‘From the Cold Case of Audra Owen’s’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

From the Cold Case of Audra Owens

1) Photograph of the Body
Her lashes collect dew in small droplets and dare the pollinators to land, on her increased forehead, on her stiff nose half-broken, and drink from her. The flies already had—they laid their eggs in her open mouth because it was safe and still. Long whisps of light hair braid around wildflower weeds, licking leaves from the ground and snatching them from the wind. She’s rotting. Her eyes are half-gone, returned to the flies and the dirt to be reborn as wheat, as peach trees, as raccoons splattered on asphalt. I can’t help but look at this photo with a strange appreciation for the scenery. At least he left her with a view, away from the highway we assume lit the night of her death in a drowning yellow light. At least it’s a peaceful place to die, if not a peaceful death: the wind, the harmony of passing cars, and stars. Poor girl. Poor girl.

2) Photograph of the Scene
She’d been out there, in an overgrown field only cared for by people with big-running dogs and prisoners on community service, for two days before someone found her. Lace from the edge of Audra’s dress braces a fresh robin’s nest on the branches of a nearby tree. Mud obscures the pale blue satin of her shoes, but the scuffs from nights of dancing on gravel roads expose the dark rubber from the soles. A dried pool of blood oozes in the sun, drying into a sticky puddle of evidence with drag marks of four limbs, a body, and two heeled shoes. It settles under a buck, fit, with crushed ribs, a bullet hole in the leg, and exposed meats and fats where the proud head should be. The trail leads from a parked blue two-door with a crushed front hood, smeared with the same sticky black tar that glued the buck to the earth. Footprints walk off into the grasses, away from the highway, along a thinner trail of blood droplets. Someone is alive, burning clothes we’ll never see, washing blood we’ll never test, and walking through grocery store cameras we’ll never watch. A girl doesn’t just die on the side of
the road, except that she does. This scene haunts me with its silence, tranquility and decay dancing around what used to be a girl. Birds sing their mating songs in the trees that soak up the deer’s blood and the rotting soup of her body before we collect it, and though she is gone, she is never gone from that place. She remains there, nebulous in nature, with only a wooden cross and plastic flower to mark that she’s ever been here at all.

3) Interview With Martin Owens

Recording Officer: Detective Elenora Ruiz
Subject: Martin Owens
Transcriptionist: Therese W. Abbott

E.R.: Recording start. June 1st, 20XX. Detective Ruiz, sitting down with Martin Owens, father of the victim, Audra Owens.

M.O.: I’m sorry—do y’all want something to drink? I don’t know how to host anything. That’s all my wife but she ain’t around to do it no more. I’d offer y’all a beer but—

E.R. No one would expect you to host anyone right now, Mr. Martin.

M.O.: You’d be surprised—so many people coming by. Sick of all these casseroles and lasagna.

E.R.: I just have some questions about Audra.

M.O.: I hope so. Isn’t that your job?

E.R.: What can you tell me about her?

M.O.: She’s a good girl. Always has been. I’m lucky. Never have to worry about her. She always comes home on time, you know what I’m saying? Studying environmental biology or something—like public parks, researching type stuff. A good girl. A real good girl.

E.R.: Did she have any friends? A boyfriend? Anyone that she didn’t get along with?

M.O.: No boys, I don’t think. She’s got a girl from school she hangs out with—Hannah or Hallie or something. Should be in her phone. I know y’all found that in her car. Bought that car for her,
you know. For her sixteenth birthday she asked for a little more freedom. I obliged the best I could. She still tells me where she’s going every time she leaves so I don’t worry.

E.R.: Would she have been out with anyone

E.R.: It’s possible. Its rare that these kinds of crimes—

M.O.: What kind of crimes?

*fan whirring*

E.R.: Mr. Owens—

M.O.: Listen, sweetheart. You might see Audra as just another girl on your long list of girls, but I’ll tell you right now. You don’t go comparing my girl to anybody else. That’s my girl. All she
wants to do is help. Animals, people—everything. And now she’s dead.

E.R.: I’m sorry, Mr. Owens. I didn’t mean to imply anything. She’s just...Audra deserves justice for what happened to her. I just want to learn everything I can.

M.O.: No—no I know what y’all do. You’re just like the assholes that keep showing up at my door. You’re going to look busy, go asking questions to people who don’t know anything, and
close up shop the minute you actually have to do some thinking. Everybody shows up when its convenient, like they actually care, but most of y’all just want to look like y’all care. Bringing
fucking lasagnas. I want to trust that you’re doing everything you can, Detective, but I’ve seen y’all fuck up more than once. And you aren’t going to do that to my girl.

*fan whirring*

M.O.: I’ll get you everything I can from her school—schedules and notes and whatever. But don’t take anything out of her room unless you’ve got good reason. I’m leaving it exactly as it is. It’s what Audra’s mother would want. She’s sentimental like that.

E.R.: Where is Audra’s mother?

M.O.: Dead. Where else? Seems like that’s all we do lately. Died of cancer in 20XX. Audra was fifteen. She got cheated of a mom, and now she’s gotten cheated of a future. This ain’t supposed
to happen.

E.R.: No, it’s not.

4) Evidence List
A pale silver bracelet with a rabbit charm. From what I gather from Mr. Owens, Audra is a pacifist in every aspect of her life. She just wants to study, tend to her father, and avoid the light of attention like it would burn her. I can relate. If I wasn’t a cop, I’d be a nudist. I’d be out on a compound somewhere off grid, my skin one with the land and my mind divorced from all semblance of society. I’d eat mushrooms and berries, make love with whatever other free-loving, empty-headed human body I can find, and never think again. When I search pawnshops on other cases for guns, knives, wedding rings, and whatever else people sell to hide, I’m afraid I’ll find Audra’s bracelet there. It’s a cute bracelet. Someone would buy it in an instant, on sale, of course.

Audra’s purse and wallet on the passenger seat of her car: IDs from the State of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, headphones, receipts for vegetarian taco bowls and
charged lemonades, pink nude lipstick, watermelon Jolly Ranchers, and absolutely nothing of use. There’s nothing more to note about it other than it wasn’t stolen. All the things that show the
world exactly who she is are useless after she’s dead. Nobody knows that she kept a picture of her childhood cow, Ulysses, tucked into her sunshade mirror. Her headstone isn’t painted with dreams of the great National Parks of the country where she should’ve studied the migration patterns of reintroduced wolves or hibernating snails or wildfires. She never has pacifiers in her
pockets or reading glasses in a tortoise shell case. Instead, the purse and wallet are returned to Martin Owens and left to do with what he wishes.

The car itself, a blue two-door with her father’s name cosigned on the loan, found abandoned on the shoulder of a decently busy road with a smashed front right headlight and a smear of fur
and blood. It’s a classic scenario, really: girl driving home at night when the headlights catch the glint of a pair of panicked eyes just a second too late. She’s lucky the torso and head don’t
shatter the windshield and crush her against the seat. The buck staggers a few feet, spins in a circle, cries, and collapses under the weight of its mortality. A headless deer. A bullet in a leg. Someone must’ve shot it and that’s why it took off running. A shattered nose, a muddy dress, and a handful of hair, and a cracked skull. The creature isn’t bleeding much except for the slim stream from the back left thigh and a puddle from its mouth where it bit through its tongue. Everything inside the animal must be broken to kill it.

5) Persons of Interest

Martin Owens. Relationship: Father

He didn’t murder his daughter. I’m certain of that. He’s a retired plumber, spent the prime of his youth in crawlspaces wrapping duct-tape around the pipes of other people who didn’t do their jobs right. He lives in a small house he paid for with his sweat and labor with a maple tree in the back and two empty beds in the locked rooms of his family. He sleeps on the couch, drinks coffee with sugar, and never recovers.

Halle Buddinger. Relationship: Friend

Halle is just another girl on a long list of girls that could end up dead at any moment. Her face is made for missing persons’ posters, smiling obituaries that say she lights up every room
she walks into, and funeral GoFundMes. She wears her hair in a low ponytail with a purple velvet scrunchy. Her purse looks like a button mushroom. She’s alive, alive, alive. But she could
so easily be dead and it could be Audra sitting in front of me for an interview. Her name could be Brittney, Jessica, Ann, Rebecca, Laura, Elizabeth, or a dozen other names and identities all
variegated by their occupations, ethnicities, hobbies, and habits. But instead, it’s Halle, a girl that shared Audra’s Literature of Ecoterrorism class, and she knows nothing useful.

“We read a book about elephant and giraffe poaching in class,” Halle says in the interrogation room. “And we used to joke about becoming those, like, African poacher poachers. Just going out there with our guns and firing them up like a shooting squad. It was one of the only things that ever got her riled up.”

