By Mackenzie Kae

She is hiding in the closet. She’s been hiding in the closet for a long time. The muscles that once cramped in twisted agony, the pelvic bone that had throbbed in stillness, the spine that screamed to be straightened – she no longer feels any of it.

The mantra repeats in her head. It will be okay. It will be okay. She is frightened, yes, but she knows how to do this. How to hide.

Her momma taught her. Her granny taught her momma. So on, so forth. They were contortionists, teaching their daughters how to fold their bodies into small spaces. She will probably teach her daughter the same one day.

She won’t teach her daughter the other thing. She is angry her mother taught her that – to open her mouth when it was best left shut.

Quiet now. She finally hears him. He slams into the small kitchen, slams the screen door off its hinges. She wants to cuss about it but she knows better. She needs to keep hiding.

He stomps through the dining room. Something crashes and shatters on the floor. She wonders if he hit it on purpose with his hands, or by accident swinging the butt of the shotgun.

Quieter now. He is in the hall. She only has a few seconds left. She hears him pause outside of the bedroom door. She left it cracked. Shut would have been obvious. Open would have been obvious, too. Cracked is more natural – maybe someone peeked in here, maybe a cat pawed it open, maybe the creaky old house settled. 

He knows, though. He always knows. Sometimes when she’s angry and opens her mouth, like her mother taught her, she calls him stupid. Well, no, she’s never said it. He’s the one who says she insinuates it. It must be true that she does, then. But she’s never said it. She’s never even thought it.

She’s hidden from him enough to know how smart he is.

Please, god, be quiet now. He’s here.

She holds her breath. Her throat grows a tumor. Good. That will help her stay quiet. Soon he will start. He will slur out his taunts. He will let her hear the safety being turned off. He will open the closet door, calmly. Then he will kiss her temple with the barrel. 

It will be okay. Remember? It will be okay. He never pulls the trigger.

But – he doesn’t open the door. He collapses in front of it. It shakes in its frame. She realizes she can see him. How? There’s a hole here. When did that hole get here?

He’s crying now. No, he’s wailing. He really should be quiet – because when did that hole get here?

 When did momma get here? Contorted against the opposite wall. She really is good. But granny’s better, and she’s here, too. When? When did they get here?

She feels more terrified than she ever has. No. No, wait. She no longer feels anything.

She has been hiding in the closet for a long time. 

*   *   *

Mackenzie Kae is a writer living in Kentucky. She enjoys caring for rambunctious beings and floating through fantasies. Her work has appeared in Corvus Review, Last Leaves Magazine, Subliminal Surgery, and Molecule.

By Brent Rowland

He washed up on our shore in the morning, a young man with small wings clinging to his slender back. His skin was sticky and his legs mangled, broken in several places. By late afternoon he was hooked up to the normal machines. We gently pinned his wings open, like two old coats, and placed heaters beneath each one. We checked his heart, x-rayed his legs, drew his blood, and found him closer to death than life. He lay there pale and extinguished, surrounded by a roomful of equipment—the ballast to pull him from whatever tragedy he had suffered.

In the evening I stayed with the boy while the others went for food. Sunlight from the window crept up his face. I was tired, watching the light in his hair, when he opened his eyes right into mine. They were clear and blue and troubled. The boy didn’t move at all. He only flexed his wings and looked at me. For the first time that day I thought of my son, and among the machines, all the tubes and monitors, I bent over and hugged the pathetic boy. I put my cheek against his and held him for a moment in the sunlight.

I wandered down the beach after that, when the others returned. These things happen while someone eats or walks along. Everything turns naturally away. But there was something amazing, and the next morning the boy was gone.

                                                                    *   *   *

Brent Rowland has worked as a cinematographer, shooting films that have appeared infestivals around the world. He’s into Arundhati Roy, Bill Evans, desi food, defunct pay phones,desert nights, art house theaters, and the cinema of Wong Kar-Wai. He has a BA in English and an MFA in Film and Media Arts.

By Evelyn Pae

Parker is in the garden, weeding. The row where her carrots should have been is a mysterious barren landscape, so deserted she almost considers leaving the weeds to their eagerly-claimed territory. But in the end she pulls them up, along with a handful of millipedes. 

The tomato plants list in the wind, yellow as pages of an old book. They grew vigorously at first, she remembers, then produced pathetic little flowers, just two apiece.

Parker snips bouquets of greyish broccoli, imagining its fiber paired with some kind of illusory sauce. The kids will push it to the side of their plates, where it will deflate further, soaking in its rejection like black tar. Her husband Dove will eat it, but with a twist to his mouth as he does, like he’s forcing himself to swallow and wants the whole family to know it. An hour later, Parker won’t have to catch him in the bathroom flossing green out of his teeth, because she’ll be back out by the garden in her bathrobe, staring at the dying plants as the shadows fall.

Now, from the garage, she hears the rattle of their finicky old lawnmower attempting to start. Once, twice, three times. 

Dove, pushing the lawnmower, appears around the corner, wearing no shirt. He doesn’t like being shirtless; in fact he is uncomfortable with regret already, feels the sweat slicking his back and knows he must be gleaming like a rotisserie chicken to all and sundry. Parker, looking up and seeing him, has the instant thought: he’s done this to piss me off. He may not know this himself, but she does. She knows it in a perverse and married way. She frowns.

She remembers finding him beautiful in college. Back then, she’d stroke her hand down the soft swell of his hip and find it strange, fascinating, how a creature could adapt to the softness of its environment by becoming even softer. She has never been a gentle person, Parker, but for those few years at school she becomes a facsimile of one. She says things she has never said out loud before, such as that when she is married with children she wants a garden, with little tomatoes her two little kids could eat right off the vine. A blush comes to her cheeks as she says it: you know, ours. And, not long after it’s spoken, they burst into existence. 

In Dove’s mind, this tenderness of Parker’s has long since solidified into the banality of expectation, and no amount of following disappointments seem able to make him understand that rather than a package feature of heterosexual marriage, his wife’s two years of sweet wifely behavior were a rare and fathomless gift that may not be seen again in this lifetime. Parker remembers it like a bout of utter insanity. She had smiled when he said he wanted a dog, although she hates dogs. He had taken her hands in his pudgy ones, and her belly had fluttered with the need for his children. Why?

She dons the long stiff gloves, which have not yet lost their Home Depot smell under the dirt. She has been waiting for calluses to form, but there are only blisters that rise, pop, and then rise again. She sometimes sits in the kitchen holding bags of frozen peas to soothe her sore fingers. Coddling them every time they hurt, she suspects, is what prevents them from finally hardening.

She flexes the gloves. “Do you need me to get out of the way?” she says to Dove. He has always been good at reading her lips: over blaring sci-fi movies, college party jabber, the harmonic screech of the young child.

Why yes, Dove thinks, as you can see, I am mowing the lawn, and you are sitting on it. “Don’t let me interrupt,” he says, as he runs the mower barely a yard past her. 

She gets up and backs away. “I said don’t get up,” he shouts over the mower’s growl. He sounds angry to her, but she just shrugs.

She is thinking about whether or not he looks good like this. She has been in kitchens all round this cul-de-sac and she has seen the way other wives coo and ogle when their husbands prance by, all thrusting shoulders and huge glistening bags of leaves. She sometimes imagines syringing a clear fluid out of the heads of those women and injecting it into her own. It would fizz in her skull, she imagines, like a zero-calorie seltzer water, happifying her instantly.

She has been staring, and Dove is squirming. “Don’t look at me,” he shouts, and watches her start. He realizes then that she had not been looking at him at all, but lost in that place within her own mind where she goes so often and he can’t follow. He isn’t sure which option makes him angrier, only that both seem unbearable all of a sudden, combined with the heat and the wetness and the smell of crushed plant matter, all of which he dislikes intensely for their unmistakable smack of the outdoors.

“How can I not?” Parker shouts back, and again he has the feeling a joke is being played on him just outside the grasp of his understanding.

“Easy,” he retorts, knowing even before he finishes the statement that it’s not going to be as witty as she is, and yet seeing no choice but to plow forward: “Just turn your head, and look away.”

Parker thinks about doing this. “All things are that easy to you, huh,” she says.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Just what it means.”

“I can’t stand it when you’re like this.” When you’re like this is all the time. Dove grunts angrily, adjusts his grip on the mower’s handle. It is best, he decides, to tune Parker out at times like this. She can take her catty little comments and shove them. What good is saying something the other person has no chance of understanding, what is that all about?

“Dove,” she’s saying, with increasing urgency, “Dove, the tree!”

He whips his head up and the tree is there, branches bristling in his face. As the mower snarls loudly on a root, he swears. What comes naturally is to yank it backwards. It rolls onto his foot with about the same ferocity with which it had chewed into the age-old wood.

The next thing he knows, he is on the ground. It’s suddenly quiet. There’s pain, wild and throbbing and blossoming out of nothingness like an overnight weed. All around him is half-cut grass.

Parker kneels by his side. She draws the mangled sandal off his foot, making him moan. There’s blood, it’s a mess, he has always hated the sight of his own blood. “Oh, sweetie,” she says, and puts the shoe aside. “It’s going to be all right. Take deep breaths.”

The tenderness is back in her face as she leans over the wound. It hasn’t been there for a long time, and maybe it’s the swiftness of her transformation that makes him see it: whatever it is she needs from him, he only ever seems to give it to her by accident. In this moment, all is clarified: he is hurt, she is soothing him, she will make sure everything is well. But it will soon break down again—at the hospital, even, with all those doctors and nurses—into that world of incomprehensible chaos, soaring vast and awful over his head. Nothing will make sense, and she will find new ways to turn even this bright and flaring agony into something he is not allowed to own for himself. 

Dove starts to cry, hunching forward and wrapping his arms around his knees to stabilize

himself, the way the counselor had taught him as a boy, that one and only time. Parker, watching, feels pity, and is not annoyed by that pity. Her heart has unlocked for him, and she puts a hand on his shoulder, not disgusted by his sweat or the blood streaked on her fingers. “It’s just a little toe,” she says, and strokes his neck. “Don’t cry, Dovey. We’ll go to the ER.”

She has the feeling that this may have been, in part, her fault, and something in her wants once again to try and do better. She has been hard on him, but now is suddenly and profoundly grateful to be sitting here in their yard, both of them warm, both of them still breathing. The world has recovered its interest and life. How terrible that it takes this injury, this emergency, to wake a person up to what’s always been there. It will all be different now, she thinks, as she takes his hand in her blistered one, squeezes it tight.  

The gloves and the upturned mower lie to the side. Around them, imperceptibly, cut grass grows. 

*   *   *

Evelyn Pae is an aspiring naturalist and writer currently based in Syracuse, New York. Their work has appeared in Unearthed and Halfway Down the Stairs.

 By Robert P. Bishop

The artist, burdened by easel, palette, and canvas, cried out when he skinned his shins stumbling through the dark. Exasperated, the artist stopped, set up his easel, blindly dipped a brush into the paints on the palette then swept the brush across the canvas. Immediately heaven and earth appeared and light separated from dark, bringing forth night and day. 

The artist gazed upon his creation with awe. “Why didn’t somebody tell me I could paint night and day, heaven and earth? It would have saved me a lot of pain.” He stared at his bloodied shins.

Freed from darkness, but drained by the exertion of painting something as momentous as night and day and heaven and earth, the artist closed his eyes and slept. 

When he woke he saw his painting was colorless and uninspiring. The artist dipped a brush in the paints on his palette and shouted, “I’ll paint some firmament and make it…”  He searched for a word… “and make it blue!” With a single stroke a brilliant blue mantle swept above the earth. Exhausted by this effort, the artist slept.

The artist woke to a world lacking dry earth. “That’s an easy fix.” He painted continents separating the waters into the seven seas. Overcome by the beauty of his creation, the artist sat down on a sandy beach and wept sweet tears.

As he lazed on the beach listening to the soft susurrus of the surf lapping the shore, the artist saw the land was barren and harsh. He wielded his brushes again with daring strokes. Green plants appeared and spread over the earth. Flowers of every color filled the air with marvelous fragrances. But something gnawed at him. “My painting is unfinished,” he muttered before lying on the warm sand and going to sleep. 

The artist went for a walk when he woke. Dismayed by the emptiness of the sky above, he took up his brushes and with slashing strokes created the sun to rule the day and the moon to command the night, circle the earth and give movement to the tides.

Exhausted by his labors, he slept.

To refresh his spirit when he woke the artist dived into the sea. The absence of living things in the water distressed him. “Well,” he murmured, “nature abhors a vacuum.” He came out of the sea, took up his brushes and fashioned the creatures of the oceans on the canvas of creation. 

Pleased with his work, he rested on the warm sand. Gazing skyward, the artist lamented the absence of flying creatures. “Behold!” he cried and brandished his brushes again. All manner of flying fowl filled the air in response to his vigorous strokes. 

That afternoon the artist strolled over the earth. The silence of the forests and the vast savannahs vexed him. “My painting’s incomplete,” he grumbled. Worn out by strenuous labors and too much time lazing in the blazing sun, the artist lay down in the shade and slept.

The next morning the artist sat under a flowering jacaranda tree and studied his canvas. “Today I will create something new.” 

He carried his easel to the ocean’s shore so he could enjoy the soothing sound of the surf while he worked. The animals he created spread over the earth. But something nagged at him. He stroked his chin thoughtfully and cast a critical eye upon his painting. “It’s still not right. Something is missing!”

After going for another walk, he said, “This place needs a name. I’ll call it Eden.” The artist paused. “Why should I name it? There isn’t anybody here, so why bother?” Feeling obstreperous, he named it anyway, because he could and because he knew every great work of art needed a title.

The artist sat down by a pool of clear, still water, saw his reflection and fell in love. He turned his head this way and that and examined every feature of his face. “Should I create a creature who is as beautiful as I am and include him in my garden?” The artist thought about it. “Why not? I’m the artist. I can create anything. Who is going to stop me?” The artist squeezed more paint onto his palette and with assertive strokes painted a magnificent creature that looked just like him. “Your name is Adam and you live in a garden called Eden,” the artist said to this living perfection.

Adam started to walk away. “Hold on, Adam, you need a partner.” The creative juices surged in the artist. With delicate and precise strokes, he painted a beautiful woman. “You are Eve,” he said. 

Hand in hand, Eve and Adam walked through the garden. Their nakedness radiated goodness, innocence, and piety. The artist followed, overjoyed by the love Eve and Adam expressed for each other and for all living things.

The artist sat down and studied his garden and Eve and Adam, wrapped in their mantle of chaste purity. After a few minutes, he exclaimed, “I know what’s wrong! There’s no juice in Eden. It’s boring!”

Snatching up his brushes, the artist painted a cunning serpent in the leafy branches of the Tree of Knowledge. The sly serpent slithered up to Eve. “Hey, Babe, take a bite of this beauty.” He presented her a glistening fruit. Eve ate the fruit. Then Adam ate the fruit. They looked upon their nakedness with wanton eyes. A ferocious hunger grew in them. Adam said, “You’ve got magnificent tits, Eve. Let’s fuck.”

Lightning flashed and thunder boomed across the darkening skies. Earth’s creatures cowered as the artist’s laughter rocked his Creation. 

“Now my painting is complete!” the artist cried. 

Then he rested.

*   *   *

Robert P. Bishop, an army veteran and former biology teacher, worked in Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, Morocco and Bahrain before settling in Tucson, Arizona. His short fiction has appeared in Active Muse, Ariel Chart, Bindweed Magazine, The Blotter Magazine, Bright Flash Literary Review, Clover and White, CommuterLit, Ink Pantry, Literally Stories, Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Mysterical-E, Scarlet Leaf Review, Umbrella Factory Magazine and elsewhere. He has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize.