‘The Mask Vanishes’

Todd Lift

The Mask Vanishes

“It’s nice to meet an adventurous reader.”

Arthur’s compliment brought a warm smile from his host. He could hardly take his eyes off the books filling the shelves in the largest room of Janice’s flat. Rarely in his thirty-two years had he felt such awe, and it was not only for the books. There were readers, bibliophiles, then people like this young woman who collected any and all works that she might have a use for in the future.

Just after arriving in the South American capital, Arthur had responded to an ad in a paper seeking a tenant to sublet this place for three months while Janice vacationed abroad. He had a room at a hotel a few blocks away. As he gazed around, Arthur knew he could go through all his life responding to classifieds and never have another experience like this one. 

As Janice talked about the lease and the landlord and the neighborhood and all the other matters he needed to weigh before subletting, Arthur struggled for balance on the ruby carpet scored with silver, gazing at the books, some with cracked spines, others well preserved over the centuries. 

He wondered who were the authors Janice admired, which of them fed her wanderlust. There must be a few here they both liked. Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Kafka, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dinesen, Calvino, Weldon Kees. Though Arthur was not close enough to read the spines, their number made him think that somewhere there must be a handful that would give them a common currency if they sat down to talk in a café. 

Janice showed little sense of the awe that had all but overcome the visitor. 

“So, Arthur, do you have pets?

It took a moment to snap out of his reverie. 

“Ah, no. No, Janice. As you know, I just moved down here, and I wouldn’t think of bringing one into so refined a space. Please tell Manuel he doesn’t need to worry.” 

She laughed lightly.

“Well, now, you could have rowdy dogs and cats and I don’t think he’d care. The issue would be the safety of my rare and exotic figurines. He wants this stuff in storage. Anyway, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing down in these parts. I mean, beyond what you said in your email.” 

Now it was Arthur’s turn to laugh awkwardly. He had come to this city to cover the election and had explained all this in his email. 

“I told you when I reached out, I’m in town to cover Paredes and his vision for the country. But, hey, I know, every other guy you meet tells you he’s a writer. And I don’t fault you for wondering what’s behind the claim.”

Janice nodded. He went on, feeling hope rise modestly.

“But may I remind you that this country may be right about to elect a libertarian candidate who will send things in a totally new direction and foster digital innovation and get millions of people out of their rut. The world will be watching the election results come in, and I want to be here, on the ground, talking to voters, getting their insights and thoughts and ideas down, and reporting on events that have so much significance for the rest of the world.”

Janice nodded. The sunshine streaming through one of the tall windows between a pair of high bookshelves accentuated the lushness of her golden hair with a tinge of copper, the paleness of her supple cheeks. The light on the bare skin of her arms threw into relief every crevice, pore, and goosebump. What most captivated him was her intelligence. He thought of the writer Paul Fussell’s description of soldiers who die before you get to know them as unread books on a shelf. At this moment he felt Janice had shown him the room to plant a notion in his mind that she was a book he would never read beyond a page or two, or a country he could only just begin to explore. Arthur felt enchanted with her and with a nation he came to feel was not Argentina or Chile or Peru, but a province of his oddest dreams.  

 “This could make my career. But look, however this turns out, it’s better than editing an investment bank’s marketing copy. And I would like to stay on the premises of a cultivated, smart person if I can at all arrange it. I’ve been in this country for five days and it’s all like a dream, yet nothing else has inspired the wonder I feel just standing here in this library, talking to you.” 

He swallowed hard, knowing he had said too much, not sure whether his honesty was commendable or his innocence contemptible. 

Janice smiled again, making him realize how silly was his anxiety.

“Well, Arthur. I’m truly sorry we won’t have any time before I set out into the world to test the truth of that statement. This trip came together at the last minute, and I’m still looking for somewhere to put my more valuable things in storage before I head off. Anyway, I sense that we do have things in common, or the wording of my ad wouldn’t have spoken to you the way it did. Let me show you around a bit more.”

She led him from the room with the wall-to-wall bookshelves and ruby carpet and down the hall to a chamber with a display of wealth and artifacts that enlarged Arthur’s sense of the term conspicuous consumption. If Thorstein Veblen were here, he might have passed out at the sight of the ancient Persian rug with its images of sorcerers and elixirs and battles at the end of the universe, the ornate chandeliers, the ivory Nok statues from West Africa and the ones purporting to channel Giacometti at his weirdest, the rows of votive candles, the red banners and dragons from an age of China you might die to inhabit for a day, the dull red and ochre Japanese Nō theater mask, the bamboo curtains, the framed poster from a Dresden opera production of Boris Godunov, the canvases painted or inspired by Cézanne, Renoir, Monet, Degas. 

The young woman seriously meant to hold out the offer of this room to a stranger. He thought that even if he suppressed any doubt as to the authenticity of the items filling the space, he could not help wondering about her grip on reality. Maybe this country really was a place untouched by the traumas of the cities where Arthur had grown up, perhaps people did trust one another and hold out hope for a friendlier social environment.

Then again maybe she was crazy. But in the most liberating sense of the term, in a way that made him want to get on his knees and propose to her right now. This sublet thing is all well and good, Janice, and I’ll be a great tenant and take out the trash twice a week, but I haven’t stopped thinking of you since the moment I walked in here and I really need to continue our conversation. 

She led him through a corridor with more bookshelves and an alcove from which a dark marble bust of the nation’s first president looked out at passersby. As they reached the lobby, Arthur thought of showings in Boston years before where the host was unimpressed with him. 

But as they faced each other in the lobby, Janice spoke in a kind voice.

“You have excellent references, Arthur. I am looking to make a decision soon. Thanks very much for stopping by this afternoon.”

Just before he turned to head for the door, Arthur noticed another presence in the lobby. A young man with Che Guevara hair and John Lennon glasses stood waiting. Pegging him as one of the most radical types of intellectual, maybe a young professor or a teaching assistant, Arthur guessed he was from one of the outer suburbs of this huge city and wanted to be closer to his university. He had little doubt that this stranger could do a better job of relating to Janice, of charming her. 

Arthur was not so vain as to think he was the only applicant she could have invited to take a tour of the flat. Or to assume that he could not be one of a number of people booked for back-to-back showings. Still, for reasons he could not put into words, the sight of that handsome stranger, looking at him with equanimity as he got ready to leave, provoked him in a strange way, made him sense a transgression.

Arthur stepped off the lift in the lobby and marched out into the bright day. For all the sunshine it was cooler than the seasonal norm. Crowds filled the streets and as he made his way toward the quarter where his hotel stood, he saw banners and posters, some for the rightist candidate, some for the socialist, some for the libertarian whose campaign had generated so much buzz. 

He reached his hotel, went up to his room on the third floor, showered, dressed again, and went out to have dinner at a sidewalk bistro. After four glasses of wine, he grew content to watch strangers pass and listen to the live music from a café up the street, as his thoughts returned to the blonde in the apartment full of books and fine things. 

The next morning was bright but cooler still. Arthur went out to get a coffee and brought it back to his room. He sat at the small desk with his laptop out and light streaming through the windows with parted beige curtains. 

As he browsed the online news, headlines repeated and bled into one another. Oscar Paredes, the libertarian, believed in cryptocurrency, flipped his middle finger at those who called it a scam and a fool’s dream, and thought the nation closer to the beginning than the end of its dalliance with new asset classes. 

But Paredes had his critics, including members of the military who said he was not equal to the challenges of resurgent terrorism and rogue states. The Maoist insurgency in the hills would graduate from firing at buses on remote roads to blowing up skyscrapers unless the country elected the strongman-in-waiting, Yukio Hata, who had served in Japan’s armed forces, had studied military history all his life, knew how to uphold order.

As he ran a search for Janice’s name once again and pulled up a page full of interesting results, the sense returned that she and Arthur were alike in so many ways. She had left her job at a Manhattan literary agency specializing in self-help books and ghostwritten celebrity bios and had come down here to live a life that answered her self-schemata. Arthur had walked out on his job at a global investment bank, had foresworn dignifying himself as a journalist when writing all day about promotions, lateral hires, and office openings, had come down here to report on an election that captivated the world.

For the rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon, he browsed news sites and set down observations about the scene in a leather-bound journal. Soon his thoughts would have crystallized enough to make pitches to editors. The contest between Paredes and Hata was getting fierce.

As the afternoon wore on, Arthur decided he had spent more than enough time in this room, doing what you must never do in a foreign locale. He could as easily have read online pieces about this nation’s struggles and its election in a room back in Boston. But Arthur knew that, whether or not he could bring himself to admit it, he had craved a space where he could answer his phone in privacy when he saw Janice’s name and number flash on the screen. It killed him that she had not come back yet with her decision. Maybe she never would.

He went down to the lobby and sauntered out of the hotel and up the street, then turned left on the corner and headed toward the district with a lot of cafés and wine bars and galleries and theaters. The streets were getting more crowded as people began to leave work. He ignored a few beggars who made pleas to him and one who cursed him out in Spanish. A truck rumbled by in the other direction, speakers on its roof blaring that Hata was the choice for anyone who wanted to rout the insurgency in the hills forever and ensure a peaceful future for the nation. Hata was more popular in the working-class districts.

He passed a music school, a bakery, an occult bookshop, and a gallery with a minimalist décor before pausing outside the entrance to a beer garden with knots of people standing around inside. This was not at all what he wanted. He pressed ahead, covering five more blocks, before he spied the façade of a quiet café with a dark interior.

The inside was bigger than someone on the street might think. As a server led him to a table, he fingered his phone, weighing whether to keep it on just in case Janice called or texted. Then he turned it off. His table stood in an alcove in the middle of the place and to your right as you walked in. Further down near the back entrance were more tables and a small stage where bands played in the evening. 

A waiter appeared and he ordered a glass of one of the enticing reds grown in the regions that rebels kept threatening to overrun. As he sat there sipping the wine, gazing through the façade of the café at the dimming light, he thought of Janice, the intelligence in her eyes, the wry quality of her tone that hinted at knowledge she had no need to deploy in the moment. 

Arthur sipped the sweet wine and closed his eyes so nothing could disrupt his reverie. He ignored the clacking of shoes in either direction as people came into the left the café. Soon the place would be full, they would all be eager for the flamenco band. Arthur just wanted to drink more wine while savoring his thoughts of Janice.

More people came and left as the light outside faded. The server brought another glass of the dark rich red substance. Now he heard a couple of voices on the far side of the alcove, near the back of the dimming café. 

“You can’t be serious, Gabriel.”

“Oh yes, I am. I did it, bro. Moved like lightning the moment she turned her back.”

“You’re joking, man.”

It sounded like a pair of young men enjoying a ribald story. Then Arthur listened further.

“Hard to believe how naïve this lady was,” said the first voice.

“Oh, she screened me, all right. Poor lady thinks I’m a theater director.”

The other laughed long and hard.

“A theater director! Good one.” 

“Naïve as they come, brother. Dumb Yank. Thinks we’ll all greet her with love in our hearts, like the Dirty War never happened. She comes down here and puts out an ad for a sublet and I show up like I’m seriously looking to sublet from her, when I really want to help myself to what she’s got. And I took that mask and it’s going to pay my rent for a long time.”

The two young men laughed hard. Arthur could not believe what he was hearing, the frank, jocular tones as this Gabriel described his modus operandi for filching expensive things. 

“That’s a nice mask, get you a few thousand.”

“Unless Hata wants us to host a Nō performance.”

More laughter. So that was it. The prospective tenant had stolen the Nō mask that Arthur had glimpsed and forgotten just before his own tour ended. 

 Arthur thought it was not yet six and he was drunk. He imagined that he had dozed off and woken in the midst of a fantasy that would expose him as the dumbest American of all for believing any of it. 

Suspicions drifted through his mind, ones that would never forgive him for not resolving them. He rose and moved in a roundabout way toward the restroom on the other side of the space, giving the table where the two young men sat, directly behind the alcove, a wide berth and keeping his face at such an angle that they could not see it if they tried. He doubted they noticed him at all. After a minute in the restroom, he reemerged and got a profile view of the first speaker at the table on the far side of the alcove. There sat the young man with the spectacles and the Che Guevara hair, talking to a guy with a construction worker’s build.

As he returned to his seat, he felt certain neither had noticed him. It was quite dim inside the space now and he had taken deliberate moves, one of a dozen people moving about. All he had to do was sit here and stay calm, though now the wine in his blood made him feel like a self-indulgent idiot at a college party, giddy and hot and prone to say moronic things. 

He sat there waiting nervously until the two young men passed on their way to the front entrance. Then he took bills out of his wallet, dropped them on the table, followed the two outside, keeping his distance. It was dark out now, but he made himself stay far behind them amid other pedestrians. Even so, he had little trouble following their progress as they moved up the street to the corner and crossed the street to the next block, toward what was, if you believed the tourist guides, an iffy part of town. He noted the satchel bouncing at Gabriel’s side, weighed calling the police on him. But he guessed police lacked probable cause to stop or search Gabriel, or whatever legal principle applied in this country. More importantly, Arthur thought that he must be the one who got back what Janice had lost. 

He followed them until they reached the next corner and turned to hug each other. Once again Arthur heard the stocky youth address the thief as Gabriel. They split up, the friend heading north as Gabriel continued east. Arthur looked straight ahead so that, on the off chance that Gabriel turned abruptly back, he would not see Arthur looking at him. Still he kept Gabriel in sight until the latter turned north at the next corner. Arthur hurried to the end of the block, peered around the edge of a department store at the perpendicular street, saw Gabriel cross the street and vanish into a two-story hotel.

Arthur held off, timing his entry to the lobby of this new hotel to limit the chances of encountering Gabriel in the hall or on the stairs. When he walked in, he saw the place was a bit seedy, with framed images of waterfalls and mountains and one potted plant in the lobby, but the young clerk was friendly enough. She affirmed that a room with a single bed was available on the second floor. If it seemed odd to her that Arthur had only a briefcase with him, she gave no sign.

On entering room 204, Arthur took out his laptop and wrote five hundred words about the race for the presidency and the growing desperation, as he saw it, of the rightist faction. “Interest rates are low and the local currency is in the gutter. Here are precisely the conditions that breed authoritarianism, but the people of this city have a choice. As they plan their trip to the polls next week, they look ahead to a couple of possible futures, one prosperous and democratic, the other averse to innovation and running on deep fears and fierce hatreds.” 

Having barely reviewed what he wrote, he sent it off to the editor of a news site he had freelanced for in the past. You did not have to be here, on the ground, to write what he had just written, Arthur knew. His coverage would be much stronger when he had interviewed people on the streets. It needed a bit of time. 

