FICTION Archives

GNOSTIC BAPTISTE by Gregg Williard

May 16, 2019 · Fiction, Williard World

“I found him.”

“Him who?”

“Gnostic Baptiste!”

“The spam tag?”

“It’s not just a tag! I wasn’t even running a simple traceroute function before I get a local postal address. So I go there…”

“Wait a second. I need a beer for this.” Alex and I had worked together for 3 years out of the Attorney General’s Office, doing tech consulting for an anti-spam task force. Alex was one of the best systems designers I knew, parlaying hacker-honed skills into the legit and the lucrative. But the thankless and poorly- paid search for spammers had become his holy grail. I thought I’d seen him at his most weirdly obsessive, but this was different. I popped two beers and handed him one, but he just put it on the table and kept pacing.

“You’re saying there’s a person named Gnostic Baptiste?”

He stopped and his eyes got too bright. “A…’person’?”

He finally fell onto the couch and rubbed his hands through his hair.

“…I find the place. An abandoned warehouse by the yards. Not a computer in sight. No phones. No jacks. No Wi-Fi. Nothing. Zip. Except this fat kid in a swivel chair. When I get close he stands up and says, ‘I am Gnostic Baptiste. Spread the word.”

I reached out to pat him on the arm. He shrank back. “Don’t touch me! I’m infected!”

“Infected?”

He sprang off the couch and bent over, clutching his crotch. “Here. Look.” He booted his computer and tapped the keys. “You see?” The screen showed a word document. Alex was typing out a solid block of spam:

BIGGER AND THICKER WITH GNOSTIC BAPTISTE!

GIGANTIC ORGAN COCK FROM GNOSTIC BAPTISTE!

BOOST HER WET HAPPY WITH VIAGRA PENIS PATCH

FOR ULTRA HARD PENILE SEXUAL WITH 100 MG

X 10 PILLS PRICE CHEAPER MASSIVE COCK WITH

75% OFF ROLEX, MORADO GUCCI VACHERON

WATCHES WITH EXTRA LONG COCK FOR HER

PLEASURE FROM MR. GNOSTIC BAPTISTE!

“I don’t get it.”

“Shit, Rob! Look at the keys I’m hitting!” He slowed down so I could see:

t-h-e q-u-i-c-k b-r-o-w-n f-o-x j-u-m-p-e-d o-v-e-r t-h-e

“Wow. Something with the keyboard?”

“It’s not the keys!” He went to my desktop. The same thing happened. We tried the four other computers in my apartment.

They only showed spam.

“Effing weird. We’ll run diagnostics. Entangled zombie shit. “

He grabbed between his legs and crawled into a corner, rocking and whispering to himself. I went to him but he waved me away and staggered back to his feet, bent over and clutching his crotch again. “Gotta’ show you.” He undid his belt and pulled down his jeans and tattered underwear. A hot, yeasty smell filled the room. His penis heaved out of his pants, drooping low from his pubic hair to coil around his leg all the way to his ankle. Even limp it was thick and solid enough to hold a dozen or more silver wristwatches along its impossible length. We both stared, breathless, as it unwound and thudded to the floor. Despite the weight of the watches, it reared up five feet into the air and stayed there, swaying. The glans was round and fat as a grapefruit, like an orchid starved for heat. Alex finally looked at me and I could see the same thought behind his eyes: and he’s not even hard. He went rigid reciting a spam rant in whispers.

“’…massive cock growth for ultra-hard and thick penile enlargement with 75% off all Rolex, Gucci, Vacheron Viagra watches from Mr. Gnostic Baptiste…”

“Alex…!”

“You understand now, Rob? I’m the tangled zombie. I’m fucking spam.” He hefted his cock in both hands and swung it against his leg. After cursing through several floppy misses the weighted organ wrapped itself tightly back around his thigh and down to his shoe. He tugged his jeans up over the pulsing coil and limped to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I gotta’ find him.”

“Wait.”

“Don’t touch me, Rob! You’ll spend every cent you’ve got on shit watches or Viagra or West African gold ingots or horny Russian mail-order brides or pictures of teen girls having sex with horses or…”

I blocked the door. “You bought the Ultra Viagra, or some shit, and took it?”

As if in answer his penis pressed, then strained against the side of his jeans. “So, what if I did? It was that or be sucked in. I told you—I’m fucking spam! You have no conception of what it feels like! To actually fuck spam! “

His erection was so stiff now that Alex could no longer bend his leg. The denim swelled. The seams popped in low, hectoring snicks. The glans wiggled and squeezed out the bottom of his jeans, white and loamy as dough. The material gave way with a shrieking rent, and his penis sprang across the room. I felt like I’d been hit by a bus. When I came to the door was on one hinge and Alex was gone.

Who, or what, was Gnostic Baptiste? I never saw any trace of him, or of Alex, either. But I know that the moment I get back online again they’ll both be there, selling watches, Nigerian gold ingots, low cost Viagra or Russian teen brides. And waiting for me. And whatever it was that Alex was powerless to resist – the promise of sex beyond any sex he’d ever known, the fucking of spam incarnate with a penis of freaks – will be popping up or dancing across or seeping into every move I make online. The only sanctuary is in silence, and cunning; an electronic chastity that will leave me alone under GPS dumb stars. Now when I walk through L.A.N. parties and Wi-Fi fields I can almost feel a tingling along the back of my hands and up and down my spine. And sometimes it even makes me hard.

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LEPIDOPTERA by Shelby Colburn

May 15, 2019 · Fiction

She told me she caught a moth in her throat. We sat in a roadhouse munching on fried pickles as snow fell past the window. She reached into her mouth with a finger and pulled her right cheek to the side like a hooked fish. I leaned closer to her face and peered down her mouth. There it was, a grey moth lodged in the opening of her throat. Its small wings fluttered behind her uvula and tonsils. She popped her finger away, closing the opening to the moth’s new home.

“It chose me,” Priv said as she attempted to clear her throat, “I felt it one day and there it was.”

She took her hand from under mine and picked up her glass of seltzer. She sipped a few gulps while I watched as the condensation formed moisture against the edges of her chipping maroon nail polish.

“I feel it against my neck if I press hard enough,” she said, “And it won’t tell me why it chose me,” Priv put down her drink and folded her arms against her chest, “It speaks to me. Tells me what it wants.”

I popped a pickle in my mouth letting the juice trail down my chin. Priv sucked a glob of ranch off her fingers. I wondered if the moth would spit the dressing down into the cavern of saliva and mucus. What if Priv displeased it—would it stretch out and choke the air from her trachea? My sadness formed a lump in my own throat.

Priv smiled and swallowed another pickle.

***

When the last traces of snow melted into the earth, I saw the effects of the insect spooning itself against Priv’s pharynx.

I was reading a book when I looked over and saw Priv staring at her lamp.

“The lights are magnificent,” she told me, “They look like life and death.”

I asked her what that meant, but she reached up and lifted the shade from the LED.

“I see pixels and swirls of purples and pinks. Oranges are mating with yellows to create greens. There is black behind every surface mixed with scarlet.”

I reached over and turned off the light. Priv blinked her eyes and turned her head back to me. Her pupils were dilated enough to leave no white.

“Return them to me,” she said.

I pulled the string down, and she reached her hand towards the burning bulb.

***

When I saw her the next day, Priv was sitting on a stool slumped over her kitchen island. Bags hung below her eyes and the paint from her nails had been chewed off.

She was whispering and placing her index finger in her mouth. I watched as she chewed the tip of the nail with small nibbles. “Your fur scratches my throat,” she said quietly while tipping her head back. She hocked, but smiled as she rested her chin against the grain of the island.

I leaned down beside her and tilted my head to meet her blank gaze. She turned her neck slightly towards me, her pupils still large in her eyes. I asked her if she wanted to try and get rid of it. She chomped down hard on her nail and tore a crescent from her finger. With a gulp she sent it back to her throat.

“Why?” she said, “Jealous?”

A glint of spit dripped from her bottom lip.

***

When bulbs began to bloom, I watched as bandages replaced her fingers. Priv munched her nails down to the lunula. Her shirts and sweaters grew damp with drool while she sucked and nibbled at the edges of her sleeves.

“I don’t want to do that,” she whispered to herself one day, taking her sleeve away from her mouth. I stood back from her and she began laughing, “I don’t want to drink the flowers.”

I asked her what that meant, but Priv told me not to worry about it. “Moth things,” she said while sticking her sweater over her tongue.

I tried taking the sleeve out of Priv’s mouth, but she pushed me away.

I didn’t want to smother her, so I let her be.

***

Two days later I found Priv examining her garden, her hands digging into the dirt to tear up her credenzas’ roots. I watched as she plucked the flowers from her garden and tilted the head of the plant to her lips, her tongue soaking up the morning dew that rested on the surface of the florets. She crushed the flower in her hands, looking up at me with a yellow-green moustache; her smirk tainted with a clear syrup falling down her chin.

***

In mid spring, when her garden was strewn with the corpses of tulips, hydrangeas, and camellias; Priv began to tear and gnaw her clothing. She plucked with her teeth the cotton and polyester blends that scooped around her neck. Lint caught between her incisors, so she flossed with loose strings from the leftovers of her rags.

“I can’t eat anything else,” she said, her eyes circled with faint black rims, “Nectar and lint…”

She walked over to her sink and ripped the curtains hanging over the window above. She tore at the sewn chickens and apples, ripping the cloth into samples that she could plop into her mouth. She swallowed and I could hear a buzzing form in her throat.

“I always hated mom’s curtains,” she said chewing. She clicked her tongue in her mouth, her eyes beginning to squint with thought. “I wonder what sweat tastes like?” she said turning to me, her teeth holding a brown Welcome sign in the gaps of her gums.

***

When the humidity of July drenched our bodies with salt, Priv began to lick her arms and hands, wiping the drops of moisture from her forehead. When she tried to lick me, I pushed her back, telling the moth to stop it.

“It’s not the moth anymore,” she said, her voice wild. She climbed up her stairs and left me alone by the entrance of her porch. The light hanging over her door frame had scratch marks.

***

That night I sat in my bed and felt the fan blowing warm summer air on my body. I was unable to fall asleep as the muggy heat held me down on my sheets.

As I scrolled through my feeds, Priv’s face popped up in front of me. I answered her call.

“I need more,” she said, her voice sounding desperate and dry.

I buried my face in my pillow, my sweat seeping into the synthetic fibers.

“Can’t you do anything for me?” she said, her voice booming in my room.

I didn’t answer her.

“You never cared.” She hung up.

***

“I need more,” a voice said coming from my window. I opened my eyes and twisted my head from my pillow. I saw Priv’s blue glare gleam as a car passed on the street below. My window fan lulled beside her.

As I wiped dried tears from the corners of my eyes, I heard Priv whispering to herself:

“I need something I haven’t tasted before.”

She opened her mouth, releasing a red string. It floated above her head in the current from the fan.

She inched closer to me, eyeing the sweat that was forming under my hairline. She lunged at me, pinning me down against the fabric of my sheets. Before I could scramble away, she locked my arms down with her knees and opened her mouth.

“Just a bite,” she said while licking the side of my face, her breath smelling of nectar and Nike. I tried struggling beneath her, but she engulfed me. All I felt was the strange sensation of wings batting against my consumed skin.

***

When I came to, green scales clutched the caves and crooks of my epidermis, and I was struggling to breathe in a suspended world of metamorphosis. I could hear Priv’s voice shake the cavern around me: Just pretend to like it.

I looked down at my body and saw that my limbs were forming branches of black with spikes of hair. How long have I been down here? I thought, disbelief running through my mind. I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t alive. What was I?

My eyesight was beginning to merge into millions of diamonds, and I felt my head sprout two antennae. My blonde hair fell from my scalp into the abyss below, followed by crumbs of tonsil stone. I brought my fingers to my disillusioned eyes and saw my red blood had turned yellow.

I looked around. I was twisted and snarled within a golden-brown cocoon just dangling below the rounded hood of Priv’s uvula.

I’m not ready to swallow you, her voice echoed around me. She laughed, swinging my cocoon back and forth. You tasted so good. I had to save you for later.

***

My fingers were beginning to form as one when I heard a voice in my ear begin to speak to me.

It’s almost over, it whispered. It didn’t come from Priv’s throat—the sound was too clear against the ringing of my ears. But the soft cadence of the voice died against the shuffling and scratching my cocoon made. As I searched for the sound, I found my diamond eyes locate the red reflection of gems hiding behind the scars of forgotten wisdom teeth.

She doesn’t like to swallow, it said raising its voice, She wants to absorb us. The moth’s proboscis did not move with the words that formed in my head—we were connected by the tissue that held us above Priv’s throat.

What can I give her?

Everything I couldn’t.

***

You think changing will help her? Priv’s throat said undulating. It didn’t help you.

The moth crawled into the red glow that shown from Priv’s cheeks, the outside world just out of reach behind flesh and veins. The moth’s white fur clashed with large red eyes, its hair coaxed in bits of lint and sap. Its left side was torn with bite marks forming over ripped trunks of leftover legs and torn aileron. Yellow blood splashed up against the thorax.

She tried eating me but she liked the taste too much.

Priv laughed again.

The moth climbed over my cocoon and began nibbling the seams that kept me suspended.

Make the decision, its voice called to me as its front leg stepped on my ridged home.

My surroundings vibrated with my every shake.

I didn’t want to leave her. It said while snipping away at the branches that held me up above the gaping esophagus. Even when I turned, she didn’t release me.

The green scales of the cocoon tightened their grip on me with every utterance. They snarled at me and dug into my furry skin.

Do what I should have done.

Priv’s jaw began to move, clipping the moth against her back molar with a large clush. Her throat motioned in repeating rows that drew back pieces of the moth.

I’m done with you, Priv said.

With one last slash, the moth tore open my cocoon and looked at me with its red eyes. It opened its mouth and screamed at me.

Priv’s mouth opened and a bright light filtered in past her gums. As her tongue bashed the moth down into her body below, I leapt forward. Two orange and black wings opened from my shoulder blades.

I flapped out of Priv’s mouth. She chomped at me with a lunge, but I soared out the gap between my fan and window. Her ethereal cries echoed below me.

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TO CUT A WIDE SWATH by Therese White

May 14, 2019 · Fiction

I smell ammonia. Old people. We visit Great Aunt Alma for no reason. It’s Sunday, reason enough. Her room: a single cell, a single window. The bed backs into a corner. Her white bedspread, a canvas. Little blocks, cut from her underwear, lay stacked: pastel patches. Her arthritic finger points to them. Her mouth opens; no words exit. Tan knee-highs choke her calves. Her strap slips off her shoulder. Her feet are firmly planted in sturdy, black loafers.

My grandparents are not surprised; they are blasé.

I stand mute, wondering what language Alma is forgetting: French or English. My plain face stares kindly, as I remember a recent verb conjugation in Madame Lessard’s class: couper...tu coupes...she cuts.

My grandmother wrests away Alma’s scissors. Arms outstretched, Alma breathes in quickly, cups my 14-year-old face, whispering, “Magnifique,” and I blink.

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THE HEART OF MORALITY by Austin Ross

May 13, 2019 · Fiction

Daddy’s monster is back. That slightly musky scent of sawgrass wafts in across the Everglades as he slides a single bullet into the revolver. This is what I remember, all these years later. This incident with the revolver is familiar to me, a nightly ritual to cap off our evenings of foil-wrapped TV dinners and, for him, nearly a third of a bottle of whiskey. I have learned by now to keep silent during the ritual.

As he examines the revolver in his hands, polishes the silver of the barrel with his sleeve, I think: he isn’t such a bad Daddy. His monster is one that only I can see. He still takes me for bike rides, sometimes, through St. Mary’s Park after school, still holds my hand as we sit in the church pew in our Sunday best. The monster inside him has slowly eaten away at what makes him Daddy. It reminds me of the alligators that I can occasionally hear through my bedroom window during the long summer nights. I can forgive Daddy for what he’s become, I think—if only because it is sadness, and not anger, that made him this way.

Tonight feels different to me, though. We are both sweaty from the oppressive Everglade heat. He has stripped to a pair of pants and an undershirt. I am still in my dress, my feet hot from wearing the shoes and socks of my school uniform. My legs dangle from the chair. I wish I was taller, older. Daddy looks at me and sips from the whiskey bottle. He spins the chamber of the revolver, clicks it shut, presses the tip of the barrel to his temple. He looks me in the eye, smiles sadly, and pulls the trigger. Click. No bullet this time. My heart is beating so fast I think it might burst, but I don’t cry. Crying makes it worse.

This is our ritual—Daddy will now press the tip of the barrel to my head, pull the trigger, and afterwards we will watch I Love Lucy, neither of us speaking in the quiet, desperate aftermath. Which of us did he want to die more? The girl with her mother’s eyes, or the widowed father? I don’t know.

Daddy slowly exhales, and I am brought back to this moment, now. Tonight is different: he slides the revolver across the table, removes his hand slowly. He looks at me, his eyes curious, like a wild animal’s, as though to ask: what are you going to do?

“Go ahead,” he says. The sound is deafening in the silence. “Pick it up.”

The revolver gleams on the kitchen table. I stare at it, my heart beating faster with each second.

“This is the heart of morality,” Daddy says, tapping the kitchen table with his finger. “A loaded gun.”

I look Daddy in the eye, carefully examine him. His face is expressionless as he watches me carefully, and I wonder: if I pick it up, will it make things worse?

I sense Daddy’s monster behind his eyes. It had come to live with us after Momma died—slumped over the kitchen table one day, her own monster—bowel cancer—having devoured her quickly and unexpectedly. Over the years, Daddy had learned to chain the monster up. When others saw him, it was manageable and tame. But I know it’s neither of those things. It will destroy him if he lets it.

I pick up the revolver, feel the weight of it in my hands, the authority it brings. I open the chamber, see the single bullet resting inside. Tears are streaming down my cheeks. I can sense Daddy’s immense sorrow. As the tears well and my vision blurs, Daddy shimmers and splits into two.

“Do it,” they both say as the monster grows. The lights above us flicker as their black tendrils stretch across the table towards me.

I slide the chamber closed again and pick one of the Daddy’s, squeeze the trigger, and in the explosion of sound, something leaves the room, some massive presence, and I wipe my eyes clear and see Daddy crouched on the floor, crying but unharmed, and I run to him, apologizing, but all he does is say I’m sorry over and over and over as he hugs me tightly. In the distance, I can just hear the rumbling growl of an alligator, or perhaps a monster, retreating to the swamps.

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SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY LIFE by Meeah Williams

April 26, 2019 · Fiction

I could sense it coming like a mule senses thunder.I had his cock in my mouth and I was trying to keep my neck from being too traumatized when he bucked his hips in short hard thrusts. It was like being a passenger in a car whose driver proceeded down the street by slamming on the brakes every three seconds. I'm getting whiplash just thinking about it. I watched people on the sidewalk stop, stare, and the expressions on their faces said "What the hell is that all about?"I leaned out the window and threw confetti at the parade-goers lining the pavement, smiling like a prom queen, my teeth gnashing together. What I mean is that I smiled like a porn star, a cock thrust balls-deep in my ass."It's okay, ok-k-k-k-kkay," I cry, throwing more confetti, which is actually colored rice, crying, my mascara running, thinking "isn't this over yet?"Thinking, when the birds swallow this rice it's gonna bloat up in their little bellies and they'll explode and die. This bed is like a raft in the middle of the ocean and I'm looking for an island, a tanker, a helicopter, anything to wave my arms at. You're in the helicopter, hovering, but all you're doing is watching. Yes, I'm talking to YOU, the watcher, the reader, whoever. YOU!When you cum--or get bored--you hit the off button. It's even worse when you hit "pause," and there I am, eyes shut, mouth black-ovaled, looking like I'm in pain, the thick shiny thing half in and half out of me, almost human-looking, human plumbing, clogged, and I'm waiting, waiting waiting either for the thrust or the withdrawal and getting neither. Just that clogged plumbing with no flow..."Fuck you!" we both shout, you and I. No, I'm not going through all that again. We're going mad with thirst anyway. It can't be long now. I'm going to test my luck in the choppy water, whatever that means. I'm going to commit myself to the waves.Hello Ocean!"Certain death," he ventures a guess. But he's already commandeered the machete, don't think I don't know it. He's figuring he'll clobber me on the head, cut open some part of me, drink my blood. He's bearded now, maniacal, looking like a two-legged Ahab."Thar she blows," he says and with his pirate telescope points up to the sky which looks like the aftermath of a flash photograph--a flash photograph of nothing—or everything.I slip into the water, where the sharks are slouching about in their leather jackets, cigarettes dangling from their louche lips, posing with self-conscious nonchalance in a way they're well aware shows off their new tattoos to best advantage.Oh the sharks aren't as bad as reported. Fake news, you see. I meet one with a Brooklyn accent and a history of trumped-up mayhem. But he's ready to turn a new clam shell, so he says. I can be a trusting soul, when I'm desperate enough. I jump on the back of his jet-ski and wheeeeeee...We're bouncing over the waves now. My hair flowing out behind me like a banner that says "Welcome home, Johnny!" There's a desert island with your name on it somewhere. But it's not on any map and you have to put your name on it yourself."Who's Johnny?" I yell into the shark's non-existent ear. He doesn't answer. His body is thick, smooth, one big chunk of remorseless muscle built by a lifetime of endless swimming and fed by murdered mermaids. He smells like Brut, not fishy at all. He's got about 300 teeth in that mouth of his. Sure they can reduce me to a bloody hash within seconds. But, wow, when he's in the mood, you should see him smile.

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LET ME SHOW YOU WHERE YOU’LL BE SITTING by Jeffrey Yamaguchi

April 25, 2019 · Fiction

We walk through a corridor, then down a flight of steps. Elevator doors open to receive us as if they had been waiting. We get in and my guide, a woman in perfect business attire, pushes the only button. The doors close. There is no sound. I can’t tell if we are moving up or down, and then I realize I can’t tell if we are moving at all. Suddenly there is a slight lift, and then feathery fall, of the woman’s hair above her eyes, which are staring right through me.

*****

There is a painting on the wall. Two large swaths of dark storm cloudiness on a moonless night, surrounded by a multitude of colors – the blue of the bluest sky, the red of a lollipop savored with impossible patience, the purple of a bruise that came by way of invitation. I stopped noticing the painting until someone new began work in our area. She mentioned the richness of the pools of darkness – unnerving, but also inviting. I looked at the painting again and saw not two streaks of starless black surrounded by colors, but now, just countless blotches of a deep and unforgiving darkness. Was I misremembering? Or was someone fucking with me?

I turned away and made a point of not looking at the painting ever again. So I saw it every day, countless times. The darkness continued to grow.

*****

The phone rings. I answer it immediately. I want to show how present I am, how assertive I am about getting things done. I say hello and hear a familiar old man’s voice on the other side of the line.

“Is Mr. Neal available?”

I explain that he no longer works here and hasn’t for some time, as I have done many times before.

“But that’s impossible. I just spoke to him yesterday. It is imperative that I speak to him at once.”

I know how this conversation will continue. So I tell the old man that I will deliver his message to Mr. Neal as soon as possible.

“Thank you, sir. I look forward to hearing from him shortly. Please do tell him it is urgent.” I hang up. A few minutes later, the phone rings. I answer it immediately.

*****

Everyone else has left. The echoes of a vacuum from the other side of the office fill the air. I look outside at all those empty offices in the looming tombstone landscape. Just a few lights on in a scattering of windows here and there. One by one, as I continue to reach beyond my own reflection into the swamp dark murkiness of night, the lights go out. Eventually, I am holding my gaze on the very last light which is rising and falling, as if it is lost at sea, not because it is moving, but because my breathing has become more labored and anxious. With absolutely no fanfare whatsoever, the last light is extinguished.

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LIES ABOUT THE WORST WAY TO DIE by Dawson Kiser

April 24, 2019 · Fiction

There are a lot of shitty ways to die. A quick Google search of the worst ways to die will lead you down a not so wonderful rabbit hole of people drowning, burning, being eaten by animals, even falling in volcanoes. Not that I’m an expert on dying, but I’m walking into the hospital right now for my third year of chemotherapy and I’d argue this must be on the top 10 shittiest ways to die. Burning? That sounds horrific but from my limited research I found out you black out within 20 to 30 seconds. Your worst 30 seconds alive. This has been my worst 3 years alive. Slowly being eaten away by the ravenous monster inside my single lung. My left lung was cut out during my first year. Empty promises of a quick fix. “The tumor is only in your left lung,” they said. “We think you’re in remission,” they said. That month spent in remission ended with me face down in the busy Chicago intersection. Blood flowing from my nose and mouth. Shit and piss down my leg. A crowd of people. Some taking pictures with their phones. Others rushing to my aid but hesitating when their noses reached the stench. Took a half an hour for the ambulance to come. Now they say, “there’s cancerous cell growth around your right lung.” As if they have to specify which lung it is.

The other cancer patients look at me with dreadful eyes. One young woman, who is still very much pretty, is looking at me wondering, “will I look like that in a few years?” Sorry, you probably will. You will probably throw up, shit, and piss more than you thought was humanly possible. You will have no appetite and will shrivel up more with each day that passes, leaving you looking like a stray dog living in a dumpster in a back alley. In your worst moments, you will compare yourself to Jesus Christ as you sweat blood down your jagged face. I pass her and say, “you’ll be alright.” and use all my strength to give her an encouraging smile and a pat on her (soon to be bony) back.

I’m running a little late so most of the good beds and chairs have been taken. I sit down in an old wooden chair with a penny thin cushion that allows the hard seat to grate on my fucked tailbone. The same nurse as always goes around and draws the curtains. This way you can’t see the other poor bastards turn into zombies. Not that this does much. The noises people make can be just as bad as seeing them turn into the living dead. The first year I tried to sleep through the “therapy” but the visceral nightmarish imagery that flooded my dreams made it unbearable. Now I bring a stack of mindless magazines to read. I tried novels but I’d get bored too easily.

I have managed to get comfortable with the needles and tubes in me. At first, you feel like the patient in the game Operation. It’s been about an hour. Family members of patients are starting to visit now. The support by family and friends in the early stages make you feel like you’re a celebrity. Your brother’s daughter’s girl scout troop sells cookies to raise money for your surgeries. Your mom’s church holds a healing service. Your best friend from high school that you haven’t talked to in years, except for the occasional Facebook message, stops by your house with a casserole and hallmark card. Your siblings and parents come to every chemo session. You get used to their company. But after a year or so the hype around your death begins to fade and less people visit. I haven’t had a visitation in a full year. Not that I care. I can’t even speak during the sessions anymore.

A few curtain rows down I hear sobbing. A young voice. A kid voice. A little girl whimpers, “mommy it hurts,” again and again. Her mother’s voice can be heard trying to comfort her dying daughter. “I know baby, I know. The medicine will help baby,” she says. That’s what we all hope. In my three years of chemo I’ve never shared a session with a kid. I’m focusing on my magazine trying to distract myself from the poor child. Brad Pitt in trouble again. The new Marvel movie broke another box office record. Nameless actress had a nip slip on the red carpet. These are the things that occupy your mind in these circumstances. Mindless pop culture magazines spreading gossip like you’re back in high school. Don’t pretend you don’t like it. You live for it.

My reading is interrupted by the sound of the little girl screaming. I hear the man closest to me ask a nurse for earplugs. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t want a pair as well. You’d want them too.

“Mommy I can’t,” she screams. “Yes, you can Claire,” her mother says with a trembling voice. She has a name. Claire. I feel the devil in my chest clawing at my heart. A name solidifies. It completes. It makes someone’s suffering tangible. A little girl isn’t dying of cancer. A little girl named Claire is dying of cancer.

I unplug all the needles and tubes inside of me. The monitor begins beeping in a fast-steady gallop. The nurse rushes to my assistance. “What are you doing? Where are you going? Are you alright?” she says. I extend my skinny-ass legs until they reach the floor. Using the chair as support I push myself up. I head down the room ignoring the nurse’s plea to sit back down. I shuffle my feet like a toddler learning to walk. All 70 pounds of me walking past all the other patients towards the sound of Claire’s cries. I turn to face her laying in her uncomfortable piss-soaked hospital bed. Her mother stands surprised to see anyone who isn’t the nurse. I fall to my knees next to Claire’s bed. I reach out both of my hands. One towards Claire and one towards her mother. Claire takes my hand and her mother hesitates a little before doing the same. “You’ve got this Claire,” I say, “you’re gonna kick cancers ass.”

I know the pain won’t stop but Claire’s cries and screams did. Another hour has passed and I’m still kneeling next to her bedside with her mother and their hands in mine. The only thing to be heard is the rhythmic beep of her monitor.

She’s asleep now. Her face soft and smooth. Soon she will be frail. Her skin will drape over her twig-like bones and her muscles will shrink. Her half circle eyes will take up most of her face and the skin around them will begin to darken. Her hair will be gone, and she will cover it up with a Mickey Mouse bandanna. She’ll want to throw punches at God, but her hands will be too weak to be made into fists. But for now, I’ll sit here in silence and comfort both her and her mother. There’s a lot of shitty ways to die but I’ll lie and tell them that cancer isn’t one of them.

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THE TROLL BY THE EAST BRIDGE by Helen Armstrong

April 23, 2019 · Fiction

The thing that very many people fail to grasp about city planning is that a lot of planning goes into it: ha ha. This is always my gag at parties and it very often falls upon deaf ears. I’m uncertain whether people don’t want to find me funny, or if they just don’t understand my humor.

When the troll by the East Bridge - creatively named by Richardson, the city planner before me, whose interests included golfing and beer and golf clubs - demanded a sacrifice or he’d torch the town, people certainly weren’t laughing anymore. And they weren’t laughing when I walked right up to the troll and he ate me - in small pieces, of course.

Maybe he had gum disease: ha ha.

The feeling of having your ligaments torn apart from one another and having your guts ingested is unique, as you might imagine. Have you had a root canal? I haven’t, but I’ve heard terrible things.

It’s also interesting how the mind doesn’t simply disappear. Our thoughts float around through and outside of our brains, our whole lives just- humming around inside our skulls. The synapses light up like the fireflies that children like to catch in the dusk at Hawthorne Field after the baseball games have all wrapped up for the evening.

Those summer nights are the best, and perhaps it would be easier to describe this feeling of being torn limb from limb not through comparison but rather, by contrasting it. Example: it does not feel like watching children catch fireflies at Hawthorne Field in the dusk.

Example: it may feel more like being the fireflies, captured in a mason jar and forced to suffocate.

The mind doesn’t simply disappear. It scatters. The thoughts that spend most of their days floating around Hawthorne-Field-my-brain-my-skull-et-cetera just kind of...

So forgive me if I’m a little all over the place.

Let’s see - I got my start as a city planner after I finished my undergrad degree in Business Administration. I loved college and as soon as I landed on the hard pavement of the real world, I wanted to scramble back through the glass doors of academia and into my seat in the front of the class again.

So I applied for a Master’s program, and a few years later wound up on the pavement once more but this time, with a degree in Urban Planning. It didn’t make the landing any softer!

People ask me what I do. I tell them: I gather and analyze data to discover the needs of the population and from there, develop both short- and long-term solutions. I review and solicit plans from developers. I know the zoning laws and other regulations - so that you-don’t-have-to. You see?

Frank thinks it’s a great profession, but he’s an artist, so of course he can think that because it pays the bills. The bills that support his painting and sculpting, and recently he’s been getting into tile-making. Which you can buy at the farmers market which I found the space for.

City planners love sustainability. I love sustainability. I was the one behind the rain gardens you see by the roads and in developments. What is a rain garden?

A rain garden absorbs the runoff rainwater from roofs and driveways and lawns and patios. From the sky. According to some studies, they remove up to 90% of the chemicals and 80% of the sediments from rainwater runoff.

That’s a good thing. It means more water soaks into the ground.

That’s a good thing.

See it sinking down, now.

Frankie also stands up for me because he loves me. I don’t mean, in my last few moments of consciousness on this realm - or, perhaps, any realm - to indicate that he is anything less than a gracious and loving partner. We did not meet at a gay bar. We met in the library. We were both checking out books on gardening.

Neither of us are gardeners.

Go figure, ha ha.

Is there a joke about green thumbs here?

Perhaps. But I don’t have the time.

I’d like to make it clear how important it is to invest in renewable energy and open spaces in our town. I know that it can feel hopeless, at times, to be up against climate change, because there’s Al Gore out there and ice caps melting, sloshing water up onto the land and killing millions of people, like they’re tiny ants. We can drown just as quickly as ants, is a fact-that-is-not-fun.

Their brains must scatter as well but into the ocean, and so the water becomes a vast repository of all the knowledge and experience that everyone whose lives it’s claimed has had. Picture that: krill floating among the memories of prom nights, and a whale may accidentally swallow the whole of a brain surgeon’s knowledge, which she’ll then spout out and fling into the air, careless with it.

Perhaps the troll could become the next city planner.

Wouldn’t that be something? I don’t think he’d fit behind my desk, ha ha.

Frank would think that’s funny, but it’s more you that I’m interested in.

What’s the point? The rain gardens are great, the farmer’s market draws people in from out-of-town-if-you-can-believe-it. Is a legacy only as worthwhile as the people around to make it into one would consider it to be?

I’ll tell you something important. No one cares about local issues.

I’ll tell you something else important because I think I may be running out of time. When they made it the law of the land he proposed to me but we never got married.

We’re still engaged.

I guess I’m old-fashioned. I guess I didn’t want to hear you all talk.

And set to the tune of Simon & Garfunkel as that is what is playing in my head in my last moments: last last last:

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PRINCIPAL ALPACA by Richard Leise

April 22, 2019 · Fiction

Interim Principal Gregory Jenne has Alopecia universalis. But he is accustomed to this; has dealt with the condition all of his life; survived the childhood taunts; rationalized the rejections; no longer dreams of eyebrows and eyelashes. Having recently celebrated his thirty-fourth birthday, he assesses his present position. He finds that he is satisfied, proud of his accomplishments. Lesser men would have created excuses. Weaker individuals would have hidden in their parents’ basements. He likes to think of himself as methodical. Scrupulous. Tall, his arms are longer than they should be, and this makes it difficult—no, this makes it impossible—for him to find suits that fit. What he has done—resorting to slacks, shirts, bowties, and sweaters (having no body hair, and the building being so cool, the sweaters function rather favorably)—has, while pragmatic, made him, enigmatic. More than this, though, and he swats a fly from his phone, dials the number on his desk, he has made a name for himself. The students like him. They call him Principal Alpaca. Ha, he thinks, whenever donning one of his sweaters (brown and beige cashmeres) hand-picked to better fit the part. That’s funny. He’d love to know the name of the child who—

“Oh, hello,” and he grabs his phone from the desk, silences the speaker. “This is Principal Jenne, from Endwell High School? Am I speaking with Mr. Nye?”

Silence. Just the buzzing from the fly, circling his head.

He is not surprised. As a point of fact, he is impressed that the phone is even connected, and, to that end, that the boy’s father has bothered to answer.

“Mr. Nye, I’m sorry to have to call, but—”

“What’s he done?”

“Pardon?”

“Bobby. Just tell me what he supposedly done and get on with it already.”

There was a time when Interim Principal Jenne would have pitied Mr. Nye. When he would have told his wife that the man suffered from what he called ‘honest ignorance.’ But his son’s particular sort of prejudice? No sir. Not on his watch. No matter how regularly he came into contact with these hillbillies, this was something that, as a graduate from, and now Endwell High’s building principal, he resolved never to accept. The fly lands upon his desk.

“Well Mr. Nye,” and he clears his throat, “Robert has been suspended. We’re going to need you to come down to the school and pick him up. Directly.”

The man laughs. “Oh yeah? Directly? You planning on telling me what for? Or’d you rather I guess. Who’s to say it ain’t his word against yours?”

“I can assure you,” he says, swatting the fly from in front of his face, “there’s no doubt. I wanted Robert—”

“Bobby.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Nye, Bobby. I wanted Bobby to explain, to report, I should say, his actions. But your son. Well, Mr. Nye, I’m not quite sure how to say this.”

“How about you use your words.”

“Honestly, Mr. Nye?” and Interim Principal Jenne straightens. “Honestly? It disgusts me to report that Bobby called a classmate the N word. And you need not take my—”

“Is he?”

Interim Principal Jenne pales. He doesn’t need a mirror to know how he appears. But shock soon gives way to anger. Indignation. Given his own, unique, pigmentation, he is no stranger to slurs. There are many words he could employ. Names he could use. But he will not stoop to this man’s level. There is no reason to escalate the issue. He was hired, in part, because he possesses, unlike his predecessor, a level disposition. His ability to handle men, he thinks, whose family tree consists of a trunk.

The man laughs. Ripe, fleshy sounds, thick as gunk scooped from a pumpkin. “You ain’t listening, Jenny. None of you do. Surprise? Who said anything about a surprise? Listen. Up.”

“Mr. Nye. Now I’m sorry, but—”

“No, sir. Nuh uh. Now you listen here, Jenny. You’re sorry? I’m the one sorry. You call me at work. You get me off my cows. You tell me you’re suspending my boy for what? It’s a simple question. Answer up. Is the kid, or ain’t he, a ni—?”

Interim Principal Jenne feels the phone against the side of his head. The screen warm with electricity. He looks out the window. The fly, like a sick screensaver, slowly rotates against the perimeter of the glass.

“That’s what I thought,” Mr. Nye says. And he cuts the call.

It is just now May. The grass is green. And the sky? Blue. The fly makes a slow pass around the room, then smacks against the window. Interim Principal Jenne watches it rise, and fall. Rise, and then fall. Flat upon its back, the fly buzzes mindlessly, its wings worthless. And then, he supposes, lowering the phone, it died. It was dead.

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THE PROBLEM WAS STARTING by Alex Behr

April 21, 2019 · Fiction

The problem was coming up with reasons to scoop rice on the plate one more night. The stove worked. She could boil water. Pasta. Rice. Pasta. Rice. Boil and pour and scoop and swallow. The problem was the streetlight. The streetlight leaked through the blinds, and she could put the extra pillow over her head, but she feared the nightmares. She waited until the birds started singing or squawking or whatever they did at 4 a.m. from branches the cat couldn’t reach.

The problem was her son: she forgot to smile at him. But she scooped the rice. She scooped the pasta. She scraped off the leftovers and filled and emptied the dishwasher. She forgot to shave her legs. There’s hair on her toes. The problem was the weather forecast cycling through the months, and the egg yolk and wine glass stains on the tablecloth. The pieces of dried cat food stuck to the linoleum. The problem was she couldn’t delete the voice-mail messages from her ex-lover.

The problem was that photo of her on his phone (and hers), where she sits on his kitchen chair with orange peels balanced on her nipples. Her tits look fine, but she has bags under her eyes and looks demented. What is happy? This? Coming off sex drugs for the first time in years (divorce, you know) is like coming off cocaine addiction: but she never was an addict. She only saw them on TV.

The problem was the orange peel photo somehow getting on her son’s friend’s Instagram account. (She never locks her screen.) She wasn’t a follower of her son’s friend, Josh, but she was on the PTA with Josh’s mom, Nancy. She got an urgent text message from Nancy through Instagram with the photo—a black bar over her eyes, and one over her tits. Nancy was Christian. Nancy sent a sad-face emoji with it and had typed many words, but by then the phone was thrown against the wall and the screen had shattered.

Oh, my god. She ran upstairs. Her son was in bed, under the covers, though it was the afternoon. The blinds were down. His phone was powered off, a bad sign. “I have to quit school. I hate you.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I can’t stop thinking about you having sex.”

“Don’t think about that!”

“I can’t help it. It’s in this part of my brain,” he pointed to his right temple, near a large pimple. Her son was fourteen, and growing so much he went through two boxes of cereal a day, but he still had a stuffed bear under his pillows.

“You shouldn’t think about me having sex. It’s gross,” she said. “Do you think about Dad having sex?”

“I don’t worry about him.”

He refused to go to school. He hit tennis balls over the back wall into the Georges’ pool. She watched him from the screen porch. It was easier to be silent with her son, too. She replayed the dead sex in her mind. The brain lit up the same parts through memories as if they were happening. Her ex-lover promised they would forget each other. He got colder the more she cried. She wondered how memories shifted and moved to different parts of the brain. Like clothes in a dry cleaners.

Late-night Google was her companion. Dopamine and acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter, helped form memories and damned her to nightmares. Her ex-lover said she was exquisite. He’d had cataract surgery; he couldn’t see her clearly. Did she end up in a Mary Gaitskill story on purpose?

The whole thing, all thirteen on/off months, was like having sex in a hospice, waiting for the death tone, but in this case the music was the krautrock group Can. They met in her ex-lover’s four-poster bed, whenever the wife stayed at her sister’s, or hotel rooms with wrought iron bedframes. Yoga straps. Useful. Do anything. Don’t leave marks. He can bruise. You can’t. Don’t look when his phone lights up. Don’t assume others. We are holes.

Her son didn’t go back to school. Everyone he knew had seen his mom’s tits. She told the school counselor she would homeschool him. Instead, she bought them two prime tickets to see the Australian Open, blowing out the last savings from the divorce.

She’d lost language during sex. Language rushed back on the plane with crying babies. Her son’s head rested on the fold-down tray table, while air currents buffered the plane above clouds. A red gash between them. Only in the air did people walk up and down aisles with blue pillows around their necks. She’d had a pain in her shoulder for months, during the sex thing, and her left hand would go numb at any thought of him, or any story that required empathy.

When the wife came back for good and the marriage closed down, he said it might still open for others, but not her. The parts that want to come close and insert into other parts ... that he would put the same parts into strangers, and them in him, and it would be the same release as with her. That is one clue. But he memorized her taste.

She’d almost left her purse and iPhone by the charging station at the gate. She forgot to pluck the dark hairs on her chin and didn’t monitor her butter intake. The problem was her ex-lover’s last email. He’d love to be friends, but casual. The words vibrated on her new screen. He has no headroom because this is the worst, most harrowing time he has had so far with his wife. He wants her to be a friend who won’t care about him. She—with the perfect tits (maybe the wife’s are too)—is sincerely great, but he is not coming on to her. Gifts are forbidden: friends don’t send friends chocolate.

She had to scrape her skin off and grow new skin, reconstruct her body from the nights of drinking scotch, being thrown on the bed, dozens of times, but never food in the fridge. Cookbooks of the married kind. Never opened. Don’t spill lo mein on the sheets.

Before the flight she’d texted, No, we can’t be friends, and more words in anguish, and a few clever things, and he texted, Peace. Healing. Respect. And his initial. In case she forgot.

He bites her all over in a public park. He wants on the Fuck Train, and then he wants off. His head is on a stake. The problem are all the skulls, lined up on stakes, the sweet procession of ex-lovers, and now one more.

A baby was wailing behind them on the plane. She said to her son, in the chill, “Should we kill the baby?” She tested out her old personality. Could she mother again?

He beat on the tray table with his knuckles, listening to Queen. Bopping his head. Took out his ear buds. “What?” She repeated herself. She hated doing that.

“Think you’re funny?” her son said. “Think you’re funny about killing a baby?”

“He’s crying.” But she laughed. It felt. Good. She woke every morning feeling dead. Her secret. She monitored the icon of the plane on the map of the Pacific, not letting herself think of what would happen if it, and them, fell.

“Did you know when you were little, we put the toilet seat up on an airplane, and you put your balls right where men pee?” She would crawl out of this bad thing.

“That’s sick. That means my balls have been to exotic places.” Her son showed her his phone. “If it’s 11:59 a.m. in Melbourne, tomorrow, why can’t they predict the future for us?”

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