FICTION Archives

OBIT by Jesse Salvo

August 21, 2020 · Fiction

Published Wed, Jan 13, 11:53 p.m. ET

Jersey City, NJ

This item is dedicated to the living memory of David Graff, a friend of this paper, who passed away this week in a manner very much unexpected to those who knew him well. David, who died Thursday, was born in Michigan to a family of middle income, attended the University of Chicago under dubious circumstances, failed out under less dubious ones, spent two years writing grants for legal nonprofits, discovered no dignity in the work, detested labor, detested snobbery, moved back to Detroit, fell in love, became engaged, took a job cleaning churches, saw the engagement end badly, saw his only love end badly, quit the churches, bought an outbound ticket, spent nearly five years living reckless across the ocean, did steady, unlucrative work in Morocco, bought a dog, gained a small reputation and a byline, broke his foot in Cambodia, got in over his head, saw a child dismembered by a landmine, acted badly and was jailed in Chile, elected finally to come home, took a job in Sioux City, detested phoniness, detested “small talk”, got a girl pregnant, paid for the abortion, buried the dog, quit drinking, broke three stories, learned to live with regret, moved to a major national publication, lived comfortably for two years, disdained politeness, disdained bosses, was bought out and left the paper, was hired and bought out again, cobbled together a National Magazine Award and a mortgage, had a heart attack, pivoted briefly to video, relapsed a year and got sober again, was contacted by and met with the abortion he’d thought he’d helped pay for, moved to New York City for work, got laid off again, sold the mortgage at a loss, reached out to his life’s only love, garnered no response, caught a job with a small paper writing obituaries, always was a joyful presence around the office, never was a burden to anyone, proved unable to shake a childhood loneliness, retired to his apartment one evening, wrote a small note in the parlance of his trade, drank a bottle of bleach sometime just before midnight, sat very still in his chair, thought briefly of all the words we use to explain a life, attained a sort of peace, and regretted only the bad parts.

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WHEN THE FIRST HUSBAND DIES YOUNG by Dan Brotzel

August 20, 2020 · Fiction

When your first husband dies young, you feel shock, you feel sick. You hurt, you bruise, you ache, you sting. You feel nothing at all but also everything, way too much. Reality has been swept from under you. There’s a big hole, a gap, where your life should be. Nothing makes sense. You’re trapped in a nightmare that can’t possibly be yours. Everything is panic, anxiety.

You keep running up against the hope that this is all an illusion, that soon you’ll be able to get your head round it, feel differently about it, send it away. You keep thinking you’re in a bad dream, or maybe even just a dream of a dream of a bad dream. You tell yourself you’ll unravel it all eventually and get back to normal.

When the first husband dies young, you feel like your future’s been stolen. You feel like you’ve entered on a chapter that wasn’t even supposed to be there in your book. You had a life, you had a roadmap, you had dreams. You had a sense of where things might go, a direction of travel. You had the shared destiny of each other.

He painted pictures of the future. He had it all scoped out. The vision–a lot of it came from him. But you went along with it. There was a certain muscularity to his mapping out of things. You liked this, at first. It involved you and only you, it made you feel that you’d been specially selected. You were part of a plan. You existed for something, for someone. Now he is gone, and you’re not sure where you are either.

When the first husband dies young, you notice how keen everyone else is to grieve on your behalf. From the outside it’s a story they can really get their heads around, a formulaic film plot: love’s young dream crushed, the brave one taken too young, a future stolen. To them, it all seems so clear, what’s happened and how bad it all is, where it all begins and ends. Whereas for you, it’s just a mess, it’s not even a feeling, it’s just a color that’s drained from the world. You wouldn’t even know where to start, how to define it, what box to put it in. You are the box.

People seem so taken with the exquisite agony of it all, they keep telling you how they feel your pain. But how can you? you think. I don’t even know how to feel it myself.

When the first husband dies young, you find that people have a part for you to play: the inconsolable young widow. And they want you to play it forever. They love it. They want you to wear black–well not literally, at least not all of them. They want you to turn your existence into a living shrine. They want you to relate everything you say to some cherished moment with him. They want your every action to have meaning only when held up against the lens of his tragedy, your tragedy.

They like you tragic, they like the look.

When the first husband dies young, you’re not thinking about moving on. But slowly you start to see that you’re suspended now in a solution of suffering, floating like a dissected rabbit in a formaldehyde tank for the world to pity. It’s a fate worse than death, you hear yourself think. Maybe you don’t want to be anything else right now, but you’d like to know you could try if you wanted. Otherwise you might as well be dead too.

When the first husband dies young, you quickly realize that you can never really say anything to anyone to suggest that things were ever less than perfect. Yet there are little things you start to remember, little niggles and judgments and tensions and frictions, things you don’t have in your life now.

Sometimes, when in-laws or relatives or friends of the deceased sing the praises of your late husband, you don’t quite recognize him. Or, when they call to mind a famous evening or memorable event with him, you recall something extra that they never saw: the row you had before the party, the resentment you carried all night, the savage alcoholic catch in his voice, the sullen resentful slurs, the punitive silences–yours and his–on the drive home. So now you have to nod and smile past your memory, as everyone looks to you to validate theirs.

When the first husband dies young, you find you can put clothes on and not have to wait for the inevitable assessment of your outfit. You can make a spontaneous plan to see someone that evening and not have to explain who they are and how you know them, or what time you’ll be back. You can do nothing–you don’t even have to say that you don’t feel like doing anything–you can just not do anything. You can mooch, you can putter, you can forget to get dressed or do your hair. You can browse Netflix or arrange your wardrobe or read a book or flick through some crappy celeb mag or plant some herbs out on the balcony or spend three hours making an onion soup, with some disposable plastic pop turned up loud that he would have hated.

There are occasions, on your own, never to be said to anyone else, in the darkest corners of the night or the quietest folds of a solitary day, when you dare to think that you prefer it like this.

When the first husband dies young, you realize he didn’t like you very much. It’s not really his fault; he probably didn't like himself very much either. (His dad was no different.) He was, to use a phrase that he loved, “a man of the world,” whereas, you–poor sweet, dear you–you were so naive and hopeless that you needed saving from yourself. You had to have things explained to you, he explained–which was handy, because he liked nothing more than to explain things. He knew stuff, he was clever, and he was capable in many ways. But there was a price.

He liked everything his way. He knew what was best for you, much better than you ever could. He expected your tastes to be his tastes. He expected you to defer to him in the big decisions–he didn’t want you to go back to college, didn’t want you to carry on with that job, let alone go for that promotion. He was happy to go along with you being you, so far as that didn’t conflict with you being his. But he wasn’t really very kind and, contrary to all his assumptions, he wasn’t very funny.

You realize that you were afraid of him. You thank God that you never had any kids.

When the first husband dies young, you blame yourself. You survived him, and now–with no right of reply–you judge him. But you know you never wished him dead; you had this silly optimistic belief that everything would right itself in the end, that you would both find a way back to the early days when everything was perfect and hopeful.

When the first husband dies young, you find one day you are free to think your own thoughts and free to stop worrying about how others expect you to be. And you see at last your first husband’s great gift to you: the realization that there need never be a second.

