FICTION Archives

HUNGER by Tyler Dempsey

May 10, 2020 · Fiction

Robbed.

The ski-masked man squeezed my biceps.

“Easy,” I said.

He went, “Get in, fucks,” and nodded toward a black SUV, gun under Eddie’s throat. “Don’t even think about it.”

Eddie called shotgun.

That was yesterday.

Eddie’s my roommate. I’m 34. Too old for a roommate.

I fucked up.

Eddie’s on the couch. You could say “living” there. Old vomit, pink—like brain blended with Monster energy drink—arced but didn’t clear the cushions. My cat’s purring caked in matter needing chemicals to remove.

Ed’s stomach jiggles from a tank top. A hairy muffin hidden for later. Pink on his cheek, he loads a pipe with drugs.

“You know. We’re broke. After the robbery. Where’d you get this? Sure, thanks. Robbed. Never thought you’d be here is the thing. The couch needs cleaned. Maybe you could get off a few months? Actually, I’m selling it. Do you like cats?”

He “salvaged” what we’re smoking from the cushions, he says, as if defending it. It vaguely resembles something I smoked a week ago.

“I have an idea.”

“If it’s moving out, to a shelter or a new house, I’m ears.”

“I’m hungry.”

I look at his cheek.

“I’m listening.”

“Saw this movie. Guys burglarize a neighborhood, taking only shit they find in freezers. Like ham the wife bought ‘cause it was five bucks, now hard as a dick. Not even the husband cares if it goes missing. We hit a few. Food for a month.”

“I’m listening.”

Eddie could afford something like rent this way.

“This might work, I was gonna sell plasma for my aunt, who needs plasma. I’m not clear how plasma works. Let’s do it. How are we gonna walk with hams? I’ll be at load-capacity quick.”

“I got a car.”

How long had he been up?

“Shotgun.”

It’s a limo. I fucked up.

Ed parks on a hydrant; a stream catching sunlight, surges forth.

“I fucked up, Ed. Can I have back? I’ll never see inside a limo again.”

“Nah. Sit here with me. I get distracted, alone.”

Eddie’s a drag.

“This is badass.”

In gear, he creeps to the next house, considers the sidewalk, but instead eases on Ron’s grass.

“My neighbor.”

In the side-mirror, two girls laugh at the hydrant liberally hosing April’s air. Ron—neighbor who shuffles his driveway each morning, waving. He’s an asshole as far as I’m concerned.

“Do we have to hit Ron? He’s not bad.”

Ed looks at the limo, still idling, like, I was hoping to not be long.

Inside, Ed grabs Ron.

“Hi, Ron.”

In Eddie’s hand, Ron’s head slams the corner separating the kitchen from the living room. I don’t think he hears me over the screams.

On a black walnut table, in Ron’s spotless-year-round living room—carpet and furniture exceedingly white—is a Monster energy drink.

“It’s Monster,” I say, pointing.

Ron’s head is soft, where there’s head at all—pumpkin innards reluctant to release seeds. Pink, with flecks of Ron’s skull here and there, circle the spot where a head would be.

“Fuck, Ed.”

I think, This is good. We can eat yogurt while we wait for ham to thaw, certain Eddie hadn’t thought of that.

Ed’s scraping a T-bone coated in decades of frost with a butcher knife under scalding water; the frost withdraws revealing rotten treasures.

I spread lasagna from a Pyrex on the countertop.

We dive in.

I’m so hungry.

Ed tongues tidbits while I grab a tray of eclairs. Down in the sink next to where he’s scrubbing it goes; sopping hands raise piles, cheeks bulge, pastry drips from lips. I use my hand as a shovel to plumb chocolate from corners of the pan softened from dishwater.

“Yummm.” Ed grins.

His neck muscles strain working the T-bone, reminding me of a bald eagle’s leg I saw in a museum.

I feel bad for Ron. He looks like an old mop you let kids tie-die.

Partially-frozen steak resists Eddie’s teeth. Something about everything, the whiteness of Ron’s living room, his green lawn. Makes you unbelievably hungry.

I go to the window. The girls from earlier are peeling out in the limo. Grass and mud spray Ron’s lawn. Red and blue reflect back and forth in the hydrant’s geyser.

I hear sirens.

I run to the fridge.

Green bean casserole going soft on top comes out. We descend. He mops dregs of curdled sauce and beans with bread. I explode a bag of Doritos. Ed laughs. Chips rain down. “There’s never enough in the bag,” I say.

Crawling in the crumbs, I hear a knock.

“It’s the police.”

“No thanks!”

I look at Ed struggling to get turkeys from the freezer in Ron’s garage. It’ll work if he drops one.

“Ed.” I remember raccoons dying in a situation like this.

Ed. Not a bad guy.

“We’re breaking down the door.”

I fucked up. Not my day.

“One, two—”

My day will come.

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JAKE’S DÉTOURNEMENT by Ben Robinson

May 6, 2020 · Fiction

The concrete slab lies resting at the centre of a clear perspex bowl that had until just now been full to the brim of cake mixture, a potential Victoria sponge whose life is suddenly cut short. As of mere seconds ago, the sugar, eggs, flour, and butter are splattered all over the tabletop and kitchen walls, the encounter played out in a split second flash of joyous rage and violence. The boy’s name is Jake. He was raised in an all-female household with four elder sisters whose relationship with him could best be described as fractious. Ever teased and chided over his ginger hair and awkward demeanour, bitterness has long since taken a hold.

“Ginger nut fell in the cut and frightened all the fishes

A fish came up and ate him up,

And that was the end of ginger nut.”

It’s his sisters Lotte and Helena doing the baking, joint champions of the annual village competition five years in succession with a sequence of unanimous victories. Their winning recipes are closely guarded and their time at the kitchen worktop is mapped out with the utmost precision. It’s this picture of control that Jake is determined to upset. To aid him in this objective, an off-cut of building materials from the garden patio has been smuggled into this chamber of baking excellence. The slab sits in wait silently beneath the worktop on the mezzanine level above the kitchen. The girls have been working on this cake since early morning and Jake’s anger is righteous. His act will represent, in accordance with Debord's theory, "the integration of present or past artistic productions into a superior construction of a milieu."

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SENIORS ON THE MOVE by Mike Itaya

May 2, 2020 · Fiction

I’m Old Boy.

In the assisted living, they give me the journal, for a doodling. I write camphor, cancer. Camphor, cancer. I don’t give a shit. I’m Old Boy.

It’s Tuesday. And right off, things go bad.

Somebody swiped Rundy’s anxiety candle.

“Who’s fucking with my aromatherapy?” He wants to know.

I used to drink. I don’t have the mind for it. My back’s fucked. I sleep out in the banquet hall, like a plank, waiting on them lunch ladies. I flash peepers and spot Rundy beneath the salad bar—guzzling stuff—working up to frenzy. He monograms his onesie with ranch dressing, and banishes a spare bottle to the nebulous domain of his nethers. He’s big into spiritual growth and looking to boogie. I double-up on Depends, in case he tries to slip me the big banana.

I got no man-panties. Nothing to hide a half-master. I seen them old gals in whale drawers, and make for jumping ship. It gives you pause. Each Tuesday. Thursday. Wednesday. You get the whole goddamn picture. I heist contraband from the staff kitchen. Heist a tomato-mayo sammie. Right beneath my gown. Wake up. With a tomato-mayo sammie stuck to my chest.

I hang with Rundy. My roomie. This tragic melon-brain. He traps rats. And makes chess sets. With taxidermied rats. It gives you pause. He’s whiplashed. Too many U-turns underneath the sheets. I whip hell on him, for telling lies on my momma. I’d rather not go into it. We’re the best of friends.

We burned down our lives in Homochitto, Mississippi.

We mess around. We don’t go to “Seniors on the Move.” Melvin, this drowning goon, crapped out during water aerobics. With the floaties. And a Baby Ruth. And an empty wallet. All this for posterity. During the Ouija séance—for Melvin—I make the board say, “Black Jesus,” which really gets the geezers riled and moaning.

They drag me to Dr. Hypnos, who dims the lights and gets “professional.” Talking all slow and sad, like he’s got a line on me. Wanna talk ten years gone. Like I’m some kinda folksy mumba-chumba with my Rascal scooter and my “FAARTS” vanity plate. My ten year plan is to be dead for at least nine of them. He says, “Something’s got to change,” and right now, that something feels a lot like me.

I see now, I got off on the wrong foot here, talking out my buns. Which chafes. ‘Cause if you’re going to say anything, you might as well say the motherfucking truth:

My line is cut.

The cable is buried.

Sickness got me here.

My life is gone.

I came off a spree once, and found my son dead in his room. His big old moon cat sitting on top of him, staring at me. Staring through my shame. I think shame broke my mind.

I burned down my life in Homochitto, Mississippi.

My boy: there was ruin in his face even I could not tell you of.

But I have lived through things that might have killed you. And I have sharpened tooth on stone. I will wait for you behind happiness. I will take you from everything that’s gone wrong.

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SAFE PASSAGE by Sharon Dale Wexler

May 1, 2020 · Fiction

Even though I know where the missing part of the toy gun is, I won’t tell. They haven’t asked. They ask each other but not me. Even if I tell them it’s under the kitchen table, that won't be the end of it; they won't settle down and sit at the table for the meal.

The dog smells like a boy on a camping trip. The breeder promised to deliver at three. Safe passage. Once inside, right away, the dog squatted on the floor.

The boy was only here every other weekend and, therefore, never showered. At first, the dog was supposed to be mine. But because I gave in, reluctantly, going along with the deceit, the dog only is mine when the boy's gone. I was the only one the boy wouldn't miss if I were missing. But before his father would buy the dog, I agreed.

The dog was my garden of Eden. Before Dude arrived, I knew no wrong. I didn't know what badness I was capable of. We are all looking to the dog for comfort we couldn’t find in food, TV, or our body.

The boy went on walks to the sewer, to sneak smokes, where the weeds grew higher than the house. See what you made him do, we'd fight over who cleans the dog’s vomit. We bonded by talking about the dog, worrying about its appearance and health. We had to be home soon because it's almost time to feed the dog.

Dude waits at the door to be able to be let out. I can hear him breathing behind the door, and there seemed to be a special relationship between us. His breathing on the top step and me thinking whether or not he would be safe from the boy let out. I don't mean to infer a relationship that was not there something supernatural unless it was there. For instance, if I said Dude find the leash and the leash was missing from its usual place in the drawer, and I couldn't find it, Dude would push me to the garage where I could find the leather strap hanging on the door opener.

The only noise in the house was from the dog barking to go out.

When the boy is over, I sleep in the room with the dog but cannot fall asleep. The dog can't find a comfortable place to lie down. I tried getting the dog to sleep in the bed. He circled around my side first; the father was sleeping on the other side or sideways with a pillow over his eyes.

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BROWN RECLUSE by Cody Pease

April 30, 2020 · Fiction

Their arrival to the reception is further delayed when he sees a spider on the tongue of his boot. Both men refuse to wear the boot now. The taller man traps the spider beneath a glass, as his partner tries to decipher what kind of spider it is. A brown recluse. The two men debate on how to dispose of it. The taller man offers to throw the glass far from the house. To let it sit in the snow and melt when spring comes. The shorter man is too kind and stubborn; he does not want the spider to freeze. He wishes he had the ability to cure the spider of its nature. To let it live in a dark corner of their house. Another pet. The taller man protests, then points to the neighbor’s porch. The neighbor’s windows are drawn shut. The shorter man finds an alcove beneath the porch, where it’s dark and warm. He shakes the glass but the spider remains still. He names the spider. This makes him feel better if the spider is meant to freeze. He leaves the glass sitting on the stone slab.

