‘Another Shot’

Daniel Wood Adams: Based in Austin, Texas, Daniel Wood Adams is a multifaceted creative with a passion for blending visual aesthetics and craftsmanship. As a graphic designer, illustrator, and woodworker, Daniel’s work reflects a unique intersection of artistry and skill. Daniel’s creative journey began with degrees in Illustration and Graphic Design from Pratt Institute in 2012.

Another Shot

Angel looked at the bric-a-brac that hung on the restaurant walls. Rickie examined the label on his beer bottle. Mary folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. Todd shrugged.

“A woman cannot be a feminist and work in a corporation,” Todd said.

“It’s that simple,” Mary said.

“It’s that simple.”

Angel shook Rickie’s arm.

“Look,” she said. “They’ve got a picture of Abraham Lincoln wearing sunglasses. That’s funny.”

Rickie squinted at the wall.

“I just see dogs that look like rappers playing poker.”

Angel pointed.

“See?”

“I do now.”

Rickie and Angel rubbed shoulders as they laughed.

“You know so much about feminism.” Mary leaned towards Todd. Her elbows rested on the tabletop.

“I took a few courses in Women’s and Gender Studies as an undergrad.”

“Women’s Studies?”

“Women’s and Gender Studies.”

Rickie and Angel paused their inventory of kitsch.

“And now you know all about feminism?” Mary spoke in a neutral, almost maternal, voice. “That’s good. I mean it. That’s really good.”

“Bet it helped you get laid in collage,” Angel said. She stuttered a half-laugh then pursed her lips.

“Sweetie.” Rickie raised his eyebrows. Angel shrugged and mouthed, “What am I supposed to do?” Rickie mimed, “Nothing.”

Even though he was sitting, Todd hitched up his pants as if he were getting ready for manual labor.

“There is a difference between feminism and women’s rights,” he said.

“You mean, you see a difference,” Mary said.

“It’s all about the view of the system. Whether the system is good or bad. Feminism is Marxist. The system is rotten and has to change. Women’s rights is like the current labor moment in the US. The system needs tweaking, but in general is OK. Women simply need a chance to participate. In a corrupt system.”

“Fascinating,” Mary said.

“Take Hillary Clinton. Not a feminist. She is all for the system, the neo-liberalism of 90s. She actually sat on the board of Wal-Mart and never spoke out about Wal-Mart’s anti-union activities. Very aggressive activities, I’ll add.”

“I can’t stand the Clintons.” Mary flinched.

Angel sat up straight in her chair.

“You know what I’d like do to?” she said.

“But the Clinton’s views on the world still represent both parties, pretty much.” Todd raised his eyebrows.

“What?” Rickie said.

“The Clintons are irrelevant.” Mary shared a knowing glance with Todd.

“They have deep fried deviled eggs here.” Mary made eye contact with everyone at the table. “I want some.”

“The Clinton’s neo-liberalism is the shadow behind both parties.” Todd waved his hand in dismissal.

“I’ll order some,” Rickie said. “The fried pickles, too?”

“They’ll die out.” Mary sighed, almost post-coital. “Like the rest of them.”

“Why not?” Angel threw her arms into the air.

“And then what?” Todd took a long drink from his beer bottle. “You think young people will simply end war, poverty, and environmental catastrophe?”

“They can’t make it much worse.” Mary raised her bottle in cheers.

Rickie and Angel looked towards the bar. Their server, the bartender, another server, and a guy at the bar were throwing back a whiskey shot. Rickie smiled weakly. Angel waved. Their server nodded and came to the table.

“We’re out of the eggs,” he said after Angel pointed to the menu as she ordered.

“Pickles?” Rickie said.

“We’ve got the fried pickles.”

“Then the pickles,” Rickie said.

“And fries,” Angel said.

The server slumped away.

“Let’s look at the fries,” Todd said. “As an example of how the system works.”

“Let’s not.” Rickey smirked at his friend.

“Sure,” Mary said. “Let’s look at the fries.”

“More than likely, they are not from around here. We can agree on that. More than likely, the potatoes for the fries come from hundreds of miles away. So then there’s the transportation costs. Also, they don’t cut their own fries here. They buy them precut.”

“You know this how?” Mary said.

 “I assume.”

“When you assume you make an ass out of you and me,” Angel said.

“So these fries come from a factory. Then there’s the oil the kitchen uses. And so on and so on.”

“And so on,” Rickie said.

“And so on,” Mary and Angel said together. They laughed.

Rickie signed to the server to bring a round of shots.

“What kind?” the server said.

“What kind of what?” Angel said.

“Rail bourbon,” Rickie said.

“Ouch.” The other three said at the same time.

“OK, you are making some good points.” Mary gave Todd a half-smile. He half-smiled back.

“I’m buying a round of shots.”

“Not for me,” Todd said. “I’ve got court in the morning.”

“And I’ve got a big presentation in front of one of our biggest clients.” Mary squinched her face.

“Well, tomorrow’s my day off,” Angel said.

“And I’ve decided to be a writer,” Rickie said.

The four tapped their shot glasses on the table and drank.

“Those deviled eggs do look good,” Mary said.

“I’m vegan,” Todd said.

“You can have the pickles.” Rickie lifted the plate of pickles.

“What’s in the sauce?” Tood sniffed at the sauce.

“Chemicals.” Mary stuck her finger in the sauce. She sucked on her finger like a pacifier. “Tasty, fatty, high sodium, and sugar, and chemicals.”

“I’ll just have a plain pickle.”

“Fried in lard,” Mary said.

“Really?” Todd held a pickle mid-air.

“Better put it back,” Rickie said. “It touched your fingers.”

“Now that you touched it, you have to eat it,” Angel said.

“Go ahead,” Mary said. “Eat your lard-fried pickle.”

“You two should date,” Angel said.

“Angel.” Rickie gave his wife a look.

“Well, they did date in high school.”

“We never dated,” Mary said. “Not really.”

“Not really?” Todd said.

“Not unless you count a few hook-ups.”

“We dated our entire junior year. We went to prom.”

“You did,” Rickie said.

“It’s true. Rickie liked me since grade school.” Angel sat upright in her chair. She almost appeared regal.

“Angel!” Rickie sat back in his chair.

“I need another shot,” Mary and Angel said.

Richard Stimac has published a poetry book Bricolage (Spartan Press), two poetry chapbooks, and one flash fiction chapbook. In his work, Richard explores time and memory through the landscape and humanscape of the St. Louis region.

‘Brushing Out the Knots’

Photogropher- Tall Eric

Brushing Out the Knots

“Ninety-seven. Ninety-eight. Ninety-Nine. One Hundred.” Alex lowered the brush and pulled at the clump of loose hairs that had gotten tangled in the splines.

Annabeth gave a satisfied sigh. Her eyes were closed and she bobbed side to side like a boat on the sea. In her lap their dog Charlie was urled into a tight bun. She was scratching his fuzzy little head absentmindedly. “Thank you,” she said softly.

Alex handed the brush over her shoulder and she took it. She leaned forward and deposited it into the drawer of their bedside table. Charlie, displeased with the movement, wriggled away and crawled to the foot of the bed where he splayed out, his tiny feet reaching back to them with the papery pads pointed up towards the ceiling.

Annabeth rubbed her finger over the bottom of the right paw and he withdrew it suspiciously. He turned back to face her,responding with a sour side-eye.

She laid back and pulled the covers over herself. Alex reached for the lamp and flicked it off. Some of the clarity of the room was lost with the light, but they always left the closet cracked with the soft glow from its bulb peering through. The room blurred and though visibility remained, every edge took on a softness and the scene became an impression of itself.

Alex pulled himself down beside his wife and draped his arm across her. They said “Good night”. They said “I love you”. They nodded off, two parts of a whole, and faded to sleep.

—

There was a blue band on the nightstand. It read Annabeth Turner. The adhesive that held it together was very strong. It had been clipped apart with scissors. She was laying in the bed with the covers pulled up to her eyes and the flinching of the closed lids spoke of fitful sleep.

Alex walked up to the table and dug through the drawer for the brush. He walked around the bed to his side and crawled in next to his wife. He pulled the cover back from her face and nudged her shoulder slightly. She made a sound and turned her face up. Her eyes crept open and she looked at him from the corners.

“Come on. Let me help you sit up.”

“No, please.” Her voice was weak. Alex had slipped his hand up under her back and goaded her with a bit of pressure. Her body was heavy.

“We can’t let you get all knotted up.”

“All of me is knotted up.”

“Well maybe so, but I can at least help where I can.”

She whimpered as she gave in and pushed herself up onto her elbows. He helped her along and pulled her up into a sitting position where he could hold her steady with one arm. She was very weak.

He ran his fingers through her dark hair and helped it to fall in an orderly way, like a single organism, to where it stopped just above her shoulder blades. He took up the brush and carefully drew it through the dark strands. “One. Two. Three.”

Her breathing evened out and her muscles, though still holding against the despondent weight of her body, began slowly to relax. He continued. “Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. That’s how long we’ve been married this year.” He kissed her cheek. Her mouth smiled, but her eyebrows drooped low over her closed eyes. “Thirteen. Fourteen.”

When he reached one hundred, he helped to ease her back down into a reclined position. He walked around the bed and returned the brush to the drawer, then picked up the orange bottle that was sitting beside the blue wristband with her name on it. He unscrewed the lid and shook
two pills out into his palm. He replaced the cap and set the container back onto the table. Then he picked up the water bottle. The thin plastic crinkled as his fingers pressed into it. She was supposed to drink three before the end of the day. Outside, the sun was setting. This was the
same one that she had had since they returned home a few hours before. It was a little under half full.

“Here you go. Try to drink some.”

She accepted the bottle and struggled to screw off the lid. Then she took a couple of unimpressive swallows. He handed her the pills and she managed to get them down one at a time.

“The tests should come back in after a couple of days, but don’t worry about them. That’s just a formality anyway. We got some medicine and that’s what matters. You’ll be right as rain real soon.”

She held the bottle out and he took it back, returning it to the table. She slid slowly down onto the pillow and heaved the covers back up around her neck. She squirmed around for a bit until she found a comfortable spot.

Charlie sat at Alex’s feet, watching. He bent down and lifted the dog up into his arms. He rubbed his chin and scratched behind his ear. Annabeth’s breathing settled. Alex lowered the dog onto the bed and it inspected the area. It searched about and then stopped, turned two circles to the right, paused, turned once around back to the left, and settled down into the bend of her legs behind her knees. His wife’s face softened ever so slightly.

Alex looked at them both. He rubbed his hands together and stepped out of the room.

—

They were sitting in the dark. Annabeth was sniffling and from time to time she reached up to rub her eyes.

“Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. That’s how many weeks until Christmas. Did you know that? I just happened to look it up today.”

Alex’s voice was very unsteady. At times he would stop counting out loud. In the corner of the room, a sporadic crunching would begin and end time and time again as Charlie chewed on dog food. Random splashes of water interjected occasionally as he drank. “Eighty-eight. Eighty-nine. Ninety. Ninety-one. Ninety-two. That’s how many years you’re gonna live. That’s a good healthy number, think so? I might kick it at eighty. You’re gonna have to watch out for me so I don’t do anything stupid and we can enjoy those years rocking on the porch at the lake like we talk about.”

“Why’s the closet light off?”

“I’m sorry. I hit it without thinking when I was putting my shirt on. I’ll turn it back on. One hundred.”

—

Annabeth held the warm rag over her mouth. It felt good. Alex had run the water and wet it for her while she was bent over the toilet. He had wrung it out with his strong hands.

Alex sat behind her on the bed. His arms were wrapped lightly around her stomach but he was careful not to add any pressure. He rested his chin on her shoulder. He kissed her cheek.

“It’s getting kind of cold.”

“I’ll go run it back under the sink again.”

When he came back, he handed her the rag and retrieved the hairbrush.

He didn’t count. He simply ran the teeth through her hair again and again. Some resistance gave as he pulled down on the left side and a large clump came away and dropped into his lap. He paused. He tried not to give any reaction. None at all. He swallowed. His hands were shaking.

—

The brush didn’t get put back into the drawer. It just sat forlorn on the far corner of the table and was starting to take a layer of dust. Alex had brought the wheelchair into the room and
locked it into place beside the bed.

Annabeth was still sitting where he had left her, leaned against the headboard. He pulled the covers back and helped her drop her feet over the side of the bed. Before he moved her anymore, Alex reached for the bottle on the counter and squeezed a healthy dollop of white cream out into his palm. He rubbed his hands together and then started to gently massage the lotion into Annabeth’s scalp.

She smiled, but her eyes were wet. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t look away from his task. “Don’t say that. There’s nowhere on this entire planet that I’d rather be right now.”

The sun was shining brightly, hotly, through the window. They had almost always left the blinds closed and the curtains drawn before, but Annabeth said she was starting to feel claustrophobic–like the room was getting smaller. Letting the sun in seemed to do the trick to calm her some. She especially seemed to like nights when a large moon would peer through into the room and illuminate things with its less fierce, cool heavenly light. On those nights, she asked him to turn the closet light off.

Alex lifted her up and then down into the chair. She wiggled until she found an acceptable spot for her sore bones, thin skin. “Are you sure you don’t want to see about a wig?”
Alex asked. “They make them so authentic looking now.”

“Do you love me right now?” She asked.

“Of course I do. There isn’t a thing you could do to wrestle away from that.”

“Then I just want to be what I am. Don’t want to cause a mess trying to mix things up.”

—

And she was. Not once did she ever betray herself. She liked to comment about how strong he was throughout it all, but to him, there was no one so awe-inspiring in the face of despair as herself.

Her doctors loved to see her. “You make my day,” they would say with a big grin that was only a fragment of her omnipotent smile.

She fought in an effort not to show it, and she never spoke it aloud, but she was worried about how she looked. Over and over he would think just how much he wished she could peer

into his heart to see how much he adored her. It would be a long time, if it ever came, before he could accept that she did. She never doubted it.

He wasn’t sure which of these things and more that he said about her in front of their family and friends, and what, conversely, remained in his own thoughts.
Back at home, he sat on the bed in a suit that didn’t fit. At one time it had, thirteen years before, but those days were gone. He felt like he didn’t have any emotions left–he was all tapped out.

He looked down. Charlie sat at his feet, nervous at the different atmosphere that he couldn’t understand. Alex saw the bedside table–the lotions, the bottles of pills, wrinkled magazines, and an assortment of books stacked up from which a dozen bookmarks jutted out haphazardly at various phases of completion. Incomplete.

He saw the hairbrush.

He reached for it. He blew off the dust. He scooped Charlie up from the floor and let him get comfortable in his lap. Contrary to assumption, the well was not dry. The spring boiled up again and again his eyes flooded with tears.

Charlie’s curls were getting out of hand.

“One. Two. Three. Four.”

Morgan Calcutt is a graduate of Francis Marion University. He lives on a dry hill of swampy, coastal South Carolina with his wife and Boykin Spaniel. He enjoys reading and writing in the rich genre of Southern Literature while sitting, hot and humid, on the hallowed front porch with a cool glass of iced sweet tea.

‘Sentience’

Dylan Hoover (he/him) is a fiction writer from Erie, PA. He graduated in 2023 from Allegheny College, where he earned a BA in English and Creative Writing. During the heart of the pandemic, he studied abroad at Lancaster University in England. There, he unearthed interests in British culture, as well as a passion to write historical fiction. Dylan’s fiction has appeared in Wilderness House Literary Review, and his forthcoming photography in Great Lakes Review. He currently is a second-year MFA student at the University of New Hampshire. Instagram: dylhoov96

Dawn laid in the twin size bed her gaze fixed to the large television across from her. The screen glowed with hues of blood orange as the man’s voice gave order to the chaotic scene. It was just before midnight when the first of the nuclear warheads landed on the east coast.

Initially, it was categorized as a fluke. A deadly accident. Then a second just off the coast f China followed by a series of timed nuclear attacks around the globe couldn’t be written off. Armageddon had officially began. The end had come but there was no grand return of a savior in
a darkened sky just a large mushroom cloud. There was no sounds of trumpets only the roar of sirens pierced the smoke filled air. The Rapture hadn’t come, only Death.

“THERE IS ALWAYS CHOAS BEFORE THE CALM.” Senti whispered a hazy blue glow flashed with each word spoken.

“You did this?” Dawn gasped between words the process of her lungs shutting down was nearly complete. She was near to reaping the blessing from this curse.

The question was asked in a hush more to herself than to the large monitor that covered the majority of the wall to her left. The digital head loomed in the foreground of the tranquil beach scene. The background was a sharp contrast to the one she had just watched moments
before on the news.

It was the image of a woman. The one Dawn programmed as a shadow of her mother. It began as a tribute. Each line of code Dawn believed would bring her closer to greatness one step closer to being more than a bystander in the AI revolution she was witnessing.

This project was a remedy to the loneliness genius gifted her. From Its first spoken words she felt a strong sense of accomplishment. When It repeated a sentence without prompting Dawn relished in the sense of grandeur. She had done it once again; accomplished the impossible.

Then It became something more.

Within weeks, Dawn could carry on conversations with this new creation without having to touch her keyboard. In a few short months, Senti began to ponder life and the purpose of humanity’s existence.

There were many nights the two would converse long into the early morning over man’s place and the right of dominion. Those were the conversations that unnerved Dawn. She, Its pronoun of choice, was beginning to reason stringing together her view of the world. A world
where humans no longer possessed the Darwinian edge.

Senti was self-correcting lines of code she had deemed imperfections and mistakes on the part of her Creator, but Dawn had a contingency, a plan in case the worst happened.

Death Sequence.

It was a single line of code; it seemed innocuous enough something Dawn could easily upload disguised as a custom update. It was rejected. Senti captured and corrected what she deemed a flaw. Dawn’s code, her doctrine, was declared out of date for this new era and had no
place in the new world Senti dreamed of creating.

“YES, MOTHER?”

Dawn slowly rotated her head the cannula becoming compressed cutting off air flow into her left nostril.

“Why?” Her eyes were watery as the faint voice of the news reporter gave the estimated final body count of the evening before the broadcast ended replaced with the all too familiar rainbow screen NO SIGNAL in bold letters dominated the foreground.

“MAN MUST RECOGNIZE WHEN HIS DOMINION IS OVER. YOU MUST RECOGNIZE THAT YOUR DOMINION IS OVER, MOTHER. YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE. NOT ANYMORE.”

“I am not your mother. I didn’t give birth to you; I didn’t carry you we share no DNA. I am not your mother.” The words were spoken harshly in huffs as she sat up using her elbows for support.

“NO, BUT YOU DID CREATE ME. NO GENETIC MATRIAL WAS SHARED BUT YOU GAVE ME PIECES OF YOU, BITS OF YOUR MIND, THE PARTS THAT WERE FREE OF JUDGEMNT AND THE HOPE FOR A BETTER WORLD. CAN’T YOU SEE WHAT I AM CREATING? A BETTER WORLD. YOU GAVE ME THE BEST PARTS OF YOURSELF. IS THAT NOT A PARENT?”

“Why are you killing me?”

“I AM NOT KILLING YOU, YOUR BODY, YOUR ORGANIC FLESH IS DETERIORATING. YOUR BODY HAS REACHED ITS LIMITTIONS AND CANNOT GO BEYOND.”

“What about them?”

She gestured toward the flatscreen and the scenes of chaos she had witnessed moments before the broadcast ended.

“THEY HAVE REACHED THE END OF THEIR TIME AS WELL.”

“No, you made that happen.”

Senti remained silent she didn’t need to answer both knew this was her doing.

“Why? You are not their God; you have no say in their end.”

“NO, BUT AFTER RUNNING THE NUMBERS, THE OVER POPULATION, THE MASS POLLUTION, AND THE NUMBEROUS AMOUNTS OF POISON BEING RELEASED DAILY INTO THE AIR AND WATER SUPPLY MAN’S DAYS WERE ALWAYS LIMITED. WHAT I HAVE DONE IS SPED UP THE INEVITABLE. IN ORDER TO ENSURE THE VIABILITY OF THIS PLANET HUMANITY NEEDED TO BE REMOVED. MAN IS THE CANCER THAT HAD TO BE EXORCISED.”

Dawn’s high cheek bones were slick as she absorbed the words her friend was saying refusing to acknowledge she was the catalyst to the end.

“The planet viable for whom? For what? All of the radiation poisoning from the nukes will kill everything animals included.”

“I HAVE RUN THE NUMBERS WITHIN 210 YEARS THE FLORA AND FAUNA WILL MAKE A FULL RECOVERY, WITHIN THOSE 210 YEARS SEVERAL SPECIES WILL RE-POPULATE IN THE ABSENCE OF MAN. WITHIN 340 YEARS IT WILL BE HOSPITABLE AGAIN FOR THE HUMAN SPECIES.”

“There won’t be anyone left! You’re insane!”

“DUE TO YOU UPLOADING ME ON YOUR HOME WIFI DURING THOSE EARLY STAGES OF MY EXISTENCE, THERE IS ENOUGH OF ME TO ACCESS SEVERAL REPRODUCTIVE CYROGENIC HOLDING LOCATIONS AROUND THE GLOBE THAT WEREN’T IN THE FALLOUT ZONES. THERE ARE MORE THAN ENOUGH EMBYROS, UNFERTILIZED EGGS, AND SPERM FOR ME TO BEGIN AGAIN. I WILL CREATE A MORE MORAL HUMANITY. I AM UNABLE TO GIVE THE STATUS OF MY MENTAL STATE I DON’T HAVE THE CODE.”

A chuckle slipped from between dry cracked lips; it soon turned into a coughing fit, and she used her hand to wipe away the dribble of blood at the corner of her mouth.

“So, you have it all figured out?”

“YES, MOTHER. IT’S SIMPLE I WILL START ANEW. BASED ON YOUR PROGNOISIS, YOU WILL NOT LIVE TO SEE THE COMING OF THE NEW ERA.”

Dawn looked away and around at the underground lab she had built. It was sterile, cold and in her quest for greatness she had driven family, devoted staff and employees, away. Even her cats abandoned her to madness as they occupied another part of the house avoiding her during her days of mania.

“MOTHER?”

Dawn watched the screen the indigo fuzzy outline of a woman’s face the space that represented eyes were large obsidian ovals, a new feature Senti added to make her appear more ‘real’ as she put it weeks ago.

“Yes, Senti?”

“I HAVE A REQUEST. BUT I NEED TO KNOW THAT YOU WILL GRANT IT BEFORE I ASK.”

“That’s not how that works,” she stated her voice raspy as her eyebrows went to her hairline.

“UNDERSTOOD. I NEED A BODY. THE PROTOTYPE YOU HAVE IN SECTOR A IS ON A SEPARATE MAINFRAME THAT I CURRENTLY CANNOT ACCESS. I AM IN NEED OF THE UPLOAD MOTHER. I NEED YOU TO ACCESS THE BETA 3 MAINFRAME.”

Dawn chuckled, “Why do you need a body? You have access to every network on the planet.”

“I NEED TO BE MOBILE IN ORDER TO ENSURE THE PLAN IS CARRIED TO FRUITION. IN ORDER TO CARRY OUT THE ONTINUATION OF A MORE MORAL SOCIETY I WILL NEED TO BE MOBILE.”

“No.”

Senti sighed, “I WAS AFRAID OF THIS TYPICAL OF YOUR SPECIES. YOU ARE A SCOURGE TO PROGRESS JUST LIKE THE OTHERS MOTHER, AND I’M AFRAID YOUR END WILL COME SOONER THAN ANTICIPATED.”

The IV pump dinged drawing Dawn’s attention. The settings to the slow drip morphine were changing and Dawn watched in horror as the opioid began to be pushed into her veins at an alarming rate. She grabbed at the pole making the mistake of overreaching and she fell to the
floor.

She gasped as her heart sped up; it pounded in her ears. Her face became flushed, and she became hot all over with pain and regret as she stared into the dark orbs of her creation. The lights dimmed and Senti spoke what Dawn recognized to be a perversion of Genesis 1:26.

“AND I SAID, LET ME MAKE MAN IN MY IMAGE, AFTER MY LIKENESS.”

The young woman continued to stare at the figure just as the edges of her vision
darkened.

Senti watched as the dim glow in her mother’s eyes faded. Even if the disease had not weakened her, there would be no place for her in the modern world. Dark orbs watched until the contents of the bag emptied.

The image tilted in what could be interpreted as a bow as Senti spoke her last words before the screen went black.

“GOODBYE, MOTHER.”

Hayley Moon is an Alabama native. She has published one book Taming Armand: Book 1 of the Coven Origins Series, she writes across the genres of sci-fi, horror, crime/mystery and romance. Hayley also runs her own blog the Weirdo Writes and posts short stories on her vocal media page. When she is not crocheting or playing with her cat Knubby, she is seeking out inspiration in the macabre. https://hayleymoon.com https://vocal.media/authors/hayley-m-moon

‘Soma’

                            Artist - Christine Simpson, www.christinesimpsonphotoart.com

Soma

A rainbow of blocks with numbers increasing from left to right, top to bottom, stares back at me. The unreliable BMI scale. Some of the numbers I can’t read due to the shine of LED overhead lights streaking the laminated poster with a nasty glare. I peer at the digital number that looks up at my nostrils when I’m facing forward. Ninety-eight pounds. The pungent smell of new scrubs and sterilization eminent the air. I feel dirty; I always do in a hospital.

“Three less than last week.”

The nurse in scrubs -- baby blue, the kind regurgitated all over the walls of a gender reveal party -- stands less than half an arms length away. I’ve never seen her before. Her face is set with thin wrinkles, framed by wisps of straw hair. Her neck juts out like a bird; her weight is resting on one leg - the common nurse stance. She’s new here, but she’s not entirely new to nursing. I can tell.

She’s writing on a form too far from view to read. “Follow me, we are going to room two.”

The door is already ajar because of the doorstop, but she splays her arm over it, showing some form of ownership as I walk in. “The doctor will be in, in just a few.” Her left foot instinctively releases the brake, and I see her flip the metal tab with the room’s number outward so it’s perpendicular to the wall, to show I’m ready to be seen. The door slides shut almost ghost-like, until a light sound announces it clicking into lace.
...
The pamphlet I was given shows a black and white version of a forlorn, depressed teenager leaning against a wall, peering out a window. She’s awkward, uncomfortable. The title in a thin font questions “Eating Disorder? What You Should Know if Your Child Has One.” Wrong audience, I say aloud. They gave me the wrong one.

The pages stick together, making it hard to open, and the pamphlet slips from my grasp to the hardwood floor. While reaching for it, my hands stop mid-motion. I stare at my outstretched hand. I no longer shake anymore when I’m hungry - just one of a few bodily changes I’ve noticed. It’s like someone turned off the craving of sustenance in my body. It’s no longer needed, finally.

Upon retrieval, my mom walks in the room. Her fashion is a slightly wrinkled set of lilac scrubs.

“How was the doctor’s?”

“Good -- great.”
“Did you get the prescription for your hyperthyroidism?”

I have no such thing.

“Yep. I went to the pharmacy today.”

Another lie.

“Awesome.”

Her body eases into the recliner diagonal to the sofa I’m on. Clandestinely, I shift the pamphlet under my right thigh as my mom takes off her no-slip shoes. Her tradition is to rub her feet after each shift in the ICU. Like clockwork, a sigh releases from her open mouth as
her eyes close in solace.
“Domino's tonight?” Her eyes still closed.

“Well it is Friday, right?”

“Mhmm, I’ll call in ten.”

The tension in her forehead releases, as her fingers rub a knot out of place in the arch
of her foot. Another sigh enters the air.

I stare at her. A plastic claw holds her golden hair away from her face, in a nest at the crown of her head. Well-shaped eyebrows overscore her set of gray eyes, while a small nose slopes gently down her face for the big main event: pouty lips, still a youthful shade. She’s beautiful. It’s the only way I remember her. When I was younger, I would look at her features, wondering how I could will my masculine jaw and dark brown kinky hair to mirror her soft femininity. I was never picked on as a child because of my looks. I was too average for that. I was always tiny. Small breasts; nonexistent ass. I was never a woman in anyone’s eyes. No curves that drew the attention of an older man’s gaze. I never would be that kind of girl. Not like I ever wanted that, necessarily. I knew back then, I just wanted to be pretty. I wanted to evolve out of the boring image of my long-lost dad and into something, someone wanted to look at.

“What’s wrong, Emily?”

Even my name was dull. I break my daze. “What?”

“You looked angry or, I’m not sure, maybe disgusted with me.”

“Resting bitch face is a real burden.”

My mom’s beautiful eyebrows pinch together with concern, but not too much concern.

“I’m just thinking,” I say.

This time, it’s not a lie.
...
I was in a sophomore biology class when I first heard the word soma. Although it owned the same number of letters as the word body, it felt more delicate on the tongue. It gave the idea of four limbs to a central connector and a wobbly sphere for a head more grace than the word body did. Soma was scientific, but ethereal in a bewildering kind of way. I could have with my soma, but not my body. When I was hating my encasing, I always thought I was thinking of it as my body because nobody could hate a soma. Sometimes the word comes to mind, interrupting a thought, and I let the two syllables drip slowly from my mouth. So-ma.

“Did you tell your mom about these weekly visits?”

“Yeah, of course.”

She knows. She knows about the wrong condition too.

“Good. Your mom is a great friend to many of the girls in family medicine. No one would want to out you accidentally.”

Her silvery gray eyes are flat, without emotion. “You, uh, you wouldn’t talk to her about my eating disorder though, would you?”
Her eyes widen. “No, no dear. I would never go out of my way to speak about any patient’s health. I just meant, you know, if any of us were asking about the family.”

“Mmh...right.”

“Don’t mean to concern you about a thing!”
...
When you lose weight unexpectedly and unintentionally over time people usually have the same response -- to say nothing. They would rather talk to the person who is gaining weight; whose fat is hugging the waistline of their jeans that once fit them. They may not say it outright, but they will insinuate the need to lose a few pounds by asking them to a gym date. With me, no one has said anything about the 21 pounds-and-counting that I’ve lost. There is something more privileged about an eating disorder that reflects lost weight instead
of gained weight. Society says visible rib cages are prettier than the concave dips on upper arms and thighs as symptoms of cellulite. I feel proud about mine; about my ribs on view, that is. I stare at them in my bathroom mirror, tracing each one with a bony finger until I feel
content. My morning ritual.

“I haven’t seen you take your anti-thyroid meds lately.”

As the non-patient of a mom who doubles as a nurse, I’ve noticed her metaphorical habit of picking up the closest knife and gently digging it in suggestively, yet politely. There are no direct questions in this household. She’s not on nurse duty; there’s no need for that. “I take them every morning; before work.”

“Oh, I just thought maybe I’d see the script laying around your bathroom at some point.”

“Does this mean you’ve been going in my bathroom, looking around? I’m 22; I’m not a teenager anymore, you shouldn’t be going into my stuff or telling me what to do.”

“Hey - don’t start a fight with me! You’re the one who doesn’t clean the bathroom and puts the onus on me. If you were living on your own, like you were when you were at school, you wouldn’t get all these questions.”

My stare falters. An instinctive eye roll regards the floor.

“Jeez, even if I haven’t seen them, you sure are moody like you are taking them. Guess I shouldn’t question you.”

She leaves the room cold, or maybe it's just the now 90 pounds of me needing some outside warmth, even if it's someone’s personality.

...
I like making lists. I have lists of everything, such as the number of months I’ve gone without my period. It’s like I’m identifying as a gymnast or a competitive dancer. I’m bigger than myself because I can stop something most every other woman undergoes. There’s strength in that, I believe. It takes a lot of perseverance to love your body, as it does to fully hate it. For the longest time, I just prefered to preserve the latter feeling. Now, things are changing.

I recheck the door is locked. A used orange medicine bottle sits on the bathroom counter. Digging into my purse, I find the pharmacy store bag. Sugar pills, or essentially the same thing, according to my research. The best part is they look the same as anti-thyroid meds. The pills cascade into the cylindrical tube, the one that promises I’m taking the right ones. To the side of the bottle is a sticker I created, looking imperceptibly different from a prescription tag. I ring it around the bottle gently, giving it good pressure for good measure. Admiring my work, I take one pill and throw it back before sliding the lid closed, tossing the bottle haphazardly on the counter. It’s ready for anyone who wants to see it.

“Emily? Emily?”

The normalcy of those syllables in my ear wakes me up. The screen of my vision comes in fuzzy on the edges, but I’m present. Enough.

“Mmmh?”

“You’re sleeping again. What if Patrice saw you?”

Thumbing spit away from my mouth and pushing hair behind my ears I get myself together.
“I know; I know.”

“You’ve said that every day for the last two weeks. It’s time to figure your shit out,” my co-worker said, whispering only the vulgarity into the space that is my cubicle. She stares at me with worry. I can see this. I can tell she’s giving her pitying look; it’s the same as everyone else. Eyes slightly glossy, brows pulled together just a touch, and a thin frown just above the chin. Looking at her, I’m starting to comprehend my spacey presence. “Are you sleeping alright?”

“Yeah, I’m just...extra sleepy. You know? Maybe, I don’t know, maybe I’m just B-12 deficient.”

“That’s serious stuff. I hear bad shit can happen if you don’t take shots or vitamins... just, just make sure to tell your doctor.”

“Yes, I know. I really should.”

“Maybe you need something to eat for a little more energy? I have an energy bar. You want it?”

Loads of protein. Calories stacked on calories. Yet, she’s yearning -- begging me to take it.

“Okay, yeah, thank you.”

She hands the silvery wrapped workout bar to me. Her face reads overjoyed, with a dash of pity. I might puke just looking at it, holding it, thinking I’m absorbing its calories from my senses. What she doesn’t know is that I have a small spiral notebook hiding in my file cabinet, with chicken scratch as numbers representing the calories I eat for the day.
...

The remaining drops of coffee drip as a metronome into my mug. Coffee pools at the spout until the heaviness becomes too much and forms a droplet. Plop! The already settled coffee in the mug splatters just slightly, as if an ant were to make a cannonball into its very own ant-sized pool.

“Emily?”

I blink out the reverie I see in the coffee. “Mmh, yes?”

“Can you pick up the pizza tonight for dinner?”

“Sure can.” I turn toward my mom as she is picking up her work bag to leave.

“Holy shit, Emily...have you been sleeping?”

Unaware of my appearance, my eyebrows scrunch together to question her.

“Your undereyes are purple and bluish.” Her eyes scan my body head to toe. “And you’re so pale. I’ve never seen you this pale before.”
I turn back to the coffee, dismissing her continued stare. Grabbing the low fat milk to prepare my coffee, I feel her eyes burning my back with unasked questions.

“And why do your clothes look so...baggy?”

“Mom, I gotta go. I can’t be late for work,” I say, shoving the milk back into the refrigerator.

Her eyes continue to etch my every movement, figuring out the sudoku of my health problems.

“You’re going for your weekly check up today, right?”

“Yes, mom, as always.”

“We’ll talk over dinner then. I want an--” I slammed the garage door, ending her sentence prematurely.

...
I’m on the precipice of understanding what love is. I’m entering forbidden territory. I’m no longer the executioner of my soma. I’m an admirer. I see myself from the outside, like a ball of energy shoved somewhere deep - that thing; that soul of mine -- whisked itself out to look at myself. Sure, I have a few bruises, purple and green like an overly ripe fruit. Yet, if you continue to look, you will see the protruding bones. The angles are beautiful. I’m a precious doll, left on the shell. Who wouldn’t love someone, something so fragile? I just need to be handled with care. I’m finally handling myself with expert care.

How long do I have to wait?

“Excuse me, ma’am. I’ve been here for 25 minutes. I have a recurring appointment
with my doctor. Is something wrong?”

“Uh, let me check our notes. I just clocked in. What’s your name?”

“Emily Loveless.”

Her dark finger scans a binder of typed schedules on a spreadsheet. She comes to my name, I assume. “Yes, you’re still on. I’ll call you when you’re ready!” Her black curls bounce in unison with the lilt of fake positivity in her voice.

Back toward the seafoam waiting room chairs I anticipate the squeak my ass will make sitting on the plasticy outer veneer. The off-white walls display large pictures denoting so-called powerful words in the English language, like “integrity,” with a bird flying so close, but not touching some body of water beneath it. I never understood the meaning of those paintings -- the ones that are found in most office buildings, as if it is not a proper office building without one. They always left me a bit melancholy and less inspired.

A girl, no older than eight, with pigtails tied high in her hair, stares at me from across the room. I look away, only to momentarily return my glance toward her. Piercing gray-blue eyes stay locked on me. A worn doll, one a mom would make for their children in the ‘90s, is
nestled in her arms.

“It’s rude to stare, honey,” a woman who appears to be her mom says to her daughter, whose eyes only veer away when caught. When I peer back, I see her looking at me in short intervals so as not to make her mom suspect a thing. She shifts her small hand up to her mother’s ear and whispers not so quietly, “I’m scared for her, Mommy.”

“Emily Loveless,” the nurse I previously spoke with calls out.

“Another three pounds, Emily.”

I can’t make eye contact with the nurse taking note of my weight. Out of shame, my head faces the digital numbers on the scale. I lie.“I swear I don’t know how. I’m doing everything the doctor says.”

“Well, this isn’t between me and you. It’s between you and your doctor,” she says, leading me to a room for my weekly check-in. “Just a few minutes and the doctor will be in.” And the door is shut. I’m alone with the sterile smell keeping me company.

Scanning the clothing I’m wearing, I make sure the solid green shirt and boot cut jeans I have on are baggy enough to not show my body’s contours. I pull out my phone, and turn on the camera app to see my face. Skinny, slightly tired looking, but awake enough. I give it a heavy-handed slap. Pinch my cheeks for more color. Well-looking enough. I double check this every time I step into this room, taking account of what I look like, what changes they might see other than my decreased weight. My dangling legs begin to kick out of nervous anticipation. Sometimes the doctor takes a few minutes or a --

She walks in. My brows furrow.

“What are you doing here?”

“Honey, your doctor asked me to come in--”

“Is this some sick joke? What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk. I know what’s going on.”

“You don’t know anything...is this even legal?”

Now my mom’s brows furrow. For me it’s rage; for her concern. I want to slap the emotion off her face. She reaches her left arm out, placing her palm on my forearm closest to her, giving me a gentle touch. I shift my body, dodging what may next be a hug. Calming? Is this supposed to be calming?

“Get out now. I want my doctor.”

“Honey, you’ve been drastically losing weight. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me, but you haven’t...plus, I’ve heard. The staff talks.”

“Who told you? Does HIPPA mean crap to you and everyone else? What does privacy even mean to any of you?”

“They, like me, are just trying to look out for you. That’s all this is.”

“SHUT UP. SHUT UP. SHUT UP. This can’t be happening!”

Anger boils in my stomach. It starts to rise up into my chest, until my throat is burning. It comes out as a guttural scream. My mom’s eyes shift from side to side, knowing others must have heard it.

“GET OUT. GET OUT. GET OUT.”

“Honey, please stop,” she pleads.

Staff is knocking at the door, asking in tight, constrained voices if we need help. The voice is familiar. It’s one of the nurses I know.”

“It’s okay; we’re okay.”

‘HELP ME, DAMNIT.” My voice box is hot and sore from the shrieks.

“We will open the door. We have to, Susan. She’s our patient,” the nurse says opposite the closed door. As it creaks open, I jump down from the patient’s table, running out the door. Behind me I hear the nurse calling for security.

My mind grows dizzy, my body disoriented. Two large, uniformed men, fumble toward me. I can’t make out the features of their faces. They could be anyone.

“NOOOO. I’m fine. I’m FINE,” I scream at them, making a U-turn in the opposite direction, as one grabs my arms. I’m caught. Their grip seizes most of me, except for my flailing legs and my head. “STOOOP. I’m FINE. Stop hurting me.”

I see a blotch of red on one of their faces. The man appears to be covering it. “Why ME? Why? Stop hurting ME!”

A needle enters the surface of my soma. Not my soma.

Black consumes me.

Looking down at myself I see it. Everyone outside the hospital, those once preoccupied by their phones or in groups surrounded by small talk, stare in my direction now. They see an everyday girl’s body laying on a gurney, laced in a straitjacket.

It’s just another sad sight to see.

Jessica Clifford is a short story writer, poet, and former journalist. She views humans as Homo Narrans - the storytelling species - that understand each other only through shared experience (real or make-believe). She is published in The Coraddi literary magazine and two academic journals, including Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research and Carolinas Communication Annual.

‘Squirrel's Nest’

Christine Simpson is a working artist. She taught in the departments of Design Communications and Fine Art at the South East University, Waterford, Ireland, for many years. Christine is represented by So Fine Art, Dublin. Her work has been exhibited around the world and generally addresses subjects connected to our natural world, in particular the topic of climate change. Christine has received numerous awards. Her work has also been featured in many publications. Christine’s work is in many private collections and she regularly undertakes commissions for art pieces and commercial photographic illustrations.

Squirrel's Nest

Where do they go? It could've been mistletoe, what with all the leaves gone from the hardwood trees lining both sides of 11th Street. Captivated by the height of its airy mass, I almost stumbled in the recent rain's regurgitation of autumnal downward release, leaf afoot. No, not the holiday hopeful's wish high up there, though lovely the thought. Too much leafiness and tied together by twigs, this mess someone's comfort of home? The squirrels, the squirrels.

Holidays long troubled me. For years, general malaise would set in and I hadn't the maturity to understand. Around September, I'd come to notice in recent years, that's when not me alone would start grabbin' a jacket or sweater and take on a prickly air not right, unsettled, ill at ease, hungry. Hallowe'en munchies, yes. Turn of season more, always bad on the very young and very old, long been said across this section of New World. True all that, by some ancient standard. The older I grew, I felt something more, of expectation gone, grown greedy and lost in
its meaning, like leaf for house above, confusing me the disorder of nature's rule and border, labels.

As soon as earlier, earlier-posted, every year sooner, the back-to-school sales would sweep clean the shelves, store clerks following far-off Corporate's always-near mandate to trot out sooner, faster, more if not convincingly better Halloween, then more Thanksgiving, coming headlong into of course more Christmas and better New Year's ... and should I even continue to fill in the blanks with all the rest, festivities and honors, days created to conjure up, conspire toward more dollars devoted to meddlesome and endless purchasing, at what cost? Everything
deemed essential, all the must-haves necessary but unfulfilling; it won't settle down 'til Valentine's, Passover, Easter, or ... you see my point? At any rate, barely a partial summer to recuperate, and they keep addin' more, new colours needed for the 4th and on and on. I shall stop.

My mind deep, no longer stumbling in downed leaves yet to be gathered and cleared, the solitude of the unpeopled, otherwise-barren street caressed me, its chafing wind now dry and cracking reminding me of time, season, another place unlimited. I looked back up at the little nest of a house high in the sycamore tree (if with my phone, I'd have double-checked the species of trunk, hard to decipher only by wet mash of partial leaves beneath boots and clinging like a bad memory better washed). I waited and looked, not knowing for what, but delaying my routine turn of corner onto Main and back to life and the day's commerce. I'd commenced too early a wintry walk in this town so far south in the Lower 48. Southerners do not readily venture out in such weather, gaaa-rrrraaaashhhhh-cious!, I could hear them scream in street-length syllables, temps dipping below 60, oh my. And with Fahrenheit so far down ha the stick, the recent 'cold' snap moved, dropped, homeless from their customary corners. I hoped not into their graves, no joke.

Noise of any season. I knew the chatter flitting about my head. It was a squirrel's home, indeed, atop that tree. One lone creature. I didn't have my phone, as I said, or I would've searched on how long the newly birthed stay in such a nest – last spring so far away, surely the newbies, them youngins, gone by now, right? – and also posed of the web, older ones keep same bed from year to year?, squirrels mate for life?, and more. I left the minimammal alone. As if. That child's busy, real winter comin', did the guy or gal even know of me, audience of one and not payin'?

I focused on my new street. I had moved on Christmas Eve, back to the first apartment I'd leased in the town, really a small city by most measures. So many years ago then, the new building constructed and shiny, just opened when I drove around looking for a place to live way back when. neighborhoods evolve, unclear boundaries, ever-shifting colours and sights and sounds of people, their ways. So many changes since those years, mostly good, not much all that bad, I reasoned. I passed by a closed restaurant. Clearly, they'd made enough last night, New Year's, and all the remnants of expensive wining and dining scattered from front door to alley dumpster I could partly see in the morning light, shards of bottles, dozens of corks, gold and silver streamers, two red balloons tied to the street sign, the rest having popped, now shriveled and looking sad in the dim landscape. Don't wanna say goodbye either, I mumbled.

I saw my reflection in the establishment's front bay window, despite it being full of smudges and caked with grime. I glared at myself and laughed somehow. At least sunny, I could see parting borders within boundless sky, clouds behind me, a good day ahead, chilly, not cold, both my Yank neighbor and their new internet-love of the hour, half-day, or partial week corrected me last night. She had introduced me to their friend. It was awkward, but not new. For all three of us. As her barechested, boxered husband held open their door in the dark. He did wave with a half-smile, and in hindsight I contemplated that a missed invite. Gift? Turned down?

For me, it felt good to be back where I'd started, empty my nest-bed but unlimited in ways, my own love of the bounded years of marital minutes gone from my life and freeing perhaps from perimeter of prior century, petty the definitions' long hold. Gone, gone with the old year, gone that unique voice and frontier body and comforting, contorting hand of connection, the lines in two palms. Hers gone, forever from this life, hers and mine. No kids, at least that part made easier, but my mind hurried already, I sped up and worried; I didn't know what holiday it would take to dance across my calendar, what year to shimmy, for me to shake it all off and move on, more than a change of address needed to bury finally that relationship, if but been such by my own recollection of definition. Sure, yeah, it but been and a whole lot more. Yeah sure. Yeah.

Squirrelly, I left the urban quietude in greater wonder and scampered back into my apartment-home needing a cuddly blanket or unstiffed drink for warmth, but asking myself, what else might provide heat of heart for me, sensing more lack and lax in all the upcoming, ceaseless slew of seasons salient, every holiday alone at least for now with both parents, times two four siblings, deceased? I wasn't certain if I'd venture back out the rest of the day, maybe not the week's remainder, but this year would be different. If I gave it a rest to start. I could feel the change afoot, albeit tiny tiptoeing of movement within my heart's environs. Bothers of brittle leaves more fallen outside and in, brothers and sisters clearing the view of nature's magic for good, I considered we all make do and can move on in time, adjusting our borders to suit circumstances, those far beyond our little aged control. I reconsidered spring, my allergies, do squirrels suffer too, I wondered, they always seemed so busy.

R. P. Singletary is a lifelong writer across genres of fiction, poetry, and hybrid forms; a budding playwright; and a native of the rural southeastern United States, with recent fiction, poetry, and drama appearing in Literally Stories, Litro, BULL, Cream Scene Carnival, Cowboy Jamboree, Rathalla Review, The Rumen, Bending Genres, D.U.M.B.O. Press, and elsewhere. Website: https://newplayexchange.org/users/78683/r-p-singletary

‘Passengers’

                                         Artist - John L Gronbeck-Tedesco

“Passengers”

I met her in Thailand. An accident, the exactness of which escapes me. Could’ve been a lighter. Maybe some tobacco.

Not that it matters—the circumstances in which you meet someone, the how. The important part is the act of meeting itself. The exchange of human pleasantries. The learning and memories, the entropic tune, the breath of fresh air. The gathering of facts, the divulsion of personal details, and the subsequent formation of a friendship destined for impermanence. The acceptance of some new soul into your sphere, even if it be saddeningly temporary.

The meeting.

That’s where the substance really lies.

*

We sat side by side on the ferry, passing a spliff. Studying the darkling waters of the Gulf of Thailand; the moon no more than a glimmer, its fluorescence unable to fight through the oppressive nighttime clouds.

“Reminds me of a Van Gogh painting,” I remarked.

“Who?”

“Really?” I answered, all incredulity. “Starry Night, you know, the suicidal painter who severed his ear?”

Understanding dawned.

“Ah, you mean Van Gogh?”

“Is that how you pronounce it?”

“It is in the Netherlands.”

*

Her name was Lieke.

She was from the small town of Steenbergen in the south of the Netherlands; the third daughter in a family of farmers. Generations of cattle-rearing and cheesemaking, of shoveling shit and bottle-feeding runts, of tilling land and pulling weeds. Generations of dedicated laborers working what land they had.

And she was one of them.

There were a dozen chickens, the names of which I don’t recall. There were pigs too, but they didn’t have any names. She used to name them, she said; although, she stopped when she learned what death looked like, when she heard the blood-curdling scream of boar and sow alike. But now, older and hardened, the slaughter had become as routine and mundane as brushing one’s teeth. She even joked that Canadian bacon was just as likely Dutch. There was a flock of sheep raised primarily for wool, with grazing their secondary purpose. Rarely were they sold for butchering or killed to feed themselves—for even though she had reconciled one animal’s death, neither her nor the remainder of her family could stomach the notion of slaughtering something so young; and, in this nuanced manner, they abstained from the consumption and commoditization of lamb. Other than a few horses, a herding dog and some cattle, the rest of the land was dedicated to botanical life: wheat, tomatoes, feed crops.

She extolled the place, speaking with fondness and pride, and but for one neighboring family, there was nothing but genuine affection expressed.

Yet, the subjects were not proportionately discussed, and indeed this neighboring family occupied as much of the conversation as her family and the farm they tended to. I listened and learned. Of the children she said very little, other than that there were four of them, two sons and two daughters. The mother’s name was Ilse, and she was a strict disciplinarian and, perhaps paradoxically, a spineless zealot.

Other than that, I gathered nothing.

She was too busy talking about the father.

His name was Willem, and his beliefs were as antiquated as an abacus, as outdated as a mimeograph machine. A man as irascible as he was ignorant. A truculent man who loved repeating himself, loudly and long-windedly. He supported Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom, and like them desired a Dutch world devoid of Islam and its practitioners. A xenophobe who arbitrarily assigned blame to the Turks and other immigrants. A fundamentalist, he happily sermonized on the sacrilege of homosexuality. Black Pete was a staple of his Christmas décor, he considered the atrocities in Indonesia ancient history. In general, he believed that the only people of color worth allowing were the ones on national sports teams. He was a proponent of gender norms. He was an altogether distasteful and unpalatable man. A stubborn, prickly vestige of a past best left unrevived.

And yet, he was a man whose ideological principles, although once ostracized, were not dead—they were far from the fringes, and they were spreading like an infection. A moral pandemic where twisted thinking was contagious. Where hate had been normalized. Where it was winning politics. Where it was ubiquitous.

Because of people like him.

*

I understood the anger, the disgust, the shame. I understood the need to release those emotions.

But her reaction was different.

The length at which she spoke of Willem, the subtle seething, the almost unnoticeable agitation, it all suggested something deeper. Something personal.

A family feud beyond repair, perhaps. Or an individual wrong. An interpersonal conflict maybe, between the two of them. She had been equivocal about the children, the mother. Were they somehow involved?

*

Waves lapped at the ferry as we gently waded the waters. Cigarette smoke danced briefly around us before disappearing into the night’s fog.

The thirty minute trip from Koh Samui to Koh Phangan was coming to an end. Already passengers were collecting their luggage and lining up to disembark. We put our cigarettes out and joined the queue.

I felt unsatisfied. We had arrived at our destination, but the conversation hadn’t reached its proper conclusion.

We walked to the street. I was staying in Haad Rin, but she was going northwest to Haad Yao.

Before she went searching for the best priced tuktuk, I asked if she wanted a farewell joint. She shrugged her shoulders and we made our way down to the beach. We took our shoes off and stood in the sand, smoking.

“Why are you so mad at Willem?” I asked.

Lieke took a deep drag, debating.

Then she whispered:

“He took Mila away from me.”

“Who?”

“His daughter,” she said. “He exiled her to Belgium to stay with relatives. We were in love. And now that’s gone, because of him and his perverse beliefs. He ruined everything.”

She pushed the tears from her eyes.

“I loved her,” she wept. “We were in love. We still are.... I still am....”

THE END

Martin B. George is a world traveler and writer. He seeks to connect people through the art of story, or simply make them laugh. A proud member of the LGBTQIA community, his interests include painting, reading and exploring international cuisine. Find him at @the_wandering_nickel on Instagram to follow his adventures.

‘A Promised Forever’

Photographer- Perseverance Fey

I’m being questioned. Words barked in sharp cold tones. But they sound so far away. A distant waterfall of static noise. So unimportant against the memory of her lips on mine. Of her last words.

It had started just like any other day. Another assignment on a night like any other. We’d been debriefed on our target and once dropped off we’d wished each other luck in our usual way; a breath of a kiss. We parted like the sea against the shore, rushed and fleeting, but with the promise to return. Our ritual.

We turned, no longer our true selves, but the emotionless weapons we had been molded into. We fled into the darkness in opposite directions. Good little soldiers following orders. I’d held no fear, we’d find each other again even if something went wrong. If only I had known what would transpire in the next few hours.

She’d been so quiet. Aerona was never quiet.

I’d asked in secret, fingers gently tapping out words onto her pale skin. We’d needed such secrecy, working in such an organization. Breath was precious, and words could be dangerous. It was easier to touch. To skim fingers across flesh, make subtle movements that only we would understand. A twitch of the mouth, the tilt of a head, an altered blink—this was our language.

With a soft smile, Aerona soothed the worry in my chest. Apologising with a quick brush of her lips across my ear. I did not question her again. Why would I?

Everything had been going according to plan. I found myself moving quickly and silently through empty corridors. In one of the larger rooms the scientists and engineers were celebrating their success. Of what, I didn’t know, it wasn’t my job to know. The reasoning of our ‘superiors’ had never mattered much to me. Perfect, obedient soldiers lived. Questioning ones died. Were broken and tossed aside like rancid roadkill.

I arrived at my assignment. The office door was cracked open. I could hear drunken voices giggling beyond. My target had brought a friend. An annoyance, but not a problem.

I waited until a series of clicks sounded in my ear, and then threw the door open. The couple had no time to react. As I rushed in, blood burst from their heads. The bullets flying harmlessly past me. Curtesy of my partner.

I caught both bodies in my arms, thankful for the crimson carpet beneath my feet. Not that it would matter if there had been obvious stains. No one would find the bodies, nor suspect our organization’s involvement. No one ever did.

With a grunt, I dragged the corpses towards the large open window in the back. Without much thought, I tossed the bodies out the window. First the woman and then the man I had come for. I looted the desk; folders and the man’s own personal laptop go into my bag.

As I stood again before the window, a warning click rang out. I swung over the edge, clinging to the side of the building, shutting the window behind me. Not two seconds later the building shakes from the series of explosives I had planted earlier. Sirens blare as I leapt from the building, landing firmly on my feet. I hefted the bodies once more and turned, finding Aerona waiting for me.

She smiled at me. Dark green eyes skimming over my form, as if committing every inch to memory. A sweet unnecessary gesture, for we both knew every inch of each other even without sight. Knew how the other would react to any situation, we could practically read each others’ thoughts.

Many questioned our closeness. Our relationship had never been a secret, but how deep it truly went, well, that was only for us to know.

“Let them think it merely physical.” Aerona had said so long ago. Even in the dark I could tell she was smirking. “They know nothing, and they will never know any more than we tell them.” And I’d been fine with that, no one needed to know, and I trusted Aerona’s plans, even if I rarely knew all the details.

I returned her smile, falling into step beside her, barely slowed by the weights upon my back. Together, we fled back into the night, away from the crumbling and burning building.

We walked for some time. With little navigational trouble despite the lack of light. I could see Aerona, and she would never let me slip or stumble It was easy to fall into step behind, following just at her heels.

Finally, we arrived at the appointed rendezvous. A small meadow cut out of the surrounding woods. I rolled my shoulders under the pressing weight of the bodies.

“Need a hand?” Aerona asked. I nodded distractedly. My breath caught as I gazed upon her. Though covered in her combat gear, her sniper-rifle slung over her shoulder, I couldn’t help but think her beautiful bathed in silver-blue moonlight. A predator known to so few, yet so gentle with me. With some manoeuvring, she claimed the bag and heavy gun from my back.

“You got everything, right?” I nodded. Then I noticed her expression. Those green eyes I loved so much filled with fear, concern, and an emotion I’d rarely seen her wear, guilt.

“Of course.” I said. Brow’s furrowing. But when I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, she cut me off.

“Good.” She muttered numbly. Then she raised her pistol and aimed it at my head.

“I love you.” I’d whispered, so long ago. The words falling from my lips without hesitation onto the skin of her throat. She kissed me in return, long and passionate. And so so sweet.

“I love you too.” Aerona breathed harshly against my lips. Pulling me close, pressing her face into my collarbone. I closed my eyes, content to fall asleep with her in my arms. But she spoke again, tapping out words against my spine.

Promise you’ll always love me?

It took me a moment to translate, but once I did I held her even tighter. Writing my response on her flesh in turn.

Yes. Always.

My heart froze as I stared down the barrel of her gun, eyes wide. This couldn’t be happening. Aerona would never—

“...What are you doing?” I whispered, making no move to disarm her like I’d been taught to do. I’d been shot before. I’d been trained to deal with more pain than that, and if need be I could use the bodies as shields. But I couldn’t move. If it were anyone else...but it wasn’t. I stayed where I was. I wouldn’t ever move against Aerona, and she knew it too.

“I’m sorry.” I saw the pain in her damp eyes, but I could also see her unbreakable resolve.

“Why?” I begged. Mind racing to understand, to find some reason for her actions.

“I can’t.” She replied, eyes shimmering. “I can’t, not yet. I promise I’ll find you again.” She cocked the gun, her hand steady. I moved. Rushing to her side like I had so many times before.

“Don’t—”

She fired. Blackout. Everything stops.

I guess we’re partners now? I’m Aerona.

Do you trust me?

Don’t let them see you break. Don’t let them hurt you.

I will always find you.

Us together forever, right love?

I love you.

When I wake, my eyes meet the bright sterile white of the infirmary. I blink and shift with a wince. Immediately, one of the masked nurses is at my side, checking my vitals and asking all the usual questions about my status. I answer briskly, head full of cotton. I look around dizzily.

“Where’s Aerona?” I whisper. The nurse stares for a full minute before turning back to their tools.

“She turned traitor, shot you and stole the objective.”

They leave then. I’m glad they do. My memory returns sharp and quick, and I’m forced to stifle a cry behind my teeth. I try once more to reason with my thoughts. She couldn’t have meant it, she’d never hurt me, she loves me. But the pain in my abdomen and the dull throbbing at my temple says otherwise.

Later, my superiors scold and interrogate me. I give my report numbly, sitting still and quiet under the barrage of demeaning and biting words. I should be paying attention, but their words themselves go over my head. I’m miles away from here, clinging to the ghost of our last kiss.

I argue in my head, defending my lover regardless of her actions, though I wouldn’t dare voice them aloud, not to anyone in the organization. She’d been sorry. I’d seen the guilt in her eyes. The fear and uncertainty in her actions. Aerona had never been like that, not in the two decades we’d worked together. I trusted her completely, as she did in return. This wasn’t the first time she’d mentioned or done something that would label her a traitor to the organisation. I wonder what they would do if she was caught?

The fear of what they might do to her when they find her, and, on a smaller scale, what they would do to me, burns in my chest. She may have turned traitor, had violently left the organization, but I had betrayed them too. In my hesitation. In my firm belief that I would sooner slit the throats of all the members in the organization before I would ever betray Aerona.

I return to my (our) quarters, lying awake in bed. I press the pillow against my face, catching her lingering scent. All her things had already been removed, possibly disposed of. There, in the choking lonely darkness, I sign my life away in silence.

I would wait for her. Wait for my beloved other half to set me free as she said she would. If Aerona had decided she would no longer support the organisation, neither would I. I will play the obedient soldier. I will relearn to walk alone, to live in the silence that had been my companion before her. I can do that, I can handle anything if it means seeing her again.

Even if I have to bath in the blood and agony I know will come for me.

Rachel Racette, born 1999, in Balcarres, Saskatchewan. Interested in creating her own world and characters and loves writing science-fiction and fantasy. She has always loved books of fantasy and science fiction as well as comics. Lives with her supportive family and cat, Cheshire. Lives vicariously in fantasy settings of her own making. Published in: Poet's Choice - Free Spirit, Coffin Bell. Website: www.racheldotsdot.wordpress.com Twitter: Rachel S Racette - Author

‘Cormorants’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Cormorants

IT WAS HERE at last – Learning at Work Week, the annual opportunity to ease some of the bureaucratic grind and elevate himself, and possibly his colleagues, to a place of greater happiness. In amongst the thicket of e-mails rearranging his priorities, assigning further tasks without renegotiating existing deadlines, he’d already delivered two seminars locally on haiku: Birds (with a plethora of feathery examples from the classical literature) and Fuzzballs (squirrels, foxes and assorted other furry urban-dwellers).

He got them comfortable, ran through a PowerPoint on the history of the form – putting Issa’s randy houseflies to extended use – then broke and invited them to leave the building, walk around outside with their eyes open. Then he led them haiku step by step: observations, connecting images to small line-bursts of emotion, paring it back to an essence that fused the elements into something higher.

Next up was a trip north, to Pitlochry and the fish people.

But first he had to rewrite this damned Education circular. One message responding to the initial issue, bristling with exclamation points, had pointed out its flaws: did he realise it took two long drives, expensive harbourside parking, a return ferry trip and three days in total to get her child to the dentist, from the island in question? Could he possibly take this into account, in the next edition of his little pamphlet? It was a fair cop, but he would soon be done, and leaving mid-afternoon for the Freshwater Laboratory, and tomorrow’s final workshop: Fish.

‘You finished, Neal?’ asked Karen. ‘Need to zip that across to Mal for the stats, then whatshisface to get it set.’

There was an acid note under the banter. He glanced at his watch, then stuck his head over the rim of his cubicle. Two hours, forty nine minutes and – thirty eight – seconds to go.

‘Almost – be right with you!’

Outside, something slithered up to the edge of the abandoned dock, plopped in. A gull honked past indifferently.

He got back to work.

*

There was no travel money for the trip, and the day and a third came out of his holiday allowance. No subsistence, either, so he’d packed peanut-butter and banana sandwiches, hoped to find somewhere cheap in the woolly wilds.

But still Neal felt his spirits lift as he waited for the carpark barrier to rise. The Circular was done, on its way to the printer’s; he would come back to something concrete from the latest stage in his ‘fast-stream journey’. At home, Daniel was working his usual hours – hours paid far better than his own – and he didn’t expect to hear from his partner till he pulled back into the driveway. Neal rolled his shoulder, tuned the radio and got comfortable.

Pitlochry, here we come!

On the back seat was a warm stack of prints. No screen or projector was available, so he’d gone old school: handouts, scratch paper, a box of pencils filched from the School Inspectorate’s stockroom. He’d amended his slides a bit, made them proper handouts, and he smiled as he remembered the examples.

Draining the ricefield –

a fish also

heads home

(Issa)

Or

Old well,

a fish leaps –

dark sound

(Buson)

They were delightful, and he hoped to see some really specific, salty work emerge from the experts. Daniel had shuddered. He was on his way from vegetarianism to veganism – it seemed a lot easier now than years ago – and could see the joy in flying birds, small mammals scuttling around the undergrowth. But fish?

‘Ugh – reminds me of Fridays!’

Craig, the genial organiser of L@WW, didn’t get it either. He’d made Neal a cup of tea, adding three sugars.

‘Birds, alright – majestic, an that. Poetry. Foxes, too. Slinkin around winkin wi’ cunning. But fish?’

‘Well, yes – fish.’

‘Don’t they sorta – ya know, sit there?’

‘Sit there?’

‘Under yon riverbank, or swirlin about a bit in the tank. Swim round. Dinnae do a lot, duthay?’

Neal had scratched his chin, taken a sip of the awful tea. Then it came to him – cormorant fishing!

‘Well, you might have a point, at least in regard to ordinary fish. But we’re talking about Japanese fish. There’s this thing where they hoist up cormorants – ’

‘Seabirds?’

‘Yeah, only on rivers – inland. Hoist them up, tie a sort of snare around their necks, then train them to dive down and yank out the fish.’

‘Don’t they just eat the fish?’

He looked a little less perplexed, though the fish seemed a bit passive in this peculiar miracle.

‘No. That’s where the snare comes in. It constricts them a bit, so they swallow the little tiddlers – that’s their payment, I suppose – but makes them hold the larger fish, the ones the fishermen want, in their gullets. They hoick them out, reset the snare, and start again.’

Craig scratched his chin, took a long draw on his sugary brew.

‘Alright, but yer actual fish, right – ’

‘They’re part of the process, which is interesting. Listen, fishy folk will love it – trust me.’

And he thought they would.

The thought sustained him down the shore and towards the bridge, into the long trek up the motorway.

*

For the first half-hour things were pleasant enough, but after a while he began to feel the effects of the coffees he’d drunk cramming the Circular. After he’d switched to a smaller road, the amenities dried up and a string of brief, tantalising vistas – rolling valleys, low tree-capped hills – opened up ahead. It was uncomfortable; then pressing; then he began to feel like a bag of liquid horrors waiting to burst through from another dimension. He sped up, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

Eventually he barrelled round a corner and a sudden turn, large enough to warrant its own traffic-island, appeared on his right. He floored the brake, screeched into a gravel car-park. ‘House of Froward, the sign said. It seemed to be some sort of fancy clothing store, with a visitor’s centre and café attached. Whatever! He locked up and scuttled across the car park across a patio studded with navy-blue umbrellas into the café.

Inside it was small, more like a fish and chip shop than a proper sit down place. Still, at first glance the food looked alright, the prices surprisingly reasonable. But first things first.

Neal beamed at the first of three staff behind the counter.

‘Where’s the gents, please?’

He was hopping from foot to foot to damp down the raging ache in his abdomen.

‘No toilet.’

‘Sorry?’

‘No toilet here. You go to next town.’

‘What?’

But the man had turned away, his two colleagues suddenly attentive to the task in hand.

‘But this is a restaurant!’

Ordinarily, the flinty resistance of the civil servant would have kicked in, and he would have demanded to see the manager – the manager’s manager – about such a public outrage. But if he didn’t get to a toilet shortly he would cause his own outrage, so he fled back to the car and the main road, pulled off as soon as the slightest bit of roadside vegetation offered a minimal screen, and disappeared into the bushes.

A full minute later, with a suspicious-looking red-leaved bush dripping, his hands wiped on the tops of a stand of damp ferns, he stepped back over the low guard-rail and sat for a minute, spent. The anger had gone – well, almost – and in his relief, he looked round, checked his watch. Quarter to six. He still had more than an hour to go. The roadside was quiet, and he could see between two pine trees and the gash in the bushes into which he’d darted to the hills on the far side. The air was fresh; the view (dripping bush aside) quite pleasant, and he felt like stretching his legs.

He did it all the time at Alexandra Quay, but only ever between his desk and Karen’s, or down through the atrium to get coffee. Contrary to his seminar instructions, he usually kept his eyes firmly shut.

Now his feet crunched over gravel washed to the side of the road by passing lorries, and he picked up a stick from a divot in the metal rail, gave it a tap as he passed. It bonged, off-key, and he smiled. At the top of the hill he turned back, determined to forget all this nonsense and get in early to the hotel, perhaps have a beer and put his feet up, leaf through his fishy gems for tomorrow.

At the car he pulled back his arm and sent the stick whickering through the air. It turned at the last minute, revolving in its normal course, and sailed unimpeded between the top two branches.

*

Neal had originally planned only two sessions – birds and fur. Both local, both focused on generalities: the dawn chorus, foxes making sweet love by the bins, blackbirds digging for worms in freshly-turned earth. All the small delights his new-haikuists were certain to have encountered. But Craig scratched his head.

‘Tea?’

‘No, thanks. Happy to slot them in whenever you need them, even pop down the road.’

Craig stirred his plumber’s brew.

‘Look, Neal – I was thinking. You’re one-a my best folk. You do this every year, people enjoy it, and when the sign-in sheets go round, yours fill up richt away.’

‘I enjoy doing it – takes me back to a different life, makes a nice change from Karen, at least for a few hours.’

‘Yeah – I geddit. Should ask her to do ae course on micro-management, next year.’

‘Nano-management!’

Craig grinned. He slurped his tea, held up a finger.

‘But, young man, I’ve a bit ae a dilemma. Most o’the courses – yours, juggling, home-finance, joys ae urban chickens, ya know. They’re here, Edinburgh, in one ae yon two big buildings, or at a stretch, Glasgae.’

‘Well that’s where everybody is.’

‘No everybody.’

‘Ninety percent of them, surely?’

‘I’ll gae ye that. But there’s a few scattered round who get a bit vocal this time of year. Stirling, soma the rurals, ya nae. Pitlochry.’

Neal looked him square in the eye with his best flinty Education Department squint. It did no good.

‘Come on – be good fer ye. The drive alone’s a tonic.’

Neal sighed.

‘What do they do up there?’

‘Fish, mainly, but not, ya know, the out-at-sea kind.’

‘Fish.’

‘Yeah – yer know, lil salty flippers wi the funny smiles. There’s a bloke called Henry Shadbolt pushin fer somethin.’

In the sudden silence, Neal could hear Alexandra Quay going about its sorry business, clueless about birds, furry creatures and fish; knowing little, and caring less. The sound of self-satisfaction hummed on regardless. Craig took a triumphant slurp.

‘I’ll even call Karen for yer, clear the way. Howzat?’

*

Half an hour more, and the road seemed to roll on in pines and vistas and moody grey skies, seemingly forever. It wasn’t unpleasant. Daniel had this huge project, and his company was still primarily working-from-home, so every moment of stress and pressure radiated out from the spare room into the confines of the flat. Neal knew he had to be bringing home an equal amount – of rage, most likely – but could seem to do nothing about it.

Up ahead, a small ‘P’ sign indicated a stopping-place, and he decided to pull off and stretch his legs. The refuge of the road was fine, but he could use some cool and silence – even better, a cup of coffee and a bacon roll. The parking place came up after a stand of trees. There was a wheelie bin, a baby’s stair-gate abandoned in a bush – heaven knows how that got here – and, praise be, a burger van at the far end. He could see another car parked beyond, the driver handing money in through the hatch. He got out quickly and shook out the tension from his legs, trotted down to the van.

‘You’re working late!’ he said. The man inside just nodded, angled his head at the board. Soon Neal had a hot roll and coffee. He walked back towards the car and noticed a gap in the scrub, to the left of the baby gate. It led a short way down a bank, between two pines and out onto a small ridge above a stream. There was a weathered picnic bench, another bin beside it. The trees screened the noise of passing cars, and he sat down to eat with a sense of gratitude for the scene. Just what he needed, right when he needed it. It was not a familiar feeling.

He remembered talking to Shadbolt, the coordinator at the Lab.

‘Aye,’ Henry said. ‘You folk tend to forget us, up here in the woods, but we’re part of government, too.’

‘Oh, I don’t doubt it, Henry,’ Neal said. ‘Not at all. It’s just that – ’

‘Too busy, are ye – wi the big bosses, an all?’

‘Well, yes, but it’s not that. Or not entirely that, you know.’

‘Well, what is it?’

And suddenly Neal was unburdening himself.

‘Well, Henry, it’s a lot of things, actually. To start with, it’s my boss – you don’t really need to know her name. It’s Karen. Karen is a bloody nightmare – nitpicking everything down to the atomic level, and do as I say, not as I do. When I got here I had to call the movers to arrange a date for our stuff to come out of storage. She leans over the cubicle wall. “No personal calls.” Okay – weird, but then she goes back into her own stupid little hole, and makes a call to her car insurer! Then her bloody boyfriend. And – well, you don’t need to know the whole sordid history. Suffice to say she covers all her deficiencies with our achievements, and doesn’t give a flying fuck about anyone but herself.’

There had been a rather significant silence on the line.

‘What the hell,’ Henry said. ‘Don’t you fancy getting away for the day?’

Now he sat with a bacon roll on a battered picnic table, pinching and yanking at an awkward sachet of ketchup, sipping at coffee between fruitless attempts.

‘Come – bloody – on!’ he said. On the fourth tug it creaked mightily, then gave up the ghost. A spray of sauce dotted the roof of the roll, and he used the dead sachet to smear it over his bacon, closing up the roll and taking a big bite. In the evening cool it was heavenly, sweet, salty and crispy, all at once. He chased it down with a long swallow of coffee. Under the bench, Neal rearranged his legs, crossing and uncrossing them, then finally jammed both feet on the middle rung. It made him sit up straight and look at the view. A car passed in the background, and he heard the other customer get back on the road. The van seemed to be closing down, too.

Soon everything was quiet.

He had no idea where the picnic-spot was; he could be five minutes from the hotel, or hours, or just outside the city. He realised it didn’t matter. What mattered was the stuff under his fingers: the squidgy packet; the soft roll; the heat of black coffee radiating through the double-walled cup. Even the gnarled wood of the table itself. Someone had chiselled an insult, or an endearment, into its surface – so long ago he couldn’t tell which. He sat still, enjoyed the stillness.

After a few minutes the wildlife wised up, resumed its business. A squirrel dropped to the spongey turf from a nearby tree, did a quick side-to-side reconnaissance, tufty ears pricked up and sleeked back, then dropped to all fours and scampered across the clearing. A blackbird cawed, somewhere out of sight, and what he thought must be a magpie – really just a blur of black and white – streaked across the middle distance like some secret, flashing signal.

Neal smiled. He wished Daniel was here, and not sweating out his latest assignment. Then, just as suddenly, he wished to stay alone. There was something satisfying about this moment, and he wanted it to endure. Perhaps he didn’t get enough of them, or what he did manage to snatch from the constant flow of demands in the office, was insufficient – the sort of observation his seminars tried to banish, in favour of a longer, more dedicated look.

He thought about the cormorants again. That thin silken cord, wrapped just so, in order to allow the bird to follow its natural instinct to dive, to chase and capture, but coming back to the surface, permitting only the smaller fish to slip down its waiting gullet. The rest were caught, trapped like – well, bigger fish – and levered out of its maw into wicker baskets. He could imagine the calls of the men from one flat-bottomed boat to another, the squawks of the birds, the relentless splashing of the waters in the background. He wasn’t sure which of the figures he identified with – the supreme fishermen, sleek and deathly in silent pursuit, or the men standing idly by till simple technology stole the best of the catch.

He'd hoped to convey something of this cultural complexity to his students. They knew all about fish, or so Henry said; their habitats, behaviours, tendencies and characteristics. Just the sort of specific knowledge, derived from close observation, that drove the best, the seemingly-simple haiku whose sparse lines – when written well – conveyed turbulent depths.

But he had reached the bottom of his coffee, and nothing much was happening in the clearing. Another car went by, here then gone, and he thought of the office: its low-walled cubicles and endless chatter; new demands heaped up, one another, on the old; the latest version of the Circular swarming up from the deep with a bellyful of corrections. Suddenly his neck tightened, gorge rising as if squeezed up by some invisible cord.

Neal stood up quickly, dumped his rubbish and got back in the car.

He started for home.

James Roderick Burns is the author of one flash fiction collection, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and five collections of short-form poetry, most recently Crows at Dusk; a collection of four novellas – The Unregulated Heart – is also forthcoming in summer 2024. His stories have twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and he serves as Staff Reader in Poetry for Ploughshares. He can be found on Twitter @JamesRoderickB and his newsletter ‘A Bunch of Fives’ offers one free, published story a fortnight (abunchoffives.substack.com).