A Beautiful Place

There are dead things in the whirlpool. On hot summer days you can smell the remains of fish and birds and other victims of the river rotting in the sun.

Today is one of those days. The sun has just entered the sky and already it’s baking the world. The dead things that have been thrown from the swirling water fester on the banks of the whirlpool. Other dead things are still caught in the current. They’re hidden from view by movement, by the white water churning and spinning. The current keeps them for a long time, but eventually all the detritus are tossed out and wash up on shore. I wonder if I’ll join them.

I never liked Niagara Falls. It’s the sort of place that lets you know how close we all are to chaos. Other cities do a better job of hiding the animal madness of us, the ugly, the mean, the horny. This is a place that you could easily imagine abandoned and falling apart. So much of it already I s. The restaurants and shops and churches, now empty for decades. No one cares to fix them up. Those who build in the area, build new.

I hear Sam grunting with exertion. I want to fight back but I can't. Something broke inside me with that last kick to the spine. I can't feel my arms trailing along the dirt path, or my ankles that he holds tight, pulling me through the forest.

There’s blood in my mouth. I can feel it but I can't taste it and that scares me more than anything. I know the taste of my own blood. Last night wasn't the first time Sam hit me. I want to think it won't be the last, but I'm afraid that would be a lie.

“You should’ve never talked to me like that,” Sam says. His voice is trembling. He’s scared. He isn't mad anymore like he was when I mocked him last night. I shouldn't have. I know it, but I didn't want him climbing on top of me with the chlorine stink all over him from his shift at the water park. I should have said I was sick instead of getting mouthy.

Sam was the first person I met in Niagara Falls. I hitchhiked here from Oshawa to see a wonder of the world and instantly wanted to say fuck this whole thing and thumb it back home. Only, I didn't have a home to thumb it too. My home was supposed to be with Aunt Jen and her pervert husband but neither of them were missing me.

I heard the rumble first. It was hidden under the sounds of cars and tourists. I kept heading down hill and the sond kept growing. Soon I could hear it over all the other sounds of this shitty little city. It was everywhere. Next I saw the mist on the horizon. It rose above the buildings, stretching for the sky, like a cloud, and I knew I was getting closer.

The roar of the whirlpool is different than the falls. It fills my ears as I'm pulled helplessly through the forest. Sam drops my feet and stumbles away from me. I see him leaning against a tree. I think he’s vomiting. After, he falls on his knees beside me.

“I’m sorry, baby. You know I didn't mean to,” he sobs into my hair.

He has puke and mucus on his chin, and my blood on his hands. I want to move but nothing is listening.

When Sam brought me home I knew to be afraid of him – grown men who bring home homeless girls are trouble. He had a place on the edge of town, run down and faded like all the rest of this crap city. There’s no heart to this city. There’s a centre which fades to decay as you near the edges where it finally blends with the rural areas that surround it. Sam’s house sat, across from an abandoned warehouse and beside a forgotten train track. His place was near the whirlpool. I’d never heard of the whirlpool, but it was beautiful too.

Sam was old and ugly, but he took care of me so I didn't fight back when he started getting mean. I knew I could end up worse places. He didn't ask for weird sex stuff and when he was in a good mood he was funny. I know it's true—he didn't mean to kill me.

My first day in Niagara, when I finally found the waterfall, I was shocked by the colour of it. None of the pictures I saw ever captured the green of that water. I thought someone must have dyed it. I forgot that the falls weren't fake like the rest of this town. It wasn't made by man, but by thousands of tons of water crashing through rock and time. The river was real, and it didn't matter that all this ugliness had built up around it – the river was a beautiful place in the world.

Sam’s stopped crying and he's on his knees, rolling me over the rock. I know where we are. He brought me here once to sit on the ledge over the whirlpool. He wanted to hold hands, but I didn't want to hold his where tourists and families could come by and see us. I remember the view, the churning turquoise water and the forest all around.

I know now this is the end. I will fall from this cliff into the whirlpool and my body will be sucked into the current. I want it to stay there forever, bouncing around with the dead fish and raccoons and whatever else might be in there. I don't want to wash up and be found baking in the sun. I don't want them taking me back to Aunt Jen and her dick-head husband so they can cry over a grave and say they did what they could to help me. I don't want to think of Sam in a prison for the rest of his days.

My body rolls off the edge of the cliff and into the air. I don't want to think of any of that ugly shit while I fall through the sky. Instead, I think of the swirling green water, and I remember that the world is a beautiful place.

Photograph and Story by: Sarah Scott

Beginnings

The colors of city lights bleed out into the blank sky, smoke rising to the atmosphere, and ashes falling back to the asphalt. In the back of his mind, he hears music—Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. For the boy, it has always been the song of the after.

Outside the thin windows of the apartment, Kai can hear the sound of falling rain and the low breeze, screeching cars and drivers spouting profanities. The streets are never quiet. He hears the beating of a moth's wings as it flutters around the street lamp, but not the urgent words that leave his mother's lips as tears streak her face. Her mouth keeps forming the same shapes, and it occurs to him that she's saying one thing over and over again.

"Everything is going to be alright, sweetie." The sound of her voice feels like the earth has dropped onto his chest when his mind returns to his body. He becomes aware that the side of his face is pressed into the cold, wooden floor of their living room. Sweat makes his dark hair stick to his forehead, and he can taste iron when he breathes. He feels like shit, personified.

"Do you need to go to the hospital?" she asks, knowing that after seventeen years, it has become a useless question.

"I'm fine," He manages to croak out a half-convincing response.

Kai struggles to pull himself up into a sitting position; there's a sharp pain flowing in the blue of his veins. The heavy soreness in his side makes him think he's broken a rib. The room is empty except for the two of them, and Kai is relieved to know they are alone, at least for now.

"Are you okay?" Kai asks. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"

His mother shakes her head, looking years older than she did the hour before.

"I'm alright," she says, leaning down to wrap her arms around his torso. The action is supposed to be comforting but she quakes in fear. His mother helps him off the floor and to the bathroom, which proves to be quite the task. Since starting high school he has grown a foot taller than her, and now his limbs still aren’t fully functioning.

He leans against the sink, and his eyes wander to his once-white shirt, advocating Sigur Ros, some indie rock group whose music he has never heard. It’s covered in blotches of dark red, the color of wine. The red seeps through the fabric. The stain will never come out.

"Just wash up, okay?" his mother coaxes. Kai pulls the shirt over his head, and she snatches it from his hands. Her eyes jump from the shirt to back up at her son.

"I'll take care of everything," she says, clutching the bloodied t-shirt to her chest and shutting the door behind her.

He takes off the rest of his clothes before stepping into the shower. He turns the faucets, and a stream of cold water hits his back. The red washes away, pooling on the white tiles at his feet, and the pain under his bruised, olive skin dulls. There’s a long, thin gash running diagonally across his chest. The cut is not deep enough to kill, but it will leave a scar.

He can try to forget, again. Try to remember all the good things, but the memories of those are fading. Besides, there is only so much you can wash away, and only so much that you can forget in the after.

Kai walks into his bedroom, looking for something constant in all the change. Instead, he finds that most of his stuff is dumped out into suitcases strewn across his bed. The shelves that once held pictures in frames are now bare. His mother stands in the center of the chaos, packing their lives away into trash bags. When she sees him she tries to smile, like this entire scenario is normal. It’s a slap to the face, a reminder of just how fucked-up their lives are.

“I have to go to the bank, Kai, sweetie. Finish packing up—I’ll be back soon.”

“Okay,” he says, because there is nothing more to say.

She reaches up and ruffles his hair, like she did when he was younger. Even though he is seventeen, he still finds comfort in it.

There’s still food in the fridge—mostly just takeout. Kai grabs a few relatively fresh-looking apples, but there’s not much to salvage among the rest. A bottle of wine catches his eye, cigarette butts floating in the dregs. He winces. The room smells like his father, like despair and fear. The burn on his arm feels vicious, singeing. He grabs the bottle, hurls it out the open kitchen window, and watches the glass shatter on the street. He laughs like it’s his last day on earth. It might as well be.

By the time his mother returns, Kai has packed everything. They pile the pieces of their lives into the back of the Impala, leaving the place they once called home barren and empty.

“Where are we going?” he asks as he shuts the trunk. His mother smiles warily before answering.

“Somewhere far away,” she tells him as he slides into the passenger side. The tiny green pine tree air freshener looks almost like an arrow pointing them away. The car’s engine sputters to life, and the sound is already so much better than any empty promise she could make.

The city is grey and flat, like a paper cutout, drawn with the tip of a needle. This city was the backdrop to his life, yet this is the first time Kai has ever thought of it as something other than his personal hell. Cars pass like water through an iron grate as they drive away. Everything looks perfect from afar, windows in buildings perfectly identical, symmetrical.

It was never so beautiful up close.


Written by: Jamie H
Photograph by: Skyler Smith

The Violent Acts of Poets, Part II

Continued from The Violent Acts of Poets, Part I.

Lily Miller’s daddy was a trashman who blew up his trailer. He was inside when it went kaboom, and there were bits of him scattered around his trailer’s acre lot. The little pieces looked like confetti. Lee Miller was his name, and he ended up nothing more than bits of candy from a busted pinata. RIP, Lee Miller.

To supplement his trash income, he cooked. Chicken cutlets. Microwave dinners from the blue box. Spaghetti O’s. Eventually, meth. He wore a goalie mask when he did it, white with holes like Jason Voorhees, and wrapped a wet towel around his nose and mouth. I told him he was missing the point, and he cackled and drank his High Life. He fancied himself a king when he opened a High Life, and there was no getting him to listen to nothing.

Lily hadn’t been round him much growing up, her mother knew better than that. But my pops, Eli, and him grew up together in Kingfisher. I remember them sitting on upturned painter’s buckets, smoking menthols, and passing a bottle of Jim Beam some nights. This was before my father died. He was an alright man, Lee Miller. Some folks are only what they are, and he was one of those. Nothing wrong with being what you are, my father used to say.

It was after Lee Miller’s trailer exploded that our troubles began in earnest. Dead men pay no debts, unfortunately, and it’s up to the living to keep on surviving.

                                                                                                ***

I let Lily sleep in the back seat when the morning came, even though it was cold. I just covered her a bit more under the blanket and kissed her forehead. Her bruises were dark getting darker. Like the night had bumped into her and rubbed off some of its neverending black, and now she was branded.

By the time I got to the convict Mcalester Freeman it was clear that I had killed him the night before. I didn’t know his name until later of course, but even nameless he couldn’t get much in the way of sympathy from me. His face was grey and blue like a Lacy dog’s coat. The whites of his stuck eyes saturated yellow.

I broke some mesquite branches, and with bloody hands covered him up best I could. There was a chill, and it stuck to the back of my neck while I plowed the earth with my fingers. It struck me that I had gone nearly twenty years of life without killing a soul. And now, two of em’ in the less than forty-eight hours. Goddamn.