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ASSIGNATION by Joshua Hebburn

April 29, 2020 · Fiction

He bought flowers at the grocery store and put them in a wine bottle with a little water and an aspirin. He put them on the nightstand. There, for her, so the room wouldn't smell of him.

He took the ingredients from the plastic bag that said, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You in red block font on the side. He took out the butcher block. He smashed, peeled, and chopped the garlic. He halved, skinned, sliced, and chopped the onions. He blinked, he blinked, he blinked. He put the onions in a bowl. He put the onion bowl where it wouldn’t bite his eyes. He quartered the brussels sprouts and put them in a bowl. He put the big pan on the range and swirled olive oil supposedly from Tuscany on it. He salted and peppered the steak. He ate a raw brussels leaf.

She didn't arrive. From the kitchen, through the living room, he went. He sat on the bed. He took the flowers from the bottle and drank the aspirin and flower water. It didn't really make him feel anything, but it was something different to do. It forced him to make a face. He’d found, but would never acknowledge, that he could do almost anything if he was alone and he stopped imagining somebody.

A little while later, he put the flowers back in a bottle with water, this time, for himself.

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FISHSPLAINING BAUDRILLARD by Faye Brinsmead

April 28, 2020 · Fiction

The robo-guppy came in a tank with LED lighting, soothing ocean sounds, and coral reef background wallpaper. Proven stress-buster, Bernie said, handing me the box. There was some study in some journal. After 10 weeks of fish-watching, 75 percent of the subjects flushed their anxiety meds down the john.

I took this as a hint he didn’t want to hear any more about writer’s block, impostor syndrome, the library’s overdue loans policy, or anything else connected with my PhD on Baudrillard.

He looks sinister, I said. Those mean little eyes. Must be in on the techno-gadget revenge plot. I took Baudrillard literally in those days.

After christening the guppy Jean, I ignored him. Maybe it was ingratitude that drove Bernie away. There were other sources of discontent: the hyperreal hair clump in the shower drain, my preference for synthetic food.

When we finally had the we have to talk talk, his reasons surprised me. I feel like the you I knew has been mummified in layers of French philosophy. Nothing you say is your own words anymore. Just some quote from some dead dude.

Given his fondness for citing scientific publications whose names he couldn’t remember, I found this ironic. Plus, it amused me to think of myself as a postmodernist quote-machine simulating Bernie’s girlfriend.

I let him have the TV, bed, couch, table, fridge, ironing board, and vacuum cleaner. Simulations like Jean and me are low-maintenance, I said. He declined the pop art poster of Baudrillard, saying he felt unworthy of Saint Gizmo. It saddened me to think his prolonged and free education had been a waste of my time.

I rented a room above a pub with a fine view of overflowing rubbish skips. Relax, it’s only simulacrum trash, I joked to Jean on putrid summer evenings. I was getting into the habit of throwing witty little squibs at him. It made me feel better about my post-nearly-everything condition.

At night, Jean and I juddered to the cover-band beats of Eagle Rock and Highway to Hell. I started talking (yelling, actually) while I typed. It helped with focus, and created the illusion of an audience.

The hypermarket turns every theory (including the theory of the hypermarket) into dentures more viscerally real, more horrifyingly alive, than the mouth that contains them.

Like a tent revivalist preacher, I was high on my own rhetoric. The less it meant, the more wasted I got.

One night, in a lull between Beds are Burning and Scarred for Life, Jean said, quietly but distinctly: You don’t understand the role of the technological object in the transition from modernity to postmodernity.

Wowsers! I don’t know why I kept up the bantering tone. Why don’t you explain it to me? Go on, fishsplain it.

Jean delivered a mini-lecture on Baudrillard’s position and my failure to grasp it. He sounded like a toothless person talking through a snorkel in a cyclone, but his analysis was relentlessly clear. I was crafting a jokey compliment when he added, Forget Baudrillard.

There’s a critique of Baudrillard called that, I said. I reference it in my thesis.

He gurgled impatiently. That isn’t a quote. Well, it is, but it exceeds the function of quotation. It’s a command. Forget Baudrillard. I’ve outBaudrillarded him. There’s a Linux PC in my brain cavity. A hydraulic pump moves my tail. If you’d bothered to unpack the remote control, you could manipulate me from 10 meters away.

The whole pub was screaming Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again. Or maybe they were lip-syncing to synthesized screaming.

I looked up to Saint Gizmo for guidance. Forget Baudrillard, mouthed the pop art Baudrillard.

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AT LEAST IT WASN’T ME by Andy Spain

April 27, 2020 · Fiction

George arches his back and reaches for the ceiling, fingers fully splayed in morning praise pose. His wife lumbers around him with a groggy scowl. “Great, gonna be late again,” she mumbles and bangs her leg on the bed frame, cursing softly as she clutches her shin.

George winces and edges past her. “At least it wasn’t me,” he thinks.

Strolling into the kitchen, George rubs his eyes and smiles at his two sons as they scurry around the breakfast table. The younger one waves hello, over-pouring milk into a glass. White cascades race down the cabinet edges and splash on the hardwood. The older boy bends over to help wipe it up and smacks his head on the edge of the counter, upending a dish of dry cat food as he staggers and collapses. He clutches his temples and whines softly.

George shakes his head and presses his palms to his face. “At least it wasn’t me,” he says, and zips up his windbreaker.

As he opens the front door, he sees his daughter drop to her knees on the lawn and scream, “Wait!” Her shoulders wrench with heavy sobs. A rust-streaked school bus putters down the street and rumbles around the corner. She twirls her backpack overhead and slings it at the house in a high arc. George chuckles as she stomps past, vigorously wiping tears from her cheeks.

“At least it wasn’t me,” he whispers.

Frank next door slams the hood of his sedan with both fists. The car sputters and lurches an inch backward, rocking gently. “Damn thing won’t move! Gears are stripped, maybe the transmission fluid’s low or something,” Frank shouts. “Like I have time for this in the morning.” He throws his hands up and kicks the bumper.

“At least it wasn’t me,” George says under his breath. The garage door hums open behind him and he steps to the side, waving to his wife as she reverses down the driveway. Dazed and distracted, she stomps the gas instead of the brake and blasts into the street. A hulking garbage truck plows into the driver’s side door in a screeching barrage of glass, steel, and smoke. The twisted wreckage whirligigs across the asphalt and wraps around a maple tree before barrel rolling down an embankment into a storm-water pond.

“At least it wasn’t me,” George says as he wipes his forehead and trots to the curb, whistling.

He scoops up the newspaper and flips it open. The front page headlines read “10,000 Dead, 20,000 Missing After Explosion” and “Poisoned Water Supply Responsible for Untold Calamity.” George closes his eyes and exhales sharply. Like a mantra, he repeats, “At least it wasn’t me. At least it wasn’t me.”

The garbage truck driver jumps out, chest heaving. He snaps his fingers at George and shouts, “Hey, buddy, you gotta—”

Frank’s car suddenly revs up and skids through the yard with a mechanical growl, clipping the garbage man and corkscrewing his legs underneath the rear wheel. Both ankles are shattered as he’s drug into the street. His jumpsuit, lacerated across the thigh, reveals shorn skin and pulpy flesh around exposed bone.

George hugs his arms to his chest. “Ooh, boy. At least it wasn’t me,” he says.

Neighbors stumble over their lawns to survey the damage, hands at mouths, bathrobes hanging loose. Dorris from across the street tiptoes to the sidewalk with a half-peeled banana in her hand. One glance at the garbage truck driver and she shields her eyes. George steps into the road waving both arms and calls out, “Hey, at least it wasn’t me!” just before an ambulance swerves to a squealing stop and pins him against Frank’s car. The siren blasts a single belated wail. George howls like an animal and paws at the grill.

An EMT appears at his side and kicks away some debris; another races to the stormwater pond. George looks down at his torso and grins feebly as he imagines hot butter smeared on toast. He caresses his cracked ribs and whimpers a mélange of unintelligible gibberish. The EMT tries to listen but discerns nothing. He lowers George to the ground and cradles his head.

I drift up from the body as it writhes and curls into a spent husk. The natural colors drain from the scene, rendering monochrome earth and desaturated clumps of blood and gristle. The chrome fenders blur and lose their shine; prolonged screams stretch further and diminish into a single resonance. The body’s final exhalation barely upsets two blades of grass.

As my silent and numb ascension accelerates, tugged upward or outward or elsewhere by a celestial summons, I take one last pitiless glance at the empty, ashen remains and think, “At least it wasn’t me.”

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BODY BETRAYAL by Crow Jonah Norlander

April 26, 2020 · Fiction

When I reached the age at which my older friends started to complain about their bodies falling apart, mine really did. My infant son picked up a smooth piece and used it to soothe his gums. My wife palmed another, soft for warmth and whispers. Mom grabbed some with more defined edges to help set up her printer, while one other bit of me barely holding its shape looked on as dad skated around backwards. My boss’s part sat around ignored, waiting to get fired. The chunk of me attending to the Executive Board made the motion to call the question, voted in favor of the decision to rename ourselves the Steering Committee. We were unanimous in our desire to dispense with hierarchy. There’s some left to be claimed if anyone’s interested, if someone can think of something to do with it.

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DINNER by Christopher Linforth

April 25, 2020 · Fiction

At that time in our lives, we rose at dusk for the feeding shift. Still in our underwear, we crept downstairs and into the kitchen. Shiny black bugs skittered across the tile floor. The lazy cockroaches remained on the counter and in the tinfoil containers stinking of rotten noodles; a few silvery beetles disappeared into the seal of the refrigerator. In the living room our mother railed at the television, at the caregiver exiting the house. We heard calls for dinner, thuds on the floor, shouts for our dead father. We rubbed crust from our eyes, then surveyed the leftovers on the floor: the cartons of moldy coleslaw, the potatoes sitting in an old washing machine drum. Our mother wanted something to ease the eternal pain in her stomach. She cried about it every evening, said it was caused by our father’s death. His coronary was our fault, she claimed. Even now, we could hear her saying that he had despised us, that raising twins had broken his spirit. He had spiraled into his own world; he desired food, every bit of it in the house, and she now carried on his legacy. We pawed through the cabinets, then the refrigerator. We slapped a slab of raw chicken on a plate, sprinkled blue crystal salts onto the pinkish skin. We slipped into the living room, saw our mother’s bulbous silhouette. The television flashed commercials: fat burgers and buttered shrimp. She jabbed at the remote control. The volume ramped up. The bass rumbled through her chairside buckets of seed packets, the fruit crates stuffed with newspapers and women’s magazines. Dolls toppled off the bookshelves. Her possessions were part of her, she enjoyed saying, but we were not. She yelled for us to hurry. We looked at the slimy chicken breast again, second-guessed the blue crystals. Our mother’s favorite gameshow came on the television and she roared for her food. We’d had enough. We sneaked closer to her. Ammonia stung our noses. Beside the foot of her recliner sat a line of soda bottles filled with urine. A string of Christmas lights lay around the bottles, around the skirt of her chair. We cooed: Mamma, Mamma, Mamma. We offered her the plate and she snatched it from us. Leave, she said. I want to enjoy this. She used to say she was a proud mother. She used to look to see what she was eating.

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