December 2025

History is written by the whiners.

JEREMY ERIC TENENBAUM, FOUNDING EDITORwith ABIGAIL SWOBODA, ALEC CALDER JOHNSSON, ARIA BRASWELL, JANE-REBECCA CANNARELLA, KELLY RALABATE, and MEG MUNRO

Please subscribe to SORTES through Patreon

SORTES is supported through the beneficent Patreonage of

IRIS JOHNSTON • JOHN STEIGERWALD • JONATHAN MCLELLAND • KELLY RALABATE • PATRICK EBNER • ROBERT POPE • AND SHEILA MURPHY

SORTES is indexed or abstracted in EBSCO

JOIN THE SUAVE SORTES MAILING LIST

Direct submissions, letters, and ombudsmanry to

sortesmagazine@gmail.com

From PHILADELPHIA, the WORDSHOP of the WORLD

Cover Image: Historic heart illustration. SORTES does not support the trade of ivory or hearts.

Martin Perlman
“ILL Moments”

Sally Bucklin
Editor
RetroFiction Quarterly
...............
...............
...............
Dear Editor:My father (assumed deceased), Gene Diamond, had some success as what I believe is termed a mid-list author with such novels as Free for the Tasking, Autumn Lust, and Behind the Square. He disappeared in 2020 during an extended stay on Crete, his favorite Mediterranean island. Dad said he was fascinated by the thousand-year golden age of Minoan culture that preceded the rise of the artistic, economic, and political power of Athens. Recently, as we (his family) began steps to sell his cottage on Long Island, I finally decided to open his file cabinets (left untouched till now) and sift through his papers. I discovered drafts of future works (never completed), lots of notes for ideas never flowered, and the story I'm submitting to you.I don't think "ILL Moments" ever appeared in print or was even offered to an editor such as yourself. Maybe now is the time, and maybe your magazine is the place. This is, I believe, an early story, perhaps semi-autobiographical, probably written when Dad was in his twenties and a student at the University of California at Santa Cruz or a recent grad. One point of reference is the attempted assassinations (there were two in short order) of President Gerald Ford in September 1975. And the locale is West Coast as opposed to the settings of his later works influenced by life in New York City and environs.I don't want to prejudice (can I still use that word?) your read of the story by saying it has a certain rawness or drafty-feel. I will note it is crafted in a blatant plot-driven manner yet does include a back-and-forth scenario which could be said to faintly anticipate Dad's mature style, which has been likened, both kindly and unkindly, to Picasso's cubistic period. Plus, didn't Picasso first exhibit (pun intended) a realistic collection before he began experimenting with form and color and brush stroke? You will find, however, Dad's lifelong theme of facing mortality is, um, alive and well in "ILL Moments."Enjoy your read!Respectfully,Beth Burke née Diamond, daughter of Gene Diamond

“ILL Moments”

She slept, the top of the sheet drawn comically over her head. A response to stimuli, Jack thought. He yawned. Considering a retreat under the covers in Lori fashion, he knew defensive measures would be pointless. How did she manage to breathe under there? Carefully angling toward the wall, decorated with last year's Sierra Club calendar pictures, Jack listened as Lori moved, settling in answer to his motions. Managing a slow easing of arm up and out from the blanket, he gently patted the back of his neck. No change. Still there.Sounds of muffled traffic penetrated his consciousness. He noted the refrigerator's low, steady hum from the apartment's far side. The bedroom felt stuffy.Jack had first noticed the abnormality a week ago. One evening while studying, he had absently felt his collar-length hair, running his fingers through it, and wait. . .what's that? Two fingers circled back for confirmation, easing over a tender bump high on his neck in what surely had been a valley. He repeated the movement, his head tilted sideways like a curious puppy's. How long had that been there? Funny he had never noticed it before, or had he? How much attention does one pay to the upper nape of one's neck? Hands crossing and crisscrossing each other, Jack cautiously explored from crown to shoulder blade. On their own accord, his eyes widened. Another soft swelling lay behind and just below his left ear. He suddenly felt uncomfortably warm.The young man stared at the bare pale wall behind his desk. Returning to his book, he tried reading for a few minutes but couldn't concentrate on an essay about mixed cultural variations in second-generation Americans. Well, enough for tonight, he reasoned. Best to turn in early. He could use the rest. Jack flicked off the high-beam study lamp and dutifully prepared for sleep.After a night of fragmented dreams, he awoke earlier than usual, the sheet and blanket twisted and rumpled about his bed. Still there, friends? He passed a hand tentatively between the pillow and his head. Damn.Since his first class, an urban community course, wasn't until ten o'clock, he opted to study at the main library. Following a quick granola and toast breakfast for which he had little appetite, he performed his uphill bike climb to the heavily wooded campus and didn't feel overly weak in the effort. That would be a good sign!Locking his ten-speed, he levered his head as if performing a post-ride neck stretch. Friends, who greeted Jack as he purposefully walked up the steps to the library, seemed like ghostly spirits. Feeling enveloped in plastic wrap, he could tell he was just shy of hyperventilating. Glass and concrete: He forced himself to notice physical structure as he moved indoors. Solid. At a contrived, leisurely pace, he sidled over to the periodical room to create the illusion of cool movement with enigmatic purpose, a feint to allow a meander to the reference section. Scanning the brightly lit room, he found the encyclopedia shelf, ran his fingers along the alphabetical volumes and pulled out H. Jack carried the book to an empty study table, protectively draped his plaid jacket onto the top bar of a straight-backed chair, and after a deep breath, seated himself.Pages flipped by, subjects running together -- Haiti, Hector, Heredity, Hockey -- there it waited for him: "Disease characterized by usually painless, progressive enlargement of nodes. . .limited to persons between ten and thirty years of age. . .may live ten years or more." he slammed the book against the solid table. Dropping his head as if it had just doubled in weight, the young man performed yet another examination, his hand orbiting around and around then spiraling forward until stopping, pressed against his Adam's Apple.He skipped his morning class and two afternoon courses. Wandering, lost in the evergreens, avoiding sidewalks and buildings, he took the measure of his situation. One attractive possibility would be to ignore the disease. Stay in school as if nothing were wrong. Graduate as planned this spring. Take a post-college trip to ramble through Europe. Pretend the lethal condition doesn't exist and, magically, it might evaporate into the ether.Inviting as avoidance seemed, non-action would have but one irrevocable result: On a crisp fall morning, he would keel over. No, denial proved no solution, at least not a positive one. Avoidance, he reasoned, is not bliss.A variation on the avoidance theme: What if he disappeared? Grab the guitar, close out the meager bank account, leave a brief yet moving note, and slip away into the night. Do people still ride the rails? The college student tried to place himself, taciturn, in a strange city, a dimly lit bar beside a mysterious woman who asked no questions. Somehow, he knew the improbability of that plot. The sociologist in him would be observing peer groups and analyzing draft beer preferences adjusted for household incomes. [Hi, Beth here. Just wanted to mention how the content of this paragraph -- the middle-class student suddenly veering off-path and becoming an adventure-seeking vagabond -- anticipates the sub plot of Dad's most successful (saleswise, yes, less so with the critics) novel, Snow in the Valley. Now, back to the story.]Jack had drifted into the section of campus where science buildings predominated. He faced the modern biology building, a six-story cube of reinforced concrete cut by long narrow windows, its angularity softened by the embrace of a nearby family of redwoods. He hoped the faculty were doing medical research: Weren't new discoveries being made all the time? Given the power of modern science, perhaps he should surrender to the doctors. Accept their treatment, keep a positive attitude, and not think about tragedies such as Nat King Cole's early death.And don't think about his mother's late cousin. Jack had been nine or ten when David, a tall, softspoken man from Boston, had come to visit. When they met, he had patted Jack on the head. David, a professor, a young, brilliant physics professor, had contracted a terrible illness, Jack found out later, when he could begin to grasp the meaning of the word 'terminal'. After staying a few days, David and his wife of forced smile had departed for points east to visit more family. A farewell tour. He died soon after. David had probably followed the doctor's advice, so what good had it done him?

Back in town and next to Nature's Heart Bakery, Jack stood before the windowless door of the AltClinic whose sign read 'No appointment necessary.' A Yin and Yang plaque near the door reminded him of his two goldfish who sometimes danced and intertwined as one, especially at feeding time. The office looked closed, the door locked. Should he return? Perhaps they could offer an alternative cure, some sort of non-radiation, herbal cleansing. Then again, what if his delaying to act meant no form of treatment would work? "I've waited too long," he said aloud to no one though his words earned a quizzical look from a passing middle-aged couple, still walking hand in hand.

For the next few days, Jack felt as though he were struggling to ascend a descending escalator. Time and time again he applied pressure in hope of a miracle. If anything, the bumps felt more solid.Lori, he kept at a distance with excuses about a mountain of assignments to climb."Don't you even want to have dinner together?" she asked over the phone. "Or are you eating and studying simultaneously?""Lori, if I can just work hard for a couple of days, I can enjoy myself by the weekend."Silence on her end. Then: "You are sure you are just studying -- alone?""Of course. We've always prided ourselves on our honest relationship, right?" He kept his hand away from his neck. "There isn't anyone else in the picture.""So, you'll call me on Friday and we'll do something and we can renew our acquaintance?""Yes, yes, and yes."

He attended classes but with the mental weight of an anchor in tow. Abdicating his customary seat near the front, he repositioned himself in a back corner. Previously a regular contributor to discussions, he remained silent unless prodded by a teacher."Anything to add, Jack?" Apparently, professor Siegal, concern in his eyes, had asked something about the uses of demographics.Words on automatic issued from Jack's mouth: "Well, income level is the major factor in home ownership distribution. Zip code correlates to income level. Polling firms can attest to that. Keeps them in business." The class responded with a mild laugh.At the end of class, finally, Jack attempted a fast getaway and made it to the door. "Jack," called his professor throwing a verbal defensive lineman's block, "where were you today?"He noted his teacher's suede jacket included the obligatory elbow patches. Where was the obligatory pipe? "I'm pleased to see you know your lines, professor." More auto words."What?""Sir, do you pat young children on the head?" Jack wanted to sever his brain-to-mouth connection. His next words came measured: "Sorry, Dr. Siegal. I'm just tired and a little behind in my studies. I have, um, some pressing issues. I'll catch up this weekend."His hand cupping the too-familiar lay of his land, Jack pulled away from the head-shaking teacher. Wondering why he had decided to major in sociology, now seeming the driest of subjects, he stumbled about campus, lacking direction.

The late September night whispered cool nothings and in other instances would have been refreshing. Jack took to the outdoors a lot now, alone, trying to absorb ocean-scented air, hoping for clarity. Keeping the pace brisk, he followed the clifftop trail above the water and its eternal wave action. Since Jack would describe himself as lean -- Lori had jokingly called him a walking stop-sign post -- how would he marshal the physical reserves and resources necessary to survive the onslaught of chemotherapy treatments?Consider Poor Newton, a hometown friend, or more accurately, a friend of a friend who had once applied for a summer ice-cream truck driver job. He would have his own white truck complete with sound system to play an endlessly looping instrumental version of "Bicycle Built for Two." Easygoing and gregarious, Newton seemed perfect for the position until a required physical examination revealed he had a bump behind his ear. Jack had shuddered when Phil, their mutual friend, had relayed the information a couple of years ago. Poor Newton's ailment had been diagnosed as Hodgkin's Disease, of which Jack knew little about save it meant suffering and death. Newton had endured surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation treatment."I was by his side at the end of the summer," Phil had written, "and Newton looked pale, weak, and blue-splotched. Constantly nauseated, or, as he aptly phrased it, 'seasick.' He's decided to give it all up. No more treatments. The docs tried to talk him out of his decision, but he's determined. They give him two to five years. Sounds like a prison sentence."Independently wealthy courtesy of his monthly social security checks payable for three years or until death, whichever came first, Newton escaped to Europe, toured and partied, eventually wintering on a small Greek island. Last spring, unannounced, Phil and the doomed lad had appeared at Jack's apartment. They were taking in the States, staying with friends who were spread out coast to coast. He wondered if it were customary for those suffering terminal diseases to make final callings on those they loved.Phil and Newton said they just wanted to crash for a couple of days, climb the redwoods, commune with the ocean, tail their friend around campus. Trying to avoid staring at the bearded, shoulder-length haired Newton, Jack thought the guy didn't look sick at all. What was the phrase -- hale and hearty?The visitors joked nonstop. Still exhibiting the markings of the counterculture, they had the makings of a great gallows comedy team. Newton laughed freely and wholeheartedly and never actually made an explicit reference to his condition. The pair entertained themselves while their host attended classes. On work nights, they visited him for free pizza slices and leftover minestrone soup. On off nights, the three took in a movie or enjoyed live music at one of the coffee houses.Alone one morning with Phil, a pre-law school dropout turned adventurer, Jack launched a volley of questions: "Does he cough blood?" "No." "Does he ever go weak?" "Not really." "Phil, how long does he really have?" "He'll probably outlive us both and have fun doing it."Feeling guilty, Jack couldn't help but pay particular attention to dishwashing while he entertained his visitors. After a meal of spaghetti or cheeseburgers, he would wave aside his guests' appeals to help clean up and suggest they put on a record or begin a game of chess. Filling the sink with scalding hot water and two times the normal amount of soap, Jack washed and rinsed each plate as if he were handling the family china. Glasses and silverware earned a double clean cycle. By dishwashing's conclusion, his wrinkled fingers appeared paranoia white.A transitory visit stretched into several weeks. Jack felt as if he had two new roommates, pressing on him in the tight one-bedroom apartment. [Beth here again. I just wanted to throw in a biographical note. His last two years of college, Dad did live in a small apartment in town, a couple of miles from the UC Campus that is famously lodged on a redwood-covered hillside to the east. He said Santa Cruz was much cheaper in those days, which allowed him to live alone and focus on writing, his primary interest even back then.] On a Tuesday, after a breakfast of leftover pizza, extra pepperoni, and without preamble, the merry travelers pretended to synchronize their watches and said, "Time to go. We'll send you a post card from Seattle." They jumped into their elderly Dodge Dart, waved so long, and with King Crimson blaring from some self-installed rear speakers, disappeared into a late morning fog bank. Jack went back inside his suddenly quiet apartment and opened all the windows.

Enough thoughts about Newton's fate. The night air felt colder than he'd expected, or maybe his body's defense systems were becoming compromised. Jack turned up his vest's collar, paused at the intersection of two quiet streets, and thought how ghostly trees silhouetted by streetlights could look. On the other hand, homes he passed exuded warm glows, even through curtained windows. Comfy ocean-weathered houses for comfy, ocean-weathered lives while the diseased pariah skirts their yards. Gazing into the moonless night, Jack debated whether he should turn to prayer and ask for divine intervention and decided he hadn't earned the privilege. If he wasn't already praying for world peace or other noble goals, how could he justify selfishly asking for a life extension?Jack quickened his step. Yesterday, about to unlock his bike, he felt a strong arm thumping his shoulder. Mostly serious Kirk. "Hey, guy, they give me two weeks.""You're kidding, Kirk. I'm so sorry." Jack felt an immediate bond with his friend, a fellow alumnus of the Cowell College dorm and now a physics major. Many of their freshman year conversations had centered around ranking rock music groups, Kirk favoring The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, and for Jack, The Beatles and Crosby, Stills & Nash."Actually, less than two weeks," said Kirk, rubbing his chin as he pulled back. Jack put curled fingers to chin, impressed by his friend's courage in facing his mortality. "If I don't finish this lab project on time, I'll get an incomplete in Thermal Dynamics and will probably blow my chances for grad school."Lips pursed, Jack nodded in commiseration while feeling as though he'd lost a companion on the Road to the End. "You'll do fine, Kirk.""Hey, Jack, how about you, you okay? How are your grad school applications going?""Haven't started yet. Maybe toward the end of the semester. I'm waiting to see what will happen."Back from his evening walk, he downed a full glass of milk. Probably carcinogenic, he mused. Under the bed covers topped by his genuine red and yellow Indian blanket, a map of geometric patterns who symbols escaped him, Jack put his hand, yet again, to neck, lightly, barely touching the hair that overlaid skin. Did the bumps feel larger? 'New Mountain Range Rising in Necklandia. Twin Peaks to Offer Skiing and Other Recreational Sports.' He forced a cough. No blood. Retreating further under the covers, Jack experienced a sharp, quick stab above his abdomen. He jolted upright, his fingers tracing a horseshoe pattern from stomach to chest to stomach. The pain ebbing, his breastbone now seemed more sensitive than normal. Had he ever paid any attention to the state of his breastbone before? Hell, I don't even smoke, he thought. I'm innocent.Upon awakening the next morning and each morning for the next three days, as if by reflex, Jack slid a reluctant hand to its prescribed destination. In a perverse sort of way, he wasn't disappointed. Then he evaluated which would be better: to go unexpectedly and quickly or in a step-by-step descent? President Ford, on two recent occasions, had almost experienced the former through two unsuccessful assassination attempts. Ford likely would opt for choice number two.He tried to block the inevitable parental scene of Mort and Audrey, survivors of The Great Depression, who leaned toward pessimism. And how would he inform friends?By Friday, the ailing young man resolved to turn himself in for an examination on Monday. That would allot one last sweet weekend with Lori. Over their dinner of Chinese takeout, extra plum sauce, he kept the conversation light. His mass of reading was nearly done. Lori's bouncy younger sister would be coming up from L.A. for Thanksgiving. They'd celebrate together and include Dave and Ann, also staying in town for the holiday. As Lori gave a rundown of her recent history paper on the cultural significance of mourning rites (beyond ironic!), Jack looked at, really looked at Lori: her smooth olive skin, those dark, mesmerizing almond-shaped eyes, bountiful black hair. She said her family came from Scottish and Irish stock. Some other genes had made it in there as well."So, what do we want to do tonight?" he asked as they finished the moo shu chicken.

Driving back from the campus' classic film night, a Marx Brothers movie at which, surprisingly, Jack was able to forget his circumstances and laugh, perhaps too loudly, along with the rest of the audience, he asked, "Lori, if I got run over tomorrow, really splattered all over the ...........""Jack!""What would I be remembered for?" He could feel her acidic stare, even in the dark of the car."For being an idiot. What kind of question is that?""I'm just wondering what kind of mark I've made in the world. The only thing I can think of meriting merit is my paper in the anthology about Lewis Mumford's rejection of modernism."Lori shifted in the lumpy bucket seat of Jack's aging but still stylish Le Mans, on extended loan from his Peace Corp-volunteer brother. "No, the only person who might remember is Mumford and he's probably in his eighties.""Great." He turned onto his block, the street a mix of family homes and two-story apartments. "Then there's nothing I'd be remembered for.""Nope. Nothing." She was almost snarling. "In less than a week, your total existence on Earth would be a pale memory for us, especially by me if you keep up this inane kind of conversation." [Me again, again. At eleven or twelve, I accompanied Dad to a reading and signing for one of his novels. In a Brentano's, I think, in downtown Chicago. At the end of the afternoon and having autographed the last of several dozen books, he turned to me (I had been sitting beside him at the author table) and asked both of us, "Think anyone will be reading me a hundred years from now?"]A soft rain filled Saturday morning. As a bonus, in the late afternoon, the couple was gifted by a rainbow, or a third of one, topping the low mountains behind the city. They noticed it from the apartment's puddled parking lot."Are you humming?" asked Lori, Jack's arm snug upon her shoulder.He gave an almost rehearsed answer. "The first cartoon I can remember has a moonfaced boy cat and a long-eyelashed girl cat out for a walk. It begins raining and they look for cover, unsuccessfully. It really pours, although their sorrow turns to dancing joy as some dogs, trees, clouds, all with rubbery legs, bend to the tune of 'Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella on a Rainy Day.' In the last scene, the boy and girl cats run up the curve of a rainbow, reach the top, and slide down into a pot-of-gold. Funny thing is the cartoon is in black and white yet feels like it's in color.""What a lovely cartoon," Lori said in her softest voice of the weekend.His right arm still embracing Lori, Jack used his other to perform a spot check. No change. Always no change.

Sunday dawned cloudless with a fresh breeze and a strong hint of autumn. Deciding to take advantage of the inviting weather, the couple headed for the upland forest, still damp from the previous day's shower. The redwoods, as always, pulled Jack and Lori into a primeval feeling of earth, tree, and sky. The couple took a longer route back to stop at their favorite vegetable and berry farm just above Shark Fin Cove. Feasting on fresh blackberries, Lori said she felt completely relaxed.While she had to study for the balance of Sunday evening, he didn't object. Jack was steeling himself for the next day when he would announce his woes to Lori and surrender to the universe.For what might have been the last time, as they had the evening before, the couple made love. Jack felt a barrier between them, one he knew to be psychological, but what if he were contaminating her? Newton had mentioned how he had continued to have sex after the arrival of the disease. Apparently, it wasn't contagious. Apparently.

She still slept, her head having emerged from the sheets. Carefully easing out of the bed to minimize any box spring squeaks, Jack pulled on a t-shirt and sweatpants. In the living room, he dropped grains of food into the fishbowl and two hungry, circling goldfish. He kept the shades closed although sunlight crept in around the edges of the fabric.He was standing beside the bed when she opened her eyes and squinted at him."Morning," he said simply.She answered with a long-noted hi.Jack looked away and returned to her. Biting his lower lip, he pivoted onto the bed's edge as she slid over. "Have you noticed anything odd about my recent behavior?""You have seemed a little distant," she said floating a bubble of concern."Right. Well, it seems I've got these bumps on my neck.""Where?" She sat upright."Here." He guided her to one of the spots. "I'm sure it's nothing, but I should find out... just in case ..........." Lori's eyes moistened. His did the same. "So, I think I'll cruise by the health clinic this morning.""I'm coming, too." She leaned forward to embrace him.

"Jack Harris." After a quick wave to Lori, he let a nurse or maybe she was an aide lead him from the waiting area into a small exam room containing a waist-high bed and assorted medical equipment. He tried to slow his breathing as he waited for the doctor, while another nurse or aide came in and took his blood pressure which turned out to be "a little high." He attempted to remember fun experiences, like summer camps in the mountains, handcupping fireflies, and the first time he saw snow. The doctor entered -- balding, at least fifty, maybe older, walruslike mustache, and smelling of soap and rubbing alcohol. He scanned some notes but Jack couldn't wait. "I've got these swellings on my neck." The doctor had him lean forward. Feeling lightly with practiced fingers, almost soothing, thought Jack."I see. Any soreness?""A little." He could hear his heart pounding like an internal time bomb. How many heartbeats measure a life? Twenty-one years of heartbeating. He tried to multiply figures in his head."Yes, it's red here," announced the doctor. Jack readied for the verdict. "Have you been scratching?"Caught off guard, he hesitated. "Yes, my scalp itches, I guess." His two decades had sure gone by like a speeded up slide show. How bountiful twenty future years would seem if he were allowed them."Dandruff," said the doctor, almost matter-of-factly.Jack acted as though he didn't understand the meaning of the word. "Dandruff?""The scratching has infected the scalp." The doctor moved calmly to the room's sink and continued talking, his back to Jack as he washed his hands. "Those swellings are the result of the inflammation." He turned to face his pale patient."You mean..............."The doctor smoothed his mustache. "There is no reason to suspect you have a more serious disease. Enlargement of the lymph nodes can come from a number of causes." He raised his hand to the side of his somewhat wrinkled neck. "I have a few along here. They once swelled up due to illness and then went down, though not completely."Putting on a pair of bifocals, the doctor began writing on a pad. "This is a prescription for scalp treatment.""Doctor, in some cases there can be, for example, cancer as the cause."The older man stopped writing. "Yes.""I have a friend with Hodgkin's Disease. He took the treatment for a while and then stopped.""He's very foolish. The disease can be cured. Now don't you worry unnecessarily about cancer. True, it does exist." [Me again, last time, I promise. This is conjecture on my part: I don't think my dad is promoting a position pro or con about whether someone should stop medical treatment for a serious disease. Rather, he is letting a situation play out without 'taking sides.' He always said he fit more as an exploratory rather than a didactic writer.] The doctor went back to writing. "And chances are you will someday contract either cancer or heart disease, which won't be for a long time."A long time, echoed Jack in thought."You see," the physician assured the young man, "there's little else, statistically, to die from these days." He handed over the prescription. "This will take care of the dandruff. The swellings will go down slowly, perhaps not entirely."Jack thanked the doctor who nodded and proceeded to his next patient. Jack also nodded as he moved past the reception desk and back into the waiting space. Lori immediately saw him and knew. Rising, she approached him. They stood facing one another."I've gotten a reprieve," he told her as he playfully patted the nape of his neck. "There are many more moments to come."

Regarding Your Submission

Dear Beth Burke née Diamond,Thank you for submitting your work to RetroFiction Quarterly. We look forward to reviewing it. We try to respond within three months; however, our backlog of unread manuscripts is substantial. Please do not let a longer wait frustrate or disillusion you when sending out your work, which we know takes hope, perseverance, and spirit!Keep at it!
The EditorRetroFiction Quarterly

Connor Fisher
Two Poems

“The Island”

I wore veils in New York until the carpenters foundme. They traced awl-tips across my skin.Stations beckoned me with the crooked legs of a spider.Workers tied handkerchiefs around their foreheads.I wanted to freeze in the winter. Fish freeze. To sleep on mystomach in a cart. To defecate with lice cupped inmy hands. Beetles crawl beneath the city's surfaceand form a hive mind wallowing in memory.I pushed my fists inside the mouths of policemen untiltheir rage transformed them into ravens. Fit yourtongue against mine and we will cleanse the hamlet.The island is round. The island was never flat.

“The Smoke”

Moons rose and the burning was terrible. Houses
flamed between raindrops.We danced in the smoke and you gave me your
mouth. I bit your ears until blood ran.And outside, workers peered through nettles as I stood in
the fire. They licked my rough hair like cats.I spoke as an apparition. Where were my eardrums?
I surrendered and cringed like a dog.Is milk poison? Chess is a cloud array. My soul is
a bucket of water. Look: rivers spurt.I'm as light as a curtain of foam. Bring me indoors;
let me sleep on the rug. My brain wants to be dust.

Ignacy Karpowicz
“Tuvalu. A Christmas Carol”

Translated by John Markoff and Małgorzata Markoff

I was flying from Australia to the Philippines, or perhaps to Fiji, or to Hawaii. I would have to check my notes. Due to some problem, a mechanical failure, a meteorological disaster, or a woman giving birth aboard -- I would have to check my notes -- the plane had to make an emergency landing.The landing itself was horrifying. That's at least what I think. After all I was sitting inside and I had never mastered the art of separating the body from the mind, save for quite frequent squabbles with my better half. The plane was nosediving right into the ocean. I had no idea that passenger planes could perform acrobatics reserved for dive bombers. If it hadn't been for the yellow bile that came up into my mouth, I would have wondered what we would drop instead of bombs: fuel, the WC contents, or perhaps a few people of color?(The event I am describing took place before political correctness was invented).The blue surface grew bigger and bigger in the window. Everything around was shaking as if someone were making a war movie with a hand-held camera. The oxygen masks fell out of the upper compartments. We were so low that a possible dehermetization of the cabin wouldn't hurt anyone. A more serious problem was the prospect of dehermetization of our stomachs.The plane was nosediving, and the engines wailed on a high and false note, mimicking the 70's group Exotic Trio. Outside the window I saw individual plumes of waves. Then something that looked like fly shit in the shape of a drawn bow without a string appeared in the distance. The plane turned towards this fly shit. "Turned" may not be the right verb. "Crashed" would be much better. The locks in the luggage compartments gave way and the bags spilled all over our heads. It was a genuine shower of chocolates, alcohol, and perfumes -- Christmas gifts.At last the plane landed. I mean its wheels touched the runway and bounced several times. This kind of landing is called a kangaroo landing. Somehow I was not surprised. After all I was flying the Australian airlines Qantas. Maybe it is their tradition and emblem. We have a white-tailed eagle, they have a kangaroo. And as far as I remember a kangaroo can't fly, just like a kiwi -- close to a kangaroo both in a geographical and a cultural sense.The plane finally came to a stop. All the passengers that had appeared in multiple colors during the boarding now simultaneously turned green. One of them started to clap, and his sparse applause was followed by more and more hands, and suddenly in the climax of clapping something was howling without a pause. The fuselage broke into half. My head hit the back of the seat in front of me.The evacuation slides were inflated automatically at the emergency exits, just like water slides in any aqua park. We were evacuated very efficiently. Some with accidental bottles of alcohol in their hands. However, it was a great relief while sliding that our feet and asses hit the asphalt and not water.The airport personnel did not interfere with the evacuation.I don't even know if they noticed the landing at all.We walked away as far as we could from the broken plane, in other words not too far, to the other end of the runway. No one was hurt, neither the passengers nor the crew. Just a few broken noses, some bruises, cut skin, and soaked underwear. Trivialities. The simplest first aid kit and a washing machine will deal with this in no time.The plane, broken like a cigar with its tip cut off, was not going to explode, although we knew that sooner or later the fuel would leak from the tanks. It always leaks. So we can still look forward to fireworks. Happy New Year. Which year was it? 85? 87? Some uneven year. In any case it was before the Roundtable Negotiations.It was clear as the blinding sun that the plane was not ready for the return trip. What is more, it had made deep holes and ruts in the ground surface, and had lost a lot of parts that were littering the runway as far as you could see. I want to add that you didn't have to look far. The island we landed on was just a little bigger than the plane itself and much lower. I realized that the highest point of the island was the circling birds. I could only hope they were not vultures.We, one hundred twenty seven passengers and eleven crew members, got together, forming a tight group. We all smoked cigarettes. Even those who didn't smoke, smoked. We shared bottles of duty free alcohol. We survived the crash. Such a survival in one piece deserves a celebration or at least a serious hangover.Unfortunately, no one took any interest in us. There were no fire trucks, ambulances, or police or customs officers. There weren't even any thieves. Because no one wanted to rescue or save us properly, one of the pilots decided to take matters into his own hands. He told us to walk towards the terminal buildings, that is, towards the shacks covered with sheet metal. They could be anything, from a brothel to an airport.We moved in unison in that direction. It was incredible. Almost one hundred forty people who didn't know one another and who spoke many different languages did something unanimously and collectively. Like lemmings walking towards the abyss. As if the tower of Babel had never been destroyed.The temperature certainly exceeded 104 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know how much it was in the shade because there was no shade on this petty island. We walked towards the buildings. I hoped to find a bar there. Double whisky with a lot of ice and then I could go to jail.We reached something that might have been a terminal. I read a sign on the building: "Tuvalu me te Atua". So we found ourselves at the real end-of-the- world. I knew very little of Tuvalu. There were nine atolls that formed an archipelago of the Lagoon Islands. The plane probably landed on the biggest island, Vaitupu, spreading over almost five square kilometers. After all it is a little more than my apartment in Poland.In the building we found two customs stations. I write "found" although we didn't look for them. Unfortunately, the customs representatives were not present. I summoned up the courage and got inside the box in which there should be, I repeat "should be", a customs officer. There were two stamps on the counter: one with a free one month visa and the other with today's date. I decided to let my fellow travelers into Tuvalu.I meticulously stamped their passports with two stamps: one with the visa, the other with the date. Each time I made a small talk with a smile."Hello, may I help you?"Occasionally, I added:"Purpose of the trip: business or tourist?"Usually I heard:"No, just a crash.""So, have a nice stay. Never Qantas," I responded."Never Qantas."We were very amused with this customs control. But it was I who had the most fun. I stamped almost one hundred forty passports. Mine was the last one and the ink was very pale.I left the customs box and said:"Claim your baggage anyway. If you dare. Qantas."I was met with applause louder than after the landing, or "landing".We walked outside. There was practically nothing in front of the airport terminal. It meant that this island was so small that there was no space even for nothing. However, the view was completely different from what one can usually see outside airport terminals all over the world. So we walked outside the airport terminal and found ourselves without any warning in the city center. Or the village center. It is hard to say. The heat jumbled the words.The architecture was obviously low, the vegetation was obviously tropical and the humans were obviously absent. What moved me -- and I am moved very easily, especially a moment after a miraculous salvation -- was that the buildings just stood there. Without any embellishments, Baroque, Renaissance, or Scandinavian functionality. Generally the buildings stood as they were built, or stood as if they were to collapse at any moment. I had some significant experience from other ends-of-the-world so I was aware that this flimsiness and transience were superficial. Those buildings would survive anything. Even the seven plagues of Egypt, or whatever their number, I don't remember, or was it Egypt at all?The island was so narrow that even Chile could get rid of its inferiority complex. I wouldn't exaggerate too much by saying that if a tall basketball player lay down across the island both his feet and his head would end up on a beach. I mean, on the beaches.I was standing next to a chubby forty-something English woman. At the Sydney airport we had exchanged a few courtesies. Now the English woman decided to introduce herself."Hi, I'm Karen."We shook hands. She handed me a bottle of Ballantine's. I took a large and graceful sip."Do you think a hotel could fit in such a narrow country?," Karen addressed me."Dear Karen, we should be happy that this country turned out to be not only narrow but first of all long. Otherwise our plane couldn't have crashed so comfortably," I said."But can a hotel fit in such a narrow place?," she insisted."Certainly," I calmed her down."The beds are undoubtedly single," she remarked mischievously.It turned out that a hotel did indeed fit some fifty meters from the airport and that it had enough space for a receptionist. The hotel was called Vaiaku Hotel Funafuti Tuvalu. It was empty and so low that I started to miss haystacks. It offered sixteen rooms in a new wing. Up to three people and the A/C could squeeze in each room. Three times sixteen is forty eight. It also turned out that it was the only hotel on the island, which meant that almost one hundred of us wouldn't have a place to stay and fifty of us would share a room with an unknown bunch of people. After an extended interview with the receptionist we found out that there was an old wing ready to take a dozen people but that didn't have air-conditioning.The first cracks appeared in our so far unanimous group of survivors. Everyone wanted a room. Luckily, the plane captain was an alpha male and he commanded that those entitled to the rooms, or rather beds, were in the following order: the elderly and the sick, mothers with small children (there weren't any), and terrorists (just a joke). The remaining beds were to be distributed in a lottery. Everybody dropped his or her boarding pass into a large bag. Then Karen, who had the honor to play one of the Fates, would pick a piece of paper from the bag and read the sex and the first and the last names. All this was meticulously recorded. After distributing forty-eight beds, including cots, the captain followed the receptionist to check the old wing without A/C.In the meantime, we, the forty-eight lucky ones with assigned beds, went to the hotel bar. The bar was not large but it had three virtues: the roof, a dozen chairs, armchairs and sofas, and a young guy behind the counter.It happened that it was Karen who spoke to the bartender first."Do you speak English?""No, I don't," he answered."Well, it is actually irrelevant what language you speak. It is only important that we understand each other. What is your currency here?""Tuvalu dollars.""What?!"Karen got annoyed as if she heard about the inconvertible currency for the first time. I came from a country with inconvertible currency, if you don't take into consideration its convertibility into other inconvertible currencies such as Soviet rubles, Hungarian forints, and Czech korunas. But this was abstraction or economy at its highest level."Tuvalu dollars -- but you may pay with Australian dollars.""And pounds?"The bartender shook his head."There is a bank nearby. But it is closed now. You can exchange..."I came to Karen's rescue. I had a lot of Australian dollars."Mister, I'd like a bottle of Walker, two bottles of red wine for the lady, four large bottles of mineral water, two cigars, and packs of cigarettes. And a bucket with a lot of ice. Not melted, of course."The bartender didn't seem to be surprised by this request. Orders in this hotel were probably so rare that he couldn't tell the difference between an ordinary request and a crazy one. First, he summed up everything carefully, took the money, and delivered the products. With Karen's help I took the bottles, cigarettes, glasses, and the ice bucket to the nearest table. A line was already formed behind us. I knew that soon everything would be gone. After all I came from a country where nothing would ever be gone but only because there was nothing there to begin with.Karen and I sat in comfortable armchairs. I opened a bottle of wine and filled her glass. Then I poured some whisky for myself. I raised my glass."My ass is your ass," I said."Excuse me?""I'm sorry," I replied with embarrassment. "That's supposed to be a greeting in this country. But my information may not be accurate.""Aha," she replied.We drank alcohol and smoked cigarettes. I saved the cigars for a rainy day. The passengers of this unfortunate flight occupied not only all the tables around us but every single piece of the floor as well. Karen and I talked smoothly about nothing. It was like flirting, like sand trickling in an hourglass. We told each other about some polished fragments of our lives, shiny snippets, and digressions with punchlines and punchlines that were not funny. We were getting increasingly drunk and tired.I began to like Karen. I was a bit tipsy, she was forty, ruddy and chubby, properly monumental but sparing with gestures. I was struck -- I remember -- that she barely had any makeup on or hairspray. But, after all, it was the eighties. The times of Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson and Sabrina the size of whose bosom was only slightly exceeded by her fame.I had no idea what time it was. My watch was showing six in the evening, but anyone could easily be lost in the chaos of the crash, and the time zones."I'm over fifty. I'm tired," I said."Do you have a toothbrush?" asked Karen.I wondered whether in English the word "toothbrush" resembled "condom", or perhaps "tired". I thought Karen had made a slip."Did you say exactly what you wanted to say?" I just wanted to be sure."Oh, yes," she responded. "A toothbrush."Then from her purse that she had taken during the evacuation she pulled a tube of toothpaste and two brand new brushes.Obviously, I had no a brush or toothpaste."The green one is yours," said Karen, handing me one toothbrush."Thanks. I have to lie down. I'm tired."I took with me the bottle with the remaining whisky, and Karen grabbed a second bottle of wine and mineral water. We walked to the reception desk. It was not a big surprise that we happened to get the same room. Fate wasn't idle. No one was dropping sand into the gears of destiny. And so on."Who is this third person?," asked Karen.The receptionist checked the guest book."Jack Snow, 28 years old, Australian citizen.""Thanks. It's a cool name.""Just in case the air-conditioning doesn't work," I interrupted.We went to the room. We cleaned our teeth and fell asleep. In separate beds. At least I feel asleep. Jack was absent. It was all right, the A/C worked beyond reproach.I slept like a dead body for many hours. When I woke up Karen was not in the room. Instead Jack Snow, I suppose, was sleeping on a cot. He was snoring a little.I brushed my teeth, took a shower, got dressed, and so on. In the hall I met Karen. She was excited and she shouted:"Amnesia!""What amnesia?" I asked. "You don't remember my name?"She waved her hand impatiently."I don't remember your name because it's too difficult, but that doesn't matter!""So what is this about?""Yesterday was Christmas!" she exclaimed."So what? Christmas has been happening every year for almost two thousand years. You can get used to it.""Amnesia!" she shouted again. "Everybody forgot about Christmas."I couldn't understand her excitement. Evidently at the moment of a plane crash Christmas recedes into the background."Amnesia! Christmas!" she cried, clearly disappointed with my attitude, that I couldn't understand her.She stared at me intensely and then broke into tears.I kept her company. I broke into tears, too. Christmas. Well. The next one might not have come. It still may not.

Mykyta Ryzhykh
Two Poems

“About how time ran out”

I said goodbye to death like fire
I won't warm anyone anymore and I won't burn anymoreSome sea bones washed up on the orange shore
The worn-out animals came out of their bodiesA cloud floated up and my eyes became clouds
I don't un...

“Once in night”

mirrors talk to silent
immobilized shadowsthe corpse wrapped
in a blanket does
not move either

Joseph Kenyon
“Mike Nettles’ Block Of Wood”

Mike Nettles, who wanted to be a Taoist, installed a large block of wood in the corner of his front yard. A cube, six feet tall and six feet wide on each side.I curled up on the bench seat in my bedroom window and watched the block of wood at night before going to bed. Not because I thought anyone would try to paint graffiti all over it again, but because Mike Nettles was right. The block was constant, consistent, steady, while everything else around it was in chaos. I drew it by not drawing it. I drew the frantic motion surrounding it and kept the center blank or minimal. I wanted to capture its sense of calm. Of stillness.Sometimes, waking up in the middle of the night with the same fear that struck me when I saw the word “Un-SAFELY” painted on the block -- the fear that my parents really didn’t like me -- I’d haul the duvet from my bed to the bench seat. I’d arrange my position so that the block was strategically placed over my right shoulder, in my right eye’s line of sight. With the block in view, the fear would lessen, and I might drift back into sleep.I was on the bench seat the night I heard the whoosh of the Molotov cocktail and the shrieking of the car tires. The explosion blinded me. I sat blinking, too stunned to be upset or horrified but not too stunned to be curious because my first coherent thought was how the flames engulfing the wooden block made it look like the center of one of my drawings. Like what I drew was a request that the block had decided to fulfill. It burned wildly. Uncontrollably. But at the center it remained calm.

We lived on Wayne Street where Lambeth Avenue ended, and our house sat opposite that ending. Mike Nettles owned the house at the western corner of Lambeth and Wayne. The Saturday the block was delivered, he supervised the unloading. It was squarish and covered in burlap or some other kind of natural material. Not plastic. I was hooked the first time I saw it on the back of the flatbed truck.He refereed the four movers as they jockeyed the block to its resting place, about a yard from the sidewalk. I loved the way the rounded pedestal of the block curved in sync with the way the grass and the sidewalk curved in an arch. Mike Nettles’ lawn was the only one with a corner in the round. The eastern corner across Lambeth and Wayne and all the corners throughout the neighborhood had lawns cut square to the right angles of the intersecting sidewalks.My father noticed the block of wood while leaving for work on the Monday after it was delivered. He phoned my mother, who came into my room, and wedged her way into the window space with a curt “Move over.” I closed my drawing tablet, although I doubt she would have thought to look at it.“What kind of monstrosity is Mikey putting in his yard for all of us to endure?” my mother said into the phone.I didn’t hear my father’s reply, only my mother’s comment: “Maybe it’s a ceramic hedge since he doesn’t have much luck growing the real thing.” She gave the air her back-handed slap. It’s something she did when she was annoyed, and I jumped off the window seat. That slap was never soft but always wayward.More talk from Dad.“God knows with Mikey,” Mom said. “He’s just plain crazy.”

My parents started taking day-long, motorcycle trips with their “gang” long before the block was delivered. I was 10 the first time they went. They left me with these epic-if-broken instructions. I wasn’t to step outside the house, not even onto the porch. I was to call my aunt in case of an emergency. I could only eat the food in the fridge that was labeled, no using the stove.I had the entire day to myself since they left mid-morning and returned about seven or eight, whenever dusk began to gather. I couldn’t go outside, so what I did was look out windows. And that’s when I began to draw.

Friday nights in the summer were “Neighborly Nights.” The adults living on our section of Lambeth and Wayne had a barbecue party with each household rotating as host. When the barbecue was at our house, I had to help out, but when the drinking started to get the better of the adults, I slipped away to my room and pushed my desk in front of the door. Earlier in the day, I made sure to move the ladder around to the front of the house and set it up in a break between the bushes under my bedroom window. It became my stairway in and out of the house during the party and after. If my parents noticed the ladder, they never said a word, and they never removed it.Mike Nettles didn’t host these parties. Nor was he invited to them. But from the first time he saw me climbing down the ladder, he was always watching when I came home. Not in any creepy, pedophile-porn-chat-fantasy kind of way but just to make sure I got in alright. He never said anything or waved or even let me know he was keeping an eye out for me, but that’s what he was doing. He seemed to care. I liked how that felt.

If you’ve gotten the idea from what I’ve told you so far that I didn’t have any friends, you’d be mistaken. My celebrity began the year before the block of wood was delivered to Mike Nettles’ house, when I was thirteen. My Instagram, the main outlet for my drawings, was called SAFELY -- Supportive Art For Every Lonesome Youth -- and it had over 20,000 followers.Locally, I hung out with other artistic kids ranging in age from twelve to seventeen. I invited some of them to post as guests on SAFELY, and they used that spotlight to varying degrees of success. Also hanging with us were a fair number of dropouts and sidewards -- our name for home-schooled kids. They wanted nothing to do with school but kept coming around their would-be classmates so that they had some connection. Maybe that’s how they kept from feeling completely left out or rejected or whatever. I really didn’t give it much thought at that time. They were just there, like the rest of us.

Further into the night that the block burned, after the fire engines left and after the neighbors had drifted back into their homes, I sat up with the charred remains. I waited for the sadness and the anger to punch through the calm and steady sense I got from the block. I waited for the fury to roll through me like an invasion. I waited with a sketch pad and pen. I waited. And I waited.When the morning came, and the blackened, ashen destruction was made to look even more of a mess in the light, I waited. I listened for my parents to righteously crow. I heard my mother say, “I couldn’t torch someone else’s property, no matter how much of an eyesore sat on it, but I’ll raise my glass to whoever roasted that block.”I heard my father’s reply: “A-fucking-men!”And I waited.

A little more than a month after the block was delivered, I got home late on a Friday night. Saturday morning by the clock. My parents were at a Neighborly Night party on Wayne. They kept the back door unlocked on these nights, and I went in that way, so I didn’t see the block until I got to my room. Words were scrawled in every direction and in different colored paints across the face of the block. I ran to it, as if the block were an injured dog lying in the street. The writing varied from one-word comments to phrases, from obscene to faux-witty, from nasty to threatening. I moved around to Mike Nettles’ side of the block, the side facing away from my house. One word jumped out at me. “Un-SAFELY.” The word was painted in the same blue shade that my father used the week before to paint the kitchen.

One of my most vivid life memories is of Mike Nettles coming out of his house after dark on that Saturday the block was delivered. He cut and unwound the material with great care. Peeling it away from the surface of the wood. Revealing the block’s hulking, solid squarey-ness on that rounded pedestal.That night, I observed the block for the first time. The corner streetlight sent a slanted shadow across it like a toga. On each successive night for nearly a month, I observed the block after dark, before going to bed. I tried to continue seeing the block as if it were the first time. As something new. I drew what I could see and what I couldn’t. I turned the perspective around in my head without ever leaving the window and drew the block from its back side. My favorite was the one that looked like I drew it while peering out Mike Nettles’ living room window. The block was focused but formless, a mixture of sharp insubstantial light and hard but gently-rounded edges.It looked like I felt.Those night drawings were learning experiences, like class. During the days and evenings of that first month, when I was home, I drew the reactions to Mike Nettles’ block of wood. I did that for fun, and if I’m being honest, a lot of fun. Cars slowed. Walkers stared. Neighbors gestured and commented. I drew them in their yards and driveways and sidewalks wearing what I began to think of as their Nettles frown. I drew them texting madly, and I drew the people I imagined were receiving those texts. Mike Nettles. The Mayor. Even Mr. Worgan, the legendary high school gym teacher/football coach who was the only adult the neighborhood men mentioned with reverence in their voices. I drew anyone I could think of with any clout.I drew a flip book of my parents taking direct action: marching up to Mike Nettles’ front door and, when he opened it, loudly and vehemently demanding that he remove the block. I drew the neighbors chanting their assent like backbenchers in the House of Commons. I drew my parents, after a five-minute torrent of abuse, as the only things being removed from Mike Nettles’ property.

I never took my parents’ neglect personally. Everybody had a “thing” and selfishness was theirs. But seeing Un-SAFELY slashed across the back-facing of the block, painted in our kitchen blue, felt to my teenaged senses like they were knowingly throwing me under the bus, and I had no idea why. That’s when I first started to consider the possibility that my parents simply didn’t like me. The thought was so enormous that I intentionally tacked away from that conclusion to another. That my parents were cowards. They couldn’t vandalize on their own. They had to hide behind me.That wasn’t a comforting thought, but I wasn’t looking for comfort. I was looking for vengeance and anger to -- I’d say it like this now but not then -- validate what I was feeling. Kids learn from their parents, so in my selfish need to clear my name, I banged away at Mike Nettles’ front door without considering how late it was. He opened it and stood staring at me, bed-ruffled.As I launched in about the vandalism, the word that looked like I painted it but in fact was painted by my parents, and that I was sorry and angry about the whole neighborhood’s reaction to the block, Mike Nettles looked from me to the block without speaking. I tugged at his pajama arm, and he followed me to where I pointed at the word “Un-SAFELY” and repeated how that was the work of my parents, not me.I watched Mike Nettles as he circled the block of wood, touching some of the words and nodding. My fascination at his reaction was pushing ahead of my mortification. I took in his every nuance so I could draw him later. I waited until I was sure I had what I was seeing and feeling from him locked into my brain. Then, I mentioned that he seemed to be more interested in the vandalism than angry about it.His head bobbed from side to side, a non-verbal comme ci comme ҫa. That’s when he told me that the block wasn’t just some hunk of wood. It was a sculpture. The artist was depicting the undisturbed calm at the center of people before they let all life’s complications “rake us up.”I looked at the block and said it looked pretty complicated. Mike Nettles agreed -- to a point. His view was that the neighbors added the complications but only on the outside. Below the surface, the block was the same.I remember thinking about that and reaching what felt like a strange conclusion. For as much as I watched Mike Nettles and his block, for as much as he looked out for my comings and goings on the ladder during Neighborly Nights hosted at my house, we only occasionally interacted. So, I hesitated -- before asking if he thought the neighbors’ vandalism had actually added to the artistry of the block.He smiled at me and said he did.I asked him if he was okay with that. You know, calm about it.“I’m trying to be,” he said, patting the block. “At the moment, I’m not quite succeeding. But I’m trying.”

I kept waiting for the rage and the sadness. For years. And years. Which, I guess, was a kind of a rage and a kind of a sadness, although I didn’t feel either. I just drew. And I waited.Then, one day, I laughed.And that’s when I first thought about going back. For a visit. After all this time.

When the gathering with my friends on those Neighborly Nights were over, I always went home. We all did. I stayed out far past what experts considered healthy or safe for my early-teen age, but I never understood why. Kids that stayed home were up to all hours playing video games, so was that safer or healthier? What were we doing that was so bad? There was some smoking. There was some drinking. There was some pot smoking, but no real drugs and no real sex until we got older, and then the kids who only wanted to do those things peeled off from our group anyway. And the dropouts eventually righted themselves and went their own ways.So, it was only the artists and musicians and writers that remained. We thought of ourselves as a street gang defending our turf against the tougher gangs. Anger. Fear. Lack of meaning. Despair. And we lost some kids in those street fights. Literally.

After the block had been torched, Mike Nettles removed the remains and put a concrete bench in its place. Just one of those garden variety benches that you see in many people’s yards, the kind with the rectangular seat and curl-li-que designs around the edges that are supposed to look ornate. Supposed to look like old craftsmanship. Except there are thousands of them sitting in yards across any patch of suburbia worth its name.When I went back to the corner of Lambeth and Wayne, Mike Nettles was still living in his house. As was my mother in hers. My father had died three years before. The bench was still there, too.I knocked. It was only early evening this time, not the middle of the night. Mike Nettles came out and we sat on that bench. Talking at first. Then being silent. Which got us more to the point.The sun went down. Mike Nettles left. I don’t remember him saying “goodnight” or “goodbye” or “stay as long as you want.” I don’t remember him saying anything. His leaving was part of the silence. Part of the sun going down. Part of the point.I couldn’t say how long I continued to sit on that bench. I just sat. How long didn’t matter. What mattered was that when I stood, I was laughing again. This time at myself.

Megan Trihey
“His Dog Kitty”

Kyle can't leave Portland without asking The Oracle first, so instead of burning down I-5 at the speed of light, my supersonic Taurus idles in the middle of a neighborhood street, flashers on. We lean against the wet hood, and the windshield wipers thump behind us. Kyle pulls a half-burnt smoke from his pocket, lights it, puffs a cloud into the mist. Sirens echo off the West Hills, and somewhere, a train horn blows. The wipers thump again."You think he would've seen us coming," I say, crossing my ankles. "Being an oracle and all."A thin curl of smoke streams from Kyle's grin. "The gods aren't pleased."Finally, The Oracle emerges from between two buildings in checkered Vans and khaki capris, tiny brown curls peeking from the top, same street-kid thin as Kyle.He smiles at me. "I'm Chris.""No, man." Kyle throws down his cigarette. "I told her you're The Oracle.""What?" Chris squints.Kyle picks him up, growls like a bear. "It's good to see you, bud. We need your guidance."As soon as he's back on the ground, Chris shakes out his sandy hair, cheeks red. He glances at me, scrapes Kyle's cigarette butt into a puddle. "What's going on?""She's driving to California today," Kyle says. "Should I stay, or should I go?"Chris looks at me. "What's in California?""My family and friends." I shrug. "His, too."Kyle taps Chris's elbow. "That sick skatepark in Weed."Chris folds his arms, scratches his chin. "Normally that'd be good enough for me," he says, eyes inching over my face.I shift my weight, drag my toe over a piece of gravel. "What's the problem, Oracle? I don't even need gas money.""I have to look out for my boy." He meets my stare. "How do I know you won't ditch him?"My mouth moves like a fish, bubbles of air instead of words. Kyle crosses his arms, patient for the first time in his life."Because I love him," I say. "He loves me."Chris leans back and whistles. "Shit, how can I say no?"Kyle is at least six-inches taller than five seconds ago. He breathes in the misty rain and exhales. "Ah," he says. "The Motherfucking Oracle."

The first time Kyle and I hung out, we truly meant to study. He was a natural at Intro to Ethics, and caught me cheating off his test one afternoon, grinned and moved his paper closer. I was eighteen, distracted by the slightest smile. After a couple weeks, I got the steel to propose this: Help me pass the next test, and my boyfriend will smoke you out. We spent the evening over an open textbook, covering all the first date basics, not a page turned, while my boyfriend did secret meth with the downstairs neighbor.In those community college days, Kyle drove a red pickup with stickers on the windows, lived on the fancy side of town in a bare apartment bigger than mine, nothing but a bed and his drawings taped to the wall. My boyfriend worked weekends at the beach, but Kyle still showed up with the Intro to Ethics textbook, opened it to a random chapter just in case. I made him spend the first night on the couch, woke to him sleeping on the floor next to my bed, skateboard-buff leg propped on the mattress.His body was the first manly one I'd been able to touch, so different from the soft sunken chests and pointy elbows of high school boys. He let me play with the curls on his pecs, skate his ass with the invisible board beneath my fingers. He asked me to drag my hair slowly across his face, and he muttered in Japanese when I hit the right spots."Didn't know you spoke Japanese," I said once, breathless, my arm spread over his sweaty chest."Don't." He reached over me for a smoke. "One of those things I can't explain."Sometimes we stayed at his place, did mundane things like laundry, Kyle pushing me down the sidewalk on his board, basket in my lap. One night, wrapped in his comforter, he leaned over, breath muggy with beer. "You have to pick eventually," he said. "You know that, right?"

With The Oracle's blessing, we peel out, but Kyle needs to stop just past the Terwilliger Curves. I wait in the car while he runs into 7-Eleven, comes out empty-handed and tells me to drive. He pulls four Rainiers from somewhere in his jacket folds, cracks one and sips the fizz.He has to pee by Salem, and we pull over again. I watch from the open passenger door, his bubble butt and half-pulled-down pants. He sways back and forth, puts out a tiny fire, and smiles at me over his shoulder. He must practice that look in the mirror, more Clooney than Clooney himself, the mole next to his left eye somehow cuter than anything George has to offer.The booze is gone by Eugene, and I need snacks. He steals more beer without me knowing, and a cap gun for kids twelve and up. He loads it as I hit the freeway, looks down the barrel before aiming out the window, cigarette perched between his lips."Could you not?" I yell over the roar of the road.Ash falls in his lap as he pulls the trigger, a tiny snap lost to the wind. "You want to try?" He holds it to me, barrel first.I keep my eyes on the road. "Don't those usually have bright tips or something?"Kyle holds up an orange piece of plastic in his other hand. "Usually," he says, and flips it out the window.

A year after he dropped out of Ethics and left LA, I rolled through Portland on a road trip. I followed hand-written directions to his apartment in southwest. He stood on the porch, naturally shirtless, forever tan from his time in Hawaii."Jesus," I muttered, forced my eyes to the steep road, a parking spot barely big enough to skinny into. Kyle held his pose until I was close enough to touch. "You again," he said, squeezing tight.His apartment wasn't like any I'd seen in California. I ran my fingers over the angled walls and thick leady paint, played with the antique brass fixtures, listened to the city through his thin windows. Kyle hadn't paid the electric, so he lit candles when the sun went down. I sprawled in a green velvet armchair while he set up a chess board. He popped the tops off a couple bottles, dragged the chair across the floor, propped me up at the table.I slid a pawn two spaces, and he did the same. He asked about life in California, told me about the bridges and bright lights, how the owner of some bar wanted to hang his art in the windows. He was three beers in by the time I finished half, and he chucked the empties out the window, cupping his ear to hear glass splash on the sidewalk.He had me on the run by then, rooks gone, queen in a corner. The candles flickered in his watery eyes. "Does what's-his-nuts know you're here?" he asked, warm boozy breath floating over me.I let him take my queen, stamp it on the table. "What do you think?"After he beat me twice and smashed six bottles, Kyle led me into his room, just a double bed under a massive American flag he used as a blanket. "Wells Fargo," he said, holding up an edge for me to slip under. "They left it up at night, and that's illegal."

He tells me about Kitty somewhere south of Eugene. How life hadn't been the same since his ex took off with his Doberman-colored Dachshund some months ago."She lives in Roseburg, I think," he says. "If I just ask, she should be cool."I glance at him in the passenger seat. "And if not?"His lips stretch down, brows up. "Well, Kitty is my dog."

The doors at The Jupiter Hotel in Portland were painted chalkboard and covered in pink and purple scribbles, yellow orange letters. Everyone looked so seventies lounging by the pool in the misty fall fog. The door to Kyle's room was open. I stepped in and tapped the chalkboard with a knuckle. He appeared from the bathroom, black and white swim trunks low on his hips, ribs sharper than the last I saw him years earlier under the stars and stripes."Here she is," he said, and crossed the room. "Back again, again."His hug was like pulling apart a cut, flicking the skin. He held my cheeks in his hands, looked me over."This place is sick." My hand glided chest to abs. "But what happened to the apartment?"He rubbed his thumb against my lips. "Gone," he said, and kissed my forehead. "I'm staying with my sister for a bit. This is her room."It reeked of smoke and pits. "Think she'd mind if I took a quick rinse? I need to wake up for the rest of the drive.""She's with her partner, so I seriously doubt she cares. Take a quick rinse," he lisped, and leaned back on the bed, reached past empty cans on the nightstand, and grabbed a book."What's that?"He held up the worn black cover, orange and white lines slicing through. "Socrates," he said. "Meno, to be specific.""Mr. Ethics himself," I said. "Still philosophizing shit to death?"His brows wiggled, and he cracked the cover. "You're not?"Mixed with old ash and body odor, something else swirled around the room, a sticky scent I couldn't pin. "Nope," I said, and headed for the bathroom. "It's over my head. I'm an English major now."I shut the door, unlocked just in case."I still think you're cool," he yelled.Grinning, I blasted hot water and slid a thin line of soap over my skin, tits, pits, and slits, then got out, glanced at the untouched doorknob. I swiped at the mirror, but the humidity wasn't going anywhere, towel, floor, everything soaked, a leather toiletry bag spotted with drops.As I tried to squeeze back into my clothes, my toes stuck to the inside of my jeans. I stumbled and reached for the sink, knocked everything to the floor. I crouched, stopped at the open zipper on the leather bag. Not toiletries at all. Tube, lighter, and a bent, burned spoon. Everything but the shit itself."Relax," Kyle said, suddenly in the doorway. I flinched and turned to him. He crossed his arms over his nipples. "It's just my sister's."I stood, clenched the towel across my chest. "That's, like, barely better."Kyle shrugged. "Well, I was thinking," he said, eyes wandering up my drippy legs. "You're probably sore from driving." He pinched his fingers like a crab.My shoulders were tense, riding higher with that kind of trouble around, the idea that Kyle's sister could come home any minute, and then, maybe she wasn't his sister at all."Can we at least shut the door?" I nodded to the corridor as a couple of girls in bikinis strolled by, glanced in. "And lock it.""Course," he said. "Duh." He closed the door and patted the bed.I stepped around my pile of clothes like it was a coiled snake, tiptoed across the crumby carpet, and laid face-down on the bed, towel wrapped tight.Kyle's weight moved the mattress, and he cleared his throat. "I'm going to have to sit on your butt.""Mhm." I closed my eyes, sank into the bed, his thighs over mine. He scooched down the towel, and my skin broke out in goosebumps. He rubbed the tight tendons in my shoulders, unclicked a bottle of lotion from somewhere, slathered it on.I scooped the hair off my neck, rested my cheek against the comforter, eyes drawn to the bathroom, lines trickling down the foggy mirror. Should I be more surprised? Kyle and I had a strict don't-ask-don't-tell policy, breached now, even if by clumsiness. I always knew he was into something, but it wasn't so bad if I couldn't say for certain it was more than alcohol and occasional coke."Kyle," I said, jaw clicking against the mattress.He hummed, worked his way down my spine."What's the deal with the drugs, man?"His hands didn't stop, smoothing gritty bits of flesh down my ribs. "Told you, not mine. You don't need to worry."I turned my head, stared at the wall. "Possession is nine-tenths."He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, smoothed lotion across my lower back. "I'm not thrilled about it either," he said, and shifted his weight, pulled the towel out of the way. "But the surfing dried up.""What?""No more couches." His touch turned to a trace, and he leaned down, blew softly into my ear. "Alright," he whispered. "Time to turn over."I blinked into the comforter. "I might have to hit the road."He sniffed, squeezed my shoulders, and I swayed with the bed springs as he climbed off.

He won Kitty in a bet. She didn't have a name. Kitty's first owner could've been The Devil himself, Kyle tells me, eyes wide in the passenger seat, sunset glow showing new creases, patches of off-color skin."Like he's a dick?" I ask.Kyle hacks, scratches his throat. He rolls down the window and spits into the wind. "He's actually very nice. You just get the sense he could rule the world if he weren't so lazy.""What was the bet?"Kyle scooches around his seat, turns to the window. "Started as darts," he says, and rubs his scruff, fingers mustard yellow. "He's all butthurt I keep winning, so he asks if I'm any good with knives." Kyle faces me, voice like gravel. "We all know I am."I tickle the rumble strip and veer back. He loves having my attention. "So?" I glance from him to the road. "Get to it, man. What'd The Devil make you do?"

When I moved to Portland, finally single, I learned one-ways and octopus intersections by driving Kyle around. He showed me streets from Elliott Smith songs, the river slicing the city in half, how the numbered streets flow from it, splitting neighborhoods into grids. I learned which hills were too steep for my bald tires in the rain, Kyle pressing on my right thigh like I could give it any more gas. He showed me where to get twenty-four-hour omelets, the skatepark where he self-defense stabbed someone in the dead of night, and hidden trails on Rocky Butte where we watched I-205 taillights crawl north toward a whole different state.

The Devil didn't think Kyle could throw a knife into an empty Pabst can, slice the aluminum, and not kill or maim the person whose head the can was on."Bullshit," I say, steering with my knee, stuffing the corner of a Taco Bell burrito in my mouth. I flip the wipers from anxious to frantic, and from the corner of my eye, see cheese and lettuce fall toward his lap."I had three chances." He crunches into a taco, chomps like a hamster, spastic munching I only hear with the windows finally up, glass stained with the slime of his mis-timed spit. He takes another bite, chews and swallows. "So the guy does this," he says, taking his eighth, ninth, tenth, whatever Rainier, placing it on his head, slowly letting go. We hit a bump. "Ah," he grabs the can too hard. A sticky splash lands in his hair and on the console. "Well, yeah, basically that." He slurps off the can, sets it in the cupholder, goes back to his taco."Wait," I say, burrito resting in my lap. "Who's the guy?""The guy Kitty came from.""No." I shake my head. "I know that. Who's the jerkoff who let you throw knives at his face?"Kyle turns to me and frowns. "Not at his face."I tap the steering wheel. "I'm asking how you found someone willing.""Oh." Kyle leans back in his seat, swallows. "The Devil just whistled." Kyle mimics, fingers at the corners of his mouth. "Literally, and this guy comes out from a dark corner of the bar. I hadn't even seen him."I grin."He's game right away," Kyle says. "Didn't even question it." He glances at me. "The fuckin' Devil, right?""But how drunk was the dude?""How should I know? Listen." He taps my thigh. "Three chances to slice the can, one way or another.""Kitty on the line.""Yes." He crumples the wrapper, lobs it over his shoulder into the backseat."Wait, what if you lost?"He shrugs, pulls out another taco. "I didn't.""But just say."He sighs. "I don't want to tell you, okay?"I pout, eyes on the white blurry line ahead of me. "Come on.""It's embarrassing."For all the time I've spent with Kyle, he's mostly a mystery. Can't tell what's a trip or the truth, whether alcohol makes him happy or fake, if any of it is my business. "Tell me," I say. "What if you lost?"Kyle rests the taco in his lap and sniffs, turns to me. "He'd take my soul."

Tracking down Kyle in Portland was all luck. Every skateboard scrape perked my ears, made me turn. Once I found him outside a bar, bumming smokes. I bought him a pack, and he took me to his storage unit, an old brick building in the central eastside, up the elevator with horizontal doors and black leather strap pulls. He twisted the combo lock, opened his unit.Must've been six-by-six, big enough for a loveseat covered in clothes and small chest of drawers, mismatched boxes along one wall. We crammed in and he found a Sunshine Dairy crate for me to sit on. He flipped through shirts, a rhythmic clack of plastic hangers. On the other wall, he'd hung his drawings, smudged and crumply paper tacked to the plywood, handwriting bigger and wilder than our California days."I forgot you're such a good artist," I said, stared at the side of his face, the temple mole that seemed to be missing from everyone else I knew. "Why haven't you ever drawn me?"He picked up a few shirts and held them to his nose, crammed them in his backpack, looked at a puffy cut on the side of his finger, picked at his skin. "Who says I haven't?"I held out my hand. "Let's see 'em, then."He slapped my palm and smiled. His teeth had become grey, really only noticeable because I'd been so close to his face for so long, could trace his jawline on the empty pillow next to mine. "I don't need to draw you," he said, and pointed to his head, right next to the mole. "Every time I almost forget, there you are again."He got a shoe box out of a drawer, picked through it in a way that reminded me of being a kid, treasuring things made of metal or wood, anything but plastic. He gathered a handful of color pencils and added them to his bag, then pulled out a buck knife half the length of my arm."Is this where it turns into a slasher?" I asked.He grinned, waved the knife like a glow stick, and pointed it at his drawings. "Which is your favorite?""The rat," I said. The biggest page on the wall, a rodent slouched on a couch, munching on a pepperoni slice bigger than its fat, balloon belly, eyes of a satisfied prisoner.He pretended the knife was magnetized, pulled toward the rat in slow motion, barely in his control.I leaned away and gnawed the inside of my cheek. "What are you doing?""This one?" he asked, an inch away from the drawing."Yes," I said. "It's stuffy in here, let's go."He drove the knife through the rat, into the plywood. It cracked and chipped, thin paper ripping as he twisted the knife.

Fifteen miles to Roseburg, and he can't spit it out. It takes an hour and two piss stops to get this far into the story, three of The Devil's black skinny throwing knives still in Kyle's hand. I picture him rocking one back and forth over his shoulder like an axe, aiming at a can on some minion's empty dome."Chuck it already," I say, smiling from the driver's seat.He holds his cigarette like a joint, pinched between his finger and thumb, sucks like it feeds his memory. "First one nicked his earlobe."I narrow my eyes. "No it didn't," I say, drifting toward the shoulder.His left brow shoots up his forehead. "I'd lie?""Nicked like, made him bleed?""Only a little." Kyle takes another drag. "The second knife stuck in the dart board over his shoulder. Even The Devil was impressed."My tires thump the rumble strip, and Kyle drops his cigarette between the seat and door. "Shit." He shoves his hand down the crack, wiggles around."Forget it," I say, staring at a green sign for Roseburg. "I need directions."He works the cigarette out, lights it again. "Next exit."I exhale, suddenly nervous, and get across to the right lane. "Alright, hurry up and finish the story."Kyle drinks down his Rainier, drags the back of his hand across his mouth. "You know how it ends. Kitty is Kitty, therefore I must've won."I give up getting details when Kyle's scratchy laugh fills the car."The second I hurl the dart -- I mean knife -- I yell at the top of my lungs, 'Hi Mom!' And the dude ducks. Blade sticks into the top of the can. Probably would've scalped him if I hadn't made him flinch."I work the inside of my cheek and signal at the exit. "Which way do I turn?"Kyle pushes himself up in the seat, leans toward the windshield. "Take a right."My foot vibrates on the pedal, so used to the freeway jitters. "Okay, so, how'd your ex-girlfriend end up with Kitty?"Kyle snorts. "Now that is a crazy story." He points to a street, into a neighborhood, and I follow his directions. His cigarette is almost to the filter, ash like a long acrylic, accusatory nail. "She's a redhead, so. God, she was scary." He looks at me, eyes as serious as I'd seen them. "I was afraid of her. Man, every time she had a gun in her hand …" He shakes his head, turns to the windshield and sighs. "Oh." He points with his chin. "Right there. House on the left."

Months passed between sightings, and it was as though all the skaters had been raptured, no gravel roll making me instinctively yell his name. I finally spotted him downtown, walking the brick steps. He wouldn't tell me where he lived, just, "Here and there." His face had gotten horsey, his once-square jaw oblong and weary. But he blinked the same, held his natural frown proudly."The county is kind enough to give bus vouchers to cautionary tales like me," he said, watching me skate without a skateboard, edge of a brick step digging into the center of my soles, arms flapped for balance. "I sell them for two-thirds the price at the transit center. Free money.""Smart," I said, and sat next to him, caught my breath.He drank something from a brown bag. "There are a lot of easy ways to get cash," he said. "Some, not so easy. But the bus scam hurts no one.""I wouldn't even call it a scam," I said, and leaned back, my palms on the cold, gritty ground. "You're saving people money while making your own."He wiggled his nose against the cold. "Interesting take.""All these years of refusing to be another brick in the wall," I said, even though I saw the red lines branching across his eyeballs. "And here you are, king of capitalism."He brought the bag to his lips, hand stretched and square, hard and dry. I wanted to reach out, dig my nail under his, scrape out the gunk. He tilted back to drink, a move that made me nostalgic for California, riding his board to the laundry room, fitting next to each other like mismatched Leggos. He finished the drink and hurled the bag down the steps. A bottle inside shattered, and several people turned to look. He pulled a bent cigarette from the fold of his beanie. "You'd puke," he said, "if I told you the not-so-easy ways to earn a living."

"What's the plan?" I ask, idling outside his ex's dark house, headlights off.The tip of Kyle's tongue rests on his top lip. He tucks the cap gun in his pants. "I'll check the back yard," he says. "Keep your foot on the gas."I close one eye, tilt my head. "That doesn't make sense."He cracks the door, and I reach up, click off the dome light. "Just wait," he says, and gently booty-bumps the door closed.He disappears around the side of the house, and the engine clicks, hums along the quiet street. I imagine him lurking in the shadows, finding an unlocked window or sliding glass door, maybe a dog flap for Kitty. But nothing with Kyle can ever be that easy. Part of me is disappointed there's no crazy redhead around to blow his cap gun to smithereens, show me what it takes to scare him.I crane my neck toward the house, the perfectly edged lawn, American flag next to the front porch flower bed. The second story looms over the empty driveway, rusty basketball hoop hanging above the garage. The place next door is a carbon copy, tan instead of beige, soccer net on the grass.A tap on my window. I jump, clench my thighs, and Kyle presses his nose against the glass. "Come here," he says, muffled.I crack the door, shoo him back. "What's up?" I whisper. "Where's Kitty?"He tugs gently on my arm. "You gotta see this," he says, and pulls me out of the car. "You aren't going to believe it."I hang onto the door. "I'm not going in there.""Five seconds," he says, and pries me away from the car. "No one's home. This'll blow your mind."I let him take my arm, and follow him around back, tiptoe through a sliding door and into the kitchen. The house smells like a department store, so many fresh scents they're impossible to place, a grated, see-through darkness. He leads me down the hall, and I peek into the master, the big kind of bed I've only seen in hotel room ads.In the living room, he stops in front of a wall of photos, a constellation of matching black frames above a dark green sectional tracked with vacuum lines. He points to the biggest picture in the middle, a family of five in matching blue sweaters. "Notice anything?" he asks."No redhead," I say, and cross my arms."But what else."I turn to Kyle, lips parted. "This isn't her house?"He exhales, breath heavy and stale. "Definitely not.""Oh my god." I move toward the door, but Kyle holds my shoulders, positions me in front of the family. "What? Who the fuck are these people?"He taps on the dad's face, then the mom's. "Look."I breathe through my nose, a short, quick burst, and lean in. The picture could've come with the frame, for all I know. It's the most generic, boring white family I've seen, absolutely nothing remarkable, no flaws to cling to. "What do you want, Kyle? I don't get it."He sighs, speaks through phlegm. "It's us, dude." He clears his throat.I glance at him, back to the photo. Let my eyes wander to others, the same couple and their kids. "What, like I'm the mom?"He nods, traces his finger over the father's face, a handsome man, jaw square like Kyle's once was, teeth white and natural, dressed like a Target commercial. Secretly, it's how I always hope to find Kyle someday, suit and tie bustling through downtown Portland, late for some lame meeting. But that could never be him, the dad's creaseless, moleless face I'm already tired of seeing."That's great and all," I say, and step toward the front door. "But I'm good on breaking and entering. We're out."His sticky limbs trap me. "Look, babe. Seriously look." He puts his arm over my shoulders, pulls me toward the wall. "Maybe in another dimension or something, this is our family."I roll my eyes. "You're such a fucking philosopher."He stares at the pictures like he's watching fireworks. "If either of us did one thing differently," he says, and gestures to the portrait in the middle. "Two boys and a girl. A house like this. Who knows." He sniffs, eyes suddenly glistening. "God, I'd spoil that girl so hard."I click my tongue."And the boys look tall," he says, squinting. "What do you think their names are?"I scrunch my lips together, bring them up to my nose. "Have you lost your mind?"He turns to me, glossy little eye globes, whole worlds I'll never know."Why is it always a felony with you?" I point to the photo. "That could never be us. You can't stay straight for a day." I shrug out of his grasp. "You as a dad? Jesus. I can't tell anymore, are you drunk, or just dumb?" My legs tremble under the second wave of adrenaline.He clenches his jaw and smiles. "Drunk," he says, and reaches for the picture. "Sticks and stones, lady." He lifts the frame off the wall, grabs my hand. "Pretty rude, but we've been married a long time. Fights are bound to happen.""Hold this." He hands me the picture and picks me up, cradles me like a bride, carries me through the front door. His neck sweats into the crook of my elbow as he skips down the lawn, plants me behind the steering wheel of the humming Taurus.

Kyle had intricate knowledge of the fancy hotels in downtown Portland, which ones had friendly valets and compassionate doormen. Some front desk people overlooked his obvious lies, claims he left an expensive laptop charger in a room on his last visit, and let him pick through a box of forgotten stuff. "E-bay," he said, tucking wires into his bag. "I can get like thirty bucks for the new Apple ones."After we'd walked down the brick steps at Pioneer Place, Kyle took me to The Nines so I could use the bathroom. He smacked palms with the doorman, led me across the lobby to the bar. "Wait here," he said.He talked to the bartender and handed him cash, walked back with a red can of Coke. "Nineteen-fifty," he said, and pointed down the hall. "The bathroom code."I nodded to the can. "What's this?""For you. Gotta buy something to get the code." He slipped it in his pocket. "I'll hang onto it until you're done."In the bathroom, I hovered above the fancy self-flushing porcelain and cringed at what my bladder could've cost him, what he might have to do to make up that buck-fifty.Outside, we balanced on the MAX tracks until he grabbed my hand, and we just walked for once. "Wanna know something?" he asked, eyes on the sidewalk."Duh." I pressed the web between my fingers into his.He blinked, and his eyes followed skyscrapers into darkness. "I wish I could have a nice, boring girl like you. Swear, I really do."I pressed my lips together, filled my cheeks with air. But, I knew what he meant by boring. Knew why he couldn't. That I wasn't so nice. I draped his arm over my shoulder and held onto his waist, walked like he was my man. "You never know," I said, though we always had.

At the Super 8 in Medford, Kyle pops in the shower and I swing through Burger King, any excuse to get away from him, hear my own thoughts. I sit in the drive-through, listen to cars on the interstate. It would be so easy to leave. Never see Kyle again, never get caught up in another felony.I look at his outline of crumbs and ash in the passenger seat, wonder if Kitty even exists, and if logic holds, where his soul is now, if not with some redhead in Roseburg. Everything he says and does seems crazy, but, at the end of the day, it's not so hard to believe that somewhere along the line, he beefed a deal with The Devil.Back at the motel, Kyle sits on the curb by the parking lot, thin white towel wrapped around his waist."What are you doing?" I ask, greasy bag in hand.He holds up a cigarette. "Came out to smoke, to look for you," he says. "Got locked out."I sit next to him, hold out the bag. "Have a Whopper.""Thank you," he says, and takes it. "Smells so good." He sounds stone-cold sober, an alternate reality Kyle, like he just beat me home from some regular nine-to-five, a dad in a family photo.I slide the cigarette from between his fingers, watch his eyes roll back as he bites into the burger.He chews for a moment, glances at me and swallows. "I was thinking," he says. "It's like thirty bucks for a bus ticket to Portland." Ash lands on my nose. He brushes it off, fingers wafting pickle juice. "I could pay you back when you get home. I just-it isn't the right time for me to skip town. You know?"I take a drag, squint at him, his hand steady around the burger, eyes calm and clear, no trace of the Roseburg tears. I nod, blow smoke above our heads. "I get it," I say. "But, bummer, dude. Yeah, I'll miss you.""Obviously." He smiles, pops the last bite in his mouth. "You'll make it to LA a hell of a lot faster, though.""I can take you to the train station in the morning. Don't worry about it."He smashes the wrapper in his fist and sighs. "That would be huge.""Thanks for making it this far with me." I flick the cig, watch sparks skip across the pavement."Thanks for coming back from B-K." He stands, flashes his butt as he wraps the towel. "I wouldn't even have been mad.""Oh, stop," I say, and he helps me up, hand warm in mine. "I promised The Oracle."Inside, Kyle goes from the towel to sheets, and I crawl in next to him, cool white cotton like an empty canvas, and my lip twitches imagining the mess we would've made back in the day."Can we watch TV?" he asks, and picks up the remote. "Please?"I prop pillows behind me, open my arms and invite him in. "Duh."He turns on Nick at Nite, rests his cheek on my chest, arm across my belly. His damp hair smells like pizza grease. I smooth it out, and he snuggles closer, moans. My fingers trace slow circles on his skin, blue in the television light, until he snores softly. I rest my head on his, kiss him goodnight, tonight and every night forever, taking up an eighth of our Cali King, all three kids finally off to college.

Robert Hill Cox
“The Recompense”

Jay P. de Groot had moved to northern Westchester to feel close to history. He could count among his ancestors the Dutch family who had established the first plantation in the area, as well as the founding father who had built his homestead several miles down the road. Two great grandparents lay in a churchyard just four miles south. That said, he had also moved here to be close to a notoriously fiddly golf course, as well some excellent restaurants with locally sourced food. After dodging potshots in investment banking for thirty years, Jay was ready for his recompense. The house was relatively small -- under 2,500 square feet -- but came with several acres of land, mostly woods, so there was little to mow. Jay thought he got the property for a song because a skein of power lines streamed over the back acre to a pylon high on a ridge that overlooked the property. The walk up to the pylon was a steep quarter mile, a great way to clear your head in the morning. The realtor said the ridge was well known for watching hawks. You could follow the ridge north into the enormous county park, although the easy way to get to the park was to go on the road half a mile.Jay convinced his wife Sang that living in the country would be good for her. Sang was prone to lung infections. They had had a big scare the previous winter: bronchitis had morphed into bad pneumonia. All she said about the close call was that she'd rather be dead than put on a ventilator again. She said she was glad she hadn't gone into medicine. She didn't believe you should always battle death.Sang was skeptical that the country was so healthy. Animals created dirt, she said. Animals were dangerous. As if to prove her point, soon after they arrived a squirrel turned up on their deck one afternoon. They were drinking tea in their overcoats, having a break from unpacking boxes. First it hopped onto the railing. Its tail jerked between positions, like a semaphore flag. The squirrel gurgled, spat, then jumped fearlessly onto the round metal table they were sitting at. It swatted the lid off the sugar bowl, grabbed a cube. Pinching it between stubby arms, the squirrel rotated the cube as it gnawed, shaving off tiny pieces. Jay reached for the newspaper. The squirrel twirled and shot from the deck so quickly Jay felt it had known he'd be swinging before he swung."It must not have eaten all winter and was hungry," Jay said."That little fucker had rabies and I'm not going on this deck again until I know that it's dead," Sang said.

The next few days were rainy and cold, so they didn't miss the deck. Sang's mother came up from Atlanta to see the house. She said the woods and the ridge made the house dark, although Jay pointed out the ridge, to the northwest, only blocked the sun in the late afternoon. She said she would have thought a man who had spent his life on Wall Street would have ended up with a bigger house. She said the sound of a coyote had kept her up at night, and coyotes were no good. When Sang came back from taking her mother to the airport at the end of the visit she said she didn't want dinner and went straight to bed. Jay went in and asked her what the problem was."The house. Mom really thinks we need to move. She says it doesn't feel safe."

Jay only felt unsafe when walking down the road to the park. The last house on the road had a dog in the yard that would lunge at the chain-link fencing, hurl itself into it with a practiced twist leading to a satisfying "chink"!, stand on its hind legs and bark and growl, terribly watchful, as Jay walked by. Once as the dog barked a man in an undershirt, despite freezing weather, stepped from the house. He whistled, then swung a Bud Light tallboy high up into the air so it somersaulted. The dog got under it, snapped its head and snagged it. It chomped. Glorious jets of beer, golden and sparkly, sprayed from the teeth holes. The dog shook the can furiously, dropped it, batted it. It slobbered up every single drop."I have coffee, too," the man said. The man walked to the dog who was still licking the can, then dragged it by the collar to a doghouse under a tree, where he snapped on a chain."If I go-pro'd her shagging beer cans and posted it on You-Tube, I'd get a million hits," the man said as he waved for Jay to come join him."Quite a dog," Jay muttered, as he walked by the dog, who was now asleep."Coco likes it when you rub the loose skin behind her ears."It was a test he didn't mind failing."What is she?" Jay asked."One-half pit bull, one-half Rottweiler, and three-quarters Japanese kamikaze pilot. At night I let her out because she loves chasing raccoons. When she catches 'em she bites their heads right off and brings me the rest, like a cat with a bird. Letting Coco out at night is also handy because it scares the crap out of anybody dumb enough to use my street as a lover's lane.""So after dark, if I'm taking a walk, I guess I'll be heading south," Jay said."The park closes at dusk. No one has any business being around here after sunset but me and my dog.""I'm your new neighbor," Jay said."I know that -- you bought the Holden place. Why the hell else do you think I'd invite you into my house to have coffee with me?"Over the next ten minutes Phil discussed how he had been an aerospace engineer, with a specialty in guidance systems. He had helped design some of the first air force drones. Right now he was a consultant for a company working on a pilotless passenger plane."It's really a lot easier and safer than a driverless car," Phil said. "Less traffic. Safer than having a pilot. No one with a head you can put a gun up to so he flies into a building."Phil said he wasn't home all that much. In winter he helicopter skied. In summer he went to his place outside Jackson Hole. But in fall he was usually home, since the park had a two-month deer hunting season for bow and arrow; it was one of the big reasons he had bought this place. It hadn't occurred to Jay he would have to share the park for two months every year with people carrying arms, if only bows and arrows.Phil said he was always looking out for people willing to take Coco on when he went away so he didn't have to put her in a kennel.It was another test."My wife is Vietnamese and doesn't like dogs," Jay said.One morning Phil's yard was silent. His truck was parked in front of the garage. Jay knocked on the gate. Phil stepped out onto the porch and waved for Jay to come join him."Where's Coco?" Jay asked before he opened the gate."Shot her. Bum hip. Can't have a guard dog with a bum hip."Jay mumbled something about wasn't it illegal, just taking your dog's life.Phil couldn't have heard him, but clearly knew what he was thinking."This country has gone to the dogs if a man can't shoot his dog," he said.

One morning, long after Sang had left for work, Jay slid open the patio door only to have something smaller than a cat leap over his foot. It was at the sugar bowl again, this time smack in the middle of the kitchen table. Jay had a mixing bowl in his arms and he immediately threw it, missing the squirrel but smashing the bowl. The squirrel scampered into the dining room.Jay grabbed a broom. Jay found the squirrel under the very center of the dinner table. Jay got down on his knees, swung the broom around and aimed. He thrust the broom forward as if it were a pizza paddle. The squirrel shot into the front hall, where Jay managed to chase it into the coat closet. Jay closed the door.There must be no trace of the squirrel or the battle with the squirrel by the time Sang got home. Sang wanted the squirrel dead, and proof that it was dead. Sang wanted a squirrel scalp.Jay searched for an implement with sufficient heft. He found a shovel. He raised his weapon, then started having second thoughts. Given all the shoes and coats inside preventing a clean strike, his attack would probably fail. He opened the front door. He retrieved a jar of cocktail peanuts and made a small pile of them on the step below the front door. He dusted them with sugar, clearly the squirrel's weakness. The squirrel would stop for a meal on the way out, and Jay would make it its final supper.Jay raised the shovel again. He heard gnawing, a squeak. He threw open the door and swung, crashing the blade down onto a pile of mukluks and Maine hunting boots. The squirrel leapt over his feet and flew out the front door, skipping the peanuts.Jay bought a second sugar bowl. A black one, on which he painted a skull-and-crossbones with some White-Out he found in his desk. He also bought some rat poison. He put some sugar cubes in the bowl and dusted them with the poison. He put the bowl out on the patio table, then forgot about it. It rained, and Jay went out one day thinking he'd have some rat poison soup to flush down the toilet. But the bowl was empty.Sang took the disappearance of the poisoned sugar as proof that the squirrel was dead. Jay wasn't so sure. One of the delights of the property had been the hummingbirds that hovered near the eaves -- early on Jay had bought a sugar-water feeder for them, which he hung outside the patio door. Perhaps when it rained and the sugar had dissolved, the hummingbirds had helped themselves. He never saw another hummingbird on the property.

After the squirrel, Jay's big problem was Sang working all the time. An immigration lawyer, Sang frequently said she was never really happy when she was happy. "You can only be happy when you're not paying attention to something that you should be doing," she liked to say. Her job suited her perfectly because, as she said, "You can never be doing enough. You're always falling short." Jay could never be sure when Sang would be coming home, which interfered with the part of his new life that was going best: planning and cooking dinner. Sang complained his sauces and desserts were making her fat; Jay saw no evidence of this. And he didn't worry about his weight, what with all the walking he did now -- at least five miles a day. And it was more if he made a mistake in his weekly shop and needed an ingredient: Sang took the car to drive to the train station every morning so he needed to walk to go buy anything -- to the Exxon minimart a mile down the road, if not to town, two miles away. Jay liked having the penalty of a long walk if he made a mistake in his planning; there was justice in that.Jay got frustrated, though, when his duck confit dried out or his Yorkshire pudding stiffened because Sang was late yet again. Usually she had some idea of when she'd be home by late afternoon, but you never knew when she'd get tied up or feel obliged to finish something. She'd call to say she'd be leaving work in a few minutes, only to phone several hours later to say she hadn't left yet. He'd throw the dinner rolls he was making from scratch into the refrigerator so they wouldn't over-rise. He'd finish the bottle of wine he had been cooking with, or break open the one he had been planning to serve. He'd do his best to distract himself by reading the news or watching some baking show on his I-pad. Sometimes she'd call to say she had no idea when she'd be getting out and he'd better go ahead. He'd realize he had drunk most of a bottle of wine -- he needed to finish the bottle so he could throw it away; if Sang saw how much he had drunk she'd get very mad at him. Usually at this point he'd make himself some toast and scrambled eggs, put the whole damn mess he'd been preparing into the refrigerator. The final insult was that it was often hard to find the space in the refrigerator to fit it all in, there were so many foil-covered dishes and barely touched carcasses. Or so it seemed late at night when you were slightly drunk.He did sometimes go to bed before she came home. On those occasions he found himself unable to sleep -- despite all the wine. He'd lie in bed and listen for the crunch of gravel marking her arrival, the slam of the car door and gentle horn bleep as she locked the car. When he heard these sounds a sense of well-being would sweep over him, and he'd often be asleep before she had joined him in bed. He almost always got up with Sang, to make her coffee, although she almost always wanted it in a travel mug to be out the door quickly. He hated the sounds of her leaving: the beep of the lock release, the click of the car door being opened, the slam of it closing, the engine revving up.He knew only one cure for his pang of abandonment each day -- he'd go for his walk, his hike, immediately, when the sun was barely struggling up from the trees.He'd be up in the woods so early sometimes he'd hear a screech owl. He'd stay out so long that in the summer when he came home it had warmed up enough to create thermals and black vultures would be circling above the ridge. And in fall he'd put on his down coat and sit up on the concrete base of the pylon with his binoculars, looking for hawks. He'd find the little dark specs and watch them take on the shape of birds as they came closer. Their shapes popped out of the sky, the way shooting stars will.

One Friday in November, during hunting season, which Jay negotiated by wearing an orange baseball cap but otherwise didn't worry much about, Sang called to say a judge had cancelled a hearing so she had less work than she thought. She promised to be out the door by six, home by seven thirty. At five fifty-five she called to confirm she was just about to leave. Then at seven thirty the call came that she was still in the office.As Jay lit the candles and they sat down to dinner at a little after nine, Sang apologized for getting distracted."I wasn't working. I got completely caught up with something I discovered on the Internet. I think we live on the site of an Indian massacre. Maybe that's why I don't feel comfortable here."She said she had learned about it because she had mistyped "mascara" and somehow the auto-correct in the search engine changed it to "massacre." She discovered that during Kieft's War between the New Amsterdam Dutch and the Lenape Indians, a contingent of Dutch soldiers under New Englander John Underhill had torched a large Lenape village, killing at least five hundred men, women and children."The only surviving account says what was really remarkable was how the Indians stayed in their bark-walled houses as they burned and did not cry or scream as they died," Sang said.It happened late in the winter of 1644. The Dutch had walked for a day inland from Greenwich to get to the village, which they attacked at night. A steep ridge behind the village, which protected it from northerly winds, prevented escape in that direction."I think the hill you like to walk up must have overlooked the camp," Sang said. "What's amazing is that the number of people they killed wasn't that much less than the total population of New Amsterdam at the time -- about eight hundred. And of course you Americans have made no attempt to discover or mark the site.""It would be bad for property values," Jay said, not really joking.

At sunrise Jay took his quick walk up to the pylon. It was a steep climb, but nothing you wouldn't be able to clamber up, he thought, if the Dutch were torching your camp. He came home and made his favorite breakfast -- poached eggs on the sourdough bread he liked to bake, with thick, organic bacon. The smell would get Sang stirring. Sang came out smiling in her nightgown and bathrobe as soon as Jay put the plates on the table. Jay loved how she never failed to appreciate a good meal -- she always had an expression of delight when the yoke squirted as she poked it with her fork; she also enjoyed the tactile feel of bacon, which she liked to shred with her fingers (licking them afterwards), even though she was otherwise impeccably tidy. She wouldn't want to talk until her consumption of breakfast was well underway, and usually signaled she was ready for conversation by picking up her coffee cup, taking a sip, and turning and saying, thanks Jay.As soon as she sat down and accepted her mug of coffee, Sang said: "Let's drive to Greenwich and figure out the route the Dutch soldiers must have taken."Jay nodded. The sooner Sang got to pursue her obsession, the sooner she'd get over it. She got up and fetched the print-out she had made of the only eye-witness account of the massacre, bringing it to the table.It had been March but bitterly cold. They had left from ships anchored in the harbor of Old Greenwich and marched a day into the interior, led by a turncoat Lenape. At dusk, a league (or hour's) walk from the Lenape camp, they rested and waited for the moon to rise. They forded two rivers (one "two hundred feet wide and three deep") and attacked. When only scattered groups of fighters emerged, the Dutch set the huts on fire. "…The Indians tried every means of escape, not succeeding in which they returned to the flames preferring to perish by the fire than to die by our hands. What was most wonderful is, that among this vast collection of men, women and children not one was heard to cry or to scream," read the eyewitness account.The Mianus River wasn't far away. And who knew what the Cross River had been like before it was dammed and made a reservoir. That reservoir was just down the road.The party of Dutch and English suffered fifteen wounded. They set out the next day "over that wearisome range of hills, God affording extraordinary strength to the wounded, some of whom were badly hurt; and came in the afternoon to Stantford [sic] after a march of two days and one night and little rest. The English received our people in a very friendly manner. A thanksgiving was proclaimed on their arrival."Jay drove as Sang gave directions. The phone on her lap showed one map, and she had several typological maps at the ready, the ones Jay had bought when they first got interested in purchasing here. It was sixteen miles from their house to Old Greenwich, but when they came back on smaller roads they got it down to fourteen miles -- a reasonable day's march. Stamford was closer, just twelve miles, through hills Jay thought could hardly be called wearisome. But then again they weren't trudging through snow in March with fifteen wounded after massacring over 500 people.In Stamford they did their shopping and had lunch. Sang spent most of the meal on the phone talking to her mother. Vietnamese sounded particularly harsh and loud when you didn't understand it and your wife was talking to your mother-in-law. Jay closed his eyes. Sang knew he thought she should step outside so she wouldn't disturb the other diners. But there was only one other couple, and Sang said because they didn't understand the language the conversation would not distract them.Sang would have long, animated conversations with her mother, her voice crooning and sometimes shouting. Then with a quick sound like "huh" she'd suddenly put down the phone. What was that all about? Jay would ask. Oh nothing, she would say.Sang said "huh" and put down the phone and looked a bit distracted, not meeting his eye. He knew better than to ask what was that all about."Mom says we should go home and look for clues."

They climbed to the ridge. Jay usually didn't enter the park this way because he worried he'd be trespassing on Phil's land, which Phil might react poorly to. With Coco's demise, Jay had been keeping to the road. Sang insisted they go this way; she wanted to follow the ridge to all the various geological features named on their maps -- Castle Rock, the Crow's Nest, Scout's Perch. Nearby were places with explicitly Lenape associations -- Bear Rock because it had a faded petroglyph of a bear, a flat rock called Dancing Rock because the Lenape had done that there. A valley behind the ridge was called the Pound -- the Lenape would chase wild game into the Pound, and keep it there until they needed it for food.The path they followed dropped a bit as they approached the back of Phil's property; indeed, another trail seemed to cross it and head west deeper into the woods. Sang insisted that they follow this second path. It made a gradual arc along a dry streambed and went into a depression that Jay realized must be the Pound."You'd think a big winter village would want easy access to the Pound. I think we just took the trail that connected the two," Sang said. They looped back up towards the ridge, which on this stretch rose close to two hundred feet over the valley."The village wouldn't have been below here," Sang said. "No access to the Pound."The descent from the ridge was steep, and the trail down had several stone steps. Below the ridge Sang kept her head down, as if she might spot some arrowhead or pot shard. Jay wondered if she understood just how much the land had been disturbed over the years, the area opened up to pastures and farms, allowed to revert to trees only during a period that was not much longer than his lifespan."You know, Sang, you wouldn't find anything even if you were an archeologist with a shovel. I'm sure it's all been worked way too much," he said.They reached the place where their path became a dirt road. A half mile later the road hit pavement at two wooden posts, which marked the boundary of the park. Shadows stretched across the road, and the air had an orange shine to it, as did everything around them.It looked like a cat. It had a feline air of satisfaction as well as a feline inscrutable smile. It had a small dark nose, a flat face, long whiskers, some of which sprouted from its eyebrows. It also resembled a dog: it sat on its haunches, front paws tidily next to each other, as if it liked to sit and had been a star at obedience school. It sat in the middle of the road and smiled across it. Jay and Sang were holding hands, and their grip tightened. Jay expected it to turn suddenly and spring into the woods. They slowed. It was no more than ten feet away. It was both very special and very scary to get so close to a fox.The fox pivoted its head slightly so it could look at them.It slowly dawned on Jay the passivity was a trap -- the fox was playing possum. They would cross some threshold and the fox would spring.No surprises or shows of weakness, Jay resolved -- the last thing they should do is run. Even backing off might be a display of nerves that would trigger it. They moved to the shoulder of the road. Jay reached down and ran his fingers through the gravel, gathering a few small pieces he might throw. But there was no choice: they had to walk past the fox.One dark eye caught a patch of orange sunlight. A triangle of skin below that eye twitched a couple of times. Its mouth was slightly open, revealing black spots on its gums. The long whiskers came to a perfect circle around its head.It felt like a dare. Reach out. Touch me. Pet me. I know you want to. I know you think I'm extraordinary.The scariest part was knowing it was still watching after they had passed. Jay expected to hear the cheery click of nails on pavement, then feel unspeakable pain as it latched on. He did not look back until they had reached Phil's house."We need to tell Phil," Jay said. Sang nodded. Phil's truck was parked in front of the garage. Jay called to him from the gate.Jay said a fox on the road wasn't right."Well, I guess we'd better go check her out," Phil said.Phil went back inside, coming out again with a double-barrel shotgun."My Ernest Hemingway gun for when the time comes," Phil said as he took the lead.The fox hadn't moved, except it was leaning slightly more forward, tilting its head out to watch them."Oh I know that fox," Phil said. "He used to come around and eat the remains of the raccoons Coco didn't want."Phil stopped and cracked open the gun breach. He reached inside his jacket for cartridges, thumbed two in. He took a step forward, the barrel drawing to within a foot of the fox's face, then inches. "Holy mother of God," Phil whispered. The fox seemed to grin all the more, as if it couldn't be happier about what was about to come. Then it sprung, lunging at the gun, first batting the barrel and then trying to bite it, teeth clicking against the metal. The first charge blew the fox back against the road. The second obliterated its head, spraying pinkish debris and skull fragments into a parachute pattern over a good six feet of road.Phil used his gun to poke what was left. The gray fur had a beautiful, bluish tinge. Phil kicked the fox into the bushes."Shame really. Someone should skin the poor bastard."Jay couldn't talk. Sang had her face buried in her hands."Well that's that," Phil said. "Good thing Coco's gone and I don't have to worry she'd come down with whatever viral shit that poor fucker had."As they walked back towards his house Phil said it might have been "dumb rabies," a form of the disease when the infected animal plays dumb to draw its prey close before it attacks, or maybe just distemper. Phil asked them in for a drink, but Sang said they had to get home. As soon as they stepped inside their house she called her mother.Jay made a simple cheese soufflé for dinner. Sang neither touched it nor said a word. Sang sometimes got this way after talking to her mother, remote and distracted. But she also looked scared."So what did your mother have to say," he asked. Sang and her mother had their secrets. When he asked this question, often she'd say "Nothing."This time she put down her fork, which she had been using to pick at the crust of her piece of souffle."She says you're in great danger and must leave this house as soon as possible."At least he didn't laugh. He'd have ended up on the couch if he had laughed."And you agree with her?" he asked, as neutrally as he could."How could you not, after that fox?"

Over the next few days they exchanged printouts of information from the Internet. Jay gave Sang a news article about a "rabid" squirrel that had bitten several people in a park in New York City. The article explained that squirrels did not get rabies, and that any crazy, aggressive squirrel you happened to encounter was almost certainly a pet that had been released but still expected humans to feed it. They had bought the house from a college professor known for his eccentricities. Training a squirrel to help himself to sugar, Jay suspected, was one of them.Sang went on various genealogical websites to research her husband's roots. She came back with proof that Jay was descended from a man born in New Amsterdam in 1643; this man's father was likely to have been the right age to participate in Kiep's dirty little war. At dinner that night Jay said he knew perfectly well his family had lived peaceably and happily in the area for generations -- two great grandparents were buried in the churchyard just down the road, for God's sake. Sang quickly pointed out they were from another branch of the family."But I've done nothing wrong," Jay said.Sang shook her head and got up to do the dishes.

Sang left for work so early the next morning, she hadn't bothered to wake him to say goodbye. Nor had she left the usual note suggesting when she thought she might be able to get home. It will be this way with Sang, Jay suspected, until he agreed they should sell the house. The only possible hope for a decent day was to take his five-mile walk as soon as possible.The sky was overcast. From the ridge the only birds he saw were crows, the hawk migration over. He'd miss this place, but it just wasn't working out because of Sang's commute, he told himself. The clincher came as he left the park. She growled and barked and clinked against the fence just as loudly as Coco ever had. Phil came out and asked Jay if he wanted to come pet Rosie, his new dog.Jay was quite proud his "FOR SALE" sign didn't fall over once all winter. At night Jay would hear owls, and in the mornings he'd come across small bloody disturbances and holes in the snow, where owls had heard tunneling voles and mice and clawed into the snow to kill them. There were reports of a snowy owl perching near the runway of the local airport. Jay thought maybe it would also like the expansive playing fields on the other side of the park, five miles away, and spent one day walking to them and back but only saw crows.The market was slow. When they finally got an offer for several hundred thousand dollars less than they had payed Sang insisted they accept. They found a brand-new rental in the city minutes from her work.It was March now, but the next morning promised a late season snow. Jay's walks had been getting longer and longer, and today he felt like walking all day, forever, never stopping. He wanted to walk all the way to the ballfields, although any snowy owl would have long since headed north. But he needed to be home for the buyer's engineer to come do his inspection. Thankfully, the engineer called to say he'd be coming by a little earlier than scheduled because he wanted to beat the snow.It was coming down hard when Jay finally pulled on his boots. In another hour or two he might not have gone out at all, the snow already deep. But at this point he felt like it made his walking less treacherous, not more. He could kick his toes into the snow for purchase as he climbed the ridge. Going down would be fun; he could kick his heels in and goose step. Of course, he could see nothing from the ridge, but the whiteout brought its own pleasure -- a sense of mindlessness. He looked down and focused on his feet, not so much scared he might trip, but that he might take a step and nothing would be there, and he'd tumble off a cliff.He looped away from the ridge and headed into the woods. It was cold enough for the snow to be light and loose and he could kick easily through it. It did, however, reach up into his cuffs and was freezing a ring of skin above his socks. He couldn't care less. He liked the squeak his steps made. He adored how there were no other sounds. Maybe there was a gentle humming sound, but like with a seashell that was really just in his head.He couldn't believe it, but he had forgotten his watch. He deliberately hadn't brought his phone. He wasn't alone, though. He saw rabbit tracks, prints of something bigger. Blue jays called out busily to each other and cardinals tutted and were flashes of red.The sky was getting dimmer, either because the snow was becoming heavier or the sun was nearing the horizon. He knew what he really wanted was to keep going, to walk deeper and deeper into the woods. He really had no reason to turn back -- the snow might well keep Sang in the city, and in any event he knew she'd be working late. He understood what he was doing came with a bit of danger; he did wonder what would happen should he fall and break a leg. Not much. Really, he didn't have a lot to look forward to back in the city. And Sang would be fine if something happened to him -- she'd just work harder. She'd miss him -- she liked how he made her laugh, how he did the cooking and doted on her. But Sang was a survivor.What unnerved him some was coming across several ravens in a tree. Ravens liked to be alone, and only came together for good reason. Under the tree was the good reason: the picked-at carcass of a deer, thigh bone sticking out of the snow. Coyotes would be around, and the thought of them is what made Jay turn in the direction of home.He got to the top of the ridge, found the trail with the steps. Several times he lowered himself onto the snow and slid, the snow sneaking up the back of his jacket, rather than take the risk of tripping and falling.Then it was flat, relatively easy. He'd move as quickly as he could, to make sure he got past Phil's before dusk when the park officially closed. God knows what Phil let Rosie do on the road after the park closed.The snow was much deeper now and to take another step he had to lift his knee high and lunge forward. Walking was hard work that kept him warm. He was happy he could still make out the two wooden posts that marked the start of the road, which looked half their usual heights but also wore layer-cake hats of snow. The road in front of him was broad and trackless. There was a cozy patch of yellow light ahead, which Jay realized was Phil's kitchen window.It was a record snow for March, everybody said. Uneven in how it walloped the metropolitan area. Sang left a message saying she'd be spending the night in the city at a hotel, but Jay would never get it. Jay heard the growling and barking, but no cling of bouncing fence this time. The snow by the fence was well over a foot deep, enough help for the dog to make it over when she leapt. The attack was swift so Jay neither cried nor screamed.

S. Mubashir Noor
“The Marigold Named Maryam”

Our shrine of marigolds is famous around the world. Tourists from far and wide say the copper-toned flowers sing to them, soothe their souls. The one called Maryam never withers.Lallu runs the place now. My best friend, he was once the undisputed village idiot. Now he travels around the world to war-torn areas and plants marigolds. He shares with them the story I'm about to recount. A story about keeping faith in a faithless world.It happened on a late summer night after Isha prayers, amid the blackout because of war. Not a light was seen in or around my wee border village, except here and there the tiny amber glow of lit cigarettes, dangling from the lips of a few shadowy sentries garbed in lungis and sweaty white undervests.The air breathed cowpat and mossy grass with whiffs of peat. It sometimes carried the soft mooing of auburn cows and the bleating of spotted goats and the whimpers of our lonesome stray dog. Oh, and the soft gurgling of some old-timer's hookah, providing the bass to the nearby concerto of crickets.I lay on my creaky hemp charpoy near the hand-painted sign that announced our village. My locked palms were a hammock for my head as I stared blankly at the half-moon etched in a murky sky.The charpoy rocked when I shifted, unsteady on soil grooved deep by tractor tires and budding with miniature yellow-orange flowers. Marigolds. They had been sprouting up everywhere without reason.Curiously, a constellation of butterflies had also swooped into our village in the last week or so, falling into our vats of milk and frying up in our open fires.As for my charpoy, it threatened to topple over each time I took a deep drag of my own cancer stick -- the fourth in a row. Health didn't preoccupy one much when a missile with your name on it could fall out of the clouds at any second.The great tragedy of war was that it erased all humanity and rewound its glorious progress, but an even greater tragedy was a stupid war that forced us into nightly blackouts in the age of satellites that could count the moles on our cheeks.Why the army and its boomer generals thought we could forever live in the nostalgia of 1965 was beyond most of us twenty-somethings. After all, their mascot, the doughty songstress Noor Jehan was long dead, and her dated anthems only dusted off for national day parades.Dead also from the recent shelling were a quarter of our livestock and a few bums who insisted on chasing after incoming rockets for spare parts they could scavenge for pocket change.Honestly, we just wanted our nightly fix of TikTok videos while dipping snuff or passing around some bitter moonshine before the first inch of daybreak brought us back to the reality of tending to our crops, bickering over whose donkey had soiled the other's sward, and praying the monsoon rains didn't magnificently wash away our year's toil of mustard and maize.Between wide yawns and petting my heirloom bronze shotgun, I mused if my life would have turned out differently had I ventured out of the village to continue a secondary school education.Or maybe if I'd followed an older cousin in crossing the seas to Greece and making a new, albeit illegal, life in Europe. He'd drowned en route, but that wouldn't have been my fate. I was born lucky.I'd inherited from my mother's side a legit gidar singhi -- the mythical jackal's horn. That was why I could sleep under leafy trees after Maghreb prayers without a djinn possessing me or a gnarly old witch, a churail, stealing my balls.It couldn't have been more than half an hour since my eyes grew heavy when a bright beam of light suddenly hit my face and almost blinded me. Then, it was gone.I sat up at once and leveled my shotgun. Though my eyes were blurry from the trauma, I spotted the strange glow jagging around in the distance like a wild buck. A flashlight?The air raid sirens were silent, and the village was still. I sighed and shook my head. Who had drunk themselves silly tonight and gone about pissing in the bushes? I ought to --The faint rustling of slow-witted footsteps started somewhere in the darkness. Accompanying it was a sour scent akin to green, unripe mangoes.I gulped and checked the gidar singhi strung around my neck. Something about the way those feet landed with an awkward pause had hastened my heartbeat.My talisman should protect me in theory, but I didn't care to test out its potency on an authentic evil spirit seeking vengeance on the world. Was this the village kids' doing? Though I'd scolded them many times, those spoiled brats kept kicking the unmarked graves near the tube well. Granted that internet speeds had lately gone to shit, but that was no excuse to disrespect the dead.More footsteps, this time behind me. Quick and steady.The shape of a slight man became sharper. He was furiously waving at me to lower my gun."Oye Fakhroo, don't just point that thing," said a familiar voice at a volume much too loud for blackout. "You have some jamalgota on you? I've been constipated for days."Lallu was jogging toward me. His sheer white skin and bleached unruly hair parted right down the middle gave him the appearance of a merry ghost.The proud owner of an off-key tea stall, he was my best friend because he'd never teased me about my flipper-like feet.His tragic exploits were legendary throughout the district. He once fed us donkey meat over Eid in samosa stuffing, calling it the best beef he'd ever tasted. His generosity earned him a caning from the mosque imam.Then the imam had us all declared as kafirs until we recited the kalimah thrice and donated without haste to his madrasah, which also served as a snuff-packing factory."Shhh," I said. "There's someone out there. Where's your vial of Zamzam water?"He proudly pointed to the string around his neck. "Get a hold of yourself, jigar," he said, slapping my shoulder. "Must be some pervert having his way with a she-goat.""No goat-lover is waving around flashlights, you fool," I answered in a testy voice.Lallu cocked his head to one side and listened intently. His large satellite dish ears always picked up things no one else could, often to his detriment. "Hain? That's new."A series of glugs, followed by the smacking of lips. They sounded so clear, as if their source stood right beside us, but wasn't.I ignored this suspension of the laws of physics and grimaced in annoyance. Breaking the curfew, eh? How dared they have fun while I was having a hard time protecting this place?Lallu armed himself with a jagged plank of wood that was strewn about the grass. "I bet it's the barber's son," he said in a conspiratorial whisper. "I never trusted that kid after he beat me at cards.""I could beat you at cards," I said coolly. "And I'm worse than Chacha Noora, who can't tell a cat from a jackal.""Humph. You're all just -- "I shushed him and gestured toward the misshapen bushes a mere stone's throw from us. Someone had just burped like a bloated bull.My grip tightened around my gun. "Once dawn breaks, we'll bathe the culprit in boot polish and parade them around the village. Agreed?"His eyes grew big with excitement. "Yes! It's high time someone inherited my throne."I gave him the side-eye and snorted. "Fat chance."The next thing we knew, a bright burst of light fell on us, forcing us to shade our eyes."Puttar, what city is this, son?" asked a cheery female voice.I rubbed my eyes to make sure what stood before me wasn't a poltergeist.An old woman, at least in her seventh decade, was waddling toward us. She wore a purple shalwar kameez with patterned yellow flowers that looked most familiar.In one hand she held a giant plastic bottle of fizzing soda, while the other bore a steel torchlight the length of her arm.I scratched the back of my head. This made no sense. Why would someone of her age be roaming around this late? Was she a churail? No, her feet weren't turned the wrong way.Lallu, to my surprise, was grinning as he lowered his weapon. "Hello, maasi. Are you lost, auntie?"My foot connected with his shin. "Are you crazy? You want the satellites to hear us?"She was upon us in the brief instant he said "ouch" -- standing so close we could see the whites of her eyes.I flinched, choking back a cry. How did she shoot through the air like a ninja?She took another swig of her soda and studied us with a curious face. We did likewise in silence.Her eyes sent a chill up my spine. Below her thin brows, one eye was much lighter in shade than the other, and it sparkled unnaturally.She wore bold lipstick, and an easy smile adorned her lips. The shock of white in her short wavy hair ran like lightning from her forehead to her crown."Um, maasi, isn't it past your bedtime?" Lallu asked in a delicate voice.She shone her flashlight at him, which was softer than before. Then she giggled. "You must be the mayor of this city! How fortunate for me to have met such an important man."My face screwed up in confusion. City?Lallu took the surreal in his stride. He was beaming, saying, "Inshallah, inshallah," when I cleared my throat and made a serious face."It's too dangerous out here, auntie. We're at war," I said. "Where are you from? Maybe we can take you back home."She responded with a blank look. "I'm going to Ajmer Sharif. I must."I nodded, a small ache opening in my heart. What a shame. A woman of her age, delirious to boot, had been cut loose to become fodder for famished wolves. I'd speak to the village elder in the morning. We should try to trace her kin."Right you are," I said in a kinder voice. "How about you rest for the night? You can take my charpoy."She shone her flashlight on me at full power. "All these riches and tall buildings and yet you offer me a simple charpoy? How cheap, puttar."Even Lallu wore a puzzled look as glanced around to find the nonexistent. "Umm, maasi, we're just a small village along the border with India. I sell tea, and Fakhroo here is a farmhand."She took another swig of her soda. Then her face lit up, and she tapped her forehead with the flashlight. "Sahi, sahi," she said, chuckling. "It's too early, too early."My mind filled with questions, but they never reached my lips. For at that moment, a dull screech pricked up my ears.Signal flares, one after the other, had dyed the horizon in ochre.A shiver passed through me. The sentries two villages over must have sensed movement. Were enemy soldiers slipping across the border? Dammit, how was this possible?Lallu took a quick sip of his Zamzam. "Ya Allah madad. Help us," he said in a strained voice.I stretched my legs to shake off the fear. There wasn't a moment to waste. We should wake up the villagers and take up arms … or flee? Why, why did this have to happen?A sharp slap to my cheek pulled me back to reality.She was glaring at me, her aura so fierce I backed away on instinct. "Which way is Ajmer Sharif, puttar?" she asked in a slight growl.Random bolts of lightning streaked through the clouds.A haze was creeping toward the village -- from the east, where barbed wire straddled our slim border.I issued an exasperated grunt and threw my hands up in the air. "Fine. Have it your way. Go out there and get killed. See if anyone cares."This time she shone her flashlight into the sky. Its light knifed through the night like a spear of the sun at high noon.I kept blinking. Was that a giant marigold hovering on the horizon? No, it must be my imagination."No blood shall be spilled," she said, tucking her flashlight under her arm. "Now point the way. I didn't come this far to abandon my trip over a trifle. I am awaited.""By whom, for God's sake?" I asked in anguish."Those that live forever, puttar. You wouldn't understand.""Ugh. More riddles."Lallu leaned in and whispered, "Think we can tie her to the charpoy?"I steeled myself and pointed toward the haze. "Your destination lies that way, khala. Don't say we didn't warn you."Panicked voices had started in the village, and kerosene lamps glimmered among the semi-pukka dwellings fashioned from bamboo and mud.I slung my gun over my shoulder and grabbed Lallu's arm. "Let's open the pen. Some animals may be saved if they're scattered.""But will she be okay?" he asked, looking over his shoulder.I hesitated. "Not our problem. Allah will care for her if she's meant to live."No sooner had we started toward the village than light wrapped around us from behind and illuminated the farthest reaches of our sight.But this was not the radiance of a flashlight, no matter how supernaturally powerful. This was the brilliance of a celestial star.We stopped dead in our tracks, our jaws slackened from shock. A dreamlike portal had opened before us, showing us another, incomprehensible world in vivid color.A web of floating highways lined with blazing marigolds, crossing in all directions up and down; phantom cars that zoomed on their translucent tarmacs in an endless trail of starlight, surrounded by towering skyscrapers that glowed in electric neon.I itched to pinch myself, to escape the hallucination, but my arms were numb. Impossible. What did all of this mean? Were we bewitched?Then the light cut off, and we were back in the darkness.I spun around to confront the woman. "W-who are you? I asked, my voice straining at the seams.She met my stare for a few seconds and then burst into laughter. "The creator has a wicked sense of humor. He gave you eyes, but no vision. He gave you minds, but no key."Lallu didn't utter a peep, even when I poked him with my elbow. He was still in a daze."Enough of your nonsense," I said, couching my gun and cocking its hammer. "Please turn around and leave. Don't make me do something I'll regret."She responded with a bemused expression. "You really must love bees, puttar.""Huh?"The next instant I yelped and leaped away, flailing my arms like a man on fire.The stock and steel of my shotgun had become a swarm of fat striped bees, calmly buzzing.They soon dissolved into the night, taking with them my only weapon.I wrung my hands together to stop the trembling. Who was this woman? How could she do any of this?She offered a sip of her soda. "It'll all be okay, puttar."It was then I noticed her brighter eye -- a blue so dazzling. As if the azure oceans of the world were filtered through a prism and polished into an incandescent marble.I took a sip to wet my parched throat and instantly a strange electricity flowed through me, filling me with a supernatural hope. All was not lost."Now, tell me, puttar. How do I get to my Ajmer Sharif?" she asked.I gave a solemn nod. Maybe Allah sent her to save us. "Help the village, khala. I swear, one day we'll do better."She smiled. "I know. The good thing about time is that it marches on. Not the mightiest of the age nor the gods of another can slow its pace a whit."I didn't understand a damn word she said, but I kept nodding.Lallu had finally snapped out of his statuesque state. He was red in the face, looking around in panic.Behind us, the village was gripped by commotion -- the shuffle of heavy boots, the crashing of upturned furniture, the muted cries of animals and men. Between them, the pop of bullets echoed in the night.The sheer violence of the soundscape made my head spin. How did the enemy get past our defenses so easily? Where were our soldiers? How could they let them cross the border on foot?"W-we should r-run," I mumbled.Lallu punched my gut without warning. I doubled over, coughing and cursing.His eyes shone with a grim determination as he held aloft his plank of wood. "This is no time for weakness. If we die, we die as martyrs."I groaned in disbelief. "Have you lost your damn mind?" I asked, shaking his slim shoulders. "We should flee."He pushed me away and thumped his chest. "How dare you suggest I abandon my ancestral home? Not a chance!"I shook my fist at his face. "For once in your life, you fool, listen to -- ""You two like flowers?" she asked in quiet amusement. "My favorite are marigolds. They go with my name, Maryam."

We gaped at her in silence. "Maryam maasi," said Lallu in a low voice. "Sneak away while you can. We can't protect you.""Ha-ha. How kind of you, puttar, but you've waited long enough."Then, to our amazement, she started waddling toward the wails and flames."Remember this well," she said, "Allah knows the just and the unjust, no matter how they cloak themselves or how loudly they pray."She strode forward with purpose; soon, just a silhouette walking into a sea of fire.Lallu made a pensive face. "What do you think she meant there?" he asked, scratching his chin.I glared at him. "That's what you're thinking?" I asked, propping up my gun with unsteady hands. "We need to flee. None of this is real, I'm -- "I stopped talking.Moments earlier, I had to shout to make myself heard. Now, my voice was booming in my ears.And what was that punchy fragrance mixing with the smoky sulfur? Almost like … a green mango?Lallu was facing the village, and he'd turned to stone. "Tittliyan," he whispered.Our village was aflutter with countless vermillion butterflies, their wings laced with thick black veins. Faintly glowing, they seemed to encase the village in a cocoon that pulsed in different colors like a beating heart.I fell to my knees in shock. Maryam."Ya Allah," Lallu kept repeating in a loop.A breeze had started in stinging sheets. Soon, it blew over to my feet the patches of a camouflaged cloth bearing flags -- the kind soldiers wore on their chests.All were Pakistani. Not a single one from across the border.I held my head in my hands and moaned. That's what she meant. The hands that burned our house down were not the enemy's. They were our own.Lallu grabbed me by the collar. "Did she turn into a flower, huh? Did they all turn into flowers, huh?"I let myself be pushed and pulled by his madness. What else could I do?A wicked fire blazing moments ago was now smoldering like the sweet incense at the Datta Darbar shrine. Rumors held that only the saints of lore could transfigure at so astonishing a scale. Why ask me anything? How the hell was I to explain any of this?A glint of steel caught my eye. Her flashlight. It lay on the turf some ten meters from us, surrounded by thorny vines that twisted like river snakes."Say, Lallu," I asked. "You think the flashlight showed what we wished to see, and not what was or what could be?"He wiped his face with his sleeve and took a swig of his Zamzam. "We should ask for ourselves."No sooner had he answered than the flashlight started slipping into the soil, frothing and bubbling like a simmering cauldron.And in its place emerged an enormous marigold -- dewy and glowing as it bloomed, its majestic stalk three feet tall."Let's call this Maryam," we said together.Lallu set his hands on his hips and drew in a deep breath. "Jigar, things are finally looking up, my friend."I gave a wry smile. "I've been hearing that since the day I was born."

Sergey Bolmat
“In The End”

'You all right, mate?'...............Charlie hesitated. He looked at his boss................'My mum's in a hospital,' he said................'Here in London?'...............'No,' Charlie said, 'in Barcelona.'...............'Oh,' Val said. 'Anything serious?'...............'I think she's dying,' Charlie said................'Take some time off,' Val said. 'It's a slow season anyway.'...............'Thank you,' Charlie said................'Not a problem at all,' Val said. 'Take as long as you need.'...............I hate my mother. This was what Charlie wanted to say. He returned to his cubicle. I don't care if she dies alone, he thought. I hate her. She is a horrible person. She left me when I was 12. Dad died because of her. He died and she didn't care, like, at all. She probably was happy that he had died. After 12 years of marriage. Imagine that. Her affairs did him in. He was a good man. She didn't deserve my father, Charlie thought. What a weird match it was, he thought, my mum, a true knockout with her stunning, if overly conventional looks, a vulgar, loud, money burning witch, always drunk, always enjoying a good sparring match, always annoying, fussy, dramatic -- and my father, a delicate little man with his feminine hands, with his quiet, pleading voice, with his pointedly withdrawn manner. She married him to harass him, he thought, because she enjoyed provoking people, pestering them, driving them out of their minds. He could remember their endless fights. And then he died, suddenly, his father, in the street, waiting for a bus, dropped on the spot. And she quickly sold their house and went to Spain and then to bloody Mexico. Because she didn't care about me, Charlie thought, she didn't care about anyone; she just didn't, only about herself. She probably didn't want a child. Could it be, he thought, that she just wanted to marry my father because she thought that he was rich? However idiotic this idea might seem, he thought, it could be true. She thought that my father was rich because she herself was stupidly, melodramatically poor and, accordingly, only interested in high life, like all the poor people from those dreary suburbs who discuss yachts and race cars, and Riviera villas, and private jets, who wear fake haute couture and salivate over of the Royal Family. Her family was a noisy bunch of horrid alcoholics, he thought. Good for nothing, he thought, always teasing me when I was a child, testing me, always feeding me the most outrageous rubbish, some cheap nasty food, which I soon learned to like and some cheap nasty nonsense, which I soon learned to like too because I was just a dumb kid. Did she, actually, made my father to knock her up with me, Charlie thought, and then forced him to marry her after she had announced to him, in her ridiculously histrionic way, which even now could make him shudder, that she was pregnant? Could be, he thought, absolutely could be. With her gaggle of lowlife boyfriends, of all those exotic charlatans, wide boys, spivs, she was obviously going nowhere. She was 27 when they married and his father was ten years older. He quite probably was a virgin, his father, at 37, Charlie thought, he was probably one of those types who persuade themselves that they are not interested in women. He was kind of afraid of women, awkward around them, kind of shy -- and for a reason because in the end it was a woman who killed him, he could have lived a lot longer in his modest, unobtrusive way. He loved me, Charlie thought, and she didn't, of course she didn't because I was only a means to an end for her, just a stepping stone, nothing else. As soon as she had me she forgot about me. She didn't want to deal with me at all. This was why she just sold our house and left after he had died, just like that while I was at school. My father paid through his nose to place me in that school, he thought, he had kept tutoring me for years in maths and English, and history, and science, many hours every day. I hated him for that, Charlie thought. But I was able to score a good result, he remembered, and was accepted at a posh, expensive school. And then my father died and my mother sold our house and one day my aunt Jen came to collect me on the last day of my spring term. She said that from now on … Oh, that was terrible, he thought. She said that Dad had huge debts................'Cleaned him out dry, that brass,' Charlie remembered her saying................It was the first and the last time Aunt Jen said something bad about his mother. He didn't understand it though but he felt the fury in her voice. Who cleaned, he wanted to ask, what brass? But he saw that Aunt Jen was angry and decided not to. That was awful. After only two years. That was a true catastrophe. Not living with her, of course, she was a very nice spinster prone to long philosophic talks and eccentric jokes, very much like her brother in appearance but tougher, a true hard-line loner, and she took good care of me. No, it was a disaster to change schools, to go from the private paradise of friends and mentors to that cesspit of wild freaks, of retards, of vile underage thugs and spiteful slags, of all those bitter and irritable teachers encouraging snitching, indifference, and low self-esteem, preparing us (with a moderate success, he had to admit) to become an army of spineless office stiffs, at best, barely capable of avoiding prisons, mental institutions, and heroin dens. That was harsh. Half of my classmates were on medications, he remembered, some of them real lunatics with knives. I don't know how I survived all that, he thought, how I was able not to lose my mind in that snake pit, how I was able to continue with my studies, to win a scholarship and a place in a good university. That was indeed a miracle; it was all Aunt Jen, God rest her soul. And when, he thought, did I see my mother next time? In three years, four, five? I don't even remember. Jen hated her. But she never showed it to me, truth to be told, never spoke of her badly ever again. And then my mum came one day, looked at me, brought me that ridiculous box set of Rolling Stones love ballads, that chemistry kit for an amateur perfumer, gave me, on a whim, her mobile phone -- mostly to enjoy an hour of shopping for the new one and flirting with a shop assistant while he was setting it up for her, spoke to me for another hour at an ice cream joint, and disappeared again for three or four years. She was always sure that he wanted to see her and the most twisted, borderline perverse thing was that he actually did want to see her, every time she bothered to reappear in his life, he was always at her beck and call, every time. He listened to her stories about her life in Bangkok or Shanghai, about her famous friends in LA or Rome, about some travels in Columbia or Vietnam, about shopping in Tehran and bullfighting in Bogota, probably all lies. Lying was as natural for her as breathing; she had no moral scruples at all. She would invite him to some unbearably pretentious place for the afternoon tea, feed him some food she considered upper class, feed him some florid gobbledygook, ask him how he was, and then depart without listening to his answers, visibly bored with his stories of his academic achievements. Once she told him that he had taken after his father; same fool, he thought. And he kept meeting her trying every time, exactly like his father before him, to impress her, to find some human connection with her. All he wanted was just a moment of human warmth, he thought, but she was incapable of that. She was an ice-cold alien, Charlie thought, an extra-terrestrial reptile watching him with her siren eyes like a well-fed predator watching a feeder mouse................And now! Finally! After all those years -- how many of them? Twenty? Twenty-five? He imagined her old, in her bed in that Spanish hospital. It must be hot over there already, he thought, in these last days of April. He probably wouldn't be able to recognise her, he thought. Always distant, she probably was a complete stranger now. And it was all right, he thought. He didn't feel anything about it. His hate had subsided. Old and alone, he thought, she deserved to die old and alone, unrecognisable, forgotten, obliterated. He just didn't care. All he could imagine was some dark wrinkly unfamiliar face on a white pillow, a dark wrinkly hand. Who cares, he thought................He could imagine her in her bed, sleeping. Maybe she already was in a coma, he thought, or drifting in and out of consciousness, whispering some gibberish under her breath. Probably she couldn't understand what had happened to her. A couple of days ago she was still young, relatively speaking, a mature woman full of life, with many plans, busy with appointments, preoccupied with her everyday routine, maybe sunbathing or going for a swim -- and now, all of a sudden she became a dying wreck. How could this happen? And what exactly was it? She couldn't understand people talking around her; sometimes she couldn't even hear them, just felt their presence. Something unpleasant, she thought. She was all right and then something snapped inside her generally healthy body. She had never felt old before, she had never even thought much about her age. Sometimes she felt tired but that was different. Now she felt numb and full of pain at the same time, the pain she perceived as a distant echo ready to burst the dam and to flood her from top to toe with unspeakable agony. And she was afraid; she was scared to death. She was, she had to admit, no shame in that. Something really bad was approaching her. Very quickly, she became so tired of her fear she could hardly breathe................And it wasn't death. She wasn't afraid of dying. Afterlife, she thought, that could be fun. But this sensation of complete and utter abandonment, this was something else. Is this hell, she thought, is this what religious people imagine as a place of punishment full of darkness and fire and all that scary stuff, weeping and gnashing of teeth or whatever? Gnashing of teeth didn't sound that bad, did it? It could be these minutes before death, she thought with a strangely cold and idle detachment, a relief of sorts -- when you understand how horrible a human being you actually were, when you see all your flaws, sins, and mistakes ballooning, magnified tenfold, thousandfold, turning into crimes, maybe even remembering true crimes you probably committed, which you had gone to great lengths to forget, had studiously swept under the rug. Time stops, she thought, and it can be eternity, the eternity of solitude and regret, your individual dreadful underworld. Once again, she felt exhausted with her suddenly complicated self, tremendously tired with her own expansive and overbearing presence, not like before when she was just scared and certainly not like all those days ago when she could have some rest and be like new in a couple of hours, ready for parties or travels, or shopping, no, this time she understood that she couldn't have any rest anymore, ever. Her very existence became hard work, every second of it, every breath, every little movement, every thought. Her body clearly refused to keep doing all this. It just couldn't continue with all that mechanical nuisance anymore. She wanted to take a deep breath but she hesitated because it meant a huge effort, the concentration of her entire strength, a tremendous job of expanding her lungs; she had to prepare herself for it. She had no idea where she was now. She remembered something about some corridors, about some unclear suburban blocks of flats, about some bad weather, it was raining, it was dark and cold, the sky was low and full of clouds. She remembered an unclear tropical plant and a road under the sun. She remembered some trees, a window, the sea. She felt like she was floating through a shiny, soft haze. Sometimes she couldn't breathe at all and she panicked and felt her body returning, parts of it, full of painful labour and protest. Sometimes she was strong enough to look around and say a word or two like god, or goodness me................Slowly, after some time -- days or weeks or maybe years, she had no idea -- she came to the conclusion that she was in for an eternity of this torment. Her indifference about this realisation surprised her. Am I really that bad, she thought, am I that far beyond any salvation from this torture chamber? That must be something. I am not a serial killer or a war criminal, am I? What happens to them if this dreadful punishment happens to me? I used to know some priests, she remembered, I liked churches with their mysterious aromatic twilight, I liked discussing myself with those holy men dressed in all those fancy outfits. Liked to tease them, she thought. Oh, I was bad. Do I repent that, she thought, am I really sorry? Am I suffering now because of that? No, she thought, it must be something different. It's not the regret it's the feeling of a lone self suspended in the middle of this endless night. It will end this way or another, she thought, and it will end soon -- or maybe never because time apparently does stop when you approach death, it's like falling into a black hole, you just remain drifting alone in this cold space perpetually, forever thinking about your shortcomings and missteps, forever reliving them, making them torch your body alive. I always wanted to live an easy life, she thought. My mother had a difficult life, my father had a difficult life but I decided very early that my life would be different. She remembered that moment very well. She was returning from school and all the cherries were in full bloom and the weather was amazing and she decided that her life would be happy whatever it takes................This is why I never lived, she thought, because I've always been far too busy being happy. I've never felt life because I was working on my happiness full time. I didn't feel anything at all, she thought. I imagined that I lived my life like I wanted, according to all my whims and fancies, but it wasn't a real life, it was something else. It was my idea of a good life; it was nothing but an illusion. I was in love though, she thought, sometimes, but I didn't really feel it. It was my idea of love, nothing else, nothing more, borrowed, probably, from some magazines, from some TV shows where people kiss each other passionately. I was always too busy with myself, always too busy copying everything. I thought I enjoyed it but did I really? It certainly was great to make love to all those men but was it what I really wanted? I liked good food, she remembered, and I liked good time but what did I know about all that? I've always been the same hungry kid gorging up on sweets because I never had enough when I was a child. This was my idea of happiness. Have it ever been a real deal, my life?

...............Oh, no, she thought, don't be like that brooding teenager from a foreign novel she once found on a bedside table in a tiny top floor studio belonging to one of her boyfriends. The book was thick and heavy and full of dense, interminable prose, page after page without even breaking into paragraphs, with lots of characters all incredibly introspective. She read it because it was plus forty outside and she couldn't leave, she had to wait till her hangover passed and was sweaty and naked, and alone, and the telly was broken, and her eyes ached from all those words but there was an unexpectedly graphic sex scene in that book and she kept reading. Even receiving his first blowjob from a mature woman twice his age that fictive teenager kept philosophising, analysing, unpacking his endless childhood memories, delaying his gratification for the whole chapter. It was my own life all right, she thought, no need for such fuss, for all these pedestrian displays of regret about it but it just didn't look that good now, did it? This was yet another reason to feel bad. It was nothing, she thought, certainly not that much of a deal, nothing out of the ordinary, run-of-the-mill showy, chaotic life -- or, rather, a poor man's idea of a showy, chaotic life, the best approximation of extravagance she could afford, lurid, noisy, and fake. It was ersatz second-hand life for the most part, she thought, if not entirely. And now it was just a trifle, a spark about to disappear in this darkness, and it was oh so meaningless. It was good enough while it lasted, she thought, but it could be a lot better. I had my chance to make it something and I made it good but good was probably not enough. Good was not nearly enough, she thought. Good is meaningless, good is stupid. Maybe it was good because it was meaningless. Your only life had to be perfect, she thought, it had to be excellent, it had to be so much better, it had to be absolutely top-notch................Ah, the darkness, she thought, this airless, soundproof darkness. Am I breathing, she thought, am I moving? Can I move my hand? I don't feel anything. She could only feel this darkness becoming her new body. Maybe I am dead already, she thought, maybe I am already underground in a tight, comfortable coffin. Maybe this is what it means to be dead. Maybe, she thought, I was cremated and I just didn't notice that. Maybe I am an urn full of my own ashes now, she thought, nothing else. Maybe I will become a ghost soon. What about the higher plane of being, she thought, what about all those human souls ascending or descending? Don't feel anything like that. Maybe it's too early. Maybe this is already the eternity, she thought................And then she saw something in this darkness and heard someone's voice. She couldn't believe it. She tried to scream at the top of her lungs -- and she heard someone answering her. And then she recognised the voice. Someone else was here in this darkness, someone else was near her -- and not just a random stranger, it was a person she knew. This is how people meet each other in the afterlife, she thought. It seems like they do meet each other in the afterlife, she thought, and they continue talking just like that................She felt someone taking her hand................'How are you?' Charlie said................His voice sounded awkward as if he were speaking mostly to himself................'I am all right,' she thought she said. 'How are you?'...............'Do you need anything?' Charlie said................'I am very sorry,' she said................'I am here,' Charlie said................'Too late,' she said. 'You can only appreciate life when you are dead. Do you know that? Apparently, it's a joke. Didn't mean to sound all smug and sentimental though. Sorry again. It's just my old age speaking.'...............'Your doctor called,' Charlie said. 'A man you knew unlocked your phone and he called some people, and finally they called me. I'm glad they did.'...............'Life,' his mother said. 'I am sorry I didn't understand it. I thought it had no meaning, only pain and pleasure, but that's philosophy. I think now that I was wrong.'...............'I love you, Mum,' Charlie said................'I wish I loved you too,' she said, 'but I didn't. Or maybe I did in my own way. I don't even know anything about you. How old are you? Are you married? Do you have any children? What's your job?'...............'Is she dead?' Charlie said................The doctor looked at him................'No,' he said, 'not yet. But it's a matter of minutes now.'...............Charlie looked at his mother. He saw her face, her closed eyes, her thin bloodless lips, wrinkles around her mouth. It looked like something was draining quietly from the surface of her face deep into her body. It looked like her eyes, her cheeks, her lips sunk into her face subtly, almost imperceptibly. Her bones became prominent -- her forehead, the nose, her chin; her skin became thin, dry, translucent. He touched her hand. She didn't move................'That's it,' the doctor said. 'She is not with us anymore.'...............Charlie stood up................'All right,' he said, 'what do I do now?'

Vanessa Blakeslee
“Malocchio”

Originally published in Southern Humanities Review

Josephine, summer heat and the reek of kerosene. They invaded the upstairs rooms together, Antonette and behind her, Rosie sloshing the pail of putrid stink, Rosie's bracelet, once Antonette's, hovering above the liquid. Sometimes Josephine took the bracelet. But Antonette made her give it back. A tiny girl of seven, stubby fingered, with unruly black hair crowned by a widow's peak, Josephine wanted to be protected by the bracelet's powers, inside its circle, saved by the cheap coral charm, a princess, a good lady adorned with a red twig. Antonette ordered Josephine aside, shoved the bed frame from the wall, bundled the sheets and slid the mattress into the hall. And Rosie kept dousing the coils and slats, a ritual of summertime. There were too many bed bugs; sometimes before dawn, Antonette was awakened by the children's whimpers and kicks as the insects drew blood; then the children cried. Josephine was ravaged. Her ankles and forearms were a wild strawberry patch, her skin broken and streaked from scratches.Antonette did not feel misery; she felt light-headed from the fumes, like someone watching her body move, haul mattresses, yank frames. Secretly, she didn't mind the heady smell, the burning in her throat and nostrils and eyes, the staving off of hunger and slight queasiness. In the fog her limbs felt heavy; she could disappear, and so could her grief, and her longing for their father to come home. She looked at Rosie's thin wrist flicking the pail's handle, and the charm glistening from the kerosene's splash, and the sunlight swirling rainbows in the surface when the pail came to rest. And above the pail, Rosie's face, awaiting her instruction, but it was not the olive-skinned complexion shared by the rest of their brothers and sisters, but paler, the eyes lighter brown, like a Northern Italian, or an English girl. Rosie's hair was slippery and straight, unlike her sisters'; she was the prettiest. Rosie's cheeks underneath the tan of yard work were the deep coral of the twig charm.Antonette had given Rosie the bracelet for protection. It had been a dusty late afternoon the month before, July. Antonette was gathered with the four younger ones in the road, halfway to the bend where they watched their father disappear, a black dot, his work clothes tied in a sheet slung over his back. That morning they had watched their zios and cousins shoulder their stiffened mother from the dining table and into a pine box, and the box into the ground. Only a few hours had lapsed between the funeral of one parent and the loss of the other. But their father had to return to Bethlehem and the steel mills; he would send money and promised to return every few weeks. He rested a hand on each of their heads, one by one, like a priest, imploring them not to worry, repeating the old saying, "Casa sua non mena guerra" -- home yields no war. He put Antonette in charge; she was the oldest. When she begged him not to leave them, he had told her she must do it. And she knew she must. In Italy, girls were married at fourteen, became mothers. She had to be their mother now, until Pop could come home.But he had no sooner vanished when Antonette struck the first of her small failings. The children had not wanted to return to the house empty of parents, to eat on the table that still bore the weight of their mother's ghost, the stench of the corpse's decay still heavy in the air. Frank, twelve, kicked stones in the dirt; Nick, almost three, wriggled and wailed in her arms until she set him down and he toddled after his brother; Josephine clung to her big sister, Rosie, both of them unmoving. Antonette did not want to go back, either, and face the pigs which needed feeding, the goats and cow which needed milking. But she prodded the children toward the house.At the farmhouse where the Dutch family lived, the woman was hanging wash. She abandoned her basket and caught up to them, touched Antonette's shoulder. "They could have your father arrested, you know," she said. Antonette shrugged her off, walking. The woman's blue eyes were strange and watery. She stuck out her arm, blocking their procession. "I only mean if you need us, we're here," she said. She clutched her hip, apron pinched full of clothespins, surveying them. She grazed Rosie's chin with her thumb, said, "This one keeps getting prettier and prettier, eh?" and drew away, up her steps, Antonette darkening with the knowledge that she was supposed to do, say something but failing to remember what. Grief had suffocated her words, and the bark of English had never come easy to her. She had quit school two years before and worked at a blouse mill until her mother's recent pregnancy, and everyone spoke Italian in town.Rosie caught fever and chills, was confined to bed for three days and nights. Not until late into the third night did Antonette remember the Dutch woman's remark about Rosie and the malocchio, the evil eye, and Antonette felt herself grow smaller with guilt and shame at her forgetfulness. How could she have forgotten the malocchio and her mother's instructions so quickly? How many times had their mother spit into the dirt after an aunt or neighbor had praised the looks of one of the children? Even an ordinary person could give the malocchio to another with one admiring glance -- the power took over and the eyes acted as if on their own, out of control of the owner's will. Their mother had performed many rituals to ward off the evil eye throughout their childhoods, and again, two weeks before her death. The pregnancy had not been easy, and perhaps Maria Philippa Cascario Capone had sensed she might die.But how to remember what to do, the correct order of the steps? Antonette worried on her way downstairs. Was grief so powerful that it could erase the simplest knowledge, even when she wore the red twig on her wrist? The malocchiocould strike at any time, but victims were most susceptible during life-changing events, especially pregnancy and birth. And pretty girls were always at risk of catching the envy of others. No wonder Rosie was so sick! If Rosie got worse, or died, Antonette would be to blame. Except the Americans would blame their father for leaving his kids alone, and would take them away.In the kitchen's shadows Antonette hunted in the drawers and shelves, arranged the olive oil, bowl and water pitcher on the table. The dark scared her, with the house creaking and the rats rumbling in the walls. She prayed to her mother and to the Virgin, the warmth of the kerosene lamp dancing across her chest. She brought herself back to the June afternoon when her mother had laid out those same items, her mother's hands resting over them as hers did now, only then the kitchen had been bathed in sunlight, the air sticky from the bread rising.As the time grew nearer for the baby to arrive Maria had felt more tired than usual. She had wanted to find out if someone had given her the malocchioand instructed Antonette to watch. Maria set the dish on the kitchen table, filled it with water and blessed the dish, repeating three times:"Malocchje ngenzate,Tre Sande m'aiutate,Che poss' I nt' a l'occhjeA cchi e fatte u malocchje a Maria."Next, Maria uncorked the glass bottle that held the precious olive oil, rare to find in America and expensive, so the Italian women used lard to cook with instead. She placed a few drops of oil into the bowl, saying that if the malocchio had struck, the three dots of oil would separate and bubble.Antonette did this now, straining to spot the oil in the dim light. But there had been one more part to the test. Why had she not paid better attention? She studied the items before her. Finally she chose the pitcher.Maria had added a small amount of water to the bowl. When she set down the pitcher and gazed into the bowl again, she gasped. The baby has the evil eye! she said. If the oil spreads quickly after adding the water, then you know you have it really bad.After Antonette added water to the bowl and it didn't separate, she exhaled in relief. She thought she remembered the next part. Her mother had shown her how to arrange three pieces of ferrato: a fork, spoon, knife, even a scissors if nothing else was available. (Now Antonette thought she could hear her mother's voice, and the long ago day and present night became one, and Rosie would not die). Place them next to the bowl. Make the sign of the cross over them, starting with the fork. Repeat the saying over each piece of ferratothree times. Antonette touched her forehead three times with the liquid from the bowl and repeated the magic saying like her mother had done."Now quickly, spit into the dish with the oil!"Antonette spit."Now pick up the dish and toss the liquid out the door!"Antonette yanked open the door and flung the contents, and the water splattered somewhere beyond the blackness and the crickets. She shut the door quickly, latched the bolt and picked up the lamp, hoping she had performed all the steps correctly, recalling how her mother had sunken into a chair, how the strands of hair had clung damp to her mother's puffy face, the weariness in her mother's voice, saying, "I only hope it hasn't already done harm."By the morning Rosie's fever was broken. But Antonette didn't trust herself enough to chance it. She unclasped the charm bracelet, a gift from her father for her first paycheck when she was twelve, and amends for her having to drop out of school. She had been delighted that he had chosen the red twig, as strong an amulet for women as the cornicello, the little horn worn by men. Their father never removed the cornofrom his neck. Rosie stirred and asked for water, and Antonette fastened the clasp around her sister's wrist.

In the yard Antonette stirred the linens, speckled with blood and the pests' feces, into a tub. Rosie poured buckets of boiling water overtop. Their eyes and throats burned again but this time from the homemade lye, not kerosene. The open air cleared lungs and brains. Nick dropped to his knees and grabbed for dandelions. Josephine asked Rosie if she could play with her bracelet and Antonette told them no. She ordered Rosie to scrub the kerosene from her skin where it had splashed and for Josephine to watch the baby. Frank was with the goats, trying to coax milk from them that wouldn't come. They were all trying but they couldn't keep up with the demands of the farm: chopping wood, feeding themselves and the animals. Antonette wanted their father to be proud and reassured when he returned, not look at her with sadness and dismay.But Antonette felt like she was always moving, never at rest, her eyes always darting for the crawling Nick, counting heads. Even at night, she felt like she never fully fell asleep. She would hear one of the kids rustling or the rattle of urine in the bedpan, and she was instantly awake, rigid in her place between Rosie and Josephine. So during the day she yawned and fended off the fog and caught herself nodding to sleep by the stove, only to jerk awake in panic.From inside the house drifted the sound of piano keys. Rosie was playing. They had all learned from their parents, although in the past year with their father taking extra work at the slate quarries and steel mills and their mother running the farm, the children had mostly entertained themselves.Since their father had gone to Bethlehem six weeks earlier, the house kept them in fear at night with its noises. The boards and pipes had probably sighed and moaned before, but the presence of their parents had been a barrier to the children's fear. In their loneliness they had no memory. After the washing and putting away of supper dishes, the five huddled in the dim kitchen and listened, eyes frozen on one another, as the piano keys seemed to play themselves. Plink. Plonk. Plink. The long nights stretched ahead with nothing to do. There was no money for toys, games, or books, and so they sat, too scared to find out what was making the piano play in the parlor. Plink. Plonk. Plink.Antonette knew it was the mice. She reassured them. But even she caught herself when another note rang out. One night Frank flipped his black hair, badly in need of a cut, away from his eyes and declared the pianist was the Boogeyman, a goblin who came out at night and hunted for children with his shotgun. Antonette told Frank if he was so sure, to go and see, but he argued that she was the oldest, so she should go.She didn't want to, either, even though she knew it was silly. But by herself she entered the black parlor with the lamp and a broom. Plink. Plonk. Plink. Halfway across, the lamplight fell over the piano keys and grey shadows flitted into the blackness. She jumped, turned back. She must not show them her fear. Their mother who killed chickens would never have been afraid of mice.In the kitchen she announced that no one was there, but then she remembered what their father had told them a long time ago about evil spirits -- that they liked loneliness and sadness, and came to haunt places where sad people lived. She told the others that by playing and singing and having a good time, they would scare off the Boogeyman. He would lose his powers. "We need to play the piano," she said. "The more fun we have, the Boogeyman will be nowhere to be found." She said this so earnestly, she almost believed it herself. "Who wants to play?" she asked, looking from one small face to another.It was Rosie who pushed away from the table, wordless, crept into the parlor and played for them. Soon Antonette was skipping in a circle with Josephine, laughing, Nick bobbing in the arms of his brother, the Boogeyman kept away.Later, before bed, Antonette had asked Rosie how she'd found the courage to sit down at the piano in that empty parlor. Rosie raised her arm in the lamplight, the charm bracelet hanging from her wrist. She flicked the red twig ornament so that it swayed back and forth. "It protects me, don't you think?" she said to Antonette. They blew out the lamp. The silhouette of the twig looked like a young deer's antlers in the dark.

By the time the linens were rinsed and rung out, however, thick black clouds blotted out the sun and a breeze kicked through the yard. Antonette and her sisters hung the sheets in the summer porch and lugged more pails of kerosene upstairs. Their father was due home that evening, and Antonette wanted the house clean, the wood chopped, and baths drawn before supper. She kept picturing their father at the table, telling stories like he used to do when he came home from the nearby slate quarries, how the munaceddi, or little demons, would play pranks on the men. Once he had told a story of how he was running the engine that pulled up the men from the quarry bottom, but when he hit the lever a munaceddu struck -- the men fell, hit the slate, two of them hurt badly and a third in the water. "And the munaceddu, he was right there in front of me, looked just like a little monk, but with a dirty face," their father said, grinning. He sat forward and ate quickly, elbows on the table, scraping the monesta from his plate."A dirty face?" Frank asked."Sure! They're like children, and this one was eating a candy bar."The children squirmed and bounced in their seats, begging for more details."A chocolate bar," Pop said. "That's how I know it was real. You don't remember the little things like that unless something's real."Antonette wondered what kind of stories their father would have to tell now, if any.The bed frames had dried. In their bedroom, Antonette and Rosie set saucers underneath the bed's legs and poured kerosene in each one. Any bugs that tried to climb up the bed posts would get trapped in the pool and die. Then the sisters lugged the stripped down mattresses from the hall into the bedrooms. How quickly the sky turned dark, just like on the day of their mother's death, except it had been a Sunday and their father had been home. Company had been over, quarry men who were drinking wine and playing cards. Their mother had made them cocoa as a treat. She asked Antonette to come with her to a neighbor's for tomato plants. The afternoon was hot and bright. They had to stop several times on the road even though it was a short walk for Maria Philippa Capone to rest, and when they passed the house of her aunt and cousins, Zia Sophia rushed to the gate and scolded her, that a woman eight months pregnant should not be out in such heat. Clouds rolled in and the skies rumbled.By the time the men rushed in the house with Maria's limp body and the doctor burst into the parlor to operate, the rain pelted the dusty road and Antonette knew her mother was dead. Was it the malocchio that had killed her, despite the rituals her mother had so carefully performed? Or was it true, what the doctor had said to her sobbing aunt and cousins, that Maria had worked too hard on the farm, and the baby had died inside. And because the baby was already dead, Maria Philippa Cascario Capone had died, too.Antonette didn't want to think of it. She instructed Rosie to set up the saucers under the frame in the master bedroom; she and Josephine would finish setting up the beds in theirs. Rosie stuck out her lip and didn't move. Antonette snapped at her, told Rosie she was a big girl, nine-years-old, and she knew how to do it. Sulking, Rosie set down her pail outside the door, said, "You have a mean mouth," and stomped into the master bedroom.When the explosion sounded moments later, Antonette could not even be sure where in the house it had come from. Her first thought was of her brother's description of the Boogeyman, that he carried a shotgun and must have climbed on the kitchen roof, shooting at them through the windows. Then she thought someone else must be shooting, not a ghost but a real, evil person. But then Rosie's screams pierced the air heavy with the odor of kerosene and now, smoke. Antonette and Josephine dropped the mattress they had been dragging into place and ran into the next bedroom. There stood Rosie, their sister's pretty face lit up by the wick she must have been lighting, but the lamp's glass globe lay strewn on the floor in broken shards, matches flung everywhere from the dropped box, the top dresser drawer ajar. Rosie was shaking, gulping air and holding her hands out in front of her, staring down at where her fingers used to be, but where shredded flesh like ribbons of black lace now hung from protruding bone. The front of her dress was splattered with blood.Antonette grabbed Rosie, and with strength she didn't know she was capable of, carried her out and down the stairs, yelling for Josephine to find their brother. On her way Antonette knocked over one of the pails from the top step; the bucket tumbled and hurled itself against the rails, kerosene pouring after her, drenching her ankles and stockings. But she ran, not looking back or down, Rosie screaming, ears ringing, treading slippery gravel up the road with the clouds groaning and colliding overhead. She kept running, and when the Dutch farmer's house came into view she started screaming so that by the time she had reached the yard and couldn't run anymore, knees buckling, the yellow-haired man and his wife had raced out to meet her. The man snatched up Rosie, yelled back for Antonette to speak in English, that they couldn't understand Italian. Antonette knew they were asking her what had happened, and somehow she found the words to tell them that Rosie must have been lighting a lamp, not knowing that kerosene is flammable. Not until later that evening after the doctor had amputated the remainder of Rosie's fingers, given her another dose of morphine and bandaged the stumps, their father at first hysterical and then withdrawn, would Antonette discover that Michele Capone had kept blasting caps from his quarry job in the top dresser drawer, next to the matches for the lamp.The Dutch woman ran inside to phone the doctor, and the man cried back at Antonette, "What am I going to do? Where is your father?" But all Antonette could do was stare at her sister, passed out in the man's blonde-haired arms, Rosie's skirt soaked in blood, the rising shrieks closing in around them as more neighbors, relatives, siblings came hurrying. A shriek climbed in her own throat the same way it had on the day she had banged and yanked on her aunt's outhouse door, begging for her mother to come out. When the uncles had finally busted through, the rickety door fell open to reveal her mother slumped to one side, eyes rolled back and dress a dark tide. Someone had grabbed Antonette's elbow to drag her away, as someone did now: Josephine, gasping, arms cut and bleeding, holding up the bracelet, the chain swinging and the charm no longer coral, but gritty with dirt, and blood.

Contributors

CONNOR FISHER is the author of A Renaissance with Eyelids (Schism Press, 2024), The Isotope of I (Schism Press, 2021), and four poetry and hybrid chapbooks, including The Unholy Moon (salò press, 2024). He has an MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and English from the University of Georgia. His writing has appeared in journals including Denver Quarterly, Random Sample Review, Tammy, the Colorado Review, and Diagram. He currently lives and teaches in northern Mississippi.IGNACY KARPOWICZ was born in 1976 in Białystok and now lives in Warsaw. Over the past dozen years he has published seven novels. His work has been translated into German, Spanish, Hungarian, and Lithuanian; two of his books, Gestures and Sonka, have appeared in English. His Balladyny i romanse won the prestigious Polityka Passport Prize. He is a translator ofEnglish, Spanish, and Amharic. His wry humor and interest in aviation are evident in his brief account of his writing career.MAŁGORZATA MARKOFF and JOHN MARKOFF have translated three books into English: Greetings from Novorossiya: Eyewitness to the War in Ukraine (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017) and Poland 1945: War and Peace (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). Polanim (Academic Studies Press, forthcoming) gathers moving interviews with Polish Jews who moved to Israel for widely differing reasons and whose experience of their new and old countries varied equally widely. Małgorzata and John are now turning to translations of fiction. Their translation of the short story “Many Years of Hardships” by Jakub Żulczyk appeared in the British literary review Fictionable (Spring 2024). John is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. Małgorzata is an accomplished translator between Polish and English with experience in journalism as well. She was the translator of The Diary of Rywka Lipszyc (Jewish Family and Children Services, 2014). She also translated three Holocaust diaries that appeared as chapters in Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, ed. Alexandra Zapruder (Yale University Press, 2012), which won the prestigious National Jewish Book Award. Previously, she translated novels, articles, and a memoir from English into Polish.JOSEPH KENYON is the author of one novel, All the Living and the Dead, and his short fiction and poetry have appeared in Blue Unicorn, Halfway Down The Stairs, and Stoneboat. When not writing, he teaches at the Community College of Philadelphia and spends time observing the way light and sounds shift moment to moment, in and around us.MARTIN PERLMAN was born and raised in Atlanta but spent his adult life out West in California, Colorado, and now Washington. Previous work has been included in SORTES (!), Catamaran Literary Reader, Flora Fiction, eMerge Magazine, The Ravens Perch, and 34th Parallel Magazine, among others. He wrote what he thinks is a whimsical novel, Thinks Out Loud: A Blog at First (Marrow Press). In non-writing time, Martin likes to try bending notes on a blues harp.MEGAN TRIHEY writes about coming to terms with leaving things behind. She worked as a television producer for two decades before earning an MFA from Pacific University, where she completed a short story collection. Her stories can be found in the latest issues of October Hill, Smoky Blue, Moria, and Pattern Recognition. She is currently working on a new collection. Explore all things Megan at @megantrihey and MeganTrihey.com.MYKYTA RYZHYKH was born in Ukraine and now lives in Tromsø, Norway. He was nominated for the Pushcart and Touchstone Prizes. He has been published often in both Ukrainian and English journals, including Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, and Neologism Poetry Journal. His book Tombboy will be published in 2026 by Lost Telegram Press.ROBERT HILL COX spent eighteen years as a financial writer and editor at a big financial services firm in New York City, ending up as the head of its editorial services in the Americas. More recently, he has been writing essays for Greymantle’s Politics and Culture and published stories in Glass Mountain and Bewildering Stories.S. MUBASHIR NOOR moonlights as a mediocre communications professional by day and crafts absurdist satire laced with magic realism at the crack of dusk. A Pakistani expat based in Malaysia, he enjoys photography, sharply sketched TV shows, and the fleeting euphoria of reaching his weekly word count. Find him on Instagram [@smobynoor] (https://www.instagram.com/smobynoor/).SERGEY BOLMAT lives in London. His short stories have appeared in such publications as BigCityLit, The Willesden Herald, Litro Magazine, Wensum, Ghost Parachute, The Inquisitive Eater, Broken Pencil, and some others. In 2024, Wild Wolf Publishing, a small press from Newcastle upon Tyne, brought out his novel What’s Mine.VANESSA BLAKESLEE’s latest book of stories, Perfect Conditions, won the Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award for the Short Story (2018). Blakeslee is also the author of Train Shots (stories) and Juventud (a novel), both of which received prizes and accolades. Her writing has appeared in The Southern Review, The Paris Review Daily, Kenyon Review Online, Joyland, The Smart Set, and many other places. She has been awarded grants and residencies from Yaddo, The Banff Centre, Ledig House/Writers Omi, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, the Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, and many more. Blakeslee has taught for the MFA in writing programs at Goddard College and the City University of Hong Kong, and she currently teaches at the University of Central Florida.

Support ArtWell

SORTES supports local, charitable, and community-based groups. Here's one important organization that SORTES supports:

ArtWell

"ArtWell was founded in 2000 to respond to the chronic community violence in Philadelphia by introducing a preventive, educational, arts-oriented approach to reach underserved communities and youth facing discrimination, poverty, violence, and the everyday challenges of growing up. Our mission is to support young people and their communities through multidisciplinary arts expression, education, and creative reflection to celebrate their strengths, thrive while facing complex challenges, and awaken their dreams."Charity NavigatorThe people who have worked on this publication support this cause and we urge you to as well.

Learn More & Donate!

Thank you!

Submission & Contact

SORTES is the very model of a modern major journal

Find us here and there:

To submit contributions, comments, questions, or suggestions, please email

sortesmagazine@gmail.com

The Dashing SORTES Mailing List

Join our debonair mailing list for news about upcoming issues, in-person events, performances, and whatever else we dream up to make all our lives more complicated and exquisite:

SORTES is?

SORTES is a spinning collection of stories, poems, songs, and illustrations to help while away the wintery June nights. It’s an oddball grabbag wunderkammer mixtape offering distraction and refreshment.We have neither theme nor scene. Each issue is its own creature. We publish both the sufficiently strange and insufficiently boring: swart stories, hoity poetry, magical surrealism, beatnik travelogues, hard modern haiku, pulp, fantasia, antibiography, crooning balladeering, experimental sentimentalism, and grainy sideways photography.We also host online readings, old time radio performances, and other beloved gimmicks as they occur to us. Previous issues are available via the site’s Archive link.

Submitting

SORTES considers unsolicited submissions of poetry, prose, illustration, music, videos, and anything else you think may fit our format. Feel free to poke us; we’d love to find a way to publish dance, sculpture, puzzles, and other un-literary modalities.SORTES is published quarterly. Each issue includes approximately ten works of lit, visual, or performance art. We like a small number of works per issue: artists and readers should have a chance to get to know each other.SORTES, you’ll notice, is primarily a black-and-white publication, and we like to play with that (by featuring monochrome videos and photography, for example), but we’ll happily consider your polychrome submission.Submissions are ongoing throughout the year. We consider artists with both extensive and limited publishing experience. We accept simultaneous submissions but please inform us if your work has been accepted elsewhere. We publish translations and reprints on a case-by-case basis; please send us a note describing your interest. And while there's no restriction on the number of pieces you can submit, please have a heart.There’s no need for an extensive cover letter or publication history but please tell us who you are, what kind of writing or art you do, and a bit about what you’re sending us. There are no formatting requirements for text submissions. There is no fee to submit. Please send submissions as email attachments whenever possible; multimedia submissions may be sent as links.

Rights

You asked and we provide: what's up with publication rights and ownership?Simple: When you publish with us, you give SORTES one-time publication rights for your work. You retain all rights to your work after publication. Work published with SORTES will remain available via our online Archive.While SORTES retains the right to link to or excerpt your published work, we do not have the right to publish your work in new formats (including print). If we would like to pursue publication of your work in new formats, we'll ask you and hopefully agree to terms.

Mahoffs

SORTES was created by founding editor Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum and emeritus editor Kevin Travers. Current editors are listed in our masthead, Many of us live in Philadelphia, some luckily do not, but we invite writers and artists everywhere to live the SORTES fantasia.

Events

SORTES regularly offers readings and performances. For upcoming events, please check here and our Facebook page.

Coming Soon Enough

SORTES 24 Live

Sunday, January 11, 2026
7pm

SORTES 24 throbs and aches and attacks! A blue heart is a new start! So join us for the SORTES 24 Live reading -- a zoomish evening of some / all of our issue's authors:Connor Fisher • John Markoff and Małgorzata Markoff • Joseph Kenyon • Martin Perlman • Megan Trihey • Mykyta Ryzhykh • Robert Hill Cox • S. Mubashir Noor • Sergey Bolmat • Vanessa BlakesleeIt'll be a toasty night to hear some great readings and meet our sparkling authors. As always, heartthrob Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum will host. The event is free and your last best shot at love.

Zoom Link

Meeting ID: 816 8522 4614
Passcode: 755629

Facebook Event

Radio SORTES

SORTES Expeditions

EXCITEMENT, ADVENTURE, AND REALLY MILD THINGS

SORTES Expeditions discovers places that are already there! We organize small teams to explore city streets, village squares, shopping malls, bus stations, downtowns, and byways with the mission of freshly seeing places we’re bored of seeing.And after the expedition, each team member produces field notes and one work of art in any medium for SORTES to publish.

Please select an Expedition listed below.

#1: Philadelphia, Passyunk Avenue

JOIN AN EXPEDITION OR MOUNT YOUR OWN EXPEDITION

If you live in the Philadelphia region or would pilgrimage to Philadelphia, consider joining us for a future Expedition. Ideal candidates include social scientists, public introverts, people who own reasonable walking shoes, and anyone who devotes the most passion to the least important. Please let us know if you're interested.Or maybe you're interested but live in a lesser non-Philadelphia location? Organize your own Expedition! SORTES would be delighted to collaborate with you. We would lend organizational expertise, templates for field reports, and other guidance -- and you can publish your field notes and art on SORTES. Please let us know if this sounds foxy.

RETURN TO EXPEDITIONS LIST

#1: Philadelphia, Passyunk Avenue

Overview

The SORTES expedition team undertook a inaugural pedestrian exploration in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania between October 25, 2025 11:00 am ET and October 25, 2025 5:00 pm ET. Our primary territory spanned East Passyunk Avenue between South Street and Broad Street. This territory, while for generations known to cartographers and inhabited by populations both indigenous and nonnative, had never been systematically chartered and documented. Team members ranged from experienced to novice pedestrians. Activities included individual notation, photographic and videographic documentation, paper rubbings, pastry sampling, and participation in the East Passyunk Avenue Business Improvement District’s East Passyunk Fall Fest, coincidentally occurring during our travel. While not all team members accomplished the summit, each voyager returned home safely.This expedition was made possible through the generous donations of our individual team members.Team field notes and media documentation follow.

Territory
Passyunk Avenue, South Street to Broad Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Date and Time
Saturday, October 25th, 2025
11:00 am to 5:00 pm ET (appx)

Team
Jeremy Tenenbaum: Chief
Kelly Ralabate: Archivist of Records / Cartographer
Alyssa Shea: Archivist of Media
Ellie Miller: Navigator / Sherpa and Medic
Daniel DiFranco: Camp and Equipage Manager
Len Davidson: Historian / Researcher
Judy Davidson: Communicator

Scheduled Itinerary
11:00am Assemble at base camp
11:15am Orientation, acclimatization, travel, operations
11:36am Mid-ascent camp: Triangle Tavern, Passyunk Avenue and 10th Street
12:23pm Summit camp: Passyunk Avenue and Broad Street
12:30pm Begin return trip
12:50pm Mid-descent camp: To be determined
1:15pm Famous Deli
1:45pm Base camp return / post-expedition debriefing: Tattooed Mom, 530 South Street
Post-expedition activities

Art

Jeremy Tenenbaum, Expedition Chief

"Mount Passyunk"

This sculpture represents the expedition course, mounting Philadelphia’s Passyunk Avenue from South Street to Broad Street. It's a simplified abstracted grid; in reality Passyunk, a noted diagonal, strikes Broad at a brazen angle and cross-streets intersect at angles as well. It also reorients the intuitive perception of the street, flipping north and south, and suggests a “climb” (despite the actual flat elevation).The sculpture is formed on a metal sheet, bent at the ends, encased in clay sheets. Due to my inexperience working with clay, the sculpture cracked as it dried. I considered repairing the cracks with fresh clay but worried this might cause additional harm. I also considered Photoshopping the cracks and lying to the world, as I usually do, but others convinced me to be true to the work and myself.

Kelly Ralabate: Archivist of Records / Cartographer

"The Ballad of Passyunk Ave"

A musical tribute to singing cowboy Marty Robbins

The day was bright and promising for seven traveling souls
On a journey through South Philly and the mysteries it holds
Typewriters and hardware, fresh cherry cheesecake,
Downing drinks outside of The Triangle for a break...But round Passyunk & 8th, we grinded to a halt,
Victims of a local man and his verbal assaultTurns out you cannot walk down Passyunk Avenue
without a Deadpool lifeguard stranger ranting at youWe had found ourselves outside of his family’s auto store,
His initial approach was jovial, but underneath lurked something more,
Deadpool mask pulled down with lifeguard shorts around his waist
As his tone turned sinister, the wary travelers braced.Talk of simulations and grand conspiracy,
Of how beings in the Matrix can never be truly free...The ranting and the raving was the opposite of brief
And to prove his final point he unplugged our chief.Over time the lecturing lost any sense of fun,
From a man with a rubber chicken holstered instead of a gun.
Eventually we all broke free and continued our hike,
Escaped conversation hostages from a man who’s not quite right.All the way to Broad Street our caravan pushed on,
Documenting wildlife and culture with abandon.But beware -- you cannot walk down Passyunk Avenue
without a Deadpool lifeguard stranger ranting at you.

Alyssa Shea: Archivist of Media

Alyssa Shea - soft coercion of highly constructed environments

"soft coercion of highly constructed environments: east passyunk ave"

Inspired by not only the act of walking down Passyunk Avenue, I also turned to my library to process the experience and to frame the construction of my video: Rebecca Solnit's Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas ("...any significant place is in some sense infinite, because its stories are inexhaustible...a place is only an intersection between forces converging from various distances..."). A 1984 pamphlet from Schuylkill Valley Nature Center that was tucked inside an old book of Philadelphia walking tours, picked up from a Free Little Library on one of my daily walks about the city ("abiotic factors / adaptations / communities / energy flow / material cycling / populations"). Dolores Hayden's The Power of Place (where James Rojas is quoted, "...the central core of the enacted environment is motion."). And lastly, Chris Kraus's introduction to Jane Dickson in Times Square ("...a fascination with how human beings navigate the soft coercion of highly constructed environments."), from which my video derives its title. The audio is a breakbeat mélange of didgeridoo, flute, autoharp, and field recordings from the expedition to channel the intersection of forces at play along Passyunk.

Daniel DiFranco: Camp and Equipage Manager

"nowsitrightbackandhereataleofawalkingfourhourmile"

Passyunk, I learned, is a Lenape word for "in the valley." Now it's all concrete, blacktop, and signs. This earth shitten landscape wants to be dirt again. Everything seems to be in its last bloom, screaming to exist. Wouldn't it be nice if we, friends, could go hand in hand and fall into the sky already shadowbound on a perfect October day?

Judy Davidson: Communicator and Len Davidson: Historian / Researcher

I was inspired by our Day on Passyunk to go back and find some quotes I had saved while on a long journey with Lenny [Davidson] 20-some years ago.

Author	Source	Quotation
Miles Morland	A Walk Across France	"There is a great peace at the start of a long journey. The end is so far away that all you see is the journey itself. You think of nothing else."
Tim Parks	Italian Neighbors	"As so often in Italy, the picturesque is combined with a sharp edge of danger."
Sign on a hotel room door	Levanto, Italy	"Dear Sirs we inform you that the room is to be vacated before 10 AM. On the contrary the room will be debit."
Frances Mayes	Under the Tuscan Sun	"Most trips have an underlying quest. We're looking for something. What? Fun, escape, adventure--but then what? ... Once in a place, that journey to the far interior of the psyche begins or it doesn't. Something must make it yours, that ineffable something no book can capture."
Cheryl Strayed	Wild	"I had arrived. I'd done it. It seemed like such a small thing and such a tremendous thing at once, like a secret I'd always tell myself, though I didn't know the meaning of it just yet."
Judy Davidson	Sabbatical Travels (unpublished notes)	"It's sunny up here over the North Atlantic. The trip was long enough that I got past the need to go home a while ago, but by yesterday we were tired... We couldn't enjoy another restaurant meal. Wonderful, wonderful as it is, Paris, too, is in the real world and I'll now return to mine."
Gertrude Stein	As seen in a daily cryptoquote puzzle	"You look ridiculous if you dance. You look ridiculous if you don't dance. So you might as well dance."

As Roy Rogers and Dale Evans sang so long ago, happy trails to you.

Field Notes

Jeremy Tenenbaum, Expedition Chief

Time	Location	Notes
11:17am	Passyunk Ave and Bainbridge St	Planter with LEGO interpolation. 6 bags of cedar chips. 2 Zagars within view.
[Untimed]	Philadelphia AIDS Thrift, Passyunk Ave & 5th St	[Cat Hanson Box] [notebook writing unclear]
[Untimed]	Passyunk Ave & Bainbridge St (appx)	742 mural
[Untimed]	Passyunk Ave & Christian St	PoMo brick shutters.
[Untimed]	Passyunk Ave & 8th St	“Deadpool Lifeguard” encounter: L. Davidson engages, Shea engages, "Deadpool" "unplugs me" [from The Matrix].
12:37pm	Mid-ascent camp: Triangle Tavern, Passyunk Ave & 10th St	Note: 1 hour later than projected itinerary
[Untimed]	Lost sight of DiFranco and Miller
[Untimed]	Statue of Joey Giardello (Legendary Philadelphia Boxer), Passyunk Ave & 13th St & Mifflin St	L. and J. Davidson diverged from team. Passerby asks Tenenbaum for location of “benches.”
[Untimed]	Passyunk Ave & Mifflin St.	Edit: K. Ralabate, Archivist: Mouse incident: Shea and Tenenbaum, kneeling to record crayon rubbing of local manhole cover, unintentionally trip human-sized Mickey Mouse afflicted with misfortune of being unable to look down.
[Untimed]	Summit camp: Passyunk Ave & Broad St	Team reduced to Tenenbaum, Ralabate, Shea. Note for posterity indicating team members and course buried in planter
[Untimed]	Statue of Joey Giardello (Legendary Philadelphia Boxer), Passyunk Ave & 13th St & Mifflin St	Rejoined L. and J. Davidson
[Untimed]	Fall Festival shop tables, Passyunk Ave	Rejoined DiFranco and Miller
3:16pm	Philly Typewriter, 1735 E Passyunk Ave	Davidsons diverged from team. Stated intention to reach Broad Street, taxi home.
3:35pm	ACME parking lot, Passyunk Ave & Dickenson St	Brief camp at corner. Team reduced to Tenenbaum, Ralabate, Shea. Note spiky seedpod [empty] and blackened bananas
[Untimed]	Shot Tower Coffee, 542 Christian St	Diverged course to briefly camp. Communication from DiFranco and Miller to meet “in 10 minutes” at Base Camp.
[Untimed]	Base camp: Passyunk Ave & South St	Rejoined DiFranco and Miller
Post-expedition: [Untimed]	Taco & Ramen, 615 South St	Dinner. Team minus Davidsons
Post-expedition: [Untimed]	Cry Baby, 627 S 3rd St	Drinks. Team minus Davidsons
Post-expedition: [Untimed]	Various	DiFranco and Miller stated intention to “get a nightcap” elsewhere nearby. Shea stated intention to meet husband at The Last Drop Coffeehouse. Tenenbaum and Ralabate return home.

Kelly Ralabate: Archivist of Records / Cartographer

Fig 1. Expedition Points of Interest
Fig 2. Expedition Findings

Alyssa Shea: Archivist of Media

Photos

Videos

Rubbings

Sketches

Found

Ellie Miller: Navigator / Sherpa and Medic

Len Davidson: Historian / Researcher and Judy Davidson: Communicator

Odd Lots

A Proper Mast-Lashing

Philosophies and Phrases for Debased Phases

or Aphorisms for Schisms or Epigrams for Pigs and Rams

The first lie we're taught is existence of sin. The second is we shouldn't have it..
Drinking, like religion and suspicion, is only dangerous in excess or less.Sex and love are each admirable but together inconceivable.The problem with good taste is that there's too much of it. A surfeit of quality is the tedium of heaven.From birth I easily succeeded. Only through great effort have I failed, albeit not very well.Sobriety is the only impediment to intoxication.Poetry lies to make truth seem plausible.Don't deny yourself a fantasy because reality is flawed. Fiction is a valid form of fact.I derive from a long line of the dead. In fact, everyone I know comes from dead stock. All living people have survivor's guilt.I assume all interactions are loving and flirtatious except those that are.The body makes us human but adornment is denial of the body and denial of the body is civilization and civilization makes us human..
It's later than you drink.I'd like to die while I'm young enough to appreciate it. I may not have traveled much in life but I expect to travel reasonably far in death.La petit morte is more manageable and repeatable than la morte grande.Intellectual property fences in the ocean. Wit belongs to any qualified thief.A friend is just a stranger you've met.Morality says A is right and B is wrong. Ethics asks you to choose between C and D.A nickname given for not drinking is a soberquet.Marry the myopic and live beautiful forever.Decency is the most popular hypocrisy.Religion revealing the historic is a useful mooring. Religion revealing the mystic is abusively boring. Religion is only useful when unbelieved..
My only regret is having been born a man instead of a book.An epicurean, voluptuary, and hedonist walk into a baroque...My mistakes are my best and only qualities.It's best to be hated by the wrong people.We always knew the world was round. Through vast effort we taught ourselves it was flat. Then through much more effort we taught ourselves it was round. And we've never learned our lesson.Fear is not, and the only, convincing theological argument.Life exists to create life but death exists to create thought.I'm queer in every sense except the homosexual.I'm an atheist because I'm too moral not to be.Great minds kink alike..
All evil is caused by children or what they become.
.
.
.
Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum
Editor
June 13, 2025

Correspondence

SORTES invites readers and contributors to fight amongst themselves. Please talk with us! Comment on stories and poems, letters, and the SORTES demimonde in general by emailing

sortesmagazine@gmail.com

Title

“Text.”

Name, Date

SORTES Riposte

Shop

SORTES is a mostly online journal, as you know, but every so often we can't resist existing.

Spectral Annual 2024

Here are four ghastly cards celebrating the tradition of sharing ghost stories at the end of the year. Each card features original eerie illustrations and newly-commissioned horror stories:-- Irina Tall's illustrations
-- Kailey Tedesco's poetry
-- Luke Condzal's historical existential story
-- Nick Perilli's familial ghost warmer, and
-- Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum's fraternal horror.Keep them, mail them, trade them, resell them once supplies inevitably exhaust.

Annual 2023

The SORTES Spectral Winter Annual 2023 revives the tradition of haunted holiday fiction. This beautifully crafted 44-page paperback anthology features ghastly short stories showcasing a dead man’s special deliveries, a judgmental seaside specter, the pains of an aging table-rapper, the heartwarming war on the poor, and the electrifying end of the year / world, as well as poems celebrating the Jersey Devil's unsung siblings. Authors include Daniel DiFranco, Jean Zurbach, Kailey Tedesco, Max D. Stanton, Mordecai Martin, and Nick Perilli. The Annual makes an ideal holiday present for any dear friend or family member who loathes the living.

SORTES Sampler 2

A SORTES Sampler 2 is a slender tasty book collecting weird fiction by Max D. Stanton, surrealist collage art by Danielle Gatto Hirano, and a poetry cycle by Uri Rosenshine. It’s a handsomely designed but affordable little snack of a book. We have incredibly limited copies on hand, and every day they become incredibly more limited, so leap today.

SORTES Sampler 1

SOLD OUT

A SORTES Sampler 1 was our first attempt to make the ephemeral real. It contains a dystopian farmstead fantasy by Iris Johnston, paper cutout art by Abi Whitehead, and a Coney Island noir by Mordecai Martin.

Or delay your delicious fulfillment and

Buy In Person

When in Philadelphia, please gobble up your copies from:Brickbat Books, Head & Hand Books, A Novel Idea on PassyunkPlease note that not every publication is sold in each location. If these fine stores are sold out, march to the counter and sweetly demand more SORTES.

Martin Perlman “ILL Moments”

Connor Fisher Two Poems

Ignacy Karpowicz “Tuvalu. A Christmas Carol”

Mykyta Ryzhykh Two Poems

Joseph Kenyon “Mike Nettles’ Block Of Wood”

Megan Trihey “His Dog Kitty”

Robert Hill Cox “The Recompense”

S. Mubashir Noor “The Marigold Named Maryam”

Sergey Bolmat “In The End”

Vanessa Blakeslee “Malocchio”

Contributors

Support ArtWell

Submission & Contact

Events

SORTES 24 Live

Radio SORTES

SORTES Expeditions

Please select an Expedition listed below.

Team Jeremy Tenenbaum: Chief Kelly Ralabate: Archivist of Records / Cartographer Alyssa Shea: Archivist of Media Ellie Miller: Navigator / Sherpa and Medic Daniel DiFranco: Camp and Equipage Manager Len Davidson: Historian / Researcher Judy Davidson: Communicator

Jeremy Tenenbaum, Expedition Chief

"Mount Passyunk"

Kelly Ralabate: Archivist of Records / Cartographer

"The Ballad of Passyunk Ave"

A musical tribute to singing cowboy Marty Robbins

Alyssa Shea: Archivist of Media

"soft coercion of highly constructed environments: east passyunk ave"

Daniel DiFranco: Camp and Equipage Manager

"nowsitrightbackandhereataleofawalkingfourhourmile"

Judy Davidson: Communicator and Len Davidson: Historian / Researcher

I was inspired by our Day on Passyunk to go back and find some quotes I had saved while on a long journey with Lenny [Davidson] 20-some years ago.

As Roy Rogers and Dale Evans sang so long ago, happy trails to you.

Jeremy Tenenbaum, Expedition Chief

Kelly Ralabate: Archivist of Records / Cartographer

Alyssa Shea: Archivist of Media

Photos

Videos

Rubbings

Sketches

Found

Ellie Miller: Navigator / Sherpa and Medic

Len Davidson: Historian / Researcher and Judy Davidson: Communicator

Odd Lots

Archive

Shop

Subscribe

Patreon

Martin Perlman
“ILL Moments”

Connor Fisher
Two Poems

Ignacy Karpowicz
“Tuvalu. A Christmas Carol”

Mykyta Ryzhykh
Two Poems

Joseph Kenyon
“Mike Nettles’ Block Of Wood”

Megan Trihey
“His Dog Kitty”

Robert Hill Cox
“The Recompense”

S. Mubashir Noor
“The Marigold Named Maryam”

Sergey Bolmat
“In The End”

Vanessa Blakeslee
“Malocchio”

Team
Jeremy Tenenbaum: Chief
Kelly Ralabate: Archivist of Records / Cartographer
Alyssa Shea: Archivist of Media
Ellie Miller: Navigator / Sherpa and Medic
Daniel DiFranco: Camp and Equipage Manager
Len Davidson: Historian / Researcher
Judy Davidson: Communicator