Halle, suddenly remembering where she is and who I am, stops herself after the thought escapes her lips with wide eyes. “Not that we’d actually do it. Sorry, I probably shouldn’t talk like that at a police station. She just cared a lot about animals.”

“We think she might’ve hit a deer on her drive home that night.”

Halle put her hands to her face, truly horrified in the way only pretty young girls destined for death can. “Oh god, that would’ve killed her. Seeing an animal like that? And that’s what she
sees before some fucking monster kills her? God.”

“It was headless.”

“Oh my god. Did she hit it that hard?”

“No, it was more like it was...cut off. You don’t think Audra would have anything to do with that?”

Halle blinks. “That’s a weird question, but no. She was a complete animal empath, you know? She hated hunting and taxidermy and stuff. Definitely wouldn’t have decapitated an animal she hit with her car. What would she even do with it?”

And then she walks out. Halle melts into the crowd of people on the street outside the station. She gets a DUI when she’s thirty-six and disappears into the obscurity of normal life. I’m
happy for her. She’s so damn lucky.

Unknown Assailant. Relationship: Murderer

The only thing we know and will probably ever know about this person is a combo of vague science and conjecture. The hair we found in her hand says he’s a man; he’s not in the
criminal system, and unless he fucks up royally or does a 23&Me, he’ll never be in the database for investigators of the future to identify. He’s a hunter; the circumstances make sense for a
nighttime hunter that spooks his prize and sends the buck off towards the highway, in which it gets hit by Audra’s car and jeopardizes his night of fun. I can imagine it like it happens in front
of me: cool night winds, angry voices reflected in the eyes of a dead deer, a swift crack in the face with the butt of a rifle, another in the back of the head as Audra falls, a trophy buck on a
wall of a cabin stained in the blood of an innocent girl.

But that’s all it is, isn’t it? Science. Conjecture. There’s no name, no address, no justice. Her case lives in the back of a storage facility, waiting for an intern to upload it to an online
archive so the people in charge can downsize. Death is cannibalistic. People die all the time for stupid reasons and I’m supposed to sever myself from the images and go eat steak and potatoes
like nothing happened. There might be one or two that sink their teeth into me, but they’ll go cold like the others. People don’t have clean-cut endings.

Case Notes from Eleanor Ruiz
It's always happening in the present. They’re never dead, never a was but always an is, and it plagues me. They die, but they never stay dead. They animate in deep storage, moaning
and crying, and sometimes just sitting, a spirit in the way all dead girls are. The face changes, the injuries slide between minor to obliteration, but today—it’s Audra. She’s sitting on the floor of
my bathroom. Audra’s hands bury in mud where my tiles split and she watches an inchworm work its way across her knee. Her face is shattered like a mirror from the nose outward, blooming towards the crack in her skull. I flick the lights on and off, but she sits there, staring near me but never at me. For a moment she’s Halle with her throat slit, then my niece with a gunshot in her chest, then a horrific stitched experiment of every dead girl I’ve ever seen in the files. Then Audra’s back, my current face into the darkness, and she waits for me to say something.

I spit toothpaste in the sink and shrug.

“It never ends, does it?”

When she opens her mouth, all she speaks is static.

Leah Skay received her BA in Writing from Ithaca College. She's a proud alum of the Japanese Exchange and Teaching Program that returned to the States with a renewed vigor for writing pieces that challenge her. She has been honored and published in various online and print publications including Iron Horse Literary Review, Progenitor, Rowayat, Poets Choice Free Spirit, and more.

‘Taken Out at the Ballgame’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Taken Out at the Ballgame

Tomorrow, when the hangover hits in full swing,
nobody will be screaming from the stands, “HOME RUN!”
Instead, sprawled across the field,
the clay swallows us whole, each divot and ridge a memory etched in time.
But tonight, we make a toast.
To the nights we got to chant and rave about our big-hearted little team,
and the all-star player who led them with pride.
Embrace this night, we will until dawn colors in the sky above second base with orange, warm to
the touch,
casting a nostalgic glow over the diamond where he once stood tall.
But tonight, oh yes, tonight, we raise a glass to this,
to a legacy left behind, in every ball thrown, it’s sewn into these blood red seams.

Grace Brendel is an undergraduate student studying Psychology with a minor in Creative Writing. She has been writing since she was thirteen years old and has won various local writing awards through her high school and college, as well as her county. She hopes to one day publish a book of poetry to inspire other writers to be true to themselves and to never give up on their dreams even when times get tough.

‘No One Will Ever Understand and That’s Okay’ & ‘Just Enough’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

No One Will Ever Understand and That’s Okay.

Neon lights bust open upon our smoky windowsill, crawling out of the weapons of our mouths I

spill inside of you.

Gunshots! Resound and bounce around the cage of your ribs. 

I dig deeper into the distance of your power floating around the vacuum of your heart.

You entrap me within your pounding blood, like rocket fuel you shock my veins.

Neon lights crack my skull open and I spill down your spine.

I wait like helpless eyes at the pew of your body, watching as you perform unto the ledge of all

we have.

Scratch and claw me open as we travel into the machine of our diamond hearts.

Glass shatters in the hall of air, spilling out from the broken tears of the god we beg for.

Ringing out, our bodies echo as the hands of the clock bring us into the fold.

Neon lights dance into the hand of an anxious star.

Your tongue burns into me like the view of a distant sea.

I scream at the walls and ask why can’t there be just one more memory?

You put the gun to my head and I lay waste to the world, the lights of the grid flicker from our

waves rippling like boundless fear.

Two bodies falling into place.

Neon lights mark the death of me and you.

So with nothing left we accept the cultivated rage, the boiling gray within, we look into the

mirrors and shatter our minds like somebody will have to love us.

Eventually.

Right?

Running into your eyes as if I belong to them, like within them I can hide from the grip of my

heart.

Save me.

I whisper (whimper).

You look into me like all those neon lights.

Breaking open, questioning their own shadow.

What do you see?

TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE!

When you look into me…

Neon lights march to the rattling drum of death. 

I smell your hair, how it tastes like morning.

Your eyes…

How they hold me.

We can’t escape it, we can’t outrun it, we can’t hide.

Neon lights commit suicide just to know what it means to feel.

JUST ENOUGH

I’m choking on blood chilling chunks of time

my thoughts are vain and tempted by the succulent imagination of desire,

the overwhelming success of death.

Laying in a bed frozen by my own howling furnace of existence

the gnawing chains and icy teeth of a sun roaming overhead,

its shape is not what I perceived coming out the womb as a shaking and wet mess of dream

it is exactly what I would envision the end of the road would look like,

how it haunts you, laughing at you with its gorgeous reminder of life and death.

As I lay here imprisoned behind the bars of her pleading laugh and iridescent glow as she sleeps,

this sun continues to bludgeon the lies into my feeble and horrific mind.

As a needle of its own breath dances along the seams of my crumpled and sickly twisted

imagination I lay in silence and watch as the shadows crawl like lyrics across my mind.

As the vision of her skin lofts neatly into the facade of my mind time bends backwards and I

imagine us dancing on a sheet of melting glass.

Helpless as the cries of raindrops splitting their secrets over indifferent Converse sneakers,

shoelaces arching their lonely shadow across laughing puddles, like that day, many days ago,

when she danced along the ribs of a rainy day and I got lost in a cloud, how I felt as if I never

really say her.

These sounds exist everywhere and nowhere at once amongst the bubbling eyes of my walls.

My mind replays her hopelessly, caught on quivering images of her hand brushing away a

stranded fleece of hair from her galactic eyes, as if it were trapped in the grooves of a never

ending war.

The taste of peaches, the juice running parallel down her jaw, the day breeding magnificence

from her frayed blue jeans.

How everything is enough in her gaze, like the watery sunlight crumbling inside her eyes makes

me believe.

Yet I am trapped.

Surrounded by the mangling thorns of passing time.

Sunlight melting down my walls like a fleeting candle, burning my veins and making me itch

from the inside out.

I shatter like glass at the sound of her skin, as the sun ticks mechanically across the sky I pray to

a god that I have never met.

Until nothing is left but a desert with drifting sand and a crumbling castle.

Michael Munns is a writer from Homer, Alaska. He has written and shared his poetry at open mics in the Colorado Springs area. He is an avid reader and writer who aspires to share his ideas
with the world. Serving in the army he does not have any college education. Believing books are the backbone to our society, he educates himself in the likes of Tolstoy, Hemingway, Faulkner,
and the greats he admires so much. His main forms are poetry and short stories. We are proud to share this is his first ever publication.

‘Lady English or Her Body Herself’

'going around and around' - Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet who has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times.

