By Tim Conley

I used to date this girl who had to have a nap every afternoon. Thirty minutes every day behind a closed door: that was the rule and there were no exceptions. She allowed a little teasing about it, to the extent that she smiled about it, but the rule held firm. The first time she stayed at my place for the weekend, maybe a month or so after we started seeing one another, she surprised me by insisting on a room to herself for the nap, door closed. Not to be disturbed under any circumstances, I said with my ominous announcer voice, and she smiled, because she always smiled at my voices, and said: that’s exactly right. We once took a trip together to Cuba and she exiled me from the hotel room for half an hour every afternoon, during which time I either read a book by the pool or at the bar or went for a walk. 

There’s something odd, when you think about it, in how, as we grow accustomed to another person, we begin to question what we accepted so readily, or even so eagerly, when we first became attracted to them. It’s as though we’re maintaining some mysterious balance to a shifting ratio between degrees of familiarity and degrees of strangeness. Amid the heat and rum and time unmeasured except by that strict routine of naps the thought of this ratio introduced itself and lingered. When we came back from Cuba, I returned to my questions about the naps. Would it be so terrible to miss one, now and then? Maybe I could try joining her for the nap one afternoon? She smiled and shook her head.

Well, my use of the past tense is probably not that much different from the ominous announcer voice: a coming change is implied. It happened on a weekend when she was staying at my place, a Saturday afternoon just over a year into our relationship. The door to my bedroom was closed and there was something I suddenly felt I needed from that room – I have since forgotten what it might have been, but of course at the time it seemed important, or at any rate important enough to justify the intrusion. Quietly it could be done, I convinced myself, because no noise had ever disturbed that sacrosanct nap: not a thunderstorm, not a car accident just outside the building, not the time I dropped a glass bowl in the kitchen.

I turned the knob with the gentlest determination. Before the door was open, my mind flashed a wild array of possible scenes, but nothing like the one that I discovered. I was not in my bedroom but in a bustling lobby of some kind, more spacious than my entire apartment. A tremendous chandelier hung between two intertwining staircases, up and down which people in extravagant dress –sequins, bow ties, turbans, feathered boas, top hats– were making their way. Lush carpeting added a decadent warmth to the general dazzle. People were lining up at desks, sitting and chatting on couches, revolving through doors.

Stupefaction lured me forward a few steps but before I noticed that the doorway through which I had come was no longer behind me I had begun to observe more and more bewildering details: that seated old woman with the weasel perched on her shoulder was singing a duet with the animal; the vexed man with such enormous feet that he could not fit them into the elevator; those uniformed hussars were laughing at how impossibly entangled their beards had become. 

The rest is too much to tell in full and it would make no sense, given in any detail. Rather than tell of the dancing skeleton chamber and the hurricane of diamonds and the tiny concierge who is himself the master key, I will stick to the broadest outline of my life since my arrival at the hotel on the glacial cliff, though simply saying as much as that will make the point that there is little to say that will be coherent. 

Not long after my arrival, I was received as an employee at the hotel, where I have served ever since. No job title could capture the range of duties I have performed and no exact duration for the long, long time I have been performing them can be given. The place itself, if it can be called a place, has always been as changeable as the guests who come and go. I have mixed martinis for viziers and shoveled the shed skin of dragons into furnaces. I have detected, at certain moments, certain resemblances to the hotel where we stayed in Cuba, but these are doubtful and fleeting. Once in a while I encounter a guest or staff member who reminds me of some friend of hers, or of her imperious mother, whom I had only previously seen in photos. Most of the time, if it can be called a time, I accept the unknown as I find it from day to day, and I suppose that I have become more and more gladly accepting of it. The terms familiar and strange have no serious meaning here. No ratio troubles me in my work.

Do I miss her? I don’t know how to answer that. It’s true that I have never seen her here and long ago gave up trying to find her napping in one of the thousands of suites, yet I have come to appreciate that she is everywhere. 

*   *   *

Tim Conley’s most recent fiction collection is Some Day We Will Look Back on This and Laugh. He lives in St. Catharines, Ontario, in Canada. 

 

By Thomas O’Connell

We are a family where a child went missing. No matter what achievements we may accomplish – art show awards, track and field ribbons – there will always be people who, when seeing us in the supermarket or at the public skate at the local rink, first think of the absence. Perhaps we do too.

We are a family where a child went missing, disappeared years ago. Ran away? Wandered off? Abducted by aliens or a serial killer? I wish I could tell you, I wish that sort of omniscience was something that I could offer you, but I cannot and so you will have to be content with the unknowing. Welcome to our world.

Today is moving day for mother. She is finally leaving the family house. When father died, she pleaded to stay for another cycle of holidays. It was the house that they would never move from, though couldn’t really afford to keep up, and so they missed the real estate spike a few years ago that would’ve rewarded them handsomely. In time, it became a burden to us children, one more child around to pitch in sure would have helped. But they were not there to contribute or persuade or field phone calls at one in the morning about squirrels in the walls. If they had still been around, mother and father likely would have moved years ago. But they had to remain in the house just in case the child came home and they insisted on keeping their landline (since the number was the one that the child knew) even when we convinced them to get a cell phone. The children kept paying for both phones.

Moving the furniture out to the rental truck, the very last thing – the very last – that is moved is the black rotary telephone, unplugging it from the wall at the bottom of the stairs in the living room. I sit on the bottom stair and pick up the receiver, listening one last time. No voice speaks to me. I can barely remember the voice and it must have changed by now anyway. No dial tone either, just space – the unknowing.

*     *     *

A librarian living in eastern Massachusetts, Thomas O’Connell’s poetry and short fiction has appeared in Bending Genres, Paragraph Planet, Hobart, and The Los Angeles Review. He is a former poet laureate of Beacon, NY, who has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, as well as having a miniature story appear in Best Microfiction 2024.

By Bethany Bruno

He used to make her omelets on Sundays. Mushrooms, green peppers, cheese grated thin. He called it his specialty. He poured coffee into her cup before his own and kissed her forehead through the steam. She used to think that meant love. The whisk against the bowl, the scrape of the spatula, the sound of him humming while she sat barefoot in the kitchen. Love had a sound back then.

Now the whisk means she is late.

He comes home at six. Always six. She has fifteen minutes to get the roast on the table before the sound of his key turns the air small.

She slices the meat and remembers a line she once read on the back of a church bulletin: Anyone you give the power to feed you can starve you too. She did not understand it then. She does now.

The baby is nine months old. The house shines. Her English degree sleeps in a box under the bed between birth certificates and old wedding cards. He told her she did not need it. “Your job is here,” he said. “Raising our family.” She agreed because belief was easier than wanting more.

When the roast comes out dry, he looks at her across the table. His fork scrapes the plate.

“You’ve been home all day,” he says. “You couldn’t keep it from drying out?”

She swallows what rises in her throat. The taste burns.

After dinner, she washes dishes until her hands wrinkle pale. Through the window, she sees their reflection. Him in the chair, her behind the glass. She dries her hands and turns off the light. The reflection disappears.

In the mornings, she packs his lunch. Turkey on wheat. An apple. A note folded into quarters small enough to vanish if he ever stopped wanting them. The kitchen smells of coffee. He eats standing up. He leaves crumbs. Always crumbs.

By noon, she scrolls through job listings. “Five years experience required.” “Proficiency preferred.” Her cursor hovers over Apply Now. She imagines pressing it, imagines her name entering some bright system where no one knows it belongs to him.

When the baby naps, the house goes still. She sits in the quiet and imagines the taste of salt. The ocean she has not seen in years. Sushi with too much wasabi. A drink poured by her own hand. She imagines someone asking, What do you want? and meaning it.

In the mirror above the sink, she barely recognizes her own face. The lines around her mouth do not belong to laughter.

At night, he reaches for her. She stays still, her body quiet and distant. His breath slows. She listens to the space between them and wonders how long she has mistaken silence for peace.

On the refrigerator, a grocery list curls at the corner. On the back, she once scribbled the line again.

Anyone you give the power to feed you can starve you too.

She reads it now like scripture.

She thinks of every meal she has served. The hundreds of plates she set before him, her hands trembling from exhaustion or apology. Her grandmother used to say, A woman’s love will feed a man until she forgets to eat. She wonders if hunger runs in the family.

The next morning, she sets the table. Plates, napkins, coffee. She makes his sandwich, but this time she takes a bite. Just one. Just to see what it feels like to taste something first.

When he enters, she smiles. “I tried the turkey,” she says. “It’s good.”

He frowns. “You’re eating my lunch?”

She shrugs. “I was hungry.”

He stares at her as if hunger were defiance. He leaves without kissing her cheek. The door closes behind him. The sound lands inside her chest like a small, clean break.

She waits for the car to disappear down the road. Then she locks the door from the inside.

The kettle screams. She pours herself a cup and drinks it slow. The heat spreads through her chest. The taste is sharp and real.

She sits at the table where sunlight falls in narrow bands. She opens her laptop. The screen wakes. Her fingers hover above the keyboard. Then she moves them. Name. Address. Resume. The cursor blinks like a pulse.

Apply Now.

Click.

The sound is soft, but something shifts. The house feels different. The kettle cools on the stove. The wall clock ticks in steady rhythm. Outside, wind moves through the trees, dry leaves skating along the glass.

She does not know what comes next. What he will say. How she will pay the bills. She only knows she is breathing easier than she did yesterday.

In the afternoon, she steps into the backyard. The air smells of soap and damp cotton. She pins the laundry to the line and watches it sway. The fabric catches the light. For a moment, she closes her eyes and lets the sun touch her face.

She imagines another kitchen years from now. A chipped mug. A small table. Her child older, her own laughter softer but still hers. Dinner without fear.

Back inside, she empties the sink. The counters are clean. The roast can burn tonight.

Let him starve.

She eats the rest of the sandwich she started that morning. The bread is soft. The turkey tastes rich. She chews slowly until she feels full.

                                                            *        *       *

Bethany Bruno is a Floridian author and amateur historian. She holds a BA in English from Flagler College and an MA from the University of North Florida. Her work has appeared in more than a hundred literary journals and magazines, including The Sun, McSweeney’s, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, Brevity, and The Huffington Post. A Best of the Net nominee, she won 2025 flash fiction contests from Inscape Journal and Blue Earth Review. She is the winner of the 2026 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest. Learn more at www.bethanybrunowriter.com.

By Huina Zheng

Silence began to cry again. Ling pulled the quilt over her head, but it slipped in anyway, sighing, murmuring, sobbing between the layers of cotton until fatigue dragged her into another world. In that place where the border between visible and invisible blurred, silence became another kind of sound: the breathing of shoe soles, the singing of mosquitoes in dreams, the gasping of walls. They floated around her body, brushed her skin, slipped into her veins.

The Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner began. Father, mother, three siblings, grandmother, and the seven from the uncle’s family next door crowded the living room.

Two large tables. The baby cousin’s cries. The aunt’s humming. A tangle of voices. Ling stirred her bowl of white rice, her teeth working mechanically. She wore a sweater of Chinese red, once her sister’s. The sounds of chewing and swallowing filled her ears, louder than any conversation. Grandmother farted, startlingly loud amid the noise. Her seven-year-old brother said, “The smelly ones don’t make a sound; the noisy ones don’t smell.” Mother’s face darkened; she was about to scold him, but since it was Chinese New Year’s Eve, she only glared. Ling ate faster, emptied her bowl, picked up the last few grains. Everyone turned to look at her. Mother’s eyes, sharp as blades, warned: Don’t make me hit you. Ling forced a smile, but a grain of rice clung to her lip. They didn’t understand why she wouldn’t eat meat. Grandmother placed a chicken wing in her bowl. Just as she lifted it, the air quivered, then silence screamed. She set the wing down and stood. As she turned to leave, the chatter followed her like needles against her back. When she closed the door, she had already turned into a hedgehog.

The TV sketch from the Spring Festival Gala crawled through the crack beneath the door. The lamp gathered her in its arms, stroking her gently. Ling turned the pages of a book, her eyes chasing the words until they filled her sight. She wanted them to leap into her ears, but they took her hair for swings, her arms for slides, her thighs for trampolines. They laughed, bright and wild. She didn’t understand their joy. Silence grinned and began to expand. Its arms propped up the ceiling; its body swelled like a balloon, covering every wall. The words trembled. She opened her mouth, and they rushed in, thrashing, biting, until she began to murmur. The sounds crawled up from her heart, through her throat, between her teeth, and rolled across the room. 

Like wind singing through a dense forest.

  *     *     *

Huina Zheng holds an M.A. with Distinction in English Studies and works as a college essay coach. Her stories have appeared in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and other journals. She has received four Best of the Net nominations and three Pushcart Prize nominations. She resides in Guangzhou, China with her family.

By Mary Higbee

Margaret ate her peanut butter toast, leaning over the sink. By the third bite, she remembered that peanut butter toast had also been last night’s dinner. She shook her head as she chewed, as if warning herself. If the kids knew that peanut butter toast was her go-to meal, they would have one of their serious talks with her. She didn’t want their solicitous tones and worried expressions when they explained why she shouldn’t be living by herself.

She brushed away the crumbs stuck to her fingers and took her coffee cup to the dining table. Sitting very straight in her chair as if the task before her was an important one, she wrote the week’s to-do list on the back of a used envelope. The list turned out to be a grocery list rather than a litany of things to be accomplished. The truth was, Margaret didn’t have a clear notion of how to spend the endless hours before her on this Tuesday morning, let alone make plans for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

What would a Tuesday look like if Sam were still alive? Margaret closed her eyes and in the gray-blackness behind her lids, she saw them studying the grocery store ad and talking about what would taste good. Sam’s request was always for her special meatloaf with mashed potatoes. Maybe they would pick up a Subway sandwich to share for lunch—black forest ham and Swiss cheese—and eat it sitting on a boulder by the river. If they were lucky, they would spot the river otter that had a den somewhere on the opposite bank. They always watched the evening news and discussed the stories while eating dinner with a dish of rocky road ice cream for dessert. “Sam, I don’t have any practice doing life alone. I’m not good at it.” Margaret said aloud in the direction of the framed picture of her and Sam camping at Crater Lake.

In the seven months since Sam died, her tears had dried up, and so had she. Her mind felt like a vacant house, full of echoes and footsteps of the past. The new worry Margaret was keeping to herself was the alarm clock she had heard for the last two mornings. The muffled ringing seemed to come from somewhere inside the mobile home, yet at the same time, it sounded like it was coming from outside. It rang for about fifteen seconds at 6:15 and then stopped. The second morning it happened, Margaret got out of bed to peer outside to determine if the noise was coming from the yard, as if she expected to see an old-fashioned alarm clock sitting on the lawn chair. “Don’t go all crazy on me, old gal,” she laughed, but with a touch of concern that she might be hearing imaginary things.

On Wednesday morning, she stirred herself awake at 6:07 and lay watching her own clock’s digital numbers turn until they hit 6:15 when the mystery alarm found its voice somewhere nearby. Margaret was so curious about the daily ringing that she was up and sitting in her chair in the living room before 6:15 on Thursday. If she listened from a room other than her bedroom, it might help guide her to the source. But hearing from the living room did not offer any new insight. “Well, whatever it is, I do love a good mystery,” she muttered to herself and got up to make her coffee. She stood at the counter waiting for the coffee machine to stop sputtering and gurgling. “At least, I’m not hallucinating. It’s a real alarm clock,” she told her favorite mug before she poured herself a cup.

She was turning away from the kitchen counter when, out the window, she caught a glimpse of a young man wearing a plaid shirt and jeans, carrying a backpack. He moved quickly and kept to the shadow created by the oak tree next to the deck. In the few seconds Margaret saw him, she noted his lanky silhouette and estimated his age to be in his twenties. His appearance in her side yard was yet another mystery on top of the alarm clock. 

Early Friday, Margaret slipped out of bed quietly and padded barefoot down the hall. She didn’t turn on the kitchen light and stood by the window watching to see if the young man would appear again. From her post in the kitchen, she heard the alarm, and just when she was about to give up her vigil, the plaid-shirted man walked by. This time, he turned his head and looked in her direction. When he realized she was watching, he ducked down and picked up his pace, but not before Margaret had seen his dark eyes and shaggy, brown hair under a baseball cap. From the size of his khaki-colored pack, it looked like he was carrying all his worldly possessions on his back.

Startled, Margaret stepped back from the window. “Well, Marg, put on your big girl pants and go outside and figure out what is going on,” she told herself in a no-nonsense voice. In the back corner of the double-wide, Margaret discovered the decorative skirting around the crawl space was askew. In the dim light under the trailer, a rolled-up sleeping bag was visible. It was proof she had a boarder, one who awoke at 6:15 and went off for the day in a plaid shirt. Was she in any danger? Margaret decided that being startled by seeing a man outside her window was different from being afraid of him.

Her son called to say that he would be over on Saturday to mow her yard. Margaret was sure Jason would discover the skirting and repair it, eliminating access to the space under the trailer. She knew she wouldn’t be able to explain in a way that Jason could understand that her intuition had assured her that the person sleeping under the trailer meant her no harm. It would be best not to mention the trespasser.

Margaret was up early on Saturday, and at 6:25, poured a cup of coffee and set it on the deck chair just as the young man rounded the corner of her mobile home. It was his turn to be startled. Margaret nodded to him, and he came up two steps onto the deck and reached out to take the cup. Standing only a few feet from her, he reminded her of her oldest grandson.

“My son, Jason, is going to fix the skirting today,” Margaret explained, not wanting him to discover it after dark with no plans for the night.

“I’m pushing on today,” he told her, and she noticed that his sleeping bag was tied to his pack.

“Will you be okay?” 

“Yes, ma’am. I’m meeting up with my brother.” He met Margaret’s gaze and continued, “Thank you for your hospitality these past few days. It helped a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” Margaret replied. She wished she could explain to him that his presence had broken the recurring pattern of her sadness. For the first time in months, Margaret didn’t feel empty.  

*   *   *

Mary Higbee is a retired middle school English teacher living in northern California. After years of encouraging her students to write, Mary enjoys applying what she taught to her own work. Her writing has appeared in the Barnstorm Journal, The Coachella Review Online Blog, The Scarlet Leaf Review, and Change Seven Magazine. She self-published a memoir, Lessons from Afar, about opening a secondary school in South Sudan.

 

By Erin Jamieson

It was a Wednesday when a small seaside town erected tents. 

The town had always been quaint: rolling hills, a coffee shop, a thrift store.

 An omnipresent aroma of hazelnut coffee and autumn leaves. 

But no one could have expected this.

A tent city, with the children absent from school rooms and instead learning in meadows. What they were learning, no one outside of the city knew. 

Nor could anyone explain the abandoned homes and storefronts. 

A middle aged woman, fresh off a divorce, passed by the tents. She was traveling, traveling without a true destination. The tents —magenta, sapphire blue, royal purple —reminded her of the county fairs she used to show her rabbits at as a girl. Here, too was the undeniable warmth of freshly popped kettle corn, the excitement and irritation of so many gathered in a small space. 

She stumbled upon a girl, dressed in a curiously long tangerine orange dress. Her eyes were the same muddy brown as the woman’s. She had the woman’s slightly crooked nose, high forehead, and stocky build.

“I was waiting for you,” the girl said, taking the woman’s hand. 

It felt natural, as if the woman was always meant to take this girl’s hand, always meant to return to somewhere far away from the congested city where she’d lost her love for others, for herself.

She headed further into the tent city, the little girl leading the way. The mass in her abdomen tingled, growing smaller and smaller. 

*   *   *

Erin Jamieson (she/her) holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University. Her writing has been published in over eighty literary magazines, including two Pushcart Prize nominations. Her poetry chapbook, Fairytales, was published by Bottlecap Press and her most recent chapbook, Remnants, came out in 2024. . Her debut novel (Sky of Ashes, Land of Dreams) came out November 2023. She resides in Loveland, Ohio. Twitter: @erin_simmer

By Fernanda Sarti

She met him in the liminal hours of travel, suspended between departure and return, when everything felt possible and nothing promised. 

At the bar, he leaned against the counter, sleeves pushed to his elbows, his white shirt catching the glow of the lights. His smile was easy, unstudied, and his blue eyes—clear, startling, beautiful—found hers before either spoke. 

One drink became two and laughter spilled between them as if they’d waiting for years. His hand found the small of her back, tentative, almost questioning. She didn’t push him away. Instead, she leaned into his touch, closing the space between them. 

Their words flowed like wine, but when conversation gave way to silence, it wasn’t empty—it was charged, alive, brimming with what came next. She felt it like a current under her skin, as if some hidden part of her had known him before—across oceans, across time. 

Around them the music throbbed, lights flickered, bodies pressed close. Butterflies drifted from the ceiling, their delicate wings catching the shimmer of the room. And then, they kissed. 

The moment cracked open: slow, weightless, infinite. The bass vanished, the crowd dissolved, and there were only the two of them, lips meeting beneath a constellation of wings.  

The kiss tasted forbidden, impossible to refuse—her body had already chosen for her. Time faltered, stretching into something softer, as though the universe itself wanted to hold them in that kiss a little longer. 

The night unfolded in a borrowed hotel room, desire blazing reckless and bright, as if it knew it couldn’t last. Their bodies learned each other without hesitation, as if language were unnecessary. 

Every kiss was hunger and release; every touch a reminder that life was more than schedules and departure gates. Between breaths and laughter, they collided fully, surrendering to the urgency of being alive on that fleeting night. 

They did not pretend it would last. They were honest in their impermanence: she would return to her world, and he to his skies. Different places, different lives, each pulled by their own gravity. But that night, those hours, they belonged entirely to one another. 

When dawn came, she traced the curve of his jaw one last time, committing it to memory. He kissed her like a promise not to forget. And then, as quietly as they had found each other, they parted, carrying the ache of goodbye. 

They boarded separate flights. And though they might never meet again, each carried the quiet hope that the skies might cross for them once more, somewhere beyond this night. 

*   *   *

Fernanda Sarti is a Brazilian-American writer based in Minnesota. Her work explores themes of love, longing, and the in-between spaces of life. She is submitting her first flash fiction for consideration. Outside of writing, Fernanda is a crisis leader and cybersecurity expert. In her free time, she volunteers as a private investigator for missing person’s cases. She is currently working on her debut novel and is the proud mom of two Siberian huskies. 

By Leftie Aubé

I always thought we’d be five. Five’s a good number. We were three when I was growing up and it felt too little. I daydreamed about us being five. An older brother and a baby sister. I always got mad when my parents told me it was impossible. My partner’s are five and they are the happiest family I know. My sister-in-law’s are five and my brother-in-law’s are five so we had to be five too, that’s just how families work best. But before we even got to three, I got sick. Then even more sick six months after we became three. But three isn’t a good number so even if I was sick and getting sicker when we were becoming more, we kept going. And while we were becoming four, I got even more sick. So sick we feared we would remain three. But by some miracle, we became four and becoming four with my sicker body scared us so much that we decided “that’s it, we’ll stay four.” Even if four isn’t as good as five. It was better than trying to become five only to still be four or even worst, go back to three but without me. So four had to be enough. And for a while it was. But six months after we became four I got sick again, way too sick to get better this time around and they had to remove the sick organ from my body. For two years after that, being four was way too many. But somehow I made it through every day of those two years and through two additional reconstruction of my organ, and surprisingly on the other side of all of this was being not sick. Then there was becoming healthy, something I had stopped dreaming about even before I stopped dreaming about becoming five. And then, slowly but surely, as I was becoming more myself and more healthy every day, five seemed like a good number again. Like the best number again. Despite everything. Four felt more and more like not enough again. Too much symmetry. Not enough adequate imperfection. But by the time we all four were ready to maybe become five, we had been four for too long. We had started to dream other dreams while we were getting used to being four and being five would be too much with those new dreams. And what if becoming five somehow made me sick again? Becoming more as greater risks than we dare to admit. Would it be worth it to maybe be sick again just to be five? Or is four enough? For now, four sure feels good. Feels right. And we’ll see. Maybe five one day, who knows. But for now we’re four, and happy, and healthy. That’s more than enough, right?

                                                              *   *   *

Leftie Aubé is a horror writer who lives near Québec city. She’s a supporting member of the Horror Writers Association. Her flash fiction, “Can’t Stand It Anymore,” was published in the collection “Wherever We Roam,” where it was chosen as an honorable mention. She’s the host of Leftie Aube’s Writing Podcast, where she shares her writing and publishing journey with vulnerability and positivity to help other writers navigate their own journey. She is represented by Ameerah Holliday at Serendipity Literary. You can find her on Instagram, Bluesky and TikTok @leftieaube.

By Emma Rowan

I didn’t want to be the guy always writing about how the city bus filled with fish. But I was the one alone at the bus stop when it drove up Fifth and reached Sunset Park, stopped at the corner of Fifth and Forty-third and flooded with saltwater. And, as if dropped right out of God’s hands through the emergency hatch, filled with various marine life. Angelfish and yellow tangs and moon jellies and lion-fish and snowflake eels. Plumose anemone and barrier coral and red string seaweed sprouted from the seats. Abalones slid across the windows where sea stars weren’t stuck while stingrays slid by. All of it happening in seconds. 

I was standing at the doors waiting for them to open before realizing they couldn’t without drowning the whole block and committing mass ecological murder. My mouth fell open, and I walked slowly around the side trying to get a better look. Inside, a loggerhead sea turtle drifted by like a blimp. It was a bus filled with fish alright. Sunlight rippling through the water. And then, just as soon as it arrived, it left. Pulled away from the curb, disappearing into Manhattan’s pulse. 

I’ve called the MTA seven times since then. Made thirteen online reports—at least I think I did, it’s not so easy on the computer. I’m writing letters too, got plenty of stamps. But man, you wouldn’t believe how many buttons I have to hit on the damn phone until I get to the other-est of other options and can finally speak to a real human being. They always tell me the same story. They have no idea what I’m talking about. They say no bus was scheduled to come up Fifth and stop at Forty-third on Thursday, June 2nd at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon. That the usual route stops there at 3:05 on a perfect day. That there was actually a terrible delay due to mechanical issues, and a bus did not come through Brooklyn up from Bay Ridge for another hour or so. They think I’m nuts.

So, I started writing to news outlets. ABC, NBC, Fox, News 12, PIX 11, you name it. I’ve tried the Times, the Post, Newsday. None of ‘em would hear it. Nobody believes me. I tried personal ads in the local paper, tried to post on something called “Craigslist” too. That reeled in some real weirdos. 

But honestly I’m not doing it to have my name in the papers or to get on Good Morning America talking to Joan Lunden like some schmuck. I just think people should know about this. People should know about the absolute miracle that is the Fish City Bus. 

See, I’ve come to realize what a blessing this is. An honor that was bestowed upon me, that sorta thing, you know. Who would’ve been better than me to be standing at the bus stop at Fifth and Forty-third that Thursday afternoon? No one else would’ve been able to name all the exact species of oceanic life. Would’ve recognized that they all originate from vastly different marine ecosystems. Me, an expert, a custodian at the Museum of Natural History who’s been sweeping and studying the Hall of Ocean Life for the past thirty-three years, don’t forget it. Best job in the world, I tell my daughter that all the time. Now it’s really paid off. 

I haven’t told her about it yet—my daughter that is. Hailey, light of my life. Best thing I’ve ever given this world. I haven’t accomplished much in my life ‘cept for her. Look, I can’t lie, I’ve messed up a lot—with her mother…you know how it goes. It was a long time ago. 

Hails just had a baby boy, about four months, name’s David. I’m a grandfather, can you believe it? If you told ‘70s me that, when I was a dumb kid, too busy smoking dope and getting blasted at the Loft in the South Bronx ‘til sunrise, I’d be knocked right on my ass! She’s moved out of the city into the suburbs now, her and her husband, but I miss ‘em like hell. She always says she’s gonna bring the baby around, but I haven’t gotten to see him yet. I guess it is a bit of a hike for them to take the train from Jersey. But she’s gonna be so proud of me when she sees what I’ve found. I just have to show her. 

I bought one of those outdoor chairs—those canvas ones with the mesh cup holders that I used to bring to Hail’s soccer games—and have been sitting at the bus stop for two hours now. Most people have minded their business, walked right by. One person bought me a coffee from the bodega, that was nice. One kid tried to ask me something with a tiny microphone, get me on some video, but I politely shooed him off. I need to stay focused. I’m not the best with the phone, so I have to be ready for when the Fish City Bus comes back. And I know it will. I’m gonna send Hails a picture. Then she’ll have to bring David, and I’ll get to show him, point his chubby, little hand at the saltwater windows as that sea turtle’s fin grazes the steering wheel. Look, a little miracle, all for you. 

*    *    *

Emma Rowan is a writer from New York. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Miami University where she is the CNF Editor for Ox Mag. She is also a Prose Editor for Temporal Lobe. She has work published or forthcoming in Hominum Journal, Spellbinder, Beaver Mag, and other places.

By Shanti Chandrasekhar

With words or with things, you always find a way to hurt me, even though you love me. Over the years, I’ve treasured the clothes from you, new and hand-me-downs alike. But that pashmina shawl you’d used only once? Are you sure, I’d said. You’d slipped it into my luggage and hugged me. Later, unfolding it before a party, I saw the stain concealed within the folds. Visible or invisible, stains find a way to remain un-erasable.

I’m that little girl—dark, skinny, bespectacled—with two long braids, hiding behind the curtains, peeking out at you and our other sister, your look-alike, twist to the songs of Beatles and I, the shy one as Mummy says of me, watch, because chatting with the guests is unthinkable, dancing unimaginable. They throw a glance at me, the visitors, and turn back to the two of you with bob-cut hair and pretty skirts, impressing them with your fast-spoken English, though from behind the curtains I can tell where you make a mistake, which our more-fluent-in-Hindi guests don’t notice and I don’t dare to say that’s wrong English and you both jabber-jabber-jabber and they laugh, tickled. When Papa-Mummy are in the room, the visitors call to me in their mock-sweet voices, Come here, but I don’t, and no, the mock-sweetness doesn’t sadden me, not like the skirts sewed with the fabric Mummy’s Anglo-Indian friend brought me from England because I share the same birthday with her snobbish-blue-eyed-son—the first blue-eyed boy I’d ever seen in person, not in English textbooks or movies. But our eldest sister said to Mummy, She’s too dark for these colors, and ran her hand over the cloth saying, It’s so soft you can tell it’s foreign material, and Mummy lets her take the material and get skirts tailored for you two, my fair-complexioned beautiful sisters, and you twirl the skirt and twist to the songs playing on our record player, songs I love, the new-plastic smell of His Master’s Voice discs I love, Nipper-the-HMV-logo-dog I love, the soft-colored skirt I love, but you wear it. My birthday gift.

That memories are unreliable is untrue. I may not recall the size of the pink flowers on the gray textile, but I remember you wearing the skirt.

The skirt, after you shot up, sat in my closet, untouched. That shawl lies somewhere in my basement, unused. Those hurts and memories, to my blue-eyed husband’s relief, I put them all away—to heal, unhindered.

Yet how it crumples, the stubborn-but-soft boundary I now erect between you and me. Intertwined threads, diverging, converging, like the double helix strands, always find a way to keep our fabric from unraveling.

                                                                   *   *   *

Shanti Chandrasekhar is a Maryland-based writer whose words have appeared in The Sunlight Press, Bright Flash Literary Review, and Persimmon Tree, among many other publications. Writing gives her a deeper understanding of life, human relationships, and her own self.