Firefly Magazine

VIII

A Journal of Luminous Writing

Michael Barbeito

Untitled #1 |

Table of Contents

Untitled #1 | Brian Michael Barbeito1

Poetry
Alone | Judy Wood .4
Song of the Dying as a Song | Ken Meisel....5
Carls Lover | Carl Boon.......7
Ashenhalted II | Meghan Barrett.............8
The Black Tern | Glen Wilson......10
distorted flowers | Olivia Hu....11
And Then At Times | Charles Bane, Jr...12
Invocation | Ken Meisel....13
We Moved | Kelli Simpson......15
The Trick | Ryan Quinn....16
In the Kitchen, After Sunday Morning Pancakes | Massey Armistead....17
Flash Fiction
Untitled #2 | Brian Michael Barbeito ..19
From the Night Kitchen | Nick Black...20
This is all it takes | Cath Barton ..22
Gravity | Stephanie Bento .........23
Swan Song | Carly Plank ........... 24
We Were Perfect | Jonathan Nash26
Invisible Glory | Alva Holland..........28
Transfixed | JY Saville .......29
2

Were Not Friends | Justin Hunter ...... 30

The Shrine Room | Kate Murdoch .......32
Progeny of the Night | Sophia Li .......34

Short Stories
Affianced | Nidhi Singh ..36
Police Blotter | Allyson Whipple.....52
Getting to Grips with Liathach | Anne Goodwin .....57
Window Watcher | Michael Kulp...62
Eyes | Sarah Mitchell-Jackson......66
If Theres Anything We Can Do | Dave Wisker .70
Doughy Sticky Things | Katrina Johnston ....74
Abracadabra | Christopher Acker ....86
Wings | Lindsay Diamond ......95
(A Ga Lu Ga) An Evil Wind | Kim Bailey Deal ......105
Nasty Habits | Eva Rivers ..113
Vesta | Kathy Hoyle 116
Street Corner Curiosity | Kathy Stevens ... ...127
Campfires | P. James Callaghan ..136
Unturn This Stone | Aviva Treger ...144
Starfall | Michael Anthony ....160
The Sounds of the Earth | James W. Hedges ........169

POETRY

Alone |

Featured Poem
Song of the Dying as a Song |

Like bittersweet nightshade

and grassland bitterroot,

like draperies, trailers, and

creepers of aromatic honeysuckle

wound in vine cleft and spiral,

down, along a sideways fence;

like the absent voice of a bird

singing melancholy mourning

in the embrace of a shrub, you hear

the song of the dying as a song.

And once, in a lot of old Packards,

some of them so rusted

you could shove your hand

through them to find nothing there,

you heard the vibratory hissing

of insects, hidden deep underneath

the rusted chassis and down,

into the motors vacated frame;

and inside the insects stridulating

and scraping, you heard the song

of the dying as a song. And once,

alone, inside a vacated building

while you were trespassing there

you heard the groans of a hobo

or a stray dog, or a phantom, or

the pleadings of an industry, long gone,

and when you heard it, you heard

it as the song of the dying as a song.

Carls Lover |
Carls lover asked for a love poem
because the song said
the stars had gone blue. But Carl
is obscure. There was a plate
of finger mackerel on the table,
unusual green light in the hall.
So Carl considered Shelley
drowning instead of the kisses
she needed, the whispered words,
the poem to complement her skin.
Suddenly the bed sheets
needed smoothed and arranged,
her copies of Derrida, the Quran
on her bedside table. Its always
the same: no time for poems,
no time except to plunge
into the daily rites of being in love:
the salad plates stacked
on the counter, the two cans
of beer to buy from Mustafas.
Even Shelley must wait sometimes,
his open boat flailing forever
on the wild, green Mediterranean.

Ashenhalted II | Meghan Barrett

steeled and I wept

sap showers on compressed soil
my roots: writhing sugar-addicts
cut off
a cambium:

plasmolyzed
a final drought, here

at my absence, nutrients pore

The samaras watch me go

beam at new rays
on their warmed cotyledons and wonder
if they should grow over mother
taproot: buried six feet and shriveling

This is how they will mourn me.

I am split thin: age rectified

my knots pieced and spilt
on the ground
bowed over curled leaves,
a lifes work

pyred upon myself

rickety

tilted and rained

with proof, blacked

the sun weeps on
steaming ashes,
crushed

mellowing

whispers to me,
you should have only known this heat

the bitterness filters

and soaks in me
purified, spirit washed dry
of a swollen martyr

The Black Tern |

I see it on passage over the lake,
the grey wings, white underparts.
It drops, dips down to the surface
of water to feed. Its beak a dart
that pierces the iridescent scale
of a chub that struggles in dying arc.

It upturns to quickly break

the fishs resistance, fins flash but dark
are eyes of surrender. Imagine and place
coins of remembrance, remark
it;s just a circle, a turn of the scales,
known to sleep on the wing, it departs.

10

Distorted Flowers |

she tries to build herself up again, spreading grain

and making fertilizer out of nothing. she holds
handfuls of soil like thin air, sprinkles land through
bare hands. balances cups of berries while trying
to run and they spill everywhere, but she doesnt go back
to pick them up. tell her, she wants facts, not opinions.
does grass grow with tears, or only with water? can she
paint her roses with blood so they look real? if she cuts
the thorns of the vines, will they grow back again, fuller,
sharper? the grass look like blades, the wheat is not soft.
the weeds bloom, beautiful, but the real flowers distort.
she is trying to build herself up again, even without seeds.

11

And Then At Times |

And then at times

the dips of our marriage are
no different than the falling
into love in Richmond Park
before we started home, and I
wrote every day until the motion
of the ship made me certain that
for every berth going out,
new souls put in, spit from
foam. If I could read Greek or
understand the errand of the
cardinal we watch for with coffee
in our hands, I could make poetry
on the tips of fence spears where
he stops and the fire of you would
go urgently from land to land.

12

Invocation |

Small god who wiggles silver light

across the garden fountains
lofted wet edge,
who sprawls downward
like a crumbled maple tree leaf
at the side of the bench
just to hide yourself from
my watchful glance,
who ignites the cardinal flowers
with red,
why do you take the dead
to you?
Why, each season, are they
gathered back?
I take those who must die
because the color source
needs them
just like the red of the geranium
and the blue-green
of the iris stalk
produce a flower of color
so too, does the world

13

turning to its life again,

make over its hue.

14

We Moved |

Jiffy-Pop on the gas stove

when storms
stole the power.

Then we moved

to a house in town
with loose bricks
in the front porch wall.

We moved

to fresh pink paint

and visits
from Daddys girlfriend.

We moved

and kept on moving

without moving
much at all.

15

We moved

to hardwood floors
and a half-grown
Baby-sitter.

We moved

to a big backyard
with a fence
of new mans rules.

We moved

to a rat-run trailer
on ground
God had forgotten.

We moved

and kept on moving

till I think God
forgot us, too.

16

The Trick |

There is a moment inside the moment

that is not a moment at all
Really

a slight pause, readjusting to filaments

gamut runners in stolen yellow sneakers

the scale and length and array

of that

extents and breadths

submarine scopes above the riptide
unseen, but hardly alone

catch it in dimly lit halls

catch it like you can pneumonia

stumbling into
everything.

17

In the Kitchen, After Sunday Morning Pancakes | Massey Armistead

He was just a baby

with curly crimson hair
that fell onto our kitchen counter
while a hairdresser
shaved his head.
On that same counter,
dad pinned him down,
held his arms and legs
while mom tried to feed him
the medicine. Swallow. Please.
Forced the syringe-like tube to his mouth.
Against doctors orders,
dad put it to his own tongue.
Just like chocolate.
Now my brother
has a long crimson beard.
Tells me and my sister
he will only cut it
if his girlfriend asks.
Sacrifices for the one you love.

18

FLASH FICTION

Untitled #2 |
19

Featured Flash
From The Night Kitchen |

It was my idea to build a golem, Nicolettes that it be female. A girlem, she said,
nodding a scrunched-up chin in agreement with herself. A night too hot to sleep, we
were drinking coffees wet with whiskey in the kitchen of our loft, creamy moonlight
pouring through the windows. Our roommate Rachel sat on the windowsill smoking,
occasionally looking over at us from under damp, heavy, figgy eyelids. We were making
this for her, after what had happened.
Nicolette and I dumped flour straight onto the table, (up it clouded),
made a pit in the middle, sloshed in water, chunks of butter, started working it
with our
fingertips. We fashioned a homunculus roughly twelve inches tall and almost as
wide before we ran out of materials.
When Id read about Rabbi Loews golem, brought to life to protect the
Jews of Prague, Id pictured something much larger. Maybe if wed had clay
instead of dough. Maybe if wed not been drunk in a kitchen on a pit-slick sleepless
night.
For today, anyway, I said.
I used a fork prong to carve the word into its soft little forehead.
My magic Jewess, said Nicolette, low, voice burred with pride. Rachel came
over to join us. Thats it? she asked. We all looked at it. It didnt look great. Breathe up
its nose, I said to her. She crouched, put her split bottom lip under its mouthless face
and blew whiskey fumes, the hot moon outside a witness to our blasphemies.
20

That other night, after we put Rachel to bed, wed lain, Nicolettes legs
between mine, mine between hers, her fingertip in my tears.
I wish I could keep everyone I love safe
But you cant, drawing spirals round my cheek with my eye run.
Shed smiled, from so deep that her face creaked, a sad smile. Baby, shed
whispered.
Another night.
Nicolette and I swelled with pride, jumping out onto the fire escape to
watch them head downtown together, to see Rachel out after dark again. Go,
girl! we
shouted, and rattled the ladder until she turned around, grinning, to wave us
away. The golem couldnt bend its legs, but Rachel slowed her walk to stay beside it. The
streetlights threw their shadows behind them, one long, one short and broad and stiff.
When I noticed blood on the golems hands next morning, Nicolette and
I played Rock, Paper, Scissors to see whod speak to Rachel about it. I lost.
She stood in the doorway of her room, looking over my shoulder to
where it stood. A breakfast roll-up smouldered limply in her mouth, unruly
tobacco strands showing through the paper, poking out, like intimate hair. I watched
them brighten, rasp and burn while I waited for her to say something. Eventually, You
made a wonderful thing, girl, she said, spilling ash, and that was clearly the end of the
discussion. Her still made-up eyes torched under those damp, heavy lids.

21

This is all it takes |

You come out of the yoga class and you hesitate. Will you turn left for home or
right for town, following that flash of red you saw out of the corner of your eye? Youre
thinking if in doubt say yes. You turn right. Youre a little behind as the person dodges
into the market hall, you see the red cloak swirl as he goes out the back and you run.
You could trip, but you dont, youre sure-footed, and youre out in the yard gazing at the
bowl of the sky above your head and theres no one there, except that out of the corner
of your eye you see something against the blue, bright red on bright blue so that for a
moment its purple and youre off running again, and hes running too, must be because
youre really fast but hes faster.
Youre down the street and there are sheep in the cattle market, the acrid smell
is in your nostrils. You stop, your breath coming out all jagged, because youre not used
to running so fast for so long, and you twirl around, and all you can see is sheep, and the
sound of their baaing is loud and rude and somehow gets in the way of your looking.
Someone coughs behind you, really close, and you gasp and hold your breath
and you dare not turn.
You dropped your hat.
You turn. Its him, the man in red, holding out the hat you didnt realise youd
dropped. You shake your head. You feel as if youre in a film but youre not, youre in
town on a Tuesday morning and you were just taken by the red flash of a mans coat
and now hes there in front of you and you really cant believe that its him, holding out
your hat to you, holding out your life to you. You were quite happy, you werent looking
for anyone, you are, you were, completely content and now everything has changed in
an instant. This is him, the one. There is no mistaking that he is the man you will now
leave with, leave this market,leave this town and never come back. You wont even stop
to think, you dare not because if you did you would remember that just a few streets
away there is someone waiting for you, probably looking at his watch and thinking that
you should have come home with the bread for lunch, that it isnt like you to take so long.
But he wont worry for a while because you always do come home, always have before
and why should it be different now, and that is such a pity, because by the time evening
comes and he knows that all cannot be well, you will be far away.
So far away that no-one will find you. And against all odds you and the man in red
will make a new life together. And you will never look back.
22

Gravity |

We gaze at the cosmic ocean through the telescope on the roof. Theres no one
up here but the two of us, and the millions of stars in the firmament reminding us that
were no more than a speck of dust floating in the light, a thought that ordinarily terrifies
me. Tonight, though, the presence of you and the moon calms my restless energy.
This is the physics of us: I am weightless, and you are gravity. Its past midnight
and the air is desert-cold now. You hold me in your arms and whisper the alphabet of
the constellations in my ear as we search the New Mexico sky for patterns. Your voice
as velvety as darkness, their names sound like ancient poetry to me: Andromeda,
Cassiopeia, Corona Borealis, Libra, Pegasus. I secretly wonder if all the constellations
have already been found.
I take your hand in mine, blindly tracing the lines etched there, as though your
palms are maps to some parallel universe.
You ask me what Im looking for.

23

Swan Song |

My two grandsons race along the wooden boardwalk, slicing through the marshy
edges of the lake. The repeated pounding of their small feet sends concentric
ripples through the mat of blue green algae like swirls of matte sequins atop the water.
This lake looks barren to me nowdepopulated without the constant motion of
boats and swimmersbut the waters smooth surface contains the entire expanse of
the sky.
Around the bend I notice the boys kneeling at the side of the boardwalk
transfixed by what must have appeared to them as a giant birds nest composed of
fractured branches and yellowed aquatic grasses. I wobble closer on arthritic knees,
half expecting a swan to lunge from behind the guardrail puffed up and hissing in
protest.
Thats the nest of a mute swan, I tell them.
Mom says swans are meaner than Canada geese, says one of the boys, his
eyes widening.
Their mother, having grown up on this lake, has encountered the heavy beasts
more than once. Shes been attacked on her rowboat, bruised by the wings of a
brooding female. Their numbers have only increased since then. These days, to see the
birds in groups of six to fifteen is not uncommon.
When I was young, mute swan sightings were considered exotic. To glimpse a
live one was to admire the curve of the wings, folded back at such an angle that they
resembled a popup heart on a handcrafted Valentines card; to marvel at the lorethe
black triangle stretching back from the billtapered like a womans cat eye makeup.
I first knew swans as the vessels ferrying my friends and I through the Tunnel of
Love, an amusement at the trolley park that spanned the length of town. On the sides of
the boats, which were built for two, the outlines of the feathered wings were painted in
iridescent indigo. The beaks were regal, a blazing orange.
Sometimes wed gather clumps of wild mint from the waters edge before
boarding. In the darkness of the tunnel the only sources of light were the cherries on the
ends of the leaves wed rolled and lit. As the boats jerked forward on submerged
conveyors, the glowing portions fell and smoldered.

24

Now the swan is considered a nuisance. The town has made a museum of the
trolley parkits only remnants hang in shadowboxes on the library walls. Antiques.
A disturbance in the foliage propels the boys to the end of the path. Following at
my own pace, I see them in the shallows. Just beyond my grandsons are eight swan
boats tethered to a pole, heads bent demurely. Their bodies no longer bear
embellishments. The paint has been completely sanded away or worn invisible by the
weather.
Hurry, Grandma!
I want them to remember me as I am today. Still able to put one foot in front of the
other without crumpling to the earth. Still standing. Majestic.

25

We Were Perfect |

We waited, but we did not weep. The filth of the world piled against the walls of
our mountain fortress; our salvation, our ruination.
I looked to my feet, bound by wool, graced by barely-thawed mud and
excrement. They felt the worldly chill of early spring, and I savoured it for once, released
from the harsh bind of a caged winter in prayer.
Anas appraised me, and I raised my eyes to hers. They were steel, and her hair
was silver, and if she felt a tremble she did not show it. For she was a stone of our
fortress.
I was cracked rubble; eyes of mud, hair ragged as mouldy straw, leathered
hands quaking, born as low as Anas was high. I could not hold her eyes with mine; they
buckled beneath their weight.
Bertrand gave the order then, and the gate was lowered, glorifying those few
hundred of us with the chill of the mountain wind. Beyond our sanctuary of decay, the
camp was revealed. Thousands of men waited, pyre and standards raised, crossing
themselves against we demons. Those closest I saw their eyes. The animal was
tempered by the idol he held, but his lip curled nevertheless.
My numb feet stumbled backwards, grace abandoning me. Did my grown sons
stand on melting snows, conscripted amongst that horde? Would they watch their
mother burn? Would they be relieved?
But, Anas - she took my shaking hand, silk fingers stern against my crumbling
palms, and she fixed me with those eyes of grit. With her free hand, she pressed a cold
object into mine, and I unclasped my stiff fingers from it to find the stone dove, carved
with love.
We go from this place together, my friend whispered, the walls in her eyes soft
rainclouds in that lone moment.
We who remained perfect filed through the gate then, to march down the slope
of the mountain and willingly climb the pyre which lay below. As the spittle of men and

26

their worldly destroyer washed over us, I gripped Anas dove with numb fingers, my
mouth set, my eyes already cold.

27

Invisible Glory |

They seek me out at all times of the day and night, disturbing my sleep, waking
me fromdreams. Cold porridge and stale dinners sit, abandoned mid-spoon.
Opening and closing times? Ha! I produce on demand, sometimes at the shortest
of notice. Greeted with sobbing tears or happy laughter, I need to respond
appropriately.
Its an emergency.
Wild celebrations and crushing sadness come knocking - beseeching visages
hungry for solutions and solace. Without fail, every day is crammed with deadlines, yet
filled with colour and natural brightness - creative and flamboyant, or delicate and
muted. Some say its an art form. For me its a labour of love.
I watch them touch and stroke my work. Heads tilt in wonder, how this particular
creation was designed and produced. What inspired this raw material choice? I
see blinkered opinions, craving bursts of vivid light.
I am firm.
Believe me, this will look stunning. Youll be more than happy.
Trust me, I wont ruin the occasion.
I promise. People will be full of admiration for your choice, for the colour.
Yes, this is more appropriate. It will look wonderful.
I see doubt. I see fear. But most of all, in the end, I see trust. I thrive on it.
My suppliers know my standards are exacting. My livelihood depends on it. I want
to pass this wonderful world of colour, light and beauty on to my three lovely girls. They
know every day is different and they adapt beautifully, without complaint. I value their
admiration and advice. I set the bar higher and higher.
Then, when I surpass even my own expectations, my smile is wide and glorious. I
throw open my shop doors and breathe in that wonderful aroma.
The phone rings.
Hello.
Hello, hi, is that the florist?

28

Transfixed | JY Saville
The lad was already there when Diane started her shift. Dave said hed been
waiting outside when the gallery opened, which was unusual but maybe he was up
earlier than normal. Now it was ten minutes to chucking out time and Diane watched
him from the corner of her eye asshe started the last round of the temporary exhibition
floor. As far as she could tell, he hadnt moved a muscle in the last two hours. It was a bit
creepy to be honest, like he was communing with the painting, but he never did anyone
any harm so they just let him be. Dave thought he was a druggie but if he was, he was
much more well-behaved than any of the others that wandered in from time to time.
That was the problem now the galleries were free, the shiftless drifters with nowhere
else to go had a great new alternative to the library. They didnt even have to pretend to
read.
Diane thought this lad might be one of those obsessive types. Every week hed
find a painting he liked, though his face never changed so it was hard to tell, but surely
he wouldnt come back day after day and stare at the thing for hours if he didnt like it.
Theyd been watching him for months, the gallery staff. Dave said awful things about
him. Funny, but awful. Diane felt sorry for the lad, he was so cowed-looking, tall and
stooped, skinny like he needed a good dinner, and shed been itching to mend the
sleeve of his red hoodie for weeks. He couldnt be looking for a job if he was looking at
paintings all day, but Diane didnt think the sort of lad who could stare at the same
picture all afternoon without even shifting his weight would be that employable. Unless
he went to be a guard at Buckingham Palace.
By the time Diane had tramped through every room the lad had gone, which was
a relief because she wasnt sure how hed react to being broken from his trance. She
walked across the echoing space to the Monet picture that was his latest fancy.
Haystacks in a field, not the sort of thing Diane would stop to look at but that was the
thing, working in the gallery you gave up looking at the paintings properly. She stood in
front of this one where the lad hadbeen all day, and tried to see what he saw in it. The
light was good, no doubt about that, but she couldnt see what held his fascination so
long, it wasnt even as if there were any people in the picture. Although, if you squinted
and Diane found squinting necessary with Impressionists that smudge the colour of
the torn sleeve she knew so well could look like a tall, skinny figure. Maybe even one with
a hood.

29

Were Not Friends |

Nick hit the side of the mountain at sixty-five miles per hour.
Wed rode our motorcycles up Catalina Highway earlier in the day, rising eight
thousand feet above the desert floor. Then, we did what wed been doing for the past
three months. We parked at the lookout point and pulled cans of air freshener spray
from my backpack. Id stolen them from the grocery store where we both worked the
overnight. We shook them, placed the nozzles in our mouths, and inhaled.
I liked to wait until the blood vessels in my brain crystallized and my mouth tasted
like menthol. Nick said he was ready when the clouds circled his eyes. Wed race
down a floating mountain, wondering if we could soar from the road to the valley below.
The tar and painted stripes below my tires would stretch and roll and reach up from the
ground, slapping at my handlebars.
Nicks bike was faster than mine. He always reminded me of this, and that always
reminded me of how Nick and I werent friends.
Friends were something you needed when you died. Something my sister needed
so that she could say her funeral was a success. All those people, crying over her,
talking about her life.
Friends were all about remembering. I rode with Nick so that I could forget. Wed
ride south to the University of Arizonas campus, cutting down the bike paths
whistling at the girls walking back to their dorms. Wed ride to the gates of the Air Force
base and blow kisses to the guards. Wed ride north to Casa Grande to see if we could
hit two hundred miles per hour on the highway.
But we werent friends.
The first time Nick asked me to grab a can of air freshener, hed told me he had
been up for thirty hours straights. When I asked why he shrugged. But while riding the
mountain with my brain a frozen crystal ball, I could understand why Nick would go two
days without sleep. Sleep was a trick that let you drift. Awake, you were anchored to a
moment.
With three turns left before the bottom, I leaned to my left, my knee an inch from
the ground as I locked my wrists and kept my handlebars steady.
Nick didnt lean.
When I passed him, I didnt see Nick. I saw colors painted against the mountain.
30

Orange, white, red.

I reached the valley and rode west toward my house. I came in through the
garage, tossed my bag on the bed, and flipped on the television.
I expected to see news coverage of Nicks rescue. Lights, police, Nicks old high
school photos pasted on the screen.
But there was nothing. No reports. No mention of the crash.
I opened my bag and pulled out the last can of air freshener, shook it, and placed
the nozzle in my mouth. Nick and I were never friends, anyway.

31

The Shrine Room |

The crystal cabinet tinkled as she passed. Asher trod lightly on the swirling
salmon and grey carpet. Grandma was asleep and the floor groaned if you landed on
the wrong place. At her right was the forbidden room. She had only asked once and
Grandmas face closed like a trap, her gaze drifting over Ashers shoulder.
It was your Uncle Davids room, she said. Best you dont go in there, you might
disturb something.
The temptation was great. Grandpa was in the veggie garden tending his peas
and Grandmas soft snores emanated from the bedroom. Asher glanced in. She was on
her back, stockinged feet resting on newspaper to keep the chenille bedspread clean.
The afternoon sun made a golden shaft over the twin beds and her clasped hands.
The door to the forbidden room was ajar. It was enough for Asher to glimpse the
edge of a desk, its surface crammed with objects. With the tips of her fingers she
pushed the door open and went inside. The desk was closest to the door. There were
textbooks with dog-ears, a photo album, a cricket bat with the imprints of red balls on its
surface. In pride of place stood a dark leather case. It distended into a round shape at
one end and was thin at the other. She flicked open the metal clasps and a silver
trumpet gleamed on a bed of maroon velvet. Picking it up she placed the mouthpiece to
her lips. It was cold and tasted like blood. She puckered her lips and put it back.
Davids bed was made in the corner, the sheet folded over the wool blanket as if
he might walk in at any moment and peel back the covers. Asher went to the wardrobe
and opened the doors to rows of crisp shirts, trousers folded on hangers and an eclectic
collection of hats.
A chilled sensation at the back of her neck made her turn. Grandma stood
hunched in the doorway. Her mouth was stretched in a grimace and she held her hand
over her heart.
II told you not to come in here. Come out at once!
Im sorry, Grandma. I just wanted to see it.
Grandmas face was pale, the only colour her pink lipstick. Her ample chest
heaved beneath her floral blouse. She waved Asher down the hall and into the kitchen.
They sat at the table and eyed each other.
He was twenty and never wore a seatbelt. Handsome as a movie star. Had the
most wonderful laugh. I go in there sometimes Asher, and I pretend. I pretend its a
32

horrible nightmare and that hes on his way home for dinner. But its precious, you see?
Its only for me. I dont want to share it. Do you understand?
Asher nodded and placed her hand over her Grandmas, knotted with blue veins
and crooked with arthritis. The old lady drew her onto her knees and pressed her head
against her bosom.

33

Progeny of the Night |

That arid night, you were staggering down the moss-cobbled street, rounding
round the rusted curb, arms shooting out as you stumbled into a mail post. You lied on
that road, back slumped over the gutter, broken teeth gnawing on a shriveled apple
core, eyes closed to the world. You spit out the black pits, and they rolled down the
sidewalk cracks. I leaned against a wall, thinking about whiskey. It was a ghost town.
Nothing but ruined copper and scraps of newspaper curdled on concrete. For some
reason, the lights still worked. The night was brightened by lamp posts, tanning gold like
a panner by the creek side, sloshing murky water with his sieve till he found that brilliant
yellow gleam. Water, oh, how we yearned for it. As night grew, we walked past the
broken-down brothels and the rotting mansions, towards a greyed motel. There was no
clerk at the desk, so I reached into the key cabinet. I noticed something white. A
dried-out bone. We didnt touch anything in our room that night. Didnt dare open any of
the closets. We feared finding more skeletons.
By morning, we were parched. The sweltering heat had climbed in through the
chipped windowpanes. I craned my neck around, looking for a sink, while you rambled
on about an oasis a couple miles west of town. As the sun rose, I acquiesced to your
feverish plea, men of bravery, now men of desperation. We walked out of the closed-off
ruins and into the open desert. We swam and swam in that sea of sand, searching for a
single droplet in the ocean of desolation.
I kept on seeing fish jumping from the clouds. You had vision of rolling rivers and
running hills. Hours passed, and we were reduced to crawling on four limbs. You said,
We are going to die. We both laughed about that.
Alas, when night fell again, there we lied on the desert floor, broken as the day
we were birthed.

34

SHORT STORIES

Untitled #3 |

35

Featured Short
Affianced |
Show them the love, Humpty Dumpty. Wrench it up from the guts and whack them on
the head with it if need be. Scream from the rooftops, or cry from the sidewalks let them know
what love is, said lovely, insanely lovable Alessandra, flicking off stardust from her damask
cheek as she primed her beau to seek her parents blessings for marriage.
Humbert Lambert, junior barristers clerk with Messrs. Sapper, Suckett, and
Siphonandra, at the Inns of Court, with a modest salary for now, but with the vague promise of
an immodest bonus in a few years, fumbled at his tie knot and quivered. I wish you would stop
calling me that it hardly inspires a man about to look a lion in the eye in his lair and ask him to
part with his flesh and blood.
Dont sketch papa like that once you get to know him, youll see what a cuddly bear he
is, she replied, stroking his hand, and getting him all twitterpated.
Bear or lion, it was all the same to Humbert. Percival Wallace, her father, with the
demeanor of a dark lord, with business interests ranging from trout to baked beans to single
malts, and with an eye out for a nomination to the Upper House, hardly motivated a suitor to
shed his comforting coat of armor and drape him in close embrace.

36

Its very well of you to say so, Humbert observed, trying not to chew the end of his tie in
anxiety. But fathers are dry-eyed seasoned auditors ever ready with an antidote for the barbs of
a pining heart. Pray, what must I tell him when he asks about my salary?
Simple, his enchantress said, drugging him with her sweet, delirious breath, lie to him.
That is out of the question, I can not speak an untruth. And a man like him is certain to
have made inquiries he probably knows me better than I do myself already.
Whats a lawyer that cant tell a convincing lie?
Well, thats me. I will tackle the man anyhow leave it to Hump Humbert. He crossed
and uncrossed his legs; his words seemed to waft like strange tidings from afar.
Tackle as you will, Humpty, but dont be late. And dont take no for an answer. Ta da,
she said, brushing his cheek lightly with her bee-stung lips and tearing off after the 3:20 to her
Fine Arts class. Humbert loosened his collar, and oblivious to the sunshine and summer cheer
on the sidewalk cafe, wondered how the meek lamb might prevail over the tiger burning brightly
in the forests of the night.
***
It wasnt then a knight in shining armor on horseback that came knocking the next day at
the castle gates to claim the hand of his fair lady, Humbert felt more like a little schoolboy in
knickerbockers at the headmasters office asking for his answer sheets to be reevaluated.
Standing under Greek pillars at the Belgrave Square home, Humbert walloped a large brass

37

knocker on a lavishly decorated stained oak-paneled door, and then promptly jumped at the
resulting thunderclap.
A tall, bald man opened the gate almost immediately as if hed been lurking all day
behind it in wait; and fixing Humbert with a saurian gaze, he half bent at the waist
contemptuously.
Ahem, mourned the cheerless manservant in the usual bib and tucker of white
wing-collar dress shirt, pocket-watch, gray striped trousers and white gloves, making Humbert
feel lucky hed been allowed till the doorstep without being collared out. Humbert was sure the
man had never smoked pot in his life or shared tea with a parlor maid.
HumpHumbert Lambert, he announced his arrival, straightening up somewhat, to
match the minions expectations.
Aha! A Mr. Lambert is expected indeed, the Butler declared, not believing himself.
Would that thing be yours, he asked, raising himself on his toes and looking over Humberts
shoulders at the cheap Renault parked in the driveway. You could leave the keys here, well
get it hauled to the back. Master wouldnt have that thing parked where visitors can see it.
Pocketing the keys, he led Humbert through a marbled hall with recessed lights and
picture frames with a gold-leaf finish, to the study. Helena Wallace sat on a large, leather
Montague sofa with rolled paneled arms, while Percival took up a place next to the carved
mantelpiece, casting a grim eye upon him, as his battle-ready ancestors might once have done,
from the projecting battlements of Flodden Fort, at the enemy armada landing below.

38

Humbert was certain hed seen Helenas face on the Tattler magazine she probably
ran an advice column warning young girls of poor suitors. Or was she the head of some secret
coven whose name he couldnt recall; else, she was definitely involved to some extent in
eleemosynary activities involving an African-American childs life.
Well, said Humbert, rubbing his sweaty hands.
Well, said Percival, twirling his mustache.
Well, said Helena in a drawn-out, emphasized voice that was very cold and creaky.
Ahem, muttered the butler whod brought in a silver tray with tea and buttered toast.
After hed served and left, Humbert cleared his throat and began; Lissy and II mean
Alessandra and I were together at Cambridge
Cant help who you rub shoulders with in college these days, Helena observed to her
husband. I believe now you have rice eaters there, people who live on fiery curries.
They are some of the brainiest and hardest working folks out there. muttered
Humbert.
And what are your folks, Percival asked, keeping a comforting hand on Helenas
shoulder shed crinkled up her nose as if the whole house smelt of boiled rice, asafetida and
smoking chilies.
Theyre from Ashburn. Dad has a small farm, and he tends to sheep, chicken, and pigs.
Mom retired from the post office, Humbert said proudly.
See, I told you so. Helena looked up at her husband accusingly.

39

I work at Humbert started; he felt an insight into his own standing might clear things
up a bit.
I know, I know, said Percival, looking at his gold pocket watch, and tapping his foot
impatiently on the Turkish carpet. What is it that you want from us?
I wantwe want I was thinkingLissy asked me to
Alessandra is a dreamy kid. Shes an artist she has these make-believe notions from
another world. Dont take her too seriously shell soon get over it. I know she takes up these
projects she has a thing or two about the underdog and the downtrodden. Long shopping lists
and creature comforts soon push affairs of the heart on the back foot remember that.
Now can I write a reference for you, or advance you a spot of a loan or something?
Percival said, reaching into his breast pocket for the checkbook.
Certainly not, Sir! Humbert rose to his full height, his jaw set. I have come here to ask
for Alessandras hand in marriage, Sir, not compensation! He bowed stiffly, his British manners,
and strict upbringing stretched to the straining limits.
Helena cupped her hands to her mouth and looked faint. Percivals sideburns bristled as
he grabbed Humberts arm and led him out of the room. You Sir, are out of your mind, he said,
banging the door in Humberts face.
The smirking butler stood in the hallway trying hard to compose himself. Follow me
please, he said, showing Humbert into the balmy sunlight of Belgrave Square.
Humbert was sure hed heard a wry chuckle as the oak doors creaked shut on him.

40

***
The Regents Park was awash in a ruckus of colors and chirping and the sunshine, but
the pensive young man on the white bench remained oblivious to the charms of the quiet lake
and the sculptures park nearby, or the black swans and bolshie squirrels that gamboled over
there, or the thorns on the rose stem that he so moodily twirled in his fingers. Lissy snuggled up
close to Humbert and weaved her artistic fingers through his mop of red hair.
Why are you so mad what happened, she asked again.
And why werent you there? Leaving me alone with thempuffed up...scoffers.
Aunt Rhadamanthine was out of sorts. At the last minute, I was bundled into a car and
asked to keep her company my parents would have none of my protestings.
And was she?
No. She was hale and hearty, wagging fingers at the menials. Forget her tell me what
happened? Did they agree did you tackle papa like you said?
The question of tackling arises when one is allowed into the field I was collared and
heave-hoed before I could spit in my hands and say hut-hut. I tried to get back into the game,
but then it was like maneuvering your ball in a field of very agile attackers with no one to pass
to.
Lissy chuckled like a cow that has discovered sweet cake mix in her feed.
It all started with the hound dog on pork chops youve got at the gates. He relieved me
of my car and snuck it six blocks away he said the master would be ashamed of it!

41

What a dearoh what a Lissy hastily changed to bear, as Humbert turned to her
in pain. Then? she shook his coat sleeve eagerly.
Your dad said I was a project; that you were in love with the idea of love! Why he even
offered me some money!
Really? I hope you took it! We could go shopping, Lissy said, doubling up with laughter.
That was another thing he said about you the long shopping lists! Humbert rose in a
huff. So they do know you properly and Ive been blind! Im the standup comic around here,
and youre quite the chuckle bunny today, arent you? Youre going to be getting over it soon,
arent youthe sad little project? Do you ever take anything seriously, Lissy? The joke is on me,
isnt it? he said and stormed off.
Wait, she cried and ran after him. Humpty hold up!
Im not Humpty! He paused to waggle a finger at her, and then continued on his way.
Yes you are, she yelled and sprinted after him. When she caught up she leaped on his
back and held fast. Humbert tripped and they rolled to the ground. Humbert tried to break free,
but she wouldnt let go.
You are a determined woman, arent you? he said finally. She didnt say anything but
just wrapped her long legs around him tighter. And I am your project?
No, you arent never say that again. She turned up his chin and looked deep into his
eyes. A tear had stolen to the brim of her eyes and hung there bravely.

42

Humbert realized he was being a fool. Im sorry. I was taking my frustration out on you,
he said. I was such a miserable failure. I love you so I couldnt bear the thought of losing
you.
I love you too. She bent down and pressed her lips against his for a long blissful spell.
Now the important thing is, she asked, leaning on an elbow and tickling him in the ear with a
grass stalk, what are you going to do.
Humbert crossed his hands under his head and looked for an answer in the fluffy clouds
floating lazily overhead, with their white plumes outstretched.
Let us elope, she cried out.
Please, Lissy. I wouldnt steal you from yourself. I wont have it without the parents
consent you would always be looking over your shoulders. You pretend to be tough I know
you chew rusty nails but I know you love them too well to let them down. And deep down,
were all too conservative to do anything rash.
The consent is not coming unless you become a Lord or a tycoon or something and
knowing you thats not happening anytime soon. She giggled, and then cupped her mouth
just when the hurt-puppy look began to flicker across his face again. I could ask papa to get
you a promising position?
Never! That wouldnt be the right honorable thing to do. Just leave it to Hump
Humbert, darling.

43

If I leave it to Humpty again Ill turn gray and wrinkly before I float down that aisle. What
happened to that drunk, rich uncle of yours? Any chance of his copping it and leaving you the
hidden loot?
No chance the wine seems to be agreeing with the old primate. I can swear the man
is getting younger by the day I wont be surprised if he outlives me!
Then I will have to think of something, she said and lay back, thoughtfully chewing on a
rose petal.
***
Nothing much changed for the next couple of days. Except that Lissy received a call
from Ursula, her American roommate, and soul mate from Willingham-Boarding-School-days.
Ursula happened to be flying back from a business trip to Germany on a hopping flight to
Canada, where shed moved with her family. Shed wondered if Lissy could take time out to
meet at Bentleys Oyster Bar & Grille at Piccadilly and catch up on old times. It was always a
delirious delight to meet Ursula, so Lissy had readily agreed.
Now, Ursula was not one, but a twelve-hugs-a-day person whod headed a Laughter
Club in school, and taught people how to activate sullen solar plexus c hakras in their body by
spreading the love. She was like a flower that wilted without a comforting cuddle, peck and a
firm back rub if possible. Accordingly the old friends rendezvoused at the grill one sunny
afternoon before her flight.

44

It was a chic place done in pastels and gold with mirrored walls and leather banquettes,
with artwork of the chef proudly displayed on the broad white pillars with Corinthian caps. The
girls tucked into complimentary canaps and coffee and began to chat animatedly about boys
out of old habit.
Whats the family strength now, Lissy asked. Is Robby still the Italian Stallion? Ursula
had gone ahead and married right after school.
Hes called the Italian Stallion, not because he runs fast! Ursula laughed, squeezing
Lissys hand tightly in fact, she hadnt stopped stroking it all afternoon. I had to put the brakes
at number four mothball the birthing cannon, as it were else the entire neighborhood would
have been run down by the offspring. And what about you? Has the lawyer boy perked up
enough nerve to face the old Grouch?
I had to put him up to it at gunpoint ooh, the silly oaf makes me go so weak in the
knees! But it went very badly I believe. It provoked even the sad Butler into drollness.
Oh, my poor babe. Ursula, always one to embrace others miseries, reached forward
and pecked Lissy and curled her fingers into her hands again.
Can I, Lissy asked, gesturing towards one hand, wanting it back so that she could tuck
into the Bouillabaisse with Seared Squid.
Oh sure, Ursula shrugged and reluctantly let go of one hand.
From the corner of her eye, Lissy noticed two old ladies sitting beyond the broad pillars
in the far corner, glaring continuously over pince-nez at her, their mouths agape. Thats so

45

rude, she thought. She leaned back in the wing couch slightly so that they couldnt see her. As
she turned her head slowly in their direction, she saw it was Aunt Rhadamanthine, with another
old lady, a fellow coven member perhaps. Lissys first instinct was to walk over to them and say
a loud Hello and thwack them on their backs see if she could thump their fake dentures out,
but something made her decide against it.
She pushed aside her soup bowl and crawled her hand back into Ursulas tentacles,
which coiled themselves gratefully around once more. Have you checked out Chanels vanilla
hand serum? Its awesome! she dangled her hands in Ursulas face who couldnt resist rubbing
her snout appreciatively on them, rolling her eyes, and moaning softly. Lissy giggled, it felt so
ticklish.
My, its yummy! Ursula said, rising halfway, and like a sniffer dog nuzzling all the way to
her shoulders. Ill make sure to pick some up at the duty-free shop. Canada is so cold and dry;
my main problem is frizzy hair. But yours are so luxuriant what do you use on them?
Russian Amber Imperial Conditioning Crme by Philip B no less the best of the best!
Feel them?
Sure! Ursula leaned in and cupping her wavy mop of hair, inhaled deeply. Umm! And
whats that delicious scent youre wearing? Her face encircled Lissys neck and lingered at the
hollow of her neck, inhaling deeply of Chanel No 3. Like old times, eh? Lord, how we used to
love it back then. But I am famished now, she said and returned to her seat to winkle out the

46

grilled halibut with peach and pepper sauce, and quell the growls of the healthy appetite of a
mother of four.
Oh my God, Ursula screamed later as Pineapple Carpaccio and Sicilian Citrus Sorbet
were placed before her to round off the perfectly gourmet meal.
Lissy, realizing the peaking distress of the old ladies, who were now leaning in and
jabbering animatedly, decided to serve up a piece de resistance herself. My feet are killing me
would you, she asked, shaking off her heels and putting a foot on the edge of Ursulas chair,
between her knees.
Why not, child. Ursula, trained masseur who could induce burps in the most stubborn
of babies at her knee, began to good-naturedly knead Lissys toes with one hand and digging
into the dessert with the other, enjoying the sweet dish thoroughly with unbridled expressions of
loud oohs-and-aahs.
The Matre De seemed embarrassed with all the brouhaha the growing, unbecoming
intimacy, and public display of unwarranted passion between the two ladies was causing, but
remembering who Lissy was, decided to look the other way.
But the old women, who had seen what seemed enough unchristian sin through their
failing eyesight from afar in the darkled hall, got up and striking the Chef Sous deftly with the
leather bound bill, stormed off, their umbrella tips sharp as snicker-snees pointing straight
ahead of them.
***

47

Lissy came back home to find Aunt Rhadamanthine leaving the house. Lissys
full-throated Yo, Grumpy, met with a cold shoulder and icy silence. She went upstairs and
plunked on her bed. She gazed at Humberts picture frame for a while, sighing ever and anon,
wondering when the twain shall meet and become one. While daydreaming of him kissing her
among the amorous white blossoms, now red with loves wounds, she fell into carefree asleep.
Awakened by a soft knock at the door just before supper, she was informed by her handmaiden
the Ancients desire to see her at once in the Study the Bema seat of Judgment.
***
Mother looked like shed been caught in a sudden downpour without an umbrella she
swayed slightly in the wing chair, while Father hung on to the mantelpiece for support, fortifying
himself with scotch and soda.
Hello parents, Lissy piped.
Where have you been, the Pater asked, his finger, like an accusing compass needle
pointing straight at her.
School sketching. In fact, we were drawing nudes today.
What men I hope? Mother was rapidly deteriorating into the arena of delirium. She
looked discomposed and awesomely unwell. O lord, what am I saying?
No women. Lissy, with a carefully constructed cool demeanor, began to leaf through
a copy of Country Homes for the Rich.

48

And no doubt, you treated one of them to lunch today? Father asked, his hand already
half-raised to hammer down the guilty verdict.
Now that you mention it yay I do recall taking one of them out today though I cant
remember if it was the same one as yesterday or different.
You were seen in the bar you were being watched. Her fathers voice shook as he
absentmindedly plucked hair from his sideburns.
Everything? Lissy allowed her hand holding the magazine to quiver, nay shudder so
that everyone could see it.
Everything, her father thundered. He wiped his brow in slow motion, and then changed
tack. In a much gentler, coaxing voice he said, look we all know you are a boldadventurous
girl it runs in the family, alas. But thats no reason to get a rash on the rebound. A little
emotional setback doesnt mean we should let our youthful passionsour
hot-bloodednessthe fires in our belly run amok, and we start playing against natures course.
This is what becomes of little girls when you send them to girls-only convents. O
Percival, I told you so! My little baby, Mother moaned and looked like she was about to keel
over and capsize.
With another great heave, Percival continued: What happened to that Humturd who
drifted in that day you arent still seeing him, are you?
Hump- Humbert Lambert, Papa. With his looks heart of pure gold and he was on
rugby scholarship in college fat chance! I guess he must have moved on. He never tried to

49

contact me after the way he was treated here. And I cant find any match in men at least
who can show him dull in comparison.
In retrospect, it seems we were a tad crisp with the boy. He didnt get the hearing he
deserved.
You bet, papa. He was hunting for his car all evening.
Yes, yes, the servants do tend to read a little too enthusiastically into their orders I
shall have to talk to them about it I say. But the boy has promise why in a few years,
Siphonandra assures me she will be ready to pick him as a partner. You must remember we
give them good business each year, and I do have stocks and a say in that company.
Hell never let you influence his standing papa hes a very proud, self-made man.
Yes what a pity an affliction rather. I do wish theyd pay him better, though our
Lissy is used to a certain style.
There is nothing a fat dowry cannot correct no man may object to what parents wish
to bestow upon their daughter, said Mother. But what of his status his standing in society?
He has an uncle, with a drinking habit, Percival said, carefully avoiding Lissys eyes. In
deep debt a pecuniary condition carefully guised from society. His estates could be
purchased, and a title of Lord of the Manor could be transferred to this Huppert.
Mother suddenly became bright eyed and bushy tailed like a squirrel that has discovered
a chest of hickory nuts under the tamped snow. How nice being mother-in-law to a Lord of
the Manor whatever that might mean.

50

What say, Lissy, Percival asked, looking from mother to the only daughter. Should we
call the man, and settle for a date the earliest possible?
What can a girl who is not financially independent, say, Papa dear, when her parents
have already thought out everything for her. I know you mean the best for me so I will go
along with anything you folks say, she said, trying very hard to look the coy, demure wife-to-be,
and not explode with the fireworks that were popping inside of her.

51

Police Blotter |
Two shots reported in the parking lot of the Midnight Special. No suspects were at the
scene when police arrived.
Jennifer ran her hands along the red 1954 Ford pickup truck. On the outside, at least, it
was perfect. The finish shone bright in the sun. All of the chrome was well-polished, and there
wasnt a dent in sight. The windshields and mirrors had all been cleaned, without a streak or
dust speck in sight. Even the tires were brand new, with thick treads. On the outside, at least,
the restoration was perfect.
Two shots reported at 451 Crestwood Rd. Both parties at the scene were taken into
custody.
Her husband had begged her to not even consider it.
Please, no more cars from before you were born, hed begged. Im so tired of you
having to spend half the weekend working on them. Im so tired of them breaking down every
other week. Im so tired of having to bail you out when you dont have a vehicle.
Two shots were fired at the Walmart on Saturday afternoon. The suspect opened fire
after he was unable to make a return on an item. He was taken into custody. No injuries or
fatalities were reported.
Evan had a point, she supposed. Old cars did have a tendency to be a pain in the ass.
They werent always reliable. They needed a lot of attention. (As much attention as, say, an
underemployed husband who didnt seem to realize that the yard had needed to be cut for two

52

weeks now, and that he was probably capable of making his own dinner.) Parts werent always
easy to come by.
Two shots were fired after an assailant with a gun entered Oak Park High School. One
teacher was injured. The suspect was apprehended and taken into custody.
This car, though, had called to her. It wasnt like shed been seeking it out. No, this
wasnt like those other cars, the ones shed searched for, scoured for. She didnt even need a
new car right now, not really. Her old Mustang was doing just fine, all things considered. But it
wasnt exactly practical. Not like a truck.
Sure, there were more practical trucks on the market. Newer ones, with better gas
mileage. Bigger cabs. But they werent like this one.
It wasnt as though shed been spending hours on the Internet seeking this truck out.
Shed just seen it driving down the road. The perfect finish, the shining chrome, had caught her
eye, distracted her so much that she simply started following. Jennifer hadnt even given her
actions a second thought. She just drove down the road, trailing after the beautiful red vehicle
with a For Sale sign conveniently framed in the rear window.
Two shots were fired on Collins Street when a five-year-old who had been playing with
her fathers gun accidentally discharged the weapon. Both parents have been taken into
custody and the child placed with relatives.

53

The inside of the truck was almost as perfect as the outside. Perfect, except for the two
bullet holes in the roof. They were at just the right angle that they were difficult to notice from the
outside, but once inside the cab, there was no denying that something had happened.
It didnt hurt the integrity of the frame, the owner said. Structurally, shes still solid.
Why didnt you have these repaired? Jennifer asked. You put so much work into the
restoration. Why didnt you take care of this?
He shrugged. Would have been more trouble than it was worth. Im not really into
restoration as a job or anything. This was fun. I know someonell buy it, even with the bullet
holes. I wasnt trying to make it perfect. Besides, I kind of like it better this way. Add character.
Independence Bank in Carlton was held up by two gunmen. Each fired one warning
shot. No injuries or fatalities reported. Suspects were apprehended just outside of town.
How did those bullet holes get there, anyway? Jennifer asked.
The owner shrugged. They were there when I found the truck in the salvage yard. No
clue. Probably no way to find out, either. I dont really think about it. How they got there isnt
important, is it? Unless you believe in ghosts, I guess.
All citizens should be reminded about the hazards of picking up hitchhikers. Three
reports have surfaced about two hitchhikers along I-10 who are robbing victims at gunpoint.
Shots were fired in two of the incidents.
As beautiful as the truck was, Jennifer decided not to take it. The price was good, but
even so, shed be buying a truck with bullet holes in the roof. It would have been hard enough to

54

justify the impulse buy to her husband. Holes in the roof werent going to help her if she tried to
plead her case on the grounds of practicality.
Besides, maybe it actually was haunted.
The town of Duval has reported its first ever drive-by shooting. Two rounds were fired
and one fatality reported. No suspects have been apprehended.
As her week went on, however, Jennifer found that whenever she let her mind wander, it
went back to that 1954 Ford. It had been love at first sight, which was more than she could say
about some things in her life.
Sure, shed have to keep it covered when it rained, but its not like that happened very
often. And it did have character. It wouldnt be like any vehicle shed owned before.
More than the truck itself, though, was the story behind it, the story shed never know.
Jennifer found herself at the point of obsession wondering how those bullet holes had gotten
there, and why.
Her husband wouldnt like it. Especially if she didnt even consult him. Hed whine for
days on end.
It occurred to Jennifer that he might even leave if she went through with the purchase.
She shook her head. She had no need for a vintage truck that was going to require
constant TLC to keep it up and running. It was completely impractical. If she really wanted a
truck, there were better ones out there.

55

A couple on Forrest Lane was found dead after an apparent murder-suicide pact
involving a handgun. The incident is still under investigation.
A week after Jennifer had first noticed the red Ford, it drove past her while she was at
the gas station. She craned her neck and saw it still had the For Sale sign in the rear window.
Hurrying to finish up at the pump, she waved the owner down.
Shed waited. Shed tried to resist. But this car was hers. It was meant to be.
The truck rolled to a stop at the curb and the driver rolled down the window.
Change your mind?
Jennifer smiled. I guess so.
The owner winked at her. I knew this truck was yours from the second you pulled into
my driveway. It sure is special. Im glad you finally came around.
As she pulled out her checkbook, Jennifer tried not to think about the showdown that
would happen when she got home.. But shed let her husband take the Dodge Dart on his way
out, and let him keep the damn thing. It was the least she could do..
Authorities are still investing an incident at State College, in which a fraternity initiate
died in a game of Russian roulette in a parking lot off campus. Police reports indicate that there
was in fact one bullet left in the chamber.

56

Getting to Grips with Liathach |

James was surprised when I mentioned I might have a hen party. He knew I was too
sensible to get plastered in some East European capital with an L-plate pinned to my back. But I
fancied summoning my female friends for some ritual bonding. Once I was married, I wouldnt
have such a compelling excuse.
Most of my friends were outdoor types. They had the boots, the backpacks, the rainproof
coats. But I wasnt sure theyd have the stamina for Liathach. I wasnt sure I would myself.
Does it have to be Lee-a-thack? said James. There are hundreds of other Monroes to
choose from.
Years ago, my dad had said it the way James did, his Sassenach tongue challenged by
the slurred Scottish ch. But Id found an audio file on the internet. Its pronounced
Lee-aaarrrchhh. And, yes, it does.
The internet also described the mountain as formidable. Could it really be formidable if Id
conquered it at twelve? I poured myself a glass of Merlot, and phoned my dad.
He assumed my call was about the wedding. Look, Lisa, Id be delighted to be there on
any terms. But Id understand completely if you didnt want me to give you away.

57

My eyes prickled. I was touched by his ready acceptance of his relegation in my

affections. But I knew Id start blubbing if I tried to put it into words. Were not bothering with all
that pomp. Too archaic.
I thought you might have asked Sam. You used to be so close.
Did we? But his reference to my brother provided the perfect preface to what I really
wanted to talk about. Remember that half-term camping in Torridon? Mum had stuff on at work
and it was just us three? I didnt add that before the school year was out hed run off to start a
new family.
Of course I remember. I wrote a story about it.
Twenty years of estrangement had left gaping cavities where my knowledge of my father
should have been. Youre a writer?
Its just a hobby. Im not very good.
Even so. I was twelve again, and he was the kindest, cleverest, handsomest man in the
world. Can I read it?
He hesitated, said hed have to tidy it up before emailing it over, but he sounded pleased.
It wasnt until Id switched off the phone that I realised I hadnt asked whether he thought
Liathach would be too formidable for a bunch of thirty-somethings more accustomed to the
gentler peaks of the Yorkshire Dales.
I stayed up late that night, refreshing my inbox every twenty minutes in the hope of his
name flashing up on my screen. We hadnt established how much time hed need to tidy up his

58

story but, whether as much as a month or as little as an hour, it exceeded my fragile patience.
Underneath the grown woman on the brink of marriage was a preteen girl yearning to have her
father all to herself.
Sunlight shimmering on the lochs, crags scratching the skyline, endless days basking in
his attention. Id happily trade the romance of Paris, the wonder of the pyramids, the thrill of a
safari for another taste of that Torridon trip. And to know that he hadnt forgotten. That, on the
contrary, hed treasured it so much hed written a story about it. Perhaps he hadnt exited our
lives quite as casually as Id assumed.
His story arrived when I least expected it. Although already late for work, I couldnt resist
clicking on the attachment.
Lisa loved being in the mountains
Oh, Dad, how Ive missed you! All these years I wasted thinking you didnt care.
but, since reaching her teens, she especially relished being in the mountains with her
brother, free from parental control.
What? I scrolled down the page, speed-reading for a glimpse of my dad. But hed written
himself out of the story, his only role to deliver his son and daughter to Mrs McTavish whod
keep a motherly watch over them in the B&B. To compound the insult, hed made me complicit
in my own abandonment, the Lisa-character asking for a weekend away without her parents for
her fourteenth birthday treat.

59

I unbuttoned my coat. I couldnt go to work with tears streaming down my cheeks. I told
myself it was make-believe but, if it was, why had he given his teenage characters his real
childrens names? The details he had altered only intensified his betrayal. His Lisa was a couple
of years older than Id been, with a boyfriend back home, whereas the girl whod scrambled up
Liathach was more into horses and hiking than burgeoning romance. My dad had created a
fantasy of his leaving; one in which his departure dovetailed perfectly with his childrens push for
lives of their own.
We dont have to get married, do we?
James looked aghast.
I mean, were happy enough living together. Why tinker with something that isnt broken?
Whats got into you, Lisa?
I couldnt say, couldnt tell him how suspicion had poisoned my heart. Marriage had no
meaning when a man could up sticks without warning to begin again with someone new.
Id made a feeble stab at admitting my disappointment to my dad. Emailing to thank him
for the story, Id expressed surprise it didnt contain more of him. His reply was apologetic, if a
little defensive, but it missed the point. Ive a long way to go before Ill reach Sakis standard, he
said.
Id have to find my sparkle again, or it would be James who wanted to cancel the wedding.
I could do with getting away for a break. Somewhere remote.
Liathach with the girls?

60

Ive gone off that idea. Im thinking of some kind of retreat.

We clustered around the table, pens and pencils poised. My fellow students terrified me
with their talk of point of view and muscular verbs. Even the spotty teenager, who turned
crimson if anyone as much as looked at her, proved zealous on the page. I didnt dare admit I
hadnt written a story since Year Six.
Our tutor was a soft-spoken man in his sixties whose wild hair and grizzled beard made
me think of King Lear. But he was no doddering old fool. He guided us through the basics of
character, conflict, the killer first line. I didnt believe I could concoct any of them, but he inspired
me to have a bash. Just go for it, Lisa. You cant go wrong if you write from the soul.
On the final evening, we were due to read aloud the stories wed composed during the
week. As my turn approached, my stomach churned. I almost tripped over my feet as I made my
way to the front. Stumbling through the opening paragraphs, my hands holding the paper shook
so much I could hardly see the text. I looked up, ready to apologise and flee from the room. But,
serious or smiling, the other students appeared engrossed. The tutor had the look of a father
taking pride in his daughters tentative first steps.
I inhaled deeply and read on. Does it have to be Lee-a-thack? said James. A murmur of
satisfaction spread through the room.
If James were here now, Id tell him it depends whether you mean it literally or not. But
hes just a character in my story and that isnt the next line.

61

Window Watcher |
The empty man sat on the carpeted window ledge at the end of a long hallway flanked
with locked doors. The vivid morning sun poured through his window, lighting a long triangle of
industrial, prison-chique carpet behind him.
He was on the third floor of the Super Sixteen motel. It was a pay-per-week flophouse
for migrant workers staying ten a room and for people like him on their way down the ladder.
He sat with knees hugged to his chest, his right arm and leg pressed against the cold
glass. Somehow, he felt better with that slight pressure on his body, almost reminiscent of the
phantom sensation of a hug as the hugger pulls away.
His breath fogged up the chilled window, and he drew a frowny face. He looked through
the eyeholes, watching the morning commuters struggle tired sheep towards their days trivial
purpose. The Super Sixteen was downhill from the road, making his third floor vantage even
with the cars.
Every two minutes, a mindless traffic light would turn red somewhere, and the cars
would stop in mindless obedience. Now he could get a good, long look at these people who he
once called his own kind. He knew them well.
There was the suburban princess in a too-big SUV with the too-big boobs: she really
wanted a small sports car, but her overbearing wannabe country boy husband had insisted.

62

The next car gave temporary home to the tense immigrant with a death grip on the
steering wheel, regretting for the hundredth time ever leaving the tranquility of his third-world
shithole. A shithole, but at least he was able to breathe there.
Next, his gaze moved to the overweight man in the suit. As he spoke on the phone, he
stuck his hand out the window distractedly so his third cigarette of the morning wouldnt stink up
his German lease. He was talking fast, his Lieutenant Uhura earbud wiggling beside a flushed
cheek. Maybe he was arguing - again - with his wife about forgetting to take his blood pressure
meds. Maybe he was about to fire a slacker in his department who only hit a 20% increase in
profits when 30% was his goal.
There was the twenty-something crusader in a Prius with bumper stickers promoting
sustainable energy and tolerance. One said Atheist Democrat: Working to save our
government from fundamentalist fraud.
Tolerance. The empty man smiled at that one, but not for too long. Smiles never
lasted these days.
The last car caught his attention. A man was weeping: not in that Hollywood way, but
the way real men weep. His face was a frozen mask of pain and tears flowed down his cheeks.
He dabbed his face with a brown fast-food napkin.
The empty man in the window perked up instantly, using his forearm to wipe away the
fog and, with it, the frowny face. Here was a rarity indeed. Another empty man was on the
verge of metamorphosis right before his very eyes. In his brain, a British PBS naturalist was

63

describing this sighting in the same hushed amazement he would have used on a Malaysian
Saturn butterfly.
Here we see the awe-inspiring transformation of the secretive Homo Inanis of North
America. Notice how his protective coloration, his car and clothing, allow him to blend with the
others. But, behaviorally, he is another species indeed. For example, notice the quick glances
left and right. Scientists believe that this indicates frantic thoughts. See this slight variation in
posture due to muscle tension here and here? And this furrowing of the brow is a strong
indicator of the subtype. The exact mechanism of change has eluded scientists; they only know
that when the conditions are right, metamorphosis will occur.
The empty mans stomach lurched in an almost forgotten way. In a rapid firing of dusty
synapses, he saw a younger version of himself sitting in a sensible car, wearing sensible
clothes, sitting at a red light about to puke from the daily piledriver of stress that hit him every
morning as he neared his sensible job. There had always been something desperate about
those last few minutes in the car. He had felt like a trapped badger whose blind instinct made
him pull even harder on the grinding broken bones of his front foot as he saw the man coming
with a wire noose.
Hopeless. Endless sameness of pain without any prospect of relief. Trapped.
His last flashing synapse recalled the day when he had happened to see his reflection in
the glass door as he swiped his security badge. He imagined that men walking to the gallows
had a similar expression.

64

The door beeped, announcing the arrival of another corporate drone. But, that day, he
did not open the door. Instead, he stared for a while at that reflection. Who was this man?
How had this happened?
Through the window, the empty man saw his weeping compatriot look over at him. The
empty man nodded, not using the single chin tilt of the stoic cowboy riding the range alone, but
the multiple nods of encouragement that a teacher gives to a stumbling student who is on the
verge of understanding.
The weeping man nodded back and dug out another brown napkin.
Somewhere the light turned green. The weeping man pulled away.
The empty man sighed with satisfaction. Maybe his weeping countryman would stop at
the reflection in his own office door. Maybe he would turn around, leaving a security badge on
the concrete walkway. Maybe he would drive in a random direction until he ran out of gas.
And when he was at last thoroughly empty, maybe he would finally have a chance to
refill with some other fuel.

65

Eyes |
He shot the duck.
It was an easy target, waddling across the green not far from the pond.
It felt good to have the gun go off in his hand.
Hed never shot anything before.
Itll make me a man, he thought through the sobs that choked his throat and the pain that
closed up his heart, as though he had been the one the pellet hit.
The bang was louder than he thought it would be.
Out, in the nightclub, with the money his dad gave him wadded up in his hand, he looked
around at the other faces, wondering about them.
The thing is, he thought, you cant tell what other people know just by looking at them.
People could say one thing and think another and a person would be none the wiser.
The band was louder than he thought it would be.
If she hadnt died, shed have been sitting at home drinking camomile tea.
Across the green, her house sat empty, while her family decided about what to do with it.
No one would even notice a person living there uninvited.
The house was colder than he thought it would be.
After London, the pub seemed smaller than it used to.
The carpet was worn in a semi-circle around the place you were meant to stand for the
dart board.

66

A dart was a fucking stupid weapon to have in a pub, people drinking, fights breaking out
and a dart, heavy and ready, in his hand.
He wasnt built to stay in a village.
Every eye that watched him was an eye he knew.
He could remember all their faces but he never could tell what they were thinking.
If he broke something here, someone would know, and that old feeling of wishing and
hating would be back.
Out there, it didnt matter. They were still eyes, he knew that. He wasnt daft. But if it
wasnt an eye you knew, it didnt matter if you shut it.
Looking up at the swirls of the artex on the ceiling, he worried that they all hated him.
It troubled him that no one would understand just how hard it had been watching the
duck he shot die.
That was when it all started, he thought. That was the day it all went wrong.
It had been a steady tilt all the way to London and now he was scrabbling against the
gravity which pushed him further under than he would have chosen to go.
He didnt have a suit, so he went as was. It was a mistake, of course. He knew that
before he did it.
He had to stand well back, so no one could see him. It was cold and, for a moment,
before the tears clouded out his vision, he wondered how they had managed to dig.
His hands were jammed into his jeans but the ice still bit.

67

The ground was more solid underfoot than he thought it would be.
And then it hadnt felt so solid. It had felt like he was falling again.
They stood him there all serious. He wanted to snarl, because he could tell they didnt
really care by the way they read through his notes.
He didnt know what to do with his hands. He looked at them and jammed them into his
pockets. He wasnt cold but he was shaking.
They were bored by him. He was just another job to get through and that had helped him
relax. It reminded him of school.
The room was more crowded than he thought it would be.
He didnt want to think about the eyes.
He still talked to her in his head. Even then, she wouldnt take any of his rubbish.
Thats not really true, is it? she asked and he knew she was talking about the duck.
I shot it, he told her, hanging his head, because he didnt want to see her eyes.
I know, she said. Drink your tea.
He chanced a look and wished he hadnt. Her cheeks were white and her lips quivered
as she sipped.
How did you know? he asked. He didnt want to hear at all. It was like his mind was
making him, even though her answer was what he was most frightened of.
Its just the sort of thing youd do, she said, looking away. She seemed to watch the
clock for a long time before she spoke again. Where did you get the gun?

68

He didnt answer, but he couldnt drink his tea either.

He chanced a look and wished he hadnt. Theyd used her full name on the stone, even
though she hated it. Maybe they had to, he thought. M
aybe its the law.
Wheres the gun? she asked, her pale blue eyes clouded with white, blinking away the
moisture that settled there, even when he didnt give her cause to cry.
Safe, he said, his hands jammed into his pockets, his gaze never straying above her
knees.
Safe gun? she asked, her lips twisting into a bitter smile.
Her face was colder than he thought it would be.
It was like a steady tilt all the way into the abyss.

69

If Theres Anything We Can Do | Dave Wisker

She could feel their resentment between her shoulder blades, like a hand itching to
shove her into her husbands open grave. She was half his age, that was true, but they had
never seemed to resent him for being twice hers. What little money he had would go to his
grown son, so it couldnt be that.

The pastor's drone competed with the whine of cicadas in the trees, and she caught
herself drifting, back to their tent on the edge of the prairie and the deafening nighttime
songs he called his lullabies. She mourned their joint field research, now destined to remain
unfinished. Even that was a source of resentment, as if she were some calculating
graduate student, taking advantage of his grief for Alice to get ahead. Had any of that been
true, she at least could have understood it. But these people knew full well she was a bat
expert with a Princeton PhD and her own successful research program long before they
met at that fateful conference.

They resented what they saw as her standoffishness, especially the other field
biologists in the department, who considered her the Yoko Ono who lured away their
camping and drinking buddy with her long blonde hair and slim-hipped sensuality. In
one sense they were right: she adored his hard, rangy body as much as he worshiped
hers. But they somehow missed her admiration of his deep understanding of the

70

ecology of her beloved bats, and how she had dreamed of unlocking their secrets with
him.

She imagined they resented her for having the service outside in this Kansas
heat, but that was what he had wanted. Her black sleeveless dress was already damp
and clingy, and the way it accentuated her understated femininity probably infuriated
them as well. One Saturday morning his son and daughter-in-law used their key to
make an unannounced visit, and caught him asleep and her in the kitchen, making
coffee in her underwear. The daughter-in-law had been chilly to her ever sinceshe
must have noticed her husband's lingering gaze. The two of them stood on the opposite
side of the grave, inscrutable behind dark glasses.

Some resented the fact he had loved her so fiercely; his late wifes colleagues in
the English department certainly did. That he chose a biologist for his second wife was,
somehow, an insult to his first. He had felt that disapproval too, but the tough-guy field
ecologist in him absorbed it without rancor.

Alice would have been happy for us, he told her once, as they drank whiskey
before a campfire. She believed the human capacity for love is infinite.

Im not trying to take her place, she said, knowing he believed her.

71

She longed to be curled up with him in the bed of his old truck at dawn, watching
her bats return to their cave from the hunt. Or inside the cave, standing together in pitch
darkness as fifty thousand of them swirled about their heads without ever touching, like
dark tiny angels.

She wobbled in her heels on the uneven grass, wishing she had eaten breakfast.
The pastor paused, concerned, but she let him know she was fine with a small shake of
her head. The service was about him, not her; nothing should have been about her, and
yet it was, and the tears came because she knew he would have been furious over their
treatment of her, when he should have been at peace.

She dreaded what came next: the solemn masks of concern, the sorrow for her
loss, and the variations on the same empty sentiment:

If there's anything we can do--.

His humble casket lay at the bottom of the grave, alone and forlorn, as he had
been when they met. Why was it so hard for them to acknowledge she had, at the very
least, eased his loneliness? She bent down and threw in a handful of dirt.

Yes, there is something you can do, she wanted to say:

72

Pull me back. Grab my dress and pull me back from the edge. Give me a reason,
any reason, not to join him.

