X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine | Fiction

ALT TEXT FOR A CANDID AUDIENCE PHOTO by Taylor Alexandra Duffy

September 8, 2021 · Fiction

With thanks to Dr. Zaneta M. Thayer, biological anthropologist

Crow Jonah Norlander

EXPERIENCERS by Emily Costa

September 6, 2021 · Fiction

Your girlfriend believes that at some point during the last year or so her father has been abducted by aliens and replaced with a human-like shell. She believes visits still happen, routinely and systematically, that they must pull him up there with that classic tractor beam, or else he meets them somewhere in the woods, and they do tests and probe him and check on his progress. Progress with what, you wonder, but she’s still talking. She says they return him dead-eyed. She’s got it all laid out. She keeps a little journal by her bed to jot down the nights, to keep track of his behavior. She says on Mondays and Thursdays he leaves in the middle of the night. The front light’s on motion detector and shines into her window. She hears his tires crunch driveway gravel. Then, he’s there again at cereal time, normal.

She’s telling you this because she trusts you, she says, finally she trusts you.

You wonder if this means you can move on from spending the night in her bed just making out, from jerking off in your room when you get home. You hate that you think that, especially considering what you’re doing now: driving down route 63 with her, tailing her dad’s BMW, trying to find what she’s calling an “entry point.” Your crappy Toyota is having some issue with acceleration—it’s stuttering, slow—but you need to maintain distance anyway. Your girlfriend is biting the sides of her fingernails. She is messing with the radio. She is telling you hang back and speed up.

Your girlfriend’s mom is at home, zonked on Valium. You’d left your own father similarly zonked, head back, on the couch. Something in his nightly regimen knocks him out but you’re not sure which pill. You make a mental note to ask the doctor. Maybe you could even ask the nurse at treatment while he dozes and you’re stuck in the sticky chair next to him, flipping through a book, unable to focus on the words. Maybe it’s the disease itself. But you try not to think about that, and your girlfriend is saying are you listening? and you are and you aren’t.

Because the thing is you know where her dad goes. It’s easy to infer, even though you’ve only met the guy once. The way he smiles, the over-cheer in his voice. Like he’s making up for something. But your girlfriend doesn’t see it. Or, she doesn’t want to see it. And you can’t just come out and tell her the warm thing her father’s enveloped in isn’t some human-sized test-tube filled with space goo. So you’re just waiting for the thing to happen. And it’ll happen tonight: you’ll follow the father all the way to the other woman’s house. There will be no object in the sky, no abduction, no jump in the clock. Just a split-level with its porch light on. The door will open. You’ll both catch a glimpse of her as she pulls him inside. Your girlfriend will look at you in a way you’ll never forget, and you won’t be sure how to make your face look, how to mirror surprise.

But before that, you’re driving, and you know, and she doesn’t, and you can’t tell her, and it’s all hanging there in the air, and you start to wonder if you’re a bad person—your most frequent thought—because you want the thing to happen already, to get it over with, to end up on the other side of it, but you don’t want to say the words. You can barely even think them.

x-r-a-y magazine

LOVEBIRD by Tex Gresham

September 3, 2021 · Fiction

Most people have no idea what goes on in retirement communities. They don’t care to know. When your kids dropped you off at Del Largo Sueño a few years go, they made tearful promises to visit, but you never saw a tear fall. They faked guilt to hide the happiness that they wouldn’t have to watch you die. Your son, Clifford, and his new wife didn’t stay long enough for you to unpack and hang your sweaters. Your daughter waited around, and then she asked for “gas money.” She’d been biting her cheek all day, her eyes sunken like little pits from whatever drug she’d decided to date that month. Gas money...like you’re too old and stupid to know the truth.

But the currency of their false guilt didn’t amount to much considering you haven’t seen your son or daughter since that day. You’ve forgotten about them, mostly. This place makes it easy. And they’ve likely forgotten about you too. A whole life lived, seeds planted so that an existence can be remembered, and it’s all forgotten like a fart in a high wind.

And you’re not going to talk about your ex-wife. She died trying to throw a toaster in your bathwater. She doesn’t deserve the headspace. None of this is about them anyway. This is about your life at seventy-nine, when you finally found something worth living for.

You’re cruising in Hank Hubbert’s E-Z Go that’s done up to look like a seafoam green ‘57 Chevy BelAir. He’s got the pedal down, the wind flapping the six hairs you have left. It feels like you’re going 80mph, but you’re probably going about 10mph. Hank passes you a joint of Birdbrain OG Kush. You take a drag, even though the doctor told you to stick to edibles. Golf clubs rattle in bags in the back. Hank’s got a shotgun in his golf bag for skeet shoot.

As you pass a group of women finishing up a game of bocce ball, Hank says, “I got a nine-iron they can use. Guaranteed to give ‘em a hole in one.”

Laughing rattles the emphysema in your lungs, but who cares?

Hank points to one of the ladies you’ve never seen. Must be new. What you do notice are the gloves on Hank’s hands. He’s been wearing them lately. You haven’t seen him without them for the past week or so. “That’s Marion Chapel. New broad. She’s got all the boys under a spell around here.”

You say, “I can see why.” Even though you can’t. She’s nothing special.

Hank says, “Maybe. But boy, does she have a daughter I’d give away the rest of my pension for.”

You say, “Does she?” and Hank laughs. But you really want to know: does she?

Men like Hank––and this place is all Hanks––usually get at women in the community as a way to get closer to their daughters. And sometimes sons, if that’s their boat. These Hanks think that these daughters desire them just as much. You’ve never had an interest in them. The younger they are, the more you’re aware of how hopeless they are. They believe the world is tailored to the young. It’s not. The world isn’t even a place for people. Not anymore. You see the young ones, the ones that Hank and all the Hanks go for, and you feel sad.

There is someone in the community that has you wholly unable to look at any woman, young or old. Not even Hank knows about her.

Sun City, AZ is a place that wouldn’t exist if not for the Almost Dead. And Del Largo Sueño is its capital. You have everything here. Whole Foods, AMC theaters, two Greg Norman-designed T-National golf courses, a wildlife refuge with any animal you can imagine, six marijuana dispensaries, twenty-one restaurants that stay open late––for those who eat dinner after 6pm––and a four-story recreation center.

After midnight, the top floor of the rec center transforms into a gambling den to rival any casino in Vegas. There’s no blackjack or Texas Hold ‘Em. People don’t bet on horse races or football games. No thirty-large on hard eight. No slot handles. People put money on the death pool. Everyone’s name and odds on a blackboard, behind the makeshift bar. You’re sitting at 30-to-1 to die within the year. Suicide voids all bets. You put five-large against yourself. Other than that, you don’t play the games anymore.

You sit alone at a table near the back of the room. You sip on seltzer water with a twist of lime, even though you’re not thirsty. The light in the room’s dim and the music––the Jerry Lee Lewis version of “Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On”––coming out of the speakers is loud enough so those who left their hearing aids at home can hear it. You scan the room, playing the part of yourself very well.

In an adjacent soundproofed room, men and women play Russian roulette. They handle the gun with maddeningly calm smiles. A table next to yours plays Guess the Pill. They slam hundreds into a pile on the table. There’s a line of crushed pill next to an unlabeled orange bottle.

“Two hundred on that being a klonopin,” says someone whose name you’ll never remember.

“Double that it’s a proto-pumper,” says another whose name is just as lost.

The one betting two hundred snorts the powdery line. You get up from the table, make your way across the room. In the time it takes you to get to the fight studio, Two Hundred clutches his chest and drops dead. Everyone scrambles to the bar to collect on the death pool.

You pass a table where Marion Chapel sits at the center of a group of Hanks that look like babies begging for their mother’s tit. Another Hank joins the table, bows as he hands Marion a drink. She’s eating up the attention, laughing like a broad right out of a Bogart movie. A candle on the table casts a moving light on the underside of her face, and the effect is unsettling. Her eyes break away from the attention and meet yours. They’re serious eyes, and you can’t hold onto them very long.

The only game that interested you here was the Fight. In the studio where, during the day, women shuffle through arthritic Zumba, some of the former boxing coaches have set up a makeshift fight. Men don’t fight here. Animals do. Mostly ostriches. Taken from the wildlife refuge. Hopped up on Viagra and Vicodin, the old veterinarians and one retired zookeeper usually haul the birds back here on their flatbed E-Z gos. You used to join them.

The setup is simple: two enter, one leaves. Anyone who’s never seen ostriches fight, it’s terrible. They kick the hell out of each other with taloned feet until gaping wounds and blood loss results in one victory and one death. You used to have a sure bet: a big strong alpha male. He’d never lose a fight––until he did. And with that one, you lost a lot of money. But that’s not why you stopped.

It was because of Rati.

