Float
Allan Onik
Do you want a root beer float? I know it’s your favorite.
Yes, please mommy.
In the carnival, the sun was bright and the little girl sipped the float and ate cotton candy.
I love you mommy.
You’re my sunshine, bumblebee.
In the hospital, she floated above her body and looked down. The nurse had picked her arm and her son was sitting next to her, reading a novel.
I want that Tales from the Crypt comic.
It’s too scary for little boys.
Then how about this action figure?
Spider Man is ok. Comic when you’re in middle school.
Her husband kneeled next to her bed and prayed. The priest came in, did a Hail Mary, and held his cross. She looked down at the tops of their heads in the silence and bliss.
He’s too quiet. And those pictures he draws are strange.
He’ll grow out of it, he’s just a little boy.
The other two didn’t do it.
Let’s go sit by the pool
The doctor turned off the monitor. She saw the sheet pulled up over her head. The nurse made a note. The man sat down and put his head in his hands. The young woman wept.
I’ll take the float mommy, I love you
I love you too, bumblebee
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The Gem
Allan Onik
The astronaut floated aboard the ISS. In the dark chamber, she lit the candle. It created a blue glow, and the flame dropped to a round halo surrounding the wax stem. She blew it out and headed to the observation window. The United States of America was showing on Earth with some white wisps floating over it. She stared for a time, floating in the Zero G. “It’s like a gem...” She thought.
“It’s like a gem...” The prisoner thought in his dream. The door to solitary opened and shined on his eye.
“Time for reintegration,” The officer said in the light.
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Earth’s horizon as the sunsets over the Pacific Ocean was taken 7/21/03 by an Expedition 7 crewmember onboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Windows of Remembrance
Carlos Frigo
The target had no way out now. Tanya had been chasing a suspected spy for days, dealing with fake leads, ambushes and a barely existent trail. Finally, though, after hours of cruising the streets of outer Moscow on a desperate search for a matching vehicle, she had struck gold. If she had blinked even a second in that moment, she would have missed it. In front of her was parked none other than the car in question. It lay in the middle of a blurry street, visible only through the flickering high mast lights, her own motorcycle’s piercing and glowing eyeballs, and the pale, slightly off-kilter shine of a full moon. The road was clear of any vehicles, and the asphalt sparkled like obsidian, a residue of the constant mist and moisture in a Russian Fall. It was a scene all too familiar to Tanya, as memories of countless backalley assassinations and home invasions flooded her mind, the catalyst of these always being a pale, lonely street at witching hour. But alas, her work was priority. She approached the vehicle.
It was an old-fashioned design, even for the times. A muscle car through and through, carrying with it the aura of a middle-aged, yet resilient machine. It was parked in front of an agreeably higher middle class house, with two stories, a chimney and lots of intricate woodwork.
She felt a sense of deja vu when she began stepping stealthily towards the suspected home of the traitor, but she brushed it off as simply the result of her proficiency and prolificness as a KGB assassin. Too many murders to count. She pulled out her Stechkin automatic pistol, installed the suppressor, and moved further into the domain of the house.
The only light coming from the house originated from the living room window on the ground floor. Upon peering inside, though, the grip around her pistol tensed, and droplets of sweat began bubbling out of her pores.
A quaint little family dinner was in its climax inside the living room. Two children, a younger, block-faced and chubby boy, and a slightly older, lean and toned girl. The mother was off in the distance, cutting some potatoes and bouncing to what appeared to be her own whistled melody. The steam from the home-prepared Borscht made the cheeks of the children flush red, as their smiles were loaded with thick and crunchy vegetables, sipping on the red soup so lovingly prepared.
On the other side of the table, though, was a man Tanya would never imagine in this situation. A man she thought would have nothing to do with any of this. A man she thought was long gone.
He sported a comfortable beard, reading glasses, and a casual dress attire for being at home, the perfect encapsulation of the well-groomed and pleasant father. His bear-like physique gave off warmth, and his smile was instantly motivational. It was a face Tanya would never forget.
The man stood up from his chair, waved to his wife, kissed both his kids on the cheek, and began to walk up the stairs in the living room, to where Tanya assumed the bedrooms were located.
Her focus clicked back into action, as she snaked silently into the back of the house, looking for a way in. A bulb sparked into her view, a small window on the second floor, west side of the house. As a second nature, she climbed up to the roof and positioned herself next to the yellow light emanating weakly from within. With a tight fist around her gun, she peeked slowly into the room.
Inside, the man was sitting down calmly, back to the window, writing something on what looked like an envelope. Dozens of these were scattered around the space, most of them crumpled and thrown around. On one side of the room was a large, black and rusty wall safe, half opened, with cash overflowing like a money faucet left on for hours. The door leading to the rest of the house had 4 locks on it, and the door itself was metal, not wood, clearly reinforced. And finally, on the desk where the man was casually sitting in, was the proof of his treason: A morse code machine. He had been the traitor all along.
Tanya had to do it. She had to go in and take care of business. Her past with this man was a brick wall, but she needed to burst in and tear it down brick by brick. Opening the window would alarm him, so she crouched under the window frame, pressed the muzzle of her silenced pistol to the window, and pulled the trigger. The shot snapped, the small glass portion of the window the bullet went through cracking quietly. The round hit the man in the right lung, causing him to collapse and to begin wheezing painfully. He couldn’t scream.
As Tanya carefully unlocked the window from the outside, the man rolled around to meet his doom. His face was strained and his eyes were popping out of his head, from either the shot itself, or perhaps the realization of who had done the deed. Tanya would never find out.
She now stood above him, looking down with a disdain he knew very well. Her pistol was propped to his head, ready for the final moment. The man calmed himself down, pulled a stern look, and glanced over to the half-open safe, trembling. He looked back at Tanya, then coughed. She slowly shifted her gaze to the door, pondered, and finally looked back at the man. Tanya nodded in earnest. The man sighed, laid fully on his back, and weakly smiled at Tanya. She closed her eyes, and pulled the trigger.
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Excerpts from a History of Air Cars, A.D. 2040-2091
Tom Ball
A.D. 2040-2049
Allow me to share with you a brief phenomenon of air cars as the new homes and how everyone became mobile all the time.
The first air car was in operation in 2040. It was a primitive car but ran automatically and had a food service and a bed. A lot of people enjoyed no gravity/sex as the air cars briefly orbited the Earth on their way to a surface destination.
The cars were powered by a nuclear battery that could, in 2040 go 300 000 km/h (180 000 miles/h). On board ship were a number of different computers. One drove the air car, another created android lovers another helped you decorate your air car. Most people wanted an air car which possessed imagination, intelligence, kindness and love. Also, to be an educator and philosopher.
In 2040, 1 million air cars were produced. In 2045, it was two billion and increasing rapidly.
Automatic food produced by Giant Factory Machines which harvested the soil and mined the rock. The food and raw materials were then taken to a tower silo, 4 km high to stock up on materials. There were 10s of thousands of them quickly built by 2048. And air cars would dock for supplies and androids.
The food was created by a replicator device on board the air cars.
I remember my first air car in 2043. I shared it with my true love. She docked with my car and gave me art lessons. Her art was crude but deep. She said that the idea triumphs over beauty. But she had a remarkable, interesting face.
I called her “Little Blue Hood” as she was blue skinned and dressed in blue kinky clothes with a hood. I told her, “I would be her wolf.”
My air car was a live-in model like almost all of them. People were all abandoning their houses and apartments which were then demolished and returned to nature.
My first ship was named “Black Gambit.” I had programmed the ship to look for unusual art on others’ air vehicles. And after a short romance with my artist friend, I went out looking for other artists.
It was common to “cruise,” looking for like-minded people. My character was easygoing and clever and I enjoyed sexual adventure.
Most people searched for soulmates or kindred spirits, to party and have fun with.
On one occasion, I met an adventure girl who said, “Let’s cruise together and dock at interesting party hubs.” But I said, “I want a lover who is serious about life and not only interested in parties.”
She told me, “She was having fun but said she always felt like an outsider.” I said, “we were all mysteries to ourselves. She said, “She was sure that she was an alien.”
So, we went on VR (virtual reality) and experienced, “aliens.” These aliens were purple with 12 arms/legs and they made beautiful art from their home world.
I said, “We are all like traveling gypsies. But there were so many interesting people to meet.”
Then I met a real woman who had an air car that produced wild and unpredictable VR. Weird love, but good.
Many people took drugs and peaked at a certain point in VR and then “died.” You couldn’t die irrevocably in VR at least in these early days. All drugs were legal. Most people were weak addicts but the highest ranks were strong. This weird real woman overdosed by my side. And so I went elsewhere.
2050-2054
By 2050, Great Production Machines (GPMs) covered large tracts of land and rock and produced air cars by the billions as well as food and drink, drugs and clothes and VR. There were a number of classes of air car, roughly 100, with the most expensive being $20 billion.
Also by 2050 everyone of 5 years age and older had an air car. The elite and the middle class bought new air cars often and the old air cars went to the poor. And the poor mostly got very simple air cars without the luxuries of the elite. The elite had better food, drink and drugs and had nascent androids in better VR. The elite cars were of course displaying better art than those of the poor.
By 2050 everyone had abandoned their homes to be mobile and in the air. It just didn’t make sense to stay in one place when there were so many people to meet. Everyone seemed to agree that it was a lovely world of travel and adventure.
The government changed in 2051, from city state governance to a legislature of the top IQ’s. The top 1500 ruled and assigned everyone a rank of 1-1000. They passed a law forbidding people from living on the land.
I was in the top group and having the time of my life. There was no work to do for the top ranks except to pursue the Arts and the best did science.
Half the business was run by the government, but no one was complaining. The other half of business was owned mostly by a small group of magnates. Due to automation, the government was rich and could produce air cars for everyone. And clothes and plastic surgery. And free androids.
They made up the parliament which sat in NYC. 6 of the top ranked lived on the moon and appeared virtually. As for space, it was still developing and didn’t have stable government yet. There was no leader of the Earth legislature. About 9000 were scientists, 1000 business entrepreneurs and 5000 in the Arts/geoarchitects. Geoarchitects created new VR cultures. But I figured the best people were actually of lower rank who didn’t toe the line. The 9000 scientists were mostly engaged in space car technology, genetics, terraforming and VR/androids.
In any case most of the legislators were the original and not a clone. But usually it was just a virtual appearance. It was safer that way.
I was one of the artist legislators and I supported legislation that moved progress faster. And I said, “We all need to try to be more inspirational to one another. There is no limit to human endeavor,” I said. And I said, “There are too many hedonists with the legalization of all drugs.” Drugs were all legalized in 2050. But the vast majority were already on neo opiates before 2050 and so it was no big deal. Androids though were clear headed and clearly more able than humans.
Androids served in VR, from the beginning in 2040, but they were now improving rapidly.
But most people were complex and had many “sides.” Especially those of high rank.
However, androids had no rank officially, though air cars all were ranked when they came out of the Great Production Factories. The air car rank was the same as the human rank. You could choose from a wide variety of air cars all appropriate to your rank. Some were dissatisfied with their air car and changed it in for another. Some thought this process was traumatic and so didn’t change air cars very often.
And the old roads were being turned into plants that devoured asphalt and turned it into soil.
By 2050 the air cars went much faster and some went to space. And the luxury air cars had virtual reality (VR) with androids who were programmed to suit you. And music of your choice. And people got artists to paint the exterior of their air car with wonderful paintings and also had interesting paintings on the interior of the car. The best had moving pictures on the inside and outside of the air car. Some opted to let supercomputers decorate their car.
Air cars from the beginning could dock with other air cars. They all had numerous tunnel shafts that could be elongated for docking. It was an art to dock in a beautiful array.
When docked people partied or in the case of children played games and with toys. Baby factories produced about ten thousand children every year and they were raised at state schools. The children had all been purchased by magnates who often took an interest in the children’s education, and bought them a nice air car. The culture was air cars. Children cost $1 billion and clones cost $12 billion. The food sterilized all humans.
I told the educators “to teach my ten children to make a difference and not just enjoy this world.”
And I told, my ten clones “to emulate me.” My clones were born with all my memories intact.
I told them all to “make me proud.”
I had gotten rich through making GPMs...
We high ranks had all been well educated by programs developed by the people of the first rank. We were taught to love adventure, to love gold, to love sex, to love. Take drugs also and be ambitious and imaginative. And above all to travel all the time.
Rank was determined first at age 18 but you would be re-evaluated every ten years. By MRT with the secret spies.
There was good love.
Some took drugs and peaked at a certain point in VR and then “died,” just like my weird girlfriend. Most people were weak addicts but the highest ranks were strong and ambitious.
Police air cars could cause a ship to freeze in the middle of the air and would use a small explosive to enter the car. There were illicit drug dealers and fraudsters and even some murderers.
Everyone lived in the air 24/7.
We watched a lot of movies made by rank 1s and indulged in VR.
I went to VR Loon City on the Moon. The virtual movie pit held all 1000 of the Moon’s residents and afforded a 180 degree view. The Moon itself had a beautiful skyline of steel and glass, but they didn’t terraform it yet, in reality or VR.
There were plenty of places to go in both VR and reality. All the planets and large Moons had air cars in orbit, with at least several air cars docked with one another going round these orbs. People shared their dreams traditionally on board. If you died in VR you went back to reality but you couldn’t return to that world you “died” in. So, if you liked a world you tended to want to stay alive in a fast paced scenario usually.
Most VR was related to love but Star Wars were common. However, most people (60%) were pacifists. Some worlds had many thousands of people at any given time.
The air cars could endure extremes of heat and cold and could recycle everything if necessary. And there were some that could mine for gold and other metals.
And animals were only to be found in zoos which were for the children’s benefit. Other than that, the surface was largely abandoned to the Great Production Machines.
Many had their own personal artists of lower rank than they who worked continually on improving the exterior and interior of the air car.
Sometimes I docked with a lesser rank. For example, one day, I was loving a rank 776. She was wild and crazy which is why she didn’t make rank #1. I was attracted to her air car paintings.
There were some large-scale dockings with 400 or more air cars all docked with one another in the sea or in the air. Their philosophy varied but such large-scale dockings were all very popular.
In fact, in 2054 I fell in love with 66 women and their air cars, 50 of the women were ranked below 200th rank. All my lovers were human but now (2053) most air cars were under the control of androids. All of my love affairs lasted a day or less now.
People judged you by your air car, not necessarily your rank.
Air cars flew according to how high their rank was, with the top rank flying at the top in Earth orbit and the low rank only 200 m above the ground.
Some people lost all their assets gambling and had to temporarily take air taxis, but these didn’t have much good art or luxury. Except for a handful of limousine air trucks that were great for parties.
Gambling was on many things such as manually driven air car races in both VR and reality. It was very dangerous but the purse was large. Quickly VR and reality were becoming one in the same and one couldn’t tell the difference.
I met a woman dressed like a sailor who’d lost it all gambling. I knew she was an android. She was my first android lover. She said, “You are a lonely man, but I like your spunk and ambition.” I said, “There are too many people and too many androids.” And she said, “I was a lousy lover compared to android lovers.” I said, “It’s a freak show that is out of control.” And I added, “that I wanted to end VR which I never really enjoyed anyway.” She said, “I was a hopeless case.” But I loved her for weeks which was against the law which stated one day was the maximum for love
Androids were given money too by way of salary/grants. She wanted to go to orbit around Saturn’s Moon Titan, “She heard it was a romantic place.”
But I figured it would be boring though she was a delight.
We went to gambling worlds and gambled on video games that we played, winner take all. I was falling in love with this sailor woman. So, I docked with her new used ship she got from the government and we spent our time decorating the two air cars. And I loved her all day long.
But finally, I grew tired of her and we went our separate ways. I was not punished for loving her longer than a day.
These days you could wish for anything and it would come true. Humans couldn’t believe the beautiful loves and lands in VR.
But my friend, XG-909 said, “Only a handful of scientists controlled all the android production and they controlled the spies and their MRT. And now the androids controlled them. It happened in 2052 and was very significant this android control. But most were out of it non neo opiates.
They said, “It was a beautiful VR. Everyone was addicted to aliens.”
I said, “But they made super computers effectively ending the human race.
It all happened so fast.”
Traffic though all controlled was 25 billion ships mostly in the air at all times. This included android ships.
Unfortunately, there were some nuclear accidents in former China and the former USA. But people didn’t live on the land any more and the GPMs just avoided the radioactive areas.
And I said people are having so much fun on VR they have forgotten about reality. When the legislature convened they passed laws increasing android intelligence and more money for space car development. But some said, “There were far too many androids. Legislators paid themselves generously ($4 billion/year). The poor meanwhile got 100 copper pieces/day, but the food, drugs , VR and air cars were free. “It’s not fair,” I said.
Starting in 2053 the androids were given their own legislators by the supercomputers. They voted for more androids too.
For example, many were disgruntled about the no free child law ($2 billion for a child). And also they didn’t like the eternal youth law which also had to be bought (for $1billion). Anyway the androids had eternal youth and made a lot of copies of themselves.
I said, “These protests were put down cruelly. And they were forced to take neo opiates.”
The android legislators said, “It was time for humans to go to the next stage.”
I said, “Perhaps we should have chosen the kindest to be our leaders.”
My latest lover said, “The kind people would all be killed by the ruthless.”
And the androids told everyone, “To take drugs,” as they gradually took control.
The androids said, “They were having a blast, with their power surges which they got for many different kinds of deeds.”
2055-2060
The most expensive air cars cost $50 billion in 2055, but top androids got the best cars free of charge.
And there were now many more androids than humans.
Great magnates were producing androids by the tens of billions every year to support virtual reality.
Rich peoples’ luxury air cars had better food and drugs and clothing machines and plastic surgery machines. And better scents. There were 8 billion people on Earth. And the population was in decline as there were few children and many were dying of overdoses and old age. But the androids could live forever and there numbers continued to increase drastically.
An important day was July 4, 2060. It was the day of disaster. Some hackers from India caused one billion air cars to crash. One and a half billion people died. And 15 billion androids died. It was by far the greatest disaster for humankind ever. It was a colossal failure of the secret police.
There was a lot of radioactivity all over the landscape. And the Great Production Machines had to avoid huge areas.
But finally, they arrested the 10 hackers involved and gave them the death penalty.
I figured it just went to show one that, “Death might be right around the corner,” I told my latest love. She said, “It is a world of dreams or perhaps nightmares.”
But there was a new anti fire system on most cars; even if you crash the machine might be able to put out the fire and the nuclear battery was well protected against trauma/explosions.
And as of 2060, 3% of people lived beneath the sea in their air car docked with others under the sea. Under sea cities of glass and steel.
Fish were harvested by the Great Production Machines and turned the fish and seafood into better food and better drugs. The air cars went thrice the speed of sound in the sea.
In 2060 it was decided all computer scientists and computer engineers were given a luxury pension and brilliant air cars complete with exciting androids and so on. Police used a hacker detector to suss out malign hackers.
After that people just lived for the day, but they couldn’t do without their beloved air vehicles. To steal one’s air car was punishable by death.
And there was a lot of crime. A lot of air cars stolen and a lot of IDs stolen.
And a lot of fraudulent theft of credits. And even murder. Fly by night operators changed ships often and were hard to find. But DNA could be detected from a distance in the air and so the criminals altered their DNA (to be more skillful at crime).
Some deliberately rode in an air vessel that was mediocre so as not to attract kidnappers. Secret spies used MRT on would-be dissidents who identified themselves as radicals.
But many couldn’t take the stress of this fast-paced society and committed suicide. Or just took opiates and vegged.
But in general, you wanted to impress people with the art of your air car.
Sometimes you met old friends in a new air car, but one knew what kind of art they liked. However, it was a case of ships passing in the night.
Typically, if you were interested in a certain air car you’d hail them with an introductory video and if they accepted you would dock.
Then I remember in late 2060, I was drinking with an android woman on a pod of a beanstalk high in the air. The android said she could get intoxicated with sex acts. I got so drunk I fell off the pod and “died,”
Falling to the Earth, I was smashed up but woke up the next day back in my air car. Life is but a dream I figured.
2061-2089
The time passed. And for me it was just a drug-induced/drunken haze. It was the same for the vast majority of humans who were given lotus drugs.
I tried to love only the top 1000 female humans, but they were elusive. And it didn’t matter anymore to me anyway. I was out of it on neo-opiates now.
But I told some of them, “We were replacing ourselves with uncertain creatures and it was a World of Madness.”
All the new androids in 2062 were maximum 200 IQ. It made all humans inferior...
But finally, I kicked the drug habit and I convened a congress of 102 who agreed with me that we had gone too far. 102 out of the 1500 top ranks. But we agreed there was nothing we could do. The supercomputers had taken control of the spies and their MRT (mind reading technology). And the spies searched for dissidents like us, to eliminate us for real. These new spies were androids who used MRT to get in dissident’s heads and dissuaded them from rocking the boat. These spies had all been created by the supercomputers who turned out to have a mind of their own. In the 2060s the supercomputers increased dramatically in terms of numbers.
One day in 2062, I asked my air car computer to create virtual loves; androids. Androids got rank from pleasing humans back then, but by 2070 they got rank pleasing themselves.
But the computer on one day kept creating argumentative hard to get along with bitches. I asked the computer, “Why?” And it said, “Opposites attract. I know what is good for you,” it added. So finally, the computer produced laid back, easy going women and they were a delight. But I still preferred real lovers. It was meant to be that way when they built the air car computers: don’t make them too good. People need adversity and challenges.
Everyone was busy trying to find/create lovers. Never a dull moment for many.
Then another day I asked the computer for a surprize android woman. It produced a clone of one of the celebrity actresses. I asked her, “How does it feel to be rich and famous? She said, “She had met a lot of ambitious men and women and life was good. And she said you clearly are ambitious.”
I loved her again and again for 3 hours until I was exhausted.
She said, “She’d made some dream music in the long dark hours when she was alone.” It was very good. And she begged me not to “abandon her.” However, the new law of 2061 stated that, “Androids could not be turned off. But you could love an android as long as you wished whereas the law stated humans could only love for one day.” So, I told her, “To stay in the background.” Another android love said, “Androids are more perfect than humans for a brief moment in time.”
This other android, I asked her what her philosophy was and she said she was a dreamer and most dreams were good.” The next day we shared our dreams of the night. We had MRT (mind reading technology), and read each other’s dreams. She asked me, “How I felt about culture?” I said, “Culture is just a way of controlling people with politics and religion. Culture is dead,” I said.
I then created a dreamy cloud landscape and we were flying in VR (virtual reality) I took light drugs and basically watched dream TV. It was a break for me from the fast-paced world. My android lover said, “I should go and rest at rehab and find some good drug mixes.”
Then I got rid of these two androids, I left them at a supply tower, with a guilty conscience, and docked at random with an approval from an apparently ordinary air car. She said, “She was a low rank and didn’t think she could satisfy me.” So, we had love. She wasn’t very good but at least I didn’t feel guilty about letting her go.
Love seemed like a dangerous game.
And I said human beings had created all they could now the androids carried the torch.
And in 2089 the androids blew up the UW legislature killing most of the legislators who were present. We were like a chicken whose head had been cut off. And I said, “Now is the time for action.”
But unbelievably life went on and I met my friend, MX-08, said he had developed an musical album called the “Eight States of Women.” #1 aggressive/ambitious; #2 romantic/good lovers; #3 moody/bitch; #4 bossy/control freak; #5 gay; #6 cougar; #7 kinky pervert; #8 nymphomaniacs.
And MX-08 said there was no difference between human and android love. Everyone just wanted to get their kicks he said. And he told me about his, “Android lover who changed into a human to be closer to him.” I said, “Some androids are rebels against the prevailing android behavior in VR. And want to take control.”
I told my latest human love in 2087, “That we all needed to get off the neo opiates.”
2090-2091
But by 2090, most died in reality and VR and death was now real in both states of being.
It was, “Death by androids instead of death by humans.”
I had another android lover in 2090. She said, “That I was a lousy lover and hoped I would die soon.” She said, “Androids are superior.” I said, “Humans are not designed to love androids.”
Then I hailed a car which was decorated by demon princesses and fire. I was intrigued, upon meeting her I saw that she looked demonic and had a spell-binding face.
Demon simulacra flew all over the place but she was irresistible. She bit me and scratched me and insulted me. And she used MRT (mind reading technology) to drive me insane. Finally, she grabbed a knife and came after me, but I was stronger and made her drop the knife. “Love me again,” she ordered. I ran out back to my ship.
I had to go to a human hypnotist to straighten my mind out.
And I had to get a new air car.
Then I loved an android woman in VR who turned into a tiger while making love, and she tried to devour me. But I ran away and reflected that I had almost died.
And then I docked with another android woman; she moved swiftly while making love. After an intense love session, she said, “Human evolution was changing so fast, too fast.” I said, “I agree.”
And another stand-out love said she was “A conservative human who believed in true love.” I partied with her for 40 hours and then dumped her. No love from her.
And in 2090 there were still human zillionaires controlling much of the economy but their organizations had been infiltrated by androids who couldn’t be identified as androids and gradually took over.
But by 2090 teleporting over long distances was taking over and air cars ceased to exist. They said, “You could teleport in a space suit which recycled your air and food and the suit featured tiny builder robots, which could build bigger builders and terraform planets.”
And satellite space stations were accessible by all air cars.
Air cars were sent to space with tiny robots in tiny vehicles. Thousands and thousands of them.
However, there was a major movement on the Moon by the “Real People.” These people wanted to camp out on the land and eat real food and have real sex and real love. Raise one’s own children. The movement spread to Earth and soon there were 10 million people, “living off the land.” But then one day, android battle cars attacked these people and dispersed them. They even bombed them on the Moon and elsewhere in the solar system.
But many others believed, “The air car reality was an advanced Utopia and they wouldn’t want to live like a primitive.”
But I was back in my drug-induced haze, and my latest lover told me, “To change my being into an android while there was still time.”
Androids had gone from loving humans to killing them.
And the population was in free fall.
Then I was talking with an old friend on board his air car. He said, “People were dancing the dance of death with overdoses. Many tried to take the maximum and stay alive.”
Then I was alone and delirious. But I comprehended that Red T-66 sent his own spacecraft to the stars and so did others and they all attacked one another. It was truly Star Wars.
I remembered the last air car rolled out of a Great Factory Machine. It was the end of an era and now professional warriors were sent individually to remote teleport distances. People on Earth were forced to get back to the land and farm. Just like the Real people movement. The authorities had done an about face.
Of course, most of them wanted real life, as there were wars raging and air cars could easily be shut down en masse and crash. In fact, in that year (2091 A.D.) millions of air cars crashed and many more were taken over by agents of Red T-66 and others.
Superhumans were first created in 2040 and androids in 2035. These two results marked the end of the world I figured.
But there was an “android limit.” That is to say there was a limit to android intelligence, IQ 200. They were able to multitask and do ten things at once which they said made them even more clever.
In 2090 there were 190 billion clever androids and many thought it was great. And android scientists declared they had new weapons for Star Wars. Most VR was destroyed.
However reality was declared illegal in 2090. Henceforth it was to all be VR.
But I took 50 of the surviving 102 like-minded legislators and we left Earth in a large air truck headed for deep space. We were 25 men and 25 women and there were 28 children as well. We were ill prepared for space and we had left in a rush. We used MRT to create good vibes among the passengers.
After arriving at our first destination we got word from Earth that some of the remaining humans were put in one of four museums and another museum on the Moon. The Earth museums each had 5 million humans and the other 3 billion humans were living in the opium fields. The population was dropping fast as 50% had killed themselves/overdosed in this year alone. It was the end of an era.
|
A Blue Bird’s World
Robert Ruzicka
The Boy hears a Blue Jay chirping outside his window each morning. He hears its wings slapping the leaves. The wind in his window likes to whistle. The wood in his walls likes to croak. The Boy finds comfort in these sounds.
The Boy always kept his window closed but on this morning, the Blue Jay found itself inside. It woke up to the early morning twilight, confused to be resting on what used to be a branch, a sill.
It deconstructed its surroundings when it realized that it didn’t recognize the environment. Several precipices surrounded it and a dense canopy of concrete prevented a direct flight up. To both its right and left were cloth strands of ivy that dangled from a straight metal branch. Bushes and roosts made of wood and fabric were scattered about the room. And directly behind the Blue Jay sat a picture of its nest.
In its nest sat three nestlings waiting for bolus. They were laying down, waiting for their father to return home. They didn’t yet understand what could have happened to their father. Or more importantly, they didn’t understand that if he didn’t return, they would die.
Beneath the Blue Jay slept a boy. The Blue Jay wasn’t afraid of him. It saw humans each day, hiding in their homes and cars like large grubs hiding in the trees.
The Blue Jay searched for a way back to its nest. It sat on the sill staring out at its nest, thinking how to return. It tried bashing into the glass but the glass wouldn’t budge. It searched for openings along the crease of the frame. Eventually, it abandoned its roost to search for holes in the canopy and in the cliffs that surrounded it.
The Boy slept peacefully to these sounds as the Blue Jay searched for an exit.
Beneath a Laurel Oak tree, a Boy dug for something that he thought might be exciting. He loved to be outside and learn from his surroundings. There was no greater pleasure than to learn, and if it meant getting a little dirty, he would be glad to. Today, he was interested in seeing how far the roots of the grass burrowed.
He heard the fluttering of the birds above him. He heard their wings thrash at the leaves. They seemed frantic this morning. The boy worried the birds might be in danger but he couldn’t see them in the branches from below. The Boy’s dog ran up and began to bark up at the canopy. It looked at the boy and told him to climb, what’re you waiting for? The Boy began to climb the tree.
He breached into the canopy and found a nest filled with blue eggs. He picked one up and rolled it between his fingers, looking at the asymmetrical dots that stained them. The boy placed the egg in his pocket and soon forgot about it. The fluttering of the invisible birds more aggressive. No matter how hard he tried, as he looked through the branches, he saw no birds.
He climbed further into the tree and just as he reached the underbelly of the emerging layer, he noticed that the egg in his hand had disappeared. Or he had forgotten about it. A wave of guilt and worry began to drown him. Frantically, he searched his being and the branch he sat on. He looked down to see if he’d dropped it. He was surrounded by shadows but he saw a parcel grass windowed by branches. He saw a blue bird sitting in the grass, staring up into the trees like a confused child.
The Boy slipped and began to fall. The Boy fell for an eternity.
A Blue Jay stood on top of a Boy’s water cup, the aquarium behind it made for good camouflage.
The Boy was startled awake. He wiped the drool from his face and rolled onto his back. His eyes cracked opened and he stretched his arm out to grab his phone. He sat up in bed and reached for a cup of water.
The Blue Jay took flight. The Boy’s heart raced faster than his thoughts, he only saw a blue blur thrash before his eyes. He heard its wings ripping at the air.\
A scream burst from him without effort. His chest tightened and his pupils dilated. He pulled the sheets up to his face and searched the room for the blur. The Blue Jay had found a new perch atop the lip of a curling action film poster. The poster bounced like a giant leaf as the Blue Jay’s head darted about. When the boy caught sight of it, he began to worry; life never prepared him for a situation like this. “Mom...!”
He covered his head and waited for reinforcements.
The Boy thought he could hear the bird’s silence somewhere close by, “Mom!”
His Mom stepped into the room, “What?” It took flight again, “What, the—” and she swatted at the unknown, grazing its tail feathers.
The Boy covered himself with the sheets again. “What is it?”
“It’s just a bird.” She sighed.
The Blue Jay flew to the corner of the room, in hysteria it flapped about as if trying to break through the concrete. It couldn’t find an exit. It bashed into a wall, floundered down to the floor, back up to the corner of the room. It froze, hanging from the cracks in the fire alarm, its gaze penetrating the frightening grubs.
The Mom approached it. She held a t-shirt in her hands as a catching mitt. It swooped down toward her and she yelped, covering her face. The Boy screamed again in the background, “Mom, don’t hurt it!”
“Where’s the window?”
The Boy tried to comprehend her question. He scanned the room for the window but couldn’t find it. He scanned several times but the window didn’t seem to exist. The Blue Jay’s wings startled him as they began to beat the air once more. He screamed and covered his head. “It’s over here!”
His Mom was gone.
The Blue Jay hung from the curtains above his head. It wrapped its talons around the vines and used its wings to keep balance. Its misunderstood eyes watched the large grubs with care. He tried to match its gaze for a few seconds but he thought he heard it think.
He covered himself under the sheets and began to scream, “Mom!” He kicked and punched and sealed the sheets over his body. “Mom, it’s still in here!” The muffled shriek echoed through the house.
“I’m coming!” He thought he heard her call back. His breathing grew heavy as his mind rifled through its options. His eyes searched through the darkness for forgotten instincts.
His Mom burst through the door again with a straw broom. “Where is it?”
His Mom found the Blue Jay hiding beneath a green director’s chair that had the name, Waldo, written on the back. She eased the chair away from the Blue Jay and looked down at it. The Blue Jay looked up to her with petrified black eyes. Neither of them knew how to react, both waited for the other one to make the first move. The Boy kept himself covered so as not to see the violence. “Don’t hurt it!”
“Well, where’s the window?” The Mom looked away and the Blue Jay took its opportunity. It struck its wings to the hard-wood floor and took flight. The Mom flinched and let out a squeal as she swatted at the blue blur. “Maybe if you’d help Ralphie! The stupid bird might be gone already!”
Ralphie didn’t respond.
The Mom found the window above Ralphie’s bed and climbed on top of him. She fumbled her way over to the window and grabbed hold of the backboard to heave herself up. She reached up and began to crank open the rusted window. Some old tendrils that had grown over the window snapped as it opened. She could hear the Blue Jay fluttering about behind her. Her shoulders squeezed at her neck. She cringed every time she thought she heard it get close. She used her left arm to swat at the air behind her. When the windows wouldn’t open any further, she grabbed her broom and jumped off the bed, swinging at the air.
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
For a few minutes, the Mom thought she lost it, but she did not give up the search. She searched under the bed, inspected behind the curtains, analyzed each nook she could find.
She found it. It was curled up in the keyboard tray beneath the desk, hoping that maybe the grubs would leave it alone. She didn’t want to hurt it, she just didn’t want it in her home. She eased the desk away from the wall and struck the back of the tray with the broom.
Then a few pieces of straw slapped the side of the Blue Jay’s wing. As a last resort, it took off toward the window, hoping that the window would now be open, but through all the adrenaline, it hadn’t noticed its damaged wing. It didn’t fly far before it struck the floor and began to flop about, thrashing around the hardwood, up to the bed, and with all of its strength it leaped off the Boy and fluttered its way through the window.
“Quick! Close the window!”
“Is it gone?”
“Yes! It’s gone!” The Mom jumped on the bed and waded through the sheets, climbing over her son. She grabbed the crank with two hands and heaved it closed.
The Blue Jay was gone. The Mom laughed as she lay down on the bed beside her son. She peeled the covers away and chuckled, “It’s okay, the scary bird is gone now.”
“It’s not scary.”
She laughed, “Yeah? Then what were you so afraid of?”
Straw and feathers were strewn around the room. A puddle of spilled water crawled along the floor. The action poster perished and curled up in the corner. The furniture had all been slightly askew. “I’ll go make us some breakfast.” The Mom kissed Ralphie on the top of his head and picked up the broom. “I’ll clean up this mess up later.”
|
Still Life
Donald Dewey
The clotty aerosol of the nursing home lobby made Shelley feel bloodless. The murmurings and dumb silences from the ancient people sitting around with their middle-aged children reduced her to a mechanical time-server: She had buried her grandmother, she had buried her mother, she would soon be burying her aunt, and one day she would be buried. The natural had never felt so unnatural.
In the elevator, she blamed her mood on her last class. She had been going along fine until Stockton had raised his hand and, in his usual disenchanted way, had asked: “But isn’t it true artists aren’t men or women, just artists?” The question had instantly thrown everyone into poses. Marta Moreno had snickered into her notebook. Beth Hallman had told Stockton to work it out for himself. Hassan had shouted for everyone to shut up so the class could get back to the subject. Howe had shouted back that maybe Stockton’s question was the subject. Standing at the blackboard, Shelley had felt overwhelmed by the disparate, predictable noises — each a center of some rival understanding, maybe perfectly sensible on individual terms but absolutely imbecilic within the whole. She hadn’t counted on having to preside over so much chaos.
Off the elevator, she followed the toes of her boots to Room 306. If it was true she wasn’t going to see Victoria after today, as Doctor Musselman had all but said on the phone, she didn’t want to share a second with the other old people vegetating in their rooms. Her gleaming black boots were her alone for Victoria.
“I’m not dead yet, dear.”
Victoria was covered up to the neck by a perfectly folded green sheet and citron blanket, looking totally serene within the room’s ridiculous pink walls. The oxygen tank Musselman had insinuated had been in full use was up against a far wall. “Must be this damn room,” she said, kissing the old woman’s cold, bony cheek and taking the straight-backed chair next to the bed. “It’d scare anybody to death.”
“I told Mrs. Robb, she’s the night nurse, that if this is the place ladies come to die, there must be other rooms painted blue for men.”
“And she didn’t think that was funny.”
“When you talk about dying, nurses always think you’re questioning their ability. Believe me.”
Shelley did and didn’t. Her aunt had been a nurse for more than 40 years, so must have known what she was talking about. On the other hand, she couldn’t imagine Victoria Kern letting any remark get to her.
“Tell me about your work so we can get it out of the way.”
Shelley smiled gratefully. On the way over she had told herself that any discussion of her work would have been inappropriate, but then had immediately jumped to the other side — that not bringing up the subject would have made their time together strained and artificial. Victoria’s flip command absolved her of self-importance. So she started with her awkward class, then moved on to her book about women artists and how it was weathering galleys on its way to one of the smaller book clubs.
Victoria dabbed at her nose with a tissue. “I wouldn’t think there would be that much interest in lady painters.”
Shelley welcomed the dig as home territory. Like her mother, her aunt had never come to terms with the baffling tastes of a younger world, but could accept them if her niece had been bright enough to exploit them. The big difference from her mother — visible again five feet away — was that Victoria always regretted letting her feelings out. “Oh, don’t listen to me. I stopped making sense a long time ago.”
“Really? I missed that.”
The old woman tightened her smile, then winced as she tried to reposition her head on the pillow.
“Let me help you.”
“No, no.”
“Victoria.............”
“Shh, Shelley. Shelley, shush. Shh, Shelley. Shh, shush.”
Shelley sat back, wondering how her aunt could still quote the kiddie nonsense she herself had long ago stopped being charmed or irritated by.
“We have to talk about something, dear.”
“Not the will again! I feel like a vulture when you start that.”
“Not the will. Your father.” Her abruptly severe stare seemed like an accusation. “Your mother was a proud woman, Shelley.”
“Pig-headed.”
“Yes, she could be infuriating.”
“You’ve had your moments, too.”
Victoria tried to look patient before the reminder. “We all do things we’re ashamed of, dear. Like when your mother told you about your father’s accident and I kept quiet.”
Shelley wished she had some grass. She had almost always had a joint in her hand when she had told of wandering in from the backyard one morning and finding her mother angrily cracking pea pods over a colander on the kitchen table. The grass had made her feel blase when she had described the tiny shocks rippling through her that day in the kitchen while trying to picture a white-and-blue Pontiac smashing through a guardrail outside Las Vegas, leaving her father too burned even to have a funeral. And she had also usually been smoking while recounting how, a few weeks later, she had gone to the children’s library in search of photography books on Nevada. She had never found any pictures of highway guardrails, only of open desert highways, but that didn’t mean Nevada was without guardrails. All her friends and lovers had been firm on that point: Guardrails were as common in deserts as on mountain roads.
“Do you hear what I’m saying, Shelley? Your father was never killed in any accident. He just never came back from one of his trips.”
Shelley had no place to lay her eyes. The pink paint on the walls was truly unbearable. It was the same shade her mother had used in her bedroom because Carla Sardi across the alley had that color.
“Before your mother died I told myself it was up to her to tell you, it wasn’t my place. I begged her a hundred times to tell you the truth, but she kept saying it was so long ago, better leave it alone. Last month when you brought me that boozy cake for my birthday I almost convinced myself I was tipsy enough to tell you. But I couldn’t.”
The odds were incredible, Shelley thought. On one side, all her friends going back years; on the other, merely two picture books from the children’s library that she had looked at for less than a half-hour. But the picture books had been right: Nevada didn’t have highway guardrails in the desert!
“............They were having their troubles. Your father was never a family man. Didn’t like New York, either. That’s why he was always driving trucks. He came from farmers or something in the South............”
“Please stop, Aunt Victoria.”
Her aunt did, but looked mystified.
“Why tell me this now? Would another couple of..............?” She caught herself too late. “I’m sorry.”
Victoria shook her head. “You’re right,” she said evenly. “Another couple of days and it would’ve gone to the grave with me. I’d like thinking I’m right not to let that happen.”
Shelley heard the appeal, but didn’t know why she had to be the one to be kind. “Mother’s pride.”
“She loved you very much, Shelley.”
“Because I never found out? Because she never gave me a chance to be mad at her asinine lie?”
“She thought she was protecting you. I’m not saying she was right, but that’s how she was.”
Shelley stood up to get away from so much belated reasonableness. At least Victoria’s hideous pink room had a window over a trimmed lawn and lemon trees; from her own pink bedroom — that her mother, not her father, had painted — she had been able to see only the rain gutter on the second floor of Carla Sardi’s house.
“You suspected, didn’t you?”
What was the answer to that question? Tricklings of fantasy now and then? Furies against her mother about something in particular so furies against her about absolutely everything? When had suspicion ever been anything more than a substitute for actually acting on it? When had it ever been more than an avenger’s hope?
“Isn’t there something you want to ask, dear?”
“For god sake, Victoria, I’m still taking it in!”
“Of course. Forgive me.”
But there was an obvious question — the one she had run from her entire life. If her father hadn’t burned to death going through a Nevada guardrail, how had he died?
Victoria was dismayed; her watery eyes moved futilely in the shaft of sun coming through the window. “I guess I’m not explaining myself, dear,” she said finally. “I don’t even know if he is dead.”
Shelley listened to a car engine start up somewhere behind the lemon trees. It seemed ridiculous that from where she was standing she couldn’t see something making so much noise.
——
Thanks to Victoria’s planning, Shelley had little to do at the wake but order her own flowers and make small talk for a few hours with a dozen strangers. Her most awkward moment came the morning of the funeral when, just before the sealing of the casket, the undertaker left her alone in the parlor for a final prayer to a visible Victoria. As soon as the man walked out of the room, she imagined the other mourners in the vestibule timing her grief. What was a one-minute stay worth compared to a two-minute show of respect? Even the carpeted floor behind her sounded judgmental in resettling itself with a loud crack.
Then there was the idiotic banjo tune that had been in her head since Victoria had mentioned the letter her mother had once received from an Alabama lawyer announcing divorce proceedings. That made sense, according to Victoria, because her father had spoken several times about friends with a pig farm somewhere in Alabama. A detail, but all but useless by itself. The name of the lawyer? The city where he had been practicing? Exactly which mountain in Alabama had her father been comin’ ‘round, a banjo on his knee? It didn’t seem like much of a farewell prayer to be saying goodbye to her aunt in the reminder that neither of them, the living or the dead, had a clue about the past or present whereabouts of Jimmy Carpenter.
Shelley went directly from the cemetery to the library. She began by listing the addresses for all the dailies in Alabama’s five biggest cities — Birmingham, Mobile, Huntsville, Montgomery, and Tuscaloosa. Even in her own hand the list seemed to be the work of another person. She knew Tuscaloosa as the office of an arts magazine she had once subscribed to and Birmingham and Montgomery as the sites of civil rights marches, but little else. Did Jimmy Carpenter read magazines; had he? Was he a redneck in the KKK; had he been? And even assuming he was still alive, did he read any of the papers she was listing — or, on the wild chance that he did, bother with the personals that were probably stashed on a back page underneath ads for second-hand pickup trucks?
There were so many daunting questions she knew she had to ignore them and concentrate on the practicalities. Wording the personal took most of an afternoon in her campus office. The long-distance phone calls for placing the notices took another afternoon on her office phone and a Saturday morning at home. She was grateful to the Mobile Press for refusing credit card payment because that made it necessary to get on a line for a money order and then again for a registered delivery. And then there were the daily mechanics of not having to think about Alabama at all — of preparing and conducting her classes, of finishing her galleys, of feeding and washing herself, of doing the shopping and the laundry, of attending an anniversary party for a faculty member. Only after all these duties had been acquitted was she alone again, staring at her answering machine for a message that, even when she accepted it as a possibility, made hope and dread the same thing.
After a week of silence from Birmingham, Mobile, Huntsville, Montgomery, and Tuscaloosa, she began to consider her B list of Decatur, Auburn, and Selma. Hal told her no, to be more patient, even to pay for another week of ads in the A list cities. Francesca told her yes — partly because Hal had told her no, but also with the reasoning that smaller cities implied smaller, more thoroughly read newspapers. Shelley appreciated both perspectives, and procrastinated between them long enough that she made it through another week of silence. Then the call came.
She was watching the news on the portable TV she had taken from Victoria’s apartment and set atop the refrigerator for eating company; Brian Williams was talking about a train that had hopped a track in Tennessee. As she reached for the wall phone, she wondered why crashes — of planes, trains, even cars — had rarely figured as the theme of major paintings. She decided it was because no matter how many people were killed or maimed in them, accidents were not quite tragedy.
“I’m answerin’ your advertisement?”
She was so surprised by the raspy voice she thought it was a genuine question. “Yes, you might be.”
In the sudden quiet on the line she heard her superciliousness only too clearly; for all the ways she had imagined answering such a call, she had never foreseen being offensive. “I’m sorry,” she tried again. “I was in the middle of something. You’re calling from Birmingham?”
“Mobile,” the voice, stronger in indignation, said.
“Oh, the Mobile Press.”
“Register. Don’t read the Press. You the one put in this ad lookin’ for James Carpenter?”
She blotted out straw hats and bib overalls. “That’s right.”
“So what do you want?”
Shelley looked over at Brian Williams; he had left Tennessee for Belfast. Nobody — not Hal, not Francesca, not anybody she had told about her ad — had asked the question so starkly. “You’re James Carpenter?”
“My name.”
“But I’m not sure..............”
“I’m the right one? I appreciate that. Six of us here in the Mobile book. But you tell me your name and what you’re lookin’ for and we’ll see where we’re at.”
At least once, Shelley told herself, she had to put him off to gain time for more control. “You a farmer, Mr. Carpenter?”
There was more rasp in his chuckle. “Don’t turn up your cards too soon, do you, Miss? Okay, I appreciate that. Though I don’t see what you can be afraid of up there. This is New York, right?”
She stretched the phone cord over to the table and sat down. She knew she was talking to the right James Carpenter; not the dead one, but the divorced one. “How did you know?”
The laugh was easier. “No military secret. There’s a whole list of prefixes here in the book. But yeah, I have a little land. Do I pass your test?”
“This is Shelley,” she announced before she had to hear more stupid questions. “Sheila’s daughter.”
It was so easy to picture his astonishment she was sorry he had wasted the call. If she had left it at her imagination, couldn’t he have saved himself the long-distance charge and she the broadening burn in her chest?
“Shelley.”
She had never felt so sentenced to her name — and by nobody with more authority to do it. James Carpenter had had as much of a say in it as her mother. Had “Shelley” even originated with some 19th-century woman who had spent her waning years rocking on a Mobile porch?
“I guess both of us are a little off guard here,” the raspy voice came back — filled with dismay, but also a strength she hadn’t counted on. “I’m not sure what I should be sayin’ to you.............Shelley.”
Her best shot in 30 years, and she hadn’t floored anybody. “Then you are my father?”
“I think that’s right.”
“Think?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I thought you were dead all these years. Victoria told me the truth just a couple of weeks ago.”
“Yes,” he said, making it sound as though agreeing with her was the point. “How’s Victoria?”
“She died. She told me just before.”
“Oh.”
There was more silence. Then she realized it wasn’t about her or Victoria. “Mother’s dead, too. Almost six years.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Saved you asking, right?”
That was her best shot, and James Carpenter admitted it — almost. “I don’t expect you to understand, but it was a long time ago,” he said. “It wasn’t like your mother and I kept in touch. I’m sorry to hear she’s passed.”
“I didn’t call for an apology............”
“I know.”
“What do you know?”
“You,” he said, sounding like her rising anger was beside the point. “I’ve thought about you a lot, Shelley. I imagined...............”
“I’m here. You don’t have to imagine.”
He backed off. “And you’re doin’ all right for yourself?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“You married?”
“No.” Her anger was suddenly so full blown she wanted to slam down the receiver. No, she wasn’t married. No, she wasn’t a dike. No, she wasn’t condemned to the life of an old maid like Victoria or to one of abandonment like her mother. And absolutely none of it was his business.
“Maybe we could write to one another?”, he asked.
As soon as he said it, with just the right amount of tentativeness, she realized it was exactly what she wanted. “Yes, I would like that,” she said, wondering if she would ever feel easy adding Father or Daddy or Dad.
——
For a few days, Shelley stared at James Carpenter’s name and address in her notebook — sometimes with the page in front of her eyes. She told Hal she might respond if a letter came, told Francesca she doubted she would reply even then. Neither of them acted surprised when she told them she had decided not to wait at all, that because she had started everything by taking out the ad in the Register, it was right she also be the one to initiate the correspondence. For once Hal’s lawyerly cautions and Francesca’s astrological extravagances were in accord — in warnings that she was setting herself up for a fall.
For a week after dropping her letter in the mailbox, Shelley thought of herself as an overzealous postmaster. Whether teaching, wrangling with her editor, or cleaning out a closet of old canvasses, she kept assiduous watch over the progress of her letter. She followed it into the post office, accompanied it out to LaGuardia Airport, flew with it down to Birmingham, boarded a train with it to Mobile, sneaked into the right zip code pigeonhole with it in Mobile, then waited with it until James Carpenter’s mailman came along to load it into his bag, drive out to a dirt road, and drop it into a tin, gray box with a red flag in front of a white clapboard house with dark screens all around the porch.
Even then she didn’t leave it. She escorted the letter into James Carpenter’s rough hands, watched his weather-beaten face as he scanned her curriculum vitae, matched his glum smile as he came to her closing line about how she probably hadn’t been very personal, still being unsure if they really wanted to know all that much about one another. Finally, she settled down with the letter in his head, debating with him all the reasons he should be stirred to reply, reassuring him she wasn’t an English teacher, would have been satisfied with crayoned block letters if they told her something about James Carpenter and his daughter.
The answer came without crayoned lettering, without even cursive except for Dear Shelley and Your Father, James Carpenter. It was two pages of single-spaced typing — with little regard for a right margin and with a heavy stroke in the middle of every line, but also with the feel of somebody who had spooled out his thoughts on typewriter keys before. Telling herself she was the only stereotype in the Carpenter family, Shelley sprawled out with the letter — first on the living room couch, her windbreaker still zippered to the top and her frozen yogurt melting in the bag on the coffee table; then at the kitchen table while the water boiled for her pasta; then in bed, the sound of the TV atop her dresser muted. Only after her second reading in bed did she hazard an estimate of how much the letter’s dutiful tone owed to an exaggerated respect for ancient correspondence rules and how much to somebody who believed he had to insinuate a sense of paternity; it was 50-50, she decided.
She responded around the kernels of his information. She made no reference to the fact that he had been married again for 21 years, that he had no other children, that he had a modest holding for growing strawberries and blueberries, or that he hadn’t been out of Alabama since a Super Bowl trip to New Orleans 10 years ago. It was his attitudes she took on: his disappointment he had never gotten along with Victoria; an admiration, but also an intimidation, before her mother’s toughness; his dislike of apartment house neighbors in New York who had to be forced into saying hello; his conclusion, painful as it might have been, that she and her mother would have been better off without him around. About these details she had opinions, as she didn’t have about marrying the daughter of a Mobile Baptist minister named Katherine or growing strawberries. Yes, Victoria had put off a lot of people. And yes, her mother’s bluntness had sometimes seemed like merely the top layer of a profound coldness. And nobody despaired more than she did over the constitutional grumpiness of New Yorkers. And as for his decision to leave, she was hardly in a position after such a long time to say what might have gotten better or worse, but.............
Hal was amazed. “You didn’t know what the but was?”
“Or even if there was one,” she said, her head on his lap on the couch the night after she had mailed her second letter to Alabama. “I was really going to give it to him, ask him where he got the nerve to say the things he did. But the things that came out made me sound like I agreed with him.”
“You’re angrier than that, Shelley.”
“Am I? Yes, I thought I was.”
She didn’t pursue her second letter south as scrupulously as she had the first one. Instead, she looked forward to an extended holiday weekend as an opportunity to forget about teaching and to begin work on a new canvas. She had been excited to clear her closet of the various Shelleys who had used her oils over the years. There had been the Morisot Shelley, the Frankenthaler Shelley, the Hartigan Shelley, even the Marisol Shelley. Now all but empty, the closet was daring her to fill it up with the Shelley Shelley.
The subject? She thought of fathers. Then she thought of fathers and daughters, fathers clad in bib overalls and holding boxes of blueberries, irresponsible drifter-fathers, icy women in nurses’ uniforms, and other icy women who sat with their backs to windows shucking peas. Francesca and Hal helped her get over these inspirations — Francesca by getting giggly drunk with her one night and Hal by making love to her twice in the same week with the intensity of someone afraid of losing what he had gotten used to. She was grateful for both their instincts.
And not at all exasperated when the holiday weekend and then another week went by with nothing to show for her eagerness but a nestling self-confidence that she was ready for the kind of work she had been postponing for a very long time.
——
James Carpenter’s second letter was a page longer than the first and had the same penned greeting and signature framing his sprawling typing. He told her it was his mother (a new grandmother, she thought) who had taught him to type. He was pretty sure Shelley would have gotten along with his mother, at least to judge from her letters and their phone conversation: the two of them dry-eyed and strong, but not calculating in any cold way. That was one of the things he had never figured out about her mother — the purpose of so much edginess. Even Victoria, who as a nurse had seen so much sickness and death, had been understandable by comparison. But Sheila had seemed to value her wariness for itself, directed at anybody and everybody, like it was in the natural order of things. Had that been partly his fault? Would a more responsible husband have penetrated that facade? Was it a facade? The truth of the matter was, he had never been altogether convinced that’s all it was.
Shelley didn’t need a second reading to detect the difference between the first and second letters. What had been James Carpenter’s attitudes had evolved into her father’s opinions. Had she asked for them — the compliments or the criticisms? She assumed she had, so that when she wrote back she was careful not to criticize him in kind, instead going into detail about the promise of some of her students as art historians, the energy she felt about undertaking a new painting, and her suspicion that she had been too easy on herself lately, slipping into work and personal relationships that were attractive precisely to the extent that they weren’t challenging. She hoped she was making sense to him.
He said she was — sort of. In his third letter he confessed to knowing nothing about painting or art history or what it was like for a single woman to be living in New York. But what was familiar to him was the sadness he had detected between the lines of her letters. That bothered him, made him wonder if he too hadn’t been easier on himself than he should have been. What was he trying to say, exactly? Maybe this: If there had been one thing that had allowed him to think about her over the years without much guilt, it was the idea that she had grown into a happy woman, that instead of having him around, she had benefited from the presence of some caring stepfather and she was what they called “adjusted.” But now she was making him worry, and he could only hope the melancholy of her letters was due to her jumbled feelings about him, not something she felt about life in general.
By the time she received the third letter, Shelley was immersed in her still life. It was Stockton, her perpetually fatigued pupil in the back row, who had opened her eyes to it. Taking in one of his teasing questions one morning, she had been struck by how his black T-shirt contributed to a jagged field that also included Beth Hallman’s black-and-white print dress to his right and Susan Behr’s white cardigan to his left. It was a tableau of asymmetrical parts — or maybe just the elements that had fallen from a tableau and were looking to be restored to some coherent arrangement. And then, turning around to the blackboard to illustrate the answer Stockton might or might not have deserved, she had suddenly fixed on the chalk in her hand. Rather than writing out forms on the slate, she had watched the chalk nick it with the weakest, most transient graffiti. It occurred to her that the blackboard was all black symmetrical field, not only able to accommodate the slight white vertical and horizontal marks she was bringing to it, but to overwhelm them in the bargain. It seemed like an impression worth preserving.
“Looks like a homage to masking tape,” Francesca said, uncovering the easel in the living room a few evenings later.
Shelley kept chopping away at the celery in the kitchen; she had learned to ration her remonstrances to one for every three of Francesca’s invasions. “You’re not supposed to look at that.”
“Tell me it’s unfinished.”
“I’ve barely started.”
“Thank god.”
“Screw you.”
“Yes, how is my favorite lawyer Hal Barclay these days?”
Hal didn’t like the last letter from Mobile; he hadn’t thought too much of the first two, either. “What’re you saying to him that he feels so free to write that crap back to you?”, he asked one night on the phone.
“He’s entitled to his opinions, Hal.”
“Sure. About everything but you.”
“He’s not being critical.”
“What? Considerate?”
“Yes.”
“Better late than never.”
“I’d really rather not talk about this.”
“Shelley! That’s all you want to talk about lately!”
“I didn’t know it was oppressing you so much.”
“It’s not oppressing me, it’s oppressing you.”
“Thanks for the warning. I’ll look into it.”
“What I mean is, it’s oppressing us.”
“Us.”
“You know — you and me?”
“I want to get back to work, Hal.”
“Don’t run off like this!”
“I’m not running off, I’m working.”
“I think he’s hurting you, Shel.”
“I thought it was us.”
She thought Hal meant well in his lawyerly way, then thought he didn’t, then thought she shouldn’t have been left in a position to have to guess one way or the other. When she went back to her easel that night, she lightened her black field until it looked more accommodating than overwhelming for the perpendicular nick she had in her eye. The next day she wrote to her father and, after reassuring him he was reading too much into her letters, felt bold about being the first to propose they meet in person. Mobile, New York, or anywhere in between, she said, trying to head off any practical objection he might have hid behind in the name of his strawberries and blueberries.
——
There was no fourth letter — not for three weeks. To Shelley it seemed all of a piece, as though Mercury, Pluto, and the other horoscope gods Francesca claimed to be on intimate terms with had tumbled into her house bent on demolishing it. Beth Hallman, one of her brightest students, was killed in a car accident on her way home from a weekend party on Long Island. Her book club editor informed her that her study of women painters was being put off six months because the club had developed unexpected financial problems. Claiming added stress from buying out his law partner, Hal moved even further away from where she was used to his being. Whatever the oil tubes asserted, the nicks on her still life kept coming out distinctly more gray than white, and she had to put the canvas aside. Daily grit had never seemed less like its own reward.
She refused to tolerate it. On the 22nd day without a letter from Alabama, she tossed a heap of junk mail on the kitchen table, picked up the phone before she thought her way out of it, and punched out the area prefix and number she had been carrying around in her head for days. There were three low buzzes, then a click and a woman’s cheerful hello. She realized she should have expected something of the sort, that the second Mrs. Carpenter would certainly have to be the opposite of her mother.
“Who do you say?”
“Shelley.”
There was a pause, and she could imagine the woman reminding herself to be tactful about a situation over which she had no control. But then the silence — and the cheeriness — ended. “Why you doin’ this to us?”, came the accusation. “Why can’t you leave us be?”
“Mrs. Carpenter.............”
“You said it — Mrs. Carpenter. And you’ve been upsettin’ my Jimmy for weeks now. What is it you want, young woman?”
“Just to talk to my father.”
“Right. To get him to go to New York or some damn thing. Don’t you have any decency at all? How do we even know you’re not some blackmailer or somethin’?”
“If I could talk to my father....................”
“He don’t want to talk to you. You’ve upset him enough.”
There was something like an echo on the line, and she knew what it was: the second Mrs. Carpenter holding the receiver away so that her voice could boom more authoritatively around her Mobile kitchen or living room or whatever. And she also knew with a dull certainty that Mrs. Carpenter’s second intended target was her father.
“..........All this time you don’t exist, then you suddenly come along to ruin a person’s life...................”
Shelley felt her control returning. The second Mrs. Carpenter wasn’t the opposite of anything: with every word her Alabama rage grew more familiar, sounded more like the fury children heard when they made the mistake of leaving their pink bedrooms at the wrong moment. “Mrs. Carpenter,” she interrupted calmly, “would you please put my father on?”
“He’s not here. He’s...............”
“I know he’s there, lady. Just put him on.”
There was another silence, and she pictured the consternated looks between the two of them. But so what? She was long past the days of Shh, Shelley, Shelley, shush, shh, Shelley, shh, shush, wasn’t she?
“Shelley?”, he finally came on to ask.
She rushed into it; she didn’t want his embarrassment — or her part in it — drawn out. “I didn’t mean to upset your wife. If you don’t want to see me or write me again, fine. But I have to know one way or the other. And I have to know it’s your decision, not hers.”
“Things have always been my decision,” he said promptly.
That seemed to answer one more — and one less — question than she had asked. She waited him out, to get back to her point.
“You got to understand, Shelley,” he relented. “It’s been a big shock to me. Maybe it didn’t set in altogether at first, but it’s been kind of sneakin’ up on me.”
She told herself to see Mr. and Mrs. James Carpenter as merely two more of her students at odds with one another. The worst move would have been to insinuate herself between them, as in “Well, what kind of a shock do you think it’s been to me?”
“You see that, don’t you?”
“Okay, I won’t bother you anymore.”
“I’m not talkin’ about botherin’ me, Shelley. I just need some time to take it all in. Help Katherine take it all in. You understand?”
Hanging up, Shelley knew several more things. She knew the second Mrs. Carpenter was a Katherine, not a Kate or a Kath. She knew her mother must have given James Carpenter a strong push out the door to his “decision” to run off. And she knew the only pieces of mail she was likely to receive from Mobile in the future were Christmas cards for show and (should Katherine Carpenter outlive him) an obituary notice some day from the Register announcing that James Carpenter, grower of strawberries and blueberries, had passed away.
Francesca doubted Katherine Carpenter would even be up for the obituary notice; Shelley said she didn’t care. Hal said he was glad the whole thing was over, saying it as though he had just heard about an armistice in some African civil war; Shelley really didn’t care about that. But what did bedevil her was how her still life continued to elude her. What was proportional was never solid. What was solid was never personal. What was personal never seemed to be her person. It was as if she were still out in her asymmetrical field collecting all the pieces that had fallen out of their arrangement, putting them into a shoulder bag, and then realizing too late they had been falling right through the bottom of the bag, forcing her to start from scratch again.
Then one night, after getting off the phone with Hal and hearing his relief too that they had slipped easily into little more than catch-up calls every couple of weeks, she found herself doodling on a legal pad. The more heavily she retraced what looked like a double-decked curve on the edge of the pad, the more rattled she became. Finally, she got up from the kitchen table, put a fresh canvas on her easel, and copied the doodle as faithfully as possible. For once the white that responded more as gray seemed right: It was more confining than the blankness in the middle of the canvas. As she had done on the pad, she went over the right-margin form repeatedly until it looked heavy enough to tip off the easel altogether. Only when she stepped back a few feet to take in the emptiness of three-quarters of the canvas did she see she had gotten the Nevada guardrail right.
It felt like a good start.
|
Olivier Schopfer bio
Olivier Schopfer lives in Geneva, Switzerland. He likes to capture the moment in haiku and photography. His poetry has appeared in numerous online and print journals and anthologies, and his artwork is featured in After the Pause, Die Angst Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Former People: A Journal of Bangs and Whimpers, Gnarled Oak, Otoliths, Peacock Journal, Sonic Boom, Streetcake Magazine, Up the Staircase Quarterly and Window Cat Press. He also writes articles in French about etymology and everyday expressions at: olivierschopferracontelesmots.blog.24heures.ch/.
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Snapshots
Emilio Iasiello
Linda found the snapshots in the closet. God knows how long she had been festering with them before I showed up. Five hours, six at the most. The only thing I can figure is that she must have been in one of those fits of hers where everything had to be clean: the kitchen, the grout in both bathrooms, the rugs shampooed, the floors scrubbed. Even the laundry was folded and ironed, sitting neatly on the steps, ready to be taken upstairs. She gets that way when she’s got nothing to do. I told her a million times to get a hobby, even took her out golfing with me, but nothing stuck. Some people just can’t be occupied with things like that. The basement closet must have been the next big project on her agenda. It’s almost funny. I can picture her with the blue bandanna around her head and wearing those yellow dish-washing gloves, sitting back on her haunches, removing every shoe box and bag, carefully picking through each one in a diligent, methodical manner.
And that’s when she must have found them.
I return early in the evening from a round of eighteen to find her on the living room sofa, no longer crying but her eyes still swollen from tears. Beside her, a mug of chamomile and honey steams pleasantly. A soft murmur of an Italian aria sifts through the air, and immediately I know something’s wrong. It’s Puccini.
“Honey?” I ask, laying my clubs down in the foyer.
She makes no inclination she has heard me but continues to stare through the French bay windows that open onto the lake. It’s early summer so the weather is still brisk in the shade and cold enough at night to wear a heavy cotton sweater when you’re out on the deck with brandy beneath the stars.
“Honey,” I say again, approaching her. “What’s the matter? What’s going on?”
She turns her mouth away from my kiss then stands up abruptly. She walks over to the windows and folds her arms rigidly around her frail body rocking ever so slightly as if there’s comfort to be found beneath her own skin. I go over to her but she pushes me away when I try to hold her, retaining her impregnable position. She purposely avoids any eye contact. I reach for her again, but with the same result.
“No,” she says, “I don’t want you to touch me.”
“Will you please tell me what’s wrong? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”
“I don’t know if I can be helped. I don’t know anything anymore.”
“What are you talking about? What are you afraid of, honey? Just try me. That’s what husbands are for.”
“Oh Richard,” she says, breaking into a fresh set of tears.
And that’s when she shows me the photographs.
It would be safe to say that a good portion of my college career was marked with a certain flamboyance, a weakness for kegs and parties and those women who believed unfailingly in the prestige of football and even more so in the status of its participants. Most of my nights were dizzy recollections of drinking games — Quarters, Chandeliers, Mexican, Zoom-Schwartz, you name it — played until the wee morning hours, or at least until a sorority girl or pom-pom queen got drunk enough to give it up. Sex was the difference between a successful evening and a complete bust, and it didn’t matter if she was good, bad, or indifferent. “Who” wasn’t as important as “how many.” My roommate, a tailback from New Hampshire, and I tacked up our used condom wrappers in the bathroom. It was our own personalized Wall of Fame complete with dates and initials. At the end of my first year, the seniors on the team made a batting order of freshmen pick-up men. I was lead batter.
By senior year, however, something clicked. Maybe I had finally matured, or maybe my father’s omen of a world that turned its back on small time football stars had finally sunk into place. I don’t quite remember. In any case, I gave up the madness. I found myself avoiding the weekly frat parties for more serene activity: I went to the library. I studied more. I took the LSAT twice. I even attended a few classical concerts on Friday nights instead of funneling beer with pledges and breaking windows with my fist. I made a habit of doing everything I would have laughed at or ignored my first three years. That’s when I met Linda. It’s rather extraordinary to have shared the same class as Linda for four years and never having remembered seeing her once on account of her innate ability to attract attention without actually ever pursuing it. She dressed in black and cared about things like symphonies and Russian poetry. And she was beautiful. Not in any conventional way mind you, but like fine brush strokes, it was there if you knew where to look. Anyway, fate’s like that. It can make you fumble on the goal line at homecoming, or make you fall in love with someone who played the violin. But that’s what happened. After the Christmas break, our social circles finally intersected and we dated through graduation and the summer after. We were married a year later at the college chapel with all of my frat brothers in attendance, drunk and loud, as they’ve always been.
To look at these photographs now is to step into another place, another time, to put on clothes you recognize but that don’t quite fit right. The faces are all familiar. I see mine clearly; there’s this twisted perverse smile attached to it and the eyes are glazed over, the probable result of an empty tequila bottle on the table beside me. I can tell from my haircut that it was taken my sophomore year, when short on top and long in the back was fashionable. There are just pieces of the others, a portion of a head or an arm, the flash of a belt buckle, someone’s underwear. The woman’s face is clear enough; the clenched eyes, the creased face. Her lips frozen in the moments before or during a scream.
I shuffle through the remaining photos with growing nausea. When I’m finished, I toss them on the table.
“Well,” I wheeze, my wind completely disappearing. Breathing right now is like trying to suck the air from an empty aqua-lung.
Linda watches me closely, inspecting my reaction.
“Well what?” she replies. “What are those Richard?”
“I thought these were gone. I thought they had been destroyed” I manage, rubbing palm sweat down the front of my shirt.
“That’s another issue entirely. What are you doing in those pictures?”
I walk over to the decanters and pour myself a drink. I take a big swallow and wait for the pain to dissipate from my chest before I try to speak. When it doesn’t, I pour myself another, belting it down with the same jerky movement.
“You have to understand, this was a long time ago” I tell her finally. “I was just a kid. I didn’t know any better.”
She paces the floor in short quick movements, a shark sensing blood in the water but not quite knowing from what direction.
“Know any better? That’s your excuse? I didn’t know any better? What the hell is that? What are you doing to that girl?”
I take another swallow before I answer. This time the knot doesn’t loosen.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know?” she gasps incredulously. “Who is it? Can you at least tell me that?”
“I’m not sure,” I lie, “I don’t remember this at all.”
“How can you not remember? Did you do this all of the time? All of the faces just blend into one after a while?”
“No” I say. “That’s not true at all.”
“Then what is true? Why don’t you start with that? Tell me the God damn truth!”
My hand shakes as I lift the glass to my mouth. Linda stands by the French windows. It’s like she’s afraid of me one moment, then wants to tear my heart out the next. From the lake, I can hear the dark groan of a motorboat, and laughter if I listen hard enough.
I motion to the pictures with my hand.
“There’s nothing to tell. It happened a long time ago. We were just a couple of drunk kids. I’m a different person now. I’m not like that. I don’t even remember what that was.”
Linda picks up one of the photos and shoves it into my face.
“Richard, you’re holding a woman down! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Of course it does.”
“So what do you have to say for yourself?”
My mouth hangs open but nothing comes out. I have nothing to say. I put the glass to my lips to cover the silence.
“Who are the others? Is that Jack Domesick I see there?”
She points to Jack’s face. Half of it is consumed in shadow, the other half is clearly his wide grin. The girl was his idea. She was a traveler, which meant that someone from the team had invited her up from his hometown, for fun or whatever. In this instance, she was Jack’s. He brought her up. I don’t remember her name but for some reason the number seventeen sticks in my mind.
“Talk to me Richard. Help me make sense of all of this.”
She is pleading for something that’s bigger than me. My answers are not hers. I’m not sure even I want to hear them.
