Longspur Peak
By Jeffrey Dupuis

From the first few seconds of meeting Dean Cain, I couldn’t stop referring to him as “Dean Cain,” never just “Dean” or “Mr. Cain.” It was not as though he had saved my life, but he had done me what you might call a “solid.” However, things could have turned out significantly worse, had I not met Dean Cain, but a mountain lion or a grizzly bear instead.

Elise had left me by the roadside, prey for the midsummer mosquitoes, and I had no choice but to walk down the mountain alone and hope for someone else to be driving down the secluded road, fraught with switchbacks and crisscrossing wildlife. It turned out asking for a divorce was more difficult than I had envisioned, even with the ticking clock of Magda’s pregnancy hanging over the whole thing. I thought that spending the day in the mountains, near Longspur Peak, away from the life Elise and I had built together, might make the whole thing easier. However, Elise spent the night prior baking, preparing a picnic, and the whole day was too pleasant to mention the D-word.

Only on the way home, when we stopped at the roadside so I could answer the call of nature, did Elise pick up my phone and find something objectionable. Although she may have been in an agreeable mood, Elise was the type of person who could ferret out a secret, even if she suspected nothing. It was a trait I profoundly disliked about her. With my iPhone in her hand, I could see her expression through the window grow more and more distressed as I walked back to the car. I couldn’t be sure what upset her, e-mails maybe, or the sonogram Magda sent of our unborn child.

“You are such a fucking, fucking asshole!” she screamed.

Tears filled her eyes and she was still screaming as she drove away, fishtailing onto the shoulder as the road curved, the tires kicking up gravel.

“You shouldn’t drive when you’re so emotional,” I called after her. “You could get into an accident.”

I honestly cannot remember ever crying. Perhaps I’m a sociopath or maybe I’m somewhere on the autistic spectrum—I don’t understand those conditions and I’ve never been diagnosed. I just tend not to feel much of anything and, as far as Elise went, I just couldn’t pretend anymore. My father used to tell me when I was a boy that our heart was encased in the ribcage to keep our feelings locked up. I know as an adult that that theory is not biologically sound, and if it were true, giant squids must be littering the sea floor with melancholy.

My first visit to Longspur Peak was when I was twelve and I went hunting with my father. We waited among the moss-covered rocks and old-growth trees at the edge of a clearing for what seemed like hours. Dad didn’t “hunt” deer, he found their food source and waited for them to come to him. We finally saw a ten-point buck emerge on the other side of the clearing. Dad aimed the rifle, lining the buck up in his sights, then, without a word, lowered the barrel and handed the gun to me. I raised the butt of the gun to my shoulder and took aim, the wood and steel rifle feeling heavy like an Olympic barbell. Then I took the shot. The bullet tore through the sternum of the buck and it bounded off amongst the trees.

“Jesus Christ, Pete,” was all Dad said and we jogged into the bush, following the trail of syrupy droplets.

We found the buck lying on his side, appearing to have an asthma attack. It struggled for air and never succeeded. I chambered another bullet but Dad took the gun away from me.

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

He handed me a knife with a wooden handle and tarnished blade, something that looked like it had last seen action in the trenches of World War One.

“Cut the carotid artery,” he said. “Like this.”

He used the back of the blade and traced a line down the side of his neck.

Dad stood over me as I sunk down onto the animal, the knife in my right hand, my left hand over top, steadying the blade. Some blood spurt out at first, coating the back of my trembling hand in thick warmth, then the stream flowed slowly down the buck’s neck.

“There’s a good man,” said. “A man clears up his mistakes.”

When it was done Dad put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it tenderly.

“In Islam, they do that to goats every year,” he said.

For the remainder of my childhood, I thought Islam was a place.

The winding road leading toward the city was the one thing that hadn’t really changed since I was a boy. There wasn’t much of a shoulder, so when I heard a car tearing down the mountain road I moved almost into the trees and waited with my thumb outstretched. A silver coupe sped by, screeching to a halt twenty feet down the road from where I was, laying down two lines of black rubber.

“You’re Dean Cain,” I said to the driver, who leaned across the car to open the passenger door.

“Yep.”

“What are you doing in the middle of nowhere, Canada?”

We took off down the road. Dean Cain had the windows down and cool air ripped through the car, flies rain dropping on the windshield.

“I’m doing a movie up in the mountains,” he said.

