Non-fiction by Natalie Gramer

She is a neat freak. Bathing herself a handful of times a day, her hair is softer than velvet, so much so that it barely registers any notion of feeling as the strands run between my fingertips. Each one is a shimmering black that bounces between the shade of oblivion and asphalt in the overhead light. There are patches of white peppered in giving way to her blushed skin beneath.

She has staked a claim on every sort of property you can think of, removing remnants of others at her whim.

“Squatter’s rights,” she says.

“But that’s my favorite gel pen.”

“Mine.” She blinks.

“Those are my receipts!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I need these for my tax write-offs,” she yawns.

“Okay, but that’s my laptop and I need it for class this morning.”

“Forget about it.”

Her green eyes mock me when I ask her questions no one is able to answer and she talks at me in a language I do not know yet seem to understand. Sometimes, she talks just to hear herself make noise. She does not have any eyebrows, but she often raises them at me in her quizzical expressions.

Most of her days are spent in luxury, her oversized body lounging on the most abhorrent of surfaces or inconvenient of places. She’s not entirely removed from society or social etiquette; she enjoys watching my favorite TV shows with me and complains when we don’t sit outside in the morning with coffee. Most importantly, she never fails to wish me a good night or good morning. But don’t tell her she’s a cat, she won’t believe you. And after a while, you won’t believe that either.

*   *   *

Natalie Gramer is a pilot and ground instructor holding a Bachelor of Arts in English Writing with a minor in Anthropology and a Bachelor of Science in Aviation & Aerospace Science from MSU Denver. Natalie has been published in the Shot Glass Journal and enjoys mythology and history.

By Cecilia Maddison

Your whispers pull me in like driftwood on the tide.  I’m washed up, thirsty, and your sly grin beams from within each gleaming bottle. You remind me of the warmth waiting in your arms. It’s all mine, you promise, for a while at least. 

A couple of bottles will do for now. They clink as I carry them like babies to the News and Booze checkout.  I pay extra for the carrier bag to hide you in, because not everyone loves you like I do. Not everyone approves. But who cares, because my boy Owen’s coming home today, and you’ll be by my side to greet him, seeping comfort, soothing nerves. You’ve always shared the highs and lows. We go back a long, long way. 

You were there when I was small enough to snuggle on my daddy’s lap, a beer can beside us on the armrest, his finger curling on the ring pull. I can hear it now, the click and your gleeful hiss. You were there in his loud laughter, his rosy cheeks, and I saw you smiling in his glassy eyes. I sometimes took a sip of froth, his hands holding mine over the slippery sides, and I didn’t like the taste, but he said − you said − that’s my girl. 

Other times, you flounced in swathed in peach or coconut on Mother’s Day. We’d present you with the breakfast tray, wrapped and ribboned, and my mother would hold you to her satin gown like a long-lost child. I’d sneak exotic sips of you, a bitter ghost swirling in cold lemonade, as she crooned along to love songs on the radio. 

Outside, drizzle wets my face. The promenade is deserted and a silver-tinged loneliness licks the puddles. An equinox tide has drained the sea, exposing muddy flats, and gulls plunge beak-first from the sky to stab at stranded fish.  Owen once played upon those drifts of shingle, filling buckets, trailing fistfuls of seaweed, unmarred by bad deeds. Today, I’d stop to breathe the briny tang, only the bottles are awkward to hold, and I’m wishing away the time to taste you.

Remember the first time we were properly introduced? You found me in a huddle of teenage drinkers on the blustery beach, sharing bummed cigarettes and slugging your foul taste from a shop-lifted vodka bottle. In a few eye-watering gulps you were in, surfing across the blood-brain barrier, pooling pleasure in my hungry brain. You hijacked reason, draped yourself across the chaise lounge of my mind, and I said make yourself at home. I was blissful, giddy, full of love, and never wanted you to leave. 

You and I became a team. With you, my liquid sidekick, I was funny and brave.  With you, my secret weapon, responsibilities drowned like rats. Friendships were fast-tracked, disinhibitions washed away, and recklessness bubbled through the bedrock of sense.  You coached me through the grim hangovers, the next day’s embarrassment, the inexplicable bruises. We laughed about the odd lost shoe. That was wild, you whispered, let’s do it again. 

You drip-fed brittle, brief relationships. In the stark light of the morning after, stumbling from the beds of bad choices, you murmured it’s ok, this is how everybody feels.

I leave the promenade, turn into the side street of council flats, and climb the concrete steps to the front door. Soon, Owen will take these same steps and a rare bubble of joy rises inside me. The guilt has weighed like ballast for too long. I never protected him as I should, letting you smother the cells of his fragile, new life from the start. I took stock of our relationship − remember how I tried to shut you out? But you wouldn’t have it, kept checking in on me, suggesting we could make this work. A little of what you fancy won’t do any harm, you assured me. Sip by sip you shimmied as close as you’d ever been, and it wasn’t just me but my baby you had your claws in. You made bargains with his brain like a witch in a fairy tale claiming what was yours.

As Owen grew, you were the guest of honour at every celebration. When he turned sixteen, the men of our family clapped him on the back and brought him beer. He drank deeply, grimaced, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. It didn’t touch the sides, he boasted, but his flushed cheeks betrayed him. Are you slacking, Mum? I drank up, knowing you were now his friend too, and you flung your cloak about us both. I reasoned that in run-down seaside towns like this, there are plenty of worse things to course through our children’s veins.

We should talk about that night; the one that ruined Owen. You were there with all his mates, your arms draped over their shoulders, stoking them up until they felt invincible. You could have left it there, let them have their fun, but it wasn’t enough. After all, you’d been working on Owen for years, curdling his mood and messing with his self-control. What did it matter who spilt the pint?  Owen threw the fatal punch, but you told him to do it. Owen served the time, but the crime was all yours.   

I saw the other mother in the supermarket, not long after the hearing. She loaded groceries on the conveyor belt, gaunt with grief, going through the motions of a world that made no sense. I know, I wanted to tell her, I’m sorry. When she saw me, the colour drained from her face and she fled, leaving a pile of packets and tins and a bemused cashier buzzing for assistance. 

Through the kitchen window, a sliver of sea gleams between buildings. The tide’s on the turn, washing back over the rippled expanse of the shore. I slide the bottles into the fridge. The gold embossed letters on the label befit your charm; you always manage to dress for the occasion, and I agree we deserve a treat. Mistakes were made and a life was lost, but Owen must move on.

The impatient rapping at the front door has barely faded before I’ve flung it wide open and Owen’s home, throwing down a grubby canvas holdall. We’re all hugs and smiles and happy words of welcome before I stand back to take a proper look at him. He’s leaner now, his face more angular. I remember the jokes during visits about the food being mush, both of us falsely bright and glad to be distracted by nonsense. There’s something else I see too, but I can’t quite place it. A sadness where anger once bristled. 

‘You’ll want something decent to eat.’ I’m chattering too fast. ‘We’ll have whatever you fancy for dinner. But first, let’s celebrate!’

I turn to fetch what’s missing. You, my friend, so we can toast a fresh start. Let’s mark the moment in your cosy glow.

Owen puts his hand on my arm, a shadow crossing his face.  ‘The thing is, Mum, I’ve been going to this group. We’ve talked a lot about what happened, and how I flipped that night. I’m not doing it any more − the booze, you know?’

For a moment, I’m startled. This isn’t what our family does. I’m struggling to make sense of it, ready to suggest we just have one or wait for dinner. Maybe I’ll have a drink for both of us. I’m about to ask are you sure?  But I think it’s you who’s saying that, so I bite my lip and smile.

 ‘I’m proud of you.’

Owen unpacks in his room, where old football fixtures are tacked to the wall from the year time stopped. I think about the other mother’s empty room, and another tide turns. The bottles are cool and heavy when I take them from the fridge, and my fingers twitch to tear away the foil, but I place them back in the carrier bag, twist the top closed, and carry them outside, with you still trapped behind glass. A shaft of evening sun pierces the clouds and gulls shriek as I flip back the hinged lid of a wheelie bin. You fall with a soft thud onto bulging black rubbish sacks and I leave you in the stench of rotting food, trapped like Jonah in the belly of a whale. Only it’s me who’s being tested.

I hear you again when I’m alone and Owen’s at his meeting. You promise to keep me company, to soothe me one last time. You coax, then plead, and finally demand that I retrieve you from the dark and take you back to where you belong. Instead, I switch on the TV, let the dazzle of a game show host’s grin fill my eyes, and turn the volume up high until canned laughter drowns out your lies.

                                                               *   *   *

Cecilia is a writer and health professional from London, UK. Her work has appeared in Brilliant Flash Fiction, The Ulu Review, RawLit, and in the 2023 anthology of Stories That Need To Be Told (Tulip Tree Press).

By Calla Gold

The first time I saw the shiny bald head of our neighbor, Mr. Lovelace, I tried to imagine what the rest of his face looked like. I already thought him fussy, with the top of his head bobbing to the sound of his industrious broom, sweeping his decks at three each afternoon. 

Standing at the edge of my second story dormer window, my limited view included our hedge of bougainvillea, the top bit of Mr. Lovelace’s ugly modern home, and his rectangular, same-height pine forest. The trees seemed to be laid out like eucalyptus plantations near the railroads before they realized the logs split and wouldn’t hold spikes. Mr. Lovelace also had the only gate on our private lane. It all said “Keep away,” to me. I figured he’d keel over if he knew he was living next door to a commune. 

I’m Lili and me and my single mom moved here when I was fifteen. Henry and Ron, the dudes who my mom met at the Unitarian church in a group exploring the idea of communal living, bought the eight-bedroom fixer-upper in Mission Canyon. The Oakes, we called it, was a sprawling eighty-year-old, two-story, wooden Craftsman, tucked into a hilly Mission Canyon neighborhood. Nestled inside a bordering canopy of old oaks, pocked by woodpeckers and acorn-stuffed by squirrels, the house basked in the sun, shielded from the view of neighbors. 

With all that privacy, came the touchy-feelie part of commune living; middle-aged nude sunbathers catching rays on our wide wooden deck. If I had a friend over, I’d herd them like an Australian Shepherd avoiding hot lava, taking the long way around to my bedroom. I’d made a friend at school named Jules. I hoped a visit to the house wouldn’t torpedo our slender connection.

My room hid at the far end of our second-floor unfinished attic; a cramped, slope ceilinged, haphazardly dry-walled nook. The dormer window and my thriving jungle of houseplants turned dinky into cozy and cute. I loved that that no else one wanted it. It crouched directly above Henry’s room. “Lili, do not make a ruckus. And be polite to Henry,” my mom said to me the day we moved in. 

Henry was a funky-looking old dude. In my judgy way, I saw him as this unattractive, old, boring academic who’d ramble on about his subject without seeing that people listening were being polite. 

One afternoon, I was trying to concentrate on doing my homework (maybe overstating my enthusiasm here,) when I heard what sounded like a wounded dog. Then I heard a wail that cut off. It was odd, because it was coming from Henry’s bedroom and he never made noise. He didn’t seem to have any friends either. Like I’d notice. 

I told Mom about the bizarre noises coming from his room. She told me that Henry was taking a weekly sexuality course, and was probably doing homework with his new woman friend. Mom did that turn the key in the lock, don’t-tell gesture. Picturing his paunchy, naked, self, was bad enough, why would I tell anyone? I would have preferred never knowing he had sex at all. But I lived in a commune. And it’s hard to not know who’s having sex with whom with a bunch of horny Unitarians.

It was fine with me if Henry wanted to explore his sexuality. Not so fine with me was Sue, the sad sack, unattractive lady, who became a new member of our commune, living in Henry’s room. She dressed like thrift-store clothes-shopper, without any shabby-chic sensibility. Sue had some poky job, a shitty car with oxidized paint, and barely spoke. But put Henry on top of her and she shouted her joy of sex, like Tarzan calling the apes.

Now I know there’s a lid for every pot, but I did not enjoy listening to their frequent enjoyment of each other’s un-sexy bodies. Seeing them together in the kitchen or bumping into her in the bathroom was just a continuing string of awkward encounters. She’d get a hunted look, like I’d say something about a mousy ma’am like her sounding like a Las Vegas hooker going for the big tip. I know, I’m a terrible person. 

The day came when Jules visited. Up in my bedroom, our quiet convo was interrupted by the gradient increase of half-heard moans. Our talk stopped, I closed my eyes, clenched my fists, and felt my face pull in like a prune. When Sue shouted at the peak of her sexual experience, I happened to look up and Jules’s eyes were wide and brimming with unshed tears. Her hands were clamped over her mouth to stop her laughter. We stared at each other and snorted and heaved in quiet mirth until we could control ourselves.  

That cemented our friendship. Within a week, she’d stumbled onto the nude sunbathing, heard another commune member’s Primal Scream therapy session on the way to the bathroom, and joined us for dinner where the college professors expounded on the sociological underpinnings of our disintegrating society. She joined right in with a smile for everyone.

A month later, while trying to win a Walkman by selling gobs of candy bars for Madrigals, I rang the bell on the gate to Mr. Lovelace’s. The gate glided opened, and there he stood, in khaki pants and a collared shirt. Beneath his bald dome, his pale blue eyes looked over my shoulder. His lips had red patches as if he picked them, like mine. 

“I live next door.” I pointed to the one bit of roof visible.

His eyes met mine, then looked down. His lips quirked a smile. He reminded me of Henry. Looking over his shoulder I saw multiple wooden bird feeders, sparrows darting back and forth, and seed sprayed out on the deck below. 

“I like your bird feeders.”

He bought a dozen bars. He had a nice smile. I decided he was okay.

                                                   *   *   *

Calla Gold owned a jewelry design business for thirty-eight years. Her Indie non-fiction book: Design Your Dream Wedding Rings, From Engagement to Eternity, was released on Valentine’s Day 2019. Her recent short stories and novelette have been published in The Santa Barbara Literary Journal, Killer Nashville Magazine, and Confetti Magazine.
Calla resides in southern California with her husband and an assortment of mountain bikes.

By Michael Degnan

I didn’t speak much in college. That is, not if I was in a group. I didn’t like speaking in front of a crowd, even just among friends.

For hours I could be with others, laughing and smiling, but saying little more than “I know” or “same.”

Of course, if I were just with one person, I could talk about anything for hours. Especially if we were smoking cigarettes or if I thought she was cute.

But on balance, I was quiet. I knew that silence was like quicksand — the longer you stayed in it, the harder it was to leave.

One of the stories I remembered most vividly from college was about a guy who didn’t say a word for a year. Then, with media cameras around him, he finally said: “Man, I could really go for a Pepsi.” A friend of mine had gone to high school with him when this happened. Apparently Pepsi paid him $1 million. 

I never found out if this story was true. I was skeptical at the time, but my friend was adamant, and this was just the type of story that I loved. I wanted it to be true.

I was reading the news when it came back to me. I had just scanned a list of headlines, all of them inane. “Feeling broke on a $665k salary” was the last one I saw before closing my computer. It was all so cynical — content only existed now for clicks and attention. None of it made me better informed. None of it made me feel good.

Maybe silence wasn’t a bad thing, I thought. Maybe silence was a virtue, a principled stand. And the guy I had heard about in college — a hero.

I decided not to talk for a day. And then another, and another. It was easier than expected. Work was just emails and WhatsApps, even with my boss, who was 10 years younger and ended every sentence with an exclamation point.

It didn’t take long for people to notice. The checkout guy at the corner store with a blank name tag, my drinking buddies who only felt like themselves in a dimly lit dive bar, the woman at the desk in my building’s lobby who always wore sweaters and looked like my aunt Kelly —  they all started to comment on it, asking when I was going to talk again, and laughing when I only shrugged in response.

By the second month, I stopped hearing from my friends. The novelty of grabbing drinks with a friend who didn’t talk had worn off.

I spent most of my free time reading. My dad had put me on to the classics. He wanted to know what I thought about Moby Dick. He was fascinated by how whales saw the world, each eye looking in a different direction. How amazing, he thought, that their brain can resolve two completely different fields of sight.

Sometimes he would end his texts with the line: If your mom were still here, she’d say she loves you. 

Time moved quickly. Each day, each week, held the same shape. Before I knew it, it had almost been a year. This, of course, was my target, my finish line. 

I reached it on a Tuesday in April. I sat in my reading chair with a cup of coffee and, for the first time in a year, made a call.

“Hello — is this a joke? Michael, is this you?” My dad talked fast, his words tumbling out.

“Hi Dad. Yeah, it’s me.” My voice was soft and tentative, like a weak muscle after a cast is finally taken off. “So, what’s new?” I said, not sure what it was that I actually wanted to say. My dad laughed and said not much, just that it was good to hear from me. Yeah, I agreed. And then I said more, not sure where it was coming from.

“Dad? Remember after Mom died how you used to make up stories before bed? About all the crazy things that she was doing — the reasons why I’d never see her again?”

“Yeah.”

“Could you do that again?”

There was a grunt that sounded like my dad smiling, and he started to tell me that the reason I hadn’t seen my mom recently wasn’t because she had died in a car crash, but because she had been recruited to lead the mission to Mars. Apparently the billionaire in charge had heard about how good she was with directions and how many constellations she knew.

My dad went on, and it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember what my mom’s voice sounded like. She had become lost in silence. Maybe that was what this was all about — after missing my mom for thirty years, I wanted to lose myself in silence too and search for her there.

As my dad described the red space rocks that my mom had to collect, I closed my eyes and smiled, wondering why it had taken me so long to start looking.

                                                        *          *        *

Michael Degnan lives on an island in Maine. His work has appeared in Maudlin House, Every Day Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine and elsewhere.

By Gary Duncan

When it’s hot, Ethan likes to park at the top of the hill and sit there with the windows and doors closed.

He thinks this would be an interesting way to die.

He managed three and a half hours once.

Anushka, his new girlfriend, said she wanted to try it. They’d only been together for a couple of weeks, but something had clicked. He liked the way they sometimes ended each other’s sentences, like an old married couple.

They parked at the top of the hill when it was hot and sat there with the windows and doors closed.

After an hour, Ethan said, “What do you think? Do you think this-”

“Would be an interesting way to die? I do.”

She’d taken her shirt off and had unbuttoned her jeans.

She said, “It’s hot-”

“But not too hot.”

An hour later, drifting in and out of sleep, she said, “My dad died in a house fire when I was three. I never told you that, but it’s true. That’s what happened. All that was left of him were his two front teeth and his fake Rolex.”

She took her bra off and said, “Mum’s still got the watch. But they buried his teeth in a ceremonial grave. It wasn’t a big grave. Sometimes, I go and talk to him. Well, to-”

“His teeth.”

“Yes, his teeth.”

Ethan, sweat running down his chin, said, “That must be-”

“It is,” she said.

*   *   *

Gary Duncan’s stories have appeared in Unbroken Journal, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, 100 Word Story, and New Flash Fiction Review, among others. His flash fiction collection, You’re Not Supposed to Cry, is available from Vagabond Voices.