American Terror

Vincent is breaking up with Jack.

He sits in the car, staring at the green doors of his high school. Jack will be done with track practice at 6:30 PM, and Vincent will drive him home. Jack will blabber on about Demi Lovato supposedly quitting music while Vincent bites his cuticles and steers with his left hand. He will pull up in front of Jack’s house, and Jack will try to kiss him. Vincent will not reciprocate, and then he will end their relationship.

Because it’s that easy.

Vincent and Jack grew up going to school together. When they were in eighth grade, Jack asked Vincent to be his date at the winter formal. Jack wore an ice blue tie with a white button down shirt and navy suit. Vincent wore a red suit and black button down because why not? They shared their first dance and their first kiss. They went to Waffle House with some friends after the formal, and then they made out in Vincent’s car until curfew at 12am.

Jack’s father was some big shot at a steel plant, and he’d hire Jack to work during the summers. He would take Vincent up to the rooftop of one of the abandoned warehouses, and they’d drink root beer and eat beef jerky. That’s where Jack said, “I love you,” for the first time, and Vincent said it back even though they were only sixteen years old. You gotta fall for somebody sometime, right?

Jack opens the passenger door and sits down, his hair wet from a locker room shower. Vincent half expects a peck on the cheek, but it doesn’t come. They pull out onto the highway as the sun starts to set. Vincent asks if Jack would like to get something to eat, but he declines. The silence is palpable; Vincent’s heart pulses a little faster because he feels like Jack knows he’s going to break up with him.

“Vince, I think we need to talk,” Jack says.

Vincent forces his eyes not to widen as he asks, “What about?”

“Us.”

Jesus, he does know, Vincent thinks.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what our future looks like,” Jack begins. “We’re juniors now, and senior year is gonna be so busy with college applications and SATs and all that.”

He’s going to do this for me, Vincent thinks with George Costanza charm. He nods, furrowing his brow to show he’s hurt, but understands.

“I just think - Vince, stop. STOP!”

A skunk is walking across the road, taking its time in the dark. The beams from the headlights reflect off the white stripe down its back before Vincent runs over it. They feel the skunk collide with the bottom of the car, and then the odor pours in through the vents. Vincent does not slow down.

The silence and stench held onto each other for what felt like hours.

“That was horrible,” Jack says.

“Ugh, yeah, that smell?” Vincent replies.

“No, Vince. That you killed it. You fucking killed it when you could’ve stopped.”

Vincent stares ahead, unsure of how to respond. He’s thinking about the blood that might be on the car, and if the smell if going to go away anytime soon.

“I thought the car was higher. I wasn’t trying to kill it.”

Jack scoffs, folding his arms over his chest and shaking his head. “You thought the car was higher.”

“Whatever. God, I’m sorry.”

Vincent turns into Jack’s subdivision, driving past the neighborhood pool and clubhouse. There’s an older couple out for an evening walk with their golden retriever. He pulls up to Jack’s house and puts the car in park. Jack doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t move.

Vincent has been spending time alone, pouring over news and Wikipedia articles about guerilla warfare. It’s hard being seventeen and feeling like the only way you can change the world is through violence. Vincent was breaking up with Jack because tomorrow he will detonate the bombs he planted beneath the stage in the gymnasium of their high school. Republican vice presidential nominee Governor Sarah Spoke will be there, and her death will be a great victory for the LGBQT community. How could he ever forget the leaked audio recording of her hatred for “fags and their ilk?” His classmates and teachers will be a necessary sacrifice.

“Hey, I really am sorry for hitting that skunk. I didn’t mean to, I swear,” Vincent says.

“Vince, we need to break up. It’s not just because we’re going to be busy next year. It’s because you’ve been really weird. I mean, I know you’ve been at the school in the middle of the night. What the hell are you doing?”

Vincent feels his heart pounding in his throat. His palms are slick with sweat and he presses them against his thighs, staring at the clock of his dashboard.

“Why were you spying on me?”

“Spying?” Jack asks. “Why the fuck would you share your location with me if you didn’t want me to know where you were?”

Vincent had completely forgotten that they had toggled their phones to share their locations. After months of preparation, he never once thought about Jack wondering what he was doing.

“Forget it. You’re right, Jack. We probably don’t need to see each other anymore.”

“Are you even going to tell me what you’ve been doing at school at fucking four o'clock in the morning for the past two weeks?”

“I’ve been hooking up with Sam Guest,” Vincent blurted out.

Another immeasurable silence before Jack says, “I see. Well, no use crying over your backstabbing ass.”

Jack gets out of the car and shuts the door, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he walks up the driveway to his house.

Vincent thinks about Jack’s dad’s plan to surprise him tomorrow with a trip to the mountains, and how they’ll be three hours up the interstate when the bombs go off and make Vincent a hero in the war against intolerance.


Written by: Natasha Akery
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

River in Time

The river calls and I heed Her, my addiction. Once, a human load of clothes set to life-or-death. The spillway ravages my teenage body. I fight, but can’t win; sweet surrender. Then my hand bumps a rock. A hateful, unapologetic rock that put me into my predicament. One last fight to gain the murky light. I grab Gibraltar and propel myself to air, to heaven, to life. A sandbar oasis; August heat from a Midwestern sun. Her lust be damned.

* * *

The river summons and I gravitate to Her, my sun. Another time, a swan dive. Head first into quicksand. Stunned into stupor and paralyzed. I float downstream—a dead tree uprooted by tornadoes. Recovery, I’m not paraplegic. I’m sanctified, I’m whole, I’m vindicated.

* * *

The river begs and I barter, my sanctuary. A toppled tent, torn down by sweaty desire. Our voyeurs, a fisherman and Her. I can taste Her jealousy, Her fury, Her might. This time She’s indirect.

My beloved lab, Pardner, sucked into Her vortex.

Chelsea screams, “If he goes under, he’s dead.”

The water envelops me. His claws rake my shoulders and blood seeps from the gouges. I thrust him up into outstretched hands. Immense suction tickles the hairs on my legs.

Chelsea nurses my wounds. “You’re fucking insane.”

I reset the tent. A brown, furry lump lies in the sand; worn out. Does he know?

The tent collapses again. More sweat, more want, more flippancy. We lie under the vision of ten-trillion stars and She gurgles. A sultry siren crying out all night long. In the morning, dense fog. I pack up the Dasher, on edge. Her fishy eyes on every inch of me. Chelsea and Pardner cavort in Her wicked reach; She relents. We drive away without further incident. A mirror pond reflection in my rearview.

* * *

The river beckons and I run to Her, my abyss. Drunk strangers playing with danger. An infamous back current; their death between my fingers. She waits for Her meal, a crocodile in the shallows. Time to learn, to sort out transgressions, to let bygones be the truth. The early edition reads as day old news: Two Visitors Drown, One Local Teen Hospitalized.

* * *

The river commands and I obey Her, my true directive. A moonless night; revelers dance. Four old tires burn hot—Hades in July. On dare I take the fridge, rusted from age, for a canoe. It sinks into Her open maw, but not before I’m in too deep. A bootlace catches; turbulent water in turmoil. At the bottom, a loud thud. Then, whispering silence. Thousands of sounds muted; listening to intercourse through a wall. I scream, I thrash, I assail until my boot comes free. Surfacing onto a distant planet—salty, foreign, cool.

I crawl out of Her watery grip hundreds of yards downstream. Back in the throe I’m a god, a titan, the river lord. They chant my name; vulcanized rubber drifts skyward into blankness. The party rages and I fuck my first fuck, dab my first dot, fill up an unused tumbler, mark time; a legend begins.

* * *

The river cries out and I ignore Her, our separation. Houses blur, cars die and time recedes; an arrow to nevermore. At night in faraway lands She babbles. A brook bursting its banks. During the day a teasing allure, happy hour to an alcoholic. One day I’ll go back, return to sender, the melting ice of headwaters. How long have I been gone? Years, decades, but not a century that’s for sure—or is it? The call, the summons, the command nothing works. She cries out for me, a mournful moan. Wretches in heat, dinosaurs in bone, the whispering coughs of vagabonds.

I cheat. Swimming pools, lakes, seas and every ocean in between. My body’s escaped, but my mind’s shackled. It’s not my father that built me, nor the clergy, not my betrothed, not even every misstep along the way. The river, that damned North Platte river shaped me. She forged my soul, fired my loins, fed my hunger, and sustained me. In death’s embrace, life isn’t sweeter. It’s necessary. An ageless mandate, the ultimate order that causes chaos—a spark that ignited cosmic fire.

* * *

The river swoons and I come home, full submersion. Fishing pole, bait and a six-pack. On the bank under a searing summer sun, I’m scared and at ease. Things have changed, but it’s me…all me. I’m older, a shell emptied of all its turtle meat, a dead beaver bloating in the sand, the fleshless carp at the bottom of Her rapids. Still, She pumps me up, inflates my sails—the Hindenburg before Lakehurst. She flows downward and up, outward and inward; heaves to and fro. The windswept furrow blown back into a perfect line. Always in perfect alignment; Amazon, Yangtze, Mississippi, Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates.

The shiny lure skips across Her bosom and sinks into Her caveat. I tug the rod and then reel, tug and reel, tug and reel. Wham, fish on. Surprised, I stumble and slide down Her bank. Up to my knees; a wet, sloppy hello-kiss. I yank back the rod, but it’s a big one. Waist deep—a quick tryst under the oaks. One more attempt to land the monster. My head goes under, the pole drifts away. She’s there in front of me, behind, beside, every point of the globe.

* * *

The river lulls and I swim through Her, my reprise. My arms are fins, my feet the lateral line. Gills, if I had gills, I’d swim upstream to spawn. I stroke and it propels me downward. I stroke again—harder, downward more. I’m not disoriented or confused. Another stroke, deeper into the depths and then another, another, another. I hit the sandy bottom, my fist jams into the gravel and silt. Go with it; the other hand jabs even deeper.

I hold myself to the bottom, I’m a kid again. Her rushing current above, peace and serenity below. Pretend I’m Aquaman, pretend I’m leviathan, pretend I’m Neptune. Pretend … pretend … pretend.

Written by: David Grubb

Photo by: Daniel Vidal

Cogito Ergo Zoom

We cruised past the closed gas station lot with a glut of hot cars parked on it. Tim shifted his 1967 Pontiac GTO down to second gear and rode the tach right up to maybe five thousand rpm, the 400-cubic-inch engine roaring and snarling like a chained dragon. My Hemi Charger R/T added to the mechanical harmony. As we wailed away in second gear, two cars rolled out into the darkness behind us. The headlights in our mirrors rocketed up Woodward like anti-aircraft missiles turning toward enemy planes.

We signaled into a wide Woodward crossover to the southbound side at Bassett Street. A wildly modified ’65 Buick Riviera rolled in next to Tim, and a crappy ’62 Ford Galaxie stopped beside my Charger. The Galaxie was not a serious street racer, just a poseur. He couldn’t or didn’t want to spend the money it took to be serious. That’s actually a thing in racing.

Speed costs money. How fast can you afford to go?

The timeless jet-black Riviera was box stock on the outside, but in its engine bay growled a throaty, modified V-8 with the kind of spiteful intent never envisioned by Buick engineers. The owner had spent a lot of money on it, and that did not work in our favor.

We shut down all four cars and stepped out into the street, like gunslingers.

“Hey,” the tubby kid from the Riv said. “You guys lookin’ to see what those things can do out here?” He stood with arms crossed, but it only accentuated his thick midsection and made him look defensive.

Advantage ours.

“We know what our cars will do,” Tim said evenly. “We wanna know what yours will do—if you have the balls.”

The Riviera kid laughed like he’d been challenged this way before, and had sent the annihilated challengers home strapped to the hoods of their cars, like trophies of war.

“Yeah man, I got the balls. You got any money?”

Tim reached into his back pocket and withdrew an envelope thick with fifties.

“Well, all right,” the Ford kid said eagerly. He had a gap-toothed grin and an oily waterfall hairstyle, that sort of surf-wave coming over the front and slicked back on the sides. We looked at him like he was a turd—Not talkin’ to you, jerk.

“You got any money, dude?” Tim demanded. The Riv kid reached into the left front pocket of his blue jeans and pulled out a roll of cash, fanning it back and forth in the air. It looked to be all hundred-dollar bills. A shit-ton of them.

“Asshole, I got the money. You got the courage to go with your daddy’s allowance?”

Tim didn’t take the bait.

“Here’s the deal,” Tim said, deadpan. “One grand, one run, no bullshit. Winner-winner-chicken-dinner. We line up over there at Hadsell Drive and race down Woodward to South Berkshire. That’s a bit more than a quarter mile, but I need less than that to put your shit on the fuckin’ trailer. The first car—the first car—to cross South Berkshire is the winner. Agreed?”

Damn, I thought. Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my college-prep pal, Tim?

“Who holds the money?” the Riv kid snarled. He was trying to sound tough now but it just came off as squeaky indignation. “Somebody needs to hold the money.”

Tim laughed an evil laugh.

“Well, it ain’t gonna be you, and this idiot”—he pointed to the Ford driver—“has an IQ about two points above plant life, so he’s out. We will hold the money.” He gestured to the Ford boy again. “Your little girlfriend here can ride with my friend and the cash, if that blows your skirt up. I get to South Berkshire first, we keep the cash. If you get there first, you get paid. But you are losing tonight, my friend. Bad. Your friends will still be laughing at your ass next September when you go back to do your junior year of vocational school over again.”

“Deal,” the Riv kid said. Tim reached out to shake hands on it and the kid slapped it away. “Fuck your handshake, asshole. Let’s race.” He gave me his cash, got back in his Riviera and burned rubber out onto Woodward.

Tim turned to face me.

“Oooooh,” he stage-whispered, “must be a tough guy.” He smiled with confidence, gave me a thumbs up, and went to his car.

Tim lined up next to the hulking Riviera. When the engines sounded like they were about to explode, I blipped my headlights once and they launched.

A smoky blue curtain of shrieks and melted rubber enveloped them, and then the black Riviera lunged forward like it came off the catapult of an aircraft carrier.

A few seconds later, I saw the flashing red lights of two police cars reflecting off the pine trees in the median between north and south Woodward.

Tim was casually driving twenty-five miles per hour in the center lane when I caught up with him. The Riviera was stopped and bracketed front and rear by two Birmingham police cars, and officers who looked angry even in the poor light.

When our cars rolled past him, the kid glared at us something fierce and Tim flipped him the bird. Seconds later, the GTO indeed was the first car to cross the finish line at South Berkshire. We pulled into the Mobil gas station about a block farther on.

“You can get out here,” I said to the Ford kid sitting next to me. “First car won. You can walk back to your little buddy. He’ll be a few minutes yet.” He got out and looked up Woodward to the traffic stop, irritated and bewildered.

We drove a few miles over to our eastside hangout. I got out of my Charger and into the passenger seat of Tim’s GTO, grabbed his right arm in two hands and shook it forcefully.

“What just happened?!”

He chuckled. “‘Situational awareness.’ I saw those cops lurking on that side street, and goaded that Riviera kid into a big-dollar race knowing he couldn’t resist the challenge. We launched hard, but I shut down.”

