Adelaide Literary Magazine No. 51, November 2021

Revista Literária Adelaide

About the Author

Jonathan L. Shaffer hails from sunny, Boynton Beach, Florida. He is a former elementary
afterschool director and life-long thespian.

49

THE BEST FUCK IN
LAUREL CANYON

by Alex Pugsley

She has four days left on the movie, scat- Evian, a bottle of California Chardonnay, and
tered over the next twelve days, and then an unopened pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights.
a three-week gap in her schedule her agent Taking out the wine and cigarettes, Samantha
wants her to fill. But she’s exhausted. It’s sets them on a counter. She grabs a wineglass
Friday evening, after wrap, and, as she from a cupboard and pours herself a full
walks up to her rental house, she sees on glass of wine. She brings this wine into the
the doorstep two script-sized couriered living room, placing it on a glass-and-chrome
packages. This is, in case you’re wonder- coffee table. From her jeans she removes
ing, Samantha Robbins, movie star. “Bright- two cell phones—a new iPhone and a vin-
eyed and glowing” were the character de- tage Blackberry—drops them on the coffee
scriptions in the screenplays she was once table, then lays down on the blue sofa. She
sent. Descriptions now, eleven years later, twitches in discomfort a few moments before
trend more towards “alluring district at- finding within the sofa cushions a vibrating
torney” or “gorgeous forensic pathologist.” massage wand. She yanks it out and exam-
If you happen to see her in person, like ines it in a sort of oh-that’s-where-that-went
the driver who just dropped her off, you’d way. She’s still considering it when a nearby
come away thinking Samantha Robbins was cordless phone begins to ring. She does not
confident, preoccupied, and possessed by move to answer it, however, and simply re-
some unquantifiable charisma. It’s a charis- clines again on the sofa, this time with the
ma on full display even as she stoops with vibrating massage wand held to her chest. No
vague restlessness to grab the two packag- sooner does the cordless phone stop ringing
es. Holding them under her arm, along with than the iPhone jingles. It is only when the
Monday’s sides, a scribbled-on call sheet, iPhone goes quiet, and the Blackberry’s ring-
and a bottle of Evian water, she unlocks the tone begins, that Samantha, like a pharaoh
front door and strides in, tossing her chat- with a scepter, rises from the sofa and picks
tels on a kitchen countertop. up the Blackberry.

She moves to the refrigerator, pulls it open, “This better be important,” she says. “I’m
and scans its contents: three more bottles of in the middle of a very important decision.”

50

Revista Literária Adelaide

“Sam! You all right?” The voice was full of Bending forward, Samantha pulls off her
concern. “You didn’t answer your phones.” pumps. “I hate these fucking red scripts. I
know it’s security and everything but why
“I thought it was somebody else.” do we have to kill trees? I can read this shit
on my phone. And the first draft sucked.”
“Who would have all your numbers?”
“All first drafts suck.”
She puts the vibrating massage wand on
the coffee table. “What’s up, Bryan?” “I don’t want to do those roles anymore.
It’s basically ‘Look at my Tits in Monument
“We need clarity on a few things—” Valley.’ What about Matthew’s project? I
loved it.”
“Join the party.”
“They didn’t get back to me. I think we
“You got a month-long hole in your would’ve heard by now. If you want, I can
schedule. Want to fill it? We need to decide email.”
now.”
“Email,” says Samantha. “Go for clarity.”
“I thought it was three weeks.”
“Doing it—” There is a sound of rapid
“I got them to move up your last day. typing. “Did it. Now what about the fund-
You’re picture-wrapped a week early. Now raiser for what’s-her-nuts? What do I tell her?”
you got a month.”
“She wants me to host for free?”
“You maybe want to tell me you’re doing
this shit first?” “They’ll send a car.”

“They’re not big scenes, honey. Shoe “Fuck, Bryan, I don’t want to nickel-and-
leather.” dime these idiots. If they paid me some-
thing, I’d do it. If it was a close friend, I’d do
“Hey, when I walk up to a crack house, it. But I don’t have any close friends. So fuck
that’s four years of Julliard walking up to a it.” She drinks from the wine. “What about
crack house.” the indie movie?”

“Did you read the scripts I sent you?” “I sent that over, too. It’s scale. Three
weeks. They need to know by Monday.”
“I’ve been home forty-two seconds. I ha-
ven’t even had a cigarette.” “It’s scale? Can I bring Jean-Luc?”

“Please don’t smoke, Sam. With these “It’s all freebies and favours, Sam. They
digital cameras they see every pore, every have no money. If you want your own hair
line.” and makeup, you’d have to pay for it.”

“It’s called video retouching, Bryan.” “For three weeks? I’d lose money.” She
makes a vague frown. “Who’s the DP? Have
“But you’re drinking water? Promise me you seen a reel?”
you’re drinking water.”
“I sent you the link.”
“I’m drinking.” Samantha reaches for her
wineglass. “I promise you. What are the “Just tell me what’s up.”
scripts?”
“I honestly didn’t watch all of it. It’s very
“The first is Errol’s studio picture. The one spooky. Upside-down bustiers and black
on red paper.”

51

Adelaide Literary Magazine

eyeliner and, you know, tortured souls in “I’ll call you at wrap. Read those scripts.
love with the darkness.” You’re a genius!”

“And I’d be an alcoholic junkie vampire?” “Yeah?” Samantha notices a scribbled
note and phone number at the top of her
“You’d be an alcoholic junkie vampire call sheet. “I think I know what I actually
who dies on page sixty-three.” need.”

“Do I want to go to New Orleans, though?” “What’s that?”
Samantha sighs. “I think I need something
else. I’ve just done three movies back-to- “Bye, Bryan! Talk soon.”
back, dude. I don’t even know what city I’m
waking up in anymore.” Twenty minutes later and Samantha
is on a third cigarette, a second glass of
“You’re in LA and you’re a genius.” wine, and halfway through a first reading
of Thunder Creek, the script printed on dark
“There’s just so much stupidity in my life red pages. More than a few times she has
right now. And I don’t see any indication it’s glanced at the scribbled note at the top of
going away. In fact, I think it’s getting worse.” her call sheet and she is, in fact, reading it
again, and reaching for her iPhone, when
“Almost forgot. I have another package the iPhone starts to ring. Recognizing the
here from your mother—” number on the call display, she answers
with a smirk. “Dear God,” she says, “finally.”
“My mother?” Samantha flinches. “What
is it this time?” “Hello?” The voice is male: distinct, com-
forting, with a suggestion of mischief. “And
“Looks like vitamins. You want me to send how is Samantha Robbins tonight?”
it over? You told me not to forward anything.”
“Waiting for you, freak,” says Samantha.
“If I have to come in to sign something, I’ll “Where are you?”
get it then.”
“Not sure. Limbo somewhere.”
“Shit.”
“Did your flight get out of London?”
“What?”
“Just second. I think I see a sign. I’m some-
“Matthew’s people just emailed back. where called ‘Lookout Mountain Avenue.’”
They went another way with the part.”
With the iPhone to her cheek, Samantha
“Those fucks,” says Samantha. “Fuck, I walks barefoot to the front door and opens
hate this industry. Why’d I go to his kid’s it. There, nine steps below on the walkway,
birthday party?” with an iPhone to his ear, is the actor, di-
rector, and producer Paul Bloom. He wears
“Because you’re a brilliant human being a dark suit and white dress shirt. Under his
who inspires millions of people every day.” arm, he carries a sturdy brown paper bag
from the Canyon Country Store. It’s packed
“I don’t need this crap in my life, Bryan.” with tulips, take-out salads, and bottles of
red and white wine. He smiles—a smile
“When’s your call on Monday?” familiar to moviegoers the world over—
and is about to speak when Samantha
“I think pickup’s at seven. Let me check.”
Standing up, and holding her Blackberry to
her cheek, Samantha moves to the kitchen
to look at her call sheet. “Yup. Seven.”

52

Revista Literária Adelaide

scream-whispers, “Jesus, man. Get in here “Hmm. Bold choice.”
before someone recognizes you.”
“So you can have one drink. And then
Inside, he puts the bag of groceries in you’re fucking me.”
the kitchen and surveys the room, taking
note of the red script, the glass of white “Ah,” says Paul, “you can take the girl out
wine, and the vibrating massage wand on of Pittsburgh—”
the coffee table. “Sam,” he says, “if you’re in
the middle of something, I can come back.” “Sewickley, yo. Sewickley.” Samantha
grabs her wineglass and raises it. “Cheers,
She closes the front door, turns to look Paul Bloom.” She bumps her glass into his
at him, and shakes her head at the absurdity and gazes into his eyes. “My God, I like
of the situation. “Come give me a kiss, you seeing you.”
freak.”
“And how about you?” He drinks from
She moves to him on tippy-toe and the red wine. “How was your day?”
fondly kisses him on the lips.
“Oh, I like Fridays. I’m a Good Samaritan
Paul takes a step back, the better to look on Fridays.”
her in the eye, and nods at her wineglass.
“You started without me?” “Who’d you save?”

“I never know if you’re going to show up.” “Because I’m not a resident anymore, they
rent me this place—”
“Didn’t I tell you I was coming?”
“Nice place.”
“You drunk texted me from Heathrow.” She
moves to a cupboard and picks out a wine- “And I get a per diem so at the end of the
glass. “White or red?” week I raffle away all my per diems so the
crew has something to look forward to on
“Red’s fine.” Friday.”

Samantha peeks into the bag of gro- “A free six hundred bucks? I’m looking
ceries. “Thanks you for bringing wine, you forward to it. How do I get in on this?”
charming bastard.”
“Get an erection, I’ll consider it. Get an
“I love that general store.” Paul watches erection, you’re in.”
Samantha open the red wine with a cork-
screw. “It’s always the last place to get wine He puckers his lips. “Hard bargain.”
before the canyon.”
“If only. Is it too much to bend a girl over
She fills the wineglass. “Are you ex- for a little hard bargain?”
hausted?”
“So what about the raffle? Who won today?”
“Not too bad. A little jet-lagged.”
“The key grip,” says Samantha. “Trevor.
“But not so jet-lagged you’re going to fall He’s two hundred and five pounds. Lean.”
asleep, right?”
“Sounds like a choice cut.”
“Why? What’re you doing later?”
“And he’s an ultimate fighter.” Samantha
“It’s not what I’m doing later. It’s who I’m finds the call sheet and brings it to Paul. “He
doing later.” She passes him the red wine. gave me his phone number and look what
“And I’m choosing you.” he wrote me.”

53

Adelaide Literary Magazine

Paul takes the call sheet and reads aloud “Google me, Paul. With or without lubri-
the scribbled note: “‘Want to help me spend cant. I don’t care.”
it?’ Smooth.”
“Cool.” He sips from his red wine and,
“Got to admire a man who goes for it.” with his other hand, pulls out his iPhone. “I
got this. I’m on it.”
“Wait—Trevor?” Paul flips over the call
sheet and reads through a list of crew mem- “I just—seriously—” Locating her lighter on
bers by department. “Trevor Haas? I know the kitchen countertop, Samantha lights her
Trevor Haas. When I did my first series, cigarette. “What kind of affair is this? I’m the
Trevor Haas was the grip. At lunch, we’d all best fuck in Laurel Canyon. You’re supposed to
smoke dope in the grip truck. He fucking hit fuck me. How do you not know this? Go read
on everybody. He fucking hit on me. Not to ‘Adultery For Dummies’ and then come back.”
burst your bubble, Sam.”
Paul glances up from his iPhone. “Is there
“Hmm-mmm,” says Samantha, finishing her an audio book?”
white wine. “Two hundred and five pounds.”
“God, I hate you sometimes.” Holding the
“Now,” says Paul, “are you hungry? I lighter aloft, Samantha carelessly pitches it
brought three kinds of salad—” at his head.

Grabbing the Marlboro Ultra Lights, Sa- Paul lifts his wineglass to shield his face
mantha twists her mouth, mock-annoyed. and—though the lighter misses him com-
“This is the worst affair in the history of this pletely—the abruptness of his motion slops
city. What happened to all the sneaking red wine on the button placket of his white
around and crazy sex?” She fingers out a shirt. “Whoa, lady,” he says, walking to the
cigarette. “And motels in the afternoon and kitchen and removing his suitjacket. “This
crazy sex?” She places the cigarette in her is a four hundred dollar shirt.” At the sink,
mouth and feels her jeans for her lighter. he lays his suitjacket on the counter. He un-
“And rose petals on the bed and crazy sex?” buttons his shirt and takes it off, revealing a
very well-defined physique.
“Didn’t I bring tulips?”
“Holy fuck,” says Samantha, staring at
“Just for once— ” Leaving the unlit cig- him. “Hold up. Don’t move.” She sets her
arette in her mouth, Samantha slaps her cigarette on the rim of a very full ashtray,
hands on either side of her jeans-zipper. “Put steps out of her fallen jeans, and walks to-
your two lips here and suck me. Then fuck wards him. “Would you look at you?” She
me. For God’s sake, Paul. Do I have to beg?” scratches a fingernail down the center of his
chest. “That is fucking ridiculous.”
“Hmm,” says Paul cautiously, “I’m waiting
for the other shoe to drop.” “You like the superhero look, do you? Two-
a-day workouts. You should see my carbs.”
“What about my pants? Are you waiting
for my pants to drop? Here—” Samantha “I’d love to see your carbs. Show me your
undoes her jeans and lets them fall to the carbs. I’ll get down on my knees if you show
floor. “Paul, I’m one of the hottest bitches me your carbs.”
in the city, I’m on Maxim’s Hot 100 List, and
you’re talking about three kinds of salad?” Paul runs cold water over the spot of
red wine, squirts some dish soap on it, then
“Bullshit you’re on Maxim’s list.”

54

Revista Literária Adelaide

rinses the stain clean. He is pulling his shirt Giggling now, Samantha continues to
back on when Samantha, returning to take stare at him. “Fuck, you’re cute. But my
a drag of her cigarette, raises her hand. God you drive me crazy. I want to smack you
and bite you and fuck you and just—” She
“Sweetie,” she says in a babyish voice, shivers. “Blech! Too many feelings.”
“please don’t put your clothes back on. Please,
please, please?” “You want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know,” says Paul, reaching for his “My feelings? Yeah. That’s why I invited
suitjacket, “I just feel sort of naked without you here. Why don’t you talk to my mother?
my clothes on.” You’d be better off.”

“Fine. Done.” Samantha squashes out “What’s her number?”
her cigarette, sits on the sofa, and picks up
her iPhone. “Moving on.” She leans forward “Oh, Ida would be thrilled. She doesn’t
and grabs the call sheet. “Oh, Trevor. You know I know you. Give her something to
Ultimate Fighter, you.” talk about at bingo.”

“We sexting Trevor? I can help with that.” Paul scrolls through the contacts on her
iPhone. “Wait. Here it is—”
“You’re going to help me sext Trevor, are
you?” “Except for the fact that she loves your
wife. She tried to send me your wife’s fucking
“Sure. I’m all about sexting. And emojis.” cook book. Jesus, did that piss me off.”

“Here— ” She slides her iPhone along the “I’m guessing it’s ‘Mom?’”
coffee table. “Send it from mine. We’ll write
it together.” “Wait—” Realizing he’s already started a
call, Samantha abruptly gets up. “No, you
“Sweet.” Paul picks up the iPhone. “How don’t. You do not. Paul!”
flirty off the top? Something simple? ‘Sup
Bae?’ That work for you?” She grabs at her iPhone but he sidesteps
her so the coffee table is between them.
“I actually believe you would do this.”
“Hello,” Paul says into the iPhone, “is that
“Oh, I’m willing to go pretty far. But I draw Ida? It’s Paul Bloom—”
the line at dick pics. Let’s just say—” He
whistles. “Lesson learned.” From the iPhone’s earpiece, Samantha
hears the burble of her mother’s voice. And
“Are you serious?” Samantha sits up, her with her mother’s voice are conjured im-
eyes bright with interest. “Did you?” She ages of her mother’s unchanging kitchen—
stares at him. “You can tell me. I won’t tell. the yellow push-button telephone with the
Who’d you send it to?” long curling cord, the empty beer bottles on
the checkered linoleum floor, the Formica
“It was just a misunderstanding between table with the crooked dent in its chrome
myself and another person.” frame, a dent that matches the scar on Sa-
mantha’s forehead, a memento from the
“You still have it?” time she first ran away.

“The pic or the dick? I think I have one of “I’m in a restaurant with Samantha and
them?” Paul touches at the pockets of his her pals,” Paul is saying, “and she was talking
suitjacket. “Somewhere.”

55

Adelaide Literary Magazine

about calling you. And Ida? I’m just going to “Well, we had a little rain this afternoon—”
put you on speaker—”
“You have a chance to get out for a walk?”
Paul puts the iPhone in the center of the
coffee table. From its speaker, Samantha now “I’ve had a bit of a scratchy throat I’ve
hears her mother switching to her politest been trying to get rid of. I’m supposed to
voice: “Isn’t she in the middle of a filming?” see the doctor—I have an appointment
next week—but I never know.”
“No, no. She’s here in the restaurant.
Somewhere. There she is.” “Have you tried tea with honey?”

“Sammy?” “Lord, no. Turns my stomach. You’re not a
tea-and-honey person, are you, Paul?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“More of a red wine man.”
“Samantha, you never told me you knew
Paul Bloom!” “I suppose I could try that.”

“Didn’t I?” “Let me know how he turns out.”

“Now, Ida—” Paul takes the call sheet and There is a quick hoot of laughter from
rattles it above the iPhone. “I’m looking at Samantha’s mother, a delighted tone Sa-
the dessert menu, so what do you think we mantha has not heard in some time—years,
should get? Gâteau au Chocolate. Can’t go really—and, as she reaches for her pack of
wrong with chocolate cake. Maybe Crème cigarettes, for some reason she presses her
Brûlée?” lips together very, very tightly.

“You’re in the middle of dinner?” “Now, Ida,” says Paul, “I don’t know if
Sam tells you about all the generous things
“I don’t know if you like Crème Brûlée.” she does for people.”

“What is it?” “Well, no, she doesn’t. She doesn’t tell me,
Paul.”
“It’s like custard with caramel. Would you
like one?” Looking over his shoulder and, as “She keeps things pretty quiet. But she
if talking to an assistant, Paul says, “Bradley, does a lot of good in the world. She brightens
can we send one of these to Sam’s mother?” a lot of people’s day.” Paul flicks at the faded
stain on his button placket. “I know Sam’s
“Oh, you don’t have to do that!” in the middle of this dinner meeting so we
should let her get back to that.”
“You sure?”
“Well, Paul, I just thank you for taking
“It’s too far to send a dessert. From Cali- time out of your day to call me.”
fornia?”
“You kidding?” Paul turns with a smile to
“Cancel that, Bradley.” Paul turns to Sa- Samantha. “What else would I be doing?”
mantha. “And, Sam, you’re okay with just He bends over the iPhone. “You have a great
the latte?” night, Ida.”

“Hmm-mmm.” “Well, I will now. You just made an old
woman very happy. Is Samantha still there?
“Oh, she never gets dessert.” Are you still there, Sammy?”

“So, Ida, tell me,” says Paul warmly, “how
was the day in Sewickley?”

56

Revista Literária Adelaide

“Yup,” says Samantha, “if you can believe “Two drops. Underneath my tongue. Love
it.” you, too. Say hi to Dad.”

“Did you do that? Did you get Paul to call “I will. Take care now.”
me?”
Paul leans over the iPhone. “Bye, Ida!”
“Oh, Mom. You know as well as I do. You
can never get a man to do anything. They Samantha touches a button to end the
have to think it’s their idea. Then they might call. She is silent a moment. Then, without
get around to doing something. No, they taking out a cigarette, she puts the pack of
have minds of their own. At least, they think cigarettes on the coffee table.
they do.”
“Now,” says Paul, “that wasn’t so bad, was
“Well, you’re being very sweet and thank it?”
you, Sammy.” Her mother’s voice begins to
quaver with emotion. “It’s a lovely surprise. “If you do this,” says Samantha, her eyes
You know, your father and I are so proud moist with tears, “if you make me fall in love
of you and everything you’ve accomplished. with you, I swear to God, Paul Bloom, I’ll
We love you very much. And did you get the never forgive you.”
Vitamin-E drops I sent you?”
“The other shoe.”
“Yup.”
“You understand me? I won’t.”
“And you’re taking them? Two drops un-
derneath your tongue?” “I see.” He comes over and sits down beside
her. “Any plans for the weekend?” Looking
into her eyes, he takes her hand in his.
“What’re you doing later?”

About the Author

Alex Pugsley is a writer and filmmaker in Toronto. He
published his first novel, Aubrey McKee, last year. The
attached story will be appearing in his first story collection,
to be published in May 2022.

57

THE ONE WITH
THE BAG

by Carlos Reynoso

“Sorry for the tough way we brought you The woman introduced herself as Anna
here, but it was for security and important Minerva of 20 years old, then, she analyzed
purposes,” said a man with a tone of a mix the photos and noticed her face in all of
between a young person and an adult. “Let them. In each of them, she wore the same
me introduce myself, my name is Edward clothes and had the same makeup. She also
Constantine. This man by my side is my wore a black jacket and black jeans. For
partner, Johnson Daytona. We work for the her makeup, she had white skin all in his
FBI, and we are currently searching for the body, from her face to her legs. In addition,
leader of the terrorist group FATE, which she had two black lines on her skin, on her
attacked a big city in Florida six days ago. head, and hands. In the first photo, Anna
Causing many buildings to be destroyed was hanging with two tall men in a Chinese
and killing a big number of residents in the district entering a restaurant. In the second
process, which includes women, kids, and one, the woman can be seen talking with a
pets. Many of our reporters had found that red public telephone talking to an unknown
the leader of FATE is a woman. So, as you person. In the third scene, Anna is reading
can see, we have you here because you are a map of a city in Florida with one tall man
highly suspect of this case. So please, give by her side. Lastly, in the fourth one, she
us your information and cooperate with us is entering an alley between two buildings.
to catch the leader.” After she analyzed the four photos, Anna
changed her look into Edward and said:
After listening to Edward’s speech and
understanding everything, the woman “Sorry to answer you this, Mr. Constan-
nodded her head and accepted the man’s tine,” said Anna. “But to be honest, I don’t
request. Edward took four pictures from his remember any single one of these pictures
pocket, gave them to the woman, and said: you showed me. Even so, the only one I
can remember is the one in which I’m en-
“First, tell me your name and age, miss,” tering the alley since that’s the last thing I
Edward said, “then look at these photos and remember before I opened my eyes here.
tell me if you remember any of these scenes.” Other than that, I can’t say much.”

58

Revista Literária Adelaide

Edward turned his back on Anna and “Wait!” yelled Anna, “that was an inno-
said: cent sin! If it’s an innocent sin, then I should
receive forgiveness, right?!”
“You are correct with that last thing, Ms.
Minerva,” said Edward, “because that’s the This time, Edward shot Anna’s right leg
moment when we decided to catch you. and said:
Looks like the drugs were so strong that it
put you in a state of insomnia.” “You want forgiveness? Get religion. I’m
sure it will be a great help in your future,
“Wait, what!?” yelled Anna, “what do after your death. You also didn’t have for-
you mean by drugs!?” giveness with the people of that city. You
know who also was in that city? My wife,
“Exactly as you heard, miss,” said Edward whom I recently married and who was preg-
while he was turning his face back to Anna. nant. Do you know who was there too? My
“For your first punishment, we decided to ninety-nine-year-old grandfather, who in
inject drugs on you.” two weeks was going to finally turn his hun-
dred. Not only did you destroy the homes of
A big tension and nervousness sur- thousands of people, but you also caused
rounded Anna’s body. While she was pro- many to lose their families and their jobs. In
cessing the situation, Ana thought: I am other words, you destroyed their lives that
the leader of FATE? If that is so, how can’t I they fought so hard to obtain.”
remember a single thing? Why do I need to
suffer for something that I don’t remember? The shot caused Anna to let out another
Then, Anna said: cry of pain. Then, Edward hit Anna several
times using the gun in her face, which made
“Wait a second. It’s not fair for you guys Anna drop blood from her mouth. After suf-
to do this to me if I can’t remember any- fering from several hits, Anna said:
thing, right?
“Be honest guys, are you the FBI?” Anna
Edward took out a black revolver from asked, “because you are going pretty tough
his left pocket, and while he was reloading with this.”
it, he said:
“Who knows?” Edward said, “we might
“True, it’s not fair,” Edward said calmly, be, we might not be. However, that doesn’t
“but it also wasn’t fair what you did to all matter because you will die soon.”
the innocent people in that city of Florida,
right?” Edward hit Anna with anger in her face
again, but this time, he did it with his right
“That’s- “ leg, making her bleed from her eyes, nose,
and mouth. After receiving them, Anna said:
Edward interrupted Anna’s words by
shooting her in her left foot, which also “Now I remember everything,” she said
made Anna let out a big cry of pain inside using her few strengths. “Those punches
the room. The wound caused Anna to let and legs made me feel lively. Such a good
out little cries for 30 seconds. It also made feeling is being hit by someone, isn’t it?”
her drop large beads of sweat around her
body. Edward looked at Anna’s eyes with a lot
of angriness and said:
“That was your second punishment, miss,”
Edward said, “anything you want to say?”

59

Adelaide Literary Magazine

“You sure are a masochist bastard, aren’t to let out a little lake of blood. Edward con-
you?” Edward said, “seriously, you don’t tinued watching Anna’s corpse with angri-
have mercy for your victims?” ness for several seconds until Johnson Day-
tona grabbed his arm and tell his partner
“Mercy? Mercy is only an obstacle for the next words:
humans to accomplish their goals,” she re-
sponded by smiling. “Kids, pets, wives, hus- “She said that she did an innocent sin
bands…All those things are just mere obsta- and wanted forgiveness. You could have for-
cles that will get in your way to achieve your given her back when she didn’t remember
true desires.” anything. It would have left a better conclu-
sion than this one.”
After listening to Anna’s words, Edward
got seriously angry. He pointed his gun at Edward turns his furious face to his partner
the woman’s forehead and shot, killing her and said:
in the process. Anna’s body dropped to the
floor and caused her wound in the forehead “A sin is still a sin, my friend. It doesn’t
matter if you remember it or not.”

About the Author

Carlos Reynoso is a bilingual person from Latin-America.
He has experience in creating flash fiction stories with
genres of mystery, action, or drama. He was born and
raised in the Dominican Republic. Right now, he is living
in Florida with his grandmother. Follow him on Twitter @
cjreynosonoboa.

60

DEAD ENDS

by Jack Cimino

After Joey had been shot, time seemed “Yeah, kid?” I asked, still staring out the
to move quicker. It was an especially hu- window.
mid night in Long Beach. I was sitting in
the parking lot of the laundromat on Park “I’m sorry about Joey. It’s messed up
Ave. I flipped my hoodie over my head, got what happened to him.”
out of the car slowly and double checked
to make sure there were no eyes on me. I Hearing his name made time stop. “Yeah
couldn’t tell if it was gunshots I heard in man, it’s fucked up.” His last words are what
the distance, or just the ticking watch on haunted me the most.
my wrist. Whatever the noise, it made me
move quicker, looking over my shoulder “Everybody loved him,” said Luis.
with each step. In one hand I was holding
my hamper full of dirty clothes and kept my I nodded my head and stared at my reflec-
other hand on the gun that was strapped tion in the washing machine, making note of
to my waist. I made it into the laundromat the clothes inside that spun in a circle, ac-
safely, and immediately received a greeting celerating every second. Out of the corner
from a familiar face. of my eye I saw a black SUV driving in the
opposite direction of the first one. Maybe it
“Oh shit. What’s up, Bryan?” asked Luis. was dark green. I approached the front door
slowly and looked up and down the street.
I let out a sigh of relief. “Watch your mouth, There was a man wearing all black standing
kid,” I said. There was a single light flickering on the corner next to the convenience store.
over his head. He seemed harmless as he puffed on a ciga-
rette and sipped from a flask.
Luis laughed. “What do you mean? I got
it from you, boss.” “You alright, man?” asked Luis.

“Yeah, well, if your mom traces that back “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good,” I said as I walked
to me I’m a dead man, you know that.” back to my machine. The memory of Joey
trembling in my arms before taking his last
As I was loading my clothes in the ma- breath clouded my intuition for a moment. It
chine, a black SUV caught my eye while was his last words that haunted me the most.
strolling down the street. I couldn’t help but
do a double take. Luis was just three years younger than
Joey. He’d been a family friend for years. I held
“Hey, Bryan,” said Luis. him in my arms when he was just an infant. I
made sure he never followed in my footsteps,

61

Adelaide Literary Magazine

though he always begged to tag along when I let out another sigh of relief and walked
it came to business and constantly asked back to the door to make sure Luis was gone.
about the latest beef in the streets. He never I saw the man across the street, this time
knew his father, and I think I filled that role he was staring directly at me. I stared back
in his mind. I’d been in the business since I for a few seconds. He put his hoodie on and
was sixteen, and I’d thought about getting started walking away. I walked back to the
out for years. Now that Joey had passed, this machine, stopped the spin cycle, and started
was my last chance before inevitably facing putting my wet clothes back in my hamper.
the same fate, or worse, someone else close The chime on the front door rang and I pulled
to me facing that fate instead. I had reached my gun from my waist without hesitation.
a dead end in the streets. The light flickering
over Luis’ head went out. Suddenly a terrible “Woah, Bryan, it’s just me,” said Luis.
feeling overwhelmed me.
I lowered my gun with a shaky hand.
“Luis, I need you to do me a favor.” “What did I tell you? Go home,” I said

“Yeah? What?” asked Luis. “I forgot my keys to the crib, man, relax.”

“I need you to grab your clothes and go “You can’t be here right now.”
home.”
Luis walked over to the machine he used
“I can’t, man, my mom has been giving and picked his keys up off the ground. As
me hell about the laundry all day. She’ll kill he was walking out, he turned back around.
me if I come home without clean clothes.” “Who’s coming after you? The same guys
that got Joey?”
I saw a black SUV drive down the street
for the third time. I paused and held my As Luis was talking, I saw the black SUV
breath as it seemed to drive by in slow mo- rolling down the street again. This time it
tion. “Alright, Luis, I’m not asking, I’m telling stopped right in front of the laundromat.
you to go home, right now.”
“Luis, get down!” I yelled and dropped to
“Yo what’s wrong with-” the floor. The deafening gunshots shattered
the glass doors and ricocheted off the
“Do you want to end up like Joey? This washing machines. When I got up to check
is not a game, kid. They’re coming for me.” on Luis, he was already gone. My body went
into shock. He looked like a newborn baby
Luis saw the look in my eye. Without an- all over again. When the cops came, all they
other word he grabbed his clothes out of saw was me holding Luis in my arms, but I
the dryer and walked out of the laundromat. was the one with a gun.

About the Author

Jack Cimino was raised on the outskirts of Hilton Head Island,
South Carolina. In his spare time, he loves going to the beach
and listening to music. Follow him on Twitter @JackCimino0913.

62

THE WITCH

by Zachary LaFever

It was the day of my mother’s funeral. It was I responded, “I’m Vince, and I just
raining that day. The rain and wind combined walked right in the door was open.” I started
and smashed along the church’s windows. It to stand up again, keeping my eyes towards
sounded like a baseball bat whacking into a the floor, and said, “I’m sorry for intruding,
steel plate. I practically looked at the ground I was leaving my mom’s funeral. I’ll get out
most of the time. Everyone walked up to her of your hair.”
casket to pay their respects. Some looked fa-
miliar, but most of them didn’t. Mom wasn’t The Witch responded and told me with
good at keeping friends. She kept me close. a gracious tone, “I understand, there is no
That’s what made it even harder to be there. need to leave. You can sit back down. Now
I was asked to write a eulogy. I didn’t know tell me, what is bothering you?”
what to say or write. When I was called up
to speak, I panicked. With a little hesitation, I said, “Well, I
left my mom’s funeral because I was over-
I ran out of the church, not caring about whelmed with losing her. I was told to say
the rain or anything. I wasn’t even outside something, and I couldn’t and ran off. I’d do
for ten seconds, and I was drenched. I ran anything to bring her back.”
into the woods, slipping in puddles. That
didn’t stop me. I kept running. I found this “You know I’m a Witch, right,” she said. “I
run-down cabin in the woods. Only having could bring her back very easily.”
one window, missing siding, and rotted. But
I didn’t care. I went right in and sat on the “Can you actually do that? That would be
floor curled up. All I could hear was the rain great. Yeah. Bring her back,” I said, confused
pouring and slamming onto the door. at first.

Suddenly the rain stopped. A beam She responded, “Yes, I can do it easily.
of light shined through the only window The only thing is... there is a catch.”
and landed right on me. The door cracked
open, and a faint voice asked, “Who is in my As soon as I heard her say that my heart
house?” That was the Witch. “How did you sank. I had a feeling that there would be a
get in?” As I was about to tell her who I was catch. But at that point, I thought I had nothing
she walked and asked again, “How did you else to lose. I asked, “What’s the catch?”
get in here?”
“If you want to get your mother back,
you must kill someone in return. A soul for
a soul. That’s the catch.”

63

Adelaide Literary Magazine

For some reason I wasn’t surprised. There quick. I walked through the woods until
is always a catch when it comes to some- I noticed a park across the tree line. As I
thing like this. I responded, “Why a soul for walked through the tree line, I saw him. The
a soul? You’re a witch, you should be able to man who made himself the easiest target.
just bring someone back.” Literally sitting on the park bench, not even
looking towards me.
“That is not how this works. If you want
her back, you have to kill someone in return.” I walked towards him. With each step I
took the more I was shaking. The more real
I had to think about it. I decided to go this started to become to me. The knife was
through with it. The Witch handed me a trembling in my hand. I was about 2 feet
knife and told me to use it on whoever I de- away from the man and I couldn’t do it. I
cided to kill. I already felt ill about doing it, dropped the knife and walked away. I
but I knew it had to be done if I wanted to couldn’t take a life. I know it’s what I was
see mom again. told to do but I couldn’t go through with it.
Who am I to decide who lives or dies? I went
I left the cabin. It had gotten dark out- back to the church, now just my mother and
side. I was going to use that to my advan- me. I said my goodbyes.
tage to sneak up to someone and do this

About the Author
Zachary LaFever is a Cuban-American who was raised on
farmland in New Jersey. He now resides in Orlando, Florida.

64

THE CELESTIAL
DIPLOMAT

by Vivien Schwarz

He arrived three quarters past midnight, and peckish insomniacs populated the diner
on foot. His car lay in a ravine a mile down at this hour. There was the occasional puffy-
the road, and his jeans and feet were mud- eyed medical resident who would come in
died. The only belongings he carried were for a pot of coffee and smoke after a gru-
the ones in his knapsack, which hung on his eling shift or the Professed Immortal who
back. Despite sensing a pair of eyes study- claimed to have witnessed the Lincoln as-
ing him and the lingering smell of tobacco, sassination and public executions during
it appeared nobody was in the desolate the Reign of Terror, but Selene saw no trace
town square. of such persons this morning.

As he faded into the darkness, the As the activity softened to a quiet hum,
moonlight revealed an accessory dangling she seized a box of matches from the cup-
from a strap on his knapsack: a sparkling board and stepped outside onto the back
rectangular keychain, with blue, black, and porch. The darkness stubbornly clung to the
white horizontal stripes. landscape despite the sun’s rays peeking out
from the mountains, creating a lurid gloam.
* The cool air was a welcome relief, and aided
in steadying her hand as she lit a cigarette. A
It was still dark when Selene stepped out few steps off the porch would lead her into
into the street. It had been a week since she a meadow, populated with wildflowers and
last left her duplex, and already walking on knee-high grasses. A generous rainy season
the pavement felt as if she were crossing had multiplied the number of blossoms and
into foreign territory. Although the town was given the once yellow grasses a kelly green
quiet—it was only half past five—there was hue. The meadow led into a forest and tow-
an energy she could almost detect, and she ering foothills, which climbed high enough
felt it as she entered her workplace, a mod- for fog to hide the summit.
est diner situated at the end of Main Street.
The sense of calm withered when she
The cook, Marvin, greeted her with his noticed the diner’s owner, Corrine, appear
usual nod and grunt. Cheery octogenarians

65

Adelaide Literary Magazine

from around the corner of the building. She next remembered Norma gently
“Look who’s decided to show herself again,” slapping her cheeks and dabbing a dishcloth
she said, her face bearing a malicious grin. on her forehead.
Selene took the last drag of her cigarette
and waited a couple minutes after Corrine “You all right?”
entered the diner before going in.
When Selene turned to look into the
To her relief, her first day back at the seating area, she noticed the corner booth
diner had gone smoothly. Ellen, Corrine’s was no longer occupied.
marionette and mole, had called in sick, and
Norma, Selene’s closest friend, had come to “Where’d he go?”
fill her shift. It was the two of them and Earl,
another cook, manning the diner this eve- “He’s left.” Norma dropped several coins
ning, and since Corrine had left later that in the cash register and threw the dishcloth
morning, it gave them the freedom to work into a basket beside the sink. “At least he
free from her glare. remembered to pay this time.”

“We choose to go to the Moon!” President *
Kennedy cheered from the radio’s speakers.
From her balcony Selene would look out
“Do you think we’ll get there?” Norma at Main Street. Sometimes, due to a mix of
reached across the main counter and turned curiosity and boredom, she’d observe the
the knob to a different station. townspeople and their habits. Often she
found herself spying on the postman to
“Not until the Soviets get there first,” Se- see if he’d deliver her good news. She was
lene answered. In spite of the evening hour, awaiting word from her childhood friend
only one patron was in the diner: a man sit- Fanny, who lived in New York City and
ting in the corner booth and sipping the last worked as an editor at a prestigious literary
of his coffee. journal. She had asked if she could submit
her short stories and poems given Fanny’s
“He’s been here the last couple of nights,” praise for her originality and elegant prose,
Norma said, nodding to him as she dried the and Fanny, with her characteristic broad
last few dishes in the sink. Selene recog- smile and hesitant nod, answered yes.
nized him as the man she had seen walking
in the empty town square three nights ago. The week before, when she remained
“He hasn’t said much.” home recovering from distress, she would
watch the goings-on of the diner, which
She sauntered over to him, coffeepot in sat a couple hundred feet away. Early one
hand. “You’ve been sitting here for quite a morning, hours before sunrise, she noticed
while.” the Professed Immortal appear to drink an
entire bottle of bourbon in one gulp before
“It’s a nice booth,” he mused. “And the cavorting his way to the diner. Later in the
coffee is cheap.” His alabaster skin was almost week, she witnessed Milton, Corrine’s hus-
translucent, and plum-colored circles settled band and business partner, visit—a rare
under his eyes. “Could you grab me a menu?” sight given he was usually rubbing elbows
with other businessmen at the chamber of
Selene smiled politely and emptied the commerce or bribing the local politicians at
last of the pot of coffee into his mug before city hall.
walking behind the counter.

66

Revista Literária Adelaide

As she searched for the postman, she *
spotted the man with alabaster skin walking
along Main Street towards the duplex. His The man visited the diner every day for
gait was similar to what she had seen the the next week, and the two of them did
other night, with a slight limp and long not speak until one evening when her shift
strides. She rose and was about to grab her ended well into the night. Selene noticed
purse to follow him when she heard a knock him leave and, instead of turning the cor-
on her door. ner in the direction where he usually came
from, he stood outside the door smoking a
“Miss Selene, I have your laundry!” cigarette. He held the door open for her as
she walked out of the diner and down the
It was Maude, the grandmother of her sidewalk.
landlord, Mrs. Weaver. Mrs. Weaver lived
with her two sons and Maude in the down- “I’ve found North Americans the most
stairs unit of the duplex. Nothing was ever charming during my travels,” he called. She
said about Mr. Weaver’s whereabouts, al- turned and gave him a quizzical look. “It’s
though Maude had hinted he had disap- just an observation.”
peared while fighting in the Korean War.
“How flattering.” She walked towards him
“Hello,” Selene greeted as she opened and studied him from under the lamppost
the door. where he stood. His skin had developed a
warm glow and the circles under his eyes
“Oh, you look lovely today,” Maude had softened. “I don’t believe I’ve gotten
gushed, a childlike grin forming at her lips. your name.”
She handed Selene the basket of laundry
and stood idly in the doorway. For reasons “I’m Adam.” She saw his eyes dart to her
Selene never quite understood, Maude in- name pin on her left lapel. “You’re Selene, I
sisted on doing her laundry, to the extent presume?” Selene nodded. He shrugged and
she believed denying the old woman the pulled out a pack of Marlboros. “We don’t
chore would be an unkindness. “Have you have these where I’m from,” he said as he
heard Jimmy has started playing the cello?” flicked away his cigarette and lit another one.

Selene returned a humorless smile. “I “How long are you staying here?”
thought I had heard someone playing music
downstairs the other night.” “I have yet to decide.”

“It’s just an absolute joy to see him have She followed him as he began walking
such talent,” she continued. Selene could toward the meadow behind the diner. He
feel her arm growing numb from holding sat down amongst the flowers and gestured
the basket. Despite her diminutive stature for her to sit beside him. “The thing I like
and mousy appearance, Maude spoke with most here is you can see the Milky Way. The
an aggressive cheeriness, prattling about last city I was in, you couldn’t see anything
her great-grandsons in one breath to the because of the lights.”
socialists in Saskatchewan in another. Once
she rushed to shut the door, Selene spread “Where were you before you came here?”
her bedsheets on her mattress, prepared to
see a large stain she had left a week ago. “Chicago.”

It was gone. “You made it sound as if you’re not from
around here.”

67

Adelaide Literary Magazine

“I’m from a bit further away.” He struck *
a furtive glance to the moon. It hung sus-
pended in the air like a cheap theatre prop, It had started with a sense of foreboding.
with the light from the sun reflecting an
eerie halo. It had happened during the transition
between spring and summer, on a day
Selene raised an eyebrow and smiled. when Henry, the son of the town’s mayor
and a medical resident at the local hospital,
“You believe I’m lying?” visited the diner one early afternoon. Se-
lene, who had found herself in an unusually
“It’s a bit outrageous. Did you come here upbeat mood that day, greeted him and
in a flying saucer?” started scribbling his order on her notepad.
In spite of being a close friend of Milton and
“You’d think I’d disclose such sensitive Corrine’s and a regular at the diner, she had
information?” yet to formally meet him.

She gazed at the brightly lit sky, which re- Selene had stood frozen. She had expe-
vealed how abundant space truly was. She rienced this uncomfortable and often inde-
remembered when she was younger, when scribable sensation before, but it had been
she believed the déjà vu meant she had pe- at least a decade.
culiar abilities, or the blackouts made her a
time traveler, and she dreamt of a lifetime “Are you okay, miss?” Henry had asked.
of exploration and independence. She had
never ventured more than fifty miles out- “Excuse me.” She had grabbed Norma, who
side of this town, but here she could witness was standing behind the counter, waiting on
stars and other celestial bodies millions of an order for a large group, and Selene had
miles and light years away. told her she needed to leave.

“Is there a god up there?” Henry had offered to walk her home.
On the way to the duplex they had passed
“No,” Adam answered. the postman, who knew of Selene’s impa-
tience in receiving word from Fanny, and
Selene rose. “As an Earthling, I need had frowned and told her he had no letters
sleep.” She waited to see if he would follow postmarked from New York City. She had
her lead, but he did not stir. “Good night.” apologized for her apartment being in dis-
As the moonlight guided her to the street, array, and it was then Henry had asked if
she thought she heard someone calling her her panic was due to her husband leaving
name. her months earlier. Before she could explain
what she had experienced was not an anx-
She turned to see Adam standing in iety attack, he had kissed her, and she had
the meadow, blanketed in the glow of the told him to leave because the sense of fore-
moon. “It’s nice to finally see you smile.” boding meant she may lose consciousness.

As she walked up to the duplex, she Henry had stopped by the diner the fol-
could hear Mrs. Weaver’s sons fighting over lowing day. He had handed her a tiny box,
a telescope in the treehouse in the back- and inside was a spliff. He had told her it
yard. She crept up the stairs to her unit and helped with neuroticism and some patients
once she collapsed in her bed, she entered at the hospital swore it aided in controlling
a deep sleep for the first time in ages.

68

Revista Literária Adelaide

their fits, and invited her to smoke it with draped over the side sat in front of the table,
him once her shift ended. and a bookshelf stood at the opposite wall.
On an adjacent wall hung a novelty clock of a
They had begun meeting in the evenings, grinning cat, its large swiveling eyes leering
normally in odd places. Sometimes it would at her from across the room, and under it
be at the local theatre, which had a habit of lay a bed, piled high with colorful blankets.
playing older films and usually remained va- The landlord’s pet, a calico tomcat named
cant, or other times it was in a nearby area Mister Palmer, sat in the corner, studying a
with natural hot springs. She had known he tiny hole in the floorboard.
was newly married—it was impossible not
to notice the gold band on his left ring finger “Do you like red wine?” he called from
or hear his occasional kvetch concerning his the kitchen.
wife’s overspending—but she viewed this
fact as an inconvenience to her newfound On his bookshelf sat a record player
excitement. and a year-old newspaper, declaring on
the front page Yuri Gagarin’s venture into
This febrile high had distracted her from space. A small stack of photographs lay on
noticing a steady weight gain and growing the bottom shelf.
nausea. The thought of being knocked up
never occurred to her; she rarely enter- “Yes,” Selene answered. She picked up
tained the idea due to an irregular cycle. It and looked at the first photo. A younger
was only one morning when changing into version of him—he appeared to be only
her work uniform and noticing her bra no eighteen or nineteen years old—stood on
longer fit had such thought entered her the top floor of a dilapidated building; the
mind. city below him lay decimated. The next
photo was of him standing outside a city,
She had waited a few weeks before with a vast sea in the background, and the
seeing a doctor. The nurse had come into remaining photos were of him in front of
the room, telling her in a hushed tone the various famous buildings in Western Europe
rabbit had died, and discreetly handed her and the Middle East.
a slip of paper containing a phone number
of a doctor. “You’re a bit like Mister Palmer, eh?” Adam
appeared in the entrance of the kitchen, with
“He’ll take care of the problem,” she had a glass of wine in each hand. “Always curious
told her. “He’s helped plenty of our patients.” about something.”

* “I’m trying to discover where you’re
actually from.” She held up the photo of
It only took a little less than forty-eight hours him standing in the dilapidated building.
for her and Adam to reunite. As he walked “Where was this taken?”
past the duplex toward downtown, he had
noticed her relaxing on her balcony and had Adam walked over to her and studied
called up to her asking if she wanted a drink. the photo. “Dresden.”

His apartment was minimalist: on his “And this one?” She showed him the second
coffee table was a page from the town’s photo.
classifieds, with an ad for a car circled. A
pink chaise longue with a patterned afghan “In Tallinn.”

“Where’s that?”

69

Adelaide Literary Magazine

“It’s a city a few hours from Leningrad.” “Not very interesting, but it’s curious how
wherever you go, tribalism exists,” Adam
Selene narrowed her eyes. said. “The scenery is different, but the
people remain dedicated to their own.”
Adam grinned. “You’re gonna go snitch
to Richard Nixon?” “What was your life like before you arrived?”

“Prove to me you’re from the moon.” “I was born to parents of different nations
and languages.” He drank the remaining
“And how would I go about doing so?” wine in his glass and walked back into the
kitchen to pour himself more. “It was a life
She noted the fine lines on his forehead of solitude.”
and the few grey hairs peeking from the
edge of his hairline; he had to be at least a “Sometimes you need to explore to find
decade older than her. “How old are you?” your niche.”

“Older than you are.” He walked over to the record player
and Billie Holiday’s croon filled the room.
“What do you do?” “Would you like to dance?” He held out his
hand in anticipation.
“Hmm?”
Selene rose. Her limbs felt loose and she
“I meant, what is your profession?” She could feel an arousal stir within her. “Yes,”
seized a glass of wine from his hand and sat she answered, taking his hand.
down on the chaise longue.
*
He took a long sip of his wine and paused.
“I was sent by my people to travel around A few days after the nurse had told her the
the globe.” news, she had taken Henry to the back
porch of the diner and whispered to him
“So you’re a diplomat.” She wrapped the the rabbit had died. He had demanded
afghan around her body and invited Mister proof, and when she replied she didn’t have
Palmer to curl up beside her feet. any other than what the nurse had told her,
he then said she was a malingerer—faking
“It’s only natural to want to visit your people her fits and insomnia as a means to feed
after you’ve declared a desire to visit us.” She her addiction—and he could not trust what
watched his eyes scan her left hand. “You don’t she revealed to him. He had grabbed her
appear to be wearing a wedding ring.” apron and dug his hands in the front pocket,
revealing a bottle of barbiturates.
The corners of her mouth twisted into
a grimace. “I was married once,” she said. “Huh, what’s this?” he had asked, shaking
“It was more of an arrangement.” Two the bottle in her face. As she turned to open
months before graduating high school, she the porch door, she had noticed Ellen’s face
had caught her ex-husband in bed with Mr. behind the screen and heard her hurry
Nilsson, their civics teacher, and in a bid to around the corner into the kitchen. “How
hide his secret, their marriage maintained can I even be sure it’s mine?”
the façade of romantic love for eight years.
“I left him less than a year ago.” She wished Before she could answer, footsteps had
to tell Adam her ex-husband had begged sounded from inside and a hand yanked
her to come with him on his move to San
Francisco, but she remained mum on the
subject. “What is the most interesting thing
you’ve seen on Earth?”

70

Revista Literária Adelaide

open the porch door. Corrine had appeared, apartment in Brooklyn or Queens. She had
her mouth contorted in a grotesque frown. originally planned spending the week with
“There are four tables waiting for their lunch.” Fanny and her family in their Manhattan
brownstone, but Fanny had cancelled the
Selene had turned to Henry, but he had day before she was to leave for New York,
since vanished. telling her she had been invited to a late va-
cation in the Hamptons.
“What are you waiting for?” She had dug
her nails into Selene’s arm and dragged Two days later she had woken up to a
her inside and down the hallway into the dull pain radiating across her lower back,
kitchen. “It seems each day you need more and when she sat up and tossed back the
supervision.” covers, she had discovered bloody sheets.

Selene had stared at the dishes resting *
under the heat lamps. A blend of sour odors
had filled her nostrils and her stomach The days transitioned into weeks, and she
began to spasm. “I’m sorry,” she had said, found herself spending every hour outside
turning out of the kitchen and into the bath- of work with Adam. She had ceased asking
room. questions about his origin and abilities. In
any ordinary circumstance she would have
As she wiped her mouth and stood up run away, but here she became complete-
from the toilet, she had looked in the mirror. ly transfixed. In spite of his laconic na-
In spite of her blanched hue, it did not ap- ture, there was a sense of liberation when
pear as if she had been upset. She had spending time with him; he, too, was an
reached into her apron for the barbiturate anomaly, albeit he occupied a societal role
bottle, but remembered Henry had seized it. less mundane than her own. On a few oc-
casions, logic attempted to interfere: his
The next morning she had opened her English, while containing a subtle lilt, was
mailbox and found an envelope containing too polished and colloquial—there were
a wad of cash. It was the exact amount to no malapropisms or mispronunciations she
pay the doctor. could detect; his mannerisms and etiquette
seemed to match with anyone raised in
Norma had driven her to the doctor’s of- North America. No one would have mistak-
fice a day later. During the hour-long drive, en him for an alien, and this aspect piqued
Norma had recounted her abortion a few her curiosity more than anything else. She
years ago, shortly after she had left her hus- wondered if she were to study his cells un-
band. When she had pulled into the gravel der a microscope, if they would contain the
driveway, Selene was surprised to see it same organelles as the cells inhabiting her
was not an actual doctor’s office but some- body, or if doctors were to place electrodes
one’s home. Norma had squeezed her hand on his scalp, if his readings would also come
and promised her she would sit beside her back abnormal.
during the surgery. Selene’s heart had quick-
ened and despite being told she was only During one particular morning in late
twelve weeks along, she could’ve sworn she October, she awoke to hear a scratching
had felt a light kick in her lower abdomen. coming from the cabinet underneath Ad-
She had pictured running away to New York am’s kitchen sink. When she crawled out of
pregnant and being able to raise her baby
with the anonymity she craved in a dingy

71

Adelaide Literary Magazine

bed and opened the cabinet door, Mister given the unseasonably cold air. When she
Palmer sprinted out, scurrying into the living passed the duplex, she thought she saw
room and under the bed. As she shut the Mrs. Weaver standing out on her front
door, a glint caught her eye. In the far corner lawn. She appeared frail and sunken, and
of the cabinet sat a drooping knapsack, with Selene remembered Maude mentioning
a worn copy of Stranger in a Strange Land during one of her monologues that her
poking outside of it and a striped keychain granddaughter was in the beginning stages
hanging from the strings. She grabbed the of consumption. The postman’s excited
book, and a tiny photograph fell out from its calls steered her attention as she crossed
pages. It was of Adam in a uniform standing the street, and for the few moments he dug
next to an older couple, presumably his through his messenger bag and spoke of a
parents; he couldn’t have been much older postmarked envelope from New York with
than he was in the Dresden photo. In spite her name written on it, she believed her life
of the photo’s poor quality, she recognized had transformed for the better.
the emblem on his hat: a hammer and sickle
within a star. She reached into the knapsack, She tore open the envelope with such
and her fingers touched a booklet—a red speed that she almost tore the letter itself.
passport.
Selene —
She thought she heard a stirring from
the other room. Cautiously, she peeked be- After talking with my colleagues, we
hind the wall, only to notice Adam snoring have decided your stories do not merit pub-
quietly as he lay buried beneath the half lication.
dozen blankets. She placed the photo back
in the book and shoved both the book and Please do not submit any more of your
passport in the knapsack before hurrying work to our journal; it will be tossed.
into the bathroom.
Fanny
She tried to ignore what she had just
come across as she changed into her wrin- She recalled her ex-husband’s wariness
kled work uniform. She had oft wondered if towards Fanny and felt a stab of foolishness.
he were Khrushchev’s kin; in the depths of The postman stretched an arm to comfort
her rumination, she had convinced herself her, but Selene continued along Main Street,
he most certainly was a fraud—a cheat, an ignoring his fumbling commiserations. She
imposter, a mime—and, if he did not con- spotted Norma standing outside the diner,
form to those roles, he was suffering from a fiddling with her pen and notepad, and
masterful delusion. attempting to appear calm as she stole
glances down the street.
Before exiting the bathroom, she saw
her reflection in the cloudy mirror, and re- “I’ve tried calling you. Perhaps you should
alized she had forgotten her hairbrush and feign illness,” said Norma.
cosmetics. As she crept into the living room,
she took one last look at him—so unas- Two figures exiting the diner caught Se-
suming yet so aberrant—before tiptoeing lene’s eye: Henry and his bride. Although
out of his apartment and out onto the she was clad in a heavy shawl, a slight albeit
street. Her skin ruptured in goose pimples noticeable bump protruded from her belly.

Norma reached to comfort her. “Let’s go
inside and get you cleaned up.”

72

Revista Literária Adelaide

“No, I’m fine,” she said, backing away. carrying a basketful of dark blue mush-
Tears ringed her eyes, and she could feel rooms.
the sense of foreboding creep up her body.
She walked around the back of the diner Confusion erupted, and for several mo-
and up the porch. As she swung open the ments she could not remember where she
screen door and reached to open the main was. “It’s okay,” he said. He crouched down
door, she was met with resistance from the beside her and touched her arm.
opposite side.
“What are you doing here?” asked Selene.
“What do you think you’re doing?” The She stared at the trees surrounding her;
main door creaked ajar and Corrine’s face what she had once considered serene now
appeared in the thin crack. appeared menacing and claustrophobic.

“Let me in,” said Selene, kicking the bottom “I was foraging mushrooms,” he said, nod-
of the door. ding to the basket. “I was about to ask you
the same question.” He offered her his jacket
Corrine remained expressionless as and helped her to her feet. “Shouldn’t you
she reached for a cigarette in her apron be working?”
and placed it between her lips. “Your shift
began forty minutes ago.” She studied Se- “Not anymore.” Selene dusted off the dirt
lene, even as she cocked her head to light from her skirt and clutched the jacket close
the cigarette, revealing a sharp beak for a to her body, as if to protect herself from the
nose. “Leave.” As she slammed the door, Se- leering trees and shame.
lene could hear her whisper whore under
her breath. “I’m leaving for home tonight. I don’t
know when I’ll be back.” His eyes flickered
“Cunt.” with surreptitious amusement, as if he were
aware the two of them shared a secret.
As she stepped off the porch, she looked “Would you like to come along with me?”
into the distance, where the field of wild-
flowers bordered the foothills and noticed She followed him down the path and out
a familiar figure entering the forest. An of the forest and gazed at the meadow and
invisible pull tugged her forward. She felt the buildings which made up most of the
the petals of the blooms grace her arms small town. From her vantage point, she
and legs; the dread had melted away and could see Marvin and Norma on the back
a warmth blanketed her skin. When she set patio of the diner, having what appeared
foot in the forest, her eyes widened in awe: to be an animated conversation. Further
moss covered the trees and pine needles up the road, she could hear the Professed
cloaked the floor. Fingers of fog obstructed Immortal bleating several expletives. She
her view, and a heavy lightheadedness reached for Adam’s hand, and for the
draped over her. second time that morning felt a warmth
come over her—only this time, it occupied
“Selene?” a voice called. a sense of certitude.

She found herself lying supine on the *
edge of the path, staring at a canopy of
leaves and pine needles. She sat up and Mrs. Weaver’s boys were playing in the
turned to see Adam walking towards her, treehouse as she stumbled onto the side-

73

Adelaide Literary Magazine

walk. From the tiny beam of light emitted new car. It was the perfect moment to start
from their dying lantern, she could see one life anew, especially since the newspapers
of them kneeling next to a radio, intently declared an imminent nuclear war against
listening to a broadcast while the other Cuba. She didn’t know where this adven-
looked out from the roof, his face ringed ture would lead her—to a nearby town, to
with a pair of binoculars. Regina or Chicago, or to one of the satellite
states, be it within the Eastern Bloc or the
“Witnesses say the unidentified flying ob- craters of the moon.
ject appears to have landed or disappeared
in the surrounding foothills…” She searched for his vehicle in the dis-
tance, eventually spying an orb which grew in
She dragged her suitcase down the side- size with each creeping second. The car glided
walk to a more deserted area. In the mo- up and down along the hills with such ease
ments after she had told Adam she would that for a moment it appeared to be floating.
join him, she had nearly missed him telling
her to meet him at the corner of the street At last, she thought to herself as the
near the duplex and await his arrival in his glow of the lights captured her face, I’m free.

About the Author

Vivien Schwarz is currently writing her first novel. She has
a Masters in political science and is active in community
organizing. She lives in Chicago with her cat, Magenta.

74

OUR FATHER

by Jesus Francisco Sierra

It’s time to ring the church bells. I’m waiting arched doorways on all sides, except behind
for my turn and I’m starting to get nervous. the main altar where a large wooden sculp-
I’ve been coming up with excuses not to ture of Christ on the cross hangs from the
climb up the tower. It’s gloomy, and I’m afraid tall ornate ceiling above. It’s an image that
of the dark, because it’s in the dark that I often makes me think about pain and deceit
see things I don’t want to see. I’ve watched and I wonder how that’s supposed to give
Tony and Abel trade insults over the last few me hope, especially when I think about my
weeks, needling each other about which one father.
of them makes the bells sound best. Where I
live even the church bells sing to the sound of The heavy timber doors remain open
the drums. I laugh every time I hear them. It’s during mass to allow the daylong heat
a sound that I’m sure only happens in Cuba. trapped inside to escape. But even in early
evening it still means relentless blasts of
Tony, Abel, and I have been altar boys for hot air running through unless it rains. Rain
a few months now. They took over for two cools and makes it much more tolerable.
older boys who had to go away to do not so Every now and then bats fly and shriek
voluntary work: pick coffee with the rest of through the church at dusk, even during
their classmates for six weeks in Matanzas. mass, somehow finding their way through.
It’s how our young Revolution intends to To me, it’s no coincidence that bats are
make ends meet. Eventually we’ll have to blind. It’s their faith that helps them dodge
go too. I wouldn’t mind so much but that’s the people, the cross and the walls. That’s
not what I would have told my father. Either what I figure. Maybe going through life blind
way, it doesn’t feel like the Revolution that is not as bad as it feels to me, because it’s at
The Beatles are singing about. night, in the dark, when I try to sleep, that
I imagine what it’d be like to be blind. It’s
I joined the two of them after they told then that the memories of my father come
me that altar boys could drink wine during back.
the service. At thirteen none of us had ever
tried alcohol but we’d talked about it. Tony At first Father Prieto, the pastor, might
claimed his father drank every day. I don’t as well have been at the altar alone since
say anything about mine. none of us knew what we were doing. I re-
member the first time we served together.
The church is an old Spanish brick and During the sermon, we sat behind the main
mortar building with thick walls and wide altar and watched as Father Prieto waved

75

Adelaide Literary Magazine

his arms incessantly which tended to pull though he was trying to squeeze something
his frock up and spread wide, making him out of me. When I cried out, my mother
look like a kite about to take flight. His deep, pulled me away from him, “Stop,” he said
bassoon-like voice echoed inside the old in stern voice. “You’re hurting him. He’s a
church. He led the mass and guided us altar child.”
boys. He pointed to the chalice, then the
offerings and then nodded in our direction He apologized to her. He squatted to
when it was time to chime the bells during look at me eye to eye and held me by the
the Eucharist. We could see his patience shoulders, gentler this time. He had a look
waiver as he waited for us to understand I’d never noticed before, his eyes narrowing
his subtle clues. into thin lines as if trying to keep out the
light. “I’m sorry son. Sometimes I just…” he
But we know what we’re doing now. said. He couldn’t finish the sentence. He
We’ve learned the routine. stood and retreated to the line with a deep
sigh, not the type that signals relief, but one
The mass is long though and it causes that signaled defeat. It wasn’t the first time
consternation among the faithful. The pews that happened. I didn’t quite understand
creak as they shift in their seats, hungry his exasperation. It was as though he’d lost
for not just the body of Christ. The bakery the ability to understand himself, what was
across the street bakes fresh bread every happening to him, to us. For me, standing
Sunday evening, right around the time the in line was fun. There were other kids in line,
mass is supposed to end, if it ends on time and I played with them while we waited. My
that is. The line starts to form a good hour mother’s soothing touch caressed the same
or two before the end of the Liturgy. shoulder he’d held, making me forget the
pain. She seemed to know more about my
I know this because, visited the bakery father’s frustration than he did, reassuring
years back, on a Sunday, when my father him with her calm demeanor. Her face,
was around. We stood and watched as framed by her short dark curls, seemed
people left of the church and raced to get to always be on the verge of a smile. I re-
a spot in line. My father kept a straight face, member my father smiling, one of the few
nervously leaning outside the line now and times he did, when we finally got our warm
then to look towards the front. “It’s only loaf. He cut the end of the loaf and hand
bread, how long can it take to pay for a it to me. “It’s the best part,” he said. We
loaf?” he said and shifted side to side as if climbed in the car; the loaf half gone by
ready to bolt at any moment. It seemed to then. My father drove, silent, all the way
me that the church was just a building to home.
him. He barely looked that way. Long after
the mass was over, as if it had been on his Give us this day …
mind, he said, “Praying isn’t going to help.
This whole place is going to shit.” About halfway through the mass, the
churchgoers turn their heads to look out the
My mom was the patient one, especially open doors at the bakery to gage the line of
with me, maybe with my father too. I was people outside. I can tell they’re always ner-
restless in line (there was always a line), as vous that they will have to wait too long or
I often was. That day my father wrapped his worse yet miss out on the bread altogether.
hand around my shoulders so hard it felt as It isn’t unusual for a person to leave the

76

Revista Literária Adelaide

mass early to hold a place in line. They try to feel my heart beating in my loins. I was so
be as quiet as possible when they stand and taken by her that I even missed the bell
snake their way to the end of the pew, but sometimes.
the aging wood floor strains under them to
the point where Father Prieto often stops I could tell that the whispering voice be-
mass until the person leaves. After commu- hind the screen that reprimanded me was
nion, of those who remain almost no one Father Prieto’s. I wondered if he knew that
returns to their seat but instead head for it was me that confessed to such a heinous
the doors and hurry across the street. By crime. My guess was that it wasn’t him,
the time mass ends, Father Prieto turns since there had to have been some sort of
to leave only to see an empty church, ev- rule that didn’t allow certain type of sinners,
eryone already gone to the bakery. Faith is my type, from participating in the Sunday
good, but these days warm bread is better. rituals. Yet, there I would be serving mass
and he didn’t so much as look at me once.
Our trespasses…. He spoke and prayed with his eyes cast
down over his giant red book. Occasionally,
My mother gained religion only after my he’d put his hand out for me to hand him his
father died. Before that, we rarely went to water or wine, or to close the book after he
mass, not even during the holidays. I did was done with his reading. I did as I was told
my first communion mostly because, like and assumed that all was forgiven.
baptism, it’s what you did. But first, I had
to go to confession. My worst sin being that For my mother, going to mass was more
I enjoyed masturbation. The dark shadow of an act of defiance. My father hadn’t been
behind the screen whispered my penance: a believer in the Revolution. He died in an
six Hail Mary’s and was given the advice and accident. The car hurled off the road to a
admonishment to never touch myself that rock outcropping on a beach below. He was
way again. When I thought about it, I won- the only one in the car. They told us he’d
dered why I’d need to pray to Mary for my been drinking. Maybe he drank like Tony’s
penance? She was a virgin. What would she father, but I wouldn’t know. I never saw
know? The whole thing made little sense to him drink. Maybe he did it when I wasn’t
me. I just did them anyway. looking. I never asked my mother about it
because in a way, I didn’t want to know. Or
The Hail Mary part was easy, but it wasn’t maybe, I just didn’t want to remember.
enough to stop my sinning, which went on
without delay, especially every time I got an The Revolutionary government was
eyeful of Alicia Gonzalez Guerra. She was a closing the churches, but she remembered
couple of years older than I was, already in this one in Wajay, across from the bakery.
high school. The middle school I attended “They don’t want us going to church,” she
was next door to the high school – I always told me. “Your father wouldn’t want us
waited outside school just to see her walk there either but praying is all we got left.”
past. She wore her pleated skirts well above
her knee When she arrived early, she nor- Those who trespass against us…
mally sat on the steps outside the school
to wait for her friends. When she crossed Wajay is a little town with one narrow
her legs, her skirt would slide up, revealing cobblestone street intersected by two
a little more of her meaty thighs. I would paved ones and getting there is difficult
any day, but worse on Sundays when the

77

Adelaide Literary Magazine

miserable bus is never on time. Well, the wears stockings in the stifling Havana heat,
real reason the bus is late, is the driver, unless they mean to make a point) with
Adalberto. He makes it a habit to stop her hair up in a bun, sits and stares out the
along his route in front of Alina’s house in window without cracking a smile. She holds
Alta Habana to have coffee. Everyone on her purse tight on her lap and shakes her
the bus understands he is there for more head in disgust, “How in the world did we
than that. I am on the bus one time when get here?” she says out loud. “It was never
he pulls up to her house and tells us that like this before.”
he’ll be right back. Everyone grunts his or
her discontent. Still, we have little choice My mother told me the same thing once.
but to wait. He opens the bus doors and She told me the buses used to be on time
runs out to her house. After a single rap on and that people had genuine respect for
her door, he pushes it open and steps in- others. Things were civil. We were all Cuban
side. Not a minute later, he comes running after all. Not any more she’d said. I had no
out of there holding on to his pants at the choice but to believe her. My mother also
waist and jumping over the half wall that told me, “Cuban men cheat, but as long as
encircles Alina’s front porch, sprinting back they’re discreet about it and come home to
onto the bus. Everyone laughs out loud, their families, it doesn’t amount to much.”
clapping and yelling, “Apurate muchacho The discreet part I had trouble with. Some
que te matan!!!” He slams the door shut, of my friends, for example Tony, told me
drops into his springy seat, and presses his about how he and his family went out to
foot down on the gas. He turns the giant Rancho Luna for dinner once and ran into
horizontal steering wheel faster than I’d Abel’s father with a tall, elegant woman that
ever seen him do. He merges the bus onto wasn’t Abel’s mother. Tony told me that he
traffic as the sound of car horns scream by. could see under the table where Abel’s fa-
ther slipped his hand under her skirt. That
He pulls away just as Alina’s husband, doesn’t sound very discreet to me.
shirtless and barefoot, runs after us waving
a knife in his hand. Everyone watches the Into temptation…
husband from the rear window. “You better
consider switching routes Adalberto,” says I’m about to climb the bell tower when
a deep voice from the back of the bus. It’s Abel and Tony tell me that I can’t go up
Sebastian, “El Negro,” an appropriate name with them. One of us needs to stay down
for a man that was dark as night. I think he below to assist Father Prieto. I feel relieved.
lives on the bus. I’ve never been on it once I stand under the wooden stairs in my frock.
that I haven’t seen him sitting in the back. Looking up and I watch the two of them
His long legs stretch out in front of him into climb the creaking wooden stairs that spiral
the aisle. His gray, thinning hair is cut close their way up along the tower walls. I can
to his scalp and he’s always biting down on hear the two of them laughing and talking.
an endless cigar. I can never tell whether it’s Their voices echo up and down the tower.
lit or not.
I look around and I don’t see Father
An older lady that I’ve never seen before, Prieto anywhere. It’s still light out. I figure
proper looking (I assume she’s proper be- sooner or later I’m going to have to do it. I
cause she wears stockings and really who can’t go through life scared. My heart wraps
hard inside me making my entire body

78

Revista Literária Adelaide

pulsate. I yell up to Tony and Abel, “I’m to the bell’s tongue and are banging out the
coming up.” beat with nothing less than joyous ferocity.

“No, stay down there, you’re going to get They turn to see me and shake their
us in trouble,” they say. heads but continue with their tune. I can
see past the arches. The bells silhouetted
“He’s not around. It’s okay. I’m coming up.” against the darkening orange sky beyond.
It’s the time of year when the sun sets much
I can’t hear them anymore, but I can earlier. I fear that the bats, which fly around
hear the low clang of the bells as they at dusk, will invade the tower on the way
position themselves to start their musical down but I’m too taken by the clanging of
ritual, discordant, random sounds, like mu- the bells. I cover my ears, but it does little
sicians tuning their instruments before a to mute the sounds of these massive metal
performance. I start my way up the steps, cones. I wonder how old they might be and
wooden planks soft and springy underfoot imagine medieval blacksmiths banging the
even under my light, skinny body. I don’t metal into the shape of a bell.
look down. I’ve never been up this high.
I’m afraid if I look down, I’ll realize that I’m The ringing stops. Abel and Tony let go
afraid of heights too. I can see bats at arms of the ropes and turn to look at me. I can
length, clinging upside down to the crum- see their mouths moving but I can’t hear a
bling brick walls. I look at a couple of them thing. They look angry as they shake their
to see if their eyes are open. I wonder if heads. I give them the finger. We all laugh,
they need to close their eyes to sleep, like I I assume outloud, but I can’t really say. The
do, they’re blind after all. How can they go ringing in my ear continues. I can see the
a lifetime without seeing? I consider for a bats stirring and making the walls look like
second about what happens when I close dark water simmering just before boiling.
my eyes to sleep, and I stare at the dark. I I must run down the steps to avoid them.
see things that I’m afraid to think about in They’re good about not running into things,
the light, and I keep dreaming of my father. but sometimes they do. I suppose faith
It’s when I’m awake that I can’t think about can only take them so far. I tremble at the
him. Maybe my own version of blindness thought of getting smacked by one of them
happens when my eyes are open. on the way down.

About halfway up the tower I hear a loud The three of us stand on the top and look
bong and I cover my ears. The sound of the down. I feel faint and I hang on to the rail.
bells is deafening and practically knocks me Perhaps I am indeed afraid of heights. I de-
down the steps. I reach for the timber hand- cide to look straight ahead instead of down
rail to steady myself and pull it up off the and measure my steps until I slowly gauge
post. The post and rail are rotted. I move the distance from step to step. Tony goes
to the middle of the steps and continue first. He always goes first. He’s always been
my climb. The sound grows louder as I ap- the most decisive of us three. He doesn’t
proach the top. Finally, I reach it. There are seem to fear much. Abel opens his eyes wide
four bells in the square tower. A single bell and motions me to begin my descent next.
hangs from an arched opening on each side. He follows behind me. He keeps a hand on
Abel and Tony lean back-to-back against my shoulder as we walk down. I can feel his
each other. They each hold two ropes tied hurried breath on the back of my neck.

79

Adelaide Literary Magazine

A bat shrieks and like a gust of wind that Guerra. Her last name means “war”. It makes
appears without warning, we’re engulfed me wish I could tell my father about her. When
in a nest of black shadows flying back and his car turned the corner that day, it was the
forth, up and down the bell tower. I duck last I saw of him. Then, after he died, I wasn’t
into a crouch and Tony starts to run down allowed to see him in the casket. I was told
the steps, two at a time. The flapping of the that the crash had been too gruesome. Maybe
bat wings stirs up a musty, humid smell and he’s still driving, looking, searching, escaping.
I sneeze over and over again. I hear Abel’s And I wonder why he didn’t take me with him.
voice yelling at me to get moving over the
lingering hum of the bell in my ears. I sit The smell of freshly baked bread fills the
down and pull my frock over my head, wrap air. I can hear the chimes during the Eu-
my arms around my knees and bury my charist. I look down and now in the dark I
head down. Abel runs past me, following can’t see the bottom so I descend into the
Tony down the steps at a frantic pace. Some- shadows without fear, no longer dizzy or
thing bumps against my back and arm more faint, but without any sense of how far I
than once as if trying to wake me. might fall if I were to trip.

Underneath my cover, I close my eyes, I reach the bottom and exit the tower
and I see my father. He is sprawled out on by the church entrance just as the mass is
the couch. His dinner is half finished. His ending. Father Prieto walks down the aisle
breath smells of rum. I can hear my mom of an empty church. Tony walks ahead of
weeping softly in the next room. My father him holding the bible out with his out-
never said much to me. He seemed somber stretched arms. Abel leads the way holding
all the time, as if he’d given up on something. a long brass staff with a small cross on top.
I walk to the next room and my mom looks They look at me and open their eyes wide.
up to me “He wasn’t always like this,” she Father Prieto approaches and says, “Son,
says. “He used to be happy, until this Revo- what were you doing in the bell tower by
lution came. It changed him. It changed us. yourself all this time?”
It changed everything.”
I said, “Thinking I guess.”
“It hasn’t changed me,” I say.
“About?”
She nods. “Not yet,” she says.
“The bats?”
He’s in his car. I’m standing in the front
porch, and he waves at me with a half smile. “What about them?”
He drives away and I chase after him. I wake
to silence. The shrieks and the flapping of “About how they can fly and live without
the bat wings gone. Evening is settling in; the seeing.”
tower has grown darker but I’m no longer
afraid. I pull my head up and look around. I “They have a gift,” Father Prieto says.
can smell the bread from across the street.
“Faith?”
Deliver us from evil….
“Radar,” he says.
I hear Father Prieto’s booming voice
echoing through the church. In the darkness Abel and Tony laugh until Father Prieto
inside the tower, I think of Alicia Gonzalez gives them a stern look before he continues.
“I suppose it’s a form of faith.”

I shrugged. “How so?”

80

Revista Literária Adelaide

“Well, their radar works when they emit “I can Father, I can hear fine,” I interrupt.
a sound and they then gage the distance The din of the bells seemed more distant now.
between them, and any obstacles based on “He’s not answering. He’s not coming back.”
how long it takes for the sound to rebound.”
I pull off my frock and run out of church
“Is that how faith works?” to cross the street. The line runs from the
bakery all the way up the street and around
“In a way. When we pray, we never really the corner. My mother waves at me. She’s
know if God hears us. But he always answers. leaning against a wall holding a loaf.
It’s just a matter of whether we’re able or
willing to hear it” “Hey, I didn’t see you serving mass today,
where were you?” she asks and rips the end
I take a deep breath. I can see across of the loaf and hands it to me.
the street and the bread line has started to
move. I turned to look at the bell tower, a dark-
ening silhouette rising tall above Wajay. The
“But if there is no one there to hear you, hum in my ears is fading. I’m going to ring
or an obstacle stops the sound from re- the bells next week. And tonight, I’ll close
bounding, it never returns,” I said. my eyes and I’ll sleep, eager for the sun
to rise and tomorrow to come, when I’ll
“God always answers,” he says. wake to sit beside my father as he turns the
corner and drives.
“I call for my father everyday Father, in
my sleep, and he hasn’t answered.” Amen

“Maybe you just can’t…”

About the Author

Jesus Francisco Sierra holds an MFA from Antioch University
Los Angeles. He had attended residencies at Mesa Refuge,
VONA Voices and he is a current member of The Writers
Grotto in San Francisco. He is also a licensed structural
engineer.

81

SCREAMING INTO
THE WELL

by Douglas Cole

As jones steered his way through the palm into…he leaned out over the hole, weight
fronds of a few ideas that wanted to sur- balancing precarious and cantilevered,
face but kept diving back down again into rocking back and forth with a delicious
the undertow of his brain, appearing just thrill of catching the fall, because down be-
for a flicker of a moment like seal heads low there were hints of acetylene and
poking their eyes through the surface of smoke and hook lights and miner’s caps,
the water and looking directly at you, real- but not the kind of apparatus that was up
ly seeing you in that way that makes you to regular street work, or maybe he saw a
think they are in fact thinking about you glorious obsidian river, a sip of which
and considering your position there and brought the perfect blend of light and
your proximity and possible threat or in- oblivion, the blissful hippocrene once
eptitude at swimming the smooth deep again if only he could reach it and take that
waters with your little spider legs, he came luscious sip, and yet again it was changing,
upon an opening. It was that time of day a thing of change both peristaltic and rep-
that could be any time of day. Why, what tilian, ouroboros with scales of mythic
have we here? he said. A carved aperture wonder, upon which panel scale are you,
in the ground had opened up before him, dear shadow? More indeed riverlike and
cut like an incision in a cadaver, bloodless flowing and bobbing to the surface with
and clean, and while he had the feeling he emergent horses heads, whole horse car-
had seen this before, had he seen this be- casses it appeared in fact flowed by lamp-
fore? He had seen it before, there below post and pick axe and bricks and tents and
him like something worker men were at timber crunched and splintered and pok-
laying subway track or sewer lines, there ing up like cactus spines, why yes in fact he
was nothing of the sort going on here, now, had stumbled onto the very portal that
however. No, this was something of an en- stands between the unfettered spirit and
tirely different nature, something out of the pineal entrance to the skull’s cathedral,
the science fiction books, a gateway, yes, the foyer of limbo full of the discarded
that’s just what it was, just that, down thought and memory and life detritus jetti-

82

Revista Literária Adelaide

soned when the soul makes its perennial sation chatter and empty rattling on and so
leap from one narrative branch to another he opened his mouth and unleashed….Hal-
and comes up shaking mitred locks and lafactiouslatoranimockery I’ve been for
gawping with primordial bewilderment you and you you see and me inside your
from traveling through the arctic mind- blind bedroom feeling for a light feeling for
bath of death’s cotilion. Ah what a marvel! a day feeling for a way back to the child in
What a blessing! What a beast to behold! all body cast and casket tree high above
The kind of thing that inspires the shakers among the wisteria limbs and mystery
and the riders and the babbling seers of winds and swaying haven’t I? The game
the tribes and the scribes in caves scrib- afoot with rules cooked up by a zookeeper
bling their visions for the holy cantors to or a circus clown, the ground of acid bath
sing out to hungry congregations. And why to touch, each grass blade sharp as glass
shouldn’t he be given this? Gift that it was, and cured with curare…oh, no…swinging
the revealing, the Sator Square, the palm down so close those blades brush like
at the end of the mind? Come at last! tongues against my hair, like an acrobat,
Hadn’t he made his sacrifice? Been making like a hero….yes, a hero, that’s the very
it daily in the construction of sandwiches thing, pursued by the animus antihero so
and the lave routine of hand and face, the loveless in his game and quest but oh so
examination of metric tables, the bustle ingenious! Outguessing and outflanking at
and beehive tremble, the spin and clatter every turn. How does he do it? It’s mad-
of the laundromat in apocalyptic white dening. It’s unfair! He must have a map
blear afternoon spin cycles, the barroom wwe van’t see, after all, a mirror behind
susitations and prescriptions and confiden- my head so he can see every card I hold,
tials of yes yes, and oh, yes, listening like a every diagram. Why did you do that? Rig
priest, singing like a goat, holding court, the game like that? Give that creature ac-
holding secret, holding infirmary’s head cess to every thread of thought and juris-
like an apple to the mouth of sad Adam prudence over every impulse. Dangling oh
stuck at the threshold of dull Eden and why yes like a marionet like a toy like a doll
wanting to cricket-leap out of the thicket of strung up over a campfire with sad plastic
monotone….? A flesh. Ah, hidden desire. features melting into hideous globular and
The cauldron of the human mind. Yes? And oh so gloriously beautiful and revealing
here before him now it was all opened up. truth to behold! Why make him in my im-
And not in desert but in city center he age like that so I have to shatter the mirror
stood, yet, verily at the navel itself. The to get out of the mess, the scene already
very oracle, the well of conclusions and vi- changing as I fly right through the snapping
sions down which one was cast to scream jaws and the closing doors, your mad
the mollusk mutton of the clutterbrain, laughter following everywhere I go, nib-
dragged like a sponge through the human bling at the nerves, biting at the toes,
day and decay and the mind at large with headlock in my dreams so I must gnaw
its static groaning of all the minds’ prayer- through my own arms to get away! Mad-
ful and baleful complaining and begging ness! Who conceived this sort of thing?
and here so too Jones knew he was called Why? Why that kind of charade? Pain like a
upon to add his barbaric howl into the rich payment, like a passport into a country of
earth ear and add to all the bilious conver- dream makers who can only repeat the

83

Adelaide Literary Magazine

sorrows and sufferings they’ve been knowing, knowing sure as judgment that
through life after life so that we spiral and the scrambled questions shifting on the
fly on the tornado’s wings with farm house page are moving targets, and I have no an-
clap clattering and shutters flying off like swers! I have no answers! It’s radicals! It’s
burnt skin, good mother brisket knitting reciprocals! It’s a beast in a cage! It’s the
her charm into a pair of guillotine eyes and hypotenuse leg! When in doubt, sit and
sending us off on a forced march through stare moodily across the room or out the
jungle and trench rows, through blow window. Heh heh. He laughed a bit, ex-
torch fields littered with the dead and punged, expelled, outcast and free. And
small town swept with sickness and com- what did the oracle say? What answer re-
pany debt and anonymous foundry lives, turned from the whirlwind?
through screaming, atomizing, disintegra-
tion knowing…knowing it’s happening He looked up. A very small crowd had
while it’s happening? Patient on the table gathered around him. Tourists. Children.
without an anesthetic? And then the outer People with backpacks and shopping bags
drifting observer disembodied and looking were looking at him. A few were smiling.
in all directions and especially down at ver- A few looked like they were getting ready
sions of myself so that I am not myself and to call the police. A few were pointing and
think why, I never was, never could have talking to each other. Did someone take a
been after all, and after all it was all an illu- picture? What was he saying? Yes what was
sion? Really? That’s the great awaking? he saying? Had they heard all that? Ooh, he
Just to dive back in and do it all again in felt his face on fire, and looking up he saw
another warped personality because I have the wolves and the rattle snakes and the
to stand on the deck of the sinking ship vipers all bending down from the tops of
and throw life preservers overboard to all the buildings. The sky was an open mouth.
of the bluing drowners with their shock A storm was brewing. Had he started that?
faces and hands of ice so frozen they can’t The thoughts in his head were turning in
even take a hold of the rope, is that it? Sing the same direction as the spiral of clouds
your praises all the way, merrily merrily above. Surely, this could be no coincidence.
and say why yes man is born of woman’s He must have stirred up the heavenly
womb and lo and so and here we go and gamelans and tapped into the great Mac-
knife blade to the neck, pistol to the fore- roprosopus. There would be consequences,
head, it doesn’t matter who has a hold of it, without a doubt. He had better prepare
the reign of terror is the reign of terror is himself. What are you looking at? he said,
resin bubbling is amber with a fly wide- and he spat and snarled at them. Animal
eyed trapped and mouthing, Pleeeeease noises came from his mouth, it seemed,
heeeeelp meeee, it almost makes you not the words he thought he said. Grunts
laugh, shrinking down to the head of a pin and squeaks. He had brought that up from
with all the rest of the bumbling angels, the depths. He had not fully re-arrived, re-
the house cat swiping at your head like the combined, reconstituted, amalgamated
great reliever come to liberate you from all back into his human form. The fur on his
that dread you carried around like work hands stood up and he swiped at the air.
papers, like homework, a kid in school sit- The people backed away. What do you want
ting down to a test and looking around and from me?

84

Revista Literária Adelaide

We’re here for the tour, someone said. Yeah.

What? Funny, what you were saying. It was funny.

We were told to meet here for the tour. This was not what Jones expected.
With both hands, he pressed against the
What tour? top of his chest and pushed downward,
smoothing the material of his coat. Then
The underground tour. he cupped his hands over his mouth and
with his fingertips rubbed his closed yes,
We’re supposed to meet in front of Doc’s then pushed his hands back across the top
and the guide would start the tour. This is of his head, smoothing out the hair and
Doc’s. resting his hands at last at the back of his
neck, turning his head from side to side.
Jones looked up. The bulb lights were on, Well, he said. No, indeed, I’m not here for
spelling out the name. Why, it’s broad day- the tour, and I’m afraid the show is over for
light, he said. Someone laughed. now. This was after all simply a preamble
to your journey. Caron shall be here shortly,
Are you here for the tour? and your tour will be a most fantastical,
historical lesson! Invigorating. Stimulating.
No! Jones said, then he took a deep breath. Truly, an eye-opener. Chuckles and laugher
What tour is this? rippled through the little crowd.

The underground tour. The underground But I’m afraid, Jones said, that I must
city. now take my leave of you, and he conjured
up a smile. He looked down and tapped the
Oh! Jones shot right through the fuzzy ground a few times with his toe. This seems
roof and shook his head and cleared the to be holding, he said. A few more people
clouds. It all came back in bites. And it was laughed, and he bowed slightly, took a deep
all beginning to blur as it formed. But he breath and went about his day.
knew, he remembered. The underground
city! Yes! No, I’m not here for that.

We thought this was part of the tour.

Me?

About the Author

Douglas Cole has published six collections of poetry
and The White Field, winner of the American Fiction
Award. His work has appeared in several anthologies as
well as journals such as The Chicago Quarterly Review,
Poetry International, The Galway Review, Bitter Oleander,
Chiron, Louisiana Literature, Slipstream, as well Spanish
translations of work (translated by Maria Del Castillo
Sucerquia) in La Cabra Montes. He is a regular contributor

85

Adelaide Literary Magazine
to Mythaixs, an online journal, where in addition to his fiction and essays, his interviews
with notable writers, artists and musicians such as Daniel Wallace (Big Fish), Darcy Steinke
(Suicide Blond, Flash Count Diary) and Tim Reynolds (T3 and The Dave Matthews Band) have
been popular contributions https://mythaxis.com/?s=douglas+Cole. He has been nominated
twice for a Pushcart and Best of the Net, received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry
and recently won the Editors’ Choice Award in Prose from RiverSedge literary journal. He
lives and teaches in Seattle, Washington. His website is https://douglastcole.com/.

86

THE BRIEF, UNHAPPY
EXISTENCE OF GAY
DOBBIN

by Randall Ivey

As one year ends and another begins, one ago and who died in another town before
invariably, inevitably waxes nostalgic, par- she was even thirty-years old.
ticularly with regard to those he has lost,
they being the most important people to She had gone to Broadusville Middle
him. My parents, Emory and Doris McMil- School in the northern part of Compton
lan, and my paternal grandmother, Jes- County, and I had not, so we did not get
sie Whitley McMillan, are the most per- to know each other until seventh grade at
sistent ghosts haunting my dreams night Moody Junior High. She had a heavy sort
after night, and to some extent so are my of presence, even though she wasn’t fat;
wife and son, although neither of them is “hulking” or “big boned” would not have
dead but estranged from me (my wife for been correct descriptions either, although
my ongoing emotional inertia, my son for there might have been a bit of truth in the
refusing to give up the belief that Donald latter. I thought she was pretty in an offbeat
Trump is the Beast of the Apocalypse and way. She was short and had brown, slightly
that the Fox “News” Channel has set back stringy hair which she wore down to her
clear American thinking a least a couple of shoulders and a wide, frequent smile. Any
centuries). oddness in her appearance came from the
slight stoop with which she walked; she
This New Year’s Eve, however, as I sit alone bent a bit at the waist, as though suffering
in the dark of my own home with a scotch spinal curvature or as though her torso
and water and a CD of Beethoven’s Ninth were a burden to her legs.
trembling behind me, I think of someone
else other than kin, an old schoolmate this She was good-natured and laughed a lot,
time, Tonya Gay Dobbin, whom I’d not seen as peculiar people often are and often do, so
since high school nearly thirty-seven years Gay, the name by which she went the first

87

Adelaide Literary Magazine

year I knew her, and in its old-fashioned de- Compton, South Carolina, especially among
notation, was an appropriate name for her. the teen set, there was no more insidious an
What’s more, and what’s better, she laughed implication than that of homosexuality, al-
at my jokes, regardless of their lameness; though the stigma had up to then applied
she laughed hard too, very noticeably, until mainly to men. (Kudos to the scum Taylor
her face turned scarlet and I worried she for breaking the gender barrier of common
might lose her breath or go into a choking decency.)
fit. But she didn’t. She recovered in time to
laugh at something else I said or something It did not have to do much with religious
someone else said, and therefore earned a strictures, this violent prejudice against ho-
reputation among the decent people in our mosexuality, as it did with the idea of effem-
class for cheerfulness. And for brains as well. inateness, otherness, the failure to conform,
She made good grades consistently and got the same as left-handedness, obesity, or the
into the Beta Club, the pinnacle of academic need for glasses, except in this case the sig-
performance at Moody J. She was especially nifying characteristic was sex and sex acts
good at math, which I envied her, having that were supposed to be performed by a
never been good at it. She was so cheerful man and a woman, if performed at all.
she even found my inadequacies in that
area laughable. (So, I guess, did my math Mr. Taylor, who strode about campus
teachers.) like a movie star, with his athletic physique
and his rich blond hair parted in the middle,
The problem with Gay Dobbin, at least in had let the smelly genie out of the bottle
1976, a time when it would still be a problem with his try at humor at Gay Dobbin’s ex-
and a most grievous one, was her first name, pense. He had given his students permis-
which I thought was lovely and fit her to a sion to let loose their capacity for hateful-
tee as much as anyone else’s name did. “Gay,” ness against someone who had done none
of course, had denotations and connotations of them any harm; this hatefulness proved
other than happiness or the state of being to be great, even for so small a student
carefree, all so obvious in the twenty-first body. I was never witness to any of the
century as not to need definition. It began verbal assaults against Gay Dobbin. For one
to be trouble for her when Mr. Taylor, a hot- reason, I preferred to stay in during recess,
shot history teacher at Moody J. (and future either in the library or a teacher’s class-
husband of a distant cousin, I am loathe to room, and read, and I didn’t eat lunch at
report) whom many of the girls found posi- the Moody J. cafeteria, choosing to wait till
tively magnetic, asked her point-blank once I got home to down one of Mother’s sand-
in class, “So is it true you’re Gay?” He knew wiches with a glass of ice tea. But I knew
what he was doing, and it worked. One can from the accounts of others that people,
just imagine the effect this faux-query had boys mainly but also some low-class fe-
on her classmates. Those who didn’t laugh males, had begun making fun of Gay for her
out loud snickered into the palms of their name, making suggestions about her affec-
hands or looked politely away to enjoy the tional preferences and habits, as though, at
irony. Gay, I am told, for I was not in the class, the age of thirteen, she had any clear idea
turned her customary red, not from a shared herself whom she loved or found attractive.
hilarity in Taylor’s little quip but from great Crude suggestions appeared in ink and in
embarrassment and humiliation, for in 1976 chalk on the girls’ bathroom walls and

88

Revista Literária Adelaide

stalls soliciting certain activities on her be- teacher, and could cause hell to one’s grade
half. She became the most ridiculed girl on point average. Still he was enough a target
campus, all because of a name she had not of derision to be called “Miss Wyatt,” among
chosen for herself and because these were other names, behind his back.
people so unhappy and filled with such self-
loathing that they must make the life of an I mention these two other people be-
innocent girl entirely miserable. cause of my acquaintance with them as well
as with Gay Dobbin and because to a great
She wasn’t the only person on campus, degree I drew the company of folks like
of course, to receive such treatment for a these. I was a regular flame to ill-formed
perceived sexual aberration. There were moths, oddballs, and outcasts. Obese at the
others. Most conspicuous was Richie Hinson, time and bespectacled, with a strong pen-
a skinny youth from Beaslap who stuttered chant for fantasy and irregular pursuits such
badly and suffered from a dreadful case of as folk music and foreign movies, I was my-
eczema that made his face look as though self a weirdo, maybe, in my own estimation
his head had been shoved into a boiling pot at least, the king of all Moody J. weirdos, or
of water and held there long enough to leave so I like to think now. In any event, these
a myriad of scars on his cheeks, chin, and people came to me, sensing kinship, for so-
forehead. He lived with his grandparents be- lace and an open, unprejudiced ear. These
cause his single alcoholic mother thought he included Gay Dobbin, about whose abuse I
was too ugly to be alive and couldn’t stand had heard.
the sight of him. Stories implicated him in
offering his sexual favors to indigent men in I found her one afternoon behind a stair-
Compton for free and for money, and these well in tears.
included black men, which in Compton
thinking at the time made his alleged actions “Gay?” I called. “What in the world is the
all the more heinous, all the more unforgiv- matter? You all right?” (When obviously she
able. I had been somewhat friendly with wasn’t.)
Richie before learning of his extracurricular
activities and even after hearing about them, She came reluctantly from the shadows,
because I had been taught to be kind to ev- and it was a shock to see her so unhappy,
eryone, regardless of who or what he was. when normally she was the sweet girl-harle-
I was told, however, in no uncertain terms quin, always laughing, always cheerful. She
by classmates, that a continued associa- looked haggard for someone so young and
tion with Richie would eventually brand me sleep-deprived; which indeed she had been.
with the same unfortunate label: “Queer!” It was obvious as well that she had lost weight.
In the end it didn’t really matter, for Richie
dropped out of school after seventh grade “That’s not my name,” she said, wiping
and seemed to have dropped off the face of away her tears.
the earth itself. There was a faculty member,
too, widely made fun of, Mr. Freddie Wyatt, “It’s not?”
balding and theatrically effeminate, who
taught English at Moody J., although “No. Not anymore. From now on it’s Tonya.
people were more discreet and clandestine I answer only to Tonya and to nothing else.”
in making fun of him; he was, after all, a
“Oh okay, Tonya,” I replied, pretending
ignorance, as though I knew nothing of the
trouble her middle name had been giving
her.

89

Adelaide Literary Magazine

“Yes,” she said and sniffed. Then, as though a most dubious crowd, and, like the now-
I had invited her, she came into my arms missing Richie Hinson, had gave herself up
with an embrace I attempted to return, but to the embraces of town lowlifes. Her ap-
awkwardly. She spoke moistly into my right pearance in the “smoking area” seemed a
shoulder. “Sometimes I hate people so much confirmation of at least one of these rumors.
I could kill ‘em!”
“She’s a whore,” one girl put it to me
At about the same time a pair of girls ap- plainly. The most scabrous rumor had her
peared at the bottom of the stairwell with impregnated by a black millworker from
the intention of climbing it. They saw us Broadusville; if she was, she managed to
thus conjoined and smiled, and I was sure conceal the evidence quite adeptly, so I
I heard one of them whisper to the other, chalked that one up to mere spite.
“And I thought she liked other girls.” This
made me flinch but not enough, apparently, Tonya was one of those youngsters who
for Gay, now Tonya, to notice. could not wait to clean the Compton dirt off
their feet. When we graduated in the spring
Redubbing herself seemed to ease things of 1982, she left town almost immediately.
for Tonya, at least to some degree. At least From what I had heard, she passed through
when we crossed paths at Moody J. she did various places without settling down till
not appear as worn as before and was even she ended up in Florence, South Carolina,
able to emit her old laugh, if not to the same in the eastern part of the state, married
volume or the same degree that previously with babies. She did not attend our ten-
shook and reddened her. Our two years at year class reunion, which surprised no one.
Moody J. closed quickly enough, and soon I left Compton too, for Columbia, for New
we moved over to Compton High School for York, for Washington, D.C., before returning
the final leg of our secondary education. Of permanently to South Carolina. I took a job
course the student population was greater teaching at Compton’s local liberal arts col-
there, and a sighting of Tonya became rare, lege, and given the size of Compton, it was
but once I came upon her in what was called inevitable I would teach at least a handful
the school’s “smoking area,” a designated of people with whom I’d gone to school
place on campus for student nicotine fiends myself; these were folks whose jobs prom-
to find their relief between classes. One had ised pay increases if they had some sort of
to pass this smelly patch of ground in order to college degree and other people who gen-
take the concrete path from one classroom uinely longed for a career change.
building to another. Tonya stood out among
the crowd. She had “hooched” herself up, One of these was a woman named Kathy.
teased her hair, lost some weight, taken to She was some distant kin to me. Her hus-
heavy makeup application, and had begun to band, also a classmate, had been deployed
dress more revealingly (at least as much as overseas by the military. Kathy was taking
school regulations would allow). We spotted courses basically to get out of the house
each other; I threw up my hand, she kind of and be less lonely. One day she remained
smiled back, and I went on my way. behind after class while her younger col-
leagues had streamed out of the room
Our classmates continued to excoriate before I had the words “Class dismissed”
her. Stories got around that she had “loos- completely out of my mouth. I was putting
ened” herself considerably, taken up with things into my leather satchel.

90

Revista Literária Adelaide

“You heard about Gay Dobbin, didn’t “But not much,” I wanted to reply. “She
you?” she asked from her seat. acted the way she acted because of people
like you, with your filthy minds and loose
The name stopped me in motion. I had tongues. You stood in judgment of her
to stop and think. She meant “Tonya,” didn’t when you had no right to. You abandoned
she? Gay had become Tonya, years ago. her when you should have reached out a
hand to take her in. She wasn’t that bad. She
“No. What about her?” was all right if you got to know her. But you
didn’t. There were a lot worse. A lot worse!”
“She got killed over in Florence County
crossing the road.” I wanted to say those things but didn’t.
Instead, upset, shocked but not surprised,
“Do what?” I asked, sitting back down at I stood and left the room without another
my desk and staring at her. word to Kathy Kitchin.

Kathy nodded. “Her and one of her you- Now, as one year passes and a new one
nguns was walking down the sidewalk of a begins, I think again of Tonya Gay Dobbin
busy street in town. Somehow the baby got and how certain people are marked out
loose from Gay and went out into the road. from day one for cruelty, confusion, and
A car was coming right for it. Gay ran out disappointment. They have the mark upon
into the road and thowed herself on top of them as soon as they leave the womb.
the child. The baby made it. Gay didn’t.” Nothing will go right for them regardless of
all their efforts. God will give them the tests
I sat and thought about this, and what of Job without the subsequent martyrdom
occurred to me most was the old Gay, the or places in the mouths of Sunday school
husky Gay with the whiplash-inducing laugh teachers. They will know misery early. They
and the slumped posture. will die young in some cases. They will be
forgotten except by a very few.
I looked up at Kathy and said, “She didn’t
stand a chance, did she? It’s like she had Tonya Gay Dobbin was one of the cursed.
all the cards stacked against her from the So was Richie Hinson. So was Freddie Wyatt.
very first.” To some extent so am I, Will McMillan, but
to dwell on my own disappointments at this
Kathy licked her lips. “Well, a lot of it she point, when I am still alive and capable of
brought on herself with the way she acted.” some fight, would be a colossal act of self-
pity. So I demur.
That observation astonished me with its
cruelty.

About the Author

Randall Ivey is the author of five books and numerous
poems, stories, and reviews that have been published in
venues throughout the US and the UK. He teaches English
at the University of South Carolina in Union.

91

THE BUSINESS
OF SHELLS

by Craig Dobson

I sold seashells by the seashore. The same I don’t remember the first time I met
shore where they could be picked up for Gary. He just seemed to be there, stuck in
free. Except for holiday makers, though, the corner of the staff room with a coffee
or those with time on their hands – lonely and a smoke. He wasn’t all that forth-
figures wandering the tide’s edge – peo- coming, which surprised me later. We went
ple were too busy to look for them. Any- on a few of the work nights out and got
way, my top price was tuppence, and I talking. At some point, he told me about
was a kid who’d chalked all the prices on his plan for starting a business. I must’ve
the promenade and the weather was grey seemed more keen than I remember. He
and it must’ve been pity that made an old made sure it gathered momentum. Next
couple buy one. No one else did. A light thing, we were standing in front of an open
rain washed my prices away and made all shipping container staring at a whole load
the unsold shells shine and seem stupid. I of old terracotta pots and amphorae and
kicked them off the promenade, back onto barnacle-encrusted tiles we’d bought and
the beach. Gary was talking away excitedly and I was
just thinking to myself seashells, seashells,
Dad made a big show of being proud of seashells.
me for trying. He said failure was part of
trying, part of the road to success. I thought Gary was everywhere: bustling, phoning,
he would buy one, but he didn’t, not because driving, buying, talking, selling, lunching.
it was part of the hard lesson of business, he Never hectic, just always doing. Even when
was just careful with money. He always told we started to travel abroad, finding out
me that money was something you had to of the way places, he seemed to know
be ‘careful’ with, as though it was delicate or someone. We’d drive into a hidden farm-
easily spooked. When I told Auntie Maureen yard and a grinning face I’d never seen
that story, years later, she said he was ‘tight’ would hold out a hand in welcome, saying
and that’s all there was to it. ‘Garee! Garee!’ Or we’d be sat over a fish
stew in a busy port within sight of the ships
* unloading, the stink of marine diesel, brine

92

Revista Literária Adelaide

and cigarettes everywhere, when a pair of *
hands would clasp his shoulders with a “Jee-
soos Chreest, Gary man!” Jane is keeping the house. It seems fair; her
father put up most of the money for it. As
He took me to the British Museum one I’ve moved my stuff out, it’s become clear
wet afternoon when a meeting had finished how little I own. For one who’s spent years
early. Walking slowly past all those pieces, trafficking in decorative objects with which
staring at the black and red figures behind to adorn a life, I don’t seem to have accrued
the glass, motionless in their centuries-old many myself. Gary did; each newer, big-
moment, Gary said softly “I love that we’re ger house he bought always brimmed with
a part of all this now.” There was a rever- them. He joked that it was all reserve stock.
ence in the way he spoke, a recognition of With so many pieces adorning his shelves or
some timeless worth. standing in mute magnificence in the corner
of a room, I could never understand how he
* felt any particular attachment to each, how
the sheer number didn’t drain them of value.
My mother wasn’t always ill, but I only have
two faint memories from before her depres- Some of our wealthier clients would in-
sion began. In one of them, she holds an ice vite us to meet their interior designers. We
cream cone for me while I brush the sand were led through acres of taste by ebullient
off my hands so that I can take it. There is men in flamboyant clothes who explained
such patience in her expression. The other their visions while their paymasters looked
is of her at home, looking out the window on with rich, casual pride – though we soon
at the rain: silent and motionless, staring at learned these people were as careful with
the grey wet world outside, its little waters money as my father. Abundance had made
moving down the windowpane just inches it no less fragile.
from her face.
Gary realised from the start that the
When she became ill, our world hung back door into that part of post-commu-
between arguments and long, wounded nist Europe that dipped its toes in the Med.
hours of silence. Closed doors would leak wouldn’t stay ajar for ever. Once others had
muffled rage or entomb another sadness. It seen how valuable a cargo the olive jars of
was worse when she drank, more extreme. antiquity still carried, he knew our margins
I knew from early on that Dad couldn’t cope. wouldn’t last. In the upheavals of change
There was a quality to his voice, a shadowing and war, he never cheated anyone or stole
fear he could never hide even when he was anything; he just made sure everything was
shouting at her. Only when Auntie Maureen organised and easy when he turned up
moved in did things change. Everything be- where his ready cash was as welcome as
came quieter. Mum slept for long stretches the terracotta was plentiful.
during the day. She drank mostly later and
Maureen would put her to bed, though There was no moment when I realised I’d
I didn’t know about the pills she gave her joined his historical collection. Perhaps my
till years later. Afterwards, Maureen would superfluous affability and ease were senti-
talk to Dad, holding him if he needed it. I mental relics of his early success. I realised
saw her once, sitting with him on the sofa, that while he never wanted me to leave the
rocking him in her arms as he sobbed. company, he would never want me to help
him start another. Like it, I was bound for

93

Adelaide Literary Magazine

the museum glass, my moment etched on my inheritance. I didn’t tell him that I under-
the memory of a sunlit hotel terrace after stood not only why he’d let her steal from
another successful day’s business, sipping him for years, but why he’d given her even
wine and chatting to him as we stared out more at the end. And I didn’t tell him that
at that most beguiling and exploited of seas. what had come to haunt me was nothing
that she’d taken from him, but rather some-
* thing that I hadn’t taken from her.

She wasn’t really my auntie. I think she did *
some work for Dad’s firm. He began bring-
ing her home. There was no announce- One of Gary’s ideas was to combine bits of
ment, no scenes. She just took part more civilisation’s enduring bric-a-brac in order
and more in our family until she came to be to increase the sum of their parts. Setting
holding it together. Her presence was one a low value ancient coin into a fragment of
of the three certainties of my later child- relatively worthless tile produced an object
hood, alongside Mum’s disintegration and of greater price. He was always careful to
Dad’s inability to deal with it. And while I ensure that each component was genu-
didn’t see the pills she gave Mum or the ine (he abhorred the imitation nick-nacks
money she took from Dad, I came, like stuffing the shelves in museum gift shops)
them, to think of her as essential. and presented the newly paired objects as
merely re-combined authentics retaining
She was a dozen years younger than my all of their pedigree. They sold very, very
parents, though she seemed older, more ca- well.
pable, with a disposition toward managing
chaos, a quiet ability to re-fashion unravel- Jane has several. I’ve watched her en-
ling things. Where my mother saw nothing case them carefully in bubble wrap before
and my father only ruin, Maureen saw what boxing them up. Not that she’s preserved
could be worked upon to work again. That’s all of the past. She’s having the whole
why I don’t believe she was using us, not en- house redone, re-decorated, wiped clean,
tirely. I don’t think she could help helping us. so that while I’ve been packing my stuff to
It was part of her character. She had what leave, she’s packing hers to stay, though it
we lacked and I’m not sure it occurred to seems she doesn’t share the irony I see in
her – or us – not to make up the deficit. this. She’s a practical person. That’s why
she had the affair with Gary. The balance
Certainly, her place in our lives could be of our life had gone; he righted it for her, at
measured – perhaps valued is a better word least, for a couple of years. When he ended
– by the fact that my father turned a blind it, I saw in her features – albeit only tem-
eye to what she stole. In fact, he went as far porarily – the same expression that I had in
as to tell me that she had her own money, my father’s before Maureen came to stay:
inventing some inheritance which she had the realisation of some broken integrity, a
wisely invested. He still maintained this fic- sense of fragmented components. Whereas
tion years later, claiming that she, too, had he thought that money – bled away in the
been careful with money, though by then I wanting wound of Maureen – would pre-
knew that the money she’d been far from serve something of what he’d lost, Jane
careful with had been his all along. I think he trusts planning and determination to reas-
was worried I might feel cheated of part of semble her vestiges.

94

Revista Literária Adelaide

* gaze lost on the sea’s grey vagueness. There
was a picnic on the beach once: Maureen
Dad’s inability to cope would manifest it- the mistress of the hamper while Dad
self in a brief depression followed by some fussed round Mum’s uncooperative blanket
physical complaint, normally a stomach and her uneaten plate of food. I remember
upset or migraine. He and Mum had sepa- lying in bed that night listening to Dad and
rate rooms. I would enter a house haunted Maureen in the room next door, his muted
by the occasional bedbound cough or the climax dwindling to steady, equally muted
creaking of the floorboards above in the snores, from which Maureen padded down-
upstairs hall. Once Maureen moved in, she stairs to make tea and read a magazine.
and I would sit downstairs on such days, our
voices subdued, our movements discreet I tried explaining the setup in our house
as we picked through the frail atmosphere to my first girlfriend, but I could see how
of muted care. compromised it sounded. After that, on the
rare occasions when friends came to stay, I
She was a great magazine reader, Mau- kept any descriptions vague, merely hinting
reen. Deliberately, with the air of someone that Mum’s illness was at the root of it. A
delayed indefinitely at an airport, she worked year after staring work, I got my own flat,
her way through them. We evolved that in- but visited weekly, sleeping over some-
conspicuous ease which quiet people who times. On one of these nights, when Dad
have nothing in common with each other had taken another migraine to bed, Mau-
develop when they are forced to share an reen and I stayed up, speaking about how
environment. Teas, meals, tasks and pleas- Mum was getting worse, how it might end.
antries were prepared or exchanged with a She said Dad would never talk about it, as
fluid, remarkably uncontested habituation. if he wasn’t prepared. He seemed wedded
to the idea of Mum simply lessening, year
Dad assumed a rhythmic, echo-like re- after year, without any final resolution.
sponse to Mum’s slowly worsening condi-
tion, his retirements lagging only just behind There was wine still left from dinner and
hers. Once she became more permanently we sat at the table, talking unhurriedly in
confined to her room, her episodes were our hushed habit. It was only towards the
played out there, dramas of shouted insult end, when I’d begun to think of going up,
and childish acts of vandalism from which that I detected the unease in her voice, an
Dad, visibly shaken, would hurry once Mau- awkwardness that was strange enough in
reen had brought her pills. Somehow – I itself to make me stay and listen. Haltingly,
never asked, then or since – Mum still man- confessing how guilty it made her feel even
aged to get hold of drink. I came in from telling me with Mum in the same house,
school once to find her, blazing but vague, Maureen confided that she still, after all
banging one open palm down repeatedly this time, didn’t know what Dad really felt
on the kitchen table while holding a near for her. Though she’d accepted years before
empty bottle of gin in the other, screaming that their situation wasn’t conventional,
that her years had been wasted, wasted. she felt she’d never received the reassur-
Dad was upstairs on the phone, pleading ance she needed from him, the confirma-
with Maureen. tion that, however circumscribed, there was
some emotional certainty there which she
Occasionally, Mum would sit in one of
the armchairs in the sitting room, her dulled

95

Adelaide Literary Magazine

could rely on. Anger crept into her voice, at mine. An almost physical shock at being
and a bitterness which, when she’d stopped discovered, a violating storm of guilt and
talking, caused her to shake her head in si- shame, emptied my mind, stripping it to
lence. I’d never seen her like this. I told her, a scoured, shadowless space. Then I came
quite truthfully, that I believed Dad needed back to myself and realised that she hadn’t
her – indeed, depended on her utterly – but moved or said anything, just kept staring at
that Mum’s illness had always been some me.
kind of guilty, unmanageable spectre in his
mind. I avoided the word ‘love’, as I had *
no idea whether being unable to live a day
without her would, for him, constitute love. On our first business trip, Gary and I flew
The conversation ended soon afterwards. to Venice. He’d wanted us to see as much
I remember going to bed uncertain as to of our new world as possible, so we took
whether I’d allayed her doubts. a train to Ljubljana. After two hours in a
bad-tempered queue of tourists in Venice’s
I woke in the night to Mum’s voice half- packed station, and then nearly missing our
crying out the end of a nightmare. When I train which inexplicably departed from an
got to Mum’s room, Maureen was bending unannounced platform, we sat through an
over her, stroking her head and making sure increasingly peaceful journey while the at-
the covers were on her. She smiled at me, tentive and welcoming Slovenian train crew
nodding that it was OK. attended to our gathering sense of calm.
The landscape changed, becoming less
In the morning, Maureen told me Dad’s tended, somehow older, its boulder-strewn
migraine was still bad. I was planning to heather and scattered copses of pine
leave after breakfast and had already spreading between small, patched fields of
checked in on Mum, who was half-awake isolated farmstead.
and peaceful, her troubling dream for-
gotten. Maureen made me a bacon sand- Ljubljana itself seemed poised, breath
wich. She, too, seemed untouched by the held, for the capitalism’s anticipated ar-
previous night. Our talk wasn’t mentioned. rival. Neither the streets nor the echoing
Her manner was as calm, unhurried and ugliness of the hotels which had been con-
hushed as ever. She sat in her dressing verted from old Communist Party buildings
gown, reading a magazine on the table in were busy. In a deserted courtyard of one
front of her, commenting occasionally. I’d of the brash, over-eager new restaurants
just buttered some toast and was scanning we sat on our first night, eating gilt-head
the table for the marmalade when I noticed bream and a lush salad while around us the
that she was leaning forward as she read, expectant city waited for more of our kind.
and that her dressing gown had gapped Gary was excited, sensing both the impec-
on one side, showing her breast, the skin cability of our timing and, to the southwest,
palely freckled, the nipple dark. Absorbed the beckoning lure of Croatia’s thousand
in her magazine, she was unaware. I looked wreck-strewn islands.
again, shocked by how immediately dif-
ferent what I saw made her seem to me, Next day, in ancient rolling stock, we
how erotic I found it. I couldn’t stop looking clattered along to Istria, passing increas-
until I glanced up and met her eyes staring ingly small stations in front of which a sa-
luting guard would stand, cap on head and

96

Revista Literária Adelaide

bright flag in hand as we passed. At the growing, its observances becoming husked,
border, we disembarked and walked over brittle things, I realised that it wasn’t just
the lines to an equally old train waiting for Jane; no lover had been able to dispel the
us the other side of a pleasingly Cold War persistent haunting of that moment. Be-
passport check. fore I’d even hurried, still dazed, from the
house that morning, before Maureen had
We spent a fortnight driving past ubiq- even tightened her gown, casually closing
uitous roadside stalls selling hog roasts or it’s spurned, never-intended, never-re-
any number of different flavoured grappas, peated, never-referred-to invitation, it had
toasts of which sealed every amiable busi- become ineradicably loosed on my imagi-
ness meeting we had with our new sup- nation. Virus-like, mutating over the years
pliers. One afternoon, I watched a battered, through a procession of warped what-ifs,
antique combine harvester without a cab, it thrived on the rich plenty of regret and
driven by a man using a tatty beach um- thwarted lust. By the time Jane sat oppo-
brella to shield him from the sun, picking site me at our kitchen table to say that she
its way round a village to harvest the half had had enough, the guilt I felt at that an-
dozen tiny strips of wheat growing like cient moment’s relentless infection was al-
outsize allotments between the antique ready so much older than the marriage in
houses, many of which still sold their own whose honeymoon bed I had found myself
wine from ramshackle doors past which thinking what I would do if time rolled back
I wandered feeling increasingly like some on itself and sat me once again before the
herald of the forces of change that would unwavering stare of that silent, motionless
sweep all this away for ever. offer.

On our last day, standing on a beach *
under a wide sky, blue as a Renaissance
Madonna’s robes, I stared at the pale exqui- After Maureen left, I got into the habit of
site, shells glittering in the shallows’ clarity. taking Dad out from the retirement home
Ahead of me, its surface awash with white- where he’d moved. If the weather was
gold sun, the sea seemed to hold its green bad, we’d end up in one of the cafés on
islands up for show, their blanched shores the front, two reserved men watching the
of rock and shingle shimmering in the heat. condensation run down the window as our
Overhead, small gulls glided past. I felt I teas cooled. But mostly we managed a walk,
could stay there, lost in nothing but warmth Dad using his stick till he felt tired enough
and the sound of clear waters folding and for me to push him in the chair. His favour-
falling at my feet. Gary found me and we ite spot was at the far end, where the prom-
ate nearby, buoyed by a sense of limitless- enade, following the rocks of the headland
ness. We flew back, certain that the future round a narrow curve, butted into the sea
was ours. like a ship’s blunt prow. We would sit on
the bench, behind thickly painted white
* railings, staring out over the sea. I grew to
like the spot, too; it forced a peace into my
What I couldn’t tell Jane when she asked days. We never spoke much, just sat watch-
me for a divorce was how much I thought ing the never-still play of the water and its
– had never stopped thinking – about Mau- drifting cast of gull and cloud.
reen. As the distances of our marriage were

97

Adelaide Literary Magazine

Maureen had used the money Dad gave lives had been so bound up with this faded
her to start a life in Canada. Older and seaside town that it leaked back memories
having frittered the steady stream she’d with every look. He’d scattered her ashes
got from him over the years, she felt this on this beach, one unexpectedly windless
was her last chance. There were a couple and warm November afternoon, and it was
of phone calls at first and then a handful here, too, where I’d collected my shells to
of letters full of her new life out west. They sell, and where she had held the ice cream
were among the few personal items I took patiently for me all those years before.
from the home when he died. After that,
nothing. Not that he ever spoke about it. So we sat behind the white bars of the
When he did talk, during our walks, it was railing, above the beach where Mum lay with
usually about Mum, about the years before our past, staring out over the restless dull
her illness. I don’t know whether he did this grey glare of the sea, westwards, towards the
for my sake, or whether it was just that their pale haze of the low afternoon sun and the
great silence beyond.

About the Author

Craig Dobson had fiction published in Active Muse, Better
Than Starbucks, Black Works, The Eunoia Review, Flash
Fiction Magazine, The Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s
House, Literally Stories, Runcible Spoon and Short Fiction
Magazine. He has work forthcoming in Flash and The
Delmarva Review. He lives and work in the UK.

98