By Julia Rajagopalan    

The corner of the hedge, nearest our driveway, is brown and dying. I know why. Twice a day, my neighbor takes her golden retriever for a walk, and every time he passes, he pees on it. I watch him do it from my office window on the second floor of my Tudor.

I love working from home. It cuts down on the commute and the office drama, but I do not like my neighbors.

I go online and purchase a little green sign that says, ‘Don’t Pee Here.’ There is a cartoon dog with a big red cross through it, like the no-smoking signs you used to see before the entire world banned cigarettes.

The next day, her dog pees directly on the sign.

I should talk to her, ask her nicely to stop, but the last time I spoke to her about the yard, she lectured me about native plants. She’ll claim that the hedge is dying because it isn’t native, and I need to rip the whole thing out and put in some weeds to save the butterflies or something.

I am not a petty person, but I’ve started taking my own walks. Every day I leave through the garage, and every day I plunge my hand into the container of rock salt, kept for the icy winter sidewalk. A paper cut on my thumb stings as it grinds against the salt.

Parked in her driveway is a forest green hatchback. On the back, clings a paw print bumper sticker. I wonder if I can find a bumper sticker for boxwoods. When I walk past her yard, I toss salt across the grass. I keep my hand at my side as I do, out of view of her doorbell camera. It reminds me of Bible study when they talked about salting the earth to keep anything from growing. I feel vindicated when I think of this. Instead of an eye for an eye, it’s a lawn for a lawn, and that is vindication and not vindictive. It’s funny how similar those two words are.

In less than a week, her lawn starts to brown. In two weeks, there are patches the size of my head. I start taking two walks a day and I wave to her as she watches me through her front window. I vary the times of my walk, but she’s always there watching. I don’t see them walk in front of my house anymore, but then again, I don’t sit in front of the window all day.

After a few months, she replaces the grass with fresh sod, though I don’t think the grass is native to this region. Still, it might be safe to replace my boxwood. I’ll do it as long as it’s not going to become a puppy urinal. I go to the nursery and locate the correct plant. Back at home, I hack at the dead shrub, cutting the roots with clippers when I can’t dig it out.

The new plant isn’t the right shape, but given the chance, it will be. As I dig through spreadsheets the next afternoon, I watch my neighbor walk past with her dog. He stops to sniff the new addition, and I’m sure she’ll pull him past, but she watches patiently while he decides. When he baptizes my new plant, I set down my pen and go to get the salt.

*.  *   *

Julia Rajagopalan is a writer of speculative and literary fiction who lives just outside of Detroit, Michigan, with her husband and their very grumpy dog. For a list of her publications, check out her website: http://JuliaRajagopalan.com.

A Memoir By Zary Fekete

The walls of the wine cellars in Tokaj, Hungary, are not built of stone alone. They are upholstered in Cladosporium cellare, a soft, black velvet mold that feeds on the alcohol vapors escaping from the oak barrels. To walk through these damp, quiet tunnels is to breathe in the metabolism of time…a scent of earth and old transformation where decay is not a failure of the system, but the infrastructure itself. 

Above the cellars, in the late October vineyards, a productive paradox begins under the insistent sun. We are looking for Botrytis cinerea: the Noble Rot. In any other context, a fungus that turns a plump, translucent grape into a grey, shriveled, unsightly raisin would be a catastrophe. It is the visual language of failure: the skin punctures, the water evaporates, and what remains is a concentrated, sugary corpse of a fruit. But in the hills of Tokaj, they have learned to harvest the shriveled. They have learned that if the mist settles on the Bodrog river just right, the rot does not destroy the sweetness; it distills it. 

The science of Botrytis is a lesson in precariousness. The fungus is a delicate opportunist. If the humidity remains too high for too long, the Noble Rot turns into “Grey Rot”…a common thief that consumes the sugar and leaves the grape sour and useless. Noble Rot, however, is a collaborator. It punctures the skin just enough to let the water out, while keeping the acids and sugars trapped inside. 

This process creates what one might call “difficult sugar”. In an industrial vat, sugar is often a granular additive, a cheap high used to mask bitterness. But in the Tokaj Aszú, the sugar is the result of an ordeal. It is the sweetness of survival. When the Aszú berry is finally pressed, it does not pour like wine; it moves like oil. The taste is not “sweet” in the way a child understands candy. It is a map: first comes the apricot and honey of the sun, then the ginger and orange peel of the transformation, and finally the earth…the taste of volcanic soil and the black mold of the cellar. It is a sensory argument that beauty requires a period of darkness. 

In viticulture, the “finish” is the length of time the flavor persists after you have swallowed. A great Aszú lingers for minutes, evolving from honey to tobacco to stone. It is an exceptionally long finish. 

