Mr. Memory

I found him sitting in the sand, watching the waves bob and weave their way through the rickety timbers that held up the decrepit old pier. His top hat and tails, the clothes that made him an institution up and down Venice Beach, were thrown next to him on the ground, ragged and threadbare. Smoke from his cigarette curled around his bald head, noxious little ringlets that replaced hair long vanished. The years had not been kind.

I didn’t think he noticed me until he spoke.

“You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory.”

Before he even finished talking, the images started to flash in my head. I saw a used bookstore I frequented during my teenage years, and Mindy, the older woman who owned it. I heard her voice, sweet and kind. “It’s different from anything Stephen King has ever written. It’s not scary at all. It’s so good, especially the first story, the Rita Hayworth one.” I saw the book, a dog-eared copy of Different Seasons with a slight tear on the left of the cover. Mentally, I flipped it open, scanning page by page, line by line, until I came to the part he quoted. The words unfurl across my subconscious like a banner towed behind a plane.

Other images popped into my mental slideshow, Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, conversing in the prison yard, and Tara Milner, who was gracious enough to let me touch her boobs that day in her parents’ darkened basement, the movie playing on her old TV. The same Tara Milner who, seventeen days later, would scratch the word virgin off my life’s resume and who, fifty-four days later, would break my heart and crush my ego by breaking up with me for Brian Rivers, because she had heard a rumor and wanted to know if “bigger was better.”

This rapid-fire flood of memories--nostalgic, mundane, painful--passed through my brain faster than the time it took him to take a drag of his cigarette. It is something I have long grown accustomed to. Hyperthymesia, the doctors call it, a superior autobiographical memory. Every detail of every day of my life, nestled snug and secure in my brain, to be thought about, again and again.

“The first time I met you it was Ray Bradbury, now it’s Stephen King,” I respond.

He turns and looks at me. And though many years have past, I see recognition creep into his eyes. A wave of relief washes over me, and I know that I have found somebody who will understand.

“So, how was Medieval Times?” he asked with a grin.

                                                                                                    ***

The waves crash onto the sand with a thunderous clap and mammoth storm clouds hang over the Pacific. It is the first time I have ever seen the ocean and I am surprised by the sour tang of the briny sea air. My parents shuffle us along, prodding us towards our next stop on our whirlwind vacation of California, the infamous Muscle Beach at Venice. My brother, full of raging teenage hormones, is ogling the bikini-clad woman rollerblading up and down the boardwalk. For me, at this point still a good six years away from my summer dalliance with Tara Milner, these wheeled beauties are more safety hazard than sexual titillation. I spy a street performer on the pier. Dapper and debonair in his full-dress tuxedo, he is standing on a small stage in front of a hand-painted canvas sign emblazoned with the words:

The Incredible--The Indisputable--The Omnipotent

Mr. Memory

I mix into the small crowd gathered around him. He hands a woman a three-year old calendar. He asks her husband to pick any date.

“February twelfth,” the husband says.

Mr. Memory puts his hands to his temples. An image flashes in my mind. The word Wednesday, neon pink against a black background.

“In 1992, the twelfth of February was,” he pauses for dramatic effect. “A Wednesday.”

The woman checks the calendar and gasps in awe. The crowd roars its approval. He picks up another calendar, this one from 1990, and hands it to a teenage girl. He asks her mother for a date.

“June thirtieth,” she responds.

Once again he puts his hands to his temples, and once again I see a vision of a word.

“In 1990, the thirtieth of June was…”

He looks directly at me. I silently mouth the word Saturday. I see the shock in his eyes. He clears his throat and regains his composure.

“The thirtieth of June was a Saturday.”

“My God, that’s amazing,” says the girl, as the group breaks into another round of applause.

“Now for my final act, I need a volunteer.” He points at me. “You, young sir, could you please come up here?”

He motions towards a trunk sitting on the corner of the stage.

“That trunk contains books, forty-nine of them to be exact. Would you please open it up, select one, and turn to a random page?”

I rummage through the trunk until I come across one with a burning man on the cover. I pull it out and flip open the cover.

“Ah, Fahrenheit 451, a great book, that one. What page did you open it to?”

“Sixty-seven,” I mutter.

“Sixty-seven,” he whispers to himself. He closes his eyes, and begins to nod his head.

“They read the long afternoon through, while the cold November rain fell from the sky upon the quiet house…”

As my eyes follow along with the words he is reciting, I feel a hand on my shoulder and hear my father’s voice.

“There you are, don’t wander off like that. Come on, we have to go, we have dinner reservations at Medieval Times.”


Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Nathan Mansakahn

Forever Young

It soon became clear that the children were not going to stop.

Their bickering reminded her of the sounds of childhood back on the island. The washing rattle of waves. The sporadic tick-tocking of coconuts falling from trees in the dark. Her father’s record player spinning black vinyl, and a singer who possessed a wincing, death-rattle of a voice. Her father, who died young at 55 and never set foot on United States soil, was obsessed with the voice. The voice’s name was Bob Dylan.

She would call it ironic, the extent to which that voice somehow scored her own life. But irony wasn’t the right word. It was more just weird. Coincidental, maybe. Like it was written in the stars. Like it was.. what? Blowing in the wind?

Sara Hibbing had been named after a Bob Dylan song. More specifically, she had been named after the final track on his 1976 record, Desire - her father’s favorite.

It was astonishing, really, that she was not more aware of this fact when it came time to name her own daughter. She wished that she could take a boat to the past, hold that particular record sleeve in her hands, flip over to the list of songs on the back, and focus her attention on the second track. By the time she actually did this, in a now-demolished record store on Mercy Street, it was more out of nostalgia than curiosity.

It was of course, by then, too late.

“Isis,” she said, addressing her daughter. “Get your stuff together. We’re leaving.”

The little girl shook her head vehemently in the negative.

“Isis,” Sara repeated. “Do as I say.”

Isis looked at her little brother, Joseph - Joey - and it was as if the two of them sang the same sibling song, and the name of the song was “Hell no... hell no... hell no, we won’t go.”

The two comrades had an unspoken bond, and Sara would revel in the existence of that bond any other time, but goddamnit, not this time. Not right now.

Where was Allen when you actually needed him?

“Mama, look!” shouted Joey.

The boy then proceeded to throw his half-finished ice cream directly at his sister. Unfortunately, on account of his tiny arms and the perilous slickness of melting ice cream, his heave fell well short and to the left of his intended sisterly target, instead slapping Sara right in the forehead.

The vanilla cream, more liquid than frozen at this point, slid down her face like a tired drunk against a wall.

It was at this exact moment that Allen emerged from the ice cream shop that he and his wife had labored over for the last six years. Six years gone since the purchase of property. Six years living with the reward from their weirdly perilous journey to the dark heart of the American dream. Six years since winning the lottery.

When he saw his wife, when he saw her face behind the ice cream mask, he involuntarily made the same face that his son was making; bulging eyes and a gaping mouth full of shock, and at the moment, a bit of Rocky Road.

Allen had beautiful skin that once drove Sara’s grandmother to proclaim him, “an angel come down from heaven.” As if God physically reached out to the young boy - just another brown boy spending too much time in the Kingston sun - touched him and made him something more than the rest of us.

Sometimes when Sara looked at him she just wanted to rub against him. Nose to nose. Palm to palm. Didn’t matter.

After buying the abandoned ice cream shop - shortly before Isis and a bit more before Joey - they had cleaned it themselves. It was in need of a thorough brush and scrub so they gathered broken boards, painted the walls a light blue color of the sea - a color of home - swept up all matter of cobwebs, and scrubbed on hands and knees until their biceps ached.

After they were finished Robert produced a small joint, and they smoked it leaning against the counter that would soon serve Caribbean ice cream. And when they were done with the joint they fucked like teenagers on that very same counter.

She knew the word was crass, but just the thought of saying it turned her on now. Robert and his beautiful body. So sweaty from work that she had to peel that red shirt off him. Like it had melted to his torso. When it stuck on his head they both giggled and she looked down at his bare stomach, and those muscles that made a “V” down to his cock (she never knew the name of them but she adored them), and...goodness.

But time pays no heed to fools - not even the young.

They never fucked anymore. They had sex, and it was like they had never before seen each other naked. Exotic positions, most ending in failed laughter, had been replaced by a sort of intense missionary eye contact. Allen preferred making love, as he called it.

But she couldn’t blame him alone. It was on both of them. She knew it was to be expected. Knew it was normal. But she had never wanted to be normal before, so why now? Why with such an important thing? With such a fun thing? It wasn’t the penetration that she craved; it was Allen’s laugh as he fell off the edge of bed, clutching a cramped leg and yelling her name; his beautiful bum the last she would see of him before he popped back up and collapsed next to her in a tired heap of love.

And now there was ice cream. Ice cream all over. Children that were beautiful as their father now, but would soon plump and fatten like all the other American children. All because of this fucking ice cream.

She wondered if other lottery winners ever wished they had never bought the ticket, or in her case, that her husband had never bought the ticket, had never used her birthday and their anniversary digits and forfeited them to the convenience store clerk as if they had lost all their chastity; defrocked by that dream, the mansion on the hill; just like everything else in this country. Was nothing left?

Sara was a volcano and the scream that erupted from her mouth had started deep inside her soul, subterranean and building until she unleashed it upon the world like spewing lava.

Isis fell silent, as did Joey, and also Allen. They looked at her like one looks at a lion, waiting for that natural power to take hold, to unleash that violent instinct.

And goddamnit, she thought, I am a lion. I am a fucking lion and now I will scorch earth as I make my way across this wasteful land, as I burn my path through children, husbands, Americans, lottery tickets, and...ice cream.

The vanilla had slid past her nose and on to her lips. It was, save her soul, terrifically good. Her family stood in silent awe of her maternal divinity; frozen in her golden glow.

She was the planet and they were her moons.

From a passing car, Bob Dylan croaked through the second verse of “Forever Young,” commanding her and her family to always be courageous.

To stand upright, and be strong.


Written by: Logan Theissen
Photograph by: Nathan Mansakahn

Common Denominators

When we last saw Anna, she was battling a particularly difficult ghost who attacked her in a parking garage. The ghost came to Anna's attention through her client Suri, whom the ghost haunted for fourteen years, inhabiting a series of different men. With Suri recovering from the ghost's latest attempt on her life, Anna plans her next move.  Read the whole Anna the Extractor Series--"The Extractor," "Bury Their Own," "Beloved," "A Tremor in Your Name," and "Stress in the Workplace," and "Calling" (an introduction)--to learn more about Anna and her supernatural adventures.

Anna leans against the cement wall at the edge of Allen Park with one foot propped up and her hands stuffed in her jacket pockets. Detective Michael Cohen called her yesterday evening to set up an appointment to discuss some of the facts regarding her previous client, Suri. The police found Anna’s profession amusing to say the least; it’s not everyday you meet a chick exorcist. After a few questions and making sure she wasn’t an accomplice for Suri’s attempted murder, they let her go.

A man with light brown hair and glasses approaches her from the sidewalk, an obsessive shine to his dress shoes and a too-crisp look to his windbreaker.

“Miss Hirsch? I’m Detective…”

“Cohen. Yeah, I know. It’s not like all my best friends are cops,” Anna says.

They shake hands and make their way over to a wrought-iron bench, which felt freezing through Anna’s skinny jeans.

“I wanted to ask you a few questions about Suri Mathis, just to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

Anna does not make eye contact, but looks out at the river, breathing in the chill of an early morning. Detective Cohen clears his throat.

“Miss Mathis was your client, correct?”

“Listen, man. If you’re just going to ask me a bunch of questions that you already know the answer to…”

“Hey, I come in peace,” Cohen says, hands lifted in surrender.

Anna meets his gaze and folds her arms over her chest as she says, “She’s been haunted by the same ghost for fourteen years. She hired me to extract it.”

“And were you able to?”

“Not entirely.”

“Did Miss Mathis happen to mention any characteristics about her assailant? His lifestyle, habits, hobbies?”

“No.”

“What about her previous assailants? There have been at least thirteen others, I’m assuming.”

Anna shakes her head. “She only described her dad. She said he drank. A lot.”

Detective Cohen nods, pulling out a large envelope from inside his jacket. He reveals a handful of photographs depicting dead women, all having suffered from different forms of violence.

“These women died within the last two weeks. There isn’t a common denominator that makes them targets. We’ve detained five of the six assailants involved in their murders. And you know what, Miss Hirsch? They’re the ones with stuff in common.”

Anna frowns, brow furrowed.

“Each one suffered from temporary amnesia when they committed the crime.”

“I didn’t realize that was a thing…”

“At first, we thought they’d all been drinking, blacked out, and then killed their girlfriends, wives, daughters. It was especially compelling when alcoholism came up in some of their histories. But when the blood alcohol concentration wasn’t matching up, it made things a little strange. We couldn’t just call it domestic violence under the influence.”

Detective Cohen puts away the photographs and leans back, draping one arm over the back of the bench.

“Suri’s boyfriend didn’t remember trying to kill her,” Cohen continues. “Neither did any of the others with restraining orders. I checked.”

“So, you’re telling me that the police department is willing to follow a lead suggesting possession by ghosts?” Anna asks through a scoff.

“Well, not the department. Just me.”

Anna scratches the back of her head and sighs, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. Detective Cohen folds his arms over his chest and sighs.

“My dad beat my mom once when I was in high school. He’d never hurt her before. And he’d never been a drinker, but all of a sudden he couldn’t keep enough Icehouse in the fridge. One night, he just started wailing on her. I got between them and punched my dad square in the eye. My mom screamed his name and then...it was the strangest thing. It was like a light turning on. He didn’t know what he’d just done, only that it was horrible.”

“What’s his name?” Anna asks.

“Huh?” Cohen murmurs, wading through the memory.

“You said he came to when your mom screamed his name.”

“Oh. Yeah. Lucas. His name’s Lucas.”

“Fucking hell,” Anna breathes, standing up and pulling out her cigarettes.

“What’s wrong with Lucas?” the detective asks, startled by her reaction.

She turns on him with a cigarette dangling from her lips and says, “That’s the goddamn ghost’s name, Cohen. The one who’s been haunting Suri. Your dad snapped out of it because your mom said the ghost’s name. That’s the power. She cast him out.”

“Jesus. This is unbelievable.”

“Listen, man. You better start believing real quick if you want this shit to stop.”

Anna finally gets her cigarette lit and sucks in, closing her eyes like it’s saving her life. It’s supposed to be so simple. Get the ghost’s name. Ask what he wants. Give him what he wants. Collect the money. But Lucas is playing a game. He’s making men kill the women they love most in their lives, and they end up alone.

“Just like me,” Anna whispers, remembering what Lucas said when she encountered him last.

Detective Cohen watches her, a question forming on his lips.

“That’s what he said. ‘All alone, just like me.’ He’s reliving something,” she says. “He’s reliving what he did.”

“How do we make him stop?” Cohen asks.

“He’s raging. We’ve gotta calm him down. I’ve gotta talk to him, but I need him to trust me. If I can get him to show himself to me - to haunt me - then I can help him.”

“Anna, he’s a murderer. He doesn’t deserve help,” Cohen states.

Anna grabs the collar of his windbreaker and yanks Cohen toward her with her fists. She looks him in the eye, noses touching.

“Look, asshole. No one deserves anything. We don’t deserve mercy. We don’t deserve justice. But if you want women to stop dying, then I need to help him.”

“And what happens if you help him?”

“He’ll cross over,” Anna says, letting go and stepping back. “And then whatever god you believe in will deal with him.”

Written by: Natasha Akery

Photograph by: Nathan Mansakahn