Adelaide Literary Magazine No. 54, October 2022

REVISTA LITERÁRIA ADELAIDE

He starts in unprompted, as if we’d just left off discussing it : You know,
Raphael, as I was saying, for years I’ve provided sport for many people.
They make fun of me and my gullibility. One smart acquaintance of
mine, Donald Ray, spelled it out for me sitting here one night over way
too many beers. It’s your goddam ignorance, he said, raising his hands
like a remonstrative preacher. Not stupidity, but ignorance.

Ah well, I said to him, everybody needs something to hold on to.
Right or wrong, I’ve got mine. So, after a while the ridicule stopped
having its intended effect. I take what I believe and move ahead, not
worrying about snide remarks and raised eyebrows. The way it works
for me now is this, and I’ll be the first to admit it could change without
any warning, but now, I don’t take a single step, not a word issues from
my mouth, but that I don’t try to find out what Jesus would want me to
do. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know about me.

I signal yes and encourage him to go on. He slants his chair back so
he can look up at the ceiling, discolored with fried foods and tobacco
smoke, and goes on with his story and becomes reflective for a few
moments and sighs.

Then he says, I’ve heard my minister say, Raphael, on many occasions
that there’s not much difference between the words somebody speaks
and the actions they take. His reasoning is that the retribution for either
one, when done wrong, will be just the same, and that what really counts
is what one thinks in one’s heart. Once that goes, that realization, then
everything is lost and you’re well set out along the road to hell.

I say, yes I get it. I know, I’ve been there myself and clack my beer
bottle affirmatively on the glass tabletop smeared with enough jelly and
other foodstuffs to pull him through at least two meals. One could row
pole-beans up in what is composting on that table top.

He continues, smiling of course that we are in accord and then says,
it would mark me out as a fool not to admit that I’m not exactly sure
about a good number of those fine code-libets my minister delivers
from the pulpit; but even with those doubts, I can still go on referring
to him as reverend-doctor; a little respect, even if unmerited, never hurt

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anybody. He knows things I don’t. That’s what he’s paid for. Another
thing he says that comes back to me now, is that very often you’ll find
people on both sides of any given issue, a response he says that comes
from a system called sexular relativism, which, as best I understand it,
involves family incest and the fact that whether something is right or
wrong depends on what country you come from. There are some French
river-people who consider it a point of honor for the fathers to introduce
their daughters to the hard world, in a shielded fashion, if you get my
drift. All of which does not, however, mean that both sides are equally
right, he’s quick to add. There’s a razor-sharp and sun-bright difference
between relativism and tolerance. But then, who knows, anyway? The
most important thing is to remember what’s most important. That’s the
beginning and end of being good — living right, going home to Jesus, he
says. Keep that uppermost — the suffering of the sweet Lord Jesus and
how the Father God’s giving us his only Son’s generous death and sweet
resurrection is what washed us all clean. That being kept uppermost in
the mind, everything else falls into place, he mentions continuously in
his sermons.

Now then, to say, as I did earlier, that I ask Jesus what he’d have me do
or utter, is not the same as to say that I always get an answer. Of course
not. But the thing is this, I strive towards it, and that’s what counts; it’s
what you intend, and not so much what you accomplish; what your
attitude is, or has been, so to speak, that is going to be the primary
concern for Him that conducts the final purge and sorting out — goats
on the left, sheep on the right — as I’ve heard it put. But then anybody
with half sense knows all that. In fact, to be perfectly honest about it,
and I hope, of course, this doesn’t reflect on the likelihood of my coming
to be set at the Lord’s right hand with the sheep, but better than half
the time there’s no answer at all comes to my efforts to commune with
the highest power in this world or out of it that there is. It goes without
saying that I’d never tell this to my minister. And anyway, we don’t have
to make confession the way those whorish papists do. No, our Rising
Sun communion is of a more serene and private sort.

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But back to prayer. That truly is a mysterious thing, especially in the
privacy of your own closet, unlike the way of the Jewish Pharisees, those
sons of the devil, and others who make a public display of their sanctity,
but especially the Jews, they were warned against doing it at Leviticus
18:22, I think Rev. Edwards quotes from that part of Scripture. And
that’s as it should be, no doubt. Otherwise, there’d be some question
of my sanity, I’d be the first to admit, I mean, if an answer came every
time I reached out imploring the help of the Lord. Which is not to
suggest that when I don’t get an answer, he’s not listening, so much as
it is that probably I’m not paying close enough attention. On the right
wavelength, for instance. Or just distractive. Who knows really?

But what I’m trying to get at is this : there is, I must admit, a great
burden of care on my mind these days, given what happened with father
and all.

I can see thet Malcolm is getting to his thesis now, and so I say, yes,
Malcolm, tell me about that. Last time I was in for a visit you were
getting started about the problems you’d had with your father, but we
ran out of time. What happened with him?

He says, I suspect that a lot of my spiritual shortcoming has to do
with plain old sheer quantity of concentration. And that’s where the
crossover with Zen Buddhism comes in that’s so confusing for a thinking
Christian like me.

Then I think, well maybe we’ll not get to it this time either and look
at my watch.

Malcolm says, which, no doubt, probably strikes a jarring note — to
hear me, a relatively unlearned country person, talking about exotic
religions. But I’ve read and thought more than might be evident or
most people think. He reaches for a cigarette and is quiet while he lights
it up, takes a long draw and blows it up in a volcano spume toward
the nicotine-yellow ceiling. Then he looks back at me and motions
toward the stack of soft-bound pornography to his left. Even so, with
my probably excessive reading, I still don’t know much at all about it,
Zen Buddhism, but I do have this friend, Donald Ray, who I mentioned

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earlier, and who I go shooting with on occasion, and he’s pretty much
an expert on it, or at least he talks a lot about it. And out of respect
to him, I often take the time to hear him out carefully, and one time I
even agreed with him that there might be some connections between
the two faiths. And that’s exactly where he corrected me and said, “How
many times I got to tell you, Malcolm, there is no such thing as faith in
Buddhism, only the concentration, or non-concentration, I was talking
about. Are you not listening? Watch, he said, and then leaned his cheek
down against the rifle stock and got off a pretty good pattern, and then
looked back up at me and smiled and said with a grin, that’s what I’m
talking about — concentration. That’s all. You just gotta let that faith
bullshit go.”

But the whole topic remains pretty much murky with me. He makes
good points from time to time, but he never has shaken my faith, and
never will. I’m almost sure of that. And even if he is in error, none of
it seems to affect his accuracy as a marksman, so most of the time we
just let it slide, while I keep wondering if he’s really on to something.

Be all that as it may, not too many months ago, I passed through an
immensely trying and curious epoch in my spiritual life that I’ve been
wanting to share with you for some time. And I’ll just set it out clear
and simple as I can. It wasn’t a grand revelation or anything like that.
I wish it had been, I suppose, like the night I found Jesus with Miss
Sugarpie who’d asked me over to St. Mary’s Missionary Baptist, the
colored church just down the road. While I’m not too high on negroes,
I do feel one should make an effort to attend economical, cross-religious
gatherings when it’s possible. But, no, my most recent encounter, the
one I’m talking about now, wasn’t that good, but instead was just a mild,
what might be termed, protracted sort of epiphany, I think they call
it. Not a Pentecost-like vision and some extra-terrestrial appearance of
supernatural things at all. Not that. And really, one way you look at it,
there might be very little that the objective and casual observer, if that’s
not a contradiction in itself, could even find that’s useful in it, in terms
of the revelation that it brought me. Because it was not as if I’d been out
in the world struggling in that great arena of wills with the spit and snot
and blood of commerce pooling in the sand the way they still do here

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in some quarters of my beloved Mississippi. No. Beyond a doubt, not.
I was sitting right here in this blue corduroy-covered recliner my sister
gave me when she moved out of town for the last time, thinking about
my father and that whore he took up with some time back. Now then,
to put it as simple as possible — they drank up, the both of them, my
patrimony. Such as it was. Which is why I’m sitting in a worn-out blue
recliner in a ramshackle metal mobile home, instead of that clapboard
house we all grew up in as kids or a nice place in the subdivision in
town where my other sister lives. But that’s moving ahead a bit too fast.

Just take your time, I say, looking again at my watch, wondering if
maybe I’ll have time to get back around to see Melissa. She’s pretty nice
when she’s coming down off her peyote, open to comfort and kind
words.

Malcolm continues, the place to begin is to point out that really, in
one way you look at it, there wasn’t much at stake to begin with. I’ve
come to realize this subsequently. I mean it wasn’t like we, my sisters
and me, had been in danger of losing Sutpen’s hundred square miles of
bottom land or anything like that. No, it was just a pretty little house
in a wooded copse, as they say in English poems (of which I’d read no
few, until my minister showed me the pagan tenor of most of them and
suggested I put them away). We had a small pond with a few fish, and
in the spring when the brim were spawning you could fill a basket up
using crickets we’d get from the cricket ranch around the corner. A few
birds. That’s all. Leaves that change in the fall. The usual stuff you find
in the country. Good enough to finish your days out on. Which was
exactly what I’d planned all along as soon as we’d get father buried or
burned or whatever he’d want done with his remnants. My sisters had all
married and moved away and everybody seemed willing to grant me the
use of the place as soon as father reached the point where he’d need help
and I could take care of him without paying too much attention to his
complaints that would surely come along with his waning and demise.
But all of that changed when he lost his footing and started slipping
towards hell. And that’s a steep and slippery slope, let me tell you,
especially when it’s slicked over by alcohol and lascivious body fluids.

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I can always hear preacher Edward’s sermon to that effect, whenever I
think about this.

But anyway, father seemed like he’d gotten over losing mother. We
all thought he had. And was settling down into his golden years of
mumbling (he always mumbled a lot to himself, even before he started
slipping away) and reading and writing letters to the relatives flung far
and wide from Dublin to Tupelo, the way he’d always done, only more
so, now that life was getting slower and drawing towards its end and
settlement, so to speak. He wasn’t what you’d call a documented scholar
or anything like that, but he had some culture that had filtered up
through the family tree — we had been Mississippi Episcopalian stock,
and though of course diminishing through the years as we drew further
and further from the source, nevertheless stood us in pretty good stead
up until he went wild. But, as is to be expected, I was convinced more
than ever that it was all the work of the devil, those modern religions,
when I saw what it had done to him — the fancy religion, I mean. That
should give you some idea of how he went bad. But after thinking about
it and discussing it with Rev. Edwards, we pretty much believe that it
must have had to do with the Irish taint that got to rankling around
in there and deflected his path from an otherwise entirely predictable
decline into his grave.

I can remember the day exactly it all started, at least for me. It was
going down on Elvis Presley just before you get to the light at what was,
or maybe still is, Winchester road, named after one of the early Tennessee
settlers who had something to do with drawing up a border between
Tennessee and Mississippi and had a grandson descendant that proved
an embarrassment to us all back in the war years. But I won’t go into
that. At any rate, I understand there’s a lot of people from Senegal and
Nairobi and places like that, moved into that Elvis Presley part of town
now. What used to be a real pretty little neighborhood, Whitehaven it
was called, which says it all, and still is, has taken on quite the opposite
in character now. Decline of that sort, going on all over America now,
reminds me of the souls of little babies that come into the world all clean
and stainless and white and then wind up after a few years of wicked

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mundane commerce with the sexular world, soiled and fouled and all
blackened over with the stench of corruption, like Whitehaven now is.

Anyway, set just off the road, fronted by a large plat of oil-smeared
asphalt is, or was, a titty-bar. I don’t like using that word, but that’s what
it was, a titty-bar. I think they’ve remodeled it now and put in a children’s
nursery for colored people — now that’s poetic. And why I was even
over in that part of town escapes me now. I mean Elvis Presley himself
is the last thing on my list. So I surely wasn’t over there to visit his place.
He’s dead and gone now, as well he should be, laid up on his Graceland
property and, not to be judgmental or too conceited, but I’m certain
he got just what he deserved with his gluttony and dope-taking and all.
I mean when you think about him, this big old fat rock-and-roll star
laying up there with everything going his way and doing what he did
with every skinny woman (and young boys too, I hear; talk gets around
Memphis, but you don’t hear it much outside of town, and certainly not
in the tourist brochures) who’d come up there in those tawdry rooms
he’d had done up like those whorehouses in Babylon.

Anyway, there I was headed home past Elvis’s place and just by accident
happened to look over to the left and saw his car, or what I thought
was his car parked out front. Accident, did I say? Not really. For I am
convinced there is no such thing — not even a sparrow falls, my minister
says. But let it go for now as a figment of speech.

No, says I, This cannot be. And I don’t mean an Elvis Presley sighting
either, though in a way it was exactly what it was, now that I come to
think about it. Imagine people trying to turn that pervert into a god of
some kind! But we’re finding more and more of that false-god business
nowadays and which explains how you can calculate how close our
trajectory is moving toward endtimes. Rev. Edwards has a nice chart
drawn up in his office showing it in lines and convergences and trends,
with relevant Bible quotes cut in.

But I made my way around the block and came back by. And I swung
into one of the gift shops just beyond Elvis’s place. I got out within
sight of the Lisa Marie and walked back down the road a bit to the

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titty-bar. And yeah, by the blood of the risen Christ, it was him alright.
The tags looked like what I remembered father’s to be and and so did a
few identifying marks on the car that I spotted. Like the baseball peck
on the back left quarter-panel when I’d let a pitch get by one day out
playing catch with my nephew, Merl. I really like working with kids.
Not only is it relaxing, but there’s something wholesome and salvational
in it as well, especially when you can turn simple phrases like ’homerun’
into a sort of homily on our future state; which is not to say that good
works has anything to do with what’s going to happen on that final day,
mind you. It’s intentions that count more than anything, as I’ve said
more than once.

Do I stop and go in, or do I wait and just try to sort it out at my
leisure? I asked myself. The answer came pretty quick: You just wait, you
hear. There’s got to be some other explanation of all this. I’m loathe ever
to assume the worst of family until I can get good damning evidence.
Maybe, says I, he picked up a part-time job delivering something or,
who knows, maybe he’s even passing out tracts. This would certainly be
the place to do it. I had been talking to him about coming to the Lord
for many months prior. It seemed a possibility that my outreach had
borne fruit. So that evening I got home and I called him up.

Father, how are you?
Fine.
Have a good day?
Fine. Just fine as frog hair. And you?
Oh, tolerable, I guess. I was just out riding around part of the day. Up
in the Whitehaven area, near the Presley place.
That should have been enough of a leading hint, but he came back
with exactly nothing, except to offer to go on to talk some small talk
for a minute or two until I finally couldn’t figure out what else to say.
So I came out with, Well, call me if you need anything.

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Click. Neat and final, just as always. He was gone. So I decided to stay
pretty much out of it for a while.

And yet, sure enough, two weeks later, when I stopped at his place, the
home place, the patrimony, for an unannounced visit, early one morning
around five or so, he had a friend there with him. Over for coffee, he
said. And happened to mention in the course of the conversation, that
he’d just met her. She was having some problems and they’d just taken
up with one another for conversation, more than anything else. And of
course I couldn’t help but smirk a little to myself thinking about that old
word for ‘conversation.’ Intercourse, you mean, said I to myself. Pretty
early morning it was. Which naturally made me suspicious.

“Charlotte, Malcolm. Malcolm, Charlotte.“ And I shook her nasty
little hand and smiled just like I meant it, ”Pleased to meet you.“

And that was it for another two weeks. Until finally she’d moved in.
His dancer girlfriend, not yet twenty-five and him more than seventy,
who made her money inch-worming up and then back down a chrome
pole, head down, mind you, on Elvis Presley. And God only knows
what else she did over in the back room they provided there, I’ve been
told by reliable sources.

Well, of course, the next thing, but only after praying on it, I remember
I was reading in Paul at the time, was to call my sister and say something
to this effect: ”The patrimony is all but eviscerated.“

She said, ”Don’t worry. He’s an old man. He’ll get over it. Can’t last
long.“

Which was, you’ll have no doubt, easy enough for her to say up in
Virginia making lots of money on her real estate ventures and that sort
of thing. And too she was big in the Baptist church up there and they’re
like Jews — take care of their own. She had no worries. She was fixed.
While I sat here watching everything just evaporate.

I was sitting in the recliner and had just closed the sweet book of
eternal promises, when she said that. I remember it as if it was yesterday.

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So I didn’t. I decided then and there to listen to her, to just watch and
wait and let it play itself out. And sure enough it did. Not a sparrow
falls, I must keep telling myself. Even a single hair casts a shadow.

Once or twice I went by to see her dance, hoping she’d show some
small crack in that otherwise obdurate character of hers, or whatever, in
which I might come to repose just a modicum of hope. But no. Nothing
like that. I mean, what, finally, can you expect from that sort of woman?
And that’s not a rhetorical question, either. Not at all.

So she would dance late into the night, and then afterwards they’d sit
up drinking together till the early hours, until finally the house got sold
along with the woods and the birds and the fish, so they cold buy more
beer and a fancy pimped-out Chrysler. And at last he ran out of money
and property and possessions and, of course you’d know it, whore too,
and he had to move in with my sister, and there I was, left with nothing.
Well, not quite nothing. I still had my faith. And then what it finally
came down to was father laying up in the VA hospital dying.

I remember that day clear as glass, the doctor walking out in the hall
there at the hospital and shaking his head and saying, ”He won’t last
long. It’s a very advanced case of infantsemens. I suspect he’ll be gone
in a fortnight.“ And me not hesitating, but coming right back at him.
Everybody thought I was out of place for bringing religion in at that
moment and insulting the doctor, but I was frank as could be. I said,
”Well that surely explains it all, given her age and profession. Spend your
time with young whores and you’re gonna wind up with infantsemens.
Don’t need a medical degree to tell that.” And then I went on to recount
the story of Sarah’s seminal emission at Genesis 17:15 and how Rev.
Edwards always said it wasn’t that big a miracle. And it wasn’t after all.
Those who scoff at that book should maybe just have another look.
Those things’ll come back to haunt you just when your pride tells you
you have all the answers.

And right there is where I stopped, going over it all in my mind, when
I realized how it stood, when the epiphany I was talking about earlier
came, sitting here in my chair, and said with as much fervor as I could,

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”Dear Jesus, if you can just explain this to me, I’ll be most happy and
ever grateful to you.“

The room was real quiet. I could hear the second-hand on the wall
clock, the pretty gold one from Whoreshoe Casino, making a soft
snicking sound as it clipped across each mark. There was this steady wind
outside and it was making a low sound almost like a long bass-fiddle
note as it blew across the top of the toilet vent pipe on the roof. I closed
my eyes and tried to conjure up that silent repose which characterizes
all good prayer. I waited with my Bible cradled nicely in my lap. And I
waited what must have been a good two or three minutes. But no answer
came. There was just this dead scary silence, except for my breathing and
the refrigerator compressor rattling on its cradle in the background and
the oven ticking off cool after I’d reheated some leftovers for my supper.

It was then I realized that sometimes the silent spaces in a body’s
life can be just as important as the speaking parts. So, maybe after all,
Donald Ray is right. Which is to say nothing to the point unless you
have ears to hear, I think it was John said.

Father died finally of his infantsemens. A year ago this Easter, I believe
it is. As you might suspect, Charlotte didn’t even come to the funeral.
She’s still going up and down her pole. But not on Elvis Presley anymore,
though. Over on Getwell it is now. And I bet she never passes too
many days before seeing her way to another cup of coffee with some
unsuspecting man who has a son maybe out there just wanting to live
in peace and instead will be forever denied his patrimony because of
some whore-woman. Like me, renting this little worn-out metal box in
the country and keeping my faith as best I can in the face of no little
diversity and disappointment. But there’ll come another day. I see that
plain. Another day’s coming.

I looked at my watch and said, Just hold that until next week, Malcolm.
I’ve got an appointment with Melissa coming up. But I’ll get back to
you. You’ll be alright won’t you?

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Sure, he said. Where am I going to go? You take care, Raphael, you
hear.

R. Mullin, having courageously served his country in opposition to one of its too numerous
wars, is a fully-accredited PNRFIC, which is to say a Proud Non-Recidivist Formerly
Incarcerated Citizen. Nevertheless, family, friends and colleagues continue to refer to him as
an ex-convict rather than a war-hero. Both terms are hyphenated. Close enough, one must
suppose. In addition, he is a Mississippi writer laboring assiduously under all of the grave
disabilities the aforementioned conditions entail. He has been published in The Avalon
Literary Review, Iconoclast Literary Journal, The Paterson Literary Review, J Journal
and The Nicaraguan Academic Journal.

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SISTERLY SUNDAY RITUAL

by Bette Kosmolak

My sister pops over for breakfast every Sunday. Like it’s a family ritual
or something. She insists we need structure in our lives now that we’re
both in Toronto and on our own. I tell her our nine to five jobs, five
days a week, constitute structure. She insists.

“With your work and mine,” she says, we don’t have time to meet
during the week, so it will have to be Sundays.”

I relent. I am glad she wants to hang out. Truly, I am. She’s my only
sister. But every Sunday?

Sunday mornings, we hunker down over my narrow kitchen table. It’s
wood and looks as if it was homemade from three planks. It is. Three
planks on four legs. But it works. She sits at one end. Me at the other.
We linger over bacon and eggs. Over-easy for both of us which simplifies
things. And coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. Each week, we indulge in our
ritual: sharing whatever devilment we’ve gotten into the night before.
However, be warned. Our ritual comes with a proviso: whoever has the
least outrageous story about their previous evening cooks breakfast the
following week. It’s my turn this week. My turn last week too.

This Sunday, sis arrives looking flustered. Almost panicked. From
my balcony, I see her jump out of her car and race up the walk to my
building. I flip the switch on the coffee maker and step outside my
apartment door to greet her. As soon as the elevator doors open, she
runs down the hall, her hands flapping wildly on either side of her head.

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She looks like an elephant rampaging across the savanna. Is there an
emergency? Some calamity of one sort or another? Probably not; no one
is chasing her. But, just in case, I prepare my body to receive bad news.
Then, I spot her wide toothy grin.

She’s hardly in the door when she starts dancing about the kitchen.
“You’re cooking again next week, too.”

“No shit Sherlock. Spill the beans.” I’m content to not have a life; I
sat home the previous evening watching Saturday Night Live. But not
my sis. Oh no. Not her. She’s a walking-talking Saturday night series
all on her own—the producer—the director—and the star of the show.

I burst into laughter at her excitement and pour our coffees because I
can see her hands are still fluttering.

“Boy, have I got a story you won’t believe!”
“Go, girl—tell me already.” I set out cream and sugar and pull the salt
and pepper shakers to the middle of the table.
.“Bill and I…you know the barista at my Starbucks…”
I don’t know him, but I’ve seen him. She accepts my nod and goes on.
“I wanted to go to the singalong at the bar at the Royal York and,
obviously, I didn’t want to go alone.”
“Obviously.” I get out the bacon and eggs and turn on the stove.
She sits down.
“So, I called Bill. He’s always singing when he works, so I figured he
likes to sing.” She measures sugar and adds cream to her coffee.
“Good deduction.”
“Gawd, he’s so cute.”

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She stops talking. Her eyes glaze over. I realize she’s in her head, reliving
her chat with Bill. If I don’t prompt her, she’s going to stay in that warm,
fuzzy memory forever.

“So, did he say yes?”
“There is a God!’ That’s what he said. Don’tcha love it?”
“There is a God. That’s what he said.” I pause to consider this. “So,
you went?” I sear one side of the bacon.
“Yeah, we went. But the best part is that you won’t believe who sat at
the table next to us.”
“You going to tell me or do I have to guess.”
“Bacon crisp, please,” she says.
“I know.” I turn over each slice of bacon and start the eggs.
“When we got there, we noticed the table next to us was empty with
one of those Reserved signs on it. We must have spent nearly half an hour
trying to figure out who would want to reserve a table at a singalong.”
“Beats me. I wouldn’t. Guess you didn’t either.” I flip the eggs. “Going
to tell me?”
“Bill thought it must be some folk singer or city official. Maybe the
Mayor. There is a God. How cute.”
“You’re still not telling me.” She infers from my tone I’m getting
exasperated. I set down two plates. Plunk. Plunk. Each in their respective
places.
“Willie Nelson!” Her voice is loud. Really loud.
“Nice try. Willie Nelson. In the bar at the Royal York. Like I’d believe
that.”

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“No, honest to goodness. They were singing This Land is Your Land…
you know that song.” She looks at me, her eyes questioning the depth
of my knowledge of folk songs.

I nod and wait.
“Suddenly, the band quits playing. And the room gets very quiet.
And everyone turns to one another wondering what’s up. That’s when
we see Willie Nelson stroll in with two…two, you hear me… very tall,
gorgeous broads.”
“Broads? Can’t you say women? Or dates?”
“Trust me,” she says, pointing her dripping fork in my direction. Egg
yolk spots the table. She doesn’t notice. “These were broads: four-inch
heels, floor-length, clinging gowns…damn near shimmering…fur stoles
around their shoulders even though it’s summer. And they all sit at the
Reserved table. Right next to us. Can you believe it? I thought Bill was
going to shit his pants. I didn’t even know he was in town. Did you?”
I gather she means Willie, not Bill. I answer accordingly. “How would
I know?” I methodically cut my eggs into manageable bites.
“Do you know how tiny he is? He’s shorter than I am for gawd’s sake.
And skinny. He looked dreadful.” She forks a bite of egg into her mouth,
Probably hyped up on something I suggest.
“No doubt,” she says through her swallow, “but he’s so skinny, you
can’t believe it. I was afraid to breathe in case I blew him into next year.”
“So, this is the truth? Willie Nelson and his entourage sat down next
to you at the Royal York. Jeez, how come all the good stuff happens to
you?”
“I know. Right?” She smiles. “At any rate, we’re sitting there, absolutely
stunned. The whole audience is stunned. Everyone, even the group…I
forget who was headlining…but the lead guitarist was really great. Not
bad looking either. Your type. Not mine.”

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“My type. Too bad I missed it.”
She cocks her head, shrugs, and scoops up another forkful.
“We’re trying, like good Canadians,” she says with a mouthful, “not
to gawk.”
“So Canadian.”
“Yeah, I know. Right? The band leader gives Willie and his girls a big
welcome, saying what an honour it is and all that, and the rest of us are
still sitting there with our mouths hanging open. Nobody can believe
this is happening. And we’re all sneaking little peeks…you know…like
trying to pretend we’re not nosy.”
“Not nosy. I know. Like good Canadians.”
“Well, we start singing again--I mean it is a singalong—and everybody’s
hoping Willie will join in. Imagine going to work on Monday saying
you sang with Willie Nelson at the Royal York on the weekend! Damn,
I can hardly wait.”
“You really going to say that at the bank?”
“Maybe…I don’t know. Maybe…if the moment’s right.”
She spaces out again. No doubt, trying to imagine the right moment.
“But, anyway,” she says before I can conjure up another prompt, “I’m
staring at these women and wondering how long it takes them to get
their makeup on—it’s perfection—when I get that little sense.”
“What little sense.” I know it’s a question but my voice drops rather
than rises at the end.
“You know. That sense that your body knows something but hasn’t
told your brain yet.”
“Oh, that sense.”

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“Yeah, that one. Bill’s got a great voice. But it’s hard to listen to it
because Bill’s not singing, he’s whispering about what knock-outs these
women are. He’s telling me what a good time Willie is going to have
later. Personally, I thought he could have kept that little remark to
himself.”

I nod my agreement and continue eating my eggs before they get cold.
“Bill keeps saying that they must be models.”
“He thought they were models?”
“Well, they looked like models. You know: tall, slim, great bodies,
flawless makeup, hair done to a tee. But suddenly I get it.” She flips a
backhand across my arm, assuming I get it too. But I don’t. I’m focused
on wrangling the pepper shaker out of her other hand before more black
flecks fly about the room.
“They’re guys!” she says. Her hands flip up like spring-loaded levers.
Egg yolk spatters the wall.
“Guys?”
“Yeah, guys.”
“You mean the women with Willie are men? Like real guys?”
“Yeah.” Her look says what part of that don’t you get?
“I whisper to Bill,” she says. “Look at their jawlines, the size of their
hands. And Adam’s apples. Those aren’t women, I tell him. Those are
men. Bill—gawd he’s cute, especially his dimple—says they are too
damned good-looking to be men. I say they are. He says they’re not. I
insist they are. He insists they’re not.”
“Did you really think they were men? Or were you just teasing?” I pick
up one slice of bacon and crunch through half of it.

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“Of course, they were men. Both of them. You would know too if
you’d been there.”

“Wow. That must have been a bit of a shock. Especially for Bill.”
“Here’s the shocker. The band invites Willie up to sing and when he
gets on stage, I swear he grew six inches taller. I know you can’t grow
taller but I swear he did. Right before our eyes.”
“He grew taller?”
“A lot. Bill thought it was star power. You know. How stars have that
aura or something that makes them look taller than life.”
“Taller than life.” I pause to consider that and take a sip of my coffee.
“So, did he sing?”
“That’s the best part. Your favourite.”
My coffee backs up into my nose before I can sputter. “Georgia on
My Mind?”
“That’s your favourite. You should have been there. But I only heard
part of it because Bill kept humming in my ear until I put my hand
over his mouth.”
“You put your hand over his mouth.”
“You know. To stop him humming”
“I know. But really. Couldn’t you just ask him?”
She shrugs as if to say ‘I’m-a- doofus-but-you-already-know-that.’
“Then Willie invited the girls up. They literally pranced onto the stage
in their form-fitting gowns.” She picks up a well-done rasher of bacon
and dances it across her plate as she says this. “And the whole audience
stood. We were all clapping and cheering and whistling. It was like being
at Caribana or the Pride Parade. The noise was bloody deafening and

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Bill kept whispering in my ear. ‘Look at the size of their feet. They’re
huge. Absolutely huge.’”

“Their feet? Is that what convinced Bill they were men?”
“Yeah, crazy, eh? And you can bet after that I wasn’t going to tell him
I wear size tens. That’s for sure.”
“For sure.”
“So, next week, you’re cooking. Right?”
I nod and drink the last of my coffee.

Bette Kosmolak is an emerging writer living on Vancouver Island. She is passionate about
writing, reading and art. Her work has appeared in Bright Flash and CV Collective.

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A GIFT FIT FOR A QUEEN

by Dru Richman

Olivia sat under a painted sky watching the suns go down. Her husbands
had put the children to bed and now she was enjoying a moment of
blissful quiet. It had been over ten years since she had started this project
for her mother, the Queen. And tonight, at mid-night when, for the
first time in seventy-five years, both suns would be below the horizon
and the stars would be visible to her world, she would reveal the work
that had dominated her life for the past decade.

I remember it well, she thought to herself; being called to Court and
her mother being there in full regalia.

“Daughter,” she called from the throne. I came forward and curtsied
to the Queen.

“You are, I have heard,” she continued with a certain sparkle in her
eyes, “a designer of some renown. We wish you to design something
special, something unique for our 75th Anniversary.”

“A daughter’s duty, for a Queen’s command,” I smiled and replied.
And so the project began.

At first, Olivia thought about doing some sort of painting—perhaps
something in 2D or maybe 3D. But court artists had been painting
monarchs for centuries. The same could be said about busts and statues—
so those were also immediately discarded. I could write a book, or a play,

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or maybe even an opera she thought. But she soon realized that while she
could do those arts, her skill laid with visual arts and not literary arts.

She thought about what to do for some time and each idea was
so monumentally small that they, too, were cast aside. She needed
something bigger, much bigger. And before she realized, it was time for
her family’s annual holiday to the far northlands of Yellowknife.

The time she spent with her family was nothing short of glorious.
There were games to play with the younger children and winter sports
to engage in with the older children. And in the evenings, she and her
husbands...well the less said about that the better. But on other occasions
she and her husbands and some friends, would sit on the roof deck and
watch the ever-deepening shadows advance across the forests and valleys
below. One evening something odd occurred.

She and her younger husband, George Edward, and her brother
William, with his husband and wives, and the local governor and his
wife, and the estate’s game warden were enjoying a light late dinner out
on the deck and suddenly Olivia noticed that the wind had died down.
Then she realized that there were no night sounds—no insects buzzing
or bird calls to one another. She turned to the game warden and was
about to ask what was happening when an electric tingle reverberated
through the air. The governor pointed northward and said, “There,
Your Majesty.”

And that’s when she saw it. Colors shimmering in the sky. Reds,
greens, blues, whites—all moving across the sky in a sinuous manner,
all interweaving with each other. It was, it appeared, a never-ending
tapestry.

“What is that?” asked Olivia.
“It’s called the ‘Northern Lights’, Your Majesty,” the governor replied.
“It is a natural electrical phenomenon that is caused by the interaction
of charged particles from the sun with atoms in the upper atmosphere.”
“It’s beautiful,” ooo’d Olivia.

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They all watched in reverent silence for the minutes that the spectacle
played out. It was then and there that Olivia realized the project that
would satisfy her Queen’s request—she would bring the Northern light
3,800 miles south to the capital. But how, she pondered.

In the weeks that followed her return to the capital, Yuitas, she met
with some of the scholars of the Royal Academy. The Master of Physics,
was a Nubian who called himself ‘Midnight’.

“That is an unusual name,” remarked the Princess. “How did you
come by it?”

“Well, Majesty,” he answered with a quick smile, “perhaps it’s because
there’ll be only one of me every seventy-five years…and that’s probably
more than enough.”

“Or,” he continued in a more serious tone, “it’s because with the
absence of light that we can see the stars and begin to explore the
universe around our world.”

“Ah,” replied Olivia smiling and shaking her head in agreement. “I
am,” she continued somberly, “commanded by Her Royal Majesty to
‘design something special, something unique for her 75th Anniversary.’”

“My family and I recently took our holiday in Yellowknife,” she told
him. “It is a most delightful place,” she said enthusiastically.

“Did you see the Northern Lights?” asked Midnight.
“Indeed, we did! And it is that very phenomena that I wish to speak
with you about,” she said.
“How can I help?” he asked.
“I wish to create the Northern Lights here in Yuitas,” she responded.
“That’s not possible,” he pronounced. “There’s not enough ionization
in the atmosphere at the latitude of the capital to permit the Lights to
light.”

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“What if there were sufficient ions?” she queried.
He pondered the question for a few moments and then replied, “Then,
yes, it would work.”
The spoke for many hours that afternoon and even more in the weeks
and months that followed. And as the project took shape, many more
Masters from other disciplines and more of their students were added
to task. After two years of research, they determined that they would
have to design and build a machine that would allow them to ionize a
large area above the capital. They soon realized that a machine, an ion
engine as they were calling it, could not be located on the ground, it
would have to be space-borne. The Space Agency was called, and shortly
thereafter, brought into the project.
In the ensuing years many engines were designed and ultimately
discarded as impractical. But finally a design was discovered that was
efficient enough to create the effects that Olivia was designing. And
building began in earnest. The Space Agency designed a rocket to boost
the new ion engine into the stratosphere and in the process discovered
that an ion engine could be used for other endeavors. They kept that
information to themselves.
And finally it was the seventy-fifth year and the anniversary was upon
the Kingdom. Celebrations had been going on for days and tonight
they would culminate in the light show that had consumed Olivia for
the past ten years.
During the ninth morning hour, the head of the Space Agency called
the Royal residence and asked for an audience with Princess Olivia. It
was agreed that they would meet at second hour after second sunrise.
Promptly at the second hour the head of the Space Agency was
announce to Olivia.
He entered the sitting area, stopped a short distance from Olivia, and
gave a respectful head nod and announced, “Your Majesty, I am John
Thornton, the head of the Space Agency.

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“Please sit down, Mr. Thornton,” Olivia said graciously.
“Thank you, Ma’am,” he said.
She spoke to the maid, “Caroline, you may serve and then leave us,”
“Your Majesty,” he started after the maid had left, “I have some
information that will delight or enrage you, or both.”
“Please go on,” she responded.
“As you probably know, our space program is still in a relatively
primitive stage. We’ve gone to our moon, but that journey took years
to plan and over six days of arduous space travel to get there and another
six days to get back. Travel to the other planets in our system will take
years or tens of years,” he stopped and waited for approval to continue.
“Please go on,” she responded.
“Some of the many problems we are facing with manned space flight
is that our propulsion systems are relatively slow, only 200,000 units
per hour. That may sound fast, but when you’re dealing with the vast
distances of space its really quite slow; the amount of fuel necessary
to boost a rocket out of our atmosphere is measured in the tens of
millions of pounds; providing enough food, water, and air for any size
crew is, frankly, overwhelming; and finally there’s the matter of gravity.
Our astronauts do not well in prolonged periods of weightlessness.” He
paused to take a sip of tea, and received another nod from the Princess.
“Once we achieve escape velocity from our planet, spaceships basically
coast once they’ve expended all their available fuel,” he explained.
“I am familiar with the mechanics of space travel,” Olivia responded
dryly.
“Of course, your Majesty,” Thornton replied. “When we received
the design specifications for your ion engine, we quickly realized that
it was the answer to many of our problems,” he continued. “An ion
engine,” he went on excitedly, “accelerates very slowly, but continually.

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So it can provide ‘gravity’ of the ship’s inhabitants. The amount of fuel
it needs can be measured in the thousands of pounds, as opposed to
millions. And because it continually accelerates, the speeds it can reach
are phenomenal.” He paused for another sip of tea, and another nod
from Olivia.

“Imagine,” he said, “a trip to our moon in under two days!” Trips to
the outer planets in five-to-ten days. And longer trips...”

“Longer trips?” Olivia questioned.
“Yes, Princess,” he said drawing a deep breath. “In our explorations of
space, we’ve discovered an inhabited planet approximately 4.2 lightyears
away. We’ve been monitoring their transmissions for a number of years
and have deciphered their language. They call their planet “Earth”. And
tonight if you look closely during your program for the Queen, you
might notice a small light receding from our planet. That will be our
probe to Earth. Using your engine, a trip that would have ordinarily
taken over 11,000 solar revolutions, will be reduced to 5.5 revolutions.”
He sat back exhausted.
“Is that all,” she asked cautiously.
“There’s a bit more, Your Majesty, but that’s the bulk of it,” he replied.
“This is excellent news!” she exclaimed. “We will talk more of this
tomorrow after I give the Queen her anniversary present. Speak to no
one about this before then,” she commanded and dismissed him.
Olivia sat under a painted sky watching the suns go down. Her
husbands had put the children down to sleep and she was enjoying a
quiet cup of tea. She had started out to gift her mother the Northern
Lights. But, as it had worked out, she had given her Queen, the stars.
She wondered if her mother would be annoyed or amused and if the
next ten years would bring greetings from our neighbors 4.2 lightyears
away on a planet called Earth.

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The winner of the first National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts Writing Contest, Mr.
Richman’s work has also won contests at Writers of the Future, and has been featured
in Writers and Readers’ Magazine, Blank Cover Press, Pocket Fiction Magazine,
Synkroniciti Magazine, and other journals and anthologies. Dru has been part of an
international writing group called Brainz for the past twenty years. Each month the group is
charged with writing something — prose, poetry, short story, a song, screenplay — anything
really, based on a one-word topic. Previous topics have included: mourning, fear, scars,
numbers, and flying. Many of his stories are generated from topics written for that group.
In a previous lifetime, Dru was a keyboard musician. Like many musicians, he started
playing in high school in various ‘cover bands.’ Later on he played ‘on the road’ for almost
five years in a band that performed county, country/rock, and originals. And for the last
twenty years of his musical career, he played in an enhanced duo band called “LoveSong”
- which concentrated on love songs from ‘the Great American Songbook.’ When Dru is not
writing or doing musical things he is a mild-mannered Macintosh maven. His company,
Mac Help Desk, Inc. [www.machelpdesk.com], continues to provide on-site Support, Sales,
Training, and Service in the Macintosh and iDevice environments. Dru lives in Richardson,
Texas (a suburb of Dallas), with wifey Ava, and their four-legged love child, a standard
poodle named Jacob.

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TWO WOMEN

by Penny Page

At first, the knock startled me—two quick raps of the knuckle followed
by one hard strike—a distinctive and demanding announcement, leaving
no doubt in my mind who was standing in the hall. I ran to the door,
my heart flying. Moira was here!

I had hoped she might stop by as she sometimes did during dark winter
nights, when the mean and silent isolation bore down in wave after wave,
trying with all its might to drown me in suffocating loneliness. It had
been six weeks since her last visit, and I more than missed her. I yearned
to hear her voice, to listen to her advice and her outrageous opinions.
I longed to hear about her latest adventures, about the things she did
that I wouldn’t dare. I loved her. She was my angel. The one bright spot
in my bleak existence.

I opened the door wide in welcome and Moira swept in looking like
a rock star. She had dyed her hair purple, an example of something
I’d never have the nerve to try, and chopped it straight around at the
jawline. On her it looked good. She was wearing a puffy snow-white
knee-length coat and black patent leather ankle boots with spiked heels.
Fishnet stockings with a thick seam up the back wrapped her calves.
She was so sexy, made to stand out. The opposite of mousey me with
my frizzy dishwater blonde hair and blotchy complexion.

“You’re here!” I threw my arms around her and held her close. She
squeezed me tight in response. Her lavender-colored hair reeked of

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marijuana and cigarettes. I smelled whisky on her breath. I stepped
back and playfully slapped her arm. “Bad girl! You’ve been drinking
and smoking pot again.”

Moira slipped out of the downy-white coat. The puffy bulk whooshed
to the floor and landed open, revealing a bright red silk lining.
Magnificent.

“Who, me?” she said, blinking in feigned innocence. “I swear I didn’t
smoke any grass. But I just left a party where lots of other people were.”
She grinned. “And they were doing other things, too.”

I kept staring at the coat’s scarlet lining. A memory flashed behind my
eyes. I was a kid, and my face hurt. I was pressing my fingers against
my nose, but still, bright red blood seeped between them. I ran outside
into the cold crying, dizzy, and afraid. I staggered away from the house,
the blood gushing from my nostrils leaving a scarlet trail on the lumps
of crusty frozen grass. Someone had hit me with something, but those
details weren’t revealing themselves. Only streaming blood and grass.
Glistening red silk and marijuana.

Moira snapped her fingers, bringing me back. “Quit daydreaming
Mush-head and come sit with me.” I didn’t mind when she called me
names like Mush-head. She was right, I had trouble paying attention.
Besides, I knew under her words was true affection. She was my guardian
angel. A gift from above.

Under the puffy coat, Moira wore all black. A tube-top wrapped
around her boobs and back leaving her creamy midriff and the oiled
skin on her smooth shoulders exposed. Her skirt was another tight-
fitting tube, a stretchy spandex that clung to her hips and thighs, the
hem just above her knees. I wished I had the guts to wear an outfit like
that. But then where would I go? The grocery store?

Moira lit a cigarette, sauntered to the couch, and half-sat, half-
lounged against the pillows, so comfortable in her own skin. I hurried
to pick up her coat. “Wouldn’t want this beautiful white to get dirty,” I

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light-heartedly scolded her. I pressed the soft warmth of it to my chest.
“May I try it on?”

She nodded. “Of course.”
I slipped into it. A perfect fit. It still held the warmth of her body. A
shivering thrill of excitement crawled up my spine. In this coat with her
heat all around me, it was almost like I was Moira, the wild unbridled
one, the one I wished I could be. Moira and I were similar in build and
yet so unalike. She was slim and graceful, but on me the long neck,
the lanky arms, the protruding hipbones, and the coltish legs translated
to skinny and awkward. We were both 29, but she carried herself like
a queen, like someone who was already wise and intended to eat up
the world in gnashing bites, afraid of nothing. I wished I had her self-
confidence. Instead, I had always been the one with hunched shoulders
who stayed home, afraid to poke her nose out and discover what horrors
the world held outside her door. “Mimi with her tail between her legs,”
my mother would chide when she . . . wasn’t herself.
“You came from a party?” I marveled. Moira’s world was so different
from mine. She was always on the go, always doing something fun. I
sat at the end of the couch facing her with my knees pulled to my chest,
all ears. “Tell me more!”
She dragged deep on her cigarette and blew the smoke at the ceiling.
“Well, let’s see. Jimmy was there. I dated him last year. Until he wanted
to get married. I said no way! I’ll never tie the knot.”
I giggled and nodded in understanding. No one man could ever have
Moira to himself. She was meant to fly from lover to lover like a bee in
a meadow.
She continued, “And Johnny. I told you about him, the guy with the
beaver buck teeth who plays the flute. He plays well, but sprays spit all
over his audience!” I rocked with laughter. “Oh, and Lucille was there
with a bucketful of cocaine. She has a terrible habit, but she always

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shares.” Moira punctuated the last three words with a wagging finger,
making sure I knew that Lucille was okay in her book.

Moira talked on and I hung on every word. The people she knew—so
many, so different, so interesting. People who would never notice me.
Like everyone whose eyes skimmed past me as if I didn’t exist. Moira
was my one significant social contact, my only friend. Without her I’d
have no one. I lived through her. She gave my life meaning.

Even her name had substance: Moy-Raw. A name you could wrap your
mouth around, lips extending, jaw opening wide, like eating caramel,
thick and chewy. A real woman’s name.

My name on the other hand, Mimi, was no more than a couple of
squeaks, two small up and down motions with the lips. Not really a full
name, just two repetitive insignificant sounds that were better suited to
a child than a grown woman. I hated my name most when my mother
used to call me, after she had flushed her pills and pulled out the rum,
when the identical syllables were clipped with meanness and a building
hysteria, and I knew what was coming.

“Enough about the party,” Moira said. “That’s in the past! We have
our whole lives ahead of us. The present and the future! So, what do
you want to do with your future?” Moira raised her penciled eyebrows
and leaned toward me, her dark blue eyes sparkling. She was asking me
to decide! And I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

“Let’s play dress-up!” I said and jumped to my feet.
Moira gave me that look, the one that said that this was an outrageously
childish idea and she’d have to think about it. But I knew she would.
She always did. It meant I’d put on her clothes. There was no dress
up for her, only for me. That’s why it was so much fun. It was like
a makeover for me, something playful and unusual that I got to do,
that she didn’t. That’s because Moira would never wear my clothes, not
even temporarily. My saggy gray sweatpants with the elastic waist, my
washed-thin Coors Light tee-shirt, and my zippered hoody with the torn

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pocket weren’t anything she would allow to touch her body. The only
thing we had in common clothing-wise was that we both went braless.

Moira stood and kicked off her heeled boots. She shimmied out of
her spandex skirt and tore her tube top off over her head. She wasn’t
wearing any underpants, so all that was left were her fishnet stockings,
which of course were not pantyhose. Moira would never wear anything
as pedestrian as pantyhose. Elastic black silk garter belts, the kind
brides wore, held up the fishnets. One at a time, Moira slipped each
off, hooked it on her thumb, and pulled it back with the other hand,
shooting it at me sling-shot style. That made me laugh. She stood buck
naked, smoking and laughing, more comfortable and uninhibited with
no clothes on than I was when fully dressed.

I slipped out of the coat, pulled off my sweatpants, tee-shirt, hoody
and stood, embarrassed, in my waist high cotton undies. “Oh no,”
Moira shouted, “you’ve got to go all the way! Off with those grandma
panties!”

I hurried to do as she instructed. Then donned the fishnets, garters,
boots, tube top. I slipped back into the coat. The silky lining felt so
good against my exposed skin.

“You look fantastic!” Moira shouted. “Let’s dance!” She went to the
kitchen and grabbed the broom. “Put on the music. Loud!”

“Moira, don’t!” I begged her. “The neighbors will hear.”
“The neighbors? Fuck the neighbors!” Moira liked hard rock, and she
ordered at the top of her lungs, “Alexa! Play Tush by ZZ Top.” On my
side table Alexa perked up at the sound of her name and a shoestring of
florescent light winged around her hockey-puck perimeter.
“Playing Tush by ZZ Top,” Alexa’s soothing voice confirmed. The hard
beat of electric guitar blared through Alexa’s round speaker.
“Alexa, louder!” Moira commanded.

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Alexa obliged, and the lyrics screamed from her hi-tech speaker, “I
been up. I been down.” Moira swung her head back and forth with the
beat, playing the broomstick as if it were a guitar. I bounced on the
balls of my feet to the throbbing rhythm and another memory jogged
loose. My mother with a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels hanging
from her hand, dancing in the living room with some guy I’d never seen
before. She took a pull from the bottle, and I knew what was coming.
She swung the bottle like a bat at the guy’s head. Lucky for him, he
was quick and ducked before she connected. She threw the bottle over
his hunched shoulders, and it bounced against the wall with a dull
thud, spilling the last of its amber liquid. She abandoned the dancing
and started on the plates. One after another, they flew through the air
crashing against whatever they hit, breaking into jagged pieces. Her
dancing partner fled, and her blood shot eyes locked on me. She chased
me with a piece of broken plate, brandishing it like a knife, accusing
me of being an alien from outer space who had come to kidnap her.

Moira flipped the broom upside down so the bristles pointed up. She
slammed the end of the wooden handle against the floor. “Your mother!”
Moira shouted. She sometimes could guess what I was thinking.

“My mother . . .” I glanced at the framed picture on the bookshelf.
“Was an angel,” I said with conviction. “She stroked my head when I
was sick—”

“Your mother was a maniac, and you know it.” Moira stomped around
in a circle, pounding the handle into the floor with each step. She sang
her own words to ZZ Top’s powerful beat, “First she was up and then she
was down and then she was all around. Just like YOU!” swaying her hips
and looking down her nose at me, confident in her assessment—even
though she was stark naked and dancing with a broom.

The only time Moira got upset with me was when I defended mother.
The weird part was she never knew my mother. She only knew what
I’d told her. Based on her reaction, I suspected her own mother may
have had mental problems and mistreated her in some way. I decided
to ignore her.

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We twirled and stomped and whooped and jumped. Moira grabbed
a bottle of Jack Daniels from the kitchen counter. Where did that come
from? She took a swig and handed it to me. I swallowed a mouthful.
It burned going down, but it was a good burn. I gulped more until the
whisky ran down my chin. Moira whipped the broom around like a
drum major with a baton, hammering the stiff handle against the floor,
the walls, the ceiling. Bang, bang, bang! The pounding vibrated inside
me and made me feel free.

The song ended, leaving us as breathless as if we had run a race. A
knock at the door, this one sheepish, one slight tap, hardly audible.
“Who is it?” we called in unison and grinned at each other. Sometimes
it seemed like we were the same person.

“It’s Lyle. Can I talk to you?” he said through the wood. Every time
I heard his voice I cringed. Not only was he irritating as hell, but he
was always sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. Nothing good ever
came of his visits.

“Oh crap. It’s the building manager,” I whispered to Moira. “He lives
next door.”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I know who he is, dumb-dumb. I’ve
met him before, remember?”

I didn’t remember, not at all, and that shook me up a little, but if
Moira said she’d met him, then I guess she’d met him. “Well, then,” I
said, attempting to hide my memory lapse, “you know he’s a pain in
the you-know-what.”

Lyle acted as though he owned the place and all the people in it. He
was always checking on me, and not in a good and caring way, but in a
nosy none-of-your-business way. Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?

“Is everything okay?” he asked through the door.
Moira started for the door, intending to answer it—stark naked!

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I gasped and lunged for her, grabbing her elbow. “Moira no!” She was
grinning from ear to ear, a wild half-crazed sneer that said she’d like to see
the look in Lyle’s prying eyes when she greeted him in her birthday suit.

I couldn’t help but snicker. “Silly girl. Go into the bathroom where
he won’t see you.”

At first, I worried she would ignore me, throw open the front door and
shove her wild grin and bare boobs into Lyle’s pinched face, demanding
to know what he wanted. She could be overly aggressive that way.

Like the time she walloped a 7-Eleven clerk over the head with a bottle
of Heineken. Moira was fifty-three cents short to pay for a six-pack, and
the cheap bastard just wouldn’t overlook it. I mean, fifty-three cents?
Come on. But if she clocked Lyle with something, like my mother’s blue
vase that sat on a table near the door, that could get me thrown out of
my apartment. That’s when the rest of the bloody-nose memory crawled
to the surface. That blue vase had a cruel history. My mother had
thrown it. Hit me square and hard on the nose. The red had streamed
from my face, down my white blouse, and puddled on the worn carpet
at my feet. I ran outside afraid my nose was broken. It hurt so bad. I
wished Moira would break that blue vase.

Relief loosened my abdomen when Moira shrugged, turned her
beautiful backside to me, took a drag of her cigarette which lay still lit
on the coffee table, and did an exaggerated tiptoe into the bathroom.
“You can handle him,” she said in a low voice. With a wink she closed
the bathroom door. I almost called out, to tell her to watch out for the
pills scattered across the floor. They could poke like sharp stones into
bare feet. I should know. I’d been stepping on them for a week.

Lyle was knocking again. “Coming,” I sighed.
I opened the front door only partially, so that my body blocked the
opening. Lyle was standing in the hall in his plaid shirt, the one he
always wore. Or maybe he owned half-a-dozen with the same pattern.
That would make sense since he was as boring and unimaginative as

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they came. His dull brown hair was sticking up in all directions as if
he’d just gotten out of bed.

He pushed his glasses up his narrow nose, blinked as if in surprise,
and gave me an up and down. He tried to peek around me to see into
my apartment, but in Moira’s high-heeled ankle boots I was an inch
or two taller than him, my body effectively blocking him from seeing
inside. All he could do was cock his egg-shaped head back and peer up
my nostrils like some little furry ferret.

“What are you staring at?” I demanded.
“Your hair . . .” he said.
“What about it?” He was seriously annoying.
“Never mind. Are you okay? I heard banging. It woke me up.”
I leaned against the door jamb attempting to look relaxed and self-
confident, like Moira. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
Moira, you bad girl, your wild dancing has gotten us into trouble.
Wherever Moira went, with her excellent name and self-confidence,
excitement followed. Unlike me, Mimi, with the two-squeak name, and
the nothing-ever-happened life.
He continued, “I’m not the only one who heard it. The tenants below
you in 2C complained.” He rubbed yellow crust from his eye with a
finger. “It’s two in the morning.”
Two a.m.? I thought it was early evening. How did I lose track of so
much time? A blade of fear sliced through me. Last time that happened
I lost two days, came home with bruises, skinned knees, no shoes, and
no memory of where I’d been.
I gritted my teeth to concentrate on Lyle’s repulsive face. Those assholes
in 2C had called Lyle the last time Moira visited. The same night she
whacked the clerk with the Heineken, she set fire to my kitchen curtains
with her lighter, but it was totally unintentional. She was simply waving
the still-lit lighter as she talked after lighting a cigarette and neither of

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us noticed when the flame caught the gingham. The curtain blazed up
like a hot orange geyser. Ravenous tongues of heat and flame licked
their way to the ceiling, surprisingly intense and uncontainable in just a
few seconds. Before I could even think about what to do, the sprinklers
sputtered on. A fierce spray burst from overhead, soaking the two of
us to the skin and dousing the kitchen. The water seeped through my
linoleum floor and dripped down into 2C’s kitchen. Not even much
water reached their place, but they threw a hissy-fit. Everyone in the
building ended up on the sidewalk where Moira oohed and awed over
the brawny firefighters. A night to remember.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” I said. “Nothing is happening here, okay?
I don’t know where the banging was coming from, but it wasn’t me.”

He nodded and bit his lip, frowning. “Are you heading out?” he asked.
I gaped at him. As if my comings and goings were any of his business.
“No. I’m spending a quiet evening alone if you must know.”
“Oh. Is your heat working, then?”
“Of course. What do you mean?”
“Why are you wearing that big puffy coat inside?” He looked up at
my head. “And your hair, you dyed it . . .purple.”
Purple? I brought a hank of hair from above my ear into my side
vision. It did look purple. Must be the light. I glanced down at myself,
held out my arms, and whiffed the pot. I was wearing Moira’s coat.
The dress-up game. The front of the coat fell open and Lyle gasped. I
was wearing Moira’s tube top and her gartered fishnet stockings, but
apparently, I hadn’t gotten around to squeezing into the spandex skirt.
The fuzzy V of my brown pubic hair was on full display. I grabbed the
coat closed and held it tight with both fists.
Lyle took a step back and shifted his eyes to the side, pretending he
hadn’t seen anything. Then he said, “I smell cigarette smoke. You know
this is a nonsmoking building, Mimi.”

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“I have not been smoking,” I replied. That was the truth, and if Moira
wanted to smoke, so what? My apartment was the place she came to rest
and regroup, to spend time with someone like me who was accepting
of her eccentricities. My apartment was her apartment, and she could
do as she pleased as far as I was concerned.

Lyle leaned in and whispered, “You’d tell me if you were in danger,
right?”

“What do you mean?” I was truly baffled.
He lowered his voice even more. “You don’t have to say anything. Just
give me a signal, two blinks, or a nod, or wipe your nose.”
That was when I saw it. An alligator (or was it a crocodile?) crawling
with stealth on its stubby legs down the hallway carpet toward us, its
reptilian eyes focused on Lyle’s calves.
I shoved my hand into Moira’s coat pocket and wrapped my hand
around the hard molded handle of a Glock 19. I knew the gun, the feel
of it, the weight of it. It wasn’t Moira’s gun, it was mine. A few weeks
ago, after Moira’s last visit, I read online that a gun show had come to
town—two hundred vendors in the arena of the local fairgrounds. I
usually avoid crowds, but I stuffed my hoody pocket with cash, pulled
the hood over my head, forced myself out the door, and boarded the
number 10 bus. The ride took fifteen minutes, and I was jittery the
whole way, not knowing what to expect.
The bus let me and several others off at the arena entrance. The place
was crawling with people, bumping and jostling to get a better look at
the merchandise. Rows of tables displayed all different kinds of guns,
neatly lined up like table settings at Thanksgiving dinner. I had no
idea where to start, so I stopped at the first table, staring at the array of
weapons in front of me. A tall fifty-something guy with a gold tooth
and a southern accent asked me if he could help. I told him what I
was looking for: something easy to shoot, something not too expensive,
something for protection—a girl can’t be too careful. The vendor agreed
wholeheartedly and made some suggestions. I held several guns, and

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the Glock felt the best. I bought it and three magazines on the spot for
$650. No ID, no background check, no paperwork. Cash and carry.
As easy as buying groceries.

That Sneaky-Pete Moira must have found my Glock and pocketed it.
Good thing she did because I sure needed it now. I didn’t worry about
wearing no pants. No time for that. With my privates on full display,
I spread my legs and aimed. I had to kill that monster before it got to
us. Of course, Lyle was oblivious, still waiting for a ridiculous signal to
tell him that I was in danger. I was in danger all right. We both were!

I caught movement out of the side of my eye. It was Moira! Urging
me on with her Cheshire Cat leer. I fired at the croc (or was it an
alligator?) 1-2-3-4, the shots rang out, explosions in the narrow hallway.
Lyle dropped to the floor. He cowered against the wall, whimpering,
his arms covering his head. “Don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me!” he cried.

Stupid fool! Didn’t he realize I was saving his life? I lowered the gun,
figuring I must have killed the big lizard by now. The bullet holes looked
like fat dark worms burrowed into the walls and floor, but the beast was
nowhere to be seen. Only whimpering Lyle and I were in the hall. Even
Moira had disappeared.

Lyle pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and pressed numbers with
a shaking finger. “Help! Help!” he shouted into the phone. “She’s got
a gun and she’s shooting. The Avalon Apartments. Third floor, hurry!”
All the while he was crawling away from me with his khaki-covered ass
in the air. A dark circle stained the crotch. Lyle had wet his pants. I
tried to warn him that the alligator (or croc) could be hiding nearby,
just waiting for a thin-boned human with puddles of lumpy fat like him
to blunder close enough for the reptile to chomp down and not let go,
but my warnings just made him scramble away faster.

Suddenly, Moira was standing next to me again, and I heard sirens in
the distance. I pointed at Lyle with humor and disgust as he crawled
around the corner out of sight.

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She sang and danced next to me—still naked, mind you. What a
crazy angel she was. She sang, “Schitzoid, schitzoid, whatcha gonna do?
Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?”

“Stop singing that,” I cried. “I’m not schitzoid. If anyone is schitzoid,
it’s you, Moira!” But she wouldn’t stop. She danced around me, waving
her arms. “Afraid you’ll end up like her? Locked away?” A sickening
tremor rolled through me like a bowling ball weakening my arms and
legs. The gun slipped from my fingers and hit the carpeted floor with
a muffled thump.

Why was Moira being so mean to me? She was singing harassment like
my mother used to. As if putting a tune to hurtful words would make it all
okay. I put my hands over my ears and screamed to block out the sound.

§

The needle slid into my flesh like a hot wire into melted butter,
injecting the elixir that first exhausted and then exterminated my wild
rage. Now I was settled in, my arms criss-crossed and cinched to my
sides, Moira’s dress-up clothes replaced by a hospital gown, the feel of
a thin mattress familiar against my back.

The doctor entered through the metal door wearing the typical
white coat, starched and ironed to stiff perfection. He stood next to my
bed, concern and assessment in blue-gray eyes. I knew him. I’d met him
before. More than once. I remembered his close-cropped silver hair, his
well-trimmed goatee, the way he carried his iPad tucked into cupped
fingers. The school ring with the red stone on his little finger. But what
was his name? I used to know.

He said, “You haven’t been taking your meds, Mimi.”
“I do fine without my them,” I spat. My meds were lying spilled across
the bathroom floor like hard-shelled legless insects, poisonous bugs that
I needed to kill. Moira agreed with me and had whispered into my ear

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that they were deadly. They were destroying me, little by little. She was
right, of course. Moira was always right. I ground them into the tiles
with my bare feet, the sharp hard pieces of their broken bodies digging
in and sticking to my soles like gritty gravel.

The doctor was speaking again. “When you don’t take them, you know
what happens, Mimi. You start drinking, and you have an episode and
end up here strapped down.”

The no-name gray-haired doctor with his psychiatric credentials and
iPad didn’t understand anything. I couldn’t think straight when I was
stuffed with those insects. Their sneaky venom went straight to my
blood and then raced to my head where they pushed my ability to think
clearly down a slippery well so deep and black that I couldn’t see the
bottom. They made me sleepy and dizzy and nauseous. On meds, I
could never overcome the sludge that clogged my mind. I was so much
better without the Thorazine or the Haldol, the Clozaril or the Risperdal
to name just a few. Poisons all. Without them I could remember my
mother and remember her clearly—not just the good parts.

But most important, the only time I got to see Moira was when I
stopped taking the pills. She was all I cared about anymore. She was
all I had in this world. She was my angel. What would Moira do right
now? She wouldn’t listen to this bullshit, that’s for sure.

“Condescending prick!” I yelled.
He lay a hand on my shoulder. “You rest, Mimi. We’ll talk later when
you’re feeling better.”
“Ha! Yelling makes me feel better!”
He walked out the door, dimming the lights as he left. I sighed and my
muscles slackened as the poison from the injection coursed through me.
“Back in the jacket again,” I sang softy. The tune was some old cowboy
song my mother sang when she was well and happy, but my words
weren’t quite right. I closed my eyes. So lonely here. And then a knock

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on the thick metal door—two quick raps of the knuckle followed by
one hard strike. Moira was here!

Penny Page has had stories published in Bacopa Literary Review, Variety Pack Magazine,
Aphelion Magazine, and in the anthologies So Much Depends Upon, Whatcom
Writes, and Pandemic Poetry from the Pacific Northwest. Her short story, "Down
the Wormhole", was a 2018 top ten finalist in The Apparitionist National Ghost Story
Competition and her paranormal mystery novella, Not Haunted, was a semi-finalist in
Chanticleer Book Reviews Best Short Story/Novella award. She has a master’s degree in
business and lives on the central coast in California where she hikes the beaches and dunes
for writing inspiration.

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ANXIETY CONQUEST

by Adam Schmitmeyer

It began like how it always does for Xavier Back, with the sound of loud,
heavy, shallow breathing. The tunnel-visioning that blackened his sight.
This was one of his famous panic attacks. Where he freezes in place and
turns into a nervous wreck.

“Oh god,” Xavier mumbled. He could feel the hot sweat releasing his
from his neck, causing a tingling sensation. And the sounds of the cars
going across the city street that assaulted Xavier’s ears were not helping
the matter.

And where is Xavier at, and what could possibly be causing him to
suffer this anxiety fueled freakout?

Well, right now, Xavier is in Celina, Ohio. Not his hometown, but
the place he moved to after graduating from his college and scored his
first full-time job. And where in Celina was Xavier at? That would be
the place where the smell and stench of popcorn assault your nostrils’
senses just by being 50 feet of the place, where lightbulbs flickered. The
local movie theatre.

He stood at the front doors of the place, unable to move. However,
the strangest part was the bouquet of roses in his hand.

These roses are for the girl that Xavier had been smitten by. A one
Kimiko Kalakaua. A Japanese-Hawaiian woman who worked at the
movie theater.

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The relationship between Xavier and Kimiko felt simple and natural.
Kimiko, like Xavier had moved to Celina herself. And both had similar
motivations for doing so. They wanted to be their own people and
survive without their families. Though, Xavier did not have to move
across the country, like how Kimiko did. The two met when Xavier got
off work at the courthouse, which was across the street from the theater,
to see a movie. The two struck up a casual chat when Kimiko had taken
notice of Xavier more business-oriented clothing (a stuffy, stiff, rough
polo shirt and khaki pants that hugged his waist so hard, the touch felt
like a vice).

From there, the two would chat each other up, with Xavier buying
tickets to showings of movies that he’s already seen before just to talk
to her in the lobby while others watched their movies. The two had a
lot in common. They both loved anime, they loved seafood, and both
liked watching reality tv shows, like Big Brother and Survivor. But what
gave Xavier so much interest in Kimiko? How she was everything Xavier
wished himself to be.

He remembered vividly the time Kimiko had gotten to the theatre
early one day, and she had decided to give Xavier a visit…A very brazen
visit. Just waltz right into the courthouse and entered his office. She
smirked and asked the clearly surprised Xavier how he was doing before
sliding into a chair and kicking her feet up on his desk.

So confident, so carefree, and friendly. Everything was not.
Xavier had thought it was time for him to take the next step and ask
her out on a date. Hence the roses. The problem, though?
Xavier Back was known for being a neurotic mess. He was shy, timid,
but ultimately kindhearted. He has a very tough time going through
adversity. Like asking a woman out on a date.
Thankfully, Kimiko was too busy with her co-workers and working the
snack machines to notice bumbling Xavier standing at the front door
like an idiot. Which Xavier took advantage of by walking away from
the door and began heading for the corner of the building. He inhaled

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a shaky breath, where he got a taste of the aroma from the flowers still
in his hands.

“This was a terrible, stupid idea,” Xavier sputtered out, teeth chattering,
sounding like clams from Spongebob Squarepants.

Every time Xavier was faced with a tough challenge, bad things from
his past would come back to haunt him in his head.

“Why is it that every time you show up, this family gets so
dysfunctional?” That was from a few years ago. A very hurtful sentence
that came from Xavier’s brother, who claimed that Xavier’s presence
caused his entire family to begin squabbling.

“Why do you always make trouble for everyone?” Said Mrs. Schwartz,
Xavier’s old aid he had in school, who didn’t like Xavier. Despite that,
Xavier couldn’t ever help but wonder if she was right, and—

“No,” Xavier said. “No more. No more cowering like nitwit. No more
letting what other people say hurt you so much. This is between me
and Kimiko. And you aren’t going to let these words, or yourself stop
you from doing this.”

And despite talking and babbling to himself like a crazy lunatic, Xavier
steeled his nerves, took a long, deep breath, and marched out from the
corner to ask his important question to Kimiko.

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THE FERIS WHEEL

by Stars Galaxyfire

“It’s over,” he said.
The Ferris wheel on which we sat just reached the top, jerked, and froze

as if it was confused too. As if hearing my heart breaking the cloudy
sky let out a roar; a storm was coming. The once bright and jovial fair
with carnival-themed music faded to grey and the world closed itself off.

“What do you mean it’s over,” I whimpered hoping I misheard.
“Us…. This…all of this. I love someone else, I’m sorry,” he said
exasperated, running his hand through his now mop hair.” You must
be kidding me, come on. Why did it stop,” he muttered, looking down
trying to figure out the reason we stopped moving.
The sky decided at that point it had enough just like me and let
the tears rage down. The hinges of our cart squeaked whining at this
unforeseen event. The wind whipped the salty bitter raindrops in my
mouth.
“Seriously, rain now?” he said looking up
The rain came down harder.
“Not after all this time. Why now?” I said close to hysterics, my voice
foreign even to my ears. I shifted my weight making the hinges squeak.

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“Do we have to talk about this? Why can’t you just leave it alone,”
he yelled.

The cart below us shifted as if they didn’t even want to hear this
conversation.

“Can I at least know who she is, or is that too much to ask for?”
“It’s Micheal,” he said softly as if scared I would break. How could
they, Micheal was my best friend since childhood surely, she wouldn’t
go for him.
“No, you’re not serious right,” I exclaim. “She wouldn’t date you, she’s
my best friend,” doubt fringing my voice as the lighting flashed as if to
signal that I don’t want to know, and the voices below shouted as if in
agreement.
“I’ve already talked to her. She told me that if we broke up, she and I
would get together. She’s liked me since she was introduced, apparently,
and I was too stupid to notice.” He claimed unashamedly.
That’s when everything clicked into place. Every outing we went on
that wasn’t designated as a date she was always there next to them on
his side, not hers. How had I not pieced together their comments and
actions till now? How can I lose them both at the same time? How can
the world shatter more around me? The wind pulled me into its embrace
as if to tell me it was okay, and my heart lightened just a bit. As if the
world was telling me that it would be alright, the rain stopped, and the
sun poked through and kissed my cheek. The Ferris wheel squeaked
and jerked and started moving again saying that it is better to move on
and not dwell.
As we finally got off the Ferris wheel drenched and shivering slightly,
I walked away never looking back for I knew if I did, I would break all
over again. “I can do this. I’m strong. I won’t let them fully break me.”
I said struggling to hold my head up high with the tears slowly spilling
through. I trudge through the mud and fog all the way home with the
sun playing peak-a-boo to check on me. I stopped at an ice cream stand

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on my way out to allow the creamy delicious dark chocolate to calm
my aching heart. I continued walking the tears slowly stopping the fog
lifting as I neared the steps. My mom came out saw my face and knew
and rushed to scoop me in her arms. It was then I knew it would all
be okay.

Stars Galaxyfire is a new writer who enjoys writing fantasy normally. When not writing
she is either drawing, taking nature pictures, or working on her degree.

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UNWELCOME VISIT

by Shyla Pope

Rick came home in the middle of a storm. Even the thunder echoing
outside her small house couldn't compare to his loud knocking. All he
brought was a tattered suitcase and an empty wallet. It was more than
he had when he'd left. She wanted to leave him standing in the hallway
because he'd only contaminate her home.

Instead, she let him in, then wanted to take it back. He instantly went
to the wine perched on top of the fridge.

"This is pretty good," he said. His first sentence of the night was to
complement the cheap wine she'd bought more than a year ago.

She bit her lip. It was hard to resist throwing him out in the storm.
They hadn't seen each other in four years. Not since he'd run away like
a coward leaving her behind.

"It's nice to see you haven't changed," she said. His frown was all she
needed to know the words hurt.

"Are you not even a little happy to see me?"
Her fingers twitched. Running a hand through her hair, she frowned.
He'd left her and ran away like a coward. She'd rather swallow nails
than pretend to be happy right now.
"I'd rather you never came back at all."

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His flinch was satisfying. Whatever regret he felt only lasted a moment
before he was slamming his hands down onto her counter. Now he
resembled their father.

"Don't be childish, Abby."
Childish?
"Says the coward."
"Seriously," he asked. His dark eyes were almost the same color as their
mothers; especially when he glared.
"You left me to take care of our parents," she said.
It'd always been like this.
His twisted frown and puppy eyes were disgusting. She'd been the
one to watch their parents slowly wither away. She'd been the one to
suffer through medical bills and treatments that did nothing. He'd left.
Not only did he run away but he hadn't even returned for the funeral
a year ago.
Something sour danced across her tongue when he rolled his eyes.
"You were fine," he said. The way he waved his hand was almost
enough to break her self-control.
Fine?
She'd worked three jobs to keep their parents alive a little longer and
given up on college to save money. He had the ignorance to say she'd
been fine. Would he be fine if their positions were reversed?
"Whatever," she said. She glanced at her door with more than a little
longing. No matter what happened, he'd never change.
"Abby I-"
"Leave when the storm dies down."

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