Illusion

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

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

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

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

I met Prue at a place called Gypsy’s.

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

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

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

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

She said, “Follow me.” And I did.

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

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

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

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

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

“You see the fortune teller,” I say.

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

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

                                                                                                    ***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                                                                                    ***

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

                                                                                                    ***

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

                                                                                                    ***

One month later, Prue disappears.

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

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

                                                                                                    ***

I’m arrested outside her building.

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

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

                                                                                                    ***

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

From the alley, I smell fresh paint.

Prue isn’t here.

Painted over.

Disappeared.


Written by: Kayla King
Photograph by: Tiffany Melanson

Good People

Read the rest of the "West" saga: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

Dena woke to the unmistakable sound of an angry palm smacking the Chinook’s window. Blam blam blam.

“You can’t park here!”

Dena jerked up, whacking her forehead on the low ceiling of the bunk.

“Aghgh.”

“Hello? I said you can’t park here. This is private property!” Blam blam blam blam.

Dena stumbled outside, still massaging her head. Goose egg, her father would have said.

“Listen, you can park at the Wal-Mart down that way, but you can’t be on this land, you hear me?”

“Sorry,” Dena said. “I didn’t--I was asleep.”

“You got a self-driving camper? First Google Glass, and now, miracle of miracles!”

“Huh?”

“Jesus, girl. I’m joking. I may be old, but I don’t think technology’s magic.”

The woman’s wrinkled hand still pressed against the camper’s window, where she’d been smacking it a moment before. Her hand wasn’t the only part of her that was wrinkled--the entire terrain of her skin was leathery. She wore seafoam green shorts, a faded t-shirt with a picture of a raccoon on it, and wrap-around sunglasses. From underneath a wide-brimmed hat, a white braid snaked down her back, ending below her belt.

Dena opened the driver’s side door and checked the ignition.

“Shit. Sorry. I don’t have the keys.”

“Well, isn’t that the predicament,” the old lady said.

Dena unlocked her phone. Still Thursday. She hadn’t slept for that long. She texted Chris: Where are you??!?

“Is that the iPhone 6? My grandson keeps begging me for one of those.”

“What? Oh. Yeah. Look, my boyfriend--well, I think he’s still my boyfriend--he went somewhere, and I can’t move my camper until he gets back.” Dena thought of Jennifer and sucked in her breath.

“Lovers’ quarrel?”

Dena glared at the old lady.

“It’s my business if you’re on my property!” the woman said, bending to adjust the velcro on her sandals. Her toenails looked like the scales of something large and reptilian.

“Is this Santa Fe?” Dena asked.

“They call it Agua Fria.”

“Cold water.”

“I see you took your Español .”

“So we’re not in Santa Fe?”

“Oh, practically,” the old woman said. “We’re right near the airport. That’s why me and Benny have to really crack down on the parking, you know? It’s nothing personal. But people will do anything not to have to pay weekly airport rates.”

“We’re not flying anywhere,” Dena said, willing Chris to text her back. The screen stayed black. She sent another text. Hello??

“You sure about that? Looks like your boyfriend might have flown off. Took the keys too! What a hoot.”

“Look, as soon as he comes back, we’re gone, okay? I promise.”

“I can wait.”

The old woman fished a cell phone from the cargo pocket of her green shorts. “I’m an Android fan, myself,” she said, her thumbs flying over the screen. “Better for customization.”

“Are you calling the cops?”

“The po-po? No!”

The woman laughed until phlegm caught in her throat and triggered a coughing fit.

Dena extended her hand to pat the woman’s back, then retracted it, thinking better.

“I don’t trust cops,” the old lady hissed, catching her breath.

“My dad was a cop,” Dena said.

“Ha! And what would he say about you trespassing on private property?”

“He’s dead.”

“Life’s a bitch,” the old woman said.

Dena had expected a different reaction, even from this human sun-dried tomato.

“Well,” Dena said, feeling a flicker of warmth for the old woman, “I think there’s a lot of stuff about me my dad wouldn’t have liked.”

“Do tell. Humor me, and I’ll have Benny bring you some chili. You’re not one of those vegans, are you?”

“What is this, confession? You want to know all the bad stuff I’ve ever done?”

“Being vegan’s a sin.”

“I’m not a vegan,” Dena said.

“Go on,” said the old lady, wiping spittle from the edge of her mouth.

“Uh, okay. Marijuana.”

“Child’s play.”

“Dating a drug dealer.”

“Well, that’s your answer for where he went! Drug run.”

She may be right about that, Dena thought.

“Um--cheating.”

Dena’s father was always critical of cheaters. Though he never talked much about Dena’s mother, he had once let it slip that, before her death, she had been unfaithful. But Dena didn’t remember her mother. How could she become her?

The old woman nodded, plucking her huge sunglasses from her face and wedging them onto her hat. Her eyes were beady and too close together.

“Cheating happens, even to good people,” she said.

“I don’t think I’m actually a good person,” said Dena, processing this for the first time. She noticed a cactus near the Chinook’s back wheel. It looked like spiny hands reaching up from the earth--hands pleading for help before wounding whoever came to their aid.

“Isn’t this the part where you give me wise life advice and then vanish with the wind?” Dena asked.

“I’m not that kind of old woman.”

The woman’s phone shook in her wrinkled hand, blasting Nicki Minaj.

“Benny! Bring the chili out to the lot! We got us a trespasser!”

Benny appeared from a squat pre-fab across the road. Dena hadn’t noticed it before. Benny was thirty-ish, six-and-a-half feet tall, and looked like one of the wolfpack from the Twilight movies.

Team Jacob, Dena thought, before her guilt took over: You are a cheating piece of shit.

“I hope you like spicy,” he said, glaring at Dena. “Don’t stay out too late, Mae.”

“That your son?” Dena asked, watching Benny lumber back towards the house.

“Hell no,” Mae said, shoveling chili into her mouth. “My son’s locked up. Benny’s my boyfriend.”

Dena checked her phone. Still nothing. She called Chris.

The number you have dialed is out of service…

“What the fuck.”

“That’s a lot of judgment coming from someone who’s breaking the law and eating my food,” Mae said.

“No, not you and Benny. My boyfriend--his phone’s disconnected.”

“Sounds like you better find somebody who can give you a tow or hot-wire a camper.”

“But--” Dena pleaded.

“I’ll give you twenty-four hours. Then, sorry, but you’ve got to move that RV. You done?”

Dena handed Mae her empty chili bowl and watched as she headed across the road towards the trailer.

Dena tossed the Chinook. No note, no keys, and no fat wad of cash--he’d taken all the money left over after they bought the RV. Dena considered her options. She could call Chris’s dad, which might result in more panic than necessary. She could call Kimbra, but she was what Dena’s father would have called “a complete space cadet.” Who did Chris still talk to? She and Chris had been so intertwined for so long that they didn’t have many close friends anymore.

She pulled out the floormats and rifled through the center console. In the glove box, she found a tiny bag of weed held closed with one of her bright pink ponytail holders.

I’m not the only sketchy one, she thought. Chris said he sold it all.

She rolled a joint and hunched down in the passenger’s seat. When she felt her head begin to loosen, she composed a text to Jennifer.

I need you.

She hit “Send.”

 
Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Caleb Ekeroth

A Strong Foundation

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

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

“What’chu talkin about?”

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

“Why’s that?”

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

“Then how’d they get to build it?”

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

“Well, looks sturdy enough to me.”

“They always do, until they don’t.”

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

                                                                                                  ***

Shelly woke to a text from her sponsor.

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

Shelly scoffed and tossed her phone across the room.

“What the FUCK?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Like I haven’t seen it before.”

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

“Aren’t you always?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by: Mark Killian
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe