By Freya Ye

Speeding through the streets until your soles burned, you tightened a grip on the suitcase clattering behind you with your whole life on its rollers. One wheel hadn’t been quite right since knocking against a curb several blocks back, and your heart lurched at each ill-timed pop and scrape. It would make sense to turn back now. The place you left barely qualified as a shoe closet, but it had someone to share the bed with each night, to need and be needed by, to plead and prove yourself to—which was almost like love.

Past midnight, lights painted the streets in acrylic strokes, dashing the city with cold blues and acid yellows. Frost stippled windshields and wire fences. Tomorrow—today—should be the first day of spring, but for now each step crunched on salt and snow. Each breath rose in hot white curls. Tears singed your eyes as you ducked under the bus shelter and pried uselessly at the push timer, begging the heater to work, but the infrared slabs hung stoic overhead. Now it would really make sense to turn back. Somehow, every step you had taken in life had led you further away from yourself, with every attempt to find the way back flinging you even further still. If you weren’t frozen solid by the time the bus came, you would leave the city you knew, trading the grief of holding on for the grief of letting go.

And then?

Slumping under the overhang, you squinted ahead where urban grids blurred into smog-smeared periphery. Come morning, you could wake up who-knows-where doing god-knows-what with devils you didn’t know, going spectacularly right or wrong in ways you could never imagine for which there would be no one to blame but you.

Behind, fire escapes cross-hatched facades of steel and stone in the direction you had come. Faces you might know flitted down dim crosswalks and passed under the bleeding eyes of traffic lights: people you had tried to be enough for, ghosts you had given so much to bring back to life that you had become one yourself. Come morning, you could wake up in bed next to someone who was almost like love, stringing the same thoughts into the same stories that made love out of almost-love and meaning out of sunk time. Soon, everything meant something meant something else meant nothing, and you would find yourself comparing bus tickets online at some absurd, sleepless hour like now, weighing the devil you knew against the devil you didn’t.

Amber eyes turned the corner, punching tunnels through the smog. You screwed your eyes against the glare as the bus belched and moaned around the block, hearing the gravelly crunch of tires as it lolled against the curb with a sigh. When you opened them again, the faces you might know were gone, swallowed by the molten haze of headlights.

Some things weren’t worth waiting for. Some minds did not mean to change. Enough was enough was enough was enough.

One foot first. Then the next. Doors hissed. Coins clattered. A few other wacky wayfarers dotted the aisles of the coach, and you stomped off snow before joining the club. Inside, hot air plugged your ears like wool as you sunk into a seat near heat vents and sprawled gratefully across the grilles until you all but cooked. Your whole life on rollers bumped against your knee as the bus pulled out, and things stopped needing to mean other things.

Moments were moments. Ghosts were ghosts. Almost-love was almost love.

The lines and nodes that cinched all things loosened and dissolved. Time became moments and thoughts etched no stories. The liquid gleam of streetlights sped and slurred outside the window as the vehicle eased into a steady swing. Cheek tilting into glass, your head felt unnaturally heavy as your eyes began to droop. This moment had rehearsed itself in your head more times than you could count, but in no iteration had you ever nodded off first before it occurred to you to look back.

Come morning, you would wake.

*   *   *

Freya is a scientist-in-training who can’t stay away from writing. She needs to know why people do the weird things that they do, and science doesn’t always know either. Catch her on IG @your.no1.fannn

By Yash Seyedbagheri               

I wipe down the mahogany table. The cloth squeaks and shrieks. There are still too many little scratches and blemishes. Too much history. A series of zigzagging lines.

My sister, Nan, puts a hand on my shoulder.

“It looks nice, Nicky. But why don’t you take a break? You’ve been cleaning for an hour straight.”

My other sister, Colette, nods.

“You can’t get all the blemishes out, darling.”

I grunt and keep wiping. I have to make this table resplendent. Mom promised she’d join us this year. I know that sounds crazy, and I should grow up, since I’m twenty-six, but still. I think of her crooked grin, the way she doesn’t just walk, but saunters with attitude, making a space all her own. I’m more of a waddler.

Colette’s phone rings. I push the cloth harder and harder. The scratches stare up at me.

“What?” she says. “Again? Really, Mom?”

Words rise, a miasma of incoherence. A buzz.

“Nick’s cleaned things up for you. Did you know that? He’s killing himself for you here. I told him not to bother, but he’s still at it. You should be here for him.”

More words. I think I make out a “sorry.” I can’t tell.

“Why spend it with someone else, Mom? What the hell?”

She hangs up. Slams the phone down on the table, and sighs.

“I’m sorry, Nicky.”

“Why the fuck aren’t I good enough? Why aren’t we good enough for her?”

They both pull me into a hug; I love my sisters, but I miss Mom’s energy, her dirty jokes (especially the one about Hitler working at Costco). I miss her promises; they’re something to cradle, at least. 

But at least I feel my sisters’ arms, strong, never wavering, the scents of soap and perfume and Camels and family.

