5/2/2019 0 Comments Poetry by Ella ParsonsMary Magdalene To the girl with skin like poplar ash, green eyes glinting- Your allergy rimmed eyes make your emerald irises glow. Those deep-set eyes rim your face so sallow, dark circles, Cupped like angel wings, with two swipes of concealer You can fake being human. Three ruby pearls on pink lips. Now you are passing for flesh and beating blood. Wayward yucca plant一 tensile green stems frowning. Lyrical shores lapping for more. Pull back, take back, Setting sun, Hit reset again until you roll out at noon. Lick back in grey sheets; you are on the wrong side Of a sunrise again, filling with gossamer gloom. Fog Rolling in over waves, under moonlight, at the seaside Let it come, Let me be undone一 in the salutations of the shores. The purple martins are coming一 and going once more. Your wasted future on ornithology, at the parties You will always be such a bore. Half sung promises Made to the arts, efforts you put forth, neither biology Nor chemistry will sing your praises. What names! What names! You have all but collected, stolen From tombstones and cellists, from botanicals, And pamphlets. You've stolen sweet treasures and histories, What names! What names! You've yet to write their stories. To the girl wanting to grow, while getting thinner- Your skeleton key rings sliding off silken fingers. Forgetting your locks, cutting them all off. A little shorter now, only a little lighter, but how? Keys tied around your neck, locked around the sunset. Walking along the marshes of the Camargue, where Mary's boat ran ashore. Wild bulls with black hides glinting, Bodies dark as a night where you can't find your keys, Stumbling drunk to not wake a dreaming roommate. Those stubborn creatures-cut from the cloth of night, Stare over estuaries, nostrils dilating, perfectly still Until a storm of sun-bleached stallions break away Tearing through mud flats once more. Flamingoes Breaking over the horizon, tides rising with the moon. Let the blood go pumping through bicuspid valves As twilight haze of your night sours by Cupid's arrow一 I swear he missed, what a splendid gift一to show up alone. All lipstick primed, doe-eyed for new dances. Dear girl, Good thing you never bother with mascara, As your salt Solution does no remedy. Failing to obtain what solution? As wet wands drip down your cheeks, Ask yourself with a Still beating heart, Still pumping lungs, straining to breathe一 Take yet another pill一 It it worth it? Not quite. Forget it now, as we are at the sea. So breathe. Through Inflamed lungs, What whining waves are coming to me? To the girl with skin like poplar ash, Bring your Doubting hand to pray, hang your mouth agape Like the Mary Magdalene, as Donatello your Body cut to sway. Popular wood all tarnished with gold, Gilded with guesswork, yet another doubting soul. Your empty mouth parts with fresh spoken words. Come on, come forth, let your wooden hands touch. You are changing now, coming out like a rat from Your own woodworks, like a phoenix dowsed From your own drowsy flames. Your ashes Covered in blushes and concealed, come you, Little doubter一 come out, your knees down To the earth. Come, put your lies to bed. Pray to the rain with ruddy feet. Demand The coincidences you see, with some bad luck Your magic might leak. Again There is silver in girls hair; they are moonlight kissed insomniacs, Stress blemished stars streaking in their hair, beams of starlight. Under their shimmering eyelids, they wake from violent stupors, Never quite able to escape tenuous realities and haploid pasts. Cautious fingers trace, checking the checkered checkerboard. Graceless heartbeats pump and cool, oxygenated blood With a terrible sigh, carbon dioxide is exhaled and a choice is made; A piece is moved. Green velvet lined bases are traded, black for white On black and white. And so we set back, leaning back, our backs Against the stacks. In the oceans of books, finding solitude Among the spines of others; libraries within school’s locked Walls are granite struck, so the nightingale starts to sing. Copper stories traded like coins, confided into coin purses. Serendipitous silence, reveals darker perpetrators, songs Aspirated, in spite of a bounded past. The nightingale Perched in her cage still speaks, as cigarette smoke rises from The library stacks. Fruitless juvenile delinquency was traded For the frayed aesthetics of antique wire, which conspires With the melancholic tobacco ashes. For chapters and novels Digress in delirious obsession, hunters chasing nymphs. Poetic sentiment was exchanged to ghosts. Apollo makes His crown fastened from laurel leaves. The former vanilla lies Are exchanged in half quiet rooms fractured by illegitimate silence. Beyond stone walls, past columns and plated windows, The sky is dressed in fading effervescence. Moon tucked into blues Like a shimmering eyelid, surrounded by freckles on humid Indigo cheeks of a shimmering goddess, half waking and half wanton. Drifting to sleep, into regressions linear and swirling into the cardinal Rims of saints and dreamers, of molecules and atoms, To structures and infinitely bound spaces. The dawn fails to wake The sleeping lids of the moon. With gold leaf on my lips-I smile. Running my fingers over bird cages and quiet locks escaped songbirds Flutter and chirp, between book stacks. Passing overhead, Drab plumage flutters, stories repeated, I'm dawn licked And coffee stained, I pick up another chess piece, I will begin again. Ella Parsons is an anthropology major graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a BA in Anthropology. She will start her Masters in Public Health at University of California Berkeley in the Fall. Ella aspires pursue research within the field of environmental epidemiology while continuing to document her adventures in global health and remaining a poet on the side.
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5/2/2019 0 Comments Withdrawal by Timothy Resau Mayastar CC WITHDRAWAL A reversal in the sky, or a story about blurred vision-- those obscure colors swimming in pools of terror-- It's a life in the wrong place-- it's a reality shift—day for night / night for day-- a surgical subtraction of self-- complete loss of identity-- being broken, broke and devoid of love-- homeless and bound for an unmarked grave-- the sickness, loss and surrender-- another nameless and trashed junkie found reaching for heaven, but just missing-- It's a bad connection like a broken heart on a tattered sleeve-- It's being serious like a busted vein-- It's a spiritual call that's lost more than won. It's iced-tears coated with melted salt. Total and finite calamity where you discover reality's always bleeding thru your ruined and running vision, and there you sit, pondering, totally eclipsed in a catatonic dream. Where you find even your children are the enemy, reminding you of who you were and now where you are, feeling your lost love's the only solution, as you desire to inject to reject this odd void to fill, believing that you're really different, saying: - I needa hit .... Ah, the truth is the world's afloat in myths, and you sail your boat like a captain toward the unending illusion of paradise. Timothy Resau is currently in coastal North Carolina. He is busy writing poems, stories, as well as working on a novel. He has a piece forthcoming in Eskimo Pie. 5/2/2019 0 Comments Photography by Ella Parsons Beach Dreams Guild Work Anywhere Else Broken Edges Slow Growth Ella Parsons is an anthropology major graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a BA in Anthropology. She will start her Masters in Public Health at University of California Berkeley in the Fall. Ella aspires pursue research within the field of environmental epidemiology while continuing to document her adventures in global health and remaining a poet on the side. Memphis CVB CC GRIEF, REHAB AND A WEDDING DRESS The dress was intended for another wedding to another groom. Days before those nuptials, he backed out. He moved on, and a few years later, my cousin did the same. She found love again, and another man to marry. The dress had the ultimate revival, thanks to my mother. At first, it was just a plain white satin gown, but my mother saw more. She redesigned it; tearing it apart and putting it back together with assistance from my Aunt Annie. My mother, without a sketchpad, ripped apart the neckline and back, then added organza over the white satin and hundreds of white pearls. She enhanced the sleeves with ruching and five tiny rose buds, each topped off with a miniature pearl. She cut a “V” into the back and filled the space with lace. My mother spent weeks away from home, away from her family in Maryland, working on that dress, turning satin into roses. It was a blessing that she had the gown to focus on. As a recovering alcoholic, just months out of rehab, we wanted the dress in her hands to keep her from reaching for a glass of Hennessey, her preferred alcoholic beverage. I come from a family of addicts. We’ve got it all covered – alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling and food. We excel at excess. We drink too much, eat too much, we all do something too much. Shopping too much is my demon, my tormentor, my hell. My mother was a stunningly beautiful woman, charming, gregarious and generous, but she was a sloppy and mean drunk. I loved and worshipped my mother. As a little girl I wanted to be her, and as an adult I tried to emulate her, falling painfully short, never able to capture her beauty and personality that dominated any room she entered or her generosity. She wasn’t always a drunk, but once she picked up the habit she quickly accelerated from occasional over indulger to functioning alcoholic. Suddenly, my once thoughtful doting mother only seemed to care about one thing: her next drink. So many special memories are soiled by her behavior. Twenty-four hours after my high school graduation she was still celebrating. The stale stench from hours of non-stop partying clung to her breath. She was sipping on a glass of Hennessy, saying how proud she was of me. It was 9:30 in the morning. My head was throbbing. We had a beer keg at the party, and I had consumed too much. The smell of liquor and the sight of my mother made me want to puke. Instead, I ran down the stairs to the dining room and grabbed a bottle of alcohol, carrying it into the kitchen, and emptied the contents down the drain. I grabbed another bottle and another bottle and another bottle and another and drained them all. My other stumbled down the stairs and discovered me pouring out the liquor bottles. She yanked my arm and asked, “What are you doing?” I ignored her. She repeated the question, and I continued to empty the bottles. She slapped my face before teetering back up the stairs. Several hours later, she apologized, but my mother kept drinking for at least 15 more years. My father battled a different dependency: gambling. He loved shooting dice, but by the time I was born he had buried the habit. He rarely shared that aspect of his life, and when he did it seemed to me he was discussing a stranger; some relative who died long before I was born, but one that he wanted his family to know and remember. The stranger blew his paychecks to feed his habit. He loved the wild ride of the back-alley games – the thrill that came with winning and the fights, usually started by him – that came with losing. Years, later my father could visit racetracks and casinos without even being tempted to bet. Yet, with just a few exceptions, addictions, at least in my family, seldom ended well. My maternal grandfather suffered from dementia after too many blows to the head during drunken brawls. My paternal grandparents died at the hands of a drunk driver, their son. In comparison, my addiction to shopping seemed harmless. I could hide my injuries, and there were plenty, under my pretty cloths. Clothes are magical. They protect me, shielding me from the harsh judgments of others. Sometimes, you wonder if they know what others do not. That years ago, while stuck in a hot car with your favorite cousin, while your mother shopped at McBrides, a now defunct low-end discount chain, he says something that injures you, and the wound never heals. You were a smart-mouthed seven-year old. Maybe you called him stupid. Maybe you said you hated him because he refused to disobey your mother’s order and let you leave the car. He said: “You’re ugly, black, skinny and baldheaded and no one will ever love you.” His words crack a piece of your heart. But with the right outfit you can hide your flaws and fool everyone. It works so well that you can even fool yourself and bury your cousin’s hurtful words. So, you shop and over spend; shop and over spend just to keep up the charade because without the clothes or new shoes, everyone will know your secret. That your cousin spoke the truth all those years ago. I don’t remember the names of some of the places I shopped, or the items purchased. Sometimes, sorting through clothes, I stumbled upon forgotten items with the price tag still attached with no memory of the actual purchase. They were like cheap and random one-night stands, only instead of waking up in bed next to a stranger’s face, there’s an odd piece of clothing in my closet or dresser drawer. My mother prayed to stop drinking. My father prayed to cure his gambling habit, but God seemed to be ignoring my prayers. There was always a sale luring me into a store or an outfit or shoes that I just had to have, with a 50 percent discount that was just too good of a deal. Either one or both would make me whole, fit to present to the world. Somehow, I don’t remember why, but I became convinced that the key to my recovery was tied to my cousin’s wedding dress. All those years ago, at my cousin’s wedding, I simply thought of it as a beautiful dress. No surprise, Mama always made things beautiful and wedding gowns were her specialty. Brides-to-be came to her. She never asked what they wanted, and surprisingly, they obediently wore whatever she created for them. She never charged a fee for making those gowns, but instead, requested a wedding invitation. Photographs of those wedding dresses covered the walls of my parents’ dining room. My cousin had been married for more than 10 years, and my mother dead for less than a year. I was grieving and aching for her, so much of what we shared was connected to clothes and fashion. Her clothes and the clothes she made for me, became a source of comfort. They seemed to have signs of life: pieces of hard candy in the pocket of a sweatshirt, tissues in her winter coat, and old receipts in a leather jacket. I wanted to see that dress. I needed to see that dress. I wondered if it would help me. Could it save me, the way it saved my mother? Could it busy my brain, and stop me from shopping, and over spending? As my Aunt Annie pulled the dress from the garment bag, it was as if I was seeing it for the first time. It was frayed and much of the once-white satin had yellowed, but it was still magical, all those tiny pearls still shining. Two lives resided in that wedding dress. The one my cousin might have had with the fiancé who opted out, and the life she made with her husband and their son. My life was not what I wanted it to be, but I have ripped it apart and remade it, again, and again. The urge to shop is always with me. There’s always a beautiful dress in a store window that I desire, a pair of shoes that I must have; resisting the impulse to shop is a daily struggle. Yet, I have learned how to walk away, no matter how deep the discount, the cost to me is inevitably much more than the price tag. Occasionally, I set goals: Don’t buy anything new, not even lipstick, for a month, two months, three months or six months. I don’t always succeed. It’s slow and tedious, but every day gets a little better. It has been years since I traveled to Virginia to see the dress. I have stumbled. I have relapsed, but every day I picture that wedding dress and start anew knowing that my life, is mine to design and remake as needed. Constance Johnson is an award-wining writer based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Essence, People, The Wall Street, The Washington Post, and on ABC News among other media outlets. She is currently seeking essays for an anthology, Wise Men: Black Women on Lessons from their Fathers. 5/2/2019 0 Comments Water by Julianne Carew vivek jena CC Water It was silent in the car for a long time. My mother gripped the steering wheel so tight that her knuckles were the color of bone. After a while I turned the radio on. She immediately turned it off. Right at that moment, my mother’s phone rang. We both looked at the caller I.D. Tessa Hebert. My grandmother. Within the span of a heartbeat, my entire body stiffened into a warning, my skin suddenly just a little bit too tight. My mother’s finger hovered over the call button. “Do you want me to answer?” I shook my head, no. “Are you sure?” “YES!” I yelled, loud, too loud, loud enough to drown out the ringing of the cell phone. She jumped. “Geez, okay. I was just asking.” Five minutes passed. The phone rang again. Tessa Hebert. My mother turned to look at me. “Do you mind if I get it?” On the window, raindrops bled into one another. It hadn’t rained in Southern California for over a year. The freeways were slick with oil. “What if it’s an emergency? She’s eighty years old, you know.” “Whatever.” My breath fogged up the surface in front of me, obscuring my image. “Just pretend like I’m not here.” My mother nodded and put a finger over her mouth. “Kim?” my grandmother’s voice echoed in the enclosed space. It was old and ragged. Even when she wasn’t speaking there was a wheezing sound that followed her voice in a rhythm. “Yeah,” my mother answered. “So I talked to Cindy.” “Okay…and?” “And she’s just hysterical, Kim. I mean, she’s beside herself. She just can’t believe that her son would do something like this. Something so—brutal.” My fingernails dug into my forearms so deeply that when I took off my clothes later that night, there were ten bleeding little half-moons. My mother kept staring at the screen on her phone. For a second she seemed to forget that she was driving. She slammed on the brakes as we met the fringes of rush-hour traffic. “Kim?” my grandmother yelled into the phone. “Kim? Are you still there?” “Yeah, yeah, mom—I’m here. I can’t really talk about this right now.” “You know what, Kim, what do you mean you can’t talk about it? You and Kathleen drop this bomb on everyone and then just leave, to go on vacation, while the rest of us are left here, not knowing what to think. You know, if this really is true then why didn’t Kat say something before—” “Mom, Kathleen’s in the car.” For the first time since my mother had answered, the line went silent. “Oh…hi Kat.” My whole body burned. My mouth opened and then closed, but no words came out. “I was just telling your mom,” my grandmother continued, “that everyone is wondering why you didn’t say anything sooner. You know, when it happened.” Sooner? What the hell did she expect me to say when I was seven or five or three and a half? Hands? “I’ve already answered that question,” I said, my voice far-off, disconnected. It didn’t even sound like mine. “Yes, I know, because of Olivia. But you would have thought if the situation was that bad, someone would have noticed.” Unwanted images of a little girl screaming. That one time we were at Disneyland and I kept crying, hysterically telling my mother that my panties were wet. Or that one family dinner when I was nine where I was so spaced out my aunt had joked that I was drunk. Or when my mother walked in on me changing out of my Halloween costume and asked me why I had toilet paper wadded up in my underwear and I’d told her, I don’t know. Or when I first got drunk on Thanksgiving and kept asking everyone if I’d been raped. “And, you know, Nikki says she can’t even recall a time when Olivia’s been alone with him. Not that that changes what happened to Kathleen.” These images, of a self, dying slowly, one piece at a time, they rattled inside my head. They bounced around and around, faster. My mother could tell that I was becoming agitated. She saw my twitchy movements, my rigid spine. “It’s just that—” “Mom, I gotta go, Kat is—” # Without asking my mother, I opened her purse and took out the Costco-sized pill bottle I knew that she kept there. My mother glanced over at me. “I have a headache,” I said, ignoring the relief I saw on her face. Inside there was Tylenol, Motrin, Vicodin and Xanax. There was Ativan and Klonopin of all different colors and dosages. There was Prozac and Seroquel and Zoloft and half a dozen other things. I didn’t know all the names. That day, in the car, I took two Excedrin and I swallowed them dry. But I also took a handful of other pills. I palmed them and held them in my fist the rest of the way to my parent’s house. By the time we got there, the pills were sticky with sweat, some of them just a little bit melted. I immediately went to the bathroom and stashed the leftover pills in my purse. Then I licked the rainbow of smears on my palm to soak up whatever was left. Just then, my mother knocked on the door. I jumped even though it was locked. “Kat? Do you want to go to dinner before you leave?” I had been planning on hopping in my car and high-tailing it back to San Diego where I lived with a few other flight attendants. I hadn’t had a drink in five days (my mother thought I wasn’t drinking anymore, but in reality, I was just trying to cut back) and I hadn’t had a cigarette in even longer (an addiction which was a flat-out fucking secret.) I flushed the toilet I hadn’t used. # At dinner, I drank two and a half glasses of wine, daring my mother to stop me, but she didn’t. When I ordered the third, she asked me, “Are you sure you’re going to be able to drive?” and I nodded. What my mother didn’t know was that wine was the least of my worries. What she would have never guessed, was the two pills of what I thought was Vicodin I’d crushed and snorted in the bathroom. “Are you kidding me? With all this pasta I just ate? I’ll be totally fine.” My vision was starting to feel fuzzy. I blinked heavily and took my glasses out of my purse. I really only needed them for reading, but they made me feel safe, one more layer to my disguise. # On the way to San Diego, I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I passed through Fontana. That was where my aunt lived, the one who was no longer speaking to me. Our last phone call had been short. Looking back, I hadn’t really said anything. My aunt had hung up on me before I’d had the chance. When I had last spoken to my aunt, I was twenty-one years old. The abuse had stopped five years earlier. Olivia was five years old. Johnny was forty-two. He had just moved in with his new girlfriend, who my aunt loved. Adrianna was normal. At least, she appeared to be normal, and this made it easier for my aunt to pretend that her son was normal, too. A few weeks earlier, at a family birthday party, I had heard Adrianna say to my aunt, “We would love to babysit Olivia one of these days. Just to give Nikki a little bit of a break.” When I heard this, my whole body froze into a warning. No. Oh my God, just say no. But that’s not what my aunt said. # I kept thinking about Olivia. I thought about the last time I’d seen her. She was in her little black ballet outfit, with pink tights, her curly blonde hair in a messy bun with a giant, matching pink bow. I’d picked her up from dance class and taken her to lunch. She’d sat across from me in the booth and swung her little black high-top sneakers back and forth against the booth. “So, tell me about school,” I said to her, “I want to hear all about it.” Olivia went on and on about how jump rope was her favorite game to play at recess because she could jump forever, longer than anyone else on the playground, higher even than the numbers she knew how to count yet. And how she had two best friends, Amelia and Michael, and how they weren’t allowed to sit next to each other in class anymore because they couldn’t stop talking, and how Amelia had a brand-new baby sister named Reagan that her mother had brought in one day for show and tell. “I didn’t get to see her though,” Olivia said. “And why not?” Olivia looked to her right and then to her left, motioned for me to lean in closer to her. “Because I was sick. I didn’t even go to school that day.” “What’s wrong? Are you feeling better?” For a moment, Olivia looked me straight in the eye, our heads so close together our foreheads were almost touching. “I actually wasn’t really sick,” she whispered. “There was just something wrong, down there.” She pointed down to her crotch. I was going to ask Olivia more questions, but she started squirming in her seat with an embarrassed look on her face, like she was already afraid she’d said something she wasn’t supposed to. I quickly changed the subject, but when I dropped Olivia off I asked her mom what was going on. “Oh, she just had a little UTI again, no big deal.” My arms immediately sprouted goosebumps. “So you mean, this has happened before?” “Oh yeah,” Nikki waved the question off with her hand, “the doctor thinks it’s from taking too many baths.” “That’s what they said about Jon Benet Ramsey too, you know, until after she died.” Nikki looked up from her phone for the first time throughout our entire conversation. “Geez Kat, you don’t have to be so dramatic. She’s just a little girl.” I didn’t say it out loud, but looking back, maybe I should have. My point exactly. # In the car, I reached for my pocket, for just one more pill. But then I had to let go of the steering wheel for—just—a—second—and as soon as I popped it into my mouth, there was a cop car behind me. I swallowed the pill dry. It was long and oval-shaped. Xanax, which was a controlled substance. My breath still smelled like wine. I quickly clicked on the cruise control and stared straight ahead and waited for red and blue lights to erupt in my rearview mirror. I did not move my arms from ten and two. Please God, please, just let me off this one last time. The cop car sound its siren. It swerved around me and then sped down the freeway. I pulled off at the next exit and caught my breath in a Seven-Eleven parking lot. I took two more pills and looked at the clock. 8:15. I had started drinking at six, plus the pills, minus my tolerance, I decided to wait a few minutes before I got back on the road. I got out of the car and walked into the convenience store. I bought a pack of Carmel Crushers, even though I didn’t smoke those anymore. They had been my first cigarette. Does anyone ever really forget their first time? # The first time I ever smoked a cigarette was when I was ten and a half years old. I was in the fifth grade. It was the day of my aunt’s fiftieth birthday. My mom and I went over to my grandmother’s house in the morning to help set up for the party. I remember there being a lot of tension and not really knowing why. My aunt was mad at my grandmother and my grandmother was mad at my aunt and my mom was trying to make them both happy, but she wasn’t doing a very good job. But nobody would admit that they were mad, or upset, or uncomfortable, so the morning passed in a long, stormy silence punctuated by only the most necessary of small talk. I remember trying to stay out of the way and failing. I remember trying to help and my grandmother getting mad at me. Then I remember Johnny walking into the kitchen right when I was eating a grape off of a fruit platter that was supposed to be only for the guests. “KATHLEEN! What are you doing?! I’m going to have to redo the whole plate!” I just stood there, and swallowed the grape I had in my mouth. “You told me I could have a bite,” I said. “Yes, but not from the middle! Do you see that giant hole?” My grandmother came stomping at me, her face in a rage. For a few seconds, I really thought she was going to slap me, right across the face, just like in the stories my mother told me from her childhood. Kat! She would say, if I had ever talked to my mother that way she would have… But then at the last minute my grandmother turned and lunged at the fruit platter. She grabbed it and she picked it up and she slammed it into the sink so hard that the whole house was filled with the sound of glass shattering. My grandmother started to cry in deep, heavy sobs while my mother, my aunt, Nikki, everyone, stared at me. I could see the confusion on my mother’s face, not really knowing what had happened, unsure whose side she needed to be on. Johnny was watching this scene play out from the doorway. From where he was standing, only I could see him. He smiled at me and rolled his eyes, mouthed the word crazy. A minute passed. Then two more. Then he stepped into the kitchen, unveiling himself in the time it took the rest of my family to speak up. “Oh, Johnny, I didn’t know you were here,” my aunt finally said. “Where else would I be? I live here,” he answered. For the length of a breath, my grandmother was forgotten. But then she dried her eyes with a napkin and said, “Johnny, why don’t you take Kathleen with you and go pick up the cake?” I looked at my mother, begging her with my eyes to say, no, Kat is going to stay here with me. But my mother wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at her mother, who was scooping broken glass out of the sink with her bare hands. “Yeah, Kat why don’t you go with Johnny while we get this mess cleaned up?” The way my mother spoke made her request sound like a question, but it wasn’t. It only appeared that way on the surface. # Johnny’s car smelled like sweat and beer and smoke. The passenger’s side was covered with empty fast food cups and half-full plastic water bottles. He pushed all of the trash onto the floor and held the door open for me. I got in and curled into a ball, trying to make myself smaller. Glendora was a small town back then. There was one grocery store, one bank, one Catholic church standing in the middle of it all. My grandparents had lived there since the fifties. I knew where the bakery was, right around the corner from their house. When we passed it I said, “Wasn’t that the turn back there?” He glanced over at me and laughed. “Yeah, but we’re gonna stop by my buddy’s place.” The way he said this, so casually, and with such confidence, the statement sounded obvious, like it was something he’d already told me before. “Is that okay with you?” My whole body felt cold and sweaty at the same time. I nodded. To this day I do not know why. I counted the street blocks as we passed. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, seventeen. At a stop light, when I still hadn’t said anything, he reached over and tickled my stomach underneath my shirt. I jumped, and tried to push his hands away. But he wouldn’t stop. It occurred to me how strong he was. He was smiling. “Geez Kat, don’t be so uptight. Do you really want to go back there? To that shit show?” We drove the rest of the way in silence. The house we pulled up to was on the outskirts of town. No one appeared to be home. I didn’t move. Johnny got out of the car and said, “Aren’t you coming?” I shifted in my seat. “No, I think I’ll just stay here.” “And just stare out the window?” “No, I have a book in my bag.” “Ah, come on,” he said as he walked over and opened my door. That’s stupid. I might be a while.” Then he stared at me with eyes that would not accept a refusal. I got out and followed him. I did not know what else to do. Johnny led me down a narrow dirt path that led into the backyard. He scaled the tall brick wall and opened the gate from the inside. I distinctly remember the hollow click of the latch slamming closed behind me. The backyard was taken up entirely with a chalk-white tiled pool that had yellow cracks all along the water line. A stale film covered its surface. Johnny bent down and touched the water and initiated a ripple effect that ended at my feet. He rubbed his hands against the front of his jeans. “Well, the water looks fine. Doesn’t look like I have to do anything.” Then he stared at me in a way that made me feel like I had to respond. All around, there was complete and utter silence. There were no other houses in sight. Johnny walked around the edge of the pool to stand beside me. He made it so that our elbows touched. “Do you want to go swimming?” he asked. “I don’t have a bathing suit.” He laughed. “That doesn’t matter.” And before I could comprehend what he’d said, Johnny began taking off his shoes, his socks, his shirt, his jeans, and he jumped into the water. He stayed underneath the surface for what seemed like a very long time, so long, in fact, that I was relieved when he came back up again. “Come on, jump in,” he said, like what he was asking was the most normal thing in the world. No. “I-I’m just going to sit over here,” I said, making my way over to a lounge chair that cracked and splintered the second I sat down. I fell backwards, onto the concrete. Johnny started laughing, manically. He leaned against the edge of the pool and splashed great big walls of water over my way. I struggled to get up, running away from him, but my jeans and the front of my shirt were already soaked through. “Johnny, stop! My mom is going to be so mad at me.” Johnny came up behind me and splashed me again. I could feel the water ooze into my sneakers, drenching my socks. “Lighten up, Kat. You know she’s already mad at you for that stupid stunt you pulled with the food. Why didn’t you tell me you were hungry? We could have gotten something to eat.” All the while, he kept drenching me in water. “Please! Stop! I can’t get wet.” “Looks like it’s already too late for that.” I sat down on the ground and I started to cry. “She’s going to be so mad.” How was I going to explain this? I could imagine the conversation. Why did you get out of the car? Why didn’t you tell him you didn’t want to go? Why didn’t you just tell him to stop? I did not have any answers, but for a moment, what I thought was going to happen outweighed what was happening in that moment. Suddenly, his entire demeanor changed. His voice became soft. “Oh Kat, it’s going to be okay. Just lay your clothes out in the sun. No one will ever know.” “I-I can’t get my hair wet.” “You don’t have to,” he said. “Come on. Come here. Let’s forget about them for just a few minutes.” I carefully peeled off my pants and then my shirt. My dark purple panties had daisies on them. My hands cradled the flesh of my soon-to-be breasts. “Come on, are you coming in or not?” I nodded, staring off into space. “You don’t have to be embarrassed. We’re family. I used to change your diapers for Christ’s sake.” I took my underwear off while my cousin watched. I got in the pool as fast as I could. Nothing but water separated the two of us. # Afterwards, he sat down on a chair next to me. He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I shook my head, no. “You know, I had my first cigarette when I was about your age.” He lit one up and inhaled. “Tina, you know my father’s second wife? She gave me one.” He took another long drag. “Never looked back.” It felt like I didn’t have a body. I was both there and not there. What if my mom smelled the smoke? We both didn’t move for a long time. Johnny lit another cigarette with the end of the one he already had. He reached his arm out suddenly and said, “Here. Take it.” I shook my head. “I don’t want one.” He said, “Yes you do,” bringing the lit end of it closer and closer, until it was less than an inch away from my face. I tried to back away but there was nowhere else to go. I reached for the cigarette and inhaled. I remember liking the way my lungs screamed without making a sound. # I was surprised to realize that I was already almost home. All of my cigarettes were gone. I stared, unmoving, at the exit that led to my house. Whenever people found out I was based in San Diego, one of the things they always said was a variation of, I’m sure you just love being so close to the beach. I always smiled and half-laughed and said, sure, because that was the response they were expecting. But the truth was, I hated water. I’d ended up in San Diego on accident. I had never once gone to the beach. I continued on the freeway, not knowing where I was going, allowing my mind to follow the impulses of my body instead of the other way around. When I finally got out of the car, the wind was salty, the temperature warm. Scattered amongst the rocks were clusters of groups, twos and threes. Far down the beach, some kids huddled around a bonfire, their laughter just close enough to remind me that I wasn’t completely alone. I took off my shoes and waded into the water. The little-girl part of me wanted to runaway from the raw feeling of the ocean. She wanted to get back in my car, lock herself in my bathroom and take every pill, in every color, until she passed out on the floor. But my instincts got the best of me. I took off the rest of my clothes and I threw them away somewhere behind me. Then I walked into the water, washing away whatever had happened in the before. Julianne Carew is a fiction editor for The East Jasmine Review as well as a Pushcart Prize nominated author who focuses on new adult and literary fiction. She is currently trying to find a home for her first novel, Why Paintings Fall. She lives in the Los Angeles area, but travels all over the world collecting stories. Her work is featured or forthcoming in, Literally Stories, 805 Literary Magazine, Thing, Bewildering Stories, Mental Papercuts and in numerous anthologies. Rich Mason CC Violence in Suburbia in Five Acts I. The gun sits On the counter while she fixes him breakfast Next to his plate when he eats the dinner, she’s cooked for him On the coffee table as she brings him his beer while the game is on On his lap when she talks to her sister on the phone On the nightstand when he climbs on top of her II. The gun sits Between them, the silent promise of what will happen If she doesn’t smile when he gets home If she doesn’t guess the correct answers to his questions If she doesn’t shut her mouth when he speaks If she doesn’t open her mouth when he unzips his pants If she doesn’t kiss him like she means it III. The gun sits Heavy on her mind, breaking the bones of her resolve Uncomfortable in her throat, phantom barrel jammed inside her mouth, choking her words Ghost muzzle hard against her temple each time a friend asks her how she’s doing A weight she carries with her everywhere she goes, every time she breathes Crushing as she wonders every moment if today’s the day, he will finally use it IV. The gun sits A silent witness as she forgets herself and snaps at him The gun sits On the table when her spine shrivels as he towers over her screaming The gun sits In front her eyes while his spit slides down her cheek The gun sits A co-conspirator, waiting for its moment The gun sits The gun sits The gun V. The Gun Sits Empty In An Evidence Box Laure Van Rensburg is a French writer living in the UK. Her short stories can be found in online magazines including Across the Margin, Spelk Fiction, Barren Magazine, Storgy and Reflex Fiction. She has been longlisted for the Bath Short Story Award, the 2018 Ink Tears Competition and twice shortlisted for TSS Publishing Quarterly Flash Competitions. 5/2/2019 0 Comments Rhonda by Anastasia ArellanoRhonda Spider threads catch the ends of my lashes as I walk up to the house. I yelp. Ellie is unpacking stacks of empty cardboard boxes by the car. She perks up. “You ok?” “Yeah. Everything is fine.” I wave the webs away. They’re old, and I’m thankful I don’t have to contend with their former residents. I steady my hands as I insert the key, unsure why I’m shaking. I can’t tell if it is the spider webs or being back home. My childhood was normal, despite the nagging voice inside me that told me I was different. “Great.” I flick a switch. A solid inch of dirt and dust has built up since Rhonda went into the nursing home. I walk to the living room and luck out finding a working lamp. Ellie is clattering through the door, struggling with boxes. “The hall lights are out Shelly.” “I know.” “Do you want me to run to the store?” “I don’t know.” “Hey, what’s wrong?” She comes in and puts her arms around my waist. I tense. “I need air,” I dash out to the porch. The light crunch of autumn leaves follows me. The old maple tree has always left a carpet of red and orange during the fall months. It was my favorite time of year, but somehow I can’t derive the same pleasure of seeing the leaves on the lawn like I did as a child. I look up to the tree just as the wind rustles more leaves to the ground. The ancient tire swing squeaks. It’s still there, barely hanging on by a couple of threads. Ellie places a hand gingerly on my back. She starts to remove it several times, like an old car engine stalling. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” I blubber, hastily wiping my eyes. Ellie holds me in silence. I calm a bit, letting myself melt into her embrace. “Hello!” a shrill voice echoes from the hedges by the driveway. I look up. A figure is bobbing around the back of Ellie’s Subaru. “Hi,” I call back. I instantly recognize her. Debbie. The busybody from next door. Seeing her bound up the driveway, carrying a pack of chocolate chip cookie under her arm, it occurs to me she’s still the same squat middle-aged woman with a bad perm job who would always call over for a gossip with Rhonda. She waves frantically. “I’m Debbie, I live over there,” she points with her middle finger. “Thought it’d be nice to bring you these. So which one of you is the new neighbor?” Ellie accepts the gift. I notice that it’s already been opened. Debbie sees me eyeing it and laughs. “I couldn’t wait. I just had to have one. Is your coffee maker unpacked? Thought a chat would be nice.” “Sorry, we’re just here to pack up the house. But thank you for coming by.” I grab the cookies out of Ellie’s hand and give them back. “Oh.” Debbie is taken aback. “Then you must be Rhonda Brown’s nieces?” “I’m her daughter,” I correct. Debbie backs down a few porch steps like she’s stepped into a dangerous situation. “Michelle?” I muster my most polite smile. “I didn’t recognize you without your long hair,” she comments on my bob. “It’s been ages! Why did you never visit?” I shrug. “Never had the time.” Debbie nods, calculating her next question. “I’ll just grab a few more boxes.” Ellie escapes to the car. She’s never been good at handling awkward situations. “So you’re back home? For how long?” “Just long enough to pack a few things,” I answer. “Where are you living now, Michelle? Your license plate isn’t local anymore.” “My partner and I live in Connecticut.” “You went to college there, didn’t you?” “New York, actually. We just moved to Connecticut a year ago.” She strokes her chin. “Who’s your partner? Is he a Connecticut native?” “I’d love to catch up but I have lots to do.” I’m not in the mood to be grilled. “One last question, and I hope it’s not too forward, but why didn’t you come to the funeral?” Debbie tilts her head. “I’m sorry Debbie, I don’t mean to be rude but my partner Ellie and I really need to pack up the house and get on the road.” Her face sprouts a look of unease and disgust. It is the one good thing about Little Pass, Ohio. Both the town and its people are cemented in good Christian traditions. Growing up, our street was the epitome of old-fashioned family values. The elementary school was at one far end, while the church was at the other, and in between sat the homes with white picket fences. Looking around, it’s clear that most are still untouched, their exteriors never having left the fifties except for the modern cars stuck in driveways – it’s just as I had left it fifteen years ago. Ellie comes up the porch steps and follows me inside. I close the rusted out screen door behind me, waving goodbye to Debbie with an amused chuckle. My light-heartedness fades as I stared up to the second floor landing. I can still picture Rhonda at the top. It was second week in January, just as winter break was drawing to a close. She was still wearing one of her beloved Christmas sweaters with the gaudy tinsel piping along the front. They were her favorite part of the holiday season. I opened the door and felt the cold hands of winter cup my face. I turned back one last time and begged, “Mom, say something. I’m your daughter.” She callously stared me down, hurling her pocket-sized Bible towards me. It landed with a deafening thud. “As long as you’re a sinner, I have no daughter.” The words still echo through my heart, tearing open old wounds. “Is this where it happened?” Ellie’s voice breaks the silence. I nod. She holds my hand as we walk up stairs but I pause half way. “Can we do the living room first?” “Sure.” We assemble a couple boxes. I label only one of them ‘Crap I actually want’. We comb through the entire downstairs room by room, and I only salvage a small Tiffany lamp. It had been my grandmother’s. Rhonda had called it an eyesore. “When are the cleaners coming?” Ellie fingers the dust on the mantle. “Not sure.” I run my hands through my hair. The back of my neck feels a little clammy. “The realtor said his office would arrange that this week.” “Did the realtor say what’ll happen to all these boxes?” “I’d imagine they’ll go to charity. Who cares?” I reply with a shrug. “I’m going upstairs.” The determination in my voice surprises us both, but I’m not too keen to stay any longer than needed. I grab some boxes and head up to Rhonda’s room, Ellie trailing behind me. Before I open the bedroom door, I freeze. “Ellie?” “Yeah?” I hand her a box saying, “Can you start the other room? I think I need to do this one alone.” She kisses my cheek. “Whatever you need honey.” I’m pleased to see that a bulk of Rhonda’s closet has already been packed. It was probably Aunt Margaret while she was down from Dayton for the funeral. She’s always been an organizer like that. There isn’t much left for me to do except strip the bed and empty out the dresser. That’s the biggest task. Rhonda had a habit of hiding her good jewelry inside of clothing. I want to find her opal pendant set she said she was going to gift to me one day – see if she still has it hidden somewhere, or if she’s given it away. I hold onto very little hope. At the very back of the bottom drawer, I stumble upon an old yellow manila envelope addressed to me. I open it to find a letter. It’s dated four months before her fall. Dear Shelly, Over the years I have wanted to pick up the phone and call you, but I’ve never had the strength, despite all the praying I’ve done. Pastor Dan has always said that being a true believer entails giving others unconditional love. My weakness in doing so has failed you as a mother all these years. I can’t lie and say that I am entirely comfortable with your lifestyle, but I will welcome you back home with love because you are my daughter. From the moment you were born you were my whole world and I’m so sorry I’ve driven this wedge between us. I pray one day you can forgive me. Love, Mom My lungs deflate and I gasp. I hadn’t realized I’d been crying. I spend a minute, still kneeling on the ground, rereading the letter. It’s almost impossible to imagine the woman who wrote it, was the same woman who rebuked every effort I made the first few years to reconcile with her. What changed? Why did she never send it in the end? The loose ends and unanswered questions stir knots in my stomach. I pick up the envelope. Something small slides around the bottom. I shake the contents into my left hand. The pendent set falls out. “Ellie!” I exclaim. She comes running from the other room and stops when she sees me on the ground. “What happened?” I raise the letter and jewelry up to her to inspect. “She left this.” Ellie quietly reads the letter, placing a hand on my shoulder as she does. Outside the bedroom window the autumn sky is fading from blue to a greyish pink. The dusty mauve clouds creep across the sky. I stand up. “Stay here. I’ll be back.” “Everything ok?” I nod before leaving the room. “I need a minute alone.” I walk down the short hallway. The floorboards creak beneath my steps. I stop at the top of the landing and look down the staircase to the front door. I whisper to the still house, “I forgive you Mom”. Anastasia Arellano is originally from California but now lives in Dublin, Ireland with her wife. She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, and holds a Master’s in Creative Writing. She writes for Wetpaint Life and Goodfullness. She’s had short stories published in McStorytellers and Honey + Lime, as well as poetry published in Smithereen’s Press. She recently completed her first solo YA novel, as well as a coauthored YA novel with fellow writer and Trinity graduate, Emma Guinness. When she’s not writing, she’s cooking, plastering her bedroom walls in storyboards, or seeking inspiration from the Irish landscape. You can follow her on Instagram @latingurl26 and Twitter @AnastasiaArell5 5/2/2019 0 Comments Thirst by Katie NickasThirst That which consumed me wasn’t hunger, but thirst. To drink was to imbibe an elixir that promised longer life. I loved the calm it brought—cold and dark, like sharks roaming through the depths. I couldn’t ever drink fast enough. Thirst was insatiable even when my belly was full. Not tummy or stomach, but belly. The more I drank, the thirstier I became—guzzling until the glass almost swallowed me. Until I was sated. Then came other sources: juice, milk, sodas, and grenadines served in sparkling glasses. One day, I tasted wine. It did more than quench. Made me feel alive, weightless, and immortal—the true elixir. But it also robbed the water from my body, leaving me thirstier than before. I was used to thirst by then. On weekends, I walked to the neighborhood emporium to marvel at the colorful syrups that flavored the Italian sodas, drink in the sun-dappled awnings, and stare at the wedges of cake and pie in the dessert case. Cats lay in chalky strokes of light, over-licking their paws. This was where I came to cope, knowing my thirst would never be gone. It was a constant presence, like the cry of a wild animal. I didn’t drink—only relished the surrogate pleasure of watching and listening to others do so. Flowers glowered at me from vases, their petals and stems fat with water like the tentacles of sea monsters. I listened to the quiet slurping sounds mix with the babble of the fountain. Ladies talked at a nearby table, speaking in the third person. “She always was attracted to damaged types—men who aren’t any good for her,” said the blonde. “But that’s her—looking for someone to care for, someone to fill her up.” I didn’t know if she were talking about me or someone else. Was anyone good for anyone, or were our personalities like basic needs to be met, I wondered? I stared at the tears of water on the white tablecloth and the oil that swirled on the women’s salad plates. The blonde’s eyelashes were layered with thick mascara that reminded me of a deer. Her cheeks were dewdrops and her eyes olives. Their singsong voices overlapped with the shuffle of feet and the clink of silverware. Everything seemed to float. I tried not to laugh. I was sitting alone. If I laughed, I’d look nuts. But it was no use. I laughed, anyway, glad no one noticed. He was like thirst—waiting for me outside the store, body slanted against the painted bricks, wearing that smile that was more of a sneer. He called out as I walked past, his gaze hovering, expectant, the way a fly’s compound eyes and succoring mouth look beneath a microscope. Up close, I noticed the pupils of his eyes were white instead of black. White stars surrounded by tangled, blue strands. I watched them disperse to a field of pressed flowers, a cosmos of insect wings flecking yellow amber. The whole universe seemed suspended in his gaze. “You’re really pretty,” he said. “Would you like to go with me somewhere?” We went a lot of places in the coming weeks. We went for a bike ride through the Five Points neighborhood and down the St. Mary’s strip. I strung my bike with LEDs that twinkled like a Christmas tree. He was fast and fearless, blazing down the middle of the street and cutting in front of buses, but I was spontaneous—the essential ingredient in adventure-making. “Let’s go this way,” I said, veering right to cut through the parking lot of a shuttered gas station. “Oh, yes, let’s…” His voice trailed off as he followed me around the corner and down the hill. He’d gotten used to my sudden movements, where I’d swerve unpredictably down a perpendicular street. He was getting tired of them, I sensed. The street wound past a theater and a string of art galleries, where a group of musicians stood beneath an awning playing the bagpipes. It was what I’d hoped for—that moment of serendipity that would close the night. Maybe he’d realize I was good at running into things that seemed meaningful or quaint, though I really had no idea what I was doing. “We’re being entertained,” he said. “My family is Scottish. You know, I went to a funeral with bagpipes once.” “Yeah?” I asked. “It was nice until I heard the drone-pipe playing in the background. That was kind of annoying. Shall we continue?” I felt exposed and caught off guard, laughing nervously as he rode ahead. I wondered how long we could drag this out. Pretend our capricious flights through town were going to lead to sex when we knew they wouldn’t. I didn’t want sex, and neither did he. We were both into the thrill of it. Savoring all the moments and their little deaths when we came close to doing it but didn’t. Paused at a red light, he stared at the colorful spokes on my wheels, his eyes focused in the vicinity of my crotch. “I like your bike,” he said, dumbfounded. “Thanks.” I lowered my leg like a kickstand and straightened proudly, as if I’d garnered an award: first prize for being with the hottest guy I’d seen in years, let alone spoken to, and resisting the urge to do anything other than pedal around town. We could go on forever, I realized. Eventually, we wound up in his house and then his bedroom, though all we did was watch movies and play games. I listened to the cool slurp of wooden letters on the Scrabble board one night, not speaking. “What’s wrong?” he asked, concerned. “Nothing. I’m just really tense.” It was more than tension. I could sense myself weakening. His gentle come-ons were getting harder to resist. He reached across the bed, resting a hand on my upper shoulders. “Well, here,” he said, all innocent. “Let me do this.” He began to caress my shoulders, running his palm up and down the back of my neck while applying pressure. It felt divine. I slumped forward, relaxing. He scooted closer, watching with that expectant gaze again. When we kissed, it was like the first time, where the kiss seemed to stretch across oceans, our tongues speaking the language of our most subtle, awakening urges. Waves of pleasure rippled over me. The room felt damp. The air seemed to drip and collect like the sea through a shell. I imagined I was an eel, a dolphin, or a jellyfish. We didn’t ever actually have sex— only dry humped. Over the next couple hours, we mastered the art of dry humping. His lips grazed my entire body from head to toe. White light tunneled my vision, throwing the room at odd angles. I passed through all the lunar phases. On the fourteenth day of the month, the moon stopped in its tracks and scratched instructions in chalk on the sky: Fuck with a capital ‘F.’ His thrusts were rough through fabric, aimed at the juncture of my hip and thigh. I kept getting wetter and reached down to find the seam of my jeans was soaked. I turned my head to the side and peered out the window at night’s black chasm. He scooted to the end of the bed as I walked my panties down my legs like a panda climbing a stalk of bamboo and twisted my arms back to undo my bra. He buried his face in my lap and I reached down to hold his head. He peered up from between my legs, wearing a spaced-out but attentive look. The next hour was akin to starting at the bottom of a canyon and slowly making our way to the top. We were like a couple of pack mules or out-of-work horses. Our feet tripped over the rocks and stones lining the walk. We tripped over each other and fell out of rhythm. His teeth sparred with my pubic bone. A woman in a crinkled skirt hawked flowers on the side of the road, distracting us. But we kept going. When we reached the top of the hill, I was thirstier than I’d ever been. I expected a smooth climax, but it was nothing like that. Instead, I resembled a monkey clashing a pair of cymbals between my thighs, my whole body lurching and convulsing forward, my eyes squeezing shut and my feet flexing and my knees going all bowlegged like a frog swimming through Jell-O. Meanwhile, he sort of latched on. My hips were rocking so quickly that he might have come flying off otherwise. Afterward, he relaxed into the mattress, whereas I was nervous and self-conscious. My body felt white and gigantic, like a flesh sundae. “You have a very nice body,” he said, as if he could read my thoughts. As if that fixed everything. In the morning, he was still asleep when I woke up. I felt drained. The events of the previous night were hazy. Searching the room, I found a bag of Jolly Ranchers on top of the tiny fridge. I sat on the bed sucking on one after the other, hoping he wouldn’t wake up and see me eating all his candy. He did wake up, but it was only for a second. He craned his head toward the end of the bed where I was and then slunk back down to the pillow, asleep again. He woke again mid-morning, rising up to pull on his jeans and peer at me over his shoulder, all matter-of-fact. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Do you want anything?” “A coffee. And some water.” “There’s water in the kitchen.” “Coffee. Large.” “That’s it?” “Yes.” He returned a half hour later with a coffee, soda, and a bag of fried chicken. I held the coffee under my nose and inhaled the steam while he slouched on the mattress eating from the bag. The aroma of chicken filled the room. I felt heavy, as if my bones were made of lead. While it was only morning, the day felt over already. “I really like your bike,” he said. “I like yours, too.” “I wouldn’t take it on any super-long trips, but it’s a nice one.” “Why, are you afraid I won’t make it?” “It’s not built for long distances. It’s a hybrid.” “I could make it.” He watched me with an incredulous stare, his eyebrows raised and his jaw protruding with food. It was irresistible. I’d succumbed to him, I realized. I could get used to this. Even envisioned us being able to stay together without driving each other crazy. Still, he was a succedaneum. Nothing could replace thirst. The following weekend, I drove to the coast to visit my parents. They were waiting when I arrived. Mom always made something sweet. This time, it was her famous chocolate cake. “Have some,” she said, serving me a slice. “It’s been a while.” She watched me sit at the table and eat, taking quick bites that made it vanish. Dad pointed at the light refracted through the glass prism on the windowsill. At night, he showed me the stars through his telescope. They knew about the thirst. Everyone did. But they also knew there was no real fix. They suffered, too, and could only be compassionate. Walking with mom along the beach, I noticed how it sprawled like a wet desert, a plain of sand that seemed to recede infinitely. Blades of grass cut through the dunes. Birds flew in sharp aerials above the sere landscape. Being by the sea made me feel like a part of it. Like a pent-up sea, I was constantly churning. “It’s a monster,” I cried. Mom’s laugh was helpless and surrendering. “It is a monster, but if you learn to respect the monster—to know its limits—you’ll be fine.” An image formed in my mind. A grainy picture of mom and dad, like the one that appeared on my phone whenever they called. I heard the fizzing sound of the connection as their faces came into view. Many years had gone by, yet there they were—the same two people I’d known as an infant—as if not a day had passed. The picture was static and unchanging. I wanted those years back—all the intervening years before the thirst took over my life. Time once seemed fluid, like it could flow forward or backward. Until now, it didn’t occur to me it might be irreversible. Yet it wasn’t loss that I felt, or even longing, but something more elemental, desperate, pining… I knew what it was. Felt it pooling like saliva in my mouth, though I wouldn’t say it out loud. “I love you more than the ocean, more than the sky,” mom said. “But I know you have your own life to live.” There was plenty of love here, I thought. It was more than enough for one person. Why didn’t I stay? Why did I leave the people I loved in search of fleeting pleasures? When we got home, I stood on the porch gazing toward the ocean. Though it was salty, I imagined swallowing it whole. I wished for rain—a thunderstorm—the clouds cracking open and shedding thick torrents. Yet the sky was a bottomless blue. Mom watched from the window. When she saw me standing and staring like that, she came to bring me in. “Come in and have lunch,” she said. Katie Nickas writes literary fiction with atypical and gender-fluid themes from her hometown of San Antonio, Texas. Her work has or will appear in journals including Asymmetry, the Furious Gazelle, formercactus, FRiGG, Literally Stories, the Oddville Press, Red Queen Literary Magazine, Reflex Fiction, Sidereal Magazine, Soft Cartel, and STORGY. Follow her on Twitter @katienickas. 5/2/2019 1 Comment Fiction By Benjamin ThomasA Direct Flight from Logan International (BOS) to Louis Armstrong New Orleans (MSY) Melissa Scott, in a moment of inhibitionless sobriety, bought a last minute plane ticket to Texas. She boarded with nothing more than her purse and a pair of oversized sunglasses she picked up in the departure terminal. She landed in Houston at 9:40 a.m. on Friday, December 7th. There were lines at the rental car booths, so she walked outside and hailed a taxi, asking the driver to bring her to a company outside of the airport. The clerk at We’ll Drive, Well You’ll Drive spoke heavily accented english and pointed her toward a Jetta that was at least seven years old. She shrugged, put down her credit card and driver’s license, and waited for the keys. An hour outside of the city, down an expressway lined with parallel roads and big box department stores that looked like warehouses and acted as the safe deposit boxes of the American economy, was a town called Grey Mill. Melissa’s brother lived there. At thirty-two, he was eleven months her senior. Irish twins despite not having a lick of Irish in them. At least that’s what their mother told them. “Scottish yes, Irish no,” she’d say while waving a cigarette and mashing potatoes, refusing to use the electric mixer the ‘twins’ bought her for Mother’s Day. “You don’t wanna be Irish anyway. Bunch of drunks.” Melissa, feeling adventurous under the Texan sun, pressed the accelerator and blew under a traffic signal as it flipped from yellow to red. She raised her hands in triumph and whooped in the driver’s seat. She pulled into her brother’s apartment complex and was simultaneously relieved and nervous to see his truck there (she was still annoyed he had bought one when he moved—never talked about wanting one before). On the flight down she had imagined multiple scenarios and decided that it would have been a better, more dramatic encounter if he had come home to find her leaning against his steps like a long lost treasure. Of course, if he wasn’t there when she arrived, that would leave Melissa with nothing to do but sit in her rental car and play on her phone. Time not well spent. Her brother’s apartment was a corner unit on the third floor. She climbed the wooden stairs and cringed at every creak. It felt like she was fourteen again and sneaking out of their parents house—though she had those silent steps memorized. She stood in front of his door and stared at the black, off-center numbers that read 308. Should she ring the doorbell or knock? Or should she get back in the Jetta, drive to the airport and board a flight back home? God, she was actually in Houston, on a whim. And people told her you were supposed to grow up in your late twenties, prepare to settle down and plan out the big three-oh. To hell with that; she knocked. When her brother opened the door, his expression changed from content, to incomprehension, to disbelief. “Hi, Nate.” He barreled toward her, and pulled Melissa into a back-cracking embrace. “What are you—when did you get here? Why did you—when did you leave?” She laughed and, finally realizing how much she missed her older brother, visible now as a real person and not a blocky Skype connection, felt tears well. He looked good. Still stood half-a-foot taller than her, and even seemed to have slimmed down a few pounds, the faded red shirt he wore swinging loosely as he moved. “I just got in. Kinda last minute thing.” He peered over her shoulder and down the stairs. “Is Carolyn here too?” “No,“ Melissa said. “She’s in Boston. I came down by myself.” "Oh" He slouched slightly. “Sorry, is everything okay with you two?” His eyes twitched as if he was just comprehending that her arrival and presence could be linked to something unfortunate. Something she had not wanted to relay over the phone. “Is everything okay with Mom and Dad?” To that she raised an eyebrow. “Are things ever okay with them?” “Mel.” “Relax, no one’s dead if that’s what you‘re worried about. No one’s sick or dying or ran away to join a cult—present company excluded.” “Seriously?” “I’m kidding.” She pushed his shoulder with her fingertips. “Come on you should be excited to see me! A little pre-holiday huddle or whatever. Now come on, take your baby sister to the best barbecue in town. After a bit of hesitation, which Melissa convinced herself was due to being taken off-guard by her arrival and not indicative of her presence in and of itself, Nate abided and took her to Big Dog’s Backyard Barbecue. # Big Dog’s was not in a backyard as its name suggested, but rather in the garage bays of an old gas station. Wooden picnic tables were organized in two rows. Each was adorned with an aluminum napkin dispenser and trays of different sauces in plastic squirt bottles, the thick liquid ranging from light tan to dark brown. She ordered a basket of pulled pork which came with half an ear of corn and two rolls. “And to drink?” The woman behind the counter asked. She looked at her brother questioningly. “Get the sweet tea.” Melissa shrugged. “Sweet tea.” Halfway through their meals, the barbecue flavor overwhelming her taste buds in a flood of deliciousness, Nate wiped his mouth and rested his elbows on the table. “So, what’s up, Mel?” She knew by his tone that it wasn’t a generic question as in: what’s up, Mel? How was your day? Or even, what’s up, Mel? Did you catch last night’s episode of The Haunting of Hill House? Despite this, she played dumb, knowing that it would most likely cause annoyance, but it was better than the answer she had, which was none. “Not much. Work’s work, you know?” “No, that’s—why did you fly down here?” She swallowed a mouthful of food, thankful that the meat was soft and tender as it slid down. “I wanted to see you. Sorry it was last minute, I didn’t mean to get in your way if I did. I can stay in a hotel.” “Come on, Mel, don’t lie to me. I’m coming up for Christmas in what, two weeks? Something happened and you’re not telling me.” Melissa sucked down two mouthfuls of sweet tea and put the cup down with a smack. “So, I have an idea. Instead of going back to Boston, what if, stay with me, what if you and I go to New Orleans for Christmas?” “Wait, what?” “Yeah, come on, it would be so much fun! It’s only like six hours, but we could make it longer, do some side trips or something. We could go right now if you wanted.” Nate stared at her with his mouth slightly open. Melissa looked down at her plate, but her appetite was gone. Vanished with the words that just came out of her mouth. “Mel, I can’t go to New Orleans right now. Especially if I’m going home in a few weeks. I could never get the time off. Besides, what about Carolyn? Kiddo, what’s really going on?” “Nothing.” Her cheeks were on fire. She tried to extinguish the burn with sweet tea but the sugary beverage had lost its appeal. It tasted like leaves and viscous, bitter syrup. “I just want to go to New Orleans and figured you’d wanna take me.” “I can’t take you to New Orleans.” “I drove down here with you when you left Boston,” she snapped and immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that.” Melissa looked up and, despite a valiant effort, couldn’t keep tears from her eyes. “Carolyn left me, Dad’s drinking again, and I just—Nate I can’t spend Christmas in that fucking city. I hate it and it’s killing me and it might be home to you because Mom and Dad make it home for you but it’s not for me and I just can’t. I honestly—I don’t—I won’t make it to New Years.” They sat in silence until someone dropped a plastic tray on the ground; the clatter echoed through the bay. Nate cleared his throat and tossed a crumpled napkin on his plate. “Come on,” he said. “I got a place you’ll like.” # After three rounds, Texas Laser Tag had a new high score. Melissa claimed her prize, and backhanded a bit of sweat from her forehead. Outside, sitting at one of several round tables, they laughed and shared a soda while talking about Nate’s school and her job. The parking lot lights flicked on and buzzed above them. The conversation was good, and it made Melissa think of home prior to her brother leaving. How they would wander through parts of Cambridge and dart across roads where the traffic only slowed when the light turned red, and crossing signlas were more like commas than actual stops. “Remember when we used to go to Beacon Hill?” He asked. “Right after you turned twenty-one?” Melissa chuckled. “Yeah. When we thought we were hot shit and then quickly realized that we could afford a beer… for the two of us to split?” When their laughter subsided, Nate reached over and rubbed her shoulders. “I’m sorry about Carolyn.” She gave her best half-smile. “Thanks. Is what it is.” “Wanna tell me about it?” Melissa shrugged and took a sip of soda. Overhead, a pair of bats darted between dark skies and street lights. “Not really much to tell. I’d love to say we had a huge, intense fight, rounds of angry sex and then some make-up stuff too.” “Mel.” “Sorry.” She chuckled. “Truth is though, things just kinda faded. Good first year and then it was like we were fifty and married. We stopped going to shows. Stopped going to bars and stuff. It just got boring and to be honest the split was pretty amicable.” Nate looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Doesn’t sound all that bad.” “It honestly wasn’t. I mean I’m sad sure, but like I said, it is what it is.” “So.” His voice trailed off. “I have to ask then, why the impromptu trip down here?” “It’s just—well, you know what it’s going to be like on Christmas: everyone’s going to fawn over you and what you’re doing down here, getting your third degree and all that, and then when Carolyn doesn’t show up Dad will actually talk to me, but it’ll be undercut with comments like: women don’t know what they want, it’s why you should date men, or even better maybe now it’ll be outta your system. And, I know the breakup wasn’t bad, but things aren’t really going that good at work, I got passed up for a promotion and somehow wound up on my boss’s shit list at a job I don’t even like anymore.” “And you thought taking off to Houston was the best way to fix that?” “Shut up. I have a bunch of sick days and vacation time saved up because I’m always there, and despite the fact that Debbie is constantly out she still kisses enough ass to be the apple of Cheryl’s eye. Ugh, we need more guys at the office I swear.” Nate started laughing. “What’s so funny?” “You sound like Dad.” Melissa settled back, no longer wanting to talk. She picked at her thumbnail while bats continued to dart overhead, nabbing what bugs they could from the air. “Look,” Nate finally said. A pair of headlights cut across them like dual lighthouse beams. “Things are gonna be rough no matter where you are. Texas has its problems too. Everywhere does. But home is home, and your family loves you.” “They love you.” “That’s not fair.” “I’m sorry,” Melissa hooked hair behind her ear. “I’m proud of you for what you’re doing. The school, the research, the work that’s being done because of it. I think it’s great. I just—Jesus Christ I don’t want to say this—I need some help, Nate. After the disaster that was Thanksgiving, I don’t know if I’ll make it through Christmas.” “So don’t go. Tell them you’re sick or something.” “I can’t do that. I can’t be sitting in a studio four t-stops away and blow them off. Then I’d be no better than they are.” Nate took the soda back from her and swallowed a few gulps. The air was warm and felt like a comforter around Melissa’s shoulders. Suddenly, she felt annoyance at her older brother. He was down here enjoying warm weather and his dreams while she was stuck at home, in a city she learned to loathe, dealing with the remnants he left behind. “What happened on Thanksgiving?” He asked. “Found out Dad was drinking again. Mom didn’t seem to care, course that could have been because of the benzos in the bathroom cabinet.” “Surprise you at all?” “Not really.” She forced a laugh. “I swear they don’t even like each other. They just stay together because they‘re both too lazy to try and do something different.” “Probably. But, okay, so what happened that made it so terrible. Dad drinking again isn’t a big deal if Mom doesn’t care, right?” Melissa grabbed the soda back and finished it. “Dad made some comments to Uncle Vic, several of which had the word dyke in them.” Nate’s eye twitched. “Carolyn heard them, but she didn’t say anything. Normally she would have probably started swinging, and yet she looked like she couldn’t care less. Driving home it hit me: she didn’t care about what he said because she didn’t care about us anymore.“ She leaned forward and rested her chin on the top of the empty bottle. “She knew it was the last time she was going to see them so... zero fucks given.” Nate slowly shook his head. “Dad’s an asshole, Mel, and Mom? You can’t let them get to you. At the base of it they love you. They do, I promise, they want the best for you, but unfortunately, and what they don’t realize yet, is that the best for you isn’t exactly what they see as the actual best, you know?” “So, let’s go to New Orleans for Christmas.” “Mel.” “Seriously, and then maybe if we don’t show up and tell them we decided to go do something on our own they’ll maybe look at themselves and realize it might be because of something they said or did. Let’s make them actually realize the unnecessary bullshit they put on us. On me anyway.” Nate stood and took a deep breath. His watch reflected the street light, and the glare caught her in the eye. Like a beacon saying come with me, I can help you. “Why don’t we start with a good night’s sleep and then go from there, okay?” Reluctantly, she nodded and followed him to his truck. # Three days later, Melissa boarded a JetBlue flight back to Boston. She would survive the holidays, at least that’s what Nate convinced her to believe, even if she truly didn’t buy it. But, he would be there, that was a plus, and he would help her through it. Plus, truth be told, with Nate back at the family homestead, there would be no reason for either one of their parents to make comments about Melissa’s life or job or choice of partners, their attention would be focused on their eldest. She touched down a little past eleven and was greeted by Massachusetts rain and wind. A fitting welcome for a place she reluctantly had to be in. Climbing the stairs to her studio, she unlocked the door and went to bed without turning on the light or taking off her shoes or brushing her teeth. At least her bed was somewhat comfortable. Nate landed at the same time, the day before Christmas Eve. Melissa met him and they stood on top of the parking garage watching the last few planes taxi on the tarmac, their lights flashing like those on decorated trees. Snow flurries fell around the Boston skyline. “Forgot how freaking cold it is up here,” Nate said. “I mean really.” “One of the many things we have going for us.” “Sarcasm noted. You sure you don’t mind me crashing at your place? I’m sure Mom and Dad wouldn’t care if I was there an extra night.“ Melissa looked at him, her breath puffing out in visible clouds. “You’re staying with me, and that’s it. I’ll take the couch.” “If you say so.” The couch wasn’t as comfortable as her bed, however her apartment felt cozier with another person inside it. Somewhere, if Melissa had her way, Carolyn would be missing that companionship, looking up as the curtains moved, thinking for just a second that it was her. She made crackers and cheese and poured cheap wine while they talked about Nate’s semester and the continued rise of Melissa’s shit coworker. “I mean, she doesn’t even do anything. She sits on her phone and just makes it look like she’s doing work every time our boss is around.” Nate chuckled and lowered his wine glass. “You know what that reminds me of?” “What?” “Remember when we used to go to the casino, and we wouldn’t gamble we’d just stick twenty dollars in the slot machine and only press the button when the waitresses were walking by?” “So we could get free drinks.” Melissa nodded. “So we could get free drinks.” They laughed, and once it subsided, replaced by the soft sound of Christmas songs playing through her smart speaker on the counter. “You ready for tomorrow?” Nate asked. “No.” She faked a smile. “But I told them I have to work. Bought myself another day.” “What’d Mom say?” The song changed to an electric guitar cover of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Outside, the snow had picked up, changing from flurries to an actual snowfall. “She asked if I knew what time your flight was.” He didn’t say a word. Just finished the last of his wine, piled the dishes on top of one another and brought them to the sink. The faucet chugged as it spat out water; Melissa put her empty glass on the counter and went to the couch. # Melissa stood on her parent’s doorstep, a Yankee Candle bag in one hand, and a Barnes and Noble tote in the other. All she needed to do was press the button, and yet she just stood there on the shoveled stoop, surrounded by everyone’s dream white Christmas. She could hear muffled voices inside. The clanging of dishes as they were moved. Aunt Kathy’s voice rose above all the others and it was followed by laughter. She could still leave. Just turn around and run back to her studio apartment, light the Winter’s Kiss candle she had bought for her mother, and read the nonfiction book on World War II that she had purchased for her father. There were no gifts for her extended family, as that was part of the tradition—only give to the ones you were forced to live with. The ones who love you unconditionally as long as you meet thier conditions. Melissa hadn’t bought anything for her brother either, at his own insistence as she was leaving Texas. “I don’t care,” he had said. “Just hanging out together, being there while we roll our eyes at Mom and wince at Dad when he talks, that’s my gift. Okay?” “But you’re my brother and I want to get you so mething.” “Then be there. That’s all you have to do.” Well, Melissa was there, and suddenly she wished she had disobeyed and bought him something—something benign like a new tie, or even something meaningful like a remastered version of a movie they watched over and over and over when they were kids. Or maybe a vinyl record that he could play on the dust covered turntable she had seen at his apartment. Some form of multimedia where words and sounds and emotions mixed together to form a coherent bond between two people (or strengthen one that already existed). Alas, she didn’t get any of these because Nate had asked her not to, and if there were any relative, blood, distant, or through marriage, that she was going to listen to, it was him. So she raised her hand to knock when someone cleared their throat behind her. Melissa looked over her shoulder to find her brother standing there, hands stuffed in the pockets of a new black coat. “Why aren’t you inside? You left like hours ago.” “Yeah.” He rocked back on his heels. “Had to pick up a last minute gift. Do they know you’re here yet?” Behind the wooden door were more muffled sounds. Holiday cheer and joy being spread (or at least the facade of it) between family members. There was undoubtedly food in the oven and Christmas movie marathons playing on the television in the living room. “Mel?” She shook her head. “No. I haven’t gone in yet. Trying to. Believe me, I’m trying.” He nodded his head to the side and started walking down the sidewalk, away from their childhood home. Confused, Melissa hurried after him, the gift bags knocking against her legs. They ducked inside a corner Starbucks, the cashier looking less than enthused to be working on Christmas Day. Melissa felt for the poor kid; Nate was already ordering. He handed her a holiday drink laced with caramel and sugar while keeping what looked like a regular coffee for himself. While curiosity burned at her, Melissa dared not ask what they were doing. Any procrastination was welcome. Maybe this was his way of helping her, a little pre-holiday huddle inside a cinnamon scented Starbucks. Nate, eyes on the snowy sidewalk outside, reached into the inner pocket of his coat and removed a plain white envelope. He put it on the table and slid it across, still looking outside, though Melissa could see a shift in his expression. One of relief? One of sadness maybe? “What’s this?” She asked. “It’s your Christmas present,” he said simply. She glared at him. “You told me not to buy you anything. What the hell, Nate?” “You’re right, I did. You’re going to need your money.” “Nate.” He looked straight at her. “Open it.” Reluctantly, Melissa took the envelope from the table and slid her finger under the fold. Inside were two boarding passes, each one for a direct flight from Logan to New Orleans. Their departure time was in three hours. Benjamin Thomas writes from New England where he unequally balances time between hiking, gaming, and quoting seemingly random movies. His short fiction has appeared in publications such as: The Lascaux Review, and Flash Fiction Online, while his debut medical thriller, Jack Be Quick, is available now from Owl Hollow Press. Get in touch at bthomas7.weebly.com 5/2/2019 0 Comments A Vila by Jenna GomesA VILA I am five. “It’s different here,” my father says, gruff. I dig my hands under the chain that has become a second skin on the dog. Its fur is wiry, matted back with saliva around its lips. This is one of the dogs that barks at us every time we walk to the center of the village. All of them are tied up with short chains or ropes. Some of them have a weathered rug to lay on. They are always outside. “Vamos,” my father says, “Let’s go. He is okay.” “But the chain -” “It’s just the way it is,” he says, “Vamos, I’ll get you a Sumol.” I give into the temptation of a fuzzy drink but I don’t abandon my ideals. I bury my face in the dog’s neck, the chains biting my nose with sharp July heat. “It’s okay,” I whisper into its ear, “I’ll come back for you.” # I am fifteen. “It’s different here,” my father says, laughing. I stare at the small glass of bagasse as if the liquid will jump out and bite me. “I start drinking this when I was 12,” my father says, “You old enough!” I don’t know if I am, but I want to be, so I pick up the glass with a quivering hand and hold it out in front of me. My father takes a sip of his and rubs his chest. “È açucarado,” he says, “Sugary.” “I don’t believe you,” I say. He laughs and I know that I don’t believe him, so I bring the glass closer and take a sniff. My eyes burn and he laughs again. “Don’t smell, just drink!” I bring the glass to my mouth. I wince as the liquid sitting at the top seeps into my chapped lips. I take a sip. # I am twenty-five. “It’s different here,” my father says, exasperated. I look at my wife who sits pained, silent in the corner as she plays with her ring. “Gay marriage is legal here, Dad.” “Ah, foda,” he bites, throwing his hands up. He hates the word “gay.” “We should be able to hold hands here, kiss -” “No!” he shouts, waving his arms in a big “X” in front of him, “This a village. It’s too small. They all know me, they know you. They know our family. They won’t be nice.” I feel a sharp pain in my gut as I realize he’s not ashamed of me; he’s ashamed of the people he grew up with. “Não se beijem,” he says to me, then turns to my wife, “No kissing. In Lisbon, that’s okay. Not here.” “Okay.” # I am thirty-five. “It’s different here,” my father says, tired. I’ve tucked him into bed and fed him his cocktail of drugs that he hides when his cousins come over. “They should know, Dad.” “They no need to know.” “But I’m sure they would want to know.” He shakes his head and then rolls his way back into a cough, turning over on his side. “If I tell them, they worry. Nothing they can do.” I close my eyes because that’s something I’ve repeated in my head the last year: nothing I can do. “But this is the last time they’ll see you.” He shrugs, coughs again. “They used to call me Touro, you know. Bull.” # I am forty-five. My son has a dog in his grasp, his chubby fingers gripping its greasy fur. He looks into its eyes and it squirms away from him. “Mamma, he’s hurting!” “Uh, uh,” I say, “He’s okay. He doesn’t need your help.” “How do you know?” he says, a single, fat tear dripping down his cheek. I kneel down to him, grab his small wrists in my hands. “Because,” I say, “This is where he lives. This is what he knows. He’s happy.” “But how can he be happy when he has that chain around his neck?” I smile and run my hands through his hair. “Because,” I say to him, “It’s different here.” Jenna Gomes's home is in the undergrad classroom, where she attempts to inspire social change all while teaching freshmen and sophomore composition. Her work has been published in Eunoia Review, Rose Quartz Magazine, and 50-Word Stories. It's her greatest belief that the best stories come from the parts of ourselves that we keep hidden, so keep digging. You can find her on Twitter at @OhOhThunderRoad as well as @MWFStories for a taste of her microfiction. |
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