A Memoir by Kate Levin

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. Air traffic control in Denver has notified us they’ve found some tire rubber on our departure runway. They don’t know which plane it came from. In case we’ve blown a tire, we’ve been directed to make an emergency landing in Washington, DC.”

It is August 1991 and I’ve just spent a magical week with my new boyfriend (whom I will marry in a couple of years). Because he lives in Sacramento and I’m in graduate school in Philadelphia, we’ve had to get creative. We meet this time in Los Angeles, where he owns a house. He picks me up at the airport in his red Alfa Romeo convertible and introduces me to his LA. We walk (yes, walk!) around downtown and eat tacos at Grand Central Market. We listen to mariachi bands in East LA. We lunch outdoors at a beachside restaurant in Santa Monica, defending our fried shrimp from marauding gulls and gazing at the surfers. It isn’t at all fancy and I love it. And him.

At the end of that week I fly to Colorado to visit my parents, who are spending the summer there.

A few days later, I board a United Airlines flight in Denver to head back to Philadelphia. The first hour is uneventful: I pretend to read for my fall classes while looking out the window and dreaming of a happy ever after with my new love. Those dreams have been rudely interrupted by the pilot. And now we are in a full-blown in-flight emergency. 

This isn’t my first in-flight emergency. In November 1989 I flew from Philadelphia to Boston for a cousins’ reunion. By that fall I’d already spent several years in therapy. During those sessions, I struggled to relinquish the illusions of childhood, especially the idea that someone would always keep me safe. I didn’t know how much I was continuing to struggle until that flight. As the plane descended, my heart pounded and my palms got sweaty. I had trouble breathing. I was convinced I was having a heart attack. I pushed the call button but no one came. Once we were on the ground, I told the flight attendant who rushed to my seat that I needed medical attention. My sisters and cousins were alarmed to see me wheeled out of the plane on a stretcher by a couple of burly paramedics. I was physically fine and didn’t need to go to the hospital, but I was embarrassed and shaken. At the end of that weekend I boarded an Amtrak train back to Philadelphia. The following week my therapist sent me to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed panic disorder and wrote me a prescription: 1/2 Xanax to be taken as needed, especially before flying. 

I’ve more-or-less overcome my panic disorder and I haven’t needed medication to fly in a long time. But I could use a Xanax right about now, since this in-flight emergency is real, not imaginary.

As the seconds tick by, I imagine the crash: the ground rushing up to meet us, the pain of flames and broken bodies. And then nothingness. 

I look around the plane. Why are the other passengers so goddamned calm? No one is screaming—yet. So is that screaming I’m hearing inside my own head?

I glance at the phone on the seat back but decide not to call my parents or my boyfriend to say goodbye. Why worry them?

I feel a tap on my shoulder. My seatmate is a grizzled cowboy-type in his late 50s, and we’ve ignored each other until this moment. But he’s noticed I’m hyperventilating and reaches out. “I flew jets in ‘Nam,” he says in an avuncular way. “I’ve seen way worse than this. We’re gonna be fine.” Even though I’m not 100% convinced we’re not going to die, I do feel comforted enough to unclench my hands from the armrests.

One of the flight attendants comes on the intercom to tell us to remove our shoes and jewelry (why jewelry?). She then informs us that when we are landing, we should all bend over and grab our ankles. She has us practice. This doesn’t help me to remain calm.

An interminable hour later we approach DC and the pilot announces he will fly over the tower so air traffic control can check out our tires. Although they don’t spot anything wrong, we still need to make an emergency landing. 

As the plane descends, we have our heads tucked between our knees and our hands wrapped around our ankles. The flight attendants shout, “Keep your heads down! Keep your heads down! Keep your heads down!” An avowed atheist, I start praying: “Please God keep us safe! I’m not ready to die yet!”

After the plane lands normally with tires intact, we all pop up and cheer. We disembark down the emergency slide one-at-a-time with our shoes on our laps. At the bottom we nod to each other in acknowledgement: “We’ve survived!” Inside the terminal we are met by gate agents, who apologize for the inconvenience and book us to our final destinations. 

Before my flight leaves for Philadelphia, I call my sister, who lives nearby. “I’m at Dulles Airport about to board a flight to Philadelphia. Our flight from Denver had an emergency landing!” 

“Wow,” she says. “That’s crazy. Are you scared to get back on a plane?” 

“Not really,” I say. “What are the odds?” 

Since that day I’ve taken hundreds of flights. Each time I board the plane and mostly keep it together (except during turbulence). I’m a grown-up who wants to set a good example for her daughter. And I have places to go: work to be done, family to visit, vacations to take, new locations to explore. But a part of me is always waiting for that next in-flight emergency. 

                                                                  *   *   *

Kate Levin (she/her/hers) is a retired English professor who lives in NYC. A member of the Kelly Writers House Advisory Board for many years, she currently serves on nonprofit boards in education and the arts. She has published in Rockvale Review, Bookends Review, Smoky Blue, and Marathon Literary Review and is a reader for CRAFT Literary. She also has a series of articles in academic journals about teaching Eliza Haywood’s 18th-century novella “Fantomina.” IG: kate.levin.5

By Mikki Aronoff

Judy’s husband, Howard, barges into the hospital room, crumples his nose. It smells of hyacinth and bleach. “Lookin’ good, honey!” he blurts, checking his watch.

Judy’s stretched out on the bed, surrounded by the spirits of her childhood pets. Nestled at her shoulder is her beagle, Tippy, his tail fanning her face. Uncle Elizabeth, the rat who bruxed and boggled, clinging to Judy’s sweatshirt as she bicycled through her neighborhood, nests in the crook of Judy’s arm next to Harriet the hamster, who’d eaten her own pups. Tomcat, rescued from a storm drain, unsheathes his claws, ready to pounce on a carnival-won goldfish now nibbling Judy’s toes. TweetyToo, her canary, circles her head in a buttery halo. Tails tuck and wings fold as Judy’s breaths slow and her eyes shut. 

Howard snaps his fingers an inch from Judy’s resting face. “Hey! Eyes up! I need you to sign something!” Howard’s shoving a piece of paper right under her nose. The word “DEED” is at the top. He jams a pen between her fingers, leans back and sniffs. The air smells furry. Feathered. Like animals, he thinks, scowling. He’s never liked animals, especially inside. He doesn’t see them positioning themselves between Judy and him. His right foot staccato-taps as he waits for a response from her, shivers as he feels something like claws picking at his itchy beard, teeth nipping at his chest. 

“Stay with me, Jude.” He tightens her limp fingers around the slipping pen and squeezes. “Let’s just make an X….”

Judy gasps, then sighs a long, soft breath.

The animals bow their heads. Squirrels bark and snap their tails. A piebald pony rises up on its hind legs and whinnies. A snarl of starlings tents Judy with a silken canopy spun from the finest cobwebs. 

“Never seen anything like it,” the night shift duty nurses say to each other as they enter Judy’s room. There are feathers all over the floor. Howard’s spread-eagled on the cold linoleum, his mouth twisted. Scratches and bites and hoof prints pattern his stiffening corpse. Judy’s body lies peaceful on the bed. The nurses step over Howard’s hulk. With quick, skillful hands, they wash her in water infused with lavender, wrap her with care, the animals gone quiet now.  

*    *    *

Mikki Aronoff lives in New Mexico, where she writes tiny stories and advocates for animals. She has stories in Best Microfiction 2024/2025 and Best Small Fictions 2024 and upcoming in Best Small Fictions 2025. More at https://www.facebook.com/mikki.aronoff/.

By Judy Slitt

I don’t know if you believe in energies or whatnot – Lily never did. But I was jogging along the beach by my new apartment, and heard my late Labrador retriever, Ozzie, panting next to me. He was always a bit chunky and out of shape, sweet boy. I stopped and looked behind me. A set of paw prints next to my footprints, all the way back to the boardwalk. 

I was the only one there.

The sunrise peeked out, red and blinding, from behind a cloud.

The next morning, I woke up to find Ozzie’s stuffed Mister Froggo on the pillow next to me. I had found it in an old laundry hamper while unpacking and couldn’t bear to throw it out. I started having trouble sleeping. Mister Froggo squeaked nonstop, as though Ghost Ozzie was biting it. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. 

I posted on the local subreddit: “Medium wanted. haunted by dog(??)” Lily would’ve never let me do that. I was the witchier lesbian of the two of us. She let me read her tarot cards, but I could tell she wasn’t feeling it – she kept saying, “Oh, really?” 

I’m not a total moron, though. I didn’t share my location with the medium until I read all her Yelp reviews.

“Call me Dee Dee,” she said, shaking my hand. She had frizzy red hair, torpedo boobs, and a stump for one of her arms. 

She wandered around my house in a gray sweatsuit and New Balance shoes, sniffing the air. Was she an actual medium? Don’t they wear long robes or something? 

She stopped in front of the couch. “I feel strong energy from your frog friend,” she said, pointing at Mister Froggo, who was covered in mystery slobber. “You moved here recently, right? Ozzie must’ve followed you from your old house.”

“The whole way?”

“The whole way.”

I imagined Ghost Ozzie on the cross-country road trip with me, from California to Florida. Sticking his head out the passenger side window of my Chevy S-10, smiling. Snuggling on my feet at the motel while a couple screamed at each other in the parking lot. Putting his blocky head in my lap as I kept calling Lily and hanging up.

“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know dogs could do that. Does that mean he’s unhappy?” I started to panic.

Dee Dee laughed. “No! No, not at all. It’s all dogs want to do – be with their human. That doesn’t change when they’re in the next life.”

“So he’s okay?” I said. “He’s not stuck in some freaky dog purgatory.”

“He may be a little nervous in his new surroundings,” she said. “That’s perfectly natural. I’d keep your routine as similar as possible to what it was when he was in his furry form. But he’s in tune with your emotions. If you’re calm, he will be, too.” She gave me sage to burn for positive vibes.

When Dee Dee left, she hugged me and patted my back with her non-stump arm. She smelled like french fries. I wondered vaguely if having a stump arm helped her talk to the dead. Though I’m not sure how all that would work. 

“I won’t take your money,” she said. “I was meant to come here.” 

I followed Dee Dee’s advice. I set up a corner of the living room with Ozzie’s bowl, plush dog bed, and Mister Froggo. I take him on walks in the morning and after dinner, just like I used to. And last night, I swear to you, I was having trouble sleeping when I felt a familiar weight settle on top of my feet. 

I said, “Ozzie, is that you? I love you. Good boy.”

Ozzie the Ghost Dog sighed heavily, and we both fell into a deep sleep.

*   *   *

Judy Slitt lives in Virginia. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Moss Puppy Magazine, M E N A C E, Crow & Cross Keys, and BULL. Her website is judyslitt.com. 

By Calla Smith

The emptiness always hit Irene the hardest at 3 a.m. when she stumbled around her apartment, unable to sleep alone. She couldn’t remember how long she had been searching for something, anything, that would fill the places in her that no one had ever been able to reach. There has always been something missing, something that kept her up at night and waited around every corner in the day while she tried to go about her life. 

Irene was trying to avoid it one day by taking a long walk somewhere she had never been and she stumbled by the tattoo studio by chance. There was no doubt in her unquiet mind as she stepped across the threshold and heard the metallic shriek of the needles for the first time.  She started on her arm, losing herself in the pain that covered all her other hurts just as the black ink covered her flesh, glistening like the blood of a new life. Maybe she could start over again after all. Maybe this could finally wash her clean.

She didn’t mind the feeling of her skin stretching around the black square that was now staring back at her whenever she looked down. The eyes hidden beneath the void recognized Irene as no one ever had before, taking in every crack and flaw in the surface of Irene’s soul without comment, greeting her as though they had known her all her life. 

She had to go back. She needed more. This time, the area that was covered looked bigger, but she kept her gaze straight ahead and felt that she could only really breathe with the sharp tip of the needle biting into her waiting skin.

The second time, the relief was more fleeting than it had been the last time. Soon one arm was covered, and then the other. Each patch of colored skin was a new pair of eyes looking at her from the darkness without ever finding her wanting. Late nights and early mornings were easier now. She felt she could have talked to the being hiding in her flesh for hours if any explanations were needed. But all the blinking eyelashes already knew there was nothing more to say or do.

And then, even if Irene couldn’t see her back, it was comforting to know it was there, like a protective arm around her shoulders. The stain had crept over her stomach and down her legs until it reached her ankles. She wore long pants and button-down shirts even in the sweltering heat once she noticed the way people on the subway gazed over her body as though they had any right to judge.

The one thing that she could never escape was the pale skin of her face in the mirror, the last terrible emptiness that could never be filled. It was the same face that had haunted her for all her life. Nothing could ever hurt her as much as the evil hiding in her pupils. It told her that no matter how much she tried to cover it up, she could never hide everything that was wrong with her. Irene knew that her face, the last bit of skin to be touched, would soon also be blacked out, as though that could make up for her existence. Maybe, she thought she could also find black contacts. Everything might finally be alright if she couldn’t recognize herself anymore.

                                                                `*   *   *

Calla Smith lives and writes in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She enjoys continuing to discover all the forgotten corners of the city she has come to call home.  She has published a collection of flash fiction “What Doesn’t Kill You”, and her work can also be found in several literary journals.

By Greg Metcalf

“I don’t need these renewed, just returning.” The man set down the books, a stack of four—the top one Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, the three below equally thick, like wood between the top one and the library counter. He held them like a casserole dish filled with a cheesy lasagna dense with sauce and meat, made with saturated boiled noodles—not the dry no-need-to-boil modern ones—ready for the oven. He slid them toward the librarian in a way that suggested the pressing of his weight. She met them halfway, letting her fingers touch his. She pulled them to her edge of the counter. Emitted a squeal as she hefted them and turned to place them in the return bin. Her instinct to turn the binds up to read the titles resisted only by the strain in her wrists. 

“Not exactly light reading.” She boldly joked with her back to him, with a desperate hope she wouldn’t turn around and find him leaving. 

“Pretty good stuff.” He was still there, his arms drawn back, but still pressed over the counter toward her. “Would you like to meet for a drink, sometime?”

“Yes,” she said, after waiting a moment. Smiling and maintaining eye contact as he smiled and maintained eye contact as the moment passed. Perfectly. “Yes, here’s my number.” She jotted it on a scrap of paper with a handy short yellow wooden pencil. She gave it to him and then left her opened hand out, steady. Perfectly, as she swooned. 

He tucked her number in his wallet and shook her hand. “I’m Adam.”

“Kathy.”

She watched after him as he walked away. Then two other librarians emerged from behind her, and she tried to appear composed. “Don’t do it, honey,” one said, and Kathy tried to turn but found herself squeezed still on both sides. 

“He seemed interesting.”

“No,” the other said. “Seems only. Trust us. What kind of book lover doesn’t own a single one?”

“One who frequents libraries?” Kathy said. 

“And what,” the first said, “reads from thousands of pages of erudite literature in less than a couple of weeks?”

“Maybe he spends all day reading.” Kathy added, almost breathlessly, “Maybe he’s a writer.”

“And has nothing to say about them except that they’re…,” the two of them said together, “pretty good?”

“He might just not be big on discussion.” Kathy still watched him through the library’s glass double doors. He crossed the parking lot and left her sight without reaching a car. Kathy immediately pictured, within walking distance, a tiny apartment designed as an elaborate reading room and, in a corner, a writing desk. 

“No, trust us, honey, you want to stay away from that one. I spent all morning, over breakfast, trying to discuss books and ‘pretty good’ was the only thing he ever had to say.”

The other gave a nod and began slowly shaking her head. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that player reader has never opened a book in his life.”

                                                                  *   *   *

Greg Metcalf is the author of Flowers on Concrete, a novel, Hibernation, a YA thriller, and the memoir Letters Home: A WWII Pilot’s Letters to His Wife and Baby from the Pacific. He has four other completed novels, unpublished to date. His short fiction has been in Confrontation and online at Boston Literary Magazine, Toasted Cheese, and others.

By Christine Robertson

It’s December, and I’m dancing in the bathroom, barefoot, dressed in my World’s Best Sister nightshirt, about an hour late for work. Lynyrd Skynyrd blasts from my phone. That soaring crescendo in Free Bird where the vocals peak, and the guitar goes wild. I should get ready, head to the office disguised as a responsible adult, but the music crawls up my skin, alive. It just feels so much more damn important. 

The phone rings. I send it to voicemail, bob my head like a chicken, belting into my toothbrush. 

Then it rings again. 

A voice I don’t know is on the other end. It says “Miss,” and my name, and tells me it’s sorry, and has terrible news. 

They found a body.

It’s my brother.

I book a flight from LAX to Miami. Stumble through the airport, drowning in loudspeakers and fluorescent lights. I pass a woman I know holding a cup of coffee—fat baby beside her in a stroller. And hours later, in a cheap rental car, I drive to the place where they lifted him.

*

I’m on a forgotten knoll off the shoulder of a road. A chain-link fence stands like a sentry guarding the parking lot behind. The road’s too wide for the few cars that speed by. It’s quiet. Industrial on one side, mobile home park on the other. Too quiet.

The Florida sun presses down. The air, thick and damp. The cop says they dragged him, dumped him, drove off in his car. They don’t think they’ll find it; it’s probably already in pieces. 

No one can tell me if he was still alive when they left him. There’s no way to know. All I do know is they found him in the morning, and he’d been dead awhile. 

It would have been dark out. 

Black. 

Stitched in silence. 

Was he scared? Did he suffer? Did he die alone? 

I search for answers I don’t want like his life depends on it. Stare at the mound, dried grass crumpled like discarded paper, desperate for proof. Something I can make sense of. Even a sign he was really here. 

There’s nothing but a gum wrapper. Half-buried rusted tuna can. Decades-old cigarette butts. 

Then behind a blade of grass, I spot a lighter. It’s red, plastic, chipped at the edge, but it looks new. I rub my thumb across the smooth surface holding it too tight. Look up at the sky, cruel blue with swollen clouds, secretive and still. A witness refusing to speak. The air won’t move, and I can’t breathe, and I want to leave, but I don’t want to leave him.

I force myself to drive to a hotel and lie alone in the dark while the world lights up. Outside, there’s a holiday boat parade. Red and green lights flicker through the window. Music blares. People laugh, slurring, loud and loose on the obsidian sea. I press a pillow over my ears, shielding myself away from the festive roar, and try to sleep.

The next several days I return to the knoll, but he’s not there. He’s nowhere and everywhere. I whisper-cry his name like a spell. Wrap myself in his laugh—that crack in his voice when he tried to sing. I hide in his crinkly eyes and mock accents, and a grin that warmed the entire world. 

Then I pull myself away, and head toward a rent-a-car place next to the airport. 

When I pull into the driveway, a bird the size of my palm bounces in the path. It chirps. Once. Twice. Three times. 

Its eye locks on mine.

Time stops. 

And just like that, it flies away.

I follow slowly at first, but as it moves ahead, my feet move faster and I’m on a street I’ve never seen before with no idea how far I’ve run. My chest burns and I gasp for air. 

It darts around a corner and disappears. 

I stop. 

Completely alone. 

There’s only a dead-end fence. A silence of sky and air so loud it throbs in my ears. I’ve no idea how to move or where to go from here. Every second he moves farther away, but I know if I keep running, I’ll find him. There’s no way he could have gone that far. 

*   *   *

Christine Robertson lives in Los Angeles. Her recent work has been published in Club Plum and Eunoia Review, and she is a two-time contributor to The Sun’s Readers Write. She holds a BA in English and French from UCLA and currently studies creative writing as part of the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. She can be found online at christinerobertson.com. 

A Brooklyn Story by Phil Baisley 

“Marble? You home?”

Jerry DeLuca peeked into the darkness of his Bensonhurst apartment.

“Marb?”

No response. No mewing. No purr.

Well, cats have a life of their own.

That’s why Jerry left the kitchen window open on all but the coldest nights. Marble, the malnourished tabby kitten he’d brought home…

How many years ago?

had never quite been domesticated. Oh, he devoured the cans of Friskies Jerry dutifully left him, one each morning, with some dry kibble in the evening, but he spent most of his time…

Where the fuck did that cat spend his time?

outdoors, a minuscule lion prowling the Brooklyn streets.

After his dinner of reheated spaghetti with sauce made from those wonderful Roma tomatoes Louie’s Market carried, Jerry listened to the tunes on his dad’s old Stromberg-Carlson until his body leaned onto the sofa cushions and he drifted into sleep. Sometime before the sun whispered hello to Montauk Point, Jerry felt, or maybe dreamed of, a warm, furry body snuggling beside him.

                                                                                *

When he awoke, Marble was alone. He arched his back and stretched his forepaws to their fullest extent. Feeling himself a bit dirty behind the ears, he licked one paw at a time, carefully wiping it behind each offending ear. When he was certain his ears were clean, he licked his lips. He tasted blood.

Usually, sensing blood on or near him triggered in Marble an image of whatever creature he’d last caught and toyed with before consuming. Rat taste was common for any New York outdoor kitty. Sparrows brought their own peculiar memories. With starlings, the blood Marble smelled could easily be his own. This was definitely rodent.

Licking until he was certain his fur was presentable should anyone disturb his sleep, Marble stretched again and then curled into a ball for the kind of rest a miniature predator can only find indoors, sunken into a down comforter.

                                                                               *

Per his custom, Jerry fell asleep before the third stop on his morning commute. Some instinct deep within him, bred through generations of New Yorkers, would rouse him just before Union Square. It always did. That left only three stops and a brisk walk to the little coffee shop where his signature order was two cherry Danishes and a black coffee.

“Mr. DeLuca!” Called the Greek gentleman behind the counter. “Your usual?”

“Sure, Georgie.”

Minutes later, the clerk returned with Jerry’s breakfast.

Hey, Mr. DeLuca, you’re looking kind of pale today. You ain’t comin’ down with something, are ya?”

“Nope. Don’t think so.”

Just to make sure, Jerry swallowed, straining his neck to feel any telltale signs of a sore throat.

“Nope. All’s good.”

But Jerry wasn’t completely convinced. What did Georgie see that he couldn’t?

“Tell ya what, my friend. Can you put one of the pastries back? Maybe I am feeling a bit off today.”

Georgie chuckled.

“Hey! You’ll be hungry as a horse by lunchtime for sure.”

And he was.

Jerry’s appetite returned with a vengeance right about 12:20, just a few minutes before lunch hour. He decided to keep the bologna sandwich he’d brought with him in its paper bag in the break-room Frigidaire and spring for a steak at Tad’s. Rare. The baked potato made up for the Danish he hadn’t eaten for breakfast, and the gnarly little sirloin, oozing blood like a gangster in a “B” movie, satisfied his other desires.

Jerry spent the afternoon listening to the Yankees beat the Red Sox on the office radio while he and the other claims examiners pored over statements from physicians and employers as they determined whose unemployment compensation claims had enough merit to appeal their denial. At five o’clock, he grabbed the sandwich out of the ice box, thinking that after a big lunch it might be all he’d need for supper.

Later, walking through his doorway, Jerry wondered again, Where’s that damn cat? 

                                                                               *

Marble couldn’t resist the call of the evening sun, and he found a spot on a stone stoop that suited him nicely. He knew the kids who lived there and understood their cries of elation and dejection as their stickball games progressed in the street. When the streetlights came on, and the children trudged home, Marble stretched, bathed his hind end and feet, and began his hunt. Last night’s mouse was not enough. He needed a richer source of nourishment sometimes, and this was one of those times.

The hatless gentleman never saw it coming. He was too busy moving his eyes left and right in the darkening alley. You never know what kind of muggers and perverts might be skulking in the corners, behind garbage cans, or in dark doorways. New Yorkers never look up.

Marble timed his leap from the fire escape perfectly, digging his claws into the stranger’s back and his teeth into his neck. The victim would recover in a daze, remembering only the pain, hoping whatever bit him wouldn’t require a painful series of rabies shots, never knowing how valuable was his unoffered, but gratefully received, gift of life.

                                                                          *

The day was warming quickly by 7:00 a.m. Jerry checked the cat food dish and the water tin, opened the apartment door, and called back, “Have a good day, okay, buddy?”

That morning at the coffee shop, Georgie called, “Mr. DeLuca! Hey! The usual?”

Jerry brushed his fingers over his lips, savoring a metallic memory.

“Just coffee today, Georgie. I’m not that hungry.” 

  *   *   *

Phil Baisley was born and raised in Canarsie, Brooklyn, New York. He is a retired seminary professor, current pastor, and reptile enthusiast currently residing in Richmond, Indiana. 

Baisley’s non-fiction work has been published in books by Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, Cascade Books, Atla Open Press, and in his own book, “The Same, But Different,” by Friends United Press. His short story, “Jarvis Hampton,” was recently included in the “Stolen” horror anthology by Easton Tales Publishing.

A Memoir by Leah Mueller

As I wandered down Van Allen Street towards Keenan’s house, I could see that the block looked exactly as I remembered. Immaculate three-story Victorian homes. Massive oak trees, shedding their first autumn leaves. Old-fashioned streetlamps on cement poles. An eerie, Norman Rockwell scene, transported into the early 21st century.

I spent my middle and high school years in downstate Illinois. Popular kids ridiculed me in the hallways. At first, I ignored them, gritting my teeth as I strode in the opposite direction. They were like cockroaches—for each one I saw, ten more waited inside the walls. I learned how to sling insults back.

Keenan was intensely neurotic, prone to nervous tics like hair-pulling. He already had a couple of visible bald spots. Rumor held that he drank a fifth of gin every night. I adored him because he was different from everyone else. Keenan was like a gnome from outer space. He and I often discussed eclectic topics that no one else understood. Social dysfunction was our shared bond, our stock in trade.

His family’s place lay halfway between my parents’ house and the high school. Our home was much nicer than his. We had a well-kept yard filled with flowers and vegetables. Keenan’s front porch was covered with rusted machine parts, old shoes, and broken toys.

Twenty-five years had passed since my last visit. Central Illinois wasn’t exactly a tourist mecca. I gazed at anonymous rows of leaded glass windows. I once knew every step to Keenan’s place. Had somebody torn down his house?

A middle-aged, corpulent mailman lumbered in my direction. He stopped a few feet away and smiled. “Looking for somebody? I know everyone in these parts. Maybe I can help.”

“I attended high school here. Just sort of wandering around. I’m doing a nostalgia tour.”

The mailman erupted in laughter. “That’s a good way of putting it. I’m Gary Hinman. Class of ’75. Been working this route for 24 years.”

“My name’s Leah. Class of ’77. You might remember me.”

“Who could forget?” Gary chuckled. “You definitely stood out from the crowd. Of course, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

“Whatever happened to Keenan?” The words burst out before I could stop them. “I’ve been searching for his house, but I can’t remember exactly where it is.”

Gary shook his head. “Man, that’s a sad story. He died only a few months ago. His heart just kinda exploded. Serious drug addict. One day, he showed me a tackle box full of pills. Acted like it was his candy drawer. The house is still there, but nobody lives in it.” His tone sounded casual, like he’d seen many people expire during his years of mail delivery. 

I gaped at him, horrified. “God, that’s awful. Forty-four is too young. Poor guy. He always wanted to buy a mansion and listen to Bach all day. Guess he won’t be doing that now.”

“No, he stayed in his parents’ house,” Gary said. “He tried to attend college in Champaign-Urbana but came home after six months. Poor guy should’ve stayed in school. He was smarter than some of the professors. Damn shame.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Hey, I’d better get back to work. Nice talking with you.”

Gary adjusted his bag and trudged towards a row of waiting houses. Halfway up the block, he spun around and snickered, “Nostalgia tour. I like that. You know, I can’t do a nostalgia tour, because I never left. Oh well.” 

A moment later, he wandered behind a bush. The mid-afternoon sun had grown frigid. A couple of acorns plummeted to the ground. The street became eerily quiet, like the moment before an explosion. 

I no longer wanted to see Keenan’s house. My old friend lived somewhere in the ether, long past Tuscola’s city limits. I tried to imagine him, crouched over an easel or a typewriter, hard at work on his latest project. Both eyes closed, swaying to music only he could hear. Like he’d found his place in the world after all.

*   *   *

Leah Mueller’s work is published in Rattle, Certain Age, Writers Resist, Beach Chair Press, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, New Flash Fiction Review, Does It Have Pockets, Outlook Springs, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has received several nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. One of her short stories appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions. Her fourteenth book, “A Pretty Good Disaster” was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2025. Check out more of her work at substack.com/@leahsnapdragon.

By Richard Collins

I was going in for chemo. I brought my daughter Izzy with me but for some reason asked her to wait in the car. A nurse came to the waiting room and took me through several long halls to another building. We passed I don’t know how many doors, most were closed, some were swinging, few were labeled. I was worried Izzy wouldn’t be able to find me if she went inside to the waiting room, or that she would stay in the hot car. I was already thirty minutes late for my appointment, but by the time I got to the new location through the maze of the hospital’s various mystery clinics I was forty-five minutes late. I tried to call Izzy or her mother on my phone but it was busy updating its operating system. The doctor gently scolded me by saying, ‘you were already late, so don’t push your luck, we only give you two chances.’ I still kept looking at my phone in case it had finished its upgrade. I thought, ‘okay, chemo, here it is. The beginning of the end. It’s not so bad. It’s been a good life. I can go out calmly.’ No raging against the dying of the light for me, in fact I’ll help it along. 

There were a lot of other patients waiting. There were gurneys lined up everywhere in the new waiting room, lots of patients milling about like me, some on their phones. Why not me? On a couple of gurneys were charcuterie boards full of half-eaten salami and cheeses, grapes and crudités. I thought this in bad taste. Some celebration, some kind of ward party? The doctor was cleaning all this up, as though he had just finished surgery or a meal. I said, “look, I’ve got to call my daughter, she’s waiting in a hot car, and I need to tell her to go inside or something.” He looked at me mock-sympathetically, held up two fingers, but did not give me permission to use the phone at the nurses’ station, so I continued to check my cell to see if it had unfrozen to continue its upgrade. The speed of the upload was not encouraging, choppy, some instability in the connection here maybe. I was about to tell him again, more assertively, that my daughter needed looking after, but then I remembered that she was not six years old but twenty-three and surely she could take care of herself and go inside if the car got too hot or she wondered where I was, here in the cancer clinic in mid-winter, when my name was called. 

                                                                   *   *   *

Richard Collins is abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple and lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he leads Stone Nest Zen Dojo. His work has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature and a Pushcart Prize and appears in Clockhouse, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, MockingHeart Review, Pensive, Sho Poetry Journal, Think, and Willows Wept Review. His books include No Fear Zen (Hohm Press), In Search of the Hermaphrodite: A Memoir (Tough Poets Press, 2024), and Stone Nest: Poems (Shanti Arts, 2025).

By Arthur Pitchenik

Sunlight alone incubated an abandoned egg in a quiet corner of the coop—and I was born again. Unlike the other hatchlings, I would not—could not—peck for insects, no matter how hungry I was, and I longed, more than anything, to fly.

One day, I watched a caterpillar struggle to crawl toward a plant, contracting its body, wrenching itself forward. It then spun a silken thread and hung from a leaf. A chrysalis slowly enclosed it—fragile and still—for days. Then the shell cracked, and a butterfly wriggled free—wet and crumpled. Its wings unfolded slowly, fluttering with the promise of flight.

I was mesmerized.

“Can I fly with you?” I whispered.

The butterfly replied softly, “You’re a chicken. You can’t fly.”

“Why?”

“You’re too heavy, and your wings are too small.”

“Why?”

“You were bred that way—so you can’t escape. You were meant to lay eggs and be eaten by humans.”

I lowered my head.

“And you’re a grounded insect meant to be eaten by chickens—yet I let you live. Is there a higher authority for me?”

“I was meant to become a beautiful butterfly.”

“And I was meant to become a sleek bird with enormous wings–meant to escape.”

As dawn broke, I felt myself grow lighter. My wings stretched wide and strong. I lifted from the coop and soared above the trees, toward the rising sun.

I awoke to the beeps of my cardiac monitor and the  breath of my ventilator—

Tomorrow I’ll be a gazelle.

*   *   *

Arthur Pitchenik is a retired physician who writes poetry, short stories, and flash fiction about adversity, vulnerability, empathy, struggle, and triumph in fantasy, science fiction, and contemporary genres.