When they let go, I look at where Colette’s slammed the phone down. Another scratch.

*   *   *

Yash Seyedbagheri (he/him) is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His fiction has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes. Yash’s work has been published in Flow Magazine, Prosetrics The Literary Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.

By Karen Zlotnick

My mother’s ghost appeared to me three whole years before my mother left. 

Sitting over a cup of tea, I told my mother about the visit. I wasn’t too shaken, but I was a little concerned it meant something ominous. I was nine, still putting a drop of milk and a cube of sugar in my tea and stirring it with a tiny spoon, the way my mother taught me.

My mother smiled, what was left of her red lipstick bright across the lower half of her face. She asked me if she looked good in ghost form and glanced at her frosted nails. It was obvious she didn’t believe me, so I kept the rest of the visits to myself.

*

My mother’s ghost visited often. 

Sometimes she’d appear in my mid-awake state, just before I’d use the back of my hand to prevent my drool from wetting the pillow. I’d feel her arms wrapped around my shoulders. She never spoke, but one time she lay down facing me and put her breezy hands on my cheeks and looked into my eyes in a knowing way. Other times she’d catch me off guard, when I was coloring or Barbie-ing or trying on my mother’s spike-heeled pumps. She came to me silent and warm. 

My mother asked me why I stopped wearing my cardigans. I said I outgrew the look, but the truth is I was always warm.

*

My mother had patience for me and listened to my relentless storytelling and detailed ramblings about my latest drawings. She took me to the art supply store and indulged me with markers, colored pencils, crayons, and professional-grade sketchbooks. She pretend-introduced me to imaginary museum-goers as The Artist in Residence.

My mother’s ghost often stood over me while I drew, nodding and caressing the back of my hair. It wasn’t distracting at all. 

One time, over a cup of tea, my mother commented that my hair was particularly silky. If you only knew, I thought. Then she told me the marker stains on my fingertips made it look like I’d touched a rainbow.

*

One night, my mother’s ghost made a rainbow appear in my bedroom, only one end of it slithered behind the ceiling fan instead of landing on the floor. With a long, billowy finger, my mother’s ghost pointed to it and smiled so big that her lips touched my closet door. It was the first time I ever spoke out loud to her. 

I said, “I love it.” 

I couldn’t have imagined it, but her smile got even bigger.

*

My mother’s fading was slow at first. She complained of back pain, took pills to relax her muscles, and slept a lot. I visited her in her bed, bringing her new drawings, new stories.

One day, my mother’s ghost stood with me in our bathroom after my mother accidentally left out a bottle with this on the label: Use as needed. We stared at the bottle together.

That night, my mother’s ghost lay down next to me under my covers. She warmed my feet with hers, and before she had to leave, she grabbed socks from my drawer and slipped them over my toes. I wore those socks to school the next day; I didn’t even mind that they were a little stretched out from sleeping and dreaming in them. 

*

My mother made a joke about how thin she’d gotten, how her jeans might fall right to her feet if she didn’t wear a belt. Eleven years old, a fashionista with an artist’s sensibility, I convinced her to let me help her shop for new jeans, but right after she parked the car under the sign for The Cheesecake Factory, she panicked and thrust the car into reverse. My mother didn’t know it, but her ghost’s hands were on the steering wheel along with hers. I fell asleep with my head on the window.

We didn’t talk about it—the panic, the drive home. Instead, I sat on the edge of her bed and told her my newest story in which a young child had to walk a tightrope over a lake. In the lake was a school of child-eating fish, and on the shore was the warm embrace of two of the child’s favorite teachers. Also, the lake was purple. 

When I showed her the drawing for my story, my mother’s bottom lip quivered. I didn’t know how to respond, but my mother’s ghost helped my mother to close her eyes and rest. I slid the drawing out of my mother’s hand, went to my bedroom, and used a black marker to blot out any fish that could eat a child.

*

My mother’s body didn’t give out until I turned thirty, but she’d faded from me by the time I was twelve.

Often with her ghost by my side, I visited my mother in the facility where they kept her clean and calm. I liked that she seemed peaceful, even when I was old enough to understand that “as needed” had become her way of life.

My aunts—Dora and Dolly—stepped in where my mother had left off. Dora, a food chemist, taught me to resist sugar, to drink my tea black, to have one bite of a cookie instead of the whole thing. And Dolly, a successful textbook illustrator, read every single story I wrote, poured over each sketch with loving, instructional eyes.

*

Right before my mother completed her suicide, my mother’s ghost guided my hand in a drawing that would become central in my third children’s book. 

A child walks over a colossal bridge which is in danger of collapse. In the sky, ghostly clouds hover. In the water below, fish form an expansive net in case the child falls. On the other side, two women stand ready.

*   *   *

Born and raised in New York, Karen Zlotnick lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and their Newfoundland dog. 

Some of her work has been featured in Pithead Chapel, Typishly, jmww, Stonecoast Review, and Moon City Review. In addition, one of her stories was nominated for Best Small Fictions.

 

By Maria Warner

“DO NOT ENTER”-bold black letters flare against neon-yellow ribbon stretched across my front steps.
 The immediate area is cordoned off with caution tape. Neighbors and delivery drivers are being turned away for everyone’s safety.

We’ve been instructed not to make any sudden movements.

My husband, Mike, and I shelter in place. We stay away from the windows. Mike sits in a recliner reading his book, The Northern Spy. I fidget on the floor, trying to relax, failing at my yoga-corpse pose. Deciding to take matters into my own hands, I slither down the hallway from the kitchen to the laundry room, army crawling along the floor. I pull a black shirt and maroon pants from the dryer. A ski mask, forgotten since our last mountain trip, lies on a shelf. I slide it over my head.

Leaning against the wall, I try to devise a plan. Think. Think. Think. I tap my forehead with my palm.

Ah-ha. I stuff four washcloths into my pants and stick the roll of tape in my mouth. Inching my way back to the family room, my progress stopped when Mike stuck his foot out.  

“What are you doing?” he asks as he flips a page in his novel. 

“Silencers,” I say, waving the washcloths. 

He rolls his eyes and returns to reading. 

MacGyvering a chair, I wrap a washcloth on each leg securing it with the duct tape.  I slide it back and forth a few times to ensure it’s soundless.

“Psst,” Mike whispers. I turn to see his eyebrows raised in disapproval.

“I want a closer look,” I say. “I need to know what we’re dealing with.”

“Don’t cause a disturbance,” he says. “We don’t want to irritate the professionals.”

I waved him off. An inch at a time, I rise from my crouch until my eyes meet the glass pane of the front door. I scanned the yard for the two people who wrapped our deck in caution tape.

They are nearly invisible in their khakis, camouflaged among the evergreens. A flicker of light. Their binocular lenses trained-on me.

“Oh,” I gasp.

They point with authority, motioning for me to look down.

There, tucked deep inside our evergreen wreath, rests a cradle of twigs and down. Four junco chicks-fuzzy, fragile, their throats pulsing with hunger-stretch their beaks toward the sky, pleading for a miracle that will come in the form of their mother’s wings.

I stop breathing.

All the noise, the caution tape, the silent commands fall away. What remains is something ancient and holy: new life, small and trembling, asking to be fed.

My bird-loving neighbors hadn’t sealed us in to keep danger out. They had created a sanctuary-so these tiny, sacred hearts could keep beating, undisturbed, into the world.

                                                                   *   *   *

Maria Warner is a memoirist and flash fiction writer whose work explores transformation, resilience, and the unexpected turning points that reshape a life. A former corporate professional turned artist and storyteller, she draws inspiration from family memory, sobriety, and the natural world to uncover moments of quiet revelation. She is the author of Family Camp: S’more Than a Vacation and her work has appeared in Isele Magazine and other publications. When she’s not writing, Maria is a pastel painter, hiker, and lifelong learner based in Arizona.

By Kip Knott

I write to remember. At my age, every tick of my watch could be forgotten in the brief silence between it and the next tick. So here is what I did today: I awoke to the sound of my alarm, which imitates church bells like the one that rang when I first took Holy Communion in ‘42. The wafer is stuck to the roof of my mouth. What do I do?  I can’t reach in and scrape it off. Daddy’s gonna whip me good. What do I do?  

  I write to remember. Everything is fading. Here is what I did today: I woke up this morning and took a shower. I had oatmeal for breakfast. The kitchen here makes the best oatmeal I’ve ever tasted. It’s almost the way my sweet Jenny used to make it. I think they add cinnamon, though, which I love. Jenny, honey, can you add some cinnamon to my oatmeal tomorrow?

I write to remember. Here is what I did today: I awoke to the sound of my alarm, which rings like church bells. I took a long shower to loosen my aching back. Damn, I forgot my towel.  Jenny, honey… Jenny… I forgot my towel again. Can you bring me a towel?  

I write to remember. Jenny? Jenny? What did I do today?

*   *   *

Kip Knott is a writer, photographer, and part-time art dealer living in Delaware, Ohio. His writing has appeared in Bending Genres, Best Microfiction Anthology, Bright Flash Literary Review, The Greensboro Review, HAD, Mid-American Review, The Sun, and Virginia Quarterly Review. His most recent book of stories, Family Haunts, is available from Louisiana Literature Press.

A Memoir by Kate Levin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                                                  *   *   *

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

By Mikki Aronoff

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

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

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

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

Judy gasps, then sighs a long, soft breath.

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

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

*    *    *

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

By Judy Slitt

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

I was the only one there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The whole way?”

“The whole way.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*   *   *

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

By Calla Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                                                `*   *   *

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

By Greg Metcalf

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

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

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

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

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

“Kathy.”

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

“He seemed interesting.”

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

“One who frequents libraries?” Kathy said. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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