By Vish S. Watkins

Thorne desperately wanted to taste a real cheeseburger, but it was June 2346, and though the cheeseburgers were flavorful, they were synthetic. In his last trip to 1964 in the late model time capsule, he had run out of time to eat one at Ruby Dee’s Burgers that everyone in Detroit had raved about. As a historian who specialized in culinary evolution, he had funds for travel-time. And now he had researched and decided to savor the original one, so he set his dial to 1934 in rural Kentucky, on the outskirts of Louisville. Punching the cloaking button to render the machine invisible to anyone stumbling by, he landed in an abandoned barn. 

A little later, he found a Kentucky farmer nearby and asked him if he could help him get to Louisville.  “It’s seven miles from here. But I was planning on going later this morning, so I can take you with me then,” the farmer said. “Till then, Amanda’ll show you round.”

Thorne scanned the milking barn that Amanda, the farmer’s 12-year-old daughter, had taken him to. He had never seen a cow before, so he approached it with wonder. Amanda, lanky with blonde hair, said, “Betsy’s a Holstein. She doesn’t get too close to strangers…”

But Betsy turned, looked with her big eyes at Thorne, drew close, and nuzzled his belly. So much affection and trust from an animal considered essentially brainless in that time. He rubbed her back. Amanda, eyes turning as wide as that Kentucky barn, said, “Mister, I ain’t ever seen her take a liking to anyone but me!”

They went back outside, where an older boy, lean, with a straw hat partially covering his blonde hair, a masculine version of Amanda, was repairing a wagon wheel. 

“Tommy, this is Mister Thorne. Betsy nuzzled him.”

The boy nodded and stared at Thorne. 

Thorne asked, “Betsy a favorite of yours too?” 

The boy spat out the straw in his mouth and said, “Oh yeah. Yumm.” 

“Oh, Tommy!” Amanda chided.

“Ain’t six months left till she’s burger meat,” Tommy said.

She knocked the straw hat off his head. 

*

On the drive to Louisville, in the farmer’s new 1934 Ford Model B pickup, Thorne was struck by the prettiness of the landscape. Within a hundred years, the world would be set on fire by thermonuclear war and all of this would be gone when the nuclear winter came in its wake. Thorne knew this history only too well. A white-tail deer ran across the road. On the fields were cows and horses, black and brown and dappled. So much beauty! Few animal species had survived the war. No cows, no horses survived. By the time Thorne was born, the small remaining population of humans had evolved into an almost different species—far advanced in compassionate intelligence, though unaltered in physical appearance. 

*

That afternoon, Thorne eagerly entered Kaelin’s, his destination, the Louisville restaurant that would later claim to have invented the cheeseburger a few months before, when Carl Kaelin had added cheese to a hamburger soon after opening his business. Thorne knew that this claim would be disputed, the original cheeseburger alleged to have emerged a decade before, when a 16-year-old lad cooking burgers in Rite Spot, a Pasadena, CA restaurant, had burnt one and slapped a slice of cheese to hide the charring flavor. A trip to Pasadena in 1924 was next on his itinerary. More than enough antique money from the Costume and Accessories Section of the time capsule station lay in his pocket to buy this burger. 

On the smoke-stained wall above the counter, a round white clock rimmed in black announced the time—12:25 PM. A red oblong storage chest with the logo “Coca Cola” painted in white on the side stood under the end of the counter. The smell of frying fats and oils oozed in and permeated the dining area. A waitress stopped by and asked him what he’d like.

The cheeseburger cost five cents according to the menu. But he couldn’t bring himself to order one. Betsy’s face kept appearing, making him cringe with memories of her tenderly nudging him with her head. He remembered that the people of this time were less empathetic with animals. He couldn’t stop envisioning Betsy in a slaughter house, those sad eyes fearfully sensing imminent death. He asked for a grilled cheese sandwich and Coca-Cola.

*

He walked the seven miles back to the abandoned shack. Looking around, reminded that this was a pre-nuclear-war landscape, he savored the enchanting sights of lithe horses, the smell of fresh-cut grass, and sweet sounds of cheeping cicadas. All this beauty destined for devastation. So many billions gone, so many species become extinct long before his birth. But now, the memories of Amanda with Betsy and the Holstein’s snuggling him wouldn’t let go. He started the engines. He recalled the smell of Betsy’s stable—fresh milk and hay and straw and wood shavings. He wiped the tears that trickled down his cheeks. Who would have ever thought that he would be mourning a cow from four hundred years in his past? 

    *   *   *

Vish Watkins is a retired physician. He holds a diploma in Classical Guitar Performance from The Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto. His work has appeared in Moss Piglet, The Write Launch, Stirring:A Literary Collection, and The Green Silk Journal.

Creative Non-fiction By MaxieJane Frazier

Blindfolded. Hands laced on top of my head. Squatting on my heels. I wait.

“Move ahead.” The low voice commands.

I waddle in my combat boots and green utility uniform, elbows flapping like wings. The rumors are true, then. We duck walk ourselves into the side of a wooden box. How small?

“Make yourself big, hit your head on the way in,” a junior advised us before the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape summer program began for us Air Force Academy rising sophomores. “They adjust the box. You want to be as large as possible, so you have some room when they shut it.”

My fingers scrape on the underside of the box top. I bang my head harder. It’s so small. Too small.

One side of the box presses in, clicks shut. I’m squatted so deep my knees are beside my ears. My muscles strain to straighten. I’ve been in the “hot box” for 10 seconds, give or take a few seconds. Panic flutters, wingbeats in my chest. How can I do this?

I gulp at air, unable to expand my chest, then force the partial breath in a hiss through my pursed lips. You are not suffocating. You are not suffocating.

Around me, panicked voices rise and fall muffled inside other boxes. The words aren’t clear, but I take a cruel comfort in knowing I’m freaking out less than at least one person.

Though this training is a secret, we know things like there is an adjustable box and we have to control our breathing. 

No one knows for how long.

“It’s at least an hour,” one junior said.

Another laughed, “It’s fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”

The common denominator? It’s too long.

I’m afraid to move my arms. Afraid to learn they can’t move from the top of my head. Afraid that my body will become its own wild thing when it learns just how trapped we are.

Fingers tingling, I breathe in my own sour fear laced with the stench of three unshowered days here in the training camp. What did you do for your college summer break? I cut off the bit of hysterical laughter bubbling up. Keep it together. Another breath, in through my nose this time. My lungs cannot fully expand, my own body and clothes a corset. I can’t breathe, I can’t . . .

Voices outside. Someone is banging, yelling.

Voice inside me, distinct and firm: It’s training. Controlled. Death is— the voice falters for a second, surely aware that the “enemy” is upperclass cadets barely trained to play their own roles, Death is unlikely. How many trained sergeants ensure our safety?

“I can’t breathe!” The voice shrieks, maybe sobs. Disembodied terror.

No one lets them out.

Something new rises in me, invisible and strong. It presses down on the feathery panic.

I start at one hundred and count backward. Too easy. I’m at zero in too few seconds. Maybe another language? French will slow me down.

Cent. Quatre-vingt dix-neuf. Quatre-vingt dix-huit. 

Somewhere around soixante-huit, the year I was born, I drift off to sleep. Curled tight, pressed in by the wooden sides, the strong thing inside me pushes back. No longer in a straitjacket, I’m a chrysalis in a cocoon.

When they unhinge the side and let me unfold into cold air, I’m wishing for just five more minutes of safety and quiet. My wet wings unfold from the cocoon. Strong, but not flight ready. My brilliant new colors hide in plain sight.

                                                                  *   *   *

MaxieJane Frazier wrangles a stubborn pen from the rural reaches of the American west. Her work is published or forthcoming in Waxwing, Gooseberry Pie, Switch, Cleaver Magazine, Booth, Collateral Journal, the Bath Flash Fiction anthology, and elsewhere. MaxieJane holds an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and founded Mighty Mule Editing. Learn more at maxiejanefrazier.com

 By Mary Guterson

At our son’s wedding, my former husband is there with the woman who is now his wife, and I am there with the man who is now my husband. My former husband’s new wife was going to marry another man before marrying my former husband, but the man she was going to marry left her at the altar. The fact that she was left at the altar is a secret, but since my former husband cannot keep a secret, everyone knows, including my current husband, who was a secret to my former husband while he was still my husband and also a secret to my son until my son hacked my emails and let my former husband know. My current husband’s former wife is not at the wedding and, as of now, does not have a new husband. My son looks very happy and we all wish him well.

                                                    *      *       *

Mary Guterson’s published work includes novels, short stories, poems, article, essays and radio commentaries. She lives in Los Angeles.

By John Jeffire

I knew I was losing my mind so I did crosswords and other things to keep me from losing my mind. Wordle, the number thing, what’s it called, Sudoku, computer solitaire, anything.  But it wasn’t helping. I was losing it, forgetting everything, where I put the keys, did I take Scotty on his walk yet, paying the HOA fee, where I parked the car at Home Depot.  One year from retirement, the kids all grown and gone, and here I was losing my damn mind.

Maybe it was the prostate. They were going to kill it. Or part of it or something. The damn thing was twice the size it should be and I couldn’t go half the time or it took twenty damn minutes for a couple dribbles. Next Tuesday, the doctor was going to go in through my leg and run a wire or something into the prostate and plug up the vein (or was it the artery?) going into the prostate and choke it out, no blood to it, or part of it, and it would die and shrink and I would be able to piss again. Janet, my wife Janet, said not to worry about it, people had stuff done to their prostate all the time, but how did she know it wasn’t cancer or something else?

“I’m having trouble peeing,” I told Janet, my wife Janet, a couple months ago.

“So what do you want me to do about it?” she answered. 

I had a lot on my mind.

And I argued.  Mostly with Janet.  Janet knew I was losing it and she just kept pushing me.  When you’re losing it you don’t like it thrown up in your face that you’re losing it.  Like the cucumbers.  Steve the neighbor guy brought them over from his garden.  So one afternoon I cut us up a cucumber, got us some salt, a couple drinks, sat everything out on the back patio.  You know, a snack, something easy, something good for you.  Something to eat together. Something to not argue about.

“You like the cucumber?” I asked.

“What kind are they?”

“They’re from Steve’s garden.”

“That’s not what I asked.  What kind are they?”

“I don’t know, a regular cucumber. The garden kind.”

“Garden kind isn’t a kind.  There’s English, Persian, Armenian, pickling and slicing, lemon…”

She started again.  Why not just eat the damn cucumber like a normal person?  Why the arguing?  Making it a federal case?

“It’s just a cucumber from Steve’s garden.”

“I know that.  You said that.  You can’t answer a simple question anymore.”

“Well, you didn’t answer my question.  Do you like it?  Does it taste good?  You’re eating it.  It seems like you like it.”  I didn’t want to talk about types of cucumbers.  I just wanted to drink my drink and eat the cucumber slices and not think about things like the names of different cucumbers or prostates or veins or arteries.

“I’d like it better if I knew what kind it was.”  Janet had her sunglasses on so I couldn’t tell what she was looking at, but her head was turned toward the neighbor’s backyard, their patio, which had one of the electric awning things. “If you don’t know what kind then you don’t know.  I bet he told you and you just forgot.  You forget everything.  I mean, I think you’re right, I think you really are losing your mind.  Anyway, I think it’s a pickling cucumber.”

Maybe Steve told me that, the right name of the cucumber.  Maybe he didn’t.  What I didn’t forget was that I having trouble pissing and I was forgetting everything.  I knew that.  But I solved the Wordle for the day that morning. Usually I was about 50-50 with Wordle but I bet at least a million people didn’t solve the Wordle that morning and it didn’t mean they were losing their minds.

“You remember you said you’d get us an awning like that?”

She pointed at the neighbor’s patio, the electric awning thing.  I did remember saying that.  About a month ago.  That I’d like to get one of those electric awning things, just hit a button and instant shade.  Janet, my wife Janet, she was right, I did say that, and I remembered that I said it.  But I just bought a set of tires for the car and paid Scotty’s vet bill.  Money was tight.

“Yeah, I remember that.”

I took a long drink. If I drank enough, would I be able to pee? I looked at the slices of cucumber.  A cucumber is a cucumber. If you like how it tastes then who cares what the name of it is.  You didn’t have to remember a damn thing to know if you liked it or not.  Right now, right here, right at this second, if you liked it, you could call it anything.  A tire.  An awning. Steve or Scotty or Janet or prostate or whatever.  

Anything.

Yeah, I was losing it.  So what.  Throwing it in my damn face wouldn’t change that. And yes, my prostate was the size of a baseball. Me, I liked the cucumbers Steve gave us.  They didn’t need some fancy name besides cucumber.  I looked over at the awning thing.  The neighbors, two mid-sixty-somethings, the Sirolis, that was their name or something like that, Italian sounding, I know their name but just couldn’t recall it off the top of my head, they waved to us and hit the switch that unfurled their awning. 

I waved back. 

So did Janet. 

I could feel I had to pee.

I picked up the fattest slice on the plate.  The awning was now fully out and the humming of its little motor gone. The neighbors sat there smiling at us. Was Mr. Siroli’s prostate the size of a baseball? He had the fancy awning and probably more money than I had, but maybe he couldn’t piss either. I hit my cucumber slice with some salt.  I held it up, bit into it, crunched it extra hard, extra loud, loud enough for Janet, my wife Janet, and the neighbors—the Sirolis or the whatevers—judging me in the shade under their fancy awning.

*   *   *

John Jeffire was born in Detroit.  In 2005, his novel Motown Burning was named Grand Prize Winner in the Mount Arrowsmith Novel Competition and in 2007 it won a Gold Medal for Regional Fiction in the Independent Publishing Awards.  Speaking of Motown Burning, former chair of the Pulitzer Jury Philip F. O’Connor said, “It works. I don’t often say that, but it has a drive and integrity that gives it credible life….I find a novel with heart.” In 2009, Andra Milacca included Motown Burning in her list of “Six Savory Novels Set in Detroit” along with works by Elmore Leonard, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jeffrey Eugenides.  His first book of poetry, Stone + Fist + Brick + Bone, was nominated for a Michigan Notable Book Award in 2009.  Former U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine called the book “a terrific one for our city.”  His short story “Boss” appeared in Coolest American Stories 2022, which won the International Book Awards Prize for Fiction Anthologies.  In 2022, his novel River Rouge won the American Writing Awards for Legacy Fiction, while the manuscript for his novel Detroit South won the 2025 Claymore Award for Literary Fiction. 

By Kim Bundy

You’ve always lived with it, just like the doctor said you would, until today’s lunch shift, when Mom and sister come in and sit on one side of a booth, Dad and boy on the other. You hand them menus and crayons and Dad slides the kiddie menu over to the boy. Little man first, he says. The boy pulls out a black crayon, pressing hard, and when it snaps in two you notice a greenish bruise at the side of his mouth. Dad sees you looking at it and eyes your name tag. 

Courtney, is it? He’ll have the chocolate milk.

You go to the kitchen, and the manager sees you rubbing your arm. What, he says. Nothing, you tell him. You fill the drinks, take them back to the table, ask what everyone wants to eat. The boy, rocking, rocking, rocking a spoon with his index finger is watching Mom, and when she says cheeseburger, he quickly says cheeseburger, too. Sister closes her hand over the boy’s finger, quiets the spoon, and asks for a cheeseburger without the cheese. 

Jesus, why didn’t you just say hamburger, Dad snorts, and the girl looks at Mom, who pinches her eyes closed. Steak sandwich for me, Courtney, he says. You begin gathering the menus and start to go to the kitchen then turn back, asking the boy if he saw the aquarium by the cash register. Would he want to go look at the fish? 

We saw the aquarium, Dad says, pulling the boy toward him. When’s the last time you folks cleaned that thing? 

You get to the kitchen and tell the manager about the bruise. He tells you it’s not your problem, but you pick up the phone, anyway, palms slick. You’ve known Margie in police dispatch a long time, and when she asks how old the boy is you guess four. Maybe five? She radios a couple of officers and says you’ve done the right thing. Tells you to stall.

You deliver their food, your armpits swampy. The boy takes a bite of his burger and while he’s chewing, fingers the bruise. Dad tears into his sandwich, sees you looking at the boy, and drops his sandwich on the plate. 

