All Alone at the End of McNiven Rd

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Bonus Time

“Meredith. Over here.”

Meredith turned towards the sound of the voice and saw Catherine waving to her from the table in the corner. She shuffled her way across the busy cafe and flopped her weary body into the booth. Hot coffee sloshed over the top of her cup, singeing her hand and staining the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

“Shit.” As she reached for the napkin container she upended her purse, dumping the contents onto the floor.

“Double Shit.”

The two women scrambled to pick everything up and sop up the coffee. When they were done, Catherine took a sip of her herbal tea and smiled a perky smile.

“Mondays. They’ll get you every time,” she said.

“My entire life is a fucking Monday,” replied Meredith. She surveyed her friend. Baby weight gone. Hair styled. Clothes unwrinkled and unstained. Makeup. Who in the hell has time to put on makeup? It’s like she isn’t even a parent.

“I’m sorry,” said Catherine, her voice chipper and grating.

“Catherine, you know I love you, but seriously, some days I want to stab you. What is your secret? How in God’s name do you find the time to put on makeup when I can’t even manage to brush my hair?”

“Well, you know, you’ve got to manage your time.”

“Seriously? That’s it? I spent an hour today removing M&M’s from the heating vents and your answer is ‘to manage your time’?” Meredith’s voice seethed with frustration.

Catherine glanced around to see if anyone was eavesdropping. Her face got serious. She motioned for Meredith to lean in close and dropped her voice to a whisper.

“Do you really want to know? I use Bonus Time.”

                                                                                                       ***

Meredith glanced at her phone, double checking the address on the GPS against the piece of paper Catherine had given her. Everything seemed to be entered correctly, and Catherine had warned her about judging the place based on its appearance, but this still seemed like a mistake. She worked her way down the dilapidated white fence until she came to a gate. Behind the gate was a small overgrown yard and a house, rickety and paint-starved. Just as she was about to flee, a woman, young and comely and draped in a delicate gossamer dress, opened the door of the house.

“Meredith, please come in.” The woman’s voice was like a cold breeze, raising the little hairs on the back of Meredith’s neck and turning her exposed flesh into dimpled chicken skin. Meredith took a deep breath and thought of Catherine and how relaxed, how together, she always was. She wanted that. She needed that. She took another deep breath and stepped through the gate. Once inside the house the woman closed the door behind them.

“How did you know my name? Are you…” Meredith started to ask, before the woman cut her off.

“No. I am his assistant. He is in there.” She pointed towards a door. “He is expecting you.”

The man behind the desk looked to be in his early fifties. He wore a navy blazer with a crisp white shirt. His dark hair was beginning to gray on the sides. Neither ugly nor handsome, he was the type of guy you could see ten times a day and not remember.

“Not what you were expecting?” he asked, and once again Meredith’s skin turned to goosebumps. “Would it be easier if I had on a black hooded cloak, scythe in one hand, hourglass in the other? Or perhaps if I looked like Brad Pitt?” The man laughed, a throaty chuckle that almost made Meredith regret coming here. But she stood, silent and terrified yet firm in her resolve, staring Death in the face.

“I am assuming that Catherine filled you in on how this works?” he asked.

She thought back to their hushed conversation in the cafe.

“What is Bonus Time?” Meredith asked.

“This is going to sound crazy, but hear me out. You get this watch. And on this watch is a button, and when you press the button, everything stops. Like Zach used to do on Saved By the Bell. But for real.

Everyone and everything is frozen in time. And you can use that time, Bonus Time, do whatever you want. But there’s a catch.”

“What catch?”

“For every twenty-four hours of Bonus Time you use, you lose one month at the end of your life.”

“An entire month? For using just one day? That’s seems like quite the markup.”

“Give up a month of sitting around a nursing home, drooling all over myself, for twenty-four glorious hours all to myself right now?” Catherine took a sip of her tea. “Doesn’t seem like such a bad deal to me. Just make sure you don’t go overboard.”

“Yes, she explained everything,” Meredith said.

“Good,” said Death. He pulled a silver pocket watch from the inner pocket of his blazer and dangled it by the fob. He pushed a contract across the desk. “Just sign here, and you’re all set.”

                                                                                                       ***

“My God, Meredith, you look fantastic,” said Catherine as she sat down at the their usual corner table.

Meredith smiled, and with a steady hand, raised her coffee in a mock toast.

“To Bonus Time,” she said.

“You haven’t been overdoing it, have you?”

“No, not at all. I only use a little at time, and I’ve been keeping track.” She pulled out her phone and looked at her notes. “I’ve used just under four days so far. And besides, I’ve got good genetics on my side. All my grandparents made it to their nineties.”

Meredith took a bite out of her scone just as she saw the two people enter the cafe. The man she wouldn’t have noticed right away, but the woman she would have known anywhere.

Meredith gasped.

“What is it?” asked Catherine.

Meredith tried to talk but fear gripped her throat. Frantic, she pointed towards the two people that were headed towards her, but Catherine didn’t seem to see them.

“It’s time to go Meredith.” The woman’s voice was frigid.

Catherine put her arms around Meredith’s mid-section and pulled up and in repeatedly, trying to dislodge the scone from Meredith’s throat.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way, Meredith,” said Death. “But if it’s any consolation, this is better than the car accident you were originally scheduled for.”



Written by: Ben Cook
Photograph by: Jennifer Stevens

Korean 28

“I’ve been dreaming about planes.” Ellen-Teacher tells me.

“I know it’s stupid...but...I think I want to be a pilot.”

We’re sitting in one of the bars near Lotte Cinema. The dim one with giant teddy bears in glass cases. The teddy bears aren’t for sale. They aren’t for anything.

Maybe it’s the mutual dissatisfaction with our job or maybe it’s the teddy bears in glass cases that make me encourage her.

“You should take flying lessons.”

Ellen-Teacher slides her glass of Hite closer and glances around before taking out her third Dunhill of the night.

No one’s watching. No one notices the female South Korean lighting another red. Everyone is busy watching themselves, taking selfies, texting, or fixing their makeup. But Ellen-Teacher looks as if her father might pop up at any moment.

“I can’t.” She says.

Ellen-Teacher can’t do a lot of things. If I ask her out for a beer, Ellen-Teacher has been directed to tell me “I can’t.” Director Randy, our boss at the English school, forbade her. He didn’t tell her why. This may also be why Jessica-Teacher answers me in small grunts and glares at me from afar.

Director Randy chose his English-speaking name by naming himself after Randy Rhoads. Sometimes he rollerblades around the carpeted office and once a week he asks me to guess how old I think he is. He’s balding. It’s week 17. Every time he asks, I smile uncomfortably and shrug with false uncertainty.

The first time Ellen-Teacher invited me to get a beer, she told me about this rule. The invite was a pity one. She saw me through my classroom window. It’d been hours of speaking in my well-crafted English slow-tongue. I’d emphasized every R and L ad nauseam to my beginners. I’d made sure my intonation was welcoming and bouncy, like the lovechild of a mid-westerner and a Southern Californian. I’d spent the last few hours of my shift trying to teach English to adolescents who only questioned my importance. “Why we need English?” I didn’t correct their questions. Like a real adult, I told them to ask their parents.

Ellen-Teacher saw me through the glass square in my door using my hand to keep my head from falling on the desk in defeat. Outside, out of Director Randy’s view, she invited me to share our first pitcher.

Ellen-Teacher and I are both 28. I lost two years during my 17-hour flight from the States. In Korea, you’re one from the moment you emerge from your mother. Your birthday means nothing. Forget about it. Your birthday is now the New Year. Everyone’s birthday is the New Year. Back in Buffalo, New York, I was a young 26 but Korean Standard Time declared me 28. I’d missed my chance to join the 27 Club entirely and glided into the not-so-golden age of a Korean 28.

Korean 28, for a woman, means marriage with kids on the way. Korean 28 does not mean teaching over-privileged Korean students English. That’s the equivalent of a spinster. I might as well resign to a life of lonely Sundays where I watch infomercials as if they are real television programs and start calling product helplines just to hear another person’s voice.

I learned my status as a spinster from every conversation with every South Korean cabbie ever.

The driver looks in his rearview and asks where I am from.

“Where are you from?”

“New York.”

The driver assumes that “New York” means the city and makes weird shout-outs. He lists the things he knows and thinks about the city, each its own exclamation or statement:

“New York!”

“Big Apple!”

“Time Square!”

“Very many people.”

I nod in agreement as these are also my thoughts on New York. We nod at each other until there are no more nods. When the nod-off ends, the driver asks how old I am.

“26.”

“Married?”

Horizontal nod.

“Boyfriend?”

Another horizontal nod.

I can see his scrunched brow in the rearview. He retires to a disappointed silence. I want to add another detail about New York with an exclamation point at the end.I want to say anything to take us back to when he was excited to know me. But his silence is a strong one, a finite one.

Ellen-Teacher isn’t married either and she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Ellen-Teacher's first name is not Ellen and her last name is not Teacher. Euna chose “Ellen” as her teacher name. My teacher name is Letia because that is my birth name. When Euna is asked why she chose the name “Ellen”, a shrug is the reason. Like me, she is confused as to how she wound up teaching English to the over-privileged kids of her country.

Ellen-Teacher lives with her parents. Ellen-Teacher had a brother. He left Mokpo to live in a bigger city. Their parents disapproved. He bought a motorcycle. Their parents disapproved. Ellen-Teacher’s brother died in a motorcycle accident.

There is little hope of Ellen-Teacher flying anywhere.

And though we both know this, that we’re a couple of Korean 28s and that it feels too late, Ellen-Teacher continues to dream of planes.

“You could take lessons.” I suggest again.

After all, Amelia Earhart’s legacy was of trying.

“Do they have flying lessons here?”

She tells me they do, she explains the expenses a little, and ends her last sentence with a but.

Even Amelia got lost.

After Ellen-Teacher’s pack of Dunhills is lighter and we’ve drained enough pitchers to find our lives laughable-laughable instead of pathetically-laughable, we part ways for the weekend.

Ellen-Teacher goes home. A hallway away from her parents, she lays her head down and dreams the same dream again. The one where she is flying above us all, wearing an Amelia Earhart leather aviator helmet, and watching the world below move on.

Written by: Tia Brown
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe

Wolf Girls

Condensation on the glass cascades into a wet ring on the railing; it leaves a slick smear when I wipe it. I down the sweet tea and vodka and the mix punches me hard, the taste a reminder of the first time Diane and I got drunk together, giggling in our church clothes and hoping no one would smell the liquor on our breath.

The drink settles in my stomach, but it offers no distraction. I twist one of my rings, anxious from the calm stillness of humid air. I don't know why I am worried, but I am certain that I should be.

                                                                               ***

We met when we were both broken and needed mending. I was thirteen, and my first period confronted my father with the unshakeable realization that there were some conversations only moms could have with daughters. We didn't acknowledge my womanhood, and because I knew it changed his perspective of me, I rejected it. I wore baggy clothes and my hair hung in tangled knots around my plain face.

Diane's father was the new doctor; though they weren't wealthy and her dad traded check-ups for produce, she was still ostracized for airs she didn't put on. She kept to herself, barely noticeable, like embers in a dying campfire.

Embers still burn, and like Prometheus, I saw the value of her spark. It came in math class, when a slip of paper fluttered down between us.

"Sorry," Diane mumbled, her black hair tumbling as she bent to grab the paper.

"You drew that?" I asked. I pointed to the drawing: a wolf howling, silhouetted against a full moon.

"Yeah," Diane said. "I like wolves."

"Me too," I said, and I pulled the chain out from underneath the loose shirt, an old plaid one that used to be Dad's. The pewter charm was the shape of a wolf's head, fangs bared. "I’m Sandra."

"I know," she replied with a shy smile. Mrs. Baker stepped between us and cleared her throat; we were silent for the rest of the period, but I could occasionally see Diane glance in my direction.

We didn't get another chance to talk until the end of the day, when we both lingered on the schoolyard.

"Which way?" She asked casually. I could hear the hope in her voice. "I live past the square."

"I'm the opposite, behind 7th Street," I said, "but my dad doesn't come home till past midnight so I can walk with you and cut back. It's nice enough."

We took the first of many walks together, and we learned we both favored wolves over horses, school over church, and George White to his elder brother John.

I left Diane at her front gate, watching as she glided over the walk, leaves crunching with each purposeful step. When she was halfway up the porch, she whirled back to face me.

"You know what we are? We're wolf girls."

"Wolf girls," I agreed, and I knew what she meant: different from others, but bound all the same.

                                                                               ***

The phone cuts through the hazy afternoon stillness. Its impatient ring summons me from the porch.

I needed another drink anyway.

                                                                               ***

It happened on my eighteenth birthday.

Diane came over with Jimmy right after dinner, and Ken wasn't far behind. We listened to the radio in the living room and got tipsy from lukewarm beer Ken swiped from his garage, sure his mother would think she forgot to buy more. Diane surprised me with a decadent chocolate cake, and we each ate two slices because the rich sweetness reminded us of childhood.

"I love you," Ken said when they left. "I've been wanting to tell you for years."

His lips were sweet like chocolate.

When I woke, my watch said it was just before midnight. I pulled on my shirt and jeans to raised voices. By the time I made it out of my room, the argument had escalated to a full-on brawl, my father's fist connecting solidly with Ken's nose. Thick crimson blood cascaded onto my mother's favorite rug.

"Daddy!" I shrieked. Ken fell back; my father was on him, beating him senseless.

"Stop it!" I cried out. I tried to pull him off, but he turned on me. The bruises from before had only just faded. He always won, either by my submission or his endurance.

He would have again, if not for Ken.

I shoved my father. The momentum was stronger than we expected. In an attempt to regain his balance, he stepped on Ken's leg. I watched my father fall, heard the snap of his neck against the table.

When Diane came to pick me up for school in the morning, I didn't come out. She walked in, the stale smell of blood greeting her. My face was swollen.

"Wolf girls," Diane sighed, and held me in her arms as the sobs bubbled out of me. When the salt dried on my cheeks, Diane's voice was soothing and low in my ear.

"We need to clean up."

                                                                               ***

"Sandy?" I can hear the fear and panic in Diane's voice. Oh, Diane: my worry is for you.

"What happened?" I ask. She chokes back sobs, and it must be bad if she's trying to restrain herself even with me.

"Jim had a stroke," Diane says this as calmly as she can, but there's anxiety seeping from my receiver.

"Is he going to be okay?" I stare down at my rings. I already know what the answer will be.

"No," Diane's voice is a whisper, "and he doesn't want…Sandy, I don't know what to do."

"Wolf girls," I respond, tears in my eyes. The hollowness she feels now is what I looked like decades ago, curled up between the two men I loved most, dead because they loved me too much for the other to live with.

"Wolf girls," Diane says, relief flooding her voice.

Written by: Erin Justice
Photograph by: Emily Blincoe