By Helga Gruendler-Schierloh

Emily sighed. 

It was time to return to reality.  

For the past two months, she had been immersed in the annual stage play of her high school’s drama class. Her leading role of  “Herona, the Sunrise Princess,” a two-act romantic comedy, written and directed by her boyfriend, had consumed most of her spare time.

In real life, Emily was anything but a princess. She behaved more like a boisterous tomboy than the airy-fairy, dainty type. However, for this special performance, she had enthusiastically embraced the characteristics, likes, and dislikes of some imaginary pampered young woman.

And the show had been a huge success! 

But it was over – and Emily was getting ready to dismantle her fairytale image.  

Gazing into her toothpaste-speckled, spit-smeared bathroom mirror, she suddenly felt a pinch of unexpected sadness about relinquishing the intoxicating sprinkles of stage magic.

Why had this play turned her head in a way she would have never, ever expected?

Was it the exhilarating feeling of being in the spotlight, the thunderous applause that made her catch her breath, or the glamorous clothing that turned her from a down-to-earth post-millennial teenager into a glamorous aristocrat of the Middle Ages? Or maybe, just maybe, had the romantic portrayal of a young girl madly in love touched a particularly sensitive nerve in her – considering how she felt about the boy who had been the driving force behind this stage play?

It was, most likely, a bit of all of this!

But now she had to emerge herself into her usual everyday activities again. 

After all, she was and never would be a princess, royal or otherwise. Even though, according to all those glamorous reviews, she had come across as rather authentic. 

She inhaled deeply, let out the air with a whoosh, and refocused at the task at hand.

Scrutinizing her superficial visage, she couldn’t wait to uncover the natural face hidden behind it. Somewhere under all that camouflage was a girl who tended to be easygoing, down-to-earth, and rather unencumbered with any thoughts of how others viewed and judged her.

Smirking at the messy pane of her mirror, she removed her styled blond wig. Then, shaking her head, she let her lush auburn curls cascade across her shoulders. 

She smiled. She still liked her own hair better.

Next, she took out her blue contact lenses.

Her greenish-brown irises shone back at her, filled with a zest for adventure, a bit of a tendency toward naughtiness, a deep-seated curiosity, as well as an ingrained compassion for everything alive. 

Yes, her hazel eyes had always suited her fine — and they would continue to do so.

Emily now dipped a cotton swab into that special facial cleaner she had pilfered from the cosmetic assortment of the student who had been assigned as the play’s make-up artist. 

Ever so careful, she cleared away the thick, black mascara framing her eyes. That’s when she wondered why she even needed that charcoal-colored goop, since her own lashes and brows were naturally quite dark already. 

Well, it was for art’s sake, she thought. That’s when more seems sometimes better.

Suddenly she felt excited about retrieving her own features. Although she scrubbed herself clean after each performance, she had usually been way too exhausted to reevaluate her bare appearance before falling into bed. 

Grimacing, she went to work.  

First there was that skin-buffering conditioner, next the wrinkle-reducing foundation, then the color-enhancing makeup, and finally the moisture-reducing, loose powder dusted over everything. For a girl who preferred to use very little to enhance her face, it had been quite an adjustment to hide behind that beige-colored crème shield. All that paint had served to underline as well as occasionally undermine her theatrical expressions.  

She was painfully aware of how often this fake plaster wall of beauty products had suffered a ghastly crack whenever she laughed too heartily during an especially funny scene. And when she cried – as per script – she would off and on wash away bits of her painstakingly constructed “royal” face to reveal a few specks of what loomed underneath.

However, she had really enjoyed her moments in the limelight. She bathed in all the raving reviews and even the personal compliments heaved upon her. To some of her admirers she would most likely remain, “Herona, the Sunrise Princess.” 

She found that label actually kind of corny, since she definitely was and mostly likely always would be a “night owl.” Therefore, instead of being a delightful princess at sunrise, she often was an absolutely unbearable grouch in the morning. It often took two strong cups of coffee and about an hour of mellowing out before she transformed into her pleasant self.

Finished with dismantling her stage image, Emily drew a long, hot bubble bath and indulged in it for a long time. After finally toweling off, she slipped into her old, washed-out cotton pajamas, then drew herself up in front of the full-length wall mirror in her bedroom

“Hmmm, just look at that figure,” she muttered. “Maybe I should lose a few pounds, but it’s really not an emergency.” 

She shook back her tangled wet hair. “Check, all good.”

Then she swiped both palms across her face. “No goop, nothing, check. Yeah!”

She bent closer.  

The beaming face in front of her was no longer that of a princess. It belonged once again to someone she remembered very well. If anything, there was an added touch of maturity in those eyes. Maybe that came from stumbling around in someone else’s diamond-studded patent-leather sandals for a while — before discovering that one’s old galoshes fit so much better.

Throwing another glance at her mirror twin, Emily was not only pleased with how she looked. She wholeheartedly accepted and embraced again who she really was — the very one she was meant to be.

                                                               *   *   *

Helga Gruendler-Schierloh is a bilingual writer and translator with a degree in journalism and graduate credits in linguistics. Her articles, essays, short stories, and poetry have appeared in the USA, the UK, Canada, and South Africa. Her debut novel, Burying Leo, a Me-Too story, won second place in women’s fiction during Pen Craft Awards’ 2018 writing contest.

By Chris Pais

The summer of 2022 was one of the driest in history and a time of revelations of almost Biblical proportions.  Not a drop of rain fell for weeks leaving the land parched, the vegetation desiccated, the lakes and rivers gasping for breath as their water levels sunk to historical lows.  In Nevada’s Lake Mead which is the largest reservoir in the United States, the falling water level revealed several sets of human remains including a body in a barrel with gunshot wounds and the remnants of many sunken boats.  In Texas, a dying stream exposed dinosaur footprints that had not been exposed since they were formed over a hundred million years ago.  In Spain, a dwindling reservoir revealed the ancient stones of the Dolomes, also known as the Spanish Stonehenge.  The receding water of the Danube showed the weary hulls of several sunken World War II era ships and in Italy, authorities detonated a wartime American explosive which surfaced on the River Po after decades of being safely submerged under water.  In verdant Wales, a lost nineteenth century village saw the light of day after a reservoir shrank to a fraction of its original size.  In China, the mighty Yangtze River retreated and exposed a trio of statues of the Buddha that were hewn out of solid rock over 600 years ago.  

While the earth went on a historical binge of revealing its long lost secrets, earthlings – especially those that had something to hide – wondered if their own dark secrets will similarly be revealed.  People walked around looking over their shoulders with a sense of dread; any conversation that started with “You know what I found….”, or an email from an unfamiliar person, an ominous knock on the door, or a call from an unknown caller on a cellphone could all very well be harbingers of a revelation that could turn anyone’s life upside down and lead to blackmail, extortion and in the best case, sheer embarrassment.  

Tom started dating Maddie after a long Covid-induced hiatus.  The last few years of Tom’s previous relationship felt like a warm beer without any fizz and they became too indifferent to break up.  The lockdown and quarantining from the pandemic were welcome excuses that brought this relationship to an inevitable end, much to their relief.  For the next two years, while the disease raged through the country leaving death and polarization in its wake, Tom clung on to his boring job and his questionable sanity by running several miles a day and doing an inordinate number of pushups.  As time went by, the virus eventually slowed down its ferocious march.  Soon, triple-vaxed people started dating each other, the unvaccinated dated their own and one’s attitudes towards masks became a filter on online dating sites.  

Tom and Maddie had nothing in common apart from having the same vaccination status and feeling the same sense of apathy and boredom towards each other and the world, partly brought about by months of Covid isolation.  They spent time together whenever they could, but they never really got to know each other.  They both hid behind the callus that had formed over the last two years and they did not want to leave themselves exposed, afraid that a vulnerability of any kind will be exploited like a virus exploits its host.  Although they were dating for over a year, they were not any closer to each other than in the first few months of their relationship.

When the global revelations started unravelling in the summer, Tom and Maddie felt exposed just like everybody else.  Tom wondered if Maddie would find out that he did not really have a college degree, and that he did not really come from an elite east coast family.  Would she know that he was really not a pescatarian but only said so to impress her, while he often went home after their dinners and gorged on a big piece of meat?  Should he confess that he not only hated classical music, but he also did not know the first thing about music theory and that he never took violin lessons as a child?  Maddie wondered if she should admit that she did not really enjoy watching football, or that she really did not care too much for his goatee or his friends and found his jokes coarse and insensitive?  Would he soon realize that she really hated golf but really liked the handsome golf instructor?  Would Tom find out that she preferred to do the dishes rather than cook, but she always volunteered to do the cooking because Tom’s cooking – unbeknownst to him but evident to everybody else – was unpalatable?

They were both reluctant to come clean with each other but at the same time, they were in a rush to make a confession before the truth was revealed.  Afraid of confrontation, they both fantasized about smooth exits from their relationship and wished for a breakup without fanfare, drama or hard feelings.   Perhaps one of them will get a job in another state, but with the growing possibility of remote work, this did not seem like a viable excuse to move.  Perhaps one of them (preferably the other) will be forced to take care of a family member with a chronic (but not fatal) illness, leaving them incapable of dating.  Perhaps one of them will question their own sexuality and initiate a breakup of the “it’s not you, it’s me” variety.

Heavy with anticipation and apprehension, they met for their usual Friday night dinner at their favorite restaurant.  Each of them secretly hated the place which they thought was pretentious and overpriced, but they feigned appreciation for the food and the service.  They were both tense and wondered what other shocking revelation would appear on the late night news.  They wondered if their own secrets will be revealed.  They drank more than their usual amount of wine, each planning when and how they should confess their own deceptions. To an outsider, they looked very much like a couple in love, and the waiter even brought them a complimentary cake, flambéed it and said, “It’s on the house”.  

Tom and Maddie sipped on their wine and could see each other clearing their throats, as one nervously does before saying something controversial.  They dug into the warm cake with their forks.  They thought to themselves, perhaps after the next sip of wine, they will tell the other what they really felt.  They looked at each other and then looked away, waiting for a distraction, anything to delay the inevitable.  Perhaps the waiter would interrupt and check in on them again. Maybe the fire alarm will go off.  They took another sip and cleared their throats again, almost in unison.  

Then they slowly began to speak. “I….love you”, they muttered simultaneously.  

                                                             *    *    *

Chris Pais grew up in India and came to the United States to pursue graduate studies in engineering. His work appears in Poetry India, The International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Wingless Dreamer, Wild Roof Journal, The Literary Bohemian, Defunct Magazine and elsewhere. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he works on clean energy technologies and tinkers with bikes, guitars and recipes.

By Ian Johnson

They refused to pin their love wholly on the arrival of spring, as they didn’t consider their love to be seasonal, but neither would they dismiss the seasons entirely. As it began, the weather was an accordion, drifting in and out between what had been dormant and what promised to stir, the tiny icicles of the dawn melting into the sun-simmered streams of late afternoon, the frozen bark on monochromatic branches beginning to pimple with the promise of fresh green buds. You could still read on the porch at 4:30, even if you shivered and lit a fire before dinner. 

They had passed the winter alone, drinking Lemon Ginger and Tension Tamer teas, staring at their smeared reflections in icy windows in under-heated apartments, childhood blankets draped over their shoulders, feeling heavy beneath the navel but light at the crown, cozily nursing the raptures and ruptures of the year before, gazing backwards, not ahead, each unaware of the other across town. But when the glass thawed and the windows cracked open, when the woods began to tinkle and drip and the treetops began to sing, when going outside warmed their cheeks instead of stinging them red, when the motherly spring approved of it, both felt ready to share themselves again with the world they had for the darker months turned away from. 

A technological apparatus and its algorithms, lazy and unnatural, prompted their union, but that was easily forgotten. Their first conversation in breathing proximity was in a cafe. Almost as soon as they were recited, he and she similarly forgot the optimistic biographical sketches they painted for each other, the do you like and what’s your favorite lines of inquiry they both fell back on. Sipping warm tea brewed with fresh leaves, their legs losing circulation, they wished time would speed up and hoped it would never yield to the clock another tick. There were so many ways they were like so many other first dates, yet something kept them in their seats in the little cafe on Liberty Ave long after the spoken conversation dried up, long after those who’d amusingly, adoringly and then annoyingly listened in snapped shut their computers and moved away. They stayed until the message was clear: they would leave the door unlocked for the other, the porch light on, the welcome mat laid out, a bowl of hot broth on the stove. The calendar said it was spring, but there were really only two seasons, in love and out of it. 

Afterwards, they hugged goodbye, leaning forward at the waist, straight-legged, like two sides of a bridge embracing over a river raging with run-off, and felt assured of what ran underneath. They had, in their first few hours together, assumed joint custody of something amorphous and fragile, something amorous and pink, a gift of the Earth’s tilt, something which threatened to crack, was supposed to spill, but only when ripe. Both were a little unsure of what to do, but felt sure they would eventually do it, because they’d done it before and would do it again. They hugged goodbye a second time and walked back to their homes that now seemed empty without the other. 

A few dates later — after a movie during which they’d rested their hands on separate armrests, a movie that neither could remember enough of to discuss when it was over; and after a dinner which saw them suffer through several long bouts of silence, only mildly awkward, the silence, it was just that their mutual delight at feeling so intimately thawed was thick enough to be intermittently suffocating; when the subliminal intimation could proceed no further, he presented her with a gift, a small box tied up with a red bow. She set the box on her lap and pulled it loose, collapsing the knot, then shimmied off the string. She ran her hand across the bare top, to clear it of invisible pixels of dust, then lifted the lid. Inside was a kiss, the chocolate kind wrapped in silver foil, with a note: Redeem soon, please. 

Their dates were official, but they weren’t officially dating, not really, and neither was sure how everything, if anything, would fall into place. Whatever it was, it was over before it began. Both knew it and accepted it, which was why it could start in the first place, because it was already finishing. What made the summer bearable was knowing that fall would follow. Both preferred it that way, the looming loss defining the current gain, and with this comfort in mind and in heart they assumed a more definite shape and color, occupied firmer dimensions and started to carry mass and weight.

Their first kiss, the first one with lips, was shared on a bench in a small park. They were talking and staring at each other’s mouths while they talked – neither can remember what about – long enough to confirm what needed to be confirmed, and then they were kissing. Her lips were colder than he’d expected, but not in a bad way – the verdant canopy above them simply didn’t filter much sunlight. When he moved his tongue to meet hers, she pressed her mouth shut and giggled. She didn’t know why she did this, but she didn’t pull away either, and there was extra rotation at the hips towards the other, and when they kissed again it was more coordinated, and everything warmed up.

Before it was anything else, the sex that eventually followed was a relief and a reminder. The dark winter had almost convinced them it would never happen again. All their parts worked, and fit well with their counterparts and, by the end, were working at high speed and with plenty of satisfying operating noises. Both were smiling, or trying not to smile and failing.

In the weeks that followed, words were used for coordination purposes, and for harmless comments about an ice cream shop or an exhibit through a window, and little else, for whatever had arisen between them could not be supported with words, could only be destroyed by using the wrong ones. They feared words would affect their shapes and colors, which they’d waited so long to see and admire. There was sweat and heat and long nights where their preferred activity didn’t require anything verbal and despite the heights at midnight the whole thing always felt a little sad. 

But the end would come regardless of their restraint, and so to avoid the inevitable destruction they would prematurely self-destruct. As summer faded they met again at the park, and sat on the bench that had hosted their first kiss. A single leaf had fallen. He noticed the yellowing edges, the way both sides curled in, as if it was trying to give itself a hug. He rolled the stem between his fingers and the blade danced. He could hear the crunch of the leaf without stepping on it.

She was crying and felt silly for crying, but he was crying, too, and the tears validated something. Too much affection too soon was suspect, but tears at the end were proof. It justified the summer on some higher plane. She wanted to store his tears in the little box he’d given her, so that if she needed to remember him she could dip a pinkie in it and rub his tears on her wrists and neck. They were crying, too, for all that they hadn’t permitted themselves to be. 

The sun was hanging low in the sky like a neighbor who can’t quite see over the fence. The wood of the bench was cold and prickly beneath their thighs. It would be an early winter, and the winter would be frigid and lonely, but on the other side of winter was spring, and maybe spring, with a fresh medley of shapes and colors, would come early, too. 

                                                      *   *   *

Ian Johnson is the author of the memoir The Bounce and the Echo – Dying to love a game (ATM Publishing, 2019), and the forthcoming novel The Commencement Version (Brandylane Publishers, 2024), as well a number of short stories and essays. He teaches middle school English in Richmond, VA.