all. It’s your gun. You’ve been feeding it the wrong bullets, that’s all. Here–try this.” 

I produced from my pocket a single, silvery bullet, and handed it to the Groom. “Go ahead. Fire.” 

The Groom loaded the chilling bullet into his rifle. The world was spinning. He had become delirious over the course of the day and had to pace his breathing to calm himself. His palms were sweating, clammy over the metal. He took aim at the bird with what he felt to be the same rigor he had been applying the entire time, and pulled the trigger. 

A hit! With a single clean shot, the bird fell to the ground, dead. Even I could not resist cheering.

“Do you see what I mean? The bullets, yes, make all the difference. Here, I have some more for you.” 

I rolled up my sleeve, revealing an impossibly smooth forearm lined with splotches the color of wood grain. I pressed my thumb into the underside of the wrist and there was an audible click as the flesh gave way, revealing a compartment in the prosthetic arm which held a small box. I handed it to the Groom, grinning all the while. 

“Only two more here, I’m afraid. But as a parting gift: a bag of supplies to help you make your own. There is a crossroads among the paths in these woods–make your way to them on the next moonless night, and cast your bullets there and then. You must finish by midnight, or else–or else I dare not say. May good fortune always bless you.” 

I spent some time explaining in detail how to cast the bullets, what to be aware of, what to be wary of, and then I departed. The Groom suspected a trick. But when he returned to The Father’s complex with three fat pheasants for him, his Bride, and himself, he thought the joy on their faces mitigated any trickery that was afoot. 

He thought to himself, well, I shot three big birds yesterday. I can make do without the bullets. But after his initial success, days passed without him being able to even take feathers off a grouse with his shots. He remembered the story of Kuno, and rumors of magic bullets, as he let the pouch gifted by the Warden gather dust in his guest house. One night, he bluntly came out and asked the Father what he knew about such bullets. 

“Magic bullets! Keep away from them if you have any care for your name and life. It’s thanks to rumors of this dark magic that the marksmanship test exists to begin with. Every hunter I know that has come into contact with magic bullets has come to a bad end.”

The Groom winced, and almost held his tongue, but he knew he had to have his next question answered. 

“But what happens if one should unknowingly use them?” 

The Father looked long at the Groom, unblinking, nearly unbreathing. Finally, he got up, and left the room, rubbing the Groom’s shoulder as he left. When he returned, he brought a lantern, a bottle of scotch, and two glasses, which he filled to the brim. 

“Fortify yourself. I’ve got something to show you.” 

The Groom did not habitually drink, so after downing the scotch he felt nauseous. The two put on their coats, left the manse, and walked along the forest edge by lamplight, deprived of the light of the moon. The Father continued, 

“It seems a simple thing, to take a magic bullet or two. You need to ensure a shot is perfect so you take a shortcut. You’ve had a bad day hunting, so you load a bullet in your chamber, to give yourself a victory. To take the edge off. Nobody needs a bullet, but every bullet needs a man, a target. And once you get into magic bullets, you can’t get out of them. You start to need the bullets the way the bullets need you. And one day, you will take aim, and your gun will miss. Or you will wish it had.” 

The Father paused. They had wandered into the forest, and the wetted ground was loamy underneath. In front of them was a pile of disturbed earth, marked with a cross. “Becoming a father changes you, psychologically. You will do things and think things you never thought possible before, all in the name of protecting and supporting your family. Your instinct says to do anything, but not all instincts can be trusted. Do you understand? Some bullets are fated to hit where they will hit, ricocheting outward, transforming the world around them. Like true love’s kiss.”

The Groom waited for a further explanation from the Father, but no such explanation was forthcoming. The Father walked him back to the guest house, then departed for the night. The Groom did not heed the Father’s words, much like someone who asks for advice on some personal matter when they only seek reinforcement of their intended action. Everything he was doing, he was doing for his Bride. I’ll only use what I need, he thought, and then be done with them. 

