Finding Religion on the Pacific Crest Trail 
By Margaret A. Frey

​

I imagine the trail, noting the pitch of the ascent, the uneven terrain. An invisible sparrow, I follow the one called Cruiser, trail named for his sure-footed, uncanny pace. He’s the tall, ball-capped hiker, sunburned, toenails flapping off raw nail beds, and blisters--pearls of exquisite pain--studding his heels, proof for any reasonable person that the human foot was not made for this grueling marathon, not adequately designed to stumble through desert and sweltering valley, only to plow snow-covered ridges at nose-bleed heights.

Only last month a missing hiker was found, the Ice Man Cometh, another wild adventurer dedicated to the trail, the freedom, the solitary pursuit of what few would consider, let alone willingly undertake, 2600+ miles of endurance and foolhardy will. The Ice Man’s heart, luck and/or sense of direction gave out on Fuller’s Ridge in a blinding June snowstorm, a treacherous pass under optimal conditions. He slept fitfully, I suspect, a full season’s nap beneath snow and ice, then reappeared, a grim reminder that the trail is rife with peril and unspeakable heartache. 

Alaskan Jesus, he of the generous spirit, quit the trail with a strange affliction, the swelling of face and neck, lymph nodes the size of boulders. The mysteriously tagged Amoeba, rushed off Bear Mountain by ambulance, suffered high-altitude sickness, and poodle bushes, innocent-sounding thistles loaded with punishing pain, undid Cushy and his wild, mountain-man beard. The most poignant story belongs to Astro. Head filled with stars and constellations, he chose to camp cowboy style--blanket to the ground, eyes turned skyward. Like a mythic hero, he raced against the odds, the clock and the cancer devouring his bones.

Warnings of rodent-borne plague, quicksand, poisonous snakes, grizzly bears and cranky coyotes populate the landscape, yet Cruiser keeps cruising because one man’s defeat is another man’s triumph.  

Bad things always happen to someone else.  

I recall believing a similar fiction a thousand summers ago, sheltering a wide-eyed naiveté about life’s peculiar turns, still believing in special dispensations for good hearts and better intentions.  Until, that is, the bad crept in, latched itself to my shoulders, an invisible shroud—parents lost to age and dementia, the near death of another child, a vibrant friend collapsing on her bathroom floor. Mishaps, bad turns and worse decisions, the inexorable ticking of the clock all catch the blissfully unaware regardless of location: inside the comfort of home or outside, embracing a wilderness quest. 

I cannot protect Cruiser from this ultimate reality, this man-child created in a sweet, giddy moment of love, lust and wine. I want merely to delay the endnote—the last shuddering breath, the eye fixed and filming, the heart seizing like a clenched fist. Keep him safe, I whisper to the God and saints of my childhood, the same celestial tribe I willfully abandoned years ago. Keep him safe, I repeat until my personal journey is over, until I’m scattered to the winds like so much dandelion seed.  

Is that so much for the Universe to consider? Is that too much for a mother to ask? I ask in the childhood way, my words brimming over. Only now, I see the rugged road clearly: that bruising, unrelenting trail.
 

​

Margaret A. Frey writes from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Her work, fiction and nonfiction, has appeared in Camroc Press Review, Cezanne’s Carrot, Notre Dame Magazine, Kaleidoscope and elsewhere. Forthcoming work is scheduled for Flash Fiction Online, Used Furniture Review and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.​

* * *

Zen and the Ultimate Truth

By Philip Goldberg
 

For Zen Brubaker, little mattered as he cruised west at 100 mph on I-80 in a cream-colored ’98 Corvette convertible with the top down. The summer sun blazed in a cloudless sky, and the hot breeze, magnified by the speed of the car, played havoc with the 33 year-old’s long blond hair. At this moment, in this car, the myth of the road’s freedom was the ultimate truth for Zen. It was as valid as the fact that the car in which he was racing west was stolen. He had stolen it just last night, when the idea to pick up and go had hit him hard.

The endless Great Plains highway, which ran straight to the horizon, reflected on the dark tinted lenses of his aviator sunglasses. Zen broke into a half-ass imitation of Mick Jagger on “Sympathy for the Devil”. The thought came to him as he sang. It was an obvious thought, yet like so many things with him, he kept it buried deep. He had no idea why he had left Pittsburgh (at least at the moment he couldn’t recall), but he knew where he was going. He was heading to Vacadale, California, the small town where he would find Tara. There she’d be in the same house where he had left her three years ago. Young Jeb would be there too.

Zen pressed his foot down harder on the accelerator pedal and pushed the speedometer past 115 mph. With the manic buzz of speed ringing his ears, he thought about plowing through the highway divider and smashing head-on into an on-coming car. The sound of twisting metal and the blazing image of exploding hellfire gave him a tingle in his groin. But it was too pretty a day to waste on dying.

As he drummed the steering wheel with both of his index fingers, he tried to remember why he had left Tara. He couldn’t recall (another momentary mental block). Their love had been strong at the time, and he was certain that she would still feel the burn for him that he still felt for her, and that she would open her arms and her home to him. Jeb was another story. But he’d deal with the boy when he had to, and not now. Instead, he raced his new car, felt the sun’s sting on his skin and licked the torrid breeze with his stuck-out tongue.

The highway sign ahead advertised a place to eat at the next exit. Zen was starving. He hadn’t eaten since last night. He had sped into Kansas an hour ago, and Pittsburgh, to him, was a lifetime ago. With the old steel town, he had also left Kelly.

Twenty-four and drop-dead gorgeous, Kelly had healed him after Tara. He had met her at a bar weeks after he had arrived in the steel town. His Brad Pitt looks always had the right effect on the ladies; and Kelly with her sandy hair and freckles had wanted him within minutes after laying her emerald green eyes on him. Within hours, they were in bed, making enough noise to wake the neighbors. In a matter of days, they were living together, arguing enough to concern anyone within earshot.

Killing the ’vette’s engine in the parking lot of the bullet-shaped diner, Zen left the car with the top down. He headed into the eatery; its neon lit name, Lawson’s, blinking.

Inside, he took a swivel seat at the counter. The place smelled of burnt coffee, sizzling cooking grease and ammonia. A buxom waitress with a million-dollar smile greeted him with a steaming pot of coffee in her hand.

He motioned for her to pour him some.

“That your car?” She asked in a friendly voice, tinged with too many years in a very small town, as she poured the steaming brew into his cup.

“You bet,” he replied.

“Must be nice.”

“Heaven-sent, especially on a day like this.”

“Giving out any free rides today?”

“Depends on how good your food is.”

She smiled and said: “Then I’ve got no chance in hell.”

They shared a laugh, and then he said: “A plate of scrambled eggs and bacon with white toast, please.”

“Good manners, too,” she said, walking off with his order.

Zen watched her ass bounce right to left, left to right with just enough jiggle to keep his eyes glued. She must have sensed his stare, because when she reached the cook’s station, she glanced back at him and smiled.

He smiled back and then saw something reflected in the mirrored wall on the other side of the counter. A state police car pulled up next to his ’vette and parked. He looked over his shoulder and watched as the brawny, square-jawed trooper stepped out from the patrol car.

The man’s knee-high boots gleamed in the sun; and he appeared transfixed by the ’vette, walking around it, studying it, and finally glancing down at the license plate. Then he turned away and entered the diner, waving at the waitress and saying: “Hey, Gwen.”

“Hi, Taylor,” she answered. “The usual?”

“Old habits die hard,” he said.

Both laughed, and Zen listened, thinking the joke was lame. He played with his coffee spoon and noticed that the cop took a stool two seats away from him. The trooper looked at him and smiled. “Your car?”

Zen thought about lying, but he realized that he and the trooper were the only two eating in the place. He nodded.

“Always wanted one myself, but I can’t afford it. Three kids, a fourth on the way, a home, well, you get the picture.”

“Two jobs, no kids is how I do it,” Zen lied.

“I’ll bet.”

Gwen returned with Zen’s toast, eggs and bacon and said, “Hey, I’m trying to wrangle a free ride out of this guy.” Then she placed his food on the counter before him.

Taylor looked at Zen. “Bet a lot of ladies hit on you for a ride in that car?”

“I get my share of requests.”

Gwen placed a cup of coffee in front of the trooper, and he took a sip from it. “Where you from?” Taylor asked in a friendly tone and then took another sip.

“New York,” Zen said through a piece of bacon he was chewing.

“Boy, you’ve been on the road a long time.” Gwen chimed in.

“Less than a day,” Zen said, realizing his mistake too late as it took more than a day and a half to drive this distance. He wanted to leap off his stool, grab the man’s gun and put a bullet between the eyes. But then he’d have to kill Gwen, and he didn’t want to do that.

“Whew,” Taylor said. “You must’ve been burning rubber to go from there to here so fast.”

“Yeah,” Zen chuckled as if to bury his mistake, his rage, in laughter. “You won’t hit me with a ticket, or throw me in jail.”

Taylor smiled. Then he grew silent.

Gwen placed a plate before the trooper. On it was a slab of meatloaf and lumpy mashed potatoes, drowning in gravy.

Something clicked inside Zen’s brain. It was what he had felt every time he needed to move on. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was a need for survival. Whatever it was, Zen shoveled some more eggs into his mouth and gulped them down. Then he finished his coffee and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. Looking up, he said to Gwen: “How much?”

Gwen faced him. “A fast drive in your car.”

“How fast?”

“Real fast,” she purred through her parted lips.

He smiled. “It’ll have to be on my way back, sweets.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Three bucks then, babe.”

He plunked down a Lincoln on the counter top and said: “Enjoy the day.”

“Good trip,” Gwen said, retrieving the money.

“Likewise,” Taylor said.

Zen walked out of the place, unaware that two hard eyes were fixed on his back. He got into the ’vette, ignited the engine and drove out of the parking lot. In a minute, he was back on I-80 heading west to Tara, but thinking about the trooper. “No way he could’ve known about the car,” he mumbled. Somehow these words allayed his fears for the time, and soon he was imitating Bob Dylan on “Highway 61.”

The sun had dropped in the afternoon sky, and the glare had increased. Zen squinted through his aviator shades to see the road ahead, which was cast in a bright heavenly white light. He half-expected to see Jesus appear on the shoulder of the interstate, hitching. He chuckled to himself, and then his thoughts returned to Tara and Jeb. He still remembered the sadness in her blue eyes, the desperate pleas and the endless tears on the day he had left.

She had grabbed his arm and had tried to stop him but he’d had none of that. After he had silenced her, he had slammed the door on the way out. Jeb’s pitiful screams had filled his ears, only to be drowned out by the pick-up truck’s engine.

He tightened his grip on the ’vette’s steering wheel, knowing that he owed them both a big apology. He would give them that. Another thought crossed his mind. He should call before he got there. He mulled it over for some time. Then he shook his head, as he wanted to surprise them and give them no chance to deny him the reconciliation he so badly wanted.

What he saw in the rearview mirror brought a quick end to his thoughts. The state trooper’s car (he assumed it was Taylor’s) was about fifty yards behind him. When the car’s siren and lights started, Zen believed his gig was up. But the thought of Tara, and the knowledge that he was driving a ’vette, blinded his reason. He stomped the gas pedal as if it was a big, ugly roach.

The ’vette raced off, and the trooper’s car followed in pursuit.

The chase sparked a primal thrill in Zen, who felt like a NASCAR racer. His Daytona was the interstate. He avoided other cars at the last split second, changing lanes on a dime, using the narrow shoulder road when no other lane appeared clear before him. In the rearview, he watched Taylor match him move for move, which made his heart race faster with excitement. He thanked the ’vette’s owner, whom he had only known for a heartbeat, on taking such good care of the car. “Catch me if you can, copper,” he shouted in his best James Cagney imitation, and he hit the gas pedal even harder. Could he drive this car any faster, he wondered. The speedometer answered by topping 125mph. The acceleration made him feel higher still. It was how Tara made him feel in bed.

He had been on top of her, feeling euphoric. Every nerve in his body had been on high alert. She had only to look in his eyes, or run a finger on his glistening skin and he would explode like a billion firecrackers on the Fourth of July. When she finally dug her nails into his shoulders, he screamed with all the fury that his vocal chords would allow, knowing full well that Jeb was awake in the next room, smothering out the screams of pleasure with a pillow wrapped around both his ears.

Suddenly, a pair of terrified eyes fogged this memory. They weren’t his. They belonged to someone else. He quickly shut them out, feeling the cold wetness in his pants. Before him, the traffic on I-80 was slowing down. He swerved hard, causing his tires to screech. The sweet smell of burning rubber filled his nose. Up ahead, he saw the wall of state patrol cars. A feeling of invincibility filled his V-8 heart. In his rearview, he still saw Taylor. A harrowing scream echoed through his stainless steel soul, and then he shouted to the cloudless sky: “Tara!” And he spun out and crashed the ’vette through the guardrail, bouncing down a small embankment onto a country road.

On the highway, troopers scurried back to their cars, and sped off to pursue Zen.

Taylor followed Zen down the embankment and onto the country road.

With sirens ringing Zen’s ears, he turned off the country road and onto a dirt road that cut a cornfield in two, sending a billowing, blinding wall of dust into the dry air. He banged on the steering column in glee, seeing Taylor’s car get swallowed up by the mini-dust storm and disappear thirty yards behind him. It was only moments before the dust cloud engulfed the ’vette, and Zen was also blinded. When one would have experienced fear, Zen felt even more exhilaration. He let loose a scream of pure pleasure, and then he went flying through the car’s windshield upon crashing into something very solid.

As he flew through the dusty air, he heard Amy’s muffled screams as he had strangled the young woman in her ’vette last night. Then he saw Kelly’s terrified face moments after he had stabbed her repeatedly the same night. A rapid succession of nameless frightened faces followed. Then he remembered something that he had buried deep in his subconscious, along with all of the grizzly truth: that Tara would never take him back. Not now. Not ever.

As Zen hit the ground hard, he saw Tara’s bloodied body after he’d beaten her lifeless the night he’d left. Near her corpse, he saw Jeb’s battered and lifeless body after he had returned from the truck and silenced the boy’s screams by stomping him. Then everything in his world stopped cold. 

Taylor and the other troopers gathered around Zen’s broken body. He crouched down in a squat position and studied the dead man with the movie star looks. He noticed a tear rolling down his cheek. Then he looked up at the totaled ’vette and the wrecked tractor that had been parked on the dirt road. He gazed at the other troopers and said: “Finally we got the bastard.”

They stared at him without saying a word.

Taylor stood up and walked a few yards, stopped and stared into the setting sun. He lit a cigarette and walked over to the wrecked Corvette, knowing that he had been instrumental in taking down the nation’s worst serial killer in decades. Then he studied the car’s extensive damage and mumbled to himself: “What a waste.” 

He paused and then added: “Of a great car.”
 

Philip Goldberg has had over 25 short stories published in literary and small press publications.

* * *

Saint Benny

By Lora Grillo
 

I pray to Saint Jude for the safe return of my mother from the grocery store. She goes once a week for a big shop on Saturday. She doesn't know that I pray for her, but I do. Two months ago, I dreamt that her Volvo was hit by a truck on her way home from the store. She was humming along to Jackson Browne's song "She Must Be Somebody's Baby" on the radio and then Boom! Dead. I woke with a start and a wet spot on my bed. I thought I had peed but it was just sweat. Oh glorious apostle St. Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus. God, I hate that song.

I tried to sneak into her bed that night to be next to her, but she wouldn't have it. She doesn't like to be too close. Instead, she likes to clean my ears for me with her finger and tell me that I smell like a dog after playing punch ball in the schoolyard. She doesn't hug or kiss me like other moms, which works just fine for me. I just worry about the dream. The Boom. Pray for me who am so miserable; make use, I implore thee, of that particular privilege accorded thee of bringing visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of.

My mother works at National Car Rental. A guy named Bobby, who thinks he is an actor, but really is just a guy that works at a car rental place, has come over a couple of times for dinner. We had hamburgers for the first visit and then bacon pizzas the second. He gave me a signed photo of himself. What kind of guy gives a kid a signed photo of himself? Bacon pizzas are my favorite. Mom cuts open a hundred thousand rolls and puts slices of American cheese on each. She cooks up some bacon which always makes my mouth water. She puts the cheese on the rolls and then some marinara sauce from a jar and tops it with the bacon and cooks it in the oven for five minutes. The bread gets crispy and the cheese melts. Sometimes there are little bubbles of burnt cheese on the pan, and when Mom isn't looking I pick them off and eat them.


I ate five in a row and wanted more, but Bobby said I should watch it because I don't want to be the chubby kid that everyone makes fun of so I went to my room. I hated Bobby for saying that. I went to bed and prayed to St. Jude that he wouldn't come over again. I promise thee, O blessed St. Jude, to be every mindful of this great favor, and I will never cease to honor thee as my special and powerful patron. Mom must have sensed that I didn't like him much because the next time he came over he waited in the car for her to get ready. Mom got dressed slowly and I watched from her orange paisley bedspread. Under my breath, I prayed she would be home early but I heard her come in around midnight, which is very late. And to do all in my power to encourage devotion to thee. Amen.

I always sneak in a note of thanks at the end of the prayer. I say thank you to St. Jude for letting me pray to him and for keeping my mom ok. I made that Bobby picture into a dart board in my closet.

* * *

Sea Turtles

By Kyle Hemmings
 

Jimmy G. chugs and tramples up the stairs to the apartment—the one he shares with his sister—on West 10th over the Korean Deli, with its late night smells of pork trotters and fish egg stew. He finds her reading his personal journal, her eyes glued to the page that states in bold letters: The World is a Homeless Schizophrenic Who Smiles like a Left-Over Rainbow.

"Fuck," says Namami, who is into yoga and yogurt, Insanity workouts, lemongrass incense and bald graduate-philosophy majors at NYU, and is four years older than Jimmy G. but acts like she's forty more. "Can't you knock? You gave me a jitter monkey."

"Stop reading my shit. Or I'll get a lawyer."

She drops the notebook to the tan aniline sofa in the soft-lit living room. The walls are mostly bare except for some framed photos of Mom, Dad, Namani as a little girl at the beach playing with sand, Jimmy G. as a toddler with his loose folds of flesh smiling into the camera as if he and the world could be one, and the graduations.

Namami is wearing a biker's jacket with a check ribbon skirt and a new pair of sneakers she bought yesterday from Payless. Her favorite saying is: "I will never live to be post-menopausal." And she has this obsession with dumping boyfriends who she thinks will dump her first.

Namami works in a record shop in 6th Ave., and at parties she has a reputation for being a drama queen after the fourth Bayou Self, her favorite drink. It’s made with spiced rum and Butterscotch Schnapps, followed by over self-hatred and some awful lip-synching to Art Cube or Malice Mizer.

"Did you feed the twins?" asks Jimmy G., munching on a banana to get his potassium fill so his heart can beat on time. The twins are Jimmy's two pet rats: Pilfer and Gargoyle. Pilfer snorts coke, and Jimmy believes that it gives him telepathic powers.

"Roger, dodger, and Ma called asking how her number one son is. The one who dropped out of life, who dropped out of college, who dropped out of much needed therapy, just so he can feed his manufactured paranoia that the ‘Zygotes from Hell’ are taking over the world slowly but surely; first the water supply then the thought-trains to the brain, and pretty soon we'll be all be a nation of glass-eyed automatons who see rainbows in subway stations. And yes, he's still writing brilliant poems based on H.P. Lovecraft and the demons that sleep under our beds, and yes, Mother, he's still an introverted sea turtle who can't seem to swim to the top."

Jimmy G. pitches the banana peel across the kitchen towards the garbage. He misses.

"I'm glad you find me amusing."

Namani sits cross-legged on the sofa, flipping through an old issue of Vogue.

"I did you a most honorable favor, oh, number one brother. I fixed you up on a blind date with a friend of a friend of a friend. Okay, subtract one friend. I think you're going to like her because you both have something in common."

He sits, poker-faced, then shrugs.

"Okay, I give up."

"You're both fucking nuts and ultimately unknowable."

"And if I forget? Unintentionally, of course."

"I'll cut your balls off in your sleep. Her name's Moe. Where there's life there's hope."

"Stay out of my life, Queen Bitch. Stay in your own underworld."

He slams the door and walks out. Namani turns another page, tosses the magazine, and mumbles to herself, "Fuck it."

They're sitting in a Chinese restaurant on Christopher Street. She's slim, pretty, and tall. Could pass for Psy's favorite groupie. Her voice is soft and flat. At times, she looks intensely into his eyes, as if she could rule him or read his thoughts, or maybe she wants him to believe she can. They talk about their favorite songs. They talk about flowers, her favorite house plants. Then she admits she really doesn't care for them. He asks her if she likes animals. She says that as a child she liked bears, but back then, she liked so many things that weren't good for her. She adds that she once had a dog, a Basset Hound named Mickey, who had sad droopy eyes and a way of making her feel defensive. She tells him she works in a doctor's office by day and moonlights as a singer in a death metal band called DNA Mishap.

Jimmy G. shakes his head and says, “Awesome.”

She tells him that he has some General Tso on his Ferris Bueller's Day Off vest.

"Oh," he says, flustered, smearing his vest and shirt with a napkin.

He tells her that he works as a short order cook at a Greek restaurant where they serve fifteen kinds of hamburger specials. He moonlights as an underground poet uncovering the layers of deception internalized from the “Zygotes of Hell”, a small community that rules our lives and controls our runaway train-thoughts.

She laughs, then studies him, her eyes unwavering, her lips mashed together.

"Seriously?" she says.

He shakes his head like a child caught stealing candy.

"It's like I dropped out in my third year of pre-med. I wanted to uncover what's under the flesh in a metaphorical way, which is in some sense, deeper and more relevant. Does that make any sense?"

"I think so," she says, chewing open-mouthed on an egg roll.

She offers him an untouched roll. He refuses and points to his half-filled plate.

Later she tells him that she was once into muscle dudes, but the attraction, although strong, always burned itself out.

"Do you feel a connection?" she asks.

"Sort of. It's, um, wavering, and at times, shorn."

"Mmmm…Let's play a game of ‘Dare You Dare Me.’ I like doing it on first dates. It helps to spur the, uh, creativity. You tell me something very embarrassing, and I'll try to match it."

"Why not? Go first."

She swallows hard the last of her egg roll, then flashes her eyes at the ceiling.

"The first guy I ever loved, well, maybe not the first, was a midget. Okay, that's a shitty term. He was my little man. He will always be my little man. And I treated him so badly because of his size, the way he couldn't pronounce certain words, and the fact that we weren't entirely compatible. And it's funny in retrospect how I read that Alan Ladd stood on lifts to kiss Sophia Loren in the movies. Well, that's neither here nor there."

"I think I read that too," Jimmy G. says, pointing his chopsticks at her.

She stares down at her plate and swallows hard.

"Somehow he found a way to penetrate into my core, my soft spot, as in perforating my armor, in the sense of Gestalt therapy, in the sense of armadillo, you know? I couldn't believe how bad he hurt me. He just jumped off my bed one night after we were making out and he said it's over. The chemistry is gone."

"And what did you do?"

"I said something like ‘Good riddance, little man. In these parts, I'm quite a catch.’"

"That's moxy."

She offers a whimsical smile, a twinkle in her eyes.

"He became an actor. He always told me that one day he'd be in demand. Well, wouldn't you know, the last time I saw him he was in a TV commercial advertising some floor cleaner that was totally organic and left the floor smelling of apple orchard. Or peach orchard. I forget. It came in several scents."

"That must have been hard," says Jimmy G., snapping a broccoli in half with his hands.

"I punished myself for years. I played all kinds of games with people, pretended that nothing mattered. I tried to hurt men, even the hard kind with several coats of armor. It's funny how in retrospect you're always a genius who sees everything in perspective, but it's too late."

"Yeah," says Jimmy G., "I think it's built into our neurons and synapses, into our phenotypes. I wrote a whole chapbook of poems that touched on that very subject. It never got published. I mean, yet."

"And here's something less embarrassing but still is something you don't usually tell someone on a first date. Am I a strange bitch or what? I have this neurotic thing with guys. I push them to the edge, actually force them to dislike me, do all kinds of weird insulting things, and then when they tell me to fuck off, I have to be alone for days. I mean, just drowning myself in this pool of self-pity."

She makes a grandiose gesture with outstretched arms.

"What if they fall in love with you?"

She swings her head side to side and raises two hands, palms up.

"Some drown. Some don't."

"Yeah, that's deep."

"Who are we, Jimmy?"

"Not sure. It's something I'm exploring, myself."

"We're fakes. We're half-fakes. Nobody would steal us."

"I'm not sure if I were not-me that I would steal myself. Does that make sense?"

She tilts her head, asks the waitress for more water.

He focuses on the tiny trail dribbling down her chin.

"Talk to me. Tell me what you can't."

"I'm really kind of embarrassed to say it."

She wipes her chin, folds her hands under jaw.

"I told you. Now play by the rules of the game. I don't care. I want to hear it. And make it good and real."

He does this nervous kind of cough as if he's about to sing before an audience with musically trained ears.

"I'd like suck your nipples before the upcoming apocalypse turns us to stone."

She stares past him, saying nothing.

"Somebody once said to me. Well, something like that. Not that exactly."

"Really? Small world."

She asks for the check. He says he will pay. She says 50/50. He says 30/70. They settle 40/60.

She says she doesn't feel they'd be fully compatible, which doesn't mean they can't be. There's just something about a guy who wears 80s clothes on a first date. And she doesn't like the fact that he played so easily into her hands with the ‘Dare You Dare Me’ game. That doesn't mean, she adds, that she thinks he's a filthy creep or a pushover.

Outside the restaurant, they shake hands, and she says she wants to think more about this, to mull over it, and that in the mean time, he should see other people, and try to become a poet laureate.

“Always aim high,” she says.

He says, “Sure.”

She kisses him on the cheek. He blushes.

They waive down their respective cabs.

One night after he goes to bed, he hears tiny stones hitting his bedroom window.

He rises, opens the window, looks out and down. It starts to rain.

It's Moe, standing in shorts, sandals, and a tee-shirt. No bra. Her tee-shirt clings to her breasts. Her nipples are erect.

"I've been thinking about you," she says.

He yells out that he wrote this really fucked up poem about her, not that she's fucked up, but in her absence he felt this really weird connection and that he could really latch on to her demons and help her come to terms with who she really is.

"Could you please shut the fuck up," says Nanami. "You're talking in your sleep again."

Jimmy G. puts on a coat over his underwear and t-shirt. He rushes outside, stands in his oversized slippers before Moe in the rain.

"I feel your darkness, and the groping, the attempt at light," he says, as if a pivotal scene from his favorite horror movie with romantic interludes.

"I had a dream of you standing naked except for that stupid vest. You were hard." She takes off her shirt.

"Are you hard?" she asks.

"Does it rain chaos in Chthulu?"

"I can be your best monster."

On the barren sidewalk at 3 A.M., under anonymous stars, a block away from the blat of a taxi, he sucks her nipples until the world goes soft.
 

Kyle Hemmings has been published in Wigleaf, Storyglossia, Elimae, Match Book, This Zine Will Save Your Life, and elsewhere. His latest collection of prose/poetry is Void & Sky from Outskirt Press. He lives and writes in New Jersey.

* * *

Bubbled Up All Over

By Kate LaDew

​

 Irving Glassamilk loved his wife Judy Stringalights so much it made him bubble up all over.  Every day as he witnessed her gliding down the stairs (and she did glide, smooth and soft like a flying squirrel in search of a tree) Irving clutched at his heart and bubbled up,  “Oh Judy, light of my life.” The words popped in the air. “I can hardly even stand it.”
 
And every day Judy made him two eggs in a boat and poured a glass of no-pulp orange juice and sat across from him and radiated goodness.
On the 25th of October in the seventeenth year of their marriage, Irving Glassamilk said something to Judy Stringalights she never forgot.

“When I die--”
“Oh don’t say it, Irving!”
"When I die, Judy-- all good men must die--”
“Oh, the waste!”
“When I die and fly up to heaven and Saint Peter or God or Jesus or angels or bright lights ask me my favorite sound-- Do you know what I’ll say?”
“What will you say, Irving?”
“I’ll say, ‘Judy Stringalights’ heartbeat’.”

And Judy Stringalights never forgot because it was just about the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her.

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Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC with a BA in Studio Arts

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Suzanne

By David Landrum

The Ohio River in Youngtown flowed clear, not like Sossity Chandler remembered it as a child, polluted with coal dust and industrial waste. The state had cleaned it well enough that her production team decided to use it as a background for a video of her latest release, which was selling well. The video would go on YouTube. Amy, her personal assistant, brought her a battle of Goose Island IPA. She sipped and watched the crew tear down cameras and sound recording equipment.

“You coming back to the hotel?” Amy asked.
“In a while. I need to be alone. The tour is starting to get to me. I’ll be back at two.”

Amy nodded. Sossity Chandler had in her a good dose of the introvert. Often, the clutter of concert tours—the shows, endless interaction with producers, fans, with her own band members and staff, the television interviews, endless conversation with agents and managers—overwhelmed her. She needed silence and needed to be alone. At such times, she went off by herself, drove, ate out alone, and sometimes went to services at an Episcopal Church that observed liturgical hours, to a library or a museum. Her times of solitude, of anonymity, restored and gave her strength to continue performing with the level of energy her audiences expected.
   
She watched the crew pack their equipment and drive off. Amy left. Sossity found herself alone by the riverbank. She finished off her beer, tossed the bottle in the back seat of her car, and breathed a sigh of relief, the air going out between her lips like a prayer of thankfulness.
 
Turning to go to her car, she noticed someone standing fifty yard or so away from her. The figure—a woman dressed in brightly colored full skirt and white blouse—waved. Sossity waved back, her curiosity stirred by the young woman’s odd dress. She had long hair and pale skin. Sossity ponder and, curious, walked over to where she stood.

“Hello,” she said.
“Hi,” the woman—she might have been thirty—replied. “You’re Sossity Chandler, aren’t you?”
She spread her arms, palms open. “That’s me.”
“So cool to meet you. I have all your CDs. I saw you plan in Cleveland last year. I’m Deidre.”

Sossity shook hands with her. Up close, she noticed the girl’s big eyes and very long hair—it fell past her waist in a dark brown cascade. Behind her (she had not noticed this) stood a weather-beaten house. Deidre noticed her gazing at it.

“Can I invite you in for tea?” she asked.

Sossity hesitated she had spent time with several fans on this concert and was weary of meeting people, but this woman’s unique appearance and simple manner intrigued her.

“Sure.”
“My boyfriend’s here. He’s asleep and won’t bother us. Maybe I’ll wake him up. He’d probably like to meet you too.”
“If you and I have tea first and just quietly before you wake him, it’s a deal.”
Her face lit with happiness. “Sure,” she beamed, lowering her voice as if they were already inside. “We’ll be quiet. Come on. Let’s go in.”

To Sossity’s surprise, the girl took her hand. Holding hands, they walked down an overgrown flagstone path and into her cottage. The interior looked cluttered but not messy; a bit neglected but not dirty. A large central with a kitchen on one side and windows all around took up most of the house. She saw three doors, probably leading to bedrooms. Old furniture stood in the spacious room:  a weather-beaten couch and chair, a dining set near the stove and refrigerator, a bookshelf and table covered with magazines and pieces of brightly colored paper, a coat tree. The windows looked out at the river. Sossity smiled.

“Nice place.”
“It belongs to my mom and mad. They let me live here. What kind of tea do you like?”
“What have you got?”

Deidre got down a cherry wood container filled with bags. Sossity selected English breakfast tea. Deidre pick chamomile. She plugged in an electric pot.

“Have a seat.” She pointed to the couch. Sossity sank into it. The water in the electric pot began to boil.
She noticed art on the walls—very nicely done art. “Did you do these paintings?” she asked. “I like them a lot.”
“Thank you. Yes, I did them all.”
“Did you study art?” she asked, wondering if the young woman was a talented amateur or had trained somewhere?”
“I went to the Pratt Institute in New York.”
“I’m impressed.”

She shrugged and continued to prepare tea. After she had placed tea bags in the cups and got out a honey pot, she sat down in the chair across from Sossity..

“Are you hungry?”
“I could eat something.” 
“I’m vegan, but I’ve got some black bean burritos you might like.”
“Sounds good.”

She got out what looked like left-overs and heated them in the oven. By then their tea was ready. They moved to the table, ate and sipped their tea. 

“Burritos are great.”
"Thanks so much. You know, I really love your music, especially Labyrinth.”
Labyrinth was Sossity’s second CD. She had released it ten years ago.

“Do you have a favorite song?”
“I like ‘Drunken Moon’ and ‘The Last Time Now.’ But my favorite song is ‘Cloud Shadows,’ your first hit. I play it over and over. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t play it.” She gestured at the windows. “Cloud shadows pass here a lot. When they do, I read the messages.”

Sossity blinked. “Messages? Where”
“In the clouds. In the breakers that roll in to the sea they speak to me.”
Sossity hesitated and then asked, “What do they tell you?”
“Different things. Last night the clouds were lit by moonlight. They were beautiful. They told me someone beautiful would come to see me when the dawn broke.”

“I’m flattered that you say that to me—if I am the one.”
“You are. I got inspired to painting something.” She pointed.

Sossity looked at an easel with a half-finished painting mounted on it. Sketched in bold stokes that were remarkably evocative, a mass of sea roiled. Blank spaces rose above it, but she saw a moon, intricately sketched, the traces of mountains and craters done with photographic precision looming over a mass of clouds, some partially rendered, some completed, reflecting moonlight. Though half-finished, the moonlight on the clouds radiated beauty and gentleness. Deidre noticed Sossity’s rapt attention to the painting.

“I did that this morning.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s the message I saw in the cloud shadows. I’ll finish it soon. I paint the realities I see. 
Sossity thought to leave, but Deidre asked, “Can you sing a song for me?”

The look in her pretty and the gentle, lovely vulnerability she saw in the barefoot girl wearing a long skirt, a voluminous blouse, and a necklace of large beads around her neck, made Sossity feel ashamed of her impulse to love.

“I don’t have a guitar.”
“I have one.” The girl scurried away and came back with Yamaha classical.
“Do you play?” Sossity asked.
“A little. Can you do ‘Cloud Shadows?’?”

She played, singing softly (remembered Deidre’s sleeping boyfriend). Deidre listened with an intensity that charmed Sossity. She leaned one ear toward her, tilting he body just slightly, lightly holding her long fingers on the arms of the chair in which she sat, lips slightly parted, eyes full of intensity and passion. When Sossity finished playing, she relaxed back in the chair.

“That was so beautiful,” she murmured.
“I’m glad you liked it. You’re a fabulous audience.”

Just then a door opened. A young man, tall, thin, wearing old-style wire-rimmed glasses, came through a door. He had on jeans but no shirt. He looked from Deidre to Sossity and then did a double-take. Sossity smiled.

“Yes, it is me,” she said.
“I heard ‘Cloud Shadows.’ I thought Deidre was playing the CD. Let me go get a shirt on.”
He turned and went back in the room. When he emerged with a shirt on, Deidre went to him and put her arms around him, introducing him as Allen.

“We’ve never had a celebrity in the house before.”
“We had Johnny Depp. He came here to buy one of my paintings.”
“I forgot about him. And we’ve have you.”

She gave him a mock punch on the arm. “Silly,” she said. “I’m going to finish the painting.” With that she went over to her easel and began mixing colors on an old-fashioned palette. 

“Can we step outside, Miss Chandler?”
Just outside the door, Sossity explained how she had come to the cabin.
“As you can see, Deidre is in recovery. She hit some whitewater a few years back, started doing hallucinogens. She ended up in a mental hospital. We met and came here. It’s her parents’ cabin they let us live here.
“Do you think she is getting better?”
“You didn’t see her a year ago. She was stark, raving mad. She’s coming out of it little by little.”
“I wish her the best. She’s a beautiful woman, inside and outside. I’d like to stay in contact with her.”
“She will want to send you the picture she’s painting.”
“Her art is remarkable.”
“It would be good for her,” he said. “The more she is aware of the outside world, the more she will take her focus off fantasies.”
“You’ll hear from me.”
“Thank you.”
“Sure. I want to say good-bye to her.”

They went back inside. Deidre stood at her easel, painting furiously. The canvas had filled with amazing swirls of lien and color, at once realistic and abstract. Allen touched her shoulder.

“Sweetie, Sossity has to go now.”
Deidre put her brush down and took three long steps to where Sossity stood. She threw her arms around her. They shared a long embrace.
“Thank you so much,” Deidre said, eyes full of tears.
“Sure, baby. I’m leaving my address and phone with Allen. I definitely want this painting on my wall and I so much appreciate that you’re doing this for me.” Sossity felt disgusted by her words and the patronizing tone of her voice, which sounded like how she would speak to a small child. Deidra Bennett was a woman and human being, not someone to whom you must speak in slow, deliberate phrases so she could understand. “I like it a lot. Your art is beautiful. So are you. Can I come back and see you sometimes?”

She nodded. They held each other a while longer and Sossity said good-bye. Allen followed her out. She gave him an email address and phone number. “Write me. I do want to see her. In October we’re doing a concert in Pittsburgh and one in Cleveland. I’d like to visit then. Maybe you guys can come to one of the concerts. I could send you tickets.”

“Your heavy stuff and a huge crowd would be too much for her.”
“I’m doing a fund-raiser in Pittsburg before the other show there—my folky stuff, just me and my guitar, small audience, small venue. Maybe that would work for her.” She looked up at him. “What do you do, Allen?”
“I take care of her. I had a job in marketing for a firm in Philly. After I met her, I left to live here. It’s a better deal than what I had. And, of course, I love her.”
“I can see that.”

She took leave of him, walked over to where her car was parked, got in and drove off. The words to the song she had sung—she had sung it hundreds of times over the years—resounded in her mind as her Lexus climbed out of the Ohio River Valley and up to the flatter, more stable land that lay on the bluffs above it.
 

David Landrum has appeared in numerous journals, including decomP, 34th Parallel, Amarillo Bay, Earthspeak Magazine, Dark Sky, Danse Macabre, and many others.

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