Live a Great Story

Dakota Foreman faced the bright orange brick wall, staring at the eye-level sign. Underneath the words LIVE A GREAT STORY would be an ironic place to die, but that is what she thought she might do.

The middle-aged man behind Dakota reburied his pistol into the twenty-two-year-old's lower back. The barrel was hot from the warning shot he had just fired. It burned Dakota’s skin through her shirt.

The man had startled Dakota, jumping into her backseat as she was leaving the gym. She was trying to text the boyfriend she wanted to break up with that she had quit her job. The man’s gun was up before she could dial 9-1-1.

He made Dakota drive to the outskirts of Charleston. Now they stood in front of an empty building in an abandoned part of the commercial district.

“You’re the final piece to the puzzle I’ve been putting together for the past twenty-four years.”

Dakota felt the pistol barrel dig deeper into her lower back, pushing her forward towards the wall. She had cried the entire drive out to this location. But her nerves had calmed since she parked the car and climbed out.

“Peel off the sticker,” said the man.

Dakota hesitated for a moment.

“Three seconds,” said the man, raising the gun to poke into Dakota’s rib cage. “I don’t have all day.”

Dakota jumped forward and dug her fingers into the brick at the left edge of the sticker. The adhesive held at first. Dakota felt the brick scratching away her green nail polish while the sticker refused to budge.

Eventually, Dakota successfully pulled the sticker away, revealing a circular stone carved to resemble a screaming face. There were two dots for eyes, a big mouth and three slits on each cheek.

“What is that?” asked Dakota.

She partly asked because she had no idea why there was a screaming face cut into the wall – or why it had been covered up by a sticker. But she also asked because the face had an unexplained effect on her. For the first time in years, she felt at home.

“A doorway.”

“To where?”

“That’s for us to find out,” the man replied. “Push it.”

Dakota’s gut told her to oblige. Her mind screamed in protest.

“Why me?” she asked, biding time to settle her internal conflict.

“Because I’ve seen enough Indiana Jones movies. And I have the gun.”

“Fair enough,” replied Dakota.

Like the man, Dakota had seen plenty of Indiana Jones movies. She knew what happened to the no-names who messed with secret doors and mystical objects. But her gut told her she was far from a no-name here.

Dakota took two deep breaths and slammed her palm into the stone face. The rock resisted at first, holding its ground. Then there was a soft click and the piece slid back into the brick wall.

A soft hum started behind the stone face. It quickly turned to a louder buzz. Dakota peeked over her shoulder at the man behind her, but he looked just as perplexed by the sound.

Then the buzzing intensified.

“What’s happening?” asked Dakota.

“The door’s opening.”

“What door?”

Dakota had confirmed multiple times there was no door. But as she turned around, she saw that was no longer true.

The buzzing was thunderous now. The ground shook and the bright orange wall that had previously rested before them was splitting and folding away. When the rumbling stopped and the wall settled, there was now an empty doorway leading to pitch black mystery.

“I was right,” said the man, stepping up next to Dakota. “You’re one of them.”

“One of what?”

“An Atlantean,” he said. “I found the way to Atlantis.”

Suddenly, the smile was gone as a spear flew from the darkness and tore through the man’s midsection. In horrified shock, he looked down at the back of the spear protruding from his stomach. He dropped the gun, collapsed to his knees and then fell to his right.

Dakota froze next to the man. She wanted to run, but her legs refused.

A mountain of a man scooted through the doorway and stepped out in front of Dakota. His dark brown beard was thick, bushy and stretched down past his chest. His hair was pulled back into a braid that extended down the same distance. The man did not wear a shirt, revealing skin bronzed as if it had never missed a minute in the sun. His muscles were ripped – taut, holding another spear, ready to throw at Dakota.

The man’s expression quickly shifted from anger and questioning to recognition. Then a smile appeared.

In a deep, rumbling voice, he stated something in a language Dakota did not understand.

Chills rushed up her spine. Chills of relief.

“You’ve arrived,” the man said in English. “The princess is home.”

Dakota’s eyebrows jumped at the word ‘princess.’

“Follow me,” said the man, waving for Dakota to follow him.

She followed. The other side of the doorway was not the dark cavern she expected. Rather, Dakota found herself in awe of a white marble walkway lined by a majestic ceiling, grandiose walls and Greek-like columns.

“Where are we?” asked Dakota, walking along the Atlantean’s side.

“This is a portal station. A bridge between our world and theirs.”

“Our world?”

“Yes,” said the Atlantean. “Ours. Including yours. Heirs to the throne spend their formative years above so they can better understand the land humans. So that you can empathize with them.”

“I’m from Atlantis?”

“Everything will come back to you once you’re home.”

“And who was that?” asked Dakota, peeking back over her shoulder to where they had left the armed man.

“Doctor Higgins has spent the better part of three decades hunting proof of our existence.”

“I’d say he found it.”

“He has found proof before,” said the Atlantean. “But he was obsessed with proof he could share.”

Dakota and the Atlantean stopped at a set of tall stone doors, having reached the end of the long walkway. The man banged his fist on the door in front of him three times.

“I hope he lived a great story,” he said. “Or at least a good enough story for him.”

Written by: Kevin Treaccar
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Mirlitons

CeCe’s nude heels clacked against the concrete sidewalk as she tugged on her black silk dress. It was the only funeral attire she owned, and it was too unforgiving for late June’s inescapable humidity. CeCe had gained ten pounds since the last time she had worn it, which meant it required constant readjustment. She had pulled her blonde hair into a ponytail, but tendrils still curled and stuck in the sweat against her neck. She reached out to pull the ponytail over her shoulder, exposing the tattoo of a chef’s knife on her wrist to her mother Bitsy’s glaring eyes.

The porch on the double shotgun house looked exactly as CeCe remembered -- bright and old and mismatched, just like the left side’s former inhabitant. Lester LeBones, the voodoo skeleton that Lorraine claimed brought the New Orleans Saints good luck, still held his place of honor right in the center of the porch’s sag. Having never made his postseason retreat to the attic, Lester sported a few strands of what had once been purple and green Mardi Gras beads, worn silvery by sun and rain alike.

The front door to the house was slightly ajar, and stanzas of gospel and the smell of boiling crawfish crept out from the living room into the street. CeCe and her parents paused at the front door.

“Remember about the knife and the books,” her father Louis said to her, loosening his tie and rolling up his sleeves. He was all business, but the droop at the corners of his mouth gave away his sadness.

One of Lorraine’s cousins had found a handwritten will dated five years back stuffed in a shoebox full of cash. She had bequeathed her chef’s knife and cookbooks to CeCe. CeCe had spent her formative years poring over those books, devouring the recipes as if they were sustenance. She knew she would take those, but taking Lorraine’s knife seemed too personal, like taking somebody’s arm.

CeCe stepped tentatively over the threshold, followed by her mother and father, and had barely rebalanced on her heels before a giant tree of a man hugged her so fiercely he almost knocked the breath out of her.

“CeCe! It has been a minute!” The boom of the voice coming from the chest it belonged to made CeCe’s ears ring.

She unearthed herself and pulled back to find a pair of green eyes set in ebony skin crinkled back at her.

“Kenneth!” she shrieked, and nestled back into his rib cage for another squeeze. He was Lorraine’s nephew, who had run off to Nashville with his brass band years ago. The last time CeCe had seen him was when she was fifteen and they were drinking illicit beers on the very front porch ten feet behind them.

“Bay...bee...GURL!” he cried, giving her a squeeze with each punctuated syllable. “You a Yankee now? Working at a big old restaurant in New York? Rooting for them Jets?”

“Screw the Jets.”

Kenneth gave Bitsy a gentle kiss on the cheek and Louis a formal handshake. He put his arm around CeCe’s neck and paraded the three of them through the house. Some of the people had frequented Lorraine’s kitchen table over the years and fussed over CeCe like their own long lost daughter. Other folks CeCe knew only from Lorraine’s stories. “Pleasure to meet you in the flesh,” she’d say, and they’d hug like they’d been acquainted for years.

CeCe made her way to the kitchen. She half expected to find it shrouded in black gauze. Instead, she found its formica table and chipped green tiled countertops overloaded with food, enough to nourish the mourners through their grief.

At the sink stood Lorraine’s best friend Doreen. “She loved you as if you were her own child, dear,” the normally gregarious woman said gently, patting CeCe’s cheek. CeCe nodded, tears finding their way to the corners of her eyes. CeCe wasn’t sure why people always assumed she needed mothering, but in this instance, she was happy to accept.

The evening was a funeral, a party, a family reunion, and a group therapy session. It was a blur of faces and names and stories about Lorraine walking through waist-high floodwaters to rescue her Mardi Gras costume box from her momma’s house and what everyone’s favorite meal of Lorraine’s was and how Lorraine had mended shattered hearts one by one, plate by plate. The summer air rolled into the room, coaxing sweat beads from eyebrows and sticking thighs to chairs and keeping stories lingering in the room, in hopes of drawing a complete picture of their subject. Louis laughed and clapped the backs of the storytellers. His sister-in-law had always brought out his most jovial side. Bitsy did what all Southern women do in foreign kitchens and pitched in with dishwashing duties.

Eventually, CeCe snuck away from the kitchen into the dining room, which was festooned with Zulu coconuts and Lorraine’s gaudy souvenir spoon collection. The dining room also held Lorraine’s cookbooks, nearly fifty of them slung and stuffed haphazardly onto an insufficient bookshelf. CeCe pulled one off without looking, and out of habit the book fell open to recipe for shrimp stuffed mirlitons. She and Lorraine had made this recipe together once, a test run before a Thanksgiving feast. They had stuffed themselves with the results while talking about CeCe’s high school boyfriend. She had trusted her aunt with every little detail of her life, from who she kissed to what her dreams were. She ran her fingers over the mirliton recipe, turned the corner of the page down, and hugged the book close to her heart.

                                                                                                        ***

Back in New York City, not a day passed where CeCe didn’t wish she could call up Lorraine -- to make her laugh, to ask her what would go best with the beautiful carrots she found at the farmer’s market. But when the head chef asked her to help conceive a new dish at the restaurant that fall, she had an answer.

“Mirlitons.”

“What?”

“Shrimp stuffed mirlitons.”

Chef looked at CeCe for a minute. He cocked his head to one side and cracked his meaty, tattooed knuckles.

“Alright, Landry. I’m listening.”



Written by: Clancy Fink
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Genie

The tire pressure light came on as Jake cleared a speed bump. For a moment, he thought the damn thing just knocked some air out of the tires, but the thought was quickly dashed by the familiar dubdubdub of a flat tire.

“Shit.” He pulled onto the shoulder and killed the engine. Turning on the cautions, he climbed out and stepped around to the right front tire. Ripped to shreds.

He checked his watch. Seven thirty. Too early to call the office, but AAA might get him going again. He pulled out his phone and thumbed the power button.

Nothing. He held it down, but the screen stubbornly remained blank.

“Of course.” He tossed it in the passenger window. “Shit.”

The road was desolate, save for a rundown gas station and the remnants of a trailer park, its wretched speed bumps the one intact relic. The only sign of life was a blue pickup sitting in the station’s lot surrounded by potholes. It had a few dings, but it looked otherwise well maintained.
Jake approached the pickup slowly, craning his neck to see inside. A pile of old coats covered the passenger seat, but it looked unoccupied. He spotted a full-size tire mounted just behind the passenger door.

He glanced around. The lot was abandoned. The street was more or less unused, save for the odd commuter trying to shave a few minutes off his drive. He was alone.

Satisfied, he peered into the bed in search of a jack and tire iron, but it was empty. Another furtive glance, then he tried the passenger door. It swung open, and the pile of coats billowed out, forcing Jake back. He tripped and landed hard as it emerged and raised to its full height.

A hand appeared from beneath what was actually a single coat and reached towards Jake. It belonged to a large man in a larger coat. A huge smile beamed out from under a fedora.

“Didn’t mean to scare ya, Friend.” The deep, honeyed voice rattled in Jake’s chest. “I thought you were another of those damn kids out to boost Blue.”

Jake hesitated, then took the Coat’s hand, which was more like a bear’s paw. The Coat hoisted Jake to his feet. “No. Definitely not. I actually thought this vehicle was abandoned and was going to take the tire for my Benz.”

The Coat followed Jake’s gaze across the street. When he turned back, his grin was even wider. “So it’s a tire you’d be needing, is it?”

“Yeah, that speed bump ripped one of mine to shreds.” He motioned to the tire. “I’m not even sure it’s the right size, but--”

“Oh, it’ll fit. Don’t worry ‘bout that.”

“That would be fantastic.” He reached for his wallet. “How much do you want for it?”

The Coat laughed a full-throated laugh. “Friend, your money’s no good to me. If the tire’s what’s needed, it’s yours.”

Jake slowly returned his wallet. “There must be something you want.”

The Coat turned and leaned into the truck. “Oh, I do. But it won’t cost you nothin’ but time.” He produced a jack and a tire iron, then kicked the door shut with a large foot.

Glancing at the tire iron, Jake fought the urge to step back. “If it won’t cost me anything, what do you want?”

“Well, some time down the road, you’re probably gonna need something again.” He shrugged as though he were delivering an unfortunate but obvious truth. “Happens to all of us. But next time it happens to you, I want you to call me.” He started to remove the tire from its mount.

“Why?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “So I can come help, a’course.”

Jake’s brow furrowed. His gut was telling him to just go find a pay phone and call AAA, but something kept him where he was.

“We got a deal, friend?” The Coat was holding the tire like it weighed not a thing.

“So you’re lending me this--”

“Giving, Friend.”

“Giving me this tire, and all you want is to do another favor some time in the future?”

The Coat nodded.

Jake checked his watch. Seven forty-three. “Deal. Can you put the tire on for me?”

The Coat’s grin grew wider. “Look, another favor already!”

“Looks like it.”

“All I ask in return is--”

“Another favor?”

The Coat winked. “But this one, you’re gonna do for me.”

Jake hesitated. “And that would be?”

Dropping the tire, the Coat spread his arms. “All you gotta do is set me free.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just tell me I’m free, and I’ll be on my way.”

“If you put that tire on in less than five minutes, I’ll tell you anything.”

He picked up the tire and started across the road. “Deal. Two for you ‘n one for me.”

Jake’s gut was screaming now, but he followed him over. When the Coat was finished, Jake checked his watch. Seven forty-seven.

“All finished, Friend.”

“Great. That was fast.” He checked out the tire, then looked back to the Coat whose grin engulfed his whole face. “Oh. Uh, now?”

The Coat raised his paws, suddenly ambivalent. “Only if ya want to, friend. Gotta be your choice.”

Jake shook his head and pulled out his keys. “Whatever. You’re free then.”

The man grinned, then removed his coat and hat. He helped Jake into the coat and placed the hat on his head. Humoring him, Jake appraised his reflection in the tinted window. Something didn’t seem right, but his mind was cloudy. He tried to pick out a clear thought, but they escaped him. The strange man clapped him on the shoulder and grinned. The clothes fit surprisingly well.

Taking the keys, the man walked around to the driver’s side. Jake followed him, his brow furrowed. “What’s happening?”

He winked again, then got into the car and started the engine. “Just remember, no one will set you free after one wish, so get ‘em to agree to two ‘fore you do the first.”

The door shut, and the Benz pulled away.

                                                                                                          ***

The moonlight bathed the gas station in silver. The road was empty, but an engine purred somewhere in the dark. Inside a dusty, beat-up blue pickup, a man in a dusty coat stirred. He climbed out and leaned against the hood.

Headlights soon appeared around the corner, and a car went too fast over a speed bump. It pulled over with that familiar dubdubdub sound. The driver got out and swore.

A voice called across the street. “Looks like you need a favor, Mister.”

The man looked towards the pickup. He could just make out in the moonlight where the voice had come from and started towards it.

Jake was grinning.



Written by: Michael Goldstein
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

A Beautiful Scene

Friday, December 18th, 11AM:
Arrived last night and went straight to bed. I’ll never get used to flying. I don’t know how people do it on a regular basis. I skipped dinner, but wasn’t hungry, anyway. The conference doesn’t start until tomorrow, so I have a full day to wander around the city. I would be showered and dressed and all ready to go but I’ve been transfixed by the view from my window. It’s nothing out of the ordinary – just a couple of buildings - but it’s started to rain. I never get these kinds of views back home, and rarely does it rain.

4:20 PM:
Went out for a few hours, had some lunch and coffee and wandered around a bit, then came back to the hotel and took a nap. It’s still raining. I wonder what’s going on behind each one of those square portals across the street. I wonder if whoever’s behind them is thinking the same thing. I doubt it. They probably have better things to do.

11:10 PM:
They follow me wherever I go. They’re in the windows and storefronts and bathroom mirrors. It’s hard to come to a city like this and not be reminded. I might as well be back from where I came – the ghosts would be the same, but without the context, without the frame, without the ambience - and it’s aesthetics I’m most concerned with. Or at least that’s what I’ve always told myself. I fear that it will be like this every time – in every city – in every room.

Saturday, December 19th, 7:12 PM:
The conference was a fucking bore. Not that I expected it not to be. At least they paid for my accommodations and airfare. I’m back in my room. If I could smoke in here, I’d never leave.

9:40 PM:
It rained then too, but not heavily, not like this. The buildings are similar. I suppose buildings are similar in most big cities. And the greyness is the same greyness I recall while walking along those busy streets two and three years ago. But there’s something missing from this scene, some vacancy that needs to be filled. But it likely won’t be, at least not if I have anything to say about it. But I’m still enjoying the moment, or at least admiring it. I shouldn’t think too much.

Sunday, December 20th, 11:08 AM:
I’ve tried filling these past couple of days with moments I could maybe reflect upon in a year or two or ten and recall vividly and with some sense of fondness, but I don’t think that has happened. Last night at the bar, there was someone. She was sitting directly across from me with a drink in her hand. She looked about twenty-five or thirty. Her hair was dark, her skin slightly tan. She looked at me. I looked at her. This continued for some time. At a certain point, her glass became empty. I should have walked over, or at least called for the bartender. Instead, I kept sipping my Rum-and-Coke. Nothing good could have come of it, anyway.

3:34 PM:
I’d like to set up my camera and record what’s playing out so beautifully in front of me, but I didn’t bring the right lens. This means no close-ups of whatever’s going on behind those little square portals. It’s probably not that interesting anyway. It’s likely trivial stuff, similar to what’s not playing out right here in this room. Maybe they’re zooming in on me. Luckily, the rain partially blocks their view – and mine. Wide shots are better, anyway. They show you the whole picture. Wait, what am I saying? I just lied. There’s an entire world outside that frame.

8:08 PM:
I should start packing, but I feel lethargic. There isn’t much to pack anyway. I should just sit here and enjoy my last few hours in this little room in this grey city. It will all come back to me one day and then maybe I’ll appreciate it more. We never fully comprehend these moments when they’re actually happening – only in retrospect. There’s no need to take pictures. No need to press record on my video camera. No need write all of this down. I don’t need any of that to remember. No, I’m just going to sit here and let this scene wash over me. Maybe in a few years, I’ll recall it vividly and with some sense of fondness.


Written by: Jamie Naqvi
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Blue Hearts

I wouldn’t ask her to name one after me, even though it was all I wanted. One of two things I wanted, and the second was her lips – anywhere on my skin.

Kisses heal the hurt; isn’t that what they taught us?

“These are my favorites,” Amber said, but she didn’t have to say it. They were the only rocks swaddled in wrapping paper, and she held one out to me, the sparkling flat of it resting in the careful platform of her two palms.

Geodes, not rocks. They were geodes. The difference, Amber claimed, was the crystals crackling from the hollows of volcanic stone. They were the product of fire and water. Warring elements, she said, while I sat against the side of her dorm room bed, the wood of one leg smooth against each pebble of my spine.

Water impregnated with chemicals, rich in minerals, she continued, and I wondered why she was talking about water, but mostly I wondered if she knew I had known her name since elementary school, watched her since middle school, and to find her in college felt more miraculous that any crystal formation.

I had started taking my miracles small, scrounging for them, an addict eager for the pop of his next pill.

“You can hold it.” The rock – geode – was offered to me, but I did not want to take it. She held the flat slice of chemical blue crystal more carefully than I had ever held anything.

Watching her hold out these rocks to me, I wished that I had talked to Amber before. Before today. Before the summer. Before the speeding car and my little sister, running. I wished I had talked to Amber the first time I noticed her, back in third grade show-and-tell when she’d smiled wide at the bright crystals in her hands even though some of the kids laughed at her for collecting rocks. I wished I could have asked her how to hold something so gently, so that I’d have known how to reach out, so that I’d have known how to take my sister’s hand when I had the chance.

But I didn’t talk to Amber before today, so I didn’t know, last summer, how to take my sister’s hand. Her IV had protruded like the brightest star – Sirius, wasn’t it? – in a midnight black sky, and to touch it meant to acknowledge the solidity of the hospital room posed around us. My hands under my thighs meant I could be dreaming, a blink and the pale pink walls would crumble like ash to reveal our front yard, where my sister ran, ran, ran.

She had always liked to run. “What are you running from?” I’d asked her, that day last summer, while I’d stretched my legs across the weeds that I was meant to be pulling.

My sister had giggled like she knew I was asking the wrong question. Where are you running to? I should have asked, and then I could have run after her, faster than that speeding car.

“Does it have a name?” I asked Amber. The other rocks did. The less special ones. Clunky, misshapen lumps that only revealed the side worth anything if turned over. Not the rock in Amber’s palm, nor the three left on the wrapping paper. It was Christmas wrapping paper. Red with pearl snowflakes, even though it was the thick of August. I could feel the crisp shadow of expiring sun on my outstretched legs until a peal of laughter from outside the room reminded me that I was sitting against the dorm room bed of the girl I’d always wished would notice me, back when I could spare my wishes on such simple things.

“No, I haven’t named it yet,” Amber said. The hair she had been tucking behind her ears – black and inky like the deepest parts of the sea – fell over her face again. She could not move it, as both hands still held the unnamed rock.

I searched in Amber’s eyes for the sympathy I’d collected from everyone back home, but instead I saw only wonder at this rock she held, like it was something precious, something alive, something to be kept safe in the flimsy swaddle of Christmas wrapping paper.

Her eyes were brown. Like dirt, the kind that packed together into sedimentary rocks, which sometimes hoarded air bubbles in the empty spaces of their chests so that something beautiful could grow.

If I asked her to name this rock after me, she would. She had texted me to come over, after all, and from what I knew, we weren’t friends. To me, she was just the girl who smiled at rocks, who left me wondering how it would feel, to be smiled at like that. And to her, I was just the boy from grade school who happened to go to the same college.

I was more than that now. No longer “the boy who,” but “the boy with.” My sister defined me, and I didn’t fight. Let her take the place in my chest where only air was whirring, the hollow I ached to fill.

“Go on,” Amber said, hands moving an inch towards me. “It will help.”

Help what? It was a goddamn rock. I lifted my palms to match hers, lifelines-up like we were showing off how much time we had. The rock slipped against the sweat of my skin.

It was smooth, warm from her heat, a kiss falling along the creases of my palms.

“I know they’re just rocks,” she said, but at first I thought I had said it.

My fingers flinched, and the rock trembled against my fingerprints.

“But pretending they’re something more helps.”

Helps what, I thought again. I wanted to say it, but my voice had lost itself in the gaping expanse of my chest, and I looked away from her dirt brown eyes to this rock in my hands.

I pretended it was a heart. Small, warmth cooling, turning blue from lack of oxygen. Did hearts do that? I didn’t know. In my head, it didn’t matter. I watched the heart harden, so tiny it could fit into a rabbit’s chest, like the ones that ran, quick, quick, across our front lawn, sometimes darting into the road without warning, without any time to stop them.

“Will,” Amber said suddenly – sudden as the flash of metal on sun-kissed skin, but not nearly as loud – and I didn’t know if she was finally naming the rock I held, or just saying my name to fill the hollow of our silence.



Written by: Danielle Dyal
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

#InstaChristmas

This is how you Instagram Christmas.

First, you need to decide what your color scheme will be. There’s the traditional red, green, and white, but that’s kind of yawn-inducing and will figure prominently in a lot of Instagram photos.

Metallic seems like a good bet, with the warm glow and cool glint of gold, silver, pewter, and copper. It picks up a lot of glare, and the glossiness of it is somehow too shiny and artificial, even for you.

Settle for bold and interesting, a modern blend of candy pink and soft mint and rich, regal purple. Plus, you know, anything can look Christmasy. Ribbon you used for your — for Jonas’s last birthday gift, a jar of sprinkles next to snowman cookies, mulled red wine and boozy, amber cocktails.

Remind yourself not to say you are “settling.” No one is settling.

You have to find those moments. The slivers of each day that are flawless, whether they are shaped by God’s hand — or, more than likely, yours.

You have to place each ornament in the perfect spot on the tree, backlit with the right color of bulb. This may require redoing your Christmas tree multiple times because each time, you think maybe you’ll wake up from the nightmare and Jonas will be next to you, Christmas tradition in progress.

Bake a lot. If you are not sleeping or taking pictures, something should be in the oven or on a cooling rack. Make cookies and tarts and brownies and cakes. Purchase more sugar than should legally be allowed in one household. Use that weird new app Boomerang to make glorified .gifs as you whisk ingredients and make light, airy clouds of powdered sugar.

Don’t forget to artfully stack the dirty, batter-rimmed mixing bowls and spatulas because life is messy, but it can still be like, peak messy. 

Christmas presents can be wrapped (and posted!) while you’re baking. Select a matte, solid wrapping paper and go crazy with curled ribbons, elaborate bows, decorative pine cones, and recently-harvested sprigs of your neighbor’s holly bush.

Arrange gifts in towers or flat lays, with handmade gift tags and ornate calligraphy. If he’s paying attention, Jonas can make out his name at least a dozen times over. Some of the boxes are empty, but most aren’t: new cufflinks, a fancy pen, a copy of The Martian on Blu-Ray.

Will he remember it was the last movie you saw together? The last experience you shared before he cleaved your life in two, the perfect half of the Before and the desperate hollowness of the After? The residual warmth of the happy Before haunts you and teases you, and you will do anything to get it, to get him, back.

Your first Christmas together you were huddled together, a shrill ice storm whipping through the neighborhood that morning. When it died down, you walked into the yard and the world shimmered and sparkled.

Just for Jonas, and not Instagram: cut off one of the branches on your Christmas tree, throw water on it, and put it in your freezer. Make sure it’s not lying on top of anything else or you will end up with branches that get stuck to like, Otter Pops and frozen peas. You can ask your best friend’s husband to construct a stand for it and then awkwardly overhear their conversation, which includes Todd saying you’re going through a rough patch and need support and his husband David replying that you’re being coddled and need a reality check before you go totally mental.

Just shake your head because you never understood what Todd saw in David, and this was for Jonas, for the perfect Before he needs to see from you again.

Be ready to spend Christmas alone, with your iPhone and the perfectly-staged photos and messes. Be ready for each moment to be exactly what you want, the only thing you can control. 

Hear the doorbell ring, feel the adrenaline surge into your veins. You are the sun in the center of his galaxy. His path may be elliptical, he may be as far from you as his orbit allows, but he is forever circling you, forever connected to you, and he will always come back around.

You open the door, ready for an embrace, an apology, a cropped square of happiness and the mess right out of frame.

It’s not Jonas, but David.

“Todd doesn’t know I’m here,” he says, “I said I was getting Starbucks.”

“Are they even open?” You ask, because it is the only reasonable response.

“I don’t know,” David rubs his left eyebrow, a nervous twitch you never realized you noticed. “You’re his best friend, Katie. You’re miserable, and you’re alone, and you and I will never be best friends.”

“Merry Christmas, David,” you begin to close the door.

“A thousand times, you could have told Todd you don’t like me. Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t see it,” you say, “but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just not for me to see.”

“He would have listened,” David says, and his brown eyes grow bleary and distant. “He loves you more.”

“Maybe. But we’ll never find out. We don’t even need to ask,” you say.

“We’ll never be best friends,” David repeats, “but you can’t be here, miserable and alone and pretending everything is still fine. Come over. We’ll get drunk on cranberry margaritas and play an Elf drinking game.”

You do not take pictures of your Christmas sock-clad feet in front of the television, Will Ferrell’s tall frame ruling the screen.

You don’t capture the second pitcher of cranberry margaritas toppling from the kitchen counter onto the floor, sticky puddles like blood from some kind of holiday horror movie.

And you definitely don’t immortalize Todd’s absolute failure at red velvet cheesecake, a soggy mess that the three of you promptly spit into napkins.

You leave your phone in your purse, and you miss Jonas’s curt, impersonal text: a Christmas tree emoji.

This is how you have the best Christmas of your adult life.


Written by: Erin Justice
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Someone Once Loved

Jim,

Can I call you Jim? It’s been so long since I’ve called you anything at all that I’m not sure how to address you now. You have had so many other names, so many other faces. I guess it doesn’t matter what you look like, or what I call you since I don’t even have an address to send this letter.

I am writing because I just can’t help but think of you, and it surprises me to find you here in my head. You are supposed to play a big role in this day. I’m supposed to want you here.

Your absence will be jarring to some of those in attendance. They will note that I am without a chaperon to escort me on this well-worn path. They will say it’s a shame - she grew up without. It’s a shame - she doesn’t have someone now. They expect a man who loved me to lead me into the arms of a man who promises to love me forevermore.

The details of the day are committed. The tables and chairs have been arranged on the rooftop terrace. They sit waiting for us to feast and celebrate, above the city and under the stars. I will be on his arm. I will wear a white dress and a smile. I will be watched by all who love me and some who will learn to.

I will take a new name again.

The first name I wore was the one you gave me. That name belonged to a different girl, one I find hard to recognize now. She was small and quiet – a splintered girl, who never spoke above a whisper. She had started out whole before being broken by your indiscreet hands. She used to laugh and chatter incessantly – sweet toddler giggles, hushed by poison secrets.

If my mother had walked away after making love to you that night near Stanley Park, would I have had a different name? Would I have been a different girl?

I took a new name in high school - just walked in and introduced myself as someone else. I left you behind. I was not going to be defined by your actions anymore. You were a past better forgotten, and I was ready to start fighting for myself. I needed a new name to match my new strength. A new name and a new voice - I was done with choking on my tongue, done with whispers and secrets.

I would let them say what they needed to say, but their words wouldn’t touch me anymore. They toss around sterile adjectives used to categorize, to give them some ownership over my life. They sit in their voyeurs’ castles and know that they have done well. They have labelled me appropriately. Let them stroke their own genius ego; I wasn’t going to define myself by the slippery touch of their saliva slick fingertips. They can keep their fickle praise and condemnations and apply their literary interests to a new sad story.

I was finished with being their survivor.

Now I am ready for a new name. I stand in my white dress, on the cusp of reinventing myself. A third name, a third girl. This new name I will borrow from my best friend. I want it to change more than my signature. I want the goodness of him to seep into me - to become mine, like his name.

I wait to enter the room and walk through their collective gaze - alone. I try not to think of you. Instead I want to imagine her – the woman I will become once I reach the end of the aisle. She is a wife and mother. She is careful and kind. She will build a good life - the sort of life your influence had denied her so long ago. She will be ready to face you and then to let you go. She doesn’t deny that you were, and she knows your hands helped to shape her. The blunt force of you left its marks and they are now her marks.

I try not to think of your absence – after all this time I shouldn’t mind. I try not to think of the kind of girl I would be had I grown up with you. A ghost of a girl, a blindly swollen shape like the white asparagus we will serve to our guests tonight, pale and bloated, grown in the dark. Instead, I try to remember that the best thing you ever gave me was that absence. You left, and green came back into my life, thick and sweet and full of hope. You let me go, you let me grow and blossom away from your greedy hands.

If I saw you now would I know any part of you? Would you know me?

I have the same freckle on the corner of my mouth that I had back then. I have decided it is pretty. I know my bad back comes from you, and my fidgety nature. I know you also left me the nightmares that return every August, cutting my summer short. My eyes are the same green as the toddler you knew – almost yellow. Would you see yourself in them?

The tables are set, the cake has been iced. The guest are all assembling in their colourful dresses and silk suits - tropical birds, perched above the grey city. I will smile and converse. I will hold his hand and kiss his mouth, prompted by the clinking of crystal glasses.

I will walk alone down the aisle.

I will stand tall while I do. I know that I am better able to give myself away than you ever were. I never belonged to you at all.


Sincerely,

Someone once loved.


Written by: Sarah Scott
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

A Mother Could Love

When they laid the howling baby on her chest, Marlena squinted hard, and said, “No, no, clean her up. You can clean her up now.”

“Ma’am, we cleaned her already. You can hold her,” said the nurse.

“Her face. There’s still blood on her face.”

“It’s her skin. It’s a birthmark. It’s not blood,” the nurse said, squeezing Marlena’s arm. “She’s perfectly healthy.”

The nurse urged Marlena to count the baby’s fingers and toes.

“See? She’s perfect. She’s a beauty.”

On her chest, the baby had stopped wailing. Marlena closed her eyes and cried as the doctor stitched her up.

                                                                                                         ***

Flora’s birthmark resembled a map of China. It began in her hairline and swooped down to cover her right eyebrow, eye socket, and cheekbone. The birthmark was a warm red, the color of the pomegranate seeds her mother ate with yogurt at breakfast.

“Stop staring at yourself,” Marlena scolded her daughter.

Flora pulled her eyes away from her reflection in the metal tea kettle.

“People will think you’re vain. Nobody likes a vain girl.”

“Okay, Mama,” Flora said, and poured hot water over her instant oatmeal.

                                                                                                         ***

They say the devil spat on her / No she was in a fire / It’s not a burn it’s a deformity / She’s so ugly / I heard she had a tail when she was born but they cut it off / No one knows who her father is / I bet his whole face is red like that / Don’t touch it / it’ll spread onto your hands if you do / Like poison ivy / Doesn’t it hurt / It hurts to look at / Ha Ha Ha / A face only a mother

could love

                                                                                                         ***

Marlena came home from her shift to find Flora sitting on the living room floor with a box of photos.

“It’s not nice to snoop through people’s things.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I only went to your closet to borrow a scarf...”

Marlena lifted an album from the box. Its cover was puffy, printed with a floral design.

Marlena in a cheerleading uniform.

Marlena at the prom with permed hair and the captain of the basketball team on her arm.

Marlena, standing next to a cousin on Halloween, her face painted white like a ghost.

Marlena stood and rested her hand on Flora’s dark hair.

“I’ll buy you a new scarf, if you want. Put the photos away when you’re done,” she said.

                                                                                                         ***

Flora ran her hands over the shelves of items--t-shirts with characters from crude cartoons, necklaces with spikes, spinning displays of nose rings.

The girl behind the counter, who had purple hair and a cropped KISS t-shirt, leaned across the display case and lifted Flora’s bangs with a long, black fingernail.

“Hey, no offense, but I can hook you up with something to cover that, if you want.”

Flora combed her bangs back down with her fingers. She felt herself blush. When this happened, she always imagined her whole face turning the color of her birthmark. She should go. What was she even thinking coming in here?

The reaction she trained herself to have, ignore the jerks, just leave, rose to the surface. Flora pressed it back down. The girl with the KISS t-shirt didn’t seem like a jerk--at least not the usual kind. Her eyelids were caked in grey glitter. She peered at Flora like a stylish raccoon.

“What did you have in mind?” Flora asked.

“There’s this stuff I use to cover my tattoos when I have to see my grandma. Works pretty good.”

The girl pulled a crumpled receipt from a trash bin behind the counter and scribbled Dermablend on the back.

“Sucks, but not everyone can handle the real me. You get that, right?”

Flora took the receipt and slid it into the back pocket of her jeans.

In Sephora, a luminous salesgirl with a fluffy afro squeezed the forty-dollar concealer on a sponge, then dabbed it on Flora’s face.

“I won’t do the whole area--that’d be more than a sample--but you can see how it kind of covers the redness?”

Flora looked in the mirror. A small section of her birthmark now looked grey--almost purple-undertoned. As if she’d been punched in the cheek.

“To achieve full coverage, you’d probably have to use more layers,” the salesgirl said, her berry colored lips pursed in uncertainty.

Standing in line, Flora plucked a bottle of black nail polish from the impulse rack and left the expensive concealer in its place.

                                                                                                         ***

“Now remember, these are just the proofs. If you want to order prints or digital files, your parents have to place an order by the fifteenth.”

Mrs. Carson passed around the slim envelopes, and Flora’s classmates began to critique their senior portraits.

Ha--I look good in a tux.
My hair’s sticking up!
Ugh, my Grandma’s gonna want like, eighteen copies.

Flora slid the photos an inch out of the top of the envelope. Then another. This couldn’t be right.

Instead of the screaming red of her birthmark, a smooth, pale cheek. A white eyelid. An eyebrow that matched its partner.

She was looking at a stranger. No--not a stranger, her mother. Her mother’s face stared out at her from behind her own strategically swooping bangs.

Flora turned the photos over in her hands.

Flora Alvarez. Harding High School. Premium Retouch - Prepaid. 

Prepaid.

Flora tore the proof sheet into thin strips and rolled each one into a ball. One she flicked across the classroom. Another she dropped in a toilet in the second floor bathroom. A third she tucked into an empty milk carton on its way to the cafeteria trash. One she chewed into pulp.

                                                                                                         ***

Flora took the Northeast Regional into the city. She told Marlena she was going to a museum to do research for a school assignment. If her mother had known it was for a college interview, she’d have insisted on driving her.

The letter from Columbia lay folded on her lap. Across the aisle of the train car, a young boy tugged at his mother’s sleeve.

“Mama--Mama--that girl--” he whispered, pointing at Flora.

Flora angled her body towards the window. The refrain would never stop, but she wouldn’t let it ruin her day. Not this day, when she was so close to solidifying her escape.

“Mama--” the boy hissed again, “Look! She’s just like you.”

The mother looked up from her laptop to engage her son. She wore a sparkling wedding ring set and an expensive looking suit. Her birthmark, which covered not just one eye and cheek, but both, was the same deep red as Flora’s.

“Yes,” the mother murmured to her son. “She is very beautiful.”

“She’s a beauty,” the boy agreed in sing-song, flipping the pages of a coloring book.

The conductor announced that they would arrive in the city in seven minutes.

Flora turned towards her reflection in the train window and began braiding her hair, lifting one strand at a time, securing her bangs away from her face.

Then she shifted her gaze, looking through the window instead of at it, to the graffitied buildings blurring by. After all, nobody likes a vain girl. 

Written by: Dot Dannenberg

Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

White Flight Ghost

They say her baby never cries. The handsome, black woman wanders the streets each afternoon in a beet red cardigan and a white poodle skirt. There are large, yellow dots on that skirt, and shapely hips beneath. The businessmen paid her to swagger: a buck fifty an hour, and a dollar bonus for scaring the white husbands. She learned to stride in two-inch heels: a rhythmic click that turns our heads. Her stroller rattles upon worn, plastic tires. Ripe daisies cover the movable bassinette - a print that climbs over an accordion hood. The child beneath is lifeless.

She began her tour before I was born, when the block’s windows were adorned with flower boxes - when a westerly breeze might carry lilac into the city. These were also the years when the tension was obvious. The sprawling urban streets were plastered white, and the fear of new, black residents – climbing north for jobs – sent the neighborhood into a frenzy. Some crumpled, old men point to “era” as an excuse for their racism: “Our houses would be worth less if black families moved next door.” This is denoted with the same cavalier smirk as when they explain atom bomb survival techniques -- “We’d hide under our desks and cover our heads.”

The woman’s lips are painted cherry-red. She occasionally touches them with her ivory, lace gloves, then looks to her blemished fingers. Fifty years later, she’s not used to the facade. Her candy-apple veneer stands out against a burnt background. She passes by Merv’s Grocery, or the faded building that was, and speeds her gait. She is running from someone.

The average house had two prices: three thousand for whites, four thousand for blacks. This was the result of deficient realty laws and racial zoning. It became advantageous, to the shoe-shined narcissist, to force white families out of the city – to the burbs – and replace them with the more profitable blacks. Movement is created by fear.

Some men who measured moral foresight in nickels tried to scare the white residents away. They created black ghosts. These spirits were released as rumor: “A negro family is moving into the Smith’s house.” As slander, “The nigger child is ripe with disease.” And as a beautiful, black woman in a red cardigan, “Just have her push a carriage through the streets. Don’t let her talk, just walk. They’ll assume. Hell, they’ll assume.”

My middle school clan used to hang out behind the boarded windows of an abandoned storefront. The building sold televisions - records prior to that - and before that, women’s shoes. The interior light bulbs were smashed, and the circuits mutilated, so we’d have to assemble during the day – when channels of light would sneak through cracked walls. Dust particles were heavy in the beams. Four others, and myself, all thirteen or nearly thirteen, would argue about the White Sox, punch one-another’s arms numb, and consider sex from afar. We were boisterous until three o’clock. The woman arrived at three. Her clicking heels would stop in front of the boarded windows. Her head turned toward the dilapidated storefront. With halted breath, we watched her through the porous timber. Johnny, who was slight yet brash, would whisper, “Damn she’s fine.” James, whose father was shot while holding a gram, concurred, “The things I’d do to that ghost.” Richard, tall and straight-jawed, promptly reminded us, “I heard she worked for them, and did a fucking good job. I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole. She’s not real, you can’t touch her.” The woman would proceed to take off her right shoe. She then examined her calloused toes – fifty years on two-inch heels. She peered into the vacant glass, to the shoe store past. The woman will never afford comfortable shoes, but she will come again tomorrow.

She was, one might surmise, like thousands of others – ambitious, black, and berated by the south. She could legally vote, but large men who wore white hoods at night stood in the doors of the polling centers. She could legally buy a house, but it might be set aflame. She was taught with shoddy books, in a shoddy building, where she urinated in shoddy toilets -- “Don’t flush, the city hasn’t fixed the plumbing.” Her relentless spirit longed for freedom – to own a car - a home - herself. She scaled north on a bus, and was dropped into Chicago, where her cousin said the jobs were. The bigotry was not obvious. She could walk on white sidewalks, but discrimination bubbled discretely beneath. She pressed for a meaningful career, but was repeatedly turned down.

Not wanting to give up, she answered a newspaper ad, “Seeking a pretty, 20-25 year old black girl—physically fit.” Looking past the kinship to slavery, she answered the call. Two clean-shaven, white men in tailored blue suits, gave her a baby doll, a carriage, and paid her in cash. “Make them think you’re moving in. Walk slowly. Give the husbands a wink…the wives can’t hurt you. You’re a ghost now.”

She sauntered.

White men considered her ass, and then considered their net-worth. White women envied her rouge, and then solidified racist dogma. White children wanted to see the black baby, but they were packed into the Studebaker and shipped forty minutes west. Nobody sees the baby.

Her stiletto blades have worn grooves into the cement. She watched the neighborhood change hands, and kept walking. She watched her loved ones default on dirty loans, and kept walking. She watched houses crumble under racially burdened debts, and kept walking. She watched nature crawl through the cement cracks, then trampled the weeds in her path, and kept walking. She is the lasting moniker of our demise. But I’m used to her poodle skirt – this ghost in the daylight.


Written by: Dan Rousseau
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Portia's Suitor

We made love with the taste of wine and olives on our tongues. We made love the way new couples do, pretending to be something we no longer were. It was careful and pretty, untainted by the ugly laziness that comes from years of togetherness. I liked to be on top, hair cascading across my breasts; he held me with his arms flexed, hands massaging me. He teased that I could only cum with a pillow over my face, and I laughed from behind my cotton fortress until my giggles turned to moans, then shivers.

Three weeks we had in Italy. Three weeks to save our relationship. Three weeks of romance and adventure, to spice things up.

Three of the longest weeks of my life.

It wasn't that he was always ogling the Italian women. That was understandable, I couldn't stop gawking myself. They danced across cobblestone streets in stiletto heels, impervious to the heat, navigating heart stopping traffic circles with graceful aggression. I fumbled my way around, tripping over my own blistered feet.

I also wasn't surprised by his behavior in the museums. I knew he wouldn't appreciate the treasures of antiquity. He would stand in front of a Botticelli just long enough to read the title, checking it off a mental list of things he had seen, without bothering to actually look.

I knew he would be a jerk to the locals, so I was prepared for his arguments. I hid my face behind my map while he hollered about the fact that the Italian economy depended on tourism and they should value him and his money. It always came back to money.

I expected all of those things. What surprised me, what murdered our dying relationship, was his drinking.

I learned quickly not to suggest guided tours; those all lingered too much for his tastes, delaying his reunion with the bottle. He flew through the Coliseum in a mad dash, suggesting we sit down for a "bevi" the second we made it to the exit. Who the fuck says bevi anyway? He always used cutesy words like that, trying to make it seem like no big deal.

“Time for a drinky-poo babe?” I was in the land of Chianti, Grappa, Sambuca, and it all tasted like vinegar sitting across from an alcoholic. I suffered through the vacation committed to a silent strike of sobriety. I realized that this relationship would end the instant our tires touched tarmac back home.

As the trip drew to a close, we descended on Venice. We had three nights in the city before catching a train back to Rome for our flight home. On our last night, with our bags stowed safely in a locker at the train station, we travelled to the island of Burano. There wasn't much there--handwoven lace and fishing boats against a backdrop of brightly painted buildings. He sat sipping cocktails in the warm August sun while I watched.

“How great has this been, babe?”

“Italy is beautiful.”

“I know how to take care of my girl.”

He said it with such swagger in his voice, forgetting I had paid my own way. The desperate need to distract myself coupled with the lure of the electric orange Campari coaxing me, I leaned full tilt into the bender I knew he wanted.

We eventually stumbled down to a restaurant, ripe with smells of garlic and anchovies. We ate a feast of clams and pasta, port and parmesan, and of course, buckets full of red wine. When we were done the restaurant manager rented us a room upstairs. It wasn't much--an ancient bed, a miniature sink, and a toilet.

In the quiet of our shabby hideaway, our bodies collided. I knew it was our last time together, a pleasure usually reserved for firsts. I put him to work, giving myself over to him with uncommon laziness. I let him smear me across the well-used mattress, his tongue pushed through my petal folds. It stroked, smooth and methodical, like a mother cat cleansing the fur of a kitten. I wanted him to have the tongue of a snake; quick stabs, tasting me, smelling me, and deciding to swallow me whole. When I came, it was without my usual pillow shield, and he followed soon after, before collapsing in a heap on top of me.

We lay like that, in a hot, tangled mess, watching Italian phone sex commercials until we fell asleep. I woke up hours later in the dark room, bile rising thick and bitter in the back of my throat. The darkness was complete, my head was pounding, and the unfamiliar room made my poles spin. Naked and drunk, I stumbled around in a useless panic before suddenly and violently vomiting on the floor.

It was a spectacular puke. A heroic puke. When I had finally purged the contents of my stomach, I searched for a light. I flicked the switch and as my eyes adjusted to the glow, relief gave way to fresh horror. With all the empty floor space in our spartan room, my vomit had landed squarely on my own clothing. I tried, unsuccessfully, to wash them in the tiny sink, peeling red-wine-soaked clams off the fabric, and rinsing the Campari orange noodles down the drain. None of it was salvageable, not my clothing, socks, or underwear. I threw the whole pile in the trash and cried in bed till morning.

In the morning, I remained useless in bed while he scoured the town for supplies, returning hours later with a very tight, very short, green lace gown. Clad in my skimpy lace disaster, we made it to the ferry in time. We sat waiting to leave, when I realized I’d forgotten my passport. If this ferry left without us, we might miss our flight home. The idea that I could be stuck here, for even one extra day in relationship purgatory, horrified me. With the end in sight, I ran through the tourist-clogged streets like I have never run before or since. I cut through carefully posed photo shoots, I knocked over chubby-cheeked German children, I hurdled a man in a wheelchair. I ran in all my puke-breathed, bare-bottomed, green-laced glory and somehow, with passport in hand, I made it back to the ferry and out of Italy.

I've never been back, and likely never will, but if you ever make it to Burano, I recommend you try the fettuccine alla vongole.

Written by: Sarah Scott

Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

The Ghosts of Santa Fe

Porfirio Soriano lowered the brim of his hat and did his best to straighten up in the saddle. Jutting up from the desert floor in front of him was a series of sandstone ridges. Mostly shaded, their jagged peaks still caught the late afternoon sun, making the pink rocks look like serrated, bloodstained knife blades.

“El Espinazo del Diablo,” Porfirio said aloud, the rasp in his voice startling both himself and his horse.

He first heard about this place from Miguel, a salty old vaquero who was well travelled on both sides of the border, and both sides of the law.

“Down in Mexico, south of Agua Prieta, there’s a maze of red rocks that sits between the Sonoran Desert and the foothills of the Sierra Madres off to the west. The Devil’s Backbone they call it.”

He cast a knowing glance Porfirio’s way.

“It’s a good place if you ever need to hide out.”

A good hideout is exactly what Porfirio needed right now. He glanced over his shoulder at the barren expanse of chaparral that he had been riding across all day. As he twisted, pain lanced through his body, radiating from the festering bullet hole in his side. He didn’t see anything behind him but the tall spires of saguaro cactus and scrub brush, but whoever shot him in that dark alleyway last night could still be out there.Porfirio turned his attention back to the rock formation in front of him. He could see why Miguel called it a maze. What looked like a solid wall of rock from afar was riddled with breaks. And according to his old friend, only one of these offered an escape.

“There’s only one way through, and you’ll never find it, unless you know what you’re looking for. The entrance looks like a cave at first, but it’s really more like a tunnel. The Spaniards called it La Puerta del Infierno. It’s a rough trail, for the most part, and it’s narrow as all hell. But then all of sudden the canyon opens up and there’s a spring fed pool, sparkling like a gem. You’ve never seen anything like it.”

Porfirio had to stifle a painful laugh. Here he was, once again following the advice of Miguel, a man who brought him nothing but trouble during their years of friendship. And he was following through a place called the Gateway to Hell, no less. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

Porfirio found the entrance to the trail just as the sun dipped behind the horizon. He sucked in his breath as he ducked under the low overhanging rocks, the pain like someone pressing a branding iron into his ribs. The last remnants of daylight faded, blanketing the canyon in utter darkness. He knew the temperature had dropped, but sweat poured from his head. He let his horse guide them through tight, labyrinthine path as it twisted and turned, praying to a God he didn’t believe in that around the next bend would be something to quench his thirst. Porfirio lost track of time. How long had it been? How many miles had he gone? At last, he caught a glimmer of moonlight reflected on water. He dropped from the saddle and tried to run, but his legs failed him. He crawled to the edge of the pool and managed a few gulps of the cool water before he collapsed into a fevered heap.

When he awoke, he was startled to see a small fire burning. A man sat across the fire from him, his young face vaguely familiar. Porfirio’s hand flashed for his gun but he found his holster empty.

“Not very trusting are you?” said the stranger. He motioned at Porfirio’s ribcage. “Guess you have your reasons, though.”

“You took a gun off an injured man, what’s that say about you?”

The stranger chuckled.

“It says I’m cautious.” The stranger’s eyes narrowed. “You think I would let the legendary Porfirio Soriano get the drop on me?”

Porfirio flinched at the way this youngster said his name. Once you get the reputation of a gunfighter, valid or not, there was a line of people willing to take you on just to build up their own name.

“Are you the one who shot me?” he asked.

Porfirio took the stranger’s silence as a yes.

“Only a coward would shoot a man from ambush.”

The stranger wasn’t fazed by Porfirio’s taunt.

“Tell me about Santa Fe,” he replied.

“Santa Fe?” Porfirio had only been to Santa Fe once.

“You’re nothing but damn cheaters,” Miguel roared as he shoved the card table and stumbled to his feet. Porfirio tried to calm his friend.

“Come on Miguel, let’s go outside, you’re drunk.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, kid. These no good…”

Miguel spun back towards the two gamblers. They were spread out, hands wavering over their pistols. Porfirio saw the one on the left drop his hand. He drew his own gun and fired twice. Miguel stood there, empty-handed, and stared at the two dead men on the floor. He shifted his gaze to Porfirio.

“Thanks, kid.”

Porfirio began to quiver, shocked at what he had just done.

“I didn’t mean to kill them. It just happened so fast.”

“It was them or us, kid.”

Porfirio looked at the stranger again, his wide-set eyes, his narrow, hook-like nose, and it hit him. The gambler on the left, the one that went for his gun, had the same face, but older. Porfirio knew his fate was sealed; this wasn’t about some youngster out to make a name for himself, this was about revenge. He looked around him. Light from the fire danced on the water and bright stars shone overhead. Porfirio smiled. There were worse places to die.

“Well, once at poker game Santa Fe, I had the pleasure of shooting two gutless, cheating bastards.”



Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Flying and Falling

I never understood why people kept birds. It felt wrong, seeing those creatures in cages. How can a bird live closed in? I used to dream of freeing all the birds. I explained this to my father at the zoo, as only righteous eight-year-olds can.

“I’ll release all of them and become a hero to the whole animal kingdom!” I exclaimed. To his credit, he didn’t laugh. He just pointed to a group of parrots.

“Where do you think those parrots are from, Leah?” he asked me.

“The forest,” I said, certain. I’d read books, after all.

“Not any forest around here. They’re used to warm climates. What would they do in the winter?” He rested a hand on my back as I turned away.

“I don’t know.” My eyes tightened in frustration. But I did know, and I hated it.

“They won’t make it. Is it okay to let them go, knowing they can’t survive outside?” He gave my shoulder a squeeze, but it didn’t help.

I nodded, hiccupping back tears. Even though I didn’t have the answer, I still hated seeing them kept from the sky.

                                                                                                 ***

Twenty years later, I made two decisions I regretted. One was agreeing to five tequila shots at my best friend’s bachelorette party. The other was wearing a tacky t-shirt claiming I was on Team Bride.

But I didn’t regret him. He was broad with buzzed hair and a strong jaw. With his sleeves rolled up, the edge of a tattoo peeked out. I was content to watch him joking with the bartender, his hazel eyes surrounded by laugh lines. Multiple shots of tequila made my staring obvious.

“Go up and talk to him,” the bride said.

“Oh no no no--” I shook my head. “Tonight’s about you!”

“Do it!!” she yelled. “It’ll be….my wedding present!!!”

I tried to be casual walking up to the bar. But I couldn’t ignore the hoots behind me. So, I sidled up to him and ordered water. Could I get away with a thirty-second conversation?

“Are you going to start a fight?” he said, turning to me.

“What?” I couldn’t believe it would be this easy.

“Well you have a bunch of women staring at you. So either you’re about to start a fight, or they dared you to come talk to me.”

I snorted water out of my nose. “Don’t know. Depends on how I feel when I finish this.”

“How long will that take?”

“How much time you have?”

I woke up the next morning with a splitting headache and his number in my phone.

                                                                                                 ***

In ninth grade biology I read a factoid about Peregrine falcons. They can fly up to 240 miles per hour, killing other birds in mid-air.

I wondered: was that death by falling, or by flying?

                                                                                                 ***

On our second date, we played pool.

“So,” I said, standing up from the table. “When did you decide to become a pilot?”

He laughed.

“Leah, you’ve set a new record.”

“For doing what?”

He turned from the table to look at me. “For taking the longest to ask that question.”

“So what do I get?” I said, grinning.

“You’ll have to wait and see.” His eyes made the promise clear as they roamed my body.

“David, I hate surprises.”

“I think mine can change your mind.”

I enjoyed the surprise, but he didn’t answer my question.

                                                                                                 ***

People always talk about about birds mating for life. Some species do form long-term monogamous bonds. But this choice comes with benefits. They often enjoy expanded territory. Long-term bonds also help them take care of their young.

Peel apart our words, our clothes. Survival is all that’s left.

                                                                                                 ***

It took four more dates and an hour in bed for him to open up.

“So, when did you decide to become a pilot?” I asked, tracing nonsense on his chest. He looked away from me.

“I didn’t tell you?”

“Nope, you distracted me with your pool skills.”

“Just my pool skills?” he asked.

“Stop changing the subject.”

“When I was ten,” he began, “my family flew back to Mexico City. My grandma was sick, and this was the last time we would probably get to see her. My parents gave me the window seat. You know, to distract me. The minute we took off, I loved it. The sound, the speed, the whole world felt brand new. I wanted to stay up there forever. But the flight ended. I came back down into the smog, the noise, the mess of it all. I knew then and there I would do whatever it took to get up in the air.”

“Do you still hate coming down to earth?” I couldn’t help asking, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I wanted to run. I wanted to stay still. I’d known this combo before: it was too late to run. I was already caught.

He kissed me and began working his way down my body. “Depends on where I’m landing.”

                                                                                                 ***

The bird with the shortest bond is the ruby-throated hummingbird. Once the birds have mated, the male leaves.He doesn’t help build the nest. He doesn’t help keep the eggs warm. He definitely doesn’t help raise the chicks.

There must be an evolutionary benefit to leaving.

                                                                                                 ***

Three weeks later, he had to leave; his assignment was changing. He was going to be out west, close to San Diego. As apologetic as he was, I could see the excitement in his eyes. There were new places to see, new skies to explore.

It was a relief, really. I’d started throwing up every morning as accurate as an atomic clock. I took a test, but I already knew what the result was going to be.

So I didn’t groan about tender breasts. I didn’t admit that motherhood terrified me. Saturday morning I kissed him goodbye and went to the clinic, alone.

You can’t fly weighed down with secrets.

Written by: Katie Simpson
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

No Console for Old Men

Cliff watched in horror as his grandson stepped out of the car and jump kicked a scantily-clad woman in the spine, laughing maniacally as she plummeted to the ground. Once she was sprawled out on the pavement, he pulled out a baseball bat and proceeded to bash her skull in until money spilled out of her purse like the blood streaming out of her head. he collected the wad of cash and returned to his vehicle, but not before throwing a grenade at the lifeless body, extinguishing the flames with a round of ammunition from an automatic rifle.

“Tiffany, I don’t want Jacob playing that game any more,” Cliff said entering the kitchen.

Tiffany sighed and continued peeling potatoes, her charm bracelet jingling as the curls of coarse skin rained down on the garbage disposal.

“Save it, Dad.”

“No, Tiffany. It’s your son who needs to be saved.”

“He’s just a normal fifteen-year-old boy.”

“A fifteen-year-old boy who brutally murders prostitutes!”

“In a video game.”

“Does that make it any better?”

“YES.”

Tiffany turned around to face her father, tightening her fingers around the partially shaved vegetable like a prison shiv.

“You’re right,” Cliff conceded. “It’s certainly better on the TV than in the streets, but it’d be best if he didn’t do it at all.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have bought him that game for Christmas.”

“THAT is the game I got him?”

Tiffany smirked and returned to her duties.

“Yep.”

“Then I’m taking it away.”

“Good luck.”

Cliff returned to the living room to find Jacob’s eyes transfixed on the screen as a curvaceous woman wearing practically no clothing threw two blades into the torso of a man in a blue mask, sashayed across the room, grabbed his face, ripped off his head, and pulled down the thin purple veil covering her mouth to reveal a set of demonic teeth, which she then used to gnaw through his face like a competitive pie eater. Once her appetite was satisfied, she spiked what remained of his head into the ground and rubbed his blood all over her body, emitting moans of pleasure as her hands traveled below her navel.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Cliff uttered.

“GRANDDAD,” Jacob said, quickly covering the controller and his crotch with a throw pillow.

Cliff walked over to the gaming console and began searching for an off switch.

“Granddad, seriously, what are you doing?”

“How do you shut this damn thing off?”

“YOU don’t shut it off,” Jacob said, standing up from the couch.

Jacob grabbed hold of his granddad’s bicep, which maintained a surprising amount of the muscle he gained during three tours of duty and several decades of construction. Cliff ignored Jacob’s grasp and began unplugging the cords from the back of the machine.

“STOP,” Jacob yelled, tugging on Cliff’s arm with all of his might.

Cliff remained perfectly still, save for the hand he sent darting towards Jacob’s wrist. Jacob’s nostrils flared as Cliff’s fingers plucked his veins like guitar strings, forcing him to loosen his grip. Cliff began rotating his hand until Jacob was on his knees pleading for mercy.

“I SURRENDER,” Jacob yelled.

“You would,” Cliff responded, setting Jacob free to cower on the sofa.

Cliff finished unplugging the game console and tucked it beneath his arm.

“When you’re done crying, meet me in the car,” Cliff said as he marched out the door.

Tiffany poked her head out from the kitchen with a grin on her face.

“You heard him,” she said. “Get out there or I’ll tell all your friends you just got your butt kicked by a senior citizen.”

Her eyes followed Jacob to the door. He scowled back and shook the pain from his arm while reaching for the knob.

“I’m calling Social Services,” he threatened.

“So you can tell THEM a senior citizen kicked your ass?”

Jacob answered by slamming the door.

“Oh good,” Cliff shouted from behind the wheel. “I was afraid natural sunlight might kill you. You know, like a vampire.”

“I get it,” Jacob scoffed, climbing into the car.

“Oh, cheer up. Before you know it, I’ll be dead, and you can go back to beating up prostitutes and touching yourself to warrior women.”

“I WASN’T TOUCHING MYSELF.”

“Sure you weren’t.”

Cliff put the Oldsmobile in reverse and pulled out of the driveway. They rode in silence all the way to the park where grandparents and grandchildren regularly fly kites together.

“SURPRISE,” Cliff said after pulling into the parking lot.

“Kites?”

“Come on, give me an hour and you can kill all the hookers your heart desires.”

Jacob pulled his phone from his pocket and set a timer.

“Tick-tock,” he said, flashing his granddad the screen.

Cliff gathered the kites from the trunk and handed them to Jacob, along with the mission to find a patch of clean airspace while he takes a leak. Jacob walked towards the field with two kites beneath his left arm and a smartphone in his right hand.

Cliff exited the bathroom and scanned the sky for the Spongebob Squarepants kite he had given Jacob on his eighth birthday. To his surprise, he found the yellow and porous diamond fighting against the wind about fifty yards to his left.

He walked towards the spot and traced the string with his eyes, soon discovering that Jacob wasn’t manning the handle. He stopped and looked around the lawn until he saw another Spongebob kite facedown in the grass. Beside it was a scraggly-haired teenager with his head pointed straight down at a phone he was gripping with both of his hands.

When Cliff was close enough to see the screen he saw something he’d been trying to forget for the better part of his adult life. He saw an earth-toned helmet, he saw crosshairs, and then, he saw Jacob tap his thumb against the glass, making the helmet and its occupant vanish behind a puff of blood.

“I surrender,” Cliff murmured, gathering the kites and retreating to the car.

 
Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph By: Sophie Stuart

One In One Out

“I hate this stupid, stupid policy,” Karen said. She pushed herself away from the desk and stood up. “It’s just not fair that we have to wait for someone to die just so we can have a baby.”

“I know, babe,” Todd said. “I know.”

All their lives, Todd and Karen had been in favor of the policy, genuinely believing in its purpose. But now that they were ready to have a child of their own, and they’d begun feeling the pangs of biological drive and government pulling at each other in opposite directions.

When Todd and Karen first decided they wanted to become pregnant, they made a list of family members whose health was failing - or, they hoped, would be failing in the near future. At the top of their list was Todd’s great uncle, Paul. He’d recently broken his second hip, which, as a coworker told him, “Once the second hip goes, it’s only a matter of time.” Todd didn’t know if this was true or not, but added him to the list anyway. Karen’s cousin, Carly, also made the list. She was eleven and battling a rare form of cancer whose survival rate teetered just over six percent. “If Carly’s parents agree,” Karen said. “Chances are we could get pregnant before Christmas!” She let out a small squeal and clapped her hands in excitement.

Approaching anyone about his death wasn’t an easy conversation to have, especially since it was about bringing another life into the world. To help, Karen and Todd ordered almost every book on the topic they could get their hands on. Each night after work they huddled over the books highlighting various sections and carefully scrawling notes in the margins. It reminded them of all the times they’d spent in the library at college studying together.

By the time they spoke with Paul, he had already signed a Life Contract with Todd’s cousin. “How could he do that?” Karen cried. “He knew we have been trying to have a baby for awhile now.”

When they approached Carly’s family, the conversation ended in a barrage of tears and Carly’s father telling Todd and Karen to never contact them again. The books had warned them of such reactions:

Coming to terms with a loved one’s nearing death is a difficult process. Prepare for the possibility of strained familial relationships. If family members do accept, expect them to resent your child once it’s born, as it may remind them of their departed loved one. This is especially true if the person who passed away was particularly young.

“What if we talk to friends?” Karen said. She grew more desperate and was even willing to risk sabotaging relationships. The books said this was also normal.

“Maybe we take out a loan and go talk to an Arrangement Agency?” Todd suggested.

“You know we can’t afford one of those!” Karen said. “They’re for the rich. If we took out a loan, we’d spend the rest of our lives paying it off.”

They also placed their names on lists at neighboring hospitals, which were for people who passed away but didn’t have ties to anyone else in the world, family or otherwise. One had better odds at winning the lottery than getting a Life Contract through a hospital.

“So what do we do now?” Karen asked.

“We could take out an ad in the local newspaper and negotiate a contract that way?” Todd said. “We have a little bit of money we could set aside.”

“But that’s about as promising as the hospital route. People would rather go through the Arrangement Agencies than newspaper ads.”

“I don’t know what other options we have, unless we try nursing homes, but I don’t want to go to prison for that.” Some people had become so desperate they would pose as family members of people suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia in order to trick them into signing a contract. It was highly illegal.

“I guess that settles it, then. We’ll put an ad in the paper.”

Each time Karen tapped at the keys on her laptop, she immediately pressed backspace until she was staring at a blank page again. After an hour and numerous false starts, she asked Todd for help.

“Have you looked at the book?” Todd asked.

“Yeah, but all of their examples make me want to vomit. And besides, if we just copy what they’ve written, our ad will never stand out, because that’s what pretty much everyone does.”

“I’ve got an idea.” Todd said. “Let me type.” He scooted up to the computer and typed:

Dying wife desperately trying to become mother to carry on family name. Serious inquires only.

Todd and Karen were surprised at the number of responses they received the following week. They felt a little guilty at first, but justified it by telling themselves that their ad hadn’t been a complete lie. Technically speaking, Karen was dying. She had been on the path to death since the day she was born, just like everyone else on the planet. And she did want a baby before it happened. By the time they had signed their Life Contract, the guilt had disappeared completely.

According to her doctors, Karen’s pregnancy was textbook. She was healthy, the baby was healthy, and the expecting mother and father were brimming with excitement and fear all wrapped in one. But during the delivery things went terribly wrong. The umbilical cord had gotten wrapped around the baby’s neck, and Karen’s body wasn’t strong enough to endure the doctor’s attempt to save her child. Both mother and child died before they ever got to feel each others embrace.

After the funeral, people waited a week before they began inquiring about the two new Life Contracts available, but the calls were too much to for the heartbroken husband and father to handle. As the phone rang in the background, Todd sat down to write one last ad:

Free: Three Life Contracts. 318 Roosevelt Drive. No need to knock. The door will be open. First come, first serve.

Written by: Michael Williams

Photograph by: Sophie Stuart