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

The Women of Harper House

Her mother would tell you she’d never been good at climbing; a false hope. At twelve years, Wren Harper mastered ascending the ancient white poplar just beyond the garden gate of the Harper estate.

She climbs now despite her dress, aided by the pair of Docs she found in the back of a closet. She doesn’t know they once belonged to her mother, Sophie Harper, before she graduated high school. 

“Pass it up,” she says to her friend below.

Wren laughs at Atticus as she jumps, trying to hand off the net. The girls are a collection of once-hipster names their mothers magicked back into existence.

Sophie watches with generations of Harper women who've passed before as her daughter climbs above.

The women of Harper House have been held within the tree despite their deaths, bodies buried elsewhere. They exist in earth and root and branch; a punishment for brutality and blood spilled on the property.

Had Wren’s mother known of her fate, she never would’ve slipped her toes over the edge of the roof, arms extended like wings.

* * *

Sophie’s need grew by the day, cradling her newborn. Too often, she wondered what it would be like to spread her arms wide. Would it be like that rhyme? And down will come baby, she sang, always gave Wren those sugared lullabies.

When she was pregnant, Sophie thought about the bedtime stories and the beautiful things she’d teach her child to believe in: kindness, love, the world, herself.

She wanted to mend a broken heart.

But when the baby was born, it broke her. Sophie didn’t feel the connection like she knew she should, but she’d smiled and kissed Wren over and over to prove she could.

The child was a creature who cried and writhed and didn’t need a story or a song, but wanted only breastmilk and blankets. Sophie had a hard time nursing, and in swaddling she felt the tenuous breath slip from herself into the babe, a tiny wraith; she sucked Sophie’s soul and her milk and her everything.

The day of her death, Sophie took the steps barefoot. Her toes curled over the shingles, which had cracked in the summer sun.

Now, she resisted the urge to name the green of the leaves. The backyard trees would outlive her.

Sophie spread her arms, and she flew.

At first, she soared, and then the breaking seared through.

Her dying started slow, breaths weakened. Toward the last, Sophie no longer tasted the sweetness of the almost-autumnal air, instead there was the tang of earth and rain and the gum of worm macerated in her mouth.

“The fall fractured the femur, ruptured the femoral artery, and she bled out.” Someone, the coroner perhaps, told Sophie’s husband in hushed tones: voice soft, succinct.

Sophie’s eyes stilled to glass, but she saw them take the woman she used to be, swaddled in the body bag, bones broken beyond repair. Her thoughts seeped from the roots of the poplar back to the branches above.

* * *

In the years that followed, Sophie never visited her grave because cemeteries were for the living, not the dead, and there was no escaping the tree.

* * *

“What are we doing, Wren?” Atticus calls from below the tree.

The women of Harper House wonder the same thing.

“I’ve named her Ophelia,” Wren says. “And we all know Ophelia fell.”

“That’s a made-up name,” Atticus says.

“Read a book,” Wren says.

Atticus asks her phone about the validity of the name. “But Shakespeare’s just, like, dead,” she says, skimming the wiki.

“So is my mother. But she was probably like this Ophelia and that’s why,” Wren says. She lifts the net above her head and plunges it down, scooping the bird from the branch.

“But the babies, Wren. What about the baby birds?” Atticus’s voice shakes.

“We’ll take care of them,” Wren says, climbing down from the tree. “We have to protect them now.”

Wren’s mother watches as she pulls pins from a pocket in the dress. The pins had belonged to Sophie’s mother, but the heads were still bright red despite their age.

The youngest Harper instructs her friend to hold the bird, and she tries, but it fidgets, and attempts to fly free.

“I have to do everything,” Wren says, holding the squirming shape in one hand, pin in the other.

The first pin stills the bird.

Blood pools in the palm of her hand.

Atticus runs from the yard, sobbing, while the women of Harper House stay silent.

The crimson cools as night descends.

Wren strokes the wings and sings the name, “Ophelia. Ophelia. My Ophie. Sophie. Sophie.”

Her mother would tell you blood never touched the earth, and so the fate of the women of Harper House would not befall her daughter.

But Wren rips feathers from each wing, bone from body; the insides spill like jewels beneath the star-infested sky.

When her father calls from the garden gate, she smiles down at her work.

She buries the bird beside the tree.

Wren climbs back up to the branch, takes the nest. The young cry with her as she carries them back to Harper House.

Written by: Kayla King
Photograph by: Heather Parsons

Election Day

My nostrils register the stranger before my eyeballs get a chance. The morning breeze, warm for early November, wafts a musky scent, along with a faint hint of woodsmoke, across the mountaintop. My fingers head straight for the canister of bear spray attached to my belt as I scan the clearing. About twenty yards away I spy the origin of the odor; a man, perched like a bird, on a decrepit old log. He stares off over the eastern rim, the sky awash in swirls of pinks and reds, as the sun gets ready to peek out over the horizon.

I take stock of his clothes and gear. His pack sits next to him, covered with the grime and dust that one can only get after serious time on the trail. Matted hair sprouts out from under his knit hat. Though filthy, it all appears to be top of the line, expensive stuff. I have no idea if he knows that I am there. I try to figure out whether or not to beat feet back down the trail when he jumps up, arms outstretched, like some sort of crusty-chic Christ, his crucified silhouette a sharp contrast against the sanguine sky.

“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains,” his voice booms and cascades down the valley in front of him.

I turn to run. The snap of a twig under my foot sends him spinning around.

“Oh, shit.” He tumbles backwards off the log, his face turning a shade of pink not altogether dissimilar from the early morning sky.

“Are you okay?” I ask, my hand still on my bear spray.

He responds with a cackle as he claws his way back onto his perch.

“I think so,” he says. “Nothing busted but my pride.”

As I approach I get a better look at him. White male, probably early forties. His eyes dance behind Burberry frames and his beard, brown shot through with flecks of gray, frames a beatific smile. There is something oddly familiar about him.

“How about you?” he asks. “Sorry for my little outburst there. Sometimes I just can’t help myself.”

“I’m fine.” I decide that I like this stranger. “What was that? Thoreau?”

“Not a bad guess, but no. John Muir. The grand old man of these hills. And boy did he get it right. Not a better sunrise in the world that the one up here. It hits me everyday.”

I glance again at his gear. It has seen a lot of miles.

“You doing a thru-hike?” I ask.

“Nope. Just kind of wandering.” He bends over and reaches out, his fingers gingerly caressing a delicate orange flower that I hadn’t noticed until now. He pulls it close to his face and buries his nose in it. There is something about his innocence that is staggering. “You?”

“Just looking for a little peace and quiet.”

He inhales deeply from the flower again.

“And you had the misfortune to run into a crazy like myself.”

“You’re a whole lot less crazy than what’s going on back down there today.” I jerk my thumb towards the metropolis I fled well before dawn. “It’s election day. Time for the people to roll their bones and cast their stones and decide the fate of the free world.”

The stranger stands up, his face switching from serene to sullen.

“Oh wow. I guess I lost track of time.”

He looks at me and it suddenly hits me who he is. The face staring at me, sans beard, had been plastered all over every screen I’d looked at for the past month. A high ranking official in the Democratic Party, his disappearance had fueled wild conspiracies from both sides of the campaign. Especially when his car was found, ransacked and vandalized on a lonely stretch of Highway 30 up near Big Bear.

Before I can say anything, he speaks.

“My first job after college was in car sales. And man, I was good at it. It got to the point that when a real pile of shit car would come onto the lot, everybody bet on how long it would take me to unload it onto some hapless rube. And then one night, I’m driving home, I see this young girl on the side of the road. I recognize the car as one I’d sold. And I remember her dad, how he’d scraped together everything he had, all to buy her a ‘dependable’ car so she could get back and forth to college. I remembered the look of pride in his eyes, and the look of love in hers. And I remember the laughter in the sales office after they left.”

He reached out for the orange flower again, his fingers tracing the petals.

“Seeing her stranded, I got this pain in my gut. Worst feeling I’ve ever had in my life. So I pulled over, wrote her a check for two thousand dollars and never went back to the car lot. And the pain eased up. I decided to dedicate my life to public service, to help people instead of fleecing them.”

He takes a deep breath and continues.

“And so it went for a number of years. Just like at the car lot, I found my niche, and I leapt up the rungs of the ladder, all the way to inner workings of the party. I felt like I was making a difference. But then one day, a couple of months ago, I opened my eyes and the message seemed to have changed. Somewhere along the way we switched from being a beacon of hope to a machine that churned out nothing but fear. And my job went from telling the world about the good we were trying to do, to feeding into some sort of collective anxiety. And all of a sudden, the pain returned and I felt like I was selling used cars again.”

“So what are you going to do now?” I ask.

“I guess that depends on you,” he said. “Are you going to go running off and tell people you saw me?”

I laugh.

“There’s a reason I hike alone,” I say. “I’m a man who values privacy.”

He smiles and picks up his dusty rucksack.

“Well, if that’s the case, I will once again quote the estimable Mr. Muir, 'The mountains are calling and I must go.'”

Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Fabrice Poussin

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

American Terror

Vincent is breaking up with Jack.

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

Because it’s that easy.

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

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

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

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

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

“Us.”

Jesus, he does know, Vincent thinks.

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

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

“I just think - Vince, stop. STOP!”

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

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

“That was horrible,” Jack says.

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

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

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

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

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

“Whatever. God, I’m sorry.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Why were you spying on me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Written by: Natasha Akery
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

The Apartment

The rickety elevator reached the ground floor with a noise reminiscent of the carriages on the train station. Afra stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the eleventh floor. The elevator started moving upwards with a mighty sound.

Zahir sat at the edge, with his legs dangling pondering about what sort of work would he have to start looking for in the coming days. He had come across the abandoned, naked building while walking on the western fringes of the city that was once known for its skyscraper-studded skyline.

The door moved with a crashing sound. Afra walked into the room with a view that even the best penthouses could never afford.

"I managed to get enough food for the next two days. We just need some hot water to heat it up", Afra said while putting down the bags on the floor.

“Did you get enough rest today Zahir? My work was deadbeat. I had to transport some goods from one end of the city to another. The pay wasn’t bad. It was enough for food at the trader’s place.” She sat down on the deteriorating couch and started fiddling with her screen.

"Why don't you go and get some hot water from the people at the top floor like last time, if you don't feel like going down all the way." Afra knew Zahir hated the topic but she was in no shape to do anything after a day’s work.

"They might not let me in, Afra. I messed up their computers last time when I tried connecting my devices to their network."

"They don't know it was you."

"Who else comes to this building anymore? Have you noticed anyone around? It's obviously one of us that tried connecting to their network."

Afra sat down on a couch, torn all over the place. "What do you think they have up there exactly?”

"I'm not entirely sure, but they do have a strong satellite web connection. I worked for them a few times before you came here. They would ask us to code stuff in an extremely modular fashion. It was a bit difficult to make sense of the overall aim of what they really wanted us to do."

"What made you stop working?"

"I didn’t. They just stopped asking people to work. That's when the others started leaving the building. I waited long to see if they would hire again. They are very different than us Afra. They can’t seem ever to be satisfied.”

* * *

The night was cold and dark, but the sound of the sea crashing into the shore put both Afra and Zahir to sleep. There were no sounds of distraction tonight.

Zahir woke up and took a quiet walk to the elevator, then ran down the staircase. The ground floor was empty except for the sleeping dogs. He picked up his bike and rode to the nearest light post. There were some bodies huddled together under the light. He approached them, switched on his storage devices, took out his screen, connected to the mesh network and started syncing data on the storage devices.

The older unmarked data would be removed to make space for the new stuff, so he quickly reviewed all the older batches he had marked for deletion. It took close to twenty minutes for the data to get synched.

Zahir started westward toward the abandoned building. On his way, he stopped at another spot and synced some more data.

While climbing the staircase of the building he took note of the fact that the top floor with the furnished apartment was not drawing generator power. The silence of the generator was rare.

"Afra, sync your devices, I have fresh batch data." She woke up at his request and took out all her storage devices from her bag and started switching them on.

"Did you manage to go through last week's data?" she asked, while reviewing her existing data on her screen.

"Not really. Most important thing I came across was news about establishment of some sort of a socialist state in the north."

"Okay. I'm going to review what you got today. You can go to sleep if you want," said Afra.

Zahir laid down on one of the mattress and turned towards the dark sky as he fell asleep.

Afra's storage devices blinked the green lights as the network completed syncing with Zahir's. She started going through the data. There was a ton of video footage, some low res, some hi. She started sorting the videos by geo-location. Nothing interested her much. She entered the directory containing news pages, articles, and reports. She quickly did an analysis of the text and found that Masdar was trending heavily in the news.

The city-state of Masdar in the west had sustained some sort of carbon footprint attack. The news suggested that unknown groups or individuals had let massive oil spills burn in the desert within the territory of Masdar. Masdar had lost large amount of its wealth in blink of an eye as its carbon footprint soared. In a news connected to this incident she read about rogue groups profiting from the carbon trading speculative market.

Reading these pieces stirred something in Afra. She woke Zahir up, "What is it exactly that you would code for the guys up there?"

"I don't know Afra, it mostly had to do with a lot of number crunching."

"What kind of numbers?"

"Various sorts. Sometimes I only worked on trade histories of essential commodities, then I did menial work like cleaning, reviewing weather data every day, and some other days I did server maintenance. It wasn't always coding precisely."

“They must have access to data that the street meshes simply could never have right?” Afra couldn’t help but think about all the reports she read throughout the night. They always seem to have fragments and nothing more when collecting data from street meshes.

She held Zahir's hand and told him "I'm going to work for them, whatever menial work it may be."

Before Zahir had the chance to respond, she fled up the staircase and knocked on the door of the apartment. It opened.

"I want to work."

Written by: Debarun Sarkar

Photograph by: Matthew Wiebe

I Am the Leprechaun

Wedding anniversaries are challenging for anyone, but perhaps more so for my wife and I. We have been married since 1940, and what can you buy for a woman who literally has everything she wants? I hustled around Manhattan to a few stores we liked, but without success. It’s harder for me, because I am the Leprechaun.

Yes–the Leprechaun.

It wasn’t always so.

Walking down these crowded Manhattan sidewalks, I remember my life before the conversion. One day I was a modestly successful New York advertising man, going about my day of quiet frustrations like everybody else. I loved walking in Manhattan then on a hot day, deliriously anonymous and carefree. Then, up in Westchester, it was early June 1940, and the war hadn’t started for us yet. We had a picnic in the cool shade of a huge maple tree, Sadie and I, having a grand time on a classic red checkered tablecloth, minding our own business. And our business was us. We had dated for about seven months, with never a single whisper of argument between us. She was beautiful, I adored her, and I intended that day to ask her to marry me.

A wild storm blew up from nowhere and we took cover in a park shelter. It hadn’t rained for more than two minutes, probably less. The sky cleared to intense blue. The birds returned to chirp in time with raindrops falling from the shelter to the concrete. Sadie laughed and my heart smiled. And there it was.

You never see them in front of you, do you? Always far away and behind trees or skyscrapers. But it landed in the grass right next to us, so I went to look at it. Had to go out and touch it. Of course I did.

The end of the rainbow.

In conformance with the legend, there was a sizable pot of gold coins bathed in spectral Neapolitan glory there on the grass, validating the rainbow’s end (apologies to Vernor Vinge; read his book). It was soundless, but it pulsed in the color bands, just a barely noticeable glow that waxed and waned. And beckoned.

So, short story long (pardon the expression), the first thing I did was scoot out of the park shelter and go to the pot of gold. I stood in the rainbow, face and outstretched arms upturned to the azure sky and bathed in color. I felt warm, happy, saturated somehow in⎯what? Love? No, joy. Flooded with joy and the irrational certitude that I was in the right place at the right time.

The gold was like a magnet. The very moment my fingers closed around a coin, I received a mild electric shock, like you might get pulling clothes from the dryer. Just a tingle. Then the gold and the rainbow vanished, like flipping off a light switch. Instantly, my dark brown hair became Technicolor red, my tan skin became fair and freckled. Even my clothes changed into a green frock coat over green breeches, and a green top hat on my head with a Puritanical buckle. Poor Sadie, shocked, screamed and fainted dead away.

There are rules, I have learned. Some I can bend, some I must submit to. However I amend them now, my successor someday will have them back in place to discover on his own. Yes, regrettably, his own. Have you ever seen a legit female leprechaun? Neither have I, just drunk girls dressed up on St. Paddy’s Day. I tried to convert a few, through various means, but only one such wish ever took. This is a mystery of the rules I think I’ve figured out.

I can change my appearance from the default red-hair-and-freckles, though changes can only be temporary. If I don’t restore the default look within ninety-six hours, even for a moment, I snap back like a green rubber band. I set my watch timer with a margin to avoid surprises.

You’ve seen classic leprechauns, about three feet tall, more or less, all dressed in the team green uniform? They’re usually hawking a St. Paddy’s Day sale down at Mattress Warehouse, but they gotta eat, too. Those are traditionalists. Purists. I choose to be six-three and dress like a regular guy. I mean, I was six-one before, so the extra inches are just harmless self-indulgence. In all respects.

I needn’t hold the obligatory coins in each hand, but I must keep them ready in left and right pockets. In compliance with legend, I spend the left-side coins and they later are returned to my pocket. I spend the right-side coins, and they later turn to dust or stones. If anyone knew enough to “catch” me, they couldn’t make me do jack, actually. My subordinate leprechauns get “caught” from time to time, but that’s a game they play with humans to practice outwitting them.

I embraced the fair skin peppered with light freckles, and I really like the red hair in a Danny Kaye kind of way, but I’ve gone into bars as short as Peter Dinklage and to Renaissance Fairs as dark as Idris Elba, so I have a range of expression. I did discover, after too many Old Bushmills shots one night, that my transformative powers extend to gender. I tried that once. It was pretty exciting to run my hands over that body, because I didn’t hold back. I was freakin’ hot. But I made the mistake of getting a final check-out in a full-length mirror on my way out the door, and it was just too strange for my struggling 1940s sensibilities. God bless my human brothers and sisters struggling with gender identity, but mine is pretty set. I stayed home that night to satisfy some curiosities, but I’ve been my regular self ever since.

That’s enough for now, then. I succeeded in granting Sadie her wish in October of 1940. Turns out the magic ingredient is genuine love, something every songwriter knows. We’re celebrating its anniversary tonight with dinner. I love her red hair. We will grant each other’s wishes somewhat later.

That’s all, lad. May ye be in Heaven half an hour before the Devil knows ye’re gone.

Written by: Daniel Charles Ross

Photo by: Taj Lewis

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

Scared Straight?!.

“Listen up, you petite cuts of FRESH MEAT,” shouts a towering figure wearing an orange jumpsuit as loud as his voice. “My name is ANVIL, and you’re in MY WORLD now.”

He flexes, sending a tidal wave of muscles and veins rippling beneath the vulgar artwork permanently etched into his skin.

“You know why they call me ANVIL?” he asks, his audience too young to seize a golden American Gladiators joke. “Because I’m BIG, I’m BLACK, and I SMASH HEADS.”

He emphasizes this point by slamming a balled fist into a callused palm, splashing the three nearest troublemakers with beads of perspiration. The human sponges–listed right to left like the old Old Testament–are Elsa, Ahmed, and Jamal. Elsa’s reaction is what you would expect from a snobbish blonde who’s every bit as frigid as the Frozen princess.

“O-M-G,” she says, her bottom jaw extending beyond her training bra.

“OH, pardon me, PARIS HILTON,” Anvil yells, unaware Perez is the only Hilton relevant to Gen Z-ers. “Did your FACE get in the way of my SWEAT?” he asks, hovering over her like an Alien to Sigourney Weaver.

Elsa straightens her posture and returns a smug grin, comfortable in the knowledge that “he has less right to touch [her] than a haunted house actor,” according to her lawyer mother.

“Sweat is the cleanest thing you gonna get on your skin IN PRISON,” Anvil says, and Elsa rolls her eyes, drops her chin and emits a mock snore.

Anvil rears back an open hand and pauses once he hears the Pavlovian throat clear of the guard loitering in the corner. Anvil would love nothing more than to smack the pearly white teeth and privilege out of her mouth, except parole.

“What are YOU looking at, ISIS?” Anvil roars, swooping his massive phalanges just beneath Elsa’s 14K-gold nose ring and stopping his pointer finger between Ahmed’s quivering pupils.

As a Syrian refugee, treading between Texans who don’t want him here and terrorists who want his head, Ahmed’s anxiety level is twice as high as yours when you see him board your plane. It’s not that he’s afraid of the large black man showering him with ethnic slurs and halitosis. He wasn’t even afraid of the prison itself. It’s the threat of deportation that really had him shaking in his didashah.

Unlike Spartan Races–where well-nourished fitness enthusiasts voluntarily traverse a paramedic-lined obstacle course full of intimidating obstructions like mud pits and flaming logs (monitored closely by firemen)–Ahmed and his family overcame gunfire, tumultuous seas, 60’s-era racism, and enough red tape to decorate a Target during Christmas season, just to rest their heads on US soil while we bomb theirs back to B.C. times. In Ahmed’s manic mind, it will all be for naught, because he got caught in a test-cheating scheme.

“You speak English, BOY?” Anvil asks even louder to make up for his lack of derogatory remarks.

“I do,” Ahmed answers in a tone so low only the K-9 unit could hear him.

“WHAT’D YOU SAY?” Anvil explodes.

“I DO, I DO,” Ahmed responds with tears waterboarding his words. “I’M SORRY! DEPORT ME, BUT DON’T PUNISH MY FAMILY.”

Anvil’s nose shrivels like he caught a whiff of his own breath and he puts some distance between himself and Ahmed.

“What about me?” Jamal says, waving his hands in Anvil’s peripheral vision.

“Boy, are you TESTING ME?” Anvil asks, biting his tongue to encourage Jamal to do the same.

“Nope,” Jamal says without an ounce of fear. “I was just wondering why you were skipping the black dude?”

Anvil exhales so hard each half of his mustache divides like twin Moseses are standing in his nostrils.

“Oh, I wasn’t passing you,” Anvil clarifies, “I was saving you for DESSERT, just like these other convicts are gonna do when they see your Usher-lookin ass in the SHOWER.”

“Awww, thanks Uncle Russell,” Jamal says, and Anvil’s face forms an expression it hasn’t worn since the cops kicked down his door on the night of his arrest.

“We’re going to need backup,” the guard murmurs into an inactive radio before dashing towards Russell with his baton drawn. Russell assumes a professional wrestler’s stance and an equally staged performance ensues.

“GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME, PIG,” Russell screams as the guard puts him in a chokehold so light it could pass for PDA, and together they backpedal out of the cell.

“Well, I hope you kids learned a valuable lesson,” Vice Principal Davis says, pantomiming relief by wiping his brow. “One day you’re stealing an answer key, and the next, they’re locking you up and throwing away the keys.”

Davis’s threat is undercut by his pride for his own pun, and the warden arrives just in time to save everyone from another bad joke. They head down the hall towards an iron frame where Russell’s massive arms dangle like a puppeteer with nothing to master.

“Jamal,” Russell whispers as they pass and grabs a piece of Jamal’s t-shirt, “why you gotta play me like that?”

Jamal shrugs.

“Nevermind that, why you here in the first place?” Russell asks with the most genuine anger he’s displayed all day.

“They thought I was cheating.”

“Well, were you?”

“NO.”

“Did you tell them that?”

“YES.”

“JAMAL,” Davis yells from the exit. “Come on! You’ll be back here before you know it.”

“HEY,” Russell says nudging Jamal in the chest before his chin hits his collarbone, “he probably knows y’all are taking me home next weekend.”

Jamal lifts his head and he and Russell continue the conversation with their eyes, looking away once the discussion becomes too honest.

“Keep your head up, Lil Homie,” Russell says, breathing deep enough to dam his tear ducts.

His hand forms a hardened ball that’s been used for destruction more often than reassurance. Jamal wipes his eyes and lowers his delicate fist towards his Uncle’s like the moon orbiting Earth.

“I’ll be back here before you know it,” Jamal says and sprints out of sight.

Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Samuel Zeller

A Feeling Like Freedom (Tales from the Academy)

(Continued from Anatomy of the Inhuman Heart.)

The sun beats down hard and hot. Desh feels sweat drip down his neck and pool against the collar of his shirt. He is sure that he is minutes away from melting into a tepid puddle on the sidewalk leading to the Academy.

Kat walks beside him, platinum blonde hair dusting the tops of her ears. Kat rolls the sleeves of her blazer up just enough to see the edges of tattoos, unfinished and disconnected. Some of them are thick black line segments, like forgotten connect-the-dots. He wonders if that is the point: if something is never supposed to get finished, it can never be interrupted.

“I can’t believe they do drills outside in this,” Kat says, “I can barely walk.”

“Same,” Desh says. “Whose idea was this again?”

“It is a good story, Desh,” Kat flashes him a cheeky smile, “but maybe you could’ve suggested it in the spring.”

“Not with my allergies,” Desh replies.

“Do you know where we are supposed to go?” Kat gestures to the building in front of them, a squat concrete structure with dozens of onyx screens peppered onto the mottled surface. Green energy. Nice.

“We’re supposed to meet Lieutenant Colonel Chisholm — he’s the guy who runs this place — and Senator Nora Ness.”

“She’s the one who funds it?”

“Exactly.”

When they arrive at the front of the building they discover there aren’t any doors. A mechanical voice echoes over an intercom and, after a pause to confirm identities and schedules, a shiny panel slides back. Desh shivers when the blast of cool air hits him, and he and Kat skitter inside.

“This is great. We never get visitors,” the mechanical voice says.

Desh and Kat stare. The mechanical voice belongs to a boy floating in the wall next to them. Bottle green glass separates them, and a patchwork of icons flash on the surface. The boy taps a short sequence and his feet fall gently to the floor as the glass recedes. Rows of black, narrow barrels slide into the wall.

“Were those guns?” Kat whispers.

“I’m Tony,” the boy reaches out to shake hands. He wears a form-fitting white jumpsuit that contrasts with the darkness of his skin. He’s bald, and the top of his head shines in the florescent light. It is hard for Desh to look at him, to take in his toothy grin and the shaving wounds on his jawline, his skull.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Tony continues, gesturing to what would seem to be the reception desk.

“Marvels of modern technology,” Desh says. “I’d love to learn more about it, if you have time — but we seem to be a bit short on it, at the moment.”

“Don’t worry; Lieutenant Colonel Chisholm and Senator Ness are in a meeting that’s running long,” Tony says. “They also wanted to make sure you got the latest itinerary. Sent to the New New Republic office this morning.”

“Probably not, seeing as we don’t work out of the office. Just editors.” Kat sighs.

Tony steps back into the reception area and taps against a small panel. He asks for their email addresses and within seconds, their tablets and phones trill and chime notifications.

Kat is the first to react, pulling Desh aside. Presumably to avoid Tony overhearing, though Desh would like to point out the whole place is probably bugged.

“Only one of us in the Chisholm/Ness interview? That’s bullsh —”

“We say no, we’re out. You do their interview, I’ll cover the others.”

“You pitched it,” Kat argues.

“And you’re better at high profile. Come on, it’ll be fine.”

An hour later, Desh regrets his decision. He has a small break before his next round of interviews, a blend of older students about to graduate to the front lines and their faculty advisors.

“So, why are you at the Academy?” Desh attempts to make small talk with Tony.

“My parents gave me the choice between MegaChurch Youth Seminary or the Academy. The MCYS doesn’t have cool toys.”

Tony takes him down a long, blinding white hallway. Desh fights the urge to put on his scratched aviators and tries to ignore how his shoes squeak on the tile. It sounds like the dolphin show at OceanPlanet.

The room is little more than a closet. Desh and Tony squeeze in. Tony adjusts the settings on an unfamiliar machine and hands Desh a lightweight plastic headset.

“Put it on,” he says. “When I come in here, I have to use the SkySuit module. I’ve got most of this room memorized. You get the trainee experience today. SkyLite, if you will.”

The headset connects. Desh sees a warm, happy blue. Green and brown blurs rotate into view, and Desh recognizes the greige concrete of the Academy. The simulation spins and somersaults, flirting with clouds and the thick canopy of a forest.

When was the last time Desh felt like he was flying, fast and free? He remembers a bright, sunny day from his childhood, running up and down a beach whose name escapes him. He hears the waves, the caw of birds, and his own laughter.

The simulation cuts to black and Tony’s voice pulls him back to the present.

“Cool, right? Best part about this place.”

“One of the best sims I’ve ever seen,” Desh says.

“Oh, it’s not a sim. Those are the senior-level students in the flight track. I patched you into one of the live feeds during their air time.” Tony smiles. “That was Lady Danger. She’s our best.”

“Flight track?” Desh swallows. The room feels more cramped than it was before. Desh realizes the black screens on the outside of the Academy are not solar panels. The Academy is also a hangar.

“Most of us can choose which track we want to take depending on our Standardized Army Test scores, hands-on modules, and simulations. Flight’s where I want to be: in the air, no constraints, just the horizon ahead of me. That’s freedom, man.”

Desh nods, but he can’t shake the feeling that it’s still a simulation.

Written by: Erin Justice
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Too Far from the Water

It makes it more difficult, Mica tells me, if you transition into a human family that's too far from the water.

"In a land family," she says, “you'll have turmoil."

"Like the waves?"

"No. Like a world with no waves."

I can't imagine a world with no waves. The pulse of them is all I've ever known. They set our days here. The waves rising and falling tell us when to swim beyond the ocean shelf and when to go closer to the shore to feed on smaller fish.

"You'll get lucky," says Mica. "I have a feeling you'll be born to fishermen."

I know it isn't good to spend too much time speculating, but I hope she's right. I swim behind her as we head towards the reef. The sun cuts through the water and flashes against her scales, which shine silver.

***

On the day Mica is caught, I swim to the sandy bottom and bury myself in silt, like I've seen the crabs do. Lin finds me and tells me I should celebrate. That Mica’s been eaten by now, and soon will be born as a human.

"How can they eat her, knowing they used to be animals themselves?"

"Why do you eat smaller fish?" Lin asks. "You help them continue on their path. Besides, humans lose all memory of their past once they're born in their final form."

I stay on the bottom awhile longer, then rejoin the others as they swim towards the shallows.

***

When the net dips down, I try to lock eyes with the fisherman. Remember who you were, I want to say, but my lips move in strange patterns in the air. My gills burn like the time I was tangled in a jellyfish tentacle.

As the fisherman moves the net into his boat, I can hear the muted sounds of my friends below, still in the water.

They wish me luck. Then, they are gone. All I hear are the waves.

***

The waves change. They usually woosh at a regular rate, but today, they're faster. I can feel a deep thrumming of noise. Until today, the noise has been soothing, sometimes seeming to speak directly to me--but now it's loud and angry. The walls of the chamber where I've been floating expand and press in around me.

When I emerge, my gills burn again, but in a new way. I try to protest in my old language, like in the fisherman's net. But now, the noise comes from me. I am wrapped in a new net, this one warm and soft. I am wiped clean. My scales are gone--in their place, brown skin.

I look up into human eyes for the first time since the fisherman's, and at once, I forget the waves. I am born.

***

“Don’t you go near that pool!”

I am four. It is hot. So hot, my feet burn on the concrete that surrounds the swimming pool. We’re on a roof deck, and Mom is talking to Jay and Shelby. No one is swimming in the perfect, turquoise water. Women and men lie on chairs all around us. Some reading, some drinking. Some sleeping. I don’t know why you’d want to nap when you could have a pool all to yourself.

Mom is helping Shelby get drinks out of the cooler. I sneak closer to the pool. I can just set my foot on the top of the water. Just enough to cool off the burn from the concrete. Ahhh.

I lose my balance.

I’m part of the water, now, bobbing up and down. Mom and Shelby and Jay are still by the cooler. I can see them as if through a sheer, sparkling curtain. No one is coming. I close my eyes, and when I open them, I see darkness creeping in.

And then, Mom’s in the pool, pulling me out, still wearing her long dress with the pink flowers on it. She’s crying. I’m crying.

On the pool deck, she spanks me, then squeezes me so tight I think I’ll black out again. She spanks me again, then kisses the top of my head.

“What did I tell you about the water? You are not a fish,” she wails.

***

“What’s your sign?” Michelle wants to know.

“What?”

“Your sign. Your astrological sign?”

She has a thick purple book on her desk. The pages are rimmed all the way around in silver, so when she closes the book, they shine.

I don’t want to admit I don’t know what she’s talking about. All morning, Michelle and her friends have huddled around that book. I didn’t expect to be included. Mom’s grand idea to move to the suburbs has left me the new kid in the middle of the school year. These kids ride horses and wear name brand clothes. The girls all have miniature leather backpacks that they’ve stuffed with glittery lip gloss and scented lotion. Mom bought me my backpack at Wal*Mart three years ago, and it’s falling apart. I don’t wear makeup. But now Michelle is talking to me. She wants to share the contents of her magical book with me.

“Helloooo? You in there, new kid? What’s your sign?”

“I can’t remember,” I say. “I knew one time, but now I forget.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“March 1st.”

“You’re a Pisces,” she says.

***

When Mom gets out of rehab for the second time, she takes me on a trip to the beach.

“You hate the ocean,” I say, when she calls me at college to propose the plan.

“I never did enough for you when you were little,” she said. “It can be a fresh start.”

I’m not sure I believe in fresh starts, especially from Mom. For her, it’s always more about disconnection from the old. “What’s past is past,” she’s fond of saying. And when the new is an escape rather than a decision, I can’t trust it to last.

“It’s nice here,” she says. The water is clear and calm. Bluer than I remember. But what memory do I have to go on?

“Did we come here when I was a kid?” I ask her.

“I don’t think so. You never liked the water.”

“That’s not true,” I say.

“Well, we just didn’t. We went to the mountains, though. Remember camping?”

“Uh huh.”

Mom’s taken her sandals off, and she cries out when she steps on something sharp.

“It’s just a shell,” I say, bending to pick it up. It’s shimmery, like mercury.

“Why does it look like that?”

“I think it’s called mica,” I say, unsure how I know this.

“Whatever,” she says.

I put the shell in my pocket, knowing I will have to make my own home.

Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Vrinda Agrawal

What the Factory Makes

We last checked in with our hero during “The Memory Assassin.” 

Read that one first. This is Part II of his tale.

What the factory makes is Time®. At least, that’s what Frankenstein tells me before he takes a, I’m going to swallow this bitch whole, bite of his ham sandwich.

Frankenstein is not his real name. Obviously. His mother used to call him that because, as the youngest of eight (count em’, eight) boys, she said he was, “an amalgam of noses, lips, eyes, comebacks, excuses, hobbies, fears, and preferences; each in some way borrowed from the brothers that came before you.”

Most of the time he just goes by Frank.

“What the factory makes is Time®,” says Frank. “Trademarked.”

“That’s dumb,” I immediately reply.

“Well,” says Frank, mouth most full of ham and cheese, “It very well may be dumb, but you will have to take that up with the manufacturers. Or maybe the marketing department. Either way, it’s not like I’m just making this shit up.”

“You cannot make time,” I say. “Time is not a tangible thing. You can’t make time, break time, stretch time, fuck time, paint time, or punch time.”

Frank shakes a scolding finger at me. “Au contraire, my friend,” he says. “Do you see that building over yonder?”

He points to the white building across the river; its outline delineated by the blue sky, so blue it looks artificial. Must be something in the atmosphere. Same deal as the harvest moon.

“That building,” Frank continues, “makes Time®.”

“Trademarked,” I say.

Frank nods and begins digging into his lunchbox. He retrieves Zebra Cakes.

I demand Frank explain himself.

“It’s a little blue pill that erases stuff. Their slogan is: Time® heals all wounds. It’s basically a legal roofie, but way more legit.”

“Why?”

“Why would you take it?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “Do something shitty. Favorite pet turtle dies. Girlfriend breaks your heart. Whatever. One little blue pill and you’re good to go.”

“That’s it?” I ask.

Frank shakes his head.

“No, the whole thing’s reactionary,” he says.

“Life?”

“Huh?” Frank confused. Frank no smart.

“Nevermind,” I reply. “It was a joke. What do you mean it’s reactionary?”

“Oh, they just have to implant this chip-thing under your skin on the inside of your wrist. It doesn’t work without the chip.”

I choke on my ham sandwich when he tells me this.

“Get the fuck out,” I say. “A chip? What kind of chip?”

Frank shrugs again. “I dunno. A computer chip thingy. Time® doesn’t work without it. It’s no big deal. Everybody does it.”

He says the last two sentences like he’s making excuses.

“What’s in it?” I ask.

“The chip?” says Frank. He’s drinking apple juice out of a box via straw. By the sound of it, the tank is running on empty.

“Shit, man. I dunno,” he says. “Science?”

He giggles at his own terrible joke, and it dawns on me that Frank is an idiot.

“So, explain this process to me,” I say. “You have something alien, of unknown origin, inserted into your body? And then you take a blue pill, also alien: origin unknown? Then you forget stuff?”

Frank does fish-face (lips, pursed), nods his head, and says, “Yeah… pretty much. Hey, that’d make a pretty good movie title, no?”

He fans his fingers wide and swipes the air across his face like he’s dropping the curtain on a movie marquee in his imagination.

“Alien…” dramatic pause. “Origin Unknown.”

“You should write the screenplay,” I volunteer.

“Man, I don’t know,” replies Frank. “I have an issue with like, the continuity of the universe, you know what I mean? There’s been so many movies and comics and shit. It’s like, Do you just forget that Alien vs. Predator ever happ…”

“So when did you do this, Frankenstein?” I interrupt. “Did it work? What happened?”

“Sure, it worked,” he replies.

“What did you forget?”

“Bro,” he says, “That’s the poi…”

“Right,” I interrupt again. “And you feel totally normal now?”

Frank pats his belly like a fat man who’s no longer hungry. “Fit as a fucking fiddle,” he says.

“No side effects?” I ask.

“Look at me,” he says. “I’m great.”

He pauses before he continues speaking, and looks at me with a scrunched forehead. It looks painful for Frankenstein to experience deep thoughts.

“What’s the deal, man?” he asks. “What do you want to forget?”

I open my mouth to reply but am interrupted by the long, sorrowful sound of a horn. It sounds very much like an Australian didgeridoo and/or the alpine horn used in the Ricola cough drop commercials.

Frankenstein snaps to attention.

“Welp,” he says. “Gotta go. I guess lunch break is over.”

He stands up and extends his hand to shake.

“Pleasure to meet you,” he says.

For whatever reason, I have not described his attire until now. He is all white. White t-shirt, white jeans with no belt, white socks, and white shoes that look suspiciously K-Swiss.

Frankenstein and I shake hands and he starts down the grassy hill to the bridge that crosses the river that acts as a moat for the castle that is the factory.

Immediately, I notice that we are not alone. There are hundreds of men and women making their way down the hill. They are all dressed in identical white. Like heavenly ants they bottleneck at the bridge before making their way into the factory buttressed by that blue, blue sky.

“Frank!” I yell. “Why are you all wearing white?”

Sometimes, athletes pinch their jerseys above their nipples and shake them out when they do something good. It’s a sign of pride. Frank turns to me and does this with his white shirt.

“This?” he shouts back to me. “This is just standard issue uniform. Pretty rad, right?”

Written by: Logan Theissen

Photograph by: Matt Crump