There she is. Standing in the sun rays of a new, cloudless day. Birds sing overhead, a soundtrack of everyday magic. This moment is just for you and her.

You know she’s seen you by the way she drops down to her knees, wings spread, feathers shaking. Her head lolls back and forth, neck puffed out. Even though her head’s moving like one of those inflatable men at car dealerships, her eyes stay primally focused on you. Your eyes never leave hers. You haven’t taken Cialis today, but the pressure in your groin is a liberation from the weight of Time and Death.

Rati chirps and growls, pulling deep within that struthio body to let you know how she feels. You run your fingers along the letters etched into the wood of her corral gate: R-A-T-I. Rati. A gorgeous word. Ra-Ti...the tongue taking a trip two steps down the palate to tap, at two, on the teeth...One of the first things you’ve ever said to her. But you forget where you heard it originally.

Love has never been in your DNA. You cared for people in your life. Shared laughter and sadness. But you never loved, nor did you feel loved. Your children are just waiting for the moment they don’t have to think of you and realize you’re still someone on this earth––not in it. You never loved your job, despite keeping it for forty years. Who in the hell would ever say they love being a maintenance technician for a cheap airline.

But the love you feel down to your essence for Rati is so pure. More than any lust or longing you’ve ever had. It is true. Her dance tells you she feels the same. Her feet tap out the word: L-O-V-E. Never did you think those letters would come together into a recognizable shape.

You know some would say you’re just playing into loneliness. Being abandoned by your children hurts, but it doesn’t hurt enough to be lonely. Maybe Rati’s doing the same, given that her lifemate was killed in the ring sometime last year. But what is love but a way to prove loneliness wrong?

She comes closer to the fence and you can smell her. The way her feet crunch the grass, thud heavy against the earth, you find comfort in that power. The new male they brought in after Rati’s mate was killed stands in the middle of the field, watching her come to you. You can tell he doesn’t like you, that he believes she’s his. She isn’t. She’s mine.

You don’t know what Rati would do if she knew that her lifemate was your sure thing, your big alpha male. You made more money on his fights than you ever did working a real job. You also wonder what she would do if she knew you had bet against her mate before his last match. You knew he wasn’t a sure thing anymore. A part of you hides the fact––even from yourself––that you didn’t want him to be a sure thing, not after you saw Rati for the first time. You wanted him gone. And she doesn’t need to know these things. That chapter in your life is over now. Unconnected to the one you’re in now. Together. Besides, you don’t play the games anymore. She doesn’t need to know anything other than your love.

Rati leans her head over the railing. You slide a hand along her face, around the back of her head. You cradle her like this, slowly pulling her face toward yours. You kiss.

You move to her ear and whisper, “I want you to come home with me.”

She shakes, her beak making this clacking sound. You reach over and slip the latch from the gate, which swings open silently. She eases out of her pen. You take her by the wing and the two of you walk.

“And you’re still taking the levodopa and carbidopa twice a day?”

“Yes.” You are.

“And the donepezil and galantamine?”

“Of course.” But you’re not.

Dr. Kosinski’s office always makes you want to lie. He’s got a face like a baby pushing out a big poop. The way he looks at you, at all of the Almost Deads, it’s obvious he hates his life because of how useless his practice has become. Why waste time on the Almost Dead?

“And how’s the diet?”

“I have bacon sometimes.”

“You shouldn’t be doing that. You know, and I know you know this because I’ve said it but I’ll repeat it: eggs are an important part of this diet. The omega-3 reacts positively with donepezil and will rejuvenate brain function. Bacon throws that off.”

“I remember you saying something about that.”

Dr. Kosinski flips through your chart, though you’re sure that’s theatrics. There’s no way, after all this time, he doesn’t have your chart memorized. “Your drug test didn’t come back. Your urine ate through the plastic cup, but so did everyone else’s so what can I do?”

He looks at you with raised eyebrows, expecting you to bow your head like a shamed child. You run your tongue over your dentures, feeling stray pieces of bacon. He looks down at your chart again.

“What brings you in today?”

You say, “My testicles have been tingling. They hurt. And I’ve been having dreams about having children.”

“You don’t have testicles. After the cancer.”

“But these dreams feel real. And it’s not like I have one or two kids. I’ve got like fifteen. Maybe twenty.”

“That’s a side effect of the galantamine.”

Again, you don’t tell him you’ve stopped taking that months ago. Instead, you say, “And what about the tingling? In my testicles.”

“Describe the tingling.”

“It’s this fullness. Pressure. I can’t say it’s unpleasant. I feel stronger sometimes.”

“That’s a good thing, yes?”

You shrug.

“Other than that, are you noticing anything different with your body? Your penis? Fingers? Mouth?”

“Different how?”

Dr. Kosinski closes your chart. “Some of the other more sexually active residents have complained about recent changes to their body. Like within the last week or so.”

“Changes.”

“One came to me complaining of jock itch. I checked him and his entire groin area looked like cooled lava. Marbled skin. Open sores. Another patient...had it in his mouth. Really terrible stuff. ”

“My jock itch is jock itch.”

“There’s been more. And there’s a common thread. Now I’m not supposed to name names, but you never remember half of this stuff, right?”

“Who are you again?”

“Have you come into contact with Marion Chapel?”

“Never.”

“Are you sexually active here?”

“Not at the moment.” You don’t tell him about Rati, mostly because she technically isn’t part of the community.

“Good. Until I figure this out, don’t. I suspect a kind of STD. All you old-timers grew up in the nuclear age. Who the hell knows what you’ve got going on inside you. I’m going to send some blood samples out for testing. In the meantime, no sex.”

“Is that all?” You interrupt his self-talk. You understand what he means about the radiation. No one knows what all that nuclear testing did to the air. But if it had changed anything, it would have long ago. This is something else––if it’s even real at all. A part of you thinks Dr. Kosinski’s just pulling both your legs.

This thing with Rati, it’s got nothing to do with radiation. You know that in your heart. It’s real, not a side effect.

Dr. Kosinski snaps on a latex glove. “Actually, I’d like to check your prostate. Make sure this pressure you’re feeling isn’t cancer.” He lubes his finger. “You know the drill.”

You do.

“Whoa! Christ, what am I seeing here?”

Hank moves away from you and Rati, hands covering his face in a way that reminds you of Dracula being shown a crucifix. Embarrassment could be a thing right now if you were interested in feeling embarrassed. Hank barged in without knocking. This is now his problem, not yours. The record player spins and Spanky and Our Gang continue to belt out “Lazy Day.”

The way Rati pushes against your naked body reintroduces you to your soul. Which helps you ignore the way Hank’s half-hidden face twists in disgust. He doesn’t know what this is like. Never will.

“I...I...don’t want to know…” Hank backs out of the room, but he doesn’t leave. He’s not wearing the gloves. The finger he points at you looks like marbled, melted skin. A boil on the tip of his finger threatens to pop and squirt at you. He stands on the other side of the doorway.

“What do you want, Hank?” With your body and mind in a warm bath of relaxation––a feeling similar to what it must be like to die––you talk without anger. It doesn’t sound like your voice.

“What am I seeing?”

“It’s exactly what you think it is.”

“You’re...doing that...with an ostrich.”

“Her name’s Rati.”

“I know what the thing’s name is.” Hank finishes with a fist against the wall. You’re sure he’d rather kick something, but Hank can barely lift his diabetic legs. He shuffles when he walks. “It’s an ostrich.”

“Yes, she is.” You know he can’t imagine what it’s like. The feeling of her beak. That when two birds make love it’s called cloaca kisses––you looked that up. It’s a beautiful phrase. Tender. Sensual. Hank can’t imagine what it’s like. It’s all just fucking to him.

“Why are you doing this?”

A part of you wants to answer: love. But it’s something else he wouldn’t understand. He doesn’t have a Rati. You especially don’t want to tell him that you and Rati married each other the night before. You feel it boiling on the tip of your tongue, like your tongue’s got one of those boils that’re all over Hank’s fingers.

You say, “She makes me feel good.”

“Christ….Are you still taking your meds?”

“Are you?”

“No, but I’m not in bed with an ostrich.”

“Is that what you came here for?”

“I came here to tell you someone called the community center asking for you. Someone named Dianne.”

Daughter-in-law Dianne. Only one you know who wouldn’t know enough to call your direct number. Your son married a flapjack from Seattle who appraises damaged houses in Middle-America caught in Tornado Alley. The one time you met her she said things like Clutched the damn deal and Suckers aren’t born every minute...they die every second. You don’t know much about her, but you know enough to know you’re glad about how little you know. The reasons why she would call and not your son are all not good.

“Did she leave a number?” You move to get up and put clothes on, but Rati reaches over and engulfs you with her wing. It’s warm, so you stay with her.

“She did.” Then, after a beat, “I can’t believe you’re in there with that thing.”

“Get over it, Hank. When you’ve been worshipping at the church of Marion Chapel, I didn’t say anything.”

“Marion is a human being. She’s real.”

“Real enough to make your hand like that, right Hank?”

Nothing from Hank. You can picture him on the other side of the wall, looking at his fingertips, their little lips pursing at him.

You say, “Leave the number. I’ll call later.”

You can hear Hank move, rustle some papers, write the number. He’s probably got the little mouths whispering the number to him. He can’t remember anything. You doubt if he’ll remember this, but you know he will. He’s talking to himself, or the little mouths. For the first time since you met him, he sounds like the classic grumpy old man everyone believes old men become. You supposed both of you are. Except he doesn’t have a Rati.

He says, “Here’s the number. But listen: you’re not...This thing, it isn’t going to last. You and that thing together.”

“This thing is my wife.” When you say it, Rati shivers, lets out a purring sound. Her beak nuzzles against your neck. You look down at her feet and notice how tense her claws are. She could pounce on Hank and it’d be over for him in a breath.

Hank sighs. “You need help.”

“You need something, Hank. You’re a lonely man.”

“Like an ostrich?”

“Like an ostrich.”

Hank leaves without saying anything. Rati pulls at you and you roll over. Your hip cracks. It’s usually followed by a pain you have to grit your teeth to get through, but right now doesn’t hurt. Right now, you fall into each other for the fourth or fifth time today. Dianne can wait. Bad news always has a shelf life of forever. It’s not as important as this moment.

You reach over and place your hand on Rati’s stomach, the eggs inside already bloating her body. Eggs. Plural. You forget that about birds.

They say a comedy ends with a wedding and a tragedy with a funeral. Life is neither, so you usually get both.

When you call Dianne, she can barely form a sentence. Hysterical is the word you’re not supposed to use, but that’s exactly what it is. She doesn’t have to say anything. You already know.

But eventually, she gets it out.

Your son, Clifford, had a thing for public pools. Being in public pools while elderly women did their aerobics. Putting his genitals against the water jets during this time. What he didn’t know is that the water has to go somewhere. It went up, inside. His bladder exploded. What you think happened is that he confused his bladder popping for some intense sexual gratification and he went about the day, stunned and confused. He bled from the inside and the damage was too much.

Dianne says this, more or less. You can tell she’s trying to leave out details, so you piece the rest together. She doesn’t seem to care about this oddity in Clifford’s life. She’s more interested in transforming his death into her tragedy.

You say, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She says, “Thank you.” And nothing else. You wonder if she’s forgotten that Clifford’s your son. You’ve forgotten, Clifford did too. So it’s not out of reach. Before you can say anything else, she hangs up.

You want more than anything to be back in Rati’s arms. But when you turn around to leave, Marion Chapel’s there. So is Hank. And about ten other residents of Del Largo Sueño. A mob with canes and hearing aids instead of pitchforks and burning torches.

Marion Chapel says, “Hank tells me some disturbing things about you.” The skin on her neck has that cooled lava look.

Hank says, “Where is it?”

You say, “Where’s what?”

“The bird.”

“She flew away.”

You want to run, but you can’t. And even if you could shuffle out of this, there are men in this mob who can shuffle faster than you. Hank comes close to you. He’s trying to get friendly.

He whispers, “Listen: just let this be over. I don’t want them to do this to you.”

You don’t think about it. You rear back and slam your fist against Hank’s nose. Every bone in your hand shatters like tortilla chips. Hank stumbles back, blood splooshing from his nose. He’s shocked, desperate. He screams.

And the mob descends on you like a bad dream.

“No, you can’t do this!”

You’ve already tried to overpower Hank, but you’re on the ground now. He stands over you. Something cracked when you hit the rec center’s unkind floor. You can’t feel the pain yet. You try to stand, but your legs are too loose.

“Stay down, you old bastard.” Hank’s got his wrinkled hands balled into fists. “I told you this thing wouldn’t last.”

Other people in the mob mumble similar things. Someone laughs. Someone says Poor sonofabitch is over the edge.

You can’t stay down. The way men in the mob have Rati by the neck, the way her head trashes. You rage. The two old-timers who run the death pool hold the door open to the Zumba studio. “Turn Turn Turn” by The Byrds spills out of the studio, casting a twisted optimism over everything. Inside, the male ostrich waits, feathers fluffed, its chest puffed. Its big legs step in place, massive talons clacking against the polished wood floor. Two of the stronger residents stand behind the safety of a raised DJ booth and hold the male ostrich back with a long leash. Hank takes Rati and shoves her toward the door.

“Stop, goddammit. That’s my wife!”

Everyone laughs. You push yourself up. Your hand slips and your face cracks against the floor. Your dentures clatter out of your mouth. The skin on your chin splits and blood runs freely. You haven’t been taking your coagulant.

“This is horrible. I can’t look at him,” says Marion Chapel. She’s at the front of the mob gathered for the upcoming fight. The men who surround her are all disfigured from the Marion Chapel Disease. They’ve all got a sedated, awestruck glaze to their faces.

Hank says, “You should’ve just gotten together with Marion. Or one of the nice human women here.”

Someone in the crowd says, “Or men.”

Marion says, “I would’ve never been with him.”

Hank says, “There are plenty of people who need someone in their lives. Not this bird.”

Hank almost has her all the way in the Zumba studio.

You shout, “Wait.”

Hank stops, giving you a chance to look Rati in the eyes. You two hold the look, connect like you always did at her pen. You say to her, “I’m sorry.” Then you turn to Hank and say, “Let me fight instead.”

Hank’s face drops. Rati freezes, eyes go wide. No one speaks. Everyone starts trading looks that say Now this could be something different.

Marion says, “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

Hank says, “That thing in there’ll kill you in a second.”

You say, “Maybe. But that means it won’t kill her. Or my children.”

A collective, “Your what?”

You say, “I’ve got pretty good odds on the death pool there. I’m not killing myself. I will fight. Let me do this.”

One of the guys who runs the death pool hurries out of the studio and starts collecting bets from the mob. He keeps shouting odds that change with every bet made. Hank pulls some money out of his pocket and slips it into the bookie’s palm. He looks back at you and the two of you share a smile like you’re friends again.

You say, “Against me.”

He says, “A sure thing.”

“I’ve got money on the death pool. Give it to my wife when this is over.”

Hank nods. “Sure. I can do that. Whatever you need.”

But you can’t imagine Hank bringing the money to Rati in her pen, or turning that money into something Rati might need––or that your children will need. You can’t imagine that Hank won’t make Rati fight anymore, or that your children won’t grow up to fight for the entertainment of the next rotation of residents of Del Largo Sueño. What you can imagine is Hank taking the cash, buying himself a new E-Z Go, taking Marion Chapel out for a high-dollar early bird. You know he’s just saying yes so you’ll get in there and die quick.

Someone shouts from the mob, “Let the man take a cane or something.”

Someone answers, “If he does, change the odds.”

Hank helps you up. Whatever cracked in your hip isn’t keeping you from taking small steps toward the studio. You shuffle past Rati and she cranes her neck in front of your face. You slide your hand down her beak to the side of her face. Her eyes are wet. A tear falls. You try and catch it, but you’re too slow. You try to say I love you but without your dentures it comes out as an all-gums I thopff eww. She looks around, pecking absently at things in the way ostriches do. She pecks at your hand, then at your shirt. She picks up a pill that’s fallen onto the floor and shakes it down her throat.

Hank shoves you through the door. You stay on your feet, but it hurts to do so.

He says, “See you on the other side.”

It occurs to you that if there is somewhere after this, it’s a place where Hank will be as well. You want to say I hope not, but you know it’ll come out sounding like a wet sneeze. So you give him a middle finger that’s bordering on arthritic.

From the mob, you hear someone say, “They make huge omelets. Lots of omegas.”

Hank shuts the door. Locks it. The Byrds keep singing turn turn turn, but everything here stays the same.

This is where it ends. Standing in the studio. Joints made of sand. Dentures gone, all gums. Prostate feeling like a hot rock. Every ounce of you bloody and fragile. The male ostrich is twice your height, its body like an idling train. Massive. Ready to do damage. It stomps the floor. The vibration rings through your bones, makes your hip whine. You try and stand a little straighter.

You look over at the window, at all the ravenous faces ready to watch you die. Impatient for the small time between now and then. There isn’t an ounce of sadness or awareness. Your eyes stop on Rati. She pecks at the window, the space between the two of you so little but impossible to cross.

You slip ahead in time. To a future where you and Rati have a home that’s somewhere not here. Rati’s in your backyard, laying your children in a shallow hole, returning to that hole twice a day to turn your children so they don’t spoil. You’re in the house, still healing from the fight. When she comes inside, you will make a joke about her head in the sand. She will peck at you playfully. You two will sleep together every night, comfortable and warm. Loved. She will lift you both physically and emotionally. She knows exactly who you are. You know everything she can be. You both are in a place where people don’t point, where your love isn’t cursed. And eventually, your children join. Dozens of perfect little ones, better than you could ever be. Each time they beat their wings, your name will be the wind that lifts them. It all seems real. A place where you are strong and possible, where your children are happy and loved.

Crow Jonah Norlander

“I’M TELLING YOU YOU’RE GONNA LOVE IT” by Eros Livieratos

September 1, 2021 · Fiction

“I’m telling you, you’re gonna love it.”“There is absolutely no way I’m going to like it.” “Come on, it won’t be that bad.”“It sounds awful.”“So?”

James was always trying to get me to do shit. The first time I ate glass, they were there, egging me on. They posted a clip of it on their story while I was picking at my gums. I remember them saying,

“If Lucas Abela¹ can do it, why can’t you?”

So, I swallowed some. We kept on hanging out. What else would I do? Their suggestions kept getting a little riskier, a bit more reckless. When they convinced me to try robbing a grave, I declined. I wasn’t into it. My ma would hate me for it. So, James said,

“You’ll never be an R.L. Stine² character.”

And for whatever reason, that really did it. I dug up a grave, but it turns out, they lock some coffins so all I took were the ghosts.

I haven’t been sleeping right. I thought this thing with James wasn’t going to work out. Their hot pink leather pants and infected stick-n-pokes couldn’t be in my life any longer. I was going to break it off. I thought maybe I’d text them and this would all be settled. They were already at my door.

“Have you tried salvia³ before?”

“No. No James, I’m done. I’m tired. I kind of just want to get a job.”

James looked at me for a moment. They looked me up and down, they lingered on the down. Their red-heart earring dangled like a pendulum. Their eyes intent, staring into my hips for what felt like an eternity.

“No. Nope. I don’t think we should keep hanging out. I don’t think we’re good for each other—”

James’ lips moved up and down, slowly, mocking me. They patted their bald head and rubbed their flat stomach and began screeching. Howling.

“Do you remember that time Hanatarash⁴ bulldozed that club?”

“No. What? I wasn’t alive. Wasn’t that in the 80s?”

“What if I told you, I could get us a bulldozer?” Their green eyes lit up with what my ma would call, “the devil’s passion.” I know this, it isn’t going to happen again.

“James, I’m done. I haven’t slept in months. I think I need to get exorcised?”

“Jen, you will never ever be a moderately well-known but still largely obscure harsh-noise artist if you don’t do this. Like, nobody will like you.” I finally heard it. The teeth still left in their mouth clicked with each syllable and everything was clarity. I wasn’t going to fall for it.

“Where would you even work, anyway? Nobody’s hiring.” James’ shoulders dropped. It felt like I was talking to someone else. They weren’t interested in trying to bulldoze a basement gig anymore.

“I don’t know, I really don’t want to but like rent’s coming up and—”

“What?”

“I was just going to start delivering packages, like just for a few weeks or something”

“I still have this bag of salvia.”

“I really don’t—”

“I’m telling you, you’re gonna love it.”

“There is absolutely no way I’m going to like it.”

Lucas Abela is an Australian harsh noise musician known for creating and playing an instrument comprised of glass and contact microphones. The instrument is played by mouth and by hand.
That guy who wrote Goosebumps.
A mistake.
Japanese harsh noise band from the 80s that pioneered the genre and received notoriety from being banned from several countries after bulldozing a club as one of their performances.

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TECHNO SHOW by Lucy Zhou

August 31, 2021 · Fiction

In a post-Covid world, we joke, the first thing we’ll do is go to a techno show. Yeah, like the kind in someone’s basement that smells of bathwater or underneath a freeway pass for better acoustics—remember that last show we went to? Where we had to slink ungracefully through a doggy door in the fence and squish through ferns that tickled our palms before we came across the path, illuminated by Carla’s bright-pink hair. There will be a Halloween-store fog machine, a drumline of clanging pots and pans, and those little umbrellas in everyone’s red Solo cup. Most people are just huffing down straight gin. Your ex’s new girlfriend is the one DJing, and you suddenly feel very petty and small, even though this is the ex who inhaled paint thinner and said your calves were horsey when he was high. But still—you look around for his signature shaved head and are relieved that he’s not here. And if he is, you couldn’t care less. So yeah, at this techno show, everyone is wearing a slick black mask in some intersection between goth and UX designer. In the bright darkness, we k-hole as if we aren’t terrified of being near stranger bodies, wrapped in tender-damp heat, after almost two years of only talking to low-res avatars on a screen. We suddenly have nothing to say. No one brings up how Jay would have been the first one shuffling up a storm, except his parents took him off the ventilator a month ago. None of us could go to the family-only funeral. Or how Tony has to sit down for most of the set after getting sick in the first wave. But we sit down with him in the middle of the dance floor, watch the crowd bob nervously and grow old. We leave after an hour. On the way home, Carla drives because she’s doing some alcohol detox, and we mouth off about how the music was whack, no, the people, no, it was the general vibe and like, what the heck was up with those little umbrellas? It’s all very predictable, you know, this idea of an after, as easy as getting used to a ghost. And Jay laughs at this like a donkey in heat from the backseat, as if to remind us that he’s still here, still kicking. By the time we turn back to make sure, he’s already gone.

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SECOND HONEYMOON by Michael Czyzniejewski

August 30, 2021 · Fiction

I met my wife on our honeymoons, the ones we were taking with other people. Both of us went parasailing when our newlywed spouses were too afraid. A storm came in just as we lifted into the air and we were caught in its path. Our lines got detached, sending us parasailing into the horizon. We woke up on a deserted island.

Two months later, firmly in love, we were found by crab photographers. Coincidentally, our spouses back home fell in love, too, assuming we were dead. At the press conference after our rescue, the four of us laughed about how things work out. Soon we were all divorced and remarried to the right people, no hard feelings.

On the island, I’d heard so much about my soon-to-be in-laws. They lived in Minneapolis but didn’t wear sweaters. They were lapsed Lutherans, they line-danced, and they played competitive Jenga. They ran an apiary.

My parents had been dentists in Toledo. They were both dead: parasailing accident on their twenty-fifth anniversary vacation—not from a storm, but by flying straight into a bridge. Miami renamed the bridge after them. It has a toll—it leads to an island where flamingos are bred—but they gave me an ID card, said I could cross for free. I was eight. I still have never been to Florida.

My new wife, Barbi, took me to see her parents after our wedding. I was allergic to bee stings and afraid to go. Barbi described their suits, the kind beekeepers wear in cartoons. She’d worked with bees her entire life and had only been stung once, on the tip of her right nipple. She swore it made her sting-proof: Bees were her chicken pox. We’d been through a lot together, I figured, agreeing to go. If I died from asphyxiation I knew she’d genuinely feel horrible.

Barbi’s mom looked exactly like Barbi, twenty years older, more of a big sister than a mom. Maybe she was future Barbi, sent back in time to pose as her own mother. She also didn’t care for me—she was a staunch fan of Barbi’s original husband, Santino, the guy now married to my original wife, Sue Ellen. Santino reminded Barbi’s mom of a boy she’d dated in high school, a boy who died visiting her at midnight, climbing the trellis to her bedroom, falling and impaling himself on the lawn sprinkler. Naturally, Santino had to be this old beau reincarnated, in love with Barbi, her genetic doppelganger. Barbi’s mom asked how our flight was. Barbi said it felt long. Her mom replied, “Santino knew the value of first class.” She looked my way. “You, sir, are no Santino.”

Barbi’s dad came in from beekeeping. He was still wearing the outfit, including the hat, a pith helmet with black netting veiling his face. He took off his glove to shake my hand, churning it like butter. He told me he loved me, leaning in to kiss me, pushing his net into my mouth. He removed his headgear. He looked exactly like me. If Barbi was the genetic copy of her mom, I was that for her dad. Helmet off, he leaned in for that kiss. “I love you,” he said. “Son.”

Barbi’s mom had readied pot roast with potatoes and carrots. It tasted sweet, like candied pot roast. “You can really taste the honey,” Barbi said. I coughed, as allergic to honey as I was to bee stings. By the time I hit the floor, my hands swelled to twice their size. Just before my eyes shut, I saw Barbi’s dad straddling me, the epinephrine injector from my pocket in his fist. A pinhead of air seeped into my lungs. I fell unconscious.

I woke up in Barbi’s bedroom. Barbi leapt to my side when she saw me stir, kissing me up and down, crying from joy that I was alive. After she calmed herself, she asked why I’d eaten that pot roast if I was allergic to honey. I replied that I’d never had pot roast with honey. She laughed, asked where I’d grown up, Mars?!

Her dad stuck his head in. I thanked him for saving my life. He told me he loved me. Barbi’s mom, from the hallway, told him to ask if I wanted more pot roast. Her dad laughed like it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard. He came in and kissed Barbi on the lips then kissed me again, this time on the forehead.

“Feel better, Champ,” he said.

Barbi shut the door when Dad departed. She came toward me, unbuttoning her blouse, mounting my abdomen. I told her I didn’t think this was the time. I still couldn’t breathe right. That’s what makes it so appealing, she said, everything that made her happy all in one place: her parents, her bedroom, me. As she undid my belt, she shared a funny thought: “What if I got pregnant right here, our first night together with my folks?” I laughed like it was the funniest joke I’d ever heard.

Afterward, Barbi asleep, I got up to use the bathroom. I walked past her parents’ room. Her dad was sitting on the bed. I only caught a glimpse, but I would have sworn he was masturbating.

I stepped into the bathroom just as Barbi’s mom was coming out. It was dark, pitch. Before I could say anything, she put her arms around my neck, whispered, Are you ready for me? and attached her mouth to mine, prying open my lips. I tried to stop her, but she pushed me against the wall, forcing her tongue past my teeth, her thigh into my crotch. I pictured the horror that was on its way, her finding out it was me, not Barbi’s dad. Or maybe she knew already. She kissed me deeper and I tasted sweetness on her tongue, something from her palate, perhaps from between her teeth.

My heart raced, my throat closed, my eyes shut, replacing one type of darkness with another.

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JUST GIVE ME A FUNERAL by Greg Gerke

August 27, 2021 · Fiction

On Thanksgiving, the southbound 1 train stopped at 96th Street and, to the surprise of the few people in the last car, an older woman with a sunbaked face in a big-brimmed gardening hat blocked the doors with a fold-up shopping cart and started to load four large bags of possessions into the space. She balanced the rectangular cart front wheels in and back out, over the gap between the car and platform, to jam the doors while hefting the bags around it and safely inside. Where did this rail-thin woman, probably 5’4”, get the strength? a young man on his way to his Aunt’s loft in Tribeca for Thanksgiving dinner asked himself. She struggled but squeezed the first one over, though it ripped on the cart and newspapers splayed across the floor like the emptying of a fishing net’s haul. The operator yelled for the doors in the rear to be unblocked. The woman waved with a storied nonchalance and, proceeding to bag two, hummed some tune popular when everyone smoked and legions loved to dance. A couple shook their heads understandingly, but then moored them in something like impatience; they didn’t want to be late for their short-fused family on this pregnant day. A lonesome man who had been just like her ten years ago, but now had an SRO that he was on his way to after an early free Thanksgiving dinner at a homeless organization, faintly recognized the striking presence and called the name he thought her parents had christened her—she did not answer. Bag two was wider than one and she had to angle the cart more. Whistling a crescendo, she parked the ripped one at the very back of the car, then slowly gathered bag two and pasted it on top, a sculptor's addition. She waited for the clenched doors to open to go out and get the rest. Someone near the front of the car yelled for her to hurry up and someone else Fuck you’d him. The conductor chided again, adding, Two seconds and I call the police...one-two. Okay. I know who you are. The woman kept her head down and continued with bag three and the young man and the ex-homeless man sprinted to help her and they got everything in and the doors closed and the train powered on to 86th street. A reminder, ladies and gentlemen, please do not block...

The woman sat in the corner, her hand roosting in the bag atop the ripped one, while the two others lived on the seats facing her with the cart wedged against them, a bungee cord tied to the right side wheels. Her articles carried a reek, but a temperate one—mold, not body odor. She once owned an array of expensive soaps and cleansers during her early years, continuing into her first marriage to the heir of a manufacturing magnate in Western Massachusetts, a fat man who kept her cooped until his early demise after five years of hell. The two other bags were full of clothes, books, papers, miscellany, and about a dozen cell phones she’d found in the last year. She wore a large threadbare coat over a sweater, a cardigan, a long-sleeved puce pajama top, and a three-year-old tee-shirt from the city’s marathon. Over her black long johns was a colorful but marred dress she’d found in a Hell’s Kitchen dumpster—a piece made in Mexico that the previous owner wore once for Cinco de Mayo at her job as a hostess. That its new owner spoke Spanish was lost on the dress. She spoke French, too. She’d actually been a governess, spending a year in Paris with a family who lived off money from past sales of Impressionist paintings. A non-practicing Jew, she closed her eyes and wrote something on her hand with a cheap pen. It was a question about the fitness of her heart, more an approbation, and though she’d had health scares, her heart was unencumbered. The ex-homeless man called her name again and this time she tendered annoyance and announced, without looking, You might have my name, but you don’t have my numbers. I’m just trying to be nice, he said. Don’t you remember me? At Stuy Cove, years ago. Night of that wind storm. I got an apartment. I’m working in an electronics store. You got to get off the street. Let them help you. She heard his words, but desiring them to have no meaning, they didn’t. I’m looking through you, she said. Yeah, he said. Happy Thanksgiving to you.

The young man, who’d gone back to sexting with some fashion designer in San Francisco, peered at the woman, wanting to understand her story, her fall, but in a choose-your-own-adventure type of equation where he could play it out as a video game, taking on the role of a vampire that swoops in and sucks the life out of her without having to talk it out, downloading her story through her blood, now his. He certainly didn’t want to smell her, though she looked okay for a homeless woman, like she’d had a cute face in her twenties, even forties, and carried an aristocratic air, like she was from Paris or—no, Paris. But shouldn’t he treat her with a little respect? Like she lived on the street. The street. All she had was in these bags, so double fuck for her. He turned his music back on. The girl from San Francisco sexted back in quaggy San Franciscan fashion, My cunt is singing, I will survive...

She had grown out of her name—she’d told herself this so many times it was true. Names only confused the issue. As a child, what did she care about her name? She just wanted to be and she’d gotten that at last, aside from the interfering governmental and police forces. She lived without time, gladly and free. When tired, she slept. When she had to, she peed. When relaxed, she ate. Nothing mattered except the minute she was in. And because of her age and gender, she was constantly given things, even from other homeless people. Still, she used a hip pocket psychology to explain what she’d become, forever erasing what brought her there.

The 1 train would terminate in a destination appealing to her kind. People were allowed to sit all night in the Staten Island Ferry terminal, though they needed to clear every two hours for a security check. Battery Park? A designated tourist and rat zone only, even locals weren’t encouraged to be there—could someone who didn’t know better have a picnic next to those species, the fresh-faced throngs headed to Lady Liberty and Ellis Island, and the not-too-good abstract art projects? But it was at Franklin she would exit. Stash her stuff, as she knew the rotating station agents, and go to Moore Street, where this abandoned building marked for demolition miraculously still stood. She’d gotten the gate combination from another castaway who’d picked it and set two old mattresses on the second story a hundred yards away from each other, adding bright neon tape to outline enormous holes in the floor. This embittered man, who didn’t like the human race, except her, had gone to New Jersey for the holiday and wouldn’t be back till Saturday. She didn’t listen to all he said, too used to his jibes and weak come-ons, but when he let something important slip, she recorded it at once.

In the black of the day’s new darkness, she kicked at a fat rat’s shadow and went to her mattress, at the head of which stood a rickety chair whose back spindles were broken. She reclined on the droopy bed, using a wool sweater as a mattress liner, and unpeeled the paper-top off a tin full of linguini that someone placed on her cart last night sometime after ten. She finger-picked a noodle. The sauce’s rich butter and cream pulled her up, reminding her she hadn’t eaten all day, and she crossed her legs, removed a stolen restaurant fork from her jacket, wiped it with a napkin, and began to eat.

The wind picked up and whooshed through the gaps and holes on her floor and down from those above her. At least she didn’t have to fend off gawkers, outreach, police, and the ever-present deviants who would fuck a woman if she had no head. A fire engine from Ladder 8 on Varick blared and she tested the air but only came away with herself, the coagulated food, vermin, and muck. The man said they might have a month’s more reprieve because some insider who supported the squat told him the funding for construction had some hiccup. Maybe till the 15th, maybe the New Year. You’ll know when you get here, he said.

The wind roiled some newspapers to lift off the ground like flashing kites in the dusky light. She chewed the gelatinous noodles by rote, like her stomach just had to be plugged into food. She had few opinions about gastronomy—she’d once taught her charges that word—and ate things she never used to, like eggplant and tofu. A shaking spotted hand raised an unwieldy Evian bottle refilled hundreds of times since she’d found it in August. If she cared about anything it was drinking water. It held off disease and sickness and assured her body function. Once she’d carried a Campari bottle for months, proud of it not breaking, until she dropped it on her socked foot one night, leaving a dark Rorschach blot of pain she limped on for three months.

A magnificent crash around the corner. Another piece of the ceiling must have collapsed. She closed the food, put it back in its bag, and tied it up. With a toothpick, she combed her teeth, glazed eyes darting across the room with half their usual alertness. She slept best right after the initial dark—the later lonelier hours, the hour of the wolf and of hounds, had too many demons to gain peace. With the energy of the holiday depopulating the city, tonight was different—she had little cause in the reprieve. Everything had darkened and she brought out a small taper, affixing it atop a cheap chrome candle holder. Then she lit it with a moan after dusting the area of rat and mice pellets, something she had first put off out of greed for the new pure solitude, her last great gift. She lay back, musing at the flicking shadows. She powered on a small music thingamajig she’d found, using one earphone to hear a jazz album.

Many decades ago she’d lived in Amsterdam with her second husband, a high diplomat and attaché, during a year of Kennedy. She had so much rare and expensive jewelry to warrant special insurance—what a fuss. They lived in the redoubtable Willemspark neighborhood near the large rectangular evergreening Vondelpark, filled with softly still waterways and many Dutch Red Chestnuts and birches. A small mansion of intricate brickwork. Three stories, with a housekeeper and a cook, a piano room, a painting by Mondrian. The year she ruled there, she became a quasi French Lieutenant’s Woman, having two miscarriages on top of the two before (to cement her childless life), a surprising affair, and a widening expansion of her consciousness (she’d again chosen a man who needed to control her—never again!) as her sheltered years in New England fell away like brittle discolored leaves she once could not shed. As weapons turned the world inside out, other rumblings fractured the cultural and psychic bedrock. She’d matured away from her country and she came to accommodate something she had no control over—her fate. Fate had given her the type of beauty and intelligence easily coveted and she interchanged it for what she fancied—not so much experience as a kind of electricity that should never be thought vain, but parsimonious in not obviously having to whet every appetite she developed. As much as she thought life could instruct, it did not obviate her from experiencing any splendor. Again and again, she kept getting what she probably wanted, freely accepting attention, adulation, and a minor fame—and then she kept getting more of it, as her stuffy husband would view her askance over Eggs Benedict, watching as the beautiful bird transformed and rose higher into something clearly not meant for him. With no child and no connection beyond the name, his title suffered some as he became known as the husband of her, the American who speaks like Katherine Hepburn, but looks like Garbo. Who could be in Vogue and would be except for his position in the government. She—whom everyone wanted, pitying him his certain loss of her.

One December evening they went as guests of the embassy to a strange midnight concert to hear the rhythms of their countrymen. She’d not heard much jazz, not been exposed, though music had passed many of her hours. She’d played piano from an early age without distinction and then had some jaundiced years on the flute. Excitable, but out of love with him, she accompanied. Performance by the most grand musicians could throw off the tourniquet she always imagined pinioned on her soul. So much could go wrong up there, but it never did. Performers seemed to be filmed and not present, outside the realm of fallibility—she could not fathom how they crisply, expertly burst out, blood pulsing, while others watched or listened or both, waiting for triumph and disaster. The great conductors: Bernstein in New York, von Karajan in Berlin, Sir Colin Davis in London, were gods. Motion pictures were intriguing and she had her favorites. But Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster weren’t people magically in her space—they were distant and magnified on the silver screen, distorted. They spoke catchy words, but their manner was a little cold, a little unreal. Music had no antecedent, no story, it impressed by degrees, in the awing conceptions enfranchised notes spurred on sound; time in music didn’t govern, it shook the body into primordial understanding. She’d easily fallen in love with her husband because music did something for him as well, though he didn’t view it in such a spiritual manner as she, rather in some patriotic vein, where it uplifted and made one’s capacity for moral living larger. He’d mentioned jazz off-handedly, after seeing acts in DC semi-regularly by himself.

Why such a late concert? It was the second of two and to be up late on a Saturday instilled some chicness onto those who weren’t, except for their money and status, both false markers. Not everyone respected such a time but the band began playing early before everyone had been seated and after one peppy piece with simply too many notes, the saxophone leader went into his rendition of a tune she knew well. Hearing his hornbreath blow the words, she checked herself because even if it was on some level gimmicky, it seemed miraculous. This burly black: full face, full suit, pressing and pressing, fulminating in a way that Oscar Hammerstein and certainly goody goody Julie Andrews had no purchase on—exhorting? She didn’t know the word, but felt it. Do you like it? her husband asked. Sssh, yes. The long version of the short song went on and a stoic part of her started to despise it: the dissonance, the down and dirty, the unbridled quality, the racial swing. She felt disturbed. Long periods of sound in the other pieces held no meaning for her and felt hardly structured—yet, they did engage because she was mentally fleeing, upset. If she didn’t care she’d be asleep, eyes open. She couldn’t leave. On and on, the unseemly flow attacked, blasting through the detritus she fruitlessly threw back, leaving the notes to clash, their subsequent syncopation always freshly re-conjured. Where could this go? How could it even continue to thrive? Why would they be rewarded for it with money? She separately focused on each of the quartet’s members and then went back to the main man. Some pillar Michelangelo might have sculpted, an enormous rock vividly alive in more than its allotted space—dead at forty of cancer and drugs. She wanted to kiss the giant lips making that terrible beauty.

Halfway into the third song, she told herself the music was foolish. He might be a genius, but his music would only drive one to vice and after a few more measures of that song, which she’d later find out was “Mr. P.C.,” she felt sickened by her life of lies.

She could still hear the man’s music some fifty years later. Deep, dark, but incredibly clear. Its matrix carried more and more and she ultimately defined it as tender and fully compassionate, yet cooly uncalculated—round and whole, even if pain did exist. It still extracted an unmistakable flavor, like the boiling of bones.

Everything comprising her life then had ended, but she had this—a moment that made time miraculous. Something millions wished they could have experienced. The tame jazz in her earphone eventually crept back. She had to resume her life, which as lives went was difficult, but not intolerable. Everybody would want the story of how she lost it all and how she ended up here, in an abandoned building with whatever other indelicacies ready to be heaped on her. She didn’t like stories. They weren’t as valuable as people thought—only experience. Stories were simply antecedents of the real—travel, work, meeting people. So many lived by aperçus, as if they were all wannabe French philosophers, people she never read anyway. She had nothing to say, no advice and no hope for her future. She couldn’t live with people, but some remaining seed hopelessly yearned for companionship. At least someone she could look at without wanting to tear his heart from his chest, who didn’t tamp her urge to complain—he’d already be well attuned to the stalactites deposited about her perceptions.

After months and months of lengthened days, the nights had precedence, stretching more and more, as the earth rounded the sun, bodies ruling human time. There. Something still weighed. Didn’t that prove she did have a part in society? If she had someone to recount what befell her and what she thought about it—but she couldn’t help it. This was how she’d changed in her life, from a mouse to a lion, and finally a raccoon. A few gun-shy people were concerned but mostly to massage their own egos. They gave her things and listened to the litanies with cloistered, embarrassed ears. They didn’t know the moment they became uninterested, something keenly perceived at once, would singe her. But what else could she speak of? Her life, a constant battle—how could she not complain? Bitterness forever tinting her bright green eyes a shade darker. Just give me a funeral, she said to one of these people, a woman who worked at a CVS on the Upper West Side near her frequent staging ground. A thirty-two-year-old who commuted from the Bronx, she wanted to go back to school for nursing, but could never get the applications together on time. A slightly overweight woman who smiled often and told her that she herself had been homeless for a summer after a boyfriend beat her up and kicked her out of their Orlando apartment. This woman baked her things, cakes and homemade bread—she made double portions of her lunches during the week, some delicacy placed in a rescued Chinese takeout container and a brown bag, with a folded napkin and a plastic fork or spoon. On each occasion she said, Thank you, my dear, thinking about the giver’s own mother and wondering if they still had a relationship, though she never asked. And just last week, after the first freezing night of the winter (her feet still felt cold at nine in the morning, to remain chilled till late afternoon), she received what turned out to be shepherd's pie with a little less enthusiasm. Awake through hours of bitter cold, it suddenly didn’t surprise her that she could just die. Not that she should, but she could finally latch onto the honorable finale instead of another long subway trip, another night frozen. Fuck this world, fuck life. Thoughts she would never let into her public lexicon. And that cloudy morning, still fogged with cold, the young woman peered, waiting for the gracious phrase and wink she usually bestowed following the hand-off, but the old woman trembled inside because she was aware of her complicity, her involvement in another’s emotional well being. Just give me a funeral...she said quietly. Then uttered the very passive-aggressive New York type of plea again, with more seriousness. Just give me a funeral. A gloss on her own mother’s, You’ll miss me when I’m gone. Even with no sun in her eyes, she shaded them to see the youth in front of her—Jasmine, she came to learn was her name. I’ll be alright, dear. Don’t mind my little jokes. You get to work now, but Theresa wouldn’t move because she sensed a lie.

