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A literary magazine about challenge and change
FICTION, JANUARY 2026, Yurii Tokar

The Aliens

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The Aliens

Yurii Tokar

A cold autumn evening was sadly spreading across the quiet village with the mysterious name of Byshev. It was located not far from Kyiv. It was there that I taught mathematics after graduating from university. Why was the evening sad? Perhaps autumn is never conducive to optimism, and November 1992, marked by a premonition of changes in the country, seemed surprisingly unfriendly for some reason. What will they be like, the coming changes? Everyone tried to answer this question for themselves, but people cannot predict the future. 

Many claim that it is during times of change in the state that a huge number of magicians appear. It is then that people begin to believe in the yeti, various monsters, and talking stones; that is, they start to believe in something unusual. Perhaps they want to escape from reality in this way, although they themselves do not realize it. In 1992, talk about alien creatures was present on all television channels, radio programs, and in newspapers.

That chilly evening, I could have sat by the fireplace, which was warming me with a kind fire, and leafed through some illustrated magazines or read an article about aliens. However, I only had an electric fireplace, which meant that the wood in it did not crackle or create a flame. Additionally, in the morning, during a math lesson, I promised a seventh-grader that I would come to his house in the evening to talk to the boy’s parents. This seventh-grader had not done his homework for two weeks in a row, and there were no mobile phones at that time, so I could only complain to the parents about the careless student in person.

The seventh grader’s name was Andrey. The walk to his house took forty minutes. Of course, I was wet, and when Andrey opened the door to my knock, he looked at his math teacher sympathetically and invited me into the house.

“Where are your parents?” I asked Andrey.  

“They are staying late at work, but they will be back soon. You can sit down in the armchair and watch TV for now, and I will make some tea and treat you.”  

The boy was embarrassed and felt guilty. I thanked him and settled into the armchair because I had definitely decided to wait for Andrey’s parents. Suddenly, someone knocked on the door. Vladik entered the house, or rather burst in. This boy was Andrey’s neighbor and was in the sixth grade. Vladik didn’t even say hello but immediately began to speak excitedly.

“There’s something going on in the street… There’s something… There’s something incredible!”

The boy accompanied his confused phrases with incomprehensible gestures, trying to emphasize the significance of what was happening. 

“First of all, good evening! Secondly, please calm down and explain what you’re talking about,” I asked the sixth grader. 

But he was so worried that he had no time for the rules of decency.

“Everything is glowing there,” he finally said in a trembling voice.

“What else could there be outside besides wind and wet snow?” I thought, getting up from my chair.”

‘Let’s go and see if you’re not making this up!” 

“No, no,” he shouted excitedly.

We went outside together. What we saw was truly impressive. The village was bathed in a shimmering blue color. It looked completely different from a few minutes ago when I was walking down the street.  

“Look,” Andrey shouted, pointing to the north, “the glow is the brightest there!”  

And indeed, it seemed that the source of the mysterious light was in the northern part of the village.  

“Do you have bicycles?” I asked Andrey decisively.  

“I have two; they are in the barn, but the chain sometimes slips on both bikes. It is difficult to control them.”  

“It’s okay. Let’s go and see what it could be!”  

The boys were delighted with this proposal. Andrey went to the barn for the bicycles, and Vladik ran for his bike, and a couple of minutes later, we were riding in a northern direction.

The bike chain was indeed slipping, and wet snow was aiming at our eyes, but none of this mattered because the mysterious flickering glow was becoming brighter and brighter as we approached its source.

It was hard to ride, but the bikes moved slowly forward. There were no people on the street. It seemed to us that all the villagers had disappeared somewhere, and we were on the set of a science fiction film. Each of us wanted to be the first to see the source of the mysterious light. However, I did not notice the pothole in the road in front of me, so my bike ended up in a puddle, and I fell. The boys were luckier because they lagged behind me a little. But the mud-spattered clothes did not cause concern because we were approaching the mystical flashes.

“Maybe these are space aliens?” shouted Andrey, who was riding behind. 

In another situation, I would have joked in response, but then I kept silent and thought to myself, “Why not? Maybe a spaceship really did fly to Earth from another planet!” 

We saw the source of light as soon as we passed the last house in the village. The situation turned out to be much more prosaic than our fantasies. There was an accident on a high-voltage power line, and periodic short circuits in the wires caused a bright glow. An emergency electrician’s car was already parked nearby, but we did not notice any space aliens. One of the electricians, who was standing about ten meters away from us, for some reason looked at me very attentively and somewhat surprised. At first, I did not understand what had aroused his interest in me, but then I lowered my head and saw myself in the bright light from the car’s spotlights. My raincoat, ironed trousers, and boots were splashed with mud.

Andrey came up to me from behind and gently tugged my sleeve.  

“That’s my dad.” he pointed at the surprised electrician, “Are you going to talk to him now?”  

“No. Some other time,” I answered, and the boys and I slowly headed back towards the village.  

In fact, I no longer had the desire to talk to Andrey’s parents, but I will note that after that incident, he always came to class with his homework done. Perhaps the space aliens had an effect on him.

FICTION, Fiona Sinclair, JANUARY 2026

Exorcising Mother

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Exorcising Mother

 Fiona Sinclair

In the taxi from the station, Emily hugged her freedom as if it was an expensive handbag. At twenty-nine, she was returning from her first ever weekend away from home.

London had meant an orgy of sightseeing that her old friend Hannah was happy to accommodate. Like a time poor tourist, Emily had galloped through St Pauls, The Tower of London and Westminster Abbey until her friend had begged for a sit down and some food. “These buildings have been here hundreds of years” she panted, not understanding that Emily’s default setting was playing catch up.

Now Emily trotted up the bungalow’s short driveway, a suitcase in one hand and, in the other, shopping bags ripe with new clothes. ‘No more hand me downs’ she thought with a smile.

It was an exceptionally warm Spring that year, as if the weather, too, was in cahoots with her. Inserting the key into the front door, Emily knew from experience that the pokey bungalow trapped extremes of weather. So, with windows and doors shut up for four days, she knew it would be like entering a forge.

But, stepping into the hall, she was struck by an uncanny chill, as if an air conditioner had been switched to its maximum setting and left unchecked for many hours. It did not provide a welcome contrast to the unseasonable spring weather outside. Instead, she began to shiver, the hairs on her arms raised like hackles and a rash of tiny goose pimples spread across her skin.

Emily instinctively pulled on a cardigan and wrapped it around her. She waited for the chill to dial down. It did not. In fact, if anything, it intensified. Her next response was to move into the small kitchen to see if the freezer door had swung open, reasoning that in a place little more than a bedsit, the chill from the freezer might well have filled the place with cold air. But the door was secure. She then went methodically room by room, trying to find some other source for the cold. She found no answers, but the bedrooms, bathroom and sitting room, were all equally as chilled as meat lockers.

This frosty atmosphere did not frighten her. Emily was accustomed to weird and little phased her now. Standing with her hands on her hips in the sitting room she suddenly recognised the atmosphere as the brooding anger that was her late mother’s trademark. Since childhood, she had been familiar with this withdrawal of affection for some minor misdemeanour, anything from ripping her jeans in some tomboy escapade to playing out with friends, ignoring her parent’s curfew. At these times, her mother’s beautiful features became an ice queen mask as maternal love was switched off, a punishment that stung far more than a slap or being confined to her bedroom.

Now the adult Emily, suspecting that death did not dissolve a person’s worst traits, knew that the house was overwhelmed by her mother’s disapproval of her daughter’s behaviour in the aftermath of her death. From her Mum’s perspective, she had betrayed her on many counts. So, this was, Emily suspected, a sort of supernatural sulk.

Decades before, her mother’s life of delicious domesticity was ruptured by Dad’s sudden death at 40. Now there were bills to settle, a living to be earned and a daughter to raise. But mum was unable to face the challenges. She was proactive only in seeking a replacement for Dad, a knight on a charger who would solve her troubles. However, she soon found that she was considered more mistress material than wife. Her beauty was too showy for a rural backwater. And millionaires with money to purchase shiny things were in short supply.

She had begun drinking just to take the edge off her problems, in the days following her husband’s death. Failure to find a new man sent her mother’s moral compass spinning off its course. Liaisons with a series of rogues paid the bills. Sex was anaesthetised by copious amounts of booze then. It also helped to blur the truth of herself in the dressing table mirror.

For Emily, her dad’s death was the death of her childhood. As family and friends peeled off with mother’s plunging reputation, at eleven she was promoted to confidante. By eighteen, when her own life was becoming fecund with opportunity, her mother’s needy ‘You won’t leave me too’ tethered Emily to her and the bungalow. She procured her wine in the morning and put her to bed when it finally overwhelmed her.

Emily did this because she adored her mother. She was absolutely partisan, saw her as a beautiful victim relentlessly kicked by fate. Decades passed in this dreary routine. Mother and daughter’s lives contracting to the parameters of the tiny bungalow. Even the rogues fell away, except one who visited weekly, left money discreetly on the sideboard, claiming he expected nothing in return. However, his eyes constantly alighted on Emily like a fly, suggesting he was, in fact, watching an investment develop.

Then, in her mid-fifties, the knight she had always sought rode in to save mother. Sadly, it was more black than white and arrived in the guise of a tumour. Turning her back on treatment and determined that cancer would not run riot in her body as it done with her husband, she decided that suicide would be the cleanest exit.

The finding of the lump winded Emily. She crawled like an invalid through those early days of diagnosis, all the while mother insisted there would be no discussion and life would default to their version of normal. Emily’s shock was compounded when she understood that her mother expected her to facilitate death. Sick to her stomach, she nevertheless agreed, thereby giving her mother peace of mind. But she secretly offered up desperate prayers that it would not come to it.

The origins of the suicide pact were hazy. Looking back, it was like trying to accurately recall a nightmare. Had her mum suggested it? Or had Emily been unable to contemplate life without her? Either way, mother’s relief was evident. In her addled mind it was an elegant solution to an ugly problem.

From her contracted perspective Emily could not envisage a future for herself. She was isolated as a heroine in a Victorian novel, having had no contact with her family since she was eleven. In a sense she had grown up supernumerary to her mother who took precedence even in something as basic as clothes. Emily had not had her own new garments since childhood. As she grew into a young woman, mother would rummage in her own chest of drawers to provide underwear, jeans, and tops. Largely because all surplus money must go on alcohol.

Mother had also guessed that the one remaining rogue who kept a seemingly friendly eye on them, in fact had an agenda. Whilst Emily lacked her mother’s beauty she had the asset of youth. Some residual maternal instinct must have kicked in here. She knew that her protection was finite now. The rogue was playing a not so long game for the prize of a vulnerable young woman. In retrospect, Emily thought mother’s advocacy for the suicide pact was a blur of all these factors, with perhaps a jigger of jealousy as well for her daughter’s youth and health.

In the months before the cancer overwhelmed, Emily basked in her mother’s praise ‘You are so brave.’ Even at 28, she still craved the approval that was dealt out so meagrely. Of course, mother had no idea that it was all bravado, but it helped ameliorate the prospect of the pact and almost made her decision worth it.

But in truth Emily was horrified. It was as if the cancer had invaded both their bodies, decided both their fates. At times she was able to park her terror by bingeing on classic literature and junk food. Other times, at night, she lay awake, horrifying images running riot in her mind. Silently screaming ‘I don’t want to.’ At these times, her love of life fought with love for her mother.

Mum sensed when the cancer was making its final move. Laying claim to her brain, it was gradually stealing her mobility and reducing her voice to a whisper. That day, Emily downed a bottle of wine herself to take the edge off proceedings. Unaccustomed to alcohol, she worked in a haze. The afternoon took on a ‘down the rabbit hole’ unreality. She talked her way through the preparations. This served to focus her mind and subdue fear. But there were still moments when she felt like a prison warder forcing her petrified body towards the noose.

A lack of basic physics saved her. The water in the bath merely rippled like a mini tide. The breaker had tripped. There was an element of dark humour about the botched attempt, but neither laughed. Emily took the failure as an intervention by fate. As she clambered from the bath the truth tumbled from her mouth. ‘No, I don’t want to.’

In contrast, her mother sobbed at the abortion. Having lost all agency to cancer, she could not now determine her own death. Her daughter, with strength gained from years of practice, now supported Mum back to bed.

And then her mum performed the only selfless act of the past twenty years. She instructed Emily to phone her estranged grandmother. As is often the case, the two hit it off. Whilst Emily had never resembled her mother, she now saw her genes were gifted from this woman. They shared the same brown hair and eyes. Their temperament was similar, too. The granddaughter inheriting her indomitable spirit.

Of course, Emily knew there would be a reckoning in the future. At some stage she would have to make peace with the guilt she had stashed away in a corner of her mind. The broken promise of living on after her mother. The disloyalty of accepting her grandmother’s protection. The process of carving out a future for herself. But, at the moment, Emily was distracted by the sheer novelty of living.

And now, suddenly, she began to throw open all the windows and doors. The heat waiting outside burst into the bungalow, seeing off the cold from every corner, melting the ice of her mother’s anger until, standing bathed in sunlight, Emily smiled, knowing that, for now, her mum was routed.

FICTION, JANUARY 2026, Jon Fain

The Exchange

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The Exchange

by Jon Fain

One family had twins, and wanted two Americans. In the German home, Pinkham and Scalzilli kept it simple. If Frau Mueller asked them if they wanted another Wurst, more Kartoffeln, or a piece of Kase, they’d tell her ein bischen. A little. If one of the blonde-haired brothers asked them if they wanted to play a game, or go see the statue of Frederick der Grosse, they’d say vielliecht später. Maybe later. That was all there was to it.

They hadn’t known each other well in their high school language class before the trip, but sharing a room in the German family’s home brought Pinkham under Scalzilli’s spell. He was there with Scalzilli when they found their way to the top floor of the Gymnasium and started throwing their American change off the balcony at the German kids as they left for the day, both to try to hit them, and laugh at the ones scrambling to get the coins. Scalzilli pulled him into the sex shops downtown after school, live shows in the back, where like the bars you only had to be sixteen. And every day, Scalzilli talked about jumping the trip—he had an older brother in London, but where he really wanted to go was Italy of course, and he wanted Pinkham to come.

They were older than the twins, who were the youngest kids in the class, and who were always teased by the other German students. They kept wanting to practice their English, and Pinkham indulged them more than Scalzilli. Scalzilli spent more time buttering up the mother. He’d pretend to be interested in all the family photographs on display, or the ingredients of the meals she prepared. Scalzilli had a way of enticing people to do things that you’d never think about without him. 

Frau Mueller gave them a key to the apartment and most nights Pinkham and Scalzilli met up with some of the other American kids on the exchange program. They hung in a club where long-haired Germans in black leather screamed out weirdo rock. The last time, a trio of American soldiers stationed at the local base came in. One of them was just back from Iraq. They sat with the students and started coming on to the girls. Becky Hawkins was one of them. 

She was one of the few girls who hadn’t yet gotten with another kid from home or a German boy. Pinkham had known her since first grade. They’d been in some of the same classes anyway, some years, same homeroom.

Pinkham was an under-encouraged only child, with strict parents. He was still a virgin, had never even kissed a girl. He had matured late; before that, was a small kid with big dreams of being a sports star, fantasies bullied out of him on every court and field. 

One of the soldiers started dancing with dark-haired Becky. Pinkham, watching from a nearby table, could tell she didn’t like it. Then she looked right at him and it was clear what she needed. Behind him, Scalzilli, sitting with the other two soldiers, laughed, and the beers and his new friend being literally at his back gave him confidence. He willed himself into believing he was Superman to the rescue.

Pinkham went onto the dance floor.

He tapped the soldier on the uniformed shoulder, expecting he’d be punched. But Becky stepped away from the soldier, who was shorter than Pinkham, and when he turned, Pinkham moved in.

As she came into his arms, she whispered that he’d saved her and that kept him bold. He thought about what to do next. 

Someone slapped his back.

Scalzilli, so drunk he swayed, managed to stay upright, a sturdy tree in a gale. 

“Man, we’re going to France! We’re driving…tonight!” 

Becky Hawkins tugged at him. When he saw what was happening, Scalzilli gave him a tongue-wagging grin, and went back to the table with the soldiers and more Bier.

After dancing, Becky said she had to leave. She asked Pinkham to walk her the few blocks to the Bahnhof so she could get a train out to where her host family lived. They talked about what they’d learned on the six week exchange, where they’d applied to college, how they weren’t ready to go back home. As the train pulled in, he did what he assumed he should. “Oh, he kissed me!’ Becky laughed. 

Scalzilli always had the key. After the taxi let him off, Pinkham stood in the driveway, looking at the house where he’d been staying. He threw pebbles against the window of their room, but if Scalzilli was in there, he didn’t hear. Pinkham went back to the front and rang the doorbell. Sleepy-eyed Frau Mueller came finally, holding her robe tight at her neck. She saw he was alone.

“Wo ist er? Wo ist Tommy!”

“He’s coming later,” Pinkham told her, not knowing if he was speaking English or German. “Vielliecht später.” He went to the room they shared.

He woke up once. He thought he heard something outside, but when he got out of bed and went to the window, he saw nothing. He opened it and let cold air seep in.

He woke up next with Frau Mueller shaking him. He’d been dreaming, in the warmth of the down comforter.

“Er ist tot!”

Pinkham got dressed and came out to find his German family—the mother, the tall bald father and the twins—and standing with them, just as serious, were his American teacher Frau Skoda, Herr Löffler from the Gymnasium, and two big men in uniforms, der Polizei.  As Frau Skoda told him about the accident, Pinkham knew that his new friend had worked his magic on someone else, talked the soldiers into letting him drive their Jeep. 

Scalzilli always had the key.

There was heavy turbulence on the plane back to New York. Becky sat with him, her head on his shoulder. When he thought she was asleep, he ran his fingers back and forth against the side of her breast, and then knew she was awake because she dropped her hand down onto his thigh.

But it turned out she was involved with someone, an older boy from another town. She didn’t dump Pinkham herself, she had a friend of hers do it, someone else on the German trip. A big girl with a boy’s name, Sidney, who told him how it was. Like usual, he couldn’t compete. And he hated that he felt relieved—not have to prove himself in something he didn’t feel ready for. 

The last time Pinkham saw Becky, it was at their graduation in the school’s fieldhouse, the boys in red gowns and tasseled hats, the girls in white. He almost hadn’t made it to the ceremony, almost flunked out after they got back from Germany. It was Frau Skoda, in spite of what she knew had happened, Scalzilli and all that; it was Frau Skoda who threatened to fail him, who sent the note to his parents about how Pinkham had stopped doing the assigned work. 

Pinkham only got in to his safe school, nearby Stony Brook, the only place he’d applied to that wasn’t 500 miles away, where he majored in business like everyone else. His freshmen year he finally slept with a girl, another first timer, but not until late spring. It ended before they left for the summer. He had another experience his sophomore year, with the same end result. In his junior year he met Natalie. It wasn’t until almost two years later, when they were out of school and living together that she told Pinkham she’d gotten pregnant from one of the first times. After they married, they had the child they’d delayed unbeknownst to him.

Three years later, combining an experience he’d long imagined with an opportunity he was too stupid to avoid, he got involved with a neighbor, the mother of his son Tommy’s best friend. He knew she didn’t even like him much, that he was a fulcrum for some phase she was in, that she wanted to be lifted free from. She proved that she liked his wife even less, by telling Natalie what happened. After the separation from his wife, Pinkham went back the twenty miles to his hometown. 

He supposed it was good that he was there when his parents had medical appointments, or needed things done around the house. They were still in the ratty ranch he grew up in, but it didn’t look much worse, at least from the outside. He’d tried to stay as close as he could to Tommy, but his wife got a boyfriend, and their son took to him right away. Pinkham and his son might as well have been 500 miles apart.

He assumed some people from his school were still around town, no doubt the ones who tortured him when they were kids. In spite of that, Pinkham went to his tenth reunion. The music was too loud, it was a cash bar, and the chicken was dry. One classmate looked the same as he had at recess in the first grade, but everyone else, including Pinkham, he suspected, looked like their parents. He heard some guy keep saying to everyone, “Less hair… more stomach!”

He talked near the end with a couple who had been on the Germany exchange, who’d gotten together on that trip and lasted. They remembered him as being much shorter. Not long after they asked what he did and he told them underwriting, property and casualty, business clientele, Happauge regional office, they spotted another couple that they knew better and hurried away.

Before that they’d told him about what had happened to other kids who’d been on the Germany trip but weren’t at the reunion. That Cash, the football star, took over his father’s roofing business and that Morgan, the class valedictorian, had gotten skin cancer and died at 26. Cayo, the musician who wanted to be a jazz trumpeter, became a lawyer instead. And Becky Hawkins had married, had a family, got divorced—moved to Maine, they said, in a second marriage, to a woman.

Pinkham sat at a table by himself, and watched kids grown old dance to one last old song.

If Becky was there—maybe he could have, would have danced with her. He could have, would have told her that that first time they danced, she saved his life. Gave him a life, such as it was. Kept him from Scalzilli’s last ride.

He might have asked her: Could she, would she? Work her magic again?

That night, no one talked about Scalzilli; he didn’t hear anyone say Scalzilli’s name. Maybe they remembered that Scalzilli and Pinkham were friends, and didn’t want to upset him. Or maybe they knew that Pinkham preferred not to share his memory with anyone else.

Pinkham over the years had shared his name, though. 

“Scalzilli!” he’d go, instead of “Shit!” 

His wife thought he did it, and he didn’t tell her otherwise, because he didn’t want to swear in front of their son.

The morning after the reunion, sleeping in his boyhood bedroom, Pinkham had a dream in which everyone—but no one he knew—spoke German. He turned the key of the car he was in, drove the strangers toward somewhere, somewhere they, but he, didn’t want to go. Coming awake, he thought he understood what had been said, but it wasn’t so, not even a little bit. 

He heard his parents as they worked at their breakfast in the kitchen down the hall. They’d be at it for a while, bickering, louder than they used to do it; neither one heard very well anymore.

By now, he had forgotten all of the dream, and remembered details from the reunion the night before, instead.

“Scalzilli!” Pinkham shouted to the stained, peeling ceiling. 

Probably not for the last time.

###

Dudley Stone, JANUARY 2026, POETRY

Suburban Walking Blues

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Suburban Walking Blues

by Dudley Stone

1.

Heavy bag on my back

Ain’t lookin’ for no job

No job lookin’ for me

Walk down Corporate, walk down Industry,

anonymous as yellow brick, red brick, stucco.

Space available, will build to suit.

Left lane must turn left.

Black walking stick holding up a wall.

Did your owner crawl home?

Curbside sentinels — blue mailbox, Fed Ex box, newspaper,

apartment finder, employment finder, cars, pets.

Oaks regular as streetlights. Acorns, sidewalks gouged

by the claws of some nocturnal beast.

2.

Sing to myself

Ain’t lookin’ for no place

No place lookin’ for me

Under construction, wooden sticks, yellow tape, red tape,

yellow flag, red flag, dig, don’t dig.

Flattened plastic bottles — beer, water, soda.

Slim Jim package peeled like a banana.

Sunshine stops between buildings. Half expect

to find something raw and dismembered among the leaves.

A Genesis sky darkening — last prayer before color bars — 

yellow cyan green magenta red blue black.

Rows of clips perched like blackbirds along the power lines.

Sidewalk a UPC code, dark dark light, thin, thin, thicker

Yellow and green fireplugs. Gnomes? Trolls?

A streetlight ignites as I walk by: Must have been waiting for me.

3.

Home is the sailor, home from the sea.

Some is the hailer, some from the he.

I never said I was okay. Never said you could count on me.

This was my school after it was my construction site

after it was my backyard after it was my wilderness

and the only thing that could fix whatever was wrong with me.

Under construction we chased each other

through breezeways, climbed the corrugated

exoskeleton. No sonnets in this neighborhood,

just the occasional three-bed-one-and-a-half-bath

haiku. Sails flap on the clothesline. A woman calls

her kids home, banging pans that ring like church bells.

The moon rises, tethered to telephone lines, supported

by utility poles. Look — a shopping cart in a tree,

a stone staircase in an otherwise empty field.

4.

Never knew I’d love it so much

or leave so soon

Walking just to keep warm

Ain’t lookin’ for no home

no home lookin’ for me

No outlet

Exit ONLY

Black cane against the wall.

If we’re both still here tomorrow, you’re coming with me.

Creative Non-fiction, JULY 2025, Phoebe Simpson

Mourning Memories

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Mourning Memories

Phoebe Simpson

“It’s too high!” I scream down to my brother Jack, who’s sat in the fresh fluffy snow below me. He had just jumped off the massive metal storage unit planted in our front lawn and was trying his hardest to coax me to do the same. “It’s lower than it looks. I promise!” he hollers back. I was skeptical, I creep closer to the edge “On the count of three you jump! Ok?” he shouts and without waiting for an answer begins to count.

“One…” I close my eyes 

“Two…” I bend my legs

“Three!” I soar, it feels like I’m falling for an eternity, until. THUMP! I landed in the fresh powder. When I open my eyes, my brother is smiling eagerly. “See, that was fun wasn’t it!” I smile back “You were right it wasn’t as high as I thought. Let’s do it again!

I hold my dad’s chunky iPhone aiming the camera at my bedroom door. A scratchy drumroll plays from outside the room right before Jack bursts in holding my pink plastic guitar, the source of the drumroll. An upbeat tune begins to stream from its speakers as my brother dances along. I can’t control the chorus of giggles that fall from my mouth. He’s too funny.

I sit with Jack in the back seat of our mom’s grey Audi on our way to visit grandma in New York. I share headphones with him as he scrolls through the bright blue iPod he just got for his birthday. He switches the songs between Eminem, Kanye West, and a variety of other artists I don’t recognize. He recites all sorts of knowledge about the music, he’s so smart. Eventually, Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne plays, and I fall in love with it. Jack lets me play the song for the last three hours of the drive.

Jack just finished his freshman year of high school, and my parents decided our local public school hadn’t given him the support he needed. He got accepted into a boarding school called Eagle Hill on the condition that he attend a few weeks of summer school to make up for his lacking grades. After three weeks my mom gets a call, it’s Jack. She doesn’t look happy; I’m asked to leave the room. That weekend my brother came home and never returned to Eagle Hill. Everything changed after that call.

Everyone’s screaming. I don’t even know what they’re fighting about. The same thing happened that morning, and yesterday, and the day before that. Eventually my mom throws Jack out of the house. A couple hours later he returns his knuckles are shredded, when I went into our barn the next day there’s a big hole in the dry wall speckled with splattered blood. He was scary.

My parents and I return from dinner, my brother didn’t want to come. The kitchens a mess. There are little white air soft pellets covering the floor. When I look out the window our back patio is piled with smashed furniture, I think it looks like its set up for a bonfire. I walk in the living room, trash and pillow stuffing is scattered across the floor. My brother comes out of his room yelling. 

It’s thanksgiving. I wake up to screaming in the kitchen, its my dad and brother, something about this fight is different. I listen trying to figure out what the argument’s about this time. I think my brother stole some money. Something shatters and the door slams, couple minutes later I walk into the kitchen, my mom’s picking up broken mirror shards and my dads on the phone with the police. Jack is hiding in the woods when the police get here, they stay for an hour or so but can’t really do anything. Once they leave, he returns and begins yelling “The next time you call the cops on me I’ll kill myself and take all of you with me!”

My mom, dad, and I sit on the couch. We just found some old tapes of when I was little, my dad used to film everything. We watch old Christmas mornings, birthday parties, and visits with my cousins. We watch a video of the first time I met my brother. In the hospital Jack sits on a chair that’s way to big for him, he’s four. My dad places me on his lap.

“Give her a kiss, Jack.” My mom calls 

He’s so nervous that he’s gonna hurt me that he kisses the air. Everyone laughs. I turn away from the TV and look at my mom. She’s crying. We all are mourning the loss of someone who’s not dead. 

Love is cruel.

Image: Harry Rajchgot (2013)

John Grey, JULY 2025, POETRY

THE LAW

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THE LAW

John Grey

He’s a cop, she says.

Her husband,

the man she lives with,

who shares her bed,

who’s the father of the child

she’s expecting in the spring.

He’s involved in everything

from fraud to robbery,

rape to murder.

He’s been trained in 

counter-terrorism and surveillance

and he can sniff out drugs 

almost as efficiently 

as the German shepherd 

that’s been assigned to work with him.

He brings his work home, she says.

Who else but her is hugged and kissed

because they just might be

the only honest, good-hearted person

left in the city.

He sees criminals everywhere

but in her eyes.

And they can’t go anywhere

without him bringing his revolver along.

When they huddle close,

it feels like a tumor in his chest.

But someone has to deal with

the vicious, the vile, 

the pathetic and the petty politics

and still find a way 

to come home to her each night. 

Only she knows who that someone is.

Image Harry Rajchgot (2016)

John Grey, JULY 2025, POETRY

MOOSE ALLEY

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MOOSE ALLEY

John Grey

The road is a slaughterhouse

on this fine spring morning,

an array of squashed squirrels,

blindsided raccoons, smooshed possums,

even a deer half-buried in a ditch.

Man has been through in

his four-wheeled killing machines

and culled the local wildlife.

In the hunting stakes,

one steering wheel

is worth ten high-powered rifles.

Even a crow is splattered.

Flight couldn’t save it.

Not the way cars fly around here.

Farther along, I see a rescue vehicle,

and two tow trucks,

one hauling away a dead moose,

the other, a cratered car.

In the game of life,

this is a tie.

But there are no extra innings.

mage: Dwight Burdette Wikimedia Commons

Catherine McGuire, JULY 2025, POETRY

Hedge School

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Hedge School

Catherine McGuire

from 1702 until 1860, English penal laws prevented Irish Catholics from establishing schools or hearing Mass. They went underground, with hidden “hedge schools” and “hedge Mass.”

The biting Mayo wind cuts through wool,

scrapes our bare ankles as we hunch

in this old quarry, half-listen

to Master Joyce as he tells of Cuchulain.

He switched to that from sums, to hold

our attention, but I’m watching the hawk

that circles above, thinking how we are all rabbits –

if the soldiers catch us at lessons,

could we end up in Churchtown Gaol? Da says

I must study, leave the guns to the elders

and Sean, who turned 16 last week.

He says learning is rebellion too – if the King

doesn’t want us to read and write, to hear God’s Word,

then by God we’ll learn! Easy for him.

Da never had to sit on sharp stone,

listen to old Joycey who’s forgetting his thoughts.

He stops, looks behind himself, scared coney,

then mumbles and draws lessons in the dust.

Bridie and Maureen are good students,

Frances more scared still than Master Joyce.

Joe and I trade winks, shift our sore rumps.

I think of the bread and cheese,

Aunt Rose’s weak beer stashed for my lunch.

The morning spills light over the quarry tip.

Shadows slide along the walls like spies,

like informers who lurk in our pubs, our market,

willing to trade bloody English coin

for a neighbor’s life.

Image: Artist unknown, at The Fine Art Society, New Bond Street, London

Catherine McGuire, JULY 2025, POETRY

The Whole of the Story

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The Whole of the Story

Catherine McGuire

That’s what he said, and meant,

as he narrated the split

in terms of desire, betrayal, rote and boredom.

But did he mention his parents’ cold nights,

the cigarette tips glowing in silence?

Did he describe the hippie chick, 15,

who blew through his precious pot stash

then wouldn’t put out?

And did he even know about his wife’s vision

as she stood at the peak at sunset,

feeling herself melting into rock and sky?

Did he connect up the month-long flu,

the office putdowns, the comic books

still hidden in the garage?

Even the mornings of coffee, sparrows, breeze,

barely noticed but soaking into his core,

forming part of the crystal lattice

of a life, not ending there,

but connecting to the 

whole

story.

Image: Richard Mayer, Wikimedia Commons

Doug Raphael, JULY 2025, POETRY

“If I wasn’t bored,”

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“If I wasn’t bored,”

Doug Raphael

I wouldn’t have walked into that corrugated shack 

by the trailer park and ordered a coffee. 

I wouldn’t have known they keep fresh Grouper on ice,

that Pastel de Nata is like silk wrapped in rice

I wouldn’t have heard the dog chained out back,

barking like a train heading off the track

I wouldn’t have watched three guys watch a Portuguese football match,

hissing like back-alley cats,

as they downed one Super Bock after another with fries 

My skin wouldn’t have stuck to the metal stool and 

the damp wood walls to my lungs

I wouldn’t have seen the sparkle in Juan’s,

the fisherman’s eyes, pounding the table 

as we all sung along

I wouldn’t’ have bought a round for strangers I just met

I wouldn’t have tasted life 

I wouldn’t have stayed that night.

Image: Daniel Schweb, Terry’s Coffee Shop, NY (2005)

Wikimedia Commons

JULY 2025, Louise Carson, POETRY

Poems I might have written

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Poems I might have written

Louise Carson

1

You were everything to aim for.

Only to touch you –

Later, ennui.

Snowflakes fall between glass and sun’s glow.

2

Full-throated agony kept landlady, neighbours awake,

wore down my teeth.

Detached, silent house. Muffled majority.

One quarter of my heart sobs on.

3

Depression took pills and alcohol,

foreshadowed cousin’s later death.

Vomit dries on floor.

Scrubbing brush wakes me up.

4

Oh, shame. A few beatings,

a couple of slaps.

Love-need.

Choked off.

5

Pelvic bones ache, loosen, at the thought of her.

Leaving, she entered me.

Even this deepest love,

changes.

6

Sometimes the old win the wars,

take possession.

But the young have hours.

Their bodies heat the room.

7

Dread, the hunched supervisor, waits to crush hope.

It will take me over again.

Be calm.

All love must lie down and doze.

8

Then what are tears? Sweet homage, ghost gifts,

liquid feelings.

Eye-wash to loosen grit.

Heart’s anti-freeze.

Image: Harry Rajchgot (2023)

FICTION, Gregory Smith, JULY 2025

JUST LIKE OLD TIMES

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JUST LIKE OLD TIMES

Gregory Smith

The sound of the lawn mower caught Ethel’s attention as she was having her morning coffee. She looked out the front bay window, squinting her eyes to try and make out the fellow cutting her grass. He couldn’t be her son- this fellow was tall and string bean lean, wearing a Kelly- green Eagles cap. Pepper, her brownish cocker spaniel, barked to be picked up.

“Ok, dear, let’s look out the screen door and thank our visitor.”

Ethel waved at the older gentleman, frantically trying to get his attention as he methodically paced the lawn in neat rows as he walked behind the gas mower.

“You-Hoo!” she called. “Landscaper!”

The stranger finally noticed the woman and shut down the noisy engine.

“Why, it’s your Uncle Andy!” she said to Pepper. “Andy! I haven’t seen you in ages! Where have you been?”

“Oh, I’ve been dead, sis,” he called back. “Figured I would give you a hand. No problem…No problem at all. Does me good to get a little exercise.” With that he pulled out a white hanky from his back pocket and wiped his sweaty brow. “It sure is getting warm out here.”

“Don’t you overdo it! I’ll bring you some lemonade to help you cool off a bit,” she offered.

“Much obliged, sis,” he replied, starting up the mower again.

Ethel found the full pitcher of ice-cold lemonade in the refrigerator and dropped a pair of ice cubes into a tall drinking glass, which she filled to the brim. She quickly walked it to the front of the house, where she opened the screen door and called for Andy again. But as soon as she opened the door he vanished into thin air, mower and all, like wispy smoke sent to the heavens above.

“Oh, that’s right…I forgot,” she mumbled to herself, placing the glass of lemonade on a small tray table on the porch.

She scurried back inside the door, chasing Pepper in. “Get in there, you little devil! Where do you think you’re going?”

As soon as she shut the screen door her brother reappeared on the lawn with the mower, just as he had been before.

“Andy, I left a cold drink on the porch for you. Come and get it,” she called out.

“I will. I want to finish up here, then I’ll come up and sit a spell. It sure is warm for April!”

                                                                  ********

Later in the day Ethel was in the kitchen feeding Pepper supper, when her son came in with two bags of groceries.

“Hello, Mom,” he greeted, kissing her on the cheek. “How are you today? That new screen door is squeaking. I’ll find the WD-40 and fix it before I leave. “

He put the groceries on the kitchen counter. “The TV dinners were on sale. I stocked you up pretty well. chicken, roast beef, meat loaf…”

“Thank you, sweetie. It beats cooking, especially since there’s only one to cook for.”

“Listen, Mom, I was going to cut the grass this Saturday but I see it’s already been cut…”

“Yes, your Uncle Andy stopped by and took care of it. It was good to see him again.”

Paul stopped and stared at the tile floor while his mother put the groceries away.

“Mom, did you say ‘Uncle Andy’?”

“Yes? Why?”

“But Mom, Uncle Andy died over thirty years ago. I was just a kid when it happened.”

“I know, dear, but he insisted on cutting the grass,” she said, putting a carton of eggs in the refrigerator. “I warned him not to overdo it.”

Uh-oh, thought the son. Is Mom losing it? He knew she’d been depressed since his father’s untimely death last winter.  She seemed to be better, a bit more cheerful, like the old Mom he knew and loved. He had worried about Mom needing physical help as she aged. She used a cane, but she was doing pretty well for an eighty-four- year- old woman, considering everything. He never thought he would have to worry about her mental acuity. She had always been as sharp as a tack. However, Alzheimer’s did run in the family. His Aunt Gail suffered from the disease up until her death.

“Mom, did you ever have a chance to look over those brochures I brought over last week?” Paul asked gently.

“You mean the ones for that assisted living facility?” she asked. “Paul, I’m sure it’s a very nice place. And I appreciate your concern. But I can’t see myself going there. What would I do all day? Play bingo and bocce ball with a bunch of old people?”

 Same Mom. She never did think of herself as old. She loved her Bingo back in the day. He had encouraged her to try the senior center downtown. They offered all kinds of activities to keep busy, including Bingo. She could get a hot meal every day, as opposed to eating TV dinners. Most of all, she would have company, someone other than Pepper to talk to. 

“Mom, don’t you get lonely here by yourself? At least at Golden Horizons you wouldn’t have to worry about being alone, or taking care of the house, or cooking, or the lawn, for that matter. Everything is done for you. Now that Jason left for college it’s going to be harder to keep up repairs here.”

“I’m not lonely, dear. I’ve got Pepper. And there are people always stopping by. Plus, if I went into that retirement community- or whatever you call it- what would I do with poor Pepper? We have been through too much together to be apart now. Wherever I go, he goes too.”

“No problem. They allow dogs in the apartments,” Paul answered. “What’s wrong, Mom? You still look upset.”

“Paul, I don’t want to leave my house,” she stated firmly. “Neither does Pepper. It’s where I lived with your father for sixty years. I don’t want to leave the memories behind. My furniture… There’s no way we could ever cram three stories worth of memories into a small apartment.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “You call them memories; I call it junk. A lot of this stuff, especially in the basement and attic, you don’t use anymore. And that’s the other thing: the steps. God forbid, Mom, I come over and find that you fell down the stairs. How do you think I would feel?”

“Oh, Paulie, don’t be silly. I’ve been up and down those stairs hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of times in my life,” she replied.

“But you were younger then, Mom.” 

“I wear the button you got me,” she insisted. “The ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’ button. I’m really okay. You don’t understand, dear…the memories are here. And it’s not just the furniture. We lived here, all together. We had Sunday dinners and cook-outs with your Aunt Gail and Uncle Andy. We had family reunions here. All those memories from christenings, anniversaries, celebrations and holidays. Don’t you remember every Christmas- opening the presents in the living room, packed with family, the house filled with the aroma of turkey? I don’t want to leave those memories behind. Maybe that’s why they are coming back. Maybe, if I leave…they will disappear too.”

“You’ll always carry those memories in your heart. It’s just that, sometimes we need to move on with life,” Paul said.

“It’s only been four months, dear, “she reasoned. “We all grieve in our own way. There is no time frame when it comes to grief. I’m not ready to move on yet.”

“When is the last time you left the house since Pop died?” he asked. “I bet, other than going out on the porch to sit, the answer is never.”

“But I don’t need to leave the house, dear,” she replied. “They come to me.”

“If you mean the paper boy, the grocery delivery and the mailman, then yes. I just don’t want you to isolate yourself from the world.”

All the same, Paul decided to make an appointment with her primary care physician, Dr. Langdon, for a wellness check-up. He could run some tests and find out if his mother’s cognitive ability was slipping. Maybe he could also persuade her into giving the assisted living facility a try. Older people tend to listen to their doctor, even more than family, so why not let her doc make the tough decision for her. Leave her house and move into a place where she can be looked after – doctor’s orders.

                                                             ********

The next morning, bright and early, after a liquid gold sunrise explosion over the eastern horizon, Ethel hoisted Pepper into her arms and looked out the bay window. There was an older woman on her hands and knees in the front garden, planting spring flowers around the pond. Ethel immediately recognized the familiar face.

“Gail!” she called out the screen door.

“Oh, good morning, Ethel! How do you like the marigolds? Pretty, aren’t they? I think the orange and yellow look nice together. Brightens up the place, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does,” Ethel agreed. “It’s so thoughtful of you. I would give you a big hug if I could.”

“I know,” Gail sighed. “We used to hug all the time. I miss that. But those are the rules.”

“Gail, how’s Edgar doing?”

“He’s fine,” she replied, shielding her eyes from the intense sun.

“Ask him to come see me sometime.”

“I will, dear. Sit out on the porch some evening and you never know- He might just come by. It’s getting nice out now. The air is fresh and clean. Everything is waking up and coming back to life again.”

                                                                      ********

This interaction with deceased relatives continued all summer long. For instance, Uncle Eddie showed up one day to repair the broken rain spout which overflowed after a thunderstorm. Cousin Marie dropped by one morning, leaving a basket of fresh sweet corn on the doorstep. It seemed like everyone was chipping in to help Ethel. She never knew who might visit each day. Sometimes Andy or Gail would come by just to say hello and check on her welfare. Sometimes a long, lost relative from as far back as the colonial times would appear, introduce themselves and make acquaintances. 

All the while Paul was at his wits end trying to figure out who was helping his mother all summer. Probably some handyman she had hired. All she would reveal was “Oh, Aunt Jennie brought that homemade marmalade” or “Your great-great-great grandfather Thomas stopped over recently to show me the new white horse he just purchased.” Funny, Paul still did all of the inside work, like changing lightbulbs, but the outside chores were always completed by…someone.

 He had to admit- the once old, crumbling property that his father left sure looked spic and span, even the new paint job on the porch-supposedly done by late nephew Harold, spruced up the place like it had never been before.

                                                             ********

Summer was winding down. It was getting dark earlier in the evenings, and there was a chill in the night air, a sure sign that fall was just around the corner. Pretty soon the dried, crispy leaves would begin to pile up on the lawn; the cooler breeze would unclothe the trees, scattering spinning leaves and pieces of tree branches up and down the once leafy-green avenue.

Starting in September, right around Labor Day, no one visited anymore. Funny how Ethel had seemed to take the ghostly visits for granted. Now she was surprised when a late relative did not show up to visit. Maybe her ghostly relatives went into hibernation for the upcoming winter?  She longed to see them just one more time before she left her house for Golden Horizons. She’d reluctantly agreed to admission after Dr Langdon diagnosed her with early Dementia. Until there was an opening, the community social worker, Miss Wilson, was dropping by every week to check on her welfare. Everything was set. Now, all they waited for was an open bed. 

How sad to be leaving her home. Even her memories would soon fade away.  

They all thought her ghostly visits were a part of her illness. Delusions. Long ago memories resurfacing one last time. Funny how she could remember her past memories yet struggled to recall what she had for breakfast that morning. Even she began to wonder if all those interactions were just her imagination. 

Real or imagined, there was one person she missed, one person who failed to visit, one person who she thought had forgotten her.  That is until one frosty morning…

The day started like any other. Ethel and Pepper were up at the crack of dawn, only there wasn’t much of a sunrise to see. A cold, drizzly rain engulfed the little town, turning the early morning into a damp, miserable mess. Ethel had developed a cough and a fever; even poor Pepper sneezed now and then. Ethel made herself a cup of hot tea with lemon and honey, sure it would ease her sore throat. She thought about calling Paul at work, asking him to take her to the doctor for a check-up, but she didn’t want to bother him; It’s only a cold, she thought. She could shake the sudden chills in her warm bed with Pepper. That was the plan: spend the day in bed and rest.

It was then she heard a faint knock on the door. Standing on the porch was Edgar, her late husband, looking very much alive.

“Edgar!” she yelled. “Look who it is, Pepper! It’s your Daddy!”

She forgot herself and opened the screen door to hug him, and he vanished. She closed the door and there he was again, smiling under his trademark, familiar fishing hat.

 “Are you ready to go?” he asked.

“Ready to go?” she repeated.

“Yes. Ready to go with me.”

“Where are we going, Edgar?”

“To Heaven,” he replied.” This morning, I got word to come and get you.”

“I can’t open the screen door because then you’ll be gone again,” Ethel claimed.

“I can open the door from the outside,” Edgar replied.

“Can Pepper come too?”

“Of course. All dogs go to Heaven. Hello, Pepper old boy! Did you miss me?” Pepper sniffed at the screen door, wagging his tail as he recognized Edgar’s scent.

Ethel hesitated a moment. Even though she missed her late husband, even though she couldn’t wait to give him a hug, she was apprehensive. Why did she feel this was all an illusion? Was it her mind again? How could Edgar be standing on the porch, talking to her through the screen door? She attended his funeral. She was there when he had the heart attack. She was with him, by his bedside, when he died in the hospital. 

 Edgar opened the creaky screen door. “Just step out, sweetheart. Trust me. Everything will be alright.”

As Ethel stepped onto the wet porch, with little Pepper in her arms, the misty rain suddenly stopped. The sun came out and it was spring again. Gail’s marigolds were alive again. Butterflies and hummingbirds flew all around the garden and the pond. The warmth of the sun dried the air.

“Let’s sit down, just like old times,” he said, leading her to the rocking chairs. “Now you’ll never have toleave home. We can sit on the porch for eternity.”

Ethel and Edgar sat there, rocking and talking, with so much to discuss, so much to catch up on, while Pepper nestled in Ethel’s lap, all warm and toasty. 

 Just like old times.

                                                            ********

Later that afternoon Paul drove down his mother’s street. He had not seen her in a few days. He wanted to install that window in the screen door, something he had been meaning to do for a while, before it turned colder. He was glad it had stopped raining, surprised the weather had turned so unseasonably mild, like a taste of early summer.

He also wanted to tell her the news: a bed was now open at Golden Horizons. It was time to move. He planned to clean out the old place, hoping to have it on the market by next spring. 

He parked in front of the house and noticed Ethel sitting on the porch with Pepper on her lap. 

Paul walked up the front steps and onto the porch. Shame to wake her. Poor lady was sleeping so soundly. Pepper was sound asleep too. Ethel had such a beautiful smile on her face. He bent down to kiss her on the cheek and noticed how cold she was. The tears rolled down Paul’s face. His mother passed away while still at home, just as she wished.

 Ethel was watching nearby.  Andy, Gail, and Edgar…they were all there with her. Even Pepper had gone along for the ride.

                                                             ********

The following spring, Paul was cleaning his mother’s house, getting the old place ready for the sale. He took a few pieces of her antique furniture as a remembrance. The rest of the relics he would sell at auction.

It was mild for early April. The annuals were already coming up in the old garden. Paul opened all the windows to air the musty place out. He put the screens in the doors and immediately noticed a refreshing breeze blowing in through the screen door. Paul and Jason worked in the living room, gathering a box full of China and other dinner ware.

“Ok, let’s carry this junk out to the car before we get the other stuff,” ordered Paul. He picked up the box and started out.

Suddenly, Paul stood transfixed at the front door, looking out the screen door.

“What’s wrong, Dad?” Jason asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I have,” Paul gasped. “Your grandmother. She’s working in the garden with Aunt Gail.”

“Dad, Grandma died last year, remember?” Jason replied.

“I see her through the screen door,” insisted Paul. “Look out there…Don’t you see her?”

Jason put his box down and went to the door, looking out.

“Nobody out there. Not a soul.” 

When Paul opened the screen door to look for himself, they were gone. He rubbed his eyes. In that instant he remembered how his mother claimed to see dead relatives in the yard. He thought she was losing her mind. Was this stress or something supernatural?

Just to play it safe, Paul took the house off the market that afternoon.  Just like his mother, he wasn’t ready to move on just yet.

Image: Harry Rajchgot (2024)

FICTION, Fiona Sinclair, JULY 2025

Queen of Queens

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Queen of Queens   

Fiona Sinclair

Throughout the winter, Wednesdays meant quiz night. Anna and her husband were stalwarts, but other players only committed to certain dates that did not clash with theatre trips and bridge clubs. As these times elderly reserves were called up, Malcom’s doddery steps aided by two sticks belied a brain still quick as a darting fish. 

The pubs they played in varied ambience. In more genteel venues, diners babbled in the background, but sports bars meant mid-week soccer matches on Sky and raucous billiard games in the back room, their combined racket causing quizzers to cup ears and grimace to catch the questions. 

‘The Legion’ was the last authentic drinking pub in the town. No food except crisps and pork scratchings. Its only concession to changing times and tastes, was a glass of eye watering wine. 

Their team would duck under the flight path of a darts match, ignore comments about ‘nerds or swats ‘and make their way to the function room, chill as a meat locker where, huddled in coats, they cantered through the quiz and did not linger after wards. 

However, playing in this venue had one advantage – Ben, who graced their team because this was his regular ‘boozer.’  They all agreed he would be an asset had he been able to commit full-time but as a train driver “I never know what shift I’m on.”

Nevertheless, his presence guaranteed a win, for Ben possessed an uncanny knowledge of both Geography and Maths, subjects that were cavities in the team’s own knowledge. Even before the question was completed, he had scribbled the answer down. Other subjects, such as history, art, music, he simply laid his pen down, head and neck retracting into his parka collar like a tortoise, signalling that he considered such subjects too girly for him, and rolled a cigarette for the break instead.

But Anna had a more personal reason for enjoying these infrequent encounters. In the break, it became an unspoken ritual that they both grabbed more drinks and sloped outside to the ‘smoking area.’ Catching up with each other’s lives, there was genuine interest on either side. Sitting with his long legs extended, still shod in Doc Martins, he would courteously exhale smoke away from her. Together they would ponder the conundrum of him finding time from his commitments to start dating. “I need to change me job “he would grimace. “It’s ruining the social life.”

‘You’d be a catch ‘Anna would reassure, recalling her single girlfriends who frequently lamented the poor stock of available men in the area. Ben would receive her compliment with a grin and a shake of his head. The young man was completely oblivious of his personal attributes. Kindness warmed his eyes but there was also a twinkle that promised mischief. 

“I’m a bit of rough” he would reply, “too much of a geezer.”  But the women she knew were tired of men who ate halloumi and did not know their way around a car engine. Ben was a hybrid. He possessed good manners that verged on the courtly. He was raising his son solo whilst the mum was off ‘finding herself’ somewhere. Yet at the same time he had oil under his nails and could rewire a cooker. 

Break over, he stubbed out his cigarette, they returned inside, leaving unsolved the complex algorithm of his life which they would no doubt tackle again. 

Anna was a member of a mums group who had initially met at the primary school gates and formed a friendship that had outlived their kids peeling off to various secondary schools. Once a month they left husbands overseeing homework and had an adventure. So far, they had sampled psychic fairs, cocktail bars, and musicals. 

“Drag club” Stephanie pronounced handing a flier to each of the five women. “It’s in Dartford, apparently the best in the UK.” In silence each of the women peered at the image of various drag artists posturing for the camera, each adorned in an outrageous costume, bearing even more outrageous names. 

“Brillant “cried Anna “I’m in.” 

The sheer novelty value appealed to her. She had little experience of drag culture. Knew it had become mainstream in metropolitan areas. However, it had failed to sashay into this parochial town. 

Anna thought back to a particular day out with a gay friend whose first love was London. He had greeted her at Victoria train station with “I’ve a surprise for you.” This always cued that he had found some peculiarity as he tramped the city, camera in hand. She was led through the labyrinthine streets of Soho. “Ah this is it,” stopping before a shop with a large display window. 

At first glance, it looked like an outlet for prom attire but, on further scrutiny, there was something out of kilter with the displays. Dresses were oversized and over-the-top. Sequins and glitter illuminated the frontage. The mannequins were larger than those found in the women’s department of M&S. The wigs were bouffant. Their makeup neon. She was mesmerised by a pair of diamante stilettos. Shining Cinderella slippers that were significantly larger. Suddenly the answer clicked in her head. “It’s a drag queen shop.” She had laughed with delight at the sheer novelty of it. 

The rest of the group looked at each other whilst Stephanie refilled their glasses. At length, a look of devilment spread amongst them. They were all game. Except Emma who hesitated “I don’t think Keith would approve.” Keith was her cover for anything that made her uncomfortable. In truth, her husband encouraged his wife to be bolder. “Oh, come on “her friends chorused, until she reddened, took a gulp of wine, and mumbled “OK.”

That Friday they shoehorned themselves into Anna’s mini cooper. A bottle of prosecco was produced by Stephanie. She also passed out plastic flutes saying, “No swigging, we’ve got standards.”

They had all taken particular care with their appearance tonight. Even Emma had sloughed off her jeans and stepped into a dress. Car head lamps and streetlights picked up and refracted their glittery tops. The inference was that no one was being out sequined by any drag queen tonight. 

Anna, the designated driver for the evening, felt like the grown up as giggles fizzed around her. She was also the navigator, sensing her friends, tipsy on prosecco, would probably give conflicting directions at best. So, she had keyed the post code into her sat nav muttering “This will be a challenge,” under her breath, knowing Dartford to be a Badlands of one way systems, unmarked roads, and impatient drivers.

In fact, it only took two turns around the one way system with Anna shouting “Look for the venue “as even the sat nav became confused as to the precise location. The women obediently craned out the windows until catching sight of the night club’s pink neon sign ‘Barbiez,’ all chorused “there,” necessitating an abrupt slam on the brakes and sharp left turn that incurred the wrath of the driver behind. 

The security guards on the doors were solid as a pair of Welsh dressers and waved them through with grins and an “Enjoy yourselves girls.” Entering the club the women collectively gasped. 

Pink walls were adorned with the promotional photos of resident and visiting drag acts. Four pink chandeliers bloomed in each corner. Chairs were unholstered in pink plush whilst the frames and tables were gilded as if Midas had touched them. Even the carpet seemed rouged. The performance area was delineated by pink floor lights. A curtain of golden streamers concealed backstage. “It’s Barbie’s dream nightclub” they giggled.

Her friends struck out for the bar, leaving Anna to select a table. Past experience had taught her to avoid the sightline of performers, particularly comedians who enjoyed banter with the punters. Since there was no stage as such, Anna knew these acts would breach the fourth wall and work the room. She selected a banquette that would accommodate all the women, backing onto the wall and softly lit by a pink glow. She hoped it would afford some camouflage. 

“We’re having cocktails “her friends flourished lurid concoctions with risqué names. “A virgin one for you dear.” She was handed a glass of liquid the colour of something Dr Jekyll might have downed. 

Drink unlatched their tongues further. Something in this surreal atmosphere encouraged them to park job niggles and concerns over kids’ grades. Instead, superficial chatter and schoolgirl giggles bounced around the table. 

The club began to fill for the 8.30 show time. Anna watched the parties of raucous young women crowned with tiaras and garlanded with sashes that declared ‘Hen Do.’ Gay men in tight clothes that proclaimed buff bodies had the comfortable air of regulars. With office parties, the women who seemed to have come on a dare. The men, declining the camp concoctions in favour of pints, talked football and motors, their body language screaming ‘straight men.’   Anna smiled to herself, “They’ll certainly be a target.” 

Flashing stage lights signalled it was show -time. “I just don’t know what to expect “squeaked Emma, as if attack dogs were about to be unleashed. “I’ll protect you from the scary ladies “Stephanie patted her arm. 

“And now,“ a disembodied male voice announced the compère. 

Miss Chief, burst through the golden curtain to strike an exaggerated red carpet pose. Her make-up was icing thick and her hair Marilyn bouffant. A pneumonic figure was trussed into a red sequinned dress accessorised by perilous red stilettos. “She’s got breasts” Emma gasped. “We’ll explain later,” her friends hissed. Her outfit determined her gait. Miss Chief skittered forward like a geisha, arms akimbo for balance. 

Miss Chief warmed up the room with ease. Mic in hand she stalked the tables for prey. Teasing brides to be with comments so close to the knuckle that Anna’s table drew a sharp in takes of breath but then gave way to laughter. Miss Chief seemed to relish hecklers. Attempts at banter by lager emboldened, straight men, were shot down by her cross bow responses. Within 15 minutes she had the crowd warmed up nicely, giving them a taste of the rest of the show. 

What transpired was, for the most part a parade of exaggerated femininity. Cher and Tina Turner lookalikes either belted out or lip-synced to classic power ballads. There was a ‘Barbie’ of course, pink coutured apart from her blue jokes that would have had Martell speed-dialling for the lawyers. There were grotesques with absurd costumes that seemed to give them licence for ribald routines. Some acts achieved a female beauty, blessed with good bone structure, their makeup was water colour rather than oil paint. “They have better legs than us “the friends agreed. 

The evening peaked with the headline act, ‘Misstique.’ She was introduced by the compère as the regional winner of the ‘Queen of Queens’ contest, the compère mock spitting in jealousy. 

In a certain light, and after a brace of beers, Misstique would have had many men trying their luck. Her female impersonation was uncanny. Shoulder length titan hair, her striking eyes were emphasised by retro up- tick eyeliner. A slick of colour on her lips was all the assistance her regular features and high cheek bones required to transform her into a beauty. 

A slender figure was swathed in a black satin gown with a daring side slit that revealed long and shapely legs. she was pure old Hollywood glamour. Rita Hayward in Gilda. She began her act singing in that breathy style of such icons. The audience was beguiled. Suddenly her act switched gears as she began strutting amongst the tables. Her little girl voice and studied innocence were at odds with the double entendre she scattered amongst the crowd. Feigning bewilderment at the audience’s raucous reaction, often accompanied by a wide eyed” What have I said? “, chided them with a mock shocked “You are a wicked audience.”

Men, straight or gay, were ambushed by her. She would plonk herself uninvited on their laps, ruffle their hair, croon a few bars of song to them. The gay men played along, joined in the singing, whereas the straight men became statues at this attack on their masculinity. They tried to appear nonchalant, but their mouths were wrenched into artificial merriment whilst their eyes sent out distress signals. Their obvious discomfort elicited belly laughs from Anna and her friends, who soon regretted their lack of volume control. The sound caught Misstique’s attention like a predator. Their banquette had hitherto worked well as cover. Now they were rumbled. It was their turn to bear the brunt of her attention. Her eyes fixed on them and gleamed. A smile crept across her red lips which she positively licked at the sight of them. “Please don’t pick on us, please don’t pick on us “Emma audibly beseeched. 

But she was already enroute to their table. Her long legs model strutting in stilettos, which did not hamper her progress like some acts, but inexorably propelled her towards them.

“Well, what do we have here?” she turned throwing the question into the audience. “Drag club virgins, I’m thinking.” The crowd laughed, complicit now in her teasing. She addressed Stephanie “Long time since you’ve been called that, I’ll bet.” Stephanie giggled in agreement, rather relishing the attention. But she had learned to her cost from their night at the comedy club, not to not try and outsmart the ‘turn.’ 

Misstique was not as acidic as some of her sister acts. She teased the women but did not torment. She had certainly got the measure of their party. Anna wondered if this summing groups up in seconds, gauging how far to go, was a skill learned with experience. Observation seemed a honed sensibility too. “Giving the sequins a night out, I see “. She brandished a sparkly cardigan shed by one of the women early in the evening. 

The cocktails worked as an anaesthetic, numbing the worst of their discomfort at finding themselves in the spotlight. Anna, however, had never felt so sober in her life. Which was why she was able to observe the drag queen with such clarity. All the previous acts that evening had been slightly removed from scrutiny. Laughing so as not to appear impolite, Anna took the opportunity to study Misstique’s face. She loved physical beauty in both male and female form and took pleasure in studying her physiognomy. It was her eyes, though, that seemed to betray a hint of familiarity. It was not just the colour but the personality that peeped out from its liner and mascara disguise. 

The voice, too, began to resonate. The pitch was lightened, but by not exaggerating the campiness, there were hints of a timbre like a familiar musical refrain that she recognised. It was Ben. Her own expression remained poker player calm. There was no tell on her face to show that she knew him. She continued to giggle with her friends at his antics. Ben, for his part, remained sanguine. He did not misstep, continued playing up to the group of women, and basking in the audience’s guffaws. But when he was through toying with them, he made to move away and, at that point he briefly looked at Anna and winked. It was the smallest of acknowledgements that would not be challenged by the other women, fuddled with drink. In return, Anna gave a nod, subtle as an auction bid. 

On the journey home, close on 2 a.m., her friends, their clubbing days consigned to a time before adult responsibility, dozed off, heads lolling against the rests. Anna was free to mull over what was, for her, the apex of the evening. She had revealed nothing to the group. With secrets she was closed as the confessional. Even amongst these close knit friends, she was entrusted with secrets of an affair, a covert bank account and a gambling habit. 

Anna was not offended at Ben’s circumspection. A pub smoking area could hardly be considered a safe place for unlocking secrets. She assumed that only the drag circuit knew, and privacy was a given in their closed circle.

The Ben she knew ceased to exist inside the club. With the final slick of lipstick Misstique burst out with a ‘Ta –da.’ And for a few hours this was an alternative world, where acts and audience alike were complicit in this grown up make believe of glamour and sequins. 

It must be easier, she thought, for gay men, for whom drag was an accepted part of being out and proud. But she assumed Ben was straight, and for these men, there was still a social stigma. The whole concept of cross dressing confused. Society likes binaries. Gay or straight. It was uncomfortable with grey areas. 

Whilst inside, Anna might Whoop at Ben’s spirit, admiring anyone who was slightly subversive, slightly counterculture. Envying his ability to slough off the banal and step into the razzle dazzle of a second persona that was clearly a hoot.

However, she also knew that this second persona would clash with his job as train driver. The railways considered themselves old school blue collar workers. Their politics were militant, their opinions fixed. Grudgingly obeying the equal rights legislation, they had admitted a few female drivers to their ranks, but they were expected to butch up in order to survive the bruising banter. 

Similarly, she believed that in his local pub, divulging his alter ego would un-stopper a prejudice that would manifest in eye watering teasing under the guise of friendly joshing. 

Yet Ben had found a way to successfully partition his life. It was, she considered as she pulled off the motorway onto the A roads, a creative outlet as much as anything. Valid as acting or painting. Drag queens were, in effect, their own creation. The planning of new outfits, tweaking of the act, must be a counterpoint to the tedium of Ben’s job, staring ahead as the train devoured the same rail track, day after day. 

The following week Anna entered the pub, feeling as if she was walking on quicksand. She was fearful that her pub quiz ally might now distance himself from fear of disclosure. However, as she settled at the team table she heard “Alright Anna?” Ben pint in hand, bestowed his familiar warm greeting. 

At the break, cigarette in mouth champing to be lit, their usual drinks in hand, he inclined his head in his usual manner towards the smoking area. 

Seated, she found herself stumbling over words as if she was the one with the secret. They discussed, as usual world events, a preamble to more personal subject matter. However, they seemed to be skirting around the revelations of the previous Friday. Anna was resolved not to bring up the subject herself. 

“So, you’ve met my alter-ego “he said suddenly, breaking the stalemate. Her nervousness stood down. “Of all the bars” she joked, and he chuckled. “You were gorgeous though.” “Aren’t I always? “He primped, fluttering his eyelashes. She giggled. “I’ll take questions now “he said. Over the weekend a screed of questions had grown in Anna’s mind. 

He was unabashed and answered, frankly. Giving a thumbnail sketch of his drag queen’s evolution. The idea of his persona came first. Online tutorials teaching makeup application presented a challenge. There were many errors with lipstick and eyebrows. Anna thought back to her teenage efforts at make-up application. Never particularly artistic, it had been a matter of trial and error, which in an all-girls school generated sniggers. 

Swerving away from parodying a woman, he wanted a more subtle look that paid tribute to the Hollywood beauties of the 40s and 50s, whom he regarded as the apotheosis of female beauty. 

The clothes were trickier. He swerved the drag queen shops with them over the top costumes. Electing instead to trawl the internet for actual women’s wear. Multiple styles and sizes were ordered. The parcels were discreetly stashed onto of his wardrobe in suitcases to elude the inquisitive eyes of his son. 

Then came the development of an act. Many days were spent pondering her name. The selection of which helped to develop her character. Alone in the house he rehearsed the routine diligently. When he finally felt he had an act “I took the plunge and found an open mic at a drag bar in Croydon.” 

“Croydon?” Anna said inquiringly because the town was in the next county. “It’s miles away, less chance of being recognised.”  “Of course,” she nodded understanding the need for subterfuge. “I would have been terrified,“ she admitted, in a tone that paid tribute to his chutzpah. “I was.“ he confessed – dragging up in the gents’ toilet, ducking into cubicles when a customer came in to relieve themselves of beer. 

A couple of shots gave Ben just enough courage to step onto the stage. In fact, he found that once the persona was donned, he felt emboldened. All his doubts and fears evaporated as the carefree character of Misstique possessed him. 

He found the audience benevolent and very forgiving. They laughed obligingly at his gags, enjoyed his interaction with them, and heartily applauded when his 10 minutes was up. 

“No turning back after that. I was hooked. “He studied the other turns on the circuit, refined his act. Ben learned that his USP was his prettiness. His homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood that was a refreshing contrast to the grotesques. In time he got a stiletto hold into the better clubs. Grew a following with the aid of socials. 

Crossing off her mental list of questions, Anna came to what she considered more existential inquiries. “When did you first want to do it?’” she asked, curious but not wanting to seem too intrusive. He thought for a while “Dunno. It was just an itch I had to scratch.” He seemed to need to qualify his answer “I’m not gay. Some drags are, but some, like me, prefer women.” 

Ben explained that the real obstacle to finding a partner lay in this second life. “And I’m not prepared to compromise it.” “I think you’ll find women are a lot broader minded than men” she replied. She still considered Ben a catch. In fact, this secret life offered a richer dimension to his personality. A mischief that many women with mundane past relationships would actually relish and become complicit with his secret. 

The break was over. “Come and see me again? “He asked “I’ve got a six month residency at the club.” Then, in a subtle appeal for discretion he added “just you and a plus one, I’ll give you a tour.”  “It’s a date “she said and got to her feet. Doubting she could entice her biker bloke to the club, she was certain her sister would relish the opportunity. She lived in London, so was far enough away that should there be any slips of the tongue, the gossip would be unlikely to reach their hometown.

Image: unknown Wikimedia Commons (1942)

Andrew Robertson, FICTION, JULY 2025

The Sycophant

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The Sycophant

Andrew Robertson

“Shipwash!! Answer the bloomin door. Where for heaven’s sake are you boy?”

Head butler Saunterton had no patience for the incompetent Shipwash, who was never around when needed most. “Shipwash!!”

Shipwash heard the second call and rolled off the upstairs daybed. He had planned to polish silver all morning but became weary after sweeping, dusting, and discretely chatting with the chambermaid. He straightened his coat and breeches, pulled up his stockings, and dashed down the back stairs. Striding through the servants hall, Shipwash glanced quickly out the window and noticed a carriage and horses. Lady Fountain had arrived ahead of time. Shipwash ruffled his powdered hair, took a deep breath, and dashed through the scullery toward the lobby.

“Shipwash, Saunterton is calling you,” a laundry maid heckled without turning away from a wash tub full of hot water.

“Like I don’t know already,” Shipwash replied. “That old buzzard Saunterton has a voice that could wake the dead.”

The door leading to the lobby opened before Shipwash reached the handle. It was Saunterton, glowering and flustered.

“Ahh, Mister Saunterton, I’ve been polishing silver . . .”

“Shipwash, you lazy rapscallion! I’ve been calling you.” Saunterton grabbed Shipwash by the coat sleeve, leading him toward the formal entrance of the house. “Lady Fountain has been waiting for thirty seconds and I can’t be expected to open doors as well as prepare the dining hall.”

Shipwash bounded across the pebble driveway, long legs propelling his lithe frame toward the carriage. “Welcome to Codfish Manor, Lady Fountain,” Shipwash said, as the Lady appraised him. He leaned in close to the window as she spoke discretely.

“Your breeches are unbuckled young man,” she said.

Shipwash hurriedly fastened his loose stocking before assisting the Lady to disembark from the carriage. Her disinterested demeanor hinted at high parentage and a residence superior to Codfish Manor. Shipwash walked ahead to open the main door of the manor.

“Your calves are rather slender for a footman. Does Lord Longbottom not feed you enough?” Lady Fountain asked.

Shipwash didn’t like to have his every move, gesture and physical attribute scrutinised by the upper class, but he tolerated it. He had plans to usurp the position of head butler from Saunterton. He also didn’t like Lord Longbottom one bit, and thought of him as an overstuffed hog. However, for the sake of Codfish Manor etiquette, Shipwash kept a tight rein on his emotions.

“Lord Longbottom is a fine master, my Lady,” he said. “In fact I remain slender due to the pleasure derived from endless duties performed for the satisfaction of the Lord and his guests. I’m actually feeling more robust every day and believe I will grow into a well-formed footman.”

Shipwash led Lady Fountain to the parlor in readiness for lunch with Lord Longbottom. He then quickly excused himself before rushing off to polish the silver he had earlier neglected. Saunterton followed closely behind, closing the door quietly.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Saunterton hissed.

“It’s almost noon Mister Saunterton,” replied Shipwash.

“Then why are you still wearing your morning livery? Do you think Lady Fountain didn’t note your plain black waistcoat. We at Codfish Manor welcome distinguished guests wearing our best striped vest for a luncheon appointment. Go and get changed immediately before you bring shame on all of us.”

“I beg your pardon Mister Saunterton,” Shipwash replied. “I will see to it that the laundry maid is reprimanded for her tardiness in returning my livery to me.”

Saunterton remained unmoved by the excuse. He had trained generations of footmen during his tenure at Codfish Manor and had become a trusted confidant of Lord Longbottom.

“Your waistcoat is hanging as always in your cupboard, Shipwash,” Saunterton said. “And the laundry staff are not for you to supervise. You already seem to spend an inordinate amount of time supervising the chambermaid.”

Shipwash retained his composure, although feeling slighted at being caught out, and suffocated by constant observation of his every move around Codfish Manor.

“Of course . . . you are right Mister Saunterton. How absent minded of me. My waistcoat is indeed hanging in the cupboard. Your perceptiveness is why you are head butler and I remain your humble servant.”

“And that’s the way it shall stay Shipwash. Run along and ready yourself for serving lunch. Lord Longbottom will be down in fifteen minutes. I must go entertain Lady Fountain,” Saunterton said.

Shipwash scurried around the pantry, cleaning silver, readying plates and glasses and making sure the head cook was on time with the meal. He peered into a large pot on the stove.

“Keep your nose out of that,” called the cook, while returning from the storeroom. “You will get fed when Lord Longbottom has well and truly completed his meal and all the cleaning is done.”

Shipwash felt repulsed by the enormity of the feast. “Well, it’s a sure thing I won’t get to eat this fine food,” Shipwash said. “It will be scraps for me, like a hungry hound that does all the work only to see the owner enjoy the spoils. There’s enough here to feed the King’s army, and it’s not like Lord Longbottom is getting any thinner. He would burst asunder if pricked with a knitting needle.”

The head cook wiped sweat from his forehead with a cloth, focusing on Shipwash through a haze of kitchen steam.

“It will serve you well, Shipwash, to not talk in such tones around Codfish Manor,” the cook said. “The walls have ears and we are under constant scrutiny. You need to know your place and accept it as your lot in life.”

Shipwash had accepted the position of footman to escape a life of drudgery. However, he had greater ambition and would do all he could to ingratiate himself to Lord Longbottom and become part of the inner circle of high class society. The cook didn’t seem to be an ally he could rely on as part of his plan.

“Of course you make perfect sense,” Shipwash said to the cook. “I have been ever so tired with my duties at Codfish Manor that I sometimes forget the great fortune Lord Longbottom, Mister Saunterton and expert cooks like yourself bestow upon me. If I had half your devotion I would be a most capable asset to the household.”

Lord Longbottom and Lady Fountain enjoyed the meal while being waited upon by Saunterton and Shipwash, who had exactingly set the table according to refined standards. Saunterton hovered close to the diners while Shipwash kept a respectful distance, ever ready to respond to any request. He stood tall and poised in a picture of obedient servitude—a stark contrast to his real desire of being the one served.

Shipwash refilled Lord Longbottom’s goblet for the third time before the Lord addressed him.

“What is your opinion of the potato, Shipwash?”

Shipwash had no idea how to answer such a question, nor did potatoes generally interest him. However, he was expert in tailoring his opinions to concur with Lord Longbottom and promote his own worthiness as a future head butler. He seized on the opportunity to ingratiate himself. He bowed slightly and spread his arms imploringly, choosing his words for maximum benefit.

“Well my Lord, my knowledge of the culinary art pales into insignificance compared to your refined gastronomic sensibility. I would prefer you illuminate me with an educated appraisal of the potato.”

Lord Longbottom sipped his drink and peered at Shipwash through the rim of the goblet. He placed the goblet respectfully down, prodded a crusty baked potato with shiny fork, and held it up to the light, before replying.

“The potato is the most delicious of all vegetables . . .”

Before Lord Longbottom could finish the sentence Shipwash butted in, “Indeed my Lord, the potato is delightfully delicious, tasty and very pleasant to the palette. Whether it is boiled, fried, mixed with other vegetables or as an ingredient in soup, the potato is incomparable. It is second to none – simply unparalleled.” Shipwash ended his expert summation of the potato, satisfied his knowledge had endeared him to Lord Longbottom. Saunterton scowled while Lady Fountain smiled amusedly, playing with the peas on her plate.

Lord Longbottom rejoindered, “Regardless of your opinion Shipwash, the potato is actually quite bland and tasteless of its own accord. It has little nutritional value and can be bad for some people, even leading to obesity and disease.” Lord Longbottom patted his rotund stomach for emphasis.

Shipwash mentally backpedaled before blurting out a confidant reply. “Once again you are absolutely right my Lord. The potato is an extremely agitating vegetable. Once hot, a potato is very slow to cool down, and I personally believe it is the catalyst for many new diseases. This innocuous round potato is the cause of diarrhea, diabetes, and uncontrolled flatulence. Potato is definitely the perpetrator of many troubles. I fully agree with you Lord Longbottom.”

Saunterton edged closer to Shipwash and nudged him toward the door. “Excuse us, my Lord, while we bring dessert,” he said.

Shipwash happily followed Saunterton to the galley, impressed at his own ability to flatter Lord Longbottom. Saunterton turned suddenly.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing Shipwash?”

“Doing my duty, Mr. Saunterton,” Shipwash said.

“Your duty doesn’t include being a fawning flatterer,” Saunterton replied.

Shipwash grinned, “You sound jealous Mr. Saunterton. It seems Lord Longbottom and Lady Fountain are quite interested in my opinion.”

“You don’t even have an opinion, Shipwash,” Saunterton said. “You are mindlessly agreeing with everything just to ingratiate yourself.”

Shipwash’s face hardened and fists clenched. He stiffened but retained enough composure to reply with a barely noticeable waver in his voice. “I intimidate you, do I not, Mr. Saunterton?” Shipwash said. “You’re fearful of losing your post as head butler to a younger man. I understand your concern. You should have heard Lady Fountain complimenting me regarding my stout calves earlier.”

Saunterton laughed heartily. “Silly boy,” he said. “I’m the most trusted servant at Codfish Manor, and there is a reason for that. I’m here to serve Lord Longbottom and his guests to the best of my ability. Why are you here, Shipwash?”

“Because I belong here!” Shipwash commanded, arrogant pride overcoming his placid facade. “I’m the son of a washerman who struggled to feed his family. I taught myself to read and write in order to move up in the world. I also have shrewdness and the ability to pounce on an opportunity. When the last footman was hospitalised with poisoning I was ready to step in and take his place.”

Saunterton’s face hardened as he looked searchingly at Shipwash, who quickly diverted his attention toward the kitchen. “We really should get back to the dining hall,” Shipwash said. “Mustn’t keep Lady Fountain waiting.”

“At last you are showing some initiative, Shipwash,” Saunterton said coldly.

Shipwash and Saunterton efficiently arranged cake, peaches and cream on silver plates. Shipwash contemplated his tenure at Codfish Manor. “Excuse my speaking too harshly, Mr. Saunterton,” he said. “The quality of my service here at Codfish Manor has been greatly enhanced by your expert guidance, and I am indebted to you for taking me under your wing. I have much to learn as your humble assistant, and have high hopes that I may serve you for many more years. My earlier outburst was of course not due to you, Mr. Saunterton, but because of having to deal with the incompetent chambermaid.”

No sooner had Shipwash re-entered the dining hall when Lady Fountain addressed him. “Your knowledge of the potato is quite vast young man. I would also like to hear your opinion of eggplant,” she said.

A faint smile crossed Shipwash’s face. He glanced momentarily at Saunterton before replying,

“It would not be fitting that my limited knowledge precedes your wisdom Lady Fountain. You are obviously well-travelled and proficient in all manner of culinary expertise. I would much prefer to hear your opinion of the eggplant.”

Lady Fountain dabbed cream off her lips and said, “As far as I know the eggplant is a very nice vegetable . . .”

Without hesitation, Shipwash again butted in, “Yes, that’s so true. There is hardly another vegetable that compares to eggplant. It can be roasted, fried, prepared as a relish and so much more. A house with eggplant in the pantry is a place worth residing. There are actually many varieties of eggplant and all of them are delicious.”

“Unfortunately, there is no nutritional value in eggplant,” Lady Fountain said firmly.

Shipwash shifted uncomfortably but quickly replied, “Again you are absolutely correct, Lady Fountain. Is there nothing you and Lord Longbottom don’t know? By itself, an eggplant is inedible and requires extreme measures to make it palatable. It causes ulcers and itching in the mouth. Eggplant is avoided by many intelligent people and is known to cause bad luck, therefore it is often roasted before serving if it is served at all.”

Lord Longbottom swallowed the last of his cake, pushed the plate away, and leaned back in his chair.

“You are a very strange fellow, Shipwash,” Lord Longbottom said. “When I say potato is good, you reply yes it is good. When I say it is bad you agree it is very bad. When Lady Fountain said eggplant is good your appreciation knew no bounds but when she stated the opposite you denigrated eggplant as an abominable and wicked vegetable. Do you have any personal integrity, Shipwash?”

“I’m your humble servant,” Shipwash replied. “Your opinion is my opinion. I have no desire other than to support whatever you do or say Lord Longbottom. Codfish Manor is my refuge and you are the master who has kindly and expertly provided an opportunity for my humble self to flourish as an insignificant member of your worthy household.”

Shipwash had much more to say but noticed Lord Longbottom’s attention had wavered. The Lord and Lady Fountain chuckled, much to Shipwash’s dismay. He hated them both but tried not to show it. Lord Longbottom turned his attention to Saunterton.

“What is your opinion Saunterton?” Lord Longbottom asked.

“Well sir, to be honest, in my opinion too much praise is the sign of a grovelling sycophant.”

Lord Longbottom clapped his hands together gleefully. “At last, an honest answer,” he said. “This is the reason I trust you Saunterton. You are not afraid to speak the truth even when it may sound unpalatable. Unlike sycophant Shipwash here, who thinks I need to be coddled and propped up with praise. You are a man of integrity, Saunterton, and I thank you for your ongoing service. As for you Shipwash, you snivelling wimp, you are dismissed from Codfish Manor. There is no place for deception here.”

“But you need me!” Shipwash demanded. “The previous footman was incompetent even before he got lead poisoning!”

Lord Longbottom looked at Saunterton, before turning back to face Shipwash. “Only Saunterton and I knew it was lead poisoning,” Lord Longbottom growled. “You are nothing but a devious rascal, Shipwash.”

“I heard whispers,” Shipwash pleaded. “The cook even told me the walls have ears.”

“If potatoes have eyes I don’t see why walls can’t have ears,” Lady Fountain laughed.

“And Codfish Manor has a door, Shipwash!,” Lord Longbottom yelled. “Make sure you close it on the way out. You have two minutes before I release the hounds.”

Image: unknown artist (2023), Wikimedia Commons

Arjun Razdan, FICTION, JULY 2025

Mme Lapoule

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Mme Lapoule

Arjun Razdan

My wife, that is to say the mother of my two children, was not a woman to be taken for granted. Not that she was particularly beautiful, though she was beautiful enough and never gave me a reason to complain, not that she was particularly gracious, though she never rubbed anyone the wrong way, not that she was a good mother, though her children love her for who she is and would not replace her with another, not that she was particularly thrifty, though we never came to the streets because of her spending, not that she doted particularly on her friends and colleagues, though they all came round to support her at the time of our divorce, not that she had any particular talent or outstood herself in any way but she did many things reasonably well to emerge as efficient for what it was worth. She had a restrained manner of parler, and never gave a false compliment or spoke out of turn, something which earned her the trust of many people, though none of them would have called her special.

She was petite, for which she wore high heels, of tanned complexion and black hair, and a top-heavy figure, which she liked to show off in a red bikini with a slotted kerb she wore year after year on the beaches of the South around Toulon where she spent most of her summer vacations. That was her one great passion. She worked at a bar, had a regular salary, and was in all other aspects like her colleagues, except in her one great craving for the sun. Her other weakness was cordon bleu, especially when served with sauce roquefort, which she could munch on all afternoon long, never mind then the concerns of figure she frequently brought up. Otherwise, she had a straight nose which was a little hooked at the end like some exotic vegetable, the sort of a nose I like, and the reason I fell for her when I was eighteen, not knowing better and getting hooked six months later. 

Thirty-one years of married life was like one long shopping trip to the vegetable marché, if you did not like something you did not talk about it, and if you liked something, you tried getting it on the best terms possible. We lasted so long because we never thought twice about it, for I think had we done it early enough we would have found out it was not worth it. It had nothing to do with other people. She cheated on me at least once with this old acquaintance of hers called Eric, a motard with a gap in his teeth and a million-watt smile, who had recently started losing control of his waistline, while as far as I am concerned, I stayed mostly true to the path, though the flirtations were legion. You know how I found out? One day Eric turned up at a neighbourhood bar, all groggy and panting for beer. It was five years after our marriage. He had not shaved, and on his trousers he was wearing a ridiculous white string instead of a belt. I asked what had happened, and he said every time he went to bed he woke up a size fatter. I thought that was a fantastic story but then he was in no mood to joke, saying he had to discard his belt because there was no more space to punch holes. 

I thought nothing more about it for a week or ten days, following which I felt the need for a pair of drawstring trousers I have at home, which being in white linen are not exactly my style, but I do not mind prancing around in it in the house, being the holiday souvenir that it is. To my surprise, I found the lace at the neck missing. It could not have flown off on its own, or shrunk when the rest of the trousers was intact, and I did not remember having taken it out for any purpose whatsoever. It was crystal clear to me. My filet had become the last-minute retainer of my wife’s lover’s expanding navel. 

I did not press her on the point, or on any other, though I have reason to believe that the affair did not last for long, notably because Eric was razed to the ground by a passing lorry on one of his motorcycling expeditions to Belgium. It is not the great storms that uproot a giant tree, it is the disease which creeps up from below and makes the timber so brittle that any passing wisp of a breeze can knock it off its feet. Such things usually die of a slow momentum of their own. When the severance comes, you cannot even feel the incision, so insensitive you have become from years of not being able to breathe freely. 

Splitting is no different from slicing a finger in the process of cutting an apple, then. Why did we part ways? As is always the case, the breaking-point was something stupid. I was sick of picking the excreta of her pet mongrel, Couti. The little devil became the most common point of dispute between us, being as it was a gift from her mother (the old lady did not forget to sound the death knell for our relationship before her death, something she would have wished all her life). For eight years, it tormented me, right from the first moment of the morning when it would stuff my nose with its tail in its excitement to get to his mistress to lick her face, to the last hours of the day when it lost its head at the emerging cuckoo at midnight doubling over itself and whining so murderously you would think the German army was at the doorsteps. Even the neighbours complained about it. 

One day I really had enough when it pissed on an 1875 edition of the Communist Manifesto which I had left on the carpet by the side of the sofa to allow the glue on the binding to dry. Without thinking twice about it, I shunted it outside along with its mistress. She banged on the door but I would not open. All of them thought I was heartless, but I was over it, and for no price in the world would I let that woman into my four walls again let alone her canine companion. To be fair to us, she never offered to part ways with it to save our marriage. That was our story. A stack of cards that you built for years took one moment in unravelling. There were two or three things that were hard at the beginning, such as you did not find coffee in your cup in the morning (she used to leave early for work) and had to do it from scratch, and that laundry did not appear stacked of its own, but had to be lugged to a nearby self-service, but little by little life pivots round its new routine. Habit is a very strong fellow. Even now, as I sift through the schedule of programmes on television later in the night, having locked the doors and having taken a pillow under my arms, I am merely wondering if I would catch a cold or not if I wear my pantouffles without the socks after shower. The plants have to be watered, the electricity bill has to be paid at the Commission, three days’ meat has to be taken out of the congélateur for tomorrow’s hotpot, and there is no cat to feed luckily. I often read history books then, to put me to sleep, for I find nothing new in them, and that bores me tremendously.

That is how I learnt to start from a scratch, four years ago, and by and by it is has been an exciting adventure. We all see each other once a year, including the wife (who still has the other pair of keys), at the Christmas dinner and it is my luck to have begotten children who are sympathetic, especially the daughter who was the only one to have supported me over the problem of the errant dog. The son is younger. He had drifted away from me a long time ago. I consider it a good sign. When sons go away, and daughters are distant but sympathetic, it means one has succeeded in raising good children. Scrupulously, under my flap I hatched them and now they have flown away to their respective enclosures to found new families. It is good that new saplings should find earth. I never had second thoughts about having them, or about any of the promulgated exigencies of life. I took most of what life threw at me, without complaining, for otherwise I would not have stayed in a marriage which did not work for thirty-one years. During this time, while we were as close to inhaling each other’s breath, she might well have been the extra seat on the sofa we always lacked.

Image: Siefkin,DR (2016), Wikimedia Images

Andrew McKenna, FICTION, JULY 2025

My First Mistake or Abscess doesn’t make the heart grow fonder

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My First Mistake
or
Abscess doesn’t make the heart grow fonder

Andrew McKenna


 
My first mistake, probably, was swimming in the Río Napo. My second, letting a German doctor look in my ear.
After trekking for nearly a week in the sucking ooze of the upper Amazon, he’d left his better judgement and I’d left mine in a miasma rising out of the sweaty foliage.
‘I’ll use river water now,’ Dieter said, snapping the lid off the shampoo bottle and holding it under the water. I watched a lazy trail of silver bubbles break the scum on the surface.
‘You see, ve yust need to unlodge de vax. Den you will be able to hear normally again. It’s zo zimple.’
A soft, almost reassuring flushing noise had been in my ear since I’d swum in the Napo three days earlier. The swim wasn’t even refreshing – the water felt like only a slightly thicker but same temperature version of the air we were breathing. At the end of a hard day’s walk, some of it through virgin forest where our guides hacked a path clear for us, it was a simple pleasure to watch the mud in solution drift away, to have your ankles free of mosquitoes, however briefly.
But a piece of wax lodged over my eardrum, causing the flushing noise, muffling all else. I could pull on my earlobe and the wax would stretch and pop, momentarily restoring normal hearing, but when I let it go it would spring back and block again.  I hadn’t been able to dislodge it even with tiny sharp instruments from Libby’s sewing kit.
Dieter noticed me jiggling my ear at lunchtime and offered to syringe it for me. As he was fresh out of syringes in the middle of the Amazon, we used a shampoo bottle with purified water.
Having water squirted into your ear under high pressure is no unpleasant experience. It sounds as if you’re in the middle of a washing machine, I imagine, and makes you nearly as unsteady on your feet, but it feels like something is moving at last around what’s been bunging your ear.
Dieter kept up a cheery banter as he worked, along the lines of ‘Ya, ven I vas in Africa, hey hey? I only used to take de malaria tablets ven I’m getting de fevers, you know? And such fevers! De human body, you know? Can’t get dis hot without combusting spontaneously.’
We ran out of purified water, which was when Dieter filled up again with a splash from the Napo. Maybe he was fresh out of common sense too.
He gave my ear a solid squirt, forcing the ooze and wrigglers under high pressure into my ear, and with a ‘Well I hope dis works now,’ we wandered back to the others.
The wax didn’t move, but I was too hot and giddy and there were too many mosquito bites to think. Maybe it would work its way out, just pop out when I least expected. I watched the butterflies while we ate a meal of potato mash, rice and spaghetti. Carlos, our guide, was a man for the major food groups.
Libby was sulking. She’d had enough of jungle food. She’d had enough of the jungle.
‘For all we know,’ I said by way of consolation, ‘maybe your body needs this much carbohydrates in the jungle?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she hissed. ‘I can’t believe what that man is doing to us.’
She toyed with a ball of greyish mashed potato with her fork and a bird screamed above us. She started.
‘Did it work?’ she asked, remembering my ear and fixing Dieter with a withering gaze across the clearing as he chatted to his girlfriend.
I said, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Sssshhh, you don’t have to shout,’ she said, with the faintest of smiles. It was the first smile we’d seen for a week, and brought the old Libby to mind fleetingly. But it disappeared and jungle girl returned.
‘But it sure felt good,’ I added.
When we hit the water again in our motorised pirogue, the engine noise struck me full blast in my wounded ear. I watched the steaming jungle slip by as we headed back to the relative civilisation of Misahuallí, and cupped my hand over my ear. It throbbed in empathy with the roar of the motor.
‘If I was a train I’d run up and down your back,’ kept running rhythmically through my head in time with the throb of the engine, as I watched Libby sitting up in front of me, sniffing disdainfully at the forest.
Families – whole villages – waved to us from other canoes as we slipped past. One little girl saw me with my hand over my ear and, giggling, imitated my gesture as her boat shot past. The flushing in my ear had grown more insistent. The crap was backing up in the pipe.
In Misahuallí Libby and I waved goodbye to the others and booked into a guesthouse. We took cold showers and picked off stray leeches under our socks, sleeves and, marvellously, her bra.
‘I don’t have the faintest idea why I came,’ she muttered as I poked a glowing matchstick into another engorged body.
When we treated ourselves to a slap up meal of banana pancakes afterwards, I could hardly chew for the ache now gripping my ear and jaw. Libby looked up at me from the book she was reading between bites when I whimpered, and sighed as if I’d made her lose her place.
We caught the bus up to Baños next morning, leaving the lowlands and the Oriente, as they call it, behind for good. To Ecuadorians it holds the mystery and danger, that delicious frisson of terror that the words ‘Japan’ or ‘Formosa’ must have held for Victorian Britons. To highlanders the Amazon is full of head hunting tribes (they don’t any more), bird eating spiders (I didn’t see any), mosquitoes that suck so much blood they can’t take off (true), piranhas and sucking red mud (fact). Highlanders would rather stay in the cool highlands during a coup, a volcanic eruption – a war – than venture at the best of times into that steaming pit of leeches, swollen brown rivers and incorrigible German doctors.
By the time we pulled up in Baños the pain in my ear was intense. Dictionary clutched in my hand and money tied up in my handkerchief, I visited Dr Raul Martinez-Lopez. He had a tiny, glum office with dirty blue linoleum on the floor. The man matched the office beautifully. He was tiny and glum and had cloudy, pale blue eyes.
He glared at me as if I had lost my mind when I started to explain the problem, but I eventually made myself understood. He shoved in his poky instrument with the light in the barrel and peered down my ear, making a few non-committal clicking noises with his tongue.
‘Yes,’ he said in his rasping Spanish, ‘you have an infección. How did you get this?’
‘Swimming in the Río Napo,’ I said grinning, sheepish.
‘Aah!’ the doctor let out a great explosion of air and looked at the ceiling. ‘I myself am too afraid to go to El Oriente. Spiders the size of your face. ¿Piranhas, no?’ He grinned, exhibiting a row of brownish teeth.
Libby was drying her nails when I reached our room and didn’t look up. Look up and you might smear the polish.
‘You’ve spilled shampoo all through my bag,’ she said by way of greeting.
‘I spilled it,’ I said, throwing myself on the bed.
‘Yes. You packed it.’
A silence in which you could hear the nails drying followed.
I said, ‘Uh. Sorry. I’ll be more careful in future.’
‘I hope there’s no rats here,’ she said, looking around the room.
‘So how did you go at the doctor’s?’ I asked after another silence.
‘Yeah, pretty well,’ I replied. ‘I got these big antibiotics, see? Big blue pills. I’ve taken a double dose already … How’s your ear? … Well, it hurts like fuck.’
‘You’re the one who wanted to come here,’ she sniffed, ‘and I wish you wouldn’t swear.’
I lay awake most of the night as the pain settled in. I listened with my good ear to the strange night noises; scratches, snuffles, some sort of faint sobbing behind the wall. The breeze. It did occur to me that perhaps the noises were coming from inside my own head.
I couldn’t rest the right side of my face on the pillow and was doing well to swallow a gob of my own spit. It was beginning to feel worse than an average infección. White-water rapids were building up in my ear canal.
We took the first bus back to Quito in the morning, and I swear I was delirious. I pressed my fingers into my temples and sweated, but it wasn’t hot. We passed through an eerie landscape of plunging ravines with the sun glinting on rivers far below, hairpin bends, impenetrable, overhanging foliage overcrowding the edge of the road.
Indians with stoic brown faces, dressed in brilliant ponchos, got off the bus in the middle of nothing and disappeared quickly over the brows of hills, or came out of nowhere to flag our driver down.
I saw a man silhouetted on the crest of a hill, holding a dagger aloft, about to bring it down on the chest of his victim. I saw a rag-tag band of Spanish conquistadors marching across the mountains, frayed by hunger and exhaustion, defeating a whole nation of Inca warriors.
Back in Quito, Libby and I broke out into a beautiful argument at the depot. Amused faces stared at us from the sidelines as her voice grew ever more shrill. She wanted to go to our pensión and unpack before I went to hospital. I wanted to go straight to hospital, but I was overawed by heat (it wasn’t hot) and unsteady because of the earthquake (there was no earthquake that morning in Quito).
‘You’re so fucking selfish!’ she chirruped at me. ‘This is all your fault. I have to go back and lie down or else I’m going to die.’
‘And I really will if we don’t get to hospital,’ I whined.
An amused crowd had started to gather. Look at the gringos!
‘A little earache never killed anyone!’
She was losing her self-control, and so was I in a different way. I’d liked to see her lose self-control in the past, but this was different, and not pleasant.
I was barely standing and could feel my bowels loosening. All I could do was suck up the dust in her wake. I reeled up the hill through the old colonial part of town, classified by UNESCO, oh yes, sweat pouring down my face, someone with a mean streak skewering my ear with an ice pick, built in 1546, yes yes, gorgeous. Nice old church. Beautiful plaza. Look up, there’s the sky. Watch out for the shit on the street.
We reached the hospital off Avenida Amazonas by lunchtime, after Libby had had her constitutional. The world was receding from focus. The doctor, another small, brown man with pale blue eyes, started talking, hey hey, German to me.
He looked in my ear and shook his head gravely.
‘Tiene una abscessa,’ he said. ‘You must see a specialist.’
Libby snorted impatiently when I reported back to her. As if I’d invited this abscess in, just to spite her. She was seated in the waiting room, engrossed in her novel. We had to wait another few hours until the especialista had finished his round of golf, or whatever it is that makes specialists the world over keep you waiting. Libby hardly budged the whole time, and I had my head between my legs and was counting the blood spots, either on the floor or before my eyes. I couldn’t tell.
The especialista had a merry glint in his eye for someone who was about to inflict so much misery. He looked down my ear, the third man in a dirty-ish white coat to do so in the past twenty-four hours, whistled between his teeth and said something like, ‘My, but you have a big abscessa in there!’
As if it were something I should almost be proud of. So in my delirium I managed an almost-proud smile.
‘We have to put a mecha in,’ he smiled.
‘¿Una mecha?’  I smiled.
‘¡Sí!’ he smiled, almost laughing. ‘¡Una mecha!’
‘What’s a mecha?’ I smiled, growing tired of all this smiling and near laughing and becoming very nervous of a sudden. I looked around for my dictionary and realised it was in the waiting room with Libby.
‘Una mechacita,’ he said, ‘to draw out the pus.’
So, hey, it was only going to be a mechacita, only a tiny little mecha.
The next I knew he had taken a white hot metal poker out of the fire and climbed up on the table. He jammed the poker into my ear with both hands, then jumped up and down on my head and the side of my face, jamming the tiny little mechacita in.
I quivered but I didn’t let out a sound. This was serious, I had a madman here. I clung to the side of the table as he pushed the little mechacita into my ear. He was moaning with the exertion, until I realised I was moaning with the joy of having such a small mechacita jammed into my ear.
They injected me after that, I don’t know who did it, or with what, but I know I loosened my trousers after a nurse asked me to and they jabbed me in the rear with another white hot poker. I didn’t know where they got so many all of a sudden.
‘¿Dónde está el fuego?’ I asked, surveying the room shakily. ‘Where’s the fire?’
Somebody laughed then, maybe me, and they ushered me out into the waiting room, into the stony silence of my girlfriend.
‘You look pale,’ she said.
The rest of the day twisted around my ears. Time was eaten by worms. I only remember snatches as the morphine or pethadine or truth serum took effect. Wandering off the footpath into the path of an onrushing bus and someone – not Libby – snatching me back; taxis floating by on Amazonas; busy, shoving crowds that were now dancing wraiths.
Libby looked up my dictionary and explained that a mecha was a ‘wick’. Simple. To draw the pus out.
I was bathed in an ethereal glow. I still felt pain, but I was beyond it, floating like a condor over Cotopaxi Volcano, perched on the rim and peering down at the fires below, waiting for the explosion.
Later, drinking dinner through a straw and rolled up in bed, I watched Libby brushing her hair, getting ready for a night on the town with the Irish girls from across the hall, I knew then my first mistake hadn’t been swimming in the Napo.

Image: Richard Hardy (2019), Wikimedia Commons

Elena Malkov, FICTION, JULY 2025

The Prophet of Endless Night

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The Prophet of Endless Night

Elena Malkov

The road splays over the slight curve of the land, fitting itself into hillsides and stretching flat over the fields. I am driving a very long way. Hundreds of miles more, and the landscape won’t change much. A town will pop up, greeting drivers by with the opaque glow of fast food signs and farm supply stores. Eventually I’ll stop at an identical town, pull off at a familiar exit and let the past wash over me in its strange newness. 

My car is named Zethar, it is dark purple with a silvery sheen and I love it in the way we love things we don’t understand⎯with fear, with hope. We have made this journey before, thousands of miles ago.

The only thing I can do for Zethar myself are fill up the gas tank and wash the windows (though never without leaving streaks), but I have learned to listen closely for the subtle changes in its sounds, its handling. Is there a grinding noise when I brake? Is the steering wheel jerking to the left? But still I only go to the mechanic when a light pops up on the dashboard or Zethar doesn’t start. 

We’ve been together a long time. We’d be best friends were it not for the fact that I know nothing about it. Zethar is a beautiful but terrifying mystery⎯especially now, when there’s only $200 in my bank account and my AAA membership is expired. I listen to Zethar’s noises raptly. And I think I hear a sharp tinny squeal, but it might just be a distant siren wailing.

I glance at the map on my phone and see there are still around a hundred miles until the exit. So far its been an uneventful drive⎯

Zethar’s gauges all suddenly point to zero, the dashboard lights blink out, the engine dies. We come to a complete standstill in the middle of the highway. Behind me someone honks, then passes with a flinging of hand gestures out the window. 

I manage to restart Zethar, pull over and sit for a moment, trying to collect myself. 

When I put the key back in the ignition, the car doesn’t want to wake up. I look at my phone for a few minutes, hoping a magical solution will present itself, but as always every desperate Google search leads only to forums full of car dads spouting helpful-unhelpful tips I cannot comprehend. 

Can’t really afford it, but I look for the nearest mechanic and find one five miles away. I try Zethar again and⎯miraculously!⎯it awakens. We drive the five miles, me holding my breath.

I see the garage as soon as I exit the highway. The office is just a long narrow closet attached to its side. The owner (I assume) sits inside, a pale lumpy mass in a large padded rocking chair, walled in by a desk littered with papers. I tell him what happened, he scrawls something silently on a notepad, nods his head at the door, and mumbles that Jim will take a look once he’s done. Walking back outside, I see Jim talking to the only other customer, a middle-aged man with an unplaceable accent, speaking with many elaborate gesticulations. His sedan is hoisted six feet up in the air.

Not even a bench to sit on. I pace. I wish I hadn’t quit smoking. I check my phone but there is no service. 

Eventually the other man lets Jim lower the car and goes into the office to pay. Jim looks at me silently. 

“Um, hello! So, my car was being super weird on the highway?” Jim doesn’t react. “I was driving and it just completely stopped working. Everything shut down. And then I couldn’t start it at first but then I could and drove here? Can you take a look at it please?”

Jim is a head shorter than me, thin dry hair smattered over his scalp and bony lopsided features. His teeth cluster at the front of his mouth, as though there’s not enough room for them in his jaw. 

“Sure I’ll check it out,” he says, reaching a palm out for the keys.

I surrender Zethar to the inverted abyss of the garage. Trying not to stare at Jim while he works, though there is nothing else to look at. No stores around. A gas pump out front (questionably functional: looks mid-century) and an empty ice box by the entrance.

Trying to see how long I can go without looking at my phone, but it’s never more than three minutes.

Finally Jim lowers Zethar’s gleaming dust-plum carapace and walks over to me.

“Nothing wrong with your car.”

“Really? I told you, it completely shut off on the road, just died. And nothing’s wrong with it?”

Jim shrugs. “I checked everything. Looks good.”

I try to think of a response. 

“It’s 20 bucks for service. Pay him,” he nods at the office.

I go in and pay, get back in the car, and head towards the highway.

For the next hour there’s no problem, Zethar is silent. I don’t turn on any music and just focus on the hum of the engine for 60 full minutes. I should be getting close now, but when I check the map on my phone (service finally restored), I’ve driven just a few miles. 

As I try to figure out how that’s even mathematically possible, a screech tears from the front of the car and the steering wheel begins to jerk in my hands. Pulling over, terrified, I grab my phone and try to figure out what happened. I search “car screech noise steering wheel shakes” but none of the sites coming up seem right, or I’m having trouble reading the words on the screen. Accidentally click on an ad for new brake pads and for some reason go through the motions of placing an order, mechanically entering my credit card number, stopping just short of hitting the submit button. I frantically close the screen and start scrolling through my contacts, trying to find someone I know who’s nearby or knows something about cars, but don’t recognize most of the names flowing beneath my fingers.

The road stretches before me, glimmers of dusk on the horizon. I’ve left myself back home and stretching out westward has only loosened my claim on reality⎯I wonder if I have any original thoughts left, any faith or purpose.

Keys back in the ignition, Zethar is acting normal again. 

We plunge quickly into twilight, thick coating of shadow on the road. Fewer cars now so I’m going fast, hoping I can actually make it there before dark. I try not to keep glancing at the map, turn the screen off for half an hour, but somehow only manage to cover five miles. 

I scream. I growl. I curse. I beat the steering wheel with my palms then grab my phone and fling it to the floor. It slips under the seat and there’s no way to get it back out without stopping. The sky is darkening and there are almost no other cars, certainly no people, not even gas stations now. I make a halfhearted attempt to paw around under the seat, but I can’t do much without completely ducking under the wheel and driving myself off the road.

Okay. I think I remember: exit 147. I just drove past the 95-mile marker. I can do this. 

Where I’m coming from, autumn is just starting to whisper through the trees. The air sharpens and the leaves begin to dapple gold. Soon they will all transform and, during a heavy rain, plummet to the ground, coating it with a carpet of yellow and red. I remember walking through them in years past⎯a sea of wet leaves enveloping my sodden shoes and a feeling of absolute lightness in my heart.

And now, back to the primordial ooze. Out west. The past, the pastoral, burnt out poesy. I don’t know why I even decided to do this. The world in crisis, about to twist itself into pieces, I’m on an ill-planned road trip. And I can’t even get there.

Darkness shatters over the pavement. Zethar emits a quiet hiss.

There’s no way to get to where I’m going; there’s no road to the past. I wander through the thickest of night in a car whose engine is speaking an incomprehensible language.

Then⎯mile marker 96. A few minutes later⎯97. I’m making progress. Just 50 more miles. 

As soon as I relax in my seat, the car begins its sibilant song again. 

I let out a dry sob. Zethar hisses louder, as though in response to my exasperation. I stroke the steering wheel in halfhearted consolation. 

Getting tired. Ignoring the sound, hoping it goes away on its own or works itself through somehow or at least doesn’t get worse until I arrive. Not long left now. The next mile marker I spot reads 99. I thought more time has passed. It’s already 9 o’clock. I’ve gone two miles in, what, 20 minutes? The speedometer hasn’t wavered. The engine or whatever begins to sputter in choked plosives, the thin red arrows in the dashboard gauges jerking side to side.

The clock is now blinking 12:00. Broken. That must be why I couldn’t keep track of time earlier! Briefly calmer, I feel my mind fog and my eyelids get heavier. I wish I could stop somewhere to buy an energy drink, feel the fizz in my mouth and the muscles behind my eyes tightening to hold the lids open. 

The next mile marker is 99 again. This time I pull over, despite the gloom enclosing the edges of the road. Scream and scream, tears burning hot in my eyes. I turn Zethar off in hopes of quieting the discontent under its hood and plummet into darkness as all the glowing details of the dashboard and headlights turn off.

No other cars on the highway. I sit in silence for a few moments, stunned at my own rashness but too frightened to move. Then, with a heavy dread balled up at the top of my spine I start the car⎯it mumbles heavily and doesn’t turn over. Again I utter several dry desperate sobs. I take out the key, put it back in the ignition, and Zethar comes to glorious life. Engine muted, we roll away, my jaw clenched with the titanium grip of foreboding.

Back to the road, back to counting mile markers. I don’t want to turn on the radio⎯all my stations are set to old frequencies and the thought of scrolling through static on this strange night makes me physically ill.

It takes another hour to reach marker 100. By now my eyes are clouded with tears, my cheeks chapping from the salt. The heat is blasting on max but still I shiver. My foot is frozen on the gas pedal

I wish I could stop and retrieve my phone from beneath the passenger seat. Maybe I have a few missed calls and texts by now, everyone wondering why I’m late.

Or⎯is it that I haven’t told anyone I’m coming? Is it a surprise? I can’t recall.

Which exit do I get off at? 147? 148? I think both will bring me to roughly the same area, but I realize now I don’t even remember how to get from the highway to the house. It’s a blur of roads in my mind. I was planning on arriving early enough in the day to let my memory guide me through the streets but now it’s hopeless.

The hissing persists, punctuated by discontented grinding noises that shake the steering wheel. Something is horribly wrong with Zethar and I can’t remember the last time I noticed any promise of civilization. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything. It is deep night. 

I think again about the mechanic who checked out my car. Already I can’t recall his features. 

But⎯I do retain some memories of longer ago. Reflected light bouncing off the walls, my mother’s perfume on the telephone receiver, dirty snow glinting on the pavement. Not memories so much as churnings of a frightful mind no longer extant. Malformed things, mostly a confusion of feelings stored with the absolute knowledge that their portent would remain vivid forever.

I no longer see mile markers, only the few feet of road ahead revealed by the soft headlights. The car’s noises have assimilated into my auditory landscape.

I am still moving forward but the car no longer covers any distance⎯we have broken into perpetuity. Its malfunctions transported us both into the shadow of the only moment and so we drive drive drive down the highway, the miles expanding into a blank eternity. 

We fade, unremembered, unmourned⎯finally⎯into the night.

Image: Lauren Coleman (2015), Wikimedia Commons

FICTION, JULY 2025, Michael Manerowski

Still Dragging My Foot

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Still Dragging My Foot

Michael Manerowski

Oh, my friends, I beg of you. I implore you. I entreat you. I warn you. Strictly. Severely. Look, do not cultivate the habit of ignoring the tasks set before you in life. For too long, my friends, for far too long, I have been dragging my foot. So long has it been, I do not even recall what it is I have been dragging my foot about all this time.

Take heed, my friends, and listen. To drag one’s foot is far worse than any other form of ignoring or delaying that which needs getting done. At least with, say, procrastination, one ends up getting the thing in question done, since a deadline usually, eventually pinches one into action.

To put something off can be quite harmless, since putting something off implies that you will get the thing done at least sooner or later, if not after a long while.

But, my dear friends, to drag your foot on something, that can become quite habitual and second nature. So much so that it can become part of the way you navigate the world. And nothing about such behavior suggests you will ever get done whatever needs getting done.

I can attest, dear friends, since I have been dragging my foot on something for quite some time. You see, I’m even forced to speak in general terms, saying, “for some time,” since I cannot provide a specific timeframe, as I do not recall exactly when I began the practice of dragging my foot.

Oh, many years ago, I had something that needed getting done. You understand, some paperwork, some form to fill out, some application to submit, some marriage proposal to make, some sin to confess … some thing or other to get done. There may even have been a couple of things. Perhaps several. And I did not want to do them. Though I do not now recall why. Perhaps because I was afraid of discovering the truth, afraid of failure, or because I did not want to be bothered with the busy work. Either way, it was at that point that I began the practice of dragging my foot.

To start, dragging my foot was quite the nuisance. One must learn to amble about in a bit of a shuffling, limping manner. And, for the novice, it can be awkward and cumbersome, and it takes a bit of getting used to, as you can imagine, if you’re going to go about dragging your foot everywhere you go. On that, I was determined to succeed, lest I stop dragging my foot and would be faced with getting done the things I was so determined not to do.

To drag my right foot, you see, I first needed to step forward with my left leg, while leaning on my right foot. Then, to proceed in my ambulatory progression, along the surface of the sidewalk, I would drag the right foot forward, making a loud, delightful, scraping sound. Skerrrrrrrrip! Then I would repeat, stepping my left leg forward, and so on.

Mind you, I was able to master the motions after many months, but it took quite some time to walk from desk to hall, say, down hall to bathroom, and back again. Easily took twice the amount of time. But I was committed. I was dragging my foot, by golly. And nothing else much mattered.

Now, after some time, I was so focused on mastering the foot-dragging, I all the more neglected and forgot what it was I had been dragging my foot about in the first place. What’s worse, as a result of all the foot-dragging, I used my right foot so infrequently that it took on severe numbness and soon grew weak and then altogether turned lame. All muscle was eventually lost. If you can believe that.

In due course, whilst continually dragging my foot around, wearing down the soles of many a good shoe, I might add, I soon lost the ability to utilize my foot. In any capacity.

Years passed. Eventually, doctors told me the foot needed amputation, blackened and shriveled as it had become by lack of proper blood flow.

Doctors had to plumb cut it off.

Now I’ve got a stump down there, just above where my ankle should be. I still can amble about, mind you. In much the same way as when dragging my foot. You’ll recall: striding forward with my left leg while leaning on the right stump. Now, however, I swing the stump forward, so as not to drag it along the sidewalk and make matters worse for the rest of my leg.

Now my walking rate is about three times slower than in the days before I started the foot-dragging in the first place. I know, I know. It’s a burden. But, still, I am determined to drag my foot.

Now, my friends, I bet you’re wondering how I possibly could be dragging my foot after the amputation. That is a reasonable question. However, the answer is quite simple. You see, obstinately wanting to continue my practice of foot-dragging, lest I might have to get on with doing that which so long ago needed doing, I tied the cut off foot to a rope and tied the rope about my waist. Now I drag the foot behind me. Everywhere I go.

Still to this day, I do not recall what it is I have been dragging my foot about. But, look behind me and you shall see that I still am. Tied to my rope, as I limp along, drags my shriveled, blackened, good-for-little-but-dragging-about foot.

Image: Shinjo2001, Wikimedia Commons

FICTION, JULY 2025, Larry Lefkowitz

Take the Money and …

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Take the Money and …

Larry Lefkowitz

On that Thursday (as he thought of it ever since), he was on his way to Tel Aviv from the kibbutz to take the lanolin that the kibbutz supplied from its sheepfold. He stopped on the way, as he always did, at “The Memory of Jacob” town to fill out his lottery card in the hope of winning the big pot. And, as always, he felt embarrassed at the sheepish odor that surely was evident upon him; his own nose, inured to the smell, was of no help to his olfactory objectivity. He thought the fact that he was named Jacob and the place was named “The Memory of Jacob” might aid him in his gamble. This time a brilliant idea struck him, he would apply the dialectical method of selecting his lotto numbers: 

for the First of May  

for the fathers of Marxism, Marx and Engels

7- for the letters of Trotsky’s name

12-for Eva Luxembourg’s name

But unlike the many times before, this time he won! (12-Eva Luxembourg). And won not small. 20 million shekels. “A lot of lanolin,” in the argot of the sheep tending brotherhood. The sole winner. In dollars, 6.5 million. In yen –but any dealings in yen would be in the future. 

Of course, he could not sleep after seeing the draw on television (for which he absented himself from a kibbutz meeting concerning the budget) and seeing that he won. And he could not tell his wife since he was divorced or his “life partner” (a terminology given to over-optimism) since she had left him not two months before. And talking to the sheep, as he liked to do, wouldn’t help in the matter, sheep were used to being counted, not counting.

The next day he threw aftershave on his hands (to cover up the sheep odor) and went to the lotto office to pick up his check. He refused to wear the traditional winners’ bag over his head to disguise himself from potential demands for monetary assistance. The socialist tradition dictated honesty, even in capitalistic matters. 

He ran to the closest bank to deposit the check, humming a tune which he then realized was the socialist anthem, “The Internationale”, sung on the kibbutz on May 1st, perhaps a subconscious counterbalancing to his capitalistic act. When the bank clerk saw the figure on the check, he summoned the bank manager who bestowed on Jacob overwhelming willingness and attention, which discomfited Jacob, since he was not used to being a celebrity. Once the check was deposited, he was happy to be free of his burden and the fear that he would lose it. He was sorry he hadn’t taken from it 10 shekels to eat in a restaurant but consoled himself that he had saved himself embarrassment before the bank manager for taking out such a small amount. This capitalism wasn’t so easy, as surely Marx knew. Marx had apparently never hit it big on a gamble (except for Marxism, of course). Nor even Engels, despite his wealth, could be said to be a big winner.   So he went back to the kibbutz and the sheep, and told nobody because he feared how they would receive him ideologically more than the fact they might force him to “donate” the money to the kibbutz. But he couldn’t hold it in any longer and he whispered it to his favorite sheep, and felt better for it.

Alas, such a secret could not remain a secret long, and even if it could, Jacob wasn’t your closed-mouth-secret-keeper. Too much ideology and soul-baring in his youth (dialectical revelation was the vogue) had made this impossible. He turned to Dotan, the closest thing to a confident he had on the kibbutz. Dotan, like himself, was on the lower end of the kibbutz honor hierarchy, both having had served in the clothing dispensary in the army, while the top of the hierarchy had served in the elite army units.  

At first, Dotan thought Jacob was pulling his leg. It took all of Jacob’s persuasion efforts, not his strong forte, but under the impetus of the secret burning a hole in his soul he succeeded. Showing Dotan the deposit receipt for the check also helped.

“So what do we do with the money?” Dotan asked.”

“We?” shot back Jacob, suspicious.

“Of course, I am using the collective ‘we’—the kibbutz ‘we,’ not you and me.”

“You think it is a kibbutz problem?” Jacob said, though he knew it was.

“Oi, boychick, and how!” confirmed Dotan..     

“I thought you promised that this would remain between us.”

“Yes, I promised that it would. And I won’t tell anyone, but –”

 “Nor me,” affirmed Jacob.

“But it will come out anyway, these things always do. Especially if there is only one winner and he took – how much, 20 million?”  

“Shhh,” whispered Jacob, looking around, though there was no one around, “Do you think I should tell the kibbutz?”. 

“I think you should. It will be in your favor. Revealed by you, not discovered from outside. But you’d better do it fast, before the 20 million cat is out of the bag.” Dotan paused. “Some cat!”

Jacob looked downcast.

“Don’t worry. It’s not a confession, though there are some members who will treat it as such. Our ideologically pure.” 

And so, at the next general meeting, after the perennial disputes over whether the kibbutz children should sleep in the common children’s sleeping quarters or sleep at home with the parents, and who should be drafted for orchard picking duty when the crop was ripe, were finished, and as Menachem was about to adjourn the meeting, Jacob stood up to the surprise of all, as he usually sat passively without saying anything.  

“Kibbutz member Jacob, you have something to say?” asked Menachem, in an irritated voice.

“Just …that …I…have…won…20… million… shekels… in the lotto.”

There ensued a stunned silence, rare in kibbutz meetings. If Jacob had announced that he was engaged to marry a sheep the silence couldn’t have been more deafening. When it ended, however, it really ended. Cacophony. The final of the 1812 Overture, the winning of the European Song Contest, the stadium noise when Maccabee Tel Aviv won the European Basketball Championship by defeating the Soviet team (well, most of the country, the kibbutz was torn between the Old Guard who favored the Soviets and the New Guard who favored Maccabee) are but poor examples. 

Jacob stood there like Robespierre before the Revolutionary Tribunal. 

It took all of Menachem’s podium skill to return order.

 “Is that all you have to say?” Menachem asked

“All?” murmured Jacob. “Isn’t it enough?”

“I was referring to what you will do with your ill-gotten … your money.”

“Do? I haven’t decided.”

“Member Jacob, you are standing here in front of a general meeting of the kibbutz. Your kibbutz. The sole kibbutz in the country that raises the banner of Marx-Leninism, the rest of the kibbutzim following the pale principles of socialism. Your kibbutz is in need of financial assistance. Certainly it is an act of Providence –well, fate—that you came into your good fortune. Well?” he said, hands on hips.

Jacob grasped what Menachem was after. Everybody at the meeting grasped it.

Dotan rose to defend his friend. “Marx said, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’ Jacob belongs to the second category.”

They hooted him down, a prelude to pro, con, and in between opinions as to whether Jacob should donate all, part, or none to the kibbutz. 

This time it took twenty minutes to quiet the horde, for horde it had become. By then Jacob’s new friends had raised him on their shoulders and carried him out of the dining room, where kibbutz meetings were held. Did they share in his joy – or hope to share in his profits? It is difficult to say. As Marx put it, “Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.”    

Two days later, Jacob received a message from the kibbutz telephone operator. His ex-wife had called. Jacob was astounded. They hadn’t talked in five years. For a few moments, he couldn’t think what had brought about this diversion from practice. Then he realized why. But he hadn’t time to dwell on the matter because the operator informed him that Aviva had called. His ex-life companion. He suspected she might be regretting the “ex.” 

He sat down with his head in his hands. Thoughts of continuing his life quietly on the kibbutz with the sheep were evaporating in favor of alternative thoughts of villas, new cars, trips around the world were looming. Capitalism, the anathema of the kibbutz way of life, didn’t seem so terrible.     

 By the time of the next kibbutz general meeting set to discuss “the matter of Jacob” could be convened, the kibbutz, as concerning so many other matters, was divided into two camps: those who thought Jacob should donate the money to the kibbutz, and those who thought he should be allowed to keep it.  

Jacob had his own thought on the matter. “I believe I am entitled to the money,” he announced.

‘But what of ideology!” someone shouted.

“Privatization is the trend, ” Jacob countered. “More than one kibbutz is considering having the members as individual ownerships.”

“They aren’t in the situation where one of their members won 20 million shekels,” someone pointed out.

“The principle is the same, “Jacob tried to argue.

“I’ll settle for the interest,” another commented.   

The arguments continued. To each appeal to the collective principle, or to kibbutz laws, Jacob had an answer. “I bought the ticket with my own money, not kibbutz funds, I bought it outside of kibbutz territory.

Arguments began. Words like “brothers”, “the common good;” slogans like “all for one and one for all”, “shoulders pulling together” – well you can imagine. And , as in past situations, no one could agree and the meeting was adjourned without a decision.

Members refused to speak to other members. Some turned their backs on Jacob. Others rallied to his side. A few quietly asked for “loans” or proposed “deals.” The virus of capitalism was battling the antigen of socialism. And the sheep were being neglected, for Jacob had much on his mind.

The calls from his two exs became more frequent. He ignored them yet knew it was only a matter of time before they came in person. The next Saturday the ex-life partner arrived as Jacob was sitting in the living room, deep in thought. He did not see her come in (kibbutz doors were not locked in those days). She approached him and, to his surprise, embraced him. “I have thought it over,” she purred. 

He was trying to find words to get rid of her when the other ex – his ex-wife, arrived. “I’m entitled to part of it,” she said immediately. Then she spied the ex-life partner. “What is she doing here!” both exclaimed simultaneously. Soon they were shouting out their preferred claims and then turned to physical contestation, rolling around on the floor. Because of his experience with the sheep, Jacob soon separated them. 

“You’ll hear from my lawyer,” the ex-wife shouted at him on leaving. 

“You’ll hear from my psychiatrist,” his ex-lifer shouted at him.

But before the lawyer or the psychiatrist could contact him, or the kibbutz could come to a decision, Jacob embraced and kissed his sheep goodbye, hitched a ride to Tel Aviv and drew a goodly sum from his bank account. The rest he transferred to another bank so that what remained could not be obtained by the many who would want to get their hands on it. 

Rumour abounded as to the whereabouts of Jacob. Some put him in South America. Some in Switzerland. Some say he had been seen in Hong Kong. No one really knew, but if you ask me, I would put my money on Australia.

 They have wonderful sheep in Australia.

Image: Keith Weller, Herd of white sheep (2004?)

Wikimedia Commons

FICTION, JULY 2025, Mike Dwyer

Blanco Billy of San Luis

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Blanco Billy of San Luis 

Mike Dwyer

Señora Beltrán, my seventh-grade teacher and Vice Principal at San Luis Middle, says I’ll see less trouble for yesterday if I do the End of Year Essay Contest. I’m sure she would show mercy if I said no, since I’m in pain and covered in gauze. But I will do it, only because her heart is set on it. (Smiling, Señora?)  

The contest is district wide, so I must write it in English, says she. Alright then. My name is Billy Riordan, but kids here call me Blanco Billy, or just Blanco – white. Because my skin is so white. Not beige or pinkish – white. San Luis is hot, dry, desert, so my glowing white epidermis is most days slathered in sunscreen, also white. They named me Blanco not to be mean, but as a simple fact. And it’s catchier than, say, ‘SPF 70.’  

I was born in Cork, Ireland, but barely remember it. My Ma got sick from birthing me, then died before I turned two. My Da, Finnian Riordan, soon felt “the island became too small” and moved us here, where he is Head of Psychiatric Services at Arizona State Prison Complex, San Luis. Doom and gloom sounding, yes, but Da says he has bettered some lives and even saved a few. 

He wanted a new start somewhere “very unlike Ireland,” and San Luis surely checks that box.  Plus, bonus, it’s two towns in one! San Luis, Arizona, USA, where I live, officially ends just past Urtuzuastegui Street, by El Beauty Cosmeticos. Walk south through The Gate and you’re in San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico, at Avenida Carlos Galles. By the KFC.  

You do see more dirt streets and peeling paint on the fences’ south side, and dozens of Tiendas Six stores to the north side’s zero. Also, the north side’s fence is low, see-through, not too ugly, but the south’s is burnt orange, taller, thick, with razor wire curlicues on top. Ugly.                             

But south side, north side, whatever – it’s all the same city, same people, same goodness. We’ll eat our lunch on the south side, dinner on the north, dessert on the south. As for the fences, we showed our papers to The Gate guards long ago; now we just wave and they wave back.        

My best friends, Luz and Luiz Reyes, ‘L&L,’ were born on the USA north side but live on the Mexico south, and they’re with me in San Luis Middle on the north. Luiz and I are about done with seventh grade, Luz with eighth. We met on my first day of kindergarten and fast became “Los Tres.” The Three, together everywhere.     

Luz and Luis love my Da and have feasted for years on his stories. The first one they heard was of the U.S. Army’s all-Irish Saint Patrick’s Regiment who, during the USA’s 1846 invasion of Mexico, switched to Mexico’s side and became Los San Patricios. That tale of Da’s is a true one; some others, not so much.  

Da loves San Luis but says he might someday again live in Ireland. Los Tres would rather he get with Señora Adelina Reyes, Luz and Luiz’s widowed ma. She’s at some level of willing, we think. Kind, funny, pretty like Luz, she’s Head Manager of San Luis’ best hotel. If she couples up with Da, he’ll stay forever. Luz once teased me that a Finnian Riordan-Adelina Reyes marriage would make us stepsiblings. Extra weird now, what with this beautiful new thing between us.   

Los Tres, we’ve always read books together. I see us three as Harry, Hermione, and Ron from the Harry Potters. Luiz is Harry. I’m officially smart, if straight A’s mean anything, but Luiz, he is geniusy. (I know, Señora B, ‘geniusy,’ not a real word.)  

Luz, she is Hermione. Smart, kind, brave, resourceful, she’d fight ten dragons for Los Tres. Just being near her has made me feel smarter, calmer, better. About school, life, myself, everything. 

Me, I’m Ron. Not the bumbling, hot-headed Ron of the earlier books. The later Ron, the loyal, reliable best friend to Luiz/Harry. I’ll do anything for him, and for Luz/Hermione. Most importantly, though, it’s Ron who ends up with Hermione!  

Which brings me to yesterday, my greatest day. Its rough ending, I’ll take that every time if I get what came before it, and to hell with any consequences. Not that there will BE any. Right, my favorite English Teacher/Vice Principal?  

The lead-up to yesterday was me being a mess. I just turned thirteen and am headed for eighth grade. Good, yes? No, because Luz hit fourteen and is done with us middle school Scorpions.    A San Luis High Sidewinder next year, she’ll be without her Los Tres partners. Without me.   

Nightmarish near-future scenes blasted my mind. Luz and some ninth (tenth?!) grade boyfriend, making out in El Parque? Me vanishing from her life before I got the nerve to tell her what I’ve known for a year? To save my brain, I would spill it all to her, and I’d do it on the Seventh and Eighth Grade Year End Field Trip. Yesterday.   

Our middle school classes aren’t allowed to bus to places just for fun, so added on is a one-hour tour of the Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park, circa 1876. Only after that do we all walk under the overpass to swim at Yuma Beach, on the Colorado River. For fun. 

Not that the Prison Museum isn’t cool. My mind, though, was occupied by one thing only: Luz. And there she was, coming from the bus behind mine. Medium length hair, black and shining, a mini tail of it stuck out as usual through the back of her San Luis Los Algodoneros cap. She wore huaraches, baggy gym shorts, and her mom’s old Maná t-shirt. Her perfect brown eyes, a shade lighter than her skin and filled with sparkling green flakes, focused right on me – no flitting them around to other kids like she might be missing something. 

Oh, quick side note! I phoned Luz earlier and she gave me permission to tell this next part. It was all said in Spanish, but I promise to stay true to every word. 

She walked up flashing that smile, the one that kills me every time in the best way. “Que t’al, Memo?” she asked. Que t’al is “How are ya?” and Memo means Billy. Only Luz calls me Memo. “Where’s my little brother?” she asked. 

I tried to sound relaxed. “Some friends of Xochitl Perez just told Luiz that she likes him, and he told me the vice versa on the bus. They’re already inside, and I bet he isn’t paying much attention to those cellblocks.”

Luz laughed. “Wow! Luiz the Lover, crushing on someone! Who knew?”

I saw the opening and took it. “I’ve never known you to have any crushes either.”

She hesitated for a second, then smiled. “That doesn’t mean I haven’t had any.”

“Oh yeah? How many, how long, and for whom?” I still sounded calm but I wasn’t breathing.

“For just one person, and I still have it. It’s for you, dummy! Of course it is.”

I don’t think I literally jumped in the air, but I did go full grito with a big old, “Ayyiyiyieee!”

Her response was quieter but came with a smile. “That means you’re vice versa, too?”

“Yes, Luz Reyes! But I wouldn’t really call this a crush. It’s more than that, you know?”              I held my breath and hoped she did. She took my hand and gave it a soft squeeze, and my heart did speedy backflips.  

“I do know, Memo. We’ve been together most days for the last eight years. This is not a crush.”

“So, are we, um, overdoing it if we use the A Word?” (Yes, Sra. B, the L Word.)

“I say no,” Luz responded. “It IS love. Not the love of adults with jobs, kids, bills to pay. But it’s still real, Memo. You are my first love! Maybe not my last, but who knows, right?” 

“True, nobody knows. And I love you too, Luz. Every single tiny thing about you.” I then            blurted, “Including your complete digestive tract!” I guess I was dizzy. Luz’s laugh was sweet, so the moment stayed magic.

“Every single tiny thing?!” She laughed again. “You’re getting overheated!”

“No, I mean it. Even the few things you do that can annoy me, those things I love too.”

“I get it. Same here! So, Memo, what now?” She looked at me like she really needed to know.     

I responded with a plan that could be called ‘rash,’ a Daily Vocab Word from Sra. Beltran.     

“Let’s skip the prison! Stroll the riverwalk for a half hour, then hurry back. Everyone will still be here, and we’ll blend in like we never left. Easy!” Luz gave a just-as-rash “Okay!” and off we snuck. Once in the clear, we held hands. It was near 11 a.m., a cloudless day headed only to the high nineties. We barely reached the path before Luz stopped and announced, “I don’t want to get anxious, waiting for our first kiss. Let’s do it now.” So we did. 

Some teeth-knocking at first, but we just giggled and figured it out. A truly perfect moment, etched into my mind for all time. After it, more walking, handholding, skipping stones, stopping for more kisses, sharing memories of eight years of book reads and bike rides and hotel pool swims and whatever else. Also, excited guesses on what the near and farther future might hold for us, individually, and couple-wise, maybe.  

We took another kiss break, and Luz asked me to promise to never treat her like property. I did promise, but me knowing she’s her own full and impressive person, I was already there.

We walked more, then saw a path zigzagging down to the water. Below on the bank was an oversized inner tube with a painted ad for the Yuma Hilton, Penitentiary Point. We rolled it into a no-current little cove, then did laugh-filled flips and flops off of it. After, we rested – arms out behind us on the tube, my right one around Luz’s shoulders, her left around mine, our butts in the river, legs over the tube’s other side. We were quiet, happy. Our own little paradise.

Luz suddenly blurted, “Oh man! Everyone’s almost at the beach, I bet. Let’s head back, yes?”

I answered, “Hey, instead of walking, let’s cruise! We’ll get close to the beach, drop the tube off, then walk right up. If we’re asked where we’ve been, we’ll say I left something in the prison.”

Luz agreed. We paddled out into the river’s center and settled in. A bit more kissing, then I closed my eyes and I think Luz did too. After a while, we heard something. A power-walking woman and her little yapper dog.   

Luz exclaimed, “She’s not even jogging, and she’s beating us!”

“Yeah, damn. The current is weak.”

“Should we get out and run?”                                                                                    

Aiming for carefree confidence, I said, “Let’s tube it! We’ll get there a little late, and yeah, we might get caught and be in a little trouble. But hey, this is OUR day!”

Brief hesitation from Luz, but she grinned, giggled, and shouted, “Órale, carnal!” That’s like, “Cool, man, hell yeah!” I giggled too.  

The fact that our swimming and bellyflopping had washed away all my sunscreen and that my fat bottle of it was in my backpack on the bus, we weren’t thinking about that. We just lazed in our tube, tilting back to look at the endless blue sky or just quietly smiling at each other. Calmly floating away, till at some point we both closed our eyes again and looked at nothing.

We awoke to roars of laughter, excited applause, and that big “ooooohh!” kids do when they know someone is in trouble. Our classmates and teachers, the ones not off looking for us, stared across the water to Luz and me. Luz looked dazed, sleepy. But then she saw me and got a whole other look. 

It was major league sun poisoning. I felt like I was in flames but also freezing. My face, arms, and legs were fire engine red, and invisible burning bugs scuttled across my skin. I wanted to yell or moan or scream but got stuck staring at my bubbling left arm and went mute. I turned my burnt head to look at Luz. Her baseball cap’s big brim had shaded her face, plus she’s brown, which helps. A little overheated and dehydrated, but okay. 

A swarm of classmates with Carlos Cortez in front yelling, “Blanco Billy is fried!” swam to our tube and brought us in. Lost in my pain, I zoned out, but I do recall an ambulance. Luz got to stay with me in the Emergency Room, thanks to Señora Beltran, who also stayed. Da and Señora Reyes drove up to Yuma in Da’s SUV. Nice one, Da! They sat around while the ER people worked on me with creams and lotions and sponges and softwraps and gauze and whatnot.

I got released hours later and Da drove us all back home. Even after her long and stressful day, Señora Beltrán seemed to enjoy the night drive, chatting it up with Da and Señora Reyes who, up in front, looked like a legit couple.

It’s now the next day, and my body burns, itches, hurts. Honestly, though, this sun poisoning deal was cool. Da and the Señoras likely wanted to yell and scold, but they couldn’t do that in the ER, what with me and my chills, burning blisters, and lost skin. By the time we left, they were too tired to blast us. And so my pain served a purpose, and those two hours Luz and I had together before that pain came, they will warm my loving heart forever. 

Okay then! I’ve reached this essay’s length requirement. One last thing, Señora B. Que todo te vaya bien, y por favor, no olvides lo mucho que me gustaste! Cut that only if you must!

Image: Wikimedia, Author Leon13639

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leon13639/54431304578/

Faith Miller, FICTION, JANUARY 2025

Twenty Dollars

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Twenty Dollars

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

Faith Miller

Every week an envelope arrives in my mailbox with a twenty-dollar bill inside.  Never more.  Never less.  No note.  Post-marks from all over the country.  Twenty dollars is not enough. Even before the pandemic it wasn’t enough.

There are five of us: four children and one woman, who is me.  The children are nine, five, three and seventeen months.  Three of them are girls.  The oldest one, Abbygayle, is not mine, well not mine by birth, but I am all she has.  The others: Taylor, Tommy, and Taryn, I did give birth to.  I am still breastfeeding all of them because I still have milk and twenty is not enough.

A bag of mandarins on sale, two cans of black beans, a box of Giant spaghetti pasta, 52 ounces of orange juice, a box of elbow pasta, Pasta Sauce, Wonder Bread, Giant Concord Grape Jelly, Cheddar Cheese Pringles and one Hershey Bar.  That’s twenty dollars and everything but the jelly was sales priced.

Everyone is hungry.  Abby and Taylor get free school lunch and I have trained them to steal, we call it “borrowing” as if that makes it okay, toilet paper from their school’s bathrooms.  Even if they get caught, and they have, it’s toilet paper and they’re kids and they explained it was only borrowing.  And what was the school gonna do? Ban them from the restroom?

Weekends are the worst.  When I had a car we’d sometimes turn up like unwanted relatives at church suppers, but he sold my car.  Or hid it.  Or crashed it.  Or did something else that I don’t know about.

He pays the electricity, the water, the mortgage.  We are never cold or left in the dark.   Twice a year he swoops in with new clothes for the older girls.  Like he was Santa or the kind of father who spoils his kids instead of the kind of father who starves them.

“I can’t trust you with money, Jane,” he told me after he’d told me there’d be twenty dollars every week rain or shine come what may.  He told me that was plenty.  There were only two children then and Tommy was a baby, but it still wasn’t enough.  And it was less once Taryn was born and when Abby came to live with me after her mother ended up back on drugs.

I can sort of understand that inclination: reality is just so terrible.  So terribly hard.

Every so often a case of beer will appear on the sagging wooden porch, a fifth of Jack, a bag of weed.  I know then he’ll be back soon: I am not a mean drunk, I am docile, sweet, the way he likes me.

He, yes, he does have a name, but I don’t like it, and I don’t like him, and I don’t like saying his name.  It’s worse to me than the c-word or the n-word or all the other bad words combined.  “Twenty dollars is just enough,” he said.

Almost enough to keep us from starving.  Certainly enough to keep me from leaving, because where could I go when I had nothing?  No money.  No car.  No outdoor clothes.  No shoes.  No phone or cell-phone or computer.  My family and one-time friends had all written me off long ago.  “Stay away from him, Janie,” my dad had said and my mom and my step-father and step-mothers one and two.  “He’s bad news,” said my assorted siblings, half-sisters, and step-brothers.

But the heart wants what it wants.  Tommy pulls my nightgown down, demanding to be nursed.  He is voracious.  His teeth are sharp.  He will grow up to be like his father, telling women things are enough when they aren’t.  I can feel it in my bones and my aching breasts.

During the pandemic he brought a cat home on one of his semi-regular visits: an orange tabby with brilliant green eyes.  The children had loved him.  Twenty dollars is not enough for cat food let alone visits to the vet.  I hope the cat found a better home, one with food and care as well as love.  I tell the children that’s what happened and I can see them wondering if they, too, should seek out such a home.

I don’t think he’d care.  I’m not sure he’d notice.   He never mentioned that cat, never asked after it, not once.

Abby says, “My teacher asked if you or my dad would be coming to the parent-teacher’s conference this year.  She said they want to speak to you.”  She looks uncomfortable.  Her blue smock dress turned top is tight across her chest.  There is dirt on her cheek.  The soap at their schools is in dispensers so they cannot borrow it. I can’t afford soap any more than I could afford the pet food or that I could afford bus tickets for all of us out of this town.

Twenty dollars is not enough.

Abby and I look down at my slippers, one of which has a sole that flaps, look at my stained red and white housecoat, her eyes continue up to my chapped lips.

“Don’t worry, Mama, I told her no.”

I don’t remember when Abbygayle started calling me Mama instead of Jane. I don’t mind.

For dinner I will heat up some pasta, one small cup each, with sauce.  For dessert one of those little squares of chocolate.  I wonder if the children have rickets or scurvy.  I don’t know what rickets or scurvy look like and twenty dollars does not buy health care.  Or Ubers.

In the garage, that does not garage a car, there is an old lawn mower, some clippers and a huge freezer.  In season, and sometimes out-of-season, he hunts and sometimes the freezer is filled with venison.  Then I use some of the money to buy oil or margarine so I can cook it up.  Then the children’s stomachs are full and so is mine.

The freezer is empty now, but there was whiskey on the porch so I know he will be coming by for one of his visits.  To check I haven’t seduced the mailman or murdered his children and run off.  I used to like whiskey with cola, but twenty dollars doesn’t buy soda, so I open the bottle and drink a glassful neat.  And then a second and part of a third before I put the spaghetti on to boil.

Abby is helping Taylor with her homework, which is coloring a picture of a house that looks nothing like our house because it is nice looking and Taylor has given it pink “paint” and drawn smiling parents looking on approvingly as a fantasy Taylor eats an apple.

“Beautiful honey,” I say, “Is that me?”  I point to the woman, who seems to be wearing a pink dress that matches the house.   

Taylor nods. “And Daddy.”

“Where are my shoes?” 

Taylor grabs her drawing and looks down at my feet.  “You tell me,” she says, sounding more like my mother than my five-year old daughter.

“Shush,” says Abby and I feel my eyes water.  I am coming to a boil just like my store-brand bargain pasta.

More whiskey, I think, more whiskey I want, but then I won’t be able to nurse and the children will go to bed even hungrier.

*

He comes the next night when I am half asleep, the bottle of Jack half-empty.  He is looming over me, frowning.  “You’re a mess, Janie, and here I am in my best clothes ready to take you dancing.”

It’s a joke, not a joke, on our first date he took me dancing, two-stepping in a self-consciously honky-tonk bar.  He is a sharp dresser, he always has been, black jeans with a crease down the middle, a chambray shirt in sky blue, a color he knows is my favorite.  He hands are so clean, his nails look like he’s had a manicure, his breath is sweet with the smell of weed and his eyes are deceptively warm and kind.  “What’s it going to take?”

“Take?” I say, siting up, moving Taryn off my lap where she’s fallen asleep.  “Go off to bed now, honey.”

She starts to say something, but toddles off, ignoring him, her baby-radar on full alert.

“To get you presentable.  Jeez.”  His tone is steel light as he sits down beside me, hand reaching into his shirt pocket for a spliff.  “Any of the whiskey left?”

“A bit.” I hope that’s true.  I have been nursing myself on it all day.

“God, you’re a wreck.”  His tone has sharpened, but he passes the spliff to me and I inhale.  “Little soap and water, bit of shampoo, bit of me time and you could still turn heads.”

I take a deep hit, before passing it back.  “Soap and shampoo aren’t in the budget, hon.”  I NEVER say hon, but it’s better than saying his name and the whiskey and the weed are working their magic.

He laughs.  “Give us a kiss.”

He’s Irish, this man, although he’d lived in the US so long his accent has nearly vanished.  He came here as a boy. I met him when he was a bad man and now he’s worse.  I kiss him like I loved him though because if I don’t the twenty dollars might vanish.

Or I might.

He fucks me hard.  In my pussy.  In my ass.  In my mouth.  He doesn’t touch me with his manicured hands.  He doesn’t speak: not lies about love or even encouraging c’mon babies as he used to when we were new to each other.   It hurts.  The not talking hurts; the not touching hurts; and the sex hurts.  He is gone when I wake up, the twenty-dollar bill on the bedside table.  And, somehow, that hurts too.

Two boxes of rice, orange juice (because that will keep us from getting rockets!), two cans of tomatoes, a pound of onions, Cha-Ching White Bread, Food Lion Apple Jelly, Colgate Toothpaste (a splurge, but a must), and a Nestle’s Crunch Bar.  It seems like less than last week.  Every week seems like less.

I have less milk today too, because he insisted on suckling at my breasts, like I was a sow and he was the baby piglet.  Tommy strikes me in frustration and Taryn just wails as Taylor and Abby take a sip of orange juice each and share a piece of the cheap bread, toasted with the leftovers of last week’s jelly.

The sun is out and I sit on the porch watching Tommy and Taryn who sit on the ground watching an earth worm.  I wonder if they would like it for a snack.   They don’t play anymore: they are listless and hollow-eyed despite my milk.  My hair is so brittle, I think it might all fall out.  It won’t matter, it will be better, more proof that no one else will ever want me like he does.

A car pulls up: poorly painted hot pink with a muffler so loud we all cover our ears. A woman get out, tentative smile on her face: her teeth are bad.  “I’m Gina,” she says.  “Abbygayle’s mother.”  That is unnecessary because the two look so alike I knew it at jump.

Gina, Abby’s mother, looks better than I would have expected.  She is not scratching her arms or face.  She looks better nourished than I do: her hair is lank, but looks clean.  She looks over at Tommy and Taryn.  “Yours?”

I nod.

“And Declan’s?”

Hearing his name makes me jump as if I’d been prodded with something electric.  “Yes.   His.”

Gina looks sympathetic.  “Is Abby here?”

“School.”

“Of course!”  She lightly slaps her face.  “Silly me.”

Taryn has crawled into my lap and I cuddle her as a mother should.  “Do you want some water?  There’s really nothing else.”

“Christ,” Gina says, but I know she believes me.  We look into one another’s eyes and we know.  “I’m all right,” she says.  “It took me a long time to find you.  Couple years.”

I nod.  “You’re taking her?  Abby?”  I keep my face closed; my tone flat.

She nods.  “It’ll be okay.  I’m clean now, fourteen months, and my mom…she would have taken care of Abbygayle but Declan took her…. thank you, thank you, Jane.”

I nod again.  “She’s a good girl.  It wasn’t a problem.”

“I’ll wait in the car,” Gina says, after we’ve both silent for a long while.  “Does she have a suitcase or….no…. I’ll just…just…”

“Okay,” I say, wishing that he had left me another bottle of whiskey or some weed.  I don’t say goodbye.  Taylor comes into the living-room where Tommy is drawing on the wall and Taryn is whimpering in her semi-fugue state.

“Abby left with that lady,” Taylor tells me.  “Is she coming back?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.”  Taylor starts crying, but I don’t move to comfort her.  I can’t move.

She reaches out a grubby hand, holding a grubby bill.  “The lady said to give you this.”

It’s another twenty.  I think: a pound of butter, a bar of Ivory Soap, a pound of hamburger, a pack of my favorite Little Debbie Brownies, Cha-Ching Peanut Butter, a gallon of sweet tea, a box of penne pasta and a single perfect Red Delicious Apple.  I think what a difference that money would make with only four mouths to feed.  Four mouths instead of five.

I fold and unfold the bill, then stuff it into the pocket of my housedress.  Twenty dollars isn’t enough.

Chuck Sweetman, JANUARY 2025, POETRY

Dramatic Monologue: On Late Blooming

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Dramatic Monologue: On Late Blooming

Chuck Sweetman

It’s a coming into one’s own, isn’t it? Blooming. . . 

You hear it said casually: when it came to math—

bless his heart—he was a real late bloomer. 

We’ll all get there, later if not sooner. But there’s 

another, more storied kind of late blooming:

a gradually-sudden metamorphosis! An elegant 

solution to the long-worked problem of how to be 

uniquely someone. This version’s not inevitable.

It’s not about short cuts or rookie-of-the-year 

awards either. I love how morning rituals and acts 

of devotion give shape to a passionate person. 

The vestments! The talismans! The quiet pageantry 

of sustaining a commitment in postmodern times. 

And look, I’m not the first to honor that spirit 

by reaching to myth, but who are late bloomers 

if not questers? Embracers of great tasks, riders

of storms, improvisors with misfortune. Believers

(at least suspenders of disbelief) in the spoils 

of victory, granted by a mostly-ordered cosmos 

in its own good time. . . In its own good time.

But what can you say? It doesn’t always work out. 

“Death by balloons.” That’s how one of my subjects 

described her nervous breakdown. After years 

busking in Boulder, Colorado, blowing balloons,

twisting entire packs of red dogs and green dragons

while scrapping to get by. “It felt like suffocating,” 

she said. “It was death by balloons.” Dream’s end.

Curse the gods—if only the household icons

of priority and necessity. Spite the begrudging gods 

altogether, rejecting the games they command 

for their own pleasure. Call out bias against people 

not created in their image. The disillusioned 

have many honest, even righteous, reasons to refuse. 

But! But for the undaunted, obsessed, misguided, mule-

headed, misunderstood, masochistic, romantic few—

what call to action remains possible on the day

when the sun will shine down. And there you are,

mid-quester stance in a courage-thirsty arena.

Sounds a lot like the famed American success story, 

doesn’t it? Albeit on acid or something. Trippier, 

in every sense. Late bloomers have journeyed. 

Spent time on remote islands. Finding love, building 

ships, eating lotus, seeing visions . . . visions of life 

and death. They’ve listened (particularly Americans 

have listened) to the language of fulfillment, beheld

its codewords as sparks flaring up from stoked 

campfires, flashing across polished helmet 

and sharpened sword, dazzling out into the night sky.

Creative Non-fiction, JANUARY 2025, Michael Amatulli

More Wasted Time

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More Wasted Time

by

Michael Amatulli

I had only been back in Toronto a few weeks when I overdosed and came to in the Intensive Care Unit at Keelesdale Hospital. All my money and dope were stolen by the people I was with before I went under, and who’d dumped me from their car just a few blocks from the hospital. I was twenty and wired to heroin and cocaine, and had been for three years, using every day to feed my three-hundred-dollar-a-day habit. To keep from getting dope-sick, I robbed convenience stores and the occasional bank teller. Until a few weeks ago, that is, when I was arrested and convicted on two counts of robbery. My lawyer managed to swing a plea bargain for twenty-two months, and avoided me going into the penitentiary system.

I had previously spent six months in the Don Jail and three in the East Detention for drug possession beefs. This was my first time in a provincial correctional facility, and I did not expect it to be the maximum security Milbrook. I was locked-up every day for twenty-hours, while the remaining four were split between the yard and the range. I was  apprehensive about doing time with hardened, violent cons, who were in The Brook because none of the lower security joints would house them – they were considered too high risk.  But I quickly adapted, befriending the more notorious offenders from my range, and eventually those from other ranges too, some of whom I knew from the street and others from my time in the Don. It was a matter of reputation to be seen with the higher profile boys, and was the difference between doing easy time, or fighting for every ounce of respect. Whether I won or lost, it hardly mattered; the important thing was not to back down and show fear, which to these guys was an invitation to mess with you.

I spent most of my cell time reading, completing correspondence courses, and writing letters. I hadn’t heard from my younger brother Pino since his first letter, right after he was charged with tossing his ex’s boyfriend over the balcony and nearly killing him. I learned from my mother that Pino was serving time in Guelph and doing well. ‘I can sleep at night knowing you’re both safe,’ she’d written. It’s a hard thing to accept when a mother is more at peace with her children in jail than on the street, though for me the street meant running wild and inching closer to a death by heroin overdose. Or worse, barely surviving the kind of life that made me wish I were dead.

 My family resided in Italy, and there wasn’t much our mother could do to help us but worry. The time came, however, when she could no longer stand to be away from us. My father, on the other hand, was against uprooting his family yet again, and would not neglect Angelo and Maria, his two younger children, to help the two older ones, who he believed were old enough to take care of themselves, anyway. Our mother argued that if they did not help Pino and me, we would probably die, an argument our father couldn’t counter, given both of us had already overdosed once – she did not wish to wait around for it to happen again.

 Finally convinced, our father sold the shop and apartment. My family arrived in Toronto at the end of July of 1985. It was the first time my father compromised for the benefit of his family, though it wouldn’t be the last.

The days passed quickly in Milbrook, considering I rarely left my cell. It could have been the first day of the month, or the twenty-seventh; it didn’t matter, as each day looked the same, however you turned and shaped it. My cell was ten by ten feet and had a small steel desk and a little window from which at noon exactly, a splash of sun fell on the word ‘fuck’, from fuck the world that some inmate had scatched on it. Instead of meal time, it was fuck time. Of course, a clock wasn’t needed to know what was happening at any given time, in or out of my cell, as after a while, the body became finely tuned and took measurement of the jail, and sensed things, warning when to stay in, or when to come out, and listened to the whispers that passed from cell to cell that told of searches, or when someone was about to get shanked. If you listened closely enough, you could hear the voices moving with the air. 

About six months into my sentence I was scheduled to work in the license plate factory. Every day for seven hours I stamped out license plates on an old, industrial press, though I would rather have preferred to stay in my cell to read Dickens, or London, or this guy Bukowski I’d come across in the library, who seemed to have been through the grind himself; or work on the creative writing course I’d recently begun. But a favourable report from the work boss was necessary for the Parole Board to consider an early-release; it showed I could hold down a job and maintain some level of responsibility, which, truth be told, I sorely lacked. I’d never had a job before and my only source of income was crime and street hustle. There was much I needed to learn, if I stood a chance of remaining drug-free, and living past twenty-five, the age many of my friends didn’t reach; guys I’d used and hustled with; went to grade school and played street hockey with; whose mothers still wore black and cried themselves to sleep every night.

I’d managed to stay clean from drugs and alcohol throughout my incarceration, even if heroin and coke could be easily bought with smokes and canteen items. Six months of incarceration had tamed my heroin cravings considerably. I attended the occasional AA meeting also, and went to chapel service every Sunday morning for worship. There was no shame in it, especially not in the Brook, where evil and violence were the dominant themes, and needed to be balanced with Good, or you could lose yourself to the dark side. Besides, where recovery from dope was concerned, a spiritual program was as essential as gravity, the thing that kept me grounded. I felt my energy shifting daily, like the sun, or moon that orients itself around the earth and commands the tides, and so too had God’s light oriented my soul a few degrees to the good; and good begot good. My mind and heart had softened once more, and I prayed and read the bible every day. And good things seemed to happen now, without my asking for it, and I was more grateful for even the little things.

I was called out of work for a visit. It was my first. I was both shocked and relieved to see my parents waiting for me on the other side of the plexiglass partition; shocked that they were there at all, given I believed they were still in Italy; and relieved that my mother was smiling when I entered the nondescript room. My father sat at the stool directly before me, silent in the way only he could be, with a look on his face that suggested he was angry. I was about to say something mundane like, ‘Ciao papa‘,’ when he said, 

“Ma, isn’t that George Chuvalo over there?” 

I looked over to the stool at the far end of the room and sure enough, there was the three-time Canadian Heavyweight Champ, while on my side of the partition was his son Jesse. The elder Chuvalo was engrossed in some narrative, while the younger listened intently, and then they both laughed, and I wondered how it felt to have that kind of relationship with your father, one where he actually spoke to you, and gave you advice about things, and laughed at your jokes, and said he loved you now and again. I wondered what it was to have a father and a dad.

“E’ Lui, si,” I said, suddenly feeling sadder than when the visit had begun. 

George was, of course, hard to miss, being the face of Canadian boxing. His son, on the other hand, had more cause for anonymity. Offenders pestered him about his famous dad, and talked shit behind his back about his family’s struggles with heroin, crap they’d heard in the news, or had contributed themselves through prison yard gossip, passed along like currency from offender to offender. It was difficult enough getting by in this place, without the extra negative attention.

 “When did you get here, papa? In Toronto, I mean?”

My father just looked at me without answering. It was his way of controlling us and making you believe you’d done something wrong; of keeping his family on edge and making everything about himself. My father blamed me, you see, for all our family’s struggles, making communication with him almost impossible. And when we did speak, it was strained and forced, awkward even; I had to think hard about the right thing to say. Of course, I understood his animosity toward me; any father would be disappointed whose son had made the kind of poor life choices I had; and besides, what father would be happy with two of his children behind bars. It was much easier to just talk about other people than it was to speak about things that really mattered, the obvious, difficult conversations that might have suggested he was partly to blame for my family’s problems. 

“Mamma, why didn’t you mention in your last letter that you were coming here?” 

“Vollevamo farti una sorpresa,” my mother said smiling. “A surprise. You look good, Michele. It shows on your face.” 

Though she smiled, I saw tears roll from her eyes, eyes that watched me closely, seeking the place where only a mother knows to look, to confirm what I’d claimed in all my letters to her: That I was clean and sober, and had found spirituality once again. It was Faith that gave my mother strength to carry on, and the will to support me and Pino. Knowing I was on a spiritual path validated her efforts. She believed it was her responsibility to teach us about God, protect us from the Devil’s snares, and this from the time Pino and I were alter boys at St. Nick’s; before even, when she tucked us in at night and taught us prayers. I hadn’t yet learned to ride a bike, but I could say the Our Father, Hail Mary, and the entire Rosary, in English and Italian. She was good, my mother was, and knew that in our hearts, so were her sons.

My father continued alternating his attention between me and George Chuvalo, seemingly reassured by the boxer’s presence in the same jail. And not for the man’s social status. It’s true that my father was a proud and private man, and would never tell another person that his boys were criminals and junkies; he was embarassed even to think about it; but here he was now, sitting next to a man, a father, a Champion no less, who’d endured the same emotional blows as him, suffered the same despair and domestic upheaval, and whose son was also a drug addict – my father was reassured by this, and for the moment, didn’t feel quite so alone and helpless.

I instinctively wanted to say how sorry I was for having disrupted their lives again. I’d carried the guilt of my family’s misfortunes since my first fix of heroin at the age of seventeen. Seeing my parents now, I was helpless to deny the depth of my humiliation, and my eyes welled with memories of years wasted on the streets. I understood in that moment the profoundness of their sacrifices; the lengths to which they went in order to keep me from sinking deeper, and deeper still, into my addictions. I wanted desperately to ask their forgiveness; but the words seemed unauthentic in this room, and undeserving. I looked at my parents from behind the glass and saw their innocence, the values they’d attempted to teach me, their goodness. And then I looked to myself and knew that I belonged here, in this shit-hole they called the Brook, a supermax jail likened to Alcatraz.  But my parents did not belong, not even as visitors. They were the victims of my recklessness and deserved more than to see their eldest son incarcerated, wearing jailhouse blues and a number on his chest, when their hope for me was to simply be a good man, find a decent job and raise a family, everything I wanted for myself, in fact, but struggled to acquire.

My visit ended and I was escorted to my cell by a Correctional Officer. The mechanical door slammed behind me and I lay on my bunk and picked up John Fante’s Ask The Dust and I read, and read, but the words were merely distant whispers, and melted with thoughts about my life outside these walls, about making my parents proud and getting a job and birthday parties; of hopeful things, the kind of stuff that made one vulnerable in a place like this, where distractions got you killed.

The jail noises intruded into my consciousness, white noise like the mechanical whir of the fan, and the opening and closing of cell doors, and the C.O.’s falling footsteps during count, looking into cells for signs of weapons and narcotics and suicide. The hour I’d spent with my parents earlier in the day was another world entirely, another mental time zone, and was now only a distant memory. I felt myself adjusting to the range activities and sounds, like when I was on the street and got ready to rob a bank, my awareness heightened, vigilant, my conscience turned off. I felt my prison attitude returning to my shoulders and chest, now hardened from months of pushing free weights in the yard; felt it on my skin, like armour, or psychosis. I was two people. I was my mother, with her kindness and generous spirit, her soft innocence and light, and hope for a better future. And I was my father, with his ego and defensiveness, his cold, hard demeanour, and dark half in times of insecurity and threat. I was both victim and assailant.

The 11:00 pm count began. We were locked into our cells until 6:00 pm of tomorrow. I looked out the small window, into the obscure night, and allowed my thoughts to wander into a kind of meditation and I prayed the Rosary and offered up my good intentions. I read some Bukowski and knew that he was writing about himself, as the despair that oozed from his words was my despair when I was homeless, or dope sick, or broke and dope sick. I read a blurb of his that said it was important not to try at things, that you wait and if nothing happens, you wait some more. Yet, all I’d done in my life was wait; for inspiration, love, financial security, vocation, freedom; and nothing came but more wasted time that stretched into days and months and years. I was tired of waiting for things to happen, of people and circumstances to control my life. It was time I took back that control. I picked up my pen and wrote a title for a story I’d begun to write for the Creative Writing course: More Wasted Time, by Michael Amatulli. I finished the story late in the night, and in the silence and stillness of the range, before I went to bed, wrote the final words to close the story:

The End

photo: William James Topley, Carleton County Jail, 1895

public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Carol Casey, JANUARY 2025, POETRY

Do Angels Really Shop at Costco?

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Do Angels Really Shop at Costco? 

Carol Casey

I met her in the OnRoute washroom, 

just off Highway 401, 

that summer when the world 

was full of shrouds. 

We stood, side by side,

at the ceramic column 

of diminishing sinks, 

where the slate-grey corridor of doors 

repeated in the mirrors.

She looked at my slacks-

a turquoise paisley pattern-

smiled at me and said 

“I see you’re wearing 

your happy pants- and I’m 

wearing my happy shoes.

I got them at Costco.” 

I looked down, pink/purple floral,

then into her smile, 

and the depths of her eyes. 

“Yes, happy,” I said, inarticulate.

“Happy,” she said; “Happy,” I said.

We tossed the word back and forth, 

a golden ball—part bird, part sylph, 

part dance till the ice behind 

my eyes melted; till the woman 

using the hand-dryer started 

to smile and bob. “Thank-you,” 

I said, as we wafted 

out of the washroom. 

I turned toward the exit. 

She disappeared into the lineup

at the Starbucks booth. 

Image by EinPole (2022) from Wikimedia

E. Kraft, JANUARY 2025, POETRY

Floridian Dream

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Floridian Dream

E. Kraft

cutting through the reflective canvas

the boat hums along the swamp’s edge,

each ripple a transient brushstroke
beneath the moss-draped trees,
where branches tap with grandmotherly fingers

the light filters in patches,
a muted backdrop of greens and browns,
where shadows pool like spilled ink,

perfumed by damp earth with the faintest hint of floral

water lilies drift lazily,

their delicate blooms in smudges of color
floating like fragments of a dream

while dragonflies dart in silver trails,

the cypress knees rise from the depths,
though gnarled and ancient
these silent sentinels guard the primordial realm
as their shapes soften in the encroaching mist

the boat slips through reeds and rushes,
each swaying stalk, a whispering brush
against the hull’s weathered side,
a rhythmic cadence in this verdant sanctuary

birds echo an intermittent soundtrack,
flitting from treetop to water’s edge,
a chorus that punctuates the stillness,
brief notes of bright clarity in the ancient, unhurried palette

each moment a detail in an unspoken narrative,
painted in hues of patience and mystery,
as I drift through this living tableau,
the swamp’s quiet artistry

Image: Harry Rajchgot (2005)

JANUARY 2025, Louise Carson, POETRY

Telling the decades

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Telling the decades

Louise Carson

 

I visited the beautiful house last night,

last dream before I woke.

It was better kept than before but still

I was unsure – which entrance?

‘It reconfigures every time,’

I said to the friend beside me.

Inside we were a half-dozen women.

The oldest made tea in a red tea pot.

One, dressed as a man, soon left, muttering,

her one-woman show called ‘Groom.’

I sat chatting, my back to the lake, woke up happy.

The house wasn’t mine anymore.

Photo by Harry Rajchgot (2006)

JANUARY 2025, Nadine Ellsworth-Moran, POETRY

In the belly of an old church

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Õ

In the belly of an old church

Nadine Ellsworth-Moran


No one threw me overboard—

but like Jonah I have to screw up my courage,

climb the rail myself, face what lies beneath,

beyond my knowing, where the ocean

door is heavy, emanating incense, musky

smoke and spice from an ancient current

where the dag gadol with its stone mouth

waits to gulp me down.

Inside the air smells blue, 

the scent of stained glass
communing with anemic light

filtering through baleen plates

and rises from candles 

that bow before their saints.

Even here remain the hints

of sweet almond paste, festal days, 

song beneath words, communion bread—

these hookbaits of salvation cast

into my offenses and laments,

lures caught in the arched timber spine.

The surface, so far and sliverthin breathed

through coldsteeped lungs, I pull old wool

the widows wear tight around my shoulders, 

inhale a heady lanolin, peat moss lost
between slick stone ribs, centuries

of damp, and lick the brine

from my lips before

I try to pray.

Image by Harry Rajchgot (2024)

JANUARY 2025, POETRY, Ron Riekki

I went to the moon once

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I went to the moon once

Ron Riekki

I was bored.  A kid.  There was a spaceship

in our neighborhood, abandoned.  I got in.

I don’t want to brag.  It was just the moon.

It wasn’t Mars or Neptune or Poseidon or

the sun.  I’m glad I didn’t go to the sun.

That would suck.  It was the moon and I

started up the spaceship and just drove.

I had no idea what I was doing.  It takes

three days to get to the moon.  I didn’t

just look that up.  It’s from experience.

I felt nervous falling asleep driving that

thing, but it’s too hard to stay up three

days in a row, so I just trusted the space-

ship and fate and coordinates and all that.

When I got to the moon, it wasn’t really

all that big of a deal.  I kept looking at

the Earth.  It felt like I was on Earth and

looking at the moon, but in reverse.  It

made me miss home.  Later, I’d join

the military.  No, not the Space Force.

The Air Force.  I was more interested

in air than space.  There’s the Water

Force too.  Except it’s called the Navy.

I wasn’t in that one.  I wanted air.  I

knew I’d never run out of oxygen if

I was in the Air Force, but I remember

this moment during the war where I

was on the runway, the B-52s all gone

destroying things and I looked back in

the direction of home and I missed it,

the horizon, somewhere on the horizon

was home and the harvest moon was

there too, reminding me that I love

adventure and I was alone and it was

night and I thought what it must be

when God looks down on us, if it

feels like when I look at the moon

or look in the direction of home and

miss my past & future at the same time.

Image by Harry Rajchgot (2022)

FICTION, JANUARY 2025, Mark Connelly

Flashes

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Flashes 

Mark Connelly

Walking into Starbucks, Katherine spotted Ted sitting alone by the window.  He seemed preoccupied and did not look up even when she pulled a chair closer to join him.  Looking out the window, he tapped his cardboard cup lost in thought.

“Did the meeting go well?” she ventured.

Ted turned and smiled.  “Oh, yes, all good.  She approved the budget. I’m just a little…” he shook his head with a bewildered sigh.

“What is it?  You feel OK?”

“I’m fine.  Well, not really.  Something strange happened today.  Eerie.”  He paused, twisting his cup left and right on the table, before looking up.  “I saw myself today.”

“Saw yourself?”

“Yes. I saw myself.  Watched myself.  But not me now.  Me fifty years ago.”

She leaned forward.  Ted was never given to whimsy or fanciful stories.  The flat soft tone of his voice was troubling. “What do you mean?”

“I met with Bess Andre at the Fairmont at eleven.  We went over the budget. She liked what she saw and said she just needs this month’s bank statements to approve it.  I told her she’d get them end of the month.  Meeting went great.  No questions.  So we chitchit-chatted a bit, took a few pictures, then I headed out.”

“OK,” Katherine said softly.

“Well, I parked down on Pine.  So, I crossed California to walk down Mason and froze.  I just froze.  In the driveway plaza of the Mark Hopkins, there was a 1973 white VW bug.  What caught my eye was the rear fender.  It had a crescent-shaped crease, a dent.  I had a white ’73 VW with the same dent in the same fender. That was my car! But new.  I drove that thing into the ground back in the Eighties.  I sold it for junk for a hundred bucks to a friend who wanted parts.  But this morning it was back, brand new but with that dent I got just after I bought it.  The trunk lid was up, and I could this guy arranging things.  And he was left-handed like me.  He held the lid up with his right hand the way I used to.  And he wore his watch on this right arm like I do.  And it was one of those thick leather cuff watchbands from the Seventies.  I had a band like that and the same watch.  Gold with a black face.  And he was wearing what I wore then – Dingo boots, flared jeans, black turtleneck, tweed jacket with leather elbow patches.  And he had mirror aviator sunglasses.  My girlfriend Toni got me a pair for my birthday that year.  I tell you it was me.  Then it hit me.  The Mark Hopkins.  April 1974.  My sister and her roommate flew out from Wisconsin on spring break and stayed there.  My friend Ric and I took the girls around all week.  Fisherman’s Wharf. Chinatown.  The Cannery.  End of the week I drove them to the airport.  So I watching myself packing up their stuff in my car at the Mark Hopkins getting ready to take them to SFO in April 1974.  I swear it was me.  Same car.  Same clothes.  Same watch. Same sunglasses.  It was me!”

She nodded, sensing his unease.

“I could see the license plate, but who remembers their number from fifty years ago, right?  But I know I have old snapshots. I’m sure they’d show the plate.  So I picked up my phone to take a picture.  Just then, the kid turned to face me.  And just as I snapped the picture, he was gone.  Nothing.  He was gone.  The car was gone.  Just like that.  Here, look.”

Ted held up his phone, scrolling through pictures.  “Look, this is us last night.  This is Bess and me this morning.  And this last one is the picture I took in the driveway of the Mark Hopkins.  No VW, no driver.  Just that delivery van in the background.  But I swear that guy and that car were there.  And it was me.  I saw me in April 1974.  I Googled it.  Easter was the 14th that year.  The girls flew home that Friday.  Would have been April 19, 1974.  Just before noon.”

“Experience anything like that before?”

“Never.  You know me.  I taught physics.  Only believe what I can see and touch.  But this today.  The car and the guy.  If I saw one separately, OK, a weird coincidence.  But the guy dressed like me and my car in front of the Mark Hopkins?   That was me, April 1974 getting ready to drive the girls to the airport.  Just too many coincidences at once.  Look, if I saw that car last week in a parking lot in Houston I would freak.  Looks like my old car with the exact same dent.  That would be something in itself.  But that car in the same spot fifty years later with someone dressed like me, same build, left-handed?  Same sunglasses, turtleneck?”

“What are you going to do?  You seem so rattled.  I’ve never seen you like this before.  Are you sure you’re OK?”

He waved his hand.  “I already booked an appointment with my internist.  Maybe it’s the new meds.  I’ve had some intense dreams lately.  Vivid lucid dreams.  Maybe that’s it.  It must be my new meds.”  He nodded as if repetition would reassure him. “That must be it.  I hope.”

“What’s wrong?  It was just a flash maybe.  Like a memory.  You walked by the Mark and remembered your sister.  Just a vivid memory.  You have a good memory.”

“I dunno. . .” he muttered softly.  “I keep thinking of my grandfather.  I  flew home for Christmas one year and visited him at the VA.  He was seeing things, too.  Dementia.  When I walked in the room he kept calling me Johnny.  ‘Johnny, where you been?  Johnny, you OK?  You all better?’  My grandmother told me he thought I was his army buddy Johnny who died of flu in 1918.  She tried to explain to him that I was Teddy, his grandson.  ‘You remember, Moira’s boy?’”  Ted’s eyes watered, and his voice quavered.  “Katie, I will never forget him looking around confused and panicked, asking, ‘Moira?  Who’s Moira?’  He didn’t remember my mom. His own daughter.  He died a few months later.  I never forgot that.”

She reached across the table and took his arm.  Suddenly, and for the first time since she met him, he began to look his age.  “It was nothing, just a flash.  An episode.  We all have moments like that.  It was nothing.”

“I dunno,” he said.  “You hit seventy-four and something like this happens, and you wonder if it’s a sign of what’s coming.  The start of something.”

“Look, you put that budget together, and two CPA’s and a lawyer went over it and never asked us a question.  I’m sure you’re OK. I never saw any changes, and how long have we known each other?  Just see your doctor about the meds.”

He forced a smile, then shook his head. “But I swear that Volkswagen and that guy were there.  They were real.”  He pointed out the window.  “See that Volvo and the crossing guard?  As real as those two.”

They both watched as the light changed, and the crossing guard waved at the Volvo driver who nodded and pulled forward to make a slow right onto Folsom.

“Hey, Teddy, get the girls off on time?”

“Yeah, no problem.  Ran late as usual, but their flight was delayed twenty minutes.  Saw them off.  Jan said she had a great time.  You made a big impression on her.”

“Well, too bad she’s in Wisconsin.”

Ted looked up from his beer.

“You know, Ric, something really weird happened today. Like Twilight Zone weird.”

“What?”

“OK, I’m at the Mark Hopkins packing up the car.  You remember all the stuff they bought in Chinatown?  I wondered if they could get it all on a plane.  So, anyway, I’m packing up the trunk in front of the hotel, trying to make sure I don’t break anything.  And I see this old guy out of the corner of my eye run across the street, and he stops dead and stares at my car.  Like he’s never seen a Volkswagen before.  Just standing there staring.  For a second I thought it was my grandfather.  Built like me, same hair, but older, you know.  He had a moustache, though, and my grandfather doesn’t.

“I thought he must be looking at something behind me, so just kept packing things.

Then, and this is the strange part, he picked up something.  Looked like a piece of black glass, size of a postcard.  He holds it up, and from the corner of my eye; I see it light up like a miniature TV.  So, I turn to get a good look, and he vanishes.  In a flash he’s gone.  He didn’t run away, he vanished.  I mean if he turned to run, I would see his back, right?  One split second he’s there, then he’s gone.  How do you explain that?”

“You’re the physics major, Einstein, not me.”

“Hell, I just stayed in school long enough to dodge the draft.”

Ric pointed to the sunglasses on the bar.  “Maybe it was those.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh the guy was real, but he was probably a mirage, a reflection.  The guy was there all right.  But he was behind you, standing in the doorway maybe.  Someone opens the glass door, and his image is reflected and you catch it in your glasses.  You said you only saw him in the corner of your eye, right?  So you move your head a few inches or maybe someone closes the door, and the image disappears.  He was a reflection, uh?” Ric suggested, cocking an eyebrow.

“This guy was no reflection.  He was 3D.  I could see his necktie.  And he had some kind of pin or button on his lapel.  There was substance there, texture. Flesh and blood real.  He was there.”

“Hey, weird things happen.”  Ric tapped his temple.  “These things aren’t cameras.  You see things and your brain processes them.  Or doesn’t.  I tell you about my wallet last week?  I swore I lost it.  I always keep it on my nightstand.  Last week, I’m getting ready for work and can’t find it.  OK, I left it in my jeans.  Not there.  I check my jacket. I look under the bed, on top of the dresser, the jackets in the closet.  I pull the nightstand from the wall to see if it slipped on the floor.  I check the sofa in the living room.  Then it hit me.  I must have left in the car when I went to the drive thru to cash a check.  I run to the car, look all over.  Not there.  I search the bedroom again.  Phone rings, so I run down to the kitchen.  It’s Jessica. I tell her I must have left my wallet at her place.  She tears her place apart, nothing.  I hang up, go upstairs, and there’s my wallet on the nighttable.  It was there all the time.  A black wallet on a white table.  How could I miss that?” 

Ric glanced down at Ted’s change on the bar, “Hey, Deal of the Day!  Trade you a buck for a dime”  He jerked his thumb toward the pay phone.  “I gotta call and see when my car’s ready.”  He tossed a bill on the bar and slid the dime into his palm.  “Be right back.”

Ted picked up his sunglasses, watching the reflection of the bottles, then put them on, turning left and right, trying to catch sight of the jukebox behind him.

“Can you believe it?” Ric muttered when he returned. “Twenty-eight-fifty for a new tire.  Believe that?  But, hey, you don’t like my mirage idea?  Got one better for you, Einstein.  It was the Dodge guy.”

“Dodge guy?”

“The guy who hit you.  You said you were walking toward your car and saw a guy in a black Dodge back into your bug, bang the fender, and drive off.  You chased after him, but he never stopped.  So today he spots you and the car, and he freaks.  Maybe he stands there wondering if he should do the right thing and apologize and give you his number?  Then he decides to runs off.  Something makes you turn, and you think you still see him, but he was already gone.  You did not see him, you just remembered him standing there. Just a memory flash.  Cops and lawyers will tell you eyewitness testimony is always shaky.  Think of magicians. They can fool a whole crowd with ‘now you see it, now you don’t.’”  He twisted his palm back and forth like an illusionist with a trick coin.

Ted shook his head, “I dunno, he was really there when I looked up.  At least for a second.  And then he was gone.  And something else.  I felt he knew me.  Like we were connected somehow.”

“Course he knew you.  His Dodge connected with your bug, remember?  Look, my car won’t be ready until three.  Let’s grab a round.”

Ted sighed, then slid the dollar across the bar and motioned for two more Buds.

The End

Image by Rundvald: Volkswagen 1300 “Beetle” 1960s from Wikimedia Commons

FICTION, Harvey Huddleston, JANUARY 2025

The Flak House

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The Flak House

Harvey Huddleston

Betty shows me her scar.  Dark purple it runs six inches down her belly.  She says it’s ugly and I say it’ll fade in time.

Drove through town on my way back.  Jap surrender is all over the news so people hold up two fingers for victory.  It’s when I get away from that crowd.  I hit the gas and can’t let off.  Car speeds up but still can’t let off so I hook my arm under my leg and sit up hard pulling my foot up with me.

Stopped on the side.  Scary as hell.  Take some breaths and try my leg.  It works so I pull away.  Slow this time and make it back here.

Martins are outside.  He won’t stop talking.  I tell them her tests are all normal and she’ll be home with the baby in a week.  That little dog stares like it wants an answer but I don’t have any.  All I have is the question.  Why did my foot stick like that again?

That time with Betty in the car.  She snaps at me to slow down.  My leg unsticks but she’s still mad so I say we have to burn off the factory oil.  She gives me a look and then we go on like everything’s normal.  And it was.  Until today.

I sat in here earlier.  Curtain stops high in its arc.  Falls back and starts all over again.  That crowd just before my leg froze.  Dancing.  Hugging.  Almost got out but didn’t.  Their faces.  Such happiness.

I should be the happiest guy in the world.  War’s over.  I have a son and wife.  That job back home waiting.  We can do it all now just like we planned so what’s wrong?

Haven’t looked at this notebook since Kimbolton.  At the bottom of my grip but I put it aside.  Need to be there with donuts by eight.  That powdered kind she likes.

In bed early but then comes a dream.  One I never had before.  Someone I don’t know.  Saying something I can’t hear.  I try hard to listen but this roar in my ears blocks it out and then there I am again.  Awake.  Soaked in sweat.

Notebook feels different in my hand now.  All soft and beat up.

Maybe if I read through I can put that year in the past.  Back where it belongs.  Or find an answer.  That answer I need.

And maybe that’s why my foot stuck today.  It’s telling me to get out now while I still have the chance.  If I can’t fix this before they come home that’s what it has to come to anyway.

May 10, 1944

At intake Doc Spencer wants to know if I ever froze up before.  Says if I come up with anything to write it down so here goes.

We’re on a weekend pass in Piccadilly.  Kal says one of the Red Cross girls is giving him the eye so we all laugh.  He says watch this and goes back for a refill but it’s about then I decide to head out on my own anyway.

You might think Piccadilly Circus is full of clowns and elephants but it’s just a big city intersection.  An old guy tells me Park is on the right so I go that way keeping right.

London has a smell.  Dirt and rubble but you can’t really say what that is.  Burnt brick.  Not fresh burnt old burnt.

Buds on the trees.  Without all the big guns you might think there’s no war at all.

Further in is a bandstand in a clearing.  No one there so I sit on a bench.  A couple comes through.  They keep going so I stay.  It’s quiet.

Then I wake up and don’t know where I am.  I try to get up but can’t.  I try again but still can’t so I just sit there and it comes to me.  There’s no war on that bench but as soon as I get up it starts all over again.

A woman and kid come at me.  She has a newspaper.  Makes like she’s folding it and pushes it to the sky.  I figure she wants me to make an airplane for that kid so I take it and start folding.

It looks pretty good but when the kid tosses it it crashes.  I’m all set to try again with less pages but that woman looks at me now like I’m one sorry ass plane builder.  Maybe the worst she’s ever seen.

She drags the kid away.  I think what the hell was that all about and take off to find the guys.

May 11, 1944

An RC girl says no GI issue in the dining room so look in my closet.  I do and find a shirt and some pants there I have to roll the cuffs up on to keep from tripping.

I set my tray on a table when that same RC girl brings me a coffee and sits down with her own cup.  She looks at the wraps on my hands so I say frostbite.  I guess that’s her cue because then she starts up about perspex waist ports on the new B-17s.  It’s kind of funny but she knows her stuff so I listen.

I was going to give Spencer what I wrote but then left it here.  I tell him instead about not being able to get up from that bench.  He says maybe I don’t want to.  Big difference but I let it go.  Spencer’s like that mad scientist in the Frankenstein movie so now I’m looking for Igor to walk in.

He asks if I like it here.  I almost say best damn flak house ever but don’t.  Then he asks if I have any questions so I ask when I can get back with my crew but he don’t answer that.  Next time he wants one time up there when I didn’t think I’d make it back.

He tells me to lose the wraps.  So much for frostbite.  Frostbite of the brain and they all know it.

I know now why I didn’t take what I wrote.  It was my file there on his desk.  Just one more thing to use against me.

So here’s the deal.  I’ll tell Spencer what he wants.  Maybe even write it down but what I put in this notebook is my business.  Then I’ll decide if he needs to hear it.

May 13, 1944

They say ignorance is bliss.  Which means the less you know the happier you are.  It follows then that learning something new costs some happiness.  But people learn new things all the time so that means your whole life you become less happy.

The inverse then has to mean forgetting things brings back some happiness.  So why remember anything?  Maybe I don’t want to.  Maybe I don’t have to.

Most people don’t go up in airplanes to drop bombs on people.

Spencer wants one time when I thought I wouldn’t make it back but that would be every time.  Add to that it’s all mashed up in my head now anyway.  What sticks out I guess is the first one.  When I first found out what I’d gotten myself into.

We thought it might be a milk run like they sometimes give a new crew but then they pull back the curtain.  Schweinfurt is deep inside Germany.  Our mission is to destroy their ball bearing factory.  Stopping production there can end the war.  That’s what they say.

Last time there in the fall our group lost a quarter of its planes.  But you can’t know anything until you do it yourself and this was my first mission so I was ignorant.  Not happy.  Just ignorant.

We take off at dawn and don’t cross the Channel until 1140.  The bomber stream goes as far as you can see in front and behind.

About a half hour over France some Mustangs show up in my waist port.  I point them out on the headset and we’re all glad they’re there.  Then they’re not.  We learn later some fighters lured them off leaving us to face their main force alone.

Some chatter on the headset.  Then Whitman on top turret yells they’re coming in a voice so high I don’t recognize it.  He opens up with his Double Fifty and the rest of us do too.

They come head on rolling over while firing.  Then they hit the group to our right and I see three forts go down.  One with its tail blown off and two trailing smoke.

Some chutes open below.  I watch as far as I can follow.

Closing on Schweinfurt their ground Eighty-Eights open up.  Flak pings off our hull over the engine and wind noise.  Black puffs appear out my waist port and inside the close ones I see that red glow.  What they call the red monster and now I know why.

Our bombs are gone but it’s still three hours back to England.  They had time to land and re-arm so the only question is when.  Just before the Channel they come from all sides.

I stay on one all the way in.  He’s gone when I realize my body is up in the air behind me.  I land on the casings and see Kal yelling at me through a cordite haze.

Coastal batteries throw up one last barrage.  I see one fort in the distance take a direct hit.  There it is one second and gone the next.  Then the Channel appears beneath us.

Kal says when I locked on that FW I kicked him in the head.  He thinks he’s hit but then sees my legs up in the air so I tell him I’ll keep my feet on the deck next time.

Back on my bunk not sure how long.  That’s when it comes to me if that’s number one how will I ever make it through twenty nine more.

May 14, 1944

Tough session with Spencer today.  Only thing I say about Schweinfurt is watching those chutes go down.  He wants to know about that so I say it was like them passing into another world.

That perks him up and I want to bash his head in with that paperweight on his desk.  He says I’m here to help.  I say you’re here to get me back into a B-17 so just sign my paperwork and I’ll be on my way.

He asks about that other world.  I say it’s a world of hate.  Farmers down there waiting to pitchfork us while the guys under those chutes watch us go on without them.  All they got anymore is that world of hate waiting below.

Next time he wants to hear about my freeze-up.  Says I should make use of the facilities here.  That I should enjoy myself.  So how do I do that with my crew back there carrying all the load.  I say I will.

May 16, 1944

I take a shortcut to the driving range and get lost.  That’s when it comes to me to just tell Spencer that’s it.  I’m done flying.  So I’m all set to do just that when I ask myself who I’ll be then.  A quitter for one thing and that ain’t so easy to fix once it’s done.

I don’t tell him I got lost.  Who gets lost in a clump of trees?  Then something pops into my head.  I tell him about this buddy when I’m a kid and how at the start of the school year he’s not there.  Then I find out he’s held back and I wonder if he’s stupid.

Spencer asks what it means and I ask him why it has to mean anything.  He says my buddy got left behind.  Same as those guys under the chutes.

I see where he’s going so I say it’s different with me because I plan to catch up.  I’ll just volunteer for extra missions when I get back.  When you give me the okay.  I say that last part like a question but then he switches to my freeze-up.

Montdidier.  No fighters all the way there and back so I’m looking out at some clouds thinking this one’s in the bag.  We’ll be back in an hour with more than a quarter of our missions done.  That’s when they hit us.

He asks what I think then.  I say it ain’t fair and keep going.

I’m on one but then here comes another.  Cannons flash round in my sight so I give him a burst.  He keeps coming so I give him another and then another.  And then.  My fingers won’t let off.  I stay on it until it gets so hot it jams.  Back on the ground my fingers are still stuck so the medics come on to pry me off.  I say it’s frostbite.  They take me to the infirmary.  And that’s it.

He makes a note and checks my file.  Then he asks about what they call me back home.

I have to think on that one and tell him it’s like those clouds before the fighters jumped us.  One time instead of my chores I get caught laid back on this hill looking up at the clouds.  All those shapes.  So my little sister Tippy gets a kick out of it and starts calling me Leisure.  Then they all start up.

He asks if it bothers me and I tell him no.  I do my job.  Like my football team back in school.  We were good because we all did our jobs.  Same with my crew.  Ask any of them.  That freeze-up just snuck up on me but it won’t happen again.

He asks if I’ve written home.  I say not until I know what happens.  He says I should.  I say maybe and we leave it at that.

May 17, 1944

Been here a week now.  He wants to know about Betty.

I tell how she lives in St. Louis and don’t want to live in Memphis.  How she won’t listen when I explain about my job.  I tell him about our last day in Forest Park and how I wish it went better.

What I don’t tell him is I decide right then and there to write her as soon as I leave his office.  So I do and tell her we’ll find a way to make it work.

Funny.  Right after I mail that letter I want one back and then the next morning one shows up forwarded from Kimbolton.  Before even reading mine she answers me almost word for word everything in it.

Spencer says I should mix in more here so I say I’m going to toast marshmallows Friday night.  Colored signs everywhere.  Punch and cupcakes for all.

May 18, 1944

He wants me to go back through my missions.  Wish I wrote them here all along.

We skip a day after Schweinfurt.  Then go three straight.  Kassel.  No Oranienburg is first.  Aircraft factory.  We peel away from the main group as a diversion.  No losses.

Then Kassel.  It was destroyed in February but they rebuilt it underground.  We lose one fort while our sister group loses three.  Third day is to a V-1 rocket site at Sottevast.  Some Focke Wulfs and light flak.  Whole mission lasts only four hours.

Next day I sleep in but then keep popping up like I’m missing something.  That’s the day I meet Fred.  He’s already got fourteen missions and I can’t even imagine that many.

He asks what I think about killing innocent civilians down there.  I say it’s our job and he nods.  Then he wonders what it’s like getting hit with a five hundred pounder and I tell him there’s nothing to wonder about because there’s nothing left.  At that he just stares with that far off look.

Number five is to Landesberg outside Munich.  A new type Messerschmidt is built there.  Some groups from Italy are supposed to link up but all I see is what looks like the whole German Air Force.

Rail yards at Hamm-Bonn is six.  I’m looking at a runway crack thinking that concrete was poured way too fast.  It’s about then we’re all wondering what happened to the land invasion.  Even the brass knows we can’t win this war by ourselves.

Seven is to Berlin.  Seven hundred forts and nothing goes right.  High winds and clouds the whole way.  Over the target we lose five forts and count very few chutes.

Fifty men.  Same chow line.  Throwing around the same football.  Gone.  Just like that.  That’s when they give us the two-day pass to London.

I try to make an airplane for that kid.

On the train back people out the window do the normal things people do.  And we feel normal too after our thousands of miles traveling together.  Difference is we ain’t in a goddamn airplane.

We get back.  First the quiet.  Then all the gear gone from the middle bunks.  End crew ignores us until one pipes up.  Went down yesterday.  No chutes reported.

Fred’s crew.  I hope he’s a POW somewhere but there’s a better chance he’s not.  I think at least he won’t have to worry anymore about killing civilians.

That look on his face.  It’s like he knew but then how could he not?  You can’t keep rolling the dice and expect it to not come up snake eyes.  The law of averages.  It has to catch up.

Berlin’s the first time my hands freeze.  I’m plugged in so I figure it’s a bad connection.  I take my gloves over to the equipment chief and he hands them back saying they’re fine.  I think he’s telling the truth.

May 19, 1944

I try telling about Fred but then don’t have that much to say.  That’s when Spencer brings up me taking the Pentothal.  Nothing to it he says.  It relaxes you so you can talk.

And spout off any dumb thing in your head.  What he’s really saying is I have to take it if I want back with my crew while at the same time saying it’s my choice.  Funny how that works.  He says to sleep on it.

Then I go to the marshmallow toast.  GIs and RC girls.  A crowd at the fireplace cooking marshmallows.

It feels tight in there and then something jumps the rails.  This RC girl acts like I should say something.  I try to smile but that’s wrong so I go for the punch.  Then I think I might throw up so I head for the door and make it outside.

I lean against a bicycle rack when this other RC girl comes out and offers me a cigarette.  I see now she’s that same one from my first day.

I tell her I don’t smoke so she lights up and lets out a long contrail.

She checks her watch a few times and asks if I want to go for a ride.  Then she hops on a bike and tells me to grab one.  Next thing I’m following her down the driveway and I don’t think anything’s ever felt so good as riding that bicycle through the night.

Almost bright out except for the tree shadows.  We go a long way and then turn down a lane that ends at a fence.  She hops over and heads off into a field.  She stops to check her watch again so I strike a match and ask if she needs to be somewhere.  All she says back is give it a minute.

You feel the hum before hearing it.  Then that rumble that gets louder until the ground starts shaking.  A Lancaster comes over the tree line followed by dozens more.  It’s RAF since they only fly at night but she knows that.

I say Limey and she says blimey.

She’s from New York so I call her a Yankee.  She says that’s what her husband calls her only he shortens it to Yank.  I ask where he is now and she points up to that bomber stream.  So that’s it.  We’re here to see him off.

Her eyes stay on that stream so I shut up and watch too.  I also watch her face and it reminds me of something.  Something I lost track of.

Back at the house all she says is I got heart and goes in.

There’s still that answer I owe Spencer.  I can turn down the Pentothal.  Get a ground job maybe.  Or I can take it and try to get back in the war.  After being out in that field earlier turns out there’s not much choice after all.

May 20, 1944

Bug Juice.  Truth serum.  I say I don’t need that stuff to tell the truth and that sets him off but good.

He says it’s not to find out if I’m lying but to reveal what we don’t know.  Think of it as peeling back the flesh on an infection to flush it out.  He’s wound up pretty good now so I tell him I already said okay.  Let’s just do it.

I report in the morning to a small clinic behind the main house.

May 27, 1944

What’s fair?  Kids say that’s not fair to each other.  Some people say we lost the game but we played fair.  And then for others it don’t matter at all.

Been a whole week since writing here.  Sent another letter to Betty.  Told her I want to take a trip together when I get back.  And it don’t matter where.

I knew we were killing people by the thousands.  Guess I had to see for myself.

I want to go hunting again.  Not to kill anything.  Just to be there.  I want to see Betty again and see how we do together.  I want to live a little more like anyone else in the world and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But there’s no guarantee.  That’s the important part.  Some die and the rest go on.  There’s nothing fair about it.  The other side is you have to live with yourself and if you can’t do that then you don’t have anything anyway.

My plan to catch up is over.  Those guys must be halfway through by now.  They’ve gone on and I hope they keep going on just like I plan on doing when the time comes.

May 28, 1944

If your mask fills with puke you choke.  But you can’t pull it off.  No oxygen so you fight it back down.  You fight the FWs too.  But then something wants to take you away.  You want to go but you have to stay on that Fifty.  So you do it and then do it again.  And keep doing it.  Until you don’t.

Spencer reads from his notes.  He says some remember everything under the Pentothal while others like me almost nothing.

Yelling over the headset.  17s falling out of the sky.  The cold.  Spencer says it’s okay to cry and I tell him why it’s not.

Then he brings up Jimmy Stewart.  He flew the lead fort to Berlin that day.  They say with a movie star leading us we shouldn’t mind following.  I remember all this.

After the mission we find out they turned him back over France but then we see a newsreel of him getting the Croix de Guerre for leading us to Berlin.  It’s a crap lie and Stewart gets cussed out pretty good that day as just another newsreel hero.

But that’s not fair either and I tell Spencer why.  Stewart’s flown more combat missions than all those other newsreel heroes put together.  Maybe he did have engine trouble but that’s not the point anyway.  And then there it is staring me right in the face.  It’s not fair.  I yell it out and wait for an answer but nothing.

Fair is for another time.  Another place.  And who am I to judge what’s fair anyway?  Maybe those newsreel heroes know something I don’t.  Maybe they know not to get themselves in a situation where they freeze-up.  Maybe they’re doing the best they can with this filthy rotten mess and that’s all you can expect of anyone.

Only other thing I remember is getting up from that table soaked in sweat.

May 29, 1944

Got my okay today.  A new directive says B-17 crews will now be nine men instead of ten.  Half the waist-gunners will train on the radio and split time between it and the Fifty.  Spencer thinks I can be one of these new radio-waist gunners.

He says my problem is all the waiting.  Too much time to think so doubling up on the radio suits me better.  I’ll be on the Fifty when the fighters come but the rest of the time will be all dots and dashes.

It’s up to the brass at Kimbolton but with my experience you can bet they’ll find a place for me.

Only thing I can’t figure is how much to tell Betty.  In my letter today I only say I had some down time.  I don’t like lying to her but if I try to explain the censors will leave in some and block out the rest.  It’ll only confuse her more.

So that’s where I leave it.  With her and me it’s all about the future anyway.

Image by U.S. Air Force personnel during World War II, date unknown

Bombing of Dresden (from Wikimedia Commons)