Illusion

We smoke for the first time together in her attic apartment, the ceiling unfinished, hidden by tapestries that meet at a point in the center. One is pale purple and patterned with flowers. Another holds colors of a sunset.

She packs the glass bowl, and hands it to me. When she says the word, “Greens,” I watch her mouth open to reveal her teeth, and it looks more genuine than the smile I saw back at the bar.

“I never—” I say, and she adjusts my hands, and lowers the flame in front of me. I take a deep breath and cough and she laughs as the small amount of smoke I’d taken in fills the space between us.

I can’t stop myself from kissing her again, this time with tongues and teeth, which clink together like our wine glasses just an hour or so before.

I met Prue at a place called Gypsy’s.

She pointed to women dressed in thick petticoats, brocade blooms patterning the fabric. She told me they called themselves sisters of the sun, homemade henna tattoos on their arms to prove it.

“You have to meet the fortune teller,” she said, pulling me to a table near the back of the bar.

I waited in line while she drank more wine, staining her lips a deep red. I wanted to kiss her an infinite amount of times, but I didn’t tell her this. Instead I kissed her once, and proceeded to the table.

“You are faithful, a loyal man, true. But you see the colors, too,” the fortune teller said, tracing the lines of my palm. I wondered how they were visible beneath my callouses; if she knew I was a painter. I said nothing, just nodded and tipped her and walked back to Prue, who gave me her hand. I traced it the same way the fortune teller did without seeing anything but her in front of me.

She said, “Follow me.” And I did.

Prue kissed me from one street corner to the next until we reached her place.

Now, when she smokes, she seems to fall back against the world, and as I take another hit, I wait to feel the same thing. But I find myself distracted by the way the bowl gleams beneath the lights on the ceiling, so purple and pure and pulsing when I squint just right.

“The lights,” I say, because I can’t say anything else. I don’t know how to explain that the lights look more alive than I feel because maybe they are alive and I’m just here; an illusion.

“I strung them myself,” she says. And I kiss her for the lights, and the moment. I can’t remember ever feeling the world in such a monumental way.

She offers me another hit, holding the bowl in front of me, letting me go slow.

“You see the fortune teller,” I say.

“Where?” Prue asks. I trace the outline of the purple flowers on the tapestry above.

We find other shapes on the tapestry, too, like we’re cloud gazing, but the ceiling is the sky, and after a while, my eyes feel heavy, and I sink into the floor, falling back against the world.

                                                                                                    ***

The first few weeks together exist in a black hole; time tentative and unreal. At my place, Prue runs her hands over the half-finished people who live within my sketchbook.

She dips her finger in a bit of blue, same as the spring sky. She paints points on blank pages. “The mountains,” she says. “They’re calling me.”

“I’ve never been,” I say, my brush in the blue, letting it puddle just so beneath her eyes.

She explains time in the mountains changes people. “But I know I’ll never go,” she says. The words are clipped, as if she's cut her hopes before they feel too real. Her eyes wander, reveal her gypsy soul within that bathetic body; an unmoving juxtaposition between want and need.

I paint Prue with perfect lips, covering the canvas with her arms and covering those in small swirls, which remind me of the sun and our first date and the beginning of everything.

“What’s your favorite season?” I ask. “For the background, you know?” I try to imagine the color scheme she’ll choose before she says it, but I can’t.

“The In-Between. That’s what I love,” she says. “One sprout through frozen ground, not quite thawed. Dandelion snow. The just-there-crisp as the first leaves fall; days disappearing,” she says.

When I finish, Prue looks at my work, stares at herself, and the faint hint of mountains beyond. I wonder if she recognizes this version, almost sad. She kisses my hands despite the paint, and I think she understands; I know her.

                                                                                                    ***

Most nights we sleep and smoke beneath my painting of Prue, her acrylic eyes protecting us from the world. I kiss my Prue and see her in shades of yellow: butter and daisies and faded henna and honey. I don’t remember when I start to see her this way, until one day, her jaundiced skin is all I see.

                                                                                                    ***

Prue sleeps and sleeps and never wakes. I’m not sure where she goes, but when I look at her, I feel trapped in the sun’s rays, eyes blinded. Sometimes it hurts too much to look at her, so instead I kiss her, and ask if she believes in the future. When she doesn’t answer, I roll a joint with thin sketch paper from the book she bought me for my birthday. While she sleeps, I smoke, and I wait for everything else to disappear.

                                                                                                    ***

One month later, Prue disappears.

They take her body and leave me with her painting. And for days after, I paint her. I surround her with pale purple flowers, eyes clouded with something I could never see.

I pack her few belongings from the attic apartment, and bring them back to my place. I take each of the tapestries, and the purple lights, which burn out.

                                                                                                    ***

I’m arrested outside her building.

The officer waits until I finish the henna lines on Prue’s arms, which I’ve painted on the side of the building.

She exists for everyone now, the brick bleeding through her skin. Her lips are dark red and everything else is pale and pure and if I squint just right, she starts to fade at the edges; only a ghost.

                                                                                                    ***

I’m released the next day, and I return to her building because I need to see her.

From the alley, I smell fresh paint.

Prue isn’t here.

Painted over.

Disappeared.


Written by: Kayla King
Photograph by: Tiffany Melanson

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

The Girl with the Ponytail

I didn’t want to be with Vick. But it was only temporary and it's not like I had a choice, what with the “below living wage” from the cafe. Mom was gone now, so it would have been Vick or some other guy. The old apartment was being fumigated, so I just left all my stuff there. It had always been an iffy place because of the bugs, but bed bugs don’t kill you, and neither do cockroaches. Other things might kill you, but not those things.

I still had my coat and bought some new underwear from Giant Tiger. Vick’s mom said I could stay, as long as “I knew this wasn’t a free ride or anything.” That’s how I got a mother-in-law who lived in the front of the house, and how I found myself frying things on the stove top like I was a short-order cook. I had only just met Vick, and it didn’t take long for the whole mother-in-law and son thing to get old. I was stuck pretending I was so damn thankful, because I had no-where else to go.

I thought I only had a week, maybe a month at most to put up with them. But now, because I’d lost my money, I was years away from not having to fuck when told, or scrape broken eggs off their chipped, Teflon pan. And why was it my job to answer the door? Letting in all those ugly, cooked people. Drug-poor and broken and without a lick of hope but for what Vick would hand them in small bags.

When I thought about my money, my stomach hurt. It had been from Grandma’s estate, the amount paid off on her mortgage. It was that lawyer’s fault. The lawyer had listened to Dad about me being too young and he was the only other person with access to the bank account. It had to be Dad who stole my money. He probably took it to pay off a debt. Dad wasn’t a drunk or a druggie, but he was a frivolous type.

The teller at the bank wore a posh suit, and she looked at me, her eyes full of a pretty sort of pity. I must have been a sight for her to see, with dark bags under my eyes and a homemade hair cut. I had to used a rubber kitchen elastic because my hair was too short to hold back properly. The elastic pulled out hairs, but it gripped tighter, held harder. The teller had to say it to me again, clear and even: “The money was withdrawn last week, the day after it was transferred from the estate account. There has been no more activity on the account since then.”

I stepped outside and threw up on on their grey, concrete steps. There was greed and then there was greed. Grandma had always been nice to me, and I had been touched by her intention to leave me that money. I’d never liked her all that much, but I respected her. She’d always told me to stop eating whatever I was eating so that I wouldn't lose my figure, and it was decent advice.

“You gotta get away from these people, your mom, your dad. This part of town is full of their types.”

With the money gone, my get away plan was ruined. I woke up on that mattress on the floor, beside the spiny beast that was Vick, not able to get up. I had a weight pressing on my sternum. A fist of anger and disappointment. I have never expected anyone to give me a break, but that didn’t stop me from wanting one. I worked hard at the cafe, refilling coffees and bringing people their orders and ketchup. But it would never be enough. I wanted to go to school, to be a nurse or something like that, where if you kept your mouth shut, you’d get paid and good. They said at the employment office that maybe in a year or two I’d be moved up from part-time to full-time, and in a few more years I’d have enough to save up for school. That is, if I kept myself in the clear.

Because of Vick’s business, there was always money lying around the house, tucked away in drawers or behind bottles in the medicine cabinet, sometimes for a few hours or just overnight. Stored until it was passed on to the next person. Vick told me he trusted me. But that morning, there was $3,000 in one hundred dollar bills in the cabinet above the toilet. Karma-wise, I knew it wasn’t meant to be replacement for the $5,000 my Dad stole. I also knew that the money didn’t belong to Vick. He likely had dibs on a percentage of it and would be in trouble if I took it, but it was almost enough money to get my plan back and start new like Grandma had intended. I slipped the envelope into the back waist of my jeans and flushed the toilet to hide the creak of the cabinet closing. I bent over and tied up my laces by the door so I didn’t see Vick in the hall. I flinched when he grabbed the envelope out of my pants. I’d never really seen him mad before, at least not at me. He looked at me with his eyes drug-red rimmed.

“Who do you think you are? I let you sleep in my fucking bed. You think you should steal from me?”

He shoved me hard, and I lost my balance. On the ground, he kicked me in the face a few times, and I almost didn’t feel the pain. Instead, I thought about Grandma because she’d never been the type of woman a guy would shove around. Each time I tried to get up, he hoofed me back down again. If this happens to you, you’ll worry about the blood in your eyes and the bones in your fingers, and all the things everyone else wrecks of yours or takes from you. Until you learn how to take, too.

When he stepped on my neck, I was praying that it wasn’t a serious injury. I couldn’t move, and Vick was pacing around the room, yelling at his mom who was talking loudly, trying to decide what to do with me. That was when I remembered Grandma saying that the world was a hard place. I wouldn’t make it unless I was the type to get lucky. I guess I was a different type.

Written by: Elisha Stam

Photograph by: Hannah Chertock

Touch of Grey

I glance at the stack of messages my secretary just handed me. The name on the top one hits me like knuckles to the solar plexus.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I stare at the name, scrawled in her barely legible scribble. Walt Bowman.

“Mr. Willett?” Her voice wavers. “Did I do something wrong?”

I shift my gaze to her. She’s a temp, but besides her poor handwriting, she has been doing a fantastic job. Sadly, this makes her one of the few bright spots of my life at the moment. I do my best to regain my composure.

“No, Darlene, you didn’t do anything wrong.” I try to smile at her to put her at ease.

“Whew, you had me scared there for a minute.” She lets out a nervous laugh. I know she needs this job as much as I need some sort of stability in my life right now. She puts her hand on my arm, a warm grandmotherly touch. “I know I shouldn’t pry, but is it something to do with the divorce? I know how hard it can be.”

I shake my head and hold up the message.

“No, this is just a name I haven’t seen in a long, long time. It’s probably just a coincidence anyway, I’m sure it’s not even the same guy I used to know.”

I close the door to my office and think about the first time I saw Walt Bowman. In his torn jeans and ragged Grateful Dead t-shirt, all eyes were on him as he came sauntering through the door of Ms. Faber’s freshman English class. As he searched for a seat, he scoured the class, taking in all the Beverly Hills 90210 clones in their Z Cavaricci jeans and Oxford shirts. And then he spied me, sitting in the corner, about as non-descript as you could get.

“What’s up, I’m Walt,” he said, sliding into the desk next to me.

“Eric,” I replied.

“You like to get high Eric?” he asked, eyebrows raised, a pimply grin spreading across his face.

“Uhh…” I glanced around the room, full of kids that I had known most of my life, but who seemed to have forgotten my name through the years. I thought of my mother and the look of quiet sadness she would get whenever she asked why I never invite any friends over after school. I turned to Walt, and tried to sound as cool as possible. “Yeah, I love to get high, who doesn’t?”

“Good,” he said.

My God, Walt fucking Bowman.

I notice my fingers tremble a little as I punch the numbers into the phone. My heart beats faster with each ring.

“Hello?” My stomach drops, the voice doesn’t sound familiar at all.

“Is this Walt Bowman? My name is Eric Willett.”

“Eric! How are you doing? You remember me, right? Hayward High, freshman year?”

“Of course I remember you. I just never expected to talk to you again. What happened to you? You just disappeared.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” He chuckles. “My dad was pretty mad when the cops brought me home. He moved us to Albany to live with my grandparents.” He chuckles again. “Man, what were we thinking?”

Thinking? I remember us thinking Spring Break warranted something more exciting than sneaking a half of a joint in the alleyway behind my house, like we had done most days during our three month friendship.

I looked above me at the two street signs above me, in awe of the fact that I was standing on the corner of Haight and Ashbury.

“What did that guy say to do?” I asked.

“We put it under our tongues and let it dissolve.” Walt looked at me. “Ready?”

I took a deep breath and popped it into my mouth. After a minute I spit out the soggy remnants of the paper.

“Feeling anything?” Walt asked.

“I don’t think so,” I responded. “You?”

“Nope. Damn it, that fucking hippie ripped us off, man. Come on, I want to go check out City Lights Bookstore.”

By the time we had walked the three miles, my world had turned into liquid dream. I stared at the historic building in front of me as it melted and swirled in a kaleidoscope of color. It was too much.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I mumbled to myself. I grabbed Walt and threw my arms around him. “I can’t handle this shit. Help me. Please, help me.”

My paranoia sent Walt into a fit of maniacal laughter.

I fell to my knees. Walt tried to pick me up.

“Cool it man, or you’re going to get us busted.”

I scanned around me. I saw the horse, but not the policeman on top of it.

“Are you okay, son?”

I screamed. “The fucking horse is talking, Walt. It’s talking.” I collapsed to the ground.

By the time I got out of rehab, Walt had vanished, never to be heard from again. Until now.

“So how have you been?” Walt asks.

I look at the pictures on my desk. I want to tell him, to unburden my soul on this stranger who once, a long time ago and for a very short period, was my friend. Well, let’s see Walt. Ever since my soon to be ex- wife found out I was fucking my now ex- secretary, my life has turned to absolute shit. I’m living at the Motel 6, my kids won’t talk to me, and just this morning I found out my former secretary/lover is suing me for sexual harassment so I’m probably going to lose my business. My life is just grand.

“I’m okay, I guess. How about you?” I say.

I try to picture him as a forty year old version of the fifteen year old kid I knew. I imagine him sporting a graying Mohawk, chain-smoking Camels and quoting Nietzsche. More than anything I want him to say “So do you like to get high?” But he doesn’t.

“I’m good,” he says. “Actually better than good, I’m great. Wife. Kids, the whole bit. I’m in the insurance game these days. Speaking of which, how are you doing with life insurance these days? I was wondering if we could sit down and discuss your portfolio sometime. You can never be too careful these days.”

I put the phone receiver down and lay my head in my hands. The tears fall from my eyes and form little pools on my desk. I faintly hear Walt’s voice.

“Hello? Hello? Eric, are you still there? Hello?”

Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Steve Harlow

The Jam Times

When I got back, Blue Louis had gotten jam everywhere, and I went and stared at it awhile because it was raspberry, full of little woody pips, and I had never in my life realized that jam was such a fine and interesting thing to look at up close. In my hand was the oil we were hoping would freak out the spiders colonizing our rooms, orange-legged little vent dwellers. Looked them up in a chart that said they were venomous so Louis was on to me like, ‘I found one of them in my bed sheets, they’ve got to fucking die.’ So I had a plastic tub full of lemon and lavender ready to spray the floor, 'cause spiders taste through their feet and they hate citrus and lavender most of all.

Toast was round later for some modeling with Lyndon, the skinny artist downstairs. Said he was going to transform her into Daphne; that chaste Laurel woman twisting and tree-faced in the clutches of lusty Apollo.

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Smells like a ponce in here.’

Louis had cleaned up the jam, was licking something off a knife. Peanut butter, I think. ‘You know, originally that meant someone who lives off the earnings of a loose woman.’

‘Like a pimp?’

He shrugged, lounging in his Harlem suit. ‘I guess.’

Louis was the lynchpin, like a black hole dragging us all in around him. Would have flown off in all directions otherwise, scooped up in the palm of God and flung into bleak space. He was a fine-boned dark man, chilli seeds and raw cacao and most definitely an Inca or Creole or something. Sometimes he’d go off on one of his expansive and ungraspable trips and stand out on the roof shouting crazy like ‘I’m the Sultan of Araby!’ until Toast and Lyndon and I grabbed at his jumper and pulled him backwards into the bare bulb light that we all lived by in St. Anthony’s.

The spiders didn’t die. Even when Toast put down black pepper over the thresholds, ‘cause they hate that too apparently. It was from her I learned that spiders have taste buds on the ends of their legs. From her I also learned how to correctly make love to a woman with my tongue, and I will always be thankful to her for both of these extraordinarily useful teachings. She was tight-hipped and sharp-jawed, like a whip ready to crack someone up. Lousy man magnet, more like a bullfighter caught up in her own red flag. Had a string of dumb cock wavers in her life, a steady assault of fat, shit-dragging bluebottles wiping their insect filth on her body.

I remember during the Jam Times, as I came to think of that collection of strange days, ‘cause during my long trip that morning I remember thinking - are those pips even real or is it actually someone’s job to make fake fruit pips for jam? – with a real intensity that completely coloured all of my thinking for a while afterward, when Louis and I were drinking coffee with Lyndon. Watching him sketch out classical atelier tits; and he suddenly chucks down his paper and charcoal and runs off back to the doss, yelling away. And that boy could have flights of fancy himself so we traipsed after him to make sure he wasn’t going to take a leap off the building or anything when he comes out of our rooms tugging on my only clean jeans, and I say, ‘You slum fuck! Those are my pants!’

And he says to me, ‘Yeah but I just remembered I got a job interview!’

‘What’s wrong with your own clothes?’

‘They got vomit on them.’

And he gestures through the hall door down to his. I don’t know why, but I head down there because I’ve got a sense of dread like lava rising up through the underground, and there is vomit crusting a lot of things; the sink, the carpet, the kitchen sides. It’s all purplish and I guess it’s red wine. Toast is face down on the futon with a slim bare ankle sticking out from under the green wool blanket, and I shake her a little to see if she’s okay.

Her breath is foul with spew and cigarettes and Lyndon. She struggles to sit up and I fetch her water and sugar like she is a sick bee, and we talk awhile about the time she was in Ireland and saved a deaf girl from being hit by a tram.

‘How do deaf people go into rooms?’

‘What in fuck’s name are you talking about now, Natty?’ Toast is concentrating on the floor as I drip-feed her Smarties.

‘Well, you know, if a deaf person knocks on a door, they can’t hear someone say, ‘Come in,’ so how do they know when to come in?’

We ponder this in silence for a while. ‘Maybe they don’t knock, maybe they just walk in,’ she says.

‘But then they might walk in on someone having a wank, or killing themselves or Spanish dancing in just socks or something like that. I don’t reckon they do that.’

She stops mainlining chocolate and stares hard at me. ‘Actually, how do deaf people enter rooms?’

‘I know, man. It’s a proper puzzler.’

‘It actually is.’

Louis is waiting for me in the hall, his hat spinning round in his hands.

‘My Grandmother said you gotta want to help yourself or The Good Lord can only stand by and watch, you gotta want to be lifted up.’

‘My Grandmother always said I wasn’t eating enough.’

‘Yeah but she was a Jew.’

‘No, the other one.’

‘Well I don’t know about that, then.’

I put out a hand to a dark spot on the wall. ‘Lou, the fucking walls are wet.’

‘It’s been raining.’

And that was that. There were long, loud nights and graves dug out of living bodies and when it rained the inside of the house got wet.

Written by: Natty Mancini
Photograph by: Jennifer Stevens

Biscuit Sings the Blues

James ‘Biscuit’ Baker sat alone at a little table in his motel room, sipping on a bottle of Lone Star. The clock read ten til six. His curtains, like all motel curtains, would not quite close. Light seeped in from the red neon sign outside, bathing his room in a sanguine aura.

He felt like Goldilocks when he was out on the road these days, the bed two nights ago in Amarillo was too soft, this one too hard. With any luck, the one tomorrow night in San Antonio would be just right. He swallowed a Vicodin and waited for the pain in his lower back to subside. Once the opiate started to work its magic, Biscuit nodded off in the chair.

A knock on the door woke him from his slumber two hours later. He lurched his sixty-year old body out of the chair and lumbered towards the door.

There was more knocking, louder this time.

“Hold the fuck on. I’m coming.”

The hazy, morning sun blinded him when he opened the door, but he recognized his visitor as soon as she spoke.

“Morning, sunshine,” she said in an unmistakable tone.

Maxine, his ex-wife, had a huskiness to her voice that once reminded him of a young Lauren Bacall, but after a lifetime of cigarettes of whiskey, she now sounded more Johnny Cash.

“Fucking hell…what do you want?”

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Oh yeah, you’re a sore sight for eyes.”

“Don’t you mean a sight for sore eyes.”

“Nope.”

“Well, you’re not looking so hot yourself, old man. I see that you got that dickey-do disease going on.”

“Dickey-do disease?”

“Your belly is sticking out farther than your dickey do.”

She chuckled at her own joke. Her laugh sent a chill down his spine.

“Not that it would take much of a belly for that to happen,” she added.

“You know Maxine, I’m sure we could just continue this love fest all day, but what the fuck do you want?”

“Can I come in?”

“No… I’ll come out there. Hold on,” he said, slamming the door.

Biscuit splashed some water on his face, put on a fresh shirt and grabbed the pack of Parliament Menthols that were lying on the table. He closed the door behind him and lit one up.

“How did you know I was here?”

“In Austin? Hell, Biscuit, I do live here, you know. And it’s not like I don’t go to the Continental anymore. If you don’t want me to find out, maybe you shouldn’t be playing at one of the most popular fucking clubs in town.”

They started walking towards the sidewalk.

“I meant, how did you know where I was staying?”

“Because you always stay here. You’re a creature of habit.”

Maxine gestured at the big Austin Motel sign, almost pink in the early morning light, that shot up into the sky.

“I figure it has something to do with that sign. A dick for a dick.”

“Huh…” Biscuit took a long drag of his cigarette. “I wonder what old Sigmund Freud would say about that. I always thought of that sign as a hand, with a big middle finger. Kind of a giant ‘fuck you’ to whole entire world… And you think of it as a dick. Maybe he was onto something with that penis envy thing.”

“Not that you would have anything to envy,” came her retort.

“Touché.”

“Seriously though, did you call Scotty and tell him you were going to be in town?”

“I tried last night when I got in, but he didn’t answer. I didn’t leave a message. I was going to try again today.”

“That’s convenient.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, that it’s convenient how you wait until the last minute to tell him, hoping that he has other plans.”

“That’s not true. I would love to see Scotty.”

“Bullshit. What are you afraid of Biscuit? Failing as father? You already did that.”

“Fuck Maxine, do you have to be so harsh?”

“What? Does the truth hurt, honey? You know what else probably hurts? When your father doesn’t make it to your high school graduation, or when he forgets to call you on your birthday. So if you’re looking for sympathy, you better find a dictionary, it’s somewhere between shit and syphilis.”

Biscuit stared down South Congress Street, searching his memory for anything other than hatred for this woman.

“He’s getting married.”

“Huh?” Biscuit turned to look at Maxine. “He’s what?”

“Getting married. She’s a real nice girl. I think he wants you to come to the wedding.”

“If I’m such a failure as a father, why would he want me there?”

“Because he still loves you Biscuit. I don’t know why, but he still does.”

Maxine put on her sunglasses and opened her car door.

“You know, despite all of our shortcomings, that is one hell of a good kid we have. And before you get all pissy, I’ll admit, it wasn’t just you. I was by no means mother of the year. But somehow he turned out real good. Give him a call, Biscuit. See you around.”

Maxine got into her car and disappeared into the Austin traffic.

                                                                                                        ***

Biscuit walked onto the stage to raucous applause. He sat down on the stool and picked up his trusty old Telecaster. Once the crowd quieted down he pulled the microphone close.

“Before I play tonight, I just want to say a few words. My son is here in the crowd, with his beautiful new fiancé.”

A spotlight was turned on to a table near the back of the small room. A waitress was delivering a bottle of champagne to the young couple sitting there.

“So I just want to say to Scott and Sara, congratulations, and I know I was a shitty father…” Biscuit’s voiced cracked. “Hell, I still am a shitty father, but I love you.”

Scott smiled and wiped a quick tear from his eye.

“Now enough with all this feel good shit. If you want happy music, go to Nashville. My name is Biscuit and I sing the blues.”

“They say that time is money… well, I guess I’m broke as fuck…”

Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Matt Crump

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

A Strong Foundation

“That’s one heckuva fall,” Dale said, looking up towards the sky.

“Sure is,” answered Ernie, emptying the contents of his shovel into the refuse bin. “You know that building ain’t even legal?”

“What’chu talkin about?”

“It’s bigger than any building in this area’s s’posed to be.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know? Sumpin’ about the foundation bein’ too weak.”

“Then how’d they get to build it?”

“I don’t know the reason, but I betchu anything there’s a dollar sign attached to it.”

“Well, looks sturdy enough to me.”

“They always do, until they don’t.”

Dale turned on the hose and washed the remaining cloth fibers and DNA down the storm drain.

                                                                                                  ***

Shelly woke to a text from her sponsor.

I covered for you, AGAIN. You HAVE to be at the next meeting or you’re going back to rehab. They sounded serious this time.

Shelly scoffed and tossed her phone across the room.

“What the FUCK?”

She propped herself up on her elbows to find a man she didn’t recognize writhing in pain on the antique area rug she bought at a Sotheby’s auction. She just laughed and fell back into her Egyptian cotton sheets.

Shelly pulled her comforter over her head to drown out the album that had playing been on repeat since the party moved to her place. It was her album, and it was the reason nameless faces were sleeping off various substances in every square foot of her penthouse apartment.

Despite her inability to play a musical instrument or carry a tune, Shelly had successfully released a 12-track party oeuvre that conquered iTunes in less than 24 hours. Some would say it was a dream come true, but Shelly could never tell the difference between reality and her dreams.

Since the day she was surgically removed from her mother’s womb, Shelly was given everything but adversity. She was born in the hospital wing of her parents’ Southampton home and wrapped in the finest hypoallergenic blanket an offshore bank account could afford.

