The Killers, Part I

Carl points his gnarly, yellow-nailed finger (cigarettes) at the graffiti and says:

“Hey, that’s pretty funny.”

The graffiti is Don’t Open. Dead Inside.

“Yeah, that’s pretty funny, Carl,” you say.

You’ve been killing people, you and Carl, long enough to know that the graffiti might as well be tattooed on your chest. When your time comes and they open you up under the fluorescent lights of the basement morgue, out of you will come a stink that smells like sulfur and gut rot. You’ve been thinking that each kill is you playing god, and that each loss of life measures out in some place unseen on the cosmic scale, and that in this invisible place beyond the horizon there are racks on racks on racks of unpaid tickets, crimes against humanity, and that eventually you will be responsible for those tickets.

Lately, you’ve been getting nervous about this whole death thing.

Next week, you turn thirty.

“Carl, do you remember when you were a young man?”

“I remember everything, honey. Remember it all like it was yesterday.”

You’ve been telling Carl to stop calling you “honey” for years but the old fool does not listen and now it’s honey, honey, honey, and goddamn, you cannot mess with things you cannot control.

“You ever worry about fate, Carl?”

Carl flips his half smoked cigarette out of the open car window and says:

“Honey, I don’t think too much on fate. That’s a mad man’s game, worrying about fate.”

It’s so hot outside that the open window doubles as an open oven door when you’re not moving, so you pull the truck slowly away from the graffitied garage door with the dead inside and the warnings to keep shit closed.

East Austin: ain’t like it used to be. There used to be dusty parking lots and shabby bars, Mexicans and blacks, a faint whiff of danger in the stagnant summer nights. Now, you ask, what’s left? Condos. Fancy restaurants always crowded. Hordes of tourists that move up and down the street like newborns blind to traffic or death. The Mexicans moved east, and the blacks, well, you don’t know where the blacks moved.

Carl is black, so you ask him.

“Gone fishin’, brother.”

He doesn’t say anything more, so either he doesn’t know or he doesn’t feel like sharing the information with a shithead young buck white boy, and you know both answers mean the question will drift down the street, out of town like an unwanted stranger.

It is funny, you think, seizing the hypothetical before it goes, that you can kill a man with Carl, an act of instinct, and one that is very intimate, and yet he still won’t talk about his race and color.

“Weird…” you mutter to no one; not to Carl, nor the faded blue paint on brick walls, sixth street, steel bones of prepubescent buildings covered in sun and burning to the touch; none of it is weird, none of it is much of anything, and goddamn if it doesn’t make you pretty sad.

You pull up to the coffee shop and Google Maps goes:

You’ve arrived at your destination! Happy killing!
The coffee shop is an old house with mismatched antique furniture in the front yard. There’s a wraparound wooden porch, home to a half-dozen white-painted steel patio chairs and their table partners, each one in varying stages of disrepair. Everything is manicured, the environment subjugated, the scene one of inflated good taste, the revelation of the cool.

Carl walks with a limp from the time he took a machete to the thigh. It clipped his femoral artery and there was blood, blood, blood. You remember you were close quarters with some whacked out Colombians full of crack and unpaid dues, tenants of your boss, in this little white house with white walls and a white staircase, and when a bleeding Carl tumbled down that staircase, dude left a trail of macabre painterly genius, like Jack the Ripper and Jackson Pollack came together and opened an art exhibit. You even took a picture with your iPhone after you shot the Colombians dead-meat dead.

Those days were a little wild, but Carl survived, and eventually everything went back to normal.

“What if he ain’t here?” Carl asks.

Even though he’s two decades older than you, Carl knows that you’re smarter than he is, and so he capitulates to your plans most of the time. But the old-timer still gets nervous around cell phones, doesn’t trust technology or GPS, has dreams about floating satellites beaming nightmares into his sleeping skull, and so he’s always afraid “the guy” won’t be where he’s supposed to be. That’s Carl’s mantra, motto, and creed: What if he ain’t here?

“He’ll be here,” you say. “If he ain’t here now, he will be shortly, and we’ll just wait and have a coffee and strike up conversation.”

Inside the coffee shop there’s a wooden bar with stools painted different colors of springtime pastel. There’s a glass case of muffins, a big fat tip jar full of pennies and nickels and one poor bastard fiver, and a chalkboard with: Today’s Specials! Vegan White Bean Chili! Split Pea Soup w/ Rosemary!

You’re in what was the kitchen of the house, and they’ve knocked down the wall to what was the living room, with windows that open out to Sixth Street, and dark couches with light floral patterns and millennials on them. Some asshole plays an acoustic in the corner and behind him the Texas sun is turning purple through the window and even from this distance, you can see flecks of dust rise and fall, disappear and reappear like electrons, with the in and out breath of the dozen or so young adults chatting and drinking coffee and carrying the fuck on.

You and Carl take a seat at the bar.

“Place looks faggy,” Carl mutters.

“Get you something?” asks the barista.

“Black coffee,” you say and Carl nods, one for me as well.

The barista looks at you like: French press or...? And then says:

“Anything else?”

“Not right now,” you say. “We’re waiting on a friend.”

Written by: Logan Theissen

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Too Much

It is March, and the salt-bleached sidewalks pull me in a familiar direction. I know this road well. I have walked it often in preparation for the events that are about to transpire. Today is a Tuesday, it is 8:17am, and so the white Tesla will pass me within the next few minutes. It will be traveling at approximately 45 kms/hour. The driver— a woman in her forties like me—will be sipping a coffee. She will disappear around the corner just minutes before the door of the squat, brick house that is her home, will open and a young man will exit. He will be wearing a warm coat, but no hat or gloves. He will be carrying a blue canvas backpack. He will not be wearing a bike helmet today, as he will leave his bike behind and ride the bus to attend a class downtown.

I know that this will happen because I have been meticulous in my planning. I know he will be alone and I know he will be on time—the bus schedule demands punctuality. He rides the bus though his Honda Civic sits unused in the driveway. He is no longer allowed to drive that or any other car. Not since that night two years ago when the streets were dark and slick and his senses had been dimmed by consumption of too much … too much everything. He is too much. A boy—no, a man—who has too much, demands too much. He takes too much for granted. He has taken too much from me.

Across the road, I take in the view that hangs as the backdrop of their lives. The lake, pale blue; the forests, soon to be green again; and the sky that hangs serenely above it. The highway—always congested with transport trucks—and the train tracks, invisible unless you know they are there. They are the closest these people will come to connecting with the blue collar soul of this industrial city. They don’t know us, the people who make up the backbone of their home. That we collided at all was an accident, one they would sooner forget. An accident that is never out of my thoughts.

My feet crunch through the detritus of winter, the white salt crystals snap under my heavy tread. I walk with steps that echo a confidence my heart does not feel. I want my feet and my legs to lend their strength to the rest of me. I want the strong rhythm of my gait—a rhythm which suggests determination—to hide that I am a weak creature. Today I need to belie that weakness, to find a strength that typically evades me.

The white Tesla sails smoothly and silently past me and I avert my eyes, as I do every Tuesday morning. My face would be recognizable to the woman driving. It would be alarming for her to see me here, since she has left me behind. My face should only occupy the space in her memories that she would rather not look at. I should remain in the courtroom where we once sat on opposite sides. We fought—ferocious as mother bears—arguing for the judge, desperate for his agreement. We fought for our young.

I quicken my pace as I approach the house that the Tesla has just pulled away from, and my palms sweat with anticipation over what I am about to do. I picture it in my head, though I know the scene is all wrong—it is fiction. The weight of the bat in my hand is too easy, the crack it makes when it connects is a cartoon version of the sound I expect to hear. In reality, the sound will not be the sharp crack of the crust of crème brulè as it fractures under my spoon. It will be the flat thud of raspberry pie fallen to the floor, a wet sound, anticlimactic. A sound I heard once that told me something I loved had been irreparably broken. I know the sticky red syrup that I picture spilling across the asphalt is also wrong. It is nothing like the the dark black blood that I remember seeping into the snow as her body turned cold.

The door opens and the boy—no, the man—appears. He fusses with the keys. He has cut his hair since I watched him cry by the side of the road as my daughter died. It was even longer when he pled his case, begged for leniency because he had so much potential and he felt remorse, and he still had his whole life ahead of him. My daughter does not.

His keys drop into the slush and he bends to retrieve them, cursing under his breath.

I grip the handle of my bat firmly as I walk forward. I hear the crunch of the salt under my boots. Snapping and cracking.

