She's Lost Control
Author: Elizabeth Jenike
Date: 2019-02-26 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: epub; ebook; QuarkXPress
Publisher: Post Mortem Press

TABLE OF CONTENTS

WHY THE HUNGRY DOG BITES

Chloe Monet Sutch

ALRAQS

Amirah Mohiddin

BELOW THE DRIPSTONES

L.L. Madrid

BAKE SALE

Sydney J. Watson

THE WITCHES

Madeline Ticknor

A PATHOGEN’S PERCEPTION

Jessica McHugh

LAUGHTER

Diana Braskich

THE BLACK WALLPAPER

Cynthia Pelayo

ORANGES

H.B. Diaz

THE VAULT

Hannah Litvin

A MARKED WOMAN

Amanda Crum

DINNER TIME: THE CONSEQUENCES OF SAVAGES

Stephanie M. Wytovich

MAGDALA AMYGDALA

Lucy A. Snyder

TIME TRAVEL

Theresa Gaffney

WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPY

J.A.W. McCarthy

SLEEPING IN PUBLIC PLACES

Jacquelyn Mitchard

FOLEY

Katy McCarthy

A LETTER FROM A SISTER TO HER BROTHER

Michelle Sikorski

LOKI’S DAUGHTER

Rachel Anne Parsons

THREAD

Emma Hines

N AND O

Laurel Radzieski

PEACH COBBLER

Rachel Graf Evans

MAMA REMAINS

Maria Zach

STRANGELY FAMILIAR DEMONS

KT Jayne

TIDE POOLS

Uvika Wahi

SYRINX

Sara Rauch

EFFECTIVE WAYS TO DRY-ERASE

Alex McKelley

I WAS A FOX

Laura Beth Johnson

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

WHEN ERIC BEEBE first asked me to edit an all-female horror anthology, I didn’t hesitate. Of course I would: Post Mortem Press has been a steadfast point on the horror scene for more than eight years now, and it’s important for us to continue forging ahead, making a path for others to come after. And for me, as a female editor and writer, the opportunity to be a part of this step is monumental.

As we began to put our call for submissions together, I realized this anthology would be a huge undertaking and would more than likely become one of the most definitive moments of my career in publishing. This book, by its very nature, is doing important work: giving women writers a platform and prioritizing their voices over the cacophony of men that has dominated the field for so long. This is not meant to start an argument over whose voice is more important or stronger or holds more weight—this book is only meant to continue the conversation of why we need diverse mindsets and points of view in the literary community. And as the global conversation continues to both widen and deepen in regards to diversity and inclusion in all aspects of our lives, I hope we can maintain that dialogue. This is a good place to start.

The pieces in this anthology deal with various themes: death, violence, love, rape, motherhood, childhood, family, failure, victory. They are all poignant, emotional, and important. They are all human. I am proud and grateful that these women have entrusted me with their words. I hope you read them and hear what they are saying—what they are screaming.

The female voice is strong, and will not be controlled.

Elizabeth Jenike

Autumn 2018

WHY THE HUNGRY DOG BITES

Chloe Monet Sutch
i

You keep a dog locked up in a dark room with

No food and

No water.

See how long it takes her

To consider her own blood a meal.

ii

You make a dog grow up in a dark room with

No food and

No water.

Watch her define her worth by how much

Blood she can lose

Without

Dying.

iii

You take a hungry dog out of a dark room

Where sacrifice was her soul companion.

You put your hand in front of her cracked snout.

She bears her teeth.

She growls.

She bites you.

You say,

Bad Dog.

That’s a very Bad Dog.

ALRAQS

Amirah Mohiddin

SOON JEHAN WILL awake from her sleep. Her eyes will open. Her skin will feel like leather. The jasmine circlet around her head and the anklets manacling her feet will be long forgotten. But she will not forget the whisper of alraqs.

“Yajab a’layk alraqs,” they whispered. It means: You shall dance.

A silver-haired perie will creep in a corner of her dark room. He will call himself Keyvan. He will not be visible to the human eye unless he wishes to be. His fingertips are full of magic, energy born from the spirits of his victims in the Underworld. He will have watched Jehan grow. He had listened to her mother’s warnings against him: “Jehani, do not be tempted by the peries! Do not take their hands! Do not meet their eyes!” Keyvan will have crippled her for her words. He will have grabbed her ankle in one hand, and her toes in the other, and twisted. He did not like that the stupid woman had tried to turn Jehan against him.

He will believe he is protecting Jehan from the divs. He believes they are much worse than he is. Now, Jehan will die. Only he can save her. He thinks she will be grateful. She would not be like the other women. Jehan will not want to leave. He will have no doubt that she would choose him over death.

His split tongue will throb and his pointed ears twitch. There’ll be no sound in the room other than the wild beat of his own heart. Jehan will cough from deep within her throat. He will need to take her soon. He will not wait for the next full moon.

Jehan will pull the threadbare cover away from her sticky skin. The clay floor will be cold. Last night’s sands will have blown into her room. They will sting her feet as she walks.

Keyvan will leer after her. “You already have dancer’s feet, Jehani. They are chapped and worn, but they are beautiful. You will be perfect for alraqs.”

Jehan will not hear him. She will wash her face and wipe her body with a wet towel. Then she’ll cough into a bowl and watch the pale yellow phlegm stick to the side. She’ll notice the red blots. Then, shaking her head she’ll snatch the roosari on the milk stool beside her and use it to cover her hair. Jehan’s chest will be wound as tight as her hair. It is a mild day, yet her skin will be full of fire. She will not have long to live. She will hide the blood, the fever, the lumps along her neck and continue to live while she can. And one day even she will forget the pain of her consumption.

On this day, she will need to go to the bazaar to buy provisions. The stock in their house has gotten low. She’ll run to the door only to be stopped by her mother.

“Habeebti, stay! Rest!”

Her mother will have been turning the mill. Grounded flour is on the thatched straw laid on the floor. She will have seen Jehan trying to escape. In their little mud hut there is little place to hide, let alone live. The soft, loose flesh of her mother’s arms will be covered in flour, and a piece of wheat will be stuck in her hair. She will stumble towards her daughter on her crippled foot. She will look at Jehan with a sandstorm in her eyes. Her storm will never cease. Every day will be an endless cycle of grinding flour and praying for her daughter’s safe return. She will cry so much that she will blind herself.

“I’m fine!” Jehan’s thoughts will not match her words. If I do not go, then who will bring you food? How will you eat? How will you survive? But she will smile. Her mother will know that she is lying, seeing the corners of her eyes turn red. Jehan will not have an appetite on this day, or the next. To her it will seem as though pieces of flatbread or even just a pomegranate seed stick in her throat, cause a new lump to form upon her neck. Her mother will have begged her to eat, to keep her strength up.

“Jehani,” she will cry. It is an old term of affection between them. Her mother will always say her daughter’s name like it is a gift, and Jehan will one day wish she had accepted it. “Jehani, my Jehani. Please be careful.” But Jehan will already be gone through the fabric that acts as a door. She will turn away and escape to save herself the discomfort of seeing her mother’s pain.

Keyvan will follow her. They still will not see him.

Jehan will notice that the bazaar is full as usual. A couple of women will stand at every stall. Some shouting. Some looking smug. There will be those walking away. The vendors will chase after those women. Jehan will have a couple of coins in her purse. She’ll smile at all the vendors, haggle for a chance to buy their sweetmeats and their yellowest apples. When she is done, she will carry a small paper bag in her left arm, and a small cloth in her right. She will use this to wipe the sweat from her fevered skin. When a spiteful cough overcomes her body, her cloth will cover her mouth lest any of the men or women see the blood. Her vision will narrow as she stumbles.

People will whisper. “A drunkard.”

“How shameful.”

“She is a woman.”

Jehan will try to run. Unable, she will stop. She will find herself leaning on a tree. Then, clouds will fill her vision and she will slide to the floor. Her eyes will close. When she opens them again she will find the most beautiful man she has ever seen in front of her.

He will be exquisite. His cheekbones carved, the lines of his face shaped in anger, his eyebrows drawn together, and his hair silver. Jehan won’t need to see his wings to know he is a perie.

She won’t know he followed her. She won’t know that he has been watching her for a long time.

“Yajab a’layk alraqs,” he will hiss. You shall dance.

She will know not to listen. But she won’t be able to help herself. His voice will soothe her coarse throat like honey. When he will reach out his hand, she will take it, forgetting her hacking cough and her leather skin. The sweetmeats she paid many dinars for will fall to the ground. A shock will run through Keyvan’s veins, knowing his beloved is connecting her flesh to his. Her attention is upon him for the first time. He will take her to a gallitrop in the Underworld.

He will know every breath Jehan takes will pump her blood with magic and she . . . she will feel alive! And she will take it with open arms. A sarangi will whine for her and every strum of the string will make her feel as though it were played on her flesh. Her throat will vibrate and hum, and the music will warble from her mouth. The trees will circle around her, arching over each other to reach her. Their bones will be gnarled, their leaves hang like curtains. Flowers will embrace the barks. They will mature from buds one moment to full-grown blossoms the next. They will pulse open and closed along with Jehan’s heartbeat. Close, op-en, close, op-en, close.

There will be other women there. The peries and divs will surround many of them. One in particular will be taunted by the divs. She will have dark hair and red lips. The divs will call her Nura. Her child will beg her attention. It will tug her arms, poke her flesh and pound its chubby fists on her knees. Nura will not notice. When her child is taken away, crying, her eyes will be glazed over, a smile on her lips. She will not move to save it. Yet, a tear will slip down her cheeks.

But Nura will not matter to Jehan, for she and the other women are nothing but blank parchments.

Keyvan will take Jehan’s elbow and walk her to his personal hollow. They will walk among roots and an infinite number of trees until they reach a garden within a circlet. He began preparing it when he found Jehan was dying. The trees will be knit. Circling the floor, there will be sensual jasmines, their fragrance heady and intoxicating. There will be gladiolus, pink and supple to the touch and an effervescence of bluebells and lush aloe leaves dripping unguent upon the rooted floor. Keyvan will sigh, letting the excitement fizzle through his body.

Jehan will no longer feel sick. She will not feel pain. Keyvan will undress her. He will remove her roosari and untangle her hair. Instead of looking away she will stare into those melting eyes of his. She will think they are like fully ripened dates ready to fall from their palm tree. He will caress her breast, cupping it firmly before sliding his hand down her waist. Using his teeth, he will peel fabric away from her skin, his greed depriving him of gentleness. He will want to bite her honey flesh. Instead, he will look into her eyes, say, “Yajab a’layk alraqs,” you shall dance. He will cup her cheek with his hand. He will lean forward, tip her head back and kiss her plush lips. She will give herself to him, curving and bending in pleasure. Her moans will liquidate his heart and pulse from his body. He gives her everything.

Jehan will not be ashamed. Not yet.

Keyvan will dress her in the customary gossamer, proud that his Jehani looks so much better than the other callous-born women. The red will accent her soft brown eyes and these bells not even queens have been blessed with. The rose-gold bells will be strung along her chest, her waist, her hips. There will be more bells binding her ankles, and bangles upon her wrists. The armlet on her right is like a clasp, Keyvan’s grip on her left arm, another. Jehan’s eyes will still be full of dreams. She will not have spoken a word. His finger will dig deep into her flesh to assuage a response. But no shock will show on her face. Keyvan will tell himself that she has the rest of eternity to speak.

After he is done, he will place a jasmine circlet on her head. It will be the one Jehan remembers from her nightmares. Keyvan will take her back to the tree-filled hollow and leave her in its centre. The divs and peries will see her beneath the fine, filmy gossamer. Jehan will not care. Every creature will see the marks Keyvan has left upon her body and they will not take her from him. She will belong to him. She will not be like the other women. She would not stop dancing.

With all the other women, Jehan will form a circle. Nura will be beside her. The peries and the divs will climb trees, hang from branches and sit upon hedges. They will tell the women, “Yajab a’layk alraqs.” They will repeat this, and move towards and away from them at a dizzying speed until Jehan can do nothing but nod. She will dance. She knows that she is at a perie revel and she doesn’t care. Her hips will draw the figure of eight in the air as they move and shake. She will do the same with her shoulders. She will raise her hands over her head and jingle. And she shall dance.

And dance.

And dance.

And she will not stop because she cannot. She cannot feel the pain yet. But days will go by. Her feet will chafe, then they will bleed. The divs will jeer, never tiring. Keyvan will close his eyes and breathe a sigh of relief every so often.

The dark-haired woman, Nura, will be the first to fall. The divs will kick her and hiss: “Yajab a’layk alraqs,” and it will be so much more of a threat than an order. Nura will begin to cry. The magic will have already worn away. She won’t be able to stand. The divs will swarm around her, marooning her to the floor.

“Let’s peel her face off!”

“Then she’ll stop crying,” they will cackle.

They will cut off her feet and then her hands, and finally her head. They will dismember Nura. Drool upon her body. Jehan and the others will continue to dance.

And dance.

And dance.

Another three will have fallen, by the end of the third night. Jehan will still stand. Keyvan’s eyes will have been fixed on her. The divs have grown hungry and so they remove themselves to find food within the trees. Jehan will see one claw the inner bark of a tree and stuff it into his mouth. Keyvan will take her back to the garden of flowers and he will take her worth. Again. She will dance for him. But the magic will have begun to fade. In its place is only pain. Her senses will reawaken. She will grunt and stumble. Her bones will begin to seize.

Then she will say, “I can dance no longer.” Her body will stop. Keyvan’s eyes will snap open. These will be the first words she has spoken to him. To him, these words will be wretched. To her, they will mean freedom.

He will reply, “Yajab a’layk alraqs. I have saved you from your death.” His voice will be hoarse. He will feel nettles prickling his throat.

But Jehan will not listen. She will remember her body failing from consumption. Her mother’s face will flash in front of her eyes. She will remember her crooning Jehani, her warning, be careful, and her own traitorous body shunning the woman that birthed and raised her. Tears will fall from her eyes. Jehan won’t forgive herself. She will weep for the loss of her mother’s love and for the pain she will endure.

Keyvan will not care about her tears. Only her dance. He will grab her bangled wrists and repeat: “Yajab a’layk alraqs.”

But, she will be adamant.

“No!”

She will try to break free of his hold. He will flinch. He will not understand. “I have saved you. You’re alive because of me. You will be safe because you are mine.”

“I did not wish to live like this.”

“Yajab a’layk alraqs!” he will roar.

“No!”

“Jehani!”

She will snap. “How dare you use that name! I do not want to hear you say it! That is the name my mother gave me!”

His face will curdle with anger. His hair will darken to the color of charcoal. His cheeks will bubble, and his eyes become thunderous. The top of his head is burning. He knows Jehan will die if she does not continue to dance. The divs will slaughter her and lay her pieces in the gallitrop to be mocked. He will have to watch.

“YAJAB A’LAYK ALRAQS! YOU SHALL DANCE!” He will raise one hand above Jehan’s head and it will be as though grains have fallen upon her. The magic will entrap her mind. She will begin to dance again. She will not be able to refuse.

She shall dance.

Keyvan will sigh with relief at her subjugation. He will feel a pinch in his lungs, but dismiss it. He has succeeded. Jehan will not die. No one will hurt her, and she will always belong to him. He will keep her safe just like today. He has made certain that she does not face the nightmare of death. He has made certain she will not forget the whispers of alraqs.

Her feet will become red and raw. Flesh will cease to hang on her bones. It will crawl higher and higher, revealing weakened muscle tissue and filmy veins. And yet, she shall dance.

And dance.

And dance.

Until she cannot dance anymore.

***

Jehan’s eyes dart open. Her breath is heavy. Her skin feels like leather. The jasmine circlet around her head and the anklets manacling her feet are long forgotten. But she cannot escape from the whispers of alraqs. She runs from her mother, shops at the bazaar and takes the hand of the silver-haired perie.

“Yajab a’layk alraqs.”

She cannot stop what will happen to her.

BELOW THE DRIPSTONES

L.L. Madrid

I KNOW WHERE I am before I open my eyes. The sour rot scent and the distant drip-drip-drip of water give this place away. I lean back against the cave wall. I don’t cringe as the slime seeps through my shirt. It’s better than the alternative. You don’t want one of those things creeping up behind you.

I look back and under the torchlight, I see my brother Vince across the cavern. He’s sitting on the ground, hugging his knees to his chest. Head buried, he waits for it to end. Shackled to an onyx altar is a small boy. He struggles and writhes against the chains. With a jerk, he turns his head and looks at me.

“Help me! The monsters are coming!”

He sees me? Before this, I’ve always been a ghost. The simmering panic at my core bubbles over. “Vince, he can see me!” I yell to my brother as he shakes his head against his knees.

“Vince!”

“Shut up shut up shut up . . . ” he mutters.

“Please!” the boy cries. “I wanna go home. I want Momma.”

I gulp a breath of the nasty air and move toward the boy. I open my mouth, but I can’t make the words come out. I tug at the chains, but there isn’t anything I can do. The boy’s skin is pallid, and his eyes are as black as the pits of a skull. I recognize him. “Luca? Can you hear me?”

“Do something. They’re coming.”

I pull at a manacle, trying to slip the boy’s hand out.

BAM.

My body slams down to the floor, troubling black soot into the already dark air.

“Don’t.” Vince stands over me, blocking Luca from view. “Heidi. You can’t do anything. If they catch you . . . ” He helps me up and leads me back to the wall. I follow like a dumb puppy and let him pull me down to sit and wait. I’m slower here. Speaking and thinking are difficult, even moving is like wading through a sea of Vaseline.

Luca screams, the tiny veins in his neck bulge.

“He sees us,” I whisper.

“I know.” The words crack as they come from Vince’s mouth. I’m about to say something else, but my teeth are chattering as the temperature plummets. That’s the first sign. It’s best not to make noise. We learned early on the dangers of calling attention to ourselves.

The skittering of a thousand rat toenails scraping against stone as they flee is the second sign. Soon the inky pond beyond the altar ripples and bubbles. They’re on their way. The ritual is about to begin. Vince and I grip each other and bow our heads.

“THE MONSTERS ARE COMING!”

***

The glowing numbers on the alarm clock read 3:47 a.m. Frozen in bed, I can only move my eyes; the crushing weight on my chest hasn’t lifted. My doctor calls this part sleep paralysis, but I think it’s because my soul hasn’t fully returned. Josh snores beside me. I envy him as I wait for the seven on the clock to morph into an eight. The paralysis usually only lasts a minute, but it feels much longer.

When the heaviness lifts and I can move, I do so quietly. I fumble for my glasses and phone on the nightstand. Josh stirs. I watch my husband, waiting until the snores resume.

In the living room, I light the lamp and wrap an old flannel throw around my shoulders and settle onto the couch. It isn’t long before my cell’s Skype alert chimes.

“Hey.” Vince is shirtless and bleary-eyed. Tonight he doesn’t try to hide his whiskey in a coffee mug. He swigs straight from the bottle.

“Hey.” I used to judge his drinking. That was before I got pregnant and had to give up my antidepressants. Now I envy him for his booze. I’m only a few weeks into my second trimester and I don’t know how I’ll make it through. I swallow the thought and replace it with I’ll do everything I can to make this pregnancy stick.

Vince rubs his eyes. He has this habit of waiting for the other person to start talking, even when he’s instigated the call. He’s more comfortable with silences than I am. “Luca Locicero,” I start. “That was the boy. I recognize him from the news. He vanished from his bedroom two nights ago. He can’t have more than what, three days left?”

Vince looks over his shoulder for a long moment before turning back and shaking his head. His hands are fisted on his knees. “Don’t think about that. It’s just a dream.”

I pull the blanket tighter around myself. “It’s not, though. I can’t pretend.”

“Then you’ll go crazy.”

He’s right. Since this started happening twenty-five years ago, I’ve learned to not dwell on the horror. This time that’s not possible. “The boy saw us. He spoke to us. We know who he is, we can do something.”

“We can’t. Nothing’s changed.”

“Luca—”

“Don’t say his name.” Vince tips the bottle back. The post-mortem ritual began decades ago with the first joint dream. I was nine, and Vince was seven. We ran into our parents’ room at the same moment, screaming about the same things. Now we call each other. We never say much, but it’s better than being alone.

“You got there first.” I study his face for a reaction, but he’s looking away from the screen. As bad as it is in that place, it’s much worse when you’re there by yourself. “Did anything happen before I came?”

He takes another pull from the bottle. His eyes are already bloodshot. He wipes his lips with the back of his hand. “Yeah. The kid told me where we were. I couldn’t believe he was talking to me . . . ”

I shake my phone. “He said . . . Where?”

“Shit,” Vince mutters. “Forget it. I doubt he really knows. Even if he did, we can’t get him.”

“Tell me where,” I start, but he holds his hand up.

“I was exaggerating. That’s all. I gotta go. I’ll see you at Mom’s birthday thing.”

“Vince!” The screen goes blank. I call him back. It rings straight through to voicemail. He’s shut off his phone. I sink further into the couch. My brother has never been much of a talker or sharer, which makes him a shitty nightmare partner. I check the clock. I don’t have time to drive across town to Vince’s apartment before Josh wakes up. Even if I did, I know my brother. He’ll pass out before I’d get there. I call and text a few more times, but it’s useless.

A clunking from the hall has me pulling the blanket up to my eyes. I know it’s the AC kicking on, but fear still clings to me. Not wanting to be alone, I make kissy sounds, calling for Wobs, our three-legged cat. Despite her missing front limb, she jumps next to me with ease, bumping her head against my cheek in greeting. After nightmares, she gets extra attention. I don’t want to be alone, and Wobs is good company. She cocks her head at my phone.

On nights like this, I watch Bob Ross videos on YouTube. I don’t paint, but his soft voice and commentary about happy trees and shy little shadows help take my mind off whatever horrors I’ve witnessed. Tonight, I don’t want to let the terror blend with titanium white or morph into a distant mountain range. I’m desperate to do something, anything, to help that boy. I wish I had a better place to start, but I don’t, so I google Luca Locicero.

Luca’s family lives about two hours away in Phoenix. Close enough that they’ve put up a few billboards with his sweet face around town. They’re doing everything you’re supposed to when a child goes missing: Keeping his face on the news, pleading for his return, and repeating his name to humanize him to the kidnappers.

That’s what I remember the police liaison officer telling my parents when Crysta went missing. It didn’t do us any good. I can barely remember my big sister outside of the pictures that hang over my mother’s mantel.

I shake Crysta from my mind and focus on Luca. I read all the news stories. I watch the pleas from his parents, and I scroll through comments that blame them. I recognize the Locicero family’s confusion, their disbelief that any of this is real. My parents stumbled around the same way. They were accused of the same unspeakable things.

There’s a tiny flutter in my stomach.

I startle and press my palm against the slight swell. A kick? I know if I told one of my coworkers they’d say it’s too soon and probably only gas. Despite everything, I smile. A kick. The yearning to savor this moment is fierce, but the dark brown eyes that peer out from my phone screen compel me to keep investigating.

Focusing back on Luca, I search for underground sights near his home address. It isn’t long before my eyes go bleary. Arizona is pocked with pits, bunkers, caverns, mines, and miles of flood tunnels. How the hell do you pinpoint the location of a dream?

***

Noting my lack of sleep, Josh makes breakfast. It’s a nice gesture and gives me the space to bombard Vince with voicemails and texts, but the scent of the maple sausages churns my stomach. I spend the rest of the morning hunched over the toilet. Morning sickness didn’t magically end after the first trimester, as HR rep Beth and mother-of-four assured me it would. Still, I manage to get dressed and heap on under-eye concealer. It doesn’t help much but at least Vince—if he shows—will look equally awful.

We bring a casserole, cake, and a bouquet to my mother’s condo. She doesn’t like us to “make a fuss” about her birthdays and refuses to go out. She invites only Aunt Didi and us. Mom and her sister are gossiping when we arrive—no Vince.

“Did he say he’s going to be late?” I ask. “You should call him. See what’s up?”

Mom rolls her eyes. “He’ll get here when he gets here.”

Josh squeezes my knee, his code for relax already. I can’t follow the conversation around me. All I can think of is Luca down in that pit with those things.

Vince arrives forty minutes late with a box of Russell Stover chocolates under his arm, the same gift he’s given Mom every year since he was twelve. I’m desperate to get him alone, but he knows this and fastens himself to Aunt Didi. I send him a text from the bathroom. He pretends his phone is off.

After lunch, we settle in the living room for cake and coffee. Vince won’t make eye contact with me. Instead, he gazes at the door. He plans to leave without me cornering him. Josh wraps his arm around my waist. My husband is a nice guy. So nice he’s almost bland, but that’s what I like about him. He wouldn’t understand the dreams, so I don’t tell him. If I did, he’d only be concerned for my mental health. It’s simpler to let him think that I’m an insomniac. I give him a peck on the cheek.

He clinks his spoon against his mug and rises. I blink. I forgot we planned this. “Heidi and I have an announcement. Ma, I know you’re desperate for a grandbaby, and in a few months we’ll have a belated birthday present for you.”

The room is stunned quiet, no doubt the others are thinking of our first two miscarriages. Only Josh and I know about the third. “I’m almost eighteen weeks along,” I say. Before anyone else speaks there’s a POP, and the lights go out.

Josh heads outside to check the fuse box, and Mom tells Vince to inspect an outlet in the kitchen. I dash after him.

“Jesus,” he mutters, crouching by a snake den of wires. Mom’s got the refrigerator and about ten other appliances plugged into a single power strip. The lights flicker back on around us but the strip is dead, and Mom’s fridge doesn’t whir. He unplugs everything and coils the cords before pushing the refrigerator plug into the wall outlet. It hums back to life.

“We need to talk,” I say.

“Congratulations,” Vince answers. There’s no light behind his eyes. He’s studying a homemade magnet that spells out “Crysta” in painted macaroni noodles. He grasps my hand. “Don’t try to find that kid.”

“What?”

“Just don’t. You’re going to be a momma. You have to keep safe for her.”

“Her?”

“I got a feeling.”

Tears prick at my eyes. “We can’t leave him there.”

“We don’t know where there is.”

“You said—”

“I was wasted. The kid told me he was in a cave. That’s all I meant.”

“I have to try.”

“Try what? Spelunking? Organizing subterranean searches across the state?”

I knuckle away a tear. “He’s somebody’s baby.”

“I know.” Vince puts his arm around my back. “You remember what happened when we tried to fight them, what they did to Crysta.”

I don’t trust myself to speak, so I nod.

“You have too much to lose.”

I swallow. “How can I live with myself if I let Luca die?”

“You’re not letting anything happen. The demons have him. It’s already too late.”

***

When I come to, I’m laying at the base of the onyx altar. It’s already cold. I don’t see Vince. I scramble to the wall.

“Momma?” a tiny voice asks.

A plume of breath slips from my lips. I press my hands against my belly and shut my eyes.

“Momma, I love you. Momma . . .  please.”

“I can’t help you. I’m sorry.” I whisper the words so softly I doubt he hears me.

A whimper, then, “Help me fall asleep?”

My eyes bump along the flickering shadows of the cave. There’s no sign of Vince or any of those things. I move slowly to Luca. His eyes are shut. I slide my finger across his forehead, moving wisps of feathery hair. I hum the tune of a lullaby my mother used to sing to me. I’ll have to ask her the words. There’s a quiver in my womb. So she’s here too. Does she know where we are? I brush my palm against Luca’s cool face. He has the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen. A beautiful boy who’ll never go home. A tear slips down my cheek and falls onto his. Luca’s eyes open. I back up to the wall. The two burning embers follow me. He’s turning. The next dream will be the last for Luca.

“The monsters are coming,” he speaks the words dully. The fight has left his frail body.

“I’m sorry,” I say. It will never be enough. I know that Luca’s mother feels a deep ache inside her, a desperate longing to hold her baby. I remember my mother screaming in the night for Crysta, pleading for her return. Prayers decay into hope for a body to bury. Twenty years later, Mom settled for an age progression photograph that now hangs between a snap of Vince leaning against his 67’ Mustang and my wedding portrait.

The rats and roaches flee, and the fires in the sconces die out. Where the hell is Vince?

“They hurt me.” Luca’s eyes close. A kick in my belly. I slip forward once more and kiss his forehead. A slimy residue slicks my lips. In my mind’s eye, I see a postcard image of the no longer operational Wonder Caves. That was the location of our last family excursion when there were still five of us. The place that shut down after a trio of second graders disappeared on a field trip. That’s where we are. Where Luca is. I crouch against the wall. Vince is here. He reaches for my hand as the crashing of water and scraping of claws echoes through the cavern, and the demons arrive.

***

It’s 3:47 a.m. when I wake. I watch the clock.

At 3:48 a.m. I can move. I text Vince: Wonder Caves.

It’s 3:49 a.m. I see the blood.

It’s on my thighs. When I feel between my legs, sticky liquid paints my hand red. No. No. No! I stare at my hand. A frozen scream fills my lungs. Wobs hops on the bed and yowls until Josh wakes.

The drive to the hospital and subsequent emergency room chaos go by in a blur: Josh’s worried face, doors swinging open and close, nurses’ sympathetic nods, and buzzing fluorescent lights. Josh keeps muttering that everything is going to be alright. Just fine.You’ll see. It’ll be okay. I know better, but I let him murmur his reassurances like prayers on a rosary.

Time slows, and I’m wheeled off to get an ultrasound. Every tick of the clock cuts into me. The cold goo the technician squirts onto my stomach reminds me of coagulated blood. The tech’s wand slips across my skin, and I make a wish. Knowing that things like wishes and prayers are useless unless accompanied by an oath—a sacrifice—I make an offer to whatever god or devil happens to be listening.

Let my baby live and I’ll find Luca Locicero.

I stare at the ultrasound screen. It depicts the universe inside of me: swirling blacks, grays, and highlights of white. Machines beep. My chest thuds. Josh squeezes my shoulder. At last, we see the flittering of a starfish hand and a twinkle of heart.

I give silent thanks. I’ll keep my promise.

There are more tests, and the doctor pats my arm reassuringly. Appointments are scheduled, and bed rest is recommended. Josh wants me to take a leave of absence as it’s too soon to start maternity leave. I promise to consider it. All I can think about is how close we came to losing her. The technician told us the sex. Vince was right. My brother sometimes just knows things.

My phone chirps. I have dozens of missed calls and texts from Vince, all warnings about Wonder Caves. I text that we had to go to the hospital but that we’re alright; I assure him I have no reason to go near the caves. I almost believe that myself.

***

While Josh showers, I sneak into the garage to call the Luca Locicero tip line. It rings and rings.

“Help bring Luca home. Name please.” The operator snaps her gum, and I can hear papers rustling.

“Um. Hi. I think I know where Luca is.”

“Name?”

“He’s somewhere in Wonder Caves.”

“You saw him there?”

My entire body goes hot. “Please. I just know.”

“We have a volunteer who’s handling all premonitions and psychic tips. Please hold while I transfer you to Serena.”

“Wait! Please, I can’t tell you how I know, but I know.”

There is a sniff and a sigh from the other end of the line. “We’ve gotten over two thousand tips. You don’t wanna give me your name?”

“No. Are you going to send someone to the cave?”

“I’ll add your tip for review. Thank you for your support. To help more, please go to the Bring Luca Home site to donate.”

Click.

FUCK.

I go back into the house and think about sneaking a cup of coffee. As I consider the pot Josh nibbles at my neck. I stiffen.

“You okay?”

“Fine. Just miss caffeine.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call out? I got plenty of leave banked.”

“You’re not using a day until the baby’s here.” I force a smile and tap his nose.

It takes a while, but I convince Josh to go to work.

After his Toyota disappears from view, I change out of my pajamas into yoga pants and a tee-shirt. I grab a flashlight and check the batteries. I scan Josh’s tools wondering what I’ll need. Screwdriver? Hammer? Side rule? I select the tool belt, a headlamp, rope, and after a moment’s thought, the hammer.

Josh has a gun locked away in a safe. I don’t know where he keeps the key and I don’t want to waste time looking for it. Besides, I don’t know how to shoot. I do know how to hammer.

I write a note for Josh and leave it on the kitchen table. My writing is shaky, and the note doesn’t make sense. I pray I make it back before he can read it. I grab water and queue up directions to Wonder Caves.

The trip takes forty-five minutes. Each time the memory of yesterday’s promise to save Luca drops like a stone in my belly, and I grip the wheel tighter. I worry about our baby. Last night I almost lost her, and today I’m putting her at risk. Still, I swore an oath at the hospital. In my core, I know breaking that promise is as dangerous as what I’m planning. The sky is cloudless and the sun flames overhead. Despite my AC being on full blast, sweat trickles down my back.

Though it’s been abandoned for years, the Wonder Caves sign still stands. The paint has faded, and bullet holes puncture the O and A. I park and put on the tool belt, holstering the hammer on my right, the rope on my left. I put on the head lamp. I look ridiculous, but there’s no one here to see. Even as doubt creeps into my mind, I know that this is where Luca wanted me to go.

I shut off my phone and leave it in the car. It won’t work in the cave, and even if it did, I don’t want Vince texting me. I grab a bottle of water and the flashlight, thinking only of going into the cave. I can’t think about what’s down there. Not yet.

A chain-link fence blocks the entrance to the cave. Luckily, someone’s cut an opening that I squeeze through, the sharp metal raking along my back as if in warning. Empty cans of beer and broken Boone’s Farm bottles litter the way.

There’s a movement in my belly, urging me to go on. With sweat-slick hands, I turn on the headlamp and flashlight. When I came here as a kid, spotlights illuminated the caverns. Now the dark comes fast and black as I follow the old path, gripping the loose railing. The air is much cooler here. I remember the tour guide explaining that the cave held a consistent temperature of 68 degrees year round. I wish I’d brought a sweater.

A black splotch flies across my vision, and I drop the flashlight. It rolls with clattering echoes as it descends into the pit. Bats scatter around me. I duck, covering my head and wait for quiet to return. When it does, I see that my flashlight beam is now a faraway pinprick. Shit.

I swallow and adjust my headlamp. Covering the ceiling of the cave are daggers of dripstone and gypsum that weep blood during dream ceremonies. I stick to the catwalk and move carefully; the headlamp helps me see ahead but not below. The dreams take place in a large chamber near a cave pool. When I hear a distant dripping, I follow the sound into the bowels of the mountain.

The rusted catwalk ends at an iron staircase so steep that I have to climb down it like a ladder. Having my back exposed to the darkness makes me nauseous, and I almost lose my grip. Blood pounds in my head and I wonder what the hell I’m doing when I hear a soft moan. I get to the bottom and pull the hammer—my only weapon—from the tool belt. I don’t know what the creatures are, Vince says they’re demons and Luca calls them monsters. The truth is that they’re too evil to have a name. In the dreams, they are many, quick and vicious.

My knuckles blanch against the smooth wooden handle. It may be dark but its day, and I have to believe that I have the upper hand. “Luca?” I call my voice bouncing off of stone and water.

“Momma?”

“Stay where you are, Luca. You’ll be home soon.”

“Momma, Momma, Momma,” he cries. I follow the sound. The light beam reflects across the motionless black pond. This is the place. I remove the headlamp and hold it out in front of me and scan the area.

On the far edge of the pond, a kidney shaped shelf-stone appears to float on the water. On top of the black rock is a wisp of a boy. Luca flinches when my light falls on him. “Monsters,” he croaks. I glance around. We are alone.

“I’m coming.” But how? I study the pond until I see the way to Luca’s stone: A thin lip of rock that edges along the water. It’s slick to the touch. I fasten my rope to a nearby column and tie the other end around my waist. If I fall into the pond . . . I swallow the thought and stomp my boots on the ground, hoping to add grit to the soles for traction. When I go to put the hammer back in its holster, I miss the loop. Icy water splashes on me, and the tool sinks.

So close now, and I’m unarmed. A bat swoops overhead. My stomach roils. I put my hands on my belly and breathe. I don’t have the luxury of panicking. I tighten the headlamp and step out on to the ledge. I take each step slowly, one hand out for balance and the other sliding along the slime-coated wall.

When I reach Luca, he’s barely conscious. I put my water bottle to his lips, but he won’t drink. I untie the rope and retie it with the boy around my middle. Halfway back, my foot slips and we nearly tumble into the water. Waiting to regain my composure, I stand near the center of the ledge with Luca’s arms wrapped around my neck, our heartbeats pounding as one.

No monsters or demons or nameless creatures surface from the water. Except for a few bats, nothing follows us out of the cave. It all feels too easy, and my wariness builds with every unimpeded step. When I stumble into the daylight, Luca is sleeping soundly against my chest. I could leave him at a rest stop and call 9-1-1, but he’s been through so much. I can’t abandon him. Josh and I have solid alibis, so I decide to take Luca to the nearest hospital and worry about what the police and my husband will think later. I’ve faced worse.

***

The sconces are lit in the dream cave.

I can’t be here. It’s too soon.

All the other times there was a few months respite between rituals, but I suppose that the last was never completed. Vince isn’t here yet. The shelf-stone is an altar again. I squint. It looks like there’s a pink blob laying on the surface. I inhale the sulfuric air and approach. A light flashes rapidly at the center of the membrane. I lean over, and my breath catches. It’s a womb. A diaphanous baby curls at the core, her heart a flickering beacon calling to me. I press my palms to my empty stomach.

Oh God, oh God.

“Heidi?” Vince’s whisper echoes from the far wall of the cave. I cannot look away. My girl is sucking her thumb. So this is how they’ll punish me for taking Luca. A chill fills the air. The rats flee. The monsters are coming. I grip the edges of the altar.

“Heidi!” Vince hisses behind me. I don’t look back. I won’t leave my baby. In front of me, the black pond ripples and tar bubbles boil and pop. When the first clawed tentacle slithers out of the muck, I hover over my womb. I’ll protect her until I can’t.

“What the fuck! Heidi, they’re coming!”

“My baby,” I whisper. Countless sets of burning eyes rise from the pond like comets piercing the blackness.

Vince is beside me now. “She’s beautiful,” he says as he pulls my arm away and carefully scoops up the womb. Her heart glows brighter than the fire-eyed demons. Vince places the warm bundle in my arms. I hold her and our hearts beat in unison.

“Get back.”

“What are you doing, Vince?”

“I’m sick of being scared all the time.” He pulls himself onto the altar as the creatures emerge. “You’re going to be a great mom,” he says as he lies down on the stone.

A cyclone of pincers, teeth, and limbs encircles the altar. High-pitched hissing fills the cave, echoing off the rocks and my brother gasps with pain but he does not scream. The tentacles whip in the air and shred flesh and bone with equal ease.

One of the monsters meets my eyes and grins.

I don’t look away.

When there is nothing left of Vince, all light extinguishes.

***

3:47 a.m. the paralysis keeps me from screaming.

3:48 a.m.: a quiver in my belly. He saved her.

3:49 a.m. the tears come hot and fast.

Josh wakes. “The baby?” he asks the panic clear in his voice.

“No, she’s fine. Vince . . . ” I can’t say it.

“Sweetheart, it was a dream.”

Wobs leaps on to the nightstand. She watches my phone, waiting for it to ring, but all is quiet.

BAKE SALE

Sydney J. Watson

ON THE DAY of my son’s school bake sale, I woke up with a smile on my face. It was early in the morning, a bit earlier than I usually got up, but that was okay, because I had several recipes to make, and I’d finally have some breathing room. My boss, the kind, understanding woman that she was, had given me the day off because she understood how dedicated I was to making sure that my son had the best, did the best, and learned the best. Plus, business had been slow lately, ever since I’d had my little panic attack last week. But having the chance to unwind with my favorite pastime would surely help with everything that was going on, right? Everything that happened was just stress.

I took a nice long, hot shower and took care to use my favorite scented soap. Today was going to be fun. I was going to relax. It was just stress, and what better cure for stress than letting the water relax my trembling, overtaxed muscles and wash away my worries? I got out and put on some lotion, taking care to rub it into my hands, then to flex my fingers. I filed my nails and brushed my hair until it fell smooth and straight to my shoulders like a crimson waterfall. I got dressed, putting on my favorite, comfiest clothes in just the right order—underwear, soft sports bra, jeans, shirt, cardigan, socks, house shoes—and began to hum to cover the tapping at the window. I wasn’t letting anything ruin this day. My humming woke my husband, who got up and gave me the strangest look.

“What’s wrong, monkey?” I asked him, smiling my most peaceful sort of smile.

He looked away, searching our nightstand busily for his watch.

“Nothing, Evie. Just a funny dream.”

I almost skipped to the kitchen, where everything I needed had been laid out the night before. I gathered up my bowls and was picking through my recipe notebook to find a recipe I wanted to start with when my husband came into the kitchen.

“Remember your keys, monkey,” I reminded him, still flipping pages while he gathered up his jacket and wallet.

“Okay.”

I decided on a recipe, impatiently swiping a large cockroach off the title, then reaching up to pick the giant stickbug out of my hair. It was several seconds before I realized that he was still standing there behind me, staring silently.

“What is it, honey?”

His eyes were wide and he was completely ignoring the insistent knocking from under the kitchen table.

“Are you okay, Evie?” he asked very quietly, almost cautiously.

“Of course I’m okay, Richard. I get to spend the whole day working with chocolate and cookie dough, and licking all the bowls. I’m quite happy, actually,” I giggled, crossing the room to bang on the table to stop the knocking.

“You’re just acting a little . . . ”

“A little what?” I moved back to the counter and measured out some flour, checking and double-checking the amount in my book as I smoothed each cup and tipped it into the bowl. A few fleas, but that was added protein.

“Well . . . a little sick, to be honest. Maybe we ought to take you to see a doctor, Eve.”

I looked at him, raising one eyebrow. He never called me Eve unless he was really worried.

“Are you still on about my panic attack last week?”

“Eve, that wasn’t just a panic attack, that was . . . ”

I moved over to him, taking his face in my hands.

“Baby, I’m okay. That was all just stress. I just need a little time to myself. Carol gave me the day off to work on the bake sale and have a little fun, so that’s what I’m going to do. Okay? A little rest and I’ll be back to normal. I promise.”

He hesitated then nodded, and I gave him a brief kiss. He hugged me, shaking, and I hugged him a little tighter. I always thought that it was sweet how worried he got about me.

“Now, make sure you remember your keys.”

“Oh, I probably won’t need them. I’m in the carpool today.”

“Well, you’ll need to let yourself in. I might not be home to come to the door. Remember, the bake sale is today. I’ll need to be at the school by noon, and I’ll probably be there until five, so you’ll be home before I am.”

He gave me another one of those odd looks.

“Evie, wasn’t the bake sale next week?”

“No, Richard, it’s today.”

“I just could have sworn I saw in the paper that it was next week.”

“Well, the paper must have been wrong. I’m absolutely sure that it’s today. They better not have changed it, because I put all this stuff out!” I laughed, sweeping a spider off his shoulder.

“Okay.”

He smiled weakly and moved away from me, toward the living room where I heard him rustle around a bit more and bid our son goodbye. I heard the front door close as Jacob came into the kitchen to gather up his lunch. He must have already gotten his breakfast, because he didn’t eat anything, just scooped some dinner leftovers into a Tupperware container and grabbed a bottle of water.

“I’ll see you at the bake sale today.”

“Okay, Mom. Wait . . . ”

“Hmm?”

I turned, and he was standing there, looking so much like his father, with the very same confused look on his face.

“Wasn’t it next week?”

“No, honey, it’s today.”

“Umm . . . Okay. Just thought . . . Never mind.”

He started toward the door, and I went back to measuring each ingredient, picking the stickbug out of my hair again.

“Damn bugs,” I grunted.

I heard Jacob pause at the door, draw in breath like he was about to say something, then keep going. He called a goodbye as he left, and I returned it, then began to beat eggs into the batter.

***

The day wore on. Peanut butter cookies, caramel poke cakes, and endless sweets crossed my counter. The whole time I hummed doggedly, forcing a smile back onto my face every time the pounding on the wall started up again. They aren’t going to take this from me, I thought as I pulled the damn stickbug out of my hair and crushing it for what must have been the fifteenth time. I’m going to be there for my son and his school, and damn them if they show up there too. Finally, it came to the part I was most looking forward to: my famous chocolate cupcakes. These, I knew, would bring in the most sales. Everyone in town loved them, and they never ate just one, not even those skinny, fake-tan bitches whose gaze rested a little too long on my pimples and thick thighs.

Two cups of sugar. Half cup of oil. One and three-quarters of a cup of flour. Two teaspoons of vanilla. Three quarters of a cup of cocoa powder. My secret weapon, one cup of hot coffee. Ingredient by ingredient, I measured, mixed, cracked and poured until the first batch was done. The howling, tapping, knocking, and pounding rose to a fever pitch around me, and countless insects burrowed deeper and deeper into my hair, tangling what I had worked so hard to smooth. I smiled so wide it hurt my face, and I clenched my hands into fists until my nails dug into my palms and drew blood. I took a deep breath and picked up the bowl of batter, pouring it into each cupcake liner, precisely halfway and not a drop more, because they tended to rise to at least half again what I poured. The blood from my hands dripped into the batter, but that was okay. The chocolate flavor was strong enough to mask it, and everyone needed some extra iron in their diet.

The noise was hurting my ears, but still I held my smile, forcing myself to think of Jason. Wait, no, Jacob. He needed his mum today. His school needed me to raise money to fund it. I had to help to make sure it was the best. My Jacob needed the best, he had to have the best. I hadn’t pushed his big-ass head out of me for him to fail before he even had a chance.

It was so loud that my vision was starting to fade. Strange how that works, isn’t it? Funny the things our brains do.

The bowl slipped out of my bloody hands and hit the edge of the pan, which flipped off the counter and hit the floor, splattering batter everywhere. I huffed, only allowing myself to express that much anger, and looked down at myself. I was covered in batter and blood and spiders and those damn stickbugs and ants and leeches, and when was I in water with leeches last? Hadn’t it been last summer, going swimming in the river with Richard and James—dammit—Jacob? I simply must not have noticed until now. No wonder I was feeling strange. I must surely have anemia. I made a mental note to go to the clinic after the bake sale before I looked back at the floor, a slick mess of cupcake liners and chocolate and blood, so much blood. Where was all that blood coming from? I shrugged, plastering the smile back on my face. Oh well. I’d just have to get cleaned up. I’d made a mess when I’d had my panic attack last week too, and getting cleaned up had made me feel so much better.

I made my way back to my bathroom, picking leeches off of me and taking off my clothes in order. Shoes, socks, cardigan, shirt, pants, bra, underwear. I dodged around grabbing hands and opened the shower door, turning both faucets as high as they would go. Might as well plug up the drain too, put some bubble bath in. Relax a little before cleaning up and starting the recipe over. I couldn’t find my loofah, though. Where was my loofah? I’d thrown out my last one, and hadn’t gotten a new one from the box. Where had I seen the loofahs . . . on top of our dresser. That must be it. Richard always did put things away in funny places. I walked into our bedroom to look on the dresser before seeing movement out of the window.

A taxi was pulling into our driveway, and I made no move to cover myself, even though I knew the driver could probably see me. He lived in this town too. What was a little nudity between neighbors? I stopped chuckling at my joke, however, when one of the doors opened, and a . . . thing stepped out. It looked like my Richard, wore the same clothes as my Richard, even sounded like Richard from what I could hear of the thing thanking the driver as it handed him the money. The driver was so clearly unaware of the danger that I wanted to run downstairs to warn him, but I knew that it would know, and the only way I could get my day back was if it was convinced that it was getting away with it.

I was calm, I reminded myself. I was perfectly calm, because today was my day to rest, relax, and do something good for my son’s school. Time was running a bit short, so I needed to get this over with quickly. I was going to have to skip that bath. Pity.

I stepped back from the window a bit and began to creep downstairs. I heard the thing rattle the doorknob and swear, daring to use my husband’s voice even in a whisper. The son of a bitch.

I crept past the door, grabbing what I needed just as the thing gave up on trying to find the spare key and began pounding on the door, calling out to me with my husband’s special names for me, in MY RICHARD’S voice. I cursed quietly, hatred welling up inside me for this thing that was trying to get inside my house to ruin MY DAY.

“Evie, come on, open the door, please? Come on, the boss sent me home early because I was worried about you. Please just let me know that you’re—”

I unlocked the door and pulled it open in one fluid motion, and stood blocking the entrance with my weapon hidden behind my back.

“Evie, thank god . . . ” It trailed off, looking me up and down. The nerve.

“Evie, why are you naked? Baby, are you okay?” Its voice was softer now, so like when Richard and I had first been dating, and he would sneak over to my house in the middle of the night to talk and cuddle and fuck like little rabbits while my parents slept in the next room over. I made a mental note to get some alone time with him later tonight.

“Eve, what’s wrong? Is something—” It yelped and jumped back as I slashed at it, because it had made a mistake. It had stepped toward me, acting so very much like my Richard, trying to comfort me.

How dare it come to MY HOUSE, pretending to be MY HUSBAND? Standing there in front of me, pretending to be one of the people I loved the most in the world . . .

It looked down at its hand, cut open along one finger, then at the knife in my hand. I stepped toward it, wanting to get this over with, and it stumbled back, holding out its hands.

“Eve, honey, what are you doing? Eve, just—just put the knife down! It’s okay, baby, just put the knife down, okay? You’ve—” its eyes, a pretty brown like Richard’s, darted here and there, looking for an escape. It hadn’t been expecting me to fight back. “You’ve got to bake the cupcakes, right? The cupcakes for the bake sale. Just put the knife down, and we can work on them together.”

Bringing up the cupcakes. Silly thing, trying to distract me. It seemed to be crying, its voice shaking in fear and disbelief, but I knew better than to humanize it.

“Eve, baby, please, just calm dow—”

I slashed it again, catching it along the throat. It cried out and clutched its throat. The taxi driver was fumbling with his seatbelt. I hadn’t noticed he was still there.

I ran at it just as the driver got out of his seatbelt and threw his door open. The stupid man knocked me out of the way just as I tried to stab it, and I caught the thing’s arm instead of its heart as the man bore me to the ground.

“What the hell are you doing, you idiot? Get—off—of—ME!” I shouted, struggling as he tried to pin my arms to the pavement. “I almost had it! If I kill it, I won’t have to worry about it anymore!”

“You’re crazy! You’re—You’re fucking crazy, lady! HELP! HELP! SOMEONE HELP!” he screamed, looking panicked.

“It’s not a person! It’s—it’s a demon! Let me up!”

The thing pretending to be my Richard had collapsed to the ground, leaning against the taxi and trying clumsily to stem the flow of blood with its jacket. Funny, I’d expected its blood to be blue or black, not red like ours. It was still looking at me with Richard’s eyes, trying to look like it was in shock. It was a bad actor. It was just trying to get in my head.

Cindy, my neighbor, came rushing out of her house, clutching a phone in her hand.

“What happened? Oh my god!” she gasped, kneeling next to the thing, touching its arm.

“No, it’s not human! Don’t trust it!” I yelled, and she looked at the bloody knife in my hand in shock.

She began to dial, and I stopped struggling. I could just explain to the police, and they’d take it away. I couldn’t wait to tell Richard about this. He’d be home in just a couple hours. He’d back me up.

***

The police came, with Cindy still pressing Richard’s jacket to the thing’s neck. They took one look at it, leaning against the car and bleeding, barely conscious, then at me, still with my knife clutched in my hand, pinned down by the driver, and screaming at them that it was a demon, and arrested me instead. Now what?

I thought for the longest time that Richard would come to save me from this horrible gray place where the creatures watch me from every corner, but today I was told that he was coming to see me, with Jacob.

I tried to tell them that Jacob shouldn’t be here, that it wasn’t right. Those things were still following me, and they’d been angry. Maybe they’d try to attach to my son, my baby boy. I couldn’t sit by and let that happen. But they insisted. I couldn’t resist. I needed to see my boys.

They sat across from me, on the other side of that glass, faces cold and anxious. I tried to move to put my hands against the glass, but I couldn’t move my hands because of the chains they’d put me in.

I tried to speak, to say something to Jacob. He looked so small and alone, staring at me with glazed eyes like he’d never seen me before. All that came out of my throat was a dry, dead rasp. Something with those chemicals they kept sneaking into my food, my water. They said that “the medicine” was all in the needles, but I knew better. I’d stopped eating just to spite them, but they said that I could have this if I did what they said, so I’d eaten that sickening crap. I threw it up into my toilet when they weren’t looking. I’d gotten good at vomiting quietly, but they’d brought me straight to this cramped little room after lunch.

“Hi, Mom,” Jacob said slowly, trying to force his face into an enthusiastic expression.

I tried to respond, but nothing came out again, so I just wrangled my mouth into a smile and inclined my head. Richard didn’t say anything. His grip on Jacob was tight. His jacket had a particularly high collar. I caught a glimpse of something white poking up from under his collar, but Jacob started talking about his school, assuring me that he had finished the chocolate cupcakes I’d been baking. He told me that our food had sold best at the bake sale. He was lying and I knew it. It never sold best, and he wouldn’t know how to bake if he’d been beaten over the head with a cookbook. Not that that would be great for teaching someone new skills anyway—but I appreciated his effort. I watched him talking, smiling like an idiot. My baby boy. It would be worth all this pain to see him safe from the creatures crawling all over the room on my side of the glass. I could take it if they didn’t get him. But then I saw one. It was a fat, flesh-colored centipede with too many legs, oozing slowly down the glass from the ceiling. I sat, focusing on Jason—Jacob—as it crawled closer and closer to the holes in the glass that allowed his voice to reach me. It found one of the holes, scrabbling through with difficulty, and flopped onto the counter on their side. I sat up a little, looking between Jacob and the centipede. Why was he still talking? Didn’t he see it?

He’d stopped smiling and was asking me something, concern on his face. I couldn’t hear him, somehow. Richard was sitting there in silence, his hand on the counter.

The centipede raised itself up slightly, tapping at his hand with its antennae, and I rasped at him, then coughed. It crawled over his wedding band and up his sleeve, the lump of cold insectile flesh disappearing under his shirt. I jerked against my chains, trying to point and say something to warn him, but he just jumped and looked at me with those wary, cold eyes, as if I was a rabid dog behind a fence. I coughed and tried to speak again, my voice failing me as I tried to stand. I heard the faint sounds of the doctor and his orderlies coming down the hall at the behest of the one outside my door. I sat down again, settling for rattling imploringly. Richard took his hand off the counter and moved away from me slightly, the lump of the centipede winding its way around his arm and over his shoulder. He pulled at his collar slightly, and I saw the bandage on his neck—and the lump of the centipede, burrowing under it.

The lump reappeared under his skin.

“Get away from my son!” I finally screamed, standing up and thrashing against the chains. “You get away from him!”

Both Jacob and the thing stumbled back from the glass, standing from where they had sat and staring at me, the thing having the gall—the audacity—to steer my son against his chest like he was protecting him, and Jacob stared at me in terror.

“Jacob, get away from him! He’s not your father! Run, Jacob!”

The doctor and orderlies burst through the door, hands grabbing, restraining, and I fought against them as best I could, trying anything to get to my son. Blood was running down my arms from where the chains on my wrists were cutting into my skin. I heard the doctor getting the syringe before I saw him, the soft sound of the needle breaking the seal of the sedative bottle reaching my ears, and I thrashed harder, screaming for Jacob to run again. He just kept standing there, staring at me with big eyes.

The doctor came with the needle then, and I pulled at the hands restraining me but they were too tight, and I was too weak. The needle found my arm, and I felt the cold, cold liquid seep into my veins, up my arm, through my neck, into my brain, the back of my eyes, carrying with it eggs, so many eggs. I stared at Jason—Jacob—and he stared back, uncomprehending. What had they done to my boy?

I collapsed, shuddering, in the arms of the orderlies, and they lifted me easily, releasing me from the chains as my vision began to fade. My feet hit the floor and they dragged me from the room, further into the nest.

***

Jacob moved away from his father as the unconscious body was dragged out of the room, watching as her feet, still twitching, disappeared from sight. Richard kept a hand on his shoulder, though his grip was light now.

“Do you think she’s figured it out yet, Dad?” Jacob asked, watching as the door beyond the glass closed.

“Of course she has, Jacob,” Richard replied, watching a spider, the same one that Eve had swept off him days before, scuttle across his arm and into Jacob’s hair. “Your mother is a smart woman.”

THE WITCHES

Madeline Ticknor

The women in my building all stop sleeping.

We become at once
exhausted and telepathic.

Some of us blame the moon
while others just blame the mold, the draft
or the building’s rusted pipes.

We begin to notice synchronicity
first in our hygiene—bathing all at once—
then in our breath.

We stop closing our doors
and going to work.

It happens without a word or warning
and with complete understanding.

We walk around in house shoes,
us women of the building, and begin to meet
on Sundays. We never say much,
just hum and read.

The men wander away and slowly dissolve
but for the few who feel comfortable with
constant candlelight. They huddle on
the first floor, bring the trash to the street.

It becomes routine.

We finally have time to drink tea, hold the mug with both hands.

We let ourselves dry out and sigh.

We play chess
and nurture our plants, watching as water sinks into the soil.

In time, we fall in love—with each other,
but mostly with ourselves.

We let each other feel exquisite and quiet
and unseen
like the whistle from a tea kettle
or the steady drip of a faucet.

A PATHOGEN’S PERCEPTION

Jessica McHugh

SHE KNEW WHICH lab doors to prop open to ensure the others wouldn’t budge.

Good Manufacturing Practice required sterile lab spaces to be equipped with airflow tracking to prevent contamination, so when certain doors were ajar the pressure differential kicked in to maintain the laboratory integrity, even while occupied. However, the volumetric airflow system experienced occasional glitches that allowed for more than one door to open in the lab space. Since the GMP group didn’t formulate any products above class two, and the labs passed OSHA re-certification after the previous year’s merger, no one kicked up a fuss about the glitches. It was understood that one risked brief imprisonment if vialing alone in the clean-room, but the temp hired to fill out the GMP team at Invitrotech wasn’t allowed to work on weekends anyway. Mandy certainly wasn’t going to be held accountable for the girl’s rebellion or the notoriously faulty sensors that trapped her inside.

It wasn’t something she planned. She wanted it clarified and underlined and written in blood on the police report that when she, Mandy Miller, came in early Saturday to vial, cap, and label the last-minute order for three thousand tubes of DNase-free water, she didn’t expect nor intend for anyone to die. Although, the notion of a freak accident intercepting the temp’s junky car before it breached the dense fog on the road to Invitrotech that morning did flash through her mind. But lots of silly things flashed through Mandy’s mind, and she didn’t have the energy to feel bad about all of them, so she kept that information to herself.

***

Vehicles dotted the lot on the north end of the building where the cell biology research and development team spent half their lives, but the rest of the lot was barren. Mandy’s husband dropped her off before his four a.m. shift in the warehouse across campus, so when the temp approached the seemingly empty building, she must have relished the freedom her ambition granted. Alone in the south wing, lighting each quadrant with her presence as she strode past cubicles and offices, she must’ve felt like she ran the place. Like she didn’t luck into being there. Like she actually went to school and earned a degree half as expensive as Mandy’s to wind up only a few rankings below a woman with a college education.

As expected, Jackson said his wife was jealous when she complained about the girl. The temp was younger and sprier. She didn’t have children or a mortgage or the kind of debt that followed people to their graves. The girl could flit about writing novels and poetry to her heart’s content while her fiance lavished her with cutesy texts she shared ad nauseum with her coworkers. She laid out a dozen perfectly logical reasons to dislike her, but Jackson’s response always came—in the form of a Gin Blossoms song she loved in college but could no longer hear without cringing. It belonged to the temp now.

Jealousy was the laziest diagnosis of one female’s distaste for another. It was also, if true, a single shriveled bloom in the bouquet of hatred she harbored for the cheerful temp. The rest, Mandy believed, were anthropological aversions, quite beyond her control, which unequivocally confirmed that something was off about the girl. She sensed it like Neolithic women sensed predators eyeing up their young.

The girl had a strange smell, like she screwed three musky men at the start of each day, and her laughter possessed a phlegmy rattle that never loosened. It didn’t appear to annoy anyone else on the team, but the wet braying sometimes caused Mandy to drift into fantasies of clearing the mucus herself. The process wouldn’t take long if she used their vacuum pump. It was an ancient juddering thing but effective as hell. Intubation would be tricky, but she doubted she’d have to use much tubing to clear the blockage. She wouldn’t even have to expense the materials if she called it a team-building exercise.

It would take more than that to loosen the temp’s silly grin. Mandy pitied the girl’s happiness like she pitied her simplicity. If the child were aware of how immensely her superior disliked her, she didn’t show it. She remained pleasant and helpful and asked Mandy about her children like she wasn’t using the job as research for the trash novel she’d write in a month and publish herself. She also didn’t recognize that Invitrotech’s offer to bring her on full-time was motivated by frugality, not her worth to the company. People without degrees were cheaper. They took more abuse and held on tighter to the gifts the middle class bestowed on them. The girl wasn’t unique. She was entry level trash that hung on longer than her counterparts and should be proud for her longevity. For Christ’s sake, the girl’s last job was in a cabinet store, and now she was resuspending PCR primers at one of the top GMP-certified molecular diagnostics facilities in the state. However frightening for the scientific community at large, it only made sense when Mandy decided the girl had to be simple. How else could she think she belonged there? How could she look past her superior’s persistent glower and continue writing verses on clean-room paper while waiting for potassium chloride to dissolve? How much longer could she go on editing her stories during bathroom breaks, taking long lunches at diners, and streaming episodes of America’s Next Top Model at her desk instead of composing formulation documents without the other team members knowing?

The answer? Six months and a real job offer. That’s when Mandy finally took her concerns to the GMP project manager. She’d known Jill Parsons for over fifteen years, during which they’d socialized outside of work a total of fifteen times, only at the corporate holiday party. There was no hope in getting her to fire the girl outright. Jill hired the aspiring writer to give the manufacturing group the shot in the arm it desperately needed after the previous year’s merger trimmed three members from the team, and it had worked. Even Mandy couldn’t deny the increase in productivity. But rules were there for a reason, productivity or not, and the temp was nothing if not a habitual rule-breaker.

Jill wrote down every complaint verbatim, thanked Mandy for bringing the matter to her attention, and asked her if she wouldn’t mind sending the girl her way.

“Oh please, Jill, I don’t mind at all.” She saluted as if issued a directive from the President of the United States and hurried off to fetch the grinning simpleton from her extended coffee break in the lounge.

“Do you know what she wants?” the girl asked, following Mandy closely.

“Couldn’t tell ya.”

“Are employee evaluations this week?”

“If it were up to me, we’d have them every week,” Mandy grumbled, and the girl giggled the way girls like her always giggle: head thrown back, teeth glistening, everyone in a one-mile radius instantly entranced.

“Wait. Is this for my birthday next week?”

“I doubt it. How old are you turning anyway? Twenty-one?”

She blasted the saccharine giggle again. “I wish! Gosh, I’d be fifteen years younger in a second if I could.”

Mandy stopped in her tracks, facing the girl, who snapped her fingers and added, “Like that!”

“You’re turning thirty-six?”

“Uh huh.”

“You’re only four years younger than me?”

She shrugged. “Am I? Are you a Scorpio too?”

Mandy grunted and continued down the hall to Jill’s office. If possible, she hated the grown-ass giggling woman even more.

The door was closed during the meeting, but no one in the Invitrotech campus could mistake the temp for a church mouse. Even during reprimand, her boisterous voice lilted and danced through the door and around the corner where Mandy listened, seething. The conversation was all giggles and Gin Blossoms as Jill explained to the temp the importance of perception.

“Whether you’re doing these things or not, someone thinks you are. That’s the real issue here.”

No it is fucking not.

“I thought you said I could write during my breaks,” said the temp.

“You can. You have forty-five minutes of personal time each shift.”

“Okay . . . but that’s the only time I’ve been writing now.”

No it fucking isn’t.

“Just during my breaks.”

And extra-long visits to the crapper.

“Maybe you could put up a sign to let people know you’re on a break,” Jill suggested. “That might help with the negative perception. Everything is perception.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea! Yes, of course, I’ll do whatever it takes.”

The temp’s shit-eating grin had an adhesive odor that honeycombed Mandy’s sinuses and prevented her from breathing clear the rest of the day. The reeking clog lasted into the next day, when Jill received an emergency order—the first since the merger—and requested the GMP group come in on Sunday to fulfill the order. While Mandy was replying, she noticed the temp’s email was included, and her stomach roiled with dread. Was the girl so simple she’d forget temps aren’t allowed to work overtime?

Of course she fucking was.

Or maybe filling three thousand vials of water on her own was her means for creating a positive perception. Either way, it made Mandy sick knowing they’d had the same idea. More so when she realized the temp had gotten the head of quality control to double check the materials and issue line clearance the night before when Mandy planned to skip the step altogether. The little brat had even racked up more than a thousand tubes in autoclaved storage boxes.

Mandy left the racks and most of the pulled materials on the labeling room bench and rolled the rest into the alcove outside the clean-room. She donned her polypropylene jumpsuit slowly, methodical in each tug and cinch—the antithesis of the girl’s process. The temp took as little time as possible to suit up, whining through chuckles about the suffocating material before she’d even finished tying off her boot covers. The face mask was the step she dragged out, sometimes not even knotting the mask strings securely. It was, Mandy suspected, a tactic the girl employed to force her out of the oppressive clean-room into the cool forgiving alcove.

Since she was out there anyway, why not remove her mask and blot her sweaty face? With her wedding coming up, she really couldn’t risk breaking out. And while she was at it, why not unzip the jumpsuit and air out a bit while her coworker continued manually pipetting one thousand vials of Tween® 20? And hey, why not read another sappy text message from her boyfriend too? She had all the time in the world, didn’t she? Even though she wasn’t much younger than Mandy, the grown-up girl had all the time in the world.

Mandy had thought about writing a book once—maybe more than once—and believed she still could. The kids were older now, and Jackson had promised to cut down on “boys’ nights out.” He could watch them. She could write. She had been good at it in college. She was good at a lot of things.

***

Officer Bracken handed Mandy a cup of tea and gently urged her to talk about the morning of the murder.

“I would never hurt anyone.”

“We know that, Mrs. Miller.”

“She and I did this stuff all the time. Played around, joked about trapping each other in the labs.”

He squinted. “So you were friends?”

Jill had documented proof that Mandy and the temp weren’t friends. And June, Billie, and John would confirm as much when asked, so lying wouldn’t do any good. The negative perception was already out there.

“No, but you need to be friendly when you’re in there,” she said. “You’d go crazy otherwise. She was only a few hundred in, I think. The automatic pipette malfunctioned, and she was getting ready to come out to find another when I walked by the lab.”

“And what were you doing there?”

“The same thing as her, but earlier. I was taking a break from vialing to label in the annex when I realized her car was in the parking lot.”

“Is that where you normally label?”

Mandy lowered her head. Rules existed for a reason, and she ignored them because the reception was better in the annex and she could listen to her Savage Garden album without interruption. “No. And I didn’t get clearance for the room either. I know it’s against protocol, but please don’t tell Jill. We might lose OSHA certification if this gets out.”

“I’m afraid it’s already out, Mrs. Miller, and OSHA’s the least of your concerns.”

Mandy nodded. And smiled. She giggled like she did the morning Jackson proposed, as the Gin Blossoms warbled “Follow You Down” from the semi-busted speakers of her scuffed Sanyo boombox. She hummed it as the officer crouched at her side.

“You knew she was severely claustrophobic, didn’t you, Mrs. Miller?”

Mandy cracked her neck. “I knew her fiancé had to text her every half hour to validate her existence.”

***

The temp’s cell phone was playing a ridiculous Muppet movie song when Mandy stepped onto the sticky mat in the labeling room that morning. Mandy groaned at how dutiful the fiancé was to be at it this early, reassuring his paramour how amazing she was, how strong, how beautiful! But the girl had to settle for being terrible, weak, and ugly that morning because she obviously couldn’t hear her phone over the clean-room’s blasting filter hood. She must’ve left it in the pocket of her hoodie in the alcove again.

A pass-through window containing a spray bottle of isopropyl alcohol and a cordless phone connected the labeling room to the clean-room, through which Mandy could see the temp’s head bowed and her arm moving back and forth. Maybe she wasn’t vialing to help the team after all. Maybe she was in there writing about how hard it was to be locked up, yet free.

Hey Jealousy, I’ll follow you down . . .

The Scorpio didn’t notice her supervisor until she was in the alcove. She saw her by chance out the corner of her eye and turned with a smile so large and terrible that Mandy actually gagged. She slapped a purple nitrile hand to her mouth and swallowed the bile. It tasted like orange juice and scorched her throat as she glared at the girl heading for the door. She finally heard her phone singing, and her grin tested the limits of her face with such unnatural grotesquerie that the acidic pulp rose again.

Mandy had only to nudge the alcove door to stop the temp from exiting the clean-room, which she did with a smirk. The temp tugged on the door and laughed nervously. And clearly. The phlegm was gone, not even one string of mucus rattling in the girl’s throat as she brayed and tugged and the panic burrowed deep into the places behind her gaping eyes. She watched in horror as Mandy ripped off her blue shoe cover and wedged it under the door.

***

“It happened sometimes,” she told the officer. “Those booties get snagged on the door and pop right off, and you don’t even realize it till you’re on the sticky mat. Ask anyone. And with the sensors acting up . . . it was a real ‘when it rains, it pours’ moment.”

It was true there was no way of knowing when the sensors would malfunction; they just did. And yes, there were decisions Mandy could’ve made to keep the girl alive. She didn’t have to open the pass-through door in the labeling room so the temp wouldn’t be able to reach the phone from her side, but it didn’t much matter. The pressure differential was glitching anyway, and both women were locked inside. There was nothing Mandy could do. The system was there for the employees’ safety. Safety was everything, and everything was perception.

The glitches weren’t as well documented as Mandy’s distaste for her coworker, but they cushioned her fall. Even with the graphic recounting of the girl’s screams and how she beat her fists to sopping bone-meal trying to break the glass, Mandy refused to accept any fault. There were too many variables to consider, too many broken rules beyond her ability to repair.

But she didn’t have to accept the fault for it to rip the prettiest pieces out of her life, like the panicked temp dug chunks out of her face. How the police and media salivated as they gathered the girl’s shards and slop into a story of a woman so possessed by envy she’d trap her claustrophobic coworker in a clean-room and watch her tear herself apart.

It was a tale easily digested and condemned, and Mandy believed it would be easily forgotten as well. Even with the sensationalism and conjecture, there was nothing novel about a terrible accident between terrible women. The world would be as lazy as Jackson, call her a jealous bitch, and move on.

She was fine with that. Locked up, yet free, she had all the time in the world now. She could breathe there. She could even listen to Savage Garden. And maybe she could finally write that book.

LAUGHTER

Diana Braskich

1

HER GREATEST ASSET was her neutral expression. It betrayed nothing. She had spent her youth tilting at windmills. A righteous fury had burned her from both ends, though it was all for naught, as even the strongest fires eventually fall to ashes.

The neutral expression was best.

She could accomplish small things with an expression. A well-timed eye roll was powerful, but generally accomplished little. It might cause a momentary hesitation, or a brief blush from the offender. Assuming he was looking.

A cold-eyed stare could stop them in their tracks, but she couldn’t really alter their trajectory. Once they regained their step, her judgement meant little to them.

And if they were not within her sight, she could do nothing at all.

She’d worked at the firm for twenty years. Started in the secretarial pool, and slowly ascended to the heights of administrative glory: personal secretary to Mr. Brix, the company founder. When she started the job, they came at her like they came at all the girls. The winks, the innuendos, the “harmless” jokes. Hovering above her desk when they spoke to her; perfectly arranged so she both fell in their shadow and had to look up from her subordinate perch to meet their eyes.

Her husband was a good man; a kind man. He knew the type of men she worked for, and how it weighed upon her. If he had a fault, it was his expectation that she react as he would.

Like a man.

When she would avert her eyes, and go about her business, her husband would tilt at windmills of his own. He wanted her to quit. To file a complaint. To fight back.

She would have none of it. It was a steady job, with good pay. But it was more; it was also a battle of wills.

She would not let them see her break.

Eventually, the harassment stopped. She got older. And as she aged, the lower ranks filled with younger, fresher prey.

Not everyone saw what she saw. To some, the jokes really did seem harmless, the innuendos flattering, the wandering hands and roving eyes at best playful, at worse, something that could be dodged. The men and women all around her turned their eyes aside and said nothing, just as she did. Neutral expressions were abundant.

2

One day a new intern joined the company. Young, smart, idealistic. And brave. So brave. The intern’s mask was imperfect; she had not mastered neutrality. So, they’d joke, and she’d smile politely. They’d see the fire in her eyes.

And then they would laugh.

3

When the secretary was young, she’d had a laughing father. A jovial man beloved by all, admired for his charm and his sense of humor. Did she know how lucky she was to have him as her dad?

Her father was the one who taught her about windmills. All her tilting was so humorous. When she was very young, she tilted to get the laugh. It was like affection.

When she was older, she tilted to maintain a sense of self. She could not change the direction of the blades, or slow the pace of their rotation, but the windmills were wrong, and to do nothing was a sin. So, she’d tilt. She’d stand against.

But eventually, she could stand no more.

Her father would come in the night, after her mother went to bed. The secretary, then just a girl, would watch under her door. When the hall light fell dark, her door would come open, and her father would come in. When all was done, he would laugh.

Her father always laughed.

4

The intern did not last at the company long. This was not unusual. Many employees over the years had tired of her boss’s incessant perversion. Neutrality wasn’t for everyone.

The last day the secretary saw her, the intern was on her way to dinner with Mr. Brix and some junior partners. As they were leaving, the jokes were particularly predatory. The intern, eyes always so ablaze, looked down. She did not meet their eyes.

Her downcast gaze stopped the secretary in her tracks. For the first time, the secretary truly saw the younger woman before her, and in that moment, she truly saw herself. A dying flame and one long-since extinguished, briefly united beneath the crushing weight of cruelty.

And suddenly the secretary was afraid. She remembered when her own eyes had first become downcast, and she feared for the suddenly timid intern.

She called the intern back, and met the young woman’s eye. She squeezed her hand briefly while she handed her the next day’s itinerary. She asked the intern if she was okay, and tried desperately to convey her concern without arousing suspicion amongst the men.

But she’d worn her mask too long and too well, and the intern, hearing only politeness, laughed falsely and said she was fine. She turned away. The secretary watched her the length of the hall, all the way to the elevator. She saw her younger self, her truer self, moving out of reach. The hall was dimly lit, the elevator bright. She locked eyes with the intern as the doors slid shut, and when the light winked out, she saw not an elevator close, but a hallway falling dark and a bedroom door yawning open.

The intern never came to the office again.

5

Previously, when women quit without notice, the secretary had not questioned it. She assumed that they had simply had enough.

It was different with the intern. Now that she had seen the intern in herself, she also saw her father in her boss. She saw the complacency and the ignorance of the elders of her childhood in her own reflection.

The intern was not answering the phone.

From the office, the secretary could hear Mr. Brix laughing.

6

The thing about the powerful is that if they stay powerful long enough, they tend to forget that the meek are even there.

A week later, Mr. Brix and the same junior partners were celebrating the closing of an important deal. Raucous laughter echoed from the office.

Long trained to be attuned to her boss’s every need, the secretary kept an ear to their drunken conversation. It was as graphic and insulting as it ever was, and their words began to ring in the secretary’s ears.

For the first time in her tenure, the secretary felt real anger. She shot up from her desk and grabbed her coat, but habit held her. One did not just get up and leave. She must be dismissed. She headed towards his office.

When she came around the door, the TV was the first thing she saw. It filled her eye and froze her heart. The intern was on the screen. The bruised and broken intern was on the screen, and she was screaming.

The boss on the screen shouted instructions while one junior manager held her still and the other held the camera. The trio in the office laughed.

The secretary stepped back behind the door. They hadn’t seen her. She sat back down at her desk. She waited ten minutes, then buzzed his office, her heart pounding in her chest. “Do you need anything else, Mr. Brix?”

Laughter in the background. “No, you may go.

But she didn’t go.

7

She calmly went into the bathroom and washed her hands in the burning hot water. She stared into her reflection, and did not notice the water scalding her hands, or when her blood began to swirl down the drain as well.

The video played in her mind, but this time she was in it. She sat before the intern the entire time, her face turned resolutely away. When they were done with the intern the video in her mind would rewind, and the junior secretary from two years ago replaced her. They broke her too, but the secretary was still there. She still looked away.

Then the cleaning lady from four years ago. The legal assistant from before that. Another before that. The secretary always looked away.

And suddenly, she was her mother, walking down a darkened hall, thirty years in the past. Hearing nothing. Seeing nothing.

The secretary put her fist through the mirror.

8

When the junior managers left, she returned to her desk. She found a letter opener.

Her boss was sitting at his desk, the TV now dark and silent.

“Why Leora, I thought you’d gone home!”

“I did sir. I forgot something.”

He looked back down at his desk, no longer interested. She came up behind him, quietly. Her face was blank.

When the blade touched his throat, her eyes filled with fire. When then blood cascaded down, she said not a word.

No sound escaped her.

Then the bloody and broken executive fell to the floor, and the secretary laughed.

But her laughter sounds like screaming.

THE BLACK WALLPAPER

Cynthia Pelayo

“I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.”

—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

ERIC AND I rarely get away from the city. The city has its hold on us. Teeth clenched in the meat of our necks and sharp claws dug into our shoulders.

He had been asking for months, perhaps even years it seemed, for us to get away. I couldn’t. First there was school. Then there was graduate school. Then there was work. And then, the blurred line between home life and work life blended into a watery existence where both became one.

I couldn’t take time away from either because no matter where I turned there was someone coming to me with a request, a need for help, a chore, or just more work. Everything and everyone demanding more of me than I could ever provide. I was always needed. By someone. By something. And I was very tired.

“The Congress Plaza Hotel?” I questioned when we arrived.

“It’s just for the night, and come on, you made vice president. We have to celebrate.”

Being promoted to vice president had been such a long time coming, such a grueling process that I didn’t even want to celebrate. I only wanted to sleep.

“We could have celebrated at home, with dinner . . . ” I said.

“You mean you behind the glow of a laptop screen? People have to learn to live without you. We have our lives to live. Plus, I’d like kids someday, you know?”

I gave Eric a look that said not now.

No one could live without me.

On the drive here, my phone had vibrated countless times. There were calls, voice messages, text messages, and alerts from various social media accounts. Everyone seemed to be looking for me.

“Don’t answer,” Eric said as he saw me reaching for my phone. “If there’s any day anyone could wait, it’s today. Hey,” he said just as we parked the car and waited for the valet. “Any thoughts on the wallpaper in that room?”

I had many thoughts on the wallpaper in that room. I was happy, at least, that I was able to find a new wallpaper I liked for that room. The old wallpaper had been horrible. Yellow. I had never seen such horrible paper in my life.

“No,” I answered. I didn’t want to talk about the wallpaper. Not now at least.

He laughed at me, and I ignored him. “You were the one that wanted to change it.”

I handed the valet the keys and just as we reached the revolving doors of the hotel Eric sucked in some air through his front teeth, and stopped right before the revolving doors. “I forgot my phone.”

“Is the reservation under our name? I’ll just check us in.”

“You don’t need to do that. You don’t have to take care of everything and everyone.”

He was being especially nice and helpful. This was very unlike him. “I’ll check us in. Meet you at the bar?”

“Yes,” he nodded, and I walked through the revolving door, and then he was gone.

The reservation was in my name, and I laughed to myself because even in this small surprise gesture to do something nice for me, Eric felt the need to involve me at the planning stage.

“Just one night?” the woman asked.

“That’s all I need,” I answered.

I made a right, passing the large lobby, and moved toward the bar, which was so dated it now seemed modern in a weird way, forced vintage. Visiting the bar at The Congress Plaza Hotel was an outing most Chicagoans had participated in at one point or another. Eric and I had visited the hotel’s adjoining bar a few times in the past, to escape the biting cold after viewing New Year’s Eve fireworks set across the sky at Navy Pier.

It wasn’t a premier or modern hotel, but it was a massive hotel, with historical significance situated along Michigan Avenue. It was old. It was old Chicago, and in many ways it represented me, us, our work ethic and the hold this city held over us. That’s what we Chicagoans did: We worked hard. We endured time. And we did what sometimes seemed like the impossible.

This hotel opened in 1893 and originally featured cobbled streets, gaslights and horse drawn carriages. I remembered that from when I was an undergraduate, working full time and taking mostly afternoon and night classes so I could work during the day, paying my way through college. Most of my peers were on scholarships or their parents were paying for their schooling. I didn’t have either luxury. One of my journalism professors worked as a walking tour guide, and one day she brought us out here to the hotel, to tell us about its structural and colorful history. I suppose this hotel had been a part of me for a very long time, and I suppose it would always be.

I took a seat at the bar. The bartender placed a cardboard coaster on the copper top counter in front of me. The image on the coaster was that of the hotel, two towers linked together by a smaller building in the center.

I ordered an old fashioned.

“Preference of whiskey?”

I had once read that in an 1882 article from the Chicago Daily Tribune, a Chicago bartender said that the most popular of the in-vogue old-fashioned cocktails were made with whiskey.

I looked at the shelf behind him. “Death’s door.” It seemed the fitting whiskey given the occasion and the place.

I placed my phone on the counter. My mother had called three times since I entered the hotel. My brother six. I had several new text messages, all of which I ignored. I wasn’t going to read any of them. There was still no message from Eric.

I turned to the photos in my phone and the first had been a collection of wallpaper swatches against the wall in that room.

“This paper looks vicious,” I had said to myself when I was comparing patterns.

“How can paper look vicious?” Eric had asked.

“Some things have an influence on you,” I answered.

That night Eric told me to go to sleep early, that he would help take care of things. Instead he fell asleep on the sofa. I stayed up all night preparing that room. The next day I lead three conference calls at work. Later that next night when I got home, I went to the basement where I kept my art supplies, acrylics and charcoals, canvas and pencils. I screamed because I wanted to paint but no longer knew how. Work, home, life had taken whatever creative energy I thought I had.

My drink was ready and then it was gone. Another arrived. The sun outside had set and the room filled. They were mostly tourists from out of town, surrounding suburbs, and nearby states who hated the city yet came here to play.

A group of about twenty people stood just near the entrance of the bar, huddled around a figure with a curled mustache, dressed all in black.

“Sometimes, ladies and gentlemen,” the man in black projected a radio announcers voice that filled the bar “you will see that very light in the corner flicker.”

The bartender noticed my look of curiosity. “Ghost tour,” he said as he wiped the bar top with a white cloth. “Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”

I had done one of those tours before. A long time ago. It was just another thing that felt like the Chicago thing to do.

The tour guide continued. “There’s very little connection to Al Capone and the hotel. The most I have been able to tie to him is that there are indications a phone call was made from the lobby of the hotel to his home in Florida just moments after the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

I glanced back at my phone. Now a call from my car dealership. I sighed. My car was more than overdue for an oil change. Yet another thing to do I didn’t have time for.

“You look tired,” the bartender said.

“I am.” I had probably slept four hours that night before and probably less than that the night before that.

“Kids keeping you up late?”

“Everything’s keeping me up late,” I said.

“Did H.H. Holmes ever stay here?” a woman wearing a Chicago Cubs jersey asked a little too eagerly. The bartender and I looked at each other and tried not to laugh. Tourists liked that about Chicago; they had an almost fervent need to know each and every gory detail of crimes from the past. Yet, crimes that occurred in the present repulsed them so that they flung hateful words about the city every time it made the news. Crimes of this city’s past were once crimes of the present.

Someone from the ghost tour group had motioned to the bartender and in minutes he was pouring beer into pint glasses.

“Before we make our way to the site of the Eastland Disaster at the Chicago River, three more horrifying things to note about this hotel.” The tour guide held out his left hand, holding up one finger. “First: The Florentine Room. There are tons of stories about whispers and phantom gunshots being heard from this ballroom when no one is there. One night-security guard quit on his first day when he heard music coming from this room, and no one was inside.

“Second: Another ballroom, the Gold Room, what I’ve mostly recorded about this room is a general feeling of unease. There have been accounts of people saying they heard a woman whisper into their ear. I can confirm that I experienced the same thing during one of my paranormal team’s investigations.”

“What does she say?” a teenage girl with blue-black hair asked.

“It’s just this faint female whisper and it’s difficult to make out what she’s saying.”

She’s probably begging people to leave her alone, I thought.

“Finally, the Shadow Guy. Some people think it’s the ghost of Captain Lou Ostheim, a Spanish American War veteran who shot himself in the hotel in 1900 after waking up from a nightmare. A lot of guests have reported seeing this shadowy figure. One guard even told me that he chased it up to the rooftop, thinking it was a person before realizing what it was. There have been many other suicides here.”

I tapped the glass on my phone. Still nothing from Eric. Once again I turned to the photos. I settled on the picture of the wallpaper I had chosen for that room. “It has a sort of sub pattern,” I remembered telling Eric as I held the paper to the light. “It’s a different shade here, and here.” I pointed out the lace pattern within the paper, but he didn’t looked up once from his phone.

“Hey, my mom’s having a birthday party for my dad tomorrow,” he said. “Can you pick up a cake after work?”

“Really, Eric? You’re telling me now? How many times have I told you I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow?”

His face was blank.

“I guess I’ll take myself to the doctor.”

That same day, I purchased a car, since I could no longer depend on him.

My phone rattled on the counter.

“You’re popular,” the bartender said.

It was my mother calling again. She left a voice message I wouldn’t check. Nearly every voice message I had in recent memory came from my mother. In nearly each message she ended with telling me I needed to sleep more, eat better, take care of myself. However, she never told me how.

I returned to the picture of the wallpaper. I remember how it looked like the first time I brought it into that room. The color. The embellishments. It’s like that paper was made specifically for our house, and that room.

“Alright,” the tour guide announced. “Make sure you settle up your tabs and let’s be off.”

A few members of the tour made their way back to the bar. The bartender printed up totals and handed out bills.

The tour guide was a little more than a quarter way through with his beer when an older gentleman in a blue polo asked, “What about the sealed room?”

A few heads turned, seeking whatever gruesome find he could provide. “I noticed there were a few young ones in the audience. I usually save that one for adult only shows, but,” he searched nearby making sure there were no children in hearing distance.

“None seem to be listening.” He knocked back the rest of his beer and set it on the counter.

“There’s stories of a room being so haunted it had to be sealed off. Some say it was room 666, and actually, there really is an office where the number room 666 should be, but it’s not numbered that, of course. There’s also one other Chicago ghost tour guide, my old boss, who claims that Stephen King’s 1408 is based off of a room here at the hotel, but that’s not true. King never mentioned any specific room in this or any hotel in the introduction of 1408.”

The old man shook his head. “No, that’s not the one I’m thinking of.” The old man looked behind the tour guide and waved over to a woman in a bright peach blouse. She was holding a bag from the gift shop at the Art Institute of Chicago, multicolored scarves and art books peeking out from the top of the bag.

“Dear, what was that one we were told about? On the thirteenth floor . . . ?”

I turned to the bartender and took another sip from my old fashioned. He was scanning a credit card and shaking his head, again, trying not to laugh.

“No, it was the twelfth floor,” the woman said.

The tour guide drew in a deep breath. “Yeah,” he hesitated. The base of his radio announcer’s voice faded. His participants now crowded around him, awaiting a tale he seemed hesitant to share.

“The Congress Plaza used to house immigrants and refugees from around World War II. In 1939, forty-three-year-old Adele Langer of Czech-Jewish descent had been staying at the hotel with her two sons, Jan Misha and Karel Tommy. Her husband wasn’t there, since his travels had been delayed. Adele and her children were in the country on a six-month visa, which was scheduled to expire. Adele grew nervous. Her husband wasn’t there. The threat of deportation hung over her. She was in a foreign country with her two small children, and she was alone. She grew depressed. Worried. Overwhelmed.

“On August 4th of that year, she took her children to the zoo for the day. They returned to their room on the twelfth floor. There, she called her children over to a window. She opened it. She pushed them both out. Then, she jumped out of the window. What’s worse is right after their deaths, an unopened letter was found awaiting the family’s response. They had been offered permanent refugee status in Canada.”

“Maybe that’s the horrible sealed off room people talk about,” the woman said.

The tour guide agreed and then rushed his group off to their next destination. To another location of murder and mayhem. This city was host to many.

My phone vibrated. The blue screen alerting.

“I’m at the room. Where are you?”

I rolled my eyes and silently cursed Eric. Like always he had completely ignored or just entirely forgotten what I had said.

“Told you I’d meet you at the bar.”

“Sorry. Coming.”

“No, Fine. Wait there,” I responded.

After walking past the lobby, going through the gilded elevator and down a long corridor, I met Eric in our room on the eleventh floor. The front desk had given him a keycard. He was seated on the bed. The room was furnished no worse than inharmonious.

“Welcome to a Lakeview King Room.” He took my bag and set it down. “Where you have a king-sized bed, decorative round table, two chairs, and a desk where I hope you will not be working from all night.”

“Where’d the valet park the car?” I removed my jacket and hung it in the closet. “Back at our house?”

“The car was blocked in. An accident or something. Didn’t you hear the sirens?”

“No,” I sat down on the bed and allowed myself to fall back against the stiff mattress. My entire body ached. “I’m so tired.”

“You work too hard.”

“You say that like I have a choice. I have to work. There’s the house, and every single repair that seems to come up at the most inconvenient time. My student loans. My credit card debt. My car. My mom’s car . . . ”

“I know you like taking care of them…”

“Like taking care of them? I have to take care of them. If I let my brothers take care of them both my blind father and diabetic mother would be near death.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe you should go back to painting. You were happier when you were painting.”

I laughed. “Find me the time to paint.” I was so mad I wanted to cry, but didn’t. I had learned to hold it in until it burned.

I lay my arm across my eyes. That did a decent job of blocking out the light. The lighting in the room was that dim.

“How was the bar?”

“Fine. Old fashioneds and entertainment.” I moved my arm away and sat up. “Dammit.” I remembered an email I owed my boss.

“Entertainment?”

I dug my laptop out of my bag and lay it on the desk.

“Some ghost tour came into the lobby and then the bar. Don’t you remember? We did one of those, geez, ages ago. I think we were still dating.”

“I don’t remember,” he said.

Eric had selective memory. He only remembered what he wanted to.

“Don’t you remember? We did one with my brother and that one girlfriend of his.”

“Sorry,” he shrugged. “Anything interesting you hear from the tour?”

“Just classic Chicago hauntings, and thank goodness we’re not staying on the twelfth floor,” I said sarcastically, “because there’s some godawful room that’s sealed off.”

“Do you hear that?” he said.

“No.” I was typing away at my keyboard, and my phone continued to vibrate. “I can’t believe I forgot about this stupid project they assigned me to. Like I don’t already have a ton of projects at work. How am I supposed to get any of this done? When am I supposed to sleep? Eat? Live? It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s getting louder.” Eric stood up, and at the window he pulled back the curtains. The room faced a brick wall.

“Still more sirens,” he said.

“It’s Friday night in Chicago. What’d you expect?”

I yawned and then looked at myself in the mirror. Exhaustion made it so that I no longer recognized myself.

“How many hours of sleep did you get last night?”

“Barely four. My fitness tracker told me that this morning.”

“I never thanked you,” he said. “For putting up that wallpaper. I know I should have done it . . . ”

“It’s up. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“What do you think? Are you happy with it? It’s black wallpaper.”

There were things in that wallpaper nobody but me knew, or would ever know. “It’s wallpaper.”

I hit send on the email and exhaled. “I think I actually have a few minutes to breathe.”

“I got you a present,” he said.

Eric never got me presents. Valentine’s Day. Anniversaries. Never. He said what was the point when we got things for each other all of the time. By things I think he meant that huge house we bought that I wound up rehabbing by myself.

“I got you a few of those fizzy bath things from that place you love so much,” he dangled the bag in front of my face.

I looked inside. “Lavender bath bombs. Wow. It’s like you’re forcing me to relax.” I wish he had done this before, things like this. It would have made things much better if he had helped. Things could have been different.

“Yes, and I’m serious. You do too much. You really need to relax.”

I couldn’t relax. Not now. Not ever. “Who’s going to live my life if I don’t live it?” I felt a sting behind my eyes. I blinked back tears. I wasn’t going to allow myself to cry.

“It’s okay if you can’t do everything. Work can wait. Your parents. The house. Maybe you just need to focus on you for a little bit.”

My phone continued vibrating. “I can’t deal with this anymore.”

“Just turn it off.”

For the first time in a long time I did just that. I reached for my phone and I turned it off. I put it in my bag and promised to never look at it again.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“It’s just . . . fine. I’ll be fine,” I lied. “I got promoted. I should be happy, but how long did I have to wait to get promoted? There are people ten, fifteen years younger than me that have made vice president, that are better daughters, sisters wives, freelance artists, mothers . . . ”

“You can be all of those things,” Eric said.

I thought of that undulating wallpaper in the moonlight and how alone I felt. How physically exhausted and in pain I felt. I was none of those things that Eric said, and I would never be. No matter how hard I worked. No matter what I did I was not as successful as I needed to be, wanted to be. I was not enough for everything I needed to do.

“I have a studio in the basement I haven’t touched since we bought the house.”

“But the wallpaper . . . ”

“The wallpaper stains everything it touches. My clothes are stained. My hands. I’ll never be the same, because I can’t sleep.”

I stood up and felt my body scream in pain. “I’m just mad. I thought I’d have more right now. I’d have more together, and I feel like nothing’s good enough. Like I’m not enough. No matter how hard I work. No matter what I do. I’ll never be good enough, and I’m just so tired, and sleep’s just getting in the way of me doing all that I need to do . . . Shit . . . ”

“What?” he asked.

“Did we lock the doors to the house?”

“I don’t think that matters right now,” he said.

My computer pinged.

“Don’t answer it. Your boss can wait. Go, take a bath,” he opened the door to the bathroom. “This is your time to finally relax.”

In the bathroom, I started the water running. I set the temperature as hot as would be tolerable. My body ached. My head, arms, shoulders, hips, feet, everything ached this intense heavy ache as if my body had been taken apart and put back together, but just slightly off.

“You sure you don’t hear that? That noise. It’s driving me nuts,” Eric shouted from the other room.

“I’m sure it’ll stop soon. Just turn the TV on or something. Ignore it.”

When the water had reached a comfortable level, I dropped the bath bomb in the water. The packed ball of Epsom salt, essential oil of lavender and light purple coloring fizzed, making this silent, soft hiss. I took my clothes off and set them on top of the shelf. Beside the tub I set my toiletry bag. My feet touched the water and it was hot, but satisfactory. I allowed my body to sink into the tub.

My muscles tensed.

It was as if I was physically incapable of relaxing. Even surrounded by steaming hot water in calming oils every fiber within me refused to be at ease.

“Tell me about that sealed-off room? What’s so horrible about it?”

“Some mother went mad. Pushed her children out the window and then committed suicide. She was alone. Depressed. No one seemed to help her when she needed help the most.”

“What do you think about kids?” Eric said just outside the door.

“I think that I’ll be the one taking care of them, just like I take care of everything else and everyone else. Plus, I barely sleep now. I’ll never sleep.”

“You act like I don’t help out.”

“You do, sometimes. I mean . . . ” I splashed some water on my face. “I just don’t know. How can we be parents? We just bought that house…”

“The house is huge. That room is perfect for kids.”

“When will I ever sleep?”

“We’ll take turns,” he said.

I laughed. I laughed so hard I knew it hurt him. I wanted to hurt him. “Take turns? You say that, but that’s not what you did. Did you?”

He didn’t answer my question.

“Do you hear the sirens?” His voice sounded distant.

I heard them now.

“Eric, are they getting closer?”

He remained silent.

Maybe he had fallen asleep.

Just like Eric, to tell me that he cared, that he would help, just like he told me he would help with the wallpaper and he didn’t. I put up the wallpaper in the nursery all by myself. When we brought the baby home, I’m the one who stayed up all night with the baby, feeding and changing. I was the one who would go to work all day on three hours of sleep, or less, and do it all over again, feeding and changing, and then there was the wallpaper.

I was tired.

I was angry.

I was in pain.

That pattern haunted me. When I tried to pull the wallpaper off and it wouldn’t break away, that’s when I laid the baby down in its crib, went downstairs and got a lighter.

There was a pound on the door to the room.

I sat up straight in the bathtub.

“Eric, did you hear that?”

I reached for a towel, but I knew it was too late. I remained in the tub.

“Do you smell that?” I heard him say.

I did. It smelled like something burning.

In the next room a baby wailed.

There was another series of knocks at the door. Pounding. This time more urgent.

“Eric,” I whispered, but I knew he wasn’t there.

There were more knocks at the door, as if two people were banging on the surface. Then a man’s voice outside the door called my name. “If you don’t open the door we’re coming in!”

I heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie just outside. “Yeah, she’s holed up in a hotel room. We’ll get her out.”

I reached for my toiletry bag and leaned back against the tub. I removed the straight razor blade from its casing. There was another series of pounds. A warning that they had a keycard and would be entering. I would be arrested.

My name being called. Always my name being called. Always someone looking for me to do something for them.

Eric and this hotel. This hotel and this city. This city and me. All part of some tragedy. Some great Chicago fire.

I drew the blade first across my right wrist, digging deep into the flesh, feeling the tiny bones in my wrist like thin chicken wing bones snapping. Then the pop of my veins as I submerged my hand under the water. A spray of red. I repeated this to my left wrist and closed my eyes.

I listened as the baby cried.

I listened to the sirens that were awaiting me not only outside of the hotel room, but were now approaching my house. Now engulfed in flames.

My husband asleep on the sofa in front of the TV, ten sleeping pills I slipped into his afternoon coffee. The wallpaper in the nursery, burning blacker and curling back on itself. The baby, just weeks old, screaming in its crib for me, everybody screaming for me, always needing me to do something for them, screaming for me . . .

ORANGES

H.B. Diaz

THREE.

That’s how many steps Dr. Crowe takes into my room before folding his hands behind his back and surveying me. One. Two. Three. Survey. At this distance, he can both examine me and flee should I become unruly, which I do often according to my chart. At this distance, I can read his nametag, little block letters set atop a logo that says: Wayview Psychiatric Institute. Blue birds’ wings wrap around the words like an embrace.

There’s a guard posted outside the room that I’m not supposed to see, but he pokes his head around the door to catch a glimpse of me on Tuesdays, because that’s the day that the seizures come. That’s what Dr. Crowe calls them. He says that I’m sick, but I don’t feel sick except sometimes in the morning after he gives me my medicine. Today, my shoulder hurts, but I cannot remember why.

My memory isn’t what it was before. It only seems to record the Tuesdays here, maybe because nothing worth remembering happens between them. I do not remember Wednesdays, or weekends, or dressing for church. Tuesday is visitation day, when I get to see my son. Sometimes, I tell him scary stories and we play Old Maid with the deck of cards I got him for his birthday. I even share the orange that I get at lunchtime. Oranges are his favorite, so I always ask for two.

“How are we today, Christine?” Dr. Crowe asks.

His voice has crystals in it today, the kind that grow on sand buckets after you get home from the beach. The salt burns my eyes.

“Why are you crying, Mommy?” I turn to the voice. He’s sitting on the bed, like always, waiting for me. I forget about the doctor.

“Mommy’s not crying, honey,” I whisper, but I can feel tears spilling down my cheeks. His hair, sandy-blond like his father’s, is dripping wet. I wonder if it could be raining outside. It’s been so long since I’ve felt the rain. The room smells like the sea. Maybe he’s been swimming.

“Where’s Daddy?” He looks up at me, his eyes like little moons eclipsing the room. I forget where I am. Water rushes in all around me. I must answer the question. I feel it surging up in my chest and crashing, crashing, in a great spray of lifeblood, but I cannot. I do not know where his father is. I cannot answer.

“Where’s Daddy?” He’s crying now. The waves slam against my legs, washing the blood away. It swirls into the sea, sinking, sinking. Food for the fish. The ocean stretches on forever into darkness and I walk forward, deeper.

The body, heavy and lifeless, floats face down in the water. I can’t see who it is, but I do not feel afraid. I feel instead that I’m on the edge of a canyon about to fly, but I cannot. I am tethered here, to this carcass, to this earth of slate and cold. The rope in my hand falls slack, and then tightens again. Slack. Tight. Again and again as the waves move past us. My son is in my arms, clinging to me. Crying. Always crying.

“Hush!” I yell above the crashing of the sea, but he cannot hear me. I can’t bear it! He points at the corpse with snot hanging from his nose.

“Daddy,” he says. I nod my head, wishing to cast him away. I long to be free of his tiny, filthy hands, always grabbing and pulling and pointing. He asks for his father, and so I drop him into the water and heave the body over onto its back so he can see. There is a hole where my husband’s face used to be, where the shotgun pellets blasted away the flesh, and that little dimple that I used to like. I remember it now, the trigger, harder to pull than I thought. The pain in my shoulder ricochets into my fingers, stinging like sea nettles.

I let go of the rope and turn away. There is nothing here for me, nothing in this vast expanse of emptiness. Freedom feels like cracking, like my skin splitting apart to let me out. I can see the shore, and the waves carry me toward it. When I wash up on the sand, I feel beautiful, like a mermaid, but I’m cold. I watch my husband’s body float out beyond the breakers. My son’s tiny head bobs up and down in the water, his sandy hair stuck to his forehead. He reminds me of a koi fish, the kind you see in the Japanese restaurants, gulping and gulping and gulping.

“Don’t restrain her!” someone yells, but it sounds far away. I’m shivering, so I dig my toes into the dark sand and the salty water bubbles up over my feet. There are hands on me, all over me, dragging me backward. I’m not afraid. I don’t really even feel cold anymore.

The sea has swallowed my son.

Maybe he’ll want his orange next week. I’ll save it, just in case.

THE VAULT

Hannah Litvin

CYBIL SAT IN a sun-filled coffee shop on an autumn afternoon with nowhere to be. The cafe was peppered with mismatched chairs, “vintage” coffee mugs curated by Goodwill, and a book-lined reading room inside what was once an armored vault. Fragrant bouquets of cinnamon brooms were positioned in corners in oversized tin milk jugs. Fall was intoxicating, spilling easygoing families, cute couples, and warm wool scarves wrapping rosy child cheeks everywhere. She wondered if she looked half as desperate as she felt this time of year. Her whole frame would rise anytime she noticed being noticed by someone, and then fall, as their gaze glazed over and through her.

At a table to her left two girls appeared to be catching up after a year of absence.

Cybil thought about Karen, her best friend from college. The long nights in the painting studio fueled by burnt coffee and Red Vines. Once graduated, neither continued making art until sunrise. Cybil moved away, while Karen stayed put and found Jesus. As Cybil bounced from state to state, the routine remained the same: move, fall in love with someone and befriend their friends, break up with them, and move again. She called herself the human pachinko ball. Other people called her a ghost.

Cybil’s eyes were drawn to a busy bulletin board on one wall of the cafe. There was a table right up against the wall, and an elderly couple sat together enjoying tea, with three earwax-tinted prescription bottles sitting on the table between them. She tried to examine the flyers from afar, without appearing to stare. The couple seemed to notice, and the old man winked at Cybil. She went to examine the board up close, leaning over the small table, and offered an apology to the old couple for crowding them.

“Pardon me, I just . . . the ads here.”

The elderly couple ignored her and continued their tea-time conversation. She shrugged and leaned closer, inhaling traces of cottage cheese and cherry cordials, the hallmark scent of bodies quitting on the inside before the brain gets hip to the plan.

Leaning on the table for support without looking down, Cybil clumsily knocked one of the saucers. “Sorry, I’m so sorry.” She lifted her palm off the china and braced herself for looks of disgust to match their breath. As she looked left, then right, no one was there. The saucer and prescription bottles were unaccompanied. As she examined the bottles this time, they were blank, labelless, like props.

Confused but annoyed, she put her purse down on the table and looked back at the bulletin board, unsure why, but unable to look away. She searched aimlessly, scouring through senseless adverts for babysitters needed, guitar lessons, and Lamaze for single mothers-to-be. An odd, postcard size, purple-gray card stuck out, tacked at the top left corner of the board, an easy sixteen inches above eye level. The flyer read:

The Vault Secondhand Friends Club: Never Feel Alone Again. Meeting now inside the vault.

Cybil read it three times to try to make more sense out of it. Meeting now? Curious. She picked up her purse and walked to the reading room. The door was almost closed, but a sliver of light shone through the crack. Hearing voices from within the vault, she slid the door to the left with all her strength, ducked inside, and quickly pushed the door back to its almost-closed position behind her and exhaled.

Inside, the voices stopped and she stood staring at an array of television sets. The TVs sat ratchet-strapped on carts, like in school, when teachers’ aides rode them through the hallways. On each TV screen sat a stranger in a green-screened studio, hands folded in their lap or gesturing in front of their face. The videos were all paused, seemingly mid-sentence, the screens flickering edgeways with static. A bigger TV sat in the center, paused on a title screen that read “The Vault.” The remote on the cart had a bright green sticky note on top of it that read “Hit Play.”

Cybil wasn’t usually one to follow instructions, but she had followed the purple postcard into this room after all, so she hit play. An optimistic jingle came out of the TV speakers, and the TV jolted to life.

“Welcome to the Vault. The world’s first club for secondhand friends. A real friend is the best insurance policy you could have. But sometimes, people don’t have true friends they can rely on. Using our patented system developed by world-renowned positive psychologist Professor Henrik Klaff, we guarantee you’ll feel like you’ve known any of these people for years, and everyone here is ready to make friendship matter. Get started by pressing play on any of the remotes on the cart. When you’re finished exploring, come back to this video for further information on how to meet your new friends.”

A chair sat in the middle of the room, facing the whole gallery, and a cart sat next to the chair. Cybil sat. On top of the cart was a small metal chest of drawers, two columns by three rows top to bottom, forming six drawers total. Each drawer was labeled with a person’s name, and she gently opened each drawer to reveal a remote control in each.

She thought back to her high school and college best friends, and the friends she had most recently seen. Did any of them really care? If she got the flu and needed someone to bring her soup and Pedialyte, who would she call? When’s the last time someone offered to help her load up her truck when she was moving? How many July 4ths and Thanksgivings spent alone in her studio apartment watching charity telethons? I need this, she thought.

Considering the names on each drawer, she channeled her fondest memories of girls: summer camp, trips to the restroom at high school dances, her roommates in the college dorms. She swam in the memories of her closest male friends: goofing off on skateboards, band practice, and later in college, getting sundrunk and high on the quad. She flushed warm with the ease of her friendships with the opposite gender. But a third wave came over her. Confusion, jealousy, nerves, mixed signals. Unwanted affections brushed off gently, too gently.

Cybil took a deep breath and started the first video. As she watched all the videos, she mocked each speaker.

Look at these sad lonely people. I don’t want to be Judy or John’s last chance, she thought.But the Doctor said this system was patented. He said guarantee. She kept watching the videos and came to the last two. Mildred first, followed by Geoffrey. Something was off about these two . . . they didn’t look like strangers at all. These are the old people from the table by the bulletin board, Cybil thought. While Geoffrey gave his pitch, Cybil spun around to face Mildred’s TV set and Mildred winked at her, clear as day. Cybil paused Geoffrey, unpaused Mildred, and repaused her just to make sure she hadn’t mistaken screen static for a wink. But Mildred’s TV was crystal sharp.

Cybil felt lightheaded and stepped out of the Vault. She made her way to the bathroom, a hand grazing the walls on her way, heart racing. Cybil leaned over the sink, thick and plasticky like it was ripped from a cheap corporate apartment, and looked up at herself in the mirror. She hardly recognized the face looking back at her, and when she took a deep breath, all she could smell was the familiar fetid odor of cottage cheese and cherry cordials. She splashed water on her face and tried to look again, hoping the flush in her skin would return. Her arms and legs tingled a mild almost-painful falling-asleep tingle. She stared at the mirror, through herself, as the fluorescent lighting overhead flickered. In the corner of the mirror was a purple-gray placard surrounding a button, with a single white-lettered word underneath. Dizzy and without much consideration, she jabbed the button several times with her wet hand before sliding down against the cold, tiled wall.

She closed her eyes, and let a wave, smooth like neon wash over her. When she opened them again, she was looking out on the vault, the walls of books and the row of TVs stacked up on either side of her. She tried to locate her feet to leave, but nothing moved. She tried to jump, to roll, to flail, but all she could feel was the bounce of tension straps on either side, holding her safely in place. Her eyes darted side to side. Static clouded her vision as the strangers, the elderly couple, and Professor Henrik Klaff greeted her in unison.

“Welcome home, Cybil.”

A MARKED WOMAN

Amanda Crum

I NEED SIN.

I crave it the way people afflicted with pica feel compelled to taste rocks and dirt, the minerals so much a part of them that they don’t even know how to name that need. It is basic, animal, a rush of desire so strong it blots out everything else until they reach for the piece of quartz or clay that makes them feel whole again.

I know what you’re thinking: that it’s the friction I want, the weight of a body on mine. In some ways, that’s true. But more thrilling is the feeling that I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing, that it’s wrong and I should be punished for it. It’s the feeling of being sixteen and sneaking out of the house to meet a boy, dress curled up on the floorboard, skin flushed and dewy. It’s the knowledge that I’ve taken a bite from a cookie I was never meant to eat just to savor its irregular borders.

When I was young I would steal pebbles from the beach near our house, rinse them in ocean water and place them reverently on my tongue. The taste was round and saline, like the burst of an orgasm. I would suck them dry and then return them to the water, where they could soak up another hundred years of salt and foam. I wish I had one now, lying in bed with the clean sheets tucked around the cleavage of my ass, my fingers itching to hold something warm and soft. I grab my left breast, weigh it in my palm, pinch the nipple to feel the familiar ache between my legs. And suddenly, I burn.

A circle of fire, around my ankle. I lift my leg, dropping the sheet into a pool on the bed, and see a dark ring of letters carving themselves into my skin. Juicy, it reads. I can feel the sting in the curve of the J, a bite on the stem of the Y. A tattoo for my wickedness.

It’s not such a surprise, I suppose. A girl like me, a girl who wants everything she can have, cannot go untouched. My sinning ways have marked me, as I suspect they were always meant to. I’m only shocked it didn’t happen sooner. And, in a way, I think it’s sort of pretty, like a bruise on a peach. When something is damaged, you can see how fragile it is.

***

Later, at the coffee shop, I sit and pretend not to notice that I’m being noticed. It’s an art form, really, requiring much practice and a bit of coquettishness—but not too much. No one wants to think they’ve been fooled, and besides, part of the fun is in the chase, even for me. I stir my coffee and look into the distance; not a thousand-yard stare, but rather a dreamy contemplation that leaves a man wondering what my reaction would be to his touch. I’ve seen it so many times before that I can spot it from my peripheral. I have to be in the right mood, though. When it’s been a long day, those looks are just tiresome. Other times, I think I intimidate every man in my orbit. They believe they would make a fool of themselves, and often, they’re right. For a girl who wants everything, I’m quite selective.

For instance, I once brought a man home just for his hands. I noticed them, lingering over his drink at the bar, twirling his glass, wiping the moisture from it, and I pictured what they would do to me in the dark. The thought made me shiver and that’s when I knew I had to have him. It wasn’t difficult; his ring finger was bare, but I could still see the tan line. He was lonely.

I took him to bed and told him I loved his hands. They could have been drawn by Michelangelo himself, although I didn’t admit that to him. Editing is good. I left my panties on and had him work me for a long time with his fingers and palms, and they were just as good as I knew they would be. He left with a dazed look on his face, like a man who has just fallen in love but doesn’t know what to do about it.

It’s late and I should be gathering my things to leave, but it’s funny what happens when a woman slows down and takes her time. People are watching me as they move to the counter to settle up, the eyes of man dip down into my cleavage and up to my pale throat and they wonder what I’d look like spread out over their sheets. I move with deliberate slowness, daring them to watch, standing to stretch in my form-fitting pencil skirt, lingering over my bag and coat and gloves. The one with the beard and dark, glittering eyes watches me from two tables over. I feel his gaze on my calves and wonder what he thinks of my new tattoo.

“Excuse me,” he says, following me to the door. I stop and cock an eyebrow in response.

“You have the most beautiful legs I’ve ever seen.”

In my bed I arch my back and roll for him, allowing the moonlight to paint me like a Degas girl. He never mentions the letters on my ankle.

***

When he leaves I strip the sheets and draw a hot bath. From somewhere downstairs I hear a piano tinkling, a love song to the autumnal city or maybe to the anonymity of it. With the lights off and the tiny window open, I can pretend I’m floating under the stars, far from home. I’m nearly asleep in the water when I feel the slashing pain again, this time on my left hip. It burns bright like the time I brushed my calf against the muffler on my high school boyfriend’s motorcycle. My fingers trace the letters: tender.

***

When the sun comes up I dress carefully in a knee-length black skirt and ivory sweater, clasp my best pearls around my neck, pin my hair up. I wear my great-grandmother’s gloves and the lotion my mother gave me for Christmas, a scent called Winter Beach that always makes me think of the sun coming out on a cold day.

The church is only three blocks away so I pretend not to hear the men on the street and in cars, the things they’d do to me. Their voices are aimed over my head, lofty as the pigeons that have turned the soup kitchen into an aviary.

I light a candle for my great-grandmother and step into the familiar scent of polished wood and incense, into a quiet so deep you can almost hear it. HUSH, it says.

“Are you there, my child?”

I kneel and sigh, the routine as familiar as childhood. “Yes, Father.”

“What’s on your mind?”

I’m a dirty girl who will never be saved. “I have these . . . urges. I can’t seem to overcome them.”

“Anything can be overcome as long as your faith doesn’t waver.”

“I’m not worried about my faith, Father. It’s my willpower.”

I hear him shift slightly in his seat and wonder if he’s blushing. Probably not. I’m sure he’s heard much worse than what I can give him. Out of nowhere, I picture bringing a man in here, pushing him against the confessional wall, taking him into my mouth. Daring him to be loud in the quietest of quiet rooms. My ribcage sparks briefly and I bring my hand up, cupping my right breast through my sweater. It’s hot to the touch. I don’t have to trace it with my finger to know that it reads delicious.

“These human urges set us apart from the godly,” he says suddenly. “You must learn to control your thoughts and beg forgiveness for your sins.”

My penance is ten Hail Marys.

***

On the way home, I feel the familiar ache between my legs, my panties pulled too tight. I walk slowly to savor it, breathe deep on the sidewalk and exhale through my mouth. I ignore the words hurled at me from the men I pass, but when I get home and undress I find them on my skin, dozens of letters carved onto my shoulder and lower back and belly. Honey and sweet and ripe, a spring day spent beneath a peach tree. Whore and slut and bitch, a cold night alone. They don’t burn, I realize, not like the others. They showed up and I never even felt them.

I never felt them at all.

***

I dress for winter, covering up my wounded skin as best I can. My mother is a strong, faith-grounded woman and I suspect she will disown me if she sees the state my body is in. Over my head goes a thick blue sweater that matches my eyes—a cunning distraction meant for my mother, who once had my colors done and cooed when the woman insisted I was an Autumn, just like her. Dark jeans that taper down into my boots, hair down to cover my neck. I feel like a nun.

My mother’s home is not the one I grew up in. It’s a small, dim two-bedroom with talkative plumbing and a postage stamp-sized front porch, a far cry from the bright and airy Victorian I spent my childhood days in. Here there are cooking smells from the previous tenants baked into the wallpaper, chintzy furnishings crammed into the too-small living room. I try not to spend too much time here.

“You’re too thin,” she says when I walk in. The ashtray is full, a sign she hasn’t been sleeping well, but there’s a full pitcher of iced tea on the kitchen table in front of her so I sit down and pour. My mother always takes the time to cut fresh lemons for her tea and plucks garnishes from the mint tree out back. It’s like tasting sixth grade.

“How is Jack?” I ask, ignoring her critique. Her cat is her pride now, even though he’s a lumpy, hateful thing.

“So well,” she says, beaming. “I’m going to potty train him.”

I frown at this, remembering how impatient my mother always was with me as a child. She left my education on all things to other people. I suppose it’s because of her own upbringing; her mother was a God-fearing woman who wore stiff-necked dresses until the day she died, like a Victorian countess, and took to preaching in the back parlor of her home after my grandfather passed away. I never met her, but I can picture the way it was, a stifling clapboard house shivering in the swelter of August, patrons sweating in their Sunday best listening to a madwoman give sermons on the right way to be afraid. My mother, eight years old, sitting properly on a hard wooden bench with her eyes cast down. She already knew how to be afraid.

“That’s nice,” I say, and look down at my tea as I take a sip to avoid meeting her eyes.

Her hand is suddenly so tight and fierce on my wrist that I’m reminded of the time I visited my great-grandmother in the nursing home. Old people have always scared me, with their paper-thin skin and otherworldly strength.

“What’s on you?” she whispers. I look down and see that the sleeve of my sweater slipped while I was drinking my tea, revealing the word slick and the raw skin of my wrist.

I try to imagine telling her about what’s wrong with me, the explanation of how sinful I am and what it means to be the mother of someone who can’t control herself. My mouth opens and closes once, like a fish. For the first time, her eyes look so old to me. Watery and pale, the eyes of a confused nursing home patient. She’s a stranger, a woman who had a life before she was a mother that I will never know about.

When she releases my wrist, I put my hands in my lap, a good girl once more in catechism class, expecting a slap across the face or a cry of outrage. Instead, there is nothing for a minute, maybe more.

“It’s me,” she says finally, and when I look at her she’s softer. She pulls up the sleeve of her baggy sweater to show me an arm full of letters, pale white admonitions that look like scars rather than painful new cuts. Dirty and ache and thrust and eager. “You and me.”

DINNER TIME: THE CONSEQUENCES OF SAVAGES

Stephanie M. Wytovich

Breathe me the sound of teeth,

This moribund dream of cannibal proclivity,

I am the hunger that wakes you at night,

That clawing, the subtle mastication

That gnaws your eyes open to bleed

Feed me the songs of your gluttony

Let me listen to the dirge of your compunction,

How you feasted on hearts, a salacious monger
of wayward girls and ghost-driven women,

Your mouth is the centerpiece to my table.

We eat at 8:00.

Do you like the depth of my depravity?

The scrape of your skin from the fork

Sliding against your skull?

Let me teach you how to sever, how to saw

Through sternums, through muscles made tight

From running. Mine is a penchant to punish,

To sauté the lack of emotion from your blood,

An effervescent bubbling, this first course

Of meals shared by sisters.

But don’t worry, there will be more delicacies

To savor, an entire spread of wanton crimes,

All those forgotten offenses you butchered and

Slaughtered away while starved from the pleasures

Of flesh. The taste of you is acrid, a fetid spoil in my mouth.

I’ll devour you regardless.

But tell me, is the pressure too hot? Does the fire remind

You of the way you toasted their flesh, how you

Tattooed their memories with the removal of their

Bones?

For there are pairings of monsters, a silence

With no room left to scream. Look at me, this blossom

Of pertinence. I am made solely of teeth.

MAGDALA AMYGDALA

Lucy A. Snyder

I was bound, though I have not bound.

I was not recognized. But I have recognized
that the All is being dissolved,
both the earthly and the heavenly.

—The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

“SO HOW ARE you feeling?” Dr. Shapiro’s pencil hovers over the CDC risk evaluation form clamped to her clipboard.

“Pretty good.” When I talk, I make sure my tongue stays tucked out of sight. I smile at her in a way that I hope looks friendly, and not like I’m baring my teeth. The exam-room mirror reflects the back of the good doctor’s head. Part of me wishes the silvered glass were angled so I could check my expression; the rest of me is relieved that I can’t see myself.

Nothing existed before this. The present and recent past keep blurring together in my mind, but I’ve learned to take a moment before I reply to questions, speak a little more slowly to give myself the chance to sort things out before I utter something that might sound abnormal. My waking world seems to have been taken apart and put back together so that everything is just slightly off, the geometries of reality deranged.

Most of my memories before the virus are as insubstantial as dreams; the strongest of them feel like borrowed clothing. The sweet snap of peas fresh from my garden. The crush of hot perfumed bodies against mine at the club and the thud of the bass from the huge speakers. The pleasant twin burns of the sun on my shoulders and the exertion in my legs as I pedal my bike up the mountainside.

The life I had in those memories is gone forever. I don’t know why this is happening to humanity. To me. I’d like to think there’s some greater purpose, some meaning in all this, but God help me, I just can’t see it.

“So is the new job going well? Are you able to sleep?” My doctor shines a penlight in my eyes and nostrils and marks off a couple of boxes. Thankfully, she doesn’t ask to see my tongue. It’s the same set of questions every week; I’d have to be pretty far gone to answer badly and get myself quarantined. The endless doctor visits wear down other Type Threes, but I hang onto the belief that someday there might be actual help for me here.

I nod. “It’s fine. I have blackout curtains; sleep’s not a problem. They seem pretty happy with my work.”

My new supervisor is a friendly guy, but he always has an excuse for why he can’t meet with me in person, preferring to call me on his cell phone for our weekly chats. I used to bounce from building to building, repairing computers, spending equal amounts of time swapping gossip and hardware. After I got out of the hospital, I went on the graveyard shift in the company’s cold network operations center. These nights, I’m mostly raising processes from the dead, watching endless scrolling green text on cryptic black screens. I’m pretty sure the company discreetly advised my quiet coworkers to carry tasers and mace just in case.

“Do you feel that you’re able to see your old friends and family often enough?” Dr. Shapiro asks.

“Sure,” I lie. “We meet online for games and we talk in Vent. It’s fun.”

For the sake of his own health, my boyfriend took a job and apartment in another state; we speak less and less on the phone. What is there to say to him now? We can’t even chat about anything as simple as food or wine; I must subsist on bananas, rice, apple juice, and my meager allotment of six Bovellum capsules per day. The law says I can’t go to crowded places like theaters and concerts. I only glimpse the sun when I’m hurrying from the shelter of my car’s darkly tinted windows to monthly eight a.m. appointments with my court-ordered physician.

So I’m striding up the street to Dr. Shapiro’s office, my head down, squinting behind sunglasses, when suddenly I hear a man in the park across the street shouting violent nonsense. Or he used to be a man, anyhow; he’s wearing construction boots, ragged Carhartt work overalls and a dirty grey tee-shirt, all freshly spattered with the blood of the woman whose head he is enthusiastically cracking open against the curb. He howls at the sky, and I can see he’s missing some teeth. Probably whatever he did for a living didn’t pay him enough to see a dentist. But his skin looks flush and smooth, so much healthier than mine, and for a moment I envy him.

He stops howling and meets my shadowed stare, breaking into a gory, gap-toothed smile. The kind of grin you give an old, dear friend. I’ve never laid eyes on this wreck before, and the woman beneath him is beyond anyone’s help. They both are. I don’t want to be outed, not here, not like this, so I pretend I don’t even see him and stride on.

A few seconds later, I hear the spat of rifle fire and the thud of a meaty body hitting the pavement, and I know that the SWAT team just took out Ragged Carhartts. They’re never far away, not in this part of town. And once they’ve taken out one Type Three, they don’t need much excuse to kill another, even if you’re just trying to see your doctor like a good citizen.

“Oh, God,” a lady says. She and another fortyish woman are standing in the doorway of an art gallery, staring horrified at the scene behind me. They’re both wearing batik dresses and lots of handmade jewelry. “That’s the third one this month.”

“If this keeps up, we’ll have to close.” The other woman shakes her head, looking grey-faced. “Nobody will want to come here. The whole downtown will die. Not just us. The theaters, the museums, churches—everything.”

“I heard something on NPR about a new kind of gel to keep the virus from spreading,” the first woman replies, sounding hopeful.

I keep moving. Her voice fades away. People still talk about contagion control as if it matters, as if masks and sanitizers and prayers can stop the future.

The truth is, unless you’ve been living in some isolated Tibetan monastery, you’ve already been exposed to Polymorphic Viral Gastroencephalitis. Maybe it gave you a bit of a headache and some nausea, but after a few days’ bed rest you were going out for Thai again. Congratulations! You’re Type One and you probably don’t even know it.

But maybe the headache turned into the worst you’ve ever had, and you started vomiting up blood and then your stomach lining, and when you came out of the hospital you’d lost the ability to digest most foods and to make certain proteins. And in the absence of those proteins, your body has trouble growing and healing. The enzymes your DNA uses to repair itself don’t work very well anymore.

Sunlight is no longer your friend. Neither are x-rays. Even if you quit smoking and keep yourself covered up like a virgin in the Rub’ Al Khali, your skin cracks and your body sprouts tumors. Your brain begins to degenerate; you start talking to yourself in second person. Sooner or later, you develop lesions on your frontal lobe and hippocampus that cause a variety of behaviors, which will lead to your friendly neighborhood SWAT team putting a .308 bullet through your skull. That means you’re a Type Two, or maybe a Type Three, like me.

If you’re Type Four, we aren’t having this conversation. Unless you’re a ghost. You aren’t a ghost, are you? I don’t think I believe in them. But if you were a Type Four, your whole GI tract got stripped. I hope you were lucky and had a massive brain bleed right when it got really bad, and you never woke up.

I’m pretty sure I woke up.

“Do you find yourself having any unwanted thoughts or violent fantasies?” Dr. Shapiro asks.

“Of course not.” I try to sound mildly indignant.

There’s one upside, if it can be called that. If you lived past all the pain and vomiting, the symptoms of your chronic disease can be alleviated, if you consume sufficient daily quantities of one of a couple of raw protein sources.

If the best protein source for you is fresh human blood, congratulations, you are a Type Two! Provided you have a fat bank account, or decent health insurance, or are quick with a razor and fast on your feet, you can resume puberty or your athletic career. Watch out for HIV; it’s a killer.

If, however, the best source for you comes from sweet, custard-like brains . . . you are a Type Three. Your situation is much more problematic. And expensive. You better have a wealthy family or truly excellent insurance. Or mob connections. Otherwise, sooner or later, you’ll end up trying to crack open someone’s skull in public. The only question then is if you’ll get that one moment of true gustatory bliss right before you die.

I have excellent health insurance. There’s no bliss for me. What I and every other upstanding, gainfully employed, fully covered Type Three citizen gets is an allotment of refrigerated capsules containing an unappetizing grey paste. Mostly it’s cow brains and antioxidant vitamins with just the barest hint of pureed cadaver white matter. It’s enough to keep your skin and brains from ulcerating. It’s enough to keep your nose from rotting off. It’s enough to help you think clearly enough to function at your average white-collar job.

It is not enough to keep you from constantly wishing you could taste the real thing.

“I was wondering about something,” I say, as Dr. Shapiro begins to copy the contents of her survey into the exam-room computer.

She stops typing and gives me a wary smile. “Yes, what is it?”

“My medication. I feel okay, you know? But I think I could feel . . . better. If I could have a little more?” I’m choosing my words as carefully as possible. My tongue feels thick, twitchy.

I can’t talk about the cravings I’m feeling. I can’t mention wanting more energy, because nobody in charge wants someone like me feeling energetic.

I wonder if there’s a sniper watching from behind the mirror on the wall; has he tightened his grip on his rifle? Are gas canisters waiting to blow in the air conditioner vent above me? My skin itches in dread anticipation.

Dr. Shapiro hedges. “Well, I know there’s been a shortage of raw materials these days.”

I swallow down my impatience and worry. The capsules are ninety-eight percent cow brains, for God’s sake. Probably they can squeeze a single human brain for thousands of doses. I can’t imagine the pharmaceutical companies are running short of anything.

“Could you check, just the same? Could you ask for me?” I sound meek. Pathetic. The opposite of hostile. That’s good.

She gives me a pitying look and sighs. The mirror doesn’t explode in gunfire. Gas doesn’t burst from the vents.

“I’ll see what I can do,” my doctor says.

I try to believe she’ll come through for me.

***

I go home. I take my capsules with some Mott’s apple juice. I rinse my mouth out with peroxide and don’t look at my tongue. I rub salve on the places my clothes have rubbed raw, and I climb naked into my bed. Sometime later, the alarm goes off, and I rise, shower, dress, and drive to work in darkness.

My shift is dull-clockwork, until just after grey drizzling dawn, when one of the new tech leads comes in to talk to my coworker George about some of the emergency server protocols. I haven’t seen this young man before; he’s wearing snug jeans, and the sleeves of his black polo shirt are tight over biceps tattooed with angels and devils. His blond hair is cut close over a smooth, high-browed skull. He starts talking about database errors, but he’s thinking about a gig he has with his band on Friday night, and it suddenly hits me not just that I know what he’s thinking but that I know because I can smell the sweet chemicals shifting inside his brain. The chemicals tell me his name is Devin.

I am filled with Want in the marrow of my bones. I am filled with Need from eyeballs to soles. I excuse myself and hurry out into the mutagenic morning and punch Betty’s number into my cell. Soon after we met, she made me promise not to save her details in my phone, just in case anything went wrong.

It’s early for her. But she answers on the third ring. Speaking in the casual code we’ve used since we met online, we agree to meet that evening. It’s her turn to host.

I sleep fitfully. When my alarm goes off, I call in sick, shower, dress, and check my phone. Betty’s texted a cryptic string of letters and numbers for my directions. And so I drive out to a hotel we’ve never visited before, drinking Aquafinas the whole way. It’s a dark old place, once grand, now crumbling away in a forgotten corner of downtown. I wonder if she’s running short of money or if the extra anonymity of the place was crucial to her.

Still, as I get out of my car and double-check my locks in the pouring rain, I can’t help but peer out into the oppressive black spaces in the parking lot, trying to figure out if any of the shadows between the other vehicles could be lurking cops or CDC agents. The darkness doesn’t move, so I hurry to the front door, head down, hands jammed in my raincoat pockets, my stomach roiling with worry and anticipation. I avoid making eye contact with any of the damp, tired-looking prostitutes smoking outside the hotel’s front doors. None of them pay any attention to me.

My phone chimes as Betty texts me the room number. I take the creaking, urine-stinking elevator up four floors. My pace slows as I walk down the stained hallway carpet, and I pause for a moment before I knock on the door of Room 512. What if the watchers tapped Betty’s phone? What if she’s not here at all? My poised hand quivers as my heart seems to pound out A trap—a trap—a trap.

I swallow. Knock twice. Step back. A moment later, Betty answers the door, wearing her Audrey Hepburn wig and a black cocktail dress that hangs limply from her skeletal shoulders. It’s appalling how much weight she’s lost; her eyes have turned entirely black, the whites permanently stained by repeated hemorrhages.

But she smiles at me, and I find myself smiling back, warmed by the first spark of real human feeling I’ve had in months. I have to believe that we’re still human. I have to.

“You ready?” Her question creaks like the hinge of a forgotten gate.

“Absolutely.” My own voice is the dry fluttering of moth wings.

She locks the door behind me. “I’m sorry this place is such a pit, but the guy at the Holiday Inn started asking all kinds of questions, and this was the best I could do on short notice.”

“It’s okay.” The room isn’t as seedy as the lobby and exterior led me to expect it to be, and it’s got a couch in addition to the queen-sized bed. Betty has already covered the couch and the carpet in front of it with a green plastic tarpaulin. Her stainless steel spritzer bottle leans against a couch arm.

“Want some wine?” She gestures toward an unopened bottle of Yellow Tail shiraz on the dresser.

“Thanks, but no . . . I couldn’t drink it right now. Maybe after.”

She nods. “There’s a really good Italian restaurant around the corner. Kind of a Goodfellas hangout, but everything’s homemade. Great garlic bread.”

Betty pulls off the wig. Before she got the virus, she could grow her thick chestnut hair clear down to her waist. I’ve never seen it except in pictures; her bare scalp gleams pale in the yellow light from the chandelier.

The scar circumscribing her skull looks red, inflamed; I wonder if she’s been seeing other Type Threes. I quickly tamp down my pang of jealousy. We never agreed to an exclusive arrangement. And maybe she just had to go to the hospital instead; she told me she’s got some kind of massive tumor on her pituitary.

She looks so frail. I can’t possibly begrudge her what comfort she can get. I should just be grateful that she agrees to see me when I need her.

And, oh sweet Lord, do I need her tonight.

Betty pulls me down to her for a kiss. Her hands are icy, but her lips are warm. She slips her tongue into my mouth, and I can taste sweet cerebrospinal fluid mingled in her saliva. The tumor must have cracked the bony barriers in her skull. Before I have a chance to try to pull away, my own tongue is swelling, toothed pores opening and nipping at her slippery flesh.

She squeaks in pain and we separate.

“Sorry,” I try to whisper. But my tongue is continuing to engorge and lengthen, curling back on itself and slithering down my own throat; I can feel the tiny maws rasping against my adenoids.

“It’s okay.” Her wan smile is smeared with blood. “We better get started.”

She kisses the palm of my hand and begins to take my clothes off. I stare up at the tawdry chandelier, watching a fly buzz among the dusty baubles and bulbs. When I’m naked, she slips off her cocktail dress and leads me to the tarp-covered couch.

“Be gentle.” She presses a short oyster knife into my hand and sits me down, the plastic crackling beneath me. I nod, barely keeping my lips closed over my shuddering tongue, and spread my legs.

With slow exhalation, Betty settles between my thighs, her back to me. She’s a tiny woman, her head barely clearing my chin when we’re seated, so this position works best. Her skin is already covered in goose bumps. The anticipation is killing both of us.

I carefully run the tip of the sharp oyster knife through the red scar around her skull; there’s relatively little blood as I cut through the tissue. Betty gives a little gasp and grips my knees, her whole body tensed. The bone has only stitched back together in a few places; I use the side-to-side motion she showed me to gently pry the lid of her skull free.

She moans when I expose her brain; it’s the most beautiful thing I could hope to see. Her dura mater glistens with a half-inch slick of golden jelly. Brain honey. When I breathe in the smell of her, I feel my blood pressure rise hard and fast.

I set the bowl of skin and bone aside and present the knife to her in my outstretched left hand. With a flick of her wrist, she slits the vein in the crook of my arm and presses her mouth against my bleeding flesh. I wrap my cut arm around her head and pull her tight to my breast.

I open my mouth and let my tongue unwind like an eel into her brainpan. It wriggles there, purple and gnarled, the tiny maw sucking down her golden jelly. It’s delicious, better than caviar, better than ice cream, better than anything I’ve had in my mouth before. Sweet and salty and tangy and perfect.

The jelly gives me flashes of her memories and dreams; she’s been with other Type Threes. She’s helped them murder people. I don’t care. I keep drinking her in, my tongue probing all the corners of her skull and sheathed wrinkles of her brain to get every last gooey drop.

I can control my tongue, but just barely. It’s hard to keep it from doing the one thing I’d dearly love, which is to drive it through her membrane deep between her slippery lobes. But that would be the end of her. The end of us. No more, all over, bye bye.

A little of what my body and soul craves is better than nothing at all. Isn’t it?

My arm aches, and I’m starting to feel lightheaded on top of the high. We’re both running dry. I release her, spritz her brain with saline and carefully put the top of her head back into place. She’s full of my blood, and already her scalp is sealing back together. We’ve done well; we spilled hardly anything on the tarp this time. But my face feels sticky, and I’ve probably even gotten her in my hair.

She daintily wipes my blood from the corners of her mouth and smiles at me. Her skin is pink and practically glowing, and her boniness seems chic rather than diseased. “Want to go to that Italian place after we get cleaned up?”

“Sure.” I’m probably glowing, too. My stomach feels strong enough for pepperoncinis.

I head to the bathroom to wash my face, but when I push open the door—

—I find myself in Dr. Shapiro’s office. She’s staring down at an MRI scan of somebody’s chest. The monochrome bones look strange, distorted.

“There’s definitely a mass behind your ribs and spine. It’s growing fast, but I can’t definitely say it’s cancer.”

I’m dizzy with terror. How did I get here? What mass? How long have I had a mass?

“What should we do?” I stammer.

She looks up at me with eyes as solidly black as Betty’s. “I think we should wait and see.”

I back away, turn, push through her office door—

—and I’m back in a rented room. But not the downtown dive with the dusty chandelier. It’s a suburban motel someplace. Have I been here before?

