Lobsang

A carpet may be spread for anyone:
spread for the Buddha bathed in blood,
and also for the weaver
of the same blood-stained carpet.
- "Every town is a hometown, all people are kin," Sukirtharani

Lobsang was aged thirty-two when I first met him. He was passing through Calcutta, headed southward. He had come down from the northern plains a few weeks ago. He was headed south to visit a hospital where a fellow monk, a friend, was admitted for surgery.

I was waiting for a north-bound suburban train at Sealdah when I wandered into the long-distance platforms out of boredom. I took a seat beside a tea vendor. When sipping on tea a beggar approached me, whom I told forthrightly that I had no money with me. I was unemployed and we were in the same boat.

"Give me the tea then. Or buy me one."

"No, I can't." An eerie sense of guilt went through my spine, recognizable through years of encounters. Passing through the streets of Calcutta, one becomes familiar with these feelings especially when indulging in hedonism in the gaze of the have-nots. The feeling goes away a few minutes later, very similar to any guilt induced by capitalism and inequality.

The beggar went towards Lobsang. Lobsang was seated on the ground. The beggar asked him for money and he handed some over. He asked again, and Lobsang handed over more money. This went on for a while till Lobsang got up and walked away. The beggar came back towards the tea vendor with a grin on his face and looked at me and said, "What would you do with so much money?"

I would later learn my guilt was nothing compared to what bothered Lobsang.

I ran into him the next day at Sudder Street. I was waiting by the crossing beside Blue Sky Café for a friend to arrive. She had texted to tell me that she wasn’t going to be on time, so I started wandering around the street and smoking cigarettes to while away time.

The sky was overcast with a comfortable chill in the air, one that didn’t require more than one layer of clothing. I liked to loiter around Sudder Street and observe people whenever I had a chance. One could find a diverse group of people here, from the middle class looking for a fix or a drink, to tourists waiting to be haggled by another class of Indians. A lot of white and east Asian tourists halted in the cheap hotels targeted for backpackers. Since the hippies first arrived, neighbourhoods such as these in most cities learned to peddle religion, drugs, ethnic trinkets and clothes to the young backpackers seeking adventure, belief, and authenticity.

It didn’t take long for the drug peddlers to start asking me what I was seeking. One of the peddlers told me some new stuff had arrived, which the city hadn't seen before. I told him I had no money. He asked me to spread the word. I responded with a certain nod of the head. When my friend arrived she stood with me on the street and smoked some more while we bathed in the comfortable winter wind.

That's when I saw him again, or so I thought. A Buddhist monk was walking by on the street.

"Oi, bald man. Oi, Buddhist. Need some stuff?" the peddler shouted out to him.

The crowd around the narrow crossroad turned its gaze towards the peddler. He kept shouting and calling out to Lobsang. Lobsang kept his eyes on the ground, not moving from the feet. As Lobsang walked away from the lane towards the main road, the peddler turned around to see the crowd staring at him. The peddler looked all around and started laughing as the crowd dispersed and he took a drunken walk to the curb and sat down.

***

Lobsang ran away from his monastery when he was twenty-nine. He had come to Calcutta to look for certain books when a man had mugged him on the streets in the night. With no money to go back, he reacted. He ran behind the man who stole the money and tackled him on the ground. The man reacted with his elbows but Lobsang hit him in the face a few times till his fist was bloodied. The tussle went on for what felt like a few minutes. When Lobsang got up, he noticed that the man was not moving and his clothes were tattered.

Lobsang went to the nearest police station with his bloodied, torn attire, surrendered and confessed the whole incident. He stayed locked up in the prison for eight months while he waited for his trail to finish. The state-sponsored lawyer made sure he was proven not guilty with a plea of self-defense. The man he had killed, was a repeating offender. It did not take the judge much to persuade.

Since then Lobsang has roamed the streets of Calcutta and Eastern India without any affiliation to a monastery, much like students unaffiliated to the universities, reading and studying on their own. Lobsang wrote about his days in the prison in a national daily. He wrote about how in his life of repentance he had come closer to the common people and in the process acquired greater knowledge. The insularity of the monasteries had never led him to ponder on deeper questions of practical ethics. When was it right or wrong to kill a man?

***

It was when he was published in the daily, which was later syndicated across various websites and social media, I recognized the man I saw on the streets those two times. Lobsang was a man who was much more complicated than he first appeared under the simple clothing. The ochre-colored cloth seemed to me like a vessel to carry the ascetic body and also a costume to hide behind. As the media lapped over him and slowly projected him as a man of wisdom, I started to wonder whether wisdom was too hasty a word to use for anyone.

During an encounter with Lobsang when I accompanied my friend Romila, a documentary director, he looked into the camera and gave elaborate answers to all questions Romila threw at him. During one of the interviews that he was giving for a television network, we followed him into the studio and recorded the interview from behind the studio cameras. His face never flinched when he confessed about the killing. His smiles transitioned effortlessly into a contemplative face. We replayed the videos in slow motion but couldn’t find an iota of guilt on his face. His wandering it appeared had indeed purged his guilt.

When we asked him what motivated him to write in the daily, his eyes looked into one of the cameras for a second and then looked straight into Romila’s eyes and he answered, “I wanted to share the knowledge I accumulated over the years.”

Written by: Debarun Sarkar

Photograph by: Michael Ken

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

Owned

“I’m not trying to go over to Bruce’s tonight,” I told him.

“You’ll go if I say you go. And I say you go. The girls can wait. They won’t run out of vodkatinis or shit. You go to Bruce’s first.”

“I don’t like his friends.”

“They won’t mess with you. Just drop the stuff and leave. Turn around, I’ll zip your dress.”

He pulled the zipper up my spine. I adjusted my boobs and pulled down my hem.

“You owe me, honey,” I said, stepping into my gold heels.

He caught my chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned my face towards his.

“Not quite, baby. I own you.”

                                                                                               ***

A cloud is nothing solid—you can walk right through it. On ground, we call it fog. But it's solid enough to stop you from seeing where you're going. It's solid enough to cast a shadow.

On the stand, I said I was in a cloud. I said my thoughts were soft—that the world had a film over it. That nothing felt real. My car’s AC had been broken for months.

“Maybe it was the heat,” I said.

“And what did Officer Cortano say when he pulled you over?”

“He said—I was speeding. He asked for my registration—I think. His voice was quiet.”

“Because of the cloud?” asked the prosecutor, rolling her eyes.

“Because of the cloud.”

“And then what happened?”

“I—that’s where it gets really fuzzy.”

“How convenient.”

They wheeled in one of those boxy tube TVs from the 90’s and rolled the tape.

Here comes the cloud: that tape, low quality, but clear enough, recording through the window of Cortano’s car parked behind mine. I’m nothing but a dark shape in my car, then an arm, holding out my documents. There’s Cortano, walking back towards the camera. He’s opening the car door; running my license. There’s Cortano walking back to my car. Me getting out. Him pointing to the curb where he wants me to sit. Me sitting as he goes through my car, as he finds my purse. Me standing when he finds what’s in it—the corner-cut sandwich baggies of meth, which he lays out across the hood of my car in a circle, like a fairy ring. His lips are moving, but the tape doesn’t have sound.

The shadow: There’s me, still standing behind Cortano. I’m reaching down and removing my gold stiletto. I’m swinging my arm. The stiletto makes contact with Cortano’s neck. There’s blood. We’re both on the ground, him fumbling for his gun, for anything. My arm, still swinging, again and again. Me, standing, reaching for the keys on the hood of my car. Launching myself behind the wheel. Tearing away.

The prosecutor let the tape run—Cortano’s still down, not moving. For awhile, that’s it. Then a second set of lights flash across his limp body as backup arrives on the scene.

The prosecutor stopped the tape.

“No further questions.”

My lawyer called expert witnesses, defined my behavior as “a dissociative state” caused by flashbacks to my abusive childhood with my father, who beat me. Who did all sorts of awful things she can’t even summon in court, because I can’t put them into words.

But the shadow has no sympathy.

                                                                                               ***

Bruce opened the door before I could knock.

“Well, look who it is!”

“I’m not coming in,” I said, reaching in my bag.

His hand latched over my wrist.

“Not on my front step. It’s still light.” His lip buckled in contempt. He yanked me inside. “Give the boys what they want. I gotta take a leak,” he said, and headed for the back of the house.

His friends were sitting around the table, halfway to loaded.

“You wanna give me some of what you got?” one said. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, making him look like a sick demon.

“You got the money?” I asked. I tried to duplicate Bruce’s snarl. “I’m here for your delivery. That’s it.”

“Hey mama, we don’t have to be that way,” he crooned, rising from his chair and snaking toward me. “Can’t buy love, right?”

He wrapped his arm around me, pulling me against him and cupping my ass.

I twisted my face away from his, seeing one of Bruce’s other boys fumbling with his belt buckle.

I shoved him away and ran for my car.

The cloud started rolling in as I punched the gas pedal. Just go, get away. They’re all too high to follow. I rolled up my windows and locked the doors when I cleared the block, just in case, even though it was a million degrees with the humidity trapped inside.

Then I saw the blue lights behind me.

I’m saved. I’m—still carrying. I yanked at the top of my dress and twisted my hair to the side. I slowed my breathing, trying to embody the classy girl headed out for a night on the town with her girlfriends. I prepped myself for the doe eyes, for the speech about being sorry for speeding. They don’t search you for a speeding ticket.

Then I saw him in my rearview mirror. He’d changed into his uniform. I didn’t know he was working tonight.

“What did I say to do?” he said, hitting each word slowly, as if speaking to a child.

“What are you doing? Bruce’s friend—he—”

“We’re going to play this by the books. You’re going to hand me your license and registration now. And give me the keys.”

“Honey, what are you doing?” I whispered again, my breath catching. I passed him my paperwork and turned off the car.

“I think you need to be reminded who’s in charge,” he said. “You’re done.”

As he walked back to his car and ran my license, going through the motions, I couldn’t see where this was going. Where I was going.

                                                                                               ***

We get an hour a day in the yard, which is really more of a dog run. Just dry dirt and a narrow rectangle of fence. We’re not allowed to talk, but I don’t mind. What’s there to say? Who would believe me? I’m just a meth head who paralyzed a cop.

In here, we all wear soft, criminal-orange clogs as light as styrofoam. They’re not gold stilettos, but at least they’re free. I’m free. No one owns me now but the state, and they barely know my name. Overhead, the sky is blue and completely clear.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Vrinda Agrawal

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

Motives

Angie’s cat gave Jayden that I-know-what-you’re-about-to-do look as he sat on the curb and spun his cell phone back and forth in his hands.

“Shut up, cat,” Jayden said. He sounded as stupid as Angie when she pranced out onto her patio in her underwear to feed the cat the dregs of her breakfast cereal. Sweet kitty! Kit-kit-kitty! Angie lived next door, and according to Jayden’s mother, spent rather a lot of time in her underwear as a profession, not just to give the neighbors a show.

The cat folded his flabby body in half and began to groom his undercoat, as if to say, “The thing that makes cats refined is we never say anything.”

Jayden checked the time on his cell phone. The plan would work. Wouldn’t it?

The cat stretched out his legs and began licking his privates. “At least I’m the real deal,” he seemed to say. “No shame. You’re a faker. Just look at your shoes.”

His shoes were brand new Adidas that he’d run over with his mom’s car to make them look beat up and vintage.

Jayden was going to call in a bomb threat. He was waiting until 11:05, the very moment the bell would ring for fourth period, to call the school’s front office.

It was 11:00. Jayden was almost sad he’d miss the chaotic moment. The skeptical but pounding pulse in Principal O’Shannon’s neck as he smacked the phone into its holster and hissed for the secretary to summon the campus cop. The teachers scuffling to herd everyone out into the parking lot across the street from the school, the one behind the old Piggly Wiggly.

The Piggly Wiggly, where the real bomb was hiding.

11:01. Angie’s cat stopped his beautification project. He was still slumped over, his white legs poking out like those of a pale man just home from work, stripped down to his boxers and collapsing into a Lay-Z Boy.

“You want me to bring you a beer?” Jayden drawled at the cat.

He knew when they linked the bombing to him they’d question his sanity. Talking to cats was a good start.

They’d peel through his life. They’d look for all his secrets, find none, and then construct some out of thin air.

They’d have his mother on TV, asking for privacy. The news would broadcast a street view shot of his sister’s dormitory at the University of Alabama. His sister, a bright young girl studying to be a doctor, recently returned from a medical mission trip to Belize, the news anchors would say. They’d shake their heads. They’d speculate about terrorist connections in Belize. They’d compare him to all the others who had come before.

But he wasn’t like all of them, his friend from an elementary school soccer team would say on Channel 5. Jayden wasn’t angry. He wasn’t bullied. No, I don’t think he was a psychopath.

11:03. It was interesting thinking of himself in the past tense.

Angie’s cat had enough of Jayden’s gaze. He stretched his back, spiking his claws into the ground a few times, before stalking off across the parking lot.

Jayden wondered what it would be like to be reborn as another person, maybe in Texas, maybe with a new name. He knew that wasn’t how it would shake out.

11:05. He tapped the school’s number into his phone, then Principal O’Shannon’s extension. Three rings.

“Ashton High School.”

“There’s a bomb in the building.” Jayden didn’t make any effort to disguise his voice.

“’Scuse me?”

“A bomb. In the building.”

“Who is this? Is this a joke?”

Jayden hung up the phone. His heart beat normally. He felt neither hot nor cold. He watched as if, almost in slow motion, Angie’s cat sauntered through the parking lot and sat in the middle of the drive.

The sun was shining. The students wouldn’t complain as they were led out of the school and closer to the ticking Piggly Wiggly building. They’d laugh. I bet it was Colton Simpkins, since he got suspended! Yeah, I bet he’s mad about missing football. Nah, I think Dontavius called it in. He hates fourth period chem.

11:08. And now, he waited. The bomb was set to go off at 11:17, just enough time for everyone to make it to the safety area. They’d done timed tests for fire drills. The current record was ten minutes, but Jayden had planned conservatively.

A white Honda Accord roared into the apartment complex from the street. It was going way too fast, thumping some R&B disaster at top volume. When the front bumper made contact with the cat, its furry black body, now looking somehow smaller, flew through the air and landed crumpled in the gutter.

The driver got out. It was Angie. Jayden could read the string of expletives forming on her lips. She stumbled toward the cat, but then pivoted and got back in the car.

The Honda reversed, skidded, and peeled out of the complex.

Was she drunk?

Jayden knew this was not a moment for judgment. He checked his phone as he walked towards the gutter. 11:14.

The cat was stiff. He nudged it with the toe of his Adidas. The cat gave a little rumble. Purring? Its dented body inflated.

“You good, buddy?” Jayden said.

The cat cracked an eyelid. Even having just dodged death, it could make time for a stink eye.

“What life was that? Four, seven? Hope you’re not up to nine.”

Jayden knew without checking his phone: 11:17. The ground of the apartment complex, only a mile from the abandoned Piggly Wiggly, shook. The cat lifted his head up out of the gutter. Jayden scratched him behind the ears.

Then Jayden ran towards the woods away from the direction of the blast.

They’d find his name on the absence list at the school. They’d trace his number from O’Shannon’s office phone. They’d bring in Angie as a witness. I might have seen him skipping school. He always did seem a little strange. They’d ask themselves why. They’d construct and deconstruct possible motives. They’d count the bodies. They’d hold a candlelight vigil. They’d find him. If he made it through the stakeout alive, they’d ask their questions.

And then he’d fold himself in half in the interrogation room chair. He’d look at the cops as if they were idiots. He’d say nothing. Just like the cat.


Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

Hail Caesar!, or The Extended Obituary of Nell Riley Foster

Nell Riley Foster, 23, of Brooklyn...

I can't do this.

Okay, fine - I don't want to do this. I volunteered. It's too late to back out now.

Nell Riley Foster, 23, of Brooklyn died early Sunday morning because some fucker got greedy and decided to rob the corner bodega with a loaded gun.

I shouldn’t say that, but you know when people your age die there's always that morbid curiosity about how it happened. I have to say something, Nell.

Nell Riley Foster, 23, of Brooklyn, died early Sunday morning. She was the victim of a violent crime.

Happy?

Nell was born to Patrick and Lori Foster, March 15th, 1990, in Cambridge, Mass. After her brother learned about the Ides of March, he called her 'Caesar' and staged elaborate fake assassinations on her birthday. He feels a mixture of discomfort and joy about this now.

Of course I won't include that when I send it. That is too personal. Still, if only I hadn't tempted death or God or karma thirteen times.

Nell graduated from Cambridge Rindge & Latin School in 2007 and received a BA in English from Brown University in 2011. Nell studied abroad in Italy the summer before her junior year. She took an intensive language immersion course but still mistranslated dishes at Italian restaurants. She dated a guy who doesn't want to come to her memorial because it's "too hard, bro."

You'll note that out of respect, I did not call him a douchebag this time.

He is a total douchebag, though.
Nell worked for an online literary start-up. She blogged about Shakespeare's wittiest, dirtiest double entendres and why Northanger Abbey is a better Jane Austen novel than Pride & Prejudice. Her favorite response to readers' angry messages was "haters gonna hate." Her editor's favorite response was "I appreciate your comments and will keep this perspective in mind."

In her spare time, Nell wrote haiku poetry on fogged windows and steamed-up mirrors. Her goal was to finish the poem before the glass cleared. She became really good at it, dissecting syllable counts with an invisible abacus.

Nell spent a staggering amount of time contacting “those Iron Chef people.” She engaged in a one-woman campaign to have Nutella appear as the secret ingredient. Her emails bordered on propaganda.

Nell ran every day. Her brother would sometimes join her, but not enough for his own health, he thinks now that he has an opportunity to reflect and to regret.

Her legal name was "Nell," not Eleanor. She was very happy her parents skipped right to the nickname.

Nell preferred Thai curry to Indian curry, naan to pita bread, and coffee to tea. Her favorite taste was “Nutella” although she liked to use “umami” when the occasion arose. Based on her own ordering and cooking preferences, it seldom did.

This has turned into “Fun Facts about Nell.” I had to Google “how to write an obituary.” It seems like content shifts from salient biographies to trivia. Maybe I can contact your old editor and write a piece about it. It would either be hilarious or macabre. I’m betting the latter.

If our places were reversed, you would have made it a personal challenge. It would have been the former; it would have been brilliant and pitch-perfect, probably the best piece you’d ever written (but not the best piece you’d ever write). It would be a glorious memorial.

It should have been me, Nell. I should have gone with you. I could have pushed you out of the way. I could have done something. Even if it all played out the same - the stumbled-upon robbery, the gun, the shot - I would have been there with you.

What's the old saying? The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long. You burned so bright you left pieces of yourself behind, and you linger like the light people see when they close their eyes. I swear I see you everywhere. Faint lines of you glow in panes of glass; your laugh smolders in my dreams (and nightmares); your smile flickers in the corner of my eyes. There is something comforting about walking into an empty room and it not feeling so empty anymore. Maybe I’m going crazy - I probably am; crazy is what happens when you intertwine your sister’s obituary with a letter to her, a letter she can’t see, a letter she’ll never see because she - you -

I need to take a break.

Nell is survived by her elder brother, Chase Foster, of Brooklyn; and her parents, Patrick and Lori Foster, of Cambridge. She is also survived by a chubby cat named Hazelnut and a betta fish named Cocoa.

Hazelnut and Cocoa seem to be adjusting to life with Mom and Dad. We try to adjust to life without you. It doesn’t always take.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in Nell's name to 826 National, a national literary charity.

You mentioned trying to find a place to volunteer, and when I came to get Hazelnut and Cocoa I saw the pamphlet on your desk. It wasn't in the recycling pile, so I am almost positive it was on your shortlist and we would have talked about it.

For the record, I would have said "go for it!"

A private memorial service will be held at her family's home in Cambridge.

I will cry because you are gone. I will laugh at the good memories you gave me.

I miss you. I love you.

I know I will see you again when a room is empty. I will feel your presence fill it. Empty rooms are the dominion of the dead.

I will keep trying to adjust to life without you.

It will take. Eventually.

Written by: Erin Justice
Photograph by: Whitney Ott

The Outer Borough

It was all too familiar. After awhile, all crime scenes started to feel the same. Especially the smell. The tinny smell of blood always saturated whatever shithole apartment the victim died in. And they were all shithole apartments in this part of town.

“Give me the rundown, Peterson,” Detective Thorne said as he snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, squatting to get a better look at the body.

“The victim’s name is Esther Walker. Sixty-three years old. Cause of death appears to be multiple stab wounds to her chest. Lives here in this apartment with her husband, Charles Walker.”

“Do we know where he is?” Thorne asked.

There were gelatinous mounds of blood surrounding Esther’s body, which told Thorne that the stab wounds he saw had penetrated her lungs. The blood had coagulated inside her body before seeping out onto the dated beige carpet.

“He’s supposed to be at work. South Bronx Auto Body over off of White Street. Our boys already checked it out, he’s not there. We got an APB out on him. Get this though, Charles is six months out of the pen. He was released last year after serving thirty years on a life sentence for the murder of a seventeen-year-old girl back in '79. The medical examiner’s report indicates that the girl was sexually assaulted and then stabbed to death.” Officer Peterson eyed Esther’s body and the similar wounds on her body. He was giddy, “You think he did this?”

Thorne glared at him. Peterson’s smirk quickly faded.

“Any eyes on a potential murder weapon?” Thorne asked as he scanned the one-bedroom apartment, hoping to gather enough clues to reconstruct the events leading up to Esther’s death.

“No, nothing yet.”

There was religious imagery everywhere. Esther was a woman of faith, after all. She had held on to hope all those years that her husband was innocent. For three long decades, she had filed petition after petition to have her husband freed, paying attorneys inordinate amounts of money, and begging non-profits to take on her husband’s case.

“My Charlie is innocent,” she had told reporters. “Charlie always told me that we would save up and move out to the country together. He wanted to get away from the big city. Charlie never did like it here. He said it corrupted people. After this experience, I believe it. The prosecutors, they didn’t have any leads, so they pinned it on him. Well, I have faith that Charlie and I will be reunited again one day and that we’ll make his dream of leaving this place a reality.”

Esther’s resolve ultimately paid off. She had finally brought her husband home and they would start saving up to move upstate, out of the city.

                                                                                                    ***

Charles had been nursing a glass of Jameson for a few hours now. The Blarney Stone was a few blocks away from his apartment, but Esther would never know to look for him there. He had lost his taste for alcohol in prison, but didn’t know where else to go.

“Charlie,” Gary started from behind the bar.

“Don’t call me that, only Esther calls me that,” Charles replied, still looking into his glass of brown liquor.

“Charles,” Gary continued, “what’s going on? You’ve been coming here every morning for the past week, ordering a glass of whiskey that you don’t touch, not saying a word to anyone.” Gary had known Charles from before the conviction, he hesitated before adding, “Look, I can’t even imagine what you’re going through, but you gotta start living again. Get back into a normal routine – go to work and at the end of the day, go home to your loving wife.”

“I killed her Gary,” Charles said suddenly.

“What?” Gary was taken aback.

“I’ve never told anyone, but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. I was drunk, that’s not an excuse, just a fact, and I killed her. I killed that girl.”

“Alright Charles, I think you should stop talking about all that now.” Gary wasn’t sure what to do with the information he was now privy to, wasn’t sure if he was supposed to do anything with it.

“I wanted to confess to the police, I really did, to get it off my chest. But Esther…I couldn’t break her heart. She was fighting so hard for me, you know? I never actually thought she’d be able to get me out. But she did it and they let me go...they let me go on a fucking technicality.”

“Charles, look buddy…” Gary was desperately trying to plug the leak he had inadvertently caused.

“I accepted it Gary,” Charles was looking straight at him now. “I was guilty and I accepted that I was supposed to be in there. I thought it was all over. How are you supposed to go on living after you’ve already accepted death?”

                                                                                                    ***

Nothing in the apartment appeared to have been disturbed, Thorne realized, at least not in any obvious way.

“What happened here?” Thorne wondered to himself.

The only thing that caught Thorne’s eyes was two framed paintings that were hanging at an angle. One was a reproduction of the Last Supper and the other was of a farmhouse. Thorne couldn’t be sure if the paintings had been jarred by a struggle or if they’d been crooked all along.

                                                                                                    ***

“Prison was supposed to be my punishment,” Charles continued, “It was supposed to be how I suffered. But now I’m a free man, living on good fortune that I didn’t earn. Human experiences are always paid back in turn,” Charles said as he threw back his glass of Jameson.

“You’ve been given a second chance Charles,” Gary mustered, not really knowing what to say at all.

“I’m an old man Gary. Even if I had all the time in the world, you can’t make up for taking away someone else’s.”

“You can at least try to lead a good life with what you have left.”

“Maybe, Gary, maybe. At least I have Esther.”

Written by: Sam Chow
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

House of Hope

Marco woke to the sounds of his infant daughter stirring. She hadn’t cried out, but the studio apartment was small and Marco was a light sleeper. He got out of bed and tiptoed to her crib, taking care not to wake his girlfriend and the mother of his child. His daughter smiled as he approached, letting out a high-pitched squeal of delight. She kicked her small feet and shook her small fists, casting the shadows of four mischievous sprites dancing wildly against the fiery orange of the dim streetlamp outside. Marco lifted her from her crib and sang to her softly, “Duermete mi niña, duermete mi amor…”

Marco found out Gabriella, his girlfriend, was pregnant during one of his assignments. He contemplated what Gabriella’s pregnancy would mean for him as he pressed his handgun to the head of the man kneeling in front of him. They were in a narrow alleyway tucked between a shuttered pet shop and an empty bodega. The steel felt cold in Marco’s hands and the click of the hammer was deafening. The trigger resisted the weight of his finger and it took all of his strength to finally pull it. When the deed was done, he paused to catch his breath. He leaned against the stucco wall and let the weight of his body pull him down until he was level with the dead body at his feet. Marco looked away from the corpse and stared instead at the graffiti-strewn wall opposite him. He spotted a wheat-pasted poster of the Virgin Mary directly in his line of sight. It was old and was peeling away from the wall, maybe someone had tried to remove it. The Virgin Mary had been vibrant with color at some point, but was now sun-faded and looked gray in the dark of the night. There, Marco closed his eyes and prayed.

He named his daughter Esperanza, a child born amidst the chaos. Soon after, with the help of some of his friends, Marco left the Maras and found work in construction.

Marco woke again just as dawn was breaking. The world was blue-gray now, colors that signaled the start of his day. He slipped into his dusty work clothes in the bathroom so as not to wake his sleeping family. In front of the mirror, he gently ran his fingers over the scars on his bare chest, a constant reminder of a life just recently past. It all seemed so distant at that moment. Construction wasn’t anything to boast about, but it was legitimate, and he wouldn’t be ashamed to tell his daughter what her father did. It was honorable work. The Lord was a carpenter, a creator of things – who better to emulate?

He was only given a few hours of work that day, hours that had been dwindling more and more in the past year. The economy was down, they told him, and no one was building anymore.

At home, he watched Esperanza play with her toys in her crib, realizing that they had all been gifts. What kind of father couldn’t buy his own daughter toys to play with? Marco glanced around the small, unadorned apartment, his eyes landing on a stack of untouched bills which sat atop a coffee table he salvaged from a street corner. The coffee table, which doubled as a dining table, was made of particle board and had swollen where moisture had breached the paint-chipped surface. The unpaid bills bothered him, but it was the coffee table that sent him in a rage. It was falling apart. It was all falling apart.

“We’re running low on formula,” Gabriella said.

“Okay,” was all Marco could say in reply.

It was chilly outside. Marco had gone downstairs to smoke a cigarette, a habit he promised Gabriella he would kick. He only smoked because it helped calm him, but now each puff he took felt like another dollar stolen from his own daughter. He fumbled with his cellphone in his coat pocket before pulling it out. He scrolled through his contacts until he landed on one from his past.

“I need work Angel,” Marco said.

“You have work Marco,” Angel replied, “in construction.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No Marco. Have you already forgotten how hard it was to leave the Maras? You got a new start. You have a choice now.” Angel had grown up with Marco in El Salvador. They came to the United States together and joined the Maras together. After Esperanza was born, when Marco wanted out, it was Angel that convinced the Maras to leave him be.

“What choice? A choice between living like a beggar and living as a criminal? It’s the street one way or the other. You’re telling me that I can choose to be a mouse or a rat. Men like us will always be fighting for scraps, better to be feared than weak.”

“You have a family Marco.” Angel was desperate.

“Exactly.” Marco, more so.

There was a pause and a sigh. “Fine, meet me in the alleyway behind Lee’s Grocery, you remember where that is?”

“Sure, the bodega by the old pet store.” The image of the Virgin Mary flashed in Marco’s mind and for a moment he hesitated, but only for a moment.

It was late when Marco returned. He opened his apartment door as quietly as possible, but woke Esperanza anyway. She cried loudly, waking Gabriella.

“I’ve got her,” Marco said to his girlfriend, “go back to sleep.” Marco, without looking, felt the disappointment in Gabriella’s eyes, but she said nothing as she pulled the covers over her shoulders.

As Marco embraced Esperanza, bouncing her lightly against his chest, she slowly drifted back to sleep. After she had dozed off, Marco held her out in front of him as she lay flat on his forearm. She felt warm and soft against his skin.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he whispered to her. And then he sang, “Duermete mi niña, duermete mi amor…”

Written by: Sam Chow
Photograph by: Chris Boyles

Lord Guan's Altar

“Detective Li, I just got a domestic violence call over at Redemption Towers. The patrol officer in the area is busy following up on an armed robbery. Do you mind watching the front desk while I look into it?”

It was 3:00 AM. It’d been months since Li had requested the shift change, but he was still unaccustomed to his new hours. He was restless, the prospect of manning the intake desk was unappealing. “I’ll take care of it,” he replied.

The Towers were a pair of government-subsidized residential buildings in Western. They were colloquially called Redemption Towers because the aggregate criminal record of its inhabitants rivaled that of Hong Kong island’s entire population. Naturally, the Towers were a hive for triad activity, so domestic violence calls were not unusual. The sidewalks leading to the Towers were swollen and cracked with age—damaged and neglected with no prospect for repair. Li sidestepped the disrepair and ignored the wary glances he received from residents as he made his way up Tower East.