He must hear the sound too, for he looks up, right into my eyes. There is a moment of recognition. There is a moment of confusion. There is no time for fear as I bring my bat down against his skull. He does not cry out. He does not fight back. I am strong, and my aim is good. He stumbles as I raise the bat and bring it down again. This time the impact knocks him to the ground. I raise my bat again. And again.

There is no blood.

There is only a broken man—once a boy—and an irreparable woman—once a mother—on a salt-bleached stretch of sidewalk, wrapped in cruel memories—wrapped in cold March wind.

Photograph and Story by: Sarah Scott

Meddled

My entire body is numb when I wake. I stay sprawled on my back as feeling slowly crawls down my neck and tingles up my arms until I’m able to wiggle my fingers. Each tap of my fingers sends a bolt of pain that deepens the dull ache in my skull.

As I regain feeling in my body, a sharp pain in my chest shallows my breathing. My tongue feels swollen, as if it can barely fit in my mouth. My skin is covered in little scratches from my straw bed, and my pale skin is bright red.

Deep down, I know I should be panicking. I’ve been trapped and unconscious for what could be hours or days—I don’t know. Yet all I can interpret is the exhaustion weighing me down and the pain in my body.

I wipe away the crust caked on my lashes. The movement torments my shoulders, and I whimper. My throat burns with the sound, and I cough from the dust coating my tongue.

I need to ignore the pain and focus on what I know. I know the murderer is a man who has pale blonde hair and clear gray eyes. He was wearing a jacket and jeans in the humid, hot Massachusetts summer. Boots, even. I had been melting in the shorts and tank I’d worn to go biking. Is he even human? Does he come from the center of the earth?

I wonder if my coworkers or roommate would call for help—if they even notice I’m gone.

Managing to prop myself up on my elbows, I look around. The only light filters in through little cracks in the roof, revealing thousands of dust particles. My makeshift bed is situated beside a thick wooden pole with a heavy chain looped around it several times. The path of the chain leads to a wide metal cuff around my right ankle. A padlock with a six-digit combination keeps me locked in place.

Apparently he didn’t want to risk losing me.

Thinking about that man makes a new pain blossom in my chest. He is the man who killed my parents. After years of being tossed around in the foster care system, I had finally been able to call a place home.

But he ruined that for me.

I guess I’m not allowed to have a happy ending.

Slowly, feeling drifts down to my legs. Now that I can move them, I’m able to sit up. The movement sends a wave of lightheadedness that crashes through my head and settles as a lead ball of nausea in my gut.

The only sound I can make is a raspy whimper when I attempt to call out. The birds continue to chirp. Twigs snap in an unsteady rhythm, probably from a small animal. Aside from that, my prison is silent. I am alone.

Shit.

I don’t want to die.

Maybe my roommate’s right. I should have believed the police when they said my parents’ deaths were an accident. Just a coincidence. I shouldn’t have put it all together, tracked him down. When I discovered he was one of my foster brothers, my blood had run cold. He could’ve been jealous or vengeful. It doesn’t matter, anymore. It’s too late to find out.

I shouldn’t have followed him to a boarded white barn in the middle of nowhere on my bike. I shouldn’t have tried to break in. I should have stayed home and watched Friends reruns while drinking wine.

I shouldn’t have tried to meddle.

Meddle. Meddle. Meddle.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Stupid enough to get myself killed.

The door’s closed several feet away, with no visible way to open it from the inside. Aside from me and the pole, the small shed is bare. Nothing is here except the microbes and me.

My legs wobble after I pull myself up with the pole. I dig my nails into the cracked wood until blood rushes down to my extremities, and I can stand with little support. I breathe out a small sigh of relief as my body begins to feel normal again. I can do this. I can survive.

I need to.

My chain gives me about four feet of distance I can wander. It keeps me just out of reach from the door, and only lets me in far enough to scrape my nails on the next pole holding up the barn. All of the walls are out of reach. The boarded up windows are feet above my head. And as weak as I am, I won’t be able to climb worth a damn.

A clang of metal startles me from my thoughts. I whirl on my heel, nearly tumbling over from the sudden movement. The door slides open as I blink my eyes to try and calm the vertigo making me sway on my feet. The man clucks his tongue at me and closes the door behind him. I watch him closely as he turns his attention to me and assesses me with cool gray eyes.

“I’m impressed,” he says. “Most couldn’t stand in your state.” He walks towards me, swinging a pistol dangling from his fingers. He pauses an arm’s length from me and tilts his head. “I really didn’t want to kill you. You should have left well enough alone.” His voice is chilled and flat, with no hint of remorse or regret. Although his voice is soft, it still intensifies the throbbing in my head. I wobble on my feet and slump against the pole, closing the distance between us.

“You took my parents.” Somehow, my voice comes out strong enough to make words. He braces his free hand on the pole beside me and lifts the gun to my face. After tracing a line down my heated cheek, he tucks it under my chin.

“They weren’t even blood,” he says and scoffs. This presses the metal harder into my jugular. I wince and shy away from the weapon, but he straightens up and wraps his other hand around the back of my neck. I freeze.

“You took them,” I repeat. “Go to hell.”

He takes a step back and raises the pistol to aim at my head. I squeeze my eyes shut against the sight. Panic rises up in my chest, but he speaks before I can quell it.

“Keep it hot for me.”

The gunshot is the last thing I ever hear.



Written by: Jeanine Kleist
Photograph by: Kayla King

Blood Town Forest

1946

A single letter sat in William Blood’s mailbox, the address for Philip Kaufman, in the corner. His aged hand, still creased from years of labor, shook it open.

“Dear Mr. Blood,” he read. “We regret to inform you that because of your refusal to pay your property taxes, and your refusal to show up in court, the Town of Lancaster, MA is confiscating the stretch of forest on Brockelman Road. Please report to our main office immediately.”

William stared at the letter until the words swam in front of his eyes. After a minute, he took a deep breath, folded it up with care, and marched to his car.

My family’s land, all I have left, and that bastard’s found a way to take it.

The fifteen minute drive felt like five, and then he’d found the building. Inside, he searched every hallway until he reached an open door that read KAUFMAN. A man in a brown suit sitting behind the desk looked up. William introduced himself, and the man got up, beaming.

“Mr. Blood, I’m glad to see you got my letter,” he said, reaching to shake William’s hand.

“You’re the man who’s taking my land.” William crossed his arms over his chest.

Phil shook his head. “I promise you, Mr. Blood, we wouldn’t do this if we had any other choice. Please, have a seat.” He turned back to the desk, getting a corner ready. “I’ll take you through the paperwork, and answer any questions you have.”

William took forever walking to the desk. Once Phil began explaining, William stopped listening. His body numb, he signed every dotted line until Phil clapped him on the back and thanked him for his donation.

“So that’s what you’re calling it?” William asked. “In your letter, you considered this ‘a confiscation.’” He pulled the paper from his back pocket.

Phil kept smiling. “Mr. Blood, you’re a respected man in this community, but you haven’t paid your taxes in full. Now, we could print that in the papers,” he said. “But you’re a good man whose only crime is not having the money. We wouldn’t do that to you.”

William scoffed, turning for the door. “Good day, Philip. Thanks for your time.”

That week, an ad in the paper declared that some hiking trails had been established in Lancaster Blood Town Forest. Seeing his name stuck in there, like he’d just handed the property over instead of fighting for it for years, left William struggling to sleep. The next night, he grabbed his sturdiest shovel, jumped in his car, and drove to Town Hall.

If he wants to treat my family’s history like a tourist attraction, then he’s got another thing coming.

Five minutes passed before Phil walked out. William waited until he rolled off down the road, and then followed, keeping ten feet behind until the man pulled up to a half-lit home. Parking along the road, William got out when Phil did. The man locked eyes with him and jumped.

“William! Are you well?” Phil asked.

“I’ve been thinking about the forest,” William said. He nodded to his car. “Come for a drive?”

Phil gaped, and then gave a nervous laugh. “That’s kind of you to ask, but I -- I’m expected, see.” He pointed to the house. The silhouette of a woman and child glided by the window, their laughs muted by the glass.

Just like my family, once.

“Won’t take a moment,” William said, and sat back down.

Phil hesitated, and then jogged over. “I have to say, I’m surprised to see you here, William,” he said when they headed down the road. “You know my office hours.”

William gave him a tight smile. “Yes, well, some things can’t be talked about in a mere fifteen-minute meeting.”

Phil twitched a nod and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Of course. So, what’s on your mind?”

William turned onto another road. Finally, he drove them down the half-paved path to his “donated” forest, the trees thickening around them. Phil’s Adam’s apple bobbed again.

“I just wanted to enjoy the quiet here one last time,” William said, pulling over. His foggy headlights passed over a sizable rock beside them, his name engraved there.

“You’re really attached to this place,” Phil said, his voice a little too high.

William handed him a cigarette, wearing a real smile this time. “More than you know,” he said and nodded to the woods. “Shall we?”

Phil choked, smoking up the whole car. “What, hike? I just came from work.” He gestured to his dress clothes.

William shrugged. “If you look west, the trees fall away and you can see the sky. Good sight to smoke to.”

Phil hesitated, and then got out to lean against the hood.

William grinned. “Good man,” he said. He followed, pulling out the shovel behind him and rounding the back of the car. At the rearview mirror, he hung back. Phil sent another stream of smoke to the sky, the stars flickering behind it.

“You’re right, William,” he said. “The stars are beautiful here.”

William nodded. He expected his heart to pound, his hands to shake, but as he lifted the shovel and whipped it down onto Phil’s head, neither happened. The man just dropped to the ground like wet laundry, his cigarette a few inches off to the side.

With a deep breath, William stuck Phil’s cigarette in his mouth, opened his trunk, and looped a long twist of rope over his arm. Hitching up his pants, he hauled Phil up over his shoulder.

His knees shook with age. Sucking a breath through his teeth, William marched into the forest, counting to one hundred before dumping Phil at the base of a tree. A cool breeze blew by, but he didn’t shiver. Unfurling the rope, he tied a noose around Phil’s neck, and pulled tight, craning his neck to study the branches.

One loomed close, thick at the base and high enough that he could reach it without climbing. Standing back, he tossed the rope three times before it caught, allowing him to wrap it around the trunk for leverage.

Slowly, he pulled Phil up. His body jerked and twitched while he hanged, but by the time he got high enough to be out of sight, he stopped moving. The branch groaned as the body swayed.

Sighing, William tied a knot, and pulled a fresh cigarette from his pocket. The breeze cooled the sweat on his forehead.

“Oh, yes, Philip,” he whispered. “The stars above my land are the best.” Hitching his pants up again, he wandered back to the road.

Written by: Caitlin Mannarino
Photograph by: Kayla King

A Bloodless Year

Unseasonal snow in these parts. Bleached flakes trace the outlines of the dead trees. Victims from the summer fires. Scorched winter wonderland. Home to a slight breeze and a body. Woman. Throat slashed. Why always a woman? Pretty. Thin arms lying there at grotesque angles. Dirt and blood and snow.

I thought we were going to get through a year with no murders. No blood. I was wrong. Karina says that it’s time to go. You’ve done your bit, she says. Let it go, she says. I flip open my phone and dial her number. She doesn’t answer. Umm, something came up, I tell her recorded voice. I’m out past Black Jack Springs. I pause. There’s a body, I say. And then, It’s snowing. For a moment I forget I’m talking. Anyway, I say, don’t wait up. Okay. Goodbye.

Jackson comes up from the house. Cold, he says. El nino, must be. El what? I ask. El nino, Jackson says. He’s very young. Probably not even thirty. El nino. You don’t know what El nino is? I shake my head. The woman’s body is still there. For some reason I expected it not to be. Karina is right. It’s time to give this up.

Jackson says, The old man up...shit, sorry. The elderly man up at the house…

Jesus Christ, I say, I’m old with or without him. It don’t matter. Now stop faggot tapping around and get to the point. What did he say?

Says he saw headlights, Jackson murmurs.

What a pussy he is. Feelings hurt. Young cocks go thumping around with emotion and forgiveness. Expression this and that. Not one of them can handle a stern voice or eye contact, much less something more. Something real.

What time? I ask. About three in the morning, Jackson says. Bullshit. That old fart is in bed by nine, I say. Well, that’s what he said. Says he got up this morning to feed the cows. Found the body. Called it in.

I see two cows on the horizon. Thin and distraught. Silhouetted against the winter sky. Gray on gray. Sinewy meat. Diseased. Thank god Karina got me off that stuff years ago. It gives you cancer, she said. They pump them full of chemicals. Slaughter them by the hundreds. Cutting machines. Nothing done by man no more. Everything machines. In the end the only thing human will be art. And this shit. Machines never solved no murder.

Phone rings. A number I don’t recognize. 512. Austin number. No answer but they leave a message. Who was that? Jackson asks.

Last day of the year, I say. Forty years of this shit and they get me on the last day of the year. Huh? Jackson asks. A bloodless year, I say. No murders. One goddamned time I would have taken a bloodless year.

Really? Jackson says. You’ve never gone a year without murders? Jesus. That’s fucked up. It’s not like this is Chicago, you know what I mean?

Karina and I in church. It was during the summer fires. The whole sky was dark with smoke. Noon. No rain for weeks. Preacher said, these fires will cleanse us. He said, it is God’s way. To make something new from something old. Karina saying Amen whenever they ask her to. You see it in the big cities, Preacher continued. See it in the New Yorks. The Los Angeleses. You see it in the Chicagos, he said. Like Sodom and Gomorrah before them, these places have turned their backs on God, and for that He will punish them. And he will do the same to us. Even here in Texas, he will do the same to us. Unless we accept Christ into our hearts. Into our homes. Our families. And when we do that, he will protect us. Each and every one of us. He will protect.

Another phone call. Unknown. 512. Austin. Another message.

Can I help you gentleman? A young woman. Beautiful. Sandy blonde hair. Jackson’s age maybe. Dressed like a rancher. Cowboy boots. Brown. Blue jeans. Checkered shirt underneath a Carhartt coat. Also brown. Freckles on pale skin. Rosy cheeks from the cold. Perfect teeth. Strong jaw. Pursed lips.

Ma’am? Jackson says. Panting like a dog. My grandfather owns the land, she says. And the house. He said ya’ll were down here. He doesn’t know the days of the week, so there’s no telling what he said to ya’ll. I didn’t know if I could help. I’m Elise.

Phillip Jackson, he says. Detective. And this is…

Landry, I say. Marcus Landry. Firm handshake. Eye contact. Slight smile. Fuck me eyes not seen since my youth.

Can I invite you up to the house? she says. It’s freezing out here. Hot coffee?

I look at the body while Jackson says, That would be kind of you, miss. For some reason, she never remarked on it. Never even looked at it. Blue face. Lost eyes. Dried blood like a necklace. It could almost be her twin. Same blonde hair. Same build.

We walk up the hill to the house. The cows scatter. Snow falls. I dig my hands deeper into my coat. My blood is too thin for this weather. Karina came from North Dakota. Long time ago. She would laugh at me. Call me a wimp. My Karina. I smile. Jackson is talking up ahead.

You go to school there in Austin? he asks. Yep, she says. Senior. Go Horns. I come out every weekend to see Papa, but it took me so long this morning. Roads are terrible. Ice everywhere. Wrecks everywhere. We’re just not used to this weather, you know? Don’t have the equipment. Salt, or whatever. People don’t know how to drive in it. So dangerous.

My phone rings. Same number. Like lightning I am hit. Karina. My Karina. She is heading to Austin today. Doctors appointments. Icy roads.

Hello, I say. A pause. A voice on the line. Is this Mr. Marcus Landry? it asks.


Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Michael Ken

The Commons

Darius broke right and sprinted down the alleyway, but deep down he knew even his best effort would be futile. Athletic endeavors had never been his strong suit, and the three boys chasing him were older, faster, and stronger.

“Get back here, you fat little motherfucker,” shouted their leader, a hulking monster of a teen whose real name was Terrence, but went by T-Dog. If the rumors floating around school were true, this past weekend T-Dog fulfilled his lifelong ambition, metamorphosed from wannabe gangbanger to a full-fledged member of the Baseline Crips after emerging triumphant from a cocoon of fists and stomping feet. His two acolytes, Peanut and DeRay, were no less menacing.

“You keep running, we’re gonna beat your ass even worse,” yelled T-Dog.

But Darius, faced with the first flight or fight moment of his life, kept chugging along as fast as his stout little legs and asthmatic lungs could go.

It wasn’t fast enough.

DeRay was the first to reach him. He grabbed Darius from behind and slammed him to the ground, knocking his glasses off and ripping the sleeve of his shirt. Peanut slapped him across the mouth, turning his lip raw and bloody.

