For readers with an insatiable appetite for wild-eyed fanciful creations and dark-eyed reality checks, this round of lit is on us. Sit back, spark it up, and if you like how you feel when you’re finished, do pass it around.

© 2011, Atticus Press. All rights reserved.

The following compilation of flash fiction contains 23 previously unpublished stories. These sudden streaks of brilliance first saw the light of day in Atticus Review from May through September 2011. We’re so impressed by the caliber of writing that we’re sure one or more of these authors will be famous one day — and you and other Atticus Review readers can say we knew them when.

Enjoy this sample serving of Atticus Review. We hear it goes superbly with a glass or three of Chianti.

© 2011 – 2012, Atticus Press. All rights reserved.

A Moebius strip is a band with a half twist along its axis and the two ends joined together. It has only one surface and one edge, and is considered an unorientable figure. Because of its properties a fish swimming inside a tube of this shape would have its left and right side interchanged at the completion of the circuit, and two insects crawling at different speeds on opposite sides of a Moebius strip would eventually find themselves side by side.

There’s nothing to start off your weekend like some quality fiction. So go on, jump in.

******

We waded into the sea feeling the smooth and oval stones beneath our feet, narrowing our eyes against the sun’s glare on the waves, the water warm as an animal against our legs. Véronique’s expression was the same as on those brilliant mornings when she stepped barefooted from the porte-fenêtre to the terrace tiles, shaking back her hair and smoothing it behind her neck with both her hands, her lips half parted to accept the wafer of the daylight on her tongue.  The shifting stones gave way to weeds, and then with water licking at our ribs, we thrust ourselves into the sea and felt the weight of gravity dissolve.

We swam with lazy strokes, moving languidly, sometimes diving down so we could feel the water’s density against our ears, then rising to the surface as if from a sleep to float outspread and spent upon the waves.  The Cannes hotels were white against the shore, the sea and sky were purest azure, and we felt our bodies rise and fall with every swell.  We did not touch for fear that we might pull each other down, that reaching out we both would sink, but floated at a distance, neither joined together nor apart.

We drifted, lolled, gave ourselves to the melting sun and dissolution of the waves, willing to assume the mode of being of the sea without resolve. The endless process of becoming, which resisted being anything determinate, the constant flux that never coalesced enough to be defined, suited us as something that we recognized within ourselves.

Then on the matelat, the parasol collapsed into a cypress shape, we let our bones be liquefied by sunlight pouring from a gap within the perfect blue, and without energy and will we drifted into sleep that seemed more like the state of stones…

A woman’s body or the act of love means nothing but itself.  It does not mean but is, just as paintings are not symbols standing for some higher truth. There is no other realm that sex reveals, no goal beyond the excitation and release. What purpose has a rock except the value given by the man who throws it at his enemies, or works it as a whetstone, or marks the boundary of his land?  And what does sex express but pleasure – and that’s all we should expect.

Even now when sensuality is lost to me, I still regard it as supreme.  The reason for my living like a moth in amber lies elsewhere.  It’s not the fault of the museum of art if blind men find it dull.

I know the women are there beyond the terrace doors, and soon la petit mort will come. Their perspiration will start to cool, translucent skin will grow opaque once more, and arms and legs will feel like fallen trees. All will be motionless, silent as a vineyard at midday.

I can hear the rustling of their clothes, which means that Véronique will join me soon. Nane will bring the pastis and the water in an earthen jug, a servant once again, carrying a tray.  She will mix the liquids in the glass, offering just the faintest smile as acknowledgment of what had just transpired. Each of us will understand the way in which that tray of drinks is necessary to maintain relations in the house.

Véronique will stretch luxuriously in her chair, lethargic after love, and we will watch the movement of the water silently.  The end may be the same, a lassitude, quiescence, but the starting point makes all the difference.

But each scene happens under glass, displaced and oddly inaccessible. Crowded at the telescope’s small end, they stand removed from breathing things, reductions, diagrams, tromp-l’oeil. I can see the bays and headlands from the terrace every day, the womanly line stretching from St. Tropez to Monaco, yet I miss it like an exile. The lassitude of those waves stretching themselves to the sand is like a tale of water.

I am an eavesdropper, a voyeur, hoping for a glimpse of sensuality as I once did as a boy outside an open shuttered window, standing beyond the oblong of light, beyond the reaches of the woman’s recognition, touching her skin in my quickening imagination and all the while confirming my aloneness by inhabiting a circumference of darkness.

It is an odd banishment when I am free to roam the shore as I please, when the wind that carries salt and spray onto the land is the same air that I breathe.  I share the movement of the scaled and crusted life, with children digging pointlessly in sand, and drifting gulls that feel the sun upon their backs…

It is a sweet loss, untainted by remorse. I wish the joy had stayed, that I were more aware when it occurred, but penitence means sinfulness and I feel like the lamb. It is nostalgia not regret that qualifies my memories, like watchtowers silhouetted on the basse corniche, their empty windows facing the sea, devoid of sight.

Why should I feel ashamed that dancers once seduced me, or feel sorry for the women I have known in Cannes, in Paris, St. Tropez? Yes, I orchestrated Véronique, Nane and Ali, even Sibyl and Matthew at Oxford, but no one is due an apology.

Something precious hovered in the atmosphere I breathed, a nameless quiddity within my sight but out of reach, revealing moderation as a lame retreat to resignation and to death. To listen to an inner voice of conscience, temperance, religion, reason when a woman’s flesh lies open to my gaze, receptive to my touch, is a betrayal of life, the cardinal sin, tempting those who need to justify their days on earth. Only holy ones show such restraint, those who feel the weight of crosses round their necks whenever they respond to erotic sights. They are ashamed of what they like, at home with misery, denial, pain that they call bitter medicine, a tonic for the soul. What they won’t allow themselves is far more telling than their vices; self-denial is the one temptation they cannot resist.

But how can people limit their existence so to follow principles along a path that skirts the olive trees? Do their hungers make them so afraid that they would choose an Alpine landscape over Mediterranean waters, the stark and white and angular to deep-toned flesh ripened by the southern sun?

******

“Don’t patronize me Mat,” Margaret said, her voice rising.  “I know about Marx and religion being the opiate of the masses.”  She put a hand through her dark hair and leaned against the car window.

“Opiates are now the religion of the masses.” I replied, trying to regain the upper hand. At this point in our marriage, neither of us would surrender an advantage easily.

She didn’t smile but gazed ahead at the New England countryside now ablaze with autumn colors.  I glanced at her quickly and reminded myself that my doubts about religion had repercussions for our relationship.

“I don’t know how you can still preach on Sundays.” Margaret continued, sitting up abruptly. She waived her hand at the folds of hills covered with trees in crimson, russet, gold. “Where do you think all this came from?” she asked rhetorically. “You once said these are the brushstrokes of God.”

She sounded distraught, challenging me. I told myself not to answer because we could withdraw from each other while feeling just as much as before, and I did not want that. Even though St. John said the truth shall make you free, not knowing can be best.

“Where did he come from to work these wonders?” I asked, despite

myself.

“Who?”

“God.”

“From nowhere, from everywhere, I don’t know; he always was.”

“Then maybe everything always was and we don’t need God to explain it.”

“Word games,” Margaret sneered.  “Logic chopping.”

“Whatever is will always be, whatever is not can never be.” I chanted.  “If God always was then the world too might always have been, and if everything has to begin then so does God.  You can take the even or take the odd.  That’s the trouble with the domino theory – there may not be a first domino to flick.”

Maggie was an easy target, so all my shots were cheap.  Of course I knew more about theology than she did but her insights into photography and art were shrewd. I was more logical, but she was more often right. Sometimes she reminded me of Sibyl, someone Margaret would never know.

The Volvo moved through what she believed was God’s country, mounted a hill and plunged into another blazing valley. The colors transfigured the land. There was something comforting about a car speeding across the surface of the earth, wrapping people within itself, muffling sounds and suspending time, granting us synoptic vision. The asphalt was new and very black, bisected by a fresh white line that rose and fell then curved away into the distance. We travel through space with the ease of angels. Still, if Christ had ascended to heaven at the speed of light, he would still be traveling.

“Mat, do you remember telling me that the soul and beauty must have been made by God because they have no use, so Darwin can’t account for them.”

I did say that, centuries ago, but it was not true.  Nature could throw up extravagances, florid things like butterflies and angelfish, peacocks and orchids. Beauty can be protective, functional. Besides, that would mean God only made things that were useless, that whatever has no point is God’s creation. The soul was a hard one though, because everyone believed in an intangible something, deep inside. And they could view themselves, and view themselves viewing themselves, and so on forever. Now there’s an infinite regress. Conundrums.  Aporias.

“It’s pretty obvious when things are real,” Margaret went on, “like the moment we decided to marry, do you remember Mat, in that restaurant in Rockport on the North Shore?  When I said yes you leaned across the table and kissed me, and that was real.”

Lovers do deceive themselves though, and how can we separate false love from the true kind? Margaret believes it is so if you think so, but nonsense can masquerade as truth, especially when it passeth all understanding.  In the seminary Wishart had said God is a paradox, that three persons in one is a higher truth, but why not call it a self-contradiction and be done with it?  Some things are absurd, and they don’t make sense by labeling them a mystery.

But Maggie was being tender, and that meant I should be the same.  Usually her Boston, business manner carried over to our relationship, and that hardness often stood between us. More and more, it seemed to be a part of her.

“Yes,” I replied, “We do love each other, and that’s difficult to explain.”

What she wanted of me was so ordinary that it was mean to raise questions. My mind kept drawing parallels with the cosmos like some metaphysical poet, which seemed remote from the business of living.  No wonder Margaret was exasperated by my doubts.  She is a practical woman after all, and my income depended on my faith, although her gallery brought in much more than my salary.

I believe.  Oh Lord help mine unbelief.

Photo Source: StyleHive

© 2011, Burton Porter. All rights reserved.

July 22
This new house doesn’t smell anything like the slum. It’s a little crowded but I guess I’ll have to get used to it. In the Orphan-itch, I didn’t have to share my bed like I do tonight. That part’s really beat. They didn’t tell me it would be like this when they came and picked me up. But dinner was good, especially dessert (homemade cookies). So it looks like the food is better here. And my pillow’s pretty soft and it has a clean sheet on it. That part’s good.

July 23
They gave us each a present today. I got a pair of sneakers. And Randy, he’s the big kid, got a pair of cleats. He’s on the soccer team. Mr. Riordan said it’s too late for me to join. Maybe next year, he said. Yeah right, I felt like saying, as if I’m still going to be here. Randy’s little brother, Rodney, got a silver bracelet that spelled his name. They said it was to celebrate his three-year “gotcha date.” Man, three years in the same place, that would be a record for me. I’m not sure how long the other kids have been here. In all, there’s six of us. Lucky me, I’m the only white one. Randy and Rodney are black. Marie and Nadine are Chinese or Japanese or some Oriental thing like that. And then there’s Max. He’s a retarded Puerto Rican kid and I’m stuck sleeping with him. Well, at least he doesn’t smell.

July 24
We took turns reading from the bible tonight. It was weird. I don’t know what the big deal about it is. They gave me a bible at the Orphan-itch but I never opened it. I used to dream about burning down the Orphan-itch. I bet Doctor Klaus didn’t tell them about that.

July 25
I found out that Marie and Nadine are from the Philippines. I’m not sure where that is. Max talks in his sleep sometimes. I think he was beat up as a kid. I feel kind of sorry for him.

July 26
I beat Rodney in a race today. Who says a white kid can’t run fast? Well, Randy won the race but I came in second. Randy’s 11 and Rodney’s 9. That puts me right between them in age.

July 27
Max turned 8 today and we had ice cream cake. I made him a card but I didn’t give it to him. I thought it would look stupid. I’m going to put it under his pillow tonight. Maybe he’ll open it when no one’s around.

July 28
I hate Max. He showed everybody the card and now I feel like a fag. Randy and Rodney laughed at the drawing on the front. And Marie and Nadine said it was nice. Mr. and Mrs. Riordan said it was “very thoughtful.” Why did Max have to show them?

July 29
We went bowling today. It was the first time I ever tried it and I kind of liked it. It made me feel good to knock the pins down. Mr. Riordan said that maybe I could join a league. I’ve never joined a league before. I wonder what that’s like.

August 1
I just found out: Marie and Nadine aren’t really sisters. I thought they definitely were. They look alike and they act alike. But Marie says they’re not even cousins. She’s smarter than Nadine. She’s OK for a Philippines girl.

August 3
Max has a fever so he’s sleeping with Mr. and Mrs. R tonight. It feels good to have this bed to myself. He’s such a runty little kid but he takes up a lot of room.

August 4
We went swimming in a lake today. All of us. We even pushed Mrs. R in with Mr. R’s permission and then I got to dunk Mr. R with Mrs. R’s permission. It was fun. Tomorrow we’re going to a party and Randy told me that there’s going to be fireworks. I can’t wait.

August 5
The fireworks were awesome! We laid out a blanket and spent the whole night just looking up in the sky. Mrs. R brought watermelon and Mr. R let us light our own sparklers. Randy’s sparkler kept going out and he kept getting so mad. It was really funny.

August 6
I hate Mrs. R. She made me get a haircut today and I hate it. It’s short and it makes me look like a fag. I hate it.

August 7
Marie told me a secret today. She said that Max may have to leave. I’m not sure why but I think it has something to do with his real mom. If Max leaves, I get to sleep alone but I wouldn’t mind if he stayed. He’s a runt, but I kind of like him.

August 8
I drove in the car with Mr. R today. He delivers newspapers in the morning before he goes to work. It was the first time I drove in the car alone with him. He asked me if I liked it here. I told him I did. I asked him if Max was going to leave. He said he wasn’t sure but they’re doing everything they could to keep him. I think he was telling the truth.

August 9
Randy came home with a black eye today. It was red and puffy and he said he didn’t want to talk about it. Mrs. R said that Randy would have to talk about it some time. Randy said, no he doesn’t. He’d never have to talk about it. When Mr. R got home from work, Randy was sitting in front of the TV with an ice pack on his face. Mr. R asked him if he wanted to talk about it and Randy said he had a fight. Mr. R said, with who? Randy wouldn’t say. I think it was that kid, Jack, who lives down the street. He’s always picking on Randy and Rodney. I’m not sure if I should tell Mr. R.

© 2011, Gerger McDrywall. All rights reserved.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“What?” He lifted his head and looked at me.

“Are you sick?”

“My stomach. I got to throw-up.”

“Are you faking it?”

“I got to throw-up.”

I glanced back at the busy road, as I mounted the steps and opened the front door.

“You better not be faking it,” I said.

The boy watched me holding the door open for a moment, before he realized what I intended, and got to his feet. He walked before me in the corridor. It was a lumbering shuffle, which saddened me a little. He moved as if all his bones were soft and bending beneath the weight of his flesh. Then, he did something that disconcerted me: When I let him into my apartment, he walked directly to the bathroom with his head down, apparently already familiar with the inside of my home. I leaned against the wall beside the bathroom door, with my arms crossed, and listened to him vomit. Evening was settling down, filling my home with dark pools and shadows, but still I listened and waited. The toilet flushed once; then after a while, it flushed again. There was silence for a long time. I left my post and went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of hot tea. I drank it at the table, as I looked at my mail.

“What are you doing?” the boy asked, standing beside my chair.

“Are you done being sick?”

“I’m okay.”

Biting his bottom lip, he leaned forward to look at the letter on the table. Then, he pulled out a chair and sat at the table. I was hoping to see him look around, but he sat as if he had been used to sitting there his entire life.

“Do you want me to mail your stuff?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I want you to go home. It’s getting late.”

He nodded at me and slipped from the chair to his feet. He stood with his hips slightly cocked and his thumbs tucked into the pockets of his cut-off shorts.

“Can I have a dollar?”

“Go home.” I turned my gaze back to the letter, as if to dismiss the boy. I sensed him lingering, but I refused to look at him. He began to shuffle away, his little body wasted down to threads. I listened for my door to open and shut, and it did. Strangely, I slightly regretted that the boy had left so easily. I got up from the table and searched my apartment, thinking that the boy might have tried to trick me and that he was now hiding somewhere. I didn’t find him.

A little while later, when I was sitting at my computer and pointing at the screen with a pen, there was a knock on my door. I buttoned up my shirt as I walked over to the door. I was about to throw it open, when I heard my landlord’s voice.

“Dr. Parker.”

“What?” I asked, with the door between us.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Talk.”

“Can you open the door?”

“What do you want?”

“I can’t allow you to bring that boy inside the building. Did you know that last week he was caught stealing a carton of cigarettes? I was talking to the clerk.”

“I don’t care.”

He knocked again.

“Dr. Parker.”

“Leave me alone,” I said and went back to my desk. I couldn’t resume my work, because he continued to knock and call my name. Although he went away after a while, I was too annoyed to concentrate. I hated the thin wisps of hair on his bald head. I wanted to do something to him that for the rest of his days would grate up and down the knots of his spine whenever he remembered me. I wanted to haunt his mind with trauma and disease.

In bed, with the covers pulled over my head, I was on the edge of sleep, imagining the young woman reclining against me on my couch, her fingertips casually moving in circles on my thigh, my fingers in her hair, my lips at her ear. I heard a faint tapping and sat up in bed. I drew my robe around me, cinched it at the waist, and followed the sound of the tapping into the living room. The boy was at the window. I opened it and looked down at him shivering. Without a word, he reached up and grabbed onto the windowsill. He started to pull himself up, as if he wanted to climb through the window, but I put my hand on his forehead and pushed him down. He stepped back into the center of the alley, where he stood and quietly inspected me.

Leaning slightly out the window, I saw that he was alone. We watched each other for a moment; then the boy came forward and grabbed onto the windowsill again. I pushed his head. His feet scrambled against the wall, and a strange gurgle escaped from his throat. He dropped back into the alley. He stared at me as if I were somehow confusing him.

“Go home,” I said.

Watching me, he stepped up to the window. This time when he started to climb in, I retreated into the room. He slipped in headfirst, his legs following in serpentine motion. He dropped fully to the floor, as if issued into my home, a thing without bones that slivered along the dimly lit floor and found its way to my couch. He scrambled up and curled himself in a tight ball.

I shut the window and locked it. For a little while, I sat on the coffee table and watched the boy sleep. When I went back to my bedroom, I shut the door and locked it. I had a difficult time trying to fall asleep. Although I had left the boy in the other room, the image of his small, motionless frame and the sound of his breathing were smeared against the back wall of my mind.

I would like to skip the details.

Let the saints and martyrs talk about the long, dark night of the soul, and how something inside of them twists around and around until they feel their bodies contorting in painful knots. Let them sweat drops of blood. Let them pray. I’m past anguish now, though there was a time in my life when my body would buckle beneath a sudden flash of guilt. Words and images swarmed my mind, each one with a little stinger, pricking me into raw pulp. Somewhere in my crippled form my heart beat like mad. Where are your accusers now? Who condemns you? I wanted to be dragged out into the street and kicked. I wanted someone to clench my neck from behind, press a gun to the back of my head, and turn my brain into a mist. But I curled up under my bed covers and searched for a place inside of myself that wasn’t touched, smudged, or soiled. Not finding that place, feeling incapable of being happy just for an instant, was another burden. It was a loss of control, a loss of agency and self. The swarm of words and images made me wonder into how many pieces my mind was fractured. Rubbing my palms against my eyes, holding my head in my hands, I was certain that I was crazy. I was also certain that I was dying. I imagined tumors and worms. Strangely, this comforted me a little, as I lay in bed, wishing my organs would rot more quickly, feeling my heart slowing down at last.

The night the boy slept on my couch, with his knees drawn up to his chin and the fingertips of one hand lightly touching his lips, I was so alone in my own repugnance that it was a long time before I fell asleep. Because such nights are rare and not indicative of my character, I don’t like confessing to them. I would like to say that the boy had a peaceful night—but in the morning, after I unlocked my bedroom door and came out of my room, I learned that the boy had his own plague to deal with. I would like to say that after I discovered the couch empty—though with a dark, pungent stain on it—I also discovered my home empty, and that the boy had left sometime in the early hours before dawn. I would like to say that a warm little nook opened up somewhere in the fabric of the city, and the boy slipped himself in, as if somewhere in the total mechanism of inhumane humanity a single cog broke loose and in that flaw, that immeasurable lapse in design, the world created a warm little nook for the boy. I would like to say that all the monsters had their claws removed and that the hearth fire burned at a steady even glow all year round and the biscuits were always cooked to perfection by some maternal old aunt with a ready kiss and smile. But innocence presupposes decadence, and in all likelihood, neither one exists—just shadow and act, and the meat, sinew, and bone of neither saint nor sinner, under a firmament that is neither sacred nor profane, spinning toward an end, which is just an end. In the meantime, lions don’t lie down with lambs; they chew them up into bloody flaps of flesh. And little boys don’t escape; they curl up on bathroom floors, with their shirts splattered and their shorts soiled.

I lightly poked his ribs with the toe of my slippered foot. The boy made a soft noise, and his body attempted to straighten but then curled itself up again, more tightly than before. A sour stench filled the room. The faucet ran at a trickle. I had an impulse to leave him, as if I could efface him from the world by simply closing the bathroom door. But I kneeled down on the tile and lifted his head. I remember that I kept speaking, saying things like “Come on now. Get up,” hoping to bring his limp body to life. He was a wet, disgusting thing. Apparently, sometime during the night, as I’d sweated and tossed in bed, everything inside of the boy had tried to evacuate itself through every orifice it could find.

After the ambulance ride and the long hours in an orange plastic chair in the hospital waiting room; after the policeman with broad shoulders and a thin, lipless mouth; after the plump woman from Dyfus with her slow, soothing voice and her dark eyes that never left my face during the entirety of our discourse—which she called our appointments—all the while my refrain sounding again and again: I don’t know the boy or what has happened to him; after a thorough inquiry was made and even the boy himself was by then well enough to be questioned, and my life was raked down to the roots, so all that could be seen was seen, and I felt as though I had been pumped dry by a chafed hand; after all that and so much more which I’m happy to pass over and never preserve with words—what finally exculpated me, what finally saved me despite my landlord’s slanders, was that out of the three different traces of semen collected from the boy’s body, none was mine.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael James Rizza has an MA in creative writing from Temple University in Philadelphia and a PhD in American literature from the University of South Carolina. His academic articles have appeared in national, peer-reviewed journals. An early portion of his unpublished novel, Cartilage and Skin (from which this excerpt is taken) won a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. The first chapter was performed at Playwrights Theatre in Madison, NJ, directed by James Glossman and read by Brendan Burke.

Photo Source: Weird Worm

© 2011, Michael Rizza. All rights reserved.

“This is a story called ‘The Storyteller.’ We’re all writing this story together. In case you are wondering: Yes, you are included in ‘We’re all.’”

Providing only the title, a three sentence-per-entry limit and the story’s beginning, Tohline left the fate of the story wide open to the guidance of any reader or writer lucky enough to stumble upon the project. Within just three days, the exercise took off, attracting more than 25 contributors and snowballing into an eclectic, provocative narrative. It’s surprisingly coherent with a hint of darkness, too.

As Tohline reflected on his site, “The best part about a project such as this one is: Three sentences gives each of us enough room to influence the direction of the story, but it does not give any of us enough room to dictate the direction of the story.”

Without further ado, “The Storyteller.”

The storyteller squatted, picked up dirt from the ground and kept walking, letting it trickle down through his fingers, the wind catching it. The young boy walked alongside the storyteller.

“Be careful of where you march your feet,” the storyteller said, and the young boy quit walking.

“Why?” he asked. The storyteller pointed at the dirt still swirling about him.

“It lives,” he said. The boy took a step back, eyes widening.

“Don’t go back,” the storyteller said. “Just stand still and listen and I’ll tell a tale to take us away. In ages past and days drifted by, a teller sinned; he told the story wrong. The sages cried and cast him from the tale.”

“Cast him from the tale?”

“Please,” said the storyteller. “Please, do not interrupt. Only listen and let me tell this story. Let me tell it right.” The young boy was quiet, the storyteller spoke, and the world melted around them. The ground shifted and groaned. The boy clung to the storyteller’s leg.

“Watch your feet,” the storyteller whispered. But it was too late. Amid the dry, red dirt, a crack opened, widened, and down the boy fell. He was now on this adventure on his own. The storyteller had hoped to impart more wisdom before the boy left to experience the world below. After all, the world below is where the tale takes place.

The storyteller, cast from the tale many years before, watched as the boy spiraled to this world. A world of dread and fear spun from a heart of darkness. The cursed Teller knew this boy was central to the tale. He was the one who could set it right. The young boy opened his eyes and his feet landed. The world around him was bright and loud and lively. A marketplace.

“Watch where you’re going, kid!” The boy turned towards the voice. Two bushy eyebrows glared back at him but the eyes beneath twinkled with mischief. Their owner threw back his shaggy head and roared with laughter that would shake the pillars of heaven.

“And where did you come from?” asked the stranger. “You do not look like you are from here.” The boy wasn’t from there, didn’t know where he was, but was drawn to the mysterious stranger. The boy attempted to answer, but his words were garbled. He furrowed his brow in frustration and pointed. Up. The stranger with bushy eyebrows tilted his head to the side, and a snaggletooth smile stretched across his face.

“Ah, my boy, it’s a dangerous land you’ve come to. Wouldn’t want to wander here by your lonesome.” A knot tied in the boy’s throat. He felt a pointed nail stroke the underside of his chin as he tried to gulp down the visible signs of his fear. His childish hands began to sweat and slime as he realized this strange creature was no friend.

“There are no children in the marketplace. You see?” The stranger growled and spat. “Run, child.” The boy’s legs carried him double time through the throngs of buyers until he knew he was safe.

The boy looked around. Nothing was familiar. He closed his eyes, hoping that he would open them and find himself back with the storyteller. The opening of his eyes revealed the fulfillment of his wish.

“What was that just now?” he asked the storyteller, who snorted in response to his question.

“It’s not the ‘what’ that’s important, boy. It’s the ‘where’,” said the storyteller. He waved his hand and the whole world shattered, revealing another world behind it. This new world bustled with energy like waves, irritated and tossed by a raging storm. Something odd tickled the boy’s imagination. He looked at the storyteller, who smiled.

“Now you begin to understand what I haven’t yet begun to tell you,” he said. “The way of the world is not true, yet there is truth in its lies.”

“I have traveled a great distance, from here back to here,” the boy agreed.

“Ah,” the storyteller leaned in toward the boy and looked into his wide eyes, “but is here here or is here there?”

“You speak in riddles,” laughed the boy. “But I like this game. Where are we going next?” The storyteller touched the boy on the shoulder. His eyes grew big, like a cat’s.

“You ask where we are going, but this is your story; you are learning what you must learn to someday become an immortal storyteller, and so we are going to whatever world your mind takes us next.”

The boy awoke abruptly, gasping and panicked. Still fearful, he focused on the model airplane suspended above his head, slightly askew.

“I made that!” he whispered. From the darkness, the storyteller’s voice echoed in the room.

“This is where you take us, boy? What makes you think you’re safe here?” Of course, he was not safe in that room with the security blanket, the teddy bear, and the soft-voiced assurances of his doting parents. But in a moment of terrifying clarity, he knew that he was not safe with the storyteller, either. A storyteller who’s been cast from the tale has nothing left to lose.

Heat filled the room. Then screams of terror seized him as the earth shifted. He was falling again. As the boy descended, he heard a noise. A familiar sound that became louder and louder. It was children playing, children laughing. And not just any children. It was his brother, his two sisters and… how could that be… it was him! The boy hesitated to go near them as he listened to their laughs. However, he did not recall this scene in his memory. One of his sisters was born dead. The three were gathered around a small object that lay on the ground; the boy could not make it out. As he approached the group, he realized they were still oblivious to his presence. Close enough to smell them, he leaned over the object and immediately felt sick.

“It can’t be!” he gasped. The body of his cat, Frederich, lay in the dirt near their feet. The children were laughing and poking the poor animal with a stick. The boy began to scream.

“You can’t bring that animal with you, boy,” the storyteller interjected. “Bad enough you brought all these children! Do I look like a babysitter to you? Come, I have more to tell you!” Tears welled in the boy’s eyes. He barely heard the storyteller or felt him tugging at his shirt collar. The boy stared at Frederich, then at the children, and at the other “him.” How he wished he could make the world change again.

“Is that what you wish, boy?” asked the storyteller. “To make the world change again?”

“I didn’t say anything,” stammered the boy.

“Oh, but you did, you see?” said the storyteller. The boy shook his head, feeling confused and helpless.

“Stop it,” he said, closing his eyes. “I want to go back to the beginning!” The boy opened his eyes, wiggling between his toes sand that was not the same as the sand he had felt just a moment ago.

“It’s all a product of your imagination,” continued the storyteller. “From your mind, the world around you is created; think it and it is; dream it and it will be; the sand is not the same sand because you thought it so.”

Looking at the Teller, with confusion fogging his mind, the boy replied, “Do you read minds?”

“No. I can read your eyes, boy. You want to go back and change things to where they were, before the cat died.”

The boy threw his arms around the storyteller’s shoulders and began stroking his hair. A dimly remembered lullaby hissed under the breath that blew through the gap in the storyteller’s front teeth. The boy felt his eyes go sleepy and his mind relax when it struck him.

“You have a gap just like mine!”

“We are the storytellers, boy. You and I. Yesterday, today, and forevermore. The future may bring our story full circle or spiral it out into the unknown.”

“How will we know which way it is to go?”

The storyteller chuckled, a deep timbre of mirth tainted by retrospection.

“Whichever way we go is the right way, boy. You see, there are stories to be told everywhere, and stories to be gathered from everywhere. In our power lies just that; to tell stories where they need to be told, to change the stories that are not as they should be.”

“There’s that cursed storyteller again,” Rueben said, looking up from stirring his potion. “And this time he’s got a kid with him.”

“Who but a boy would listen to him and his endless drivel,” Myrna said. “I’m surprised the idiot didn’t die from chronic logorrhea years ago.” She thought a moment, and then grinned. “But if that didn’t kill him, maybe we should. What say you?” Myrna frowned at Reuben’s silence. “Hey, are you listening?” Reuben pulled his head back, his face drenched with blue liquid.

“Huh, what?” he said. Suddenly, he heard a new sound. He turned.

“What was that?” he thought. Something was stirring in the depths of the potion. Something was bubbling and coming alive. “No, Reuben thought. No, it can’t be…” Backing away in a rush, Reuben toppled over his own legs. Myrna stepped near him and, shrieking, he told her to get away, get the hell away.

Myrna hesitated, it was too late. Fire erupted from the potion container. Myrna screamed as she was consumed by the flames. The storyteller seemed unconcerned as he watched the flames rise and slowly disappear.

“Did you hear something?” the boy asked, looking at the storyteller.

“No,” said the storyteller, grinning victorious. The boy looked toward the horizon, watching the glorious orange glow of the sun disappear behind the veil of purple and black.

Just as Myrna was consumed by the fire, so too was Rueben consumed by his grief—and a creeping desire for revenge. Myrna was a miserable, nasty hag; true. But she had been his hag. Justice would be violent, but slow rather than swift. Rueben swept the ashes of his hag into a pile. Slowly, with purpose, he began to sing.

In the world where the storyteller and the young boy walked (What world? Who knew? The young boy certainly had no clue anymore), rain began to fall. The young boy held out his hand to catch a droplet. The droplet of rain was red. The storyteller cursed. The boy was gone. Cackles of laughter echoed with every splatter of rain. His mind too went red. Fear shook him like a violent wind. As his eyes swept up, he saw a shape coming slowly into focus—a shape like a man with short, wicked horns at the sides of his skull.

“You know me, Teller. They have told you what happens to little boys who tell tales—LIARS.”

Images flashed in his mind of the boy, bound by barbed wire, gagged, and unconscious. Streams of dried blood clung to the boy’s face like old wounded tears. He lost sight of the boy as the horned man thumped him in the chest. The impact on his chest caused him to awaken.

Startled, he looked around, and then sighed in relief. The little boy lay sleeping next to him, his cat curled up in his arms. Frederich was warm against his flesh, purring quietly and steadily. The boy opened his eyes for a moment, remembering Frederich as he had last seen him; the macabre scene still vivid and living in his mind. It was in that moment that he was suddenly brought back.

He was again on the road with the storyteller. The dirt from the man’s hand was still swirling in the wind.

“I’ll be careful where I march my feet,” the boy said quietly.

ABOUT THE ORCHESTRATOR
J.M. Tohline loves words the way you love finding money in that pair of jeans you haven’t worn for a year. His mind is full of stories, and these stories frequently tumble out of his mind and land on pieces of paper. When he’s not spilling stories onto paper, you can usually find him reading in public places and watching people interact. He might be a closet superhero, but he cannot say for certain. He shares thoughts regarding writing and other aspects of life at his website, and he writes miniature stories on Twitter @JMTohline.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Anonymous

A successful and early internet entrepreneur and pioneer, Steven Bustin has been published in Clickz.com, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and HumanTimes.com. The author of the non-fiction book, How The USS Nashville CL43 Fought WWII, his book blog can be found here.

Dorothy Distefano is a Word Mercenary from western New York. It makes her happy to beat words into submission on a daily basis in the freelance writing world. You can find her blog here.

Michael Goodell was born on the East Coast, raised on the West Coast and currently resides in Michigan, what he likes to call America’s Third Coast. His first novel, Zenith Rising, was published last year, and he has recently finished his second novel, Rebound. You can find his website here.

Jordan Guthmann: “He is Legend” was all she wrote.

Susana Mai eats stories with a side of minced dictionary and whole wheat plot-lines. She blogs here.

Dreamer turned novelist, Karen McGrath balances editing and coffee-table teaching while dancing on the edges of imaginary places. Her writings can be found here and her tweets here.

Melanie

Kelly R. Morgan can be found playing in worlds of her own creation, where the mundane doesn’t stay that way for very long. She blogs about her writing here.

Gary Munn, Ph.D. is a retired educator of English Literature. He says it was a lot of fun joining in on the writing of this story and that it has whet his appetite for more writing. He thinks the storytellers should try an even bigger undertaking in the future.

Wolf Nibori

James Rush is a graphic designer, photographer and surfer in a northern English coastal resort. Currently sipping a strong espresso, lightly wind caressed, door open, he stares through an expansive office window. Never has he seen such petite lapses of glistening energy flopping onto the sand below. He percolates his short biography, pours another coffee, and hits send… His blog can be found here.

E.C. Sheedy lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she writes romantic suspense and some very nasty villains. You can find her website here or on Twitter @EC_Sheedy.

Kim Smith

Simon Staffans is a developer and designer of cross and transmedia formats. He finds his work interesting, entertaining and fulfilling. It also helps pay the mortgage.

Mark Westmoreland lives in a world where words are magical, and dragons are real. Visit his world here or follow him on Twitter @MarkAW00.

© 2011, Jordan Tohline and Friends. All rights reserved.

That is the topic of my novel, a darkly comic satire on the commercial exploitation of death. But Sunset Parlor is more than that. It also raises questions about the ethics of euthanasia—not abstractly, but through scenes ranging from comic to tragic, played out by a varied cast of characters, from the silk-smooth entrepreneur with political ambitions to the hypocritical evangelical pastor with a gay lover, from the poor immigrant with terminal cancer who doesn’t want to die to the wounded veteran with a terrible crime on his conscience who does.

In this excerpt, John Kantzer, a terminally ill low-paid worker, attends the Grand Opening of the first Sunset Parlor in a decaying industrial town somewhere sometime in twenty-first century America. Bemused and distressed by the crowd, he is about to leave when he hears a voice behind him.

Excuse me, sir, a young woman’s suave voice inquires at his shoulder. Can I help you?

Turning slowly round, he finds himself confronting a blandly smiling, sympathetic face with bland blue eyes and bland fair hair, whose owner’s lapel button blandly declares her name is Candy.

“Well, I don’t know,” John Kantzer answers uncertainly. “I mean, what, er what exactly is it you do here?”

“Oh I’d just love to explain,” Candy mellifluously replies. “Maybe we could go into a counseling room? I believe we may be able to help you, sir.”

Help him? John feels vaguely threatened. Has he asked for help? Not that he doesn’t need it, but still.

Nevertheless he allows Candy to take his elbow and guide him into a room like a rich doctor’s office, or at least what he imagines a rich doctor’s office is like. A woman hasn’t taken his arm since he can’t remember when. He’d forgotten what a warm comforting feeling that is. At the door, Candy pauses to nod and smile to a passing young black woman with an equally bland and sympathetic face, whose lapel button blandly announces that she’s Angie. “Hi,” Angie says to Candy in a low purring voice and includes him too in her amiable greeting. John doesn’t see and anyway couldn’t interpret the swift subtle commerce that the two young women’s eyes then transact. But if he could, he would have read Got any hits yet? And I’m doin’ good.

“Now,” sighs Candy as, settling John into a comfortable chair, she sits in her own no less comfortable chair opposite and places her clasped hands on the broad elegant desk between them. It’s almost as if this is the moment she’s been waiting for all day—a few minutes alone with this interesting man above all others. “Can I get you a coffee? Coke?”

John Kantzer shakes his head. How quiet and peaceful it is in here, is what he’s thinking, after all that echoing noise outside. Even the pain seems easier.

“Right,” Candy says. She leans forward slightly and steeples her hands now in front of her, pausing like someone waiting for a recording to come on in her head. Then perhaps one does, because she starts. “Maybe I should give you a rundown on what we do here first and then see if we can help you in any way, Mr….?”

“Kantzer,” he answers almost reluctantly, as though he’s giving a secret away. “John Kantzer.”

“John, right?” the smooth voice purrs. “What a nice name. Straightforward and honest.”

“Johann, where I came from,” John says, as though that might disqualify those flattering epithets.

“Johann? I get it. Johann — John, right? That’s cute.”

John doesn’t quite look as if he agrees with that epithet either, but he doesn’t say so. The quiet and the comfort here are calming his nerves as well as his pain. He regards Candy expectantly.

“And where do you come from, John, may I ask?”

“I was born in the Ukraine.” Again this feels like a secret prised out of him.

“Oh, Ukraine, right.” Candy’s eyes have hazed slightly. “Is that er like Europe?”

John nods. He’s used to people placing Ukraine in Australia, so this is a refreshing change.

“But, er, you are a resident of Obegon now, John?”

“Yes,” he nods again. “Why?”

“Well, that’s like getting ahead of the game, Candy smiles. Let’s just do the rundown first, ok?” She pauses to wheel her inner recording back, then presses Play again. “Let’s begin with Obegon State Statute OMS 127. That say anything to you John? No? Suppose I said the Death with Dignity Act?”

Now John looks puzzled, as indeed he is. “That something to do with the electric chair?” he hazards. He’s not sure he likes the way this conversation’s heading. Execution’s not what he wants to hear about. Not in his condition.

“We-e-ll, Candy concedes, that is like in the ball park, but…” She leans forward and looks earnestly with her limpid blue eyes into his anxious brown ones. “The Death with Dignity Act is just that, John. It’s about dying with dignity. Dignity, John. I mean that’s what we all want, isn’t it? If we can’t live for ever? A death with dignity?”

“Well, yes,” John agrees uneasily. “I guess so.” As if he hadn’t been worrying about that the last six months.

“And that’s what this act’s all about, John.” She leans still closer to him across the desk, and he is transitorily aware of the curve of her breasts under her close-fitting shirt. “This act,” she enunciates very slowly and distinctly, “legalises physician-assisted suicide in terminal cases of great pain.”

“That so?” John murmurs faintly.

“Of course, you have to be an Obegon resident. That’s why I asked you John. Remember I asked you?”

Yes, John does. At least, he nods as if he does.

“Because currently this act doesn’t apply to out-of-staters. That means you’re lucky, John. You may not think so, but it does.”

John certainly doesn’t look as though he thinks so, but Candy again assures him that he really is. “Yes, you’re lucky. You qualify. Do you have any idea how many people there are in Obegon that are like terminally ill and in pain – real unbearable pain, John? And would like to depart this life in a totally meaningful dignified and painless fashion of their own choosing, rather than suffer months of pointless agony and then die during the night in some corner of a public hospital where no one even notices till they’ve been cold for six hours or more?”

“What?” That was too much of a mouthful for him. And yet he’s digested enough of it to feel it’s also too near the bone. He finds himself helplessly watching Candy’s smooth full cherry-coloured lips wreathing themselves round still more of his own half-hidden thoughts and fears.

“Because we know what public hospitals are like, John, don’t we?”

John thinks he does, but has no time to say—

“Do you know how many people, John? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? She shakes her head, releasing a whiff of heavy perfume that reminds him of lilies and hence of funeral homes. “Probably nearer ten thousand, John. According to our research here in Sunset Parlor. Ten thousand who want to pass over with dignity. Isn’t that awesome?” Now Candy leans back and nods. “And that’s where Sunset Parlor comes in. The Death With Dignity Act allows these people to die with dignity, but it doesn’t make it easy. Our mission is to facilitate that final journey, to give them the best possible departure, the passing they themselves desire. A passing they and their loved ones can totally accept and enjoy. Where the Act enables, we empower. Now isn’t that something?”

It certainly is, but John is too dumbfounded to say so. He feels his heart pounding against his narrow chest. This isn’t what he came here for—and yet it almost feels as though it is. Or should have been.

“Forgive me asking, John,” her voice drops to a tone of pure dulcet concern, “but are you like ill yourself? Are you in pain?”

He gives his head a definite shake. He doesn’t want to lie, but this delicate probing scares the hell out of him, makes him want to run away. It’s as though she knows him better than he does himself. And what disturbs a man more than that?

“Really, John? Because I thought when I saw you just now, I thought here’s someone we could really help?”

Her voice hangs there, a sympathetic question mark he can’t erase.

“Well, maybe,” he gives at last.

Candy reaches out her hand to lay it on his. How warm and comforting it feels. “Bad pain, John?” she softly inquires. “Real bad?”

And now he nods, tears suddenly pricking his eyes. Real bad. Feeling the pressure of her smooth sympathetic palm round his worn gnarled knuckles, he almost chokes. “I got cancer, it’s…it’s…”

“Terminal?” she gently but firmly breathes.

Again that sympathetic squeeze of her warm young hand. At last he nods again and bites his lip against the tears, which nevertheless he can’t hold back. He sniffs and looks ashamedly away. “My wife died two years ago,” he mutters brokenly. “I got these morphine patches, but they don’t help much any more. My daughter don’t want to know, she’s…” And now he’s really sobbing.

Candy’s other hand reaches out. She clasps his in both of hers. “We can help you, John, her soothing honeyed tones caress him. We can help you.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author of a number of highly praised novels set in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, Christopher New was born in England and educated at Oxford and Princeton Universities. Formerly Head of the Philosophy Department at Hong Kong University, he is also the author of The Philosophy of Literature and numerous philosophical articles. You can learn more at christophernew.com.

Photo Sources:
Syringe, Free-Photos
Lips, mi9

© 2011, Christopher New. All rights reserved.

She had to be at work at nine. It was 8:56. She didn’t have any cigarettes. She loved cigarettes. It’d take a full ninety minutes to get the fryers going before the early crowd started trickling in for lunch. Her craving for nicotine was enormous.

Cigarettes, she thought, and down-shifted.

Once, when she was fifteen and had been smoking for three years but didn’t have the money for a pack of Camels, she chewed some of her brother’s Skoal. Long cut. It was a big pinch. “Suck it,” her brother said. So she sucked it. The nicotine came and burned her mouth and calmed her nerves. She sucked some more. The grains of snuff started to fill her mouth. It was like her tongue was covered in grime. Like she’d licked a dirt road. She tried to get it out. She spit. She coughed. She dug with her finger, but it was everywhere, gagging her, making it so she could barely breathe. She ran to the bathroom and locked the door. Her brother stood outside laughing. The vomit raced up her throat like a locomotive.

Judy downshifted again. Then up-shifted. Someone could get rich starting a company that delivers cigarettes, she thought, then turned into the truckstop where the Kentucky Fried Chicken was located.

Her boss was at the counter with a bag of money. Wanda was a big fat black woman who called everyone, even black people, whitey.

Wanda said, “Whitey, you late.”

Wanda was mean, but she was fair. Judy liked her except for the days when she hated her. Wanda was often confused about the world. Judy was, too.

Judy said, “Do you see this?” and held up the key to her 1991 Honda Civic. “This goes into the ignition of a car that is running on three cylinders and needs new tires. I poured a quart of oil into the engine to get here.”

Wanda said, “You still late.”

Wanda got to wear a brown shirt and a gold nametag. Judy wore a red shirt with her name stenciled in cursive on her right tit. It made her feel ridiculous. She refused to wear a hairnet unless the district manager was in the building.

Judy said, “I don’t have cigarettes. You can’t imagine what that’s like.”

Wanda said, “I punched you in. Not for you. For me. I’m tired of being the manager who has employees constantly punching in late.”

Judy said, “Fine.”

Wanda said, “Fine would be you coming in on time.” Then, “Your hair looks nice. Where you get that done?”

Judy said, “Thanks. The barber college.”

Wanda erupted with laughter and said, “You kidding?”

Judy said, “I’m not kidding.”

Wanda said, “Oh my.” She said, “Well, they do good training.”

Judy rolled her eyes. She was so far gone, nothing could embarrass her. Haircuts: the barber college. Cold: the clinic. Teeth cleaning: the community college. She couldn’t wait until she had a degree, a real job, and, for the first time in her adult life, health insurance. She could almost imagine going to a doctor and knowing who the doctor was.

Judy said, “I have to leave early to take my Art History final.”

Wanda said, “The hell you do,” and stopped counting the money that she was putting into the registers.

Judy said, “Well, I do.”

Wanda said, “You go animal house on your own time.”

Wanda hated college. She thought it was for rich kids. She thought it was frat parties and hanging out in the dorms. It didn’t matter that Judy was older than Wanda, made less money, and lived in a transient motel.

Judy said, “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

Wanda said, “Well, you don’t,” and, “Shit,” but like it was two words: she and it.

Judy had an A in the class. The class was not hard. She went to Pitt, but a branch campus. The professor didn’t seem to care. He never took attendance. Class let out early. Lots of people had good grades. Nobody studied. Judy studied a little. She was twenty-nine. Most of the students were teenagers. The older students transferred out. By older, she meant twenty. The boy who sat next to her, who was embarrassingly cute, worked as a plumber and talked a lot about pipes and how much he hated wearing latex gloves.

Judy looked at her watch. School was there. Work was here. She was bad at judging the distance between the two, and her mistakes were always pissing someone off. Like Wanda. It was ten o’clock. The fryers were bubbling. She needed the grade. If she kept an A average, she received a small scholarship that paid for her books.

Judy walked back to Wanda’s office. The door was locked. The door was always locked. Judy imagined Wanda in there, checking out internet porn. Everyone knew she looked at the gay sites. Or maybe she was gambling. Wanda claimed to make ten grand extra every year from playing cards on-line. Judy couldn’t play cards. Mostly she smoked and went to school and fried chicken. She hated frying chicken. She would have liked to kiss the twenty-year-old plumber from art class, but it would have made her feel foolish. It was still fun to imagine.

“Open up,” Judy said.

“Go away,” Wanda said.

“I need the phone.”

Wanda opened the door. Her shirt was untucked, her big belly barely covered by the fabric. Her upper lip was sweaty.

Wanda said, “Not on my time. Phone calls on breaks.”

Judy said, “Do you want me to stay?”

“Of course, you gonna stay, bitch,” Wanda said. “You work here.”

“Then I need to call my professor.”

“Get a cell phone.”

Judy said, “Don’t make me hate you.”

Wanda said, “Please,” and laughed, then moved so Judy could use the phone.

The professor’s name was Roberts. He was a fat man with a goatee who carried a lunch box and wore mismatched socks. He did not have tenure. Maybe he was part-time. He complained a lot about the administration, the pay rate, the hiring practices. Judy thought he might be insane. Clinically. None of the other students seemed to care. Judy dialed the numbers and waited until he picked up.

She said, “Hi. This is Judy Powell. I’m in your 3:30 Art History class.”

Professor Roberts said, “And you can’t make the final today.”

“Right,” Judy said.

“Because your mom died,” Professor Roberts said and snorted. “I understand. We’ll work something out. Grade-wise.”

“My mom didn’t die,” Judy said. “I’m at work. I was wondering if I could take the final with your night class. I’m sort of stuck here.”

“Don’t bother,” he said.

“Don’t bother what?” Judy said, trying to sound polite.

“How are your grades?”

“All A’s,” she said.

“You’re fine. A for the final. A for the class.”

“Really?” she said.

“What’s your name again?”

Judy repeated her name, and added a short physical description of herself and where she sat in the room.

Professor Roberts said, “Sure. You’re the older gal, right?”

“I’m twenty-nine.”

“Sure. You talk. You participate. You’ll do fine.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

Professor Roberts said, “Don’t bother.” Then, “Where do you work anyway?”

She said, “KFC. On the Turnpike.”

“Me, too,” he said and laughed.

“Me, too what?” she said.

“Me, too. KFC. I teach at the KFC of universities. How much do they pay you? Are they hiring?” He coughed, but away from the phone.

Judy forced an awkward laugh. She wondered if she should hang up, drive to campus, and take the test.

“Maybe I should just come in,” she said.

“I told you,” he said. “You’re fine. I love mashed potatoes and gravy.”

Wanda stood outside the door with a whisk broom. Wanda looked at Judy and shook her head. The fryers were raging. It was, for the first half hour, a terrible smell. Not like burnt feathers and gizzards, but that’s all that Judy could ever think of. Wanda lifted the broom and did a little dance.

Judy said, “What?”

Wanda said, “Parking lot.”

Judy said, “With a whisk broom?”

Wanda said, “Uh huh.”

Judy said, “Christ,” and took the broom.

Wanda said, “Check my top desk drawer.”

Judy said, “Why?” and had seedy thoughts about gambling and porn.

Wanda said, “Fuck ya then.”

The desk was covered in neatly stacked piles of paper. Wanda was a paperwork machine. Judy opened the drawer. Inside, between the neatly arranged paperclips and ink pens, was a pack of Marlboro Reds.

“For me?” Judy said, her eye practically twitching at the thought of smoke.

“I stole ‘em off Keenan last night,” Wanda said. “The boy’s fucking fat. He don’t need to smoke.”

Judy said, “I could kiss you.”

Wanda said, “How about you sweep while you smoke instead?”

Judy said, “I’m a sweeping chimney.”

Wanda said, “You’re a chimney sweep.”

When Judy should have been in class, she was where Wanda said she’d be: at work. It was almost four o’clock. Judy felt greasy and tired. She ate three biscuits when Wanda went on break. She smoked all of Keenan’s Marlboros. They were smooth and delicious, even though they were not her brand.

Later that night, at home, she called her mother. Her mother was living with a man that was not Judy’s father. The conversation was short and pointless. Judy called her Aunt Lila. Lila, who was almost fifty, was taking night classes to become an accountant. They talked every day. Aunt Lila asked how Judy was holding up. Judy asked Lila the same question. They were both too tired to say much else. Lila said, “I love you,” and Judy said, “I love you, too,” and they hung up. Judy lit a cigarette. She flicked the ashes in a diet Coke can. She didn’t have anyone else to call, and that made her sad, but she knew that tomorrow she’d be too busy to feel sad again.

Judy thought about her final. Maybe she should have gone in and taken the test. She dialed the professor’s number. When his machine picked up, she gave her name and social security number and restated their earlier agreement: A for the final and an A for the class. She hung up the phone, but didn’t put down the receiver.

Why the hell did she need art history anyway?

She was a criminal justice major. She wanted to be a cop.

The next day, Wanda was in a mood. Lunch was over. The store was empty. The tables needed to be cleaned. The floors needed to be mopped. Nobody wanted to mop. It was amazing how slick the floors got after the lunch rush. All that fried skin missing customers’ mouths. Judy had two packs of cigarettes and felt fine.

She said, “I’ll do the parking lot. I’m not mopping.”

“You do the parking lot, you do the bathroom, too,” Keenan said. “Where’s my cigarettes, bitch?”

“Smoked ‘em,” Judy said.

“Real nice,” Keenan said, but he smiled, and Judy knew he wasn’t mad.

Keenan was seventeen. He went to high school half a day, then worked half a day. He could count the money, run the receipts, and do a closing in under fifteen minutes. No one else could do it in under thirty minutes. But he didn’t have any plans, and he liked to smoke a lot of dope and eat macaroni and cheese. Judy was the same way at that age.

Wanda came out and said, “I’m in a mood.”

Keenan said, “Shit.” He said, “Go lose some money on the internet. Everything’s taken care of out here.”

Wanda said, “Whitey, you know nothing of the chicken business. You wouldn’t know a drumstick if it bit your ass.” Wanda turned towards her office. Over her shoulder, she said, “Clean this shit up,” and slid a mop bucket towards the front of the store.

Keenan said, “I hate when she calls me Whitey. It’s fucking retarded. All that lard in her gut is making her funny in the head.”

Judy said, “I’ll be in the parking lot,” and took the whisk broom. She said, “I’ll do the bathroom when I get back, white boy.”

Keenan said, “White this,” and flipped her a long black finger.

Wanda screamed, “Judy!” from her office.

Judy screamed back, “What?” and headed that way.

Wanda’s office door was open. She shuffled some papers and looked pissed. Judy really needed a cigarette. If she didn’t get one soon, she’d eat, and then she’d hate herself for eating more fried junk. The chicken strips tasted exactly like the French fries. The French fries tasted like the biscuits. It was all the same. Wanda turned and wrote a number on the sales board. It was worse than last year’s sales, and not even close to their goal. Wanda was shocked by this every day. Judy didn’t know why.

Wanda said, “Is Keenan stealing food?”

Judy said, “How would I know?”

Wanda sat down. She put her hands behind her head and sighed. She said, “You gonna bullshit me now?” Then she leaned back and the chair almost tipped. Her arms darted out to her sides like tiny wings on a baby bird that was just learning to fly. Wanda said, “Whoo shit!” then she threw herself forward to stop the fall. Judy tried not to laugh. Wanda righted herself. She fixed her shirt. She leaned forward and pretended to be comfortable. She folded her hands on her enormous stomach and shook her head. She said, “You almost made me fall.”

Judy said, “Okay.”

Wanda said, “I ask you again: is Keenan stealing food?”

Judy said, “What did I just say? I don’t know.”

Wanda said, “I’m watching you. I’m watching him. I’m watching his friends. I’m watching your friends. We got an inventory coming, and I know we low.”

Judy said, “My friends don’t come in here. I’m not in high school.”

“Don’t act like it then,” Wanda said. “I know you give a biscuit to your sister before. I seen it from my office.”

“Whatever,” Judy said and took her whisk broom.

The parking lot wasn’t getting swept. Instead, Judy smoked three consecutive cigarettes and flicked the butts at Wanda’s Ford 500. It was a nice car, new, with a gold metallic paint that glittered. Judy wondered what it would take to become a manager. Training? Paperwork? Wanda had a GED. Judy had school but not enough to mean anything. College was like buying a house one brick at a time. She took another long puff. Manager. She had this thought sometimes, and it scared her. Fried chicken for the rest of her life. Fake mashed potatoes, the flakes falling from a box like snow. Bags of frozen soup coming off a freezer truck, and boxes upon boxes of chicken parts. Judy lit a fourth cigarette. She would have liked to do this for the rest of her shift, but she heard Wanda inside, screaming. There was Keenan’s voice, being defensive. Then it was quiet. Then there was screaming. If she was a cop—when she was a cop—she’d stop this. She’d pull her gun. She’d say, “Enough.”

Judy took her cigarette and walked towards the Ford 500. After a few steps, she dropped the broom to the cracked asphalt that she was supposed to be sweeping. The car looked even better up close. It was huge, like someone had put Judy’s apartment on wheels. She leaned close and put her face to the glass. The interior was leather, a beautiful brown, smooth and without the cigarette pocks that marked the interior of her own car. There was a CD player, and what looked like power windows. Judy’s Honda had over two hundred thousand miles. It had been her mother’s car, then her aunt’s, then her mother’s car again, and now it was Judy’s. She pressed harder against the glass of Wanda’s new shiny Ford, hoping to get a glimpse at the odometer but her breath clouded the glass. She took her shirt and started to wipe away the fog. It was quiet and cool, and Judy inhaled from her cigarette. There was a cough, and it took a second for Judy to realize it wasn’t her own, but Wanda’s.

Wanda was three feet away and she had her hands around the wooden handle of the whisk broom like it was a neck she was about to ring.

Judy, without removing the cigarette from between her lips, said, “Sorry.”

Wanda extended the broom for Judy to take and said, “Sorry’s what you gonna be if you don’t move your greasy hands away from my new car.”

Judy stepped away from the car and towards Wanda.

She said, “I was just looking.”

The sun was out, shining over Wanda’s shoulder. There were clouds. Judy let her cigarette fall from her mouth to the asphalt beneath her feet.

She stuck out her arm.

She took the broom.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dave Newman is the author of the novel Please Don’t Shoot Anyone Tonight (World Parade Books, 2010) and four chapbooks, most recently Allen Ginsberg Comes To Pittsburgh. His poems and stories have appeared in literary journals in the UK, Japan, and the USA. He lives in Trafford, PA.

Photo Sources
KFC, The Hot Glove
Animal House, Digital Ink Report
A+, APA
Cigarettes, The Telegraph

© 2011, Dave Newman. All rights reserved.

Dangling his legs between the steel fence, Mason casts his line far below to the surface of the lake. Mason knows that next year, when he’s sixteen, he may lose interest in such things—especially if his parents permit him to acquire his driver’s license. Temptation may breed a change of heart, of soul. This is not a guarantee by a long stretch. But still. It is enough that his parents let him go fishing “out there” in the secular world. So much of Mason’s life is circumscribed, pinched into 510 Daisy Drive. Though he has met a handful of the neighboring kids, Mason feels they have little in common with him. Mason considers himself open-minded, but the ubiquitous agnostic world-view is as alien to him as any imaginable. He understands home-schooled children, but the “publics” are a whole different breed.

As his line dangles in the muddy pond below, Mason closes his eyes. Though he must fend off unsacred thoughts on a daily basis, Mason is not immune to them. Occasionally Mason succumbs to them, though he tends to push those incidences off to the side. Still, Mason has purposefully imagined sordid acts, and on several occasions late at night Mason has even allowed such thoughts to infiltrate his mind to such a degree that he was forced to take matters into his own hands. It is Nature’s fault, Mason knows. Corruption of the corporeal.

Mason closes his eyes. He holds the rod gently in his hands. The grass by the fence tickles his legs and the scent of pine cones and clover and lilac overwhelm him, and Mason curls his legs around the fence and allows his back to recline into the cool bed of grass. Even this is forbidden by his parents. “Nature is a seductress,” his mother says. “Rest your faith in the glory of God.”

A better seductress would be J. Lo, Mason thinks. Or Beyonce and J. Lo intertwined, skin on skin, limbs on limbs, bosoms, lips, hair flowing. Mason tries not to use the Internet for evil devices, but at times when his mother is upstairs, occupied with her baking or folding laundry, he can’t help himself. So many seductions, so little time to indulge in them. Though he is filled with shame, Mason sometimes wonders how anything so pleasure-filled could be shameful.

Immersed in fantasy, Mason feels a sudden tug on the end of his fishing line. He lifts himself from the grass, slightly dizzy from the head-rush, and Mason reels in the line. It is quite heavy and Mason can feel movement at the end of it. He leans back and uses his feet as leverage against the fence. He reels for some time.

When at last Mason pulls the line through the fence he can see he has not caught a fish at all. Rather, a small turtle. The turtle has apparently swallowed the hook whole and a line of blood dribbles from its mouth. It seems unable to breathe.

Mason is not sure how the Bible instructs him to act in such a case. He knows he should be merciful, but how? What kind of mercy should he show? Mason watches the eyes of the turtle in clear agony. He lays the fishing rod in the grass, allowing the turtle to at least rest its hard shell on the ground as it bleeds. This is not what Mason expected.

Mason can’t bear the sight of an animal in such excruciating pain. Mason closes his eyes and stomps his foot down on the animal’s protruding neck. Hard. He does this three times—this gives Mason no pleasure at all. The turtle attempts to withdraw his neck, but it is too late. Still seeing the animal writhe, he stomps five more times, harder. Mason wipes his bloody sneakers on the grass, looking around to see if any one saw him. Removing his pocket knife, Mason cuts the fishing line and lifts the lifeless body of the turtle.

Mason doesn’t know if he did the right thing, and he doesn’t know if turtles can actually rise to heaven (Mason wonders: does a turtle have a soul?). He offers a small prayer for the turtle anyway: “All-powerful and merciful God, we commend to you, turtle, your servant. In your mercy and love, blot out all the sins he has committed through turtle weakness. In this world he has died: let him live with you for ever. We ask this through Christ our Lord.”

Mason looks at the ropey neck as it dangles from the turtle’s shell. Mason drops the body below and watches it splash into the muddy water. Mason considers this a burial. Mason hopes the body sinks right away, but instead it floats. It floats until Mason can’t stand to look anymore. His hands are wrapped around the fence posts. Mason lifts the fishing rod and tosses it down the embankment as well. Mason doesn’t watch to see where it lands. He turns his back on the grass, the pond, and the floating turtle and walks away to prayer, to hearth and home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nathan Leslie’s six books of fiction include Madre, Reverse Negative, Believers and Drivers. He is also the author of Night Sweat, a poetry collection (2009). His short stories, essays and poems have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines including Boulevard, Shenandoah, North American Review, Baltimore Review, and Cimarron Review. He was series editor for The Best of the Web anthology 2008 and 2009 (Dzanc Books). He has also written for The Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and O.C. Weekly. For the past five years Nathan has served as the fiction editor at Pedestal Magazine. He has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Photo Source: PBase

© 2011, Nathan Leslie. All rights reserved.

“I don’t care if this house blows away,” he said.

Renee, his sister, shook her head.

“I don’t care either,” she said. “But my bed is right by a window and I don’t want to get cut up if it breaks.”

Then she set about gathering the things they would take downstairs to pass the time. Billy liked this part because Renee never took the same stuff. Sometimes she grabbed a radio; other times it was board games. Once she brought a portable T.V. her boyfriend stole for her and they watched all the late shows. Tonight, though, all she took for fun was a tablet of paper and scissors. Billy knew this was for a game they played where she’d write a story, cut it up, then have him put it back together however he wanted. He liked how the words had different meanings depending on their order.

Once they had everything, the two walked past their uncle who was passed out on the couch. The rain and thunder and sirens covered up his snoring. Like always, they both had the same thought as they looked at him. I hope a tornado carries him away. Well, this was what Billy thought but he was pretty sure Renee used different words in her head, words that conveyed how their uncle treated her different than Billy.

As they walked down the stairs, Billy felt the air take on more weight. He followed his sister to the corner which held a card table and two chairs. The air smelled of dust and rot and all the old things leftover in the basement from when their parents were alive. And underneath this there was the stink of puke from the time Renee brought down one of their uncle’s bottles (just to see what it’s like, Renee had said) instead of games. They never talked about that night, and Billy could never decide whether the smell was really there or just in his head. Either way, the urge to throw up was there, the taste of it like a catch in his throat.

Renee set two candles on the table, struck a match, and lit them both. For a moment they both looked around, glancing at piles of their parent’s clothes as if they had just woken from a dream. Renee stared at the box which held their mom’s wedding dress and sighed. Then she started writing in the tablet.

“I’ve been thinking about this story for a while,” she said. “I hope you like it.”

Billy nodded. He tried to breathe through his mouth but thought it sounded like their uncle’s snoring and gave it up. Instead he focused on the steady noise of the sirens. Lately it seemed like there were more storms, each one bigger than the last; all of them forces outside of his control. Still, without all the tornado warnings he probably wouldn’t ever see Renee. She was always with her boyfriend, leaving him with nothing to do but watch T.V. while their uncle slept.

“You think a tornado will ever really hit us?” he said.

She wrote a couple lines on the tablet before looking up.

“No, I don’t think we’re that lucky.”

She smiled, tore off the page she’d been working on, and handed it across the table. The candles flickered as she disturbed the air.

“You cut it this time,” she said.

He concentrated at cutting the paper so he didn’t lose any of the words. When he finished there was a pile of scraps on the table. She leaned forward as he arranged the words into sentences. They were all about brides, spring, or flowers, and all of it seemed out of place with their surroundings and the blare of the sirens. Without looking at Renee, he scrambled up the paper and started over. The result was the same no matter how many times he mixed them up; all of the sentences spoke of love or moving on or both.

“I don’t like this story,” he said. “Write a new one.”

She smiled and reached for his hand. He drew it back, nearly knocking over a candle in the process.

“Billy, I’m not happy here.”

He stood up, swallowing back whatever was rising in his throat. He had to breathe through his mouth again or he knew he’d puke.

“This will be better for all of us,” she said. “Once Jack and I get settled you can come live with us.”

He shook his head.

“That won’t happen. You know it won’t.”

Before she could say anything else he grabbed some of the scraps and held them over the flame. He repeated this till the page was all burned up. Renee alternated between screaming his name and telling him to stop. He snatched both candles and ran to the clothes. Renee followed him, and he tried to light up the wedding dress box but she tackled him first. He felt the wind go out of him at the same moment the candles slipped from his hands.

When he recovered he expected to see and hear and smell burning, but it was dark and quiet. Then Renee said his name, softly at first, then louder and more insistent. He rose to his feet and moved toward the stairs, finding his way by the faint glow of the television that was still on upstairs. He could hear her calling his name until he got out the back door. For a moment he waited, expecting her to come after him, tell him to get inside before a flying branch knocked him out.

But she didn’t come. And when he listened at the door he couldn’t hear her footsteps inside. Then he realized the sirens were off and the wind had quieted down. Another storm had passed. As he walked off into the night he hoped she realized this too.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Abbott is a writer, musician, and English instructor. His stories and poems have appeared in literary journals such as The Potomac Review, Georgetown Review, upstreet, Chiron Review, Underground Voices, Fast Forward: A Collection of Flash Fiction and many others. He is also the author of a novel, a story collection, and a poetry collection. Abbott lives with his wife and daughter in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Photo Source: Quinsigamond Community College

© 2011, John Abbott. All rights reserved.

A few weeks after you break up she calls you because her car battery dies; she leaves the inside light on a lot. She lives on the other side of Brooklyn from you, near Prospect Park. When you drive over to give her a jump she tells you she’s seeing someone new. She tells you her new boyfriend is a decathlete. That’s all you need to know, really: he’s a decathlete. You are not. You haven’t tried three sports in your entire lifetime, much less at the same time. You ask her why she didn’t call her new boyfriend to jump her battery instead of you, but she says he’s probably too busy. She shows you the text he just sent her while you wait for her car to rev, though: LUV UR SEXY ASS. “God, isn’t he romantic?” she says, biting her lip.

Most nights you can’t sleep so you end up driving to campus and taking a walk. There’s online gin-rummy and Netflix but it’s mid-October so it’s still warm enough to go outside without your face falling off. Sometimes when you walk late at night you’ll see Diego trolling around campus in the white security van but right now it’s three a.m. and the campus is empty and silent; you can hear coyotes in the distance. You look out into the dark desert and think of Kitty Poon. How far did she make it? Is she still alive? Did drinking the Fightin’ Butterchurn turn her stark raving mad?

You go behind the recycling bins and climb the ladder. Sometimes you like to prowl around the empty library at night and pretend you’re in the movie Capricorn One. But halfway down the stairs you hear the echo of voices. You think you hear a girl moaning. You definitely hear a guy yell, “yeah, yeah, yeah.” When you get to the bottom of the stairs you see a bright light coming from the far side of the cavern that extends from the silo. The door to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Club room is open and you can make out various shapes moving around in the dim. As you get closer you can see Diego slouched back in a director’s chair next to a video camera on a tripod. There some stage lights and a ring of people dressed in strange costumes. Diego is the guy saying “yeah, yeah, yeah.”

You don’t stay for long, but you guess the movie’s theme is Joan of Arc, since the girl on the mattress is dressed in shiny armor. The historical detail might be a little off, since the rest of the cast seems to be dressed up as goblins, trolls and elves. There’s a dragon, too, and a guy in a wizard outfit whose head is just a big red eyeball.

“No, no, no,” Diego yells at the guy standing above Joan; he bangs the notebook in his lap against the arm of the chair. “Your line is, let me strike you with my flesh sword like David did to the Philippines.” Diego was right: he does need help with a script. You back out of the cavern, trying to go unnoticed. As you disappear into the shadows you think you recognize Escape Goat as one of the sexy background elves, but you can’t be sure.

Escape Goat comes to your office hours to discuss the grade you gave her on the last exam. She wants to know if you’ll give her partial credit for one of her answers. Question #4 in the short-answer section was: Name one of the two poets who in 1798 collaborated on the Romantic poetry collection, “Lyrical Ballads.” You would have accepted either William Wordsworth or Samuel  Coleridge.

Her answer was Calvin Cooleridge.

She smiles and tilts her head. “It’s pretty close right?”

“I don’t know,” you say. “It’s closer to Calvin Coolidge than Samuel Coleridge.” You know she is a history major, though, so maybe she got things mixed up. “Were you studying for your history exam at the same time?”

“Who’s Calvin Coolidge?” she says.

You smile and tell her you’ll add the two points to her grade.

“Can I tell you something?” she says, and for a moment you’re worried she might have told the Dean about the whiskey in your desk drawer. But instead she says, “I really liked your class this semester. You’re a funny guy. And I learned a lot.”

Suddenly you feel bad, and you’re about to fess up and tell her that Jane Austen never took down a grizzly with her bare hands, and Walt Whitman in fact did not write the lyrics to an early version of “We Are the World,” when she stops you.

“We knew,” she says, smiling. “But it was never boring, I’ll give you that.” She leaves, and for the first time in a long while you feel something other than loneliness and pity in your gut. Maybe tonight will be the night you drink the Fightin’ Butterchurn. You’ll sit in the Winnebago and raise your jar high and toast Kitty Poon, who had to show you the way. You stand up from your chair and look around the room for a mirror. You start to unbutton your shirt. Somehow you’ve made it to your age without having any idea if you look good naked or not. Somehow you’ve made it almost a full year in North Dakota without really knowing how cold it can get outside.

You are in your office late again, writing comments on the stories for your last workshop this semester. You are scrounging around the desk for the White-Out so you can do the right thing and cover up your comment This Story Sucks Balls! when the office phone rings. At this hour it must be Gloria, so you pick up on the first ring and say, “No, I am not happy with my mail-order bride. You said she was a decathlete but when she takes her shirt off her stomach flops out like a stack of pancakes.” It is not Gloria. It is your ex-girlfriend calling from New York. She is calling to tell you she broke up with the decathlete. She also has a chipped tooth after a woman punched her in the face for using her hat to sop up a glass of merlot.

There is good news, though. She just sold a new song called “Queef In Your Grille” to an edgy sitcom on HBO. The producers loved the song so much they wrote an entire episode of the show titled “Jailbreak.”

“You know, if you fart in someone’s face while holding them under the covers, it’s called a jailbreak.” At first you think she is calling because she misses you, but after a few minutes you recognize from her boozy voice that she’s just drunk and lonely. You pull the bottle of Wild Turkey out of your desk so you can feel drunk and lonely, too, which is better than just being lonely because when you’re drunk at least you can pretend you’re having fun. You splash some whiskey into the warm diet soda in your jumbo Kum & Go travel mug and kick your feet up on the desk. As you listen, you imagine her voice belonging to someone else. You close your eyes and dream of a new girl, named Mabel. In your dream, this Mabel comes into your office and tells you she wants to make love to you right there on your desk while the two of you talk about books and writing. You can’t picture her at first, so you have fun making it up.

Editor’s Note: Author Tommy Zurhellen wrote this Dakota-themed short story while he was researching and working on Nazareth, North Dakota, his debut novel, now available for sale at the Atticus Books online store. You can read part one of the story here and part two here. You can also help Tommy finish his next short story by submitting your own 25-word idea to his weekly Collaborative Writing Contest!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tommy Zurhellen, whose novel Nazareth, North Dakota is scheduled for a spring 2011 release, has been teaching creative writing at Marist College since 2004, and serves as director of the Marist Summer Writing Institute and the Writer-in-Residence program. He received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Alabama in 2002. His short works have been published in Quarterly West, Carolina Quarterly, Passages North, South Dakota Review,The MacGuffin, Crab Creek Review, Apalachee Review, River Oak Review, Red Mountain Review, Iconoclast, Coal City Review, and elsewhere. His website can tell you more.

Photo Source: Weeping Cherries

© 2011, Tommy Zurhellen. All rights reserved.

After grad school, you moved to New York City for full-time adjunct job at NYU; the pay was lousy, but it gave you time to finish your novel. You landed an agent who worked out of her apartment in Washington Heights and specialized in cookbooks and time travel fantasies. This is Gloria. Whenever you talk on the phone she calls you kiddo. That first manuscript was a love story set in SoHo between a society girl and a working class guy who end up running a flower shop together. You name it Blood and Roses after the old Smithereens song, but the publisher changes the title to Flowers for a Vampire. There are no vampires in your book. Gloria tells you the market was trending heavy towards vampires that year.

“Next year,” she says, “who knows? Werewolves? Princesses? Mummies could make a comeback. Maybe horses will finally get hot again. You know, kiddo, if you wrote a book where a horse learned to travel back in time, I could sell that in a heartbeat.”

You tell her you’re working on it. “Is it even better if the horse is a vampire?”

“Don’t get cute,” she says.

The truth is you’re not working on anything. These days you treat your laptop like a lump on your neck, scared to touch it because you’re afraid you might find out things are worse than they already are.

On Friday afternoons you let your workshop out after a half-hour so you can get to the Winnebago early and nab one of the captain’s chairs that face the television. A retired rancher named Dale Larsson runs the place, and he takes the job very seriously. He even has a signature drink in honor of the school, the Fightin’ Butterchurn, which consists of whiskey, buttermilk, and a dash of A-1 steak sauce stirred up in a mason jar and served at room temperature. You have not worked up the courage to try one yet, but you are constantly reminded by the regulars that Kitty Poon did. On the little shelf behind the bar, Dale keeps the mason jars of the people who have finished an entire Fightin’ Butterchurn without throwing up. There are four total, each signed and dated. Kitty’s jar is in the middle. Her uneven handwriting on the glass seems so frantic and sad; the signature isn’t much more than a series of jagged loops in black magic marker, and wrapped around the jar are the words everything i have is blue. The date scrawled on there is last April, a few weeks before the end of the spring semester; it couldn’t have been long after that when she ran out of Spitznagel Hall and disappeared into the Badlands forever.

“Doctor Poon is kind of a hero around here, you bet,” Dale tells you with a straight face. At first you think these guys at the Winnebago would have a field day making fun of her name, Kitty Poon, but then you realize this is the same state where no one seems to notice the gas stations are all named Kum & Go. But now that you think of it, no one back in Brooklyn would probably care, either; the guy down the hall was named Ace Diablo and the woman in the apartment above you went by Candy Gunns. You didn’t see either of them much, though, since they both worked nights.

Diego Lunez comes in the Winnebago and sits down next to you. He works security at the college but every couple weeks or so he’ll come up with a new scheme to get rich and retire. Last time the plan was domesticating prairie dogs to sell to celebrities as the next thing in pocket pets.

“Two words,” Diego says this time. “Christian porn. I mean, it’s real porn, but when you write the script, everyone making love in the movie is married and they’re only having sex to make babies.  No condoms, no birth control of any kind. And they could sing hymns and quote Bible passages while they’re doing it, too. Anyway, I’m still working on the details. What do you guys think?”

Dale slides a beer in front of him. “You got a title yet?”

Diego nods. “Cum All Ye Faithful.” He sucks the foam off the top of the beer. “Talk about an untapped market, right? But we need a place to film the thing. Someplace quiet.” He pats your shoulder. “I figure you could help with the script, seeing as how you’re a writer and all.”

“Not lately,” you say, eyes trained on the dirty Mason jar on the shelf in front of you.

You have Escape Goat in your office again. She changed her thesis and now it’s: In “Sense and Sensibilty” by Jayne Austin, Colonel Brandon has symptoms of post-dramatic stress disorder. You picture a dozen or so actors trying to come down after after a really bad dress rehearsal of King Lear, passing around the lithium tablets and Wild Turkey backstage while they tell each other horror stories from their time doing community theatre. Actually, that doesn’t sound so far off; you used to hang out with actors in Greenwich Village. Before her songs started selling, your ex-girlfriend landed a part in an off-broadway production of Fight Club: The Musical. You remember doing a few plays in high school yourself: you were in West Side Story but you couldn’t sing or dance so the teacher gave you the role of Officer Krupke. All you had to do was stand center-stage and twirl your nightstick while the rest of the kids surrounded you and laughed at you. But on opening night the stick slipped out of your hands and pegged one of the Shark girls in the eye.

You still can’t sing or dance. In grad school you tried to start a band called Judas Presley, which would only play metal versions of Elvis songs, or Elvis versions of metal songs. It was a melodramatic idea — but this was grad school, everything was melodramatic. Judas Presley had one gig, unpaid, on a Wednesday afternoon, at a local hangout called the Chukker. You didn’t manage to play any songs because the drummer got in a fight with his girlfriend before the show and she called in a bomb threat.

You realize you are singing “In the Ghetto” pretty much at the top of your lungs when you remember Escape Goat is still sitting there. How long were you zoned out? You don’t own a watch. You realize only now Spitznagel Hall is like Vegas: no clocks on the walls. They want to keep you inside as long as possible. They want you to lose track of time. You have never been to Las Vegas yourself, but you do have a great aunt who spent so much time sitting at a slot machine she urinated on herself. When she stood up to find a bathroom she passed out because all the blood had pooled in her legs from sitting there for seven straight hours. She capsized like that statue of Saddam Hussein, invisible ropes pulling her down onto the ruby red carpet.

The story does have a happy ending: she won $25 in casino coupons.

Once again, you come back from your daydream and see Escape Goat sitting there. You stare at her for a moment, but it’s long enough to realize she’s a very pretty girl, and she deserves better than you.

“The new thesis sounds great,” you say. “Maybe check the spelling again, but otherwise it’s awesome.”

Editor’s Note: Author Tommy Zurhellen wrote this Dakota-themed short story while he was researching and working on Nazareth, North Dakota, his debut novel, now available for sale at the Atticus Books online store. You can read part one of the story here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tommy Zurhellen, whose novel Nazareth, North Dakota is scheduled for a spring 2011 release, has been teaching creative writing at Marist College since 2004, and serves as director of the Marist Summer Writing Institute and the Writer-in-Residence program. He received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Alabama in 2002. His short works have been published in Quarterly West, Carolina Quarterly, Passages North, South Dakota Review,The MacGuffin, Crab Creek Review, Apalachee Review, River Oak Review, Red Mountain Review, Iconoclast, Coal City Review, and elsewhere. His website can tell you more.

Photo Source: Chessalee

© 2011, Tommy Zurhellen. All rights reserved.

You also call her that because her name is Kristen, and you have seven Kristens in your classes this semester. You also have four Megans, four Brittanys and three Alyssas. You would eat a bowl of nails just for a kid named Hortense or Martha or Mabel to walk in here. You could have a real conversation with a Mabel. Nothing against Escape Goat, she’s a good kid, and besides she’s pretty much the only student who comes to your office hours under her own power.

You do not know how long you have been staring at the ceiling when you look down and realize she’s still sitting across your desk, her face frozen with a look of concern. You blink your eyes and say, “How long have I been daydreaming?”

“Not long,” she says. “But you do it a lot.”

She is here to show you her new thesis: In “Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austin, Eleanor Dashwood is taken for granite by her sisters and mother. You picture the Dashwood women walking down a quiet country lane in their fluffy dresses and frilly bonnets, passing a block of stone on the side of the road and starting up a conversation, mistaking it for Eleanor. You sit back in your office chair and smile. You say in an English accent, “Dare I say you look rather stoned this day, dear sister.”

She gives you a puzzled look. Mabel would have laughed at that, you say to yourself.

Obviously, this was not to yourself because Escape Goat says, “Who’s Mabel?”

God, you used to love to read. There must have been a time when you loved teaching, too; halfway through your boilerplate lecture on Jane Austen you decide to mention Texas named a city after her because after she was done writing novels she moved to the American southwest and gained fame on the frontier as a killer of grizzly bears and lover of lonely cowboys. No one noticed.

“Are you okay?” Escape Goat says. “I heard about the last professor who had this office.”

There are a lot of stories floating around campus about Dr. Kitty Poon, the last Creative Writing professor. From what your friend Diego tells you, she was a poet who moved here from Los Angeles after her fiancee cleaned out her checking and moved back to Argentina. You do some internet snooping and find out she published her first book of poems a couple years before she came out here; the title is My Year of Loving the Vampire but when you buy it off Amazon you don’t see any vampires. It’s a beautiful book actually, full of sunny poems about a girl sitting up in bed while her lover is in the kitchen, singing songs in Spanish while he makes them coffee.

She managed to put out a second book after her first semester at West Dakota A&T; they have a copy down in the silo and when you read it you realize the mood of her writing has completely changed. This is a chapbook called Kill, Kill Kill and all the poems are about feeling trapped. You make the mistake of reading this book in the same office where she probably wrote it. If you look close enough at the walls you believe you can see fingernail marks where she tried to claw her way out.

Escape Goat touches your arm. “Are you sure you’re okay, professor?”

“Your thesis sounds great,” you say to her. “Maybe check the spelling on the author, but that’s about it.”

West Dakota A&T, formerly the Western Dakota College of Dairy Sciences and Mines, must have been even more desperate than you because they hired you over the phone. The job description was obviously rushed onto AWP: Assistant Professor of English, tenure track, 4/4 teaching load, Creative Writing (Fiction) focus; minimum requirements of MFA or Creative Writing PhD, experience teaching both workshops and lit surveys, minimum one book. You see yourself as a master of meeting the minimum requirements. In the phone interview the hiring committee only told you the last Creative Writing professor experienced some personal problems. The committee failed to mention there have been four Creative Writing professors hired in the last four years and none had been fired. They failed to mention that it’s common knowledge on campus that the position is cursed. They also failed to mention the last one, Kitty Poon, ran out of her office — your office — screaming and naked one day and disappeared into the desert, never to be seen again.

You do not complain because there are a few things you fail to mention, too, like NYU firing you for holding the last five weeks of class in “the fourth dimension” which at the time meant something deep and ethereal to you, but to your students it simply meant there was no class at all. The breakup with your girlfriend didn’t help; you were a mess, or as the police report likes to say, an “incoherent nutbag” when they got a call about some guy crying and humping one of the barrels outside McSorley’s on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.

It’s a fairly new campus, built on a former Air Force compound on the edge of the Badlands, about seventy miles northeast of Bismarck. The closest town is a little sprawl of twenty clapboard houses along with a pizza parlor/hair salon, a post office, and a Winnebago on concrete blocks that serves drinks on weekends. A lot of the original military buildings on campus are still standing. The library is underground, built inside the concrete husk of the old missile silo. When you check in with the Dean on your first day here, he points out his window  on the top floor of Spitznagel Hall down to a little tin shack behind the recycling bins.

“There’s the library,” he says proudly. He laughs when he sees the confused look on your face. “Oh, don’t worry, that’s just the stairs.”

You ask him why they put the library in a missile silo. “Why not use it for the cafeteria, or the gym?”

“Because students use the cafeteria and the gym,” he says, winking his eye like a singing cowboy.

You ask, “How many books does it have?”

“You know something, I don’t rightly know,” he says. “Haven’t made it all the way down there myself.” He sits back down and shows you a photograph of him shaking hands with both Hall and Oates at the same time.

When you go behind the recycling bins and open the rusty tin door to the shack, you see a short ladder leading down to a catwalk. The catwalk connects to stairs spiraling down the sides of the silo. When you stand at the top you can’t see the bottom, so in the right mood you picture yourself standing at the mouth of Hell. There are a few books at the bottom, along with the unisex bathroom, computer lab, and the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Club meeting room. There are plenty of surplus PCs in the computer lab but it’s not a great place to study, since most days the hockey team uses the stairs for conditioning and when they clatter up the metal helix of stairs in full equipment the noise reminds you of gladiators rushing up from the bowels of the coliseum into the sunlight. The school colors are black and brown; the mascot is the Fightin’ Butterchurn.

Editor’s Note: Author Tommy Zurhellen wrote this Dakota-themed short story while he was researching and working on Nazareth, North Dakota, his debut novel, now available for sale at the Atticus Books online store.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tommy Zurhellen, whose novel Nazareth, North Dakota is scheduled for a spring 2011 release, has been teaching creative writing at Marist College since 2004, and serves as director of the Marist Summer Writing Institute and the Writer-in-Residence program. He received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Alabama in 2002. His short works have been published in Quarterly West, Carolina Quarterly, Passages North, South Dakota Review,The MacGuffin, Crab Creek Review, Apalachee Review, River Oak Review, Red Mountain Review, Iconoclast, Coal City Review, and elsewhere. His website can tell you more.

Photo Source: ISEM

© 2011, Tommy Zurhellen. All rights reserved.

It wasn’t that the new guy wasn’t good or thorough or professional, but he looked like a high school student or maybe a cast member from Glee. He certainly didn’t shave. Was he even old enough to drink?

“Hey doc,” Pete asked, “are you old enough to drink yet?”

The doctor smiled. Jesus, was he wearing braces? No, thank God.

“I am not old enough to drink,” the doctor replied, “but I will be old enough to vote when Obama is up for re-election, so that’s cool.”

Cool. Pete said cool all the time, but were doctors supposed to say it?

“Okay, Pete,” the doctor said, pulling on a rubber glove, “you’re forty now, buddy, and I need to check that prostate.”

“Really, you couldn’t have given me warning before I got here?” Pete asked. “A post card maybe, or a text, how about a comment on my Facebook page, isn’t that how you guys communicate with each other?”

“Would you have come in?” the doctor asked.

“No,” Pete said, smiling to himself.

“There you go then,” the doctor said. “Now please bend over the examining table, and trust me, this is way worse for me than it is for you, but I took an oath, and I am going to uphold it.”

As Pete stood there, bent over, he wondered how it had all come to this? How he had ever decided to starting coming in for annual physicals, much less turned forty? He was tempted to say, “you using the whole fist, doc,” but figured the doctor was too young to get that reference.

“All done Pete, take a seat man,” the doctor said, pulling off the glove.

“Is that it?” Pete said, hopping back onto the examining table.

“One more thing,” the doctor said, sounding more serious, somber even.

“Yeah,” Pete said, “is everything alright, you look serious. Is this about my ED, because I would like to have that treated if I could. Maybe that nurse at the front desk could help me out?”

“Here’s the thing,” the doctor said, still serious and ignoring him, “you’re forty now…”

“You have to rub that in?” Pete said.

“Sorry, but you’re forty, and with your family history of cancer, especially your dad dying so young…” the doctor said.

Oh yeah, that’s why he was so focused on getting his annual physical: his dad never had been, motherfucker. Pete was happy not to think about his dad if he didn’t have to, and it’s not that his father had done anything wrong to Pete or anyone else, but he had died, and that sucked, so it was easier not to think about him at all.

“…anyway,” the doctor continued, “I hate to say this, I really do, but I want you to get a colonoscopy.”

“You know doc,” Pete said, “I think the prostate exam is all I can really handle today.”

“I know you’re young for it, but I’d feel better, and honestly, it’s not as bad as you think. The prep is the worst part by far.”

“Easy for you to say,” Pete replied.

“True that,” the doctor said, “here’s your prescription, for the solution you need to drink the night before.”

“Sweet,” Pete said.

“Live long and prosper,” the doctor said.

Pete gave him the Vulcan hand sign, though he had considered doing something else, and got on with his day.

Pete’s boys were watching Pokemon. His wife was talking on the phone. And he was slowly eating a coronation chicken salad sandwich from The 3rd Coast, savoring every bite, every raisin and pear, every spare drop of curry as he stared at the jug of solution on the table in front of him. It was foreboding, enormous, like one of the heads on Easter Island. But it would be fine, right?

His job was to drink the entire jug, cup by cup, every twenty minutes until it was gone. After that, gravity would take over.

Pete poured the first cup, gulped, closed his eyes, pinched his nose and chugged it. It tasted like vomit mixed with salt, brine, and a touch, a small touch, of cherry. He knew he could do this.

The twenty minutes between cups started to pass faster and faster and every cup went down harder and harder. His stomach was gurgling, but nothing was happening, not yet, and maybe not ever. Maybe he was the rare guy who was immune to the solution’s effects.

His wife put the kids to bed. He drank the last cup, victory, and nothing, no movement, no nothing. It reminded him of when he used to take hallucinogenic mushrooms. There would be the opening stretch when they didn’t seem to be working, but they were and at that point you had to sit back and try to prepare for a ride that was due to start any moment.

GURGLE.

What the fuck was that Pete thought? That was a much bigger gurgle than before. Pete ran to the bathroom, skidding on a Pickachu doll, sliding, almost falling and pulling at his pants, praying he wouldn’t have a problem getting them off.

Pete hit the seat and braced himself.

“Hey, you alright?” his wife shouted.

“When it’s time to go, it’s time to go,” Pete shouted back, repeating a line his father always said when comparing death to going to the bathroom. When exactly had he become his dad again?

An hour later Pete fell on the couch sweaty and exhausted; his wife moved over to the chair.

The next morning, still drained, Pete decided to walk over to the hospital. The air was refreshing and Pete started to believe that maybe he had been through the worst of it.

After Pete checked in, the receptionist, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen, handed him a space-age looking beeper like the ones they gave you at Cheesecake Factory and told him they would beep him when they were ready.

“Do you have any questions,” she then asked, dimples popping and chest swelling.

Pete looked at her low cut top and big smile. She looked more like a hostess than a medical professional. When had going to the hospital become like going to a chain restaurant? Is this where everything was heading, sameness, homogeneity and youth? Was this change? Was it an improvement? What was it?

The beeper suddenly went off in Pete’s lap. He walked to the door and another pre-pubescent extra from Gossip Girl guided him to the changing room.

“Just put on a robe, keep your shoes on, and then exit into the waiting room, alright sir?” she said, before adding, “unless there is anything else I can do for you?”

For a moment Pete wondered if she would be willing to join him in the changing room, his wife would give him a pass on a day he was facing his mortality, wouldn’t she? The he remembered the current state of his stomach, his age and the great likelihood that this woman wouldn’t have slept with him at any age.

“No thank you, I’m fine,” Pete said, walking into the changing room.

The waiting room had chairs lining the walls and one television mounted high in the air showing The View. The room was empty but for one older gentlemen in the corner reading The Economist. He was distinguished looking, classy, with his hair neatly combed to one side, tortoise shell glasses and beautiful loafers on his feet. He somehow even wore the ill-fitting hospital gown as if sitting in a spa.

He reminded Pete of his dad. Well, no, that wasn’t accurate, because while it occurred to Pete that had his dad lived, he would have been about the same age as this guy, his dad had not been this refined. Pete’s dad had grown up in New York City, the son of garmentos, and though they had been successful and his father had done well, he always came off as a hustler, looking to make a deal, and just so Jewish. Pete hated thinking that way, and his dad wouldn’t have been happy about it either; he couldn’t stand self-hating Jews.

And yet, with his wild hair, the ever-present trace of a Brooklyn accent, and the way he would buy two slices of bread in the cafeteria by his office and then take onions off of the salad bar and call it lunch, he had always been an embarrassment to Pete: no sophistication, and nothing to teach Pete about being a professional or a man.

But this guy, this classy, sophisticated dude across the room, he would have taught Pete some things, and maybe he still could. Pete wondered if he could draw him into a conversation, find something to bond over.

Pete looked back up at The View. They were discussing health care reform. His dad would have loved what Obama was trying to accomplish with health care reform and his efforts to support the middle-class and the poor. The greatest country in the world can’t take care of its most vulnerable, he would say, we should be ashamed.

His father would have been disappointed as well, though, in Obama for not going far enough with the banks, immigration, gay rights and the war, mad that he wasn’t pushing more, needling more and throwing his weight around.

Still, he never would have allowed anyone to criticize Obama either. He would have reminded people where we had been, that it was racism regardless of what you called it, and that racism undermined everything good, and potentially good, and that would never change.

Pete continued to watch The View as Elizabeth Hasselbeck started to rail on how health care reform was being shoved down American’s throats with little to no discussion and no room for legitimate dissension, the same Elizabeth Hasselbeck who would never have to worry about paying a bill, much less for health care.

Obama’s picture then flashed across the screen. Pete look at Obama and then at the older gentleman who had put down his magazine and was looking at Obama as well. Pete decided to say something, this was his chance, but the older gentleman spoke first.

“Well, they got what they wanted,” he said, sort of talking to himself, but not really, “they wanted a socialist government and they got it. They wanted a Nazi for a president and they got that too. Goddamn fascist.”

Pete didn’t know what to say, how do you respond to that?

“He’s trying to help people,” Pete finally said, “lots of people, it can’t be easy.”

“What’s next,” the guy said, “the Goddamn immigrants and then the banks? Just let it be, things are working fine.”

“Do you really think that?” Pete said.

“That’s right,” the guy replied. “Did you know he wasn’t even born in this country?”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Pete said.

“Don’t fall for it kid,” the guy said. “The blacks and Jews are trying to take over. The country is going to hell.”

Pete thought about how his dad would have punched this guy in the face, but how Pete couldn’t, wouldn’t do more than he had. Pete also thought about how ultimately he was a pale imitation of his father, and that life constantly had a way of reminding you of this no matter how much you liked to pretend otherwise.

For a moment, Pete wondered if he should say something else, anything, but the guy had already picked up his magazine again, leaving Pete to ponder not only his inadequacies, but his colonoscopy, something he was suddenly looking forward to and maybe even deserved.

Photo Source: Computer-App.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Tanzer is the author of the books Lucky Man, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine, Repetition Patterns and 99 Problems. He also oversees day-to-day operations of This Zine Will Change Your Life. He is currently watching SportsCenter, but upon his deathbed, will receive total consciousness, which is nice. Ben Tanzer’s third novel, You Can Make Him Like You will be released by Artistically Declined Press on April 12, 2011 and is currently available for preorder.

© 2011, Ben Tanzer. All rights reserved.

After all, cooking wasn’t the easiest thing to do in our house. Both of us hated dishes so the kitchen was always a mess. There were pots and pans stacked on the counters and plates in the sink. Some still had clumps of food stuck to them. I even had to rinse out a bowl to use. Somehow there were a couple of clean forks and knives in the drawer. I got some eggs from the fridge and went to work scrambling the yolks.

While I was tossing in some vanilla and cinnamon I heard this noise on the window. It was this chit-chit-chit sound. Real fast-like. It was freezing rain. By the looks of the street that ran out front of the house it’d been going awhile. The stoplight was shining off a layer of ice. A car drove by real slow before locking up and fishtailing. It spun almost halfway around before the driver got it corrected and went on his way.

From the other room I heard Cathy’s alarm go off. She groaned and shuffled into the shower. That week hadn’t been good to her. We were both finishing up school, her studying and me teaching, but she was in the thick of it and the stress had really started wearing on her.

The thing about Cathy and me was that whenever one of us got to feeling pressure, things started falling apart. The worse it got the more we picked at each other. An argument here, an argument there, until eventually we’d just have a knock-down drag-out and stop talking for a couple of days.

I remember this one time when the both of us had had some kind of trouble at work and the bills were piling up. We got to making smart comments and butting heads. It built up and built up and something ridiculous sent us over the edge. Something to do with me changing channels on the television and she was up and cussing me out and telling me she had a good mind to cut me.

Cut me? I said. What the hell’re you talking about?

She got right in my face and started chewing on her bottom lip. It was what she did when she got real upset. James, she said. I’ve had enough of your shit. You hear me?

There was a look on her face I’d never seen before.

All right, I said. All right.

She said, I mean it. I’ve never meant anything more in my life.

I know, I said.

Okay, she said. All right.

That night I couldn’t sleep for anything. I just kept tossing and turning. All I could think about was what she’d said.

Hey, I said, shaking her awake. Hey, hon.

What? I’m sleeping.

Hey, I said. You know earlier?

What about it? she said.

What you said about wanting to cut me?

Yeah.

About wanting to cut me?

Yeah.

You meant that? You really meant that?

Cathy took a deep breath and messed with her pillow. Yeah, she said. I did. If I’d had something to do it, she said, I would’ve.

That woke me up. Not just that night either. I mean, it really stayed with me. How could it not? Anytime we fought after that, if it got heated or whatever, I’d think about what she’d said and start apologizing real fast, saying I’m sorry and trying to hold her close. You can’t deal with that, after all. You can’t be looking over your shoulder and sleeping with an eye open every night.

So that’s what we were up against, all that stuff piling up and the two of us nearing something awful and permanent. And there I was dipping some slices of bread in the egg and putting them in a pan on the burner. French toast was her favorite and I was hoping she’d see I was trying and maybe we’d get things back on track.

Cathy walked into the kitchen, dressed in a sweater and jeans and drying her hair with a towel. “Making breakfast?” she said.

“Trying,” I said, and grabbed a spatula to turn the toast. It was getting some good coloring on it.

“Today’s gonna be a rough one,” she said.

I said, “I bet” and turned on the coffeemaker.

“Is it snowing out?” she said, straining to look out the window behind me.

“Freezing rain. Looks real slick.”

“That’s just what I need,” she said. “I mean, I really want to go and flunk this class and break my arm on the way out.”

I laughed and checked the toast. It was just about done so I sprinkled some more cinnamon on top and turned the burner down.

“I had awful dreams last night,” she said. She had that towel in her hands. She was squeezing it and balling it up before she let go and it fell to the floor. “I mean, they were terrible.”

“Huh,” I said. I got the toast out of the pan onto one of the few clean plates. From the cabinet I grabbed a bottle of syrup and carried all of it over to the table and laid it out for her.

“Did you hear me?” she said. “Did you hear what I said or do you not care about my dreams?”

I said “What?” and poured a couple cups of coffee.

“You never ask about my dreams,” she said. “I don’t think you give a damn what I dream about.”

“Sure I do,” I said. I handed her a cup and a fork and knife. “Eat,” I said. “Eat and tell me about these dreams.”

“You don’t want to hear about ‘em. It’s fine. It’s no big deal. You don’t have to worry about what I’m dreaming.”

I said “Honey” and smiled. “I want you to eat and tell me everything you dreamed about last night.”

“You don’t have to say that,” she said. “I know you’re being nice and it’s appreciated. I really appreciate it. You need to know that.”

“I mean it,” I said.

“All right,” she said. She sliced into the toast and drug it through a puddle of syrup. “You don’t have to listen if you don’t want to.” She took a bite and smiled. “This is real good. Really good.”

“All right,” I said. “Now, what about this dream?”

“Well,” she said. “It was one of those where it feels like real life. Like you’re really there and you don’t know any better. You ever have those?”

“Sometimes,” I said. The freezing rain was starting to really come down outside.

“Anyway, it was one of those. It was so real to me. I can’t get over that, how real it was. I could smell it and feel it. Everything.”

“Okay,” I said. I was listening but still watching the sleet. It’d picked up to the point where you could hardly see anything for it.

Cathy said, “Are you listening?”

“Sure,” I said. “I was looking at the sleet. That’s all. Please, keep talking.”

Cathy sighed and took another bite of her toast. “So I was in my old high school and I knew there was this test I had to take, but I couldn’t remember where the room was. For the life of me I couldn’t remember.”

I said “Wow.”

“Yeah, exactly. You said it. You really said it. And I went to get a schedule out of my locker, but I didn’t know the combination.”

“What’d you do?” I said.

“I went from door to door but I never found the room. I got so upset I started crying. I could feel the tears rolling down my face. I could really feel them.”

I finished my coffee and rinsed it out. Then I scrubbed the pan I’d used. “Is that it?” I said.

“No,” she said. “That’s not it. That’s not even close to it. If that was it I would’ve said that was it. I got all the way home and none of the lights would work. I kept flipping the switch but it didn’t matter. I was in the dark and it was the scariest thing ever. It didn’t feel like home. It didn’t feel safe.”

I said, “Huh.”

“Then, all of a sudden, they all came on. Every light in the house. And do you know what I saw?”

“What’s that?” I said. “What’d you see?”

She set her fork down on the plate. Her eyes narrowed the way they do whenever I’ve done something to really piss her off. “You,” she said. “I saw you sitting in your chair. You were there the whole time.”

I didn’t know what to say so I kept scrubbing.

“I asked you why you didn’t help me and you didn’t say anything. Nothing.”

When I finished with the pan I turned around to say something, but I couldn’t. Cathy was sitting there at the table with her plate of half-eaten toast in front of her. She looked like she was about to cry, just like she did in that dream, but what really got me, what really got my attention, was the knife in her hand. She was gripping it for all she was worth. Gripping it so hard her knuckles went white.

“Why would you do that?” she said. “Why would you just sit there and not say anything?”

I thought about it a second. I mean, I really stood there awhile and wondered why I might’ve done something like that. I thought about it and looked at that knife in her hand. I said I didn’t know.

Cathy didn’t really say anything after that. She put her knife and fork and dish in the sink with my cup and the pan and all the other dishes and went into the other room to get her shoes and coat. I watched her tie her laces and button her buttons. She stole one last look in a mirror on the wall and went outside to get the car ready.

I stood at the sink and washed our dishes. When I got done with those I started in on the ones that’d been there awhile. From where I was standing I could see Cathy scraping and beating ice off the car. It was so thick she had to hit it with the butt of the scraper. Her hair kept falling down in her face and then she’d have to stop, take a breath, and tuck it back behind her ears, only to have it fall all over again. It took her awhile to clean the windshield, but she got through. When she finished she got in and backed down the drive.

When I was done with the dishes it was about time to take off, so I got my coat and gloves and shut off all the lights. The sun hadn’t started coming up yet and it was so dark in there I could hardly see to get to the door. I tripped over the couch and a pile of clothes. Outside I breathed the cold into my lungs. I had about a half a mile walk to the school and needed to get used to it. I stepped out onto the drive and tried to find my footing on the ice. It was everywhere, on the houses, the power lines, the street signs. A layer of it coated everything. It was even on the trees, and when the wind blew through them the limbs and branches groaned. They groaned and cried until they were just about ready to break.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jared Yates Sexton lives in Indiana and teaches writing at Ball State University. He is a contributing editor at BULL and his short story collection, Just Listen, was recently a finalist for the New American Fiction Prize.

Photo Sources:
French Toast, jdfoods.net
Ice Storm, Senator Blogstetter

© 2011, Jared Yates Sexton. All rights reserved.