Category: Issues

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The Icicle

 

I’m walking down Michigan Ave, backpack on, face freezing and being rearranged by the wind. I notice a WATCH OUT FOR FALLING ICE sign on my right just as soon as I slip on a patch of it. It knocks me flat on my back, folders and notebooks doing nothing to ease the pain. In a daze, I lay for a second to regain my senses before standing. In that moment, an icicle falls, tip pointed, and drills perfectly into my right forearm.

It doesn’t bleed. I don’t scream. A young businessman on the street calls 911 as soon as I’m struck; paramedics arrive a few minutes later. The ambulance takes me to the hospital, wherein the doctors tell me they’ll just have to wait for it to melt. I’m expecting them to bring out a blow-dryer, a heating pad, something to melt this ice in my arm. Instead, they send me on my way, tell me to come back once it’s melted and not a moment sooner.

Days pass with the ice in my arm, and it just won’t melt. Not even a drip. The weather warms slightly, the snow and ice on the ground slink away into sewer grates, but the chunk in me won’t follow suit. It’s begun to weigh me down, shoulders tilting, spine curving, as I try to keep balanced.

One morning, I startle awake. The ice is different, a darker shade. I reach for my glasses, arm pulsing with every movement. Holding it up, inches from my face, I see veins forming inside the icicle. Blood is coursing through it, twisting and twining just as easily as in my own body. It’s become a part of me.

 

“What seems to be the problem?” Dr. Nygard asks as he steps into his office, the same one I’ve already been waiting in for twenty minutes. I grip my wrist, careful not to touch the icicle, and lift my arm as much as I can, bugging my eyes at him until he says, “Oh, I see.”

“What am I supposed to do?” He’s looking over my chart in his hands as if there could be anything of use now. The last time I was here, I was nine and had a hernia, not exactly the most pertinent information.

He says nothing for a moment, slips the glasses hanging from his chain onto the bridge of his nose, and wheels his chair closer. Uncomfortably close. His right knee slides between my legs, and he leans down until the tip of his nose breathes rings onto the ice. He smells faintly of bleach and mint, as if he was cleaning his lab coat while he blew bubbles of Winterfresh; it makes my stomach twist.

“Do you mind?” I ask. He tilts his head up until our eyes meet. A single eyebrow raises before he’s back down examining the ice.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s like it’s adapted to your body. How curious. . . .” He trails off as he runs a finger along its length, from where it intersects with my arm up to its rounded end; the touch sends a shiver down my spine. The blood responds to his finger, rushing toward that side of the icicle, hungry for affection and attention. He removes his hand and the flow returns to normal.

He raises his pointer finger and taps the top of the ice, angering it. The blood rattles inside. The entire icicle twitches and shakes my arm. My vision blurs, head grows hot, a migraine sets in immediately. My other arm involuntarily swings and concaves his cheek, knocks him clean off his chair.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t—” I’m up and extending my left hand, knuckles throbbing, but so dazed it doesn’t matter. I feel like I’ve just been punched.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” He scrambles back on his elbows, head knocking into his desk as I tower over him.

“I don’t know what hap—”

“Get out. Please.” He’s pawing at his nose, blood tie-dying the front of his fresh whites and running into the crevices of his hands. “Get help. Other help.”

“I’m sorry.” I repeat as I leave, closing the door behind me. There’s shouting from inside, cursing and anger and pain. I rush out of the professional wing, down long narrow hallways of harsh light, and into the bustle of the hospital. I maneuver toward the exit, weaving through packs of doctors and nurses, pushing past patients on gurneys. I trip over a woman in a wheelchair, crash to the ground, icicle arm first, and slide to a stop next to the door. The pain vibrates through my body, spirals up and down every part of me. My vision goes spotted and sparkling.

When the pain eases and I can see again, I realize no one’s noticed me. No one even seems to care that I tripped and fell, let alone that there’s an icicle the size of a Pringles can stuck in my arm. I brush myself off, careful not to touch it, and limp out without so much as an “Are you okay?”.

 

When I get home, there’s a wet patch on the top of my pant leg. The icicle drips but is the same size as it had been, melting but not melting. Now, I can feel it there, icing my blood the slightest bit, pushing itself out to my veins just as swift as it drew my blood in.

It tugs my arm across my body, over toward my left, ice tip pointed at my bruised knuckles. It freezes them until they’re numb, unable to feel the pain. My blood inside of it pushes up against the outer edge, rushing to feel the warmth of touch. I can see it snaking through the tiny tunnels of veins, rerouting as if lost in a maze and choosing a new path. The cooling feels nice, calm. Like all those times my mom brought me an ice pack as a kid. It’s involuntary on my part, the icicle controls my arm and makes the healing so, but it’s just as personal and sincere. There’s a moment where I’m almost happy to have it there. Almost.

 

Two weeks now that I’ve been stuck with this icicle. It’s made my daily life a hassle in every way possible. The boiling hot showers I normally take have turned icy, cold enough to keep the icicle happy and turn every part of my body as frigid as it is. I’ve stretched out all the right sleeves of my jackets; each looks like a bell bottom pant leg now while the left sleeves are still fitted. It makes me look ridiculous. I’ve shattered my phone screen, not enough feeling in my right hand to hold it without dropping. I’ve had to essentially become left-handed; writing pen to paper has been avoided at all costs.

Yesterday, I spent hours testing out ways to get rid of it, but I felt so lightheaded every few minutes, I had to lie down. It was like all the blood had left my body, been taken in by that leech on my arm. The more I try to get rid of it, the more it steals from me, holds for safekeeping in its veins.

A list of methods I employed to melt and/or destroy the icicle: held my arm in the oven (didn’t work, burned my fingertips on the back of it), touched a hot pan to the ice (felt like what I imagine getting struck by lightning feels like, immediately dropped said pan, burned and bruised my foot pretty badly), smashed the ice into the edge of the counter (ended up smashing my fingers that were gripping it instead, quite painful, wouldn’t recommend), and finally, poured boiling water over it (which, you guessed it, burned my entire forearm instead).

Every time things went south, however, it would pull my arm toward whatever was hurting and ice it over. Cool the burning flesh and draw the pain away. It somehow even numbed my fingers and arm even without touching them directly. It was like it knew how irritating it was being, couldn’t help but fuck with me until it felt my horrible gut-wrenching pain, then wanted nothing but to make me better. I went to bed after that last attempt ended in boiling my arm; the icicle was full of blood as it had been and it pulled itself in tight to my chest as I drifted off. A hot, heavy weight that comforted and disgusted me at the same time.

This morning, however, I wake up late. Rush into another cold shower and make my way to class. Stay busy typing my notes during the lecture and discussing Freud’s psychosexual theories after. No one notices the icicle, covered by my stretched-out jacket sleeve. After class, I head home. Walk through my door, drop my backpack on my bed, and go to make lunch, after which I notice a little trail of water leading through my apartment. I look at the icicle for the first time today, and it’s considerably smaller than before, more ice than flesh. There are points where it’s completely see-through, little pockets of crystal clear between the red and the fogged frost.

“What the hell?” I absentmindedly say, and as soon as the words have left my mouth, it starts to fill again. I watch as it sucks my blood like a big straw, drawing it in ounce by ounce. My fingers get colder as I flex them, trying to maintain blood flow to them, but it’s impossible. It stops after a minute or so, feels like how it had before.

The most curious thing: the trail of water has disappeared. After checking the floor, down on all fours with my cheek resting on the cool hardwood, I check the icicle and its regained its size, shape, all of it. It’s like this never happened, save for a tiny crack running down the bottom end, stemming from the base of my arm where it sticks out.

The next day, I try to ignore the icicle as much as possible, but it seems like everyone else has suddenly taken notice and won’t shut up about “that thing in my arm.” I can’t figure out what’s different, why everyone is suddenly so concerned. The barista at Starbucks wants to take a picture with me, The Ice Man, like I’m some fucking superhero.

“You can’t touch it.”

“C’mon, man. Just let me hold it.”

“No. One picture if you stay on my left side.” 

“Oh my god, lemme try and pull it out. Some The Sword in the Stone shit. Please?” He mimics the motion and laughs at his own joke, pulling the straw out of his drink as if I don’t get the reference. I don’t respond, just dead-eye him until he gets the message and goes back to work.

Walking down Wabash on my way to class, I see a dotted trail of water behind me. Drips from the melting icicle that makes me happy, but cautious enough to avoid looking directly at it.

Then comes a homeless man. He grabs my shoulder and spins me around to face him so fast I don’t even have a chance to yell.

“You good? What’s that thing? Is that ice? Son, it’s so hot. How is that ice?” His questions tumble out one after another, breathless and confused. He leans over to look closer and his eyes grow wide, before he starts mumbling ice and hot over and over again. He hurries off to follow the stream I just left behind like it’s the yellow brick road to Oz.

Class is largely uneventful, until I’m supposed to give a presentation. I’ve been too busy trying to get rid of the icicle the last few days, I’ve completely forgotten about it; I have nothing. I stand up in the back of the lecture hall, trying to apologize, all the heads start to turn.

“Sorry, JD. I totally—”

“Isaac? What is that?” My professor’s head juts as far from his shoulders as it can. There are gasps and groans and whispers from my classmates. It’s like they never noticed it the last two weeks.  A girl just in front of me looks horrified, mouth ajar; she turns around toward me and leans as far back as she can. Another I had a group project with last semester searches for his phone, presumably for a picture, but can’t get it out fast enough.

“Are you okay?” Is the question on everyone’s lips, but I can’t take all the attention. Sensation comes back in my fingers, full feeling in my arm. Big drops splash onto my shoes as it melts more rapidly.

So I bolt. Run as far and as fast as I can, all the way off campus and back toward my apartment. I make it to my building, panting with lungs burning, and sit down on the concrete front steps. Watch the puddle form around me; it soaks into my jeans, but I don’t mind. I sneak a glance at the icicle as the last solid piece slips through the hole it leaves and falls to the pavement with a tiny crack. The veins hang down from my arm like vines, iridescent in the sunlight, before slinking back up and under my skin.

 

The gaping hole in my arm won’t heal. I can run my finger around the rim of it without so much as a tingle; the inside of it is smooth, perfectly round.

It’s been a week. The hole doesn’t hurt, although it’s a bit numb, like it was when the ice was there, but in a different way. It feels emptier, less comforting, less familiar. It feels almost like I’m missing a part of myself, though that doesn’t make sense. How can things move that quick? How can something you’ve only had so briefly become such a part of you? I lose sleep over it, twist and writhe under my blankets, clutching that arm to my chest as tight as I can. I have a reoccurring dream of it growing back but wake to nothing.

The weeks become months, spring storms turn to summer breezes. I think about it less and less, and the hole has become my new normal. I patch it with cotton balls and Band-Aids, try to fill my time with all the friends I’d neglected in the past few weeks, too preoccupied with the icicle to make time for them.

August gives way to September without my noticing, and suddenly it’s been six months since the icicle left me, melted away. I start to question why I ever wanted it to leave in the first place. Why I longed so badly for it to be gone, but I just have to keep reminding myself it’s for the best.

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Nick Warrington is a recent graduate of Columbia College Chicago. He now resides in Arizona. This is his first publication and is looking forward to more soon.

 

 

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Uncle Jack

“If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back,” they say over and over like a parrot on a perch. They don’t know what it means. They don’t even know all of it. Sammy sure didn’t. But he would learn. 

Back then the children’s chant was contained to Sammy’s school, Sammy’s street. His cousins didn’t know it. Not until he told them. Then the twins couldn’t stop. “If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back,” they said over and over, whispering it even under their breath in their sleep. Sammy made sure to keep his light up shoes off of any cracks. He always did. But it wasn’t easy. It made pins play up his spine. 

The next day he was determined to figure out where it came from, because if he could find the source, maybe he could stop it, just like his dad did with the termite infestation. His big brother Billy, who knew everything, said that it came from the house at the end of the street. Sammy felt a rush of ice course through his hot veins. Everyone knew the house at the end of the street. At least everyone knew to avoid it. All the moms turned their noses up at the overgrown lawn and lowered their voices when they judged the dark exterior. But then their hands would go to their hearts and talk about the “shame of it all” and the “poor things” that live there. “Things,” they said. The dads would grunt in agreement behind newspapers, shaking them as their hands shook. Sammy didn’t like the sound of “things.”  “Things” that go bump in the night made goosebumps appear on his arms.

Needless to say, Sammy didn’t want to go anywhere near the house at the end of the street. He just—he couldn’t take the pressure anymore. Cracks in the pavement were everywhere he looked, taunting him, daring him. They were like bare tree branches. Some so fine he could barely make them out and so numerous he had to go the long way home. Part of him said it was stupid to listen to a dumb rhyme, but he couldn’t risk it. Not his mother’s back. His mother made him hot chocolate, sang to him when there were “things” under his bed, and gave the best hugs. She couldn’t hug him if he messed up. 

Sammy and his family walked into church that Sunday, but not before his close call; his foot nearly touched the curving crack on the papal blacktop. After service he decided he would get his bike and go to the house at the end of the street. Sammy rode his bike, asking everyone he came across to join him; he wanted to try and end his constant torment.  Some laughed at him. Some went pale and pedaled away. Many told him he was doomed. Even Becky Stephensons, who’d eat any bug for a quarter, told him it was too dangerous. He stared over at a fractured sidewalk from his perch on his bike. He knew he had to go. Did they not understand the pressure he was under? The cracks were everywhere. 

He pedaled on alone until he reached the end of the street. The houses stopped and the forest began. The house on his left was empty. An abandoned ‘For Sale’ sign was stuck in the ground with a faded woman still smiling, watching him. The house on the right had a number of items scattered across the lawn, like the Benston’s frisbee. Even old Man Jensons’s rocking chair creaked against the wind. Sacrificed baseballs and red rubber kickballs were better left in the weeds of the house at the end of the street. It wasn’t worth the sacrificed lives, he thought. Molly Hanson, who lived next door, was never the same after her dog, Snuffles, disappeared past the broken fence. 

Sammy shivered. He whittled away the hours searching for allies, so long that the sun made long shadows of the house at the end of the street. He laid his bike on the sidewalk near the ‘For Sale’ sign, keeping his eyes on the house. Sammy was certain it would come alive and eat him¾that the dark panels of a splintered wooden porch and the white door speckled with dirt and dust would suddenly crack open like a wicked maw with wooden teeth and a worming tasting tongue—all to swallow him whole. At least he would die in his Sunday best. Mother would like that. If they found him, a voice like Billy’s echoed in his head. His small frame shivered in the windless autumn dusk. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t approach a stranger’s house. Not without someone by his side. He’d never gone to a stranger’s house on his own before. He worried his top lip. He was alone and this wasn’t just any other house on the block. This demon house full of “things” was going to kill him and then he’d never see his mother again. 

He thought of his mother reading in her nook. Her gentle voice as she helped him with math homework. He hated math. He steeled his shoulders. Letting out a breath, he slowly began to cross the street, careful of the cracks. The wind rustled the leaves like the hushed whispers of a crowd. Only they watched his daring approach. He could do this, could protect his mother’s back like she protected him. As he reached the gate and took in a breath of pine and ash, a deep hoo sounded and fear shot through him. In his young imagination a demon had cried, but the owl in the trees blinked curiously after him as he ran back to his bike and sped away.

At school that Monday, everyone was surprised to see him alive. He was telling them of his close call, of the deep demon’s voice that had bellowed out demanding “Who goes there?” When he caught sight of the Stenson sisters playing hopscotch and chanting “If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back. . . .” and the words and the moment left him. With each thunk of stone on the pavement, they sang it as they hopped. Sammy’s ears rushed with blood and his breathing stopped. Time seemed to slow as Sally Stenson’s foot nearly landed on the arcing crevice in the black. He liked Ms. Stenson. She coached his soccer team. If her back cracked, who would coach them? What would the Stenson sisters do? It wasn’t until her pink butterfly speckled shoes landed firmly on the unscarred yellow chalk-dusted ground that the world and the insistent questions of his classmates came back to him.

“Are you going back, Sammy?” 

“Of course, he’s not going back, Mikey!”

And Sammy found himself saying, “I’m going back,” as he watched the stone soar through the air and the girls chanted “If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back. . . .” and giggled to themselves. He would go back. He would enter the demon’s house at the end of the street. For his mother’s back. For all mothers’ backs, he thought as the recess bell rang. 

That’s how Sammy found himself in front of the house at the end of the street. Again. With his bike safely resting against the fence and a shaking hand, he reached for the hook on the gate. No voices or owls cried out as his fingers touched the cool rusted steel. With a screech, it came loose. The gate swung open in front of him and he shivered. 

The house was still. It was light enough now he could see the ghostly white curtains that wavered behind aged glass. One black shutter hung loose as if it wished to jump to its’ death to the weeds below. It wasn’t like the other houses in the neighborhood. Maybe that’s why the moms didn’t like it. Sammy had to agree that it looked like a blackened wound. A scar. Sammy had never seen a house so old and dying. Sammy had never seen a house so still and quiet. Every other house he passed on his bike he saw children playing, dads mowing lawns, moms with backs bent over flower gardens. But not this house. Not even the rocking chair creaked. Not even the forest wanted to reach out and touch it. The tree roots curled, snarled out, and rounded the house twisted and wrong, as if the shadows burned it. Sammy inched closer. The faded woman on the ‘For Sale’ sign across the street was his only witness. 

He bit his lip as he studied the house, like it was a trapped snake or a patient spider. Any moment the shadows could spring to life and lash out at him. His palms sweat and little needles played up and down his spine. This was the furthest any neighborhood kid had ever ventured. On near tiptoes, he crept down the tan walkway. He kept his movements slow and measured as if he were approaching a lion. The sky was darkening by the time Sammy reached the middle and that’s when he saw it. Just three stone slabs from the front steps there was a spiderweb of cracks, making Sammy freeze in his tracks. His breathing came in short gasps. He couldn’t avoid those. He couldn’t risk his mother’s back. If he slipped just once . . . . he could see her doubled over in pain, back snapped in two like thin spaghetti. He’d come home to find her lying on the couch, or worse, the floor, unable to move or hug him ever again.  A wave of icy horror washed away the feeling of bugs crawling on his skin. I can’t do this, he thought. He turned on his heels and ran. The gate slammed behind him as he grabbed his bike. He didn’t look back. His heart didn’t settle until his mother made him her famous hot chocolate, her back intact.

Sammy vowed that he would never go back to the house at the end of the street that night as he told Billy this story. Billy, who knew everything, laughed and ruffled his hair as he passed a sulking Sammy. This didn’t comfort Sammy. He wasn’t one to question Billy, because he knew everything, but Sammy hoped beyond anything that Billy was wrong. That the house full of “things” at the end of the street had nothing to do with this cursed rhyme. 

The next day at school he was hiding from his classmates’ questions in the basement bathroom when he heard it again. “If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.” The words were slowly spoken, like how time passes in math class. But the words were strong and sure like when his dad would scold him. It was a warning. It sounded again. Sammy followed it as it echoed off the linoleum hallway. But he could never find the source. His classmates, when questioned said it was probably Mason O’Malley, the little boy who hid in the shadows of the playground. He was part vampire, some said. Mikey argued that he was part werewolf. Becky swore he was part demon and Molly confessed that she’d seen him in the house at the end of the street. In a hushed tone, she admitted it happened so quick that she didn’t believe it. He must be part ghost, she swore. 

There was something strange about Mason O’Malley. Sammy knew that. Everyone knew that. He rarely spoke. Sammy didn’t know of any other O’Malley, which was weird on its own. Everyone had another someone with their same name. It’s how it worked: everyone in town knew everyone, despite how his mom often complained about this. When he got home from school, he wanted to ask Billy, but he was at hockey practice. His mother hummed to herself as she stitched. The sharp needle flashed through the white as he sat with her. He wanted to ask her, because she knew so much. But as he watched the red thread tighten into a solid line, he couldn’t bring himself to worry her. Dad was always saying things like that, that he mustn’t worry his mother now. She glanced up at him and smiled like sunshine and ran a warm hand through his hair. She asked him with a little crease between her brows if he was alright. Sammy nodded at her too solemnly for a child and marched upstairs. 

The needles and pins that danced their burning icy tips up and down his spine every time his light up shoes came close to a crack told him he couldn’t not go back.

So for a third time, Sammy dropped his bike in front of the house at the end of the street. With Billy’s extra hockey stick in one hand, he pushed the gate open. No voice sounded and no owls cried. The house stood still and ready to snap at him. He wanted to glare at it, dare it. But that icy fear still clung to him. He wasn’t dressed to die. His mother wouldn’t be happy to find he died in Billy’s old hoodie she hated, but made him feel warm. Probably because it was too big for him. He shivered despite it. He had to go forward. He had to. 

He began to work his way over the stone slabs and their seams until he came to the spiderweb. He paused and took a deep breath, tightening his sweaty, shaky grip on the stick. He stuck his foot out the side and let it hover over the overgrown weeds. Flashes of the long blades of grass springing and rushing to tangle themselves around his ankle screamed through his mind. Then the vines would pull him, pull him down into a deep dark abyss or toward the house full of “things” that would swallow him up. He scrunched up his face and hunched his shoulders as his light up shoe made contact with a slight crunch. Nothing happened. The air was still. All around him was silence and his own wild beating heart. He placed his other foot on the grass and the same thing happened. Nothing. He breathed out a sigh of relief. 

The sky had grown darker when he reached the front steps. The wood was weak beneath his feet. Soft, like flesh. He shivered, and then he was standing in front of the door without a knob. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have a plan. He’d never been to a house without an adult before, but despite himself, he reached for the cracked doorbell on his tiptoes. The white door speckled with dust and dirt swung open silently. Sammy crept in, his heart thumping away in his chest, hockey stick raised. He stepped across the threshold and the door slammed behind him. He squeezed his eyes shut. This was the moment where he became one of the neighborhood stories. Boy seen entering the house at the end of the street! Was never seen again. Lord help him! He was going to be Molly Hanson’s dog. His knees went weak.

“If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.” It echoed and warned the same as before. He forced his lungs to take in short gulps of stale air. It smelled like the gate outside and the times he’d taken out the trash for his mother. 

The ghost’s voice floated through the sound of his thumping heart again. 

“‘If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back,’ sang Uncle Jack.” 

Sammy’s eyes shot open. That was new. 

He stood alone just beyond the threshold for a moment more. In front of him, a little to his right, were broken stairs and a narrow hallway about half the width of his hockey stick. Two rooms opened up on either side, like stuffy deflated lungs, and in each, thick sheets hung over the different sized furniture like the dust in the air. They had to be white once upon a time. Now they looked like mummies wrapped in pages of an old book. Were these the “things” the moms talked about in hushed whispers? 

The only difference was that the left had one mossy green couch that stood uncovered. It was poxed with burn holes and had a moat of shiny brown bottles like the ones dads would sometimes drink at summer BBQ’s. They reminded Sammy of the dead cicadas the end of summer would bring. Each bottle stuffed with bits of white, and Sammy prayed they weren’t bones. Bones weren’t that small, right? God, he was going to die. 

“Uncle Jack is back and he brought his rack.” Curiosity spurred him onward, toward the voice on the left side of the broken stairs. Curiosity was going to get me killed, he thought. 

Sammy’s heart stuttered in his chest as his foot stepped out and the floor beneath it creaked like a dying cat. But the voice didn’t stop. It floated still through the dust in the air. 

“‘If you step on a crack, I’ll break your mother’s back,’ cried Uncle Jack.” It clung to Sammy like a spiderweb: thin, itchy, and everywhere. He could see so many woven webs in the corners of the rooms. He figured a kitchen lay beyond the hall, and beyond, the backyard that surely held a mass grave of kids stupid enough to enter a demon’s house full of untold “things” and Molly Hanson’s dog—if they didn’t eat his bones too. Along the broken splintering stairs hung faded portraits that watched him through the cracked and dirtied glass. He kept his head down, but he could feel their eyes on him. Were they going to warn the demons? Or the witch that lived here? Or Uncle Jack? Or—Sammy didn’t make it to the kitchen. 

He followed the voice like it was a siren’s song until he found Mason O’Malley in an empty hall closet under the stairs that smelled of copper and mold. The other boy was rocking himself back and forth, bony elbows sticking out where he’d wrapped his arms around bony knees. His black eyes didn’t look up at Sammy from under his black mess of hair, but he didn’t stop speaking. 

“Uncle Jack is back and he brought his sack. ‘If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back,’ warned Uncle Jack.”

Sammy knelt down in front of Mason, who was so white Sammy thought he was dead. His arms were spotted like the couch. The closet held only a thin blanket and the faded backpack Mason brought to school on the days he came. It was really just a pile of loose threads, just like the clothes on Mason’s back.

“Uncle Jack is back and he brought you to his shack. ‘If you step on a crack, I’ll break your mother’s back,’ laughed Uncle Jack.” Mason’s voice didn’t waver. His eyes didn’t move. He just rocked back and forth like a windup toy Billy had given him for Christmas. 

“Uncle Jack is back and he brought the black.” Sammy placed a shaking hand on his Skeletor shoulder. “Uncle Jack is back and he brought the black. He brought the black.” Mason’s eyes snapped up to meet Sammy’s. Mason’s ice-cold hand gripped his wrist, siphoning the warmth from his bones and Sammy’s heart climbed higher in his throat. 

“He brought the black. He brought the black. In his sack. In his shack. He brought the black.” Sammy snatched his hand back as Mason’s voice shook as he begged, ragged from his rhyme. “The black with his sack in his shack. Uncle Jack. Uncle JACK!” His cry was deafening and Sammy didn’t think little boys could wail like that. Only ghosts. 

Sammy stumbled to his feet on legs that felt like bees trying to fly through lead and took a step back as Mason’s eyes didn’t leave him for a moment more. 

Then Mason settled again in his corner and after a sliver of silence spoke again, like one of his father’s records back on track.

“Uncle Jack is back and he brought his rack.” Mason was looking through him now and Sammy warred with himself. Were his friends right? Was Mason the demon of this place? Or a trick? Or a trap? 

“‘If  you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back,’ whispered Uncle Jack.” Mason’s voice was hushed and rough like a river after rain, and Sammy found himself repeating it like he would repeat the answers in math class. 

The slam of a screen door echoed down the hall over Mason’s whisper. Sammy’s whole body jolted as the house shook. 

“Uncle Jack is back!” 

Sammy dropped the hockey stick and bolted as a lumbering shadow filled the unexplored kitchen, cracking the tiles under him. Thumping, lumbering footsteps jolted toward him. It was him. It was Uncle Jack with his sack, coming from the rack and the shack. 

“If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.” The words screamed at him, followed him as he ran from the hulking beast behind him. Sammy knew it had been a warning. This was Uncle Jack come to take him and break his mother’s back. 

Sammy heard it, “If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back,”  again and again as he flew down the front steps, across the walkway and to the gate and his bike. It echoed with each beat of his pounding heart. “If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.” He risked one glance back to the doorway, where an outline of a giant man stood. Tomorrow at school it would be a demon twice the size of his father with horns and frizzy hair and eyes the color of blood and fire. His friends devoured his story and basked in awe of him. Only for a few seconds, then no one believed him.

No one understood how Sammy had managed to scramble away from Uncle Jack and the demon house full of “things” at the end of the street and toward his mother and her hot chocolate. Sammy didn’t even understand what Mason had been trying to tell him. Some days in his story, Mason’s human, a boy not much younger than him. Sammy wondered about Mrs. O’Malley on those days. On others, he was a ghost who wasted away so many years ago forced to live with the demon Uncle Jack and his rack.  He searched for Mason O’Malley, but no one had seen him. 

He asked Billy, who knew everything, if the house at the end of the street had been the O’Malley’s and if Mason had had an Uncle Jack, but before Billy could confess he didn’t know, their mother hushed them and told them not to speak of such awful things as she handed them both their hot chocolates. It was hot against his palms. 

He never should have gone looking. He would tell himself that often. He never should have gone looking. He made it worse by looking. He’d picked at the scab and now it was infected. 

Eventually Sammy stopped telling the story. It worried his mother, or so his father said. 

But the warning never left his head. Step on a crack; Uncle Jack would be back. That looming shadow kept following his every step. His parents soon lost patience in his slow walk down sidewalks. Each annoyed sigh or cross, “Come on”, felt like a hot lash, but he couldn’t help it. They didn’t get it. If he stepped on a crack, he’d break his mother’s back. Every step he took, he could see it, see what a misstep would bring. His mother’s face laced with pain. Her spine shattered in two. Sammy had to watch his feet, even more than before. Because if he didn’t, the shadow of Uncle Jack over his shoulder, waiting with his rack, would ruin everything for that one mistake. 

Years later he still heard it with every shattered, fractured piece of earth–blacktop or concrete–he saw at the rifts below his path, and always found himself whispering “If you step on a crack, you’ll bring Uncle Jack back.” 

Then he’d sigh to himself as the pins and needles danced their burning icy tips along his spine and say:

“I never should have gone looking.” 

_____________________

Emma Dailey Mitchell is a recent graduate from Columbia College Chicago. She has been published in StudyBreaks. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, or listening to many stories.

 

---

Father

 

There was a time when I was laid low, and I can feel it happening again. Wasn’t sure I’d make it out back then, yet things seem darker now, more than ever. 

Autumn knows I’m fucked, but she thinks she’s got me grounded, and I’d prefer to keep it that way. She’s got enough to worry about. Her father has been around more often, which is worse than it sounds. The bastard drank through the liquor cabinet twice over in a week. He says he wants to look after her, but he’s got her locked up. Won’t let her leave the house, and Autumn’s just letting him do it, as if she weren’t a grown-ass woman. It’s like she feels sorry for him, maybe even a little responsible, which is downright fuckin’ stupid if you ask me. And she’s reverted back to this helpless child state, so that her lowlife father has something to live for. It’s like she’s afraid that if she were to stop trying, she’d turn into him one day, and that makes her weepy. If I think too hard ’bout it, it’ll make me weepy too. But the Devils and I have been lookin’ after Autumn for years. He doesn’t just get to show up now. Fuck that.

Back when we were in school and her mom was still around, things were different. Mrs. Oswald was like Oscoda’s own Stevie Nicks, that is, if Stevie Nicks played euchre competitively and had an oddly charming gap between her front teeth. Autumn is a lot like her mom was, except Autumn’s eyes are this unreal bright green. Before she left, Mrs. Oswald would pick us up from school in the winter and let me stay over for dinner a couple times a week. She knew things weren’t good at home. Nothing stays secret in town for long. She left for a drive one day, and never came back. Autumn was sixteen. 

It was around that same time when the drugs got bad. Mio High School was the easiest place to sell in town, and we bought ’em up like they was hotcakes, or whatever the saying is. Cecil, the lunchroom cook, was my personal dealer. He was a pudgy motherfucker with oiled hair and a blue net over his beard. On Thursdays, I would slip out of fourth period, and down to the kitchen. Cecil would meet me by the bathrooms and slip a wad of napkins into my hand before the lunch bell rang. 

At first, it was just an eighth of weed wedged between the napkins. Some real weak-ass weed. I’d sit with Holton and Autumn out by the river, and we’d smoke ourselves silly on the rocks. We’d burn through the eighth after a couple days. All of us built up a tolerance to the stuff real quick, I mean the shit was truly weak as all hell. And so, every Thursday, I’d beg Cecil for something stronger, but the weak shit kept coming. Holton preferred liquor anyhow, but there was a hunger inside me for something more. 

The day Cecil started selling me crack was the first time I lied to Holton. 

Cecil seemed extra paranoid as he stuffed my cash in his back pocket. I flipped through the stack of napkins and unearthed a crumbled white rock in a dime bag.

“What’s this?”

“Hey! Hey. Don’t open that here.” Cecil looked left and right, more cautious than usual. He leaned in close, and I could smell, on his apron, the chili we would have for lunch. “That there is some solid rock.”

“What, you mean like¾”

“It’s crack, dumbass, Jesus. You smoke it.”

“Smoke it? But it’s—it’s a rock . . . how—”

“Christ, Kosak, you’re the worst.” He rolled his eyes and whispered hot breath on my ear. “Pick up a tire gauge from Gary’s Auto Shop. You can smoke using it if you can get your hands on a copper sponge, like the ones we scrub the pots with.”

“And, what? I just take a lighter to the rock?”

“Just take a lighter to the rock.”

A class of sophomores walked past the kitchen and into the library. Cecil held his breath. He dropped his voice even deeper.

“You’ll figure it out.”

The tire gauge and sponge were easy enough to find. It took me a couple tries, but after a few weeks, I fell into a rhythm, and was taking hits like a fucking pro. 

I still brought weed to the river to drown everyone’s suspicions, but after a while, it became nearly impossible to hide. When Brody and I were scheduled for the night shift at Julie’s Diner, I’d have him cover me while I lit up my pipe behind the dumpsters through snowstorms. Brody didn’t know what was up, but he had my back, no questions asked. Like a true motherfuckin’ Devil. 

I started getting nervous and developed these mad headaches after a couple months. Autumn never asked, but she could tell something was up. I was picking up shifts at Julie’s Diner left and right in order to fund and fuel my impulses. I saw Autumn less and less that winter. Holton was no idiot, and I could tell he was starting to worry. When the snow began to melt, we went up to the river late one night, just the two of us. Holton had a handle of Jack in his fist as we sat down in the river valley. 

“So, dude. How are things?” He took a swig from the bottle and offered it to me. Holton wasn’t a small talk kind of guy. It was all cheap bullshit. If he was speaking with you, he had a reason. I could already feel the pressure of his words like something else was on the other end of them.

“Well man, shit like always, I guess.” I took the Jack from him and held it for a moment before tipping it back. Watching him roll his eyes, I took a second gulp for good measure.

“You know what the fuck I’m talking about, Kosak. Don’t you pull this shit, or I’ll beat your fuckin’ ass, man.” The subtle warmth of early spring was settling in, and under his thick jean jacket, Holton’s long, blonde hair was stuck to his neck with sweat. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. I balled my hands into fists and grasped at a straw.

“How long until your mom is out?”

“Two months,” he laughed. “I mean, the bitch got caught drunk driving. I hope she knows how stupid she is.” Holton took a long swig from the bottle. “What’s the story on your dad?” 

It was my turn to drink.

“He beat the shit out of my mom, dude.” I took a long gulp.

“Well, I fuckin’ know that. I mean, is he finally doing time?”

I shook my head, “I can’t get her to press charges. I tried to talk some sense into her, but she’s afraid he’ll kill her or some shit.”

“Aw, that’s real fucked up.” The bottle was getting lighter.

“You’re telling me, dumbass.” I laughed at him and he slapped me on the back.

“You . . . you know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna go to your house, and when he comes home, we’re gonna beat the shit out of him.”

I nearly choked on the booze. Now my old man was a scrawny piece of shit, he had a temper like a struck match: quick and unforgiving. He beat my mom when he came home late, or when he had too much to drink. He beat on Mom when she’d talk back to him, or when he’d lost a job, or when the redwings lost a game. He’d been beating on Mom ever since I was young, but never once did I think of taking my knuckles to his teeth. 

“Oh, fo’ real? I . . . I don’t know.” I was starting to feel really dizzy from the liquor and could barely make out the front of Holton’s Metallica t-shirt.

“Kosak, you gotta stand up to that son-of-a-bitch. And . . . and I’m gonna help you.”

I imagined, for a moment, what it would feel like to pound Dad’s face in. His blood on my bruised hands, his body crumbling beneath my blows. Him looking into my eyes as I drove him into the dirt. Would he scream, or just sit and take it? Never did I think he’d actually get what was coming to him. It made me feel nauseous, and yet, sort of powerful. I popped my knuckles, fighting the urge to pull my pipe from beneath my coat and take a hit. Despite his escalating drunkenness, Holton was watching me closely. 

“Wait, are we really doing this?”

Holton finished off the handle and smashed it on the rocks. “Fuck yeah,” he stood up, and wobbled a bit. Then he reached down and yanked me off the grass. He looked at me for a long while, then wrinkled his eyebrows. “You sure nothin’s up, Kosak?”

I took a deep breath, burying the thoughts of my pipe. “Nope.” 

He shrugged, and we went off to find Holton’s baseball bat.

 

On our way back to the trailer park, we placed carryout orders at Julie’s: cheese fries and bacon burgers, because Holton said you can’t beat ass on an empty stomach. Brody was on the clock, and he slipped us a couple of strawberry milkshakes from the back. Once we arrived home, I cut the milkshakes with booze, and Holton scarfed the fries down in seconds. I wasn’t too hungry. 

We made camp in the living room and drank through another bottle. Holton sprawled out, his legs draped over the arm of the couch. Sometime after the sun went down, Mom stepped out from the hall with wet hair and red eyes, clenching a full mug of coffee. The ceramic twitched in her fist, and clattered against the table for a moment before she set it down. She looked at me with deep, tired eyes, and I watched as she realized Holton and I had been marinating in booze. She flinched, then looked down at the cup of coffee that she had, no doubt, left out for Dad on the table, and I watched as the last of its steam rose and mingled with lingering cigarette smoke. 

Holton flicked ash on the table and looked over his shoulder.

“Good night, Mrs. Kosak.”

She nodded quickly, as if by accident, “Night, boys,” and hurried off to the back of the trailer.

We listened as a freight train passed through town, its whistle long and droning, echoing through the wheat fields. I looked to Holton, who was at this point, very drunk, and puffing on another cigarette while cautiously thumbing through a literary commentary on Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. He might never have passed high school, but there was no questioning Holton Casey’s literacy. He always carried a book in his bag, and it was like waiting for a joke to unfold seeing him there, drunk on the couch, reading some philosophical bullshit. 

I was dying to get my pipe out.

The shitty porch light on the front of the trailer flickered in the window. I shut the curtains and slipped outside. 

I pulled out my lighter behind the bushes on the other side of the trailer. There were no windows on that side, and all the other lots behind us had fallen dark. I took a big sigh and slipped the pipe from my coat pocket. The moon was huge in the open sky, and it reflected an orange glow in the chrome of my tire gauge pipe. It was peaceful and a bit chilly. I tugged my coat closed and flicked open my old green Zippo. Carefully, I grazed the flame against the white rock at the end of my pipe, and listened to it crackle like strawberry Pop Rocks.  The thought of smoking Pop Rocks made me laugh. I slowly rotated the tube back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, before quickly latching my lips onto the opposite end and inhaling deeply. Finally. I flipped the lighter closed and leaned hard against the side of the trailer. 

A crack high was nothing like a marijuana high. Not even close. A crack high was deeper, more lingering. Like the flightiness you feel in your chest as you jump off a cliff into the river, or down that first coaster hill at the fair. It was quick and euphoric, filling my lungs and the blood in my veins, but never entirely satisfying. Never could get enough. Always on the edge of fulfilling. I thought of Autumn¾her creamy waist and wavy blond locks, how she’d sit right on my lap and kiss me long and good¾and I knew I loved her. She was like a drug, a rush, euphoric. The sting in my chest told me I was really beginning to miss her.

 

I wrapped up my pipe before I could take another hit, and shoved it deep in my coat.

“What the fuck are you doing back here?” 

I looked up to see Holton rounding the corner. 

“What the fuck is that?”

“It’s nothing, man¾”

“The fuck it is! Do you think I’m fucking stupid? Is that. . . . You smell like my mom. Is there meth here? Are you doing goddamn meth back here?”

“No! You know I’d never¾”

“You must think I’m a fucking idiot. Hand it over.”

“What? No, I¾”

“Kosak, I swear to fucking Satan, I will beat your goddamn ass. Hand it the fuck over.”

“I just¾”

“I’m not playing!” He shoved me hard against the trailer and I didn’t fight back. “Now.”

I could feel a ripe bruise beginning to bloom where he shoved me, and I winced when I reached into my coat. I clutched the pipe, and Holton yanked it from my hand. 

“A crack pipe? Are you fucking serious?”

I looked down at my shoes and swallowed my brimming tears.

“How long have you been doing this shit?”

“Couple months.”

“Christ.” He put his head in his hands and cringed like it was his fault. “Did Autumn know? Of course she didn’t¾and you lied to me? Man. . . .”

“It fucking killed me, Holton. Honest. You’ve seen what drugs can do. I’m hurting, man.” 

I looked him in the eye and wanted to cry. I wanted to sit with Holton, and I wanted him to let me cry. And I knew he wouldn’t give me shit for having tears, but I was on the verge of bursting, and I was afraid I might not be able to stop. My skin felt foreign and it filled me with disgust. What would Autumn think of me? The tears streaked my cheeks. She would be so upset. How could I tell her? She would hate me. Christ, she should fucking hate me.

Holton looked down at me, a crumpled heap against the side of the trailer, and his face softened. If anyone understood what I was going through, it was him. He put the pipe in his back pocket and pulled me into a big hug. “I know, man. I know . . . What the fuck. I’m sorry.” 

It was hard to tell if it was the booze talking, or if he was taking on my pain, but he gave my shoulder a squeeze, and I swear I saw him cry too. We stood there for a long while in that hug, partially because I wasn’t strong enough to pull away, but mostly because I didn’t want to. Holton holding me together in the middle of the night, letting me know it was okay that I had fucked up, that everything would turn out, and that he was there for me, meant the whole fucking world. After a while, he leaned back against the side of the trailer and lit a cigarette. “Love you, man,” he said with the square dangling from his lips. “Oh, and we’re ditching this in the river,” he patted his pocket, “after we take care of your old man, of course.” 

I tried to hide the obvious panic in my eyes, as I had completely forgotten what we had set out to do that night. But it had to be done. No looking back now. I felt a pit in my stomach as I came down from my high, and in the cool spring breeze, I started sweat.

 

From the side of the house, we watched a rusted, black pickup pull into the trailer park. We turned and looked at each other, then Holton lumbered into the house with his cigarette still lit. He leaned in the doorway with his bat wedged under his arm, and he took a long drag before squishing the cigarette into the porch with the heel of his boot. I could see the anger in his body grow, his eyes grew darker, his shoulders hunched up like a vulture, and I was startin’ to think I might throw up. 

 

My dad pulled the pickup ’round the back and left it parked in the grass. His hair was greasy, his eye sockets were dark and tired, and when he slammed the rusted door of his truck, I just wished he would have dropped dead right there.

“Well, well, degenerates! What’s the occasion?” He walked to the front of the trailer with a grubby smile and his arms spread wide.

“Shut the fuck up, Perry.” Holton gritted his teeth and spat in my dad’s direction. I slowly walked around the front and stood on the porch beside Holton. He was so big that his body ate up the doorway. Holton swung his bat down from under his arm and tapped the end of it on the edge of the steps.

“Is that any way to greet your father, boys?” Dad gave me a look like you better move your ass or you’ll regret it later. He rubbed his tired eyes like he was ready for bed, but I just knew if we let him through that door, he’d guzzle some beers with the fridge wide-the-fuck-open, then give Mom a good slug to the face before passing out in the hallway. Her cheek would be purple and swollen by morning. The thought of it made my blood boil. I didn’t realize how much he left a bad taste in my mouth, like Holton’s words that night had made me aware of the buds on my tongue, and the newfound disgust was overwhelming and unbearable. I didn’t budge from Holton’s side.

“I don’t have a goddamn father.” Holton tapped the bat on the steps again. “And you sure as hell ain’t nobody’s father.”

I glanced at the side window. Mom’s curtains were drawn shut. She was either knocked out on way too much melatonin or pretending to sleep. Either way, she wouldn’t be leaving her room, I knew that much. I could imagine her in her powder blue nightgown, curled up under a weighted quilt. Her dull, graying hair would be braided down the center of her back, like it always was. She would be tired. She was always tired. You could see it in her cloudy blue eyes, that she had run out of tears years ago. Like she had given up and she was hollow now. I wondered if she expected to get hit, if she was anticipating the pain and bracing for it each night as she got into bed.  How could she live like that? I thought of Autumn¾her soft green eyes and tiny fingers that I would hold in the palm of my hands like flower petals¾and I wanted to cry. I thought of her father, how possessive and aggressive that piece of shit was, and I knew in an instant what I would be capable of if that man, or any other man, ever laid hands on Autumn.

Dad walked closer, and I watched Holton’s muscles tense. I wondered if my muscles tensed like that too. I couldn’t feel anything but the breeze that tossed my hair. My body was numb.

“I’m sure you boys don’t want any trouble.” He eyed the bat in Holton’s grip and took another step. 

“Too late for that.”

I held my breath as Dad came closer. I could now see the lines etched in his forehead and the yellowing of his canines.  I wanted to yell at him, to make him hurt on the inside, but I was frozen stiff like a corpse. Holton looked over at me, I had turned white as a sheet. He nodded at me and patted my shoulder. As Dad placed one foot on the porch, Holton took that first swing, right at Dad’s knee. 

My father didn’t make a sound as he collapsed on the grass. There was only an intense, sharp inhale, and a guttural gurgling from the back of his throat. All the air had been knocked out of him as if his lungs had come loose from his body. He crumpled instantly, and I thought for a moment that he might pass out. Then, he let out a pitiful yelp and gritted his teeth hard. Holton’s eyes were still filled with rage. He didn’t even smile. Just stood there, looming over my father like he was a meal.

“Argh! What the fuck! WHAT THE FUCK!” My father suddenly found his voice. 

“Oh look, it speaks.” Holton looked at me and I could tell he was still drunk. “Here.” He reached over and handed me a beer from the cooler in the living room. I gripped the bottle tightly. “This’ll help.”

“AH! OH, DAMN IT!” My father cradled his twisted leg, grunting with each breath like  a hunted hog. I chugged the beer and smashed the bottle on the steps.

“What the fuck! I’m gonna kill you. Ah! Piece of shit, urgh!” he mumbled into the dirt. All I could do was stand there thinking of Mom while I watched him squirm. I thought of Mom and her meek voice and her frail body and all the times she woke up with blackened eyes, and I quickly realized how gratifying my father’s shrieks of pain were.

“Oh, do shut the hell up, Perry, before I bring this bat down on your ribcage.” Holton rolled his eyes and my father groaned.

“Urgh. You . . . you’re just gonna let him do this to me? Ahh, I’ll kill you both! I fucking swear!”

I felt my feet begin to move my numb body, and Holton nodded in approval as I walked down the front steps and onto the grass. He offered me his bat.

“Not my style.” Then I turned to the ground, “You did this to yourself.” 

I stopped, looking over his crumpled body. At this moment, he was not the man that had painted my mother’s flushed cheekbones with purple bruises. This was a frail sparrow, a frightened animal, and in seeing him so reduced, I realized how fucking insignificant he was. 

He groaned weakly, and I gave him a good, long look before bringing my foot down on his head.

There was a crunch, and then a shriek that shook the dirt beneath my boots. I stumbled back, and my father looked up at me, his face broken and bloody, his eyes brimming with horror. I smiled at him for a moment, and before I could think, brought the toe of my boot into his gut, first once, then again, then again. Over and over, until everything went fuzzy. I didn’t stop until I faintly heard Holton shout from over my shoulder.

I looked up and the moon looked back, large and radiant blue in the black of night. Its glow rivaled the golden flicker of the porch light. It was all very calm, and the air carried a silence I hadn’t known I was longing for. Holton cast a shadow that stretched across the soggy grass and fell over my father’s motionless body. I looked back at Holton, the lantern left dark chasms over his eye sockets. Like he was hollowed. 

“Kosak!”

Only when I took a step closer did I realize the worry smeared across his face. 

“Kosak, we need to go.” He raised his eyebrows and shifted a bit from side to side, which made me uneasy. 

I took my first real breath of the night, and my whole body shuddered, my hands raw and shaking in the cold. I turned back to the lawn and immediately fixated on my father’s brown leather jacket. The stitching was loose, and the elbows were worn and faded. There was a slight twitch in the fabric. He was breathing, barely. The son of a bitch was nothing if not persistent. I brought my wrist to my forehead, sweaty and throbbing with a brewing migraine. I felt my lip quiver, so I sucked it in, and bit down hard, until the taste of iron grew overwhelming. I didn’t know whether I was pissed or relieved, maybe a little of both. But I felt my mouth move, and when the words “How fucking dare you” left my lips, it surprised me, and I knew Holton was right. I turned to Holton, eyes burning, head pounding, and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Okay,” he said, and we ran.

 

We arrived at the river valley two hours before sunrise, and the water was calm for once. Holton unzipped his jacket as I sat on the rocks, and he stood there chuckin’ pebbles into the waves for a while. Neither of us spoke as we slowly sobered in the darkness. My temples were still fuzzy with a pain that I could almost ignore by continually biting the skin off my dry lips. I don’t remember thinking, like my mind had been wiped clean. It was as if we had never left the rocks that night. Like we had been sittin’ by the river for hours, just sippin’ on a handle of Jack ’till the world froze around us. I’m not sure how long we sat there in silence, but after some time, the sky began to brighten, and Holton stopped throwing rocks.

“We don’t have to talk about it.” He looked down at me, searching my face for answers. His hair had grown greasy with sweat and was plastered on his pink cheeks.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s done then.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll just lay low.” A deep orange bled into the horizon and shot out across the sky like a sunburst. “Morning already?” Holton jumped, silly, and shook his head like a dog. “You ready, man?”

“What?”

Holton pulled my pipe from his coat, and my tongue became stale. 

“You wanna do the honors?” He held out the tire gauge. I hesitated. A heavy breeze off the water whipped a strand of hair into Holton’s mouth, which he quickly spat out. “You got this.”

He put the pipe in my hand. 

I felt the weight of the chrome in my clammy palm. The sun rose higher, finding pockets in the clouds to slip through, and I became hyper aware of my lungs. Felt each rise and fall of my chest with great intensity.

The pipe grew heavier.

I looked at Holton and he raised his eyebrows.

“You need a push?” He slapped my back. “Tell you what, I’m gonna count, and you’re gonna chuck that piece of shit out over the rocks, and if you don’t throw it by the count of three, I’ll punch you in the fuckin’ face.” He cocked his arm back and gave a toothy grin.

I looked out at the river valley: at the cranes in the bank snapping at trout under the water’s surface, how the morning sun reflected off the waves, washing everything in a reflective, dewy, gold. 

The pipe went out over the rocks, and the moment it left my fingers, I let a couple tears slip. Holton never told. He never told a soul about one damn thing that happened that night. Not one, not even the fuckin’ Devils. I’ll never get over that as long as I live.

Before we left the river, Holton said to me, “Go see Autumn.”

“Yeah, I’d better.”

“Go see her now. She needs you, Kosak.”

I nodded. Holton was right. Now, more than ever.

 ______________________

Maria Kowal is a fiction graduate from Columbia College Chicago living on the Northwest Side of the city. She is currently working on a novel-in-stories, Mourning River, that explores death and how it morphs relationships. You can find her stories, poetry, and contact information at her website purplehydrangeas.org.

 

---

Party of One

 

Mark could hear his phone vibrating on the wooden nightstand, a rattle he was all too familiar with. He rolled over, dismissed his alarm, and laid in the silence of his bedroom. His day began. He rolled out of his bed, slugged his feet into his slippers, and dragged himself into the bathroom in an effort that reminded him of black-and-white zombie movies. 

Mark pawed the light switch and looked into the mirror, rubbing his eyes. Internally lamenting over why he got out of bed to begin with. He brushed his teeth with the efficacy of a bear who had just come out of hibernation. Up. Down. Up. Down. This continued not until his teeth were actually clean but until Mark believed he had kept at the task long after the average person would normally stop brushing their teeth. He spat the results into the sink, took off his pajamas, and lumbered into the warmth of the shower. 

Five minutes had passed before Mark had even thought about actually washing off the residue accumulated from the day before. He spent those five minutes bemoaning the day ahead. To Mark, his work was not born of passion, but necessity. He worked as a copyeditor for a magazine; wherein, Mark would watch his life waste away as he changed “affects” to “effects,” desperately hoping to be left alone. The pessimist in him spent what seemed like years imagining the ridiculous things his boss would say to him, along with the witty responses he would never actually say to her, provided she would even establish said ridiculous situations to begin with. When he ran out of clever rebuttals, he took a tenth of the time he had already spent showering to actually clean himself, and like a soldier saying goodbye to a loved one before departing to the front lines, Mark turned off the water.

Upon departure from the shower, Mark had but one task left. He took another glance at himself, surprised by how much soap can change the appearance of a human being. After his surprise faded, he unhinged the mirror to reveal the medicine cabinet behind it. He grabbed the orange bottle, stopping immediately. He shook the bottle to a frustrating silence. He muttered all manner of obscenities under his breath before slamming the bottle onto the counter and running a hand through his still-wet hair. 

“Unbelievable,” Mark thought to himself. He had called in a refill for his Invega. Alas a late draft of an urgent project had been e-mailed to him after hours, and he had spent the evening rolling his eyes at typos, forgetting to collect his medicine. With the last dose still in him, Mark drifted into the bedroom, snatched his phone from the charging cable, and with a few taps, pulled up the messenger. 

Of his acquaintances, only three of them knew about Mark’s medicine: his mother, his doctor, and his best friend Ash. Two of them were out of the question to drive him to the pharmacy, which left Ash. Mark tapped out a message as he walked back to the bathroom to retrieve the clothing he had left himself to change into:

Hey Ash, idk if you’re working rn, but if you aren’t, could you give me a ride to the drug store? I forgot my antipsychotics lmao.

The two had known each other since elementary school. Since before Mark’s schizophrenia, or as he remembered saying to Ash after his diagnosis, “Well, actually, it’s a schizoaffective disorder, and that’s worse than schizophrenia, so I’m fucked!” He laughed along with Ash when he said that, but he knew it wasn’t true. They would still play video games and watch baseball together. 

After all, Mark was still himself, he just needed to take his pills, and the longer he went without them, the worse off Mark became. It wasn’t a matter of days, or even hours. Mark had minutes, and when those minutes wore off, it was downhill, fast. 

When Mark sent the message, his heart sunk. He felt his medicine beginning to wear off. The party had begun. 

As if Mark were pierced by the arrow of insanity, he felt his own consciousness bleed out. Like water filling a glass, the bathroom started to brim with the manifestations of his illness. It started with a tapping noise; it always did. The tapping of a nailless, handless finger on a hard surface, like concrete or steel. It tapped rhythmically, in quarter-notes, Mark had observed. He heard it slowly, by his feet. Like someone had placed themselves under the floorboards. Mark fixed his attention to the floor, and it was there the voices began calling. They were partially indistinct; Mark couldn’t actually make out anything they were saying beyond strange words and phrases. Mark’s soundscape was host to an innumerable amount of these disembodied, causeless voices. Far away, for now, but he could hear them encroaching. Mark briefly sympathized with the creature from Frankenstein, being chased by an alien mob of torches and pitchforks. The first thing he heard came from behind him, miles away. He heard a man yelling.

Hey, mister! There’s blood all over you! There’s blood in your hair!

This caused Mark to run a hand once more through his now damp hair, feeling the different clumps that had begun to dry together. He gagged at the texture. 

Ash hadn’t answered that text.

A post-it note lived on the corner of Mark’s laptop. In his handwriting, it read “You only have two hands and ten fingers.” When anyone asked about it, Mark would lie to them. He had an anecdote prepared about the dangers of stressing out over things beyond the control of an individual. It always worked. People would leave the conversation uplifted, sometimes repeating the phrase back to themselves hopefully as they sauntered back to their cubicles. 

The truth of the matter was far more unsettling. 

Mark’s hallucinations were not just auditory. They seeped through his senses, and the most common visual hallucination Mark endured was a sharp change in the appearance of his hands. Being constantly in his peripherals, Mark’s mind would wander, often interpreting something like the typing of a sentence with forty keystrokes to mean that each of Mark’s hands must contain twenty fingers. Sitting at his desk, Mark opened his laptop, logged in, turned on some music to a playlist marked “ambient jazz,” and brought up his e-mail account. In a message to his boss, Mark began typing:

Sorry to report, but there’s been an emergency in my personal life. I will not be able to. . . . 

While writing, Mark had looked down at the keyboard to find the bucket of worms his mind had presented to him: his hands overflowing with writhing fingers. As he looked at them, his stomach swirled in nausea. Combined with the intransient nonsense that had now overtaken his sense of hearing, he wondered. He wondered if this is what others saw him as. He wondered if this was his true self. 

Mark interlocked his hands behind his head, closed his eyes as tight as his face would allow, counted to ten, and recited the mantra on his post-it note. “You only have two hands and ten fingers, God damn it,” he growled. 

He unlocked his hands and brought them back around into his line of sight. They had returned to the state in which he remembered them. He smirked and finished his e-mail. 

Sorry to report, but there’s been an emergency in my personal life, I will not be able to resume working until tomorrow.

Best Regards,
Mark Duppy

Relieved of his responsibility, the only task at hand was getting to the pharmacy to retrieve his Invega. He looked at his calendar. 

“Friday, thank God. Three days to get ’em,” Mark thought to himself. Luckily for him, when he woke up on Saturday morning, his phone was blinking with a missed notification. 

Mark reached his finger-laden hands toward his phone. He repeated his mantra to no avail. 

Hey bud just woke up. Had a 12-12 shift. U good? If not lmk.

Been better. These fuckers are persistent lmao

Bet 

U home or did you go somewhere like last time?

Nah I’m home. 

Everyone else was busy 

There’s no way in hell my mom’s flying in for this shit

haha

Lmao 

Don’t leave the house no matter what anyone or anything says 

Omw

Thanks 

I s2g this isn’t a pattern or anything. 

You know. I’ve been taking them 

I just forgot.

Ik would’ve been able to tell if you stopped. Don’t mention it. 

If u feel real guilty grab some beers for the game

lmao 

For sure dude, I’ll get you back on this one. 

Don’t worry abt it

 

Ash buried his phone into the cupholder of his car, turned on the radio, and pulled out of his driveway. Mark’s apartment was just around the corner.

A coping mechanism Mark employed was to look at a compass and attempt to make out all of the real sounds coming from each direction to keep him grounded. He brought up a picture of a compass through an image search.

The north was easy, straight ahead: his laptop. The music. The song he was listening to was amidst a flute intermission, and the trills of the song spiraled through his ears like a stunt pilot looping his plane. 

The northeast, slightly to the right, the sun leaked in, dripping through the window. Mark was reminded of warmth as he heard the sounds of a fire crackling in the air. He wasn’t sure if it was the warm presence of good against evil or the fires of hell that awaited him, so he chose the more positive outlook. 

To the east, he heard galloping. Like a horse but if its hooves were wet from a run in the rain. The creature galloped from the east, to southeast, to the south, to the southwest, to the south, and finally, back to the southeast until it noticed Mark listening in. Then, it started producing a sound that Mark interpreted as someone chewing meat. The chewing panned across the back of Mark’s head in a similar motion, sweeping from his left ear to his right. Mark listened on, until the beast paused dead south. 

Slowly, it worked its way forward, with the sound of metal scraping in addition to the chewing, as if it were eating a knight in armor, dragging him along as the pair walked down a concrete road. It got closer and closer until Mark screamed, trying desperately not to listen.

Finally, to the last cardinal direction, Mark’s exercise was cut short by a knock on the door. Ash had arrived. Mark grabbed his wallet, put on his shoes, and answered the door to find Ash waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

“Jesus Christ, dude,” Ash said, looking up at Mark’s unkempt hair amongst his uncharacteristically rugged appearance. “Has this been happening all day?” He tried to look at Mark, but his eyes were affixed to something far away. 

“Yeah, like five minutes after I texted you yesterday.”

“We’re on the clock then, huh? Let’s run it,” Ash said, getting into his car. Mark climbed into the passenger’s seat, and by the time he could buckle his seatbelt, the two were on their way to the pharmacy. 

Mark hated traveling while off of his medicine. He would always overestimate the quality of his own imagination. At least in his house, Mark knew where every piece of furniture was, what sound it made, and what shadows it cast. He knew he was alone and could immediately discount any sort of outside character intruding on him. He spent time wondering whether or not anything that was going on was actually real. 

The first and most obvious scenario to him was that everything was indeed real, and he was riding with Ash to pick up his medicine. The second slightly worse scenario was that this particular hallucination started before he left the house, and Mark was sitting somewhere in his bedroom in isolation, but at least Ash could find him if he did show up. The third and worst case scenario was that this hallucination started after he left the house, in which case Mark would now be sitting somewhere outside¾God knows where¾inaccessible to anyone on the outside, for Mark would dismiss them as being a hallucination when in fact they were real, and it was he who was operating outside of reality. 

This thought scared him, and so he went about trying to prove that all was as it seemed. 

“Hey Ash?” 

“Yeah?”

“Are you real?” Ash raised an eyebrow toward Mark.

“Yeah, it’s all good,” Ash reassured him.

“Okay,” Mark began, “but, like, if you weren’t real, you’d tell me you were, right? Like, that’s what someone who isn’t real would say.”

“Well, I dunno, man. You’re in the real world.” 

“What’s something that only you would say? Like, something that I wouldn’t ever think of you saying?”  

“I need to replace my wipers. They’re squeaky,” Ash replied. 

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said, flicking the lever beside the steering wheel. The car’s windshield wipers scraped across the glass, screeching to be repaired. 

“Huh,” Mark said, with confirmation that the two were really in Ash’s car, driving to the pharmacy. The pair traveled to the sound of the car as Mark marinated in thought, tuning out the indistinct chatter of the voices until they pulled into the parking lot. 

“You need me to go in with you?” Ash asked.

“Nah, I’m good. Thanks, though,” Mark replied, staring ahead toward the door.

“Yep,” Ash said, stepping out of the car to light a cigarette as Mark went inside. The doors slid open, and a voice annunciated through Mark’s ears and into his mind. 

We’re watching you.

Before he could even think to ask what that meant, the voice dipped back into the jungle of voices that had trailed him since this morning. He wandered to the back of the store, covertly trying to figure out if any of the other customers were indeed trying to spy on him. 

Of course, they were not. 

At the back of the store lived the register. He meandered around the area until the cashier spoke to him, as he was the only customer in sight.

“Can I help you, sir?” the young woman inquired. 

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, I’m here to pick up a bottle of Invega?” Mark said, looking down at the register.

“Sure,” the woman replied, scrolling through a spreadsheet, “Duppy?”

“That’s me.” 

“All right,” the cashier said, fishing a bag out from under her counter and placing the bottle inside of it, “That’s gonna be fifteen twenty-eight.”

“Sure thing,” Mark responded, sliding his card through the reader. The woman handed Mark his receipt, and he wandered back out of the store. He figured out if any of the customers had followed him by weaving between aisles that no reasonable person would traverse unless they were specifically following him on his way. Once he doubled back between stationery and contraceptives, Mark confirmed that he was not being spied on and left the store. Finished with his cigarette, Ash had been waiting in the car for his return. 

“Got ’em?” Ash asked.

“Yep,” Mark said, flashing the bag, “Thanks again, by the way.” 

“Really, don’t worry about it, man. It’s like, five minutes,” Ash said, pulling out of the parking lot of the pharmacy. The ride back to Mark’s house was uneventful until Ash pulled into the driveway of his apartment building. 

“If you need anything else, shoot me a text, yeah?” 

“Yeah. Thanks,” Mark said, getting out of the car. Ash rolled down his window.

“Yep, we still good for the game Sunday?” Ash asked.

“Oh yeah, for sure.” Mark nodded. He turned around to face the car, but he avoided looking at Ash once more. He figured if anyone had honestly looked into his eyes, they’d see just how deranged he was and want nothing to do with him. 

“All right, see ya then,” Ash replied, pulling away. Mark went back to his apartment, unmodified from how he had left it. That didn’t stop him from checking every facet of every room to ensure that no unwanted company had made their way into his home. When he knew he was alone, Mark retrieved his pills from the bag, ran the faucet, and, at long last, took his medicine. 

Mark turned to his laptop, resumed the ambient jazz he had been listening to, and laid in his bed. As he listened, he could feel his sanity starting to breathe once more. The voices retreated, becoming quieter and quieter, until all that was left was the music. With an outstretched hand, Mark shut his laptop, and even the music had ceased. 

He laid in the silence he took for granted mere hours ago, and he let it wash over him like the ocean.

 _______________________

Gregory Kucera is a fiction writer who graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2020. This is his first published work. 

 

---

Wore Me Out

 

Colin has his headphones in and his eyes fixed on his phone, but he still notices the instant Natalie crosses into the terminal. She shows up for their 6 a.m. flight in sweats she’s probably had since college, hair piled in a lump, more on one side of her head than the other. Yesterday’s mascara is still under her eyes. Colin asks her if Kenny gave her a ride, and Natalie says she took a cab.

He passes her his sunglasses like dawn won’t be occurring when they take off hours from now, but it’s the first time she smiles. There’s seven of them from Sales on the trip, something about making quotas or finding new lines of clients, he doesn’t know. He probably spent most of that meeting zoning out.

They’re going to Utah, like Utah is a place that people go.

He hadn’t been to bed, afraid he’d sleep through the 3:47 a.m.  alarm. He wants a Cinnabon and some vodka and whatever other bad choices the airport can provide him. He yawns, rubbing at his chin, and wishing he’d shaved.

They move through security like the living dead, like cattle, like things that stumble slack-jawed toward a destination. Except for Cynthia, who came in a full business suit, complete with stockings and a fancy brand of heels he doesn’t know the name of. She is gunning for a promotion, which is stupid since no one on this trip has the authority to make a decision about that. Natalie drags her duffel behind her like it has wheels, even though it doesn’t. He almost offers to carry it, but it’s too early and too late for him to know if TSA counts that as someone else messing with your bags.

Colin doesn’t want to go to this conference he knows nothing about, but that makes sense. Colin doesn’t want to do anything related to work. He just wants to get paid and stretch his vacation days, but here he is with his boarding pass and his photo ID, en route anyway.

He watches Natalie reach into her pockets ahead of him, pull out a coin purse with her keys attached, a pack of gum, and a crumpled Kleenex that she put back into her pocket.

The woman wearing latex gloves motions her forward, then makes her put the sunglasses in the bin with all the rest of her crap. She obliges, but Colin can tell it annoys her as well. She puts them on again immediately post-metal detector before she even picks up her clogs.

Their gate is the farthest one from the two-seat bench provided for an entire airport to sit and put their shoes back on. And the whole way he wonders if their pilot’s slept at all, or if he, like Colin, just figured there probably wasn’t a point.

When they arrive at their appointed gate’s selection of uncomfortable chairs that are too small and always have parts that poke you in places that don’t need to be poked, Natalie curls up in one like a pill bug you find underneath a rock. She pulls her hood down, so all he can see is her mouth.

Colin stares at her lips from across the aisle, going fugue, until the stewardess announces forty-six minutes later that their rows can start boarding. He nudges at her calf with the toe of his still untied sneaker, and she sighs, moans, and begs him for five more minutes.

Calls him Kenny.

 

He wakes up bleary-eyed when they’re asked to return their tray tables and seats, even though he doesn’t even recall hearing they were allowed to move them in the first place. The plane descends, and he jumps slightly when they touch the ground, as though it’s unexpected.

Up a row, by the aisle, Natalie’s stretching her arms over her head, elbows pointing wide, and he can almost feel the pops of air escaping from his own joints.

Her dark hair has come loose, and she looks about nineteen in a hoodie from her alma mater. Colin watches her until the guy next to him clears his throat for a second time, obviously anxious to wrestle his carry-on from the overhead compartment.

She waits for him at the end of the tunnel and makes him promise to sit next to her in the van so she doesn’t wind up getting stuck with Cynthia.

They spend the ride whispering about how Salt Lake City is all mountains and homeless people. Her breath smells like peppermint.

 

He’s going to have to wear a name tag. Like, honestly, he’s putting on a tie so that people can ask him, “Oh, Colin with one L?” while looking right at it on his shirt pocket. It’s ridiculous.

His watch still says it’s 11:34 a.m., but he’s pretty sure he’s got time before the Meet and Greet Mixer Breakfast that’ll include all crappy pastries and weak coffee. 

They’re staying at a Marriott across from the Convention Center that seems to have accepted a challenge to use as many prints as possible in their design. The carpet doesn’t match the curtains, neither of which match either of the chairs. It’s vines and geometrics and a jumbled mess of patterns and colors. The tie he’s packed is blue and somehow clashes with everything. With one last pull still needed to achieve a crooked half Windsor, he hears a knock on the door.

Natalie’s standing there in the hallway in the black dress pants she wears almost every day and a button-down with stripes so thin they look like they were drawn on with a pencil. She looks indifferent, her face the female mirror to his. Maybe when they had started together three years ago, they were excited. To be twenty-two with that many personal days and a company phone had seemed like everything Colin couldn’t wait to get to while sitting in Corporate Finance 201 and every marketing lecture. 

It got old around the time his college girlfriend dumped him, and Natalie started dating Kenny.  He went on job interviews for better positions, but that never went anywhere. So basically, it became fully obvious that this was, in fact, his life and not just part of its ongoing trajectory.

And, yes, he recognized he should have hooked up with Natalie when he had the chance. But she’s the kind of pretty that takes a while to notice. Which he likes, he realizes, more than those girls who are conventionally good-looking but kind of shit about following up on dating apps. Her eyes are a little too big, and her upper lip can nearly disappear if she smiles wide enough, not that Colin really has to deal with that all that often in their office. She’s got great tits, even in this tragic work shirt.

He thinks rapid-fire about her in his room⎯on the bed⎯the taste of sweat on her hip, even though she hasn’t moved from leaning against the door frame.

On the nightstand, his phone buzzes, and he goes to grab it while Natalie reminds him they’re going to have to sit near the front if he doesn’t hurry up.

It’s from Casey, a text, Hope u landed ok. The office is quiet without u =). She wants them to be something serious so badly that even being the type of guy that he is won’t discourage her. It’s easy to picture her sitting at her makeshift desk near reception, their little business school intern. He and Casey aren’t really a thing, unless sleeping with her a handful of times counts as a thing. She wears dresses that are probably too short to be work appropriate, and that’s mostly why Colin’s going to respond. But Natalie calls his name, and he just slips the phone into his pocket, grabs his keycard off the dresser, and heads for the door.

 

All he wanted while they were holed up in a conference room, on chairs that were somehow worse than those at the airport, was to fall asleep, facedown, directly on top of his bed’s comforter—the only white thing in the entire room.

But after an entire day of tuning out generic PowerPoints by watching Natalie doodle in the margins of her agenda, he’s too tired to fall asleep. All Colin can think about is how someone was paid today to explain to them how to use hashtags on Twitter. Plus, the room isn’t the right temperature, and he can hear the TV from next door through the walls. He’s on his seventh wind and just waiting for it to break.

So he treats himself to a drink at the hotel bar, not bothering to change out of his t-shirt and basketball shorts. Maybe it will mellow him out, turn off his brain and shut his eyes.

One beer has turned into two and a half when he notices Natalie coming through the lobby in a yellow dress he’s never seen before. Not that it’s the kind of thing you’d wear to a soulless office to make phone calls. Her hair is in a thick braid that reminds him of loaves of bread at a bakery.

He calls out her name, too loud, so other people turn to stare at him, but she looks, and that’s all that matters. 

She comes to sit next to him in her dress the color of scrambled eggs fresh out of the pan, dandelion smudges, and soft baby chicks. Settles right on the barstool and makes him guess how many points of interest she walked past without going inside.

“I’m the worst kind of traveler,” she informs him before asking the bartender for a Jack and Diet Coke, easy on the ice. “I just want everything to be like home.”

The Sam Adams he’s had is probably why he asks her to tell him about home. What are the things that she likes about it, a question he never would have asked her in their elevator or breakroom.

Natalie plays with the straw in her drink once it’s placed in front of her, disrupting the carbonation, talking about her sister and this place she gets really good chai and one window in her apartment that she likes to look out of and feel introspective.

She makes him come up with something to follow that, and laughs when he says he likes knowing what number all of his favorite stations are on TV.

The conversation goes on as their drinks get lower and warmer in their glasses. Colin keeps bumping their knees and brushing her arm, touching her without meaning to⎯animal magnetism. Her lipstick is wearing off, so her mouth looks more like it did at 5 a.m., and that was still today. That time that seems so long ago like another person must have lived it.

Her phone chirps in her purse, and he fantasizes her turning it off, ignoring it, keeping all her attention focused on him. But she pulls it out instead and smiles. Differently than she did at the airport. Differently than she ever smiles at him.

“Kenny?” he asks, and she nods, typing out a reply.

He thinks about how he still hasn’t even told Casey he landed.

“What’s the deal with you two anyway?” even though he doesn’t want to know. Just wants to pick at his feelings like a scab.

“What’s the deal with me and my boyfriend of two years? I love him, you dummy,” she says, still clicking out a message.

Colin wonders if he’s ever been in love with anyone. How he probably should have been by now, or at least known definitively that it was happening. 

“Why didn’t he bring you to the airport this morning?” he asks, picturing Kenny with his too-curly hair still passed out in bed while she quietly carried her stuff out to a cab.

“It was so early, Colin,” and he thinks about how he would have gotten up to take Natalie to the airport like it’s something that’s actually true. He probably wouldn’t even remember that Casey had a flight if she mentioned it.

He wants to stop interrogating her, but not enough apparently. “Does he love you? You said you love him, but does he love you?”

She places her cell down on the bar and twists her body to look at him more fully, and he feels his shoulders tensing up. “I’m pretty sure he does.” She sounds so confident, even though there’s nothing confirmed by what she said. 

And then she puts her hand on his, the first time all day she’s been the one to initiate the contact, and it’s terrible in its insignificance. More terrible than the way she looked in his sunglasses, or her whispered breath against his ear, or the way right now, when he has an impulse to count the birthmarks on her collarbone. 

“Do you need to talk about something?” she asks, like she’s his mom, or a guidance counselor. “Is something going on with Casey?”

He laughs a laugh that’s more a scoff than anything else and tells her he just wants to finish his drink.

This is only happening because he’s drained and a little in the bag. It has nothing to do with the way he gets up most mornings and looks at himself in the mirror to shave only to think, Who the fuck is this asshole? Which is why he comes in sometimes with a five o’clock shadow so thick, it reminds him of someone on their way to rock bottom and how that’s worse than having to look in the mirror in the first place. 

Nothing’s wrong in his life, but nothing’s all that right either.

If he didn’t run into her, he would have walked past her room at least once tonight, too nervous to knock, except still thinking everything that’s happened between them was a sign that he probably should summon the courage. He’s a coward on top of everything.

But, he offers to pay her tab, and she obliges⎯a small victory.

Colin wants to put his hand on the small of her back, imagines the sensation as warm and yellow as melting butter against his palm. Use that hand to guide someone else’s girlfriend back to his room, so she can pet his hair to wake him up the next morning. So she will perch on the edge of a tub to watch him shave and kiss him with kisses that feel like salves to anything that’s ever ailed him. Let that motion, that initiated pressure against her spine, turn him into somebody different, even if it’s just for a little while. 

There’s no Colin with one or two L’s. There’s no Colin at all.

They’re the only ones in the elevator, and she leans against one of the walls with her eyes closed, talking about how tired she is, how she just wants to take off her shoes and she can’t believe in less than a day she’ll be back on a plane, and can he believe it?

He nods like she can see him, and just lets her ramble.

At her door, she says she’ll see him tomorrow while she’s already inside, her body mostly a sliver. “Thanks for the drink.”

“No problem,” leads to him only seeing the tendons of her forearm where it’s getting ready to secure the safety latch, and so he says her name to get a few more seconds. Maybe more than that. The power of liquid confidence.

“Yeah?”

“Not going to invite me in for awhile?”

She looks exasperated, like his mom used to look when he’d remind her he needed a newspaper to do his homework with⎯which should be grosser than it is. “I’m exhausted. You’re not exhausted?”

“What’s a half-hour more going to do at this point?” He grins in the way Casey has told him can convince her to do anything, like get her off under a blanket while her roommate watched Twister with them on the other side of the living room.

Natalie opens the door wider, an invitation that he already knows he’s going to push. “You’re a bad influence, Colin. This is exactly why I have to get a snack from the vending machine every day at 3:30 p.m. now.” 

Stepping in, he notices first the clothes strewn all around, a record of everything he’s seen her wear today. It’s not hard to want to add the yellow dress to the collection. Maybe right there, beside the rumpled dress pants. She slips off her shoes with her opposite toes.

“I can’t help it that I make good suggestions.” Colin flops himself on the bed, which doesn’t smell like her. Yet. He presses his face into the comforter, imagining that almost-cookie scent of Natalie’s.

She crosses over to the bay of windows, the breeze from the air conditioner stirring the skirts of her dress slightly. She’s actually opened the curtains in her room, the city lit up warm with the temple glowing like a beacon. Somewhere beyond that, which he can’t really see, those mountains are snowcapped and intimidating. The city’s so open and so closed in, somehow at the same time.

Natalie turns to look at him, her fingers jangling the chain. “They never wash those things, you know. It’s probably covered in jizz.”

He can feel his dick jump against the mattress. “So, you won’t come sit by me?”

“Colin.”

He tries to make himself seem innocent. “What? Cause it’s a bed? You can’t just sit on a bed with me?”

“I don’t think Kenny would like it,” Natalie says, even though she’s already on her way to moving closer. “Or Casey.”

“How is this any different than when we sit in the lounge at work?”

“You know why it’s different,” and it’s thrilling that this is happening, whatever it is that’s happening right now.

“I’m going to turn on the TV, okay?” Colin stretches to grab for the remote.

Natalie says, “But you don’t even know the channels here,” which means she was really listening to him down at the bar. She gets close enough to fold the comforter back, finally sitting on the sheets at the corner of the bed.

Colin pokes his head up over the ridge she’s made to see how upright she’s holding herself. “What do you want to watch?”

“We shouldn’t be doing this.”

He asks her, “Do you want me to go?” only because he’s pretty sure she’s not going to make him leave.

“I don’t know.” He watches her, taut. “No. But put on HGTV.”

It’s basic and annoying, but she wants it, so he doesn’t even argue and just presses the channel arrow on the remote. Maybe it’ll be something they’ll recollect upon when they’re furnishing their first place together, so he allows it. The couple is trying to decide which house they’re going to buy for their growing family, and every single place looks terrible. But Natalie starts to undo her dark hair, fingers combing through it, looking somewhat wild. She leans back too, her spine relaxing, and when the next episode starts, Colin doesn’t even know where the family chose to live because he’s been so focused on her.

A realtor droning in the background, he reaches out to touch her hair, stark against the white of the bedding. It’s soft. “I wanted to kiss you at Christmas.”

“What?”

“After the holiday party. When it was snowing.” The two of them standing out in it while Kenny went to get the car. Colin had had too much to drink, and every Uber he tried to call kept dropping him, while the snowflakes were getting caught in the fancy curls Natalie had set into her hair. Cheeks pink. It almost happened.

She pulls away, the strands tugging out of his fingers. “I think you should go.”

“Come on, Natalie. I was just being honest.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, getting off the bed and walking away from him. Like he’s some kind of feral dog she can’t turn her back on. “This was a mistake.”

“Why, though?” He sits up. “Because you know what I know? There’s something here. And I think you know there’s something here.” Because he can’t be the only one. There’s no way, with all the glances and conversations and the fact that he is here right now in this hotel room, that she hasn’t considered this.

“I’m with Kenny.”

“Again though, Natalie, why? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense to you!” And then she’s swinging the door open, and Colin knows the moment is well and truly broken but still can’t stop himself.

Heading toward her, he desperately pleads, “Tell me you at least think about it, Nat. Come on, tell me it’s not just me,” because that’s how she makes him feel. Desperate. He needs to hear her confirm it, even though his evidence of whispers and looks feels like enough to label his hypothesis as accurate. Friends don’t glance at one another the way they glance at each other. Acquaintances don’t share secrets the same way people who’ve thought about one another naked do.

“Goodnight, Colin,” she says firmly, and it makes him sigh and head back into the hallway.

The only noise is the door mechanism locking him out. 

Part of him still wants to knock.

But he goes back to his room to stare at the ceiling and jack off to the mental image of her waking up next to him, all loose hair and parted mouth. In the hangover of it, cum drying on his fingertips and a t-shirt he’s probably going to leave behind on purpose, the guilty piece of him wonders what it’s like to be a decent person. To not hit on someone else’s girlfriend or do things like decide to finally text Casey back the very untrue: I wish you were here.

He flicks back to the list of messages, and Natalie’s is there from last night. You’re literally the only way I’m going to get through this trip. He wants to delete it. The text and her contact information and her, if he could. But he just turns off the screen with his thumb.

Colin lies in the dark and already knows he’s not going to shave tomorrow.

_____________________

Danielle Hirschhorn started writing on storybook paper in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently working as an Elementary Media Specialist while completing her thesis work at Columbia College Chicago. Hair Trigger contains her first two publications.

 

 

---

A Strange Sort of Company

 

I was shocked by how much had changed. The road was the same, at least insofar as the curves and cross streets, but it had been repaved. I missed the rumble of tires on broken asphalt, the low growl of my engine choking on cheap gas. Between the new tread on the rental car and the smooth, black surface of the road, the whole thing felt like a record without the grooves; the music of it was gone.

Shopping centers had sprung up by the exits, bright and clean and empty, spilling white light into the same dark sky I’d often glimpsed through my father’s old telescope, his hand guiding mine, his voice whispering the names of constellations. 

“That’s Orion,” he’d say. “See the shield, the outline of the hunter? He boasted that he was the best in the world, so Zeus had him killed by a giant scorpion. You know how it goes.” I’d nod, even though they all looked, to me, like clusters of stars.

It was my father’s funeral that had brought me here. I’d known he was dying, but still—you’re never really prepared for the way that phone call hits you. I got off the freeway and made my way along the backroads.

Some of it looked exactly as I remembered. There I was, fishing in the creek behind our synagogue with Andy, leaning against the dusty walls of the movie theatre in line for Fatal Attraction, waking up in my jeans on Jordan’s living room couch, the TV still playing. 

Three identical blue houses still stood along the left side of The Arlington, waiting to be watched from the window of a bus on the way to school. 98.7 still blasted the Christian Rock my sister and I listened to when we wanted to torture our mother. I looked for the Rose Garden just off of Grant Street, but it was gone.

It’s funny how we expect our old corners of the world to be put on hold as we work and shop and buy houses and generally make a mess of things. I found myself fuming at the new and better supermarkets, the repaved roads. People passed laws conserving all sorts of swamps and valleys they deemed sufficiently heavy with history; had no one thought to protect mine?

 

The funeral was nice, I guess. Forty or so people packed themselves into the small synagogue at the top of Spruce Road. I’d spent much of my young life there, and still, I always denied that its teachings would come to inform my worldview. I spoke, briefly, to say that I was grateful for the support, and that I missed my father, and that I loved him.  

After the reception, I swam through the throng of guests, trying to avoid eye contact. The script was always the same. 

Thank you. I’m doing all right. Yes, he was. It is hard, but I’ll be okay. Yes, thank you.

A woman tapped me on the shoulder. “Joel, it’s good to see you. I’m so sorry. How are you holding up?”

“Thank you, it’s good to see you, too. I’m doing all right,” I said. I studied her face. She was entirely unfamiliar to me.

“Your dad was always so kind, I mean, just the sweetest man, really,” she said.

“Yes, he was.”

“And you’re sure you’re all right?”

“Yeah, I’ll be okay,” I said. She paused for a moment, looking at me. She seemed to be waiting for something. Then she smiled. It was a sad little smile, the kind you might give an old man when he complained that the nurse was stealing from him. I brushed away the thought.

“Well, it was great seeing you, and again, I’m just so sorry,” she said finally.

“Yes, you as well, thank you.”

I watched her fade back into the reception before it hit me. The lines by the corner of her eyes, the music of her voice . . . this woman had once been Jenny. Jenny, whose hands had pulled me over the sagging, chain-link fence of the local pool at two o’clock in the morning. Jenny, whose mother made the best lasagna imaginable, whose sense of fashion was so bad you couldn’t help but admire her bravery, and whose lips I had once kissed on a blue sofa by the window of my best friend’s living room.

I wanted to run after her, to tell her I remembered, to ask her how she was. Instead, I slowly made my way across the room, saying yes, and thank you, and he really was, until the courtesies faded into one another, and the people became a mess of moving mouths and reaching hands, and I found myself back in the rental car. 

 

The house was what I’d really been dreading. I hadn’t been back since my wedding, when the yard was full of balloons, and my mother painted the steps like a rainbow. It seemed a shame to give up the memory in favor of sorting through boxes.

I opened the door quickly and stepped inside. It was cleaner than I’d expected, and a little contrived. It looked as though I might have found it tucked between the pages of a realtor’s pamphlet, but I supposed that once he was on his own, my father had finally taken the opportunity to remove the ragged couch and bright posters that had defined so much of my childhood.

I made my way into the study. Even now, entering the space felt mischievous. I waited for my mother to poke her head through the doorway. What are you doing, Jo? You know Dad doesn’t like you to be in here without him.

Most of the stuff was garbage: tax returns and junk mail and textbooks I couldn’t imagine anyone ever wanting to read. I decided to keep my old report cards, but found little else of value.

The rest of the house was mostly bare. I salvaged a few mugs I thought I remembered, and a pillow I’d embroidered for Mother’s Day a million years ago, and continued to look around for something I could hold on to. Where were the photos, the journals, the old calendars? Everything was too new, too unfamiliar. Someone had painted over the initials we’d scratched into the wall beside the fridge. Our old TV had been tossed aside in favor of a flat screen.

I headed back into the study to grab the report cards and noticed a letter on the side of my father’s desk. Finally, I thought, here was something of his I could hold on to. I turned it over. It took me all of two seconds to realize the return address was mine; I had sent him the letter only weeks ago.

And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to put it down. I imagined my dad holding the paper between his fingers, reaching for his glasses. I imagined him doing his best to decipher my handwriting, thinking about what to say, setting the envelope on the corner of his desk. Maybe he was hoping to write back in the morning when the light was better. Maybe he went to the couch to watch the news and forgot all about it.        

I read my own words until my hands started to shake and my eyes felt hot and the letters blurred together, and I sank to the floor, sobbing.

I cried for a while, thinking about his ridiculous status updates on Facebook, the way he always asked about the kids before he asked about me, the way he let them dye what was left of his hair over our summer break, the last time I’d seen him. I thought about his old tweed flat cap, a relic of the time he’d spent in the Lower East Side as a child, the long breaths he took between sentences, the way his hand felt on my shoulder. I thought about the first time he’d held onto me not as a gesture of warmth but to steady himself as we walked down a flight of concrete stairs, how scared it had made me for reasons I couldn’t quite put into words.

What did it matter if the town was no longer small and ragged, if my old friends had changed? He had changed too, long before the pills and nurses. It had been a long time since I’d spent a night chatting with him under the stars. For years, our conversations took place over the phone, our topics ranged from preschool to doctor’s appointments to politics. 

It occurred to me that the man my high school classmates remembered had died long ago, little by little, and each time I’d had a chance to mourn alongside him. I’d cringed as he pulled out the holiday card from the year he forced us into matching sweaters, listened to him sigh as I attempted to spread my full-size sheets across a twin-size bed in an empty dorm room. 

Those losses were gradual, and shared. Most of them had long since been forgotten. I was longing for the man I’d written two weeks ago, the man who was old, and contemplative, and grouchy sometimes. It’s one thing to miss someone you remember. It is quite another to feel that they should still be with you.

I packed the report cards and mugs into a small cardboard box, grabbed the pillow, and headed back to the car.

The road was still too smooth. The sky was still washed out. It didn’t bother me. I knew what I was looking for. I knew it would still be there.

It was a warm day, and the beach was lined with tents and towels. The lake was dotted with the bright colors of children’s swimsuits and life jackets. I took off my shoes, enjoying the warmth of the sand on the bottoms of my feet. There it was, perfectly preserved, a bright splash of color between the aging planks of the closest picnic table. My kids had insisted on pink, spreading the dye across his head, staining his hair. I closed my eyes. That was how I wanted to remember him: sitting in the sun, pink hair dye streaking down his back, watching me, and the kids, and the waves. 

Running my hands over the cracked wood, I felt, for the first time, a closeness that was almost unbearable. I wanted desperately to see him sitting next me, to feel his calloused hand on my shoulder, to hear the rough edges of his voice over the wind. I opened my eyes.

I was alone, of course, and lonely, but it was a loneliness that felt for all the world like a strange sort of company. 

___________________

Asher Witkin is a singer-songwriter from Berkeley, California. While these are his first published pieces of writing, you can find his music wherever you listen to songs; or check out his website at asherwitkin.com.  

 

 

---

The Graceless Haze

 

When I was young, I used to want to rip my heart out. Whenever Mother would get angry with me, she would say that I had a “graceless heart”¾a rather morbid insult for a young child. On the days she yelled at me, I used to cry so hard I forgot how to breathe and imagined that I could rip my heart out and grow a new one¾a kinder, redder, more graceful one.

My life on the farm was dull. The same soft creaking of the old house and the same old breeze that blew by was familiar in the worst way¾any twinge of nostalgia was riddled with disdain. The skies surrounding the farm were always the same shade of hazy blue. They never shone that brilliant, ocean-like shade of blue¾there was never any depth. It was always covered by a layer of haze as if I were seeing through the lens of an old film camera. I didn’t know any differently at the time, but I somehow felt the brilliance underneath like it was an invisible force whispering my name and promising me “more, more, more.”

My mother, Isadora, did everything in her power to make sure that I never craved anything other than that hazy blue that seemed to engulf everything around it. I almost never left the cottage that my great-grandfather had built. He’d left the house and the land surrounding it to my mother when he died. I was only a baby.

To my granddaughter, Isadora, he wrote in his will. It was scrawled in his perfect script that stayed immaculate until the day he died. I leave my house and my farm, so she may never want for anything.

My great-grandfather was an adamant farmer. I always remember seeing a photo of him on the wall in the kitchen where he was sitting on a tractor with a smile. He once owned one of the biggest farms in the state, using his acres of land to raise cattle and grow corn. Under my mother’s watch, the farm had dwindled to a mere half-acre of land, a garden, and the big red barn. I was in charge of caring for the animals in the barn (there was a goat, a pig, a cow, and a bunch of chickens), which I hated to no end. My mother refused to enter into the barn for some reason. Gathering eggs into a wicker basket before the sun comes up was certainly not my idea of fun, to my mother’s surprise. She did everything in her power to keep me from wanting more, which is why I was bound to the tiny oasis she’d created¾isolated from the world and its excess.

“Wanting more leads to sin, Florence,” she’d said one day when she was chastising me for asking to eat something else for breakfast. I was tired of the same old scrambled eggs and plain toast. I was thirteen at the time¾of course it was getting old. “Being unthankful is a sin.” Her voice was starting to get louder and louder, the way a train does when it gets closer to you. “Don’t have a graceless heart!”

But no matter how much she yelled at me or punished me, I was still that graceless girl with a graceless heart who didn’t want to eat those freshly scrambled eggs or sit underneath the hazy blue sky. I always found something to long for.

 

Every morning began the same clichéd way¾with the crow of the rooster. That meant I had about an hour before my mom was expecting a basket full of fresh eggs for breakfast. The sun would have just cracked the horizon, slowly turning from a soft pink to the blue I hated so much. The haze, the goddamn haze. It was relentless, or in my mother’s words, graceless. I always tried to get out of bed quietly, as to not disturb my cat who slept at the end of my bed.

I knew something was wrong when the rooster did not crow at daybreak. Rather, I awoke to the sudden jolt and shock of cold air caused by my mother ripping the quilt off of my body. I instinctively tried to yank the covering back, which certainly did not help my case against my already enraged mother. My eyes were still heavy with restless sleep.

“Florence!” she bellowed, eyebrows deeply lowered.

She looked distressed and sounded even more so. Her voice cracked when she uttered my name, and for a moment, I felt sorry for her. Sorry that despite her best efforts, I wasn’t happy. But that moment of tenderness was as fleeting as the spring, and the ever-present gnawing of disdain and resentment came to the forefront of my mind.

“The rooster didn’t crow,” I muttered, tugging at the sleeve of my gingham nightgown. No matter how angry I got, my default seemed to be timidity. I suppose that’s how my mother taught me.

“Get up, now!” she pursed her already thin lips, so they almost disappeared for a moment. “You have twenty minutes. Then, we will discuss repercussions.” She stomped out of my bedroom like a toddler throwing a tantrum. My cat was staring at me with his round blue eyes, confused by the racket. I pet the top of his head making him purr softly.

“Here’s to another day in the oasis,” I whispered. The words tasted bitter at the back of my throat.

 

I trudged my way out to the barn, tripping a few times over the hem of my nightgown. I hadn’t even bothered to change. It was later in the day, so the sky was already that shade of blue. The sun was warm, but the air was cold; almost unseasonably cold for the early fall. Nevertheless, I walked to the barn with my wicker basket in hand.

When I opened the doors to the barn, a rush of cold air hit me. The temperature was about twenty degrees colder than it was outside. I shivered but proceeded. I knew my mother would be expecting me in the next ten minutes. I started with the cow, pouring some feed into her trough.  I had to milk her later since I was under a time constraint. I fed the goat and the pig the same thing and even stopped for a moment to pet them. The air got colder and colder the deeper into the barn I got, and by the time I reached the chicken coops, my entire body was covered in goosebumps. I scanned the area, searching for the rooster that had caused so much trouble. I didn’t see anything except the strange way all the chickens were huddled to one side, clucking wildly. My hand began to tremble, and I clutched the basket so hard I could feel the pattern of the weaving pressing into my hand. I knew it would leave red indents for a few minutes after I loosened my grip. Something wasn’t the same, and I would know, all I knew was the same. The closer and closer I got, the more evident it became that something¾god, I couldn’t put my finger on it¾was very, very wrong. Still I proceeded, stepping over the bales of hay that kept the chickens in that area, to collect the eggs.

One egg in the basket. A gust of wind blew cold air into my eyes. It made them tear up.

Two eggs in the basket. I heard breathing. I looked at the huddle of chickens. I knew that there was no way that an animal would breathe like that.

Three eggs in the basket. I heard chewing—really loud, ill-mannered chewing.

The fourth egg almost made its way to the basket, but before it could find its home among the others, I saw a figure hunched in the corner shoveling something into its mouth.

I dropped the egg and felt the yolk splatter on my ankle. The figure was human-like; I could see the outline of every vertebrae of the spine on its back. I tried not to make any sudden movements, but my breathing was uncontrollable.

The figure whipped its head around, throwing the long mess of tangled black hair in a rainbow motion. It looked up at me with murky eyes that showed signs of them once being blue. Its skin was so pale that it was almost purple; you could see its blood rushing through its body. The head was huge in comparison to the thin, willowy body that it was attached to. Its neck did not seem suited to uphold so much weight. Everything about its body read like a disproportionate drawing done by a child. The arms were just slightly too long, and the legs were a little too short. I stepped back, unable to break eye contact. The figure rose slowly to its feet as if not to startle me.

“You needn’t be afraid,” the monster said. The voice was a woman’s voice with an endless whisper. “My name is Delilah.” Her teeth were sharpened to a point¾every one of them. There was blood on them still, and I could smell the metallic scent wafting out of her open mouth. “I’m returning from a long journey. I must retain my strength before going home.” She circled me. Although she was walking on two legs, something about her gait made it seem like she was floating—flying. Her white dress was ripped and dirty at the ends, but clean on top.

“I can’t help you.” I turned to try to run away, but Delilah swiftly moved in front of me.

“Graceless girl!” she yelled in her whispery voice. She trailed my neck with a long fingernail. “I could slice you open right now.” She pressed her nail just hard enough to draw blood and let it drip onto her nail. She raised the drop to her lips and licked it off. “And my, my, wouldn’t you be delicious?” She cackled at the fear she saw in my eyes. She lowered her hand onto my shoulder. It was even colder than the temperature inside. I tilted my head down to hide my nose from the smell of blood and rotten flesh that continued to flow out of her mouth. Delilah grasped my face in both of her hands and brought it closer to meet hers. Our noses were touching. That scent was all I could smell. “You must help me. And I will make the world shine for you.”

“Wh¾wha¾ what do you need?” I barely squeezed those few words out. Delilah released my face and stepped back.

“Aha, I knew you would find your heart.” She made a noise that sounded like it was supposed to be a laugh but was more like an exasperated wheeze. “I need to feast. For five days. Every day, I need something fresh,” she grinned, exposing her pointy teeth, “to devour.”

She moved her skeletal hands rather theatrically.

I was momentarily mesmerized by the way her fingernails moved in a delayed wave as she gestured. The trickling of the blood from the cut on my chest snapped me out of it. I wiped it with the sleeve of my flannel, watching the deep red disappear among the pattern of the shirt.

“Well, we have a garden. I can bring you something from there.”

Deliah wheezed again. “No, child.” She moved close again. “I need a life!” All of her words were beginning to drag out more. “And I need blood!” She was so close to my ear that her breath made the side of my face burn. “There is always more.”

“Is there?” My gaze was still down, but Delilah raised my chin with the knuckle of her boney pointer finger.

“Un-bow your head, child.” She paused for a moment and took a breath. “I promise you,” she smiled. I wondered how her pointy teeth didn’t cut her lips. My mother used to tell me that one day I would cut mine on my sharp tongue. “There is more.”

I nodded and told her I would return the next day to give her something new to eat. I picked up a few eggs and put them in the basket as Delilah returned to the carcass.

For a moment, I looked forward to the next day. The hazy blue skies did not seem to haunt me.

 

Back at the house, my mother was stewing at the kitchen table. She cooked the eggs spitefully. I don’t know if it was the scent of the eggs or the thought that in only a few days things would go back to the way they always were that made my empty stomach lurch.

“Shall we pray?” my mother asked, already with her hands clasped together and elbows resting on either side of her plate. The steam from the eggs was fogging up her glasses. “Bow your head.” I dropped my neck but kept my eyes open. “Dear Lord,” she sighed. “Blessed be this meal that we are about to partake in. And let Florence remember what your word says¾‘God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.’ Forgive her. Amen.” She opened her eyes while her head was still bowed as if to avoid making any eye contact with me.

She chewed every bite of her breakfast slowly while staring at my plate. I stared back at her. I didn’t touch my breakfast, and she said nothing.

 

The first morning I woke up to silence was intoxicating. There was no rooster ringing in my ear singing the tune of rural prison bells. I pulled myself out of bed before the sun even dared to interrupt the stars. My cat, resting along my feet, looked up drowsily at me, his eyes shining through the darkness.

“Another day in the oasis,” I whispered in his direction as I pulled on one of my many long floral dresses that my mother had sewn by hand. I was doing everything as quietly as possible as not to wake my mother in the room across the hall. The thing is, whenever you’re trying to be quiet, everything seems ten times louder. The click of my boots against the hardwood floors sounded like an entire army and the creak of the front door felt like it echoed forever, but when I got outside, everything went silent. Not the sad kind of silence that made you feel alone, but rather the kind that meant you could fill it with whatever you wanted.

            

Delilah was waiting anxiously in the corner where I had found her. I caught a glimpse of the pile of dry bones next to her before she rushed to greet me.

“What shall I eat today?” She swirled around me once, rubbing her hands together ravenously.

I looked around the barn. It was just about feeding time and all the animals were already awake. Some of them wouldn’t be fed but become food for Delilah.

“You can eat the pig.”

Before I could even finish my sentence, Delilah had already made her way over to him. I looked away just before she impaled him, but not in time to cover my ears from the squeals.

 

The third day went the same.

I climbed out of bed before daybreak and headed to the barn to tend to Delilah. On that day, I let her eat the cow. My mother asked me why I didn’t bring any milk for the day.

“I’m tired of milk, Mother,” I said as I sat down to do my schoolwork. “Can’t you go into town so we can have juice or something?”

She did that thing where she tilts her head down and looks at me over her glasses instead of through them.

“Florence,” she sighed. “I pray that you talk to God and cleanse your heart of this ungrateful spirit of yours. I really do.”

I said nothing after that. And she did not speak to me for the rest of the day.

 

On the fourth day, Delilah finished off our animals when she ate the goat. It made me quite sad. He was a beautiful thing, with his black coat and perfectly spiraled horns, but he looked at me with a resolution that was almost comforting. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he knew what was coming.

“My child,” Delilah began with a mouth full of goat flesh. I had become less squeamish about watching her eat. “What shall I eat tomorrow? On the final day.”

I looked around. I hadn’t thought of that. The barn was nothing but hay and bones at this point. Panic rose in my chest almost instantaneously.

“I¾I¾” I stuttered, trying to catch my breath that had suddenly run away from me. “I have no idea.” My voice trailed off. “There is nothing else.”

“You’re wrong, child.” She raised her head from the carcass only momentarily. “There is always more. You just have to search for it.”

 

I was distracted all day¾the only thing I could think about was Delilah. Every time I remembered that I needed to feed her on the last day, my heart started to race. Things came to a head when I was sitting at the table doing schoolwork my mother had given me for the day.

“Mother,” I began, glancing up from my schoolwork. I had been staring at the same unsolved math problem for the past ten minutes. “There is something I need to speak with you about.”

Whenever I spoke to her, my voice took on a very formal cadence. It wasn’t a conscious choice. I suppose my subconscious just knew that to ensure survival, I had to protect my mother’s idea of me.

My mother looked up from whatever she was crocheting.

“What is it, Florence?” She sighed with an already disappointed tone. She was getting tired of me, I could tell.

“There is something strange going on in the barn,” I was trying to make it seem as minuscule as possible. “Something very, very strange.”

She looked at me, her beady eyes cutting deep even beneath her thick wire glasses.

“And there is nothing more,” I got choked up on my own words. I could feel the tears welling up. “There is nothing more I can do about it.”

I don’t know what I expected from her, honestly. I knew it would not be sympathy or care or anything of that sort. Perhaps more of this shameful indifference she had recently adopted. Anything, but nothing prepared me for rage. She paused.

“Florence, you are testing my patience!” She slammed her crochet needles on the table so hard it made me jump. “Your thanklessness sickens me! You may not say it with your mouth, but you say it with your actions.”

“Mother, there’s something in that barn!” I yelled.  I’d given up on trying to hold back my tears. They tasted bitter. “And I can’t make it go away!”

“Don’t you raise your voice at me!”

“Mom, please, listen!”

“I will not entertain your NONSENSE!”

I gulped.

“I did not raise you to be this way!”

“Mom, I’m sorry.” I was really crying then. My voice was cracking at every inflection. “I really am. I’m sorry that I can’t ever seem to obey the right way, and that I always seem to want more.”

She crossed her arms over her chest.

“I’m sorry! Please, forgive me! But I need you to listen to me!”

I was groveling at this point. There is truly nothing more shameful than having to beg.

“You make it difficult for me to be graceful,” she stood up and abruptly pushed her chair in. “And for that, I do not forgive you.”

She left me at the table, alone. Crying so hard I had to gasp for air.

 

The fifth morning of waking up without the crow of the rooster was not really waking up¾I hadn’t slept at all. The feeling of silence wasn’t as intoxicating anymore¾it was frightening. I stayed up all night trying to think of something for Delilah’s final day. I had considered going out and killing a squirrel. Or just begging her to eat something from the garden. But I wasn’t up to begging anymore.

I must have gotten too lost in my thoughts. The thing that snapped me out of my panic-induced haze was the sound of my mother opening her bedroom door and trudging her way to the bathroom. I whipped my head around toward the window. Sure enough, there were the early signs of daybreak. My heart instantly started to race. I wasn’t sure whether I was going to cry, vomit, or have a heart attack.

I jumped out of bed and began pacing around my room.

“There is nothing more, there is nothing more,” I repeated over and over again in my head. Or at least I thought it was in my head, but apparently, I was saying it out loud because my mother burst through my door. 

“Florence, what in the world are you doing?”

My cat finally awoke from his sleep when she spoke.

I was so panicked¾nothing she said really registered in my brain¾I was just fixated on my cat. His orange fur and blue eyes and the way he still looked a little drowsy and a little confused. My heart sank to my feet when my brain registered my thoughts.

“Florence! Answer me!” my mother yelled. She was no longer hiding her rage.

I ignored her and made my way to the edge of my bed where my cat was. I snatched him into my arms and brushed past my mother toward the door.

“Florence!” she called after me.

Her voice trailed behind me as I broke into a stumbly run, seemingly unable to move my eyes anywhere but forward. I was headed to the barn barefoot against the cold grass.

 

I burst through the doors of the barn just as the sun was beginning to come up. I didn’t even realize how much I was freezing.

“Did you find anything?” Delilah approached so frantically; she was almost running on all fours.

“I couldn’t find anything. There is nothing more!” my voice was shaky. A few tears fell down my cheeks as I clutched my beloved cat to me. “This is all I have left.”

My cat looked curiously in Delilah’s direction. He was just as mesmerized by her fluid motions as I had been on the first day. She moved her hands slowly to watch the cat’s eyes follow her to the left, to the right, and then back again. Suddenly, she closed her hand and lifted her gaze simultaneously. She was glancing, no, glaring, right over my shoulder.

She smiled as she brought her focus back to me.

“Don’t cry, child.” she cooed, wiping my tears with the rough pads of her fingers. Her long fingernails scraped my cheeks.  “There is always more.”

I shook my head and brought my gaze to the ground. “There’s nothing. I’m sorry.”

She placed the back of her hand under my chin and raised my head.

“Florence, my child,” Delilah breathed. “There is always more.” She looked at me with knowingness in her eyes, as if she was trying to send her thoughts rushing through my brain. “There is always more.”

She motioned behind me with one of her skeletal hands. 

There was my mother standing in front of the open doors. The way the early morning light was hitting her, she looked like a shadowy figure. I could only see her silhouette, yet I could imagine her facial expression: a distant stare with flickers of fear. She didn’t dare to move from her place, not to leave or to escape from Delilah’s beckoning. This was the one and only time I witnessed her speechless.

Delilah placed a hand on my bare shoulder.  It wasn’t as cold as it was the first day¾there was a humanlike warmth that permeated my arm. When my own eyes sparkled with understanding, Delilah brushed past me without hesitation.

More, more, MORE, I thought. It wasn’t a quiet thought this time, instead my mind screamed every syllable.

Delilah floated over to where my mother was and circled her once. The hem of her tattered dress followed a few seconds behind. I wish I could have seen my mother’s face. Would I have detested the fear in her eyes or savored it? I suppose I’m lucky that I didn’t see her face; that I didn’t have to learn of my own cruelty on that day.

Delilah sliced her chest open with a single swift motion. I could hear a slight sputter, but I was surprised not to hear the gush of blood and a loud cry.

I didn’t know that death was so silent.

I saw Delilah’s hand disappear, stretching the cut down my mother’s chest into a chasm. She grasped my mother’s still-beating heart out of its rightful place, the arteries rebounding and spraying drops of blood on my face. I didn’t bother to wipe them away. My mother’s heart beat three more times before it went still.

Th-thump. More.

Th-thump. More.

Th-thump. More.

Stillness. Everything.

A sick smile broke across my face as I relished in the feeling of that soft haze fading from the sky. I knew the brilliance would be revealed to me in only moments more.

________________________

Deanna Whitlow is a fiction undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago. She was a staff writer of the digital publication Affinity Magazine; and she founded SameFaces Collective, an online literary and art magazine where she is both editor and a regular contributor. 

 

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Evan Dahm tackles the political dynamics of a fantasy world in Vatt

 

Interview by Lily Reeves

Evan Dahm is a prolific comics creator from North Carolina. He has been self-publishing fantasy comics online since 2006, and his work is commonly known as a game-changer in webcomics, bringing complex worlds, themes, and art to the medium. Since then, many of his comics have been physically published. His currently running, award-winning webcomic, Vattu, has two physically published volumes, and the third was successfully Kickstarted in November.

As a comic artist myself, Dahm’s comics have been hugely inspirational to me. I first started reading his comic Rice Boy in middle school, shortly after it ended. At the time, his work mystified and fascinated me. Having since become an adult, I can say that’s still the case, but I can also appreciate the masterful story-telling, and relevant sociopolitical themes. Vattu, in particular, is a gut-wrenching story about the machinations of the powerful, and about the little people dealing with the fallout.

 

How did you get started in comics? What got you interested?

 I’ve been drawing forever, and drawing comics for a long, long time, but I only started to take them seriously as a medium to work in when I started Rice Boy in 2006. It’s a medium for visual narrative that one person can create entirely by themself in whatever idiosyncratic way they like—that is the main thing that still draws me to it.

How would you describe Vattu to someone who’s never heard of it?

I still have trouble with this. It is an expansive, meandering fantasy-adventure comic, a kind of biography, and an exploration of the capital of a preindustrial empire and the social dynamics and revolutionary energies within it. It’s about political power and the development of identity within and against it. It’s set in a world full of weird creatures.

What are your biggest influences for Vattu, or for your comic work in general?

I don’t know what to point to exactly. An interest in actual history and what the experience of first-contact culture shock must feel like was a motivating thing for Vattu. Invented-setting genre fiction with a social and political focus has been hugely important to me: Ursula K. Le Guin, Angélica Gorodischer, China Miéville….

The world of Vattu is colorful and complicated, and entirely imagined. How do you approach world-building? What do you prioritize in order to make it feel real, without getting bogged down in all the details?

I am very interested in the experience of reading and believing a fictional setting –in how “immersion” works in fantastic stories. I really try to prioritize the mechanics of exposition in any sort of invented-setting story; I think how the setting is conveyed through the story is as important as the material of the setting that the writer develops external to the story. In the material of the setting itself, I start with broad atmospheric and thematic ideas and build in detail to support that. Starting from a premise that detail is quality, and that a fictional world has to be as richly and arbitrarily detailed as the real one can be destructive to the goals of a narrative, I think!

Vattu contains a lot of symbolism and specific cultural practices, such as the Fluters’ name marks, and the Tarrus cult. Is any of it based on real world cultures? Any particular stories behind any of these ideas?

I don’t think any of it is specifically based on real cultural practices! The Fluter marks in particular started for the sake of visual interest, and keeping the characters distinct, but as the comic went on I got really focused on the idea of identity and selfrepresentation, and it became valuable as a way of talking about that. A lot of the cultural detail is stuff I’ve built in to support the thematic content of the story. That’s a little backwards maybe!

Much of your work is centered on nonhuman characters with features very different from our own. In a visual medium it can be difficult to portray the alien as relatable. What’s your interest in these kinds of characters? Do you have any special methods for making them relatable to your readers?

 I’ve been doing comics mostly about nonhuman creatures for a long time, and I’m stuck on it now! It feels kind of like a waste to make stories in a totally visual medium and not take advantage of it in that particular way—I want to invent as much as possible of the visual context, and use comics to present it fairly literalistically or without much overt “style.” I guess it is difficult sometimes to communicate with non-human characters, but I think all readers are generally eager to meet you halfway, and to anthropomorphize whatever is presented. I don’t have any special methods other than to try to take body language seriously!

How do you plan out your comics’ plots? Do you have an entire script that you follow, or a loose guideline? Over the years, have you changed the course of Vattu’s story?

 I’ve approached plotting in very different ways for everything I’ve done! Vattu started with a big broad outline, and it’s tightened up and shifted in the details as I’ve moved through it. The main structure hasn’t changed fundamentally, but the comic has started to mean different things to me than it did eight years ago, so I think it’s different now than I would have thought back then. I am writing and rewriting pretty frequently.

Historically, comic books have been widely dismissed as cheap, disposable entertainment. However, they’ve been gaining traction as a vehicle for more serious and more personal stories over the past few decades, especially in independent publishing and web comics. What do you think this medium brings to the table that distinguishes itself from others?

 I think the facts that comics are a visual medium that can be made by an individual or small team and distributed very cheaply or for free open a lot of space for idiosyncratic work. It feels like a pop cultural frontier sometimes because it’s so low-risk. This makes me want independent comics and my own comics to be weirder and more personal and more critical.

Any advice you would give to someone trying to write their first long-form comic?

Keep all your art at 600 dpi. You can plan too much; be aware that any long-term project that you move through from front to back might be more like exploring a space you’re building than it will be like executing a plan you’ve made beforehand. The most valuable thing starting out is making your work visible and easy to find!

Vattu © Evan Dahm

http://www.rice-boy.com/vattu/

Tags: Evan Dahm, Vattu, Rice Boy, interview, comic, webcomic, graphic novel, fantasy, world-building

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Author Garnett Kilberg Cohen talks about the process of writing her short stories, the influences behind them, and magazine editing.

 

Interview by Mulan Matthayasack

Garnett Kilberg-Cohen was one of my Fiction Workshop teachers here at Columbia College. Aside from being a wonderful professor who pushed us to create our best work and introduced us to amazing writers, such as Emma Donoghue and Roxane Gay, I discovered she is also one of the co-editors in the department’s nonfiction magazine, Punctuate, and has published her short stories and essays in many magazines such as The Literary Review and American Fiction. I decided to interview her to get to know her more as a writer, as opposed to a professor.

Your most recent piece, “My Life in Smoke,” published in The New Yorker, is very intriguing and reflective. What compelled you to share your journey with this topic (smoking) in particular?

The object of the urn in the first paragraph of the essay was a stimulus. Since it sits in a room of my house, I look at it and think about it fairly frequently. I think important objects from our pasts are often imbued with meaning or can spark memories. Also, a few moments and images of my smoking have reoccurred to me over the years. Since they were important enough to me to reappear in my consciousness over the years, I decided to write them down. Once I started writing them, other memories came back, so I wrote them as well. I worked for a few days shaping them into an essay. A month later, I went to Scotland, so I added that information into the essay. I like to manipulate time—move backwards and forwards—in both fiction and nonfiction, but in this piece, it seemed important to the logic to have the events appear in somewhat chronological order.

In that same piece, you claim you moved around a lot. I notice this is a common occurrence in some of your other works. Does your environment—or perhaps, the lack of it, or even the search for it—dictate or influence a majority of what you write?

I find that new places often inspire ideas. Also, when I move away from a place, the place can accrue more power and its most poignant qualities rise to the surface of my mind, giving the place almost a mythical significance.

I read your other piece, “Space and Time, the Four Dimensions,” that was published in the Tupelo Quarterly. The content itself is extremely touching, and I love how it makes you think about certain people, yourself, and the idea of fate—also, the way you organized the piece is interesting: you have an instance for each “dimension.” Was that originally how you planned to structure the story, or did the story naturally form on its own?

I can’t remember the impetus for the piece—probably seeing the reunion of the band on Facebook—but I do remember playing with the concept of four dimensions. Forcing the story into four compartments encouraged me to think about the story in new ways and from various perspectives, and to distill it. I say in the essay that time moves only in one direction, but a part of me doesn’t believe that. At least in a metaphorical sense, my past is always running alongside my present. And the future haunts and terrifies me.

You’ve dabbled in pretty much everything: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays. . . . Is there a particular genre that you like writing the most? The least? What’s the hardest part of that?

Though I started out as a journalist and a copywriter, most of my writing life has been spent writing fiction, but over time I took more detours into writing poetry or nonfiction, usually because the material I wanted to write did not fit into a fictional form or because it was primarily nonfiction. Some of my fiction is partially biographical, but if it doesn’t have a strong imaginative component, I don’t want to call it fiction. Different material requires different forms. In the last ten years, I have spent more time on nonfiction—maybe because as one gets older, more real life has built up and calls for exploration and documentation. Plus, nonfiction more easily lends itself to non-narrative subgenres such as meditations on events or objects. My most recent published fiction is probably my least biographical; “Wheels” (in Hypertext) and “Maternal Instinct” (in Fiction Southeast) have fewer biographical components than anything I’ve published. In fact, they are both from male points of view. It has been years since I have written any poetry but I imagine that if I do it again, it will be in a flurry of connected poems rather than just a poem here or there—as that was how I composed poems in the past.

I notice a lot of your work is “short-story” or “memoir” based. . . . Have you ever considered writing a longer piece such as a novel?

I have considered it and I have tried—and will probably try again—to write a novel or a longer memoir. But I find shorter pieces, something that needs to be read in one sitting—meaning about one to 50 pages—generally have more intensity. I don’t think lives or even major events generally follow the arc of a novel. That is not to say that I don’t read novels and love them, but unlike a short story or essay, I can put them down for a few days, come back to them, and then put them down again. A good short story or essay keeps one captive and delivers immediate impact. Probably my favorite form of fiction is the linked story, like Munro’s The Beggar Maid or Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, where the most important moments of a character’s life add up to give a multi-dimensional view of the characters and their lives. Linked collections often feel more authentic than novels.

Where do you usually get your inspiration from?

Multiple places. An image. A reoccurring memory. Something I’ve read or observed. Over hearing a conversation. Or just forcing myself to sit down and write.

Some artists say most of their ideas come at night; others say they work better in the early morning after grabbing a cup of coffee and sitting somewhere quiet. What’s your process like when it comes to writing?

I love to have a window—looking out on trees or water or a busy place. But truly, I do not require a specific space or time. Once the urge has taken over and I am writing, I am not looking out that window much.

How do you handle writer’s block?

I haven’t experienced it much. That said, I have experienced not being able to write the way I want to write (I guess maybe that is a form of writer’s block), when a story or essay feels flat or not to be progressively well. I have not figured out a cure for that except to push through and if it doesn’t work, try to write something else.

Who are your favorite authors? Which writers would you consider your style is most similar to?

The list is long and changes. But a few who have remained constant for a while are Joan Didion and Alice Munro.

Does being a co-editor in your magazine, Punctuate, help your writing? If so, how?

All reading and thinking about writing—which is a big aspect of editing—helps my writing.

How do you manage to balance teaching, writing, and editing all at the same time?

It is very difficult and at this point in the semester feels close to impossible, but knowing I have to structure my time well helps.

What are some of your favorite literary magazines?

As with books and authors, that changes a lot. I think Black Warrior Review and Crazyhorse are both lovely. Michigan Quarterly is a good one too. Gettysburg Review, Brevity—fortunately for us writers, the list is long!

How do you go about choosing which magazines and journals to submit a piece to?

With my best pieces, I usually start with the best magazines, meaning ones that have won awards or published pieces that later appear in Best American Short Stories or Best American Essays or have been around for a long time, proving their sustainability. I like journals that are physically attractive, like Black Warrior Review, and include some visual art. But sometimes I choose a magazine because it seems particularly suitable for the particular form or content I’m working with. I also like to expand the places I’ve published, so I have rarely published in a place more than twice. But these are not hard and fast rules. Sometimes I will simply see a journal name that I like. I subscribe to many literary magazines so I have a good sense of a lot of them.

What advice would you have for dealing with rejection letters?

Since most writers get far more rejections than acceptances, it is important not to allow rejections to have too great an impact. I would tell beginning writers that if they are confident about a piece to simply keep submitting it and to be sure to do simultaneous submissions; if you get a rejection from one place but know it is out at three other magazines, it softens the blow. Also, I can say I have been rejected by what I consider a lesser magazine only to revise it a little and have it accepted by a better one. Not all editors share your aesthetics or understand what you’re trying to do. But if you get a rejection with some advice, at least consider what the editor has advised.

The Nickel Boys

Review by Benjamin Peachey

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead is an expert on creating stories that exist in and comment on the racist history of America, as seen in his previous works like The Intuitionist and The Underground Railroad. The Nickel Boys is his latest to delve into the evil of racism, and face it head on through its characters. What sets this work apart from his other novels, is the juxtaposition of the brutal and the hopeful. That fight is present from the first sentence, even more so by the novel’s close. 

In the beginning of this novel, we are introduced to Elwood Curtis in segregated Tallahassee. A bright and inquisitive student, he listens to the records of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches which were “a vivid chronicle” of the history of racism in America. Elwood becomes a victim of bad circumstances and ends up in the Nickel Academy, an academy for reform, in name but not practice, where the boys are sexually abused, beaten, and sometimes murdered by the staff. Elwood must traverse this new world with the help of his fellow Black inmates. 

Whitehead creates Elwood and his story from real accounts of the school that the Nickel Academy was based on. This is never clearer than when Elwood is beaten, the descriptions so specific, so real, that they must be from first-hand accounts. 

Elwood longed for a world of equality and was ready to fight it anyway he could. “No money at all. They laughed because they knew the drug store didn’t serve colored patrons, and sometimes laughter knocked out a few bricks from the barricade of segregation, so tall and so wide.”

Even in the worst of situations, the boys in this story still see the hope of a world that could be. Martin Luther King Jr. inspires the characters throughout; his exact words appear in the novel. “He lugged his words like an anvil in his Nickel-issued pockets. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, the reverend said, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. . . . Is this what it felt like? To walk arm in arm in the middle of the street, a link in a living chain, knowing that around the next corner the white mob stood with their baseball bats and fire hoses and curses.”

Whitehead does not create his characters to live in despair and brutality, but to show the journey of how they overcome it. Learning from our past mandates us to confront our present. Whitehead portrays injustice and dares us to look away from the truth he writes. 

 

Publisher Information: 
Published by DoubleDay on July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-537070
210 Pages

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