By Julie Brandon 

Eleanor sat on the park bench holding the sealed envelope in her hand. Even though she knew what was in it, she just couldn’t bring herself to open it. How could David allow Cecily to be so cruel? Surely, he knew that Eleanor wasn’t completely over him. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t over him at all. Eleanor shook her head. Thankfully, David would never know how many nights she stared at old photos of him. To be truthful, she was a little worried about her inability to move on. The cream-colored envelope in her hand was proof that he had. Eleanor’s mother kept trying to convince her to join a club, an online dating site, something that would get her out of the house and perhaps meet someone new. She wasn’t getting any younger, her mother would murmur. Every time she said it, Eleanor had to resist the urge to run to the mirror and look for gray hairs.

This was ridiculous. She gave herself a little shake. It’d been two years. Two years since he’d broken off their engagement saying he needed to figure out what he really wanted. Apparently, it was Cecily. Eleanor should have known something was in the wind when they’d met her at a party and David’s eyes lit up. He and Cecily had belonged to the chess club in college and were overjoyed to see each other again. David tried to teach Eleanor to play but she was helpless at it. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t remember which piece moved where. Soon after the party, Cecily invited David to play a game at a local coffee shop. Eleanor was relieved. Finally, he’d stop bugging her to play. And he did. She never gave it a moment’s thought until the day he’d told her it was over. By then, it was too late. David and Cecily’s love of chess had blossomed into another kind of love and Eleanor was left behind. She remembered how it felt when she dropped her engagement ring into his outstretched hand. How he quickly closed his hand into a fist around it, as though she’d snatch it back. 

Eleanor has seen the engagement announcement on social media. She’d idly wondered if David had bought Cecily a new ring. Of course, he did. No woman wants to wear the cast-off ring from the cast-off fiancée. Eleanor sighed. She didn’t have to open the envelope. She could toss it in a park trash can and walk away. But she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Her mother was right. It was time to move on. Maybe not a dating site but she could take a class at the community college. Pottery or guitar. Anything but chess. Taking a deep breath, Eleanor opened the envelope and pulled out the engraved invitation. As wedding invitations go, it was lovely. She reached into her purse for a pen. She signed the RSVP card, inserted it into the stamped return envelope and sealed it. On her way out of the park, Eleanor spotted a blue mailbox. She dropped the envelope in and with a spring in her step, continued on her way. 

    *     *    *

Julie Brandon is a poet, playwright, lyricist, and storyteller. Her work has been published in Bewildering Stories, Corner Bar Magazine, Bright Flash Literary Review, Altered Reality, Fresh Words, Mini Plays Magazine, To Write of Love During War:Poems, Wicked Shadow Press: Dead Girl Walking anthology, Mask of Sanity: The Monster Within, Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival Anthology: Boundless, Kibbutz Gezer International Exhibit, Detangled Brains and others. Julie’s book of poetry, My Tears, Like Rain, was publish June 2024. Two of her short plays have been produced by Broken Arts Entertainment and Theatrical Shenanigans podcasts. She lives near Chicago, Illinois.

By Mathew Channer

Emilia stepped carefully over the garbage bags on the porch and went down the stairs onto the weedy lawn. She didn’t look at her brother—still digging, the hole as deep as his chest now—as she passed the remains of last year’s garden. At the end of the garden was the bench her husband had built for her so she could look out over the valley. She sank into its familiarity, imagining the non-existent depression her body had carved over the years.

Shunk. Shunk. Shunk. Pete’s shovel stabbed the unsuspecting earth. Emilia refused to look. It was easier to gaze south over endless fallow fields and fence posts, the glimmering strip of Route 50 an un-sutured wound stretching toward the state line. All the land stank of rot, the fields blotted with mud as winter slipped slowly into creeks and ditches and slithered away. 

Emilia picked at the bench, peeling up little strips of damp wood. They had painted it to match the summer grass, but snow and sun had flayed its skin, its demise aided these last few seasons by anxious fingers.

Shunk. Shunk. Shunk. Like a heartbeat. Emilia pushed her fingers into her ears, but her own heart took up the rhythm. Da-dunk. Da-dunk. Da-dunk.

Emilia groaned and ripped her hands away. Her brother’s boots clomped onto the porch, then back down the stairs with slow, measured steps. Two, three times more. His breath heavy with effort. Plastic rustled against his clothes. Emilia stared at the sky. Dark clouds hung over the land, muttering to each other between horizons. 

Shunk. Shunk. Sh-

‘Shut up!’ Emilia screamed. 

The shovel clattered. A waft of damp earth, and then her brother sat beside her. Dirt clung to his pants and boots and plaid jacket. They were her husband’s clothes. Pete’s shirt and jeans had already gone into the garbage bags.

Silence stretched like a chasm, then collapsed inward as Emilia’s brother sighed. His breath misted the air. 

‘Don’t suppose you’ve thought up a good explanation, yet?’

Emilia hated his pragmatism. Perfect pragmatic Pete. If she had eaten anything these last forty-eight hours, she would have vomited all over him just to make a point. 

Pete’s eyes wandered the sepia fields, Emilia’s sepia garden, her strained, sepia face. Blonde hair poked from beneath his blue woollen cap.

‘I guess this is why you haven’t called for a while,’ he said. ‘Seems a bit of an overreaction, don’t you think?’

‘What would you know?’ 

Pete frowned and returned his gaze south, his head slightly tilted as though listening to the muffled thunder. Emilia tore another splinter from the bench. 

‘I’m sorry.’ She sniffed.

Pete seemed not to have heard. He was watching a bus glide gently along Route 50.

‘I never wanted this, you know,’ Emilia said.

‘Of course not.’

‘I never wanted it.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

‘But I didn’t want anything else either. I was just wandering around, waiting for something to happen. What did it matter if it was Montana or Wyoming or South Dakota? Wheat or pigs or poultry?’ 

She pressed her shaking hands to her lips and peered over them like a rabbit peeking from its burrow. 

‘You know, when he brought me here, I stood in this spot and looked over all this land, all mine now, and I promised myself I would never let myself get used to it. I wouldn’t stay a moment longer than it took to get comfortable. The old fool thought I was crying with joy and built me this bench. And what did I do? I sat on it.’

She saw a streak of blood on the back of Pete’s hand and tried to wipe it off with her sweater, but it was dry and stuck to the skin. She gave up and wrapped her arms around her chest. 

‘And now I’ve dragged you into all this. I’m so sorry, Pete. You were always so good. So level-headed. Think about your career. They’ll make you sergeant soon. You should take me in. I’ll tell them everything. I’ll tell them this was never my life.’ 

Pete didn’t reply. 

‘Did you hear me, Peter? I said this was never my life. Not really.’

It was late afternoon, the sun setting unseen beyond the clouds. The cold wind picked up the skeletons of long-dead leaves and carried them around the garden until they settled in some new place. 

Pete drew a deep, slow breath. 

‘Maybe this isn’t my life either,’ he said.

He got up and walked through the garden and began filling the hole. Emilia remained, peeling strips from the bench and dropping them between her feet. Among the piled splinters, the first tiny buds were unfolding, little bursts of green climbing daringly upward. Suddenly a robin broke into song, another answered it from across the garden. Emilia watched as the two birds met in mid-air, swooped around each other, and flew away south.  

She stood and went inside to pack a suitcase. 

*   *   *

Mathew Channer is a full-time writer from small town Western Australia. He is both creative writer and journalist and is widely published in Australia and North America. He is a staff editor at Flash Fiction Magazine. Recently his fiction has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, Reedsy, Flash Fiction Magazine, and the 2022 Revolutionaries Anthology It Begins With Us. His debut speculative fiction novella, Last Train North, was released this year. He lives in Canada with his partner, Hayley, and his dog, Nymeria. You can read more of his work and stay up to date on new releases at http://www.mathewchanner.com.

By Shanti Chandrasekhar

Bricks, tiles, cabinets, appliances, she selects for the new home; sample after fabric sample, she turns over and nails the one for the sunroom sofa; a unique coffee table, she singles out; and the top-grade leather for the family-room sectional seating, yes, she chooses it all. Even the wall unit for the study that is his.

While in India, she scans the intricate weavings of each authentic Kashmiri silk-and-wool rug the men roll out.

“Madam?” They look at her, expectant, awaiting a nod from her.

A blend of aroma—cardamom, cinnamon, and clove—drifts into the small showroom. She turns around and faces a skinny teenaged boy holding a tray with a tiny ceramic mug of masala chai for her; the hot liquid, spicy and sugary at once, dribbles down her throat while the cashier makes a bill for the three rugs to be shipped to America.

Back in Virginia, she chooses the texture, the colors of the room-darkening pull-up-pull-down blinds and drapes to cover every window – all thirty-three of them.

Thirty-three windows. Yet she struggles to breathe.

Shapes and colors of her choice surround her, she sees nothing. Her feet tread on smooth tiles and plush carpet, she feels nothing. Nothing. Except the fear that grips her. Fear that leads to panic attacks every so often. Stop, stop, stop! Her voice is lost in the din of the tirade he hurls at her, relentless, night after night, year after year.

Yet, in an attempt to save what the piece of paper locked in a filing cabinet calls marriage, she seeks help; yes, she tries to change another person, but oh, how she fails.

For a fleeting relief from claustrophobia, she opens a window, inhales the chilly air, and breathes out. Her breath, her breath, her breath…warm and foggy, floating out into the dusk, out of the mansion, out of the house that’s never been her home.

Sunlight trickles into her nine-by-ten bedroom through the rental apartment’s stained-white vinyl blinds, awakening her. She’s alone. Yet she’s not. A presence, she senses. Ethereal. Peace surmounts the apprehension of the trials ahead. Peace. For now.

*  *  *

Shanti Chandrasekhar formerly held professional titles such as project manager, project engineer, and technical writer/editor, yet has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, 50-Word Stories, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Braided Way, Literary Mama, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She lives in Maryland.