By Russell Fee

Lake Superior whitefish: mild, delicate, succulent, the meat parting in sweet-scented flakes at the lightest touch with a fork, its slow melt in the mouth. Delicious when prepared breaded, battered, buttered, pan-fried, baked, smoked, or served as a dip or sandwich. He’d loved whitefish every way and with everything since his first taste. Not so her, and that had been a surprise. She wouldn’t eat it; refused to even taste it. Her reluctance to partake of such a culinary gift almost severed the stem of their budding relationship before it flowered. Nonetheless, he had persisted in his pursuit of her.

Both had gone east for school: she from LA and he from Marquette, Michigan. They’d met at the end of their sophomore year, and then she had gone to Ireland for her junior year abroad. They had reconnected their senior year and were inseparable from then on: graduation, marriage, graduate school, settling in Marquette, a home on the southern shore of Lake Superior, professorships at Northern Michigan University. No children. They’d tried but eventually realized that the two of them were enough for each other, that they each had not really wished for more. They agreed on almost everything, everything but whitefish.  But her resistance to this delicacy eventually became the source of a loving tease between them.

“She’ll have the baked whitefish and I’ll have the chopped salad,” he would say to their server at their favorite restaurant. And when their orders had been placed before them, they would each slide their plates across the table to each other with gentle ceremony and an accepting smile. The well-worn joke became a way of uniting them through the one thing that set them apart. 

The memory of the evening she suggested they dine out is now a reel of every detail that loops over and over in his mind: their stroll to the restaurant, the lake’s shimmer of moonlight, her hair tousled by the breeze, the dress she wore, the seating at her favorite table, the muffled chatter of the guests, the tattoo of silverware on porcelain and china. He’d been tired that evening and had almost dispensed with their joke when the server had asked for their order, but her look of bemused anticipation had changed his mind.

“I’ll have the chopped salad,” he said, “and she’ll have the baked whitefish.” She smiled, then smoothed the lap of her dress with both hands and sat up straight before taking a sip of her wine. He remembered they had chatted and laughed over the silly moments of the day until the fish and salad arrived. He was about to push the plate to her when she leaned forward and touched its edge. “No,” she whispered. 

He knew then what it meant as she dined on whitefish for the first time. It was a gift from her that spared him the words he could not bear to hear. It was her goodbye. The cancer had metastasized. Their time together would end. 

Afterwards, when his grief had turned to gratitude for their life together, her simple act of love made whitefish a meal that would forever bring her back to him.

*   *  *

Russ Fee is the author of the award-winning Sheriff Matt Callahan mystery series.  The second book in the series, A Dangerous Identity, won the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary with a BA degree in English.  Russ began writing in earnest after careers in law and teaching.

He and his wife, Joan, are dual citizens of the United States and Ireland.  They now live in the Upper Midwest, which they love.

To learn more about Russ and his work, visit his website at outerislandpress.com.

 

        

  

By Sophie Panzer

My grandfather loved giving out money. It didn’t matter if you were a relative or a telemarketer trying to scam him – if you asked, he gave. At every family gathering he slipped bills into hands and purses. Do you have enough cash? Go get my wallet and take a twenty.

He was a Depression baby who told stories about eating dandelions and Jell-O for dinner. As a child he had no ambition beyond earning enough to ensure his family would never have to endure the same deprivation. He made it big in advertising and retired a multi-millionaire.

The only thing he liked better than giving out money was telling me how important it was that I find a good man, someone I could build a future with. No one knows true happiness until they have children and grandchildren, Lena. His house was plastered with photos of his progeny. We beamed down from the walls and jostled for space on the refrigerator.

I didn’t think this would be a problem until I saw Katie Dominic in her prom dress and felt my world stop spinning.

My mother said I couldn’t tell him. He won’t understand. You’ll break his heart. I thought of how he had paid for braces and college, of all the checks he had slipped into birthday cards, and felt a surge of guilt. I said nothing.

When he got dementia he began saying things over and over again. Things like Did we get the Times today? and Lena’s never had a boyfriend. As if it was a puzzle he just couldn’t solve.

When he became bedridden, my grandmother had to go to the bank every few days because he kept trying to give. We would sit by his hospice bed and he would ask Do you need cash? Do you need cash? and try to press money into our hands three or four times in an hour.

After he died I helped my mother clean out his office and we found a box overflowing with receipts for charitable donations. I was about to throw it away when I saw one slip emblazoned with a rainbow. It was for a gift he had made to a nonprofit that advocated for gay rights.

There was a memo line at the bottom for donors to leave a message or dedication. My grandfather had written simply, For Lena.

* * *

Sophie Panzer is the author of the chapbooks Survive July (Red Bird Chapbooks 2019), Mothers of the Apocalypse (Ethel Press 2019) and Bone Church (dancing girl press 2020). Her fiction has been long listed for Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in New World Writing, Heavy Feather Review, MAYDAY, The Lumiere Review, Club Plum Literary Journal, Whale Road Review, The Hellebore, and others. She lives in Philadelphia.

By Laura Weiss

Inside the repair shop where I take my cracked phone to be fixed, the tattooed guy behind the counter says he’s forgotten to turn on his home security camera. He can’t stop thinking about his stuff. Someone will steal it. For sure.

“What stuff?” I ask, to be polite, in the way I used to be in the times before these times. 

“Everything in my house.” He leans across the counter. His voice rises. “You know, don’t you, they’re out to kill us.” It’s a statement, not a question.

“Who?” I whisper. From somewhere deep within the store, a cat screeches. 

“Them.” His pale eyes lock onto mine, daring me to prove him wrong, his gaze recalling my mother’s the day before she ran off with the dog walker.  

 “Actually, my phone is fine.” I jam it back into my pocket. The ropy-armed clerk follows me outside. Post-pandemic plywood bandages storefronts, and the ice-slicked streets are chalkboards left unwashed. 

“Wait, miss, wait,” the clerk shouts, his footsteps thrumming. “Don’t leave. I can fix your phone.” 

In my mind, he tracks me through the city. From the fire escape, he jimmies open my window. He sets the place on fire.

A few days later, humpy gray clouds threaten snow, and the air smells sour like the rich lady who employs me as her personal assistant. I snap a photo of my friendly neighborhood peddler with his junk—tattered books, a purple piggy bank, a blender, a Santa-attired teddy bear, an overcoat, its crimson lining split open.

The vendor shakes his fist at me. “No pictures.” 

My insides accordion into prickly folds. I wonder what’s happened to my old pal, the man who said hello, the peddler who clowned around, the guy who grinned at the camera, pleased his image graced the only painting I’ve managed to finish since art school. Once, he would have offered discounts on his books, like the one I thumb through now, a CostaRicaThailandMexico guide sitting atop a pile of cheap jewelry. The cover is awash in turquoise sea and sky. I ask how much. 

“Five, like it’s marked.”

Inside my apartment, the door is bolted shut. The air within me drains. The jagged blades of my house keys jut out from the gullies between my fingers, my pathetic attempt to jerry-build the brass knuckle a man described on Nextdoor. From a home protection site, I buy pepper spray. Worry coats my stomach. Worry the keys are dull. Worry the spray won’t spray. 

My days and nights are spent indoors, curled up on the couch with the CostaRicaThailandMexico book. A picture of a woman on a beach, her head tilted toward the sun, seawater caressing suntanned legs, causes calm to sluice through me. For the umpteenth time since art school, I paint the urn carved into the façade of the building across the street. My cuticles are ravaged, bitten to the quick, a habit acquired from my mother who chomped on hers relentlessly after my father died. On my laptop, an au pair employment site lights up the screen with CostaRicaThailandMexico parents hunting for helpers. 

Do I like kids? Enough, I decide. 

Emails go out to six moms, two dads.

A few days later, a mom replies. She sends a picture of her dog. She sends a photo of her house. No image of children. This is odd, but I push past my hesitation and think about the mom’s creamy white villa festooned with purple Bougainvillea, and there’s also a pool, a perfect rectangle of cerulean blue, the same pool that appears in the photo my mother sent me of her new home in the tropics.

The CostaRicaThailandMexico mom wants me to start immediately. This is a place where I can progress beyond an urn, a place where my white hands will darken, where silence will snuff out the noise in my head. The radiator clanks. 

To the childless mother, I say: Yes. Oh, yes. 

Soon luggage collects at my front door. A backpack bulges with paints and brushes, with my favorite coffee mug, with a crisp white blouse and trim black skirt to change into when I land at the CostaRicaThailandMexico airport, where a chauffeur, whose photo reveals shoulders as wide as airplane wings, will carry me in his Mercedes to the yummy vanilla villa. 

One final run to the drugstore. 

“Where are you going?” the salesperson asks, ringing up a travel-mouthwash, a mini-deodorant.

“To paradise.” 