We’ll take the bill, Courtney, he says, his mouth full of chewed-up steak and bread. You remember the time your first-grade teacher Mrs. Lane asked about a bruise on your arm, and you told her you fell off the jungle gym. How Mama told you to be tough and when she finally took you to a doctor, finally believed you, an x-ray showed a hairline fracture. Not much we can do about it now, the doctor said. You’ll just have to live with it.

Dad gets antsy and asks why you’re just standing there so you offer apple pie on the house. Oh, yeah, Courtney? On the house? He stares at you, his pupils huge. You hurry to the kitchen and scoop pie on plates. As you walk back into the dining room two cops walk in, a guy and a lady. 

Dad’s face turns scarlet, and the lady cop looks at him then at you. You nod and your skin prickles. Christ. Dad starts grabbing everyone’s napkins, crumpling them up, and says they’re leaving. 

Daddy, what about the pie, says the boy. Dad tells him to shut the hell up and the plates in your hands start to crater. Lady cop walks up to their table and asks if everybody’s doing okay. What’s it look like to you, Dad says, and everything goes quiet except for the tap, tap, tap of the spoon. 

Lady cop says look, we don’t want any trouble here, and there’s a loud crack. You wonder for a second if somebody pulled a gun but no, you’ve dropped the plates. Tart apple slices through the fog of body odor hanging in the air and guy cop turns his head, mumbling into a radio on his shoulder.

Dad says let’s get out of this dump and pulls the boy out of the booth by his arm. Guy cop grabs Dad by the shoulders and the boy, eyes wide, covers his mouth with a small, trembling hand. The manager comes out with a broom, tells you to clean up your mess. 

You fucking just had to go and make it your problem, didn’t you, he says, shoving the broom into your hands. Jagged shards are everywhere–under booths, the cash register, by the front door-and you know you’ll never get them all. 

The boy starts crying and it courses through you, settling into the tender split in your bone, and as you pick through the broken bits of plate you remember how the doctor said your body healed itself as best it could, the tiny bones knitting themselves back together, how Mama said kids don’t need locks on bedroom doors (just stay away from Papa when he’s mad!), and now, instead of the spoon, it’s the whole diner, rocking, rocking, rocking, so you pick up a pointed shard and make a quick, neat slice in the thick scar tissue on the inside of your arm, watch the little red beads bubble up, and wonder how long you’ve been holding your breath.

*   *   *

Kim Bundy’s stories have or will appear in The Hudson Review, Ghost Parachute, Flash Boulevard, BULL, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Louisville Review, Midway Journal, Every Day Fiction, Halfway Down the Stairs, and others. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and long-listed for the Wigleaf Top 50. She currently serves as a reader for Fractured Lit.

#

By Sarah Parris

I discovered a chickadee egg in the grill today. I’d meant to lay it in the hedgerow, nestle it among the leaf litter, but as I passed my cat’s small winter grave, some ancient magic pulled me aside, bent my knee. I set the egg at the center, among the violets, above her heart. An offering. A prayer for rebirth.

                                                                   *   *   *

Sarah Parris is a professor of English and creative writing in Missouri where she lives with her wife and three cats. Her work has appeared in Blood Tree Literature, Midwest Weird, Oracle Fine Arts Review, Progenitor Art & Literary Journal, and others. 

A Memoir by Nate Methot

I stare at the faces as they stare straight ahead. Examine them, take them in, an assembly of clones in row after row set out just for them. They’re just kids; they’ve never looked more like children, dressed up by their parents, silent and still, wide-eyed and utterly bewildered. Blindsided. No one prepared them for this.

I’ve known them for years, but still, I can’t recognize faces. I’m sure they don’t recognize mine. I’m not who they knew, and they know it. We’ve never been here before; these faces were born just today.

I’ve already seen what they see. I fell asleep on one planet and woke up on another, rocketed through space without consent. Its atmosphere synthetic, my heart, lungs, and spine weren’t prepared. I designed a robot to survive me: encoded my memories without their emotions, tested its systems, then let my human body wither and expire.

Dragging themselves from the life-giving sun, the Vermont of late spring, our guests funneled into a stagnant, aged chamber, full of gloom. Energetic youth, brimming with activity and optimism, invincible, glorious summer set before them. All of life stopped upon entry.

Uneasy, uncertain, unsure, they forced their way forward and gave hugs to the robot, all charged up and programmed to receive. Despite each embrace, an inscrutable chasm divided: flesh, blood, and feelings on one side, steel, circuits, and automation on the other.

In the face of all the beginnings and possibilities in the opaque space between adolescence and adulthood, of all of their plans for the future, they’d been forced to acknowledge an impossible ending. Confirmation lay in a box for that purpose. We had to show them, and they had to see—had to look, but couldn’t. Not really. Not fully. 

I watch lifeless mannequins stare blankly at memories. They’re hopelessly lost, drifting away and returning, stuck between logic and nothing, as if on the hunt for a clue. He matches his pictures but doesn’t. Are we sure this is him? Surely, this boy isn’t gone. Seeing is believing, and yet…

Unasked questions fill the collective conscious, saturate the tedious, lifeless space. How did this happen? The images are fresh—graphic, vivid, concrete, tattooed on my brain. But sharing’s not possible, and comprehension eludes.

Someone broke into our home and our lives and took him away. I awoke to a scream as Mom discovered the switch—a sound I’d not heard, no one’s heard. Haunting blue face and frozen body at its center, a universe of panic swarmed in. But it was over at the start. I burst out the door and set to work on my robot, unable to breathe and desperate to survive. Her most precious, her first born—her beloved—was gone, replaced by a vile, revolting stranger. 

At the front of the room on display is that stranger; everyone’s eyes on the stranger. Nobody knows him or understands why. We’re all strangers; for the first time we’re strangers; the strangest among us up front. 

          *   *   *

Nate Methot is the author of A Life Derailed: My Journey with ALS, a memoir. He was diagnosed with ALS at twenty-seven in 2011. He lives with his parents in Vermont and writes with one finger and a mouse. His memoir, blog, social media, and local newspaper column can be found at natemethot.com.

By Kelleigh Cram

Every time I read it, it changed. Subtle shifts that would go unnoticed to the untrained eye, like the sugar packets. When I first followed Alice to her favorite brunch spot, she took her coffee with two sugars and a splash of cream. The next time she used four, then cream only. By the end she drank it black, but people don’t change their coffee habits. They are ingrained in you, set in stone by the time you reach adulthood. 

I found the book at a neighborhood yard sale, cast aside with the other dollar-bin items rescued from junk drawer purgatory. It called to me, its yellow pages faded but untouched, the cover chipped from careless storage. No design, no pictures, just a single word serving as the title. I ran my fingers down its spine, knowing I had to have it.  

Five times I read it without reaching the end. I started the last chapter for the first time when Tammy called to say Dad was in hospice. Three days and nights of sitting in that hospital, comforting him, holding his hand, the right words spoken and gestures performed, but all I could think about was Alice. I don’t remember grieving, just coming straight home from the funeral to finish the book. 

My bookmark laid face down on the floor, discarded like one of the tissues they passed out at the viewing. I turned to where I left off and began to read. Right away, I knew something was wrong. It was like jumping into a movie halfway through. I backed up a few pages, restarted. No matter where I read, it wasn’t the same book.

I blamed grief and started from the beginning. That’s when I first noticed the changes. Alice met her friend at a different restaurant. Her golden retriever became a labrador. Instead of a light sweater, she grabbed a raincoat. I read on, glossing over these details. I was invested in Alice and needed to know what would happen to her. 

A car wreck brought my second attempt to a crashing halt. I woke early to finish the book, ignoring the clock as it neared eight thirty. My gut told me to stay home, but I couldn’t afford to be late for work again. I passed a truck at the same time it merged into my lane, forcing me off the road. The nurses say I woke up screaming for Alice.

Tammy visited me. As soon as she stepped into my room I begged her to get the book. She came back armed with clothes and toiletries, everything I needed except for the one thing I wanted. She claimed she couldn’t find it, but I doubt she even looked. By the time they released me it was too late. I skimmed through the pages, new words printed over the ones I’d already read. 

There would be no more distractions. I refused to set the thing down. I read during meals. I read in the bathroom. I didn’t shower or go to work. After two days of reading nonstop I dozed off, waking to find the book sprawled across my pillow. My frantic attempts to pick back up made no difference. That version of the book was gone, lost into the void of Alice’s world. 

I took a break for damage control. The more I insisted I was fine, the more convinced Tammy became I wasn’t. She asked to stay with me for a few days and I suggested she stop acting so much like Mom. We compromised with dinner at the local diner.

“You just don’t seem like yourself,” she said once we settled in a corner booth.

I stirred my coffee, staring into the glossy hue swirling at the top of the cup. I reached for the sugar container, pausing to run my finger over the different colored packets.

“How do I take my coffee?” I asked.

“What?” Tammy looked up, pushing her plate aside.

“I can’t remember how many sugar packets I use. Or is it Splenda? Or cream?”

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

I glared at her, waiting for an answer. “Well?”

“Put whatever you want in your coffee,” she said.

I jumped up, slapping a twenty on the table. “How do you not know? You’re my sister.”

I went to work the next morning, blaming the accident for my absence. I left the book at home, knowing if I had it with me I’d be too tempted to read it, but Alice still found ways to speak to me. Words in an email morphed into excepts from the text, just long enough to leave an imprint when I closed my eyes. The phone rang, my hello landing on dead air. 

“Alice?” I asked.

The silence on the other line hung thick with her presence. It was time to go home, and this time I had to succeed. I armed myself with coffee, Red Bull, and dollar store snacks before locking myself in my room. 

Something was wrong with Alice. The once carefree woman had grown cold. Did I leave her alone for too long? Was she punishing me? Her friends turned into enemies. Kind words developed a sarcastic tilt. I began to doubt myself. Maybe Alice had always been this way. She wasn’t changing, only my interpretation of her. 

The phone rang. I turned it off. I knew in the back of my mind I no longer had a job and Tammy was worried. Dehydration, hunger, and exhaustion played tug of war with my body, but I couldn’t stop. Alice wouldn’t survive another read through. 

Someone knocked on the front door. I almost dropped the book but managed to squeeze the pages under my thumb before it slipped through my hands. The knocking grew louder, the sound coming from underwater. I ignored it. We were getting so close, Alice and I. Once I reached the end Alice would be redeemed, her true nature revealed by a final heroic act. The last two pages fanned out over my hand, rocking up and down as though summoning me forward. Before I could turn the page a window popped open, the light bursting into the room searing the ink off the pages.

I felt no fear, only agitation. I tore my eyes from the book to face my intruder. Tammy stared back. 

Her words were hallow, annoyance masquerading as concern. I tried talking her down, but she wouldn’t have it. I got up to make the guest bed, knowing once again we would have to start over. 

The next morning, I told Tammy I was going to work before driving to the local walking trail. I parked in the back, a secluded spot where Alice and I could be alone. As soon as I read the first word I knew.

This was a horror story. 

I forced myself to keep going. Once I finished, everything would be okay. There could still be a happy ending.

Alice frightened me. She transformed into something violent, hateful. Her thoughts read like venom. I no longer rooted for her, willing the fiction gods to smite her. A sense of loss rose from deep within me, tears threatening to blur the words into oblivion. Alice, my Alice, was gone, but I couldn’t give up.

When it got dark I clicked on the overhead lights, keeping my eyes locked onto the book. This was the closest I had ever gotten to the end, but the more I read the less I wanted to know. My hands trembled as I flipped to the last page. A single paragraph hovered over a sea of blank gray space, Alice’s fate summed up in four simple sentences. Don’t do it, I thought, don’t do it Alice. I willed myself to slam the book shut, but my eyes got dragged across the page, Alice whispering the words in my ear.

As I read the last sentence, the kind that makes THE END not only unnecessary but inevitable, a chill washed over me. I knew who Alice was, what she was, who she had become. I had to stop her.

Someone tapped on the driver side window. Through the glass, Tammy looked miles away, from another dimension, one where Alice didn’t exist. Her voice rose up from a deep tunnel. 

“Alisson? Are you alright?”

“It’s Alice,” I said, knowing it was too late. Alice’s story was written and would never be undone. 

*   *   *

Kelleigh Cram resides in a small town near Savannah, Georgia. Her work has been featured in Ponder Review, Bacopa Literary Review, and The Hoolet’s Nook.