I looked at my mastermind friend in frank admiration.

“Then, as you saw, I was the first car to cross South Berkshire. We win. Cogito ergo zoom.”

Cogito ergo sum is a Descartes phrase generally translated into English as “I think, therefore I am.” Cogito ergo zoom was an axiom by legendary advertising and car magazine editor David E. Davis.

It means, “I think, therefore I go fast.”

Written by: Daniel Charles Ross
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

The Killers, Part I

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

“Hey, that’s pretty funny.”

The graffiti is Don’t Open. Dead Inside.

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

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

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

Next week, you turn thirty.

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

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

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

“You ever worry about fate, Carl?”

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

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

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

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

Carl is black, so you ask him.

“Gone fishin’, brother.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What if he ain’t here?” Carl asks.

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

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

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

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

You and Carl take a seat at the bar.

“Place looks faggy,” Carl mutters.

“Get you something?” asks the barista.

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

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

“Anything else?”

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

Written by: Logan Theissen

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Validation

People used to tell me I was a good writer. I worked on some flashy accounts in my 30s. But being able to write isn’t much use to a copywriter since a Twitter feed became an acceptable body of work. I took this freelance job because, well, they offered it to me. No one has done that in a while.

I know they saw my portfolio because the thing I paid a 19-year-old to add to my website told me so—one new view from a mobile device lasting two and a half minutes. My face gets hot just thinking about it. A recently promoted creative director scrolls through my life’s work at a stoplight on the way home from the office at 3am. He watches my commercial for Pennzoil and doesn’t laugh. Why would he? His dad still takes his car to get the oil changed for him. Fucking millennials.

Cruising from level to level, every parking spot in the garage is the size of a portal leading into John Malkovich’s brain. Do this many compact cars even exist in America? I park my 8-seater like a complete jerk and hustle to the elevator. I catch my reflection in the stainless steel doors. Is a 40-year-old woman wearing high tops hip or hilarious? A young man appears next to me wearing the kind of suit that looks too small but isn’t. He wants me to see his socks, right?

I walk into the office and look around. There are no cubicles, just rows of desks topped with shiny technology. I pause at the receptionist’s desk. Her age and outfit appear to be violating all sorts of labor laws.

“Welcome to Pop, how can I help you?”

“I’m Margaret Kay, the freelance writer you called.”

“Totally. Welcome. We’re swamped so I’m so glad we found someone who is available.”

Unfolding from behind the desk like a newborn foal, she leads me through the office.

“Great timing because they just kicked off a Gogo.com brainstorm.”

We arrive at a conference room where a vertical garden covers the entirety of one wall. Everything smells like parsley.

“Hey team! This is Margaret. She’s the writer helping us out.”

Their heads bob up from various screens, they mumble hello, and their heads drop back down. I sit and open my thick, white MacBook. A handsome guy wearing a tank top is leading the meeting. He looks at me and suddenly the light above me feels twice as fluorescent as all the others.

“Did they email you a brief?”

I nod and pull a piece of paper out of my laptop case. Everyone seems confused by its tangibility.

“Any questions before we get started?” asks Tank Top.

“Am I right that the gist of the campaign is, Gogo.com is the new and better Amazon.com?”

He smiles and I forget about my crow’s feet.

“You’ve got it.”

Then a young woman, broadcasting mixed messages with her neck tattoos and Nancy Reagan-esque tweed suit, speaks up.

“Well, we can’t say Amazon.”

“That makes sense because they’re a competitor,” I reply agreeably. “So it’s more like, Gogo.com is the new and better place to shop online.”

Now Chubby Ex-Frat Boy has something to add.

“We can’t say ‘new’ because the site launched over six months ago.”

“I think ‘better’ is off limits, too,” says Tattoo Nancy. “We can’t back up that claim.”

“So where are these ads going to run?” I ask, scanning the brief.

All of a sudden Tank Top addresses me like I’m a dementia patient.

“At Pop, we don’t create advertising. We create stories.”

“I see. Where are we going to share these stories? Facebook? Times Square?”

Chubby Ex-Frat Boy seems bored by me.

“The campaign is running exclusively on Snapchat,” he says.

“Isn’t that the one that disappears after 30 seconds?”

“10,” Tattoo Nancy says without looking up.

I stare at the garden wall and wonder if they would let me take home some herbs. Bon Appétit has a recipe for parsley risotto I really want to try.

“What if we show a guy surfing on a credit card and in the waves we see things he might buy, like a bike helmet…an electric razor…that kind of thing?” says Tank Top.

This gets Tattoo Nancy going.

“Yeah, and maybe it ends with a line like, ‘Deals that won’t wipe you out,’” she adds.

So puns are acceptable again. That makes sense considering how kids these days seem to be fascinated by the 1980s. I manage to be both too old and too young for this crowd.

Tank Top jumps up, grabs a dry erase marker, and plants in front of the whiteboard. He starts scrawling the surfer idea.

“That’s good, that’s good. What else?”

Chubby Ex-Frat Boy sets down his array of devices.

“Maybe there’s a cheerleader—a hot cheerleader—and she’s jumping around with this sign that says, ‘Shop for your team at Gogo.com!’”

And just like that, another gem on the whiteboard. I start sweating. I need to contribute something, that’s what I’m here for. Yesterday, I spent the entire day cleaning out our garage and now, like some sort of miracle, both of our cars can fit inside. I should start a garage-organizing business. I clear my throat.

“What if there’s a cute puppy—like a golden retriever—and he’s tearing up a shoe. We hear a woman’s voice over say, ‘Come, Gogo, come!’ Then a line comes up: ‘Great deals on shoes and more at Gogo.com.’”

Silence.

“We could do a series of them starring Gogo the dog and he’s always chewing on something different that you can buy at Gogo.com.”

Silence and then…Tank Top starts writing.

“I love it,” he says. “That kind of story has share value.”

Are those like stock options? I decide not to ask.

“Cool,” I say coolly.

An hour later, I get back in my car. They asked me to come back for another brainstorm tomorrow. When I pull up to the parking garage attendant, I realize I forgot to get my ticket validated by Bambi the receptionist. The woman in the booth tells me it’s going to be $30. That’s how much I charge per hour, so basically I was never here. I hand over the money and stare at the attendant. She looks to be about my age, with long, thin hair and spotty teeth. A book called Love at Sea is sitting open across her broad lap. I realize I’m jealous. I wonder how much she makes an hour?


Written by: CE Jordan
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

The Commute

The transit driver gets back onto the car carrying a leather, sand-colored briefcase in both hands and raises it high above his head. “Does this belong to anyone?”

Almost all the passengers in the lead car look up. A young red haired lady sitting in the seat ahead of me takes her earbuds out and looks quizzically at the passenger sitting next to her.

“What did he say?”

The man looks up from his reader. “I don’t know, something about the briefcase.”

The woman turns as he passes her. Our eyes meet.

“He’s asking if the bag belongs to anyone,” I say.

She shrugs, turns around and replaces her earbuds. The driver walks through the aisle, still holding the briefcase over his head. I can hear him ask the same question as he enters the second car.

The driver returns, carrying the bag like a football under his arm. He adjusts his Port Authority cap. He raises the bag high over his head again. “Last call.” No one even acknowledges him this time.

“Come on, already,” a teenage girl shouts.

The driver returns to his seat, places the briefcase at his feet, and puts the car in gear. My eyes follow his every action. That is a beautiful bag. I slouch in the hard pew-like seat and try to get a quick catnap before the rat race begins.

“Nice bag, huh?” The man sitting next to me interrupts my plan. He removes his glasses off. “I was shopping for bags online about two weeks ago. Saw one just like that, you know, the saddle bag look.”

“Yeah.” I nod, hoping he’ll take the hint.

“Yep. It cost almost twelve hundred dollars.” He replaces his glasses and returns his attention to the newspaper in his lap.

I turn my head. “I believe it.”

“Who would leave a beauty like that?” He picks up his newspaper. Our conversation is over.

I can see the bag clearly from where I sit. It even has locks on the two buckles. Who would leave a bag like that? I wonder what’s in it. Maybe it’s full of hundred dollar bills from a bank robbery. Nah. It’s probably stuffed with important documents. The person who lost it is probably going to get fired or hung out to dry. Or both. No, with a bag like that, she’s the boss. Maybe somebody’s carrying their lunch. Trying to look important. Nobody would forget an expensive briefcase like that one. The motion of the train brings me out of my thoughts. Everyone else has returned to their business. One fellow traveler opens his newspaper. The headline, in bold print, erases the grin on my face. Suicide Bomber claims the lives of fifteen in an Iraqi marketplace. I can read it from four seats away.

Wow, that’s crazy. People just going about their daily lives, and all of a sudden their world is ripped apart – dead. I take another look at the bag. It could be a bomb! I push that thought away. But it’s a stubborn and persistent demon. It could be--no one would just forget an expensive bag like that! The bag was heavy, you could tell by the way the driver held the thing. You couldn’t miss that. What if it is a bomb? I swallow hard.

The first terrorist bomb attack on an American public transportation system. I read last week about how the transportation systems and seaports are the most vulnerable spots in our security. This is crazy!

The tie around my neck is suddenly too tight; my lips are parched. I can smell the odor of my fear seeping through my new white shirt. My sound of my heart slamming against my ribs is like the ticking of an old clock in a room at night. All the other passengers are in their own world. It’s a bomb. At the next stop, I’m getting off this train. I’m going to stand right by the door.

"Next stop, First Avenue Station. First Avenue Station, Next stop," the automated voice announces.

First Avenue Station, the first station underground in the inbound direction. Underground, that’s a great place to set off a blast. Got to get off! Wait... wait, if I stand by the door I’ll be nearer the blast. Gotta get off before the train enters the tunnel.

Think!

I stand and pull my handkerchief from my back pocket to mop my forehead. My fingers do a tap dance on the cool metal handrail. The car approaches the tunnel to the entrance of the First Avenue Station.

Think, Alan! Think!

I pull the stop request wire violently.

"Stop Requested. Stop Requested,” the automated voice sounds out.

Everyone is oblivious to the danger. The train isn‘t slowing!

Perspiration showers down my face. An older man wearing a shabby, two-button polyester blend sports jacket opens his mouth to speak.

A monstrous roar drowns the man’s words; a blast so loud I grimace in pain. The shock wave somersaults me like crumpled newspaper. I crash into the lap of an older woman; my legs swing around and catch the side of her face. I can feel the crack of her neck. My eyes snap open.

Parts of arms and legs tumble through the car like ten pins. Screams are cut off in mid shriek.

Blood splatters paint the windows and walls of the car.

The world is black.

Then bright.

“Sir, sir? He’s conscious.”

The nameplate stitched on the navy blue shirt reads Acosta.

“Sir, I’m an EMT. Everything is just fine. We have managed to stabilize all your vitals. It’s nothing really serious. You had a minor panic attack.”

Written by: Charles Stone

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Backseat Feminist

It’s a scary word and always has been, but I don’t know why. Most men fear it because one day they got together and decided it means something else entirely. It scares them, perhaps because they feel threatened, and for a moment I am glad. I am glad they feel the threat I feel every night walking to my car alone, or on afternoons when a letter carrier knocks on my door unexpectedly and my heart lurches, because for that moment, I am in danger. For that moment, I am reminded I am a woman. And the moment when I say the word, they get to feel like me.

The creaking Volvo rumbles and roars as I try to pick up bits and pieces of the conversation happening between the men seated in front of me. One of them belongs to me and the other does not.

“Honey, could you speak up please? I can’t make out what you’re saying up there,” I say with invitation as I dry my sweating palms on my skirt pleats.

“We’re just talking about Grandma, babe,” my husband says over his shoulder without letting his eyes leave the road or his hands leave the wheel.

“About that comment she made about the pill,” his brother laughs. “She’s hysterical.” He slaps his knee and faces forward in his seat.

I lean forward to become part of the conversation. “Did you know it wasn’t even invented until the 1960s?” I speak loudly so I am heard over the motor’s gravelly voice, but I can’t help but feel that I’m yelling when I shouldn’t be.

“Birth control?” my husband asks.

“Yeah. It was really the beginning of the feminist revolution. Sexual awakening and all that.”

“Well that makes sense,” my brother-in-law chimes in. “Before that, women were too afraid of getting pregnant. They used to be driven by morality I guess.”

I clench and unclench my jaw. “We still are. And it takes two people to get pregnant by the way.”

“I never said it didn’t. Stop putting words in my mouth.”

I sit back in my seat and decide to leave this battle for another day. A road trip to my in-laws’ house for Thanksgiving is neither the time nor the place to get in a family argument.

“Wait, James is right,” my husband says. “Back in the good old days, women weren’t as promiscuous because they had the consequence of pregnancy, but once the pill pretty much gave them free reign, it turned into free love and that whole movement in the 60s. Isn’t that what lead to AIDS?”

“Oh my god,” I grumble.

“What?” James challenges. “No, say what you have to say.”

“I don’t want to have this argument.”

“Roy and I are just trying to have a discussion with you. It’s not an argument.”

“Fine,” I consent. “You can’t really think the creation of the pill lead to the outbreak of a worldwide epidemic.”

“Whoa, now I never said that,” Roy says, taking both hands off the wheel and back-pedaling like his life depends on it. “I never said they were causally related, just that the correlation cannot be ignored as it all began in the same decade and in the same population.” His experience in academia is apparent; it’s as if he is making a presentation before his peers and has just realized his mistake. The vernacular shifts and the verbosity shows through his best intentions.

“The pill let women claim their sexuality for the first time,” I say. I feel myself climbing on the soapbox, but I can’t help it and I don’t want to. “In the centuries prior, women weren’t seen as having sexual desires but as wives whose primary role was to produce children. People found the idea of a woman enjoying herself ghastly. Even sinful. Suddenly, women were almost granted permission to enter into sex for no other reason than to have a good time, just like men had been doing for a thousand years. No strings attached.”

I step down from the box feeling good about myself, but it isn’t over.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Roy says. “The pill caused women to be more promiscuous.”

“Promiscuity existed long before the pill did.”

“Yeah Roy, what about prostitutes?” James says to this brother, thinking he’s agreeing with my point. “They’re as promiscuous as it gets.”


“You both keep forgetting there are two halves to this.”

“Who, men?” James balks.

“You never alluded that men became more promiscuous when the invention of the condom came about, which was around the sixteenth century by the way.” I slump back against the vinyl bench seat with a thump, resisting the urge to cross my arms and let my bottom lip protrude. I want to ask why they aren’t listening to me, but what I ask instead is, “Why does this have to be ‘us versus them?’ Aren’t we on the same side here?”

“With bra burners?” James laughs.

I sigh. It’s clear I am getting nowhere, and I notice Roy has fallen strangely silent. “Why are we even talking about this?” I ask.

“You brought it up, Anna.” James jabs the air with an index finger.

Only I didn’t. But instead I say, “You’re right. I don’t know why I did. See, this is why I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“We can talk about this stuff while keeping a level head. You’re the one who turned it into a fight about your rights.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

I’m left in the backseat of an old Volvo driven and directed by two stubborn men. A woman who, in an argument about feminism, is the one apologizing.

The irony doesn't escape me. Instead, it brings prickling tears to my eyes, hot and stinging, and again I try to hide what I am. I let one tear after another fall down my face and pray they don’t turn around in their seats. They never do. If they see me, I will appear weak; if they know they will laugh. I am being too emotional, I am overreacting.

I make excuses for myself, but most painful are the excuses I make for them. 

Written by: HG Reed

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Until Next Time

The ceiling fan whirred above him, cascading a wave of hot air upon his sweat-drenched forehead.The single bed he lay on filled nearly the entire square of the tiny room. Dirty clothes and torn blankets littered the remaining floorspace. In the corner, a small plastic plate held the remnants of a piece of bread, its stale surface coated in a layer of green foam. Three books lay by his bedside, their pages the only lifelines he knew. His ears probed the dust-coated air, listening for the footsteps that would signal the arrival of his daily routine.

He had dreamt, he thought, of the ocean. It was blue, just like he had seen in the pictures, with a green tint that exuded a sense of comfort to even the smallest of creatures. He had been swimming, feeling the vibration of the great body of waves that pulled him deeper into its intricate embrace. As soon as he started to surface, succumbing to the desire to see the crests of the ocean waves, a thick, tattooed arm inserted itself into water and grasped him in a chokehold, holding him in place as the water filled his lungs.

That was when he woke up. He didn’t get up – he knew what that would bring about; instead, he lay there, staring at his most constant companion whirring away as each of the five long blades maintained their insistent monotony. He was almost asleep again when the footsteps awoke him. His eyelids lifted reluctantly. He didn’t get scared; not anymore. After all, it seemed easier, almost pleasant, to maintain the appearance of supreme disinterest, even as his body shook with hatred.

As the footsteps neared, the lock clicked, the door grinding open to reveal the figure that had tormented him since he could remember. Only recently had the entrapment begun. He didn’t know why. He didn’t think to ask why. He just survived.

“Get up,” his ragged voice called. The boy was surprised, at first, hesitantly aware of walking into any traps. “You deaf, boy? Get the hell up! And put this on.” He tossed a shirt onto his bed.

                                                                                                  ***

It shouldn’t be much farther, he thought, checking his addresses as he sped through the puzzle that was the inner city. He drove fast, the impossibility of his to-do list an irritating itch that forced his foot to the pedal of the government-loaned vehicle. He had had ten visits scheduled already for that day; protocol advised that each visit take at least an hour, from entry to inspection to exit, and at least an hour and a half if any family was found in violation of health or safety codes. But, at ten visits in five hours, he hardly had the time or energy to pay attention to “protocol.”

    

As the always-one-step-behind voice of the rickety GPS system called out, he slowed to a stop, acknowledging the metal-barred staircase that led to the sixth home visit in what was turning out to be a longer day than usual. He approached the stairs, refreshing himself on the apartment number and the family name: Briggs, Briggs – 203B.

He checked his records: only one visit in the last two years had required a follow-up; this was going to be quick. His phone rang; he glanced at the number, ready to send it to voicemail before the name stopped him. It was his boss. The boss who, like everyone else, apparently, was swamped and yet still had time to assign him 47 cases in the span of a single quarter. He answered, feeling no urge to disguise the impatience in his voice. “Hello??”

“Kasey, I just got a call. I’m not sure how credible it is but I need you to check it out. A neighbor reports that she saw the Smith girl, you know, the one from the upper east side?”

“Uh yeah bu--”

“Anyways, she was apparently looking pretty beat up. If it’s abuse this would be their final violation. I want you to schedule an immediate visit. Tell them we’re doing surprise rounds or something, and let me know.”

“Okay, but I really don’t--”

“Thanks, Kasey. Keep me posted.” The click of the phone on the other end just about summed up the entire last quarter for him. Resisting the urge to break his clipboard and drive away, he continued making his way up the stairs. He knocked, waiting, as always, with pen in hand to give the same greeting he always did before making his way through the home.

A man answered. His gruff, unshaven face clashed with a suspiciously white shirt that tucked into a pair of torn jeans.

“Hi,” he grumbled, “we’ve been expecting you. I’ll grab Jackson. Come on in.”

Kasey stepped inside. No intro, I guess. He looked around. The dingy apartment reeked of stale food and what seemed to be smoke, though the eerie odor was masked by the overwhelming smell of cinnamon emanating from a candle in the foyer.

“This way, right in here. We know the drill.” He grumbled again. Kasey followed the gruff man’s voice, entering from the cramped foyer into the main living room. In the middle of the room stood the man, hand on the left shoulder of Jackson Briggs. He was 13, according to the records, though he looked about 11. He was short – maybe 5’2,” and, like his father, he wore a new-looking collared blue shirt tucked into blue jeans.

                                                                                                  ***

He kept his eyes straightforward, like he was told. The nails digging into his shoulder made certain that he gave nothing away. He was wearing his “new” shirt, after all, and for the first time since the last visit he had real denim jeans covering his bruised legs. The man with the clipboard stared at him, checking boxes as he turned his eyes towards the surprisingly clean kitchen. The hand on Jackson’s shoulder clenched harder, as if to squeeze every emotion right out of him. He flinched, withholding the scream that would tell the man with the clipboard to turn around; to look closely; to see the dark purple lines that his blue collar hid: the ferocious marks of the rugged attention he’d received since his mother left. He wanted to scream; to scream, and to leave. But he knew he couldn’t; he wouldn’t. He had nowhere and no one else.

“Okay, everything looks fine. I’ll send your report and be back next month.” The door slammed.

“Back to your room, boy.” The vice grip loosened. A single tear caressed Jackson’s cheek.

Until next time.


Written by: Tyler Wilborn
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

The Otherlife

The day after he crashed his car through the guardrail of Route 1, rolled twice, and came to a stop against Fairfax County’s oldest oak tree, Brennan Davis got up to go to work.

He put on his gray pants with the barely-noticeable hole beneath the back pocket. He tied the maroon and green striped tie that Becca bought him, the one he thought made him look fat, but that she seemed to like so much.

“Skinny ties are for tall, skinny dudes,” he’d told her. He was neither.

“That’s ridiculous,” she’d said.

As Brennan brushed his teeth, he remembered the impact of his head on the windshield and opened his mouth. Huh. No chips or gaps.

Brennan was dead, but he didn’t know it yet.

When he stepped out into the driveway, his car was gone. He rubbed his temple. For a moment, the image of his VW Golf becoming one with a tree flashed before his eyes, but then it faded. Did Becca say she needed the car today? That must be it. He walked to the bus stop.

When the bus arrived, he boarded, hesitating as he tapped his transit card to pay. The bus driver looked familiar, like the man who drove the school bus when Brennan was in middle school.

Weird, Brennan thought, and took a seat by the window.

He took out his phone to text Becca about the car, but something was haywire with his contacts. Most of them were deleted. He tried to recall Becca’s number, but realized the only numbers he could remember were his parents’ landline and his own cell.

This is what being technology-dependent gets me.

He dialed his parents, hoping they were at the house. It was roundabout thinking, he knew, but his mother would have Becca’s number. He meant to call her anyway, to tell her about something that had happened. What had happened? Yesterday. Something big? With a tree?

The phone rang.

“Hello?” a scratchy voice said.

“Uh...Mom? Are you sick?” Brennan said.

“Who is this?”

“Wait, who is this? Have I reached the Davises?”

“You’ve reached Millie Davis.”

“Aunt Millie?”

“Oh, shit,” the scratchy voice said.

A wave of adrenaline spread through Brennan’s bloodstream. His hand shook as he pressed the cell phone closer to his ear. Aunt Millie had lived with his family until her death, when Brennan was eight.

“Which one of of you is it? Your poor parents. Holy hell,” the scratchy voice said.

“It’s Brennan?” Brennan answered.

“Where are you? How did it happen? Well, you’re here now. Come to the house.”

“I don’t understand--” Brennan said, before his phone beeped and died.

“Fucking battery!”

There was something wrong with his ears, maybe that was it. Or maybe his parents got a new number. Right? He hit his head yesterday! That’s what he wanted to tell his mother. No wonder nothing made sense.

The bus pulled up a block away from work, and Brennan got off. He popped into the Starbucks that was right next to his office.

“What can I get you?” the barista asked.

“Let me do a tall--no, make it a grande Latte Macchiato.”

“Ooh. I’m sorry. We don’t have that.”

“I’ve been ordering it all week! Did you guys discontinue the new menu items already?”

“Wait--are you new? Jolie--Jolie, we got a fresh one!” the barista called to her manager, who turned off the milk steamer to answer.

“Awww, man! So there’s a new drink out?” Jolie said. “Can you describe it for me? We like to stay current, so if it’s something I can just mix together from what we have, that’d be great. Otherwise, we gotta wait for someone from corporate to kick it, and who knows how long that’ll take.”

Brennan loosened his tie and took three cleansing breaths, like Becca always did when she was trying not to flip her shit.

“Pardon my language,” Brennan said to Jolie, “But what on God’s green fucking earth is going on here?”

Jolie cackled as she scooped ice into the Frappuccino pitcher.

“Oh, honey,” she said. “You’re not on God’s green earth any longer.”

Brennan left the Starbucks without his latte. The whole world was losing its mind. He swiped his badge to get into his office building and took the elevator to the fifth floor. Before going to his own desk, he stopped at Matt’s cube to bitch about his phone and the incompetent Starbucks employees.

“Dude, you won’t believe--” Brennan started.

But when Matt turned around, it wasn’t Matt. In Matt’s desk chair sat a fat, middle-aged guy with 1980s aviator-style glasses.

“Hey,” Aviators said, extending his hand. “You must be new.”

“I’ve worked here for five years!” Brennan said, before passing out.

  When he came to, an elderly woman with pink lipstick was leaning over him, fanning his face. Aviators stood behind her.

“Arlene?” Brennan said.

“Yes, baby. Didn’t expect to see you around here so soon.”

Brennan used his elbow to shade his eyes from the fluorescent lights. Arlene, the director’s secretary, had died last month of a heart attack one week shy of her retirement date. Brennan had given $10 towards flowers for her family.

“Where are we, Arlene?”

“This is the Otherlife,” Arlene said. “Boy, is the accounting office going to be glad to see you.”

Arlene and Aviators sat with Brennan as he cried. They explained what was going on, that it was perfectly natural to be upset. That some people, like them, felt it was best to pick up where they left off--it added some stability. Lots of people kept their old jobs for awhile until they saved up enough to move on, making room at the office for the new dead. 

“Some people choose to relocate right away--back near their family who have passed too, or to another country they always wanted to see, but others stay forever. There’s a guy on the third floor who’s been here since the 1930s,” Arlene said.

“I--I need to borrow a phone charger. I need to call Becca,” Brennan said.

“That your fiancee? She’s not here. She’s still living.”

“I guess I need to call my Aunt Millie, then.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Arlene.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

The Front Door

I was always surprised by the long drop to the ground from that window, no matter how many times I did it. I would lie with my stomach on the window, my legs stretching down as far they could before I would let myself drop to the grass. I hit the bushes most of the time, and almost always lost my shoes, but every now and then I would just miss and land with shoes intact. On those nights it seemed luck was with me. Strange, but when I left the house by the window, life's forbidden possibilities seemed so close at hand. Grandpa must have known I escaped. I think he planted that bush there to make it harder for me, but he never said a word. Doug was always there, waiting in the dark with a tender kiss.

That night we were headed to a party at Roger's house, a ten minute walk. Roger’s parents lived in the center of my little town -- alcoholics who always seemed rumpled and sad. They encouraged Roger's friends to hang out there by ignoring all company. The house was dingy, but you could tell it used to be nice -- a white wood-frame 50's style home with oversized rooms and lots of character. The back part of the house was added on later with narrow halls and lower ceilings. It felt like a cave, the perfect hangout for us.

That night the blender was making margaritas in the kitchen; Mrs. was doing the honors. It was rare to see her out of her bedroom as she was quiet -- not shy, just closed off. Her presence that night was explained by the fact that some relatives of Roger's were coming over and she wanted to see them. They were attending A&M, which made them celebrities. I had a secret dream of going off to college. I never mentioned this to any of my friends. I didn't think they would understand the urge to leave this town.

Doug got me a special margarita with sugar on the rim. He took care of me that way. It was a nice touch, but it made it messy to drink. We were asked to sit around the living room with the parents. Seemed to be the price of the special drinks that night as Mr. and Mrs. had never said a word to us before. We usually just went to the back of the house with the TV on mute and the hard-rock music on so loud we felt it, or we sat around on lawn chairs in the garage where an old ping-pong table sat untouched. I never even saw a paddle. Roger would have the music blaring from his crudely made plywood speaker cabinets housed in trunk of his car. The treble speakers were under the dashboard inside. It was a serious system, if unattractive. With all this heavy metal, not much talking went on. But this evening we were sitting around the living room and it was very uncomfortable, like being in a police lineup. I kept getting sticky sugar fingers, which I tried to wipe off on the sofa when no one was looking.

Mr. and Mrs. were asking what each of us planned for the future. Doug was planning on becoming a welder since he heard it paid real well. Jeff was thinking along the same lines, but he one-upped Doug saying he wanted to do the underwater kind. Roger did not know and said so with annoyance. Just as the question was about to get to me, the phone rang. I was relieved and disappointed in the same instant.

With the distraction of the phone, Roger dragged us to the garage avoiding the margaritas so his parents wouldn’t trap us again. He had beers in the ice box outside. Tonight Roger decided the stereo system had to come out of the car so we could hear it properly. This took an incredible amount of effort--things were cut and reassembled. Roger was proud of that system. After he got it out and working again, requiring some electrical tape and wire stripping, Ozzy Osbourne started playing. We’d seen him live two weeks before after camping out for tickets overnight. We were still all about the bat eater.

By the time we were all getting lazy and stoned, a small, nondescript sedan pulled up. Out stepped a young couple about twenty years old. They seemed deliberate in their movements, or maybe I was just in slow motion. They said they didn't have much time. They just wanted to stop to say hello. They seemed so goal-oriented in that one statement. The tension in the garage went way up and the music went down. Everyone wanted to impress them. Sentences were complete, voices were loud enough to be heard. But mostly, we all wanted to hear what their life was like. They had one more year to go til graduation, and they were already getting offers from Amoco and Conoco, not as welders but engineers. They didn't stay long -- half an hour at most, and Mrs. never made an appearance, but they made an impression on me.

We all were a little depressed when they left. The party kind of fizzled. We felt empty, without purpose. What were we working towards? It was a long, silent walk back to my window. I was bad company and I don’t know why I tried to hide it. Getting back in was always harder, but we had it down. Doug would lock his fingers together and I would step into his hands as he flung me up. Tonight I said, "I got it, you can go". I don't know if he understood, but he nodded as he turned to leave. I waited a bit, and then decided to just go in through the front door.

Written by: Deborah Dwight Brown

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Rust

Maybe we are too young and the world is trying to remind us of that.

“It’ll be okay,” I say.

When she lifted the sheet last night, it looked like spilled ink seeping beneath her. The words are on her lips even now, even if I’m only imagining them. She’s quiet and still and I’m filled with everything she’s not.

I start a haiku in my head. The words are written in blood. Too much blood. I don’t say them because I can’t. I hold Gray’s hand, and it leaves me itching to trace words in her palm. I write the haiku with my other hand on the underside of the kitchen table.

My flower baby,

free little gypsy dancer,

please don’t fly away.

“I can’t just sit here, Shaw,” Grayson says.

The way she bled our baby from her womb looked like a Rorschach test. When I think back to that moment, I try to remember the way she took my hand, running it down the small bump of her belly; a tiny half moon that will never be full.

The sun peeks through the living room window, exposing a sliver of light, trapping Gray in the shadows. She rearranges reminders for doctor’s appointments and our one ultrasound picture on the refrigerator door. She hides them beneath scraps of stories neither of us have used. Other paper bits bear pieces of poems waiting to be penned.

Grayson lets the faucet run over her hands until they are pink. The crusted blood beneath her nails turns the water pink, too. She washes my coffee mug from the night before. You could stop drinking it with me, she’d said at the beginning, but I never knew she was serious. Caffeine was the first to go when she found out she was pregnant. I never stopped drinking it. I should have given up coffee for her. I should be helping her.

When she starts scrubbing the sheets, it’s as if she is real and the sheets are real, but I am imaginary. And so I take them from her and try my best to scrape these moments back to before. I want the pen in my hand and the notebook in my lap and I want Grayson sleeping beside me.

I want us to be okay.

I’m already wishing for Gray’s lips to spread and reveal a sunrise kind of smile; teeth cresting over the horizon of her bottom lip. I know that look might be lost in blotches of blood now.

“Just leave them,” she says. The room feels different with her real voice here. Her small voice, her shy voice; the quiet way she always says she loves me.

I let her kiss me as she cries, her lips stiff and unsure. When she moves away, the space between us smells like traces of Thai takeout from the fridge. I want to pull her back, but she wraps her arms around her stomach, and I know it’s not me she wants.

We replace the bedding with two sleeping bags. Once inside, she curls away from me, but our feet still touch. I try to sleep, but her words and my words and all the words we heard between last night and this morning are in my head. I push an earbud into my right ear and the other into Gray’s and I press play.

I try to find words without paper and pen, but I can’t get them right. Before Gray, I was never a night writer. But now, the words find me while she dreams. Maybe that’s the only way stories can separate themselves between two writers.

I write a letter by the light of the alarm clock, not wanting to wake Gray. I start with To Nyxie, trying it on seven separate pages. I don’t know what to say now. I never told Gray about the name, but it’s what I’d started calling her bump while she slept. Sometimes I told it stories or wrote it words on her skin, hoping it would know.

“Already a day,” Gray says when she wakes. The early evening leaves traces of moon mist over her eyes. “I miss—”

“I know,” I say.

Because I do.

I don’t show her the pages pressed between the mattress and pillow. I set them on the bedside table instead, and wait for her to say something. She doesn’t.

Gray walks to the kitchen, and moments later I smell fresh coffee, hear a spoon clink against her mug. I know she must be stirring in honey and cinnamon the way she used to before. I wonder if the color will remind her, if she’ll write her way through the memory or if it will rust her insides until they crack.

Grayson sits at the kitchen table, steam surrounding her chin. Her eyes flash to the sheets in the sink. Spots still dot them like stars. All I see are bits of our baby. And I know she must see the same thing. I press the fabric to my chest until it doesn’t feel real and I don’t feel real and this all feels too fucking real with Grayson’s hands wrapped around my green coffee mug.

I leave the sheets on the balcony beside the bonfire pit we’ve yet to use this year. When I return to the kitchen, Gray’s coffee is gone, and part of me hopes she’s dumped it down the drain, that this is all unreal for her, too. Her hand finds mine across the table. I try to squeeze the life back into her, but it’s already gone.

Written by: Kayla King

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Rescue

Read the rest of the "West" saga: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |

Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

The Benadryl was kicking in. Brooklyn’s head lolled to the side as she watched Doc McStuffins on Drew’s iPad. The fire ant bites on her legs were so close together, the swelling around the individual bites overlapped into an angry, unending rash.

“Do you think we should call the doctor?” Drew asked.

“He’s just going to tell us to do what we’ve already done,” Jennifer said, shaking her head. Just in case, she dislodged her cell phone from the tight back pocket of her jeans and Googled “ant bite emergency?”

Then she noticed it: a text. From Dena.

I need you.

Jennifer’s stomach couldn’t decide how to react. It dipped as she remembered a brief flash of the smoky field, Dena’s hands inside her clothes. Then her stomach lurched in anger, confusion.

“Needs me? She left me,” Jennifer said under her breath.

By Jennifer’s calculations, it was her turn to ask for a favor. She had been the one to save the day, repair the RV, give Dena whatever it was she was looking for the night of the bonfire. Jennifer was the one left behind to act like an adult when she didn’t get what she wanted. What more did Dena need to take?

And yet--Jennifer was drawn to her. Her thumbs skimmed across her phone screen, replying before the rest of her body gave the go-ahead.

where r u?

The text bubble containing the always-taunting ellipses appeared on the screen. Then:

Santa Fe. I’ve made a huge mistake.

what happened??

I should have stayed in Austin. Chris disappeared. Took the keys and $.

wtf!?

Yeah. This crazy old Indian lady’s gonna lose it if I don’t get off her land in 24 hours.

lol thats racist

Native American. You know what I mean. For real though.

what r u gonna do? wheres chris?

His phone’s cut off.

hes GONE gone?

I think so.

Jennifer watched her brother turn off the iPad screen and scoop sleeping Brooklyn into his arms. She wasn’t sure what good mothering was, anymore. She worked hard, and she was still a disappointment. She tried to keep Brooklyn safe and loved, and the fire ants found her anyway.

“Drew?” she said.

“Yeah?” he whispered over Brooklyn’s sleeping body.

“You still want to go to California?”

                                                                                                          ***

Benny answered the door when Dena knocked. He raised one eyebrow at the greasy-haired white girl on his steps and said nothing.

“Is...Mae home?”

“She’s at Bingo.”

“Oh,” Dena said. “Well, will you tell her that my friend is coming from Texas and I will be gone as soon as humanly possible, but it might be tomorrow instead of tonight? Oh. And give her this? Kind of a thank-you-and-I’m-sorry gift?”

She thrust a Wendy’s hamburger bag into his hands, spun on her heels, and headed back to the lot. Benny watched her until she disappeared inside her hunk-of-junk RV. He opened the fast food sack. Inside was a package of peanut M&Ms and two plump, hand-rolled joints.

                                                                                                          ***

“Jennifer Michelle, you are being nothing but reckless right now.”

“Mom. It’s fine. You need to chill. Drew’s the one moving to California. I’ll be back as soon as I can hot-wire a Chinook.”

“I would like to repeat that this is a fact-finding mission only?” Drew chimed in. “If I don’t find any good job leads in two weeks, I’m coming back, too.”

“I don’t think you should take Brooklyn with you. Especially with those god-awful ant bites!” her mother squawked. “Jesus, how did she even get that many?”

“I’m a terrible mom, that’s how. But I’m still her mom. She’s coming with me.”

                                                                                                          ***

Highway 84 stretched in front of Drew’s Toyota, shimmering with summer mirages. Brooklyn snored in the back seat.

“We can turn the radio on. She’s zonked.”

“Zonked? Who says that?” Drew said.

“It’s in the Mom Handbook.”

“Har, har.”

Jennifer turned the radio to a Car Talk re-run.

“You sure you don’t want to get the RV going and then come with me?” Drew asked. “Carl won’t care. I think his girlfriend has a kid, actually.”

