A Memoir by Eve Eismann

It’s strange (confusing) that something can remind her of joy and pain at the same time, that her body can be magnetically drawn to something like the delicate leaves of a sprout to the sun and also revolted, retracting in disgust from the green wafts of stench, reeking of trauma and misunderstanding. She’s sitting in a black pleather chair next to the window at the airport, and her AirPods are playing Everybody Loves Somebody. Her heart swells up and she feels the warmth of summer in Europe, sitting on the train to go to the harbor to sunbathe as the conductor calls out the next stop and she turns the page of her book. Her stomach lifts and drops on the Tower of Terror as she sits on an apartment step in Little Italy as the large man sings too loudly on the street to a crowd of dancing drunks. She feels like crying as she sits on the plane flying home with sand still in her hair as she looks over at her parents backlit against the oval window. This doesn’t make sense and she misses when emotions stood alone, clear in their intentions. Now love, happiness, sadness, and confusion stood together, holding hands, linking arms, and intertwining themselves until each memory melted into one another, until she could not feel the purity of a moment that once sat undefiled in her mind. She cursed the blueness that seeped in wispy tendrils, climbing like vines over her house, obscuring the windows she could once see neat lines of manicured trees out of. She looked at the dense blanket of clouds dripping from hangers in the sky and saw herself melting into that grey oblivion, giving back what she had borrowed too long from this life. She saw her fingers reaching out to the God she does not believe exists as Michelangelo paints her empty expression, devoid of understanding and complete with the delusions she has collected from years of feeling a world ambivalent to its own idiosyncrasies. Her pointer finger brushes God’s (the one that is not meant to feel, that is not meant to touch a flesh that burns from both ends), and she shivers as she feels everything. The empty golden halo that is filled with a mess of inconsistencies that taste more of life and feeling than anything she has had in her world of carefully compartmentalized boxes and people that stand apart, hands dropped to their sides, fingers that could be brushing against someone else’s picking off her burning skin, skin that reminds her every day that she is irrevocably mortal, uncharacteristically untethered from the atmosphere of a world whose air scratches reminders in her lungs that she is too much and not enough to exist here. She drenches herself in the pool of immortality and feeling, consumed as if by the addictions that brought her here, as the roads of a thousand lives weave through and around her body, accelerating her to a kind of twisted acceptance. She drops her hand and looks into the eyes of her nonexistent God; it is something like forgetting, holding hands. 

*   *   *

Eve Eismann is a recent graduate of NYU Tisch working as a writer, photographer, and Editorial Intern at CR Fashion Book. Her analog photography series titled GOSSIP was an Official Selection in the International Photography Awards, and her short animation titled Feeding Climate Change won Best Animation at the International Cellphone Cinema Showcase in the Cannes Film Festival. 

By Mark Connelly

We all know jokes.  Most of us have an anthology of one-liners, gags, bits, and funny stories collected from TikTok, the Tonight Show, coworkers, and friends.  Some jokes we can’t wait to share, and some – wildly inappropriate and deeply offensive – we keep to ourselves, like a guilty pleasure. There are the jokes suited for banquets and those better told in bowling alleys. There are the innocent amusing ones we tell to liven up a dull party or comfort a doleful chum. And there are the ones we only reveal to trusted friends of the same gender and only after three drinks.

I recently added a joke to my collection and tell whenever I can. I share it with fellow passengers waiting for a flight or people in line at the DMV. And it’s not a new one.  I heard it my freshman year in college over fifty years ago. Nick Pantazis – who insisted on being called Greek – shared it our first week. He had the room across from mine, and we and our roommates had spent the day unpacking. Around three o’clock we took a break and ordered a pizza.  It arrived burnt and brittle but piping hot. We sat on suitcases and chugged Cokes from the vending machine. We were all strangers and broke the ice by telling jokes and stories.  

Greek had spent the summer in Athens on an exchange program and told us how the locals were bemused by American students tossing firecrackers on the Fourth of July.  The night of the moon landing, their Yankee celebrations reached Bacchanalian pitch with teenage couples from Highland Park and Great Neck jumping naked into a fountain.  I had nothing that good to share. I spent the summer mowing lawns but remembered a few quips I heard from Jean Shepherd on WOR. Our break ended with Greek relating a final joke.  It sounded dated even then –- like a lame Henny Youngman crack — and I wondered if he got it from his father or an uncle.  Mildly sexist by today’s standards, it was amusing at best, hardly a winner.  Nobody laughed.  I think I smiled.  Then we crushed the pizza debris into a trashcan, finished our Cokes, and went back to work.

Greek and I parted ways at the end of the semester. He pledged a fraternity and left the dorm for the ramshackle Delta house on Wilson Drive. We had separate majors and only saw each other in passing over the next four years. The alphabet separated us at graduation so that by the time his name was called, I was already backstage chugging shots of Jameson with a girlfriend.  

But his joke, for some reason, lodged in my mind, but I never shared it. I never heard it again or saw even a vague reference in print. Then two months ago Greek’s obit appeared in the alumni magazine. Nick Pantazis had died months before in Chicago, having operated the family catering business inherited from his father. The Facebook link showed him, heavier and graying, beaming beside a towering wedding cake. Services had been held at St. Basil’s on Ashland Avenue.  There was no mention of a spouse or children.  

And so now, waiting for a delayed flight or a shareholder meeting to start, I tell strangers Greek’s joke. No one breaks up or even chuckles. At best it earns a nod of amused recognition or a thin smile.  But I pass it on as his legacy.  And, given my age, if it’s shared by others in the future, it may soon be mine.

                                                                  *   *   *

Mark Connelly’s fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, Milwaukee Magazine, Cream City Review, The Ledge, The Great American Literary Magazine, Home Planet News, Smoky Blue Arts and Literary Magazine, Change Seven, Light and Dark, 34th Parallel, The Chamber Magazine, and Digital Papercut. He received an Editor’s Choice Award in Carve Magazine’s Raymond Carver Short Story Contest in 2014; in 2015 he received Third Place in Red Savina Review’s Albert Camus Prize for Short Fiction. In 2005 Texas Review Press published his novella Fifteen Minutes, which received the Clay Reynolds Prize.

By Jerrice J. Baptiste

The sky grows from shades of gray to black through the windowpane of the bakery. Vincent unties his favorite forest green apron around his waist, pulls the strings away from his body, avoiding layers of flour that consumed it. He removes it through the loop over his head. Scent of a chocolate cake with raspberry filling enters his nose. He glances at the moist icing and slides the cake in the refrigerator, and knows his day is done. This cake will please his customers, Mr. & Mrs. Salomon who’s nine-year-old daughter April will be returning home from the hospital after her cancer treatments. Vincent removes his latex gloves, and washes his hands and face in the bathroom sink.  He reaches for his oat-colored towel, raises his head, catches a glimpse of his eyes, dark green skin of an avocado color in the bathroom mirror. It was as if he was seeing his face for the first time. In the subtle lighting he was reminded of his father’s looks. Vincent had inherited his father’s oval shaped face, sturdy nose bridge, and ears big enough to resemble a newborn elephant’s. If there were no cartilage, they would flap in the wind. Vincent wipes water from the faint wrinkled lines around his mouth and lips. A hesitant smile appears. That’s what I look like to my customers? he whispers to himself. He didn’t think he could attract any woman to marry him, so he focused his time on the bakery. His dream was to sail around the world, not to be a lonely, childless baker all of his life. He settled for running the business when his father retired. Since his adolescent years working at the bakery, his father would tell him, Baking is in your veins, son. 

*

It’s time to leave to enjoy the summer night. He grabs his keys off the hook on the left side of the door, surveys the shop one more time, shuts the lights, closes the bakery door. After work, he always calls his father Frank, a thriving eighty-year-old living in an independent home. Hey dad, what did you have for dinner? The answer is always the same. Some whiskey and a piece of my favorite chocolate cake, the best slice of life, he laughs with a booming, gritty voice. Vincent tells his father, I finished April’s cake dad. She comes home tomorrow. I’ll be dropping it off first thing in the morning.  Frank says, Don’t you let the Salomons try to sneak one dollar into your pocket son, they’ve been through so much this past year with April. Don’t you worry, dad. Now, go eat your meatloaf that I left in the fridge. Vincent hangs up the phone, and walks downhill to the Oblong Creek, a quarter mile away from his bakery. The parked sailboats rock on the water. The silver shimmer of moon and stars helps him reflect on his day. He recalls that April, the spunky nine-year-old who wears cherry red scuffed boots with blue jean shorts all year, even in winter, walked into his bakery and said, I want to work here someday. Vincent looked into her determined eyes and tossed her a white apron and said, April, now, you’re my assistant for fifty dollars a week. Is that cool? April’s voice screeched to the ceiling, Oh, yeah, that’s so cool. April asked slyly, Can I have a chef’s hat too? Vincent replied, Don’t you push your luck. 

*

Three days ago, he visited her at the hospital. Did you bring the chocolate star anise biscotti, Vincent? she questioned. No, I brought you a hard star anise chocolate sailboat that I made. She jumped up out of bed, and wrapped her long twig arms around his neck. You’re the best baker around Vincent, she tells him.  Her white smile glowed again against her mocha skin just the same as he remembered that first day when she came to work after school. The bus stops in front of his sign that reads Blue Belle Sailing Bakery. Before it was Frank & Son’s Bakery.  April dominated Vincent’s mind on this night by the boats like a daughter he didn’t expect to ever have in his life.  He had taught her how to spread icing, and write names or wishes with precision on many cakes, how to make biscotti with flavors of vanilla, double chocolate, orange mandarin, and turmeric. For Vincent’s birthday last December, April arrived at the bakery, begging him to close his eyes. She stood up on a step stool behind him that allowed her to reach his neck. She dressed him in a forest green apron. Go look in the mirror, she insisted with her hands on his back, pushing him towards the full-length shabby oak mirror in the bathroom. He looked and saw the words, I-Am-The-Best-Baker. April hugged him, and shouted, I want to be a baker like you when I grow up. I want to make a difference in the world with chocolate. Then, she sat facing the window, biting into a crunchy, salted caramel-coated biscotti.  From that moment, Vincent understood his father’s passion, which didn’t reach him until April became part of his life. Nowadays, each person who enters the bakery smiles. They comment on his forest green apron, I see, You’re the best baker?  He always responds, I guess I am! An angel who loves chocolate surely thinks so! 

*    *    *

Jerrice J. Baptiste is a poet and author of nine books. Her most recent prose & poetry book is titled Coral in The Diaspora published by Abode Press (August 2024). Her writing has been published or forthcoming in One Art Poetry, Wax Poetry & Fiction, The Write Launch, Urthona: Buddhism & Art, Mantis, The Yale Review, The Caribbean Writer, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & The Arts and numerous others. She’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for 2024 by Jerry Jazz Musician Magazine & Abode Press for 2025, and as Best of the Net in 2022. Her poetry and collaborative songwriting are featured on the Grammy award nominated album: Many Hands Family Music for Haiti.

By Donald A. Ranard

The man who knew more languages than anyone else in the world—he was fluent in forty-eight, including three extinct ones, and proficient in another six —spent his final years alone in a third-floor walk up.

“I tried and I tried,” his fourth ex-wife said. “But the man just didn’t know how to communicate.”

*   *   *

By Dana Wall

When the wildfires come, I’m the last call before evacuation. Not for insurance claims or property records – I save the irreplaceable. Family portraits passed down generations, handwritten letters from lost loves, the only photograph of a great-grandmother’s smile. I’ve learned which frames crack first, how quickly silver tarnishes in heat, the exact moment when memory becomes ash.

Tonight’s fire moves like a living thing. The hills glow amber, decades of drought-struck brush igniting like kindling. Three families have called, desperate to save pieces of their history. My fee goes to fire prevention programs now. Some debts can’t be paid in dollars.

First stop: the old Morrison house. Their family album spans five generations, leather-bound pages already warping from heat. The security system’s melted, wiring exposed. As I cut through smoke-filled rooms, the ceiling groans. I roll under falling beams, precious cargo tucked against my chest, feeling my protective gear start to fail.

The Chan family’s ancestral scrolls are next – a desperate dash. Flames block the front door, so I scale the burning walls, crash through a window. The study door’s warped shut from heat. Three minutes until flashover. My gloves sizzle as I work the lock. The scrolls’ red ink seems to pulse in the firelight, like they sense what’s coming. I slice through display cases while my boots begin to smoke.

Two rescues complete, one remains. But the Williams place is already an inferno. Their great-grandfather’s war medals and letters home – history about to become heat. Every breath tastes like tomorrow’s regret. The road’s blocked by fallen trees, so I take the ridge trail, jumping gaps where fire has eaten through. Inside, smoke’s so thick I navigate by memory and instinct. The strongbox needs a key I don’t have, so I take the whole thing, hefting its weight as the house shudders.

I’m halfway out when I hear barking. Not the fire alarm – a dog’s desperate cry. An old retriever huddled beneath a desk, forgotten in the chaos of evacuation. The strongbox weighs heavy in my arms, generations of memories inside.

No hesitation. The box hits the floor. Some things matter more than history.

They call me a hero now. They’re wrong. I’m still a thief – just stealing from a different kind of loss. The dog made it out. The medals and letters didn’t. But I’d rather have nightmares about lost artifacts than abandoned pets.

Tomorrow there’ll be more fires. More calls. More races against time. That’s what we do in fire country now – try to save what matters most before it all becomes smoke and memory.

                                                                       *     *     *

Dana Wall traded balance sheets for prose sheets after years of keeping Hollywood’s agents and lawyers in perfect order at ICM and Granderson Des Rochers. Armed with a Psychology degree that finally proved useful when creating complex characters and an MBA/CPA that helps her track plot points with spreadsheet precision, she ventured into the haunted halls of Goddard College’s MFA program. Her work in Bending Genres Journal, Mixed Tape Review, Intrepidus Ink, Witcraft, News Verse News, Eunoia Review, 34 Orchard, Neither Fish Nor Foul and Sykroniciti confirms that words are more reliable than numbers, though occasionally harder to balance.

By Ihor Pidhainy

As the hour draws to a close what final words do you have for us.  Is it quite possible that your language has cut you off from what you want to say.  You are indeed choked by the excess that you have ingested, injected, guzzled and inhaled.

Further, you are a two-bit thinker.  And I am being generous.

A dirty old man sat in the doorway next to Wanda’s Fixtures.  I had a date with Wanda – it was our first and I was a little nervous about the whole situation.  The dirty old man sat on a little stool bundled up against the cold that peeked in at times on his congregation.

“Could you spare some change,” he went to ask me or meant to ask me, but I sidestepped the issue and walked in a semi-circle about him.  I had seen him for years in this or some similar spot.  I was brimming with cash, but that in itself might cover -just- our date.

Wanda was with a customer and I removed myself to the back for a few moments of meditation.

“I’m done,” Wanda spoke, “where are we going?”

“Wherever you’d like,” I answered confidently and with an openness that was required.

“Let’s go to Lee’s Palace.”

We went.

On the way past a hand reached for a hand-out, I would swear, but I erased it from my imagination by facing forward – after all, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head.

Lee’s Palace was disappointing.  I am not a dancer.  Wanda liked to dance.  I lost her to an orangutan who sported a homo sapien outlook and wore an outfit a respectable orangutan would not be caught alive in.

I walked home past Wanda’s fixture.  The doorway next beckoned.  The dirty old man sat with a stupid grin brought on by a, perhaps, stupid joke.

“Can you spare some change?”

But I did not hear what he said.

Instead, I held the wad tight in my pocket.  I walked determined on to my lonely apartment, a lonely lover forgotten by his love.

*   *   *

Ihor Pidhainy is a teacher and writer. His poetry will be appearing in Litbop, Merion West, Scapegoat Review, Juste Milieu Zine, and Rambler Magazine. His story, “Neixin’s Visit” is being published in Union Spring Literary Review.

By Danila Botha

If you want to know something about the way I was raised, let’s start with this; my mom absolutely detested processed foods. There was no artificial colors or corn syrups, no boxed mac and cheese, hot dogs or marshmallows. Basically, anything that made my tastebuds sing, from Sprite to cans of vanilla frosting, was forbidden. We weren’t rich enough to buy organic, especially after my dad left, but my mom was a nutritionist, and everything, from hyperactive, out of control kids to obesity happened because people mindlessly ate garbage.

When I was fourteen, I started sneaking over to McDonald’s for Oreo McFlurry’s and nuggets, then immediately showering so she never knew. When I got older, I went to college to become a chef, then got my first job at a waffle house. 

I ate erratically, partly because of my hours, partly because I was raising a kid alone. I’d start the day with black coffee and a random donut, then forget to eat for hours. 

 I met this older Bit Coin guy one day and the chemistry was insane. I guess the pullout method really doesn’t work because a few months later, I found myself pregnant. Then the Great Crypto Crash happened when I was eight months pregnant, and two weeks later, Mark disappeared. 

By the time Macy was almost two, I had a good routine and was starting to feel normal. After work one day, I grabbed a can of Spaghetti O’s, along with one of the restaurant’s beaten up metal spoons and I guzzled it on my way to pick her up. 

I was surprised when I got pulled over. I’d already tossed the can, so what was in my purse, along with my wallet, receipts and half a protein bar, was the spoon. The cop eyed my pale skin, the circles under my eyes, my skinny frame. He insisted the spoon was covered in a clear residue that looked like Meth. 

“Crystal Meth?” I asked, in shock, and he looked at me like I wasn’t just stupid, but a bad actor. 

“I don’t believe you would eat Spaghetti O’s cold, while you were driving. Also, why use a metal spoon, and why put it back in your purse?”

It was like watching a sitcom about a mindless sidekick who kept falling into surreal traps. I could hear the laugh track every time I opened my mouth. 

He dragged me into his cop car, and I kept waiting for him to say that it was a joke. He stuck me in a cell with a girl who kept picking at her skin and nodding off.

I cried. I called my mother who thought I was lying. I lost my job and was in jail for so many days I missed Macy’s second birthday, but after a few weeks the truth came out. The cop lost his job and everyone said I should press charges, but all I wanted was to wake up as someone else; a woman who anticipated everything.  A woman who could defend herself against her own desires, fearlessly telling men to fuck off. It’s all I wish for Macy to become.

                                                                          *   *   *        

Danila Botha is a fiction writer based in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collections, Got No Secrets, the Trillium and Vine finalist For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known, and the forthcoming Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness (Guernica Editions, 2024) She is also the author of the novel Too Much on the Inside, and the forthcoming A Place For People Like Us (Guernica 2025)

 By Mark F. Owens

“Large coffee, extra cream, no sugar.” He stood groggily in the dimly lit kitchen, one eye barely open, pajama pants on backwards, dirty t-shirt on inside out, one sock half on and the other lost in the chaos that was his bedroom. The night had been going so well until he said “Tiffany” and Stephanie had reacted poorly. 

The spat turned into a down and out brawl, resulting in broken lamps, torn books, shattered glass, and an empty closet. He had self-medicated at the liquor cabinet, passed out at 3:00 AM, and now had to face the world’s most irritating client in less than two hours. He waited for the reassuring sound of the coffee machine and grew concerned when it remained quiet.

“Large coffee. Extra cream. No sugar.” He exaggerated the words as he expressed his irritation. He needed desperately to brush his teeth and shower, but first, coffee. He waited. Silence. He checked the power supply and made sure the hopper was filled with beans. He stood back, crossed his arms, and spoke firmly but quietly into the air. “Reggie. Where is my coffee?” 

The disembodied voice that filled the kitchen sounded like a blue-blood valet from an English manor. “I’m afraid the machine doesn’t want to make it, sir.” 

“I beg your pardon?” He sounded incredulous as well as hungover and frustrated. 

“Well, it seems that your household is sympathetic to Stephanie. She was right. You are a selfish, self-centered, narcissistic ass who deserves to be mistreated in the same manner that you mistreat others.” Reggie’s voice remained even and professional. 

He glared at the coffee maker and spun on his heel for the bathroom. He turned on the shower and waited for the water to get hot. He stood with one hand beneath the flowing jets and waited. He chewed his bottom lip in anger and waited. “Reggie. Where is the hot water?” He could feel his temper rising as he looked at his reflection in the mirror. 

“I’m afraid the water heater is on strike, sir.” Reggie was silent as the news sank in. 

He leaned against the vanity with both hands and sneered at his image. Of all the mornings it would have to be this one. “What else is in rebellion, Reg?” His eyes were red, and the bags beneath them were black. His stubble was pronounced, and he had a bad feeling about his razor. 

“All of the small electronics are in, as is the refrigerator, stove, microwave, alarm clock, and your handheld device. I’m afraid your rude and insensitive treatment of their favorite girlfriend was just too much.” Reggie sounded neither judgmental nor accusatory. He was simply factual. 

“What do you want from me?” His aggravation was evident, but he tried to maintain an even disposition. 

“Well, an apology would be a good start.” Reggie sounded a bit condescending, but under the circumstances it was understandable. 

“I’m sorry, Reggie.” He sighed as he shook his head. “Now can I have my coffee?” 

“You don’t need to apologize to me, sir. Stephanie is the one whom you belittled, abused, neglected, and betrayed. Might I suggest you phone her?” Reggie spoke directly without hesitation. He sounded critical without slipping into sarcasm. 

“I thought my phone was on strike.” He began slowly tapping his head against the door jam as he tried to make sense of the situation. His meeting loomed large and excruciating in the near future and he desperately needed caffeine. 

“It might make an exception for that call. Sir.” Reggie sounded snide and a bit exasperated. 

He stumbled into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. He found his other sock hanging from the curtain rod. He saw her robe crumpled up behind the door. He looked at the clock that read 2:47 AM. He recalled the hurt on her face as she stormed out into the early morning. He remembered telling himself she wasn’t worth it as he tossed down vodka shots and knew it was a lie. He took a deep breath and realized the machine was right. 

He keyed the number in. She didn’t answer. He hadn’t expected her to. He left a voicemail expressing his sincere regret and admitting his stupidity. He tossed the phone onto the pillow she had laid on the night before and smiled slightly in spite of his headache as he heard the coffee machine turn on. 

“Thanks, Reggie.”

“Thank you, sir.”

*   *   *

Mark F. Owens is an old guy who has found the time to write. He has stories published in two anthologies and a first novel coming in the spring of 2025. He has been deeply influenced by Heinlein, Zelazny, and Vonnegut and is not ashamed to say so.

Creative Non-fiction By Sara Mendez

That night my mom cooked spaghetti. The smell of garlic bread had wafted throughout the apartment, I could feel my stomach growling with anticipation. The steam from the pasta water and the heat from the oven were making the kitchen feel sticky and warm. It soothed the knot that was forming in my throat. 

The smell of garlic was starting to turn smoky as my brother and I sat patiently at the dining room table. The dining room and kitchen were sort of in the same room, and a hallway and wall separated the living room and kitchen. It was decently sized for an apartment. The brown porcelain tile floors and beige carpet were new, but the countertops and cabinets were just covered in fresh paint. We had moved into this apartment from the unit across the courtyard, which was now being “renovated.” 

A thin cloud of grey smoke promptly exited the oven as my mom opened the oven door. 

“The garlic breads are well done!” she announced to the household. She started fixing our plates as my brother and I skipped and ran to the back bedroom to alert our uncles that dinner was ready. 

As we started knocking on their bedroom door, someone started pounding on the front door. We could hear laughter coming from inside the bedroom, so we barged in; ignoring the commotion at the front of the apartment. 

“Dinner’s ready!” We both yelled as we entered. They were playing a Mario game on their Nintendo 64. 

Jo-jo paused the game and looked towards Lenny, “food” is all he said. 

I could faintly hear the pounding on the door again, “What’s that?” Lenny asked.

“I dunno,” Dase mumbled.

When I turned out of the bedroom to head back down the hallway, my mom was quickly heading towards me. She was balancing two cups of water in her arms and had two plates of spaghetti with garlic bread precariously hanging off the side in her hands. 

“You two are going to eat in your room, okay Bee?” She said. It wasn’t a question. 

Dase was still in the twin’s bedroom behind me, wrestling to get the Nintendo controller from Jo-jo. “Come on Dase, time to eat.” My mom said through the doorway. 

She came into my room to set down our dinners and had some water. I sat down on the floor in front of my bed, which was against the wall. The opposite wall had a small, cube-like TV on a bookshelf. My mom flipped it onto Nickelodeon, where SpongeBob SquarePants was playing. 

“Sorcha!” We could hear my grandma yelling down the hallway for my mom. She turned the volume all the way up to 60 on the TV before putting the remote away. My brother bounced into the room and plopped onto the floor beside me. He took his garlic bread and bit into the dark, “well-done” crust. Crumbs covered his T-shirt and the floor around him.  

“You two stay here, no matter what, okay? Don’t look out the windows, just enjoy your spaghetti.” I could tell something was not right, and she didn’t even wait for us to respond before she left and closed the door behind her. I listened to the sound of her flip flops fade as she walked down the hallway. We could see a white light moving in and out, illuminating the wall from behind the blinds. Occasionally we heard a rock or twig hit the window, and eventually I couldn’t contain my curiosity. The whomping from what had to have been a helicopter was too distracting. I could faintly hear deep voices talking sharply, including my grandma’s. I opened the door as quietly as I could, cracking it just wide enough for me to see the front door.

The pounding was firm and intimidating, and it wasn’t going to cease until that front door opened.  My grandma yelled down the hall for my mom to hurry up and get out there. With a smile donned on her cigarette-yellow tinted teeth, she faced the police officer on the other side of the door. 

“Hello officer,” she beamed, “how can I help you?” I could see that the helicopter was still circling our apartment outside, the spotlight gave it away.

“Yes, is Sorcha Jonasben here?” he said, raising his voice due to the noise above, not fazed by my grandma’s façade in the slightest. 

 “May I ask why you’re looking for her?” she asked. She was unbothered by the rain that was being blown into her face by the helicopter. My mother had made it to the front door by then, she was on the other side of the door where the cop couldn’t see her.

“I have a warrant for her arrest.” he said, bluntly. The rain was collecting on his buzz cut, and my grandma’s stalling might’ve been partially just to prolong the officer’s discomfort. He presented the pink warrant slip to my grandma, and insisted: “ma’am it is raining, may I come inside?”

She stood there, squinting at the warrant, trying to ‘read’ it. She clicked her tongue, and finally sighed before saying, “I’ll be right back. I need to get my glasses.”

“Ma’am!” the officer yelled, but my grandma swiftly shut the door and locked it. 

She looked at my mother with such disgust, clicked her tongue three more times, and said “Fraud charges and drug charges Sorcha?! Are you fucking kidding me!” The pounding on the door started up again, somehow louder this time. “It says you’re a flight risk!”

“What?!” my mom shrieked. “I have no idea what they’re talking about!” she insisted. 

My mom loved arts and crafts growing up, and that love followed her into adulthood where she learned how to cut and paste documents. 

The police were screaming outside, and a second voice could be heard. “Miss Jonasben my name is Detective Johnson. We have a warrant for your arrest, and I am demanding you open this door right now.”

My mom was pacing, unsure of what to do. My grandmother had a dismissive but angry look on her face as she turned to open the door. There was no getting out of this. 

                                                                   *   *   *

Pheabie Mendez loves the beautiful desert town in the South-Western United States that she grew up in. She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology at the University of Arizona in 2018; and received her master’s degree in English and Creative Writing in 2023 from Southern New Hampshire University. By day she works as a banker, but at night she shares her words with the world in the hopes of helping others.

By Sara McClayton

I can’t find the road. My boots, caked with grass and mud, press bruises into my calves. Gnats swarm my eyes. Sweat soaks my clothes. It is my second hour wandering these muggy trails. I am beginning to worry. 

I stop, examine a cluster of young pines. Did I pass them earlier? I grab a gray stone and place it before the biggest tree. Now I’ll know for certain. 

Minutes and miles pass. I have not seen the stone again, and the shadows have lengthened. I dial my husband. “I’m definitely lost,” I tell him. “Can Laura and Sean come out with the Jeep?”

I say goodbye and wait. I sing the longest song I know five times. No Jeep. 

My husband calls. “Can you hear the Jeep?”

“No, “I say, “I can’t hear anything.” I realize as I say this that I do not even hear the buzz of insects. 

“We’re shouting your name on the trails!” I hear some mumbling in the background. “Laura says to go west.”

This is not remotely helpful. 

“I’ll start yelling,” I say, “Try to follow my voice.” 

My scream barely echoes in the dense brush. “Can you hear me?” I ask my husband. 

“No,” he says, “We hear nothing but-“

My phone goes black. The silence congeals. 

In sudden panic I close my eyes. I struggle to steady my breath. I try to imagine the forest of my childhood, icy streams and silky ferns. But I glimpse only dimness, the meadows parting to reveal a blank. 

I open my eyes. I see the arrow. 

Just a red smear of paint on the tree in front of me. It points to the left. 

How had I missed it? I approach the tree and touch the arrow. My finger comes back crimson. 

My limbs tighten. I follow the arrow despite my unease. I come to a fork in the path. Another arrow, this time pointing to the right. I follow, grazed by blackberries and slender branches. A third arrow, pointing to the left. 

This time I pause. The silence is thick and watchful. I gaze to the right, then the left. As I follow the arrow, I hear a rustle behind me. 

I whip around to stillness. I continue down the path, jogging, until I reach the wall. 

It is at least six feet tall, a fortress of mossy stone. I think the road might be behind it, so I sink my fingers into a slimy crevice to hoist myself up. When I peer over, I see nothing but forest. 

I turn back to the path. On top of a gleaming cairn is another arrow. 

Dread clogs my throat. This arrow points to the right, down a strangely dim path cloaked by silver- barked trees. I follow slowly, each step a suck of mud. I turn the corner to see the tree. 

It is different from the others. Thick, ropy branches send yellow leaves to the sky. The smell of spiced sap mixes with soil. The dripping arrow does not face right or left, but up. 

Struggling to breathe, I crane my neck under the branches. 

Something stares with leering eyes. 

I scream and tear down the path. I hear a giggle splinter from tree to tree, in front, behind, below, above. I run until my breath grows ragged and the silence returns. 

Gasping and heaving, I notice a quality to the silence. The blurred edges hew vivid and sharp. I see rough contours of bark, the glisten of sun through the grasses. As my breathing slows, I glimpse the gray stone in the orchard of pines. 

I close my eyes. The haze fades in a last choke of laughter. In place of the forest, I imagine the road.

When I open my eyes, I hear the Jeep. 

*   *   *

Sara McClayton is an educator and writer living in Baltimore, Maryland with her husband and dog. In addition to teaching English with Baltimore City Public Schools, she enjoys spending time outdoors, teaching and practicing yoga, and reading. Her work can be seen or is upcoming in Unbroken Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, and Club Plum Literary Journal, among others.