Lady English or Her Body Herself

It's almost rotting, it's so sweet. An end of July kind of heat brings the moisture and everything around welling to the surface. Skin beads in sweat and the fruits are sweating too, but Eden English is crying tears that would have poured in any weather. Sitting up in bed, her acrylic nails are digging just slightly into the skin above her eyes. There's a passing thought, the tears always seem to stop when the eyes are torn out of your face. It passes. And when she trembles she does so in silence.

There's a tapping on the window in the bedroom. The sheets and the blanket are rippling around Eden's kneeling body, she's an island alone and the bed is the ocean. There's another body beneath the surface, another breathing beneath the blanket, the sheet to the side. More tapping, and Eden brings her nails deeper into their press against her skin. The other's breathing steadily, he doesn't snore, and he doesn't tremble sitting up in bed when it's hot.

More tapping, it's slight and high pitched like a bug confused and flying continuously into the clear glass barrier that separates the outside from the heat and the light and the garbage inside. More tapping, it's a fine sound like the end of a needle beating and bouncing back from the glass. Eden English tears her hands away from her eyes then, the movement is ferocious but no blood is drawn. She turns, and in the cruel sudden churn of her movement the other sleeping mound almost wakes up. His breath draws inconsistently for a moment, but Eden English goes completely still and the stirring does stop. There's a finger in the window, visible only as a sprout rising and tapping from the bottom of the glass.

The single illuminated finger is all that there is, the 3 A.M. dark is so thorough that it swallows everything in the background to match its ubiquitous black. It's unmissable, steady at first then harder and faster when it seems to notice it's been noticed. Eden turns away, brings her hands back to her eyes and clutches her nails into the skin. She draws a bead of blood this time, but the tapping doesn't stop and the body stirs again by her side. He grunts, closer now than he's been to waking up, and the blood drips to fall in the path of the tears that stream on the English cheeks of the illustrious, the notorious Eden English.

It has to stop, and she whispers as much when she opens the window. He's smaller, below and reaching up just barely stretching from the tree he'd climbed. The finger is as far as he can reach, and he doesn't respond but draws his finger back down by his side. He gestures to the ground below, and raises his brow. Any sound is a threat, he knows that as well as she, and she complies to the ask of the gesture. She meets the man at the front of the house. He's covered in sap and smiling. "You're bleeding," He says.

“You have to go.”

“I felt young,” He’s blurting, words preplanned and emanating from a part of his brain that fossilized in a moment only ever revived when revisited. “Didn’t you? Didn’t you feel young?”

She looks away, eyes trailing off and to the left. She stares then at anything that isn’t the man, the grass in the slight night wind that tugs gently up and away from their roots. None will ever pull completely out of the ground, they're stuck and the movement is nothing but a tease to those that are anchoring them to the place they were born, the place where each blade will die. “I wasn’t young,” Eden scoffs an English snobbish kind of a scoff, “There’s no regret in the having of youth. Maybe it’s more likely I’ve never been young.”

“You were young.”

A light flashes on in Eden’s room. Just hardly visible from their place in the front yard, it lights a dim-white glow and beams flashing slightly for a moment before turning off, then on again, and off more permanently. Eden looks back down, back to the dark and the boy in the yard, “You have to go.”

“I will, you know I will,” He stops, but his hands are moving like gears working against one another, and anyone can tell that there’s more to say. Eden waits, watches while the boy’s ghostly night fingers work in twirls taking action like a five-way-thumb-war pitting one hand against its brother. “Tomorrow,” He says, it's a civil war, “You know I’m gone, you know I’m gone and I don’t have to say another word.” He waits again, wishing for something that will never come. Not in the front yard, not with the dim-white glow still lingering as a scald in her vision.

“It won’t work—”

Verbally, he jumps, on and all over the K in her word. “I’ll be back,” He starts, “Time will pass and mine will come. There’s always a return, we don’t just escape the places we come from.” He clears his throat, swallowing the lack of conviction back in his throat. He steps almost imperceptibly back, his bare tree-climbing feet shuffling cold in the dew of the night. He’s moving away from her, coaxing, it seems, an unconscious approach.

Eden English doesn’t shuffle, she stands straight digging her slippered heels into the mud. She’s not cold, but she crosses her arms and shakes like she’s loosening something at or around her shoulders.

“Turn around,” She says, “Turn and walk and leave me to my shame.”

If still uncertain, there’s a definite finality to the tone of her voice. She closes her mouth, and even in the proceeding silence there is no room to speak. She looks back up, and she yearns for the overripe heat, the dense fogged air of the room she’d just left. Life outside is a cold, cold thing in the night. Chilled to the bone, she ceases her quiver, so he complies and turns away.

Back inside, the boy-shaped lump speaks unseen from beneath his pile of blankets. “Who was that?” He asks, and Eden twists her wedding ring around a notch it’s created in her finger.

“An old friend,” She smiles, and slides in, adding her shape to the lump between the sheet and the blanket.

“An old friend climbing a tree to tap on our glass?”

The lump shifts, and Eden turns to face the blanket shape of his face. She sighs, “He’s leaving in the morning; just stopped by to say his goodbyes.”

“Where’s he going?”

Eden English sits up in the bed that she shares. She hesitates for a moment, and everything around her goes hot. The world is boiling over, bubbles rising popping at the brim of what’s bearable. Dense air had seemed so sweet from the outside looking in, but things that entice from afar have a way of constricting, of suffocating the ones that manage to find their way close. She thinks to the outside, to the shivering air and the boy’s bare leave-dying feet in the grass. He’s turning blue, but the freeze is a thing of beauty when existing enveloped by the heat.

“I don’t know,” She says, and shallow-thick air steals the conviction from her voice. “There isn’t a place in the world that would welcome him. I think we might’ve been his last try, here.”

The lump sticks his head out through the top of his covers then, he inspects the woman for a long time, and when he rolls over he says: “Let him in.”

“What?”

Facedown now, the lump’s voice is muffled as it emanates only audible through the fluff of the pillow. “He’s got nowhere to go, let him in.”

So she does; she gets up and walks out and trails the other boy for a while down the street before getting his attention. He’s shocked at first, even yelps a little when she calls after his name. Under a streetlight, everything around the two of them is golden. A beam of the brightest day within the night, he looks at her and cocks his head to the side when she tells him to follow. Open-mouthed, he lingers for a moment while she turns and leads him back in the direction of the house. She leaves their golden oasis, and he follows her willingly back into the dark.

Inside, everything is calmer, more settled than it was the last time he’d seen it. There are no broken glasses, no leftover food and liquor spilling from the countertops. It is no bachelor pad, and nobody’s left tonight. He walks, not a comfort but a desperate wanderer willing to break any bond for the sake of a bed. The other boy is there, he saw him lumpified when straining to tap on the window before. He starts to sweat, to shake watching as the glorious Eden English leads him up the stairs.

The lump is silent when they enter the bedroom. Not even snoring, he breathes the unasleep rhythm of a parent-fearing child hiding in a game of hide-and-seek. For a moment it seems that he’s preparing to jump out, to surprise, but Eden gets into bed and the boy follows and there is no surprise.

She looks at him, swapping glances between his eyes and the lump that’s breathing by his hip. She nods, and he knows. He gets under the covers and only then does she smile. She pulls the sheet, the blanket up over his face. He is silent, a lump like the other. There’s a moment of the purest, most sanctified silence you’ve ever heard. He almost sleeps, but she rocks her weight forward on the bed, and the crying comes back.

Tim Donahue began his writing career at Western Washington University in 2023 when he released his debut novel, “The James Gang” with Central Park South Publishing on June 2nd of that year. Donahue has worked for the past three years at Wavelength, a journalistic publication at Western Washington University, and in his free time he enjoys fly fishing, riding his bike, and repairing used books.

‘Fresh as the Flowers’

The Thinker - Lucy Mason is earning her BA in English at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She has been photographer for the Omaha Central Register (2018-2022), hired for events such as the Healthy for a Lifetime Conference (2019, 2021) and has placed at the Nebraska State Journalism competition (2022), and won first place at Skills USA Regional (2020). Lucy is the Creative Nonfiction Section editor for UNO’s 13th Floor Literary Magazine (2024).

Fresh as the Flowers

When my brother, Jordan, and I landed in Raleigh, staggering noise overwhelmed us. The sound of static from the airport shifted into the blaring bustle of the city. Cars packed narrow roads, pedestrians flooded the sidewalks and coffee shops, and construction barriers sent us on distracting detours. 

So much had changed. 

I eased our rental car through near-impenetrable traffic, fingers stiff and clammy at the wheel. My thoughts gushed in a frantic cycle, fueled by overtired caffeine jitters. We had so much to do before our return flight in two days.  

“This is ridiculous,” I muttered. 

“It’s no worse than Vegas traffic.”