The salesperson emits a wistful sigh. On her neck, a bruise matching the cadmium red on my artist’s palette, blazes. My eyes fasten on that mark, while the man who surely beat the salesperson seizes my mind. I should call a hotline. Or the police. Relief bubbles within me at the prospect of delaying my departure. But upon further examination, the mark appears pink. Maybe it’s a love bite. A hickey. With a mix of relief and anxiety, I grab my purchases and leave.

In the Down And Out City, the metal gate of the phone store clangs shut. The peddler is gone from his street corner. An Uber has been summoned. On my app, a bug-car jitters forward, twitches, then comes to a dead stop.

A passing taxi ignores my frantic waves. A girl on a bike glides by, her golden hair streaming, a flag leading a parade, and I yearn to journey with her through the Down And Out City, stopping at the place by the river, where in the long ago times, the night sparkled with light.

A cab bucks to the curb. I peer inside. 

“Get in, would you?” the driver says, flashing me an annoyed look.

*   *   *

Laura B. Weiss is a BLR (Bellevue Literary Review) reader, a Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellow, and a journalist who has written for The New York Times, NPR, and Publishers Weekly, among others. 

By Lindsay Bamfield

     She is tired. Tired like never before. Not the tiredness of the new mother waking at her baby’s every snuffle or insomnia from the pain of swollen breasts when the baby is sleeping at last. 

     She remembers those years but they’re long gone. This tiredness is all enveloping. Her blood thickly oozes in her arteries clogging her energy. 

     She opens the front door and steps out. She hesitates for a moment at leaving her responsibilities but then walks without thinking where she is going. Guilt enshrouds her like a cloud of summer midges but she plods on. 

     She reaches the alleyway and heads down the narrow footpath bordered by high fences separating it from suburban gardens. 

     She emerges opposite the lake. Here is a space for nature where trees dip feathery branches into the water. She listens to the cries of birds arguing. Flocks fly overhead making for their roosting places. A few ducks still swim but they too are preparing for the night. 

     She finds a bench and sits to rest and watch the sun on its downward journey casting a golden glow over the western sky. She catches a fleeting delicate perfume but cannot identify its source. 

     She breathes in and it feels as if this air is new, never used before. She recalls lessons about trees breathing out oxygen so perhaps it really is. A breeze ruffles the water. She can’t remember when she last gave herself up to nature’s embrace. Its sights, sounds, smells and sensations. She wants to taste it too. 

     It’s getting dark and she realizes too much time has passed. She must go home to what awaits her. She rises and takes one last look at the lake. She tells herself she can return. Her steps are a little faster on the way back, perhaps with urgency to resume her responsibilities, perhaps because her energy has been replenished.

     Her husband looks at her when she enters the room. ‘Who are you?’ he says, as he says every time he sees her, no matter how brief her absence.

     She tells him as she always does. For a moment he is silent and all is well, then his frightened confused anger erupts. As she tries to pacify him, she recalls the lake, the birds, the sweet scent and the breeze caressing her and knows this is what will comfort her during her long sleepless night.

                                                          *   *   *

 

Lindsay Bamfield moved to Australia from UK in 2019. She writes short stories and flash fiction and non-fiction articles. She is currently also working on a novel. She has been published in a number of magazines, anthologies and literary websites including Dress You Up, (New Lit Salon Press, USA) Yours, Hysteria 6 Anthology, Stories for Homes 2, and Mslexia, 

In 2016, Lindsay edited Finchley Remembered II for The Finchley Society, a second volume of local people’s recollections. 

In 2009, she co-founded a successful writing group in North London which ran for several years, and co-organized five small but highly successful literary festivals from 2012-16 (The Finchley Literary Festival.) 

Twitter @LindsayBamfield. 

www.lindsaybamfield.blogspot.com 

By Martin Agee

—after C. J. Trotter

A threnody is playing as I lumber my way up the stone drive, big fan ears flapping in the wind. The ground shakes with each ponderous step, and I worry about the neighbors. I turn toward the front door, the bluestone cracking and crumbling under the weight of my massive legs. The entryway, no longer wide enough for my ever-expanding girth, splinters as I force my way in.

The house is quiet. I feel around in the dark with my proboscis and make my way up to the bedroom, fearful the staircase may give way at any moment. The bathroom door is closed but the light’s on and I hear voices. Maybe she’s conversing with the mirror—a reflection once stared at my gray wrinkles and said:  next year, you’ll be a cheetah.

Deep folds of skin scrape against the woodwork, leaving the stench of yeast at the entrance to the bedroom. I light a lavender candle on the nightstand and change into a flannel nightshirt before crawling under the bedsheets with Moby Dick. I’m almost up to page four hundred.

Soon the light’s off and I hear footsteps down the hall. Pulling the covers over my enormous skull, I wait for her arrival and brace for the screams.

She reaches the bed and slips under the sheets. Her silken skin presses against me and I feel a trembling. Her hand touches the nape of my neck, and the candle flickers as she whispers: you are everything. 

I exhale a deep breath and the lace curtain undulates.

Outside the window the shadows are long but the moon is bright, and for a moment I imagine reaching for the glowing orb with thumb and forefinger—strangers with which to pluck it like a marble from the sky. The silvery light reflects the eyes of the world as she searches the blueness of mine, and renewal is nearly complete.

* * *

Martin Agee’s career as a professional violinist has brought him to the major concert venues, recording studios, and theaters of New York City for over thirty-five years. During his years as a professional musician, he has remained active as a writer of poetry, fiction and critical essays. His works have appeared in Belle Ombre, Idle Ink and Jerry Jazz Musician, among many others.

Website: http://www.martinagee.com

By Christy Hartman

Mae spotted Leah in the produce section, lightly squeezing an avocado to test for ripeness. She would have known her older sister anywhere, despite her being dressed in the suburban mommy uniform, messy bun, black leggings and slightly cropped sweatshirt. Today Leah’s shirt whimsically proclaimed that she is A Latte to Handle.

Mae saw the same shirt on her Instagram feed a few weeks earlier.  The autumn-filtered picture featured Leah and her four-year-old daughter flashing big smiles as they posed in a pumpkin patch.  Mae doubted her sister could pick her out of the dozen other women, filling their carts with fruits and veggies. Ten years passed since Leah ran from their childhood home. Ten years since eight-year-old Mae clung to Leah, begging her not to leave.

“Mae, I have to go, I just can’t stay here anymore,” Leah’s eyes flashed manically in the dark kitchen. A sleepy Mae walked in to see her sister there, backpack over one shoulder, hand on the screen door, ready to leave.

“Dad will be back any minute. I think he’ll actually kill me this time.”  Leah peeled Mae’s small arms from her neck and gave her sister a tight squeeze. “I’ll come back for you, but I have to find a safe place first.”

Headlights passed over the window above the sink and lit the sixteen-year-old’s face, highlighting the red welt forming on her cheek and dried blood caking her cracked lip.  Leah shut the door behind her just as Mae heard the front door open and her father’s boots in the hallway.

Leah did not come back for her.  Leah did not come back at all.

When Mae turned 14, she found Leah’s Facebook profile. Although Leah used her middle name and their mother’s maiden name, and the profile picture was blurry, Mae instantly knew it was her sister.  Anger and pride kept Mae from sending a message. While her dad drank away his own childhood trauma and her mom continued to disappear into herself, Mae spent the next four years trapped in the family Leah had escaped, failing to find the courage to leave.

Mae watched her sister’s life unfold in carefully curated posts and pictures.  A graduation cap flung high into the air.  A mountaintop selfie with a handsome boyfriend. A sparkling ring on a manicured finger. A white dress dancing under fairy lights. A chalkboard announcement on a growing belly. A pink knitted hat on a sweet cherub face. Tanned legs on a white sandy beach.

Mae had no post-worthy milestones to celebrate on her page. Social media had no platform for a fist-sized hole in Mae’s bedroom door. An empty fridge after mom stopped caring. The long thin scars hidden under her hoodie. A plaster cast on her left arm. Flashing red and blue lights of a patrol car. A strange bed in a strange house.

Mae emerged from her childhood bruised and battered.

                                                               *

Leah slowly moved into the cereal aisle, picking up boxes, reading labels and putting them back. Mae pushed her cart to the end of the same aisle and watched her sister, staying far enough away to avoid being noticed. Leah placed a rainbow-colored box of sugary cereal into her cart. Mae smiled involuntarily, a sudden Saturday morning memory flooding in.

                                                                 *

“Leah-Lou, wake up, I’m hungry.”  Mae flung herself onto the creaky bed.  Leah scooped her baby sister under the blankets and pulled the little girl close.

“Shhh! Don’t wake up mom and dad.  What should we have for breakfast Mae-Mae?” Leah ran her fingers through her sister’s unruly blonde hair.

“Cereal please.” Mae squirmed out of the bed and the two girls quietly made their way to the kitchen.  Saturday morning was their favourite time of the week; their parents, exhausted from Friday night parties and fights, slept in until the afternoon. Leah would lay a blanket down on the grimy floor. They took turns using a tattered pink flyswatter to keep their cereal safe from the black flies, drawn through ripped window screens by the yeasty scent of old beer. The sisters spent hours watching TV.  They especially loved the happy sitcom families. Leah would pretend to be the clean, understanding, cardigan-wearing mom and Mae would be her mischievous but tender-hearted daughter.

After Leah left, Mae started sleeping in on Saturday mornings too.

                                                                *

“Excuse me, I need to get up this aisle.”  An impatient man’s voice snapped Mae back to the supermarket.  In her rush to get out of the way, she bumped into a display of Cheerios, knocking several boxes to the ground.  Leah turned towards the sound of the commotion.

Mae held her breath as they locked gazes. Leah’s eyes narrowed, then grew wide. What did that look mean? Recognition? Guilt? Fear?

                                                               *

                                 

Six months earlier Mae a picture of champagne glasses clinking on Leah’s Facebook page, with the caption: Leah is feeling: *Excited*

“Celebrating with my amazing husband!  Promoted to sales manager – so proud of you baby! Kayleigh and I love you sooo much! Anyone know a good real estate agent in Stoneville?”

Mae soon made the decision to move to the same town of manicured lawns and seven-dollar coffee shops. She found a waitressing job at a retro diner; it barely afforded her a small suite above someone’s two car garage. She watched Leah shop in this grocery store every Wednesday afternoon since the move.  Hoping for this moment. Hoping her sister would explain away the hurt and pain and absence. Hoping she would invite Mae into her sitcom-perfect, Instagram-worthy life.

Mae took a step forward and gathered her courage.  She was no longer the eight-year-old left crying on the kitchen floor. The words she rehearsed for years began to form on her lips.

Before Mae could utter a word, Leah broke their gaze, turned her cart around and began to walk away.

                                                      *   *   *

Christy Hartman is a Canadian writer based on Vancouver Island. She has a B.A. in English Literature from the University of British Columbia.

have grown again today, swollen like overripe fruit that’s starting to ferment in the sun. If I adjust the angle of the light peering into the small cave behind my front teeth, sometimes they look like brains instead. I enjoy checking on them every day, watching how they bob and quiver with every breath and gulp and vowel from my hot potato voice. I like seeing my uvula wiggle like it’s scared it’s going to be squashed between them soon. 

I stare because I know I’m looking at the gateway to something you’re not supposed to see: your own insides. I wonder if the soft tubes in my throat are the same hue of red with a glistening film of blood orange. I picture my real full-sized lungs, inflating in my chest like a set of old bagpipes, making a crackling noise that bubbles up to my collarbones when I lie down. I think about the tubes splitting off again to other parts of my body, sending oxygen and nutrients across the sprawling planes and delicate ecosystems of organs and flesh. An alien landscape that my brain must know my eyes could never handle.

When the pain is especially bad, I imagine the little lungs being plucked from my mouth, root and stem, and asking the surgeon if I can take them home. While I recovered, alternating between eating toast and ice cream, I’d pickle the little lungs and display them in a jar on my mantelpiece. They’d glow in the light from the fire on winter nights. They’d be my own medical oddity, a museum curiosity for visitors to find horror and delight in. Friends and family members would call me strange but soon they’d take the jar in their own hands and hold it up by the window, examining it from every angle, and I’d laugh while I waited for the kettle to boil. As I’d sip my tea, which would go down much too easily, I’d look at them proudly: those little lungs that once lived in my mouth.

                                                                            *   *   *

By Sophie Campbell

Sophie Campbell is a fiction writer and holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Strathclyde. She enjoys writing stories about ordinary people and, occasionally, the supernatural. Sophie has had short stories published with Speculative Books, Razur Cuts, The Instant Noodle Literary Review, Aloe Magazine and others. She is currently working on drafting a novel. Sophie is also interested in counter culture, witchcraft and Scottish folk tales.

By Robert Nazar Arjoyan

The screaming never didn’t wake me. 

When we were all still together, it happened practically every single night. Olin would shriek, slam open the door, and stomp those cute little fucking feet of his over to our bed, yowling through the dark. Well, just my bed now. I guess that’s one happy thing about divorce.

Less screaming.

I told Olin’s mom we shouldn’t co-sleep, but did she listen? God knows I hardly heeded her anymore. Sheil and I learned we were better to each other as husband and wife rather than mother and father. Sometimes that can happen. No one ever prepared me for it.

The walls of our- of my house are old and wafery. They are a home inside a home, refuge to so many God-knows-whats, and it was with limpid simplicity that Olin’s midnight screeching skated across the square footage to rap on my sleeping skull. 

“It’s OK, honey, go back to sleep,” I slurred out, burying myself under the pillow. Of its own volition, my right hand slithered along the sheets to just have a touch of her. Grabbing only a tangle of nothing, I empathized with Olin as he swung open his door and trudged toward me. We were both thick with hard habit.

Sleep was quick to reclaim me, though, and I didn’t stir again until I felt a fist kneading the base of my back.

“Olin, please stop,” I said, employing the slightest shove.

My eyes shot wide open and despite the heavy duvet, a freeze rolled through me. It wasn’t my day with Olin, you see. 

He was with his mom. 

What exactly was beginning to straddle me?

It wasn’t the pajamaed frame of my son which I had grazed, but something bristly and hot and writhing. I recalled the footsteps then, the rhythm of their approach totally off. They weren’t soft or pudgy, they were craggly and scaly, sharp clicks on hardwood. 

The thing sat on top of me, mounting just like Olin. 

Son of a bitch, I thought, thinking it my last, this was the hobgoblin! Olin’s ghoul, the source of his sustained screeching. It couldn’t be anything else, so persistently he’d fretted over it, so intricately he’d described it. Sheil would durably listen to his protests, going so far as to invoke spells of protection, which didn’t really help the cause, while I chose to flick an impatient wrist at the topic.

I looked into the creature’s meltable face as it shifted from one aspect to another, a never settling permutation that scared the shit out of me. But, beneath the ripple and roil of its quick mask, I detected a strain of sadness. For an instant’s instant, the war of its visage stopped and reflected me back to me. From its rattling throat gargled a secret, the throbbing truth split both ways. 

We missed Olin.

Next day, there was no trace of the troll, not in my room or under the bathroom sink, reported by my son as the gnome’s nest. And yet, when the mournful scream of the shambling imp breached my ears around two in the morning, I’d be a liar if I told you it woke me. 

No, I was up, waiting to be a little less goddamn lonesome. 

                                                           *   *   *

–

Robert Nazar Arjoyan was born into the Armenian diaspora of Glendale, California. Aside from an arguably ill-advised foray into rock n roll bandery during his late teens, literature and movies were the vying forces of his life. Naz graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and now works as an author and filmmaker. Find him at arjoyan.com

Creative nonfiction

By Susie Kaushik

“Suzie!” Mama yelled. “You best get to feeding those pigs! I don’t see Tucker slackin’ off!”

“In a minute, Mama!” I yelled back. My brother grinned.

“Yeah Suzie, the pigs are real hungry!” He taunted.

“Oh, be quiet Tucker.”

“Suzie!” Mama yelled again.

“Fine!” I hollered. “But Tucker’s scoopin’ the poop.”

“Hey!” Tucker whined.

“Quit your whining! For an eighteen-year-old, you sure are childish.” I said.

“Am not!” Tucker replied.

“Kids, quit your yappin’ and get to them pigs.” Mama yelled again. Tucker and I grabbed the slop bucket, while Rosie, the pig, followed us around, waiting to be fed. As she trotted around excitedly, she knocked the bucket out of my hands and spilled the slop all over.

“Rosie, now I have something else to clean up,” I said as I headed to the shed for a shovel.

Later that evening, after I changed into clean clothes, I opened my dresser drawer and stared at the pages inside. A month ago, I submitted a short story to a newspaper in the Big City. I gently picked up the letter and read it for about the thousandth time. ‘Dear Suzie, thank you for your entry! We are very pleased to inform you that you are the winner of our contest! Your story is being published, and we would love to have you at our Young Authors Reading Event in the Big City! The details and ticket are in the enclosed envelope.’ 

I trembled with excitement and imagined myself reading my story in front of an audience in the Big City. This was all I ever wanted. “Hey Suzie, dinner’s ready.” Tucker poked his head into my room, interrupting my daydreaming. Flustered, I shoved the letter into my pocket, and headed downstairs.

After a dinner of hearty stew and green bean casserole, I knew it was time to tell Mama about the invitation. I gathered all my courage and said, “Mama, I was wondering, well, there’s this event in the Big City, and I really want to go. I looked down sheepishly, then reached into my pocket and gave her the envelope. Mama read the letter and gasped.

“What is this about, pumpkin? You didn’t tell me you were writing a story!”

“I didn’t want to tell you until I was done writing it.”

“But then you sent it to the Big City without telling me. Why would you keep this a secret?” She asked, bewilderment on her face.

“Because I thought you would disapprove.” l responded, my confidence slipping away.

“Susan Jean Barnes, I do disapprove.” Mama said sternly.

“But Mama!” I begged.

“Besides, there’s only one ticket, and you’re only thirteen! I’m not letting you go on a plane all alone, and we can’t afford another ticket!”

“But it’s only for a weekend. And I can stay with Aunt Ellen!” I pleaded.

“No!” Mama’s tone was firm. I got up from the dinner table and ran to my room. I heard my mother’s footsteps behind me. “Suzie!” She called. I didn’t hear the rest of her words as I slammed the door before she could follow me inside. I sank onto my bed and cried.

The sound of footsteps in the hallway shook me out of my despair. I peeked through the crack in the door and watched as Mama reached the top of the stairs, then paused, looking at a picture on the wall. It was a photo of me, when I was two, grinning as I picked blackberries, purple juice staining my face and clothes. ‘I always knew my baby girl would grow up and leave the farm. But why is it happening so soon?’ mama muttered. I held my breath, as mama stood there, looking at my photo for a long time, then, with a deep sigh, she slowly turned around and walked back down the stairs.

The next day all I thought about was how I could convince Mama. I thought about it during school, while I did my homework, and while I fed Rosie. That evening, after dinner, I stood up, and pleaded my case. “Mama, I love living on the farm, but I don’t want to work here when I grow up. I want to be an author!”

Mama looked up at the ceiling, hands on hips, as if the answer to everything was up there. After a long moment she spoke, “If I sell Rosie, I’m sure we can get a good sum for her, enough to get another ticket, so I can go to the Big City with you. I reckon it will leave some over to arrange for someone to take care of the farm while I’m gone. After all, I didn’t feed her all that good, rich slop for nothing.” She spread her arms wide, and smiled, happy she had found a solution.

“No!” I cried and threw myself into her outstretched arms. “If it means selling Rosie, I don’t want to go to the Big City!”

“Oh honey,” Mama said, enclosing me in her warm, comforting hug. “You do love this farm.” She stroked my hair, “Hush, darling, hush.”

Absorbed in my thoughts, I was startled when I heard Tucker’s voice. “Mama, Suzie, I think I know what to do.” We both looked at him in surprise. “If we sell some of the old tools from the shed, I reckon there’ll be enough money to buy another ticket.”

“But, Tucker,” Mama said, disappointedly, “There won’t be enough money left to hire a good, honest man to watch the farm.”

“Mama,” Tucker stood tall and proud. “There’s a good, honest man right here, in front of you.” Neither mama nor I knew what to say for a while. Then Mama looked at each of us. “Oh, Tucker. Oh, Suzie. I am so proud of you two. Now, how did y’all grow up without me noticing?”

My heart swelled with love for my Mama and brother. “Mama, Tucker, I won’t let you down.”

                                                          *  *  *

Sophia Kaushik loves to write stories which speak to the reader’s emotions, entertain, and create a sense of connection with one’s truer self, and sometimes, better self.

“I don’t know where they are.”  

By Danila Botha

They called her Pits because her last name was Pitfield, and kids would sing “hands up baby hands up” and laugh whenever she raised her hand in class and saw the jungle, all dense and tangled that was growing wild.  We were twelve but the popular girls thought she should have started shaving. A popular creep came up to her in the hall and asked her if her pits matched her carpet and she kicked him in the stomach with her steel toe boots.  She told us in her quiet, measured voice that it was worth getting suspended over. 

They called her Dime Bag because she started a business making beaded necklaces, like daisy chains, all pastel colors and tiny little white flowers. She would sell them in the washroom at recess and lunch. I bought a lavender and baby pink choker that held together for ages. It was going well until the most popular girl in our grade saw the little plastic bags and told everyone she caught her dealing drugs (and later, that she found her decorating her own locker for her birthday, the popular girls could not, for the life of them decide which was worse)

They called her Bisexual because one day in grade nine science, when the teacher asked us about the two types of reproduction, she looked up, a big grin across her still full, light acne pocked baby cheeks and said “A sexual and Bisexual.” Her face got hot and turned red, and she yelled something about not being one of those indecisive people who didn’t know what they wanted, she liked men, just men- and I wanted to throw my binder at her, because I was bi and I already knew it then, even if I hadn’t told anyone. 

They called her the Librarian because of a rumor that she’d had oral sex with a guy in our school library, in this section off to the side, where people went to study. She read a lot, or you could find her scribbling something in her notebook. He wasn’t her boyfriend but you could tell she was obsessed with him, she’d stare daggers at him when he flirted with other girls, and it never stopped him. A girl and her friend said they saw them, some people said oral, some people insisted they had anal and when people asked her, and all she said was she was still a virgin.  I’ve heard she still reads a lot. 

They called her the Mattress when she was there to substitute for their favorite history teacher. She was blonde, prettier than most teachers, with a slightly hooked nose that made her look interesting, too. She wore caramel v-neck sweaters that looked expensive, and her hair pulled back in a casual updo. One of them swore that her mom knew her back in the day, and that everyone called her the mattress because she made the rounds. She had a practical, comforting energy, and when I thought about our usual teacher, who looked down the shirts of girls his daughter’s age and gave away easy A’s, it made me furious. 

They called her the Ditz because she could do a pitch perfect imitation of all those actresses in 90’s comedies, Cher from Clueless, Elle from Legally Blonde. She had the highest GPA in our grade, but it didn’t matter, all everyone ever said was that she didn’t have much substance, and I wish that I’d corrected them, even once, because I knew her better. 

They called her Miss Fist, even though she was the epitome of tiny and delicate, all polo shirts and blonde curly hair. Her boyfriend was a giant, but people insisted they saw them go under the bleachers at a school basketball game. She was a model of discretion, never saying a word to anyone, but whenever I saw his giant hands swallowing hers when I saw them walking around together, I tried not to flinch and wonder how much it hurt. 

They called her Dee, which she insisted on, because her full name was Dikla, which meant palm tree in Hebrew, but resulted in people calling her dick lover since middle school. If someone forgot her name, she’d say Dee, like my bra size. She poured herself into too tight t- shirts and told everyone about waking up one day and discovering she was a D cup, and none of her bras and shirts fit her.  She wanted everyone to know that her boyfriend was her first, that she planned to marry him. It was important that they were each other’s one and only she told me, because it was the only way things could be meaningful. I’m ashamed of how much I hoped he’d cheat on her. 

They called her The Crow because she painted her face like the guy in the movie, all black and she wore Pantera and Pop Will Eat Itself T shirts. She and one of her boyfriends used to steal scales from the Science Lab to weigh and sell their drugs. “I weigh ninety-six pounds,” she told me one day in gym class, “I’m worried about myself,” and I was too jealous to say anything helpful. 

They called her Janice, because she was 5”10, and rail thin, with dark hair and a new nose like Janice Dickinson, and a laugh as distinctive as Janice on Friends. She’d get her hair blown out and her make-up done just to walk in our school’s fashion show. She wore designer all black, and ironic jewelry, huge Dollar Store smiley face or large fake diamond rings. I didn’t know anyone could possibly envy me until I saw her try to flirt with a guy I was dating. 

They called him JD, because he had James Dean hair, he was handsome and could flirt with his eyebrows. He could compliment you on the tiniest thing no one else bothered to notice. He was always cutting class, smoking cigarettes or weed and drinking JD, like he knew how stupid everything we worried about was. He was intense about his acting. I figured he’d direct, or act in something great. I wanted him to get to live in a world where it was safe to show a fuller range of emotions. He didn’t overdose, but he was murdered, in a case related to drugs and when they invited me to a tribute, I cried but couldn’t bring myself to go. 

They called her Signs, because she had two deaf parents, and was fluent in sign language. She was always part of our school’s talent show, signing beside a singer or an actor, like an extra bit of magic. She had a sweet, helium voice, and I thought if she could get a job as a cartoon voice, she’d get rich. One day, she stopped wearing any tight shirts, including her favorite dark purple one, because her dad told her she looked like a whore. Someone saw her after she dropped out of school. He said, “Remember Signs? She’s working as a cashier at The Shoe Company. You know how she wasn’t fat before, but she wasn’t skinny? She’s really skinny now.” 

I hope they’re happier now. I hope they’re safer. 

I hope they’ve gotten kinder. I hope I have. 

                                                                           *   *   *

Danila Botha is a fiction writer based in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collections, Got No Secrets, the Trillium and Vine finalist For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known, and the forthcoming Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness (Guernica Editions, 2024) She is also the author of the novel Too Much on the Inside, and the forthcoming A Place For People Like Us (Guernica 2025)