The green tarp on the king-sized bed is covered in blood and bits of skull. There’s a body wrapped in black trash bags, stuffed between the bed and the writing desk. Did I do that? What have I done?

Oh, God, please make this stop. I have to lean against the wall to keep myself from tumbling backward.

Betty comes out of the bathroom, dressed in a spattered silk negligee. I think it used to be white. There’s gore in her wig. Her eyes go wide.

“I told you not to come here!” She grabs me by my arm, surprising me with her strength. In the distance, I can hear sirens. “They’ll be here any minute—get away from here, fast as you can!”

She presses a set of rental car keys into my palm, hauls me to the door and pushes me out into the hallway—

—and I’m stepping into the elevator at work.

Handsome blond Devin is in there. A look of surprised fear crosses his face, and I know the very sight of me repels him. His hand goes to his jeans pocket. I see the outline of something that’s probably a canister of pepper spray. It’s too small to be a taser.

But then he pauses, smiles at me. “Hey, you going up to that training class?”

I nod mechanically, and try to say, “Sure,” but my lungs spasm and suddenly I’m doubled over, coughing into my hands. When did simply breathing start hurting this much?

“You okay?” Devin asks.

I try to nod, but there’s bright blood on my palms. A long-forgotten Bible verse surfaces in the swamp of my memory: Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.

I look up and see my reflection in the chromed elevator walls—my face is gaunt, but my body is grotesquely swollen. I’ve turned into some kind of hunchback. How long have I had the mass?

Instead of the pepper spray, Devin’s pulled his cell phone out. I can smell his mind. He’s torn between wanting to run away and wanting to help. “Should I call someone? Should I call 911?”

The elevator is filled with the scent of him. Despite my pain and sickness, the Want returns with a vengeance. Adrenaline rises along with my blood pressure. My tongue is twitching, and something in my back, too. I can feel it tearing my ribs away from my spine. It hurts more than I can remember anything ever hurting. Maybe childbirth would be like this.

Betty. I need Betty. How long has it been since I’ve seen her? Oh God.

“Call 911,” I try to say, but I can’t take a breath, can’t speak around the tongue writhing backward down my throat.

“What can I do?” Devin touches my shoulder.

And the feel of his hand against my bony flesh is far too much for me to bear.

I rise up under him, grab him by the sides of his head, kissing him. My tongue goes straight down his throat, choking him. He hits me, trying to shake me off, but as strong as he is, my Want is stronger.

When he’s unconscious, I let him fall and hit the emergency stop button. The Want has me wrapped tightly in its ardor, burning away all my human qualms. The alarm is an annoyance, and I know I don’t have as much time as I want. Still. As I lift his left eyelid, I take a moment to admire his perfect bluebonnet iris.

And then I plunge my tongue into his eye. The ball squirts off to the side as my organ drills deeper, the tiny mouths rasping through the thin socket bone into his sweet frontal lobe. After the first wash of cerebral fluid I’m into the creamy white meat of him, and—

—Oh, God. This is more beautiful than I imagined.

I’m devouring his will. Devouring his memories. Living him, through and through. His first taste of wine. His first taste of a woman. The first time he stood onstage. He’s at the prime of his life, and oh, it’s been a wonderful life, and I am memorizing every second of it as I swallow down the contents of his lovely skull.

When he’s empty, I rise from his shell and feel my new wings break free from the cage of my back. As I spread them wide in the elevator, I realize I can hear the old gods whispering to me from their thrones in the dark spaces between the stars.

I smile at myself in the distorted chrome walls. Everything is clear to me now. I have been chosen. I have a purpose. Through the virus, the old gods tested me, and deemed me worthy of this holiest of duties. There are others like me; I can hear them gathering in the caves outside the city. Some died, yes, like the ragged man, but my Becoming is almost complete. Nothing as simple as a bullet will stop me then.

The Earth is ripe, human civilization at its peak. I and the other archivists will preserve the memories of the best and brightest as we devour them. We will use the blood of this world to write dark, beautiful poetry across the walls of the universe.

For the first time in my life, I don’t need faith. I know what I am supposed to do in every atom in every cell of my body. I will record thousands of souls before my masters allow me to join them in the star-shadows, and I will love every moment of my mission.

I can hear the SWAT team rush into the foyer three stories below. Angry ants. I can hear Betty and the others calling to me from the hollow hills. Smiling, I open the hatch in the top of the elevator and prepare to fly.

TIME TRAVEL

Theresa Gaffney

Some days you expect
to last longer than others;

I mean this in two ways. First:

you expect the hours to stroll
like honey down the bottle, like
you and her, hand in hand in
the park, meandering into afternoon
at speeds faster than you’ve agreed to.

You want to bask in bright laughter,
watch the sun set but never go down.

This never works. She’s the type it hurts
to smile too much.

The second way I mean this:

when you expect not to cry at your desk
but you well up, grey and wet, in your cubicle
kick holes into boxes in the closet before lunch
crawl under the table to count the almonds
and their solar systems of almond dust. Leave
early and by the time you arrive home,
your layers are peeled back, rotten.

WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPY

J.A.W. McCarthy

I DIDN’T BELIEVE my sister until I watched her cough up our mother into the bathroom sink. There, surrounded by pale pink tile, she hovered over the basin as a pearlescent form, bruise-grey and burst-veined like a diseased organ, slithered from her mouth. No bigger than my fist, it shuddered in the sink before bursting open and releasing what looked like a puff of smoke that swirled around our heads then raced out the open window. After wiping the oily bile from her mouth, my sister said she felt much better.

Before our mother died, June had been the optimistic one. When Mother called me a whore for wanting to attend a school dance, June told me she hoped I got kissed that night so I could tell her what it was like. When Mother locked her in the broom closet for laughing during church television, June said she was relieved because she would rather be reading the back of the Clorox bottle. When our mother pinned her across her lap and spanked her at age sixteen for stealing her cigarettes, June never cried as I whispered that I was sorry. June was the first to call our wounds battle scars. Throughout our childhood she came up with the most outrageous, elaborate plans to murder our mother, describing iced-over porch steps and unstable shelves laden with dog shit and raccoon carcasses (“The shelf would knock her out and then she would smother in the dog shit, Edie. The raccoons are just there because she hates them.”) until I was blind and doubled-over from laughter. Even under our mother’s judgmental eye, June found joy in what we could one day have.

June had just finished high school when our mother took a tumble down the stairs. In her will she left us the house and the burden of planning a funeral that no one would attend. We didn’t care, though; we lounged around the house in our new party dresses, singing along with Stevie Nicks on the radio and gorging ourselves on cinnamon coffee cake and vanilla fudge during the body-less wake we had so carefully arranged. We stayed up all night watching movies where people kissed and took off their clothes and sometimes got murdered by madmen in the woods. We dug up our records from the backyard and played them so loud that the windows rattled. For the first time June talked about college and maybe becoming an architect or a graphic designer or a veterinarian. It wasn’t until we saw our mother lowered into the ground that June started to change.

“It’s a waste of money,” she said one day after I found the college brochures in the garbage. “No point in squandering what little we have on something so prideful.”

She started complaining about how her clothes touched her body and said we could have nicer things if I got a better job than bakery cashier. She stopped listening to our records and took up humming instead, these strange, strangled dirges that I had at first mistaken for grumbling under her breath. Often, I would awaken to find her sitting at the kitchen table smoking our mother’s Virginia Slims, the ashtray already overflowing as if she’d been up since before dawn. When I stayed out late on the weekends, she waited at the window for me, telling me I should be charging if I was going to spread my legs all over town.

At first I thought June was having a delayed reaction to Mother’s death, perhaps some lingering guilt from our celebration. Her eyes weighed on me every moment I was in that house and her voice followed me out. I yelled, I shook her hard, I begged her to be my little sister again. I took extra shifts at the bakery even though it hurt to be there. I started dating a man who encouraged me to move to the city with him.

One night, in a rare moment of clarity, June came to my bed in tears, sweat rolling from her hair line and beading along her collarbones. The heat coming off her was so intense that I thought our palms would sear together when she grasped my hand. This was when she first said it.

“Mother’s in me, Edie. I see her sometimes when I look in the mirror. She’s suffocating me. I can feel her in my chest. I can’t breathe.”

This is why, after I finally believed her, after I saw her cough up our mother into the bathroom sink, that I try to stay out of her lungs, even though it really is the best place to be.

***

I died six months after moving to the city, though I wasn’t left for dead in an alley with my panties around my ankles as Mother had predicted. It was after the funeral that I slipped in through June’s left nostril, when the casket was being lowered into the ground and I realized I didn’t want to go down with it. Outside of my body I was a rush of air, a ghost without a form blindly searching for soft walls to contain me. My sister June was a magnet, all velvet and steam and the irresistible comfort of familiarity. I remember wondering if our mother had felt the same when she chose June, when she gladly let June pull her in.

It wasn’t the lure of getting to live again inside a human body that gets to taste and touch and dance and sing. The truth is, I had been abruptly expelled into the stinging cold, and I needed warmth again, like when you first step out of a bath. I knew what our mother had done to June, and I didn’t want to be that thing that wormed its way through my sister’s heart and lungs, smothering and overtaking until June herself was nothing more than a tiny knot in the back of her own mind. Racing around in my sister’s throat, I whispered apologies and promised that we could coexist.

Now I mostly alternate between her ear, her eyes, her right hand, and her belly. Curled in the cool tunnel of her ear I can talk to her and know that she understands me. I slide down into her right hand whenever she touches bathwater or kitten fur. When she visits the bakery where I used to work, I linger in her eyes so I can watch Louisa’s round hips sway and dip as she bends to take the perfect cupcake from the front of the case. For just a moment I’m back in June’s ear as Louisa says she’s sorry about Edie—about me—and I hope she means more than my death. Later, at home, I pool in June’s belly so I can remember what it felt like to lay my head there and be comforted by the gurgling of her stomach like we used to do as children.

We’ve been listening to T. Rex and The Pretenders and Leonard Cohen, indulging in sporadic jumping and slow glides around the living room like right after Mother died. I wrap myself around June’s tongue whenever she licks the salt off the French fries from our favorite diner in town. She’s started wearing my old clothes, taking in the waist a touch and shortening hems, slipping into the lacy things I kept well-hidden when our mother was alive. She preens and poses in front of the mirror in our room, making me gasp when she rips a skirt’s seam all the way up her thigh. I can see myself in her reflection, a softly diffused form roughly in the shape I used to hold, crackling and smoking like live flames along the lines of my sister’s body. I know she sees me too: she smiles and says, “Your favorite, Edie” as she steps into my green silk dress.

There’s lipstick and the tiny gold hoops I used to keep in an envelope under my mattress, then the heels from my apartment in the city. She dabs perfume in the places I thought only I knew: the back of her neck, between her breasts, along her thighs where her stockings clutch her skin. I don’t have to ask; I know where she is going because I was in her right hand when she dialed my husband.

***

I can tell that he misses me: boxes of half-eaten pizzas litter every surface of the living room; every ashtray is overflowing, my lipstick-coated butts still lining the bottom of each dish; my purse is still where I left it on the kitchen counter; my plants are all dead; and he looks like shit. He’s still buttoning his shirt when he opens the front door, and I can feel my sister’s disappointment as she peers over his shoulder to see that he hasn’t bothered to clean up for her.

“You look good, Adam,” she says, stepping inside.

He’s too dampened from the whiskey and last night’s pills to be taken aback. I know June isn’t being sarcastic, though. My husband was always sexiest to me when he was wearing three days of stubble and begging for a haircut, and the smell of stale cigarettes and congealed cheese isn’t enough to cool the heat I feel spreading through June’s lower belly and down her thighs. She makes him coffee and tells him to eat the cake she brought, all the while making flustered little noises about how thin he’s gotten and how he’s got to start taking care of himself and how Edie wouldn’t want to see you like this, Adam. She sits too close to him on the couch, and I race to her nose so I can smell him, so I can burrow through the musk of dried sweat and three-day-old soap and the salt still on his skin from the nights when the whiskey ran out.

“I haven’t finished boxing up her stuff yet, but I can do it now,” he offers, tensing as he starts to rise.

I rush into June’s hand and guide it over his, relishing the familiar roughness of his knuckles, his once constant restless energy tame under what’s left of me, so grateful to my sister for letting me linger here. “There’s no rush. I really just wanted to see how you’re doing,” June says.

“Shitty, obviously,” Adam chuckles, taking back his hand and pushing it through his dark, grease-clumped hair.

It was always easy for me. From the first time I saw him sitting alone in the far corner of the pub, hunched over a tattered paperback and losing his place every time he took a drink, I knew I wanted him, and I made sure he wanted me too. I acted like I didn’t enjoy being pushed up against the backs of couches and bathroom stalls, like I was embarrassed by his hand up my skirt under restaurant tables and when our dinner party hosts left the room, but he knew the thrill it gave me and we both loved the game. We kept our hands and our minds busy, and he didn’t ever have to swear that he wasn’t thinking of anyone else when he was with me. Now I see the spark of recognition in my husband’s eyes as June flips her skirt above her knee and guides his hand there. I feel the moisture transfer from his skin to hers, her pulse quickening with his, both their chests seizing in a held breath. I know that look. It’s easy for my sister too.

I can’t stay out of her lungs. They’re exactly where I want to be, riding every quick and heavy breath as she unzips his jeans and slips her hand inside. I’m in her fingers again as she pulls her black lace panties off and presses them into his fist. On my sister’s tongue I taste the flesh I never thought I’d know again. I roll inside her chest and slide down her throat and am propelled throughout her body by her racing heart, touching on fingers, filling her lips, alighting for just a moment in her ear. As she straddles him, I spread myself along her thighs, pouring back into her chest at the end so that I can feel his heart speed against hers.

After, while Adam is zipping up and June is smoothing my green silk dress over her knees, a darkness unfurls inside her head, a thick choking haze like city smog that makes it difficult to see through her eyes. She picks up her panties from where they have fallen between the couch cushions and regards them as if they are the stray cats our mother used to shoo away with rocks from the yard. When she next speaks, Adam can barely look at her.

“I know all about it,” June says, rising to her feet, towering over my husband as he sits splayed on the brown leather. I am still flushed and pleasantly electric along her limbs, but her words pinch and constrict me. “I know what you did with her and you know it’s why she’s dead,” she continues, the haze between us thickening. “You took my Edie away.”

Adam picks up one of the many beer cans from the coffee table, shakes it, then polishes off its stale contents in one sloppy gulp. “You can show yourself out,” he says.

***

I sit inside my sister’s ear and beg her to explain herself as she stands in the shower scrubbing every inch until her skin is glowing red and raw. Why were you so cruel to him? I ask. You always liked him. She shakes her head so hard that I tumble down into her pelvis.

Once she’s satisfied and clean, a growing hunger tosses me around in June’s belly, and the heat spreading through her chest makes her lungs too stifling for me to rest. I’m in her mouth, dodging behind teeth and under her tongue as she rampages through a box of saltines then so many eggs fried in butter that I feel a nausea that makes me believe that I have a body again. She sleeps fitfully, sweating even though I make a point to settle in her always-cold feet. She’s anxious for morning, and I’m afraid of what’s going to happen when she’s up at dawn and already rubbing my perfume along the length of her neck.

The bakery doesn’t open until seven, but June is there just after six, tapping daintily on the door before the employees arrive. Of course I’ve been in her eyes, watching through the glass as Louisa heaves enormous trays of mantecados and almond schnicken and cinnamon apple empanadas into the cases. She’s already wiped her hands on her apron so many times that the pink-frosting streaked fabric is wadded like a corsage at her waist, and every time she bends to adjust a row of pastel tea cakes I can see the outline of her breasts swing inside her white tee-shirt. I didn’t fall in love with Louisa because her sweat smelled like yeast dough or her lips tasted of powdered sugar. I loved her because she was generous and stubborn, and she put her back into everything she did, and for a brief time she gave me something better than what I had at home. June was the one who held me and promised me my heart would heal as she pushed her fingers along the back of my head, unaware that Louisa used to do the same for me.

“Hey, sweetie,” Louisa greets June as she unlocks the door for her. “The register’s not up yet, but I can give you some schnicken for breakfast if you like.”

“Yes, that would be nice,” June agrees.

My sister sits at a table by the window, absently picking at her pastry while watching my boss putter behind the counter. We take in the smell of warm milk and sugar-frosted steam from the ovens in the back. Louisa starts a pot of coffee and pours June a cup, jovially teasing my sister for being up so early and how it must be because she couldn’t wait for one of her famous treats. June doesn’t respond, doesn’t even smile. She turns her gaze out the window, observing the sky as it lightens in warm bursts of orange into blue into white.

“Did you love my sister?”

Back behind the counter, Louisa drops one of the little cards meant to label a tray of ham and cheddar tarts. She keeps her eyes on it as she retrieves the paper and brushes it against her skirt. “Of course I did. She was a lovely girl, a great employee, she—”

“You know what I mean.”

“She was a good friend.”

Now I’m on June’s tongue, and I’m rolling and bouncing and screaming as if her mouth were my own. I’m screaming liar and coward and you told me you loved me every night, but my sister’s teeth don’t so much as rattle. Louisa keeps the counter between herself and June as June rises and crosses towards her. I move to my sister’s ear so I can hear Louisa’s breath quicken as she glances nervously at the clock, expecting JoAnn or Terry to walk in any minute now. “What would he think?” she had asked when I grew tired of after-hours gropings and dropped kisses every time her son arrived to take her home. “He’d never forgive me,” she had sighed more than once into my hair. Even though I knew he was just an excuse, I joined my mother in hurling vulgarities at the sweet boy who would sometimes deliver his mother’s apology cakes to our house.

Why were you so ashamed? I whisper before sliding from June’s ear.

Louisa jumps when June slams her palms down on the counter.

“Why were you so ashamed?”

“I don’t know what—”

“Don’t lie. I know everything.”

Louisa’s shoulders slump first, this folding in on herself as if her lungs have completely deflated, taking a couple of inches off her already small stature. A tendril of her long black hair slips from the loose bun at the back of her head, a thick loop of shiny silk snaking around her neck, threatening to tighten around her throat.

“You’re a coward,” June chastises her. “Your son, he’s a grown man now—he knows about these things. Don’t you think he’d want his mother to be happy? You broke my sister’s heart.”

“She . . . she got married. She moved on,” Louisa stammers.

“Edie moved to the city. Edie ended up dead.”

That’s what does it. Dead, in the voice of my sister, a voice that sounds just like mine used to. Louisa’s lips press into a wavering line against each other and her eyes blur with the sudden weight of tears. I wonder if she’s ever really thought about it before this moment, about what she’s lost. I wonder if she cried alone like I did that night after she told me it was over. I wonder if she regretted spending her day kneading dough while my funeral took place across town with only my sister and the priest our mother complained was “too liberal” in attendance.

Louisa wipes her arm roughly over her eyes. Flour mixes with tears across her reddening cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? That’s it? That’s hardly even an apology.”

“I don’t know what else to say, June.”

“Tell Edie you love her. Then tell your son. Tell him everything.”

“I can’t . . . ”

“She died thinking she was nothing to you, thinking you just threw her away.”

Louisa doesn’t look scared or even surprised when June reaches across the counter and grabs the loose rope of hair curled around her neck. Her dark, wet eyes struggle to stay on June’s face as my sister drags the edge of her fingernail slowly across Louisa’s fat lower lip, and I race to June’s hand so I can relive the tremor of those lips against my skin all warm and soft and pliant. It occurs to me that I have all of eternity to think about those lips the same way I think about my husband’s hands.

Louisa closes her eyes for just a moment. With her face now pulled close to June’s, I see the recognition surface as she breathes in my perfume. She looks confused by the intimacy, by something I used to do.

“You’ll never be happy,” my sister says.

I’m in June’s chest when she grips the back of Louisa’s head and slams it into the side of the pastry case. Nestled against her heart, every staccato beat jolts me like the glass against Louisa’s temple. There’s a little blood and a crack racing towards the cupcakes, and Louisa is flailing and screaming and grabbing more of her own hair than June’s hands. It’s easy for my sister, easier than it ever was for me.

Once Louisa is quiet and slumped behind the counter, June grabs a handful of napkins and wipes the blood and stray strands of hair from the pastry case. I allow myself to settle in her lungs, surprised at how her breathing has slowed and how the heat in her chest has cooled to a perfect warm bath that cradles me. I still remember what it feels like to have a heart with its jackrabbit highs and smothering lows and the engine-beat of contentment in between. It’s this contentment that fills me, that gives me a shape again, when June smiles at the first employee in as she passes him through the bakery’s double doors.

***

This is not my sister. This is not my June. This is all me.

I was the one who pocketed cigarettes and lipsticks, and dreamt of humiliating revenge, and plotted arsons. June was the one who told me people are weak and not to dwell and to be patient. She took the hammer from my hands when I stood over Mother’s bed at night. She reminded me of who was worth my tears and who wasn’t. When I screamed and broke dishes and poured cold water all over the porch steps, June talked me down with promises of what we deserved.

I try to make her expel me, make her cough me up into the bathroom sink like she did with our mother. After she eats, I push my way through her stomach, bouncing up into her throat and back into her gut over and over until she’s doubled over and retching, but she always manages to keep me locked in behind her teeth. While she sleeps, I lodge myself in her throat so that she’s forced to cough unconsciously, but her tongue always rolls me back inside. It doesn’t matter what happens to me, if I will become smoke out the window or if I will cease to exist once I’m outside of her body—I just have to get out so I don’t keep hurting my sister the way our mother did.

“We were supposed to be happy,” June says one night as she stands in front of the mirror in her nightgown, her fingers busy working through her long blonde hair. I can see myself in her reflection, diffused and crackling at the same time, outlining her body like angry marker strokes over and over again as I race along her edges. I know she can feel me too by the way she rolls her arm, tumbling me back into her chest. “I tried, but I was too late, wasn’t I?” she sighs, her words a dull reverberation inside her ribcage.

You have to let me go, June, I say inside her ear.

“Again? Like I let you go when you said you knew what you were doing? Like when you said it wasn’t too much and you could handle it?”

I made a mistake.

June finishes braiding her hair, considers herself in the mirror, then shakes her hair loose again, knocking me into the base of her skull. I’ve been here before, of course, gliding over the surface of my sister’s brain, desperately trying to get inside, but never even able to work my way between the folds.

“I had a plan, Edie. It was slow, but it was working. First Mother, then Louisa—I would’ve left Adam alone, but then all that shit you did together . . . If you had any kind of patience, Edie, we could’ve been happy.”

Please, June. This isn’t you.

“This isn’t me? You think Mother was controlling me? You think you’ve been controlling me?” She lets out a huge, gaping laugh, jarring and so much crueler than the ones I remember when she talked about smothering our mother in dog shit or the irony of Louisa’s son falling in love with a man. “I’m the one who pushed Mother down the stairs, Edie,” she tells me, going back to fussing with her hair. “I’m the one who made sure Louisa got what’s coming and I’ll be the one who does the same for Adam. All those things you wanted but couldn’t do—it’s me, Edie. Maybe this is who I really am.”

I think about the day our mother died, seeing June frozen at the top of the stairs, one hand on the railing and the other braced against the wall as she stared down at the woman I’d wished dead a thousand times over. I remember envisioning myself there, close behind Mother as she rattled off that day’s chores and how I could do them better, my foot jutting out just enough to catch her heel and knock her off her feet. I remember holding June’s hand as her tears started right as the paramedics arrived, amazed at her capacity for tenderness towards the woman who had been so cruel to us. As a thick, choking haze falls between my sister and me again, I imagine Adam standing on the roof with her, drunk and leaning farther and farther over the ledge while she asks him if he can still see my blood on the sidewalk below.

You have to let me go, June. You won’t be happy as long as I’m here.

My sister smooths down her hair one last time then drops her hands, bracing her palms against the mirror as she leans in close to the glassy surface, squinting a little as if she can see me inside of her reflection. “What about you, Edie? You didn’t get to be happy when you were alive, but I’m fixing that now. Then we can both be happy.”

We shared more than just blood—I see that now. All night and into the next day I roil and jump, struggling to break myself apart, to dissolve myself fully into the person who has always been half of me like I was half of her. Despite my efforts, she sleeps soundly, and she eats without nausea or vomiting, and I stay lodged in her body for days that could be weeks that could be months.

When June walks by the bakery, I am afraid to look, so I tense in her ear hoping to hear Louisa’s laugh as she greets her favorite customers or wishes my old coworkers a good night.

When June stops in the corner store, I’m in her fingers as she turns the heavy bottle of Adam’s favorite whiskey over in her hands.

When June climbs the stairs to the apartment where I last lived, I linger in her feet so I can feel each weathered groove and remember what it was like to stumble and yell and laugh, tipsy from gin, cheeks and chest hot with anticipation as my husband tugs at my skirt.

And when Adam opens the door and takes the whiskey and accepts my sister’s suggestion to enjoy a drink on the roof, I wonder if after this, if after we are done, June and I will finally be happy.

SLEEPING IN PUBLIC PLACES

Jacquelyn Mitchard

THERE IS ONLY one of her, and she knows it.

In the cool, arid darkness, she listens for Jeremy’s breathing, measures it, tests its familiarity, slow and direct with a customary slight hitch on the inhale, like a sneeze in reverse. He is really, fully asleep, sprawled: In the first days, he faked it sometimes, she could tell, his respirations a regulated pantomime. She can’t decide if she hates him more for faking sleep or for actually sleeping. Excited, she rises, and collects her kit, fuzzy throw and water bottle, paperback and pen flashlight, cranberry cookies furled in a paper napkin, ear buds, yoga pillow, the four flexible black poster boards rolled in a hair elastic. Her phone. The phone is a concession. The room is dimmer than a lake bottom, but she skirts the obstacles—throw pillows, her boots (“Hey,” she told Jeremy yesterday. “You were a high jumper in college, but I’m a low jumper. I jump over my shoes.” She’s funny. She’s fine. She’s funny and fine and even fancy), her lap desk, her great-grandmother’s primitive cherry cradle, filled with dead plants. She must make a note to burn it.

“Hello,” she says to the owl that sits white on the creaking branch just outside their door. It never flies off, just regards her with bored, reptilian eyes. “Hello and goodnight.”

There is a style to these things. She lets the car roll backward down the slight short slope to the blacktop, engaging the motor only when she knows that the stand of wizened evergreens the realtor grandly called a privacy privet will block the murmur of the fine and fancy Volvo motor. Now she is on her own.

The edge of a residential area is sometimes best, but she can’t go back more than once or twice in a two-week period. People will notice. They watch cold-case shows: They’re nervy; they’re curious; they’re insomniacs; they’re the future foilers of felons. She often searches out the edge of a tree-bowered neighborhood: Holiday times are good for this. Family and friends, everyone’s here, cars up on curbs and lawns, as if she’s invited too! On weekday nights, a church or a synagogue is just the thing. Ecumenically enough, the big lots at the big box churches always have room for one more pilgrim. Who’s to say, after all, that she’s not one of the devout, grooming God’s house before the Sabbath onslaught? Hotel parking lots are golden, too, bathed in cheap light, angled in next to mini-vans with roof racks and side windows decaled with six stick figures . . . Mom, Dad, Sis, Bro, cat, and baby on board! The rub comes if someone from the desk notices her car; but hotel desk workers are desperate. How can they have paid for an associate’s degree in hospitality for this, sick drunk hockey fans flapping naked in the pool at three in the morning? They have bigger fish to fry than her. And hotel rooms? Hotel rooms are simply not public but instead like little houses. You stay in hotels with someone you love, on a visit, on a journey, or on business. They are all you need, a nascent environment. They constitute a commitment, to some future. Temporary, but not tenuous. They won’t do.

Except for the politics she fashioned for herself in college days, she would always go to the parking lot of the Wal-Mart. Wal-Marts never close: They proudly welcome weary RV travelers, and some even boast cable and hookups. Though her snobbery shames her, she does have to admit that on weekends, Wal-Mart parking lots can be upsetting, aromatically, because of the collision of all the gassy smells pizza burritos cheesy popcorn belches.

Roadside parking areas terrify her. Killers cleave to these places, seeking wounded.

She goes to them most often.

She goes to one now.

It’s far, maybe a drive of fifteen minutes. When she sees the flirty leafed wink of the caged lights above the toilets, her breath comes faster. This could be anywhere. There’s a big truck, a big furniture truck and in her humble opinion, furniture trucks and milk trucks are just somehow a cut above. Two mini vans hump nose to tail, like beetle mates. She chooses a spot next to a huge holly bush. She’s been here before.

One time, someone showed up. There came a tap tap on the window, and, her eyes shocked open, she went whaling around in the glovey leather front seat. “Please don’t get out of the vehicle, miss.”

“Okay.”

“Is everything all right here? Do you mind passing me the vehicle registration and your license?”

“I’m just taking a break. The signs says: Plan your next rest.”

“That’s fine, miss. Please stay in the vehicle.”

After an interminable wait, during which she reviewed all of her possible toll violations and near misses, the officer returned and said, “This address is in Kirkwood. It’s only two exits from here.”

“Oh, I’m moving,” she explained. “I’m moving on. I got a late start and I really needed a short nap.”

“Well. Lock up,” said the police officer. “Drink lots of water.”

“I do,” she said. “I stay hydrated.”

That night, she couldn’t go back to sleep. She fidgeted, and finally went to the doughnut shop, sitting in the window reading season-old celebrity magazines that predicted the breakup of couples already divorced, jangled as an Edward Hopper dame.

Now she tucks her poster boards against the inside of the windshield and the two side windows. They’re bent just right, and she doesn’t really need the tape she keeps in the glove box. She stuffs her backpack and extra pillow up on the package shelf so the car looks full. For a while, she’d had a car cover, but it was almost impossible to get into the car with it on and she found herself fixated on the notion that some vandal would think hers was a costly car worth hiding, like a Mercedes, when a 2005 Volvo was its own best camo. She reclines the seat and tucks the throw around her shoulders, around her neck. Her arms are as stiff as the skin of a frog. There.

“This family cradle kept your grandmother safe,” Jeremy said. “What was good for big Rebecca will be good for little Rebecca.” She hasn’t burned it. She can always burn it. There has never, she wants to tell Jeremy, been a single verified case of sudden infant death syndrome when the baby was sleeping in the parents’ bed. Of course, fat, senseless felonious drunks rolled on their infants and crushed the life from them. She knew they did. They did it on purpose, because she didn’t believe they could not notice, for how could they not notice? In the hospital, newborn Rebecca thrashed like a weasel when she slept spent and chanced to lean on her unaccustomed bundle, just five hours outside her own body. In their big bed, Jeremy liked to lounge. Jeremy basked. He was a scholar of sleep, a sultan of snore. He didn’t want to wake little Rebecca. She pictures poor Jeremy’s trustful face, slackened in sleep, pressed to the biggest cherry bright plate on the electric stove.

Next month, she thinks, as her face shoulders neck chest heart relax, she will take the plunge she’s been meaning to take all along. She’ll pack a tiny bag and rent one of those pods at the airport, those brutally clean pinned sheet napkin wrapped pods. They were made for her kind, for sleeping in public places. She sometimes casts yearning looks at the troll houses of bank kiosks—how warm and public they would be. But dirty. Dangerously dirty. When the weather is warm, she’ll park up in the lot of the ski lodge. Ah wilderness. She can imagine waking to the sun basting the ridge, another night burned.

At Jeremy’s Christmas party, she overheard a woman sleekly say, “They were acre couches. They were Rhode Island sized couches. They were deep as the Mariana trench. And I just stuck my purse under my butt and kicked off my shoes and snuggled up on top of my ratty old fur coat and I was out! Out!”

The woman turned, flinching from her eyes, more startled than the owl.

Even in memory, the devouring maw of her attention abashes her. It must have risen up like a stink. She had studied the woman. Her bob, her sneer, her fishnets and coral pout. Was she another like her?

No, she thinks. She’s fine now. Here now. The night is colder. Cold might rouse her early but she will get some good hours. Down she slides into surrender. There is no other. Of her, she is the only one.

FOLEY

Katy McCarthy

MONA PRESSES THE loose floorboard with a socked toe, just to hear it talk. It speaks: the sound of a miniature diving board. She is grateful for 7:30 a.m., an hour appropriate for drinking coffee, grateful that it is no longer 4:30 a.m., the hour at which she unwillingly rose.

Her three roommates are still nooked up in their bedrooms. If Mona listens closely, she can hear the fleecy sounds of their elbows moving through blankets and the little taptap of their finger pads on glassy screen faces.

Like most things, Mona prefers hearing her roommates to seeing them.

Sound is fact. She can handle it objectively, break it down and hold its many parts in her ears. When she was a kid and her parents used to rage at each other she would rhythmically press the hollowed part of her palm to her ear, remixing their fights into something more abstract. Something tolerable.

One of her routine morning thoughts (the kind you cannot control, that float up triggered by the environment) is that a person can gauge their fit within a communal household by how they feel in their home in the morning.

Most mornings in this house, Mona skulks around drinking a cup of coffee, the better to speak as rapidly as the fast-mouthed cohort she lives with. Often, she ends up drinking another cup and overshooting the mark. Her shaky hands break mugs and she starts her day by scuttling shards of ceramic into paper bags and apologizing.

They are not bad people, just not her people.

Mona makes coffee. She stirs in cream with a butter knife. The sound warps and curls, a bell to action.

The freeway is thick with other Angelinos at 8 a.m. Traffic is now the center point of a constellation of other things she finds unfavorable about L.A: the dirt air, the layer of jelly fat on her lower back from no longer walking everywhere, the performance art. It feels that all the components of her life are light years from each other. A forty-five-minute commute to a party, an hour to the museum on the hill, a year until her next career move.

***

At work, Mona and the senior foley artist Louis—a surfer-turned-yogi-turned-sound guru—stretch out on yoga mats in the recording room. The walls are upholstered in spiky foam, localizing and dampening all sounds. The familiar weight of silence soothes Mona’s tympanum.

Mona squats to stretch her hips out, then eases down onto the floor and extends her legs, touches her toes. She is agile and has a penchant for picking up complex choreography. In New York, she danced with a downtown company. The director told her once she had great powers of mimesis but no style. So now, she is here, where perfect mimicry is the name of the game. Doing foley is like playing Dance Dance Revolution while performing a John Cage piece.

Mona extends her arms behind her and interlaces her fingers. Her left shoulder pops satisfyingly. On tables around her Louis has already gathered wheels, pieces of wood, Play-Doh, little trays of gravel, carpet samples. “Finishing the last episode of Clambake Motel today?” she inquires.

“Yap,” Louis hands her a cue sheet: lots of keys, some flesh stuff, doors slamming. Mona turns around to peek into the audio booth, the engineer has arrived and is looking down at her phone. Louis walks up to the glass between them and taps it with the back of his knuckles. “Let’s make some noise!” he sings.

The first scene is a bath. As the character steps into the tub, Mona follows suit with her own legs into a tub of water, splashing lightly in acclimation to the heat. Louis voices the heater, plucking a wire to simulate the popping of hot oil. When the character, the overworked female proprietor of the titular Clambake Motel, allows her head to be subsumed by the water, Mona sticks a straw in the tub and blows bubbles to give sound to her underwater exhale.

***

At the end of the day, Mona is damp but feels accomplished. “Great work today,” Louis compliments her, “can’t wait to see you take on the flick we’re doing in the morning.”

“Gimme the lowdown,” she says, tucking a bucket of keys back onto a shelf.

“Kind of an indie movie, suspense . . . horror,” he says, “sort of experimental. The whole movie is basically a bunch of YouTube videos edited together.”

Mona has a soft spot for horror although she has done very little foley for the genre.

“There’s a lot of barefoot carpet tiptoeing and slamming door stuff, but some pretty chilly shit at the end.”

“I might stay late and watch it, is that cool?”

“Sure, just lock up when you leave and don’t like, wig out here alone.”

***

In the engineering room, Mona clicks around on a mouse to wake the projector up and presses play. The picture blooms to life, introducing FionaFakesIt, a YouTuber who has forsaken Hollywood dreams for smaller screen fame. Dirty blonde and slightly sticky in the heat of the San Fernando Valley, Fiona is creating her latest DIY filmmaker tutorial. A mélange of shears and loose hardware and leftover rings of PVC make cameos on screen as Fiona demonstrates how to make a camera glide rail with rollerblade wheels and pipe. When she cuts to the footage it is choppy, fast then slow, and bumpy. She is willfully oblivious. “So, there you have it, your own good-as-professional camera slider for less than twenty dollars!” As she is swiveling the camera towards her pillaged, useless rollerblades, a shadow moves across her window. Busy making a joke about already missing blading on the boardwalk, she doesn’t seem to notice.

But—later—as Fiona is reading the five comments she has received, two of which are from bots, she frowns at one. “Something in ur window at 7:13? Whattttt is that?”

***

FionaFakesIt’s audience starts to grow, and she gets a haircut and paint her nails. She posts a video called Three DIY Techniques for Injections and Needles! In the first demonstration, she barely touches the needle to her skin and films herself pulling away quickly. “This is how they did it in Pulp Fiction,” she explains, reversing the video to make it look like she is stabbing herself.

“It’s obviously most effective if, just as the needle makes contact, you cut to a scene of like . . . the person’s face in pain,” she says guilelessly. For method number two, she pulls out a hunk of prosthetic skin and loads a real hypodermic needle with a milky concoction. “Couldn’t afford a full limb and I doubt you could either, but I have a friend who works in sex doll fabrication who will give me swatches of test skin.”

Fiona flicks the needle and jabs it into the yielding fake. She sucks it back and the chamber of the needle swirls with a few red ribbons from the blood packet glued to the underside of the prosthetic. She depresses the plunger and empties it. “So that works pretty well.”

“The last method is to just use a stage needle,” Fiona explains. “You can get em’ online. It’s basically just blunt metal, spring loaded, so when you push it against something, it looks like it’s going in, but the needle actually just retracts into the body of the syringe, see.” She swiftly stabs herself. “W-what the fuck!?” she yells. The needle is buried deep in her arm. She pulls it out and shakily makes a joke about being a “real noodle for accidentally using a real needle.”

Fiona chuckles, but her pupils are huge. Mona thinks that if the movie was 4D, Fiona would be fragrant with fear-sweat.

Fiona is wrapping up her video and reminding folks to leave comments and be sure to Like the video if it was helpful. As she’s waving goodbye, there is a slam! from somewhere in her house. Fiona jolts back and snaps her attention in the direction of her bedroom door. “The fuck . . . ”

“Um, hello?” she calls out in her valley voice.

She gets no reply. “Must be the Santa Anas,” she says to her camera.

Seconds go by and Fiona doesn’t move, just stares in the direction of her bedroom door. Mona imagines the little red worm on the video progress bar getting longer and longer and how it looks just like a syringe of blood, getting fuller and fuller.

Finally, Fiona looks deeply into her webcam. “Maybe you guys can come with me and I’ll just check it out.” The picture swims as Fiona scoops up her MacBook. Holding it close to her head, angled slightly to the front, she and her viewers move into the hallway and then slowly towards the living room.

Her front door is open wide to the windy night.

She approaches the door and Mona gets a view of Fiona’s dark front yard, overgrown with bougainvillea and manzanilla and white sage and also two glowing eyes.

Mona gasps as Fiona yips and slams the door. The computer is briefly left unattended and Mona can hear Fiona locking the door and tip toeing to a window, the sound of curtains being pulled shut and then slowly pulled back. Fiona comes back to the computer. “It’s just a deer guys, sorry I’m so jumpy.”

She turns the screen towards the outside again. Through the window the deer stands still, ears alert.

“Pretty wild in these hills,” Fiona speaks softly. “Maybe I should start a nature channel instead, whatdya guys think?” Then a crack sounds, and the deer falls hard.

Fiona and the computer run back down the hallway, into the bedroom, behind a locked door. Fiona dials 911 on her cell phone and is frantic with the operator.

“My front door was open, and then just now someone shot a deer in my front yard [a pause]. No, I haven’t used any drugs tonight! Can you just send someone out fast, I’m worried there is someone in my yard with a fucking gun! My neighbors? I don’t know, a half mile?” She gives them her address. The webcam records all, then she hangs up and moves off screen. Clicking sounds lead Mona to assume that Fiona is locking her windows. Fiona comes back to the broadcast, wild with fear, biting her lips and rocking. “I don’t know what to do you guys, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what is going on or who is out there or why—why they killed that deer or . . . ”

She leans over her keyboard, biting her right thumbnail and periodically jerking at the small noises of her home.

This goes on for fifteen miserable minutes. It’s a strange editing choice, Mona thinks, but effective. Real time, waiting for the police to wind their way up and over the canyon.

Finally, the police rap on the door and yell. Fiona skitters out, leaving the computer unattended. Muffled voices sound from the living room. The screen is a still life of her empty room. It’s banal but riveting, the way real things are. The cinema vérité editing choices snub the four-second attention span of millennials and ease Mona into a state of suspended disbelief.

There is a noise at the window. The window. The window is opening, just a crack.

Fiona leads the cops back to her bedroom. They immediately glom on to the small pile of needles on her desk.

“Oh, no! Um, I make YouTube videos,” she explains.

“About doing drugs?” an officer asks, icily.

“Ha, no, like about how to do your own special effects and editing tricks and stuff.” Fiona’s wrinkled brow and flushed cheeks loom into the image. “Actually, something else weird happened tonight with one of my props . . . Look, I’ll show you.” She stops the recording.

Mona realizes her shoulders are crunched and her palms sweaty. Adrenaline hums pleasurably through her. She adores the feeling now but knows the movie will keep her up later. Her penchant for horror often means late nights spent rigid with wakefulness, only eventually falling asleep with her bedside lamp aglow. She is a feminist who loves slasher films and she sort of sees no problem with that. The contemporary woman is allowed to be contradictory, permitted to watch men hurt women on screen and then bring a man home with her.

Different men cater to different qualities of her fear. Some men Mona sees as comrades of death: If a murderous spirit comes to life under the house and floats up to violently kill her, her friend will die too, and she won’t be alone in her final moments. Other men seem capable of protecting her. These men she puts on the side of the bed facing the door, cupping their cross-fitted shoulders and riding smoothly into the deep black of unconsciousness. It’s complex, womanhood, but Mona doesn’t lose sleep over it with a warm male sharing the bed.

***

Since the video of the deer, which went viral, it seems that Fiona has accrued quite a fanbase. Not just DIYers but people looking for entertainment outside the purview of HBO and Netflix. Fiona stirs almond milk into her coffee that lingers, undispersed, so unlike cream, and runs her mouth about morning light on camera.

“Let’s see if the Times is here,” she says and pads to the door. The vertical format of the video tells Mona that Fiona is recording from her iPhone this morning. The video walks with Fiona to the door, who opens it. She leans down to pick up the plastic sleeve of newspaper.

Underneath it, written in coppery, dried blood: Hollywood prefers real horror. The prop needle lays next to it.

Fiona drops the phone.

The next day she will pick up a million new viewers.

***

Mona does not want to be like poor Fiona with her stalker and her dangerous fame. The internet is a nation of creepy stalkers and prurient fans, diligently tuning into Fiona’s every episode. Shamelessly Liking as she gets scared witless. Does she want the attention? Not like this.

When she finds the needle, Fiona runs straight to her car and speeds to a friend’s place downtown, stopping only to buy an e-cigarette at a gas station. She blows vapor over her anxiety and tries to keep her audience intrigued by wearing less clothing and recruiting friends to prank call her and breathe deeply on the other line. But it’s never enough, her capricious fans can smell the fakery and viewership drops off. No one actually wants to watch her parent layers in After Effects to create a Cool Text Message Conversation on Screen while receiving fake calls. The comments are demanding: Return to the Blair Witch broadcast or else. The audience is fickle; they want what they want.

They don’t have to pine for long.

In the next scene, on a Tuesday morning when she live-broadcasts herself reading and responding to comments, Fiona notices a new video on her channel that appears to have been posted the night before, but not by her. It is a dark, pixelated shot of the front of the friend’s house she has been camped out in. Light blinks from an upstairs window and the camera zooms towards it. It’s slightly blown out, but it’s certainly her, Fiona, demonstrating how to set up a green screen. She gestures towards the corners. She pulls wrinkles out, stapling the Kelley Green Sheet to the wall like an alien hide.

“Someone hacked my account . . . ” she says quietly. Her eyes are red and searching. Her chin wobbles as she speaks, looking directly at the camera “Who the FUCKING FUCK are you, this is SICK, OKAY? and WHY . . . Why are you doing this? I want it to STOP I want you to stop please stop,” she pleads, wrapping her arms around her shoulders. “Maybe it was a joke, or maybe you liked me and didn’t know how to, like, show it or something, but, it’s gone too far, and the Police are looking for you and, now I’m sure they will track your IP address and find you, so you better just stop. Okay? Just . . . ” She breathes out. “Please, just, please leave me alone, go away.”

She turns the camera off.

An hour and fifteen minutes into the movie, on a Thursday night, Fiona kills herself on camera.

Mona half-watches, but she listens, deeply, to Fiona’s death. The incision will need to be juicy, Mona thinks. The steady push push of blood from the pulsing slits should make a glug, glug noise. How will she foley this scene? Slicing into a chocolate lava cake? Pushing viscous liquid from a slice in a balloon?

“You did this to me,” Fiona cries, “You did this to me.”

A knock sounds off screen. A woman’s voice Fiona? Fiona lemme in. Fiona. Fiona come on. Fiona. Knocking, knocking, knocking. FIONA! Fi! Fi? Then: pushing until the door gives. A woman dashes into view. Shrieking like a blonde raven, she rips her shirt off and tries to hold it to Fiona’s ruined white wrists. Her acting is clunky, she over prepared for the part. She quickly fishes her phone out of a pocket and calls 911, shout-reporting what’s going on and throwing the phone down.

Mercilessly, the webcam rolls on.

EMTs show up, scoop Fiona onto a stretcher and load her into an ambulance. Her friend rides with her, broadcasting hopelessly until the moment Fiona’s pronounced DOA at the hospital.

The end of the movie shows Fiona’s friends taking turns broadcasting from her funeral. It’s set to music and a cork board in the parlor foyer is pinned with photos of her. The camera moves unsteadily into the atrium of the funeral home, towards the open casket. It hovers over Fiona’s stodgily made-up face, her chin squished into her neck. The camera spins around to three of her friends, cheeks grey with mascara and tears. “Rest in Peace, Fi,” they say to the camera.

The movie fades to black.

“Jesus,” Mona mutters, “experimental indeed.” It takes Mona a minute to snap out of it, to return to reality. Her foot has fallen asleep and the room pulsates with the new silence. It’s so quiet that when Mona squints her eyes together, she can hear the wet clicking of her lids meeting. She considers the objects she will need for the various scenes when the movie comes to life again.

Fiona is sitting in a nondescript room on a bench against a concrete wall. She is crying. Her wrists are unscathed.

A man in a mask steps into the frame. It’s so cliché. “What is this?” Mona scoffs.

Two professional shotgun microphones are cradled in stands to the left and right of Fiona. The masked man slips monitor headphones on and taps each mic in turn while he listens. He points at Fiona, blubbering, insane. “Say it!” He commands.

“I am Fiona Minbrook and I faked my own death and,” she sobs, “and now I will die.”

It’s all sort of chintzy and gross, thinks Mona. But the microphones. The microphones make her feel queasy.

The stationary computer camera, probably set out on a table facing the scene, delivers a merciless brutality to the scene. Nothing swirls or is implied. The man has a blade. It all happens very quickly.

With each lacerating moment of contact, a sound is released from Fiona’s skin. Mona realizes she has heard it before, when she was sixteen and didn’t want to die, but needed something to do with her fury. Swiping her mother’s sewing shears across the insides of her thighs the sonics were slightly different: the dragged scissor blades creates a tiny bit of friction, her tender epidermis puckering and gathering before giving. She only did it once or twice.

Mona looks at the condenser microphones with their long and slender and highly directional heads like bird beaks. Fiona keens her own death cry and still the mic delivers clean, even sonics.

Mona reaches over and presses the projector’s power button. The picture blips off, but the audio, recorded with two broadcast quality microphones, keeps telling.

Mona hears air particles moving, and then something swift, like tofu splitting. It is like the release of a tiny suction cup but also not like that at all.

The sound is not campy, because the real thing never is.

It is a sound that cannot be unheard, the sound of nothing except the exact sound of the thing that is happening.

***

Four years after foleying Fiona Fakes All Mona is sitting in a dark bar, her cocktail sweating onto a napkin as she waits for her date to show up. When he arrives they greet each other awkwardly, “Uh, Mo . . . Mona?” he questions. She winces, hoping no one can hear her confirming her identity because they have never seen each other in person before. She nods and stands up, he opens to a hug as she offers her hand. They reconcile into a silly half embrace.

Mona lost the weight that plagued her when she first moved to LA and her body is clothed in a black turtleneck maxi dress accessorized only by jutting elbows and hipbones. Predictably boring, the date asks Mona what she does for a living. She answers by finishing her drink and ordering another one.

“I’m a foley artist,” she finally says, “are you in the industry?”

“Wow, I’ve always thought that would be a cool job!” He gives her a dopey smile and swigs his pale ale. “I’m in tech. It’s okay! How long have you been doing . . . foley?”

“Four or five years now.”

“Have you done any movies I would know?”

“Do you like scary movies?”

“Not really.”

“Well, that’s sort of my genre.”

Mona doesn’t tell him that she’s the best in the field, booked for the next two years straight.

***

She sticks around because the guy has nice teeth and cross-fit shoulders. She orders them another round even though he is only halfway through his first.

A little later, a little drunker, Mona crunches an ice cube. The sound makes her shiver. “Want to come home with me?” she whispers across the dark table.

In the Uber home she puts his hand up her dress. For once, she is not concerned about sound. Let the driver hear, she thinks.

They stumble into her bedroom. He pulls his shirt off and steps towards Mona to help her do similarly. Mona pauses, considers turning the lights off, decides she doesn’t care, and lets him slide the dress up over her head.

The dress is up around her neck, blocking her face, when she hears him gasp. She finishes the job for him, dropping the dress on the floor. He gapes at her body, at the mélange of scars lacing her stomach, arms, and legs.

She walks to him, smiling, her arms open. “It’s okay,” she says. “It always sounds good at the time.”

A LETTER FROM A SISTER TO HER BROTHER

Michelle Sikorski

I THINK FOR you to understand this, you need to know that when I was nine, I saw angels for the first time.

Well, not really. What I actually saw was a visual hallucination common in ocular migraines: silver specks flying past me in my peripheral vision, bright and fast and, to my nine-year-old mind, obviously divine. I saw the “angels” several times after that, until I was thirteen and I heard mom’s eye doctor tell her about this bizarre, benign kind of migraine that causes people to see evaporation lines, or random flashes, or silver specks flying past their heads. No angels visited me after that. I mean, I still get the migraines, but they’ve lost their magic.

Unfortunately, I’ve found little proof or evidence in anything divine since. But ever since I got possessed, I’ve started to wonder if devils need angels to exist.

I know it may seem a little out-there of me to start off by saying I’m possessed, but trust me, I am. I didn’t know at first—I didn’t know for years—but that’s what I want to tell you about.

In retrospect, it’s actually really obvious. I think it started when I was five or six: I was definitely young. And I can’t say for sure if this is the first time it happened, but I can remember being little, and getting in an argument with Mom, and I was so mad. And then I seemed to switch off: I was still there, I was still seeing and feeling and thinking, and my body was moving, but I wasn’t doing it. And I didn’t snap out until she burst into the room, hearing the thuds of my head against the wall over and over and over.

Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud.

And she yelled at me, but I could tell it wasn’t an in-trouble kind of yell. It was a primal sort of yell, the kind of yell that felt like bears and splitting earth.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “That’s never the right way to handle things; promise me you’ll never hurt yourself like that again.”

And I promised. The fact that I hadn’t felt like I’d done it at all evaporated in the face of her fear, and I promised to never do it again.

When it happened a month later, I didn’t tell her. I haven’t told her about any of the times since, either.

It was scary early on, but you’d be surprised by what you can get used to. It was at least fairly predictable. I’d get angry: at mom, at you, at a mean kid out on the street. I’d stew, I’d feel the anger bubble and froth and start to overflow, and then just when my body felt like it would burst from the pressure, it would happen. I’d take a back seat, something else would take over, and all that rage would flow right from my body, into my fists, and onto my head, my chest, my stomach, my legs. I’d watch as my hands pulled my hair, as they pummeled my shoulders and thighs, and I’d wait. Eventually they’d flop to my side, my own again.

If I’m being entirely honest, I didn’t hate It back then. Before It started escalating, back when the possessions were a relatively infrequent thing, there was something kind of nice about it. I’ve never liked being angry, although it’s always come easily to me. I can remember watching you play video games on the hardest setting, dying over and over and screaming and punching holes in your walls and thinking, Why doesn’t he just turn down the difficulty? Why doesn’t he just turn off the game?

And when I’d ask, you’d say: “Well, getting pissed off is part of the fun.”

I couldn’t relate to that. Still, I have to admit that when I took my body back from whatever made it hurt me, there was always an immense feeling of relief. My hands could be sore, my legs bruised, my head spinning, but at least I wasn’t mad anymore.

It took a darker turn when I started high school. I met a girl with scars on her skin, and I discovered we shared a secret. Her monster used weapons instead of fists. Mine got ideas, but they didn’t last long. See, some things get noticed more than others. I guess my monster didn’t want to get noticed because after the first time someone asked how I managed to get a cut like that so high up on my leg, it went back to hitting. Everyone gets weird bruises sometimes.

I know I sound crazy. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I am crazy. Being possessed makes you crazy. And I have evidence for the possession. I’m getting there.

Have you ever looked in the mirror and seen someone else’s face? I have. I was at school, and I’d forgotten an assignment for class, one that was worth about a forth of the semester’s grade. I could barely hear the teacher’s lecture on irresponsibility, because I was ten times angrier with myself than she was. And after she was done offering me a portion of credit if I brought it in before homeroom the next day, I slipped away to a bathroom and It took over.

It was the first time it happened near a mirror, and so it was the first time I ever got the full view of what I actually looked like, my fists smashing against various parts of me. I wasn’t too surprised by the hitting, I mean, I could always see that. It was my face that caught me off guard.

It was twisted, and cruel, and entirely unlike the face I was used to seeing when I looked in a mirror. My features were there, but it wasn’t an expression I knew I could even make. But worst of all, when the jolt of horror ran through my body, everything stopped. My arms fell to the side, and my face turned toward the mirror, suddenly expressionless. Thinking it was over, I lifted my hands to fix my hair, except they didn’t go. I watched my legs move me forward, so that I was no more than an inch away from the mirror.

There’s a distinct kind of dread that comes from looking into your own eyes and seeing something else. I watched my lips curl into a smile, and I saw my hand wave, and then I was alone.

I went home early that day.

Something about seeing it, and seeing It see me, made me ready to fight. After Mom dropped me off and headed back to work, I got on the internet and started researching what the hell was happening to me. I found this guru’s website, which included a self-guided exorcism. It was specifically for exorcising “emotional demons” which, based on the description, was what I was dealing with. The site said that some people were vulnerable to possession when feeling a particularly strong emotion, but if you could stay in control of what you were feeling, you could build up a wall that would keep whatever was possessing you out.

“Own your emotions,” the blog post said. “Don’t let the demons take over. Feel what you’re feeling.”

Of course, I couldn’t just conjure up being angry, so it had to wait until the next time something happened worth getting riled up about.

It took a long time, almost a year. I’d memorized the instructions at that point, having read them maybe two to three times a week, waiting for the moment I’d get a chance to fight. Maybe something about knowing the battle was on the horizon made me avoid getting angry, or maybe I developed a coping mechanism, or maybe people just sucked less for a while, but for whatever reason I didn’t have to try to fight it until I discovered my boyfriend had cheated on me.

That did the trick.

It was just like it had been when I was little. I was mad and bursting and I felt like my chest would explode and I tried to hold it there, in that space. I recited my mantra in my head, one taken from the suggested list of mantras on the guru’s website:

This is my anger. I decide what to do with it.

For the first time, I felt it try to take over, but I was able to push back. My fists clenched: I unclenched them. My open hands swung back to land blows on my face, but the blows stopped before they made contact.

This is my anger. I decide what to do with it.

After several minutes of this back and forth, my mantra on repeat in my mind, it stopped. I hadn’t hit myself once, and I was entirely in control.

I felt relieved for about ten seconds before a guttural sound burst from my throat. Suddenly, my legs catapulted me toward the nearby window and my fist made contact with the glass, shards slicing my skin open and tinkling as they fell to the ground beneath me.

“If you do that again,” I heard my voice say, “I’ll make you regret it.”

Again, some things get noticed more than others, and breaking a window gets noticed a lot. When I couldn’t properly explain why I’d punched a hole in the glass, you all got worried, and Mom sent me to that therapist. And that just made everything worse.

Dr. Russ’s office was scattered with toys and colorful books. An oil diffuser filled the room with a strong-but-pleasant scent of lavender. We talked about her first: She told me she’d helped plenty of people overcome impulsive behaviors and self-harm, and she had “all the confidence in the world” that we could navigate this together.

I wanted to tell her about my possession suspicions, but I knew how it sounded. That’s a level of nuts I wasn’t ready to identify with, and I didn’t want to give her any reason to put me away.

So I told her the truth as well as I could: How the self-harm always seemed so out of my control. And she gave me a word, dissociation, and I held that word to my chest like an amulet. We talked about coping mechanisms and deep breathing, and she said that, if I wanted, we could look toward medicating if things didn’t improve.

For the first time in a long time, I started to feel optimistic. Maybe I was just sick, and if there was a cure, why shouldn’t I take it?

Later that night, though, when I was sitting alone in my room, all that optimism faded away. I felt a sudden pain in my hand and looked down to see my fingernails digging so hard into my palm I’d drawn blood. My jaw dropped as I looked down at the red dot, which grew, grew, grew, then rolled down onto my wrist. My voice said, “If that bitch gives you meds, I’ll make you flush them. Or take them all. We’ll see.”

It left, and dread filled every inch of me. I hadn’t even been upset.

A few times after that, I thought about telling my therapist what was going on. I even tried, once, but when I’d open my mouth to say it, my lips would close back up again. Instead of getting help, I got a very gentle lecture on how important it is to say what you’re thinking in therapy. I wanted to scream, but my vocal chords wouldn’t let me, and the hand in my sweatshirt pocket pinched the skin of my stomach hard through the fabric as I nodded, silent.

I didn’t need to be angry anymore for It to happen. It would catch me off guard, while I was doing homework or getting the dog ready for a walk. I think the dog could tell. Whenever it would happen in front of her, she would growl low and bare her teeth at me. She never bit me, even though it seemed like she wanted to. I guess she knew I was in there, too.

I even tried a church. It had been a long time since I’d believed in the kind of angels that would fly past your eyes in ethereal specks, but I still believed in something, and the something I’d witnessed made me hopeful there was something else that could fight it.

It was a bust. The priest told me possession wasn’t real, and even if it were real, it wasn’t something he could handle. He told me to pray more, and he suggested therapy. I’d have sworn at him if I wasn’t already thinking of doing this, but it’s not as if I need more marks on my record.

I think I’m most afraid that there is a hell, and that I’m going there now. On the other hand though, I’m being tortured by a demon so, you know, six of one and all. I think ideally it’ll just stop. I know I should think heaven is ideal but I’m just not . . . if I had that kind of optimism, I wouldn’t be writing this.

I keep thinking about that scene in the first Avengers movie with Bruce Banner. He talks about trying to shoot himself but then: “He spat out the bullet.” I don’t think my thing has that kind of power, but I don’t really know. It doesn’t seem particularly interested in protecting me, though.

Tell mom I’m sorry I lied for so long about this. But I just don’t know how else to end this. Let her read this if you think it will help. Don’t if you think it won’t. But I really am sorry. To both of you.

LOKI’S DAUGHTER

Rachel Anne Parsons

Half of her is such a pretty girl,
stand just this way, don’t face it head on,
don’t show the other side of you,
ride that horse sidesaddle so no one sees.

Half of her is all but gone already.

She’s the ruler of the underworld,
she’ll give you hell if she gets the chance.

She has two brothers, monsters too,
a serpent who floats above her in the sky
and a wolf with a mouth like a trap.

There was never a chance for her
to see the sky for longer than a moment.

Chin up, girl, the world’s not ready
for the living dead, the liminal spaces
where halves and wholes separate.

Her mother’s a giant, her father is
the father of lies, she pays for old sins
that never touched her skin, like
genetic memory, but it’s nothing
if you just stay on her good side.

THREAD

Emma Hines

EARLIER THAT MORNING, I had been forced into a corset and swathed in thick white layers of fabric by the servants before they forced me into the throne room. Tonight, I am allowed to wear nothing before they force me into the bedroom. The unspoken message is clear: You can hide nothing from us.

From him.

It means that my dagger is useless, discarded with the silk nightclothes I’d tried to hide it under. While I’ll find my nightclothes folded neatly on my bed when I return—because I will return, I tell myself—I’ll likely never see the flower-engraved blade again. I was lucky that it was a servant girl’s hand that brushed over the steel against my back as she was undressing me, and not the hand of my lady-in-waiting, who I’m certain is in the pocket of the king.

The great doors slam behind me, and the red thread spools in front of me.

Ever since I could walk, my feet have followed the path of the thread. It led me through life: I wandered the streets and still found my way home by following the line the Fates had drawn out for me. I went out on hunts in the deep snow and returned when others would have been lost by keeping my eyes on the red in the storm of white.

I was ready when the demand wrapped up in a pretty proposal and tied with a royal carriage came by one day, discovering that my thread stretched down the road that led to the capital, and didn’t double back to indicate my return.

I hadn’t told my parents anything because I hadn’t known the specifics, only that I was destined to leave. They, along with half the kingdom, knew I could see my thread but had never asked where it led because they thought they knew, and I didn’t want to make them think otherwise. The thread did not show what happened, only traced where I would go. My footsteps swallowed it up and left no trace behind. I had spent my childhood imagining what grand fate awaited me in the capital, before I learned that the city was controlled by a tyrant king who executed a courtier every week and sat their corpse on a mock throne next to his.

They said that he had a specialist who stuffed the bodies to keep them sitting upright in the throne, but no one knew how the king kept their eyes open.

Panic and terror at the thought that I was destined to be his wife consumed me, made me sick with fear and anguish, until my mother stood her ground and told the king’s men I wouldn’t marry him.

Sitting next to her body on the three-day carriage ride to the palace turned that panic and terror into fury, as I slowly realized that the thread had not led me to the palace to be his queen, but to be his assassin. Three days before the wedding, when I saw my mother perched on the mock throne like a doll, I stole a knife from the kitchens and made a plan.

But now the knife is gone, and my mother’s body is burned, and the plan has gone to pieces, and I have nothing.

The red thread leads right to the king’s bed.

I have long since stopped trying to avoid the path the Fates have laid out for me. I can stop and stall, I can dart along its path, I can hold and feel the strength of the thin thread that is my destiny, but I cannot break it, no matter how much I might try.

So I walk along it, and see that it doubles back, in and out of the chamber several times.

I make it out alive. Tonight and tomorrow, at least. Maybe more.

I do not think about what the king does to me in his bed that night. Instead, I plan.

The next night, I dress again, and pin up my hair with a hair stick tipped in poison, very careful not to scratch my scalp. But when the servants come in and undress me, the girl who found my knife carefully pulls it out and slips it into her apron pocket, shaking her head slightly.

I want to hate her, that servant girl. But I see her bruises, so like my own, and I cannot. I wonder who the king has killed, or has threatened to kill, to keep her here. I begin to wonder that about everyone I see in the palace corridors or sitting at the feasting table, their eyes cast down and tears hidden so theirs is not the neck that breaks next.

I follow the thread to his bed again, and again and again and again. I try necklaces, rings, bracelets, anklets. I try painting poison on my lips after coating them with something to keep the venom from killing me, but the servant girl unclasps my jewelry, wipes off the blood red gloss, and pushes me through the bedroom door, night after night, until—

Until I see that my thread does not loop back out the door.

I will die in this bedroom tonight.

Optimism is the one thing that has kept me sane while knowing my destiny all my life. Maybe my thread leads to prince charming so I can marry him and live happily ever after. Maybe my thread leads to the king so I can kill him and live. Maybe my thread leads to the bedroom so I can—

There is nothing good that finishes that thought.

—become the next stuffed body on the throne.

We all walk a road that ends in death. The only difference is that I can see where the path leads and am forced to follow it anyways.

There is a large crystal vase sitting on a table, but my thread does not go near it, so I know that I do not shatter the vase and slit my wrists on the shards. There is a balcony that overlooks a lovely garden and a twenty-foot drop, but my thread does not go near it, so I know that I do not throw myself onto the stone fountain below.

No, my thread leads to the bed, as it always has, so I go to the bed to meet my destiny.

Once the king is finished with me, he whispers in my ear,

“I think your most clever attempt was when you painted your lips with poison,” and I know that the servant girl is dead. The amount of thread I have left is only a few feet, telling me that I barely make it to the door before the king’s men kill me.

But I don’t try to run. Instead, I grab hold of the thread that led me here, the thread that took me from my family, the thread that ruined me, and in a wild lunge, wrap it around the king’s neck and yank.

It is thin, but it cannot break.

All those years, I’d tried to change the thread to shy from my fate, never use it to fulfill my destiny.

The king struggles against me, but I do not let go of the thread, even as it slices my fingers as it is slicing his neck. I hear the bedroom door slam open, but I do not let go of the thread, even as it gets shorter and shorter, even as I have an instant to wonder what I’ve done by using it like this.

“Drag her into the hall!” I hear someone shout. “Get her away from the king!” But the king slumps dead against me, and my throat is slit on the bed instead, right when and where my thread runs out.

N AND O

Laurel Radzieski

N is deemed too young to be having
the thoughts she has been having, so
a sewer grate is installed in her mouth. The small steel hoop
with miniature bars hangs from pink palate
and contains her. O falls in love with the grate
and begins worshiping it on the playground, braiding
daisy chains and throwing sand. N does not understand.

Each press of her searching tongue is rebuffed by barricaded
mouth. She likes to click her teeth against the restraint,
but that only drives O wild. When N laughs, O tangles her hair
in tribute, entranced by caged tongue gyrating against cool metal
fence. One day, N asks for a favor and lifts her shirt
for O. Button nipples tinkle like wind chimes.

N asks if some small bud of womanhood has appeared on her flat white
chest. Her plea for new swelling is thin through upheld cloth.

O does not know what to say, but the enchantment has been broken.

She abandons N and cannot explain why. N has a sewer grate
installed in her mouth and the boys are afraid to touch it.

PEACH COBBLER

Rachel Graf Evans

PEACH COBBLER was originally produced by the Weird Sisters Theatre Project (Executive Producers Shelli Delgado, Kate Donadio Macqueen, Rachel Frawley, Julie Skrzypek, and Rebekah Suellau) as part of the Dangerous Women Immersive Horror Experience Showcase in Atlanta, GA. Tiffany Porter (Director), with Asia Howard (Jo), Mary Ruth Ralston (Val), and Rose Bianco (Annie), October 2017.

CAST

JO, Val’s sister, 30-50

VAL, Jo’s sister, 32-52

ANNIE, their mother, a corpse, 55-85

SETTING

The family home.

TIME

Today.

***

(Lights up on an open kitchen/dining room with a huge chest freezer in the center, like an island. JO enters with groceries.)

JO: I’m home! (Beat.) Val?? Well, okay then. Late. Again. Hang on, Mom, I’m coming.

(JO places her tote bags on the counter. Opens her purse as she crosses to the ice chest. She opens the chest and fog pours out from inside of it.)

Up you get! There we go.

(She hoists her mother ANNIE’s corpse, who’s in rough shape, up from her makeshift freezer coffin of ten years.)

You’re looking good today, Mom. And I brought you a gift! Look at this.

(She brandishes a “Peach Cobbler” colored tube of lipstick.)

Isn’t it divine? No occasion. Just wanted to let you know you’re special to me.

(She cheerfully applies “Peach Cobbler” to ANNIE’s lips.)

There. I love it.

(An attempt on the doorknob, then a fumbling of keys outside the door.)

VAL (off-stage): Why is the door even locked? Jo? Josephine?

(JO props ANNIE up in the freezer coffin and crosses to open the door for her sister. VAL stands in the doorway. VAL carries groceries. VAL observes the home and ANNIE.)

VAL: She looks good today.

JO: Never better!

VAL: You’d never know it had been ten years.

JO: I already got groceries. Why are you home so late?

VAL: I had to pick up the things I like.

JO: You always do that. It’s selfish.

VAL: You only get the things you like. It’s fine. The system we have is fine.

JO: Then why do you keep harping at me?

VAL: I don’t. You’re the one who had to mention that you got groceries. It would only be pertinent if those groceries contained something that I like too.

JO: Well, maybe you do like something that I got. I’ll show you what I got—

VAL: It doesn’t matter.

(Beat.)

JO: It’s a new lipstick today.

VAL: What?

JO: On Mom. She’s wearing a new lipstick today. That’s why she looks nice. Did you notice the lipstick? I guess not.

VAL (scrutinizing ANNIE’s lips from a distance): Oh yeah, that is nice.

JO: It’s called “Peach Cobbler.” I thought that was significant.

VAL: Remind me?

JO: She won the state fair baking ribbon for a peach cobbler. God, you could just remember anything about our mother from time to time. It’s like you don’t even care.

VAL: You have such a better memory for it! I know I can count on you to be here to remind me.

JO: You just know I’ll always be here to remind you of things. Always around. Not going places, just always nearby.

VAL: Now that I see the lipstick, it’s very nice.

(Beat.)

JO: How was work?

VAL: Same old. Runfeld was a pain, it was her last day. There was a cake.

JO: Her last day was today?

VAL: Yeah.

JO: So her party was today?

VAL: Yeah, if you could call it that.

JO: There isn’t going to be another one? This was it? Her last day?

VAL: Yeah. Good riddance.

JO: You told me you’d tell me when the party was.

VAL: I told you it’d be “early next week”—today is Tuesday. That’s still early in the week.

JO: I was here, with Mom.

VAL: I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’ll make sure to tell you when the next one is—

JO: I liked Runfeld a lot!

VAL: Okay, maybe you two can see each other sometime.

JO: And you’ll stay here. With Mom.

VAL: Sure . . .

JO: Okay. You have Runfeld’s number?

VAL: I can get it.

JO: Okay. (Beat.) I got another call from a reporter today. They’re getting nosier.

VAL: Why do you think that is?

JO: I don’t know. I wish you were around to take the calls.

VAL: I have other things to do.

JO: I’m running out of things to say to them.

VAL: So say the same things over. Or don’t pick up.

JO: It’s impossible to ignore the phone. It rings all day. It drives us mad.

VAL: So pick it up and slam it back down!

JO: What if it’s someone important?

VAL: I don’t know how to help you.

JO: I want you to stay home with her a few days a week.

VAL: What for?

JO: So that I can go out.

VAL: You can go out.

JO: No, I can’t!

VAL: I go out all the time! And she’s fine!

JO: Because I stay home.

VAL: Nothing will happen to her.

JO: You don’t know that! What if the power goes out? What if a fuse blows? What if there’s an electrical fire in the freezer. What if someone takes her?

VAL: That’s not going to happen.

JO: It could! It might! You don’t know.

VAL: In the very unlikely event that sort of thing happened, we’d weather it. We’d deal with it.

JO: But Mom couldn’t deal with it. That’s my point.

(Beat.)

VAL: Did the reporter ask anything new?

JO: She said that there’d been a family source ratting us out.

VAL: Who! Who is it?!

JO: I don’t know. She didn’t say.

VAL: It’s Sabrina. It’s gotta be Sabrina. I saw her at the store the other day and she just had this look about her, you know, something wasn’t right with her—

JO: I don’t know . . .

VAL:  And—??

JO: And then the reporter said that Philip said we weren’t doing anything illegal and he didn’t mind because we were longtime loyal paying customers.

VAL: That’s right, we are!

JO: So I asked her to please mind her own business and to leave us alone.

VAL: Yes!

JO: And she asked: Did I know how much money we were shelling out for mother’s “maintenance,” she called it, and how much that could make us in profit if we decided to go another way and I slammed the phone right down on her! The right time to slam!

(Beat.)

VAL: Did she tell you how much?

JO: No! Money’s no object when it comes to love! I can’t believe you would even ask that.

VAL: I’ll bet it’s a lot of money.

JO: How loyal are you to this family?

VAL: Gas prices have only gone up over the last ten years.

JO: What are you saying?

VAL: I’m just pondering.

JO: I don’t like your tone.

VAL: I’m just saying, it can’t be good for the electric bill, keeping the lid all open like that.

JO: She’s been cooped up all day, since I also went out to get groceries because I thought you’d be back sooner than you were so she’s been cooped up for most of the afternoon and I wanted to let her breathe!

(Beat.)

VAL: Is there an end to this, Jo?

JO: To what, Val? An end to what?

VAL (gesturing to ANNIE): You know, this. Mom.

JO: I can’t believe you’d say that. In front of her.

VAL: Sorry, Mom, you know I—

JO: You’re not sorry! You’re not sorry at all! If you were sorry, you’d help out from time to time! You’d know that I didn’t always want to be the one here and caretaking because sometimes I make mistakes and sometimes I don’t catch it if she has a blood clot and then the next day she’s dead so it’s just better if I keep tabs on her but it wouldn’t be terrible if you decided for once in your life to be as committed as I am to caring for our mother and so I think that the best solution is to make you stay. I’m going to make you stay and watch her.

(JO forces a struggling VAL into the freezer coffin, squashing ANNIE and VAL down into it. She sits atop the lid, triumphant.)

There, now I can go out from time to time. Because someone will be here with Mother.

(JO swings her purse across her torso, applies the same cheerful lipstick to her lips, and saunters out the front door. She does not lock it. As the lights fade, the freezer coffin opens and both ANNIE and VAL’s corpses rise with dead-eyed stares at you.)

(End.)

MAMA REMAINS

Maria Zach

THE DOOR SMASHED open and ricocheted off the spring attached to the wall. The sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh assaulted my nostrils. I pinched my nose. Mama sat in her favorite recliner, feet up, eyes closed, glasses still perched upon her nose; an empty bag of bagels on the side table. The background strains of ‘Have You Got The Guts?’ were playing on the television, and some nutty celebrity was trying to swim across a pond occupied only by a couple of alligators.

It was an idyllic picture if it weren’t for the fact that her skin was rippling, sprouting. Worms had invaded and claimed her body as their own. They crawled over her body and face. It was sickening to look at them. I focused resolutely on one—a fat wiggly worm struggling up her jaw slowly, painstakingly. Victorious, it entered her right nostril. I watched its head disappear from view followed by its body and tail. I imagined I could see it moving up her nose. It would reach her forehead and then move up into her scalp and grow out with her hair. My eyes moved up her face and just as my gaze reached the T-zone between her eyes, I spotted movement at the corner of her right eye. As I watched intensely, a worm laboriously made its way out of her right eye socket.

Her cheeks bulged as they had never done in life. Her mouth was probably festering with worms. The lips were held tightly closed, keeping them in. I was glad she’d fallen asleep with them closed.

She had sprouted holes all over her body—wormholes. Worms crawled in and out of every one of them. She was a loaf of bread, only bigger, darker and they were eating her. They were filling up their tiny wiggly stomachs with worm mouth-sized Mama flesh. They ate of her until they were nothing but her.

Worms scurried in and out of her hair, going busily about their tasks, whatever those were. Her wispy gray hair was fanned out on the cushioned headrest. Dead, she teemed with life. She was alive; a hundred thousand, a million times alive.

I submitted a special request to the funeral home director. I wanted them—all the worms; every one of them that had eaten of her—that were her. I was given three gallon-sized jars full of worms.

“Is that all of them?”

“Every one, Ms.Johnson,” answered the funeral home director.

Mama went in the coffin. What was dead did, at least. I had the remaining. What was yet alive was in jars. I carried the jars back to London. Now she went with me where I went; wherever I went.

She lives with me in my apartment. At night, when I’m back from work, I fill a tray with warm, moist mud, bits of leaves and bread. Then I open the jars and let them go. She had never starved me.

Occasionally, on a weekend perhaps, I take her to the park. I sit on a bench and place her on the bench beside me. We sit together, alone. Passersby give us a wide berth. She doesn’t speak. She was never a great talker, so that’s perfectly fine. As a child, she used to take me to the park. We sat together on one of the little benches scattered around the park and watched the other children at play. We never spoke. We just watched. And then we’d go home. We’re a resilient duo - mother and daughter. She never had time for snivelers anyway.

Some parts of her are missing. Most of her hair for instance and the tip of her nose and all of her lips—they went in the coffin. My eyes are always drawn to the tip of her nose. Other parts too, but they’re not important.

I watch their bodies glide smoothly through the mud, over each other, their bellies full of Mama and wonder what she had tasted like. I have never tasted her; they have. Maybe, I should. I eye one—a small squiggly one. I pick it up and suck uncertainly upon it for a second or two. Are worms toxic? Nay, I distinctly remember reading somewhere that they are a delicacy in some parts of the world. Without further ado, I pop it into my mouth and chomp down hard. Just once. Yuck! A sticky liquid squirt inside my mouth. I can’t spit her out. I want a piece of her anyway. I need a piece of her. I don’t chew anymore. I just swallow. Now I have a piece of her whether she likes it or not. My depravity, I convince myself to be brazenness.

They started dying slowly. Her eyes, nose, ears—they died one by one. I thought of eating them. There were enough of her for a veritable feast. Perhaps I could roast them. Peanut butter or mayonnaise? It might even taste good. The thought was revolting. Besides, I didn’t want too much of her. So, I collected the dead; they had to be buried. I collected the dead as they died, in another glass jar and the jar kept filling. I added new jars. They filled too. I had more of her than I ever had. I had to bury them.

I couldn’t take her back to the grave, so I made a sort of burial ground on the terrace in a corner of the greenhouse. I wonder whether she liked plants; I sure hope she did. I’ve never seen her look twice at one, although that might be because we never had space enough for a garden. Anyhow, I made her as comfortable as possible. And I checked, often. I saw them come out of the ground; so many of them. They thrived on her. It seemed I just couldn’t get rid of them, of her. They just kept coming— more and more and more. The more she died, the more of her there were.

I collected them again. Into the glass jars they went, until I had seven jars and a half, full of worms. Cremation—that’s the only way now. I made a funeral pyre—Hinduism to the rescue—and set fire to the lot. Burn. Burn. Burn. Karma and all that shit. I watched the flames lick them up. And they burned. The ashes I collected in a small pot. I didn’t bury them—never will. Jubilant, I secured the pot with wax. A sealed red-ribboned earthen pot—it ornaments my mantelpiece—an ode to my Mama.

STRANGELY FAMILIAR DEMONS

KT Jayne

THE SUBJECT LINE of the email stared at me: “Gareth Lancaster, Solicitor.” At first, I thought it was one of those Nigerian scam emails. Against my better judgement, I finally opened it, more from curiosity than anything else, and scrolled down. There he was. Staring at me with brilliant blue eyes full of electricity. Shockingly too-black hair, all teased up, that to anyone else looked as if he’d slept on it and just woken up after a very rough night. Those of us in his inner circle knew that it had been carefully coaxed that way with a hairdryer and a metric ton of product. He was crouched behind an amp. Forever looking as if he’d been caught at something. The bright red railing of the balcony stood stoically behind him. The window was open and I could almost feel the perpetual drizzle there.

Melancholy and familiar.

This was the man that had raised me. My brother. I’d worked hard to avoid thoughts of him since I’d left England. He interrupted my silence with an occasional card on my birthday or at Christmas. No response on my end had rewarded me with no contact, and I assumed that he was deeply entrenched in a bottle. After the photo was an email.

Dear Ms. Barrymore, my name is Gareth Lancaster and I am the solicitor to your brother Crystof’s estate. I would like to extend my condolences as I inform you of his death. Several weeks ago, he collapsed at the pub and never awoke. I’m sure that you have surmised his alcoholism was a great contributor to his death. As you know, you are his only relative. I apologise for the delay in contacting you. I was unaware that you had moved to the US, and it took some effort to find you. I gather, from the amount of effort that it took, that you were not anxious to be found. In light of this, I felt that electronic communication would be the most expedient way to contact you. At this time, and also aware of the great imposition to you, I would like to ask you to return to Liverpool to settle your brother’s estate. I could, of course, do this myself with electronic communication, but Crystof was insistent in his will that you “return home to bury your demons.” I have no idea what he is referring to, but I leave the ball on your pitch. Please notify me within seven days how you would like to proceed. I realise that this may be difficult for you to decide, but if you can at least work out a timeframe for your visit, I will be happy to make all of the necessary arrangements for you on this end. I will do my best to make this trip as worry free as possible for you.

Gareth Lancaster

The memory of this man was vague and blurry, buried deep in my past. He stood on the fringes of a fog. Judging me. Looking for weaknesses to exploit. He did, however, hold true to his word. He arranged flights, a hotel, and offered to hire a car which I refused. I hated to admit that if he hadn’t provided all of the maps, apps and directions, I would have been completely lost. Everything had changed since I was a girl.

Slightly familiar.

I looked out the window of the train I had caught from the airport. It was raining. I looked for a memory of England that didn’t have rain in it but was unsuccessful. Looking down at my tablet, again, I tapped the screen staring at Crystof’s photo once more. The anger of knowing that I was here to pick up the pieces that he’d left behind stirred deep inside of me. It reached around me like a straightjacket and tickled my spine. Another mess to clean up.

Too familiar.

Closing my eyes, I listened as the train sped along the tracks. “Drag you back to Mersey side, drag you back to Mersey side” they seemed to say. I had left Liverpool when I was little more than a girl and had left my roots buried deeply behind. I had become something stronger than that little girl. Moved to another country, started over, built a business and a strong woman. This made me feel as if I’d been dragged backwards in time. An unwilling participant in another of Crystof’s sick games.

Strangely . . . helpless?

As I disembarked and climbed the train station steps, I looked around, hoping to get my bearings. Instead, nothing was even vaguely familiar. I’d arrived, but felt as if I had been dumped in this place with no landmarks and time speeding past me at a break-neck pace. I took a breath and closed my eyes, slowly exhaling. Scouse accents formed a heavy curtain around me and I stood for a moment trying to decipher them. They were gradually loosening the block in my brain, some words like jackhammers, and others soft, slipping through the cracks like cryptic code. I fumbled in my bag for my phone, poking at it until I found the map app. I twirled, looking for something that matched the screen, but quickly feeling overwhelmed that these two things had no chance at becoming something that coincided with my reality. I was a stranger marching on less that familiar ground. After a few wrong starts, I tripped on a street sign and found my way to the solicitor’s office.

A small bronze plaque on the side of the building read “Lancaster Law est. 1819.” The waiting area was barely more than a walk-in closet. I let the door shut behind me with a little jingle and waited while my eyes adjusted to the darkened room and memories seeped slowly into my brain. A tall man with blond hair going gray at the temples emerged from the shadow of the hallway that stretched into the depths of the building.

“Are you being served?”

“No, I just walked in.”

The man stepped closer and smiled at me. Not warmly, but in that way that makes you feel as if you are going to be a sumptuous meal indeed.

“Crystyna Barrymore?”

I nodded as the man offered his hand. As our palms touched a coldness threatened to drown me. As if someone had just walked over my grave. I felt a soft rustling between my shoulder blades. The touch was jolting and prodded at something deep inside of me that I had not touched in a very long time.

“Gareth Lancaster. I’m afraid my girl is gone for the day, but I can probably figure out how to make a cuppa if I need to.”

Strangely . . . trapped.

“I’m sorry for your loss. Your brother and I were mates in school. We came up in the Liverpool leagues together. You barely look like that little girl that used to sit on the end of the bar. If it weren’t for your hair, I’d have never guessed.”

“It’s been a moment.” My voice was not friendly. It sounded harsh. Bordering on frightened.

“You’re certainly a beautiful young woman.” He looked into my eyes, and I was caught for a moment in the crystal blue sea of them. The little girl inside of me struggled to scream something at me about him. The entirety of my inner soul clenched. As if to protect me.

“You have some paperwork for me?”

The solicitor looked down at me. At first, I saw a trace of annoyance, but he quickly covered that with a crooked smile and patted me on the back.

“Of course, I understand.”

His voice betrayed him. He didn’t understand at all, but his British upbringing was not going to allow either of us to be outwardly uncomfortable. He turned and walked down the hallway to his private office. Clearly expecting me to follow.

The office was a deep burgundy, except the ornately carved polished ivory desk. Windows stood watch on either side of it. Lancaster was already sitting behind the desk looking smugly in charge. He gestured to a tall leather chair that towered over my head by a half meter. I sat and looked around. One wall was filled by a bookcase. Only a few personal belongings were interspersed among the stern spines. A football sat in a square glass case by itself on one shelf. I recognized the Liverpool Liverbird exactly in the center of several signatures. The solicitor followed my gaze.

“Championship League ball. Last game Crys and I played together. Then we discovered alcohol and punk. The rest of that is history. Do you follow our lads?”

“When I can.”

I held my phone tightly and thought of the Liverbird on my home screen emblazoned with “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” I remembered something Crystof had said when I left: You can take the girl out of the Mersey, but you can’t take the Mersey out of the girl. My fierce backing of the lads in red was one of the few clues to my former existence.

“You know that you are all Crys ever had. He generously left you his whole estate. He makes some stipulation, however.”

I looked at him blankly. Waiting. Crystof was always attaching strings. And leaving things to be picked up.

“He wants you to spend a night in the flat dispersing his belongings according to his will. After this, you will attend a gathering of friends at Stonehenge. Then you are free to leave. If you choose, I can arrange the sale of the bar and flat for you.”

My hands clenched tightly into fists. I had a day to prepare for my brother’s little party. I could tolerate the nonsense of staying in the flat and even disbursing whatever possessions he thought were worth something. I couldn’t tolerate the idea of holding a memorial service that was so obviously contrived. It was just too much. I hadn’t even seen the man in fifteen years. We had barely talked the last ten. I struggled to figure out what the catch was.

Later in my hotel room, I lay on the bed, mindlessly flipping channels, unable to focus. I kept turning it over in my brain. Had Crys actually gotten sentimental? I thought back to my childhood. I could hardly remember our parents. Crys was so much older than me that he just took over when they died. Most of my childhood was spent in the bar. My brother had never even attempted to give me a normal childhood. He didn’t care if I went to school. He didn’t care if I had friends or did the things that normal kids did. Instead, I nursed him through the DTs and made sure the bar opened every night. I made sure that bands were booked and had somewhere to stay. At some point I drifted into mixed-up dreams full of caravans and screeching guitars.

Strangely familiar bedfellows.

I awoke before dawn, tangled in the bed clothes and my own confusion of the memory of gossamer wings. The pain between my shoulder blades had intensified, but I attributed it to sleeping in an unfamiliar bed. Somehow, I was still clutching the keys to Headbangers in my hand. I dressed purposefully. Every item carefully chosen to provide a sort of strength that I was definitely not feeling. Lancaster had given me the address to the bar, and I picked it up off the night table as I left the hotel room.

Once outside, I wound my way through streets that I no longer knew with the help of my GPS until I was standing in front of my childhood home. For a moment, I was a little girl again. Handing out flyers for bands that were playing and giving away door passes. I stepped up to the door and pulled the key ring out of my pocket. Taking a guess, I tried a key in the lock and it turned. I stepped inside. The bar smelled of years of cheap alcohol, cheaper ale, and cigarette smoke. It lay so heavily on everything that it had sunken in and embedded itself. A snap of the torch and I could see a few tall tables standing in the middle of the space while booths lined one wall. The bar filled the corner opposite me. I could see the ghost of the little girl that I’d been perched on the end. Dark purple hair obscured her face and fell in heavy straight lengths around her waist. I knew her eyes were closed as she listened to some long-ago band, rocking gently in time.

The stage was a two-meter-tall raised platform with a small set of steps leading up to it. Memories of the music that had once filled this place inundated me. I found the light switch next to the bar and pushed the button in. It was brown and stiff from nicotine and disuse. There were only a few working lights, and they did little to help illuminate things.

I’d spent my childhood in this place. Suddenly, I was angry. I felt it welling up inside of me, and I clapped a hand over my mouth, terrified I would scream out loud. Tears were streaming down my face, and I blinked. It took a moment to realize where they were coming from. I felt foolish, but in an instant every sadness for all the things I’d missed in not having a normal childhood and living in this place crashed in on me. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d picked up a stool and thrown it at the bar. It made a hugely satisfying crash as it splintered into a thousand pieces and I ducked, covering my head to avoid them. I felt a sharp stab high in the middle of my back and dreaded that I’d actually caused some true harm to myself.

Just as quickly as the anger had come, it was gone. I decided to take stock of what was still there, assuming Crys’ “friends” hadn’t cleaned the place out. I fished in my bag and found a flashlight, aiming it at the back of the bar, its bright light guiding me. Glasses of dubious cleanliness lined the shelves underneath the bar. I grabbed a short one and shined the light through it, sitting it on the shiny mahogany surface in front of me. I turned and focused the light on the meager alcohol supply. I was right, there wasn’t much left. Taking a step, my boot crunched and a quick flash down revealed the floor blanketed with glass, answering the question of where all the alcohol had gone.

They must have sat and drank for hours after Crystof collapsed. I could see the picture of my brother passed out in the middle of the floor with a crowd of drunks raiding the shelves while he remained untouched. I tapped a button and a panel under the register opened. Crys had always kept a bottle of the best stuff there “for special occasions,” which, if memory served, meant any time there was a reason to have a toast. Or not. I cracked the seal, grateful it had escaped the obvious revelry. Opening the lid to the ice chest, I found it mostly full. I guess drunkards who are wreaking havoc don’t care about ice. Using the glass to scoop some up, I sat it back down and filled it within a finger’s width to the top.

“Fuck all. What a week.”

I lifted the glass and crossed myself silently, thinking, Spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch.

“All right, Crystof. I’m here. I have no fucking idea what demons you think that I have, but I’m here. The only demon I’ve ever known is you.”

I drank the whiskey in one gulp and grimaced against the burn at the back of my throat. I polished off another one in sheer avoidance of the steps that lurked behind me. Filling the glass once more, I carried it to the foot of the stairwell where the steps loomed darkly. I peered up, guts turning cold. Frigid fingers of fear played between my shoulder blades. My fingers traced nervously down the length of my hair. The steps were a sentence as I mounted them, and the flat above was the jail. Taking another swig, I trudged to the top where a gray-painted door stood as a barrier between me and the sad little girl I used to be. I could hear her in there trying to be brave, locked in the closet, trembling in fear, squeezing her eyes shut tight to ward off the spiders that Crys would tell her were waiting in the corners to eat her. Hoping that being locked in the closet would be the worst part of the evening. Knowing that it more than likely was not.

Familiar fears.

I opened the door and saw the bright red railing of the balcony just before a sharp pain radiated across my head and the stars exploded in my brain. I watched the heavy glass I’d been holding fall in slow motion to the floor. Ice and whiskey splashed into the air and cascaded down the steps in tendrils. I tried to catch myself, but the hard wood floor met my cheek and I bounced. A little pool of whiskey formed around a chunk of ice and the glass rolled to the very edge of the step. Hovering. Then Darkness.

Strangely disjointed.

***

I heard my name being called from a distance, and I swam through murky swamp water trying to reach it. My body felt too heavy to break the surface, and I reached to try and get through. My eyelids felt so heavy. I tumbled upward and found myself in the garden behind my parents’ house.

“Mum?”

A dragonfly flitted in front of me, and a puff of glittery dust followed it, making me sneeze. It would hover and then dart to one side of the path. I looked down and found glowing arrows embedded in the grass under my feet. Giant flowers loomed over me, their faces looking down at me in concern. I caught glimpses of gray sky above them.

My black Mary Janes led me in pursuit of the insect. I barely noticed the garden at all. Occasionally a flower would reach out to me with its petals as if to slow me down. The flowers became denser and I could feel them catching on my jumper, trying to gently hold me back. I shrugged them away and continued to follow the path of arrows.

I looked ahead and saw a dense gathering of pansies with strict little faces around a wooden gate. In my childhood, this gate had let back toward the house. I was not certain that it would lead there now. As I approached, the pansies stood at attention and held out their petals as if to ward me away. Slightly beyond them, I could see the dragonfly hanging in midair. It wagged its tail, motioning me to follow it. I reached past the pansies who batted at my arms with their petals and tried to reach the gate. To my surprise, my arms elongated like the stretchy superheroes we had when we were kids. I grasped the wood of the gate and pulled, trying to force my body closer to it. The pansies became more insistent, batting at me with their leaves. The dragonfly buzzed around my head, growing larger by the moment. One pansy with a black face highlighted in red came nose to nose with me. I looked it in the eye as its mouth opened and a scream came out of it. So loud and strong that I was knocked off of my feet with the pansy tumbling down on top of me. I struggled with it, attempting to get on my feet once more.

The ground vibrated next to me and I rolled over on my stomach, covering my head. A scaly red appendage grabbed my wrist and pulled on it. I fought it, trying to free myself, but its grip only tightened and my body began to slide across the grass. I could see the dragonfly through the pansy forest, and it was changing. Scales were appearing all over it, and legs were sprouting toward the ground. My eyes traced the appendage that was dragging me to discover that it was actually a tail. Clear wings became red and morphed from insect-like to bat-like. The pansies continued to beckon me back to them, but the dragonfly was gaining stature and was able to prevent me from going anywhere that was not of his choosing. I came to a stop between the creature’s legs, now more dragon than dragonfly.

Looking through its legs, a dark cloud was barreling toward me over the ground, and as it neared, I could see that it was actually millions of tiny black spiders. Each one carried a small egg on its back. They covered every inch of the grass in front of me until they stopped at my feet. The dragon’s tail was still wrapped around my ankles. I saw the pansies crowding up behind me again.

Loud music came to my ears. Just behind the dragon, I could see the door of Headbangers open and a band playing inside. I yelled for Crystof, but the music drowned me out. I flailed my arms and legs until I was able to free myself and began to run. The dragon waddled behind me, pushing me with its snout. As I reached the open door of the bar, the dragon used its teeth to prevent me from going in.

A tall blond man who looked slightly familiar appeared in front of me. He grabbed my wrist and twisted it until my palm faced up. He held up an index finger and the nail grew out into a pointed claw that he used to puncture my skin. I braced for the blood, but instead those tiny spiders raced out of the cut. The man smiled and nodded. I had two competing urges at once: The first was to remember this moment; the second was to turn and run away, but he was too strong. Pulling me close, our noses touched. I felt something winding up my bare legs. I looked down and saw the red scaly tail.

“You are meant to be something else.”

I looked into his deep blue eyes. I was engulfed with the feeling that I should know this moment. That it was a clue. The tail was slithering around me, twitching and then aiming it’s pointed end for the center of my spine.

Strangely stabbing.

“There is something inside of you. Something that you have been grooming all of these years. It’s time to let it go.”

The man dropped me and I fell feet over head for a very long time. The ground was racing up at me and I screamed.

***

When I hit, I was standing in the middle of a protected circle in my old West End apartment. The room was lit by several candles standing on pikes positioned around the room. I automatically began the incantation that would summon the demon. At least I hoped it would. My success had been spotty at best. When the words were over, I raised my arms and waited. The air swirled around me, and suddenly I felt the presence of the demon. Deep and heavy.

I had believed that I was safe inside the circle. I had never been so wrong in my life. As the demon entered my body, I felt it merge with my soul. It was cold and empty. I looked down at my feet to see if I’d stepped out of or broken the circle. I hadn’t. But the ground beneath me yawned open and again I was falling.

Strange nothingness.

***

My first instinct was to reach down and cover myself. I couldn’t move, though. I opened my eyes slowly. It was dark. My back was cold and I realized I was lying on something hard and flat. My brain careened wildly out of control, memories flooding over me. I snapped my eyes shut to keep from vomiting.

“Crystyna,” a voice hissed in my ear. I swallowed hard but didn’t answer.

My palms touched the surface beneath me. It was rock.

“I know what demons you need to bury.”

My eyes flew open and I turned my heard to the voice. The fragments of my dream were prodding at me. I was no longer afraid. This territory was familiar. I remembered this little vignette from my childhood. I had watched it many times over the years. The world snapped sharply into focus and Stonehenge loomed large above me.

“You don’t know how long I’ve waited for you. Since you were a little girl, I pictured you here.”

I looked at him, narrowing my eyes. He had no idea what he had stumbled on. I decided to play along for a few minutes. He relaxed, stroking my hair which had been gathered out from under my head and was cascading over the edge of the stone platform that I had discovered myself bound to. I lifted my wrist tentatively, testing the strength of the bonds. Simple rope, tied just shy of securely.

Strangely underestimated.

I took a deep breath and gathered up the ghost of the little girl inside of me. I whispered to her to stay still and do exactly as I said so that we could be safe. I knew that she trusted me implicitly. I prodded her to speak. Her voice shook as it escaped my lips.

“What are you going to do to me?”

“I’ve got wonderful things in store for you. You are going to be part of something very important. Do you remember?”

I did remember. I watched him carefully. The sky was dark and heavy gray clouds sat over us as if in waiting. He stood up and began the ritual. I watched the words dance around me. A spark made me turn to see a burning torch. Several others followed. Shadows became dark cloaked figures and I waited until the gathered close. Gareth Lancaster, solicitor, continued with the Samhain ritual. A flutter in my chest reminded me of the words’ true meaning. There was a lilting lyricism to them. I smiled. I lifted my head so that I could look at him more directly. I felt a tingling at my temples as he lifted his arms wide, shouting words into the wind that was now swirling around us. The energy of Stonehenge rose thick and heavy between the rocks. I could feel the electricity of the ley lines that crisscrossed the plain beneath our feet. Electricity that tickled my back.

“The wheel of the year turns once more and we cycle into darkness,” Lancaster yelled as he pulled a knife from his belt and held it over his head, aiming for my chest.

My back began to ache and I laughed. It was happening, I could feel it. My breath quickened. The pressure in my back was released with a scream and I let my wings flex outward slightly so that they would lift me into sitting position. Lancaster’s eyes widened. He was too shocked to be afraid just yet. That was fine. There would be plenty of time for that. I bent my knees until I was sitting with both of them folded in front of my chin. Clenching my fists, I yanked hard on the ropes and pulled up. They snapped like thread. I flexed my back and spread my wings wide as I crouched in front of this man playing at demon craft. The knife he’d held clattered to the ground. I lifted one hand and felt the horns that had erupted at my temples. I smiled.

Deliciously familiar.

Lancaster and company were still too stunned to move.

“What do you have to say for yourself, solicitor?”

My voice was low and powerful. Gravelly. It echoed ferociously off the rocks and sat heavily in the air. Waiting for his answer. He shook his head. I raised my hands and breathed in deeply. The intensity of the ley lines was intoxicating and I whispered to the little girl inside to stay calm and quiet with her eyes tightly shut. It had always been the demon’s job to protect her.

“You don’t think that I forgot about the things that you did to us, do you? You didn’t just imagine them. You did them. You and that pathetic brother of mine.”

I grew angrier as the words flew out of me. I felt the little girl stand up inside of me and plant her size three trainers firmly in the ground. Her hands on her hips. She was pissed off.

I examined my hands and saw that long talons had grown where my nails had been. Reaching out with my index finger and pointing, I touched the end of Lancaster’s nose.

“You should have known better. He was a miserable drunk who didn’t have a clue about more than the bottom of a bottle. But you. You could talk him into anything. I know that you did. I ran so that I wouldn’t have to be humiliated by you and your scumbag friends on a daily basis. You thought I belonged to you, and you used me.”

The man was shaking uncontrollably. I lowered my hand to his neck and wrapped my fingers around it, lifting until he was at eye level. I could see the fear inside of him, and I was feeding on it. The little girl inside was bathing in it.

I left him just enough room to gather a few ragged breaths. And to be truly afraid. I licked my lips with pleasure. The fear tasted salty in the space between us. He made a small sound that was like a mouse that then something poured on the grass. I laughed deep and growly when I realized he’d pissed himself out of fright. His hands scrabbled to wrap around my fingers in an attempt to free himself.

“What are you g-g-g-going to do?”

“I’m going to bury my demons, Mister Lancaster, just like my brother wanted me to do.”

Footsteps ran away from the circle as the barrister and I were left alone.

“How much fun is this? Your mates are gone. Terrified of a little girl barely a meter and a half tall. That doesn’t say much for them. Or you.”

I shook him like a child’s doll and he whimpered. I waited. The energy had not completely gathered yet, but it would be soon. It climbed the air like a vine, spreading like wildfire. I began to finish the ritual.

“White for life.”

The counselor’s eyes had gotten so big that I was sure they’d fall right out of his head and roll away.

“Black for death,” I hissed in his face. The instant cognition of what was about to happen reflected in his eyes. It was the moment that he understood what his ending would be. It was delectable. I savored it and stood tall, still holding him by the neck. My wings created a dark purple canopy over us as I flexed them. His face was red and his eyes were bulging. I raised my other hand to encircle his throat completely. He kicked his legs uselessly at the air. Arms waved and hands slapped at me. I could feel his heart beat in his jugular vein.

“You shouldn’t mess with little girls and their dreams, solicitor. They will grow up mean.”

My tongue darted out and caught a bead of sweat running down his cheek. He tried to retch, but my grip was too tight. It was too late to wriggle free. He couldn’t breathe at all. His face was purple and his cheeks puffed in and out in an attempt to suck some much-needed air into his lungs. His movements became frantic. For a moment, he was an Ecstasy-fueled dancer at a rave. I twisted my hands and felt the satisfying crunch of his neck snapping.

All movement stopped and he went limp. I threw his body to the side, taking care to assure that he landed outside of the ley lines that were rising. No need for pesky zombies. I raised my hands to the sky and roared. Rain started to wash over me and soon I was soaked but shivering in victory.

I jumped down to examine Lancaster’s body. He lay at a strange angle that I knew he wouldn’t recover from. I flexed my wings outward and shook them just enough to get the rain off. They folded back up under my hair. I looked around and found my clothes in a heap next to the altar. I pulled on my tee-shirt and jeans and then slid my feet into my Converse. My hand went to my temples and with a gentle push on each horn, they too disappeared. I smiled again and mentally held out my hand to the little girl.

I took one last look at my brother’s dead mate and kicked him hard. I looked around until I found his car keys and shook them with a little jingle.

“I didn’t need to bury the demon. I just needed to get rid of the assholes that created her.”

I stepped over him and walked away. I felt energized. Getting in his car and heading back to Headbangers, I considered my options. Getting rid of the assholes was a great thing. I was okay with both sides of me. The demon and the little girl. They got along well. Both served a purpose. They were strange.

But they were familiar.

TIDE POOLS

Uvika Wahi
there they go
screaming again
ululating battle cries
slicing portions of
blame
slick, unfair
scrambling for excuses when
what they really want is
out
it’s time to go
to the tide pools
pore over chitons
watch sea stars make
lazy progress
until the mind
gives up
and rests
there he is
chasing outlines along my form
crossing out segments he
doesn’t like
criss
cross
dragging fingers along my skull
readying
to lobotomise problem areas
at the tide pools
i could
exist as separate body
as tide pools sometimes do
undulate
as kelp
in soft resilient revelry
there she is
cooling rapidly down
silent
her everlasting mouth snapped stolidly shut
ready to never say anything
again
agreements must be kept
the ebb and flow
of her chest
gone
memento mori
run
run to the
tide pools
hold on
for dear life
the barnacles
until she comes back around
again

(till this clamour dies)

(god i hope it dies)

i am here by the tide pool
taking time
gathering myself
or drowning
whichever comes first
i’ll be here
drinking it
in

SYRINX

Sara Rauch

WILD CHILD WITH a voice like none other, the city’s songbird, hear her and weep—or see her tossing back single malt at any of those password-protected faux-dive bars uptown, weep for how easy the brew went down—or shoveling dirt in the community gardens while the paparazzi snap madly, weep for her raging russet locks, the sculpted sinew of her arms.

Odessa could, and did, drive folks mad. Fans swooned in the front row; biplanes pulled banners proposing marriage; one poor fellow was found unconscious in his bedroom, walls papered with her image, her latest album spinning. Unapologetic as she traipsed up and down the island, bodyguard-less, denied nothing, she reveled in her freedom and ignored the society paper reports, though her scion parents more than once advised her to be careful.

Raised a lady though she’d been, Odessa scoffed at the pills and retreats, laughed in the face of any suggestion to normalize.

Except the nose job.

But she only underwent the knife because her polyps truly were painful.

Her surgeon, bless his incendiary, world-renowned heart, did a marvelous job keeping her famous beak sharp.

The society pages ran shots of her, bandaged, leaving the clinic; a week later perched on a stool at Calypso toasting the bartender, bruises still dark beneath her lively eyes. She came home to Zee and Maude’s pointed looks and went straight to her room. They tried—they really did—but in their off hours, she knew they brought out the vaporizer and regaled each other with her antics. She’d taken them around the world, she’d filled their already flush bank accounts—they’d borne a star, with a voice that belonged in the history books—what, really, was there to be concerned about?

***

Well, Warren, for one. The man in his worsted, double-breasted, three-piece, opening doors—a gambler, a mobster, that smooth Colt pressed into her hip when they kissed—he lavished her with sideways compliments and promises occasionally broken, his eyes bluer than the Caribbean ocean he took her yachting across, his adept fingers knowing every tender, yearning button.

Until Warren, Odessa tossed boys over her shoulder with all the care of gravity knocking hatchlings from a nest, strewing the sidewalks with crumpled little sacks of skin. Until Warren, Odessa never relinquished control.

Warren was a too-clean-to-be-true window knocking Odessa from the sky: dizzying stars and concussion and, not long after she canceled a world tour on account of exhaustion, a daughter as red-haired and Roman-nosed as Odessa herself. Warren took one look at his daughter—Ophelia; Little O—and muttered, Genes, with a tone that could only mean indifference.

With Little O in her arms, the scales fell from Odessa’s eyes. She’d married a cad. A dapper adulterer. A snake-oil salesmen. The society pages ate it up—why had she discounted their bold headlines before? A truth is a truth, no matter how garishly exposed. Perhaps divorce would have freed her. Perhaps, if she wasn’t so tired, she would have considered the risk.

***

Little O grew and outgrew her onesies, footie pajamas, frilled pink party dresses. A walking, talking mini-Odessa: skittering away from Warren in private, smiling between her parents when society required their family presence.

Odessa ignored the paparazzi’s cheap shots, refused to do a damn thing about the crow’s feet gathering around her eyes or offer explanation for her prolonged hiatus. She told Little O the stories of her youth—champagne and red velvet and jets—not exactly standard-issue bedtime stories, but fairy-tale enough to keep them both alive.

***

Not until Odessa caught fifteen-year-old Little O singing along to her first album—recorded when Odessa was barely older than Little O was now—did Odessa consider leaving. Warren was on another “business” trip, the rooms of their spacious pre-War blissfully peaceful, and there was Little O in the living room, warbling out the window so her mother wouldn’t hear.

Odessa called on Zee and Maude, who served her coffee with too much cream and heard out her plea before saying, “We’ve waited years for you to ask.”

Odessa nodded. They’d all been rooting for her, she realized—her parents, her long-gone friends, even the society pages. Why hadn’t she understood?

“Warren won’t take kindly to your disappearance,” Zee warned. Maude rolled her eyes.

“I don’t love him,” Odessa said. She’d never been so abject, even with her parents.

“Hallelujah,” Zee said.

“How do you feel about Nevada?” Maude asked. Nonchalant as ever, barely glancing up from the coffee as she poured more.

***

The little adobe-style house blended with the landscape—west-facing deck, no neighbors for miles. Nevada glowed with salvation. After a long day of hushed, rushing travel—each airport a new identity, a change of clothes, until they touched down in Las Vegas where Odessa wondered if her old pal Andy would be game for a visit, and deciding against it, white-knuckled the three-hour drive northwest, their first sunset—brought tears to her eyes. The sky like fire, like space, like air filling her lungs, so real she wanted to fling herself into it. She wanted to sing.

How long had it been?

Little O said, “Ma, what’s wrong?” Odessa could not speak the words for freedom, not yet, so she wiped her face and said, “Just happy, my canary. Come, let’s go make dinner.”

They heated baked beans and frankfurters and Odessa taught Little O the words to “O My Darling, Clementine” and the rules of harmony, which Little O interrupted with, “How long will we stay?”

It was the first time Little O had asked a question since Odessa had roused her that morning with a finger to her mouth and the whisper to leave everything.

Odessa surveyed the spare kitchen, their unwashed dishes perched on the edge of the sink, her daughter’s slumped shoulders—she must be worn out.

By now Warren would have the search out for them, not because he cared but because it would look suspicious otherwise. He’d have invented a kidnapper, a plot against him, sympathy he did not deserve.

“A while yet,” Odessa said.

Little O nodded. Was it resignation or relief?

A lizard raced across the floor. Neither flinched, nor screamed. They were too tired for that.

Tomorrow would be a better day. Tomorrow their new life would begin.

***

Odessa rose before dawn. Little O slept, her red hair plastered with sweat to her forehead, a riot across her pillow, but she had never seen her daughter’s face infused with such peace. Leaving her to dreams, Odessa stepped out into the cool, sandy yard and examined the house as the sky lightened. Earth-colored. Soft. Triple bolts on every door, the windows bulletproof. Both Eden and fortress. Her parents did the best they could to protect her.

She heard chickadees but could not locate their whereabouts. When she trilled they answered. She did not yet know if she missed the cacophony of the city, the tuneless hum her life had become. She touched her nose and wondered how the society pages were reporting her absence.

Against the subtle landscape, her hands and bare arms appeared infused with pure light. Her skin prickled. She cleared her throat, ready to hum—but what?

They needed groceries. New clothes. Little O would need lessons, a library of books, voice coaching. IDs with their fake names were to arrive by post—a PO box in town.

She coughed, rubbed her eyes—perhaps she needed to go back inside, escape the plumes of dust. But there was no breeze. She turned looking for the whirlwind’s source, and there sat—a turkey vulture, ten feet, maybe twelve, away, regarding her with suspicious (or was it curious?) eyes. Did she look that bad?

She caught her breath. The sun already hot and high. Her first day on her own in years and here she was, locked in a staring contest with an oversized carrion-stalker. It did not feel like bad luck, only something uncanny, to be this close to oil-slick feathers, the sharp beak and red head set in wrinkles.

“You could be my twin,” Odessa finally said. She laughed and the bird dipped its head and she did not know what to do. Stay or run? When had she become so indecisive, so tame? The old Odessa would have crept closer—but now she stayed put, her eyes riveted to the enormous bird.

Little O called from the deck, “Ma?”

The vulture rose with a magnificent swoosh, blowing air across Odessa’s face. Little O squealed. “What the f—?”

“Watch it,” Odessa said.

All day, as Odessa and Little O came and went, the bird circled, a persistent shadow orbiting the sun.

***

When the phone rang, they did not answer. Unless it rang twice and exactly 180 seconds later rang again. Zee and Maude, calling as aliases from phone lines that couldn’t be tapped—diners, dinner clubs, once the theater on 96th Street where Odessa performed her first gigs.

News like bursts of flash: Warren declaring an exorbitant reward, ransacking Odessa’s old haunts, interrogating former lovers, showing up unbidden to ramble half-soused bile over Zee and Maude’s Oriental rugs.

“He doesn’t miss me,” Odessa said.

“He misses your name in the paper,” Maude said.

“Some reassurance.”

“He is who he is, always has been.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I am.”

Across the room, Little O worked on a crossword, her lips pursed in concentration. How serious her daughter was. Had Odessa been so self-composed as a teenager, so grave? Would she ever have submitted to long days alone in the desert, all this quiet? Maybe before she found her voice, maybe after she lost—

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

“Well, goodbye then.”

Someone must have come into the room, wherever Maude was. She hadn’t mentioned her location.

The dial tone sounded before Odessa could return the farewell.

No trace, her parents promised her. But still. Odessa worried.

***

Each morning the vulture landed in the yard, folded its great wings and stared. At first, when Little O joined her, fresh from bed and smelling like sleep, the thing lifted and returned to the sky. But the morning Little O brought a plate of rancid hamburger (how hard it proved, cooking for only two; how did her daughter know?), the bird stayed.

“What do you think it’s trying to tell us?” Little O asked. They watched the tender, bare neck bob up and down to the Fiestaware. Dawn slashed the horizon with rust and crimson.

“Perhaps it imprinted on us?” Odessa would never say this to anyone but her daughter.

“I read they have no syrinx,” Little O said. “They can’t sing.”

“Not here for lessons then.”

Little O laughed and the vulture raised its head and hissed.

“But we’d make such a striking trio.”

The vulture hissed again and took off for the sky.

***

They started with scales. Little O proved a natural, needed little correcting for her posture and breath; Odessa recognized the potential, the power of her baby—could see the faints and screams and the glittery jewels held aloft by shaky hands—she’d break hearts as naturally as she coasted over fa-so-la-ti-do.

Odessa’s throat ached. It’d been so long. She yearned for slippery elm lozenges, their cardboard-y softness, the little box in her pocket. Little O showed no signs of discomfort as she worked on “Water is Wide.” Oh, to be young, to be limber and learning.

Each night at dinner, Little O put away double portions. Over rice and beans, or Shepard’s pie, or steak with peppers and onions, Little O peppered Odessa with questions: What was your favorite venue? Your favorite song? Then one night, Why did you stop?

Odessa thought of the newspaper and magazine clippings she’d left behind. It wasn’t as if Warren forbade her from continuing—he merely made it difficult. Meetings in St. John, Aruba, Fiji; hosting dinner parties for twenty twice a week; the fistfight with her agent. She didn’t dare read the society pages after that incident, and when she discovered she was pregnant it felt easier to cancel her remaining shows and comfort the masses with promises to return to the stage soon. She couldn’t sing while throwing up; she couldn’t face arguing with Warren’s refusal to hire a nanny.

Not until now had she been allowed to admit she missed it.

“Little O,” she said, whenever the questions bubbled, “don’t get carried away.”

Little O rolled her eyes, or stuck out her tongue, or sighed huffily. “You never tell me the truth.”

“I’ve told you everything,” Odessa said. “There’s nothing left to know.”

“Bullshit,” Little O said.

“Watch your—”

“Oh, please. Who’s here to hear?”

She had a point, Odessa admitted. Later, alone, she’d remember the moment and laugh—Little O’s frank stare, her narrow, haughty shoulders—given the space to breathe, Little O had found her voice, and fast. Genes.

***

The papers had called Odessa the Cardinal—because of her hair—a ridiculous moniker, to Odessa’s young mind. But watching the vulture peck at a plate of spoiled chicken breast, Odessa sighted a brilliant PR move.

She could’ve been the Vulture. Could still be, considering the refused face lifts. Would she have minded so wild a label? Probably she would have loved it—she studied the power of the bird’s wings, the strange beauty of its fierce face—but maybe hindsight clouded her judgment.

***

The mornings ran together. Out in the desert, a refugee with her daughter, Odessa set about relinquishing her despair, a blotchy cloud marring the brightness of her new freedom. Why would she miss her husband, after what he’d taken from her? How could she?

When the whir of her thoughts conspired to suffocate her, she sang.

She could not go back—what was left to her? A devious husband or the disgrace of divorce, an abandoned career, aging parents. Gilded though it was, hers though it had been, Odessa despised the bars of that cage.

She knew in her heart she’d rather age like fine leather under the harsh sun. She’d rather be the vulture circling the wide sky than a cooped up songbird. Praise and comfort be damned. Watching her daughter read or build Zen rock gardens in the yard, listening to her belt pop sings with a voice that could bring down a coliseum, Odessa tried not to wish she’d played her hand sooner.

***

She and Little O worked through solfège and legato, soft palate, vibrato. Little O didn’t really need it, but Odessa insisted she learn the basics. Odessa’s vocal cords ached—no, they burned, like a brush fire, like how the sun felt on her skin at high noon, like the color of the first leaves to turn in autumn, like she and Little O’s hair, should it ever come to life.

Watching Little O’s mouth form around the sounds, watching the wistful gaze in her eyes, letting the melancholy fullness—a note Odessa was famous for—of her daughter’s voice wash over her, was both balm and bruise.

Evenings, after the sun waned, they practiced in the back yard; the acoustics of the hills surrounding the adobe better than any world-famous architectural design.

To Little O’s delight, the vulture often joined them. “My faithful audience,” she called to the bird. “My first listener.”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Odessa asked.

“Ma, you’re my voice coach, you don’t count.”

Oh, how that hurt.

“Speaking of, do you think Buzzy would like liver? Can we get her some?”

“I’m sure Buzzy has no complaints about liver.”

That night, after Little O fell asleep, Odessa carried her glass of Merlot to the edge of the yard, to the tree where Buzzy roosted. At the sound of Odessa’s voice, the bird’s skinny neck bobbed.

“How do I tell my daughter that you are not a pet?”

The bird grunted.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you lost? Hurt? Don’t you have any—?” Odessa stopped. The bird nested its scarlet head into its body with a faint harrumph.

***

The phone shrilled, went quiet, shrilled again three minutes later. Wine glass in hand, she answered, “Cardinal here.” She’d imbibed too much.

“Well, that was easy.”

Odessa slammed down the phone, her stomach in knots. How could she have been so stupid? Of course Warren would find them. He wasn’t the type to willingly divest of goods he considered his own.

She punched in her parents’ number, held her breath as it rang.

“Hello, Cardinal.”

“Please tell me they’re alive.”

“They are. And they’ll remain so if you and the fledgling stay put.”

Odessa clicked the phone into its cradle, hoping her silence—though it never had before—might buy her family some time.

***

She did not know how to prepare her daughter. She did not know how to prepare herself. A gun? She’d held Warren’s, but never fired. The police? Unlikely they’d be of any aid against Warren’s charm or deep pockets.

Three sleepless nights passed, and as the morning of the fourth day spilled across the horizon, she still could not will herself to gather Little O and return to the city, the plush apartment, the maid, the cocktail parties and incessant, meaningless chatter.

Indecision weighed heavy upon her. When the vulture landed and grunted what Odessa had come to consider Good morning, she grunted back. The bird reared its fearsome head and hissed.

“Didn’t have your coffee then?”

The bird extended its wings, warming them in the sun.

“Ma, are you teasing Buzzy?”

To hear her daughter’s voice, the light lilt of drawl in it—how ever could she concede to silencing that song?

“No, Little O, we’re commiserating.”

“What’s that?”

“Partaking in each other’s misery.”

“What do you have to be miserable about?” Little O crossed her arms. “What good does that do us, marooned on this island?”

Oh, how she loved her daughter, the petulant diva, the jaded songstress, the secret Siren. Oh, yes. She’d risk it all to keep her free.

***

Because they were out back, they did not hear the car or the footsteps; Buzzy’s sudden departure during “I’ll Fly Away” surprised them.

“Quite the downgrade in audience.” Warren’s voice seized Odessa’s throat, the words gone dry. But Little O kept singing, her voice as ancient and sorrowful as a harp.

When Odessa turned, she saw Warren was alone, pistol held casually by his thigh. Little O finished the song before turning to say, “Hello, Father. To what do we owe this pleasure?” Odessa marveled at Little O’s calm.

“I’ve come,” Warren said, brandishing his ultra-watt smile, “to take my two runaways home.”

“We are home,” she said. Little O grabbed Odessa’s hand. For protection or comfort, Odessa could not be sure.

“Now, now, baby doll, don’t be silly. You belong with me in the city. We’re a family.”

Shadows—two, four, seven—circled overhead. Warren did not notice, but Odessa did. Buzzy had friends.

“Why did you make Mom stop singing?”

“I did no such thing. Why, my dear wife, would you tell our daughter such a malicious lie?”

“She didn’t have to,” Little O said, her palm growing damp in Odessa’s. But her posture stayed straight, her tone true.

“You turned her against me?” Warren asked, his raising his arm, aiming the gun.

Odessa and Little O stood—no scream, no flinch. Perhaps they were too tired yet.

The vultures swooped lower, wings cutting the air. A horde of voiceless creatures, the only witnesses of what would certainly be death. Odessa wondered what those vultures would give for a syrinx, for a song.

Maude had taught her the old tune long ago, when Odessa was a hatchling, nights in bed to soothe her. “Sleepsong”; how long had it been since she’d hummed the melody?

Lay down your head and I’ll sing you a lullaby . . .

Little O, though Odessa hadn’t taught her this one, joined. And I’ll sing you to sleep and I’ll sing you tomorrow . . . The vultures dropped closer. Odessa felt their air on her face.

Warren wrinkled his nose. “Please,” he said. “Spare me.”

But they kept singing. May there always be angels to watch over you . . . Odessa’s chest surged. For a moment, she felt safe.

She didn’t hear the shot until after the vulture had knocked her and Little O down. Chin scraping the sand, wind knocked from her. Little O whimpered, but did not relinquish the tune.

Then Warren, through the dust, wobbling upright, “What the fu—?”

The dust cleared, and Odessa saw the Colt, lying on the ground. She crawled toward it.

“Now, Odessa—” Warren said, sidling forward. “Don’t get too big for your—”

But one of the vultures—was it Buzzy?—blocked him, bobbing its menacing head, backing Warren from Odessa. Odessa grabbed the gun, scrabbled backward.

A hiss. Several hisses as the vultures landed in a circle, closing off Odessa and Little O. The heft of the Colt surprised her, always had. She knew what she had to do but she did not know if she could do it. Little O sang on, Loo-li, loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay . . .

“Please,” Warren rasped, stumbling toward them, trying to maneuver around Buzzy, clutching his left arm, his chest. “Help me.” Odessa had never seen him so desperate. Maybe she’d misunderstood him, maybe—

Buzzy stayed put, even as Warren’s face blotched scarlet, as his breathing faltered in wet gasps.

Loo-li, loo-li, loo-li lai-lay

Loo-li, lai-lay . . .

Little O’s dirge faded as Warren collapsed, not without some grace, onto the dusty earth.

The vultures parted, spread their wings, and alighted. Buzzy stayed, just out of range, surveying. Finger on the trigger, Odessa pointed a shaky hand at Warren. She took a few steps forward, circled Warren’s body, tried to gauge his breath. Not trusting her vision, she inched forward and nudged his foot with her toes. Nothing. Was it a trick? She hesitated. His leg. Nothing. His hip—nothing, already the weight of breathlessness upon him. She resisted the urge to kick him in the ribs, to scream obscenities, to bash the gun upon his thick skull, to sob. None of it necessary. Little O came forward, put her arms around her mother. Buzzy issued a soft grunt. “Thank you,” Little O said, solemn now, aware. The whoosh of wings as Buzzy returned to the sky.

Odessa tucked the gun into her waistband, said, “That was your final lesson. You’re ready for the stage.” Her daughter smiled—the fates, called upon, had answered—relief as palpable as the heat rising off the pale landscape. Odessa rushed for the adobe. She did not want Little O to see her cry.

Besides, someone had to call the police. And hide the gun.

***

The squad cars and ambulance arrived, did their business, departed with signatures and the body. The death certificate would say Heart Attack, not atypical for a man of Warren’s demeanor. Later, Zee and Maude pulled in, Zee cursing the dumb goon who, once Warren’s signal went slack, fled the apartment fast as you could say Roadrunner.

Zee pointed upward without looking, “Smart bastards, those vultures. Can smell a stiff for miles.”

“Poor Buzzy,” Little O said. She’d attached herself like Velcro to Odessa. “All that work and no payoff.”

Zee raised an eyebrow at Odessa, but Odessa ignored him.

“Shall we?” Maude asked. The driver they’d hired waited, smoking, kicking the sand. Her parents had never liked nature—too many variables.

“We’ll stay on a while,” Odessa said. Little O’s posture relaxed. “We have—some things to consider.”

Maude exchanged a look with Zee and then each stepped forward to kiss their daughter, their granddaughter. Odessa felt the loose boniness of their shoulders. Old now, comforted.

Buzzy hovered, monitoring. Odessa loved the bird’s sharp, bright face, her unapologetic occupation of charnel ground. Odessa’d never been a cardinal, brilliant and pleasing though they were.

Little O waved till the dust consumed the car, and Odessa headed inside to dig up her old address book, ring Andy. Certainly Vegas had room for another comeback. She could see the dazzling reviews, shows sold out as soon as the box office opened, she and Little O decked in scarlet lipstick and black feather-dresses—the whole world enchanted by the mother-daughter duo who sang as though their lives depended on it.

EFFECTIVE WAYS TO DRY-ERASE

Alex McKelley

After it happened I chopped off six inches of my long blonde hair

Dyed it pink

Said the pink was an accident

I winged my eyeliner and caked on berry red lipstick

Chugged whiskey and Sprite

Chugged amber Woodchuck cider from the deli downstairs

Chugged anything offered

Slammed every kitchen cupboard in my mom’s house

Screamed your name into my high school bedroom

Dyed my hair red

Wondered what it’d be like to hang myself from the closet

Wondered what it’d be like to hang myself from the stars

Threw up in my dorm room

Flirted with every boy I saw

Fell at every party

I shattered the stained glass mirror of myself

Danced in the living room

After it happened I stopped wishing on dandelions

Stopped reading books

Started spelling my own name in my alphabet soup

Cried into my winter coat

Ate dinner alone in the basement of a Wendy’s

Fantasized about getting mugged on the corner of the street

After it happened I threw myself down the garbage shoot in our living room

Ripped yearbook photos from my spine

Built a collage, a mosaic of flowers and bones

Rode the elevator up and down

Begged my teachers to stop questioning my tear-stained pillow and the way my veins quivered

The way my voice shook

After it happened

An earthquake erupted under my skin

I stood still

Closed my eyes

Reached for every hand around

Met myself halfway

Dove into the bathtub

Filled it with my spit

Shouted at the trees in Central Park

Sewed a quilt of all my flaws

Set it ablaze in the parking garage across the street

Buried me softly

Wrapped me up warm

After it happened

I awoke on a stainless steel road

I found myself gone

I found myself shivering

Wrapped her in my arms

Built sandcastles with her hair

Built a moat around her lungs

Sang her a sonnet

Showed her the way home

I WAS A FOX

Laura Beth Johnson

I was a fox when he undressed me

I was a dove he coaxed out of flight

I was a hare with my nervous laughter

I was a snake when I said not tonight

I was a doe when he approached me

I was a dog he trained to lie down

I was a possum with my stillness

I was an ant when pinned to the ground

I was a seal when he noticed weight gain

I was a cat he jolted from sleep

I was an ox with my head drooping

I was an albatross when in his keep

I was a wasp when he slapped me

I was a crocodile striking back

I was a raven with my shrieking

I was a bear when I broke from his grasp

I am a woman all the time now, a woman no more and no less
a woman hungry and healing, a woman worthy of breath

I am a woman when I speak loudly and when I feel fear

a woman when making love, a woman when women are near

I am a woman of my own relief, I belong to myself

I am a woman, a woman and nothing else

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Diana Braskich is a 34-year-old mother, student, bank teller, and aspiring writer from North Idaho. She is a sexual assault survivor, and she hopes to one day use her pen to advocate for women and children who have yet to find their voice. She has previously been published in The Coeur d’Alene Press, Live Well CDA, and Idaho Magazine.

Amanda Crum is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in publications such as The Bluegrass Accolade and Dark Eclipse and in several anthologies, including Beyond The Hill and Two Eyes Open. Her first chapbook of horror-inspired poetry, The Madness In Our Marrow, was shortlisted for a Bram Stoker Award nomination in 2015. She currently lives in Kentucky with her husband and two children.

Holly Diaz’s short horror pieces have appeared in Sirens Call, Danse Macabre’s online literary magazine, and Horror Tree’s Trembling with Fear. She also manages author and independent retail accounts for Penguin Random House.

Rachel Graf Evans is a writer and theatre artist based in Atlanta, GA, where she serves as the Dramatists Guild Young Ambassador for Atlanta and the Alliance Theatre’s Literary Intern. RGE is a proud member of Working Title Playwrights and the Dramatists Guild. 2016-2017 Horizon Theatre Company Playwright Apprentice. Stay tuned at www.rachelgrafevans.com.

Theresa Gaffney is a writer, reader, television-watcher, and preliminary member of Book Twitter living in Astoria, NY. She tweets about her period @_gaffknee.

Emma Hines is an 18-year-old senior in high school, planning on pursuing a university degree that will support her goal of becoming a professional writer. Along with many other short stories, she has written a book, and hopes to be published. Other selections of Emma’s short stories have been chosen for YuGen, Cold Creek Review, AHF Magazine, and Down in the Dirt Magazine, among others. She has an author page at https://emfleuve.wordpress.com/.

KT Jayne is just a little autistic zombie girl living in the backwoods of Indiana anxiously awaiting the zombie apocalypse. In the meantime, she supplements her diet by eating small children.

Laura Beth Johnson is an award-winning poet and singer-songwriter. In 2017, she was honored with the Lucy Monro Brooker Poetry Award by University of Indianapolis for a piece titled “Crazy and Special”. The poem appears on an album of original music Johnson independently released in May of 2016 under the moniker, “Sorrow Estate”. The album has been described as, “poetic lyrics and haunting melodies meandering through a unique blend of folk, rock, and jazz.” Johnson won Eden Café’s “Songwriter” and “Vocalist” categories in their 2017 Songwriter Competition. Johnson’s poems have been published in Babblings of the Irrational, Etchings Magazine, and The Lanthorn. Laura holds a bachelor’s in writing from Houghton College.

Hannah Litvin is a writer and former Texan living in Philadelphia. Her poetry has appeared in Bitterzoet, The Violet Hour, and Summertide Magazine. In 2018, she won a Vaclav Havel Scholarship in fiction to attend the Prague Summer Writers Program for their 25th Anniversary Workshop. She runs a calendar and resource hub for Philadelphia writers at www.phillylitspace.com.

L.L. Madrid lives in Tucson. She has an affinity for desert creatures and other feral things. L.L. is the 2017 recipient of the Luminaire Award for best prose. When she’s not writing, she edits a peculiar little journal called Speculative 66. Links to L.L. Madrid’s works can be found at http://llmadrid.weebly.com/.

J.A.W. McCarthy goes by Jen when she is not writing. She lives with her husband and assistant cat in Seattle, Washington, where she needs music as much as her laptop to get the words out. Her work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Unfading Daydream, A Murder of Storytellers’ anthology The Misbehaving Dead, and Ink Stains.

Katy McCarthy is an artist, filmmaker and writer based in Brooklyn, NY and Austin, Texas. She is currently teaching in the College of Fine Arts and University of Texas, Austin.

Jessica McHugh is a novelist and internationally produced playwright running amok in the fields of horror, sci-fi, young adult, and wherever else her peculiar mind leads. She’s had twenty-one books published in nine years, including her bizarro romp, The Green Kangaroos, her Post Mortem Press bestseller, Rabbits in the Garden, and her YA series, The Darla Decker Diaries. More information on her published and forthcoming fiction can be found at JessicaMcHughBooks.com.

Alex McKelley is a poet based out of Brooklyn, New York. She has been writing since she was old enough to hold a pen and has had poems published both online and in print over the past decade. All of her work comes directly from journal entries; they are each messy and dreamy and gritty and personal in their own way.

Jacquelyn Mitchard is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twelve novels for adults, seven novels for teenagers, and five children’s books. These include The Deep End of the Ocean, the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. With more than 2 million books in print worldwide, in 31 languages, she has won or been nominated for or the winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, the Bram Stoker Award, and others, and is a professor of Creative Writing at Miami University of Ohio. Her articles frequently appear in O Magazine, Harpers, and Readers Digest, and her novels, essays, and short stories have been widely anthologized. Mitchard grew up in Chicago and now lives on Cape Cod with her family.

Amirah Mohiddin, born in Birmingham, U.K., is an MA Creative Writing student. She is a fantasy, speculative fiction, and magical realist writer of short stories and novels.

Rachel Anne Parsons is an Appalachian writer and poet, currently located in Olive Hill, Kentucky. She identifies as bisexual, and much of her work focuses on the experience of growing up queer in rural Appalachia. She is the daughter of musicians and farmers, and she raises rabbits and goats. She is interested in mythology, and it is a theme present in much of her writing. She is also a person with anxiety and depression and often writes about mental health, and especially mental health in Appalachia. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in creative writing.

Cynthia (Cina) Pelayo is the author of Loteria, Santa Muerte, The Missing, and Poems of My Night.

Laurel Radzieski’s debut poetry collection, Red Mother, published by NYQ Books in 2018, is a love story told from the perspective of a parasite. She earned her MFA at Goddard College and she is a poetry editor for Clockhouse. Laurel’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Down the Dog Hole, Really System, The Golden Key, and other publications, and her poetry has been featured on the Farm/Art DTour in La Rue, Wisconsin. She can be found online at www.laurelradzieski.com.

Sara Rauch’s debut story collection, What Shines from It, will be published this year. Her prose has appeared in apt, Hobart, Gravel, Split Lip, So to Speak, and more. She lives with her family in Easthampton, Massachusetts. www.sararauch.com / Twitter: @sararauch.

Michelle Sikorski is a fiction writer and barista who has lived former lives as a magazine editor and content marketer. She has a BA in Journalism from University of Cincinnati. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Lucy A. Snyder is a five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning writer who is author of a dozen books and about 100 published short stories. Lucy’s fiction has been translated into French, Russian, Italian, Czech, Spanish, and Japanese editions. Her work has appeared in publications such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Nightmare Magazine, Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, and Best Horror of the Year. She has a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College and is faculty in Seton Hill University’s MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. You can learn more about her at www.lucysnyder.com, and you can follow her on Twitter at @LucyASnyder.

Monet Sutch is a 25-year-old college student living in Portland, Oregon. Writing and literature have been sources of sanctuary and safety for Monet since she was a child. Her work focuses on family, identity, recollection of trauma through different lenses, and using curiosity as a necessary tool to approach all things existential, ethereal, and human.

Madeline Ticknor graduated from Lewis & Clark college with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. She is now in the process of applying for an MFA in poetry and creative writing. Her work has been published in feminist publications like Susie Magazine, based in Brooklyn.

Uvika Wahi works and lives in Portugal.

Sydney J. Watson is a sixteen-year-old, AFAB, pansexual, and genderfluid (primarily female—preferring female pronouns as well) student stuck in rural Missouri. She has been creating stories for as long as she could comprehend words and dictate them to my mother, and, over a decade later, has just finished the first draft of her first novel and is in the process of revising it. She has several other horror stories and one . . . fantasy? Romance? She is also developing several video games and am interested in writing, directing, and acting in horror movies. Her poetry has appeared in The Paragon Journal’s special issue “The Seven Forbidden Words,” which was created in protest of the “language style restrictions” on the CDC and has been sent directly to the President, Vice President, and several other high-ranking officials.

Stephanie M. Wytovich is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her work has been showcased in numerous anthologies such as Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Shadows Over Main Street: An Anthology of Small-Town Lovecraftian Terror, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror: Volume 2, and The Best Horror of the Year: Volume 8, as well as many others. She is the poetry editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press, an adjunct at Western Connecticut State University and Point Park University, and a mentor with Crystal Lake Publishing. She is a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, an active member of the Horror Writers Association, and a graduate of Seton Hill University’s MFA program for Writing Popular Fiction. Her Bram Stoker Award-winning poetry collection, Brothel, earned a home with Raw Dog Screaming Press alongside Hysteria: A Collection of Madness, Mourning Jewelry, An Exorcism of Angels, and Sheet Music to My Acoustic Nightmare. Her debut novel, The Eighth, is published with Dark Regions Press. Follow her at http://stephaniewytovich.blogspot.com/ and on twitter @SWytovich.

Maria Zach loves everything experimental and cross-genre; things that cannot be put into boxes. She is an introvert who talks to dogs, cats, trees, books, reflections . . . you get the idea. She calls my pet monster ‘Over-Thinking’. She has been published in Writers in the Know (WINK) Magazine and has works forthcoming in Gold Dust Magazine and Blood Puddles.

Copyright 2018

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