Kenny-Boy

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Kenny-Boy

Mary wasn’t born in Alabama, and she knew she certainly didn’t want to die there, either. The landscape flickered by outside her car window, longleaf pine trees streaking into a single flare of green. The smudged skyline of Birmingham faded behind them, its squat, gray buildings a miserable excuse for a skyline, and Mary’s throat tightened with disappointment. Her husband, Randy, nodded his head to the radio, drumming his hand along his upper thigh. He was off-beat, and though he pretended not to notice, Mary knew it bothered him. She heard it in his exhale. In the sudden, frustrated click of a tongue. A chorus, half a bridge, then the meaty staccato of his fingers stuttered. Paused. Began again. The 80’s station was punctuated with bouts of static and Mary felt the slow tendrils of a headache begin to tighten at her temples. She spoke.

“Could we change the station?” She asked.

Randy kept his eyes on the road.

“No,” he said, “I like this song. You know I like this song.”

Mary pressed her forehead against the cool surface of the window. This was a celebratory vacation. It was meant to be a grand hurrah. They had just left their forties behind in a fanfare of silver party balloons and a shared birthday cake, too many candles haphazardly stuck in its frosting. Their friends had hugged them close and left wine-stained kisses on their cheeks before heading home early to care for dogs or children or newly minted teenagers, of which Mary and Randy had none. Instead, they answered the summertime siren’s call of the beach and packed their suitcases.

They hadn’t been married long. Just a handful of years. Mary, her hair frizzled by years of bleach and ragged at the tips, struck up a conversation with Randy at the local pharmacy. She held a prescription for thyroid-support medication, her body recently gone soft amid middle-aged hormonal famine, and Randy palmed a blue-printed hand cream. He was nice enough. At 47, tired and the sole 2 owner of a 1500 square foot split level, nice enough was all Mary was looking for. They went on a date to the local pizzeria. She learned he hated fishing but loved trout at a restaurant, was kind to waiters but winced behind their backs, paid for dinner but only in $50 increments. He called her the next week, and they were married in six months.

The trip to the coast was cheap. With retirement looming, Randy was less willing to fork over a handful of cash that could be earning interest in their 401(k)’s. Mary hoped they would pack a few of their lightly used suitcases for a trip to Maldives or even spring villas in Tuscany. She wanted to lick marbled salt from her fingers after dinners of fish-and-chips in London and sear the top of her mouth on pizza in New York City. Heck, she said, one evening when their discussion reached an argumentative pitch, “I’d choke on a pita if it was on a cruise in the Mediterranean!”

Instead, they were driving down the hard-drawn center of the United States, leaving the leafy summer suburbs of Chicago for the wind-scraped beaches of the Gulf Coast. To his credit, Mary knew, Randy did make it sound exciting. Exotic, no. Glamorous? No. But quiet, and good. He did make it sound good.

He asked her before bed: “What do you think about driving down to the Alabama coast?”

A crossword puzzle was open across the hairy plain of his belly. His legs were spread long across bed, creating dual humps beneath the comforter.

“We could rent a car, grab some sandwiches or something and make a go of it. We’ll drive straight through the meat of the country.”

Mary chewed the inside of her cheek. Her face was soft, still damp from her evening moisturizer. She took off her glasses and placed them on the nightstand.

She answered, “I haven’t been all the way through the South. It might be nice.”

“Might be?,” Randy laughed. “I’m going to make it the best damn trip you’ve ever taken.” He sighed long and slow before humming to himself in a self-satisfied pulse. Mary rolled over and bit his shoulder, kissing it quick.

They left early on a Monday morning, striking the US hard through its greened middle on I-65. They drove through the sweeping cornfields of Indiana, stopping at a small barbecue joint for lunch and sharing cornbread by the whirr of an undulating fan. Their car was an old BMW model, a deep green with broad fenders. It looked formidable, the kind of impressive vehicle someone would have been proud to own in the 1970s, but the air conditioner was on the fritz and neither had remembered to get it serviced before they left town. It froze over quickly, until there was only a buzz from the air vents. Randy turned it on and off in spurts, their underarms and the tender place at their lower back growing damp. The American South bloomed across the state of Tennessee, an experience that spanned a quick few hours spent eating an early morning breakfast in Nashville and stopping for gas downtown. Mary knew her husband hated to be low on fuel, so she bit her tongue when he stopped every few hours.

By mid-afternoon on Tuesday, just past Birmingham, the creased lines of Randy’s neck had grown red with sunburn. The radio crackled in and out, unbidden stanzas broken and disjointed. Mary twisted herself over the passenger seat and stretched her arm backwards in search of the brown sack of snacks she had packed just that morning. The biscuits and gravy from breakfast left her body heavy and sodden. Randy barked at her, sweat dribbling down his temples.

“What did you bring?”

“Hold on.”

Mary felt something in her shoulder pop and she breathed in hard with pain.

“I’m freaking starving here. C’mon, babe.”

Randy’s eyes cut towards her then back at the road.

“Fine.”

She unbuckled her seatbelt and shifted herself entirely over the seat, leapfrogging her hand over empty water bottles and warmed soda cans before locating the half-crushed sack under the seat.

“It’s kind of messy back here.”

“I didn’t ask for a sermon, just something to eat.”

She handed him a bag of cut apples and Randy’s jaw jutted forward, mouth open.

“Really? Apples? Do you even know what they do to your gut?” “There’s fiber in them. They’re good for you.”

“They’re full of sugar, and if I’m going to have sugar on a road trip I’d rather it be some sort of piece of crap candy.”

A blue sign painted with fast food symbols streaked by the window, and Randy merged hard. The car vibrated as it jumped the rumble strip.

“Candy sounds great.”

They stopped at a Trucker Travel Stop. The brown, yellow and fleshy pink branding reminded Mary of the thick carpet and wood paneling at her grandmother’s house, forever frozen in the 1970’s. While her husband perused the candy aisle, Mary wandered towards the fountain drink station against the back wall. It was tattooed with soda; sugary liquid lacquered the metal countertop and grey tiled floor. A tray of hot dogs steamed next to it, sweating sausages spun between slick metal cylinders. She filled a dented Styrofoam cup high with ice before spurting streams of Coca-Cola on top. It fizzled and popped, the excess bubbles tickling at her nose.

“You ready to go, sourpuss?” Randy held two bags of sour gummy straw in his hands.

Mary never knew if he meant it, the nickname. She never laughed. He never stopped using it.

“Yeah, hold on.” Mary turned towards the waist high wall of snacks and knit the tender space between her eyes together.

Her eyebrows were thin and fair, so they never quite met. Still, the ridges were deep and spread from her hairline almost to the bridge of her nose. She chose a bag of sun faded cheese popcorn before second guessing herself and snatching a small carton of Goldfish crackers instead. She took a moment to straighten the forgotten popcorn back on the shelf before following her husband to the cash register. There were still a few more hours of sun before they would stop for the night, and the sugar cocktail or perhaps strange effects of the candy dye had Randy talking.

“You know, my parents listened to the radio all the time. Talk radio, you know. The occasional baseball game when we were out camping. But otherwise, it was just talk, talk, talk, all the time.” Mary murmered her assent.

Alabama was seeping towards Misissippi outside the window, the weeping kudzu stretching towards the road in sage, sweeping arcs.

“My dad, he was a real man. He’s why I drive so well,” Randy took both hands off the steering wheel and balanced it between his knees, jolting the car before he straightened it back on the highway. “I wish you knew him. You know, I know, he was a truck driver. Which I guess makes me a professionally trained driver. Taught by the kind of guy who can’t mess up.”

Mary realized she was gripping the doorhandle. She loosened her grip, her knuckles reddening with blood flow.

“He was smart. I like smart people, you do, too.” Randy bowled over her concerns, smiling. “That’s why you fell in love with me, right?”

Mary smiled tightly. Ruefully, she thought? Was it a rueful smile? Was there something dark in it, something bitter? She didn’t question Randy’s intelligence. Still, her was brash. Brazen. Unliked. The ebb and flow of electronic impulses in his brain were hardly governed by societal expectation or emotion, and instead he relinquished his ideas on unsuspecting audiences with little thought to their digestion. Brash and loud spoken, he hid the ugly flare of his self-doubt behind her. He could transfix a room with sordid tales of death culture in Central America or lighten a party with jokes that teased at the political dealings of the host. Even so, and perhaps because, he treated his mind as if it would suddenly dissipate. Sometimes the loudness of his voice was too brash for the moment, revealing sweat at his hairline and the untamed stench of insecurity. The air conditioning wheezed, and Randy turned it off to defrost. The cab boiled. Mary tapped her fingers at her temples, drawing her legs up onto the car seat, crossing them like a child. She noticed newly painted veins of dirt across her white tennis shoes.

She spoke. “If you would’ve known better, would you have wanted something different? With your life?”

Randy didn’t answer. Mary saw the tension build in his jaw as he clenched his teeth.

“Would you have wanted kids? To live somewhere else?” Mary’s voice was small, but there was an ache to it. Something tender and small, a question that required an honest answer.

Randy said nothing. The radio continued to play, the sound a tinny, country twang. Thunder growled in the cloudclotted sky. The storm muted the springtime sprawl of color outside the window. The craggy hills of the north had long since softened into flatlands, and even those were giving way to the Gulf region. Just past Montgomery, the highway rose above a streak of swampland and straddled the Mobile River. Trees cloaked in kudzu reached brazenly over the road, eerie, monstrous things. Outrageous, craggy, lifelike as they clawed at the cars speeding down the empty highway. The storm clouds trapped the heat low along the road. Randy glanced at the fuel gage once, twice, three times. No one had spoken in an hour.

“Let’s stop quick,” Randy said.

Mary pointed at the GPS. “We only have a half hour to go,” she said. Her voice was low.

Randy smirked. “A half hour is better spent with a full tank.”

A fleck of candy clung this right canine. The exit was almost hidden by the overhanging heft of tree branches, the blistering orange of synthetic lighting just beyond a bend in the road. There were two gas stations across from each other, each boasting empty bays. Tom & Jim’s Gas Stop boasted a slick tin roof, slanted at an impossible angle and pockmarked with dirt and uprooted vines, but light burned from inside. Mary saw an older man at the counter, leaning backwards with his arms crossed, head tilted towards what she was sure must have been a television hung towards the ceiling. It was too lonely, Mary thought, and she wordlessly pointed at the Chevron across the street. Randy obliged, turning the car hard into a brilliantly lit gas station chain, the concrete scabbed with spilled condiments and oil stains. The Alabama forest hung heavy behind the stark white and silver metal of the place, bending over the clean lines of capitalism as if bowing in reverence. The seat belt alert pinged as they both unbuckled, opening and closing their doors in unison, the staccato sound loud against the chatter of cicadas from the trees. Mary wondered how many were there, their beady eyes black against the night. Randy looked at her, eyebrows raised.

Mary said, “I need to stretch my legs.”

“Don’t go far,” Randy answered, tapping at the pump keypad.

Mary stood on the passenger side of the car; arms folded on its roof with her chin on her hands. She watched her husband’s back flex beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, noted the new lines that streamed across the back of his neck. She hardly knew his body. She’d only seen it for the past few years, already quiet and tempered by middle age. She didn’t know how the tautness of youth had calmed across his chest, small patches of fat cropping up at the bend in his waist and along his upper arms. Youth had long since left him, twisting his physical self towards someplace softer and unknown. Mary felt a sharp twinge of love for the person he must have been. The softer, kinder self. The emotion was easily overwhelming and just as quickly gone. Was it even real, she thought? This kinder person? The stranger walked out of the forest with little fanfare. He wasn’t there, then suddenly he was fully formed and breathing, just beyond the line of gas pumps, as if he’d been split from the earth. He walked with the slope of a wounded animal, tangy and wild with presence. Everything moved. His fingers plucked at one another, bloodying cuticles into crusty lumps, and his tongue worked behind the pockmarked stretch of his cheek. Haggard eyes darted back and forth, from Mary’s tight face to Randy’s curious scowl. “Well hey there, you two.” His voice was raspy with disuse.

“Hey, man.” Randy towards the man, pulling his hands from his pockets.

“You got a couple bucks to spare?” the man said.

He tapped his foot against the ground, the sole of his boot loose and flapping. Rap rap, it went. Rap rap.

“We don’t have anything,” Randy said.

“You expect me to believe that, with that high-oh car you’re drivin’?” There was expectation in his voice.

“We can’t help you out. Sorry.” Randy leveled his eyes at the man inching across the asphalt, incredulous with his defiance.

The man tilted his head and smiled, revealing a mouth full of straight, white teeth. The man’s right canine was broken, leveling the point into a jagged line.

He spoke, louder this time, “Hey man, you know who I am? My names Kenneth, Ken, Kenny-Boy. I live out past the tree line there.” He held his hands up in a mock surrender. “Pretty sure I was born there, too, but who knows? It was a long time ago.” His breathing hard and oddly distinctive, each exhale accompanied by a grating wheeze.

Kenny-Boy continued. “All I need is a couple bucks to get me through the night.”

“We don’t have anything for you,” Randy said. “But you sure as hell better stop right there.” Randy’s hackles were raised, the air lit with primitive territoriality.

“What’re you going to do?” Kenny-Boy stopped. “Hurt me?”

Randy pocketed his credit card and unhooked the pump nozzle from the car, placing it back in its cradle. Kenny-Boy moved closer, his voice wheedling. Dangerous. “Hey buddy. I’m talkin’ to you.” Kenny-Boy jerked his chin up, his left nostril twitching.

“Look man, I don’t have anything. I have a card. Do you want a card?” Randy sucked in his cheeks and squinted his eyes, incredulous. “Even if you get the damn card, I’m not tellin’ you my zip code, so good luck using it here.”

Mary breathed out, her body weakening against the car door. “Randy…”

Kenny-Boy spit. “Shut up, lady.”

Randy fired back. “That’s my wife, asshole.”

Mary couldn’t turn her gaze, couldn’t look at anything but the stranger’s face. It was sunburnt, but it couldn’t hide the leathery complexion and dirt-speckled expanse of it. The corners of his mouth bubbled with spit and blood, and thick flakes of skin peeled from his lips. Mary couldn’t smell him, but she knew he would be earthy and pungent with sweat.

“You give me some money, and we’re all good. And don’t offer no fuckin’ food. I don’t want it, I don’t need it.” His words fell hot on the pavement.

Randy sighed and turned back towards his wife, who was frozen on the passenger side of the car. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, his smile pitying. “Do you have anything?”

Ken, Kenneth, Kenny-Boy clucked his tongue once and his nostrils twitched in unison as he turned towards her. “Yeah, baby, you got anything?” He bit his lip and shrugged his eyebrows up and down suggestively. “I don’t have anything, he’s right. I’m sorry.” And she was. She was sorry, that she was meeting this man at a gas station in god-knows-where Alabama. That he’d walked out of the forest, the remote tropics of the American South, and had run into the brunt of her husband’s insecurity. She was sorry that he was alone and she felt alone. No one was guilty of anything but the accident of proximity, and she realized it just might be enough to ruin them all. Mary’s quickly escalating panic punctuated her words as she apologized again.

“I’m so sorry.” The edge of her sentence broke, and she felt the muscles in her stomach clench. She suddenly missed the five-dollar bill she spent on Goldfish and Coke that afternoon. Randy mistook her tone for fear, perhaps for panic and, he reacted hard.

“You hear her? She doesn’t have a damn thing. Neither of us do. So get the fuck out of here.” Mary thought about that night for years. Maybe if he’d sounded more apologetic, the man would’ve made off with a scowl and thick wad of phlegm spat to the pavement. Maybe if he had acted like the man mattered more, like his unwelcome presence held weight, that they would have ended up at the beach like they planned. Their world would have continued like they planned.

Kenny-Boy held out his hand. Grime striped his palms.

“Give me the keys,” he said. “I get the car.”

He jerked his head towards the forest, “you get the woods.”

“Are you fucking kidding me -”

Time moved quickly. It stumbled over itself, losing minutes to seconds as Ken, Kenneth, KennyBoy pulled a knife from the deep pocket of his cargo shorts and stabbed Randy in the stomach. Both men gasped in unison. One hand was sunk deep into another’s torso, where the thrump of blood, pushing and pressing onward, spilled up and around the blade. It was a secret place no one was meant to touch, perhaps only the being that knit blood to bone, but here they were. A colony of germs spread through Randy’s gut, latching onto blood vessels and spilling into tiny capillary canals. The blade, unseen and deadly, nicked the abdominal aorta and skewered his right kidney, unleashing a torrent of blood into his stomach. The delicate balance of Randy’s internal organs was upset and violated.

“Lady don’t you touch him! Don’t you move!” Kenny-Boy screamed across the car, eyes still trained on the gory scene in front of him. Mary held her hands up, bent at the elbows, pale fingers shaking against the clouded sky. The convenience store lights flickered, and the world went dark, the scene lost in the night for a moment before Ken, Kenneth, Kenny-Boy, the man from the swamp, the man from the woods, ran. If Mary had known any better, she would have prayed to the croaking depths of the Alabama wilderness to open its jaws and swallow him whole. She would have pleaded with the swaying kudzuchoked trees to tear the limp threads from his emaciated, tobacco-stained limbs, to leave them in shreds on submerged cypress branches. She would have prayed for a belch from the bayou, summoning alligators on their nocturnal night flights to train their eyes on his circuitous course through the trees. For their hunt to be silent but their enjoyment to be long, drawn out, the screams from their prey unwholesome to the human ear. If she had known, she would have sent a fiery strain of energy towards the sky, electrifying the tunneling wind channels and constellations with an arc of lightning so bright it would crack the darkness straight through the middle, igniting the man’s body with celestial fire.

Such is the grief of a woman, when a woman comes to know grief. Randy cradled his stomach and met his wife’s eyes with a rounded look of surprise. Pain seeped from the corners of his mouth, visible in the white strain of his lips, tunneling down his neck in a trail of wildly pumping arteries. Mary dropped her arms and sprinted around the car, hand skirting the dirty green hood. She gathered a crush of bug corpses in her palm. She caught her husband as he began to slide towards the concrete, wrestling the crook of her elbows underneath his armpits to soften the slump. Her arms burned as they sputtered awake, blood suddenly racing towards her fingertips.

“Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay.” She repeated herself, her words rote and meaningless.

She tossed them towards the gash in his belly as easily as if she was comforting a child, knees red from the itch of summertime grass. What damage could it have done, she thought, her mind clicking back and forth in time, dredging up models from high school anatomy class and off-base chemical equations. The kidneys, heart, liver and lungs, all nestled around each other in perfect pink and purple hues had seemed so approachable when they were flattened against the stretch of a poster board. It was so different from the sweating, bleeding, oozing body in front of her. Adrenaline sped through her limbs and ignited her throat as she screamed. Guttural and harsh, over and over again. She screamed. Kenneth, Ken, Kenny-Boy, did he hear her, Mary thought later? Did the sound of it twist itself around his chest, squeezing his heart as thoroughly as hers broke? Her screams, didn’t they sluice through the trees, gathering weight as they crackled through the saw grass and alligator weed? Grief was grief was grief, Mary thought. For the kind and the unkind. For the dead, the dying, and the ones who should be.

Meghan O'Brien is a graduate of the University of New Orleans MFA program, and works in the publishing and digital media industry.

By the Cherry Tree

Photographer - Tobi Brun

“By The Cherry Tree”

Prudence Dickson did not mean to be defiant, truly she didn’t. Somehow however, her tone, or her look, or her choice of words always seemed defiant to her father, and Thomas Dickson tolerated no defiance. His wife and his other children soon learned to keep their heads tucked in, especially when he had a mood, but Prudy had never mastered the skill. In truth, in her 17th year, they had clashed more than ever.

“My child, will you never learn that a soft answer turneth aside wrath?” Clara Dickson asked, as she surveyed the results of the latest thrashing Prudy had suffered, dabbing the welts with an ointment of willow-bark, plantain leaves, and calendula. Her daughter hid her face in the pillow and tried not to wince or move too much as her wounds were dressed.“I didn’t mean to,” Prudy answered.

“You never mean to, child,” Mrs Dickson said. “You never did. But it’s never stopped the consequences, has it?” She placed a square of light linen over the belt marks and bound it lightly in place. She shook her head, sadly. 

“How do you bear Father, Mommy?” her daughter asked. “It’s not like he’s never beaten you or the others. How do you stand it?” 

“My parents decided I should wed your father,” Mrs Dickson replied. “He’s a good provider, and well-connected. Yes, he has a bad temper, but he does not drink to excess, or scandalise our family, like some men do.”

“But do you love him?”

“Love is just for novels, Prudy,” her mother said, with resignation in her voice. “It’s fine for the characters in Miss Austen’s books, but in real life...love doesn’t often fit into marriage.”

“That’s awful,” Prudence said, sitting up and turning to face her mother. “I can’t imagine it.” Her mother smiled at the folly of youth.

“In time, you will,” she said. “Your father will find you a good match and, if you are lucky, he’ll be a good man. Who knows? You might even grow to love him.” In truth, Mrs Dickson doubted her words and if she suddenly recalled, fondly, a young man’s face from her own youth, she did not say so.

Thomas Dickson was well-respected in the village of Queenston. Starting with his own land-grant of 300 acres, through connections, luck, and 150 acres Clara had brought him as a dowry, he’d become a wealthy man. His home – the Stone House – was the largest and best appointed all along the frontier. As collector of customs, and the owner of a large estate, he had only a few equals, and no real rivals. His family sat in the first pew at St Saviour’s Church, and even the curate looked to him for approval as he delivered his sermons, rather than the deity he served. No one would have dared call him a petty-tyrant to his face but, in that small corner of Upper Canada, he was never gainsaid.

As the family left the church on the next Sunday morning, Dickson greeted the curate, who was pleased to have received the great man’s approbation; he had wondered why Mr Dickson had requested that particular topic for a sermon, but gathered from his face and handshake that he was not displeased by the result.  After that short delay, Dickson turned aside to address the real goal of his socialising, today.

“Mr Chase! Just the man I was hoping to see,” Dickson said, as he drew aside the older man. Nearly 60, and recently widowed, Uriah Chase had no children who had survived, and Thomas Dickson was not one to miss such an opportunity. Chase owned nearly 400 acres of land, had a grist mill, and a smithy that he ran at a considerable profit.

The two men chatted for a while about assorted local matters, before Thomas Dickson got to the point.

“You know, I was listening to the sermon, today,” he said. “When Reverend Dawson reached the part about ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him,’ I must admit, my thoughts turned to you, in your bereavement.” He smiled at the frail, old man.

“What am I to do?” Mr Chase asked. “I am robbed of my support and succour. I suppose I shall go to my death unmourned and forgotten. Alas.” Chase evidently thought his wife’s decline the most extravagant of self-indulgences, and the resultant loss as a personal attack on himself and his position in the world.

“It’s very sad,” Dickson agreed with him “Have you thought of looking for someone to ease your burdens and gladden your closing years?” He glanced over at his wife and daughters, as if by chance.

“Oh, I’ve no time for courting,” Mr Chase said. “Such a foolish waste of time is suitable to the young, but, an established man, a man of business, can’t be engaged in such frivolity as paying calls, and taking women to dances, and the like.” Dickson knew that Chase had been making inquiries, but his disagreeable and miserly nature had led to him being rebuffed by many of the older women – spinsters and widows both – that might have afforded him a suitable match. No one with a modicum of independence would likely yoke themselves to such a man, and those with no dowry or inheritance stirred no passion in his avaricious heart.

“I do understand,” Thomas Dickson said. “If only such matters could be conducted like a business transaction.”

“As they were, in the old days!” Chase said with some vigour. “The parents would decide such matters, the partner would be chosen, and the matter set to rights on a proper basis.” Mr Dickson, certain Mr Chase meant on the basis of the property each partner brought to the altar, smiled to himself.

“I hear your wisdom, sir,” he said. “And having only daughters left, I am much concerned that they marry into substance. I have not been well myself, and worry lest all I have built up be scattered on the winds.” This last was a total invention, but he suspected an intimation of his own frailty might bait a trap for the older man.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Uriah Chase said, insincerely. “But I’m sure your eldest girl  – what’s her name – doesn't lack for suitors. Half the bucks along the frontier must be vying for her hand.” He gazed at Prudence, appreciating the view of her slim waist set off by the full skirts of her dress. Thomas Dickson did not miss this glance.

“Silly boys, wastrels, mostly,” Dickson said. “I’ve seen several off. No, I would have her wed a man of substance, someone with judgement. Someone who’s demonstrated sound sense in cultivation and business…Well, in short, someone like yourself, Mr Chase.” Mr Dickson gave a deep sigh, as if the frustration of finding such a match weighed heavily upon him.

So it was that Mr Chase was invited round for Sunday dinner at the Stone House. He lingered afterward and, between sips of port, appraised the four young daughters of his neighbour: Prudence, Charity, Emma and Maud. The last two – 13 and 11 – were, of course, too young to be marriageable, nor would it do for Mr Chase to make his suit for the 15 year old before her 17 year old sister was wed or, at least, engaged. As it chanced, Prudence had a bosom that he found most pleasing, especially when set off by her slender waist. The prospect of a fat dowry –  and a fourth of Thomas Dickson’s worldly goods should he die, God forbid – was even more pleasing to Uriah Chase.

If Clara Dickson was surprised when Uriah Chase was invited to stay for supper too,  she did not say so. Only Emma noticed the funny way in which she looked at her daughters that afternoon, but she did not know the reason until later. After dinner, the two men concluded their arrangements in Thomas Dickson’s office.

“Mommy, I will not marry that man,” Prudence said, when her mother told her. “He’s so old! And he looks at me as if I were a prize pig that he wished to fatten for slaughter.” Clara had not known, and did not commend what Thomas had decided, but there seemed little chance to evade it. She stroked her daughter’s hair as Prudence buried her face in her shoulder. 

“My child, you had to know that your father would pick you a husband, soon,” Mrs Dickson said. “And though Mr Chase is older, well, that means he will not trouble you so very much, as a younger man might. He will not stray with others, and you will be a rich widow, soon.” She realised that might not have been the best thing to say, when Prudence began to sob again.

“I do not wish to be a widow at all!” Prudence said. “And I would rather be a poor widow, and have been truly loved, than a rich man’s widow who never loved her husband.” 

Mr Dickson, however, was unreceptive to any such arguments. He had made a good match, one which would see his eldest daughter well settled. Then, should Mr Chase happen soon to die – which event Thomas Dickson fully expected – then his daughter, knowing little about land and business, would of course turn to him, and he would gather all that Uriah Chase had scraped together over 60 years, into his own hands and to his benefit, although he would never say such a thing, openly.

The next Sunday, which was as pretty as a May Sunday can be in that part of the World, Mr Chase sent a carriage round to fetch Prudence to visit him. Mrs Dickson went to chaperone but, taken with the pretty day, and the blossoms on the trees, she did not seem to notice that her daughter and the young driver exchanged looks, both going and coming.

Over the following weeks, Prudence took many long walks out to the edges of Thomas Dickson’s fields, and lingered beneath the black cherry tree, along the road to Durrand – a hidden spot that the girls had often visited when avoiding their father. If Emma discovered her older sister’s visits there,  she never breathed a word to her parents. Thomas Waters, the young drivere who worked for Uriah Chase, came often to the spot, and brought flowers he picked for Prudence. Their meetings seemed to Emma like a scene from one of the novels she loved to read. And Clara, if she learned of them, did not hinder Prudy’s frequent trips to the cherry tree, though she wondered if her daughter had ever noticed the initials and heart carved into the bark, almost hidden after many years, and forgotten by all but her.

One morning in June the household woke to find that Prudence had left a letter at her father’s accustomed place at the family table. What it said, exactly, none of them were sure, but the scowl on Thomas Dickson’s face as he tore the missive to shreds was one they long remembered. Emma was not surprised by the event, but Clara Dickson’s curiously dry-eyed weeping managed to distract the ire of Thomas Dickson from noticing any conspiracy.

“I’ll thrash the girl until she cannot sit for a week,” Dickson thundered. “How dare she throw herself at trash like this Waters? I’ll have that young puppy put in the pillory! How dare he sully my name?”

“You will have an apoplexy, if you do not calm yourself,” Clara Dickson told him. “No one has been put in pillory since before Prudence was born.” Even though this was true, Thomas Dickson did not wish to be calm. He swore out a warrant for the arrest of Thomas Waters and, as justice of the peace, he signed it. He sent men after the pair but, as they had set sail from Newark in a schooner, there was no prospect of apprehending them. A disappointed Thomas Dickson realised that, by the time he could find Prudence and bring her back, she would be ruined; Uriah Chase was not the sort of man to accept his hired man’s leavings.

So, with the blackest ink he could find, Dickson crossed the name of Prudence out of the family Bible. He tore the silhouette and pencil sketches her sisters had made of her to fragments, and burned the family portrait he’d once hung with pride over the dining room fireplace. He forbade his daughters – his three and only daughters, as he said – to ever mention the name Prudence again. When, in due course, a letter with familiar handwriting  arrived for him he consigned it to the fire, unread.

It was the same when other letters came, whether sent to him, or Charity, Emma, or Maud, he inspected them closely and, if there was the slightest suspicion in his mind as to who had sent them, the letters were burned. If any letters that came to Mrs Dickson, she kept that secret to herself and read them in some quiet moment, committing them to heart, before disposing of them.

It was not possible to forbid all mention of Prudence by those outside the Dickson home, of course. The girls heard from others that their sister had married Thomas Waters, and that they were living in Durrand. If Thomas Dickson also knew, he never mentioned it, but he did send letters to every substantial man in that district and beyond, traducing the name of Thomas Waters, and enjoining them never to give him gainful employment. 

Thomas Waters had guessed that his father-in-law’s wrath would be exceedingly great, and had made such plans as a young man with little money and few connections could. His strong back served him well, and he managed to persuade the Board of Police in Durrand to take him on as the new gravedigger before he had even run away with Prudence. A cabin went with the position, since the burial ground was some distance from the village. A relic of fortifications from the late war with the States, it was rough, dirt floored, and small, but sturdy enough.

Prudence might not have been used to such rude surroundings, but she did not complain. She took in sewing, and from scraps of material her patrons did not wish to claim, she made little curtains for the paper windows, and a quilt for their marriage bed. She walked the three miles to the village, and the three miles back daily; sometimes more than once. She swept the floor and did the cooking and the laundry, carrying the basket of clothes and such linen as they had down the steep banks to the creek and washing  them on the  stones. Had she married Mr Chase, such chores and many more besides, would all have been done for her, but she did not dwell on it.

Over the months, rumour had come that Uriah Chase had wed, and she worried it might have been Emma who was forced to be his bride. All Prudy’s letters went unanswered, and she needed to know more than the rumours occasional travellers brought. In due course, little Thomas Waters was born, yet still no word came from Queenston. When May had come again, and the boy was three months old, Prudence decided that she could bear the silence of her family no more. She kissed Thomas Senior and, carrying little Thomas on one hip, with a pack of needful things on her back, she set out to walk the 50 miles; they had no extra money for her to take a stagecoach nor a schooner.

“I should go with you,” Thomas Waters told his wife. “It’s cowardly for me to not face your father.”

“If you leave,” Prudence told him, “Then you might lose your job. It will take days to walk so far – longer, carrying little Thomas. People will complain if their dead go unburied for a week or more.” Thomas knew she was right; people had complained in the Winter, when the ground was frozen, and the bodies had to wait in the brick charnel house for a thaw to come. 

“Could we not wait?” he asked. Thomas Waters loved her dearly and the idea of Prudence being gone for five days or longer bothered him. He did not fear she would stop loving him, but he was not sure what Thomas Dickson might do; he’d seen the marks her father’s belt had left on Prudy’s back.

“It will be hotter in the Summer,” Prudence told him, her eyes steady and her chin slightly tilted upwards to look at him. “And the baby will weigh more. It’s better to go now.” Thomas kissed her and watched her as far as he could, until the road took a sharp bend around the earthworks of the old forward battery, and he could see her no more.

Prudence had walked the distance from her cabin to the centre of the small village of Durrand more times  than she could remember, and it was not long at all before it was behind her. From there the King’s Highway ran out generally eastward, although it wandered a little from south to north, on occasion, to find a footing on the driest land between the escarpment and Lake Ontario. It had been a well travelled route even before the first settlers had arrived and, although but a dirt road, it was the best and quickest way to walk the long distance.

Twice a day, stagecoaches passed along the highway, from Queenston all the way to York, or the reverse. The whole journey took some 17 hours, but none could not stand the bumping and lurching that far, and horses and drivers were both changed at Durrand. Half such a trip on Upper Canada’s roads was no joy for travellers in those days. A barefoot walk would spare Prudy and the baby an ordeal, nor would the girl be much wearier at the end of it.

At Big Creek Prudy faced her first real challenge; ’til then, the road had been mostly level, but that stream lay at the bottom of a deep gorge, about a quarter of a mile wide. The road ran steeply down to the water, and then climbed again quickly on the far side of the ford; she felt a little breathless by the time the road levelled out again. Less than a mile to the east lay the Gage’s farm; a fine piece of land, their front garden marked the high-watermark of the American invasion that was beaten back just before Prudence was born. Their house lay on the far side of the Stoney Creek, as they called it, but the Gages had built a bridge across the small stream.

People had begun to plant fruit trees on the farms that lay beyond that, and the road was scattered with fallen blossom; the scattered petals and fragrance were some relief on the long and dusty walk to the next hamlet. It was called Fifty, since it stood on the banks of the fiftieth creek between that spot and the great Niagara River. Prudence was a little worried that she might be recognized and handed over to the justice of the peace there, to be returned to her father. John Willson knew Thomas Dickson well, as both sat on the bench, and in the Legislature, but Prudy’s fear was childish. The pampered young lady who had fled the Stone House a year before little resembled the barefoot mother in homespun cloth who was trudging along the King’s Highway. The gossip as she passed through Fifty, was not about her, for that was old news, but about Willson’s son, Hugh; John had his own family troubles to attend to, without getting involved in her father’s.

By the time she reached Grimsby, it was late in the day. She had no money for lodging, so she found a spot beneath some bushes at the edge of Robert Nelle’s fine farm, and spread a blanket there. There was water from Forty Creek to drink, and the baby nursed quietly; Prudence ignored her own hunger. In the morning, she rose at first light and walked on. 

Prudy’s resolution to walk the whole way wavered when a passing farmer and his wife offered her a lift on the back of their wagon. She hopped up in back of the buckboard, which rattled and bounced along the road until they reached Thirty Creek, where the couple turned toward their destination. Prudence thanked them for their kindness as she set out, again. Though little Thomas had not enjoyed the rough ride, she was less footsore than she had been, and the farmer’s wife had given her some bread to eat. 

From Thirty Creek it was a long walk to Glen Elgin. That stream ran down the valley, from the mills at the edge of the escarpment into the broad and safe harbour that opened onto Lake Ontario. People had started to call that pretty spot Jordan, and Prudy wished she could tarry there to enjoy the Spring day, but whatever balm or gall awaited her in the Gilead of her fancy, it lay beyond Jordan’s shores. 

Beyond Glen Elgin, the several creeks that flowed down into the Black Swamp were a bigger obstacle; all of them had to be forded, and they swarmed with biting flies that tormented Prudy and little Thomas. Twelve Creek – the largest of them, more like a river than a stream – ran down, deep and wide, from the escarpment to the Great Lake, and the bridge over it had a toll which she could not afford. To cross over Prudence had to make her way up to the village of Beaver Dams, a steep climb to the top of the escarpment. Weary at the end of a long-day’s walk, she lingered in the village and watched a woman beating her rugs outside a substantial house.

“That’s a big job,” Prudence said, with sympathy, for beating rugs is dirty and tiring work. The woman looked Prudy over; seeing a barefoot young woman with a child, both dusty and tired from the road, she guessed that the girl might be in need.

“If you help me finish beating the rugs, you might have supper and a place to spend the night,” she offered. Prudence was quick to agree, although she had never done such work herself. Still, she’d seen the hired girls at the Stone House do it twice a year, and she knew what to do, and the dust of the task added little to the dust of the road. Thomas lay on a mossy spot and watched his mother work, not understanding in the least why she was doing something so funny.

In the morning, Prudence and Thomas set out once more. From Beaver Dams, it was an easy, downhill walk along the Limestone Heights, past Stamford and St Davids.  It was only 13 miles to Queenston, but Prudence found she was walking slower as she neared her destination.

“Thomas,” she said to the baby, “I don’t know how your Grandfather will act when he sees us. It would be wrong not to give him the chance to meet you, or to deprive you of your grandparents but…” She struggled to put her fear into words, while little Thomas gurgled and paid no attention. 

It was just before 11 in the morning when she first saw the Stone House. Her memories of growing up there flooded back; although she loved her mother and sisters, it had never been a happy place. It did not feel like home, the way the cabin did. It might have fine floors, glass windows, and a grand staircase, but she did not envy those who lived under Thomas Dickson’s roof. She stopped and put on her shoes; she was not going to stand before her father barefoot. Then, bracing herself for any storm, she walked up the long drive to the door. 

It was time for luncheon Prudence realised as she knocked. It would take a minute for someone to come from the dining room to answer the door, so she waited patiently. She expected it might be one of the hired girls and, since they never stayed long, it was likely that whoever answered might not know her. But it wasn’t a stranger whose face appeared; it was her sister, Charity.

“Prudence!” Charity said, her hand rising to her mouth in shock. Her wide blue eyes took in her sisters’ road-worn appearance, and the small child she was carrying. Behind her Prudy saw Emma, Maud and her mother crowding the door from the dining room, and staring at her. Their expressions ran through surprise, wonder, shock, envy, joy, and worry, but no one dared to say a word before Thomas Dickson passed sentence.

Then, pushing past the women, her father appeared. His face was expressionless as he approached. Prudence moved slightly, holding up the baby as if in offering; showing her father his namesake. Thomas came to the door and Charity stepped aside. Without a word he closed the door in Prudence's face.

Prudy Waters took a deep breath; later there would be weeping, but she would not do so here, not on the doorstep of the Stone House. She would not give Thomas Dickson the satisfaction of driving his wayward daughter from his door in tears. She held her head high and walked down the drive. Her steps were firm, and no one watching would guess that she was worn from the long road she had walked, and heart-broken from her reception. 

The road could be seen from Stone House for some way, and she kept her pace steady but, as Prudy came over a small rise, Emma was waiting for her by the cherry tree, where once they had hidden from Thomas Dickson’s rages. Down in that hollow, they could not be seen from the house, but they were not too far to hear if Emma was called. Prudy smiled as her sister came toward her, carrying a loaf of bread in her hands. Emma’s presence was a comfort; the sisters had always been close.

“Mother told me to bring it,” Emma said. There was a slight hesitation in the younger girl’s voice, as if she wasn’t sure if the gift would be accepted. There was a steel in Prudy that was new-tempered, an edge she did not recognise.

“Why didn’t Mommy come, herself?” Prudy asked.

“She’s making sure Father is distracted,” she answered. There was something in the way she said it that made Prudy realise the source of her hesitation.

“Has it been worse since I left?” Prudy asked; she could not keep a note of fear from her voice. The question hung for a moment, and Emma’s eyes looked bright with tears.

“Yes,” she answered. “His temper is worse, and he demands greater obedience.” 

“I didn’t know, I’m sorry,” Prudy said.  She wondered if she was telling her sister the truth; she knew her father well enough to know her defiance would goad him. The guilt she felt was relieved, a little, by the knowledge her sister wore no wedding ring.  “You didn’t have to marry Mr Chase?” Emma shook her head.

“Father spoke of it, but Mommy said she was not going to lose a second daughter,” she answered.

“I was afraid Father might make you,” Prudy said. “I wrote to ask, but never heard a word.”

“You wrote?” Emma asked; she’d thought her sister had forgotten her. Prudence nodded.

“Whenever I could find paper, and a coin to pay someone to fetch a letter to you,” she said. Emma looked at Prudy and realised that could not have been as often as she wished. Emma relaxed a little, then hugged her sister. 

“I’m glad you escaped,” she said.  “He’s wrong to drive you away.” 

“I never expected he’d welcome me back, but I had to give him the chance to see his first grandson,” Prudence said. Emma came closer and looked down into the boy's eyes; he looked back with the thoughtful gaze of a child seeing someone new, but still safe in his mother’s arms. “Does he know you’re here?” Emma shook her head. 

“He went into the study and locked the door,” she said. “Mommy gave me the loaf, and told me to come. I didn’t know she knew this spot.” Prudy looked at the old tree; there were many initials she did not know carved into the trunk, her sisters’, too, and her’s and Thomas’, set into a heart. 

“You must have run, to catch me” said Prudence. “I wasn’t walking slowly.” Emma grinned and Prudence knew her sister had hiked up her skirts and torn across the fields to arrive ahead of her. Then the smile faded.

“Does he hit you?” Emma asked, and they both knew whom she meant.

“He’s never hit me,” Prudence replied. “Thomas isn’t perfect, but he loves me, and I, him.” Prudence looked in the direction of the Stone House. The rough cabin she shared with Thomas was not a fine house; no one riding out on the York Road would ever stop and admire it as passers-by admired the Stone House, but within it dwelt no heart of stone. It had something her birthplace would never know.

“Mother worries that you’re penniless,” Emma said.

“I am,” Prudence replied. “But I have a roof over my head, my husband has a job despite Father, and I can sew or do laundry. We get by.” Emma ran her hand down her own silk dress as she looked at Prudence’s rough homespun; it looked the worse for the dirt of the long road on it but Prudy did not seem embarrassed by it. The younger girl watched her sister sit on the dirt to take her shoes off; she could tell that Prudy’s feet were most often unshod, these days. Emma wondered whether she could make such sacrifices.

“Will you come back?” Emma asked. She put the loaf – still warm from the baking – into her sister’s bag. Prudence smiled at her; she appreciated the kind gesture.

“No,” she answered. “Never, as long as Father is alive. But you can write to me. So can Mommy, and Charity, Maud too, when she’s old enough to keep a secret. Mrs Waters, in Durrand, on the York Road. Just don’t let father know.” Emma hugged Prudy, a strong embrace that ended in a sob, before she turned away.

Standing still under the cherry tree Prudence watched Emma, until she disappeared back toward the Stone House. The tears she had feared just a little while before did not come; there was no longer a cause for them. Prudence Waters looked up into the tree’s leafy boughs; there would be many cherries, this year.

Peter McGuinness recently retired after teaching History, World Religions, Philosophy and Visual Art for nearly 30 years. Before becoming a teacher, he was an editor and a journalist. He have a B.A. in History and Politics, a B.A. and an M.A. in the History of Art, and a B. Ed. He recently had a story published online in Grim & Gilded.

The Machete Yelp Reviews of Sebastian’s Seabiscuits

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Jonathan D.

Davis, CA

3/5

Sebastian’s Seabiscuits was fine. I guess. Don’t get me wrong, I feel for the staff. But would I

come here again after what happened? Not a chance. I mean, I didn’t really see it. I was pulling

out of the parking lot when the guy got there. I think I saw the knife for a second. But still. Also,

racehorses aside, I still don’t have a clue what a “seabiscuit” is. The crab wasn’t half-bad though.

Rachel F.

Santa Cruz, CA

5/5

Please please please please please support Sebastian’s Seabiscuits! Like I’m begging! They need

support now more than ever! I get the criticisms– like sure, how did the guy get in? But what,

you expect these minimum wage high schoolers to risk getting beheaded so you can eat your

lobster mac and cheese? They’re such nice people. Would give 6/5 if I could. Great service! The

experience wasn’t their fault. Oh, and the food was pretty good too iirc!

Barnabus M. (Food Critic and Top Reviewer)

Sacramento, CA

0/5

Davis, California has a new restaurant and if I can say so based off of my experience (and I

really do feel like I need to say so), it’s a total f*cking death trap. Don’t eat here! It’s supposedly

a “new” restaurant, but it already has mold in the corners. The silverware looks old and has water

stains. The décor is old-fashioned if I’m saying it politely, and the breadsticks were stale.

Disgusting. And what on earth is a seabiscuit? Look, I’m not saying the deaths were their fault,

but clearly, they’re into the drug trade or owe money to the wrong people. So, actually, probably

is their fault. I didn’t even get to sprinkle some crackers in my bisque before blood was squirting

all over the place. And before people start sending me messages again, yes, this is my real name.

Delany J

Davis, CA

2/5

This place was a really weird way to start college. My roommates and I just wanted to get some

food after we got our nails done. We’re tired of our room already. I mean, three bunks in a 12-

foot space? What is this, the military? The university is totally abusing us. Anyways, we got the

grilled prawns for our appy and it was actually pretty good. Maybe too salty. I’ll have to drink a

lot of water before my workout in the morning. But not bad. I was really excited for my eggwhite

whitefish omelet. They said it comes with tomatoes, spinach, a mix of cod and haddock, and

avocado optional, but y’all know I’m a California gurlie so OF COURSE I’m getting my

avocado!!! And a good price, I think. $25. I grew up in Nevada and we don’t get a lot of seafood

out there, so it seems fair enough to me. Anyways, the guy with the sword walked in right when

my omelet got set on the counter thing where the servers pick up the food. He was dressed nice.

Sort of like Daniel Craig <3 But then he started hacking away at people and the servers just ran.

They just ran! They didn’t seem all that dedicated, and the omelet never came. Not sure if I’d

come here again. Depends how well they clean up the stains.

Curtis L.

Pensacola, Florida

1/5

Listen I paid for a f*cking service man, this stuff happens in real cities all the times but these

townies just freaked out and ran off like a bunch of rabbits or whatever. I paid for a service!

Where are my salmon tacos? They talked up the avocado drizzle. Well, you know what? I never

tasted it. They didn’t even give me a voucher for free food next time or nothing. Not that I’d ever

come back. Shouldn’t food be part of the service? Like, shouldn’t a comfortable sword-

murderer-free dining room be part of what we’re paying for? How the f*ck they gonna let some

dumba** with a machete in. Block the door. Say he didn’t reserve a table. HOW BOUT CALL

THE COPS. But no. California hates police. Let’s just let everyone take a machete to the neck

instead of trusting our bravest heroes. AND GOD FORBID WE HAVE A GUN ON HAND TO

PROTECT OURSELVES. I don’t know why my daughter wanted to go to school here.

#givewaitorsguns #impeachNewsom #f*ckcommunism #landofthefree #nationalguard

#f*ckliberals #demsrcowards

Dave

San Francisco, CA

4/5

Jeez. That was a crazy experience. I think they handled that psycho pretty well. Minor injuries, 2

deaths. But that’s the police’s fault for not getting there quicker. Machetes aside, the food was

good. I really recommend the lobster tarts. Sounds weird, but it was really good. Also, the Clam

Juice Monterey Mule was surprisingly refreshing. Yeah. I feel bad for the owners. Gonna be a

rough few months for them. I’ll go back next time I’m in town again though. I feel good

knowing that my son is going to college here given how kind the employees were to us after the

cops arrested that dude. Also, though, I’m really unclear about what a seabiscuit is. “Seabiscuits”

weren’t even on the menu, so I decided to google it, but the only thing that comes up is that

Tobey Maguire movie.

Jake Johnson is a writer based out of Davis, CA. They are an MFA Candidate in the Creative Writing Program at UC Davis and have an adorable dog named Bandit. Their work has been featured in Rain Taxi Review of Books.

The Revenge of the Potato Man

Photographer - Tobi Brun

You almost wouldn’t consider Captain Sandwich a superhero. Almost. But if you saw how fast this guy could throw a sandwich together, it would blow your mind. I mean, you can’t even see it. It’s like… like… If you’ve ever been unexpectedly hit on the head and your eyes black out for a split second. It’s like that. It’s not painful to watch. It’s just that fast. 

I first met him when I started working at Fatty’s Sandwich Shop downtown. They didn’t even have the guy train me because he’s too fast. He’s physically incapable of slowing down. At least, that’s what he says. I just don’t think he likes training people. 

“Oh, and this is Captain Sandwich,” the grease-aproned owner with the bulging belly said to me as an afterthought on my first day. I must’ve looked confused. 

“Y’see,” he started to explain. The whole time, Captain Sandwich worked away, making sandwiches, stocking the line, filling sauce-bottles. All extremely fast. 

“The p’cyoolur thing ‘bout him is: he’s only this fast with anything sandwich related. Can’t run for shit, can’t beat anybody up worth a damn. But man, when he makes a sandwich…” he drifted off and raised his hand towards Captain Sandwich, still working away. 

Mitch trained me. He was a cool dude, laid back. I thought he was my age. I was nineteen then. Later when it came up (I forget how) I was shocked to find out he was ten years my senior. I was also shocked to find out that not a hair on his head was real. One day, when he was walking into work, his hat (part of the uniform) blew off and took his hairpiece with it. He chased it down as I watched out the window. When he finally caught it, he placed it swiftly on his head and neck-snappingly looked around to see if anyone saw. I quickly averted my eyes and continued making sandwiches. 

Mitch and Captain Sandwich and me and Fatty (the owner). They really didn’t need anybody outside of Captain Sandwich, but he had recently converted to Catholicism and wanted

Sundays off. Mitch worked Sundays now even though he didn’t like it. I asked him why he didn’t like working Sundays and he shrugged and said: “just don’t.” Anybody else who responded in this manner could be psychoanalyzed to determine the root of this dislike. Maybe a dislike of being deprived of a morning of sleeping in during their youth. Maybe something traumatic and repressed regularly occurred on Sundays in their youth. Maybe they had been forced to work Sundays against their will their whole life. But Mitch could be taken at his word. If he just didn’t like something, he just didn’t. 

Sundays were the only day of the week I worked which was fine because I was in school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and felt like I was wasting my time and money in school. Or somebody’s money. I wasn’t involved with the tuition payments. My parents and the government handled things. But I was wasting somebody’s money and that didn’t sit right with me. 

The only reason I had gone to college right after high-school was because that's what I was supposed to do. That’s what everybody else was doing. All the people that didn’t follow this pattern were on Skid Row, or so they’d led me to believe. “They” meaning the adult influences in my life. So it was off to school. 

My first semester I had no friends. Well, there were people you could call friends, technically. People I would talk to in passing or in a certain class, but it wasn’t like we were hanging out outside of that. 

I remember Frankie Midnight (his actual name, I’ve seen his license). He didn’t have anybody in his social circle in our sociology class and we happened to sit next to each other, so we’d exchange comments at the beginning of class. All the talk was limited to the class, though. As much as I desired to break beyond that talk, I never could. I didn’t know too much about him. Maybe I could’ve come up with something. Asking him about a movie or an album or

something. But I never did. I’m pretty sure he was content with the limitations of our conversations. 

I was doing the credit-required classes first and falling deeper into depression. I found refuge in the library. The third floor was the silent floor and there were stacks and stacks of classics to look through. I buried myself in A Farewell to Arms and A Wild Sheep Case as well as several biographies or autobiographies of my favorite writers. The bio/autobiographies depressed me though. Keouac had met all of his lit’ry buddies in college while I was sad and alone. Rimbaud had completed his works by seventeen. I was two years older and hadn’t written a worthwhile thing. Hemingway was on the Italian front at eighteen. I dove deeper into fiction. 

The sad thing about reading was that the library would always close at some point and whenever I put the book down I’d be alone again. Wisps of the characters and their worlds would comfort me in my mind, but confronting the sidewalk by myself as others around me walked laughing in twos and threes always brought me down again. 

Working Sundays was a welcome escape. Fatty’s was far enough away from campus that nobody would pass up the other options along the way to get there. Fatty’s wasn’t renowned or locally legendary. It was just another sandwich shop in the city. The only people that came in were traveling through or lived on the block. 

I’d work other days as needed. My social life was nonexistent and my free time was spent reading, so I was available to work whenever. Fatty would call me and ask if I could come in and I’d always say “yes.” I’d get to witness Captain Sandwich at work. 

Whenever I worked a shift with Captain Sandwich I never had to make anything. Well, sandwiches anyway and that’s mostly what we sold. We only had two salads and they were the simplest things in the world to make. Just a Cæsar and a Greek. People hardly ordered them.

They weren’t even listed on the menu and most people weren’t brave enough to ask for something they didn’t see. But once in a lucky penny (how often do you find those?) someone would ask. 

The thing I noticed about Captain Sandwich was that he was incredibly slow doing anything else. I mean, Fatty had told me so, but to actually see it? It was the craziest thing. There would be a rare instance, say he went to the bathroom and I had to make a sandwich. He’d come back and notice the wallet-clutching customer and decide to cash them out. He would punch the numbers at a flat tire’s pace. Beep…… beep…… beep…… enter… “your total will be $13.74.” He’d slowly take the money, like he was reaching through frozen syrup, gather the change like someone after coming stiffly inside after a freezing day, and hand it back through the syrupy barrier. 

Whatever sandwich I had made would be long done, waiting on its anxious owner to get their change and devour them. Then he (Captain Sandwich) would smile the biggest smile in the world. It looked like it hurt, with his eyes squinting and all of his teeth showing, and bid them a good day. He’d hold the smile until they walked out the door, casting uncomfortable or shivering glances over their shoulder, then he’d sigh and let it drop like the final rep at the gym. His face would return to normal, he’d pat me on the shoulder without looking at me and then return home to his station. 

I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew what I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to be a clock puncher or a pencil pusher or a corporate drone. I didn’t know exactly the meaning of these phrases at the time, but I understood the idea they represented: conformity to a single thing for a lifetime. Whiling away the time until retirement, then being too tired to do anything when retired and wasting away prime years of life. Thinking of doing any single thing

for the rest of my life terrified me. The only things I really wanted to do was… well, I didn’t know. 

I didn't want to be a rockstar or an actor or a lawyer or doctor or teacher. All I wanted to do was be left alone to read and write. Whatever I wrote and submitted was rejected. Maybe my time to be a writer was gone. Maybe I wasn’t even born to be a writer. What did I want? Maybe I could just marry into money and become a house-husband. That’d be easy if I knew any rich women and how to talk to them too. 

My second (which would be my final) semester ticked away. I was already wasting time in life. I needed to get out, I needed my freedom. Time was freedom and if I could control my time I could control my life. That’s what I thought then at least. Why was I learning things I didn’t care for or had already learned in high-school? I was planning on going on leave to sort things out. I needed to know what I wanted before I wasted any more time or money. 

Fatty’s grew on me. If I was spending time doing something I didn’t want to, at least I was making money doing it. But I enjoyed Fatty’s. All sorts of interesting people came in and Captain Sandwich was there too. I’d become mesmerized watching him work on any large orders, the way his hands moved, the way the ingredients flashed away. It was like watching something in fast-forward, but about a thousand times fast. 

One Sunday, Mitch told me the origin of Captain Sandwich’s powers. It had been itching away inside of me, the need to know. I waited and waited until somebody told me, but as time went by, nobody ever did. I finally asked Mitch. His eyebrows raised and he nodded. 

“You’ve been here so long now that I didn’t realize you didn’t know,” he said. I was leaning against the sandwich line and he leaned against the salad line opposite. There were no orders and everything was clean enough. He looked off, thinking…

He looked slowly back at me. 

“Apparently he was born like that,” he said with a shrug. Just then, a customer walked in and Mitch nonchalantly walked over to take their order. I was left incredulous and disappointed. I planned on asking Captain Sandwich (real name unknown) myself one day, but never got the chance. 

After a month of mentally building myself up, I finally decided to ask him. I finished class and skipped the library. Fatty had asked me to come in when I could. That was in the morning before my class. In fact, his phone call had woken me up. 

“Busy today kid?” he asked. Fatty was straight to the point. No ‘hello,’ ‘good-morning,’ or ‘did I wake you?’ I didn’t mind it. 

“Not after class,” I responded, equally to the point. 

“Come in when you can?” He said with a slight note of asking. Somewhere towards a demand like a speeding car, with the added question like hitting the brakes too late when passing a cop. 

“Sure” 

“Thanks” 

He hung up. 

When I arrived at Fatty’s it was no longer Fatty’s. There were fire engines lined all down the street, cop cars, ambulances, lights flashing, hoses spraying and misting. Ironically, the mist from the fire hoses made a rainbow in the air. Before the remains, outside of the emergency responders buzzing about, were the infuriated, fist-clenched Captain Sandwich and the greasy-aproned fat-bellied Fatty, trying to hold back tears. 

Before I could say anything (I had no idea where to start), Captain Sandwich’s

fire-eyed gaze met my helpless and confused one. 

“Come with me,” he said and began to walk. I followed behind. Fatty stared at the smoking blackened remains of his once not-so-renowned restaurant, oblivious to anyone else. The sun glinted off of Captain Sandwich’s blackout ‘77 Mustang. He got in and reached over to open my door. I slid in. It smelled like a new car. The leather interior was spotless and the sun gazing down from the blank blue sky hardly penetrated the tinted windows. “It’s about time I ended this,” he said, staring forward angrily and firing up the engine. Before I could ask what we were ending or what happened or if he was really born like that, we were peeling out and zooming down the street. 

When I said he was slow at everything else, I was wrong. Apparently he was a fast driver. Captain Sandwich was an enigma full of surprises. And not only was he a fast driver, he was precise too. He drifted around corners on a dime. He weaved in and out of honking cars, his only focus on the road ahead. I felt at ease, despite the speed and ferocity with which he was driving. “Potato Man,” he brooded, “Po-tay-to Man.” 

He rounded another corner and there was a long empty straightaway. At the end of the straightaway stood the city’s renowned restaurant “Potato Man’s: Burgers, fries ‘n stuff.” “What makes you think he did it?” I asked, unease creeping up on me. The packed parking lot of Potato Man’s lay ahead. We entered and Captain Sandwich slowed, stopped, then reversed quickly into an empty spot. 

He put it in park and fished in his pocket for something. 

“THIS,” he said, removing his hand dramatically from his pocket to reveal a single french fry. I didn’t get it.

“THIS,” he said, bringing the fry slowly in front of him, his gaze focused venomously on it, “Is the Potato Man’s calling card.” 

“We’ve been enemies from the start,” he said to himself, then looked me in the eyes, “But today I end this.” 

We marched in. Captain Sandwich marched straight to the front of the long line. Several people raised voices in objection, but we paid them no mind. Well, Captain Sandwich didn’t. I gave them apologetic shrugs and helpless hand gestures. 

“Bring me to the Potato Man,” Captain Sandwich demanded the freckled, potato-hatted cashier. The cashier nodded nervously. 

We were brought through the busy kitchen to a door that looked like the door to a walk-in cooler. 

“He’s through there. Or, uh, he should be. I gotta get back to work.” 

He quickly moved away. 

The door opened inward to a dark wood paneled and floored hallway. It was lit overhead by warm lights hanging at intervals from the ceiling. Captain Sandwich entered and I followed. The door shut behind us. 

At the end of the hallway there was a potato-skinned door with a golden plaque that read “Potato Man.” We entered without knocking. 

The Potato Man (I assumed) was behind his desk. He stood when we entered and between the short time between him standing there and him raising the revolver, I gathered that he was short, fat, bald, and wore a white suit with a Potato Print tie. He fired and I winced, shutting my eyes. I heard a thud. It was a gut shot to Captain Sandwich. 

My mouth hung open. My mind raced. What the hell was–

There was a second shot and the bullet thudded into my gut like a boxing glove hitting a heavy bag. I was down for the count. I looked over to Captain Sandwich and he looked at me. Blood trickled from the side of his mouth. Is this really how it ends? I thought. Captain Sandwich smiled. I was confused. 

“Y’see,” he strained, “he thinks he’s won.” 

The Potato Man still stood, only the top of his bald shining head visible over his desk from where we lay on the ground. 

“But he’ll never, never–” 

There were two more shots and everything went dark.

Riley Willsey is a 23-year-old writer and musician from Upstate New York. His short story, "Bus Station," was published on Half and One's website. Sporadic posts and bursts of creativity can be found on his instagram page, @notrileycreative.

‘THE BANANA WHISPERER’ & ‘BITTER HALF’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

THE BANANA WHISPERER

by

Daniel Weitzman

Ben is the apostle of perfectly ripe bananas. 

Does Ben have his mother to thank for cultivating this talent?  She may have played a part, had relied on the child Ben to let her know when bananas had attained the right shade of brown to be turned into banana bread. 

Does Ben have his streetcorner fruit vendor to thank for his prowess?  There may be a connection, the scrambling man is forever laying out unripe bananas for his customers — only to invoke Ben’s disapproving eye. 

Maybe Ben was just born a Banana Whisperer; regardless of how he achieved this distinction, it’s only done so much for him.  For reasons that escape Ben, potential employers aren’t terribly impressed by his knack for identifying banana ripeness — even though he customarily gifts interviewers with a Ben-approved banana.

Once, Ben’s then-girlfriend Elsa called him out for his banana-centric skill set, convinced he was just trying to work a banana into their bedroom maneuvers.  Ben denied the allegation vehemently — while still suggesting that a greener banana would be the banana of choice for such activities.  Elsa was gone shortly thereafter — but not without terming their breakup, “The Banana Split.”  Ben was not amused, moped around his studio apartment for weeks afterwards.  Ben reached out to his older brother Joel for comfort; Joel accommodated accordingly, inviting Ben to spend a long weekend at his swanky beach house.  Ben was only too happy to accept, was having a lovely weekend until he apprised Joel’s six-year-old son, Alexander of a classic banana peel shenanigan.  Alexander tossed a banana peel on the floor to see if — as Ben had suggested — someone would slip on it in true cartoon style.  The gambit was summarily derailed by Joel’s wife Melissa, who a) spotted the banana peel before anyone could slip on it and b) had Ben disinvited for the rest of the weekend for being a bad influence on Alexander.

No job, no girlfriend, no support network.  Things are not looking up for Ben.  Ben wonders if there is a way to “monetize” being a Banana Whisperer.  He imagines launching a career where he travels the country, advising cooks, grocers and shoppers on banana viability matters.  Surely, he could be a featured guest at Whole Foods or alike!  Ben goes so far as to design a Banana Whisperer outfit/apron to help him build his brand and impart his knowledge.  Ben digs deeply into his already-scanty savings to promote this initiative, which turns out to be more of a de-monetizing idea.  There are no takers for a traveling (or stationary) Banana Whisperer.

This is discouraging for Ben, but he will not give up on his dreams.  He puts a banana under his pillow at night, perhaps it will whisper pulpy intelligence to him while he sleeps.  For his troubles, Ben’s pillow smells like a banana — not an awful turn of events, but not the outcome he is hoping for.  The ‘pillowed’ banana has attained a lovely yellow hue overnight, Ben deems it suitable for a morning peanut butter and banana sandwich.

Still seeking a way to leverage his Banana Whispering skills, Ben wonders if he’s been culturally insensitive in pursuit of career actualization.  Might he fare better if he included plantains in his scope of Whispering?  He spends the next few weeks focusing on plantains; the streetcorner vendor allows Ben to sniff and fondle the odd plantain.  It makes for an interesting sight — Ben up to his nose in plantains while customers go about their habitual melon, kale and carrot acquisitions.  Still, Ben’s efforts to diversify fall woefully short.  Seems his gift doesn’t translate for plantains — which he discovers tend to remain green even when ripe.  Unable to account for this variance with his prognostications, Ben is forced to move on.

Accordingly, Ben widens his scope of inquiry, visiting the monkey house at the zoo.  Here, he hopes to find inspiration, identify a telling interaction between monkeys and bananas that will inform his pursuits.  Sadly, there are no revelations to be had among his fellow primates (though Ben does have a modest breakthrough, realizes he prefers orangutans to chimpanzees). 

Ben’s research continues, he trains his thinking on certain banana icons: banana cream pie, Banana Republic, J.D. Salinger’s short story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.”  Still, he is unable to close the loop, find a rationale for Banana Whispering as a tenable occupation.  While Ben is tempted to drown his sorrows in a banana daquiri, he is not so far gone as to recognize the cycle of self-destructiveness this may unleash.  

Instead, Ben finds himself in the throes of another potentially self-destructive act, agreeing to visit his mother for an afternoon catch-up.  Ben, thoughtful Banana Whisperer he is, comes prepared — bearing a bunch of bananas perfectly-suited for his mother’s banana bread. 

Ben takes a deep breath at mom’s door, waits to be admitted.  She throws open the door, ushers Ben into her living room.  Here, a surprise awaits — as Ben’s brother, sister-in-law and Elsa close ranks with his mother, surrounding Ben.  Ben wonders if he’s forgotten somebody’s birthday or if his mother has gathered the family to announce that she is finally ready to downsize to a smaller apartment. 

As it turns out, the get-together is all about Ben, whose family has united out of concern for Ben.  Ben has walked into an intervention.  For years, they’ve tolerated his Banana Whispering.  But his recent attempts to make something more of his gift, to turn it into a bona fide business?  Ben has crossed the line, has taken his Banana Whisperer preoccupation too far.  There must be something else he can do with his life; he did, after all, graduate a reasonably good university with a B.A. in Media Studies. 

Ben looks around the room, absorbs the would-be succor. 

His mother offers to take him to the theatre to help clear his mind.

His brother offers to bring him into his restaurant supply business.

Elsa offers to take him to lunch, maybe they can mend fences. 

Ben recognizes that all present have honorable intentions.

Still …

For all their troubles, it’s clear to Ben that those nearest and dearest to him have no idea who he is.  Ben is The Banana Whisperer — and that’s not about to change.

Ben departs his mother’s, bananas in hand.

BITTER HALF

by

Daniel Weitzman

“Who are you?” said a particularly hefty tween, bellowing at Landon Raff from among a throng of alligator worshippers. 

“Just the creator of “Ali Alligator,” said Landon, a few beads of sweat running down his concave face. 

“What do you mean, ‘creator?’ said tween nightmare, flapping his costume Ali jaws. 

“Where are your parents?” thought Landon.  “And can they just show up and drag you away?”  Landon knew that wasn’t about to happen, more likely, mom and dad were among the attendees of today’s Ali-thon.  The show was just getting started, and Landon was already primed for it to end.  One of these days, he would walk. Today?  Probably not, he was already present and accounted for — even if he felt unaccounted for.  Such was the life undiscovered, unappreciated, unknown.  

“I wrote Ali into existence, he’s my brainchild,” said Landon, peering down at the imperious tween from a podium asparkle with lights and glitterati all paying tribute to Ali.  At least it wasn’t a big city humbling; today’s show was taking place in the mid-Huron valley, where press coverage was less suffocating than it would be in any given Gotham. 

“Whatever,” said the kid.  “When will Ali be here?”

Landon was tempted to tell his audience exactly what they didn’t want to hear, something like … “As soon as I fire up my imagination and dream up Ali’s next adventure,” but reason prevailed. “Soon,” he said.  “He’s just getting his Ali rap together — getting pumped for you guys.”  More likely, Derek Solomon, the man who donned the Ali suit for live events, was getting his stomach pumped after another bender of an evening. 

It was just another day of abject humiliation for Landon — the man whose blood, sweat and life savings had gone into giving life to Ali, but who remained an anonymous figure to the army of Ali allies whose patience was wearing thin — almost as thin as Landon before his Ali submission somehow found its way out of The Bokar Syndicate’s slush file and into the spotlight.

If only Meredith Bokar could’ve prepared Landon for the life of callous disregard that came with the territory. 

Ali was a multi-media sensation:

His syndicated exploits appeared in almost three thousand publications.

His animated show boasted streaming numbers that wrung sponges dry and shellshocked ninja turtles.

Of course, there was a movie in production.

Ali was the best-selling plush plaything in toy stores, nationwide.  He was also gaining momentum internationally; could an anime Ali be far behind? 

There were Ali pajamas, diapers, string cheese, breakfast cereal.

There was talk of an Ali ice skating extravaganza.

And as if Landon didn’t feel expendable enough, A.I. Ali had made a cameo on the Internets.   

It was Ali’s world, and Landon was just living in it.

Barely.

Sure, he was making stupid money and had redeemed himself in his mother’s eyes (the monthly check Landon sent her had shut her up about his life of Bad Choices and Missed Opportunities), but he couldn’t help but feel like an afterthought.  One might speculate (and Landon did) that his relationship with Dear Mother had forever doomed him to feeling like a second-class citizen.  That said, forever hadn’t happened yet, and Landon pined and sighed for first-class status.

How that was to be attained was anybody’s guess, Landon hadn’t a clue.  Of course, he could shutter Ali, walk away — but could he, really?  Ali was a cash cow, Landon wasn’t likely to fill the void as a dog-walker, barista or podcast host.  Better to feel jealousy than nothing at all, reasoned Landon — a sentiment sorely tested by his current surroundings.

“We want Ali … we want Ali … we want Ali!” 

The rafters shook, the auditorium redolent with worship — none of it for Landon, who — per script — grabbed the mic and shushed the crowd, the emcee who stood between Ali and his acolytes.

“Hello, Huron!” said Landon, playing his part to obsequious perfection.  These moments were scant consolation — but would have to do until Landon could devise a way to share in the spotlight with Ali.  Equal partners — he could live with that.  Right now, the scales were sorely out of whack; not only was Landon an unknown, he served to introduce the man in the Ali suit.  Oh, how the fit was preposterous; what fit?!?

Still, he had signed on to be Ali’s party-starter, had to put on his conciliatory pants and get the show started. 

“What do we say when Ali’s in the house!?!”  What, indeed?  Landon had burned the midnight oil — well into the following morning — coming up with a catchphrase.  But boy, had it been worth it!  For Ali.  And to adorn t-shirts, bumper stickers, the banner that accompanied the Ali float for the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

“It’s now — not later — for Ali Alligator!” 

The auditorium buzzed, a sea of fanboys and girls singing Ali’s praises with carefully hewn phrases!  Oh, how Landon loved his work, his way with words! 

“It’s now — not later — for Ali Alligator!” 

The auditorium buzzed, a sea of fanboys and girls oblivious to the work that had gone into inventing Ali.  Oh, how Landon hated his work, his way with words! 

“It’s now — not later — for Ali Alligator!” 

What a bunch of fools and tools — if only Landon could bring himself to go rogue.  One of these days, Landon would put Ali in his place and elevate his own place.  Not today.  Not as the curtains parted and the star maker to the star maker to the star appeared.

What in god’s name was Meredith Bokar doing taking the stage; this was unprecedented?

Less unprecedented was the appearance of Ali nee Derek, riding Meredith’s coattails. 

The arena exploded; Meredith took it all in stride — as if she’d been born to bask.  In fact, she had been; daddy was the prototypical media mogul, had handed down the reins to someone just as capable and probably twice as bloodthirsty.  When Landon had floated the idea of a bigger payout, she had countered with the notion of diminished compensation; hadn’t Landon profited enough from Ali — and the corporation that sponsored him?

“We’ve got a special guest appearance today,” said Landon, cueing the crowd as Meredith cozied up to him.  “To what do we owe this pleasure?”  Meredith lived and died by the script, what was she doing interceding in today’s Ali-thon?  Why?  And why in God’s name did she insist on wearing alligator skin stilettos, wasn’t that a bit off-brand? 

“Hello, Landon … hello, Huron … hello, Ali,” exclaimed Meredith, wresting the Ali-clad Derek to her accommodating side.  “What do you have to say for yourself, Ali?”

“I say that today’s Ali-thon is a great place to break the news!” barked Derek, pumping his webbed wardrobe arms in the air.  Speaking of off-brand, an upright alligator was an anomaly no turn of genetic events could have ever concocted.  But the low-to-the-ground version of Ali had tested poorly—so, there was Landon’s brainchild, subverting evolution and snubbing him.          

“What news?” said Meredith, who clearly knew the news — and was allowing today’s main attraction to break it.  Landon waxed hopeful, had one of his recent story pitches gathered momentum?  ‘Gator-Haters Anonymous’ was one that he took perverse pleasure in.  Also, ‘Crock-Pot Journal,’ which would launch a new nemesis for Ali Alligator — a crocodile who fought Ali tooth, nail and jaw for the rights to reptilian greatness. 

“You heard it here first!” said Derek, egging on his Ali allies with stubby leaps and snappy prehensiles.  “You, my dearly beloved Ali lovers, are standing on the very site where we will soon be breaking ground for an amazing new Ali venture!”

The first to create, the last to know.  Landon shook his head, a bulbous bead of sweat splashing the podium.  What now?  Hadn’t Ali already broken the bank, wasn’t every possible version of him already in existence — or well along in the development process?  How else could Landon’s progeny lap him? 

“You tell ‘em, Ali!” extolled Meredith.  “Sure, we could’ve leaked the news sooner, or chosen a bigger media market to tell everybody — but we decided to tell the world on the exact grounds where our biggest Ali attraction ever will be located.”

“We?” wondered Landon.  He had zero recollection of being consulted on whatever it was that was about to turn Ali fans into fanatics — if they weren’t already.  Not that Bokar owed him the courtesy, by terms of his contract, he had been acknowledged as Ali’s author (a lot of good that had done him) but the iterations of Ali that found their way into the public eye belonged to Bokar. 

D/Ali (Landon’s term for the mash of Derek and Ali) snatched the mic and hatched the news.

“You, the fine people who make Ali possible, are standing on the future home of Ali World — where all things Ali will be happening!”

If Landon thought the crowd couldn’t get more boisterous — in fact, he didn’t, and they did.  A tumultuous cry rang out through the auditorium, Landon spotted the torturesome tween doing a flop of a backflip — which toppled a few of his equally enthused neighbors.

Ali World!  Wasn’t it already?  Landon had suffered a legion of Bokar babies; this one would be truly insufferable, the straw that broke the alligator’s back!  The death roll that dismembered Landon and relegated him to irreversible oblivion!  What happened in mid-Huron wouldn’t stay in mid-Huron; a few shakes of Ali’s tail and there would be an Ali World Europe, an Ali World Japan, an Ali World Saturn. 

It was time for Landon to take action … time to dial up his visibility … time to get the respect he so sorely desired.  Needed.  Was owed!  If it cost Ali some of his Landon-created popularity, so be it.  The scales of justice demanded it! 

And what might that action be?

Months later, when Landon was squirreled away, preaching the word of Landon to his listeners, he would reflect on how he’d fomented such an outlandish idea.  In fact, there was no thunderclap, no “ah-hah!” The idea just came to him — much like the idea for Ali had those tumultuous years ago.  The idea?

He would kidnap Ali, hold him hostage until the world paid his creator the attention he was long overdue.

How would that work out?  Landon wouldn’t know until he tried.

And so, he did.

It was now — not later — to make off with Ali Alligator.

If you happen to spot a hollow-faced gent shepherding an alligator wannabe — quite likely, against their will — you are encouraged to contact the authorities. 

The alligator is in great demand.

So is the man who created him.  His mother misses her monthly check.

Copyright © 2024 by Daniel Weitzman.  All rights reserved.

Daniel Weitzman is co-author of ‘Odd Gods’ (HarperCollins, optioned to be turned into an animated series). His children’s stories have been featured in ‘My Dad’s a Punk’ and ‘Stone-face.’ His film and TV credits include ‘The Pirates of Central Park’ (Children’s Film Winner, New York Film & Video Festival) and ‘Row Your Boat Ashore’ (Nicholl Fellowships Finalist). “Grown-up” material includes ‘The Only American’ (Every Day Fiction) and ‘Oh, Brad’ (Free Spirit). Daniel is author of a number of digital initiatives, including his personal favorite, a multi-media effort created for the US Forest Service. To check it out, visit https://discovertheforest.org/ 

The Idiot Savant

Photographer - Tobi Brun

The Idiot Savant

Nineteen years of eating bats and salamanders. Nineteen years of painting walls. Nineteen years of humping the stalagmites when he was horny. Nineteen years of shitting in the corner by the rocks. Nineteen years.

Yes, nineteen years have gone.

The idiot savant is getting old these days. His head has balded, his feet have splayed, his spine has crooked and bent. At night he cackles. Wouldest thou see him there in the dark, thou would not even recognize him for a man, for a man he is no longer. A creature of the cave he
hath becometh, and with that, he grunts, he has finally done it. Today is the day the idiot savant enters the prime of his artistry. He wakes up and lights his torch with flint and stone and mashes up his berries between two rocks in its light. Then he takes the paste he’s made, rubbing it into his hands, and, going up to an empty wall, he starts painting. His subject, a horse, which came to him in a dream, prancing across a prairie he himself had never been.

“Grhm,” he grunts. The horse is goblin-like. It looks as if it shouldn’t prance. Rather it should romp.

“Grhm,” he grunts. Come to think of it, he doesn’t know what a horse looks like. He only knows what it doesn’t.

“Grhm.” He can’t tell what the painting even is.

“Grhm.”

“Grhm.”

“Grhm.”

He stops, standing back and looking at so far what he’s done.

Am I a brainless lizard? he thinks. A dilettante thug? Do I have any talent at all?

“Grhm,” he grunts once more, meaning no.

. . .

They found him there in the cave fifteen thousand years later, then just a shriveled mummy in the corner by a mound of fossilized shit. According to the lab where they tested him, died of malnutrition. Though, it was also suspected that, due to the phrenologically distorted crown of his skull, there lurked something else, an injury perhaps from his youth, although that they could not determine.

“He’s a savant,” one said, shrugging his shoulders and scratching his head with his micro-pipet.

“Sure.”

And so from then on in the eyes of modern science, he was a savant, the idiot savant. What was more a miracle than the mummy, however, was that, as for the art he made, it was still there, a bit grimy in parts but all still there. Archaeologists documented over two-thousand individual paintings, many of which on canvases that seemed to have been repeatedly scored. In one of their reports, they wrote that the paintings were the most lurid, the most sublime, the most visceral they’d ever seen, this coming from a part-time curator for the Uffizi and the Louvre and the Vatican. Another wrote that the paintings were so much what their colleague had said that, for weeks on end, lions and cave bears lurked in their dreams. They took special note of a horse in a field they said they but dimly recalled as though it was their earliest memory.

And so on and so forth until the hearsay had confounded, the reports had ballooned, and the money, the money, that which pervades all, too, had pervaded this. The company had planned to open the cave for tours to the public.

COME, they said. SEE THE SAVANT. FORGOTTEN DREAMS LIE WHERE HE RESTS.

By the time the archaeologists had searched the cave wall to wall once then twain and the company had opened the cave up, within no more than a single month, that month being February, everybody, everybody in the whole world seemed to have come. Ernest Hemingway,
Winston Churchill, Amelia Earhart, the Dalai Lama, to name a few. Picasso came once too, and when he emerged from the cave’s jaws as if straight from a woman’s womb, grabbing a hold of his wet tan fedora and wet tan suit, he turned to his wife and said, “Fifteen thousand years of
mankind and art.”

“Yes?” said his wife. “Yes, honey?”

He coughed. “And we’ve learned nothing.”

Condor Wrights -- Writer, student, cheeky little monkey with a stick. Lives in Nashville, TN and Oxford, GA. Reads in his spare time and lies around with Billy, his dog. Stokes the fire when he can.

A Solitary Affair

Photographer - Tobi Brun

A Solitary Affair

The man had been a famous writer in his day. He’d won the Booker and the PEN Faulkner and was a consistent bestselling author since his debut. His realm was the short story. They said he brought the form back from the grave. The boy was an aspiring young playwright. He had
boarded the man’s boat, again, seeking his advice.

"You didn’t say this writing business would be so lonely."

“Yes.”

“Yes? Well what do you mean?”

“Have you ever met a writer?”

“Of course.”

“Have you ever met a socialized one?”

There was a pause.

“I suppose not. I see your point.”

They were sitting in a jacuzzi in Aruba on the man’s boat while a little Guatemalan girl
fanned them with a banana leaf. She had gecko eyes. They blinked from the side.

“Oh, Plata.” Plata was her name. It means silver in Spanish.

“Yes?” she said.

“Will you please stop it with that fan and get me my drink, please?”

“Sir, right away.” She folded in the banana leaf and set it by the corner.

“This feels nice, doesn’t it?” The man was leaning against the tub. His back was against the bubbler. “Ahhhh, isn’t it nice?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

His arms sank into the water. He scratched his stomach, twirling his belly button hair around his thumb. “So what makes you want to be a writer, kid? Is it the women? Is it the money? Is it the fame?”

“No. Not quite.”

“Well, you’re not a writer if you don’t want something.” The man sat up. “Cervezas, niña,” he said. “Pronto.”

“You see what I did there?”

Not long after the girl returned with the drinks. The boy stared into her eyes. She blinked, handing him his glass.

“Thank you,” said the boy.

“Yes. Thanks, darling,” said the man as lifted his glass to his nose then to his lips. “Mmm. Grhhmm. So kid, why do you want to be a writer? Tell me, what is it that truly brings you to such a craft?”

“It’s not that I want to write,” said the boy then took a sip. “I have to. I just have to. It’s in my blood.”

The man shook his head. His jowls jiggled along, “What? Margharitas in your blood, not spirit.”

“Margarita.”

“Yes. Rum is in mine.” To this the man finished his glass. “Welp, kid, you know, I have no real advice this time. Just chase it with a hatchet, and buy your boat in Aruba when you can afford one.”

The boy stood up. He waded through the hot bubbly water, thick as it was, crawling out of the tub. The girl handed him a towel.

“Thank you,” he said.

The towel soaked the water up.

It was evening. He looked back over at the man. The man was chewing ice from his drink, staring off into the sea and the sun. He sat alone.

“Sir, can I get that towel for you?”

The girl was behind the boy. Their eyes met. She blinked.

“No. No, I’m fine,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Really?”

“Really. I can get it myself.”

He threw the towel in the bin by the sliding glass door.

The boy’s room was shaped like the inside of a conk, cavernous, marbled walls, mother of pearl. It sounded like a conk too. When one put one’s ear to the wall, the sea could be heard. He was packing his bags when he heard the knock. It was the girl. She poked her head into the room.

“What is it?” he said, walking up.

“There is dinner. Hermit crab, plantains and wild rice. He is waiting for you. Would you care to join?”

“No,” said the boy. “I prefer not.”

She smiled. It was a sad smile. “That’s too bad.”

He could see the light of the sun shining through the porthole streaked across her face.

“Here. Take this,” he said.

He held out a dollar coin in the palm of his hand. She reached. For a moment their hands clasped as she did. The coin was still there when she drew her hand back.

“I can’t accept this,” she said.

He looked at the coin. It glimmered in the light.

“Right.” He set it against his chest, wiping the grease from it, then slipped it in his pocket. “I best get back to what I was doing
then.”

“What was it you were doing, if I may ask?”

He stood there for a moment, looking down. “I was writing,” he said. Then he turned
back up without looking at the girl.

“Well, it was nice to meet you,” she said.

The boat had shifted. The sun was gone.

“It was—I mean, it was nice to meet you as well.”

She smiled. “Good bye, sir.”

He nodded then shut the door.

Condor Wrights -- Writer, student, cheeky little monkey with a stick. Lives in Nashville, TN and Oxford, GA. Reads in his spare time and lies around with Billy, his dog. Stokes the fire when he can.

TACENDA

Photographer - Tobi Brun

WINNER OF ‘THAT’S ABSURD!’ ANTHOLOGY CONTEST; COMING MAY 31ST, 2024

JAMIE GOOD

She wakes from the dream she has had every night she has sex with men. This dream is ongoing, without remedy, and still each night, the dream feels as real, as tangible, as the night prior, perhaps even more so. 

A playwright sleeps next to her, and with her, and he has no idea. Despite being a writer, he is still a kind man. He is so kind, in fact, that she continues to sleep with him, and the morning after she does not want to die. This can not always be said about sexual escapades, especially when it comes to the types of men she usually sleeps with, and so this is of value to her. This dream is but a small hiccup in their relationship. 

That is to say, she could tell the playwright about her dream, and he would comfort her, and would try to understand the dream. He might try to fix it—he has that tendency to try to fix, which annoys her, but not enough yet to mention it to him. Ultimately, however, the playwright would extend his ongoing kindness to her like silk tendrils, wrapping his little cellist (she is also a poet, and a pianist, but the playwright likes her as a cellist) in his placation, like an insect caught in a web who thinks not of his imprisonment or his death but how lovely it is to be macerating in the warm, gentle winds of summer, without the effort of having to beat his wings to enjoy midair. 

But she can’t tell the playwright about the dream because its origins are a touchy subject for them both. She can’t share the dream without also sharing when and where it started; the playwright would need to know to understand, he can’t help her if she doesn’t tell him. She might remind him that he can’t help her at all, this dream is even less in his control than it is in hers, but he is not so sure, and besides, how can he know that if she doesn’t tell him? But he might guess.  

The dream is this: every night, after sex, the cellist is too restless to sleep, but too tired to rise and clean herself, to set about another activity. This pains her, to lie in this state of in-between, an exhausted but unsatisfied consciousness. The cellist might like to bathe, or to read a book, or to make a drink, hot water with lemon, sometimes with gin, oftentimes with gin, everytime with gin, or perhaps the cellist would like to sleep, but perhaps not. The playwright falls asleep immediately after sex, his face seraphic.

But the cellist, in this state of inbetween, feels trapped, unable to move and only to bear witness, to experience the sensation of semen leaking out of her as spiders crawl towards it. This is neither fully cerebral, nor imagined; she can feel the spiders’ legs, their light touches, traveling towards the spreading sour-sweet dampness. She can tense the muscles in her abdomen and feel the semen’s quickening expulsion, she can hear it, she understands it is too what these spiders want, to eat, to crawl into her to feast on what remains inside. She can feel the spiders going into her, drinking in what has been taken from the playwright, laying eggs, biting her, mistaking her insides for his. Every night, the spiders come. 

Then she wakes. She is not sure if she dreamt the spiders or not; she must have dreamt them, because what else would she wake from? But then she is sure the spiders came before she fell asleep, right after sex, was she not wide awake, immobilized, the spider’s thin legs along her own? 

The cellist has begun to place her hands in between her thighs to sleep. This serves both as a barricade to the spiders entering her, and as shortcut; the cellist has taken to scratching at these spiders, batting them away, running her fingers up and down her legs to check that there are no spiders, but she could feel the spiders, she knows she could, they are there, but never once has she found one. 

So they are inside of her. She inserts fingers inside of herself, feeling around, scraping, but nothing is scooped from her except skin cells, soft tissue and blood, and the last of the playwright’s semen. Her insides pill and clump, something wet and solid, to be rolled between her fingers like paper. The spiders could have laid eggs and crawled away. The spiders could have already bitten her. 

The cellist has tried everything to rid herself of this dream, or the potential for it, without revealing to the playwright her dream. They’ve tried barriers, he has finished elsewhere onto her body, but the cellist is not without the fear, she can explain away all of their precautions, she knows still the spiders will come. The spiders still come. 

Three-hundred-and-thirty-seven days have passed since the cellist has developed this neurosis. When she thinks about this, she realizes it is not really that long, not even a year. And not every night does she experience this sensation, only on nights she has sex with men, and she is only seeing the playwright so it is only when the playwright spends the evening with her, or she him, does this occurrence take place at all. That is to say, now, she is only experiencing this dream with the playwright. 

After waking, or this perceived waking, she is able to move. She showers. She scrubs the inside and outside of herself, her thighs scratched red-raw, open like a mouth. She makes a drink. It’s her business what the drink is. She rubs lotion into her body. She twists her hair up and with metal that bites into her hair like a jaw. She looks at the clock which reads anywhere from eleven at night to four or five in the morning. 

The playwright lives in a large apartment, the second and third floor of a house he does not own. The ground floor and the basement are inhabited by the violinist who does own the house. The cellist has an extremely good reason for not going to her own house. It’s a great reason, even. 

The two men do not speak to one another. This was not always the case, and this previous history burdens this period of unspeaking further. Currently, the two men are halfway through a play they are three-and-a-half years into developing. The play grows and shrinks and grows and shrinks. It is something of a shared masterpiece, the magnum opus of both men, they think, and other times, they think the play is shit. The play is only halfway complete, and remains halfway complete, as the two men continue not to speak to one another. 

That is not to say there has come a standstill, or stagnation of progress made on the play. The two men still meet in the afternoons, sometimes on the second floor (the playwright’s), and sometimes on the ground floor (the man’s), sometimes in the morning. They work at the same lenient company. They never meet in the basement or on the top floor, as that is where the two men’s beds are, and this is where all of their problems lie. 

The playwright is both a playwright and costume designer. The violinist is not so much of a playwright as he is a poet, and a visual artist, and a musician.  Together, the two men are like five men, all working together on this play that may or may not come to fruition.

They met at work. The playwright works as a costume designer and the violinist works as a photographer, or a critic of photographs; it is unclear to the playwright. The violinist is a critic, the playwright decides. That is primarily what he brings to the play. He critiques.  He offers criticism. He criticizes. 

Neither man is sure what the play is about, and this suits them. 

And what does the cellist do? She teaches ballet. She is not exceptional at ballet; that is why she is young and teaching, instead of dancing professionally. Professionally, she is a cellist, and a pianist. It would benefit the two men to have her help with this play, once, some time ago, she did help with this play. For a while, it was discussed that maybe the cellist does perform in this play; she could be the clown dancing (she is not an exceptional dancer, this is true, but she is skilled enough), but now that is no longer on the table. 

It was originally the violinist’s idea to have the cellist dance in the play, and now he can’t believe he suggested such an idea. For one, she is not as great of a dancer as he was originally led to believe. He was blinded by something he continues to not confront, he realizes. Okay. Okay. That’s no secret. It is a secret. And anyway. 

The violinist restarts his train of thinking. Being beautiful is not the same as being a talented dancer; he can’t believe he conflated the two. Additionally, this is an absurd play, as in, the genre is absurdism. The cellist knows nothing about the absurd. The violinist has even tried to lend her his copies of theories and works of absurdists the cellist didn’t understand. She didn’t understand it. She returned the work and had nothing to say about it. She didn’t understand it, the violinist said again to the playwright, who dared to bring up that perhaps the cellist was right for the play after all, this two-person project could again become three, and this was the first and last time this expansion of creative thinking was brought to the table. The two men continue to work on the play silently. 

Still now, clandestinely, the playwright does seek her help; there’s a choreographed part of the play, with ballet, but it’s clowns doing ballet, a sexual, weird sort of ballet he says, he’s not sure if he understands, he is sure she doesn’t understand, the violinist’s opinion does sway him, even if he won’t admit it, but he won’t admit it, so would she offer her opinion?

Meanwhile, the cellist goes to work. Work is painful. It reminds her of her shortcomings (dancing) and keeps her from her passions (music). Poetry fits into none of this. After work, she is involved with two different orchestras: one she plays the piano in, and another she plays the cello in. But she is so tired after dancing! Sometimes, she dances even more than her students. 

Years ago, the violinist formerly played in both orchestras the cellist plays in, but when they met, he was then only playing in one. The cellist suspects he is no longer permitted to play in the other orchestra for reasons he will not share. 

The violinist tells the cellist it has worked out. He has too much going on in his life to be in two orchestras. The violinist is very talented, and multi-disciplinary. He has gallery showings of his work: paintings and photographs, and this supersedes the second orchestra, the lesser of the two orchestras. 

At the violinist’s orchestra practice, the two do not look at one another and they do not speak. Again, this was not always the case. The violinist and the cellist met playing together in this orchestra. 

They all know what hangs in the room between them, and they do not look at it. It is too close for their eyes to focus on, anyway, suppose they did want to look at it—they couldn’t. It’s blurry. 

The cellist is upset that the violinist remains speaking to the playwright (even though they are not speaking, but silent in a room together) but will not look at her (he will not look at the playwright either, but that is beside the point). The violinist and the cellist each have their own reasons for remaining upset, but not to the degree in which they relate to one another. That was a long time ago. 

Unrelated: The playwright doesn’t like the violinist’s poetry.

Unrelated: The cellist doesn’t the violinist’s poetry, either. 

Unrelated: The violinist thinks the cellist does not pursue music as vigorously as she ought to. 

Unrelated: The playwright is creeped out by the visual art of both the violinist and the cellist, believing the violinist to be given too much credit and the cellist to be given too much allowance.

Unrelated: The cellist and the violinist do not think the playwright is a very good writer. What could be worse than a writer, and a poor one? 

What could be worse: a painter, and a poor one. But unfortunately, the violinist is very talented. 

Here is a house with three people, in triangles of hatred. All three of them hate one another (to varying degrees) and themselves (to the same degree). The house is so full of tension it has actually compacted, like a spine; the house used to be six inches taller. The house is a bit sore. It’s growing stiff. 

The cellist has an extremely good reason for not going to her own house. It’s a great reason, even. 

What lingers from this hatred in all of its past and present is the spiders. The cellist can’t tell the playwright about these spiders, because that would be to acknowledge the origins, which of course they all know, but still, it is much less painful for everyone not to hear this spoken aloud. But it’s the origin of the dream, and the spiders came, and have continued to come since. And more to the point: the playwright was once in the same position as her. Truly, the same position as her. Might he have suffered the same dream? But it was so long ago, he might say. They’ve sorted it out now. That was then, and this is now, and it is behind them, so let’s look at what’s in front of them, what’s on them, inside of them. Maybe they would not talk about it at all, and have sex instead. This is a common way of addressing their relationship problems. 

So what would she gain from telling the playwright? The playwright will think she thinks of the spiders, or the origins thereof, when she is in bed with him, or afterwards. She doesn’t, she would tell him, afterwards she only thinks of the spiders, because they are crawling inside of her, but still, the playwright would worry. And that’s only afterwards! She didn’t mean to say spiders, she doesn’t think of them during sex at all. During sex, she thinks of him, him, him him. Yes, you. The playwright. My god! 

None of this is fair, thinks the cellist. She was not born yesterday. She knows the playwright thinks about what he worries she thinks about. He must. He must. She is not the only one to have experienced it. And this, they have it in common. They have it in common! Him, even longer! Even more! So why is she excluded from the play, and not the playwright?

She doesn’t want to be in the play. Last week, she came downstairs for a slice of lemon, for her drink, and caught sight of the play growing arms and hands, two long papery limbs. Disgusting. 

Meanwhile, the two of them (the playwright and the cellist) have become independently obsessed with beetles. For the cellist, this has been ongoing. She discovered beetles first. Yes, she would say, it does annoy her a little bit to see beetles come up in this play the two men are working on, the play she is excluded from.  For the past two days, the playwright has been sewing a costume of a giant beetle dressed as a king, and the cellist has been referring to it as King Beetle even though the playwright has been insisting that the beetle is not a king, only dressed so. Then why couldn’t she refer to it as a king, if it has dressed itself as so? Because it is not a king, the playwright insists, he knows she is using King Beetle in a derogatory way, and this is as far as they get in the discussion. King Beetle takes up nearly the entire second floor, the cellist thinks resentfully, even though King Beetle is taking up a single dining room chair. 

The cellist was continuing her series she started before she started seeing the playwright: portraits of mouths wide open, full of dermestids, eating the gums off of sets of teeth. The cellist loves the dermestid beetles for their vulture-like qualities, their insistence on only seeking sustenance from what is in a state of decay. Bird-insects. 

Meanwhile, there’s been some sort of pause with the two men’s work, and they’ve spent the last three weeks in silence, sitting at the kitchen table of the playwright’s, scribbling away on paper like two small children told to remain quiet or else. The play was at a critical point. The violinist and playwright had reached a creative peak. The play was almost finished. It was all coming to one massive culmination, the play had seized both of them by the neck and was banging their heads together like a toy monkey crashing symbols. Something was missing from it, something small, but crucial, and they were so close to knowing what, the play would be finished, a ten-act play, forty-thousand words, they guessed, a five-hour performance, a masterpiece. A play like this had never been done. They weren’t going to move from the table until they figured it out. 

Both men had stopped going outside to smoke; the playwright had stopped smoking entirely and the violinist sat smoking at the table, and because the two men were not talking, the playwright could not ask the violinist not to smoke in his house please, to which the violinist would remind the playwright that he, the playwright, does not own the house but is a tenant of the violinist, who does own the house. 

So the smell wafted around them, while the playwright ate slowly and with quiet fury, thinking, letting each cracker go soft and wet, fully liquid before swallowing the wheat-water, then another cracker. The manuscript of the last three acts was spread across them, notes and highlights and words burned out with the ends of cigarettes, a different word, a synonym, a substitution, an object, something better, written around it in the nearly illegible handwriting of the playwright. They were certain something was missing from the last three acts. Around them, half-finished and fully-finished costumes were thrown over chairs, dressed over mannequins, scattered across the floor, King Beetle proudly in the center. 

So the violinist was going to smoke in his house. The playwright was going to invite the cellist to play a melody on the piano again, he was sure a musical element was missing, and wanted to think while listening, and so the cellist was in a now three-occupied room. 

This was a mistake. Now neither men were thinking about the play and were instead thinking about what hangs between them. Communal misery. All suffocating, frozen the way one does when approached with something temperamental, dangerous, and volatile in a state of calm, not wanting the behemoth to startle.

If the violinist was honest with himself, he did want to provoke a little. But he wouldn’t. But this was his house, and honestly, it was beginning to feel feverish, an alleyway full of hot sun-garbage, was this not his home? The cellist was aware the violinist was thinking of her as garbage, and the playwright, who was eyeing his King Beetle costume; he didn’t want the smell to seep into the fabric.  Enough time has passed between the violinist and the playwright, goes the argument. Enough time has not passed between the violinist and the cellist. Why doesn’t she get that? It’s simple. 

No time has passed between the playwright and the cellist. They were inside one another this morning. 

This thought occurred to the violinist, who became so disgusted he went downstairs; he couldn’t look at anyone he said, and the cellist and playwright looked at one another. Shame joined all that hung unspoken and heavy between them: a thick, useless spider descending from a web, and the sex the playwright and the cellist had that evening was quick and furious, both wanting the other to finish so the sex could be over without the disatisfaction of a failed orgasm, so nothing more might hang between them. 

King Beetle was brought out and puppeted around after this, the playwright needed to think but again the cellist was immobilized and the spiders came and crawled and feasted and bit her, she could hear the spiders inside of her sucking out the semen, she could feel their sticky-warm legs inside of her, tracking the semen inside and out of her again like mud stuck to the bottom of shoes treading on carpet, and how far and how not far she was from her childhood, doesn’t everything repeat itself, how she was in this house with these two adults who hated her and loved her and hated her and cared for her and hated her with the burdened, emotional way of disinterested parents. 

The cellist woke up and did not wake up. The house sucked its teeth at her. King Beetle lay across the bedroom floor like a popped balloon. The playwright was downstairs not speaking again with the violinist, the two sat at the table, the playwright still unsmoking and honestly, thought the violinist, this was helping nothing, they’d be much better off if the playwright would just have a cigarette. The cellist could hear the silence creep down the house, through the walls like a spreading infection. The house should be amputated. The house should be cauterized. The house should be euthanized, she thought, aborted, deemed inviable. 

The cellist woke up again, convinced she was pregnant. This was not the first time she awoke with this distinct notion, yet another recurring and inescapable feeling. She went downstairs and told the playwright she thought she was pregnant, in front of the violinist, who laughed for a long, long time, announced he was hanging himself, and went outside to smoke. He was not going to hang himself, the playwright said, his eyes and mouth too open. The playwright smiled when he was nervous, or uncomfortable, and all of his teeth showed like an upset horse. Was she sure?

No, she said, but she had begun to have this growing premonition, something ongoing and worsening, and tonight she could stand it no longer. 

Nothing was open. It was eleven-thirty at night. They would go to see a doctor in the morning. A large part of the playwright thought the cellist was suffering some sort of anxiety disorder. Or worse. What could be worse? He didn’t want to entertain those notions. 

A small part of him worried perhaps she was pregnant, and then what? They were halfway through their play. He wasn’t ready for a child. And what if the play was a success? What if it demanded a sequel? Perhaps the child would be fit to be in the play, he thought. King Beetle (now he too referred to the creature as King Beetle; he heard too much of its nickname) might need an heir, a successor. He did not tell the cellist any of this. He sensed she was resentful of King Beetle, and her resentment made King Beetle a shy performer, self conscious. 

All night the two men worked silently on the play, and when morning came they had two new characters who did not fit into the plot and whom neither man could remember creating, and three-thousand less words than when they started. The violinist stabbed his chained cigarettes into the play over and over and over again like bullets, the text illegible and charred. Everything around him, everything that came out of him, or came to him, or came from him, or came in him, or came in front of him, was shit. The playwright drove the cellist to purchase a pregnancy test. She purchased four. She needed to be sure, she said. 

At home, all four tests came back negative. Thank Christ, the playwright said. He felt even less prepared for fatherhood this morning than he had felt last night. The violinist said nothing about the news and went outside to smoke. He started smoking outside again. The playwright had too much of a presence in the room. It ruined his smoking. The cellist did not react. She looked at each test and threw it away. So she was not pregnant. But the feeling persisted. 

She felt that she was pregnant with herself, not that she had impregnated herself, but rather that she was two selves, the fetus and the mother, and failing in her performance of both roles. The playwright did not understand. She was afraid of both herself and pregnancy. But you’re not pregnant, the playwright said, but that didn’t matter, she believed that she was suffering a miscarriage, they had taken the test too late, it would have come back positive if she had taken it earlier. 

Her miscarriage was of herself. The playwright stopped listening because he didn’t understand, he was thinking about how King Beetle had been moved downstairs, not because of the cellist, but because now, like the playwright, the violinist needed to look at King Beetle while he worked. But now the violinist was alone with King Beetle! Suppose something should happen, and the playwright was not there!

The cellist has stopped talking and the playwright has not realized. She is experiencing her affairs privately, her miscarriage is taking place so far inside of her that no one can see it; it will be a long, long time before anything is expelled, for there to be any evidence something was wrong to begin with. But she knows about the miscarriage. She knows she, herself, the mother, the fetus, was not made to exist in the world. She could feel the fetus of herself rotting just underneath her heart. She moves through the world aware of this decay.

Downstairs, the play grows legs, and its tail absorbs back inside of itself, and begins to nurse from the house. 

The playwright eventually notices that the cellist has not spoken for an indefinite amount of time. He has not even seen the cellist move. He asks the violinist how long he has been gone for. The violinist says at least a month. The violinist! He has always lied, thought the playwright, he’s a liar. That’s a source of both the playwright’s and the cellist’s hatred (The playwright is a liar. The cellist is a liar). The violinist wants to be left alone with King Beetle, he wants the playwright to think he can be trusted for so long, a whole month. It’s been three hours, the playwright says, he has some choice words for the violinist the playwright wasn’t even aware he knew, and the violinist reminds the playwright he is the playwright’s landlord, the playwright is but his tenant, a creative serf. 

The playwright goes outside and asks the neighbor how long it's been. The house has pinchers that open and close slowly. Since what’s been? The neighbor wants to know, and the playwright can’t figure out what to tell him. The playwright goes back inside and looks at the cellist, who looks gaunt. The house smooths hair from the cellist's face in a way that is not romantic but is also not distinctly un-romantic. It is a caress. It is a caress, he can see it. He can see the outline of her teeth through the skin on her face, she is so thin. Jesus, the playwright realizes, it has been a whole month-and-a-half of silence, of the cellist doing nothing but lying in his bed, their bed, she has an extremely good reason, a great reason, even, for not going to her house, and now she is lying in his bed, their bed, it is their bed, he doesn’t mean to keep calling it his bed, and now she is lying in his, their bed, really, their bed, watching spiders lope across the ceiling. 

The spiders are loping. Loping and eloping, look at all those little egg sacs strung along the ceiling like christmas lights, but more than eloping they are quite literally loping, like gazelles; the spiders are galloping up and across the walls and ceilings, sprinting, to what, to what? The playwright wants to know, he has never really paid attention to spiders; they bore him. 

The cellist looks even more emaciated. Has it been another month of watching these spiders lope and elope? The playwright felt if he neared the cellist, he would be able to see her blood pulsing through her capillaries, the outline of her nervous system. He looks away and the cellist has gone out for a walk, she said, it’s all coming back to him now. 

On her walk, the cellist passes snail shells she thinks are empty, but are instead full of flies, and maggots. When she is almost home, she sees a ground beetle, belly up, ants eating its innards. Not once does she see anything alive.

The playwright takes her to see a doctor, who asks her how long she’s been sick for. What the cellist wants to say is that she’s been sick her entire life, something accidentally born but that should have been deemed unfit for life. 

The cellist wants to tell this doctor that she, the cellist, is ill-suited towards the world, that she shouldn’t be here, that she isn’t fit for life, not physically, but yes physically, so physically, and on the inside too, cerebrally, corporeally, in every since of the world she isn’t fit for the world, look. She’s like a sick embryo trying to attach to an inhospitable uterus. The embryo can’t implant! The conditions are not correct, and it must be expelled, or rot inside, or both. The world is a hostile environment and she is a hostile environment!

The doctor doesn’t know what the cellist is talking about, and starts recounting facts about inhospitable uteruses, causes of the hostile environment: infection, anorexia, and so on. Has the cellist always been so thin? When did she stop eating? The cellist is unconcerned with eating. She is in a period of her expulsion-rot. And there is already so much to expel-rot. Why should she consume any more? Why should she take in any more? Nothing else should enter her. It is unfit! She is unfit! 

The doctor is annoyed that the cellist is attempting to entertain him with her theatrics, when what he wants to know is why she was sick for so long, why she did not come in sooner.

The cellist was extremely busy, she tells him. And she was busy! She was preoccupied with herself. Besides, she said, The house has a stomach-ache, and that takes precedence. It’s hot outside. It is so, so hot outside. The house doesn’t do well in the heat. 

The cellist is asked to take another pregnancy test. It comes back negative. The cellist gives blood, and three days later that test returns negative too. No parasites. No tapeworms that will have to be cut out of her, pulled and pulled and pulled like tricks clowns perform at a circus, the strings of multicolored tissues all tied together, attached to the feet of a dove. 

In the house that continues to shrink, the cellist drives her palms into her navel, elbows jutting forwards, shoulder blades separating and coming around to meet her chest. She can’t stop putting more pressure. It is nearly excruciating. 

I am certain that something is growing inside of me, she tells the playwright, pressing harder still. He tries to pull her hands away from her stomach. He reminds her of the pregnancy test, the blood test, how there can’t be. 

I know there is, she said. I know it, I know it, I know it. The playwright goes downstairs, to King Beetle and the violinist, neither of whom speak, or give him any such troubles. The cellist goes for another evening walk. A routine. She sees a slug, ants and maggots again feasting on what remains of a carcass. She wonders if she will ever see her dermestids in real life. The violinist and the playwright accidentally make eye contact. The tension is something rope-like and gelatinous, something each man wants the end of in his mouth, pulled taut between them. 

The play is one hundred-and-twenty-thousand words. It is an entire novel, it is too long for a novel, and still it is not finished, and still neither of the two men know why. There are so many pages. Okay, so it is more than one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand words. The play has become something mechanic, and structural, towering over them. And they are tall men! Not the playwright, he is a little stout and has the beginnings of bow-leggedness. Not the violinist either, he could be tall, but he is stooped, and has poor posture from sulking, and hunching over from the cold when he goes outside to smoke. This stoop exaggerates his skinny legs and round, bloated torso, the playwright notices, the violinist could pass for a spider. 

The playwright refuses to take off the King Beetle costume. He had to sew allowances in the costume as to make it fit him; he made it for someone much smaller (who?), but these allowances are a small price to pay for consolation that the violinist is not touching King Beetle. The playwright will not take the King Beetle costume off even to bathe or have sex with the cellist. This is fine with the cellist. She is thinking about how today on her walk, a bug flew into her eye. She is not all that sure the bug came out, and then what happened to the bug? Does it stay trapped underneath the skin below her eye? She knew someone as a child who used to pull that skin open like a pocket and stick their fingers into it, their knuckles touching their eye. The cellist can’t think of this without feeling squeamish, without thinking she might vomit. The bug stays. But now what? Is that tiny bug, a fruit fly, she thinks, or a gnat, trapped indefinitely. Will it rot underneath the skin of her face?

King Beetle finishes inside of her, and the spiders come. 

She lies awake. Next to her, King Beetle’s snores are muffled by a fabric face covering. The house is feeling a bit antsy. The house is tossing and turning. 

Downstairs, the violinist stands on the balcony and smokes, holding onto the railing for balance. Someone should feed the house a bit of ginger, to settle it. Someone should feed the house a bit of gin, to settle it. No. What is good for a toothache? Rum. He thinks of child-rearing, rubbing rum fingers on teething gums. He is a poet.  

Enough about children, the violinist is smoking, and he wants to enjoy it. He can’t do so thinking about children, especially given all that’s just not happened with the cellist. The violinist is permanently smoking. He can’t un-purse his lips, like in the stories children are told about crossing their eyes, and their eyes sticking so. Children again! But they can’t uncross their eyes! He can’t un-purse his lips, he is chronically puckered, as if about to kiss. More poetry. He doesn’t even write poetry. Yes he does. But he doesn’t. He plays the violin and smokes. He drinks out of glasses around his cigarette, the wine staining the yellow butts somewhere closer to green. Nicotine has dulled his appetite and he becomes skinnier, more spiderlike, thin, jumpy limbs that threaten and flirt with the balcony, his stomach swelling with wine and expanding ribs. He’s been having a lot of girls over lately. They are girls, the playwright and the cellist insist, King Beetle agrees, the rotting embryo agrees, the mother agrees, even the house agrees. These girls are college-aged, most aren’t even twenty, and the playwright and the cellist have to listen to the sex through two floors of the house, the sound bursting through the storeys like arteries. 

The cellist goes for another walk, not wanting to listen to the blood-moans. It’s not even that late at night, only eight, and still light out, the air carried over the bay, thick with the smell of salt and fish still alive, swimming in an ocean warm and empty like a stomach. She inhales and it feels like pool water going up her nose, the chlorine irritating the cartilage around her nose. She finds more empty snail shells, insects and worms anxious to crawl out with each disturbance. Another bug flies into her eye, and she worries she can’t blink enough to expel it. 

She goes home and lies in bed with King Beetle, who has had a day. They lost an entire section of the play, act six and half of act seven. The play is too small to see. The cellist doesn’t understand. Lost as in missing? Scrapped? Forgotten? King Beetle wants to talk about the play but can’t, and the words agitate him, vibrating in his body so his entire form trembles, shaking the bed. This upsets the house, who can’t cry anymore, and instead wails and rocks, heavy and careening. Some of the spider’s webs are irritated too, and the spiders begin their descent downwards. King Beetle rolls on top of the cellist. The spiders are hungry, but they can be patient. They can wait, and they do, and King Beetle comes, and she comes, and the spiders come. 

She is certain they are biting her. She has been certain this whole time of their biting, but tonight she can feel it, she knows she can feel it, and how could she have missed this sensation the whole time? And these spiders, all the same, all the brown recluse, the Loxosceles, violin-spiders, fiddlebacks. 

The cellist has all sorts of premonitions that King Beetle and the playwright and the violinist and her unborn child and the house are all tired of hearing, but she isn’t. There is something not right with the violin spiders. There is something not right with the violin spiders. They are not harmless, and there’s other kinds, she knows this, kinds that aren’t known about but something in her gut knows of them, and she’s convinced of the Loxosceles tenochtitlan, not yet discovered but she knows of it, she knows of it, King Beetle shudders, shaking her worries and thoughts off of him like a horse tossing its head to rid itself of flies, she’s thinking of horses now, everything reminds her of her childhood, her childhood hasn’t stopped but is ongoing, cyclical, she’s with her parents, she’s watching her neighbor’s horses, and she can’t figure out how to put the horses’ fly masks on, and the horses’ breath pained and agitated in quick snuffs, its nostrils flaring, and so many flies are on the horses eyes, directly on the cornea, crawling and crawling and crawling and she can’t even look into the horses’ eyes they are so covered in flies, doing what, the horses’ breath coming faster, and she can’t figure out how to put the fly masks on.

The Loxosceles tenochtitlan has crawled inside of her, and has bitten her. She knows this, she can picture its dorsal pattern, that distinct violin shape, the lesions of rotting flesh left after a bite, a foot across, more than a foot across, larger than her womb, larger than a face, wider than a child, the flesh blackened and inflamed and decaying and this is the cause of her hostile environment, the dead tissue around the puncture, and there are so many punctures. What if the beetles come now? What if the beetles crawl out of her portraits?

There’s nothing to be done, she thinks. Fine. Instinctively, she knows everything about these spiders; they are as much inside of her, a part of her, as ingrained as her genes, with all of its inherited knowledge, how she knows without being taught how to blink and swallow. 

She wakes up. But she didn’t sleep. What is there to wake up from? King Beetle lies completely still. Fine. The cellist gets up, and has gin and lemon and hot water. Two pairs of footsteps come down the stairs, whisperings, and neither pair of footsteps belong to the violinist. Fine. King Beetle is behind her, rubbing her lower back, working up to her shoulders. How long have you been awake for? He wants to know. I am always awake, she says. She meant to add, At this hour. It’s one o’clock. She wants to play the cello, and she can’t! Go to sleep! She can’t play with an audience. She can’t play with an audience. Go to sleep!

Jesus Christ, the playwright said. Where is King Beetle? He’s downstairs. It’s his turn? Whose turn? His turn. If the cellist was being honest with herself, she was beginning to think for a moment that King Beetle and the playwright were the same person, indistinguishable. But now she sees. It has divorced parents. There is joint custody. The playwright does not know what she is talking about. She is staring into the face of King Beetle. Where is the playwright? I’m here, King Beetle says. He is sweating so much the antennae hang down like rabbit ears. The costume is soaked through. 

It’s summer, and everything is in rot. It’s too hot. It only continues to get hot, and then what? More rotting. More rotting more rotting more rotting. And there’s nowhere to go! 

King Beetle is hungry. It’s eight a.m. Has she been taking what she was given by the doctor?

Oh God, the cellist remembers. She was given a whole assortment, all sorts of multicolored pills for her sampling, like confetti, like candy, like everything reminiscent of childhood. Antidepressants and anti-anxieties and antipsychotics. These aren’t for me, she decided, scattering them through the yard like birdseed. It is birdseed. The birds come and eat these multicolored pills and forget they are birds. 

The playwright cuts open a papaya and scoops out the seeds. They don’t sell papayas here, the cellist tells him. Where did you get that? King Beetle has no idea what she is talking about. The playwright is scaling the wall like a spider. The violinist delivers a bill to his, their kitchen. He wants to charge the cellist rent, because she is in his house so much. I have an extremely good reason for not going to my house, she writes on the bill. Great, even. She puts the bill on the kitchen table of the ground floor, the violinist’s floor, unpaid. She goes for another walk. She passes by someone dressed in too many layers for the heat: gloves, cap, long socks, a jacket pulled over a sweater pulled over a long sleeve. The cellist wears a short-sleeve dress of thin layers of cotton and she is sweating, the cotton winding itself around the knobs of her spine like strings, like a marionette puppet. Who is puppeting her? Everyone. She has never not been a puppet. The cellist asks the pedestrian if she is not hot, it is so, so hot outside, I’m practicing, the pedestrian says, and refuses to say more. 

In the evening, she makes a drink of just lemon and gin, the glass pulled from the freezer. Let it shatter! It doesn’t. This is fine. The cellist is used to disappointment. It is not the right sort of weather for hot water. King Beetle wants gin too. Fine, she says. The playwright has sex with her on the kitchen floor. The spiders come. Kitchen spiders, now tracking tiny bits of food inside of her. And what did she say? No more consuming. Nothing inside. Nothing inside! No one is listening to her. She is yelling this, nothing more inside of her, please, but the walls of the house swallow the noise, a one-way sound-mirror. She listens to the violinist having sex two storeys down. Only expulsion! Only expulsion! 

The play has begun to hunch, and shuffle instead of walk. 

She goes for another walk, after she wakes up. It is too hot to sleep. Outside, a senior citizen sits on a bench underneath a streetlight. The cellist can’t recall the last time she saw a senior citizen. She’s been terrible about leaving the house for orchestra practice and work. Her dance students are probably standing at the barre, leaning, or sitting, or gossiping. They should be stretching. Warming up!

The senior citizen is scratching at a sore on his leg, and scratching, and scratching. The cellist can’t look away. The senior citizen periodically stops, inspecting his hand, the fingertips of which are covered in blood and peeling skin, right up to the first knuckle. Sometimes he brings his hand to his face. It is too dark to see what he does with his hand so close to his face—is he smelling? Licking? She remembers being taught that with cuts and wounds, to put the blood back in her mouth, to reabsorb, so nothing is lost. The senior citizen scratches with new vigor, determination, on and on, checking his hand, scratching again. He’s going to claw right to the bone, she thinks, blood runs down the outside of his shin, staining his shoe. The cellist goes home. She wants the playwright to sleep with his arms around her. She thinks of the first night they slept together, before he fell asleep, before the spiders came, her body in front of his, both of them lying on their sides, she the smaller spoon. The playwright had wrapped his arms around her chest, and she can remember tipping her head forward, pressing her lips into his forearm, the very soft sigh she heard from him, how nothing needed to be said between them. 

At home, the playwright is asleep, and King Beetle has finished her gin. This is fine. She didn’t want gin, she wanted to play her cello. No, she really did want gin. She goes downstairs to pilfer some of the violinist’s gin. He doesn't notice. He is outside smoking. He is growing extra tufts of hair because it still gets cool at night. He could smoke inside, he thinks. Why doesn’t he? But the playwright is inside. The playwright never goes outside. It’s too hot. 

Downstairs, the play has been placed into the fireplace, intact, only smeared in charcoal. It is too hot to light the fireplace and burn the play. 

The cellist drinks the violinist’s gin, lies down next to the playwright, and wraps his arms around herself, a cocoon of warm and heavy flesh. The playwright presses his mouth into the back of her neck. He is so tired, and his head is so heavy. He is pressing his head so hard into her. She’s worried his nose will smush too, and he’ll suffocate behind her like this. 

The playwright wakes up first. It has been morning forever. The earth has never known night.

 The playwright doesn’t know where King Beetle is. The violinist has King Beetle. The violinist is refusing to give King Beetle back. This is it. The playwright shares the pilfered gin. They can’t have any sort of relationship, the playwright says. No, he says to the cellist. Not you and me. He meant the violinist. He’s done working with the violinist. The play is done. No, not complete. Done as in, the playwright is finished working on it. No, not finished. He’s sick of the play. It’s remaining partially-complete forever. It’s in the fireplace, didn’t she see? It’s about chess now. They’ve been playing the same game of chess all summer, didn’t she see? Chess, yes, chess! They’ve lost another four acts of the play, anyhow. Four acts. Didn’t I tell you? The cellist looks at him. I did tell you, the playwright insists. I did tell you. He looks hurt that she doesn’t remember. 

The play exists now in its final form, unfinished, and in the fireplace, awaiting its cremation. This is always how the play was going to go. He’s ecstatic. The whole house vibrates in excitement. The play is done! It’s in its final form! He and the cellist don’t even know how to go about celebrating; this was so unexpected. They finish the violinist’s gin, and have sex again on the kitchen floor, no it isn’t sex, it’s hungrier, the cellist wants the playwright’s entire body inside of her, not just a part of him, she wants the sounds of her teeth on his bones rubbing into her skull. 

The violinist knocks on their door. She is paying rent, he says. Or eviction. He’s dead serious. He does not care about this alleged extremely good reason, and he thinks the cellist is lying. He knows her. She is a liar. If anyone knows that, it’s him. Unlock the door. He knows her. The playwright and the cellist do not want to listen to this, and have even louder sex. The violinist understands now. He thought maybe that was what was going on, but now he knows for certain. He makes a loud remark about the cellist, to be heard over the noise the playwright and cellist are making, something about her sexual history, or tendencies, that the playwright did not previously know. The cellist didn’t tell him. He looks at her, horrified. The violinist is lying, the cellist says. The violinist insists he isn’t, and offers more damning evidence, more facts, how could he know that, and not the playwright? The playwright doesn’t know what to think. He can’t believe this. The violinist continues to talk through the door. The playwright is pushing the cellist off of him, he can’t look at her, he doesn’t understand, why she wouldn’t tell him, the door is open, the violinist is the only one dressed, and very dressed, is he going somewhere formal? 

What ensues next:

What ensues next: What should have been happening this entire time. 

What ensues next: Enough with King Beetle and the house and the fetus and the mother and the neighbor-strangers and the spiders. Too, too, too too many. It is just the three of them: the playwright, the violinist, and the cellist. It has always just been the three of them, the playwright, the violinist, and the cellist, even without these spiders, who have only come from a splitting, like a worm cut in half to make two new, living worms.  No more of this dividing and reconfiguring; it is time to take all of these splits and join them all back into the original, what began with a division through a combining, what shouldn’t have and divisions and combinations have continued since and that is where the spider-sickness originates. 

What ensues next:

What ensues next: But what are they to do with that? 

What ensues next:

What ensues next:

What ensues next: Palms and feet and tensed fingers everywhere: the floor the walls, her small, damp, body on top of his, and him, he too, he doesn’t know if he wants to be closer or farther, who he would hit, is he the mother or the father, the father, the father, the mother, her pulling a head back and open, unsunned white and at a right-angle, to give time to nose or jaw or teeth, he is larger than her and so is he, shocked but not in shock, he is there, three sets of clothes flung into open throat of the house, the gaping ceiling, three bodies dressed in what has been pulled too tightly and has snapped, the three entirely indistinguishable, the three entirely indistinguishable, he is there in between and outside and apart and inside, what closes and opens, too much straddled, not one of them stops him, his hands just where her ribs stop, his hands on top of her shoulders pushing her downwards, her ribs upwards and outsides and still and still and still, what comes from the house, what comes in the house, the house is the only one making sounds, loud sounds, its the house too-inside of her not the men, the house is tensing, waiting to jump, waiting for what comes, the spiders swaying in their corner-webs, quivering, beginning their descent downwards, patient and familiar and hungry.

Jamie Good is waiting for the fairies to come and abduct her back into the fairy world. Until then, she has not at all been a menace and has only ever been up to nice, everyday, perfectly legal things. Follow Jamie on Instagram @jamiempgood.