Bubble

“Good match.” Amy walked from her baseline to the net. She took Riley’s hand and shook it. She was hot and sweaty, her skin a little rough from gripping a racket every day. Only ten years Riley’s senior, and she already worked as a teaching pro.

When their hands slid apart, Riley said, “Thanks.”

“Keep practicing those volleys.” Amy leaned her racket against the net. She wiped her forehead with her towel. “Master those and you’ll beat a lot of kids your age.”

“Continental grip, right?” Riley picked up his racket and held it out. “Like this?”

Amy glanced at his hand, drying off her hands with the towel. “Turn your racket a smidge to the right.” Riley turned it left. “Other right.” When Riley turned it again, Amy laughed. “Very funny. You know the grip.”

Riley smiled. He did, but he wouldn’t have minded if Amy adjusted his grip with her hand. “I want to play another practice match when I get it right. Maybe I’ll win.”

Amy laughed. “We’ll see.” She tossed her towel to the bench. “Now where’s my next opponent?”

Riley grabbed his own water bottle. He unscrewed the cap and chugged it. Nothing was better than winter clinics. Over the summer, this court—and all the others—were outdoors. In the winter, the club erected a bubble, a temporary grid of steel beams crisscrossing beneath a thick, plasticky, dome.

This was court one, the show court, where the club scheduled tournament finals in the summer. Today, it was also the court where Amy reigned, awaiting new challengers every half hour as part of today’s match play.

Riley was about to ask if Amy would play another set when the new girl burst into the bubble. She jogged over, letting the door slam behind her. She wore her tennis bag across one shoulder; it bounced against her side with each step.

“Hello, Miss Hannah. Where have you been?” Amy asked.

“Playing a tiebreak,” the new girl said. “With Derek.”

Riley snorted. He’d beaten Derek a thousand times in the past few years. Maybe this new girl wasn’t as good as the pros thought – Riley had heard them whispering about her tournament record before match play.

“Have you two met?” Amy asked. “Hannah, Riley. Riley, Hannah.”

“Nice to meet you.” The new girl set her Wilson bag down on Riley’s bench, next to his extra racket. She couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen.

“Hi.”

“You’re with me until noon. Anything particular you want to work on?”

“Can we play a set?” the new girl asked.

“Sounds good.” Amy picked up her racket and turned to Riley. “You’re back on court two.”

“I know.” Riley didn’t move. “Can I watch a point?”

“Someone’s waiting for you.”

“Please? I’ve heard Hannah’s really good.”

Amy looked to Hannah and then back to Riley. Hannah shrugged. “If you really want to,” Amy said. “Just one point.”

Riley shuffled to the back of the court, squatting against the edge of the bubble, beside a steel beam. When the new girl reached her baseline, she fiddled with her racket strings, examining Riley through the gaps in the polyester...probably wondering why he’d chosen to squat behind her instead of sitting on the benches, like he should have. Riley wanted a front row seat.

Amy bounced a ball on the opposite baseline. Her forehead creased with concentration. The new girl had white stripes down the back of her shirt; they shifted back and forth, blocking his view of Amy as she readied herself for Amy’s serve. Ace her, Riley thought.

Amy hit an easy serve. The new girl split-stepped and hit a forehead back. Though Amy could’ve put the ball away, she didn’t. She’d done the same thing at the beginning of Riley’s set: Amy could hit a thousand winners off of each shot, but instead of pounding the ball, she returned it, analyzing Hannah’s forehands and backhands, identifying weaknesses and cataloging them. Testing her opponents.

The new girl split-stepped again. There was something magical about her, something natural and easy and right. So that was why the pros were whispering about her earlier—she never stopped moving, and she was never caught unaware. Riley watched the new girl’s feet, her perfect split-steps, the swish of her skort as she chased a short shot from Amy.

Amy, of course, was even more perfect. Now, Riley wished he’d sat on her side. Who cared about watching the new girl lose when he could’ve been watching Amy’s powerful legs and toned arms, the turn of her body with each shot, her brown ponytail bouncing with each split-step.

The new girl charged the net. Time for Amy to destroy her. Amy’s passing shot bounced well within the court boundaries and knocked into the wall to Riley’s right. Ha! Riley would’ve gotten his racket on that, at least. He couldn’t wait to see how Amy beat her in the next point.

But Amy stopped play. “You’re practically in the alley. I had the whole court to pass you. Don’t make it too easy for me.”

Hannah moved to her right. “Better?”

“Yes.”

So what if the new girl was twelve or whatever, and beating some of the kids Riley’s age? Amy’s suggestions and advice were reserved for Riley, her special student, because they were so good together and worked so well. Riley and Amy, teacher and student and more, without Hannah.

“Watch out—at some point, I’m going to make you do that again,” Amy said.

The new girl nodded, and Amy served the next point.

What just happened? Amy was supposed to be Riley’s pro. She saw him as more than a student; he knew it. They always worked together. He took private lessons with her. She gave him extra time, because she liked him so much, and sometimes she brought presents around the holidays, a little bag of candy or a few cookies. If she didn’t like him, why did she treat him special? Was Amy lying, faking it? Riley, her favorite student, was a mere shadow in the back of her strategizing session with the new girl, an intruder in their private bubble, their private moment. His presence—and feelings—didn’t much matter, whether they filled the bubble or not – and he wondered how long before it popped.

The new girl flubbed an easy forehand; the ball sailed into the net. This time, Amy offered no advice. Instead, she called, “Riley. When are you going to court two?”

Written by: Natalie Schriefer

Photograph by: Anthony Delanoix

Last Christmas in the Desert

It was a damn beautiful sight, being home, Theodore Saunders and the rest of The Cosmic Cowboy Gang, home for the holidays, top of the charts to happiness, with a bullet. Christmas in the desert was Geronimo in boots stepping on rattlesnakes, Sticky Fingers with a new floozy, dressed in rags, sans-makeup, and him saying over and over again, mantra-like, “She’s as beautiful as a sunset,” so much so that surely he was on something. “Give me some,” I told him and he handed me purple pills, which I gulped down with a tumbler of Rye as Sticky Fingers’ girl winked at me. “What’s your name?” I asked her. “Phyllis,” she said. “Really?” I laughed. “What’s so funny?” “Nothing,” I said. “I guess I just expected something different.”

MacDougal Franks, Theodore Saunders, Geronimo, Sticky Fingers, and me, myself, I - The Cosmic Cowboy Gang, home for the holidays, like I said. Franks turned up the radio and The Castilles played groovy chords, CGE, over and over again, and then THEM came on the radio and finally, lastly, last song before the sunrise, was “Feeling Like a Million Bucks,” by The Albatross Society, guest vocals by Raymond Feelgood.

We’d all stacked into the car like canned tuna, a beat-to-shit Corolla that someone’s mom had bought used, cash-only, on Craiglist. It was born red, but the desert had its way with it and now it was pink in its old age. Sometimes it smoked, and it always jarred and buckled like a mustang from the nineteenth century, but most of the time it rode and this time it rolled us down the slope of Old Man’s Bluff, to the Valley of the Dead Crickets where Geronimo once claimed to have seen a UFO, and to where I can attest to seeing roughly one million dead crickets in the early morning hours of November 9th, the first of many plagues to wipe shit-eating grins off orange oompa-loompa motherfuckers and their disciples.

All the crickets were gone now and in their stead was red earth, blue sky, yellow sun - all of it so settled into a cosmic grace that it was impossible to disturb, it’s fantastic indisputable, it’s hypothetical smile beaming and clean, bright and shining, tie-dyed in the colors of the desert. It was a beautiful sight in an ugly world.

The purple pills took over and blanketed us all in a hazy gospel of good-times, and Sticky Fingers went off with Phyliss to howl wolf to the sexual skies, and Geronimo stumbled into The Valley to find rattlers, and Macdougal Franks and Theodore Saunders and myself climbed up Old Joe’s Bluff to paint our masterpiece on the blank sky. Cowboy boots lack traction so we slipped and slid on loose rubble from age unknown until we reached the crest, and looked out over The Valley of the Dead Crickets, where the sun came up on the good side of the world. It was Christmas official, and in the muted sunrise it began to snow on us, trinkets of grey gold, acid and mushy on the tongue, and with the snow it became impossible to forget that the world around us burned, that on our tongues was no doubt someone’s arm, eye, shoulder blade, breast or heart, lungs, someone’s face or even someone’s tongue - the last meaning that in our version of these end days we’re french kissing with dead strangers.

For years our radioactive society had been scheduled for disintegration. The Lord works in mysterious ways, but each Christmas will be our last, until there are no more places like Old Joe’s Bluff, no more Cosmic Cowboy Gang, no more time for creatures, cultures, or cunt, it finally, at the end, being more convenient to list the things that remained than the things we’d lost. But what do we know? We’d still ride the rollercoasters of our purple highs, we’d still pack the Corolla, we’d still fancy sunrise over sunset, refuse to bury the optimism that comes with the beginning of a day, the freedom of future, and an unlit matchstick. There’ll come a time to burn, but not yet baby, not yet.

I emerged from my druggy reverie just as Sticky Fingers, Phyllis, and Geronimo reconvened the circle of us on the top of the bluff. The sun was high up in the sky then, and afternoon approached. “Why’s the sky blue?” Phyllis moaned, stretching her arms out to meet it, to sink her slender fingers into a cloud. I told her that Aristotle believed that all air was blue. But it was a wispy blue. A slight blue. And only when all air stacked on top of itself did you get the colors of our overhead skies. “If you go to the top of the world, above the clouds,” I said, “the sky would get paler and paler until finally it gets close to white, and that’s when you get to heaven, not a white, just the lightest shade of blue.”

“That ain’t it,” Geronimo said. “It’s the refraction of sunlight. That’s why the sky is blue.” Phyllis shook her head. “That’s how the sky gets blue,” she said. “I’m asking why.” Geronimo started to speak but stopped, unable to corral whatever epiphany lay dormant inside himself, and nobody talked for a good while. I decided that I wanted to believe Aristotle’s reasoning, and that we were seeing the best sky, as it lived its bluest self, science be damned.

When it came time to go the others hopped in the Corolla and I stood outside it, my body a shadow on the desert rocks, silhouetted by the Corolla’s single headlight. “Let’s go,” they chorused, but I waved them off. “I’m going to stay,” I said. “Someone needs to stay outside.” A few of them laughed and asked what I was talking about. But how could I explain to them what I could not even understand myself? Some neolithic organ inside my gut, some nameless constituent of my soul, knew then that it would be our last night, and that as the birth of that day’s namesake marked the beginnings of our Anno Domini epoch, its death would come then, same day, new hour, two thousand-odd years in the making, and that for us, for everyone, it was the last Christmas in the desert.

As they drove away I could see a growing fire stretched across the whole of the horizon, getting bigger. It changed the color of the blue sky and turned it black. I stayed outside.

Written by: Logan Theissen
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

The Caravan

The caravan stopped again.

“Two more,” someone near the door shouted. The passengers all groaned and huddled even closer together. Most had been left behind before. Days, weeks, even months spent walking down deserted streets, desperate for a ride to the camp, only to watch their potential salvation speed past, cries of “full up” trailing behind. So they make room now, though it means sitting on laps, and on the floor, and not being able to sit at all.

How did Jonah put it? “Packed in like cattle off to slaughter.” Alec tried to remember if he had ever learned about cattle back in school, but couldn’t summon the image. Perhaps that was what he would have learned in second tier, he thought. He’d never know now. Jonah says that the cattle died off long ago anyway. That’s why being compared to them made Alec uncomfortable, he was afraid he’d share the same fate. Jonah smiled at him when he confessed this secret fear and told him he was a worrier like their mother had been. Alec didn’t like this comparison any better. He did not want to share her fate either.

As the truck began to move again, Alec wondered about the new arrivals, what their lives had been like before. It was a game he played to pass the time and to distract himself from the fear that had started to grow in his belly. The lady was a doctor, he decided. And the man was a baker. No, not a baker. His mother had been a baker and it was best not to think of her. Because if he thought about her too much, he remembered how his mother looked the last time he saw her; tears in her eyes, but not on her face, trying to be strong. How she had told him to be brave and that she loved him and told Jonah to care for him. He remembered how her arm reached out to touch him one last time, before she realized what she was doing and recoiled into herself. There would be no hug goodbye. No kiss. They couldn’t risk it. So it was with a wave that Alec had said goodbye to his sick mother and started on the long walk with Jonah. They were lucky, climbing aboard the then half-full caravan after only a week on the road.

A cough interrupted Alec’s thoughts. The whole truck went still. Another cough. The brakes slammed so hard they fishtailed in the sandy road before coming to a stop. Light filled the truck as someone swung open the doors.

“Who was it?” came a booming voice. Alec recognized the gruff accent of the Commander that had interviewed Jonah and him before their intake. He was a large man with hair covering his face but none on his head. Not even eyebrows. “See, mom was right,” Jonah had whispered to Alec when they had first seen the Commander. “It’s from the treatment!”

Now, Alec ran his hand over his own bare head, a nervous tick he had developed, and waited to hear what would happen next.

“No one’s gonna own up to it huh? Fine then, everybody out. Everybody,” ordered the Commander.

Slowly the mass of people spilled out of the truck. They were separated, the vaccinated, or Baldies, as the Commander called them, on one side of the road, the Untreated, on the other. Still no one had admitted to the cough.

“Look around you. Look at all the people you are putting at risk. You know the cough is the first sign. You know it will progress quickly, that it will begin to spread. And still you stay silent. Coward!” the Commander bellowed. He addressed only the Untreated, the ones that weren’t lucky enough, or rich enough, to get the vaccine. Still, no one came forward.

“Then you leave me no choice. Obviously the scanner we have doesn’t work. Everyone registered clean before we let you on the truck. I cannot bring an infected to the camp. And since I do not know who is sick, I have no other option but to leave you all behind. Baldies in the truck”.

The Untreated began to panic. Children sobbed, men and women began to accuse each other of being the cause for their banishment. An old man simply sat down, defeated, in the dirt on the side of the road.

Then, finally, Alec watched as a man stepped forward, wrenching himself from his wife’s grasp. “It was me. I coughed. I’m sick. Just me though. There is no fever yet, you can feel my head. I have no rash. I am not contagious. My family is not ill, I couldn’t have infected any of the others yet. Please, just leave me behind.”

The Commander himself went to feel the man’s head. He looked him over for the rash. Satisfied, the Commander nodded once at the man. “Fine,” said the Commander. “Everyone back in the truck. But your family sticks by me. The first sign that they’re sick too and it‘s over, you hear? Let’s move.”

The man nodded to his wife, and whispered something to his children. They reached for him but his wife held them back. They would only get a wave as well.

As they boarded the truck, each member of the caravan nodded to the man and wished him well, knowing that he wouldn’t be and that the virus would take him slowly and painfully. They’d all seen it. But for the man’s sake they pretended they hadn’t and said their goodbyes. All but Alec, who avoided the man’s eyes as he boarded the truck behind his brother.

Later, after Jonah had fallen asleep, and the whole truck was quiet, Alec sat up rubbing his head. Over and over he repeated to himself what his mother had said before they left, as she showed Jonah how to shave their heads to look like the Baldies. “You just need to make it to the camp. They have the vaccine there. You just have to make it to the camp. Whatever it takes….”

“Whatever it takes,” Alec whispered to himself, running his hand over the stubble on his burning head. He’d need Jonah to shave it again tomorrow. Alec spent the night watching the now fatherless children sleep, telling himself they would be at the camp soon. They’d all be safe soon. “Whatever it takes”, he whispered again, burying his head into his arm to suppress another cough. Whatever it takes.



Written by: Lindsay Sakatch
Photograph by: Anthony Delanoix

On the Other Side of the Mountain

Trees grew at the mountain’s snow-covered base, left undisturbed by a less primitive race of people. To Jeannie, the summit didn’t seem so far away, but the path took a snake-like route, adding far more miles than a direct path to the top. The group paused momentarily to take in the view, then continued on the frosty trail.

“I can’t believe we’ve hiked thirty miles already and we’re only at the base of the thing!” Archer’s younger sister Amie laughed and shook her head.

Jeannie sat watching the sunset while the brother and sister built the fire. It didn’t bother her that she barely knew them or why they were willing to help her; the fact was, she needed help. Archer the navigator and Amie the nature expert, the perfect traveling pair. She was just the tagalong. She shivered remembering how cold she was when Archer had found her. How long this journey was taking her. Amie interrupted her thoughts.

“I can’t believe we haven’t had one blizzard! This might just be easier then I thought! Just think, the three of us fighting our way to the top of the mountain. Will we make it? That’s up to chance.”

What a flair for the dramatics--nothing like her brother, thought Jeannie.

That night, Jeannie dreamed of fireplaces and wooden walls, felt the utter joy when she saw…

“Sorry to wake you--” Archer’s head appeared in the tent flap. “We need to get going. There’s a storm coming.” He backed out then called, “You’d better hurry.”

Snow had fallen so thick they could barely pick up their feet. Archer half carried Amie over snowdrifts so deep her tiny frame sank to her waist.

Jeannie said nothing the entire three miles, and by the time the sky showed the pink signs of sunrise, she was exhausted.

“Please, can’t we just rest for a while?” she begged. For once, Amie said nothing and plopped down on a rock next to Jeannie. Jeannie tucked her icy fingers under her arms, looking for heat that wasn’t there. She had never thought she was crazy until now. Her goal had always blinded the insanity of her endeavor, and even when Archer saved her, she had thought she was being rational.

It was a miracle Archer had thought to look near the snow slide. She had thought the cave would be a good place to sleep until the snow stopped, but as she slept, the mouth of the cave slowly covered with snow. By the time she tried to dig herself out, the pile was too thick. If Archer hadn’t been there, heard her scream, she never would have made it out.

                                                                                                    ***

We must be nearly to the summit, Jeannie thought. They had covered only five miles in six hours, and the snow was still falling in sheets.

“What are we going to do? How can we go on in this weather?” she asked. Amie just smiled and Archer shrugged and pressed forward. I guess we just keep going and hope for the best, she thought.

That night, Amie told stories while cooking dinner over the fire. “We needed more money to travel. I was only working at the general store, and Archer was writing for the tiny paper back home.” She blabbered on, but Jeannie was hardly listening. She was dreaming about what was waiting for her on the other side of the mountain.

                                                                                                    ***

“There’s the summit!” They all looked at the mountaintop only a few miles away. It had been a long few weeks before the snow had stopped. Archer shared his sister’s excitement, but Jeannie remained silent.

Her mind drifted back to a boy waving as he boarded the train, his green army uniform still clean, his pack too big for his back. Then she remembered the call that he was gone. MIA, miss. I’m so sorry. But she knew he couldn’t be gone gone. She pictured the log cabin where his family had stayed when he was young, the times that he had told her about it, how it was it was his favorite place on earth. And now, finally, she was so close, just on the other side of the mountain.

Tonight, she thought. I can make it on my own now. Archer talked with Jeannie by the fire that night. She liked his company, the way he treated her like a sister instead of some girl he had picked up on the way. She knew he thought of her as one of them. But I’m not, I can’t be, she reminded herself again. No one can follow me.

The crescent moon was high and the stars in full shine when Jeannie began to steal away from the sleeping camp. Wind whipped her face as she crept through snow-covered trees. She turned toward a sudden noise.

“JEEAANNNIIEEEE!!”

Archer stumbled through the snow, shouting. She ran through the snow as fast as she could and hid behind an evergreen, knowing the darkness would hide her tracks. She nearly cried as she saw Archer stumble past, begging her to come back.

She wanted to call out to him, to tell Archer to come with her, but she couldn’t, she knew that. What would they do? she thought, What if they told someone? Deserters are not taken lightly. Who knows if I would ever see my beloved soldier boy again.
As Archer’s calls faded into the distance, Jeanie slipped out from behind her hiding place. As the night wore on, she became increasingly lost. The snow, gone for several weeks, returned so heavy she could barely see where she was going. She stumbled as the wind whipped around her. Just keep going, you’ll be there soon.

But by sunrise, she was still alone. “What have I done!” she cried, “Why did I think I could do this alone? Oh Annachie, I’m so sorry.” In her exhaustion, she lost her footing and tumbled down a snowy slope. That’s when she noticed the little column of smoke from between the trees. Her heart racing, she ran in its direction, half crying with joy. Tripping over herself, she fell face first in the snow.

“Stay where you are,” came a voice behind her. Jeannie looked up and saw the little cabin only a few meters away. She heard the crunching of snow and turned to see the end of a shotgun barrel only feet from her face. Her eyes traveled up the gun to the man holding it. “Three years,” he said. “It took you three long years.”

“Yes, Annachie, but I’m home.”



Written by: Tess Selby
Photograph by: Blake Bronstad

2 Drink Minimum

The bar is small, dark, and trite, nestled in a strip mall between a prosperous and garish Korean nail salon and the upscale Gourdough’s Public House. This bar is not upscale. It survives precisely because it’s a hole people can climb into and pull over themselves.

It’s as anonymous as porn theater sex. It has no windows, no sign over the door, no chipped and faded little cigarette-company decal with a penguin proclaiming Come on in, it’s KOOL inside! The metal door is old and rusted, dented here and there, with two punctures that let in rain. It works with a scream of protest, just like most of the bar’s patrons.

The place has weathered barn wood nailed to the wall at the far end, and a few dart players of unreliable skill throw feathered projectiles at a target hung from a nail. A ragged color printout of someone’s ex-wife is taped over the ten-ring, encouraging accuracy. Most of the darts embed into the barn wood anyway.

As a celluloid Nick the Bartender said to the you-never-existed George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, this too is a place where men, and now women, are hard customers who come to drink hard liquor, and get drunk. If you can’t drink at least two, you are out of your league here. Go next door to Gourdough’s where there is better lighting and you can order your fucking Mojito.

Coincidentally, the bartender here is also named Nick. He hasn’t mixed a White Russian in two years. There was that Manhattan last month, but it was served to a regular who followed up with a triple Lagavulin neat. The woman’s date never showed—married prick, got cold feet. After almost two years on that bar stool, she never came back.

This is a destination bar, where men and women often meet with others not their spouse. Couples huddle in booths around the perimeter of the main room. A few more sit at booths and a few tables in satellite rooms even darker than the main area. There are other regulars, too. You can buy or sell information here, or plan some deal, but don’t get caught with dope or it’s your ass. If someone calls in looking for a customer—a frantic wife, an angry husband—no one is ever there. Sorry, really busy. Take a message?

Detective Inspector Douglas Lee Pavlichek is distinguishable from the other customers only to the bartender. Nick has served the cop booze since he came on the job; through two marriages, three killed partners and six promotions. He does a very passable simulation of a businessman, with his Abboud suits and Burberry trench coat. The homicide cops are well known to be natty dressers, and Pavlichek does his part. You need nice suits when you go to your partners’ funerals. Pavlichek doesn’t have a terrible average, though, for his thirty-two years. That works out to less than one dead partner per decade. But after he lost Mooney, Pavlichek decided he’d rather work solo. He’s on the glide slope to a disappointing retirement anyway, so the bosses agreed.

He also doesn’t care about any two-drink minimum, because Detective Pavlichek hasn’t had two or fewer drinks at a sitting since 12th grade, when he partied so hard that he barely graduated. Only Mrs. Ellsworth had saved that, allowing a retake of the final exam over the angry objections of Mr. Crawford, the so-called “guidance counselor” who hated Pavlichek since he was a southmore. That’s how they say it here, southmore, not sophomore. So he passed with a D-plus—still hadn’t studied—and drew the Logan green cap and gown to make the high school perp walk with almost a thousand other seniors that year.

Here’s a piece of info for that next lull in class reunion conversation: Today, a man named Logan Green is the co-founder and chief executive officer of the ride-sharing service Lyft.

No, that doesn’t mean anything. Nothing does.

Pavlichek doodles on a bar napkin. When he looks up, Nick is already watching him. The detective waves an index finger in airy, imperfect circles, ordering another round. Nick pulls a Stroh’s from an ornate tap and then pours an extra-double Johnny Walker Black while the beer foam settles. By the time Pavlichek survived the summer after high school, he could drink a whole fifth of Johnny Walker Black and still be just walking-around high, could drive and everything. That time he wrecked his car down the street from Griff’s house, where Griff’s mother always bought the party alcohol, the local uniforms didn’t even know he was wasted. That was the first time Pavlichek thought about a career in police work.

Police work is how he describes it, because cops will tell you honestly, in quiet moments, that “law enforcement” isn’t the same thing. Rookies do law enforcement; veterans do police work. Police work maintains order and keeps people safe and free, keeps the jackoffs in their own districts, at least. Those lofty goals are not always the purview of laws, so most cops don’t enforce laws. They do police work.

Pavlichek’s phone buzzes in an inside-left coat pocket, but he doesn’t have to look at it to know who it is. His personal cell is in the inside-right pocket, but it never buzzes. He downs the scotch at once, then powers down the beer.

“Gotta run, Nick. Work,” he says. He leaves a fifty on the bar, because if you tip a bartender well now, he tips a cop well later. Pavlichek gets only two steps away before turning back to Nick.

“Hey, you havin’ a good day, man?”

Nick shrugs. “Yeah. I guess. You know, it is what it is.”

“You are right about that.” Pavlichek waves a two-finger salute and turns to the door. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Okay, Inspector,” Nick says. He wipes wet rings from the polished surface of the bar and picks up the napkin. Pavlichek has carefully torn up the business card of the department psychologist and left it in a perfect teepee of matte pasteboard on the bar.

On the napkin, Pavlichek has drawn the crude image of a handgun shooting a bullet through a cartoon badge, and all around it, over and over, he’s written the words Kill me now.



Written by: Daniel Charles Ross
Photograph by: Chris Boyles

Meddled

My entire body is numb when I wake. I stay sprawled on my back as feeling slowly crawls down my neck and tingles up my arms until I’m able to wiggle my fingers. Each tap of my fingers sends a bolt of pain that deepens the dull ache in my skull.

As I regain feeling in my body, a sharp pain in my chest shallows my breathing. My tongue feels swollen, as if it can barely fit in my mouth. My skin is covered in little scratches from my straw bed, and my pale skin is bright red.

Deep down, I know I should be panicking. I’ve been trapped and unconscious for what could be hours or days—I don’t know. Yet all I can interpret is the exhaustion weighing me down and the pain in my body.

I wipe away the crust caked on my lashes. The movement torments my shoulders, and I whimper. My throat burns with the sound, and I cough from the dust coating my tongue.

I need to ignore the pain and focus on what I know. I know the murderer is a man who has pale blonde hair and clear gray eyes. He was wearing a jacket and jeans in the humid, hot Massachusetts summer. Boots, even. I had been melting in the shorts and tank I’d worn to go biking. Is he even human? Does he come from the center of the earth?

I wonder if my coworkers or roommate would call for help—if they even notice I’m gone.

Managing to prop myself up on my elbows, I look around. The only light filters in through little cracks in the roof, revealing thousands of dust particles. My makeshift bed is situated beside a thick wooden pole with a heavy chain looped around it several times. The path of the chain leads to a wide metal cuff around my right ankle. A padlock with a six-digit combination keeps me locked in place.

Apparently he didn’t want to risk losing me.

Thinking about that man makes a new pain blossom in my chest. He is the man who killed my parents. After years of being tossed around in the foster care system, I had finally been able to call a place home.

But he ruined that for me.

I guess I’m not allowed to have a happy ending.

Slowly, feeling drifts down to my legs. Now that I can move them, I’m able to sit up. The movement sends a wave of lightheadedness that crashes through my head and settles as a lead ball of nausea in my gut.

The only sound I can make is a raspy whimper when I attempt to call out. The birds continue to chirp. Twigs snap in an unsteady rhythm, probably from a small animal. Aside from that, my prison is silent. I am alone.

Shit.

I don’t want to die.

Maybe my roommate’s right. I should have believed the police when they said my parents’ deaths were an accident. Just a coincidence. I shouldn’t have put it all together, tracked him down. When I discovered he was one of my foster brothers, my blood had run cold. He could’ve been jealous or vengeful. It doesn’t matter, anymore. It’s too late to find out.

I shouldn’t have followed him to a boarded white barn in the middle of nowhere on my bike. I shouldn’t have tried to break in. I should have stayed home and watched Friends reruns while drinking wine.

I shouldn’t have tried to meddle.

Meddle. Meddle. Meddle.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Stupid enough to get myself killed.

The door’s closed several feet away, with no visible way to open it from the inside. Aside from me and the pole, the small shed is bare. Nothing is here except the microbes and me.

My legs wobble after I pull myself up with the pole. I dig my nails into the cracked wood until blood rushes down to my extremities, and I can stand with little support. I breathe out a small sigh of relief as my body begins to feel normal again. I can do this. I can survive.

I need to.

My chain gives me about four feet of distance I can wander. It keeps me just out of reach from the door, and only lets me in far enough to scrape my nails on the next pole holding up the barn. All of the walls are out of reach. The boarded up windows are feet above my head. And as weak as I am, I won’t be able to climb worth a damn.

A clang of metal startles me from my thoughts. I whirl on my heel, nearly tumbling over from the sudden movement. The door slides open as I blink my eyes to try and calm the vertigo making me sway on my feet. The man clucks his tongue at me and closes the door behind him. I watch him closely as he turns his attention to me and assesses me with cool gray eyes.

“I’m impressed,” he says. “Most couldn’t stand in your state.” He walks towards me, swinging a pistol dangling from his fingers. He pauses an arm’s length from me and tilts his head. “I really didn’t want to kill you. You should have left well enough alone.” His voice is chilled and flat, with no hint of remorse or regret. Although his voice is soft, it still intensifies the throbbing in my head. I wobble on my feet and slump against the pole, closing the distance between us.

“You took my parents.” Somehow, my voice comes out strong enough to make words. He braces his free hand on the pole beside me and lifts the gun to my face. After tracing a line down my heated cheek, he tucks it under my chin.

“They weren’t even blood,” he says and scoffs. This presses the metal harder into my jugular. I wince and shy away from the weapon, but he straightens up and wraps his other hand around the back of my neck. I freeze.

“You took them,” I repeat. “Go to hell.”

He takes a step back and raises the pistol to aim at my head. I squeeze my eyes shut against the sight. Panic rises up in my chest, but he speaks before I can quell it.

“Keep it hot for me.”

The gunshot is the last thing I ever hear.



Written by: Jeanine Kleist
Photograph by: Kayla King

In the Darkness

 
Her mother named her Desire, then gave her up for adoption. Charlotte and Ben argued about the name as they signed the paperwork. Charlotte wanted to call her Evelyn after her sister, but Ben said they should respect the mother’s wishes.

“It’s the one thing she has from her mom,” Ben said.

“I’m her mom now,” Charlotte pleaded, but Desire stuck.

Desire grew up with no false assumptions about her birth. Her adoptive parents repeated the story constantly—how her real mother was struggling with the sin of addiction, and how Jesus brought Desire to their home to be a beacon of light in the darkness.

Desire, unaware of metaphor or of the silent darkness that is infertility, looked around for the dark wherever she went. She saw it down open manholes and on moonless nights. She saw it in her adoptive grandmother’s basement as it appeared in her nightmares. And then, in fourth grade, her Sunday school teacher Mr. George said it was time to address the darkness head on. It was time for street evangelism.

After church, the fourth graders climbed into the fifteen-passenger van with Eagle Vista Fellowship painted on the side, armed with paper tracts.

“Does everyone have their buddy?” Mr. George asked, twisting from behind the steering wheel.

Everyone did. Desire’s buddy was Brittany, who had won a medal last month for memorizing the most Bible verses. Brittany, whose blonde hair was so long she could sit on it. Brittany, whom Charlotte said had been blessed with a generous spirit, since her little brother had Down’s and was God’s special gift in difficult packaging.

93.8 THE FISH was playing a jangling praise song, and Brittany lifted her tinny voice to sing along with Mr. George. They were headed towards the part of town where Ben and Charlotte delivered meals on wheels to the needy. The front porches were crowded with junk. Some houses had broken windows or dangling shutters.

“This is it!” called Mr. George. “Stay with your buddy, and remember to pray over each house, even if the people don’t want to talk.”

Brittany ran ahead, calling for Desire to catch up. She had already scampered onto the first porch and pressed her pinky into the doorbell by the time Desire made it into the yard. Brittany rang the bell three times, but no one came. At the end of the driveway, the girls held hands as Brittany prayed over the house. Desire always kept her eyes open during prayers to see who else was peeking. Brittany wasn’t peeking. Desire looked at the sky, where she imagined God was glaring down at her for not speaking to him more sincerely with her heart. She saw a giant bird lope through the air and land on a telephone pole.

“Amen,” Brittany said.

“Look at that bird,” Desire said. “I think it’s a buzzard.”

“It’s not!” Brittany said, still speaking in her praying voice. “It’s an Eagle! For Eagle Vista! It’s a sign Jesus is blessing our work here today. We have a lot of people to reach. Why don’t you go down this side of the street, and I’ll take that side? Then we can bless twice as many houses!”

Desire, more from watching Scooby Doo cartoons than from listening to Mr. George, knew they shouldn’t split up, but she also wasn’t sure how much more of Brittany’s praying she could take in one afternoon.

“Okay, but don’t go to the next street until I catch up,” she said.

Desire shuffled her tracts as she waited on the next porch. An old lady peeked through the curtains and glared. At another house, a man thought she was selling Girl Scout cookies, but didn’t want to talk about God. Finally, at 665 Winthrop Street, someone took a tract.

The woman at the door was pale, and so skinny you could pour water into her collarbones and it would stay there. Her greasy, red hair was slicked back, and her eyes were glassy. Desire didn’t want to look at her face, so she looked at her feet.

“I like your anklet,” Desire said.

The woman laughed. “I blinged it out the best I could! Still keeps me on the porch.”

On the black plastic, a little green light blinked among stick-on rhinestones.

“What’s this paper all about?” the woman asked.

“Jesus wants to love you,” Desire said.

“About time somebody did,” the woman said. “What’s your name, church girl?”

“Desire.”

“That’s some name.”

“I’m adopted.”

“For real? Your parents told you that already? Damn.”

“Yeah. You shouldn’t say that word.”

The woman laughed again. “You come up on my porch and tell me what I can’t say?”

Desire backed down the steps into the yard.

“Do you want me to pray with you?” Desire asked, following the script she’d practiced with Brittany.

“Why not.”

Desire looked over her shoulder for Brittany, but didn’t see her anywhere. The bird flapped its wings on the pole, its feathers like long black fingers.

“Well, you gonna pray?” the lady asked.

“Um, dear Jesus, please bless—sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Charlotte,” the woman said.

Desire stared at her, straight in the eyes this time. At that moment, Desire felt Jesus was trying to tell her something: this was her real mom.

“Don’t you remember me?” Desire asked.

“No. Should I? Your church group come here before?” the woman said.

“Did you have a baby nine years ago?”

“Hey crazy, I don’t have kids!” the woman laughed.

From behind her, Desire heard a sound like the screeching of a screen door. She whipped around expecting to see Brittany leaving a house, but the noise was coming from the buzzard, swooping down into the yard.

Where was Brittany? And why didn’t her mom remember? Was Jesus not speaking to her after all?

“Can you help me find my friend?” Desire asked. “And scare off that bird? He’s freaky.”

“They’ll be after me if I leave the house.”

Desire suddenly felt sweaty. Her mother, or Jesus, one, was abandoning her again, and there were people in this neighborhood who would get you if you went outdoors. And she had abandoned blonde-haired, generous-spirited Brittany alone in this land of darkness.

“Please help me?”

“Sorry,” Charlotte said, retreating back into her house. “You’re on your own.”




Photograph By: Emily Blincoe
Written By: Dot Dannenberg