By Erik Barca

That afternoon, it began to rain, and the snow turned to brown slush. It’s now nearly midnight, still raining, and the snow is gone. In the kitchen, Paul pours himself another scotch and takes it to the living room. She’s still not home. 

So okay. But no, actually, not okay. Not at all.

She wanted an open thing. That’s how she put it, eight months ago. Paul didn’t say anything, just stood there frozen, glaring. Then he went into the kitchen and started banging around pots and pans. She understood where he stood. Of course she did. 

He falls back into his recliner in the living room. The older boy is asleep in the basement bedroom below. The younger, just turned three, is asleep in their bedroom across from the kitchen. Paul gets up to check on him, cracking the door to let a thread of light slip in. The downy-haired boy lies curled up on her side of the bed, hand under cheek. They were her life, yet she’s brushed them aside. Her carefully sculpted household, now out of balance. 

He considers taking Eli downstairs to his bedroom, with his brother, but decides against it. He closes the door and returns the room’s darkness. 

Paul goes for another drink and adds ice. His hand begins to tremble and the liquid sloshes down onto his slipper. He sets the glass down and grips the counter to stop the trembling. It’s an unforgiveable betrayal. She must understand this.    

He moves back to the living room with his glass and sinks onto the couch. His performance review lies folded on the coffee table. This is what the superintendent wrote: “Ineffective communication with parents and colleagues, which has led to misunderstandings and conflicts.” 

One of Paul’s students – his best student, actually – broke down after some prom queen mocked his Dutch Boy bangs and tossed his copy of Wuthering Heights out the quarter-open classroom window. The room erupted, and the 16-year-old kid actually started to sob. Paul couldn’t think what to do – so he threw an eraser at him. The parents demanded a conference to “talk it through,” but Paul refused. Then he had to explain to her  – her eyes darting around in panic or anger, he couldn’t tell which – why he’d been placed on disciplinary leave for two months.

He finishes his drink and gets up to fix another. Standing at the sink, shoulders slouched, he hears the front door click. He keeps his back to the door. 

“Hey,” she says. He can tell she’s been drinking by the throaty pitch of her voice. “Are the boys all… are they asleep?” He turns as she places her bag and a take-out container by the door.  She looks at herself in the mirror above the entryway table and sloppily tucks in her blouse. “I brought you leftovers,” she says. Paul catches her eye in the reflection as she leans closer, picking at a tooth.    

Just like her – bringing food. Like everything is like it was. Like they’ve reached some kind of understanding.  

“Do you know what time it is?” he says.  

“Paul, let’s not do this. I’m very tired,” she says.

“You realize it’s no good. It’s unraveling, the kids – everything. Right?”  

She smiles at him as though he were a child. She says nothing, walks to their bedroom and locks the door. Moments later she’s out carrying Eli, asleep in her arms. 

“Why is he sleeping in our bed? Is it so hard to put the boys in their own beds?”  

“Put him back,” he says.

“I will not. This isn’t normal. Children should sleep in their own beds,” her voice rising. Eli wakes, begins to fuss and wraps his arms tightly around her neck. 

 “Is it normal you out with her all night? The whole thing’s warped. Give me my boy,” he says.

“You’re not touching him!” she snaps and walks toward the stairs leading down to the basement bedroom. Paul follows and wrenches her arm back. 

“For God’s sake! Get the hell away from me!” she says.

She turns to face him, her boot heel balanced on the top step of the unlit stairs. Paul moves closer. “Please,” he says reaching for Eli. He grabs the boy under his arms pulling harder than he intends. Eli shrieks. 

She pulls Eli back and slaps Paul flat on the cheek with her free ringed hand. He staggers back against the wall and slides down, legs splayed. He covers his face with his hands.

She taps the sole of his slipper with her boot. “Now look at what you’ve done,” she says. “Paul. Do you know your problem? Your flaw? … Your tolerance. It’s insidious. Paul, tell me,  why have you let it come to this? Tell me, when the time comes, what will the kids think of a father who tolerated such things?” 

Paul swallows hard, pushing himself up. Arms outstretched and head lowered, he stumble-charges forward and grabs her waist and … pauses, unsure what to do. She hugs Eli close and steps to the side. Paul slips and falls face-first onto the hardwood floor.

He pulls himself up on his hands and knees and arches his back. Blood pools in the back of his throat. Dizzy and nauseous, he falls again, flat on his stomach, sprawled – like a failed push-up. He’s blocking the staircase now, and she can’t get by.

Then he feels the wet heel of her boot crunch down on his curled knuckles. Mother and child step over him, descend halfway down the stairs, and look back up at him lying crooked on the landing.  

                                                               *   *   *

Erik is a student in the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension. His stories focus on the fragility of martial and family relationships.  

By Rachel Makinson

I rolled over in bed to face you and I told you that in my dream I’d slept with someone who wasn’t you. 

And you said nothing and you closed your eyes and in the morning you made me coffee and put two pan au chocolat onto plates. You brushed the crumbs from the table and you wiped the table with a wet cloth and you washed my coffee cup in the sink. 

I watched you, though you thought I was reading the paper, and once you were done, you went upstairs to take a shower. I only read my paper then. And I read it until two when it began to rain and you came back into the kitchen to make us sandwiches for lunch. 

I took a gherkin straight from the jar and I crunched into it like I’ve always done but you didn’t look at me or smile or laugh like you did the first time I crunched into a gherkin. 

The fringe of your brown hair was in your eyes and you left it there and there was a smear of butter across the breast of your red dress, across one of the pink buttons, and I told you that the woman I dreamt about last night didn’t have breasts as good as yours. And I laughed. You didn’t. 

You sliced through the sandwich and you slid the plate across the table. And you ate outside in the garden and I watched you through the French window, though you thought I was watching the television, and once you were done you went back upstairs without washing the dishes. I only watched the television then. And I watched the television until four when the sunshine had come out again and you came back into the kitchen with your bags packed.

It was just a dream, I said. 

But you opened the door. 

                                                                  *   *   *

Rachel Makinson is a UK-based writer and editor, with a BA in English Literature with Creative Writing from Newcastle University. Her work has been featured by several magazines and journals, including Otherwise Engaged Literature and Arts Journal, Marrow Magazine, Tabula Rasa Review, and the London Independent Story Prize. 

By Don Tassone

Maggie opened her eyes, just as her doctor came into her room.

“Good morning, Ms. Riegert,” he said.

She looked up into his face.  Everything was blurry.

“Where am I?” she said, slurring her words.

“You’re in Jewish Hospital.”

“Why?”

“You’ve had a stroke.”

She gasped.

“Am I … okay?”

“The left side of your body is paralyzed, and your brain has been affected.  We don’t know how much function you might regain.  Only time will tell.”

Maggie’s eyes welled with tears.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I wish I had better news.”

“How long … will I … be here?”

“Until you’re stable and arrangements have been made for your longer-term care.”

A nurse dabbed the tears now rolling down Maggie’s face.

“Do you have any other questions?” the doctor said.

“No,” said Maggie.

When her doctor and nurse had gone, Maggie closed her eyes and reflected on her situation.  It had been 20 years since Evan had left her.  For 20 years, she had atoned for her great sin.  She’d done penance to the point of nearly destroying herself.

Enough, she thought.  I’ve punished myself long enough.  It’s time to forgive.

Then Maggie opened her eyes, and the room came into focus.

                                                             *   *   *

Don Tassone is the author of two novels and nine short story collections.  He lives in Loveland, Ohio.

By Brian Gifford

Sarah prayed for a red light so she could have a few more minutes with her daughter. Because once she dropped Rachel off at her new apartment in The Bronx, Rachel’s destination would be like some kind of an ending, and it would be a long, lonely drive back home to Ohio. 

“Promise me you’ll always be sure to walk with somebody everywhere,” Sarah pleaded. Rachel promised she would. “And keep your head down while you walk. Make no eye contact with anyone.” 

“Mom, I’m going to be okay,” Rachel tried to reassure her mother. “This is a good place for me.”  

Graffiti marred the wall beyond which her apartment sat. There was a spelling error in the original graffiti, and another—obviously less talented graffiti artist than the first—had corrected it, even though it seemed clear that the mistake was intentionally ironic: “It’s all a mistace,” the original had read, and someone had crossed out the “c” and written in a “k.” Sarah just hoped Rachel was not making a mistake coming here. She was proud of her daughter when she took the fellowship teaching at the charter school, proud of her commitment to serve disadvantaged students; she only wished it would not take her so far away. 

“Be sure to call your father often,” Sarah said. 

“I will, every day after work,” Rachel promised. 

The drive home was as lonely as she anticipated it would be. Rachel’s father, John, was dying of brain cancer and was not well enough to make the trip. Rachel had accepted the fellowship before John received his diagnosis. If John was angry with his daughter for leaving while he lay dying, he did not show it. John had been given only months to live, and Rachel said she would be home for Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. 

Sarah cared for John when hospice was away, and when hospice was there, she kept herself busy with the yardwork that she and John had always done together. 

John made it through Thanksgiving. Rachel stayed with her parents for the entire week that fall break. While Rachel was there, John beamed for the first time in a long time.

“It’s great to have her here,” Sarah said.  

“Yes, it is,” John said. “And she offered to stay with me rather than going back to The Bronx.”

“Good,” Sarah said.

“But I told her to keep her commitment, that I would be here waiting for her here at Christmas.”  

Despite her worries, Sarah was glad Rachel would be far away from home during the unbelievably hard times that were coming. She had watched her own father die of cancer just last year, and she could never get out of her head the vision of his being at the point where only a dose of morphine bordering on the lethal would take the pain away.     

“I love you so much,” John said to Rachel as she was preparing to leave. Sarah thought it sounded like a valediction, as though John knew he would not make it to Christmas. She thought it was the bravest thing she had ever witnessed.

Right up till the time the end came, in early December, Rachel called every day after work. Even when John was unconscious, Sarah would hold the phone up to his ear, and Rachel would tell her father about her day working with the children and say over and over again that she loved him.

  *    *    *

Brian Gifford has previously published short fiction in Agape Review and The Muleskinner Journal, which nominated one of his stories for a 2025 Pushcart Prize. He has work forthcoming in BULL and Does It Have Pockets? Valediction was written after obsessively listening to Noah Kahan’s You’re Gonna Go Far and reading some of the exceedingly poignant comments on YouTube. 

A Memoir by Susie Aybar

Before baseball season, my dad brought home a list of Yankees and Mets games and let me pick tickets for a few of them. They were a perk of his corporate job, one of the few my father ever used. I always chose the Mets tickets. It was the mid/late-80’s, the glorious era of Dwight Gooden, Keith Hernandez, and the infamous error by Bill Buckner in the 1986 World Series. Time wasn’t something my father had a lot of, but each ticket promised his attention for a whole evening.

My father worked endless hours in New York City, regularly traveling to Europe, Asia, and Africa during my teenage years. It was still a time when you were as faithful to your company as you were to your family. He worked for the same pharmaceutical company for 30 years in Quebec where he was raised, then in New Jersey where I was born, and finally, in New York where I grew up. He commuted, leaving the house at 6 am and returning at 9pm. 

He didn’t take sick days or more than a week or two of vacation each year. When he was home, he seemed tired, which I’m sure he might’ve been, or like there was always something else to do, which I’m sure there was. Mow the lawn. Pay the bills. Wash the car. He could be gruff and short on patience. If I left the lights on in the kitchen I would hear about it. If I talked on the phone for a long time, he’d remind me to “Say your piece and get off!”

He would throw me a baseball while he grilled porkchops or shoot a few baskets in the driveway. When I got older, he got busier, and our communication frayed. If he got mad at me, he might be leaving on a trip for Asia and not coming home for weeks, so our disagreement would hang suspended in the back of my head, like a test that was coming up. But it was more like an equation I could never figure out. Our anger would dissolve over time, but never be resolved. 

I was my father’s third and last girl. I happened to love sports. Did he ever wish I were a boy or that things were different? Did I become a baseball fan to connect with him in some way? Even though he wasn’t a diehard fan himself, baseball was a portal between our worlds.

My obsession with baseball intensified when my middle sister left for college when I was 13. My sisters were five and nine years older than me, so we hadn’t had much in common during those years, but I still missed the house filled with their friends and their noise. The bickering, teasing, and laughing. My parents were preoccupied with their aging parents and work. Sometimes I felt like they hardly noticed me.

I watched as many Mets games as I could on tv and couldn’t wait for the games in person. 

We’d meet my dad at the train station, he’d change out of his pinstriped suit into his jeans, and we’d drive to Shea Stadium at rush hour. The seats were right next to first base. We ate hot dogs, I’d have soda, and my father would have a beer. I brought my glove, always ready to retrieve a ball. We talked about the game. I don’t remember the conversations, but the games got us through those awkward years. It was a place where there was no nagging, no distance, no gruffness. My dad always wanted to leave before the crowds did, but he would stay until the end because I asked him to.

Now, my father is 84. I’ve been fortunate to know him for 20 years since he retired. He will still make me turn out lights and his impatience can still flare, but I couldn’t have imagined the version of him who asks me about my cats fighting and my son’s doctor appointment. My father has spent many afternoons on playing fields watching my sons play soccer or baseball. When our family is away on vacation, he’ll come by our house, check our leaky fridge and play with our animals while the pet sitter is at her day job. 

A year and a half ago, my father became very ill after an intestinal surgery. During that time, I sat in the hospital, watching his face become drawn and his skin wrinkly from being unable to eat, his mind fuzzy and hungry. He was hooked up to the wall, with a nasogastric tube suctioning acid out of his stomach. Walking the hospital hall became a Herculean task, even with the assistance of a walker and a companion.

I tried not to think of the things we might not do again, telling myself you never know when something will be a last anyway. After his illness, going to a baseball game seemed ridiculous. Just him eating a full meal became a goal and then eventually, going to a restaurant down the street. It would be months before he felt better.

“How long has it been since we went to a game?” my dad asked me a few weeks ago when he came to the Mets game with my family.

“I don’t know, maybe before the pandemic?” I said. 

I had stressed about getting him to the game, his walk through the stadium, the stairs to our seats, but he was fine now, bragging how he’d walked over 14,000 steps dealing with a plumbing issue that week. When he went to the bathroom with my husband, I screenshot their tickets so they could get back to the seats. There are no tickets to hold anymore. I tried not to think about this time, maybe being one of the last games and focused on getting my dad the hot dog he wanted.

                                                                     *    *    *

Susie Aybar has an MFA from Manhattanville College. Her prose can be found in Literary Mama, Tiny Molecules, and Honeyguide Literary Magazine and is upcoming in Door is Jar Literary Magazine. Her poetry has appeared in ONE ART, The San Pedro River Review, Medical Literary Messenger, and others. You can connect with her at susieaybar.com. 

By Anne Anthony

After my mother died, I pretend she lives in the Cape Cod home where she raised me, ten hours north, sitting in her chair by the bookcase, her knitting needles looping a strand of wool over one needle, and threading the other for the half-finished comforter spread across her lap; its shades of purple, magenta, and blue, my favorite colors entwined together, and I hope she’ll finish by Christmas.

After my mother died, I imagine her traveling to my home for a visit, and halfway between there and now, she stops overnight at my daughter’s, spending the afternoon drinking tepid tea and eating Twinkies with her great granddaughters, energetic toddlers resistant to naps and time gets away from her so she stays overnight.

After my mother died, I believe she takes the trip she’s been planning for as long as I can remember but which was waylaid when her mother took ill and after she lost her job to someone younger; I imagine her flying across the ocean to Parisian streets, strolling along the Seine, drinking expensive wine and eating exotic dishes in an outdoor café; She spends a lengthy pause before the Mona Lisa in the Louvre to contemplate the mystery of the woman. After a week, she boards a train for Rome, the center of her faith and spiritual home. When she returns, I expect she’ll tell me about the Pope, how he blessed her, how he spoke her name in that accent of his and held her gaze longer than others.

After my mother died, I find her cameo stuck inside a drawer in the guest bedroom left behind from her last visit, and when I reach for the phone to tell her I found it, I remember she wouldn’t answer after 9 p.m., so I wait until morning.

*     *    *

Anne Anthony credits her steady diet of comic books for her ardent belief in superpowers. She’s published in Bull, Flash Boulevard, Flash Fiction Magazine, Longleaf Review and elsewhere. Her micro-fiction, It’s a Mother Thing, was nominated for Best Microfiction 2024 by Cleaver Magazine. She released a short story collection, A Blue Moon & Other Murmurs of the Heart, in 2019. She is a senior editor and art director for Does It Have Pockets. More here: https://linktr.ee/anchalastudio.

By Sara Ponferrada Reed

Good morning. 

You stare at yourself in your full-body mirror as you get dressed for today. You pick out your top, your skirt, and the shoes that will go perfectly.

You slip the shirt over your head and squeeze it past your breasts. You look back at yourself, flattening the fabric, convincing yourself that this looks good on you. You move onto the skirt, one that you haven’t worn in ages. Once you pull it up and zip up the side zipper, you involuntarily frown.

This doesn’t look right.

Is it me? 

You look at your reflection and you just see your skin—vulnerable skin that hides beneath the clothes you funneled into, skin that harbors years of “life experience.” You feel your cheeks moisten with uncontrollable tears. You don’t see yourself or the “you” you want to see.

While you’re staring back at yourself, you notice a small scab on the outside of your left bicep. It is tiny, hardly noticeable, but the intrigue to pick at it is immense.

You take your right pointer finger and pick at it until it peels off. The scab begins to loosen, and bam! It is off. Phew, what a relief!

The scab hangs, attached to the smallest bit of your arm. You pinch it to finally remove the scab, but as you pull, it rips into the surrounding skin. You wince. This hurts. But you keep pulling, determined to remove this scab.

You’re bleeding, but you keep pulling.

A good inch of your skin has now been removed, underneath is this bright pink which has yet to see the warmth of the sun.

You undress so you can keep pulling.

Your arm is now uncovered, and you say hi to your new skin. You stare in awe at the freshness, the novelty. 

You pull until “naked” has a new meaning. Until there is no sign of age, no sign of experience, trauma, or growth.

You marvel at your new nakedness. But, you have removed the character, everything that has made you who you are from the day you took your first breath of Earth air. It’s all gone, on the floor at your feet. 

You put on the outfit you picked out for today back on: your top, your skirt, and the shoes that will go perfectly. Again, you slip the shirt over your head and squeeze it past your breasts. You pull up your skirt and zip up the side zipper. 

Now, you stare at the outfit over your fresh, bright pink skin.

Wait. This doesn’t look right, either.

You don’t recognize the person you see before you. Who is this? She is not the same person as the one on the floor at your feet.

You sit cross-legged on the floor next to the pile of yourself and analyze what you have just done. What made you think that this new skin would solve your problems? You still want to pinch the sections you’d love to remove. Your frown is still an involuntary tic. You still don’t feel comfortable in the outfit you chose.

You brush the pieces of you into a pile and desperately hug it against you, pulling it over like a coat on a winter day. You beg that any of it sticks. 

Will anyone recognize you today? But most importantly, will you recognize yourself?

*   *   *

Sara Ponferrada Reed is a 21-year-old writer and poet based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her work focuses on topics such as mental health, love, loss, self discovery, growth, and assessing deeper emotions. Her poetry has been published in Turtle Way Literary Journal.

By Petra F. Bagnardi

They burned my books, they closed my school. Still, they could not take my thoughts from me; I glanced at the almost blank sky, I borrowed a ray of sun and a cloud to write, a phrase, a sentence, an essay.

They burned my canvas, they broke my brush, they even stole my watercolors, and yet, they could not take away my imagination; I made my way to the edge of a lake, I used gusts of wind to fold the murky waters, into soft green hills and silvery ambitious mountains.

They burned down my school. I was a fledgling soul when they destroyed my future. So I composed a simple sonata, crashing and banging, drumming and humming; pots against doors, spoon against floors, tears against walls.

                                                                      *   *   *

Petra F. Bagnardi is a screenwriter and a poet. She was short-listed in the Enfield Poets’ Twentieth Anniversary Poetry Competition, and her work was featured in numerous literary journals including Masque & Spectacle Literary Journal, Punk Noir Magazine, Poetica Review, Drawn to the Light Press, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Redrosethorns Journal, Quail Bell Magazine, Ginosko Literary Journal, and The Sunlight Press.

By Zary Fekete

He came from nothing. His parents died when he was very young. Now, a young man, he stood on the street corner day after day, begging for a few scraps. Though he was unwashed, he had a fine head of hair and light blue eyes. He whispered words of appeal, giving bright piercing smiles to whoever happened to look upon him while they dropped their coins in his waiting cup.

Not content with the meager rations the small town provided, one day he snuck into the train station and stowed away on a train bound for the capital. He sat in one of the box cars, swinging his legs in the breeze as the country unfolded before his eyes, desperate for something greater in life.

The train chugged into the final station, and the enormity of the glass and steel surrounding him made him quiver in fear. He almost resolved to stay on the train and wait for it to depart again for the countryside, but having come this far, he hopped from the car. He followed a crowd as they departed through the double doors and was soon on the dusty street, amazed at the clamor of horses and buggies coming from all sides.

He looked around and found a corner. He sat, taking on the practiced look of entreaty and held out his cup. He kept his eyes on the ground, murmuring from time to time, “Please, sir…Dear, madam…”

Suddenly a pair of feet stopped before him. Fearing he had been caught for some unknown discrepancy he made to apologize, but when he looked up, he saw a middle-aged man who was looking down on him with astonishment in his face.

“Why, you’re him!” the man said.

The young beggar looked around, sure he had been mistaken for someone else, but the man before him made no attempt to look elsewhere. 

“Who, sir?” the young man asked.

The man reached down and gently took him by the shoulder. “Stand up, please,” he said. The young man stood, and the older man immediately turned to the passing crowd around them.

“Look, it is he!” 

First one, then another, and then perhaps the entire sidewalk stopped and looked at the young beggar with amazement. A young woman hurried forward and cupped the young beggar’s face in her hands. “How can it be?” she said. “A miracle!”

Soon he was propelled forward with dozens of hands on his back and arms. The crowd ushered him down the street and across many city blocks. At each turn the crowd around him grew until it seemed as though the entire city was following at his heels. A strange hush settled over the multitude and the only thing the young man heard was the strangely whispered repetitions of, “Him… He… It is he!”

Suddenly a large edifice rose before him and he saw a building that could only be some national parliament. Carpeted stairs rose before him and the crowd prompted and beckoned him forward. Cautiously he put foot after foot forward and was soon surrounded by the cool stones of the central hall, the walls of which were festooned with various doors and hallways from which many more people poured out, all with astonished looks on their faces. 

The original middle-aged man who had stayed by his side this entire way, led the young man to a staircase. Guards stood at the top of the stairs where a massive wooden door was suddenly opened. The beggar stepped up the stairs and when he stepped into the inner chamber, he was confronted with an elegant portrait hanging on the opposite wall, covered with plush curtains. 

One of the guards hurried to the side of the curtains and began to pull on a plush cord. A moment later the portrait was revealed. The beggar looked up at the painting. Because he had never before looked in a mirror, he had no idea it was him.

*   *   *

Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky:zaryfekete.bsky.social