Lately, as I look at Hungary in this spring of 2026, I find myself thinking about that finish. For a long time, there was a fear that our shared hardships were not “noble,” but merely “grey”…a slow, fungal rot that consumed without creating. We felt the skin of our civil discourse becoming thin and papery; we felt the water leaving the fruit. But as the air begins to vibrate with a new, quiet intensity, it seems we were simply undergoing a slow fermentation. We are learning that a culture, like a wine, cannot be sweetened from the outside with cheap additives; it must be concentrated from within, through the slow evaporation of its own illusions. We have endured the shriveling, and we are left with the lingering taste of a rot that refused to stay bitter. 

      *   *   *

Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary and currently lives in Tokyo. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (The Written Path: A Journey Through Sobriety and Scripture) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky:zaryfekete.bsky.social

By Daryl Rothman

“From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world.”

Shakespeare~

“Ah,” the man said, glimpsing the placard adorning the restaurant door. “Fitting.”

They were comfortable, but it still was not often he took his family out for a nice meal. Prices had gotten so steep–ironic, if you thought about it. Soaring food costs had been among the chief culprits in the Global Famine (GF, to which it was now most commonly referred). The year was 3024 PGF (Post Global Famine). For kids, the famine was but a distant specter of a world long gone, something studied in mandatory GF courses in school, something to which their parents sometimes referred in hushed tones, but not really affecting them tangibly. But there was a danger in failing to heed lessons of the past, the man knew. It really hadn’t been that long ago. He shook his head, recalling the solemnity with which his grandparents would speak of the matter when he was young, citing the solemnity of their grandparents, and so on, before them.

“Here, dear,” his wife said, placing her hands under his head, which had lurched precariously to one side. “Let me.” The man smiled at her, while lamenting the irony—-he knew better than to shake his head, especially without his neck halo. His wife wore hers, as usual. Children were required by law to do so. Life without halos, people who walked on their own two feet instead of buzzing around in zip carts, teeth that were more than mere vestigial remnants–these were but vestiges of that ancient history, before the GF and before bodies had atrophied and brains and heads swelled to disproportionate degrees. Of course, it didn’t seem disproportionate now; this was simply the way things were. But the man recalled the wonder with which as a child he’d read and seen photos of pre-GF humans, the wonder with which his own children did so today. Hard to fathom, such times. When food was the prime source of nourishment. Owing to an extraordinary mutation, a sliver of the world’s population had been able to survive the famine, coming to rely upon the written word rather than food and water for sustenance. Yet even among those gifted with the mutation, in time it became mostly the very wealthy who could afford literature. There were always the bootleggers, the black market. But as was the way of things, segments of the new world stratified out as the centuries passed and many descendants of wealthy ancestors saw their own fortunes ebb and in some instances even became destitute. There had been wars and rebellions and strife, and it was not lost upon the man that their world might always be on the brink.

His head now firmly re-centered, the man sloughed off his momentary embarrassment, opened the door and shepherded his family inside. Ollie, their eight-year-old son, clipped the doorframe with one of his wheels. His sister Xenia, three years his senior, rolled her eyes before sailing smoothly past. His wife touched his arm lightly and smiled at him as she rolled past.

“Greetings!” The nattily attired maître d’, a wisp of a man with an even wispier moustache, rolled up to them. His head lolled atop his pencil frame like an animated candy apple. “Have you reservations?” 

“Good evening,” the man said. “We do. The Baroques. Four.”

The maître d’ executed a slight bow, more of nod, really—-he was halo-less, naturally, this being such a reputable establishment, so a full bow was out of the question. “Excellent,” he said, scouring a tablet. “Ah, here we are. Right this way.”

After they were seated, a waiter approached and gingerly placed tiny scrolls of paper into their saucers. Ollie regarded his quizzically. 

“Kind of like a prologue,” his mother explained. “It’s like an appetizer I suppose. A little something before the main course.” Ollie unrolled his paper excitedly.

“Thy ambition,” he read. “Thou scarlet sin, robb’d this bewailing land.” His father smiled.  His boy was a good eater, and why not? —-he had been voracious from the moment he left the womb. He picked up his menu and gulped at some of the prices. Yes, it was a nice place, but even the children’s meals were exorbitant: one order of three Hemingway shorts ran 5,000 credits. 

“Can you believe this?” he asked his wife. She regarded him plaintively.

“Please, dear. We never get out. This isn’t a speed-reading restaurant.”

He hmphed. The waiter returned and spoke in effusive tones about their specials. Shakespeare. Joyce. 

“How much?” the man inquired. His wife looked away.

They would not be getting the specials. The man ordered a Great Gatsby, his wife Sense and Sensibility, their daughter The Sound and the Fury, and their son (after lobbying unsuccessfully for a full novel), an order of Tolstoy micro fiction. The man, considering himself well-fed, expressed surprise that the Russian master had dabbled in such media. “We took a few liberties,” the waiter acknowledged quietly. “It’s morsels from edited-out sections of War and Peace.” The man hmphed again.

“So,” inquired the mother of her children, “anything interesting at school?”

“I dunno,” mumbled Ollie. Xenia groaned.

“You never know,” she said.

Ollie didn’t look up from his appetizers. “So?”

“Now, now,” said their mother. “Manners, both of you. We are Baroques, after all. What about you, sweetie?”

Xenia leaned forward and spoke in hushed tones. “I’m worried about Lanie,” she said, glancing furtively about to ensure no eavesdroppers. “We think she’s developing a reading disorder. She’s so thin.”

“Oh my,” said the mother. “I am sorry to hear that. Is she getting help?”

“She won’t listen,” Xenia insisted. “She thinks she looks good. Wants to impress Gordy, you know.” She shook her head. “But she’s a waif. We can’t get her to read.”

“BOR-ING.” 

“Shut up!” Xenia told her brother.

“That’s enough,” their father said. “Both of you.”

Their meal arrived. Ollie sat up, wide-eyed, licking his lips.  “Start with the lens closest on our left,” the mother reminded her children. Most meals were of course consumed via tablet, plasma, or touchscreens of one form another-—this was fine dining, however, and their selections were served in classic hardback. Most people’s eyes were unaccustomed to book consumption, plus the lighting was dim, so the provision of reading lens tableware was standard fare at any reputable establishment. Each of them plucked up a lens and started in.

“Not so fast,” Xenia admonished her brother, who was flipping pages frantically. “You’ll get indigestion.” Ollie stuck out his tongue in protest, but a loud burp escaped, and his family twittered. 

“Don’t read too much,” the mother suggested. “You should save room for epilogue.”

When they finished, the waiter wheeled up the dessert cart: Dostoyevsky, Eliot, Salinger. A fancy selection of fables. “Did you save room?” he inquired hopefully. He held up The Brothers Karamazov before the man. “A very fine vintage. Barely read. Take in the bouquet.” 

The man smirked. “The Brothers Karamazov, for epilogue? Good God, man, we’re not gluttons.” He folded his arms, but couldn’t escape his children’s beseeching stares. “Maybe we can share a few things,” he finally said. The waiter grinned triumphantly.

  “Dad,” Xenia lamented after their order was placed. “Really, share?”

“We’re not made of money, young lady.”

Xenia sat back and folded her arms. “It’s not that. But now we have to all scoot up next to each other. It’s embarrassing.”

“Here, here,” said the mother. “Not necessary. We’ll all read a few bites at a time, and pass it.”

After their epilogue—-at one point during which Xenia had to snatch the tablet from her brother, who she insisted was reading more than his share–the man wiped his lens with a cloth and exhaled. He was very full. He summoned their waiter. “We’ve marked our spots–please pack up the leftovers.” His wife regarded him.

“Dear,” she said.

He turned to her. “Did you see the bill? Besides, I might want to read a bite before bed.” His wife looked down. 

The waiter extracted a wand from his jacket and scanned it over each of their meals. Ollie snatched up one of the scrolls which had lodged under his plate, and quickly consumed a last few unread morsels. Xenia covered her face. The unread portions of each meal fluttered out as the wand crossed, and the waiter scooped them up and neatly arranged them in to-go sleeves. The man nodded his thanks and extended his wrist. The waiter passed the wand over, the man’s credit implant registered with a beep, and the waiter looked away politely as the man grudgingly punched in his gratuity. They took their leftovers and wheeled out of the restaurant.  The man shook his head—-carefully—as he pondered just how expensive it was to feed a family these days. Times had sure changed.

*     *     *

Daryl Rothman’s YA/Fantasy novel, The Awakening of David Rose, was released by Evolved Publishing, September 9th, 2019, and was a winner in the Best Young Adult Fiction category for Pinnacle Book Achievement Awards. First in a series of three, it was inspired by (and the protags named for) his children, and the protective relationship between them. Daryl has written for a variety of esteemed publications, including Men With Pens, KM Weiland, CS Lakin, Carol Tice, Joanna Penn, Problogger and more, and recognitions include Flash Fiction winner for Cactus Moon Press, Flash Fiction second place winner for Amid the Imaginary, and Honorable Mention for Glimmer Train’s New Writer’s Short Story Award Contest. 

Book II in the David Rose Series debuted Sept. 26, 2022, and Gospel, a literary-suspense novel, released in November, 2024, was a finalist for Feathered Quill’s Book Awards for Adult Fiction.

You can learn more about Daryl’s work on his website at  DarylRothman dot com or his FB Author page at Author Daryl C Rothman. 

By LA Carson

I smell it before I see it. Burnt bread. I ditch my stingray in the front yard, not messing with the kickstand, and scramble up cracked cement steps and into the house. Momma’s wailing behind her locked bedroom door. I hunker down on the other side, my cheeks smashed between the doorknob and doorframe.

“A charred loaf ain’t nothing to cry about Momma,” I holler through the door.

I use my quiet voice and remind her that we got bread from the Save-A-Lot in the cupboard, but she might not hear me, what with her bawling and carrying on. Ever since that time the squad came for her, I got to be extra careful. It don’t take much to shatter Momma. Same as that tiny blue robin’s egg that fell out of its nest on my window ledge and cracked open on the ground, Momma’s fragile like that.  

In the kitchen, the troublemaker blob of charcoaled bread looks like a giant marshmallow singed too long over a campfire. Still in the loaf pan, it’s dumped over sideways on the stovetop, pretending to be sorry for the commotion it caused. I grab the step stool, on account of first grade arms can’t reach the knob that turns off the oven. Next, I slap bologna between two Sav-A-Lot slices, add a squirt of French’s, then cut the sandwich into two triangles and pour a cold glass of milk. Leaving all that on the counter, I head out back, careful not to let the screen door slam behind me. The grass is tall enough to tickle my knees when I bend over to yank up a clump of dandelions. Back inside, I shove ‘em in a glass of tap water, then I load the food and flowers on top of my Charlotte’s Web book, like it’s a tray. I cart everything down the hallway and park the tray on the floor beside Momma’s bedroom door and knock. 

“I got dinner for you Momma.” 

Her sobs sound faraway now, like she fell down the neighbor’s well, but she don’t answer, so I snag the pillow and blanket off my bed and drag ‘em to the floor outside Momma’s door, pretending like it’s a campout. As the streetlights flicker on, my belly growls so I eat half the sandwich, swallow a gulp of milk, hoping Momma won’t mind sharing. 

Sunshine through the dirty hallway window wakes me in the morning. Both paws on the cat wall clock are up past the whiskers, so I missed the school bus again. Momma’s door is still locked but there’s no ruckus, just the faint sound of her snoring. The house is quiet, like the school library or Momma’s old hospital room. Sometimes the quiet is scarier than the noise. The untouched tray is where I left it but the milk is warm and the bread feels rough, like chapped lips. 

The dandelions bowed their heads.  

I want to tell her I miss him, too. 

Sourdough was Daddy’s favorite. 

                                                        *   *   *

LA Carson writes fiction and creative nonfiction in North Carolina while nursing a homesickness for Southern California.

By Andrea Tillmanns

When I woke up and saw my body lying next to me, I thought at first it was a hallucination. It took a moment for me to realize that this was reality. 

Yet my body was clearly not dead. It was breathing, and I could hear its steady heartbeat. And so, I firmly believed that everything would be okay again. 

Until my body suddenly sat up, my eyes looked at me, and my hands reached for my throat. I never would have thought it was possible to strangle oneself. Whoever had slipped into my body obviously didn’t want any witnesses.

*   *   *

Andrea Tillmanns lives in Germany and works full-time as a university lecturer. She has been writing poetry, short stories and novels in various genres for many years. Her poems and stories have been published in The World of Myth, Hawthorn & Ash, SciFanSat, and other journals and anthologies. She has also published more than twenty books in German. More information about the author and her texts can be found on her website www.andreatillmanns.de.

 By Pramen Vasilev

The sky burned a bruised purple as Lenacrouched beside the radio, fingers trembling over the cracked dials. Outside, the wind howled through the skeletal remains of what used to be a city—twisted metal, broken glass, and silence so thick it pressed against her eardrums. She’d been alone for 217 days. 

At least, she thought she had. Then, yesterday, static. Not the usual atmospheric hiss, but a rhythm—three short bursts, two long, one short. S.O.S. She hadn’t heard a human voice in years. Not since the Collapse. Not since the satellites died, the power grids failed, and the world went dark.

Lena had spent months restoring the old emergency radio from the basement of the community center. Wires stripped and reconnected, vacuum tubes replaced with scavenged parts from dead laptops, a jury-rigged solar panel lashed to the roof.

 She did it not because she believed anyone was out there—she’d long accepted she was the last—but because the routine kept her sane. Today, though, routine meant everything.

She adjusted the frequency, breath shallow. “This is Lena,” she said into the microphone, her voice rusty from disuse. “I’m broadcasting from Grid Seven—former Portland outpost. I’m alive. Repeat, I’m alive. Does anyone copy?”

Silence followed. Then, a crackle. A whisper of sound, like a sigh through broken teeth.

“…copy… Lena…”

Her heart stopped.

“Who is this?” she gasped.

“…station… safe… children… we have children…”

The words were broken, faint, but unmistakable. Children. Not survivors. Not just another lone scavenger. A community. Tears blurred her vision. For years, she’d whispered stories to the empty rooms, pretending her daughter still listened. Now, someone was listening.

“Coordinates,” she said, voice steadier. “Transmit your location. I’ll come.”

Static swallowed the air. Then, slowly, a string of numbers pulsed through—north, up the old highway, near the Cascades. A place with geothermal heat, they said. A bunker. A future.

She packed that night. Not much: water purifier, protein bars, the faded photo of her daughter tucked into her jacket, and the radio, cradled like a newborn. She left a note on the wall in bold red paint: Gone north. Following the signal. If you come—follow me.

Dawn broke as she stepped beyond the city limits, boots crunching on glass. She didn’t look back. For the first time in years, the silence didn’t feel like emptiness. It felt like possibility. The wind carried nothing but dust and hope.

Three days later, she reached the coordinates. A metal hatch, nearly buried under moss and snow, barely visible. She knocked—three times, then two long, one short. A pause. Then, from below, three knocks in return.

The hatch opened. A woman with tired eyes and a rifle smiled. “We heard your voice last night,” she said. “We thought we were alone.”

Lena stepped inside, into warmth, into light, into the sound of distant laughter. The world wasn’t over. It was just beginning.

  *   *   *

Pramen Vasilev is an award-winning writer whose work has been published in more than a dozen US and UK literary magazines. Pramen has big dreams and he loves to help others, while living in a peaceful small place with two cats.

By R. I. Miller

I stare at my laptop. The screen is filled with only two words, “And then …”

This story has been torturing me, hiding in a pit in my mind, playing hide and seek, not exposing itself for more than a moment. It’s a mess. It has to be, it’s about a relationship…I think.

“Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets, and little man Lola wants …” I thought that was funny when I first put it on my phone, now I think it’s stupid. I should change it, but not right now. I cannot distract myself any more, let it go.  

I think I may have an idea. I am waiting for it to materialize. 

 The phone is still “chanting.” I yell, “Hey, I’m not answering!” Defeated, I look at the caller ID. 

It’s Gretchen, I do like Gretchen. I answer.

Gretchen is looking for someone to go to the movies with. Her boyfriend is in California, somewhere in California. He’s always somewhere else, and also her sister is going to have a hysterectomy, do I know what that means to a woman her age? 

 I say that I can’t say that I really do, but I am sure it is difficult. Gretchen tells me that I am being a bit gratuitous. Yes, I tell Gretchen, I understand that I cannot understand, and I know that she, Gretchen, was helpful to me when I went through my last breakup, and yes of course I’ll go see the movie with her. 

Gretchen likes movies about the end of the world. This time it appears that tiny invaders from somewhere in space stop everyone on earth from talking. I say, “How is that not good?” But Gretchen says it’s definitely a disaster movie and will I stop analyzing everything. I say “Okay, six tonight.” 

It is four o’clock. If I focus, I can get at least an hour of writing in, maybe an hour and fifteen minutes…fat chance.

I think about the little tiny invaders and I hope they are not green. It would be better if they were colorless, and odorless also maybe body-less — no corporal existence at all.

“Empty” does not cover the description of the void that surrounds me, inhabits my thoughts, erases my words before I can get them out. I key in, “And so she” and then change that to “Then she” then to “Would she.”

Would Gretchen want to go for drinks after? If she thinks her boyfriend is screwing around, she will want to go for drinks. She will definitely want to talk. 

All I need is one idea.

 The phone again!  I answer very loudly and rudely, but don’t completely finish because it’s Gretchen again and she wants to know if I had my heart set on going to the disaster movie.

I try to explain that I do not have my heart set on it, and that anyway, I cannot imagine that a world where no one talks would be much of a disaster, and that it would probably be beneficial. Gretchen says that if I really want to see that film she will go, but really there is another film at the little arty theater on the corner of Main and 2^nd that she thinks would be better.

Gretchen definitely wants to talk about her boyfriend. She wants to go to a movie about lovers who never quite connect. Gretchen reminds me that I like the actress that’s in it. I do like the actress. She willingly participated in a remarkably memorable dream, for which I thanked her endlessly but she never came back for a return engagement. 

I say yes. 

Gretchen says the film starts in less than an hour. 

I’ll be ready in thirty minutes, I say. 

Focus! I move the laptop toward me, I am hoping the words will flow from my finger tips to the keypad, in thirty minutes I could write a good paragraph, a least a good opening sentence, maybe even a concept. The keypad is waiting, just one word, a beginning. My fingers only have to move, automatic writing, from the soul to the keypad so to speak.

I remember the dream. I breathe deep. I breathe out. Air forms a vortex around my nose, it feels cold. I try to forget the dream, I breathe in, my mind is a blank, my breath is escaping my body, through my nose, I transcend the here the now.

The actress is in front of me; I open my eyes and realize I have stopped breathing. Now I realize Gretchen looks a lot like that actress.  A long string of g’s fill the screen. I lift my left index finger from the keyboard.

I concentrate, I imagine a point on the horizon, it’s so far away that all you know is that it’s something, or maybe a “what.” The character is not right, actually there is no character. The character can’t make up her mind, because she’s not fixed yet, not an embodiment. Time is escaping faster than my breath. Think! I am thinking.

I am thinking about Gretchen. A beginning materializes, “It is time to…”. Gretchen is coming up the stairs. She opens the door and walks over to me. 

I realize I would to go anywhere with Gretchen. I start telling Gretchen that, but she interrupts. 

“I thought you were kidding about writing a novel.”

“How could you think that? You know I’ve been writing.”.

“Yea, but only those bizzaro things you call stories.”

I start to explain again.

But Gretchen says, “You really wanted to see the movie about the tiny invaders, didn’t you?” 

“No,” I say, “it’s you, this story is about you and me; I mean, it’s about us … I mean …us.” 

Gretchen looks at me, no smile, no frown she just looks. 

“You know,” she says, “I can never tell what you’ll come up with. Let’s go, put your coat on or we’ll be late.”

“But.”

“Later, we’ll talk later, after the movie.”

*   *   *

R I Miller lives in Maine. He has published work in: Glint Literary Journal and The Gentian among others. He has also published a novel, “The Touch of Bark, the Feel of Stone.”

By E. Robert Pugh

Flood within, flood without. The Valley floor accepts the rain, flows it through the streets where I sought you: a friend, a brother, a ghost, a gap—memories dulled by ten wide years, renewed by surprise. These eight miles of straight are the runaway between openness and closure, a heart unguarded and a situation unchanged.

You, now, and who exactly awaits at the table near the back where we often holed up, minds full of polyrhythms, mouths full of jokes, glasses full of steam on nights —those moments and the peanuts we made, the howling and the lost time reflected upon as I slalom through the traffic cones, the spraying flood of storm drains, the potholes become ponds.

Words heard before. You, the flake, the friend who cancelled last second but showed up first minute, until you were angled and reeled north into the marine layer and the cold summers of circumstance and opportunity, gutted and mounted and kept in the plastic valley by a life you came to love—a life I tried to understand through posts and stories as you began to dematerialize, memories replaced by the lessons I had to learn.

Until a delayed response became a never response.

Until you deactivated, cutting the last and final tether.

Until most definitely you musta meant became most certainly you don’t give a shit—never gave a shit, our friendship a sun-bleached façade hiding snide comments and judgment, concealing that you were a self-obsessed miscreant seeking only passengers. 

And probably are, brought low into the smog once more with the scales of wonder and regret held in balance enough to push me to say yes, into the rain and thankful for every red light, with curiosity and the urge to tell you what I couldn’t in every dream where you appeared, my change muzzled, unable to show you that I’ve become a tree.

The hope that the last second would come and you would not. I could drink a beer in peace, then return home to the tiny sturdy life that you would not understand or expect from me, the wild one once full of confusion and panic, now full of what you probably wanted to see outta me this whole time. 

Flood within, flood without. The place where we once were, its crumbling asphalt, its stubby trees dripping with my wish to not recognize your car.

But of course, there it was.

                                                                       *   *   *

E. Robert Pugh is an emerging writer of flash fiction and short stories based in Redlands, CA. He was recently published in the New Feathers Anthology.

By Angie Chatman

Every morning, after dropping Tyler off at school for his half-day kindergarten class, Carmen took her power walk. For this pregnancy she’d read a variety baby books; all of them stated that healthy exercise could induce labor. They also warned not to start an exercise regimen before consulting a doctor. At nine months, Carmen was dying to start labor, and her doctor had encouraged short strolls for her mental and physical health. When she’d been pregnant with Tyler, she’d been so busy learning to be an army wife, moving with Gabe to their first post in Missouri and satisfying her cravings for pickles and orange juice. Now, that they were back home in North Carolina, Carmen was a lot less stressed. Still, she felt as if she had swallowed the moon, sometimes light and warm; other times it was as if a jumble of rocks had collected in her belly and pressed on her legs and feet. 

She drove to her favorite section of town where a small, well-tended park was circled with well-kept houses built in the late ‘50s. After swinging her bulk out of the car Carmen took a deep breath, and tried to clear her mind of worry and instead focus her attention on specific sights and sounds.  As she walked, she spotted two hummingbirds flitting around the birdbath. A car slowed down for the speed bump then thumped twice, and an airplane from the nearby military base roared in the sky. Beyond a white picket fence, white petals from a rose bush collected in the grass; Carmen breathed in the scent.

Her mind wandered to her husband. She checked her phone to see what time it was there knowing that wherever he was in Afghanistan, Gabe wouldn’t be able to sleep, especially at night. The baby shifted, and Carmen paused until the mound adjusted, then took a deep breath and continued her journey. 

She completed the ½ mile circle twice, then sat on the park bench in front of an old oak tree to cool down in the light breeze. Its branches swayed as if beckoning her to explore its skin. She closed her eyes and when she opened them, she was high in those branches, rocking in a cradle of soft leaves. A gray pigeon flew overhead; its blue neck plumage shimmered like a jewel in the sun, and it cooed a soft lullaby. She reached for the bird. It flew to a higher branch, then began its song again. Carmen slept. 

When she woke, she was seated on that bench; only moments had passed. Instead of running errands for the two hours that remained before she had to pick up Tyler, she drove home to take a real nap. 

A black Chevy Malibu was parked in front of her house. It had government plates.

Her first reaction was to drive away and take care of those errands, but somehow her brain registered that not only would not stop the news, it was also rude. Carmen would never disrespect a soldier. Instead, she opened her car door, swung herself out again, and waited as two men in dress uniforms got out of their car.

“Mrs. Lewis?”

At first, she didn’t recognize the name. Gabe’s mother was Mrs. Lewis. She was Gabe’s wife and Tyler’s mom. Although they’d been married for six years, she still didn’t think of herself as Mrs. Lewis except for the mail, and on formal documents. 

“M’am?”

She nodded. 

“May we speak with you?” 

 Her whole body shook. She felt dizzy. She reached out to one of the men, then withdrew her hand, and placed it on her belly, swaying slightly.

“Come in.”  Once inside, she walked to the sofa, sat, and waited for them to tell her Gabe  was dead. Though she knew that they were talking, she couldn’t hear them clearly. It was as if she’d been pushed into a pool and was now underwater. “Wait.,” she heard from another part of her brain. They didn’t say dead. It was killed. Killed in Action. 

She asked when.

“The details aren’t available yet, Mrs. Lewis.”

“Please don’t call me that.” Her voice screeched. She hugged her chest, took a deep breath, and counted to three. “My name is Carmen.” 

“May I sit, Carmen?”

She looked at the two men; she couldn’t tell them apart. Tall, white, clean shaven. One of them handed her a handkerchief and the blur cleared; the one who asked her the question was older. There were wrinkles on his face: grooves around his lips, crow’s feet marked his dim brown eyes. This must be hard for them too, she thought. How did they get assigned to do this? Did they request the duty to provide this horrible service to military families? Who would request this duty?

“Carmen?” 

 “Is it all right if I sit?”

She pulled one of Tyler’s toys out from under the sofa cushion and squeezed. It sounded like a balloon leaking the last of its air.

“Carmen?”

“Yes. Yes, please sit. Can I get you anything? Some water?” 

He sat. “No, thank you.” He went on to explain that the military was still investigating the…Carmen tuned out. His voice was in the baritone range. She wondered if he sang like that guy whose hit was “Sweet Caroline”. The song was named for JFK’s daughter. Who had told little Caroline and John-John the news about their father? Both parents were in Dallas. Did Caroline see it on television with the rest of the world? Or, worse was there a staffer who had to break the news to that five-year-old child?

“I don’t care about any investigation,” her voice rose. Breathe. “When will Gabe be home? Gabe and his effects.” Would there be effects? She would get his name tag? How else did they know it was Gabe?

She nodded as the baritone explained that an office would notify and assist her with arrangements. She then thanked the men and told them they could leave.

“Do you have anyone you can call to stay with you?” The younger man spoke.

She stood. “Yes, I’ll call. After you leave. Please, go.”

The younger man was going to say something, but the older man cut him off. “We’ll wait outside until someone else comes, Carmen.”

“Fine,” she nodded and shut the door behind them. 

She shivered from the cold that came with shock and went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Her hands continued shaking. As she was filling it, the tea kettle fell into the sink, and she slid to the floor, howled, and went back under the blanket of grief which threatened to swallow her. 

She crawled to the sofa. There she dumped her purse on the coffee table and grabbed her phone. Gabe’s mother was #9; she’d wait to call her until she could deal with her. Now, she needed to have someone pick up Tyler; she couldn’t risk driving in this state.  

Amber was #3 on the speed dial. The tears returned, but Carmen was able to choke out a few words, “It’s Gabe,” she moaned. “They came.” 

She didn’t need to explain to her best friend who ‘they’ were. 

*

Carmen didn’t know how much time had passed but she heard Amber’s car – it needed a new muffler – pull up to the curb. She’d had to move off the couch a couple of times to pee and drink more water, after each trip she’d sit or lie down, stroke her belly, and weep some more.

Tyler burst into the house with all the energy of his 5-year-old self. Amber followed, wearing her smock, which was splotched with flecks of clay the color of dried blood. 

 Tyler came to a stop, his sneakers squeaking on the hard wood floor. “Mom, what’s wrong? Auntie Amber said it was ok if I had ice cream for lunch…”

Carmen wiped her eyes and laughed. “Come here, Ty.” She hugged him tight taking in his musty little boy smell. “If Auntie Amber said it was ok, then it was ok. How was school?”

“Great! We did drawings. Miss Nolan said mine was the best.” He took off his backpack and removed a roll of brown paper, scraped off the masking tape and unrolled it on top of the coffee table. Through blurry eyes, Carmen saw a gray bird, its neck was colored blue.

“It’s a pigeon! I saw one outside the window and I wanted to make you a drawing. Miss Nolan said pigeons are messenger birds and that I might have a message when I got home. Do you have a message for me Mommy?”

                                                          *   *   *

Born and raised on Chicago’s southside, Angie Chatman is a freelance writer and storyteller. Her short stories and essays can be found in Iron Horse Literary Review, Taint,Taint,Taint Magazine, Brevity, Literary Landscapes, The Rumpus, Pangyrus, Hippocampus Magazine, Blood Orange Review, fwriction:review, and elsewhere. 

She has told on The Moth Radio Hour’s episode “Help Me” and won a WEBBY award for telling on GBH/World Channel’s Stories from the Stage episode, “Growing Up Black”.

A Memoir by Kurt Schmidt

While the snowstorm was raging outside, I was reading a letter that said I was a criminal, delinquent in paying a fine. Being accused of a crime I didn’t commit? The words in this prophecy indicated I’d soon lose my driver’s license, or worse.

The letter said I was remiss in failing to pay a recent parking ticket in a city that I had not visited in over two years. In mid-January, I had supposedly parked overnight in a “snow emergency” zone. The license plate number in the letter was mine, but no one else had ever used my car to travel overnight to a city seventy miles away to do who-knows-what in the middle of the night. I owed $75. 

If I failed to pay in 30 days, I would incur a late fee. If I failed to pay in 60 days, another late fee. “After 90 days of the issue date, outstanding tickets will be sent to a Collection Agency and can not be contested in court.” I figured with the bold letters, the underline, and capitalization of “collection agency” that these folks really meant business. Moreover, I would be unable to register my car again until the fine was paid. 

My mental state was already tenuous from the storm and two painful hospitalizations in the last four months. I’d had a blocked coronary artery and then a bowel obstruction. I was still in recovery and trying to avoid any potential situations that might cause emotional distress. It was a Saturday, so I had the rest of the weekend to obsess about it and shovel snow.

The snowstorm had ended by the time I called the Bureau on Monday and asked the woman who answered if she could talk to me about a problem with a parking ticket. I gave her the ID number from the letter. After a short pause, she responded, “Yes, seventy-five dollars. What’s the problem?” I explained that I hadn’t traveled to Manchester in over two years and that no one else had used my car. She said she would have to look into it and call me back.  Probably tomorrow, she said, because the Bureau was experiencing a storm-related problem today. Although she took down my phone number, I worried that her voice sounded grumpy and not in the mood to deal with someone who claimed his parking ticket was empty of any truth.

On Tuesday I waited for a phone call that never came.  As an inveterate worrier, I stewed about it all day and googled the Bureau to see if there was some person’s name associated with it. There was a Bureau Coordinator named Donna.  I called again Wednesday morning and heard a cheery female voice that I hoped was Donna.  When I explained that I’d talked with someone on Monday about a parking ticket that could not be mine, the voice asked if I knew who I’d spoken too. I said I didn’t know but that maybe it was Donna. The cheery voice asked me to hold.  Moments later a different cheery voice said, “This is Donna. How can I help you?” I explained the circumstances again and said, “How could this happen?” Apparently the ticket had been written in the dark of night and in isolation. Maybe the officer had copied the wrong plate number. She would do “some research” and call me back. If the rest of the day went by without her call, I would probably walk down to our nearby frozen lake and stick my head in an ice fisherman’s hole.

But she did call. The officer who’d written the ticket had neglected to note that the license plate of the violator was a cardboard temporary plate. Sometimes the Department of Motor Vehicles gives out temporary plates with low numbers without any concern as to whether that number still belongs to a permanent plate like mine. So that meant a road-rage psychopath could be out there, committing crimes in my name. I said this episode had been distressing and asked if there was anything in my letter from them that I still needed to worry about. She said to just destroy the letter and not worry. 

I did not destroy the letter. I still worried. Perhaps if the authorities came for me, I could hide in the attic. I considered writing a letter to the state attorney general just so there would be some record of the incident and my phone conversation with Donna. But she’d been apologetic, and I didn’t want to cause trouble for her.

But what if my unpaid parking ticket was still in the bureaucracy computer system when I went to our town clerk to register my car? I’d still have criminal status.

A week later I drove to the town hall and entered the town clerk’s office. She smiled. After offering my old registration, I watched her facial expression as punched my numbers into her computer.  She squinted a bit. Did she see that I was a criminal, or was it just eye strain? Then she smiled again and instructed me to write a check to the town and one to the state. After doing so, I told her my mistaken-identity story. She laughed and shook her head. I laughed too.

But on the drive home I wondered about the police arriving at my door one day to say a security camera had captured my license plate on a car racing away from a bank robbery. I was supposed to be feeling better, but my imagination was working overtime. I needed my brain to take a break and shut up about potential storms that might never arrive. 

      *   *   *

Kurt Schmidt is the author of the novel, Annapolis Misfit, (Crown Publishers) and chapbook memoir, Birth of a Risk-Taker, (Bottlecap Press). As cancer survivor with PTSD, he overcame anxiety to fly in a small plane piloted by his newly-licensed son, who previously crashed a dirt bike and Mazda Miata at various race tracks and now races a Porsche and flies his own plane (crashing neither hopefully). Their flight story appeared in The Boston Globe and the Rock Salt Journal and can be viewed among others at www.kurtgschmidt.com.