He asked himself whom he was kidding. It was impossible to think about any of this right now. He got up and tiptoed out into the hall. Then he made his way out of the hotel, stole back to the one where had stayed since arriving in the country, and collected his things but did not check out. After stopping to have dinner at a sidewalk café with wistful and sad music flowing from the speakers, he headed back to the seedy hotel. 

The second floor was quiet and empty. With painstaking care, he moved down the hall and stole a glance at the crack under every door. Only one of them, 212, had a light on inside. He went into his room, arranged his things, turned the light off, stood waiting at the peephole. Arthur knew he could wait all night if it came to that.  

Just after midnight, Gabriel passed by in the hall, as nonchalant as ever. Arthur heard a door open and close. With infinite care he slid out into the hall, edged down a few inches in the direction Gabriel had gone, noted the light filling the crack under the door of 217. He quickly went back into 204 and shut the door without a sound. 

In the morning, he did without caffeine, needing to see Gabriel pass by outside on his way to the stairs. Gabriel left at 8:47. Arthur hoped that Gabriel was not just going on a coffee run, that he would be gone for at least an hour. Happily, not everyone was as habituated to morning coffee as he was. Gabriel still had not returned when Arthur heard the cleaning lady’s cart roll up the hall. In deference to the sign on Arthur’s door, she skipped 204. Breathing heavily, sweating a little, he opened the door a crack to follow her progress down the hall. If Gabriel came back now, it would sink everything. 

Wearing only a towel, Arthur went into the bathroom and spread shaving cream on his face, then quickly shaved his neck and his right cheek. Gazing into the mirror, he thought he could pass for a man in mid-shave. He turned the hot water faucet as far as it would go, then slid back to the door and looked out again. The maid was not in the right place yet. He waited for a while and gazed out again. The maid had opened 217 and gone inside. In Arthur’s bathroom, steam rose from the basin and the hiss was loud. 

With an effort, he snapped off the left faucet handle. Then he dropped it next to the basin and ran out of his room and down the hall, calling for the maid as loud as he could. She came out of 217 with a startled look. He told her that the handle had come off in his hand and he could not shut off the scalding water. As she hurried up the hall, he darted into 217 and to his surprise located Gabriel’s satchel right away. It lay on a small table before a closed curtain with a floral design. He flipped it open, reached in, freed the Nō mask. 

In other circumstances he would have stood admiring the smooth ochre likeness of a face, the subtleties of its look and the elegance of its design. Now he slid it between the towel and his buttocks and went back out into the hall, thinking the hardest part would be to get back into the room and hide the mask without her seeing anything. But the maid had already left to get help for the gushing water. 

Luckily, fixing the sink was the work of a few minutes for the maintenance guy the maid had fetched. The guy and the maid even spared Arthur the questions and eye rolls he thought he was in for. With the sink fixed, they left and the maid resumed her rounds. 

Arthur could not give up this room. The other hotel was the address he had put on his sublease application. For now, Janice could not know where he was. Sitting at the little table by the window, with the blinds open just a crack, not widely enough for anyone to see him from the street, he studied the thing he had rescued for Janice. Holding it in his hands now, he could not imagine Gabriel raising the alarm, saying Hey, someone stole the mask that I stole. 

When night fell, he stole out of the hotel again and ten blocks away found an empty bench. He pulled out his cell phone and entered a number.

“Hello?”

“Janice. Arthur here. Remember me?”

The pause before she answered was faintly ominous. Could she have forgotten him already?

“I . . . I do remember you, Arthur. I’m sorry, I’m just a little distracted right now—” 

“—because Gabriel took your beautiful Nō mask.”

“What? Gabriel! How do you know this?” 

“I heard him talk about it, Janice. But don’t worry. I have the mask. You’ll have it back very soon—”

“You have the mask? Where are you? Return it to me now!” 

“I just said, you’ll have it back soon. I had to call you. You might have thought I stole the mask. Or that I’m trying to sell you something you own, like the con men in that O. Henry story. I needed to call and explain—” 

“Nothing you’ve said so far in this call makes the slightest sense. How did Gabriel get his filthy hands on my Nō mask? How in the hell did you get it back? Is this even Arthur I’m speaking to?” 

“I’m going to call you a bit later when you’re calmer, okay?”

“No—no, please, Arthur. I’m sorry. Please take your time and explain.” 

He described the incident in the café and following Gabriel up the street. Beyond that he told her nothing. If she imagined that he had confronted the thief, and bested him physically, he saw no need to correct her. 

“Now, I’ve got the mask and you will have it back quite soon. I just feel that—I don’t know, exactly—in order to appreciate the full significance of this victory, I need to understand you a bit better. I’d love to know how you came to acquire this mask, and all your books and paintings and figurines and carpets and necklaces. Does that make any sense at all?”

“Oh, you why to know why I’m intellectually curious. I don’t think I can answer that, any more than I can tell you why some people have higher sex drives than others.”

Nice choice of a metaphor, Arthur thought but did not say. 

“I’m not going to lie and say that I didn’t notice this about you. And think, wow, what an extraordinary person I’ve met.”

“And here we are in this strange city, two American fish out of water, so why I wasn’t acting warmer to you. You really like having incurred a moral debt from me. Come on, Arthur, I’m not stupid.” 

Arthur sighed.

“Well, I guess I expected a bit of gratitude after—” 

“Is Gabriel okay?” 

Now he relished the heights that he occupied after getting the mask back.

“He’s okay, Janice. I didn’t mess him up too badly.” 

He thought she would detect the irony in that last bit, but it was not clear she did.

“Arthur, I leave Wednesday. When can I get the mask back, please?” 

“Tomorrow.” 

“Call me tomorrow.” 

The next morning Arthur rose early and went out to canvass one of the working-class neighborhoods for views on the election. He took copious notes in a journal. At ten a.m. exactly he found a bench in a small park and dialed Janice’s number again. Arthur had begun to think that Janice was still figuring out how to talk to him, that he needed to present his most relatable self.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Janice.”

“You know, Arthur, I’m beginning to wonder whether you have my mask or this is some cruel ruse.” 

“Do you want me to describe it?” 

“You saw it the other day.”

“I saw it without seeing it, Janice. Your books were on my mind. And the fact you’re obviously smart and cultivated and complex and interesting. Look, I can come over this afternoon and return the mask.”

Again the pause before she answered discomfited him.

“No, don’t do that. I’m . . . I’m taking legal advice about how to handle this.”

“What? I get one of your most prized possessions back for you and you don’t even want it back—” 

“Of course I want it back, Arthur. That mask has tremendous sentimental and spiritual importance for me. Way more than you know. But I have to be a little careful about how we proceed here. I don’t want Gabriel going and telling people that I sent a mercenary out after him—”

“Gabriel is fine, Janice. I didn’t hurt him. He has no idea who took the mask from him. I was careful about that, let me tell you. I want to return the mask. I’ll bring it to your lawyer. Just give me the information—” 

“Are you stupid, Arthur? Or, a better question: do you think I’m stupid? You could be working with Gabriel. This could all be an elaborate scheme to blackmail or embarrass me.”

Arthur felt as if he had swallowed a rat.

“How on earth could I—we—profit from taking your mask and giving it back to you?”

“You might give me back a fake and sell the real one. Or wait till the fake is in my place and then go online and say I patronize a black market for forgeries. Or come out and suggest that I owe you something pretty substantial for getting the mask back. Or the one you give back might be stolen from somewhere and then I’ll really be fucked. There are so many scams and schemes in this great big rotten world, and if I’ve heard of one I’ve heard of a billion. So please be patient here.”

They broke off the chat in mutual exasperation. Arthur went back to the seedy hotel and sat in his room reading notes from his journal, typing on his laptop. He sent off three articles featuring extensive comments from people on the street with strong opinions about the election, most siding with the libertarian candidate, a few with the strongman. 

“Esmeralda Flores, a sixty-nine-year-old grandmother, said Paredes will legalize and promote the adoption of new asset classes offering her family a way out of poverty in this faltering economy.” 

“The innovator Paredes brings a youthful charm and Kennedy-esque luster to the country’s hidebound political scene, said Diego Martinez, a forty-year-old mechanic.” 

“Cryptocurrency and spot ETFs are stepping stones to real engagement with the global economy as financial institutions pull back from China and look for new markets for their cutting-edge products, said Sandra Escobar, a university student.” 

After sending off the last article, he closed the laptop and covered his face with his hands. He was here as that venerable thing, a foreign correspondent. Most newspapers and magazines did not have boots on the ground. This could make his career. But never could he have imagined the frustrations that his act of heroism had brought on. The gulf between him and Janice was as wide as ever. 

In the evening, he found another bench and dialed her number. He feared she would hang up on hearing his voice, but her tone was civil.

“Janice, I really have tried to do the right thing here. You can have this mask appraised. It’s not a fake and I’m not going to blackmail you. And, you know, I don’t fault you for imagining an elaborate scheme. The country is going through turbulence and it affects the way people think.”

“Thank you, Arthur. I regret some of what I said earlier. And you’re quite right, maybe the election is affecting my mood. The choice really is stark and riots are not impossible after election night. People want order. They don’t know what Yukio Hata really represents. I know.”

This was not the first thing Arthur expected to hear.

“I don’t understand. What do you know?”

“I’ve met the candidate, Arthur. I was at a gallery opening drinking wine and he came right up and started talking to me. He said he could relate to my ‘fish-out-of-water’ status because he’s from Japan and he’s experienced some pretty ugly racism here.” 

“I don’t doubt it.”

“And I tried to convince him that I have a serious interest in Japan and its culture, I collect things, but he was just like, yeah, sure, whatever.” 

“But it’s true.”

“Obviously, but he thought I was patronizing him. Yet he persisted, he got my number from someone and called me a number of times until I found a polite way to ask him to stop. I didn’t like how he acted, his assumption that I would welcome him into my life, but I think I really offended him.” 

“You are perceptive. About the mask. I really am acting in good faith here and would love just to return it, no questions asked.”  

“I know, Arthur. You’re a kind and curious man. I need to speak to my lawyer again, but we’ll arrange it. Please understand it may need to happen after the election, things are just so crazy.”

He guessed that was not so bad. The election was the next day. Still, it rankled a bit. He felt she was stringing him along and setting up an anticlimax, where the lawyer would accept the mask from him, hand him a bit of money for his troubles, and say goodbye. 

The sour mood did not hurt his productivity. Yukio Hata was ruthless, there were rumors about his unsavory connections, including mobsters, he was the last person this nation needed as its leader, and Arthur wanted him to go down in flames. He wrote four more stories and pressed send each time with satisfaction. The world would know what to think of the strongman-in-waiting who had moved in on Janice and belittled her knowledge of Japan. This Hata was a thug, a pompous buffoon with no real grasp of economics, Arthur’s articles made clear. 

Toward midnight he drifted off quickly in spite of horns honking and people chanting slogans in favor of one or the other candidate. In the dream that came now he wandered on a vast field with miles of swaying grass and snow-capped mountains in the far distance, a scene like those where he imagined battles in the Falklands war to have played out. The winds whipped his hair and grew so strong he thought he might fall over, but he pressed on, scanning the desolation for smoke or dancing cloth or any other sign of another person. 

After wandering for what felt like many miles, he paused at the sight of a narrow ditch scoring the expanse of grass. It ran perpendicular to his route and could almost have passed for a crude path. He thought any sensible person would follow it, because if you pursued it far enough you would end up somewhere, but as he looked in both directions a sense rose, a queasy feeling that anticipated the corrupt choice he was on the verge of making, and he looked in the direction opposite the distant peaks, at the fringes of field on both sides of the ditch, and something told him if he dared go that way all existence would recoil. As he pressed on the same way and the monotony of swaying grass did not yield, he began to count his paces. Somewhere after ten thousand he lost track, worn out, desperate. Arthur could not know whether his judgment was right or wrong, whether it was self-interest or a vestigial morality that had driven him on this way. He was aware only of a face, the size of a small moon, filling the vastness in front of him, daring him to continue. Or rather it was the outlines of a face, without features he could describe and all the more terrifying for that.

He woke with a start. The horns were louder as light streamed through the gap in the blinds. It was a day like no other in the nation’s history, everyone was on the way to the polls. Before he headed out, he thought of calling Janice, but that would happen after the election was over, that was how they had left it, and she already had concerns about him. Arthur was so eager to get out onto the street that he almost forgot the protocols for avoiding Gabriel. He did not even know that Gabriel still stayed here. 

Arthur roamed all over, visiting the voting stations, talking to strangers in cafés and on the street, getting heaps of comments, pulling out his laptop at odd moments to file live updates. He managed to turn out four full-length articles which appeared on various websites. Finally, at the end of one of the most productive days of his career, he headed back to the hotel to watch the returns come in and knock out a couple more stories. By ten o’clock Paredes was the clear winner, with sixty-eight percent of votes cast. 

In the morning his work was far from done, what with the victory parade starting just after lunch, but there was one person in the world he wished to speak to right now. After three rings Janice answered.

“Janice! Isn’t this the best news you’ve ever had in your life?”

“Oh, Arthur. Is there anything you won’t do for my attention?”

“Ah, right, that’s it. Like my elaborate plan to steal your mask and give it back to you. Speaking of which—” 

To his utter dismay, Janice said she could not stay on the phone and read out the address of her lawyer’s office. She hung up. Arthur felt so mad he feared he might run out into the street and attack someone. Here was what his decency had got him.

The parade started at the base of the Avenue of Martyrs and would end a mile away at the biggest park in a city full of them. Arthur found a spot on a block not too far from the starting point. People cheered and pushed against the police barriers and doffed their hats as the vehicles began to glide past at a leisurely pace. The first was a converted van with huge speakers mounted on top, blaring the election results. Then came an open car with several campaign officials in it, though not Parades himself. Then a pickup with a screen mounted in its bed on which scenes from campaign headquarters the night before played. Some of the people in the second car also appeared on that screen, opening champagne bottles, hugging, giving impromptu speeches. Next there came another truck with a really long bed on which a mariachi band played with vigor. The vehicle that followed was a buggy-driven open carriage where two people sat, one them a man in a conquistador outfit sipping champagne, the other a woman in a gorgeous white dress and a Nō mask.

Arthur rubbed his eyes and stared hard at the woman in the carriage. His first thought was that all the strain and anxiety of recent days had made him hallucinate. The carriage advanced up the street and he almost lost sight. Then he began to make associations and thought, Janice is mocking me. Showing me that I went to so much trouble for nothing at all and my life means nothing. That I was a fool for thinking my possession of the mask gave me some kind of leverage, more foolish still for thinking I could be of interest to her. I do not exist.

It had to be her. It must be. 

He climbed over the barrier and ran toward the carriage. People shouted and screamed though some of the cries were jocular, as if they took him for a good-natured fan. He panted and ran faster and nearly fell. In his peripheral vision more strangers yelled and pointed and he half expected a bullet.

Then he was at the side of the carriage. The masked face did not turn. Arthur reached in and ripped it off with all his force, revealing the visage of a startled young local woman. Arthur dropped it, turned, and ran as fast as he could toward the base of the avenue. 

Screams followed him and he heard footsteps pounding, but to his amazement no one caught up with him. He turned and ran north and got onto a parallel street that would take him almost to the seedy hotel. People must have thought he was crazy but so many were exuberant in the city today, nothing was normal. At first it seemed incredible that no crowds pursued him, but then maybe in the eyes of these people he was just another drunk idiot. You couldn’t stop them all, so why try. He thought of the woman in the carriage. People in this country feared Yukio Hata and sending her out in that mask was a small olive branch to the loser who still commanded vast influence in the police and military.

Especially the police.

Panting, sweating, on the verge of falling down, he slowed his pace as he reached the hotel. No one appeared to notice him as he passed through the lobby and went up to the second floor. He went into 204, closed the blinds all the way, then picked up his laptop and slammed it on the desk as hard as he could. 

As he sat with his face in his hands, weeping and cursing himself, his cell phone rang. He reached for it warily.

“Hello?” 

“Arthur? It’s Janice, how are you? I wanted to let you know that I’ve made a decision.”

Now he heard voices outside, and boots on pavement, and realized he had been wrong. People had followed his progress from the Avenue of Martyrs. 

“Okay, then. Tell me.”

“I’m going to sublet the place to someone else, but as a consolation prize, I think I’ll let you keep the Nō mask.”

“Hah. That’s rich, Janice. Do you know—” 

“Honestly, Arthur. I avoided saying this, but you’ve missed too many clues. You assumed that Yukio Hata was wrong about my knowledge of Japan because I owned the mask. You never guessed that he might have given it to me after the gallery opening, as a small step toward curing my cultural ignorance.”

Boots thundered on the steps. Within seconds they would be at the door.

“How very kind of him.”

Janice laughed. That light, breezy sound. 

“No, Arthur, dear. Kind is not the word. Hata thinks of himself as a deity. When that man gives me a mask, he means it as a profound, spiritual gesture binding us together forever. Hata has evil connections, let me tell you. The only way I could ever extricate myself without ending up on a death list was to make him think someone stole the mask. Which should not be hard to believe when the police find you with it. So you’d be on a certain list even if you had not helped Hata lose. Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be you just now.”

Arthur felt as if his lungs were on fire and he could barely see. Hard knocks came at the door.

“Gabriel. He had the fucking mask. He took it from your place.”

“My exquisite lover Gabriel and I have followed your every move since we met, Arthur, dear. He was going to plant the mask on you, but you made his so life much easier. And mine.” 

Janice hung up. The police burst in just as Arthur was trying to flush the mask down the toilet.
 

Michael Washburn is a Brooklyn-based writer and journalist and the author of five short story collections. His short story "Confessions of a Spook" won Causeway Lit's 2018 fiction contest.

‘Warring’

Rollin Jewett’s varied past includes acting stints in The Bodyguard, Unsolved Mysteries, Miami Vice and others, penning Carmen Electra’s first film (cult classic American Vampire with Adam West), and being a contestant on Jeopardy. Rollin is also an award winning off-Broadway playwright with plays produced all over the US as well as internationally. As an author, Rollin’s short stories and poetry have appeared in various magazines, journals and anthologies, including the Night Picnic Journal, Aphotic Realm, Door is a Jar, Coffin Bell, Gathering Storm, and Gravitas, among others.

Warring

Sgt. Edwin Stahl carefully edges forward, crawling to the edge of a granite outcrop overlooking Cochran Shoals along the Chattahoochee River, east of Vinings, Georgia. He grunts, wallowing upon protrusions of scrub brush and weathered rock. The heady incrustation of sweat and dirt imbedded in the reeking wool of his uniform render him an easy target for horseflies and sweat bees. Sgt. Stahl is unaccompanied. Loneliness has clouded his thirty-three years, like southern summer storms batter resilient trees during prolonged downpours. Never fulfilling his unending yearning for affection, he remains in watchful anticipation. An aching combat injury compounds his desolation.

Applying highly honed surveillance skills, the stocky and swarthy Union soldier expertly slithers forward, scrutinizing the rapids below and the ridges opposite. As a Harvey Scout, Edwin forges ahead of the Union Army’s southerly trajectory, seeking tactical information on enemy position and strength. Having, for decades, successfully camouflaged his secret desires and deflected revelations of his true nature, he is adept in clandestine operations as a prized Union scout. Under the anxious command of Union General George Thomas, Stahl’s keen observational prowess is crucial to the impending siege of Atlanta, following the Confederate rout at Kennesaw Mountain to the north.

The river below, with its shallow cascades and deep emerald-green pools, appears free of human presence, though life’s experience has taught him to avoid assumptions. The clues, such as suddenly silent birds, chattering squirrels, abrupt river splashes, distant puffs of smoke, neighing horses, far-off bells, yells and cries, scents of burnt gunpowder, cooking odors, rattle of wagon wheels, unexpected movements in the corners of his eyes, snaps of twigs and rustling of leaves, horse dung, human stink, resonant rumblings of ground, metallic taste, and even the sense of being watched, all appear absent. He tentatively concludes that the Rebs have assumed fallback positions miles south near Atlanta and that the river can be crossed without resistance.

Briefly standing, Edwin abruptly dives onto his hardened belly, detecting sudden movement along the river below. His pulse races … armpit stench arrays a betrayal of budding fear. Easing up, he gently removes his hat as he again scans the scene below: he spots a lone figure casually splashing within a quiet river pool several hundred feet below.

Mid-day July Georgia heat stifles Stahl with its heady humidity, burdening his breath. Edwin notes a strange stillness surrounding him … nearby yellow pines fail in their usual whispering, revealing only sounds of persistently battering and gurgling water flow, falling and colliding with rock protrusions. Cautiously creeping ahead, he spies the bleached body of a lanky young man, naked save for a crumpled gray felt hat.

The man is taut-skinned and lean, likely from persistent dietary deficiencies. Save for an outcrop of dark brown hair protruding the decrepit hat, the young man displays pasty white skin that heartily reflects the harsh sunlight. On a granite jut near the man rests a disheveled pile of filthy gray wool clothing, a pair of partially disintegrated boots, and a single rifle awkwardly perched beyond the owner’s reach. Spooked by his earlier observational failure, Edwin watches and waits predatorily.

At length, Edwin reckons that the youth is isolated and unaided, yet he maintains caution. Assuming a motionless position, he studies the river scene patiently. No unexpected sights are evident save for the unclothed and seemingly lost lad. Stahl is puzzled: the young man should have fled the approaching Union Army but seems oblivious to his surroundings and as well as the looming peril.

As a scout, Edwin is prohibited from contacting the enemy or, if encountering a rebel soldier, to take prisoners … gathering military intelligence is his sole objective. Avoiding assumptions serves as his leading principle, but he reasons that a lone naked man with an out-of-reach rifle is of negligible threat … he cautiously advances. Fixated on the detached figure, Stahl carefully scales the granite overhangs to confront the mystery man below.

Though violating his orders in confronting an enemy agent, Stahl justifies his actions by promising himself extraction of key enemy information. But his motivations stealthily outflank his conscious pretenses: his mind denies that his eyes are infatuated with the nakedness before him.

“Stand up and hold your hands way high, soldier, so I can see them plain and good,” Edwin commands the startled young man as he springs around a large boulder. As the youth jerks about facing Stahl’s loaded pistol, terror etches his dirt-smeared face. The soldier momentarily stumbles.

“I said stand up, damned it; and I mean it now … toe the mark!” As the lad apprehensively stands and extends his arms into the air, Edwin notes tears streaming down the lad’s face. Stahl kicks the enemy rifle away from the grubby pile of clothes and unintentionally ejects the weapon into a nearby blackened pool. The gun rapidly sinks.

“What’s your name and rank, son, and why the jezus are you sitting out here by yourself with na’er a stitch of clothes on your hide?”

Edwin searches a pale and angular face spotted by a scrappy beard and patches of grime rubbed into the pores of still pimply skin. Surmising his shivering prisoner more a boy than grown man, he guesses the lad no more than eighteen years. Boy soldiers are plentiful among the Fed bluecoat army … he suspects the Rebs have even more. Pity for this disheveled excuse for a warrior surges through Stahl, who reluctantly recognizes the ongoing duel between duty and desire.

“Private Callander Hill of the 2nd Kentuck Infantry, sir; an’ please don’ be shootin’ me as I’m a far fetch from my unit,” the youth spouts anxiously, his quaking unrestrained.

“Where you from in Kentucky, private, and why’re not fighting for the Union?”

“I hail from Scott County, Kentuck, sir, and folks thereabouts don’ think too highly of the Fed’rals, not like those bushwhackers in them Appalchin’ hills east-wise. Me, I don’ care much for one side nor the other, but pa and my brothers all signed for the Johnny Rebs. Kinda’ did what I wuz supposed to, I guess.”

“You on French leave then, Private? Damned coward then … gonna’ absquatulate, I suspect! Then where hell’s your others, then? Takes more than one boy ta’ make a regiment, soldier.” Edwin quizzes his charge while continuously scanning his surroundings for others, chiefly enemy agents. His scouting acumen signals alarm … he senses the presence of an unaccounted party. He critically doubts himself.

“Guess I kinda’ got loss from my unit a time back … then I don’ recall more. Things kinda got confusin’ up there at Kennesaw way with hard fightin’ and all, and I skedaddled from where you Fed’rals were a comin’ … thought I wuz’ with my own, but it turned out otherwise. All I know is that I’m afar fetch from my own and don’ know where they is.”

“ Guess I kinda got lost; well ain’t that a sorry excuse for a soldier. How the jesuz do you get lost when there’s a swarm of troops all around you? Don’t make much sense to me. But I guess that’s how a Reb does his fighting, as y’all appear losing all the way to Atlanta town.”

Looking at the stark and submissive figure standing before him, Edwin perceives the lad’s past, a likely bleak life. Maybe three quarters a foot more than 5, the boy tips little more than 130 pounds. His ribs are menacing protrusions, and the caps of his hips extend outward from his thighs like tabletop edges. Isolated patches of dark hair sprout from his chest in sparseness that matches his meager beard. Hill’s prominent genitals, crowned by a thick patch of pubic hair, sway above two slender and hairy legs. Stahl’s prurient gaze is unstoppable. He has spied upon many an unclothed lad, most far cleaner and better fed than this specimen; however, secluded opportunity bolsters his calculating interest. Edwin is progressively gripped by longing and fantasy that shatters his otherwise cautious nature.

“So, why’re you all neck’ed like that, Soldier Hill?”

“It bein’ so hot an all, I was thinkin’ a gettin’ cool and a might cleaner in this here water. This Chattahooch sure’s got some chill water likened to home.”

“My take is you’re about to run to the Bluecoats like a coward, or maybe a Secesh spy more likely, Private.”

“Kin I cover up or sumthin, sir,” Hill pleads, concerned with his captor’s ceaseless focus on his nakedness. “Don’ feel right a standin’ here all neck’ed front’a every jaybird in these here parts.”

Abruptly, the young private bends, reaching for the splayed pile of shabby clothing.

“You just keep those hands up toward high heaven and don’t make another move, damn it, ya’ dumb jackass! Ya’ hear?”

An alarmed and speedily focused Edwin methodically meanders toward his captive and quickly raises his now cocked pistol, placing the barrel at his slumping prisoner’s temple.

“Dang it, I don’t just know what you’ve got in that pile of rags now do I? Now don’t move a stitch, you hear? Your being at unease ‘cause you got no clothes ain’t exactly no fault of a soul other than yours, now is it?”

Edwin watches intensely as the young man, expecting a bullet at any moment, begins shaking wildly. Stahl’s sense of excitement flourishes. The surge of mortal power over another, especially a naked man, begins to stir other passions, none in keeping with his scouting orders. As he looms over his prisoner in a dominance-festered, life and death posture, the private begins to whimper, unable to control the stream of piss running down the bleached flesh of both legs. The sight and stench of urine edges Edwin toward a jumble of anger and remorse. He cruelly strikes the back of Hill’s skull, buckling the hapless man to a fetal position.

“Oh, for lord’s mercy; why’d you go do that? Look at what you made me do.”

“Don’ know, sir, I guessed y’all was gonin’ to shoot me as sure as the day I was birthed! I was fearin’ to die … I’m too skeered to die jus’ now. Don’ shoot me, bless no, sir!”

Tears cascading down the private’s scrawny cheeks yank Edwin from near viciousness to icy concern. His rapid emotional transitions disgust him … his embittering hidden life conceives a vein of malice that disarms his judgement. Reassessing his stance, he surmises that Callander might have been handsome had he’d been better fed … as is, even without the boy’s pitiable loss of bladder control, Stahl’s perceptions of Hill wander erratically between repugnance and overpowering carnality. Shackled by years of sexual starvation, he’s torn between mercy and retribution.

************

High above Stahl and his captive, a secluded witness to the ongoing riverside conflict prepares to intervene. His pistol is cocked, ready to fire. Corporal Aaron Resh, a fellow Union scout, has secretively trailed Stahl throughout the day … though not assigned to the sergeant, he follows without apparent motive. His fascination for the naked soldier below matches Edwin’s. Observing the commotion below, Resh is torn between protecting Stahl and savoring the struggle.

************

“Lord, ya’ stench so,” Edwin screeches. “For chrise-sake, get yourself in that water and wash the piss off yourself, Private … into that pool behind you and wash that stink before I sicken of your sorry behind. Hell, it’s like reekin’ babe nappies in this bakin’ sun right now. Come on, git down there and splash yourself off, and don’t try anything tricky when you do!”

Humiliated and terrorized, Private Hill is paralyzed by his captor’s fitful behavior. Confused, he timidly turns toward the water, feverishly anticipating a gunshot-induced demise. He accepts the old Yankee’s grip over his life but is baffled by Stahl’s intentions … he senses a man in conflict … he detects both loathing and longing. Sluggishly, he lowers himself into a seated position and immerses himself in a pool of swirling, teal-tinted water, resting with his torso above the water line.

“Sweet jesuz, ‘tis ice-cold! Jus’ let me splash a bit an’ git outta here so my privates don’ shrivel to nothin’.”

