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

Sabotage

“Fred. Fred, wake up.”

He stirs from his wounded slumber as Amelia squeezes his shoulders, shaking him gently. Fred is leaning against the trunk of a palm tree, his eyes squinting at the dry blood on his pants. Every part of his body is sore and he protests from the inside, but Amelia is insistent. He looks up at her, feeling what remains of his existence spill out like water on a hot skillet.

“What is it? Are you hurt?” he asks in a gruff whisper.

“Can you walk, Fred? You have to see them. Their wingspan must be fourteen feet! They’re absolutely breathtaking!”

Amelia is giddy, with cuts on her face and hands as if she had walked through brambles. Without thinking, she kneels and pulls his arm around her shoulders, trying to pull him up to a stand. He wails, stomach churning at the pain. Unphased, she starts to hobble forward, but it’s no use. Fred falls to the sand, too weak to weep.

“Oh, do get up! We may never have another chance to see such magnificent creatures! To think, they live and we thought them to be the stuff of legend!”

Fred feels his consciousness as he rolls over onto his back, his right leg throbbing as pain rides up through his back and down to his toes. He cannot comprehend Amelia’s mania, her inconsiderate obsession with whatever winged creature she happened to come across while he very well might be dying.

“Don’t worry, Fred. You’ll see them. I’ll even bring one to you if I can!”

He doesn’t hear her run off when he blacks out.

                                                                                                       ***

The sun is high in the sky when his eyes flutter open. Amelia must have moved him because he is lying on a blanket next to a small campfire. He hears something boiling when he turns his head to look around. Amelia is squatting about ten feet away, covering her mouth with the back of her hand as she giggles. After some time, Fred realizes she’s speaking French. But there’s no one else around. However, the way she’s carrying on he nearly doubts himself.

“Amelia, dear, who’s here?” Fred asks.

A quick turn of her head in his direction, then she remembers the pot of boiling water over the fire. Amelia removes it, then crawls to Fred’s side.

“Captain, I’ve brought one to you. They speak French!”

Fred’s heart begins to race, jumping to the conclusion that they are rescued. The adrenaline gives him enough energy to sit up so he can behold their rescuers with his own eyes.

“Thank God, we’re saved,” he breathes.

“Fred, this is Malory,” Amelia coos as she gestures past the fire.

There is no one. Fred’s breath picks up and panic begins to set in as it did those first few moments after he crawled from the wreckage of their crash.

“Amelia, I see no one,” he says evenly.

She huffs and walks back to the spot where she had been squatting, pointing with both of her hands like knives to the space in front of her.

“Honestly, Fred. I know you’re not feeling all that well, but she’s hard to miss.”

Amelia speaks again in French, and Fred can feel his heart leaping toward his throat as a deep fear sets in. He searches his memory for clues. There was the crash. There were the attempts at radio communication from what was left of the plane. There was his weakening body as blood oozed from his wound, and Amelia stitching it up. And then there was a fish roasting over a campfire. He could not eat it, but she could. Fred remembers the cautionary tales of eating the heads, that you can lose your mind for hours, sometimes for days.

Fred’s terror gives him the strength to stand.

“Forgive me, Miss Earhart. My vision has failed me since the crash. I can barely see you at all,” he lies.

“Ah, Fred, you poor dear,” Amelia says as she leads him around the fire. “Perhaps Malory will let you see her with your hands.”

And she takes his left hand and runs it through empty space, touching nothing, but Amelia speaks with awe.

“Feel the wings, Fred? A single feather is nearly a foot long. Wings for arms, but they keep everything else. She is the truest representation of an independent woman - a harpy, a woman who can fly.”

It’s too much. The world fades, and Fred’s last thought is the hope to wake up saved.

                                                                                                       ***

Fred wakes up screaming. Amelia’s fingers dig into the stitches on his right thigh and her other hand is wrapped around his throat.

“So, was this your plan all along, Fred? To rip me from the sky as I closed the circle of the globe? Was this part of your plan?”

She rips the wound open and the blood oozes heavily. Fred wretches and weeps, too weak to pull from her, nearly delirious with pain, dehydration, and hunger.

“Malory told me everything,” Amelia continues. “She heard you radio FDR, tell him our coordinates, tell him that you were successful. That you thwarted me. That you failed me as a captain and friend.”

Fred can smell his own blood and the ocean. He can feel the wind and hear the crash of waves below.

“You won’t take my wings, Fred.”

Amelia kicks his body over the edge of the cliff and he tumbles down toward the ocean. She sneers down at the ring of foam on the surface of the water before looking up at the sky. The sun melts behind the horizon and the stars begin to peek. Amelia spreads her arms and breathes deeply, closing her eyes as she recites:

“For life is not the thing we thought, and not the thing we plan; and Woman in a bitter world must do the best she can - must yield the stroke, and bear the yoke, and serve the will of man.”

Amelia leaps.

Written by: Natasha Akery

Photograph by: Matt Crump

Rx

The way the light reflects on the water makes me think of my old life. The world looks doubled over. There are two treelines in the distance, one on the horizon, one seemingly subterranean. In my old life, I‘d stand beside the water and take a photo of my feet kissing the edge of the reflection. I’d text the photo to Joshua, saying, It’s so beautiful. Wish you were here.

That all seems so ridiculous now. I’m disconnected. My pulse pounds an urgent rhythm where once it was smooth.

I had to get away. I’ve been hiding out in this tunnel since I made a run for it yesterday evening, but in the daylight, I’m exposed.

It’s still early. Nobody in sight. I gather up the wrappers from the energy bars I stole when I left and shove them in my purse. Gotta cover my tracks. It’s time to move.

                                                                                                     ***

Officer Harkless slides his sunglasses into the pocket of his uniform shirt. It’s a new idiot every week—desperate and demanding, and with no comprehension of the system.

“Like I told you,” Harkless says to the man, “it’s too soon. We can’t do anything till she’s been missing for over twenty-four hours. I’ll take your information, and you can call again if she’s not back by tonight.”

“But—she’s gone!” the man stammers. “Isn’t this your job? Finding missing people? She’s never taken things this far before.”

“So she’s done things like this before?” Harkless asks.

“No! I mean—no,” the man barks. Short-tempered and idiotic.

“Just give me your information, sir.”

“Joshua,” the man says. “Joshua Brenner.”
                                                                                                     ***

Save the date!

Joshua & Julie

17 May 2014

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. –Helen Keller.

It was Julie’s idea to add the fucking Helen Keller quote. She said she saw it on Pinterest and thought it was so inspiring, so representative of marriage. The great adventure! Two people wandering into the unknown with nothing but the stars to guide them! I told her if she found one more thing on that goddamned website I was going to take back the ring and call the whole thing off. No more handmade boutonnières or cutesy place cards constructed of Scrabble letters and burlap. And no. No to Mason jars. Forever.

Now the save-the-date card taunts me from its shrine on the fridge. Julie smiles her radiant, fake grin, the one she gave to the clerk at the Kum & Go just before I watched her shoplift a handful of shit and go around the corner of the building to “find the ladies’ room,” never to re-emerge. I remind myself I love her. I love her.

                                                                                                     ***

Maybe I was born for life in the wild. I’ve been taking what I needed from this world for as long as I can remember. But I should’ve taken more food from the Kum & Go.

I look around for edible plants. This area’s a treasure trove—mint leaves, honeysuckle, mushrooms of various degrees of risk. I fill my pockets with them all.

In my old life, honeysuckle was the color I’d chosen for bridesmaids’ dresses. Honeysuckle yellow satin. I can’t remember why that would have been so important.

My mind rushes. For once, it’s not my legs that tingle, but my brain. A mantra, chanting between my temples. I can’t be caught. I can’t be caught.

                                                                                                     ***

He’s back. Harkless sighs and flips to a new page in his notepad.

“Mr. Brenner, can you describe your fiancée’s recent behavior? Is there any reason we should believe she’s in any sort of danger?”

“Danger? No! I have no idea. She’s probably mad about something—some passive aggressive shit.”

“No disrespect, Mr. Brenner, but this case is taking time and resources we could be spending elsewhere. So if this is all some sort of domestic dispute—“

“No, I’m sorry. Sorry,” Joshua says. “This is different.”

“Again, I don’t mean any accusation, sir, but have you noticed anything different about your fiancée lately? Spending time with new people? Any alcohol or drug abuse?”

                                                                                                     ***

Along with joining Pinterest and adopting a frenzied skincare regime, Jules stopped eating meat the millisecond we got engaged. She always bitched about the idiocy of her friends who did juice diets, but figured going vegetarian would help her with the whole bridal beauty vision. It’s all a giant racket, women getting too worked up over all that crap. Something’s always wrong with them. Things that aren’t even real. I have fat under my ass. My stretch marks have stretch marks. My legs feel like they’re crawling all the time. Julie went into full combatant mode for all of these imaginary ailments.

“I’m going to teach you the most important two words of your married life,” my father-in-law told me after Julie came back from two days of doctors’ appointments with a prescription for curing restless leg syndrome and a pamphlet about liposuction.

“What’s that?” I asked him.

“Yes, dear.”

                                                                                                     ***

“Hello?” I hear from behind me.

I freeze. I shouldn’t have left the tunnel. I should have stayed until it was dark.

“Ma’am, are you lost?”

“Stay back! Stay away from me!”

“I’m not going to hurt you. But this is my land.”

“I won’t be here long—I’m passing through. I’m gone!”

“Hey, wait—aren’t you the woman from the news? The one who went missing from that Kum & Go?”

                                                                                                     ***

“Harkless, they found your girl.” Rhodes stretches the phone in his direction. Harkless waves it away.

“Get the address. I’m on my way.”

                                                                                                     ***

Mirapex. I squeeze the bottle in my fist as I watch the cop escort Julie up the driveway toward the house. She looks confused, as she should—the drugs are probably still in her system. In my other hand I’m clenching the packet of fine print. Mirapex may cause trouble breathing, tremors, changes in vision…and in rare cases, compulsive behaviors such as gambling, excessive drinking, or shoplifting.

Of course I wouldn’t have noticed. Planning a wedding breeds compulsion. I’m not sure what I can blame on the wedding and what on the drugs. What is Julie and what is some phantom.

“They caught me,” Julie says, freeing herself from the cop’s grasp. “I guess I’m back.”

“Why did you leave?” I say. I’m trying to slow my breathing, reminding myself I shouldn’t expect a coherent response.

She doesn’t answer me. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a flower—a honeysuckle blossom?—and offers it to me.

“I’m back,” she says again.

My muscles, tensed for two days, loosen. Then she reaches into her purse and retrieves a pair of shiny aviators.

“I got these for you,” Jules whispers.

                                                                                                     ***

Harkless pats his empty pocket.

“Rhodes,” he says. “You seen my shades?”

Written by: Dot Dannenberg

Photograph by: Angela DeRay