“But we’re not in Vegas. I thought I was getting a break.”

“Do you want me to drive?”

“And where will I pull over?” I cried, motioning to the blockade of cars surrounding us. 

The clock blinked 11:02. In only six hours, we needed to meet our stepmom at the mortuary. She had assigned us the task of deciding what our dad would wear when we laid him to rest the next day. She wanted us to feel involved but, in truth, we hadn’t felt like a part of their family since our mom moved us across the country ten years earlier. 

“Okay, get out your phone,” I said. “Should we find the hotel first or the mortuary?”

Jordan scoffed. “We are not going to waste this entire trip by waiting around all day.”

“But we need to know where they are.”

“We have hours before we can check into the hotel and even longer until we have to be at the mortuary.”            He shook his head and typed into his phone. “Let’s just go see the old neighborhood now. It’s only… hang on… forty minutes away.” All these years and he still had the address of our childhood home memorized. 

He slowly navigated us out of the smothering city traffic to where the trees formed a deep green barricade on either side of the highway. Thick, fluffy clouds drifted over the treetops in an incredible haze of blue. I had forgotten the clouds. In southern Nevada, the dusty land stretched for miles until intimidating mountains cut across the horizon. Infinite clear skies loomed overhead in constant blinding brightness. Brilliant clouds like these stood no chance beneath the rays of the searing desert sun.

“Okay, we want the next exit.”

I merged into the far right lane and watched for signs of home, my fingers drumming on the steering wheel. “You know I’m knocking if it looks like someone’s there.”

“I won’t stop you,” Jordan said. “Just don’t be too disappointed if they don’t want a complete stranger barging into their house.”

“Hey, come on. I’m no stranger,” I grinned. “I left my name and a Sharpie self portrait on my old bedroom wall. Clear as day. I’m sure whoever lives there now will recognize me.”

He rolled his eyes. “Of course. Silly me.”

But as we got off the highway, my excitement turned to confusion. Chain-link fencing and concrete barriers lined the roads rather than the old safeguarding trees. Streetlights overlooked intersections where quiet stop signs once waited. Stacks of modernized apartment complexes towered over the renovated land where we used to play in vast, free forests. I felt more lost in my old hometown than I had in the city. 

“It should be… here,” Jordan said, rolling down his window as I pulled up to a sleek, three-story black and white townhouse. 

I drew in a sharp breath, scanning the pristine green lawn and raised flower beds. Our old house had been completely obliterated, replaced by this contemporary monstrosity. 

My thoughts flooded with dim memories and images from ratty, torn and retaped photographs–back to when our shabby family home stood on this plot and our parents loved each other. I remembered the splintered white paint on the wrap-around porch peeling away in long, biting slivers. Virginia Creeper clung to the rails, twisting its tendrils through each wood post. Gridded windows lined the cracked walls; some still held their decorative green shutters but most had fallen off or hung by a desperate screw. 

Our dad had boasted that the day he purchased our mom’s engagement ring, he also placed a large down payment on the old colonial house. Together, our parents intended to refurbish it back to its original beauty–to sand the porch, to repaint the walls, to fix the landscape and plumbing. But over time, they forgot their promises to each other and to us, allowing our family to weather and fall apart, just like the battered house. 

Now my gaze swept across the giant, tinted windows of the expansive building. They reflected the darkening clouds overhead and the perfectly-placed cobblestone walkway, which led to our rental car. I wondered if other marriages had ended–if other children had watched their parents deteriorate–over the remodeling of our childhood home. Maybe that’s why it had been demolished. 

I caught Jordan’s pale expression in the reflection. His jaw twitched back and forth, grinding his teeth. Despite the impending funeral, I had hoped this trip would motivate him and remind him of happier times. I cringed at the thought of dropping him off at his lonely studio apartment in two days; his apartment where he hid away and slept for days and days at a time.

I cleared the lump from my throat and gave him a nudge. “Let’s just go for a walk.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and unbuckled his seatbelt. 

The sidewalk guided us away from the stereotypical new builds and into an older, untouched neighborhood. Here, the shaded cement cracked and crumbled, lifted by the free spirits of the sprawling trees. I let out a breath, eagerly recognizing some of the aged houses. 

We walked to the end of the block and turned onto a hidden sideroad. As children, our dad had walked us down this road to play at a private neighborhood park. I nicknamed it “Splinter Park” because of the unfinished wooden play structure and the sharp wood chips at the bottom of the slick metal slide. Every visit ended in tears.

Jordan and I rounded the corner, unsurprised to find Splinter Park torn down. In its place lay a grassy clearing, surrounded by a quiet shelter of trees. 

Jordan left the path and walked to the center of the clearing. I followed, feeling the cushion of spongy grass through my shoes. He dropped to his knees and let himself fall back into the greenery with a deep sigh. 

“I hope you checked for poison ivy before you did that.”

“You worry too much,” he said and patted the grass at his side.

“What about ticks?”

He scowled at me. 

“We’re not in the desert anymore,” I grumbled and slumped down into the damp grass. 

My eyes lifted to the incredible vibrant green leaves that scattered over stretching limbs, blocking the stormy sky. They swayed in the breeze, rustling a soothing chorus while blurring and distorting my vision. My eyelids felt heavy, drifting shut for longer and longer with each blink. But the marshy grass soaked through my shirt, and I leapt to my feet. 

“What?”

“Get up,” I said, trying to rub the seeping water stain from the back of my pants. “This grass is soaked.”

“It’s fine.”

 “Are you serious? You’re going to be drenched. And cold.”

“You should practice your breathing,” he said and let his eyes shut. 

I crossed my arms, about to tell him what he could practice, when the familiar chirp of an old friend caught my attention. At the edge of the grassy clearing, a male cardinal stood watching me in a brilliant spark of red. 

“Jordan,” I whispered, nudging him with my shoe. 

He ignored me. 

I took a few silent steps closer to the beautiful bird. I had always loved cardinals. They fascinated me; their vibrant color, their echoing song, the wedge-shaped wisp of feathers sprouting from their heads… 

My foot snapped a twig, and I froze. The cardinal cocked his head to one side. Then he took off in a flutter of red to hide amid the leaves. I peered into the shadowed branches, hoping for another glimpse but settling, instead, for the sound of his trill. 

“Jordan, you missed it,” I said over my shoulder. A giant raindrop plopped on my forehead and rolled straight into my eyeball. “Ugh. Great. Now it’s raining.”

He sighed and scuffled to his feet as the clouds burst in a sudden downpour. I held a hand over my eyes and squinted up at the overarching tree limbs. They caught much of the rain, offering us some protection from the surrounding storm. 

Jordan trudged to my side, wiping mist from his cheeks. “What’d I miss?”

“Oh, there was a cardinal. It stopped singing when the rain started.”

“Bummer,” he said, looking out toward the trees. “If you weren’t so worried about rain and ticks, I’d say we should go for a little walk in the woods.”

I smoothed my dampening hair out of my face. “Yeah, that sounds like a great way to get lost. We should probably head back–”

“Hey, look,” he said, crouching in the grass again. The back of his sopping clothes clung to him, stained various greens and browns from the waterlogged field. He returned with a tiny, yellow flower. “Do you remember these?”

The flower had five glossy, paper-thin petals on a long, spindly stem. 

“Oh, it’s a buttercup!” I knelt to find one for myself. Several hid in the longer tufts of grass, but I noticed many more sprinkled beneath the trees of the reaching forest. “Man, I completely forgot about these.”

“Me, too.” He twirled the stem between his fingers, watching the petals swirl into a yellow blur and ricochet the falling rain drops. 

“Remember that game kids used to play at school?”

He looked at me. 

“Maybe you were too young when we moved,” I said, using my wet sleeve to hopelessly wipe rain away from my eyes. “We would take one of these and hold it under someone’s chin to see if it reflected gold sunlight onto their skin.”

His eyes seemed to flicker to life. “I think I do remember that!”

“Yeah, if it did, that meant they would grow up to be rich.”

Jordan laughed, and the years splashed away with the rain. His shining smile swept the dark circles from beneath his eyes, and his skin glowed healthy and vibrant. He looked up to the shrouded sky, allowing the rain to drizzle through his dripping hair and wash away the despair. I watched him glow with fresh purpose and life. He was still just a kid–goofy and filthy and happy. 

I grinned, and, just to see, I held the buttercup under his chin. But the storm clouds cast us in shadow, leaving no sunlight to reflect gold. 

Jordan smirked. “Well? Am I going to be rich?”

I tossed the flower on top of his head and walked toward the tall, beckoning trees.

“You are rich.”

Jay Peter-Robison began writing stories when she was eight years old. She enjoys writing poetry and stories about nature and family relationships. She also loves to hike and spend time outside with her husband and three young children.