‘UNCLE FRIDAY’ & ‘THE CARAVAN MOVES ON’

N.J.J. Smith is a photographer, electronic musician and philosopher based in Sydney, Australia.

UNCLE FRIDAY

Running a sleeve over his face, blood from his nose smears his cheek, the smell of it making his
stomach churn. Climbing to their flat eight storeys up, he curses the older boy who’s made vicious
sport of waiting for him outside their building, Jakob’s malformed lip an irresistible fixation for the
thick-faced bully and his entourage. With blood dripping from his nose into the dimpled channel
above his lip, Jakob coughs as he climbs, misting the concrete walls in a queasy pink spray.
On the landing below his flat, he stops, realizing it’s Friday—visiting day. The idea of another
nameless uncle wobbling about their flat brings a fresh fury; spitting like an asp, he settles on the
stairs, head between his knees, arms over his head, watching the blood splash between his tight
secondhand shoes. Squeezing his fists, he waits for the bleeding to stem, for the anger to ebb. But
when he hears his mother’s voice echo in the stairwell—unintelligible, her drunken cackle punctuated
by her visitor’s slap to her backside as they slur their prolonged goodbyes—he bites his lip to restrain
a wail that, if unleashed, would splinter every atom in its path.

When the door finally slams shut, Jakob’s temples throb to Uncle Friday’s heavy tread; his
breathing, loud and labored, accentuates his every step until they stop directly behind Jakob—his
shoes squeaking, the breath from his open mouth thick with the gin and cigarettes Jakob’s mother
serves up as a prelude, as a pretense. As Friday steps around him, Jakob peers over his arms to watch
him stagger, clutching at the railing as he turns back. Jakob recognizes this Friday’s uncle as the older
man who visits more often than the others, the one who always brings a sad-eyed smile and little
dime-store gifts. Catching his watery eyes, Jakob tucks his head back under his arms.
With Jakob’s mother’s scent still wafting from his skin, Friday offers a salutation.

“I want to wish you a very happy birthday tomorrow, Jaapje. And I want you to always
remember this: we’d never know a good pear if we’d never tasted the bad.” Getting no response, he
sighs. “I’m just saying you’re one of the good ones, Jaapje. Stay that way.” Still getting nothing from
the boy, Friday shakes his head and turns to resume his unsteady descent.

Lifting his head again, Jakob watches Friday’s greasy hair gleam under the fluorescents until he
disappears into the well. Having forgotten the date, the idea of another birthday party for two brings
his fury back to a boil as he stands to trudge up to their flat. Pausing at their door, all those birthdays
past rush to assault him again, one after another: the black pits of her eyes; the twist of her mouth; the
heat of her breath; the determined grind of her hips, cleaving away any distance he struggles to put
between them. His lip curling into a snarl, the taste of blood metallic in his mouth, he takes a deep
breath; opening the door, he enters silent as snow.

Framed in the open French doors that let out onto their tiny balcony eight storeys above the
Kleinevossenplein, she wears a short t-shirt that covers none of her nakedness from the waist down.
Waiting for Friday to step out into the street below, muttering to herself, she doesn’t sense Jakob
moving behind her, his arms stretching out before him as she leans over the railing to shout down to
Friday, now lurching from the building into the deserted Kleinevossenplein. Hearing her vulgar
sendoff, Uncle Friday chuckles; stopping to look up, he blinks as the smile freezes on his face,
entirely unprepared for the terminal velocity of her graceless farewell.

THE CARAVAN MOVES ON

The grey landscape stutters by like movies Samil remembers from before everything changed—images
cast upon taut canvases spanning horse-drawn carts, the silver apparitions flickering for gatherings held
rapt in the luminous dusk. Those silent ghosts had ignited the twilight, quavering for a congregation of
the mesmerized. Today, though, it’s the horizon shimmering with strange light as a mute cargo lurches
into every bump and jolt shuddering through the bus’s chassis. Today, crossing the cratered floodplain,
Samil and Eyal are being taken to a depot from where they’ll be freighted back to a place once called
home. But home means nothing to Samil now—just a mournful word denuded of everything but the
fading spectres of what might have been.

Watching lightning spider behind the virga of a summer tempest whorling through the far-off
Dinara, he’s trying to remember his mother’s face, how it creased when she spoke of the sea—of
where the earth fell into the waves, of where the tides rose and fell with the breath of time. Smiling,
she had promised that one day they would journey there together, all of them. But some promises,
Samil has since learned, are doomed from the making.

Turning, he watches Eyal’s fingers pick vacantly at his shirt, at that ever-alien mark burned into
his forearm. Mimicking the tic, Samil’s fingers trace the contours of his own stain, buried beneath the
tattered sleeves of his sweater. He knows his mother never imagined this sea, the one in which Eyal is
slowly drowning—lost to a different tide, the one dragging him deeper within by the day.
In those final hours that he’d believed his last, Eyal’s mind had finally pushed out the horrors it
could no longer bear, severing itself from the temporal world. Wife and daughters lost, he collapsed
inward, his psyche indiscriminately stripped of both its wretched debris and any remaining shred of
hope. Samil had been stripped away, too, that black tide leaving his son as alien to Eyal as the brand
on his arm.

Now, staring out at the ravaged plateau, it finally sinks in for Samil just how alone he really is:
his father now his charge, their roles reversed, left to scratch and beg their way through this savage
new world. Leaning into Eyal’s absent slouch, Samil sighs, their quailing future looming before him
as he begins to calculate everything that he and Eyal have already lost against the uncertain value of
the precious little they still have left to lose.

Cor de Wulf divides their life between the Pacific Northwest, Normandy, and the Netherlands. Their short fiction has appeared in Club Plum, Coffin Bell Journal, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bright Flash Lit, The Writing Disorder, Every Day Fiction, Ink in Thirds, and Blood Tree Literature. Their work has also recently been nominated by editors to the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize 2025 Anthologies.

‘IF YOU FORGET’, ‘FIGURES IN WHITE’, ‘MORNING IN AUGUST’, ‘LANGUAGE IS PRISON’ & ‘WHAT IS NEW IS PASSING AGAIN’

王翰林 Hanlin Wang, https://wanghanlin.art/

IF YOU FORGET

I deceive myself. After a year of silence, pretending
recovery from the death of the imagination or some
such moaning, I face my block as an architect, head-
on. I don’t want to build or spirit people along
carrying lumber to job sites, muddy with concrete,
and toting steel tools, cut hands, lost funds, and
critical rejection. I’d rather sleep than bet my time on
art, though I say to myself it begins here, my best
work is coming, previously repressed by
circumstances. Prepare for me, public, I’m here! It’s
an old line and an older deception: lolling or sleeping,
you die of work, if you forget how to play.

FIGURES IN WHITE

My friends surround me. All figures in white.
I’m a sheath wearing my old jeans. Lunch on
me. I’ll give you some old things. Take yours
with sadness. I may be last to see you.

MORNING IN AUGUST

You enter a warm room. Light. Levers and tools
everywhere. You empty from an over-size shirt
and paint with blue everything not tool.
Impossible. On the balcony is a wind, trees,
never tools and you stand and you do not know
why but you won’t go back inside. Warm wind.

LANGUAGE IS PRISON

Language is prison. So is heartbeat, though silent.
It’s sad when the only true path is obedience to our
own chains. I promised to try something new (your
attention is old.) Try sleep reading. The ball is old.
The cat is new. The birthday party is tomorrow.
Were you paying attention? The keyboard floated
left on top of itself. Nobody stops this. Levitate from
your bed, regard doorways as croquet hoops, hop to
something simple, Work work work. Seek no local
rewards, gain only from the constructions, believe
you’re in the business of magic. This, the playing.

WHAT IS NEW IS PASSING AGAIN

The cycle begins again. And yes, you can leave the program,
clean, hair brushed, and with new luggage, then arrive for
the cruise under another good name. The firings, the
resignations, the downsizing, the self-criticism, all this
behind you – and yet everyone else wants to keep going.
These days are now stress-free. Starting this month, you’ll
rescue gadgets from obsolescence until you look hokey
holding them. You can blame yourself for wanting to stop
by roadside rocks dripping with spring water and bathe, find
someone, anyone, and play ping-pong, find others, and form
cubicles where you have to walk around to pass each other’s
games. The plan was health, not progress, and really, would
you leave now and abjure your demesne? The washer
knocks, the trash truck moans, the dripping arm of an alien
sea creature rises in the bay, watched by cliffs of witnesses,
who flee with their refurbished tools. I’m not that old but it
reminds me of something - what is new is passing again.

Lawrence Bridges' poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums (Red Hen Press, 2006), Flip Days (Red Hen Press, 2009), and Brownwood (Tupelo Press, 2016). You can find him on IG: @larrybridges

‘Representational Humans’

Michelle Kohari

Representational Humans

The dentist enters the examination room with a tablet in her hand. I don’t notice her right away because I’m lying on the hydraulic dental chair and playing with the controls. I quickly remove my hands like a kid not wanting to get caught playing with a grown-up gizmo. But something gets stuck and the bottom and upper portions of the chair continue to rise toward each other. She reaches over and touches another button that stops the movement of the chair before I can be folded in half like a pen knife.

“Good morning, Mr. Dolan, Dr. Holzer here, nice to see you again,” she says, clasping her tablet in front of her and rocking back and forth.

“Good morning,” answers a voice from the examination room next door. Dr. Holzer laughs nervously as she frantically fingers her tablet. She lowers her voice as she speaks to me.

“You’re not Mr. Dolan, are you?”

“No. I’m Joe Reo,” I say. “I’m here for a crown.”

“I’m here for a crown, too,” says the man next door. “Should I come over there, Doc?”

“No, no, stay right there, Mr. Dolan,” she says, her voice crackling like a lit sparkler. “I’ll come to you.” She starts slowly backing to the exit, holding her tablet in front of her like a shield. “Sorry for the confusion, Mr. Reo. I’ll be back.”

“No problem,” I say. “Guess Mr. Dolan and I look alike.”

She hurries out of the room without responding.

I look for ways to occupy my time. I squint at my reflection in the small, stainless-steel sink next to the chair. Instead of the younger face that used to stare back at me in a mirror, I see the wrinkled face of an older guy, complete with thinning gray hair and jowls that hang from my face like an old rooster. I look away and substitute this unacceptable image with the default one in my high school yearbook. I sit back in the chair and let my eyes wander.

I’m about to close them and take a snooze when I notice a painting hanging on the wall to the left of the window. It contrasts with a series of colorful posters hanging around it, showing the many services available to patients. One shows implants complete with silver metal posts drilled through gum and bone minus the blood and gore, another, whiter teeth featuring a couple whose mouths are frozen in an artificially, open-mouthed grin.

But it’s the painting that grabs my attention. It portrays two figures shaped like humans, one slightly taller than the other. That’s where the similarity to anything human ends. They are faceless, hairless and without limbs. I see it as a kind of representation of human beings, like the artist didn’t know what a human really looks like.

I wonder what a painting like this is doing in a dentist’s office, but the sound of a whirring drill accompanied by a throaty moan puts my artistic curiosity on hold.

The crown didn’t cause me much discomfort, so I decide to run a couple of errands. As I open the door to my car, I cringe at my reflection in the side mirror. My daughter, Kaylee, moved in with me when my wife passed away. She gave most of my wardrobe to a homeless shelter (I thought I saw a man wearing my pajamas in the grocery store parking lot, but I couldn’t be sure), remarking that if I wear what I wore when her mom was around, I would think too much about death and that was unacceptable.
Today, I am wearing what she chose for me before I left the house this morning: a red plaid shirt that reminded me of the seat covers in a 1962 Chevy Nova I owned as a kid and a pair of tan, twill pants with an elastic waist band. Kaylee said I wouldn’t need a belt with these pants and that they would always fit even when I got sick and lost weight.

I drive into Ollie’s Oil outlet on Main Street for an oil change, trying not to be too self- conscious about wearing a shirt that looks like seat covers, and beltless trousers that resemble the kind they give to mental patients so they won’t get any ideas.

I pull up to the bay door and am greeted by three of Ollie’s finest descending on my car. They poke tablets with their fingers as they ask me a series of questions: “How many miles? What’s the make and model of your vehicle? Have you been here before? What can we do for you today?”

They take my keys as they stick a paper mat on the floor of the driver’s side. One of them ushers me into the “Ollie Lounge,” where the odor of musty oil mingles with the smell of freshly popped popcorn, leaving a curiously industrial taste in my mouth. He proudly points to the popcorn maker, adding with an exaggerated smile, “Help yourself, it’s on us.” I shrug as I head for the machine and take two cups of popcorn back to my seat.

A homeless man enters from the rear, his shopping cart parked outside the door. He heads for the machine and quickly fills a cup with popcorn. He stands there staring into space as he eats the popcorn. One of the Ollie guys is checking out a customer at the nearby counter, but he pays the man no mind. I remove my cell phone from my pocket and pretend to check it. I want to avoid eye contact, which might cause the homeless man to yell and make a scene, forcing us to acknowledge him. But to my relief he gets a second cup of popcorn and heads out the door, guiding his cart down the street and out of sight.

Next stop, the library to return books. As I drive down Main Street, I notice signs in the windows of several businesses proclaiming “Columbus Day Sales.” One in particular catches my eye in the local appliance store: “Old Style Phonograph Now 20 percent off.” I have several boxes of 45 records in my basement I haven’t told Kaylee about (I’m afraid she’ll sell them to some guy named Craig she mentioned a while ago). But I need a record player since mine disappeared when my wife and I moved into our current house years ago. I make a mental note.

The library is next to the town park at the end of Main. I deposit my books in the drop box on the side of the building and turn to go back to my car when I notice a crowd in the park. I walk closer and see a group of people carrying signs and marching in front of a statue of Christopher Columbus in the center of the park.

As I get closer, I hear a voice on a bullhorn engaging the crowd.

“Hands off Columbus, Keep him among us.” The man screaming into the horn stands on the steps of the monument, holding the bullhorn to his mouth with one hand and pumping his fist in the air with the other. A line of people snake in front of him like a bicycle chain in motion as they repeat his words.

“Chris is our Hero, the Council’s full of Zeroes.” They scream the words as they pump their signs up and down. Several messages are emblazoned in bright red letters on them like,

“We love you, Chris,” “Say No to Columbus Haters,” and “Columbus was not in the Mafia.”

A young woman with dark frame glasses and a wide grin frozen on her face thrusts a flyer at me. “Come to our march today at city hall protesting the town council’s decision to remove the Christopher Columbus statue from the park.” Before I could respond, she threads her way through the crowd of onlookers handing out flyers as she does so.

I look down at the flyer and wonder if I should attend. In grammar school I wrote a poem about Columbus and got an A. Besides, he discovered America. Why would anybody want to tear down his statue?

As I walk around the monument, I encounter a smaller group of protesters directly behind it. There are several native people dressed in traditional garb. One wears a buffalo robe and soft moccasins. Another is dressed in full regalia, like for a ceremony or something. I am impressed by the large war bonnet with its feathers of many different colors.

A young man approaches me and hands me a flyer. He wears a black tee shirt with a bust of Columbus in yellow on the front and a red ‘no symbol’ over it. His hair is tied back in a pony tail.

“Welcome. Please join our counter protest today as we defend the council’s decision to remove the Christopher Columbus statue from here.”

I shrug. “But why do you want to do that? He discovered America, didn’t he? He’s a hero.” An older woman approaches, wearing the same nix Columbus tee shirt along with jeans and a pair of beaded moccasins. Her eyes are narrow slits and I can’t tell if they’re actually open when she starts speaking to me. “That’s not all he did,” she says. “When he got to the Caribbean, he took native people on his ships and sold them as slaves when he returned to Spain.”

The young man folds his hands in front of him as though he is about to deliver a presentation at school “He insisted the natives bring him gold and when they didn’t, he cut off their hands.”

“Your hero.” sighs the woman, her eyes wide open now as she steps closer to me. “He tortured and killed many native people.” She points to the flyer in my hand. “If you care about the truth, then join us later as we make sure the council sticks by its decision to remove that devil from our park.” Her eyes return to their original slits as she hurries to greet a couple pushing a baby stroller. I look down at the flyer.

“So will you join us?” asks the young man.

I look up. “I don’t know if protests really do anything,” I say. “Though I was quite the protester in the 1960’s.”

“Really? Then come and join us. It will be like old times.”

“There was this one protest,” I say smiling at the memory. “When I was in college, the girls basketball team couldn’t use the gym for practice as much as the guy’s team. They wanted equal time.

“So, I’m watching the girls getting ready to march in front of the gym. They got signs and all and they’re wearing their uniforms, shorts, tee shirts. That’s when I notice one of the girls. Tall, lanky, gorgeous, with the biggest blue eyes you ever saw.”

The young man folds his arms. “What did you do?”

“I introduced myself to her. Her name was Gina. And I told her I agreed with their cause
and that I wanted to protest with them.”

“Good for you. You got involved.”

I savor the memory for a moment. “Sure did. I followed Gina in line all day, shouting slogans and screaming at the guys as they entered the gym for practice until I was hoarse.”

“So, what happened? Did they give the girls more practice time?”

I shook my head. “Don’t know. But I got Gina to sleep with me that night. What a night. Did all kinds of things to her. Yup. That’s a protest I’ll never forget.”

As I walk back to my car, I look at both flyers wondering which one I should attend. But then I remember the phonograph on sale at the appliance store. I fold both papers and place them in the recycling bin at the end of the park.

The folks at the appliance store play Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” on the phonograph for me to demonstrate the machine’s high sound quality. I close my eyes and see the King shaking his legs and swiveling his hips, damming all those swooning girls to hell according to the religious norms of the time. I buy it and have them place it in a plain brown shopping bag to prevent Kaylee from seeing it. I don’t want her getting any ideas about my record collection.

I drive past the park and notice the demonstrators have all gone. I pull into a parking space next to it, not quite sure why I am stopping. A gravel path that winds around the park catches my eye. I get out and walk on it, the crunching sound of the stones under my feet welcome and familiar.

It winds through bare maple trees, having given up their leaves with the onset of Fall. But I close my eyes and see them bursting with leaves, like when I was a kid and went to the park to play baseball in the summer. Afterwards, hot and sweaty, my friends and I would lounge under trees exactly like these to cool us with their shade. I close my eyes. I see us lying on the soft grass, hands behind our heads as we talk and joke with one another, or on our sides as we pull at the grass and toss handfuls at each other.

I think of the painting at the dentist’s office. It troubles me that there isn’t anything to identify the human shapes. I imagine the faces of my friends along with their youthful bodies on those shapes. That would make it a real painting, something familiar and definite, not something that leaves you wondering.

I think about the protests. Maybe I should go to city hall and talk to some more of the protestors. Or, go back to the dentist’s office and take a cell phone picture of that painting and have Kalee print it out in color so I can hang it on my bedroom wall and stare at it each night.

But then I think about the phonograph.

I hurry to my car as I remember that the “B” side to “Hound Dog” is “Don’t Be Cruel,” and I can’t wait to hear it.

Joe Cappello lives and writes in the picturesque desert country of Galisteo, New Mexico, USA. His short story about the battle for the heart and soul of language, “The Codex of Lady Lucy Bugg,” appeared in the October 2024 issue of “The Write Launch.” Another story, “Running Errands” was a finalist in the 2024 Earnest Hemingway Short Story Competition and published in the 2024 issue of “Hemingway Shorts.” His short story, “They Only Showed Elvis from the Waist Up,” took first place, Short Story, General Category, in the Southwest Writers 2023 writing contest. He is thrilled to be part of the thriving Santa Fe artistic and creative community.

‘Crush Your Head’

Jeremiah Gilbert is an award-winning photographer and travel writer based out of Southern California. His travels have taken him to over a hundred countries spread across six continents. His photography has been published internationally and exhibited worldwide. He is the author of three travel books, including Can’t Get Here from There: Fifty Tales of Travel and From Tibet to Egypt: Early Travels After a Late Start. His most recent, On to Plan C, documents his return to travel in a post-pandemic world and is the first to include his photography. He can be found on Instagram @jg_travels

Crush Your Head

Blake was about to switch off the television when a rerun of the first episode of the old Kids in the Hall show came on. He guffawed as he saw nerdy, be-speckled Tyzik, holding his thumb and pointer finger an inch apart, and squinting one eye to sharpen his focus on some nemesis. “Crush your head! I crush your little head,” Mark McKinney squeaked, as he brought his fingers together in a pinch. Ah, Blake thought, if only.

The scritch-scratch at the door finally drew his attention and he punched off the remote.

“Hold your damned horses!” he shouted into the yard, unbolting the back door. Scabby bounded in, bringing with him his stinky breath, the stinging late spring air, and a rush of snow that flew from his fur. With the TV off and the dog in for the night, Blake stretched out on his cot with the old olive army blanket pulled tight around himself. He dreamed of the old days -- getting stoned with his buddies, drinking beer, and eating M&Ms.

Waking late the next morning, Blake rushed out of the house and headed for the Tim Hortons drive-through for his usual pre-work double-double. It was still cold and dark, a typical Canadian March morning. Ten cars were ahead of him and the queue was moving way too damned slow. What the hell was that guy up there ordering? Probably one of those French vanilla double espresso extra-hot latte things. If only he could make the cars in front of him disappear with a snap of his fingers and some fancy-schmancy words. Bam! he’d be the first car in line.

It had been years since Blake thought about having a superpower. It must have been the “Crush Your Head” episode he watched last night dredging up those memories. The first person he ever met who had a special power was Mikey McFaherty, the dark-haired freckled kid who lived up the road when he was a boy. There were three brothers and three sisters in that crowded ramshackle house: Mary Anne, Michaela, Mikey, Mitchell, Michelle, and Marky. The boys all had freckles, and the three girls were skinny and knock-kneed. How the parents ever kept them all straight was a mystery. He and Mikey were in the same grade at Our Holy Mother School.

Mikey was twelve when he discovered he possessed the power to change water into wine. Even though the vino was pretty crappy, his popularity surged and he was the only kid in class invited to all the garage and basement make-out parties. He got a girlfriend way before Blake and the others. When the priests learned of Mikey’s superpower, they told Mr. and Mrs. McFaherty that Mikey had a calling and should enter the seminary. So, when he was fourteen, Mikey was dragged kicking, screaming, and shouting “you bastard, you whore!” to go live at the Rectory with Rev. Father Malachi Aloysius Theophilus (they called him the MAT-man for short). But when round pink Colleen Brody turned up pregnant (though who could tell?) a couple of months later and fingered Mikey, that was the end of his ecclesiastical career and the beginning of his teenage father career. Last Blake had heard, Mikey was working at the brewery and still paying child support to chubby Colleen.

The drive-through wench brushed her shaggy lavender bangs out of her eyes and handed Blake his coffee and chocolate dipped. His first sip burned his lip and tongue so bad he spat it out—now that was a great start to the day. His truck blew a loud backfire as he accelerated onto the interstate and Blake realized he still hadn’t remembered to check the engine timing. If only he had a photographic memory like Missy Orbutt did, he wouldn’t always forget the important things, like paying his rent and power bill so it didn’t go dark. Or maybe remembering to send his mother a birthday card (he’d paid sorely for forgetting that last year). Missy Orbutt wasn’t the smartest kid in school, despite her remarkable memory, but lots of people thought she was because she could parrot absolutely anything she read and heard. Every Sunday after Mass, she entertained the gang by reciting entire skits from Saturday Night Live. That was the best part of Sunday. It didn’t hurt that her go-to-Mass blouse was unbuttoned low enough to show her precocious titties. You’d have thought that with those talents Missy would have been running for some provincial office by now. But she had done lousy on her college entrance exam, after paying good money to obtain the answers from the previous year. Unfortunately, the kid she got them from failed to mention that he’d done abysmally on the exam. As noted, Missy wasn’t all that smart. Blake’s buddy told him he had seen her bartending at Hooter’s. At least she was making good use of one of her superpowers.

Arriving home that evening, Blake was greeted by loud barking from the backyard. Opening the gate from the breezeway, he saw Scabby tangled in his chain. Dumb dog, thought Blake as he unclipped the chain from the post, and then the other end from Scabby’s collar. The sun hadn’t quite set yet and the long grass was swaying in the yard in the golden light. A bit of the day’s warmth still hung in the air. It seemed like a good time to pick up dog poop since he hadn’t done it for weeks. Blake grabbed a bucket and shovel from the breezeway and set about the task, with Scabby close at his heels supervising.

He found the first dead squirrel in the long grass and the second and third were at the base of a tree just inside the fence. There seemed to be no teeth or talon marks on them, though upon close inspection there was a dent on either side of each squirrel’s head, and their heads were flattened. Since Scabby could not have reached them with his tether on, Blake briefly wondered how they had died. Scabby nuzzled each one as it was scooped into the bucket and looked up at Blake expectantly.

As they headed into the house, Blake stopped at his truck and grabbed the bag of Carl’s Jr burgers he had picked up on the way home. Scabby was bouncing like a jack-in-the-box trying to get to the bag. “No way!” said Blake, “These are mine.” Wiping his hands on his overalls, he dumped a load of kibble into Scabby’s bowl and sat on the couch in the TV room to eat. The news was showing a video of the Prime Minister jabbering about the economy. I am so sick of that guy, thought Blake. Every girl he meets in the bar says he’s “such a doll” or “what a dreamboat!” when his picture comes on the TV. Blake took a bite of his burger then closed one eye and focused the other on the PM. With his thumb and forefinger, he crushed the PM’s head.

“I crush your head! I crush your little head!” he said. Nothing happened. Blake tried to crush Scabby’s head, but Scabby just lay there licking his balls. Oh, well, he hadn’t developed that particular superpower. And he couldn’t turn water into wine last he’d tried, and he forgot everything he read. And the damn dog had bounced up again and was trying to steal a burger from the bag.

At the end of his shift on Thursday, Blake headed over as usual to The Beer Mug with a couple of guys from work. They always started the weekend a day early so Friday would feel like it went by faster. Downing Labatt Blues, they talked about the Canadian Hockey League players who had been selected in the NHL draft and which team would come out on top. Their boss took some hits from the guys for calling out Blake this week for being minutes late back from lunch.

“He’s such an f-ing keener,” and they toasted to the boss’s demise. When the international news came on the television, the group all turned to watch the newest drama unfolding to the south. Now there’s a guy who has a real superpower, Blake thought, as a portly old guy with bad hair and a red ball cap pointed and waved to the crowd from a podium. This guy could tell people absolutely anything. He made crazy statements and tweeted pure trash, and they bought it hook, line, and sinker. The crowd chanted his name and waved their own red hats in the air. Some of the women took off their shirts and threw them toward the stage. The guy had a large following that was immune to his lies. Maybe it was genetic. Maybe it was something in their diet, like orange Kool-Aid. It was a powerful superpower to control people with words and

Blake was very jealous of it. If he could lie that way and be believed, he could talk himself into a great situation at work, and probably become at least a shift supervisor. He’d have all the girls he wanted and all the beer he could drink.

The barman switched the channel to the hockey game. When Blake left at the end of the third period, he threw a gold-colored one-dollar loonie on the table, and silently told the coin it was a two-dollar toonie. The loon on the coin didn’t change into a polar bear, and the coin’s color remained the same. Well, shit, then. He tossed a second loonie on the table, pulled his hat down over his ears, and walked out into the darkness.

Blake pulled his truck into the driveway and shut off the ignition. It bucked hard twice before shutting off. When he opened his car door, he could already hear Scabby scratching and whining from inside the house. Damn, Blake thought. He had forgotten to put him out before he left for work. The dog bolted through the door and into the dark yard and Blake made for the john to relieve himself of all the Labatt. Later, as he dozed on the couch with the TV on, he heard the once again forgotten dog scratching and whining. Blake let him in and Scabby raced to the kitchen and sat by his food bowl waiting. Blake threw a handful of kibble in the dish and went to bed.

The next morning, pulling on yesterday’s jeans, splashing cold water on his face, and only slightly hung-over from the Thursday evening pre-gaming, he calculated that only nine hours from now he would be off for two whole days. The sun was up and Blake let a whining Scabby out into the yard. Next he looked, the dog appeared to be hanging about a large dark object toward the back of the property. He wondered if the rotting old maple tree had finally dropped one of its huge branches. He stepped into his work boots and ventured into the yard, his breath hanging white in the chill mist. Lying on its back, legs in the air and protruding from the tall fescue was a four-point buck. Blake tugged on the antlers and hauled the buck toward the house through the weeds, Scabby at his heels, watching possessively. Blake examined the animal and was confused to see no obvious evidence of injury or illness, except for a depressed area on both sides of its head. The brown fur was smooth and the dead eyes were clear. There was no stink. It looked as if the animal just dropped wherever it had been standing. Well, whatever got him, this was venison for a year. He covered the buck with a tarp and hoped the chill would hold through the day when he could rush home from work, dress the animal, and carve out some steaks. Today was looking good. It was Friday and there was venison on the menu.

When Blake left for work, Scabby was sitting on the ground as close as his chain would let him get to the deer, a couple of meters away. A few minutes into his drive, Blake realized he hadn’t filled the dog’s bowl with kibble before leaving. Eh, he’ll hold, thought Blake and he continued to the shop.

Blake dashed out of work the minute the buzzer sounded and jumped into his truck. He planned to make a quick run to Carl’s Jr. to get some burgers since he knew he had a couple of hours of work ahead of him dressing that buck and wouldn’t want to wait that long for dinner.

He’d eat burgers again tonight, but tomorrow he’d feast on a venison steak. As he approached the house, he heard the dog barking furiously in the backyard. He put his burgers on the counter and went out back to check on the buck. It had been a cold and raw spring day, so he was pretty sure the meat was going to be fine. Scabby was exactly where he’d been when Blake left in the morning, still at the very end of his tether, and as close to the deer as he could get. Blake untied him just to shut him up, and the dog darted over. Blake shoved him away from the buck using his boot.

“That’s mine! Keep off!” he shouted.

As Blake started to haul the carcass toward the carport, where he had set up a tarp on the concrete floor to do the messy job of butchering, he noticed a dead squirrel lying in the grass not far from the deer. And then two crows, lying side by side nearby. Scabby nuzzled each of them in turn and picked up the squirrel in his mouth as he followed Blake to the carport. Blake briefly wondered if the crows had ingested some of the deer and died, but there were no marks on the deer suggesting it had been bitten or clawed at, and the crows seemed fat with shiny feathers, though quite dead and their heads a bit flat. The squirrel - well, seems like dead squirrels had been littering his yard lately.

Blake went into the house to get his tools. He stopped to grab a couple of burgers and pop open a beer as he headed back outside. Scabby met Blake at the door and dropped the squirrel at his feet, looking up eagerly at Blake. Blake pushed him away and kicked the squirrel back toward the yard, then knelt to start the bloody job of butchering. He began at the groin and made a long slit in the skin down one leg. Two hours later he was done and loaded the meat into the basement freezer.

Then, on second thought, he took out one small venison steak and brought it to the kitchen. He put a frying pan on the gas range. Scabby had begun to jump and bark near the stove.

While the meat sizzled in the pan, Blake tossed a handful of kibble in the dog’s bowl. Scabby ignored the bowl and continued to pester Blake. Once again Blake pushed him away. Scabby abruptly ceased his barking and stood still, looking intently at Blake whose attention remained focused on the frying pan. Scabby tilted his head to the side, closing one eye.

He balanced on his haunches and raised both paws in front of him in what resembled a supplicating gesture, but wasn’t. Blake flipped the meat in the frying pan, breathing deeply of its gamey aroma, and then dropped like a stone to the kitchen floor, his arm hitting the pan’s handle on his way down. The venison flew from the pan and landed on the floor. The famished dog grabbed the steak. Blake lay unbreathing on the floor. Other than two paw-sized dents on each side of his head and a slight flattening, there was not a mark on the man.

Sherri Bale is a retired medical geneticist and part-time personal trainer. She writes flash, short stories, creative non-fiction, and has completed the first draft of her YA/historical fiction novel set in Alaska in 1919. She lives in Maryland, USA with her husband and diabetic rescue pup, Petey.

‘Nostalgia Zombies’

Maia Brown-Jackson has braved the myriad esoteric jobs that follow a degree in literature, strayed to Iraq to volunteer with genocide survivors, caffeinated herself through a graduate degree in terrorism and human rights, and now investigates US spending in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Also, she does art.

Nostalgia Zombies

Derry was my best friend, but that was a long time ago.

Since then, I built my career while Derry played in a band. I saved for retirement and Derry saw the world. And when I bought a house, Derry was still burning through a revolving door of roommates. Derry always used to say, “Sam... you’re the Yin to my Yang.” Thanks to him, I had a long slew of firsts. My first girlfriend, first toke, first summer job, first suspension, first set of wheels, and so on.

Derry may have been there for many of my firsts, but not the parts of my life that were built to last. When I graduated from Stanford, Derry was backpacking in the Alps. When I purchased my Tesla, Derry was flat-broke. When I got my partner-track job, Derry was working in the kitchen at a crêperie. So once upon a time, Derry was my best friend.

I see him every year or so when I travel back home to Eugene, Oregon. We go through the motions of well-intentioned phone calls a few times each year. Sometimes, I’m quite restless after these calls. The last time we spoke to one another, I sat in bed staring at the ceiling until well after midnight. My brain kept repeating an old saying I had heard: “Time is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.”

Early in the morning, the day after our last phone call, my phone started ringing. It was Derry. We had just talked yesterday; I couldn’t possibly think of a good reason why he would be calling again so soon. I picked up and said hello. There was a long pause. Derry breathed loudly on the other end. Finally, he spoke.

“Do you remember Jesse?”

“From high school? Of course,” I replied.

“He passed away yesterday.” Derry’s words cut through the air like a knife.

Finally, I spoke. “What happened?”

Derry sighed. “It was a heart thing. I don’t want to pry, but all I know is that it came out of nowhere.”

Jesse Portsmith. The mighty cross-country runner. The third leg to our inseparable trio of long-distance misfits. Jesse insisted on rocking the shortest of shorts even in the dead of winter. He would unapologetically piss in water bottles on the bus ride to races. And the day before Thanksgiving each year, he hosted a potluck for everyone on the team. I hadn’t spoken to Jesse in years. I wasn’t expecting to ever speak to him again. A rotten corner of my brain wished I could simply unhear this news.

I felt detached from my body as it floated into the kitchen and numbly prepared my coffee. I actually went the entire week without shedding a tear. Meanwhile, Derry was profoundly shaken. We talked on the phone twice more that week. He’d regale stories I couldn’t have possibly remembered from our past. I hadn’t thought of Jesse in years, so there was little I could add other than silent nods from the other side of the phone. Every summer during high school, we would drive into the mountains for a few days. The Pacific Northwest was the one place in the country with snow-capped peaks well into the summer. Jesse stuck with Boy Scouts throughout his senior year, and he would teach the two of us survival skills. Conditions were always pretty extreme, so we would be sure to downplay the risks to our parents.

“Jesse always tried to convince us that Mount Shasta was haunted,” Derry blurted out unexpectedly during one call.

I vaguely remembered these tirades. The mountains were a sacred and mystical place for Jesse. Derry had always been eager to “yes and” any situation. So, the two of them created extensive lore. More than likely just to get a reaction out of me. The snow prints of other climbers were Yeti tracks. Cave creatures lived deep inside the crevasses. I did my best to convince them none of this scared me back in the day, but I wasn’t very persuasive. Shasta was our big adventure to top off high school. We all went our separate ways after that. I went to Stanford, Jesse to University of Oregon, and Derry hit the road. We never made it to the summit on that final adventure. At the time, we thought there would be a next one.

On the second call, I discovered that Derry had been spending a lot of time on the phone with Jesse’s mom, handling funeral arrangements. I was amazed he still talked with her. The funeral was planned for next Saturday. Derry begged me to fly back to Eugene for the service. I went back and forth on whether or not to go. I was very busy with work. There was so much to do, and I dreaded being pulled back to my hometown.

I wasn’t used to Derry needing me like this. Despite my reservations, I acquiesced to Derry’s request. The night before my 6:00 AM flight, I had a hard time getting to sleep. Finally, I slipped into a fitful nightmare. I was back on Shasta. Derry, Jesse, and I found ourselves halfway up the mountain as blood started oozing out of its snowy pores, trickling slowly. Neither Derry nor Jesse seemed perturbed by this.

I desperately needed to get off, but they kept assuring me it was fine. I just needed to lighten up. Dream Me went into his tent and stubbornly shut himself away from the others. Their voices died down and all I could hear was the wind howling outside.

An outline of a figure approached my tent. It stood there for longer than I thought possible. Finally, it crouched down and slowly unzipped the flap. It had heavy black boots and muscular legs. They were gray and covered in decomposing flesh. As dread filled my body, its knees started to creak. Each inch sounded like bones snapping. A scaly hand pulled the cover to one side. Then, a decrepit face with an ear-to-ear grin forced its way inside. It was a face that I hadn’t seen for many years, but I recognized it straight away.

Jesse smiled in the darkness as I silently screamed in horror.

Back in Eugene, Derry insisted that we share a hotel room to save money. He was already there when I got in, lying on his queen bed, leafing through a Gabriel Marcia Marquez book. I glanced at his shoes still on his feet and frowned. Ignoring this, Derry sprung up from his bed, placing me in a mighty bear hug. I squirmed uncomfortably and patted him on the back.

Derry seemed genuinely excited despite everything. I reminded him that I was flying out the next morning before glancing at my watch and informing him that we should get going.

There was a long line out front of the chapel. Derry’s face turned pale as we inched our way forward. There were too many people in front of us to make out the casket right away. Finally, we saw Jesse. I had only seen a few dead bodies before in my life. All the others were elderly and tired looking. Jesse looked as if he was still a boy, with a ruffled tuft of black, bushy hair upon his peaceful face. I realized that I had frozen still and was holding up the line. Derry also wasn’t moving. His left hand jutted out and grabbedmine, holding it tight. Normally I would have wrested my hand away from him, but he looked terrified.

“Please stay with me,” he mouthed. I swallowed and led us to the casket.

Derry hugged several old classmates as we stood next to Jesse. I vaguely recognized some of them, but Derry had specific and thoughtful words to share with each. Jesse’s mother held Derry in her arms for a whole minute when she approached us. Derry promised to visit her often.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” was all I managed to get out.

I couldn’t bring myself to say I would visit. I couldn’t imagine speaking with Jesse’s mom even prior to this tragedy. Holding this loss between us felt like an impossible feat. I desperately wanted to get back home to LA. To get away from all of this. Derry and I finally left the suffocating chapel. Outside, late spring danced playfully around us. Derry looked up at the bright, blue sky and smiled.

Finally, he gave an enthusiastic sigh and slapped me on the back. “Let’s go get drunk!”

“Perhaps one,” I reasoned. But somehow, I found myself smiling for the first time all day.

Without my consultation, Derry ordered a shot and a beer combo for each of us. His reason for this was that it was more economical. By the third round, I was ready to object, but my head was swimming. Plus, Derry was very busy explaining who was married, who had children, who had shitty partners, and who was cheating on who. I really didn’t care about any of this, but there was enough booze in my system to ask follow-up questions and nod along convincingly. Plus, the more gossip we covered, the less likelihood of covering the elephant in the room. The thing is, Derry lived for the elephant in the room. I knew there was no avoiding it.

After a long-winded story about Wendy Permoth’s shoplifting addiction, he focused his gaze on me somberly.

“Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone?” he whispered. Derry didn’t need my permission, but I still nodded. He looked down meekly, as if it pained him to share what he needed to share.

“It feels like everything changed when we came down from that mountain. I’ve told myself this fairy tale for years. I’ve told myself that if we had made it to the top... if we had summited. You, me, and Jesse... we would still be friends.”

Derry’s admission was pure. I didn’t have enough time to put up my defenses. My heart started thumping in my chest. Something was all wrong inside me. I couldn’t breathe. I felt scared. So scared that I looked to Derry for help. All of a sudden, whimpers began to escape from inside of me. Tears started streaming down my face. I missed Jesse. Hell, at that moment, I missed Derry. I even missed myself. Derry held me close. He didn’t seem to mind my tears staining his dark blazer. Against all rational thinking, I let go. And it felt good.

After years of begrudging calls with my old friend Derry, after begrudgingly flying to Eugene for Jesse’s funeral, and after begrudgingly ripping the walls of my heart open for just a few minutes, I begrudgingly agreed to climb up Mount Shasta with Derry. The next morning, all these commitments flashed through my brain. I wanted to find a way to wriggle out of this crazy idea, but Derry was glowing. It was all he could talk about.

So that’s how I found myself at the trailhead of Mount Shasta a decade after my senior year of high school. One member of our trio had passed on, and the other had grown into someone unrecognizable. But the same Derry from way back then was right there in front of me.

Pickaxe, rope, crampons, boots, tents, sleeping bags, and layers upon layers of clothing were all crammed into a backpack I could barely hoist onto my shoulders. Derry insisted that we take a route starting from the north which was far less traveled than the typical southern route.

He wanted the mountain all to ourselves for a purer experience. Since this type of activity wasn’t really my thing, I just had to take his word for it. Personally, I’d much rather spend my Saturday at brunch or wine tasting like a normal person.

It was hard to believe that all this gear was necessary. The May heat was sweltering at the trailhead. I was already sweating at 7:00 in the morning. But as I looked far off into the distance, the tree line faded into rock and snow all the way up to the top. We’d be spending two chilly nights on the mountain. A lot would change in this snowy world above the clouds.

Before starting the hike, I took one final look at the peak. Jagged rocks violently protruded from the glacial snow. They looked deadly even in the distance. This wasn’t going to be an easy feat, but I had missed my chance to opt out. I looked over to Derry for wisdom.

“This is the one place where Jesse didn’t need to piss in water bottles. God bless him for that,” he remarked somberly.

With that, we started hiking. The first few hours crept along at a relaxed pace. The trees around us were ancient and tall. They protected us from the brutal overhead sun. We didn’t see another soul the entire day. The chirp of birdsong and Derry’s idle musings made the hours flow along pleasantly. Late in the afternoon, the tree line cleared out, and we began hiking on a mixture of dirt and snow. Little by little, I put on more layers of clothing. The airer was thinning and my breathing began to labor. The terrain went from solid to sloshy.

Those past few weeks had disrupted so much of my well-being. I had become one of those sad sacks who dwell on high school like it was the apex of their lives. Memories of the three of us kept coming into focus at unexpected times. We all lifeguarded in the summer prior to our Junior and Senior year. At the time, days crawled along endlessly. A five-hour shift might as well have been an eternity.

There was really one reason, and one reason only that lifeguarding mattered. We got the opportunity to hang out with female coworkers. Girls in these cases were literally being paid to hang out with us, so our risk of being abandoned or belittled was quite small for a change.

Life during those summers held a highly regarded ritual. We’d wake up at first light for cross country practice and run our hearts out. By Junior year, Jesse, Derry, and I were like agile antelopes far in front of the rest of the pack. We’d take down a few bottles of Gatorade followed by a shower and pancakes back home. After that, we’d typically make our way to the pool for work. On a lucky day, I’d be paired up with someone like Ashley Whitman for an hour on slide duty. This meant we could talk the whole time while kicking preteen pool rats down the Aqua Loop. Nine hours later, we’d be tanned, tired, and a hundred bucks richer.

The three of us would grab some well-deserved ice cream before going to bed and doing it all over again. That was the summer of The Strokes. Julian Casablancas was the coolest human being on the planet. He was pissed off, righteous, rarely sober, and singing the thoughts we all felt but didn’t know how to say.

“Time, like toilet paper, disappears faster near the end,” I muttered philosophically.

“And you don’t know how big of a roll you’ve got until it’s out,” Derry followed up.

We were now traipsing through inches of powdery snow. Derry had assured me that crampons would not be necessary on our first day. They would only slow us down until the route became pure glacier. It was hard for me to imagine going any slower. We couldn’t be covering more than a mile an hour. With the bird chirping long gone, I was once again certain that an afternoon wine tasting would have been preferable.

We arrived at Marine Camp about an hour before sunset. I am told that it got its name because Marines used to climb here for basic training. Derry also said that they stopped this practice decades earlier due to a horrible accident. A dozen or so recruits had died in a cataclysmic blizzard.

“Your ghost stories were a lot more convincing back in the day,” I retorted. But Derry assured me this was one hundred percent true. I told him he was getting worse at lying with age. Derry shrugged and gestured at our empty water bottles. There was a nearby glacial stream. I agreed to go on water duty while Derry set up camp.

I scrambled down a small boulder field leading to the shallow stream just beyond our camp. I crouched down and laid out our bottles. With a sigh, I took off my gloves and allowed the frigid air to numb my extremities. I took this as a sign to work quickly. My hands were shaking by the time I submerged the final bottle into the icy glacier water. I scanned the horizon to distract myself. It was so barren and sterile. Nature here wasn’t the most inviting. All of a sudden, I bolted upright. Someone was watching us. A human-shaped shadow stood motionlessly just beyond the mountain ridge. I looked at it, and it looked at me. Or at least I thought it was looking at me. I glanced down for a moment to grab our water. Just like that, the figure disappeared. With a shudder, I scrambled back to our campsite. I decided not to voice my paranoia just yet. After all, this was a public space.

By now, I was wearing every piece of clothing in my pack. The sun had disappeared behind the mountain, and it was freezing. Derry and I made our way into the tent and zipped ourselves into insulated sleeping bags. It wasn’t late yet, but I knew I wouldn’t be leaving that spot until the sun came out again. It felt weird to be so close to Derry. If Jesse hadn’t died, the next correspondence between us would have probably been my annual Christmas card. Or more accurately, it would’ve been me asking Derry what his latest address was so I could send him a Christmas card.

The day had been hard on my body. It needed to rest. In no time, I drifted off into a dreamless and stale sleep. Derry’s infamous bladder issues caused him to step outside twice to urinate. I’m sure that could not have been comfortable. I silently thanked myself he didn’t have Jesse’s tendency of pissing in water bottles.

The next morning, we woke up to a grisly surprise. A Coyote head had been planted on the ground in front of our tent. There was no meat left on the bones; just two hollow sockets and a taunting grin. Its front teeth jutted out like daggers. It smelled all wrong too; like it was still decomposing. I lifted my thermal over my nose and looked to Derry for advice. I could see the hairs standing up on the back of his neck.

He shoved the skull off to the side with a nearby branch.

“I’ve seen a lot of shit outside, but this is new for me,” Derry stated cautiously.

My head was spinning. I couldn’t figure out how to gauge this eerie situation. This was why I liked the indoors. “We’re going back down, right?” I asked.

Sean Newman is 31 years old and lives in San Francisco. He has combined his love of literature and the outdoors for a tale about adult friendships clashing in the mountains.