“Thanks. But I kind of need to see where this one goes.”

                                                                                                          ***

The RV still smelled of cats and mildew. Dena dumped a can of Chicken & Stars soup into a pot and lit the stove burner. She leaned on the flimsy table and turned her phone over in her hands. Chris had been off the social media grid for twenty-four whole hours. No selfies, no tweets. No Instagrams of his feet or his lunch.

He hated her enough to resist the pull of his biggest addiction.

She poked at the soup with a wooden spoon, watching the doughy stars swirl in the broth. Dena wasn’t sure how she’d gotten to this point. She and Chris just wanted different things, wasn’t that it? Jennifer understood her--Jennifer had her own complications. With her, Dena could be free and loved at the same time. Couldn’t she?

Not that she deserved something like that.

                                                                                                          ***

Dena squinted as a car approached--Jennifer in the passenger seat--a guy behind the wheel.

Shit. Who is that? Her baby’s father? Dena thought. She checked her phone, attempting to mask her anxiety. Jennifer got out of the passenger’s side, stretched, and bent into the back seat.

“You guys are so dumb,” the guy said.

“Shut up, Drew,” Jennifer said, still untangling the child from car seat buckles.

“You could have just had the camper towed somewhere.”

“This is my brother, the smartass,” Jennifer said. “And this is Brooklyn.”

“I panicked,” Dena admitted, relieved to learn the guy’s identity. “Chris just left me here. And he took our cash. I have, like, forty dollars in my account.”

Dena wanted to take Jennifer in her arms, to hold her in a combined death grip of attraction and gratitude. But her feet wouldn’t move. Brooklyn’s face was red from crying--and her legs--was that a rash? Dena realized, in that moment, the scope of asking them to come all this way.

A screech of tires cut the silence as Mae’s Pontiac swerved to park beside her house.

“I sure hope this is your rescue party,” Mae said as she crossed the road. Mae spotted Brooklyn and took off her sunglasses. Her small eyes wrinkled in delight. “And who is this?”

“Brooklyn?” Jennifer said, shooting Dena a questioning look.

“Let’s see if we’ve got something for those legs,” Mae said. “Benny?” she said into her phone. “Bring the bug bite potion.”

Dena half-expected a secret Native American herbal remedy, but Benny appeared, red-eyed, carrying a tube of cortisone cream. Mae knelt down in the dust, and Brooklyn walked right to her. The old woman cradled the child and spread the medicine on her inflamed legs.

Dena watched them, then looked at Jennifer, Drew, the RV. Benny. Was he high? All here, in this moment, because of her.

Maybe I’m not a stranger, Dena thought. Maybe reinvention, despite what she’d always believed, could be real. Could be possible. Even for her.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg

Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Connections

Sean came home to a hurried note on the fridge that read, WiFi Out.

“And?” he said aloud, knowing it was his problem now.

He wiped Kim’s scribbles from the whiteboard with his palm and studied the remnants accentuating his fingerprints. It was the closest they had come to holding hands since Kim began her nightly rotations at St. David’s Medical Center.

There was a lot to love about dating a doctor-in-training – the free medical exams, the parental approval, the promise of riches – but Sean didn’t anticipate the disparate schedules and always playing second fiddle to school work, although, he really should have. As the son of two equally preoccupied medical professionals, he had spent enough time with nannies, tutors, and tennis instructors to know that patients come first once one pledges the Hippocratic Oath.

Sean rinsed his hand off beneath the kitchen faucet, filling Kim’s marinara-splattered pasta bowl with muted-green liquid.

“Merry Christmas,” he said while drying his hands on a snowflake-patterned linen.

Sean tossed the towel on the counter, disregarding Kim’s insistence he never do that on account of the bacteria velum laminating the surface. She also gave him a very detailed explanation of how alcohol poisons your internal organs, but that didn’t stop him from retrieving his stout glass from the cabinet and filling it to the brim with a beer as dark as a reindeer’s pupils.

Sean took a big swig of the toxic elixir and closed his eyes to devote his senses to his tastebuds. He rolled his tongue around in his mouth like that spiral thing in a washing machine, detecting notes of coffee, licorice, vanilla, and dark chocolate.

“Liver be damned,” he said after swallowing the flavorful gulp.

Sean opened his eyes and saw a smeared whiteboard to his left and a sinkful of dishes to his right. He took another sip of beer and contemplated which task would have the largest impact on his immediate future. He took his phone from his pocket and spoke to the only other intelligent being in their apartment.

“Ok, Google,” he said, his phone chirping to attention. “Call Time Warner Cable.”

He watched as the search box transcribed his words and dialed his most loved and hated utility provider. Once the tone began to hum in the earpiece he hit the speaker icon and let the phone yodel from atop the bunched hand towel.

“Customer service,” he shouted when the automated messaging service asked him for his ten-digit phone number. “Customer service,” he repeated when the robot on the other line apologized for not understanding. “Customer service,” he said once more before the robot gave up and connected him directly to a customer service representative.

Sean grabbed the gloves hanging from the faucet and slid them over his fragile hands. As his chapped fingers filled the humid hallows he recalled Kim’s lecture about the pathogens cultivating inside his rubber gauntlets. He also remembered the look on her face when he folded down the pinky, ring, pointer finger, and thumb of one of the gloves, leaving the middle digit standing tall and proud like the flag of Iwo Jima.

“Thank you for calling Time Warner Cable, this is Janet speaking. Can I have your ten-digit phone number?” Janet, the customer service rep, requested.

Sean recited his number with the pace and volume of an American tourist in a foreign land. Janet processed the information and asked, “what can I help you with?” Sean told her his Internet was out. She politely recommended a reboot and asked him to hardwire his router to a computer. Sean asked if there were any other way to do it, because he’s “kind of busy right now,” to which Janet apologized and said, “a direct connection is the only way to return the signal to full strength.”

“Fine, give me a minute” he scoffed, tossing his gloves over the faucet like sneakers on a telephone line.

Sean picked up his phone and carried it to the bedroom, where a yellow light was beckoning him from beneath his desk. He asked for another time extension to find an extra ethernet cord and Janet was obliged to comply. His clinking and clanking served as a crude waiting tune while he rifled through the drawers.

“Got it,” he announced and crawled towards the modem before Janet could give further instructions. He plugged the cord into an empty port and cursed himself for not starting with his laptop. Unwilling to turn back, he slithered the free end up the wall and wiggled it around until it latched onto an unidentified object. He returned to the surface to find the cord hooked on the ankle of the World’s Best Boyfriend trophy Kim gave him on their two-year anniversary.

He plucked the doohickey from the plastic statue and inserted it into his laptop. “Okay, fire when ready,” he said.

“Very good, sir,” she replied. “I’m going to put you on hold while we reboot your system.”

“Do what you gotta do,” Sean said, flopping onto the bed for a more comfortable wait.

Sean awoke several hours later to the sensation of skin filling the gaps between his outstretched fingers.

“AHHHH,” he yelled into the darkness.

“Shhh,” Kim said, placing her free hand on his cheek. “I’m not going to hurt you, little baby.”

“I think you literally scared the shit out of me,” he spat, grabbing her elbow and pulling her within tickle torture range.

Sean moved his fingers across her torso like a piano virtuoso, each tap eliciting involuntary leg kicks.

“MERCY,” Kim screamed.

Sean ceased his concerto and studied her face like sheet music. She was smiling with her lips, nostrils, and eyes, which were staring directly back at his.

“You seem happy,” he said. “Good day at work?”

“Not particularly,” she answered, intertwining their fingers once again. “It’s just good to be back.”

“It is,” he said, catching a glimpse of green light beneath his desk as he leaned in for a kiss.


Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal