Reese Dains

Arrival 

Two battered wipers swished over the yellowed windshield, splattering rain onto cracked asphalt in heavy sheets. The steering wheel thrummed under my fingertips as Ol’ Rusty rumbled down a desolate stretch of road, dim headlights barely illuminating the interstate. Even in the cab with heat blasting, every breath turned to fog. Although I wore the winter jacket my daughter had sent a few years back, the cold made my stomach turn. They usually stayed away in weather like that. 

I was alone out in the rainstorm, coming home after a month on the rig and clenching an unlit Newport between my teeth. The radio wailed static; this was gonna be a long ride. Halfway home, I stopped at a gas station, hoping the rain would clear up. 

The cashier’s name was Carla, written out on a silver tag in blue-black calligraphy. She was young, maybe twenty-five, and probably from the next town over: North Creek, about forty miles out. As she scanned my things, I speculated. 

Maybe the pay is good? Maybe She has a kid at home? Maybe she’s desperate? Maybe she’s alone. Maybe anything.

Carla smiled as she printed my receipt—two packs of Newports, a Slim Jim, and sixty dollars on pump eight. After I had paid, I went and lit up on the curb, hiding from the rain beneath an awning. Car was full, and my jacket was thin, but I didn't want to keep driving. I just wanted to sit out in the cold and smoke. 

I did a lot of smoking. When I first saw them, I had been lying on the softball field, high off my rocker. I thought it had been a hallucination, which had happened before, but it was real. The cops didn't believe me, but it was real. I was just the only one who could see them. That didn't make it any less real. 

Parents made me see a therapist after that. Therapist thought I had a problem—what a load of bullshit. I still wonder about him. My high school therapist. His job must have been hard. He must've hated looking at kids and thinking they were just starting up on that slow trajectory to madness. He was probably already feeling it burning in the back of his mind.

And I was thinking about the therapist and about Carla, a girl whose story I had already made up in my head. And I was thinking they might never show up for her. Or maybe the cold would be enough to keep them at bay. Or maybe nothing would ever be enough.

And that’s when I saw them, because they came. They always came.

Two of them, circling in the sky like stars. They shined about half as bright, but the light was a vibrant red, so you knew they were there. You knew they weren't just stars. They seemed to orbit each other with some gravity that was different from the known. The whole scene—the lights, the rain, the orbit—seemed special. 

Fuckers.

Part of me wanted to just start driving, but it was better to wait it out. They got angry when I didn't stay to watch, and last time they’d been angry, I’d had to replace Rusty’s whole engine. 

I lit another smoke, this time from the safety of my truck, and watched quietly as they circled closer to each other, falling nearer and nearer to the ground. I had theorized once—back in my theory days—that they needed a partner to perform the lift. After all, people weighed a lot. Less after the arrival, but still a lot. I figured maybe the extra weight and the force of gravity was too much for one of them to handle alone.

The whole thing took maybe twenty minutes, which seemed like a long time. For them, time passed differently. For them, it must’ve only been a couple passing instances. 

They collided in sparks above the dim parking lot, and the world raged in a sudden pound of wind. Rain shrieked through the air, striking against Rusty’s ruby body with intentional violence. From across the concrete, Carla emerged from the station, fearfully clutching her coat in the storm. And she looked right at me, crying out the way they always did. And I didn't say anything, just watched her face contort in pain from the heated cab of my truck.

And then she was gone. Inhale, exhale. They took her particles with them, but her smell hung amplified in the air long after they had vanished. The smoke made the smell go away, so I lit another Newport, and another. And another. 

Rusty’s radio was playing this shitty song about love, and I thought I would never love because I was toxic and she would never love because she had disappeared. 

When her smell had dispersed, I went back into the gas station and yanked the keys from behind the register. She was smart not to bring them. Smart for me; sometimes, the responsible type would bring the key with them, and I would have to pick the lock.  

In the control room, I took the fire hatchet to the monitor system. Smoke poured. Alarms wailed. Cameras all defaulted to black as Ol’ Rusty and I wheezed down the road. 

Maybe she’ll wake up in a field tomorrow. Maybe she’ll be okay. Maybe they’ll come for her every month. Maybe they’ll never come for her.

Maybe there will be no one to come for.

It was best not to think about this. This, most viable explanation. 

The following month, there was a new cashier at the register. He grinned as I walked in, telling me about all the new deals they had. Hot dog and drink combo, only two bucks. As he took my cash—nothing traceable—I looked up to see Carla’s name removed from the staff registry. 

“Can I get two, actually?” He replied with a ‘sure thing,’ and added another combo to my bill. It seemed like the least I could do. 

Usually, I didn't hit the same place twice, but I was irritated that day. There wasn't a reason for it. Things had been good that month. Big promotion at work. Food was better than usual. But the irritation throbbed in my mind all the same.

As I sat on the curb of the gas station, watching the sky, I had to smoke twice as many Newports to keep the edge off, and it seemed like a while before I saw red. 

But they came. They always came. 

Reese Dains is an avid fan of science fiction, theater, and horchata tea. Currently, she's studying Computer Science in New York City. You can find more short fiction and poetry on her Instagram, @rhiannadains.

Deron Eckert

What Was Left Unsaid

“What the hell is all this?” I ask, knowing he’s not going to answer since we held his funeral last week. I should’ve got over here sooner, like the real estate agent wanted, but it’s been a lot. I’m talking about dealing with the estate, bills, and endless paperwork and calls not the death itself. We hadn’t been on the best of terms since I heard him argue with Mom and say, “I wish to God we never had him.” I was “him,” and I was five.

I’d call him up on his birthday, and occasionally on Christmas, and talk for a few minutes before making an excuse to get off the phone. I wouldn’t have even done that if Mom didn’t insist. I’d do anything for Mom, but once the cancer finally caught up with her, I didn’t have any incentive to keep calling. I wish I could now just so I could tell him off for leaving me with this mess.

I’ve never been in this house. After the divorce, Dad got to keep all the junk Mom always made him throw away. He must’ve thought it was a silent protest against her because I can’t imagine any other reason he’d want to keep stacks of the local paper, the one that publishes weekly. “You must have thirty years of this shit, you bastard,” I say to his ghost, thumbing through the faded rags until I see the time Clinton rolled into town. I remember Mom setting up chairs on 15, so we could welcome his motorcade into town with smiles and waves that he likely ignored behind his tinted glass.

Dad would’ve been living in one of his apartments by then. I reluctantly visited the first a couple of times and stayed on the single bed in the empty room that I was told was mine. I don’t think I ever spent a whole night there. I wouldn’t cry in front of him. Instead, I’d wait until he went to sleep, sneak out to the living room, and call Mom. She’d put me in the car before she’d go back in to tell Dad that I was homesick. It was harder for him to refuse when he could see me pretending to be fast asleep in Mom’s backseat. I don’t remember how many times we repeated this charade before he got the message and left me alone, but I know I never saw his second apartment or his third.

I hope he bought the La-Z-Boy Mom never would let him have before he moved into this house. I’m about the same age now as he was when he moved out, and I’d like to think he struggled getting this monstrosity down three flights of stairs, like I am with these three steps. I have no doubt that someone will pick it up off the curb before I finish clearing this place out. Bad taste never goes out of style, and Dad was a connoisseur of it.

“See you never grew up, Peter Pan,” I say, as I throw away shelves of movie memorabilia, action figures, and comic boxes. I half-ass flip trough the long boxes to make sure he didn’t leave anything worth a damn behind, knowing he would’ve sold off anything that would’ve bought at least a pint of just-right whisky, the stuff that’s okay enough to drink alone but not something you’d leave sitting out for people to see. Not that Dad was a social butterfly.

The folding table in the living room still had his and his buddies’ cards, cigarette buds, and empty beer cans on it before I carried it out, not bothering to push the legs in. But other than those idiots he played poker with every week or so, I don’t think anyone else has been in here since Lucy left him. No use in me trying to guess how long ago that must’ve been because I refused to meet my stepmom. “Must’ve pissed her off something good because she didn’t even come to your funeral,” I say with a smirk, as I dump the bedside drawer full of underwear she must’ve left behind in the rush to get away from him.

“What pisses me off the most is that Mom would’ve been front and center at the damn thing, even after you left her. You had woman after woman, and she never dated a soul. Said all she needed was me. I remember at least a dozen times that we had to rush out of a restaurant because you came in with one of them on your arm and that shit-eating grin on your face, like you were anything more than a free meal.

You even had the nerve to bring one to my pool party at the Pavilion. Probably didn’t even notice Mom stayed in the restroom until you left, which thankfully didn’t take long. You were always good at that. Even now, you went and died before I could tell you what a right piece of shit you were. See all these pictures of your mom and dad and sister? They’re going straight in the trash with everything else that could remind this world that you ever existed,” I say, as I slide frame after frame off the bedroom dresser into a thick garbage bag until I stop on the one closest to Dad’s side of the bed that holds the photograph of the day he taught me how to swim. It’s the happiest my father and I have ever looked. I was six.

Deron Eckert is a writer and attorney who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His writing has been published in Sky Island Journal. He is currently seeking publication for his Southern Gothic, coming-of-age novel, which explores how personal experiences change our preconceived notions of right and wrong.

Eli S. Evans

Two Adornos

The name painted in black letters on the red mailbox was Adorno; but whereas Theodor Adorno, who invented the influential philosophical procedure known as critical theory in an effort to adapt Marx’s analysis of the commodity to the cultural and economic conditions of late capitalism and the so-called “culture industry, was a German-Jewish émigré who died of a heart attack in Switzerland in 1969, Gregory Adorno, who lived alone in the tumbledown house at the other end of the gravel driveway and had scrawled his name on the mailbox himself in leftover autobody paint, worked as a security guard patrolling the grounds of the nearby paper plant (which had been out of business for at least a decade, but someone still had to keep the window-breakers and other mischief-makers off the property) and tossed back Buds at Jack’s Red, White, and Brew on Route 5 every Friday and Saturday night. The locals, needless to say, were well-aware of the difference between their Adorno (alive) and the other (not), but from time to time some desperate Ph.D. student from out of town would show up at Gregory’s door, greasy-haired with bloodshot eyes and a satchel of overdue library books slung over one shoulder, begging him to please, please, please help them understand critical theory before their upcoming qualifying exams.

“Honestly, I don’t know a thing about it,” Gregory would have to confess.

As a security guard, on the other hand, he knew quite a bit about how to wield a Billy Club, something several of the students who visited him subsequently discovered was at least as useful, when it came to passing their exams, as the ability to analyze the portrayal of the mechanization of leisure time and the mass production of consumer desire in Siegfried Kracauer’s Georg.

Eli S. Evans has been littering the internet with his work for twenty years. A small book of small stories, Obscure & Irregular, can be purchased via Moon Rabbit Books & Ephemera, and a larger book of even smaller stories will be forthcoming from the same just in time for the holidays (though at this point, we're not sure which holidays). He'd also like to do a chapbook or small book consisting entirely of stories in which someone is run over by a truck, so if you dabble in printed matter and would like to collaborate, get in touch at elisevans@gmail.com.

J. Fisher

coleslaw

the violence had gotten obscene. So we did what we always would; we went shopping. Arkansas in the summer is akin to resting upon the face of the sun, so atop the 64 Lincoln’s sub-mental idea of air conditioning my mom opened the windows. We took in the swamp air, and filled the cabin with the odor of good dope and silliness.

The grocery store was a cavalcade of choice. I put boxes of sweet corn sugar cereal into the pit that I had no intention of eating.

When full, we attempted to put our time in against the check out counter. In her usual rage, my mom had no time to stand. The idiocy of attending was too much for her.

We ducked the line, rolled the cart out of the store, and filled the cavernous trunk with our ill-gotten booty.

As the road rolled under out magnificent wheels, she took the time away from her fuming cigarette to put her long, thin fingers over mine and tell me “I love you”.

They say narcissists have no capacity for love.

I would tell them

Try it.

J. Fisher has been working and publishing for the last 20 years under a host of noms de plume. In that time they have had works circulating from Balzac to Berlin. They have published 3 formal poetry collections on the Frontenac House label (Death Day Erection, bulletin from the low-light, and iii).

Amy Marques

My Father’s Burgundy Pajamas

The first time I saw my father in pajamas was that time he didn’t die.

My father always dressed properly: undershirt and button-down neatly tucked into belted pants that were expertly hemmed and ironed.

He was wary of public spaces where people wore skin-revealing clothing, hearts on their sleeves. And he rarely acknowledged bodily functions—even sleep. He apologized for sneezing and was mortified when his nose ran. I don’t think he would have survived a public fart.

That one time he didn’t die was when his own father passed. After weeks of sleepless nights in a sickroom, unwilling to call his boss and acknowledge a death in the family, he decided to postpone grief and drive to his quotidian meeting.

He never made it to work.

He fell asleep at the wheel and awoke by the wrong side of a country road. He had no recollection of crashing or even climbing out of a car so smashed nobody could find an unmiraculous explanation for how he made it out alive, let alone unharmed.

A week later, I saw him in a pasture talking to a cowhand while wearing burgundy cotton pajamas. I wondered if he’d hit his head. Maybe the crash had dislodged his personality.

When I find myself cinching belts and tucking away unconventional aspirations, I remember what he said in response to my cautious inquiry as I examined pupils that showed no sign of abnormality: Life is too often wasted on the living.

That’s what he said, his burgundy cotton pajamas sticking out like a giant misplaced flower in a green field, that one time he didn’t die.

Amy Marques grew up between languages and cultures and learned, from an early age, the multiplicity of narratives. She penned three children’s books, barely read medical papers, and numerous letters before turning to short fiction. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in anthologies and journals including Star82 Review, Jellyfish Review, MoonPark Review, Flying South, Streetcake: Experimental Writing Magazine, and Sky Island Journal. You can find her at @amybookwhisper1 or read more of her words at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com.

Susan Eve Haar

MEMORIAL DRIVE

The bad boys roam free. We don’t know where they live; we’re not even curious. But then again, we’re not even curious about each other. We are the faculty brats. We live in a small neighborhood on the wrong side of town, an island of modest houses owned by the university. We share a yard, an expanse of grass that’s worn in spots. In the summer there’s a smattering of dandelions. Women come and gather the jagged leaves; they are edible to others.

The map of my world is small, bounded by the red brick houses that surround the yard. Our home faces away from Memorial Drive with its river of cars that cast shadows into our rooms at night. Beyond that is the real river, the Charles, where carp glitter and die, smothered by pollution, rotting in the weeds.

Across the lawn, the row of houses walls us off from the bad boys’ territory. A tumbled-down trellis marks the end of our domain. Beyond is the wreckage of a demolished factory. Smashed cement, rods of iron rusted and twisted, girders broken and dangerous. There is a driveway, upheavals of broken blacktop. Many interesting things can be found in the grass: bicycle chains and small, deflated balloons that swing when you pick them up. But we stay away. We do not cross the line. We know who they are.

****

It is summer, the first summer that my mother makes me wear a shirt. It is very unfair; I miss my skin. I am six. I have begun to read. I read with a flashlight under the sheets after lights-out. In the day I am supposed to play outside. Sometimes I do. I have a special place where I keep saltines, where I read and watch. It’s a hollow I’ve found in the lilacs, a purple perfumed cave. I am invisible in there.

My brother is four years older than me. I wear his too small jeans. We share a bathroom, but we live adjacent lives, except for the occasional violence or the forced intimacy of carpool. I read and eat blintzes. My brother collects switchblades and slender stilettos, stamps, and broken stones. He has a scimitar on the wall, brought to him by a foolish uncle.

There are other children in the other houses. The six Solamita kids live in the house across the way. Most of them are little; still, they are interesting. Theresa, the second oldest, bangs her head on the refrigerator, and there is always a baby crying. I like it there. I go to Saint Joseph’s with them for the smoky incense, the wonder of stained glass windows, and the chanting of Latin. I yearn to belong. I promise to take Communion when my grandparents die.

We are a disparate crew, the faculty brats. Our households are mysterious, we don’t play together much, and our parents don’t talk. But if we band together, we can fight the bad boys, push them back from their incursions into our territory. The bad boys don’t have names; they come in a pack. They want something we have, something we are. We are different tribes, and they will hurt us if they can.

****

It is June. I am outside mixing clay on my little metal table. It is white enamel and there’s a shepherdess decal in the corner. The shepherdess wears a long white dress with a red sash, and she holds a golden crook. The sheep are worn away; still, I know that she is Mary.

The clay is gooey. It oozes between my fingers and collects under my fingernails in dark crescents. Someone has taught me how to knead clay. I push it forward with the heels of my hands. It makes a ramshorn shape. Then I scoop it up and smack it back down.

When the clay is thick enough, I make a bird nest. I rub dry grass into the clay, and I punch out an indent with my fist. Next, I pinch up the sides and pat the surfaces with dirt. When the nest is dry, I wire it to a branch of the thorn tree that spreads in our yard and wait for the birds.

I investigate insects. Grasshoppers leave brown spittle on my fingers. Some things sting. Caterpillars have hairy spikes. Best of all I like the roly-poly bugs, the way the tiny feet disappear into a hard little ball. I hold it in the pit of my palm and examine it, the way the little plates, lapped together, shine.

There are hedges of butterfly bushes in back of our house. Hot in the sun, the white flowers flavor the air with an ashy fragrance. Butterflies with spotted white wings dot the bushes in surprising abundance. I am a hunter; I catch them in my green mesh butterfly net and store them in glass milk bottles. I give them leaves to eat, but usually they die. And it is there, behind the butterfly bushes, that the bad boys like to hide. If I see them, I run away.

****

I am in my cave eating saltines. My brother is elsewhere, perhaps upstairs with his collections, and the neighborhood kids with whom we share the yard, well, I don’t know. All is copacetic, peaceful in my bower of green. And then I see them, the bad boys, behind the hedge. There are five of them. They are here.

When the stones begin to fly, our neighborhood boys mysteriously appear. My brother is there. The girls—me and Nina Solamita and Andrea—race to gather rocks. We scrabble around, digging. The earth is hard. We use pointed sticks and our nails. We run to make piles of ammunition for our boys.

My brother is the oldest. He has a wicked throwing arm, and he aims to injure. But even he is surprised when, just minutes into the fight, one of the bad boys cries out. He staggers into the clearing of the common yard. His hand is pressed against his scalp above his forehead. One eye is clenched shut against the blood that spills down his face. He is crying. We stare. The bad boys emerge. They stare too. Then they scatter and run, kicking up clods of earth. They leave him, wounded.

Adults are summoned. Curiously, no one cares. My mother offers the boy a dish towel, but he turns and runs away, his hand still on his head. “Scalp wound,” she says. She suggests to my brother that he might apologize, and then she’s gone. Soon it will be time for dinner.

****

At the foot of the trellis, I squat. This is where I hunt roly-poly bugs. The structure is draped with honeysuckle vines. I pinch off the bottoms, white bruising to ivory, and suck out the nectar. I am drunk on the smell of the flowers. I don’t notice that I’m on the wrong side. I don’t see the bad boys, but they are here.

There’s a clump of them, five. The biggest one eyes me. He pushes out his pelvis. His thumbs are stuck through the belt loops of his jeans. Though he has the kind of haircut you get from a bowl over the head, there is nothing funny about him. I hunker down, trying to stay small.

The boy looks at me. He squints. He is thinking. The other boys are waiting. They are watching him, not me. He is the chief. Although he is not the biggest, I can tell he is in charge.

“Bring me something,” he says to me. It is a demand for fealty. “If you bring me something, you can stay.” Suddenly, I am desperate to be there. To watch. Something is going to happen; I can tell. I need to see what the bad boys do.

I run. Our house isn’t far, though with its dark interior and Danish Modern furniture it is a world away. I choose a dinosaur, a memento from the Museum of Natural History, cast metal with a scalloped spine. I run back, holding it out on my palm, proffering it. The boy takes it, rolling it in his hand, feeling the weight of it.

“OK,” he says, and he puts it in his pocket. The boys arrayed around him wait. One picks his nose, rubbing his hand on his shorts. They are a raggedy crew; they are actually dirty. But then so am I.

“What,” he says then, looking around. It is a statement. One of the boys crouches down. He has ashy blond hair, and he’s wearing a red Celtics T-shirt. The chief squats down too. He looks at the boy. It’s as if they are in a separate room. The other boys are peeking in, watching. I am watching too.

“I had pneumonia,” the red-shirt boy says. “Look.” He pulls up the leg of his jeans to the knee. “My skin is all in squares.” He points. I can’t see the squares. The chief nods. “And since then,” the boy adds, “my penis hurts.” He unzips his fly. He’s still squatting, but he gets it out. The chief looks at it. We all look at it. It’s hiding in a little hood.

“It hurts,” the boy repeats. He’s holding his limp penis in his hand. He closes his hand, wrapping it in his fingers. The chief gets up. He walks over to a tree. He pulls down a branch and plucks off a leaf. When he comes back the red-shirt boy hasn’t moved. Leaning down, the chief pulls the boy to his feet. Jutting out his chin, he indicates the boy’s penis swaddled in his fingers. The boy takes his hand away. The penis hangs over the tongue of the zipper. With care the chief wraps the leaf around it.

“Keep it on overnight.” He looks at the boy directly. “In the morning, it’ll be OK.”

That seems to be it. The boy pulls his zipper up, careful not to disturb the leaf. He wanders off. I watch as the other boys scatter, kicking at the rubble and pushing each other. It was a magic, I know that, but not a good magic. I feel a sudden pity for them, all those boys, as I do for my brother. And something I will later recognize as compassion. I touch my T-shirt; the fabric rasps my skin. I couldn’t be more pleased that I’m a girl.

Susan Eve Haar is a writer and playwright living in New York City. Her essays and short stories have been published in CRAFT, North Dakota Quarterly, Pembroke Magazine, and other places. She is the winner of the 2021 Kallisto Press Chester B Himes Memorial Short Fiction Prize, and twice nominated for a Pushcart prize. Her plays have been published in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2020 and 2018, Monologues for Headspace Theatre: Radical Thinking Inside a Box 2019, and The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2018 all published by Smith & Kraus. Her work has been produced at a variety of venues including Primary Stages, Women’s Project Theater, and the Edinburgh Festival. She is the recipient of a Sloan Foundation commission. www.susanevehaar.com.