He gathered the pouch, and a lamp for light, and made his way into the moonless night. The Groom could only make his way by keeping his eyes level, to see the trees blazed with color to form the huntsman's trails. Every sound set him on edge, the flap of wings becoming a harbinger of doom, the snapping of twigs becoming the breaking of bones. But with courage he persevered through fear, and made his way to the crossroads. Once there, he put a cast-iron pot in the center of it, and set at once to gather wood to make a fire underneath. Contrary to the difficulty he had doing anything else in the forest, wood was easy to come by, and once gathered, sparked to life at once. To ensure a healthy pour, he took the mold for the bullets and held it over the fire, until gunmetal gray turned black with soot. He never realized how hot an open fire could be. 

When the pot was sufficiently heated, he placed lead ingots inside of it, watching as they lost their shape within the crucible. Entranced by the sight, he leaned in, inhaling deeply, but to his surprise the mixture was totally scentless. 

Time to flux the metal. He would not have thought it possible without the Warden’s earlier guidance, but by adding impurity to the concoction he could in fact make the metal more pure, and make it flow smoothly. He was to purify the molten lead with wax from a blood red candle. He tried to light the candle with the flame from the bonfire, but two successive times the candle ignited, then was snuffed by a gust of wind. The third time, he lit the candle, but as he neared the fire the flame reached out towards him, scalding his hand. He let out a primordial scream, and looked at his skin: His hand appeared calcified, with orange bubbles emerging from the flesh. He had no choice but to press onward. He could get medical attention later, but if he failed to cast these bullets, here and now, he might never have another chance. 

He gripped the candle, feeling a painful popping sensation on his palm, and held it over the mixture. With each drop of wax that pierced the meniscus of the lead, smoke emerged from the cauldron, at first in thin, ashen lines, then as a black, obfuscating cloud. The Groom fell backwards as his vision was blocked, and found himself unable to move. He could hear approaching footsteps, and felt their reverberations in his bones. As the dark cloud cleared, he bore witness to a creature only recognizable as a stag from its torso and legs, as the head was missing. Blood and muscle pumped within the bisected neck, pulsing from the force of hooves on the forest floor. The creature circled him, and as it circled again he noticed a front leg dangling, as if held in place, which proceeded to wrap around his neck. From the black cloud emerged a horde of birds, multicolored, whose cries reached a fever pitch. No sooner did he raise a hand to cover his ears then the birds descended on his burned limb, pecking at the skin, tearing it cleanly from the muscle. He crawled to the mold for the bullets, strangled by the stag and beset by the birds. He struggled with the leg until it slipped off his neck and around his mouth, at which point he bit into it. His teeth tore flesh, and the stag bounded off into the night. He grabbed a ladle made for the material, and proceeded to cast the bullets. The birds grew closer around him, and he grew dizzy from the fumes and force of them. The black cloud, it seemed, was parted, with illumination growing with each pour. He looked into the sky, and saw a yellow moon sagging. He could not be mistaken in thinking there was no moon before. Could he? But he would not be deterred. He continued pouring, thinking of his Bride, praying for safety. It seemed to him that he was lighter, as if the moon itself were trying to lift him from the earth. He poured the last of the lead into the bullet mold, and the world quieted. The howling was silenced. The light from the bonfire died out, leaving him with only the meager illumination of his lantern. No moon in the sky. He sat, and waited, watching the glimmer of soft metal hardening into something special. He glanced at his wrist–his hand appeared healed yet scarred, but his watch had broken, the crystal cracked, the time stuck at 11:47. He was supposed to finish casting by midnight. How long ago did his watch break? He took the locking pins out of the mold, and pried it open. Sixty bullets, like marbles, like teeth, came clattering out, and the Groom got down on his knees in the dirt to gather his bounty. He was mesmerized by the sound of them, the chittering they made as he placed 59 pieces of cool metal in an ammo bag. When he grasped the last of these, however, he heard a rustle in the trees beside him. He could barely make out the shape of the beast by lamplight, but he saw glistening fur, like a wave of oil crashing down against him, felt the hot, dry breath on his throat, as he came face to face with the bear. 

In times of great need, one fails to act with conscious thought. Your movements, actions, words, become not your own, and you operate as if possessed by something greater than yourself. It was with this motion that the Groom shielded himself from the gnashing teeth of the great demon with one arm, and fumbled for his pistol with the other. He scrambled backwards, trying to place a single newly-cast bullet in the chamber, hand still mutilated, the creature slashing at his back. He slotted one in and closed the chamber, then turned and, not daring to look the creature in the eyes, fired. The weight of the bear fell upon him, and for a long while he did not move. He wondered if he had fallen asleep, so long did he lay under the weight of his bear. Suddenly, the weight felt lighter. He tried to push the beast off, but his hands found only soft cotton, and long hair. He rolled the weight off of him, and shone his lantern. He was staring at his bride, pierced through the neck. Surely this wasn’t her? Surely it was just another vision. 

Perhaps, but as his pulse slowed and he came to his senses he became only more certain that he had done a terrible thing. It occurred to him that he had to get out of the forest, and to make amends. The Groom gathered his bullets, and supplies, to hide any trace of his ever having gone to the crossroads. He was too weak to carry the Bride atop his shoulders, so he was forced to tie her limbs with rope and drag her behind him. By the time he emerged from the woods, the sun had started to rise, and the Father screamed at the sight of the Groom dragging a massive bear behind him. He was now a true hunter. A date was set for the wedding. 

With the bullets guiding him, no prey was too dangerous, too nimble, or too cunning for his gun. Even if the family ate meat every day, at every meal, there would be no way to eat it all themselves. The Father thought it a bountiful sign, that the next generation would have a hunter who had been truly blessed, the second coming of Kuno. The Groom told himself, all things in moderation. He will only use the bullets as necessary. But the more he used them, the more necessary they became. He told himself he would stop, and he did not stop. So he told himself again. A poor sailor does not realize a ship's hull needs to be repaired until the floors feel wet. So when a poor man tries to mend his soul he may not notice that the devil has already taken root, that he has taken on water, that he has been hollowed out and the demon made a home in his bones. 

The Groom stopped sleeping well at night. His Bride was normally a sound sleeper, but she would awaken some evenings to find only sweat-soaked sheets beside her in bed where once her love had laid. The Groom had retreated to the cold confines of the butchery. The night before their wedding was one such time. Normally the Bride would allow him some privacy, a hidden spot in his soul, but on this occurrence she thought perhaps it was time to offer him solace. The Groom sat at the base of a meat locker, his head resting against the door, fingering a small pouch which jingled at his touch. 

The Bride approached him, and as she placed her hand on his shoulders he flinched. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.” 

He looked up at her, his eyes tinged ruby at the corners and purple below. He remained clutching at the pouch. 

“What have you been doing? Why can’t you sleep at night?” 

He handed her the pouch. It had inside a single bullet. 

“I can’t do this anymore.” 

In some ways, his admission shocked and comforted her. She assumed he meant hunting. Though she was proud of the hard work her Groom had undertaken to satisfy an absurd tradition, it galled her that he should suddenly become such a skilled hunter. If he did not have the temperament for the trade, then perhaps he was not as skilled as he appeared. 

“It’s okay. You only need to be a hunter for one more day. Then our inheritance will be secured. I’ll provide for us, and you can keep the books in order. You won’t have to kill another animal. You won’t even have to hold a gun.” 

He embraced her. 

“I’ve done a terrible thing.” 

“I know. I know. It will all be okay after tomorrow.” 

What a place the world would be if it were not for misunderstandings! Neither party in this exchange said what the other one had heard, nor heard what the other one had said. The Groom thought he had wordlessly confessed and been given absolution. The Bride thought he had bared his animal-loving heart, and that she had given comfort to his fears. The two went to bed happy, but only because they had failed to communicate to one another. 

On the day of their wedding, the Groom only had one bullet left–the bullet needed to hit the dove, and then he would be done with magic forever. He wanted to stop himself from using the magic bullet to pass the test, however, and so he brought two more bullets with him. Ordinary bullets. When the time came for the doves to be released, his bride and father-in-law standing behind him, he shuffled them in his pocket, picked one at random, and loaded his gun without glancing at the bullet. 

He aimed his rifle, and waited for the birds to be released. His Bride did the honor of tying a ribbon to a dove, then at her Father’s signal, the flock was released. He only had a moment to see them, but by now his marksman’s eyes had been trained. He spied a ribbon on a leg, aimed for where the bird was going to be, adjusted for the force gravity has on the trajectory–and fired! And hit! With a burst of red the dove was arrested in midair, and plummeted to the ground. Everyone hushed, and when the Groom recovered the bird and presented it, they cheered. One voice, from among the group, called for an encore. The Groom thought for a moment he saw the gleam of a ruby tie tack, but assumed he was mistaken. Then I stepped out from the group, holding an apple. 

“Lightning doesn’t strike twice, but your aim is so true it might as well. When you struck your dove, it hit a tree on the way down. Wouldn’t it be appropriate, then, if you made this apple which fell to earth your next target?” 

There were sounds of disapproval. After such an impressive shot, to hit an apple? Absurd and obscene. Not a worthy follow-up at all.

“Let me clarify. I propose not just that you strike this apple, but that you strike it from the head of your beloved.” 

Almost everyone turned to the Groom. The Groom and the Father turned to the Bride. She approached her betrothed. 

“William. If you want to take this shot, I’ll trust you. But you don’t have to wield a gun anymore, for as long as you live.” 

He held his soon-to-be-wife, and asked her to walk to the other end of the clearing. As she passed, I handed her an apple. 

“And for you, dear Groom. A blindfold.” 

And thus the Groom was given his most dire missive: Perform an impossible shot, with only the devil’s chance to save him. With two bullets in his pocket, he picked the one that felt warm to the touch. He trained his rifle on his bride, the sight tracing along the white train of her dress, her wrung hands, her tense smile, her eyes, open one moment and closed the next, her flowing hair, to the apple atop her. He inhaled, and he exhaled, noting how each movement adjusted his aim. 

“Place the blindfold.” 

And the Father placed the blindfold on dear Williams’ head, and many in attendance looked away. Many of the children, not understanding the implication, attempted to look but were blinded by the opaque hands of their parents latticed in front of their eyes. One man who was a true believer wondered if Kuno, once known as the Scourge of the Scioto for his prowess, was watching.

I hope you will forgive me for what is about to happen. The Groom forswore temptation, but what value does that have if he is not tempted? What good is virtue if one is not called upon to practice it? 

The Groom could not see anything, so he did all he could and focused on his breathing. In, out, in, out. If his aim did not stray, then he could hit the apple. If his aim lingered downward, his bride would be dead. He needed to fire at the apex of an inward breath. And he did. And he heard a woman scream. 

When the Groom removed his blindfold he saw what he had wrought: An apple, cleaved in two from the shot, on the ground. His Bride, untouched. He had made the shot. He ran to her and kissed her, vowing never to touch a gun as long as he lived. For the rest of the ceremony, he felt like a revenant, as if he had not been himself for a long time. He felt like he was finally free. 

At the reception, the Bride and Groom gleefully cut into a cake the shape of a lamb. Easter would not be for another six months, but the cake–and the choice of red velvet–was to their particular tastes. 

The two sat at ease, and ate their pieces of cake, when the Bride began choking. The Groom placed himself behind her, to hold her and unblock her clotted passageway, but he turned her around when he felt liquid trailing down his scarred hand and saw the Bride’s dress stained red. Still choking, only crimson froth emerged from her mouth. Her gaze looked frightened, then softened into one of peace. She kissed the Groom on his forehead, leaving the red impression of lips behind, as she sat down, motionless save for a periodic movement of her irises, silent except for a low, guttural gurgle. 

Who is to blame? Myself, for offering the magic bullets? The Groom, for using them? For casting the bullets in the first place? The Father, whose desire to see tradition followed led to the Groom’s desperation? Kuno, whose centuries-old decree is still followed to the letter it was initially inscribed in? When all is dead and buried, I do not see the point in blame. Instead, I beg you to ask how, along any step of the way, this could have been avoided. Without the magic bullets, how could there have been both a marriage and an inheritance? When was the moment everything was lost? Was it when the Groom cast the bullets? Or had this moment been coming, ever since the decision was made not to challenge the will of a man dead two centuries past? I do not have the answer, so at this juncture I will leave you with an epilogue: 

The autopsy revealed a bullet lodged in the Bride’s throat. At this discovery, the Groom checked his pocket. The third bullet was missing. When she died, he took his rifle, and ran from the chapel to the forest. A search was conducted, but all the party came across was a patch of scorched earth at a wooded crossroads. Her Father wept, and bereft of daughter and yet another son, retreated to the confines of his home. He died before the year was out, and when he did finally pass, miles of forest were razed in accordance to Kuno’s will.

Jack Douglas Riter

‘The Graffito’

Future Focus Photography by NATALIE PARDUE extends an invitation to see robots as not just machines, but as beings capable of evoking feelings, reflections, and stories.

The Graffito

I had been driving for twenty-six hours straight when I first laid eyes on it. The deep hours had long settled in, and it would be some time still before the slow groan of dawn began to light my way, but the building’s variegated neons spiked out into the empty interstate darkness just the same. It was a gas station, but not any kind of chain, at least not one that I had ever heard of. The sign featured a neon white skeleton character kicking one leg in and out, probably meant to suggest a can-can style dance, but whoever molded the neon tubes must have been pretty new to the craft, or just did not care much. Beside the pose-alternating mascot stood blue neon lettering of a similarly dubious construction: JACK-A-BONES’S GETTIN’ PLACE.

My gas tank was not in dire need of refilling and would most likely hold out until I reached the nearest town, whichever that might be. I hadn’t been keeping track of where I was going, only the sheer distance from where I had left. But the thought of continuing without ample caffeination sent a jag down the back of my neck, so I decided that it was I who needed the refill. I veered into the small parking lot without a second glance for other cars, as is my way. Of course there were no cars around, nor had there been any for the last several hours. In that state of mind, you could have climbed into my passenger seat and told me cars had gone extinct, and I probably would have believed you. I came to a screeching stop, parked diagonally between two and a half spaces. This is also my way.

As I approached the full glass-pane exterior, it became immediately clear that, despite the lack of cars as far as I could see, I was not alone in this place. Two figures occupied the building, one behind the checkout counter, the other in the midst of the convenience store. The latter was a strikingly small man, perhaps only a head over five feet. He was deathly pale and wore bedraggled clothing, and was gesticulating wildly, angrily. He had the look of someone who lived in a gas station at the apex of night, so to speak.

“You don’t understand, J.B.!” he shouted. “How’m I supposed to get stuff at the Gettin’ Place if I don’t got cash to get stuff?”

The individual behind the counter was even more striking than his interlocutor, albeit for far more unusual reasons. For one, he was wearing a vintage Badfinger concert tee. A brave choice, especially given how well preserved the thing was. For two, he seemed to be a fully ambulatory human skeleton, bones in all the right places. Normally this would have been a red flag, but as I have mentioned, I was in an altered state at the time. Additionally, the creature sported a name tag at the end of a lanyard: JACK-A-BONES, Manager.

“I appreciate your struggle, brother,” he said calmly in an accent I couldn’t place. My fault, not his. “But a Gettin’ Place can’t get stuff for people to get if the people ain’t gettin’ it with tender, you dig? ‘Sides, there’s more currencies in this world than just cash.”

Fully aggravated, the small man began to reach for something tucked into the back of his pants, but was halted when Jack-a-Bones raised a dusty hand in rejection.

“Hold on. I’ve come to anticipate and even appreciate your repeated attempts to rob me, I really have. But it seems I’ve a new customer to tend to.” He shifted the bony, palm-out hand to point in my direction, then curled that same ivory finger to beckon me inside. He then turned his attention back to the would-be robber and said, “‘Sides, you know well as I do that this isn’t the kind of place you can rob. It’s the Gettin’ Place, not the Takin’ Place.”

I didn’t get a good look at what kind of implement the little man was about to arm himself with, but he seemed persuaded by the manager’s apparent lack of concern.

“Ahhhh, hell with it all,” he grumbled. He turned in my direction to leave and, in passing, spit on my damn shoe. It took me a second to even process how the slight made me feel, but when I jerked my head up to give the guy a piece of my mind, he was gone. The bastardry of it, I thought.

“Got a napkin for that,” Jack-a-Bones said, calling my attention back into the shop. “That one’s a sorry sort, but I mostly feel bad for him. Comes in here more often than I’d like, never buys anything. Gets a bit violent sometimes, but he’s easy enough to see off.”

The inside of the Gettin’ Place wasn’t far from what might be expected of a convenience store. The interior lights were neon like the outer sign, but in a sort of putrid white-green-yellow hue. It contained the typical rows of candy, snacks, a few simple groceries and toiletries, as well as fridges and freezers filled with all manner of drinks and ice creams. Many of these products were recognizable at a glance, but on closer examination, their logos were smeared and illegible, as if conjured from a memory of a dream of a memory. Music played dimly over the shop speakers, but it too seemed sludgy and misremembered. It was in this melange of unreality that I approached Jack-a-Bones and accepted his napkin.

I watched his non-face move as I wiped the saliva off my shoe. Despite lacking any and all muscle or skin, he seemed to have no problem with speaking, and while I couldn’t perceive any rise or fall in his chest, he occasionally preceded or punctuated his statements with a deep inhale or sighing exhale when the conversation called for it. Interacting with him felt unusually mundane, such that I’m not sure I’d notice anything strange about him if I were blindfolded. And yet, the experience of hearing speech emerge from an animate skull did not react well with my addled state.

I suppose he must have been observing me as I did him, for he then asked, “You seem a mite out of sorts. Get you a drink?”

Before I could respond, Jack-a-Bones drew two shot glasses from somewhere under his counter, accompanied by a large, swishing bottle of indeterminate brown liquid. As he filled the tiny vessels to their brims, I finally managed to collect the presence of mind to ask my host a question.

“Do you have a liquor license?”

Jack-a-Bones slid one glass over to me, then knocked back his own. The brown liquid poured through his jaw and a faint splash sounded from the floor beneath him. “A what?”

I briefly considered refusing, but maybe that was what I needed. Tying one on and passing out in the back seat of my car wouldn’t put any more miles behind me, but maybe that momentary blackness, that discontinuity of consciousness, would ease the pain. So I followed suit.

“There’s a good man,” Jack-a-Bones said. “Now come, we’ve some things to discuss.”

He swung his legs over the counter and vaulted into the store proper with ease. As he righted himself, he produced an overburdened keyring from his shorts pocket and locked the front door. He then beckoned me to the door marked “Employees Only,” wherein lay a set of rusted metal stairs.

Even with the added clarity of hindsight, I can’t fathom why I simply acquiesced to these instructions. Certainly my judgment was impaired to some extent, but to follow a stranger to a dark backroom of a locked building? I’d like to give myself some more credit than that. But something about Jack-a-Bones was so utterly disarming, so perplexingly reasonable, that not a single part of me spoke up in protest.

The stairs led only to a second door on an upper floor, which the skeleton opened without embellishment or bravado. We found ourselves then on the roof of the building, under a black spill of starless night. In the nearest reaches that meshed with the glow of the station, it seemed to bend into faint iridescent ripples like sunlight in a pool of gasoline.

Jack-a-Bones led me to the edge of the rooftop, where we proceeded to sit, our legs dangling over the lip of the front overhang. He reached into another shorts pocket and offered me a cigarette. I declined, at which he shrugged and lit his own with a white disposable lighter.

“I’ll be straight with you, brother, and I’ll hope you’ll do the same for me,” Jack-a-Bones said, taking a short drag on his cigarette. He didn’t look at me as he spoke, instead allowing his empty head to track the gentle curls of smoke. “This is a psychopomp-type situation, and it’s my job to help folks like you sort some things out before you take your next steps.” Another drag, longer this time. “Let’s start at the top. Why are you here?”

I felt my heart sink at that moment. I had hoped that this was some kind of dream. It still could have been, I suppose. But the strangeness of the place made some sense in this new light.

“I had to get away,” I said. The liquor was starting to warm my face, but it felt closer to a wash of shame. “I couldn’t be in that place anymore. Losing my job was one thing. I could cope with that. But then my partner and I started fighting. Constantly, bitterly.”

“Right. But that’s not the only reason, is it?”

I felt stupid explaining it, as if he already knew what had happened. There was no way to sugarcoat any of it, to make it sound understandable to anyone who hadn’t already experienced it. We were just two stupid people doing stupid things to each other until it went beyond us.

“Someone called child services on us. Our situation was deemed unfit to provide sufficient care. A week later, it was just the two of us, trapped in that house with each other. But I guess that was just a few days ago.”

“And now you’re here,” Jack-a-Bones said, finally facing me. “How do you feel?”

“Like it was all for nothing. Was it?”

“Not my place to say, brother. S’not my purview to make value judgments on folk that pass through here. The Gettin’ Place is more of a quasi-spiritual cognitive metaphor, dig? Anything you get from this experience is as valuable as you make it.” He rifled around in another pocket and withdrew a miniature flashlight. “Here, take a look at this.”

Jack-a-Bones shined his light on the concrete canopy that stood above the gas pumps. Evidently, someone had managed to climb onto the platform and had engaged in a bit of creative vandalism, leaving behind a piece of graffiti.

“That bit’s been there longer than I have, I reckon. But I’ve found it makes for a nice reflective exercise. What does it look like to you?”

I strained my eyes to see the image in the low lighting. It initially appeared to be a garbled mess, much like the products in the convenience store, but I soon realized that the image’s appearance changed relative to my position, as if produced by lenticular printing. Training my gaze on the picture from the left, it appeared to be a human hand with two fingers (index and middle) raised, accompanied by the text, “nd CHANCE.” When viewed from the right, it appeared as a game of hangman wherein the player had expended all of their guesses, leaving the little man dead on the noose, eyes turned to Xs; accompanying the doodle was the unfinished puzzle: S  _  R  R  Y. I described the graffiti to Jack-a-Bones as best I could.

“I see,” he said, smoke rolling into his mouth and out through his eye sockets. “I don’t think I need to spell out what you should be picking up from that, yeah? It looks different to everyone, but it all says the same thing in the end.”

“I understand, but I don’t see what I’m supposed to do with it. I destroyed my life, and my family’s. There’s no undoing that.” I watched Jack-a-Bones turn off his light and stow it once again, taking in the true absurdity of it all. “Is any of this even real?”

He laughed a sudden, grinding laugh, as if he hadn’t expected the question. “Mate, it doesn’t matter if it’s real if it affects your life or changes the way you think. This could be a bad trip, for all I’m concerned, and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.” He snuffed his cigarette on the cold concrete roof. “Point being, you have a choice here. You can either get up and get on with it, or you can cut your losses and take the L right here and now. I’m just here to give you that choice. Your decisions led you here, and it’s your decision that’ll lead you out.”

“And what if I don’t choose?” I said. “What if I just get back in my car and keep driving? Or what if I just stay here?”

“You’re well within your right to do so, brother, but there’s no guarantee that the choice will come back ‘round. That’s how you end up like the guy what tried to rob me earlier.”

A darkness passed over my heart. I couldn’t blame Jack-a-Bones, but his words were cold comfort. I didn’t want this decision; this was all to avoid decisions, to avoid anything that would make it all real. But perhaps it wouldn’t have to be real for much longer.

“I can tell what you’re thinking,” Jack-a-Bones said at length. “I’m supposed to remain ultimately impartial, but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a part of me that wants to see people keep going. So before you make your decision, let me say this.” He rose to his sandaled feet and tugged on my shoulder that I might join him. We stood facing each other in the night’s oily blackness. He spoke thusly: “You asked me earlier if your life was all for nothing. And as I said, I can’t be the judge of that. But you can. And so what appears to be a complex decision ultimately boils down to whether you want to go back out there and prove yourself wrong, or if you’re content to let it actually be for nothing. You can break it down into as many moral gradations as you like, but that’s the real core of it all. Get it?”

Jack-a-Bones made a deep inhale, then slowly let the breath out. He clapped me softly on the arm with his skeletal palm and turned to retreat back into the station. As he slipped out of sight, his voice echoed once more out of the stairwell. “I’ll be unlocking the front door now, so exit at your leisure. My break’s over, so I must get to stocking.”

Dazed, I ambled back to my car without a word. Something in Jack-a-Bones’ words had touched me, but still I felt lost and, above all, afraid. To take up the burden of finding purpose amid a sea of mistakes and heartache, he made it all sound so simple, so easy. My mind raced until it far outpaced my ability to keep track of my own thoughts, so deep had my exhaustion grown. I had completely forgotten my initial reason for stopping, to reinvigorate myself, and was now suffering the consequences.

Unable to carry out this ultimate decision with a clarity of mind, I instead laid my head on the steering wheel and closed my eyes, hoping that I might awake in a better place.

Alexander Forston (he/him) is an Indiana-based writer. His work often explores the fuzzy edges of the real and the unreal, yet never abandons the core of the human heart. He holds an MFA in fiction writing from Lindenwood University, and teaches composition at the University of Southern Indiana.