ISSUE 10 Archives

EXCERPT FROM “COLLEGE NOVEL” by Blake Middleton

September 16, 2018 · Excerpt, Fiction

The next day around 6:00 p.m. Jordan drove to the corner store near his apartment and bought a Peach Cisco. He drove down I-95 with the windows down and drank Cisco and listened to Propagandhi. In the song the lead singer sang about sticking an American flag up someone’s asshole. In the parking lot of Eric’s complex Jordan sat in his car and swallowed an Adderall then drank some Cisco.

He walked toward Eric’s apartment. All the apartments looked the same. People were starting to come home from work. Jordan walked up the stairs to the third floor. He knocked on Eric’s door and Eric opened it. ‘Drinking Cisco already?’ Eric said.

‘Yeah,’ Jordan said.

‘Take this,’ Eric said. He handed Jordan a beer. ‘I just opened it. Put that shit in the fridge. It’s not even dark.’

Jordan walked inside and saw Eric’s roommate, Sam, lying on the carpet, holding a beer. ‘What’s up?’ Jordan said.

‘Drinking beer on the floor,’ Sam said. He got up and sat on the couch, grabbed a TV remote and a PS4 controller, turned on the PlayStation and the TV.

Jordan put his Cisco in the fridge. He sat on the couch next to Sam. Sam was holding a controller, searching YouTube. Eric sat on a different couch, facing the TV. Sam played ‘Sound System’ by Operation Ivy. They talked and drank beer.

An hour later Jordan was shirtless on the back porch, sitting in a lawn chair, holding a beer. Sam was behind Jordan digging through a bag of haircutting clippers. He attached one to a razor and ran it down the center of Jordan’s head.

‘Hell yeah,’ Eric said. ‘I'm pulling up a seat.’ He grabbed a milk-crate and sat on top of it. ‘Did you tell Emma you're shaving your head?’ Emma was Jordan’s girlfriend. They lived together with Zach. Had been dating for about four years.

‘Um,’ Jordan said. He texted Emma and said he was shaving his head. ‘Yeah.’

Sam shaved off a long strip of Jordan's hair. ‘That feels good,’ Jordan said.

‘Give me your shirt,’ Eric said. ‘It's going in the freezer.’

Jordan picked up his shirt and handed it to Eric.

Eric walked inside. He walked back outside. He drank some beer and burped. ‘We’ll be drunk by nine,’ he said.

‘Right when we have to drive,’ Sam said.

‘Perfect,’ Eric said.

Sam finished shaving Jordan's head. Jordan rubbed his head. ‘Does it look alright?’

‘Looks good,’ Eric said. ‘Go ahead and pull your shirt out of the freezer.’

Jordan walked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. He rubbed his head with his hands. He walked into the kitchen and grabbed his shirt and put on the shirt.

‘It's cold,’ Jordan said.

‘Feels nice, right?’ Eric said.

‘Yeah,’ Jordan said. ‘Not bad.’

They sat on couches in the living room.

Sam talked about getting high at church when he was in high school.

Eric played a music video for the song ‘Jesus is a friend on mine.’

Jordan said it sounded like the Talking Heads.

Sam said something about the guitar player’s hip motions.

‘I need more beer,’ Eric said and looked at Jordan. ‘Wanna come to the gas station?’

Eric opened his car door. ‘Don’t get in yet,’ he said. He pounded on the seat. ‘It’s infested with roaches. You gotta pound the seat so they go back into hiding.’

Jordan and Eric drove to the gas station near the interstate. They passed a McDonalds, a Wendys, a Taco Bell, a Walmart, another McDonalds.

‘Jesus is a friend of mine,’ Eric said. ‘He taught me how to praise my God and still play rock-n-roll.’ He parked the car. ‘Man, I really wish they made eight-packs of tall-boys.’

Eric walked inside the gas station. He walked outside the gas station, holding two four-packs of tall-boys. He got in the car. He looked at Jordan and held the four-packs next to each other. ‘Eight pack,’ he said.

They drove back to Eric's apartment and walked inside.

‘Let's take some 800 milligram ibuprofen and get fucked up,’ Jordan said.

‘Ibuprofen is generic trash,’ Sam said. He was lying on the carpet again. ‘I only get high off Advil extra-strength.’

Eric put beer in the fridge. ‘How does it feel to be two of the dumbest assholes on the world?’ he said. He grabbed a beer and closed the fridge.

‘Feels pretty good from down here,’ Sam said. He took a drink of beer, spilt some on his face.

‘You spilt beer on your face,’ Eric said.

‘That’s what the carpet is for,’ Sam said. He rolled over and rubbed his face on the carpet.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Eric said. ‘I’m getting drunk tonight.’ He pulled his shirt off, walked to the kitchen, put the shirt in the freezer.

A little later Eric’s girlfriend, Kim, showed up. She sat on the couch next to Eric.

‘Can we get high tonight?’ Jordan said to Kim.

Kim reached under the coffee-table and pulled out a bong.

‘You're not allowed to smoke weed,’ Sam said. ‘You just got a haircut. That's illegal.’

Eric played depressing music on YouTube.

‘Sounds like American Football,’ Jordan said.

‘No,’ Eric said.

‘Very similar,’ Sam said.

‘Very sad,’ Kim said.

‘Sounds like Postal Service and American Football,’ Jordan said.

‘I’m gonna kill you,’ Eric said.

Jordan and Kim smoked marijuana.

‘My mom is going to find out,’ Sam said. ‘This is smart. This is really smart.’

Kim handed Sam marijuana and Sam smoked marijuana.

‘Play Ricky Calloway,’ Jordan said.

‘Shit,’ Eric said. He played the song ‘Get it Right’ by Ricky Calloway. ‘This is the guy that pressure washes UNF.’ UNF stands for University of North Florida. Jordan and his friends went there because you didn’t have to write an essay to get accepted.

‘What?’ Kim said.

‘This is Ricky fucking Calloway,’ Eric said. ‘He's a funk-singing pressure washer.’

‘Shit,’ Kim said.

‘He's not good at pressure washing,’ Sam said.

‘Leave Ricky alone,’ Eric said. ‘He does a fantastic job of pressure washing. He’s an excellent pressure washer and a magnificent funk-singer.’

‘Yes he is,’ Jordan said.

‘I'm an asshole,’ Sam said.

‘You are,’ Jordan said. ‘He does a fantastic job.’

Jordan stood and walked into the kitchen. He was feeling buzzed. He opened the fridge and grabbed a beer. He opened a cabinet and picked up a glass. ‘Why does this glass have Dough Mahoney written on it?’

‘That's mine,’ Eric said.

‘Who's Dough Mahoney?’

‘That's me. Dough Mahoney is PEN name. I have to use a PEN name because I’m going to be the fucking president. Kim made me that.’

‘Dough Mahoney,’ Jordan said, and poured the beer into the glass.

‘Dough Mahoney,’ Eric said.

It was quiet for a few seconds. ‘My mom is autistic,’ Sam said.

‘My Mom is Zach Braff and so am I,’ Eric said. ‘She’s big Zach Braff and I’m little Zach Braff.’

‘Shut up,’ Sam said.

At the party an hour later Jordan sat around a table with Eric, Aubrey, Olivia, and Sam. It was a glass-top table and the base was made of ceramic dolphins. There was a large bong in the center of the table. Aubrey was painting something on a small canvas. In the living room there was a drumset, a guitar, a bass guitar, and a microphone. Jordan was stoned and staring at the ceramic dolphins, not really thinking about anything except how stoned he was. He was very stoned, he thought. He heard a tambourine. He looked up and saw Olivia smiling. It was her birthday. She was twenty-two.

‘This is my tambourine,’ she said, and shook it again.

‘Cool,’ Jordan said.

‘I'm putting on Die Antwoord,’ Olivia said, and put on Die Antwoord. ‘I want champagne.’ She walked into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of cheap champagne and two glasses. She shook her tambourine. ‘Would you like some?’

‘Sure.’

She poured Jordan a glass of champagne. He drank some.

‘Don’t drink before we toast,’ Olivia said.

‘Sorry.’

Jordan held up his glass and toasted with Olivia. Olivia smiled and then Jordan smiled.

‘Where’s Emma?’ Olivia said.

‘She didn’t wanna come. She’s probably at home watching The Office.’

Olivia shook the tambourine again. ‘This isn't loud enough,’ she said. ‘I’m tired of hearing everyone's voice that hasn't said hi to me yet.’

Jordan didn’t know what to say. He took another drink. The champagne was good. Or the champagne was bad, but Jordan didn’t know what good champagne taste like.

Someone walked up to Olivia and said happy birthday. The person was wearing a colorful jacket and eating a carrot. ‘That jacket is funky fresh,’ Sam said. ‘That is some serious jazz.’

‘Yeah man,’ the carrot-guy said, and took a bite of his carrot and walked away.

‘That was strange,’ Jordan said.

‘What?’ Sam said.

‘That whole thing,’ Jordan said. ‘What you just said.’

‘You didn't like that?’ Sam said. ‘You gotta get freed by the funky fresh jazz beast.’

Eric walked up and said something about Billy Collins.

‘Billy Collins is dead,’ Jordan said without thinking. ‘He died a week ago.’

‘No he didn't,’ Eric said. ‘Fuck off.’

Aubrey held up the canvas she was painting. ‘It’s Eric,’ she said. The painting was deformed-looking.

‘The sagging lip represents years of untreated alcoholism,’ Jordan said.

‘Fuck off,’ Eric said.

Sam stood up and sat at the drum set. The carrot-guy walked over and played guitar. His carrot was gone.

Eric walked up to Jordan and said he had a confession. Eric said he never received money from the U.S. government for being one-eighth Native American. Jordan had been convinced for over a year that Eric received money from the U.S. government for being one-eighth Native American.

Jordan looked out the back window. ‘There's a fire out there,’ he said. ‘Let's go.’

The fire was big. There was a small tree next to the fire. Kim walked outside and stood next to Jordan and Eric. ‘This is how white people die,’ she said.

‘White people die in Iraq,’ Eric said. ‘Chill the fuck out.’

Someone threw an onion in the fire. ‘Burn the onion,’ someone yelled.

‘Is that an onion?’ Kim said.

‘It's okay,’ Jordan said. ‘We're going to get high.’

‘Who started this fire?’ Eric said.

‘Banksy,’ Jordan said.

‘Capitalism is the fire, and the tree is the people,’ Eric said.

‘When Bernie Sanders becomes president I'm going to request that all parties have large fires and Adderall,’ Kim said. Jordan gave her some Adderall on the drive over.

Kim talked about moving to Portland. Everyone was always talking about moving to Portland.

Jordan didn’t have anything to say about moving to Portland. ‘We need to burn this tree,’ he said, because it felt like it was his turn to say something.

‘It's alive,’ Eric said. ‘It won't burn.’

‘We need to burn the tree,’ Jordan said. He was drunk.

‘I'm not going to burn the tree,’ Eric said.

‘Okay,’ Jordan said. ‘Don't burn the tree.’

‘I'm not going to,’ Eric said.

‘Good,’ Jordan said.

Someone threw a pallet on the fire. The fire got bigger. There were about twenty people outside, talking in groups of three or four.

A little later Robert showed up to the party. Everyone was still standing around the fire. Robert was wearing his Winn-Dixie apron.

‘Why are you still wearing that?’ Eric said.

‘I forgot,’ Robert said.

‘Keep it on,’ Jordan said. ‘It's good.’

Jordan asked Robert when he was going to bring him some ham-steak.

Robert said the ham-steak at Winn-Dixie wasn't on sale anymore. One time Robert and Jordan got stoned and ate ham-steak on the kitchen floor of Jordan’s apartment. Jordan said the ham-steak was shaped like a dog's head and Robert got scared and threw the ham-steak in the freezer, only to be discovered months later.

‘They sound kind of good in there,’ Robert said about the people playing instruments inside.

‘Should we go inside?’ Jordan said.

‘Take off your apron,’ Eric said.

Robert took off his apron. He threw it in the fire.

‘Hell yeah,’ Eric said.

Eric, Jordan, Robert, and Kim walked inside. They stood in the living room.

There were about twenty people in the living room. They listened to people play music. No one was singing. Jordan walked to the microphone. He sang a song about ham-steak and Bernie Sanders. He walked outside and felt extremely intoxicated. A person walked past Jordan. ‘What is on your shoulder?’ Jordan said. ‘A hamster?’

The person said it was a rat. Jordan asked if he could pet the rat and the person said yes. ‘Her name is Little Miss,’ the person said.

‘Hey Little Miss,’ Jordan said. He looked at the rat. It had big eyes. ‘This rat likes you a lot. You can achieve things.’

‘Okay,’ the person said. ‘Thank you.’

Robert and Eric walked outside. Robert talked about leaving the party to go see a rapper named Kevin Gates. ‘I don't want to see Kevin Gates,’ Eric said. ‘He fucked his cousin.’ Robert said that it was cool to fuck your cousin in the year 2015. Jordan went pee behind a dumpster near the garage and then walked inside the garage. The garage was the rat-person's art studio. Jordan said he liked the art. The rat-person said it was shitty beach-art he got commissioned to make for rich white people.

Little Miss was in a cage hanging from the ceiling. Jordan put his finger inside the rat cage. The rat licked his finger. Jordan asked if the rat was going to bite him and the person said no. ‘It's licking me,’ Jordan said. He walked outside the garage. He walked inside the house. Someone said something about a terrorist attack in Paris. Olivia was singing and playing tambourine. Sam was asleep on the couch. Robert handed Jordan a beer and they both shotgunned a beer.

College Novel by Blake Middleton is forthcoming from Apocalypse Party Press in early 2019.

Blake Middleton

THE HYPOCHONDRIAC SOCIETY by Michael Prihoda

September 14, 2018 · Fiction

The Hypochondriac Society met every Thursday night in the basement of Knox Presbyterian Church.

The church was like a Russian nesting doll: the Presbyterians on Sunday morning, some Mennonites on Sunday night; a children’s Montessori school met in part of the basement during the week or whenever the hell kids attended school nowadays and for a while I think Paul, this one guy I knew from somewhere (maybe he served me food at Shish, that Mediterranean deli on Grand near the university that I generally avoided because, well, undergrads) said Monday nights were AA meetings but I didn’t buy that. For some reason. Maybe it was the shape of Paul’s face. Who am I kidding, I can’t remember his face.

But so the hypochondriacs got it on Thursday nights from 6:30 to 8:00, officially, though some of us lingered after that, as if every Thursday were a wretched party we couldn’t help prolong, knowing the hors d'oeuvres, so to speak, wouldn’t be as good back home.

There were ten of us for the most part. But if you count the people I talked to, it was four: Trey, Tull, Diogenes. Shit, that’s three. Whatever.

We brought our maladies like the shitty nephew brings a ring down an aisle toward a semi-entranced couple, the male counterpart of which probably harbors resentment and not a bit too little of put-offishness at having to tolerate this dweeb carrying potentially the most expensive piece of anything he’s ever purchased for anyone, excepting that Camaro he may or may not have purchased back in LA but whose payments he quickly defaulted before prestidigitating a new life with a family containing one of these trite extras: i.e. said punk nephew of bride.

Each week was the same but different. I’d had rumors of testicular cancer brewing for seven months now and every time I whispered this fear Diogenes would puff her cheeks, the same as certain fishes; her eyes would go all blurry and crosshatched and outsiders would think she wasn’t paying attention but really she was like an anti-muse, absorbing all our shit through her nostrils to pack away somewhere deep until her time as oracle might be called upon.

She always looked that way except for this time when a new guy came, threading some story about constant jaundice, MS, atherosclerosis, arthritis, tonsillitis, two bum knees, chronic shoulder pain, halitosis (a dead give away for a faker, since no such malady exists, I mean, c’mon, do your homework, as Trey would say), but so the list goes on and finally, after his lungs fully unwound his sails, Diogenes gets this feral look on her face, so bad I thought Vesuvius had reincarnated itself in the form of a 5’5’’, Greek-yogurt-eating self-proclaimed virgin who had dreams of being the first celibate porn star in history (don’t ask…). By the time she had picked up a chair (roughly shoving some guy, whose name may or may not have been Marvin, from said chair; the one operative detail I knew about him was the shape and expenditure of his glasses, overheard amidst the meandering exchanges of post-meeting time: oracular, the frames alone running him a morbid $340, “and that’s not counted in yen…”) the new guy skedaddled, dropping three paper clips, two rubber bands, a plastic clip like for a bag of chips, four number two wooden pencils (not the cheapo kind you see on sale at K-Mart in early August), and a grape sucker. I felt bad because that was classic hypo repertoire, the junkies’ toolkit.

The next time somebody new showed up, everyone kept shooting wry side glances at Diogenes for the first ten minutes as someone named Chris(?) said the usual.

Then it got to the new girl. We tensed.

So far she’d been calm as a nonexistent ocean breaker so when she up and Mt. St. Helens-ed us by whipping off her cardigan, t-shirt, and bra, exposing her breasts, and then pointing at a point near-ish her right aureole, only to scream, “SEE THIS!?” you could say we more or less had not seen it coming.

Well, sure, we saw. We saw a decently attractive woman whip off her top(s) and jab an index into the flesh of her right/left breast. But we didn’t see.

“BREAST CANCER.”

Then she sat down.

It made us uncomfortable. This was not at all procedure.

I looked at Trey. Trey looked at Tull. Tull looked at the floor, ceiling, Chris(?), then me. Then we all looked at her.

The older woman who walked with a cane some days to play up her failing hips happened to be sitting next to the new, breast-exposed woman. She patted her gently on the leg, which up ended up awkwardly landing somewhere around her thigh/butt cheek/hamstring since the woman was sitting and the half-naked girl was standing. “What’s your name dear?”

“Did you hear me?” her voice had rumbled into a lower register, less scream, more molasses to it. Considerably more mortality.

Something was wrong.

I wanted Diogenes to pick up a chair and make to hurl it. I wanted Tull to squeak so I could start talking about how I swear those mosquitoes from that weekend I spent camping with my cousins three weeks ago were carrying Zika virus. It wasn’t even my turn. There was procedure. But this was no good. I felt people shifting in their chairs.

The girl broke the spell by snapping her bra back into place, then putting her t-shirt on, then her cardigan. Very diligent, almost business-like. As if she had tried something on at Gap and found it not entirely agreeable.

She sat down. Her demonstration having birthed enough ghosts to fill Iceland.

Next Thursday four people showed up: me, Tull, Trey, and some other rando. Diogenes had come down with the flu, or so her text to Tull had said, which she’d half-related to us in malformed sentences lacking adhesion to the English language. I saw breast-cancer girl outside Knox on my way in, just standing near the steps to the door, in a pool of approaching darkness. I couldn’t/didn’t meet her eyes.

The meeting didn’t last until 8 that night. She wasn’t there when we left.

The week after, Trey and I were the only ones who showed up. Diogenes’ flu had progressed into full-blown malaria and Tull’s text also indicated house-arrest Ebola might be in her system.

Trey and I tried to have a normal session but the point was sharing, not talking tete-a-tete, mono-a-mono. That was too personal. Hell, if we wanted that, we wouldn’t meet in a church. The person we really spoke to at these things was the space between the circle of chairs. The god in the room. Breast-cancer girl showed us what we worshiped and it got embarrassing.

I helped Trey stack the chairs and we barely raised a hand to say goodbye.

At home, I took my shirt off and stared at myself in the mirror, squeezing my pectorals to make the aureole bulge, wondering what lay beneath.

I had nothing.

Michael Prihoda

EYE BITES by Jenny Fried

September 13, 2018 · Fiction

What You Need to Know

I cut off a rat’s head with a guillotine, and it told me I looked like someone who ate cereal for every meal, which was one I hadn’t heard before. I do not in fact eat cereal for every meal, but there’s no use fighting with a rat head. I learned not to argue when I tried to kiss someone and was so nervous I missed her mouth. At first she told me it was cute, but later she said she didn’t know why she bothered with me. I got lost in the forest once. I remembered reading about mazes, so I took only left turns for as long as I could. I found a hill made all out of sand and a man with long straight hair. I knew I knew him from somewhere but I couldn’t figure out where the information I wanted was, trapped inside my head. It was like a seal I saw on the beach once. All its flippers were fine, and its tail was touching the water, but it couldn’t figure out how to get back in.

Things I Know

The animals commonly known as seals are referred to as pinnipeds in the scientific community. Kingdom: Animalia. Phylum: Chordata. Class: Mammalia. Order: Carnivora. Suborder: Caniformia. Raskovnik is the Bulgarian name for Marslilea quadrifolia, a small plant that looks like a four leaf clover. It is not particularly rare, nor does it grow in remote areas, but is completely unidentifiable to the untrained eye. A legendary herb of the same name was said to be able to open any lock. The distance from the earth to the sun is 4.85 million parsecs, 149.60 million kilometers, 92.96 million miles, 327.22 billion cubits. Thousands of people have childhood memories of a series of kid’s books called the Berenstein Bears, pronounced like steen. They never existed. It’s the Berenstain Bears, pronounced like stain. The erroneous memory is embedded so strongly in some people’s heads that it has been cited as proof that we are now living in a parallel universe, that it was -stein when we were kids, but that timeline was erased somewhere along the way.

What I Say to You

I think if I were an animal I would be a seal.

That Night

I make out with a chair and then it rips off its face, but it isn’t you its someone else I know. We go to a protest at my old high school and I am so so late for Spanish but this is important. A short kid with a beard sneaks away with my backpack while I’m chanting. I run after him I think but my legs are still at the protest and he gives my bag back because I ask him nicely. I go to an Italian restaurant with my parents and my mom kisses our waitress on the cheek. When she turns into a frog I wonder how I’m going to pay my college tuition. My frog mom swims around the glass of water the waitress keeps refilling and I keep drinking it because I don’t know how to tell her to stop. I don’t know how to tell you to stop looking at me because its not that I don’t like your eyes I do I just know that your pupils will start taking little bites of me when they dilate because that’s just how these things go.

Out Your Car Window

Even when it isn’t that hot yet if you look closely you can always see asphalt shake and shimmer a little. I think it’s jealous. Everything always moves over it and it has to stay still. Its just like how when you see deer next to the highway they’re always looking at you and their eyes are always full of that look you give bridges when you’re wading through the water. But there aren’t any deer this time because I asked you to go the slow way, only boys on bicycles and a dirty Laundromat every couple of blocks. Somewhere inside there’s probably a chute where they throw all the lost socks and a place where their ashes stay and the sock ghosts crawl out and go haunt feet and doorknobs. It’s kind of weird to look at someone who can’t look back but what else are you supposed to do if you aren’t the one who’s driving?

What I Say to You

Do you know what paper tastes like?

Sort of. I ate straw wrappers when I was a kid.

I ate old newspapers. I didn’t realize they didn’t taste good until I was done eating.

Like aftertaste?

Kind of.

Not quite?

It’s more like you forget what it tastes like while it’s happening.

Like you have to think about it later?

Yeah.

What are we talking about?

Eating paper.

We’re talking about eating paper?

Sure.

That’s it?

I guess.

Last Year

The bites started small, with just the eyes. Little love bites. Then there were words I could see on my skin. Then the big ones. Bite one pushed the air out of my belly. Bite two left a mark on my face. Bite three put a chip in my tooth. Sometimes I still cut myself on it when I’m trying to speak.

Things I Know About You

You walk with your heels turned in.

You always have cough drops in your pockets.

You don’t turn the radio on in your car, even when we aren’t talking.

You know more kinds of bears than I do.

You do your laundry in the sink.

You always forget to staple your papers together.

You wear shoelaces that are too long, and they drag on the ground even when you remember to double knot them.

You don’t have any pets

You answer my questions, even stupid ones.

You go the slow way if I ask you to.

Your Place

I know that walking through doors makes you forget things because I read it somewhere. When I walk into rooms sometimes I forget what I am doing there and then I lie down on the floor and look up at the ceiling and wonder how many doors I have to walk through before I forget everything.

I know that you are looking at me because your eyes take three bites.

I like your eyes. I like your eyes. I know I like your eyes, I do, and my tail is in the water. You put your hand on my arm, you put your hand on my face, and look, look it’s you. But what if it isn’t, what if you rip off your face and it isn’t you it’s someone else I know, and your hand is on my face. Again. Her hand is on my face again.

Shut up don’t argue with a girl who wants to eat you.

Under the Table

You find me under the table and you put my head in your lap. We stay right there, and you don’t say anything, and I think you are good for me, I want to say you are good to me, I want to say stop looking at me, I’m under the table for a reason, and your eyes are just little bites now but what if they get bigger. I want to say what if I want to say stop but instead I just think it, but instead I just think it.

Jenny Fried

BUS PORTRAITS by Kai Ming McKenzie

September 12, 2018 · Creative Nonfiction

A man on a bus is writing in his day plannerThere is a slender man who spends every morning bus ride one winter scratching out notes to himself in a little day planner. He looks so busy that we who are seated near him are tempted to try to read over his shoulder to see what he is writing about. He has tiny and meticulous handwriting, and he writes straight through the delineated intervals of his days with a fine-tipped pen.Everything is done with quick and efficient motions, which paradoxically give the impression that there is something wrong, a neurological syndrome of some kind at work. Perhaps it's just that he never seems to have to pause to wait for the next word to come — if those tiny marks even are words. Maybe they are symbols forming some other kind of record.When he gets close to his stop his busy hands loudly rip apart the velco straps of his insulated, soft-sided lunch container and put the pen and the planner back into the front pocket. Then he pulls his knit hat down over his ears and carefully rewraps his scarf around his neck, three times. It is eight o'clock in the morning, but the page of his day is completely inked over.We want to know where he will record the rest of his hours, since his day is already filled in.A kind of fastidious graphomania or sheer nervous energy channeled out through the fingertips — that's how I described it when I wrote about it in my own little book, while I was sitting in the seat behind him, looking on. One bus rider draws portraits of anotherA woman is sitting near the front of the bus. She can't stop waving her arms. Her crooked fingers brush her black nylon kerchief and catch in it; her head bobs left and right with the ruts in the road. She is making gestures that seem devotional or beseeching, but may be meaningless. There is a white crust around her lips. Her face is gaunt, her muscles taut and ropy under her warm, dark brown skin. Naturally we do not look directly at her, but around her, carefully.Seated further back is a white man in his fifties who got on earlier. He is balding, but retains a ponytail; he is dressed casually; he is not on his way to work. He has a large newsprint sketchpad propped on the seatback in front of him and he is drawing this woman with soft vine charcoal which he pulls from a ziplock bag in the pocket of his leather vest. He spends about a minute on a portrait, then turns the sheet over with a quick flourish and starts again. They are pretty good gestural sketches. She is shown in profile, since she is in the handicapped seats and he is facing forward. He pays attention to the face.This is what this guy does — we see him on the bus all the time. He pays his fare and rides around for a couple of circuits, drawing the passengers, then when he gets bored of us he puts his pad under his arm and gets off at the coffee shop near the university.After the fourth or fifth portrait she seems to notice he’s drawing her and she grows agitated, but can't seem to turn to him to communicate, can only glare at him out of the corner of her eye. His sketches begin to show her evolving rictus of distress. If she wanted to get him to stop, she would have to rely on help from someone who could read that this was a new and different kind of distress than her default state. Actually, we do understand — but we are trying to look away. None of us tells the artist to stop.Eventually, and with some trouble, she produces a ballpoint pen and grasps it in the air before her, making parodic, palsied sketch-strokes in the air, still not looking at him directly. Now her expressions are genuinely ugly. Then she finds a piece of paper and slashes at it with great effort, producing some marks — a portrait of the artist — which she clumsily rips up and tosses to the floor.We do our best to ignore this exchange. We have ridden with the artist before. Those who have sat in front of him have been annoyed; those who have sat behind him have mostly just watched him draw. A woman writes a note in the stairwell of a busThe bus lurches down a dark street, behind schedule by a few minutes. Although it is night, there are still plenty of us riding, headed towards downtown. At the stop at the corner, a woman is waiting in a dull yellow pool of light with a two- or three-year old girl in a stroller. The bus stops in front of them and the doors open, but instead of getting on, the woman tries to ask the driver something. She doesn't seem to be able to move her lips and tongue in order to form words; she can only gesture and make loud, inarticulate noises.While she does this the bus driver is half-yelling, what? where? to her while keeping both hands on the steering wheel. She can only respond with more blocked sounds.We passengers sit listening to her moaning and the bus driver yelling back for a while, seemingly in a stalemate. The engine has an irregular idle, and it rocks us gently. Finally someone from the back of the bus says in frustration, for fuck sake, give her something to write with, and everyone comes back to life, fumbling for pen and paper to take to her. We are glad to have something we can do.She gratefully takes the pen and the scrap of paper from a passenger and writes something down and passes it up to the driver, who says, with an emphatic head nod, yes, I stop there, get on. So she stands her daughter up on the sidewalk for a moment, then collapses the spindly stroller and tucks the U-shaped handles over one arm while gathering her daughter in the other. She mounts the steps and takes a seat at the front, quickly unfolding the stroller, setting the brake, and getting the child buckled back into it.As the bus pulls back into the street she starts to take off her coat and, while doing so, finds that she is still holding the pen and the scrap of paper that she wrote her destination on. She folds the paper up and pockets it — she might need to show it again when she gets off at the other end. Then she looks up at us, holding out the pen to return it, scanning our faces to find the owner, showing no emotion that we can see. Keep it, keep it, we say, shaking our heads.From the stroller on the floor the child is turning her head to catch her mother's every movement, looking mutely up at her with love in her bright eyes. She fidgets against her seat belt, looking like she's got something to say, as if she is getting ready to speak for the first time, to say I know what it’s like.

Kai Ming McKenzie

FLIPPED by Zac Smith

September 11, 2018 · Fiction

Brad flipped his car after hitting a fire hydrant, right downtown, right on Fifth Street, right near our old apartment, the prefurnished one with the broken window and the red wall and the kitchen that had bookshelves instead of cabinets, he was driving, something happened, who knows, he hit the hydrant and the car went upward, upward, from the height of the hydrant and the height of the curb, and the car veered upward and over the hydrant, and the hydrant's base cracked under the weight and pressure of the car and the angle of it, and the cracked base gave way so that the water could come out, and it came out, one huge spray into the underbelly of the car and out into the street below while car ascended into the air itself, at an angle, fast and strange, twisting, up and around, the body of the hydrant lifted, dislodged, entirely broken free, the water coming out as a geyser, up and out, the body of the hydrant rolling away, or more tumbling away, bouncing under the force of the impact, the force of the water, the car's wheels spun and the engine roared freely, the tired no longer struggling against the friction of the road but against nothing, free air, spinning madly, the engine just bellowing as the car veered upward, the clanging of the hydrant as loud as the screaming of the engine and the roar of the water, all three a unified cacophony on Fifth Street near our old apartment, right in front of the convenience store where people would gather to smoke and scratch off lottery tickets and ask for change and sell weed and catch up with the other people who lived on the block or around the corner, and who we would sometimes buy forties with and scratch off lottery tickets and talk about what the other people on the block were doing, who they were with, where they had been and what they planned on doing, who was leaving town, alone, or leaving with someone else, people we knew or didn't know or had only heard about, or people who we saw buying beer but who never hung out, and right next to the laundromat where someone died once in the bathroom, then they closed off the whole place with police tape, and everyone was crowded around trying to see who it was, if it was anyone we thought it would be, anyone we expected to die in a bathroom, or who always hung out in the laundromat for whatever reason, but it was just some nobody that no one knew, it was right in front of that laundromat where he flipped the car, his foot still on the gas, the car in the air, the tires spinning, engine screaming, water spraying, hydrant rolling off, and when the car landed it was the loudest of everything, a real crashing down, the whole car coming down from the air with its full weight, just a huge crash, the windows crunching into a million tiny bits and the hood crumpling in and the engine letting up, finally, a big groan into nothing, but the water still spraying up and wide, less murky now that it was finished clearing out the old silty pipes in the neighborhood and pushing in fresh clean water, spraying all over the upside down car, all over the street, the curb, like the car, car half on the curb, half in the street, Brad pinned between the wheel and the seat and the roof of the car but able eventually to wrench himself out through the busted-out window, on his back, coming out like a baby covered in glass and blood and just staring at the water coming up and spraying out everywhere while the radio kept playing, louder than almost everything else except for the water spraying out and splashing down, louder than Brad muttering “shit, goddamn," over and over again, louder than him just muttering the same thing over and over again, wondering when the cops would come, whether anyone would call them, whether he would have to call them, wondering what would happen if they came, what would happen if they never came, all kinds of shit, over and over again, the same shit just over and over again in his head.

Zac Smith

MILK by Michael Mungiello

September 10, 2018 · Fiction

I’m on my way to mom’s apartment.

I’m at mom’s apartment.

Wow, nice. She’s really spruced up the place.

Mom?

I’m in here!

Down the hallway, wood floor, wood walls, wood doors, wood frames around photos (of me as a baby, me at my wedding, none in between); plants.

Mom?

Kitchen. Mom’s cluttered kitchen, Tchotchke salt shakers, detergent blue water sitting in the sink, a mini-TV in the corner and a little man saying in the Voice of Concern

A Storm Is Coming.

I look at the whole scene through the linty light coming through mom’s drawn translucent curtains.

Hey, Mom! Came to check up on you before the big storm. Do you need anything?

Oh, how neglected I am!

No one takes care of me!

For all you care, I could die!

Woah woah woah—what?

And she does the aftercry sigh and shiver and explains: last night she fell; couldn’t get up; called me but I didn’t answer (my phone was dead and I was out and she calls me once a day so sometimes, you know what, maybe I’m entitled to ignore a call, maybe it feels good); she called dad; he picked up; came over; helped her up; left; mom fell again; and couldn’t get up until early this morning, she had to move around on the floor and leverage several equidistant pieces of furniture.

Jesus, that sounds terrible, mom! Why didn’t you call dad again?

She doesn’t say, exactly, but talks about pride, pride, pride. Dignity; couldn’t I have called back? And dad, she didn’t want to steal him away again from whatever he’d been doing at that hour…

Yikes, mom.

But it’s nice to be with her. Why? She asks about my job (I’m a pharmacist) and roasts me about the stupid things I say and she roasts me in a way that confirms that those things are stupid but that I’m not. Critiquing is how she connects. She has long grey thick hair like she could be a famous poet with a black-and-white headshot but she’s not a poet.

She points to my belly.

I’m pregnant, by the way, 4 months.

You look fat.

Yeah, mom, I just found out it’s twins.

(This is a lie. It’s not twins.)

I’m worried though. What will the baby’s life be like, Lorenzo is on another business trip, left with no notice. Things between us? Not good. And I know he’d always provide for the kid with money but as Lorenzo would say in business-talk:

I’m afraid I’ve written a check I can’t cash, emotionally.

The phone rings.

Mom answers.

Hello…Completely?...Okay.

Yes. Soon. Thank you.

I decide not to ask, it’d just give her an excuse to talk about how nobody cares about her, again. Mom’s quiet. She gets a tall glass and fills it with water and drinks it in a swig. Then she gets a gallon of milk from the fridge (I spot her like she's lifting weights, which is ridiculous because someone should be spotting me! I'm lifting weights) and she has a tall glass of milk.

Ah, milk. I have milk memories, like how in college I used to put vodka in my half-full gallon of milk so I could drink during the day without roommates noticing. (Milk gets rid of the smell.)

Ah, memories.

Mom makes the ahhh sound and puts down her glass.

Wow, what thirst!

She turns to me, panting with slaked satisfaction.

That was Cheryl. Dad’s dead.

Dad and I once went to a baseball game. He bought me a pretzel and looked very tall, very strong. I told mom the truth, he and I had a good time. Later she hurt her back and I connected the dots and didn’t speak highly of dad ever again. Her back didn’t improve, and hasn’t.

Outside birds and worms, pedestrians and rats, everybody scurries to a place where they’ll be safe. Meanwhile I’m on my way to dad’s, alone. Big clouds darkly hover over me. I feel ashamed. Was it something I did that made dad die? Or is this some kind of joke?

I take a cab and despite myself relish the opportunity to spend money like that. If not now, when?

Hi Cheryl.

She opens the door and is sad. Paramedics already there have given up and logged time place cause.

Hi Karen. Is your mother…?

Mom isn’t feeling well, she needed to go lie down after the shock. (That’s what mom told me to tell Cheryl.)

To me it all feels autocompleted. Of course dad died. Of course I’m here. Of course I’m consoling Cheryl, perfectly adequate stepmother. Of course of course.

You sure you’re okay?

You’re not even crying!

Yes, Cheryl. Thank you, Cheryl.

You have to feel your feelings!

Yes, Cheryl. Thank you, Cheryl.

I sincerely try to earnestly sniffle.

Cheryl grew up on a farm in Vermont and is into energies.

The difference between mom’s place and dad’s place is that dad’s place has an upstairs and a basement: three levels total. Mom? Just one floor. I guess that’s just the difference between a house and an apartment.

Photos here too, above granite countertops and under mini-chandeliers. Dad and Cheryl on their honeymoon and on fun vacations to Greece (I like these). Me and mom and dad—my communion, graduation, wedding. I wear a version of the same dress in all three.

Dad won’t meet his grandkid.

That’s sad.

It makes me angry.

Their cat is on the ground. He shows me his belly.

Cheryl, what did they say? Oh I see. Heart attack.

The phone rings. Cheryl goes but the person hangs up as soon as Cheryl says hi.

So difficult to believe.

I know, Cheryl.

He was the best man I knew.

And it’s stupid but I agree. He was actually nice. When he asked if I liked a movie or a book or a song on the radio that played while we were in the car (he’d ask after every song when it was just the two of us in the car)—he cared about my answer.

He was curious about me, fascinated. When he was around.

He’d also do this thing where he didn’t visit for a long time, even though he was a subway away.

(Dad: Park Slope. Mom: Upper East Side.)

Oh.

He’s dead.

Actually dead.

The paramedics are leaving with the body. Cheryl follows and I’m going to get mom.

The storm speaks!

Rumble Rumble

I look out the wide windows in dad’s study. Little rain sounds on the windowpane, steady then faster like—sorry—heartbeats.

I’m feeling sensitive.

I want to be with mom.

I clutch a photo of us all and take it with me when I leave, I don’t really look at it.

I’m in a cab to mom’s and now I look at it. It’s us at the Grand Canyon, the trip we all took, even Cheryl.

Mom looks pissed.

Dad doesn’t seem to notice she’s pissed.

I realize, if I was mom, that would only make me more pissed.

(Cheryl, nervously cheery.)

Thunder Rumble

Lorenzo calls but I decline.

I get to mom’s.

Knock.

Freak out, get the landlord to let me in.

Mom’s dead.

On the ground, on her back, hand on her belly.

She looks vulnerable but she’s not vulnerable she’s just dead.

The landlord says

Oh no.

Your mom’s dead.

The rain is coming down not in sheets nor in blankets but in beds, California Queen. Like the weather is furious at the windows.

I don’t call Cheryl because I know mom would kill me. The landlord calls an ambulance but the streets are already flooding.

The other tenants are calling him—leaks!—and he has to check on his own room.

They’ll be here soon.

Everything’ll be handled.

I have to leave.

It’s okay, thanks for unlocking the door.

Well mom, you and me.

I hear a beeping sound over the rain brigade. What the hell?

The smoke alarm in the living room is going. I glance up and get a whopping drop of water right in my eye. Then a bunch of other drops on the back of my head when I turn away to wipe my eye. Then a torrent, a pillar, a fire hydrant’s worth of water. It’s like a whale is upside down on the roof and its blowhole is lined up exactly with the alarm. The alarm is blown right off, I’m drenched, I put a bucket under the hole and it doesn’t do much.

Crrrrack

I look outside and a tree comes down at one end of mom’s street. The tree blocks the road.

Crrrrrack

Another tree! Blocks off the other end of mom’s road.

Then ambulance sounds. But they can’t get past the trees. I see them pull up to the first one and then back out and swing around the block and try the other end of the street. It’s pathetic, futile. They know mom’s dead. No rush, guys. No worries.

I’m suddenly starving. I go into the kitchen and make a cold cut sandwich with Italian bread, mortadella, and mozzarella. A wayward branch bandied about by the wind smashes through mom’s window. Some glass comes dangerously close to getting in her hair. For propriety’s sake I drag mom into the kitchen with me, which I know I’m not supposed to do with the baby, and draw the curtain that was functionally the kitchen door, so nothing will mess up mom’s face, no broken glass or whatever.

Her eyes are still kind of open.

I want to close her eyes but I don’t want to touch her so I put the family photo from dad’s house over her face. It helps. It feels respectful.

I think I hear her try to talk. Garble. She’s not dead.

Mom?

But she doesn’t answer.

The storm is hard to describe.

Like, “I look at the storm and see myself.”

Like, “I feel I’ll die due to storm-related head trauma.”

Like, “And what about the people who aren’t me? What’s the storm like for them, where are they? It’s useless to wonder this but do nothing. I think I’m bad.”

Like, “I actually make a dark and stormy. In my mind I raise a toast with mom’s ghost.”

Like, “The thunder is dad, the lightning mom, the raindrops Cheryl. The baby?”

Like, “Thinking of my baby as the storm rages, I feel badly about the environment: specifically, climate change.”

Like, “I don’t hear the knocks at the door over the storm sounds so the paramedics have to break mom’s wood door.”

Like, “The paramedics’ ponchos seem used up and the paramedics themselves are still soaked all the way through. I’m swept into my old bedroom like dust while they work on mom. No windows in my old room. Safe.”

Like, “The paramedics come in to tell me that mom’s not dead but that she has overdosed on her back pain meds. They are taking her to the hospital now. They will try to brave the storm conditions. They ask if I will be riding in the ambulance—they understand if I don’t want to risk it.”

Like, “I decline another call from Lorenzo. I text and tell him I’m okay, just bad reception because of the storm. He responds with a thumbs up emoji.”

Like, “The back doors of the ambulance close and the rain’s hit me so hard even the baby feels wet. The ambulance wades in our race against time.”

Like, “There should never be a season for things like this.”

Like, “The storm is just a device. Like mom or dad or Cheryl or Lorenzo or the baby.”

Like, “I look at the storm and ask, Why can’t you be other, better weather?”

The storm stops.

The storm starts.

The storm says, What storm?

Michael Mungiello

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