By Roland Goity

I awake to a series of tugs, totally disoriented. Somewhat regaining my senses, I see Abigail. Only, she isn’t old and weathered like me anymore. She’s wearing a floral-patterned summer dress, and is as slim and pretty as when we first met, her tawny hair teased the way she liked. And she’s mumbling something, but I can’t make out what she’s saying other than my name: Albert, Albert, over and over. Then, just like that, she’s gone. 

*

“I’m sorry about the fever dreams, Mr. Parsons,” the doctor tells me, “but your fever is under control now with the Tylenol and you seem reasonably okay otherwise.” 

“These strange visions. They aren’t just fever dreams—they’re something more!” However, I continue to avoid telling her about what I’ve seen: my late wife. 

She gives me a bit of a side-eye, and hesitates before answering. “Covid-19 in extremely rare cases has been linked to new-onset psychosis, tricking your mind in relation to what you see and hear. I wouldn’t worry about it, however. You’ll be in the free and clear very soon.”

*

It’s late October. Driving from the hospital after my appointment, my eyes are drawn to the spectacular orange, yellow, and red colors of the Japanese maples that line every path and street in and out of the complex. They remind me so much of the vividly bright cocktail dresses Abigail used to wear. My mind fixes on the beauty and despair of these same trees as their leaves fell in early November, four years ago. 

I am seventy-one now, nearly eight years older than my wife was then. We both occupied hospital beds the year the virus engulfed us. Only, I was never put on a ventilator, and she was. I returned home a week later, navigating the stops and turns of these little streets every day right before and after visiting hours until it was too late for even the ventilator to keep her alive. 

When I arrive home I consider the doctor’s skepticism about my condition. It’s true that my fever is minimal, my coughing fits have largely passed, and I just feel a little achy and off. Maybe she’s right—I’ll soon “be in the free and clear.” 

I make a BLT that’s nothing like the wonderful ones Abigail would make for us—mine use bacon bits from a package.  I mindlessly eat the sandwich as I watch the television news. Then, I settle in for a nap on the couch. 

I only fade off for a few minutes this time before I snap awake suddenly and find Abigail, the young version again, straddling me in a see-through nightgown. She lifts its skirt and rubs her belly in the dim light of the room. Her face carries a sunset glow. 

“We’re going to have a baby,” she says. “You’re going to be a father.” Identical words to those she told me one evening in bed, more than forty years ago.

Then, just as in those recent appearances, she abruptly disappears, and I’m alone again. 

Despite the virus, I feel a brief surge of energy, amazed at getting to relive the moment I first learned of our daughter’s pending arrival. Abigail’s visit has triggered so many beautiful remembrances of our life together. I picture us dancing to “Night Fever” under a brightly it disco ball, doing the Times’ Sunday crossword in the park on the bench by the fountain, and, not long before she died, standing side-by-side across the net from our friends in pickleball dink rallies once our bodies were no longer cut out for tennis. I want to keep awake and let these memories, these feelings, linger. But I am so drowsy and exhausted, I just can’t. 

When I finally rouse myself off the couch, birds are singing on the back porch and the next day’s sunlight has made its way across the hardwood floor. There’s no evidence of anything supernatural having occurred. Not that I expected any. 

*

Raindrops in the wind crash against the restaurant window on the wharf where my daughter and I are having lunch. It used to be her mother’s and my favorite spot, where we’d dine whenever we wanted to celebrate something, or just have a really nice time. The “seafarer’s special” is my favorite meal in the world, and Iris is treating. Today’s celebration is for the fact that I tested negative ten days ago and have regained my strength. Only, while I feel better physically, I’ve undergone a strange sense of loss that I’m still trying to understand. Iris, who’s happier than I am about my renewed health, thinks I’m nuts. 

“You need to forget about what you think you saw, Pop,” she says, waving a forked scallop before setting it in her mouth. Iris looks a bit like Abigail, with the same hazelnut eyes and cute little nose. Unluckily for her, she got stuck with my thin, flat lips and child-size teeth. When the little scallop’s gone down the hatch, Iris says, “Grief can be a powerful thing, but you can’t let it control you. I mean, it’s very touching that you got to share another special moment or two with Mom again in this unusual way. Appreciate that, but don’t dwell on it. It will hold you back and be painful in the long run.”

“You’re right,” I say with a smile, not correcting her that it wasn’t just once or twice but nearly a dozen times. I reach over and put my hand on hers. “Thank you.”

We enjoy the rest of our lunch and she drives me back home. We have tea at my kitchen table before she gets up to head home. We hug and say farewells at the door.

“Glad you’re doing fine again, Pop,” she says, before kissing my cheek. “I know it’s hard. We both miss Mom so much, but you need to refocus, okay?” 

“I will,” I say, as she dashes to the car in a hunched position, her unhooded jacket pulled up over her head to avoid the downpour. Just the way she used to do when she was late for school as a child and her mother was already in the car, behind the wheel. 

Is it bad luck for one not to put their hands behind them and cross their fingers when telling a lie? I hope not, as I neglected to do so, one hand warm in my jacket pocket, the other waving adieu. For, while I’m sure “refocusing” is admirable, I have another plan in mind. 

*

A month passes. Travel spikes as people around the globe begin to celebrate the holidays. There’s a new variant afoot, and the CDC warns everyone to use extreme caution—mask when out in public, employ best hygiene practices, test themselves should any symptoms occur. That’s my cue. I head to the airport nearly every day for a week, then another. I eat my lunches there, have drinks with travelers in the terminal bars, even do a little shopping in the semi-chic chains and mingle with others whenever I can. 

I feel generally good, aside from the typical sneezes and aches that come with the December cold. Then one day, I feel a little worse. The next day, worse still. I pull out an antigen test from my bathroom drawer, unseal the packaging, take a swab and prepare the solution. Within minutes I’m extremely relieved: Both lines have quickly filled solid on the testing device. 

“I’m positive again,” I tell my daughter on the phone. 

“Oh, no!” Iris says, saying how sorry she is, explaining how they can’t afford to have me stay with them now, as her husband’s parents will be there too, and it would be too risky to possibly jeopardize their health, not to mention everyone else’s. “We can Zoom, though!” she says, trying to sound upbeat. “You won’t be totally alone over the holidays. At least we’ll see each other’s face, hear each other’s voice.” 

“That’s okay,” I say. “A simple phone call works best.”  It takes a minute or two, but I assure her that I’ll be fine. 

 What I didn’t tell Iris, of course, is that I won’t be alone. With a huge grin on my face, I pick things up off the floor, wipe down the tables, and prepare to spend another Christmas with Abigail. 

*   *   *

Roland Goity lives in Issaquah, WA, where the summers are spectacular and the winters are made for writing. Recent stories of his appear or are forthcoming in Poor Yorick, Litbreak, the Scop, Freshwater Literary Journal, and the Literary Hatchet.

By Ysavelle Buitrago

I thought getting hit by a car would hurt like hell. It would leave my insides looking like a Pringles can that had been shaken up. Sour cream and shattered bone. I imagined the pain almost comically, like you see in movies. Someone gets hit and flies ten feet into the air, landing on the hood. I imagined my bobble head bouncing to the pavement, my brains glistening and splattered, like canned tomato soup in the sun.

In reality, getting hit by a car was so much lamer. 

First, I was hit slowly. Agonizingly slow. As if the driver were doing it in a library. I was on a bike, crossing at the crosswalk, when this massive souped-up truck decided to cut me off. My wheel was sucked under first, the undercarriage of steel having some gravitational pull bigger than Jupiter. My body followed as I watched my bike mush down like Silly Putty. I landed so softly on the pavement that I would have thought I hit my overused mattress. ‘No pain!’ I thought, and then my left shoulder started being eviscerated under the pressure of a trillion pounds of lazy American engineering. The motherfucker wouldn’t stop rolling up to a light that was still red.

The rubber welded itself to my arm and ribs, sucking at them like an ice pop. Despite the agony, I couldn’t help noticing how gentle and almost caring the movement of the wheel was. I made a mental note to seek out more hugs and firm shoulder pats from humans if I had a future after this flattening. Enjoying being gummed to death by a monster truck due to loneliness is just embarrassing.

I heard screaming from beyond my gummy void.

“Stop, someone is underneath your tire!” 

I didn’t care. My bike was destroyed, what else did I have to live for? That’s why when the man got out of his truck and pulled me out of the darkness, I had my eyes closed.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” he whined. His voice, dropping in and out of cigarette coughs, was familiar and incredibly annoying. He wrestled me upright like this was my fault, like I was being scolded for playing in the street. I touched my side and felt the geometric indents of tire tracks. I kept my eyes closed.

“Ow” I said.

“I swear I didn’t see you. You have to believe me. I would have stopped!” 

“Ow” I said again. 

I felt someone grab my arm and finally opened my eyes. A crowd had gathered. People had pulled their cars over. Thick, calloused fingers inspected my face and my new Superman ice cream rib decorations. 

“How do you feel hon?”

“Bet you’re glad you wear a helmet.” 

The strap had cut into my lip, and I tasted blue-frosted piggy bank pennies. 

The crowd surrounded Mr. Monster truck, too, and kept us far apart. His head was in his hands, curled up on the curb like he was the one who had just been run over. A lot of ‘what the fuck were you thinkings’ mixed with ‘I’m calling the cops’. A nightshift nurse had me lie on the sidewalk. I stared up at the sky and wondered how I was going to get to work with a mangled bike and $93.43 left in my checking account. 

The cops put Mr. Monster truck in the back of their car, and after the medic treated me, they gave me a ride to the station, too, saying I had to make a statement. I said my statement was that I had been run over and asked if they had snacks. I hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday. 

Two stale cider mill donuts later, I sat in the waiting room of the police station, my thighs slippery and germy with plastic sweat from the fold-out chair. No one had come to take my statement. I don’t think they remembered I was there. 

But Mr. Monster truck did. He burst out of the interview room like a house cat tasting fresh air for the first time. I was his target; another excuse to the girl he tried to kill. 

“You really have to believe me, I never saw you. The truck is too high, my stupid-ass brother Stevie made it way too high and now I can’t see a goddamn thing down there.”

My injuries flamed. It couldn’t be.

“Dad?” I said. 

We hadn’t seen each other in ten years. Not since he kicked me out. Not since he told me he’d pay for college and then told the financial office he didn’t have a daughter. Not since I was a golden ferret of an 18-year-old girl. My waist was bigger now, my hair was blue. 

“Dad?” I said again. 

“Well, I didn’t expect this,” he said.

Then he hugged me. I hated it. The fermentation between us like a knot of hair grown stiff with time and neglect. It hurt worse than his abandonment, worse than his truck.

He mumbled something about time and coming around and strode out the front doors. A cop came up behind me and said I could sue if I wanted; people did all the time.

I watched my dad check his back tire, the one that had tried to stamp me out like a roach in the kitchen. Suddenly, my ribs didn’t hurt so badly.

“What am I gonna sue him for? All he has in the world is that truck.

*   *   *

A Detroit native with a degree in filmmaking, Ysa loves to be anywhere but home. After spending the majority of her twenties teaching English in Colombia and South Korea, she is now backpacking the world one cheap flight at a time. When this Latinx adventurer isn’t hiking to ancient ruins or cooking dinner for everyone at her hostel, she is reading novels about furious women and writing until her head is empty. Blue-Frosted Pennies is her first publication.

By Kate Sullivan

Mrs. O’Reilly had an outdoor shower installed in her backyard.  She was aware that the neighbors on either side might object, but she did it anyway.  She asked the man to make the fence around her shower high enough so she couldn’t be seen from the triple decker next door.                  

Why, she thought to herself, at this late stage in her life, would I want such a thing?  She didn’t quite know the answer.  Every time she would try to explain it to herself, all she could conjure up were vague notions about freedom or lofty thoughts about nature.  

For sixty-two years, she’d lived a simple life in this house, cooking supper, doing the laundry, attending daily Mass at St. Bridget’s, packing a lunch for her dear Bertie to take off to his job digging graves.  She’d lived a practical life, and wondered what she would do with herself now that Bertie was gone. She missed him desperately, the love of him, the routine of him. She wondered if she had the strength or imagination to continue.  

It wasn’t until her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Wenzel dropped dead one day as she scraped the old paint from the balusters on her front porch, that Mrs. O’Reilly got to thinking of how short life was and that if she had any thoughts of anything she’d like to do before she died, she’d better do it now.  Travel was too much, what with arthritis, a trick knee and a list of other little annoyances.  She’d never been much for dinner parties.  She’d given up her needlepoint because she could no longer decipher the directions.  She never did much like shopping for new clothes.  Well, to tell the truth, she found clothes tedious in general. She was happy wearing the same thing day in and day out.  

In the meantime, she would go to the library, just to sit, and sometimes doze in the comfy chairs in the public reading room, a glossy home and garden magazine open in her lap.  The houses pictured in the fancy magazines were the size of a city block. She enjoyed looking, but none of it was really for her. 

Until she came to the spread about outdoor showers. 

“Ah now, that’s it, so.  Wouldn’t a nice outdoor shower be just the thing.  I would feel like a queen, like I was on vacation every day.”  Other than the tall fence, she didn’t have any other ideas of what she might like in her shower.  A bar of soap, some shampoo, a hook for her bathrobe. Truth be told, she had never really seen an outdoor shower, except in the beautiful magazines at the library. She’d do what she could. 

Mrs. O’Reilly thanked the workman and waved as he drove off in his truck.  Then she went right to the backyard, lifted the latch on the door and stepped into her new shower – just to feel the space. She loved the smell of the new wood.  She turned on the water, just to test it out, careful not to wet her oxfords.   

She had never really given much thought to her daily shower.  It was just part of her routine, like taking out the trash or sweeping the driveway.  

Early the next morning, before breakfast, Mrs. O’Reilly put on her bathrobe, hooked her towel over her arm and headed out the back door.  She wondered if she had every felt, really felt the cool of early morning air. She smiled and raised her head to look at the sliver of moon that still hung in the pinkening sky.  She thought of Bertie and wondered what she really thought about life after death. She liked the idea that her dear love was now the air, the moon, and the sky.  She took off her bathrobe hung it on the hook and felt the cool air on her skin.  Have I ever really felt that? she wondered. She stepped under the warm water and just stood, letting the warmth, the cool, the wet, the moon, the sky, Bertie, the all of it, wash over her.  I have never felt so alive, she thought.

In the ensuing days, Mrs. O’Reilly’s pleasure only increased.  The workman had put down a large scrap of plywood, so she wouldn’t have to stand in the weeds and the mud while she showered.   She could see this wasn’t a very poetic place to stand. She went back to the library to look at the pictures. There were lots of good ideas – wooden floors that looked like a Japanese temple; or small smooth stones, like what she imagined she might find in a secret cove in Greece. But perhaps stones would be a bit hard on her neuropathy? Maybe different colored flagstones, though they made her think of the front walk of the house she grew up in and she didn’t want to look backwards.  She wanted to look forwards.  She turned the page and there it was – just the right thing: beautiful large flat fieldstones, with Irish moss growing in the spaces between.  The outdoor shower in the magazine looked like the Garden of Eden.

Mrs. O’Reilly watched as the workman finished placing the last fieldstone, and wondered aloud, Now, wouldn’t a lovely bench be just the thing in here?  I could sit a while, maybe even read a bit of poetry. Perhaps two benches!  Who knows what the future may bring?  Mrs. O’Reilly surprised herself with such thoughts of the future.

She loved the simplicity of it all.  She longed to escape the braided rugs, the upholstered sofa, the china cabinet full of wedding gifts, and all the rest of the clutter that had accumulated over the years.

Mrs. O’Reilly learned how to meditate from a little book at the library.  Just sit quietly with your eyes closed and observe your thoughts as they pass by. 

She began to spend more and more time in her outdoor shower. How wonderful it was just to sit naked on her little wooden bench.  She became more aware of her surroundings, the aliveness of the breeze, the dark rich breath of the earth, with its lovely Irish moss.  This seemed to be a place where her spirit was free to wander.  She had never let her spirit wander before.

She greeted passers-by as though she was the same Mrs. O’Reilly, but she wasn’t.  

She told a few neighbors about her shower, just in case they might be tempted to try. Mrs. Capobianco, who lived alone and grew African violets on her windowsill, and Betsy (she never had learned her last name), lonely, since she had decided to not replace her dear terrier, Fred, who had died a few years back. She even told dear Mailman Tom, the kind, elderly deliverer of mostly junk mail.   

 Mrs. O’Reilly returned to her bench and remained seated, quietly singing the Taino Chant To The Four Directions she had seen on National Geographic.  After years of gospels and doctrines and special Holy Days of Obligation and the rest of it, she welcomed the simple purity of singing to Nature – to the turkey spirit of the South, the owl spirit of the West, the hummingbird of the North and the hawk of the East.  That was it, a song of simplicity. The beauty of the earth and all creation – the sun, the moon, the planets, the souls of plants and animals, and the soul of dear Bertie; all one and the same.  That’s what it’s all about, she meditated, as she shook the battered calabash rattle she found at the thrift shop.

                            Caney Ata, Caney Ata ah eh ah Caney Ata

              Caney Baba, Caney Baba, ah eh ah Caney Baba.

After so much convention, so many rules, Mrs. O’Reilly was starting to swim in different streams and she knew she would not go back.  She would no longer burden herself with the cares of the past.  She no longer needed the approval of others.  She would enter into herself fully, right here in her outdoor shower. She sang her song with such full-throated joy, she did not hear Mailman Tom knock on the shower door.

                                                                *   *   *

Kate Sullivan likes to play around with words, music, and pictures. She has written and illustrated children’s picture books “On Linden Square” and “What Do You Hear?”, sung chansons at NYC Mme Tussaud’s Wax Museum, and her fugue-ish ‘Fugitum est’ was performed at Carnegie Hall by The Kremlin Chamber Orchestra as part of their tribute to Mozart. She  paints ostriches and likes to play the musical saw to impress people. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines. Her flash fiction Mudlarking at the Beauport was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. 

By Lorette C. Luzajic

after The Guardian of the Black Egg, by Leonor Fini (Italy, b. Argentina) 1955

The house reeks of cat piss and formaldehyde. And something else, too, something rotten and old as the hills. The pine shadows sway moodily in the gloaming on the way, but inside, the night is impenetrable and blinding. 

You fumble along the walls and inside your memory for a switch. The house groans and yawns as the power flickers to life from the rafters. You make out tattered swatches of linen and tulle winding along the seams of the room. Peeling strips of wallpaper unravel from ceiling to floor. The slatted light spills to the cluttered floor through ornate bronze bars of dozens of suspended bird cages. From the silence and the stench, you understand they hold no living thing.

“You finally came.” The sound rises from heaps of rubble and jetsam. Your eyes follow her voice until you find her, perched on a pedestal of debris. She is all brittle ridges and edges, bones like blades against a sea of skirts. She nonchalantly swipes at flies. You shudder when your eyes meet. Hers are holes.

Around her neck are frayed ropes of amulets, ancient carnelian frogs, twin slate finger charms stolen from tombs. In her hands she holds what you have come for. The gleaming black egg, ancient, and birthed from the volcanos still roiling in the distance. 

It is an appointment you do not wish to keep. But the guardian has summoned you: she is getting weaker and her days on this plane are almost past. The egg must be held in hands that pulse with the bloodbeat of the Ancestor, to harbour the darkness and keep it from spilling into all the land.

“Mother,” you say. “Are you ready?” She nods. “Are you?” You stare through her, through time, and she looks through you, too, to things beyond and unknown. Without letting go of the black egg, she twists out of her garlands and places them over your lowered head. 

You shudder, but it must be done. 

Finally, she hands you the obsidian: the tecpatl, for the terrible task at hand, and the egg, for the terrible task ahead. You glide the flint through the loose soft flesh of her throat, watch red rivulets stream down until she crumbles. Then you climb into the nest and take her place on the throne.  

                                                                     *    *    *

Lorette C. Luzajic reads, writes, edits, publishes, and teaches flash fiction. She has placed twice in Best Small Fictions. She is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review and The Mackinaw.

 

By Fredrik Siwmark Carlsson

It was the summer when the French romance took over our lives. We dressed in striped sweaters, mixed Kir Royale in chrome thermoses, and convinced ourselves that Cape Cod was the French Riviera. We read Bonjour Tristesse and listened to Édith Piaf while ash flakes drifted down from the ends of our cigarettes.

“Will you pass me the croissant, mademoiselle?”

“Of course! I mean, oui, oui!”

We named passing women Bovary and Esmeralda. All the handsome men we called Jean Valjean, and the hunched ones, Quasimodo.

We were never as happy as that summer on New England’s Côte d’Azur. But the romance wasn’t eternal—it was left behind in the sand along with the baguette crumbs as soon as school started again.

                                                                  *   *   *

Fredrik Siwmark Carlsson lives in Lund, Sweden. He is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in literary studies and the Swedish language. He won the short story contest Värmland skriver in 2022, and one of his short stories was recently published by Flash Phantoms. Fredrik is the founder of http://www.hundraord.se, a website for 100-word flash fiction in Swedish.

By Phillip Sanderson

Let’s not give Pepper more credit than she deserves. All I had to do first thing in the morning was walk to the front hallway and reach for her harness, and Pepper went berserk—scratching at the front door, jumping all over me, and doing zoomies up and down the stairs. She wasn’t a genius, but she did love her walks.

Once the front door was open, Pepper was eager to find the best sniffs, pulling me to the boxwoods, along the cement sidewalk, and into the paved parking lot. If she was lucky, she’d find trash on the ground. Pepper considered discarded napkins and straw paper a particularly delicacy; she would chew until she swallowed the wet, pulpy mess. If I tried to coax it from her, she’s clamp her jaws shut and feign ignorance.

Pepper was a rescue we had adopted. By the time her gigantic ears and full-body wiggles had won us over on our visits to the local shelter, Pepper had already been returned twice by previous owners. I had resolved that wouldn’t happen again, and we’d be her forever home. Solid as a rock and full of boundless energy, we like to say that “Pepper loves real hard.” She was sweet, but with her neurotic tendencies (for example, wristwatches were a trigger), Pepper was a bit of an acquired taste.

When we stepped out that morning, Pepper yanking me here and there in her morning routine, I was surprised to see a young girl walking in the grass towards us. Her hair hadn’t seen a comb that morning and maybe much longer. Despite the cool air, she was barefoot and wearing a thin, yellow cotton dress with little blue flowers. It was all she was wearing. In the crook of her right arm, she cradled a large, white guinea pig with tan markings. With her left hand, she absently stroked the top of its head. I’d guess she was about seven years old.

With neither fear nor preamble, the little girl approached and asked, “Miss, can I pet your dog?” In her voice, I heard a child’s natural curiosity that you might expect from someone her age, but with an innocent boldness and naiveté that caught me by surprise.

I didn’t want to disappoint the girl, so instead of answering, I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Lilah.”

“And what’s his?” I asked, pointing with my free hand to her furry little bundle.

“I call him Tuck.” She looked down and stroked one of his velvet ears. “He’s my best friend.” Pepper strained at her leash, desperate to paw at a patch of ground just out of reach. “Can I pet your dog?”

Pepper quickly forgot her digging and became distracted by a discarded Burger King cup lid caught in the bushes. Probably best that she hadn’t noticed Lilah or Tuck just yet. I’d recently given Pepper a stuffed toy squirrel to play with. It had lasted for all of about 15 minutes before she had pulled out every bit of the white stuffing and happily scattered it across the living room floor. There was no way I would let her near either the girl or her guinea pig.

As kindly as I could, I told her, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

Her eyebrows scrunched together in confusion as she continued stroking the guinea pig’s head. “Why not?”

“I don’t think Pepper would understand your pet isn’t a toy. And she’s really, really rough on her toys.” Looking the girl over, a lot of red flags were going up. “Where do you live?”

She pointed vaguely to another section in our development, a subdivision of two-story townhouse clusters joined by a broad, winding river of asphalt. “Over there.”

Lilah tried again. “Can I pet your dog?” Give her points for persistence.

“Who takes care of you?”

“Granny. But she doesn’t get around too well. She likes me to do things for her, like fixing her coffee and bringing her cigarettes. Other times, she tells me she doesn’t want to look at me anymore, so I go for walks.”

Flags, flags. “Do you go to school?”

“Sometimes. When Granny remembers.” Lilah cocked her head to one side as if she heard something in the distance, a sound that worried her and made her clutch Tuck a little tighter. “I’ve got to go. Bye.” And suddenly, the little girl scampered across the grass and pavement to a building out of sight behind our unit. Perhaps she heard Granny call and was running home.

*

Two days later, Pepper was harnessed and leashed, ready for her morning walk. We had just stepped out the door when Lilah approached, walking across the grass and leaving a trail of footprints through the dewy wetness. In the crook of her arm was Tuck, along for the ride and gently being stroked on top of his head.

“Can I pet your dog?”

Again, Pepper managed to ignore both the girl and the guinea pig, anxious for our usual route along the neighborhood. I’m pretty sure she wanted to check out her territory by seeing what sniffs had changed overnight and if there was anything new to pee on. Or better yet, if there was any new paper trash she could eat. It was ridiculous how vigilant I had to be on these walks to keep Pepper safe from her own vices.

I shook my head, grateful that Pepper was oblivious. “We already talked about this. My dog isn’t good with furry little creatures that look like slippers with whiskers. I’m afraid not.”

Just like last time, Lilah was barefoot and wearing the same yellow dress with blue flowers. Her hair was wild, and she swiped at it with her left hand to keep it out of her face. Her face was the picture of innocence, trying to understand as she asked, “If I didn’t have Tuck, could I pet your dog?”

Knowing how Pepper liked to jump, a habit I’d never been able to break her of, this didn’t seem like a good idea. Lilah was small with a thin frame and Pepper easily outweighed her. Her pale skin had little smudges across her cheeks and arms, and her fingernails had dirt underneath the tips. My heart went out to her, and I couldn’t be one more disappointment in a world that probably had more than she deserved already. “I think that would be okay. If I held Pepper on a short leash and she had to sit for you, you could pet her.” Besides, it seemed a safe bet that nothing could separate Lilah and Tuck, and I would never have to make good on my promise.

Lilah’s face brightened, and it occurred to me that this was the first smile I had seen. Her front teeth were slightly crooked, but I realized that when she smiled, underneath her shabby appearance, Lilah was a beautiful little girl.

Pepper’s ears perked up, large and tall like ridiculous velvet satellite receivers, hearing something in the distance that made her strain at her lead again. She still hadn’t noticed Tuck sniffing into Lilah’s elbow, nose twitching and long whiskers brushing against her arm.

The red flags were hurting my head, and I felt like Lilah needed me to be an adult. “Can I walk you back home? I’d like to speak to your Granny.”

The smile disappeared, and Lilah looked panicked. She shook her head, “No, no thank you. I’m fine.” Lilah gave Pepper a final glance and said, “I need to go now.” Before I could say another word, Lilah took off again, sprinting like being chased by a wolf pack.

*

The next morning, Lilah was waiting for us on the sidewalk. She stood patiently, again barefoot, wearing the same dress, hair uncombed. Only this time, the little girl’s arms were empty.

As before, she approached and asked, “Can I pet your dog?” Though the air was calm and mild, my skin got goosebumps.

It shocked me to see her without Tuck, her constant companion. Instead of answering her question, I asked, “Where is your guinea pig?”

The girl’s brows furrowed together as she frowned and tilted her head to the side, her face clearly confused by the question. Without an ounce of guile or deception, she shrugged her thin, little shoulders in puzzlement. “What guinea pig?”

Pepper pulled at my leash, eager to be on her walk.

Suddenly, the girl’s expression changed, and she was bright and sunny again. “Can I pet your dog?”

*   *   *

Phillip is an emerging writer after having enjoyed a 30+ year career as a high school mathematics teacher. He and his wife reside in a rural community in southeastern Virginia bordering the Chesapeake Bay where they stay busy updating an old farmhouse and keeping up with their four adult children. He can be found at http://www.plsanderson.com.

By Annie Chen

A girl stands at a street corner where cars and scooters drift by, their engines humming like distant memories. The light for the crosswalk turns green, and she watches those wearing the same uniform as hers cross the street with a wistful smile. She recognizes them. They are her classmates; just yesterday, they had lunch together, gossiping about who was involved with whom. 

She doesn’t say hello. One of them meets her eyes, where the stillness behind her gaze numbs her from head to toe. The pedestrian light flashes. The engines roar to life. And an icy chill creeps down her spine.

The sound of footsteps grabs her attention, and she turns and sees an unfamiliar young man years older than her. High school? College, perhaps? He’s holding snacks in his hands, snacks that her parents had bought her just yesterday for her amazing test scores. He isn’t looking at her, but at the flowers and snacks that surround her feet. His eyes are like hers. Still. Quiet. Dull.

His lips move, yet his words are lost on the weeping wind that is her voice.

Because this unfamiliar face is but another grave reminder that she will never leave this street corner. The street corner where her youth is left shattered on the road, never to be gathered and pieced together into the collage of a future that was once hers.

*   *   *

Annie Chen is a writer and coffee and tea enthusiast who’s always looking for a cat to cuddle.

By Matthew Curlewis

I want the hands on my clock to tell me about a different time, not a time before, but a time after all of this. Because I’ve always believed in, and have always been a champion of, hope. So I want, not the whole view – that would be too overwhelming – but I want a glimpse of a future that is better than this. I want to keep believing in hope.

Besides this impossible want of being able to see the future, I guess I just want some small things. I want to be stopped in my tracks by the sight of a tiny, purple flower, that, against all odds, and at the end of a fragile, bright green stem, has somehow managed to grow out from a crack in the wall of a building, when every other view from every other angle, speaks only of desolation. I want to hear a child giggling uncontrollably each time their young sibling blows a dandelion into tiny white parachutes that drift upwards, until they get tickled into somersaults by a breeze along the edges of an azure blue sky.

And I want my father’s hand that I am holding, instead of being cold and lifeless, to feel like it could lead me to tomorrow, again.

*   *   *

Since growing up on a farm in Australia, Matthew Curlewis has lived and worked in Sydney, Tokyo, New York, and these days Amsterdam, where he runs the ongoing Writers’ Stretch & Tone workshop for Amsterdam Writers. His short film Brilliance screened at numerous international film festivals, and his works have appeared in publications including The Guardian, Blue Pepper, Wordpeace, and 50-Word Stories. Matthew also releases fortnightly-ish Bright Side Writings on Substack: optimism-led stories to brighten these dark times of chaos and collapse.

A Memoir by Lee Zacharias

For fifteen years my mother fell. Off curbs, out of chairs, standing up, sitting down, getting out of bed, getting back in. Sometimes she fell while doing nothing at all. She would not hear of assisted living or allow an aide to come in, would not wear a Life Alert, would not use the platform cane or walker I bought her. “People will think I’m old,” she said. If I tried to help her down a flight of stairs, it wasn’t because she wobbled, it was because I thought she was stupid. She didn’t need anyone’s help, no matter how often she lost her balance. Once she broke her foot. What else, I don’t know. I lived a thousand miles away, and not only did she lie, she always had some excuse: she never fell, something tripped her, something tangled, things got in her way. 

She fell for the last time six days before her ninety-eighth birthday, sometime during the night of April 2, 2016. I know the date because when I arrived Wednesday evening, April 6, the Sunday Northwest Indiana Times was still on her stoop, fliers spilling from the top of her mailbox. Even before I let myself in, the house gave off a smell of abandonment. Inside it was putrid. “Mom?” I called as I dropped my luggage. There was a chair overturned in the hallway, a stripe of light beneath her bedroom door. A heavy sewing table had toppled behind it, and I had to break in. I found her on the floor with her head near the foot of her bed, helplessly waving her arms, eyes darting, naked from the waist down, lying in her own feces, conscious but unable to speak as I bent to ask what had happened. Whether she recognized me or not I can’t say.

I called an ambulance, and she died in six days later, less than twenty-four hours into her Hospice stay, April 12, 3:25 a.m., perhaps the very same hour she had fallen. The hospice nurse had estimated it would be another seventy-two hours, and so after a long day—a series of long days in ER, ICU, and finally the wing of the hospital where she was sent to wait for a bed at the Hospice Residence Center to open—I had gone home to get some sleep, even though I suspected it would be her last night. During her first days in the hospital she had briefly regained some ability to speak (though not her coherence), but she was long past words now. Still I told her where she was and that her passing would be peaceful. “I kept my promise,” I said. “I didn’t send you to a nursing home.” I assured her that she would be with her beloved dog Lobo, that she would be with Roy, the boyfriend who had died years before, with her father, her brothers, and sisters again. Most of all I promised that she would finally have the chance to know her mother, who had died before my mother was old enough to remember her. I teared up as I read “The Rainbow Bridge,” wept through the Twenty-third Psalm, kissed her forehead, told her I loved her, and said goodbye.

When I returned at 4 a.m., the nurse let me sit with her for a while, then came in to tell me the remover had arrived. “You’ll want to step out of the room,” he said, but I shook my head. I hadn’t been there to hold my mother’s hand as she took her last breath, but I intended to see her off.  I watched as he loaded her onto the gurney, zipped her into the body bag, and wheeled her down the hall to the Cadillac SUV waiting in the garage. The aide pushed the button to raise the door, and as the vehicle pulled out, I waved and called, “That’s a mighty fancy ride you’ve got up to heaven, Mom.”

And then I came home, to her house that is, a house I had hated for the entire 61 years I spent living in it as a child or visiting as an adult. And yet in the near week it had taken my mother to die, I somehow felt more comfortable, more at home than I ever had before, for I realized I had something I’d never experienced there in all those decades, privacy. If I poured myself a glass of wine, no one asked what I was doing; if I went to the bathroom, no one demanded to know where I had gone. And now it was mine, mine and my brother’s, though the job of cleaning it out would fall to me, for he had been in the hospital himself, waiting on a new pacemaker, when my mother fell, and was still under orders not to drive. I went back to bed, but couldn’t sleep. There was work to do. My mother had come through the Depression, and like so many of her generation, she never threw anything away. Who knew when you might need a dozen pair of dry-rotted drapes still brandishing their hooks, six thousand margarine tubs, or that broken appliance? 

Some of the evil little things that get to you fresh in your grief: a nasty funeral director you’re dealing with by phone because at least fifty years before your mother prepaid her cremation through the Chicago Memorial Trust, and he is so angry that she lived and died in Indiana but is being cremated in Illinois, the first thing he says is not the perfunctory “I’m sorry,” but “You’re not going to be able to get death certificates.”  Or perhaps he’s angry to have to fire up his oven for so much less than the going rate. Whichever, he is snappish. Half an hour later his secretary calls to say that your credit card has been denied, not because you live in North Carolina, were in California the night your mother fell, and are now in the Midwest without having notified the bank, but because the funeral home entered the wrong security code. Or maybe it’s phoning the Lake County Board of Health for assistance with the death certificates only to be told that the funeral home has to take care of that and having the clerk ring off with a disheartening “Good luck.” Most of all it’s getting a jump on the cleaning out by beginning to haul away the junk you know no one will want, and when you reach the top of the basement steps with a hideous plastic floral arrangement in petrified green Styrofoam, the Styrofoam block explodes, showering you and everything around you with toxic green dust, and stupidly you sit on the kitchen floor and weep, because you are not crying over your mother’s death but the mess you have to clean up. Except it is your mother’s death, which keeps coming at you sideways.

And then this moment of grace. You have been posting on Facebook throughout your mother’s ordeal because you are alone, your husband is back home, taking care of your sick dog, and your phone is the only link you have to the outside world, though you’ve paid little attention to it, you have not wished anyone a happy birthday or scrolled down through your friends’ posts, because death is self-centered, it hears of nothing but itself, you have only glanced at the first to pop up when you open your page and not bothered to read it. But tonight that first post catches your eye. A former student is worried about a robin’s nest in her yard, wondering why the mother has abandoned her eggs. Probably it was touched by a human, her friends suggest, and instantly I remember that when I was a child I stole a robin’s nest. My kindergarten had been hatching chicks and I must have meant to tend the little blue eggs until they opened and then take care of my very own baby robins. My mother climbed the neighbor’s tree to replace it. I was too young to remember, or perhaps even notice, whether the mother robin ever came back, but suddenly on this day of her death I have my mother back. She is young and agile, her hair thick and dark. The pale gray hem of her dress sways as she balances the nest, moving higher and higher, but nothing tangles, nothing trips, nothing gets in her way. My mother is climbing a tree.

                                                              *   *   *

Lee Zacharias is the author of four novels, a collection of short stories, and two collections of essays. Her most recent book is Remember Me (Unicorn Press, 2024). She has twice won the North Carolina Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction and silver medals from the Independent Press Awards in both literary fiction and nonfiction. Her third novel, Across the Great Lake, won the Phillip H. McMath Book Award and was named a 2019 Notable Michigan Book by the Library of Michigan. She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. Her essays have been cited as notable numerous times by the annual Best American Essays, which reprinted her essay “Buzzards” in the 2008 edition.

By Barbara Westwood Diehl

Wanda likes to think of herself as a citizen on patrol. From her bedroom window, she watches one of the McGuire kids. A tiny girl in a Dora the Explorer t-shirt, flower barrettes clipped all over her head, poking around the trash cans in the Lemmon Street alley. Looking for who knows what. A tough little thing, this McGuire. Like a blue chicory flower in the concrete. Pops out of nowhere.

Wanda raises the Venetian blinds, opens the window, and props it up with a volume of Britannica so it won’t come crashing down. Through her binoculars, she watches the child wander up and down the alley, tugging the plastic handle of a pull-toy behind her, one of those toys with popping balls, like the Pop-O-Matic board game Wanda played with her kids when they were little. Trouble, that was the name of it. 

Every few feet, the pull-toy hits a bump in the concrete and falls on its side. The little girl pops it right back up again. Keeps those balls popping. Like yellow ragwort, purple thistle, up from the cracks. 

Wanda swings her binoculars up and down the alley. Not one adult in sight. Neglect is what it is. Criminal. But she remembers what Jo Dean always says. She owns half the little box houses on the alley, so she should know. What Jo Dean says about their lives—you may have the best of intentions, but people don’t take kindly to being fixed. A citizen on patrol doesn’t fix people. But the Pop-O-Matic pull-toy pops something loose in Wanda. Trouble. That game of pressing a plastic bubble and moving the pieces around the board toward home. Home. She wants the girl to go home. 

She hears the crunch of tires rounding the corner from Carey Street onto Lemmon. It’s a convertible, a big one, yellow hood the length of a house, with music pulsing so loudly the driver couldn’t possibly hear the Pop-O-Matic or see a chicory-sized kid in the sun glare of metal cans.

Wanda sticks her head out through the Britannica-propped window and screams, “Stop. You’ll hit the baby.” But the driver doesn’t stop. 

She pushes away from the chair, binoculars swinging from the strap around her neck, and      runs down the carpeted stairs. Her hand glides along the polished rail and she rounds the landing—pushing away the image of a tiny body against a car grill—to the stairs to the first floor to the foyer and on through the house. She bursts through the kitchen door and runs along the brick walk and out through the gate onto Lemmon Street.

The car has stopped. The music is still pulsing loudly enough to rattle the aluminum trash can lids, and Wanda feels her heart pressing in on her. About to pop. The driver is slouched sideways in his seat with an arm slung over his door. A McGuire. Although Wanda is only a hood’s length from them, he doesn’t seem to see her.

Where is the child? That child with barrettes in her dandelion hair? Wanda’s eyes sweep the front of the car and the alley. No child. With her heart still fighting the music, she bends down and looks under the car. Not there. 

Then she hears it. The Pop-O-Matic popping. The toy emerges from behind a mattress leaning against a house, popping blue, red, and yellow balls. Then the child herself.

Wanda exhales. Her heart still isn’t right, and her vision is a cloud of blue, red, and yellow. The binoculars strap around her neck is choking her. She lifts them up and over her head, and they fall from her hand onto the hood of the car, where they leave a dent like closed eyes.

The man in the convertible rises above the windshield and the damage and all her good intentions and raises a hand toward Wanda. Flash of metal in his fingers. Pop. Now she has his attention. Pop.

*   *   *

Barbara Westwood Diehl is senior editor of The Baltimore Review. Her fiction and poetry appear in a variety of journals, including Fractured Lit, South Florida Poetry Journal, Poetry South, Painted Bride Quarterly, Five South, Allium, Split Rock Review, Blink-Ink, Midway, Free State Review, Ghost Parachute, Pithead Chapel, and New World Writing Quarterly.