“The fuck you running for?” T-Dog asked, shaking him. “Huh? Answer me motherfucker! Peanut, I thought you said this motherfucker was smart. Don’t seem so smart to me.”

“Wh-wh-what do you want from me?” Tears poured down Darius’s cheeks as he stumbled over the words.

Before T-Dog could answer, a voice, booming and gravelly, called out, “Let that boy alone.”

Darius, glasses gone and eyes clouded with tears, watched unfocused as a blur of a man hopped a dilapidated, white fence and confronted his attackers.

DeRay rushed at the stranger and was thrown headlong into the fence. T-Dog took a swing at him. The man caught his punch and pulled him close, twisting his arm awkwardly behind him. The man slid his other arm across T-Dog’s throat.

“I said, let that boy alone.” He held onto to T-Dog for another few seconds, choking him and cranking up on his arm, before pushing him down to the ground. “Now, get out of here.”

T-Dog got up slowly and brushed himself off. He and the others backed down the alleyway, bristling with teenage rage, staring at the man.

“I’m gonna get you motherfucker. This ain’t over.” T-Dog yelled, before shifting his gaze to Darius. “You either. See you around school.”

“You alright, son?” the man asked Darius, brushing him off and handing him his glasses.

Darius was pretty far from alright.

“Umm. Yes, sir. I guess, sir.”

“What’s your name?” asked the man.

“Darius.”

“Darius, I’m Theo. You live around here?”
“Yes, sir. We stay over in the Commons.”

Theo glanced up at the ten-story public housing unit that dominated the neighborhood. He put his arm around Darius.

“It’ll be ok. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

                                                                                                 ***

After he finished washing up, Darius scouted around the little house. He noticed a large picture hanging over the mantle. It was a younger version of Theo. Darius didn’t know much about sports but he knew the iconic baseball uniform.

“Did you really play for the Yankees?” he asked.

The voice that answered him was not Theo’s, but the hoarse rasp of an elderly woman.

“Yes, he did. My baby pitched three seasons with the Yanks, until he blew out his elbow.”

Darius turned and looked at the woman. She was wrinkled and weathered, but had gentle, warm eyes.

“Still lives up in New York, too. He’s just down here taking care of me.” The woman coughed. “I’ve been sick lately.”

Theo came in from the kitchen, carrying a pitcher and three glasses.

“I see you’ve met my momma. I’ve been trying to get her to move out of this neighborhood and come live up north with me for quite awhile.” Theo smiled. “But she’s a stubborn old woman.”

“I love my boy, but the only way I’m leaving this house is in a body bag.”
                                                                                                 ***

“Good morning. Is there anything I can help you find?”

The man behind the counter eyed Darius suspiciously. Or perhaps it was just Darius’s guilty conscience. He had never skipped school before, and he had never ridden the bus to this part of town before, either. He felt very out of place, but baseball card shops didn’t exist in his part of town.

“Yes, sir. I was wondering if you had any Theo Jackson baseball cards?”

“Theo Jackson?” The man furrowed his brow. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“He played about ten years ago, for the Yankees.” A proud smile spread across Darius’s face. “He’s a friend of mine.”

“Hmm, let’s see what I can find,” said the man. He pulled out a worn copy of Beckett’s Ultimate Baseball Card Guide. “Now, not all players get cards, you know,” he said as he thumbed through the guide. “Alright, here we go. Jackson, Theo. Looks like he was a common in 2004.”

“What’s a common?” asked Darius.

“Well, with baseball cards, about eighty percent of them aren’t worth much. Maybe five cents or so. Players who most people wouldn’t recognize on the street.”

The man walked over to a cardboard file cabinet. He slid out a drawer and started rifling through it.

“It’s the superstars cards that are valuable, but to keep the value on them up, and to keep them rare, they have to fill the packs with commons.” He walked back over to Darius, card in hand. “Like your friend here.”

                                                                                                 ***

Darius couldn’t wait to show Theo and his mother the baseball card, but he forgot all about it the moment he rounded the corner. Blue and red lights swirled, lighting up the street. Three police cars were parked haphazard in front of the Jackson home. The people of the neighborhood ringed the area, watching and whispering amongst themselves. Darius’s heart dropped into his gut. Even from a distance he could see the rumpled white sheet on the lawn, covering the body.

He could see Theo’s mother sitting on the front step, crying and shaking. Two police officers were doing their best to calm her. Darius ran towards her. The baseball card slipped from his hand, mixing in with the fallen leaves on the lawn. As he got closer he could hear her wail.

“Oh Lord. I didn’t have no choice but to shoot him. I swear it. He was gonna kill my baby.” She took a deep breath. “He was gonna kill my baby.”

The front door opened. Theo walked out of the house. He knelt beside his mother and offered her some water. When she finished he set the cup on the top step and put his arms around her.

Photo and Words by: Ben Cook

The Violent Acts of Poets, Part III

Continued from The Violent Acts of Poets, Part I & Part II

A rumor of money brought bad men to my door. Payback sought for Mr. Miller and the debts of a deal, no doubt. These things sometimes happen. We are wandering souls like spokes on a ferris wheel, always ending up where we’ve been, and sometimes that love of money is too much. The greed spills out like oil from the gulf until we can’t stand it no more. Round and round until eventually we all get chewed, spit, swallowed, and fed to the worms.

The bad men were three in number, with one shotgun, and poor timing. They roped around the house in the early morning hours, drunk and amateur, whispering commands seen on television. The valley walls enclosed my father’s house, and echoed muffled spits of “Go round back,” in the dark.

The leader held the gun, and I did not like the look of him. He had a shaved head and wore an earring in the shape of a cross. He also wore a white t-shirt, under an un-seasonally heavy coat. He must have sweated through it, because the trapped summer heat lingered until October in the valley. The coat covered the gun. The gun covered the man. Some kind of evil covered the house in the valley; its windows broken past midnight, the hell-bent wood floor creaking. You could hear things below the floor at night. Critters holed away from the elements.

The one with the crucifix ear was first through the front door, reaching around and unlatching the lock through the broken window. Lily and I huddled together and watched the knob shake, before the glass shattered and the faceless arm reached around to open the door. The arm did not sufficiently make it back to its owner.

Grabbing the wrist I pulled as hard as I could toward the hinges of the door. I meant to break it in half. I did not plan for the glass. The remnants of the window looked like ocean waves frozen on some far away alien planet; abstract and artisan in the moonlight. They ribboned the meat of the bad man’s arm like there had been some sort of accident, the sound of scraping bone punctuated the screaming, and blood spurted across the door and wall unlike anything I have ever seen. My grip slipped and for a second I thought I had sawed his arm off, but it retreated from the window and disappeared around the closed door like a wounded animal. There was a howling. The man was clutching the arm, wrapping it with shreds of shirt, and when I walked to the porch and looked down at him, there was nothing but a strange, abstract, tangled movement; like watching a bag of snakes at night; like there was a black-holed well where his stomach should have been.

“There is a hole,” I said, picking up the shotgun, “In your soul.”

I don’t know why I said it. I was not the biblical hangman that he would soon face. It rhymed and simply slipped out of my mouth. I chose to let it linger.

I could hear his accomplices running across the field, up the slope to the main road and the gate of the property. It was a full moon and you could see them stumbling back and forth, too slow and drunk. They fell, and got up. Cursed. Coughed. Hollered. Repeat.

Lily swept by me, off the porch, taking the shotgun with her. I yelled after her and kept pursuit as she tracked the other two. I made progress but she was not slowing, not stopping, not aiming. She held the shotgun from the hip until she tripped and fell forward. The shot ripped the night and echoed through the valley. Some animal howled back like they were accepting the challenge.

Most of the pellets went through the man’s back. They ripped through muscle and lung, so by the time we stood over him he was coming up blood. It flooded him and his insides and bubbled from his bearded face. Lily handed me the shotgun and turned back down the slope to the house.

I used to believe that it was an accident, her tripping and killing that man. But later I was not so sure, and finally I believed she would have killed him tripping or not. Either way I took the kill as my own, when they asked me later, and sometimes if you believe something hard enough it becomes true. Such is the stability of truth.

The body on the porch had kept its arm but lost its life. He was small, but the amount of blood that haloed around his sunken frame was astounding and leaked through the wooden slats of the porch. You could hear it dripping. A coyote punctuated the night with a reedy cry.

“Where is the shovel?” I asked Lily.

                                                                                                     ***

After the gas station, we drove in our new car until the county fair beckoned us inside. What county I could not say, but it had children with cotton candy faces, and fathers wearing cowboy hats, and mothers wearing infants on their shoulders.

Teenage girls wore the rainbow in their hair, bunched in groups, and chattered at teenage boys who wore tank tops. Ringing jackpot bells sold tiny fortunes of knick-knacks. Carnies pulled clientele like Bourbon Street salesmen.

“Baby, what are you going to win me?” she cooed at me.

Fluttering eyelashes, and a turn of the head. A shadowed smile. She was all of it to me, and I hoped to be everything to her.

“I suppose I’ll win your heart,” I replied.

“Boring,” she said. “I want one of this ridiculous stuffed animals.”

Of course she did. So I won her a giant teddy bear by throwing balls through a rigged hoop until I ran out of tickets, and then by stuffing a twenty dollar bill, one of my last, into the hands of the hazy teenager with drugged eyes.

Eventually we went back to the car, back to the road for another night. Later we pulled over in the darkness and had sex, for the last time, in the back seat with her giant teddy bear as awkward company until we set it outside.

The sun came up and we fell asleep being forgetful and dumb to waste another day, not knowing then that our hourglass was dripping empty.


Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

Stanley Cupid's Eulogy & Coda

Varying Degrees of Murder

On a rainy-day Tuesday I murdered Cupid. It was an accident of course. No amount of spit-in-my-face romance would drive me to murder the entire industrial complex of love. I loved love. Love made singing birds, giggling babies, and the most honest smiles ever smiled.

Also, there was no body. It had vanished like a sock after a dryer run. Poof.

“Manslaughter,” I sighed. “A case of murder-lite. At most.”

“I’m not a lawyer,” said Van, “but I don’t think there are degrees of murder.”

“Yes, there are, you idiot. There are literally degrees of murder. Second degree murder. First degree. Etc.”

That was Joan Newman. I was in love with her, though it was a new love, the age of which was approximately three, call it...eh...four hours.

“No body,” I said.

“True,” said Van. He struck a thinking man’s pose. “A guilty verdict might be tough to…”

“Should we, like, do something for him?” she interrupted. “Some sort of eulogy? I mean, he was a man…”

“Was he?” I asked Joan.

We both looked at Van.

“What?” he said, like an idiot. Like Van. Like the oblivious assistant: King of the Fuckboys.

How We Got Here

My path to murd… err… manslaughter, began with a harmless crush. A crush that would have made Aphrodite proud. One of those attractions that, even if only for a moment, makes you believe we are more than walking sticks of DNA, bumping and fucking our way to the grave.

I worked at a place called “Charlie’s Books” which was a goddamn awful place to work. Don’t let the name fool you - there were dozens of them. They gave 5 Ways to be Wealthy: Get Rich Bitch (Or Your Money Back) prime real estate and buried Nabokov in the back with Joyce and Fitzy. We had to wear name-tags, and mine said Jonah. That’s my name, BTW. There was also a place to write your favorite book on the name-tag, and so I wrote Moby Dick.

“I love that book,” a nice older woman said to me that very same day, the first day of the name-tag.

“I’ve never read it.”

“So why did you write it on your name-tag?”

I shrugged. “Seemed like low-hanging fruit.”

She wandered off, and I felt pretty bad. I don’t think she got it. People say I have issues with my tone, young man.

I got written up by the manager (on my first fucking day!), so I had to change my favorite book to How to Win Friends and Influence People because fuck you, Charlie. And your books.

Anyway, I fell in love with Joan Newman because she was a writer, and wore black frame glasses, and white high-top Converse below a dress and a sweater. Also because I fall in love easily. I tell people that I’m a romantic, which is different than actually being a romantic, but I’m one of those too. My brothers call me a pussy, which is just not cool, bros.

Joan was a pretty great writer on a book tour. She hailed from the west coast and was trudging her way across the Great Plains via a host of Holiday Inn Expresses, dodging Oklahoma’s imperfect smiles and aggressively Christian billboards while, she felt, her artistic integrity lit itself on fire. She found herself bible-belt sequestered, stuck in the rain.

She read from her book, Woman in the Mirror: My Decade of Dancing Like Beyonce and Being a Bad Bitch, and complained that she couldn’t buy wine at the grocery. We told her it was because Jesus didn’t want her getting too drunk, but she was still pissed. Nobody told Joan Newman what to do. Not even Jesus. Especially not Jesus.

Love’s a Battlefield w/ Crossbows

Joan Newman, damply fabulous under a red and white umbrella, was cutting through an alley to cut some time. It was late, near midnight. Post book-reading. Her white Converse were muddied but gaining character by the step.

I wasn’t following her, so much as walking a respectful distance behind in the same direction. Could I have walked with her? Sure! Did I? Hahahah...

Either way, she wasn’t being safe. The neighborhood gentrification had set and dried (which was kind of shitty, and also kind of historically inevitable), but nitrogenated cold-coffee shops or not, there were always pockets of danger in the witching hour. We should have been in an Uber. One of the cheap ones.

Even though I was on high alert, it was still pretty surprising when a Hobbit-like figure slide into the alleyway behind Joan. Most appearances are pretty surprising in dark alleyways around midnight, I suppose. Per my nature, I immediately thought, Nothing good can come of this. Fuck.

I had no idea where he’d come from. His appearance was some kind of magic trick. He was very short and round, with hair that was long but afraid of the crown of his head. The little fat man shined by the light of the lone streetlamp. He was also struggling to carry something, dragging it behind him like a third leg.

Right around the time the short-round lifted the third leg up to his arm, it struck me that life is sometimes stranger than fiction. That the world will never make sense. That we are all flawed beings, fucked and beautiful, and oh my god is that a crossbow?!?!

Yes. Yes it was.

Something came over me. It was love. Not a boner, but courage. Courage! Unheeded! So I squawked my battle cry into the night, and ran at him. I thought he would, you know, stop whatever it was that he was doing. Don’t criminals say, “Fuck it,” and bail when some good citizen intervenes?

But the little troll didn’t bail. Instead, he spun around and pointed the crossbow at me. I zigged and zagged like I was playing capture the flag at motherfucking summer camp. (Falls Creek Runner-Up, 1995 & 1996. Screw you, Barry “Beaver” Bevinson. You didn’t deserve it.) Unfortunately, I got to him quicker than planned. Having nothing better to do, and not having an arrow in my gut, I just...kept going. I didn’t so much tackle as run into him. We both tumbled into the side of some dumpsters.

The Recycle one knocked me unconscious.

Stanley Cupid’s Eulogy & Coda

When I woke, Stanley Cupid was gone and Van, his assistant, had appeared. Van said that Stanley had been his name, and Cupid his title. He said that Stanley Cupid was the one true Cupid, and that his crossbow was not only harmless, but actually, “more important than the wheel and fire combined.”

I found that claim dubious at best.

Van said without Cupid, without the crossbow, there would be no love.

“It’s a partner system,” Van said. He held up a small black address book. “This,” he said, “this is the little black book of love. It tells us who our targets are.”

“And then?” Joan asked.

The rain had stopped, and so the three of us gathered around the death dumpster of the hobbit. Van gave both the eulogy and some much-needed background info on Stanley Cupid.

“It is with great regret,” he began, head bowed, holding back tears, “that I say goodbye to the only boss I’ve ever known. Stan, you were a good matchmaker. The best. You shot the world with your arrows of love. You shot children and old people. Penguins. Swans. Some Bald Eagles, I think. Sometimes you would shoot, like, ten people a day.”

I looked at Joan Newman who was, like, what the flying fuck is going on? But then she smiled at me and...I dunno...we were a team.

“I told you who to shoot,” Van continued with cracking voice. “The names appeared, dispatched from Le Factory del Amore. I’ve never been to Texas, but I’ve heard it’s there.”

Van sneezed, and wiped his teary eyes. I felt bad for him. Whoever this Stanley Cupid was or wasn’t, he meant something to someone. After it’s all said and done, I hope someone sneezes and wipes teary eyes for me.

“Rest in peace, Stan the man,” he finished.

We sat there in that humid post-rain silence. The halo of dawn peeked from the east, and with it came a Wednesday.

“What’s next?” Joan Newman asked.

“Well,” Van said, “I don’t know. I guess we go to the factory. They’ll tell us what to do.”

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“Somewhere in Texas,” Van replied. “Down by the border. They make tortillas there. And love. Tortillas and love.”

“Good luck,” Joan scoffed.

“Oh, well, you have to come with us,” Van said.

“Us?” I said.

“Fuck that,” she said. “Topeka awaits me.”

“If you don’t,” Van said, pointing at me, “then he dies.”

“What???” I yelled.

Van scratched his head, and with trademark confusion said:

“Well...it’s possible. I think. I think it’s possible.”

It’s possible our quest will continue with…

Eros Wants Revenge

Written by: Logan Theissen

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

The Violent Acts of Poets, Part I

They found the body in late March, and from there I suppose it was just a matter of time. Regardless of what you think of cops, it wasn’t too hard to put two and two together. Lily and I disappearing like we did. Even then, without foresight, there was a sort of irony to our adventure. A narcissism, I suppose -- to think we’d get away with it. Such a product of our times. Oh well. Guess everyone is.

Wish I could claim some sort of thematic importance to Durhams Corner, but honestly, it was just where the road ended. A candle that’s got no more wax to burn. No rhyme or reason in such a place.

In a way it makes sense for this story to begin where it ended. Like a snake that eats its tail. The circumstances that led us there seemed almost incidental, so incidental, in fact, that it must have been destiny all along. To this day, I can’t imagine these particular series of events unfolding in any way other than the way they did. I suppose that’s life though, isn’t it? Sometimes I think fate is as indiscriminate and omniscient as God, and then other times I fool myself into thinking they are the same thing.

But I’m getting ahead of myself now.

We did what we did out of love. We did it out of survival. We did it because my father once told me that a woman is to be respected at all costs. We did it because we were young and didn’t know no better.

We always said we never meant to kill those folks. Nobody could ever understand such a sentiment; couldn’t reconcile the action to the consequence. But it was a true statement. We never meant to kill them. Not any of them.

They say everything happens for a reason. Better to talk from the beginning.

                                                                                         ***

Lily Miller. Lord, that girl lit a fire under me. Sitting in the back of Scott Reynold’s truck like that. She was small. Small hips. Small breasts. I’m not a tall man, but we fit together. She felt like the right answer. She had freckles and I had none. She had light brown hair and mine was dark. She had hazel eyes above those few freckles and mine were blue. Are blue. I saw her in the parking lot, and then later that night, I remember, I saw her again out at the bonfire. Few of us carved out a spot in the night, and she was there. Drinking beer. Rubbing bare legs to stay warm. Fine and at home in a lawn chair. And I was staring at her, across the fire, waiting to match eyes and when we did, well, it was like hearing the best song, loud, your face naked to the passing winds of an open car window, telephone poles flitting by.

This was before the realizations of her situation came clear into view. It started as passion, and before it sunk into desperation for the both of us, well, we made sure we fell in love before that happened. Fell in love before we started to need each other. We wanted a solid base, like we were building a house. And sometimes we would talk about building that house on a few acres, far away from her daddy. And the graves of my folks, sitting there like domino fossils in the ground, waiting to be unearthed by some far-off civilization; far away from them.

We should have high-tailed it out of Dodge that first night. We’d already done enough by then. But we didn’t. We parked to do some thinking and while we were thinking the whole wide world blew up.

It was cold that night. I don’t remember the day of the week or nothing like that, only that it was chilly as all hell. I had on my Dad’s old navy-blue mechanic’s jacket. Had his name on it -- Eli. He had blue eyes too, just like me. We were parked in Lily’s car, north off Waterloo Road, listening to the radio whispers of Tulsa. Dark night. Lights of town a few miles west, bouncing off the clouds, making that green glow.

At the time we didn’t know nothing about Macalester Freeman. Nothing about the accident up the road, about the bus that slipped on black ice, went sideways into a ditch, or how that bus was from the state penitentiary and carried in its confines a man such as Freeman. Capable of such violence.

Speaking of that violence, it’s in there, isn’t it? In your gut. In your blood. Maybe I didn’t use to think, but now I do, that it’s born in there. Right along with your fingers. Right along with your lungs.

He came up on us with a rock to bust the window. Went for the driver’s side because he knew someone got to be in that seat, and he was right. It was Lily. The window popped and shattered, and before I could reach he’d pulled her out of the seat. She was screaming and I could hear him beating on her. It sounded like she’d got the hiccups, and in those first moments there were only those sounds as I rounded the corner of the car. Meat packing sounds.

What happened next I’ll never be sure of. I remember seeing his shadow from the light of the moon, and I went for it, and I tackled it. The beast still had on handcuffs, and I remember he ended up on top of me, and he bashed down with his fists balled together, and I remember the metal scraping my throat. There was something wet on my face. Blood or spit. Probably both. He was bigger than me, I remember, but he was handcuffed and I was stronger. I could feel that strength. My strength. I remember getting on top of him and choking him with my left hand while my right crawled like a spider across the red dirt of the road, and I remember the feeling of that rock in my right hand, and I remember the instinctual way it rose up above my head, and I remember the way it went down. Meat packing sounds again. Wet splashing up into my eyes, nose, and mouth. Certainly blood this time. I remember how when I finally made full contact I pinpointed the spot and hit it again and again in the darkness. I can’t remember stopping.

After it was done I went to her and she was bloodied and pulpy. She was having trouble breathing and I cradled her in my arms. Neither of us spoke. We looked to the sky. Listened to the far off rumblings of the highway.

I dragged the body off the road to the ditch that ran perpendicular. Through the ditch I was blocked by a barbed wire fence, but I hopped it in the darkness, tearing the navy blue jacket, and dragged Freeman underneath by his feet. A seclusion of trees offered itself not far from the road, and I left him there and made my way back to the car. Lily was in the front seat, fingering her cell phone nervously. I told her that we needed the police and a hospital, but she shook her head. That road led nowhere. Not after her daddy and what happened in that goddamned trailer.

I opened the door to the passenger side and the overhead light blinked to life and I could see the bruised eye and bloodied nose of her, puffed lips and sniffs like allergies.There was a blanket in the back seat and we slept there, huddled together. Coyotes howled through the busted window and I blinked awake all night, until the pink glow of dawn showed, pregnant with life.

Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Anna Westbury

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

There was more blood than I had anticipated. That was one thing. Luckily, most of it kept to the sea, where it washed out into nothing. Into what? I suppose another tendril of life floating in that fabulous blue. It would have been a pity, I thought, to spoil the clean white of the boat. That cloudy, nursery blue that looked like New England. Planks for seats. A pity, sure, but necessary. Let’s not forget that he had it coming. Had it comin’ as they say in the south. I’ve never been there but I romanticize about the double-wide trailers on acres of wheat. Places that could hold a murder secret for years.

But back to the blood. Who knew? Such a little head. So much blood. More blood than anticipated, as previously noted. Don’t like to repeat myself often but that amount of blood is worth the sin. And how watery it was. I always thought it would be more of an ooze, but it’s very watery. Not at all viscid, but no, like vinegar. And the pure softness of the head? Incredible. We bump our way through life accumulating badges of scars of all shapes and sizes and the head stays on, egg-like and lolling. It is a shame that I couldn’t have taken more pictures. As a disciple of J.M.W. Turner, my darling Elizabeth would have no doubt appreciated the dissolving colors of the whole gratuitous mess - Turner of course being one of her own, of God and Queen and country. Or some such shit.

Remember that perfect time at the museum. The old train station - d’Orsay, you devil. Remember how we waited in line in the rain. And the way it felt when the rain ended and we came out of those artistic havens and were greeted with shining cobblestones below our feet. The rays of the afternoon light backfiring from the Seine back to Wayfarers. How France became Spain, and then we leapt into London? Remember that European happiness, how we called it the continent, how we drooled over ol’ J.M.W.’s Sunrise with Sea Monsters.

I revert back to art in her absence. Her favorite thing. How she thought she saw the world different because of Turner, Monet, because of Jackson Pollack; that sedentary drunk who dragged his genius with him through the mud. I was colorblind. Haha. Of course. But she loved the idea of two colors becoming one, and she would have enjoyed the artistic presence in that macabre boat.

She would have enjoyed it, I suppose, if she would have seen it earlier - before the clipping of her own banal life. Of course, without Elizabeth there would have been no Colin, no boat, no leaking body fluid, and most important of all, no tiny fishes feeding on brains! I am not a Godly man, but I am a jealous one. I did not stand under that Protestant steeple and mutter silly fairy tales for my constitution. For God’s sake! Marriage is marriage! What is this place where I have found myself? I feel that those around me are ogres. They are purveyors of poor taste and worse principles.

My libertarian desires, unfortunately, cannot hold a candle in the wind to those magisterial principles of honor and dignity. I mean that I do not blame my dear Elizabeth or her poor Colin for their actions. They are only existing. Or were. But no, while their actions do not elicit any moralistic repugnancies on my part, the severe consequences of those actions most certainly do. There can be, as my mother said, no civility outside truth. She was, of course, wrong. But there lies a faint trench of that aforementioned truth that runs through her elementary observation. Mainly, that if you’re going to lie and cheat, best to keep such surreptitious actions veiled.

Honest though, I think it was their stupidity that I could not forgive. To think that I wouldn’t have figured them out. Ha! Incredible idiots. As if I was blind to their lean-in conversations, that night at the Henderson’s party. Them out on the deck, me fondling my sweating cocktail; the lights of the harbor blinking like stars behind their laughing heads. As if their sideward glances would go unnoticed. Ha!

Though I must say, must give credit where it is due, no matter how posthumous it might be, no matter where it might land on that elastic rubber band of time. They did a fine job in their dogged proclamations of innocence. First her, in the study, with the rope. How even with her last gag she claimed, what? Virtue? And not only that, but confusion as well? And later he - bent over the bow of the boat - white shorts hitched above tanned legs and knees, dropping the anchor, unknowingly manufacturing a sort of tombstone somewhere down there in the shallows. How even after I’d hit him once, how he gasped and reached up for the boat. How he questioned my motives as the blood seeped out of him and became tangled in the waves and then gone into the deep.

So credit to them, for their perseverance to a lie. May they rest in peace.

Oh, dear. What a beautiful bird!

Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Blake Bronstad

Common Denominators

When we last saw Anna, she was battling a particularly difficult ghost who attacked her in a parking garage. The ghost came to Anna's attention through her client Suri, whom the ghost haunted for fourteen years, inhabiting a series of different men. With Suri recovering from the ghost's latest attempt on her life, Anna plans her next move.  Read the whole Anna the Extractor Series--"The Extractor," "Bury Their Own," "Beloved," "A Tremor in Your Name," and "Stress in the Workplace," and "Calling" (an introduction)--to learn more about Anna and her supernatural adventures.

Anna leans against the cement wall at the edge of Allen Park with one foot propped up and her hands stuffed in her jacket pockets. Detective Michael Cohen called her yesterday evening to set up an appointment to discuss some of the facts regarding her previous client, Suri. The police found Anna’s profession amusing to say the least; it’s not everyday you meet a chick exorcist. After a few questions and making sure she wasn’t an accomplice for Suri’s attempted murder, they let her go.

A man with light brown hair and glasses approaches her from the sidewalk, an obsessive shine to his dress shoes and a too-crisp look to his windbreaker.

“Miss Hirsch? I’m Detective…”

“Cohen. Yeah, I know. It’s not like all my best friends are cops,” Anna says.

They shake hands and make their way over to a wrought-iron bench, which felt freezing through Anna’s skinny jeans.

“I wanted to ask you a few questions about Suri Mathis, just to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

Anna does not make eye contact, but looks out at the river, breathing in the chill of an early morning. Detective Cohen clears his throat.

“Miss Mathis was your client, correct?”

“Listen, man. If you’re just going to ask me a bunch of questions that you already know the answer to…”

“Hey, I come in peace,” Cohen says, hands lifted in surrender.

Anna meets his gaze and folds her arms over her chest as she says, “She’s been haunted by the same ghost for fourteen years. She hired me to extract it.”

“And were you able to?”

“Not entirely.”

“Did Miss Mathis happen to mention any characteristics about her assailant? His lifestyle, habits, hobbies?”

“No.”

“What about her previous assailants? There have been at least thirteen others, I’m assuming.”

Anna shakes her head. “She only described her dad. She said he drank. A lot.”

Detective Cohen nods, pulling out a large envelope from inside his jacket. He reveals a handful of photographs depicting dead women, all having suffered from different forms of violence.

“These women died within the last two weeks. There isn’t a common denominator that makes them targets. We’ve detained five of the six assailants involved in their murders. And you know what, Miss Hirsch? They’re the ones with stuff in common.”

Anna frowns, brow furrowed.

“Each one suffered from temporary amnesia when they committed the crime.”

“I didn’t realize that was a thing…”

“At first, we thought they’d all been drinking, blacked out, and then killed their girlfriends, wives, daughters. It was especially compelling when alcoholism came up in some of their histories. But when the blood alcohol concentration wasn’t matching up, it made things a little strange. We couldn’t just call it domestic violence under the influence.”

Detective Cohen puts away the photographs and leans back, draping one arm over the back of the bench.

“Suri’s boyfriend didn’t remember trying to kill her,” Cohen continues. “Neither did any of the others with restraining orders. I checked.”

“So, you’re telling me that the police department is willing to follow a lead suggesting possession by ghosts?” Anna asks through a scoff.

“Well, not the department. Just me.”

Anna scratches the back of her head and sighs, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. Detective Cohen folds his arms over his chest and sighs.

“My dad beat my mom once when I was in high school. He’d never hurt her before. And he’d never been a drinker, but all of a sudden he couldn’t keep enough Icehouse in the fridge. One night, he just started wailing on her. I got between them and punched my dad square in the eye. My mom screamed his name and then...it was the strangest thing. It was like a light turning on. He didn’t know what he’d just done, only that it was horrible.”

“What’s his name?” Anna asks.

“Huh?” Cohen murmurs, wading through the memory.

“You said he came to when your mom screamed his name.”

“Oh. Yeah. Lucas. His name’s Lucas.”

“Fucking hell,” Anna breathes, standing up and pulling out her cigarettes.

“What’s wrong with Lucas?” the detective asks, startled by her reaction.

She turns on him with a cigarette dangling from her lips and says, “That’s the goddamn ghost’s name, Cohen. The one who’s been haunting Suri. Your dad snapped out of it because your mom said the ghost’s name. That’s the power. She cast him out.”

“Jesus. This is unbelievable.”

“Listen, man. You better start believing real quick if you want this shit to stop.”

Anna finally gets her cigarette lit and sucks in, closing her eyes like it’s saving her life. It’s supposed to be so simple. Get the ghost’s name. Ask what he wants. Give him what he wants. Collect the money. But Lucas is playing a game. He’s making men kill the women they love most in their lives, and they end up alone.

“Just like me,” Anna whispers, remembering what Lucas said when she encountered him last.

Detective Cohen watches her, a question forming on his lips.

“That’s what he said. ‘All alone, just like me.’ He’s reliving something,” she says. “He’s reliving what he did.”

“How do we make him stop?” Cohen asks.

“He’s raging. We’ve gotta calm him down. I’ve gotta talk to him, but I need him to trust me. If I can get him to show himself to me - to haunt me - then I can help him.”

“Anna, he’s a murderer. He doesn’t deserve help,” Cohen states.

Anna grabs the collar of his windbreaker and yanks Cohen toward her with her fists. She looks him in the eye, noses touching.

“Look, asshole. No one deserves anything. We don’t deserve mercy. We don’t deserve justice. But if you want women to stop dying, then I need to help him.”

“And what happens if you help him?”

“He’ll cross over,” Anna says, letting go and stepping back. “And then whatever god you believe in will deal with him.”

Written by: Natasha Akery

Photograph by: Nathan Mansakahn

New American Dream

You don’t ever get used to it. You think it’s a nightmare. Anytime you wake up suddenly, that’s what it is: a nightmare.

You’d be wrong. You’re not waking up from one. You’re waking up to one.

You almost wish the virus resulted in something more. After all the horror films and tv shows and novels, you were expecting zombies or vampires or at least a dystopian society. It would give you something to fight against, instead of this anticlimactic coda.

It doesn’t matter that you watched your wife and kid succumb to a plague that’s like the Black Death’s big bad-ass motherfucker of a brother. Life’s just there. An undesirable Everest. Existential manifest destiny.

The only salvation is natural resistance and immunity. Hey, you’re one-in-a-million, kid. You won the genetic lottery. Your prize, other than life, is to stand watch over your family as they bid adieu to the living world. To sit in stony silence as they scream and writhe at the end. You keep hoping they’ll get better, but when the seizure starts it’s time to put Old Yeller out of his misery.

                                                                                                ***

“Hey!”

The voice is loud but distant.

“Give it to me!”

You walk toward the parking lot, skirting the edge of the trees.

                                                                                                ***

Don’t think about who it is.

Don’t think about your youngest, still growing out of his lisp. Your namesake, fruit of your loins, proof of your virility.

‘Help me, Daddy.’

Don’t think about her, the one you love and make love to - oh, but not now, not with the blood and sweat. Did you know the last time you had sex it would really be your last?

‘Please, baby. Please help me.’

Then the shrieking horror. The shut-the-fuck-up of it. Are you really putting them out of their misery?

Maybe you’re just selfish. A selfish bastard who wants some peace in the apocalypse. What gave you the impression the apocalypse would be peaceful?

You want to swallow a gun, but you’re not strong enough to pull the trigger.

Strong enough to live, though. Ha. To have God look at you under his holy magnifying glass and say, “Yeah, that one - he’ll do.”

Strong enough for that bullshit divine intervention.

Not strong enough to squeeze that trigger when the barrel’s pointed in your direction, no sirree.

You are a survivor. It’s your curse: to be able to survive, to want to. You are your own Achilles's heel.

There’s a hissing voice in the back of your head, one that says maybe you wanted to shoot them. Maybe deep down in the very core of you, in the base, the id, the part unearthed by the End of Days, you longed for a solitary life. For the new American dream: peace in the apocalypse.

Because it was too easy, wasn’t it?

And you can’t confront that. Can’t look at it full-on, which means you can’t stay in your house, where memories are replaced with the stench of decay and the strange sounds of corpses. You don’t have the heart to stay there, to debate mercy and murder until you’re blue in the face. Just like them.

Sorry, lover. Sorry, offspring. This is one vacation we can’t take together. Are we there yet? Well, some of us are. One of us didn’t make the cut.

You close the door on that life.

                                                                                                ***

Two men argue.

“It belongs to me!” The bearded one says. His hair is gray, but he looks like he could’ve been thirty a year ago.

“Fuck,” you whisper. You spot the source of the fight.

                                                                                                ***

You get out of the city. You think of proportions and odds, the density of urban life compared to others. You decide it’s time to go loot the local Costco and say goodbye to modern living.

Now every morning you wake up with a start, the sleeping bag rustling as you spasm into consciousness.

You walk as far as your feet will carry you. And when you find a bike, you ride until your thighs cramp and the tires blow. You avoid cities like the plague (ha ha ha!), but small towns are fine. Towns are nice. Quiet. Beautiful, in a sad sort of way.

Some people make pilgrimages, traveling in packs to start a new life in some destined place.

Too many are like you--carrying on without a plan, without an ending in mind. It’s like you all decided to just go on a walk to get some fresh air, and you’ll keep going until you find it.

Or die trying.

                                                                                                ***

“Help me!” The woman screams. She looks around, her eyes wild and large. They fall on you, and her yell becomes primal and desperate.

You take in the bruises on her face, the clubs the two men carry.

Even Neanderthals are deadly.

“Please!” Her voice ends in a sob, and she wails louder as you turn around and walk farther than you have before.

You still hear her.

                                                                                                ***

Don’t be stupid. That’s the gist of it.

Don’t drink the water without sanitizing it.

Don’t go into old buildings.

Don’t eat wild mushrooms.

Don’t start fights you can’t win.

But you’re a survivor, so all these rules are common sense. They are easy to follow. And in the days and weeks and months, you age like it’s been years, decades, centuries. You’re an old soul traversing an ancient world.

You want to ask God to throw you a bone. Give you the peace you need. Because you were going mad in that house at the beginning, and you weren’t thinking straight, and you didn’t want to kill them, you really didn’t, and you know that now, because it’s all you ever really thought about since, and can you go home now?

Wouldn’t it be nice, to close your eyes and have everything tangible fade to black forever? To fall asleep and let death embrace, and in that embrace you find them?

Tiffany.

Max Junior.

To hear your own name on your wife’s lips?

I love you, Max.

I love you, Tiffany.

Phantom voices fill your head.

Help me, Father. Help me, Husband. Help me, Stranger.

But hey, cheer up.

It’s gonna be a beautiful day.

Written by: Erin Justice
Photograph by: Whitney Ott

Law 203B

My wife thought I was joking when I told her I had killed someone once.

“You’re such a shit. You did not!” she said with a smile, taking another sip of her wine.

“I did.” I said, no smile on my face.

We went back and forth like this a few times, her laughter growing more apprehensive each round.

“Alright,” she began. “If you did kill a guy, then how’d you do it?”

“You really want to know?”

She nodded.

“Well,” I said. “I stabbed him. Here… Here… And here.” I pointed to my stomach, heart and throat. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Yes, I really, really do,” she said. Her smile had long since disappeared, her face flooded with concern. Should she fear me, or should she love me? Couldn’t she do both? These were questions her mind couldn’t answer. Or maybe it could but was too afraid to do so. 

“Okay…” I said, drawing in a deep breath. “First I stabbed him in the heart, then the stomach.” I paused to take a sip of my whiskey. “Then I cut open his throat.” I felt I had said too much at this point, but that’s what happens when you have almost four glasses of Knob Creek coursing through your veins.

She still wasn’t convinced I had actually killed somebody. But at the same time, she wasn’t convinced I hadn’t killed someone either. She gulped the rest of her wine, eager to refill her glass. I followed her lead and downed the rest of my whiskey.

As the alcohol made our minds heavy and dull, I continued telling my wife about the man I’d killed. I was twenty-three at the time, fresh out of college and living on my own along a small highway north of Lawrenceville. The man had knocked on the door of the house I was renting.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “But would you be able to give me a lift to the gas station? I ran out about a mile back.”

I couldn’t place my finger on it, but there was something about him that made me feel uneasy. His words weren’t genuine, and when he spoke, he filled the space between us with ill intention as thick and sticky as the air on a hot, humid day.

“Sure,” I said. “Let me just grab my keys.”

I came back to the door. The man wedged his boot into the doorframe and had a gun drawn. “Give me your keys,” he said. Up until that point, I had never been in a fight in my life, but at that moment, something inside me took over like a set of instructions my body had to obey. The next thing I remembered was looking down and seeing the man’s lifeless body lying in a pool of his own blood. His name, as the cops told me, was Robert Sanderson, a local meth head.

“I know this was self defense,” the police officer said. “Ain’t no doubt about that, but the way you killed this man… Looks like you really knew what you were doing here.”

After that night, my wife was cold and distant. She only said the bare minimum and came up with excuses that kept her away from the house as long as possible. I didn’t know if she was afraid of me or angry.

“What’s going on?” I asked over dinner one night. “Are you mad at me for what I said the other night?”

She didn’t answer, just stared down at her plate, nuzzling her food with her fork.

“Well?” I said, my voice swelling with anger.

Finally she said, “I want you to get the test.”

The killing gene test was developed five years ago by a scientist named Dr. Alex Sherman. One small drop of blood could easily identify if someone carried what Dr. Sherman called the killing gene. If you had it, it meant you were hardwired to become a killer, and the evidence supporting his research was overwhelming. And by overwhelming, I mean one hundred percent accurate. At first Dr. Sherman’s discovery was controversial, but pretty soon politicians began using it as part of their political platforms. This lead to the passing of Law 203B, or as it was more popularly referred to: the Killing Gene Law. The law required the pre-emptive arrest of anyone testing positive, even newborns. Once arrested, carriers were sent to specially designed prisons the press had dubbed Killer Camp. There are lots of theories surrounding what goes on at these camps, but no one knows for sure. Despite all this, the public still embraced the law.

“You can’t be serious!” I said. “I killed that man out of self-defense, and you know it.”

“I have to know,” my wife said. “I’m scared.”

As she finished her words, the world around me became fuzzy. My thoughts were suddenly mangled and confused. My body felt heavy and clumsy. And then everything went dark. I woke up a few hours later, tied to a dining room chair. My father-in-law was there. I assumed she was the one who tied me up.

“Candice told me everything,” he said. “We just have to make sure you’re not one of them. You understand, right?”

I didn’t say anything. I was too angry.

“The cops will be here in a few minutes,” he continued.

“Where is Candice?” I asked.

“She’s with her mother. Said she can’t come back until she knows she’s safe.”

During my third day at the Lawrence County Jail, an older doctor visited my cell late in the afternoon. With him were two police officers and a man wearing a suit, a lawyer I assumed.

Without any greeting, he jumped right into it, “I’m afraid you have the killing gene.”

“You’ll be transferred to killer camp in the morning,” one of the officers told me as he walked off, grinning sadistically.

Written by: Michael Williams

Photograph by: Whitney Ott