“I said get your arse full inta’ that water, Private, and I mean business on that matter, hear?”

In renewed weeping, the mortified youth edges deeper into the pool, his shoulders at river level. Whirlpools dance about his plunged body, striking the surfaces of his rapidly bluing flesh. The prisoner trembles intensely … he’s tempted to flee the stream’s biting chill.

“Deeper, Private, I say … deeper. Get into that water ‘til you can scarcely breathe, you hear?” Stahl barks as power-fueled fancies surge within, his member swelling uncontrollably.

Without alternatives, Callander aversely complies, wandering hesitantly into the pool’s depths. He briefly searches Stahl’s face for a possible stay in sentencing; however, he perceives only menacing insistence. He falteringly edges forward.

With his mouth barely above the surface, the young man’s head suddenly disappears, remaining disturbingly out-of-sight. Initially presuming an escape attempt, Edwin shortly grasps that the boulders corralling the deep pool would stymie flight. Stahl points his revolver in the direction of the private’s last sighting, yet Hill fails to resurface. Edwin’s heart trebles.

Horrified by the debacle he triggered, Edwin shrieks toward the bluffs above, crying heavenward as in desperate prayer. His Union duties are set … he fathoms that saving the Reb is forbidden. Seconds lapse. Debate roars within his soul. Like a video clip under pause, indecision freezes all motion. Two choices have governed his stifled life since puberty: hide or escape. Yet, as the seconds flee, he rejects both.

Abandoning duty, Edwin removes papers and a compass from his rank tunic, sets his revolver upon a rocky ledge, and dives, fully clothed, into the dark pool where Hill vanished. Below the surface, an overpowering current slams his skull against a submersed rocky protrusion … he retains consciousness but loses his orientation. The water’s thrust and clouds of silt steadily sap his vigor. Quickly resurfacing, he resubmerges within shimmering bands of sunlight penetrating the pool, spotting in the water’s green glow the blanched white of an arm thrashing in the torrents.

Stahl’s sodden boots stabilize movement like underwater weights, allowing him to slowly shift toward Hill. He heists the drooping and slackened shoulders but fails to eject the soldier’s slumped head toward the surface. Hill remains submerged. Though terrified of water Edwin discounts his hazard and races toward the inert soldier like an enraged bear … he grabs but fails to dislodge a slab of rock trapping Hill’s foot. He repeats his actions, but the rock remains. Stahl’s tenacity ignites unremittent rage. Rapidly resupplying his lungs, Edwin ferociously leverages the rock, adjusting it sufficiently to release the unconscious private. Grabbing the youth’s scalp, he heaves the limp body onto a nearby outcrop. Hill’s skin is ashen, devoid of life signs.

Edwin drifts within an undercurrent of denial, refusing to accept Hill’s death, but simultaneously disavowing his ongoing deviation from duty. He wreathes within waves of ill-founded affection for an enemy soldier, stinging stabs of tenderness that, in combat, warrant a firing squad. Stahl’s attentions founder within a slurry of urgency and despair … conflict reigns … warring forbids empathy, cover extended to a rebel soldier. Devotion … death … duty … desire: each muddled within a cauldron of grief.

“Please … oh please, Callander … don’t, don’t … oh dear God, don’t go this way right now … you’ve come too far in this damned war. Breathe; I said breathe ... I’m ordering you; don’t you understand?”

Edwin ragingly pounds on the youth’s rapidly bluing chest, causing the unconscious man’s ribs to forcefully heave and fall. Hill fails to breathe. Losing hope, he seizes the youth’s shoulders and hips, turns the naked frame along its side. Laying along the inert man’s length, Edwin hooks his arms around Hill’s back and squeezes mightily, chest to chest.

Callander’s life fades.

With every passing second, Stahl’s will to survive subsides, his soul fleeing inevitable suffocation. His mission abandoned in quest of unspeakable ardor, he desires only not to be.

************

From afar, a baffled Resh follows the riverside commotion from his granite bluff outpost above. While certain of Stahl’s dereliction of duty, he resists reaction … his intentions for his fellow scout are elusively complex. Edwin has been in his sight for months.

************

Without forewarning, a surge of brownish slime ousts from the young man’s mouth and nose, plastering a slippery dollop of putrid ooze onto Edwin’s face as the youth coughs and gags violently. Though nauseated by the ejected cloud of rank mist, he gleefully embraces the private with revived aspirations.

As Callander’s breathing stabilizes, Edwin sobs hysterically as he agonizingly uprights himself and positions the private’s slumping head within the hollow of his lap … rocking the private like a Madonna mourning over her beloved. The day’s life and death encounters have numbed his perceptions of existence and meaning; yet he senses a path forward … an escape. The day’s encounters are his and Callander’s alone … their survival serves as a sign of redemption. He and Callander have resurrected.

Startlingly, the young man’s eyes open, fixing on the drained face of his captor.

“Em I dead?” a disoriented Hill garbles. 

“No, you cussed fool, you ain’t dead, though it appeared you were for a stance. Oh God, dear God … I believed you were gone for certain, but you’ve come back to me bein’ alive like you were before … you’ll not be goin’ out of my sight. I’ll take care of you and make darned sure you get back to Kentucky like you want. you hear?”

Neglecting his scouting obligations, Edwin sets a new course that includes a promise without means of assurance. But promises and hopes sooth his heart … his affection-bound aims flounder in absence of his proficient reasoning skills. He neither knows nor cares that Callander may be of another mind.

Looking upward, Hill spies Edwin’s tears. Comforting conclusions embraces him … notions foreign to a middle child of eleven hard scrabble kids, more in need of food and shelter than human nurturing. His dirt-poor existence had been daunting and with few frills, particularly affection. Hugs were unknown. Reaching an additional birthday was the sole luxury for the Callander siblings … being loved and giving love were never offered nor afforded. 

Callender looks into his captor’s eyes and winces, wondering what fate has befallen him. Is the old Yank his savior or executioner?

“Did ya save me, Sir? Will ya shoot me anyways?”

“I guess I had a hand in it … I’d have done anything to see you’d come back to me. I’m gladdened to see you a’living so, no, you darned dupe, I’m shootin’ nobody today.”

Sensing Stahl’s good will and eager for a life beyond scarcity, Callander gambles his future. In tiny increments he elevates a hand toward Stahl’s dampened face, mindful of the consequences of rejection.

Delighted by the young soldier’s tepid overture, Edwin gently lowers his head toward the scrawny face of the spent youth, maintaining a watchful eye on the enfolding interaction. He hesitates as foul bodily scents confront his passions, giving him pause … he ponders his ongoing dereliction of duty. Embracing this pathetic figure constitutes shielding an enemy combatant, a court-martialing offence. Throughout his adulthood, Edwin has scorned the long-locked instincts that are ushering him toward forbidden and uncontrolled affection. But his resistance is disabled as he grasps the enfolding joy about him, undeniable happiness he has long believed unapproachable. Even the stench of festering bodily fluids fails to quench his yearnings. He presses his lips against Hill’s, preparing for a final rebuff. But Callander lovingly accepts Stahl’s advances, relishing and furthering the evolving alliance.

Wound in delight, the two cling to one another like reunited mates, separated during protracted warfare. Craving trustworthy bonds of affection, they embrace with abandon … vulnerable … untried … alone.

Like an emboldened schoolboy, Callander abruptly flips himself above his captor and, prepared to usher forth his suppressed expressions of endearment, lifts his head toward the sky in a celebratory gesture. Smiling like two children positioning for sweet treats, Stahl and Callander initiate their daring engagement.

Edwin gazes longingly upward as his unanticipated lover, fleetingly pondering the precious reality of a yearned-for soulmate. Gratefulness engulfs him.

Edwin reaches for his lover’s face when a loud crack emits from some distant and hidden point.

Fixing his gaze in the direction of the report, Stahl fails to spot a source; however, he watches, as though in slow motion, as Callander’s body sluggishly slumps aside and toward the river’s edge … a thick mist of sticky gray and pink descends upon his face. Callander’s eyes are fixed and unmoving as though suspended in eternal contemplation, but his presence slowly saps away with a blank expression.

Edwin shoves his lover’s limp body aside and leaps to his feet, his mouth formed into an unutterable scream. Panting wildly, he pounds his chest in anguish, responding in agony to the carnage before him … the emotional impact of Callander’s slaughter sidelines the immediate horror of violence. Stahl’s brain commands piercing yelps of revulsion that his voice refuses to form. He subconsciously smears the revolting film of death from his face and onto his hands, spreading it across his tunic.  Eventually Edwin slams to his knees and onto the rock prominence, staggering within sobs that stunts his breath.

************

“He was gonna slaughter you for sure, Stahl!” yells an approaching figure in blue, stepping down from a rock ledge overlooking Edwin and Callander’s corpse. “Can’t tell if that fellah was a Reb or not, nekkid and all, but he sure was fixin to pound your skull as I could tell.”

Edwin looks toward the ledge, staring at Aaron Resh, a fellow Union scout walking toward him. A still smoking pistol remains in his grip. Edwin’s visual world passes in half time, as though floating in a dream world. The immediate events remain incalculable … that which proceeded Resh’s arrival refuses to mesh with the present. Viewing Callander’s violent end cripples his mental capacities.

Within his malfunctioning memory, he recalls Resh’s jealousy of scouting skills he couldn’t match. Suspicious of the junior scout’s reticent nature, Stahl steadfastly avoided Resh’s recurring attempts to befriend him, fearing familiarity. But, in his ongoing emotional fog, Edwin identifies Resh as his sole adversary. Anger surges.

Recognizing Resh as the instrument of Callander’s death, Edwin leaps to his feet and lunges toward his adversary like a hungered leopard springing for its prey. 

 “You son of a whore, you took him … you took him away from me … why’d you do that … why?  You didn’t have to … you could have waited … see if he was hurtin’ me! He was mine … he was my prisoner, only mine!”

“But he’s just a Reb, Stahl, and a buck nekked one at that! What the b’Jesus is wrong with you … why you frettin’ for the likes of him?”

“Dammit … damn you to hell you arse … I loved him … “.

“Not by a jug full, Stahl … hell, you paid me no interest these months. Why? Since Murfreesboro I gleaned you for a possum, all for naught. Why him … what was I but hankered down to you? I’d be the Union side and a might cleaner. Ever did ya’line with me, always dodgin’my ev’ry move t’ward you and us?”

“He was all I had … you took him … I’ll not it lapse that you did.”

Abandoning lucidity, an unarmed Edwin feverishly grabs a startled Resh by the neck like a frenzied madman, without restraint … as an aggrieved Achilles seeking atonement for his lover’s slaying. As his grip on the corporal’s neck slowly restricts Resh’s windpipe, the corporal swings his still free pistol-holding right hand and, after several unsuccessful attempts, places the gun’s muzzle against Stahl’s temple and fires. Stahl’s grip ends. As he slumps, Stahl looks up and gasps, “Callander.” His breathing labors briefly and then ceases.

************

Resh inspects the grisly scene, incapable of squaring his affection for Stahl with his wretched demise. Rech grieves, the dead distorted before him.

Hours pass as the evening’s light embraces the ravine. Certain of his inability to justify Stahl’s demise and fearing retribution, Resh wearily commits the day’s relics to the river’s cascades.

“Stahl … Stahl, why this … why this way?” Resh agonizes, watching the blood-streaked contrails flowing downstream as the bodies bob over the river’s outcrops.

Shattered, he crumbles and weeps.

Michelo Isola is a gay man who has longed to write meaningful short stories, but fearful rejection because of age (76) and identity. His pen name came about as the result of significant criticism from conservative members of his family.

‘Ballelejuah’, ‘A Long Way To Go For A Turing Reference’, ‘27.99’ & ‘Molt’

Juan Sebastian Restrepo(zeb) is a Florida-based artist known for his paintings and drawings that explore the interplay between memory and storytelling. He holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a BFA from Pratt Institute. His recent exhibitions include “intersections” at New World Gallery (2023) and “Hybridity” at the Edwardsville Arts Center (2018). Upcoming solo shows include “No Further Expectations Beyond this Night” at The Art and Culture Center/Hollywood (2024) and “multitasking” at [NAME] Publications in Miami, FL (2024). Restrepo also teaches as an Adjunct Faculty member at Florida International University and Miami Dade College.

Ballelejuah

It's bally in here, today
Warm, with the scent
of axe and gym socks
The gymnasium
With it's once polished floors
And steady, irregular thumping
of basketballs, like thunder
It's early enough
The girls haven't arrived yet
with their volleyball
passing games in their ring.
The kids playing wallball
in the corner,
can't get along.
That One kid, and the other one
playing horse at the hoop
raised nearly to the ceiling,
out of the way
The herd grows with every air ball.
A swish, from half court
Nobody saw or heard.
Ballelujah

A Long Way To Go For A Turing Reference

I understand that contemplating
The mind of God is fruitless
Nonetheless I persist.
(we're commanded to put
aside our first fruits)
Objectively, prayers unanswered
are likely God's dearest gift.
Pondering deeper
(The depths of a pond)
I believe God's immense silence
to be cause and yet effect
of harmonic cancellation.
"Dear god, let our team win"
Uttered from fervent
but utterly opposed hearts.
Does God have the luxury of chance?
A holy coin flip, Eeny Meeny Miny Mo?
Mayhap, perhaps, divine consultation
With a machine, or Alan Turing
(whose accomplishments in math
FAR outweigh his harp virtuosity,
Though he probably could hit
Those high notes!).
Gods fingers too large for one of those
Folded paper fortune teller things,
He whips out his god sized cell phone
and texts Saint Cajetan, his delegate
in matters of arbitration

27.99

Thank you for your service
For the years and money you spent
In pursuit of your teaching degree
For feeding my son, my daughter.
Thank you, for making them feel seen.
Thank you, for braving dirty hands
And snotty noses, and coughs
That never get covered.
Thank you for buying all that stuff
You share with my kids
Even when i should have provided it.
Thank you for spending long nights
And early mornings, and weekends
Reading a thousand papers
That all say the same thing,
And treating each on like a work of art.
Thank you for being their friend
When they're sad, or scared
Or just plain mad at the world.
Thanks for always keeping your chin up
When they blame you for children
Who never hear "no" at home.
Thank you, for being willing
To stand between our kids
And a man with a gun, and lots of bullets.
That will be $27.99.
I'm sorry, we don't offer
An educator discount here,
But perhaps you were in the military?
Willing to die or kill for ‘Merica?
No? I'm sorry, the total is $27.99
But, thank you for your service....

Molt

If I squint past the beams
Of light flooding through the window
I see the discarded husks
Of who she was once
Strewn about the dust.
I wonder, do they give her
Pause.
And whether she knows,
Or cares that she is now
Just a bigger monster.
No kind words or whispered love
But a mouth full of rot
And venomous fangs.
More Shelob than Charlotte
Her visitors litter the sill
Tribute to her
And unheeded warning to others
Here, there be monsters...

Peter Cooke is a newish poet who works in a middle school library. Cooke also facilitates an after school poetry club for kids. He has been recently accepted for publication by Skrews Syndication and Rising Phoenix Review. He started seeking publication mainly as a way to "lead by example" for his middle school poets.

‘Out of the Woods’

Juan Sebastian Restrepo(zeb) is a Florida-based artist known for his paintings and drawings that explore the interplay between memory and storytelling. He holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a BFA from Pratt Institute. His recent exhibitions include “intersections” at New World Gallery (2023) and “Hybridity” at the Edwardsville Arts Center (2018). Upcoming solo shows include “No Further Expectations Beyond this Night” at The Art and Culture Center/Hollywood (2024) and “multitasking” at [NAME] Publications in Miami, FL (2024). Restrepo also teaches as an Adjunct Faculty member at Florida International University and Miami Dade College.

Out of the Woods 

The copper tub reflected the water splatter as the level rose. The combination of lavender and eucalyptus mixed with the steam created a calming vibe in my little pink bathroom. It was relaxing, in a way, feeling all the stress slowly leave my body almost like I was floating outside of myself. 

I watched my old cardigan fall to the floor as I stepped into the water. 

I winced for a second, then emerged deeper, feeling my skin burn. I blocked the pain from my mind as I had done before, but it was beginning to feel comfortable as the heat seeped into my pores. The water pouring into the tub drowned out the music that played in the background. When the tub finally filled to the brim, I twisted the knob to turn it off. The whimsical Folklore album played on, filling in the silence, “I think I’ve seen this film before so I’m leavin’ out the side door.” 

My body slowly sunk to the bottom of the tub. Laying there, I replayed the events of the previous months over and over. 

My break-up. 

My hook-ups. The hook-up with a co-worker and a former co-worker. 

*Beep, beep* 

That brought me back to reality. 

I reached for my cell phone that sat on top of the toilet seat. Looking at the screen, I quickly put it back down. Not tonight, I thought as I lay there. I need more time before talking to you. 

*Beep, beep* 

1

Fuck. I reached for my phone again. Adam. He was the one to blame for this downward spiral. Just looking at his name on my phone took me back to that night. 

We lay on our bed. The bed where before that night, we had talked about our future and the kids we hadn’t had yet. Where we would be tangled up in the sheets embracing each other in the comfort we needed. Where that night, while we were talking about our day of work and school, he shattered my heart. 

“We need to talk, Beth,” he sighed while guiding a stray strand of hair out of my face. His touch was soft on my face. 

“What about?” 

“Us. I don’t think this will work anymore. We aren’t doing well, and we can’t keep faking anymore.” 

The rest of that night was a blur between my blurry, tearful eyes and the half bottle of Patron I drank to numb all of my pain. I couldn’t understand how twenty-four hours ago, we had been talking about forever and how we were willing to make everything work between his nursing school degree and my night job. We had been struggling with spending time together due to our two different schedules. The night shift sometimes made it feel like we were just roommates instead of partners. Then that next night, it turned out that he wasn’t happy and thought that there was someone better out there for the both of us. 

There was a scratch at the door that brought me back to reality. A tiny black nose connected to a brown and white dog had pushed her way into my bathroom. She released a low whine and lay on the fuzzy, electric green rug. Tilting her head back and forth, she released another low whine in confusion. 

2

“Come here, Belle,” I whispered as I dangled my arm over the tub’s edge. Water droplets trickled off my arm and onto the tile. Belle was hesitant but slowly made her way toward me to see what would happen next. As she sat below me, she managed to balance herself on her back legs and extended herself upwards to put her front legs on the brim of the tub. The chihuahua/terrier tried to lean her head towards me and somehow managed to get the stray tear that lingered in the corner of my left eye. 

“Thank you, pretty girl,” I said, rubbing the three little white spots that were on her right ear. Her comfort helped me cheer up, even if it was just for a minute. 

*Beep, beep* 

I looked towards my phone while she continued to try and lick my face more. I shifted in the tub to sit up, and Belle took off out the door to avoid the water. I opened up my messages to see three texts from Adam. 

The first one, “Hey, are you okay?” 

“Hello?” 

“Beth… You have your read receipts on. I can see you are reading my texts.” A heavy sigh slowly came out of my mouth while I laid back in the tub, trying to think of something to say. I saw the three little dots appear to show he was texting something else. Lowering my arm to the outside of the tub, I dropped my phone on the fuzzy rug and then submerged my head under the water. The air bubbles quickly rose to the top as I released my breath. I wonder if I drowned how long it would take for someone to come here, I thought. No, that is awful to think. What would happen to Belle? Who would take care of her? Your parents didn’t want you to get her, and you did it regardless. What would they do? 

3

Gasping for air and clearing the hair out of my face, I reached down and moved my phone back to the toilet seat. I stepped out of the tub, grabbed my green towel to wrap around my breast, and walked towards my bathroom mirror. My eyes were still puffy and red from the nonstop crying I had been doing for the last two weeks. Looking at myself in the mirror, I removed my towel and examined myself. Looking at the stretch marks that ran down my breasts and thighs, my stomach, when I turned to the side, looked like I was about three months pregnant. Disgusted with how I let myself go these last five years in the relationship. 

Maybe this is what my former co-worker meant when he said that ‘curvy’ girls were more fun to fuck, because their extra skin made it easier to hold on to. 

“Stupid Irish men,” I muttered as I ran my hands along the side of my body. I knew I had let my body go, and maybe this was the reason that Adam had left me. Of course, he would never say that to my face. He was too nice in that way. He was always being considerate of what he said to me. 

*Beep, beep* 

Picking up my phone, I looked to see who could be texting. 

Zayne. My co-worker. The guy who was the rebound two months after the breakup. We had agreed that we wouldn’t be an item, just FWBs. He was my go-to, middle of the night, can’t sleep kind of text. 

“You okay?” was his text. Never before had he reached out like this. It wasn’t like him. “They say all’s well that ends well…” I replied. I need to cut the Taylor Swift crap, I thought. As I had moved to my bedroom, his next text came in. 

“Seriously, are you okay?” 

4

I sat there with my legs crisscrossed, thinking of how to respond. Do I tell him that I thought of drowning myself in my tub less than ten minutes ago or lie and say everything is fine? Normally I would be against lying, but tonight that was the winner. 

“I’m fine.” 

The three dots appeared and then disappeared. Zayne was never one to care about how someone else felt; instead, it was all about him. That was why these hookups would work between us. He got what he wanted, and I did too—my chance to escape my mind and shut down for the few minutes that it lasted. Our ‘situationship’ wasn’t healthy, but sometimes I didn’t need healthy. I just needed to escape. 

I tapped on Adam’s last text. The text bubbles still showed like he was still writing out another message. 

Why is he doing this? Shaking my head, I laid back on the bed and saw a white and brown fur ball jump up. 

“Make yourself comfortable, Belle. It’s just going to be you and me for a while,” I said. She walked towards the pillow I was lying on then curled herself right up against my shoulder and gave a heavy sigh. “Well, aren’t you just being dramatic,” I smirked. She licked my nose in response and then burrowed her head into the black comforter. 

I looked back to Adam’s text. The bubbles had gone away, and now all I could see were the texts he had sent over the last week. I began to type out my response, and instead of thinking before hitting send, I did the complete opposite. I hit send. 

“We were built to fall apart. Then we broke each other’s hearts.” That was my response. I didn’t know what else to say to him. 

5

Laying in bed, my mind began to wander back in time. I met him close to six and a half years ago. We worked together at Applebee’s, but we also were hurting at the same time. It was the same relationship that I had with Zayne currently that I had with him in the beginning. We helped each other heal in different ways, but we couldn’t let each other go. So our story had begun, not the way that a normal story would start, but it was something. During this time, he was the person I thought I was meant to spend my life with. We were both in school working towards a better future. He was determined to be a nurse and live in the big city. I wanted to be a writer who could travel the world. We had always supported each other. We thought this was love, but we never called it what it was. Toxic. We were always worried about each other being honest. It made Adam paranoid any time I didn’t immediately answer the phone when he called. I chose to overlook that side of him. 

That was a choice I shouldn’t have made. 

*Beep, beep* 

Was it Adam? I thought to myself. 

Nope. 

It was a notification from Bumble. I forgot about this app. As I clicked on it, I couldn’t remember who I had swiped right on. The few memories I have of this were when I was at the bar with my friend Sam. We had been doing Patron shots left and right, along with her constantly advising me on how I needed to get back out there. How now that I have been single for four months, I need to start talking to people again. She had been telling me about all the apps she was on and meeting all of these men who made her feel special. 

Checking my messages, I was surprised to see I had one guy reaching out to the question I had asked him. 

6

“Favorite childhood memory?” 

He had replied, talking about all of the trips he and his family made to his grandparents. Seems like a sweet guy, I thought. I swiped through his profile. He was a good-looking guy, about 6’3”, and very family-oriented. He had included that he was a dog lover, though he didn’t have a dog currently, and that he was a teacher/coach. The more that I looked at his profile, the more I wanted to know about him. There was this attraction to him that I didn’t know how to describe. As I went to reply, there was a sudden knock at my door. 

Belle was alert and barking up a storm. My wall clock showed that it was 10:30 pm on a Friday. I looked out my little peephole in the door and felt my heart drop to my gut. “What do you want, Adam?” I yelled through my door. “Why are you here?” “Your text. I’m here because of your text, Beth.” 

I slightly opened the door and put my head between it and the black doorframe. “My text didn’t say for you to come over.” 

“Yes, but you quoted Taylor Swift lyrics. I know you only do that when you hit a low point. Let me in, please?” 

My head and heart were at a battle. My heart wanted him to come inside, while my head was saying to close the door completely. 

“Come on in,” I sighed, opening the door completely. As he walked by me, I could smell the alcohol on him. He must have been out drinking when he was texting me. Turning to face him, he placed his right hand on my cheek and gently pushed me against the door. 

“I can’t shake you, Beth. I tried that night we broke up and the nights that followed, but I can’t get you out of my mind.” 

7

I could feel his other hand running up and down my body, exploring every inch of my black silk nightgown. 

“I can’t do this, Adam,” I whispered. “You can’t just come back after four months of leaving just because you saw me post a sad tweet.” 

His breathing was getting heavy as his face inched closer to mine. “I know, and I regret leaving you behind, Beth.” 

I could see the hurt in his brown eyes. It was the same hurt that I saw that night and every day when I looked at myself in the mirror. 

“I have missed you,” I said. “I missed you since that night you said we were over.” Adam’s hand tilted my face up towards him, his lips right in front of mine. For a moment, nothing but good memories flashed before my eyes. He made me smile and would surprise me with my favorite flowers, white daisies. 

“I want you,” he whispered. “I want all of you again.” 

I felt this sharp pain enter my gut when those words flowed out of his mouth. There was no going back from this, and I couldn’t tell what the future would bring, but at that moment, all I wanted was him. 

“I’m yours.” I pushed my face forward to where our lips collided. I could taste the Jameson on his lips and the hint of cigarettes. He never smoked when we were together, but I wasn’t going to stop and ask why he started now. Our hands explored each other like it was the first time all those years ago. His touch made me feel safe and weak, all in one. He made a grunting noise as he picked me up, my legs wrapped around his waist, and carried me to what used to be our bedroom. 

8

I wanted us to make up for the lost time. To stay frozen while time continued to move around us. His embrace was what I missed the most. His touch. His taste. The way we got tangled up in the sheets and then would lay there and giggle about how we were as twisted as a pretzel. We lay there that evening, his head resting on my chest, yet I could still feel the pain. The same pain I felt the night where he called it quits. I looked over at my neon clock, where I saw it was 12:03 am. 

Crap. 

I needed to sleep, but I couldn’t. 

*Beep, beep* 

I quickly reached for my phone so it wouldn’t wake Adam. He began to quietly snore, my signal that he was completely passed out. I clicked on my notifications to see that it was from Bumble. 

A message, to be exact. 

Butterflies arose in my stomach, along with a shiver that ran up my spine. Never had I imagined that I would be in bed with my ex and also want to meet this new guy in person. Beth, what a shame you're fucked in the head, I told myself. 

Bumble guy had asked me what my favorite childhood memory was, and it was nice to think back to when I was a little kid. I told him my favorite memory would have to be all the summers that I spent rodeoing with my grandparents and how it shaped my love for horses even more. 

Laying my phone on the side of my bed, I looked towards Adam. He was everything that I wanted when I was twenty. He was the kind of guy who had a great career and knew what he wanted in life until it came to his relationships. He and I always struggled with getting out of our 

9

comfort zone of a relationship. Yes, we loved our date nights in the same three places, but it always was the same old routine. He never wanted to venture out and try new things, while I practically had to beg for those experiences. 

The vibration went off on my phone, and as I looked at it, I had to grip it tight so I wouldn’t drop it. 

Bumble guy wanted to meet. 

He wanted to take me on a coffee date and get to know more about me. 

I could feel my heart begin to race. What do I do? 

I knew I had to make a choice. 

In my response to him, I said one simple word. 

Yes. 

Tabatha Franklin is a passionate 5th grade ELAR teacher. She has a love for words and literature, and this passion is what she uses to encourage her students. She loves to spend time with her two dogs, her husband, and a good cup of coffee. Previously published in October Hill Magazine and is currently a Non-Fiction Editor for Chaotic Merge Magazine.

‘Flipped’

Juan Sebastian Restrepo(zeb) is a Florida-based artist known for his paintings and drawings that explore the interplay between memory and storytelling. He holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a BFA from Pratt Institute. His recent exhibitions include “intersections” at New World Gallery (2023) and “Hybridity” at the Edwardsville Arts Center (2018). Upcoming solo shows include “No Further Expectations Beyond this Night” at The Art and Culture Center/Hollywood (2024) and “multitasking” at [NAME] Publications in Miami, FL (2024). Restrepo also teaches as an Adjunct Faculty member at Florida International University and Miami Dade College.

Flipped

Meghan's seat belt cut into her stomach as she drove to work. She fiddled with it, trying to get it to sit the right way as she sat at a stoplight. She got it after a second, the light turned green, and she kept driving.

A week later, something jumped onto her bed as she slept in her apartment. It shocked her awake and bounced her up. Her heart pounded as she looked for the intruder. Someone had broken in. She flipped the light on, and it burned her eyes.

No one. Nobody stood on the bed or next to it. The covers twisted around her legs, and she sat at an angle, turned ninety degrees, staring at the wrong wall. She spun on her bed and took in her empty bedroom.

She grabbed a gymnastics trophy off her dresser and spent ten minutes hunting through her apartment, testing the locks on windows and doors and peeking into closets. She held the trophy like a cudgel, upside down. She found nothing. A nightmare. It must have been. No one would break into an apartment on the tenth floor of a fifteen-floor building. She went back to bed, setting the trophy on the nightstand next to her phone.

A few days into the next week, she headed to an account manager's office. She had to talk to him about the new accounts for Q2, and then she had to speak with the marketing director about the Q1 ad campaigns. She hummed "Free Fallin'," which had come on in the car.

Her tan flats left the floor as she turned a corner. Her body shot upward, she pitched forward, and her back slammed into the drop ceiling. She punched through a panel before she fell back down to her stomach, skinning her knees on the brutal, unyielding office carpet. She chomped her tongue hard enough to draw blood.

Voices approached, and co-workers found Meghan sitting on the ground, rubbing her head and looking up, face a twisted mask of surprise and confusion. Dust and broken ceiling pieces littered the ground around her. “I...I flew up and hit the ceiling.”

“What do you mean?” a man said as he helped her to her feet. “You jumped?”

“No, I....” Meghan looked at the gap in the ceiling. “It was like gravity had reversed. And then I fell.”

“Fell? Haven't you learned how to fall after all those years of gymnastics?” A woman said. She looked up as Meghan glared at her. “It looks like a piece of ceiling fell. Did it hit your head?”

A few minutes later, Meghan sat at her desk, ice pack pressed against her head. She spat blood into the wastebasket and glared at the ceiling. Maybe a panel had fallen onto her.

Three days later, on Saturday, Meghan carried a box of old cookware down to the storage of her apartment building. She took an elevator to the parking garage and crossed to the storage area. She balanced the box on her leg while she fished the key out. Key in, pull open door, enter storage space. Once she found her apartment's closet, she had to rearrange things to make space for the cookware and spent the next ten minutes playing Tetris with old Christmas decorations from her mom, clothes she meant to donate, and a surfboard she had never used.

If I move this box of ornaments over here, that means I can put this bag of old jeans on top of it. Ah, dammit, the surfboard fell over again. Have to...prop it up...in the corner. At last--enough space. She stood up, picked up the box of cookware, and fit it into the space she had made. 

She dusted off her hands, closed the door to her closet, fished her phone out to check the time--plenty of afternoon left--and flew up until her body hit the ceiling.

Her head hit first, and then her body crumpled into a fetal curl. Breath blew from her lungs. The shock jolted her hand open, and her phone crashed to the cement floor, nine feet below her as she lay on the ceiling. Her body pressed against the dirty surface, and she let out a painful cry. She rolled her back against the ceiling and looked down at her phone. The screen had a deep, flickering crack.

Her stomach bucked. Her vision spun. White dots flashed. A lump on her skull pushed her hair aside. Her right wrist shouted at her, and her hip stung. Something pulled up onto the ceiling. She ran her hands over her clothes but found no wire, no rope, nothing to lift her. She rolled to her hands and knees on the ceiling. Dust flew down her throat, and her stomach twisted as she coughed. A fluorescent light blared a foot away. She rubbed her eyes and tried to stand.

She collapsed back against the ceiling, eyes shut as the world spun on every axis it had. She groaned and whimpered, pulling her sore body toward the door. She pushed herself to her knees and reached for the doorknob; a full foot separated the handle from her fingers. Hands pressed against the wall, she put one foot flat on the ceiling--her legs shook and failed her. Meghan slumped to her side. She looked over her shoulder, at her phone, on what used to be the ground. Panting, swallowing, Meghan turned around and pulled herself until she laid over it. She got to one knee. 

She fell, striking the cement ground next to her phone. Several minutes went by; her body lay under grimy fluorescent lights, motionless.

The door to the storage area opened, and a black middle-aged woman came in, carrying a box. A moment later, she found Meghan and ran to her side. "Miss? Miss, are you all right?"

One of Meghan's eyes cracked open. She shifted and grabbed the woman's wrist. Everything hurt. "What on earth happened to you?" the woman asked.

Meghan tilted her head back at the ceiling. She picked up her phone, squeezing it tight. "I got stuck to the ceiling," she said. “And then I fell.”

The woman, Cynthia Anderson from the sixth floor, helped Meghan limp back to her apartment. The elevator, as it sped to the tenth floor, sent her into nauseated spirals. Meghan collapsed onto a chair as Cynthia ran around, finding painkillers and something to pack ice in. Meghan's wrist swelled, her knee bled--again--and thoughts bounced inside her head like rubber balls inside a bathroom. Crashing everywhere. "Meghan, I need to get you to a doctor," Cynthia said. Meghan looked at her. She'd been sitting in the chair for an hour. Or a minute. "I'm a nurse, and I think you have a concussion. You said you fell?"

Meghan looked up at the ceiling. A popcorn ceiling, with millions and billions of tiny, jagged stalactites. "No, I...." She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Something happened and I was lying on the ceiling, and then I fell and hit the ground.”

“That concussion must be worse than I thought. Let's get you to my car.”

She had a concussion. The doctor recommended sleep. “No, you don't have to wake up every two hours. Just sleep.” Meghan hung on to Cynthia like a high bar as they went up to her apartment. Cynthia offered to check on her in the morning. Meghan agreed, holding tight to the counter.

Pain rocked Meghan from one side to the other, splashing over her like waves on a ship. Fragmented thoughts and vivid, feverish half-dreams boiled her skin.

She stood in the center of her bedroom. Her bed floated over her.

She stepped over the lintel to get to the hallway.

She looked out the window, up at the distant ground. A friend beckoned to her from far below.

She woke up the next morning in the center of her living room.

"I'm really sorry," Meghan said Monday morning. She sat on the floor under the kitchen counter, one hand squeezing it. "I feel awful. I've...I've been lightheaded for a few days now, and I fell really bad on Saturday. I got a concussion." Her cracked phone flickered in her hand as her boss spoke. "Because of the ceiling tile? Uh...maybe. I feel a little better, but...I don't even think I should be driving, much less working on sales reports." She let a long breath out as her boss went on. "As long as I can get a little extension for the Q3 after-report, I'll have enough time. I hope to feel better by tomorrow."

She said goodbye and hung up, rubbing her forehead. She replaced the ice pack atop her head. The swollen lump had shrunk, and she shivered, but it weighed her down.

Twice more since waking up on Sunday, confused and cold in the middle of her living room. 

The first time as she showered, minutes after Cynthia had called to check on her. She had grabbed for the shower handle, and her wet hand had slipped. She crashed to the ceiling--the popcorn ceiling had sliced hundreds of tiny cuts up and down her left side. She reached out and grabbed the shower curtain rod, counting the seconds. She'd spent her entire childhood grabbing bars, and she focused on her landing. At her best guess, she spent five minutes on the ceiling as the shower ran, gusting steam up onto her. When it ended, she swung on the rod. Her hands slipped off the warm, slick metal, and she crumpled to the hard tile. She gasped as more new pain shot through her. 

The water ran on, crashing onto the floor of the shower. She stretched her body out, bracing herself between the shower stall, the toilet, and the wall, breath coming faster and faster, heart swelling in her throat. Steam stung her eyes. The cold tile dug into the marks on her side. She inched herself across the floor until she curled herself around the toilet, shivering, dripping, hurting, and crying.

The next morning, in the kitchen, she maneuvered to the sink as she held tight to the edge of the counter. She wrapped her arms around the edge of the sink and pried open a cabinet with the tips of her fingers. By tenths of inches, she worked a mug out and turned the water on.

The second time had come at night, before bed. She had called Cynthia again.

"It happened again. In the shower. I was on the ceiling for five minutes, Cynthia, you have to believe me!"

"Oh, hon, you poor thing. Confusion and dizziness are common concussion symptoms--it just felt like you were on the ceiling. My husband is home right now, he could come up and help you out. If you're okay with that, of course."

Meghan's eyes had been on the ceiling. "I guess that's okay."

"Okay, he'll be up in a few minutes. I'll have him bring some oatmeal cookies. They might not help your head, but they'll taste good."

Ten minutes later, a short, middle-aged black man appeared at the door to her apartment, beaming and holding a plate of cookies. "Meghan, right? By God, you look...." His eyes flicked up and down her body. "Uh, Meghan, you live with anyone? Boyfriend?"

"No, no." Meghan turned around and led him in. "I'm here alone."

"But...you have a boyfriend?"

Bruised. Fearful. "Mr. Anderson, I'm single. No one is doing this to me." She sat on the floor, near her coffee table. She reached out and wrapped her arm around its leg. 

"Oh, good. Good. Because, you know, I've seen that kinda stuff a few times. Here." He held out the plate of cookies. "Go on. Cynthia's a dynamite baker."

"Thank you," Meghan whispered, taking one of the cookies and slipping the edge between her teeth.

Mr. Anderson--Boyd--had asked her about possible triggers for dizziness and falling. Slips? Momentary losses of thought? Meghan didn't know. She tried to explain what had been happening. It couldn't be, of course. She had hit her head. She nibbled the cookie down to crumbs as she hung on to the coffee table. Boyd told her to be careful, get some rest, and to call him or Cynthia if she needed help. He left the plate of cookies in the kitchen and said goodbye.

Meghan sat, clinging to the table. She swallowed hard and slipped her eyes shut. Darkness spun around her. She let the table go. She remained on the floor. Staggering into the kitchen, she stood in the center until she grabbed the edge of the counter. Moments later, her feet flipped over her head. She lost her grip and crashed to the ceiling, at least escaping another head wound. A few moments later, the tenant above her stomped on his floor.

Meghan stared down at the plate of oatmeal cookies on the counter until she fell ten minutes later. She ended up on her back on the kitchen floor, crumbs scattered around her, after bouncing off the counter and rolling.

The next morning, the mug she held ran over with water, soaking her hands, and she dropped it into the sink as cold struck her. She slapped the faucet off and sank to her knees in front of the sink.

A jagged crack ran around where she had hit the ceiling the night before. Enough force to almost punch through to the apartment above hers.

She put her hand to her pocket for her phone. It still rested on the counter after she talked with her boss. She shoved it into her pocket. With one arm over her head, she made her way to her bedroom, clinging to the refrigerator, the couch, and her bed. She wrapped herself in a duvet and balanced a pillow on her head. After creeping to her dresser, she took out a belt and began to find a way to strap the pillow down. She got as far as looping the belt around her throat before throwing it into the corner, shaking her head. She took her phone out and sent a message to Cynthia, asking if she had a bike helmet she could borrow.

And then she sat in her bedroom, holding the pillow over her head, sweating under heavy blankets, staring up at the ceiling.

She jolted awake, poison slicing through her veins. She looked around and found herself still on the ground, sleeping on the pillow she'd been holding over her head. She pulled her phone out. Almost noon. She sat back against the edge of her bed, clutching the pillow to her chest. She buried her face in it, and her stomach woke her an hour later. She grabbed a fistful of carpet and took a deep breath.

Crawling across the carpet, pillow and duvet covering her, she returned to the kitchen. From her spot on the floor, she opened the fridge and grabbed the closest item, a tub of yogurt. She pulled open a drawer and grabbed a spoon sight-unseen, and huddled under the open drawer as she ate.

And nothing happened. She emptied the tub of yogurt and tossed it toward the garbage. Soft food in her belly strengthened her. She closed the drawer she hid under. Licking her lips and breathing out, she stood. Everything spun. The ground quivered under her feet. Afternoon light shifted through the window, but she didn't go anywhere. 

Until she bent for her pillow.

Her hands caught the edge of the counter, hanging on this time. The entire length of the countertop cracked and separated from the cabinets underneath it, groaning as it pulled away.

It held, attached at the end against the wall, and for a moment, Meghan hung under the ceiling. It waited a foot below her; she released and landed on her feet. She'd ruined her countertop. At first, it had been a minute. Then five. Then ten. How long this time?

She walked to her bedroom, stepping over the lintel, wincing every time her foot came down on the popcorn ceiling. She stood over her bed. Her gymnastics trophy remained on the nightstand. When she fell, how hard could it be to summon those championship skills back and keep from hurting herself? As she fell onto her bed, of all things? Even softer than a mat!

She knelt and then laid on her stomach--when she fell, she flopped onto her back without pain.

A laugh escaped her. It turned into a roar and a scream. I've been flipping and grabbing bars my whole life! It's not like it's anything new! Laughing until her stomach hurt, she laid on her bed, hair spread out around her head and sheets in disarray.

She sat up and put her feet on the floor, curling her toes into the carpet. A foot away, the golden gal on top of her gymnastics trophy applauded her. She picked up the trophy and held it to her body.

But what next? She could keep herself safe--now she had to figure out why. She'd call Cynthia and Boyd and try to convince them. What about her friend Marie? Marie would back her up. She'd be there to he--

She hit the ceiling hard enough to punch through it, cracking through the plaster and wood and shooting into the next apartment, an empty bedroom. She screamed and clutched the gymnastics trophy as she continued up. Her body turned, and her back hit the next ceiling first, denting it as she came to rest and forcing all the breath from her lungs.

Pain rolled down her spine. She squeezed the trophy to her chest, eyes shut tight. They have to believe me now. How else could I do something like this? As long as they look--

The pressure pulling her up surged; she crashed through the ceiling, shooting upward into the next apartment, smashing apart a bed and the next ceiling, shrieking as she plummeted toward the top of the building. She gained speed, crashing through two more levels until she entered the penthouse. The old woman who lived there jumped out of her skin when Meghan shot through her floor and crashed into the ceiling, crumpling into a ball.

Meghan looked up. She curled around her trophy. Years of taking falls hadn't left her just yet. She spotted the old woman. "Help."

A force yanked on her, and the final barrier between her and endless sky cracked. "Help! Help me!" Meghan shouted. "I need help! Call someone, please! Do something!" The ceiling crackled, crumbling dust to the floor. "Please! Please!"

It gave way, and bright blue sky greeted Meghan.

She fell up with nothing to stop her. Arms and legs spun. Buildings flashed in and out of her sight. The sun carved arcs in her eyes. Her trophy caught the light and turned it to golden spears, attracting attention from anyone near windows.

She glanced off the edge of a cell tower on top of the building, and it knocked the scream out of her mouth. Her thigh struck a dish, and she cried out in pain, still climbing. Her shoulder hit something, and numbness filled it to the fingertips as she twirled into the sky.

You spent your entire childhood grabbing bars!

Her numb fingertips caught part of the tower, and she jolted to a stop. Her toes hung up toward the sky, her hair gusted around her face, and her right arm cradled the gymnastics trophy to her chest. Her left hand squeezed the metal bar with all the strength it had. 

Breath pounded in and out of her. She craned her head up, taking in the immense height of the cell tower and her building. Distant, tiny cars drove through streets far under her head. 

The cell tower creaked. Metal squealed and bent. The bar Meghan clung to twisted, pointing upward. Meghan's fingers dug furrows into it. 

It snapped; the sky grew, and the ground shrank. The cell tower's final segment flashed closer and closer, a red light atop it glowing every few seconds. She reached out her hand as she spun, and her shoulder pulled out of its socket as her fingers wrapped around the final rung on the cell tower's metal skeleton. Pain tore across her back, and she let out a howl. She looked up.

Endless sky waited to swallow her--licking its lips as she hung under it, pointed straight down its throat. Gnashing its teeth, spittle flying, tongue darting out and in.

A circular opening widened past her feet. Crackling red static ringed it, and bloody darkness waited inside. Moans and howls and screams poured out. The opening in the sky grew around her, and her separated shoulder lost strength. Her hand squeezed harder, just like when she swung on the bar in high school. 

Black light surrounded her. A small opening let the cell tower through and showed her world. Alien color dug into her eyes. Flickering figures appeared--stretched and narrow, three fingers on each hand as long as her arm, and they reached out for her. They stood on the sky. The closest one's boiling hand touched her face.

Bellowing, Meghan snapped the base of the gymnastics trophy through its head. It turned to a red smear. Blazing beams of white light shot out from its body, blinding her, and screams drilled into her head.

Whistling air replaced screams. Her eyes cracked open--blue sky replaced red. She hung from the cell tower, toes pointed toward the ground, waves of pain from her shoulder washing over her. Red powder covered the trophy's base.

She turned her head. Pain and flipping perspectives dizzied her. Light reflected off windows, each one containing staring people. Her toes found cold metal. She groaned as her shoulder redoubled its painful argument. She wrapped her other arm around the cell tower, still holding the trophy, and eased herself down.

After a few minutes, she had to work her way around the tower to a small, narrow set of metal rods--the tower's ladder. Her stomach rolled inside her, and every time the cell tower's red light flashed, her head snapped up, looking for a red wound in the blue. 

Her foot touched gritty cement, and she lost her balance, yet her feet kept her upright. Open sky swirled around her. The door to the roof pounded open, and people rushed for her. She cradled her wounded arm. The gymnastic trophy base's sharp, stained corner pressed into her collarbone. They had all seen her.

Daniel Deisinger is alive and he dares you to prove otherwise. His work has appeared in more than thirty publications, including 'Havik,' 'Defenestration Magazine,' and 'Ripples in Space.' His serial “Voices in My Head” is available on Kindle Vella. His X account is @Danny_Deisinger, and his website is saturdaystory-Time.weebly.com.

‘TRAUMA BOND’

Juan Sebastian Restrepo(zeb) is a Florida-based artist known for his paintings and drawings that explore the interplay between memory and storytelling. He holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a BFA from Pratt Institute. His recent exhibitions include “intersections” at New World Gallery (2023) and “Hybridity” at the Edwardsville Arts Center (2018). Upcoming solo shows include “No Further Expectations Beyond this Night” at The Art and Culture Center/Hollywood (2024) and “multitasking” at [NAME] Publications in Miami, FL (2024). Restrepo also teaches as an Adjunct Faculty member at Florida International University and Miami Dade College.

     TRAUMA BOND                      

     First off, Candy was not old enough to be a grandmother. She had just turned forty-eight and did yoga at the YMCA twice a week. Real grandmothers had to be at least sixty with white hair and glaucoma and wearing three pairs of glasses. Like her Grammy Barnes, once upon a time, doling out gardening advice and oatmeal with blackstrap molasses. That was an earlier era, before opioids and Suboxene. Before teenagers covered themselves with tattoos and got pregnant without knowing it and lost their parental rights by leaving their toddler wandering the neighborhood in diapers. Repeatedly.

     “It’s all my fault,” Candy said. “I must have done something wrong.” She and her neighbor, Sheila, were sitting on the back porch, drinking ‘sun’ tea. Candy brewed it in a big jar on summer weekends. Sometimes they added a touch of vodka.

     “No, you were great. I saw it all. The neighborhood crew loved it when you’d load them in your van and drive them through the carwash. Anymore, it’s the luck of the draw, having kids,” Sheila said. 

     “Your daughter seems to be doing okay,” Candy said.

     “I hope so,” Sheila said. “She only calls home once a month now.”

     The toddler’s name was Max. A puffball rascal who pulled the cat’s tail. Named for Mad Max, his absent mother’s favorite movie. After several 911 calls from neighbors in the trailer court, Child Protection Services got involved. They placed Max in foster care with Candy. The unrepentant daughter also lost her right to a name in Candy’s house. Candy tried to not even think her name.

     “It’s a shock, but eventually you’ll forgive her, just like when our girls got expelled together,” said Sheila, who had just lugged over a dusty Pack-N-Play crib from her attic. 

     “Remind me what they did,” Candy said.

     “Called in a bomb scare to avoid taking a final exam.”

     “I never forgave her for that. I just forgot,” Candy said.

     “This time, she’s inpatient and receiving a medical detox. She’ll get clean,” Sheila said, “and, honey, your little houseguest is a champ.”

     Sheila waved both hands at Max and scrunched a funny face, and the toddler stared back impassively. 

     “When his dad comes for the supervised visits, Max looks up at him like, hey, who’s the grown-up here?” Candy said.

     Max’s father, Gator, was a scrawny, wannabe rapper who freelanced as a plumber’s assistant. He rarely showed up on schedule at Candy’s house and when he did, played with Max as if he himself were a two-year old. Gator was so skinny that the local plumbers hired him to slide into narrow crawl spaces that nobody else could enter.

     “No worry of Gator ever trying to get custody,” Sheila said.

     “I kind of wish he would,” Candy said. “No, I don’t really mean that.”

     “Relax. I won’t tell CPS.”

     Caseworkers came and went with clipboards and cameras. They studied everything in Candy’s bungalow on Bridge Street. They told her to address her ant problem. Everything was under observation. Everything was being supervised and noted. And everything was getting more tenuous, as Candy second-guessed all her choices. How much screen time is healthy for a toddler? And, of course, the sugar thing. 

     To provide the required level of care for her grandson, Candy would either have to quit her job at the mall optician, or hire a nanny, or put him in a certified daycare. This was according to the red-bearded caseworker who came to inspect Max’s bedroom.

     “What if I took him to work with me?” Candy said, “They have child-care for the retail employees at the mall.”

     “We’d have to inspect those premises too,” the red beard said.

     Silence, while Candy rubbed her eyes with her fists.

     “Are you all right, ma’am?” the caseworker asked.

     “I’m remembering something from high school science class about the act of observation changing the thing observed,” Candy said.

     “You’re feeling… changed how?” the caseworker asked.

     “Way more paranoid,” Candy said and shrugged and pulled her glasses down to the tip of her nose. “They should sell insurance for my predicament. Parental Screw-up Insurance. God, I never expected this to happen to me.”

     “Don’t blame yourself. It happens a lot. I’ve got a twenty-five year old living in my basement, playing video games all night,” the caseworker said.

     Candy appreciated the sentiment. “My grandmother used to listen to a radio show, Queen for a Day, and when it got toward the end and the prizes were being dangled in front of the contestants, she’d say, ‘Just try and get it, sweetie. Just try and get it.’”

     “I’m not sure what that means,” the caseworker said.

     “Most everything in life is too good to be true,” Candy said.

     After her husband bolted when she was six months pregnant (life lesson: never fall in love with a carpet salesman), Candy went back to Central Tech to become an optician’s assistant. She had to pay the bills somehow and, what the heck, she’d always loved eyeglasses. In her will, Grammy Barnes bequeathed an entire collection to Candy. Horn rims, rhinestone cat-eyes, polarized aviators. Candy wore them for fun, for dress-up, and when she needed to feel serious. She wore the serious glasses a lot now. Would Grammy Barnes approve of her decisions about Max? 

     At work, Candy displayed a soft touch with her customers, literally and linguistically. A purchase of eyeglasses is an intimate experience. When gently placing the product on the customer’s head, Candy always added a slight stroke at the temples. And a warm word.

     “You look ready for the beach at St. Tropez.”

     “Is that in Florida?”

     “Somewhere around there.”

     “Do the bifocals make me seem fuddy-duddy? Maybe I should get the progressives.”

     “No, on the contrary. I was thinking the traditional bifocal line adds some gravitas.”

     Candy decided to put little Max in the daycare at the mall. No choice really. She couldn’t afford anything else and Social Security was years away. She was afraid that Max would get expelled for biting or throwing toys. He liked to throw stuff out of his crib. And he never spoke. Age two and a half and Max hadn’t uttered a single word to Candy or the bearded caseworker, whose name was ‘Bill’. 

     “Should I be worried about that?” Candy asked.

     “Let’s give it a while longer,” Bill said.

     “Would you like something to drink, a glass of sun tea?”

     “Yes, thank you, ma’am. I’m parched.”

      They sat out on the porch and shared a cold drink. It became a habit. Bill had come by the house several times now. Max crawled around and eyed him, turning slowly left and right, as if the toddler had the world under observation too, and felt speechless at the sorry state of affairs. Or rather, Max spoke out with his eyes, big blue discs, astonished and perplexed. Twice, Max reached up and yanked at Bill’s red beard. Ouch. Somehow he took it in stride.

     “I hung a photo of his mother on the wall beside the changing table,” Candy said, “but he doesn’t seem to recognize her.”

     Bill said, “I notice that you never use his mother’s name.”

     “I’m trying to forget her. It’s awful, but otherwise I just couldn’t cope.”

     Bill murmured something far down in his throat and thumped his chest.

     Candy added, “The truth is, I’m really mad at myself.”

     Bill nodded and said, “Been there, done that. Try hanging a photo of yourself with Max’s mother. And also one of his young dad.”

     “That’s a good idea, thanks,” she said, “How’s it going with the gamer in your basement?”

     “Obsessed with Grand Theft Auto and a webcam site that streams the daily existence of a guy crossing the Atlantic ocean in a barrel.”

     “Say what?” Candy asked.

     “You heard it right,” Bill said.

     “My Grammy Barnes used to complain that the world was passing her by. And I never really understood that until now.”

     “I’ve been feeling some compassion for the dinosaurs too,” Bill agreed.

     Bless his heart, little Max did okay in the daycare. He was content to sit in the corner and watch the other kids play, occasionally lobbing a stuffed animal at them. 

     “Somehow he knows this has to work out, or else we’re in big trouble,” Candy said to Bill, when he came to inspect the daycare. “He still isn’t talking, by the way.”

     Bill shrugged and said, “Nature gives us the first couple years of life to experience basic human connection, before language comes along and screws everything up.”

     “So… he’s enjoying it while he can,” Candy said.

     “Exactly, while he’s got someone who really cares for him,” Bill said.

    “Hey, you’re sweet,” Candy said. And Bill was sweet, sort of, in an affable lunkhead manner that hinted at scar tissue not far underneath and that Candy had been assiduously avoiding ever since her lunkhead husband abandoned her. In the minus column, Bill sported pathetic, drugstore readers. 

     He surprised her with a come-on. He turned to Max and said, “Kid, your grandma is hot.”

     Max blinked his blue eyes. Candy blushed and said, “Bill, I know you mean that as a compliment, but I’m not sure it’s really appropriate, you know, given the situation with your agency.”

     “Sorry, you’re absolutely right,” Bill said. “Please don’t tell my supervisor.”

     “Is he the one who called to tell me that my daughter has run away from the recovery center?”

     “Yeah, that’s one. I couldn’t bear to tell you myself. Have you heard anything from her?”

     Candy shook her head. “I’ve resigned myself to the fact that the next thing I’ll hear is that she’s overdosed.”

     Her daughter had been missing for over a week. Nothing, no requests for money. Even Gator claimed to know nothing. It was scary. Candy lit votive candles on the dresser at night and grew clingy with Max, allowing him to sleep in her bed. She did not tell Bill about that. At the store, she experienced some unsettling, hallucinatory encounters with former selves. Weirdly personal. She’d be sitting with a young customer and suddenly see herself in the person’s face. A mirror reflection at an earlier age, all hyped up about a band, weekends in roadie mode, hitching a ride to the casino bar in the equipment van. It got worse when sparkly floaters started to appear at the edge of her vision. She offered unsolicited advice to her customers.

     “Can I make a recommendation?’ Candy said.

     “Sure, go ahead,” the customer said, thinking it was about eyeglasses.

     “Don’t ever gamble with the rent money.”

     “What do you mean?”

     Someone filed a complaint with her office manager, who knew the situation with Max and was tolerant enough to give Candy the rest of the week off. News of the overdose came two days later, after a night of hailstorms. Her daughter’s body was found in a dumpster where she had taken shelter. The news cracked Candy’s armor of anger, and she cried for hours, while Max stared quizzically at her from his crib. His blue eyes pleading, “What’s going on? I’m the one who’s supposed to cry, not you.” 

     Candy’s friends rallied and brought food. Sheila, in her frayed, flowery bathrobe, came over and kept the coffee on and helped write an obituary and organized a memorial at the funeral home. 

     “Do you want to include the story of our girls building the chicken coop in your backyard?” Sheila asked.

     “Yes, that’s a good one,” Candy said.

     “How about playing on the high school softball team?”

     “They won the sectional championship her junior year, before she dropped out,” Candy said.

     “Who should we list as survivors, do you want to mention her biological dad?” Sheila asked.

     “Her sperm donor, you mean. No, please, no mention of him,” Candy said, “I don’t want him to read the obit and show up at the funeral home.”

     The chances were slight, but it was hard not to stress about that ghost re-appearing. What if the sperm donor wanted to claim grandparent rights? Or get back together with Candy? Or even worse, what if Candy felt so overwhelmed at the prospect of raising Max alone that she would actually entertain the idea? Bad form. A violation of her pact with Sheila not to date handymen just to get the grass cut. 

     The gathering at the funeral parlor was sparse. Sheila and Gator and two people from Candy’s yoga class and a staff person from the recovery center. The officiant was a pastor who had known the deceased during her brief forays to the local church. Gator performed a memorial rap. And there was a mystery man at the back, in a trench coat and cheap sunglasses. It was Bill. The mystery being, why had he come?

     “I’m not here as a caseworker,” he said, grasping Candy’s hand in the receiving line. “I’m here as a friend. I’m here as another single parent with an only child. I’m here because I understand what you’re suffering.”

     Sheila elbowed Candy and whispered, “For chrissakes, invite him to the reception.”

     The reception being a box of Krispy Kremes and coffee in Candy’s kitchen. She also prepared a bowl of Grammy Barnes’ sweet-carrot salad, featuring mandarin oranges and tiny marshmallows. Gator goofed around with Max in the corner playpen. Max distracted them with a rolling happy-baby pose and silly-guy Gator copied it.  

     “What’s the latest on your son and the webcam barrel traveler in the ocean?” Candy asked.

     Bill said, “It’s taking him longer than expected. The currents shifted and the man is running out of food and the livefeed followers are taking up a collection for him.”

     Sheila said, “Webcams are a popular thing. We should set one up here. A ‘Raising Max’ webcam. I bet we could get a lot of followers.” 

     “People watching every day to see when Max speaks his first word.”

     “And shows off another happy-baby pose.” 

     Candy laughed. It sort of hurt to laugh, but in a good way.

    They chatted about devising a method for Max’s site to provide remote babysitting. What started as a light-hearted fantasy slowly shifted to a serious discussion. Perhaps advertising dollars could be invested in a college fund.

     “Whadya think, Max?” Candy said.

     “Do you want to grow up as a reality TV star?” Sheila asked.

     In the corner, Max blinked and grabbed for a pair of Grammy Barnes’ glasses that Candy had put in the playpen as a toy. He carefully rested the frames on his stubby nose and squinted at the big people, as if that could help bring them into focus.

     Candy went back to work the following week. Slowly, life on Bridge Street returned to some version of time-passes normal. It took a lot of deep breathing and floor twists. It took a lot for Candy to resist blaming herself. With her daughter’s death, Candy and Max were no longer on the caseload at Bill’s agency, so he had no official reason to visit. They texted occasionally. Bill sent links to grief support podcasts. With Gator’s consent, a lawyer took over the formal adoption process. 

     Candy felt lonely and lapsed into thoughts about cutting. A stress-relief method learned from her daughter. It was one of the earliest warning signs, back in junior high. Candy grieved for her misguided daughter and every time someone said, “she’s in a better place,” ouch, Candy wanted to break something. She forced herself to heed Sheila’s advice about not making any big decisions for at least six months after a major loss. 

     Candy enlisted Sheila to explain to Bill, “I’m afraid that includes not starting anything new with a guy, at least for now.”

     “Understood. It’s up to her,” Bill said. They were standing outside on the slushy sidewalk. “I wanted you to know that I quit my job, so there would be no gray area. I’m driving a school bus now.”

     “Guess I’d rather be safe than sorry,” Candy said, from up on the porch, which apparently was not what he wanted to hear. And not what she really wanted to say. “At least for six months,” she added.

     Sheila added, “I think she means that in a positive way.”

     “Right, I get it,” Bill said, ruefully.

     Candy didn’t see him for six months, but she didn’t forget about him either. Sheila did some online, background snooping on Bill, just to know if there were any red flags. Most everything checked out, no gaps in the resume, no priors. There was one puzzling discovery. The kid in the basement did not exist, or rather, yes, Bill did have a gamer son, but the son had died of a fentanyl overdose three years ago. For whatever reason, it seemed Bill still spoke about him in the present tense. Sheila thought this was a red flag. At first, Candy did too, but, gradually, she sort of understood how that could happen.

     Max settled down a bit and stopped yanking the cat’s tail. He occasionally pulled on a baseball cap that Bill had left at the house. The brim slipped down and covered his face and he pulled it up to pay peek-a-boo. In fact, his first spoken word was “peek.” He also frequently pointed to the photo of his late mother with Candy on the shelf by his crib, and one Saturday in mid-November, he spoke his second word, “shoe.” Gator showed up semi-regularly to babysit, while Candy went out grocery shopping and ran errands. 

     Toward the end of December, during a snowstorm, Bill appeared suddenly at the optician store, without any advance notice. It was just before closing time. He sat down on the stool in front of Candy’s counter. He brushed snow off his head and shoulders. She didn’t recognize him at first. He had shaved off his beard. So Max wouldn’t tug on it? For a moment, Candy felt a pang of irrational jealousy that Bill missed Max more than her. 

     Candy sucked in a deep breath and asked, “May I help you?”

     “It’s been six months,” Bill said.

     “Almost to the minute,” she said.

     “I need new glasses. My cheapo readers are terrible,” he said, “and they scratch too easily.”

     “I’m glad you can be the one to say it.”

     “I need a new look,” Bill said, and stared at himself in the oval mirrors.

     “Something… more Elton John?” 

     “I’ve heard that a person’s eyes can be a diagnostic window, you know, like medically,” Bill said.

     “What do you mean?”

     “For diseases and stuff.”

     “Can be, yes.”

     “Can you look into my eyes and diagnose what’s wrong with me?” he asked.

     Candy leaned over and peered into his left eye. She sighed and shifted her position to peer into his right eye.

     “Do you see anything?”

     “Absolutely, the problem is very clear.”

     “What is it?”

     “You can’t get me and Max out of your head.”

     Bill laughed and reached up and they hugged across the counter and knocked some demo gear onto the floor.

     “Let’s go rescue the kid from daycare,” Candy said.

     They cleaned up the stuff on the floor. Candy took Bill’s hand and led him back through the break room and down the narrow hallway to the daycare center. It was noisy, end-of-the-day noisy. They spotted Max in his corner. The toddler stood up, a bit wobbly, and did a quick double-take, but otherwise appeared unfazed. He threw a stuffed tiger at Bill. 

Ian Woollen has recent short fiction at Panorama, Millennial Pulp, OxMag, and forthcoming at Amarillo Bay.

‘Paris of the East’

Juan Sebastian Restrepo(zeb) is a Florida-based artist known for his paintings and drawings that explore the interplay between memory and storytelling. He holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a BFA from Pratt Institute. His recent exhibitions include “intersections” at New World Gallery (2023) and “Hybridity” at the Edwardsville Arts Center (2018). Upcoming solo shows include “No Further Expectations Beyond this Night” at The Art and Culture Center/Hollywood (2024) and “multitasking” at [NAME] Publications in Miami, FL (2024). Restrepo also teaches as an Adjunct Faculty member at Florida International University and Miami Dade College.

Paris of the East

Prepare me the Renaissance. Almost always true is the bare-chested Sun-stirring Americana fever  

Drenched as well till knee-deep in the sweat 

Of summer. Or perhaps the cold-as-spite bite on your cheeks 

On a Parisian evening, evening streets or 

Evening tea at the downtown Inn 

‘Twixt the sheets our thighs, your collar, spilt 

With sunlight like a hazy projection in the  

Electric theater where I first saw you. 

In the air of respected sex and gender 

I gape open my mouth, will you see that three-lettered word they carved  Into my tongue? In the Paris of the East 

Where our only soft evening-airs come from the 

Electric fan and the culture’s what you make of it 

But lack of comprehension and two holed shoes are ever your only tools Tunnels of bones is all I’ve had to bury to be like you. 

Are you from here or do I yearn for you or have you yearned like me To depart the Paris of the East, churchyard I went far, in the black dirt knee-deep. They make you monstrous before a spectacle,  

pinch the skin I scrub for stunning showmanship on the 

Alpines, cliffsides, or the undying riveras chronicled in the likewise undying art. 

The worser weather here, with the chipping varnish, 

the dense exhalation and  

My cheap and starving body and false teeth and no personified 

Dream to hold me and more importantly no strolling on those 

Evening streets where I am predestined to be happy 

I would lose their affections to be the exception of this empty cave Or what they like to call the Paris of the East 

To see the Eiffel, or the Mavericks I call like-minded 

Having the so hollowed-out cheeks I crave, and their smiles I covet Prompted by the high-rise gym I’ll die nearly every day in. 

Fate, I’ll cut you up and swallow your golden guts the ones 

That makes ambition prophetic and gleaming, too. 

Paris, I know you by proxy. I’ve seen your Christmas markets a mile an hour And the ambient jazz that enchants me into desirability. I love your old folks And they will love me, and will cherish the stories 

Of before I bit the tendrils of the Paris of the East 

In speaking for me, don’t show me the golden ticket I know exists I’d swim the Seine like an infectious kiss in all that  

I found glorious. All that I found would haloize this suitably 

Svelte waist and hollow cheeks, or the doe-eyes plus the allure of untethered threads And more and more tantalizing nakedness that makes artful ambition prophetic.

Feng Kok is a aspiring writer based in Malaysia, currently honing my craft as he approaches the end of high school. When he is not writing, he is studying for his IGCSE exams and enjoy reading, watching movies, and consuming other forms of storytelling

‘POMEGRANATE’ & Assorted Poems

Anna Karakalou is a Illustrator, creative director and scenic artist. She have worked in the film industry for 20+ years. She currently teaches Illustration and Sequential Arts at VCU.

POMEGRANATE 

I never knew I was a woman, 

until I ate the pomegranate.

Five,

I pick my nose and burp at crows,

my legs are merriments of cartoon band-aid bruises,

my arms marked by bug bites and mud pie galore. 

What are cooties?

Collecting frog bones, 

a trophy of my morbid accomplishment.

Squishing ketchup packets to decorate my bare fries,

there was no such thing as time. 

Ten, 

I mastered air guitar solos, traded sillybandz, 

wore monster pajamas under my uniform polo shirts,

wizard—vampire tournament during recess.

Please, friend, won’t you smile at me?

Distributing pizza slices on park benches,

the cheese oozes like Goosebumps slime.

Afternoons—

with long haired Patrick and brace face Abraham,

scraping our knees on concrete parking lots,

my skateboard fractured when I hit the ground.

I never knew I was a woman, 

until I ate the pomegranate.

Fifteen, 

I spent my time debating God as if he could hear me.

My body,

blossomed from spring to winter,

unconsenting. 

I was not aware of the skin I housed;

the implications that arrived giftwrapped,

and expectations greeted by strangers.

You’re a young lady now, behave like one.

Banquet dinner, fertility fruit appetizers.

no meal can complement,

the snow mint toothpaste, 

upon consuming a pomegranate. 

Twenty, 

Avoiding reflections in public bathroom;

a reminder that I do not belong.

Not on planet Venus nor planet Mars.

I sprinkled dandruff flakes of parmesan cheese,

on scrambled vermillion meatballs, 

they cruised slowly on angel haired noodles. 

Let's see how long I survive with one meal a day.

Becoming an enigma to myself, 

I snort chunks of humanity, 

until,

I can convince myself 

that I am still a person.

I never knew I was a woman, 

until I ate the pomegranate

BODY GIRL GHAZAL

What did mother say, eyes pensively grey, lightning bolt veins protruding,

through the corners of her wrinkled with age skin, “What happened to my little girl?”

As the music grew louder, hopscotch became powder, cracking carrot colored pill bottles,

Trading cheap beer for cigarettes, donating fist punches in mosh pit circles, violent girl.

When I shaved my hair, mother could not bear, then I bit my flesh torn fingernails, sneezed

 waterfall spit above incandescent birthday flames, “That is not ladylike, you are a gross girl.”

At the clear faced mirror, exhibiting plaid boxer shorts, enveloping forest grown legs, 

pulverize my chest in beige bandages, plum box bruises, flooding my ribcage, hurt girl. 

I stand, between wasteland body and mental benzene plastic, corduroy skin- twist the gears, windup toy, marching to the thump of your heart, mother protests “You don’t look like a girl!”

You supposed that is true, as shades of indigo and verdant possess, the ardor of my precarious being, I— prescribed female at birth, have never been a girl.

GIRLHOOD 

I sat there without my underwear, 

I felt my white lace dress caressing the back of my thighs

and stayed on the seat dripping

Blood.

I thought that’s how girlhood was supposed to go.

You just give and give 

Until your body is at the brink of collapse. 

Until your own blood becomes a foreign substance 

And the world holds it at the palm of its hand

Because it is theirs to claim.

Your girlhood is their plastic wrapped candy.

THE PUB ON 2ND AVE 

I am the beast, disfigured,

with my barren tongue and dead beam unsettling wet eyes.

The mirror cracked images,

shards of glass trickling over my boney knuckles.

Narrow walls quivering,

I felt my heartbeat drumming through my throat 

as the nauseating sweat ingests my pores.

The stench of my day is one breath away, 

my mouth full of absinthian spit and silver iron.

The room convulses like an epileptic performing an embalming ritual.

Bodies hovering over microphone speakers, 

the screech of leather boots conversating on the floor tiles. 

The bathroom has exhausted opportunities,

a sink trailing of snuff cocaine, pop colored graffiti adorning the vulnerable toilet. 

Cheap beer glasses shivering on the pub counter,

next to the scattered, crumbled dollar bills, a junkie's annual collection of pocket change.

The cigarette smoke shrouding over the pool table, embalms me, 

the ash sprinkled out like an interrupted ant pile.

A red head in smudged pink lipstick plants one on ripped leather jacket with a heart tattoo 

the name ‘Mabel’ written inside.

The cluster crowd, emitting friendly punches, slamming spines against each other.

Exchanging odors and fingernail samples for fragments of hedonistic pleasure. 

I am desensitized to pain, as my blood drips like raindrops against car windows, 

trailing down fever dream teeth.

Around the mosh pit cameras flashed on torn t-shirts, studded belts, 

amethyst bruised faces, popsicle dripped vomit on denim pants.

Devouring my busted lip, I heard the voice of God reprimand me;

Don’t become accustomed to the taste of your own agony.

SPIDER

My mother is everywhere 

With her silken web 

She creates a culture of fear

Spreading across from person to person.

Each face becomes an 

Extension of her

Observing and keeping me

In line. 

My mother is the spider

Wrapping me- spinning silk around me 

Keeping me hostage to her web 

Her legs can feel every movement I make. 

My mother is the spider 

The silk queen

Capturing my image in her eight blinded eyes 

Breathing death and pestilence on my shoulders.

I’ve been wrapped in the silk egg

For longer than I expected 

I have outgrown my welcome. 

Kathleen Pedraza is a graduate student of English Literature at Florida International University. Pedraza’s passion for poetry stems from a deep fascination with the complexities of the human experience—the interplay of beauty and discomfort that life often presents. In her writing, she explores the nuances of emotion, mental health, and the contradictions that define our identity. Pedraza is drawn to the moments that are both fleeting and profound, capturing the essence of what it means to be human.