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Copyright © 2012 by FictionBrigade

This book contains works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely

coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, transmitted or distributed in any form or by any means without permission.

“Impressions of Death and the Afterlife” © 2011 by Kaj Anderson-Bauer“A Flash Look” © 2011 by Roy Buck

“Crow-Boy and the Opposite of Indifference” © 2011 by Brian Cooper“yOWSa” © 2011 by Jacqueline Delibes

“The Future Is So Gay” © 2012 by Shawn Duyette“Mending Wall” © 2011 by Richard Helmling

“Unfamiliar Rooms” © 2011 by Walter Holland“Wanderlust” © 2011 by Danilo Lopez

“Summer Memories” © 2011 by Catherine A. MacKenzie“Chat” © 2011 by Monica Martinez

“A Vist to the Hen House” © 2011 by Debra Mathis“The Purple Hat” © 2011 by Melanie McDonald

“No Beards for Mr. Bailey” © 2012 by Peter McKenna“Whispers in the Night” © 2011 by Melissa Mendelson

“Passing Lane” © 2011 by Brandon Meyers“Wronged by the Circus, Again” and “Saying Goodbye” © 2011 by Ryan Moll

“Sierra Nevada Reverie” and “Daydreams and Hiking” © 2011 by Shelley Muniz“In the South of France We Split Hairs” © 2012 by Brittany Newell

“Shrinking Husband” © 2011 by Vincent Rendoni“There’s Always All That” © 2011 by Allie Rowbottom

“Networking” © 2011 by Jessica Simms“Not Totally Passive” © 2011 by Louise Farmer Smith

“The Study Date” © 2011 by Simone Stedmon“Mouth to Mouth” © 2011 by Clare Tascio

“Notes from an Inner City School” © 2011 by Ling E. Teo“Rainbow Gold” © 2011 by Valerie Tidwell

“Job Interrogation” © 2011 by Lauren Tolbert“The Heartthrob” © 2011 by Gina Wohsldorf

“Thoughts” © 2011 by Meirav Zehavi“pressed between leaves” © 2012 by Eleanor Bennett

“Snap Cut” © 2011 by Christopher Hackbarth“Purple Hat” © 2011 by Sean Lefler

Published by FictionBrigade, LLC.www.fictionbrigade.com

FictionBrigadeTM

Cover design by Clare Tascio978-0-9849834-0-7 (eISBN)

978-0-9849834-1-4 (POD ISBN)

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CONTENTS

Fiction

Impressions of Death and the Afterlife 6

A Flash Look 8

Crow-Boy and the Opposite of Indifference 9

yOWSa 11

The Future is So Gay 13

Mending Wall 17

Unfamiliar Rooms 19

Wanderlust 21

Chat 23

The Purple Hat 26

No Beards for Mr. Bailey 30

Whispers in the Night 34

Passing Lane 36

In the South of France We Split Hairs 37

Shrinking Husband 41

There’s Always All That 45

Networking 47

Kaj Anderson-Bauer

Roy Buck

Brian Cooper

Jacqueline Delibes

Shawn Duyette

Richard Helmling

Walter Holland

Danilo Lopez

Monica Martinez

Melanie McDonald

Peter McKenna

Melissa Mendelson

Brandon Meyers

Brittany Newell

Vincent Rendoni

Allie Rowbottom

Jessica Simms

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Fiction

Art

Haikus

pressed between leaves 65

Snap Cut 66

Purple Hat 27

Eleanor Bennett

Christopher Hackbarth

Sean Lefler

Summer Memories 68

A Visit to the Hen House 69

Wronged by the Circus, Again, Saying Goodbye 70

Sierra Nevada Reverie, Daydreams and Hiking 71

Catherine A. MacKenzie

Debra Mathis

Ryan Moll

Shelley Muniz

Not Totally Passive 48

The Study Date 49

Mouth to Mouth 52

Notes from an Inner City School 54

Rainbow Gold 57

Job Interrogation 58

The Heartthrob 59

Thoughts 61

Louise Farmer Smith

Simone Stedmon

Clare Tascio

Ling E. Teo

Valerie Tidwell

Lauren Tolbert

Gina Wohlsdorf

Meirav Zehavi

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FICTION

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So let’s say you die. Freak accident let’s

say. It happens all the time. Maybe you have a heart

attack. But no—you deserve better. Maybe it’s

summer. You are painting your house. You have

lived in this house for years, you and your

husband—or maybe your wife. You bought the

house years ago, when real estate was cheaper. Now

you are finally

getting that

mortgage paid

off, and it feels

good to have

assets.

It is one of those days in early summer

when yard work still seems like a good idea. The

new grass is coming up, and there is a warm breeze

blowing. So you buy a few of those big buckets of

paint—yellow paint, because you are starting over.

Starting over? Yes, you think. Today is a new day.

You pull the ladder out of the garage and

get to work painting your eaves. “Goodbye blue

trim,” you think, “it will all be yellow now. Yellow

forever.” Pretty soon your arm begins to tire, and

you sort of reach out for the last little bit of eave

over the front door. Then, before you have much

awareness of what is going on, you are falling and

twisting backwards down into the sidewalk.

You don’t feel the impact of the earth. That’s

because your neck is broken. You don’t know you

are dying yet.

All you know

is that you

seem to be

stuck to the

sidewalk. Now you realize that you won’t be

getting up again—“I am dying,” you think, and

your brain starts churning wildly. You begin to

panic. “Oh my God,” you think, “I am going to

die.” But even though your brain is more active in

these last moments than it has been in your entire

life, to a passerby you would already appear dead.

And here it comes. Your mind is like a light bulb

that flares brilliantly and then quietly burns out.

Then you are dead. You were thinking something

Impressions of Death and the AfterlifeFiction

By Kaj Anderson-Bauer

Then you are dead

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as you died, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

There’s a lack of continuity between life

and death—physics is different here, for example,

and that’s just one thing. Getting off the ground

might take you ten years. You might insist that your

back is broken for that long. It’s not broken, but it

takes most people a few years to adjust. It takes a

while to get used to being dead, and in some cases

the post-death depression and the haunting memo-

ries never go away. The afterlife can be a depressing

place, and the adjustment is different for everyone.

It might take fifty years before you can even stand

up again—it might take five hundred. But then,

time is different in the afterlife too. Years will go

whizzing by before you know it. Five hundred years

is pocket change here.

But see, that’s the bad news. There are good

bits of the afterlife as well. Your memories and

your imagination do everything here, so that opens

up a lot of possibilities. You can float in the air for

example, and you can breathe underwater. You also

might meet someone here—someone to love. You

might start a family. It happens all the time. People

have built monuments of infinite height and also

infinite smallness. People have written stories so

long that they take thousands of years to read—but

here we have time to read them. We have time for

everything.

Truth is, lots of people die and go on to

do great things, even with the depression and the

haunting memories. Some people are actually hap-

pier here. Maybe that’s you. Maybe, once you get

up off the ground, you will come to realize that

painting everything yellow wouldn’t have solved

your problems anyway. You might realize that you

really couldn’t have started over on that summer

day, so long ago. You can never start over; you can

only keep going.

Maybe at a certain point, you will forget everything

about the few years you spent living. How long will

it take to forget? It’s hard to say. Maybe, one night,

millions of years from now, you will awake from a

dream. You will be lying in bed next to the person

you love—still asleep beside you. You will look up

at the ceiling of your house, dark in your bedroom.

You will hear the refrigerator turn on downstairs,

and you will wonder if you

ever really lived at all.

Kaj Anderson-Bauer writes fake gossip about his friends and

real letters to Val Kilmer. He has recently published his stories in

Melee Live and Thin Air Magazine. Kaj lives in Arkansas.

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Lincoln’s mirrored self a mismatch of two

differing faces. Different shades as the President stood

in front of the mirror. One of which was many shades

lighter, she noted. The death pallor of the Doppel-

ganger’s ghastliness. An action perceived in advance?

Bilocation, multi-location--when an

individual or object is in two places at the exact

same time: glimpsed shadow of themselves in

fringe vision. No chance of reflection in their

flashed position.

A look-a-like labeled harbinger. An omen.

At times, a ghostly double right by their sides.

*

A French teacher named Sagee, witnessed

by her 32 students, saw their teacher’s autoscopy

mimic and eat with nothing in her hands.

Sagee was ill. Her doppelganger passed

through her. Her parallel double was vibrant. In

broad daylight, there was the bilocate and it was

motionless while Sagee taught, but the doppelganger

mimicked writing while the teacher thought.

*

Lincoln was superstitious, some say an

occultist but really he studied a deeper truth hidden in

plain sight. Old mirrors holding memories of every

reflection captured. The president’s wife saw two

separate distinct Lincolns in their chamber’s mirror.

Lincoln stated, “That I was to be elected a

second term of office, and that the paleness of one

of the faces was an omen that I should not see life

through the last term.”

A deeper truth existed beneath the surface of the

chambered mirror; John Wilkes Booth’s bullet

exiting the front of Lincoln’s paled head.

People have said that if Roy Buck

was a mode of transportation he’d

be an ostrich with a leather saddle.

He was raised in Green and Gold

country (Wisconsin) before living

several years in both Missoula,

MT and “da” UP, off Lake

Superior.

A Flash LookFiction

By Roy Buck

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The people in the mountains have no religion

and the gods walk among them. You can travel

only a few hours from here and if you have a

guide to trace the winding path, find an unnamed

village whose every inhabitant is acquainted with

the crow-boy, and who offer food to him and his

associates. The inhabitants are less than a dozen

families now

and none of the

families large or

healthy. Their

losses give them

reason to be hostile to outsiders, and sometimes

reckless in their hostility. But if you bring weap-

ons, food, and authority, each in quantities enough

to compensate for the villagers superior patience,

guile, and aptitude for suffering, you may be able to

learn something like what’s written here.

The village is unnamed, but if you don’t go up

the mountain and instead go to the library in the

capital, you can ask the librarian to show you the

book that proves the existence of a Monastery on

Standing Mountain, and then of a First Village

Under the Monastery on Standing Mountain and a

Second Village Under the Monastery on Standing

Mountain. And so on. The book is a not a book

of history or geography, but a collection of tax

records, and implies that the Monastery was built

first and that

its presence

attracted the

people who

built houses,

cultivated small, terraced farms, offered a tax in

the form of grain to the inmates of the monastery.

And bred more of their kind. Implausible, but

most of the villagers assent to this story, claiming

also that the Monastery itself was built the week

after the creation of the world, and that it was

abandoned at the time of the founding of the

Empire. According to the tax records however, the

oldest people in Third Village should have heard

stories from their grandfathers about the

Crow-Boy and the Opposite of IndifferenceFiction

By Brian Cooper

Remember to breathe

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Monastery’s construction, and even those in Fourth

Village should have childhood memories of their

own to explain the monks’ departure.

If you do choose to go up the mountain and visit

the Monastery— a significant choice given the

villagers antipathy toward any persons or beings

associated with what they have come to call The

Black Temple— you will find a place that, despite

its reputation and history, stimulates the evaporation

of consciousness that, according to some historians,

was the hallmark tenet of the structure’s builders.

It’s more not-there than there. Not only are the

timbers charred nearly to ash and the foundation

stones interpenetrated with mosses, fungi, and all

their inbred cousins, but the roof is composed of

fog and the floor is sketched from fallen leaves and

your soft, shuffling footsteps. Your shadows are

the last standing idol. The place’s not-thereness

welcomes your not-hereness, and if you linger long

enough to stop asking why you came or how much

longer you’ll wait, or where you’ll go when you

leave, the boy with glossy black hair and the

unfortunate nose will at last get your attention.

He’s been here all along and he’s not really quiet.

Still, this is the first time you’ve apprehended his

offer. He’d enjoy your help in destroying the world

as it is, starting and ending with the crumpled huts

of the First Village. Not need, not want. But enjoy.

And you’ll also enjoy it too in parts, sometimes the

thrill of power, sometimes the unthrill of

powerlessness. Swords. Fire. Croaks the crow-boy.

Remember to breathe. Destroy? Without malice,

and without mercy. And yet with some other

opposite to indifference.

Shouldn’t that be difference? Croaks the crow-boy.

Brian gave up playing Dungeons & Dragons soon after he

got married and gave up writing fiction soon after he started

law school. Today, he has three sons and he works in the

general counsel’s office of a federal agency. And so, his very

cool and supportive wife says, if he wants to play games and

write stories, who’s going to say that he shouldn’t?

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US HIGHWAY 46, New Jersey – Seth Grantberg

has staged a defiant occupation of the garage attached

to his mother’s home in Parsippany, New Jersey. A

self-described “former Partner at commodities and

derivatives brokerage house MF Global,” Mr.

Grantberg, 42, readily granted an interview. MF

Global, until recently headed by ex-New Jersey

Governor Jon Corzine, is currently under federal

investigation for hundreds of millions of dollars in

missing money.

Mr. Grantberg, wearing a European-cut suit and

vibrant power tie, appeared exhausted as he lay on a

cot in the unheated garage. He noted that his current

diet includes root vegetables, a jar of Nescafé and

rain water. The former broker clutched a Cipriani

Wall Street lunch menu to his chest.

An inquiry about why he remains in his mother’s

garage and the whereabouts of his wife, friends and

home yielded a glacial silence. After several minutes,

Mr. Grantberg acknowledged, “They’re gone.”

In an attempt to use the bathroom, Mr. Grantberg

repeatedly banged on the door separating the garage

and main house, a door apparently bolted from the

inside by his mother Carolina Grantberg, 63. From

the kitchen, a muffled female voice answered, “You

want to use the amenities? Pay us back for your

education. Thank us for decades of sacrifice. Or

clean the bathroom for once since 2008, how’s

that?”

“Excuse me for a moment,” Mr. Grantberg said

as he raised the garage door and squatted behind

a hedge. Moments later he returned, zipping his

trousers. “A little customer money gets diverted

and now I’ve been cut off,” he said, and then yelled

towards the kitchen, “I’m pissed.”

Asked to define what he’s demonstrating against

and what his specific demands are, Mr. Grantberg

pointed to a protest sign painted with the words

“A Return to Flowing, Beautiful Excess!” In the

yOWSaFiction

By Jacqueline Delibes

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driveway, he marched alone in a circle for hours to

wave the sign at passing vehicles.

“Let me back in – I’m proud to be part of the

1%,” he shouted at a stray dog.

Incredibly, Mr. Grantberg claimed to be completely

unaware of the Occupy Wall Street movement that

has captured worldwide media attention. “Really?”

He looked away and fanned himself with a pile

of stock certificates. “I hope they get what they

‘deserve.’”

“Are you interested in futures by any chance?” said

Mr. Grantberg, looking refreshed by the question.

“The future?” asked the reporter for clarification.

“Not the future. Futures.”

Carolina Grantberg answered a reporter’s knock at the

main entrance. The living room was decorated with

stylish mid-century furniture accented by cheerful

family photos.

“Did Seth convince you he was a Partner at MF

Global?” asked Mrs. Grantberg. “He was fired

from a secretarial job at a dojo in 2008.”

She added, “He’ll join us for dinner, like he does

every night. Tonight it’s roast chicken, glazed carrots.

Pudding.”

“Seth is in a time-out at the moment. Of course

he uses the bathroom.”

Mrs. Grantberg shouted towards the garage door,

“But not when he’s been so disrespectful.”

Mr. Grantberg vigorously denied each of his mother’s

allegations of misconduct. “We acted perfectly within

SEC regulations. That’s all I’m permitted to say

because of the investigation.” He lit a cigar. “Caveat

emptor.”

Jacqueline Delibes writes humor – personal essays, flash fiction

and short video scripts. Her background includes film editing,

film production and marketing. She has a personal interest in

transformational healing. Find her at www.jacquelinedelibes.com.

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Michael clung desperately to the memory

of his best days. His apartment looked much like

his dorm room even though he graduated in 2026.

Four years later, he stood in what he liked to refer

to as his “Snatchelor Pad,” and nearly cried as he

looked at the photos of his college days.

He never even talked to his closest friend

anymore. Steve, like the rest of the “Duche Pixels,”

grew up, forgot about the band, and even old friends.

Since his friends had moved on, gotten great jobs,

money, and families, Mike’s decline had been quick

and violent.

The toll drugs and alcohol took on his liver

turned him into a madman. He was not psychotic

and somewhere still had a heart of gold, but years

of booze, nicotine, and processed food devoured

him, turning him mean and angry. His life was a

rage of heavy energy, attracting bad situations,

people, and occasionally animals, all which appeared

to be out to harm him.

Friendless, with no money and a bloated liver,

Michael, dumbfounded, found that he was crying.

He fell and his crushed will would not even

outstretch his arms to break the descent. His right

shoulder hit the wall and the weight of his distended

body easily pushed through the thick sheetrock.

Mikey’s feet slipped and he slid down, decimating

what remained of the wall.

He sobbed violently with his eyes wide open

and unblinking. Sheetrock dust merged with his tears

and created a depressing plaster. He cried himself

into a strange sleep but his eyes remained open.

Some hours later he awoke to the sound of his cell

phone. He painfully broke away dried plaster from

his dehydrated eyes. Sitting against the wall, partially

blind, Mikey considered never eating, or drinking, or

moving, ever again.

Vision reluctantly returned. He looked down

at his cell phone and saw the only thing that could

have helped him remember what hope felt like: Steve.

It took Mikey three days to get up the courage

to return Steve’s call. He was excited for the first time in

years. Nervously feeding on old dried cheese from the

myriad pizza boxes that made up most of his furniture,

The Future Is So GayFiction

By Shawn Duyette

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he built up enough energy after devouring his card

table, ottoman and T.V. stand to make the call. “Steve-

O! How the hell are ya fucker?”

Steve cringed after the opening line and

immediately regretted his decision to contact Mike.

His wife had insisted he at least check to ensure

that Mikey was alive.

Steve always did what Myra recommended.

“He might have been an ass the entire time we

knew him in college, but he was our ass,” Myra said.

Steve’s mind reeled when Myra suggested

he call. In his mind, she was the main reason he

didn’t call. “Creepy-eyed Mike,” would leer and

mentally undress Myra from his perpetual perch of

insobriety. He was the guy who told Steve how hot

Myra was, and joked that if Steve died, Myra would

be well looked after…in bed.

Steve felt bad for Mike, but was scared of

him. Steve was always a shy person and freaked

out the first day of school when this big mindless

idiot approached him and declared as loud as his

booming voice would project to the entire dining

hall, “This little fucking nerd is my new best friend.

He’s gonna help me graduate from this hell-hole so

nobody fuck with him…in fact, don’t even talk to

him! Understood!”

Years passed and Steve proved Mikey right.

He did all but show up and take Mike’s tests for

him. Over time, Mike’s gentle bullying made Steve

a bit tougher. Steve realized this, thanked Mike

internally, and after graduating, thought they would

part ways. Mostly he was right, but even though he

didn’t call, text, or email, Mike still showed up on

occasion without notice.

This was the longest hiatus yet and Steve

coyly admitted to Myra he was worried. She skillfully

pointed out the moral and spiritual obligation Steve

had for his karmic buddy. Though he didn’t believe

in karma, he believed in his wife. It took him three

days to build up the courage to call.

“I am ok Mikey, thanks. How are you doing

buddy?” Mikey was stupid by any measure, but was

not inept. He could hear the false concern in Stevie’s

voice and it was too much. He burst into tears and

wept aloud.

At first, Steve had no idea what sort of joke

Mike was playing. “C’mon Mike, I called to say hi. Can

you act mature at least once in your life?” The sobbing

continued and Steve felt his gut drop when he realized

what was happening. “Mike man, are you ok?”

After several minutes…a whimper. “No.”

The next morning, Mike awoke with the

ugliest, most dour look upon his mug. But for the

first time in years he was happy. He opened the

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door and went outside to hail a taxi.

Myra came to the room to wake Steve. He

lay there awake with his back turned. “Honey, you’ve

been sleeping a long time.” Steve’s eyes were wide

and clear as he turned to Myra. He said to her, “Baby,

I invited Mike to stay with us for a week or so.”

It took the correct and truthful answers to

dozens of questions to convince his wife he was

not mad. After she was satisfied he did the right

thing, she congratulated him for his courage, then

called her mother to tell her she and the kids were

coming to visit.

“A fucking six-pack!”

Steve thought he should have some beer for

his friend’s arrival. He genuinely thought that six

was too many. But after realizing the advanced state

of Mikey’s disease, he knew that six was too many.

“You know, I actually don’t think you

should be drinking at all buddy.”

“Don’t buddy me you little bitch! Get me a

bottle opener…now! Hahaha, just kidding chump.

Where are we going to party tonight?”

“Listen, I flew you here so you could relax

and be with a friend. Let’s not turn this into a week

of debauchery.”

“Dude, you’re killing my buzz!”

“C’mon man, I’m serious.”

“Fine. I’ll chill, ok? Now let’s get trashed. I’m

kidding…fuck. Get that worried look off your face.”

Before they went out, Steve admonished Mike

about the city. He told Mike it was not like Boston. San

Francisco had become so populated with aggressive

lesbian women, the men were threatened and

generally scared to go anywhere alone, and had learned

to become extremely polite and introspective when in

public. If so much as a wayward glance landed in the

direction of some groups of women in many parts of

the city, that man would be beaten and may not return

home. In reality, the women of the city became the

men, and the men like women.

That night, after drinking too much, the

two stumbled from the bar. Steve, more inebriated

than he intended, forgot entirely where they were

and the etiquette required for peaceful passage back

to the Bart station.

He was laughing and feeling bolstered by

the presence of his enormous friend when he

heard her.

“What the hell are you two going on about?”

He had seen her and her gang before outside

the Bart station. The last time he did, she was

pummeling a homeless man who dared asked her for

change. The man was hospitalized. Although many

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people saw what transpired, no one dared come

forward. If someone did, it was unlikely any of the

many lesbians that made up the corrupt police force

would even make an arrest.

“Why don’t you two little fuckers hand over

your wallets, and get the hell out of here.”

Mike was outraged but not at the woman;

he thought she was cute, even if she was a bitch.

What pissed him off was Steve. That pussy actually

handed over his wallet and said thank you.

“Steve, what the fuck are you are doing?”

“Dude, just do what she says.”

To which she replied, “Yeah dick dude, do

what she says.”

Mike yelled, “Bitch, shut the fuck up before

I slap you!”

Mike had done it now. A hundred and

one lesbians seemed to come out of nowhere and

descend upon the two behind a wave of thrown

bottles and scrap metal.

“Just hold down the dork. It’s the fat one

that called me a bitch.”

Mikey fought hard and knocked down at

least seven lesbians with his huge fists. Steve was

dragged over against a parked car and made to

watch the beating of his “fat-ass friend.”

After they were done pummeling Mikey,

they dragged his lifeless body up and over the Bart

railing, and discarded him down three stories into

the desolate station.

No one ever questioned the fact that some

drunk was found dead with so many contusions.

And Steven told no one but Myra.

Shawn Duyette is an

avid yoga practitioner

and the creator/author

of MotoYoga. The main

focus of his writing orbits

around the spheres of

self-help, exercise, health

& wellness, nutrition,

meditation, adventure and spirituality.

Shawn attended medical school and focused on Chinese,

holistic and integrative medicine. While in school, Shawn discovered

a penchant and a gift for massage and bodywork. He continues his

healing work today with a bent toward experiential enlightenment

and strives to assist others to discover their true strengths and

passion through exercise, adventure and creative storytelling.

Shawn Michael Duyette is an entrepreneurial

minded Sagittarian and a master of many trades. His wife

calls him a renaissance man. He is an author, yogi, martial

artist, and he can cook a gourmet meal. Shawn loves the

outdoors and meditation. He is a consummate creative type

who loves to invent and improve the world for all.

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Mending WallFiction

By Richard Helmling

When I pull up, there’s a crane by my

neighbor’s house.

This is out of the ordinary.

“What’s up, Mitch?” I ask, on account of

his name being Mitch.

“Solar panels.”

“Going green?”

“Self-sustaining. Got a tank up top for rain

collection, too.”

“Rain collection?”

“You watch the news?”

“You’re not worried about that 2012 thing,

are you?”

“I don’t know if we’ll make it that long.”

“Huh?”

“Watch the news. Take the bailout stuff.”

“The bailout?”

“You ever balance your checkbook, Davis?”

he asks, on account of my name being Davis.

“Not really. The bank sends me a

statement online, so—”

“Figured. Those guys who worked up the

bailout must not have ever balanced a checkbook,

either. How much debt you have?”

“Not too much. We just have a couple

grand.”

“Chump.”

“What?”

“Not your stupid credit cards. How much

you owe on that Acura, that Toyota, on your

damned house?”

“Shit, I don’t know.”

“Two hundred, at least.”

“I guess.”

“Now, think brother, the country’s in the hole

about eleven trillion now, and Wall Street and this

entire backward financial system can only live with

trillion-dollar infusions to keep alive a capitalist system

founded on the assumption of unlimited growth of

capital. What’s the problem with that, Davis?”

“Um—”

“Unlimited growth is impossible. Sooner

or later, there will be no new markets and you

know what happens then?”

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“A depression?”

“Bullshit. The whole world is linked into

one economy that’s defended by a bloated,

over-spent military force—ours—all of which is

dependent on a finite energy source. It won’t be any

fucking depression. It’ll be a goddamned dark age.

You know who does balance their checkbooks?”

“My wife’s pretty good about hers.”

“The Saudis. You know what they’re doing

right now?”

“Balancing checkbooks?”

“Drilling offshore. They’re sitting on one-

fourth of the world’s oil in the dirt and they’re drill-

ing offshore. How come?”

“Apparently it’s got something to do with

their checkbooks.”

“They know the shit’s running out, man.

They’re gonna grab every damned drop they can

so they can keep enjoying their Mercedes Benzes

and their harems with seventy virgins for as long as

they can.”

“I’m thinking they’re not virgins anymore

once they’re in the harems, no?”

“I’m just saying, they’ve got a plan.”

“And so do you?”

“I’ve stockpiled a life-time supply of am-

munition and water purification tablets—and toilet

paper; I’m not an animal. I’ve got two tiers to this

house. Got enough space for gardening on the

second to grow essentials. Solar and wind on the

top to keep the refrigerator and the perimeter lights

going.”

“Perimeter lights?”

“You think other people aren’t going to

see my little fortress here? You think they’re not

going to want to come in, help themselves to my

food, my daughters, etc. I’ve thought it all through.

Corner house, wide back yard, got room. From

the roof, with a good rifle, I can pick off anybody

comes within fifty feet.”

“Mitch, my house is closer than that.”

“Yeah, sorry, bud. When the shit hits

the fan, I figure I’ll have to raze your place to the

ground.”

Richard Helmling

lives with his wife and

two children in El

Paso, Texas. He has

an MFA in Creative

Writing from the

University of Texas

at El Paso. His professional writing has been published

in English in Texas and his fiction has been published

in the Rio Grande Review.

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Anna in the morning searches an unfamiliar room

wondering if she really said “Where’d my sock

go?” or just thought it. A mess that’s yours isn’t a

mess. The room’s not hers; neither is he. The left

sock is missing, and it does matter which - it has

little asymmetrical toes and everything. He’d called

it ‘adorable’ and sort of tugged it from her foot

slowly,

laughing, eyes

never leaving

hers.

Managing not

to spill the wine. Last night. This is the price, she

thinks or maybe says. Somehow this missing sock

will come back to haunt me. He had the grace or

wit not to mention his wife’s name. Anna’s too

preoccupied with the sock, now, to be grateful.

Maybe later.

Bella in the morning stretches sore muscles and

arches her back to look out over the upside down

city. Rain whispers at the window, hush, hush. Not

a chance. “Well then,” she says, laughing. The toilet

flushes. His callused heels gracelessly bang the tiles.

“The first day of the universe started with a Big

Bang,” she calls out. The bathroom door muffles

his response. “No pressure!” she calls out. “What?”

he says. Bella rolls her eyes, looks at her wrists,

her arms. Little asymmetrical bruises. He’s a lefty,

she thinks.

“Did you say

something?”

he says as he

enters,

flopping around cheerfully. “Not every Bang has

to be Big,” she says. He scratches himself, says, “Is

that a joke?” “Never you mind,” Bella says. She

laughs again, points to a spot on the bed beside

her. She sparkles.

Carmen in the morning doesn’t feel like dealing

with Mama but she has to go home. She knows.

Mama will let the silence settle in a little first.

“Emilio doesn’t know what you do at night,”

Unfamiliar RoomsFiction

By Walter Holland

He had the grace or wit not to mention his wife’s name

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she’ll say. “Thank heavens.” Of course he doesn’t

know, Carmen thinks, it’s worse that way. He

feels she’s gone without knowing it. He doesn’t

know yet that those scary feelings are called

Questions. Bad enough facing Mama’s pursed

lips and disapproval. Emilio loves her even when

she’s...A kettle hisses, whistles. Katherine’s in

the next room making breakfast. Goal-oriented.

Carmen doesn’t want to say: “Cata, listen.” She

won’t say “I have a little boy.” Or “I can’t walk

into my baby’s nursery again smelling like a

strange woman.” She won’t, she won’t, yet she

will.

Debby in the morning looks right and then down,

whoa, he’s naked, then left and down, OK also

naked, then up at the ceiling and down at herself,

naked, check, iiiinteresting, and hands and arms

are just everywhere. Hers and everyone else’s.

The stereo was on all night: blue jazz,

bedroom music. Debby wriggles, remembers,

opens her eyes wide. WELL then. Debby thinks:

Am I a perv now? A brand new smile comes,

suddenly, and she thinks: I don’t care. She reaches

over, squeezes somebody’s something-or-other,

hears a contented sigh. Debby surprises herself.

Thank heavens.

Emmie in the morning awakens alone

remembering, like every morning, and doesn’t start

crying so much as pick up where she last left off.

Maybe she’ll sleep away the day, die, dissolve,

disappear - or maybe awaken, blessedly, finally. One

or another. But probably not. Probably she’ll just

have to live one more day, by habit if not choice.

The room was theirs but it’s just hers now.

Everything is an intrusion. Nothing is familiar.

Emmie says, I have nowhere else to go.

Debby says, I guess I’m going crazy.

Carmen says, I need to go. No, now.

Bella says, I’d go again, you?

Anna in the morning says, Where’d my sock go?

Walter Holland is a

full-time dad and part-

time writer/editor from

Cambridge MA. He

has never published a

work of fiction.

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WanderlustFiction

By Danilo Lopez

“The journey, not the destination, becomes the source of

wonder”

Lorena McKennit, “The Mask and Mirror”

At the Hotel du Lys, 23 Rue Serpente, Paris,

France, it wasn’t her nipple that froze in the garden,

but the inconstancy that served them well. The rest,

adorned with festoons and clairvoyant silk roses,

was a monument to passing loves, boring laughs.

No cats could be mastered, no clogs to ride. Only

her expectant smile, eternally asking “how much

longer?”

At the Hotel Endri, Rs. Vaso Pasha 27,

Tirana, Albania, she realized that in the beginning

the heart rules over the head. She didn’t care much

about not seeing him but once in a while. She didn’t

care about him not answering her calls. So many

endless nights she cried until dawn waiting for the

phone to ring, in vain. Right before sunrise she

would then slowly rise, shower, get pretty for him,

drop off Brian at school, and head off to the of-

fice. At lunch they would have long conversations.

After work, when he was able to, he would stop by

her house. She would try to penetrate the heart and

mind of that quiet man, so loved, so lonely, in vain.

She, tired of being closed, would open to him as

naturally as water and salt. He, tired of being open,

would close to her as naturally as dust and air.

At the Hotel Carpati, Str Matei Millo 16,

Bucharest, Romania, she discovered that in the

legend of Dracul, the reincarnation of the love

of his wife kills him in order to reach eternal

salvation. It was not the destiny of the two souls

to sail together and be saved in pairs. Each soul

had to reach its own salvation alone. From this

stand point, she concluded, soulmates didn’t

exist in eternity (souls are timeless) but in brief

chosen associations formed in the temporal

plane. So, in the end, she would sail into

infinity by herself. She learned that in eternity

the concepts of loneliness and separation didn’t

apply to a soul freed from a body: her soul was

interconnected to all others, and all others were

connected to the Cosmic Mind.

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On the way back from Sevastopol to

Odessa, she crossed the Black Sea. Standing at the

veranda on starboard, looking into the dark blue

waters and the misty coastline in the horizon, she

slowly opened her purse, pulled out a packet of

Virginia Slims, took one with expert fingers, and

lit it with her left hand. She inhaled deeply as if

trying to trap in her lungs the countless memories

that came to supplant reality, the mosaic of happy

moments gone so many years ago.

But it was at Kadriog Park in Tallin’s Old

Town, Estonia, where she convinced herself—in

mind and heart—that having him incompletely

was more painful than not having him at all. She

decided to peel off one by one the conquest

poems read in bed, the postcards received from

unknown places, the memories flooding her mind,

the punctual flowers on each of her birthdays, the

infinite nights embracing nothingness, the

painful unreturned messages, the absent phone

calls, the mad lovemaking, the Orvietto Classic

drunk by the terrace, the warm baths together, the

odious unstoppable tears, the flaring disco dances,

the Mother’s Day unwrapped gifts, the unrealized

Christmases. Until she stopped needing him.

The box burned for several minutes. The

flames, red like the awnings in Riga’s Central

Market and yellow like the dying sun in Vilnius,

Lithuania, illuminated the back patio with large

dancing shadows. The smoke became thick like the

walls of old castles in Dubrovnik, Croatia, and then

the ashes, gray like the skies of Oslo in mid-winter,

were swept by clear rains and gentle winds.

Danilo Lopez (Nicaragua, 1954) immigrated to the United

States in 1985. An architect by training, he has published

several poetry collections in English and Spanish and three

anthologies with funding from the Miami-Dade County

Cultural Affairs Council, the latest being Dona Nobis

Pacem. His work has appeared in many printed literary

magazines (Hayden’s Ferry Review, BorderSenses, etc.) and

on-line (Baqueana, Loch Raven review, etc). He has ap-

peared in poetry anthologies from the United States, Spain,

Argentina, and Nicaragua. He is a candidate to the MFA

at the University of Texas, El Paso.

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ChatFiction

By Monica Martinez

BIANCA

She raised her glass, swirled the remaining

ice and wordlessly called the bartender. He retrieved

the Jack Daniels and mixed her a second drink. Bianca

retrieved her netbook from her silver and black Coach

Mia tote. She logged into her email, moving her hands

along the keyboard and mouse pad without taking her

eyes off the TV. The Weather Channel broadcasted

the storm would clear before the night was over. Her

eyes turned to her computer screen. The Yahoo

messenger indicated Ada was online.

As Bianca debated chatting with her little

sister, a new email appeared on her screen. She

opened up the note from her boss:

Bianca,

Hope you have a safe flight. To answer

your questions. The Austin branch of the

law firm has a position open for associate

but it is a lateral move. You heard right,

Carl is retiring. We will have an opening for

partner. Off the record…You’ve got a

shot. See you in a few days.

— Albert

ADA

The coffee mug from this morning, the water

from lunch, and the lunch itself sat untouched. Dad’s

Colts were playing the Broncos and his eyes never left

the TV. Ada had retrieved her laptop from her room.

Having no interest in the game, she tabbed between

Facebook and Yahoo. Waiting for her was an email

from Julliard, the subject: New Student Orientation.

Her eyes darted at her father, then back to her email.

She left it unopened.

It had been sixteen minutes since Ada

logged on and she knew Bianca had seen her. Ada

clicked the chat. She typed, CALLED THE AIRLINE.

DAD’S BEEN WONDERING WHERE YOU ARE.

BIANCA

The chime of the chat window pulled

Bianca’s eyes off the Weather Channel. She rolled

her eyes at her sister’s comment. With her drink in

one hand, Bianca’s fingers searched for the letters.

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S,N,O,W...

ADA

The chime of the chat window let Ada know

she had received a response. Bianca had written,

SNOWED IN.

THAT’S WHAT YOU GET FOR LIVING

IN NEW YORK. NEVER SNOWS IN TEXAS, Ada

responded to her older sister’s message. She

looked at her dad. The game was on commercial

break. “Papa. Why don’t you eat something?” He

didn’t even look at her when she spoke to him.

She looked back at her computer screen. Bianca

didn’t respond.

BIANCA

Taking a long slow sip of her drink, she

wondered how to answer. Bianca wrote, YOU DO

KNOW THAT JULLIARD IS HERE IN NY NOT IN

TEXAS, RIGHT? It took a few minutes for the chat

window to chime again but when it did Bianca did

not like what it read: DON’T THINK THERE WILL

BE ANY JULLIARD FOR ME. Bianca set her Jack and

coke down and typed, ADA, DON’T DO THAT TO

YOURSELF.

ADA

Ada stared at the words her sister sent.

Yes, because this was Ada’s choice. Because she

was doing this to herself. There was only one way

she could still go to Julliard. YOU’RE COMING

HOME THEN?, she typed to her big sister. Bianca

responded with the same response she’d been

giving for days, FOR THE FUNERAL AND THEN

BACK TO WORK. Ada typed what she’d been

asking for days, AND DAD?

BIANCA

Bianca picked up her glass and took

another sip. So what would they do with their

father now? I DON’T KNOW, Bianca typed.

WE NEED TO KNOW, Ada responded.

I’VE GOT A SHOT AT PARTNER, Bianca

typed.

I’VE GOT A SHOT AT SINGING MADAME

BUTTERFLY AT THE MET SOME DAY, replied Ada.

After the capitalized “WE” that Ada had

wrote, the “I’ve” both sister had started their sentences

with looked so selfish.

ADA

She wrote to Bianca, EVEN WITH THE

NURSE MOM HAD TROUBLE WITH DAD. WE NEED

TO DO IT TOGETHER.

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YOU COULD GO TO SCHOOL AT NIGHT,

Bianca wrote. A small consolation prize for the girl

who had been accepted with a full scholarship to

Julliard.

Ada responded, AND YOU COULD TRANSFER.

I CAN MANAGE UNTIL THEN.

BIANCA

Transferring to the Austin branch was an

option Bianca wanted to avoid. She spun around to

look at the airline board. Her flight was still marked

as delayed.

WE’RE BOARDING. WE’LL TALK MORE

WHEN I GET THERE, she typed.

Bianca changed her status to invisible so

her sister wouldn’t know she was still online. She

opened Albert’s email and hit reply. In an email to

her boss Bianca wrote:

Albert,

Thank you for your kind words but I have

to take the transfer. My dad had a stroke

and my sister can’t care for him alone now

that our mother has passed away. I will make

the request official when I get back from the

funeral.

— Bianca

ADA

Bianca Grayer has signed off, appeared on

Ada’s screen. Ada opened a blank word document.

In it she wrote:

To Whom It May Concern,

I regret to inform you that I will not be able

to accept the full scholarship to your fine

establishment this fall...

Monica Vanessa Martinez is a student at the University

of Texas-El Paso where she is working towards her MFA

in creative writing. She lives and works in Austin, Texas.

When she is not writing she enjoys training for half-

marathons, scrapbooking and cooking.

26

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Alice’s mother enjoyed going out with Dr.

Dexter, who was funny and handsome and owned a

sailboat. He had invited both of them to sail with him

today. Alice’s mother volunteered to bring the picnic

lunch. They met him at the lake, where his boat was

docked. The boat, moored in its slip, looked huge to

Alice. Black stenciled letters proclaimed it The Siren.

Its polished

wood gleamed

in the sun.

Dr.

Dexter emitted a

wolf whistle of

delight when Alice’s mother stepped out of the car.

Her mother, looking pleased, said, “Oh, David,” in a

teasing voice. She had bought new swimsuit covers,

“sailing togs” she called them, for herself and Alice,

hers in red terry cloth and Alice’s in yellow with white

daisies. She also had bought two straw hats, one

yellow and one purple.

Alice had been delighted with the purple hat,

the color being her all-time favorite. But right when

they were leaving the house that morning, her mother

paused in front of the entry mirror, set down the

picnic basket, examined her reflection, and said,

“Here, trade hats with me.” She swept the yellow hat

off her head and held it out toward Alice. Alice

understood then the purple one wasn’t hers really, but

a spare, in case her mother changed her mind. Alice

had to wear

the yellow one

instead.

Now Dr.

Dexter helped

them climb aboard. He kissed Alice’s mother on the

cheek, a playful kiss, as he took the basket and made

sure she got across the swath of water between the

walkway and the boat. Then he turned back to help

Alice.

“Come aboard here, matey,” Dr. Dexter said

in a jovial voice a little louder than necessary, perhaps,

for just between the three of them, and extended a

hand to help her. His blue eyes crinkled at the

corners. His hands looked clean and rare. Alice knew

The Purple HatFiction

By Melanie McDonald

Come aboard here, matey

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she should say something joking back to him. Her

mother wanted her to say something funny and

bright, make a good impression, but she couldn’t.

Instead, she just smiled.

Dr. Dexter had no children of his own.

Earlier that morning, Alice had received a lecture from

her mother on how to behave during this outing so as

not to annoy him. She was to be on her best behavior,

“and no sitting with your nose in a book like the

Queen of Sheba,” her mother said. The fact that

they got new clothes for sailing let Alice know how

much it meant for her mother that Alice had been

invited, too. They had to be frugal, her mother was

always saying, because they had a lot less money

now than when they still lived with Dad.

Her mother and her women friends often told

each other how single men didn’t want women with

baggage. Alice, hearing this, always envisioned a small

gray suitcase abandoned on a train platform. She also

understood that undesirable baggage was anything

hampering an otherwise smooth, pleasurable trip

toward some much-anticipated destination. At twelve,

Alice probably knew a little more about her mother’s

friends, their dating lives, than she should. The Bible

said always honor thy father and mother but it seemed

grown-ups weren’t required to honor kids back.

Dr. Dexter hopped around the ship’s deck,

loosening some ropes and tightening others, raised

the sails, and eased The Siren out of its slip. From

time to time, no matter what he was doing, he

glanced over at Alice’s mother. Alice understood.

Everyone loves to look at beauty, heads swiveling

like flowers on their stalks toward the sun. Water

lapped at the sides of the boat like dogs’ tongues.

Alice sat alongside one rail, leaning over as far

as she dared to peer at the water. She watched the lacy

green froth of the wake trailing along behind them,

and imagined mermaids cavorting below. She thought

Art by Sean Lefler

28

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it might be fun to be a mermaid, except she didn’t

care much for eating fish. She could smell the lake fish

in the tangy air, but couldn’t see any of them.

Alice’s mother let out a sudden whooping

laugh, and Alice turned and looked in time to see the

purple hat, caught by a renegade breeze which had

snatched it

from her

mother’s

head, sail-

ing out

into the lake, touching down a few yards from what

Dr. Dexter called the port side. The hat landed upside

down, taking on water at one edge of its brim.

“We can swing around and pick it up, Elaine,” Dr.

Dexter said, raising his voice to be heard over the wind-

chopped water. His topsiders had darkened with spray.

“Oh, no, David,” Alice’s mother said. “It’s just

a cheap sun hat. Don’t worry about it at all—look, it’s

already sinking.” She laughed, a merry trilling sound

meant to show she was not concerned. The dim shape

of the hat, now like a cup inverted on a saucer, could

still be seen sifting its slow way toward the bottom.

“Mom,” Alice said, “maybe we could get back

there before it—”

“No,” her mother said, cutting her off. A

threat hummed in her voice, beneath the word, like the

warning of a rattlesnake. Alice wondered if Dr. Dexter

heard it, too. He seemed to be studying the main sail.

“But, Mom—”

“Alice. Sit down,” her mother said, and gave

her a look that froze her in place. At that moment,

her mother was wishing her away, as if Alice could

vanish, like the hat

or a piece of lost

luggage.

The look

passed, but Alice

stayed frozen for some time, miserable under the

hateful yellow hat, the hat that survived. Why

couldn’t the wind have taken it instead?

At noon, they skimmed into a quiet cove,

unpacked the hamper and ate the lunch her mother

had prepared, the sandwiches of expensive deli meats

and cheeses, a treat Alice had been looking forward to,

dry as brick dust in her mouth.

She wished she had not kept her mother’s

secret. She wished she had shouted, “That’s my hat.”

Would Dr. Dexter still have offered to turn the boat

around? She didn’t know. She did know that in the car,

later, her mother would promise, by way of apology,

to buy another; an apology which would arrive too

late, and would be a lie—there wasn’t the money.

Still picturing the purple hat, Alice stood up

The Bible said always honor thy father and mother

but it seemed grown-ups weren’t

required to honor kids back

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and leaned over the rail, staring down into the churning

water, and imagined her mermaid self, silent, pale-faced,

and clutching a small suitcase, sinking away to join it

beneath the waves.

Melanie McDonald has an MFA in fiction from the University

of Arkansas. She received a Hawthornden Fellowship, with a

residency in Scotland, for her debut novel Eromenos, published

March 2011. Her work has appeared in New York Stories,

Fugue, Indigenous Fiction, and other journals. She has

continued to study writing at Vermont Studio Center, NUI

Galway, and at workshops in New York City; Squaw Valley;

NapaValley, and WICE Paris, taught by C. Michael Curtis,

senior fiction editor for The Atlantic Monthly. She also spent

some time in Italy while at work on Eromenos, recently named

a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, historical

fiction division.

Sean Lefler is an artist and animator based in Southern

California. He graduated from Cal State Fullerton where he

contributed a weekly comic to the school newspaper. Today, Sean

spends his days facing the real world and all the challenges life can

throw at him. Taking hit after hit, Sean produces work

independently as well as pursues other endeavors such as stand-up

comedy and improv.

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1968 was just loaded with drama. Tet

offensive, King and Kennedy assassinations, Paris

uprising, Chicago uprising, Nixon elected. I knew

these things were going on, but like most boys was

preoccupied with girls and trying to look cool. Over

the summer I let my hair grow and sprouted

sideburns. Returning to school I had an impressive

set of whiskers for 15. Guys pointed them out; so

did some girls. The dress code had lightened up that

year. Girls could wear pants, boys could grow their

hair past the neckline; they could even grow

moustaches, if possible. Besides this Jewish gorilla

who grew a beard in one week just to prove he could

(and then shaved it, Dean’s orders), I was the only

kid in my class with anything noticeable. I was proud,

even if my sideburns were not a chick magnet.

Coolness involves more than looks. Some guys

achieve it through attire, some through indifference,

some through idiosyncrasy. Not me. I still wore white

tennis shoes and rode my bicycle to school, didn’t

know any better, until I heard snickers and stopped,

for I was not too cool to care. Neither was I strange

enough to be the iconic oddball (like Jake, a guy with

wire rim specs, wire curled hair and a lunatic grin,

who got around by bouncing, jumping down the hall

or across the quad, and chanting what sounded like

math formulae).

I just wanted to be cool in the simplest sense

— to belong to something, to have a gang, a niche.

My freshman PE coach, Mr. Frank, had told me

I ought to go out for track. Ol’ Riordan the Un-

coordinated — two left feet and they’re both flat,

throws like a girl, can only dribble with his mouth

— surprised the coach, the class, and himself with

his speed, even if he did run like a ruptured duck.

In the second week of school, I got brave enough

to venture into that noisy, towel-snapping, territorial

I-got-it, I-got-it! world of jocks. Runners aren’t really

jocks, but they belong to a team and presumably get to

be buddies and hang out together and maybe meet girls

(Cheerleaders? Not likely. Sisters, maybe).

The track coach was Mr. Bailey: close-cropped

sandy hair, five feet eight, late twenties, gray framed

glasses. We’d had him as a substitute sometimes the

No Beards for Mr. BaileyFiction

By Peter McKenna

31

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previous year, but not during any running trials. So he

would not have had any impression of me, nor would

I of him, as he just put us through scheduled activi-

ties (the least embarrassing for me was soccer, which

nobody could really play except one Mexican kid and

one Pakistani

kid, who were

not allowed

to be on the

same team).

In the glass-

enclosed coaches’ office he greeted me with a smile

and a handshake: first time I ever shook a teacher’s

hand. He said Mr. Frank had mentioned me, and he

was glad to have me on board (do coaches always say

that?). Did I have any previous track experience? No?

Well, he looked forward to training me. He gave me

an armful of documents: team regulations, track meet

dates, request of change to sixth period PE, parental

consent, release of liability, doctor’s okay. That was it

for now, he said, shaking my hand again. Oh, except

one thing.

Yeah, coach?

Get a haircut and shave that beard. No facial

hair on my men.

This isn’t a beard, just sideburns.

Far as I’m concerned, any hair on your face

besides eyebrows is a beard. And no beards on my

team.

Excuse me, Mr. Bailey, but...how come?

You represent the school, you represent me.

I want my men to look squared away.

But

what’s that

got to do with

running? I just

want to run.

Running

involves discipline like any other sport, and the first

rule of discipline is you do what the coach directs.

If he wants you to be clean shaven, if he doesn’t

want his men looking like a bunch of hippies, then

you shave and cut your hair.

We went back and forth for a while. I said

the school had loosened the dress code this year.

He said the coaches could set their own. I pointed

out some of the towel snappers in the locker room

that had hair past the neckline. He said they were

not on his team (Mr. Frank, observing from his

desk in the corner, raised his eyebrows at this). I

said that I didn’t think that any guys from any other

school would care if our hair was long. He said

he would care, and that’s all that mattered. I said,

lots of athletes have long hair these days, who’s

No facial hair on my men

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that guy, that football guy? He said if Joe Namath

wanted to be on his team, he’d tell him, get a

haircut, and if Ben Davidson showed up, shave the

mustache. If Flash Gordon (I think he was actually

referring to Flash, the DC comic hero) showed up

with a mustache, he wouldn’t get on his team with

it.

Mr. Bailey, it took me all summer to grow

these sideburns.

Well, it won’t take you so long next summer,

if you feel you really gotta have them. You’re making

this too much of a drama, Riordan.

Well, I think you are, Mr. Bailey, and I’m

sorry, but I don’t want to be on your team.

If you can’t handle discipline, then I don’t

want you either.

Thus my life as a jock was strangled in the

womb. Apparently I really pissed him off. He gave

me dirty looks for the rest of the year, muttering

stuff about hippies and trolls. Luckily we never had

him as a sub as he probably would have had me

running discipline laps. Coaches were always telling

you, Go run one. Sometimes more than one.

I did not mention to him that my motive

in going out for track was really that I wanted to

be part of a team, to be cool in some way. I’d have

been embarrassed to admit that, and it would have

played right into his argument.

If sports weren’t for me, what then? Acting?

Bailey did say I was dramatic. So I auditioned for the

school play that semester, Teahouse of the August Moon,

about Americans bringing democracy to Japan. I

got the part of Colonel Purdy, which allowed me to

swear on stage. First line: Dammit to hell! Dammit to

hell! Dammit to hell! Later I got to say, These people

are going to learn democracy if I have to shoot every

one of them. Plus ca change...

Mrs. Joyce, the director, said that as I was

playing an army man, well, I didn’t have to get a GI

haircut, but I should trim those locks, and those

sideburns had to go.

And so they did. Maybe that’s what pissed

off Bailey so much.

I would say these were the roads taken and not

taken, if I were now making a living as an actor, but

I’m not. However I did become a runner again, at 53,

midlife crisis or something. It came back easily enough.

“They shall run and not grow weary,” (Isaiah 40).

As for Bailey, one Saturday when he was 43,

he went for his daily six miler. Halfway into it he

had a heart attack and dropped dead, literally. He

was on a popular jogging trail, and an ambulance

was quickly called. Thing is, nobody knew who

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he was as he had no identification on him. Some

runners had seen him before, but no one from his

teams, none of his men. Four hours later the police

got a call from his concerned wife: I’m a little wor-

ried about my husband, this isn’t like him...

Poor woman, especially having to find out

the way she did. Still, Bob Bailey died doing what

he lived for, and if no one recognized him at the

hour of his death, practically everyone remembered

him afterward. Obituaries were profound and the

bleachers were packed in the service held at the

track and field. Testimonies were many. Mr. Bailey

coached about life as much as running. Hard work,

team work, discipline, discipline…but he didn’t just

bark orders at you. You could talk to him about

anything, you felt like you had a friend, you felt

family, you were part of something.

Just west of the bleachers, overlooking

the track, stands an obelisk with a bronze plaque

bearing his profile. It’s not a bad likeness though

his hair’s longer than it was in 1968; more like ‘78.

One likes to think of it blowing in the breeze.

After his name and his dates are three simple

words: Go run one.

Born in San Francisco, Peter McKenna has lived there most

of his life. He taught English composition until everybody

realized he was better at composing than teaching.

“Those who can, do. Those who can’t do, teach.

Those who can’t teach, teach P.E.”

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Whispers in the NightFiction

By Monica Mendelson

Beep, beep, beep. Message delivered.

Somewhere in the gray mass, sparks were flying. A

warning screamed along its circuitry, but there were

no clues as to where or when the danger would

begin. And as the darkness closed in, I remained,

lying broken across the bed.

The night was quiet, foreboding. Even

the storms fell under hush. The stars were lying

beneath darkness, and no moon shined tonight. A

gentle buzzing crept across the sky and slipped into

my room, chirping in my ear, but I didn’t want to

listen. I couldn’t listen.

Click. Something scratched against the

window screen. Click. Red eyes shined in

anticipation, but fear held me still. It wanted me to

know that it was there. It wanted me to know that

death was coming, and if anybody laid eyes on the

monster outside my bedroom, they would surely

die. And I did not want to die.

The buzzing in my ear continued. Despite the

overwhelming sense of fear, the knot tightening in

my belly, I sat up and faced the darkness. No shadows

moved, but they were alive and waiting. The bedroom

door was closed. Would I be able to open it in time,

saved by the light, or would darkness claim me once

more? Beep, beep, beep. Why did I have to be cho-

sen?

The Chosen were often ignored, cast away,

or locked up. Nobody wanted anyone to see past

their perfect world, but we saw through their façade.

We saw the mistakes planted that would lead to

their destruction, the lies that would blister and

peel, and the hands to tear them down. We saw

the waves crashing, the lives lost, and the buildings

falling, but those that tried to save the world were

either killed or labeled enemies. The rest of us just

hid away, trying to escape fate, but fate found me

here tonight.

And fate was waiting. The bruised X on my

arm screamed with every single beep. People were

going to die. Tragedy was coming. No clues would

be given, but when the hour came, I would know

everything. But would I save them, or would I let

them die?

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There was no Superman. He was buried

under rubble, and the people that he saved quickly

forgot about him. They were lost in gratitude of

being alive, but humanity was sand in the hour-

glass, slipping away. There were no heroes. Nobody

wanted to risk their lives because nobody saved

them. Why should I be any different?

All I had to do was go to sleep. The

beeping would stop. Fate would pass me by and look

for another, someone willing to listen. This world

had already gone to hell. Her heart was ripped out

and torn apart. We were living the dog-eat-dog style,

but somewhere in the darkness, someone still cared.

Someone would risk all to save them. They would

die for them, but for those saved, would they even

know? Would they even care?

I tossed and turned for awhile. The beeping

finally went away. Fate no longer held her breath, and

like a ghost, she was gone. The monster hovered

outside, disappointed, but it would not have me

tonight. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to save

anyone because nobody saved me, and that thought

was a dagger to my heart. There would be no sleep

tonight. There would be no peace to find because

tragedy was coming, and people were going to die.

I sat up and ran from my bed. I threw open

the bedroom door. The hallway was dark, shadowed,

but my past mistakes were alive and well. I hurried

by closed doors, trying not to disturb the innocent,

and now I stood beside the front door. My hand

shook badly as I reached to open it. I didn’t want

this. Nobody wanted this. Nobody wanted to know,

so why did we, the tortured Chosen? I stepped

outside, but the monster was gone. Relief swept

through me like a cold breeze, and I knew that I

would not be the hero nor villain in the coming

events. I would just be its keeper, locking the dark

secrets away until fate returned for me.

Melissa was a newspaper reporter for the Smithtown

Messenger Newspaper and its sub-issues, The

Brookhaven Review, The Ronkonkoma Review,

and Medford News. She later freelanced for The Photo

News and wrote movie and television show reviews for the

film-making website, Wild Sound. She currently works for

the State of New York and writes for Associated Content,

now known as Yahoo Voices, and has finished her first

novel, a collection of three novellas tied together.

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Passing LaneFiction

By Brandon Meyer

I stare out the window at another

vegetable enfilade, a general inspecting his troops.

Endless rows of verdant corn stand at attention,

awaiting orders that will never come. In the

distance, wisps of cloud skirt the mountain tops,

looking like the furrowed brow of some ancient

and displeased demigod. My breath fogs on the

glass and I draw a heart, smiling at the girl in the

car next to ours. She smiles back, holding up her

hand to show me her ring with an apologetic shrug.

But her eyes linger on mine, and before we pass her

she breathes on the window to draw her own heart

for me. As her car grows smaller in the rear-view

mirror, I file this moment away along with a

hundred other warm memories to keep me

company in the cold and dark hours of life.

Brandon Meyer was born in Redlands, California in 1985.

After high school, he attended UC Santa Barbara, where he

earned a BA in English. While there, he worked as a copy

reader for the Daily Nexus campus newspaper. He earned

a teacher credential from the University of Redlands after

graduating from Santa Barbara, and currently teaches

high-school level English in San Bernardino, California.

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In the South of France We Split HairsFiction

By Brittany Newell

In the south of France we split hairs.

The hotel managers never believed we

were brothers, identically browned by the sun as

we were and bound by our cheap Grecian sandals;

still, they looked us over with monocular wrath and

plunked the ring of keys with suggestive slowness

into my hand, seeing as my hair was shorter and

sparser than his (damn the Navy Man fad) and I

was therefore assumed to be older. Behind polished

doors, we sat knee-to-knee on the bed with the

windows flung open, tossing Canadian coins to the

gawkers below. We were especially fond of the girls

with scarves on their heads; we counted the flower-

like specks from our balcony, and pondered their

shadowy faces at night.

The afternoons were spent hunting cafes with

pianos; Edelweiss had tricky fingers. Ostentatiously

primped in our collegiate blue, we ambled down

cobblestone streets ‘til our ears caught a stand of

prematurely embezzled Beethoven sonatas, and like

cats we would dash towards its low-ceilinged origin,

notes held aloft by self-satisfied oceans of smoke and

set sweetly aside from the streets courting grief.

Edelweiss, slimmer than I and for the

moment empowered by the forgettable charm of light

freckles, would rest gently against the Steinway’s black

body ‘til some jokester, all-eyes, suggested he tip.

Smiling quickly, he’d inherit the bench, and I, cross-

legged with coffee number good-god-knows-what

pressed against the skin of my throat, would hunker

down in the indifferent din and succumb, just like

a tourist, to the lavender crystals of sound he set

loose—bombs wagging through the air and smashing

lewd jokes in the Louvre, earnest pleas for the stray

calico, borrowed clothes returned late in unimaginable

states, and the tenth vertebrae of gruff morning voices

upon my bent brow, until my coffee grew cold and his

welcome was worn by the need of a carousing fiddle.

We would stand and exit single-file, the irrepressible

sun stabbing bellies gone soft but still brown. I would

tackle him then, golden freckles denoting a plan of

attack. He’d spit in my eye and I’d bellow, “Celeb!” for

the army of Sabines and Brigittes in their kerchiefs to

catch.

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Arms linked, we would board the metro and

ride for twenty-five minutes to the nearest McDonald’s.

By then, we were sleepy and high as wet posters. The

wind blew a kodachrome dream with no sound.

On our sixth night in France and our third

night in Paris, there was an explosion.

The sound of it echoed throughout the city,

dashing like a kitten with singed fur through the sleep-

slackened streets and finding ways to squeeze, with

otherworldly craftiness, between cracks in the tene-

ment walls. I shot up in bed; it was a boom, a gusty

cartoonish ka-boom! that roused me, and, as I sat with

my knees pressed to my chest, continued to resound

in me in the most curious places, like in the webbing

between fingers, like in the slits between my teeth.

I squinted out the window. These days

Edelweiss couldn’t sleep without it open, having

spewed about his circulation and “good air.” The

static blue mass beneath us, speckled here and there

with cinema signs and streetlamps, looked just as

foreign to me now as it always had. Our French

was terrible: we would not know that less than one

hundred miles away a nuclear reactor had exploded

until a day after returning home, when our giggling

mothers would shove us awake and tell us the news,

oh my darling sit up, the unimaginable news.

Like a girl I drew the covers tight around

me; fucking Edelweiss liked the room to be subzero.

Every night he burrowed beneath lumpy patchwork

mountains, so it came as no surprise that the kaboom

couldn’t touch him now, already departed in his casket

of starched sheets. I watched for a moment or so as

he slept, longing to wake him, or whatever remnants

of him existed in dream—just a tuft of blond, like a

pre-war memento found in the grass, poking out from

the mauve and unconscious mound.

I opened my mouth. It felt like a fleet of

black balloons was fretting in the space between

my joints. “What was that?” I managed to ask. The

largeness of my voice shouldering through the

darkness put the rest of me to shame.

A stranger’s voice, testy and malformed,

replied. “It wasn’t nothin’ man.”

“Edelweiss,” I whined. I knitted my hands

together and muffled a scream when my knuckles

began to glow, ever so tastefully peach, in the dark.

It reminded me of a game me and my brother used

to play: I’d coat my hands in honey, stick them out

the window as he hurtled down the road behind the

county dump, and pull them back inside the car when

we reached the empty 7-Eleven parking lot. “Hands

up,” my brother would bark in his best imitation of a

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back-county cop. As I raised my hands, I’d see his face

soften to inhabit some semblance of wonder, a gentle

expansion of his facial bones second only to the

clement tiredness which follows sex and the wretched

gloss of meth. In pulsing silence we would look down

at my hands. They’d be crusted with fruit-flies, dead

and dying, the fine hairs of their legs waxed off and

their translucent wings tinged blond.

“Something’s wrong,” I croaked.

The

heap rolled

toward the

window. It

slurred, “I’ll

protect you.

Everything’s great, so shut up. OK? Thank you.

Love you. Bye.”

I closed my eyes and squeezed my hands

between my thighs. I knew that morning’s light, with

its subsequent nicks on the cheek and bare bodies

seeking caffeine, could not soothe me. I hoped with

a childlike zeal to never have to get up again. We

were OK for now, due to the groggy and bottomless

explanation of nighttime, when logic took a backseat

to shapelessness and dim dimensions made even the

shoddiest of scenarios seem romantic, and if not

romantic, then one-of-a-kind, worthy of a snapshot or

a scant line of coke. I didn’t yet know for certain but

it wasn’t hard to prophesy what we could encounter

once dawn’s light disproved the density of darkened

breasts: we would wander the vacated streets like ex-

cons, scarcely daring to believe our good luck.

We would marvel aloud at how hot the

bricks of the buildings became when we touched

them.

We would

pierce the

waist-level fog

with our calls.

We would

hoard the pâté

left on patio tables and drink ourselves sick on

every bottle of cognac we could find in the dank

unlocked pubs.

Drunker than we’d ever been, we’d dare

one another to jump off the bridge and backstroke

through the slow-moving Seine. Its viscosity was

inviting, its surface like a thick and shiny tarp against

which we’d ricochet. We would jerk off at the subway

station and make our cum criss-cross the tracks, such a

contrast as we’d never seen except in silent black-and-

white movies. Edelweiss would vow to play at least one

Something’s wrong

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rural diddy on every piano found in Paris. We would

crawl into a pink chateau to which some part of his-

tory was inexorably fixed, and Edelweiss would threw

himself at the piano, the largest I had ever seen, and I

would plunk down on the Persian rug as thick as hotel

mattresses and spread my arms and weep. After

weeping I would puke and after puking I would doze,

as all the while he twinkled Ravel and our unsteady

bodies dripped green river-water to warp the wood

floors and have the hard-breasted portraitures begging

for hell.

But first, I listened to Edelweiss breathe.

For the moment, there was nothing else to

do. Sleep felt like the rejection of an out-of-your-

league kiss. What was possibly the pinnacle of

Edelweiss’s elbow, propped up on an elevated hip,

was at once the pushiness of God. I worried that

the beating of my heart might wake him, irritate

him, cause him to disfigure the conclusions that his

ignorant bones drew.

Here was a boy steeped in the sweetest of

solutions.

He didn’t give a shit, not yet. To him, the

world was endless. At dawn, he might awake and

beat me with a pillow, try to stick his toothbrush in

my asshole, flop down beside me on the bed and

bawl, “Did someone have a nightmare, huh?”, and

before I could even retaliate, before I could even

wet my finger to deliver unto him a cataclysmic

raspberry, it might all be over without so much

as a last cuss, the heart might cease to churn and

the trees shyly fidget, it might all be lost, like dogs

loved more than Father, in the impetuous blink of

an eye.

But what did he care?

For now, he was young and all the girls in

gray headscarves would love him. He had only to

play them a tune and their accents would thicken,

their bra-straps would melt, and their eyes would

zone outward like sagacious TV’s.

Brittany Newell is an underaged naval-gazer. She is also a

classical singer and slam poet hailing from the San Francisco

Bay Area. You can read her work in Polyphony Maga-

zine, Talkin’ Blues Journal, and The Interlochen

Review, among others.

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Shrinking HusbandFiction

By Vincent Rendoni

I first noticed it during a shave. Faye is

five-six and when we designed our house, I gave

her free reign. This house fits her dimensions well,

and mine well enough. Except for our bathroom

mirror. It sits low, low enough to where Faye can sit

down and put her face on. I’ve always been forced

to bend over

to get a good

shave. I was

going to tell

Faye that we

should recon-

sider the mirror, but I never got around to it.

So anyway, I’m about to bend over to get

my chin and I realized I didn’t have to. My back

had been feeling stiff and I first assumed it was

just bad posture. It didn’t come up again until a

few weeks later when Faye kissed me goodnight.

Faye worked long hours and I kept odd ones, so

sometimes we missed our little ritual. But whenever

I snuck into bed, or when she was off to work in

the morning, we’d always make an effort to plant

one on each other’s forehead, a bit of a consolation

prize if you will.

But our ritual was always best. It wasn’t

really a ritual at all. Faye would come up to me in

her nightgown, just after we had brushed our teeth,

and put both of her hands on my chest. She would

give me a long

look over, as

if she was see-

ing me for the

first time, and

would give

a little jump and kiss my cheek. The day we knew

something was wrong was the night she put too

much into it and hit me in the head with hers, and

down I went. I checked Faye’s head and there was

a little bump, but nothing more. She looked at me,

slowly rubbing the back of her hand against my

cheek.

“I think something is wrong,” she said.

“Really wrong.”

After a little bit of fighting, a little bit of

Your husband will become smaller and smaller, until

his size is best described as subatomic

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Faye pushing me, we went and saw Dr. Reynolds.

He had treated me for everything from the chicken

pox as a kid to swine flu a few years back. I always

hated when he had to take my blood, but whenever

I looked into his eyes, eternally sallow but kind, I

always felt a little bit better upon leaving. But the

day we saw him, Dr. Reynolds couldn’t take his

eyes away from my folder. He told me what I knew,

but wasn’t ready to hear from somebody else: I

had been shrinking. Faye burst into tears and I was

incredulous.

“At 34, it’s a bit unusual,” Dr. Reynolds

said. “You see it typically in the elderly, and in them

it could be for a variety of reasons: Water loss,

tissues diminishing, one’s vertebrae becoming not

unlike rubber. But you, well, have none of these

things. You are just shrinking. Shrinking in perfect

proportion and symmetry. If it’s any consolation,

it’s becoming increasingly common in men your

age.”

“What are our options?” Faye spoke for

me.

“There are no options. Your husband will

become smaller and smaller, until his size is best

described as subatomic. There will be a day, even

with the proper equipment, where you will be un-

able to see or hear him. We presume he will go on

living, but we certainly can’t say for sure.”

He couldn’t even look at me as he said that

last bit.

Faye and I chose to go on like normal for

a time—the way I wanted it—but after about one

year, I noticed that she no longer had to jump up

to kiss me before bed. We were at the same height.

It wasn’t real before. It was then. Dr. Reynolds said

the shrinking would be aggressive, but still.

When I began to have trouble looking over

the sink in the morning to shave, that’s when we

broke down and had to buy my first stepping stool.

When I couldn’t make it onto the bed anymore,

that’s when we had to head on over to the Ace

Hardware for a ladder.

Faye was so strong. I had read articles

about how husbands shrinking just killed families,

left spouses unable to cope. I’ve known Faye since

when we went to college at Washington State. She

used to cheer me on during my basketball games,

when I was the best point forward the Cougars

ever had, in the times when I was a giant. Maybe

I doubted her a few times, thinking she’d leave. I

wouldn’t have blamed her. But I was wrong. Faye

held my hand in public through all of it, completely

unashamed of her shrinking husband. She looked

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at me with love as she placed me into my high chair

at the dinner table. When I had trouble making it

up the steps, she would pick me up and hold me

close before placing me on my side of the bed.

“You were always too tall for me,” Faye

would say to me at night. “I could get used to this.”

Faye never left my side, but I could see it

was taking a toll on her. When I was no bigger than

one of her fingernails, that’s when she stopped

leaving the

house entirely.

She used to go

on morning

walks, meet

her friends

at the Tully’s around the corner, and chat with the

cashiers at the Safeway. We would get our groceries

delivered now. The friends would sometimes come

by for coffee, but they were tossed out in a rage

after they gave Faye a pamphlet on a hospice care

for shrinking men in Southern Idaho.

We spent most of our days lying in bed, the

television on low in the background, with my body

up close against Faye’s eyes, remembering.

“Skating at the roller disco in Colfax with

all the flashing lights and dry ice,” she said.

“Football games decked out in crimson and

gray,” I replied.

“The casino on the reservation where they

didn’t card anyone.”

I didn’t like to talk about old times, but

Faye did.

I know why Faye was so reluctant to leave

my side. We had to have our talk soon. We agreed

long ago that

I wasn’t going

to just keep

going the way

I was

going. No,

Faye and I thought it best I go out with some

dignity, that going unseen and unheard to her,

becoming smaller and smaller until I was the most

fundamental of fundamental parts, doing battle

with all that’s unseen—fleas, bacteria, electrons—

was a fate worse than death.

That much Faye and I agreed on, but we’d

never gone much into specifics. After I was no larger

than one of her fingernails, we saw Dr. Reynolds

again after putting it off as long as we could. I told

“You were always too tall for me”

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him to be honest with me.

“Not long,” he said, unable to even look at

Faye’s palm where she held me.

The day has finally come. It’s no secret

that Faye has been having trouble seeing me lately;

that’s why I have to be so close to her eyes when

we’re in bed, even though she knows it makes me

uncomfortable to see her trembling under the face

she puts on for me.

But I think now Faye is having trouble

hearing me. She smiles and nods at whatever I’m

saying, as if she’s some visitor in a foreign country.

Last week:

“Honey,” I asked. “I need to pee.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Faye.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

When she’s sleeping and I can’t, I quietly

rehearse to myself how I’d like to go. I want to

tell Faye to get up and go for a walk, to grab

coffee with her girlfriends, and make nice with

the butchers and fishmongers at the supermar-

ket. I want Faye to leave the house. I want Faye,

even though we’ve talked about it before, even

though there’s an inherent risk, to take me with

her even as it grows cold and I realize I’m sus-

ceptible to even the slightest change in

temperature. I’ll tell her there’s no other place

for me but the labyrinth of her ear where it’s

warm and I can hold tight to the strands of her

cilia. In there, Faye can hear me loud and clear

for the last time, even though it will sound so

much like the first. I’ll be with Faye for as long

as she can hear me, until I become smaller, small

enough to slip through the fault lines of her

cells and body, and become a part of her.

Vincent Rendoni is an MFA candidate at Chatham

University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and teacher of

creative writing for the Words Without Walls program of

Allegheny County Jail.

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Andrea was standing at the kitchen sink,

scrubbing the face of a cast iron skillet with a wad

of steel wool when Loren came home and put a

baseball bat into the small of her back. It was the

morning of my first day of ninth grade so I wasn’t

home to help her. It didn’t surprise anybody, what

Loren did. That sort of thing happens a lot around

here and he’d

already gone

three tours so

it was almost

expected.

When

I got home and found Andie that way, sprawled

out on the floor, her legs scissored in front of her

pregnant belly and Loren squatting in a trench he’d

dug out in the back yard, spooning with a shovel,

I walked to the phone, picked it up and dialed. I

don’t really remember what I told the operator. I

think I just said that I needed help. I think I just

said, my sister, and, her fiancée, when the woman

asked what the nature of the emergency was. It

didn’t matter though, the paramedics arrived in

minutes and pretty much figured things out for

themselves. They siphoned into separate groups,

four for Andrea and six for Loren, still holed up

in the trench with a hunk of his calf missing from

where he’d caught it on the lip of his shovel.

The night before it happened I hadn’t

been able to

sleep. I was

all nervous

about the

day to come.

I lay awake

for hours, looking up at the glow in the dark stars

pasted on my ceiling and thinking about high

school, the bigger building, the kids I didn’t know.

After a while I got out of bed and sat up on the

roof. I do that sometimes. Nobody knows I’m up

there except me. I bring a bag of pretzels or chips

and just hang out, looking down at the front yard.

The big truck tires full of dirt and weeds my Dad

dragged into the lawn when I was littler and packed

There’s Always All ThatFiction

By Allie Rowbottom

The night before it happened

I hadn’t been able to sleep

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with sod from a pile out back. Andie and I have

made gardens in those tires every spring for years

now. Kneeled next to each other on the warm black

rubber and sprinkled marigold seeds into the tiny

holes Andie scoops in the dirt then covers it over,

tenderly, with soil and water.

So the night before it happened, I set

myself up on the roof. The stars were out

like always and the Milky Way had smeared

itself over them, like somebody just ran by

and dragged it along behind their outstretched

fingertips. For some reason up there, I started

thinking about what it might have been like for

Loren when he was away. Whether or not he got

lonely at night, whether or not he got scared. I

pictured him, dressed in green and sleeping in

his boots, curled up on a cot, thinking about

Andrea. The night there would be filled with

sounds, wailing sirens maybe, screams

sometimes. Not like the night is here, full of

small, familiar sounds. The dogs at the

McAllister’s house trotting by, collars jingling.

The snap of studded tires on the road. The

whine of breaks before the crunch of gravel

when the older Lucky brother comes home,

pulls his truck into the driveway and cuts the

engine. There’s always all that, always the breeze

moving through tree branches. The vibrations

of the house, ticking and whining and falling,

still again, underneath me.

Allie Rowbottom is a first year PhD candidate in

creative nonfiction at the University of Houston. She

received her BA from New York University and her

MFA from California Institute of the Arts.

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I am the girl with the boy-cut under a

black-and-white checked hat, sitting in the back

row, waiting for a cigarette.

You are the man at the on-stage podium,

sonorous voice intoning from your new novel.

I’m the one who sneaks out the back when everyone

else is queuing up, waiting for your signature. You’re

the kind of writer who’s already outside, holding a

lighter to the tip of a Marlboro. So I tell you, “Great

reading.”

And you say, “I know.”

I am the girl who’s making eyes. You’re the

man who writes down your hotel room. I’m the girl

who shows up.

Jessica Simms is a candidate for the MFA in Fiction at

Chatham University. Her work has appeared in Tidal

Basin Review and Sex and Murder Magazine.

NetworkingFiction

By Jessica Simms

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I tried to warn them, but now all eight of

them have ordered the crab. Leo’s happy because

it was stinking up the kitchen. I told the folks the

chicken was real good, but no, they had to have

crab because they’re here on the Eastern Shore—

big defenseless tourists from Minnesota. I shoulda

suggested a designated driver order the chicken

so’s he could rush them to St. Anthony’s while

they barfed and pooped all over the car seats. Food

poisoning ain’t pretty.

I could drop it all on the greasy kitchen

floor, but Leo who intentionally hired a cook with

no sense of smell, would insist we scrape it up and

serve it. I’m not proud of working here or of

letting Leo drag me back to his trailer after closing,

always saying he couldn’t run the place without me.

Some nights I hate myself.

It’s not like I’m totally passive. I’ve applied

a dozen places down the shore, but they give me

the runaround. I am overweight, but that don’t

mean I’m not polite or don’t know how to make

the kids laugh.

The poor hungry tourists are looking

toward the kitchen. Who’s gonna save them? Leo’s

grinning, teeth like a shark. Maybe it’s time I take

a cigarette break, one butt tossed at that pool of

grease under the grill.

“Folks, y’all might want to step outside so’s

you can catch sight of the flying fish. Yes, yes,

flying fish right here in Maryland.”

Louise Far mer Smith grew up in

Oklahoma. She has taught English,

trained as a family therapist, and worked

in a U.S. Congressman’s office. Her stories

have appeared in magazines including Virginia Quarterly

Review and Bellevue Literary Review which published

her “Return to Lincoln,” a 2005 Pushcart nominee. Her

story, “Apartment on Riverside Drive” took first place in one

of Glimmer Train’s 2006 short story contests. Her work

has been supported by The Ragdale Foundation and Virginia

Center for the Creative Arts. She was a 2005 Bread Loaf

fellow. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she is completing

a story collection, CADILLAC, OKLAHOMA.

Not Totally PassiveFiction

By Louise Farmer Smith

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The Study DateFiction

By Simone Stedmon

With a cigarette in one hand, and a sickly

orange drink in the other, he lay sprawled out on

the bed. Jazz music was blasting around the room

and he nodded along to the beat, his blonde hair

askew and black-rimmed glasses thrown haphazardly

on the floor. Surrounding him were a multitude

of people, all wearing a uniform of skinny jeans

and rainbow-colored t-shirts and all with the same

Cheshire-cat grin etched onto their faces. A slight

breeze wafted a strange aroma towards me, and I

became aware that what was being exhaled from the

rolled white wands was not tobacco.

“Come on in, darlin’,” came a voice that was

not the one I sought; the blonde-haired boy’s lips

remained motionless. As I was invited into the room,

the drug became fused with a concoction of other

curious scents: spilt alcohol seemed to have absorbed

into every item of furniture and there was the stale

stench of sweat, not entirely covered by past sprays

of Lynx that now lined the dressing table. “Fancy a

smoke, love?” leered the same voice, pointing to a few

inches of spare bean-bag to his side. I shook my head.

Instead, I moved to the other side of the room and

precariously perched on the edge of the bed, feeling

self-conscious all of a sudden. This was not what I

had expected. I did not fit in with this group at all.

Breaking from his trance, the blonde-haired

boy muttered something that sounded like ‘Alright,

mate?’ followed by a brief pat on the back which I

assumed meant to make myself comfortable; enjoy.

Someone pointed towards the TV which was

showing an episode of Family Guy, although their

eyes were so glazed that I could not believe that

they were actually watching it. Whatever was

happening on the TV was appreciated as a chortle

erupted from beside me. But the laugh seemed

distorted, mechanical, fake. There was nothing to

be scared of here, yet it was like looking into one

of the circus mirrors that bizarrely morphs the

body.

When I had bumped into him earlier in the

library, when his blonde hair was neatly in place, he

had invited me over to work on an essay. But I had

pictured something quite different. I assumed we

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would be alone. Together we could have talked and

enjoyed each others’ company as we normally did.

The boy who had seemed so rational, who would

spend an evening with a cup of tea and a book, or

would head down to a pub for a few drinks with

friends was now some sort of peculiar sloth.

I must have stayed for about half an hour,

just relishing

in the bizarre

conversations

that slowly

emerged.

Progressively

the fumes were beginning to get to my head and I

felt myself become dizzy, so I left. I think I passed

unnoticed, as there was no call back into the room.

Disappointment flooded my body as I shut the

door on them. It was like closing a door to a whole

new reality. I left them to delight in their own little

world for just a while longer.

An oppressive mist lay over the rows of

oscillated grey buildings which lined my way home,

the occasional light shining through a grubby window.

People rushed past, heads down and coats pulled close

around them. Shoulders occasionally bumped into

another’s, which was followed by a mumbled apology

they were already too far away to hear. Like clockwork

they marched on, heads suffocated by the memory of

stacks of bills piled on kitchen counters, lunches that

needed to be made for the next morning, shelves that

husbands needed reminding to fix. Occasionally an eye

strayed towards a flashing sign or the muffled music

escaping from behind the door of a welcoming pub,

but their gaze always returned fixedly to the floor. They,

like me, were

pursuing

relentlessly

towards their

final destination:

caught in the

monotony of life, unable to change course.

I walked this route daily and my feet slapped

against the pavement instinctively as my mind drifted

back to the room. They had seemed so content, so

liberated from the troubles of tomorrow. Their heads

were temporarily free to wander into a world away

from the routine of life. They did not care for money,

or exams, or work. And him. He had not noticed me

but then he did not need me in that world. They just

needed themselves and that pure sense of calm.

But wasn’t the mundane what life was about?

Wasn’t living by the rules what we were taught? It

was only as I was taking my keys from my bag that

I was roused from my thoughts and realized I had

Fancy a smoke, love?

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made it home. As I stepped over the threshold I

looked at the white walls stretching anodyne towards

a cream stair runner, shoes stacked neatly in a pine

frame, the clock’s insistent ticking. In that moment

I thought of essays that needed writing, letters that

needed filing, clothes that needed washing, and I

shut the front door behind me with a final bang.

Later that evening, having finished off the

last few mouthfuls of lukewarm hot chocolate, I

headed to bed. Whilst I repeated my usual routine

I wondered what would have happened if I had

stayed? If I had been that bit more adventurous? I

pulled off my jumper and was suddenly caught by

the distant scent of smoke that had absorbed itself

into the material. Closing my eyes, I drew the fabric

towards my face and inhaled.

Simone Stedmon has had a love for English ever since

discovering the alliterative joy of ‘Each Peach Pear

Plum’ as a child. She is currently in her third year of

studying BA English Literature at Cardiff University.

When she is not studying, Simone enjoys presenting a

student radio show and traveling adventures with friends

– even if it’s just pitching a tent in a muddy field! In an

ideal world Simone would like to be writing or presenting

Children’s programs in a few years time.

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Mouth to MouthFiction

By Clare Tascio

Craig is a lifeguard. When I tell people that, the

first thing they ask me is if we met because he

saved me from drowning. They laugh with their

mouths open. I don’t know how to answer. I feel

like I am choking on something soft.

People vomit after being resuscitated.

Craig would

like to save my

life.

I don’t think

he would go pale and scream and pump my chest

with the

desperation of a man in love. Craig would be calm

and cool.

He would smile at me once I pulled back to the

shore of the living the same way he smiles at me

after kissing me good morning.

Craig would like to tell people that he saved my life.

It would reaffirm that Craig is the guy who saves

people.

As his girlfriend of five years, Craig must save me

at some point.

He has chosen this summer to do it.

I have been sent away. To Craig’s sister’s house in

New Jersey. Right on the water. I have been sent

away for the weekend, and have been instructed

not to return

with the same

face I went

away with.

My face right now looks something like

mismatched furniture I guess.

A few days a week Craig gives private swimming

lessons to wealthy housewives. I don’t get jealous.

Craig asked me if I would be. But I don’t get

jealous when I think of those mothers, impeccably

groomed and manicured, being instructed by my

boyfriend on how to move their perfumed arms

Craig would like to save my life

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and kick their waxed legs and breathe and float.

Maybe I have a problem. Maybe I don’t love Craig

enough to care if he cheats on me with someone

else’s wife.

But really it’s because I know that Craig loves kids.

He would never think of throwing their lives into a

tailspin by getting caught with their mother under

an oversized monogrammed towel.

I am being unfair. Craig would say I am being

unfair.

Craig’s sister is a lot like Craig. Suzie is athletic. Tan.

With curly black hair, and brown eyes that glow

gold in the sun. The life she has, kids, house, heavy

couches, is the life Craig wants.

Craig sensed that now was the time for him to save

me. He has tossed me a life raft.

Female Craig.

I am a grey person. Craig is gold and brown and

black. His hope is that with some sun and surf and

salt I will change like a shrimp from cold

unappealing grey to hot juicy pink.

That’s what I said to Craig. He said I was being

unfair.

I am standing on the beach. The sky is overcast.

You can only see a few feet of ocean, like a grey

tongue slipping in and out of the white fog.

Suzie didn’t ask when she should expect me. I

know where the spare key is.

Brother and sister assume I will let myself in.

Clare is 22, born and raised in Brewster NY. She is

currently attending Hunter College for creative writing/

studio art. She loves pinot grigio and goat cheese. Preferably

at the same time.

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Luna Silvestre played the flute so beautifully. Her

name meant Silver Moon.

Kelvin wrote a limerick that involved a private part

of a teacher. His mother came in to meet with the

teacher a second time.

Catherine, a beautiful muchacha who knew how

to stand up to the boys, loved Green Day and had

sepia-flecked, emerald eyes.

Jane reminded you of a good Catholic girl.

Little Kerven was the best fighter on the basketball

court—he protected the ball and played hard in the

face of loss.

Jordannie’s temper drove the boys wild. So did her

cascade of dark auburn hair.

Dakhari said, “Ma president iz black, ma vp is phresh,

n if u don’t vote 4 dem, u’ll get a cap up yo ass.”

Aleigi was studious, polite and popular. She was a

paradox in a ghetto school.

Edward was perpetually showing off. He forgot,

after a while, who he was showing off for, or what

he was showing off.

Ilkona was enthusiastic for every project.

Melissa thought she was too good for any project.

Bespectacled Martin was laid back because he was

very tall.

Blue-capped Kevin worshipped the ground any

Dominican Yankee walked on.

Carlenis showed up with Baroque curls one day,

and that day, took on a sweet disposition.

Jandy roamed the hallways. He was a demon on

Notes From an Inner City SchoolFiction

By Ling E. Teo

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the motorbike. The girls felt tingles when he called

them “whores.”

Jennifer was Puerto Rican, which meant she was

softer-spoken. Like Luna, she played the flute

beautifully.

Marcos looked

out of the

window when

the Assistant

Principal talked

to him, just

to rile the AP further. In a red jumper and flat cap,

Marcos could pass off as Fat Albert.

Dania was often absent. When she was not absent

you noticed her, because she was a large girl.

Fausto suffered insults because he was black. He

wrote beautifully but did not like to share his writing.

His eyes shone like diamonds when he was mad.

Nigel was Nigerian. He was gentle, sweet-tempered

and imperturbable, and therefore did not suffer.

Raphael was white-looking and that was his cross

to bear. He spoke in rap.

Alex did not know why he was defensive and edgy,

which made him edgier and more defensive.

Johnlaudy often put on an angry front to impress

the female class bully. He had a crush on Stephanie.

Stephanie

could get the

fearful class

quiet in a split

second. She

tried to cow her mother by reporting her to the

Administration for Children’s Services.

Christina was the class brain. Like Joan of Arc, she

suffered for her beliefs.

Roberto frequently forgot where he’d left his brain.

Raquel wrote that she was from “cats and carriages

and dancing marriages, pizza parlors and tallest

tailors.”

Brenda was the class bobinchero; she spread the

latest gossip with lispy, run-on sentences.

Sean was the PTA President’s son. He always wore

The girls felt tingles when he called them “whores”

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a smile and a collar shirt. When he wanted, he

could turn water into wine with his words.

Christian had a twin sister who was as beautiful,

smart and goth-like as she was.

Salome, with the arc eyebrows, held back just

enough to leave the boys feeling empty.

Dariel looked like one of Maurice Sendak’s wild

things. He stole teachers’ Sharpies and tagged every

table, chair and urinal with graffiti.

Little Jesus was caught tagging disused subway cars

with Dariel. He was upset because he now had a

record.

Tremain announced to the class, “Cafeteria smells

like weed, pizza grease, and long-ass balls—in that

order. Dead-ass.”

Sheyla was always tuned into the beat and mood of

the class. She was the class barometer.

Teaching in Inwood, the northern most tip of

Manhattan, I was often overcome, inexplicably,

with a craving for rice and black beans. Now once

or twice a year, I make rice and beans in honor of

these children and their determination to be happy.

Ling E. Teo is a Humanities teacher. She grew up in

Singapore and lived in London, where she won an Asham

Award for writing. She currently lives in New York City.

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“Oof !” Thump. Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.

A rainbow wave of gumballs cascaded

down the wooden steps and flooded the

restaurant’s entryway: red, green, blue, yellow, and

white balls whizzed out the front door, bounced

into the bathroom, rolled under the host stand.

The compounding rattle caused heads to swivel to

the stairs, and every child’s eyes grew big.

“We’ll help!” shouted a blond four-year-old,

rushing to the scene with the rest of the stampede

and curling his baby-fat fingers with their dimpled

knuckles around as many gumballs as possible,

cramming them into his mouth and pockets.

Children from upstairs tumbled over the

protesting but still-prone gumball delivery man.

He rose when the final toddler had gingerly passed

him, bruised and battered and bloodied as

colorfully as the gumballs he had allowed to slip

from his arms. The noisy silence of smacking gum

settled when the entire rainbow had been gathered,

and the children—some blowing bubbles, some

counting their haul under their breath, some crying,

having arrived too late—

wandered back to their families, distracted.

Valerie Tidwell graduated in 2009 from the University of

California, Santa Barbara, with a degree in communication

and a minor in professional editing. She did pretty well in

school, but there is a whole big world out there to explore,

and she spent the next two years doing just that, living in

Taiwan and Italy and traveling in between. As she has

not yet managed to make traveling a paying gig, Valerie

sometimes works in restaurants, where the initial inspiration

for this story was undoubtedly found. Valerie currently lives

in Washington, D.C.

Rainbow GoldFiction

By Valerie Tidwell

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She looked up and saw a pair of grey eyes,

patiently waiting. She looked down and saw a drain

in the floor. This isn’t an interrogation, it’s a job

interview. This isn’t an interrogation, it’s a job

interview. She wanted to melt and run down the

drain and out of the room… but asked instead,

“Could you repeat the question?”

Lauren Tolbert is an occasional

job interviewee who lives in

Minneapolis, MN. Currently

she is a chemist, but is looking

forward to new job opportunities,

hopefully those that come without

an interrogation. This is her

debut publication.

Job InterrogationFiction

By Lauren Tolbert

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- Good party.

- Yeah. Outta sight.

- Nobody says that, man.

- I said it.

- Great, now everybody’ll say it.

- Outta sight.

He smiled, because she was here somewhere. He

just had to march. He was full of marching

powder, so marching shouldn’t be hard, but it was

hard, because he missed her, and missing her made

everything harder. Like marching, even on

marching powder. It was always somebody’s

birthday in Hollywood. Where he grew up, weeks

passed with no birthday parties, so birthday

parties felt like parties and not excuses to leap into

a pool dyed red. The theme was death. He counted

fifty grim reaper costumes, but everybody was

high—tough to take a grim reaper seriously when

he couldn’t quit moving. It’d be tough to wake up

tomorrow like it’d been tough to wake up today

because she liked to fuck when fucked up, so he

got fucked up and fucked her and waking up was

torture. He was a pretty face, a magazine cover;

magazine covers could cover the torture he visited

on his pretty, pretty face. Bass line beat a beat for

his feet, ba-BUM-bum-BUM-bum.

Bass line was a baseline. He wasn’t normal; he

wanted her to fix him, to fix him she only had to

love him, to love him she only had to fix him, ba-

BUM-bum-BUM-bum, I’m-a-BUM-

bum-BUM-bum. He liked being young and alive

and famous and doomed. The heartthrob’s heart

throbbed, ba-BUM-bum-BUM-bum.

How could she want more than to be loved by

this pretty, pretty face? The refreshment table had

bowls of pills, so he took a handful and felt

better. The pool was red, like devils crying. Like

angel blood – he liked that. He’d put it in a song.

He was all out of songs—he hated that, that Lost

Angel Ease, like sad Satan. Like red water. He felt

awful, he was a handful, and the pills were mixed

on the refreshment table, where he wasn’t

crying—ugly, ugly. Who wanted to be loved by this

ugly monster? bum-BUM-bum-BUM-ba, throbbed

The HeartthrobFiction

By Gina Wohlsdorf

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his heart. He needed to sit down, he had to, but

he couldn’t, because he was doomed and liked

it best, better than famous and alive and young,

bum-BUM-bum-BUM-I’m-a-bum-BUM-

bum-BUM. To fix the love, to love the fix, was

completely normal, but it wasn’t his baseline. He

could make that himself, bum-BUM-bum-BUM-ba. He hated to march, like the steps

would torture his ugliness bare and bright for

flashbulbs, which flashed brilliant behind what he

was, which was more, which was afire and

faithful, which was possibility on a pulse—the

pulse of waking up and fucking her fucked up,

doing it hard, doing it today and tomorrow, and

you only had to keep moving. Like that grim

reaper, or that one or that one. Any one of fifty,

because the theme was death, and he didn’t need

an excuse to leap into the red pool that felt like a

party, unlike weeks past when he grew up in

Hollywood and got a new birthday, everyday,

marching, he liked marching, it made everything

easier. He didn’t miss her, it was easy, so easy, he

was full of marching, and he just had to because he

was out of his mind, and that made her-

- Outta sight. He smiled.

- Great, said somebody.

- I said it.

- Everybody says that, man.

- Yeah. Good party.

Gina Wohlsdorf is currently an MFA candidate at

the University of Virginia. Her work has appeared in

Meridian and The Storyteller, and is upcoming in

Gambling the Aisle.

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ThoughtsFiction

By Meirav Zehavi

I think the fact that I accept myself and my deeds,

that I know exactly who I am, is what helps me

maintain my sanity in my work. Other people,

possibly you, have fears, shames and regrets. It’s

this holy trinity which harms your judgment,

making you restless as wolves in full moon nights.

You would like to think you can lock these ill

feelings in the safes of your consciousnesses, but

it’s not that simple. Not anymore. Not when you

die, anyway.

We, the members of the government’s thoughts

department, have a key. It’s a fine needle which

looks like a sharpened finger. We open your

heads and use it to pick your brains and scan

your thoughts. You lie helpless and lifeless on a

stretcher, electrodes attached to your cold bodies,

and your memories are formed as scabs on a screen

whose color is white as a bare bone. All the insects

that crawled in your throats, sucked your blood,

digested your sanity, spawned in your lungs, and

maybe, maybe even caused your deaths – but you’ll

rather die than expose them, are revealed here

in front of us. There are no secrets on the white

screen. I saw things that were engraved on my

eyeballs – that I’ll never be able to forget, and my

lips would never be able to pronounce.

Our initial goal was to draw information from ter-

rorists who refused to cooperate. Yes, I remember

the beginning. We prevented terrorist attacks. Mem-

bers of terror organizations almost never give

themselves up. We kicked them, starved them,

imprisoned them in dark and suffocating basements

while their eyes, ears and noses were bleeding, and

they remained silent as corpses. It was so

frustrating. Only when they truly turned into corpses

we could make them talk. A few weeks later, straight

after we captured them, we shot them. Oh, it was

such a relief. We got the government’s approval to

do so, claiming it will help us maintain our

humanity. Instead of beating criminals until their

pants are absorbed with urine and feces, their hairs

with sweat and their shirts with vomit, and my skin –

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my skin with their blood, I could just shoot them.

We gained a tremendous success. Shortly

afterwards we started acting also against “heavy”

criminals – murderers, rapists and people with

dangerous sadistic tendencies, which we had

reasons to believe that they hold valuable

information. I used to sit in front of my white

screen for hours, the fluorescent lights burning

above me

as dying

stars and

my hands

holding a

sharpened

shiny needle. Sharpened things always shine better,

more beautiful. Sometimes I continued searching

criminals’ brains while sleeping – they resurrected

as ghosts in my dreams, haunting my nights. I read

some ghosts can gain control on living beings.

When I woke up from these nightmares, I was

sweating and my hands were shaking. It always took

me a few seconds to assure myself that it’s still me

controlling my body, that the ghosts didn’t change

me. I knew these criminals’ souls – I saw them on

my white screen. At first they were blurry, but after

a while they turned bright as cloudless skies. I tried

to resist, but revealing the criminals’ secrets was

easier when I allowed their souls to pour from their

brains to my needle, from my needle to the tips of

my fingers, and from my fingers they crawled under

my nails and skin. Some of the criminals were vic-

tims themselves, mostly in their childhood. Some

of them were persuasive and charismatic. They

were all psychopaths, in one way or another. So yes,

I knew their souls.

And

sometimes,

sometimes I

understood.

There was a time it used to scare me, but as I said,

nowadays I have no fears, shames or regrets. And

that, that might scare you.

I realized that understanding criminals doesn’t

make me a criminal. It doesn’t make us, the

thoughts department’s members, criminals. We

fight for justice. Moreover, we started acting also

against “heavy” criminals which we didn’t have

reasons to believe that they hold valuable

information. The thing is that you can never be

I knew their souls

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sure, and we wanted to strengthen our war against

injustice. Thus we killed them as well so we’ll be

able to read their minds. And no, in case you’ve

wondered, there is no need for “privacy” in a world

which consists of integrity.

So why should we stop with criminals? Yes, this is

also what we thought. We had a chance to destroy

crime. We opened heads of victims, invaded their

thoughts, discovered their abusers and imprisoned

them. Well, actually, we stopped imprisoning them.

We just shot them. There were some families of

victims which opposed to opening their loved ones’

heads, but their resistance was weakened by grief.

We explained that we don’t enjoy invading their

love ones’ heads, and this is exactly the reason why

we do it – so there’ll be no need to do it in the

future.

We acted against all criminals, including “light”

criminals such as thieves. I don’t understand this

definition – “light” criminals. A person is either a

criminal or a good citizen, and if he’s a criminal,

we should shoot him and investigate his thoughts.

No, not “should”. “Must”. I won’t deny there were

times in which we made mistakes in identifying

criminals and innocent people found themselves

dead. However, our achievements flourished,

providing unquestionable evidences of the

necessity of our actions. Many agreed. A few

opposed.

“Can’t you see our flourishing achievements?”

“Flourishing,” said a woman while protecting

her criminal child, “like cancer.” She swore she’ll

murder me, steal my technology and invade my

thoughts.

I shot both of them. There’s no doubt that these

opposers are criminals.

If you can hear my thoughts, I guess I’ve died. All I

can do is hope you’re members of my department,

and not my opposers. Dear friends, remember to

act against the true criminals. I give you my blessing.

Meirav Zehavi is a M.sc.

student in Computer Science

that lives in Israel. She is a

vegetarian that loves animals

(especially dogs) and literature.

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ART

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pressed between leavesArt

by Eleanor Bennett

Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 15-year-old internationally award winning

photographer and artist who has won first places with National Geo-

graphic, The World Photography Organisation, Nature’s Best

Photography, Papworth Trust, Mencap, The Woodland Trust

and Postal Heritage. Her photography has been published in the Telegraph, The Guardian, BBC

News Website and on the cover of books and magazines in the United States and Canada. Her art is

globally exhibited, having shown work in London, Paris, Indonesia, Los Angeles, Florida, Washington,

Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Canada, Spain, Germany, Japan, Australia and The Environmental Pho-

tographer of the year Exhibition (2011) amongst many locations. She was also the only person from

the UK to have her work displayed in the National Geographic and Airbus run See The Bigger Picture

global exhibition tour with the United Nations International Year Of Biodiversity 2010.

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Snap CutArt

By Christopher Hackbarth

Christopher Hackbarth has always been an enthusiastic a creative creature. A

childhood of drawing on the backs of paper placemats in restaurants to building

with Legos has not quite left him as he pursues an Illustration degree from the

California State University of Long Beach. Christopher is enjoying the opportu-

nity to discover and explore the arts and continue to develop a true passion. “I feel

happy to be in such an exciting place in life right now. The ability to soak in so

much information and experience is almost overwhelming, in a good way.”

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HAIKUS

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Summer MemoriesHaiku

By Cathy MacKenzie

Seeds planted in soil

Grow thick stalks grasping the sky

Wilt without a kiss

Summer Memories, Part 2Haiku

By Catherine A. MacKenzie

Cathy enjoys writing poems, short stories and essays, some of which have

been or will be published in such publications as Chicken Soup for

the Soul, Sasee Magazine, and anthologies compiled by Twin Trinity

Media. Her writings have also won several contests. Along with several

short stories, she is currently working on a novel. Check out her website

at: http://writingwicket.wordpress.com/.

A glass of cold wine

Bikinis and shorts and tanks

Forget ice and snow

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A Visit to the Hen HouseHaiku

By Debra Mathis

such sweet heat against

my cheek, an oval promise,

the freshly laid egg

Debra Mathis grew up in the deserts of New Mexico, and

began writing poetry by the age of seven. Her first poetry

book, “Gravity Moves Water”, was published in 2006. She

currently hovers in the badlands of Texas, while working

on her PhD in psychology. Gardening, studying and playing

music take up most of her time.

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Wronged by the Circus, AgainHaiku

By Ryan Moll

I could never kill

Enough clowns to make up for

My summer of shame

Saying GoodbyeHaiku

By Ryan Moll

Autumn approaches

Sock puppets packed away now

“See you next year, friends!”

Ryan Moll is an Applied Mathematics graduate student at

the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has written

hundreds of haiku poems on subjects such as clown abuse

and loneliness. Ryan has an intense fear of conjoined twins.

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Shelley Chase Muniz was born in Modesto, California, and attended college at

Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California. She moved to Sonora

in 1974, married, and had two children. She was a primary school teacher’s

aide and librarian at a local elementary school for fifteen years. She

currently works at Columbia College as a library specialist. Shelley’s short

story, “Silent Screams,” was a finalist in the 75tyh Annual Writer’s Digest

Short Story Contest. In 2010, another short story, “Holes,” was published in

the anthology Wild Edges by Manzanita Press. This year, 2011, Kate

Farrell, editor of an anthology about mothers and daughters titled Wisdom Has

A Voice included Shelley’s story, “Even Then” in her choices for publication.

Sierra Nevada ReverieHaiku

By Shelley Muniz

Sunlit granite domes

A field of purple lupine

Two for one complete

Daydreams and HikingHaiku

By Shelley Muniz

Stomping through blue sage

To reach a tranquil river

Lost in translation

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