When I’d done all I could do with the body, I began to pray over it. But I couldn’t concentrate right, gave it up halfway through, and went to wake Lily who was sleeping soft and kind.

                                                                                                ***

We went as far as we could until the gas hand ticked like a broken clock against empty. Lily and I goaded the fumes and pushed ourselves forward in the cab hoping for a few more rolls of the wheels. We succeeded and stalled out in gas station ruins. There was a broken car half-eaten up with rust and a sign on the store window advertising antiques.

I told Lily to get the revolver from the glove compartment, and she did, and she weighed it in her palm. She held it careful as an egg, said it was cold and heavy. Then she said, we ain’t got nothing. We got bruises, I told her. Bruises, health, and our gun. There’s money in antiques, she said before opening the door and unfolding herself, stepping outside holding the gun under the blanket wrapped around her.

I asked her what she was doing and she came around the car to me and stuck the revolver in the back of her jeans. She took off the blanket and draped it around me before kissing me and telling me that she loved me no matter what. No matter if the cops found us and burned us both. I told her that nobody would be burning nobody, but she didn’t say nothing and just looked back at the antiques store. Before she opened the door and I heard that bell ring, the one that sometimes comes with opening doors, she reached behind her and grabbed the gun.

When she came out she wasn’t hurrying, only carrying a brown paper grocery sack like she was bringing her lunch. I asked her what happened and she said that she had a big sack of money, that’s what happened. I asked her for the gun and she handed it over. It was still cold and heavy.

She pulled keys from her pocket and dangled them. The proprietor has an old truck out back, she said, so we went around and I saw the crimson truck the color of rust with white-walled wheels. The white-walls belonged to an earlier time. Maybe one where meth trailers didn’t blow up, where thugs didn’t threaten young girls for the sins of their fathers, where boys didn’t have to turn to men so soon, and where the laws of God and man rode side by side like brothers, instead of fighting like wild cats, twisting and bumping and snarling at one another.

We drove dead north keeping off the interstate as much as we could. I knew the cops wouldn’t figure it was us until they found Lily’s car with the license plates. I asked her if the cashier was gonna be calling the cops and she shook her head. She was driving and didn’t look over at me. Why not? I asked. It ain’t a problem, baby, she said. She was chewing bubble gum, wearing cutoff jean shorts. The frays, the little cotton tendrils, pressed up against her thigh, reminded me of jellyfish all washed up on shore with something dead about them. I don’t know why, but she made me think of the ocean sometimes, and I imagined us walking barefoot like everyone else along the rim of the sea.

It got dark somewhere in Nebraska and I took over driving. Lily fell asleep snoring with her legs across my lap, and the bracelet on her wrist tapped against the window like drunken code. A town blinked away in the distance, each light a firefly caught in the whirling purple clouds of the central shelf. A storm’s coming, I said to no one. Soon we dipped into a valley and the lights disappeared.

Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Child Support

 Read more of the Anna the Extractor series here: Introduction | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Anna peers at the family photographs hung up on the walls as Nancy’s dog Sadie sniffs her legs and hands. She stops at a photograph of Nancy’s daughter, Mira, a close up of her profile as she blows bubbles.

“When did Mira stop sleeping?” Anna asks.

“It’s been a year. I usually find her on the couch in the mornings. She says she just sleeps better down here, but I think it’s something else, because it bothers the dog, too.”

Sadie sighs through her wet brown nose and lies down on the floor at Nancy’s feet, chin resting on one paw. The front door opens and Mira comes in, cheeks flushed from running around outside.

“Nugget, do you mind coming in here and meeting someone?” Nancy calls.

Mira steps into the living room, wiping her nose on the back of her arm.

“Hey, I’m Anna.”

Mira offers a tight smile.

“Anna was wondering if she could see your room. Would that be okay?”

Mira nods and heads up the stairs, ponytail bouncing as she jogs the steps. Anna follows close behind, and Sadie harrumphs as she gets up to her paws and makes her way past to get to Mira first. The young girl is already sitting on her bed, running her fingers through a Barbie’s long plastic hair. Sadie hops up on the bed and curls her body around Mira’s hips.

Anna doesn’t even have to walk into the room to feel the presence of something otherworldly, resonating against her ears.

“You’re very organized,” Anna says, observing the color-coordinated bookshelf.

“I didn’t do that,” Mira states.

Anna glances at the girl before approaching the closet door, and flinches when her palm touches the knob. This is where it haunts, but she can’t see the ghost unless she knows its name, or it chooses to reveal itself to her.

“Mira, I have a friend who would like to sleep over with you tonight if that’s okay? She’s really nice, about your age but your Mom won’t be able to see her. Only you will. Do you want to meet her?”

Mira nods then jumps a little when the ghost of a young girl appears next to her, wearing a blue Easter dress and matching ribbons in her blonde ringlets. The dog moves her rear paws to accommodate the spirit, not even bothered by her presence.

“This is Lydia Marie,” Anna says. “She’s going to help us figure this out, okay?”

Long after Anna is gone and the lights are out for the evening, Mira and Lydia Marie lie on their sides facing each other in the dark, nose to nose.

“You’re not cold,” Mira says. “The one in my closet makes my room chilly when it comes out.”

“It’s because I’m happy,” Lydia Marie says with a smile. “We’re only cold if we feel sad or confused.”

“Is it scary being dead?” Mira asks.

“It used to be before I met Anna. I help her help people like you. And we help ghosts, too. We’re trying to help this one so it stops bothering you.”

“But why would you help a ghost? They just wanna scare people.”

“Ghosts don’t want to scare people. They’re here because they’re stuck, reliving a part of their lives that they can never have back. That’s why we help them. So they can move on and not have to hurt anymore.”

The temperature of the room drops as the drawers begin to slide open and clothes end up in piles on the floor. Lydia Marie sits up and squints, then sees the ghost of a small boy, shirtless and covered in dirt, squatting as he separates Mira’s clothes by color, obsessing over anything blue.

“Hello,” she says.

The boy turns to look at Lydia Marie then shakes his head violently from side to side. She slides off the bed then kneels next to him, placing a hand on the back of his neck with care. He lashes out at first, but she persists and runs her fingertips over the skin. His eyes close as he clutches one of Mira’s sundresses to his chest.

“What’s your name?” Lydia Marie asks.

The boy mumbles. Lydia Marie asks again and he mumbles once more, but she catches it this time.

                                                                                                   ***

The next morning, Anna stands once more at the closet door, placing her hand on the knob and whispers.

“Jack, come out.”

The door opens and two eyes peer at her from the darkness. Anna smiles and offers her arms to him as she sits down on the floor. He rushes at her, throwing his arms around her neck, burying his face in her shoulder, and wrapping his legs around her waist. Anna laughs, almost falling backward as she extends her legs out in the air to keep her balance.

“He’s just a little boy,” Mira says, holding Sadie’s collar as the dog leans forward trying to get to the shirtless spectre.

“Tickle?” Jack asks, moving Anna’s hand to his neck.

Anna can feel Jack’s life blend with her existence, the chill melting against her body as she holds him close and caresses the fine hairs on his nape. Her eyes well up as memories fly across her mind; Jack’s father locking him in the closet, his mother drunk and emotionally flatlined. She sees him looking out the window at the other kids in the neighborhood, noticing who wore red the most. And she feels his lungs give out beneath the pressure of a pillow, and the dirt cover his body somewhere in the woods behind the house. All because they didn’t understand his autism, didn’t understand his desire for a world organized by color, because he wanted them to help him build rainbows.

“Oh, Jack,” Anna whispers, rocking back and forth with him. “It’s okay, now. It’s over.”

The chill begins to dissipate in the room and Jack fades, his heart known and full as he crosses over to a place where Anna can’t yet go.

Written by: Natasha Akery
Photograph by: Erin Notarthomas

She Whistled in the Night

I had been working the overnight shift at the Windsong Assisted Living Home for just shy of two months. Once I adjusted to the hours and the smell, a smell of atrophy that was somehow also antiseptic, I had grown to really enjoy it. By no means was I thinking of it for a new career, but it was the best in the long string of bad jobs I had since I left the Army.

The residents all varied in age and ability, and in their propensity for conversation. Most of the ladies were genial and would gossip and flirt. The men treated me with a polite indifference, until they found out I was a vet. And there were a few, I quickly learned which ones, who were so lonely after being unceremoniously dumped by their families that would latch on until I feigned an emergency just to escape their room.

And then there was Manon Pelletier. Never once had she uttered a peep. Until now.

“Could you leave the curtains open tonight please?” she asked, her voice a hoarse, cracked whisper.

She was a tiny speck of a woman, just wrinkles and bone, really. Every night when I came in to her room, she would be hunched in her chair, bundled under her tattered, old blanket, staring as images flashed across her television. And every night my “How are you tonight, Ms. Pelletier?” fell on deaf ears. Or so I thought.

“Sure thing, Ms. Pelletier,” I said, shocked at her request. “You want to see the lights?”

Due to a spate of recent solar storms, the news was reporting that the Aurora Borealis would be visible as far south as the Mid-Atlantic, and up here in the northeast kingdom of Vermont, they were forecasting quite a spectacular show.

“Have you ever seen them before?” I asked, trying to coax a little more conversation out of her.

She gave no response. I went on doling out her meds in silence, and then, just before I was about to leave, she spoke, her voice growing stronger and taking on the French Canadian lilt that is common this close to border.

“When I was a girl they would call us half-breeds, my sister and I. Our father was Québécois, and our mother was Inuit. We lived with her people when I was small. Every night we would watch in silence as the lights danced across the sky. They were beautiful, but we were afraid.”

“Afraid? Why?” I asked.

“There is a saying the Inuit have. The great peril of our existence lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls. You see, we don’t believe in God, but we believe that everything; man, walrus, caribou, whale, seal, everything--has a soul. And when they die, that soul is released. That is what you see at night. The lights are the souls of the fallen, of the dead. And it is said if you whistle at them, they will come down and take you away forever.”

“Whoa. That’s crazy.”

For the first time her gaze deviated from the TV and over to me. Her eyes held a fierceness, a spark that belied the deteriorated state of the rest of her body.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not calling you crazy, but…”

“It’s ok. I understand. But I am going to tell you something, something I have never told anyone, not my husband, not even my parents. When I was a girl, things were simple. Simple, but not always good. There was a man, my mother’s uncle. He was a bad man. He did bad things to my sister. She was twelve, two years older than me. I would pretend to be asleep, wishing he would leave her alone, but in a way, thankful it wasn’t me.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

“One night after he left our room, I saw her sneaking out. I followed. The lights were brilliant that night, swirling on the horizon. When she began to whistle I got scared and ran to her. She was crying. When she saw me she yelled at me to go back home.”

Tears started to well in her eyes, and she stared ahead blankly, searching her memory for details about that long-forgotten night.

“She said she couldn’t take it anymore… I wanted to stop her… She made me promise that I would go back home…”

I took her fragile hand in mine just before the dam burst, unleashing a lifetime of tears.

After a few minutes, she regained her composure.

“As I ran back home, I heard my sister start to whistle again. A harsh, frigid wind kicked up. I could hear something behind me, like the sound a train makes as it splits the cold, still air. I threw the blankets over my head and cried myself to sleep. In the morning, when they discovered she was gone, I told my parents not about the lights, but about my mother’s uncle. We left for Montreal soon after that.”

“I’m so sorry,” I repeated, not knowing what else to say.

“I’m very tired now, could you help me to bed?”

“Of course.” I hesitated. “Ms. Pelletier, do you still want me to leave the curtains open?”

She smiled at me.

“Yes, please. And thank you for listening to my story.”

“Anytime.”

I closed her door and walked back down the hall towards the front desk. Out the dining room window I caught a glimpse of shimmering green light. I turned out the lights and stood at the window, transfixed, as the Aurora, ethereal and electric, swayed in the night sky like whispers of smoke off some unseen, supernatural campfire.

I don’t know how long I was watching or what made me go check on her, but as I approached her suite, I heard a high-pitched whistle. I struggled with my keys, searching for the one that would unlock her room. The temperature dropped as a cold draft rushed out from the beneath the door. The whistling was joined by another noise, a hushed murmur that rose up into a throbbing, unsettling hum.

“Ms. Pelletier? Are you alright?” I screamed as I pounded on the door.

And then, just like that, it was gone. All of it. The whistling, the hum, the cold.

When I finally got the door open, Manon Pelletier was nowhere to be found. Her bed was a jumble of diaphanous sheets, soaked through with sweat. Her window, closed and locked when I left, was open. And out in the distance the lights danced on.

Written by: Ben Cook

Photograph by: Erin Notarthomas

Brothers

As of today, there will be seven of us. Mikey and I are in the basement, like we always are on CPS days. We hate that stupid lady, Ms. Fowler, because she pretends she’s looking out for us, but really she doesn’t do crap. She comes in with her fancy suit and her clipboard and wanders around while Barb “yes ma’am”’s and “no ma’am”’s and shoves the little kids’ mess into the closets. It always looks real clean when Ms. Fowler shows up.

Sometimes if we’re lucky, Barb will be too tired to put the house back like it usually is, and Mikey and I will get to sleep on the sofa bed for a night.

On every other night, the sofa bed is folded into a lumpy couch, and that’s where Barb sits and watches her shows, and where Rex passes out drunk when he gets home.

Mikey and I sleep in sleeping bags on the dining room floor. But today they’re rolled up and hidden away. In the basement, we try to do the same.

Mikey’s on tiptoe peering out the half-window through the curtains.

“Is her car still out there?”

“Yeah, you dumbass. I can still hear her upstairs.”

He’s right. Fowler’s heels are click-clacking on the newly clean floor above our heads.

“Where you think the new kid’s going to sleep?” I want to know.

“Depends. If it’s a girl, I guess with Tisha and Brianna.”

“They’re going to be mad.”

“What else is new?”

I hope the new kid’s not a girl, because then there’ll be more of them than there are of us. Rex is right about one thing: Too many women in a house ain’t nothing good.

But at the same time, I don’t know if I want it to be a boy, either. Even with Barb and all her bullcrap, we’ve kind of got a good thing going right now. Mikey and I have this agreement. He’s allowed to mess with me because I’m younger and not as cool, but he’s also got my back. Mikey, I think, is the same kind of way as me—we’ve both had teachers and social workers slap us with some kind of “behavior problem” junk every once in awhile, but we’re not like kids who are really angry.

Some kids I’ve lived with—they’re angry all the way down to their bones. Their anger actually jumps into their arms and legs and takes over. And that’s the kind of kid I don’t want to see delivered to the house today. Because with anger like that, especially in a boy, one minute you’re playing video games or flag football or sleeping or eating knock-off Lucky Charms at breakfast, and the next minute you’re on the floor, and anger’s got its grip around your throat.

“There she goes,” Mikey says, watching Ms. Fowler’s car pull out of the driveway.

“Bitch,” I say, testing the word in my mouth.

“What’d she do to you?” Mikey says, imitating Barb.

“Nothing. And that’s why she’s a bitch.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” Mikey says, thwacking me on the forehead. “Come on, before Barb starts screaming.”

Too late.

“Mikey! Troy! Come meet your new brother!”

That drives Mikey crazy—how Barb’s always calling us brothers and sisters.

“Tisha is not my sister,” he always says, but I think that’s because he secretly has a crush on Tisha, and if they were brother and sister, that would be some pervert crap.

We get to the top of the basement stairs. The little kids are near the door, all scrubbed and happy, chewing on pieces of an alphabet puzzle Barb set out on the floor. Stupid Ms. Fowler probably thinks Barb’s educating them early. What she doesn’t know is that puzzle’s missing about half the letters because Tisha stole them to decorate her poster for Science Fair last month. Barb said she wasn’t about to spend money on craft supplies, and Tisha said, “Isn’t that what the government pays you to do? Support me and my education?” and Barb said, “The government pays me enough to put food in your mouth and not a penny more,” and Tisha said, “You call this food?” and flipped her bowl of tuna salad.