Shelly recreated the scene as she bundled herself in a silk throw blanket and headed to the bathroom. Years of private ballet lessons served her well as she tiptoed through the minefield of half-naked bodies, empty bottles and drug paraphernalia.

She bounded into the bathroom, closed the soundproof door and cherished the escape from her own auto-tuned voice. As she turned toward the sink the delicate fabric slid off her left shoulder, exposing half of her body.

Shelly paused and studied her reflection in the mirror. She let the rest of the blanket fall to the white-marble floor and scanned her skin for imperfections. There was no sign of the lower-back tattoo her father had lasered off the same day she got it. There were no scars from the breast augmentation or nose readjustment she received on her 18th birthday. The only blemish on her velvety skin was the beauty mark above the left side of her lip.

“God DAMN,” interrupted a man who had been admiring Shelly from the bathtub.

“Rude,” she responded, calmly reaching for the blanket.

“Like I haven’t seen it before.”

“I was too fucked up to even remember that night.”

“Aren’t you always?”

Shelly flipped him off and left before he could say another word, soon realizing she traded one obnoxious voice for another. She covered her ears and shook her head back and forth until the sloshing fluids in her skull drowned out the monotonous beat of track 8, “I’m Not Sorry I Party.”

Through her blurred vision she spotted a joint nestled behind the ear of a passed out partygoer by her feet. Hands on her ears, she gracefully retrieved the rolled paper with the toes of her right foot. She remained balanced on one leg like a stork as she bent over and brought the joint to her mouth without ever letting the music slip through her fingers.

Shelly maintained her grace as she searched each room for a lighter, eventually spotting a golden Zippo standing on a shelf next to the porch door. She jeté’d between the unoccupied patches of carpet until she came within arms length of the lighter.

After she snatched the gold case during a pause between songs, the lighter’s absence brought the other items into focus. Specifically, the photo album chronicling her greatest childhood achievements. She grabbed it and fled to the porch, where she sat on a lounge chair, lit the joint and proceeded down memory lane.

She opened the book to find her eight-year-old self staring up from the back of her purebred-horse, Sebastian. That year she and Sebastian won first place at the Youth Dressage Festival, although, most of the credit belonged to Sebastian and his team of world-class trainers.

She took another drag and flipped to another random page, this one containing a picture of her and her prom date in front of a private helicopter. Shortly after their departure, Shelly was caught straddling said date on the headmaster’s desk. The hormonal teens got a lecture and the teacher who turned them in lost his job.

Shelly continued alternating between tokes and page turns, each image reminding her of her immunity to hardship. Once she ran out of pictures, she noticed a billboard promoting her latest fragrance, Dangers––which she had yet to smell. She stood and walked towards the banister on the balls of her feet, staring at her massive portrait until she felt the subtle chill of polished metal permeating through the silk.

She lifted her right foot and rested it on the bottom rail. She repeated the motion with her left; then again with her right; then her left; then right; then left, until her entire weight was balancing on her arches.

She took a deep breath, leaned forward and began her descent. She looked for the net or fireman or superhero that would save her from harm, but all she saw was pavement.

She was confused. She was afraid. And for a split second, she was alive.

Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

Hide and Seek

The tub smelled like Lysol when Jeremy climbed in. Dana must have been up before sunrise cleaning. He thought of his own tub, back in his studio apartment, the rainbow of mold he was accumulating. First the black kind and now an orange-pink kind around the drain. But he could eat out of Dana’s tub if he wanted. He thunked his skull against the tile wall a few times.

You’re an adult. You’re an adult, too.

He could hear the twins counting in the hall.

“Twenty-seventy, twenty-eight, thirty! Ready-a-not, here we come, Uncle Jeremy!”

“Let’s get him!”

Their bare feet pitter-pattered up and down the hardwood floors of the hallway.

Dana’s twins had never heard of hide and seek. Their eyes stretched wide as he explained the premise, the rush of the hunt already winding them into a frenzy. Dana’s twins hadn’t heard of a lot of things. They had only wooden toys. No plastic. Dana was afraid of hormones and over-stimulation, and said that certain toys just didn’t fit “the aesthetic she was going for.” The twins weren’t allowed to watch television because of something about pixels and ADHD.

All of this, of course, was documented on a list Dana handed off to Jeremy before she left for the weekend.

“No sugar, no caffeine. And no chicken nuggets,” Dana had said.

Jeremy nodded.

“Once kids eat nuggets, they won’t eat anything else,” Dana laughed.

“Sure,” Jeremy said.

Kitty wasn’t eating gluten, and Huron should have soy instead of regular milk before bed.

“Got it,” Jeremy said.

Jeremy had spent most of the last decade resenting Dana for making him look bad. He’d heard somewhere that parents’ satisfaction with their grown children depended on a set of factors including the child living in close proximity, being married, achieving a successful career, and producing grandchildren. Jeremy was a sea of negatives. He moved to New York after college, just like everyone else, where he worked intermittently as an underpaid hotel concierge. His girlfriends were also intermittent, mostly manic types who turned out to be more interested in being interesting than spending time with him.

Dana had the career, the husband in finance, the twins.

But while Dana and her husband were in LA for some coworker’s black tie, no-kids-allowed wedding, Jeremy had the twins, trying to curry favor. He needed some brownie points before he dropped the bomb on everyone about his whole legal situation. It had just been a little bit of coke. He’d had enough money to post bail, but his sentencing date was coming up, and he was pretty sure without help from Dana, he wouldn’t be able to afford the kind of lawyer who would get him out of doing 180 days in county jail. It was the baggies and the scale that would do him in—the cop had accused him of dealing because of paraphernalia alone.

The bathroom doorknob rattled.

“Uncle Jeremy! You in here?”

It was Huron. He was caught.

“I found you, I found you!” he said, bursting into the bathroom.

“You got me, Huey.”

“Now we gotta find Kitty!”

“But you and Kitty were both seeking. Where did she go?”

“She’s hiding too. She’s a better hider than you.”

Shit.

Jeremy darted through the labyrinth that was Dana’s pristine house, checking under beds, in the linen closet.

“Kitty!” Huron called. “Kitty come out!”

“Kitty! Game’s over!” Jeremy rounded a corner into the living room. The sliding glass door was open about six inches. “Huron, come on.”

He yanked his nephew by the wrist and went outside onto the deck. Huron continued to call for Kitty, more chant-like now, repeating her name over and over in between deep gulps of air.

“Stop it, Huey.”

Jeremy slid his hand into the pocket of his jeans and pinched the baggie inside.

Get through this. Later. When Kitty’s found and they’re both asleep. You are an adult.

Dragging Huron, he headed for the street. He considered ringing the neighbor’s bell, but then figured that might get back to Dana. Better not to have any witnesses to his failure at the one responsibility of babysitting—keep track of the kids.

Two responsibilities: keep the kids alive.

“I don’t like hide and seek,” Huron whined.

“Me either, buddy.”

They checked the ditches, the bushes, the park down the street. The guy in the ice cream truck said he hadn’t seen her.

“Ice cream is full of processed sugar,” Huron said.

“Helpful,” Jeremy grunted.

It had been thirty minutes. Sweat crept up Jeremy’s back. An hour. They went back to the house and searched again. Nothing. Huron fell asleep on the couch, and Jeremy moved him to his bed. Jeremy went back to the bathtub and climbed in. He took the baggie of coke from his pocket, licked his finger, and stuck it in the baggie. He swiped the powder on his gums, then knocked his head against the tile a few more times.

Shit. You are a grown-ass man sitting in a bathtub. You are a grown-ass man outsmarted by a four-year-old. Get it together.

“Anybody home? Police!”

Double shit.

Jeremy tripped out of the bathtub and toward the front door.

The cop had Kitty by the hand. She was fine. She was perfectly fine.

“Good thing she knew her address, right? Are you her dad?”

Jeremy’s lips felt a little numb.

“Uh…”

“Jeremy’s my uncle!” Kitty said.

Jeremy pulled Kitty to his side, positioning her in front of the pocket where his drugs were stashed.

“Mind if I come in?” the cop asked.

“Okay!” Kitty chirped. “You want a snack?”

The cop laughed. Jeremy managed a grimace.

“Your neighbor over on Iverson found this little lady picking flowers in her yard—didn’t know who she was.”

“Well, thanks, officer. I was…just getting ready to call 911, actually.”

The officer squinted at him. Jeremy knew this drill. Checking for red eyes, for balance, for any disoriented behavior. Any sign he couldn’t be trusted. He pulled Kitty closer.

The officer’s eyes then redirected to Dana’s foyer—the Manet print of the naked woman picnicking, staring straight out, the parquet flooring, the ridiculous chandelier, the rug from India.

“Well, you all have a good one, then,” the cop said. He tipped his hat and left.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe