Cover art by Eleanor Leonne Bennett

Table of Contents Lisa Gray, “Wee Gems” G. A. Scheinoha, “Path of Least Resistance” Liam Spencer, “Keepers” Michael Madden, “Skullduggery PA” Janet Kuypers, “much” Victoria Griffin, “Cigarettes and Daisies” Liz Betz, “Good Medicine” Janet Kuypers, “out” John K. Graham, “Time” Eland D. Summers, “Hunting With Carey” Eric Napolitan, “Soulless” Eleanor Leonne Bennett, “diogen” art Rachel Peters, “The End of Something” Kyle Hemmings, “Divided Street” art Sam Nicodemus, “She Dreamed” Fritz Hamilton, “The King of the Jews goes to Auschwitz” Fritz Hamilton, “women working in Afghanistan” Chad Newbill, “Daddy’s Chair” Andrew D. Grossman, “False Flag” Clyde Daniel Bearre, “Winter Hitchhikers” David Hernandez, “Searching for Coins” Craig Watts, “The Goat’s Milk Massacre” Brian Looney, “Convoluted Afternoon” art Michael C. Keith, “Soldier Blue” Donald Gaither, “untitled (symphony)” Eric Ullerich, “Killing Nazis” Janet Kuypers, “last” W. Scott R. Brownlee, “Philosophical Stripper” Jessica Marie Baumgartner, “After the Eulogy” Edward Michael O’Durr Supranowicz,                                             “a Turn in the Road” art James Krehbiel, “Little Soldiers” David Michael Jackson, “Pretty Water Scene” art Janet Kuypers, “one oh three destruction instructions: run faster”

Note that any artwork that may appear on a Down in the Dirt issue web page
will appear in black and white in the print edition of Down in the Dirt magazine.

Order this issue from our printer as a 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback book (with both an ISSN# and a ISBN#) Path of Least Resistance

Wee Gems Lisa Gray     I shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t have left any of them. It was irresponsible. Then no onecould have stolen her away. My wee gem.     I blame Ben.     “She’ll be all right in the room. The door’s locked and we’ll just be downstairs in the hotel bar,” he insisted.     That’s men for you. Assertive. Insistent. And I was stupid enough to be swayed by him. I’ll never forgive myself. Or him.     “Your wee gem safely tucked away?”     Did I detect a hint of jealousy in Ben’s sister’s voice?     She knew I hadn’t wanted to leave her. Hadn’t wanted to join the nightly drinking sessions in the hotel bar. And I was angry at Ben. Angry he had told his sister we were coming on this holiday. And angrier when I’d found out she and her no-good husband had booked the same hotel. It wasn’t like I hadn’t tried to like them both. I looked across at Val. Her bright red lips were parted in a false smile, her hand twirled round the end of the champagne glass revealing a wrist bedecked with brassy bangles. Jewellery. She was always covered in it. But not the expensive sort. She’d never have that while she was with Steve. I looked down at my ringless hands.     “Missing her already, are you?”     Steve’s voice was teasing, tantalising. He took pleasure in baiting me. They both did.     I’d never fitted in. And they knew it. It hadn’t seemed to matter at the beginning. I had Ben and my wee gems. My wee gems were there before Ben of course but he had gladly accepted them as his own and I had been glad. They were no longer the product of a broken home.     I waited for Ben to come to my defence. Like I always did. But Ben didn’t seem to notice.     “I’m getting this round,” was all he said, as he pushed back his chair and made his way to the hotel bar and disappeared in the throng.     “I’ll go help him,” said Steve and I was glad for an end to the baiting.     “Don’t forget mine’s an orange juice,” I said.     Steve gave me a funny look and disappeared.     To this day I’ve had my suspicions. But then I’ve suspected everyone. From the evening she went missing. I’d got up to check on her three or four times but each time Steve had said, “Sit down. Stop fussing. She’ll be all right. Relax and enjoy yourself.”     He pushed another Buck’s Fizz in my direction.     He must think I’m stupid, I thought. I’d known it wasn’t plain orange juice. The potted plant behind me knew as well. He’d been given three quarters of each glass to drink. I had made a pretence at sipping the other quarter, using every opportunity to get rid of the rest. The others hadn’t seemed to notice. They were on their fifth round and enjoying it when I eventually made my escape.     Everything was there. Except my wee gem. They’d got in through the window, the police said. Forced open the shutters and taken her. They must have been watching us. Known we were downstairs in the bar and seized the opportunity.     My wee gem was never found. I had my other wee gems for comfort of course. When I got home. I’d gather them round me and I’d feel better.     “You’re excluding me,” Ben said.     I felt bad. I knew how much she’d meant to Ben too.     I knew how much she’d meant to Ben.     It couldn’t be, I thought. It couldn’t be Ben. I knew he’d been jealous of my special relationship with her. But to go to those lengths. No. Grief was playing tricks with my mind.     “You’ve got your job,” I said more callously than I intended.     “It’s not the same,” he replied.     I could imagine it wouldn’t be. Others would pale into insignificance beside her.     “A lot of people have asked about her,” he said, “since I took her into the shop that day.”     I’d forgotten about that. My suspicions came flooding back. He’d wanted her in the shop. I should have had my suspicions then. Was she the reason he’d wanted to be with me in the first place? Had he and that no-good brother-in-law arranged all this? Was that the reason they’d plied me with drinks? I knew Steve been in and out of prison. Had they arranged to sell her to a third party? There was an international market out there. I shuddered at the thought of what would become of her. I knew the shop wasn’t making money. Television shopping and the internet were to blame. I had personal experience of that.     In fact I’d become something of an expert.     I knew Steve had been furious when Ben wouldn’t give him a job after coming out of prison. Could Steve have taken her? There’d be plenty out there who’d want their hands on her. I tried not to think about it. Tied not to think about what they would do to her. Would she even look the same? Would I recognise her?     I didn’t tell the police my suspicions. I didn’t need to. It was obvious they’d suspect Steve and his wife. What with his criminal record and the fact the police reckoned there had to be a woman in it somewhere. And by association, Ben. Because of his job. Of course they all denied it. But it all came out eventually. Ben was never strong. He said they had arranged to take her but that when he and Steve had gone for her under the pretence of getting drinks, she was gone.     no onebelieved him of course.     So Ben, Steve and his wife are all in prison. But they didn’t find her. It’s what they deserve. For plotting to take my wee gem.     I’d heard them. But I didn’t tell the police.     I’d gone down to the bar early that evening to tell them I wouldn’t be joining them after all. And I heard them. Behind the potted plants. Planning to take her. Take my wee gem!     “It’s the only way,” I heard Steve say.     Ben looked unsure. I waited for a reaction.     “We can sell her to the highest bidder. It’ll be an end to all our troubles.”     Steve’s voice was assertive. Insistent.     “You’ll be able to sell the shop and retire. It’s not making any money. There’s no future in it. You know that. And I’ll be able to give up my life of crime and buy Kathy the kind of jewellery she’s always wanted. It’s the perfect solution.”     Ben shifted uncomfortably.     “But she’s my wee gem too,” he said, unhappily.     “You’ll still have the others. You’re not going to miss one. And the loss of her will only bring you and Fiona more together.”     I couldn’t believe my ears. I waited for Ben to reject the idea.     Instead, incredibly, he slowly nodded his head.     “You can easily talk her into joining us for drinks. And there’ll be plenty of opportunity to do it when we go to the bar,” Steve said smoothly.     I hurried back to our hotel room. That’s when I changed my plans.     I shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t have left any of them. My wee gems. It was irresponsible. Family should always come first. And they were my family. My only family. The product of a broken home.     We’re home now. My wee gems and I. I’ll never leave them again. I look at them sprawled on the bed. They look happier now. There’s a new brightness about them. Of course they still miss their sister. But I know deep down she’s safe. And we’ll see her one day.     I sank on to the bed, gathered my precious gems about me and pressed the remote on the television. It was my favourite channel. It had been since my divorce. I opened my hand-bag and removed the cheque I’d got for the sale of Ben’s jeweller’s shop. It was more than I’d anticipated. But I didn’t feel guilty. The high street jewellery business was in decline and Ben wasn’t going to need it where he was.     Suddenly I gasped. There she was on the television. My wee gem. No, not my wee gem. But just like her.     What was the presenter saying?     “————————————no longer around. Hasn’t been for five years.”     Like my own wee gem. Irreplaceable.     I thought back to that day. Ben’s sister’s voice rang in my ear.     “Your wee gem safely tucked away?”     They had been. All except one. I should never have taken her on holiday. It was irresponsible. Then no onecould have stolen her away. My wee gem.     But they were safe now. Except for one.     “You miss her, don’t you,” I said to them.     I got off the bed, picked up the metal pole and pulled the loft ladder down. She was still in the suitcase where I’d left her. I saw the neon blue of her eye twinkle as I opened it.     My own wee gem. Paraiba.     I’d only planned to hide her away. Collect the insurance money. For the rescue mission. But my plans had changed.     I blame Ben. He’d always coveted her. Wanted her for his shop. Knew the sale of her would set his shop up for life. He’d always been jealous of the fact I had her. Of my gem expertise.     Greed. Like that burglar brother of his and his jewellery-obsessed wife.     I lifted my wee gem up on to the bed and placed her gently down beside her sisters. There was no jealousy between them. Only love. Her very presence brightened the others. One big happy family, I thought.     I looked at the cheque on the bed.     Money, I thought. Useless.     Useless.     Unless put to good use.     I looked at the tourmaline winking wickedly on the television screen.     Love. She had plenty to spare, I could see. But not if some greedy collector got hold of her.     It wasn’t about money. Didn’t anyone know that? And if it was, those gems would pay them back. One way or another. Like they’d paid Ben, Steve and Val back.     It was about love. And rescue.     Like they’d rescued me when I had got divorced the first time. They’d been my comfort.     “How would you all like a new sister?” I said, waving the cheque at them.     They all flashed fierily at me. They weren’t fooled. They knew it wasn’t about money. It was about love. One only had to wear them and feel it.     Wee gems! I thought. Why can’t we all be like them?

Path of Least Resistance G. A. Scheinoha How like water— to choose the easiest route; not battle uphill or fight your way through the bedroom of desire.

Keepers Liam Spencer     Finally. I could live a little. It had always been something. First, I worked too much. Then I was broke because of a work place injury, and was in too much pain to consider going out.     I had just made career with my federal job, and had won a case against the IRS who had been garnishing my wages. I had money and had Sunday and Monday off. I planned to go out Saturday night.     The cruelty of the alarm hit me Saturday at the now usual five AM. I felt like I had died in my sleep. The highs and lows of early December played hell with my sinuses. I made it to work on time, just barely. Everyone was grumbling. The holiday season was cruel for us. Non-career employees were wiped out completely. Their exhaust made them pale, drained, near death. Management sprinted to cover routes.     My injury was severe. My foot and ankle had been shredded. I lacked stability, and the risk of career ending injury loomed large. I was on light duty, unable to carry mail over uneven ground. I hadn’t yet seen my new route, and had to case it, divide it up for other carriers, and catch hell for them having to carry loads for me. There was nothing I could do about anything. I was a piñata.     The new supe decided I needed to carry some mail. I agreed. Others wondered how I could. I would find a way. I hated having to depend on others. It was my route. My job. They were going through hells and exhaustion. I was only in pain.     I raced through casing, got everything ready, and took off with my work, which included three stops before I got to carrying a mere hour on my new route. I was assured that all three swings were flat. They were anything but. I didn’t know my own route, and so made many mistakes and ran very, very late.     The supes didn’t care. They were delighted to have everything covered. I checked to make sure I had Monday off. A supe I almost always got along with informed me that I did indeed have those two days off. He then mentioned the ODL (Overtime Desired List), if I was interested. I replied that I was, as soon as the injury healed. He made sure I understood the bidding process, eager to have me go to a different route. My route was a killer.     It was all a relief. There had been talk that management was trying to get rid of me because I couldn’t yet carry my route. This conversation showed that they were keeping me. Whew.     I took the bus home. My car had been hit while parked on an icy morning. A company that transports wheel chair people had left notes. It was over two thousand in damage on a five thousand dollar Honda CRV. Buses weren’t too bad though, and allowed chances to be around attractive women.     I would say dating had been hit or miss, but it was ninety five percent miss. The only hit was with a crazy woman who yanked a handful of hair out of my beard while we fucked. It hadn’t gone well.     I still missed my ex girlfriend, Samantha.     It wasn’t all the time that I missed her though. For some reason, the feelings hit whenever I came across a woman who I thought there might be possibilities with. It was then that memories would flood, and I would be tempted to try to contact her. Some other things would bring back floods of memories too. Locations, certain songs, some dreams, and so on. I would force those floods back, reminding myself that she and I hadn’t known each other in a long time now. She was with someone else. It was all dead.     I got home Saturday to my slightly messy apartment, empty and dead. I stood staring at it. My foot and ankle screamed. I had overdone it at work. I hadn’t eaten either. Time had been too tight. I crammed a slice of cold pizza down my throat, opened a beer, and went online. A couple friends posted that their apartment had been flooded with sewage. Great. I offered to help, as did many others.     A second and third slice went down hard, with a thump. I could barely finish a third beer. Pain and exhaustion gripped me. It was to be my night out, at last, yet I needed a nap. It seemed reasonable. I’d nap for a few hours before going out. It was only four, after all.     It was after eleven. Fuck. No going out. I went to get more beer from the convenience store that’s three blocks away. The streets were filled with loud drunks. An attractive woman kept running, her heels clopping along, up and down the block. Her face held drama and insanity, as if she wanted and needed attention. I watched her boobs bounce as she approached, and her ass wiggle wildly after she passed. What a great fuck she would have made, maddnesses and orgasms swirling so deliciously. How to actually meet her though?     I mentioned the insanities to the owner of the store. Full moon, he claimed. He then bitched about the protesters regarding the police killings of black men, saying they’re politicizing things that were just tragedies. He looked like he wanted me to agree. I did not, and skirted the subject.     I returned to my apartment with beer and smokes. Six beers later, I was snoozing again.     The alarm went off Sunday morning at five. Hitting snooze made it eight. Coffee made it nine thirty. I am not a morning person. A beer run made it ten, just in time to catch a Steeler game. It’s tough to catch a Steeler game in Seattle, so I was thrilled. I jumped and yelled as they beat the Bengals 42-21. More yelling had the Seahawks beat the Eagles. Pizza rolls held me over. I was going to treat myself to Sunday night football at one of my favorite bars. It had been a while. I would splurge to eat there too.     There she was. A cute red head named Melinda that I had connected with years ago. She reminded me of Samantha at the time. We had talked rarely since then. The last I heard, she had found herself a better man, and so was off limits. Still, there she was, sitting at the bar, a real regular, holding sway, laughing and drinking and talking.     The bar was an anthropological experiment of sorts. A pecking order. The accepted regulars, holding sway, setting norms and morays. The outsiders coming and going. The usuals who were outside of the expected norms. They all knew me, even as I was rarely there. I was known as a real nice, solid guy who didn’t fit their expected norms, and didn’t converse as they did. As usual for me, I was one to keep an eye on.     I had sipped eight beers before arriving, and was a little too intoxicated for their conversations. I watched the game while waiting for my food, and went to smoke.     Outside, I remembered the times I had spent there. There were some very tough times I had found myself standing there drinking and smoking. The place had recently been sold, and was soon to be shut down for remodeling. Yet more destruction to the Seattle I had grown to know and love. This might be the last time I am ever there. I looked around sadly.     My giant chicken sandwich arrived, and I devoured its’ messiness while sitting alone, hearing the lame conversations of the keepers of the norm. They were saying so much more than their words. Pecking order struggles. Uh huh. I wondered how to get the red head. Was it possible?     She was surrounded by other regulars, the keeps of the norm were in full force. How could I get in to talk with her? It would be a tall order. I bought her and another keeper a drink. He didn’t really like me, but he had bought me a drink to make up for blocking me from her before (she had stood up to him over it). They both waved and smiled. Later, when they went out to smoke, she came over, all aglow, to thank me.     A short time later, they came out while I was smoking. She began asking me about my job. I couldn’t believe she remembered what I did for a living. She glowed brightly at me. Then she asked if I got random drug testing at work. I replied yes. She looked disappointed, then lit a pipe and passed it around. The smell of crack filled the air, and conversation got livelier.     Suddenly, there she was, wearing new glasses, and looking sweeter and more innocent than ever. Way outside the accepted norms, but well thought of, and very cared for. Min was often a problem drunk, getting cut off when she became emotional. We had talked many times, off and on, over the years since Samantha and I had split, and we always had great conversations and fun whenever we bumped into each other.     Min was five foot five and thin, with a drinker’s body. She was very cute, with a beauty that couldn’t be diminished. She didn’t fit in anywhere, and drank to compensate. An outsider. Outcast. Interesting. She, like almost everyone there, worked in bars. For some reason, we always hit it off. For some reason, she was always with some boyfriend who didn’t like her.     She ordered a beer. We said hello. Our eyes said so much more. I complimented her glasses. She glowed. We left and went out to smoke. We sat close and began talking. We sat closer. People came and went, seeing us as something as a couple. I bought another round, then another. We sat closer and talked. My arm, somehow, ended up around her. She snuggled in.     She eagerly volunteered that she was actually single...almost. Nothing was final, yet, though. Not yet. We kissed. We kissed again. She snuggled closer. People came out and hushed themselves as though they were interrupting us. We went in to piss.     I came out of the restroom first, of course, and ordered two beers. The bartender looked at me harshly.     “I have to see Min first, and make sure she is ok.”     “Ok. Probably a good idea.” I looked puzzled. What was I doing?     The bartender smiled at me as he handed me my beer. Min came out and talked with him for a minute. He handed her the beer. We went back outside, and got closer than ever. Kisses happened, initiated by each.     The door swung open, and out poured the keepers, led by the red head. Melinda gasped.     “Whoa...”     Her eyes met mine. She said, “Really?!” without a sound. Other keepers poured out too, but they shrugged it all off as being expected. Before long we were all standing and talking.     I held my own, keeping people at arm’s length while asserting my spot as a guy not to be taken lightly. I can throw my weight around pretty well sometimes.     Min struggled to get into conversation with others. They crowded her out, as if intentionally. It almost seemed like they were trying to get her frustrated and desperate so as to say something out of like, to sink her into inferior status. Our eyes met. I smiled broadly and winked. She blushed and smiled. I knew their reindeer games, and how to cut them short. Min sipped heavily.     As some meandered back inside, a lost drunk came by asking how to get to Peso’s. Melinda and Min answered him with conflicting directions. Melinda was correct, but Min was insistent. Melinda got verbally nasty, snotty. Min looked lost. Her eyes begged support. I spoke up.     “Hmm..I cannot quite remember...”     Melinda glared at me.     “Just because you like her! It’s to the left.”     She rushed inside, the door closed hard.     Min and I stared at each other for a moment, not sure what to make of it all.     “I’m sure it’s to the right.”     “Actually Min, it is left. Sorry, but it is. Straight up this street is the convenience store I buy my beer at. I live two blocks past that.”     “No, you’re wrong. I know it’s to the right. TO THE RIGHT.”     “It’s only a few blocks, Min, we can walk there. We’ll see. Besides, we’ve smoked my last smokes. I can buy more at the drug store.”     As soon as we left, Min grabbed my hand tight. We glowed and smiled at each other. As we neared the intersection, Min mumbled that Melinda had been right. She was upset. I changed the subject, mentioning getting smokes at Bartell’s. Her hand tightened around mine.     “What do you smoke?”     “American Spirit, yellow.... and a bottle of vodka.”     Min’s hand gripped mine. She leaned in for a kiss.     “What kind? Go ahead and tell the clerk.”     We kissed again outside the store. The bottle was in my pocket. Min offered a twenty.     “No no, think of it as a first date gift. More drinkable than flowers.”     Min smiled and blushed.     “Why do you like me so much? No one does.”     “Because you’re Min. Need I say more?”     The bartender was relieved to see us rolling back in, hand in hand. The tab would be paid. One more round of beers while Min and I stayed outside holding each other. Close to closing, the area was flooded by keepers needing to smoke. Melinda glared with a smile. Min shrank until I kissed her. She glowed.     I mentioned I needed to get beer before two. Min spoke up, mentioning that we had vodka. My hard on was rock. Min smiled, grabbed my hand, and led me away from glares. She glowed. I followed.     We passed by a building called “Twin Birches.” The giant sign makes it look like “Twin Bitches.” Samantha and I used to laugh about that. Min and I now did too.     Everything looked familiar somehow. We walked into a parking lot and up one flight of stairs. The door opened. A smell hit. We walked in. the smell hit harder. A cat greeted and looked at me strangely before rubbing it ass against me.     “All I have is old lemon juice. I hope it’s safe. We can mix with water.”     She fed the cat on the kitchen counter.     “The only glasses I have are in there. Let’s see what we can use.”     The dishwasher opened. There was one actual glass. The other was plastic. I poured both with vodka, added lemon and water, and handed her the actual glass.     “WOW! How nice of you! Normally, they give me the shitty glass.”     “Cheers!”     Our glasses clanked.     The place was a mess. Clutter and dirt everywhere. Uneaten food. Glasses and measuring cups as ash trays.     “This is clean for me. Really. Believe me.”     “It’s alright. Really. When I am too busy with work or injured, my place is the same.”     She walked over and held up what looked like holiday decorations. The letters spelled out “MISS GREG.” Min teared up a bit.     “Yeah. ‘cause I do.”     We went out on her balcony. There was an amazing view of the sky line and Space Needle. It looked all too familiar. Way too familiar.     “What street is this?”     “Second Ave N”     My heart dropped a bit. Samantha’s place was nearby. We had lived there together, loved there together...     “My ex lives like right down this street. Wow. Eerie.”     Min shot me a look. How dare I?     We shared moments out there, holding each other and kissing. As I went to her neck, she stopped me.     “I’m not doing anything like that tonight.”     “Ok.”     We went back in and began smoking and drinking. Out came her laptop. Youtube. Signing and laughing, drinking, and talking. My arm stayed around her. We kissed frequently. She glowed, but stopped everything from going further. “MISS GREG” was still out there.     Min sang her beautiful voice to love songs, eying me and licking her lips. We’d kiss. She’d put on the brakes. She’d sing again. We’d kiss. Brakes on.     We talked relationship. No one liked her. I corrected her. She glowed.     I came back from the bathroom. Min had her feet up on the coffee table. Her eyes were slits. Her face was pleasure. Pleasing noises came from deep within her.     “I’m scratching my rash. I have exhema. It flares up when I get nervous. Gawd this feels so good.”     “Hell I thought you were masturbating. Now I have a giant hard on. Damn.”     “Here, look. Can you really be with someone with this?”     Sure enough was a very bad rash, midway between her bellybutton and pubic hair. She scratched it all just right. Pleasure sounds continued.     “Damn Min, sounds like that just make me so damn hard. I mean, you already turn me on so bad, and then making those sounds?!”     “Even with these gawd awful rashes?! Gross!”     “You still turn me on, Min. Make of it what you will.”     We kissed again. Then tongues. Then breathing.     She stopped me again.     “Time for bed. It’s seven AM.”     There was the largest bed ever. It could fit ten people and a cat. Gadgets filled half of it. We climbed in, fully clothed. Coins were scattered. My arm was under her. She cozied up. My left arm went over her. It was a great fit. Snores took minutes. The cat slept on her hip. Then it slept on my hip. Min reached down, petted the cat, kissed me, smiled, and rolled over.     “Morning” hurt. Monday. My head had got hit by a thousand buses. I groaned and gagged. I chugged water after pissing. I was no longer used to party nights. I sighed as I made coffee. Was this growing up or growing old? Great times were had, even with no sex, yet I felt like I died in my sleep. I used to eat up nights and days like these. What happened?     I meandered out to the patio. Fresh December air helped me cope. I looked around. The old neighborhood had changed. An old house and apartment building were boarded up and fenced in, ready for demolition. Hmm...they look awfully familiar...     The bad coffee began working. That old house was where a band practiced. It was nearly right across the street from where I lived. Sad to see it go down. Memories. Chances. History.     Slowly, so slowly, it dawned on me. I had lived a half block south from Samantha and her sister Faye. If that house was at the corner...     I was standing on the balcony of an apartment in Samantha’s building! In fact, I was one floor up, and one apartment over from her apartment!     My eyes shot wide open, my jaw dropped. I looked down toward Samantha’s patio, ready for memories to flood...     There she was! She was standing there, staring at me, in just as much shock!     Oh, how I must have looked! The same as I used to after each of those nights with Samantha...hair messed up, steaming coffee, bloodshot eyes, struggling to be back to human. She probably thought I had a wild night of drinking and fucking. In her building. Our old territory. Our old love.     She eventually walked past, shaking her head, as though I was a mere mistake in her past. My heart fell 19 stories into hell. Not like this, I thought. No!     I walked back inside. The cat was ready to make love. Min was snoring. I had one last coffee. Eying the last cigarette. Better to leave that one to Min.     “Good morning Beautiful.” I kissed Min on the side of her mouth.     “Good morning.” She groaned.     ”Sorry, but I’ve got to go.”     “Ok.”     “Can I call you tonight?”     “I have to work.”     Coldness, sudden.     “After work then?”     “Umm...ok. ok.”     “Have a great day.”     “You too.”     I took pictures off the balcony before I left.     I might never be back.     I petted the cat. He smiled at me, welcoming me back. Hopefully, Min will too.     The apartment manager saw me leave. His expression wondered how I did it. I lived with two smoking hot sisters for over a year in one apartment, and now I was leaving the apartment of a different smoking hot woman in the same building. He hadn’t realized that I hadn’t lived in between.     I walked through unfamiliar streets on purpose, not wanting to be further haunted by what might have been.     I bought beer and smokes at the convenience store, went home, and began writing this story.

Skullduggery PA Michael Madden     Kaitlin woke to the sound of gunfire.     She rolled over and smacked the alarm clock radio off its stand and onto the pile of dishes on the floor. When the shooting didn’t stop, she called out to her husband, the bourbon soaked piece of white trash who had once again lubricated himself into a coma in front of the tube.     “Shane, turn off the Goddamn TV!”     In the sad history of the world there was never a more foul time and place than Skullduggery, Pennsylvania, 1991. Only twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia, it might as well have been Texas. It was from the shallows of its gene pool that Shane Patrick Cole and his entire family of epic losers had been spawned. Three brothers, two of them bartenders and one doing a fifteen year bid up in Graterford for statutory rape. Mom, on the prowl for husband number four while finishing up stint number three at the methadone clinic outside town. And Grandpa Cole, a lecherous-eyed lunatic that Kaitlin fantasized gouging to death with a fork.     “Shane!”     Scholl Diggery and Mining Company was the town’s namesake, its reason for existing and claim to fame. Founded as a coal mine in 1852 by brothers Helmut and Werner Scholl, it had been declared a national heritage site in 1969 and its ruins preserved as a monument to the industriousness of the noble immigrants that the Scholls had imported, like cheap potatoes, from Ireland’s famine-struck western coast. While elsewhere the Irish had been treated with distain, the Brothers Scholl had embraced their ilk. In exchange for signing a five-year contract at subsistence wages, they were advanced the cost of ship’s passage and given a shack in the growing shantytown surrounding Scholl Diggery, which the Irish renamed.     They are a very poetic people.     “Shane, you faggot son of a flat-chested whore!” Kaitlin screamed, bursting into the living room wearing a camouflage-print bra and panties, towering over the man who had once been her high school sweetheart, now thirty pounds heavier, stretched out on the couch in stained boxers, snoring like a congested troll and still balancing a fifth of Jim Beam on his chest. “Shane!”     “Big shabang at the Ambassador last night,” croaked Grandpa Cole from his wheelchair in a dark corner of the room. “Shane here caught a bit of a buzz. Whole town did. Yo, what’s dat you’re wearin’ doll? You goin’ huntin’?”     Ignoring the old man’s lustful gaze, Kaitlin yanked the television plug from the wall and then stomped to the bathroom to slap on her face.     Her shift at The Ambassador started in twelve minutes.     Although the mine collapsed in 1903, most of the town’s original charter families could still be found clinging to the area, eking out a living in their own unique way. The Fergusons owned Skullduggery Liquor. The Kellys operated the dump. The Hagen Clan had a strangle hold on local construction with the Kings, Holts and McFaddens providing the electrical, plumbing, and roofing services respectively.     For most of their history the Coles lacked anything close to a specialty unless you counted coal mining in the nineteenth century, moonshining in the early twentieth, a pitiful attempt at organized crime in the nineteen-forties, or dealing weed in the sixties and seventies.     It was mostly welfare fraud after that.     A higher purpose found the Coles at exactly 11:52 am on March 17, 1989 when Grandma Cole was decapitated in a freak accident with the town’s Saint Patrick’s Day float. The lawsuit put a strain on the Coles’ relationship with the rest of the town, but scored them enough to purchase The Ambassador, Skullduggery’s one and only stripper bar.     After nearly a century and a half, the bastard sons of Erin had finally found their niche. #     The Blizzard of 91’ is what they would eventually name it, but for the time being they just called it “the Storm.” For three days the sky had belched up a wicked blend of snow and sleet whipped into a froth by high speed winds. Philadelphia had declared an emergency and implemented its blizzard disaster plan: salt the streets, plow the snow, dump it into the Delaware River. Skullduggery had implemented its own three-part plan. Hunker down. Ride it out. Drink heavily.     Kaitlin plowed her jeep into a snow bank and made a slip-sliding dash for the Ambassador’s front door. It was barely eleven o’clock in the morning but, since the town had shut down on account of the storm, the regulars had already clocked in. The Kelly twins were slamming shots nonstop at the end of the bar. Tommy Hearn and his cousin Fergus were taking shots at the Queen Elizabeth dartboard on the wall. The Kingston Trio, Brian King and his two lackeys, Barton and Milton Holt, were guzzling beer straight from a pitcher while taking turns dry-humping the pinball machine. The lot of them, except for Derrick Cole, the bar manager, were engaged in Skullduggery’s favorite pastime.     General jackassery.     “Where you goin’?” Derrick asked as Kaitlin headed for her waitress apron behind the bar. “Didn’t get my message? Bambi called in.”     “Your wife. Your problem,” Kaitlin said, snatching up her apron.     “She’s snowed in. Got caught in the storm up in Phoenixville and had to spend the night at the Motel Six.”     “Forget it, Rick. Ain’t no fuggin’ way.”     “Sorry Sis.” Derrick took the apron from her hand and jerked a thumb at the stripper pole. “Looks like you’re gonna have to suit up.”     Kaitlin slammed the dressing room door into the gouge in the wall. At the dressing table, she inspected her breasts, each bursting with enough silicone to split a grapefruit. If one were to rupture, she fantasized, it would mean a ten thousand dollar settlement and an all-inclusive weekend retreat at Philadelphia General Hospital courtesy of Dow Corning Corporation.     And if both were to bust, well, she dared not even dream about that.     Out on the floor, Kaitlin plunked a fist full of quarters into the jukebox and hit B-17, Motown Philly by Boyz II Men.     Nine times.     Not a one of the jagoffs bothered to look up, not even after she’d mounted the stage and dropped her J.C. Penny, Japanese print wrap to the floor. It had been Sinead Blaine, Kaitlin recalled as she zombie pranced around the pole, the dancer they called Bumper, who had clued Kaitlin in about the class-action suit.          Face down in a tanning booth at the Boyertown Mall, Bumper had experienced what they called a double blowout. Both of her implants, swollen by the ultraviolet rays, had ruptured simultaneously leaving Bumper flat as a schoolgirl and out of work, but first in line for a fat Dow settlement. The last Kaitlin heard, she had traded in her husband for a Latino model and her Skullduggery doublewide for a row house in South Philly. Shangri-La.     Back in school we’d dream every day. Could it happen to me? Will my dreams fade away ...     “Gotcha covered, baby doll” Barton Holt said, sliding a crumpled single into Kaitlin’s string and treating her stomach to a back-handed brush on the takeaway.     “Gee thanks, Bart.”     “No problemo, baby doll. Where’s Shane? He asked me to take a look at the shitter. Said somethin’ about a leak in the tank.”     “Home drunk,” Kaitlin said, making sure to avoid eye contact.     “Men.” Barton wrinkled his nose. “Whaddaya gonna do?” He tossed her a wink before staggering off for another draft.     Doom da, doom diddy. Doom da, doom diddy dat...     The real money, Kaitlin figured while hooter-jiggling to the back of the bar, was in slow leaks. A rupture was a one-time hit, a quick and dirty cash settlement. A slow leak, on the other hand, provided access to a smorgasbord of long-term ailments that could land you on the retirement train. The big “C” was a first-class ticket if you didn’t mind losing a headlight. Rheumatoid arthritis was good for a ride and came with a lifetime supply of oxycodone. And then there was the mother of all claims, the gold mine of silicone induced syndromes. Swiveling her hips, Kaitlin couldn’t help but grin at the thought of it.     Lupus. #     By twelve noon, ice on the power lines had once again severed Skullduggery from the grid, forcing its population to seek warmth at the only establishment in Eastern Pennsylvania savvy enough to have purchased a generator but tight-assed enough to have kept coal heat.     “Where you goin’?” Derrick asked as Kaitlin slipped her wrap back on and joined him behind the bar.     “Fuck’s sake, Rick. There’s kids in here.”     Derrick looked up and squinted his eyes as if surveying the situation for the first time. Every table was taken. Teenagers were at the pinball machine and the crowd at the bar was damn near two-idiots deep.     “Fuggin’ A,” he said. “Goddamn storm is a gift from God. Handle the bar. I’ll hit the kitchen and fire up the stove. Call Shane and tell him to get his sorry ass over here right now. We’re gonna make a killin’.”     Allison Strauss had gotten lupus from leaky implants her husband had given her as an anniversary present. By Kaitlin’s mark, the sore joints, occasional headaches and mild rash that Allie had endured were a small price to pay for the brownstone she’d landed in Philly with the settlement money, not to mention the fifteen-hundred-a-month compensation package and the funds to hire a kick ass divorce lawyer.     Turned out, the settlement money wasn’t marital property.     Kaitlin started slinging beers. The Kingston Trio, the Kelly twins, Fergus and his cousin Tom had all staked out their regular stools and were engaged in an intellectual debate. The topic was a familiar one.     Mexicans.     “Like fifteen of em,” Brian King was saying. “Moved in last week. All chatterin’ at the same time. Galack alack alack alack...”     “You mean like Fergus?” Barton nodded toward Fergus McFadden, sitting at the end of the bar with his long hair hanging down over his face, muttering to himself.     “Fergus!” yelled Brian.     “Huh?”     “Fuck you talking to yourself all the time for? What are you, goin’ schitzo?”     “I heard ya,” said Fergus. “Mexicans. Where’d they move in?”     “East Pratt. Supposed to be opening some kinda taco joint.”     “No shit,” said Fergus. “Ma lives on Pratt.”     “You’re mom lives on West Pratt, dufus.”     “And, she’s a hoe,” added Barton Holt.     “Hoe bag,” Brian clarified.     “Fug off,” said Fergus, inspecting the swig of foamy beer still left at the bottom of his mug. “Kate, there’s something floatin’ in my beer. No shit. Can I get another?”     Kaitlin topped off a Natty Light and slammed it down. “Two-fitty.”     The hard part, Kaitlin realized, would be engineering a legitimate leak. Spontaneous leaks were a sure thing. Even leaks caused by accidents qualified. Case in point, Tammy Delgado had caught a slow leak as she was driving home from her shift at the Skylar up in Norristown. Dow paid out on her rheumatism claim despite the fact that the leak had been caused when she’d mashed her Toyota into a police cruiser while ripped on benzos.     Intentional leaks were another thing entirely. Years before she’d hooked up with Derrick, Bambi had punctured hers with a syringe. Instead of starting a slow leak it caused a blowout. Figuring it was at least good for a ten-grand hit, she filed a claim. The problem was, when the Dow company doctor took a look, he could tell it had been an inside job and the poor kid had to jiggle it with one hooter until she could scratch up the cash for a new one. Blowouts were risky.     Slow leaks were the bomb.     “You do realize,” Milton announced. “That speakin’ Spanish don’t make em Mexican.”     “Oh geez,” said Brian. “Here he goes.”     Milton Holt was one of Skullduggery’s few high-school graduates, the Ambassador’s resident know-it-all and all around pain in the ass. The faded scar across his left cheek had appeared two years earlier when he’d started hanging at the Roadside Grill across town. Rough crowd at the Roadside, apparently. After only two weeks he’d returned to the Ambassador with a black eye, a fresh scar and a blessedly humble demeanor.     Since then, all three had dissipated.     “Point a fact,” Milton announced. “All the Mexicans ‘round here are Salvadorian.”     “Where’s Salvadoria?” Fergus asked, carefully stacking two-fifty in change on the bar.     “In Salvador, fuckhead,” said Brian.     “No shit. Same difference. Either way we’ll be feastin’ on tacos.”     “Not necessarily.” Milton jerked a thumb Brian’s way. “Assumin’ genius here knows Spanish when he hears it, then our new neighbors are probably Salvadorian. Ergo, they will likely not be opening a taco shop and instead will be opening what’s called a pupuseria.”     “Puseria?” Brian snarled. “The hell is that?”     “Of course,” Milton said, cocking an eyebrow. “For all we know it’ll be a pizzeria.”     “Puseria.” Fergus snickered, pushing his stack of change forward. “Sounds like competition for ya Kate.”     Kaitlin eyeballed the stack. “You’re short.”     “And retarded,” Brian added.     “My bad.” Fergus dug out another quarter and clinked it on top. “Keep the change.”     “Yo, Baby Doll!” Barton bellowed, his wife on his lap. “When’s the next floor show?”     Fer fuck’s sake, Kaitlin thought. She’d settle for a double blowout.     A God-awful moan drifted down from above. Low at first, it built in intensity, winding up through the lower registers and tapering off to a shrill shriek before concluding with a loud crack! The entire bar was struck silent, staring at the drop ceiling.     Derrick burst out of the kitchen. “The hell was that?”     “The building settling?” suggested Brian.     “Water in the pipes?” offered Barton.     “Rats,” said Fergus.     “Dumbass,” said Brian. “Ain’t a rat in the world big enough. Fuggin’ sounded like a two-ton banshee!”     “Ever been to the kitchen? No shit. Seen a rat back there could fuck a Rottweiler.”     The second time it lasted longer. Starting out with the same awful moan, it blossomed into the whiney creak of a wooden ship and ended in a series of small thuds like baby gorillas brawling in the attic.     Kaitlin stepped up to the only one in the entire bar who seemed unfazed. “Christ, Milt. What is it?”     “Well,” began Milton. “As you may be aware, water is dense as shit. Even when compared to some of your more viscous oils—“     “Fucksake, Milt!”     “Snow,” he said. “Twenty-four inches by now, puttin’ pressure on the rafters.”     “The roof,” said Kaitlin, “Will it collapse?”     “Well, if ya ask me—”     “That lazy wetback,” Derrick cursed. “I told Juan to shovel the roof yesterday. He check in today?”     “Snowed in,” Fergus informed him. “Got caught in the storm up in Phoenixville. Spent the night at the Motel Six.”     “Fuggin’ Mexican,” Derrick muttered.     “Interestin’ sideline here.” Milton pushed his mug forward. “Top me off, will you Katie? And stop me if I’ve told this before. Did a term paper back in Ms. Henry’s history class. The topic? Swear ta God, the Blizzard of 49’. Records are sketchy, a course, but back then it snowed for at least—”     Kaitlin swept his mug off the bar and sent it crashing to the floor. She grabbed Milton by his shirt. “You pompous, shanty prick! Will ... it ... collapse?”     It breaks down like this.     A cubic foot of snow weighs in at around fifteen pounds. Double that to account for two feet of accumulation. Now multiply that figure by twenty-four-hundred square feet, the area of your standard stripper-joint. What you’re looking at is seventy-two-thousand pounds of pressure, all bearing down on the rafters. But, when you add the fact that this particular stripper-joint was constructed in 1904 by unemployed Irish coal workers whose only previous attempt at building rafters had resulted in a mine collapse, what you’re really looking at is what engineers call imminent system failure.     So, yeah. It’s coming down.     The next twenty minutes, however, were as normal as it gets mid-day in a strip club. The Kingston Trio continued debate on the origins of Salvadorian Mexicans. The Kelly twins resumed their argument about whether Superman had ever done it with Louise Lane. Fergus sat mumbling to himself at the end of the bar.     Then it started again. The creaking. The moaning. Splintering sounds up in the rafters that had even Milton quaking. Just as the cacophony reached its crescendo, the door swung open and in stepped Shane Patrick Cole.     “Fucksake!” he screamed. “Somebody toss me the shovel!”     There was a loud snap! A section of rafter crashed through the drop ceiling and landed splintered on the bar.     “Lord Jesus, Fuggin’-H-Christ!,” howled Fergus, swiping beer-soaked shards of mug off his shirt.     Derrick tossed the shovel to Tom, who passed off to Fergus, who dropped it. Kaitlin snatched up the fumble and completed the play, lobbing it into Shane’s outstretched arms. Shane reached up and pulled down the ladder that led to the roof. Cocking the shovel over his shoulder, “I’m goin’ up,” he said.     The cheer was deafening.     The brave Skullduggerans cowered together at the bar, shouting encouragement as their hero scaled toward the roof. For reasons they would have trouble explaining later, not one of them thought to exit the building.     In their defense, there were four things of which they were not aware. The first is the concept of maximum load, the static load rafters can safely support. The second is terminal load, the point at which static load exceeds tensile strength and rafters break. The third is the fact that the rafters above them were two-hundred pounds shy of terminal load.     The fourth, however, and this is the kicker, is that Shane weighed two-hundred and eight.     “Maybe ... we should ... go somewhere else,” sobbed Bernie Holt, clinging to Barton’s arm. “Saint Paul’s has got those gas heaters. Father Cavanaugh wouldn’t mind.”     “Let’s everybody not panic,” Derrick advised, holding up a platter of food. “Shane’s got everything under control. Come on, now. Who ordered the wings?”     “How ‘bout another round, Kate?” asked Fergus, dangling his shattered mug by its handle. “No shit. I only got a sip.”     “Wings are mine!” someone yelled from the back.     The way they would tell it later, it came without warning. While this is not entirely true, it did happen pretty fast. A section of rafter gave way, dropping a hundred years of attic debris straight to the floor. Two old water heaters. The Christmas display. Cast iron pipes stolen from a Holt Plumbing jobsite in 64’ when the Ambassador’s previous owners had intended on remodeling the john. And five-hundred pounds of assorted rubbish including two-years-worth of used fryer grease that the Coles had stored in gallon jars instead of paying Kelly Waste Removal to cart away. Unfortunately for everyone involved, much of it landed in a colossal pile directly in front of the door, except for the jars, which exploded on impact like mortars.     Pandemonium ensued.     There was yelling of course, screeching if you count Bernie Holt, and a mad rush by the Kingston Trio to clear the door, impeded though it was by the layer of grease now coating most of the floor. Their Three-Stooges styled rescue attempt concluded with Brian King out cold and the Holt Brothers in a low-crawling, marine-style retreat back to the bar after the three of them had back-flipped on the greasy floorboards.     Every moron in the joint then tried to squeeze into the narrow space behind the bar. The thinking, apparently, was that the rows of delicate pilsner glasses dangling from the ceiling rack would provide shelter.     Kaitlin hoisted herself above the hysterical mob.     “Kaitie!” Derrick screamed as Kaitlin drop-rolled off the bar. “Where you goin’?”     Kneeling before the striper pole, Kaitlin folded her hands. “Our Father who art in heaven. Hollow be thy name. Blessed are the sins of your fruit Jesus ...”     “Everyone quiet!” ordered Derrick.     “Forgive me not through your temptation. And please, Lord, get me outta here.”     “Shaddup!” Derrick smashed a fifth of Johnny Walker Red against the wall, the sacrifice earning him a moment of silence. He pointed to the roof. “Listen!”     The creaking had stopped. Nothing but the howling wind, Kaitlin’s whimpered little prayer, and Shane scrunching through the packed snow on his way to the top.     Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch, scrunch ...     “Father, please don’t let the roof come down. I promise, Lord, I’ll never strip again. Move outta this sinful town.”     Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch ...     “All I need is the deposit money, maybe first month’s rent. Swear ta God, Lord, I’ll scrimp and save to get the bread. Work double shifts. Sell hand jobs on Main Street. Just don’t let this be the end.”     Scrunch, scrunch ...     “Deliver us from evil.”     Scrunch.     “Amen.”     It came down like they do in the movies. All at once. The drop ceiling slammed down in one piece with the rafters layered on top and the snow supplying most of the pressure. The coal heater choked out. The lights flickered off.     Except for the shallow breathing, the Ambassador went silent. #     Kaitlin was drifting into unconsciousness by the time she heard voices again.     “Mira! Mira! Uno más! Justo aquí!”     The pressure eased as, piece by piece, they yanked off the debris. Last to be removed from the ruins that had once been the Ambassador, Kaitlin was led through the ruble to the parking lot. The gang was all there.     The Kingston Trio.     The Kelly twins.     Tommy Hearn and his cousin Fergus.     All were nursing their wounds while listening to Shane recount his brave attempt at saving them. Kaitlin limped straight for her jeep.     One of the Salvadorian Mexicans ran up. “Necesita ir al hospital?”     “No,” she said.     “Mira!” he said. “Es desigual!”     “No probelemo,” she replied. “Got a spare key in the jeep.”     “Es desigual,” he repeated, stepping in front and cutting her off, lifting his palms breast high and pulling one back further than the other. “You no ... you no ... you not even!”     Kaitlin looked down at the miracle that had been her breasts. The left one was full, voluptuous as the day it had rolled off the factory floor. The right, a sagging mess.     It wasn’t until she fired up the jeep that Shane looked up.     “Katie doll, you O.K.? Where you goin’?”     Kaitlin looked out at the snow covered town. So white. So pretty. Goddamn postcard picturesque.     Smiling as she threw it in gear, “Philadelphia,” she said.

Mike Madden bio     Mike Madden is a writer of crime and other fiction and a criminal defense attorney in Washington, DC. His work has been published in Pulp Metal Magazine, Every Day Fiction and the Baltimore Sun.

much Janet Kuypers 6/7/5 haiku 2/28/14 How much for your poem? I ask, because you seem to have so much to say

Visit the Kuypers Twitter page for short poems— join http://twitter.com/janetkuypers.

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku much live 4/9/14 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku much live 4/9/14 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (posterize)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers hosting the open mic and the Deborah Rosen feature 4/9/14 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery in Chicago WITH THIS HAIKU

See Vine video of Janet Kuypers’ haiku much from Scars’ Down in the Dirt issues book the Intersection (Samsung 11/20/15)

Cigarettes and Daisies Victoria Griffin     “I loved her, you know. She was perfect for me, and she said I was perfect for her. But that never was true.”     “She loved you, Grandpa.”     “Yeah, she loved cigarettes, too. See where that got her.” The old man laid the daisies against her headstone. He’d brought her daisies on their second date, fifty-two years ago. When she’d stepped onto the porch, in that pale blue sundress, the sight of those daisies had set her eyes twinkling like lightning bugs. He’d brought her daisies for every anniversary for twelve years before she finally told him she didn’t like daisies at all. She hated them, actually. They made her think of some strange, one-eyed creature. So their next anniversary, he’d bought her a card and candy and a pretty silver necklace, and she’d looked at him and cocked her head to the side and whispered real slow, “What, no daisies?”     “Grandpa, it’s getting dark.”     “Just hold on.”     “Grandpa, you really shouldn’t be—”     “I said, hold on!”     The old man groaned as his cane dropped to the ground, and his body bent into a horseshoe. His grandson rushed to his side, but he pushed the young man away, frowning at the glimpse of his tee shirt, stretched over his muscled frame.     Another groan as the old man’s back straightened and cracked, and he allowed his grandson to hand him his cane.     “Grandpa, we really should go. Misty needs to get back and rest.”     The old man’s eyes wandered toward the van, parked not thirty feet away. His grandson’s pregnant wife was sitting in the passenger seat, her chest heaving beneath her drooping eyes, and suddenly it was 1966, and he and his wife were in the living room, listening to Bob Dylan on the radio, when she said it was time.     She was calm and he was crazy, driving twice the speed limit as she breathed deep and slow beside him. And when they made it to the hospital, and that little baby girl found her way out of her mother, there was no music or celebration. There was only his wife’s simple smile. He wished he could bottle that smile.     “Grandpa, really, she’s due any day now, and she shouldn’t be—”     “Go, then! Go! Don’t stand around here waiting for an old man. Go take care of your wife.”     “I’m not going to leave you, Grandpa. Just come get in the van.”     The old man turned from his grandson and kneeled, his old limbs shaking as he did. He held his cane across his body like a sacrifice, and bowed his head, listening to young feet shifting the dry grass behind him.     “Please, get up. It’s ten miles to anything. I can’t leave you here.”     The old man was silent.     “Grandpa, please don’t make me do this.”     The twenty-three-year-old sounded like his was six again, whining for a treat from his grandparents’ fridge. The old man didn’t move.     “Okay, fine, do what you want. But I’m calling Mom.”     He drew his cell phone from his pocket like a gun from a holster and started back to the van, his mother’s ringtone already in his ear.     The old man was still a long time after the van’s engine had died into the fading light. His cane slipped into the grass, and he looked down at his shaking hands, the flesh old and wrinkled, like it might fall from the thin bones of his fingers.     He felt his hands draw into claws, and he pressed his fingers into the dirt, feeling the cool soil beneath his fingernails. Maybe if he dug forever he could reach her.     He looked up at the cold, gray tombstone, her name etched into its surface, mocked by the daisies just below, and he cried like the day he lost her.     She always said she wanted to die free—on the top of a mountain, or the bottom of a canyon, or the middle of a dark blue ocean. She wanted to die somewhere her soul might wander for all eternity, and never have to look at another human being again. She wanted to die with her heart in her hands, her mind free of worry, her spirit just barely bound to her body.     His beautiful wife had died in a hospital, unable to move, barely able to speak, her body overwrought with disease and her heart, soul, and spirit dark as the sky above the rotting graveyard.     He had held her hand and felt her flesh go cold. He had watched the light drain from her eyes. He had watched her silver hair droop like a weeping willow.     He had thrown the daisies on the nightstand across the room.     When his daughter made it to the graveyard, she found her father slumped over her mother’s grave, the fingers of one hand buried in the soil, broken daisies strewn across the grave beside him.     They buried him next to her, and his daughter smoked a cigarette.

Good Medicine Liz Betz     Arlene is about to unlock the entry of Three Monkey Antiques when she notices a truck parked beside a cluster of vehicles further down Burdock’s main street. The street, like the rest of the town, is gray with winter debris while the sky overhead is undecided about the sun. For a day in May, it is chillier than it has to be. Arlene shivers, as foul smoke from her brother Sid’s cigarette adds to her discomfort. They watch the driver of the truck enter the café.     “It seems early for the coffee group,” Arlene says.     Her brother shrugs. “Yeah. Didn’t know the café would be open.”     Across the street, a man, the drug store owner, comes out of the post office. After a second, he waves in Arlene’s direction and she nods in return. It is a simple exchange but after last night’s council meeting, a welcome one. Maybe she did have good medicine, as Sid called it. Or the man is sorry for his questions. Arlene isn’t setting up a half-way house. Sid has served his sentence and he’s come back home. He isn’t about to murder anyone.     The lock unlatches on her third try and the siblings enter the building where much of the space is piled high with knick knackery. Even the air is crowded with dust from another era. Arlene has sorted and displayed but her efforts have made little difference. But now Sid is here to help.     Work can be good medicine too and this is real work. Sid will mind the stores (the antique shop and the adjoining pizza outlet and movie rental). She will keep the village moving forward. A smile flits over her face as she realizes that she is promoting both nostalgia (at the antique store) and visionary thinking (as mayor of Burdock). Two opposites that she can handle if she’s flexible. That reminds her of something she wants to make a habit of.     She rolls her head in a complete circle then reverses the direction. Her neck stretches and crackles but she doesn’t hear it. Her thoughts return to the council meeting. Opposites and opposition are nothing new but an audience is. Certainly the meetings are open to the public but this is a first. Two men sit with their arms crossed, silent and frowning. And a third man, a stranger, takes notes after he is told no microphones are allowed. Is he media?     Arlene thought they might question her, and she plans a defense. She will make a positive difference. As evidence, soon there will be a new highway sign. Welcome Home to Burdock. It isn’t unanimous but after 43 years of Burdock – You are in Wheat Country, a change is overdue.     Arlene catches sight, again, of the man who challenged her at the council meeting as he walks past his pharmacy. He’s not opening up; he’s going for a coffee. No point in seeing evil in that simple act, but Arlene, girded for battle, senses an omen. People go for coffee all the time, she tells herself, but the seed of doubt sprouts a bitter leaf. How long before anyone asks Sid to come for coffee?     “Where do we begin today?” Sid asks as he navigates through the stockpiles of antiques. He heads to the back of the building.     “Fuck, there’s a shit load of stuff,” he mutters.     Arlene bristles, not ready to civilize Sid’s words despite wanting to, but also because the mess makes her feel guilty. She has been too busy. But it is what she wanted, for when they moved off the farm and retired, Ed 65 and her 59, she almost went bonkers.     Ed gently suggests she open an antique store, maybe with the idea that it would clean out their own home. The old bank is a good building for it. They buy it and Arlene fills it. Then the second store comes up for sale, and then the election for mayor and Arlene jumps into it all.     It’s her time, she tells people, but she finds time isn’t as flexible as it once was. The mayor duties, which hadn’t seemed like much from the outside, take a huge amount of time. And so does the antique store and her second business, A Pizza and a Movie. Luckily a short passageway connects the two building to allow one person to look after both. One person like Sid, who needs to adjust to the outside world.     Arlene trails after her brother. Sid will adjust. She quells her own doubts. Just look at him, walking like a free man. However, inside the antique store isn’t where a person actually could walk free. Neither is Burdock been free from their welcome, despite the newly decreed town slogan.     Sid stops in the doorway to the innermost room. “You know what? I think I could set up a cot and sleep here.”     Arlene looks in. The towering cartons block access to a cluttered room.     “Even if it were empty, this room is too small,” Arlene states. The voice of the mayor, her husband calls it now.     “I’m used to less room than this,” Sid says.     Arlene sees his point. He hasn’t seen this much space or stuff for thirteen years.     “Don’t,” she says.     “Don’t what? Talk about my cell?”     “This is your fresh start.” She gives Sid a look that warns him not to argue. He needs a fresh start. What else has he, if he doesn’t get that?     Sid picks a spatula up with his mitten shaped hands, bumpy from poorly set bones. Arlene unclips a ornate hair pin and then fastens down a wisp of white hair; the action hides any pity that reaches her face.     “You don’t want to hear about my sweet little corner in the penal system?” He cocks his head slightly and with a grin empty of real pleasure and several teeth adds, “You don’t know what you’re missing.”     What’s missing is a lot of things, Arlene thinks. Purpose. Thirteen years. A big chunk of knowing each other. Like what’s with the shirt? Arlene winces; red flames reach over purple and blue waves in an unlikely riot of colored silk. The shirt doesn’t disguise his hard thinness. It doesn’t help him fit into the Burdock scene. It looks like something only an ex-con could wear. Arlene remembers a white shirt with a little tie and how the three year old Sid proclaimed that ‘he was her date’ as he got into every one of her senior prom pictures. She isn’t about to dress him now.     “Why can’t you just stay with Ed and me?”     “Three’s a crowd, don’t you think?”     “You know you’re absolutely welcome.” She means this but under it is a whisper in her mind. If Sid stays with her, her home is a halfway house. Just as the pharmacist says at the council meeting. His accusation opens her up and by the middle of the night, she dreamt of mobs and torches. This morning she shook it off. She is, after all, not one to let fears grip her in daylight. She’s a Swede and she’s right and she is like a pit bull in a lot of ways. She lists these strengths like bricks in a fortress. She is the mayor too.     When she runs for mayor her husband tells her, be a person first. Politics shouldn’t rule her life. Then Sid, when he learns of her election, tells her that she needs good medicine. That’s how Indian war parties were formed, he told her. A warrior with good medicine would have followers, but not absolute power. Leadership then relied on personality and character and the choice of followers to give respect.     What a perfect description of leadership! Sid’s words sort it out for Arlene. Families are their own sort of medicine.     Does Sid remember that too? Arlene wonders. Sid clears his throat.     “Listen Arlene, you’ve been great, but I need to be on my own.” Sid grins. “Besides which, if I’m here I can eat all the pizzas I want.”     Arlene smiles. “That’ll get old fast. But it’s good if the cook likes his own food.”     The pizzas are prepackaged completely ready for the oven. Sid only has to cook and box them for the customers. With his hands, it is the only option. At least Sid is showing some initiative. This is his first request since he’s been out. Up to now, he never says yes or no to anything. It’s like he’s still behind bars. Fresh starts are shadowed by his past.     Arlene will help as much as she can. She takes a deep breath and massages her eyebrow, then her upper lip, her chin and finally the base of each finger. It’s one of her stress release tools, she explains to Sid. Then she faces the clutter.     “We can talk about the room later. Right now, let’s get these pictures sorted. We can open these up; maybe there’s something good behind the crappy calendar pictures.” She picks one picture out of a box filled with them. It frames autumn trees, impossibly golden in tone. Arlene puts it on a table. Sid continues to look into the room.     “Come on Sid, we’ve got an hour before we open Pizza and a Movie. Let’s see how much we can clear away. Get the toolkit, will you?”     Sid slowly returns with tools, window spray and several cloths.     “This one’s good, just a copy. But still. William Kureleck.” Arlene dusts the frame. Pictured is a haystack in the center of a snowy field. To the left is a man working behind a horse, maybe shoveling manure off the sled, on the right a couple of kids play in the snow. And these cows are eating the haystack and right in the hay, almost as an afterthought, is the Virgin and Baby Jesus.     Sid looks over her shoulder and she hands the picture to him. He reads the title.     “Nativity 1965. We Find All Kinds of Excuses.” Then squinting closer he finds more words handwritten in pen close to the picture’s bottom edge. “People work and play without regard to the salvation of their eternal souls.”     “Freaky, eh? I wouldn’t want it but there are customers that will.” Arlene turns to another picture but Sid hesitates. Finally he puts the print aside and they work. Some pictures are set aside and others are dismantled for their frames. The hour passes. Then they set aside their work in the antique store and prepare to open the doors of Pizza and a Movie. Sid empties the movie deposit box while Arlene unlocks the second set of doors. She props the Customer Coffee Free sign in the window and flicks on the neon open sign.     Arlene decides to go to the cafe. The real seat of power is not the village office. She washes her hands and while in the bathroom, she does her quickest de-stress routine: a sniff of her aromatherapy followed by an exaggerated yawn. She goes out onto the street that remains under a heavy sky.     There are even more vehicles now parked near the cafe. This can’t be a coincidence, but Arlene firmly tells herself not to be alarmed.     She passes two empty old store buildings. She will suggest that they be replaced by a playground or park when the time is right. Whenever that will be. By the time she approaches the cafe her thoughts return strangely to the title of the Kureleck print. ‘We Find All Kinds of Excuses.’     As Arlene steps through the café door, the buzz of voices drops to a silence. Before she understands, she is met by a woman headed to the street. Dorothy! She looks different than she does on T.V. in her news reports. Plus she rarely visits her hometown. Is she doing a story here? Arlene remembers the note-taking stranger at the council meeting. Someone from Dorothy’s team?     As the gurgle of a coffee maker, then a lowered voice or two begins to fill the unusual silence, Dorothy grasps Arlene’s hand.     “Arlene. So good to see you. Can we talk? In private?”     Arlene swallows, as the memory of her brother’s arrest returns to her. Panic and disbelief. She felt it then and feels it now.     “We can go back to my stores. Sid is making coffee at the Pizza and a Movie,” Dorothy is silent as they walk down the street. The illustrated sign hanging over Arlene’s antique store commands her attention. Three wise monkeys clasp their hands over ears, eyes or mouth. The symbolic message says if we hear, see, or speak no evil, we ourselves shall be spared evil.     But evil is not so easily deterred.     Dorothy had been in the same grade as Sid, and other than that Arlene wouldn’t know her, with the 15 years in age between them. Even so, it is obvious Dorothy has something to impart. Arlene reins herself to trust in good medicine.     They enter the store where Sid pours coffee for Dorothy. She tells him she is glad to see him in Burdock.     “I’m actually moving back, too.” Dorothy smiles at their reaction. Sid recovers first.     “Not much news out this way.” He says.     “I’ve decided to do something different.” Dorothy says. “Afghanistan was pretty tough, not that what I went through holds a candle to the soldiers, but I’m shifting gears. I want to find ideas for documentaries.”     “What about small communities, like Burdock with shrinking populations that must change to thrive? A documentary about the effort and the opportunities and how it can all go sideways.” Arlene said with a glance at Sid.     It is on the tip of her tongue to mention miscarriages of justice but Dorothy knows Sid’s story herself. Just as Arlene knows of Dorothy’s son and his light slap of a sentence. The Young Offenders Act didn’t erase home town knowledge.     “Things certainly go sideways.” Dorothy says.     There is a moment where no one speaks. Arlene should ask what is happening at the café.     “The people at the café have themselves in a lather.” Dorothy’s words come in a rush.     Arlene takes a deep breath, and then gives herself a full-body shake, like she is a rag doll. Dorothy looks surprised.     “It works for stress.” Arlene explains before she asks what she has to.     “It’s a not in my back yard type of thing.” Dorothy says.     Sid interrupts. “Oh, let me guess. Something has disturbed Burdock. Something like an ex-con among them.”     “Yes. That’s one part of it. The other is my son Michael. He’s not a bad kid, but he’s been in trouble. They’re worried that he’ll influence others. So, I know that you worked hard on this, but they are starting with the sign. They don’t want it to say ‘Welcome Home to Burdock’.”     Dorothy lets this register as she watches Arlene’s face. Then she adds, “Their reason is that I wouldn’t want to come back and Sid wouldn’t be here either except for the sign change.”     “That’s just ridiculous...” Arlene sputters and then asks. “So what do they think the sign should read? - Welcome home but only if 100% of the citizenry like you?”     “But only if you don’t disturb us in any way,” Dorothy says without humor.     “They believe that the sign is a problem. How is welcome home a problem?” Arlene asks.     “If I hadn’t been in the back booth and heard it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.” Dorothy never looks this distressed on television. “I thought Burdock was the place for me and Michael. It’s just a sign out on the highway, but it tipped my decision and now ... I was so naîve. They even have a lawyer!”     “The best slogan might be, ‘we try to get along.’” Arlene sounds wistful.     “Humph!” Sid clears his throat. “I know a slogan that fits. We found it this morning.”     Sid crosses into the antique store to bring back the picture.     “We Find All Kinds of Excuses. Excuses like a troubled teenager who will ruin the community. Or an ex-con who will kill again.”     “Again?! You’re innocent.” Dorothy’s defense of Sid causes a grateful warmth to spread inside Arlene.     “I’m convicted though. That’s what this ingrown place knows and that’s all they know.”     Arlene sees truth on Sid’s face. And Dorothy cannot argue. Now Arlene is convinced that things will not change. The knowledge settles over her like a lead blanket.     She shakes herself, letting her body loll and wobble and go limp. Surprisingly, Dorothy joins her and after watching the two women for a half-minute Sid does the same. They flop their arms and roll their heads and a strangled chuckle escapes Arlene.     What should she do now? Proclaim a village ordinance that everyone do a rag doll shake every day? How funny! She lets loose until she realizes her laughter must look like hysterics. She sobers. She’s tried. And the gathering at the café, they’ve tried too. To protect themselves from fears and failures, even if it means the village will die.     “We should go to the meeting, I think.” Arlene says.     Slow nods mean they are with her. Good. This is where it starts. Arlene lifts up the picture.     “I’m giving them this. And then, unless something changes my mind, I’m....”     She is sure of her heart.     “I’m not their leader.”     They start their journey, past empty buildings, over cracked sidewalks, a group of three. Arlene looks up. There is no end to the gloom and no reason to think another day might open with sunshine. But they have good medicine. And that would be welcome somewhere. Arlene knows this.

Liz Betz Bio     Liz Betz writes from rural Alberta. She considers herself a late bloomer as a writer but recommends retirement as the last option to pursue dreams. Her published stories can be found through her blog.

out Janet Kuypers haiku 2/28/14 spirits inside you want to come out and scream their story to the world

Visit the Kuypers Twitter page for short poems— join http://twitter.com/janetkuypers.

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku out live 4/9/14 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon camera)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku out live 4/9/14 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (posterized)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers hosting the open mic and the Deborah Rosen feature 4/9/14 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery in Chicago (where she reads this haiku)

See Vine video of Janet Kuypers’ haiku out from Scars Publications’ Down in the Dirt issues book the Intersection (S 11/22/15)

Time John K. Graham Time the devourer of all things.—Ovid I think it’s true as the French say that life is half lived before we know what it is how fortunate those whose genius has lain—in part—in their productivity thousands of compositions by Bach thousands of art works by Picasso we are so much less than we could be

Hunting With Carey Eland D. Summers     I had never been hunting before, but my anxiety passed as Carey’s truck jostled me over the lumpy, hilly ground that his family used to tend but now reserved for hunting. The sun was still not up, but I thought that I could see little orange flecks of light unravel the darkness. Carey and I drove in silence; I was still too tired to keep a straight head, and I was a little worried that talking would somehow break a rule of hunting: you don’t talk. I realize, now, that the truck would have not only muffled my words, but scared any deer off long before they even had a chance to see me sitting in the passenger seat. Still, my nerves were tight and taught, a result of the cold spring air. From what I know now, we weren’t supposed to be out hunting at that time of year, but Carey was never a man to give a damn about what the government said we could or couldn’t do. It was his land. Which, sitting in the passenger seat next to him, was good enough for me.     I wasn’t really sure why I was there to begin with. I wasn’t actually going to do any of the hunting myself; I had asked Carey drunkenly the night before if I could tag along on one of his hunting trips, and suddenly Carey was standing at the foot of my bed at four-thirty in the mourning telling me that we were already late. Nothing wakes you up faster than a shadowed seven foot man who you’ve heard punched a bear in the face, telling you to “Get the hell up, already.” Of course, later, it was revealed that he never punched that bear, but it still scared me all the same.     So I wasn’t hunting. I was just tagging along for the experience. I told Carey I wasn’t going to shoot a gun, that I hadn’t ever shot one before, and that I just wanted to know what it was like to go. I had no idea what to expect, and as usual, Carey didn’t provide me with any expectations beyond a steely cold glare that I had always hoped meant more that he liked me.     As we bounced from one field to another, we’d pass by an old silo or deer stand and Carey would quickly remark something or other about family history and some uncle had died there, or was mauled by an animal there. We passed a shack that was rotten with moss and lichen, well hidden in the woods, I almost didn’t see it; Carey, tipped his head toward the shack and said, “My Uncle Bruce was shot by my Aunt Edna and buried in the back yard there. Edna hung around for another ten years before anybody figured it out, and she’s in a loony bin down somewhere in Arizona now.” And that was that; the shack was already gone, and Carey was looking out through the front of the windshield to the next patch of history that would come up, and that he would painfully deign to tell me.     After we had bobbled a bit more on the black South Dakota soil, we rocked to a halt. I could feel Carey’s rust red truck settle into the frozen mire of dilapidated corn field. The trip there had been educational: I had learned that not only was Carey’s family well established in Eastern South Dakota’s agriculture, some hundred years of trying, at least, but also that they were violent, stir crazy, and generally ornery people. I was wondering if going hunting with Carey, alone on his land, in the dark, might have been a bad idea.     Once we got settled, things let up a bit. It was still quite dark, but the sun was making more of an appearance on the horizon. Something that I had forgotten after moving away was that the sunrise can take such a long time, out here in the middle of nowhere. I rolled down my window to let some cool air in, and I was surprised to find that it was warmer than I had expected. A gush of warm wind, sweet with black soil and ozone, swept in and reminded me of spring, and that it was happening. Carey smoked a cigarette and looked out, wistfully, over his family’s land with his 32-20 Winchester tucked to the side of his knees. I felt glad that I could come out. I had always wanted to be an early riser, beat the sunrise, drink my coffee black, eat a stack of flapjacks at once, call pancakes flapjacks, and be a general man’s man. As a child I had wanted to be an old-fashioned gunslinger, and maybe sitting there with Carey as he was waiting to find a deer to shoot was the closest thing that I had ever gotten to being that gunslinger. Now I realize that I don’t ever want to point a gun at another person, and that if I was put in the position to I’d probably piss myself and run away.     Carey seemed to relax a bit as well. He started to make little chit chat, under his breath. I kept thinking that we were going to scare away the deer, but I didn’t really want to see a deer get shot. I wasn’t sure I could handle all of the guts and blood spilling out of the carcass, the black marble eyes staring into the woods like it was thinking just a little bit further and I would have made it. He talked about silly things, things that I wouldn’t have expected Carey to want to carry on about. “Margarine, not the stuff you buy on the shelves, a more basic formula that didn’t have yellow food coloring in it, was once used to feed turkeys, but it made the turkeys go nuts. They would eat and eat and eat, but never get the nutrition that they needed, so they’d slowly starve on all of the calories. Had a few that went rogue, ate another turkey to make up for the slow starvation. Saw one once standing over its kill, covered in its own kind’s blood. That’s when I shot it. Turkey fed turkey that had been eating the margarine-feed was a pretty bad meal, if you ask me.”     Carey pulled us up a black path in the clustered dead weeds, up to a small hill and onto an acre that wouldn’t be tended to for another month or so. Broken alabaster feed-corn stalks that had lost their color made little triangles on the dewey black soil below us. I remarked about how it was warm for that time of year. Carey said nothing and pulled a plug of tobacco from a pouch with an Indian on it. I thought about asking him for a plug, but I didn’t really like chewing tobacco. I had done it a few times before, and the effects weren’t worth the taste or sick that usually came with it. I had also heard that there was fiberglass in it, which wasn’t appealing either. Carey turned off the truck and we waited.     We sat as the sun crept; I wanted to ask all sorts of questions, but since we had parked Carey had been silent and still, signaling that he was busy. We were parked about fifty yards away from a few clumps of trees that blocked a small creek that had been dried up, the mud steaming. His window faced the creek and the woods, and mine faced the pasture and the sun.     By the time the sun was half exposed, a red current of clouds ran down through the sky, Carey rolled down his window and the gun cracked a bullet through the air. I was surprised at how loud the gun was: it cracked a couple of more times as he discharged the hot shells behind the seat and the glass of the windows rattled. Without looking at me he said, “Put your arms down,” and turned on the engine and shifted directly into second gear. I realized that after the first shot I had braced myself against the ceiling, pushing my palms into roof of the cab. I relaxed and we sped off to the trees and approached the deer that Carey had shot which was now lying on the ground. I thought about it, and I couldn’t remember seeing the deer before he had shot it. Carey hopped out of the cab and, before I had gotten to him, he had already started opening it ass to belly. Before I looked away, which was pretty quick, I looked at the thing’s eyes. They were brown and almost human except for the long black pupil, like the black center had bled when Carey had shot it. They moved, darted, then slowed. Its mouth moved a bit after everything else, then I guess I looked away. At first I thought Carey had just started tearing it open as it lay there alive and dying, but as he tied it to his hood, which I didn’t think hunters still did, I noticed the cut in its throat, the red-black blood staining the bit of white fur that led to its belly. He had taken the time to bleed the deer out before he butchered it, and at the time I figured it was a small kindness. That was the last time I felt any human connection to Carey. Again, after the fact, I realized it was because he didn’t want the deer to kick him as he cleaned the body, which just proves to me now that Carey was always unsavory in one way or another, even if just for pragmatism.     I don’t know how he saw him, as we tusseled on the dirt path on our way back to the highway, but Carey shot out another round from his window without stopping the car. As we barrelled along I thought I saw antlers fall beneath the orange dawn and into the darkness of the highway, but it’s one of those images that come up after the actual event, in the sour note of a memory tieing pieces together. Your eyes, in their perifery, can’t see everything; your brain makes up the rest. Once we got to the highway, Carey pulled over, knife in hand, and approached the body. I wasn’t going to get out of the cab, but Carey just stood there, in the waning darkness. I got out too, wondering what Carey was thinking. I was half expecting him to hand me the knife, but when I got there I realized the barbarity of that gesture; I had, deep down, hoped that Carey would have me skin the deer. But, as I got out of the cab, and I heard the garbled bellow echo out of the dark pavement, that dream vanished. I knew that sound. We all do, we’ve all made it before. Lying in the dark, was a boy crumpled over his bicycle, wearing a back pack and an orange helmet with antlers fixed on the sides. Carey and I stood over him as he held his chest, choughing up blood, eyes frantically darting. Crying in between the pained coughs to get the blood out of the way. The eyes were wide; they locked with mine, for a second, black iris swimming in a blue-white pool. Then they stopped, and the boy died.     Carey and I stood there as the sun rose, a bit too far before we realized that we had something to do, that we had a dead body and we had choices to make, and potentially those choices meant not being seen with a dead boy who was supposed to be riding his bike to school. Carey, without saying anything, swept him up in his arms. The little boy’s frame contrasted Carey’s, thin little arms that hadn’t had time to properly develop, probably small for his age. I remember that he was wearing a black down coat, North Face probably, but with gym shorts, and I thought that as he died he probably had been pretty cold; why would a child who had to ride 5 miles in to school be wearing shorts at this time of year? And so the questions began.     “What the fuck are you doing out here?” Carey asked. Angered, he dumped the body into the back of his pickup, antlers and all. “Get the bike. Who fucking rides a bike to school at dawn with antlers on his head?”     I got the bike and put it over the boy’s body in the back. Carey pulled a tarp over both. “Where do we take him?” I asked.     “Take him? Like we’re dropping him off at school, you dumb fuck. We’re dumping him. Why would I go to jail for him?”     “Wasn’t it an accident?”     “Not with the history my family’s got, it’s not.”     “Shouldn’t we find his wallet or something? Something that has his name on it, like an assignment?”     “I don’t care who he is. He’s river boy, for all I care, cause that’s where he’s going.”     Carey got out his knife and hesitated for a second before cutting the deer off his hood, throwing it on the road where the boy had been. As we left, Carey backed over the body a few times, grinding it into the road. As we sped off down the highway we passed a truck that Carey seemed to recognize, raised a single finger from the wheel to wave, but everybody does that around here, regardless if you know them or not. Under his breath, as we passed, Carey muttered, “Fuck fuck fuck,” like it was someone he was expecting slow and stop, force us to chat, to ask why we had blood on our hood, who I was, and what good game he had under that tarp in the back. But we passed like it was nothing and I sighed with relief. Carey must have heard because he shot me look like he was saying, “Yeah, you and I are fucking lucky.”     Every now and again, on our way to the river, I thought I could hear the boy cry, and I’d look out through the back at the tarp, which flappled idly in the wind, the boy and the bicycle inanimate beneath it. I barely recognized the drive back, black dirt illuminating the bleach white stalks of broken corn punctuated by silos, ranch houses with lights just turning on, and abandoned houses with sunken roofs. At one of the houses I saw an old man standing with his hips on his hands, staring into the sun as it rose, spitting on the ground. Something like, “fuck this earth,” I could hear him saying through his thick tobacco filled drawl. But he zipped by like everything else. We must have been moving fast if something as far away as that man could have traveled by so quickly. Again, I can only see him standing there after the fact; I’m not even sure I saw him.     Time, as I remember it, breaks in images, flashes of things where the perspective has warped it. Like: once we got the river, Carey drove the back of his truck up to the beached dock. No one was around, with good reason: the river was mostly frozen. The ice was thin, but enough so nobody cared to come out and bother with. Carey got out and pulled the tarp off of the boy and his bike. Again we stood there and just looked at him, under his little broken bicycle, legs all torn to shit from the fall and from having been tangled in the spokes and the chain. Carey took the bike off of him and threw it into the river, crashed through the shards of ice and fell beneath. Carey then grabbed the boy and held him against his chest like he was asleep, the boy’s head resting on his shoulder, looking small and frail. The boy must have been at lest thirteen, but the way I remember it he was tiny, like a six year old or something. It makes it harder to remember him that way, a child that we had killed, about to be dumped in the icy river, mother and father coming still eagerly waiting for him to come home from school. His first year of school. But then I remember he was riding his bike to school, at least five miles out, and maybe his parents never noticed, bad enough already to make him ride a bike in gym shorts just out of winter, five miles in the cold. Regardless, I remember him being tiny; Carey using only one arm to prop him up, the other hand carying a shovel to break the ice. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work, but as Carey got to the water, he used the shovel to crack through the ice and he walked into it, water soaking up through his green khaki pants, filling his shoes with ice. Once he was far enough out there he threw the shovel back on to the shore and held only the boy. He lowered him, held his face in front of his own, and mumbled something. He seemed to look into the boy’s face for an eternity before suddenly the boy was already half in the water and under the ice. Then it was just the antlers that Carey held, pushing the boy off under the water to be pulled away with the current.     Carey’s return to land was a slow one, one that took much longer than going out. He seemed to trudge, hitting every piece of ice, like he was freezing with it, binding with the ice. He pulled his feet out and onto the gravel of the land, pants black, tipped with white frost around the thighs. He bent down to grab the shovel and he stood back up and approached me and the truck, back turned to the nameless boy somehwere in the river, floating down the Missouri.

Soulless Eric Napolitan     Damon Raventon started his day like every other, but little did he know it would turn to shit so fast. He worked the same IT job for the past five years, which was great for a twenty-seven year old, who survived the economic downfall that his generation went through. The job wasn’t glamorous, paid very little, and had no stability, but it would do. All that didn’t matter, it was a job, and he was happy to have it. Everything went normal that sunny morning from the drive to the finishing three projects before lunch. After a delicious lunch, the bottom fell out. Laid off after five years with the company - was the worst slap in the face that someone could receive. The company claimed profits were down the last few months, and they could not afford the position anymore. That did not stop the CEO from having a new Jaguar, like the rich entitled prick he was, and his ditzy bitch trophy wife from having designer clothes. Damon was a professional, and restrained himself from telling them how he really felt. He made it back to his car with his head hung low. He rested his head on the steering wheel in agony, then slammed his fist into it with rage, and screamed. He jammed the car into drive, and sped away.     The next month, Damon spent hunting for the next great job to start a new chapter in his life. He knew he had great skills, and assumed it would be easy, maybe a few days. He went on interview after interview, and received every typical lame excuse in the book.     “You’re over qualified for this position.”     “We are looking for someone with more experience.”     “The boss’s nephew, the corn dog eating crack head is a better fit for our culture.”     “We decided to go with an underqualified dumbass who will work for pencils.” He heard it all that month. He sat at the kitchen table in his small apartment, a full glass of whiskey in front of him. His suit draped over the chair next to him, as he was either at an interview, or stuck at home looking for work. The process was getting old, his bank account was wearing thin, and his expression screamed of a man at his limit. The job section of the paper was open in front of him as it was every morning. His eyes scanned every listing, searching for a gold nugget among the countless shit, then he stopped. His eyes got brighter, and he circled a listing with a bright-yellow marker. The ad stated, “EARN MONEY QUICK, DETERMINED SALES PEOPLE NEEDED, NO EXPERIENCE REQ., APPLY IN PERSON: $5,000 A WEEK”     He figured it was all a scam, but at this point it didn’t matter, nothing better had come along, so it was worth a shot. He grabbed his blue suit off the chair and raced to the bathroom to get ready.     Damon parked his car outside an old abandoned hotel, it once was a grand luxury hotel when it was open decades ago. Now, the windows were boarded up, paint was peeled off, and weeds grew out of cracks in the decrepit parking lot. He checked the newspaper listing, the address matched. He exited his vehicle. Every step he took towards the building, his mind screamed at him to turn around, “You might get raped by meth-head psychos”. He kept going, driven by pure curiosity.     Damon persevered, and made it to the main entrance. He went inside. The interior of the hotel was as bad, if not worse, than the outside. It was a total mess with various items scattered about, holes in the walls, small dead animals, graffiti covering the walls. He made his way down a long hallway trying to avoid broken bottles on the floor, and other disgusting objects in his path. He stopped at a door marked CONFERENCE ROOM, took a breath, and turned the knob. Rows of dirty old chairs filled the room, faced a podium that was burned black, one of the many things in the room that was vandalized.     Six people were randomly seated in the room. A man with a worn-out baseball cap, a teenager wearing baggy clothes, an elderly gentleman with an oxygen cart, a business man, a twitching drug-head, and a very beautiful young woman. Damon took a seat in the back to observe everyone in the room.     Soon after, a man entered wearing a black suit with a tie that was cut in half - tattered like it was burned off. He strolled up to the podium carrying a briefcase, and spoke in a low raspy voice.     “Welcome, to the greatest opportunity of your life. You can call me, Mr. Graysen.”     There was an uneasy silence upon the room - the rats fornicating in the walls were louder than the six people in the room.     Mr. Graysen broke the silence, “I am sure you are all eager to find out how you can earn five-thousand dollars a week.”     “Yeah let’s get on with it!”, screamed the man in the baseball cap.     “The proposition is simple. You will collect people’s souls for me, with this device.”     Everyone in the room chuckled with disbelief.     Mr. Graysen took out a small silver pen like device.     “I will demonstrate.” He snapped his fingers.     A fat bald man walked into the room - stopped, and looked around the room as if he was expecting something different.     “What the hell is this,” He shouted. He ran for the door, but Mr. Graysen grabbed him. He looked into the fat man’s eyes, and spoke softly.     “If you place your finger on top of this, all your troubles will fade away.”     “Bullshit!” The man screamed back.     “I am telling the truth, give it a try - see for yourself.”     “Whatever.”     The man snatched the device from Mr. Graysen’s hand.     Damon fidgeted in his seat - he had a bad feeling about what was about to happen to that man. It brought a wave a memories back - a time when he watched a neighborhood kid attempt a magic trick that he had seen on television, which ended up almost blinding a lovely young girl. Damon averted his eyes, and opted to fix his gaze upon the beautiful woman in the row in front of him. He noticed a blue punk star tattoo on her neck and a ring piercing on her luscious lips.     The fat man placed his thumb on the top of the slender device. His eyes twitched violent. Then in seconds it was over. He stood with a blank gaze, as if everything that made him who he was - got sucked into that device leaving him with nothing, only the most basic of human functions.     The watchers gasped at the spectacle.     Mr. Graysen smiled with a sadistic grin. “Simple as that, his soul is stored in the device, which can later be deposited for payment. He will still be able to function, and have a normal life, but with no personality, and no desires - other than the basics.”     The teenager in baggy clothes stood up - pointed a finger at Mr. Graysen. “This is a fucking joke!” He walked off and left the room.     Everyone else followed him out, besides the woman, and Damon.     “Consider yourselves the lucky ones.” Mr. Graysen looked straight at Damon, and the woman.     “Please come forward.” He signaled for them to approach.     They walked up to the podium, slow, and unsure. Mr. Graysen extended his hand - greeted them.     “You made the right choice.”     “What’s the catch?” The woman spoke in the most innocent sexy voice.     “Gather souls, and make money, simple as that.”     Damon starred at Graysen with mixed emotions. Part of him wanted to trust him, and go for the easy money while the logical part believed this man belonged in a room with padded walls.     Graysen opened his briefcase, and pulled out two silver pen devices. He handed one to each of them.     “These are called, Catchers, you can -”     “Lame.” The woman interrupted.     “Collect five souls in these, then take it to a drop off location to collect five-thousand dollars.”     They were speechless, stared at the odd devices in their hands.     Graysen snapped his briefcase closed. “We’re done here.” He handed each of them a business card. “The address for the drop off, is on that card.”     Damon tucked the card away in his pocket, left the room.     Damon and the woman walked towards their cars half in a daze from what they just experienced. He sprinted up to her.     “I think we should discuss this.”     “I don’t fucking know you.”     Damon extended his hand in her direction. “Damon, nice to meet you.”     “Molly.” She shook his hand in return.     “Want to go somewhere and talk about what just happened?”     Molly was not eager to meet any new friends that day. Money was tight and the debt was piling up, which was all that mattered to her. However, deep inside she knew it would be better to go at this with a partner. She was tough and could easily handle herself, but this was beyond anything she had ever encountered.     “I know a place where we can talk,” she responded.     GRIMM’S DUNGEON, was a gothic bar on the edge of town. Not exactly the place Damon had in mind. The tables were sleek black, walls were red with various gothic decor, and on each end of the bar there were cages in which half-naked girls were dancing. Damon and Molly sat at the end of the bar near one of the cages. Damon eyed the girl in the cage, amused.     “You like what you see?” Molly broke his trance.     “Yes, but they’re not as beautiful as you.”     Molly chuckled, “At least buy a lady a drink first.”     Damon ordered them two beers from the bartender. He was not a stranger to women, but Molly struck him like none other. Her beauty was mesmerizing with a sense of mystery and danger - due to a lip piercing, punkish style, and small star tattoo on her neck.     “Mr. Graysen was pretty fucking crazy, right.” Molly said.     “Yeah, seems like a total scam.”     “My broke ass is willing to try anything at this point.”     “What happened?”     There was a long silence. The bartender placed beers down in front of them. Molly quickly grabbed one - chugged down half of it.     “If it’s too personal you don’t have -”     Molly wiped her mouth, and responded. “No - It’s been a long time since anyone cared.”     Damon took a drink of beer, waited to see if she had anything else to say.     “I was in school to be a nurse, but couldn’t handle blood. I wanted to be an accountant, but hated math. I ran out of money before I could try anything else, so I ended up working here - in the cage, then found out having guys fondling me was worse than everything else before it.”     “I’m sorry to hear that.” Damon touched her hand to comfort her.     “It’s fine.” Molly took another long swig of beer. Damon finished his off.     “If you are going to try and do this crazy soul stealing thing. How about as partners?”, Damon asked.     “I’d like that, as long as we get equal pay.”     “Definitely.”     Molly smiled in relief to finally have met an honest person that she felt she could trust. Damon was not sure the idea would work, it was still the craziest job he ever heard of.     “I got the perfect person we can try this soul stuff on,” Damon informed her.     “Whatever you think.”     The parking lot outside of Damon’s old work was empty besides two cars. Damon knew the one very well. His ex-boss’s black Jaguar. He and Molly waited behind a dumpster, and watched the car. She fidgeted impatiently, and lit a cigarette. Damon grabbed it from her mouth, then stomped it out on the pavement.     “Let’s not alert everyone that we’re here,” Damon barked at her.     “I’m just so fucking bored.”     “You asked for this job.”     “It sounded so much more fun at the bar.”     Damon’s boss exited the building, walked towards his car. Damon nudged Molly in his direction.     “That’s him.”     “I got this.”     Molly hurried to her feet, and ran at Damon’s boss. Damon shook his head in disbelief. Damon caught up to her, but she was already on top of his boss attempting to handcuff his hands, but he knocked her off with ease. Damon rushed to help - punched his boss in the face, which he dreamed of many times before. They worked together to handcuff his boss’s hands behind his back. They got him to his feet, dragged him away.     Damon’s boss was tied to a chair in the center of a dusty old warehouse. Damon and Molly faced him with their silver pen devices in hand.     “How do we do this?”, Molly questioned.     “Since I am the expert,” Damon responded.     Molly walked up to Damon’s boss - grabbed his hand, then forced it down on the silver pen device. Nothing happened as it did in Graysen’s demonstration. Molly looked at the man confused, as if a spectacular firework should have exploded, but failed.     “What went wrong,” She shouted.     Damon shrugged his shoulders, “Maybe you have to ask him to place his finger on it. Mr. Graysen asked, in his demonstration.”     She looked into Damon’s boss’s eyes, “Would you please place your finger on top of this pen?”     “Fuck you!”, Damon’s Boss screamed.     Damon’s eyes flashed with rage, as he wanted this over quick as possible. Being in the presence of his boss again filled him with anger. Damon grabbed him by his head, “Do it now! Or we will kill you!”     Molly screamed in his face, “You can go back to your life soon as you do as we instruct or maybe I should utilize some of your fortune.” She held a debit card out for him to see.     There was a long silence, everyone waited for the other to speak. “Fine.”, Damon’s boss broke the silence.     Molly held out the silver pen like device. He placed his finger on it. He screamed in agony like no one should ever scream. In less than a minute it was over. He stared back at Damon and Molly with a blank soulless gaze, like the man in Graysen’s demonstration. He walked off in a trance like state. His entire personality was stripped away, only a shell of himself remained.     Molly grabbed Damon - kissed with passion, full of lust.     Molly and Damon woke sweaty - between cheap motel sheets after a night of celebrating their victory. Damon stared blankly at the chipped ceiling not feeling like he should. His mind screamed at him that he punished an asshole, and won the girl - that nothing could be better, but his heart felt heavy - concerned with what he had done. Molly slept next to him, dreamed peacefully, while he laid in torment. He got over this feeling, learned to accept it for what it was, and enjoy the ride.     The next week, Molly and Damon spent filling their silver devices with souls. It was surprisingly easy how people would press their finger on their device without knowing why. There were many ways to convince them, money, threats of violence, pain, tricks of future wealth. Since their devices were full, they headed to meet Graysen, and collect payment.     Graysen picked an abandoned meat plant - the floors stained with years of dried blood. The three of them spoke in the center of the room. He greeted Molly and Damon with a devilish grin, while his breath smelled like sulfur. Damon sniffed the air, held his ground and made sure he didn’t gag at the smell. Amazed, he did not notice it the first time they met.     “Do you have the devices?”, Graysen asked.     “If you have payment.”, Halley responded.     Graysen opened his briefcase, took out two wads of money that contained five-thousand dollars each. He handed them to Halley. She flipped through a stack to make sure it was all there, then gave the second to Damon. She handed the silver devices over to Graysen. He pulled the end cap off the device, sniffed the contents inside. “Souls smell so sweet.”     Molly smiled, then spoke. “We need more.”     “I have as many devices as you need,” Graysen replied.     “Five each,” Molly said.     Damon eyed her as if she was crazy. It was not too bad taking five souls each, but now they were going to have to obtain twenty-five souls each, which was biting off a huge chunk before their skill level was past intermediate.     Graysen gave Molly the devices as she requested. Damon fidgeted uncomfortable. Graysen closed his briefcase.     “Our business is concluded.” Graysen walked off.     Damon blinked and he was gone. Molly grabbed his arm.     “Time to have some fun,” Molly expressed with a gleam in her eyes.     The pattern continued as it did before. Grabbing souls during the day - sex and partying at night. Every time Damon looked at her, he had feelings for her - stomach would flutter, he had fallen for her. Damon hated it - it made his mind weak, and clouded his judgment, but it was impossible to avoid.     Molly and Damon were driving through an upscale suburban neighborhood searching for the first soul to take of the day. Molly drove, wore a low-cut tank top and shorts. She knew that the hotter she looked, the easier it was for their clients to say yes. Damon looked out the passenger side window at the various sights of suburbia. It was not the first time they took a soul in this neighborhood, and it felt strange to be back - if all eyes were watching their every move.     While stopped at a stop sign, Damon noticed the house from which they took the soul of a man. He watered the grass with a blank soulless gaze - no sign of any emotion. His three lovely children ran up to him, hugged him. His gaze did not change at all - not a glimmer of humanity remained. A beautiful woman ran out of the house, pulled the children away from him. Screamed at him with all she had, but he continued to water the grass unfazed.     Molly drove onward, eyes darted around, searching for someone to be the next soul taken. “There has to be someone around here to take,” Molly stated.     “Sure.”     “What’s your problem?”     “Not feeling it today, maybe we should do something else.”     “Maybe you should quit talking like a wuss, cause there is a lot of money on the line.”     After seeing what they did to that man, Damon had no interest in causing any more pain. He knew all along that what they were doing, was not good, but it didn’t hit home until that single moment. Blinded by her beauty, booze, sex, and fun was the excuse Damon came up with to live with what he had done.     “Let’s pick a different place,” Damon spoke after a long pause.     “As long as we each fill a device today.”     Damon nodded in agreement as Molly drove to their next destination.     Damon and Molly walked through a crowded mall. Happy people laughed, and smiled - while they searched for the next soul they would take.     They walked into the food court. Filled with people sitting at tables enjoying savory mall treats - the typical food that every mall in America has inside. Molly looked around the vast sea of people.     “Who shall it be today?”, Molly inquired.     Damon gazed at the various people in the food court. A young woman and her three children ate pizza, young teen lovers shared an ice-cream cone - no one in the entire court deserved what they were looking to do to them.     Molly gleamed as if she found someone to her liking, and hurried towards the other end of the food court. Damon followed close behind her. He no longer wanted to be part of the soul stealing business, but he didn’t want to lose Molly. Damon grabbed her by the shoulder. “Let’s do something else.”     “Why are you acting this way?” Molly fired back.     “I want to spend time with you, forget work.”     “We can do other stuff later, we need to make some cash.” She continued towards a young woman, who was eating a salad.     Damon stepped in her path, took her by the shoulders. “I want to be with you, go away with me.”     “I need the money. Sorry.” She punched him in the gut, pushed him aside. He braced himself on a chair to keep from falling. His heart hurt more than his stomach. He wanted things to turn out different as he cared so much for her. The fact that she would not take a day off, made him want to go postal.     Damon regained what was left of his manhood, rushed into the center of the court, stood on top of a table, and screamed. “There’s a bomb in the trashcan!”     Everyone stopped what they were doing, and looked at him.     “I am fucking serious! We’re all going to die!”     The mall patrons panicked - darted in all directions to avoid the blast of the bomb that did not exist. Once the food court cleared - only Molly remained. Anger burned in her eyes as she approached Damon. “Very clever, asshole.” She screamed.     “We need to take a break. We’re the ones losing our souls.”     “Bullshit. We’re having fun, I know you love it.” She crept closer towards Damon.     “We need balance,” Damon rebutted.     “We each only have two devices full.”     “It’s not always about money.”     “With the amount of debt I have, and the fact that my last place of residence was my friend’s couch. I have no choice.”     “I want to be with you, but I am done hurting people.”     “Thanks to you, we didn’t take a single soul today. Be happy.” She sat down at a table, disappointed.     Damon joined her. Took her by the hand to ease the situation. “There’s other ways to make money.”     “Since I have so many skills.”     “I can help you figure it out.”     Molly jolted up out of her chair, grabbed the napkin dispenser off the table - tossed it. It clanked on the tile floor, the sound echoed around the empty food court.     “This is the perfect job for me. End of story,” Molly screamed.     Damon stood up. “I can’t live with hurting people. I thought I could, but I was wrong.”     “I am going to continue on. I hope you understand. Shake my hand, and forgive me”. Molly extended her hand towards Damon.     He smiled, and shook her hand. The hope drained from his face. He tried to pull his hand away, but she held it tight. The silver pen device was in her hand when he took it. His soul was sucked from his body. He now felt what so many others have.     “I am really sorry.” She spoke with remorse, and sadness in her tone. She pocketed the device after it finished. Damon stared back with a lifeless gaze.     “I had fun. But I have needs.” She walked off, leaving Damon standing there in the empty food court. Soulless.

diogen33, art by Eleanor Leonne Bennett

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

Divided Street, art by Kyle Hemmings

The King of the Jews goes to Auschwitz Fritz Hamilton The King of the Jews goes to Auschwitz & gets cooked in an oven where they make him into pizza, sausage & onion & extra mozaball then serve him up to Merkle with a few bites extra for Putin about to annex the Ukraine & start on the Baltic States, but Lithuania resists as Russia starves her own people rather than abandon Putin’s plan to restore the Soviet Union, even if it means a nuclear war against America & the the West for what’s a few million people incinerated & the end of civilization as long as Putin gets his way    .    .    .

women working in Afghanistan Fritz Hamilton Be a police woman in Afghanistan & be murdered for doing a man’s job when that’s contrary to tradition/ be shot for not knowing yr place/ be murdered for doing yr job when it’s only supposed to be done by a man/ be shot dead by another cop who will be rewarded because he’s a man/ be like an American nigger several years ago,& be grateful because you’re dead    .    .    .

Daddy’s Chair Chad Newbill The tattered brown chair sat on the right side of the living room. Slightly angled; as if it were a lighthouse surveying the traffic. The pillows were tired and matted down. A worn afghan, that great grandmother had made, tried to cover the war scars of splashed whiskey, cigar smoke and rough play. It was the patriarch of our unpretentious castle. Daddy would spend many hours in that brown saddle. In the morning, dad could be found sitting in the chair, dropping ice cubes into his coffee to ease the scalding. He would sit and watch the morning’s weather forecast, or read if he was feeling particularly energetic. He sat. I loved his monotony. After dinner, he would be the first one to leave the table. He sat in the brown chair and smoked his desert cigar. I liked the smell. I liked the flow of the smoke. It all seemed so sophisticated and academic. A coffee mug of Jack Daniels always followed. He drank it slowly and gently ran his finger tips across the rim between sips. He sat. I loved his monotony. He would pick up his black framed glasses from the end table to read. He hated his glasses. He had the idea that glasses only weakened his eyes and not wearing them was good exercise for them. Besides- he thought they made him look old. I thought he looked distinguished. His reading selections were very eclectic; Philosophy, poetry, old text books and even the dictionary. He especially loved biographies. He would read and read until his glasses were dangling from the end of his nose. He sat. I loved his monotony. One Tuesday after school, I skipped home, celebrating the fact that I had no homework. I walked into the house and the air was different. I didn’t hear the usually sounds, or smell the usual smells. I walked through the living room             and noticed mom had rearranged the furniture in the living room. After much scrutiny, I realized my daddy’s brown chair was gone. Instantly, our castle became an empty cave. The whole house looked gray and dark. My heart sank and my stomach hurt. The living, breathing fixture was gone- gone for good. He left. I miss our monotony.

False Flag Andrew D. Grossman     In order to fulfill my husbandly duties on a hot, dry Saturday afternoon, I was on Bell Boulevard in Bayside, mentally checking off appointments and errands. With two small shopping bags containing sundry items from the drugstore and a fresh bag of cat food, I turned towards my car, considering whether and what to bring home for dinner, when I saw Grace.     Even after so many years, her profile was unmistakable as she leaned over an outdoor bookstand, perusing the clearance offerings.     “Grace?” I said, as I came up behind her, bags in hand.     “Oh my god, I thought I saw you on the street earlier; how many years has it been?”     “More than I care to remember! How the hell are you?”     She smiled, loosened her shoulders, relaxed slightly.     “I’m not bad, just killing an hour or two until my girlfriend gets back from the spa. Do you have time for a quick drink?”     I surely did. —     Years before, Grace lived in the big blue house across from me, in our wending cul-de-sac suburbia. She wore colorful, frilly dresses, but that was the only girly thing about her. She and I were the same age, and together with my younger brother we explored the wilderness of our backyards, made forts under the lush trees and solid wooden fences, and devised games to give the summer meaning and purpose.     She won every game. That was the first rule of most of them, actually: the girl never did learn to accept second place graciously. Those few times she came close to losing, her eyes would glow fire-red and my brother and I- young, but not stupid- would dial it down and let her steal the victory. She was the generalissimo, the ship’s admiral, the Indian chief, the team captain.     One of her favorite games was borne of a misunderstood construction of capture the flag. She explained to us, the uninitiated, that we had to steal a flag, secure it in our fort, and it would keep us safe from attackers until someone stole it, in turn. The identity of our prospective enemies was ill-defined.     At first, we used a small American flag on a sad, thin wooden pole. It stood perhaps six inches high, and in those days some local denizen with too much time on his hands used to line the cul-de-sac with them for the 4th of July. The flag was made of thin plastic, and needless to say, it did not last long in our indelicate, grubby young hands. Grace tasked us with finding a new flag.     Ever the industrious boy, I ran across the backyard, into the kitchen through the sliding glass door, and scanned the room for flags. Seeing none, I shifted my focus to flag materials. My eyes quickly settled on a wooden broom handle, our dining room tablecloth, some Elmers glue, and a pair of scissors.     To hear my mother later recount it, she had been out of the kitchen scarcely five minutes when she heard a sound like a herd of elephants stomping into the house, rustling about, and then stomping out again. She returned to find the kitchen a mess, with her mangled tablecloth on the floor, glue spilling on the counter, and yelps of triumph from across the backyard, where a makeshift flag had been raised over Fort Necessity.     Gathering what had transpired in the few minutes since we left her sight, she marched across the grass, voice volleying attacks, seized my arm and led me roughly back inside, where I was sent to my room to await sentencing by my father.     The next afternoon, I saw Grace and demanded an explanation: she had promised that the flag would keep us safe. “I guess it wasn’t a true flag,” she replied sadly. —     We dated on-and-off through high school and most of college. For two ill-conceived years we lived together, in an off-campus hovel that would never pass modern building code standards. She was fierce and passionate, and I was honing my skills in oral argument- we had fights that could curdle milk.     Her fury and energy had a positive side, of course, and there were many long winter days we never left the bedroom, having furious sex, tender sex, sex for hours and hours. At last, exhausted and sated, we would cling to one another, overheating and relishing in our stink and our sweat, falling asleep that way, awaking disoriented but content.     Her twin appetites for fucking and fighting made our relationship wonderful, and terrible. To the outside world, we presented as sweet and supportive; friends and family thought we were just the perfect couple, they could never imagine how we interacted behind closed doors, nor did we care to enlighten them.     Over time, the sex grew less important and the fighting grew more frequent. Midway into our junior years we decided to call it quits, and while the breakup was styled as “mutual” and “amicable,” and we both professed our desire to remain friends, it didn’t quite work out that way. We saw each other in passing, in social groups, at parties and events, but we weren’t close, not after we parted. —     “I heard you were married,” she said, as we sat on a pair of tall stools around a small, circular table. We glanced without interest at the hot press sandwiches on the menu, and put in our drink orders: a Stella for her, neat scotch for me.     “Going on six years, no kids.” I completed the eleven-word summary of the state of my life du jour. “How about you?”     “Oh, I moved here about six months ago, still settling in. I’m seeing somebody, Victoria, and we moved here from Austin.”     Our drinks arrived, mine in a large, vacuous glass with a plastic stirrer, for some reason, topped with a miniature Olympic flag, hers still in its bottle.     “Are you liking New York, so far?” We are a city of transplants, and no matter how many years go by I still relish being on the dispensing end of this particular query.     “It has its moments. Shopping is more of a challenge, but the possibilities are practically endless.” She took a long gulp from her bottle. “What I still don’t understand is the climate. Why do so many people choose to live in a place with such extreme temperatures?”     “Because of the six weeks each year when its nice,” I flippantly replied. It was a rehearsed retort, glad to dust it off for fresh presentation. “You get used to it after a few years, and I’ve grown to enjoy the variety.”     “So, tell me about your wife...” she leaned back on the stool, inviting me to take the lead. I recognized this subtle gesture, the way she would relax and let somebody else do the heavy lifting, in conversation, in bed, in dance, in life. She would grow passive, taking it all in with a contented look on her face, then suddenly spring back to life and charge in with such force as to take the reigns back and steal the energy and glory of the moment. —     After our split, I heard through the mists of rumor and gossip that she had “come out,” and now exclusively saw girls. At first, I thought it was a misguided attempt to hurt me, as though my male pride would be undermined by the thought of “turning” a straight girl gay, but she knew me too well to think that gambit would actually work.     It turned out to be a real evolution, not an attempt to somehow exact revenge. She embraced her newfound sexual preference with the zeal of a convert, marching in parades, proudly displaying her rainbow insignia, growing loud and outspoken on issues of advocacy and equal rights.     She developed a reputation as being somewhat promiscuous, unable to hold down a single relationship but more than capable of juggling several at one time. She was a constant presence at campus parties, late night clubs, weekend raves. She dyed her hair and chopped it short and unruly, a modern sight to behold. —     “I’m glad to hear she makes you happy,” she said at last, leaning forward to indicate her re-engagement in the conversation. She still had a tinge of mischief in her eyes, but it was a more sedate, less-dangerous spark than she had once had.     “She really does. And we love living here, trying to live life to its fullest, you know? How about you and Victoria? Do you think you’ll stay in New York?”     “Well, her job is here, and I don’t have any particular objections. It’s weird, you know, we’ve been together for almost two years, it’s the longest relationship I’ve had in a long time. Maybe I’m getting a touch domestic.” She gave a wry smile and took the final sip of her drink, waving to the waiter for a replacement beverage.     I continued to nurse my scotch. Though I prefer bourbon, scotch serves a useful purpose in that a strong sniff is equivalent to a small sip, stretching out my enjoyment and keeping my bar tab from the heights afforded by easy access to Woodford Reserve.     “Do you two live around here?” I artfully re-engaged her. I’m usually quite at ease in a social situation, but this conversation felt more labored, almost forced. Perhaps it was the years of estrangement, the rapid cooling of our once-hot passions, the guilty remembrance of our once-shared lives.     “We’re actually between places at the moment, staying in a long-term hotel until the rental season this fall. It’s nice if a bit cramped, but on the positive side, they clean the place each week, and you know I’ve never been much for housework.”     I laughed, glad for a common happy memory. She joined me, the wide, toothy grin she gives when she’s genuinely amused. I remembered how it contrasted with her all-lip, polite chuckle in mixed company, and the way her upper lip curled menacingly when she was full of rage.     Her phone rang, or more accurately, it buzzed incessantly, like a wasp having convulsions, until a swipe of her finger calmed it back to silence. “Hello? Hi sweetie...okay. Okay. Have fun, I’ll see you tonight!”     She hung up, I looked at her expectantly.     “Vic is going out with some friends, won’t be home until late.” She frowned, threw back her beer for a moment, set the bottle down loudly. “Guess that’s what I get for waiting up for her, huh?” —     When I moved out of town, I threw a party, a big, loud, last hurrah to my hometown before launching myself into the world, to grad school, a career, a new life. Going to college in your hometown has quite a few unsung benefits, and among them is the large collection of friends and friendly acquaintances who are a part of your life. There were probably 150 of them at my party, which overran my parents’ basement and spilled into the neighboring yards.     I played the social butterfly, the gracious host, flitting back and forth, from room to room, greeting people and chatting them up, filling drinks, moving on. I was refilling one of those ubiquitous red cups that are so associated with college parties at the keg when I felt a tap on my shoulder, turned, and saw Grace.     “Hi!” I said, startled. “What are you doing here?”     It was a rude question, I realized as soon as I spoke it, but she didn’t take offense.     “I just heard there was some free booze to be had,” she deadpanned. “No, actually, I just wanted to say goodbye.”     Before I could react, she thrust her mouth forward onto mine, giving me a frantic, ferocious kiss, thrusting her tongue into my mouth and bending my spine backwards with incredible force. It lasted five seconds, perhaps, and then she suddenly disengaged, released me, and took a half-step back.     “Anyway, good luck, I hope everything goes good for you.”     She turned and walked away; I stood there, momentarily stunned, searching for a correct reply. To this day, when I think about it, I’m still searching. —     When the check came, I self-consciously considered whether it would be proper to offer to pay, but she quickly drew just the right amount of cash to cover her portion, with a generous tip, so I followed her lead and did the same. As we walked out of the restaurant, I started instinctually following her as she walked towards her hotel, which was just a few blocks away, in the opposite direction from my car.     In the pit of my stomach, I realized the danger. These old coals, long neglected, still contained the potential for a roaring fire. I remembered all the things that attracted me to her, long ago. I thought, too, of the other things, the parts I hated, the parts I was glad to be done with when we parted. It was wistful, but a bitter wist, smoky but just a bit sour.     Soon, I thought, she will invite me to join her in her room for another drink. There, one thing might lead to another (Might? Shall. Let’s not feign naivete). This could wind up being a catastrophic mistake.     My shoulder-dwelling devil, as from the old cartoons, whispered that it might not be a bad idea, that the prospects of getting caught were low, and that opportunities like this don’t present themselves every day. I shushed him, silently, and as we drew near to her hotel I started mentally preparing to reject her offer, but kindly, without offense, though looking back I have no idea what words I thought would accomplish that particular balancing act.     “Well, goodnight! It was great to see you again, it really was.” She said quickly, and started to walk away without so much as a hug goodbye.     “Wait,” I said, and she obliged, “I have something for you.” I reached into my pocket, and pulled out the small Olympic flag that previously and unnecessarily garnished my neat scotch. She looked puzzled as I placed it in her hand. “You win.”     I turned on my heel and walked away. The last image I have of her, she was still standing there, in front of the hotel, holding in her palm a small plastic flag that still smelled faintly of good whiskey, her head bent down regarding it, a mix of confusion and vague recognition in her eyes. —     When I recovered my senses, standing in front of that leaky keg of cheap beer, still clutching my now-full red cup, I quickly walked after her. She was nowhere to be found. I looked in each room, in the outside area, where the smokers and Smokers were congregating, but she was gone. I asked a few mutual acquaintances, but none had seen her.     It was like she had never really been there at all.     I set my drink down on the upstairs table, leaving a wet, sticky circle on the white tablecloth, and thought about Grace, but only for a moment, letting my mental swirlings start composing the first chapters of my next life.

Winter Hitchhikers Clyde Daniel Bearre     He saw her in the distance. A small figure pressed against the winter gusts, her black overcoat billowing like the broken wings of a blackbird.     Hell of a night to be walking, he thought as he turned up the controls of the pickup truck’s heater.     His headlights glinted off a metallic shopping cart. The cart wobbled in a crippled rhythm causing him to suspect a bent wheel.     Bet she’s got all her worldly possessions crammed inside that rickety grocery cart — everything from her only extra pair of socks to her next meal.     As he approached, she broke stride and peered back over her shoulder. Her frail hand, with thumb up, beckoned a ride. Snow, in scattered contrast, swirled around her dark figure. Getting closer, the little cart tugged on his focus once again. Proof of his prediction, the cart brimmed to the point of bursting with the woman’s rolling assets. A colorful array of belts squeezed the shopping cart’s swollen girth like a tourniquet. Along with the tradition brown and black, there were yellow, green, blue, purple and red belts.     “I wonder why she has so many belts?” he wondered before telling his self, “Blow right by her. Don’t look her way. Her problems ain’t mine.” He looked at her anyway as he passed. Her sullen, sunken eyes met his with a pitiable plea. He tapped the brakes . . .     What the hell am I doing?     He accelerated.     Suddenly, his chest tightened. He couldn’t breathe. Something had past between him and the hitchhiker, something unclear but, for him, very real. Like a frozen snake guilt slithered through his conscience.     To combat his feeling of contrition he rationalized: It’s complicated. You don’t go picking up strangers. Especially hitchhikers. Not even if it’s near freezing and the next town is five miles away. You just don’t do it in such dangerous times. He tried to laugh. Remember what Ma always said –     Don’t pick up hitchhikers.     He looked in his rearview mirror. The woman was standing still, watching him drive away. Self-reproach nagged him like a judgmental heckler. He felt as if he’d clubbed a baby seal. As her shadowy image faded in the flurrying snow, she raised an ungloved hand. This time, instead of an uplifted thumb, she pointed to the starless sky with her middle finger and shook it vigorously.     He grunted as if the wind had knocked from him. He slammed the brakes, sending the pickup into a sizzling skid. He eyed the hitchhiker in the review mirror. In spite of her flagrant arrogance, guilt continued to spin his moral compass.     He snickered, Spunky old lady. She’s gotta be crazy being out in this rotten weather. The engine hummed in what seemed like accordance. She’ll not make it through the night if I don’t pick her up. He studied her sable silhouette in the snow storm. “What the hell.” He threw the truck into reverse.      As he coasted backwards, the woman’s pathetic plight focused. No more than five foot two her sickly slenderness somehow defied the squall. Beneath her overcoat he caught a glimpse of a Chicago Bears sweatshirt peaking out like a shivering child. Her blue jeans were torn in the knees and she wore socks for mittens.     Stopping next to her, he went to get out of the pickup and help her with the cart. The woman, however, quickly opened the tailgate and, with strength that betrayed her scant build, hoisted the cart into the truck bed. With a nervous sigh, he closed his door, leaned across the seat, and opened the passenger door.     Stepping up into the pickup truck, she said in a low, husky cigarette-scarred voice, “I like blue trucks.”     “So does my wife,” he said.     A strange discomfort and strong repulsion rippled through him in response to her proximity and obnoxious bouquet. Body odor, wet hair and stale cigarettes mingled like dirty rats in a garbage pail. She appeared to be in her fifties but he suspected she was younger than she looked. Her haggard face revealed years of bad experiences and hard living like a roadmap through hell.     “So, what are you doing out on a night like this?”     She eyed him with suspicion and said, “Hunting.”     “Yeah, right, hunting,” he said, trying to dismiss the cold frighten feeling her response had instilled in him. Hunting?     “So you’re married?” she asked, hugging herself in front of the dashboard heat vent.     “Sure am,” he said. “Goin’ on twelve years.”     “That’s unfortunate,” she said in a tone that caused the hairs on the back of his neck to prickle.     “Got any kids?”     “Three, two girls and a boy.”     She grimaced. “That’s unfortunate.” Her tone was not judgmental, only bleak.     “Why is being married with kids . . . unfortunate?”     Her eyes flared with a solitary light. “Believe me. Unfortunate is what it is.”     Reaching inside her overcoat, she pulled out a pack of cigarettes.     “Oh no, please, don’t smoke,” he said with an urgency that embarrassed him. “My wife will kill me if I let you smoke in the truck. It’s almost brand new.”     Her left eyebrow lifted like a question mark on her wrinkled face. “That’s unfortunate.”     She put a cigarette in her mouth in spite of his protest and reached into her overcoat for what he thought was her cigarette lighter.     “Please, lady, no smoking.”     With her hand still tucked in under her overcoat she demanded, “Pull this fucking thing over.” Her black eyes roiled with hate.     Astounded and a bit frightened, he pulled the truck off the road and stopped.     “I can’t believe you’re goin’ to get back out in this weather because I won’t let you smoke.“     “Who says I’m getting’ out?”     From inside her overcoat she pulled a survival knife. The blue glow of the dashboard glinted off of the knife’s serrated blade. With a lunge, she plunged the cold steel through his rib cage and into his lung and liver. His breath rushed from him. She held the survival knife in his gut for a moment before, with an effort, jerking it out. He fought back a hot, hateful nausea.     “Why,” he gasped, “I was trying’ to help you.”     A grim smile creased her weathered face. “I’m the hunter. You, you are the unfortunate prey.“ She lit a cigarette. “Besides, I’m fucking cold.”     Avoiding the blood that gushed with every dying beat of his heart, she unbuckled his belt and yanked it from his pants in one practiced motion. Frisking him, she found his wallet. She unfastened his seat belt, reached across his limp body, and opened the driver’s side door. As she shoved him out of the pickup, she asked, “Didn’t your mother ever tell ya not to pick up hitchhikers?”     He hit the icy pavement sickening thud. Laying flat on his back, he looked up at her and said, “But . . . I’ll die out here.”     She peered down at him from behind the steering wheel. “That’s unfortunate.”

Searching for Coins David Hernandez A dollar bill picked up in the parking lot, from underneath a car. A half dollar found beneath a vending machine, right before a customer can order a Coca Cola. A penny picked up near a land line of a bus stop, right before a bus driver can make a call. A nickel found under a man’s seat, right before the bus’ doors closed. A dime quickly felt in a pocket. A quarter found on the street, right before bus 50 arrived at its stop. If this homeless man keeps up this search, he will finally ride the bus, be safe from the sun, and escape from being a ghost.

The Goat’s Milk Massacre Craig Watts     First graders can be such assholes. They have no common sense, and they can be quite reactionary. Seriously, kids at that age get all worked up over the wrong stuff. The boys would howl in indignation if the girls got out the door for recess first, and the girls would cry if they got passed over to be line leader. Not many people remember how irrational they were at that age. It wasn’t all Elmer’s Glue and blunt tipped scissors.     For example, cafeteria time was highly ritualized. I remember one day when our regular opaque, white plastic drinking straws were replaced with clear ones. The entire class was bewildered by the difference and remarked upon it for the first three minutes of lunch. But this was nothing compared to the Goat’s Milk Massacre.     The school’s milk, at that point in time, came in little cardboard cartons that cost four cents. I think they came from Meola’s, Garelick Farms, or some other regional dairy. The cartons were white with red lettering. That was important.     One day, we showed up in the cafeteria and were greeted not with the familiar red and white cartons, but instead with plain white ones.     No lettering. No distinguishing markings.     Of course, this change in routine was unprecedented to us youngsters. Maybe the worldly fourth graders could have let it slide, but not us. Our eyes widened in disbelief, and we began to whisper to each other. How could this be? There were several dozens students in the cafeteria, and the anxiety among us quickly percolated. Someone, I swear it wasn’t me, announced that the milk in the anonymous cartons was goat’s milk. That was all it took to push us past our tipping point and into full-blown psychosis.     Kids were refusing to drink the milk. A few seconds more, and some kids were crying. These spooky white cartons were enough to make us question all we held as true and decent in our seven year-old worlds. We were terrified of this milk.     For a few minutes, the cafeteria rang with the wails of the damned. My friend Jim Revell’s face turned the color of a nasty sunburn. Nicole Vincent had a five-inch tendril of snot hanging from her left nostril, but would nevertheless go on to become junior prom queen. And for years afterwards, there were rumors that David Davis had wet his pants.     In between wiping my nose on my shirtsleeve and staring at my feet, I happened to glance over at Jim Henniger. To my horror, he was sitting and calmly drinking his milk with his hermit bar. It was obscene; but then again, he was a known booger-eater.     Eventually, one of the lunch ladies emerged from the bowels of the kitchen in her stained floral apron and laid into us.     “There’s nothing wrong with that milk!” she bellowed with her hacksaw voice, drowning out our cries of despair. “Drink it! Drink it!”     I don’t recall how the whole thing ended, but I’m pretty sure most of the first grade went without their milk that day. It’s too bad a psychology student wasn’t there to witness the whole fiasco. They could have scrawled enough notes on paper napkins to get halfway through their doctoral thesis.     Mercifully, the regular red and white cartons were back the next day, saving us from any further mayhem. The suspect white cartons were never seen again. A milk-related debacle would not occur again until fourth grade, when chocolate milk finally arrived at our school. On that day, the kids were dancing in the aisles.

Convoluted Afternoon, drawing by Brian Looney

untitled (symphony) Donald Gaither buzz, whir, hum, drone variations on a theme symphony by bees

Killing Nazis Eric Ullerich     Be fast, don’t rush. Mike pulls his Volvo station-wagon into the McDonald’s driveway in pursuit of a caffeine bump with his 20 month old boy sweet-eyed asleep in the Britax car-seat behind him. He’s not supposed to get him to nap driving around but desperation sets after two hours of crib-shrieking. If he can cruise through this drive-thru, grab a coffee, the baby will most likely stay asleep. Any cooing or fidgets, there’s a freeway onramp around the corner and the 405’s strum should knock him out in no time. He’s in a first-person-shooter dropping into occupied France with the rest of the 101st, watching parachutes unfurl and gunfire spark below.     When he pulls the wheel right, his shoulder aches where he used it for a pillow last night, sleeping on the ground next to the crib, his presence intended to ease the transition from the “mommy-daddy bed.” His wife would be shocked at the idea of him eating McDonald’s, with her grass-fed, non-gmo, baby-food from scratch, but he just wants a coffee after all-night-sleep-training the baby, allowing his wife a decent night’s rest and enough energy for her to complete the last few laps on the partnership track at Cheever & Wolff.     He is tempted though. McDonald’s cheeseburgers take him back to pit stops with his mother on road trips through Virginia during her two weeks of summer visitation. His mom now calls him Mr. Mom.     “You spent a lot of time and money in law school to be Mr. Mom.”     When his wife was six months pregnant, he hired a contractor to convert their detached garage’s bonus room into a home office. After his wife gets home, he retreats to this office, coppery, slate tiles, warm, tonal walls, but completes only his most urgent work, which is rapidly dwindling, before decompressing in front of his computer with internet porn and Nazi killing.     The drive-thru line splits in two but the left lane is occupied by a van, not a mini-van but a full-sized van, flailing teen-age body parts inside, female, bare legs and ponytails. Surely a sports team, Mike thinks and confirms when a field hockey stick pokes from one of the hinged windows.     Mike slides the Volvo into the right-lane just as a white Nissan pulls forward. Abreast the speaker and glowing three-paneled menu, he thinks this coffee extraction could not be going more smoothly if it was executed by Navy SEALS. Target down, clear barrels.     “Would you like to try our all new Chicken-Bacon-Parmesan Sandwich?” a female voice flirts over the drive-thru speaker clear as if it were coming through the Bose system in his car.     “No thanks, just a coffee, please,” he says into the speaker, checking on his son through a system of mirrors, a fish-eyed reflector below his rear-view and then one mounted on the top of the second-row seat, to which his son’s backwards-facing car-seat is latched. The baby continues to slumber but his head is pointing left rather than right as it was minutes ago. Or is it now pointing right? He’s unsure with all the mirrors.     In response to his coffee order, feedback crackles at him followed by a new voice, a teen-aged girl’s snarky soprano gnarled by the drive-thru sound system. Mike wonders why and how McDonald’s decided to make their pre-recorded, pre-order up-sell, cheese and pork disaster crystal clear while leaving the inevitable human interaction to obsolete technology.     “Hello, can I help you?”     “Just a coffee, please.” His son’s head is now pointing the same direction as when he pulled into the drive-thru line.     “What size?”     “Medium.” The driver of the van in the adjacent lane is alternately yelling orders into the speaker and the vehicle’s back.     “We only have large and small,” the female voice concludes.     “Large please.” Mike forces through his teeth.     “Do you want cream and sugar?” she asks.     “Cream, please.” Baby eyelashes are fluttering behind him.     “Any sugar?” she asks, maintaining her cadence. From the van, he hears a discussion regarding the McRib and whether it is currently in-season.     “No, just cream, please.”     “How many?” He’s not sure how to respond, doesn’t know the standard quantification of cream with respect to coffee. Is it ounces, cups or something metric? She’s probably got a script either in front of her or committed to memory, he thinks, calming himself. She’s not trying to fuck with him. He punches the top of the leather steering wheel with the palm of his hand. He punches it hard, as hard as he can. Nothing happens to the steering wheel, which is why he punched it but half the field-hockey team is staring at him. He thinks he may have yelled something too so checks the rear-view.     “How many of the little containers?” he asks, encouragingly. Escaping him is the name of the capsules of half-and-half diners deliver by the dozen as though the bored and/or lazy waitresses refilled your cup enough to use that many, none of which have expiration dates. He knows he’s used ones that have managed to stay in circulation for months by the luck of the draw as the cream turns into putrid snowflakes atop his coffee mug.     “Little containers?” she asks. She probably has no non-McDonald’s interaction with coffee, doesn’t even drink it but surely she’s been to restaurants, seen her parents drink coffee. Every Starbucks is sardined with teen-agers but they’re all drinking triple-mochachino-latte bullshit. Her parents are probably divorced but her estranged father takes her to neon-restaurants that serve breakfast 24 hours a day. They don’t talk and when the waitress comes around she won’t order and when her dad tries to suggest something she loved eight years ago she says, “Um, do you even know how many carbs are in French Toast, Brian?” He wonders if her parents drove her around to help her fall asleep.     “You know the little plastic containers with milk with the paper top you pull back,” he’s hanging out the side of his wagon raising his voice into the speaker, assuming that’s where the microphone is. “Creamers!” he remembers.     “Our cream comes out of a machine, sir.” Her voice doesn’t have any attitude, whatever spikiness he hears is attributable to McDonald’s sub-par audio.     “One please,” he chooses the smallest integer, thinking he can always add more.     “Do you want it in your coffee, sir?” The Volvo has been still too long, his son’s arms and legs probe their vicinity, seeking orientation. He considers backing out with the white Nissan still stuck at the first window. He adjusts his rear-view mirror so he can actually see what’s behind his car instead of a triptych of his first born. A black F-150 looms behind, its grill filling the rear-view, the rest taking up the side mirrors. If Darth Vader moved to Lancaster after dropping out of Jedi school this is what he would drive.     “Yes, put it in the coffee,” he shrills, whatever it takes to end the conversation. Why the hell didn’t he just order it black? The van lurches forward as though the driver has flexed his right ankle off the brake allowing the V-8 one yard of leeway before stopping, leaving a rapidly shrinking window, but a window nonetheless, for him to slip into.     “Anything else, sir?”     “That’s it,” he screeches, watching the van veer in front of him, towards the first window, around hedges being manicured. A Latino with a sword-like trimmer, an extra-long chainsaw essentially, the combustion penetrating the near air-tight Volvo cabin, choking him with the aromas of his youth: lawn-mower exhaust, gas-lines and cut grass. He wonders at this man’s life. Mike had a job like that once, bending metal in a machine shop, and did everything he could to never do that sort of job again. But it seems nice now, wake up, work, go home, sleep. His son’s eyes drop to half-mast with the minimal motion and not the carbon monoxide, he hopes.     Mike lets the station-wagon idle to within inches of the van to maximize the distance traveled to keep his son in the half-state in which he currently appears to be hovering. He’s so attuned to his son’s coos and gurgles, knowing he’s waking up and yet he’s still able to delude himself that he might go back to sleep. The van pays for its gargantuan order, mammoth bags necessarily held with two hands across the window-vehicle chasm, swifter than expected. The van then lives the dream he hoped to realize: a swift payment at the first window followed by a moving grab at the second and onto a major thoroughfare. Before he can move his car forward, a wiry young man walks, struts really, in front, putting his left hand on top of the right-front corner of his station-wagon, like he needs a point of leverage to make such a sharp turn, as though his car is more of a Jersey-pike. The violation makes him think of high school basketball practice. When someone comes through your zone you let him know, his coach had always told them. If someone cuts through the key you bump them with an elbow or a knee, a hip or shoulder the second time. He’s wearing a San Francisco Giants cap. Across the flat-brim is a 59/50 New Era sticker.     The kid sidles in, never looks back to acknowledge he’s cut the line. Has he technically cut the line? What’s the etiquette for pedestrians in drive-thrus? Mike lets his car pull forward a few feet unsure of how much space to give a pedestrian in a drive-thru line. The kid rests both his elbows on the metallic ledge, cranes his head, a chicklet smile towards the kitchen or whatever that space inside a McDonald’s is called, thick hair spilling out the back of his cap. His eyes squint then widen, chin protruding, like he’s acknowledging old friends and introducing himself to unfamiliar faces.     The kid’s ass is spilling backwards into the drive-thru lane, Under Armour underwear extending six inches above his skinny jeans that are pulled taut mid-butt by a studded belt. A girl’s head gravitates outside towards the boy, her blond pig-tails framing her heart-shaped face. She looks at his lips when he talks, uncaring her line of cars is making no progress. Visa, Mastercard and American Express stickers are attached to the bullet-proof bay-window.     Mike wants to honk at them but fears turning his son’s whines into shrieks. The kid exhibits no intention of wrapping up his conversation. Mike decides there’s plenty of room to get around the kid and pay for his coffee at the second window. If McDonald’s can produce a sexy, pre-recorded enticement for vein-clogging sandwiches surely they’ll accept his two dollar payment fifteen feet from the bad-boy poser making eyes at this debutante so her daddy will pay attention to her.     When Mike pulls the Volvo around the kid, he remembers how he’d make a run at a jump shooter like he was going to take him out before veering to the side, sneak a foot where he was going to land. The kid never looks up, just keeps talking to the girl. He turns the wheel a half-second before he needs to, relishing the idea of a little scare. No harm no foul. Maybe the kid will hear his tires squeak, like a high-top on newly mopped hardwood. He coasts towards the first window when he hears a thud from the back of his car.     He looks into his side-view mirror, sees a concavity to his rear quarter-panel, the kid pulling a hammered fist back from the very same concavity, the blow creating sufficient vehicular shake to wake his son who announces his consciousness with a howl. The kid’s glaring at the mirror, at him. Mike takes umbrage at the assault on his car and, via his sleep-deprived version of the transitive property, its tiny occupant. He didn’t try to hit the kid, never even came close. Yes, he cut it a little but the kid couldn’t know he did it on purpose. Mike flings open his door, kneeing his way out. The kid is walking towards him, striding like he’s about to start running. Mike is standing in the wood-chips, middling the first and second drive-thru windows. His car door abuts the stuccoed side of the McDonald’s, removing paint, causing divots he’ll later notice and claim as damage in addition to the more purposeful dent.     At 6'4", Mike has almost a foot and near a hundred pounds on this kid. Mike expects a basketball fight. Two guys walk towards each other, their chests bump and two teams separate them while yelling profanities at each other. “Fuck you!” “No, fuck you!”     As the kid strides towards him, Mike remembers one of his high school games. A great ending, he’d heard, a buzzer beater. He’d been ejected with about four minutes left in the second half when he’d flipped the other team’s forward over his hip and onto his back battling over the low block after their arms had become intertwined, just a result of a shift in leverage, nothing malicious. Yeah, maybe Mike had done some talking during the game, gotten under his skin a bit. The kid, built about the same as him, all knees and elbows, popped up, throwing haymakers into the middle space between them. He had just backed away but felt like a wuss after the game for not picking up the gauntlet. He’d been afraid, unable to control that primal urge to retreat. Refs blew whistles pointing at both of them, as though they were equal participants in the melee, then flailing arms indicating showers for him and his counterpart.     Since then, he’d had two more rhubarbs, both on the court, one in a rec-league game with reversible jerseys, the other a pick-up games, shirts and skins. He’d been a skin, his stomach hairier and newly over the waistband of his shorts. He declined the other guys offer to “take it outside,” even taken a retaliatory elbow on the next play but he was an adult by then, what was the point of getting his ass kicked, the guy might have a gun or a knife in his car. He hasn’t played basketball in over two years, with the baby during the day and his workday shifted to night.     This kid doesn’t say anything just keeps moving at him with orange eyes. Mike steps into him when he’s about two feet out like he used to do when he was going to draw a charge but just expects a chest-collision from which, by the laws of physics, he will come out on top, when there’s a hot sting in his left ear and the kid is pulling back a clenched fist. Adrenalin pumps preventing the sensation of pain but the shock this guy he’s just met, this kid, is hitting him. He tries to process. He’s having a fight with a juvenile two feet away from his, fully conscious, infant child, wailing, wide awake, probably a full diaper. The kid, with fist re-cocked, looks to deliver another blow, clearly nowhere near his first fight, his face inches away from Mike’s, breath smelling like cherry Jolly Rancher.     Mike closes his eyes, lowers his head, reaches out with both hands, getting two fistfuls of t-shirt. Instinctively, he pulls the kid towards him (as opposed to executing the first move of an MMA submission hold, two taps on the left arrow, hold down the red square), standing him up, looking into his eyes. The kid’s upper lashes curl to touch the skin on the underside of his eye sockets, the lower to the top of his cheek. His baby’s eyelashes do this. It’s the lashes he’ll use to distinguish the kid’s face from the others in the police folder, youthful faces as identical as those composing the squads of Wehrmacht that charge his machine gun positions late at night. The kid isn’t trying to hit him anymore, just staring at him, judging him.     Mike lifts the boy off the ground and chest-passes him into the second window’s adjacent wall. The boy flies farther than expected. Wood-chips scatter as the kid’s ironic Jack Purcell’s try, without avail, to find purchase. The kid skitters to a stop, collects himself, smirking at Mike the whole time, hoisting himself up as Mike hears his toddler from the backseat of the Volvo. Mike flails at the rear-door handle, planning to unclasp the chest latch and three-point seatbelt, extract his baby and hold him in his arms, leg-bounce him until he’s soothed. The kid hops into the passenger side of the raised, black pick-up, while Mike still struggles with the rear-door handle.     “Move your fucking car before we drive over it!” the kid yells out the passenger window, before hollering something to his friend behind the wheel. The Giants hat lies between his feet amongst the wood chips. Even though the Ford has monster-truck ambitions there’s no way it could drive over his station-wagon but Mike puts it at about 50/50 he might get his friend to try.     “I’m moving it,” Mike mumbles at them, while in contradiction opening the rear door to get at his baby to give him his rightful attention. That his son is safer inside the European engineered automobile and molded car-seat doesn’t occur to him.     The truck’s revs and bounces diminish before shuddering to a stop as Mike sees the driver staring at the cap. He pushes the red button over his son’s crotch that releases the infant-seat’s center prongs. The baby retracts his hands from the straps then reaches towards his father, all baby-fat and big eyeballs. Mike grabs him under the armpits and pulls him to his chest before shifting him to his hip around which his son sends both legs before laying his head against Mike’s side. Mike savors the full weight of his baby and his slurpy breaths before squatting down, keeping his son upright, grabbing the Giants cap from the wood chips. Near the ground, Mike can see the wood chips are synthetic. Standing up, he holds the brim at eye-level, appreciating the precise machine-made, orange S and F, intertwined. Mike spins it in his hand, grasping the brim, offering it at the truck. His son is hysterical on his arm, sucking great gasps of air in between high-decibel wails. The truck lurches, as the clutch is released out of sync, then stilled by a stomp on the brake as neutral is found. The driver’s side door slings open. This second boy drops down, the chrome step too high to be helpful. His eyes deliver a placating look, hoping to retrieve the hat that clearly belongs to him, trying to convey regret he ever let his friend wear it in the first place.     Mike feels warmth on half his neck. He sets the cap on the roof of his car and reaches into the lower pocket of his cargo pants, his “daddy pants” as his wife calls them, removing a baby-wipe, that he puts to his ear. When he pulls the wipe away it’s all red. Mike wads it up and tosses it into the wood-chips before grabbing the cap from the top of his car.     Mike looks at the hat and thinks about pulling it away from the kid as he reaches for it. It would be a small thing but those hats aren’t cheap and he’d get to see this kid’s sad eyes knowing he’s not getting his $45 cap back without a fight and this time he’d be ready. He’d put this kid in the hospital. Fuck the consequences.     And then Mike realizes this has got to be over, finally answers the question of how he has got himself and his son in this situation. He leans forward, extending the cap with his right hand, keeping his baby boy as far away as he can, and this kid accepts it with his right hand. If not for the cap in the middle and the lack of an ocean, they’d look like they were reaching across the bows of two ships to shake hands. The next morning this other kid will see Mike’s bloody fingerprints on the bottom and top of the brim. He’ll be conflicted over whether his mom can get the stain out and if he can produce a plausible explanation.     Mike puts his son back into his car-seat then enters the Volvo himself and turns the ignition. His son calms down just feeling the purr. He pulls forward enough for the F-150 to peel-out of the drive-thru, hanging a sharp right onto Riverside Boulevard, middle-fingers and profanity blazing from both windows.     “Here’s your coffee. Would you like to call the police, sir?” the girl with the heart-shaped face asks but he only hears it out of his right ear. Adrenalin-shaking hand, he presses a middle finger to his left ear where a buzz is originating, wanting to release the feeling of pressure like he’s got water trapped in it.

last Janet Kuypers haiku 2/14/14 But I have to drink more. The burning doesn’t last as long as you do.

Visit the Kuypers Twitter page for short poems— join http://twitter.com/janetkuypers.

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku last live 4/23/14 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku last live 4/23/14 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (S)

See a Vine video of Janet Kuypers’ haiku last @ a Starbucks 6/7/15 (of the last lines of her poem the Burning) (filmed with a Motorola)

See Vine video of Janet Kuypers’ haiku last read from Scars’ Down in the Dirt issues book the Intersection (Samsung 11/23/15)

Philosophical Stripper W. Scott R. Brownlee     Gabriel Aldama was a handsome man with black hair shaven short. His suit was light in color, accenting his olive Cuban skin. A thin beard line, closely trimmed, ran along his jawbone up to his chin where it became a mini goatee. He was of average height and weight. His shoes were shining in the dim light of the strip club.     “What do you for a living honey?” the stripper, Bell, asked of him, gazing deeply into his brown eyes. “I love your eyes.”     “I work for the government,” Gabriel said with a slight Cuban accent, writhing uncomfortably in his suit as the stripper sat on his lap. “Oh no, I don’t need one of those.” He looked at his thick gold wedding band. He pushed her back onto her feet, and then he grabbed his cold bottle of Saranac Black and Tan beer. Gabriel guzzled it down. “No offense.”     “Your friends over there aren’t so timid,” Bell pointed at three other professionally dressed men, laughing up a storm at the stage. A stripper was pouring beer down her leg into the mouth of one of his friends, soaking his shirt. “Maybe you should let me help you relax, like them, why let them have all the fun?”     “Because they’re not married.”     “That doesn’t stop most men, I’m up next, watch me, baby, then tell me you don’t want me.”     “You did your job well. Someone else deserves your talents.”     “You know you’re so fucking hot I’ll do you up, down, backwards and in handcuffs, on the house.”     “Don’t take offense. You must be smart and good at something else. Use your skill sets and keep sex sacred.”     “Are you religious?”     “Catholic.”     “One of the worst kind,” Bell said. “Your priests come here all the time.”     She almost slithered away when she strutted away, as if she was a serpent, and then she climbed onto the stage to perform her dance. A new song began playing loudly called “Crazy Bitch” by Black Cherry. Bell was cute and short. She wore a brown mini skirt, a tight fitting pink shirt and brown leather boots with high heels. Her tight, sexy belly was milky in color, lighter in tone than the make-up stuck on her face. She grabbed the pole with both hands as the spotlight shone on her, she bent down her head, her shoulder length reddish hair with black streaks falling in a straight, still line and she danced quite seductively, shaking wildly as if she was humping an invisible man, making herself sweat, shake, shake, shaking. This went on for the entire song. Her hair went sweeping to the left, then to the right and then up and down eagerly. She leaned against the pole, sliding down slowly, gyrating the whole time and then she crawled in staggered, wildly thrusting body movements toward the edge of the stage, staring at Gabriel passionately, hungrily, the make up on her face becoming drenched in sweat, smearing her mascara. She jumped up and flung off her shirt toward Gabriel’s table; her small, round, white breasts were firm and nipples erect. She shook her body sexually. Then her red and black hair went flying about wildly as she jump-danced around in the spotlight, leaping onto the pole and spinning around, landing splendidly onto her high heels. Gabriel wasn’t certain when she had become completely naked but she was when the song ended. Bell jumped off the stage like a sprite cougar as the small audience cheered, especially his partners as she neared him, picked her skirt up off the stage along with her purse and she swiped her shirt up off the floor to lay the articles on Gabriel’s table beside his drink and her impassioned lips were on the prowl as she kissed him fully on the mouth. Gabriel almost fell backward out of his chair. Bell could see the erection poking up at his groin through his suit as he pushed her back. Gabriel was so exasperated that he was unable to utter a word momentarily. Bell sat in a wooden chair beside him.     “What did you think, baby?” Bell panted as she put her hands on her hips, staring keenly, amorously at Gabriel. He handed her a fifty dollar bill. She wrapped the money into her pink shirt. “I told you I’d do you for free. Thanks. It will go toward my boob job”     “God made you fine just the way you are. You should get married and save those lovely breasts for his hallowed pleasures.”     “My pleasures ain’t hollow, baby.”     “Never mind. Why do you do this? If it’s for college, many people go to college and work an honest living while attending classes.”     “I have a kid and his daddy’s done run off, somewhere up north in Oregon.”     “You know who Santorum is?”     “I’ll Google it,” the girl said as she shuffled through her purse to grab her Galaxy phone and was instantly texting. Gabriel took another long swing of his drink as a song played loudly. Another young attractive girl with long black hair and large bouncing breasts danced wildly on stage. His drunken friends hooted insanely for her. He noticed a fat, bearded man sitting in a dim corner staring directly at him with his hands on his lap. “It’s about lube and poop coming out after anal sex.”     “Is that the bouncer, or owner?” Gabriel said, pointing at the man in the corner.     “Never seen him before. So, handsome, you want to fuck me in the ass? Got any blow, pills? It hurts. I’ll need some money for that, sweetie.”     “What?” Gabriel glanced away from the stranger to look at the nude stripper. She began rubbing his thigh as she got on her knees between his legs. His cock began to throb with an almost insurmountable swell of lust. He could smell all the various sweating vaginas in the room and it made him feel sick to his stomach. “What did you say?”     “I know you’re shy, honey, but I need money for taking it in the ass.”     “I don’t want to have anal sex with you or anyone.”     “But you told me to Google it, thought you were hinting at fucking me in the ass. You business guys always like the kinky shit, especially the religious ones and you Catholics are the craziest, better to fuck girls like me for money than to molest children.”     “So you’re a philosophical stripper now? Listen, moron, I didn’t tell you to Google anal sex. So shut the fuck up, you piece of shit whore. Answer me, who is that man in the corner?”     “Take it easy, baby, you said to look up Santorum. Here, look.”     Gabriel looked at the Goggle definition of Santorum and smiled. Then he looked at the man in the corner who was now watching his raucous friends throwing money at the stage and stuffing bills into the topless girl’s silky mini skirt. Then he looked back at the angry stripper.     “I didn’t realize that’s what you were talking about, my apologies. What I meant was Rick Santorum, the man running for President. He said in a debate that a child raised by a man and wife is ten times likelier to stay out of poverty, crime and teenage pregnancy. So what kind of life does your child have to look forward to?”     “You got kids, mister?”     “Five.”     “All by the same woman?”     “Yes,” Gabriel laughed. “That’s the old fashioned way of doing things. Tradition.”     “I never thought about it. Trailer parks got their own way of doing things. I come to California to act.”     “As a porn star?” Gabriel laughed, finishing his second bottle of black and tan beer as he looked at his wrist watch. “You got the moves for it.”     “That’s not nice,” Bell said forlornly, gazing down at her hot pink toenails. “I was in my high school drama class. I was really good.”     “You should’ve been in dance class. You’ve got natural dance moves. Get out of this shit hole. Study medicine. That’s a growing field because of the aging American population. Whatever junk you’re addicted to, get cleaned up. If you don’t possess academic intelligence, then enter retail, that’s the other large opportunity for employment.”     One of the professional looking men in suits and ties stumbled over to Gabriel’s table.     “My, my, my” the drunk agent said, slurring his words. “Agent Aldama is leaving his lofty place of sainthood to finally enjoy the taste of flesh, to roam amongst the sinners.”     “I need to go to confession just to breathe the same air as you.”     “Agent?” Bell asked.     “Ole Saint Gabriel hasn’t informed you?” the drunken agent said. The nude, pretty stripper waved her head no. “Man, you’ve got some nice tits! Aldema, let’s fuck her together like me and Roger did that prostitute in Colombia last week! How’s a thousand dollars sound, lady?”     “Really?” Bell asked in astonishment. She strode toward the drunken agent as he fumbled a wallet out of his wallet. He fingered through it to thumb out ten hundred dollar bills. The drunken agent shook the money in her face and then ran the bills down between her breasts.     Gabriel felt his pocket vibrating. He pulled out his phone and read a text from Brad.     Got a job today     Gabriel texted his friend back.     Great     Adapting well?     Took me awhile to adjust from Afghanistan back in 2009     Now I’m in LA on a layover, just got back from Colombia, these Secret Service boys got it made     You back in NC?     “You texting your wife, priest?” the drunken agent asked. “C’mon and fuck this bitch with me tonight.”     “I’m a dancer,” Bell said.     “For a thousand dollars you’re whatever the fuck I wanna call ya,” the drunken agent said.     “She’s a philosopher,” Gabriel chuckled. “No, my wife is asleep. That’s an old war buddy of mine. Can’t be a priest, either, you moron, I love my wife’s vagina too much and I wasn’t holy when I called in an artillery strike on the Taliban. Those mujahedeen boys could run pretty fast. They should be Olympic track runners. But they couldn’t out run my artillery strikes. Blew them all to hell. I’ll have to go to confession for that too. Hey, where did the fat man go?”     “What fat man?”     “A fat bearded guy was staring at me earlier, looked suspicious, now he’s gone. Paul, I’m serious.”     “Check the bathroom,” Paul said as he wrapped his arm around Bell, cupping her breast in his hand. “God, I love your tits!”     Gabriel walked to the bathroom with his beer. He knelt down on his knee to look at the locked door. He saw panties dangling around high heels that were sliding along a suit. In the next stall, the door was open and with one hand Gabriel gently pushed it open to discover that it was empty. He could hear the bass of the music rattling inside the smelly bathroom. The scent of shit, piss, pussy, beer and cigarette smoke lingered heavily in the room. A feeling of nausea began to rise in his throat. Rubbing the pistol beneath his suit, Gabriel left the bathroom to walk to the front door. He asked the door man if he had seen the missing person. The large, muscular bald man with a thick black beard and dark sunglasses pointed outside the door.     “Hey, you’ll have to pay to get back in,” the door man said.     Gabriel showed him the badge beneath his lapel.     “Or, maybe not,” the doorman said.     Gabriel stood in the street light of the warm southern California night. The street was quiet. A few cars were parked on the street. In the slight wind that blew a trace of ocean salt could be smelt. The bass of the music playing inside the strip club rattled the windows on the building. The neon sign above his head was flashing NUDE and it was buzzing. Gabriel stood there awhile glancing in both directions. No traffic. An abandoned warehouse took up the opposite side of the block. On his side of the street was the club, a liquor store that was closed, several abandoned buildings and a closed convenience store. As his eyes scanned his surroundings, Gabriel’s head never moved, only his eyes. There was movement in the shadows across the street. Gabriel did not move except to slide his hand furtively up to his chest to clasp his pistol. A car turned down the street on his side. Gabriel skipped across the street to blend into the shadows. He shielded his eyes from the head light of the car. Once the truck passed by he lifted his hand away from his eyes. He saw the fat man from the club slipping into a black sedan further up the street. The car raced off almost silently with a quiet engine. Gabriel was in pursuit on foot. His heels clapping against the asphalt was the loudest sound in the night. As the car turned the corner Gabriel saw that the car license plate was Government Issue and that all the windows were tinted black and the escape driver never bothered to turn the headlights on.     “This can’t be good.”

After the Eulogy Jessica Marie Baumgartner     Carl wasn’t sure how he made it home. He didn’t remember the drive, but there he was, in the house he had shared with his wife, the home they were trying to fill with the sounds of a baby’s cries. Now all of that was gone, taken in an instant.     Unable to put the urn down, he sat on the couch and stared. Time became irrelevant as his hands rubbed the cool silver containing Karen’s remains. His cell phone rang multiple times but he didn’t move. He could only grip the vessel.     Shadows grew around him, blanketed the furniture as sun went down. Their cat Smokey jumped into his lap and affectionately begged to be fed. Carl mechanically stood up, cradled the urn in his left arm, and went to the kitchen to feed the cat. He pulled the bag out of the closet and the tap of cat food bits pouring into the plastic bowl filled the empty house.     He hated that silence once he left Smokey to eat. Karen’s missing voice became all too real. He didn’t want to sit back down, he didn’t want to move. He just stood in the doorway peering into the empty room. He stayed there as the sun went down and lost track of everything. Karen was gone, his light, his muse.     She had always pushed him while working herself, but he hadn’t finished any of the projects he had promised her. He’d put so many things off. So he remained, standing in anguish until dawn, unable to figure out what to do next.     The long dark hours embraced him. When a lightening registered, he loathed the new day. A knocked gained his attention, but he refused to go to the door. Smoke ran past him but he didnn’t care.     “Carl?” His sister in-law’s voice called. As her eyes met his, they grew wide with concern. “Oh my god, what are you doing?”     He barely registered her presence and grumbled.     She took his arm and encouraged him to sit at the kitchen table. “Okay, let’s get you something to eat.”     She raided the refrigerator and started making him a sandwich. When she put the plate in front of him he didn’t respond. Food seemed so empty, almost petty now that Karen was gone.     “Jesus Carl! We all miss her, but you know my sister would punch you in the face for acting like this right now.”     A slight smile perked up the corners of his mouth. “Yes, she would.”     “Then eat damn it, and stop being such a jerk.”     He stared at the food in front of him. He knew Carmen would pester him until he ate, so he took a small bite. It tasted like nothing. He sat back and chewed while staring at the urn in his lap.     “You’re going to have to put that down eventually,” she nodded at the urn.     Her suggestion disturbed him, he couldn’t answer.     She walked closer and tried to take it from him.     He jerked it back and shouted, “No, don’t you get it, my life is over.”     “What? Let’s not make this harder than it already is.”     “Karen was the only person who understood me, who could give me what I needed to try and accomplish anything. Without her I’m just...”     “Honestly, you’re being a total douche right now. My sister is probably pissed at you for acting like this. I knew you guys were codependent, but this is just sad.” She turned and left him to his thoughts.     He pushed away the sandwich and somehow forced himself to make it to the couch. Smokey pushed his way next to the urn and pressed his paws against it. There was a comfort in that gesture that eased Carl slightly. For three weeks he lived that way, lying on the couch. His grief tore him apart, but his duty to Smokey got him up once a day when he would feed him, go to the bathroom, force a glass of water down his own throat, and then lay back down.     Then one morning he awoke to find Carmed standing over him with a look of disgust. He tightened his grip of the urn and ignored her.     “Well at least it seems as if he’s been feeding you.” She picked Smokey up and ran her fingers along his.     The moment Carl closed his eyes again she yanked the urn out of his hands. “Get up!”     He immediately grabbed for it, but she jumped back.     “Carl get up, this is ridiculous.”     “Give it back,” he bellowed.     “Not until you put yourself in order or I’ll dump these out the window.” She shook the urn causing a mountain of anger to grip him.     “You’d do that to you sister?”     “My sister has moved on, the ashes in this thing have nothing more to do with her.”     “What do you want me to do?” his voice shook as the question rang in his ears.     “We’ll go through her stuff today, and then you can get back to holding your false wife.”     “Fine.” He stood up resolving to get things over with quickly.     They went up the stairs and into the bedroom he’d been avoiding, starting with Karen’s clothes first. He pulled all the hangers from her side out of the closet, and threw them on the bed that he couldn’t bring himself to sleep in without his wife. “Take them all.”     Carmen sighed and grabbed a trash bag from the bathroom. Coming back to fill it she said, “You know we don’t have to do this now. I just want you to stop moping around.”     “I’m sorry I can’t just get on with my life like everyone else,” he gritted his teeth. “Take it all, her clothes, jewelry, everything.” He grabbed the urn from his sister-in-law and went back downstairs.     Meaning to retreat, he made it to the foot of the stairs before his heart lurched. He couldn’t allow everything of Karen’s to be taken without watching. Slowly climbing the stairs he rubbed the urn.     “What the hell are you doing?” He stared at Carmen sitting on the bed going Karen’s drawer in the nigtstand.     She held up the story Karen had just begun as he moved toward her. “I didn’t realize she was writing again.”     Carl saw the tears pour down Carmen’s face and looked away. “We were trying to start a family too.” It felt good to finally tell someone.     “She never said anything about it,” Carmen gasped.     “Nope, didn’t want to jinx it. You know how superstitious she was.” He allowed a quiet laugh to escape him.     “At least she had time to try.”     He sighed bitterly.     “She always said you were the real writer.”     “Been working on it since I met her, she was the only one who could keep me going.”     “I guess she did that for both of us. She was the only one who could get me to do something with myself.”     Hearing about his sister-in-law’s lack of ambition eased Carl a little. She had always been like a little sister to him after having loved Karen for so long. His remorse softened as Carmen handed him his wife’s words.     “Thanks,” he said as Smokey jumped up.     “You know, you could finish it for her.”     “I don’t know.”     “Why not?”     “This is hers, not mine.”     She didn’t argue as he skimmed the pages. He found himself engrossed in his wife’s thoughts, her world. He leaned back and breathed deep.     “What did you think?”     “I have some work to do.”     “You’re going to finish it?”     “Not this,” he tapped the notebook, “It’s time I hammer out the last of my novel.” Standing resolutely, he set the urn on the nightstand next to a picture of him and Karen.     Carmen didn’t hide her voice as she spoke to it, “Don’t worry sis, he’s going to be alright.”     When he let her out he smiled. “Even now she’s still encouraging me.”     “She always did.” Carmen laughed.

a Turn in the Road, art by Edward Michael O’Durr Supranowicz

Pretty Water Scene, art byDavid Michael Jackson

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem one oh three destruction instructions: run faster live 2/27/15 in her Chicago Destruction Instructions show (Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem one oh three destruction instructions: run faster live 2/27/15 in her Chicago Destruction Instructions show (Canon Power Shot)

See YouTube video 2/27/15 of Janet Kuypers’s Chicago show Destruction Instructions of 5 poem WITH THIS POEMs with John on electric base (Canon fs200)

See YouTube video 2/27/15 of Janet Kuypers’s Chicago show Destruction Instructions of 5 poems WITH THIS POEM with John on electric base (Canon PS)

Download this poem in the free chapbook “Destruction Instructions”, w/ poems read on 2/27/15 at Chicago’s Uptown Arts Center

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem one oh three destruction instructions: run faster at the Wormwood Poetry Collective in Chicago 3/10/15 (Canon Power Shot)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem one oh three destruction instructions: run faster at the Wormwood Poetry Collective in Chicago 3/10/15 (Canon fs200)

Janet Kuypers Bio     Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.     She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.     She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org and chaoticarts.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.     From January 2010 through August 2015 Kuypers also hosted the Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting the Cafés weekly feature podcasts (and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).     In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), the 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& 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.

this page was downloaded to your computer