Adelaide Literary Magazine No. 50. July 2021

Revista Literária Adelaide

engineers had begun to repair the power “Treason!” I gasped.
supply (hundreds of homes were blacked-out,
apparently) we were taken to Penge police “Yes, it was your stated intention to kill
station, where we now sat handcuffed in an a member of the royal family, to whit: the
interview room. Queen.”

“So: you were experimenting with explo- I looked at Ray. “Yes,” he said steadily
sives?” enquired the detective. “And we have no regrets- death to the Queen.”

“Yes, that’s right officer” replied Ray. The two officers discussed something
under their breath with their backs turned.
“And you had illegally connected to the Ray took the opportunity to do the same.
National Grid.”
“Please let me do all the talking. The in-
“Yes, that too is correct.” terviewing techniques of 1982 are surpris-
ingly naïve, so if you just keep your gob shut,
“And you say that you had planned to I will incriminate myself and make you seem
blow up Buckingham Palace” merely an accomplice. They will be sepa-
rating us for more questioning soon.”
“Death to the royal parasites!”
I was speechless and remained so. A
With visible disgust, the detective left stern woman entered the room with a tray,
the room, ushering in a PC. He stood by the which she sat on the table between us. On
door and glowered at us. it were four cups of tea.

“What will happen now?” I asked him. “So, you wanted to blow up the Queen
did you?” she asked, much as a primary
He stayed silent. school teacher might. It was surprisingly
effective in that I started to question if I
“It’s OK,” said Ray. “They are trained to wanted to stick with Ray’s story.
say nothing in such circumstances- it’s easier
that way.” The pain in my injury throbbed “Why would anyone want to assassinate
behind its dressing. I was feeling sorry for the Queen. Our Queen? She is a wonderful
myself. person who upholds what’s left of decent
standards in this country.” She plonked the
“Will we go to prison?” I asked Ray, dole- two cups in front of us, spilling a bit.
fully.
“How can you live with yourself?” she
“I would say that is quite likely.” said Ray scolded, glaring at us.
“There are quite a few charges levelled at us”.
“I think we are going to find that out.”
The detective returned and nodded to said Ray sardonically, before turning to me.
the PC, who remained in position.
“Fancy a cup of tea?”
“I’m afraid it’s not looking too good for
you chaps” said the detective, jauntily. “We
are just deciding what charges to bring, but
they are all serious- especially the treason.”

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Adelaide Literary Magazine

About the Author

Robert Parker is a dyslexia specialist living in Sussex, England with his long-suffering wife and
son. He has a rather eclectic resume, the indicator of either an indecisive- or an inquiring
mind. He always tried to improve himself and he is now working on his prosopagnosia with,
at present, little success.

50

TUNNEL VISION

by Susan Cornford

Malcolm watched from the doorway as Imo- with them for some time and they passed
gene switched around place cards for their over the parcel.
dinner party one last time. He was lucky to
have found a wife with such a strong sense The next two days were filled with
of, not snobbery… etiquette. She was, in driving west on dirt tracks in their four-
fact, the source of all he saw here of taste wheel drive, dodging other militia groups
and beauty. The whole house was filled with of both Muslim and Christian persuasion.
the comfort and luxury that he had wanted Finally they got to to the border and handed
so much and worked so hard to get. over the mandatory bribe to the official.
He, in turn, gave their parcel the essential
You’d never know that twelve months Kimberley Process Certificate and waved
earlier he’d lurked in a stinking, steamy jungle them through into Cameroon.
of the Central African Republic, waiting for yet
another Muslim strongman to show up with “You are now leaving what is officially
the blood diamonds they were smuggling The Unhealthiest Country in the World!”
into Cameroon. announced Ray.

“Hey, Ray,” he said, fingering his gold “Yeah,” replied Malcolm, “I hope you
cross, “do you think saying a prayer would didn’t go for any of those women, because
help get this heathen to show up?” 11% of the population here has AIDS.”

“Shut up¸ Mal. Just because we’re supposed “No way! But that reminds me, I need to
to be missionaries doesn’t mean you can say drain the dragon.”
things like that out loud. There is such a thing
as hell-fire, you know.” Mal pulled over, his partner got out
and relieved himself. Unfortunately this
“Well, I wish I had taken French in high disturbed a large male gorilla. That was
school and then I wouldn’t need you for this the last he ever saw of Ray, as he drove off
caper.” toward his long-looked-for rendezvous with
riches.
“And I wish I had your contacts in the
diamond trade.” Malcolm refocused on the scene in front
of him. It had definitely been worth
Suddenly they were surrounded by a whatever it took to get all of this. He heard
band of men, brandishing the trade-mark the doorbell ring, announcing the arrival of
machetes of the Seleka. Ray “parlez-voused” their first dinner guests. As he turned to go,

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Adelaide Literary Magazine
his eyes were caught by a flash of light
outside the dark windows. A Molotov
cocktail smashed through the glass and
exploded on the beautifully laid table. What
followed was, indeed, hell-fire.

About the Author
Susan Cornford is a retired public servant, living in Perth,
Western Australia. She has had pieces published or
forthcoming in 365 tomorrows, Akashic Books Fri-SciFi,
Altered Reality Magazine, CarpeArte Journal, Cloudbank,
Drunk Monkeys, Flora Fiction Website, Medusa’s Laugh,
Mental Papercuts, Moonchild Magazine, Mystery Tribune,
Subtle Fiction, Switchblade, The Were-Traveler and Thriller
Magazine.

52

UTOPIA
AMERICANA

by Charlotte Graham

A place where love never ends The medical sheet said: John Fields (M)
(74) (widow, wife Dec.20.01) admitted to
The room had seafoam colored walls, and ICU 8/08 with general collapse/ delirium/
one window: from it you could see the high fever/amnesia/panic/unresponsive,
smoke. It was the middle of the day. I was tested positive for proximity sickness (PCS)
at the end of my rope. What is my name? then transferred 8/23 down to Wd 5 for end
Asked the man in the hospital bed. John, I of life care.
told him. No, he said.

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Adelaide Literary Magazine

I brought this evidence to my obstinate At the vending machine, my reflection
father. He found it distasteful. Get Gwen over a row of Kit Kat bars. I closed my eyes
down here, he said. (Gwen was not the to stop seeing me. Money was a worry in
name of my mother.) Gwen is dead, I an- those days, as it was in all days. But I didn’t
swered. feel poor. I didn’t feel much at all. Back in
the seafoam room, my cheek rested on cold
He went back to sleep. Can you hear me? steel. I stared at Zeus’ face, which warmed
I asked. I said, Gwen is dead. me. Despite all present numbness, I was
unable to totally mute my rage. And yet I
He is there, in the bed. But he’s no longer almost liked it, having someone to care for.
all there. It made me feel like I belonged to someone.

Nothing: nothing new. The walls were Driving back home, the smoke loomed
pushing in. Beyond those walls, the world larger in the October air. It came from the
was pushing in. This was the hospital I fire which has been burning for more than
was born in, I thought to myself. Not born: a hundred years. The fire is underground, in
ripped. Uncontaminated by the womb, like the old mine shafts that used to bring in-
Athena. He opened his eyes, asked again: dustry to Centralia. It rages ceaselessly. Time
What is my name? Zeus, I said. is limitless in the fire, which has only grown
with attempts to put it out. It started in an
I closed my eyes and saw red. The fluo- act of self-immolation, the kind of curse that
rescent lights in that room wouldn’t allow can never be stopped. Some tourists come
for total darkness behind my eyelids. to see the infinite flame, but most keep their
distance. The smoke poisons us, in this town
I need the darkness, so I can go where of red and grey. There is a crack in the side-
I want to go. I am 7. It is a day that holds walk outside of my house, and it looks like
the promise of summer. I know no loss, no a finger pointing. I live in a town with no in-
responsibility. I am reading a book so good dustry, in a world with nothing new. It is the
that I do not notice the ache in the back eleventh hour of a declining empire.
of my neck. I am sitting on the sidewalk.
Nearby, my brother bullies a smaller kid. I Once home, I settled into myself. My beer,
hear him push that kid into the dirt. warm on my tongue, had been sitting in my
hand too long while I stared at the wall. To-
The voice came from the man on televi- morrow will be another day, I thought. And
sion, the same man as always: there will be another one after that.

The question is — how many more Amer- He bumped into me from behind. I
ican lives are we willing to risk? spilled my drink down my front. He said,
Forgive me, and it sounded more like a com-
I opened my eyes. The man on the tele- mand than an apology. He said he noticed
vision was in a grey suit. He used to have me from across the room. A John Prine song
robots that dropped packages anywhere in was playing. It smelled of must in there. This
the country. A corner store right up in the place is full of strange men, I thought, but he
clouds. Now, he has a lever which he moves, is not one of them.
and bombs are dropped far away. Over
there, the eyes in the corner of the room What’s your name? He asked. Rose Fields,
that watch you wherever you go. Those I said.
eyes follow the master clock: the big eyes
in the sky.

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Revista Literária Adelaide

Rose Fields (F) (25) average height and significant they are. Not me: I knew how
weight/waitress in town/caretaker of her fa- happy I was with him. The tug in my stomach
ther, who does not remember her/daughter when he rang my door, the surrender: hap-
of a deceased woman/sister of a man who piness. It was as though I had met him long
jumped into the fire. ago, as though he had always been there, as
though all my life there was a room in my
He took my beer and finished it. He was house for him, and he had the key.
fiddling with a bottle cap. He had dirty fin-
gernails. He noticed me noticing them and Bill picked me up from work. He had a
curled his fingers into two self-conscious cream-colored 1972 Pontiac. I picked an eye-
fists. I work with cars, he explained. lash off his cheek and said, Make a wish. I
put on my crown from my prom queen days.
So he was a mechanic, but he was also a I fluffed out my hair, I looked almost the
painter. He painted landscapes. The walls of same as the girl I was before. He drove me
his apartment, above the repair shop, were out to the hospital on the edge of town, far
covered in pastoral scenes. An acrylic farm- enough away from the fire that the doctors
house perched on peeling yellow paint; as- could treat those who fell ill without getting
bestos lurking behind. infected themselves. He spent days with me
and Zeus. Against the red blind of the school-
Bill was kind, Bill was smart. He was good house wall, I see him leaning, waiting for me.
looking. His forehead stuck out a bit. This He was always waiting for me, seeing me,
gave him the effect of peeking out from taking me places. We are driving and a forest
under a rock, and he often exaggerated this stretches ahead of us, as wide and deep as
by tucking his chin to his chest when he was the sea. The hum of a silver bird overhead;
listening. He had too-big hands and a nose the click of the camera that records each
that curved a little on the way to its final person driving in and out of town. We drove
destination, just above his wide-set mouth. on a road paved by poor immigrants, who
He had arms full of tattoos, barbed wire were underpaid by the robber barons, who
around his biceps. I told him that I worked live now in great steel cities and left towns
at the diner off Route 89. like ours years ago. We drove on a road that
used to run through Lenape territory.
— If I come by tomorrow, will you be there?
I was in love, so I carved his name into a
— Yes. (yes, yes, yes,) tree. Love kept me here, in Centralia. But love
could take me away, if he wanted to.
He left the bottle cap on the bar. I don’t
know why: I picked it up and surreptitiously — What was your dad like before he got
folded it in my jean pocket. I could still feel sick?
his charge on it. I stood up, put a bit of weight
on my legs. Fine (drunk). — My dad: he used to like coming home,
unbuckling his shoes, and drinking just
My nine months with Bill were spent in whiskey. It must have been a nice feeling.
a haze. I woke up every morning waiting for An honest day’s work with your body, some
the dream to end, because I’m not used to hours to yourself.
having a nice thing. When the dream did
end, later, I regretted expecting it. Someone But machines made him redundant. No
said, once, that the great tragedy of life is we one likes being made redundant.
live our happiest moments unaware of how

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Adelaide Literary Magazine

I told him everything there was to know And when you are very young, you are very
about me. My brain twisted to meet his, and lonely, so you wander where you mustn’t.
I saw the world through his eyes. His history
was mine, and when we were intertwined, it I closed my eyes. I am 9. I have dirtied
wasn’t so scary to laugh at the past. I closed my special red shoes, the ones my mom got
my eyes and I saw them: thin men, lined up, for $2.99 at Salvation Army. The neon green
one-by-one. A French queen, imprisoned by price tag on the sole has half-rubbed off. The
her husband for thirty years in a gilded cage. grass scratches my legs, the smell follows me
The small child, the one with thick-lensed out the door. I bike away from danger and
glasses and bug-like eyes, the one who find refuge where I can. I land on my knees,
doesn’t speak much, the one whose mother and my thin skin gives way. I bleed on the
is unkind to her. The past is making fun of me. pavement, I get gravol in the wounds. Doing
I know Bill was confused by me, but he tried as my mother tells me is boring because it
his best to understand. makes sense. To be wrong is to be daring. To
be daring is to go to the dark and mysterious
Bill painted me in everything. I’m a wan- castle at the end of the street.
dering cloud. I’m a puddle next to a pickup
truck. He was unvarnished, and I liked that. Bill had an idea one day, to get Zeus from
It’s what I liked about the world. the hospital and take him to the hill in the
forest we liked to go to, next to the river that
Mr. Randall is a pedophile. Mr. Randall is a winds through town and starts here, under a
strange man. He’s just sort of funny, that’s all. waterfall. On a high, peaceful, shady path, we
laid with our captive. He is happy, I thought.
These are the things people said about Mr. The orderlies will be upset with us, but they
Randall, who lives down the street. He lives know he will die soon. They will understand
on the bad side of town, like me. But we grew that we wanted one nice day. There, on the
up accepted; warmed by the cloak provided hill, I saw the death caps grow. They waved
by titles such as working class, and war vet- at me from the hilltop. He could die now,
eran. Mr. Randall was a draft dodger who did with some dignity left, I think to myself. Dig-
not keep up his lawn, and lived on Social Se- nity means choosing. I looked at him and he
curity money. You were scared of him when looked at me, and I realized he was in distress.
you were a kid. His grass grew up to your He squinted in the sunlight. I don’t feel like I
waist, and he was always wearing corduroys, belong here, he said, his old voice nervous
even in the summer heat. He was unpleasant and shaky: not like him. I don’t know where
looking and afraid of others, and he carried a to settle down anymore.
foul stench. Bill asked me about him, one day.
I don’t know if he’s as bad as all that, I said, So we brought him back to the hospital.
But something about him does bother me. In The sun powered us as we carried him down
the bright and misleading sunshine of April the hill and into the Pontiac. The sun warmed
we sat. The mud was soft and warm between my back as I helped Bill lift my dad into the
my toes, and my feet felt stuck there. back seat, next to his folded wheelchair. His
two lame legs were dangling out the side
It’s terrible, when you are a child, and you door. The sight of them disgusted me. I
are only there for other people. Your parents pushed them in gently, and closed the door.
brought you here for their own joy. You are
at the mercy of adults, who do as they please. It matters to me if you think I’m beau-
tiful. I said this to Bill now that we were

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Revista Literária Adelaide

alone, and it was late. Because, I said, if you time. I did not yet know that Bill was dead.
are not judged to be beautiful, then you are I still felt the happiness I had always longed
not really beautiful. I do not say this part out for. I was thinking of a wedding, of rice
loud: If you are beautiful, you get the prize — thrown on me as I descended the steps, tri-
which is to be owned, which is to be available. umphant. I poured another cup of coffee for
the old man sitting alone, the one who is
I told him about my mother dying. my always sitting alone. I wiped my brow. Then
brother losing himself to the fire, my father the door opened. Then I got the news.
losing himself in a different way. As the out-
side world grew lonelier, my soul sunk into His funeral was held later that week.
a deeper fury. I was popular in high school, They buried his paintings in place of his
because I tried very hard to be. Being picked body. In the summer, the fire spreads its
on in elementary school leaves you with a heat around the town. Something happens
willingness to shape yourself later, to do as in the air invisible. It’s best to stay out of
you can to fit in. That willingness took root in the way. I wished I could have burned with
me at an early age. I couldn’t move if I tried. him — a widow giving sacrifice.

It was midsummer then, and the pave- Now all the days are the same day. The
ment shined like polished coal. There was no hours move in sluggish fashion, syrupy; the
reprieve from the heat that summer, even at eight hour reluctant to reach the ninth. My
night. It pressed on your neck. Bill stamped perennial loneliness, which throbs inside of
out a cigarette with his worn brown boot. me, will not abate.
His crooked nose glowed in the hum of the
gas station. So now it is July, and life is stark in the
dead heat. A spotlight shines on me from
Bill’s last thought was: What a nice evening. above; I am barefoot on the burning pave-
ment. It is the morning of Independence
Death came for him in the form of an Day. Kids are lighting fireworks in the street.
eighteen-wheeler, a drunk driver behind An alarm wakes me up in the morning, and
the helm. His body contoured to the front clocks chime all day long. A phone call from
grill upon impact. His embrace with the the past, a bottle to help me sleep, and I
truck was followed by an explosion, from no longer go to the hospital. My father’s
the rusted gas pump behind him. An explo- stuff is everywhere, my brothers’ stuff is
sion like a red mushroom, larger than any everywhere, my mother’s stuff is every-
the station attendant had seen. I know this where, there is just too much stuff, and the
because the station attendant told me later, stuffiness of it all is killing me. The sun will
after he ran to the diner. His eyebrows were die one day, and I cannot wait. The war my
singed from the heat and he told me: I saw father fought, the war that took all the men
the young man’s body twist in the fire. He from this town, the war between me and
said he was coming to meet you. myself, they will all end one day. So I go out,
and I come home drunk.
I saw it, too: I saw it in the station atten-
dant’s eyes. Bill’s body burning bright. He lit On the way home, I stop at the store.
up the pine trees surrounding the old station. I buy a carton of cigarettes and another
bottle of beer. I turn on the little silver box
But me: I was up the road, when it hap- in my house. No government announce-
pened. My shift was almost done. I looked ment tonight. A dead composer’s piano
at the clock once more: it is 11:48. Almost

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Adelaide Literary Magazine

music fills all four corners of my small clap- I leave him. I go to the river and see how
board house, the house I grew up in, just as the sunlight makes it bright. I stare directly
he once filled the halls of Budapest. at the sun until I have to close my eyes: I
see little red dots. I feel the sunlight run the
He was just so nice. It seems impossible length of my spine; the length of the world.
that he could die. The fact of death is ob- I climb the hill in the forest and see the ruins
vious to no one, least of all me. A car veers of the mine in the quarry, see the beautiful
left, it runs into someone young and vital. smoke in the distance. I see my loneliness in
And then he’s not there anymore. If you every dusty ray of light.
wait long enough, everything changes. Ero-
sion, or a sudden act of God. In the diner, the old man sits alone. In
his eyes are dead people. A pile of bodies
I am standing in a place I do not know. that could have been a pile of rags. And the
Beyond me I know is the smoke, and I know guards of the camp, with their hands in the
there is the fire hidden beneath. Imagine this: air, look so-well fed. That’s what the old man
a woman loves a man, though he is not real. can’t forget: the pudge of the guards; the
He came from the fire, and the fire is where roundness of their cheeks. The fat of them
he goes to after. He brings me here. I feel the was violence. He smells the coffee brewing.
flicks and beams in my pelvis, as though a He salts the egg I lay in front of him.
string is wound tightly around the pit in my
stomach, connecting me to something else. Sometimes, when I hold myself quietly,
A thought enters my head: I know this place. I feel the fire all the way from here. I have
I’ve been here before. Another thought en- felt it every day. Since the night I drove to
ters my head: What am I doing here? the hill and saw the smoke I have felt it. But
I felt it before, too. When I was a child. And
I walk home, back to my grey-bricked even before that.
house, back to my red door. My knuckles
are white, my fists clenched, and I sit on I can look out and see the other people
the steps that lead to my door, until the behind their picket fences. I can see the
porchlight goes back out. Just because you wind move the leaves. The fire is a diode. It
cannot see something does not mean it is pushes against me gently, warmly. If I listen
not there. My cold hands are on my chest, very closely, I can hear it asking me how my
my concave stomach, trying to feel for what day was.
I can not see.
How high up the sky is, how low down
We are all visitors here we are on Earth. Ants that carry eight times
our own weight. All watched over by ma-
The decaying taste of liquor on my tongue, chines of loving grace. I have to be here for
the sickening headache. I’m used to waking another three hours. When I go home, I will
up this way. On my couch. My shoes, still throw my memories out. I will wait for him
on. I take a shower and feel the hot water on the porch to come back from the land of
rush over me. I throw up and watch it wash the dead. I ask the man with the bodies in
down the drain. I feel the usual: tired, and his eyes if he wants the check. I wonder if
a little bit anxious. I visit the seafoam room. he can smell the alcohol on my breath. Hello
I take the man who has forgotten my name Stranger is playing on the jukebox, and I see
on a walk, his last ever. The wheels of his Bill in my mind. It seems like a mighty long
chair squeak, and his shaved head is bent.

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time, sings the voice in the corner. At one The silence between us stretches thin, so
table, a teenage couple argues. The boy I cut it.
leaves the table, the girl tucks a piece of
blue hair behind her ear. — You look just like him, I say. You look
like my boyfriend, who died.
I think about going outside for a ciga-
rette break: it is a nice evening out there. — Am I him?
Good weather made me feel guilty. I never
should have grown up. Bill’s musky smell isn’t there. This one
smells vaguely like gas.
That’s when I see him: Bill.
— No.
He is leaning against his cream-colored
Pontiac. The light from the diner bleeds out I remember something I heard on the
the windows and casts a red spotlight on radio this morning. The man who is usually
him. Bill! I shout, I press my hand against on television says: there is glory in serving
the glass of the window, and he doesn’t turn your country. In death, you live forever.
his head. Can he hear me? Can he see me?
— Did you know that? I ask the visage.
The bottle cap jumps in my apron pocket.
I leave the diner, coffee pot still in hand. I — Did I know what?
approach the visage.
— There is going to be another draft.
He looks at me like he knows me. Like he They had said there wouldn’t be.
has been waiting for me.
He looks at me. He asks me if I wanted
He looks like Bill, but not. Same crooked to go for a drive, so I say yes (yes, yes, yes,)
nose, same overhanging forehead. Same, and I do not go back in to work. I take the
same, but different. His fingernails are coffee pot with me. I leave behind me the
clean. The sight of them makes something old man waiting on his check, the man with
stir in my stomach. When he is still, he could dead bodies in his eyes, who is staring at his
be a painting of Bill, but then he moves: ex- untouched egg. In America, who starves?
tending his arm towards me. For a moment
he looks like a mechanical figure in a car- So fast and sharp the turns in the road,
nival ride, reaching for you in the funhouse. so cool and deep the grass we lay in. We
His expression is vacant, but when he looks are on the hill he and I used to sit on, where
at me, his eyes are sharp: like two high we once took Zeus. Everything changes, but
beams, frozen on my face. not for me. I have made an unintentional re-
turn: I am back at this place again. I push his
It lasts a moment. But then, he is back to sleeves up, to feel his skin (proof). It is hot:
being Bill. He asks: like marble in a shadeless courtyard. There
are no tattoos. It is as though his skin was
— Do you know me? manufactured yesterday. So, not Bill, then.
But someone like him. Someone just like
— Yes, I say. him. I feel like I’m wearing hand-me-downs,
he says.
— Where am I?
Now I am holding him, now he is ema-
— Centralia. nating heat. He is like a furnace. The lethargy
has subsided. Now, I have energy flowing
— Have I always been here? through my veins. Better the devil you know,

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Adelaide Literary Magazine

then the devil you don’t. My mother used He studies. I give him a book, and he
to say that. His solid hand covers my hand reads next to me. He perceives as I do, and
and a shiver shoots down my spine. I mould him as I would a child. My love is
something you can learn from. Centralia
I woke up this morning and a thought was built on a giant pit of dead: the people
came to my head: I am losing my grip in this who were killed to make way for us. And we
slippery world. just added more dead. The burning miners.
The army vets who died with holes in their
I make myself a bowl of cereal, which I arms. The bored young kids who snort and
do not eat. I make myself coffee, which I do ingest. And those who jump into the fire:
drink. Did I dream him up? I look outside their ghosts linger on. It’s the proximity to
and his car is gone: there is no proof. an energy source, says the scientists on
television, it turns some folk insane. You’d
I put on my shoes and I walk the planned have to be insane to stay here. The dead
streets of Centralia, cracked pavement, over outnumber the living a thousand to one.
the bridge that crosses the river, until I get
to the highway that would take me some- Now you can never leave me, I say. He
where else, if I let it. I am a vagrant: trucks says, I don’t know where I was before this.
barrel by in the unforgiving sun.
Slowly the pattern of our days grows to-
Before I know it, I am near the fire. Flickers gether, and shapes itself into something like
of cold blue, sparkling violet. The fire talks love. Foxgloves flutter prettily in the breeze.
to me. He is here too, the visage. Leaning If something is there to be touched, there
against his car again. What is my name? He is something to be picked apart.
asks. I tell him: Bill. Because I want it to be so.
A memory shoots through me, like
We drive away together. We stop at an something running through my veins. He
antique shop, we are on a date. is walking through my mind, the scary
man from down the street. The witch in
In the shop, run by a decrepit man, arm- the forest who cooked me into a pie. I can
chairs are crammed next to backgammon feel his wormy hands closing in around my
boards. There is barely any room to move. wrists. I stop the movie by banging my head
There is a painting. It is of a woman. She against the wall. I look in the mirror and see
has dark hair and eyes, and she stares at a red trickle down my forehead. I tell the
Bill. She is reclined, she is challenging. She man who I now know to be Bill about my
is wearing a long, sheer gown, with lilac rib- childhood, and I am more honest this time.
bons around her ribcage and arms. And he The shame of our poverty, my father’s war
studies the painting, like one seeing the sky wounds, the plenty that is America, that
for the very first time. And he looks at me, feels just out of reach. The fire that we
like I am being seen for the very first time. never left, the lawsuit money we never took.
It was dirty money, said my parents. It was
Did he come from the West? Was there money that betrayed the town. But they
a town full of them somewhere: the same were already gone by then.
sandy hair, the same wide-brimmed smile?
Were they made just for me, in a factory I go to the fire again, which I have come
called desire? One comes out on the con- to see as my home. I can stop thinking when
veyor belt: he likes to paint. The next one I feel the warmth. Bill meets me here, we
now: what does he like?

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hold hands. He drops me off at the hospital plans to rescue the three hundred trapped
some days: how kind. The orderlies look at miners.
me with shock. Does my happiness show on
my face? I rearrange my features: surely it is But it was too expensive for the com-
impolite to be so in love when one’s own fa- pany to do. Not worth it. Worth.
ther is ailing. I sit in the seafoam room. The
day turns to dark. I see my face in the reflec- When the man who was once my father
tion of the black window. I am covered in got sick, he spoke of my mother, who had
dirt, and blood. My knees are skinned, and died a year prior. He spoke of the affairs he
there are twigs in my hair. I do not know the had, and he spoke of my brother.
look in my eyes.
By the time the sickness had taken hold
I can spend more time with Bill, now that of him, his eyes were iced over. He stopped
I have stopped going to work. One after- speaking out loud. How do I know when I’m
noon, we are sitting and watching television, dead?
and a commercial for Buddy Wilson’s Car
Dealership comes on. Bright color flashes I come to: I am still sitting on my couch.
on the screen. This man sitting next to me, There is blood on my hands, glass in my
his face thin with anger, takes my drink from palms.
my hand and throws it at the television, and
the glass pierces the screen right over a Bill is gone now, but I know where. And
shiny red car. Now the screen is black and I know why.
white fuzz, a thousand ants marching across
a town square. That’s not like you, Bill. He I am 17. I am lying in a field of daisies. The
looks confused, like he is unsure of why he cotton fabric rolls down my thighs and sits at
did what he did. I get up and clean the mess. my ankles. I am rolling my thumb under my
dress and I want Bill to see me, but I do not
The crooked nose is proof. The fall of his know him yet.
feet as he steps down my driveway is proof.
The space between me and him, between I am 8, I am 9. I take my rusty red bicycle
here and there: proof. He was there, there I and I go out to the farmland, way out West
was. I stop going outside, unless it is to drive of town. The road leading there is poor in-
to the fire, or buy more liquor. I am drinking deed, rocky and wide. I cannot wait to grow
more now. Tired. up.

I tell my body to get up and it almost I climb and sit on a wooden fence, my
answers. The government announcement arms hooked over and my chin resting on
came from the little silver box, the radio we the higher piece of wood, my seat the lower
can’t throw away: they would know, they piece of wood, my legs dangling, my feet
would find you, they would fine you, and touching the tips of the tall dewey grass. A
they would replace the disposed with an- little red house in the far distance, like the
other radio. The man’s voice was saying kind you see in vision tests. Four sheep
things such as: the necessity of war. What grazing.
is the worth of one human life?
A hum brings my eyes up to the sky:
They say that when the accident hap- seven silver drones, in a V-formation, mim-
pened, when the fire was lit, there were icking migrating birds. Dropping packages,
dropping bombs.

I no longer feel that I know time.

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The beast had lost its eyes to see the fire, out of curiosity. Some turn
around: their eyes like pebbles, dull and
The man who was once my father is now black. But no one who gets this close walks
dead. No one was by his side when it hap- away.
pened.
The man in front of me is next. He stays
His funeral is small, the attendees three. still for a very long time. Then, like his body
I stand far away, where I cannot contami- is being wrenched from its standing place,
nate the still living (the still sane). A quick he throws himself in. Now, it is my turn.
tug pulls me closer, just a step, and I think Now, it is all about me.
very seriously of running to the scene and
throwing myself on top of the casket with How pretty it looks, up close. The sun,
him. A small voice inside of me, a voice that that big warm beast who powers the world,
used to be my own, says that I have long rising over the fire pit. Hues of copper dance
started my descent, have begun to follow over the roiling flames. A great hum sur-
my father to the same inevitable conclusion. rounds me, enveloping me like a blanket. I
I will not allow myself to die that way. After do not quite remember how I got here. I feel,
this, the voice is gone completely, and I be- suddenly, that I am 8, and I am lost at the
long to something else. fair. Took too long at the fair. Who took her
home, that little girl? There was Mr. Randall.
He goes to Valhalla. I will dine with Freya His interest was piqued, though she did not
in the heavenly fields. The flowers suddenly know it. Did he take her home? He was nice.
are blooming, very quickly, and I realize Wasn’t he? And before me, in the flames,
I have been standing here for eight days, I see the whole world burning. There are
facing the fire. That is where I need to go. the Salem witches. There are the Hindu
On the ninth day, I walk towards the sound widows. There are the Buddhist monks in
of Bill’s voice. I know my way in the darkness Vietnam, screaming in their orange cloaks.
and in the light. There are some things that are better kept
secret. Hints of sinister and violent mys-
Bill is here, he has been waiting for me. teries: the death of the whole world lies in
He is leaning against his car. He will keep there. There is an old ship, with an empty
watch. I wave at him, and he waves back. hull. There is Father Ignacius, with a body
in his hands, burning with a century-and-a-
Those who jump into the fire are all half of Catholic guilt. They are all withering
lined up. We all knew to come today. These in the fire, full-bodied. There is my brother,
people came from all across the country, he is ringing his bell, biking through the fire,
they felt the siren call of loneliness, the he is only a child. There is my mother, there
warmth the fire has. I see Mr. Burns from is my father. There are the boys who were
the supermarket, who used to sell me sent to war before they even thought about
sweet apples. He has felt the tug, too. I wait love, or anything else. These being dead, I
my turn. Pick me. Pick the easy one, the sad think, then dead too I must be. And there
one, the drunk one, the low-hanging fruit. I am, I am 8, I am 9, in the fire, dirt on my
knees, wiping my mouth, like the cat that
One by one, they jump in ahead of me. got the cream. It is revolting. I scream, and
There is always a pause, and then a scream. the scream sounds like it is coming from
I am getting close to the edge. Clouds of
carbon swirl up around us and enclose us
in monstrous shapes. Some people come

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very far away. My front is hot but my back I see God in the fire, and he talks back to me.
is cold, and I have a crawling, unsafe sen- I’ll cut my hair for you, I’ll be who you want
sation. There is something big and wide, me to be. I’ll follow you into the fire. Is that
staring at my unprotected back. Someone what you want? Are you feeling okay? says
says, somewhere, There is freedom to my mother. We lost you. Where did you go?
giving in. Sometimes you get tired of the I’m feeling fine, I say. I yearn, I hunger, I
turning world. Warm little fingers curl on thirst, I want, I need, I please. Have you
my shoulder blades, asking me to come in. been a good girl? Yes, I’m how you said I
So I say, I will. Yes, the fire says. And I say should be. I look down and see my red
yes, yes, yes. shoes. I have red shoes, I say softly. It is the
last thing I say. A big push comes from be-
You want to live forever, you want to sit hind, or maybe it is a pull from the front.
in the passenger seat of a shiny convertible And I feel terror, but then: euphoria. Not my
and see the great big highway in front of house; a stranger’s house I leave behind. As
you, you want to climb a bridge that keeps far as I can remember, there is no place
going higher and higher, into the sky, into other than this.
the clouds, all the way up to Mount Olympus.

About the Author
Charlotte Graham is a social worker who also writes.

63

SEATTLE, 1961

by Mike Dillon

As mother raised her fist to knock on the white door. She shook my hand. Her hand
white door, she paused and glanced back was soft as a very old, maybe expensive,
at me. leather glove.

“Please take your cap off.” She led us into “the drawing room.” I
saw she was quick on her feet.
So, I did.
And then there I was sitting on a soft
“That’s what little gentlemen do,” she sofa beside my mother, staring at a sidewalk
added in a cartoonish sing-song I’d never maple glittering in the mid-morning sun on
heard from her. But then, she’d never called the other side of a closed window.
me a gentleman before, either. Little or oth-
erwise. Mabel stood over us and clapped her
hands. “Tea will be ready toot sweet.” Of
I was on spring vacation. I wanted to be course, I didn’t know what those last two
home with my friends, on the green island words meant, let alone that she mangled
where we lived a half-hour ferry ride to the the French phrase in the usual American
west. Instead, we stood beneath a milky way.
gob of April morning sun before a white
door in the city. And yes, her name was Mabel. Rich as
Croesus. Or, as my mother put it: “Lots and
Mother knocked. I’d never met her great lots of money.” Inherited wealth from her
aunt before. banker dad Back East where she grew up,
so the story went.
I was too young for Dickens, as you’ll soon
learn, but when the door opened, even in Then she was off to the kitchen. Her thin,
my eleven-year-old brain, I somehow wasn’t calico dress seemed fashionable in a simple
surprised at the figure standing there from way. She seemed like someone who had
another time, her parchment-white skin lu- once been attractive, or, at least, radiantly
minous against the background gloom. cheerful. Mabel brought out three cups
of tea on a tray and white, powdery Rus-
She hugged my mother. “It’s been twenty sian tea cakes. Before she poured the third
years, I’m sure,” she said. “Too long. Too cup, Mabel glanced at mother from across
long.” Her iceberg-blue eyes turned to me. the dark, wooden, low table between our
“And who do we have here?” couches a dozen or so feet apart.

“Thomas,” my mother said. I had always
been Tom until mother knocked on the

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“Thomas has tea at home. Pour away.” “I don’t have to sneak my cigarettes any-
Mother’s tone was fake-jolly. more,” Mabel mock-whispered. “But I won’t
smoke in front of the boy.” I turned my hat
The gossip resumed and I returned my over in my lap.
gaze to the window. An occasional car went
by below. Mother quickly glanced across the room
to the plates and cups on the sideboard. I
Sometimes a breeze off the harbor knew that change-the-subject maneuver.
moved through the new, green leaves of
the maple, making starbursts of sunlight. “Spode from England?” I’d never heard
A thin hum, like a distant lathe, came from the word “Spode” from my mother’s mouth
the harbor a ten-minute walk down the hill. before.
This was a quiet, leafy part of Seattle, with
small restaurants and old mansions. “O my dear, no. County Meath, Ireland.”

Mother and I were in one of those man- Art work, mostly family portraits, hung
sions. on the butter-colored walls. The paintings
were dark in the Munich School mode of
Conversation in the “drawing room,” be- the late nineteenth century. I would come
tween my mother and Mabel proceeded to know the style one day because that’s
as if I didn’t exist. I sat there, trapped on the kind of stuff that still hangs in a nearby
spring vacation, and gazed out at the green museum founded by a rich Seattle couple,
maple. My green Little League cap — we long dead, who collected it. Mabel and Flor-
were the Shamrocks — lay in my lap. I sup- ence knew the rich couple well, of course.
posed that’s where little gentlemen rested
their baseball caps. The cathedral bells marked the ten
o’clock hour. I counted each tenor chime as
Mabel, ninety-two, had retained some- I watched the maple flicker in the brilliant
thing of a teenage girl: quick, sparrow-like April morning sunshine.
movements; always on the verge of
laughter; dramatic pauses. Even old, she “Archbishop comes tomorrow,” Mabel
was a verb, not a noun. confided. “It’s a short walk. He comes once
a week, at least, to make sure I haven’t
Mabel never worked. Neither did her given away my money.”
sister Florence. Yes, Florence. Mabel and
Florence. They read musty books, trav- “Now Mabel,” said mother in mock
eled to the European capitals, visited their horror. I looked away from the window to
beloved Ireland in the early 1930s, and my great-great aunt.
paid homage to their parents’ birthplace
in Roscommon. Seattle had been their Mabel was getting interesting.
home since early 1920s. They hosted par-
ties, showed up at exhibit openings at the After a few minutes I heard my name.
nearby art museum, and attended Mass at
the nearby cathedral at least three times a I looked over. Mother was saying: “No,
week. he hasn’t read Dickens yet. That comes the
first year of high school.”
Florence made it to eighty-nine. She’d
been dead fifteen months. “O what a shame.” With theatrical dismay,
Mabel furrowed her brow and lowered her
voice. “Now is the time for Dickens. There

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Adelaide Literary Magazine

is no greater beginning in a novel than that supposed to know? And if it was Grant, why
of David Copperfield.” She closed her eyes, would she ask? I’d thought about it before.
put both hands upon her breast as if to keep Why wouldn’t it be Grant? On the other
a small bird in, and spoke: Whether I shall hand, sometimes maybe famous dead
turn out to be the hero of my own life, or people get switched around.
whether that station will be held by any-
body else, these pages must show. “Now, now, think about it,” Mabel said.

“Isn’t that a lovely thing to tuck into a “I am,” I said ruefully. My ears were ringing.
young boy’s pocket?” she sighed, looking up
at the high ceiling. I suddenly remembered “Thomas,” said my mother, enunciating
I had an open pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint each word crisply. “Who..is..buried..in..
gum in my jeans pocket, which I had been GRANT’S TOMB?”
ordered not to chew.
“I don’t know.”
Mother shot a look towards my lap. I
was fussing with my Little League cap again. “Grant!” Mabel exclaimed, and clapped
her hands. I looked over to the window and
“Thomas knows everything about the the flickering maple. I wanted to be high up
Civil War,” mother interposed. in that tree.

“Ah, two days ago was the day Lincoln “Well, here’s something to remember,”
died,” Mabel declared. “April 15, 1865. 7:22 Mabel said in a soft, conspiratorial voice.
a.m. sharp. Clockmakers used to set their She picked up her cup and saucer and bal-
stopped clocks to that very time. I suppose anced them on a knee.
they don’t anymore.”
“My father viewed Mr. Lincoln’s body in
After a pause Mabel declared: “I was New York City. He’d been dead ten days and
born two years after Mr. Lincoln passed.” was somewhat altered, shall we say.”
Her eyes drifted off.
I wasn’t that interested anymore. I was
I looked at her with growing respect. still smarting from the dirty pitch.

“Ask Thomas anything you want about Mabel leaned my way. “His face was
the Civil War,” mother said, picking up what brown as a walnut. The lips were parted and
might be a winning thread. I sat up at the his teeth were showing.” She took a sip of
prospect of being useful in this strange house. tea. “Embalmers were quacks in those days.
Still are, as far as I’m concerned.”
Mabel set her teacup and saucer on the
table. A robin caroled somewhere. Maybe
from the maple.
“How hard shall I make it?”
“I lit a candle in the cathedral yesterday
“Hard,” I chirped. “It’s OK.” I almost put morning for Mr. Lincoln at exactly 7:22.”
on my baseball cap.
No one said anything. I guess we were
“Well, then…Let’s see. O I know. Who’s supposed to pause for some kind of moment.
buried in Grant’s tomb?”
“But I still think we’ve brought the ______
So, she’d thrown me a knuckle ball with along too fast.” She said this in her girlish,
spit on it. If it wasn’t Grant, then how was I enthusiastic manner. And she used the
word my mother told me never to say, ever,

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even though it showed up in Huckleberry “But they’re Irish,” mother offered
Finn a lot. I won’t write the word, even here. brightly, as a way out of this.

“What more do they want?” Mabel con- Mabel cocked a brow. “Shanty Irish.” She
tinued. “We lost almost 400,000 of our drew out a long “a” in shanty
brave, blue-coated boys to set them free.
Of course, I’m not counting all the dead “What do you think, boy?” Her smile was
soldiers dressed in gray. All of whom had warm.
mothers, too, I’d like to point out.”
I was sure of myself this time. “I don’t
Silence. The robin caroled. I heard an- know,” I said.
other car go by. I fiddled with my cap. There
was no mantel clock, but somewhere I Her smiled cooled: “Well, at least now
seemed to hear something ticking. you know who’s buried in Grant’s tomb.”

“I know,” my mother said, in the confid- On the way out, after our goodbyes,
ingly sheepish way I overheard her mention mother and I paused beside the lilac bush
to my father once that a woman at their near the door. I pulled my cap back on my
golf club was “seeing” our oil delivery man. head. My mother adjusted it a little, some-
“Besides, you can’t legislate morality.” Those thing she’d never done before.
last words landed firmly as a judge’s gavel.
“There,” she pronounced. We still hadn’t
I studied my mother: pretty, athletic, dark moved. The lilac beside us was jeweled and
haired with red lipstick, dressed in her best, shining after last night’s rain. “Take a whiff
blue town-suit, black hat and white gloves of that,” mother said.
beside her. She never dressed like that ex-
cept when we took the ferry to the city. I was staring at her.

I studied Mabel’s face; sometimes “It’s the true smell of spring.”
her olive-dark eyes wandered to the wall
where a portrait of her parents hung. Their I was still staring.
faces, against a dark background, shone like
washed-up corpses. “I know,” she said. “Sometimes you just
have to go along with things.”
“And now look at who’s in the White
House,” Mabel went on. “Richard Nixon I looked up into the green maple, with its
was cheated by old Joe Kennedy’s ill-gotten tender new leaves backlit by the sun shining
gains.” on the city below, where the harbor was a
hard, corrugated blue and the ferry, like a
white game board piece, drifted towards
the dock to take us home.

About the Author

Mike Dillon lives in Indianola, Washington, a small town on Puget
Sound northwest of Seattle. His most recent book is “Departures:
Poetry and Prose on the Removal of Bainbridge Island’s Japanese
Americans After Pearl Harbor,” from Unsolicited Press (2019).

67

BEYOND
APPEARANCES

by Jose Recio

Playing in front of her house, a little girl sets narrow creek near her home. It called her
wildflowers in earthen pots pretending to attention because the roof was painted
be a gardener. She lives with her parents dark blue, the windows’ frames green, and
in a red-roofed village, a quiet place with the entrance door red, all of which looked
a population of scarcely nine-hundred peo- different from the other village houses,
ple, located in the Valley of Lebanon, Can- stone-built and red-roofed. A woman was
tabria, at the Peaks of Europe’s foothills, sitting in a folding chair outside this house,
where many are farmers or artisans, and painting. Full of curiosity and careful not
young children attend the same school. to be seen, the girl moved behind the
artist and observed her actions. The wom-
This spring, the girl has turned seven. an-artist repeatedly looked at the poppies
Her eyes are black, shiny; her hair dark, cut and daisies growing about her; then, she
short, and her complexion pale. An innocent turned to her canvas and painted them as
smile betrays the void left by two missing a bouquet. But some flowers seemed well-
baby-teeth. She feels intrigued about the shaped and neat, while others appeared
world around her and often ventures into blurry. Such discrepancy struck the little girl
her surroundings: enchanting hills, ever- as odd. She was about to ask the artist why
green trees, winding streams. She loves she did that when a black miniature poodle
the birds and all the other little animals she suddenly came out of the house running to-
sees and enjoys watching tapestries of pop- ward them, barking.
pies, daisies, campaniles, and other wild-
flowers that spread around and breathe in “Rosie!” The artist called out.
their fragrance. In her outings, the little girl
sometimes reaches the nearby Monastery The poodle, wagging its tail, went straight
of Saint Toribio, inhabited by Franciscans, a to the girl who, apprehensive about the
pilgrim destination, and wonders about the dog’s approaching, hurriedly asked the artist,
friars’ mysterious lives. “Why do you do it?”

One day, this spring, the little girl came “What?” The painter turned her head in
across a picturesque small house beside a surprise.

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“You paint some flowers looking fuzzy!” friar strolling in the portico. They heard him
saying to the air: We only see part of that
“Because that’s how I see them.” which is whole. The girls chuckled; they un-
derstood each word but not the meaning
At that point, the poodle playfully of the utterance. At that moment, the friar
jumped up at the girl as if wanting to kiss started to walk towards the column behind
her on her face, but she got scared and ran which they were hiding, which made them
away. For a long while, though, she in vain very nervous because they understood that
tried to understand why the woman-artist the monastic would tell their parents if he
had painted some of the flowers looking discovered them. Therefore, they ran to-
nice and others blurry. wards the same iron door they had entered,
and they left the place.
A few days later, this girl was wandering
the countryside in the company of a little When the little girl returned home, after
friend her age. They entertained themselves she and her friend had fled the monastery
gathering pinecones and catching butter- in a panic, she saw two large glass jars half-
flies when, absentmindedly, they reached filled with water lying on top of the dining
the Monastery. The little girl shared with her table. A neat red poppy, its stem submerged
friend that she sometimes went inside the in water, rested on the rim of the taller jar,
court-yard with her dad to deliver bread— and two fuzzy-looking yellow daisies had
her father owns a bakery and supplies the been set beside the poppy. Two other blur-
friars with the daily bread. She enjoys step- ry-looking daisies, one yellow and the other
ping into the court-yard and loitering about pink, floated in the other jar. The back-
while her father does his business. ground of this ensemble appeared unde-
fined. Impressed by this scene in which
Presently, both girls fantasized about slant sunlight made that the room looked
the friars living there. Driven by their rev- shadowy and some of the flowers unde-
erie, they searched for a way in and found fined, the little girl suddenly understood
a rusty iron gate camouflaged among the what the monk with his words and the art-
fern; surreptitiously, they entered the ist’s painting meant to express.
cloister and hid behind a column. Quietly
standing there, they spied on a Franciscan

About the Author

Jose L Recio was born and raised in Spain. He studied
medicine in Spain and later left for California on an
International Fellowship. He and his wife currently live in
Los Angeles. Over the last few years, his interest in creative
writing keeps him busy. Having grown to become bicultural,
he writes both in Spanish and English. With Adelaide’s
books, he has published this year a collection of twenty-
four bilingual short stories.

69

PERENNIAL
UNDULATION

by Preston Canavan

A smack of thunder prompted his eyes to covers and stroked her soft fur, profusely
drift open. He lay still a moment, taking this apologizing for his tardiness in an obnoxious
time before sitting up. An hour could go by falsetto. She forgave him. They snuggled
before escaping bed crossed his mind. Ev- on the carpet until the sun caught up with
erything took longer. Rain fell outside, mut- them. The bright warm patches of sunlight
ing the light and widening the soft shadows gave the apartment an open feeling. Things
of his tight apartment. He ignored his pill were looking up. All of them. His wife was
bottles and shuffled to the kitchen, in need so darling while she slept. He wanted to
of coffee. Dirty dishes stacked high greeted wake her up. She’s always so fun to talk to.
him as they always did in his grey time. A
note from his wife sat by the pile: “Wash The daily parade to the kitchen was
these, please!” He ignored it. His coffee made more pleasant by the sudden urge to
machine groaned to life and spat out a conquer the dish pit. An expected, though
steaming smelly drink. He sat slow and over-due, burst of strength and speed
started his work for the day. It was exhaust- made quick work of the task. He listened to
ing just opening the laptop. It was exhaust- a podcast and let the coffee machine heat
ing drinking the coffee. He powered ahead, up while he scrubbed and rinsed the dirtied
making sure that he achieved the bare min- cutlery. He hummed a song to himself and
imum. Perhaps some rest will do me good. took note of the Cinderella-y feeling. He
Another day done. His mind was asleep be- made sure not to take this for granted, as it
fore his head hit the pillow. He was asleep was all part of his temperament. He kissed
before his wife came home, and after she his wife on her way out and gave her a
left for work. thermos of liquid love. The coffee breathed
even more life into him, and he completed
He awoke before the sun. Even the birds his work early. He spent the remainder of
were asleep. He felt well rested, ready to his hours creating, in whatever medium
start the day. He looked around, to find his gave him the most glee. When his wife re-
cat was awake. Her tail swishing, as though turned home, he loved her until her stamina
her patience ran thin. He threw off the expired and she retired. Why would anyone

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take these? He thought, turning a pill bottle being himself. He peered into his subcon-
in his hands before setting it down. Though scious, trying to find a reason for this dis-
he woke up before the sun, he went to bed comfort, or a way to stop it. Alas, he peered
past midnight, as would be his custom for too far. His brain careened without brakes
the coming few weeks. into a freefall. Skin crawling, heart breaking
and rebreaking with a speed that eluded
He awoke feeling giddy, but without any the mortals. A piercing ringing in both ears,
joy. A wheezy screamy jittery giddy that and an emphatic auditory hallucination bar-
cried and laughed in the same breath. He gaining with him to open the window and
hadn’t been sleeping much, but he hadn’t jump. Stupid boy, JUMP! He slid open the
noticed. He had energy and that’s all he window with impulsive fervor and his wife
knew. But now there was no positivity awoke. She yelled, diving at him and wres-
backing it up. No sun in the sky, he looked tling him to safety. They both wept.
through his window, into the dark quiet of
the city before it wakes up. His sleeping None of this was uncommon. It was all
wife’s face wordlessly tormented him for part of his perennial undulation.

About the Author

Preston Canavan studies creative writing at Full Sail University.
In his spare time, he plays trumpet, piano and electric bass.
He performs standup and jazz music at Orlando open mics
weekly. Follow him on Instagram @PrestonCanavan

71

RUNNING WITH
THE WOLVES

by Kylie McKenzie

I picked at the flecks of dirt beneath my that the skirmish had separated us, it would
fingernails as the rain outside turned from be instant death to run into a pack alone.
a downpour to a soft pitter-patter outside
the cave. With my assault rifle holstered Frederick would be heavily displeased
against my back, I pushed off the wall and with me for not staying put if he was even
adjusted my army fatigues, before check- still searching for me. Lyra and Kate had been
ing the double knotted laces on my boots. silent since we lost track of them, leaving
“This is Cat-005 of Blue Team, does anyone little hope that was much left of them to be
copy?” found.

There was no response, not even a gar- I moved quickly through the trees,
bled static, over the radio. I ran a hand hoping to find some indication of which di-
through my short red hair anxiously. rection would take me back to the base as
I kept my head low. If I was lucky, the mud
Frederick and Jefferson had warned me caking my clothes would mask my scent
to stay put once they realized we’d been from any predators lurking nearby.
separated in the dense woods, our signals
struggling to reach each other. It was as the darkness began to fall that
I heard a shrill howl pierce the quiet night.
I had lost hope that they would find me It was close, too close, and I knew it was
hours ago, and I wouldn’t blame them if me they had caught onto as I heard the ap-
they had given up the search. I poked my proach of more than one beast.
head outside the cave and sniffed the air.
Damp, earthy, but the stench of dog wasn’t I took off in a sprint as I heart snarling
carried on the wind. Without the use of my not too far behind me. Branches whipped
radio, I would have to rely more heavily on me in the face as I tore through the dark,
my senses. I took a few cautious steps out of stumbling as I went. I gave in to the pure
the cave, my awareness of my sense height- terror in my bones, allowing it to carry me
ened. It had been one thing to run into a faster and faster, until everything around
few stray wolves with my team, but now me was a blur.

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I must have run a mile by the time my the river. I had not yet reached four feet in
breathing had become ragged, and I’d for- height, and the water would quickly cover
gotten what exactly I was running from, my head. The sound of the wolves ap-
giving in to the most primal sense in me, proaching helped me to make my decision,
focusing solely on survival. and there was a cry from behind me as I
plunged into the water.
They were wolves. This was my only
thought as I crept through the dark wood. However, I had miscalculated, and the
Wolves would tear you to pieces, rip the water moved much faster than I had antic-
flesh off your bones, and leave you to bleed ipated. I was quickly pulled under the sur-
in the cold. This was what I told myself face, and I struggled to reach the top for air.
every time I ran from them. I had been left
in agony many times because of the wolves, Fighting. I was always fighting. Fighting
and I would always run from them as if my for my life, and my place in this world. Did I
life depended on it. even have one? I began to contemplate the
idea that there really was not a place for me,
They stormed after me, barreling that I was meant to be abandoned by the
through the woods and trampling the twigs wolves and left to drown.
and roots beneath them in pursuit of me.
They howled after me, as if their shrieking A hand shot through the water and
would draw me back to them. yanked me onto the bank just as I was be-
ginning to accept my fate, and I shouted as
I knew better than that though. Wolves I was slung over a sturdy shoulder.
only cared about their pack, and they would
leave you writhing in pain to care for their “No!” I screamed, “I won’t be abandoned
own. I had enough bruises from the wolves again!” I shrieked, trying to squirm of out
to prove it. I stumbled over a loose root, the strong grip that held me in place. I
and a sharp yelp left my lips as I felt pain could barely make out the child services van
shoot through my ankle. through my tears and the blinding red and
blue flashing lights.
The wolves were catching up to me at an
alarming rate, and to lose their trail, I began There was shouting all around me, but
to crawl through the dirt and the brush, it may as well have been the growls of ani-
hoping to escape their notice. mals as far as I was concerned.

Tears pricked my eyes as thorns tore I won’t go. I won’t. I-
through my skin, and I choked down a sob.
It was an effort now to even crawl. I noticed The resounding bang that blasted
a dip in the earth in front of me, and a song through the forest woke me from my terror
of flowing water. I realized that the land induced hallucinations. I had been on the
sloped downward to a rushing river below ground, screaming as one of the animals
and slid down the slab of dirt and rocks until had been tearing at my armored shoulder.
I sat at the water’s edge. There would be bruising for sure, and
maybe worse damage if the wolf didn’t now
The white noise provided by the water lay beside me in a pool of its own blood, a
rushing downstream covered the labored gaping hole in its neck. I barely registered
panting that left my mouth as I contem- Lyra hauling me to my feet, until Frederick
plated if I was strong enough to swim across spoke.

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“What happened to staying in the cave?” Frederick rolled his eyes and clapped a
he chided. hand against my shoulder. I took one last
look at the wolf, before following them
I took a deep gulp of air, centering my- through the woods. I had made a calculated
self as I met his tea green eyes. “That was choice, and it had been a mistake, I realized.
hours ago,” I said. “I didn’t think you were My pack was here, and they wouldn’t be
still coming.” leaving without me.

About the Author

Kylie McKenzie is a creative writing student at Full Sail
University. In her spare time, she trains in Krav Maga and
firearms defense tactics. She spent eight years studying
martial arts and enjoys military-style fiction. Kylie enjoys
riding short-board, painting, and music.

74

THE PRICE FOR
GREEN

by Lane Goble

In an empty colorless theatre, a man in a stage, putting on a show in front of a larger,
black plague doctor mask, who we will call imaginary audience. Painting his new canvas
The Doctor, enters the stage. There is a paint- with flair and energy, mixing his paint more
er’s canvas and a stool, with an empty field ostentatiously. The show stops. He motions
of seats behind them. The Doctor sits in the to remove his mask, until the front doors
stool with a newspaper in hand and reads. swing open.

The front doors of the theatre open, A tall man in a green, human-like, mask
three individuals dressed in similar mono- walks in-between the seats to the stage. He
chromatic suits as The Doctor enter. They extends a piece of paper to The Doctor.
take their seats.
He kneels on the stage to meet the tall
The black masked painter notices and man at his eye level, takes the paper and
prepares his supplies. A single vile of black reads. Skimming the papers and signing it,
paint, another vile of white paint, a tray, he returns the paper.
and three different sized paintbrushes.
With preparation completed, he paints. The The green masked man exits the theatre.
stokes flow effortlessly. There are momen-
tary pauses during his showcase looking at The next day, The Doctor prepares for
the crowd, seeing only three people remain the next show. He grabs his newspaper and
throughout the duration. sits on the stool. On the front page there is
an article advertising The Doctors’ show. As
The painting is completed. The Doctor the newspaper hits the floor, half the seats
stands and bows to his crowd of three, they in the theatre are being occupied. The the-
applaud, then leave. The art is picked up atre now with many different colors from
by the painter and moved into a room with each of the patrons’ different suits. Yellow,
hundreds of pieces of art. Some paintings red, blue, and purple to name a few. The
simpler, some more extravagant. black masked man turns to begin.

The Doctor takes the stage once more, Behind the canvas, on the stage, the green
looking at the seats. He moves about the masked man from yesterday was sitting.

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Adelaide Literary Magazine

The Doctor paints with passion, never The Doctor enters the painting room and
glancing back, pure focus. Line after line until is wrestled into a chair by two well-dressed
the painting is finished. He spins around to masked men. His arms and legs strapped to
see three individuals exit the theatre, the the chair as the two men stand behind. Across
only three that showed up yesterday. Turning the room, the green masked man stands with
back to look at his painting, the canvas was another person who is obscured by a curtain.
decorated with yellow, red, blue, and purple.
No longer black and white. This canvas was The curtain falls, and behind it, a man
set aside, the audience still waiting for some- with a white plague doctor mask with a
thing to latch on to. The Doctor switches colorful suit of similar make to that of The
back to black and white paint he didn’t know Doctors’. The Doppelgangers’ movements
was replaced and paints. resemble The Doctor’s, during his imaginary
performance.
“Boo’s” echo in the theatre. Tomatoes
are thrown at The Doctor and the audience The Doctor fails to break his binds.
leaves. His black suit is covered in red.
The Doppelganger takes the stage in front
The green masked man shakes his head of a full audience. Painting and performing,
in dismay. He enters the room of paintings the theatre filled with thunderous applause.
and locks the door behind him.
The hopeless painter watches in his chair,
The next day, the tired artist takes his seeing the three patrons who left yesterday
newspaper to his stool. The headline reads had returned wearing colorful suits. He felt
“The Doctor takes a new look, in this event a cold sensation run across his neck, fol-
of the ages.” The door to the painting room lowed by warmth. Looking down, his black
is open and the green masked man is no- suit now covered in red.
where to be seen.
The white masked painter showered in
confetti and praise, forgets The Doctor.

About the Author

Lane Goble was born in Kentucky. He spends his time
writing stories and writing for his Dungeons and Dragons
campaign.

76

SHIVER

by Ben Shahon

I don’t remember where or when it was Why did Harry want me to come out
that I first met Alex. As far back as I can here, today? It’s cold as balls, like every Feb-
remember, she and I have been close. Her ruary day in Montana, but on top of that the
mom, Patricia, and my mom, Sue, had snow seems to be actively trying to screw
known each other from something back in us over today. The cold is sinking into my
the day, and when Patricia told my mom bones as I wait outside my house for him to
she was moving back to Archville, my mom, come by and pick me up.
as far as I know, instantly decided to move
home, too. This would have probably been Harry pulls around in his beat-up old
when I was two or three years old, we think, Chevy. He’s got one of those little two-seater
but time seems to move differently here. It trucks, the kind where it’s got two doors on
honestly feels like I was born here. either side so you can slide junk behind the
seats, and there’s a topper on the back that
I do remember, however, that Alex and makes it look like the least functional sta-
I hadn’t really gotten along all that well tion wagon of all time. The tinted windows
at first. I showed up for our first playdate do not help. He honks the horn as he drives
wearing a Dora the Explorer t-shirt, and up, and rolls down the window so we can
Alex already had some choice words, greet each other. I jog down from the porch,
get in the passenger seat, and wait for him
“Dora’s for babies.” to drive us off.

I tried to protest a little, but it was no use. “Hey, look what I snagged.”
I knew it was true. I tried to hide how I felt
by taking off my shirt and turning it inside “What?”
out, but that just freaked Alex out. She kept
saying that I looked weird, and she started “Look in the glovebox.”
crying. After Patricia was able to calm her
down, Alex and I played together the rest I open it up and pull out the only object
of the time the adults were doing whatever inside. It’s a short, flat bottle of brown glass,
it is they do during a kids’ playdate. Alex with a tropical scene painted on the front.
called me Weird Baby the rest of that after- The label says, “Made in Jamaica.”
noon, and for a time after that.
“Where’d you…? How..?”
*
“I snagged it from my parents’ liquor cab-
inet on the way out of the door. It was all
the way in the back. They won’t miss it.”

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I turn the rum over in my hand, exam- underneath, I can’t think of anything else
ining the round smoothness of the bottle. I more lovely than her. I hope to God she
crack open the lid and take a sniff. The smell doesn’t catch me staring, but in reality, I
is funky and sweet, reminding me of the ba- don’t care, because looking at her in this
nanas my parents often leave in the kitchen moment is wholly worth it.
for me and my siblings to eat for breakfast.
The alcohol cuts through it, though, clear “So, should I break out the booze now?”
and strong. Harry can smell it, too.
“Yeah,” I say. “I don’t think anyone will
“Hey, put that thing away,” he says. “Do find us here.”
you realize how much trouble we’ll be in if
someone sees us with that before we leave She takes a tepid sip from the bottle and
town?” hands it over to me. I take a harder pull, and
I feel it burn the back of my throat slightly as
“Before we leave town?” I swallow. I burp, and she calls me banana
breath.
“Shit. I didn’t mean to spoil the surprise.”
“It’s really too bad we won’t get to do this
“Where are we going, Harry?” anymore, soon.”

He turns to me with a loving smirk, “What do you mean?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
“Well,” I say, “You’re leaving…”
*
Alex just got word of a cross-country
I pull into a clearing off a side road no one running scholarship to a school in Florida a
ever goes down. I have to get out and open few days ago. Unlike her, I didn’t apply any-
the gate, letting the frigid Montana air into where at all. My grades were too bad, and
the cabin of the truck. I see Alex shiver, and I never really understood anything in any
as I step to the blockade, I mutter a small math class since middle school. Besides, my
prayer to no one in particular. I need Alex to parents had the service station to take care
like this spot. It means a lot to me; it’s been of, and like Dad always said, “It’s a living.”
a refuge for me ever since I found it a cou-
ple of years back. It’s this long, wide break She shifts uncomfortably in her seat, be-
in the treeline, with the forest running in fore taking another drink from the bottle.
parallel on either side of this hundred-yard This time, it’s more in line with the shot I
chasm, all the way to either horizon. And took.
on a day like today, it’s all covered in a thick,
snowy slush. “You know,” she says, “Different regions
are supposed to have different kinds of rum.
“Wow.” She says. Like, I was reading, and apparently in Florida
they drink Cuban rum, which doesn’t taste
‘Yeah, wow.” so much like bananas. That’s probably be-
cause they make it out of—”
Alex really does look great today. He
brick-red hair falls on her shoulders in the “I like the bananas.”
lightest suggestion of a curl, her brown
eyes surveying the endless majesty out- “Me too. Of course, I do too. Just, it’s
side my windshield. But, as she sheds her kinda cool there’s more than just bananas
coat to reveal a simple plaid, green flannel out there, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so…”

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* He really is looking for something, some
sign, some moment that means I won’t
Harry has this really weird look on his face forget him, that he won’t be left behind
right now. I can’t quite tell what’s going here in Archville to die sad and alone, while
through his head, but I can tell that it isn’t I move away and join the real world.
good. He doesn’t usually seem so closed
off and distant. We’ve been friends a long So, I lean over, and I kiss him.
time, and usually when you know someone
this long you can tell what their thinking at Harry isn’t ready for that. He recoils a
any given moment, to a certain extent. But little at first, clearly surprised and trying to
right now, Harry is a blank page, and I can’t show some sense of dignity, but quickly he
read him at all. kisses me back, and I can feel the rush of his
repressed desire coming forth all at once.
“Hey, man is something up?” The tidal wave threatens to overwhelm me,
as though this is something that he has
Harry kind of shakes his head, almost like been thinking deeply and intensely about
he had been underwater and just come up for a long time. Part of me wants to stop, to
for air. His eyes bug out in the way you only check in, to make sure that he’s alright, but
see when someone gets woken up suddenly part of me recognizes that it’s maybe the
from a deep sleep, the kind where your only thing making him feel o.k. right now.
dreams and your reality seem to blend into So, I keep kissing him.
one all at once. But Harry wasn’t dreaming;
he was just sitting here in the car, having a After a bit he pulls away for real.
drink, talking to me.
“So, the clearing’s nice and all, but it isn’t
“I’m… I’m scared Alex.” what I really came out here to show you.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” He opens the door and hops out of the
truck. I look at him in confusion, like I just
I had a feeling this was coming. Harry kissed you and you have not a damn thing
and I, we don’t really have any other friends. to say about it? Nothing?
I mean, the town only has a population of
a couple of hundred, and our graduating I step out of my door, too.
class has a whole whopping 10 students
in it. Most of the rest of them thought we *
were weird, since we were the only guy and
girl who weren’t dating each other. Not that I knew it! I can’t believe it was so hard for
either of us have any aversion to the idea me to figure out! I knew that Alex must love
of dating in general or anything. We were me, too! I can’t contain how happy I feel
just old friends, and neither of us were each for her, for me, for us! The future doesn’t
other’s type. We agreed the whole thing have to be just sitting around my dad’s gas
was a little silly a long time ago. station, thinking forever about what might
have been. No, I can be with Alex! I can be
But… the long distance boyfriend. I can be the fi-
ancé who comes into town every couple of
I can see the look in Harry’s eyes right months and rocks her world for a few days.
now. It’s the same look I’ve seen Derek give We can finally settle into the rhythm of be-
Charnice a hundred times. Or any of the ing a team forever, just like we always have!
other guys in our class give their girlfriends.

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I am so excited by the kiss that I hop damp on the edge facing us, and the in-
out the truck. There’s something special I creasing wild wind pushes a few rose petals
cooked up for just this occasion in the back off the bed and into the snow at our feet.
of the truck. I know this isn’t romantic in
the way they teach you in Shakespeare or *
whatever, but most of those idiots end up
dying anyways. Alex and I are going to live! “I—”
And we’re going to be happy!
“Alex, I know this is a big change for us.
* But now is the time for big changes. You’re
moving to Florida! We’re a couple! And now,
I walk around the side of the truck to the we’ll have sex, too. It’s just the way to cel-
back, where Harry is waiting, his key in ebrate.”
the lock that lifts the window and lowers
the gate. He looks like a nervous puppy, all “Harry, I didn’t kiss you because I want to
shaking from the snowflakes accumulating be your girlfriend.”
on his ungloved hands, his breath coming
forth in quick, excitable bursts. He is prac- “Then…what was that?”
tically bouncing on his toes by the time I
make it to the back. “You looked…lonely. I just thought…I just
thought that it might be one way for you
“Harry, what’s this about?” to feel like we were more connected you
know? Because six months from now, we’re
“Alex, this afternoon has already been not going to be seeing each other every day
incredibly special. It’s something I think I’m anymore.”
going to remember for the rest of my life.”
I try to grab Alex’s hand, to hold it in
“Harry—” some kind of a way that will make her feel
safe, secure, like this is the right way for our
“Shh. Don’t say anything yet. Just take a lives to go, but she pulls away quickly. I try
look, first.” again, and she asks me what the hell my
deal is, and I try to tell her that I just want
And he opens the gate. to be a couple, just to go back to a couple of
minutes ago when we were kissing and we
The back has been completely made were happy, and she tells me to get away
to look like a teenage boy’s idea of a hon- from her. I ask her to at least be reasonable,
eymoon suite. An air mattress, the bat- to let me give her a ride back into town, and
tery-powered pump still running in the she tells me no, she’d rather hike the three
corner, takes up the majority of the space. miles herself. And then she turned and ran.
It’s dressed with garish pink sheets with
little hearts all over them, and the roof is *
lined with Christmas lights, which Harry
flicks on by turning a little knob. There’s a I can’t get away fast enough. I don’t know
wireless speaker in the back, near the over- where any of this is coming from. I get that
sized “I,” “<3,” and “U” pillows, and it seems he clearly has had some feelings for me for
to be playing an early 2000’s pop rock slow a lot longer than I previously realized, but
jam. The snow begins coming down at an who builds a sex dungeon in the back of their
angle, making the air mattress get a little truck? I would die before I got into that thing
with anyone, let alone with little Weird Baby.

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I am in a full sprint before I can even re- going to happen? I was going so fast—too
alize how far away from town I am. fucking fast—oh fuck that’s a lot of blood
fuck.
*
I throw up as Alex shrieks in pain. “What
When Alex takes off, I run back around and the hell’re you doing?” she says. “Are you
hop into the driver’s seat. I have to catch trying to kill me?” As lightheaded as I am, I
her. I just have to, to convince her that this start to recognize what she means. This is
is crazy, that there’s no way she’ll make it the kind of thing that could end her career
back into town safely in time, that she’ll as a runner, could keep her here in Montana
die of hypothermia long before she makes forever, to not get to go out and experience
it to any kind of building, or even into cell the world, something she was clearly looking
service to call someone and get a ride. The forward to doing. “My leg is fucking wrecked.
whole thing is so stupid. Stupid Harry! Get me in the truck, moron! I need a hos-
pital, now!” My head continues to spin, and
I try to start the engine, but it stalls out I see that her leg is Z-shaped at this point. I
the first couple of times I try. I check the try to straighten her femur and she starts to
gearshift, and notice that I accidentally left strangle me to stop me from touching her
it in second gear. But resetting it seems to leg. I let up and so does she. “You need to get
make little difference. It’s the battery. I grab me into the truck, not solve this yourself. Put
my portable jumper from behind her seat me in the bed.” I point to the little blur in the
and run around to fix the engine. distance, signaling that the mattress is long
gone, and she just sighs. “Then put me in the
Positive to negative, negative to ground. seat. We. Need. To. Go. Now!” I do as she
Battery pack on. Back in the car, I turn the says, and rush to get back on the highway.
ignition again another few times, only for it This time, we break straight through the gate,
to stall out. Alex is dozens of yards away by sending splinters everywhere.
now. Eventually the engine catches. I floor
it, spinning my wheel enough to spend the *
truck 180ing around, flinging the air mat-
tress out behind me. I watch it start to I’m losing a lot of blood… have to stay awake…
fade in the rear-view mirror as I get up to
speed. Her door slams shut, so I open mine, *
keeping it open with my left leg as I drive to
catch up to her. Alex starts to moan a lot as I pull back onto
the road. “A few minutes!” I shout at her.
I go too fast, and a little too close, and “You gotta stay awake for a few minutes.”
the back door clips her femur.
A loud honk blares in my face as I notice
* a pair of headlights coming straight at me.
Noticing the road, I see that I’ve drifted to
Motherfucker! I swear, I’m going to kill him! the opposite lane of traffic. I swerve back
to my space, in time to notice that we just
* played a game of chicken with an 18 wheeler.
I see flashes of light behind me, first yellow,
Oh shit oh shit oh shit! Alex is bleeding out then red and blue. I keep picking up speed
in the snow. Fuck me. I can’t believe I let as a squad car pulls into the left lane.
the back door hit her. What did I think was

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“ARCHVILLE P.D. PULL OVER.” Beside the door is a table, and on that table
sits a large postal package, with a comically
I have no intention to do so, especially oversized teddy bear peeking his small,
when the girl I love is bleeding out in the black nose out of it. My bedside table has a
passenger seat. get well soon card, tasteful and simple,
with wild pink roses, yellow pansies, and
“THIS IS NOT A WARNING, SON. PULL red poppies. It seems to have been signed
OVER NOW.” by everyone in Archville, save for one glar-
ing exception. It’s postmarked from April,
Neither the officer nor I notice the snow- and one of the messages is about him, ask-
plow coming through on his lane. The two ing where, and if I could give a call to the
ram head-on, and I hear the crunch of metal sheriff’s office when I feel ready to talk
on metal scrape and twist as the cars crash. about what happened. I don’t know exactly
I keep driving until we make it into town. what that is, and I’m not entirely sure I
want to even if I did. I put the card down
* and look over to my mom, napping in the
chair by the window, having fallen asleep
I awake in a hospital bed, my whole leg watching the evening news on the televi-
straightened and wrapped in a cast elevat- sion. I watch long enough to see that it is
ed above my bed. My left arm is hooked up now June, and the weather forecast for the
to an IV, and my right one is hooked up to next day is sunny and sixty degrees.
some other kind of machine I can’t identify.
The door is closed; I have a private room.

About the Author

Ben Shahon is a writer whose work has appeared in
Stonecrop Magazine and Free Library of the Internet Void.
He is a candidate in Emerson College’s MFA Program in
Fiction, and holds BA’s in Philosophy and Creative Writing
from ASU. Ben currently lives outside Boston.

82

IN THE LIFE OF A
SLEEPWALKER

by Paulette Carter

I woke up in a cold sweat. I realized that my to take off his trench coat soon- I discover
husband is not beside me in our bed. I come what my husband does when he sleepwalks.
to and realize that my husband must be I finally get to see it in live time. I see my
sleepwalking. The weirdest thing is my hus- husband’s frontal portion of his body for
band never slams our bedroom door when the first time tonight. I notice he is sporting
he would sleepwalk in the past. I put on my a women’s wig and women’s clothing. I con-
shoes and walk out the bedroom door. I clude that my husband is a drag queen pros-
see my husband walking out the front door. titute when he sleepwalks. I’m in complete
I thought to myself, “I wonder where my and utter shock this -sight of him makes me
husband goes when he engages in sleep- want to help my husband through his sleep-
walking.” I don’t know, but I am going to walker chronic disorder. I am running to-
find out. So, I decided to follow my husband. wards my husband before I could reach him.
He’s walking on foot to his destination, so I My husband gets in the car with a stranger.
decided to take the same action since I’m I hopped in a taxi and tell, the taxi driver to
following him. I noticed that my husband “Follow the car that my husband is in.” We
is wearing a different attire from his sleep are keeping up with the vehicle that has my
attire. He is wearing a trench coat, platform husband in, not losing sight of the vehicle
shoes like they wore in the ‘70s, and a wig. for a moment. We all arrive at the hotel. I
What is he wearing? I asked myself. I con- ended up getting held up with the taxi driv-
tinue to follow my husband on foot, and we er. As I’m wrapping things up with the taxi
arrived at the destination. We stopped on driver, my husband and the stranger are
20th and Main, which is not a good part of already in their hotel room. I finished pay-
town. It’s filled with questionable charac- ing the taxi driver for the ride. I rushed up
ter people this- isn’t a good place for us to the stairs of the hotel. I noticed things have,
be roaming around at nighttime. I watched escalated quickly between my husband and
from afar. My husband is on the corner of the stranger as I watched through the hotel
20th and Main. I’m still trying to figure out window. There was a crack in between the
what’s going on?. My husband. Proceeded curtains, so I was able to see in the room.

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I am peeping through the window. I saw house. I snap myself back into reality and
my husband tied up, being tortured and muster up the confidence to knock on the
taunted. I couldn’t believe what I was wit- hotel room door. Knock, Knock! The sound
nessing with my own eyes. I can’t imagine echoes through the hall of the hotel.
the pain and anguish my husband must be
feeling at this moment. I came to my sens- The stranger says, “Who is it?”
es and realized that my husband is still in
his sleepwalker daze, so he’s not feeling any I replied, “Housekeeping.”
pain at the moment but, once he wakes
up, he will. So, I begin to hatch a plan in my The stranger cracked the door open, so I
head to rescue my husband and attempt to can barely see the events taking place in the
wake him up. I sneak into the housekeeping room. On instinct and impulse, I thrust the
dressing room to find one of their uniforms housekeeping cart straight into the door be-
to put on. I found the one that I was look- fore the stranger had a chance to reply or
ing for, which- is the housekeeping uniform close the door in my face. The stranger falls
I can wear to rescue my husband. As I get back on the bed to bounce off the bed onto
dressed, I couldn’t help but think, how did the floor. I look at my husband and, I can tell
we get here? To this place with these cir- he has no idea what’s going on. I begin to
cumstances. I’m done- with putting on the untie my husband’s hands. While com-
housekeeping disguise. I’m ready to rescue pleting this task, my husband’s pupils were
my husband as I make my way to the room dilated. That’s how his eyes look when he is
where my husband is, being held captive. I sleepwalking. I finished untying my husband
make sure to grab a housekeeping cart to before I could lift him. There was a POW! I
complete my disguise, to make it even more fell on the floor of the hotel room I am shot.
believable. I’m slowly approaching the ho- I hear the stranger fleeing the scene out of
tel room because I am nervous and scared. fear of getting caught. The tragedy of me
I get a grip on myself because I know what getting shot, my husband snaps out of his
I must do. I have to build the courage up sleepwalker mode and immediately aids me
to stand up and fight against the odds. Fi- with cuddling, crying, kisses, and apologies.
nally, I have reached the door of the hotel I go unconscious. Beep, Beep! My alarm
room I, read room number 32. I can already goes off on my watch. I tell my support
envision myself saving my husband and us group, thank you for allowing me to share
getting out of here. Going home to our cozy my story. My husband and I have an ap-
pointment with the sleep therapist.

About the Author
Paulette Carter is a student at Full Sail University, studying
Creative Writing to further her career as an inspiring writer.

84

NONFICTION



ISOLATION

by Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar

At 10:00 a.m., the tiny Alaskan village still deliver comfort, but I have only her two cats
sleeps in this unrelenting daylight. Not one to keep me company. Normally sweet pets,
walker crosses my path on my trek to the they are rattled from the long journey and
black-sanded beach; a hulking dog, wolf- unaccustomed to their new surroundings.
like and menacing, watches me approach. Thank goodness I brought my Kindle—at
Thankfully, likely weak from hunger, it can’t least I can read.
be bothered to lunge toward me.
I feel entirely cut off from civilization.
It’s not supposed to be like this. I trav- Though I have traversed many foreign soils
eled here with my daughter, a recently hired in the last two decades, nowhere has felt
elementary teacher in the village’s single so strange or far from home, even though
school, to help her settle into her new rural I remain in America. This might as well be
life. Flying in the eight-seater airplane over- another planet.
looking the lush greenery and wilderness
below, I experienced a twinge of jealousy for With nothing else to do, I keep walking.
her adventure. Imagine being a 21-year-old The utter quiet adds to the desolation of
college graduate leaving everything behind this land. A gentle yet chilling breeze whis-
to teach disadvantaged children in a village pers softly, competing only with the subtle
with only 400 people and one store! I ex- groan of distant machinery, the swish of
pected my few nights here to be filled with my blowing hair kissing my shoulders, and
unpacking her few possessions, playing card a lone bird’s cheerful trill.
games, and likely spilling some tears as we
thought about how far from home my only Joyless, unlike this native songstress, I
child would be. stare out at the craggy, porous rocks from
which reedy green clumps sprout intermit-
Shortly after we arrived, though, we tently. The longer grass sways placidly, at-
learned she was attending teacher training tempting to lull me with its heartless melody.
the next morning in the neighboring village A miniscule, unfamiliar insect tickles my
a plane ride away, where she will remain hand; irritated, I squish it mercilessly.
until my departure. Not only was I ill-pre-
pared for saying goodbye so soon, but I Corpses of giant, rusted pipes litter the
am now stuck here for the next three days other side of the beach, carelessly thrust
without my daughter, the internet, televi- aside after becoming defunct, marring the
sion, music, or wine. Each of these would pristine landscape. Yet, where else can
they go? Like beached, dead whales, they

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are too immense to move and may rest for bitter, bone-chilling cold will permeate the
eternity, their metal flakes leeching into the air, seeping into and hardening the ground
dark, rippling water. as well as the residents.

Crunching across the grainy terrain, my Despite the calm, despite nature’s maj-
shoes kick away smashed shells and pieces esty, I have never felt so alone, wanting
of broken bottles, which the lapping strait to go home now, back to Pennsylvania’s
has taken and reinvented into opaque, warmth, trees, and people. Realizing only
multi-hued sea glass. Though I’ve heard of now that I haven’t seen any trees here, I
the beauty of this trash-made-treasure, I miss the familiarity. Bring me back to my
remain uncaptivated by the sharp, jagged comfort zone and away from this savage,
edges, picking up no souvenirs. The pearles- lonely environment.
cent sheen of a shell attracts my eye, but it’s
merely a shard of its former glory. There are more boulders on this small
strip of beach than human beings in the en-
Clouds hang low, skimming looming tire village. Walking away, I trip and barely
blue mountaintops. Shivering in my thin catch myself from falling, thwarting the
jacket although it is only August, I cannot land’s cruelty and escaping, for now, un-
fathom Alaska’s brutal winter, when the scathed.

About the Author

Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar is an associate professor
teaching first-year writing at Bloomsburg University
of Pennsylvania. A former secondary English teacher
in Delaware public schools, she received her Ed.D. in
Educational Leadership with a Literacy Specialization from
the University of Delaware. Her research studies and
practitioner articles have appeared in diverse educational
publications such as Inside Higher Ed, Edutopia, Faculty
Focus, Modern English Teacher, and The Teaching Professor.
After many years as a writing educator and researcher, she is searching to rediscover her
voice as a fiction writer. She is beginning an MFA program in creative writing to work toward
this dream.

88

THIS WINTER

by Bridget Kiley

I never wore socks before quarantine, but Now every weekend is spent in our New
now I seem to always be in need of them Jersey apartment. We picked it for the cheap
– digging to the bottom of drawers to find rent and access to the city, but also with the
a match, looking through dirty laundry – expectation that we wouldn’t actually be
sniffing out more socks. spending much time here. The pandemic
changed that, and now we’re learning what
The cool tile in the kitchen pricks my it means to be New Jersyites, something we
feet. The wood floors in the dining room didn’t think we’d have to face. I look out the
are even chillier where my laptop sits at a window over a land of sparkling suburban
table that’s no longer used for dining. Now, homes and it becomes even more apparent
I preemptively put on socks when I wake up that this life isn’t for me. But it never used
and it makes the days a little quieter as I to matter as much because I had New York
glide almost undetected across my apart- – I had her every weekday and most week-
ment, flitting in and out as if not really there. ends and Jersey was just a place to sleep.
It’s completely different from my pre-Covid
worklife when everything felt urgent and I wake up on a Saturday in January and
loud, like the doors to the bus slamming look at my phone for an hour in bed. I walk
behind me and the sound of my heels on into the living room and turn on American’s
the subway platform as I ran to catch a train. Test Kitchen, my favorite show, and drink my
second cup of coffee. I notice that my feet
Before the pandemic, I used to wear are cold but I ignore it. By eleven o’clock, my
a lot of tights, stockings, or bare legs, but feet are even colder as I’ve gotten up twice
rarely socks. In winter my uniform was to go to the bathroom during commercial
loose dresses and mat black tights. When breaks. By eleven-thirty, I succumb. I have
I wore socks, I’d wear black ones, usually no plans today. I put on socks.
stolen from my husband because it was in-
frequent enough that I didn’t need my own. It strikes me that I never used to be
On weekends, I was fine with bare feet; slip- home long enough to wear socks. In be-
ping from the bedroom to the kitchen in the tween commuting to Manhattan, I had
morning to brew coffee, getting back in bed brunches, nail appointments, yoga classes,
with said coffee, and waiting until eleven or birthday celebrations, or traveling home to
twelve for my weekend plans to commence, Vermont. What used to feel normal, I now
which would sometimes involve socks, but realize was fleeting.
just as often not.

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My mom calls. She wants me to put her frumpy old socks that I don’t even like and
on speakerphone so my husband can hear, I’m haunting an apartment I never wanted
too. to live in.

The socks you sent me for Christmas are I wake up late on a Monday. It’s 8:45 am
my new favorite pair. She says. and I need to turn my laptop on and log into
the VPN by 9 am. I drag myself to the kitchen
They hit just above the ankle but not too table where I keep my laptop, notebook,
high. And I love the way the pink flowers and i-Pad. I power everything up and close
look rolled up over black leggings. She says. my eyes as I wait for the day to load. Slowly,
things start to chime: Outlook, Gmail,
Maybe I should get a pair. I say. Jabber, Slack, Microsoft Teams, all the bull-
shit. I keep my eyes closed, not wanting an-
When I hear myself say it, I immediately other day to begin, but the noises of
recoil. Since when did I get excited at the Monday grate in my ears. I open my eyes
prospect of new socks? I understood why and start to click through new emails. The
my family did. They had to endure tough coffee maker dings and I excitedly get up
Vermont winters and spent Saturdays hiking from my chair and pour myself a cup. Back
rather than brunching. I hadn’t needed at the dining room table, my hands are
a warm pair of L.L. Bean socks since high warm around the mug. The weather out-
school. Before the pandemic, when I would side is snowy for the first time this winter. A
go to Vermont, I’d bring my three pairs of gray, Jersey sky hangs overhead. Even
wool socks that I only pulled out a few times though I know how cold and disastrous the
a year for this occasion. I’d wear them the weather is outside and how warm and quiet
entire time, and when I returned home, things are in here, I’d give anything for a
I’d wash them and place them back at the reason to venture out. I want to stand,
bottom of my drawer. freezing, waiting for my bus – bump into
people and trip my way down the subway
It wasn’t until this winter that I realized stairs. I want to run for the train, a trail of
how much my life has changed. It wasn’t socks burning in my wake.
until I opened my drawer one day and
the darned socks came rolling out that it
became clear: I’m stuck with a bunch of

About the Author

Bridget Kiley is content marketing & social media strategist.
Her professional writing experience is backed by a passion
and deep knowledge of creative writing, for which she
holds an MFA from The New School.

90

FOR THE LAND OF
THE FREE

by Christine Kiefer

I am wrapped up in a map of the United us was surprising, comical almost. The red
States of America. state to the/ north of me said, “Don’t take
our guns, no big government, and nobody
I fall asleep at night picturing the nation. gives a damn what the gays do.”
I have an artsy map of the country hanging
above my bed. I look at it when I lay on the This wasn’t the first time that maps
bed backwards to pet my cats. When I drift made me restless. Anytime I was away from
off to sleep, I see myself, smack dab in the home, when it was time to go to sleep, the
middle of the U.S. of A. imagery began. I was in a bed, in a room,
in a hotel, or a house, in a city, in a state. I
Missouri is tricky. We touch six other saw that place on an old map of the United
states. Just a slight brushing against Ten- States of America, pulled down from a roll
nessee and Oklahoma, in addition to in the ceiling of my childhood classroom.
the obvious ones. Of course, I am aware I would picture me in that place and then
that many people in The United States of look to where my family was at the exact
America can’t find Missouri on a map at all. moment. It was like the maps in magazines
I have no hard feelings about this. I know its on airplanes, where a line is drawn from city
body- its jagged lines, its little “bootheel” at to city. The longer the route from my bed to
the southeast corner, how one could travel my mom’s or my sister’s, or later, my daugh-
along Route 66 and find kitschy historical ter’s, the worse my agitation. How could my
landmarks, like “Gary’s Gay Parita,” where body be this far from the other bodies?
the “gay” is actually a woman’s name, not a
queer person like me. It was later easy for me to keep an anx-
iety map in my head of the gay marriage
For a time, I pictured my body on the states. The long-held American principle of
map straddling Iowa and Missouri. The foot “leaving things to the states” always played
in Iowa is married, the one in Missouri is a role in drinking laws, juvenile justice, the
not. Missouri isn’t exactly progressive, but death penalty, taxes, and whether a person
to have a place like Iowa come to their could ride a motorcycle without a helmet.
senses about same sex marriage before

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On the Martin Luther King bridge from simple, smooth, I-love-you-no-matter-what
St. Louis, my hometown, to Illinois, motor- conversation. My mom does sometimes
cyclists would stop, pull over halfway across quip, “what are the chances that both of
the Mississippi river on the wobbly bridge, my daughters are gay?” I tell her I hear it
and remove their helmets. They sure as shit has something to do with testosterone left
weren’t going to have their rights trampled over in her uterus from also having my four
on for a second more than required. They brothers.
went from the oppression of Missouri to
the “die if you want to” freedom of Illinois Meanwhile, my country, and especially
like they were removing shackles. my state, made my brother, sister, and I
not so sure about being “loved-no-matter-
When I passed over state lines, with a what.” From 1967 to 2015, our Due Process
marriage certificate on the dashboard, we was up for grabs. Especially if our bodies
didn’t pull over to remove our rings. I didn’t were in Missouri.
announce, “Now you are just my girlfriend.”
But I wanted to. Many years ago, I drove towards a road
blocked by people with signs saying, “Mar-
It’s American to travel over state lines riage = One Man + One Woman.” Interesting
for tax perks, cheaper cigarettes, abortions. math. Even the “God hates fags” folks were
The imaginary lines have always ruled us. out in force. There is still a billboard on
People travel to Oregon for the right to Highway 70 with the same message. It’s a
die and dip their toes into Nevada to buy jarring experience, to go along your normal
a brothel blowjob. Breaking polygamy laws day, not thinking about sex or who you
in Utah is now only equivalent to getting a prefer to have sex with, not worrying about
traffic ticket. The sister wives lobbied for love contracts, just keeping the grocery list
the right to have a husband in their bed in your head. Then there are humans taking
every Monday and alternate Fridays. up space to say you’re disgusting.

The polygamists and I have things in While the straight world worried about
common. They only felt married sometimes. me getting married, I was in law school. I
was having have Map of the United States
The Lovings were married in Washington, of America anxiety. Law school was all about
DC, and then not married when their bodies the Feds versus the States, the Commerce
walked into Virginia. On a map, this is such Clause, the Supremacy Clause. All fancy
a short distance. They could take a walk and ways of figuring out what to do with a gov-
go from married to not married and back ernment that was both united and divided.
again. The Supreme Court decided in 1967 To memorize cases, I put them on my imag-
that they were married regardless of the inary map. Little Matchbox cars traveled
placement of their bodies. This was due to across state lines, or a bus of people would
“Due Process” which is a very unromantic travel north, gaining more rights along with
way of saying the right to “life, liberty, and way. I had figurines on my map, yelling “fire”
the pursuit of happiness.” In my mind’s map, from a theater in a state I can’t recall now.
they were birds, flying everywhere with
little baby birds behind them, getting little I understood that we are a United States
bits of liberty from Rhode Island to Arizona. confused about our unity. I sympathized
with my America. Autonomy was sweet
My parents would go on to have two gay when I had it; selfish decision making,
daughters. Coming out to my family was a

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freedom to ruin myself if I so chose was “see my papers” as I entered. I thought I felt
a right I flexed throughout my life. Hell, I a burning in my arm, a brand burnt there.
went without a helmet every chance I got.
But when I got sick, I still called my mom. I came home to a shrinking map. In my
When I was lonely, I still walked into a gay little town, gays got nothing. Ten miles away,
bar looking for my people. we had “domestic partnerships” and em-
ployment and housing protections. When I
My individualism didn’t quite work sat on my porch, I was free game.
when I had a partner, one I let chip away
at my self. I allowed a coming together that My suffocating discomfort grew. In my
felt like being squeezed out of clown car. bedtime map images I was morphing too
She was always chasing me, trying to lasso much, too close to home, and too often, a
me. I’d give in and then she’d say, “but wait, different person when I left the driveway
there’s more.” She was an all or nothing than I was when I arrived at work.
type of arrangement.
It may have been my underlying dis-
I know now that it was a weak, des- gust in these United States, in being only
perate fear that I’d travel my map alone if half-way married, or not even married at
I didn’t acquiesce to her romantic notions all, that drove her away. She said we could
of marriage. I proposed to her in the tradi- take up a fake address in Iowa, which made
tional way of surprise in a romantic setting, me laugh and hurt her feelings.
giving her a diamond, overlooking the river
and the autumn trees. It was at a place in I tried to get a divorce after she left me.
the country where queers weren’t welcome, Funny thing about being “kind of married.”
let alone allowed to tap into our own due No judge will “kind of divorce you.” Mis-
process. souri said we weren’t married at all. Iowa
said we weren’t residents. And so it went,
I was a liar. my due process and me. We were kind of
living, kind of liberated, and just a little bit
We drove four hours north in the bitter pursuing happiness. My map was a blur
cold to get married outside a cabin in Iowa, now. When I traveled, I didn’t see the anx-
in front of a fire. The route on my map iety bedtime map. I wasn’t anywhere, so I
heads straight north and then veers just a wasn’t too far from home.
touch to the west once you get into a state
where license plates read, “Our liberties we My dad called me on June 26, 2015,
prize and our rights we will maintain.” Good the day the Supreme Court came to their
on you, Iowa. senses and used the same logic from 1967.
Same sex marriage suddenly blanketed the
We lit paper lanterns. They all went di- entire United States of America. My mind’s
rectly into a nearby tree and were shredded map tried to be a cool aqua blue sigh of re-
by the limbs. We had a marriage license lief. On that day I was all-the-way married.
that we should have used as kindling in My due process was so glad, I could feel its
that very fire, but my Iowa wife held onto goosebumps all over my body. But I sobbed
it like a prize, all the way into Missouri, a and shook telling my dad, “Now I’m married
symbol to her of love and commitment. To to someone who left me. I don’t get to cel-
me, I thought of being on a train, seeing the ebrate this!” He said it was a huge victory
border of Missouri ahead, being asked to nonetheless and that I should go for a hike
to clear my mind.

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I was officially married to a woman who that mine was the first same-sex divorce in
told our friends I needed medications and Missouri. I imagined my divorce as a walking
a nice long stay in a hospital. She probably piece of paper, pissing all over the state, all
was right about that. Yesterday she was over every Missouri rainbow flag parade. I
not my wife and today she is. I lived in the told my dad I wanted to publicly apologize
United States of America, and nowhere to all the Missouri gays. He said I needed to
could I go to change my marital status. I was move on with my life and how were things
married everywhere. The map became just at the office.
a big blob of gray country, with no states, no
borders, no change in landscape. I had terrible timing, and a lack of
self-awareness to be a good wife, or a good
Thank you, government of The United pseudo-wife. I didn’t get to celebrate what
States of America, for giving me a right I was a huge victory for me and so many
wasn’t born with. Thank you for letting me people I care about. I lived I my country with
be in a love contract with someone who mixed-up, twisted gratitude and resentment.
left me for a younger, prettier woman. I had
gotten over the betrayal, even feeling relief The United States of America is a strange
that she met someone else and left me place, where what we can do, what we get,
alone. I didn’t love her. Truth is, I didn’t like how much we get, when we get it, is decided
her much, even before things went awry. by nine people in black robes. I’m what due
She wanted to fight, and I wanted to pre- process looks like one day and doesn’t look
tend she didn’t exist. I slammed doors when like the day after. I’m living with liberty and
I was with her, I yelled and screamed and happiness, but that’s not because I earned
then sat silent, refusing to apologize. Ours or deserve it; it’s because the right people
was a bad marriage, even when it wasn’t got the law right. And at any time, they can
one. I was a terrible kind-of wife. take it all away. Or at least they can take
it away in Iowa and give it to you in Mis-
I then proceeded to get divorced like souri. Your body is a pin on a map. Where
every other straight person has done in the your body sits, the space you take up in the
history of straight people. I’ve been told world, it’s not yours. It never was.

About the Author

Christine Kiefer is an attorney in the middle of the USA
and currently an MFA candidate in the creative writing
program at Lindenwood University.

94

THE SOWBELLY
TRIO

by James Hanna

My wife, Mary, and I sit on the front porch “Now don’t change the subject,” says
of our Florida home. Mary is feeling nos- Mary. “Remember that two-man band you
talgic, so she asks me a syrupy question. I belonged to thirty years ago? And how you
never feel very comfortable when Mary dragged me to those county fairs, so the
asks me such questions. I am not good at pair of you could perform? Out of all songs
providing the sort of answers women like you and Big Al played, you must surely have
to hear. had a favorite.”

Mary asks me, “What’s your favorite song?” Big Al is the name of a social worker I
knew when we lived in the Hoosier State.
I think for several seconds, and then I A bluegrass aficionado, he liked to play the
shake my head. “Am I supposed to have a banjo, and we eventually formed a two-
favorite song?” person band we called The Sowbelly Trio.
Big Al sang and picked his banjo while I ac-
“Hey, don’t get defensive,” says Mary. companied him on the harmonica. We actu-
“You aren’t required to have one. But not ally taped a few “albums,” and we hawked
many people reach their seventies without the tapes at county fairs. People said our
having a favorite song.” sound wasn’t bad, but we needed someone
to play bass.
“What’s your favorite song?” I counter.
“I like every one of those songs,” I tell Mary.
“Oh, that’s easy,” says Mary. “It’s ‘Clouds’ “Bluegrass was like a first love to me. ‘Foggy
by Joni Mitchell. I sang that all through col- Mountain Breakdown,’ ‘Fox on the Run.’ They
lege back in my flower child days.” don’t write them like that anymore.”

“How does it go?” I ask her. “Quit stalling,” says Mary. “What I want
to know is what’s your favorite song?”
Mary quotes a line from the song. ‘So
many things I would have done, but clouds I think a bit longer then shake my head.
got in my way.’” “It’s going to be hard to pick one. We did
make several albums.”
“Ya gotta watch out for those clouds,” I say.

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“Yes, I remember the names of those al- “But you never did get one, did you?”
bums. They were really pretty silly.”
“Well, you might have helped us out.
“High on the Hog, Second Litter. What’s Didn’t you play the guitar back in college
so silly about those names?” when you sang that song about clouds?”

Mary laughs. “You know, I don’t think Mary laughs despite herself. “Yes, I
you took that band seriously at all. But I’m played the guitar, but I also have my pride.
serious now, and what I want to know is I would never, ever have joined a group
what’s your favorite song?” called The Sowbelly Trio.”

“My favorite song?” I mutter. I can feel “Too bad. You might have improved our
myself starting to sweat. “Well, if I have to sound.”
have a favorite, I guess I’d pick ‘Cotton-Eye
Joe.’” “That seems like a pretty lost cause.”

“’Cotton-Eye Joe’!” exclaims Mary. “We may have been struggling,” I answer,
“but we were never lost.”
“It’s hard to beat ‘Cotton-Eye Joe.’”
“All right,” Mary says, “Quit stalling around
“Who was he? A runaway slave?” and pick another song.”

“He might have been one to start with. “How about ‘Pig in a Pen’? That fits the
But now he’s a metaphor.” image we had.”

“You and your metaphors,” says Mary. “A “How does that go?”
metaphor for what?”
I clear my throat and sing the chorus
“The things we cannot control,” I say, and bars. “‘Wellll, I got me a pig back home in
I sing the tag lines from the song. “‘Where a pen and corn to feed him oooooon. All I
did you come from, where did you goooo? need is a purty little girl to feed him when
Where did you come from, Cotton-Eye I’m goooone.’”
Jooooe?’”
“You’re not helping your cause,” says
“Out of all the songs you might have se- Mary.
lected, you had to choose ‘Cotton-Eye Joe.’”
“What’s wrong with ‘Pig in a Pen’?”
“It’s a very popular song,” I reply. “There
are over a hundred versions of it.” “Those have to be the most sexist phrases
I have ever heard.”
Mary sighs. “That just makes it worse—
metaphor or not. I forbid you to pick ‘Cotton- “That song has different levels.”
Eye Joe’ as your favorite song.”
“One level is quite enough. No woman is
“Why can’t I have ‘Cotton-Eye Joe?’” going to stay home all day just to feed some
bumpkin’s pig,”
“If we’re going to ask questions,” says
Mary, “why did you call yourselves The Sow- “Pigs have personality,” I say. “They’re
belly Trio when there were just two of you?” also a lot of fun. That’s why we chose to
name our band The Sowbelly Trio.”
“It’s a catchy name. It made folks perk up
and listen. Besides, we didn’t think it would “That won’t get you off the hook,” Mary
be long until we got ourselves a bass player.” says. “Now pick another song.”

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Revista Literária Adelaide

I think for several seconds then decide Do I really wish to part company with the
on a Rascal Flatt number. “How about ‘God songs that had won my heart? No, I must
Bless the Broken Road that Led Me Straight keep them alive to me—they are too much
to You’?” a part of my soul—so I slip my cell phone
from my pocket and give Big Al a call.
“Nice line,” Mary says. “But I’m not buying
it. It sounds like a pig in a poke.” Big Al is glad to hear my voice and to re-
live our bluegrass days. He says our band
“Does that apply to my favorite songs spread a whole lot of joy although it never
too?” amounted to much. He suggests we get
back together soon and do a little jamming.
“I’ll leave you to think about that.” If we can find ourselves a third member, he
says, we could go back on the road.
Mary leaves me sitting alone on the
porch, and I once again feel myself sweat.

About the Author

James Hanna is a retired probation officer and a former
fiction editor. His stories have appeared in over thirty
journals, including Sixfold, The Literary Review, and Crack
the Spine. His books, three of which have won awards, are
available on Amazon.

97

CONCESSIONS
FOR CASH

by LeeAnn Weaver

I got the key out of the lockbox and swung them, a rental; an easier bone to throw me
the front door open. The wide, winding than their mansion in New Canaan would be.
staircase and empty hall greeted me as it I was at least more familiar with Westport
did every Sunday. I put down my bag filled (with the exception of their evident design
with brochures and leaned back against the aesthetic). They also knew what this com-
closed door. mission meant for me, for my family.

“Here we go again,” I said out loud to the At the end of the entry hall, I stepped
statue the stager had set upon the entry down into the family room. The back of
table. “Today’s the day my friend.” the house faced the sun, and the room was
flooded with light. It was a beautiful space.
The faceless, genderless piece of rock Built-in window seats, lots of bookshelves,
gave no sign of agreement. It and I had been and a huge stone fireplace that gave off
trying to sell this house for three months. warmth even without a fire. The stager did
her best to Westport the hell out of the space
I began turning on lights as I went with a huge white sectional and Pollock-like
through from the front to the back of the black and white wall art. But I still felt the
house. I had learned which of the hundreds warmth here, it was my favorite place to sit
of switches turned on which lamps and during these lonely open houses. It wasn’t
overhead lights; I had learned which ones the best time to put a house on the market,
turned on nothing. The warm light seemed but my friends were antsy to unload it.
to bounce around the living room and dining
room. It reflected off of the metal and glass I loved to sit here and imagine my two
surfaces, ricocheted off of mirrors, and got kids let loose in this space. In the last house
lost in miles of white furniture. The stager we owned, the boys and their friends would
had set up nothing warm in these lovely ride their scooters in a circle, through living
rooms, nothing to absorb and hold the light. room, family room, kitchen, dining room,
and around and around again. Carpet to floor,
This was my first listing. Given to me by carpet to floor, sounding like little Danny in
close friends who knew that and put their
trust in me anyway. It was a second home for

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