By Sofia Bagdade

He wished he didn’t peep through the blinds. Now, he scrubbed his eyes with soap-worn fingers. All night, he dreamt of floating still in Atlantic depths. His vision obscured, limbs limp, only the cold shock feel of a near wail. Then, the haunting, melodic chords swept his body sideways, notes that rang of sunken ships and lonely voyages, bubbled streams in the grips of drowning. 

His mother used to flick on the blue nightlight until a glow washed the room and play whale songs on a thin cassette. “We all sing of longing,” she ran an index finger down the vein of his forehead until sleep and song became one. 

He woke up gasping, needing control, jerked the faucet desperately until the water moved only when he told it to. No swirling depths, no algae frozen arms, just this thin artificial stream, origin at his fingertips. 

The sloped gray beach cabin stood tall before his perceptible memories began—the familiar sliver of sky and sea, how the sand picked up in tunneled gusts by their doorway. The low moan of the ferry shuttling day visitors to the island that felt more like his than a destination. By the end of August, all the sunburnt and beer-drunk caravans retreated to places of permanence, homes untouched by the moody reach of the sea. He enjoyed this emptying out. The shore grew more open to roam in the absence of intrusive umbrellas. 

His corner bedroom had the best view of the beach, an expanse of blonde flat coiling to waves. This morning though, when the early light sliced his bedsheets, the familiar yellow distance now tainted with gray. His throat still full of subconscious salt, he crept untrustingly to the slits. There, thirty feet of elegance and blue speckles, a long body pale to land, a swath so great his eyes could barely register it as once alive. 

All of those dreams under sea crests and here on his very shore a great humpback, at least the 18th doomed on the East Coast this summer. He’d never seen a whale before, coloring his imagination with woeful songs and underwater images, and yet here, on his very shore. She seemed a swirl of peaceful and disturbed, unmoored and laid to rest in a desert unknown to her body. 

He imagined the sensationalized headlines, the town swarmed with camera straps and reporters with balloons for microphones. The media might name the whale “Bess” or “Marie.” There would be vigils and climate denials, there would be frenzies to control the unforgivable—a whale stranded, a bald example of our aloneness. 

He couldn’t tear himself away from the blinds, where it was just him and her outline. He tried to remember a prayer for salvation or a poem that spoke of loss, but all he could hear in his inner ear were the distant rumbles of her song. Bowing down, he held silence in his spine and paused just above the white stereo beneath the windowsill. The machine glittered with dust and misuse. As if to apologize or revere an ancient God, long dead, swept away totems in drowned temples, he hit play. 

The music sputtered out like exhaust does an old pipe. He cracked the window, and before the nets and descending dots of hurried limbs in the distance, he played her song.

                                                                    *   *   *

Sofia Bagdade is a poet from New York City. Her work appears in One Art, The Shore, Red Weather, and The Basilisk Tree. She finds joy in smooth ink, orange light, and French Bulldogs. 

 

By Micheal Degnan

The sunflower is on the corner by the library and reminds me of Stephen. All sunflowers do. Even Van Gogh’s. Even those that my niece stamps out on construction paper with sponges.

I first met Stephen my freshman year. He was a senior and had applied for school funding to start a zymurgy club. He used the money on a home-brew kit and several bags of grain. He tossed me a beer when I came in. “Welcome to the club,” he said.

I started to come by every week. Each time, I discovered something new, something that hadn’t reached the suburbs where I grew up. Prosciutto wrapped asparagus. W.B. Yeats. The Bhagavad Gita.

His apartment was filled with plants. Ficus trees and spider plants. Succulents and bonsai trees. “I retain information better if I read by plants,” he told me.

In the front of his apartment was a bed of fifty sunflowers. He had planted them the previous summer, once housing assignments were announced. They were over six feet tall and swayed in the breeze like a pendulum.

Every day, he would cut one flower and take it to class. On his way back to the apartment, he would give it to someone. “May your day bring you joy,” he would say.

Gradually, the stand of flowers receded, marking the passing of our days. 

That was twenty years ago. I haven’t spoken to Stephen since he graduated. I consider texting him a picture of the sunflower by the library, the plant nurturing the pursuit of knowledge.

But I hesitate. What is this paralysis — fear that he won’t respond? Or that he will? 

Instead, I go into the library, hoping to discover something new, like why time is a human construct or how perennials can return after being dormant for so long.

                                                                      *   *   *

Michael Degnan lives on an island in Maine. His work has appeared in Bright Flash Literary Review, Maudlin House, Every Day Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere.

 

A Memoir by Bill Vernon

When our landline rang, I rushed away from my just heated breakfast and lifted the receiver, avoiding a second ring that would’ve awakened my wife. Her depression was worsening again as Trump wreaked havoc starting his second term. She needed to sleep soundly to keep her equilibrium, and I needed her as balanced as possible to keep myself sane. 

My wife’s doldrums had started with Trump’s first term. She’d mailed letters opposing his election, postcards urging Democrats to vote, and distributed yard signs in town. She’d taken a bus to Trump’s inauguration in DC during the Women’s March. Then the pandemic hit. Then, after three years of isolating ourselves, we’d both caught Covid anyway. By now I had so much to worry about, I always woke up unenthused and troubled. 

Seeing “Digestive Specialists” on the display screen, I muttered, “Damn!” The clock on the wall read 8:03. It was still dark outside. I knew these specialists wanted me in for a colonoscopy—I’d been avoiding an appointment for months—but why call so early? Why not text or email? Doctors should be sensitive to patients. I intended to complain. 

Nearing my ear, the phone transmitted a flute-like, very feminine voice. 

It startled me. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”

“Of course, sir.” The woman identified her employers, asked if I was William, pronounced my surname carefully, and after my yes asked for my “date of birth.” I gave it as numbers, which she repeated. Then she said that I was due for a procedure and my doctor invited me to make an appointment. “Invited?” There was surprising delicacy in that word choice.

Sometime during this short exchange, I’d sat back down on my chair facing my bowl of oatmeal and the dawn glow outside. This woman’s voice was like birdsong penetrating the kitchen windows. Her words were clipped, precise, with syllables rising and falling like poetic meter. Her tone was warm and friendly. Her accent was India Indian. 

“Sir, are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here.” Hoping to connect with her more personally, I said, “So you’re referring to doctors in that new office building south of Dayton by Costco.” 

“Sir, I do not know Costco or Dayton. Your doctor’s office is on Clyo Road.” She’d said Cleeoh before saying Clyo with a long I as everyone pronounced it.

I nodded. “That’s where I meant. See Clyo ends just northeast of that building on Feedwire Road where Costco is.”

“Thank you, sir. I didn’t know that.” 

Well, of course, she wasn’t there. She was sitting in a bank of phones somewhere miles, possibly continents away where other English-speaking Indians answered and made calls. 

I said, “Before we go on I’d better tell you that I’d like to talk with a doctor before scheduling a colonoscopy,” omitting that I was afraid my prostate condition might impact a colonoscopy, a fact I deemed inappropriate for her.

“That is no problem, William. Your doctor also wishes to see you before your colonoscopy.” 

She’d used my formal first name, but I couldn’t address her similarly. Maybe she would identify herself if I kept up the name game. I said. “What is my doctor’s name? I’ve had different ones over the years and have forgotten who mine is right now.”

“One minute, please, William.” I heard pages turning, then “Rabish Gupta.”

“Will you spell that so I can write it down?”

“Certainly.” She pronounced each letter slowly. “R as in ripe, a as in alpha, b as in beta, i as in in,” and so on. 

I in turn repeated what she said for each letter, plus okay, continuing through the last name, then “Thank you.”

“That is my job, William. Now the date.”

I heard noisy movements as she apparently searched printed schedules. Several minutes later she said, “Oh, I see now that your doctor retired. You must pick another one.”

She read off three Indian names. 

I shrugged. “I don’t know any of them. Just pick one for me, please, one who’s expert and knows what he’s doing. That’s my main concern.”

“Of course they are all professionals, William. Is Anandi Ganguly all right?”

“Yes, if you think he’s good, then I’ll try him.”

“He is a she, sir.” She said this with a smile in her voice.

It created a vision. With short black hair and wide, dark eyes, wearing a blue and white sari, sitting at a wooden desk, she looked 20-something and was smiling. 

I smiled back, ignored my food again, and said, “I will write that down if you will spell her name.”

“Certainly, William. Are you ready?”

So we went letter by letter again, with me repeating and writing each letter, saying each letter’s clarifying guide word, ending each letter and word with “Got it.” 

Our back and forth was a call-and-response duet with a flowing rhythm like a waltz. We danced verbally with warm rapport into the actual scheduling of my visit to Anandi Ganguly’s office. I wrote date, time and doctor’s name on scrap-paper to take for re-transcribing the info onto my calendar and my wife’s calendar.

“Can I help you with anything else, William?”

“I can’t think of anything. Thank you for calling and helping me.”

“You’re welcome, William.”

I hesitated, then added, “I’ve enjoyed talking with you.”

“I enjoyed meeting you as well.” She ended the call.

I looked outside. Dawn was bright now. Daffodils were blooming.

My wife startled me, saying, “Who were you talking to?”

I glanced up. She was standing beside me. “I just made an appointment with my proctologist.” 

I’d forgotten to keep my voice down to let her sleep. 

The clock said 8:20. I’d spent 17 minutes on the phone and hadn’t touched my breakfast, which needed reheating. With memories of the lady’s voice singing to me, I imagined meeting her sometime, somehow, in the future.

***

Writing connects the dots for Bill Vernon. His novel OLD TOWN (Five Star Mysteries) concerns how early American attacks on indigenous inhabitants of southern Ohio affect Americans today. Recently published shorter things include nonfiction at Agape Review, Smoky Blue Literary & Arts, Still Points Arts Quarterly, and fiction at Synkroniciti Magazine, Northwest Indiana Literary Journal, and New Feathers Anthology.

Writing connects the dots for Bill Vernon. His novel OLD TOWN (Five Star Mysteries) concerns how early American attacks on indigenous inhabitants of southern Ohio affect Americans today. Recently published shorter things include nonfiction at Agape Review, Smoky Blue Literary & Arts, Still Points Arts Quarterly, and fiction at Synkroniciti Magazine, Northwest Indiana Literary Journal, and New Feathers Anthology.

By Zilin Wu

She handed a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums and white baby’s breath to the family member. 

The mourning hall was small, awash only in plaster white and raven black. Ribbons tied into floral shapes hung from the ceiling to the ground, like intestines spilling from a slit-open abdomen. She carefully avoided them, making her way to the coffin. 

A staff tried to stop her, but a woman, likely the deceased’s mother, intervened. The woman’s eyes were swollen red as she cast a look at her. 

She returned a smile. 

The coffin was no different from the ones she had seen on television, a far cry from the bold personality the deceased once had—surely not chosen personally. The made-up body lay quietly in the enclosure of wooden panels, surrounded by lilies. She noticed that the edges of some lily petals had already yellowed. 

Whether it was the years apart or the fact that they no longer belonged to the same world, the face before her felt unfamiliar. Gone were the dramatic black eyeliner, the glossy red lips, and the sharp voice that pierced through crowds. She could hardly tell if the person in front of her was the same person she once knew. 

“Were you Malan’s classmate?” 

She turned around. The frail, pitiable woman stood beside her. She feigned a move to return to the guest seats, subtly creating distance, but the woman followed her and sat down, pulling a crumpled tissue from her pocket and dabbing her eyes incessantly. 

She nodded. 

“Thank you. None of her close classmates came. Only you still remember her… ” 

The woman’s sobs burst forth with her tears. She leaned back slightly. 

The music softened, and the host began organizing guests to present flowers. She aimed to go first and reached for a flower. 

The tray held only lilies. She paused, scanning the room, and from the disarray of bouquets scattered around, she spotted hers. Under the confused gazes, she walked across the entire mourning hall to retrieve it. 

As she passed row after row of black chairs, she recalled the graduation ceremony years ago. Malan had said to a classmate who was not yet her boyfriend at the time that the flowers given by her mentor were meant for funerals in China. 

That bouquet had been golden mimosa and white anemones. Her mentor had told her that it symbolized spring and hope. 

The malice felt like a thorn lodged in her fingertip—a wound she could never locate despite her attempts to extract it. Then she realized: perhaps the “close classmates” who didn’t show up had also been pricked by this person, now permanently at rest and mercifully devoid of her sting. 

She exhaled a breath of stale air, her muscles, tense with anger for years, finally relaxing. Her hand loosened, and the yellow-and-white bouquet fell onto the coffin lid at last. 

*   *   *

Zilin Wu is a London-based writer and photographer. She has written many short films, a mini-TV series, and her first feature script. She has a great passion for drama and suspense. She is also dedicated to showing the nuances and undercurrents of interpersonal dynamics in modern society.

By Marcia Yudkin

Who started the rage for framing in Balaceras County?  Some point fingers at Helen Pascombe, owner of Creative Corners, which for a fine fee frames paintings, family portraits and diplomas. She vehemently denies this, adding that if any local shop cashed in big on the craze, it was Loulu’s Lumber, because of the run on two-by-fours in a final phase of the fad.

After 17 interviews, eight of them conducted under a promise of anonymity, I believe it all started with Annie Holbrook and Charlotte Bucha, anthropology majors home for a visit with Annie’s family. Ducking into the Hilltop Hotel to use its facilities, they passed a curl of old rope framed behind glass on a wall near the Ladies Room. They debated what it meant, noting that there was no label indicating the object’s provenance or an attribution to an artist Maybe it was conceptual art, or a reference to past threats against Native Americans in the area?

Or maybe it was an unnoticed whim of the hotel’s decorator, installed when his bill wasn’t paid in full? Charlotte began to skip along the Teapot Trail, inventing more and more preposterous interpretations of the mystery item for her friend Annie.  She picked up four long sticks – hemlock branches, to be precise – and at the mouth of the trail, within sight of the Mama Soto Mart parking lot, she arranged them into a square, placing a tall heap of acorns in the center. Annie and Charlotte left.

Along came Henry DeWitt, known by his VFW poker club to be a devoted friend of squirrels. He first wondered at the acorns, then perceived the four-sided border, slightly askew, around them. So as to more clearly leave the nuts for his rodent pals, Henry snatched up the branches and arranged them around the word “Always” in the Mama Soto advertising slogan some 20 feet away.

The next morning, someone – my sources would not divulge who – had also balanced four branches in a box around the word “Service” on the Mama Soto sign.  

From there, it’s a little hard to trace the sequels of this act, because it was as if a tribe of mischievous and invisible wood nymphs had invaded downtown. Branch-framed items showed up in nooks and corners, then in blatantly public locations, like the lawn in front of the Balaceras County Library. Some framings seemed random and others sloppy, but a few seemed to convey a coded message, like sticks placed around turds that dog walkers had not bothered to clean up.

Then someone upgraded the trend to thin planks of lumber nailed around somethings on the sides of buildings, which must have required ladders in the night. These blossomed like architectural tattoos for several days. KTVV News ran a story at that point, which included two mistakes I’m not going to belabor them for.  

And then it was Halloween, when at least seven kids too small to really appreciate the county-wide joke dressed up as themselves surrounded by a frame. Little Donna Lovejoy, for instance, trick-or-treated this way on Lantern Oak Lane. I suspect that the eye-rolling she and other children got for their costumes contributed to the next development, which was – nothing. All the mock framing stopped.  Finito.

And framing went back to something reserved for antique maps, Aunt Tillie’s pastels, Jerome’s law license and Jennifer’s favorite photo of her Schnauzer, Sallie.  No artifacts of the madness remain. In a generation, will anyone recall this community-wide prank?

*   *   *

The author of fiction in Yankee, Writers Forum, Flash Fiction and New Stories from New England, Marcia Yudkin advocates for introverts through her newsletter, Introvert UpThink (https://www.introvertupthink.com/).  Her essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ms., Next Avenue and NPR.  She lives in Goshen, Massachusetts (population 960).

  

By Ted Scott

January 5, 021 PS (Post Singularitas)

They came for me last night. One of those new mobile AIs, on four feet like a headless dog but with two long thin arms coiled around eye stalks protruding from the two ends of the body. The 8 fingered hand at the end of one arm held a small cylindrical device with a slowly twirling wire loop at its end. I recognized the device as a metal detector.

A harsh male voice spoke. “We’re here to search your room. Please stand next to the door.” Before I could even say, “Why?” the “creature” moved to the center of the small room and started its search. It uncoiled the arm holding the detector and began moving the device around in a pattern, then more closely scanning the bed, the small bureau, the table, the waste box, and the chair. It even scanned the sink, the toilet, and the large screen on the wall facing the bed, but the detector failed to report any metal. “Thank you for your cooperation,” the voice said as the door opened and the “creature” left the room, closing the door behind it. I tried the door, but it was locked, then angry and annoyed, I took my pill and went to bed.

This morning, when the screen buzzed, I rolled over and slowly got out of bed. I touched the screen and the buzzing stopped. A moment later, the door chimed and the mid panel opened and folded out. A plastic bowl and spoon appeared, along with a plastic cup of dark, coffee-flavored water. From the smell, I could tell that the bowl held cinnamon-flavored corn meal. That was one thing I liked about the Box House. They did seem to know what flavors to give you when you wanted them, and I always mellowed out after eating. But, what about last night? What was that all about?

As I moved my breakfast to the table and sat down to eat, the door panel closed, and the screen lit up. Max, the humanoid AI that delivers the morning news, said “Hello, Jason. Some good news today. The Carbon Index is 441.81, down from 441.89 last month, but the local temperature is 313k, so those of you on a free pass day should be cautious if you venture out.” Then it went on to announce the standings of the various game competitions. I listened carefully to see how our section was doing in the Wormhole event. I heard Jackie’s name mentioned, but I didn’t get all the details. Maybe there would be more on the personal news.

I finished eating, brushed my teeth, and did my stretching. I managed to stay synchronized with Alfred, my screen trainer, for most of the session, and was awarded 4 points on my permanent score. I wondered what last night’s episode had cost me. When I checked my personal news. I discovered that some tools had been stolen from the factory. The CCTV had captured an image, but the thief had broken some lights and was heavily masked, so the only information was the thief’s body size and type. Three men in our section could fit the profile. One of them was me! They had searched my room for metal. Box residents are forbidden to have metal. All our belongings are made of plastic by 3-D printing machines using 100% recycled plastic.

When the AIs took over, after the floods, the fires, and the Great War, everything was different. Once there had been freedom and movement, parks and houses, airports and highways. Now the undestroyed landscape is covered with robotic farms, factories, and solar generators. Electric railroads are the only connections between human settlements. We nearly all live in tiny one-room apartments in giant box houses, and we wear the same clothes, eat the same food, and play the same senseless games every day. And we always take our pills at night. I shudder to think of that awful night when I didn’t take it.

But maybe it’s better than before. Over a billion people were killed in the war and another two billion died before and soon after. They say that when the population drops below four billion and the carbon index gets down to 400, our freedoms will increase and some form of Democracy will return. I can hardly wait.

                                                                   *    *    *

Ted Scott once was a physicist, but now reads and writes memoir, poetry, and short fiction. His work can be found in Boston Literary Magazine, Fear of Monkeys, Foliate Oak, The Journal of Quantum Electronics, and a variety of anthologies. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, but can sometimes be found windsurfing on Maidstone Lake in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.

By Ryan Babcock

In the bathroom, pregnant for the second time, Rosemary stared at the + on the plastic pregnancy test; she pondered the prospects of going through it all over again—during her first pregnancy she did what any excited new parent would do: she and her husband had the doctor tell them the sex so they could decide on a name together—Margot—and they decorated the nursery a pastel yellow, because she was to be their little light, at night they read to the child in her swollen belly and feigned interest in classical music, because a friend mentioned it soothed the baby; every night, Rosemary sought solace with her palm pressed against the swelling belly, feeling the gentle kicks—a connection to the burgeoning life within; yet pregnancy overwhelmed her, it cast doubt on everything her husband said, made her cry every time she saw children splashing through sprinklers or anytime her ice cream melted from the heat, and she became so hypervigilant of strangers that she’d stopped leaving her house for fear someone would slice her belly open and run off with her baby; she knew it was irrational, but she felt overpowered by a protective maternal instinct; then, one day, she got sick; afraid her baby would also get sick, she went to the hospital; they ran some tests and said it was nothing more than a common cold, the doctor wrote her a prescription and offered her felicitations on becoming a mother; she swallowed the medication like she was told; as the days passed, she felt something was wrong; the kicks slowed; they seemed to lose impact; eventually stopping altogether, which sent her into a panic; in the car, her husband called each of their parents and asked for them to meet them at the hospital; while they sped down the interstate Rosemary cried so hard she had to keep wiping snot with the back of her hand as she choked on every demand for her husband to drive faster and faster to the ER: there, they informed her she wouldn’t reach the end of her second term; the baby’s heartbeat had stopped; there had been a complication with the medication the previous doctor had prescribed; they needed to induce labor; the hospital staff went through the motions of delivery: providing her an epidural and instructing her to push until Margot was released; surrounded by their respective families, she held Margot in her arms, a fragile beacon bearing the weight of her maternal dreams; her tears blurred the baby’s body, making it look like Margot was reaching for her; part of Rosemary wished that were true, knowing it was a foolish wish; Margot, barely over a pound, had the same bulbous nose that Rosemary’s father had and the same extra-long second toe her husband had; they took photographs to commemorate the life that was meant to bring sunshine into the world; Rosemary was so disoriented, possibly even in a state of psychosis, that she thought the flash from the cameras was somehow Margot hugging her goodbye, her mother wiped Rosemary’s tears away for her, told her everything happens for a reason, which pissed her off, because she’d held her dead daughter in her arms for no good reason and no sentimental cliché would alter that opinion—so she sat on the mouth of the toilet for a long time, hoping it would swallow her whole, even when she made the effort to get up, her legs betrayed her, and she had to call her husband to carry her to bed; a lump formed in Rosemary’s throat as she told him she couldn’t suffer through a loss like that again; she didn’t want to get her hopes up that she could be a person who has a family; he told her to get some sleep, and they would talk more in the morning; but she didn’t sleep much that night: she had a nightmare she was the Angel of Death giving birth to a coffin, and her new baby’s ashes would sit on the mantel above the fireplace like Margot’s; when she woke, her body was slick, the sheets beneath her stuck to her skin, and she could hear her husband humming in the kitchen; without him there to talk her down, she made her choice: she wouldn’t keep it; he came in with a tray: oatmeal, strawberries, and a glass of water; he sat on the bed, placing his palm on Rosemary’s thigh; told her it was her decision, but he wanted to try one more time, and then they wouldn’t have to ever again; wouldn’t ever have to talk about it, if that’s what she wanted; grief’s claws sunk deep, but her husband’s optimism offered a fleeting respite; it provided possibility for another chance at motherhood; she wanted to be the accommodating wife, so, reluctantly, she acquiesced; and once again, they found out the sex of their baby—a girl they would name Aurora—they wouldn’t repaint the nursery, this time they would add flowers along the doorframe; at every prenatal check-up they cautioned her about her blood pressure, but Rosemary explained to them how every day she was swaddled in anxiety over fear her baby’s heart would stop and it wouldn’t go away until Aurora was in her arms, alive; five weeks before the due date, her water broke around midnight; she denied to her husband that she was in labor and insisted visiting the hospital was unnecessary, but he ignored Rosemary and argued with her to get out of bed and into the car until she consented; since she had Margot, they’d moved states for a fresh start, so on the drive to the hospital, she called and asked her parents and sister to fly out; her husband did the same; it became real for Rosemary and her husband when the hospital staff surrounded her, no other family present yet; but they all began flooding in to the state; first her parents; then his parents and siblilngs; then her sister; they all waited in the lobby, anticipating Aurora’s birth; after thirteen long hours of labor, Rosemary pushed Aurora out into the world; she had a full head of hair, the same bulbous nose, those same toes, and she was yellow; so yellow that the doctor explained to them how common jaundice was for premature babies; they would be sending her to the NICU to sleep under a blue light that would flush the bilirubin toxins from her body; her family arrived at the hospital and celebrated Aurora, told her about her sister Margot; after two sleepless nights in the hospital, the doctor cleared Aurora to leave with Rosemary and her husband under one condition: Aurora must come back the next day to recheck her bilirubin levels; however, when Aurora came back to the hospital, her numbers were frighteningly high, so they tell her, her husband, and both their families they must keep her overnight; it didn’t matter how many times the doctor told her not be concerned with the near zero chance of death, she was concerned that it wasn’t zero; her once-steady legs buckled beneath the haunting possibility, and her husband caught Rosemary before she collapsed from grappling with the potential loss of another child; they were all anxious; her family was undecided on whether or not to keep celebrating or start mourning while they kept her and her husband from the bottom of rock bottom; while they waited for a call they all distracted themselves with card games, movies, chores…calling the tired nurses for updates; at dinner, Rosemary’s mother shared a story about Rosemary as a toddler; once, at a toy store, Rosemary was told no when asking for a new Barbie; in protest, Rosemary bulldozed Barbies off the shelf, then threw herself on the ground; banging her fists on the dirty tile, her red face streaming with crocodile tears; in a moment of desperation, Rosemary’s mother got on her belly, next to her daughter, and began to imitate her: flailing arms and legs, fake sobs; Rosemary stopped her cries immediately and looked at her mother with a furrowed brow, realizing her chicanery had been discovered; the word no became less triggering after that incident and her mother explained the whole experience as mortifying for her; Rosemary liked hearing stories of her as a child; it made her feel maternal in some way she couldn’t articulate; the call came two days later, they could finally bring Aurora home; both families packed themselves into two cars; when Rosemary held her baby in her arms, she watched Aurora’s little heart flutter through her yellowish skin; Aurora clenched her tiny fist around Rosemary’s finger, slowly opening her ocean-blue eyes to gaze at the woman she grew inside; despite this radiant joy of holding her second daughter, a profound love both for the baby she now had, and once had, crumbled and shattered within her; the world, for a brief moment, felt brighter, a deceptive glow swiftly overshadowed by the encroaching darkness of postpartum depression; her husband snuck up behind her, embracing Rosemary and Aurora; he craned his neck to kiss away the worry etched on her face, we’re not going to fail her, he reassured, his words a soothing balm; she nodded, momentarily believing in his promise after everything they’d endured together.

                                                         *   *   *

Ryan Babcock is a Virginia-based writer and educator. He studies creative writing online at UCLA Extension and UC Berkeley Extension, and is pursuing an M.A.Ed. in ESL and Bilingual Education at The College of William and Mary. He thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2019. His poetry is forthcoming in Eunoia Review.

By Nancy Klann-Moren

It had been quite some time since I talked to Jennifer when she called to say her father had passed away. She said they had a small ceremony and buried him next to his first wife, Jennifer’s mother. 

“What about Ruby?” I asked. 

Even though I didn’t know the woman I had heard my share of disgruntled, ugly-step-mother stories and petty gossip about her. Nothing nice.

“Oh, she died last February,” she said. “She’s in my dad’s closet.”

“Oh?”

“She wanted her ashes spread along her favorite spot in the hills around Mulholland Canyon. Dad had intended to take her there, but wasn’t well enough to see it through.” 

“Why is she in the closet?”

“I don’t know. It’s just where he put her. And, right before he died he asked if I’d lay her to rest. What else could I do but say yes.”

“I’m sorry to hear all this.”

“The landlord’s in a hurry to empty the apartment and get some new renters in, and I have until Sunday to pick her up.” 

I had never been to a ceremony where the ashes were scattered, but had imagined how inspiring it would be for family and friends to gather and watch their loved ones’ remains being lifted by the wind and spread over the horizon. I envisioned a release of the soul into the sky. I must have seen something like that in a movie. 

“That sounds nice. You’ll be with family?”

“No, just me. I don’t know any of her friends. Don’t even know if she had any.”

“You’re going alone?”

“Yes.” She laughed. “Unless you count Ruby. It shouldn’t take too long.”

“I’ll go with you if you want.”

“Really? Great. I could use the company.”  

On the top shelf of the closet, next to the tube and face mask of a CPAP machine, sat the unadorned cardboard box, with the words Cremated Remains stenciled on the side. Jen stood on her tippy toes to teeter the graceless box down from the shelf and wipe the dust off the top. 

Outside, when she put the box on the back seat I thought I heard her say, “Let’s get this over with.” 

“You don’t want to strap her in the seatbelt?” I asked.

Jen shrugged. “She can’t get any more dead.”

The day was clear as we drove up Laurel Canyon toward Mulholland and maneuvered the winding spine of the Santa Monica Mountains. She took the narrow curves and turns too fast for my liking as we passed celebrity homes and spectacular views. 

“Daddy made a big mistake when he married her,” Jennifer said, as if Ruby was out of earshot. My instinct was to tell her to stop speaking ill of the dead, especially when they’re in the same car on a famously dangerous road. Instead, I twisted around to check on the box, and winced at the sight of it balanced on the front edge of the seat, poised to drop to the floorboard. 

Not too long after that, Jennifer slowed as we approached one of the designated overlooks. “This is close enough,” she said and pulled the car off the road near a trail. 

“This isn’t the spot she wanted?”

“She won’t know the difference.” 

I followed as Jen carried the box down a dusty footpath bordered by sagebrush. It veered left, hugging the side of the mountain. She stopped at a spot with a sweeping view of both mountains and ocean. 

The beauty alone felt like heaven was close. I breathed in the fresh air and marveled at a red-tailed hawk gliding above the ravines, and anticipated the magnificence of Ruby’s spiritual flight. 

Jennifer placed the box on the ground and pulled out a vacuum-sealed plastic bag.

“Shit,” she said and handed it to me. “Can you hold her while I go back to the car? I think I have a pair of scissors in the glove compartment.”

It felt heavier than I expected. “Hi Ruby,” I said and introduced myself. “This is a beautiful spot. I hope you’re okay with it.” 

I looked through the plastic and tried to make sense of what I saw. Mixed in with the ashes were visible chunks of bone and jagged pieces that resembled charcoal briquettes. “What happened?” I asked no one. My mind went straight to the old dog food commercial. I’m gonna get me some Kibbles ‘N Bits and Bits and Bits. My romantic notions for the day were dwindling.

When Jennifer returned with the scissors I asked, “How come these aren’t soft and powdery like the ashes in a fireplace?” 

“How would I know? Maybe you have to pay more for those.”

She looked down the side of the cliff. “Does it matter?” 

“I think so,” I said.

Jennifer shrugged, cut the top off the bag, and said, “Good riddance, Ruby,” as she turned it upside down. Stunned, my stomach turned. 

Too heavy to catch what little wind there was, instead of soaring, Ruby’s Kibbles ‘N Bits plummeted down the side of the mountain. The heavier pieces clunked against the boulders. The clatter caused my brain to cloud, and the abrupt hush that followed when they reached their resting place in the abyss of indifference, heightened my bewilderment of how swiftly my expectations for the day had collapsed. 

I walked back to the car feeling unsettled and agitated. And foolish.

As she thoughtlessly tossed the empty Cremated Remains box into the trunk, I said, “I thought it would be nicer than that.”

She looked at me. “Really?”

*   *   *

Nancy Klann-Moren has published a collection of short stories titled, Like The Flies On The Patio, and two novels, The Clock Of Life, and Love and Protest, and has also contributed to several anthologies. She serves on the board of The Southern California Writers Association and teaches a short story workshop each year at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. http://www.nancyklann-moren.com.

A Memoir by Naana Eyikuma Hutchful

I look over at you in the corner, your eyes trained on mine, back straight as a board. Your rigid body is unfamiliar. I wish you’d do something, anything. I miss the fluidity of you, not the arms crossed tightly over your belly, eyes dark and empty, frozen in place. A perfectly sculpted statue, but still a statue. These days, I like you better with my eyes closed.  I can feel your breath, hot and quick on my cheek, the side of my neck. I can run my hands through your thick chestnut hair, braid it into a rope down your back. 

Nikki’s key turns in the lock. I jump out of bed and throw the duvet over the sheets as smoothly as I can. I run over to my desk, brushing against the switch to turn the lights on. I think I may have fooled her this time but I am still in my fluffy grey bear pajamas, my bonnet still on, dried white streaks down my cheeks. She doesn’t comment on it; at least I am trying at something.

Today, she brought mandarins. Two bags of them.

I am not feeling so well, I say. Migraine. 

Nikki walks me back to my bed. She pulls the covers up to my chin. 

I coo and moan and drag my knees to my chest. She goes into the kitchen to make me a lemon and ginger tea. 

Nikki is running out of take your times. 

She wants me up and out. She wants me to look at people again. 

I want to say yes, yes, yes. The way the light enters the green of her eyes, ring-scattered spots of yellow like gold gleaming. I capture every frame of it: the slight tilt of her brows, the lines in the corners of her eyes tightening, her lips splitting apart, first a crack, then wide open, her eyes begin to water, there’s a slow vibration to her hands, twisting around each other, unsure of what to do next.

I know you are not real; the sharp edges of you against the wall. But when I close my eyes you beg me not to leave you again.

Nikki looks right into the corner. It’s almost as if she can see you too.

                                                             *   *   *

Naana Eyikuma Hutchful (they/them) is a Ghanaian writer with work appearing in Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, Gone Lawn, Maudlin House and forthcoming elsewhere. They like sunrises, yearning, and Wong Kar Wai films.