welcome to volume 93 (April 2011) of

down in the dirt
internet issn 1554-9666
(for the print issn 1554-9623)
Janet K., Editor
http://scars.tv.dirt.htm
http://scars.tv - click on down in the dirt

In This Issue... Fritz Hamilton Frank De Canio John Ragusa Ben Macnair T.G. Schoenberg Sarah Mallery Tony Brown Valerie Goodwine Razsaveh Richardson Micah Thorstenson Janet Kuypers Danielle Bredy Richard Shelton Mark Murphy Robert Levin John Atkinson Dion Beary Ryan G. Beckman Chris Schafer Steve Baba (with cover art by John Yotko

Note that any artwork that appears in Down in the Dirt will appear in black and white in the print edition of Down in the Dirt magazine.

Order this issue from our printer as a 5.56" x 8.5" ISSN# paperback book: or as the 6" x 9" ISBN# book “Wake Up and Smell the Flowers”:

String about to snap, & Fritz Hamilton String about to snap & not just in string theory/ up all night in Goldbuggy’s madhouse, & when I lie down to sleep, one of Goldbuggy’s suiters jumps on me, & not the Lord, my soul to keep, but a giant roach from the Sinaloa drug cartel, who makes me follow him straight to Hell, & there’s Jesoo burning bright like the devil in the night/ Jesoo touches me, & I too burn/ I decapitate some of Jesoo’s Christians & dump them in the playground of an elementary school in Juarez/ the kids come out for recess & eat the corpses with their cookies & milk of human kindness/ the blood runs in the Rio Grande swallowing all the illegal immigrants, who chew the bones of the corpses the kids ate/ they have not been U.S. inspected like most of our meat since George W chose to deregulate everything/ I try to go to sleep, but can’t get my eyes off Jesoo lynched under the bridge over the Styx from L.A. to Tijuana, where all the evangelicals preach to the Mexican hos & get their Christian rocks off ... !

My schizo friend comes to me because Fritz Hamilton My schizo friend comes to me because he needs a demon in his presence to prove he’s psychotic & keep him terrified; so I’m in his milieu whether I like it or not/ he obviously would rather be alone, but I’m there to prove he’s sick/ as far as he’s concerned, that’s all I’m here in life to do & be/ he doesn’t care that I write poems on this Toshiba & send them out to be published & collect them into books, & I go about my everyday affairs & visit my Goldbuggy almost every week to watch movies & go to her church & eat out & shop & go to the beach, etc/ he doesn’t care that I eat well & see the doctors & take my meds & try to stay eligible for low rent & exercise to stay fit at age 74/ he just cares that I’m there as his demon to keep him tortured whether I’m aware of it or not, but he has to be aware of me to stay schizophrenic & uncomfortable because otherwise he’s not sick, & I ASSURE YOU, he is ... !

Strindberg in Paris Frank De Canio He saunters in his black-hooded cloak, scanning the distant blue line of the harbor, which he can see across dust-covered walls of a lunatic asylum. He boards in a nearby hotel. Later, he’s forced to duck behind the hedges, having injected morphine into the twig of a leaf to test the drug’s effect on plant life. He’s chased back to his hotel, chastened. Chapped hands caked in sulphuric dust, he tries to transform base matter into gold. As his love grows cold by the blue flame of the crucible, he dons his penitent’s cloak.

brief Frank De Canio bio “I was born & bred in New Jersey, work in New York. I love music of all kinds, from Bach to Dory Previn, Amy Beach to Amy Winehouse, World Music, Latin, opera. Shakespeare is my consolation, writing my hobby. I like Dylan Thomas, Keats, Wallace Stevens, Frost , Ginsburg, and Sylvia Plath as poets.”

Space Fever John Ragusa     The worst thing about being an astronaut was the food.     That’s what Gerard Dilby thought as he ate his supper in the spaceship. His wife could make a better dinner, and she was a lousy cook.     Dilby looked at Felix Marker, his fellow astronaut, who was wolfing down his meal. The man had horrible table manners.     There wasn’t much about Marker that he liked. Submissive to a fault, he constantly thanked Dilby, and he was always apologizing. That kind of thing became annoying after a while. Still, Marker was a brilliant astronaut, and Dilby admired him for that.     “Aren’t the stars pretty?” Marker asked. “They shine like diamonds in the sky.”     “What’s so pretty about a bunch of rocks?” Dilby said.     “According to my figures, we’ll be landing on an asteroid soon.”     “It’ll probably be a wasteland, like the others we explored.”     “Maybe we’ll be lucky this time. We might find the energy source we’re looking for.”     They strapped themselves in and Marker counted. “Get ready for touchdown. Five, four, three, two, one.”     The spaceship landed, throwing up dust and pebbles.     “We’ve grounded safely, by golly,” Marker said.     “Let’s go out and start searching,” Dilby said.     They opened the hatch and stepped out onto the asteroid.     Glancing about, Marker said, “You were right. This place looks about the same as the others.”     “Then we won’t find an energy source.”     “The oxygen meter shows that this atmosphere has air. We can take off our helmets.”     They removed their headgear.     “It’s hot, isn’t it?” Marker said, sweat running down his face.     “Yeah, it’s like a desert.” Dilby looked around and found the landscape familiar. It was barren. A few hills composed of dark, dusty rocks contrasted sharply with the eerie violet hue of the sky.     Dilby nudged his partner. “Do you see that crater over there? It appears to have what we’re looking for. Let’s go check it out.”     “Help! Help me!” a voice cried out.     “Look over there!” Marker said, pointing. “Someone is caught under a rock.”     “We must save him,” Dilby said.     They ran over to the creature and lifted the rock from his legs. He was black and hirsute, with red eyes and a ragged leather outfit. He smiled at them.     “Thanks for saving my life,” he said.     The astronauts were amazed. “You can talk!” Dilby said.     The creature offered his hand. “Welcome to our asteroid. Your journey must have been exhausting. You can rest here.”     “Who are you?” Marker said.     “I am a Beloid. I belong to a species that looks different than Earthlings, but has a similar lifestyle to theirs. We have lived here for several centuries. We view your activities on our monitors. Come, let me show you our houses.”     He was friendly and polite. Dilby and Marker were incredulous.     “This is like a dream,” Marker said. “I can’t believe it’s happening.”     “Both of us can’t be dreaming,” Dilby said.     They came upon some stone dwellings.     “This is where we stay,” the Beloid said.     “These houses aren’t very big,” Dilby said.     “That’s because our population is small,” the Beloid explained. “Our species consists of only several individuals; a plague killed everyone else. Our doctors haven’t found a cure for it yet.”     “What a shame,” Marker said. “What’s your name?”     “I am Meegar.”     “I’m sorry, Meegar.”     “There’s no need for an apology. We all have to go sometime.”     Another Beloid joined them. “I’ll be damned!” he said. “These are visitors from Earth.”     “Yes, they’ve arrived for their mission,” Meegar said.     “I see. Anyway, I’m afraid Bentlose will die from the plague, but not quickly. Should we use the alternative?”     “Yes,” Meegar said. “We must kill him to end his suffering.”     “Do you mean you commit euthanasia here?” Marker asked.     “Yes, we do. Unlike humans, we don’t like to see people endure pain.”     “We won’t be spending much time here,” Dilby said. “Once we find an energy source, we’ll go back home.”     “In the meantime, why don’t you stay in one of our houses?” Meegar said.     Dilby shrugged. “That’s fine with me.”     “Me, too,” Marker said.     “Splendid! Follow me.”     They went into one of the houses.     “The bedroom is this way,” Meegar said, walking down the hall.     “I still can’t believe this,” Marker said. “Isn’t it awesome?”     “It sure is,” Dilby said.     They entered the bedroom. It was small, with little furniture.     “I think the bed is big enough for both of you,” Meegar said.     “It’ll suffice,” Dilby said.     Marker took a camera from his pocket. “Okay, Meegar, give me your best smile.”     Meegar grinned. Marker snapped a picture.     “Gee, thanks,” he said. “When we get home, I’ll show this photograph to everyone. It’ll be printed in every newspaper in the world. We’ll make history!”     “Let’s go outside and do our job,” Dilby said.     Marker turned to Meegar. “Gerard and I will explore the area now for an energy source.”     “Good enough. If you need anything, we’ll be here.”     “Thank you. Off we go, Gerard.”     Outside, they went over some rocks with energy detectors. They had no success.     “Damn!” Dilby said, throwing his machine to the ground. “We’re not making any progress.”     “Well, we haven’t checked many rocks yet.”     “I know what we can do. You stay here, and I’ll go over other areas. There’s no sense in us both checking the same spots.”     “That’s a good idea.”     Dilby walked in the opposite direction. He checked some rocks for a few minutes. Then Marker called out, “Gerard, come over here, quick!”     Dilby ran over. “Have you found something?”     “You bet I have! Look at the gauge on my energy detector.”     Its needle indicated that the stone contained energy.     “Mission accomplished! Boy, I’ll really get recognized now.”     Dilby then realized that they would share the credit for their accomplishment. The idea made him furious. He wanted to be the hero.     Marker could not receive some of the credit if he was killed.     Yes, murder was the only solution.     He knew how to get away with it. He would strangle Marker and then he’d tell the Beloids that he had died from “space fever,” a rare disease from outer space.     There was just one snag. The Beloids would see finger marks on his throat, and they’d realize that he’d been strangled. Dilby could solve that problem. He’d tell them that they couldn’t get close to Marker, because space fever is contagious.     It was a perfect plan; there were no loose ends. He had fame in his pocket.     “Hey, Marker,” he said, “come here a second. I want to ask you something.”     Marker walked up to him. “What is it?”     “Are you going to let me have some of the credit for our success?”     “Why, certainly, Gerard.”     “That’s too bad.”     “Why?”     “Because I want all of it.”     Dilby grabbed his partner by the throat and squeezed. Marker struggled, but to no avail. In minutes, he was dead.     Satisfied, Dilby headed toward the house.     When he arrived, he told Meegar about space fever and how it had killed Marker.     “That’s awful,” Meegar said. He frowned. “Didn’t you say that this disease is contagious?”     “Oh, yes. It spreads very fast, too.”     “Is it painful?”     “Yes, indeed.”     “Doctor Vantren, come in here, please,” Meegar called out. “We need your services.”     Puzzled, Dilby said, “You don’t understand. Marker is already dead. A doctor can’t help him now.”     “That is not why I’m getting the doctor.”     “What do you mean?”     “You said that space fever is contagious. You were with Marker just now, so you must have caught it. But don’t worry; we won’t let you suffer.”     At that moment, Vantren walked into the room with his little black bag.     “Doctor, give this man the alternative,” Meegar said.     Vantren took a hypodermic needle out of his bag and approached Dilby with it.     “No, don’t do it!” Dilby pleaded.     “This won’t hurt,” Vantren said.     The spaceman screamed as he received the lethal injection. Soon he was as dead as his partner.

Psalm Ben Macnair My friend says she is born again in Jesus. Her Mother grumbles that her 18 hours weren’t enough. Her Father shrugs, grunts something, and watches the TV. My friend says God knows everything we do and think, but if any-one of us did that, we would be arrested. I wouldn’t want God to know everything I did. I wouldn’t be able to finish this, and I would like to believe that God supports free speech, even if he does not agree with letting his son make his own decisions. I wonder if God ever gets sick of all of these minor chord dirges that old fingers play on a Sunday, and wishes people would stop asking him for guidance. Or, maybe he embraces it all. It helps him to fill the time between the beginning and eternity. He can only make so many planets, and he knows we aren’t the only one, but the other life is so far away, and this civilisation still has wars, and produced Billy Ray Cyrus. My friend says she is born again in Jesus. She says it is the best thing she has ever done. She says that he is the best friend she ever had. How can I compete with someone like him?

Spit T.G. Schoenberg     Jake pulled the ski mask down outside the parking lot. He checked his watch: 11:30 – right on schedule. Taking a deep breath, he jogged towards the front door. He pushed the door. The bell rang, but no one noticed. Jake ran directly in front of the counter and raised his gun. “OPEN THE FUCKING REGISTER! NOW!! LET’S GO!!!”     The clerk that night was a girl about eighteen years old. Her fiery orange hair infuriated Jake, though he didn’t know why. She trembled violently and started crying almost immediately. She tried to stammer something, but all she produced was a whimper and some spit that drooled down her chin before plummeting to the counter in a disgusting, pearl-colored pool.     Everything was going perfect. He knew this pathetic girl would be working; he was watching the store for weeks, so he knew the shift schedule. He knew that the cameras could not see him if he ran into the store, rather than creeping in. He knew he would not be caught because his plan was perfect.     Jake reached across the counter, dragging his arm through the spit. Enraged, he wiped it off on his jeans. Looking down, he saw a dried ketchup stain on his pant leg. Sarah. He had forgotten about Sarah. Thinking of his baby sister, Jake dropped the gun and sprinted out of the store.

Border Windfalls Sarah Mallery         Surrounding the main quad at Sunford College, brick buildings stood coated with ivy so thick the windows looked more like square holes chiseled into a Chia Pet than double-hung windows. From there, bored students could look out daydreaming while frittering away precious classroom time. Below them, narrow pathways gently twisted and turned through a staid campus, reminding one of an English university rather than a small United States college, and indeed, in 1968, Sunford might as well have been nestled in another country. No anti-Vietnam demonstrations or Civil Rights movements here; only conservative children of even more conservative business families, pretending to get a “well-rounded” education and in the meantime, spending their parents’ money as fast as they could.     Peter Rosen’s view on education, however, contrasted sharply from his colleagues and in particular, his roommate Jack Reinhold. No two people could have been more different. Jack descended from a Texas oil-rich family, while Peter’s parents were hard-working, lower middle-class, and being Jewish, slightly insecure about their son’s enrollment in so Waspy an institution. But Peter had won a full scholarship, and that was that.     “Jesus Christ, Peter, why do you have to pound the books all day, huh?” Jack’s boisterous voice always broke Peter’s concentration.     “Listen, I’ve got a chemistry test tomorrow, if you don’t mind! Some people have to work hard to get good grades....” Peter teetered on the verge of another tirade about not having a rich daddy to bail him out, but thought better of it and stopped.     “Peter, someday you’re gonna regret not playing with me and my pals. Life’s too short, you know?” Changing into his tennis outfit, Jack warbled a low whistle, then bounded out of the room, slamming the door shut and sending several of Peter’s papers flying.     “He really thinks he’s God’s gift...” Peter grumbled, snatching up the strewn papers that had littered the floor of their small dorm room floor.     As much as he tried, he couldn’t help it; he was bitter. Why not? Things were always so easy for people like Jack. Was it because he was from a wealthy family? No, not just that. After all, Leonard Kaufman down the hall—his father was fabulously rich, yet he was a complete nerd—nothing ever went right for him. Peter chuckled at the thought of Leonard trying to be social at the college cafeteria; it was not a pretty sight. He sighed and looked down at Jack on the quad talking to a co-ed before settling down to a long study session.     Four years later in medical school, he was still studying hard, still much too serious, and still completely different from Jack. “Come on, Rosen, you’ll never save the world, you know,” everyone laughed. But Peter was not only going to be a good surgeon, he was also really going to contribute to society.     However, picking out a specialty proved difficult—too many things competed for his attention, and indeed, if his Aunt Sophie hadn’t been sent to the hospital for extreme dehydration due to a recent bout of influenza, he might never have decided at all.     “Dahlink, I expect you to come visit me here at the hospital. Now, come tomorrow... that’d be nice,” she commanded over the phone, unwilling to wait for any kind of response. Click.     The next day, as the elderly woman nodded off in her bed, Peter was itching to go, but he knew if he actually got up to leave without saying good-bye, there would be Hell-To-Pay. Instead, he picked up a copy of “National Geographic” and started thumbing through it, flipping the pages in time to the rhythmic, gravelly sound of Aunt Sophie’s snoring.     God, these articles could be so much more interesting, he sighed, alternating between glancing at the pictures and checking out Aunt Sophie’s progress towards waking up. The photos are really spectacular. If only the articles gave you more detail. If only....     On the spreadsheet in front of him was a little boy, displaying a horrendously disfiguring harelip and cleft palate. Staring forlornly into the camera, his tears had been caught mid-slide on his cheeks, frozen forever in the photograph, but that wasn’t all. Behind him, several townspeople had been captured as well, but instead of sadness, their faces were suspended into sneers and taunts.     Children born with this condition, the article stated, not only had to contend with a real physical problem, they had to deal with people who thought their malady was the sign of the Devil himself. According to local custom, they weren’t allowed to live a normal life; indeed, they were to be constantly punished, or at the very least, not permitted to go to school for fear of contaminating the other students.     Peter could feel his energy being drawn out of his body and siphoned onto the page. This was his answer: he would specialize in plastic surgery and eventually try to set up a small clinic to repair some of nature’s damage to these poor unfortunates.     But nobody took him seriously. Sure, sure, they all snickered. You’re doing this not for the tremendous-amounts-of-money-you-could-get-doing lipo-suction, but rather for the good of small children. Yeah, sure. Tell us another one, Rosen. His parents were no help, either. They were more than ecstatic—their son, the Beverly Hills millionaire plastic surgeon—how could they go wrong?! Their finances as well as status would go up in the world once he became a full-fledged doctor—what a godsend!!     But in his first year as a doctor, Peter chose a research position at a plastic surgery clinic in El Paso, Texas, where the job description included some hands-on experience as a craniofacial surgeon, dealing mostly with harelips and cleft palates. His salary was much lower than expected, and he didn’t seem to even care about liposuction or face-lifts where the real money was. His parents were stunned.     The head surgeon at Peter’s clinic remained adamant. “Listen, Rosen, I know you are hoping for extra funding for your harelip projects in Latin America, but just forget it. This is 1980, with a Republican president; they’re not receptive to your convictions. If you have to pick an unpopular cause, why don’t you spend your time researching this new virus that seems to be killing homosexuals? Nobody cares about your kids from other countries. Take my advice on this, I know what I’m talking about.”     Peter slunk home, devastated. It must be my touch, the non-Jack-Reinhold-touch he ruminated. Suddenly he wondered what the rogue was up to. How was his life turning out? He switched on his television for the evening news, then walked over to his refrigerator to pull out a frozen turkey T.V. dinner. He was examining the back of the package when he heard a voice that propelled him 180 degrees to face the television.     “....Tell me, Mr. Reinhold, how can you account for this remarkable turn-around in your newly acquired cable station in El Paso? Ever since you took over three years ago, the rating charts have sky-rocketed, with everyone talking about record sales. Tell me, isn’t it true your “Give-A-Kid-A-Wallet campaign has been the main reason for this?”     Jack Reinhold smiled deftly and leaned into the microphone. “Well, yes, the program has been a success. Give a child a wallet and they’ll try to put something into it, I always say. Makes them get out there and work hard. Thanks much, and have a great day.” Slipping into his brand new Porsche 911, he was off and running.     All the years of hard work and frustration finally caught up with Peter. “Goddamit!” he screamed as he hurled a slipper at the TV. “ It’s time I had some of <>Imy goals realized! I’m a good person, I work hard. Why the hell can’t I get successful?!!....Give a Kid a Wallet! Give a Kid A Wallet! What about my kids?! How about their lives?!” Pounding his fist against the kitchen counter, he watched turkey, gravied mashed potatoes, and peas catapult across the room.     That night in bed, images of Jack standing over him, laughing, made sleep impossible, but eventually, as the night sky shifted from pitch black to a soft, milky gray, he drifted off, his mind made up.     “WBBQ Cable network, Jack Reinhold, Managing Director,” a receptionist’s reedy voice warbled over the phone.     “Yes, I’d like to talk to Jack Reinhold, please.” Suddenly, Peter was very nervous.     “I’m afraid he’s in a meeting. Whom shall I say is calling?” Her pinched tone was beginning to lodge itself just beneath his skin.     “Just tell him a very old friend from college is on the phone.”     “What friend? What is your name, sir?” The tone chilled considerably. The hell with her.     “Look, tell Jack, Peter Rosen called, and have him call me back.” He hung up, sorry he had called.     He only half-expected an answer back; people like him never commanded one. Instead, he spent his nights at a nearby library, studying South American cultures, with their remarkable herbal medicines, and their abhorrence for harelips and clef palates. The more articles he read, the stronger the gravitational pull lured him in towards these abandoned and abused children.     Two weeks later, an invitation arrived in the mail: “WBBQ Station cordially invites you to a cocktail party honoring Jack Reinhold, Managing Director. Please RSVP by January 20, 1980.” Annoyed that there was no personal note to him, he was about to flip it into the waste paper basket when he caught sight of a few scribbled words on the back:     “Hey, buddy, great to hear from you.     Please come, okay? Best, Jack.”     He felt curiously reaffirmed, as if his own father had placed a loving arm around his shoulders, telling him what a good boy he had been and how much he was admired.     The Maitre D’ Restaurant was old-world, elegant, and obviously expensive. Silver trays of champagne-filled fluted crystal glasses floated throughout the “Chateau Room” on the finger tips of well-dressed waiters, while caviar canapes made their way into executives’ mouths, and plush carpeting muted the sounds of business deals being solidified.     Peter tried to juggle a canape-filled plate and napkin along with his second glass of champagne as he scoured the room for his old roommate. When he spotted him from across the buffet tables, he thought, same old Jack: handsome, albeit with a slight receding hairline, but still vital as he extended his large, masculine hand out to everyone in passing.     Peter smiled in spite of himself. This man really had it all. Then Jack caught sight of him. Waving his right arm wildly, he shouted, “Hey Peter! Wait there, I’m comin’ over!” By the time he had reached the doctor, his simple bear hug made Peter feel truly welcomed.     “What a surprise to hear from you! Frankly, Rosen, I thought you hated my guts. I’m so glad! When this is all over, I want you to come to my apartment to catch up on old times, okay?”     Peter nodded, excited at finally being accepted. But after the party, as he entered Jack’s apartment, his insecurities instantly surfaced. A glass and chrome coffee table lay on top of the most plush cream-colored textured carpeting he had ever seen. Light tan leather sofas, accessorized by woven Guatemalan throw pillows and a collection of antique sailboat models on various Stickley side tables, completed a picture of confirmed bachelorhood and good taste. Peter was totally intimidated.     “Hey, buddy. Have a drink and let’s catch up.” Jack handed his ex-roommate a thick-walled tumbler of Jack Daniels-over-ice and motioned for them both to sit down.     “So what in the world have you been up to these last few years, huh? Still in medicine? Still so serious? Talk.”     Not inclined to spill his guts, Peter hesitated. But a second later he couldn’t resist.     “You’re the one who’s gone on to fame and fortune, Jack, not me.” The envy and bitterness were unmistakable.     Jack sat back for a couple of seconds before answering, his head cocked at a forty-five degree angle. “Man, I’m so tired of you always thinking everything’s been handed to me on a silver platter. I mean, I created this whole cable situation on my own, without any help from my dad or the rest of my family. It’s all me, kiddo, so why don’t you get off your high horse for a second, okay?”     Peter could feel the blood rushing up into his brain and quickly gulped down the rest of his drink. Suddenly the room started to sway, and with it, an outpouring of his goals and dreams in a torrent of words that had been repressed for years. When he started talking about the children, he became quite emotional. Then, suddenly embarrassed, he asked where the bathroom was so he could compose himself.     Returning to the living room, he sat down to face a surprisingly somber Jack. “Listen, buddy, if you are serious about this business with the harelips and the kids, maybe I can work something out for you.” Jack leaned in, squinting his eyes as he continued to think outloud.     “I don’t know if I can swing anything, mind you, but why don’t you make a list of what you would need in order to start operating. Then send it to me, let me think about it all, and I’ll get back to you on this in a couple of weeks. All right?”     Peter nodded, still numbed by alcohol, and a surrealistic feeling that all this couldn’t be happening.     But by the following day his list was preliminarily sketched out: a clinic that could hold up to five beds at a time, an operating room, x-ray equipment, surgery utensils, scopes, at least one nurse—he knew often asymmetry could occur and if it did, a good nurse or nurses were required to help in the suturing of the nose and mouth if one side didn’t quite match up with the other. Sometimes there might be poor healing from cleft palate surgery, and that, too might require a second operation.     In addition, he knew ear infections often resulted from cleft palate surgery because the cleft could interfere with middle ear functioning. To allow proper drainage and air circulation, often a plastic ventilation tube was inserted during another smaller procedure.     He thought of bleeding inoperative hemorrhaging because there was such an abundance of blood supply in the palate, so of course, a massive stockpile of bandages would be needed. Due to budget concerns, he would have to forego a geneticist and psychologist, but an orthodontist, audiologist, and an ear nose and throat specialist would be much appreciated. A bi-lingual speech therapist would be ideal, but having scribbled late into the night, he was beginning to get nervous—-his list had become so extensive. How far could he actual push Jack? He wondered.     Then it hit him. Narcotics. Drugs for anesthesiology and for pain. Oh, my God. How in the world was he going to carry narcotics across the border? He knew from experience post early tissue operations could use Tylenol or other weaker aids, but bone-grafting and post palate procedures were a very different matter. The very idea of all these children having to endure all of this without proper painkillers was intolerable.     He was thinking of scraping the entire operation when his office phone rang. “Hey, Peter, I think we might have a go-ahead on this.” Jack sounded excited.     “You’re kidding! Well, I’ve thought of a problem.” Peter said.     “What’s that?” Jack sounded impatient.     “Narcotics. Those kids cannot have certain operations without them. The pain is just too great. You can’t bring narcotics over the borders, Jack, you know?” Peter couldn’t hide his disappointment.     There were several seconds of silence. Then, “Call me tonight. I have an idea.”     After a long day of anxiety, Peter finally phoned. “Hi, Jack, it’s me.” He waited nervously. “Well....?”     Jack started in. “Okay, I don’t think it will be a problem, because my cable station has worked with a doctor down in Mexico who says he can supply morphine, etc. in exchange for helping some villagers he knows with this problem.”     Peter breathed a huge sigh of relief; maybe it was all going to work out after all. He went ahead and signed his Professional Leave papers from his clinic, and contacted Jack daily about all the things he needed until at last, he felt he was ready to go.     “Oh, Rosen, there’s one more thing I forgot to tell you,” Jack said casually. Oh, boy, here it comes, Peter cringed.     “It seems my driver, who has been transporting all the wallets for my “Give Children A Wallet” out of this little village, suddenly quit, leaving me high and dry. Since you mentioned you’re thinking of putting a clinic near there, I thought maybe you could pick up the wallets yourself. I’ll be looking for a new driver, but for now, you could pinch-hit for me and also get involved with the community, you know?”     Peter laughed. Sure, sure, no problem, he told Jack. Just when do I start? * * * * * * *     From birth, sucking on his mother’s breast had been a very different experience for Eduardo than it was for his brothers and sisters. When they nursed, their tummies were soon filled with warm, nutritious milk. When Eduardo tried to feed off of his mother, all he got was pain and total frustration.     “Ah, Dios mio, what are we going to do?!!” his mama would say, tenderly looking down at her odd little one, the one many villagers claimed was the work of Satan. Her eyes would fill with tears as she watched her baby desperately try to suckle, his cheeks working furiously while his hands squeezed her flesh. But as the liquid spilled out between the two gaps on the top of his mouth, he would end each feeding session by clenching his miniscule fists and letting out an explosive wail.     Her husband Ernesto pronounced the boy was no good, but Rosalie wrapped him even tighter in his swaddling clothes, keeping him warm and safe, away from the world. But she couldn’t always protect him; as Eduardo grew, she could see how everyone treated him. Children threw things at him when he tried to walk to school, and many of the adults in the village, when they saw him coming, would scurry over to the other side of the street while making the sign of the cross. So she shielded him the only way she knew how: he was to stay close to her in the home, never go out in public, and with her limited education, she would teach him how to read.     In time, Ernesto admitted there was no good reason to complain about Eduardo; he was a good child, after all, with an acceptance of life far beyond his years. In fact, he was so quiet and well-behaved, his father often didn’t even notice his son sitting by the big front window, his face pressed against the glass, gazing at all the other children scampering back and forth from school each day without him. It just bothered him that his son couldn’t say any solid words, only strange guttural tones that only Rosalie could understand.     But there was one joy in Eduardo’s life: watching his mother weave bright, beautiful cloths. Her large wooden loom took up most of their back bedroom, and it was there he would spend hours watching her shift the different threads with her hands and feet, combining colors that stayed inside his head for days.     Sometimes she would instruct Eduardo not to interrupt her, particularly when she was weaving her ‘material especiale’, to turn into wallets for that ‘nice Mr. Reinhold’. This kind of work was very important, she would reiterate daily to him. In fact, ever since she had connected up with Jack, Rosalie and Ernesto’s lives had changed. Now they didn’t have to worry so much about putting food on the table, so she was always anxious to please.     When she worked, she would take out several different colored strands from her parents’ hand-carved trunk: navy blue, magenta, yellow, pink, red, white, and green. Threading them carefully into her loom, she would start humming. This was the part Eduardo loved the most; it meant his mother was happy and that always gave him great peace.     In and out the different shuttles flew. Up and down the foot pedals danced, until soon a beautiful striped heavy fabric would begin to emerge. And as the afternoon light sifted in through the window at a lower and lower angle, Rosalie would keep working until finally her neck and back felt the familiar muscle tension she knew so well. Time to stop and prepare dinner. Then she would get up, and stretching into a yoga-like position, laugh at Eduardo, asleep next to their dog, curled up like a baby, not the eight-year-old boy he really was. * * * * * * *     “I think I‘ve gotten everything you wanted on your list, Buddy. It’s all ready to be moved into your facility in the town of Quolonga, as requested.” Jack couldn’t control his smug grin. “Give me a call the second you get down there, okay, Rosen?” he went on. “I wanna make sure you made it all right with all the equipment. I also want to make double sure after a week, you get over to the Gonsales house to pick up those wallets.”     “Of course, of course. I promised you, didn’t I? You know me. The conscientious one. Don’t worry—I’ll definitely pick up those wallets.” Peter waved to Jack as he hopped into the front cab with the driver and the truck pulled away.     In Quolonga, a small staff of three greeted them in front of a rundown, paint-peeled clinic on one of the few paved streets in town. Peter shuddered, but in a few days they had made sure it was scrubbed, cleaned, and sterilized—at least it was sanitary.     It turned out Jack would remain true to his word. Not only did Peter receive most of the items on his list, his old roommate had also done good, local PR. Within the first week, Peter had patients standing in line, more than ready for their first operation. Babies, bundled up in their mothers’ arms, were the easiest. It was the older children that Peter was the most concerned about and without morphine, he felt completely stymied.     When Jack called, he assured the doctor about a delivery soon, and speaking of deliveries, had he picked up the wallets from the Gonsaleses yet? Peter felt like snapping at him; wallets were certainly not as high a priority as these children, but he bit his tongue and agreed to go the very next day to pick up the trinkets.     Watching Peter trip over one of their chickens clucking happily in the front yard, Rosalie giggled. These gringoes. They might all have money, but en realidad, they had no grace. Walking through the rusted front screen door, she greeted him politely, then motioned for him to follow her into the house where all the wallets were kept.     Stepping through the doorway, Peter gasped. All around the tiny living room were beautiful fabrics hung up in every conceivable inch of space—from an armoire, several cupboard doors, to even a standing lamp. He had always admired these kinds of woven cloths at the Texas open-air markets, but it was quite another thing to see that many intense colors up so close.     Rosalie grinned proudly, then coaxed several members of her family to come out of the back bedroom to meet Peter. Ernesto shuffled his feet nervously, his eyes cast downward as Peter extended his hand. Little five-year-old Maria looked up at the strange man with the biggest brown eyes the doctor had ever seen, but it was Eduardo who immediately captured Peter’s attention. Just seeing that bilateral lip, he understood instantly how miserable the boy’s life probably had always been.     Rosalie smiled and retreated towards the back of the house, and after a couple of minutes she returned, carrying a large cardboard box. Peter took it from her, set it on the floor, and opened it up. Inside, were dozens of beautiful, hand-woven wallets. As he exclaimed, “Oh, how wonderful!” Rosalie came and went, carrying box after box, until the small room overflowed with cardboard and vibrant colors.     She pointed to an address on a small slip of paper, then to the boxes. “Muy importante, muy importante!” she insisted.     Frustrated with Jack, Peter frowned. What was he, a delivery service or a doctor? Then he felt ashamed. After all, Jack was making his dream come true; it was the least he could do for him and his wallet campaign for kids.     He turned to Eduardo, and placing his left hand on the boy’s shoulder, tapped his own chest with his right index finger first, then gently laid it over the two gaps above the boy’s lip and declared, “I can fix. Me—el doctor. Comprende?”     Rosalie looked puzzled for a second. Then it hit her. Rushing over to Peter with eyes the size of 200 peso coins, she kept asking, “Is posible? Is posible?”     Peter nodded. Without warning, she flung her arms around the young doctor’s neck, crying and laughing all at the same time.     The next several weeks became a blur. Twenty-four seven, Peter focused on the children, and although all the morphine had arrived, he realized he would have to divvy it out sparingly. And as far as his weekly trips to the Gonsales household to pick up the wallets were concerned, they didn’t bother him that much—his official driver, José, turned out to be pleasant enough. Each week, they got into a light banter about baseball and American culture while José loaded his truck with the ‘wallets especiale,’ as Rosalie liked to call them.     Eduardo was doing remarkably well, considering, although his series of cleft repair operations had been as difficult as they had been painful. Because the child had never had the initial tissue procedure that Peter normally would do at three months, they had to make up for lost time, and then, when they saw some intraoperative hemorrhaging, they decided to perform major suturing in order to stop any excessive bleeding. But throughout the operations and his stay at the clinic, Eduardo never complained; he just kept nodding his head and gazing up at Peter with nothing less than adoration.     Even outside the clinic, life had picked up for Peter. Jack bought him a black Range Rover for his weekly trips with José, and in addition, two good business suits “for when he had to return to the states and have meetings with important people.” Although those meetings never seemed to amount to anything, the doctor didn’t notice—he was too busy flying north with Jack on the station’s Lear jet and admiring the view from cream leather double-club seats. * * * * * * *     Jack and his companion George began their slow descent over the sparce, desert-like terrain, as huge dust clouds rustled up dirt particles, paper debris, and dried plant life. After landing, they climbed out of the small Cessna and ran for cover into an old, mud-splashed building, just long enough for Jack to radio someone over his walkie-talkie.     “Get ‘em all ready. We’re comin’ over now,” he ordered into the mouthpiece. Turning around, he winked at his associate.     Soon, a bug-splattered jeep shuddered to an abrupt halt outside the building, and when the driver vaulted off the truck, some fine dust from the ground seeped in under the bottom crack of the door, causing Jack to give two quick coughs before heading out.     The three men rode in silence for quite some time as they headed far up into the hills, where everything was bursting with vegetation, birds, animals, and humidity. Nearing the top, odd, unintelligible sounds echoed repeatedly. Then, as the jeep got closer, the sounds became almost familiar, until finally, the car pulled up in front of a large, Spanish-style hacienda. There, the sounds were unmistakable.     Sounds of barking dogs clogged the otherwise peaceful air, making it almost impossible to hear oneself think. After the men got out of the jeep and walked behind the house to a large wired kennel, the frenetic hounds jumped up in unison, their noses twitching like rabbits as they desperately clawed the fence.     George noticed most of them were Bloodhounds, but a couple were German Shepherds, and one was a Doberman. Judging from the timbre of their barks and the slight curl of their lips, he surmised they were not necessarily friendly, simply territorial.     “See, George, I told you these dogs are special,” Jack announced proudly.     “OK, OK, but why? You never did tell me, Jack.”     “These dogs are ‘specially trained for border patrol guards, U.S. Marshals, and drug enforcement organizations in the states. We have also used them in Mexico and further south. They’re beautiful, don’t you think?”     “Yeah, so?”     He continued. “Anyone would think they do top-notch drug sniffing work, because they’re smart, they look great, and they certainly have the energy... But I have a little secret. I’ve hired an expert dog trainer to brainwash these little fellas here, so they don’t locate the drugs. They even start looking elsewhere. Great plan, don’t you think?”     George stared at Jack for a couple of seconds, then shook his head. “Son-of-a-bitch! That’s brilliant! It must really work, you bastard; you’ve sure gotten rich. But what about this partner of yours, this goody-two-shoe doctor friend?”     Jack snorted. “Don’t worry about him. He’s totally innocent and so into his kids and their operations he wouldn’t be able to tell cocaine from white table salt. Forget about him.” * * * * * * *     Three months later, when Peter spotted a shiny black Mercedes parked halfway up the street from Rosalie and Ernesto’s house, he didn’t think anything of it. After all, his current mission was far more important. He had brought with him his new young friend, and together, they quietly walked up the front path and slowly opened the screen door.     Eduardo took one look at his mother and said clearly, like any other boy, “Te amo, Mama.” A hushed silence followed. Then she burst into tears.     “O Díos mio,” she cried repeatedly, clinging to Eduardo and rocking him back and forth in her arms. “Es muy claro, sí?” she finally whispered to Peter.     He nodded, smiling. Yes, it was very clear, for the first time in Eduardo’s life.     Suddenly, a rifle blast crackled through the air, shattering the front window and scattering broken glass everywhere.     “Get down! Get down!” he yelled. There was no time for a Spanish translation, and apparently, no need for one. Before Peter could say another word, he watched the members of the Gonsales family crawling on their hands and knees military-style to the back of the house, with Rosalie signaling him to follow as they all bolted out the back door. In less than one minute, they had ended up at a hidden outhouse, where an old, rust-covered pickup truck was already fired up, with Ernesto behind the front wheel.     One of the children shoved Peter towards the loadbed. He jumped in, landing on a semi-soft dark green army tarp, and when he lifted up a corner, he saw more bolts of the beautiful woven fabric. Stunned, all he could mutter was, “Que pasó? Que pasó?” What the hell is going on? he wondered.     Rosalie brushed back her wispy hair. “No problema. Es no problema. Paciente, por favor. Please....,” she begged, as one of the older daughters covered them all up with the tarp. The truck sped off, bouncing so high, Peter had to grab Eduardo to keep him from flying out.     After the first field, the truck slowed down, then stopped to pick up someone. Peter could hear Ernesto and another adult male in the cab, talking rapid fire Spanish, and although the stranger’s voice sounded familiar, he couldn’t quite make it out over the rattle of the old engine and the crunching of road pebbles. He could feel his right hip bone throbbing, and he tried to edge up on his elbow to call out to Ernesto, but just then, the truck unexpectedly slammed to a dead stop.     He tried to shield his eyes from the overwhelming sun with his hand as someone lifted up the tarp. His eyes suddenly could focus and he blurted out, “Oh, my God, José! What the hell are you doing here? What’s going on?!”     José grinned. “Hey, amigo, this is the way it is down here, you know? We all gotta live, we all gotta eat.” He shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the cab.     Peter lay still for a moment, trying to think. Obviously the Gonsaleses were in on this whole thing, so was José, and Jack—Oh, my god! Jack had to be the ring leader, he.... A wave of nausea washed over him, just contemplating all the implications. If Jack was up to his eyeballs in drug trafficking, where did that put him? Where did he fit into all of this?     He sat up in a panic and yelled at the muddied half-opened cab, “Hey, José, stop and answer me RIGHT NOW! Stop the truck!” The two men up front continued in stony silence for a couple of minutes, until they had rounded a bend and got into a more deserted territory before stopping.     Up in the cab, Ernesto twisted his torso to look back at the doctor. “Señor, what is it you want to know, eh?”     “I want to know where am I in all of this?! I don’t want to have anything to do with drugs!” Peter’s fist slammed down hard on the edge of the load bed.     José jumped out of the cab and stamped back over to Peter. “Amigo, you always in the middle. Those wallets you and me pick up every week, eh? You always in the middle...”     Peter’s mouth dropped. “But...but...I’m innocent, I had no idea....”     “Señor, we gonna take good care of you. You stay with us for a few days. Then the Federales not find you, okay?” José was already heading back towards the cab.     That night, as they all huddled together in the back room of a small, dilapidated house, overwhelmed by cat urine and tobacco, an angry Peter stayed warm by a bolt of fabric he had wrapped around him along with murderous thoughts.     But looking over at Eduardo, he melted. As the moonlight wafted in through an open window, he spied a tear drying on the young boy’s cheek, and he wondered what the child was thinking if he was awake, or dreaming about if he had just fallen asleep. It was the last thing on his mind before drifting off into his own dreams.     A loud knock startled Peter out of a police-filled nightmare the next morning. Seconds later, José was bending over him. “Señor Rosen, is not safe for you to return to the United States yet. Too much trouble at the borders. We can keep you for a week or two, here in town, okay?”     “Listen, where the hell is Jack Reinhold? Where is he? I want to talk to him!” Peter demanded.     José averted his eyes. “I so sorry. Señor Reinhold is not here right now. I am so sorry. We do not know where he is...”     “That’s just great! Just what I need! He gets me involved in this mess and then disappears! Just wait until I get my hands on him...” Peter growled. “What about the rest of my children? I need to get back to the clinic, and do my real work, you know?!”      “Sí, sí, Señor Rosen, I understand. Is your job. And now, is my job to protect you, so please... stay here ‘til I say is okay.” He turned and walked out of the room.     Peter stayed put but remained on edge. At night, his sleep was fitful, and during the day, his appetite had shrunk down to nothing. Forget José, he finally decided, I’m going to return to the clinic and do my operations. Suddenly, he felt better than he had in two weeks.     Café Orlando was a small, trendy place, where pretty waitresses served cafe espressos and cervesas that tasted better than the usual warm beers offered in other local hangouts. Settling down at a table in front of a big glass-plated window, Peter zeroed in on the front door of his clinic across the street and waited. Soon, a mother entered the clinic with her little girl whose head and lower face were carefully covered with a colorful Mexican shawl. When the two quickly came out again, the mother was trying to calm a sobbing, inconsolable child.     I should be there for them, Peter agonized, gulping down his last sip, and as he raced across the street to try to catch the mother and daughter he smiled, knowing in his heart that he was at the right place, doing the right thing.     He never made it.     Two Mexican drug officials grabbed him as soon as he got over in front of his clinic, then whisked him away to the border, where they handed him over to two U.S. drug enforcement officers.     “But wait, I must see my patients at the clinic. They are counting on me.” Peter pleaded. The officers just laughed, fingering their mustaches and rolling their eyes.     His trial didn’t last very long and the judge was fairly lenient with him in comparison to Jack. His doctor’s license was suspended for now, but because of his charity work, there would be a possible future reinstatement based on good behavior. When they read Jack’s sentence, Peter glanced over at his former partner and noticed that the suit was still gorgeous and expensive, but the face looked gray under the tan, and the knuckles were definitely white. * * * * * * *     Most days Peter feels quite sorry for himself, sorry he ever got involved, and how he would like to kill Jack. For an innocent man, eighteen months in jail is a long time to be locked away. But then, when he really feels depressed, all he has to do is get out Eduardo’s letter again and immediately he starts to feel better: Señor Peter, I write letter to you. thank you for my life ever one love me now. I go to school other persons play with me now. I never forget you. I love you. con mucho cariño, Eduardo.     Sometimes in the exercise yard, Peter runs into Old Bill, the “Lifer” who manages to pull himself up onto an iron bench and pontificate about how crime doesn’t pay. Once in a great while the other inmates even stand around and listen to the old guy for entertainment. But on those occasions, just thinking of Eduardo, Peter simply smiles, and walks away, shaking his head. Maybe, just maybe crime does pay, after all.

A Once In A Lifetime Thing Tony Brown     Even though not much of a wine drinker, as he approached the entrance to the A Touch of Grape store in the mall, he decided to go inside just to find out why so many people were crowded into such a small space. A man at the back of the store was standing higher than the others somehow, but the throng was jammed in so tightly that it was impossible to tell what he was standing on. Soon it was evident that the store was having a wine-tasting event, as he could barely hear the man describing various wines and their bouquets, the different types of grapes they were made from, the areas of France, Italy, California— and places locally from eastern North Carolina— that they had come from.     He struggled to make his way nearer to the speaker because he had once been to Italy’s Tuscany region, and to Duplin Winery in Rose Hill, and had seen the wine-making process in person. A dubious group of people who seemed to be family members were milling about, not giving the first hint from their bedraggled appearance as to the possibility that any one of them might be an expert on the various nuances of wine; it being much more likely free alcohol was their sole interest. One of them, an extremely large woman with a baby carriage, apparently had recently given birth and was for all practical purposes ordering her breasts to expose themselves, since her loose blouse was not even close to covering them on either side and she had no bra on. There was no baby to be seen or heard, however.     His brief moment of titillation was quickly replaced by annoyance that the woman would so carelessly allow herself to be seen like that whether she had recently given birth or not, especially with the thicket of long hair protruding from her armpits. She was a new mother, though, and perhaps she just didn’t realize she was exposing herself. He could hear very little of what the man on stage was saying because this one group of people were annoying the store personnel by picking up all sorts of items and saying they liked this, and they liked that about it, but this or that or the other was wrong with it...something needed to be different before they would purchase it.     Obviously they had little intention of buying anything at all. Eventually, they massed at the outer edges of the place, sitting so close together people could only pass through with great difficulty. They were talking loudly about Jesus and how everyone needed to be saved and making rude comments about the people who were struggling to get past them.     Finally he’d had enough.     “You all need to allow these people a way to get past you,” he said firmly. “There’s no reason you have to completely block the exit.”     They huffed and puffed and let out a great hue and cry, moaning out oh woe is us, we’re sitting innocent as can be, but still he persisted, knowing that the store clerks were helpless to deal with such obnoxious people.     “You’re an adult woman, ma’am,” he continued, addressing the fat lady, “and you could take care of your baby’s needs without making all these people so uncomfortable with your breasts flopping out every which way but loose, and you‘re not even feeding your baby!”     Several clapping hands could be heard behind him as he stood up for crowd’s rights.     “Well, I never...” the woman sputtered, her upper body leaning away from him.     Emboldened, he stood firm. “You all have been pestering these sales people with all sorts of stupid questions about stuff you don’t have the slightest intention of buying. I suggest that you either start buying or start leaving, and let these people get on with their business.”     “Well, I never!” the woman said again as she tugged at her blouse to close the gap, glaring up at the increasingly large number of people who were standing with him, nodding agreement and clapping his every statement of fact.     “Hmmph!” she cried as she stood. “Let’s get out of here and away from this rude man!” she told her companions. “We don’t have to put up with this!”     As she started pushing the baby carriage, it clinked. The woman pretended not to notice until he moved over and blocked her way out. She bent over and revealed three bottles of the most expensive wine in the shop that had been posing as an infant covered by a pink blanket.     “How ever in the world did they get in there!” she said, nervous tics causing her reddened face to twitch.     “I just wonder,” he said, as he picked the bottles up and placed them on a counter.     The crowd around her murmured at the revelation. “She didn’t even have a baby!” one lady said. “She’s just fat,” another woman said, while a gray-haired man in a business suit declared, “I heard about these people on the news! She was showing herself to distract attention from what they were doing. Somebody ought to call the law!”     At the mention of the word “law” the group jumped to their feet and were gone before several people who had whipped out their cell phones could even dial “9-1-1,” but not before several more bottles of wine and various items from other stores in the mall mysteriously appeared, scattered on the floor in the area where they’d been sitting.     Clapping broke out as several of the patrons clapped him on the back and shook his hand.     “People shouldn’t have to put up with such nonsense whether a woman is pregnant or not,” one woman carrying a small child said. “Thank you, sir, for saying something. Most people just let folks like that get away with such behavior and they never even know that they’ve been so obnoxious.”     Another voice chimed in, “We all pay through higher prices when people shoplift like that. Let’s hear it for this man who spoke up when no one else said a word!”     He was embarrassed at the accolades because it was so unlike him to do something to make himself get noticed, but still he felt pride in having expressed what the others had felt, but been too polite to say. He selected a bottle of brightly-packaged Carolina Scuppernong Blush from Duplin Winery and went to the rear cash register area to pay. The lone male clerk had finished his spiel, largely without those in attendance having the opportunity to hear him, and was accepting orders from the few people still left in the store after the confrontation.     One of the female clerks sat on the low counter that served as a podium when the store was having wine samplings and was talking about the flavors of different wines that she liked. She had enjoyed his defense of the store and motioned him to sit beside her, since it was near closing time and the shop had now emptied except for him and the store personnel. They all sat scrunched together on the little stage-like area, women on both sides of him, smelling of different sweet perfumes, the odor of wine from little plastic cups they held drifting to his nostrils.     “How much is this wine,” he asked.     “Eight-fifty with tax,” the male clerk said.     He started rummaging through his wallet, worrying that he didn’t have enough money, but a twenty popped out and fell on his lap, relieving himself from embarrassment over not having bought anything after his tirade. Everyone on the platform was squashed together with not an inch of space between, and he struggled to keep the twenty from getting lost in the tangle of bodies. He managed to retrieve it and handed it to the clerk.     With the much-quieter atmosphere, a piped-in Musak version of “Surfer Girl” by The Beach Boys could now be heard. He leaned over to the pretty college-age girl next to him on the left and whispered, “I used to sing this for my daughter when she was very young.”     “My name’s Kate. Sing it for me,” she requested, tugging on his arm. He shook his head, but she persisted, so he began singing it low into her ear, then a bit louder to overcome the chatter. The talking started to fade away as he sang.     “Little surfer, little one...made my heart come all undone, do you love me, do you surfer girl.”     Silence began overtaking the chitchat. “Sing louder,” Kate said, and so louder still he sang.     “I have watched you on the shore, standing by the ocean’s roar...do you love me, do you, surfer girl.”     Some of the others obviously knew the song, despite being younger than it was, and began echoing, “Little surfer girl, my little surfer girl” like the background vocals on the original, and pretty soon everyone joined in as he repeated the song over again, and the others who hadn’t known the words began singing along.     One of the employees began lowering the mesh metal door, and he started to get up to let them close, but the others held him back, saying, “Let’s do it one more time; this is so nice.”     The song had swelled into completeness now, as the others sang, “ah, ah ah ah,” to begin it. Like a folk-in from the sixties, everyone was singing together, with him— for once in his life— as the star. The “oohs” were where the “oohs” should be, and the same with the “ahs.” It was almost as if Brian Wilson himself were there, guiding their way through his song.     “Little surfer, little one, made my heart come all undone. Do you love me, do you surfer girl” echoed through the entrance of the store and out into the mall. People closing their shops stood, and smiles came to their faces as they listened while the chorus swelled louder and louder. Some of them began to quietly sing along.     The wine shop became a hootenanny from the Sixties right then, peaceful and as happy as a group of people can be, singing as one. The clerk handed him what change he had coming from the twenty as the song finally ended for the last one-more-time. Everyone patted him on the back, saying, “How wonderful this has been. We’ll never close this place again without thinking of you.” The steel curtain guarding the entrance began to slowly rise as if it were reluctant to let him leave. He hugged them back and wished this could last forever, but of course it couldn’t, no matter how magical the moment had been.     “If you kiss me, Kate, I’ll know this is a dream,” he said. To his surprise, she not only complied, but did so right on his mouth, then brought him close to her with a hug. The other women began to kiss him on the cheek or touch his arm, and finally, the lone male clerk grasped his hand while holding his left shoulder with his other hand.     “It’s been a blast, man! Thank you ever so much for telling those people off and preventing them from taking that stock...but most of all for sharing your song and a part of your life with us.”     “Yes,” Kate said, “we all agree. Your daughter was a lucky girl to have a father who would sing to her like that. This is something marvelous that happens just once in a lifetime.”     As he stooped to pass under the gate, he was filled with humility at having given those people a good memory and a piece of his past, but at the same time, melancholy at the fact that what had occurred was really what she’d said. Exactly what she’d said.     Just a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

Law Valerie Goodwine     The old ones told the tale of a deadly flood that covered the land killing all in its wake. The gods had sent the flood to punish the tribe, said the elders. The tribe had abused the land and angered the gods. Punishment had been swift and deadly.     Freddy didn’t know if he really believed the old legends. It happened generations ago so how could the elders be sure?     Secretly Freddy thought the elders were just using the legends to control the tribe. The elders claimed that overuse of the land caused the flood through global warming.     The elders said to save the land and not leave a carbon footprint. Eat sparingly to spare the land. Gluttony is a sin.     Not to follow the laws of the elders was to risk death for all. The laws were many but they all said the same, the land must be respected.     Oh hell, Freddy thought, I am so tired of hearing the elders preach at me. Who is to know how much I eat, if I only eat when I am alone?     So Freddy ate and ate, always in secret, defying the gods. Sometimes the land shook and the elders worried the deadly floods would come again. Still Freddy ate.     One day after a particularly filling meal, Freddy heard distant screams. The screams drew closer and he saw members of his tribe running for their lives.     “To higher ground” the elders cried. “Run, run. The flood is coming.”     Mothers and fathers carried their children and ran. Terror filled every face as they hurried towards higher ground.     Freddy followed the elders and ran as fast as his overstuffed body would allow. He wished now he had not eaten so much. He was the slowest of the tribe. Little by little, he fell behind the others.     As the warm waters lapped at his feet, he saw it was bubbling strangely. A pungent odor hit his nose and he had trouble breathing. Faster and faster he tried to run but the waters kept rising.     What a fool he was to have disobeyed the elders, he thought, as the water swirled around his legs. This was his fault. He fingered the sacred amulet around his neck and prayed for forgiveness.     Fluffy gave one last shake trying to escape the bathtub. Mark grabbed the back of Fluffy’s neck, forcing him back into the tub.     “Oh no you don’t, get back in the tub. You’re getting a nice flea bath. You’ve been itching so much you’d think a whole tribe of critters lived on you.”

Getting Over Someone is Hard to Do Razsaveh Richardson Chapter 1     Have you ever had to get over someone? Yes. Getting over someone I know is very hard. It’s actually not easy at all. Getting over someone really takes a lot time to do.     However, there once was a girl named Katy that had to get over someone over the last couple of months. It was very hard for her. She had to get over a girl name Joilise (they call her Joi for short).     It was hard getting over her because she was really in love with her and she still is. Katy and Joilise went together for a long time. That’s another reason why it was hard for her to get over her. It took a lot of time getting over her. It didn’t make any since because she just couldn’t understand why this was constantly happening to her.     Katy’s mom always asked her what was wrong because ever since her and Joilise had broken up she looked sad all the time. Then one day her mom had called Joilise because she was crying and Joilise told her mom that her and Katy were just friends because Katy was insecure and that she still loved her. Katy and Joilise still talked every once in a while. Sometimes she was so happy that Joilise was still in love with her and then again sometimes she is not because she is trying to get over her completely. That actually keeps a smile on Katy’s face even though she was trying to get over her. Chapter 1     Now Katy is currently single and she wants real love. She is waiting patiently to get a relationship. Someone once told her to be patient and love will find you. That person said “I know its going to be hard but you can do it.” Katy told that person she wants to give up on love so bad but she will try.     Katy knows the saying: “Never leave the person you love no matter what.” Even if the person is right or wrong. Its just the simple fact that the person she was with is Jolise did her so wrong. Katy actually gave her so many chances and she messed up.     The final reason why Katy and Joilise had broken up is because Jolise cheated on Katy with her “baby momma.” She was very upset because instead of Jolise telling Katy that she had cheated on her, someone else did Joilse’s baby momma. Katy and Joilise’s baby momma were arguing back and forth on Facebook. Katy really wanted to beat Jolise’s baby momma up but she just began to be the bigger person.     When she had found out that Jolise had cheated on her, she had asked Jolise why she did it and she did not have a valid reason why. Katy believes the Jolise wasn’t even going to tell her that she had cheated on her. Katy had once asked Jolise, “When were you going to tell me that you had cheated on me?” and Jolise’s words were, “I was going to tell you - I just didn’t want you to leave me.” Katy really thought that was a line of bull. She really didn’t want to hear any excuses whatsoever. Katy and Jolise stayed into it all the time. Joilise said to Katy, “All you do is complain and you’re so stuck up.” “You supposed to be grown right but act like a ’lil kid. Remember I didn’t cheat on you. You’re the one that cheated on me,” said Katy.     There is someone Katy is now talking to, someone named Mariah. They have been talking for about a month now. She is so happy with the person she is talking to now. Katy just doesn’t want to be hurt again. Mariah said to Katy, “just trust my word.” “I don’t want to put my past all on you,” explained Katy. Mariah then told her, “Baby I’m not going to hurt you no matter what, I will never ever do such a thing.”

Hurry Up and Wait Micah Thorstenson Can’t wait for the week to end I overheard Just got to make it through He said And as I took another drag of my cigarette Out in the cold I wondered How many people live By waiting And not knowing they are already Dead They aren’t waiting for the weekend Or to return to empty rooms And empty beds after shift They are waiting on the grave To be bathed in fluids That will allow them To wait longer

Janet Kuypers reading the Micah Thorstenson poem Hurry Up and Wait from the April 2011 issue (v093) of Down in the Dirt magazine (which is also available as a 6" x 9" ISBN# book Wake Up and Smell the Flowers

Watch this YouTube video read live 04/05/11, live at the Café in Chicago

Hurry Up and Wait Janet Kuypers 05/30/09     People are rushing, don’t have time for breakfast after you slammed the alarm snooze button three times, stumble out of bed, you’re clean enough, forget the shower, clean up your face, smooth your hair, put on your work clothes, grab the briefcase, lock the door, spped up but avoid the sweat of a near sprint to make it to the el train, the bus stop. You can grab a muffin and coffee once you get into work, you think, as your light pant doesn’t change once you’ve stopped at the stop. You’ve still got places to be, check your watch, look down the street, where is your carrier, you need that vehicvle to get you to where you need to be. Pace a bit. Adjust your clothes. Check your watch again. This is corporate America, you think, hurry up and wait.     The world rotates over a hundred thousand miles an hour. Everything is spinning. Observe the world. See more and more, but feel connected less and less.     Is it possible to relax where you least expect to? ###     When people would take smoke breaks at work, you know, 20 minutes outside their office highrise every other hour, I thought, if they can take smoke breaks like that, I can take one or two 40-minute breaks a day to walk up and down those 42 flights of stairs. At least it’s healthier than smoking.     Well, if I can do things like that, if I can pick up recyclable garbage left on the street after thinking people are pigs for throwing recyclable trash out like that (because if I don’t do something after I complain I’m almost as bad as they are), if I can make choices like that, maybe I can look for peace, or even meditate, anywhere.     Even at a bus stop.     If you could find some time to just stop, after an hour the earth would have moved six hundred thousand miles.     I wonder, when the world is spinning like this, if you could meditate, mentally step outside it all. Gain a new perspective. Come to peace with everything.     I wonder what people think of me if I do this.     But I wanted to see if I could finally relax.

Janet Kuypers reading her short prose Hurry Up and Wait from the April 2011 issue (v093) of Down in the Dirt magazine (which is also available as a 6" x 9" ISBN# book Wake Up and Smell the Flowers

Rather read it? Then read the original writing

Watch this YouTube video read from the April 2011 issue (v093) of Down in the Dirt magazine (which is also available as a 6" x 9" ISBN# book Wake Up and Smell the Flowerslive 04/05/11 at the Café in Chicago

Enveloped Danielle Bredy     Eight years had passed. Saliva, set, sealed and significant. The letter was mailed. Out of everything that had happened, I really just wanted to let my Grandparents know that they were in my thoughts, and that certain facts like that don’t waiver. Some five year olds chew and swallow without asking questions, but when I was five, I always could feel the restraint. Both sides must have been using restraint to control the situation. We eventually learn that, in some cases, uncontrolled is more natural. For us, it was necessary.     In such a gentle fashion, my letter gracefully nodded goodbye as it sailed to sit atop the pile of others. The other letters were to other locations, other mortgage companies, other lives being acted out silently on postal time. Postal time makes you slow down some and get in touch with your feelings, or ignore them. It isn’t there to dictate that portion. I chose to stay occupied and like a brave soul would do, I made myself vulnerable. Who knew what bitterness lurked on which banks of their arteries. Their capillaries might hold their feelings captive. But, I held faith. I went about my week and a half, not expecting, but with sincere hope.     A few more days had passed and things had begun to settle into the new divots without my Dad. An envelope returned to me. It didn’t seem to boast anything like some letters and junk mail do. Yet, it seemed to be anxiously awaiting arrival. It could have been my nerves, but it was here. My mom, despite knowing who the letter was from, exercised restraint again. “You wrote to them, so it’s your letter to read,” she stated softly. She looked as excited as my limbs were. Adrenaline duped, I opened the letter carefully.     I read every word. I had one thing right – that our feelings were mutual. I was also right in thinking that they hadn’t wanted to cut out of our lives, and that they would have walked through fire if it meant they could have seen us still. Without so many words, she exclaimed how happy her and my Grandfather felt to hear from us. They were wondering, though. They were wondering if the situation was real: if my Dad had really left, and if it was really for sure this time. At the end of the letter was written, “We’re looking forward to seeing you and getting to know you again... we do hope you didn’t get in some kind of trouble for this.” Restraint. Control.     Sometimes things in life need to lose their control to be natural, and to be at their most balanced. To an extent, even I know this. I hear my Grandfather still reads my letter. It’s one of the few times his wife has seen him cry.

In the Very Back Richard Shelton Where starry skies Platinum the horizon, Flayed way back In the farthest known reaches Hides each in his own heart Sorrows borrowed from life, Prodigious in their longevity, Overlapping lives. Sorrows kept alive By an indispensable lack of clarity.

Janet Kuypers reading the Richard Shelton poem In the Very Back from the April 2011 issue (v093) of Down in the Dirt magazine (which is also available as a 6" x 9" ISBN# book Wake Up and Smell the Flowers

Watch this YouTube video read live 04/05/11, live at the Café in Chicago

Apophis Mark Murphy     Chief Detective Higgins offered a cigarette to Murlow, who nodded meekly and took it. When Higgins wasn’t looking, he put it in his jacket inner pocket. Murlow didn’t smoke.     It was raining harder now. Murlow’s jacket and shoes were soaked through as he and Higgins trudged up the Parliament steps. That was one cliché Murlow learned always to be true. No matter the day or the season, it always rained in London.     Higgins took a big drag from the limp cigarette. Blazing orange embers lit up the rain droplets and a stream of smoke danced up into the storm. In a flash, Higgins dropped the butt to the ground and stomped it out. Murlow watched the ash wash the pavement, bits of gray overtaking the blue puddles.     “Who called it in?” Higgins grunted.     Murlow sidled up to him. “The ambassador to Somalia. He was to see the Prime Minister today to discuss the increase in piracy off the Somalian coast, but when he arrived, he found him dead, slumped over his desk. He had a .38 next to his body. One round was missing from the chamber. CSU found it in the desk about an inch deep into the wood. Passed clean through his head.”     Murlow grabbed at his stomach. Higgins nodded and lit another cigarette.     Deputy Detective Charles Murlow was young, only twenty-eight. Interpol recruited him for international investigations out of the FBI in 2032 and he was now in his fourth year of service. Murlow had short black hair that he kept in a crew cut. In his FBI years, he kept it long. One day, he met an Interpol operative while working the investigation of the murder of three Secret Service agents outside the presidential compound. The operative had a crew cut, and he was able to find the murderer in a matter of hours. The next day, Murlow cut his hair. Two years later he was with Interpol.     Higgins peered over his shoulder at the front gates. Rows of police cruisers lined the avenue as officers from Interpol, MI5 and the local London units scurried every which way. Higgins growled a series of inconceivable words into his holographic transponder. Like dogs responding to their master, the officers fell to their posts. A few low rank Interpol detectives hurried up the steps but stopped just short of where Higgins and Murlow stood. Only when Higgins turned his back to them did they dare look up.     Special Agent in Charge of Field Operations at Interpol Jameson Higgins was not an easy man to get along with. He was gruff, surly, the result of over forty years of experience working field ops. He was a man who could have ranked much higher in the force if he wanted. Two decades earlier, he was promoted to head of North American Operations, but declined. He’d take a desk job when the field didn’t need him anymore.     Four years ago he met a young FBI agent while on a job in Los Angeles. His name was Charles Murlow. Higgins instantly saw potential in him. Murlow had the attention and cold discipline of a Navy SEAL: swift, attentive, willing to take any order without question. Higgins finally found a young pair of legs who could carry out all of his orders via proxy. In a year’s time, Higgins would take the desk job, and Murlow would take his place as Head of Field Operations.     A stocky guard rushed down the steps and flagged them down. “Good morning, Inspectors. Come right inside. The entire place is in chaos. Only a matter of moments before the press notices all the sirens and comes knocking.”     “Did anyone touch the body?” Higgins asked. He and Murlow followed the guard into the enormous government building and down a hallway adorned with lavish paintings and beautiful furniture.     “No sir,” the guard replied.     “When did the ambassador find him?”     “Around nine this morning, sir. Said he knocked but didn’t get an answer. The door was unlocked so he went in. That’s when he found the prime minister slumped at his desk.”     “Why is he down here?” Murlow asked. “The prime minister’s office is one floor.”     “Not sure sir. Prime Minister Madison told me he had to check on something. He said something important was coming. I didn’t know he had a bloody gun, honest.”     Higgins and Murlow continued in silence behind the guard. After a minute they reached a door marked STUDY B. The guard turned and looked at the men, concern floating in his eyes.     “Why are they all doing this?” he asked.     Higgins coughed and reached into his pocket, pulling out the pack of cigarettes. He flipped it open but, realizing they were all gone, put it back into his pocket.     “Back to your post, boy,” he said.     The guard began to speak but thought better of it. He gave a curt nod and hurried away down the hall. Higgins did not glance back at him as he turned the knob to the study.     The door swung open and the scene slowly washed over Murlow. It was a small study. A couple of busts of former prime ministers stood out against an otherwise drab room. The wallpaper was faded red and a modest chandelier hung from the ceiling. The purple curtains were drawn but Murlow could still hear the rain batting at the windows. A narrow plush rug led from the doorway straight to a beautiful oak desk.     It was there on the desk, slumped down, hand dangling off the front amidst a waterfall of dried blood that pooled in a black splotch on the rug, was the body of the prime minister of Great Britain. Two forensics experts were busy taking samples and making notes of the scene. They nodded at Higgins and Murlow before returning to their work.     Higgins sighed. “How many does this make, Murlow?”     Murlow gratefully took his eyes away from the body. “Ten in the past year. Three in the past week alone.”     Higgins frowned and smacked his lips. He nodded and moved into the room to discuss the situation with the forensics experts.     Murlow stood in silence. For the past year, the planet watched dumbfounded as world leaders began committing suicide. It all began with the president of Mexico who jumped off a cliff near the Gulf Coast. A month later, the prime minister of Japan was found dead in his office in the Diet building. He had committed seppuku, a ritual suicide once common in the samurai days. Then there were the leaders of the countries of Chad, Mongolia, Thailand, Australia, Sudan and Germany. The dictator of North Korea’s death was by far the strangest. He abruptly called an international press conference in which he declared that his country would switch to a democracy. He then pulled a revolver from his inner jacket pocket and shot himself in the head. That was two days ago, and now the British prime minister was dead along with them.     Murlow inched towards the body. His expertise was in interviewing the witnesses and suspects after forensics had finished with the bodies. The FBI was more about the history of the crime. Interpol was more about the scene of the crime. This past year had put him around more bodies than he wanted to admit.     “What’d they find, sir?” he asked Higgins.     “Just as you reported. One slug entrenched in the wood of the desk. The bullet passed through the back of his head and out just above the right eye. Instant death.”     “Why this room?”     “Prime Minister Madison was a former member of the British Royal Navy, a man of honor. My guess is he did not want to tarnish the upper office where so many great men had served before him.”     One of the forensics experts examining the desk called out to the two detectives. Higgins and Murlow rushed to the desk where they found the man pulling a small packet out of one of the side drawers with tongs. Higgins put on a pair of gloves handed to him by the other forensics expert and took the papers.     “We believe he was reading this, placed it in the desk, then shot himself,” the forensics expert said.     Higgins nodded and held the packet up to the light. Murlow saw a seal on the top right corner, the stamp of the UK Space Agency, the United Kingdom’s space research department. Another stamp, a red TOP SECRET, smudged the top left corner. In the center, Murlow read the title:     FOR THE EYES OF PRIME MINISTER ALAN MADISON ONLY.     THE RESULTS OF THE RESEARCH ON 99942 APOPHIS AND ITS CURRENT TRAJECTORY FOR APRIL 13th, 2036.     Higgins glanced up from the document at Murlow. He had a blank look on his face.     “April 13th? That’s two days from now,” Murlow muttered. “And what the hell is 99942 Apophis?”     “An answer,” Higgins replied. ...     Higgins demanded that CSU let him take the packet with him. They refused, declaring it now a part of evidence. It took a few threats to their wives for the experts to finally relent and allow Higgins and Murlow each to photocopy the packet, leaving the original in their care.     “What could possibly drive world leaders to take their own lives?” Murlow asked.     Higgins stared past him. “Something big.”     Higgins called Interpol HQ and declared that he and Murlow would take the rest of the day to review the new evidence. They would check back in tomorrow with their reports. Before they parted, Murlow held out his hand. He always shook Higgins’ hand when he left for the day.     Murlow tucked the packet into his jacket pocket and got a ride with one of the local squad cars. They rode in silence until they reached his hotel. He took the stairs to his ninth floor room and collapsed onto the bed. It was nearly sundown.     Almost a year had passed since he started work on the world leader suicides. Higgins took him to every crime scene, showed him every bit of evidence, listened to every one of his theories. When Interpol held press conferences, Higgins always kept Murlow off to the side, away from the viewfinders and video cameras. Once, Murlow accidentally answered a question from an American reporter who called out from behind, thinking it was Higgins asking for clarification on one of the suicides. Higgins nearly booted him from the case.     Murlow sat up and slipped out of his jacket, taking the folded packet out of the pocket. He read the title again and flipped to the first page of the UK Space Agency report. It was an index for the mere ten pages of information.     1) Overview of 99942 Apophis     2 – 8) April 2029 Trajectory Change and Mapping of Possible Collision Points     9 – 10) Suggested Courses of Action     On the ride to the hotel, Murlow considered what “Apophis” could be. It sounded like a terrorist organization, but he did not recall Interpol, or any agency for that matter, having any information about such a group. He flipped to the first page and read the report:     Official Final Report on Near-Earth Asteroid 99942 Apophis     —Overview of 99942 Apophis—     In late 2004, astronomers at NASA discovered a fast-moving object, the orbit of which was projected to come dangerously close, some forty times closer than the current orbit of the moon, to Earth in December 2029. It was quickly determined that this was a near-Earth object, or NEO, an asteroid, dubbed 99942 Apophis. The Apophis asteroid is roughly three hundred miles across and caused slight panic when NASA announced it had a 1 in 200 chance of hitting the planet. As further calculations were conducted however, the orbit of Apophis was better determined, and the likelihood of a collision with Earth was lowered to 1 in about 334,000.     Apophis did not hit Earth in 2029, though a new danger arose. Our planet’s atmosphere is pocketed with “gravitational keyholes,” areas of uneven gravity where the pull of Earth’ gravity can be stronger or weaker than the areas around it. The orbit of Apophis showed that the asteroid would pass very close to a large keyhole in its 2029 pass. Going through the keyhole would not cause the asteroid to strike the Earth at that time, but would instead alter its future trajectory such that when it returned on April 13th, 2036, it would strike the Earth with one hundred percent certainty. It is with the utmost concern and sorrow that we report to you, Prime Minister, that 99942 Apophis did indeed pass through the gravitational keyhole in 2029, and will strike our planet in 2036.     Sir, Apophis is the single greatest threat to humanity in the history of our species. This object is large enough to decimate an area the size of the United States in an instant. A strike would be the equivalent of detonating every nuclear warhead on the planet simultaneously. Should it hit an ocean, tidal waves the likes of which have not occurred since the extinction of the dinosaurs would wash away entire continents. Survivors will be doomed to years of “Asteroid Winter” in which debris and dust kicked up by the impact will block out the sun, killing crops and drastically lowering temperatures across the entire planet. Starvation and disease will run rampant. Every government will collapse. Life as we know it, save for some subterranean species and microbial life, will cease to exist.     Maps of projected collision sites, casualty estimates and possible dates of extinction follow.     Murlow felt a burning sensation in his neck. The crescent overhead light above his bed shined so brightly it gave him a headache. He jumped to the window and pulled open the curtains. Up in the now dark sky, he saw the moon pale against a backdrop of pinprick stars. It was crazy. The idea that an asteroid that large would come to Earth in a fiery flash of destruction, and in two days no less, was absurd. Governments would warn the people. Preparations would be made. The United States would surely launch something to knock the asteroid away or change its orbit or blast it into nothingness. But he could think of nothing save for the bodies of the world leaders he found over the past year. He felt sick.     After a few deep breaths Murlow returned to the bed. He flipped through the next section. There were pages of maps, graphs and data. He saw the projected collision area, a stretch that covered nearly half of the Earth in an “S” from Thailand across the Pacific and up through Baja California and into Arizona. There were casualty estimates: between one hundred and five hundred million dead instantly depending on land impact. Over a billion dead from tidal waves should it strike an ocean. One particularly nauseating factoid sat on the second to last page. Human Race Extinction Prediction: 2041. Five years. Humanity had five years.     The last graph was a telescope photograph of the Apophis asteroid itself. The photocopy was grainy and Murlow couldn’t quite make out which dot among the hundreds of other dots on the page was the asteroid. In the top right corner, he spotted nearly invisible text, labeled “99942 APOPHIS.” Above it was the faintest speck of white. Murlow had to blink twice to make sure the dot was really there.     He swallowed the lump in his throat and wiped the sweat off his brow and flipped to the final two pages.     —Suggested Courses of Action—     The passage of 99942 Apophis through the gravitational keyhole caused widespread alarm in the space divisions of many nation’s governments. A collaborative effort began in 2030 on possible courses of action to be taken to prevent Apophis from striking our planet.     The heads of every country’s space agencies met at a conference in February 2030 in Jacksonville, Florida, United States of America, disguised as a conference for determining a new form of clean energy. The first action of the conference was to determine if any countries had developed technology that could destroy an asteroid or alter its orbit such that it would miss the planet. It was determined that while most agencies had research programs in place to create such technology, no breakthroughs had been made and no such technology existed.     The programs then conferred to see what the best way to stop the asteroid would be. It was suggested that nuclear warheads be fired at Apophis in 2036 as it neared Earth. This was dismissed as the warheads would likely not make it to the asteroid, or fall off course. Warheads were also determined to not be powerful enough to destroy such a large object and any debris blown off of Apophis could strike the planet and endanger citizens or fly off and strike the planet some time later after orbiting around the solar system.     A more likely course of action was to create a device that would use gravity to push Apophis as it neared Earth, thus altering its trajectory. Many nations had programs to develop such technology in place, but construction on such a device, while plausible,had not begun. The space agencies determined that with adequate funding, in the range of several trillion dollars, they could construct and launch a functioning device in forty years. The idea was scrapped.     The conference concluded without a set course of action and each individual agency promising full disclosure to solve this crisis. It has since been six years and while all agencies have worked tirelessly to find a solution, we regret to admit that as of now, no solution exists.     It is therefore the recommendation of we, the UK Space Agency, on behalf of all space agencies worldwide, that you, Prime Minister Madison, along with all other world leaders, announce to the people of your United Kingdom and all peoples the world over that the end is near. We strongly encourage you to inform everyone that the projected strike date of 99942 Apophis is Thursday, April 13th, 2036 at approximately 10:03 PM, GMT. People should make penance with themselves and prepare for the worst, as the worst is yet to come.     We greatly regret putting this burden on your shoulders and the shoulders of all other world leaders. We ask that you have strength and courage, as our nation looks to you for guidance in these most trying of times. Any other information or assistance you require, we will provide at a moment’s call. Thank you Prime Minister, and we only wish that we could bring you better news.     Respectfully,     We, the Various Department Heads of the UK Space Agency     A list of names and signatures followed. Murlow sat with his eyes fixed on the last page of the packet. The end of the world in ten pages.     He was dizzy. Outside his door he heard a crying child and a mother trying to calm her down. He was hungry. He did not want to eat. The room was spinning now. He grabbed the headboard to steady himself. Above his head the light shined and his head throbbed. For a moment he thought the light was falling and he ducked to avoid getting hit. He tugged gently at the headboard. It snapped off in a shower of wood chips and dried paint.     A subdued ringing filled the room. On his nightstand he saw his cell phone vibrating. He snatched it and put it to his ear. It continued to ring. He pressed it closer to his ear. It rang louder. He shook his head and pressed the answer key. A gruff voice began speaking on the other end.     “Did you read it?” the voice said.     Murlow was dazed. “Read what?”     “The Apophis report.”     Murlow suddenly realized it was Higgins. “I...yes. Yes I did.”     “This is the answer. It explains everything. We have to talk to the president.”     “The president...” Murlow muttered.     “Of the United States. What’s wrong with you?” Higgins growled.     “I, yeah. Nothing.”     “I mentioned the word Apophis to his press secretary, who had no clue what I was talking about. But the president called back in minutes. We leave now. Get to Heathrow airport in an hour.”     Higgins hung up. Murlow sat in silence with the phone still pressed to his ear. Then, as if in a dream, he gathered his jacket and suitcase and left the room for the airport.     Outside, he couldn’t hear the child anymore. ...     The following morning was damp and gray and Murlow wondered if it was raining the entire world over. They turned in their firearms at the security checkpoint and one of the White House staff led them down the ornate hallways to the Oval Office. She opened the door and Higgins and Murlow entered. The president was sitting on one of the sofas in front of the Resolute Desk sipping coffee.     “Detectives Higgins and Murlow,” the staff said, pointing to each man.     The president beckoned to the men to take a seat and Murlow heard the door shut behind him. A pitterpatter of rain began to strike the broad windows, droplets dancing down the panes before crashing on the sill below.     “Take a seat detectives,” the president said. He was a short man, the toes of his loafers just barely scraping at the carpet. There was no hair on his head and his eyes burned into his pale skin. But he sat with his body high, his shoulders back until his chest nearly burst from his suit. He spoke softly so that the detectives had to lean in closer to hear him. Murlow had never met the president before, but he instantly liked him.     “Coffee?” the president asked.     Higgins waved him off. “No thanks.” He spoke with the same gruff manner he used with any other person. “Prime Minister Madison is dead.”     The president nodded. “Yes, it’s a real tragedy. He was a good man.”     An uncomfortable silence swallowed the room. Murlow looked at the president, then at Higgins. He waited for them to speak.     “Let’s get right to it. You know why we’re here,” Higgins said. He reached into his coat pocket and took out the UK Space Agency packet, dumping it onto the table. The president did not move.     “So you know?” the president asked, sipping his coffee.     “Madison stuffed this in his desk just before he shot himself. This is why he killed himself. This is why they all killed themselves.”     The president nodded.     “I assume you have a report just like this from NASA?” Higgins asked.     The president nodded again.     “And you’re aware that Apophis is scheduled to strike tomorrow?”     “NASA says it’s on schedule. They even updated the trajectory to me. Should strike the Pacific Ocean about five hundred miles northwest of Hawaii. Gonna be a hell of a fireworks show.”     “Do they know?” Higgins asked, waving his arm towards the doorway.     The president shook his head. “No, just I and the department heads of NASA. Not even my wife and son know.”     Higgins glanced at Murlow then leaned towards the president. Murlow followed.     “Are you going to tell them?” Higgins motioned with his eyes towards the window. The president let his gaze sift to the White House lawn outside. The rain was stronger now. He sipped his coffee and put the cup on the table.     “No.”     “Good.” Higgins put his hands on his knees and began to stand up.     Murlow felt the burning return to his neck. Every hair on his body stood up. All the colors of the room started to melt and drip down to the floor. He raised his hand to pull at Detective Higgins but quickly realized he was pulling at nothing but air. Every instinct in his body told him to be quiet, told him to stand up and leave with Higgins. But the burning sensation in his neck would not let them. It was guiding him now, and he must speak.     The words spilled from his mouth robotically: “You have to tell them.”     Higgins froze and cocked his head at his young officer. Across the sofa, he saw the boy’s eyes, wide and black. It was clear he was awash with fear. He raised his hand to Murlow and did not know if he would pat him on the back or strike him.     “Excuse me?” the president said, giving a searching glance at Murlow.     “You have to tell them. Everyone. They deserve to know that today will be their last full day on Earth,” he said, nearly shouting.     “And why is that?”     Murlow stuttered. “Because...because, you’re the leader of the free world. You have the responsibility to tell everyone that their lives are in danger.”     “Danger?” the president shouted. “Danger suggests a chance of peril. This is beyond danger, Detective. This is complete and utter annihilation, the very end of existence as we know it.”     “Well you, you have to tell us that. Give us a chance to seek shelter, to get underground, to collect our families and prepare. At least give us a chance to make peace.”     The president laughed. The hollow office resonated with the sting of his bellows. Murlow glanced at Higgins, aghast to find a slight smile on his face as well.     “Son, are you thick? Are you deranged? Suppose I do tell them. Suppose I go up to that presidential podium and I tell every man, woman and child on this planet that in just about twenty-four hours all of them will be dust. I’ll tell them exactly what you said. I’ll tell them to dig a shelter, get their families together and prepare. I’ll tell the ones who don’t want to get underground to make peace. What do you think will happen next?”     Murlow hesitated just long enough.     “Every single man, woman and child will panic. Rioting will ensue, looting will be rampant. Old grudges between enemies will turn into bullets in brains, knives in backs and heads rolling down the streets. Orgies will break out in places you’d never even thought it possible to have sex. Hell, people will probably storm the White House and come after me. They’ll succeed too, because my staff and my bodyguards aren’t gonna stick around to protect me.”     Murlow felt the burning in his neck grow hotter. “You can help. You...you can do something.”     “Unless I can fly to outer space and smash this asteroid into little pieces or push it into the sun, I’m useless.”     “You’re not useless. You’re a leader. People look up to you. People need you.”     “What people need is to feel content with their lives. What people need is to exert control. And what a leader needs to do is ensure that people have just those things. I could tell them. I thought about telling them countless times. But a leader, Detective, is human. They’re fallible just as much as anyone else. If I tell them all is lost, I’m not a leader. I’m just the bearer of bad news.”     The room was spinning now. Murlow felt his fingernails dig deep into the mesh sofa. Higgins was silent. He kept his eyes on his partner.     Suddenly, the president leaned towards Murlow and put his hand on his knee. Murlow felt the burning in his neck subside.     “I’ll tell you what. You can tell them. I can call a press conference. You can stand at the presidential podium and everything. I’ll let you say whatever you want. You can warn them, you can plead for calm, you can lead a prayer service for all I care. It’ll be just the same as if I did it. The end result will be the same.”     Murlow grabbed the president’s hand and clenched it tightly. He wanted to snap his arm in half, rip it from his socket. He wanted to lunge and crush this man’s head. Yet the president did not flinch. His eyes were cold and firm. Murlow gazed into them but quickly looked away. He could not bring himself to look at him again. All the while Higgins watched in silence.     Finally, Murlow let go of the hand. The president slowly leaned back on the sofa, chest once again protruding outward.     Murlow could not take it anymore. He had to get out of there. With a jolt, he stood and moved to the door, his hand shaking as he grabbed the knob. He turned and looked at the president and his mentor. Tears began to run down his cheeks.     “And I suppose you’re going to kill yourself, just like all the others,” Murlow whispered.     The president laughed. “No, instead I’m taking the day off tomorrow. I’m going to take my family to the Nationals game. The Mets are in town.”     Murlow watched the smile fade from the president’s face as he reached for his cup of coffee. The president then shrugged and said:     “And then, I am simply going to cease to exist.”     Detective Murlow stood and watched the leader of the free world sip coffee and gaze at the rain falling outside the window. When their eyes did not meet again, he fumbled with the doorknob and pulled the door open.     He was about to step outside when he heard Higgins call out. “Charles, wait.”     Murlow turned and saw his mentor standing and watching him. The normally gruff detective now looked much older, frail even. His words sounded much softer. Murlow felt the tears again well in his eyes as he turned away.     “No.” ...     Charles Murlow glanced at his watch as he walked through one of the fields in New York City’s Central Park. It was 3:55 PM April 13th, 2036.     The air was warmer today and the sun had broken through that morning bathing the city in a healthy glow. All around him people were out and about. An elderly couple was walking their dog. A woman was pushing her child in a stroller. And in front of him, he saw a young boy, no more than ten years old, throwing a baseball at a pitchback. He was having some trouble as the ball was falling just short, striking the ground and kicking up dust.     Murlow approached the boy. “Having some trouble?”     The boy looked up at him from beneath a curved baseball cap. He nodded.     “I can’t get the ball to hit it from here,” he said, nodding at the pitchback.     “Show me your grip,” Murlow said.     The boy took the ball from his glove and put it into his throwing hand. He held it up for Murlow to see. Murlow noticed that the boy had his entire palm wrapped around the ball.     “Try holding it like this,” Murlow said, taking the ball from the boy’s hand. He held it with two fingers and a thumb across the seams. The boy watched carefully and took the ball back.     The boy cocked his arm and thrust it forward. The ball flew and hit the ground just in front of the pitchback.     “You didn’t use the grip I showed you,” Murlow said.     He looked up at Murlow and smiled. “I like it better my way.”     The boy took several steps forward to retrieve the ball when Murlow’s watch began beeping. It was now 4:03 PM.     Just then in the sky, Murlow saw a bright flash and heard a boom like the loudest thunder he had ever heard. Shielding his eyes, he gazed up and saw a basketball-sized object floating west across the sky. Around him, curious pedestrians gawked and pointed.     Murlow sat on the grass and waited.

Spinning the Wheel of the Quivering Meat Conception Robert Levin     I was, I suppose you could say, in a PREpartum depression.     It started when my wife, Connie, decided it was time to have a baby. I was thirty-one and she was twenty-eight, a circumstance which I reminded her in my argument against the idea, was no cause for alarm. But after she’d voiced her ambition—and thereby made it real to herself—the achievement of motherhood became an obsession for her and she would not leave me alone about it. Finally, after several months, my reluctance to enlist in her project compelled her to resort to a not so veiled threat: “Steven,” she said. “Either we have a baby now or I’m going to leave you.”     All right, I told her, get off the fucking Ovril then.     Now it wasn’t that I never wanted a baby, and not that when I had one I didn’t want it to be with Connie. Strong of character and will, nurturing, quick-witted and sometimes astonishingly perceptive (not to mention pretty), Connie was a terrific wife and more than qualified to be an exceptional mother. The notion of one day having a family with her was hardly repugnant to me.     No. What troubled me when the prospect became imminent—what troubled me immensely—was a consequence inherent in the making of a baby, a consequence that I could not stop recognizing. Fathering a child would tie me into the hideous plan that Creation has devised for everything corporeal. I would be, and by my own hand, replacing myself. Once the deed was done, once I had accomplished the only thing we know with any certainty Creation wants of us, I would be, in Creation’s estimation, expendable.     If Connie, born Catholic but now earnestly New Age in her faiths and sentiments, mollified her fear of death by believing in reincarnation, I was a secular Jew and so had only the void to anticipate. And if I’d always been keenly tuned to the price of existence, and lived in a perpetual state of medium-grade anxiety as a result, my heightened appreciation of my mortality destroyed any semblance of internal equilibrium I could claim. With Connie’s demand the sinister underside of nature had turned itself toward me and it wouldn’t turn away. Indeed, my now hyper-consciousness of what it ultimately meant to be alive made any vista of extravagant pullulation, albeit as manicured as Central Park, grotesque to me. On the most festive of occasions I would see what William James saw—“the skull grinning in at the banquet.” And I understood as well what Burroughs meant by “Naked Lunch.” When I ate I saw exactly what it was—the flesh—on the end of my fork.     I was also, much of the time, in a small rage about the new burden I’d be taking on. I’m referring not to the responsibility of child raising per se, but to the fact that no matter how large was the contempt I’d developed for humanity over the years, having a child would force me to care about what the world might be like after I died.     Thoroughly upended, I even began to think about homosexuality; about, that is, the solution it afforded to the problem of getting your rocks off without spinning what Kerouac called the “wheel of the quivering meat conception.” Though a less than appealing option for me, there were hours when, oddly and perversely, I could not help but feel . . . well . . . TITILATED by the concept of having sex that was unencumbered by procreative implications.     In the petrifying absence of contraception I found myself avoiding sex with Connie. And when I could not avoid it my performance was impeded by occlusions in my circuits that would leave the both of us in a condition of considerable frustration. Worse, my very biology joined in the protest forcing me to suffer the embarrassment of a sperm count that a lab I visited at Connie’s insistence twice reported was “virtually negligible.”     Compounding these miseries, locking me deeper into paralysis as it increased my sense of urgency, was Connie’s evident disappointment in me; a disappointment that was evolving into disdain. Terms of endearment like “honey” and “sugar,” for example, were routinely being replaced by “washout” and “loser.” In my timorousness I’d become, in her eyes, something less than a man. Recalling her admission to me once that she’d believed that all Jewish men were extraordinary providers and natural born fathers—and having long before disabused her of the former assumption—I knew that I had no choice now but to keep the latter one alive.     Then, reasoning that a change of scene might turn the trick, Connie came up with the idea of spending a few days in the country together. When I agreed, she arranged for us to stay with our friend Betsy who ran a little print shop out of her ramshackle house in a Catskill town not far from Kingston.     With Connie’s patience rapidly dissolving it was, I knew, something like now or never for me and I geared myself as best I could. Scrupulously adhering to a plan we devised—a month of wholesome foods and regimented exercise; no masturbation for a fortnight—I made ready to win a war with myself.     But arriving upstate, I felt like a German soldier must have felt upon arriving at the Russian front. It was the middle of winter, the sky was low and gray, the snowdrifts were thigh-high and the temperature was near to zero. This was not exactly an atmosphere conducive to a successful completion of the undertaking at hand—especially not when in the back bedroom to which Betsy assigned us (and which she used to store old printing equipment and bound stacks of yellowing posters and flyers), you could see your breath and needed to wear a coat.     But as inopportune and unlikely as the setting may have been, it was on our second afternoon there that a child was conceived.     I should say, first of all, that I was feeling physically ill—and it wasn’t only that I was on the edge of a cold. If, having lived all of my life in city apartments, heating oil prices were never a concern for me, they were for Betsy and she usually made that very clear. On this day, however, in a generous but woefully misguided demonstration of support, she had pumped the thermostat up to steam bath levels. The oppressive heat, coupled with an effluvium of musty furniture and nasty chemical compounds, threatened my ability to both keep my lunch AND remain conscious.     In any case, with Betsy at work out front, Connie, after giving me a thumbs up sign, took off her clothes and arranged them carefully over a chair. Deliberately presenting her bottom to me as she bent to the bed to pull away the quilts, she followed this maneuver by abruptly turning around and flopping onto the bed on her back. Then, reaching for a pillow, she propped it under her buttocks and spread her legs.     “Stevie, do you feel it too? It’s as though there’s a spirit hovering near us waiting to be born again.”     “Great,” I said, removing my pants. “I hope it’s the spirit of a heavy-duty bond trader who happened to have a coronary while he was up here for a weekend. Please don’t let it be one of the local yahoos who ran his pickup into a tree.”     I entered her immediately—it had, after all, been two weeks. But just as quickly I knew I was going to wither. My deprived penis’s rote reaction to a welcoming vagina notwithstanding, the gravity of the occasion continued to undermine me. Still, I’d made a compact which I had to honor and I began to leaf through bodies, shuffle through poses, postures and configurations in my personal mental Kama Sutra file—then, beginning to panic and sweating obnoxiously—to ransack my memory and imagination. But no one and no thing I could remember or think to want would keep me up, let alone elicit he participation of my gonads. I tried, with my hand, to STUFF it in. I would happily have settled for a premature orgasm.     “Stop,” Connie said. She squeezed out from under me and, her hair trailing along my chest and stomach, ran her tongue down the length of my torso to the numb thing between my legs.     A determined virgin into her early twenties—she had not permitted a man inside her until she was twenty-three—Connie’d had more than a little experience keeping boyfriends with her mouth. In seconds, my mental state notwithstanding, she got it half way up and we tried again. But once more I evacuated her ignominiously and she was obliged to root in me again. Ten minutes must have passed before she raised her head. I was expecting an expression of scorn. Look, I was prepared to say, I’m sorry. This is really out of my hands. But Connie was grinning at me. Crawling backwards a little, she reached her arm under my legs and lifted them until they were almost perpendicular to the bed. Then, holding my haunches up and steady with both of her hands, she lowered her head to my starkly exposed ass and drove her tongue as deep as she could into my rectum. Lingering there for a while, she finally came out from under me and, brushing it against my nostrils en route, brought her mouth to my ear.     “You little Jew bastard,” she whispered. “I wish you’d be the lesbian you are right now because what I really want to do is eat your pussy.”     Score one for Connie’s acumen and her resourcefulness in an emergency. “Harder,” she was instructing me after no more than a minute had elapsed. “Go deeper. Yeah! Oh! Splash.”     Cody was born nine months later, almost to the day. Nature being oblivious to human expectations of justice and symmetry, he had, contrary to the circumstances of his conception, both a proper allotment of toes and fingers and a countenance that was amazingly genuine in its sweetness and innocence. I mean there was nothing unhealthy or freakish about him, nothing that was even remotely Damien-ish. By every measure he was a wonderful specimen.     And me? Well, I was worn by then to a physical as well as emotional nub—I lost fifteen pounds during Connie’s pregnancy that I didn’t need to lose. But not dropping dead with Cody’s arrival had a salutary effect on my nerves that was almost immediate. I was still filled with trepidation, of course, but—my panic significantly less clamorous and debilitating, my not so quiet desperation much quieter—it was, relatively speaking, a manageable trepidation.     Just days after his birth I was, in fact, as close as I get to all right again.

Robert Levin Bio     Robert Levin is the author of “When Pacino’s Hot, I’m Hot: A Miscellany of Stories and Commentary” (The Drill Press), and the coauthor and coeditor, respectively, of two collections of essays about jazz and rock in the ‘60s: “Music & Politics” (World Publishing) and “Giants of Black Music” (Da Capo Press).

African Sun John Atkinson     02/08/05. The expiry date stamped on the faded white box of the Combivir was over three years ago. Dr. Higgins didn’t bat an eyelid as he handed it over to the emaciated, faceless blur in front of him. He gestured the figure out of the way, not registering sex, age or the desperation that raged in her eyes. “Next.” he called, past her to the crowd. Africa was like that; expiry dates mean nothing when the dated product is all that is available. And the individual is nothing compared to the constant mass of people; the feverish press of bony hands that clutch almost useless grey boxes to their chests. Africa strips your compassion, there is simply no room for it amongst the dust, the sun and the haze of bodies that every day clamour for the cast off medication, so generously ‘given’ by the companies who cannot legally keep it on their shelves.     “Next, next.” He had barely even glanced at his clipboard of names, the guards patrolling the queue would turn back those who have no place here. He took a moment to glance down at the pile of boxes before him. The faded blue logo of PharmaGlobe hovering above prescription information that half of these patients couldn’t read or follow. He passed the box to the waiting hand and picked up another. The figure before him was a young woman, carrying a child. “HIV positive?” he asked her. She nodded. “The child?” She nodded again. “I can’t give these drugs to children, do you understand? I’m sorry, I can’t give them to you.” The woman stared at him for a moment before reaching for the box in his hands. “No,” he repeated, shaking his head for emphasis. “Not for the child.” He gestured at her baby, “I can’t give them to children.” The woman was looking at him, shaking her head and reaching for the box. “No. I’m sorry.” She didn’t understand, even when the guards dragged her away she screamed her incomprehension back at him. “I’m sorry,” he called after her. “Are you?” Dr. Malek’s lilting accent enquired. Higgins turned to his habitually silent partner at the desk in the middle of the dusty, dirty town that, in turn, was in the middle of the desert. “No. No I’m not. How can I be? We turn a hundred people away a day, people not on our list, people who are too far gone, people like her who would share and run out and end up worse. I can’t care for any of them and even the at the clinic it feels like we are wasting our time.” Malek looked over his wire framed, round glasses and blew a plume of cigarette smoke out before answering. “You’ve been here what? Five months? I’ve been here for three. Fucking. Years. It doesn’t get easier, it just gets... normal. What’s wrong with the clinic?” “Side effects,” Higgins replied. “Too many and too dangerous, especially in HIV patients.” “Don’t worry about it,” replied Malek. “PharmaGlobe has a good track record of, how to put it? Overcoming obstacles.” “Yeah, so I’ve heard. Is that true though or just rumour? How could they get away with it?”     “My friend, this is Africa,” said Malek. “You can get away with anything here.” **     The dull green screens blocked Farouq Bulakwal’s view of the rest of the infirmary. For seven days now he had been surrounded by green screens, white coats, silver needles and the dark red of venous blood. He had learnt to identify the doctors assigned to him by the sound of their approach. Dr. Winston had a confident stride and thick soled shoes that clicked on the tiled floor. Dr. Higgins, on the other hand, seemed to scurry; his feet making scuffling and tinny sounds. But it was neither of these treads that approached him as he lay dying in the stifling, stinking hut that passed for an infirmary in Malawi. The steps that approached him were soft and slow; steady. They came to a halt at the edge of the screen and the smiling, slightly sad-looking, face of Nurse Saada appeared before the rest of her squeezed through the tiny gap in the screens.     Saada looked down at Farouq’s ashen face; his brow covered in beads of sweat and his lips twisted into a grimace of pain and anger. He couldn’t seem to comprehend how tightly the tuberculosis had him in its grip. She mopped his face with a cool, wet towel and spoke to him as he lay motionless and perspiring in the bed. She spoke to him as she worked; reassurances and promises that could never be kept, not with the disease coursing through his veins.     Slowly she withdrew the IV needle from the catheter on Farouq’s arm. The hanging bag of ST-1067836/Saline-0.25mM/litre was nearly empty. She replaced it with another bag, bearing the signatures of both Dr. Higgins and the trial leader Professor Burns. Nurse Saada didn’t know a lot about ST-1067836, patented under then name Cyclosporadulin, but she did know that it wasn’t doing Mr. Bulakwal any good at all. She slid the needle back into his arm, resolving to speak to Dr. Higgins about the effects of the drug and the possible consequences of its use. As soon as the needle was replaced Nurse Saada left, there was nothing more she could do for Farouq; only wait and hope the trial was a success.     Throughout his brief encounter with Nurse Saada, Farouq Bulakwal had been fully cognitive and fully aware of his surroundings. He remained, however, totally unable to move. **     The white skin of Dr. Higgins’s arm contrasted sharply with the black neck it was curled around. The post coital smile of Nurse Saada didn’t last long on her face. She turned to face Dr. Higgins and spoke frankly. “The Cyclosporadulin you and Burns are giving to the patients in the clinic.” Higgins groaned and rolled away from her. “Not that again Sa, you know I shouldn’t have told you anything about it in the first place.” “You said it was a drug to treat TB yes?” Higgins sighed, rolled back and propped himself up on one elbow. “Yes,” he replied. “A new TB treatment drug from PharmaGlobe.” “Why is it that some of the patients are getting better and some are getting worse? I was treating Mr Bulakwal today and he seems to be completely catatonic. He was fine before you started dripping that crap into him.” “Fine?” Dr. Higgins was incredulous. “He was dying of TB for God’s sake!” “You know what I mean, he could move and speak and everything, and now he can’t.” “Well that is one of the side-effects that Professor Burns and I are investigating.” “Side-effects? For fuck’s sake Timothy, are you telling me that this drug hasn’t even undergone clinical trials?”     Timothy Higgins gave her a long look. “What, in Christ’s name, do you think we are doing at the clinic!” “That’s illegal! You can’t administer drugs to patients without trials! Those patients haven’t even signed papers to acknowledge the trial. They know nothing, the nurses know nothing and you and Burns strut around handing out life and death! That drug is killing my patients Tim!” “Alright, alright already. I’ll talk to Burns about it, see if we can finish the trial early. God knows some of these patients are never going to get better.” **     Farouq Bulakwal lay in green-screened slumber in the hot humidity of the clinic. He stirred as he heard the footsteps approaching; the quick clicks of Burns and the timid shuffle of Higgins. He heard their raised voices grow louder as they neared his bed. The two men squeezed through the gap in the screens and stood over Farouq’s bed, looking down upon him like the harbingers of death that they were.     “Look at him Dan, I mean look at him.” Farouq lay emaciated on a filthy sheet. A slow trickle of blood leaked from his mouth and his eyes flickered open and closed, unfocused and yellow with fever. “Yeah, look around you Tim. Everyone here looks like shit.” “But he was getting better. The Nurse here, Saada, said that before we started giving him Cyclosporadulin he was responding to the treatment he was on. Now look at him; catatonic, feverish, oral and nasal haemorrhage.”     “HIV positive?” Burns knew the answer before he even asked. “Yes,” came the reply. “The same as all the rest.” Higgins wiped his brow and looked again at the hopeless man and shuddered out a sighing breath. “I’ll start looking for a non-HIV patient to replace him in the trial. And I’ll think of something to tell Saada.” “See that you do,” replied Burns. “There is a lot of money in developing this treatment. PharmaGlobe seem to think a TB pandemic is imminent and their head start on the competition could spell big money for all involved.” He looked pointedly at Higgins to insure his point had been taken before turning on his heel and leaving. **     The next day when Saada slipped through the gap in the screens she thought, momentarily, that a miracle had occurred. The man in Farouq’s bed was sitting up and eating the clinic’s morning meal of bread and bouilli. It was only when Saada realised that the man in Farouq’s bed was not Farouq that she began to shout for Higgins, for Burns, for anyone. The bed’s new occupant seemed perplexed by the reaction of his nurse, but happily resumed his breakfast once she had been removed from the clinic. The bag attached to his IV-drip feeding ST-1067836 into his veins. His TB was at an early phase, recently detected and easy to treat. He made the perfect replacement for the dead Farouq, and no-one would even know. This patient had been fully screened and blood-tested; there was no chance of this one dropping dead in the middle of the trial. **     By the time Dr. Higgins had caught up with Saada he thought she would have calmed down. In actual fact, she had whipped herself into a frenzy. “I couldn’t tell you,” were his first words to her. “They don’t know about us, and even if they did I can’t tell anyone about the trials we’re doing in the clinic. Do you have any idea how much money is at stake here? And this is Africa Saada, no one keeps track of things here. It’d be so easy for them to just make us disappear if they had even the slightest inkling that I’d told you anything about the drug or the trial.”     She stared at him, aghast for a moment. “I don’t care about your fucking trial! What did you do to Farouq? Why is there another man in his bed and absolutely no record of Farouq Bulakwal ever having been in our clinic? Answer me! What did you do with him?” It was Higgins’ turn to look aghast at the woman stood across from him. “That’s the whole point!” he cried. “He was part of the trial! A vital part. This fucking treatment works fine on healthy people, TB remission in 3 months, far faster than rifampicin and no side-effects. No side-effects they told us! Not if you don’t count an actual <>Iacceleration of the disease in HIV positive patients as a side-effect. Their lungs turn solid almost overnight, they become virtually paralysed, their soft tissues start to haemorrhage and they quickly lose all cognitive ability.” Saada’s mouth was hanging open. “You know all this? You and Burns, that’s what you’ve been testing? So what Farouq died and you just wrote it down on your little clipboard and wheeled him down to the morgue?”     Higgins had, at least, the grace to look ashamed. “I’m afraid not. PharmaGlobe need this drug. They’re on the brink you see; share prices going down, pressure from the board. They told us ‘no side-effects’.” “So what are you telling me?” Saada asked, incredulous. “The trials are a fucking fix?” “Yes. We had to remove Mr. Bulakwal from the trial and replace him with a non-HIV positive patient. One for whom we can note down ‘no side-effects’. PharmaGlobe need this Saada, and they are paying big for it. We can’t afford for this trial to go downhill and neither can PharmaGlobe, they’ll do anything to push this drug through. Anything.” **     Burns blew out a mouthful of cigarette smoke in frustration. The voice on the other end of the telephone was speaking gibberish. Higgins? Higgins was a good man, a little shy and nervous sure but essentially a good man and a good doctor. Maybe that was the problem. “Listen,” Burns interrupted the voice. “I simply don’t believe it. Higgins would never get caught up in something like this. He’s as passionate about this project as I am.” The tinny voice from PharmaGlobe spoke again, sweeping away any doubts Burns may have had. “Well of course it wasn’t me! I don’t understand it! Higgins never seemed the sort of guy to talk to the press about something like this. No. No, of course it wasn’t me. I’ll try to find him. What do you mean ‘not necessary’?” The line went dead with a faint click.      “Shit,” said Burns, slamming the telephone back into it’s cradle. **     “The press? You spoke to the fucking papers about this?” Higgins was livid, since he had told Saada the bitter truths of the clinical trial she had insisted they make a run for it. He wasn’t convinced it was a good idea but she had threatened to go without him and he couldn’t allow her to go off on her own with the knowledge he’d given her. Plus he liked her and felt a protective desire to keep her safe. “I wanted to keep you safe,” he roared. “I was trying to look after you and you go and do something like this? Only Burns and I knew the details of that trial. All PharmaGlobe need to do is call Burns, find out I’m missing and they’ll know I told someone. How could you be so stupid?”     “Stupid? Me Stupid? It is illegal Tim! What you and Burns and the drugs companies are doing in Africa is illegal. I’ve watched the West take and take from Africa for years, always thinking that there was nothing I could do to change it, nothing I could do to hit back at them. At you! Well now I have. I don’t care if they kill me for it, I don’t care as long as the world knows. As long as people know and people make it stop.”     “And what about me Saada?” There were tears in Higgins’ words. “Don’t you care what they’ll do to me?”     She looked him in the eyes, the pale blue eyes she had once thought so dreamy, but now flickered with cowardice. “You. You were responsible for the deaths of all those people in the clinic. Men, women, all of them. All you will get for this is what you deserve. Goodbye, Higgins.”     Higgins sank to his knees, the tears already spilling down his cheeks. He was still there, weeping under the African sun, when the black Land-rovers arrived an hour later. **     “Yes,” said Burns to the tinny voice from PharmaGlobe. “Yes, as you say. Oh yes, Dr. Malek has settled in just fine, yes. Helping to finalise the results. So, got her as well then? And the reporter? Lucky break for you guys then eh? No, I know. No, certainly not. Yes, report’ll be on your desk in the morning. No, Sir. Goodbye.”

Daffodil’s Dion Beary     “My client will now be taking a few questions. Keep them short. She’s only got fifteen minutes. Please, no pictures. She says press conferences are as pointless as staring into the sky and that all those flashing lights make her feel as if the stars are exploding one by one. Isn’t that amazing people? She’s made you into a metaphor! Count yourselves lucky.”     Daffodil’s agent had made the speech several times before. It was also his job to have security remove anyone who broke those very simple rules. Daffodil should not be agitated. She was his livelihood, and he loved her for that reason. The fee for his love was 5% of everything Daffodil made.     When the hands flew up, he selected a thin older woman with a face that looked as if it was composed of broken parts of other faces.     “And what is your name?” Daffodil’s agent asked?     “I’m Mrs. Huffington,” she replied.     “And what is your question for Daffodil?”     “What is your motivation for writing such magnificent poetry?”     Daffodil answered, speaking for the first time during the press conference. “I like to sit in my garden and tend to the plants that grow there. But sometimes it gets too hot or it rains. So, I write a poem instead. Next question.”     Daffodil’s agent called on a chubby man who may or may not have been a pig in a man suit. “And what’s your name?”     “I’m Mr. Beck,” he replied. “Daffodil, many famous poets of the past have commented on what exactly it means to be a poet. Where do you weigh in on this?”     “I consider myself more of a comedian than a poet, actually,” she said. “Who’s next?”     Daffodil’s agent selected an attractive man who was too young for his white hair, but too old for his shiny blue eyes.     “What’s your name?” Daffodil’s agent asked.     “I’m Mr. Cooper,” he replied.     “And your question?”     “Do you find writing poetry to be a meticulous, difficult, intricate process?”     Daffodil made a face as if she was thinking about the question, but that was just to keep appearances up. She was quite the actor. “Each one of my poems takes exactly twenty-eight seconds to construct in my mind. As soon as I’m done, I forget it. It sometimes takes me weeks to remember it, and by then, it’s typically a different poem than it was before. Then, I write it down.” The press recorded every word of this bullshit. Coming up with ridiculous statements about her poetry was becoming one of the few things that gave Daffodil any joy. Someone once compared fame to a monster. Daffodil couldn’t readily remember who that was, probably Plato, but she agreed with them full heartedly. This monster starting to swallow her.     Looking out into the pit of faces all there to question her every motive, she suddenly felt faint. There was too much attention, too many eyes. The color fled from her face, and she became pale. Her throat felt scratchy and tight, which made her cough, and she became pink. Her stomach began to spin, and she became green. The press saw this brilliant rainbow and anxiously began snapping pictures. The clicks and pops and flashes made her dizzy. Her world became brighter and brighter until it was all as white as blank paper. She fainted and collapsed on the ground.     “That’s it!” her agent yelled. “You have all broken the rules. This press conference is over. Security! Get everyone out of here.” As the room emptied out noisily, Daffodil’s agent stood above her shaking his head. He sighed.     “Can we just get through one press conference without you fainting?” He leaned down and picked up her limp body, tossing her over his shoulder. “You’ve got a reading tonight in Denver.”     She groggily mumbled something. ***     Daffodil Lansley knew poetry was a joke. This gave her a leg up on her contemporaries. At the age of sixteen while discussing Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain” in her English class, her note-taking hand seemed to briefly take on a life of its own, so instead of writing background information about Whitman’s admiration of Abraham Lincoln, she wrote this phrase: “This is all a bit silly, isn’t it?”     Once she realized this, poetry came to her with ease. She’d write the most ridiculous things she could think of: poems consisting of nothing but punctuation, poems that were actually just doodles of people she saw on the bus, poems that were just the word “poem” over and over again. She showed the poems to her friends and teachers and laughed to herself whenever they complimented her on how great they were. The laughs really started rolling in when she submitted a few of the poems to a publisher one night. When he emailed her back, begging to publish anything and everything she had, Daffodil laughed harder than she would ever laugh again.     Four years later, she published a collection of poetry called Masturbation. It contained twenty poems, some as short as one word long (one such word being “applesauce”) and some exceeding 70,000 words in length. Daffodil figured that she could make a little bit of a money off the thing, at least enough to fund her gardening, which was starting to get a little expensive to keep up, because sometimes things get out of hand, and what starts out as simple becomes too much for one person to handle. Daffodil was still young, and she didn’t know this yet. ***     Critics were calling her the savior of the poetic form. They praised her ability to mix experimentation with accessibility and used just about every nonsensical adjective at their disposal to describe the collection. She was featured on every popular talk show and put on the cover of every popular magazine. After a reading of one of her poems in the drought stricken city of Nakuru, Kenya, the entire Great Rift Valley was bathed in rain for ten straight days. Several doctors, moved to action by the brilliance of her poetry, pulled an all-nighter at an IHOP in Idaho Falls and were able to come up with several possible cures for leukemia. On an episode of The Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan read a few excerpts from Daffodil’s collection to an unruly cocker spaniel. The dog’s behavior from that point on was exemplary.     But her most striking success was with high school students. All around the world, teenagers could be found with copies of the collection, posting excerpts from it as their Facebook status, and spontaneously reciting lines from it whenever appropriate. Many of them were paying attention to poetry for the first time, and they eagerly sought out more poets to sate their new taste. Daffodil had single-handedly popularized poetry amongst the Twitter generation. There was, of course, the little problem of her fainting occasionally during interviews and press conferences, but why take her off the road when she was only becoming more and more successful? her agent reasoned. He said to her one night in a hotel room in Dallas, “You’re on fire, Daffodil.”     “I do feel like I’m burning down,” she replied.     “Oh, you and your metaphors,” he said. “Such a poet. Now get some sleep. You’ve got Larry King tomorrow.”     “This isn’t funny anymore,” she said to him. Laying herself down on the bed, she allowed exhaustion to get the best of her and she fell asleep. As soon as her breathing was slow and rhythmic, her agent began clipping her hair. Locks of Daffodil’s brown hair were going for $50 on Amazon, and since hair was made in her body, he figured he was entitled to at least 5% of it. ***     It was a movement, and every movement needs its pivotal moments, something for the history books, something to prove that whatever was happening actually happened. One night, four kids got together and decided to provide the movement with just that sort of moment.      The plan was to stage a poetry festival. They’d invite popular poets from all over the world to read entire collections on five different stages set up on a farm somewhere in the Midwest. They hadn’t settled on a specific farm, although they knew it probably wouldn’t be difficult to find one once they got out there. They decided they would hold poetry workshops, slam poetry sessions, poetry contests, put up giant cardboard cutouts of famous poets, and most importantly, they could charge people $50 a ticket and sell them overpriced food, water, and t-shirts with ironic phrases on them (their favorite being one with a picture of Emily Dickinson running around with this phrase written under it: “I’d love to — stay and talk — but I’ve got — to dash!”). But they knew if they were to have any hope of getting lots of people to buy tickets to their stupid festival, they’d need Daffodil Lansley as the headliner. She was the one responsible for this movement, the focal point of her entire genre. Without her, no one would give a shit. They decided to call it The Poetry Extravaganza featuring Daffodil Lansley.     The kids went to Daffodil’s front door and buzzed the buzzer. There were four of them, two boys and two girls, and they’d all dolled themselves up just a little bit. Business casual, the capitalists would call it. The girls were in pretty Sunday dresses covered in flowers, while the boys wore striped polos and khaki pants. Hair combed, fingernails cleaned, too much perfume and body spray, and these were the poetry enthusiasts, the free spirits.     They sipped tea in Daffodil’s living room while explaining their project to her.     “We can define our generation here and now,” one of the boys said, the skinnier one.     “And we’d make a lot of money,” the larger boy chimed in. “We would, of course, be willing to pay you a substantial amount.”     “We know that genius isn’t free,” said the round girl.     “And neither is poetry,” said the girl shaped like a pear.     Daffodil listened in only mild interest. She’d been growing more and more concerned with poetry-as-fad and the role she played in the this new trending topic. Poetry was just a joke, and she knew this, but these kids believed in it, couldn’t see past the smoke and mirrors of it all. And there were thousands, if not millions, more like them. It all made her a little paranoid and uneasy.     Finally, the kids put down their teacups and put on their adorable little serious faces.     “We need you to be our headliner,” the large boy said, “or our event, this movement, won’t be successful.”     That word, “successful,” numbed Daffodil for a moment and she breathed deeply. She remembered how her teachers used to talk about poetry, how they said it had no rules, and there were so many different poets and poems and styles, and that chaos has made her feel free. But that was before she discovered poetry was just one big joke.     She realized then that she’d become a troll.     “No,” she said, looking the kids straight into their adorable little serious faces. “I can’t do this anymore. I won’t headline your festival. I can’t be your figure head. I’m retiring from poetry.”     Imagine Jesus Christ telling you he was an atheist, and that’s what those four kids were feeling at that moment; they knew they’d make less money.     The kids turned their adorable little serious faces up to maximum adorable seriousness.     “Daffodil, I don’t think you understand,” said the girl whose body shape was similar to that of a pear. “Don’t you realize how many critics would fall to the ground worshipping at your feet if you performed? The pictures from this event will line history books. Our movement and our generation will finally have something to call our own.”     “Plus,” the short boy said, “we already ordered over five hundred of those Emily Dickinson t-shirts.”     But Daffodil was steadfast. She’d seen a vision of herself as Chaucer’s Friar, selling false relics to the ignorant believers.     She shifted restlessly in her seat. “I think it’s time you left,” she said to them.     “But—”     “I’m sorry. The smell of Axe is giving me a headache.”     The two boys frowned a little at each other and then stood to leave, the girls following quickly behind. Alone again, she sat back in her living room and started to finish her tea. She looked forward to a day when she’d be able to sit on furniture in a living room in a house and drink tea from a cup without having to exploit people for it all. Tomorrow, she decided, she’d fire her agent and tell her publisher that Daffodil had died and been revived, had sinned, repented, and would, no doubt, be forgiven. Amen. ***     “Retire? You can’t retire,” Daffodil’s agent said the next morning. The two were walking through Daffodil’s garden.     “Well, I am. No more poetry. No more passing out at press conferences. From now on, I just want to be left alone,” she said. She carried a grass-woven basket on her arm and periodically stopped to bend over and pick a ripe strawberry.     “Is this a metaphor? Are you being symbolic?”     She stopped and turned to him. “Don’t you get it? It’s all a joke.”     “Dramatic irony, you mean?”     “What the hell are you talking about?” Daffodil bent over and picked up a handful of dirt. “Do you see this? It’s dirt. That’s all it is. And these strawberries are strawberries and my grass-woven basket is a grass-woven basket. It’s ridiculous to believe anything else.”     Daffodil began walking again, deeper into the garden. Her agent scratched his head, deciding the scene was simply too dense for him to decode. ***     When Daffodil’s retirement became public news, the outpouring of the over-the-top silliness was tremendous. People actually cried. CNN dedicated an entire day of coverage to the developing situation. Spaceships and planets fell out of the sky causing mass chaos and destruction. But Daffodil ignored it all. For the first time in four years she had no qualms at all about the life she was living. She’d taken a pilgrimage of the mind during those first few days out of the spotlight. The peace she found there was safe and warm and red and orange. So, while out gardening one warm afternoon, when the four kids came around her backyard, she was a little more than apprehensive. That paranoia eased its way under and up the back of her sundress.     The kids weren’t dressed as nicely as before. They wore their khaki cargo shorts and screen printed t-shirts and tight fitting jeans and halter tops. Casual, the capitalists would call it. They had changed the plans for the festival. The whole thing would be dedicated to her and her imminent retirement. And they would charge people $80 a ticket and sell them cookies with tiny haikus written on them and Allen Ginsberg wigs and funnel cakes. It would now be called Daffodil’s Retirement Party and Poetry Extravaganza featuring Some Other Poets Too.     They explained all this excitedly. “And, of course,” the round girl said, finishing up the speech, “we’d be willing to pay you a substantial amount of money.”     Had they not heard her before, she wondered? She stood up, clutching her tiny gardening shovel much tighter than she’d ever held a pen back in her days of poetic dominance (you know, like, last week). “Children,” she said, “I have found a peace amidst myself that I never found in poetry. I’m not going back to that life.” She wanted to tell them that poetry was just a joke, but she felt as if she’d be snatching blankets away from infants. After all, it was her fault they believed in poetry so much. She’d built her wealth and fame on kids just like these, and seeing how dedicated and passionate they seemed about poetry made her feel like a liar again. So, she explained to them once more, with words that were fire ants, that she would never again place herself into the poetry world. The kids’ ears burned and turned red and swelled to look like cauliflower.     Daffodil threw down her shovel and stormed inside as the kids watched on in silence. They just didn’t understand why the world’s greatest living artist would give up on everything for a life of normalcy, of sitting in the dirt in a garden. So, the kids destroyed the garden, pulled up all the daisies and carrots and strawberries and tomatoes and tulips and cabbage and daffodils. It took them almost an hour, and when they were done they salted the Earth so nothing would ever grow there again. ***     Years passed and poetry remained incredibly popular, mostly thanks to an additional collection of Daffodil’s poetry entitled Fetish, which had been locked up in the painfully slow publishing process, finally getting released. Daffodil’s fame was now replaced by a mythic legacy. She had completely withdrawn from public life. The only thing more intriguing than a superstar is a reclusive superstar.     Those four kids knew this, so they got together and rethought their plan. After forty days and forty nights of wandering in the desert of pontification, they finally concluded that the festival would now have to be Daffodil Lansley’s return concert. The whole thing would be dedicated to Daffodil’s triumphant return to the poetry landscape and perhaps it could coincide with the publishing of a new volume of poetry. They could charge people $250 a ticket and raffle off a Sylvia Plath Brand© Self-Cleaning Oven and serve all kinds of flavors of ice cream. It would now be called Daffodil’s Comeback Poetry Extravaganza featuring Promiscuous Sex.     So, again, they came to Daffodil’s door. They were stripped down to their underwear. The boys were in nothing but silk boxers, and the girls were in matching bras and panties, expensive ones from Victoria’s Secret. Sexy, the capitalists would call it.     When no one answered the door, they became concerned and began yelling through the door for Daffodil to come out and talk with them. They heard her voice come from inside, so quiet that the wind almost took it away before they could grab it.     “Go away and, please, never come back,” she said. “On my own, I have blazed more brightly than I ever could in the sunlight. I’ve found love in myself, the only place where it truly exists.” That right there is the joke of poetry, but she didn’t tell them that. The guilt of her exploitation was still too painful. On the occasions when she’d allow herself to think about it too much, it felt as if a van was rolling over her chest.     Speaking of vans, the kids then drove one through Daffodil’s front door. They needed to talk to her about the festival and none of them knew how to pick a lock, so it seemed like the most obvious solution. The wood splintered as beautifully as wood splintering after being hit by a van.     The two boys, who had driven the van through the door, hopped out the sides and, with the girls in tow, entered Daffodil’s house. The floors were a maze of potted plants. Daffodils grew tall in them, tall enough to look the kids straight in the eyes. It was an indoor daffodil forest. The kids probed the moment for a symbol, a conceit, a meaning, but instead heard the pained moans of Daffodil. She was curled up in a corner, blood trickling from her mouth like a newborn’s drool. There were tiny mountains of broken wood all around her. Something about driving a van through her front door was, apparently, dangerous to her health.     The kids watched her dying, half in ignorance and half in ignorance. Yes, completely in ignorance. They began to slowly take off their clothes until they were nothing more than bare chests, breasts, stomachs, dicks, thighs. Pornography, the capitalists would call it. Daffodil looked up at them, clutching her stomach, laying on a bed of splinters.     “Don’t you get it?” she said, her voice cracking and shaking. “Why don’t you get it?”     She was pleading with them to understand, but her universe was becoming dim and dull and dusty.     And then it died. Daffodil slumped down completely onto the floor, her body a stone, her soul a statue. The daffodils that created a forest in her home wilted, turned to grey, and disintegrated into dust. The kids watched all this and decided they were OK with it. Poetry may be a joke, but money is still real, they reasoned. Daffodil’s death was so trite, such a weak moment in her otherwise flawless career. The kids reasoned that they’d do a favor to her legacy by never mentioning it, and made a point of ignoring it whenever Daffodil was brought up in conversation amongst them. Every artist gets one free pass. ***     The poetry festival was held in honor of her memory. They charged people $700 a ticket and sold bumper stickers that read, “Daffodil Has My Back” And they sold Emily Dickinson t-shirts and cookies with haikus written on them and Allen Ginsberg wigs and a Sylvia Plath Brand© Self-Cleaning Oven and funnel cake. It was quite difficult to pull off, but the kids had help from a man who said he used to be Daffodil’s agent. They called the festival Daffodil’s. Hundreds of thousands of people attended, and all of them came completely naked, sweating and drooling and pissing on the farm ground below them. This was an orgy.     Years before, a young girl sat in her English class, listening to a lecture on Walt Whitman and, barely thinking, jotted down this note: “This is all a bit silly, isn’t it?”

Dion Beary Bio     Dion Beary is an aspiring writer studying English at a private university in Charlotte. He enjoys writing about people and how they interact with each other. In 2010, he won the Marjorie Blankenship Melton Creative Writing Award in Nonfiction.

Sunrise Ryan G. Beckman     Ian’s mother died over winter break when we were seniors at Rutgers. We were in the living room of our apartment, vermin free, but that’s the best you could say. Wood floors blackened by years of dirt, cracked walls that looked like load bearing spackle. The wind came through glass panes like they were screen. We were watching Groundhog Day, the right movie for the weather. It was a few days before he was going home for Christmas and we were drinking Red Stripe and smoking a joint when his phone rang. He looked at the number: it was his cousin. “I’ll call him back.” A minute later his cousin called again, then his aunt.     He was looking down at her number while he finished the beer; smoke curled around his hand as answered the phone. She was conscious, but they told him to get there as soon as he could.     He didn’t say what was going on, just asked for a ride. I’d only had a few sips of my beer so I grabbed my keys and we went out to the car: it’s an olive LeBaron, a few years my senior. The cloth that covered the ceiling fell off, exposing flesh colored foam; when it rains, the interior smells like my grandfather’s attic.     Ian nestled into the passenger seat, head back and looking out his window, legs bent and pulled close to his chest. On Route 18, he put his feet to the floor and asked if I had another joint. I put one to my lips to light it, took a puff and then passed it to him; I didn’t say anything when he didn’t pass it back.     He told me that it probably wasn’t a big deal, she was probably fine. He said something happened with his mother.     I knew it was really bad when he wasn’t concerned. He’s not the type to brush things off. A few months ago, he went to the doctor convinced he had a tumor; it was a pimple. He almost looked proud when he said the doctor laughed at him. He explained that he’d rather expect the worst and be surprised with good news than deal with disappointment.     We took the exit for the Turnpike. I pulled up to the tollbooth to grab my ticket from the machine. “Can you hold this?” He put it under his leg so it wouldn’t follow the smoke out the open windows. I took the ramp for the Turnpike North and we saw signs saying that exit 11 was eight miles away.     I heard him sniffle and tried thinking it was the cold weather. I asked if he was alright; when I looked over, he was wiping his nose across the sleeve of his sweater. He shook his head and said, “I hate the turnpike.” I asked if it was the smell of industrial waste, of the meadowlands. He just stared straight ahead and explained that when he’s on the turnpike he can only pay attention to the next exit. “On the parkway, it’s just an hour twenty and you’re in Bergen County; the turnpike feels too compartmentalized.” He rambled on for a bit; when he trailed off, I told him, “the turnpike actually is faster.” As we passed the five mile marker for exit 11, he said “It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t feel that way.”     We were silent for a minute and, to say something, I started talking about the fisheye lens I’d just bought, telling him it’s 12mm, it’s got a high aperture, shit I don’t think he would’ve cared about under normal circumstances. “It’s really great for low light.” The whole time, he just keeps nodding along to the soundtrack of my voice.     Four miles before the cluster of exits at 14(a-d) and I realized my tank was almost empty. “I’m going to need to stop to get gas.” He reminded me that there was a station around exit 16 so I didn’t have to get off the road. He flicked the roach out his window and watched the cherry bouncing across the dark highway in the sideview.     As he rolled the window up, he started talking about graduating, about the astronomy course he’d be in the following semester. He’s not a photographer, but he told me about film technology, how it got pushed forward to assist astrophysicists. “Kodak didn’t really care about photographers.” He talked about blue and red sensitive film, about the different stars they enhance and obscure. Then he paused in the middle of a sentence to ask me what he’d do if his mom died. I took my eyes off the road to look over at him sliding through patches of streetlight, not looking sad so much as vacant.     I said, “It’s ok, I’m sure she’ll be fine.” Because really, who’s going to be a dick and say you were wrong when his mom dies.     When I was filling up with gas, Ian went to the bathroom and came back with half a roll of toilet paper in hand. I told him he wasn’t allowed to shit in the car and he forced a smile. He spent the rest of the ride filling his pockets with used tissues. I didn’t know what to say; I tried not to look over at him.     We got to the hospital and I pulled up in front to drop him off, but he said to park, “Another minute won’t make a difference.” Inside, he said we were looking for the ER. We followed signs through a labyrinth of hallways covered in paintings of the same purple flowers, the same basket of still life. When we got to a set of double doors with Emergency Room painted on them, someone tapped Ian on his shoulder: it was his cousin James. He’s tall, probably 6'2 and he’s built like a football player, like a lineman. His short, choppy words bracing against any possible emotion: “They’re in the room on the left.” He didn’t look at Ian when he said this, reflective eyes just staring at his shoes.     We opened the door and his Aunt came out and gave him a big hug. She introduced herself to me as Abby. When I went to shake her hand, she hugged me tightly then went back into the room; I asked Ian if I should wait outside, but he said, “She’d be happy to see you again.” Still, I felt strange: I’d only been out to dinner with him and his mom twice when she came to pick him up in New Brunswick. Both times were with other roommates of ours. I hadn’t said much more than hello or thank you to her.     Inside the room, everything seemed quiet. Every three seconds there was a beep or the press of her ventilator, but the noise coming from the machines just punctuated the silence from the rest of us, from his mother.     His aunt told us that they were trying to transfer her to a room upstairs, but she couldn’t remember the ward. She started crying a little, but you couldn’t hear it in her voice. Ian walked over to the bed and just looked at his mother. He asked if she was asleep. “The nurses are waking her up every now and then to make sure she doesn’t slip into a coma.” Later on we found out it was just to see if she’d gone into one. Abby walked over and tapped her sister on the shoulder, saying “Ian is here.” She kept tapping her, hitting a little harder each time, the whispers getting awkwardly loud.     She left the room and Ian stood, reaching towards her hand, but pulling back each time. His aunt came back with a nurse who shook Ian’s mother. He asked the nurse if she should be doing that and we were told that she wasn’t shaking very hard. “Ms. Rosen,” she said, “can you open your eyes?” She repeated this a few times before we heard groaning. Eeeehh ahhh oeee. The nurse shook her again, “can you open your eyes?”     Mrs. Rosen was groaning; Ian’s hand was covering his mouth, his head shaking side to side; his aunt told the nurse to stop. Ian took his mother’s right hand, the one that machines weren’t connected to, “I think she’s saying they are open.”     From over his shoulder, I could see her eyelids flutter, but unable to part.     The nurse looked down, “Ms. Rosen, your son is here. Can you say hi to him? We’ll let you get back to sleep if you say hi to him.”     There was a pause with a few beeps. Her lips didn’t move, but we all heard her: Iiiiiii; it was the last thing she said.     The nurse wrote something on the chart, checked her watch, then walked out of the room. Ian kissed his mother on the forehead. His aunt walked over to the other side of her sister, fingering her hair. I wondered if his mother could feel Ian’s skin through her dreams the way I do when someone is sleeping beside me.     I excused myself from the room and found his cousin pacing the hallway. He told me that she was at the grocery store when she lost her balance and fell down; she called the ambulance, but couldn’t get up. When she got to the hospital, they performed a CAT scan and something ruptured; her brain was hemorrhaging.     While I was out, talking to the cousin, Ian must’ve been getting the same story from his aunt. He came out of the room, walked past us and went into the bathroom. It sounded like a stall door slamming shut; there was silence for a few minutes, then another slam; when he came back, he had a fistful of toilet paper, his face was pink, the knuckles of his right hand were bleeding.     “The doctors will be taking another CAT scan in a little while; the bleeding might stop itself, but if it gets worse, they’ll have to operate.” He asked if I wanted to leave, “My aunt said she’d give me a ride back to New Brunswick,” but I knew he wasn’t leaving the hospital anytime soon.     I wanted to go, but it felt wrong to leave the situation, no matter how detached from it I’d normally be. I told him I’d stick around as long as I found something to eat. So when Ian and his cousin went back to his mother’s room, I found a vending machine with hot food; I got onion rings and mozzarella sticks. It was better than I expected. After eating, I wiped my greasy hands on my pants and walked in to the room thumbing my face to make sure I didn’t have crumbs in my beard.     Abby was sitting in a rose colored chair; James was on the floor beside her. When I walked in they both looked at me, but didn’t say anything. Ian was standing bedside, holding his mother’s hand like a kid waiting to cross the street. We heard footsteps walk past; the aunt switched places with Ian and asked how classes went this semester. They talked about James’ first year at college. While they talked, they were looking at the walls: a picture of a bird, a box of rubber gloves, and a chest of drawers under a sink; next to one door is a silver wastebasket and a few sharps containers, a wall hook and several bins loaded with plastic across the room. The last wall, everyone avoided: head of the bed, monitors, one of those old-school clocks with a rigid second hand.     Eventually, the orderlies took Mrs. Rosen out of the room for her scan. We were escorted to a waiting room and told that someone would let us know how things were going in about half an hour. Ian said he was hungry, so I showed him the vending machine and we got french fries. He was entertained by the mechanized cooking, so we got a second batch that neither of us ate.     Back in the waiting room, Ian took the used tissues out of his pocket and threw them into a garbage can one at a time. I remember watching him and thinking about the conversation we’d had about the turnpike. A doctor found us and explained that the hemorrhage had gotten worse, that the bleeding caused the brain to swell, that it was choking itself of oxygen. They’d bring her up to surgery in about two hours, the earliest the surgeon was available. They would drill into her skull and drain the fluid out, “The procedure is fairly simple, it’s just a question as to how she recovers.” He’d paused before saying “how,” probably debating whether he should say, “if she recovers.”     He asked if there were any questions. His aunt asked for the cause and the doctor suggested a combination of her blood pressure and her medication.     Ian turned to me and said to leave, “I’ll let you know how things go.”     On the drive home I listened to the radio and thought about my parents sleeping in the house I grew up in. At the apartment I sat down on the couch with another Red Stripe, chilled by the absence of people and emotion. I put the movie back on, but stopped it shortly after. It felt wrong to watch the rest of it without Ian.     I went back to the hospital two days later. Ian called me and said to bring my camera to the ICU; I thought it was good news so I picked up a get well soon balloon on my way over. It felt wrong to bring a camera into the hospital, so I just grabbed my pocket sized point and shoot.     I passed a waiting room and saw James, Abby, and Ian’s uncle. He’s bald and overweight the way retired bodybuilders can get, paint was speckled across his boots. Abby gave me another clinging hug and I asked how things went. She told me, “Not so well.” Her lips pursed, her sister brain dead. She was looking at the balloon when she said, “the doctors told us there’s no chance for recovery at this point.” She was in the same jeans, same sweater I saw her in the other night, her face looked chapped and the bottom of her nose was raw. She hugged me again, then thanked me for coming back. The uncle, Bill, shook my hand from his chair. He had one of those bone crushing grips. James was looking at the floor, ears angled towards the TV that was airing a football game.     In the hallway I heard yelling. I wandered around a few corners and saw an elderly woman standing on her bed and screaming at a small man in scrubs. He was slightly hunched over with his arms spread wide. It looked like he was debating whether to catch or tackle her.     “You’re all fucking crazy, there’s nothing wrong with me....” I went to the doorway, “Ma’am?” They both look in my direction.     I told her I brought the balloon for her. She smiled like a child and brought her hands together under her lips. She put a hand on the mattress, went down to her knees and asked the orderly for help getting off of the bed. She kissed my cheek before I left.     Around the corner I found Ian sitting in the room with his mother. He was leaning over her body, holding her right hand and resting his head on her stomach. Everything above her eyes was enshrined with gauze. In addition to the tubes going in and out of her left arm, there were two coming from her head. One snaked its way from behind her, it was red and dropping the contents into a bag near the ventilator: the exact opposite of an IV drip. The other tube ran clear and stuck out from her forehead, an unnatural human unicorn. She looked plastic, her chest rose with the machine in the corner.     There was a wire going from Ian’s ear to hers, from each of them to an MP3 player. I waited a few minutes, until some songs had ended. When he took the headphones off, I coughed so he would turn around. He looked tired.     “I think she liked Louis Armstrong.” He told me she hadn’t woken up since the surgery, “I thought, in case she could hear it.”     I told him I was sorry, that if there was anything I could do to help: the same things he’d hear hundreds of times over the next few days.     He pointed to the bag that was collecting excess fluid from her skull. “I keep looking at it,” he said, “it’s almost beautiful.” I walked closer to the bag; the bottom was a raspberry shade of red that diffused into a translucent yellow. “It reminds me of a New Brunswick Sunrise.” I didn’t ask if he was talking about the drink or if he was just talking about the morning sky. I didn’t ask if he meant that this beautiful thing was taking away the shadows that can hide the shit of the world.     He asked me to take a picture of it, then he asked me to bring him to the supermarket where his mom’s car has been parked for the past few days. He was worried it might get towed.     Outside, in the sun, Ian blinked the way prisoners do when they’re released in movies. We got into my car and he told me they were removing her from life support. “Last night the doctors pulled her off the ventilator for ten minutes.” Apparently, it’s a test they perform. “They wanted to see if she could breathe on her own.”     So they wouldn’t kill her, they gave his mother pure oxygen beforehand: her blood was saturated with enough air to sustain her for the ten minute test. But, if Mrs. Rosen didn’t breathe during the test, she’d technically be brain dead.     “At nine minutes she took one breath. The doctor said it wasn’t a good enough sign, that the damage was going to be irreversible.” The parts of her brain that controlled coordination, that housed memory, they were gone. He was telling me these things, dry as his cheeks and his eyes. He said he wished she hadn’t taken that breath, “it would’ve been easier.”     The parking lot was empty aside from his mother’s car. There were some yellow and green flyers stuck in the windshield wipers. I told him we’d drop the car off at his mother’s house, “I’ll bring you back to the hospital.” He really shouldn’t have been driving at all.     He opened his door and looked back at me. “You know, we’ve all been torturing her.” The doctors had said that any movement his mother might make was a sign of recovery. “I saw my aunt digging her nails into my mom’s hand, not enough to make her bleed, but close. I’ve been squeezing as hard as I can, almost breaking bone. I saw my cousin pinching the inside of her arm when he hugged her last night. She doesn’t move anymore.” He said this like he was asking for a beer; he didn’t wait for a reaction; he just closed my door and unlocked his mother’s. I saw him play with the air freshener and imaged what the smell reminded him of as he started punching the steering wheel. From inside my car, I could hear his scream, shrill and sustained.     Ian took a long shower at his mother’s house. I sat in the living room and left the TV off. The floor was covered in a moss colored shag carpet; the wood panel walls had the same remnant 70’s feel. I stroked the blue velour couch and looked at two photos propped up on the end table. In an elaborate gold frame, Ian and his parents are wearing Mickey Mouse ears. It was a remarkably unflattering photograph of all of them. Ian looked like he was seven or eight, one front tooth was missing and his hyper neon shorts reminded me of the shame I felt looking at pictures of myself from the 80’s. His mother’s hair was caught in the wind, blown into her mouth. She was pulling the strands out when the picture was taken. His father’s pot belly was hanging out, and his taut t-shirt distorted the picture of Homer Simpson’s face. They were all in flip flops and nobody’s eyes were fully opened. The second picture was in a plain black plastic frame. It was Ian and his mother after his Golden Key ceremony. He looked surprised by the flash, but his mother was looking at him and smiling. Ian wouldn’t have either of his parents in graduation photos.     When he came downstairs he told me he was fine to drive, that I could just go back to New Brunswick. “I guess I’ll have my own car now.” He wasn’t blinking, leaving eyes hanging open to stay dry. I told him I’d rather bring him to the hospital.     At four o’clock, the doctor came and verified the family’s wishes. I stayed in the waiting room, the four family members stayed with Mrs. Rosen for her last minutes. Later, Ian told me that the motion they’d been waiting to see finally came, that he could actually see her body shutting down.     It was his aunt that suggested we get some food. Ian mentioned a nearby diner he’d never been to, a place he’d be comfortable never seeing again. When the hostess asked how many people were coming, we looked at each other and counted heads. The waitresses were all wearing Santa hats and bright red t-shirts saying Merry Christmas; busboys wore green shirts with a picture of mistletoe. Tinsel was draped all over the place, a gold star on our napkin holder and an obligatory menorah near the cashier. They were out of booths so we sat a round table, trying to space ourselves evenly from one another. When the waitress brought the water over, I ordered a milkshake, everyone else got coffee. She smiled and talked about the holidays, told us she’d be back in a few minutes to take our order. His uncle flipped through his menu then looked around the table and said, “I think I’m getting pancakes, what about the rest of you?”

Early Morning Hunting Chris Schafer     “I can’t believe I let you talk me into that,” Earl rolled the cigarette between his fingers. He’d thought about quitting but he kind of liked the idea of knowing what would kill him.“You act like you didn’t have a good time,” Syl retorted. He had just tossed his cigarette over the side and lit a new one. The ripples of the lake jostled the boat beneath them. Syl knew the moon caused tides on the oceanfront, he wondered if they did the same thing to lakes.     “You knew we were hunting today and you had to go out last night,” Earl persisted.     In the darkness a duck squawked but the night hid its shape. Earl looked for it once but all he could see was the reeds of the blind around them.     “Good to see something else is alive in this world besides us,” Syl snorted. “We should’a just stayed in bed.”     “Four hours in a motel bed is about all I can stand. If I had to listen to that little whore of yours anymore, I’d a shot you then and there,” said Earl.     Syl laughed, but he didn’t deny it. “There was one for you big man. Not my fault if you left her at the bar.”     Now the smile from Earl’s face faded. “That was not for me. There is no way I’m flying wingman with that ugly bitch. God, I bet she had teeth down there!”     Syl laughed again.     In the darkness another duck called out. “Quiet,” said Earl. “You hear that?”     “Of course I do,” Syl responded. “It’s just a koot. Nasty-ass puddle duck. They know no one in their right mind would shoot ‘em, that’s why they’re all loud. What’s to fear?”     “I’ll shoot ‘em,” Earl responded.     Syl shook his head, “You’re just a regular Jack Pine Savage aren’t you? You ever seen a recipe for koot in a cookbook? They tell you to simmer it in a pot with a brick and after an hour you dump the pot out, pitch the koot and eat the brick.”     “Was that in one of Nancy’s cookbooks?” Earl asked.     Syl nodded.     “I think I’da taken the brick over Nancy’s cooking regardless of what she was serving,” Earl laughed.     Syl raised his hand and even in the dark Earl could tell his friend thought he was number one. “Besides, Nancy had her good points.” Syl stated with a predatory smirk on his face.     Earl looked away; even the blackness was more appealing at this point. “Yes, I’ve heard about her good point, you told me, I don’t need to hear it again.”     “It’s like sucking on your thumb,” Syl said with a slight giggle in his voice as he thought back to his ex-wife. “It’s like sucking on your thumb.”     Beneath them a tiny swirl joined the larger ripples.     “Quiet, you hear the ripples in the water? That koot is moving.” Earl raised his shotgun and waited. He was sitting on the north side of the boat, surrounded by the reeds but the position did give him a nice open area to look through. They had to dock here in the first place and now he would use it again as his own little sniper perch.     The ripples continued underneath the boat, slow and low. They looked like warm syrup spread out over pancakes as they gradually progressed across the waterfront and underneath the boat.     “I can’t believe you’re going to waste a shell on a koot.”     “Shut up Syl.”     “You know it isn’t considered exactly sporting to shoot a bird off the water?”     “Syl, I’m on no sleep here and the last thing I want to hear is a lecture on sporting. I want to get a bird and if it happens to be on the water’s surface, so be it.”     Syl sighed in contempt but yet he couldn’t help but watch over Earl’s shoulder as the pair waited for the koot to show itself from beyond the reeds.     Underneath them the water rippled once again.     “He’s close now,” said Earl. “He’s coming this way.”     But what was coming this way was not the koot, on the water from around the bend. Instead it was a mallard, flying low directly above their head.     The crafty duck flew by at top speed, it seemed to know they weren’t paying attention and didn’t let out a call until he was nearly out of shooting range. Earl and Syl booth looked up in time to savor their lost opportunity with pure disgust. “Great, there goes a real trophy and we missed it because you’re so focused on shooting aquatic rats here!” said Syl.     “There’s no reason you couldn’t be looking for that. You didn’t have to be watching me!”     “I just can’t believe you...” And then there was silence from in the boat. Because outside the boat, on the other side of the reeds, the koot was screaming. The bird fluttered its wings in rapid succession as though it was trying to take off but the wings kept striking the surface and the bird never left the water. There was a guttural cry and suddenly the wings were flapping against water, under the water. Another cry and then the bird’s voice was suffocated underneath the water.     Syl and Earl sat motionless, the mallard now long since forgotten. “What the hell was that?”     “Probably just a snapping turtle,” said Earl. “Guess I’m not the only one that’ll eat a koot.”     Syl looked as his friend with disgust, amazed Earl was going to try and dig this argument up again. “Snapping turtles don’t eat adult ducks. They eat babies, little fish and shit of the bottom.”     Underneath their boat the ripples of the water intensified but neither man noticed.     “It’s all perspective,” said Earl. “A koot ain’t a big bird so a big turtle could take it down.”     As Earl spoke a second koot drifted along past the threshold of the reeds, exactly where he had been waiting for it. The jostling and talking coming from the boat did nothing to dissuade this bird from sailing out into the open, right now all it wanted to do was get away from where it had been.     “There’s one of your prized buzzards right there,” Syl pointed.     Earl turned around and sure enough, the koot was now sitting complacently in the water some ten yards ahead of them. It had stopped its retreat and now rested on the rippling waves. Ripples that were growing again.     “You think a snapping turtle could take that one?” Syl questioned snidely as he looked at the adult bird.     Earl spared only a moment to shake his head at his friend before raising his gun and putting the koot in his sights. As he did so the ripples underneath the boat increased, forcing the tiny vessel to undulate. Twice Earl lost his focus on the bird and he was forced to resight. The entire time the koot sat complacent, “Take your time,” it told him. Still the ripples continued. “What the hell?” Earl spat between clenched teeth.     And then the ripples dissipated and the bottom of the boat was struck by that which created them. The boat shook violently and for a moment Syl swore they were out of the water. He thrust both hands out to the sides and grasped the railings, his fingernails digging into the plastic.     Earl, was sent backwards into the belly of the duck boat’s center. His shotgun was slung over the side where it sank into the murky water and reeds below.     “What the hell was that?” Syl said. The fear in his voice was obvious. At once he was taking inventory of their situation. They still had the oars and one shotgun. Suddenly leaving seemed like a very good idea.     “Where the hell’s my gun,” said Earl who had recouped himself and was now looking over the side where nothing but ripples and reeds greeted him. The water was so thick, you could probably sink a boat down there and no one would ever see it. Syl was suddenly starting to wonder what else was down there that no one else had seen.     “I’m going in,” Earl said.     “Are you crazy?”     “That’s a seven hundred dollar shotgun. You think I’m going to just let it rot at the bottom of this swamp?”     “Didn’t you just feel that?” Syl said slapping the side of the boat with his left hand. “Aren’t you a little worried about what else is at the bottom of this swamp?”     “Ain’t shit down there but reads, fish and my gun,” said Earl as he took off his left boot.     He was halfway through taking off the right when Syl glanced up at the koot again. “Look!” he screamed, this time the fear was apparent in his voice.     The ripple pattern had stopped and the lake below the duck was suddenly tranquil. The duck sat in this frigid water for a moment and then it motioned to move, its feathered body lunging forward but gaining no ground, its head darting out only to ripcord back again. Twice more the duck tried before letting out a frustrated squawk.     And then the water was a swirling funnel below the duck and the creature squawked again, this time in pure pain. Its head totemed straight up towards the sky as its body descended into the water inch by inch. Another painful squawk and then the bird was gone, its body lost in the shadows of the empty darkness.     “What the hell was that?” Earl squealed.     “I don’t know, but that was no snapping turtle.”     Earl had forgotten all about his gun now. “We need to get the fuck out of here,” he said.     Syl nodded and reached down, grasping the adjacent oar in his left hand and slowly dipping it into the water. Nether man diverted his eyes from the water’s surface, which was now faceless once again.     Syl touched the water with the oar and as he did the water before them came alive once again. “Get that damn thing out of the water!” Earl screamed.     Syl obeyed, but it was too late.     The rippling pattern lunged forward creating its own wake as it headed for the boat. “It’s coming,” screamed Syl as he grabbed for his shotgun.     Earl crouched low in the boat, his hands over his ears. In the commotion Syl couldn’t hear him scream.     The tide surged further towards the boat, and Syl waited for something to rise. The shot wouldn’t penetrate the water well but whatever it was down there, if it rose, Syl was going to give it both barrels.     But nothing ever did surface, instead the waves subsided at the base of the boat.     “Where the hell did it go?” Syl questioned.     Earl had stopped screaming now and he was also looking around. “We have to get out of here!” he whined again.     Syl grabbed the oar again and turned to put it in the water. The reflection of the moon greeted him as he turned.     Reflection of the moon?     Syl had only a moment to contemplate it before the giant pupil, rolled across the reflection to face him. In the reflection of this giant eye, Syl could see his own screaming face. Below the boat the water undulated and suddenly the boat and both men were airborne in an eruption of water.     Earl swirled three times in the air, bashing his ankle against the side of the boat. He had never seen the eye but now he was traveling through the air, thanks to the power of this thing. He circled once more and then started to fall, head first towards the water. But he would never touch it, instead a giant mouth rose from the water, splicing itself. And as Earl fell towards that yawning death, he suddenly realized what it would look like with teeth.     Syl never heard Earl die, no one did. Instead he hugged the side of the boat and cowered. The water around him was tranquil once again. Around him the articles of the boat, the light, the candy, the coffee, they all sunk slowly into the water.     The tranquil water, nothing moving nothing rippling.     Something nursing.     Syl’s right leg, which had been swirling back and forth was now locked in a vice. And Syl could feel himself being sucked down, his right ankle firmly holstered in a place to horrible to comprehend.     It felt like nursing at first, a gentle pressure. Almost like sucking your thumb. Like sucking your thumb.     And then the feeling subsided and the gentle nursing gave way to a crunching, grinding sensation. Syl had only a moment to scream before the water took him and all sound was drowned out by the murky darkness.

Scenes From A Vivid Life Steve Baba strawberry screams the window is cracked in the middle of the equator one is better than one two makes it diluted and crumbly its her fault that the airplane drank the suitcases joining the two enemies together they shunned ballet and enjoyed touching a basketball on fridays