By Denise Longrie

Earl and I sat on the porch swing, listening to the hiss of rain against the leaves of the trees along the street. The great oak in the front yard swayed, dancing in the wind. I shivered, pulled my hood over my head, and took another sip of spiked hot chocolate, clutching the mug in oversized mittens.

In the distance, thunder rumbled. Lightning flashed. I’d noted the smell of a coming electrical storm arising from the earth all day.

“Wanna go in?” Earl asked. He grinned as if to say, “Chicken!” The wind blew his dark curls across his face. He had to feel that.

“Nah. Do you?” My hands trembled but I’d be damned if I were going to let him see that.

Cars drove by, raising walls of water that washed over the sidewalks.

A bolt of lightning lit up the sky.

“Christamighty,” said Earl.

Thunder crashed, rattling the windows behind us. “Holy shit,” I said.

“We can go in.”

What? And listen to you call me a coward forever? “Not yet.”

A Ford F-150 shot down the street, drenching Mrs. Baker while she walked her German shepherd. The poor dog howled and leaped straight into the air. Mrs. Baker swore.

“Earl.” I pointed to the hair standing up on my arm.

“Shit,” he said.

I stood and called to Mrs. Baker, “Come get out of the rain.”

She didn’t wait for a second invitation but ran up the steps and onto the porch, the dog at her heels.

As soon as Earl shut the door behind us, the dog shook himself, spraying water over the walls—and us. 

“Pompey, stop that,” Mrs Baker said.

I opened my mouth with an offer to get towels, but the loudest crack in the world rang out. The dog tore off, yelping down the hallway and dragging his leash. Mrs. Baker called after him. I looked out the front window. Half the oak tree that had once stood in our yard now lay in the street. The other half stood smoking in the rain.

                                                        *   *   *

Denise Longrie’s work has appeared in Danse Macabre, Liquid Imagination, and Wisconsin Review. She has self-published a nonfiction guide to pre-1900 speculative fiction. Currently, she is working by the flickering light of a Jacob’s ladder on a sequel treating twentieth-century pulp science fiction. In a previous life, she worked as a pharmacy technician.

By William Ogden Haynes

It is night, and a man is driving along a country road. The only 

illumination is a harvest moon and his headlights shining on 

the road ahead. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the bony crown of a 

buck shatters the windshield. The driver slams on the brakes, 

and is simultaneously punched by the deploying airbag as the car 

comes to a stop. Gems of safety glass on the dashboard and on his 

lap gimmer in the darkness. The driver unbuckles his belt and walks 

to the front of the car, where steam rises from the broken radiator. 

The headlights are still working, and they show the brown furry 

body struggling, back legs paralyzed, front legs scrambling to gain 

purchase on the asphalt. The driver drags the deer by the hind legs 

off the road and deep into the woods. He pulls the buck to a large 

tree lathered in moss, and sits with his back against it, his hand 

resting on the buck’s hind quarter. In thirty minutes, the deer finally 

calms and his breathing gradually slows, sighing with each exhalation, 

the blood on his fur, black under the moonlight. The man continues 

to pet him for a while, even after he dies.  

                                                             *   *   *

William Ogden Haynes is a poet and author of short fiction from Alabama who was born in Michigan. He has published several collections of poetry and many of his poems and short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies. http://www.williamogdenhaynes.com

works its way around my mouth, like marbles I’m trying to keep from my throat with my tongue. If I swallowed one would I shit it out, see a shiny glass eye looking up at me from the toilet? I search for grief support groups, meditation grief groups, books about grief, I sleep most of the day, all night, I dream that my mother isn’t dead, she’s clawed her way through mud that’s been piled on top of her in a makeshift burial; she re-appears, pieces of dirt and grass in her silver hair. “Wow, Wow,” were her last words, said with wonder, then the health aide injected another dose of morphine into her open mouth. In those fleeting moments of consciousness, I changed her diaper, told her my dead father was home waiting for her, convinced her that one day we’d sit together on a bench in Seward Park next to our imaginary apartment in Lower Manhattan after having lunch at our favorite French bistro, picking up cappuccinos at the corner café, watching the Chinese ladies play Mahjong, the kids climb on the metal jungle gym, listening to the dogs bark at each other on the basketball court. And yes, now I remember! I shared this vision as her breath slowed; she said wow, wow because for a few glorious moments we both believed it was true. 

                                                                      *   *   *

 

A Memoir by Rebecca Tiger

Rebecca Tiger teaches sociology at a college and in jails in Vermont. She’s written academic books and articles about drug policy, addiction and celebrity. Her stories have appeared in Bending Genres, BULL, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Emerge Literary, Peatsmoke, Roi Fainéant and Tiny Molecules, among others. 

A Memoir by Tim Clancy

In 1964, when I was ten years old, my parents gave me fifty cents a week for doing the dishes or cleaning a bathroom. Knowing that she could trust me to do it right, my mom would sometimes pay me a dollar or two for an especially arduous several-hour cleaning job, like washing all the walls in the house or scrubbing all the scuff marks off the basement floor. If I wanted anything more than that, I’d recruit a friend, and we’d go to the houses of older folks in the neighborhood, folks who didn’t have kids, and just get right to the point: Got any work for us? We can pull weeds, rake, shovel snow, clean your garage. If it meant hours of scraping paint on a hot summer day or chipping away at an ice covered driveway on a bitter cold day in winter, the lure of a payoff in dollars—or just one dollar—was, for me, at the age of ten, irresistible. 

But so was spending it. That same year, I rode my bicycle to Kresge’s, a “dime store” in Berkley, the next town over, and, with just three dollars, I bought Christmas presents for my entire family, which, at the time, consisted of two parents and six siblings. These gifts were mostly small, plastic, and soon lost or broken; nonetheless, it was thrilling to buy a little something for each person in my family: key chain, spool of thread, squirt gun, pair of dice, miniature baby doll, tiny bar of soap.

My mom’s mother—Margaret Bailey—lived in Berkley. We called her “Grammy.” The summer following my Christmas shopping spree at Kresge’s, I rode my bicycle to her house on Cumberland Street. She knew I was trying to earn some money and had promised to “put me to work.” I was happy to oblige. 

It was a still, humid day in late August. Grammy’s yard smelled of fermenting apples that had fallen from a huge old tree that shaded the deep green of her small backyard. Using a butter knife as a digging tool, I spent the afternoon swatting mosquitos and pulling tightly packed tufts of grass and dandelions from between the bricks that formed a path between Grammy’s house and her garage. After a few hours, my face and arms itching and my hands raw from clutching and digging with the butter knife, Grammy invited me in for lunch. 

In her tiny green kitchen, she served me a baloney sandwich with a pickle, a few potato chips, and some iced lemonade. Since I almost always had several siblings or a friend to eat with, it felt strange, but certainly special, to be eating in the company of just one other person, my grandmother, something that had never happened before—or since.

The underside of the gray formica-topped island where we ate our lunch was covered with hard little lumps of dried chewing gum, probably stuck there by the youngest of my mother’s siblings, Patty Jo, who, at the time, still lived with Grammy in the house on Cumberland Street. Chewing gum was not allowed at my house (“It rots your teeth!”) so whenever we visited, I’d sneak a chunk loose, slip it into my pocket and, later, in the privacy of my wanderings, chew it back to life, with gusto. 

After lunch, I went back out in the yard and resumed my work until all of Grammy’s brick walkway was clearly visible: an interlocking pattern of hard brown rectangles, connecting house to garage. I walked back and forth on it a few times, admiring its simple, sturdy construction and the way it seemed to glow in the shady yard. 

Grammy fished two dollars from her purse, handed it to me and said “I wish it could be more.” 

I believed her. 

                                                           *   *   *

Tim Clancy is a retired English teacher. He lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a short walk from Lake Superior. Among others, his writing has appeared in Paul Auster’s anthology “I Thought My Father was God,” The MacGuffin, and Catamaran.

By Ann Kammerer

Some Saturdays I’d get restless after working all week for salespeople who never invited me to happy hour.

When the sun set, I’d load my backpack with beer and cigarettes, lace up my boots, and bundle up in a corduroy coat and black knit hat. I’d skirt down the alley to a dingy park, sit atop a splintery picnic table beneath a clouded moon, and listen to the tangle of rusted swings.

One Saturday, music pulsed from a rental house high on a hill. Lured by bright windows mirrored with silhouettes, I made my way up a set of worn stone steps.

“Who are you?” A blonde guy in a polo shirt and khakis blocked me at the door, flanked by two identical guys.

“I’m Linda,” I lied. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Like who?” he said.

“Yeah, like who?” the second said.

The third simply stared.

I didn’t answer and nudged past, the three guys muscling, grabbing my backpack.

“Hey.” A guy in flannel with dark wild hair broke through the swarm. “Leave her alone.

She’s with me.”

The three guys laughed. One pushed me toward him.

“Take her,” he said. “She stinks anyways.”

The guy in flannel took my hand.

“Let’s go.” He pulled me through a mob of people to grab a plate of snacks, then led me up a staircase to a room at the end of the hall.

“This is a lot better,” he said. “All those people are jerks.”

He swung the door open and set the chips, pretzels, and cheese on the empty plank floor. The plaster walls were bare except for a world map and a wrinkled poster of Che Guevara.

“Wanna beer?” The guy fished two Dos Equis from a Styrofoam cooler then sat down on a mattress strewn with worn paperbacks by Pablo Neruda, a Spanish phrase book, and a spiral notebook filled with scribbles. 

“You can sit,” he said. “I’m not like them. I won’t touch you unless you want me to.”

I peeled off my backpack, then my coat, and lowered myself next to him.

“Thanks,” I said. “I mean, for saying you knew me.”

He leaned back, the top of his head brushing the world map, his face unshaven, his eyes speckled and hazel.

“Sure,” he said. “You looked like someone I might know.” 

We shared the chips, then pretzels, not talking. He popped cheese in his mouth, then pressed a small piece to my lips.

“I bet you name’s not really Linda.” He licked his fingers and leaned in. “I’ll tell you my name if you tell me yours.”

He took off my hat and smoothed my hair, asking if it was OK. 

“Sure.” I said. 

He slipped off his shoes then mine.

Pressing together, we stretched the length of the mattress. We lit cigarettes and reclined on our backs, a blanket pulled to our chins, our heads propped on folded over pillows.

“I’m leaving soon,” he said. “On a motorcycle. To Mexico, maybe to Panama or wherever.” 

He blew smoke rings, his jaw clicking.

“It’s good we met, I guess,” he said. “Too bad we hadn’t sooner.” 

                                                      *   *   *

Ann Kammerer lives in Oak Park, Illinois, having relocated from her home state of Michigan. Her work has appeared in Fictive Dream, One Art: A Journal of Poetry, Open Arts Forum, Thoughtful Dog, The Ekphrastic Review, and anthologies by Crow Woods Publishing and Querencia Press. She has received top honors and made the short list in several writing contests. Her debut chapbook of narrative poetry “Yesterday’s Playlist” was published by Bottlecap Press, with the collection “Beaut” forthcoming from Kelsay Books.

By Sarah Rose George

Connie was almost certain that her boyfriend had just asked her a question, but she was too busy wondering if she was the only sick-fuck in the room. 

I mean, really– what were they doing here? Really doing here? How many more game nights would they have with Francine and Dean until someone finally suggested an orgy? Or swinging? There was no other reason why Dean would look her in the eyes like that when they talked, Thomas and Francine yammering on in their own little world across the table from one another, an unfinished game splayed out on the dinner table, ignored.

There was only one real way to know for sure: someone would have to make the first move. It wouldn’t– could never– be Connie. God knows she had been mistaken about what she thought were sure bets before. But it was killing her. She felt totally insane, throbbing with unmet needs. 

“Babe,” Thomas said, nudging Connie with his elbow. “It’s our turn!” 

“I know,” Connie lied. “I’m just thinking.” 

“She’s strategizing,” Dean said, raising his thick eyebrows. 

She had been with Thomas exclusively for more than three years now, and already she was wondering if their romance had died. Were they really meant to go on like this? Both of them pretending that the other could give them everything they could ever want or need? She didn’t really want sex anymore– he always initiated. It wasn’t that she wasn’t attracted to Thomas, she was. Is. But there was just something missing. That drive. That desire. But isn’t that what everyone always tells everyone else? That sex dies when you get married? But they weren’t even married! 

Connie picked up her blue piece and moved it three spaces. 

“Interesting choice,” Dean said. 

Connie just shrugged, trying to stop herself from staring but staring anyway at Dean while he considered his move, his brows narrowed toward the board in far too much contemplation for this stupid game. 

When she had first met Dean, Connie had thought he was attractive, and she swore that he thought the same thing about her. Every game night onward, her fantasies congealed. She could picture it so clearly in her head, as if remembering a movie she had seen. It went like this:  

She and Thomas got up to leave. Francine and Dean hugged them goodbye at the doorway. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you so much for coming. Dean hugging her, still hugging her, now a couple of seconds too long. That night, with Thomas snoring next to her, Connie’s phone, face up, would buzz, a nuclear bomb of light through the blue darkness, and she would snatch it to her chest as quickly as she could. A text. From Dean. Not in the groupchat with the four of them. Just to her. Maybe we should hang out just the two of us sometime. And then they would. And then they would start sleeping together. Thomas and Francine didn’t need to know. It was just sex, after all. Just something they needed to sustain their relationships that really mattered to them. 

She should just say it. Chicken shit, just say it. You can laugh it off as a joke! Just–

“Connie,” Francine said, a smile on her lips that looked threatening and then coy and then… “It’s your move.”                                                                   

                                                                  *   *   *

Sarah Rose George graduated from Bard College with a BA in creative writing. She currently lives in New York City and works in book publishing as a production editor and freelance proofreader. 

A Memoir by David Riessen

Tomorrow is the funeral. It has been five days since our beautiful, 24-year-old son Sam suddenly died. When he was first born, we, like all parents, counted his lifespan in days. Then weeks, then months, and finally years. I wonder if death is like that. Will I say Sam has been dead for seven weeks? How about, Sam has been dead for 15 months? Twenty years? Somehow it feels like he has been dead forever. Are we dead before we are born? Or does that not count? Is there a difference between before birth and after death? 

Before Sam died, life was full of the usual complement of half-truths, well-intentioned untruths, and harmless lies. After Sam died, there is none of that. None. If I have a disagreement with someone, we resolve it with simple honesty. “I’m sorry that you feel that way. I love you – we can figure this out.” Or something like that. Although these are the worst days of my life, they are also the most real and beautiful. We have no time for trivia and no energy for social niceties. Nothing but grief, love, honesty, tears, laughter, more grief, and more love. It is the fullness of life, and it is going to last forever. 

 My mom, oldest brother Howard, and a few other relations arrive at about 6:00 p.m. It is the first time I have seen any of my non-nuclear family since Sam died. I meet them at the door with hugs, but no tears. No tears? Why am I not crying? (Or as three-year-old Sam would have said, “Why amn’t I crying?”) And why is my family not crying? (Or as older Sam would have said, “Why are they so fucked up, Dad?”)

Indian food has magically appeared on the dining room table, and so my family and I sit down. Debi and the ten or so others who are in our small, old, lovely house have retreated out of sight. Who can blame them?

“Wow, look at all this food!”

“Is this Oriental food?”

“It’s Indian, Mom.”

“You can’t say Oriental anymore, Aunt Norma.”

“Well, whatever it’s called, it looks delicious.”

“Where did it come from?” someone asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “A restaurant.”

“Are there a lot of Indian restaurants in Larchmont?”

“Is this tandoori shrimp? I don’t think I’ve ever had tandoori shrimp. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as tandoori shrimp.”

“It looks delicious.”

“It is delicious.”

“Who’s going to eat all this? I’ve never seen so much Indian food in all my life.”

“What’s this dish?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“I think it’s chicken masala.”

“No, it’s lamb masala.”

“Lamb? Are you nuts?”

“David, is this chicken masala or lamb masala?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Have some rice. Who is going to eat all this food?”

“Who wants some more chicken?”

“It’s lamb.” 

“Maybe it’s Vindaloo.” 

 And on and on it goes. All this stupid food talk is spoiling my loss of appetite. I have barely eaten in the last five days. Loved ones have put food in front of me from time to time, but I can’t remember eating, and I am certainly not eating now. 

“Howie, when are your kids getting here?” I ask.

“Emily is flying in tomorrow morning.”

“What about Martin?”

“Oh, Martin isn’t coming.”

“What? What do you mean he isn’t coming?”

“He couldn’t make it.”

“He couldn’t make it? Why not?”

“I don’t know. That’s what he said.”

At this point, there is a short, awkward silence, which is quickly filled by the sounds of eating and what I assume is more nonsense about the food. I’m not sure what is being said because I’m still trying to process my interaction with my brother. Martin is Howard’s 33-year-old son. We are not a close family and only get together for major life events. Bottom line: Martin and Sam have almost no relationship. Still, they are first cousins, and I thought that would have counted for something. “He couldn’t make it” means he couldn’t be bothered to take the 78-minute flight from Buffalo. And apparently, my brother couldn’t be bothered to discuss the well-known Rules of Mandatory Funeral Attendance with his son. My brain finally clears, but for the first time in five days, I am unable to say what’s on my mind. All I can do is listen to the narishkeit.  

“Ooh, Naan. I love Naan.”

“I think that’s Paratha.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s so good. This might be the best Oriental food I’ve ever had.”

“You should say, Asian, Aunt Norma.”

“Well, then it’s the best Asian food I’ve ever had.”

“It’s Indian, not Asian.”

“India is in Asia. David, isn’t India in Asia?” 

And suddenly, I can’t take it anymore. Do I yell at my brother? Spill my guts? Cry? No. I want to be honest, but I can’t. Instead, I tell a story. 

“Did I ever tell you about the time I got caught shoplifting?”

 All eyes are immediately on me. Everyone is now full of chicken (or lamb?) masala, but hungry for a story. Any story. A little entertainment.

  “It was July 1975: the summer between high school and college. I walk around the parking lot until I find a plastic shopping bag with the Two Guys Department Store name and logo printed on it.” 

“Two Guys?” my mom interrupts. “Two Guys has been out of business for years.”

“Mom, please. Just listen for a minute.” I want to say, “Do you think you can do that? Listen for a minute? I know I’m asking a lot, but maybe for once in your life you could just –”

But I don’t say that. That would be horrible. And I’m not horrible. I’m good. I’m a good boy. So I tell the story. And they love it. And I love telling it. Lots of laughs. I love nothing more than lots of laughs. We are all having a great time.

And then this sick feeling expands in my chest. This heavy, oppressive pressure that threatens to crush me from the inside out. I can’t do this anymore. Without another word, I move away from the table and find Leah, who helps me escape upstairs. When I come down some time later, those strange people with whom I share DNA are gone.

I sit down at the dining room table with my chosen family, and we eat the leftover food, which I’m pretty sure is chicken masala and naan. Intimacy and love abound. India is definitely in Asia. And I can breathe again.

David Riessen has been writing plays, screenplays, novels, and TV scripts on and off since he was a teenager. In the wake of his son’s sudden death, he has focused on creative nonfiction, which seems to suit his new reality. Two of these stories are featured or forthcoming: one in Defenestration and the other in Moon Park Review. David lives in Larchmont, New York with his wife Debi and dog Raven. DavidRiessen71@gmail.com

By Barbara Kivowitz

As her birthday approached, she became smaller. Her body deflated and her thinking became more chiseled. Mostly nouns and verbs, no context or flowers. We sat at the window table in the fancy tea salon – sparkling white linen tablecloth, sparkling spoons and forks, sparkling array of obsidian and sapphire and emerald cakes and twisted golden marzipan sculptures on a slowly rotating tiered carousel.  She sunk down in her seat so her eye level met the 3rd button of my shirt.  I asked her, “So how does it feel to turn 90?” Her face slowly melted into a wet porridge of sneer and desperation. She mumbled, “How do you think?” I leaned forward and considered touching her arm but instead grabbed a pig shaped marzipan cookie. I chewed slowly, letting the sugar dominate. She reached for a golden eclair encased in a veneer of chocolate lacquer. She pulled her hand back before her spindly fingers made contact. She replaced her hand in her lap. Her other hand lifted the sparkling linen napkin from her lap and began to gently wipe the corners of her mouth as if she were brushing away the crumbs of the uneaten eclair. Each gentle dab of the napkin removed a particle of her red lipstick until her lips contracted to the size of a tiny pillow.

                                                                     *   *   *

Barbara Kivowitz started writing when she developed a chronic pain condition and discovered that journaling was the only time she felt no pain. She is largely recovered from the pain and is still writing. She and her coauthor wrote “Love in the Time of Chronic Illness: How to Fight the Sickness Not Each Other,” a guide for patient/caregiver partners. She has published essays, creative nonfiction, and prose poems in journals and popular magazines. She is a retired comparative literature teacher (and speaks five languages), social worker, innovation researcher, strategy consultant, and is currently an advocate for bringing the voices of patients and families into all aspects of healthcare policy, education, and practice. She lives with her husband in San Francisco and in the Sierra Foothills where she hikes, swims, and keeps an eye out for mountain lions.

By Tom Gartner

Alma hated shrink-wrap. It made her think of suffocation, of all the warnings she’d ever read on plastic bags, of all the horror movies she’d seen where the eyes of B actors went hazy as they struggled for breath. She would dream, sometimes, that she was drowning, gazing up through twenty feet of translucent jade at the unreachable air. She would wake to find that she’d been pressing her pillow to her face.

As her breath came back, as she puckered her lips to force air out of her lungs so more could come in, she would flee her bed. But in the kitchen, the gleaming clarity of the knives hanging on the wall would bring on images of mutilation, of evisceration.

In the bathroom, the steady concussion of water drops on porcelain swelled in her imagination to a Niagara-like roar that slowly rose until it threatened to close over her head. In the living room, the picture window seemed to summon her out into the darkness, where a void opened below the narrow deck.

For a time, Alma found comfort only in the coat closet, with all her coats and sweaters torn from their hangers and wrapped around her like a protective cocoon. If she heard a whisper in the fabric’s rustling that she could strangle on a sleeve, it was only a whisper.

But her scars had healed and faded, so much so that she was sometimes surprised to find the small dark patches of faded tissue on her torso. The seizures had stopped entirely, and her vision had cleared. She tried to be grateful: it was a gift of sorts, she knew, that imaginary fears had taken the place of real ones.

She could see now that a process had started, that if she gave herself to it those fears would drop away too. Her strength would come back, her will would harden, and the people who’d made her suffer would taste fear themselves. Those fears would be real enough, and she would make sure they came true.

*   *   *

Tom Gartner’s fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals, including The Madison Review, California Quarterly, Kestrel, and Twelve Winters. Other work is forthcoming in Third Coast. One story was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives just north of the Golden Gate and works as a buyer for an independent bookstore in San Francisco.