Tisha got grounded for two weeks, but she also got first place in the Science Fair.

“I like a girl who knows what she wants,” Mikey said.

Barb scoops up the little kids, one on each hip, and waves us all into the kitchen. Mikey grabs a couple of Powerades from the fridge and throws me one. I catch it with one hand.

The new kid is standing in the doorway. He’s tall and skinny, about Mikey’s age. All his crap is still in what Tisha calls a “foster kid suitcase,” a black trash bag clenched in his fist.

Barb starts on her house rules speech.

“Here, we are all brothers and sisters. We respect each other, and we respect this space. This is a drug-free house. Do not push me on this…”

The new kid, aside from the trash bag, looks out of place in Barb and Rex’s cramped kitchen. He’s white, which isn’t unheard of, but his clothes are too nice. They look new, maybe even from a department store, and even weirder, they look ironed. Somebody put creases in his jeans.

Brianna is sitting on the counter by the microwave swinging her legs back and forth. She has on foam flip-flops that are an inch too short for her feet. She, like the rest of us, is looking at the new kid like he’s an intruder from Mars.

“You will be home for supper every night, because I’m not giving you any extra money for eating out, and if you have extra money, you’d better be explaining where you got it…”

The new kid smiles and nods, but his eyes are glassy. Is he sedated? Mikey cuts me a concerned glance. What are we dealing with here? Rich kid, bad divorce? Somebody here by mistake?

“Now, you look like a nice young man, so I don’t think we’ll have any trouble. You’ll be sleeping in the dining room with Mikey and Troy, since we’re kind of short on bedrooms at this moment. Now go on, boys, and take your new brother to the basement to get a sleeping bag.”

“This way,” Mikey grumbles, and we lead the new kid down the stairs.

He looks out the window as Mikey digs around for a sleeping bag. While the kid has his head turned, I give him a good once over. His blonde hair is slicked back with hair gel, and the light shining through the sheer curtains lights up his face, peppered with freckles.

“So,” I say, puffing up my chest. “Who are you?”

The new kid turns his pale face to look at me. He opens his mouth.

I know then something is wrong. Where his tongue should be is a black V—his tongue is slit, forked up the middle.

“Holy crap--”

“Ssssssssssss,” hisses the new kid. I jump back, and he cackles. And in a garbled, lisping speech, he spits, “Like the lady said. I’m your brother.”

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Erin Notarthomas

Taboo

If someone walked out of the kitchen, she would see me sitting on the floor in front of the record player, weeping over a paring knife. But she would not see the thoughts darting behind my eyes. She would not see that I am afraid to live, but too scared to end my own life. She would not see that I wonder if I looked pretty. She would not see that I hope she would come across me like this, hope that she will be startled and concerned, hope that she will kneel down and wrap me in her arms. She will not see that something about that made me want to laugh, but my depression makes me feel guilty for ever feeling happy.

Someone did not walk in.

I take a shower, put on my clothes, and walk the mile to the restaurant where I work as a hostess. I smile at passersby, and forget how sad I am for a few minutes, but then I remember that I am depressed and I’m not allowed to feel joy. It delegitimizes my condition and gives someone the right to say, “See? It must not be that bad.” I clock in, take my post at the door, and start wiping down menus as I contemplate whether I should tell my boyfriend that an acquaintance handcuffed me to his stove last night, leaving the key just a toe’s length out of reach. When the guy returned three hours later, he was drunk with a girl hanging on his arm like a Christmas ornament, glittery and hollow.

“Why the fuck are you still here?”

“I couldn’t reach…”

The girl picked up the key and crawled over to me, taking off the handcuffs, reeking of Red Bull and vodka.

“Do you wanna stick around and play with us for a little bit?” she asked. “Maybe you could handcuff me…”

My loneliness ached for promiscuous company, anything to keep me from going home to an empty apartment, but the acquaintance made it clear that I was unwelcome. I guess I misunderstood his initial invitation to come in for a drink. Maybe I overstayed. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him about that time I felt the devil hovering over me, telling me I belonged to him. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that I had a boyfriend.

“Hey, Lacy.”

Tim, the manager, summons me out of my chronic ruminations as he approaches the hostess’ stand and refills the business card holder.

“Hi, Tim.”

“How was your night?”

“Okay, I guess.”

Tim lifts an eyebrow and folds his arms over his chest.

“What’s up?” he asks.

“Do you think I should tell my boyfriend that a guy handcuffed me to a stove?”

Tim’s jaw drops and his brows knit together. I’m not sure if he’s shocked more by what happened, or by my nonchalance.

“Lacy, you should tell a family member. Like your Dad? Or an uncle? Or the police. Jesus, are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine. He’s a friend. I’m just wondering if it’s something my boyfriend needs to know.”

Tim rubs his face with his hands and shakes his head, “Oh my God, please don’t do it right now. Wait until after work.”

But I’m already texting Mark: Hey, we need to talk. Something happened last night. I’m at work right now. Talk to you later.

The restaurant phone rings. And rings. And rings because Tim is standing guard. When he finally answers, he can’t even get a word in before Mark starts yelling, “Lacy?! What the hell happened?” Tim’s face is red when he tells him not to call the restaurant, that we’ll have to talk later. When he hangs up, the phone rings. And rings. And rings. For the next two hours, Tim has to answer and then hang up. My phone keeps lighting up, but I don’t read the texts because I have customers to seat.

There’s a lull in the action when my co-worker Mina comes up with some menus and asks me how I’m doing. Tim has all but disappeared, and I feel a little bad, but I’m mostly thinking about how angry Mark probably is with me.

“I’m all right.”

“What’d you do last night?”

How can I resist? I tell her. She’s got this look on her face like I’m crazy. I tell her that I’m in love with my boyfriend, and there’s no one else for me. I’m gonna marry him.

“But you decided to go in some guy’s apartment for a drink?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“You know what, Lacy, you sound like two fucking people sometimes.”

She turns on her heel, ponytail nearly whipping me in the face. I’m trying to understand what she meant when I unlock my phone and see the notification for thirteen messages from Mark. My heart starts to pound in my chest, and I know that physically I’m having a panic attack, but I’m so used to it that someone wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at me.

Lacy, what the fuck happened?
You can’t say something like that and then ignore me.
Tell your boss to eat a dick.
What the hell did you do?
Did you cheat on me?
Lacy, I swear to God, if you cheated on me, it’s over.
Call me as soon as you can.
Who was it?
Do I know him?
How could you do this to me again?

This is such bullshit.

You know what, forget it.

I’m sitting in front of the record player when I get home from work, listening to Damien Rice. I tried to call Mark, but he didn’t answer. I kept calling. And calling. And calling until he must have turned off his phone, because it went straight to voicemail after a while. How long can I watch this record spin? How long until someone walks in and notices that my sadness is a thick skin, and I don’t feel much of anything anymore? Lord, how long?

Written by: Natasha Akery

Photograph by: Sydney Singhass

Drive

"Just start the car and drive," she said to herself. Her hands were trembling. She fumbled with the key, nearly dropping it before she managed to jam it into the ignition. "Just start the car," she chanted. "Just start the car... just start the car... just start the car."

A twist of her wrist and the car shuddered to life. The throaty rumbling of the engine momentarily startled her. She hadn't expected it to start; it was old and she was used to things not working. She gripped the steering wheel, knuckles burning white.

"OK. Now," she instructed, "just drive the car. Just drive the car. Just. Drive. The. Car."

She stepped on the accelerator. The engine roared, but the car remained stationary. First, panic - "No. No… No… NO!" - then, relieved realization; she hadn't put the car in DRIVE. She cursed her own stupidity and shifted the gear stick. It settled into place with a clunk. The car lurched forward, churning up a thick, brown cloud of dust. At the same time, she felt the weight of doubt, like a ball and chain, holding her back. But, no. It was now or never. She had to go. She had to go or she would be stuck here forever. She had to go or she would die here, without ever having lived. She couldn't look back. She mustn't look back.

She glanced in the rear-view mirror.

"No… No… NO!" She yelled, hitting the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. She scolded herself for being weak. She must never look back. It was over. Over. From now on, this place was dead to her. It was no longer home. For the time being, she was homeless. She thought of all the trite sayings she'd heard over the years: ‘Home is Where the Heart is.’ ‘Home Sweet Home.’ ‘There's No Place Like Home.’ She considered the meaning of the word 'home' - A place where one lives? A place where one feels safe? Yes, she had lived here, but no, she’d never felt safe.

Salvation was a small town, the kind of town outsiders often saw through the rose-tinted glasses of romanticized nostalgia; a town forgotten by time, with white picket fences, unlocked doors and friendly locals. But the reality was far less idyllic. The white picket fences needed painting and repair. The unlocked doors and the so-called friendly locals – residents who felt it was their business to know everybody’s business – made Salvation a gossipy, judgmental community, one completely devoid of privacy and personal space. In her opinion, there’d been far more suitable names – Stagnation, Suffocation, Strangulation – but she’d always kept those to herself, until this afternoon.

“This place, it’s killing me. I have to get out. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe with all these hands around my throat.”

The memory replayed. It clouded her mind - a stubborn storm of thought, a tempest she couldn’t shake.

“What did you say?” he slurred, grabbing another beer from the refrigerator - his fifth of the hour. He popped the metal cap from the bottle and flung it at her face. She flinched and turned away. The cap bounced off her head and clattered to the floor. He scoffed. “Pick that up,” he said.

But she didn’t move.

“You hear me? I told you to pick it up.”

She felt the burning heat of his glare and thought, ‘If you do this, life will never be the same. If you do this, there’ll be no going back.’

She returned his glare. “I heard you,” she said.

His eyes narrowed and he stepped close. “Then. Pick. It. Up,” he hissed. Spit flew from his lips with each punctuated syllable. His speech was slow, shaky, angry.

‘If you do this…’

But she already knew.

‘Life will never…’

She was going to do it.

‘No going back…’

She straightened up, looked him firmly in the eye and said, “No.”

The pain from the blow was momentarily blinding and she crumpled to the floor. When her vision cleared, she saw him standing over her with clenched fists. She reached up and fumbled for the edge of the countertop, finding it with the pads of her fingers. Using the wooden surface as support, she pulled herself to her feet. She was dazed, but determined, and when the second blow came, she was ready.

She ducked and grabbed the kettle – heavy and full of water – and swung it at him. The rounded metal connected with the side of his head, making a musical, watery gong sound. To her surprise, he fell straight to the floor. She hadn’t expected it to work; he was strong and she was used to things not working. But he was sprawled on the floor, out cold. She knew she had to act fast. She grabbed some money, a change of clothes and the key to the car.

Now she was on a long, empty road - tires crunching over the gritty surface of the tarmac below, sky stretching, blue and wide, above. She rolled down the window, letting the wind play with her hair, and she thought, ‘This must be what freedom feels like’. She breathed in, deep, and briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she caught sight of something in the rear-view mirror. In the distance, in the middle of the road, stood a girl - a vision of herself – a girl with the same face, clothes and hair. The girl looked panicked and distraught.

Her heart lurched and she gasped, slamming on the brakes. The car stopped. She considered turning around and going back. But then she thought, ‘You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. You can only save yourself.’

She took her foot off the brake and pressed it down on the accelerator. As the car picked up speed, she glanced in the rear-view mirror. The girl was gone.

She fixed her eyes on the road ahead and never looked back again.

Written by: Angela DeRay

Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

A Tremor in Your Name

(continued from "Beloved" and "Bury Their Own")

Anna stands by the window, resting her head on her forearm propped up against the wall. Searching the backyard, she spots the noose that almost ended her client’s life and the little red stool that kept death at bay. The yellow police tape wrapped around the perimeter of the house quivers as rain begins to fall. Anna closes her eyes as the pattering resonates through the ceiling, recalling the boil of her blood when Lucas appeared by her side, a ghost that had possessed an innocent man and compelled him to attempt murder. Suri, her client, hired Anna to extract Lucas from her life. For fourteen years he has haunted her and taken control of men’s bodies in order to do her harm. While Suri recovers, Anna remains in this abandoned house with nothing more than a name to go by, but in her line of work, a name is all the power she needs.

She sits down on the floor in the center of the room and rubs the cross dangling from a chain around her neck. In the blink of an eye, a ten year old girl sits in front of her wearing an easter dress and a blue bow in her blonde hair. Lydia Marie is the ghost haunting her necklace, and her phantom sidekick. She tilts her head to the left and studies Anna’s face, furrowing her brow.

“What’s wrong, Anna?”

Anna smiles with just the right corner of her lips and shakes her head, “I’m trying to track someone down.”

“A ghost?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you can only see him if he lets you see him.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Lydia Marie wrinkles her nose and offers an impish grin. “But I can see him even if he doesn’t want me to.”

Anna looks up and mirrors the spectre’s expression. “Precisely. Lucas knows the rules; if I say his name, he has to come. You can be my lookout for when he decides to show up.”

“But how are you going to extract him? It doesn’t sound like he’ll be too interested in taking orders,” Lydia Marie says with some concern.

“He’s obviously got some unfinished business and it’s centered around Suri. A game of twenty questions is in order. If he gives me a motive, then I just need to provide him with a suitable substitution.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Anna doesn’t answer. Instead, she claps her hands and rubs her palms together, fighting the chill down her spine. “You ready?”

Lydia Marie nods, unsure at first, but gaining confidence with the prospect of helping Anna catch the bad guy. Anna imagines her lungs expanding in every direction as she inhales, then whispers.

“Lucas.”
                                                                                                  ***

Lydia Marie hides in the closet, peeking through the shutter-style slats with her hands over her mouth. The hair on the back of Anna’s neck stands on end and her skin prickles with the presence of another otherworldly being. She does not see Lucas pacing in front of her with his hands behind his back, grinning from ear to ear. She waits for Lydia Marie to signal her, but instead the young ghost passes suddenly through the closet doors with horror written in her eyes.

“What are you doing here? Where’s my father?”

Lydia Marie is all but shrieking, her spectral hands balling up into fists and tears welling up in her eyes. Lucas turns toward her, still invisible to Anna who is startled and jumps to her feet. He narrows his eyes as he searches his memory for who she is and recognition passes over his face.

“Ah, Lydia. I left your father long ago…”

Lydia Marie’s entire body trembles, her bottom lip quivering. “It was you! It wasn’t Daddy! It was you!”

Lucas pulls the corners of his mouth up into a smile and shrugs. “If that makes it easier for you to cope, my dear, but I didn’t make him do anything other than what he’d already considered himself.”

Anna, unable to hear Lucas, asks desperately, “Lydia Marie, what’s he saying? Ask him what he wants. Ask him why he’s doing this!”

“You’re a monster! I’m all alone because of you!”

Lucas chuckles, his hiss like poison. “You and your father, ripped apart. All alone. Just like me.”

Before Anna has a chance to confront him, the chill leaves her skin and she knows that Lucas has disappeared. Lydia Marie wraps her arms around herself and looks up at Anna, shaking her head from left to right.

“Before Daddy drowned me, there was always a man at the house. He would sit with my dad while he drank and watch him when he hit me. I never knew who he was. I thought he was Daddy’s friend, but I understand now. It wasn’t Daddy who hurt me. It was Lucas.”

Flesh and spirit, the two stand in silence. A dog barks in the distance as thunder rips through the rain.

“Anna, Lucas said Daddy and me are all alone just like him.”

Kneeling down in front of Lydia Marie, Anna meets her gaze and whispers, “Let’s go find your father.”

The ghost looks down at her feet and asks, “What if he doesn’t want to see me?”

Anna shakes her head and says, “Baby girl, I think he’s been dying to see you since 1962.”

Lydia Marie looks up and says, “I want Daddy to know I forgive him, that I know it’s not his fault.”

Anna realizes that this is the reason why her friend hasn’t been able to crossover. All this time Lydia Marie was wandering between worlds because she believed a lie, that her father never loved her. Reconciliation could be the very thing she needs to move on, a bittersweet notion once Anna considers that she would lose her. But this is why Anna entered this obscure line of work, to secure peace for both the living and the dead.

“Come on. Maybe we can track him down before dinner time.”

Written by: Natasha Akery
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe