GIRL ON FIRE by Neal Suit

The first of the silvery sequins that grew and dangled from your skin appeared on your left shoulder, forming the shape of a crescent moon. I examined the sparkling protrusions rising near your collar bone, squinting as they glistened under the lamp.You booked an appointment with the dermatologist. They gave you a cream and told you to come back in a week if it hadn’t cleared up. They took pictures to show their colleagues and friends and the internet. They fawned over how you shined.Sequins sprouted on your arms, legs, neck, back, and forehead. Walking made you shimmer. The sequins not only reflected light but generated it, emitting an ethereal radiance. Your light seeped under our doors and billowed from our chimney, its slivers spilled out from our windows. People gathered to see the majestic illumination, took pictures and videos, posted them online and claimed you were a gift from God, a genius, an aspiration.Sequins soon covered your entire body, each of your movements a cacophony of glittering fire wheels, a dancing forest of whirring diamonds. I wore sunglasses everywhere I went, even when I showered or sought refuge in the garage. In the pitch black of midnight, our house remained alight. I covered you in a thick, wool blanket. The glare was still like shards of glass piercing my optic nerves. The blanket burst into orange flame, sputtered into black, and disintegrated into gritty, dark powder. You caught our bed on fire, the heat from your reflection incinerating the wood frame and synthetic fibers of the sheets. I could not hold or touch you for fear of being singed, my skin burned to blisters.Throngs assembled outside our house, hoping for a glimpse of you. When you left the house, crowds followed. Restaurants seated you at their best table without a reservation, a waiter standing by with a fire extinguisher in case your reflection combusted the table, the walls, the wine, the other customers. You were invited to red carpets, after parties, and award shows. Newspaper and television reporters called you a national treasure, a celestial being, a glimmering example of what can be achieved, what all young girls should strive to be. Fashion designers tried to sculpt dresses and gowns and jeans and blouses to simulate your luster, the marvel of your shine. All of them fell short of your grandeur and knew it.You worried that the only reason anyone liked you was for your sequin skin. You worried that the sequins would dull or fall away. You had nightmares that someone grew diamonds for skin, another ruby flesh, overpowering your shine, outdazzling you. Your brilliance grew. Your bright glow created a veil of blindness, even for you. Everyone stood back, averting their eyes, seeing only the blur of light, unable to get close for fear of burning their skin and eyes, being reduced to ash. The most they could hope to see is the remnant of phosphorescence from where you had been, the scorch marks on the concrete where you had stood, the remains of a dying star. All the while they muttered to each other, “Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she perfect?”

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SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE! by Rich Giptar

The first time I ever heard about Matthew, Mom was filming us on her Nikon D5300 and trying to get us to play this stupid game for her YouTube channel. The previous day she had filmed our reaction to her telling us we were getting a new brother or sister. We had been in a good mood then, ready to whoop and jump in the air and cover our mouths with our hands and run out the room. The bit she was filming that day was meant to be sequential, but Dad, a moron, had put our clothes from yesterday in the washing basket instead of spraying them with Febreze and folding them on top of the vasselier like he was supposed to. I had to wear this stinky, crumpled Ralph Lauren football shirt and Elise had to wear this stinky, crumpled Ralph Lauren pin-striped dress. My parents were very faithful to Ralph Lauren because it was where they got the idea to adopt from overseas in the first place, out of an article about a child model for Ralph Lauren, who had been adopted from India. The article was still on our corkboard. The title of the article was ‘SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE!’ 

Mom shoved a scratch-map towards us with the hand that wasn’t holding the camera and asked us to guess where our little sibling might be from by scratching out different countries. It was laborious. Elise scratched out the UK, and I scratched out Australia, and Elise scratched out Sweden until Mom got irritated. Dad pointed out a country that was the shape of an Airheads candy. Because it was a scratch map, it didn’t have any names on it. 

I was editing with Adobe Premiere on Mom’s computer when she got back from the airport with Matthew. We were going to film the first time we met him, but it was easier if it wasn’t the real first time so we could plan it. Elise ran and opened the front door but something was wrong. My first thought was that he came from a people that was extremely tall, like the Dinka people of South Sudan, because he was taller than Mom. But it turned out that he was just old. It obviously wasn’t what Mom wanted, because toddlers got more clicks, but she had been teasing this for weeks and had a brand deal so in the end she just had to take whatever she could and move on.

‘Hi,’ said Matthew. 

I thought he must be half Black, half Chinese because he wasn’t Black or Chinese. Unless he was…Muslim? Elise and I shook hands with Matthew and then he helped me edit a video of his gender reveal on Adobe Premiere. I was holding a large balloon filled with blue powder which Elise stabbed with craft scissors. When it popped the powder sprinkled over us like a Pokemon stun-spore animation.

Mom was disappointed because she had to scrap a lot of video ideas, like teaching Matthew English. The thing is, Matthew was actually really good at videos. He was spontaneous and could do cool stunts, like fifty cartwheels without getting out of breath. He said it was because he was raised in a mountainous atmosphere so the air down here went in really smooth and easy. Mom said, ‘I’m not trying to be David Dobrik.’ 

Matthew taught me a lot of useful things, the first two of which were how to clean your nose out in the sink and how to make your hand into a boat shape so you could eat without using cutlery. He also showed Elise and me how to play tigers and goats. First, you had to make a grid of thirty-two isosceles triangles. We made a huge grid in the yard out of rope and twenty Ralph Lauren promotional T-shirts. We needed one more tiger. Mom came out into the yard. ‘Be a tiger! We need a tiger!’ Elise yelled at her. 

‘Or you could be a goat,’ I said.

‘What?’ said Mom. She looked angry.

In the end, Dad was a tiger. 

Matthew got a job at the computer repair store so he could save up for community college. He actually had a lot of qualifications already, but they weren’t valid in America. He bought a car and sometimes brought Elise and me along on trips to the Asian supermarket to buy Lao Gan Ma and Bombay mix. 

Timi haru kasta chau?’ the shopkeeper used to say to us.

Hami sanchai chum,’ we said back.

Dad used to be the one who was behind the camera, but after he started going on more weekend work trips, Mom made Matthew the camera man. He was also the donkey-man. One day we were hiking along the Bison trail and Matthew had to carry a colossal backpack with a million changes of clothes in it so Mom could take a lot of photos and eke them out over the next month on her Momstagram. 

Mom found a boulder she want to take some photos with and asked us to climb on top. I could do it easily but Elise looked like a crazy squirrel trying to get up there in Keds, swinging this dumb Barbie-colored baguette bag prop. Mom rolled her eyes. It was funny ‘til it wasn’t because she ended up slipping and crunching her ankle. Matthew had to scoop up Elise and run with her back down the trail with the obese pack still bumping up and down on his back. Mom scooped up the baguette bag before she followed.

We went to the ER and had to wait on this gross foamy line of chairs. Mom started sneaking the camera out and zooming in on Elise’s face and then zooming back out and then zooming in on her twisted ankle. After like an hour of waiting she said ‘Hell,’ and then grabbed Elise’s arm and tried to make her hop over to a ward and lie down in an empty bed for the clickbait. She was dragging Elise and Elise didn’t want to be dragged and was leaning the other way and they ended up crashing onto the floor. A lot of nurses came and stood in a disapproving circle around them like nuns. After that we stopped speaking to Mom and Mom stopped speaking to us. She posted a broken-heart emoji on Twitter and started taking Dad on expensive dates downtown. 

For Matthew’s eighteenth birthday, we pooled our pocket money together and bought him a Canon EOS M6 Mark II. He also had some presents for us. They were adoption papers with our names freshly printed across them, and two airline tickets. We were finally going to be able to leave Trump’s America behind, and pick fresh golden raspberries off wild bushes. We were going back to Matthew’s homeland.

‘Your parents have agreed,’ he said, ‘and they’ll come and visit on vacations.’ We nodded happily. Mom and Dad were away in Guatemala. They were trying to find a new orphan there, a young one, with some modelling potential.

At the airport he bought us chicken nuggets and Capri Suns. Elise propped her ankle up across two chairs and rested her head back in Matthew’s lap. I leaned onto his other side. I felt content and languid, like a dog. 

‘I love you, Matthew,’ I said. 

He put his arm around me. ‘My name isn’t Matthew,’ he said. 

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SOMETHING SERIOUS by Austin Putty

For whatever reason, I didn't want to lie to myself and say it wasn't cheating. No matter how undecided I was about Glenn, whether I was using the evening as a test to see if I really loved him or not, the fact of the matter was that I had agreed to the blind date and had therefore opened myself to the possibility of cheating. Of that in itself, I was undoubtedly guilty, but guilt, oddly, wasn't the emotion that came over me—it was irritation. That feeling was blown away, though, the moment I shook my date's frosty, glistening hand. 

My date was a hulking figure shaped in three spherical lumps. He introduced himself as Derek, and I told him I was Tushara. We were at a hibachi grill. When he sat down, he took off his mistletoe-patterned scarf and bowler hat. I slid into the chair next to him, still a bit stunned. I had a suspicion that, underneath that beige turtleneck he was wearing, he had buttons going down his chest. His carrot nose was pierced, and I was surprised to find myself liking it. The rest of him was harder to swallow. 

My date was a snowman. Like, a real, actual snowman.

Still, Derek seemed well-mannered enough. He ordered a water with extra ice. I got saké, warm. A delicate Chinese fiddle played over the restaurant’s speakers, its melody broken by the clatter of plates and silverware. Waiters who passed couldn't help but slow their gait to look at him, to say much less of the dinner-goers at their tables. I didn't like all the attention he drew. It was embarrassing, and it made me want to leave. 

After taking a drink, Derek cleared his throat and turned toward me.

"To address the elephant in the room, there’s nothing magical about the hat. I’m just bald underneath."

I forced a laugh, bad as the joke was, then took a sip of my saké to keep from rolling my eyes. "Solid icebreaker," I said, not intending for it to come across as sarcastic as it did. The night was already so much weirder than I'd imagined it. I couldn't even cheat like a normal person. In my whole life I had never cheated on anyone, so whatever this date was turning into felt karmic.  

"Thanks," he said. He patted his forehead with a napkin. "Any questions about my, uh, corporal situation? I know it’s a bit of a shock."

"I'm not even sure what to ask," I said. It was hard to look him in his eyes. They were two beady coals, right there plumb on his otherwise guileless visage. It was unsettling. 

"It's fine. You don't need to force yourself. I know it takes some getting used to," said Derek. He filled the pause with another sip from his glass. 

I pulled my phone out of my purse and sent a flurry of question marks and angry emojis to Mary, the co-worker who had set us up. She had asked me the other day how things were going with Glenn, what our Christmas and New Year's plans were and so on. Mary tends to get her hopes up for me in a way I find annoying, so I'd lied and told her I'd broken it off with him. When she asked me why I had dumped him, I gave her part of the truth—that he had asked me to move in with him, and that I didn't want things to go any further than they already had. It wasn't exactly a lie since I had been leaning in that direction. I still hadn't given Glenn an answer. 

Anyways, I told her I didn’t do blind dates on principle, but she kept pushing after the story about Glenn. She said Derek was a friend from the north who had come down on business —an equivocation if I'd ever heard one. If I were to get up and leave him at the restaurant, I knew I would never hear the end of it from her. I didn’t have many friends left at work. I won’t pretend that wasn’t my fault. 

"So, how long have you been working with Mary at the preschool?" asked Derek. I kept my gaze focused on the lotus-themed wallpaper hoping to get through as much of the conversation—and the night—as possible without having to look at him. I was already being rude, so what did it matter?

"Pretty much since I graduated," I said. 

"College?"

"Mhm-hmm. Going on about three years now."

"Working with kids is difficult," said Derek. "I'll bet you're really passionate about your work."

"No. I figured out I don't like kids." 

"Should a preschool teacher be saying that?"

I shrugged. "I hate kids and the kids hate me."

Derek was quiet for a moment. Then he snorted. "You're funny. Mary's a little snarky too. Makes sense you two would get along."

"I tolerate her." I looked down and noticed my legs bouncing, so I crossed them. "How do you know Mary?'

"You could say we grew up in the same neighborhood." 

"Did Mary... build you?" I asked. I felt my face grow hot at the stupidity of the question, of the situation. 

"No," Derek said with a laugh, "but I did spend a lot of time with her whenever school let out."  

"Interesting," I said, although I was completely uninterested. In fact, the answer left me even more confused and irritated. I picked up the menu and wondered if Derek would pay for me. Surely, he would. He seemed like the type, and I deserved a free meal out of the night, at the very least.

"I’ve never been to a place like this before, where they make the food right in front of you," said Derek, smiling. "I’m excited."

My eyes were glued to the menu. "I’m excited for you," I said. The conversation was headed for another stalling point when the chef appeared at our table and began to put on a show of flipping knives. Derek watched, an expression of wonderment on his face, but something about it seemed strained. I heard a rhythmic ticking noise, though what it was I couldn't place. The chef tossed a bottle of cooking oil in the air, caught it, and squirted its contents across the grill. He brought out a lighter, gave it a flick, and the oil burst into a plume of flame in front of us. 

Though his body was already pure white, Derek seemed to pale. He raised the two twigs that formed his eyebrows, his mouth slightly agape. "Wow," he said, and he began to fan himself. It gave me an idea about the ticking noise. I looked behind Derek’s chair and, sure enough, he was dripping water from his backside onto the floor. 

"Are you okay?" I asked. It came out quieter than I meant it to, as if he were a child who had wet himself and I was trying to be discrete so as not to humiliate him. 

Derek jolted upright in his chair. "I'm fine. I'm good. Something wrong?"

"Well, it's just that you're..."

"What? Something in my teeth?" he said. His grin was polite, but the corners of his mouth were tense. 

"You're dripping." I felt embarrassed saying it, for some reason. Derek's façade broke for a millisecond, and his lip twitched. 

"Really?" he asked, turning around to check. "I hadn't noticed."

"As long as you know," I said. Had I known what was about to happen, I wouldn't have let him off so easily, but what did I know of talking snowmen? I don't tell diabetics how to control their blood sugar, so why would I nag a snowman I had just met over his body temperature?

"Appetizers?" the chef asked, and Derek and I agreed to shrimp and rice, no eggs for my portion. As the chef went to work chopping onions and pushing around clumps of short grain, the heat of his culinary performance soared. He erected flamethrowers and volcanoes out of his ingredients, and then, when they were piping hot, launched them playfully toward our plates and mouths. A flung piece of shrimp lodged itself into Derek’s chin like a harpoon, the steam allowing it to burrow deeper after impact. 

The chef, seeming a bit unsure how to deal with the situation, looked at it and said, "Now it’s shrimp on ice!" Derek laughed in good humor, but he was grimacing. I wondered how much more he could take, why he was trying so hard to make a good impression. I had been sending him nothing but bad signals. 

Derek’s patience with the chef’s unintentional torture and my cold attitude reminded me of Glenn, in a way—how his selflessness always made things more uncomfortable than they needed to be. Mary had told me the other day that it had taken her husband a week to notice she'd dyed her hair a shade lighter. Not Glenn, though. If I was quiet for so much as a second, he’d ask me what was wrong. When I stayed over at his place on the weekends, I couldn’t even change into a new T-shirt without him feeling the need to tell me I looked pretty in it. Maybe he sensed I was getting cold feet about us. And regardless of the thought behind it, it’s kind of dumb to compliment someone for wearing pajamas, isn’t it? 

Glenn’s a nice man, and, at first, I thought his fussing over me was cute. I’d been in a string of casual relationships for a while, so when Glenn came along, I thought I was ready for something serious. But the more time we spent together, the more Glenn’s concern became smothering, his deference annoying. When I told him I had started weekly therapy, he grabbed me all suddenly and started whispering sweetly how proud he was of me, how good and courageous my decision was. I didn’t know if I had a boyfriend or a second therapist. 

Still, there’s something about Glenn I couldn’t get away from. He’s brave, I think, in ways that I’m not. The kind of bravery that lets you do karaoke sober. He’s generous, adventurous, open-minded. When we spent a weekend in New Orleans back in August, he gave a ten-dollar bill to every street performer we came across, even the suspicious drummer kid smoking a roach outside Jackson Park. Nights like those, Glenn could be the best person in the world.

It was easy to fantasize about our breakup and whatever came after when I was alone, but I always felt weak when I was with him, and I would start second-guessing everything. That's probably the thing I hate about myself the most—I'm never cynical enough when it matters. 

Poor Derek was trickling, but somehow he and I had made it through the preparation of the main course. The chef lit up another oil splatter to clean the grill, and Derek endured it wearing that same pained grin. Singe marks speckled his arms and sagging dimples. 

"Buddy loves to kick up the temperature, doesn’t he?" said Derek.

"Are you sure you're okay?" I asked. "Yeah.” Derek’s eyes widened, and he nodded vigorously. “Don’t worry about me. He’s turning the grill off and we’ve got our dinner here. Let’s go ahead and eat." 

Derek lifted a spoonful of fried rice to his mouth. In an instant, his snowball hand slid off his wrist and plopped down like a blob of yogurt, spoon and all. A middle-aged woman eating tempura in the booth across from us let out a sharp gasp. Everyone in the restaurant turned and froze. Our chef, who had been in the middle of wiping down the grill, looked over to the manager at the front of the restaurant for rescue. The manager only shook his head and ducked behind the lectern. I stared at Derek's mushy hand resting atop the mound of fried rice on his plate like an overzealous dollop of mayonnaise. 

"God, this is so embarrassing," muttered Derek. His idiot smile finally disappeared.   

I found myself scooping Derek's slushy hand off his plate and putting it into an empty cup. 

I locked eyes with the manager as he was peeking over the lectern. I mouthed, "Check, please." 

***

Lately, Glenn had been pushing for us to get to know each other’s families more. His family was small—he’d lost his parents when he was young, and both he and his sister had been raised by an older aunt. I think it would have been easier if it was a big family. I come from a big family, so I can trust in generational distance and my louder cousins to keep things superficial, but Glenn’s family is claustrophobic. I can't ask Glenn if I forget someone's name. There's only three of them. And as much as he wanted me to get along with them, I didn’t want to spend all my Sunday afternoons with his nosy aunt and hermit sister. 

I thought about how I might end things with Glenn. Glenn and I had never told anyone, nor did we speak about it much, but we had begun as a one-night thing, originally. For me, Glenn had sprung into existence from the corner of a bar. I figured, at first, that was where I would eventually return him. He was good in bed, so I replied whenever he texted me, and Glenn pushed our relationship along from there. He was the one who had asked us to become exclusive, he was the one who had changed our dates from coffee shops and bars to sit-down restaurants and weekend trips, and he was the one who had asked me to move in with him. Wouldn’t it be fitting then if I ended things by slipping out of his life as easily as he had slid into mine? To tell him that I had cheated on him with a gentlemanly, bohemian snowman because, like I had always tried to tell him, I wasn’t cut out for anything serious?

I feel like I’m misrepresenting Glenn, or maybe it's that I can only say how he acts when he’s around me. He teaches math at a Catholic high school. He’s an assistant coach on their football team. I’ve been to some of their games, and I’ve seen Glenn chew out his students in front of the crowd, in front of their parents and siblings and friends. God knows who else. The Glenn on the sideline who spits and yells is not the one I talk to every day, so it makes me worry if other parts of him I don’t like will surface given time. That's the point of dating, isn't it? To be around someone until you figure out why it'll never work between you? Sometimes it takes one evening and other times it takes a year of saying yes until you can't any longer.   

***

Derek had his head inside one of the freezer doors in the frozen section. We were in a Walmart, the one across the street from the hibachi place. Vapor leaked out around him along with the hum of the freezers. I was shivering with my arms folded across my chest. Shoppers prodded their carts around us in the aisle, and I wordlessly apologized to each. Mary still hadn't texted me back. 

"I’ll be fine, just give me a second," said Derek. I stood a measure back from him and the freezer, waiting. We had gotten his hand reattached, but I wanted to make sure he was out of danger before I took off. He had lied about his condition in the restaurant, after all.

"Does this happen a lot?" I asked.

"No, I’m usually pretty good about managing it. Doctor says it’s anxiety."

"I mean the melting."

"Yeah. It gets worse when I’m nervous. I’m a nervous melter," said Derek. I felt bad about it, but the remark made me snicker. Derek missed it though, his bulbous head resting between a stack of DiGiornos. It was a bit of a shame, too, since he had been trying so hard to get me to laugh at dinner. I doubted he would say anything half as funny in the remainder of our time.

"I haven’t been out in a while," said Derek. "I bet I look pathetic."

"You’re fine. I haven’t been out in a long time either."

Derek turned his head. "Oh yeah? What’s the story there?"

I thought about lying to him. Instead I said, "I’m not really sure what I want, if I’m being honest."

Derek took his head out of the freezer and rolled it around his shoulders like a ball in a socket joint, casual as a morning stretch. “Silver Bells” crooned softly over the store's speakers. It was December, after all. 

"That’s understandable," said Derek. "Everybody goes at their own pace. Take me: I’ve called off two weddings last-minute, but I’m trying to put myself out there again." 

"You had a fiancé? You’ve had two fiancés?" I tried to imagine Derek getting down on one knee. 

"And both times I got cold feet. I mean, I always have cold feet, but—"

"No, I got you," I said. Derek caught me smirking that time. He grinned and smoothed his soft-serve scalp. 

"It’s scary, you know? Normal relationship stuff is frightening on its own, but I’m a snowman. There’s a lot of uncertainty that comes with that. A bad weather report could kill me, so how could I ever be a life partner to someone?" 

"I can't quite understand that," I said, "but I can empathize. I used to think I was going to marry the guy I dated through high school and college, but he dumped me senior year. I loved him––he was my first love—so I feel like I never really learned how to date until I was older, and now it feels like all the good men are taken or maybe I still don't know how to look. I don't know. I sound whiny and simple when I say all of this out loud." 

"No, it's not simple or stupid or anything," Derek said. Our eyes met. 

"Listen, Tushara, I’m sorry about dinner. Mary probably twisted your arm into coming. I won’t be hurt if you want to cut out." Again, Derek put forth a weak smile. 

"Maybe that's for the best." I crossed my wrists behind me, and my fingers tethered themselves onto the handle of a freezer door I didn't know was there. Across from us, I spotted a tub of Very Berry ice cream. "Actually, I’m up to grabbing dessert if you want." 

Derek raised a twiggy eyebrow. "Really? You know a good bakery around here?"

"I was thinking ice cream. You down for ice cream?"

"Can’t. I have sensitive teeth," he said.

"You’re joking."

"Of course I’m joking," said Derek. "I’m a snowman. I’m always down for ice cream." 

When I had the tub in my hands and closed the freezer door, I saw Derek gleaming behind me. It didn't seem forced like it was at the restaurant, either.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing," he said. "I just think you're a good person, is all." 

I wasn't sure I agreed. I've never been one to like compliments, especially unexpected ones. I may have blushed a little. That's all I'll say. But then I remembered Glenn, and whatever had been warming inside me vanished.

We took the ice cream and a packet of plastic spoons to the car. Something about the way Derek brought his head low to ease himself into the passenger seat caught me. He had to adjust the seat to give himself more room, but even once settled you could hardly fit a hand between his head and the car ceiling, and his left arm smothered the entire middle console. He swallowed up space no matter where he was—like Glenn, you couldn't ignore him if you wanted to—but being boxed inside the car with Derek magnified his presence, made me notice just how immense he was. I, on the other hand, had always felt a bit sad at how little I filled the space around me. I'd have to lean my whole body over to rest my arm on the console as nonchalantly as Derek. The distance between me and him was all on my end. 

"Can you move your hand?" I asked. Derek complied, and I slammed the tub of ice cream down on the console. We opened it, digging our spoons in. Derek’s lips turned pink and purple. The color of the ice cream diffused around his chin like a drop of paint in clear water. I put my spoon down and reached across to touch the coloring. Derek's face had the same texture as packed snow. 

"There’s something I have to tell you," I said, and Derek cocked his head. "I’m with someone right now, and I’m thinking about leaving him. He wants me to move in, and I like him —I really do—but I'm scared. I keep making up all these excuses and explanations, but I don't know what I'm afraid of." 

I looked down and saw that my hands were shaking. I brought them into my lap to keep it hidden. Derek leaned back and mulled over my confession with a bite of strawberry ice cream. The car was off, and the radio was off, so I heard nothing but the crunching of Derek’s enigmatic maw, a sound that reminded me of boots on fresh snow. 

"You should leave him," said Derek.

"I’m surprised that’s your answer."

"Really? Did I seem like an optimist?" 

"You were just talking about putting yourself out there."

Derek laughed. "I guess I was. But I think, in most cases, if you have doubts about something important, you should play it safe. You and I are paranoid people. I have my reasons, and I'm sure you have yours."

"Maybe, but look at us," I said. "This has obviously not worked for either of us." Derek crossed his arms and leaned into the window, away from me, but I continued. "I think we should try something bold for once."

Derek knit his stick eyebrows together and sighed. "I don’t know about you, but I’ve already faced mortal danger tonight, and I’m getting a little tired."

"It’s okay," I said, "because I’ll be the one taking all the risk this time." I leaned over, closed my eyes, and pressed my lips against Derek's. It took him a moment to register what was happening, but eventually he got around to kissing me back. I expected at least a shiver, but instead I only felt numb sloshing my tongue around the insides of his frozen mouth. It wasn't satisfying but it wasn't horrible either. More than anything, I was saddened at how little Glenn came to mind. There was no sinful thrill or overwhelming guilt. No invasive, on-the-fly comparisons. This was a man who loved me, and I could hardly think of him in the act of cheating on him except for noticing how little I noticed him. .I climbed on top of Derek, and he pulled off my cardigan. My inner thighs felt like fire, his lap was so cold. 

My mother used to tell me that my grandparents had lived almost their entire lives without ever having seen the snow. It was only when they came to America in their twilight years that they had first felt its gentle sting upon their cheeks and upturned palms, but the new experience had shaken them deeply. Nothing reminds you of the fact that you are a warm-bodied, living being more than the shock of cold. I knew that Derek and I would never speak again after that night, and I knew Glenn and I weren’t going to make it either. 

What happened next—it didn't matter anymore whether I was making a mistake or not. All that mattered was that I knew what I wanted in that moment, so I held tight to it. Mary would chew my ear off once I told her everything, and that was fine. I still had time to figure my life out. This was a winter story, but the seeds of spring were still packed tightly beneath the frost.

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DELICIOUS by James Cato

Like most Saturday mornings, I’m alone cleaning the streets. The morning sun hurries through the cloudless sky, already buttering me with sweat, though Las Vegas sleeps. I slog around with trash pincers and make peace with the place through solitude.

Before, I worked afternoons and wore my baseball cap with the army patch. People asked questions. Where was I deployed? What’s it like being a woman in war? Did I ever shoot someone? War stories drew people in. They tried to stare through the ugly by looking at me.

I’m picking up after a parade; I can tell by the debris. Streamers stick to the sidewalk like snakeskin. Buzzards hunch atop asphalt burgers and chicken bones, sharing sticky leftovers with lizards and scorpions. I call it desert-dessert. Delicious. They help me clean.

When I wore my hat, some people would blame me, yell at me. Others would thank me. Nobody knew any better. I came from a small town, the only way out spelled A-R-M-Y. At eighteen I copied the boys and picked up my M16 with dreams of returning to a big city. I guess it worked—Vegas, baby.

I pause, my sack heavy with trampled food, fancy pants, a sparkly shoe, ragdoll condoms, a brunette wig, and Everclear in a grenade bottle. A creepy plastic bag crinkles in the center of the road, juddering in the heat mirages, weighed down by a shrouded cylinder. I drift toward it like a hooked fish.

I was asked if I got flashbacks. People heard of IEDs disguised as garbage, but they hadn’t heard of daisy-rigging. That’s when one decoy IED, planted somewhere obvious, is linked to another, hidden. You never have a clue. To those asking, I just said: It gets easier. 

My jeans swish against the steel under them, long jeans because my legs don’t get hot anymore. A vulture beats her wings to defend her breakfast. I promise her I’m not interested. A scorpion scuttles by, tail up. I give my pincers a few clicks in solidarity. A spiky lizard pauses in my shadow. He can only go a few minutes exposed without cooking alive, so I rest, offering my shade. I eye the heat weeping from that ominous bag.

Some people were curious; some were killing the cat. The latter quizzed me on my childhood. Where I grew up, we'd placed dime bets on lizard-scorpion fights in jelly jars. “So you’re a tomboy,” the people replied.  No. I always chose the lizard, and I always lost. The scorpion was daisy-rigged too; it distracted the reptile with mean claws then stuck them with the flagpole stinger. One girl chided, “If you hadn’t trapped them together, lizards and scorpions would never fight.” I agreed with her.

Nowadays I rarely see anything but downed drunks and desert-dessert out here. Even when I do, my head is naked to burn, no more army hat. Still, there’s that familiar horror. It’s everywhere in Vegas—bodily fluids, confetti, meat, clothes, sun, photos, torn food, glasses, vomit, tamped dunes, smoke, torn packaging, friends, sere vegetation, shattered porcelain. Remains of a night gone wrong. The striking indifference of the desert.

A few men with chapped lips liked my figure, and I stared at their legs. They looked at my shirt sticking to my chest or at my hair curling in the heat and made sly intimations, but I just stared at their legs. Stared as if there were nothing else, no man, just calves sliced like porpoises through a propeller, toes pointed like fairy shoes, two dogs with eager snouts. They gave up eventually. Probably after telling me they had the world’s longest tongue.

This bag on the center line has a prim little knot to cloak its contents. I reach down and work it free, hand shaking. Inside, glowing in the sun, is a full angel cake in plastic armor. I smile at it for a full minute before I bring it to the curb. Yes, an untouched angel cake, forgotten, a gift from fate with no strings attached. I join in desert-dessert with the vultures—delicious. Like remains of a night gone right.

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THE COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPIST WANTS A DIVORCE BUT DOES NOT WANT TO BE THE ONE TO ASK by Jo Withers

Ten months before she wants things to end, she buys two figures sculpted in soapstone, one male and one female. She positions them on the bedroom windowsill, where they will be the first thing seen each morning, the last thing seen each night. Every day she moves the figures a fraction apart. Every day she turns the male slightly into shadow, every day she moves the female closer to the light.

Eight months before she wants things to end, she redecorates, weaving bad memories throughout the apartment like mold. She scents the inside of their pillows with crumpled pine leaves to remind him of the skiing holiday where she flirted endlessly with the waiter. She covers the coffee table in the lounge room with black and white art magazines, like the ones in the waiting room at couple’s counselling. She displays erotic prints on the lounge room walls: a ballerina who looks just like her, wrapped around a dancer who looks just like his best friend. 

Six months before she wants things to end, she conceals a thin wire through the lining of the sofa, from her side onto his. Every time he says something romantic, she pulls the wire a little at her end so it scratches the back of his neck, thin and pointed like a needle. ‘I missed you today,’ scratch, ‘I like your hair like that,’ scratch, ‘I love you,’ scratch. 

Four months before she wants things to end, she talks to him after he falls asleep. She slips the curtain back and lets the moon inside, licking the walls like patterns on a zoetrope. She watches his eyelids dance as he grows restless, smiles as his peace of mind strains. She leans closer, feeds his subconscious with hatred. She whispers names of her past lovers, intertwines them with the names of poisonous plants and sexual positions. She tells him what she liked, what she doesn’t like with him. 

Two months before she wants things to end, she chooses a symbol to mark the culmination point. She decides on a cross. She bombards him with this image at the conclusion of everything. When they finish eating, she places her knife and fork in a cross on her plate. When the T.V. show ends, she crosses her legs. When the day is over, she marks a thick black cross on the kitchen calendar. When they finish having sex, she strokes a cross against his back with her fingertips. 

One month before she wants things to end, she begins to highlight words in newspapers, magazine articles, cereal boxes, instruction booklets. Words like ‘terminate’, ‘dispose’, ‘detach’.

On the day she wants things to end, she knocks the soapstone man to the floor, leaves it lying face down under the bed. She whispers belladonna and the name of her first lover over and over as he sleeps. She circles every spiteful, affecting negative that she can find—‘separate’ on the laundry powder, ‘divide’ on the cake mixture, ‘dissolve’ on the salt. She leaves him a note, ‘See you tonight’ followed by ten thick black kisses. Cross, cross, cross, cross, cross, cross, cross, cross, cross, cross.

When she returns from work, the house is still. She smiles at the inertia as she moves from room to room. His marks are already fading, no footprints on the sofa, no ring stains on the coffee table. His clothes have been cleared from the wardrobe; his accessories have been taken from the drawers. As she wanders through the kitchen, she ignores the water filter blinking ‘empty’, pretends she doesn’t notice the microwave label urging ‘Do not dissemble parts’. In the bedroom, evening turns the cream walls sepia, on the windowsill the soapstone woman absorbs the last light and warmth from the fading sun.

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THE ROT OF THAT by Darina Sikmashvili

City women bucked when you tried to do a nice thing. To carry this or that, to open a door. To offer guidance in a terrain they weren't used to. Danny remembered telling one young woman with a gristly attitude that she shouldn't get too flustered about the noises at night. Houses out here make noise; nature is a talker. She was there to buy firewood. He was trying to do her a favor. But the girl just raked her tongue ring across her teeth and looked the other way. Danny wanted to reach into that mouth with his fingers and yank the ring right out. But he took her money, tossed the wood into the trunk of her car, and watched her get the fuck off his property. 

This woman wasnt like that. The feat to mask a certain softness immediately endeared her to him. She reminded him a little of his Josephine is why. He liked the way she studied her surroundings, his property. The way she offered, in earnest, to help wheel the wheelbarrow across the rain-silken earth. Hesitant, she asked: was the wood dry? He assured her, he wanted to. Dry as bone. It'll catch quick. Come see for yourself. Come closer. Close. 

But she would not. 

Josephine liked it, he thought, even under all her lecturing. Liked how ridiculous Danny found it when she'd go calling up specialists for the houses little things. How by the time some jackass quoted her a price like he was going to drive her around in a limousine while the pipes got replaced, Danny would return with the parts to do the work himself. 

This was early, when he was courting. Trying to teach this city mouse in an ugly, old, inherited house how to lean back and relax. What needed mending? She need only show him.  

Daniel,” she'd whisper. 

Danny,” he'd correct. 

He rose with the sun. His hands, eager and aching to meddle, to fix. But fixings not what partners are for. She called him that. Partner. Like they were fixing to rob a bank. 

Always a musky fear when Josephine climbed on top. She rode him and looked up, or worse, inward. He burned holes into her eyelids trying to will her out of a private celebration and back into bed with him. He felt not like her husband then but some thrill dispensary. A utility. Hed let her work herself until he swelled with wrath. Then he'd fake boredom, pluck her off, and turn her on her stomach. Hed grind to find her tool parts, isolate them, but it would come to naught. Softened by adulation, always.  

Josephine left him in the winter, in the middle of the night. The inherited house was his if he wanted it. He chopped what he could into wood to sell. He chopped the trees. He torched every last living thing on that plot of land but mother nature sneered. Spring came. Shrub returned lush and grass soothed scalded earth. 

But what of the rot of loneliness? What of that? 

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BEFORE THE FATHER/DAUGHTER JAILHOUSE DANCE by Meg Pokrass

1.

Before seeing your daddy you wait with the other girls who have criminal daddies and you size them up. Your nose doesn't hide like theirs does, doesn’t hang down in shame. It dangles smack in the middle of your face like a lifelong promise. You’re proud of your strident, unapologetic nose, the nose you inherited from him.

"You all waitin’ to dance with your bad daddies too?" one of the droopy girls says. You aren’t interested in bonding with fools. You wonder if these girls wake up to the sight of a mother pulling crust from her eyes, saying, what the hell is this stuff that settles here? Do you think it’s made of tears? 

2.

What you’re excited about is how you'll look to your daddy, now, at this age, with women in rare supply. Girls who wait to be let inside a jail to dance in the arms of their criminal daddies should think about these things. You know that getting inside the jail and seeing your daddy will make you think about the feral cats you’ve been feeding in your car since you turned sixteen. That dancing with him will help to keep them alive.

3.

The day your daddy left for prison he held you high up above his head and loved you like a thousand criminal daddies. Raised you to the tips of his shoulders and showed you how, exactly how, to touch the ceiling and that he wasn’t a fucking criminal, okay? That is the daddy you trust. The one you’ve been dancing with forever. You recall his sharp black stubble, his bigness. How his confidence grew against your smallness. 

You can feel his fingertips spinning the dial.

Hey daddy, you say to your face in the mirror, applying lipstick, smiling like a criminal daughter. I’m stealing you back. You’ve already locked me up.  

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THE COUCH ATE MY MOTHER by Julia Breitkreutz

The couch unhinges its gray jaws and my mother’s unresisting body sinks into the wide gap between the soft cushions. When I first notice that the couch is eating my mother, the slight folding of her pelvis into the gray polyester fabric is so subtle of a shift that I would have easily glanced over if not for the noise—thick and wet—like leaving the YMCA as a kid. With a beach towel wrapped around my small frame, I remember how my orange Crocs quickly filled with a thin puddle of water that had dripped off my body. The sound of my skin and the chlorine water coming together in the confined space made me laugh as I walked with my mother—hand in hand—across the hot pavement towards our van. A squelching sound. 

*

The couch’s black, slimy tongue has revealed itself and is wrapping around my mother’s thin, unshaven calves. It releases this thick gray goo across her wasted body, like the glistening trails slugs leave behind on our driveway. I grab and pull my mother’s arm—we all do—but the action only seems to increase the rate at which the couch devours her. 

*

There are the pills—yellow and white and some pink—that Doctor Gordon tells us we must give her three times a day. Dr. Gordon has a thick belly upon which he folds his wide hands when we tell him that the pills aren’t working, that our mother is still being eaten. He is already scribbling a prescription for more pills as we speak.

 I wonder what color they will be this time. What shape.

*

I hold my mother’s head up and away from the floral-patterned pillow and notice the indentation her head has made in the fabric. I press the glass to her thin, chapping lips. As the orange juice drains from the glass, I find myself wondering exactly how long it takes for the colorful pills to exert their power after dissolving within a body. 

*

Soon all that is left of my mother’s body is her head and neck. We take turns spoon-feeding her vanilla yogurt mixed in with strawberries for breakfast and warmed-up beef stew for dinner. I fill up a red bowl with warm water and massage shampoo into her hair, cupping the water in my hand and rinsing away the suds as she sinks a little deeper, the end of her chin now hidden. 

There is a moment in which I think I notice a flicker in her eye. For an instant, I convince myself that she is actually looking at me as if she suddenly remembers that I am her daughter and she is my mother. Just as quickly as it is there, it disappears and the couch makes a slurping noise, taking a few centimeters more of her into that space which we cannot reach. 

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ROLLING by H. A. Eugene

The day came when he didn’t know what else he could possibly do, so he climbed up a great hill and lied down on top of it. And then he started rolling. 

He accelerated, faster and faster, and after a few exhilarating bangs and bumps, found himself, once again, at the bottom. But he didn’t stop there. He kept on rolling—through the woods and into town. Eventually he rolled into the city, underneath the highway that bisected its sprawling map, past the train tracks, and beyond the outlet stores that marked the suburb’s edge. 

Rolling, rolling, rolling. 

Until houses changed to warehouses, and warehouses changed to land with unshaven grass and ravenous trees that crawled over rocks and monopolized the dirt; until that dirt turned to rock, and that rock, a chalk-like substance that ended at a cliff whose edge dropped into a churning, interminable darkness.

The sea.

And with no regard for what lay ahead, he plunged right off that edge—and splashed directly into the foaming brine. But this didn’t stop his motion, no. Instead, he continued rolling—underwater. On the sea floor, over massive dead reefs, and beyond the Continental Shelf, then down into the Mariana Trench, where water flows beneath the water.  

And even in this lightless submarine plain of great pressure and gurning silence, he kept on rolling. 

Rolling, rolling, rolling. 

By this point, it was as if motion had become a type of stillness, and stillness, motion; a convolution of senses, all but ignored by his ceaselessly spinning purview.

Like those numerous wrecks—missing machines, long since abandoned and so time-worn, they appeared ancient.

And those ruins—so eroded, they appeared constructed by time and chance, and not by people.

And those bizarre entities—yes, there were creatures down there! But as organisms go, they were barely alive, in the sense that he understood ‘alive’ to be. And the exact shapes of their oblique bodies—to say nothing of how they lived at all, this far down—would never be known by him. Because—like the wrecks, the ruins, and every other mystery that whirled by—they appeared only as colorful slivers of light, beheld for barely a stroboscopic moment; far too quick to ever be properly defined, or explained. Because he was rolling. 

Rolling, rolling, rolling. 

And he kept on rolling, even when the waters became still, and the air rejoined the surface, where birds made feasts of dead things in the briny surf. 

Mind you, by this point, he, himself, was dead; though that hardly mattered. His lack of life did nothing to stop his rolling; though eventually, his body did fall apart, smallest bits, first. Fingernails, then fingers. Then hands. Then arms. And those biggest chunks of him dissolved into bone and mush; then sand, until that sand broke up into the smallest possible units of matter; mindless doo-dads that kept on and on and on; compelled by heat and cold, to a state of endless, un-feeling motion.

Rolling, rolling, rolling. 

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REST STOPS AND PARKING LOTS by Aaron Burch

Because I didn’t want to pay for a hotel. Because I could afford to pay for a hotel, but it seemed like a waste. Because, as much as I enjoy sleeping in and then being lazy and watching TV in bed, I wanted to get up and moving and on the road as soon as possible. Because I’d paid for and slept in a hotel the night before, and I’d do so again the night after, and I thought a night in my car would both save me a little money and make me appreciate the nights when I did get a hotel.

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