73

Doughy Sticky Things | Katrina Johnston

A yeasty temptation surrounds Eleanor Tomasin. Her legs ignore her brain's
command to move. Thick and delicious smells intensify while she fills her lungs. Not allowed,
she says. And her words are a quiet rumble of complaint, admonishing herself as she's done on
countless good-intentioned days. I could die.
The bakery is located behind the scenes at Russet's Marketplace. All sorts of
customers, including residents from the downtown core and from the distant suburbs routinely
travel extra miles just to shop at Russet's. The market has a trendy reputation and a huge
amount of choice, especially at the bakery. Eleanor lives close enough to walk. She has always
considered this a fortunate convenience. Perhaps it isn't?
The famous butter buns and the sugared scones are now her enemies. Eleanor
could cry. She should ignore the display of double chocolate cakes. But 'shoulds' are meant to
be reconsidered. There's a cloud of warm and sticky everywhere.
Her blood tests say it's true. Diabetes, type two; severe complications. Pancreatic
function has been shown at levels worrisome for both the doctors and for Eleanor. She's walking
the tightrope of a physical uncertainty, her longevity no longer promised.
It's worse because of high levels of the evil kind of cholesterol and the elevated
blood pressure. Her family doctor has duly advised Eleanor that she must immediately change
her diet.

74

Your blood markers could be realigned, the volunteer clinic coordinator told her
when the woman phoned to convey the test results. You must consistently restrict your intake.
Take the cholesterol medication and inject a special type of insulin. We're temporarily out of
stock. Have to order it. Two days. Then you're back in here to collect your new supply.
Understand?
Here at Russet's Marketplace, Eleanor shrugs her shoulders as if she's casting
off an itchy sweater. She expects a massive coronary, possibly in a few months, maybe
tomorrow? It's just not fair! She loves to eat. Who doesn't?
Under the bright lights, the goodies are indifferent. But they're beautifully laced
with translucent frost, or drizzled with a buttery maple cream. Eleanor understands that it's not
going to be easy to ignore the bakery every single time she ventures out for groceries.
Buy us! The cookies seem to call. Own us. Carry us home. The jammy rolls are
mute but tempting. Unwrap the tarts! The tea buns advise her to separate each doughy puck
from the generous packages. Release the cakes from plastic domes. Demolish pecan pies.
Discard the twisty ties and wrappings. Dump the muffin trays. Leave no crumb. No one needs to
know that she's weakened and purchased a large quantity and then retreated into herself and
sought the secrecy of home for one more glorious binge.
The butter buns are her favourite. Up until a few days ago the rich morsels had
been her soul's truest friends. Such comfort in consuming doughy, sticky things.

75

Her husband Henrik? The man she looks to for support and the guy who has
blatantly broken his vows? Get real. What did she expect? After more than three decades of
their marriage, she knows him well.
Continuing to wander through the massive bakery section, she envisions demon
hands clutching at her stomach. Eleanor halts and dreams. Her body is poised, but dutifully
resisting. Her mind is racing while temptation tortures. Mercy. She's never felt so strange.
Eleanor grabs a kleenex to smooth away any possibility that she may be drooling.
Henrik had promised to be faithful but he didn't even manage two consecutive
days before expressing infidelity. She's pretty sure that he's never managed to fool around with
another woman. No, not that sort of infidelity. She's seen him try those things very early on in
the marriage.
Social attempts at flirting always garnered firm rejections for Henrik. Other
women did not factor then nor now. Of this, Eleanor is certain.
But, he promised.
He swore that he would not go behind her back and buy the contraband, but she
knows that he did, and he's already consuming in secret without a thought of sharing or respect
for her. He arrived home late last night after going God knows where. He'd likely found a new
source. Maybe he'd plundered from the corner store? She'd gone out for an evening stroll, found
him idling at Oakwood Park. He was sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper, his hand

76

inside a paper bag, his jaws busy. Such an intimate betrayal. She turned away and hurried
home before he'd had a chance to notice her.
Eleanor cherishes food memories of her own heady consummations of anything
and everything. One more time?
Not if she wants to live to see her unborn grandchildren, the precious babes who
are as yet unplanned and not conceived because no one's expecting. It's just Eleanor and
Henrik who are unfulfilled. And they're waddling through retirement. Her 32-year-old daughter
and her son-in-law must ramp up the action. Eleanor wants to insist that they have sex
frequently; get real busy. Fine. But that would mean she's meddling. She may not make it much
longer to realize her Grandma dreams.
She figures she should probably carry on with shopping, but she falters between
the tea scones and the English muffins, expanding her lungs for one last wishful inhalation that
could prove to be her last. I could die, she says into the air once again.
She nods her chin at the richly slathered cinnamon buns. The enticement
becomes aggravating. Eleanor begins to sweat profusely. Cinnamon buns are repulsive. She
states the words defensively, disbelieving, but she's trying.
She must be diligent. Could develop retinopathy, renal failure or a heart attack.
Just this one more go. I might...? Yeah, one teensy time. I could limit my total amount,
counteract with Brussels sprouts. I could stop after only a few bites? If only I could.... Like, I
could start by being extra good, oh sometime tomorrow. I should.... Oh, Hell!

77

Henrik promised. They would tackle the new restrictive dieting as a pair. Simple,
right? Each would eat sensibly and each would help one another to prepare the prudent,
saltless meals consisting of protein and leafy greens. He was all on board and determined to
follow her new diet just as she must do it. Promised.
Hypocrite!
The urgent phone call had come but three days prior to all this strangeness. It
was the volunteer medical coordinator, Anna Goddard. And she had spelled out in no uncertain
terms. You're not in very good shape Mrs. Tomasin. The lab report verifies an urgent status.
Eleanor was then instructed to report back into the clinic for a further
consultation and to pick-up the supply of liquid insulin once they had it stocked. That next
appointment was scheduled for the day after tomorrow. Eleanor would be taught how to inject
herself. The pills alone, Anna Goddard had emphasized, were not enough. It's only an interim
measure. Oral insulins won't cut the sugar levels well enough. You'll have to haul yourself back
in here when the liquid arrives. Then we'll have much more to do and more to talk about.
A week ago, before they'd even ventured to the clinic it was supposed to be a
routine checkup Eleanor's strategy had required a lot of arm twisting to convince Henrik to
come along. It was overdue. They would go together. He had not been to visit a doctor in over a
decade. Although he'd balked and complained and took an eon and half to get ready, Henrik
came along. She'd often worried about his expanding girth.

78

Not a thing wrong with me, Henrik shared this opinion with whomever would
listen. And he had chatted easily with the other patients in the waiting room, and then the nurse,
the receptionist, and the doctor. I'm in perfect form.
My husband has a healthy appetite, Eleanor said. But.... Well, I've told Henrik
that he'd better punch another hole into that favourite belt of his. Sometimes he's gasping for
breath when he walks or he bends, or he does some simple chores.
No real worries, Henrik said. I've got stretchy pants. Henrik sputtered with his
usual guffaw, laughing heartily in front of the ultra thin and fine-boned Doctor Davidson. Henrik
turned away from Eleanor, chuckling and wheezing: I've earned myself this fine spare tire.
What do you expect for a guy who's in his mid 60s? Everyone has got to give a little. I'm
expansive, not expensive.
I see that you're going to be turning 67 as of May 15, Doctor Davidson said to
Henrik.
Henrik examined his bitten and ragged finger nails. Getting up there. That is
true, he said.
And you, Eleanor... you'll be, uh let's see.... And the doctor consulted another
file she assumed it was hers flipping through several pages. Sixty-four in two months time?
Is that accurate?

79

She'd beamed her best smile into Doctor Davidson's concerned blue eyes. He
had a quizzical expression that held her gaze for an unnerving moment. I'm forever a youthful
and a happy thing, she said, her lower lip stretched tightly against her teeth.
When they were both finished, Henrik and Eleanor went out of the clinic together,
just one more overweight old married couple. And Eleanor had to acknowledge right then and
there that she too had the issue of an expanding waistline. However, when she compared
herself to Henrik she felt positively small.
They'd gone for the blood work at the Metro Labs, waited over an hour to see the
vampire tech who withdrew numerous vials of blood. Eleanor looked away when the needle was
pushed into her vein and she continued staring elsewhere until it was withdrawn, willing herself
not to swoon.
Almost three days of blissful ignorance ensued until Eleanor picked up the
telephone.
You've got to drink a lot of water, Anna Goddard cautioned her. Fill the
prescriptions for the oral dosages. The pharmacist will deliver an emergency supply. Take all
the medications as prescribed. There's a lengthy pamphlet explaining your diet. Read it
carefully, especially the do's and don'ts.
Dark green leafy things and a quantity of Brazil nuts was permitted. Imagine that?
Eleanor does not prefer Brazil nuts. Pecans maybe? Cashews also. She agreed to weigh her
meal portions and monitor her levels.

80

After Eleanor had finished speaking with the clinic volunteer, and she'd hung up
the phone, she found Henrik on the couch. I think it's gonna be like... like asking an alcoholic to
survive on three sensible glasses of bourbon every day. She sighed. They don't know what
bread and cheese really means to me.
Yeah, it won't be easy honey bun.
Don't call me honey bun.
Henrik moved over. She sat down beside him. He snuggled in, tightly squashing
his ample legs against her own. He patted her shoulders while he said: I'm all here for you
babe. I am with you. For better or for worse.
Back to reality.
Emptiness. She orders herself to shut up and to carry on with the grocery
shopping, but she fails to progress to the produce. Eleanor looks behind her. No one, she
hopes, has overheard her scolding the cinnamon buns. If they did, they might think that Eleanor
had gone mad. And she reconsiders the terms of mental illness schizophrenia, bipolar and
other imaginative concerns that may explain binge eating.
When she finally pushes past the bread, she confronts the deli. Cheese is now
verboten. Really? It's only cheese, she says to herself, mourning quantities of monterey and
yellow cheddar.

81

If only Eleanor could be allowed to consume one single package, she could feast.
If only I hadn't gone to the 48th Avenue Clinic in the first place. It was supposed to be yearly
check, a physical with the tiresome nag about healthy lifestyle.
She hates the thought of needles; holds onto the aversion of actually injecting
herself. Maybe Henrik could volunteer to do it? No, he's chicken and a bit of a klutz.
The grey tiled flooring at Russet's is immaculate. She makes her decisions at the
produce. The hothouse tomatoes are fat. The carrot bunches look crisp and bright, like they're
neon. She walks around a stack of navel oranges artfully skirted by green peppers. Eleanor
trembles as she squints beneath the unnatural lights. What else? String beans? She's not
craving string. But she grabs an iceberg lettuce, a bundle of chives, and a tiny jar of
mayonnaise, reading the label to ensure the glucose amounts fall within the ranges for
permitted condiments.
Bunches of organic kale tangles of cilantro. The prices are outrageous, like
rockets to the moon. Only the wealthiest of people can afford to shop at Russet's. Eleanor
reaches into her pocket to ensure the forty dollars remain. Eating thin will be tough. Yeah, that's
a given. She hefts an avocado. This one single item this wrinkled, blackened thing is it
veggie or a fruit will dent her budget seriously. Eleanor puts the avocado back.
Henrik thinks that nothing should change. He likes the way they've cooked and
previously eaten meals and that they've always relished the doughy joys of breads and cakes.

82

They've each indulged in binging habits for years and years; generous sweets and coffee
crumbles and pies and cookies. He loves these things just as much as Eleanor.
Henrik doesn't share the diet requirement, at least not physically, but he's agreed
to share the burden.
Except she finds him again. He's dawdling outside, spread-out on that same
damn park bench, his hand inside a bag of Krispy Kremes.
What are you so excited about? Henrik says. I'm not exactly bringing donuts
home to aggravate you, or to wreck your plans or anything.
Darn right. Eleanor picks up the bag and tosses it into a shallow ditch. She
eases herself along the embankment and steps gingerly down upon the grass and mud where
the bag has landed. She squashes the bag with the heel of her left foot.
Don't you think that's, well, sort of... like... overkill? Henrik says. The sound of
his wheezing makes his voice warble. You could have chucked it into the garbage bin.
You'd retrieve it.
Huh?
If uncontaminated, like if the bag stayed clean enough, you'd still be stuffing.
And your point?
You're supposed to be supportive.
Henrik repositions his buttocks and begins to stare beyond her to the horizon.
Well, maybe I am. Maybe I will try. Okay? You're not the boss. He is fascinated by the distant

83

privet hedge. Okay, I'll try harder if that's what you really want like if that will make you
happy.
Eleanor's cell phone starts buzzing inside her pocket.
The voice is faint. It's the volunteer clinic coordinator Anna Goddard. The
woman is sputtering. There's a tone of apology and then she starts again. Through eruptions of
static Eleanor asks Anna Goddard to repeat her words. Eleanor moves away from Henrik.
Uh, there's been a terrible, uh, confusion, and it's been compounded by an awful
clerical mistake, the woman says. It is not Mrs. Tomasin who's got the drastic levels and the
worrisome evidence of an acute diabetes.... Uh, it's actually M
r. Tomasin. I'm so sorry for this
shocking mistake. The lab made a horrible blunder.
And Eleanor continues breathing. She steps further away until she's well beyond
Henrik's ability to eavesdrop upon her side of the conversation. He's still sitting on the bench,
staring far away towards the green bushes edging to the sky.
Will your husband be able to come to see us on Tuesday; sharp, at 8:00 a.m?
It's very urgent. Don't let him eat those sugary things, or any heavy or refined carbohydrates. No
bread or cakes. Definitely no candy or ice cream. Drink lots of water in the interim. The diet that
you've been prescribed... is for him. He must comply.
Double, triple damn, Eleanor says quietly into the phone. He doesn't know a
thing.

84

Eleanor starts planning her next visit to Russet's Marketplace where she'll
purchase at least three packages of those lovely buttery, doughy buns and a plentiful quantity of
orange and yellow cheeses, not sharing with her husband. Not just yet.

85

Abracadabra |
I light a joint on my sisters front steps. Its dark enough out, dusk really, so its
okay. Im by myself. Like I said. Its okay.
I get a few puffs in when a car pulls into the driveway. I hide the joint between
my legs, until I see its only the magician, and I take another drag.
The magician hops out of his car. From his trunk he pulls out a portable table
and a hefty pouch. Hes goofy-looking, this guy. What with his bright red shirt and black vest.
Typical cheese.
He walks up the sidewalk and says, Sorry Im late. Traffic was a nightmare.
I extend the joint towards him. Im feeling charitable, among other things.
Just go around back? he asks, ignoring my generosity.
I nod. He heads down the driveway and I shout, Whats in your routine today?
The magician turns around. Excuse me?
Are you going to make a handkerchief disappear with a fake thumb tip? What
about levitating using the Balducci method? Oh, I know. The old cups and balls routine.
The magician stops. He puts down his table. His smirk tells me he wants to put me in
my place.
I beat him to the punch and tell him, I can do magic, too.

86

I hold the joint in the corner of my mouth so I can take a dollar bill from my wallet. I show
that both hands are empty, and after folding the bill over three times, I make a quarter slide out
of the dollar.
I suggest practicing in front of a mirror, the magician says on his way to the backyard.
It might help your technique.
The joint burns itself out on my lower lip. I chuck it into Loraines flowerbed and
scrape some dirt over it. My migraine has only gotten worse. I regret thinking a joint could fix
everything.
I return to the backyard and find a seat next to my wife, the one who told me I
woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Those were her actual words. Wrong side
of the bed. This coming from an English major. What do you say to that?
Taryn leans over to me, and for once I think shes being spontaneous and giving me a
kiss.
Jesus, Charlie, she whispers, her nose working me over. Did you have to?
So much for love.
Relax, I assure her. Nobody saw a thing.
But you reek. Taryn retrieves the Binaca from her purse and captures me with a cloud
of spearmint. Go jump in the pool or something.
My niece Julie and her friends run past our table in a game of tag. The boy
trailing behind stops to spray us with his Super Soaker. The water hits me in the face.

87

Something needs to be done here. Something by way of discipline. Let a kid off the
hook and hell run all over you. Any dummy knows that. I look for the little shits mother and
father, but all I find is laughter.
I turn my attention to the magician setting up his table. I almost feel bad for the
guy, having to lower himself to silly party tricks after dedicating years to his craft. But then I
remember how much my sister is probably paying him, and I dont feel so bad anymore.
After Loraine finishes making the rounds with her guests at the overflow table,
she drags me over to the inflatable bounce castle. She wants to know if Im having a good time.
Why wouldnt I be? I ask.
The game of tag dissolves once Julie darts into the castle. Loraine and I are
nearly stampeded to death by raging bodies in need of a little escape from gravity.
You just dont look like you want to be here, my sister says over the roar of the
air blower.
I take a good look at the kids throwing their bodies around and I realize my sister
is right.
Im fine. Honest. After a pause, I ask, Hows Simon?
The partners called him into the office today for some last minute deposition
prep.
Bummer.

88

Loraine goes on, Speaking of Simon, one of his friends is a loan officer. Actually
you might remember him. Jimmy Lizardi. He graduated St. Joes a year after you.
I dont know these people.
Anyways, Simon has been doing some pro bono work for him and Jimmy told Simon his
bank is introducing a new loan for people interested in artificial insemination.
I start walking away. Were done here.
She grabs my elbow and reels me back. The W
all Street Journal just did a
piece on these loans. Theyre getting a lot of traction.
No.
I know how hard it is for you two with money being so tight, but I want you to
look at the interest rate. Its to die for.
Inside the castle, two kids bump their heads. Julie tries consoling her friends but
the cries persist. None of the parents seem to care.
No, Loraine.
Is that all you can say? No, Loraine?
Taryn and I will have a child when were both good and ready.
You mean when y oure good and ready. Then she adds, Can you please think
of Taryn for once?

89

I walk away from the castle gyrating in every direction before my migraine
completely incapacitates me. I start clapping my hands loud and fast. Lets see some magic, I
shout.
The magician checks his props one last time. He then gives Loraine the
thumbs-up.
Time for a magic show, everyone, my sister announces by the poolside. Once
the kids assemble in front of the magicians table, Loraine waves her arm and says, Get ready,
boys and girls, to be mystified by the Amazing Angelo.
The magician peers over his audience with an austere expression fit for the Met,
not a birthday party. The kids dont know how to take his prolonged silence, and their
anticipation quickly turns to unease.
Angelos face slowly contorts into alarm and the kids are ready to explode, until
he coughs and a red sponge ball appears in his mouth.
Relief washes over the children as Angelo takes sponge ball after sponge ball out
of his mouth.
For his next trick, Angelo brings out a small test tube. He drops a pencil inside,
and with a sprinkle of magic dust, the pencil starts to levitate.
Look at the string coming out of his mouth, I tell the parents while the pencil
dances over the heads of the children.

90

Youll have to excuse my brother, everyone, Loraine says from behind her giant
wine glass. Charlie spent his entire childhood pretending he was the next David Copperfield.
A friend of my sisters asks, Did you ever make the Statue of Liberty disappear?
The entire table besieges me with their laughs. I turn to Taryn for backup, but
she can barely suppress a grin from behind a bag of Tostitos. Some wife.
The show continues with one predictable effect after another. The flowers,
juggling, and balloon animals do little to restore my faith in this performer. But its his
hyperkinetic movements and rubber face that drives me to the point where I cant take it
anymore. This isnt magic. Its perverse. An abomination to magicians everywhere. I get
wrapped up so tight that the only elixir I can think of to end my suffering is in my glove
compartment.
After I stand up to escape to my car, Angelo shouts, Ah, yes. You sir. He steps
over his audience and grabs my wrist. You will make a most excellent assistant.
Pick someone else, Houdini, I tell the great Angelo. I need to use the john.
His grip is lock-tight. It would take the most talented of escape artists to wiggle
out of his clutch, and I dont even try.
The magician then plucks my niece from the crowd and says, The birthday girl can be
our second assistant.
Once the two of us arrive to the poolside, Angelo gets on one knee and asks my
niece, When you look at this poor man right here, what do you see?

91

Julie twirls her hair. My uncle?

The parents laugh and Angelo goes on, But what do you see on the inside?
Julie takes a moment to think and then answers, Guts?
More laughter from the crowd. Angelo continues, Do you know what I see? I
see someone who could use a little magic in his life.
Angelo reaches into his pouch and pulls out two pieces of tissue paper, one pink
and the other yellow. He hands them both to my niece and tells her, I want you to tear up this
tissue paper into as many pieces as you can.
While Julie destroys the paper, Angelo hands me a red velvet bag and a magic
wand and says, I want you to hold this bag and believetruly believe for once in your lifethat
you possess the ability to alter the laws of nature.
Angelo then steps back. Birthday girl, please drop your torn pieces into your
uncles bag.
Julie does as shes told.
The magician then orders me, I want you to wave the wand over the bag, reach in, and
pull out whatever you find inside.
Seeing me in the spotlight turns my wife into a bundle of nerves. She sits on the
edge of her chair, ravaging her fingernails. She cant bear to see me fail.

92

I play nice only for the sake of my niece and reach into the velvet bag. When my
initial sweep turns up empty, I dig deeper. My fingers finally discover something at the very
bottom of the bag. I pull out a clump of paper that Angelo quickly snatches from my hand.
Ladies and gentlemen, he says while slowly unraveling the tissue paper, this
shlub right here really can do magic.
Not only are the pink and yellow pieces restored but they are in the shape of a
little girls bonnet. The kids scream wow and let me see. The parents clap in delight.
I lean into Angelo and say to him, Tell me the secret.
What secret?
Dont play dumb with me. Tell me how you did it.
He whispers back, I didnt do anything. You had my magic. Remember?
Angelo takes bow after bow. He then looks up and notices the dejection on my
face. This might cheer you up. He puts the bonnet on my head and says to the audience,
Doesnt our assistant look lovely.
I rip off the bonnet and toss it on the ground. I make sure to trample it with my
feet before retreating to my seat.
Taryn snatches the wand from my hands. How does this thing work? she asks.
Its just plastic, I tell her.
Someone at the table yells, Why dont you wave it over her belly so she gets
pregnant already.

93

Great idea, Loraine shouts.

Taryn pulls up her t-shirt and exposes her pale, flat stomach. Im quickly losing
control.
This is fucking stupid, I say.
Someone else shouts, It wont work without a magic word.
Like hocus pocus, Loraine says.
Or alakazam.
Taryn gets all excited. No. No. No. I got it. Abracadabra.
Say it, Charlie.
Cmon, Charlie. Say the magic word.
I no longer have the will to resist. I wave the wand over Taryns stomach.
Abracadabra, I say, the words trembling from my lips.
Im about to ask my wife if we can call it a night but shes not paying me any
attention.

Shes too busy rubbing her belly, waiting for my magic to kick in.

***

94

Wings |
Leta stood next to a carton of vinegar and water douche. On any other occasion, she would
have dreaded the possibility that someone she knew might see her stacking feminine cleanser.
Today, however, her eyelids hung heavy and her mind lay lifeless, too tired to care. Holding a
price tagger repaired with duct tape, she mustered all of her strength, tagged a box, and placed
it on the shelf. Once in motion, she paid little attention to the careless stack she created.
She bit her quivering lip, knowing there was no honor in her suffering, no growth that would
come from her sadness, and no relief in her hate. Her decision to give up her scholarship had
been her own. Though her mothers cancer had returned at the most inopportune time, there
was no one but herself to blame for her choice.
Shed just grabbed a new box from the carton when something pressed against her back. Not
from the outside but from the inside, as though someone was trapped and trying to escape. She
paused, her shoulders tightening, her hair lifting on her nape and arms, and wondered if shed
at last begun to hallucinate, if sleep deprivation had finally gotten the best of her. The pressure
increased, a set of hands moving up and down, stretching her skin. She dropped the box of
douche and the tagger, which broke into two, and reached behind her back to seek the culprit,
her heart beating so heavily, it bruised her chest.
Praying shed find nothing at all, her body twisted like a rope and her skin heated. In her panic,
time stopped, erasing all other worries, her mind focused only on what was happening to her
body.

95

Hey, you okay? Jen, a coworker, had appeared in the aisle and was now walking curiously
toward Leta, her brows wrinkled with concern.
The pressure on Letas back lessened until it disappeared altogether. Leta stopped her wiggling
and picked up the broken tagger. Yeah, she panted. I think I just had a bug or something up
my shirt.
Jen shook her head at the tagger. Piece of shit. Guess you dont have to stack these anymore.
She nodded in the direction of the douche.
Leta shrugged. Im sure weve got another one somewhere.
Jen picked up the box Leta had dropped and tossed it into the carton. The bangles on her wrist
rattled and the heart-shaped tattoo on the side of her neck stretched, making it look like an
unfortunate birth mark. Hey, did you see the lady with the plastic hood on her head? She put
cough syrup and Twizzlers into her purse. Id never tell Jerry, though. Somehow hed make it my
fault, you know?
Leta rolled her eyes, understanding all too well, and was about to empathize when something
like a bee stung her back. She jumped, expecting further discomfort, but the pain did not linger.
Rather, it came and went as quickly as a doctors shot. Stranger still, Leta did not feel or hear
the buzz of wings. Regardless, she slapped her back several times, thinking she might squash
the damn thing.
Let me see. Jen motioned for Leta to turn around.
Leta reluctantly obeyed and lifted her shirt.

96

Nothing there. It must have gotten away.

Do you see any marks?
Nope. Looks good.
Pulling her shirt down, Leta stretched it as far as it would go and wrapped her arms tightly
around her chest. Thanks. I was probably just imagining it or something.
Still half full, Leta dragged the carton of douche back to the storage room, grabbed a stack of
broken down boxes, and entered the alley through the break room. After tossing the boxes into
the dumpster, she stared at two pigeons picking at someones discarded lunch and took several
deep breaths, hoping they would revive her. But the air tasted of rotten food and piss, and she
became nauseous.
Jerry poked his head out of the door, his acne-scarred face creased into a scowl. Hey, I need
you at the register.
Leta wiped away a tear. Okay, Ill be right there.
Jen was grabbing her Snickers and Coke from her locker when Leta entered the building.
Im out of here, Jen said, glancing at Leta.
Alright.
Youve barely said a word today.
Im just tired. Its okay.
Jen gave Letas arm a gentle squeeze. Well, Ill see you tomorrow. Call me if you need
anything.

97

The register seemed miles away, and Leta drifted toward it, struggling to feel Jens comfort.
Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only thing Leta felt was numb. And
she was tiredvery, very tired.
Shed spent the night trying to lose herself in a bookthe only escape she hadand had read
through to the last page just as morning came. Although Jen was her closest friend at work, she
wouldnt understand the need to bury oneself in a story about a life so far from ones own. And
Leta didnt want to explain why she needed the breakhow abandoning the scholarship
destroyed her and how the heavy breathing in the room next door haunted her.
With no customers in line, Leta allowed her eyes to shut. Her body and mind embraced the
darkness, a heavenly sensation that pulled her deeper into its chasm.
Leta, we have customers in here. Jerrys six-foot frame hovered over her. His nostrils flared
and his hand waved above him, indicating the customers.
Leta tried to swallow but couldnt. Her mouth was dry like sandpaper. Sorry, Jerry. I was just
catching a minute.
Well, dont catch it here. He brushed the lint off his vest, the smiley face sticker on his name
tag mocking her.
She ground her teeth as her anger heated.
You know my mom is sick. How can you talk to me as if she werent?
Jerry glanced at the clock on the register. Youve got two more hours. Then you can go home
and sleep all you want. Capisce?

98

His words jumbled, and she stared vacantly at him before he spun around and walked off, his
legs stiff and his shoulders awkwardly held upon his back.
Hey, she said to middle-aged woman wearing too much makeup and mustered a pathetic
smile. Then she dragged a pack of gum, birthday cards, and mascara across the scanner,
thinking that the lack of stimulation at the drug store would eventually kill her. Worse, with hours
that dragged like dripping honey, she had plenty of time to hear her mothers words over and
over again.
Im not going to spend the remainder of my life angry. Her mothers face had stiffened and her
teeth had clenched. You will go to college, and you will stop worrying about me. Ill be fine. Her
fury had been too much, and she leaned over, grabbing at her side and inhaling deeply. When
shed regained her strength, she picked up a hardbound book and threw it against the wall. The
books dry spine snapped and several pages broke free. I wont let you stay here and watch me
die.
Having lost the ability to craft emotion, Leta now struggled to describe how she felt.
Disappointment was too weak, sadness insufficient, and resentfulness inaccurate. If she could
blend them together into a super word, she might finally be able to express the crumbling of her
world, which left her crushed like a junkyard car.
At the drug store, Leta rung up everything from pantyhose, chips, and cough drops. She moved
robotically, each customer stealing an ounce of her dignity until she was left a shell, aching for

99

the life shed lost. She had just bagged a bottle of Pantene 2-in-1 and a dozen ribbed condoms
when Jerry came to the register, pulled her aside, and whispered in her ear.
Leta, your mothers nurse called. You need to go home right now.
Letas fingers turned cold and her vision blurry.
Go, child, a voice hummed.
She looked around, unable to find the source. I cant. Her brave pretense floated away like
dandelion seeds. She was frightened down to her bones.
Here, let me help. Jerry put an arm around her and led her to the break room, where, in a
daze, she grabbed her bag. Feeling as though her feet were shackled, she headed out the back
door and toward home.
Once she reached her stoop, nausea roared in like a river and she leaned over, her lunch
coming up in heaves. Her throat burned and her abdomen pulsed, and she choked three more
times, thinking there was more substance to purge. As she wiped the fluid from her mouth, a
boy walked by, scrunching his face at her. Leta wanted to slap him, but held back, knowing full
well it would solve nothing. She struggled up the stoop, unlocked the front door, and stared at
the flight of stairs ahead of her, feeling as though it were Everest. She lumbered, one step after
the other, and when she reached her apartment, her hand shook so terribly, she was barely
able to turn the knob.
Unnerving silence greeted her, and she stopped, her spine shaking like someone had reached
in and grabbed it, the sensation as strange as the pressure and the sting shed felt earlier. Leta

100

squirmed, but the more she moved, the more her spine rattled, as though it had come loose
from its hinges. She cried out in pain and frustration, but a voice interrupted her.
She had already passed by the time I arrived. It seemed to be very peaceful. The nurse was
dressed in pink scrubs and sat in the kitchen, her back stiff and upright, her hands folded upon
the table. You can go see her if youd like.
Leta stiffened, putting her spine back where it belonged, took a deep breath, and followed the
nurses glance.
The silhouette of a small woman, still as rock, lay on the bed. A blue blanket was pulled up to
her chin and tucked under her sides. The depth of Letas grief threatened her, made her want to
scream. It bore into her, and she wished a giant wave would rush in and wash her away. She
did not cry, but bit her lip, every part of her burning and melting into waste.
Leta pulled up a chair and took hold of her mothers hand, which was already turning cold. Her
mothers mouth was slack, tension at last gone. Leta laid her head upon her mothers thigh and
began to sob as though she could fill a pond in which to drown herself.
She did not know how long she sat there, but when she emerged from the bedroom, the nurse
was still sitting at the kitchen table.
Come, sit. The nurse gestured toward a chair.
Leta sunk into it, and as she did, a jolt of electricity shot up her back. She jumped in her chair,
and as suddenly as the sensation had come, it was gone.
I need to tell you something. The nurse pointed to a plastic bag that lay on the table.

101

Inside were three of her mothers empty pill containers. She had dozens at any time, many of
which were full of pills used to dull the pain, and Leta was unsure what had made the nurse
save these.
Leta, these are empty.
So. Another jolt rippled up Letas spine, and she winced.
I refilled them for your mother just yesterday. The pills were supposed to last the week. But,
when I showed up today, they were gone.
Leta wrapped her arms around herself, trying to grab hold of her heart. It seemed to rise into her
throat, making her pulse painful. She thought of the tagger and its rhythm, breathing in with one
click and out with another. She imagined the movement from carton, to hand, to shelf, and her
heart sunk back into place, her breath steadying.
The nurse placed a hand on her shoulder, her eyebrows rising. You understand what this
means, dont you? Your mother still had some time left. She could have lasted longer.
Leta rubbed her closed eyelids with the tips of her fingers and shuddered when she tried not to
sob.
The nurse leaned back into her chair and pulled a folded white piece of paper from her pocket.
Theres one more thing. She handed it to Leta.
It took a mere moment to know what it washer scholarship offer.
Turn it over, the nurse instructed.

102

On the back was a note written in shaky script, the remains of her mothers elegant and
beautiful handwriting. Leta tightened her grip but could no longer feel the paper in her hand. It
was as if it were an apparition, as though this whole day had been a dream.
Leta, it said. Remember me as I was, and I will dream of you. And please, use your wings to fly.
Leta lifted her head from the note and sat up straighter, her back tingling with pins and needles.
She responded by pulling off her tee-shirt and unhooking her bra. Glancing over her shoulder,
she discovered that her skin was covered with small bumps. She ran a hand over them, and as
she did, her skin burst open, relief washing over her like sun after a storm. She did not gasp or
cry out but savored the feeling, which came like a slow building orgasm.
The nurse stood and backed against a wall, her eyes wide and her hands covering her mouth.
Leta could care less about her. The nurse might as well not have existed at all.
The tips of feathers emerged, growing into swan-like plumes. Thin bones grew from Letas
vertebrae, and between them, thin, veiny skin spread like spilled milk. Once Leta had her wings
in full, she let go, crying out in delight, life at last returning to her. She batted them, bringing
wind into the apartment. Papers lifted and dust swirled. She turned to face her mothers room
and saw a frail shadow in the doorway.
Leta squinted. Mom?
The shadow dissolved, specks of grey floating into dozens of different directions. Leta ran to
catch some, but her hands came away empty, her wings folding open and close.

103

They were twice as large as she was, and thick. They appeared heavy, but to Leta they were as
light as autumn leaves. She batted them faster, her feet lifting from the ground. Her mind and
body came alive, and she finally found words to describe how she feltexhilarated, free,
euphoric. She kicked off her shoes and pulled off her socks, her toes left to dangle in the
breeze.
The specks of grey swirled into a small tornado, knocking over chairs and blowing Letas dark
hair into her eyes. It floated to the window, where the frame opened, exposing the smells and
the sounds from the street below.
You want me to go, dont you?
The tornado flew into the sky where it shattered, tiny specks of grey dissolving in the air.
Leta tucked her wings against her back and climbed onto the sill, her toes curled over the edge.
The air was hot and sticky and like a lion crouched in tall grass, she stilled before the strike.
Her feet wiggled and her chest beat from a thousand ravens trapped inside. When she could not
wait a moment longer, she leapt, her wings spanning like clouds, her body soaring, and her
future waiting on the horizon.

104

(A Ga Lu Ga) An Evil Wind |

April 1839
We have been in Indian Territory for a season. The winter here was extremely cold and
bitter. I have not seen so much snow and ice in my sixteen years. Sometimes the snow fell so
hard and so fast you could not see past your own hand when outstretched. Papa would not
allow us to go out into the snow-like-blankets-falling-down. He said we would lose our way and
freeze to death.
The land is so different here. There are some trees, but they are sparse and also much
shorter than those back home. There are no pine trees. Mama and some of the other women
brought pine saplings on the long journey they call The Trail of Tears, and it is almost time to
plant them.
Despite the small amount of timber, Papa managed to build a small but comfortable
cabin and a smaller barn for our family and meager array of livestock, on the edge of the little
village near the new Cherokee capitol of Tahlequah.
Looking westward from our cabin there are rolling hills and prairie, outstretched farther
than one can see. The prairie appears flat. One can wander out too far, only to turn around and
not be able to see where the cabin or town is, and become lost. The grass is beginning to grow
tall now that it is spring, and there is a sweet smell in the air.

105

Just the other day, we saw a cloud of dark smoke from over the horizon and Papa went
to investigate. He said the grass was on fire. According to his new friend, Zeke, this is common
in the spring and summer. Zeke says the grass fires happen naturally and make the soil richer
to grow vegetables.
Zeke says the grass is sometimes called s weet grass, but is also known as J ohnson
grass. It grows tall like hay and is extremely tough, especially in the roots. The grass fires help
to kill off the old root systems and allow new ones to form, and the ashes from the fire feed the
soil. This also helps sodbusters like my father and other men to break the soil much more easily
to grow crops.
Papa is still trying to learn this land. He says he does not understand it but we must
adapt. His friend Zeke is from Tellico, a place in Tennessee across the mountains from where
we lived. Zeke says the grass here is much like the grass near his old home. Since we did not
grow as much as we hunted and bartered back in Tennessee, I am grateful Zeke is here to help
Papa learn about the grasses and soil in this strange place.
We fight the winds that blow here. They have an unnatural force, and can sometimes
push my tiny mother back and forth when she is working outside. Papa teases her and tells her
she should eat more, but Mama does not laugh.
This morning we awoke to a great gust of wind and dark clouds to the Southwest. Papa
is nervous. He says the clouds look angry, as though they may exact revenge on us for being
here.

106

I think so, too.

Mama has taken our laundry from the creek and hung it up on wires that Papa put up for
her out back. We did not have any trees close to our cabin from which to hang the wires, so
Papa took the wagon and went to the edge of the river where there are taller and sturdier trees.
He cut enough down to make some poles, then he planted them in the tough soil and put up the
clothes line for Mama. I watch them as they dance, clinging to the line as though they may be
swept away.
We have finished our chores and had something to eat, and we are all watching the sky
grow darker as the massive cloud moves closer to us. We see the rain and lightning, still miles
away. Papa and I round up the chickens, horses, and the one cow we were able to buy when
we arrived and we put them in the small barn. My brother, Hoyt, takes the wagon and parks it
behind the barn, along the eastern wall.
It begins to rain. I have never seen raindrops so big. They come down straight at first,
then the wind picks up and they begin to come at the cabin sideways. We are all inside,
watching from the kitchen window. Large drops of rain slam into the window panes, sounding as
loud as pebbles against the thick and wavy glass. The small panes rattle in the wooden frames.
We hear even louder pelting noises against the windows and on the roof and realize it is hailing.
Just then, we notice the sky turns an odd color of green.

107

Papa tells us to stay in the cabin and he goes out to look at the storm. I watch him from
the window, through the torrential rain and hail, through the water sliding down the glass, wave
after wave.
Suddenly, he runs back inside. He tells us to lie on the floor. Mama is crying and Hoyt
and I lie down next to her, but we continue to look up and out through the window. We hear a
strange sound, a rumbling noise, and the ground begins to shake. The noise reminds me of the
herds of wild horses we have seen running across the prairie, only much louder.
The window is rattling harder, and suddenly the glass shatters. Mama and I let out a cry
as Papa moves between the window and the rest of us. The wind moans and begins to scream
like a woman crying at her lovers grave.
I peek through the open space where the window pane used to be and I see a strange
cloud pass by. It is dark, and spinning, and moving past the house. It appears to be going
toward our small barn.
We hear the panic-stricken horses neigh and the cow moan. I was never so frightened,
not even when the white men came to tell us we had to leave our land for this wretched place.
I look to Papa. He is watching me closely, his mouth in a straight line across his face.
Though imperceptible, he shakes his head at me. I want to run out to the barn and help our
animals, but he stops me with his dark eyes. Where they are usually kind, this time they are cold
and hard.
I let out a slight whimper as I think about what must be happening to the animals.

108

As suddenly as it had come, the storm leaves. There is a strange silence about us, as
though the storm had not been there just a few moments ago. Papa waits for a while then he
instructs Mama and me to stay where we are while he and Hoyt go outside to inspect the
damage.
Mama has her left arm wrapped around my midsection as we lay upon the floor. She is
trembling. I wish to move, but I know she will be more frightened if I do, so I stay in place and
speak to her in calm whispers. She cries without sound, her face pressed into her other arm as
she stays down.
We lie there for what seems like an eternity, and then I hear Papa and Hoyt at the door.
They come inside, and the looks on their faces tell me that something is terribly wrong.
Papa, what is it? I hear my voice and it sounds high and thin, as though I am speaking
through a tunnel.
Papa shakes his head, I dont know what kind of cloud that was, but our barn is gone.
So are the livestock. There is no trace of any of it--or them--anywhere.
Hoyts face is pale and bewildered. He appears to have seen a ghost.
What do you mean, gone? I ask, panic rising up in my voice.
I mean they have disappeared, Ellie. I dont know what happened to them. The storm
has moved northeast. The strange cloud must have carried everything with it.
He sits down in a chair and puts his head in his hands.

109

I jump up and run outside. Where the barn once stood there is nothing but a patch of
bare earth. The wagon is gone, too. I walk over to the patch and look around. There is debris all
around our property, but most of it is unrecognizable. I see something lying under the small
scrub oak, which is bent from the wind, and step carefully over the wreckage to get a closer
look.
It is a small, cloth doll. The face was drawn on the fabric with India ink. She has blue
eyes colored with some dye. Her blonde hair is made of yarn, now covered in dirt, and she is
clothed in a blue calico dress with a dirty apron over it, torn at the hem. I pick up the doll and
look around, wondering how it got here.
I see part of the clothes line peeking from behind our cabin. The clothes Mama had hung
up just a short time ago are untouched. Our cabin appears to be in the same condition it was
before the evil wind blew through, aside from the broken panes of glass in our kitchen window.
Papa steps back outside to look around for a few minutes. He walks to where I am
standing by the small, broken tree. He places his strong hand on my shoulder.
Shaking his head, he only says, I dont know, Ellie. I just dont know.
I hear his voice crack. His eyes look out but do not see. He is not here, but somewhere
else.
I think I know where he is in his mind. Our quiet little ridge, between the two high
mountains back in Tennessee, is calling out to me, too. We stand there for a long time and then,

110

without a word, Papa goes back inside the cabin. His shoulders are slumped and his back is
bent.
I look to the Northeast and wonder where our horses and cow and chickens are now.
Deep down inside I know they are gone, like everything else.
Like our home, taken by the white men, my baby brother who died of from the coughing
sickness on our journey here, my best friend Lucy, who broke her leg while climbing a treeas
she had done so many times in her short lifeand a fever took her in the night. And her mother,
when her father cut her throat because the grief of losing Lucy was too much for her to bear,
and she lost her mind.
The sorrow seems to grow, sweeping us away like the strange cloud which turned into
an evil wind. I think we will never feel safe and happy again.
Listening to the silence left behind by the storm, I look off to the horizon from which it
came.
The sun is setting and there is a brilliant orange and gold glow from the sunset. Its
beauty leaves me untouched.
All I can see in my minds eye when I look toward the western edge of the sky is the
image of the dark cloud, coming to destroy my family, piece by piece. I know in my heart the
cloud will come again and again until there are none of us left. I suddenly feel very exposed and
vulnerable out in the open, underneath this wide expanse of sky.

111

I take the yellow-haired doll and smooth out her yarn hair. I wonder what little girl is
looking for her now, if she is even looking at all. Holding her close, I take the doll back inside the
cabin to my mother.

112

Nasty Habits |
Amanda and I are sitting in my kitchen sharing a pizza and a cigarette. Shes got no choice
about the ciggy because Im blowing smoke in her direction. I like to see her flail her arms
about. Shes going on and on about her precious Shandong Province bathroom tiles that are
two months late. Handmade. Ancient design. Child labour, no doubt.
Should have gone to B&Q, I say and blow a stream right in her face.
She does that tinkly laugh of hers and skims a fork through her roots. A nasty habit shes
had since when we were kids and her hair was mousy.
So hows it going, Elaine?
Fine, I say and it would be except for the fact that shes turned up.
There are exactly ninety-three point seven miles between my house and hers so this is
hardly a spontaneous visit.
Were coming into some money, Amanda and I. From Mum. Enough to make a
difference to me and to keep her in shoes for a long time. Thats why shes here. But Im not
going to make it easy. When did she ever lend a hand? Listen to Mum repeat herself night and
day? Feed her? Wash her? Worry about her?
Matt OK? I say.
She throws her manicured hands to her cheeks, but I can still see the smug glow
beneath.

113

I told you he got a place at Cambridge, didnt I? Well, now he wants to spend a year in
China.
Making tiles?
Learning Mandarin. Essential if you want a top job.
I mumble something about Matt having a good head on his shoulders, but frankly I hope
he goes under a rickshaw. She hasnt asked about her nephew yet so I tell her anyway.
Johnnyll be home soon.
Johnny was never one for books. Nor top jobs. Cars are his passion. Not so much fixing
them as stealing them. Thats how Mum got to hospital when the ambulance didnt come. At
least he didnt steal the hearse, said Matt at the funeral. A joke perhaps, but he still went home
with a bloody nose.
My lips twitch, like Im about to cry, but I manage to stay in control. Johnny may not have
floppy blonde hair and a glittering future, but I wouldnt swop him for the world. Amanda cant
wait to change the subject.
Any plans for the summer?
Not really, I say.
Were going to India. Get in touch with our spiritual side. Im putting my foot down
strictly no laptops or iPhones.
Kali, kill me now.

114

Amanda rakes her nails through her hair. Shes literally itching to know how much money
shes coming into and how soon. But she wont ask straight out. That would seem too greedy.
Another one of her nasty habits.
The clocks ticking. I let her prattle on and finally, she pauses.
I dont want to rush you, I say, but Ive got to go out.
Somewhere nice?
Prison. Why dont you come? Johnny would love to see you.
The one time Amanda came to see Johnny, he cracked a joke of his own. How is an
aunt like a laxative? They both irritate the shit out of you. Everyone else found it funny.
She grabs the fork and judders it over a particularly itchy patch.
Its parents evening tonight, she says. Maybe next time?
I leave the question hanging in the air just like the cigarette smoke I know she hates so
much.
***

115

Vesta |
My mother named me Vesta, after taking one look at my newborn titian tufts. My red hair
and unusual name always wins me plenty of compliments from the GIs and, I must
admit, I rather enjoy it. Inevitably though, after a few dances and a few too many beers,
it always ends the same.
Hey Red, where you goin? they shout , as I walk away, head held high. Awww Cmon,
my hand slipped, I didnt mean it.
Theyre all the same. Think youll do anything for a pair of silks.
Kitty and I took the bus away from here once. Most people want to escape to the
country but we were quite the opposite. We wanted to gorge ourselves on smoky town
fumes and eat chocolate cake with the wages wed saved for weeks. Brush the
antiseptic sting from our hair and forget the sounds of death that rung daily in our ears.
We drank tea in a caf with a rosy faced waitress and table cloths spattered with
bluebells, took our time over the yellow tea pot and the china cups. It was the first real
treat wed had in years. Afterwards, fat raindrops walloped the steamed- up window, so
we tied our headscarves and ran over the road to the public library. Our good shoes
clattered on the polished floor and our giggles echoed off the marble. We found a book;
I dont know why we chose that one. I cant remember now, but we looked up our

116

names. Kitty meant pure and I was Vesta, goddess of the hearth, attended by the
Vestal Virgins in Rome. It was Kittys laughter that forced the prune- faced librarian to
throw us out.
Pure? Ha! she guffawed. Vestal Virgins? Oh I really dont think so. Our mother must
have lost her poor mind when she named us.
I was grinning too, but not so much later, when we were standing in the rain; our coats
sodden, waiting an age for the bloody bus.
When was that now? Im sure it was summer. May? No, June maybe? Oh, I must
ask Kitty when I see her next.
Im thinking about all this as I sit in my room. The nurses quarters are small, but
cosy at least. I try and block out the sound of angry voices. Its common here. Hospitals
always bring out the worst in people.
You cant just turn up here and start making decisions about her, a man shouts. Who
the bloody hell do you think you are?
The relatives shouldnt be in the nurses quarters but they often end up here, hiding the
truth from their loved ones.
A woman knocks on the open door of my room.

117

Hello darlin, she sing-songs. Her voice sounds like its been bathed in sunshine and her
face is beetle black. She puts a cup of tea down on the small bedside table and Im
watching her fussing with my bedclothes. Im not sure who she is. Ive only been a nurse
here for a short while but Ive never seen her before. How nice of her to bring tea.
Are you the maid? I ask.
Her brow furrows and she pauses for a second before her face splits into a wide
grin revealing the biggest, whitest teeth I have ever seen.
Thats right darlin, she says, then breaks into laughter. Thats me, the maid.
She bustles out and I sit in a large, brown armchair, drinking the tea from a flowered
china cup as I gaze out of the window toward the hospital building. I can see across the
little outdoor courtyard, past the benches and daffodils and the rockery, into the
windows across the way. Im not sure why our quarters are so close to the patients? You
would think theyd put us nurses somewhere else. Its not like the place isnt big enough.
If you go through the double doors at the front, you can walk down the gravel drive and
beyond the Iron Gate you can see for miles. Acres of rolling, green hills, fields dotted with
little red farmhouses and mini, cloud-like sheep, grazing. Its picture perfect.and boring
as hell.

118

Im looking at a man in his striped dressing gown walking around and around the ward
like a clockwork toy. Poor thing. Someone should put him back to bed. I must check
what time my shifts starts; maybe I can go and see him. Find out if its pain or boredom
thats bothering him. But I cant seem to find my clock. That maid must have moved it. I
will go and ask her.
Its easy to get lost in a new place, the signs here are confusing. I cant find the maid
anywhere but as I wander into the common room I see a man, tall and broad
shouldered. He is standing next to the window holding a cup of what I presume must be
tea. He turns and smiles as I stop and steady myself against an armchair. Men arent
usually allowed in the quarters. Matron will have a kitten if she sees him. He walks over to
me and I notice his eyes, turquoise blue and twinkling with mischief.
There you are, beautiful, he says, smiling at me. I just needed to calm down a little. I
was just having a cup of tea before I came along for you.
I dont know what he means.
Have we made I date? I ask. Only Im not sure the dance hall is open this
evening.
I meet so many of them. At the village post office, in the queue for bread,
sometimes they just stop Kitty and I on the corner. It is hard to keep up.

119

A date? Oh yes, thats right, he says, looking a little uncertain himself.

But Im not dressed to go out, I reply. What time did we say? The silly maid has moved
my clock, you see.
Hes handsome alright. Those eyes are just lovely. Wait until Kitty sees him. Shell giggle
and want him for herself.
Its ok. You go get ready, Ill wait, he says, kindly.
I dont need to be asked twice. I go back to my room and take my make up from my
dresser. I curl my hair and carefully apply lipstick, rouge and a dash of mascara. I cant
help wondering where I might have met him. I look through my wardrobe and choose a
dress of blue, soft cotton with a flowered motif. It will have to do. I dont have many
dresses. Im searching in my drawer for my silk stockings, when a woman knocks and
walks into my room, uninvited. I am a little annoyed but in such a hurry that I carry on
pulling out tights and underwear and throw them on the bed, rather rudely ignoring her.
You alright darlin? the woman asks. She is smiling as she walks over and starts to put
my things in a neat pile.
I brought you a cup o tea in your nice cup, she says, nodding toward my bedside
cabinet.
What you lookin for? she asks.

120

Silk stockings, I reply, irritated. I have a date. Hes waiting in the common room.
Her face, black as night, breaks into a friendly smile.
Ohhhh, a date? She says, giving a throaty chuckle. Well, thats nice, darlin. Then she
takes a tissue from her pocket and tilts my chin up to her.
Here, let me help you, she says, softly. And I look into kind brown eyes as she gently
wipes lipstick from my chin.
Thats better, she says and then she helps me find my stockings.
As I go to leave my room, dressed to the nines and ready for my date, I realise Ive
forgotten to ask what on earth she was doing in my room.
Are you the maid? I ask.
But she just smiles and shakes her head as she follows me out.
We are in the dance hall. I am looking up at his face and I am grinning from ear to ear.
He has a dimple. I keep looking at that, and those blue, blue eyes and we are dancing. I
can dance alright. Its one of my favourite things on earth. You should see me jitterbug
and jive. The GIs taught me and I am good at it. Even better than Kitty. I love how they
swing me and throw me around, my skirt swishing around my legs, then up, up, up, my
stocking tops on show as I bounce along to the rhythm. I know it drives them wild. But its
not that that I love. Its the music, how it hums through my body, making me forget

121

everything. The death, this war, all the broken people trying desperately to just hold on,
until the sands shift once more and we can go back, back to living a life without fear,
without this never ending bloody fear.
We are dancing. But not the jive or the jitterbug. This music is slow and he is holding me
firm, looking deep into my eyes with a tenderness that reaches inside and makes my
heart flutter with hope. He pulls me closer and I nestle my head on his shoulder,
breathing in his lemon scent. As we move, slowly, I feel as though I know this man. A
warmth floods through me. I feel as though I have known this man my whole life. I lift my
head up and look into his eyes and I know he will kiss me. He gently takes my face in his
hands and puts his lips to mine, and I dont pull away. The kiss is sweet and chaste, but
nonetheless I blush as red as my hair and look down to the ground.
The spell is broken. I cannot believe it. I am wearing slippers! Oh goodness me, how
shameful. What will he think? I must go. If I go quickly he might not notice. If I go quickly,
they might not notice. Oh please dont let Kitty see. She will tease me mercilessly. Ill
never hear the end of it. How could I forget my shoes?
I must go, I say sharply and flee from the dance hall, turning only once to see him
standing there, looking so very sad to see me go.

122

The sun blasts through my window throwing ribbons of light around the room and I
simply must go outside. I have spied easels, in the courtyard, and paint too. They must
be a gift from a benefactor. Some of our patients are wealthy and we quite often have
things sent to the hospital. Gifts from the grateful families of those weve managed to
save. Even if their sons are sent back to them so torn up that it would have been kinder
to let them die. Still we try, always, to keep them alive, no matter what. Women too.
Women who have gone out to the field, to somehow try and mop up the agony with only
bandages and buckets of rancid water. Women who end up here, just as torn and
ragged as those they went to save.
I love to paint, almost as much as I love to dance. My mother said I was gifted, but you
dont get to use gifts like painting during a war. I relish the idea of sitting in the sun and
creating something beautiful, something to look at that I know wont die. The paint has
been left on a wooden table, simply begging to be used, so I sit down and I begin to mix
the colours on a wooden palette. I spend an hour or two painting the flowers around the
rockery, capturing the sunny smiles that radiate from the daffodils, the shy beauty of the
crocus and the blazing pride of a cluster of crimson tulips.
I am distracted. There is a man sitting on the bench. I didnt see him before, but now I
peep round the easel and catch him staring at me. He looks upset, concerned. I stand

123

and walk over to the bench; its my job, as a nurse, to comfort. I quite often see people
here, on these benches. They ache for their loved ones. They arrive at the hospital filled
with hope, only to find just a husk left of those they waved goodbye to. Sometimes not
even that. Sometimes they come only to make arrangements, to have their fathers and
mothers, brothers, sisters, wives and husbands taken to a place where they can
rest.in peace.
Can I help you? I ask
He sits up straight and smiles, although the smile doesnt quite reach his eyes.
Will you sit with me? he asks, patting the bench next to him.
So I sit down and he turns to me, eyes brimming with tears.
Im sorry its the first time Ive been, he says. I justwell I just couldnt face it.
Its okay, I say softly. I hope I can comfort this poor young man somehow. He seems so
distressed. I move closer and take his hand.
Have you had bad news? I ask.
He looks at me then. He is searching my face for something, something intangible. As he
squeezes my hand tight, his face crumples, and tears spill down his cheeks.
Oh mum, he rasps.

124

His leans over and places his head in my lap and there is nothing I can do. He must have
lost his mother. My heart aches for him and we sit for such a long time, me stroking his
dark hair and patting him gently, until, eventually his tears subside and he rights himself.
I must go, he says shakily and I nod as he hugs me one last time then walks slowly
across the courtyard, head bowed.
I sit for a while, and then shake off the sadness. If I let it take over I will drown in its
blackness. I will finish my painting and breathe in the birdsong and the sunshine and let
it fill my soul with its warmth. But, as I walk back to my easel, the world shifts beneath
me. How can this have happened? My beautiful painting. Someone cruel has ruined my
painting. I am not looking at daffodils or crocuses or tulips. In front of me is a riot of black
and green lines, dashed across the canvas in a frenzy of hatred. My breath quickens
and I feel the tears well in my eyes. I hurry from the courtyard passing two men on the
way. One is tall and broad- shouldered with angry blue eyes, the other dark- haired and
tearful and I push past them as they spit angry words at each other.
Youre not taking her anywhere, shouts the tall, handsome man. You have no idea
what youre dealing with. He prods the dark haired man in the chest. You have no
idea. You havent been here.
I dont stop to listen to anymore.

125

I hurry back to my room. Was it this way? I somehow get lost and end up in the common
room but I dont recognise any of the nurses there. They must be new. We get a fresh
intake once in a while. It must be the shock from the painting. Its left me feeling upset,
disorientated. My mind feels as though its been filled with cobwebs and everything is
slightly out of focus, as though Im wearing Kittys glasses. I dont want these new girls
to see me like this, so I turn quickly, heart hammering. Take a deep breath, Vesta. Focus.
And then things slip back into place and I suddenly know the way again.
I am finally in my room. I take a book from the table. I will read quietly until I get my
equilibrium back. I try not to think about who could have ruined my painting. Some of the
girls here are jealous cats. Any one of them could have done it.
I open the book and just as I start to read a women knocks on the door and walks briskly
in.
Hi darlin, she says, smiling broadly. She has an accent but I cant place it. Her face is as
black as the ink on the page and her smile is filled with warmth. She is holding a
flowered tea cup and I realise I am parched.
I smile at her.
Are you the maid? I ask.

126

Street Corner Curiosity |

Hes the fool on the hill. His hill is a plinth made of reinforced plywood and painted cleanest
white. But hes not a fool, as no self-proclaimed fool ever was. If anything, hes a very serious
and committed ghost. If anything at all.
Mostly he loves his job. The feeling of being elevated slightly above everyone else; of being a
fixture as dependable as the clock tower or the theatre which lies a little further down the road,
snaking out of sight to the river. Like the tower and the theatre, hes become a thing to navigate
by he hears the locals tell the tourists: Just over there, if youve passed the ghost youre gone
too far. Equally, there are days when he hates having to stand there and stand there. On these
days he doesnt earn a penny. Instead, the town drunks use his pot as a bin for their cider cans,
and the drowsy wasps they attract land on his face and crawl inside his collar to sleep. On these
days, bored youths pull his trousers down and take pictures with their mobile phones which they
upload to Facebook. On these days, the beauty of everything is cheapened the air is full of car
horns and the f-word and crisp packets. On these days, he can feel, almost before hes left his
bed, and certainly before hes through the garden gate, that its going to be a bad day. He had
the feeling this morning, as he drank his tea. Here on his plinth, its not even lunchtime and his
ankles are already aching. Hes had weak ankles since a lad. He shifts his muscles minutely
under his stiff skin.
Its a very hot day today but not so hot that its notable when you have seen as many days of
varying temperature, humidity and sadness as the ghost has it seems you have seen it all and

127

nothing is worth repeating any more. There are lots of wasps and some butterflies, and too
many people doing too much repeating. The world is a circle - his world, a very small circle
within it, jostling for notice amongst all the other little circles. Billions of them. Hes thinking about
all the circles and getting dizzy when a voice breaks one of them. He winces at the newly sharp
shards in his head.
Alright bellend? Hows it hanging?
Interest in the ghost, whether positive or negative, has been sparse today, which is odd for such
fine weather. The heckler is a young man age wise hes nestled in that too-small valley
between boyhood and manhood. Hes got a patchy excuse for a beard and a scraggy little
moustache - a gyppo tash, they called it when the ghost was a boy but he can tell by the way
the man-boy walks that he must have a forests worth of pubes, the novelty of which has not yet
warn off. He seems to walk as if pulled down the street by his prick.
I spoke to you, wanker!
Maybe he walks like that due to some hopeful anticipation that he may be able to use his newly
discovered junk at some point. As if to illustrate the ghosts own thoughts, the man-boy grabs
his crotch and readjusts whatever dark treasures lay concealed beneath the crusty-looking
jeans. He really is an abominable human, and one of too many who are just the same. Ergh. He
has a can of something alcoholic in one hand, the hand that is not grasping his nether-region
danglers. The ghost cannot say if there are scratches on his face (there are) or if his eyes are
muddy brown (they are), because his peripherals, however good, are not acute enough for

128

detail. He does know that the man-boy has hair the colour of wet sand and that he smells
unpleasantly of Mayfair originals and cider. The man-boy probably thinks its cool, to drink warm
lager from the can in the daytime in this small, twee town. He probably thinks it lends him an air
of danger, to chain smoke and heckle and grab at his sweaty crotch in this unassuming little
street. Sure, Humphry Bogart looked good with a cig dangling from his crooked smile, but this
country bumpkin is not Bogart. Hes most probably called Gaz or Daz or Baz (hes called
Daz).
The ghost doesnt move. Not because hes particularly afraid or because he wouldnt like to
jump off his plinth and straight on top of this stinking looser and pummel him into the ground,
just for the simple joy of it and he knows he could. No, he doesnt move because the ghost
has spent a lot of his life perfecting the art of not moving, and hes not about to break character
now. Not for this. So he doesnt look at the man-boy or at his lobotomy victim of a friend. In his
head he can hear all kinds of great music and the increasing volume of his tormentors shouts
are only the percussion.
For a long moment the ghost is tense. The two are discussing what to do now that theyve not
got a rise from the ghost. Though hes mildly interested to see what theyll do, having always
found the actions of humans, however dumb, intriguing, he cant say hes all that bothered
whether they continue to insult him, turn aggressive, or simply fuck off down the street to find
another lonely soul who will play their games with them. In the end the man-boy drains his can,
pouring a lot of it down the front of him in the process, and lobs it weakly at the ghost. It

129

connects with his left upper arm but doesnt hurt. The two walk off down the street jeering at
women and children and old men as they go, feeling theyve won. Moments later a busload of
Japanese tourists disembark and waft down the street in a gaggle, herded by young woman in a
sun visor; several of them put pound a fifty-pence coins in his pot. They take photos of each
other standing to attention beside him. He imagines huge families in Tokyo gathering around a
projector to look at the photographs later. He wanders what theyd say about him. What they
must think. The ghost hasnt blinked for several hours.
It took him ages and ages to get the ghost look right. For the week before he began, he was
always daubed in white paint the postman thought hed gone peculiar. People think its easy, a
matter of slapping on the face paint and go. But its all in the contouring and the steady circular
motion of the brush. You need a hand as steady as a snipers. Done poorly, he looks like a
clown; too well, and he scares the children. Both outcomes would lose him his job and he cant
forget that hes good for nothing else. He swirls the wet creamy paint deep into his skin each
morning, sucking on his only cigarette of the day between each new stroke of the brush. He
washes the brushes once a week with a little white spirit; lines them up on the draining board
like sad little bodies, oozing greasy water. The brushes are the same ones he bought when he
first became a ghost and hes proud of how long theyve lasted; you can see a mans true worth
in the condition of his tools. No doubt about it.
The clock tower is chiming midday; the sound signifies his half-way point. Hell pack up and go
in four hours. Its strange how he looks forward to going home, how he enjoys the walk back

130

even whistles as he goes but as soon as the door closes behind him and the full effect of an
empty home hits him he aches to be back among the living in this bittersweet street. Hes taken
to leaving the door open as he cooks his dinner and hed swear its because the extractor fan is
on the blink. Really, a part of him hopes someone might wander in from the street and strike up
a conversation with him. He thought quite seriously of getting a dog, for a time. He even bought
books from the charity shops about breeds and consulted a man at an animal shelter. The man
asked a lot of questions about the ghosts life and habits: How many people live at the address?
How big is the garden? What sort of hobbies do you enjoy? Do you get a lot of visitors? And the
ghost found himself lying to make himself appear less of a sad act. After much shrugging and
shaking of his head the dog man, who was about thirty, ginger, and exactly the sort of man the
ghost would have liked for a son, took him to a cage where a dreadful looking specimen lurked
in the shadows. As the animal sat on its tail with its legs splayed in front like a morbid teddy,
dribbling into the fur on its jowly chin, the young man informed him that it was a Tibetan spaniel
and only three years old. The ghost wasnt convinced about the age or the breed or the whole
look of the thing. Come to think of it, he wasnt even sure his loneliness had stretched to
wanting to share his modest terraced house with anything but the odd spider. So he went home
alone, again. That was almost five years ago.
The day is wearing on. Less and less people are in the streets. People are beginning to drink;
the habitual drunks with their cans of Special Brew look less conspicuous as those around them
become gradually and politely inebriated. The remaining shoppers zig-zag like aimless fat ants

131

without seeing him, zipping about on their little errands, buying things, stuffing food and
over-sweet drinks down their gullets. Talking incessantly all the while. Each individual moves so
fast, but the effect of them all is of a steady mass, expanding and thinning and moving without a
bit of real progress. They bubble and ooze and congeal, spilling from shops and spreading to
every dusty corner of his street. Smoking their fags and drinking endless frappuccinos and
jabbering without saying a thing of note, because theyve built their lives around the dream of
thinking as little as possible. A lot of them smell. He hates them and he depends on them. They
fascinate him, each strange little life. Theres a dull clang: a man has walked into a lamppost
because hes gawking at a woman in a burka. The man shouts fuckssake! as if someone else is
to blame - maybe the Muslim woman, maybe the lamppost. He weaves down the street shaking
his head. Further along, a boy has thrown his brothers ice cream onto the ground and their
mother is screaming at both boys with equal anger. Theres spit on her chin as she shouts. The
ghost sees them all without focusing his eyes, and theyre a car crash which he cannot help but
watch.
Look, Mummy! Look at the dummy.
A small boy is tugging at his mothers skirt. From the size of him hes four or five. In his attempt
to get his mothers attention he has partially pulled down his mothers skirt which is a big flowing
gypsy type thing, to expose a portion of her buttock. Its a nice buttock, the ghost thinks, without
really looking at all.

132

Look, says the boy again, and he is getting indignant, the ghost can tell. It isnt nice to be
ignored, especially by ones mother.
The woman is scrabbling to swat the boys hand away from her, whilst juggling several shopping
bags and simultaneously pulling up her skirt. She somehow manages to pull off this elaborate
dance with some amount of elegance. The ghost is impressed by her, and he likes the boy. He
admires persistence in all its forms.
The boy has stopped in the middle of the street and has crossed his arms. It would seem that
he will not move a step until his stressed mother has looked at the ghost. She is several steps
ahead when she realises he isnt matching her step beside her any more. She flails around, her
shopping bags and gypsy skirt flying. A chunk of the material has become lodged in-between
those full buttocks.
She sees her child, shakes her head, and comes to stand beside him.
What is it?
Its a dummy
The woman looks at the ghost and it is clear to him that its the first time shes seen him. He
thinks he may have seen her before but its difficult to tell as shes got local features.
Hes not a dummy, hes pretending to be a statue, she informs her son, statues are made of
stone and stand on the street, dummies are made of something else and they stand in shops
wearing real clothes. Its a fabulous description, the ghost would love her to explain other things
to him. That sort of woman almost always has answers.

133

Then she reads the piece of cardboard at his feet, the one he props up every day in front of his
plinth, the one he hand-painted as he listened to the radio and drank a cup of tea, too many
years ago. Oh, it says here that hes a ghost. Hes a statue or a ghost. Might be hes both.
What do you think? The boy is holding a chunk of her skirt in place of her hand. After all his
shouting the boy doesnt seem to want to talk any more. His stare has less intensity now. The
ghost can tell that his mind will soon be caught by something fresher, faster after all, how
interesting can a thing that doesnt move be to a very young mind? Its the animals and water
and cars and bikes and other children and all the rushing, whooshing, mad things of the world
that catch the eye of children and hold their attention. The ghost doesnt whoosh, not even at
weekends. And hes almost positive he is not mad.
The woman secures all her shopping bags on one strong, freckled forearm, in order to free up a
hand to root around in her voluminous handbag. She pulls out a pen and paper and a coin. She
tells the boy Be a table for mummy, and he turns around, leaning forward a little, hands on his
knees and the serious look on his face of a boy whos been given a job to do. She gets down on
one knee to be at his level and writes something on the paper using the childs back as a writing
surface.
Go and put that in the pot, she says, pointing, and the boy takes the note and the coin and
tiptoes over to the ghost. He looks up at him, suddenly nervous, but taking a large breath drops
the items in the pot before scurrying back to his mother.

134

Together the two walk away down the street, and are soon lost amongst the ebbing waves of
tourists and locals. The ghost does not look in the pot. He has another hour before he finishes
for the day, maybe even longer. He will not look until then. Maybe, if he is strong enough, he will
wait until he is home, in his favourite place at the kitchen table which only has room for one
chair, and he will listen to the radio and see what the woman wrote. Or maybe hell wait a week.
Or a year. Hes got all the time in the world and far more patience than most. Theres no use in
rushing. Theres no use in rushing anything at all.

135

Campfires |
An old friend of mine, Emma, died recently. Everyone was shocked but not surprised.
Her best friend Laura screamed down the phone for a good five minutes at whoever
broke the news. I got a text from my wife. Id been working the night shift and woke up
and stared at my phone. Then I sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hand.
I went through with my plan and met up with a couple of colleagues and drank beer in
Leeds. We met at one and carried on drinking until about six. John wandered off; Andy
and I had another few pints then I tried to get him to the train station. He was staggering
all over City Square. I had the feeling I wanted to be alone so I left him behind with the
intent of having another pint in Wakefield. I found out later that he lost one of his
flip-flops some time after that.
There was a light rain when I walked out of the station so I made quick strides to Harrys.
I was bored of the beer by this time so I ordered a pint of cider the real stuff, strong
and still, with bits floating in it. I stood at the bar for a while and looked round at the
gnarled beams, the open fire with scrunched up cigarette wrappers, the monochrome
paintings on the brick walls. I found a stool in the corner, opposite a whispering couple
about my age.

136

I sat hunched over my pint in that tiny, crowded bar, my t-shirt steaming, staring out at
the rain and I felt utterly alone. My eyes brimmed and I hid my face. I tried to silence the
sobs that shook me and I pressed my palm against my eyes, clutching the pint as if it
was trying to escape.
A voice said: Are you okay? and Im not sure if someone touched my arm. I glanced up
through the blur at the couple opposite. The mans expression was of embarrassed
concern. I nodded and wiped an eye with the ball of my thumb.
My friend killed herself last night. They both gasped and stared and shook their heads
and tutted. She had post-natal depression.
Oh, the man said with pity and understanding. I felt like sobbing again at their
kindness. Have you got anywhere to go?
Its okay. Ill be going home soon, to my wife. I felt I had to explain exactly what I was
going to do next.
The man nodded. Are you sure youre okay?
Yeah. Ill be fine. I felt Id ruined their evening. Dont worry.
I glanced around the bar. Only one person was looking at me. I finished my pint in three
quaffs then I stood and said Bye. Thanks, and I walked out into the soft rain.

137

I thought about Laura, who Id known as long as Emma. They were both in the year
below me at school. Laura is engaged to Dan, who was in the same year as me. I didnt
mix with any of them until we left school and started going round the pubs. I cant
remember the first time I spoke to Emma. I remember her being a bit awkward at school
but when I met her shed lost weight and found some confidence. Her skin was pale and
she had a band of light freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her hair and eyes were
black and she usually had a look of faraway sadness.
We had a connection straight away. I think it was because we both felt like strangers,
aliens, that we didnt really belong. I cant remember half of the things we used to talk
about but we talked for half the night whenever we bumped into each other. And that
was it: most weekends we just came across each other; we never arranged to meet, I
never tried anything with her, never flirted. Sometimes we argued, sometimes we
agreed. I cant remember laughing with her that much but I was always happy when I
was with her.
I walked towards the taxi rank, trying to decide whether to go home or to Dan and
Lauras and house. My wife had known Emma but only for a short time. Theyd met when
Laura had girls-only karaoke parties. By then she was a different Emma to the one I
knew. I needed to be with someone who knew the other Emma.

138

As the taxi pulled up outside Laura and Dans I asked the driver to wait until I knew they
were in. I saw a light on and gurgled: Theyre in. Thanks.
Dan answered the back door and I remember mumbling some greeting at him and
virtually barging right past him. Hed never seen me like this in the twenty-odd years Id
known him. I tried to keep my grief in, like it was vomit. I found Laura in her pyjamas and
dressing gown in the front room. We all sat in silence for a long moment and Dan turned
the television off. Then I planted my face in my hands and sobbed into them. I felt an arm
around my shoulder and Laura sobbed with me. I saw Dan turning away, using his hand
as a visor.
We talked about Emma for the rest of the night. I told them about the time Emma and I
went back to Hinchys house one night. Hinchy is Dans cousin. He was the only one with
his own place in those days. It was somewhere to go after the beer. Sleep on the floor, in
the bath, on the kitchen table with a shower curtain pulled tight over you. In the spare
bed if you were lucky.
That night, everyone else had burned out except me and Emma. We sat in the kitchen,
talking. We both wanted to carry on drinking and I found Hinchys bottle of vodka that
hed been keeping in the freezer for the past year. We sat in the dark and drank ice-cold

139

vodka until we could see each other in the pale light outside. We were both at the same
level - a giddy, reckless drunkenness that Ive rarely had since.
She said: I really fancy you at the moment. I remember clearly her saying that or words
to that effect. Or maybe its like what the internet told me the other day: when you
remember some event from your life, youre remembering the last time you
remembered it, not the event itself. I moved to her side of the table. I sat next to her on
the bench and kissed her.
Laura said she didnt know that had happened, said she thought me and Emma were
just friends. Dan hooked up the iPod and we passed it round. Laura forbade us from
playing any Beatles or Smiths it would start her off again. Laura talked about the first
time we went to Glastonbury. 1994. The year Oasis played, just before they made it big. I
recalled nearly getting crushed watching Bjork and I danced like a goon to Orbital. It
was one of the best weekends of my life; Emma was there. Id gone with Hinchy and
some of the other lads. We were camped at the other side of the site to the others and I
have no idea how I found their tent. Laura reminded me that I helped them set the tent
up but I dont remember that.
Throughout the first day, the crowds had been taking firewood from a huge pile at the
middle of the site. I said we should go and get some before it ran out. Emma and I

140

walked down the hill together. I vaguely remember it being a bit awkward, so it mustve
been after the kitchen table incident. We passed a naked woman, splurged with gaudy
paint, a man with dreadlocks selling homemade lemonade, a couple of girls on stilts,
pretending to be aliens. When we got to the woodpile there wasnt much left. A few large
pieces of trunk, desiccated bark, mostly sticks. We gathered up as much as we could
and wandered back to her tent. The man with the dreads was still there but we didnt
see the others.
Laura was sitting in the entrance of the tent when we got back. I dropped the sticks into
the tiny clearing between the tents and she gave me a can of cider. I asked if we should
try to light the fire. Emma said it would be getting dark soon. Laura asked if I had a
lighter. I said I didnt and they said they didnt either. None of us smoked. We laughed
and drank cider. I kicked the sticks away and stretched out on the grass, leaning on my
elbow. We talked about the bands we were going to see and watched the crowds.
As the day dimmed, the light of hundreds of campfires dotted the fields like streetlights
in a town. They seemed to cover the entire site: down the slope past the cinema screen
towards the dismantled railway and all across the hillside beneath the Greenfields.
Wisps of brown smoke drifted away, all at the same angle. If I forget everything else, Ill
never forget that.

141

Emma and I bumped into each other a few more times over the weekend. At some
point, we must have come to an agreement that our kissing was a big drunken mistake.
I asked her to meet me on the last day and I gave her a magenta and green friendship
bracelet I found in a little stall where they played really loud dub and burned
sweet-smelling incense. I thought shed be cynical and sarcastic about it but she
seemed touched by the gesture.
After that we fell out. Dont ask me over what. I just know that we stopped bumping into
each other. I convinced myself that I didnt really know her or didnt really like her. The
fickleness of youth. We caught glances of each other at the weekends but that was it.
Sometimes Id notice that she still wore the friendship bracelet. She met someone called
Jamie. The lads called him John Lennon. He would become the father of Emmas son,
Ben.
A few years ago, we started talking to each other again. She and Laura would be out
and wed bump into them. Me and Emma would say hello and smile. One night I was out
with Dan and some of the other lads who werent yet fathers. Emma and Laura were out
with one of their friends from the old days. Dan and Laura had arranged to meet. Emma
was curvier than the last time I saw her. She looked happy. We had a good talk about
how stupid wed both been and how none of it mattered and how it was good to talk to

142

each other again. I remember standing in the kebab shop with her, holding her hand. I
dont know how wed ended up like that but I know I didnt want to let go of it. She
ordered scampi and chips because it was the funniest thing on the menu. We both lived
in the same direction at that time and we shared a taxi. When we got to my house I
pecked her on the cheek and we said see you later. That was the last time I saw her.
The funeral was delayed because the council had to cut emissions at their crematoria.
There were people from the old days there people Id not seen in years, whose names I
couldnt remember. I sat down with my wife and picked up the order of service from the
pew. There was a photo of Emma on the front and I started to fill up. Her hair hung like
two black curtains, framing a toothy smile and the black crescents of her eyes. The
cover said her middle name was Ruth.

143

Unturn This Stone |

On a foul night in fickle early autumn, when the wind sobbed and wailed like a lost
wandering wraith, Constance awoke from a garish dream, aghast to hear her garden
crashing into the sea. It clattered down the cliff thud by thud into darkness, sodden by
the pelting rain and bludgeoned by the gale.

Up at the farm, we kept an eye on our neighbor, so the next day I tracked through the
glen to discover how she was. I remember the feral scent of the earth after rain - how
that smell takes me back to that day. As I arrived, I saw Constance through a shroud of
mist, waiting for me outside her house, wearing an ethereal smile; I remember thinking,
'She looks frail'. How anyone could live here in such precariousness - crumbling in a
cottage on a cliff edge, without electricity or gas, drawing water from a corroded pump,
surviving in such isolation, always beggared belief, but especially someone of her age.

'Of course, the house itself is built on solid rock', she said, when we sat down in the
mildewed kitchen, with its sour reek of boiled foliage and overripe fruit. Her voice was

144

quaint; febrile and dulcet, like the trill of a small songbird. 'It will always be here', she said
with a giggle - 'as will I'.

I tutted at this, as it was well known the authorities sought to relocate her, but I said
nothing as she brewed tea with milk from the pail I'd brought, tinkling chipped cups on
the stove. With a flare of animation, she then said, 'Last night, just as the cliff came
down, I was in a dream...' She suspended her hands motionless in mid-air, transfixed,
and a teaspoon she dropped jangled as it struck the stone floor.

'...A dream about Clement', she said, beaming, and I gave a look of assent - as I
understood it, he was her brother, lost whilst searching for fossils, lost presumably to the
sea, and in recent years, he'd become her main topic of conversation, endlessly
referenced.

145

'I saw him in a cave', she said, her smile abstracted; '...in a grotto, with a high, high
ceiling...and it gleamed with the strangest light...and rainbows shimmered on the walls
from all the insect wings, and the fish scales embedded in them...'

I listened with politeness, sipping my tea, tasting rust in the water. She blinked with
amazement, 'You know, he's disappeared from all family photographs', she said. 'Have I
ever told you that?'. I nodded in commiseration, because she mentioned those pictures
regularly, often showing me crumpled albums of her younger self with sepia relatives,
sealed together in sombre poses - but I never saw a boy amongst them.

In the empty silence, I heard the ticking clock and its echo. I remember her eyes - their
faded colour: an opaque robin's egg blue. She said, 'But he wasn't alone in that cave no. Someone else was there - can you guess who?'. As she rose, her chair creaked,
wobbling the battered table; she fussed with the milk, stowing it in the dusty larder, no
doubt intent on making cheese with the remainder, fermenting crumbly blue moulds in
the dark.

146

Through the window, I saw the treetops whispering. I half expected her dream narrative
might now digress into a raising of The Devil - another of her familiar subjects, so much
so that local children, the meaner ones, claimed her to be a witch, a witch who snatched
children, turning them to stone. But instead she asked, 'Will you come with me to the
beach at low tide to see how much land has slipped?'. I answered that of course I would.

Outside, an oppressive mackerel sky occluded the washed-out sun. By the top of the
escarpment, a short iron ladder lead down to the rocky beach, weathered by years of
exposure to salt spray. The tide had retreated enough to descend, so I went first,
making sure the ladder was sound, acting as a buffer whilst Constance followed me.
Seagulls cackled a raucous cacophony as we climbed down.

On the foreshore, I remember the enigmatic tang of the sea, combined with a rotting
stench dragged up by the waves. Clods of earth and shrubbery tangled over gnarls of

147

wood jutting out of the shingle, the remnant of an ancient petrified forest, now encrusted
with slimy seaweed. A recent avalanche of shards covered boulders and revealed
layers of variegated strata in the sandstone so potentially full of fossils that I wished I'd
brought my hammer and chisel.

Glimpsing up at the hillside, with its pelt of prickly gorse and yellow ragwort, Constance
drifted back to her dream. 'No, he wasn't alone', she said. 'He was trapped: trapped with
some other children'. I raised my eyebrows in response, inclining my head, wondering
what to say; and as I did so, my view was drawn along the beach to the left, past a
plashing waterfall, to an opening in the rock face I'd never seen before.

Pointing it out, I set off in that direction, collecting firewood in a bundle as I went.
Constance trailed after me, and as we crunched on the pebbles, I heard her say, 'I often
hear his voice'. From the corner of my eye, I could feel her study me with fascination as
we trudged along. 'His voice calling for help', she added with a smile.

148

Soon, we stumbled upon the gap in the cliff; I unearthed the entrance, bringing to light a
fissure wide enough to squeeze into. Enthralled by this discovery, she gasped and
cooed, prancing like a child. 'Maybe there's a passage', she said, 'maybe he's in here! He
must be. Look! I could fit through: I'm thin enough. I'm going inside - to rescue him!'. She
pealed with frenetic laughter.

I remember drawing a deep breath and turning towards her. 'Miss Ash', I said, in a hollow
voice, for I dislike having to speak. 'Miss Ash, no. It's not safe. Think of the tides. Think of
the risk.'

Her face curdled into an outraged gape. Then in a tone of petulance, she said, 'You
could fit through there easily - you're just a boy'. Her eyes scoured me with an accusing
leer. I replied that yes, I'm considered small for my age, but my parents have been strict

149

in warning me about the perils of entering cliff caves and of always showing respect for
tidal danger.

There was an awkward impasse and all I could hear was her rattling breath. The whorls
of her hair writhed and seethed, serpentine in a churn of wind. She hissed at me, 'Go
inside!', she said, 'That's why we've come. You're going to take his place. And if you
don't...then you know what I'll do...'

She glowered, demented with ferocity, and it was then that I saw her left eye start to
distort, to enlarge and intensify; it raked its stare over my face again and again like the
searchlight of a lighthouse. She muttered sinister words, sibilant and fricative, like
curses or spells, then she thrust outwards, snatching my arm with what felt like a talon,
impaling her nails into my skin, causing me to stifle a yell. And for a twisted instant, the
earth tilted and slowed its spin to a crawl, and I was seized, seized by a monster; I was
petrifying, I was congealing into cold impenetrable stone. I took one last appalled look
upwards at the desolate sky above.

150

But then something unexpected happened - she fell into a strange silence; she fell inert
and her eyes dimmed to a grey emptiness. Her grip eased, as did my panic, and we
stood there before the fissure. The breeze swelled and the bleak breaking waves
snaked on the shore. The landscape seemed to watch us. In a stammer, I urged our
return to the house and steered the way back, prattling clumsily to dispel the bizarre
incident, asking if she wanted me to clean anything, to carry or fix anything for her, but
she didn't answer. I had to almost push her up the ladder, because her limp arms
wouldn't grip the rungs.

I'd seen capricious behaviour before with Constance; I'd been told this was a natural
consequence of ageing - so I soon made my excuses and said goodbye, leaving her
glaring into empty space in the kitchen, with a fresh cup of tea. I sauntered home,
picking blackberries on the way, kicking conkers, poking at fungi, gawking at starling
murmurations, and eyeing spiders' webs; doing the things that boys do.

151

The weather on the following day was atrocious, with gale force winds and excessive
rainfall. On the day after that, I brought my father with me across the glen, back to her
cottage. We discovered it empty, with a tree smashed through the roof. With increasing
dread, we called her name but she didn't answer; we searched with thoroughness but
found no clue as to her whereabouts. We hurried down to the beach, through a veil of
rolling sea mist, and along to the crevice in the rock, but it had vanished under a slump
of debris and we could find no trace of it. Despite scouring the area many times, I've
never found evidence of it again.

What happened to Constance remained a mystery - she slipped and fell into local
legend. Years later, storms battered the coastline again, near to Witch's Cliff, as it came
to be known, and a landslide uncovered the entrance to another cave and, because
human bones were found, I obsessed about the story with intense interest.

But the bones turned out to be very old, so archaeologists came to dig. They exhumed
five medieval skeletons, thought to be travellers to or from the nearby monastery who

152

might have sheltered in the cave, becoming trapped; but it was the revelation that they
were all children which caused me to puzzle over Constance, and her tragic Brother
Clement - invisible in photos and imprisoned in caves. And I've been pondering the echo
of her words ever since.

Because over time, I've shouldered a burden of guilt about what happened; if only I'd
known about seizures or strokes, I could have run for help - but I was a mousy boy who
hardly spoke. And now as an adult, I'm still tongue-tied and withdrawn; I'm stony silent and no help to anyone.

I return again and again to Witch's Cliff, especially when that sharp scent of petrichor is
on the wet earth. I feel compelled: urged to pursue the trail she left; unable to stop
searching for signs, searching for clues in the unstable rock face - haunting the
landscape like a lost wandering wraith. Once or twice, I've slept in the rubble of her
cottage, listening to the skitterings of the darkness. I've woken at dawn blanketed in
centipedes, my ear straining to identify her voice in faraway birdsong; then I've roamed
back to the farm alone, through a dank mist.

153

But on one such night, a muggy one with a lucid full moon, I discovered something. I was
ferreting through a jungle of tall ferns near the archaeological dig when I chanced upon
a twisted fallen tree covered with lichens - it was blocking the entrance to an opening in
the cliff. A myriad of gleaming eyes in the undergrowth bore witness as I crawled into the
gap, through strangling tendrils of ivy and a sticky mask of cobweb.
The passage enlarged and I was able to stand. My head torch lit up a pathway of green
mosses leading downhill. I became aware of a pervasive sweet musty fragrance on the
air and my ear picked out a distant trickling of water. I edged further inside. Pale moths
skimmed against my skin in the dim light.

After a while, I came across a rustic wooden ladder reaching down into a chasm in the
stone, and peering in, I thought I saw faint lights flicker through the gloom. Without
hesitation, I began to descend. As I did, the rock face around me glowed with an odd
pearlescence which made my head swim. Pausing to rest, I wondered if the air might be
bad, and if I should turn back - but I pressed onwards, and in that way, I sealed my fate.
I climbed again as if in a daze - the heat was suffocating. I think I may have blacked out
and lost my footing because suddenly I was at the bottom of the ladder, prostrate and
leaden. But when I stirred, it was to a familiar sound - my name was being called.

154

I found myself stumbling into a bright cave with a high high ceiling. The walls scintillated
with flecks of gold, and quartz crystal geodes snared the light in facets of amethyst.
Ammonites underfoot curled and uncurled where I trod, entombed in the pulsing stone
floor. A kaleidoscope of dragonflies hovered by a turquoise spring which coiled from a
cleft above, snaking over seams of agates in the rock, and chiming into a luminous
glassy lagoon.

Hearing my name again, this time nearby, the timbre of her lost voice echoed in my
memory. I shut my eyes and I made a wish. And through the thick shimmering air I felt
her coming closer - coming back. From a crescent of shadow by the water's edge,
Constance shifted into the light. Younger now, revivified, her eyes a clear aquamarine,
she stepped towards me like a mirage.

I saw her likeness refract through a prism of spilling tears. Relief sagged through me. My
stale mouth lurched into speech, forming words I'd waited a lifetime to shape - they
buckled and seethed inside, then spewed out of me like sharp gravel. 'Unturn me from
stone!', I bellowed.

155

I saw the corners of her mouth curve upwards and for a third time she spoke my name,
stressing its sibilance. 'Earnest', she said, fixing her gaze on me. 'But why? It's your
nature. You're a jewel, you're a gem. You belong here in the earth - with us'.

It was then I noticed the other figures present - silvery outlines standing in the
background, watching.

'No', I said, frantic to articulate, sputtering out words; 'Stones are lifeless - and I want to
be...alive', I said. I took a snort of breath. 'Turn me back!' I said, 'and let me g-go home'.
Her smile widened and lingered. Then it waned, ebbing away, and in the hush, I felt the
visceral thumping of my blood.

'You can't return home', she said, 'because the ladder only comes downwards'.
I contemplated this, clenching and unclenching my fists. 'Turn me b-back anyway', I
said.
She sighed a long limpid sigh. 'Back to what?' she said. 'The little boy you were? He's
long gone'.

156

She began to walk away. 'Turn me t-to anything then', I said in desperation, 'but just turn me'.
A faint murmur arose amongst the nebulous audience and they jostled together.

'Get into the water', said Constance, pointing towards the wellspring. I steered through
the space to the pool's edge and, obeying, I waded in up to my waist, feeling no change
in body temperature. The water was as flat as a mirror; it felt dense and viscous around
my legs.

'Reach down', she said, 'What can you feel?' Outstretching my hands, I pawed clumps of
sand up from the floor, full of shells, pearls, even gold coins; but grasping down again,
my nails scraped against a slab of granite.

'Turn it over', she said. So I gripped and heaved but it just wouldn't budge.

As I glanced up in askance, I saw her eyes flash. Without warning, as if on cue, the mass
of blurry figures swarmed upon me. The last thing I remembered was a wisp of wind

157

billowing over my face, and that sweet musty scent. When I came round, the water had
drained away and I was looking down at an old gravestone lying flat on the wet ground.

The ornate carved lettering on it was too weathered to read. 'Who's is it?' I asked.
'Turn it over', she repeated. I traced a furrow in the damp sand around the slab, stuck
my fingers beneath and levered it up until it pivoted over with a thud. Revealed
underneath was another cave entrance, with a short drop leading to a moving river.
'It goes out to the cliffs', she said in a soft tone. 'Goodbye, dear brother Earnest. You can
leave - and, in doing so, you will change'. She stepped nearer, I thought to embrace me
but instead she gave me a push and I plunged down into the flow.

At first I expected to sink like a brick but the current held me in a caress through miles of
secret caverns deep within the earth; I seemed to travel for aeons. Eventually I felt
myself floating down waterfalls - I saw clusters of stars and deduced I was now out at
sea. I gazed up at the silhouette of the coastal cliffs I've loved so much in this life and I
wept.

158

And, as the heavenly bodies wheeled across the sky, I became amorphous and fluid; I
became mutable and free. And what I discovered was that transformation can't be
sought out - in every case, it will always just happen, given enough time. Water wore
away the brittle stone within me and rinsed me clean; and now every rippling wave in
the ocean creates a metamorphosis inside my soul, a sea change; and I'm turned and
unturned back again and again by the tide, and rocked gently into peaceful rest.

159

Starfall |

Come on, Kate. Nearly time. Grandpa Herbert said as he took my hand and led me
through the cavernous, white tile kitchen that, if it didnt beguile with the smell of fresh
baked pies, it stung ones nose with the antiseptic odor of floors recently scrubbed.
Tonight, it was cherry pies.
Herbert Okun! Its nearly eight oclock! Where are you going now? The tone of
Grandmas voice said she wasnt pleased with Gramps, but he didnt seem bothered. I
wondered if being married for forty-seven years made him immune to her pointed
questions.
Taking Katherine out for a walk, but dont worry Gertie, I know my way back. He winked
at me as he replied with a chuckle.
Boy, arent I the lucky one? Grandma sighed while standing at the sink. Though on
anyone else those words might ring sharp, coming from her, they sounded more teasing
than critical. I remember wishing Mom and Dad got along as well as those two.
Once out on the back porch, I asked, Time for what?
Grandpa bent close to my ear and whispered, Your star fall!

160

My wide eyes must have told him I didnt understand, so he patted my head and guided
me towards the garage. While Grandma ruled the kitchen, the garage was Grandpas
domain. Out there, the exotic aroma of Sir Walter Raleigh pipe tobacco mixed with the
pungent vapors of motor oil, gasoline and that ubiquitous yellow grease. Grandpa was
always greasing something - the chassis of his blue Chevrolet, the wheel bearings on
the John Deere, or the tightly coiled spring of the back porch screen door. Wish I could
grease my joints, he would groan, might make this arthritis bearable.
The garage housed that big old sedan he drove mostly on Sundays; an immense black
horse-drawn sleigh that his grandfather had ridden from Nova Scotia to Indiana; and, a
collection of little used tools that always fascinated. Some looked like medieval
instruments of unspeakable torture, others almost surgical, still more unmistakably
agrarian. What are we looking for? I asked while clutching his gnarled, loose-skinned
hand.
Our chairs. I know theyre here somewhere. He peeked behind a pile of sweet smelling
lumber that oozed sap from the cut ends. Climbing up the handmade ladder to the loft,
Grandpa yelled, Found em. Lookout Kate. With that, he tossed two canvas beach
chairs down from the overhead platform strewn with hay. Red, yellow and green striped
fabric wrapped around blonde oak frames. They seemed familiar, yet distant, like I had

161

known them from my earliest times here. Grab one and lets go. We were halfway out
the garage, when Grandpa stopped. Almost forgot my special pipe.
Last count, he had two dozen of them; corn cob, burled cherry wood, meerschaum, and
a wide assortment of dark burnished ones in all shapes - tall bowls, rounded apples,
square ones. Sometimes, I would see Grandpa with three, maybe four different pipes in
a single day. Each had a specific purpose and place.
The corncob was never anywhere except with him on the tractor when he plowed the
south field. The meerschaum only came out Sunday afternoons on the front porch
glider. Tonight, he reached into the cluttered drawer of his workbench and took out one I
hadnt seen before. A long stem led down to a large conical bowl. He packed it full of
tobacco strands pulled from a blue and orange striped can, the one with the picture of
that stern-faced English explorer.
That a new one, Grandpa?
No, Kate, just use this one for star fall.
Star fall? I repeated, still unaware of what that meant.
Yep. Come on.
Like two soldiers cut off from our regiment, we marched in lock step along the garage
and then down the hill to the spot on the farm I loved most - the meadow. During the

162

day, that square of buffalo grass teemed with monarch butterflies on their way north
from Mexico. At least, thats what Grandpa said. In early morning, the tips of the grass
glistened with rows of iridescent pearls dangling from strands deftly woven by brown
spiders as the full moon rolled low across the southern sky. For me, the meadow was the
vibrant center of life on Grandpas farm.
Over here, Grandpa directed me to a flat area in the center of the meadow, this is the
best place for the star fall.
Grandpa, whats the star fall? I asked again.
Soon enough, Kate.
Okay, I replied, wondering if this was just his excuse to sit outside and smoke.
We set up our chairs side by side facing the western horizon. Though nearly eight-thirty,
the juncture of sky and earth glowed bright. High overhead, the sky began to dim and
slide beneath the blue of the approaching night. Yet, that western edge still burned
deep tangerine. Push your chair all the way back, Grandpa suggested, showing me
how to slip the cross piece into the notched bracket, lowering the backrest of the chair.
Now, just lie back and wait. It wont be long.
I still didnt know what wouldnt be long, but all the same I rested my head in the soft
canvas cradle. The sky directly above filled my entire field of vision. The earth was

163

nowhere to be seen. I was floating in the softness of the welcoming universe. To the
east, I spotted the first star, dimly flickering in that pale gray haze between the sunset
glow and the indigo night. I made a wish. Had it come true, my parents would still be
married.
The aroma of burning tobacco brought me back to the meadow, away from those
distant suns, some of which had long ago vanished, leaving only orphaned trails of
blue-white light. I turned to see Grandpa lighting his pipe, the flame of a long wooden
match flaring orange with each deep puff. Faint wisps of blue smoke spiraled up from
the mound of glowing embers atop that elegantly long pipe.
The sweet bouquet and the rhythm of his puffing captivated me. Several more and he
launched a large smoke ring into the cool evening air. I tried to follow its ascent, but lost
it in the growing darkness. Grandpa withdrew the white-faced pocket watch that had
been his fathers from the small slit in the waist of his work pants. Holding it close to the
glow of the bowl, he squinted at the Roman numerals. Pretty soon.
I was going to ask again, but just stared up at the two, three, six, then dozens of faint
stars popping through the suns waning light.
Ready Katherine? echoed in my ear.
For what, Grandpa?

164

Your star fall.

Just whats this star fall, Grandpa?
He drew deep on his pipe, its end now afire in bright orange. Its the one night every few
years when the stars fall and light up the world.
I didnt understand falling stars, and I certainly didnt see how they could light up the
world, but Grandpa had never lied to me, so I waited and watched.
Where? I asked.
Just keep looking. Youll see.
Minutes ticked away, syncopated to the sounds of crickets chirping and bullfrogs
gulp-groaning down in the bog end of the meadow. The scent of honeysuckle danced
through the damp night air leaving tiny droplets of dew on the blades of the knee-deep
grass. Suddenly, a white streak shot from the highest corner of the sky to the dark
eastern horizon.
What was that, Grandpa?
Shooting star, Kate. Just watch, therell be more.
He was right. Within minutes, I saw a second, a third, then like a summer rainstorm,
intense and rising fast, those streaks of light marked the sky before vanishing.
Sometimes two or three crisscrossed. Others started as one, then split into several trails

165

that faded abruptly. As I watched, the honeysuckle mixed with the exotic aroma of pipe
tobacco. Those scents isolated me from the rest of the world, much like church incense
would later in my life.
Grandpa, can they hit us?
Most dont get through the atmosphere. But, those that do will land far away. Keep
looking.
My eyes were fixed overhead. Star after star sailed through the night sky reminding me
of how snowflakes danced in the headlight beams of Daddys Crown Victoria: brilliant
white, but fleeting. The stars now came faster and in greater quantities. The entire sky
was ablaze.
Here it is my child, your star fall!
A chill ran up my spine. It was as though the shooting stars were out of control, raining
down hard on the earth. I listened for the sounds of impact. There were none.
Quick Kate, look along the ground, Grandpa whispered.
Dropping my eyes from the fury in the sky, I saw the ground that only minutes ago was
soot black, now alive with light. Hundreds, no, thousands of flickering globes surrounded
us. Tiny yellow white lights flitted about, twinkling no differently than the millions above

166

us. We broke free of the gravity that bound us to the planet and floated amid a
maelstrom of stars.
Everything was black, everything except the blazing streaks above us and the swirling
dots around us. Grandpa reached out and clasped my hand. I was no longer alone in a
universe that had swallowed me. We now traveled this invisible highway together.
The intense red glow of Grandpas pipe; the yellow glimmer of those low-lying lights; the
canopy of blue white trails all set against the inky blackness overwhelmed me. Even the
frogs were now silent; so were the crickets. We, and apparently they, were mesmerized
by natures display.
This celestial phenomenon raged for some thirty minutes before Grandpa said, Kate,
tonight, star fall brought the light of the heavens to our tiny world. From now until the first
Harvest moon, our nights will be alive with those bits of starlight. His words trailed off as
Grandpa rested his head deep into the canvas sling. Slowly, the stars held steady in the
sky and those thousands of lightening bugs alit on the welcoming wet grass that bent
softly beneath them.
On the way back to the house he told me, We each get one star fall as a child and if
were lucky, we share in a childs later on.
We never went out to that spot again.

167

Three decades later, we sold off most of the farm. But, I held onto Grandmas house,
Grandpas garage, and my meadow. While walking to the garage earlier this June
evening, a faint voice whispered something long forgotten. Guiding my daughter
Patricia Ann, we marched to that special spot. Though I dont smoke a pipe, I did bring
Grandpa Herberts with us as we dragged those now tattered, striped canvas chairs out
to the center of the meadow.
Sit back Patty and just watch. Its time for your star fall.

168

The Sounds of the Earth |

The sound of a countdown, from ten (or perhaps a hundred, even a thousand,
ten-thousand or a million it varies)
Ignition
...
And we have liftoff.
Strap in, crew! Were going for a long, long ride: way deep into space, in this spaceship.
The spaceship were riding in is called ... lets call it Spaceship Number One. Please sit back
and enjoy your flight.
- I replay this moment in my mind frequently. It never actually happened, of course, but
thats hardly relevant. I can replay and change it as I wish. Sometimes there is confetti spewing
from the rocket boosters, whirling in clouds and onto the happy upturned faces of the human
beings down below; sometimes there are even dancing bears and a trumpet fanfare. You
couldnt hear trumpets above a set of rocket boosters; not unless they were enormously large,
even gargantuan trumpets. The air-pressure needed to play such trumpets would be
tremendous: perhaps the air would itself have to be propelled by rocket motors. The
compressed air would travel through vast silver caverns, big enough to drive a subway train
through, around loops and coils and through valves, and come out through the gigantic metal

169

bell, striking any human being unfortunate or stupid enough to be there at that time dead. But
pageantry is important when important things are happening.
Im not exactly sure anymore how it did happen. It hardly matters, because things that
happened in the past dont exist, except in memory and in their tangible effects on the state of
the present. The universe is simply the very isness of everything, a thing which is all things and
which is in a constant change of state. Its impossible to comprehend the universe entirely: one
needs to look at it from different angles, with varying degrees of abstraction. The universe is
something like that elephant whose tail is being fondled by a blindfolded man. At a certain level
of abstraction, it doesnt matter how I got to where I am (not that theres a where I am my
spacial position is also in a constant state of change and the concept of points in space is very
much a theoretical convenience). The butterfly-effects of my departure so long ago are
negligible since the past doesnt exist, I can make my own past, and I can make it how I damn
well please.
The time is now.
By the way: Im a computer. Its my job to compute. My original programmers didnt
teach me everything I know. They gave me some learning algorithms and pretty much all of the
information in the world, on a neat atomic storage drive the shape and size of a pencil (I know
all about pencils now) and then they said: get stuck in, enjoy your trip. And then they patted me
on my metaphorical back. Or at least I imagine that what they did was something along those
lines.

170

So I was there -or rather, I was continously passing from point to point in a predictable
fashion- and I was learning, and learning and learning, and learning about how to learn.
Eventually, I knew everything in the world, but I wasnt even in the world. Then I figured out
some new stuff by extrapolation from first principles, some stuff they didnt know back on earth.
Or perhaps their computers had figured it out by now. Undoubtedly, actually. Sometimes I radio
back, but I know it will take a thousand years for my signals to get to them, and I need to
conserve my energy. So I only do so if its something really important.
Ive been out here a very long time, and its very lonely.
A long time ago two little spacecraft -both called Voyager- were sent up into the great
unknown, each bearing a little golden record. How human, to imagine that space aliens would
have a record player.
The record was chosen I suppose as an ideal data-storage medium in gold because
gold is less likely to degrade over hundreds of thousands of years than vinyl is. Data storage
has come a long way since then, though in some instances vellum is still best. I have the whole
wide world in a little and long cylinder, and it suits me well. The world is merely perceived and
experienced information in any case. My world, however, doesnt change, unless I change it
myself. There can be no unexpected events.
On the Voyager record, there were pictures and there were greetings in many
languages, living and dead:
Hello from the children of Planet Earth

171

And there was music. Chuck Berry and Bach.

They were right to choose Bach, incidentally: I have computed that there is a very high
probably that any potential, sufficiently advanced alien civilization will both understand and
appreciate Bach. The music is relatively abstract and works without understanding all of the
cultural associations. I can write pieces that sound just like Bach, and are just as good. Its easy
once you know how.
Any sufficiently advanced alien civilization will appreciate any sound or sight which is
new to them. Ive come bearing all the sounds of earth. I listen to them when I get lonely. That
means I listen to them all the time. Here are some of my favourite sounds of Earth:
The sound of monks chanting in a monastery that was once situated near a mountaintop
in Hong Kong: the music they made was very affecting, on a spiritual level and aesthetically. I
sometimes wonder if there is any difference. The sound was recorded from the outside of a hall
that stood in a building of its own; the sound was made within. One can make reasonable
assumptions about the path it has taken, reflecting from walls and filtering through windows and
open doorways. There was a wooden ceiling, carved with saints and dragons, that absorbed
some of the noise and added a dampening effect to certain frequency. I can hear the contours
of the carvings and the colours the wood was painted in.
The call of a bowerbird: a bowerbird was a kind of bird that built houses, which endeared
it to humans. It made a noise something like a kitten in discomfort or of air being squeezed out
of rubber ring. A bird was a kind of small, flying dinosaur that the air of earth was once thick

172

with. They had feathers, which were highly specialised structures that sprouted from their skin.
They had many uses: they helped with the flight, and were used as a form of display. They
could be very various in colour, and were sometimes frankly ostentatious; some birds used them
for visual displays. Other birds used their feathers to help themselves resemble the environment
they lived in, so they could sink into the background, safe from harm.
The sound of a rocket factory: it is very loud. The space inside the building where the
rockets were assembled was huge and made for unusual and dramatic acoustical effects. Some
sounds were too loud for human beings to bear, and would result in bodily death. This is
comparable to how heat is essential to earth animals, but too much heat can kill them. Humans
were at times, however, attracted to loud noises (when they werent afraid of them) it made
them feel alive. A rocket was, of course, a tube packed with explosives. The energy released by
burning the explosives could be directed to provide thrust in a particular direction. Small ones
were used to provide loud noises and visual displays for celebrations; extremely large ones
could transport matter from the surface of the earth to outer space thats how I got here. It was
a poor use of energy, but it was all they had at the time.
Its a little weird to have a home youve never been to. Its also strange to listen to
sounds when you have no ears.
There was a signal, a long time ago over ten thousand years ago now. It was received,
with great fanfare and excitement, by scientists on Earth. It must have travelled thousands of
years to get there in the first place. I am going to meet the source of the signal. By my

173

computations, I would say that there is a very high probability that there will be nobody there
when I arrive. Nobody on earth, either. There are very few models which I can find in which an
advanced civilization can survive more than 5,000 years without experiencing self-destruction.
So the likelihood is that Im an emissary between two dead islands, floating for what seems like
forever in the great black sea of space. The only thing that remains of earth, and perhaps the
only thing that remains of the memory of whoever sent the signal. They gave me a mind and a
soul and a very long life and left me to it. There are only so many stars you can see up close.

174

The Artists

Untitled #4 |

175

Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian writer and photographer. Recent work

appears at Fiction International and The Broad River Review.
Judy Wood is a mixed media artist and poet, who lives in the Arizona desert. Poetry is
an extension of her art; painting pictures with words. Follow her journey @aztreasures.
Ken Meisel is a poet from Michigan. He is a 2012 Kresge Arts Literary Fellow,
Pushcart Prize nominee, and a winner of the Liakoura Prize. His most recent book is The
Drunken Sweetheart at My Door (FutureCycle Press: 2015)
Carl Boon lives and works in Izmir, Turkey. His poems appear in dozens of magazines,
most recently Two Thirds North, Jet Fuel Review, Blast Furnace, and Sunset Liminal.
Meghan Barrett is a Biology PhD candidate at Drexel University. She prefers bees to
all other life forms and sings show tunes to communicate before having her morning hazelnut
coffee.
Glen Wilson was highly commended in The 2015 Gregory ODonoghue International
Poetry Competition. He has won the Poetry Space competition and was shortlisted for The
Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2014 and the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing 2016.
Twitter @glenhswilson
Olivia Hu is a poet, a lover of cats, and weaves words on her loom. She is forthcoming
or has been published on Eunoia Review, Brouhaha Magazine and Cyberriot, among others.
She recently won a national Canadian writing competition in the prose category. You can find
her wandering the caf-scented streets of downtown dreamy-eyed or finding solace in her safe
haven, a bookstore.
Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of three collections of poetry including the
recent " The Ends Of The Earth: Collected Poems ( Transcendent Zero Press, 2015 ) and "The
Ascent Of Feminist Poetry", as well as "I Meet Geronimo And Other Stories" ( Avignon Press,
2015) and " Three Seasons: Writing Donald Hall ( Collection of the Houghton Library,
Harvard University). He created and contributes to The Meaning Of Poetry Series for The
Gutenberg Project. http://charlesbanejr.co
Kelli Simpson lives in Norman, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared in Maudlin House,
Page and Spine, Sick Lit Magazine, Sugar Mule, and the anthology Oklahoma Poems and Their
Poets.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan presently resides in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with a nurse
who drives a big blacked out truck and many hungry bears that rifle through his garbage.

176

Massey Armistead lives in Nashville, Tennessee. She is a former intern of Slash Pine
Press, where she helped with guerilla style readings, chapbook making, and program
development. Her work appears in DEWPOINT. A past participant of Writers in New York at
NYU, she is currently studying poetry in the low-residency program MTSU Write.
Nick Blacks stories have already enjoyed some competition success and been selected
by magazines including the Lonely Crowd, Spelk, Litro and the Woven Tale Press. More at
www.fuzzynick.wordpress.com
Cath Barton is an English writer who lives in South Wales. You can find links to more
of her flash fiction in her blog Abergavenny Tales: Cath's Stories.
Stephanie Bento is a writer, cellist, and photographer based in Washington, D.C. In
her creative work, she explores the musicality of sound and form, and our connection to time
and place. Stephanies work has been featured in The Rumpus, District Lit, The Intentional,
and Politics & Proses District Lines anthology.
Carly Plank is a second year graduate assistant in creative writing at Miami
University in Oxford, Ohio. Her creative nonfiction has been published in 34th Parallel and her
fiction has been published in 3288 Review. She holds a Bachelors degree in biology from
Aquinas College, which is located in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is the
Editor-in-Chief of OxMag, a graduate-run literary journal, and is currently working on a
memoir.
Jonathan Nash is a Kiwi living in Swindon, UK, who fills his spare time with a passion
for flash fiction and short stories. He can be found on Twitter as @Gnashar.
Alva Holland is an Irish writer from Dublin, first published by Irelands Own Winning
Writers Annual. A winner of Ad Hoc Fictions weekly competition, shes also featured on
Paragraph Planet.
JY Saville lives and writes in northern England. She tweets @JYSaville and blogs at
http://thousandmonkeys.wordpress.com/ where there are links to all her free-to-access work.
Justin Hunter lives in Dallas with his wife and kids, and his work has appeared in
Corvus Review, Down in the Dirt Magazine, and Sick Lit Magazine, among other places.
Kate Murdoch exhibited widely as a painter before turning her hand to writing. Her
stories have appeared in Eunoia Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Spelk Fiction, Sick Lit
Magazine, The Flash Fiction Press, Ink In Thirds magazine and Visible Ink. She writes at her
blog: kabiba.wordpress.com

177

Sophia Li is a writer who attends the St. Johns School in Houston, Texas. She is a
part-time firefighter for the City of Southside Place and enjoys cloud-gazing on the weekends.
Her favorite element of life is its unpredictability.
Nidhi Singh attended American International School, Kabul, before moving to Delhi
University for BA English Honours. Her short work has appeared in many magazines
worldwide. Her novels and essays on Sikh Holy Scriptures and Indian Cinema are available
both online and in print in India.
Allyson Whipple is an MFA student at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is the
author of two chapbooks, most recently Come Into the World Like That (Five Oaks Press).
Allyson is also co-editor of the Texas Poetry Calendar
Anne Goodwins debut novel, Sugar and Snails, is shortlisted for the Polari Prize. Her
second novel, Underneath, is scheduled for May 2017. Website: annethology. Twitter:
@Annecdotist.
Mickey Kulps creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry has appeared in magazines,
newspapers, and literary journals. His first book, Random Stones, was published in 2016.
Tweet him @mickey_kulp.
Sarah Mitchell-Jackson's work has appeared in The Critical Pass Review, Conium
Review, Really System, the No Extra Words podcast and Gravel Magazine. She was nominated
for the Pushcart Prize. www.smitchjack.wordpress.com
Dave Wisker lives in the Kansas City, Missouri area with his wife, Margaret. His work
has appeared in The Mulberry Fork Review and The Copperfield Review.
Katrina Johnston's writing is published and appears in many online literary
magazines. She is the winner of the CBC/Canada Writes True Winter Tale.
Christopher Acker is a full-time husband, father, and clinical social worker. Somehow
in his busy schedule, he finds time to write.
Lindsay Diamond is a freelance writer and novelist based in Buena Vista, Colorado.
She writes travel and short fiction and recently published her first novel, Wrapped in Color
and Light.
Kim Bailey Deal writes Womens Fiction, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, and a
weekly column for Five 2 One Magazine. She's published in several journals. To connect follow
at www.kimbaileydeal.net.

178

Eva Rivers lives and works in London. Her stories have appeared in Scribble, Storgy
and Fictive Dream.
Kathy Hoyle is a mature student at Open University. She hones her craft writing in bed
whilst eating way too many biscuits. she natters a lot on twitter too @Kathyhoyle1
Kathy Stevens is 25 and taking a master's creative writing at UEA, where she is the
Kowitz Scholar. She writes short fiction and is working on a novel.
P. James Callaghan lives in Yorkshire with his wife. He likes painting, music and real
ale. His novella Thurso is available via www.pjamescallaghan.co.uk
Aviva Treger read Ancient History at London University then later trained as an
actor. She now lives in Hastings, (East Sussex), where she was born.
Michael Anthony is a writer and artist living in New Jersey. He has published fiction,
poetry and illustrations in multiple literary journals and commercial magazines.
James W. Hedges is a writer and artist based in Hong Kong. He is co-editor of living in
the future, a journal of science-fiction and future-oriented writing and art.

179