Really, dear, really. It’s frustration.

Jasmine then delivered what she’d turned over many times before, during her days at the register and at home on the couch, seeing a homeless person appear comet-like on her television shows. You can stay with me, Emma, adding her name in a loving, pitying way. You can have a couch. Stay for a few weeks, you can.

No, dear, please.

Jasmine hesitated. Wet-eyed, she said, I have to make sure. I can’t let something—Don’t hurt yourself, don’t.

No, no, and she patted Jasmine on her back. I won’t, I won’t.

Do you promise?

Yes, I promise you. Go on now, it’s after nine.

In Tribeca, she sat up cross-legged, again working a pick through every crevice of her teeth. Things which would remain. Maybe she’d spend the next weeks accepting death. Her bluster would eventually fail her. The end would be on its way, not because she had no one but because she had nothing left to accomplish.

The building creaked in the wind and she remembered her parents, briefly. Small, silent people who never wanted to be a bother. Whatever did they want for her? She wasn’t interested in the answer. In the end, it had all been enough. From the high to the low, or was it the other way? Had she arrived at one or the other?

Crow Jonah Norlander

OGOPOGO LIVES by Sheldon Birnie

August 25, 2021 · Fiction

It was Canada Day by the big lake and everyone was right fucked up.

After the fireworks show on the beach wrapped up, the crowd took to the streets. Things were getting messy. Drunk girls held on to each other, hiking miniskirts up around hips to piss off the wharf into the black waters below, howling. One fell in, came up splashing, laughing. Muscle dummies squared off in the road, blocking traffic, letting the blood out of each other. Strip clubs up and down the lakeshore were packed, dancers raking in the money hand over fist. A police helicopter circled above, spotlight illuminating scenes of depravity that would make Bosch blush.

Kevin and his buddies were right in the middle of it. Floating on waves of psilocybin and pilsner, they drifted from a backyard barbecue and booze up just south of the highway over to the beach to take in the beautiful explosions, then stumbled aimlessly along among the throng as it poured back through downtown. One buddy disappeared into a dance club, one popped into the peelers, another just drifted off, mumbling at trees and trying to open locked cars he thought might be his, until Kevin was alone again, swaying slightly in front of a street punk busking for change.

“We’re gonna be rich,” the big boy in patched pants and a sleeveless jacket sang, voice gravelly as the arid valley soil all around. The battered guitar he strummed upside down had the words “Mr Awesome” scrawled in Sharpie along the body. “Because the Ogopogo lives.”

“Fuckin eh,” Kevin mumbled, tossing the dude a buck before shuffling off, away from the echoing horns and sirens and drunken hollering towards a park by the water. The song’s expression of hope buoys him onward.

Squirrels chase each other up around and over the branches of an American elm. Crouched on a mattress in an alley, a man leans away from a dry handy to vomit on the hot concrete. Further up, among the aging bungalows, a couple are full on fucking on the hood of a beige Toyota Corolla.

The road crosses a stream dried up in the summer heat. Little more than a ditch, really, full of trash and brambly weeds and emanating a foul stank. How many such streams, sometime and former means of shunting moisture down the valley towards the big sink, had been paved right over or rerouted beneath concrete? Fuck only knows. But Kevin follows the one he’s stumbled across west until he hits beach access.

Blessedly, nobody’s fucking here. Visibly, at least. Dogs barking, Kevin flips his rotting kicks off, letting the grimy sand squelch dryly between his toes. He sits down where the black water laps the shore, shoves his feet into the cool wet void with a deep sigh. That’s the ticket.

Sounds of the city drift up the lake. The chopper, sirens, odd car alarm blaring, and drone of ceaseless traffic become background chatter, white noise.

“We’re gonna be rich,” Kevin hums, sipping warm soda and rum, wide eyes staring out at stars rippling off the water. “Because the Ogopogo lives.”

The lake is deep.

The lake is long.

The lake is wide.

Must be plenty of places for a big bastard fish or whatever to frolic or lay about down there. How long he stares, sitting there, Kevin doesn’t know or care to find out. He’s content, watching the interplay of light and dark, wondering if a prehistoric beast from the deep will emerge before his eyes or not. Isn’t counting on it. Isn’t disappointed when it fails to appear. Knows, if he were Ogopogo, he sure as shit wouldn’t be showing his face on Canada Day. No way José. Save that for the solstice. Or the equinox. A full moon, or maybe the new? Some pagan holiday, anyway, as ordained by the stars or the moon or whatever calendar the pagans planned their parties by. The alignment of the planets, perhaps?

Kevin wonders if Ogie ever gets lonely, cruising the depths of this primeval waterway? Is there a mate it has longed for, over the ages, who was lost, cut off in some upper channel, when the glacial flood waters receded? Does it pine, lowing in an age-old subsonic language, beneath the waves, for its long-lost lover?

There’s no way they’ll ever be reunited, Kevin knows. But does Ogie? Has it accepted eternal solitude, or does it hold out, hopelessly, for a miracle? Ten thousand years is a long time to pine. How does a monster as ancient as Ogie measure the passing of epochs?

Such solitude has Kevin feeling blue. Where has his love gone? Over the hills and far, far away by now. Of that he is sure. She told him that much, at least, when she left weeks earlier. What drove that love from him? Something akin to a change in climate, personal if not meteorological. Way it goes, he knows. The way it goes.

Would she return? She’d told Kevin not to hold his breath. So he won’t.

Kevin takes a long pull of warm drink, smacks his lips and gets back up to his feet. The sounds of the city have diminished, but not disappeared. Hours remain before the sun pokes above the valley to the east, though the sky is beginning to lighten.

To the north, a small mountain looms. A provincial or regional park of some sort—he’s never really been clear—with dusty trails snaking up to its peak. Kevin’s climbed it before, sober as a judge, and high as a kite, and most everywhere in between. From the top, eyes can see far and wide before the lake swings out of sight behind the hills in either direction.

Whistling the beggar punk’s tune, Kevin figures he may as well climb. See what he can see. Should Ogie or something of similar lost mythology pass by in the early light before dawn, could he spot it from up here? If not up here, then where?

He is off. Up, up, whistling away.

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SPLENDOR IN THE CORN by Kate Jayroe

August 24, 2021 · Fiction

I am such a hot, sad wraith. Open-mouthed, I sob in the park on quarantine walks. I listen to ‘Til Tuesday. I ramble as far as possible from every other person there. Fuck the Frisbee golfers. I’m processing the three most harrowing break ups of my life. I’d been with none of the people involved, save myself. One is the man I’d been sleeping with. A hot, aging punk with a scarred nipple from self-piercing as a teen in his parents’ kitchen. I liked to squeeze the scar tissue in bed between two digits, other hand busy down below. It ended because he does not fall in love. A sort of policy. It ended because he called me “Carolyn” on Friday the 13th, his own swollen digits inside me. It ended because I cried watching him sleep, knowing it was a mistake to have let it last as long as it had. Another, a best gal pal whom I called “wife” for years. Wifed me as well. A mutual She/They connection. You know. Nowadays. We slept together or not all over town and the world. Drank together. Gymed together. Bathed together. Ate salads with fried chicken. Ate ass and watched the Criterion Channel. Snorted ketamine. It ended because I began sleeping with the punk and she began sleeping with his best friend, a surfing therapist who named his dog after himself and brought crab dip to potluck type gatherings. The third: a kindly Midwesterner who did basically nothing. Once a year, he traveled across state lines for an annual event where I likewise was present and had crossed state lines in preparation. He sits crisscross applesauce all the other days in a cornfield, until his wife calls him home for supper. He sighs, looks around one last time. Then he gets up, dusts off his khakis, and crosses the threshold to a warm hearth. Some would call him spiritually touched. A holy man of modern times who cares not for wages or liquor. He leaves his marriage bed cold. But the cornfield! Warm with his breath. His tight, little buttocks. In a hungry vision in the park, the angel Gabriel tells me to go to the cornfield via tractor and seduce the man within. Gabriel says: Do not be afraid of the Frisbee golfers. In general, they are socially distancing at a proficient level. Intercourse among the corn is how you heal. Ride a John Deere for your journey. Enjoy the slow sights of a cursed nation. Nothing runs like a Deere. I understand you two have sporadically dry humped for several years while both attending an annual event which holds sentimental value in terms of content and locale. If you bag the final one, they’ll all be done. Mark my words. Gabriel’s haircut looks a lot like Aimee Mann’s haircut in the “Voices Carry” music video. The angel dissipates into a cruel, clear sky. Publicly visible menstrual blood dots my grey yoga pants. A consecrated mark upon my miserable flesh. I see Kansas. I see cows. I see COVID, dancing in the very air. Salome, before the silver platter. I see outdoor church services with The Word of God booming all around, nourishing the grass and torturing bees. I hear the tractor’s slow death as I approach Ohio’s edge. I ask Gabriel to help me make my country mission. The tractor goes kaput at the outskirts of my silken destination. Each ear has such girth. Morning dew smooched each tip. All these blooming cobs are tall sex incarnate and I feel something dropping deep in the deepest goddamned pit of me. Immersed in a labyrinthine patina of gold and green, I don’t know where to go. How long may I live off corn? Grilled. Creamed. Pops. Pop Secret. It has been hours or half of one. I lie down and nap, under the dumb watch of a caftan-wearing scarecrow. I awaken! The heat of the day. Shall I perish in this maze of desire? I’ve all but left hope, when I hear a rustle. A school of greasy teens emerge. I call out: Youths! Please help. I’m looking for the man who does nothing. It’s paramount we rut among the corn. They laugh in demon song. Good luck with that, says the one in front. You’re not far. Keep along this path. We see him each week and bring offerings. He wants nothing of our joy. The youths did not lead me astray. I shortly see khaki out the corner of my eye. His eyes, mouth closed. He breathes in the way we are instructed to breathe for optimal health. He is surrounded by offerings of the youths. Brazzers DVDs, Wild Turkey 101, whippets, fidget spinners, pop sockets, magnum condoms, greeting cards, wild flowers, a cheeseburger. Gingerly, I mimic his sitting and face him. Slow as a cat, he opens his eyes. He bares teeth. Well! He says. Well, well. Well. I stroke his face. He sucks my pinky. We nuzzle as old horses might. I kiss his lips. He gently puts a hand up. You’re great, he says. I can’t. This isn’t across state lines. Corn won’t allow it. Besides, you know there’s someone I love very much in a nearby warm home. You’ve made me ill with unresolved desire! I’m shouting. The angel Gabriel brought me here! We must rut! Please, give me your spirit. At least a 69. Here, he says. He slides a Brazzers DVD my way. An ear of this stuff is bigger than me anyways. If you’d like, I can sit here with my eyes closed while you bring yourself to climax. I think there’s a portable DVD player, nearby. Gabriel will understand. I cum so hard, I see Gabriel’s smile. My heartbreak rushes out of me. Silken waterfall. What now? I ask. We sit here, he says. Then, we go home. Corn, for dinner.

Crow Jonah Norlander

THE MASTIFF by Max Halper

August 23, 2021 · Fiction

“My life is over,” I said in the dark my first night inside.

A full minute passed. “Shut the fuck up,” said my cellmate.

A month later I hanged myself. I did it from the bunk with my undershirt. There was no pain. My cellmate slept through it. When he woke up I was so dead I seemed more a facet of the cell than an occupant. He looked at me and nodded, as if my body imparted some keen insight. He determined I had managed to escape, had bored a tunnel through the only wall in the prison they could not reinforce. Now I scrambled toward freedom, through darkness on hands and knees, driven by desperate hope, spying a glint of light, quickening—only it wasn’t light, but a trick of the eye, and the darkness twisted onward. My cellmate relocated my commissary to his side of the cell, and then sat on his bunk and waited for the doors to open for roll call.

The way time worked inside was tricky: it smeared, pooled. Coagulated. Time curdled in prison. Then again, it was possible that time worked like this on the outside too. My cellmate could not remember. Sometimes he counted in his head, to try and stabilize the time, to ground it. He counted slowly. If he stopped counting, or ran out of numbers, the time would disfigure. He counted then, there on his bunk, waiting for the doors, my body hardening beside him.

Four years later he was released. They excavated his property from storage and led him out through door after door. The doors locked shut behind him. It was late November. The sky was the same gray as the prison’s interior. A van pulled up to take him to the bus. He climbed into the passenger seat and the van drove down a road he remembered only vaguely, as if from a dream. In the side-view mirror, the edges and angles of the prison distilled into points and counterpoints. The gray sky crashed over it all and the road buckled. A car whooshed past in the opposite direction, full of people.

“Something happened,” the ticket agent said. “Down in the city. No buses that way.”

My cellmate shook his head. “I’ll just take whatever’s going south.”

“No buses south,” she said. “You’re going to have to wait.”

My cellmate stood aside. A television mounted to the wall ran ads for cars and drugs. A woman on a bench near the bathrooms gawped into her phone. A pair of children chased one another along the perimeter of the terminal, their sneakers squealing on the concrete floor. A teenaged boy leaned across the counter at the convenience kiosk and whispered to the teenaged girl tending the register. A man in a suit slept on a bench beneath the television, surrounded by suitcases. My cellmate tried to determine what each of them was in for.

An hour later the ticket agent announced that all buses were cancelled indefinitely. My cellmate went to the door of the terminal and waited for a guard to release it. It doesn’t work like that here, he reminded himself. It was cold enough to snow; the sky whorled off into tangled sheets of gray. A bus driver stood beside a concrete pillar, smoking. “Which way is south?” my cellmate asked.

The bus driver jerked his head.

My cellmate walked off without anyone’s permission. Something akin to homesickness gathered at the base of his skull.

He walked along the shoulder. The road essed through a corridor of rufous trees. Acorns skittered around his feet. He had a dream while still inside that he walked along the shoulder of a country road in late autumn. He didn’t know where he was going, or where he’d been. He just walked, my cellmate, then he woke up in his cell. He remembered this dream only now, and felt suddenly unbalanced, as if the whole thing had listed to the side. He counted in his head; when he ran out of numbers, he told himself, his eyes would open, and he would be back inside.

No trains running southbound. No trains running at all. It was too late to keep walking. My cellmate had the $160 he’d gone in with plus the $150 in gate money they’d handed him on his way out. He got a room at a motel by the station. The room had two twin beds. He sat on one, then the other. He watched the door. The room sloped endlessly in all directions. His shadow spiraled along his arms. That night he dreamed he crawled through a tunnel toward a guttering light. The tunnel emptied into his cell. He lay on his bunk and fell asleep and woke up in the motel. It was still dark. He parted the curtains. A light on the solitary telephone pole by the road revealed a veil of languid snowflakes. There were no cars in the motel lot. He drank from the faucet, pocketed a bar of soap from the shower. He waited at the door.

He walked south along the train tracks. Snow gathered in his hair and across his shoulders. Daylight stole uncertainly around the crests of the trees; sometimes it seemed to retreat, and grow darker.

White sky, blue air, purple trees. My cellmate could not feel his toes. One-thousand-nine. One-thousand-ten. A silence of geese scored through the falling snow. Ahead, the train tracks disappeared into the mouth of a tunnel at the base of a speckled mountain. One-thousand-eleven. My cellmate took long steps. His breath bled through the cracks in his lips. The mountain was affixed at its distance. One-thousand-twelve. He curled his arms around himself. One-thousand-thirteen. One-thousand-fourteen. The snow flitted. The mountain maintained its size and shape.

It was impossible to determine for how long he walked through the tunnel. A full minute. Twelve years. It was pitch-black. He felt along the cold, rough wall. He counted, but the distance between each number—One-thousand-four-hundred-twenty-four, one-thousand-four-hundred-twenty-five—was immeasurable. The tunnel twisted onward. Years ago there was a blackout in the prison. It lasted days. The inmates were not allowed candles, and the staff refused to part with their precious supply of flashlights. There was disconcertion. One of the inmates, Gideon, a cop-killer, suggested they all tell stories to pass the time. Most of them grumbled off to their cells. The few remaining gathered in the dark dayroom. Gideon asked who wanted to go first, but no one volunteered.

A dog trailed him along the train tracks. When he stopped, the dog stopped, expressionless in the uneasy snow.

The shops, restaurants, and single motel in Wallkill were closed. He slept in the stairwell of a stout brick building off the main street. A man came down the stairs, paused and looked at him, then left into the dark morning. My cellmate continued south soon after. The clouds broke apart, and the sky behind was pale. The train tracks ran along a ridge overlooking the highway and the river. Cars traveled only northbound. Further along the traffic hardened, until the whole thing came to a standstill. Where the river crooked sharply east, two jets screamed suddenly from the north, scored through the sky so low my cellmate ducked, and thundered off toward the horizon. Later, he beheld a swarm of helicopters affixed high overhead, black specks biding their distance. He felt assailable below.

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