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SAN ANTONIO by Saul Lemerond

August 19, 2020 · Fiction

The piglet was pink, but not the regular pink that you expect piglets to be. This was the sort of glowing, warm pink that only exists in Disney movies. God, the little animal was so cute Yancy wanted to squeeze the thing to death. Wanted to squeeze it ‘til its head popped off its precious little body.

Yancy’s friends Tim and John think this too. He is so lucky, they think as they stand beside him wishing they could also have one. They’d all been on their way to the Riverwalk but now no longer care.

Yancy reaches out a hand and pets the piglet on its snout, which offers a high-pitched oink. This is right. Rightly right. He names the piglet Normand. Normand smiles. Normand’s smile is a demon’s smile. There is an air of danger about Normand, which only makes Yancy desire him more.

Yancy picks up Normand, thinking, My mother will like this piglet.

He looks over to his friend Tim who is tall and reminds Yancy of the bronze cowboys on the Riverwalk, the Briscoe. Stetson hatted. Rugged and loving life. There is a piglet that has appeared at his feet.

John, who is dashingly handsome and reminds Yancy of a younger version of himself, also looks down to find one.

This is strange. Yes, they admit that, but, their libidos are excited. They know a good thing when they see it, and they brace themselves, psychically, for what promises to be a considerable amount of sexual attention. Yancy looks at Tim. Tim looks at Yancy. They smile at one another. The attention, it seems, is already here.

How beauteous these piglets are. Oh, brave new world, Tim thinks, that has such creatures in it.

They take pictures and record videos of the piglets and post this on their many profiles. Tim names his piglet Worthington. Worthington, like Normand, has the grin of a hungry hobgoblin.

***

Yancy’s mother is a starchy woman who likes index funds, has a drooping heart, an aching soul, and a mood in constant need of cheering. Her name is Mildred.

“What a cute little piglet!” Mildred shouts when she sees Normand. She tries, very hard, to hide her jealousy which is a very ugly part of her that she rarely acknowledges.

Oh, and will you look at that. Mildred didn’t notice at first, but she has a piglet standing next to her as well, sniffing at her fern-green flats.

“Where did this little guy come from?” Mildred asks. “This is the cutest thing I have ever seen in my adult life. I will name him Weatherford. It looks like a Weatherford, don’t you think?” She, like Yancy and his friends, is also excited about the attention this will afford her, sexual and otherwise.

Mildred sends a picture of Weatherford to her friend, Francene. Francene sends Mildred a picture of her piglet, Hamlet. Hamlet, like Weatherford, is adorable yet also menacing.

It’s a profoundly joyous time, and they make sure to post this on their many profiles.

There are many questions about where the piglets came from and why they are here. These questions seem important but not as important as, say, actually having a piglet. The piglets are a mystery to be sure. Everyone agrees. They will investigate, of course. Of course they will. Later.

Then the message: Arbuckle just ate John!

Yancy looks at his phone and wonders if this is a typo. If instead of ate, they meant @. ‘@John!’ makes more sense than ‘ate John’, but no. A photo is shared with a little adorable Arbuckle chewing on John’s foot, still in its classic western boot.

Everyone at John’s funeral who doesn’t have a piglet finds a piglet there. They are dangerous, these piglets, it cannot be denied, if only slightly, which just adds to their titillation. The funeral is like most funerals only more so in that it serves as both a celebration of life and a fracture in their interpersonal happiness along with flowers, drinks, and old friends.

The occasion is emotionally wrought. Everyone loves their piglet, but at the same time, they do not know if they can trust them. Tim looks at Yancy. Yancy looks at Tim. The death of their good friend has brought them closer than ever.

During the funeral, Hamlet attacks Yancy’s mother’s friend, Francene.

At first, Hamlet leaps up to Francene’s neck and takes a fleshy chunk out of her neck, right around where the carotid artery probably is.

The other piglets, seeing this, jump aboard this flesh lunch wagon and take what they can get. Muscle, bone, tendons, and teeth. When they are finished, there is nothing left. Everyone posts this on their many personal profiles.

Mildred takes out her phone and reports this to several organizations who make it their business to keep data on such things.

It seems to the mourners as if time stops and the whole scene freezes in tableau.

Yancy looks at Tim. Tim looks back. Suspended between them is an aerosol of terror, disgust, and desire.

The horror sharpens slowly, like the point of an icicle in early springtime, then everything begins to move again.

Tim pukes in the large clay pot of a Ficus benjamina. Several others join him. Many fear they will be eaten next. They inspect their piglets who oink at them dismissively, so dangerous and yet so cute.

***

Later, when they are still alive and uneaten, it becomes clear to everyone that their piglets will either eat them or they won’t.

Yancy could not get rid of Normand even if he wanted to. He puts him in a box outside at night and finds the piglet in his bed moments later. He leaves him hundreds of miles away in the Chihuahuan Desert and returns home to find Normand waiting on his porch.

Yancy sits down and reflects on these uncertain times. He wonders if he is in love with Tim. Tim does not wonder. Tim knows.

The two of them sit and drink coffee together.

“I want that piglet!” A voice shouts. It is strange to Yancy and Tim. People do not care that the piglets are dangerous. People, it seems, have complicated relationships with danger.

Yancy and Tim hold Worthington and Normand close. Across the street, there’s a group of people with no piglets and a single man who has one.

Yancy and Tim think there might be violence. You never can tell these days.

A drove of piglets runs up from off of E. César E. Chávez Blvd. Now, there are exactly enough piglets for everyone. Tim kneels down in front of Yancy.

Yancy calls his mother, Mildred, to see if she is still alive and unchewed.

Her smiling face appears on his phone with Weatherford in the background.

He is adorable. The threat of him, Yancy thinks, somehow adds to his appeal. He tells his mother that Tim has proposed. Life is too short, he says. He wants a Texas wedding.

Across the street, one of the new piglet owners is being devoured by his adoptive little pink package of joy.

Several of the other piglets join in on the meat buffet and blood sprays everywhere. The shock and smell of the wet, naked viscera send several observers to vomit into the gutter lining their side of the street.

Yancy turns his phone around so that his mother can watch. Mildred sends this information to the appropriate data collection agencies, then she congratulates Yancy and Tim. What a good couple they make.

The drift of piglets lets out a long whine. High pitched, like a host of porcine cicadas.

Tim records all of this on his phone, livestreaming to followers with similar interests.

Oh, how cute, they’re singing, Yancy thinks. Is there no end to their precious benefits?

These are interesting times. Uncertain, yes—destabilizing and frightening, of course—but interesting to be sure.

Another piglet begins to eat its new keeper. It starts at the leg. The screams that follow are uncanny.

“Yancy,” Mildred says, and Yancy turns his phone to face his mother. “I’m so happy,” she says, “for you, and that my Weatherford is a kind and gentle creature.”

“My Normand, too,” Yancy says, lifting the singing piglet up to nuzzle his neck. He is happy to be with Tim and Worthington.

“I cannot believe how many people have joined my livestream.”

“We should take one of those Lollipop carriages downtown.”

The gutter runs thick with retch and gore.

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DARLING by Suzanne Grove

August 18, 2020 · Fiction

We were fifteen, our bodies slick with baby oil, as we tanned on her lawn in old beach chairs rusting at the edges. I was pouring flavored sugar down my throat when Julia told me the devil seduced my parents. The candy’s raspberry tang hit my soft palate, and I coughed a fine blue dust that tasted like medicine.

I knew her parents were evangelicals or born again or fundamentalists, all words I could say but didn’t understand. Her father wore jeans to church. The faded denim Wranglers rode high up his waist and tugged at his crotch. His leather belt with a fat buckle was two-toned, gold and silver with a vacant-eyed Longhorn steer carved into the middle. He was an alcoholic until Jesus saved him, or that’s what people said. I spent a lot of time thinking about him. I spent a lot of time thinking about that belt.

My parents were getting a divorce.

“It’s the devil.” Julia removed the wrapping from a package of single-slice cheese. “My father said so.”

The waxy yellow square melted as she nibbled on it. We were starving. We were always starving at Julia’s house. Her mother had a pork shoulder locked away in the pressure cooker, but the refrigerator was nearly empty. A jug of iced tea and container of potato salad. Some salami and the cheese. A box of her mother’s Pinot Grigio dripping onto the glass shelf.

“Let’s go to my house,” I said. It was July, the middle of a stagnant afternoon in Ohio, gnats floating around our faces and flies landing on our forearms and toes, rubbing their legs together with no sense of urgency.

“Can’t,” Julia said. “Not allowed.”

I ripped open two more paper straws of the candy, felt my mouth go hot and dry. Julia slid off her chair to take a drink of hose water. She was lean, all pale limbs with a pointy chin and something sly glinting at the edges of her eyes. I left without saying goodbye.

My mother had already moved to Massachusetts, where she had a new apartment on Beacon Street near Boston Common and a new husband named Rob. I was supposed to fly there at the end of August and start school at a private academy. Until then, I belonged to my dad, who worked as a prep cook at a nice restaurant in Toledo. He came home exhausted and reeking of the lemons and limes he sliced for the bar.

I didn’t agree with Julia’s father. Even at fifteen, I noticed a new weightlessness to my parents’ interactions, a buoyancy that arrived after they’d decided to separate. I could hear dad chuckling during his calls with my mother, a beer warming in his hand. He spoke kindly to her. They seemed happy again.

On the following Friday, Julia and I went to the pool. I rolled a beach towel and change of clothes into my backpack, zipped away all the accessories of womanhood I’d wanted until they arrived: tampons and pain killers; deodorant and blemish cream that burned my skin. We kicked and dove until our bodies ached with sun and sore muscles. We shared heaps of French fries Julia soaked in salt and vinegar. I phoned my dad to tell him I’d be spending the night as we walked back to Julia’s house. Our flip-flops kicked up dust from the gravel that hurt the soles of our feet.

Julia told me she loved me.

“As a friend,” she said. We were propped up against her twin bed, reading the movie times in the newspaper. Her parents didn’t allow television in the bedroom. “You’re the only person I can stand.”

Later, when I came back from her kitchen with two fudge pops and potato chips, she was leaning awkwardly against her closet. She kept chewing on her cheek and scrunching her toes together. I moved past her to fetch the pajamas in my backpack. Despite the heat, we opened the windows in her bedroom and watched pixelated movies on my phone using the neighbor’s Wi-Fi. We let the insects sing us to sleep.

On Saturday my father knocked on the bathroom door. I was going to a matinee with Julia. A horror film.

But my father canceled my plans.

“You’re coming with me, kiddo.” His arms were crossed, thick and hairy in a white t-shirt. He’d recently shaved. “Get dressed for the track.”

All of dad’s friends were gamblers. On weekends, they brunched and played twenty-one and bet on the horses at the casino two counties away. He’d never taken me with him until that humid afternoon, sweat pooling in the creases of my elbows.

“I don’t think you’re ready for Boston,” he said. His friends were luxuriating in the air-conditioning, but my father sat me down on the outdoor bleachers, the aluminum scorching my thighs. Everything reeked of manure and alcohol. “Tell me these are some sort of prescription I don’t know about.”

From his pocket he pulled a bag with four blue pills inside.

“I found them in your backpack,” he said.

They weren’t mine, but I knew immediately how they’d fallen into my possession.

An hour later, circling the food court, we saw Julia’s father. He was eating a hot dog, drinking from a plastic cup of clear liquid. Two limes. I told dad about Mr. Richardson’s comment. About the devil and the divorce.

“The man’s a hypocrite.” He moved his face like he might laugh, but didn’t.

On my way to the bathroom, Mr. Richardson found me. He called me darling and told me to forget about seeing him. For Julia’s sake. I thought about his daughter telling me she loved me, and imagined her slim fingers fidgeting inside my backpack.

“Are we clear?” Mr. Richardson asked.

He was wearing his belt buckle.

From his neck lifted the sweet smell of sweat, and booze.

In that slim, carpeted hallway, a swirl of blue patterns spiraling beneath me, Mr. Richardson leaned his body toward me, shifted to take a step.

I didn't know what to say or where to move, so I just kept looking at his belt. The steer would not to return my gaze, its empty eyes refusing to bear witness.

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PENNY-UP by Daniel Fraser

August 16, 2020 · Fiction

On Tuesday afternoons I would go down to the garages with Sam and Jason to throw coins at a wall. Derek would come and bring a twelve-pack or a slab and we'd stay there past dark. Penny-up can't be explained, you just have to play it. Like life. The summers were the best. Big sun falling behind the tower block, kids running under the washing lines, screaming and fighting on the open grass, the chimneys and smoke-blackened brick stretching back into the hills, and us with nothing to do but roll.

“Watch me,” said Derek. We watched him land a soft rebound. It was warm, muggy. The sky was swirls of grey and milk, somewhere far off crept little bits of blue.

“Not bad, not bad,” said Jason. I told Derek he might make the championships.

We called it rolling but really it's a flick. You throw just like a decision but here it's not heads or tails, win or lose—it's all how well you handle the distance.

I cracked open a beer, listening to air escape. That sound like sea being sucked beneath a stone. Foam curled out above the mouth. I drank.

“Did you see that horror film?” said Derek, “the one with all the cameras.”

“I did,” I said, “I like anything where people are being watched.”

“Is there a film where everyone is Michael Caine?” said Jason, “I want to see that.” He wiped his hands on his overalls.

“Guy Ritchie doesn't make those anymore,” said Sam. Sam sliced his flick wide—“fuck it.”

We grew up in a place no one ever never really leaves. None of us broke the mold either, slowly aging into versions of our fathers. Toned down and diluted into something we could bear. Jason and his dad landscaped gardens for rival firms operated by two half-brothers. Derek was a lifeguard with a wrestling ring in his back garden made from broken gym equipment. His Dad looked like Bill Oddie but was some kind of karate grandmaster. Me and Sam worked removals, furniture mostly. Both of our dads went missing, so we knew about taking stuff away. We moved furniture from one place to another, room to room or town to town. With work distance didn't matter, only care. We were good. Sam could drive a van and I could judge the width of an object just by looking.

The light was paler now. Some kids were shouting, calling out a cheat. Jason made two in a row and took the pot.

“Who is this man?” said Jason, looking round, grinning, pointing at himself. An imaginary crowd roared. Derek kicked at rough edges of the tarmac. I cracked open another beer, feeling happy and small, like an insect, embedded safely in some forgotten fabric, left to chew its little square of dust. That's the good feeling, the penny-up feeling, like one small glory is just enough. Some people don't get it. I brought Amy down once. She stayed twelve minutes and told me to meet her in the pub. Amy had a hole in her throat from birth and we'd been in love for nearly as long—same street, same school. She ignored the game and shuffled inside her coat. The valley was colder then. Her hair caught up with brown leaves blowing from a sycamore outside the cinema.

“It's just throwing time away,” she said, sipping bitter. I made a joke about time being money. She looked at her hand and kissed my arm and told me on Tuesdays not to call her before nine.

Derek looked at a pigeon and said the word “sandwich.” He pulled a sandwich from inside his coat. After three bites he got distracted and dropped the sandwich. I imagined the bread growing legs and crawling up the tower into the sky. I'd already sold the script for Spider Sandwich and started shooting by the time someone said, “you're up.” I flicked a scrape right down the wall; it ended millimeters from the edge. A winner.

“Sick,” said Sam. We bumped cans in celebration. Just then I was king of penny-up, grandmaster, lord of the garages. Sam got a hip flask of whiskey from the van and we swigged it, shoulder to shoulder, the liquid warm and burning in a way that didn't need to last.

Sam's been living with me for four years. Our brick house is an end terrace rented from someone else's aunt. Three rooms under a low slate roof: separate bedrooms, and a downstairs that's just one big space. In the garden, old paving stones frame a swimming pool of lawn. “We can grow things here,” Sam said early on, but neither of us ever really did. Most nights, Amy would come round and I'd cook dinner. The first few times Sam told me she was frosty until we discovered Helicopter Police. Amy liked anything with cops that fly. Once we found a channel with repeats and watched it for six hours straight. The police would fly around and shout and look down on people doing criminal things.

“Night vision,” Amy said when everything turned green.

“Oh fuck,” said Sam, “run!” They ran. The cops read out confusing radio signals and codes. It didn't seem to make much difference, they just flew hard into the night. Sometimes the camera was black and white, sometimes it was red.

“Heat sensors,” said Amy, “they're done for.” She dipped a chip in mayonnaise and shuffled forward in her seat. Everyone cheered when the criminals got away.

It was close to sunset. Clouds were glowing low behind the empty mills and scattered clumps of wood.

“I want to meet someone,” said Derek, “a girlfriend.”

“You need to be more romantic,” said Sam, he flipped a coin and caught it, then wrote poetry on the air. He picked imaginary roses and gave the wrapped bouquet to Jason.

“I'm romantic,” said Derek. Derek opened a can, a puff of lager fizz hissed into his face. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth. Derek kicked off the next round, betting high and almost making it. Sam took it in the end, on the last roll. Derek smiled and shivered and leaned against a garage door, the metal bending inward, before popping out without a dent. Even after, when he was injecting, Derek still made Tuesday though his hands were mostly too shaky to win by then.

Dark was scrolling through the hills. Derek looked at his watch, his neck woozy and soft. He put his hand in his pocket and brought out a new roll of coins.

“No more for me,” I said, “I'm quitting while I'm ahead.” Derek looked away toward the wall. Sam drank up and burped and crushed the empty can into his hand.

“Ready to go?” he said.

“Yeah,” I told him. We hugged Jason and Derek in turn.

“Got a full house in the morning,” said Sam, turning. I nodded and followed on behind. We got to the van door, and I heard Derek shouting, “Practice round, practice round!” We drove home, stopping to pick up frozen bags of fish fingers and nuggets, leaving Jason and Derek in the thickened moonlight, Jason shouting over the garages, “Come on then, just us two now.”

I called Amy. She picked up and told me about her day. “Nuggets,” I said.

“Police Helicopters,” she said. Behind me, Sam said, “You know it,” and started making siren sounds. A wind ruffled through the van, we hung our mouths out of the window like dogs. I smoked while Sam drove. The van climbed above the factories and the old estate. Summer fog came and covered up the stars. The rest of the week stretched out ahead of us. It didn't matter. Just then nothing was big and frightening: the world was just a web of tiny movements, round lumps shifting, bumping into things, moving closer or further away.

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TENDERNESS by Anthony Sabourin

August 14, 2020 · Fiction

The Doomsayer is at work.

He takes a sip of black coffee from a styrofoam cup. He mumbles to himself and barks like a dog and screams into his elbow as one would muffle a cough. He takes another sip of coffee, gargling it and spitting it into the street; wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Across the street the train is stopping, and soon the morning rush will be streaming by on the stretch of street before him, walking in their harried steps, a tension in the inconvenience of being a person around other people, already impatient to hasten the day’s end before it’s begun. The Doomsayer adjusts his pants and trench coat, picks up his cardboard sign, and steps upon his milk crate. He shouts the words on his sign.

“The end is nigh!”

Faces look up to see.

“The world is almost over!”

***

The Doomsayer worked early and all day, taking lunch at 10 am and as many bathroom breaks as he could finagle out of the decrepit Subway across the street, where he was engaged in a bitter feud with the manager, a weaselly man named Laramie. He would be home in time for dinner with his wife, a sturdy and freckled woman who stunk from her work at the smelting plant, whom he loved completely.

It was a good life, and the Doomsayer found joy in his work. He was passionate about the end of the world, and while he was aware that his message was difficult to accept, for a long time he lived for even the most tacit acknowledgement of the words that he raggedly shouted to the idiot faces of the people who worked in glass and steel buildings. Even the most furtive of glances would satisfy him for weeks.

He remembered with great fondness one particular day when a car broke down in front of his preaching stoop. —his cracked yelps painting a picture of the end, of how the resolute corporate leaders of the past were long dead, and how their doughy and cow-eyed offspring could only lead us more swiftly to our certain doom; that unchecked plague had emaciated the horses and left the goats vomiting in the city’s neighboring fields, and how more and more these days the rain was actually just acid that left the asphalt smoking after a storm. He supplemented his arguments with credible first-hand analysis of various religious texts. And with the tow truck loaded and ready to leave, as the Doomsayer asked out of professional courtesy if this mother and her child would at least acknowledge if they, on the basis of the case the Doomsayer had presented to them, thought that the world would end, was it not true that their heads, as the truck jerked and pulled away, bobbed in a manner that was markedly similar to a nod? For so long this had been the highlight of the Doomsayer’s career, so much so that yearly his wife made him a rum cake to mark the anniversary of the occasion.

—after the black clouds of the chemical factory had intermingled with and covered the skyscrapers with soot, and all was darkness except for the fires from neighboring cities—that crowds began to form. Only now—as the syphilitic ramblings of the city’s mayor failed to placate them—that the crowds gathered to listen to the Doomsayer.

“Have we passed the point of no return?” he asked the crowd.

“Yes!” the crowd shouted back at him.

“Do the penguins now slide into the muddy ocean from the floes of our own garbage?”

“Surely!” they cried.

“What happened to all of the good animals? The noble giraffe? The whimsical flying squirrel?”

“All of the good animals are extinct!” the crowd said.

“And what of the new animals humankind discovers? Those weird fangy monstrosities they fish out of the bottom of the ocean? With their glowing eyes and spiked, skeletal bodies - what do we make of mother nature’s nightmares?”

“Only abominations remain!” the crowd cheered.

“No!” the crowd chanted in ecstasy.

“And what of our neighbors? Can we depend on the slack-jawed inbreds to the east and west of us for salvation in our hour of need?”

“Our neighbors can only be depended on for war and death!” the voices boomed.

“What have we done to our planet?” he would shout at their faces.

“We’ve wasted it!” the crowd would wail.

It was a true golden age.

Yet, after years of plying his trade in obscurity, the Doomsayer felt a sense of emptiness in his newfound success. The work came to him easily now, and he longed for the days when convincing people that the world was ending was a challenge. He had taken to rolling in the garbage in the alley by the Subway, thinking the rank juices dripping from his trench coat would make his message less sensible, but still, the crowds grew.

Only a seasoned observer would have been able to tell that his rheumy eyes were sad and not sick, his voice still full of fury but devoid of passion, his malaise not directed at the end of all things, but at himself and his lack of joy in this—his moment of triumph. The closest thing the Doomsayer had to such an observer was the dreaded Laramie, who mistook these changes as sure signs of the imminent death of his rival. Over a sandwich made for the Doomsayer with open contempt, they conversed:

“Is your death near?” the scoundrel Laramie asked him.

“Is yours?” he spat at his enemy.

“I am a picture of health,” Laramie said, and the Doomsayer did acknowledge to himself that Laramie’s long neck, bulbous head, and tiny limbs still wriggled about the vandalized sandwich counter with the ease of a younger man.

“But you—” Laramie continued. “Your new friends out there may not notice the change, but I have seen how your voice falters, how your eyes have turned splotchy, and your gestures uncertain. I have seen your skin grow pale and your body rebel with stink as it rots from the inside. I want you to know that I relish it!”

“If I appear ill,” the Doomsayer said, “it is no doubt from the stagnant meatballs and moldy cheese I ingest from this, the foulest of the Subways.” He took a bite of the sandwich and chewed it slowly. “But I want you to know, Laramie, that this food is the small dose of poison that grants me the immunity I need to endure your presence, and upon your demise I will lead your family to this failed enterprise to celebrate my ultimate victory.”

It would take another half hour of negotiations before the Doomsayer could use the bathroom.

After facing an afternoon of the cheering crowds, there was little relief for the Doomsayer among his own kind, for even at the Lazy Susan—where the drink special of a free rotisserie chicken with the purchase of a pilsner openly courted the castoffs of society—the company of his fellow harbingers, soapbox criers, suspected deities, and lesser prophets greeted him as a celebrity.

He drifted about in the whorl of voices with his pilsner and a drumstick—

Majestic tirade out there—buy you a drink you’ve earned it—the voice it’s his voice how he uses it he can—goes to show that hard work pays off in the—did you see the garbage he rolls in a stroke of genius—Kevin, I’m—it adds so much resonance you know he’s the garbage we’re the garbage we’ve wasted it—used to be humble too good to drink with the Kevins now—I think it’s his sign you need the right message—location is the key—no, I’m not Kevin I’m Carl you know, the conspiracy of dust that’s mine—all hard work that’s the key—The end!—It will never end it can’t—so proud of him I taught him the ropes and he—buy you a beer whatever you want —is nigh!—such persistence, it couldn’t have happened to a better guy he’s—

—running his fingers along the arches spine of Susan IV, the tavern cat about on her rounds—

It’s really him he comes here—yeah of course the end of the world—eat the rich that’s my thing I pass out pamphlets—where did you get that cloak it’s really thick—when he bellows it shakes the earth—they eat out the palm of his hand how articulate—the geese there are too many of them that’s my thing—K-E-V-I-N, I’m the second coming get you the right cloak—the end is nigh!—I found out they all huddle together close to the lake and I try to convince them to drown but the geese don’t ever—the end is nigh!—No I’m Carl the dust it—listen—you’re a Kevin I’m a Kevin—THE END IS NIGH!—oh every night this chant—THE END IS NIGH!—they never listen—THE END IS NIGH!—the rich you gotta eat them I hand out recipes—THE END!—dust building never stopping—IS!—the voice it’s—NIGH!—can’t hear you these chants—THE END IS NIGH!—the dust builds and it can’t - no listen –THE END IS NIGH!—it builds—THE END IS NIGH!—THE END IS NIGH!—THE END IS !

—looking out at still more expectant faces, the bedraggled and cloaked and rag-covered fellow cranks, he never knew what to tell them. He had nothing to say. He lifted up his beer to his fellow colleagues in a gesture of goodwill, chugged it down, and left to more cheering.

Outside he was accosted by one of the newer criers, a weathered boy who carried pamphlets of recipes for how to eat the rich, which he distributed to the university students downtown.

“Wait!” he said, grabbing the Doomsayer’s arm.

“Eat the rich! How is that going?”

“The University guards and their truncheons do not support cannibalism but I can still outrun them,” the boy said.

“Ah that’s good. You may want to use your pamphlets as padding, if they ever do catch you.”

"I appreciate the wisdom, sir. And, I apologize for grabbing you just now but please, do you have a moment to discuss the end? I feel like there must be something more to it. I have to know what is next.”

“Next?”

“Don’t pretend. These people, they look to you now because you knew, and because you knew, surely you must know what happens next. There must be something. Please, I beg of you— help me out here, I mean I’m just starting and even with just a nugget of your foresight I could build a whole new-”

“There is no next.”

“What?”

“The end is it. One day it will all be over with and done and that’s it. That’s the end of it all.”

The boy fell silent and his shoulders dropped into a slump. “Oh,” he said. The Doomsayer left him by the neon lights of the Lazy Susan, and walked home to his wife.

Home and seated for dinner, the Doomsayer realized it was the day of the cake. The Doomsayer had forgotten, but now here it was, his wife bringing it into the dining room and setting it out on the table. The rum cake is a glistening oversized donut shape from the bundt pan, with two candles representing the woman and her teenage child from that halcyon day years past.

He tried to make a happy face.

“What’s that, all of those things your face is doing?” his wife asked.

“I am just so moved by this gesture. The rum cake, I appreciate it so much I just.” The Doomsayer blew out the candles to keep from crying. He cut two pieces of rum cake and set them onto plates as listless smoke filled the room.

“Oh, so we will eat the cake in this very sad manner,” his wife said.

“No, I am happy, I love this delicious cake,” the Doomsayer said with a full mouth, chewing as his eyes began to water.

The Doomsayer’s eyes said that nothing was wrong, only this was unconvincing, because they were spilling tears, and suddenly he was breathing heavily and having a panic attack while still trying to eat the cake. His wife went into the kitchen to pour him a glass of water, and throughout the Doomsayer was trying to comport himself as though he were not having a panic attack, his body shaking as he swallowed cake between gasps of air, all of it becoming increasingly ridiculous. With his full mouth he sobbed “I no longer love what I do.”

His wife laid the water on the table and held him. She cooed into his ear: “Ah so what you love has turned into work, eh? Woe unto the prophet now that his obscure and cool new future is the common present. Shush, my idiot baby. You think I do not see this at the smelting plant? Some people stare at the glowing ore until it takes their minds away. You just need to take a vacation.”

“A vacation,” the Doomsayer said with wonder. The very concept seemed alien to the Doomsayer, but immediately his panic faced relaxed and his eyes brightened, and he again seemed at peace. They went back to eating their cake, which was very strong, and it led naturally to their lovemaking, their cries frightening the squirrels who had overtaken and were developing complex structures with the garbage they were collecting in the field beyond the Doomsayer’s home.

In the morning he purchased a plane ticket and packed his bag, soon finding himself on a propeller plane rocketing in its arc towards the Republic of Vronsk, a coastal city known for its decommissioned oil rigs, incomplete skyscrapers, and beautiful beaches, with sand as white as the Doomsayer’s knuckles as he experienced a screeching stop on the ramshackle landing strip of the Vronsk airport.

Vronsk was beautiful. The Doomsayer wandered around the city in a Hawaiian shirt and dollar store sandals, marveling at a sky that wasn’t grey-black. He fed beef jerky to the mongrel dogs, who began to follow him around.

He gazed up at an unfinished condo, whose main level was ransacked, and whose upper levels gave way from glass and concrete to upright metal beams that stabbed at nothing, razed manmade exclamation marks surprised that this was their end. As he walked up another block to see another interrupted building, he heard the familiar sound of a voice yelling in the street. Feeling the pangs of homesickness, he walked to the source of the shouting.

“It’s over!” the voice cried out. It was a Vronskian woman with a shaved head, wearing a metallic bouffant dress. She was gesturing to the great and unfinished skyscraper above her, which the Doomsayer had to admit was a nice touch. A crowd was forming.

“The sun shines weaker every day and the ocean rises ever more swiftly to swallow up Vronsk!” she shouted. “Our street dogs outnumber our children! And in their canniness they slip into our houses and lie in their beds!”

Voices murmured in agreement.

"Our leaders have been rendered fetus-like from inbreeding! Drought has crippled our farms and clouds of locusts rattle against our windows in the night! The word is ending!” she shouted. The Doomsayer found the material to be very strong, and he enjoyed being present in the throng of people who shouted in recognition.

“The world is ending!” he heard the woman say. All around the Doomsayer was a sense of good cheer. The woman basked in the jubilation for a moment, but she cut the crowd short. “It is ending! But is this enough?” she asked the crowd.

“No!” They shouted back.

“No!” the woman said. “For the end is not coming soon enough. We must act!” she preached. Members of the crowd raised their fists in the air.

“We must destroy!” she shouted. “We must waste! More garbage! More fires! The end is in our hands and we must never waver!” she screamed. “We must be resolute! The end is now!” The crowd was rapturous. The glass in the skyscraper was mirrored like the back of a bar, and reflected in that mirror the Doomsayer saw an old man in a Hawaiian shirt. He felt as though he were in a foreign church. The dogs followed him as he left the crowd.

The Doomsayer meandered beachward, stopping to buy postcards at a souvenir shop. On the back of a postcard featuring art depicting a more optimistic Vronsk, with the sun setting and playing off of completed skyscrapers, he wrote a series of threats addressed to Laramie. Then, on a postcard depicting a series of minerals native to Vronsk he addressed to his wife a poem of longing. He continued on, mailing the postcards and, at a corner store, buying a jug of brackish wine which was described to him as a local delicacy.

From the beach looking towards the ocean, the decommissioned oil rigs lounged in the distance like ugly mechanical swans. The Doomsayer laid on a towel in the sand with his dogs and an open package of beef jerky. He was sharing the jug of wine with a couple who had seated themselves next to him. They were honeymooning in Vronsk, which was very affordable, and they overlapped against each other like sunning seals, languid curves supine and happy. They reminded the Doomsayer of earlier days with his wife, and he radiated happiness and goodwill towards the loving couple, and refrained from mentioning the imminent end of all things.

They watched people in swimsuits splash in the waves; the new wife and husband periodically wading into the water, and as the jug emptied the afternoon passed in the lazy and relaxed way that beach days pass when the sun is out. Bony birds circled overhead, and shade from the palm trees retreated to the street.

A commotion arose in the water. From people-watching and the overheard snatches of conversation, it became clear that a woman playing in the waves had lost her wedding ring. She lay sobbing hunched over herself in the sand, and an improvised search party was formed, with bodies launching themselves headfirst into the surf, legs akimbo, looking in the sand underneath the waves for the lost ring. The newlywed couple next to the Doomsayer were recruited into the search, and the Doomsayer offered to stay behind to watch over their things. He threw beef jerky to the dogs and watched the futile pattern of the people in the waves, as over and over legs would appear out of the water, and would wriggle about in the air until submerging, and after a beat, like a magic trick, an apologetic face would emerge.

Suddenly a siren wailed from the beach, and a fissure of water erupted from one of the oil rigs in the distance. The Doomsayer watched as the rig furthest to the left began its collapse, metal sweeping into the water, the rig’s mast dipping at a dangerous angle and toppling into the adjacent rig. The shriek of metal-on-metal reverberated with the siren in the air. Waves grew larger and crashed to the shore and people retreated to the sand. The search was over.

Eventually the newlywed couple returned to the Doomsayer, where they admitted that the ring was likely lost for good. The Doomsayer stayed on the beach though, watching as the rigs toppled like slow motion dominoes into the greedy sea. The sound they made was mournful. The sun dipped below the horizon, disappearing into a blood-red wink.

Alone with the mongrel dogs on the beach, the Doomsayer turned around to face the street, and he noticed how the people were moving in the moonlight like pallbearers in search of a body. Everywhere there was garbage. He returned to the view of the lapping waves, and he found himself wading into the water, and his head disappeared into the sea.

The dogs watched the waves.

A pair of pale legs popped upright into the air, calm and balanced despite the waves.

The conspiracy of dust carried on unabated.

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MOONRAKER by Robert Warf

August 13, 2020 · Fiction

GREENHOUSE

My father's hands are large and calloused with supple jointed thumbs.

I have my mother's hands. I'm a man. Not a man like my father. A man like my mother.

I'd tell you about my mother's hands, but I can only say so much for so long about a good thing.

But I'll tell you about my father.

I'll tell you something.

MOONSHADOW

Oil rig at sea. Drillers drilling. Sweat. Dripping sweat. The moon overhead. Men work under lamplight. Roughnecks with rough hands. Hands of a father. Smoldering filter in dirty fingers. Dirty fingers of my father's dirty work. A flare dropped down a well. A spark from machinery. Not by my father's hands.

They told us father didn't feel a thing when it went up.

Not a thing.

He just went, but not up.

MARSHLAND

Daddy, I've done a lot of acid. I see burning plains. Fire skirting along the horizon, flirting with you, but I can't put it out daddy, I can't put it out.

He holds my hand. Mother’s in another state. Father's woman in the other room. I am with father. Hand in hand.

Son. At some point you've got to come down. My father said this to me and I did this for him. I did this for him, and when I asked him to come down he never did.

MACHINERY

I’ll tell you something else. Something I need to say.

I’ll tell you what I saw when I went up.

I saw you.

We spoke. So here I am talking to you father. You left me with mother and I love mother, but I want to love you. You left me with mother's hands and I don't understand why you left. I don’t understand where you left me, but I want to understand. I want to because I need to.

Let me see you father.

MUSHROOM

When I see you, we sit out along the plains with a bottle of red wine and a cowboy steak we eat with our hands. You smoke a Rothman's how mother told me you smoked Rothman's. You hand me one and we smoke and watch the plains. There's no sea here. There's nothing. We're safe. I tell you this when you panic. I hold your hand then. You ask where we are and I see the sweat on your forehead and I see the veins in your eyes and I know, you need to know. You must.

Where are we?

You don't know father. You aren't meant to.

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SCARAB by Jihoon Park

August 11, 2020 · Fiction

I see a scarab beetle on the sidewalk on my walk home from the bar. Instead of stepping on it, I scoop it up with the Yellow Pages on the driveway and place it on the ficus tree next to the garage door.

I’m very nice when I’m drunk. I fall into bed next to Janine. She is awake but she does not want to talk to me. She probably wants me to shower and get the whisky smell off, but I still have some dignity left. I am my own man and tonight I want to sleep in my jacket and jeans.

In the morning, I see Janine smile for the first time since our son died. She has made pancakes. A stack of three pancakes for her, and a stack of three pancakes for the scarab beetle.

“I see you brought the bug in,” I say.

“Sorry there’s only one pancake left,” Janine says. “Scabby was starving. Maybe you can wake up earlier next time.”

So she’s given it a name. That’s fine. My childhood dog’s name was Scrappy, and I wonder if Janine is playing a trick on me. Do those names even sound alike? I try not to think about it.

My hangover gets worse on the drive to work and so I pull over on the freeway to throw up the single pancake I ate. I gargle with the mouthwash I keep in the glove compartment.

Janine spends more and more time with Scabby, who grows bigger every day. She takes it to the play structures in the park. She takes it to the mall and looks at the stuffed animals in the Build-A-Bear Workshop.

One day I come home to find them watching Wheel of Fortune. Scabby is now the size of a large Doberman. “Can you get groceries tonight?” she says, patting Scabby’s little armored head. “Scabby ate all the frozen chicken. I left a list.”

I decide to have a few drinks at Ralph’s Tavern before grocery shopping. At Ralph’s, I run into Hector. He has just sued his employer after spraining his ankle getting off a forklift, so we celebrate. After last call, we smoke two joints inside his van. We drive out to the soccer field and skid out donuts in the parking lot, like in the old days.

I come back home past 2:00 AM. Janine is waiting for me at the dining table reading The Metamorphosis.

“Did you at least get the groceries?” she asks without looking up.

“Forgot.”

We start to argue. Janine wants me to stop drinking, to be a better role model for Scabby. We start arguing, but Janine stops. She doesn’t want to wake Scabby in his room.

“His room?” I ask.

Janine tiptoes down the hall and opens Dave’s room, the room we never go into since he died. Scabby is asleep in Dave’s bed. I begin yelling. I hate seeing that thing in my son’s bed. I throw the desk lamp and shatter the window. I pick up Dave’s old hockey stick and bash down the closet mirror. I topple over Dave’s drawers. Janine grabs Scabby, cradles him in her arms and yells that she is staying at her friend what’s-her-face's for the night.

My feet are bloody from stepping on broken glass, so I wrap them up with gauze. I make three Long Islands in the kitchen and gulp them down. My hands shake. My feet hurt too much to sleep so I go and get groceries.

Janine does not come back for a while. I sweep up the glass in Dave’s room and fix up his drawer with some old two-by-fours in the garage. I straighten out his trophies. I want the room to look nice.

I try removing the bloodstains in the carpet with shampoo, but it doesn't work. I search Google and it tells me to use ammonia instead. The internet warns me not to mix ammonia with bleach, since the fumes will kill me.

I invite Hector to crash on the couch for a few nights. He brings over four bottles of Johnnie Walker, which he bought with his settlement money. We drink and smoke and watch reruns of Cheers.

Janine comes back with Scabby after a month. Scabby is all grown up now and much taller than me. He is dressed in a nice three-piece suit. Janine says she is back to collect her things, and that Scabby will take care of her from now on. He has found a nice job at that legal firm with the nighttime television commercials, Johnson & Perkins or something like that.

I beg her to stay. She hands me a business card. One of her old college friends is an addiction counselor and has agreed to see me pro-bono. I get angry. I don’t need anyone’s charity. I rip the card into tiny little pieces and toss them down on the doormat.

“It’s all your fault, I should have crushed you when I had the chance.” I leap at Scabby and throw punches, trying to bust his jaw or mandible or whatever you call it, but his exoskeleton protects him. I expect him to fight back, to rip me apart with his 100-times-stronger-relative-to-his-body-weight strength, but he just waits until I tire myself out. I collapse on the front steps of the house.

“I’m sorry,” says Janine, staring down at me. She grabs hold of Scabby, who opens up his back to reveal his glistening, golden wings. I watch them fly away, Scabby’s wings booming like a helicopter, until they disappear as a little dot in the blue sky.

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WRITING PROMPTS AND CHANGING VIEWS by Sabrina Hicks

August 9, 2020 · Fiction

At a time when real life is crushed into an acronym, IRL, to accommodate social media, texts, curated accounts, all I crave is something real, someone to talk to, my father’s voice, my mother’s strength. Dani was annoyed that her father sent her a text asking how she was doing, as if the weight of their collective damage could be written with thumbs. Knowing he won’t answer your phone call, you text back fine not explaining how you got fired for taking too many days off, caring for a woman he once loved.

A strong memory of color. I’m driving to the hospital to visit my mother with Hey Jude playing on the radio so that when I enter the lobby of broken people my head is filled with begging: Jude, don’t be afraid, Jude, don’t let me down, Jude, take a sad song and make it better, and I think for a second I’ll let her into my heart so it can beat for two, like all those years before, but I don’t go to her. Instead, I pretend I’m there to see someone else. I say to the front desk, Maternity ward, please. My sister just gave birth. And somehow, I end up staring at babies fresh from the womb, bound in white hospital blankets, striped pink and blue and yellow, brushstrokes of blood and cream-colored mucus still streaked across their brow, and I wonder what it’s like to be that new, to open my eyes and see the world for the first time, to recognize my mother through static. I blink in the rich colors of life, until I’m kicked out and treated like a baby thief, like death visiting.

A time of anger or fear. She sits up, tubes scattered about, says, Dani, don’t be angry. But Dani cannot help herself. She vacillates between sympathy and disgust, looking at the slices across her mother’s veins, the dissection of life and death like the tree that fell on the roof of Dani’s childhood home, nearly missing her, her mother and father on one side, she on the other, and how her mother’s voice was a bridge cutting through wind and rain. Her friends console her, tell her she’s stronger than her mother, implying her mother is fragile and weak, not made for this world, but she doesn’t believe any of those words or explanations, only that some things cannot be explained, which is to say, everything human.

A ladybug crawls across your chest . . . Its wings, tucked underneath its brightly dotted shell, spill out, like her shirt you brought from home, coming through the zipper of her pants as you and the nurse get her dressed, before she is released from the hospital with a stack of papers on suicide prevention, group therapy, interventions, substance abuse hotlines, and bills to add to the bills you haven’t paid. She will not let you fuss over her anymore she says, but the shirt coming out of her front zipper is a bookmark you save for later when your eyes are heavy, humming Hey Jude, coming undone, the speckled night crawling across your chest.

A man asleep in a car. Make it funny! Make it scary! But all you see is a reckoning, a knife placed squarely in his chest and the taste of blood waking inside you. You write about the twist. You write about your father leaving you both, leaving you caretaker, littering your childhood with each curve of road. You rip it all up and write fantasy, a Lord of the Rings knockoff where you are the hero, your father is the villain, and your mother the damsel to be saved. But how do you save someone from themself? You forget about salvation, make the car drive off a cliff, a man asleep at the wheel, a daughter looking over the edge, a mother who becomes her own hero.

A time when you were desperate or diseased.

A time when you were grateful and knew love.

A time when all the triggers buried in your chest did not require a key.

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VISION QUEST by Joe Cary

August 8, 2020 · Fiction

Nestled in his sleeping bag, Randy had fallen asleep alone under the desert stars, but here is stirred by a slithering along his naked thigh and a rattle under his armpit. Half asleep, he imagines he’s dreaming, but a Stone Age part of him wrings his spine and cascades adrenaline. The rattlesnake brushes Randy’s ankle and traces halfway up his ribs, so smooth and cold he wouldn’t have placed it but for the harrowing sound. A collision of fear and logic keeps him rabbit-still. The slick, thick thing slides across the old bruise left by Phil’s wingtips and curls around Randy’s heel, then brushes the arch of his foot. It tickles, goddamn it, and his foot jerks. A radio-static rattle as the diamondback roils against the bag.

“No please God no,” Randy whispers.

He spies his iPhone ten feet away, beside a saguaro, and pictures his F-150 at the trailhead.

Maybe it’ll leave on its own.

He sniffles the cold snot in his nostrils, senses the chill in his earlobes too, and it hits him: his bag is the warmest spot around. The snake isn’t leaving. Warm panic simmers in his chest and he laughs morosely. “Exactly what you want.”

Slowly, he brings his hands to his collarbones. The bottom of the bag, yellow in the moonlight, undulates and swells as the thing settles around Randy’s feet and lays its weight across his ankles. A quieter rattle, like the trill of cicadas.

It’s not here to bite me.

Randy thinks of his phone and the text messages on it. And the opinions and lives that would be forever changed if those messages were found. How he’d flung his phone from this spot after Phil’s last text at 10:16 p.m.: U ARENT WORTH THE WAIT. If only it were closer now. Phil would know what to do, he’d handle this.

Randy pushes up gently against the bag, exposing his chest to cooler air. A breeze washes the sharp scent of desert sage over his face. He inhales, but then he blinks at something in his eye and his nose tingles; he rubs it and pinches the septum, but blurts a sneeze that quakes his body. The snake writhes and its rattle screams like a whirring fly reel as it lashes Randy’s ankle; Randy pisses himself.

“Please. We’re good.”

A klaxon ringtone blares. Randy cranes to the flashing amber light and knows it’s Phil, and wonders what he has to say for himself. It sounds five, six times in succession and he knows Phil’s drunk again. He’ll think Randy is ignoring him. He’ll get spiteful. Dangerous. A snake without the courtesy of a warning.

But at least Phil is awake.

“Hey Siri.”

No reply.

“Hey Siri!”

“Hey! Fucking Siri!” The snake coils around his right ankle and constricts in pulses like a blood pressure sleeve.

“Oh, that’s your name? Hey Fucking Siri, get outta my bag.” He squeezes his face; this was to be time away from Phil––self-reflection under infinite stars––not a nightmare. Another klaxon and Randy grinds his head into the ground, convulsing at the futility. The rattle sounds like a strong shower.

“Fine, Phil, come,” he says to the sky. “Arroyo trailhead. Two miles east. You can shove me. Kick me. Just. Please hurry.”

A pocket of air billows in his gut and Randy wonders if gas would faze the snake, pictures it flouncing up his chest and tearing across his face, returning to bite him only after the air clears. He’s getting squirrelly and he knows it.

His left foot tingles. It’s falling asleep. Far off, a coyote howls, and Randy senses something, like an ancestral echo: he’s the one who needs to leave. Before both feet go numb. Tick, tock, he’s on his own with this. Alone. He’ll take his time, he decides, the patience of a glacier. The rattle buzzes like his Cannondale’s rear hub, as if the snake agrees.

One tooth at a time he carefully unzips the bag to his hips and digs his elbows in and slowly—slowly—raises his torso. He eases his left foot back, knee bent, and grounds his heel for stability. Pain lances across his instep as his foot awakens. The snake remains coiled around his right ankle. He bends that knee slightly and flexes his foot back and forth repeatedly, rhythmically. When his calf begins to quiver he pleads, “Hey Siri, let me out, and you keep my bag. Promise.”

“You’ll need to unlock your iPhone first,” says the other Siri.

At that, the diamondback uncoils and threads into the spot where Randy’s left foot had been. Randy rises to his palms and cranks out, elbow buckling, wrist searing. He scrambles clear and, stiff and numb, pulls on his Levi’s and boots. Then he lumbers to his phone and uses its flashlight to find a rock, saucepan sized. He grabs it to bludgeon the snake, but a klaxon startles him.

“Go to bed, Phil!”

Rock in one hand, he thumbs to the last text: U better be DEAD.

Randy drops the phone.

The sleeping bag is silent, placid. Randy holds the rock over his phone and considers its cost. The hassle of replacing it. Adjusting the rock’s position, he contemplates upgrading to a better camera and boyfriend and, hell, a new phone number, sloughing it all...and lets go of the rock, not a deliberate action but a refusal to hold on, willful neglect or careless disregard as lawyer Phil might argue. The phone crunches. Randy grunts and jumps on the rock and the phone crack-cracks. Bending, he scoops the scraps and shards and the phone itself—battered and bent, screen crazed—and slips it all into his pocket.

He turns around. “Hey Siri, enjoy the bag.” Then he puts one foot ahead of the other for the two miles back to his pickup and blinks a smile each time the phone scraps rattle in his pocket.

x-r-a-y magazine

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