A Memoir By Debbie Chase

I hoist my drum from its orange and black batik printed case and place it on the moist, humid ground, in the middle of a circle of Cyprus trees.  Like my fabulous shoe collection, my djembe has been gathering dust over the past four months during stay-at-home orders.  No drum circles, dance classes to play for, or buddies hanging in the park drinking Guinness and banging out rhythms together as the sun set.

I missed my cowboy boots and the swagger they gave me when I wore them, and I missed that drum, when my hands bounced off the goat skin, sound echoed out the bottom to fill a room, and the call and response from my drum buddies filled the air.  

So I pulled on my boots and drove to the park.  I look wistfully at the band shell where we all used to play –eight of us trading rhythms and stories, picking our favorite tunes and arguing over which break went with which song.   The djembe does not come with printed sheet music. All the tunes are taught by watching, listening and memorizing.  We needed each other to remember the order of beats, the breaks, and the names and meanings of the ancient songs, which ones were for harvest, celebrations or rites of passage.

But today I play alone. I angle the drum between my legs and hit my palms to the skin.  The sound is eerie, muffled at first, my hands no longer used to the quick snap needed to make a crisp sound.

So much of my community lost.  All the two-dimensional awkwardness, one-at-a-time, bad timing of a zoom conversation.  Without heat or warmth, my own day-to-day energy fades.  Online relationships hardly seem worth preserving.  

I tilt the bass between my legs, angle my hands around the edges of the tightly pulled goat skin head and attempt sound – eight months of inactivity erasing ten years of devoted practice.  Muffled, flat, uninspiring.  Circling me and my lone chair,  the Cyrus trees in their stoic hardness seem to judge my meager notes, a disappointing substitute for my cluster of misfit drum buddies banging out rhythms, arguing about the break, guzzling beer while we fed off each other’s energy and joy.   

But I keep at it.  The flat notes.  Stiff arms.  Crumpled spine bent over the drum.  

People walk the paths in the park– couples with dogs, older people with canes, kids. 

But then a young girl approaches my circle and starts moving her little hips to my beats, and  I remember the point – joy. I uncurl my back from its hunched stance, kick off my boots, bury my toes in the earth, and channel my buddies.    Victor, the respiratory therapist who smoked so much pot that he could never remember the rhythms.  Lisa, whose dreadlocks smelled like the inside of my son’s rabbit cage.  Omari, former marine and ready with a knife if a stranger approached us from behind.  Wheedie, longing for Ghana where his father was born and had returned to die. I miss the sweat of real people in three dimensions, the smells, the raised voices, the bad timing, the smoke. 

People clap.  I have never been an entertainer.  Content to mess around with my buddies but reluctant to take the stage.  But in this park on this day, when the music houses, dance halls, and theaters are shuttered.  When so few planes fly and the sky is still.  When playgrounds lie dormant and laughing children stay home.  I become the sound filling the park, the streets and the sky.  I feel the offering and the receiving, almost like the call and response of my drummer community.  

*   *   *

Debbie Chase is a writer, restaurant cook, nonprofit strategy consultant, drummer and mother.  Her work has appeared in Jacobin Magazine, Under the Gum Tree, Cincinnati Review, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Discretionary Love, 5 Minutes and Motherwell.  She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.  

By Mark Fleckenstein

They met in the library. He knocked a book off the shelf which fell on her foot. After an embarrassed apology and shy introductions, they studied at the same table. Attempted small talk. Ended up locked inside the library and made love on the study table before calling security to let them out.  She graduated in spring. They married in the fall, a year they’d met.

The baby died suddenly after the birth. They separated, then divorced 6 months later. They still exchange holiday cards, infrequent telephone calls and letters.  He no longer remembers why they divorced, and she, how they met. The baby still rests between them. 

                                                                *   *   *

Five states, a B.A. in English and MFA in Writing later, Mark Fleckenstein settled in Massachusetts. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, he’s published seven full-length books of poetry and three chapbooks.

By Wendy K. Mages

A gaggle of intrepid geese, in a nearly straight line, marches into the busy intersection. Traffic screeches to a halt. The geese celebrate; fanning their feathers, they gather into formation honking and preening, like a brass band in front of a reviewing stand. Cars honk back. The parade waddles on….

                                                             *   *   *

Wendy K. Mages, a Mercy University Professor, is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an award-winning poet and author. She earned her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her master’s in Theatre at Northwestern University. As a complement to her research on the effect of the arts on learning and development, she performs at storytelling events and festivals in the US and abroad. To learn more about her and her work, and to find links to her published stories and poetry, please visit https://www.mercy.edu/directory/wendy-mages

Creative Nonfiction by Kandi Maxwell

I despise moving. It’s hard physical work. Pack and lift heavy boxes. Move household objects from downstairs to upstairs and out the front door. Load the stuff into the back of my Jeep. Drive thirty miles to our storage unit and unload the boxes. When I return home, I think about cleaning, but save it for the following day, and instead, take a much-needed nap. This wasn’t the original plan. Our final move was supposed to be in 2015 after my husband, Lloyd, and I had retired, sold our home on thirty acres in the high desert mountains in Modoc County, California. Moved from the land of sweet-smelling sage and juniper trees to the forested Sierra Foothills. The land of lakes and rivers in shimmering shades of blue. We moved to be near children and grandchildren. We bought a tiny cabin on half an acre lush with Ponderosa pines, madrone, and cedar. Yet, crushing claustrophobia pressed in on us at the tiny property. Our cabin was close to neighbors whose homes were visible through the trees and sat too close to a well-traveled road. At least it appeared that way after living fifteen years on a dead-end, dirt road with only a few sparsely scattered neighbors. Cattle had often traveled our dusty road in Modoc County—to see cars drive by in front of our new home was a bit of a shock. We needed seclusion and solitude so made plans to buy a larger piece of property as a retreat. 

The planned refuge came together in 2019 after Lloyd found a remote ten acres with a well, one solar panel, an outdoor shower, and a useable off-grid trailer. I swept, scoured, and scrubbed. Lloyd installed new flooring, a wood stove and water heater. We bought a propane refrigerator. We took loads and loads of junk to the dump—old mattresses, rolls of rusty wire, rotting wood and broken furniture. The property was rustic at best, but quiet. No road near the trailer. Our long dirt driveway was gated and locked. We were several miles from pavement. 

The plan to use the trailer as our private getaway, while keeping our on-grid cabin changed when a neighbor asked to buy our cabin. Another plan formed—live off-grid full time. That worked great for two years, but life wasn’t easy. We were three years into severe drought. Heat was suffocating without air conditioning. Then came the fires. First, there was the Willow Fire of 2020 that sparked near our trailer. Thousands of people were evacuated in communities near us, but we didn’t know that. Without electricity or a paved road, we were not given any warning. Thankfully, our neighbor up the hill had a fire scan at sent me a text at 1:00 a.m. Alarmed, I stepped outside and saw the glowing flames in the distance. My heart raced as I rushed back to the trailer and told Lloyd we needed to get out immediately. 

 Later, there was the Dixie Fire of 2021, an enormous wildfire that began in July and burned 963,309 acres before it was contained in October. For four months, smoke turned blue skies into oppressive gray that burned our lungs, stung our eyes. Lloyd has asthma and COPD. His incessant cough became a dry, hacking bark. When the fire drew close to our property, we were evacuated—twice. I remember the panic. My shallow breath; my tensed muscles. We were frazzled by hyper vigilance. Previously, in 2018, my children and grandchildren lost their homes in the Paradise Camp Fire. We had already been emotionally devastated by fire. Now, we were bone-weary and scared.

The third plan hatched—buy another home not far from the trailer, on the grid, near pavement, a fire hydrant, and a community water source. It took some time to find the right place, but eventually, we found a white, wooden farmhouse on five acres. It was higher up the mountain where snow had been heavy in the past, but the drought hadn’t brought snow to our new house in years. Not until the winters we lived there when snow piled six feet high. Massive cedars, weakened by drought and attacked by bark beetles, fell all over our property, smashing fences, our shed, the satellite dish. The power failed, and the outage lasted weeks. Roads closed. After two winters of heavy snow, Lloyd was exhausted. Shoveling snow and cutting and clearing downed trees is hard in an overworked body filled with degenerating discs and bones.

The fourth plan was Lloyd’s idea. I loved the snow, but Lloyd was cold and overwhelmed. He shoveled around his truck and down the driveway. As he tried to drive away, his truck slid in the snow and smashed into the garage. He didn’t stop— just kept on driving down the hill to town to see a realtor. 

“We need to be realistic,” Lloyd said to me. “We’re aging. Maybe we should move closer to the big town.” I was reluctant. Established requirements: acreage, not too close to other homes, preferably on a small road, and not in town. We found the house on the edge of town with three acres on a quiet street. There were sugar pines and oaks. Green, grassy hills. Turkey and deer. But I couldn’t get used to the peripheral noise—car engines and loud, obnoxious motorcycles, sirens, and barking dogs. The house was built in 1957, newer than our previous homes, but I couldn’t accept the blue carpet, or the Airbnb feel of the home—the house came furnished with over-sized furniture: a sofa, chair, and ottoman. I felt detached. Lost. I had no emotional connection to the low, rolling hills or the house.

Lloyd was fine. He could turn off his hearing aids for quiet, and he enjoyed the comfort of spreading out on the big couch. He thrived in the summer’s heat. This was his geography—until winter when atmospheric river rains caused a state of emergency due to raging winds and hammering rain that caused three huge digger pines to fall on top of our waterline and lift it out of the earth. Trees had to be removed, the debris chipped and hauled off, the entire water line replaced. It took a full month to clear the trees, trench the earth, and install the line. Lloyd, at 74, hand-dug about 20 feet of trench line as the fifty-something-year-old plumber didn’t want to shovel through the narrow, tree-rooted spot. 

Desperation filled us. Was there anyplace we could settle down?

The fifth plan was simple—sell the too-close-to-town house to live off-grid on the land we loved. We had been chased off the mountain by climate chaos, but experience had shown us there was no place to hide. Lloyd had recently finished an addition on our trailer. After a well inspection, we had a new well pump installed. A second generator for a window air conditioning unit. We plan to enclose the 10’ x 12’ screen room for more useable space. Add more solar panels for winter lights.

So, we’re moving again. We will put money into a place in the mountains we can’t insure, a place where red flag days are prevalent all summer. Where river rains flood dirt roads and heavy snow downs trees. We may be crazy, but here we are in our seventies, packing up to move from our illusional safe house to live quietly off-grid in the woods. After five moves in nine years, I’m exhausted and yearn to stay put until our bodies wither and fade. I fear fleeing from yet another home, but dreams and memories hold me up. 

At least for awhile, we will live in our beloved Sierras. Sit outside and drink our morning coffee under the cedar trees’ fan-like sprays. Watch shadows dance on the trees. Because even in our elderly age, we refuse to put a limit on our plans.

*   *   *

Kandi Maxwell (she/her) is a creative nonfiction writer who lives in Northern California. Her stories have been published in Hippocampus Magazine, Bluebird Word, The Raven’s Perch, Wordrunner eChapbooks, and elsewhere. Her memoir, Snow After Fire, was released in June 2023 by Legacy Book Press. Learn more about Kandi’s writing at kandimaxwell.com.

 

By Sarah Wheeler Hedborn

I opened my mother’s purse as the priest’s homily droned and dug my hand through the alligator infested swamp of its contents. Alligators swirled around me, snapping, biting, boring me with words and songs and rituals that meant nothing to me but a wasted Sunday morning. My fingers groped through the sludge and weeds, retreating at something damp, fighting something sticky. 

And then I pulled my hand from the swamp in one quick motion. A glasses case. Sometimes my mother wore glasses at mass, because here she needed to see things that otherwise she could see with ease the rest of the week. The navy case was plush under my fingertips and I slid the glasses out, resting them on the end of my nose, the way she did. I turned my head back down into the muddiness of the purse. Everything was magnified, the wad of tissues, silver lipstick tube, car keys, battered package of Doublemint gum whose sweet, minty scent infused the purse. The faux leather, black cloth lining, dollar bills, checks in the checkbook, all smelled of her favorite gum. 

Once more, glasses still on the end of my nose, I dove into the bag, this time finding a familiar, silky red pouch, frayed at the edges, with a loose black snap. It did not make noise as I pulled it open, but I glanced up anyway, into the hushed masses, all at mass, and saw no one watching me. My mother was on the altar, song leader. My father the lector. My brother altar boy. My sister hid in the bathroom because our parents were not here to make her stay with me. I was alone with the swamp, and the pouch.

I tipped it into my hands and out poured the black beaded rosary my mother had received from her parents on her first communion. Always she used this rosary, fingering it in times of trouble, times of need, of worry. It was an artifact she never let us handle, no matter our trouble or need or worry.

Somehow, absorbed in dripping beads like water snakes through my fingers, her glasses dropped off my nose and clattered to the pew beside me. I grabbed for them and the rosary spilled from my hand like pebbles onto the sandy church floor, far away from their swampy home. Slumping down in my seat, I nudged the pebbles with my toes, the gritty carpet rough under my feet, knowing I would not be able to pull the pebble rosary to me. But if I timed it right, no one would notice me slipping under the waves, scouting the coarse ocean floor, scooping up the rosary like treasure and returning to the surface triumphant. 

The priest’s eyes stared nowhere into the crowd, but the crowd focused intently on him and his frothy words, mouths open, heads nodding. Taking a deep breath, I dropped down, my chest and stomach hugging the cold rock of the kneeler, and searched the floor with my fingers. Finally, my fist closed around my prize and I swam for the surface, breaking the waves and inhaling deeply, sliding back onto the wooden pew, ignoring the glance of the old man at the other end. He’d come late, sat alone and did not wear his Sunday best and so his eyes did not chastise me. Had it been my mother’s eyes, catching me with her prize, then I would have had a problem.

Opening my fist, I took a watery look at the rosary. Shiny, but not beautiful, just ordinary plastic. But still it was nice and it was old, and I liked old things with their memories, like the red silk pouch on my lap which I now realized contained a piece of yellowed paper, folded into a tiny square. Drawn in faded blue ink on its top was a heart. I opened the paper, one fold at a time, and at each fold there was another heart, and inside each heart were the letters: P+T. My mother was P, but I could only guess at who T was. I thought with pity, this is ancient, from another time, from a girl who was once young and drew hearts on pieces of paper she hid away, but now she sits on the altar listening to the relentless sermon on the shore. I knew her peevish glare when I stirred with boredom, the reverent focus of the face tilted to the priest, the deep concentration and stillness as she recited every word, sang every song, enacted every ritual that meant nothing to me and everything to her.

Inside the very last fold of paper was an even smaller piece of paper with a tiny green ink scrawl. I held it to my mother’s glasses and read: “I don’t believe in God.”

I held that paper and raised slow eyes to my mother in her chair on the altar. She was not looking at the priest, but was gazing down at her hands, which she slowly folded and refolded, one on top of the other, over and over, her fingers locking and unlocking, clenching and unclenching. Once and only once, her eyes closed and she gave a small sigh.

  I dropped my eyes to my own fingers, gently folded the note back into tiny squares, each heart disappearing, one into another, then I slid the paper back into the bottom of the silky red pouch. The beads of the rosary fell like black water droplets onto the page, burying it again under the depths.  

                                                               *   *   *

For seventeen years Sarah Wheeler Hedborn taught First-Year Composition at Northern Illinois University. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Iowa State University. Her fiction is published in The /temz/ Review and Eunoia Review, and forthcoming in Spry. Currently she is raising twins in a small town outside of the Chicago suburbs.

By Tracie Adams

“Someday I’ll write a book about us. But not until this is over, and there’s a happy ending.”

I said those words over a decade ago, and I still haven’t written that book. I sat across from my adopted son in the small sterile room designated for prisoners to visit with family. We smuggled a Bible in by leaving it under the sign-in sheet for his counselor to pick up later when the guards weren’t looking. He was 17 then and we were all doing time for the crime he had committed. The bars that held him were literal. The bars that held the rest of us were intangible but just as effective in punishing us, holding us captive in the shame and isolation that his jail sentence had imposed. 

When others left church on Sundays to enjoy family gatherings, meals around tables overflowing with happy banter and home cooked joy, my family walked through a metal detector to see him. They searched every one of us, even checking the diaper of my one-year old daughter for smuggled drugs and weapons. I didn’t make eye contact with the guards, my kids or my husband, because the humiliation of the search was just too raw to share. No one wanted to go, but we couldn’t not go. We all felt his captivity in the marrow of our bones, the despair now part of our DNA, and each family member shared in the mutated misery. The rest of us, my husband and three biological children, were technically free, but always bound together tethered to him in his cell no matter where we went. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from the weight of it, so we carried it together. 

When he was just nine years old, his birth mother had terminated her parental rights in a small courtroom filled with empty chairs, a judge, and a social worker assigned to his case. 

Before she dropped him on the doorstep of Social Services, she had gathered his clothes and a few toys from their apartment and placed them in a lemon-scented trash bag to be sorted through at the orphanage. He rarely showed any emotion when he recounted the traumatic events of his life, but he would at times describe with tears in his eyes that day when his mother used a camcorder to video him one last time. He ran after her vehicle as she drove away, leaving him scared, scarred, and skeptical among strangers. 

Before we adopted him at the age of eleven, he had been rejected by several foster families and even his own maternal grandparents. The man he thought was his father turned out not to be, and so he got down to the business of survival and never looked back. It changed him. His growth was stunted, and he was saddled with more learning disabilities than any classroom could accommodate. He was hyper-vigilant, always scanning and planning, unable to sit still or trust anyone. They told us his diagnosis of Reactive Attachment Disorder made him “unadoptable,” and they made us sign papers attesting to our understanding of the psychiatrist’s report which plainly stated he was not worth the trouble. 

In the car ride home, I sat wide-eyed, holding my breath, wondering if I had made a mistake signing the papers, ushering this storm into our lives. In the days ahead, we would stare fear in the face and dare it to take another step toward us. We have been through therapy, in and out of courtrooms, jails, doctors’ offices, pharmacies, and have answered our phone many dark nights to hear desperate, angry tales from both him and his victims. He is almost 33 now, with more than fifty failed jobs, a divorce, two more jail sentences, and three kids of his own all testifying that this will never really be over. Still, I love the boy who came to us wounded, washed up in the raging storm waters, and I’m riding this out to the very end. He’s my son. If there was ever an indication of a happy ending, I haven’t laid hold of it yet. I won’t wait for it. I’ll just write what I know, and continue hoping for what I can’t yet see on the horizon. 

                                                                     *   *   *

Tracie Adams is a writer and teacher in rural Virginia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Oddball Magazine, The Write Launch, WOTL Magazine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and Sheepshead Review. Follow her on Twitter @1funnyfarmAdams. 

 By Hemant Kulkarni

“Look! There’s a lone human! I think, Male,” Pom said and the screen zoomed on the human. The man was squatting behind a bush, his pants down, dragging a stick in the soil in front of him. “Let’s do something fun.”

“No!” Req replied. “We already have a lot of data from our previous missions. You know how long it takes to open up this planet’s animals. Besides this one isn’t dead.” Req paused. “Look, we have completed our tasks. Let’s fly up to the mothership now.” Req operated the computer with its wiry appendages. A collection of sealed metal containers slid into chambers as white gas hissed out.

“I am not talking about studying his body.” Pom said. “I have something else in mind.”

The Intergalactic Biological Exploration Agency had assigned Pom and Req to this star. This agency was aware of the independent life that had arose and evolved on the third planet from this ordinary star. Previous missions over millions of years had classified and categorized most of the life forms. So Pom and Req had to update the existing data and discover new species, while not violating any Celestial Lifeform Protections.

“It is boring,” Req said.

“Trust me. These are the second most fun animals to play with. Perhaps, we can observe something new which we can report.” Pom tried to find something to influence Req with.

“We don’t have time for this. We only have a few days before we head out of this system. We have a ton of reports to complete before that.”

“I know. This is pure fun. Relax your back a bit.” Pom said. Req slumped in its pod in agreement. “Let’s bring him in,” Pom muttered, then commanded the computer: “Cap, translate what I say to this human.”

“Predicting the human’s language based on the geographical location,” Cap responded. “Ready.”

Pom realised a sudden booming voice from the sky would spook the defecating human. Their hovercraft was invisible of course. “Do we have gold nuggets on board, Cap?” Pom asked. Req looked at Pom, puzzled.

“No, we don’t,” Cap replied.

“Grrrr, we should always have some gold handy for this planet, Cap,” Pom said. “Can you spray some dirt and make it look and feel like gold?”

“Give me a moment.”

“The human might walk away anytime now,” Req chimed in studying the human on the screen.

“Here it is.” Cap said and opened a hatch containing a metal plate with glinting gold nuggets.

Pom examined the plate. “Looks like gold. Please drop this on the ground in front of the human.”

“Understood.”

And they saw some ground dust rise into a little cloud as the gold nuggets dropped in front of the human. The human squealed and collapsed to the side pulling up his pants.

“He will now run away,” Req grunted.

Pom fixated on the screen for signs of success. The human got up and came close to the scattered nuggets that shone like little starlight on the ground. He squinted up in the sky, scanned the surroundings and inched closer. He reached out cautiously and grabbed a handful of the nuggets. A huge smile stretched across his face as he weighed the gold in his hand. Pom tapped its wiry appendages on its body in delight.

The human stood up and cast around a suspicious eye while covering his hands.

“Alright, Cap,” Pom said. ”Now tell him what I say.”

A sudden voice boomed from the sky. “This is a gift for you, for your good deeds.” Pom was shivering in excitement.

The human squinted up at the sky. He turned around in circles but couldn’t locate their hovercraft.

“We mean you no harm.” Pom said. “Would you like more gold?”

The human looked down at his hands, then turned up and nodded with a smile.

“Oh, so easy!” Pom cackled at Req. “The only animal of this planet that we can’t lured by food!”

“And they call themselves intelligent,” Req added.

“Cap, tell him this: You will now see a door appear ahead of you. Walk inside to get your gold.” After Cap voiced the message, Pom said, ”Now, land us near the human and open the hatch to let the human in.”

The human spun some more, unable to spot any door in the vicinity when they landed on the ground. The human retreated and almost collapsed, his eyes on the sudden crushed crops. The air let out a sudden hiss and a large dark rectangle materialized and expanded before him. The human froze in his place and gasped at the opening in thin air. His eyes darted around and then back at the door.

“Do not worry. You are a good man. Come inside.” Cap voiced lowering the volume.

The human took a couple of hesitant steps and inspected what the door presented him. The door presented a small unlit chamber, a dark rectangle suspended in the air. Around the door the world remained usual.

“Cap, please turn on the lights in the chamber. And show him a pile of gold as the humans like it.”

A large glowing pile of gold coins appeared in the chamber. The human gulped looking at the sight through the opening.

“He won’t come in,” Req said, annoyed.

A frozen silence hung around them penetrated only by a breeze and the low hum of the craft. The human took another step and climbed up the ramp through the door. Pom cast a slow glance at Req, who waved its head.

“Good! Now what should we make him do?” Pom asked Req.

“What?” snapped Req. “I thought you had a plan!”

“I wanted to have some fun, not a plan. Now, give me some ideas.” Pom said. “Should we make him dance?”

“Grrrr. Did you lure him aboard only to see him dance?” Req growled.

“Alright, yes.” Pom said. They glanced at the screen. The man walked around the pile of gold and stealing glances at the open door through which a tree waved in daylight. Pom then added, “Let’s give him one of our guns and see what he does.”

“Everyone in this galaxy can tell what he will do. He will vaporize and obliterate everyone who doesn’t obey him and take over the world. If not he, someone else will. They will fight for the gun’s control for perpetuity.” Req said.

“Right.”

“Besides, it may violate some Celestial Lifeform Protections.”

“Let’s make him a king and see what he does.” Pom said.

“How? We cannot do that without exposing ourselves to humanity. And making him into a king might take years to unfold.” Req tapped at the time of their departure from this solar system.

Pom clicked in disapproval of his own idea. “You shoot some ideas.”

“I would like to see him run around the world. But given their speed, we’ll have to wait years of Earth time. Won’t work.”

The human tried to pick the gold coins, but it slipped through his hand like air. His other hand held onto the gold nuggets. “Wh– What is this?” The man stammered.

“I have it! A perfect idea to entertain us for few days.” Pom said and then turned to the computer.

In the chamber, Cap addressed the human: “It is all the gold you will get, but, you have to do something first.”

“What?” The human’s eyes widened. He squeezed the gold in his hands.

“Go and convince the world that we, ‘aliens’, exist.”

“I like that one.” Req said.

“That’s it?” The human asked.

“Yes.” Cap said. And Pom shivered again in delight.

*   *   *

Hemant is a budding writer and Project Manager in the IT industry with a fervent passion for delving into the complex intricacies of human behavior and societal dynamics through his writing. Hemant shares his creative journey and literary musings on Twitter at @randomhemant.