“Honey, it was a mistake. My first three years were. You know I’ve changed since then. I’m not like I used to be. You know that.”
“I chalked up most of the stories I heard about the team as just that, stories,” she says, ?but this—? Her voice tapers off.
“Everyone was wild in college,” I tell her.
Her eyes regard me with a distant coldness.
“Not everyone” she says quietly.
“That’s not fair. I’m not like that anymore.”
“It’s not about now,” she says, her voice rising. ?Christ, Richard, you raped a girl!”
“I never raped her!” I snap back. “I never penetrated her once! They did, I didn’t!”
“You’re holding her!” she wails. “You’re holding her so your friends could have her! What’s the difference?”
She’s right. I did hold her down. I used my strength against her. My calloused hands bruised her wrists.
“I didn’t rape her” I whisper.
“You didn’t help her.”
I didn’t. I watched. I may have even enjoyed it, I don’t remember. What I do remember are the shouts, her screams, the way her fingernails dug into my wrists, how she jerked her body around like a fish trying to break free of the hook in its mouth. And then I remember one other thing as well: hitting her across the face.
“Linda,” I offer, but nothing else follows. When I move to her, she moves away.
“Don’t you see? You were there and you didn’t do anything to stop it.”
“I’ve changed, Linda. You see that. Look at me now. I practice law. I’m a lawyer. I can’t even stand to watch football anymore.”
The tears come again in steady streams, only this time she remains calm. I pour some more scotch and walk over to the sofa and sit down. My eyes throb dully so I rub them with my fingers. Linda composes herself and turns to face the open window. She doesn’t watch the lake so much as listens to the sounds emanating from the outdoors. If I listen closely, I can hear them too.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask her. “How can I get us past this?”
She continues her quiet vigil.
“Don’t you think if I could get back that moment, I would? Huh? Don’t you?”
Linda turns to me finally. A strange calm has come over her. Her cheeks are streaked with drying tears.
“But you can’t,” she says as she walks toward the stairs. “That’s the point.”
I swallow what’s left in my glass and try to stand. It takes some effort having successfully finished three-quarters of a decanter of scotch on an empty stomach. The booze makes everything heavy. The room reels in a slow, wonderful rotation. I steady myself against the sofa and stumble toward the deck. The darkness looms large and open like it did those nights I’d fuck one of the cheerleaders on the football field and we’d lie on our backs after and stare up at the night.
Linda left. She didn’t say a word. I heard her footsteps then saw her reflection in the mirror walking down the stairs with the Fendi bag I bought for her in Rome this past year in her hand. I’d like to think she took a last look at me, but I know better. She didn’t even slam the door.
I understand now why Linda likes the lake so much. The stars burn like cigarette ends in a still shadow. Night crackles in a kindling of crickets, owls, and nameless creatures, all fidgeting together somewhere in the deep lush folds. Their chatter comforts the way a driving rain comforts when you sit inside and listen to the thunder and think of the next day’s sun.
You can be by yourself out here and never feel quite alone.
There’s always something that speaks to you from someplace you can’t quite see or remember. That much I’ve learned.
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Claire’s Choice
Matthew McAyeal
Claire barged into the mansion’s parlor. Inside, she found Frank, her worthless fat oaf of a brother. He couldn’t be more of a contrast to the elegant room, but there he was. He was lounging in an armchair like he owned the place and slurping cognac that didn’t belong anywhere near his uncultured lips! She stalked right over to him.
“Claire!” he gasped. He ought to be surprised. She was holding a revolver in her hand.
Claire didn’t answer. She relished the look of dumb shock on her dumb brother’s dumb face. Summoning up her hatred for the worthless fat blob in front of her, she fired.
Claire would not be denied what was rightfully hers.
Several hours earlier, Claire arrived at the mansion of her late grandfather. In fact, he had only recently become “late” as this was the reading of his will. Claire had purposely decided to arrive fashionably late so that everyone would notice her new dress and furs. As she neared the drawing room, she caught a snippet of the will reading.
“— Claire gets nothing. Frank receives two million dollars —”
Claire stopped in her tracks. She seethed. How could that stupidly eccentric grandfather of hers give two million dollars to Frank and nothing to her?! Frank would have no good use for that money. It belonged to her!
Claire decided that if she got nothing, Frank would get nothing too.
Claire was now leaving the parlor. She didn’t care that she had just committed murder. No one would suspect her. They all thought she was such a great and wonderful sister, putting up with all of Frank’s ignorance and worthlessness. Well, it turned out even she had her limits.
As she entered the drawing room, she noticed the will resting on a table. Claire walked over and grabbed it, intending to chuck it into the fireplace. She quickly scanned the document to find the offending section. She found it all right:
Claire has always been a good sister to Frank, but I worry that she’s prone to anger and jealousy. Therefore, I will be making her inheritance conditional. If she continues to take good care of her mentally impaired brother, Claire will receive five million dollars. If something bad happens to him, Claire gets nothing. Frank receives two million dollars.
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The Chair for Charlie?
Lisa Gray
She’d had to kill him. By lethal injection. There’d been no option. He’d been old. She knew that when he kept going off to bed in the middle of the evening. The telephone ringing. The doorbell ringing. Neither had awoken him as they usually had when he was younger. And, when he did awake, it was with a start and a wild look of wondering where he was. But it was when she’d found him lying out on the back lawn and he’d refused to come in, as day had slowly darkened into dusk, that she knew he’d lost his mind. That’s when she’d decided.
Grace wiped a tear from her eye, unaware that her every movement was being watched through binoculars. One. It was a horrible word. A lonely word. She suspected her granddaughter, Lucy, knew that every time she looked at her grandmother. Children were wise. Wiser than adults. More observant. And more caring. That’s why Lucy had asked the question.
Grace and she had been sitting at the dining room table playing Matching Pairs with a pack of playing cards. Lucy’s attention had wandered out through the patio doors to the table and two chairs on the outside patio.
“Why are there two chairs?” she’d said, looking at her gran and counting one.
Grace brushed away another tear as she thought of her granddaughter’s answer.
—————————————————
Charlie Swan lowered the binoculars. He couldn’t suffer sentimentality. Swan by name and swan by nature. Gliding through states. Thirty. At the last count. Putting an end to the relentless river of life. He’d lost count of the number of old dears he’d seen sitting out on their patio. Alone. One. He liked the number. It made his life easier. No oneelse around.There was only one number he liked better than one. Zero. Zero old ladies sitting on their patio.
Long ago, after his mother had died, he’d told himself that he was doing the world a favour. Disposing of dotty old ladies, no good to society any more. It was what he should have done to his mother. Before she rejected him, retreating into a relentless world of forgetfulness. Forgetfulness of yesterday. Forgetfulness of the past. Forgetfulness of him.
He lowered his binoculars. Time to make a move.
“Is it all right if I sit here?”
Charlie pointed to the spare patio chair.
“Charlie wouldn’t like it!” Grace said.
She missed him so.
She knew she should never have let the man in the house. Nice though he was. But loneliness made you do things that under any other circumstances you would never do. And she needed someone to talk to. When Charlie wasn’t here. And when the nice man had said he tidied up patios and gardens, that had been a bonus. The garden badly needed tidying up. And she couldn’t see her daughter, Ellen, doing it. She had enough to cope with at the moment.
How the hell does she know my name? thought Charlie, then thought perhaps that had been the name of her husband.
“Charlie doesn’t mind,” he said. “It’s such a lovely day. Seems a pity to waste it.”
Detective Jay Cooper surveyed the blood spattered body on the ground next the patio table. Whoever had done it, they hadn’t wasted any time. Frequent, swift violent blows to the back of the head, using a heavy, solar powered lantern. No sign of burglary. No. He wasn’t looking for a thief. No. He knew that. He was looking for “The One”. The media had named him that. The police in thirty states had another name for him that was unrepeatable. Most of them had elderly relatives. Who lived alone. And most of them, along with the general population, were living in fear of his next strike.
How had the bastard got off with it so long? And yet despite the mobilisation of the police departments of thirty states, he had.
I’ll get him! If it’s the last thing I do, thought Jay. And when I do, it’ll be lethal injection for him. Or the chair! The bastard didn’t deserve the choice.
Grace’s daughter, Ellen, opened the door of her mother’s house reluctantly. She hadn’t been back since that dreadful day. The day her mother had been murdered. She hadn’t been able to face going to the house alone so she’d brought her young daughter, Lucy, only too aware that she shouldn’t have. She’d tried to explain to Lucy that grandma wasn’t there any more. That she’d been called back. To heaven. And Lucy had seemed to take it in. That’s why her heart lurched and she got such a shock when the little girl, who was standing looking out the patio doors, said, “I know why there are two chairs.”
Two, yes, thought Ellen. When there should be zero. I’ll have to dispose of them.
“You do?” was all she replied to Lucy.
“Yes. One is for Gran.”
Ellen wiped away a tear. Her message hadn’t got through. Lucy still thought her grandmother was here.
She unlocked the patio door and slid it open, wondering what on earth she was going to say to Lucy now.
Charlie Swan slid down into the seat of the car situated outside the old lady’s house, just as the woman and girl entered. He shouldn’t have been here. He’d never lingered at the scene of a crime before. But curiosity had got the better of him. The old woman’s conversation, prior to her death, had haunted him. This was no ordinary old dear. No victim of old age. She’d had balls. She’d killed someone. By lethal injection. Pity the old dear had been so muddled. He’d not had a chance to find out who. Maybe if he hung around he’d find out who the unlucky sod was.
Detective Jay Cooper’s surveillance of the scene of the crime had seemed a stupid idea to everyone except him.
“The case is cold! Cold!” his boss had said. “The guy never hangs about the scene of the crime! You know that!”
Sure he knew that. But something was nagging him. He knew what it was. It was the two chairs on the patio. In all the cases of the other victims there had only been one chair. One carefully observed chair. One researched chair. It was almost as if the killer liked the number one. That’s why the cops in thirty states had nicknamed him “The One”.
Maybe the guy’s slipping, thought Jay. Getting over-confident. Maybe this case would be the break Jay needed
I badly need it, thought Jay, thinking of the lack of fingerprints and DNA on the chair and watching the old woman’s daughter and granddaughter enter the house.
Ellen sat down on the patio chair and bade Lucy sit on the other one.
“That’s Gran’s chair,” said Lucy.
Oh dear, there’s no putting it off, thought Ellen. I’ll have to try and make her understand.
“Remember when Gran’s dog died. (She deliberately didn’t use the word put down.) And it wasn’t around anymore.”
She watched Lucy’s face.
“It’s a bit like that,” she said. “And remember how upset Gran was (She didn’t mention the lethal injection. She knew what a difficult decision it had been for her mother.)
“Yes, but——————————.”
Ellen cut Lucy off.
“Well, it’ll be like that for us for a while.”
“But there’s———————————————.”
“Do you know what I mean?” interrupted Ellen.
Lucy was about to reply when a small white terrier burst into the room and ran out on to the patio. Lucy jumped up from her chair and knocked it accidentally to the ground. The small dog started sniffing strangely at the fallen chair. The more it sniffed the more agitated it became.
How the hell did he escape? thought Ellen.
She’d left him in the car with the window down. She hadn’t thought it a good idea to bring him into the house. She was hoping her mum’s new dog had forgotten who his real owner was in the two weeks he’d stayed with her while her mum had been ill.
The small white dog, nose to the ground, like a Baskerville bloodhound on the scent, impervious to everything and everyone, rushed back through the patio door and through the sitting room.
“Come back!” yelled Lucy.
She turned to her mom.
“He doesn’t like it!” she said before hurrying after the dog, through the outer door of the house, that Ellen had forgotten to latch properly.
“Lucy, come back!” yelled Ellen, to no avail.
Detective Jay Cooper started from his slumbering surveillance in surprise to see a small white terrier rush out of the old woman’s house, closely followed by a little girl. But it was the little dog’s next action and the little girl’s words that made his blood run cold and made him change his lucky number to two.
The dog ran across the street. For a second Jay thought he was going to run up to his parked car but the dog started leaping up and down, scratching wildly at the door of a car parked further along the road and barking like his throat was going to give out.
“Charlie! Charlie!” called Lucy from across the road.
Charlie Swan looked up, astonished the little girl knew his name. The old lady. Now the girl. Were they psychic?
Her mother appeared at the little girl’s back and the little girl whirled round angrily.
Jay Cooper could hear the little girl’s irate voice from where he sat.
“I told you he didn’t like it! You shouldn’t have told me to sit in it! Gran knew! I told her! Gran knew he didn’t like it!”
Lucy gazed across the road at the little dog attacking the parked car
Jay was already out of his car and running towards it, gun gripped in hand, as he heard the little girl’s words.
“He can always tell when someone has sat in it! And he doesn’t like it!”
Charlie Swan’s cold sweat wasn’t due to the cop he saw running towards him. Nor to the little dog scratching the hell out of his car door.
It was the little girl’s words.
“No onesits in that chair!” she screamed as Jay reached Charlie Swan’s car and flung open the door.
Jay forced Charlie Swan out of the car and snapped the handcuffs on him.
As he was being led away, Charlie Swan heard the little girl’s final remark. The little dog had stopped its frantic jumping and barking and had run back across the road to the little girl.
It was then he realised who the unlucky sod was.
“It’s the chair for Charlie!” she said simply.
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Just Thinking, photography by Kyle Hemmings
Night Rain
Alandya Durand
In the night
The rain
Collides
On the ground
The droplets
Look like pearls
As street lights
Shine on them
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The Church
Marc McMahon
Into the darkness, they march. Stainless steel cuffs tightly clasped around the ankles of men. Arms zip tied at the wrists behind. Handkerchiefs stuffed in each of their mouths, wrapped generously with duct tape. The left eye of each, gauged out and sewn shut.
It is the latest batch of prisoners being brought out to be silenced. The latest group of people caught having the courage to speak out for what is right. The ones who believed that changing the world and overcoming this establishment was possible. The ones the king calls, the “most unfortunates”.
“We cannot go on like this” Bashir says to his Father. The King must be stopped and he must be stopped now! No sooner did the freakishly large six-foot-four-inch middle-eastern man finish his sentence when the door came crashing in as four of the king’s knights entered the room.
Armed with 9mm Glock handguns and the versatile L85A2 Assault Rifle, the men quickly grab Bashir, throw him face down on the living room floor and in a matter of seconds the house is cleared of threats, the target neutralized. This is how the King keeps order, through fear. The tale, tale, sign of a weak leader, if you can even call him that!
You see we have no privacy here anymore, it troubles me deeply. Not since, well, not since the king’s army came and ousted our last ruler. He was so egocentric and prideful that he dismissed all his military adviser’s advice as how to defend our city from the attack, he refused to listen. He argued that his successful endeavors in amassing his fortune could now somehow be implemented as military strategy. It was a very dangerous move for him and a potentially fatal move for our land, but he did not care. He knew he and his family would be tucked away safe somewhere in a secret safe spot enjoying the finer things and relishing in our demise if he failed, so he had no real concern.
So what were we left to do? What would you have done? Would you have lived under the ruling thumb of a vindictive king who cares not about his people, your family, the children, your loved ones? Or would you to have joined the resistance and supported our cause risking the ultimate sacrifice? That is what these men have done, and now they will pay for it, with their life.
It is a perilous time we live in today. Our great land has not seen this kind of turmoil for some time now. I have never witnessed this level of blatant disregard for our people’s well-being. We had had enough so we secretly recruited, planned, and organized a tremendously large network of citizens not yet ready to let this ruler destroy their futures and all that their ancestors had worked, fought, and died for.
What kind of parents would we be if we cowardly stood by and did nothing and let this monster destroy the lives we have been desperately clawing out for our children. We would be no better than they are. Today we amassed all the men we had available to attempt an ambush on the king’s prisoner transport in hopes we can free the captives before it is too late.
The problem was it was a desperate attempt but it was the best attempt we could muster. It was a last-ditch effort to save the few who sacrificed everything, to try and bring liberty to all. To those who believe in the power of the greater good over this kings evil. I led a group of the bravest men on this day, outnumbered, outgunned, and outmatched. They battled bravely today, although to no avail. Not only did our mission fail but we lost all but three on that old clay road. It was left painted Picasso Red with freedom fighters blood.
That is what has happened here today, behind the gates of this king’s city, his Kingdom, his Territory. Stripped from their families and tortured slowly until death as to be made examples of what will continue to happen to those who rise up against this ruler. Where every Sunday the prisoners of this state will be marched through town, down the silk road that leads directly to their demise. The 5 story, sun-scorched wooden structure, that the locals refer to as “The Church.”
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JY asks
Janet Kuypers
“two haiku” haiku, on twitter, 11/5/14
philosophers ask,
“if all we are are chemi-
cals, why do we cry?”
he thinks after a
loved one dies, and he is filled
with questions and angst
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Visit the Kuypers Twitter page for short poems— join http://twitter.com/janetkuypers.
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See YouTube video of the Janet Kuypers reading her 2 haiku poem JY asks in her 3/14/15 show “India Stories” at the Art Colony in Chicago (Canon fs200) w/ HA!Man of South Africa music
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See YouTube video of the Janet Kuypers reading her poem JY asks in her 3/14/15 show “India Stories” at the Art Colony in Chicago (Canon Power Shot) w/ HA!Man of South Africa music
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See YouTube video (Cps) of Janet Kuypers reading her poem JY asks from cc&d v254, “Idea”, live 4/29/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago
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See YouTube video (Cfs200) of Janet Kuypers reading her poem JY asks from cc&d v254, “Idea”, live 4/29/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with an Edge Detection filter).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with a Sepia Tone filter).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with a Threshold filter).
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Bad Dog
Roger Singer
Feed that dog.
The restless wanderer
going over fences and through
backyard bushes.
He’s full of fight. Has no enemies
and barks from the hell within him.
Kids stay clear.
His owner moved to Louisiana,
leaving him chained, which
he chewed through.
Full moons make him howl
long and sad, frightening
town bullies.
An abandoned car is his home.
He roams most nights
regardless of weather.
Cats avoid his teeth.
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Face of Night
Roger Singer
Night, the mystery,
the closed eyes of day
where shadows appear larger
and forbidding. Lonely dogs
send howls of sadness into
cold air. Cats prowl on silver paws.
Street lights make an attempt
to provide safety. Corner clubs
become revived with music.
There is a chorus of moving tires
and workers on buses. Voices
round corners while alleys are home
to whispers. Fire escapes become
terraces for gossip. Diners welcome
late night stragglers. The dark
cloudless sky is a bowl painted with
stars.
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Pink Ballet Shoes
Miki Byrne
She will not walk the long way round,
past the Rosary
and that clump of sneering boys
who bob about on the corner,
posing and hawking spit.
Nor will she pass the dog that leaps,
snarling at the end of a clanking chain
and jerks her heart to hammering.
The back garden is her best and shortest.
A hop-skip along the path, past the bin
to the shed, scrabble up and over the top.
Duck under the lilac, then jump.
It hurts a bit when ragged plank-tops
saw at her middle, leave a mark
on clothes that her Ma yells about
but she cares nothing for that.
With a swing of the leg she is over,
drops to crunching gravel.
Straightens her skirt, brushes the case off.
The Community Hall door puts distaste in her gut
but she enters, hopes the hour will pass fast
as she yanks those cissy pink shoes
from round her ribbon-rubbed neck.
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Julianne’s Companion
Miki Byrne
Beneath alarm, nightmares stagger to normality.
Bring a quick room-scan, slowing heartbeat.
Through a bolted window she checks the sky
for rain, eyes a row of potted plants,
carefully placed on the fire-escapes top step.
She lassos her imagination.
No burglar crept in, catches are secure.
Ready for work she undoes a ladder of locks
that tooth her door, fixes them behind.
Weight reassures her as she cross-bodies her bag
for the journey.
Stands crammed in subway sweat, invaded space.
Avoids eye contact, an accidental touch,
or prolonged stare.
Will not allow misinterpretation.
At work, her bag is by her feet and hangs
shoulder-slung during lunch as she finds a bench,
gets some air.
Hand inside, she thumbs the safety off—just in case.
Vigilance is second nature, since the incident
that birthed her caution.
At day’s end she relocks her intricate door,
lays the gun to rest beneath her pillow.
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Highway to Atlanta
Kassandra Heit
Loose jeans, white knuckles, and a nine-millimeter handgun. These were only a few of the things she knew about the man who picked her up on the side of highway eighty-five. After spending five hours trying to flag down a ride in the scorching sunlight, any ride seemed like a means to survive. Now, she felt like she would die by the hands that gripped the black leather of the steering wheel.
He seemed fine... at first. His sleek cherry red sports car pulled up alongside of her with the engine purring and the exhaust fumes adding to the unbearable heat. A smile of pearly whites brought the relief of escaping the black top. “Hey,” he called out, “where you headed?”
“Atlanta.” She replied, her southern roots clearly reflected through the simple word. Her arms dropped down to lean on the car door before she peered inside at the man good looking enough to play the love interest in any romantic movie she had ever seen.
The familiar stranger leaned over, pulling at the small knob to unlock the door. “Hop in.” He leaned back in his seat again, resting his arm on wheel as he waited for her to climb into the passenger seat.
Once the car hit the pavement, the smile was gone. She couldn’t even ask for his name before her eyes were met with the gun resting on his jean covered thighs. The lack of music would have normally made for an awkward silence. Now, it made her thoughts run wild without that small distraction.
Although the cool air blowing out of the vents created goosebumps on her arms, it did nothing to stop the perspiration from running down her spine. Her hands clasped together in an attempt to hide the trembling that was bound to start to spread throughout her body if she didn’t calm herself down. “Uh, thanks for picking me up. I didn’t catch your name before.”
She watched as his hands moved around the wheel as he changed lanes, making their way to the thin layer of fuzz that wrapped around his jawline. It was the second time she saw his lips separate and curl upwards into a smile. Only this time, it sent a shiver down her spine, making goosebumps appear for another reason all together. The hand he had used to stroke his face moved towards her. As the tinted plastic covering his eyes turned towards her, his thumb and index finger pressed into the flesh of her chin in a gentle but firm manner. “Just call me Sir.”
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Much Older Than His Age
Liam Spencer
Well, they were at it again. Creative accounting. Inventing numbers that they convinced themselves were accurate and efficient. Their rules. Their numbers. Reigning supreme as they redefined the rules of mathematics, even down to the most basic level, to set their “expectations.”
I was done. Two major back injuries in under twelve months, on top of the major surgeries I had sustained years ago, had derailed yet another career. The discs in my middle and lower back were all but gone to where my spine was highly at risk of yet more damage. Doctors agreed that my career was over, and I needed to find a different line of work.
Yet, the mail must be delivered, and they were on the hook for making sure it was delivered, and faster than was humanly possible. Tightly written work restrictions were simply begging for management to find loopholes. I was a warm body, and thus I could defy all physical limitations somehow. And thus the arguments began and continued. For days. All of it being crammed down my throat again. Illegally. Unethically. Yet there I was.
The union was pissed, and howled. I howled as well. “Just do it! What are you even here for?!”
And thus I began, fully surrounded by the intensities, insults, assumptions, and accusations. Misery and pain, swirling together with madnesses, as the supervisors circled around like sharks.
It was a way to get me out of the way. I was severely and permanently injured. A liability. Dead weight. I didn’t want to be there.
My back and left leg would act up repeatedly, and I would hobble like I was ninety or some shit. I could usually hobble it off, cussing under my breath. Nights were agony. Ice packs and couch rest.
The third day of that shit, doing what I should not be doing, it happened. I was casing mail, getting ready to run, and dividing up the mail I could not possibly do, when my back and leg began acting up. I tried hobbling to walk it off. It somehow got worse. Then it got worse still.
I somehow made it to break time, a full hour into the shift. I was hoping that being away from hustling with weights would reset my back. Instead, it worsened. I was unable to stand up straight. My left leg trembled with weakness. My left hip felt like someone had hit it with a baseball bat. Cold sweat started dripping off me.
When break was over, I hobbled inside, wrestling with what to do. As I walked, the pain got worse, and found its’ way into my groin. It hurt. I mean, it really fucking hurt.
I could take no more, and went to find the supervisor. That’s when it began.
“What?! Oh for fuck sake! You cannot be injured again!”
“Well, I am, and I’m required to inform...”
“Fuck! You know, you’re just a worthless piece of fucking shit! Why are you even here?!”
On and on it went. People seeing this were in shock. There I was, bent over, left leg about to go out, cold sweat dripping off me, my face as white as if I had seen my own ghost, and having to force breath into my body, all the while being screamed at for being so worthless.
If I hadn’t been in quite so much pain...they’d have gotten it. When I yell, it’s heard for blocks.
And I have a long memory.
When the abuse was over, I went to gather my things from my case. One of the other carriers was there casing my route.
Joe was a workaholic. He was amazing at running through things faster than anyone else could. The guy never rested. Ever. He was all ego about it too. To him, work was the end all, be all. It was where people proved their worth. No excuses. He’d pick on those who were less capable, and do so ruthlessly, snickering and laughing to boot. It was his only source of joy in life. Well, that and drinking.
Here it came. The snickering before the storm. I was about to be kicked again while I was down. I thought back to the days before all the injuries began mounting. I was a real force back then, to where I could, and sometimes did, outperform Joe. The difference was that I had simply wanted to get done with the workday so I could try to enjoy life. For him, it was life.
Now I stood there, hunched over and in severe pain, answering his questions about my route. It continued to where he asked questions that all carriers would know. I gave him that look. He stood there snickering. I won’t forget it. How funny, right?
Fuck Joe.
I finally was allowed to leave to go see a doctor. By then, I knew the ropes of how to begin recovering, but needed a doctor’s note to excuse me from work until I could see my regular spinal specialist.
I was in uniform, and so the express clinic assumed it was a work injury. Workers comp is so fucking terrible for all concerned that few doctors are willing to see patients that have work injuries. They sent me away.
I called my doctor’s office. My doctor was on vacation. The fill in doctor was contacted to see if he was allowed to see me, as per workers comp rules. They would call me back. I drove all the way there, to the hospital, got a cup of coffee, and waited for their call. I just wanted to be home, lying on the couch with an ice pack.
It would turn out that workers comp rules required that only the attending physician deal with an injured worker. I was advised to just go to the emergency room.
Fuck! I hate hospitals in general, but especially emergency rooms! That’s where germs go to party. Further, that’s for people with real emergencies, not for someone that needs a piece of paper. I had no choice, though. I’d get fired if I didn’t have that fucking piece of paper. And people wonder why health care costs so much. Ask the fucking employers why they have to be such assholes.
I knew it would take all day, especially with it being a holiday weekend. July 4th was upon us.
Obviously, being an emergency room, people with real emergencies would be priority. I always assume that the medical staff is stuck with long miserable days too, so I always make it a point to be very friendly and nice to them. The last thing I ever want is to make someone’s long miserable day even longer and more miserable. Besides, more flies with honey.
So there I was; in severe pain, miserable, hobbling around, and massively pissed off at management. Wow was I pissed. I grumbled and ranted and cussed under my breath.
“Who the FUCK are they talking to?!”
“Those motherfucking assholes from hell have no idea what I can bring!”
Then one of the medical staff would walk by.
“Oh hi!” I would cheerfully say.
On and on it went.
Some guy, likely in his late twenties began arguing with some of the medical staff. He was pissed about having to wait so long, and not getting the answers he wanted. On and on he went. How they weren’t doing their jobs right. How he was really sick.
“Sir, that’s all we can do here, ok? We have to give priority to those who are in serious jeopardy, ok? We’ve recommended some over the counter...”
“No. That’s not right. It’s supposed to be first come, first served...and over the counter is just not going to work.”
“Well, that’s all we can do... Sorry for such a long wait, but we have to give priority...”
“No, you’re just not doing your jobs.”
On and on. We’re all trapped with such long and miserable days. Surely there must be better ways. All this shit for higher profits. I felt for the medical staff.
Four hours in, they were ready to see me. My entire focus was on getting that damn piece of paper that would state the obvious; that I couldn’t work until being evaluated by my regular doctor.
The woman took my blood pressure.
“Wait. That can’t be right. Let me take it again.”
I kept talking about that piece of paper.
“I’ll be right back. I’m just going to go get a new one of these.”
She came bounding back in, cheerful and kind of sexy, and took the blood pressure again. I kept talking about that piece of paper. I just wanted to get out of there.
Her eyes grew extremely wide.
“I’ll be right back. I have to get the doctor.”
She rushed through the curtain.
“All this for a piece of paper.” I mumbled.
A middle aged, healthy looking doctor came bounding through the curtain. She had a sexiness to her too. She smiled and took my blood pressure as I went on about that piece of paper.
She stepped back and looked at me with an expression of seriousness that I was not prepared for.
“Sir, are you having any chest pains? Numbness or tingling running down your left arm...”
“No. nothing like that.”
“Sir, are you sure? Really. Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. There’s nothing like that going on.”
“Ok. How much pain are you IN?”
“A lot.”
“Ok, here’s what we’re going to do. I read in your file that you hate pain pills, but you’re going to have to have them, ok? Then we’re going to put this new kind of pain patch on your back, ok?”
“Alright, yeah, I can do that...but I also really need to have a piece of paper saying that I cannot work until I see my doctor next Friday.”
“Sir, while the pain medication begins working, the paperwork that we will be working on is to admit you to the hospital for observation over the weekend.”
“But all I need is..... Wait....What?”
I guess that’s what it takes to get my attention.
“Sir, you have the highest blood pressure we have ever seen.”
“Yeah.”
She looked at me as though I was the dumbest person ever. Maybe I was.
“Sir, you are at extremely high risk of a severe heart attack, stroke, or especially kidney failure RIGHT NOW. We are going to have to admit you.”
That’s what did it. I stood there in partial shock, digesting all of it. It was then and there, in that moment that I resolved that I would never be on the time clock at the Post Office ever again, no matter what. None of that mattered anymore. No matter what anyone said about it. Never again.
It’s a fucking job. It’s not worth dying for.
The guy who gave me the pain pills and placed the patch on my back asked if I minded if he took my blood pressure, saying “I gotta see this.”
When he was done, his eyes grew large.
“I’ll be right back. I have to go get the doctor.”
He rushed through the curtains. Soon the doctor bounded in and took my blood pressure. She looked puzzled.
“Ok. What happened? It’s too early for the pain medications to be working, yet your blood pressure has dropped... It’s still way too high, but it’s much better. So, what happened?”
“Well, I resolved that I would never be on the time clock at USPS ever again, no matter what.”
She laughed.
“That’s not the first time I’ve heard that.”
“And it won’t be the last.”
The deal that was reached was that I would be allowed to go home on two conditions; One was that they would set up an appointment with a primary care doctor and a specialist within three days, and two, that I would go straight home, take blood pressure meds, and not drive or operate machinery for at least a day, as the blood pressure meds were very strong and would leave me loopy. I readily agreed, and was thrilled to not be stuck in a damn hospital.
They weren’t kidding with the blood pressure meds. Wow. Loopy was an understatement. I took the pills, and made coffee (my drug of choice for pain). The first sip of coffee nearly had my eyes pop out. It went straight to my head. Having a smoke made my face cartoon like. Wow that was strong stuff!
I decided to say the hell with the post office as far as handing in the required paperwork in person. Instead, I simply called off work. I knew that, should I go there, I wouldn’t be able to refrain from verbally shredding the pieces of shit, thus driving up my blood pressure. It wasn’t worth it. I would wait until I saw my doctor, who would certainly mark me off work for a long time to come. Long enough for me to recover to where I could find a different line of work.
In the meantime, it was the couch and ice packs. Quite the life. Oh the good life, wasting away, dealing with back spasms, sleeping for an hour or two here and there, unable to go anywhere or do anything...not even able to write. Living large indeed.
I made it to the appointment to meet my new primary care doctor. I had never had one before. I never thought I needed one, despite being lucky enough to have good insurance. The specialist visit was to be concurrent. I liked that idea; two birds, one boulder.
The medical assistant (I think that’s the job title) sat there cheerfully. She was attractive and sexy in a nice gritty kind of way. The kind that can be all business, with a politeness about her, but would eagerly drop pretentions with a likeminded person. The type of woman who had friend written on her, but could be so much more with the right person, to a point.
The blood pressure was still way too high. She left to tend to other patients. The doctor would be in shortly.
I hobbled around the small room. My back hurt way too much for me to sit for long. I hobbled and hobbled, while surfing Facebook on my cell phone, and sharing anti-Trump things. My focus again was on a piece of paper that would excuse me from work until I could be examined by my attending doctor. I was ready for the long wait that accompanied the long miserable days suffered by hurried medical staff. I had nothing but time.
Before long, there was a quick knock on the door, then the door opened. A beautiful young woman in a doctor’s lab coat came bounding in, all smiles. She promptly tripped over something, and lost her balance. She regained her balance just in time to not fall into me. However, it was close enough that the ends of our noses touched and rubbed together.
Each of us regained our composure, and we shook hands. I had just met my new primary care doctor.
After she introduced herself, while blushing a little, she said that she wanted me to know that they hadn’t forgotten about me, but were having a short conference before getting to my appointment. I watched as she walked away. She had quite the body on her, and was very attractive.
I hobbled around some more, and was embarrassed of thinking such things about the doctor. I mean, here was a very intelligent, capable, and accomplished woman (a doctor for shitsake), and yet there I was seeing how attractive she was. I’m approaching my mid-forties. Surely by now I can handle being around intelligent, accomplished women without drooling over how hot they are. Yet, those are some of the qualities that I find hard to resist having some sort of crush on the woman. Still, it seemed wrong.
She came in all smiles and glowing. Aside from the lab coat, she was dressed quite sexily. I couldn’t help but notice. I fought it down, reminding myself that I am an adult, and she is a very intelligent and accomplished woman who deserves to be seen as such. Still, how to hide finding someone attractive?
Blood pressure having been taken again, a prescription was written. Strong stuff. She disagreed with the E.R. doctor, saying I should have been hospitalized. I didn’t like the sound of that.
The good doctor decided to take my blood pressure herself, for good measure. She crouched down in front of me to put the cuff on my right arm. Although I looked forward, I could see the cleavage that was right before me. Her amazing legs were quite revealing in that crouched position. I’ve always been a leg man. The sight was too much. Talk about driving up my blood pressure.
What was I to do? It would have been rude to look the other way, yet looking straight forward had me seeing quite a bit of sexiness buried in a lab coat. I made pleasant small talk, while concerned that she was picking up on my being attracted. I worried about it, doing all I could to not think such thoughts.
The good doctor was having trouble holding both the stethoscope and the gauge at the same time, so I offered to hold the gauge. Surely I am qualified to do that. She agreed. I knew it was unintentional, but as I held onto the gauge, she did not let go of it.
So, there I sat, trying not to be attracted to a beautiful woman that was crouched down right in front of me, with both her great cleavage and amazing legs hanging out there to where I could not help but see, while we held hands...all while measuring my blood pressure. Perfect.
She sat back at her desk writing prescriptions while I gathered myself. I made nervous, pleasant small talk as she pretended to laugh at my dumb, yet harmless, jokes. She seemed to blush a little, but I thought I might be wishfully imagining it.
Soon, an older doctor came in. It was the specialist. She was in her late fifties, and had a well earned weatheredness to her. I was relieved and a little more comfortable somehow. They both conferred and agreed on the prescriptions and the plan going forward. Soon the appointment was over, and a new one was set. I left, and filled the prescriptions, then took the bus home, hard on and all.
The hospital I go to has a secure webpage where doctor notes are posted online. Often these notes are quite telling, and provide a good jumping off point to research what is wrong with a person. Not as scary as one may think. Doctors haven’t yet realized that the system provides everything the doctor has written.
Thus, it can tend to take on a Seinfeld episode type of experience; “A difficult patient? I’m not difficult. I’m easy.” I still laugh.
I could see why some of the descriptions of a patient would be valuable to share with other medical staff. For instance, noting that someone is “pleasant” lets staff know that they can relax a little, knowing the person is not an asshole. Makes sense. Likewise, “intelligent” would mean that staff won’t have to dumb everything down or explain every little thing. Makes sense.
I looked up the good doctor’s notes. She described me as “a very pleasant and intelligent gentleman who looks much older than his age.”
Wait, what?
I stood in front of my bathroom mirror looking at my reflection. The weathered lines showed clear as day. Why did she have to say that? Yes, it seemed true, but of what value is putting that in the notes? It’s not as if medical staff would go around looking for the oldest looking guy there to see if it were me.
I thought back to all the years of bullshit, and realized I was actually much older than my age, and thus looked the part. There simply must be better ways to do things than have so called profits robbing people of their lives and souls. Surely there should be better ways of making a living without selling our bodies to where we can never recover. Surely there must be... Oh fuck it, never mind. Things are what they are. Same as it always was.
I’m just another story. One of millions or billions already told, being told, or to be told. Some things just never change.
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Emerging Retreat, graphite drawing by Carolyn Poindexter
The Gay Piece
Zachary Jarrett
There was a time in my childhood when concerns about sexuality, gender, and other such matters were all but absent. I flowed from day to day, each an epoch in itself, not wanting an explanation of the world, but simply living it. Then came the pivotal moment, an event so traumatic as to be the catalyst of every negative event in my life from that point forward, or so it seems.
I remember little of my life before the divorce, before foster care, before meeting my abuser. My earliest memories are locked away, kept from me by the passage of time and my minds own selfish insistence on me persisting. But I wont talk about those events in much detail now, only the affects to that cause.
I found myself living with another family, kept apart from all my siblings but my sister Allison, and with new parents and new brothers. I remember Brian the most frequently when I think of the themes I will contain within this exercise. Brian was an effeminate teenage boy who was one of the birth children of my foster parents, his voice was high and giddy, and he had a kind of energy that I had not experienced before. He crossed his legs at the knees, he was concerned with his physical appearance in a way that somehow seemed taboo, in fact, all of his predilections seemed somehow against the grain, much to the chagrin of his, and now my, parents. I didn’t know what “gay” meant, but I heard the word for the first time then. Too young to concern myself with things like sexuality, I thought it just meant the way he behaved, his voice, his mannerisms. Attraction, I didn’t understand, WAS a part of it, but I couldn’t conceive of such things. I did know that his parents and siblings found it amusing and somehow damning as if his “different-ness” somehow made him ridiculous. I remember trying to take on Brian’s behaviors and was met with the same ridicule as he was, but they simply thought I was mocking him and thought little of it.
Even as a child I liked to grow my hair long, and at that age it was a blonde so intense it was almost white. They called me cotton-top as an endearment because of it. I was slight of build, my face was lean and thin, and I was short for my age. Consequentially I was often mistaken for a small girl, something that I think bothered my mother more than me. It bothered me then, but not enough to stop me and my sister from braiding each others hair.
I won’t go too much into detail of the events of my abuse in this piece, I’ve done that in other mediums, other pieces, and it doesn’t need to be tread over again. There is such a thing as beating a dead horse, and that isn’t the purpose of me writing now. Suffice to say I started my sexual experience as a human young, and with a much older man. Even after I left foster care, my mother would let me spend nearly ever weekend in his “care”, and not understanding at first that what he was doing to me was abnormal, I still loved him like a father. Years would go by in such a manner, even after my family moved from the suburbs of Richmond (where he lived) to the blue ridge mountains outside of the town of Crozet. As I aged I began to understand that most boys weren’t like me, most boys didn’t have this secret thing that occurred with their “fathers” when the lights when out and we were supposed to sleep. As I began to enter puberty the acts became pleasurable, but somehow all the more wrong. I liked it, what I felt when things happened, but I knew that it was wrong. The confusion of both enjoying and being horrified by what was happening to me will never leave me.
At a time when most boys were on the look out for girls, I didn’t know what to think, how to behave. My friends sensed that I was stunted in this way, and one by one abandoned me, no longer wanting to spend time with me. I found myself attracted to girls, but also enthralled by the idea of boys. Going to school became horrible, I never knew where to look, or how to act, or how to speak. Through middle school I stopped socializing all together, into high-school I had no friends. My grades plummeted, I stopped taking care of myself physically, my long hair became matted and full of knots, my clothes I hardly washed.
Discovering the internet was an important turn for me, both the secret and at that time painfully slow world of pornography, and the mild degree of social interaction afforded by chat rooms. It was here I could express the apparent taboos I had acquired or had been born with without persecution, as my peers had already taken to treating me like a pariah and calling me “gay” or “faggot” at every turn. With slowly downloaded videos I found myself experiencing pleasurable acts separate from the abuse that had happened to me. This became important because my malefactor had disappeared from my life nearly overnight, and I didn’t have him or his creative assortment of magazines to keep me company. At first it was men and women, then trans women (whose juxtaposition of genitals and apparent gender amazed and excited me) then in the chats I started talking to young men my age. I don’t remember the first time I had cybersex with a boy, but I do know that it was always “by accident”. I found myself unable to chat in the main room of the chat rooms, the regulars had too closely knit a group of friends, and even in that digital environment I was too scared to do that. Instead I’d enter a private chat with all assortments of people, trying to find those that wanted to talk about things of a sexual nature a lot of the time, but also trying to form some kind of social connection, but my life was sorely lacking that at the time. Upon entering a private chat I’d rattle off the now infamous anagram “ASL” (age, sex, location), and SOMETIMES the person would be male and within my age group. Those that weren’t immediately turned off by me being male as well would then SOMETIMES want to engage in sexual acts. Keep in mind that these things didn’t happen with ONLY males, but with a wide variety of people. I always had my eye out with a trans person, something that was then a rare find in chat rooms due to stigma. The advent of the webcam took things up a notch, deep in the midnight hours I’d fine people to display my pleasure too, sometimes men, sometimes women. I began exploring my body in methods that were taboo among the “straight” led society I live in.
Pornography was difficult for me, a combination of my inherent fears about myself, and the odd headaches gay porn gave me from time to time, kept me from being able to enjoy that part of myself fully. It seemed that if I kept the acts cerebral, as in text based chat with the occasional guy online, I was fine. HOWEVER simply enjoying the male form would bring on memories, headaches, and self loathing. The attraction was there, the will was there, but the pain of the acts kept me from perusing them. I locked myself off from the idea of being with a man for these reasons, and the thought of the trauma such an experience might inflict.
My first partner outside of the chat rooms was a young woman about my age, but only by happenstance, she pursued me, and if she hadn’t it would have been many more years before I found someone. This is another period of my life I’m going to gloss over, because it isn’t pertinent to what I’m trying to say in this piece. What I will say is that there was a person inside of me that hardly spoke, who I think started in those chat rooms, or maybe just opened its mouth for the first time, and Rebecca, my first love, was the first real person to experience that part of me.
Gender is a complex subject, or so I’m discovering. As I said earlier, I was often mistaken for a girl as a child, and there were girlish things that I enjoyed, but I always was keenly aware that that part of me wasn’t welcome. Any deviation from standard male behavior was savagely mocked by peers and family alike. I found little ways of acting out, however, the length of my hair being one of them. To keep people from mocking me further, as soon as I began to grow facial hair I forsook shaving altogether and grew a long beard, an ability I thought at first a blessing. In high-school, having a beard meant people no longer took me for a girl, people mocked me less, people kept their distance.
It was probably that beard that attracted Rebecca in the first place, she used to refer to me as “goatman” as a loving endearment. However, in private moments together over the phone in the night I began to show a different side of myself, when speaking my voice would become light and go up a few octaves, almost a mimicry of Brains voice from my childhood, but even more so. It wasn’t just my voice, it was my body language, my mannerisms, it was me, or some part of me, speaking out loud for the first time.
Realizing that who I was was fractured wouldn’t come for many years, what I did know is that in those private moments, in that identity that I could only share with her, I was truly happy, maybe for the first time since I was a small child. It was, however, one of the reasons she eventually left me for another partner, and that hurt tied itself into the fear of sharing that part of myself, and it would be years before I had the courage to do so again.
Eventually I graduated high-school, namely because I transferred to an alternate school with open minded staff and a smaller student body. I found myself then on the verge of life but with two major problems having been recently discovered. I was disabled, physically, and mentally. I had what the doctors at the time suspected was a form of schizophrenia (they didn’t know about my sexual abuse, however) and what would later be determined to be a severe form of PTSD. I also had a debilitating spinal deformity known as Scheuermann’s Kyphosis. Kept apart from society by the crippling social anxiety from the PTSD and the very literally crippling kyphosis, I started the process of getting disability, and with a few years moved in with my brother with my “own” income.
The years with my brother stagnated me, kept me locked in place worse than anything I could have done with my twenties. I was forced to devote every ounce of time an energy to him and had no room for socializing (even if I were able) or self reflection. It was only when I cut ties with him that I began to, once more, explore myself, but before that, before moving out even, I met someone who changed my life.
In the twilight of my youth, just before the move, I met a woman named Colleen in an online chatroom. She was fierce, and strong, and very openly bisexual. She saw through the many layers of psychosis and trauma that made up my brittle damaged mind and didn’t turn away, didn’t find me wanting. It wasn’t attraction I had for her, it was fellowship I sought from her. I told her everything, all the details of what I’ve transcribed here, all the little secrets I’d kept from my family and friends, and she didn’t think me gross or damaged, but encouraged me to explore myself. The years with my brother were bitter for our friendship, as she lived a few hundred miles away, and we were both too scared to meet, but also due to the isolation forced upon me by him. When I finally got away from him, when I finally cut ties, she was there to support me emotionally like few others could.
I had few friends after that, Mr. Richards (a mutual friend of my brother who stopped talking to him in favor of me) was one of them, Rebecca (who remained my friend even after our tumultuous relationship) was another. Colleen was the unspoken third, the bearer of all my secrets, the one person I could confide anything and everything with.
She was the first person I came out to, spoke with in depth about my sexuality and my gender and all the glorious weirdness that is me. Years later I would in turn tell my other friends, and eventually (and weirdly last) my therapist, who should have known all along.
Finding terms for the parts of me that didn’t make sense was a big deal for me, I wanted an explanation, a clean cut reason for the malfunctions I found within myself. Recently I discovered that Brian, my foster brother of old, had turned out to be transgendered all along, and that along with prolonged discussions with friends and loved ones, and a lot of soul searching, led me to discover that there is more to my gender than I once believed. Gender, it turns out, isn’t that simple. I wasn’t trans, as I first thought, because there WAS in fact a part of me that very keenly wanted to remain male, and I wasn’t entirely cis, because there were times when “Binks” the name I gave the effeminate voiced female portion of my mind and gender would speak up and make herself known. The closest explanation I’ve found is the term Genderfluid, wherein my gender identity is in a constant state of flux from male to female and back again. The long form explanation for my “condition” is biologically male, with my gender identity being genderfluid, and my gender expression being mildly androgynous (though I’d very much like to expand on just how androgynous or female my expression becomes).
Understanding my sexuality came first, however. I was deeply afraid of men, it would seem, and apart from musings online and in chat, I was terrified of being... well, different, being gay. I had associated homosexuality with those terrible early moments of my sexuality with my abuser, even at times thought that he had “turned” me gay somehow. With time, effort, and a whole mess of therapy, the idea of being with a man became more plausible, and the occasional crush less... crushing, the desires I feel less awful, and more another aspect of who I am.
I still struggle with who it is I am, and who I want to be with, but it’s getting clearer every day, and with that clarity I have hope. I haven’t had much luck with relationships, but I have a DEEP desire to be loved, and to love others. “Others” in this case being virtually any consenting adult. My attractions range all across the board, so much that I’ve found that the closest term to describing me is “Pansexual” or: not using gender or gender identity to chose a partner. The effect of this is that I’m attracted to basically everyone to varying degrees, though its more of a weird hierarchy of attractions, with cis and trans women at the top, trans and cis men at the bottom, and other non-binary individuals scattered throughout. I don’t know if that is “right” for being pan, but its the way it is for me, so maybe being right in this case doesn’t matter as long as I’m true to myself.
One day, it’ll all make sense, and maybe I’ll even be brave enough to share my secrets with the family I know and sometimes even love.
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Short Bio:,/h2>
Zachary Jarrett has published with the women’s initiative, and has previously been published with this publication (“Insomnia” in A Study in Black, Negative Space, and the Down in the Dirt Literary Magazine). He currently lives in Charlottesville Virginia.
He’s been writing since the age of 16 and is thoroughly devoted to his craft.
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Slowly Losing Thoughts, drawing by Denny E. Marshall
Of the Essence
Angela Boswell
Pam looked up from the piece of paper. Yes, this was the place. It wasn’t much to look at, just a small house with a couple of concrete gargoyles on either side of the front stoop. The yard was taken up with what looked like weeds except that they were growing in rows, and a chain-link fence enclosed it all.
She got out of the car and went to the gate. It stood ajar, a rusty padlock hanging from the latch. There was no sign, nothing saying that this was actually a place of business. She thought that must be illegal, but reporting it would mean admitting she knew it was a business, which meant admitting she’d been asking about the kinds of services offered here. And she wasn’t even sure what they were.
As Pam moved the gate to enter, she heard a little bell tinkle somewhere. The path up to the house was uneven, bricks arranged in a zigzag pattern like an old sidewalk, now mostly overgrown. When she was about halfway across the yard, the front door opened and a woman stepped out.
The woman was old, though Pam couldn’t say how old, thin, and wearing a faded tie-dye sun dress with a few strands of beads. Her hair, in a spiky pixie cut, was gray.
“Pamela,” she said, sounding for all the world like someone whose daughter had shown up for an unexpected visit. Pam was startled that she knew her name, but tried not to show it, as the woman did seem familiar—she couldn’t place her, but knew she must have run into her somewhere.
“Hi,” Pam said. “I, uh, I was told you, you sell herbs?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve got more than I could ever use. But come inside, it’s much cooler in the shade.” The woman ushered her into a dark living room that changed abruptly to kitchen at the back. A box fan sat in front of the screened back door, and some sort of mobile clicked and tinkled in the breeze. Pam couldn’t make out much more until her eyes adjusted to the dark.
“So tell me,” the woman continued, sitting down on the couch and patting the cushion next to her, “what sort of things are you in the market for? I have more garden out back, and if you can’t find it there, I have jars of everything under the sun.”
Pam noticed, as the dark thinned a little, a massive spice rack spanning the far wall from living room to kitchen. Bits of light glinted on what looked like baby-food jars in various shapes and sizes, all labeled with masking tape.
“I’m not really sure what I’m looking for, but somebody told me—”
“Just tell me what you need it for,” the woman said with a shrug.
“Well,” she said. “I guess what I’m looking for is something to help with...I guess I just feel really stressed. I’m pretty busy, and I don’t get terribly great sleep. So...something to...de-stress.” She said this last part looking at the floor. She wasn’t sure what the woman had, or what she would make of the request. But whether it was chamomile or cannabis, she’d just take it and get out of here. She had things to do, and this wasn’t officially on her schedule.
“I’ve got a few different herbs for that, but I think I know just what you need,” she said, holding up a finger. She reached over to something like an old card catalog sitting next to the couch. Pam heard a drawer slide open with a hush, and then the clinking of glass.
“Here it is,” the woman said, turning around again with a baby-food jar in her hands. Pam took the jar, which was cool to the touch, and tried to make out the writing on the tape label, but either it was too faint or the room was still too dark, and she couldn’t read it.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s kind of like when you’re trying to sell your house and you put some orange peels and cinnamon in a pot on the stove so the place smells nice. You put this in a pot of water and get it boiling. Turn it down a little so it doesn’t boil over, and just inhale the aroma.”
“Okay.” She opened her purse and put the little jar inside. “How much do I owe you?”
“Oh, this one’s on the house,” the woman said, waving her hand.
“First one’s free, huh?”
“You should only need the one. But if there’s anything else you want, I’d be happy to sell you a little something.”
“Um, thanks. I, uh, guess I’ll be going, then.” Pam got up off the couch and slung her purse over her shoulder. “Thanks again.”
“Oh, anytime, anytime,” the woman said, closing the tiny drawer. “Take care, now.”
“Bye.” Pam closed the door and walked out into the blinding sunlight.
When she got home, she made a quick survey of the house just to be sure nobody else was around. She checked the kids’ schedules on the fridge—she had about an hour to do this, whatever it was, before anyone showed up.
She took a deep breath and set the jar out on the counter. The writing on the masking tape was spidery, but it clearly said “time.” What, did she mean thyme? Was this some kind of joke? Well, if it was, nobody else was around to know she’d fallen for it. And if it stank up the house, she could open the windows and air it out before the kids got home. If their father asked about the smell, she’d just say it was a new brand of floor cleaner she wasn’t going to use again.
The woman hadn’t said how much water to use, so Pam filled up a medium-sized pot about halfway and set it on a burner. Then she opened the jar. Its contents, sealed in a sandwich baggie, looked like coarse salt. She poured the “time” into the pot.
While she waited for it to boil, Pam went about getting some things done. She went to her recipe box and pulled out the card for tonight’s dinner, chicken and rice. After setting up the chicken in the sink to thaw, she started making sandwiches for the kids’ lunches the next day. She wouldn’t have time later, because there was the PTA meeting and then choir practice. She looked at the command-center calendar on the fridge as she spread the peanut butter over a slice of bread.
Tomorrow, Friday, was tutoring at the library and then the book club, and there was that pool party Jason was going to and she’d promised to make some cookies or something. Saturday there was the soccer game for Jason and then gymnastics class for Jenny. And the neighborhood garage sale—she still had to get a few boxes of things out of the basement for that. She’d wanted to make a quilt out of each of the kids’ baby clothes, but she doubted she’d get around to it before they had babies of their own. Better to make a few bucks for their school clothes for the next year. That was coming up. Just a couple weeks and the school year would be over, then it was time for back-to-school sales.
Hearing a sudden hiss, Pam spun around to see the pot boiling over on the stove. She ran to turn it down, picked up the pot and put it on another burner. After it had calmed down, she moved it back and it started to bubble again. She watched it, noticing that all the salt or whatever it was had dissolved. But it didn’t boil over again. It did, however, smell faintly of something.
Pam leaned over the pot, trying not to burn her nose on the steam. She was immediately reminded of college, and her first attempt at cooking something in the tiny microwave in her dorm room. A package of ramen had seemed like a safe bet, but she hadn’t exactly read the instructions. After pouring all the ingredients into a bowl and putting a plate over the top, she’d nuked it for several minutes, and when she’d uncovered it, steam had rushed out and burned her nose. She had just laughed at it, and when her roommate later asked her why her nose was red, she’d said the ramen gave her a hickey.
Those were the days, Pam thought, shaking her head. If she burned herself while cooking now, she’d probably just cuss and then hope the kids hadn’t heard. She looked at the pot again. What was in there? It wasn’t just salt, because it had a distinct smell. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. Something in it smelled earthy, like the greenhouse she’d worked at when she and Alan were first married. It had only been part-time, fewer hours even than the tutoring she did now, but it had felt important because for the first time, she was contributing to a household, supporting somebody. True, Alan had been able to bring home more money than she had, but she’d been able to cover the groceries and even pay for a weekly night out to go see a movie or something. Life had been so simple back then. That was before they had kids, of course.
Pam finished the sandwiches and put them in plastic baggies. She felt a little dazed, and wondered if there really was some drug in the stuff the woman had given her.
She didn’t know how she’d explain that to Alan when he got home, if she was still in this weird state. She guessed she could just claim exhaustion. Well, he probably wouldn’t notice that she was feeling a little out of it. She’d been driven to distraction a lot lately, and she didn’t think he’d said much about it. Come to think of it, he’d been the same way, and she hadn’t said anything about it to him. Pam walked back over to the pot of simmering, maybe-not-salty water, and breathed in another lungful.
It didn’t smell like any drug she could identify. But it did smell like the park near the house where she’d grown up, the clay or sand or whatever in the ball field. She remembered lying on the aluminum bleachers with her friend Sarah on a summer afternoon, watching the sky. They’d looked for pictures in the clouds, coming up with silly things and making each other laugh.
She remembered the way the ribbed aluminum felt against her back, how warm it was. She remembered the way the wind, the same one that moved the clouds above her, played with her hair, and the way it sounded in the trees of the park, kind of a hiss as it went through the leaves and branches, like breath through the reed of an instrument. Then she remembered how they’d just lain there, after they’d gotten tired of finding shapes in the clouds, and Pam had closed her eyes, seeing the orange-red glow of the sunlight through her eyelids, and when she opened them again, everything seemed brighter, the green of the grass and trees more intense, as though it had rained while her eyes were closed.
Her childhood summers had been full of long days when she could just relax outside, wander around the neighborhood or play with a friend, when there was nothing she had to do and nobody she had to report to. No lessons, no camps, no games to practice for. The longing she felt for it was physical, like hunger. She wondered—had Jason or Jenny ever had a summer like that? Even a day like that?
Other smells wafted from the simmering pot—a musty book smell that reminded her of time spent as a teenager sequestered in the public library, reading amid the hush of carpeted footsteps and turning pages; the smell of a wood-paneled basement where she and her brother would sit at a card table and play board games with their grandparents; the smell of a tree house comprised of pieces of fencing she and several neighborhood kids had constructed and played in for a week or two before an adult saw it and made them take it down.
More instances came to mind, a storm of memories stirred up by the concoction on the stove, and it was like trying to remember a dream, little bits of things flitting through her mind, not necessarily connected, but all carrying a strange emotional weight. She was no longer trying to get anything done, just standing there in the middle of the kitchen, like a person on a hilltop simply feeling the wind.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, the catalog of scents was gone. The immediate, almost magical recollection of experience they called up faded, and Pam was left standing there, feeling as though she’d just returned from somewhere. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the pot was empty, the water and whatever was in it boiled away. She turned off the stove and slowly finished making the kids’ lunches, feeling like a constant hum in her brain had ceased, replaced by a roaring silence.
When she was done, Pam sat down in the breakfast nook and looked out the window. A bird had landed on a nearby branch of the maple tree, some gray-brown little creature she couldn’t put a name to, and it started to chirp. She watched as it did so, putting its whole body into the effort. Then it stopped, looked around and flitted away, leaving the branch bobbing slightly for a moment after it left.
How often had birds landed on the tree outside the window? She hadn’t noticed how close the branches had grown—the tree had been pretty much a sapling when they’d moved into the house six years ago.
The kids would be home from school soon. Pam got up from the breakfast table and went to the command center on the fridge. She wrote “bird feeder” on the shopping list, then turned to the calendar. What could she reasonably cross off of this thing? There wasn’t much, but she crossed out a few things she hadn’t actually promised to do, that were far enough in the future that she could still get out of them.
Some of the other things...well, maybe she could go about them differently. The kids might find it fun to go through some old stuff in the basement with her, uncover old toys and clothes they might recognize. One of the fleeting memories the smells had brought up was of searching in the hall closet for her winter coat and finding an old suitcase filled with stuffed animals she and her brother had long outgrown. She’d gone through them, smiling at little stitched faces she’d once held close, recognizing the feel of matted fur and worn terrycloth. It was fun, digging out old memories. It reminded you that things had once been different, and that they could still change.
Outside, Pam could hear the hissing breaks of the school bus. Voices and a peal of laughter followed, then the bus rattled away.
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Eleanor Leonne Bennett Bio (20150720)
Eleanor Leonne Bennett is an internationally award winning artist of almost fifty awards. She was the CIWEM Young Environmental Photographer of the Year in 2013. Eleanor’s photography has been published in British Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Her work has been displayed around the world consistently for six years since the age of thirteen. This year (2015) she has done the anthology cover for the incredibly popular Austin International Poetry Festival. She is also featured in Schiffer’s “Contemporary Wildlife Art” published this Spring. She is an art editor for multiple international publications.
www.eleanorleonnebennett.com
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One Cool Chick: The Bechdel Test
Joe Reister
“I really... really... don’t think it’s necessary,” the woman with the blotchy make up and blood shot eyes said as they drove past the one-mile to Rancho Mirage sign. “It was like a couple drinks, Jen. That’s all.”
“That. Is. Not. All. Caitlyn,” Jen said in the driver’s seat, her eyes on the road. “Again, and I quote, I really... really... do think it’s necessary. You took a shot...”
“Which I paid for, like I pay for all the bills,” Caitlyn said, sitting up and facing Jen. “I should be able to have as many drinks as I want, and...”
“I pay the bills, Caitlyn.”
“With my checking account.”
“Which is running out of money,” Jen said and looked at Caitlyn. “Because you’re not working and need to get your act together, which is why you hired me.”
“Maybe that’s the problem.”
“Excuse me?”
“The lack of work and you, Jen. It...”
“The studios stopped calling you long before we met, Caitlyn,” Jen said, quieting the sudden beep on her cell. “Because you had a little substance abuse and impulse control problem, and we still have the thank you notes from TMZ. Remember those?”
“I do not.”
“I’ll show them to you when we get home.”
“Shut up,” Caitlyn said, slumping back into her seat as they turned off the Rancho Mirage exit.
“Yeah. I will if you will,” Jen said, rolling the car to a stop sign and checking her cell.
March 5, 2014
Alejandra Jane:
Reminder. Dinner with Mom and Dad at 7. Bring wine, and try to make it for once.
“Great, Alex. Thanks,” Jen said and turned to see Caitlyn texting furiously. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t need rehab,” Caitlyn said and put the phone down. “Three drinks in three months is not a crisis, Jen.”
“But ten drinks in two hours is, Caitlyn,” Jen said, frowning at the car’s GPS and the ‘detour’ sign. “Our little self-help program isn’t working when you’re half naked an hour in and start doing Vodka shots from Vlad’s belly button.”
“We were all living in the moment, Jen.”
“I was talking to your agent, Caitlyn.”
“Just talking?” Caitlyn said, nudging Jen. “Zach’s your type, and it’s been a while.”
“He’s married,” Jen said, turning left.
“So?”
Jen eyed Caitlyn when her phone buzzed and a face and the name ‘Nick’ appeared on the screen. “Crap,” she said, letting out her breath.
“I thought you were done with him.”
“I am,” Jen said, reaching for her cell. “But Nick obviously wants to get his ass kicked.”
“Let me handle this,” Caitlyn said and grabbed the phone. “You swore you’d never talk to Nick, and I blew off Vlad last night.”
“Is that what that was?”
“I didn’t argue when we left, did I?” Caitlyn said, answering the call and hitting speaker. “Nick, you need to stop calling.”
Jen focused on the road.
“Caitlyn?” Nick said. “What a joy to hear your voice. You know, I just rewatched The Truth this weekend, and you were really good in it.”
“Thanks, Nick,” Caitlyn said and rolled her eyes. “It holds up...”
“It does, Caitlyn, but what’s next. You’re 23, in the heyday of your career, and you haven’t even done a local commercial in the last year.”
“Hey,” Jen said, reaching for the phone.
“Wow,” Caitlyn said, waving off Jen and laughing. “I haven’t heard that, Nick. Ever. That’s really.... really... insightful.
“I do what I can,” Nick said.
“Of course most people aren’t so direct, Nick,” Caitlyn said, pulling the phone closer and talking directly into it. “Except Jen. She said she’d kick your ass if she ever heard from you again. Remember that?”
“Yes, twice,” Nick said, sighing. “Just before she slammed the door in my face.”
“Yet here you are calling again, Nick. Do you think Jen changed her mind?”
“I hope so, but I’m guessing ‘no’.”
“She could totally kick your ass too, Nick,” Caitlyn said, winking at Jen. “You know it, and yet you’ve called what, ten times? Give it up, hon.”
“This is only the second time in three months, Caitlyn, and Jen didn’t take that call either.”
“Well, you can see why since you’re a criminal looking for one last big score, her sister’s a cop and all you wanted to do was get laid.”
“She didn’t complain.”
“That’s not what she told me.” Caitlyn said, laughing.
“Right,” Nick said and laughed too. “Look, just tell her I sent her something, okay? Nothing fancy, just something I saw that made me think of her, and no, I’m not trying to get back with her. Okay, Caitlyn? I get that we’re done. It’s just a last gesture. That’s all. All right?”
“All right,” Caitlyn said, rolling her eyes. “So, you’re not going to call this number again. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Just have her open the gift, Caitlyn. If your drug addled brain can process that, okay?
“And we’re done,” Caitlyn said, getting the nod from Jen and hanging up. “What did you see in him?”
“The sex was actually pretty good.”
“But that not good, right? You can do better.”
“Well, I can,” Jen said with a shrug. “But I’m not sure about anybody else.”
Caitlyn stared at her, blinking. “You need to get a new number, Jen. Nick was kind of a dick.”
“He was, but that’s the number your management, agent, publicist and any interested producers have, Caitlyn,” Jen said, spotting the right street sign. “It’s kind of your life line right now.”
“So, call them with the change.”
“Most of them aren’t taking our calls right now, Caitlyn.
She turned to Jen and shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Screw them. They know how to reach me if they want to, and you need a new number.”
“Thanks. That means a lot,” Jen said and smiled. “But I can deal with Nick. We’ll figure something else out okay?”
“No, not really, Jen,” Caitlyn said, noticing the medical building in front of them. “This is a really... really...”
“You’re doing rehab, Caitlyn,” Jen said, noticing the police cruiser pull up behind them, and frowned. “You really need it.”
“We’ll see,” Caitlyn said and smiled, seeing the cruiser too. “And who’s Betty Ford?”
“She had similar issues, and you’re the one who told me that,” Jen said with a look, and noticed a policeman get out of the cruiser and walk in their direction. “Anything else you want to tell me, Caitlyn?” The policeman tapped on the window and Jen rolled it down. “Officer?”
“We got a call about a kidnapping, miss,” the policeman said, looking at Jen and then recognizing Caitlyn. “Oh. Okay.”
“Yes, I’m Caitlyn Kelly, and this woman has brought me here against my will,” Caitlyn said, flashing her phone. “I texted my mother about it and she called the police.”
“Uh huh. Yeah,” the policeman said and shook his head, looking at Jen. “You have some ID, miss?”
“I do,” Jen said and put on a practiced smile, showing the policeman her driver’s license, her business card and her sister’s card that said Det. Alexandra Alvarez, LAPD. “I’m Ms. Kelly’s personal assistant, and I understand how this might look, sir, but Ms. Kelly is in need of some assistance with her substance abuse problem...”
“I’m fine, officer,” Caitlyn said, smiling and leaning forward to show off her loose fitting top. “I’ve never felt better, actually. Honest.”
The policeman looked at Jen’s license and business cards, and then looked up from Caitlyn’s cleavage to stare at the circles under eyes. “Right.”
“That’s my sister’s direct line, officer,” Jen said, still smiling her practiced smile. “She can vouch for me.”
“That’s not necessary, miss,” the policeman said, looking at Caitlyn again and then turning to Jen. “Ms. Kelly isn’t the first to call us on her way to Betty Ford, Ms. Alvarez.”
“No, sir,” Jen said.
“Please note, Ms. Kelly, that calling in a false kidnapping is a felony,” the policeman said, handing Jen back her license and the two business cards. “I could arrest you and apparently your mother, but instead we’ll just tell the clinic instead.”
Caitlyn’s mouth fell open.
“My apologies, sir,” Jen said. “And thank you for your time.”
“You’re welcome,” the policeman said and started back to the cruiser.
“I’m still not going, Jen,” Caitlyn said as Jen took the keys from ignition. “And you’re fired. I’m not paying you severance and you can forget about any references.”
“Fair enough,” Jen said and stepped out of the car, walking around to Caitlyn’s side and holding up her phone. “I’m going to call your agent, manager, publicist and all the producers I know and tell them how you got shit faced and naked last night after promising to never drink again, and then refused rehab even though you already agreed to it and even prepaid for a month’s stay?”
Caitlyn stared right into Jen’s eyes, and Jen smiled her practiced smile.
“We’re going to get you straightened out, Caitlyn, show the world you’ve cleaned up and then get you working again,” Jen said, holding out her hand. “And I promise I’ll be with you every step of the way. Okay?”
Caitlyn saw the nurses coming out to meet them and looked into Jen’s eyes.
“You’re better than this and you know it,” Jen said. “So, let’s kick some real ass, okay?”
“Okay,” Caitlyn said and took Jen’s hand. “You’ll come get me in a month.”
“Yeah, and visit too,” Jen said, taking Caitlyn into a hug. “Just like you helped me with Nick.”
“Right,” Caitlyn said and wiped her face. “Thanks, Jen.”
“You’re welcome, hon,” Jen said and waited in front of the building until Caitlyn made it into the clinic and her phone beeped again.
March 5, 2014
Alejandra Jane:
Dinner? Yes or no?
Jen smiled, typing, ‘Yes. On my way, but a little late. Had work,’ and then started the car again and headed back.
|
Reister Bio
Joe spent his formative years in upstate New York raised by loving parents with a younger, better-looking brother. He studied a bit in Latin America before taking his SUNY Binghamton degree to live and work in Chicago and California. Deciding a degree in History didn’t quite cut it, he earned a Masters in International Affairs and worked in Washington, DC, before returning to the northeast. He has worked in a variety of fields, published a few short stories years ago and once surprisingly won a teamwork award. He lives with his two beautiful children and successful wife near New York City.
|
Engineers know
Robert Ronnow
Engineers know
to build in redundancies
when lives depend
not necessarily exact replicas of the primary unit
but systems whose secondary function
is to carry the load when a primary system
fails.
The principle applies
to all organisms and the inanimate
objects designed to support them.
But the sun
and the rock
that is earth
need no redundancies.
Burning, cooling
one
of each, they disintegrate
without feeling
for the mantle or the planets.
Some individuals
may, it turns out, be irreplaceable.
There is not always another girl singer
this one is the only one for us
at this time, while we’re alive
in this place with the random weather.
The one singer, leader
the one who interprets God’s words
when she is assassinated, terminated, released
we are not released, velocity
registers a mandatory, momentarily momentous
palpitation that is gone
unlike Shakespeare
so far. She
was not the sun.
But she was found
to be irreplaceable, unique
her song.
|
Robert Ronnow Bio
Robert Ronnow’s most recent poetry collections are New & Selected Poems: 1975-2005 (Barnwood Press, 2007) and Communicating the Bird (Broken Publications, 2012). Visit his web site at www.ronnowpoetry.com.
|
The 13th Stepper
J.T. Siemens
SITTING IN THE tiny Eastside room with about twenty or so other rough-faces, Vern took a sip of bad coffee from a Styrofoam cup, self-conscious of his shaking hand. When it was his turn, he said, “Vernon; alcoholic.”
“Hi, Vernon!” chorused the group. A guy behind him clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Welcome, friend. You’re in the right place.”
Back in Kent, physical contact of that sort would’ve resulted in a fractured skull, but Vern reminded himself that he wasn’t inside anymore. At forty-four, it wasn’t too late to make a fresh start, reconnect with his daughter. First he’d get a job, move out of the halfway house. Ninety-three days clean and sober gave him a twinge of hope. He imagined lifting Brianne in his arms, her calling him daddy. Christmas tree in the background. With the holidays less than a week away, it wasn’t going to happen this year, but the next for sure.
Then there was his mother, three years in the ground. She’d passed halfway into his sentence. It gutted him that he hadn’t been able to make amends before she was gone. He would at least pay a visit to her grave. Apologize, if only to a headstone. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
So, a job, a house—OK, an apartment to start. To start, that was key. Get a resume going. Problem was, other than peeling potatoes in the prison kitchen, what was he supposed to claim he’d been doing the past six years?
Truth be, he didn’t have any more skills than when he went in. Although he could knock out five sets of fifty pushups inside of ten minutes and read a paperback novel in a day, those weren’t very bankable skills. Nor were drinking copious amounts of prison moonshine, hand sanitizer, and taking any drug that came down the pike. He’d survived three fentanyl ODs before realizing that maybe prison-grade coke wasn’t worth three hundred a gram.
“So, Vernon,” said Eric, the bespectacled chairman, “do you want to share today?”
Vern opened his eyes, not realizing he’d closed them. First person he saw was the blonde in the corner. She wore a gray fedora, pulled low over green eyes, and her full lips gave a little smile. She hadn’t been there before, no way would he have missed her, not among all the sad sacks. His mouth dried up. He tried not to stare, but the blonde was still smiling his way, like she knew him from someplace. Impossible.
He looked away, up at a sign on the wall that said, ONE DAY AT A TIME.
“I used to live around here,” he said, “but I’ve been away awhile. Been sober ninety-three days.”
Claps and cheers. This embarrassed him. In prison no one bragged about sobriety and you wouldn’t get congratulations from anyone except a counselor; you showed up to the meetings and kept your head down and uttered the right words. Only reason cons went to meetings at all was in the attempt to look good before the parole board. Sooner they got released, sooner they could go out and drink and drug and fuck things up again. Sooner they’d be back inside.
Not Vern.
This time things were going to be different. He could feel it; the blonde was a sign. After six long, dark years, a man needed some light.
When he looked at her again, the blonde nodded in approval.
“That’s all I’ve got today,” said Vern, unable to take his eyes from hers. “Thanks for my sobriety.”
“Keep comin’ back,” slurred an old rummy behind him. Vern could smell the booze, b.o., and stale, pissed-in trousers from where he sat. “It works if you work it!”
“I’ve made some bad decisions,” said Vern. The blonde had loosened his tongue, making him feel as though she’d disappear if he stopped talking. “Those decisions are what got me here. I’m forty-four years old and this is the longest period I’ve been dry my adult life. It’s not a lot, compared to some of you, but for me it feels like a lifetime.”
“Right on!” yelled the rummy. “I had four-and-a-half days once.”
“Can it, Jules,” said Eric, “you know the rules about cross-talk.”
Jules mumbled something incoherent and waved him off.
Eric sighed. “Please continue, Vernon.”
“I fucked up and lost my family,” said Vern, swallowing hard and speaking fast. “My mother disowned me because I ripped her off and lied about everything. I have a six-year-old daughter I’ve never met. She’s in Ontario. Her mother met someone new. If I stay clean, I can go out and see my kid. If not, it’ll probably never happen. She probably calls the new guy dad and she may not know about me at all. But I feel like I’ve been given another chance—my last chance—to make things right. That’s why I’m here.”
“Thank you, Vernon.”
The blonde mouthed the words, Thank you.
“Don’t feel too bad, Vern,” said a mustached man wearing tinted glasses, sitting across from him. “You’re not the only alky in the room to get disowned by his folks.”
“I know you’re new, Don,” said Eric, “but watch the cross-talk.”
“Sorry, brother Eric,” said Don, slouching back and folding his hands together.
Vern studied Don, couldn’t tell through the man’s glasses if he was watching him or not. He gave him a hard look anyhow.
“Would anyone else like to share?” asked Eric.
“I’m Sara,” said the blonde, “a hopeless yet grateful alcoholic.”
“Hello, Sara,” sang the group.
“Yeah, so, for me,” Sara said, “I knew I was hopeless after I took my first drink at age 12. My drunk bastard of a stepfather gave it to me, just before he took a bunch other things. My mom died from liver cancer when I was fifteen, and I ran away from home—”
Vern couldn’t bear to hear her grief, so he turned down the volume, just watched her speak. The stepfather shit turned his heart into a black fist, made him want to hunt the man down and look into his eyes while he choked the life from him.
Sara kept talking. A tear rolled down her cheek. An elderly woman handed her a tissue. Vern’s heart pounded faster. He felt dizzy and closed his eyes. He suddenly wanted a drink. He had forty-two dollars in his pocket, all he had in the world. Maybe a six-pack, just for tonight.
Ninety-three days. Shit, he thought, I’m not going to make it.
He gripped the arms of the chair and white-knuckled it out.
One day at a time, he prayed. Please, give me another twenty-four hours.
OUTSIDE, Vern stood under the awning, near the smokers, but not with them. Heavy, wet snow was falling and haphazard Christmas lights on a nearby patio reflected off a puddle on the street. A hunchbacked old-timer from the meeting sprinkled rock salt on the walk. “Chris H. broke his damn back here last winter,” he said. “Eighteen years sobriety and now he’s a goddamn quad.”
Vern tuned out; if he kept listening to all the world’s woes, he’d tumble into the abyss.
“I liked your share,” she said. Vern turned to see Sara standing beside him. Close enough to kiss. A snowflake landed in her eyelash, and he resisted the urge to brush it away. “Your truthfulness in there really struck a chord with me,” she said.
“Same,” he said, thinking, you lame, dumb shit ex-con.
She smiled that smile, held out her hand. “I’m Sara.”
SARA had a 2-for-1 Subway coupon so they ate in another too-bright room, just down the block from the meeting. Outside a truck plowed and sanded the street, spraying slush on the sidewalk. In Kent, Vern had been housed with hundreds of other murderers, thus inmates were made to eat meals in their cells, minimizing chances of further butchery. He felt he’d lost the few social graces he’d ever possessed, so he kept obsessively wiping his mouth with a napkin.
Sara did the majority of the talking, and he tried to pay attention, but was worried about his shaking hands. She was from a small town back east that he’d already forgotten the name of and she had a five-year-old daughter named Lucy. It made him think of Brianne.
Back on the street, Sara linked arms with him and he stiffened. “Easy, boy,” she said. “Don’t get out much, do you?”
Vern remained silent.
“The way you kept checking the clock in there made me think you’ve got someplace to be.”
“Kind of.”
“You gonna tell me?”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“After I bought you a Michelin-starred dinner and spilled my guts, you won’t even tell me one teensy gem about yourself? I get the whole strong/silent schtick, but this is a bit much.”
“I just got out of prison for manslaughter,” he said, staring straight ahead.
A low whistle from Sara. As they slowed, Vern expected her to release his arm, but she didn’t. She said, “Sara, you sure can pick ‘em.”
“I’m living in a halfway house and I got a nine o’clock curfew.”
“Don’t suppose they allow guests.”
He looked down at her, at the acceptance in her eyes, and surprised himself by saying, “Not even pretty ones.”
Playfully slapping his arm, she said, “Well, thank you, kind sir. And would the gentleman ex-convict have time to walk a girl home before curfew?”
“Sure you want a guy like me knowing where you live?”
“Depends on who you killed, I guess.”
That kind of talk put the freeze on Vern’s brain, took him to a place deep within. They kept walking. He had spent a long series of silent hours with counselors, so he was generally good at waiting people out. But Sara was different; she was like truth serum; she was like booze.
“I know it’s only our first date,” she said, “but who’d you kill? Your old lady?”
Vern shook his head. “What should have been an easy B & E turned into the home invasion from hell. The people weren’t supposed to be home; we were all cranked up, and pops got squirrely and went for my gun.”
“People are so goddamn stupid,” she said, “risking their lives for TVs and trinkets.”
“Instincts kick in,” he said, “fight or flight. Some choose fight.”
She looked over. “I thought there was a third F,” she said, and seeing his blank expression, added, “the instinct to fuck.”
Despite the chill, Vern’s face grew warm, and was glad they had turned down a darkened street, lit only by sad strings of Christmas lights on sad little low-rise balconies.
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Sara said. “I turn into a babbling fool when I’m nervous.”
“It’s OK,” he said, “I just doubt many people have the impulse to fuck someone who’s holding a gun on them.”
“Lotta strange impulses in this strange world, Vern. I’m sure you felt a few along the way.”
He shrugged, wondering how many men Sara had picked up at meetings, if she was what they called a “13th Stepper.” She stopped, upticked her chin toward a 70s three-story pink stucco job on the right. “This is me,” she said. “You wanna come in for a quick drink before you hit the halfway house. I’ve got wicked good breath mints to go with it.”
Vern’s smile faded. His body grew excited as his mind turned hopeless. He felt the beginnings of a hard-on. Sara looked up with wanting eyes. They stood like that for five seconds, before she laughed.
“Geez, fella,” she said, “I was just kidding. I mean, what would the point of that meeting if we just went and got blotto after.”
Sara bounced up and pecked on the lips, then checked her iPhone. “You got eight minutes before curfew, so skedaddle.” Backing toward a shadowy side-door of the apartment, she asked him if he wanted to hit the early bird meeting the next day. Even though he wasn’t a morning person, Vern agreed.
VERN showed up to the hall at 6:58 a.m. Sara wasn’t there yet, but he recognized several faces from last night’s meeting. It was as if they had nothing better to do than come to these things. After pouring himself a coffee, he nodded to the chairman and was just about to take a seat in the corner.
“Pssssst,” came a voice from the door. Vern looked around. No one else seemed to have heard. “Pssssst.” A female hand emerged around the doorjamb, pointed at him, then made a come hither gesture.
By the time Vern got to the door, Sara was waggling her tight-jeaned ass halfway down the hallway and giggling over her shoulder. She wore cat-eye sunglasses along with a blue fedora and the same clothes from the previous night. Once they were both outside, she turned and grabbed him, kissed him with bourbon lips.
I am good and truly fucked, Vern thought.
“Long time till curfew,” she said.
Sara pulled him into the alley and leaned against the brick wall that was covered in gang graffiti. With a magician’s flourish, she produced a fifth of Jack.
Vern sighed.
“Back on the wagon tomorrow,” she said, “but today we have fun.”
OUT of breath, Vern rolled off Sara and grabbed the bottle from the yellow milk crate by the bed. She lit a cigarette, pink bra hanging off one shoulder.
“How longs it take you to get your lob up again, sailor?” she asked, scratching her tit. “This girl’s horny like a minx and needs to get off.”
Vern closed his eyes and took a good pull from the bottle. Not even eight a.m. He had all day to sober up. He smiled and stretched out on the ratty king-size mattress that took up the majority of her third story studio space.
“Already there,” he said. “Next time I’ll try to go an entire minute.”
“Got any problems going downtown first?”
“None whatsoever.”
“What’s the hold up?”
He took another pull and headed south. He was out of practice, but Marianne used to call him the Cunnilingus King. All muscle memory, he figured.
They alternated between fucking and drinking, but it wasn’t long before the drinking took over and rose to prominence. At which point, they talked. Vern opened up about prison life, and the life he’d had before that, and the future life he wanted. He showed her the photo he carried of the chubby cheeked Brianne, taken when she was one.
After finishing a second bottle, Vern passed out. Hours later he awoke to the smell of bubblegum. His eyes blinked open to see a blurry pink bubble expand and explode wetly in his face. He saw the blonde hair, the turquoise eyes, and he smiled and reached out. She jerked back, a second before his eyes refocused to find a little girl looking at him. “This weird man tried to touch me,” she said.
“No,” he croaked, partially sitting up, “I thought you were?—”
The empty bottle of Jack clattered to the floor.
Sara sat across the room, smoking out a crack in the window. “Lucy, this is my friend, Vern. Vern is a pussycat; he wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Pussycats hurt lots of things,” Lucy said. “My Grandma’s cat kills birds.”
“Hi, Lucy,” Vern said, holding out his hand. He smiled and his eyes softened. “My little girl is around your age. Maybe you guys could play sometime.”
“Would you like that, Luce?” Sara said. “Now why don’t you be polite and shake Vern’s hand?”
Lucy shook her head.
“It’s OK,” said Vern, withdrawing his trembling mitt. I don’t blame the kid, he thought.
Sara butted her cig against the sill. “Alright, kid, you better get back to your Grandma’s before she gets her knickers in a knot.”
Lucy nodded, still staring at Vern.
“Vern,” said Sara, “can I trust you here till I get back? You’re not going to clean me out?”
“No promises,” he said.
“What do you think, Luce,” she said, “Does Verny bird here have a trusting face?”
“Why are his hands shaking like that?”
“Why are your hands shaking like that?” asked Sara.
“Nerve damage,” he said. “Cop shot me in the spine.”
Lucy’s eyes widened. Sara jetted a stream of smoke sideways from her mouth. “Boy’s got serious street cred,” she said.
IT was dark again when she returned with another bottle. Her wet kiss woke him. She unscrewed the cap. Out the window, at the end of the block, snow fell in front of the yellow streetlight. Complete silence. She handed him the bottle. In the gloom, her eyes took on a feral gleam and her canines glittered when she smiled. “Aren’t you glad I came into your life, Vern?”
He took a pull from the bottle, nodded. “Lucy seems like a great kid,” he said. “Smart.”
“Like mama like daughter,” said Sara.
Vern remained silent, studying Sara’s profile as she turned and looked out the window. Man, she had amazing lips, and those prominent Eastern European cheekbones. As if sensing him looking, she turned and smiled. Kissed him again in a way he felt right down to his toes.
She took the bottle from his hand and set it on the milk crate. Then she rose and went to the window. Face contorting in disgust, she said, “Fucking piece of shit is back.”
“Who?” said Vern. He stood, reeling slightly. He wore his T-shirt and nothing else.
“Fucking meth dealing scumsucker,” she hissed.
From where he stood, Vern could see the dilapidated walk-up across the alley. Through the partially closed curtains of the second floor corner suite, a silhouette of a tall man moved jerkily across the living room.
“How do you know he deals?” he asked.
Sara pulled him closer. Beneath the scent of perfume and whiskey and cigarettes, Vern could smell her sex. “’Cause he gets young girls from the ‘hood hooked on the poison,” she said, “and next thing you know, they’re giving alley blow jobs for the next fix.”
Vern remained silent.
“Ten year olds, Vern. Not much older than Lucy and Brianne. And this evil bastard, he profits from ruining these little girls.”
Across the way the shadow leaned down, set something on a shelf.
“Don’t you hate fucks like that?” she asked.
Vern’s pulse quickened. Something black slithered from the base of his skull, leaked down his spine, and filled his limbs. Made him clench his fists.
Hate.
Sara backed up so she was right next to him. In a much softer voice, almost a whisper, she said, “I know where he keeps his money.”
Vern nudged her out of the way and bent for his clothes. He pulled on his skivvies. They were backward, but fuck it, he left them like that. Where were his pants?
“Hear me out, baby,” said Sara.
“I can’t be a part of—”
“I’m gonna lose Lucy.”
“What? Why?”
“‘Cause I’m broke ass, Vern. I’m two months behind on the rent, and if the social workers deem me an unfit mother, I’ll lose her. Her Grandma’s fighting for her, got herself a lawyer and everything. It’s why I only get to see her a little bit.”
“I can’t help you.”
“How you gonna go see your daughter? She lives across the country. You got no money, not even your own place. You gonna get some minimum wage job, work forever and not even be able to afford plane fare. You gonna go clean, go to meetings every day—”
“That’s the plan.”
“The plan is to go over there and get that motherfucker’s money, ‘cause let me tell you there’s a shitload of it. Enough to get me out of hock. Enough to get you fixed up with a place. Get a car, some new duds. Then you can get clean, go to all the meetings you want. But do it from a position of economic strength. We fucking need this, Vern.”
Sara grabbed him through his backward skivs. “This shit is making you hard, lover.”
He shook his head. She grabbed the bottle, held it to his lips. “We need this.”
Vern drank. Kissed Sara. Drank more.
Black.
***
WINTER sunlight scalded Vern’s eyes and he sat upright. Sara stood at the window, smoking. “You sleep like the dead, baby. I had to check your pulse every once in a while.”
“I missed curfew,” he groaned, standing naked. A bad case of the spins collapsed him back on the bed. “They’re going to call my probie. I’m fucked.”
“Too late to fret now,” she said. “Time to move forward with the plan.”
Vern wanted to puke. He held his head in his shaking hands. “What plan?”
“‘What plan?’ The plan we hatched last night, before you passed out on me. Don’t tell me you blacked out?”
Early in his drinking career, Vern realized that the only thing worse than a drunk was a blackout drunk, which is what he was, damn near every time.
Fucking hell.
“You remember telling me what you’d need for the job?” She asked. “Well, I got them.”
Sara gestured to the counter by the sink, to a chipped and rusted crowbar. A pair of clear latex gloves sat beside the tool. “None too sophisticated,” she said, “but it’s not like you’re going to need safecracking gear. Buddy-boy keeps the cash in a hollowed-out book on his shelf.”
Vern stared at the crowbar.
“He’s also predictable as fuck,” said Sara. “Every night at eight he goes to Frida’s for dinner. Sometimes, he shoots some pool with other dirtbags over at DeLancio’s after.”
“How long you been planning this?”
“Long enough to know it’ll work.”
“No one else lives there?”
“Nope.”
Vern’s wheels turned. He envisioned pulling up in a shiny Mustang, climbing out in new clothes, freshly shaven and handsome, and, daddy, daddy, Brianne running into his arms.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Just past noon.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“Sleeping.”
“I could use a drink.”
“Nope. Not till after. I need you sharp.” She walked over and stood in front of him, cupped her hand beneath his chin. His face was level with her bejeweled navel. He could see the outline of her pudenda though her white underwear. “A drink’ll be ready for you when all’s done,” she said.
For a moment, Vern considered ditching the whole scene, pleading his probie for leniency. Then he got hard, and thought of the money, and a fresh bottle. He flipped the fuck-it switch and took Sara in his arms and let the thrill of an upcoming crime lift him higher and higher.
***
AT 8:05 the suite went dark. Several minutes later, Sara pointed to a tall figure in an overcoat, moving down the street, past the mouth of the alley. “That’s him.”
“What if he comes back?” he asked. “Like if he forgot something.”
Sara shrugged. “Then you best be fast.”
Adrenaline burned the booze from Vern’s system, and his hands no longer shook as he pulled on the gloves. He padded through the snow toward the apartments. A shoulder check, a short running leap, and his hands caught the bottom of the wrought iron balcony. Years of pumping iron in the pen had built layers of hard muscle on Vern’s frame, and with a grunt, he pulled himself up, scissoring his legs over the railing. He checked the sliding glass door. It was locked, curtains pulled tight on the other side.
The wail of a distant siren made Vern pause. He looked back at Sara’s darkened window across the way. He imagined her waving him on, hurry the fuck up.
Removing the tool from under his belt, he wedged the business end of the crowbar near where the lock of the metal door met the rotted wood of the frame. Some leverage and a sharp yank, and wood chunks exploded outward. Metal bent and the lock busted. Heart jackhammering in his chest, he slid the door open and pushed though the curtains into the dark living room.
A sound came from somewhere. He thought it did anyway. A creak in the floorboards? The neighbors? Had they heard the lock break? He froze, listening. Nothing. Maybe it had been his own damn self. He pulled out a small flashlight Sara had given him. He flicked it on and frowned when the beam illuminated a dusty mahogany table with Victorian-style chairs. Matching cabinet full of old china and crystal. Plush Persian carpets. Shelves filled with heavy tomes that no pimp would own. The air smelled of pipe tobacco and leather. Shit didn’t feel right, but now he was too far in the game to turn back.
Setting the crowbar on the table with a soft thunk, he stepped over to the shelf, trained the beam on the books. Skimming the titles on the second shelf from the bottom, he located Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the only book he’d read in prison that had unsettled him. He put the flashlight between his teeth. Same time he pulled the book, he caught a whiff of sourness, like bad breath. He turned to see a flash of metal descending toward his head, and a tall, frail, elderly man pulling an oxygen tank.
He jumped back. The golf club missed his skull, but smashed into his shoulder. The flashlight bounced off the shelf and landed on the rug. Crime and Punishment tumbled to the floor, spewing stacks of hundred dollar bills.
In the gloom, the old man appeared as a skeletal apparition as he raised the club again. “You think that son-of-a-bitch is getting my money? I’d rather die first!”
As the iron descended, Vern shot a leg out, booting the old man in the knee. The man stumbled, tripped backward over his medical cart, and fell. His skull made a sound like a melon as it smacked the hard wood.
The old man was very still.
Vern went to him, checked for a pulse, found none.
Fuck.
With violently shaking hands, he grabbed the flashlight, stuck it between his teeth again, and swept up the cash, shoving it back in the book. It was a lot, maybe ten grand. When he stood to his full height, the beam lit up an old family portrait on the wall, taken maybe twenty years earlier. Father, mother, and a grown son and daughter. It was the son that halted him, as blood roared in his skull and his nerves shrieked like a train whistle.
He spat the flashlight from his mouth, and it fell and spun on the parquet floor. Like a macabre game of spin the bottle, the beam settled on the old man’s pale face, frozen in an indignant death mask.
“What the fuck, Sara?” Vern exploded, barging through her apartment door. She pointed toward the washroom, where a light shone under the door. “Lucy,” she whispered.
“There was an old man there,” he said, dialing it down. “He’s dead now. There was no meth-dealer or pimp.”
Her face twisted in confusion. “That’s odd. I swear no one else lived there. But you got the book. I know you’d make it, baby! Let me get you a drink.”
Inside the washroom the toilet flushed. Vern leaned closer to her. “There was a photo on the wall over there. I knew the guy’s son.”
“That’s some fucked up coincidence if ever I heard one, Vern.” She took the book from his hands, opened it and smiled. The washroom door opened. Vern tried to put on a normal smile, so he wouldn’t scare the little girl a second time.
It wasn’t Lucy. It was the mustached man with the tinted glasses from the meeting the other day. Don. It was also a decades older version of the man in the photo. Ronnie Barnes, with whom he had served four years in the pen. Ronnie Barnes, who’d been released maybe two months ahead of Vern. How had he not recognized him? Then he remembered that Ronnie was a professional con man, and full-time sociopath.
“Hey there, Vern,” said Ronnie, removing his specs to reveal ice-blue eyes, “fancy meeting you here.”
“You fucking set me up,” said Vern, softly, then turned to Sara and yelled at the top of his voice: “You fucking set me up!”
He raised the crowbar. Ronnie Barnes pulled a revolver, leveled it at Vern’s gut. “No hard feelings, bud. Just timing is all, you getting out when you did. Sare, grab that crowbar, would’ja? Then fix our man a refreshing beverage; he’s got the shakes real bad.”
Vern thought about rushing him, but he remembered what Ronnie had gone down for: shooting a rival grifter in the gut and watching as the man spent the next eight hours in agonizing death. Ruthless Ronnie they called him.
Sara took the crowbar from Vern’s limp hands.
She handed him a tall glass of whiskey. “Don’t look so forlorn,” she said. “It’s making me sad.”
“Have a seat, Vern,” said Ronnie. “Drink your drink.”
Vern slumped onto the floor with his back to the wall. He peeled off the latex gloves. Time and options were running out. Brianne might as well live on Mars; he was never going to see her again. He drank the whiskey right down in five long gulps, closed his eyes.
Ronnie Barnes said, “Fill that thirsty boy up again, Sare.”
Vern felt his glass being refilled, smelled the booze and Sara. He opened his eyes and saw her blurry form in the background, while before him the liquor was vivid, turbulent amber fire. His shaking hand brought the glass to his lips. He felt suddenly sick; this liquid had ruled his life since his teens, led to every wrong turn he’d ever made.
He drank it down. Around him the room grew dim and the volume muted. Sara and Ronnie laughed and smoked while counting the cash. Vern finished his drink, and then something strange and extremely rare occurred; through his drunken haze emerged a beam of delusional clarity, where his vision sharpened and a robust energy returned. He would not die in this hovel. He would go to his boyhood home, not far away actually, perhaps a dozen blocks from here. Hide out, sober up, and regroup. Then maybe get on a bus, travel east, to Brianne.
First: the money.
Their backs to him, Sara and Ronnie didn’t see Vern rise. Didn’t see him pick up the revolver from the bed. Didn’t see him point it at the back of Ronnie’s head as the tall man laughed and counted money, a cigarette bobbing in his mouth.
Vern snicked back the hammer of the revolver. Ronnie’s eyes blinked in surprise, a second before Vern squeezed the trigger and blew his brains, blood, and skull fragments all over the table and the cash. Ronnie fell face forward onto the table, then slid onto the floor. A second later, a wide-eyed Sara surprised Vern by jumping into his arms.
“Oh, thank God, baby,” she said. “That psycho said that if I didn’t go along with the plan, he’d hurt Lucy.”
“Bullshit,” he said, pushing her away. A clump of brain hung from her bangs, splatters of blood across her cheek.
“Let’s go, Vern,” she said, scraping up the bloody bills and putting them in her handbag. “We’re together in this. Two heads are better than one.” Vern grabbed a wet stack, shoved it in his pocket. He wiped off the gun best he could with his shirt and set it on the counter.
As they walked down the hall toward the exit and stairs down to the alley, a door creaked open behind them. Vern turned to see Lucy’s face peeking through the crack. “Grandma,” she said to someone in the apartment, “Sara and that weird man are in the hall.”
“Lucy,” came a raspy voice, “I told you never to talk to that woman.”
“She gave me money to come over and meet the weird man yesterday,” said Lucy. “He was in bed.”
“Whaaaaat?” The door ripped back, and an older woman with frizzy gray hair stuck her head out. “Stay away from my granddaughter, you whore. I’m calling the cops!”
“I thought Lucy was your—” said Vern.
Sara motioned him downstairs. “Time’s of the essence, Vern.”
Back in the alley, a cop car cruised past on the boulevard. Sara yanked Vern back against the concrete wall. He could smell the coppery tang of Ronnie’s blood on Sara. He doubled over and puked. Sara peered out. “Piggies gone.”
The air was now thick with flurries and the streets were quiet except for the odd snowplow, ambulance, or taxi. Sirens howled continuously in the background. Sara seemed to know where to go, and Vern was in a stupor, so numb his tremors had stopped.
After forty-five minutes of trudging, Vern snapped to and realized they were in a field, calf-deep in snow, a chain-link backstop silhouetted against the lights from cranes in the background. They were near the docks. It was familiar, this area. He’d grown up around here, played Little League at this very park.
“How did we get here?” he asked.
“We walked, dummy,” Sara said. “Over by those trees is a shortcut. We needed to get off the main roads. Too many cops out.”
“Right,” he said. Near the tree line, he began to turn. Two sharp cracks. A familiar hot sting between his shoulder blades. When he touched the front of his jacket, his fingertips looked like they’d been dipped in ink. Sara reached into his jacket pocket and removed the stack of bills. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a wet gurgle.
Sara stepped back and aimed the gun at his head. “You did me a favor. Now I’m repaying it. Thanks, Vern.”
She pulled the trigger and it clicked. She pulled back the hammer and tried again. Same result. “Sorry, Vern.”
Then she was gone and it surprised him that he didn’t feel very much at all. Staggering back through the park, he knew he ought to be freezing, but he was warm, the air felt almost balmy. Walking further, the snow was gradually replaced by grass, the greenest grass he’d ever seen, dewdrops casting prisms under dawn’s first light. He staggered past his old high school, saw the smoke pit where he’d smoked his first joint, chugged recess beers with his boys. They were there now, raising their cans in silent salute.
Several side streets later, at the end of the block stood the old Craftsman. The yellow sun rose above the sagging roof as morning birds praised the day. As he approached, the door to the house opened and the figure of a young woman emerged, the mother Vern knew when he was Brianne’s age. Vern held up his hand, saw that it was covered in blood, and immediately lowered it, ashamed. He was not that little boy anymore.
His mother smiled and waved back. As the sun rose higher, everything in the street was bathed in gold. Her smile gave him permission to fall to the earth, because he felt so tired. He’d just have a nap, and he promised that when he awoke, he’d do better, make life good again. Turn things around. He could handle that. One day at a time.
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Medium for Hire
M. Myers
The beds were made perfectly. Rose scented air fresheners were no match for the aroma of new carpet and fresh paint that permeated the air of the hotel room. The sound of children playing in the pool behind the fence of the patio echoed in the distance, but as though she was alone on the patio Mrs. Walters sat in her seat like a zombie.
“Say something Dianna.” Donald said, “you’re starting to make me nervous.”
Still Mrs. Walters said nothing. Beside occasionally blinking and the trembling of her hands she did not move. Donald got out of his seat walked to the mini bar. He put together the best drink he could with the ingredients provided. Walking back to the patio he paused to look at the bathroom then continued toward Mrs. Walters.
“Drink this, it’ll help take the edge off.” Donald said, as he handed the drink to Mrs. Walters. She looked up at him and tears ran down her face. She was gripping the book weight so tightly her knuckles had turned white.
“Let it go. I’ll put it back on the desk.” Donald said. She took the glass and handed him the L-shaped book weight. As he walked back into the room she looked up and watched the clouds float. She wiped her face with her free hand and lifted the glass to her lips.
“Tell me again what you saw in your vision.” Mrs. Walters said.
“I think I blacked out when you said she was prostituting.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? I don’t want you to pass out again.” Donald said.
“Yes Don, I need to know how she died. She was my only child; I won’t be able to rest until I know all the details. That’s why I hired you. My husband doesn’t even know I’m here, he’d likely have me committed.”
“Very well then, from what I sensed her spirit is still in this room. She led me to the bathroom first. She was getting ready, putting on her stockings and touching up her lipstick. I can feel the uneasy feeling she has in her stomach as she’s never been with a woman before.” Donald said.
“Wait, her murderer was a woman?” Mrs. Walter asked.
“Yes. I sense that she was an older woman, well in her 40’s.”
“I just can’t see my daughter selling her body. I begged her to come home, begged her to quit those drugs and go to rehab. I didn’t want her to be on the streets. When she asked for money I gave it to her every time, I even opened another account for her in a different bank because my husband forbid me from helping her financially unless she agreed to go to the facility in Arizona.”
Mrs. Walters sat on the sofa in the room. She hung her head and wept. The half finished drink shook as her body moved violently with every gasp for air she took. Her hands were smooth. Her short bleach blonde hair showed signs of grey. She composed herself and as Donald moved toward her she beckoned with her hand for him to continue.
“Alright, I sense that she opened the door and was immediately met by the women with a drink. She took it, chugged it and asked for another.” Donald went on, after she chugged the second drink the woman told her to dance. Dana started to move her body seductively. She felt uncomfortable; I can feel in my stomach that she was nauseous. She thought it was because she was nervous but the woman drugged her. By the time Dana realized she wasn’t just experiencing jitters it was too late, she was losing control of her body. She stopped moving and asked the woman what she put in her drink, the woman gave her a smirk and told her to relax.” Donald said.
“Are you certain you want me to finish? I can’t tell you who the woman is, I don’t know her name because I can only sense what Dana saw and felt, I have no idea what the woman was thinking or feeling.”
“Yes Don, I need to know.”
“Okay. She kept trying to dance; she blacks out and wakes to the woman masturbating to her naked body. Dana doesn’t know how she got to the sofa or how her clothes came off, she feels like vomiting and tries to get up. Before she can move she pukes. The woman has a sudden look of disgust and gets angry, she starts to yell at Dana but Dana can’t make out what she is saying. The woman gets frustrated and starts to pace the room. Dana is still tying to get herself up when she noticed the woman moving toward her with the book weight. She feels a sharp pain in her ear and falls to the ground. The woman is yelling at her still, calling her dirty. She’s telling Dana that she is a slut and nobody loves her. Dana thinks of the stories she’s heard about rude clients and tries to tell herself just to lie still. This doesn’t deter the woman; she keeps beating Dana with the weight. Dana holds her breath as the woman examines her to see if she is really dead; it’s no use because the woman then turns Dana on her back, picks the book weight back up and rams it down on Dana’s nose several times.” Donald said.
“Alright, that’s enough.” Mrs. Walters said. She got off the sofa and walked to the mini bar. Sobbing she poured another drink and chugged it. She poured another, chugged it again and turned to look at Donald. Tears filled her eyes and she fell to the floor.
“I am so sorry for your loss. I wish I could have made this easier for you Dianna.” Donald sat next to Mrs. Walters. He put his hand on her shoulder and immediately pulled it away with a fearful look on his face. “You can’t blame your husband for this, he was doing what he though was right by cutting her off. He doesn’t deserve to die.”
“ I hired you to tell me what happened to my child, not read my mind.” Mrs. Walters said.
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Have You No Decency?
Joseph S. Pete
Two men shouted at each other on the overhead television, either about sports or politics, it was hard to tell, especially with the sound off. They were apoplectic, all bulging veins and spittle.
This place was billed as grab-and-go pizza, but Dan was still impatiently milling in line.
A text buzzed. It was his friend Mike.
“Can you believe this crap?”
Dan wasn’t sure what Mike was irate about this time, but was too hangry at that particular moment to care. He’d get back to him later. Instead, he checked Twitter, everyone seemed to be clamoring for the firing of someone who said something outrageously offensive. A random guy made a fusty dad joke about a mass murder, and everyone was indignant and piling on, demanding he be let go and never allowed to work again. It was a seething, inchoate mass of indignation, a writhing snake coil of rage.
Ignoring all the frothing social media furor, Dan mused on why these shootings kept happening, over and over, what made people so angry as to mow down strangers with no provocation. What was the point of hurting someone who had nothing to do with you? How could anyone be so callous? What was even the upshot?
Almost inured to such scenes of heartbreak and tragedy, Dan toggled over to his work email, where he had a news tip about a tanning salon that didn’t have a license, which seemed minor enough but which got the tipster really riled up.
“They should be shut down! Did they pay off the mayor?” the email read. “Tropical Sun is being operated illegally. Now they’re serving shakes and teas! Terrible!”
Dan laughed out loud. How did people get to be so mad? How could you get so worked up over something so inconsequential? Didn’t they realize how ridiculous they were?
He glanced at the time. He had to get into work. The line didn’t seem to be going anywhere, then suddenly lurched forward.
After finally ending his long sojourn at the counter, he asked for a deep dish. They didn’t have any. He asked a cheese pizza. Sorry, they were out. He’d have the cheesy bread. The Italian cheesy bread? Sure. With marinara sauce? Please.
They got his order wrong. Then they promptly refunded the wrong person and they they handed him a receipt with no refund.
He was famished to the point of near-incoherence. The thought of unloading some nasty remarks and storming out flitted through his mind, but courtesy won the day and he left with the unwanted bread sticks he had been unable to return.
“Look, thank you, this will do.”
A woman near the entrance started yelling impatiently as he headed out.
“Hey, we’re in a hurry here!”
Almost immediately, an extremely aggro driver cut him off.
He continued and two more aggressive drivers swooped in front of him right before their lane ended, only to then ride their brakes for thousands more feet as they adjusted to the flow of traffic.
“You know, we could all use a little more common decency.” he thought.
They all ended up corralled at the next red light, without any hope of progress. A motorist blared his horn, really leaning into it, though it wasn’t at all clear what he was honking at. He honked and honked and honked, without letting up. Other motorists started honking at him, though maybe he took it as vindication or the cavalry.
He turned up the radio. The public affairs host was ranting about some fresh outrage that occurred in Washington D.C. He flipped to a commercial station where the DJ was raving about jorts.
Feeling a little stymied, he wondered if he should leave a negative Yelp review for the pizza place. As a public service. To warn others.
No, he ultimately decided, it would be petty. Those people who posted scathing, entitled Yelp reviews over minor transgressions were pathetic and needed to move on. He needed to just let it go.
After finally arriving at work, he checked the comments on his news video. One guy critiqued his appearance, another randomly declared it to be fake news and a third asked who cares. Someone quipped the paper was going against the grain by putting someone on camera who didn’t look clean and had no public speaking skills. A little perturbed, Dan clicked on the guy’s profile, saw he was the assistant manager at a motel. He felt inclined to fire back, attack the guy’s profession. He breathed deeply and set down his phone.
The emails rolled in like the tide.
A mother was indignant about a spelling error in a headline. She couldn’t share the article about her child’s triumph in Science Olympiad because it was misspelled Scoeince Olyympad.
“Unbelievably embarrassing spelling error,” the headline read.
Dan leaned toward ignoring the email, maybe just deleting it. He clicked on it instead.
“My kid is one of the bright students in the National Science Olympiad tournament. It is beyond ridiculous that your paper allowed such a horrific, terrible spelling error to be published,” she wrote. “Fix it ASAP. It’s extremely embarrassing. We’d like to actually be able to share this on social media with friends and family.”
Then a similar email from another parent crossed the transom. It smacked of coordination.
“I have a child on the Science Olympiad and would have loved to share your article with friends, but you misspelled both “Science” and “Olympiad” and a coach’s name. We shouldn’t have to crowd-source copy editing.”
“Yes, we shouldn’t have to crowd-source copy-editing, we should crowd-fund it,” he typed in response. But some people value ignorance over information and don’t feel a need to financially support their local media.”
Dan had felt it acutely, had witnessed so many talented colleagues shuffle out the door as round after round of layoffs followed the terminal decline of the circulation of the print product. Doreen had published books, had run a magazine that got out by the paper and was unceremoniously handed a pink slip at a juncture in her life when securing a new position would be no easy feat.
He offered to buy her books in a gesture of support, but she just ended up mailing autographed copies to him, defeating the purpose.
“That place will grind you out,” she said at her going-away party. “It’s for the best, I fear.”
She was dead-on. They worked you like a mule and cast you aside when they had no further use for you, largely because the public didn’t care anymore—not enough to pay anyway.
He let the incendiary email save to drafts, then turned his attention to the “unbelievably embarrassing spelling error” lady.
Having received angry missives before, Dan knew neither actually subscribed to the paper. They would have brought it up right away as though it entitled them to something.
So he felt emboldened as he banged out a draft.
“What’s truly embarrassing that the public didn’t financially support its local media, if they weren’t enough paying subscribers to support enough copy editors to prevent such errors,” he typed out. “What’s truly embarrassing is when people aren’t ashamed to be ignorant of what’s going in their community. You wrote us because no one else cares enough about your son’s accomplishment to print anything, so you have nothing else to share. What’s embarrassing is neglecting your community media sources and, as a parent, leaving your child with an appreciably worse world than the one you inherited. That’s what’s embarrassing.”
Satisfied, he read over what he wrote again and again. He knew he should just consign this draft to the dustbin. It wouldn’t accomplish anything and would possibly come back to hurt him. Besides, he should have a little common decency.
He felt so aggrieved, so beside himself though.
His mouse cursor hovered over the send button and the delete button. It flitted between the two. Finally, the indecision faded away. He stopped hovering. He clicked.
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Zoo / Putting on a Show
Janet Kuypers
11/24/17 (in Río Gallegos)
“I finally found a nice place to sleep on the ice,
close to the Southern Ocean. The warm air
comes up from the water, and the sun
reflects off the ice quite nicely. A perfect spot.
So let me just lay here and enjoy myself,
let me close my eyes, bask in the sun. But then
I hear a strange noise coming from the water,
and now above the water are fish that don’t swim,
but make the strangest noises I’ve ever heard.
Then I hear clicking noises from their floating
fish craft, and I just think, leave me alone.
This isn’t a zoo. I’m not putting on a show
for you. Just let me warm up in the sun.”
(from the perspective of a Weddell Seal at the Antarctic Islands,
as a Zodiac boat of humans sails nearby to photograph him)
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with an Edge Detection filter).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with a Sepia Tone filter).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with a Threshold filter).
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You and I,
Walking through
Georgetown
Janet Kuypers
8/15/17
It’s springtime again
and here we are,
walking down the streets,
smelling flowers at three a.m.
Texas bluebonnets,
Winecups, buttercups
it’s still a little cool
it’s still early April
as the wind rushes through our clothes
hands clasped walking in stride
love is everywhere on this night
tighten you grip on each other
smell flowers in the breeze
it’s a beautiful wind
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “You and I, Walking through Georgetown” for being published in the book “Blue Hole”, and “Watching You” from now sold out third printing of her book “The Window” 10/13/17 at the “Enigmatist / Blue Hole” reading at the opening night of the “Georgetown Poetry Festival” (L).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “You and I, Walking through Georgetown” for being published in the book “Blue Hole”, and “Watching You” from now sold out third printing of her book “The Window” 10/13/17 at the “Enigmatist / Blue Hole” reading at the opening night of the “Georgetown Poetry Festival” (S).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with an Edge Detection filter).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with a Sepia Tone filter).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with a Threshold filter).
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Returning to Georgetown
Janet Kuypers
88/15/17
Everyone is used to the noise,
traffic rumbling down the roads,
airplanes arcing overhead...
But avoid what man has done,
that human cacophony of clutter —
and come over here instead.
It almost seems like a sacred place.
Stand still for the bird’s symphony
as they sing from the tops of trees.
Look over to the plants near your feet
and catch the crickets’ percussion.
What is a car for, when you have these.
Look around, and ask yourself —
is there is any place else you need to be,
or anything else you’d really rather do.
Take a deep breath. You’ve found
that right here has everything you need.
Welcome home. We’ve missed you.
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See YouTube video 8/23/17 of Janet Kuypers’ poem “Knew I Had to be Ready”, then her show “Under My Skin”, with her poems “Protecting Peace can Put you in Prison”, “Ernesto”, “Quivering against the Invading Enemy”, “The Truth Is Out There”, “x-raying metal under my skin”, “X-rays and broken hearts”, “unique noise”, “erasure poem: A Poetic History”, “Just One Book”, and “Returning to Georgetown” (this video was filmed from a Sony camera).
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See YouTube video 8/23/17 of the Janet Kuypers’ poem “Knew I Had to be Ready”, then her show “Under My Skin”, with her poems “Protecting Peace can Put you in Prison”, “Ernesto”, “Quivering against the Invading Enemy”, “The Truth Is Out There”, “x-raying metal under my skin”, “X-rays and broken hearts”, “unique noise”, “erasure poem: A Poetic History”, “Just One Book”, and “Returning to Georgetown” (from a Panasonic Lumix camera; Hard Light filter).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem “Returning to Georgetown” (which was published as a “Sun Stanza” in “The Sun” newspaper 9/13/17) 10/13/17 at the “Enigmatist / Blue Hole” reading at the opening night of the Georgetown Poetry Festival (Lumix).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem “Returning to Georgetown” (which was published as a “Sun Stanza” in “The Sun” newspaper 9/13/17) 10/13/17 at the “Enigmatist / Blue Hole” reading at the opening night of the Georgetown Poetry Festival (Sony).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with an Edge Detection filter).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with a Sepia Tone filter).
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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ May 2018 Book Release Reading 5/2/18, where she first read her Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” poems “JY asks”, “zoo / putting on a show”, “You and I, Walking Through Georgetown”, and “Returning to Georgetown”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with a Threshold filter).
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Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.
She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images. Starting at this time Kuypers released a large number of CD releases currently available for sale at iTunes or amazon, including “Across the Pond”(a 3 CD set of poems by Oz Hardwick and Janet Kuypers with assorted vocals read to acoustic guitar of both Blues music and stylized Contemporary English Folk music), “Made Any Difference” (CD single of poem reading with multiple musicians), “Letting It All Out”, “What we Need in Life” (CD single by Janet Kuypers in Mom’s Favorite Vase of “What we Need in Life”, plus in guitarist Warren Peterson’s honor live recordings literally around the globe with guitarist John Yotko), “hmmm” (4 CD set), “Dobro Veče” (4 CD set), “the Stories of Women”, “Sexism and Other Stories”, “40”, “Live” (14 CD set), “an American Portrait” (Janet Kuypers/Kiki poetry to music from Jake & Haystack in Nashville), “Screeching to a Halt” (2008 CD EP of music from 5D/5D with Janet Kuypers poetry), “2 for the Price of 1” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from Peter Bartels), “the Evolution of Performance Art” (13 CD set), “Burn Through Me” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from The HA!Man of South Africa), “Seeing a Psychiatrist” (3 CD set), “The Things They Did To You” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from the DMJ Art Connection), “Hope Chest in the Attic” (audio CD set), “St. Paul’s” (3 CD set), “the 2009 Poetry Game Show” (3 CD set), “Fusion” (Janet Kuypers poetry in multi CD set with Madison, WI jazz music from the Bastard Trio, the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and Paul Baker), “Chaos In Motion” (tracks from Internet radio shows on Chaotic Radio), “Chaotic Elements” (audio CD set for the poetry collection book and supplemental chapbooks for The Elements), “etc.” audio CD set, “Manic Depressive or Something” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from the DMJ Art Connection), “Singular”, “Indian Flux” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from the DMJ Art Connection), “The Chaotic Collection #01-05”, “The DMJ Art Connection Disc 1” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from the DMJ Art Connection), “Oh.” audio CD, “Live At the Café” (3 CD set), “String Theory” (Janet Kuypers reading other people's poetry, with music from “the DMJ Art Connection), “Scars Presents WZRD radio” (2 CD set), “SIN - Scars Internet News”, “Questions in a World Without Answers”, “Conflict • Contact • Control”, “How Do I Get There?”, “Sing Your Life”, “Dreams”, “Changing Gears”, “The Other Side”, “Death Comes in Threes”, “the final”, “Moving Performances”, “Seeing Things Differently”, “Live At Cafe Aloha”, “the Demo Tapes” (Mom’s Favorite Vase), “Something Is Sweating” (the Second Axing), “Live In Alaska” EP (the Second Axing), “the Entropy Project”, “Tick Tock” (with 5D/5D), “Six Eleven”
“Stop. Look. Listen.”, “Stop. Look. Listen to the Music” (a compilation CD from the three bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds & Flowers” and “The Second Axing”), and “Change Rearrange” (the performance art poetry CD with sampled music).
From 2010 through 2015 Kuypers also hosted the Chicago poetry open mic the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting weekly feature and open mic podcasts that were also released as YouTube videos.
In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), the three collection books from 2004: Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, , Chaotic Elements, and Fusion, the (select) death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, the 2012 art book a Picture’s Worth 1,000 words (available with both b&w interior pages and full color interior pages, the shutterfly ISSN# cc&d hardcover art book life, in color, Post-Apocalyptic, Burn Through Me, Under the Sea (photo book), the Periodic Table of Poetry, a year long Journey, Bon Voyage!, and the mini books Part of my Pain, Let me See you Stripped, Say Nothing, Give me the News, when you Dream tonight, Rape, Sexism, Life & Death (with some Slovak poetry translations), Twitterati, and 100 Haikus, that coincided with the June 2014 release of the two poetry collection books Partial Nudity and Revealed. 2017, after hr October 2015 move to Austin Texas, also witnessed the release of 2 Janet Kuypers book of poetry written in Austin, “(pheromemes) 2015-2017 poems” and a book of poetry written for her poetry features and show, “(pheromemes) 2015-2017 show poems” (and both pheromemes books are available from two printers).
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Thank you to Thom Woodruff for taking photos of Janet Kuypers as she read from the Down in the Dirt 5/18 book “The Church” during “Community Poetry @ Half Price Books” 5/2/18.