The door to apartment 5B was askew and opened into a small kitchen, where the cabinets had been emptied. A doorway on the right led to the apartment’s sole bedroom. Alice was alone, sitting hunched on a twin-sized bed amidst a sea of debris from what appeared to have been dinner plates. She stared blankly at Li as he tiptoed his way towards her. A fresh bruise was forming on the left side of her swollen face and a streak of dried blood was smeared across her upper lip. She wasn’t crying, nor was there any indication that she had been.

“Let’s get you to the hospital,” Li said. She grabbed her purse and followed him out without a word.

The drive to the hospital was a hushed one and it wasn’t until she came out of the doctor’s office, cleaned and bandaged, that she finally broke her silence in the waiting room where Li was sipping lukewarm coffee.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Back at the precinct, Alice was cautious in her narrative. Her boyfriend, a low-ranking member of the Three Brothers Triad, had beaten her. He’d discovered that she’d been stealing from him. But that’s where her story stopped—she refused to give up his identity and had no desire to press charges. The silence that Li had previously managed to dispel now persisted.

Alice was staring at a small desktop altar that sat above an old, dusty television in Li’s office.

“Do you believe he protects you?” She was referring to the ceramic icon of Lord Guan, angry and red-faced.

After a pause, Li replied, “No, I’d given up on gods a long time ago. After losing a wife and son to the triads, there’s not much energy left over for faith. That’s why you shouldn’t protect your boyfriend.”

She ignored his admonition. “Ironic isn’t it, Lord Guan, god of war, patron saint to cops and crooks alike. My boyfriend burns incense to him every morning. I’m sure your officers do the same.”

Alice continued, “How’d they die?”

“Who?”

“Your wife and son.”

Li was silent.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t pry,” Alice said.

“No, it’s alright. It’s supposed to be healthy to talk about one’s tragedies. My wife was kidnapped and shot—the price she paid for being married to a cop. And my son, well, death isn’t the only way you can lose a loved one to the triads…”

When Li realized he wasn’t going to coax any more out of her about her boyfriend, he drove her home.

It was early afternoon by the time Li’s shift ended. He stopped for dinner at Ang’s House of Curry and a cup of tea at Harmony’s before heading home. He was a regular at both spots. Routine, the doctor said, would help.

At home, he went straight to bed but was unable to fall asleep despite his exhaustion. There was an umbra of stubborn daylight illuminating the heavy curtains he had installed in a futile effort to imitate darkness. As Li lay in the stifling heat of the Hong Kong summer, he wondered if he would ever sleep again. He had changed his work schedule because of sleeplessness, which he attributed to the unbearable silence of the night. He hoped the urban frenzy, which broadcasted itself through his walls, would comfort him by mimicking the sounds his home had lost. It did not.

In his most sleepless moments, his mind wandered. Today, it was Alice. For hours he couldn’t shake the image of her milk-white innocence and fragility and the dark bloodied stains her gangster boyfriend had defiled her with.

Soon, Li was outside Tower East, coffee in hand. It was late afternoon. Sunglasses shielded his bloodshot eyes, burning in the way fatigued eyes do, from the sun. Each time he blinked, Alice’s face flashed before him. Blink. She’s smiling at him teasingly as her loose t-shirt flutters in the breeze. Blink. She’s looking down coyly as she combs her hair back behind her left ear. Blink. Her bare legs move back and forth as she shuffles her feet. Blink.

The air in the stairwell was stagnant. Beads of sweat trickled down Li’s neck and into the collar of his shirt as he made his way up to apartment 5B. The door was unlocked. Alice’s boyfriend was in the kitchen with his back facing the front door. Li heard shuffling in the bedroom—Alice. Blink.

The pistol quivered in his trembling hands as his exhaustion began manifesting itself. He pulled the trigger, striking the boy in his lower back. Alice appeared from the bedroom, letting out a bloodcurdling scream, “NOOOOO!”

As the boy’s legs buckled beneath the weight of his distorting body, he turned, revealing himself to Li. Li’s heart shuddered as he leapt towards the boy, in Alice’s arms now.

Li cried, “Danny? Danny?!”

He had lost his son twice now and there was cold comfort in the fact that he would never lose him again.

Photograph By: Jaemin Riley
Written By: Sam Chow