Fatal Attraction

Cliffs chiseled in time,
gun metal rock breaks
the sea.
Wounded, it retreats.
I wish I were stone.

On the Lack of Reading Comprehension

Specifically,
the lack in many alleged professionals
The group was formed for book reviews
and the promotion of forthcoming books,
yet because the group also had the words
Poets and Writers in its title
an alarming number of poets felt free
to post their poems on the group’s page,
poems that had never been and would never be
published anyplace else
(unless the poet paid for it)
I think the two things are related

I’m lying on the grate where the steam comes up.

I’m lying on the grate where the steam comes up.
Otherwise I’d freeze a Chicago winter night.
Occupy Wall St, what a bust!

Then all day I sit in Union Stn like waiting for a train,
moving around so they won’t get suspicious.
I’m lying on the grate where the steam comes up.

Sometimes I’m sitting in the library with a book
or in the Pacific Gardens Mission getting saved & fed.
Occupy Wall St, what a bust!

On Thursdays the Art Institute is free.
I walk around looking at Kandinsky & Klee
I’m lying on the grate where the steam comes up,

spending a Chicago winter night behind the Post Office.
When they open their doors, I’m at the mission getting saved.
Occupy Wall St, what a bust!

Soon it’s Spring, & you can get rained on before
you pull a tarp over yourself at the grate.
I’m lying on the grate where the steam comes up.
Occupy Wall St, what a bust ...

!

When the roach pins Jesoo to the floor

The roach pins Jesoo to the floor
& the sewer pipe explodes over Jesoo‘s face.
Sewage marinates the holy grail.

It catches in Jesoo‘s teeth, &
a mole chews on Jesoo‘s tongue, as
the roach pins Jesoo to the floor.

Rick Perry gets shoved down Jesoo‘s throat,
studying Mein Kampf & The Bible, as
sewage marinates the holy grail.

The roach dines on Jesoo‘s tongue,
making it hard to spread the word.
The roach pins Jesoo to the floor.

Jesoo‘s freed by Magdalene his whore.
He sucks Mitt Romney from his pedoody, as
sewage marinates the holy grail.

The apocalypse falls with nuclear bombs, &
the world‘s a wasteland of blood & bone.
The roach pins Jesoo to the floor, as
sewage marinates the holy grail ...

!

The Music Shades The Sun

Somebody’s dead symphony
Leaks from the stereo,
And Taylor found me lying on the tiles
Of the bathroom floor,
Ripped,
Slashed,
Beaten,
Gutted,
Opiate powder still on the end of my nose,
My head spinning
With a hangover spike
Pierced through the center of my skull,
Just brittle bone,
No meat,
Paper skin,
And yellow enamel.
Wine and rum bottles rooted across our landscape
Like dying trees.
A note from our mothers on the fridge,
A skillet melted into the burner,
A smoke alarm torn off
And hanging by a wire from the ceiling,
A pink laced thong on the floor,
Three condoms bathing in a coffee cup,
Jade coming out of the closet half naked
And sneaking out the door,
The sink reeking of moldy dishes
And stale creamy water,
The truck out of gas,
The rent a week late,
The noon ladies of the neighborhood
Knocking on the door with matching purple hats
To express their judgment,
The fratboy’s stolen beer in our bellies,
And blood mysteriously on the floor.
Two cockroaches clenched each other,
Beside my ear,
And fucked.
Taylor rubs his fingers through my tangled hair
And whispers,
“Good Morning.”

A Pleasant Fantasy

Upon the hospice tablature
The Atheist lay dying.
Near him reverently stood
A speaker of the faith.
Unafraid the Heathen said,
“I’ll go on forever.
The rest of you will perish in
The earth and be forgotten.”

Jordan

I went into Denny’s,
Only Jordan working,
Desperate for coffee,
He was very slow.
Weary of the wait,
I got up to leave.
He hollered, “Are you leaving?”
“You bet your ass I am!”
Today again I saw him.
I said, “I got angry
Yesterday.” He said,
“I know.” And I felt sorry.
Later on I spoke.
He said to be more patient.
Again as I was leaving
I said, “Jordan.” Quickly
His hand shot out, I shook it.

There in Place of ‘On’

I pressed the button, and it didn’t respond.
So I stood dumbly, waiting for what.

I tried again, a dry click again. It was there in place of ‘on.’

I have to wonder when things quit. I have to wonder about the timing.

Material goes, snaps at a point. But I need detail.

The day, the hour, the second. When and why it coughed up blood.

When and why it doesn’t last. If it has a purpose, even.

What’s the point of a routine if little things disrupt?
Maybe I’ll just disconnect my buttons.

Truth

“Truth” is popularly portrayed
as an intermediate shade of gray
between too polar extremes,
black and white;
yet, “truth” is most often like
shifting patterns of dark and bright
beneath a sunlit tree,
its’ fluid limbs
dancing to the wind.

The Corpse

The officers rushed to my cell
Sure that they would find a
Bleeding corpse, or at least
Someone injured and in distress.
I laughed to think that I
Could have been that corpse,
Slightly annoyed that my ex-wife
Called the prison to warn of danger
When there was none to be had.
Yet I recalled rumors of
A contract on my life, wondered who
Would step up to collect the bounty
And how my ex-wife would have known.

Cut

Your words cut me like a knife
Apologies don’t heal my wounds
Lying on the floor
Drowning in your hate
My soul spills out
I can’t breathe or speak
Just a shell

Surface Reflects Being

I am a mirror, a window,
Perhaps even a well-polished spoon.
My surface, simply the image of what surrounds,
Maybe slightly bent, discolored, or transparent.
I follow the laws of physics,
Photons of light reflect off of you,
Bounce off of me,
And back to the pupils of your eyes.
And this you see is your
Reflection.
But what you see is not you.
It is the light absorbed by your eyes,
Sent off to the brain,
Neurons firing off complexes between synapses.
You follow illusions of the mind.
Certainly distorted, misshapen, and clouded.
Your being, simply the product of what surrounds,
Perhaps once a well-raised child,
Looking through a mirror, a window.

Point Click

FLIRTY GIRL 152
15 years and 2 kids
She misses his taste
His fingertips still imprinted on heart and pillowcases
So much time in-between
Who would want her now?
POINT CLICK

BEARS FAN 101
He is just a nice guy
A plain Joe with a beer belly to
Rest his mug on
If he makes contact will she respond?
POINT CLICK

DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL
She loves the taste of women
But blood is thicker than happy life
She will honor her parents, marry and spawn
Would he see through her charade?
Would he encourage her little secret?
POINT CLICK

LADIESMAN 69
He has one mistress
Ledgers and portfolios his only love
What about sex? Can he find just sex?
POIINT CLICK

DEEPER MEANING 10
She trusts enough to text her number
Entertaining conversation is the promise
“Wanna to cyber with me baby. I know you want to”
POINT CLICK

RACHEL’S DAD #1
He has kids. She doesn’t
How can she understand
She will never be first
His kids his love his joy will always be first
She can never be........
POINT CLICK

 
What if I’m not thin enough?
What if I’m not wealthy enough?
What if I’m not smart enough?
What if I’m just too old?
POINT CLICK

NO MATCHES FOUND

Back Room

    Some men call her by the nickname they dreamt up when she was young and a looker: Bliss.

    But now her chest’s uneven, one boob gone, the other repaired, her teeth that are left have turned brown, and she wafts pungent. . . . Well she doesn’t douche as religiously now.

    She parks it by a table in the rear, the customer comes up and pays his Washington, Hamilton or Franklin, and she lays him in the back room.

    One or two are from the old days, they remember what they used to call her, but once I asked her her real name.

    Oh yea, I said. I’d forgotten that she’d told me years ago, when I was young.

    I asked her which she’d prefer. Prefer for what? she said. For me to call you. —Oh, Honey, it don’t matter. Faith is just a name. Whatever you call me, you know what I am.

an Appropriate Hell

Never made much sense to me
whips, pitchforks, brimstone, the whole rigmarole.
The prince of dark cunning
should reward his minions if only to keep them loyal,
exalt and place the best workers on sulphurous thrones,
and pin goat horn medals on the most devoted.
This eternal burning stuff is not good publicity.
Hell isn’t run by the mightiest foe of God and man,
but by a grade 5 civil servant with seniority.
And the wages of sin couldn’t be death,
for then both good and evil would receive the same salary,
and that’s communism, God forbid.
As for their retirement benefits there’s the gold watch,
useless of course
for neither time nor glitter have any value down there.
Of course walking downstairs is easier than walking up,
but at the bottom there’s a processing center
with an eternity of forms to fill out,
and a waiting line so very long one can’t notice it’s circular
around a horned red-bodied pitchfork-wielding,
nitpicking intake clerk finishing his lunch break.
And it’s a long long long lunch break; after all, gluttony
is one of that sin-mongering clerk’s seven nicknames.

Carried on a Breeze

The trees whisper a secret on a morning breeze
An echoed urging heard clear from the sea
A rhythmic music dancing over sun washed sand

And bury every care you brought there in the sand
Hearing only your heart beat in an ocean breeze
Bringing a calming message of hope straight from the sea

When you have already tasted the salt from the sea
Now find comfort in a soft silky blanket of sand
All heartaches carried away like a kite in the breeze

To lose yourself completely in breeze, sea, and sand.

My Past Portrait

I need to find a way
Back to the place I came from
Back to that old oak coffee table
In front of the TV

I wish I could find a way
Back to the little kitchen
Where I used to drink 7UP and eat vanilla ice cream
With the tranquil summer air blowing through the open window

I still dream of finding a way
Back to the tiny, green backyard
That used to make me feel so small
Yet as if I could see the whole universe from where I stood

I doubt I’ll ever find a way
Back to those basement stairs
The ones I used to dive off of like a superhero
Free falling into a pile of cloud-like pillows

I know I won’t be able to find a way
Back to Battle Creek Park
Where the playground was my home
And jumping off swings was a sport

No matter how much I keep wishing,
I’ll never find a way back
To that little yellow house,
On the corner of Tower Street

guzzling drug cocktails
with champagne

so
why can famous people

michael jackson
anna nicole smith

so why
can the rich stars

get duplicate prescriptions
of pharmacy medications —

doctors give them papers
for a rainbow of drugs —

so they can
have a few drinks,

mix a few pills, and
o.d. on prescription drugs?

with doctor slips
and pharmacy visits

they can party like a rock star
‘til they legally overdose.

so why can the famous
o.d. on prescription drugs

and i can’t buy
two packs of sudafed

(‘cause you know,
my sinuses can kill me) —

why is it that i can’t buy
two packs of sudafed

after returning from a trip
where I bought sudafed?

is it that
when you’ve got it all

the wealth,
the adoration

everyone bends over
backwards

to get you anything
and everything you want

(it doesn’t matter whether
or not it’s for your own good —

with all that money,
with all that fame,

you’re too important
to need a guardian)...

so is it that
the rich and famous

get any drug
and every drug they want

and us regular joes
us coffee diner junkies

have the government
breathing down our backs

about non-prescription
sinus medication?

i mean,
i know there are some

who want to
convert these o.t.c. drugs

to make them something
that’s a whole lot of illegal

but why,
if the government

is not stopping
the rich, the wealthy,

the revered
from offing themselves

why are they
so concerned

with some idiots back here
doing the same?

i mean,
why

do us regular joes
us coffee diner junkies

have to suffer
the consequences

of people
at opposite ends

of a spectrum
we’ll never touch,

because we’re always
stuck in he middle?

Love Affair With The Moon 2012

how do we understnad this love
for what we see in the night sky

I think everyone loves the moon
and I think everyone was transfixed
to their televisions or radios
when we made that first one small step for man
that one giant leap for mankind

scientists at NASA during the cold war
considered setting off nuclear bombs
on the dark side of the moon
because, you see,
no one sees that side of the moon
and it would be a safe distance from the Earth

but what would that do to our weather, or our orbit?
the earthquake that caused
the devastating tsunami in Asia
slowed the rotation of this planet for a full second —

and they say commting nuclear atrocities on the moon
is a safe distance from the Earth

our calendars have leap years
‘cause we can’t get the time right...
in a few months we even have to add seconds to a day
to adjust our caledar
to the slowing of the Earth’s rotation

astronomers now estimate
that because of gravity’s change
the moon, every year
is almost 4 centimeters farther away from the earth

so if you remember the moon looking so big
when you looked at it in the night sky
when you were little, well,
you may have been right

astronomy is like a forbidden love affair
something whose constancy can give you hope
even when you’re only standing outside
in the night and looking up at its perennial beauty

it is something one person may never actualy touch
but it is something we can always,
like a star-crossed lover,
admire from afar

grandmother
charged
with murder

just heard
a grandmother
was charged
with the murder
of her granddaughter

you see, she caught
the 9 year old girl
eating chocolate

so to punish her
she made her carry
a bunch of firewood
in both arms
as she ran
back and forth
in her back yard

without even
giving her water,
her granddaughter
died of cardiac arrest
and dehydration

but then again,
i also just heard
that a mother
was arrested
for allegedly
giving her children
heroin
before they
got on the bus
for school

i’m sorry,
i don’t study the masters
i just study the disasters*
as i eat
my dark chocolates
and observe

* “i don’t study the masters
i just study the disasters”
is from Sid Yiddish

You Moved
from Island to Island

after the loss,
life goes on

as more time pases,
the more you forget

but after one talks
about the spirit world

I remember you,
in the kitchen

moving from island
to cabinet, to sink

you’re a fixture with us,
but then I realize

that as more time passes
the more we forget

and at the beginning
we wanted to forget

you moving from island
to sink, to island

it hurt too much
to remember

but as time wears on,
life goes on

and as more time passes
the more we forget

that you are always
there with us

as we move
from island to island

Janet Kuypers Bio

    Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.
    She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
    She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org and chaoticarts.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.
    Since 2010 Kuypers also hosts the Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting the Cafés weekly feature podcasts (and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).
    In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, , Chaotic Elements, and Fusion, the (select) death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, and the 2012 art book a Picture’s Worth 1,000 words (available with both b&w interior pages and full color interior pages. Three collection books were also published of her work in 2004, Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art).

The Rope

    The rotting pickup truck pulled up in front of the abandoned farmhouse. Walter and Lucas got out and stepped toward the well in the bare dirt front yard.
    Okay, here we are, said Lucas. And there’s the well. Do you think that thing is really down there?
    That’s what Father Peter says.
    How do we get it?
    We need to know how deep the water is at the bottom. If the water’s not deep, you need to go down in the well to find it.
    What do you mean I need to go down there? What about you?
    You’re skinnier than me—
    So what because I’m skinny I should go down a filthy well?
    Well—look at how narrow it is, Lucas. I’m too big. But wait—listen. Let’s not argue about who should go down the well. Before anybody goes down we need to know how deep the water is.
    Oh—how do we tell that?
    We’ll tie a rock to a rope and let it down in the well.
    How will that tell us anything?
    We’ll let the rock down in the well to the bottom of the water. Then we’ll pull it up and see how much of the rope is wet.
    That sounds good Walter.
    So go get the rope.
    Okay. But where—
    When I was up here yesterday scouting around, I brought some rope. It’s down the cellar. Go on, get it.
    Okay Walter.
    Lucas stepped up on the porch and entered the unlocked house. He walked down the entry hall across the rotted floorboards and went to the door to the cellar. It hung loose on its hinges and nearly fell in on Lucas when he pulled it open. This farmhouse had sat empty for almost fifty years. And according to Father Peter, the thing in the well had been there even longer; thrown down there in anger by Griswold, before the killing started. Father Peter had taken Griswold’s confession just before they strapped him into the electric chair. And Griswold had told Father Peter about the well. Killing, thought Lucas as he went down the creaking roughhewn cellar steps. Killing; slowly he descended into the darkness, thinking of what Griswold had done over fifty years ago, upstairs. He’d used his knives quickly and surely—and the three in their beds had had no chance. In the damp dirt-floored cellar, he found the coil of rope and brought it quickly back up and out to where Walter stood, leaning against the well.
    That’ll do it, said Walter. Now find a rock and tie it to the end of the rope—there, look—there’s loose bricks in the foundation. Use one of those bricks there. There—
    Lucas went past Walter and down the steps and pulled a brick from the crumbling foundation. Lucas always did what Walter said. As he tied the rope to the brick, he wondered what made Walter so much smarter than him. They had come from the same womb but yet, they were so very different. Walter was all confidence and brains. It was for Lucas to work.
    Having tied the brick to the end of the rope Lucas went up to Walter and asked what to do next.
    Go to the well, said Walter. Let the brick down in the well until there’s slack in the line. Then pull it out and see how much of the line is wet. That’ll tell you how deep the water is down there. Go on—go on and do it. Do it now.
    Lucas did as he was told and went and let the rope down and pulled it up just as Walter had said, and he saw that about ten feet of the rope was wet and that the brick had gone down about forty feet in all. Lucas went and showed Walter and told him what he thought.
    I’m not going down in that well, Walter—it’s too far down and then I’d have to dive ten feet to the bottom of the water. It’ll be black, it’ll be dark—I can’t do it Walter—
    Oh yes you can, said Walter, raising a hand. Plus it has to be you. That well’s only about two and a half feet wide, maybe three—you’re skinny. Look at me. I’m heavy. It has to be you that goes down, Lucas—you’re the only one who will fit.
    But I don’t know if I can do it Walter. I—
    Go on in and get out of your clothes and then come back out here and I’ll lower you down into the well, with that rope. Let’s see—
    Walter came down off the porch and tested the line.
    It’s strong enough, he said. It’s nylon—that’s why it’s lasted in our barn all these years. I’ll lower you down with this—we’re lucky to have this rope Lucas this is damned good rope—it’s long, too. Damned long.
    Lucas stood blankly watching Walter. The rope looked pretty thin to him.
    That’s rope’s thin, Walter—it won’t hold me—
    Yes it will now get inside and get out of your clothes. Now.
    Lucas put his head down and went up into the house. He went to the living room and sat on an ancient moldy overstuffed couch, raising a cloud of dust about him. Slowly he began to get out of his shoes and socks and clothes and as he did so, the cool air wrapped him all around the same way the walls of that well would wrap him. And his feet were cold, now that they were bare—but even though it was the middle of Summer, the water in the well would be much colder. And then he would have to dive ten feet to the bottom, holding his breath—he held his breath sitting there in his boxer shorts as he thought this—and he’d have to feel around the bottom in the dark—he closed his eyes—as he held his breath—his lungs were near bursting—and God knew what would be on the bottom, the thing they were after had been thrown down the well fifty years ago, God only knew what other things had gone into the well since then—his stomach turned as he flexed his hands and imagined the slimy feel of the bottom—and then his lungs would be bursting and he’d have to surface and he’d have to go down many times before he could say he’d really checked out the bottom—and what if he found nothing, then what would Walter tell him to do—No, he said to himself; No I’m not going to do it, he muttered under his breath—and he got dressed and went out to Walter and he stood on the porch thrust his chest out and he spoke.
    I can’t do it Walter—it’ll be awful—
    What? What do you mean? We’ve got to get down there—
    You go down there Walter. I’m afraid.
    Afraid? What do you mean, afraid?
    What I said Walter. It’ll be awful down there. I can’t.
    Lucas’s eyes dropped and he felt ashamed to have to tell Walter he couldn’t do something he had been told to do. He didn’t know what else to say—he bit his tongue and closed his eyes and Walter watched him and he recognized the fear in Lucas he’d seen so often before, and so he said in a blustery tone All right! All right! Then I’ll have to go down there—I hope to hell I don’t get stuck but somebody has to do it Lucas I guess it’s a job for a man, like me. Let me past!
    Walter pushed past Lucas on the porch and went in the house and sat on the same rotting sofa Lucas had sat in, and he leaned back against the sofa and thought. What a pain in the ass Lucas is—it’s because of him I have to play this game—and even though he was fully clothed with no intention of going in the well, the stinking rotting cool of the room wrapped around Walter’s body as tight as the walls of the well would be, and then when he got to the bottom, in the water, somehow he would have to turn around in the tiny space and position himself to dive to the bottom—and he would have to hold his breath, enclosed in the water and the tight walls of the well and he’d have to struggle to the bottom and he’d be so exhausted—and his lungs would be bursting and he wouldn’t even be able to feel around the bottom for the thing before he’d have to go back to the surface—and he’d have to try and try again—and god damn it he was too big to go down that well and he opened his eyes on the couch and even though he had known all along he wasn’t going down that well, he was covered with a thin film of cold sweat, and he realized why Lucas was so fearful. He rose and decided what he would say as he went back out of the house to Lucas and stood next to where Lucas stood on the porch gripping the railing.
    Lucas—you have to do it. I’ve been thinking. There’s no way I’ll fit.
    But I’m afraid to do it Walter—
    But you’re the only one who’ll fit.
    But I—
    You have to, Lucas!
    Ten minutes later Lucas stood by the well barefoot in his boxer shorts with Walter tying the rope around his brother’s chest and talking fast.
    Now Lucas when you get down there you know what to feel for right? You know what we’re looking for, right—
    Yes I do, said Lucas shakily.
    Just wait, said Walter. Wait until we have it. It’ll all have been worth it. You’ll forget how awful it might have been to be in the well—when we’ve got it, we’ll be set for life.
    I know that Walter—
    So go on. Into the well you go. I’ll lower you down. Go on.
    Goodbye Walter, said Lucas.
    Walter’s jaw dropped and he looked his brother in the eye.
    What do you mean goodbye? There’s no goodbye—
    I just felt like saying that Walter, said Lucas, turning his eyes away. All right. Here I go—
    Lucas climbed over the edge of the well and started down with Walter holding the line tight and letting it out as Lucas went lower. At last Lucas was lost in the dark below and Walter called out to him as he paid out the line. The line rubbed hard against the rough stone lip of the well on its way down.
    You all right Lucas? You okay—
    Yes Walter. It’s not bad—it’s not bad—
    The line paid out ten, twenty, thirty feet—and kept going, all along rubbing hard against that sharp stone lip.
    You all right Lucas?
    I—I’m not afraid Walter.
    I’m not afraid—
    A splash of water sounded from far below and the rope went slack. Walter knew that Lucas was in the water now—and would be diving down. He kept slack in the line and paid out about ten feet more—Lucas must have been on the bottom now, feeling around—how could he hold his breath this long how could he?
    At last there came a splash of water from far below.
    Lucas, called Walter down the well.
    Lucas!
    Nothing yet, said a thin voice from far below.
    Again, the splash.
    Lucas was diving again. Walter held his breath and kept the line slack and held his breath the whole time, until his lungs were about to burst, and at last there was another splash of water far below, and a wild yell from Lucas.
    I got it!
    I got it!
    Walter!
    I got it!
    You do? You sure?
    Yes. Pull me up Walter.
    Please pull me up now.
    It’s cold here Walter.
    It’s cold and I can’t breathe!
    But I got it!
    Walter began to heave on the rope and pulled Lucas ten, twenty, thirty feet up, with the harsh stone once more ripping at the length of the rope, and then—the rope broke and from deep in the well came a great splash and a yell; and the rope suddenly letting go threw Walter off balance and he fell backward and cracked his head on a rock on the ground, and lay there, knocked out cold, the broken rope wound in the dirt around him.

    A blanket of stars hung far above startled the opening eyes. The hand came up from somewhere and rubbed the throbbing head. The bed spread cold under him. Why was the bed so hard and cold? The mild breeze flowing over ran chills throughout his body. Lord God, he muttered as he slowly rolled ontao his side. Lord God, my head. The bed became hardpacked earth—and the house appeared, looming over in the silent nighttime dark.
    Then, it came back to him.
    All at once, it came back to him.
    The well! The God-damned broken rope!
    Lucas!
    Walter leapt to his feet but his legs went rubbery and he fell to his knees, and struggled to his feet a second time, and turned.
    The well stood there in the starlight.
    How long have I lain there—Lucas!
    Lucas!
    He scrambled to the edge of the well, and called out down it.
    Lucas! Lucas!
    The well sat quiet, a hole of silence. He gripped the edge. How long had he lain there? The night came around him, telling him; too long.
    Get help.
    Must get help.
    Walter ran to the rust red pickup truck ignoring his throbbing head and he woozily climbed into the truck, jammed the key into the starter, and savagely turned it. The truck started with a series of wheezing coughs from under the hood. Walter threw on headlights and jammed down his foot, wheels spun, dirt flew, and he was off. He flew down the driveway.
    Get help.
    Must get help.
    For Lucas.
    God damn that rotten rope. God damn it—
    Biting his lip bloody, he turned onto the washboard dirt road and started toward the village, ten miles off. The trees flashed by on either side—madly he drove into the glow of the headlights, but he could not outrun them. Trying hard to do so though, he pushed the pedal harder, the ancient rotted truck shuddering, roaring, bouncing; faster; faster.
    Must go faster.
    For Lucas.
    But Lucas had had it.
    He had really had it.
    He had really had it, in his hands.
    Father Peter had been right; it was there; it was there.
    But, close or not, it didn’t matter right now.
    Tears blinded Walter; he saw Lucas before him, but receding into the distance. An unseen fist punched Walter in the gut repeatedly, knocking the wind from him, pushing the pedal harder; he had to get to Lucas; he could not let Lucas disappear; he struggled to breathe; the truck went faster, brother pursuing brother, one trying desperately to keep the other alive; a damned broken rope couldn’t be the end, it’s too small a thing to be the end; but God, they’d been so very close; they’d been so very close.

Chained in Memories

    My husband and I reached an age when our priorities changed. Our house in the country tended to annoy us when our voices echoed and the quiet was no longer peaceful, but tedious. Our daughter was grown and living in the city. Charlie, my husband, was diagnosed with prostate cancer. At “stage two” the prognosis was optimistic, but living away from hospitals and our only daughter no longer appealed to us.
    Our new city house came with a lovely fenced in private yard, an in-ground swimming pool, an office for Charlie, and room for my artist’s corner. Our master bedroom finally came with the large bathroom I’d always dreamed of. Best of all, though, was the den in the finished basement. The woodwork in the downstairs den was hand-carved and fantastic. The crown moldings cradled the ceiling so perfectly they added dimension to an area that is often claustrophobic. Paneling halfway up the walls in solid pine glittered in its finished gloss coat. Matching beam work framed not only the room, but also the wall to wall, ceiling to floor built in home library.
    Charlie also fell in love with this room, finally finding the perfect home for his flat screen television and surround sound. I just wanted to bask in its beauty. We stole the house at $50,000 under its market value without ever stopping to question our good luck.
    One would have thought, at our age, we would know better.
    Our new world changed the day I met a new, or should I say, old, tenant. I like to think I have an open, yet reasonable mind. Up until we moved into our new house I had experienced strange things in my life I could not always explain, but embraced the idea that I didn’t know everything. I didn’t inherently believe in ghosts. Yet there she stood, curly cue pigtails and traditional night gown, staring at me like I was the ghost in the house.
    “Who are you?” She demanded of me. I couldn’t help glancing at the ratty teddy bear she grasped in her arms. Noticing the teddy bear meant noticing the diamond ring this little girl wore on her third left finger. The child stood perhaps three feet high and was missing a lower left canine tooth. Freckles stood out on her pale cheeks like a child’s dot to dot game.
    “Who are you,” she repeated. “What are you doing in my mother’s house?”
    “I live here,” I told her.
    “You can see me?”
    “Of course. Were you not talking to me?”
    She cocked her head at me, like a bird trying to decide whether or not to trust the hand that fed it. She shrugged her bony shoulders and disappeared.
    She quite literally disappeared. I blinked my eyes and by the time I opened them she vanished.
    Most people would immediately assume they were seeing things, but I’m a psychiatrist. I know signs of crazy. If I were crazy, I’d be the first one to let me know. I did, however, want to find out more about this house’s previous tenants.
    The next day, I went online to search the history of the house. I should have done this before we bought it, but who really thinks to ask the realtor things like, “So, is this house haunted?”
    I searched for deaths of children in this house or any nearby houses, but found nothing. I searched generic deaths at my address and came up with useless, unrelated information. I decided to go “old school” and called the city records. She pulled the records on my address. She did come up with a death in my house – an elderly woman died in her sleep at this address in 1923. Somehow, I doubted she was my ghost.
    That night, I dreamed.
    In my dream I saw a wisp of white chained to a wall. The wall, gray and nondescript, kept the insubstantial wisp captive, but I could not see why. Somehow, I knew it was within my power to free this wisp.
    “Don’t,” whispered my own voice. “Don’t. You don’t know what it is.”
    It was so sad and pathetic. I could hear the keening wails of a tortured soul. How could I do nothing when it was within my power to help?
    “Don’t. There may be a reason why it is here.”
    I turned to walk away. My better judgment was right. Just because I could free it, didn’t necessarily mean I should.
    “Don’t.”
    I’d lost. Against myself and my own better judgment, I’d lost. I reached down and pulled free the spirit. She immediately morphed into the untrusting little girl I’d seen in my basement.
    She looked at me uncertainly; just as she had the moment I told her I could hear her. Then she was gone.
    I woke in the middle of the night with the most unsettled feeling I could ever remember experiencing. My breath trapped in my lungs and my legs seemed paralyzed. I needed a drink of water so badly my throat burned, but I suddenly feared the shadows of my own home. I lay in bed, silently still and afraid of the things that went bump in the night, not knowing why a harmless dream had left me so petrified.
    The next morning I laughed at my own paranoia. It was not like me to be frightened of my own imagination. After all, what were dreams but manifestations of imaginative ideas? This is what I told myself, at least. This worked very well until I saw my ghost sitting at the bar table downstairs.
    “Oh!” I dropped the basket of laundry I’d carried downstairs. Dirty socks and other unmentionables scattered at my feet, but the girl didn’t startle at all.
    “Who are you?” she demanded in her little girl voice.
    “I – I’m Maryann.”
    “You see me?” her cold eyes stared into my soul, out of place with the innocent shape of her angelic face.
    “Y-yes, I can see you.”
    “Where are they?”
    “Who? You’re parents?”
    Her head jerked in an upward angle, focusing on something only her dead eyes could see. Her expression softened, and something akin to fear skittered over her face before her was able to compose her features.
    “They’re dead.” Again, it was not a question. I shivered at the cold realism in which she spoke.
    “Who are you?” My voice came out barely more than a whisper.
    She stared at me for a small eternity. She twisted the diamond on her left ring finger absentmindedly. The intangible diamond caught a ghostly glare.
    “Emma,” she said. Then she was gone.
    I stood in my cold basement, composing myself and steadying my heart and breathing rates. A part of me considered the possibility that my ghost was a manifestation of my brain, attempting to cope with a stressful situation. We had just moved and Charlie had just faced death, but other than that I could think of no stressful situations, and I thought we handled those experiences well, considering.
    Busy work is the best way to avoid an unpleasant situation, so I collected my laundry and cleaned my house. By the time I finished I was exhausted and my counters gleamed.
    I’d avoided it long enough. I pulled out my laptop and Googled my home address with the name Emma. I found no noticeable links, but something did catch my attention. In 1891 a major train collision in my new hometown had claimed the lives of 75 people. I couldn’t pin down how this connected to Emma, but at least now I had a place to start.
    As I did not particularly feel like finding the fatality list of those 75 victims, I decided I’d ask Emma about a train crash the next time I saw her. That is, if she were real.
    Tired as I was, I barely made it through dinner that night with my husband. I skipped my usual evening run on our elliptical and went straight to bed that night. As I lay down, waiting for sleep to take me, I couldn’t help wonder what took the light from Emma’s eyes. She was dead, inside and out, and she did not mind if I knew it.
    The dreams returned that night. I dreamed I stood in my nightgown, barefoot outside the rail station uptown. The station had no color. Shades and shadows composed the scene. I felt the cold concrete on my feet. I caught a shiver and heard the distant train whistle.
    “Don’t,” came my familiar whisper.
    “Don’t what? I haven’t done anything.”
    “You have, you will. You are setting her free.”
    “How is that a bad thing?”
    “Don’t,” it whispered.
    The train pulled forward, steam billowed around me and the sounds of screeching and buckling metal filled my ears. Momentarily, the steam and smoke from the train obscured my vision. When my vision cleared disaster sprawled before me.
    Twisted and gnarled metal turned blackened and jagged, littered the rails before more. Bodies lay sprawled about me, dead, dying and dismembered. Though a part of me knew this was a product of my imagination I remained sickened and awed by the destruction I witnessed.
    “Those poor people,” I whispered.
    “You won’t find her, you know.” A new voice, masculine and rough, came from behind me. I turned to face the engineer of this passenger train. I could tell by his uniform and the red hot poker sticking out of his right eye. He did not survive this crash, yet he remained among the other tortured souls to bear a message to me.
    “Who?”
    “You know who. You will not find her here. She was not one of us, but we know of her kind. She does not share our Purgatory; she has her own Hell. Leave her be, she is beyond your help.”
    “That will be your downfall.”
    Smoke from the crash thickened around me, obliterating my view of the disturbing engineer and all his moaning companions. I floated into blissful nothingness.
    The next morning I could not find enough coffee to help me recover from my poor night’s sleep. Charlie sat at our breakfast nook with me while I attempted to recover my dignity and sanity in my morning caffeine hit. It wasn’t working; I still felt like death warmed over.
    “Hon, are you sleeping okay?” he asked me the next morning. “The past few nights you’ve been tossing and moaning in your sleep. Something bothering you?”
    Now, I’ve been married twenty five years, but even after all my years of marriage I just didn’t have it in me to tell my husband that I was not only seeing ghosts, but carrying on conversations with them as well – both in my dreams and during my waking hours. So I did what every woman who has ever been married does. I blamed hormones.
    “Bad dreams. That’s all. To be honest, babe, I’m probably starting menopause.”
    “Ack! Weird woman crap! You know I hate it when you talk about that!”
    “Your sympathy is overwhelming.”
    Charlie laughed. “I’m sorry your female stuff is getting old and no longer functioning at its normal capacity. This, my dear, is why you have girlfriends. Call up the girls and go out for a bit, you’ll feel better.” With a peck on the cheek and a slap to my rear my under-empathetic husband flew out the door to his tool shed to bury himself in wood shavings and power tools.
    Alone in my castle, I continued to feel uneasy. I meandered down to my den, my favorite room in the house, with the intention of turning on a nice cardio workout DVD to burn some of my nervous energy.
    Shortly into my workout, my heart started racing, my head spun, and my vision blurred. At first I thought I was having a heart attack or a stroke. Then I saw her. Her cold eyes watched me, not offering any aid or showing any concern. She just watched me. My breath froze in my lungs and I struggled to breathe. Then my vision blurred to the point of blindness and I passed out for the first time in my life.
    When I came to she continued to stand over me.
    “What do you want from me?” I croaked.
    “You see me,” she spoke with no emotion. My eyes flitted to the diamond ring so out of place on her little girl hands. Her hand twitched at my attention.
    “Were you in the train crash?”
    She looked at me with those cold eyes. “You can see me! Try harder!” I felt her anger, cold and burning. I choked on its burn before I realized I was really choking. I gasped and clawed at my neck, fighting to release her hold. I could not understand why she was doing this to me, but somehow she was taking the air from my lungs. What had I done wrong? I only wanted to help.
    Dots burst before my eyes as I continued to struggle for the breath that wouldn’t come. I fell to my knees, fearing I had been wrong my entire life – maybe a ghost really could hurt me. I looked up again at the dead child, my eyes pleading with her cold ones for mercy or understanding. Through my tears I saw her as she was.
    No longer did a sweet girl in nightclothes stand before me. A grown woman, her neck black with bruises stared at me with hateful cold eyes. The diamond that had glittered on an innocent finger burned like a beacon. No child would have ever worn a diamond, why had not I realized that? Now it was too late. I was going to die at the hands of a ghost I couldn’t understand.
    A force not unlike gravity pulled my neck toward my ceiling, my fingers still clawing at my neck as smaller and smaller amounts of air leaked in through my nose and mouth. I was going to die in my basement, with only those cold eyes to send me into the next world.
    The worst part? I’d failed. All my years helping people come to terms with their pain or suffering in their lives and in death I would fail. My end was truly tragic.
    As the last of my breath leaked from my lips I head a crash and an all familiar swear. My non-traditional knight had come to my rescue. Earth’s real gravitational force crashed me back toward my plush carpet. Without thinking Charlie pulled me up into his arms and swung me straight to the garage, speeding his way to the emergency room. Halfway there my breathing returned to normal.
    “Charlie, Charlie, slow down, I’m okay. Really, I’m okay I can breathe now.”
    “You scared the Hell out of me just now, don’t tell me you’re okay! Your lips were purple! I didn’t know they really went purple!”
    The image made me think of Emma in her adult form. The purplish black circles under her eyes matched the dead tone of her lips. I knew that lips could turn purple if deprived of oxygen. I also thought I knew how my ghost died.
    Charlie insisted on the ER, wherein the doctors decided I had an anxiety attack and suggest rest and relaxation. My time strapped to the echocardiogram machine offered an opportunity to think of a new way to search out my ghost’s past.
    Once cleared to use my cell phone I pulled out my smart phone, grateful for the modern technology.
    I went to Google search, but this time I omitted my own home from the search, wondering if its involvement was incidental. I searched Emma’s name, her manner of death and my town alone. This time my search produced results.
    November 12, 1943, Emily Sprouse killed her husband and then hung herself. The story read that Mr. Charles Sprouse had been abusive. The whole town knew about the abuse, but in those times tradition dictated that they turn the other cheek because he also happened to be a police officer. Emily’s autopsy showed she had been pregnant when she died.
    Only now did I truly see her. Faced with bringing a child into this world of violence she found the only escape she could conceive. The violence of both her life and her death followed her into her own personal Hell.
    Once home, Charlie insisted I rest – upstairs, while he watched over me like a hawk. For days he absolutely forbade that anyone go in our basement. I let him coddle me and watch over me for those few days. When I thought he’d gotten it out of his system I cooked him his favorite meal – chicken kiev, asparagus, and scalloped potatoes.
    “Charlie,” I attempted to negotiate with my overprotective husband. “We can’t avoid the basement forever, dear. How would the laundry get done?”
    “Laundromats.”
    “Be serious.”
    “I am serious, we can’t go down there.”
    “Because there’s a ghost? Come on, you know how ridiculous that sounds.”
    “How can you be so calm about this? I saw you dangling in midair, choking to death, and now you want to go back down there?”
    “I watched you battle for your life for the past year as well, Charlie. Be reasonable, we cannot be afraid of our own home! I have to face her. I have to make peace with her.”
    Charlie brooded in silence for a few moments. “We could sell.”
    “No, we can’t. Not in this market, and there was a reason why we bought this place in the first place. You love this house as much as I do. This isn’t a house – it’s our home.”
    “You’re not going down there alone.”
    “I am.”
    “Not.”
    “One hour.”
    “Fifteen minutes.”
    “Thirty.”
    “Deal. But I am coming down there at exactly thirty minutes.” He sighed deeply. “Mary, I just don’t like this. You’re certain you know what you’re doing?”
    “Babe, I’ve been doing this my whole life. The stakes are only slightly different because she’s – you know, already dead and all, but the concept is the same. She needs help. She went through something horrible and now needs to deal with it in order to move past it”
    “You know this is insane, right?”
    “No one knows insane better than me, Baby. I don’t like it either. I just know that I have to do it.”
    “I can’t survive if anything happens to you. You know that, right?”
    “Same goes.”
    That evening, after Charlie had settled down with the evening news, I slipped downstairs to face Emma. Charlie’s program lasted thirty minutes and he would be true to his word, so I knew my clock was ticking.
    No sooner had I stepped off that final step into my beautiful finished basement had the air turned frigid. The air was so cold it hurt to breathe. The tiny hairs inside my nostrils felt as if they had been instantly turned to ice.
    “I see you, Emma,” I said to the empty room. “Do you prefer Emma, or Emily?” Impossibly, the room turned even colder. My joints in my fingers ached with the pain of the temperature drop. I flexed my hands and hid them under my armpits in an attempt to steal my own body heat. “Stop trying to scare me, Emma. I want to help you. You were right, I do see you. I know what you went through. I know what happened to you.”
    “You don’t know anything!” she roared out of the shadows, taking my breath away with her anger.
    “I only want to help.”
    I expected her to tell me a story. I wanted this tortured spirit to bear her soul to me. Her brief conversations to date should have prepared me for her lack of verbal expressionism, but I don’t think anything could have possibly equipped me for what happened next.
    An unexpectedly solid hand snapped up faster than I could blink and wrapped vice-like claws around my neck. She stared at me with icicle eyes, translucent and unseeing.
    “You cannot understand,” she rasped.
    Under her grip my neck burned like ice. My cozy den transformed around me. My vision blurred, and through it I could see one image – Charlie. He knelt in my basement, all dimples and smiles, with an intricate and delicate diamond ring in his hand.
    “Well?” he said, with a dashing smile, “What’d’ya say?”
    I felt and heard myself laugh, but a voice inside kept telling me something was wrong. Charlie does not do dashing smiles. And he didn’t propose here. He proposed at a Yankee/Red Sox game in Boston.
    “Of course I’ll marry you.”
    He wrapped me in his arms and swept me in a circle as I wept with joy.
    A flurry of color and my mind stole me to a tropical island, with palm trees and sand as far as I could see.
    “I could stay here forever,” I could hear my own voice, but it didn’t sound like me. It was too low, and the accent is off. I tried to shake the fog of confusion.
    “Where ever you are is where I want to be. Should we buy a shanty and live off the land?” Charlie joked and tickled my ribs. I laughed and then we kissed until play turned to passion.
    The sun faded, and so did the joy. The man I had loved and kissed passionately on the beach was replaced by a brooding man who drank too much and argued more. What started out as angry words soon turned to slaps, pinches, punches, and eventually broken bones. Scenes from multiple emergency rooms in multiple towns flashed through my memories like a shuffling deck of cards. Each broken bone, bloodied nose and black eye left a callous on my soul.
    I tried to leave once. He dragged me back and beat me to the point of unconsciousness.
    That night he raped me for the first time. With a vicious yank of my hair he whispered, “You are mine.” He proved it by taking me against my will. The man who promised to love me forever turned me into a tool to use at his whim.
    Life continued to fall apart. He continued to abuse me. If I tried to fight I learned it always hurt worse. So I endured, as was my duty as a wife.
    People knew. It’s not easy to cover that many injuries. No one offered me any kind of advice or shelter. I’d get an occasional pat on the back. Other women claimed that if I tried harder to please him he wouldn’t get so angry. People found it difficult to think poorly of a local cop.
    Wait. That wasn’t right. Charlie wasn’t a police officer. He was a... a... something, but not police. The fog seized my mind once more.
    Another flurry of images played in my mind. I was punched in the gut the first time I told him I was pregnant. After that I miscarried three times. My body wasted away.
    When I knew I was pregnant for the fifth time I didn’t tell him. After five years of marriage I had no love for my husband. I was dead – a walking corpse, now carrying a poisoned seed.
    My weeks progressed. At first I cared little for the thing within my womb. It would soon die just like the others. Then came the day I felt the strange flutter of a small baby moving within its mother’s womb. Only then did the implications of the child come to me. I began having nightmares. I dreamed of Charlie harming the child, and then I dreamed of the child harming me. I did not know which scenario I feared more. I had thought myself incapable of fear after the years spent with Charlie, but now that I had carried a child long enough to feel it, I faced new and more terrible fears.
    Being so horribly underweight, the evidence of my pregnancy showed sooner than anticipated. For the first time in a long time I fought back when he came at me.
    “Whose bastard are you carrying?”
    “What are you talking about? It’s yours!”
    “Bullshit! If the bastard were mine you would have told me sooner. A man has a right to know who his wife’s been whoring with!”
    “No one! I didn’t tell you because I was scared I’d miscarry again.”
    “Oh, I’m to blame for your inability to breed, is that it? The one thing nature gave to women and not men and you can’t even do that.”
    Disgusted, he dealt with the argument the only way he knew how. He backhanded me across my face.
    He only hit my face that day. Always before, he hit me in more inconspicuous places. That night he wanted me not only afraid but also ashamed. I would not be able to go out in public for days, if not weeks. He did not hit me in the stomach. He knew the child was his.
     “I’ve decided you are going to keep this kid,” he said one day. “You’re going to keep having kids until I say you’re done. Just remember, though, the kids will be mine – just like you. Fatherhood has... potential.”
    That night I couldn’t sleep for fear. By now I knew my husband. I knew him to be conniving, charming, and dangerous. What would he do with a child? Children? How would he raise them - hard or manipulating?
    Days were spent in indecision and fear. I never slept and constantly fretted over the strange looks from the monster who wore my husband’s mask.
    Eventually I realized what would happen if I brought a child into this world. Charlie would find a way to use it to control me. What if it was a boy who grew up like his father? What if it was a girl who grew up like me? The tragedy of it all struck me so profoundly. I made my decision with a bitter heart.
    I waited until he passed out. His hand was still on my stomach when he drifted. In any other couple, the gesture would have been sweet, but in this man I knew the gesture was possessive, not loving. The man who wore Charlie’s face snored softly as I crept to the kitchen for the sharpest knife I could find.
    I stabbed him. Over and over again, I stabbed him. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t let him hurt me, my baby or anyone else ever again. I stabbed him, mad with pain, mad with grief, I stabbed him. He deserved each puncture in his soft sweet skin. Blood sprayed all over my face and hands. I laughed as it splashed and ruined my nightgown. I couldn’t help but think, “I’ve stained my gown, Charlie will be so angry when he wakes up.” That made the giggles start all over again.
    I giggled and sobbed alternatively. I watched the blood seep out of him. I wept for the boy I married and laughed at the monster he became. I knew what I had done. I went from victim to monster in one instant. A life for a life. That’s what the Bible said. So I fashioned a makeshift noose out of Charlie’s best tie. It was silk, a bold red he’d gotten for Christmas before we were married. I hung myself in our closet, my own laughter echoing in my head.
    My ghost stood before me, her cold eyes uncaring.
    I gasped for air, trying to readjust to my own life. In a few minutes I’d lived nearly a lifetime of someone else’s experiences. I reflected the two images of Charlie’s face now. The husband I knew and the monster she’d shown me. I knew that monster had been her husband, not mine, but I’d counseled at enough battered shelters to know an abuser could be anyone. “That was disorienting,” I announced.
    “You see me,” she stated simply in her fashion.
    “I do, I see you. I’m sorry.”
    My time was up, I knew Charlie was coming. I also knew I was likely dealing with the devil, as it were. I had to show her not everything was as she saw it.
    “I see you, do you see me?”
    Her head cocked to one side. She looked at me, but I could tell she did not see beyond her own pain. Who could blame her?
    “I have seen your pain and felt your pain. Can you see beyond it? Not every relationship endures the same hardships and pain as yours. Many see love where others see pain. Your pain is gone. You ended it, yet you still endure it. What do you see now?”
    She blinked, not quite knowing, hearing, or seeing our conversation.
    I heard Charlie’s steps coming down into the basement. My window closing, I tried to reach her again. “Emily, my Charlie is coming down the stairs. Look. Look at Charlie; he has never abused me or our child. We raised a beautiful girl into a successful and independent woman. Our life was not yours. Let go of your pain and see the good in people.”
    I prayed my ploy worked. If I gambled wrong, Charlie’s life hung in the balance.
    He stepped into the room gingerly. He heard me as he came down, so he knew what I was doing. Even though I knew my visions had been a glimpse of another’s life, seeing Charlie jolted me. I saw him covered in blood, the knife in my head and my own insane giggles echoing in my memory.
    I closed my eyes and willed away the images. Not my Charlie, I told myself.
    “Mary? You okay down here?”
    Emily stared at him blindly. For an instant the air turned bitter cold and I worried that I had misjudged the situation. Charlie sensed it too and hurried over to me, wrapping his arms around me in protection, as if he could save me from the dead. That singular act of selflessness saved us. Emily’s husband would have never offered himself for her. He used her and abused her; he did not love her. She saw my Charlie willing to risk himself to protect me and the fog vanished from her eyes.
    “I see you,” she stated. She stared at us and at her own ghostly bloody hands. A single tear rolled down her face.
    The room flashed with the light of a dozen stars. Charlie and I shielded our eyes with our hands and turned into each other to escape the glare. When the light cleared, Charlie and I were alone. Emma was gone somewhere beyond her pain and chains.

Happy Thoughts

    The day didn’t start out too badly. In fact, I was pretty happy with the world when I awoke. The brown smog that had hung over our valley for two weeks was gone, washed away by last night’s rain. Half a rainbow lit up the western sky. I opened my bedroom window and inhaled the sweet air.
    With nothing special that had to be done, I cooked some bacon and eggs, made a pot of coffee, and sat down to read the paper. The headline story told of a particularly gruesome murder. Paul Jameson, a real estate broker, was eating breakfast with his wife, when he suddenly reached across the table and slashed her throat with a bread knife. Not satisfied with the result, he continued the attack until parts of Mrs. Jameson were strewn across the kitchen floor. In his statement to the police, he claimed that some sort of dark shadow had attached itself to his back and burrowed into his brain, convincing him that Mrs. Jameson was the Antichrist.
    The story bothered me enough that I couldn’t concentrate on the crossword puzzle. I gave up, read the comics, and washed the dishes. Today was to be my big day. The Greater Bookertown Booster Club would present me with a plaque in recognition of my work with disabled and disadvantaged children. Wanting to make my best impression, I showered and shaved with particular care, applied liberal amounts of underarm deodorant, brushed my teeth thoroughly, and gargled with Listerine. The dark blue suit would do nicely, along with freshly shined black oxfords, a white shirt, and my favorite tie, a conservative red-and-gray foulard.
    The luncheon at the Pine Cone restaurant went smoothly. As usual, the food was delicious. I had their spinach quiche with a green salad on the side. Then we all introduced ourselves. I sang along with the Booster Club songs, even though I didn’t know them very well. One of them began
    I’m here to tell you all
    I am a Booster True,
    And I will sing
    Praise to our Booster Flag . . .
    or something like that. I never could keep the words straight. Anyway, the words didn’t quite fit the tune, and almost everyone was off key. I tried to sing loud enough to drown them out, but it didn’t work and I got a lot of dirty looks.
    Next, we went around the table in the “Happy Thoughts” mode. This was a Booster thing where you had to share a Happy Thought or else put a dollar into the kitty. When my turn came, I tried to think a Happy Thought, but nothing came through. In the awkward silence, I felt something pressing down on my back, and I gasped for air. Finally, I was able to toss a dollar bill into the kitty and say, “Sorry, I’ll have to pass.”
    Anita Thomas, sitting at my right, put her hand on my arm. “Are you okay?”
    “Yes, everything’s all right. A little allergic reaction, I think.” I took a sip of water and buttered a roll. Whatever had been on my back went away.
    It was time for the awards. The Booster president, Ralph Makerstetter, held up one of the plaques and told us more about them than anyone could possibly want to know. Five members, including myself, would be receiving plaques, and I was last on the list. Ralph recounted the achievements of these members in excruciating detail. Lee Travis, an insurance salesman, had set a new record for Booster Candy sales. Janet Plowman, a college professor, persuaded twenty-eight stores to install Booster collection boxes at their cash registers, with twenty-three of them displaying Booster Flags. Frank Larsen, a garbage truck driver, auctioned off the many valuable items he had recovered on his route, netting one hundred thirty-eight dollars and seventy-two cents for the Booster charity fund. Jim Szymanski, a retired policeman, designed a new logo for our Bookertown Booster Club jackets. Each of these four found it necessary to chatter interminably about how greatly they were honored and what a pleasure it was to be of service as True Boosters.
    Finally my turn came. Ralph held up the plaque and announced, “Last but by no means least, we have this plaque honoring Jack Fellowes for his outstanding work with disadvantaged and disabled children. I could talk for hours about his unselfish, continuous devotion to this cause, and his wonderful results in improving the lives of these unfortunate children. But mere words cannot do justice to his work, and his achievements speak for themselves. Jack, come on up here and accept this honor.”
    While he was talking, a cold breeze came through the room, and the lights flickered. I stood up with difficulty, because something was weighting me down. I managed to walk up to the podium.
    “Here you are, Jack, and congratulations!” He handed me the plaque—a monstrous thing, fully two feet square, with a bronze plate and the Booster Club emblem. It was so heavy I nearly dropped it. Ralph held out his hand, but I couldn’t spare one of mine to shake it.
    I stood there holding the plaque with both hands, while everyone waited for my speech. Suddenly I found my voice. “You can keep your goddam plaque. I hate all the creepy little cripples, and you’re a bunch of frigging hypocrites. Here’s a Happy Thought for you. Take this plaque and shove it!”
    It seemed necessary to emphasize my words, so I banged Ralph on the head with the plaque. As he fell to the floor, I overturned the table. Then I walked back to my own table and tried to choke Anita. Two members and a waiter pulled me off and held me down until the police arrived.

    Now I’m locked up at the State Hospital, and I have these stupid psychiatrists poking at me every day. I try to explain, but they’re too dumb to see the black thing on my back.
    I’ve written several letters to the Governor, demanding my constitutional right to the services of an exorcist.

Bob Johnston Bio

    Bob Johnston is a retired petroleum engineer and translator of Russian scientific literature. He waited until his sixtieth year to start writing fiction and poetry, and over the next thirty years he has been trying to catch up. He lives in the original Las Vegas, New Mexico with his wife, three cats, and some hope of completing his memoirs and the Great American Novel.

Moving Her World

    The crowd was considerable, and not one Natalie relished being part of since its political leanings were the opposite of her own. It was all she could do to refrain from screaming, in particular at the obese, straw-haired blonde to her right waving the God-Hates-Fags sign, or at the Obama-Half-Breed “Muslin” placard to her left. Not to mention the Respect- “Are”- Country-Speak-English waver behind her.
    Suddenly the platform filled with movement. Its knot of black suited goons parted to let the ultra conservative candidate step out in view to screaming and applause.
    Natalie had only seen glimpses of him on TV, being that as soon as he appeared, she would smash down the remote button to make him vanish. Now she had to look.
    He reminds me of a vampire, she thought. Not that he was pale, but he had the height, barrel chest and square jaw of a cartoon super hero and the plastic expression of a blood sucker pretending to be human before he drained you dry. Apparently, everyone else was too self-deluded to notice. The hatred Natalie felt for him was a snarl of black wire in her chest. All she wanted was to do what she came for and get out.

    For years, Natalie had flirted with the idea. She remembered lying in bed before they sold the old house and staring at a vase of dried grasses on top of an antique wardrobe. While her husband snored, she wondered what would happen if by her mind alone she caused the fronds to move.
    Two main fears kept her from seriously trying. If she succeeded, it would terrify her. Success would demonstrate that the physical world as she knew it was not true. If others found out, she might end up forced to perform and, in her stage fright, not be able to do it. Or if able, people might hound her day and night, turning her into a parlor magician. Would black ops military buzz her home with helicopters, then drag her off to an underground base where she’d be held prisoner till she died, forced to use her skills to kill people in third world countries? Wild and crazy, but....
    On the other hand, should she more likely not succeed, this would attest to herself either that all reports of psychokinesis are probably false, and by association other paranormal phenomena, in which case there would be nothing outside of this predictable, material world.
    Of course, this train of thought was quite a stretch, since just because she, Natalie Wynn, could not move an object with her mind did not mean that there did not exist others who could. According to reports, especially those from behind the former Iron Curtain, there definitely were such people.
    Whatever the case, she had not tried, at least not very hard, and for the most part stopped thinking about it.
    Seven years later, she and Rob lived in another house and there was no need for a wardrobe in their bedroom with all its built-in closets. What had happened to the vase with its fronds, she could not remember.
    Rob had gone upstate to turkey hunt for the weekend and Natalie’s friend Bindi was coming over for an evening of movies and martinis. Natalie had stocked up on flicks ranging from vampire romance to Sundance independents. All set for cozy fun and then she got the idea.
    She waited for Bindi to sip half her martini before she brought it up. “Have you heard of psychokinesis?”
    Bindi, an intern at the hospital, was skeptical about such things, but she surprised Natalie. “In India we have our Sai Baba, among others. They supposedly make things appear out of midair, bilocate, you name it.”
    “Yeah,” said Natalie, “but have you seen it with your own eyes? Or just heard stories that happened to a friend of a friend?”
    “Well...” said Bindi. “I’m a scientist type, remember?”
    “I was thinking,” went on Natalie, halfway through her own martini, “like what if you and I tried it?”
    Bindi flashed her one of her who-is-this-screwball looks Natalie could picture her giving to some of the nutcases she handled in her current ER assignment.
     “What did you have in mind to move?” asked Bindi. “With our minds.”
    Natalie shrugged. “I don’t know, obviously something lightweight. I don’t have any feathers in the house. What’s lightweight?”
    “Not my ass,” said Bindi.
    “No, not after that chocolate festival weekend,” kidded Natalie.
    Actually, Bindi was tiny and so, for that matter, was Natalie, though not as thin. Nor was she overweight. She considered herself the invisible type, having remarked to people over the years that she was so nondescript that she could disappear in a crowd and no one would remember having seen her.
    “How about a kleenex? Wanna try with that?”
    “You know,” said Bindi, her tone pedantic, “‚Kleenex’ is a brand name. The correct term is ‚tissue.’”
    “Whatever. A tissue then. Let’s do a tissue.”
    “How do you make me do these things?” Bindi mumbled as Natalie placed their chairs catty-corner to each other at the kitchen table.
    She poured them each another martini and held her glass up for a toast. “To our transcending the limitations of physical reality,” she muttered, clicked and downed a third of the glass.
    “Don’t you think you need to keep your intellectual capacities sharp for this?” warned Bindi.
    “On the contrary,” said Natalie. She pulled a tissue from the box, wadded it up a bit and lay it in front of them. “Speaking for myself, I need to quiet down that intellectual part of my mind, the “monkey mind” as my tai chi teacher used to call it. I need to assume a childlike state of trusting awareness, slightly out of focus.”
    “Whatever,” said Bindi.
    “Now, don’t comment, let’s just stare at the kleenex and make it move.”
    “Which direction?”
    Natalie waved her hand. “That way, toward the fridge. Forget everything else in your life, Bindi and just make that tissue go toward that fridge.”
    “Your wish is my command,” said Bindi and both women fell silent as they concentrated.
    At first, Natalie had trouble keeping her mind on the tissue, as she had fallen into a stream of thought about her friend’s name, which was also the word for the colored dot Indian women place in the center of their foreheads. Over their third eye, so to speak. Third eye. That is when she had the idea of projecting the force, or whatever it was, from her mind out of this hypothetical “third eye.” Perhaps Bindi had done the same, for as soon as Natalie executed that thought, the tissue moved ever so slightly.
    The women jumped, pushed back their chairs. “My God,” said Bindi.
    “Let’s get right back on the horse,” said Natalie, and once again they concentrated. This time the tissue did not move.
    “Take another slug of your drink,” suggested Bindi, which Natalie did.
    Third eye, third eye, she said to herself and the tissue slid a bit, stopped, then scuttled to the edge of the table.
    “How do we know we’re both doing it?” asked Bindi. “Maybe just one of us is.”
    “Well, go for it yourself,” said Natalie. “I’ll just sit back.”
    “Don’t think about moving it then,” said Bindi and she set to work, her brow furrowed. After a while, she stopped. “Nothing. You try.”
    But Natalie couldn’t bring herself to do it. The old fear had returned.
    “Let’s just assume that it took the two of us,” she told her friend.
    They needed a break from the intensity of the exercise and for some reason, neither discussed it further. The rest of the evening, they dedicated to watching movies and when Bindi left at midnight, neither referred to their former entertainment. Later, Natalie wondered if their reluctance to admit what had happened was akin to what she’d read about the sometimes strange clamming up of UFO abductees after their alleged ordeal.
    When she next spoke to her friend, Bindi did not refer to their astonishing accomplishment and Natalie again felt reluctant to mention it. That left her on her own still without knowing who had supplied the main energy behind the phenomenon. Was it like doing the Ouija board? Both supposedly supplied it equally? There was only one way to find out.
    The first night Rob was out (for some reason unknown to her she had not told him about this yet), Natalie set things up with the tissue box on the table, a cold martini in front of her and the phone off the hook. She drank with trepidation. This was the nitty gritty. She felt the alcohol hit her blood stream, then wrinkled a tissue and laid it in the center of the table. Another sip and she had a good buzz on. Time to go to work.
    Something seemed to come over her, a soft peace as if weightless silk cascaded down over her body. Her eyes half shut, she focused gently on the semi blurred tissue and within a matter of seconds, watched it slide across the table, hesitate a moment, then finish the trip and disappear off the edge.
    The event seemed oddly right, as if she’d been waiting her entire life to see what was perfectly natural to her. She stood up and looked around for something with more substance than a tissue. A cigarette would be perfect, but she no longer smoked, so she took a note paper from the kitchen counter, rolled it up like a cigarette and carefully taped it. Soon it was rolling about on the table surface. With practice, Natalie could cause it to turn.
    This was incredible. How many people existed who could do this? She felt special, yet very alone, as if she belonged to a secret club like the X-Men. Then she experienced cold terror. When Rob came home, he found her silent and ashen.
    “What’s the matter?” he asked as he poured himself a glass of burgundy.
    “Nothing,” she told him. “I guess I’m just tired.”
    Normally, she told him everything. Unless someone specifically said, “Don’t tell Rob.” But now she clammed up. The whole experience seemed deeply private, and she was relieved now that Bindi seemed to want to forget it. Because that made it her own secret world, a tiny one now, but one that could expand should she pursue it.
    She needed Rob to go out more, wanted more time alone. Since they worked roughly the same schedule, both of them teachers at the same high school, this was difficult. So when some of the faculty began setting up a soft ball team, she encouraged him to join, while bowing out herself.
    Over the next few weeks, as Rob attended softball practice, then played scheduled games, Natalie practiced. She graduated from rolled paper to pencils and from there to a one time success with a small paperback. It only skidded an inch, but it moved.
    When softball was finished, she suggested to Rob that he join the faculty bowling league. “You don’t want to join too?” Rob asked, but no, she didn’t. She didn’t care when he came home from bowling nights later and later. She was now refining her movements and no longer needed booze to get started. It was no longer enough to slide an object; she wanted to move it where she wanted it exactly. She wanted to maneuver something vertically from across the room. Had any of this ever been done?
    It was claimed that a Russian woman, Nina Kulagina, could separate a yolk from the white of an egg floating in fluid from across a room. But doing this so exhausted her that she slept for days to recover. Natalie, while sleepy after her experiments, did not feel depleted or exhausted. After performing her PK feats, Nina Kalagina had also suffered a dangerously racing heart and sometimes was unable to speak or see. Yet Natalie could now move matter from at least thirty feet away without any apparent damage to her health.
    Was she using a different method than had Nina Kulagina? There was no one to ask. She had never in her life felt so alone.
    Rob was out more and more. Had she made a mistake to encourage him to join these groups? Had he formed a “special” friendship with someone in the league? While this nagged at her and she felt guilty over allotting so little time and energy to her husband, she was compelled to keep working on her skills. Hadn’t Thomas Edison forgotten to eat and actually urinated or worse in his pants rather than stop working? She wasn’t yet that obsessed, but she understood how he’d felt.
    While she cooked dinner one evening, Rob was watching a court show with the usual caustic judge. “I can’t stand her,” Natalie called from the kitchen. “She never lets anyone finish, she jumps to conclusions that may be be wrong and she humiliates people.”
    “That’s why people like the show,” said Rob. “It’s the old watch-’em get eaten by lions mentality.”
    “Why are you watching it?” she couldn’t resist asking. He didn’t answer.
    She had hated this particular judge for years and now felt a strange compulsion to do something about it. Her laptop was open on her desk in the kitchen so she looked up how to obtain tickets to one of the show tapings. Would Bindi go with her to New York? Probably not, being so busy as she was. In fact, Natalie had, she now realized, not heard from her friend for a couple of weeks. Something held her back from even calling Bindi much now, possibly anger, certainly wounded feelings. Why had her friend backed away from her? Ever since that night when they moved the tissue, their relationship had not been the same.
    A neighbor, Denise, was willing to go so Natalie lined up tickets for the following week. She took a personal day from school.
    “Not bad,” said Denise, as they filed into the studio. “Second row back and nobody tall or wide in front of us. You go, girl!”
    Denise was so not Bindi and for a moment, Natalie endured a terrible emptiness in her gut as she tried to hold back tears. Bindi and she had been “besties” since college. She so missed the old frequent and easy companionship.
    “Yeah, we lucked out,” said Natalie drily.
    The judge was even more obnoxious in person, which reminded Natalie why she had come. Someone needed to give the woman a taste of her own poison. She hoped chatty Denise would quiet down so she could concentrate. The plaintiff claimed the defendant owed her money for staying in the plaintiff’s apartment for five months while she was in San Francisco caring for her dying mother, while the defendant maintained that the plaintiff knew he was looking for work and had offered him a free place to stay while he did so.
    “In exchange,” he said, “I protected her place by being there. There’d been robberies in the neighborhood and she was worried. I took care of her cats and plants and painted the bedroom for her.”
    “I’m on his side,” whispered Denise. “He’s hot too.”
    How Natalie missed Bindi’s dry, intelligent sarcasm. Whatever the case, Ms. Nasty Judge went on a vendetta towards the defendant until his balls were rolling on the floor.
    “I hate her,” said Denise, and Natalie had to agree.
    Now was the time, so she made her best effort to forget Denise’s presence and focused on the judge. Not having yet worked on living material, other than plants and insects, this was going to be a first. Natalie aimed her mental beam through her third eye at the judge’s stringy looking throat. Concentrate, concentrate, thought Natalie, narrow the passageway, rough up the membranes! Within a matter of moments, Nasty Judge was clawing at her neck and choking.
    “Ghhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” she hacked, bringing her assistants running. The taping ceased. A comedian darted out to entertain the audience, his jokes so-so, but the sudden complementary, sponsor gifts welcome. Apparently, there were bags under the seats waiting for such events.
    “Wow, I wonder if she’ll be back,” mused Denise.
    She was, and the show resumed only to end in the same disruption as before.
    “I’m afraid we’re going to have to stop for today,” a stressed looking young man apologized. “Thank you for coming and please do try another day.”
    “Whoa,” said Denise. “Long ride for nothing.”
    “Not exactly,” smiled Natalie.
    So...it was possible to stop people from doing things one didn’t approve of. Though she was exhilarated, she would need time to digest this. What a pity she couldn’t tell Rob. And what a gulf this opened between them. For that matter, what a gulf she felt between herself and everyone.
    Instinctively, she knew that Bindi would be even more distant if she knew in what direction Natalie had taken things. Yet Natalie could not stop herself from where she was heading.
    Out on the street from the darkened studio, she and Denise blinked in the sunlight though it was almost four o’clock. “I’m starving,” said Denise. “Do you want eat before we take the train back?”
    Natalie reluctantly agreed.
    “I can’t believe that of all the days they tape the show, we get the one where she chokes,” said Denise as they scanned the street for a restaurant. “Look, hamburgers are their specialty,” she said, pointing to a sign up the block.
    “Here’s a Lebanese place,” suggested Natalie, her mouth already watering. She adored Lebanese food.
    “Oooo, ick,” said Denise. “Let’s just eat American, okay?”
    Natalie signed and followed Denise. Missing Bindi, missing Bindi, who was adventurous about food.
    Just then, an imperious looking man walked out of a jewelry store, followed by three women swathed in burkahs. He was short and swarthy with an arrogant attitude that did not befit his less than glorious appearance. Two of the women giggled while the third tripped and almost fell. It was a wonder she could see at all. The man turned to reprimand her. Natalie could not understand his words, but his meaning was clear and though she could not see the woman’s face, she could sense her shrinking in embarrassment.
    “What a jerk,” said Denise, and for the first time Natalie felt in sync with her. “He needs someone to teach him a lesson! Maybe cut off his you know what! I don’t know why women put up with that shit.”
    Natalie reacted without thinking. She concentrated on the man’s chest, his nipples to be exact, and with all her mental might drew fat cells into each of his man-breasts. Visible under his shirt, for he was not dressed in robes as were his female chattel, small round, very feminine lumps appeared. Not large, but very much there.
    “Holy crap!” yelled Denise. “He has boobs!”
    Everyone passing on the street turned to look as the man patted his chest, his hairy hands settling on his curvy lumps. He grunted in horror and turned back into the store, crashing into his women and sending all three to the floor, sprawled in heaps of fabric.
    “Move along,” Natalie mumbled to Denise and speeded up her walk.
    “But wait,” said Denise, “what happened back there? I don’t get it. Why did he grab his man-boobs all of a sudden? I didn’t notice them at first, but-”
    “Let’s just go eat, okay, Denise? I’m about to faint from starvation.”
    Once in the restaurant, Denise gloated, “He has his nerve being all dominating and obnoxious when he has mammary glands!” She laughed as she perused the menu.
    Natalie, instead of joining Denise in her pleasure, experienced a frightening stab of horror. Wouldn’t playing God lead to terrible things? Would those breasts she gave him last or dissipate? As she ordered her meal, her hand shook as she handed the waiter her menu.

    She returned to an empty house, nothing unusual now, and had to remind herself it was Thursday, one of Rob’s regular nights out. Nothing to be upset about and even good to have the time alone to digest what had occurred. She craved a martini, but her heart was already thumping erratically, so she sipped tea instead. The cat did not jump into her lap as usual - did he sense somehow that she had morphed into a monster? She grabbed the remote to flick on the news.
    Okay then, she was a monster. Let’s work from there. Then what could she use her talent for that could benefit the world? Was this like being a good witch?
    As usual, the TV talking heads did little but rile her. Especially the announcement about a right-wing Presidential candidate coming to Scranton the next day. How had she missed this before?
    Though she liked Denise better than she had at first, the thought of spending another day with her so soon did not appeal. Asking Bindi to go was out of the question. She had not returned Natalie’s last two calls. Besides, she wouldn’t want anyone, certainly not Bindi, to see what she had in mind.
    Next morning Rob noticed she was not leaving the house for school at the same time he was. They took separate cars since their after school activities ran at different times.
    “I called in sick,” she said. “I’m going to Scranton.”
    “Why?” he asked, his face bewildered. “There’s going to be a gigantic crowd down there. That idiot is coming to campaign.”
    What could she say? He would never understand her wanting to go to that. “Um, they’re supposed to be having lots of sales on computer stuff and I was thinking about an iPad.”
    “You are? You never said anything about it. I thought we were saving for our trip spring break.”
    God, she hated to lie. “Well, like I said, they might have half price sales. It won’t set us back, really,”
    “Whatever,” he said, heading out the door. “See you.” Was he shaking his head? What did that mean?
    Easily flustered in heavy traffic, Natalie still managed to locate a parking spot three blocks from where the candidate was speaking. She steeled herself before walking. Okay, she decided, if I am now behaving as if I’ve gone to the dark side, then let me do it well.
    The crowd roared, dotted with the bigoted holding their godawful signs and when the candidate finally opened his mouth to speak, Natalie’s brain churned as she tried to decide what to do. He did not remain behind the podium, but grabbed a microphone and moved out from behind it, pacing back and forth as he whipped up the mob. His entire person was open for psychokinetic attack.
    “Family values!” he yelled. “Marriage is for a man and a woman! Not two men doing abominable things in the bedroom! Not two women pretending to be male and female! God made Adam and Eve and set up how things are meant to be! The Holy Book is quite clear on that!”
    The sign wavers screamed. Natalie eyes were drawn to his fly. God’s idea of how a man should be, was he? She focused her third eye laser beam on that zipper over his family-values “junk” and moved that slider slowly down, metal tooth by tooth until the whole thing gaped open. Then, ever so gently, she nudged his flaccid member out until a pink little head made its appearance. The candidate, apparently feeling the breeze, stopped suddenly and looked down.
    Someone noticed, then more and more people until they were pointing and screaming. Men guffawed, women tittered; the candidate had lost his hold over the crowd. His handlers, behind or beside him, did not at first understand the problem. But soon they saw and rushed him off stage.
    Natalie, smiling, pushed through the throng and hightailed it to her car. By the time she was ten minutes from home, the candidate’s fall from grace was on the news.
    That evening, she sat in the dark sipping tea while she mulled over her world as it had so strangely become. Rob was out, as usual.
    Afraid that Bindi might refuse a call from her house phone, Natalie turned on her cell, which she rarely used unless on the road, and pressed in Bindi’s number. Her friend answered.
    “It’s me,” Natalie said. “We need to talk.”
    First silence, then softly, “I do miss you,” said Bindi.
    “I don’t understand why you’ve cut me off.”
    Bindi sighed. “I don’t know.” She paused. “I’m a scientist type. I like things to be in order and make sense. What happened just didn’t. It screwed up my brain. I guess I associated that unpleasant feeling with you. It all got lumped together. Please forgive me.”
    Natalie wanted to jump right in, but she didn’t know how much truth telling Bindi could take. “Bindi, just because science can’t explain what causes something doesn’t mean it won’t be able to a few decades from now.”
    “I know, but it creeped me out.”
    “Well, I want us to be friends again, I so miss you. But you need to know that I’ve not stopped what we did that night. If you want me to keep what I know to myself, I will. Foremost I want us to stay friends.”
    Bindi was quiet for a moment, then said, “Okay, I can deal with that, I guess. Just don’t levitate in front of me or anything.”
    “I won’t,” laughed Natalie. They then enjoyed a relatively normal conversation with gossip and work stories. There was a lot to catch up on.
    Natalie felt such relief. One down and one to go, but Rob was another story. At least with Bindi, though she didn’t know everything Natalie was doing, she did know about the psychokinesis itself. Rob knew nothing. Though he claimed to be open to paranormal matters, all he’d ever run into were the stories of others and most of those from strangers on television. Natalie had a feeling that he wouldn’t deal so well with something weird on his own turf. This meant she would have to keep it all from him and it squatted in her mind, like a fat, ugly spider. If he ever knew what she’d done at the campaign speech in Scranton, he would look at her with horror ever after.
    When he came home near midnight, she was sitting in bed waiting for him.
    “You’re still up?” he said, his tone not exactly expressing pleasure.
    “Yeah,” she said tentatively. “Couldn’t sleep.”
    “I need a shower,” he said.
    “Come here first.” She reached out to hug him.
    She smelled it then, a mixture of odors including something floral. Her heart sank. “Go get your shower,” she said and like a dog happy to be released, he shot off.
    She flicked out the lamp and lay down, pulling the covers over her head. So she had been awakened to an unbelievable gift. How far could she, would she take it? But it had come with a great price as most valuable things do.
    Turned away from him, she was wide awake as Rob slipped into bed.
    “Natalie?” he said tentatively, but she didn’t answer.
    Her wet eyes were wide open in the dark, straining to see what would come.

Rapunzel’s Hair

    Dusk, and once again, the dream-like grapple with death, as high winds howled across the South Dakota desert, and black rocks twisted in a devil dance against the sky.
    “Where’s your goons, Tonto?”
    Greenleaf looked sharply at the girl. She stood, motionless, by the window, her arms folded.
    “Relax, angel, it will all go down.”
    “It doesn’t look like it.”
    “They’re on their way.”
    She made an impatient gesture.
    Shadows filled the room, as night came on. He sat at the table and studied the layout which the girl had drawn for him, the maze of rooms and hallways and staircases, while he chain smoked cigarettes. She remained restlessly watching, her eyes fixed on the road.
    “I’m not waiting.”
    “That’s too bad love.”
    “I’m not coming back.”
    “That’s too bad too. But it will be a mistake.”
    “You’re a mistake.”
    “Suit yourself, Cinderella, but there’s still time.”
    “Your time, Geronimo. Small time.”

    Headlights swept the driveway. A dark, late model car pulled in. Two shadows sat slumped in it. Greenleaf rose softly, slipping a revolver down his snakeskin belt, his gaunt Indian face expressionless.
    “Your coach awaiteth.”
    “Your goons are drunk.”
    “They’ll deliver.”
    “You’re a joke.”

    “Fifty thousand dollars?” The Mexican asked again.
    “Right, amigo,” Greenleaf answered impatiently, “fifty grand.”
    “Fifty thousand dollars in cash?”
    “Cash.”
    “In that haunted house?”
    The wind rocked the black sedan. They sat parked near the entrance to the roadhouse, headlights extinguished, engine idling. Greenleaf watched the girl slip out of the car and run through the night. Her cheerleader’s uniform fluttered with the gusts. Her long golden hair – something out of a fairytale – flared, for an instant, as she disappeared through the roadhouse doorway.
    “You have seen this cash, my friend?”
    It was still early. The parking lot was all but empty. There was a pickup truck parked by the roadhouse door. There was a late model station wagon next to it. Beyond the asphalt, under the waving trees, they could dimly make out the silhouette of a squad car. Inside the roadhouse, the girl was making her moves.
    “This don’t look so good, my friend.”
    The driver stared hard at the parked police car. His blunt fingers gripped the wheel. His partner was staring hard at it too. He shook his head and tilted his bottle.
    “It looked good to you this afternoon, amigo.”
    Greenleaf leaned forward in the back seat. He tried to peer past the two petrified Mexicans. The roadhouse was a relic from another time – a high gabled ghost built during the brief mining boom which founded Black Water. Its wooden frame was warped and weather beaten, bordering on haunted oblivion. The gutters and drainpipes were dull with rust. Blinking neon food and drink signs stabbed through the first floor windows. The rest of the house was cloaked in darkness. Somewhere inside, the strange white girl was drifting through the rooms, cutting phone lines, unlocking doors.
    “No, my friend, it sounded good to me this afternoon.”
    The driver took a long drink from the tequila bottle. He wiped his mouth, hesitated, and then took another.
    “How does this sound to you?”
    Greenleaf shoved the barrel of his revolver into the driver’s neck. He cocked back the hammer until it clicked into place.
    “It’s going down soon, Pancho,” Greenleaf whispered, “and you’re going with it. So’s your pal. In case you forgot, we’re looking at a bag stuffed with cocaine in a safe in that house. We’re looking at fifty thousand dollars on its way to claim it. We’re looking at the advantage of surprise, and we’re looking at the fact that we got someone inside to set things up.”
    Greenleaf sat back in the seat and closed his eyes. He listened to the wind howling through the night – across the bluffs and rocks and boulders of the Badlands. His shiny black hair was matted with sweat. His hands were shaking. The night seemed like a dream. Everything seemed like a dream since he had met the girl.
    She had appeared that morning, like a apparition, standing suddenly before him in a Black Water tavern, where Greenleaf was playing the final shot in a high stakes pool game which began the day before and continued through the night.
    His dark eyes heavy with smoke and the long night, his fingers stiffly wrapped around the cue, Greenleaf leaned across the table and fixed his gaze on the last bright colored ball which seemed to float there. He looked up suddenly – a flood of sunlight was streaming through a cathedral window. As he squinted, the stained glass dazzle slowly gave way to a strange white girl. Hair like spun gold, skin so pale it was almost translucent, she stood like a chimera at the end of the table, disturbingly beautiful, her candy-cane cheerleader’s uniform sparkling under the light of the overhead lamp.
    “Got a gun Cochise?”
    She was looking down at him with undisguised disdain. Her eyes seemed to look through him, not at him, from some far away reality quite beyond him.
    “I might have, princess. Why?”
    Greenleaf had to gather himself together just to take a breath.
    “Got a couple of these to go with it?”
    She lifted the ball from the table and held it lightly in her hand.
    “I might have those too, love. Cut to the chase.”
    She waited tables after school, at a roadhouse in the valley. The owner had a brother who was a crooked county cop. They were both crooks. Anyway, the cop got lucky. He scored a primo bag of cocaine in a routine traffic bust. He either snuffed the delivery boy, or let him go in trade ... he was selling the stuff back to the delivery boy’s boss ... or to someone else. She had overheard all this through a door in the storeroom and couldn’t quite get it straight. But the score was stashed in the office safe. A deal was going down that night at eight o’clock.
    “Big time wampum, Hiawatha.” She made mock Indian signs with her hands. “You in or you out?”

    Headlights swept across the roadhouse parking lot. A champagne colored Cadillac sped past them and parked by the neon-lit door. Two men in suede suits and Stetson hats climbed out. They looked around and went inside. One of the men was carrying a briefcase.
    “It’s game time amigos.”
    Greenleaf pulled himself together and leaned forward. He jabbed the driver’s partner with his gun.
    “I’m not going to run this past you again, amigo. You know the set up. Make your way to the hall at the end of the bar and slip through that storeroom door. It will be unlocked. Inside the storeroom there’s another door, also unlocked. That door opens to the back of the roadhouse office. It’s unlocked too. Wait by the door ‘til you hear my voice. Then bust in.”
    The Mexican looked long and hard at the parked police car. He studied the Cadillac. He turned and looked at his friend. The driver nodded gravely at him. He shook his head and slipped outside.
    “Let’s move.” Greenleaf jabbed the driver. They drove to the end of the parking lot and braked by the swaying trees. Greenleaf hit the asphalt running, a flashlight flickering in his hand. It was all a matter of timing – to hit them hard in the middle of the deal. He imagined the play going down, right now, in the office: the safe open and the cocaine out, the briefcase open and the cash out, the four men clustered around the office desk, sampling the product, checking the bills. He imagined himself and the Mexican, guns drawn, busting in from different doors. Five times fifty thousand dollars, the coke would take in on the street.
    Greenleaf calculated breathlessly as he ran. Maybe more. Plus the cash. Eighty thousand dollars would be his share. In ten more minutes he would have eighty thousand dollars. Eighty thousand dollars plus.
    The cellar door was open and Greenleaf bounded down the wooden stairs. The flashlight tossed off devil shapes in the darkness, igniting black flame shadows everywhere. Eighty thousand dollars, Greenleaf repeated to himself. He beamed his way, slowly, through the mountains of roadhouse rubbish, around crates and barrels and boxes and trash. He ducked under dripping pipes and waded through puddles of stench. The old house rocked and creaked above him, while the cellar floor was alive with frightened rats.
    Murder. Gunplay. Prison. Death. Black thoughts ran round and round in his head. Round and round, they raced in his mind all day, as waves of fear and panic seized him. Drug dealers, crooked cops, crooked club owners, shotgun ready Badlands bartenders – Cinderella’s castle was a booby trap. He had known that going in, but he could not stay out. Eighty thousand dollars. This was his first real crack at big-time dough. Maybe the only shot he’d ever get. This was the break he needed to blow off Black Water, to escape his dirt poor life in the South Dakota desert – shooting stick for meals and flops in Badlands dives.
    Greenleaf stopped abruptly and held his breath. The long, steep staircase that led up to the office suddenly loomed before him, climbing through the cobwebs and disappearing in the darkness. He lifted the light and shined its beam on the waiting door. His heartbeat raced and his legs felt wobbly. He had to grip the flashlight to keep it steady. The Mexicans were right. The play was crazy. They were pros upstairs – four armed, experienced, dangerous men. Those pros would never give up the Jack. Not without a bloodbath. Even if they gave it up to them tonight, they would get it back tomorrow. They would hunt them down, anywhere they went. The cop would see to that. How hard would it be to throw a net around Black Water?
    To find and break the Mexicans? To sniff him out? To get all of them? “Anything odd happen here lately, you ask? Well, yeah man, there was this high-school chick in here talking to this hustler Indian.” They didn’t have a chance. But he knew that coming in. Eighty thousand dollars. Maybe they weren’t supposed to have a chance. There was something out there he couldn’t quite see. Something crazy. He tried to see it, but the pills he popped all day to stay awake ...
    Greenleaf froze on the spot, as the door opened suddenly and a flood of light came streaming down the staircase. Framed in the yellow haze at the top of the stairs, the silhouette of the girl appeared, standing motionless in the brightly lit doorway. Her eyes gazed down on him like holy mysteries – two huge, hypnotic, emerald-green gems. As always, her gaze went completely through him, hitting some mysterious target deep inside him, leaving him, as always, strangely stunned and spent.
    Greenleaf felt himself falling as he mounted the stairs, sinking, dropping, drowning like a one-armed swimmer disappearing into some desolate unknown. Halfway up, he remembered the mask. He slipped it over his head and face. An executioner’s mask. A hit man’s black hood. Someone would die tonight, Greenleaf knew, and he somehow knew, deep down, that it would be him.
    He lumbered to the top, and as he moved through the door, the girl swiftly retreated. He followed her figure down a hallway lined on both sides with hulking doors. She was dressed in a bridal gown, a ghostly swirl of taffeta and silk. On her head was a crown of desert flowers. There were more garlands woven in her golden hair. She turned and smiled at him and beckoned. He lurked behind, his neck glistening with sweat, squinting through the slits in the black hood. At the end of the hall, she turned again. She lifted an ivory finger to her lips, slipped through the door and signaled him to follow.
    He followed her in, but what he found inside the dingy office looked more like a hophead’s hallucination than the slick double cross he was expecting. Yes, all the players were there waiting for him. The cop was there. The owner – a big balding man – was there. The two Stetsoned drug dealers were there, as was the briefcase full of cash and the sack of coke. But everything was topsy turvy, upside down. The men were sprawled all over the tiny room – slumped in chairs, toppled over furniture, curled on the floor. No sound came from the bar. The girl stood like a dream shape in the midst of the petrified mayhem. Her emerald eyes were sparkling and there was a faint smile on her lips. She performed a little pantomime for him. She mixed an imaginary drink, tilted her head, and pretended to drink it down.
    “Knock out drops.” She whispered.
    She leaned over and pulled the gun from the curled up cop. As she did Greenleaf saw the body of the Mexican behind her. He was sprawled out on the floor. There was blood seeping through the top of his thick black hood.
    “Happy hunting, Hiawatha.”
    She smiled as she rose and extended her arms in front of her and pointed the policeman’s thirty-eight caliber special at his chest.
    The explosion sent him reeling back. He slammed against the wall and sagged slowly to the office floor. A ball of fire blazed in his chest. His head was spinning as he gasped for breath.
    “You won’t need this, my love.”
    The girl floated over him like a white-winged angel. She pulled the gun from his snake skin belt. Greenleaf lifted his eyes and watched her turn and fire his revolver into the unconscious cop’s chest. She fired again into the face of the sleeping owner. And then she fired into the walls, desk, woodwork until the gun was empty.
    Greenleaf tried to rise but he found that he could not move. It felt as if a great weight was pressing down upon him. He looked on as the girl took one of the drug dealers guns and shot the Mexican, and then used the Mexican’s gun to shoot both the dealers. She moved around the room amidst the rustle of silk and the fragrance of desert flowers, rearranging the bodies, shooting bullets into the walls and doors. He knew what she was up to but he couldn’t quite swallow it. She floated past him and rustled down the hallway. There was the slamming of a door and the sound of a body being dragged back toward the office. Greenleaf knew it was the body of the getaway driver. A door opened across from the office. The sound of the barroom’s jukebox filled the air. There were more explosions, more bullets ricocheting, the sound of more bodies being dragged and rearranged – the bartender, the cook, the few patrons. It was as if the roadhouse were her dollhouse. The bodies of the men her toys – all of them arranged by the girl to create, for the police, the illusion of a robbery gone bad – and a survivor-less gunfight when it had.

    A white silk suit, a diamond ring, a pocket full of money, his hair slicked back – Greenleaf was high rolling his way through the casinos of Las Vegas, a blonde on each arm.
    The bright lights glittered and the roulette wheel turned. He was winning big time, jackpot after jackpot, prince among the players ...

    The girl sat in the dark and waited for her lover. Soon, he would appear to her, as he always did, in the antique barroom mirror. Tall, dark, handsome, elegant, he would be dressed for their wedding in that high style gold rush fashion which gentlemen wore for their ladies way back then. The roadhouse was theirs now, theirs alone. Her father was gone. Her uncle was gone. They were gone in the way they both deserved. There would be no more of that from them. There would be no more rooms with drunken men. There would be just her and her lover from now until forever.

Romantic As It Should Be

    Erwin and Deidre have just picked me up for the threesome I agreed to last week. We’re going out for Italian food first and he and I are a bit overdressed: Erwin wears an ugly grey shirt, striped with blue and gold patterns, which, despite being hideous, complements his cigar-skin and light eyes. I sit in the backseat on the way, watching Erwin carefully eyeing the road. Whenever I’ve driven with him before, he has been loose and talkative—what you want in a comfortable, casual acquaintance. But when they picked me up his voice was jittery, his movements stilted; his responses to basic questions came after long deliberation. Then he began overcompensating, trying to sound in-control, and I’m sure he keeps thinking, What should I say to a man who’s about to sleep with my wife?

    I’ve known Erwin about three years. We had worked in the same office for a little less than a year until I took a job at a rec center after my wife left me. When we worked together, Erwin and I commiserated with each other’s entry-level jobs at the stock brokerage firm, complaining about the duties, the tedious input of numbers, and the rookie positions we had, trying to understand the way things worked inside the heads of men and women who made our salaries in a week—all while trying not to seem jealous, trying not to look stupid when we asked questions. We fetched Red Bull, brought back barbeque and each wore our five ties on the same days of the week the entire time we worked together. The people we dealt with at the firm were the types who go have martinis and say, “There are things in life besides money,” and then laugh raucously.
    I was offered a position at a local rec center that made me look as though I had copped out, abandoned lucrative work in favor of something easier, more juvenile—more fun. I shoot baskets with middle schoolers; I handle the immature children; basically I help people who need helping. Now, Erwin makes roughly five times more than I do and I try not to sound bitter about any of it. I can see, though, Erwin feels awkward in his mannerisms: the way he looks away when he shakes your hand, how he avoids conversation with you at neighborhood get-togethers, a way he parks his car farther from your door than he needs to. We have some mutual friends, and I see them around the neighborhood once a week or so—we still live in the same areas, saving up till I get my own wife and hopefully a life more like his.
    His mousy girlfriend has become a mature housewife and hostess. They serve fifty-dollar-a-bottle champagne and fancy cheese at an annual Christmas party. He flaunts his success. But he still looks at me sometimes as if I’d already slept with his wife. It isn’t with an expression like I’ve taken part in broken their marital bonds or done something lurid with her at a party—but he looks at me as if maybe sometime before their marriage Deidre and I may have had a one-night-stand, maybe lost our virginities to each other in high school, maybe mistook one another for prettier people some drunken night. This is the jealous way men size up each other when they have no substantial sensical reason to dislike one another.
    So why me for their threesome? The only reason I can come up with is that I mentioned over drinks one night that I had had some experiences with men in college. Neither of them said anything at the time, but I suppose they were both thinking things. Apparently, a couple nights of homosexuality makes me a prime candidate for a threesome in their mind. And I think the only reason I’m here is that I haven’t had a date in almost a year, since my wife left me. I blame the celibacy simply on not finding the kind of person I’m into. That’s when I started working at the rec center for less respect and less pay. Who needs money when all you have is yourself?

    “Slow down,” Deidre says to him now. “I think you missed your turn, babe.”
    “The restaurant’s this way. I know where I’m going,” he says.
    “Okay, I know you know where you’re trying to get to, but you should go down—.”
    “Please. If I went that way I’d have to drive up and down the block for—”
    I tune out here. They’ve been going on like this since I arrived. Out the window the sun is boiling down, glazing the gross part of the city. I’m not hungry, and even if I had been before, I don’t think I could stomach anything before the event we’re all supposed to enjoy together. I wish they would’ve said to go over to the house and we’d have it done right away. But apparently there’s a way in which these things are done. And I guess I’m not in a position to make requests. Maybe they’re thinking that I should feel lucky.
    “So Cale, how’s the work at the rec center?” Erwin says to me.
    “Good enough,” I say. Deidre turns around, like she wants me to expand on that, and I do. “It’s fun sometimes, stressful others. Some days there’s nothing much going on and others it’s crazy—tons of drama, you know? Listening to kids who can’t drive yet start talking about their problems. They’re all just getting into relationships. It can get annoying sometimes but mostly I just try to think of it as kind of entertaining.”
    “So what was today like?” Deidre asks with a smile, I guess wanting to hear more about a person who’s going to see naked in a couple hours. Realizing that doesn’t arouse me in the slightest. It just makes me feel sorry for her.
    “I mean,” she says, “was it a more dramatic today or a plain day?”
    “Well usually since it’s the end of the school-year things start to slow down. The biggest drama we had today,” I say blandly, “is that we thought we lost the kid of the gymnastics coach.”
    “Jeez,” she says. “That doesn’t sound exactly drama-less.”
    “Well, I mean the whole thing only lasted half an hour. He wound up in the dugouts in the baseball fields.”
    “I used to play baseball,” Erwin jumps in. His voice is dry as he speaks. “I played centerfield in college.”
    Deidre rolls her eyes. “Did you ever play?” she asks me.
    “Baseball? No. I played football, though.”
    “What position?” she asks.
    “Receiver on offense. D-back on defense.”
    She says, “I don’t know why I asked that. I don’t know anything about sports.”
    “A receiver,” Erwin tries, “is a wideout when you’re on offense, when you have the ball, and a—”
    “Babe, I have no idea what that means.” She looks at me, “I don’t really care either. No offense.”
    I say, “Basically, I caught the ball when my team had the ball and tried to stop people from catching the ball when my team didn’t.”
    “Ah,” she says. I look at Erwin, both hands on his steering wheel.
    She adds, “I used to dance. Pretty good, too. I could’ve had a career.”
    “Don’t brag,” he says. “She likes to be ostentatious,” he says. Although he’s not really using it correctly I let it drop.
    She doesn’t wear lipstick, I notice then. Aside for silver nail polish, nothing about her seems to suggest any large event. I’ve dressed nicely though—perhaps too overdressed, and though I knew we weren’t going to some expensive locale, I assumed a big evening somehow equated to being well-dressed. But Deidre is wearing hardly any makeup, except a black spoke of mascara around her eyes, bringing my eyes to them instead of her rather androgynous clothes: jeans, a buttoned-up white blouse that reveals almost nothing.
    She sees me eyeing her, sizing her up, and when I don’t flash some coy smile I think she feels a touch insulted.
    “You look, you know, really sexy tonight,” I say, then wish I could have it back.
    Erwin looks back to me as though wanting to tell me I’m inappropriate. But can he say?
    Instead he says, “Ah thanks,” as though I was complimenting him.
    Deidre playfully hits him with her handbag.
    “See, why can’t you say things like that?” she says to him.
    He says, “Why can’t you say things like that to me? Guys have pride, too. Right, Cale?”
    “Right. Yeah. Guys have feelings, too.”
    “I don’t know about feelings,” he says, incorporating some of that pseudo-masculine there’s-more-to-life-than-money attitude. “But we can look good, too.”
    “Erwin doesn’t have feelings,” Deidre says. “He’s a little android most of the time.”
    “You just catch me when I come home from work.”
    “He leaves before I wake up.”
    “You can’t complain about these things. Tell her she can’t complain about these things.”
    “You can’t complain about these things,” I say.
    She looks at me and smiles as though we’ve known each other longer and better than we have. Her expression and the way she tilts her head happily seems to say, Maybe this wasn’t really that bad of an idea.
    “Maybe we should change the plans and just go straight to our place,” Deidre says.
    “What? Why?” Erwin says.
    “Well maybe Cale doesn’t like Italian food. We just kind of assumed. We could do it a different way. Maybe we should have ordered in.” She is visibly genuinely concerned. She wants this to go well.
    “We can still change the plans,” she offers.
    “I’m fine with it,” I say. “Totally fine with it.”
    “Maybe we should have ordered in. Also, Cale is dressed so nicely. I don’t look as good.”
    Erwin looks back. “Yeah, why are you dressed up? Why are you wearing that jacket?”
    “He looks nice,” she says.
    I don’t know what to say to this, so I say nothing. I’m shrinking into myself. A pawn.
    “What do you want to do, Cale?” Erwin asks. “Do you want us to pick something up?”
    “Maybe I could go pick it up and you two could go home,” Deidre says.
    “No,” Erwin says at the same time I say, “Whatever you want.”
    “Maybe we—” Deidre starts but is cut off.
    “What do you want to do, Cale?”
    “I think lets just stick to what we had planned. Soldier on. It’s fine.” I think of what I’m saying: Soldier on? What is that? It’s like I’m speeding through the nervous energy of trying to impress two first dates simultaneously.
    Deidre sucks in her breath and sits back in a way that lets me know she’s not satisfied by wanting to soldier on; it was a poor choice of words, I know. She doesn’t want things to just be fine. They need to be great, if not perfect.
    To avoid having to exchange glances I look out the window. There’s a girl—dressed in all white—in the street with trying to ride a bicycle, and I watch her a moment. She’s certainly inexperienced.
    When I turn back to look at the couple in the front seat I try to imagine how their conversation went, how they came to the conclusion that this was a good idea. I hadn’t even wondered if I was the first choice until now. They seem such a straight couple, almost too plain to be a couple seeking to satiate the smallest orgiastic urges.
    She was the one who slipped me the invite at a huge dinner party they threw last Friday. She pulled three fingers lightly down my chest, looked up at me, shrugged her shoulders, sighed. Her hips were barely showing between a tight, chic black skirt and the tip of her thin yellow top. I swallowed audibly. I could see Erwin in the other room, the dark skin, lambent eyes. I said yes.

    We pull up to the restaurant soon, and as Erwin and I start to unbuckle Deidre says, “I feel like we should get to know each other a little bit first.”
    “I hope you know me as well as you need to,” Erwin says to her.
    “Don’t be a smart alec.”
    “What do you mean?” I ask.
    “I mean, I don’t know. At dinner. I wanted to do dinner first just because I thought it would be a good way to get to know one another.”
    “I’d kind of prefer not knowing too much,” Erwin says. “Other than whether or not he has some kind of STD.”
    “Erwin. Jesus.”
    “I’m just asking. I wouldn’t want him to give you one.”
    “God.”
    “She likes to be all didactic,” he says, and although again he’s not using it right, it’s not my place to correct him—especially when I see Deidre doesn’t seem to know he’s wrong.
    “Well do you?” he says to me. “Do you have some kind—”
    “Erwin!”
    “No, I’m as clean as a whistle,” I say, then wishing I could edit my words. I try to sound calm though this might be one of the more awkward moments I’ve ever had: being screened by a prude-looking couple who are asking if I have an STD, sitting in a tiny sedan, in a Macaroni Grill parking lot.
    Why did I come here? I said yes when I didn’t have to, but even then the choice seemed beyond me. I’m twenty-eight years old and have felt powerless since my wife left. I guess this is only one more time.
    “Oh Jesus, Deidre. I’m only kidding.”
    “You wouldn’t be kidding too much if he’d say yes. What an embarrassing thing to be asked.”
    “Don’t you think it’s smart to ask someone that?” he says to me.
    “I would judge you if you didn’t,” I say, though the thought never occurred to me. Perhaps it should have. Perhaps it should when I sleep with women, which isn’t something I worry about now.
    When we step inside, the restaurant is crusted with white lights that grow on artificial vines and painted a veneer of faux red-brick wall. It looks like a place that’s trying too hard to make you feel like you’re somewhere you should want to be.
    A hostess seats us in a nook and Deidre smiles thankfully as if she’s glad to be away from the main floor where other people might see or listen to us.
    “This is nice,” she says to the two of us after the hostess has gone. “I thought some privacy would be better maybe.”
    “Are you ashamed of us?” Erwin asks.
    “No, it’s just a little odd. Seeing three people, you know, going out for dinner.”
    “Are you serious?” he says. “No it’s not. Three people go out to dinner all the time. Maybe he’s your cousin, or my brother. Or maybe we’re all just friends.”
    “You and I don’t look like friends,” she says. “We’re both wearing wedding rings.”
    “I don’t know that we need disguises,” I say. “It’s not something we need to hide.”
    Erwin nods toward me, “She’s just being ridiculous.”
    “Don’t do that tonight, Erwin,” she says. Don’t go talking about me like I’m not here.”
    He rolls his eyes toward me, and I wonder how he gets through this relationship without a guy to fall back on when he needs to.
    I thought by now I’d be able to decipher whose idea this was. I don’t really care, and I haven’t really been looking, but it seemed an important thing to know—like having all the facts in front of you when dealing with a customer or when I try to talk to kids about their issues.
    “So what is it you were so desperate to talk about?” Erwin says to his wife.
    “I wasn’t so desperate to talk about anything. I just thought it would be a good idea or something. And then you launch in with your STD junk.”
    “Hey we don’t really know Cale all that well. Not on those levels, anyway. It’s only smart to ask.” Then he asks, “So why aren’t you married anymore, Cale?”
    “Erwin, you’re being so, I don’t know, inappropriate tonight.”
    “Inappropriate?”
    “All right, bad choice of words. But you know what I mean. Stop being so,” but in the frustration, her vocabulary is limited. “Weird. Stop being so weird.”
    “This whole thing is weird. But fun. You can’t escape the weirdness, though.”
    “Maybe this is a little too weird,” I say.
    “No, no,” Deidre says. “Erwin’s not being on his best behavior.”
    “I’m not a child.”
    “Calm down,” she says.
    “Maybe we should change the subject,” I say. “I mean, I don’t want cause problems.”
    Deidre says to Erwin, “You should be thinking about how you can make someone uncomfortable, Erwin. He’s always like this when he feels awkward.”
    “Well, I can see where he’s coming from.”
    “Do you feel awkward?” she asks, as though my answer has the possibility of offending her personally. “What do you want to do?”
    I wish they would stop asking me what I want. I want to fuck them and set them on fire at once.
    “No, no. I’m fine. I’m great. Let’s keep on.”
    “Soldier on?” Erwin says and grins. “This is what our leader says.”
    I nod, and look to the side as if I’m assessing something poignant, but really I wonder what the odds are that we’ll drop this whole thing. I’m really not in the mood anymore. But I don’t want to disappoint. They’re marriage might be floundering; they might need something new—although I don’t really see why sleeping with another person makes them any closer. Having a shared unusual experience?
    “When was the last time you had sex?” Erwin asks.
    “Erwin, quit with this. It’s like you’re interviewing a witness.” Then to me, she says, “Erwin watches too many cop shows.”
     “You’re the one who wanted to get him talking about personal things—get to know each other, right?”
    “Well I thought we’d do it a little more naturally than all this.”
    “So when was it?” he asks me.
    “I don’t know. A few weeks I guess.”
    “When was the last time we had sex?” he asks his wife.
    “I’m done,” Deidre says and stands at the moment the waitress comes at that moment and Deidre asks for the check though we haven’t ordered anything—not even drinks.
    “Um?” the waitress says before looking at Erwin and me. “Do you mean you’re leaving?”
    Deidre still stands but doesn’t move. She surveys the table as if she expects something to happen or someone to say something to save her from embarrassment. No one does.
     “Don’t be so pedantic,” he says, and then I pick up on how this is what he does: use words a little too lofty for his wife to make her feel stupid—or at least below him.
    It works. She looks down at her menu as if reading, but her eyes flick over it so quickly it’s obvious she’s thinking of other things. She has nothing else to say. What do you say when you don’t know what’s going on besides just agree and go along?
    “I’d like to leave. Yes,” she says. At that second I can see this is something she’s pushed on Erwin that now he wants to get out of I look at him. He avoids looking at me. I wonder if I would’ve pushed my wife into something like this when I was married. I once mentioned with my wife that we could have had a threesome with another man. She didn’t want to though. From then on she questioned things about me. I’d be lying if I didn’t start questioning myself, too.
    “I’ll be in the car,” she says.
    “Don’t make a scene,” he says.
    “I’m not making a scene. I’m just leaving. I’m trying not to make a scene.”
    “You’re being obsequious,” he says.
    Deidre and I look at each other like neither of us knows what it means. Erwin probably doesn’t either.
    “She’s always doing this,” he says to me.
    She says, “You’re acting like a child.”
    “I’m acting like a child,” he says to me. He grins and straightens his posture and smooths out his repulsive shirt. He swallows and briefly looks unsure of himself.
    Then he looks at me, grimaces and looks away. He rolls his eyes in a way people do when they’re worried their sarcasm is going to get them slapped but can’t help themselves anyway. Deidre is gone.
    As she departs I take the napkin out of my lap. When did I set it there? We haven’t been here long enough for me to touch the table. I look at the single men at the bar, the waiters, the other parties. I look at any of the men present other than Erwin.
    Then it occurs to me I am witnessing the crossroads of their marriage. No. More than that. I am integral—critical—to it.
    “I’ll go see how she is,” I say. “I mean I can just go talk with her a second.”
     He’s quiet. I can’t tell if he thinks I’m messing with him or if I genuinely want them to work through this. Perhaps I don’t know what I’m after either.
    “Maybe I’ll do a good job of settling her down.”
    This idea does not sit well with Erwin. He looks at me, with something like anxiety at my smile—the wriest one I can conjure.
    “No, no. I will.”
    “Listen, I really think she’s made it pretty clear that y—”
    “Just don’t go anywhere yet.”
    I have never given Erwin enough thought to truly consider him someone who gets under my skin, but now I want him to be. My thoughts go back and forth about the different reasons I am here: lust has so little to do with it. Salvaging, for both myself and for them, seems a much more appropriate word. Power, also, doesn’t seem unfitting.
    In less than five minutes Deidre is back. Erwin is nowhere to be seen.
    “So did you kill him?” I say.
    She huffs a laugh, “Not yet.”
    “Ah,” I say. “I thought now we’d have a chance to be alone.” I wink and touch her foot with mine. It should be obvious that I’m kidding, but I don’t know that it registers.
    Her mouth scrunches in a softly snorted laugh.
    I ask, “So did he make you come back in to turn me on again?”
    She swallows. “Hardly. I told him I can’t look at him. He said don’t go. Here I am. If he comes back in here right now I swear to God, it’s over.”
    “That’s a big statement.”
    “It’s gotta be obvious that this isn’t exactly working,” she says, with eyes that rest on me, begging me, Please you have to understand.
    “Is that why I’m here?”
    She shrugs in a way that says yes.
    “Because I keep getting the feeling that I’m causing more harm that good.”
    “No, no,” she says. “You’re helping us. This is gonna make or break it.”
    I hold out my hand. She takes it reluctantly. I wish Erwin would come in right now.
    “I think that if you need something like this then the decision’s already been made for you.” She is quiet and staring into the shiniest dinner plate I’ve ever seen. I’m sure she can see her reflection. Maybe this would be a turn-on to her husband. To see her holding me like this. Or maybe it would be the end of everything. I look at her. Do I actually find her attractive? Sexually? I haven’t even thought about it. He is.
    “I don’t think you should be putting me in a situation where I should make the choice for you guys.”
    “You’re not making it. I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she says, pulling her hands toward her so she can put them over her face. I take her hands back.
    “Yes you do.”
    I kiss her.
    A couple of neighboring tables are looking over. I can’t even imagine what they think is going on—what is happening. What is happening?
    The first thing I’ve actually wanted to happen all night does: Erwin is a few feet away.
    “I thought this would calm her down.” I wait to get hit, to feel a muscled fist thrust against me. Instead he grabs her—not hard, not violent—and speeds her toward the exit.
    She looks back at me with nothing like desire, with only desperation. Again, I am her hope. I follow. I want to fuck them and set them on fire at once.
    At the car there is no conversation about it. Deidre doesn’t say she wants to drive. She sits where she is and waits for him to get in the backseat. When they both sit next to each other, daring the other to speak I get out, go around the car to the driver’s seat.
    I stop a moment and see the craggy, bird-dropping-drenched trees. I see a homeless man on the corner with a sign, the back of which, I see, is the box of a family board game. I think of them in the back. I can hear them as I stand outside even with every door and window shut. They are an attractive couple. I’ve seen him at the pool in the summers—dark-skin with taut muscles. She’s pretty good too.
    After a moment I open the door, trying not to listen to them. I take the emergency brake off, put it in gear, and start to drive. They are talking about why they’re here.
    The first thing I hear is him saying, “That’s hitting below the belt.”
    “Yeah, well something was wrong down there already,” she says.
    “Listen man,” I say, “I just thought I’d kiss her to maybe start things along. I thought that’s what you’d want.”
    “You just drive, asshole. Take yourself home.”
    “At least he made a goddamn move. The only thing you’re doing is trying to back out. You’re trying to back out of everything. You don’t even want this to work. Cale was right about this—if we’ve come to this then this marriage is officially on the outs.”
    Having the actually drama collapsing just behind me as I’m driving them along changes the feeling of the whole thing. There’s no power in it. There’s no resolution in it.
    “I think I will just take myself home.”
    “See, you’ve scared him off,” she says.
    “Oh please. We weren’t gonna do anything. We all knew that.”
    “Not this guy,” Erwin says, giving a decent thump to the back of my head. “He was into it. Definitely more than we were.”
    “Shut up. It’s our fault it’s like this. You didn’t even think about Cale.”
    “Bullshit. The guy didn’t have to come. He could’ve said no and never talked to us again. What’s the damn difference to him.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Why would you even put up with this? With this jackass.”
    “Shut the hell up,” he says.
    “Don’t talk to me like that.”
    Then to me, she says, “Seriously though, why did you even come?”
    “Don’t ignore me,” he says.
    Then all of a sudden I start yelling things.
    “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. Maybe I’m sick of talking to kids all day at some rec center. Maybe I know I should be happy to be doing better than you but I’m not. Maybe your wife is pretty. Or you, maybe you’re just goddamn hot. Who knows?”
    None of that seems to be true, but who knows. Maybe it is and I can’t realize it.
    I go on. “And why am I dressed up? I don’t know. Maybe because I never have an excuse to look good anymore. Maybe because this is my first ‘date’ in a year. Why am I wearing nice clothes? How do I know what to do in a situation like this? I’m wearing this jacket because I wanted to wear this jacket.”
    When I take a breath I realize I’m looking in the backseat as I’m driving. When I look back around the girl I saw earlier on the bicycle is in the road.
    I swerve to miss her. I do. However, I’ve run their car between a bush and a tree.
    The car and the tree collide almost silently. I couldn’t have been going more than ten miles an hour. The engine is clicking to a halt. I get out of the car. The engine is running but the only thing I hear is the wind pushing through the Spanish oak that now punctuates the car.
    The sun has just gone down and the streetlights aren’t on yet on. It’s still early, I realize. Not romantic as it should be—if it’s even “supposed to be” romantic at all. But I don’t know what this should be like.
    Deidre and Erwin are quiet in the car. Everything is quiet though everything seems to be broken down. I feel like they should do something, and I wait for it to come—for them to blow up at me. But what would they do? What do you say to something like this?
    After about a minute, I realize the girl is trying to ride away, but she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s trying to learn how to ride by herself, which momentarily makes a touch of empathy split through me. I walk over to her, wanting to help her, feeling sorry for her that no parent or sibling or friend is trying to teach her how to do something that everyone should enjoy. Nobody is trying to help her. Her hair is tied back and she looks tired, like she’s been trying to learn something on her own for a very long time.
    I step closer. She notices I’m coming toward her. Then she drops the bicycle in the middle of the street. It lands with a clang that lingers loudly in the street. Then she tears off, running back home I guess, her clothes—all of them perfectly white—receding until she’s completely vanished. She leaves without thinking about it, without doubting for a moment what she should do. She makes a good decision, the decision I actually tell kids at the center to do if they’re ever alone and see a stranger coming toward them. She does what’s right—what she knows she should do—and runs away. Even though she’s alone.
    I keep walking toward the middle of the street, and when I get to the bicycle I pick it up, straighten it, and lean it upright against a tree and walk—not knowing the direction I’m going, but knowing I’m walking away, so unsatisfied.

Will Pewitt bio

    Will Pewitt lives in St. Augustine, FL and teaches at Flagler College and the University of North Florida. His fiction has been published in over a dozen national journals and can be reached at will.pewitt@gmail.com.

Jim Maddocks, GLASGOW, via the Internet     I’ll be totally honest, of the material in Issue (either 83 or 86 of Children, Churches and Daddies) the only ones I really took to were Kuypers’. TRYING was so simple but most truths are, aren’t they?

what is veganism?

    A vegan (VEE-gun) is someone who does not consume any animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans don’t consume dairy or egg products, as well as animal products in clothing and other sources.

    why veganism?

    This cruelty-free lifestyle provides many benefits, to animals, the environment and to ourselves. The meat and dairy industry abuses billions of animals. Animal agriculture takes an enormous toll on the land. Consumtion of animal products has been linked to heart disease, colon and breast cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and a host of other conditions.

    so what is vegan action?

    We can succeed in shifting agriculture away from factory farming, saving millions, or even billions of chickens, cows, pigs, sheep turkeys and other animals from cruelty.
We can free up land to restore to wilderness, pollute less water and air, reduce topsoil reosion, and prevent desertification.
    We can improve the health and happiness of millions by preventing numerous occurrences od breast and prostate cancer, osteoporosis, and heart attacks, among other major health problems.

    A vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle may be the most important step a person can take towards creatin a more just and compassionate society. Contact us for membership information, t-shirt sales or donations.

vegan action
po box 4353, berkeley, ca 94707-0353
510/704-4444

C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review (on Children, Churches and Daddies)     cc&d is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist.     I really like (“Writing Your Name”). It’s one of those kind of things where your eye isn’t exactly pulled along, but falls effortlessly down the poem. I liked “knowledge” for its mix of disgust and acceptance. Janet Kuypers does good little movies, by which I mean her stuff provokes moving imagery for me. Color, no dialogue; the voice of the poem is the narrator over the film.

    Children, Churches and Daddies no longer distributes free contributor’s copies of issues. In order to receive issues of Children, Churches and Daddies, contact Janet Kuypers at the cc&d e-mail addres. Free electronic subscriptions are available via email. All you need to do is email ccandd@scars.tv... and ask to be added to the free cc+d electronic subscription mailing list. And you can still see issues every month at the Children, Churches and Daddies website, located at http://scars.tv

Mark Blickley, writer     The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

MIT Vegetarian Support Group (VSG)

functions:
* To show the MIT Food Service that there is a large community of vegetarians at MIT (and other health-conscious people) whom they are alienating with current menus, and to give positive suggestions for change.
* To exchange recipes and names of Boston area veg restaurants
* To provide a resource to people seeking communal vegetarian cooking
* To provide an option for vegetarian freshmen

    We also have a discussion group for all issues related to vegetarianism, which currently has about 150 members, many of whom are outside the Boston area. The group is focusing more toward outreach and evolving from what it has been in years past. We welcome new members, as well as the opportunity to inform people about the benefits of vegetarianism, to our health, the environment, animal welfare, and a variety of other issues.

Gary, Editor, The Road Out of Town (on the Children, Churches and Daddies Web Site)     I just checked out the site. It looks great.

    Dusty Dog Reviews: These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding.

John Sweet, writer (on chapbook designs)     Visuals were awesome. They’ve got a nice enigmatic quality to them. Front cover reminds me of the Roman sculptures of angels from way back when. Loved the staggered tire lettering, too. Way cool.     (on “Hope Chest in the Attic”)     Some excellent writing in “Hope Chest in the Attic.” I thought “Children, Churches and Daddies” and “The Room of the Rape” were particularly powerful pieces.

    Dusty Dog Reviews: She opens with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, “Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment.” Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers’ very personal layering of her poem across the page.

Cheryl Townsend, Editor, Impetus (on Children, Churches and Daddies)     The new cc&d looks absolutely amazing. It’s a wonderful lay-out, looks really professional - all you need is the glossy pages. Truly impressive AND the calendar, too. Can’t wait to actually start reading all the stuff inside.. Wanted to just say, it looks good so far!!!

    Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA
    Indeed, there’s a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there’s a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

    Mark Blickley, writer
    The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

    You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.

    Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book or chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers. We’re only an e-mail away. Write to us.

Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies)     I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies’) obvious dedication along this line admirable.

    The Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
    The Solar Energy Research & Education Foundation (SEREF), a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., established on Earth Day 1993 the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST) as its central project. CREST’s three principal projects are to provide:
    * on-site training and education workshops on the sustainable development interconnections of energy, economics and environment;
    * on-line distance learning/training resources on CREST’s SOLSTICE computer, available from 144 countries through email and the Internet;
    * on-disc training and educational resources through the use of interactive multimedia applications on CD-ROM computer discs - showcasing current achievements and future opportunities in sustainable energy development.
    The CREST staff also does “on the road” presentations, demonstrations, and workshops showcasing its activities and available resources.
For More Information Please Contact: Deborah Anderson
dja@crest.org or (202) 289-0061

Brian B. Braddock, WrBrian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies)     Brian B. Braddock, WrI passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies’) obvious dedication along this line admirable.

    Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA
    “Hope Chest in the Attic” captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family.
    “Chain Smoking” depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. “The room of the rape” is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

    want a review like this? contact scars about getting your own book published.

Paul Weinman, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies)     Wonderful new direction (Children, Churches and Daddies has) taken - great articles, etc. (especially those on AIDS). Great stories - all sorts of hot info!

    Okay, nilla wafer. Listen up and listen good. How to save your life. Submit, or I’ll have to kill you.
    Okay, it’s this simple: send me published or unpublished poetry, prose or art work (do not send originals), along with a bio, to us - then sit around and wait... Pretty soon you’ll hear from the happy people at cc&d that says (a) Your work sucks, or (b) This is fancy crap, and we’re gonna print it. It’s that simple!

    Okay, butt-munch. Tough guy. This is how to win the editors over.
    Hope Chest in the Attic is a 200 page, perfect-bound book of 13 years of poetry, prose and art by Janet Kuypers. It’s a really classy thing, if you know what I mean. We also have a few extra sopies of the 1999 book “Rinse and Repeat”, the 2001 book “Survive and Thrive”, the 2001 books “Torture and Triumph” and “(no so) Warm and Fuzzy”,which all have issues of cc&d crammed into one book. And you can have either one of these things at just five bucks a pop if you just contact us and tell us you saw this ad space. It’s an offer you can’t refuse...

    Carlton Press, New York, NY: HOPE CHEST IN THE ATTIC is a collection of well-fashioned, often elegant poems and short prose that deals in many instances, with the most mysterious and awesome of human experiences: love... Janet Kuypers draws from a vast range of experiences and transforms thoughts into lyrical and succinct verse... Recommended as poetic fare that will titillate the palate in its imagery and imaginative creations.

    Mark Blickley, writer: The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing the book.

    You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.
    Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book and chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers - you can write for yourself or you can write for an audience. It’s your call...

    Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA: “Hope Chest in the Attic” captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family. “Chain Smoking” depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. “The room of the rape” is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

Dusty Dog Reviews, CA (on knife): These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding. Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

 

    Dusty Dog Reviews (on Without You): She open with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, “Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment.” Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers’ very personal layering of her poem across the page.
    Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

    Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada (on Children, Churches and Daddies): I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer’s styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.

    Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA: Indeed, there’s a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there’s a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Children, Churches and Daddies the unreligious, non-family oriented literary and art magazine Scars Publications and Design ccandd96@scars.tv http://scars.tv Publishers/Designers Of Children, Churches and Daddies magazine cc+d Ezines The Burning mini poem books God Eyes mini poem books The Poetry Wall Calendar The Poetry Box The Poetry Sampler Mom’s Favorite Vase Newsletters Reverberate Music Magazine Down In The Dirt magazine Freedom and Strength Press forum plus assorted chapbooks and books music, poery compact discs live performances of songs and readings Sponsors Of past editions: Poetry Chapbook Contest, Poetry Book Contest Prose Chapbook Contest, Prose Book Contest Poetry Calendar Contest current editions: Editor’s Choice Award (writing and web sites) Collection Volumes Children, Churches and Daddies (founded 1993) has been written and researched by political groups and writers from the United States, Canada, England, India, Italy, Malta, Norway and Turkey. Regular features provide coverage of environmental, political and social issues (via news and philosophy) as well as fiction and poetry, and act as an information and education source. Children, Churches and Daddies is the leading magazine for this combination of information, education and entertainment. Children, Churches and Daddies (ISSN 1068-5154) is published quarterly by Scars Publications and Design, 829 Brian Court, Gurnee, IL 60031-3155 USA; attn: Janet Kuypers. Contact us via snail-mail or e-mail (ccandd96@scars.tv) for subscription rates or prices for annual collection books. To contributors: No racist, sexist or blatantly homophobic material. No originals; if mailed, include SASE & bio. Work sent on disks or through e-mail preferred. Previously published work accepted. Authors always retain rights to their own work. All magazine rights reserved. Reproduction of Children, Churches and Daddies without publisher permission is forbidden. Children, Churches and Daddies copyright Copyright © 1993 through 2010 Scars Publications and Design, Children, Churches and Daddies, Janet Kuypers. All rights remain with the authors of the individual pieces. No material may be reprinted without express permission.