He gave me the synopsis as though it was printed on the back cover of a DVD. When copper miners in the Pacific Northwest accidentally awaken the legendary Sasquatch, it’s up to small town sheriff Hardee Wallace (Dean Cain) to put a stop to the monstrous, bloodthirsty rampage.
“I don’t know any radio stations,” Dean Cain said, pointing toward the dash. “Put on something rockin’, I wanna get in the zone, you know…”

The classic rock station was the only one that came in clearly. We caught the tail end of Don’t Fear the Reaper, then a paid political announcement came on. It was an election year and the party in power filled the airwaves with attack ads. How do the Liberals plan to balance the budget? By raising taxes. Higher taxes kill jobs.

“I doubt they can cite any economic research papers to support that claim,” I said to Dean Cain.
“It’s just common sense. High taxes kill jobs and the middle class.”

“You can’t have a middle class without public education, infrastructure and social services,” I said. “Taxes are what pay for those.”
 
“Are you a communist?” Dean Cain asked me as the car screeched to a halt.

“No, I’m not a communist,” I told Dean Cain. “I’m more like what you Americans would consider a New Deal Democrat.”

“Try a No Deal Democrat. Your free ride’s over. Get out of my car.”

I could see then that I wasn’t dealing with raised-in-Smallville-by-the-salt-of-the-earth Dean Cain. This was more the entitled, beginning-of-Future Sport Dean Cain, or maybe even the intolerant to the developmentally challenged, surfer-from-Life-Goes-On Dean Cain. He had pulled over so close to the edge of the road that I stepped out and fell about three feet into a gully. As soon as I closed the door, he sped away and I could hear Panama blasting from the car’s speakers.

The rays of the waning sun stuck to what looked like a string of gems, a tiny constellation of sparkles at the base of an old, stone mile marker. I could see that it was broken glass. The marker itself was marred with streaks of green paint. A crow stood upon the moss-covered milestone, looking down at the glittering glass, seeing value where humans see only damaged goods.
 
The lift Dean Cain had given me shaved an hour off my journey and I could walk to the nearest town before nightfall. Magda would call and maybe Elise would answer. I imagined all the horrible things they’d say to each other or about me, as I walked back to civilization.

I didn’t seen Dean Cain’s face again until a howling winter night, at home, watching the Sy-Fy Network as bare branches tapped my window. Dean Cain was starring in Sasquatch Rampage, which concluded with a copper mine filled with sasquatches and dynamite, and Dean Cain firing a flare gun into the TNT, saying “Bigfoot…meet big bang.”
​
Elise wanted nothing more from me other than the severing of all ties, which was considerate of her, since I’d need what money I had for my impending child support payments. She later married a tow truck driver and moved up near Longspur Peak and they lived happily among the local Sasquatch population, making well-mannered baby after well-mannered baby.

Jeff Dupuis writes fiction, poetry and satire. His work has been published on The Barnstormer and in magazines and journals such as Valve, After the Pause and University of Toronto Magazine. His next e-book, Mister Molecule's Grand Gesture, is forthcoming from Found Press.

* * *

Pleasureworld
By Jeremy Griffin

Bradley had ridden his bike the mile and a half to K-Mart check out the meager collection of anime magazines (you had to make the twenty-minute drive to the mall for a more extensive selection, and just try convincing your mom to haul you all that way so you could spend an hour staring at Annie Mays—that’s what she called them, for Christ’s sake), only to find himself drifting toward the pharmacy as soon as he walked in the door. Actually, it was more of a pull, he would later realize—yes, he’d been pulled toward the racks of mysterious and intimate inventory, the kinds of items that he could never bring himself to look at directly. The feminine products in their pink and purple packaging, their lettering curvy and leaflike. The creams and ointments, the powders and sprays. It all made him feel so indecent.
 
The worst was the display rack of condoms. Partially it was because they were right there at the pharmacy counter, where the aisles converged like rivers emptying into a single floodplain. Also, their sizes and variety of colors gave them the distant appearance of candy, until they were right in front of you and suddenly the silhouetted images of men and women on the verge of kissing were obvious and you felt like a complete idiot. No matter how many times Bradley saw the display his brain continued to process it this way; it was always just for an instant, but it was still enough to fill him with the absurd suspicion that, like so many other things in his life lately, the whole thing was just some unending prank directed exclusively at him.
 
Even more disturbing was how intimate those silhouettes seemed, more so in fact than if the couple in the image had been doing it outright. You don’t hear people swapping dirty jokes about kissing, do you? You don’t hear them yukyukking about it in the halls at school, clapping each other on the back like the punchline is some sort of accomplishment. Kissing was so unremarkable as to be off-limits. Sex, however, was public domain, or so it seemed to Bradley who, at 13, was still a virgin—a screamingly obvious one, too, if the incident in the locker room two days ago was any indication.
 
Now, at the condom rack he paused, trying to appear aloof, like buying condoms was something he did all the time. He plucked a pack of Durex Pleasureworlds© from one of the hooks and examined it closely. ALTERNATING STUDS AND RIBS FOR INCREASED SENSATION! it proclaimed in bold black letters at the bottom of the box. Of course, he had no occasion to use the condoms. For him, talking to girls was like trying to communicate with an exotic and potentially dangerous species. Plus, there was Emily Hilford’s revelation in bio last month that everybody presumed him to be a level 5 queermo. “I thought you knew that’s what people were saying,” she’d said as though this were the most obvious fact in all of human history. “I was just asking. It’s not like I’m psychic or whatever.  Sor-ry!”
 
No, the condoms were about something more, something he didn’t entirely understand yet but could feel turning in his mind like the tumblers of a lock falling into place.
 
Running his thumb over the image of the man and woman, Bradley thought about all the boys in gym class who had stood around the other day laughing at his Pokémon briefs, all of them including his best friend Jason Halvorson. They had been inseparable since kindergarten—“the Ambiguously Gay Duo” as Jason’s sister Maggie, a high school sophomore, often joked—although admittedly things had been a little strange ever since last year when Jason shot up a good six inches in a matter of months, leaving him with a slim, serious face and an air of antagonistic indifference. Everything was gay or lame or weaksauce now. Everything, that is, except the invitation he’d received a couple months back to a party at Desiree Yarborough’s house, where he’d reportedly had sex with Ashley Carr during a round of Seven Minutes in Heaven.
 
Upon hearing the story, Bradley couldn’t help feeling betrayed. For years they’d shared their outcast status like members of a support group; now here was Jason having suddenly graduated to this newer version of himself while he, Bradley, was stuck being who he was, a plump, chipmunk-cheeked kid who got tripped in the halls and whose mom slipped little notes of encouragement into his lunch like he was still in preschool. Believe in yourself! they’d say or maybe Today is yours!. Each one he would cram into his pocket and then later deposit in his locker, because as embarrassing as they were, he couldn’t yet bring himself to throw them in the trash.
 
Nor could he bring himself to confront Jason about his new personality. Doing so, Bradley feared, would only widen the chasm between them. And so he now wondered: is this what had drawn him here to the condom display, a need to prove that he could be a better version of himself too, someone who could willingly make the wrong choices because they were wrong? That he was capable of being just as reckless and dangerous and unpredictable as Jason?  
 
Whether there was an answer to the question, Bradley couldn’t say, but that didn’t matter. Casting a look down either end of the aisle to make sure no one was watching, he slipped the small box into the pocket of his hoodie.
 
When he’d left from home on his bike, he’d had no intention of stealing the condoms. In fact, other than the first edition Bulbasaur card he’d swiped from Ricky Bowles when they were eight (Ricky wasn’t actually a Pokémon collector; he’d gotten the cards as a birthday gift from an aunt, which as far as Bradley was concerned made him unfit to own it), he had never stolen anything in his life. But now, as he made his way to the automated doors with the box in his pocket and his heart fluttering wildly in his chest, he felt a sense of triumph that he’d never experienced before, as if everything in his life had been careening toward this single act.
 
Except, that was when the alarm blared out and the red lights of the theft detector panels started flashing; he’d been too lost in thought to even notice them. As he whirled around to the store’s interior, he met the eyes of a clerk restocking the five-dollar DVD rack. A pudgy slack-jawed fellow, the man had acne-scarred jowls and a sullen demeanor that made it clear he would just as soon put a bullet through his head as price-mark another copy of Pirates of the Caribbean.
 
Well, here it is, Bradley thought. He was busted, no question about it. Any second the man would come grab him by the arm and drag him into a little windowless room in the back of the store where he’d have to wait for the police and then his mother. Oh god, he could just see the humiliation on her face when she arrived to pick him up, the craggy crease of her brow, her lips pinched into a wrinkled, colorless nub. Her son the thief.
 
Then a strange thing happened.
 
Something shifted in the man’s eyes, a glint of recognition, and suddenly Bradley had an unaccountable feeling that this fellow, a complete stranger, could discern things about him, personal things that only someone like Jason would know. In a flash, the events from the other day flitted through Bradley’s mind: the locker room with its pea-colored walls and fusty stench; the scrum of shirtless boys guffawing over his underwear, which he had only picked that morning because all the others were in the laundry; Jason stepping forward and giving the waistband a snap, his face bent into an unfriendly smirk; Bradley locking himself in a bathroom stall later that period and sobbing so violently into the crook of his arm that he had to bite into muscle to stop.
 
Only later would he come to understand what it was that the man saw—the shared recognition of trauma, like witnesses to a grisly accident. This must have been why the fellow now turned back to the DVD rack like he hadn’t seen anything, his pricing gun once again click clacking on the plastic cases.
 
For a moment Bradley just continued staring at the back of the man’s head, waiting for something to happen. Waiting to surrender. Then, when it finally dawned on him that the clerk was letting him go, he fled outside.
 
Behind him the lights continued to flash and the theft alarm howled, and folks in the parking lot gaped at him as he flew past them, but he was barely aware of any of it. All he could sense as he mounted his bike and began pedaling furiously, his hand still gripping the box in his pocket, was the blood pumping in his ears and the afternoon heat on his face like a friendly welcome to an unfamiliar world and the phrase repeating over and over in his head Today is yours! Today is yours! Today is yours!

Jeremy Griffin is the author of a collection of short fiction from SFASU Press titled A Last Resort for Desperate People. HIs work has appeared in such journals as the Indiana Review, the Iowa Review, and Shenandoah and has been nominated multiple times for a Pushcart Prize. He is currently a lecturer of English at Coastal Carolina University.

* * * 
The Long Dirt Road
By Keshaune Hatchett


On a brisk, fall afternoon in a small town in Ohio, all was calm as the hours were entering into the evening.

That soon came to a screeching halt, after the front door at the local watering hole violently flew opened and slammed against the wall shattering the glass.

Slade Drew, the town drunk and troublemaker emerged from the bar with a bottle of liquor in each hand.

After taking a few staggered steps into the street, he stopped and took a drink from the bottle that was in his right hand, while loud obscenities were being shouted by the owner of the bar, as he stood in the doorway.

In his inebriated state, Slade spun around and flung the bottle in the direction of the bar owner, and even though he missed his target; the bottle shattered a window.

This brought pleasure to Slade, as he flashed a yellow toothed smile. He ran his fingers through his stringy, gray hair, and after shouting a few obscenities of his own; he gave a one finger salute then turned and staggered away. 

As he walked down the middle of the street, taking a drink after every few steps, people were staring at him in disgust, but their looks or remarks did not faze him.

He came to the end of the block and made a right onto a long, dirt road that led to his house, but before completely making the turn; he stopped and looked back at the bar from which he came then chuckled, as he admired the damage that he caused.

Slade took yet another drink then began to make the mile long hike on the dirt road that led to his house.

Half way down the road, he immediately stopped in his tracks and stared at a mysterious entity that stood just ten feet in front of him that seemed to have magically appeared.

Slade could not believe his eyes, as he wiped them several times, but after each time; the entity remained.

The creature returned Slade’s stare with eyes as black as charcoal. His skin was chalky white, and was riddled with long knife- like scars. His long, slick, black hair partially covered his face and hung to the middle of his torso and back.

Slade’s first instinct was to turn and run away, but he was frozen by fear, and once he noticed the creature’s thick claws that pointed at the end; his heart began to race, and he started to sweat profusely, sensing his demise was imminent.

He knew he had to do something. Thoughts of fighting entered his mind, but he knew that his slender frame would not stand a chance against the creature, so he decided to do the next best thing, run.

Slade took a hard step to his right, but it was met by a hard step to the creature’s left. He did the same to his left, and alas; it was met by the same to the creature’s right.

It was like the creature was playing with his prey, taking perverse pleasure in Slade’s fear, and after he flashed his smile that was full of gray, razor sharp teeth; the creature belted out a deep sinister laugh at the sight of urine that streamed down Slade’s pant leg.

“Enough!” Slade shouted, as his anger had usurped his fear. “Whaddya want from me?”

“I think you better watch the tone in your voice!” the creature replied in a very deep tone.

Slade took a quick drink then took a deep breath, “Why ya here?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Slade watched in horror as the creature ran the claw from his index finger along his own cheek, slicing the skin, but at the same time was in awe as a white smoke emitted from the cut while his skin healed, as if nothing ever happened.

“What are you?” Slade inquired.

“I am a demon,” the creature smiled and said. “You caused quite a disturbance back there. Where’s the man that was so full of bravado a short time ago?” he took a few steps toward Slade, which were met by a few steps back.

“I, I was just havin' a lil fun; I ain’t mean no harm.” Slade wiped the sweat from his brow then gazed into the demon’s dark eyes. “I promise if you let me go; I won’t cause no more trouble.”

“On the contrary, I like it when you cause havoc.” the demon rubbed his palms together while flashing a smile. “I love it when you tear up places and get thrown out of establishments.”

“You talk like you seen me before,” Slade replied, as he stared at the demon with a perplexed look.

“I have.”

“Where you seen me before? I’ve never seen you," Slade said

“Just because you don’t see me, doesn’t mean that I’m not there,” the demon chuckled. “I am always around, lurking in the background.”

The demon looked around the dirt road then looked at Slade’s sweat soaked white tank top that was littered with food and alcohol stains, and noticed that his slender frame trembled from fear. “Is there a particular question that you want to ask?”

“Yes, but I’m afraid of the answer.”

The demon glared at Slade with a look of disdain, “Ask your question!” he shouted.

“Are ya going to kill me?”

The demon’s demeanor quickly shifted from anger to delight, as he stared into Slade’s petrified eyes. He purposely stalled for a few moments while Slade waited with bated breath.
After what seemed like an eternity had passed, the Demon cracked his familiar diabolical smile then answered, “I am not going to take your life today.”

Within a flash, the Demon had closed the gap and was within an inch of Slade.

He was snarling and breathing profoundly as saliva fell from the ends of his teeth, “You are not the sharpest knife in the drawer are you?” the demon continued to breathe heavily. “I won’t take your life today or tomorrow; we still have a lot of damage to do in this town.”

After delivering those words, just as quick as the demon appeared, he had vanished, while his words resonated in Slade’s head.

“We?” Slade asked, as he heard the demon’s laugh echo.

Slade dropped the bottle that was in his hand, as the laughter was replaced by sirens, and as the police cars rapidly approached; he realized that the demon resided within.

Keshaune Hatchett was born in Canton, Ohio in 1975. He graduated from Canton McKinley high school in 1993. He served his country in the United States Navy and was honorably discharged in 1997. He attained his Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice from Beckfield College in June of 2014. He had short stories titled, Angel Among Us published in the June 2013 issue of Cigale Magazine, and Sometimes We Forget published in the May 2014 issue of Foliate Oak Magazine.

* * * 
Crossroads
By Amy Jarvis


​What remained of raindrops danced across her skin, tracing over each other and refusing to be completely straight.  Grace could feel tears threatening to stain her eyes, but made no move to wipe them away.  Instead, she pulled down her jacket sleeves, covering the reminder of what had brought her into the woods in the first place.  Her footsteps on the damp, fallen leaves were muffled underneath her as she made her way through the dense trees, with only the full moon slicing through the branches to guide her.  From somewhere in the distance, what sounded like an animal howling startled her. Trying to ignore the nagging feeling of trepidation, Grace convinced herself she wouldn’t have to walk much farther from the beaten path.  Several minutes later, Grace stopped dead when she realized she had come to an iron fence that wrapped around the outline of cement blocks.  Old railroad tracks twisted through the woods beyond the cemetery, crossing over each other and disappearing in different directions, possibly leading nowhere.  She slipped through the gate, walking through what appeared to be a mist-filled cemetery that had been abandoned years ago.  
 
What couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes before, Grace had pulled her car into the empty parking lot outside of the nature preserve.  Loose gravel had shifted underneath her tires, echoing through her mind.  They would find her car, she had thought to herself, but it would probably take a few days before they found her body.  She wondered if her hair would be tangled around her face, her skin covered in caked on mud and devoid of any color besides ghostly white.  She could only hope her father, the only person she wanted to believe cared, would forgive her.
 
The tombstones were barely recognizable, their pieces crumbling underneath them.  The writing, meant to memorialize souls, had hardly withstood time.  Grace leaned close to one, deciphering what she thought said 1864.  A chill crept underneath her skin, but she doubted it was from the cold.  A mausoleum stood towards the center of the cemetery.  The outline of a cross on the rooftop seemed to burn into her, and she contemplated the irony of spending her last moments inside something dedicated to the afterlife.  Swallowing, she made her way towards it.  Writing was etched into the stone above the heavy wooden door, but she couldn’t quite make it out.  As she pulled it open, the door let out a groan that echoed through the woods behind her.  She glanced over her shoulder, aware that if anyone was around, they obviously would have heard it.  Moonlight filtered in behind her, through the window and cracks in the cement, welcoming her.  The entire mausoleum seemed to be covered with a layer of age, complete with dust and grime that edged along the stone walls.  Cobwebs brushed against her skin, and she resisted the urge to cry out.  Several wooden benches were placed in crooked rows, and a statue of an angel stood in the corner, its vacant, hollow eyes staring into her.  Candles stood against the far wall on what appeared to be an altar, dried wax pooled around them, their wicks charred.  She quickly searched her pockets for a lighter without any luck.  Below it, draped with what remained of dried flower petals so fragile they were practically see-through, stood a coffin.  She took a few steps forward, determined to figure out what she had stumbled upon, when footsteps mirroring hers came from behind her.
 
“What are you doing in here?” a deep voice asked.
 
Grace turned, swallowing the scream that caught in her throat.  A silhouette leaned against the doorway.  Shadows masked most of his features, but from what she could tell, he didn’t seem much older than her, and he wasn’t dressed in clothing like she was accustomed to.  Instead, he was draped in what appeared to be a duster that hung down to heavy leather shoes.  She took several steps back, smacking against the base of the coffin and knocking a few flower petals to the cement ground.  In the several seconds it took to steady herself and ignore the nausea that came from losing blood, she found her voice.
 
“I didn’t realize I wasn’t supposed to be,” she managed to say.
 
“I never said that,” he responded, crossing his arms.
 
She glanced around with every intention of finding another way out, only to realize that he was blocking her only escape.  He watched her from the doorway, but made no move to come inside.  
 
“What are you doing here?” he repeated.
 
Grace looked back over at him, realizing that whatever was about to happen, there wasn’t much she could do to prevent it.  She had wandered out into the middle of nowhere, and now she was inside a cemetery that looked like it had been abandoned for years.  No one would ever find her if anything bad was to happen, and she was okay with it.  That had been her plan all along, anyway.  With that thought in mind, she lowered herself down onto the nearest bench, grime seeping into her pants.  She clasped her hands together on her lap and studied them, trying to come up with an answer.
 
“I came out here to think,” she said. 
 
“You’re a good liar. Now why are you really here?”
 
She looked over her shoulder, noticing that he had taken a few steps into the mausoleum.  The door closed behind him, sealing her fate with it.  Grace watched as he made his way down the aisle in several long strides.  He knowingly went directly to a matchbook on the altar, lighting the candles before sitting down on the bench across from her. 
 
“What are you doing out here? Do you normally walk around the woods at night?” Grace asked, a note of sarcasm in her voice.
 
“I own the property,” he said calmly.
 
She felt an “oh” form on her lips, but she wasn’t quite sure it made it into the space between them. 
 
“Are you going to answer me?”  he asked.
 
“I messed up,” she said.
 
Grace was referring to her life in general, but her response still caught her off guard.  For a second she considered that she was telling the truth.  There was always the possibility that things could get better.  She choked at the thought, swearing at herself that she was beginning to sound like her therapist, who probably repeated the same things to everyone with depression for the money.   Nothing was going to get better and she knew it.  For a second, it looked as though he had stifled a laugh.
 
“Do you want to talk about it?”
 
She shook her head, trying to figure out what was going on.  From what she could tell through the veiled window near the entrance, he had started a fire outside of the mausoleum.  She vaguely remembered walking past a crumbled pile of cement bricks outside, and figured they served as a fire pit.  It made sense; November in Virginia had a tendency to be cold enough to need it.  She watched as the glowing embers faded outside of the window, disappearing into the cascade of night sky. 
 
“Who are you, anyway?” Grace asked.
 
“Does it matter?” he asked.
 
“I suppose not,” she responded.
 
“You still haven’t answered my question,” he said.
 
“What are you here for, the company?” she retorted.
 
“Not tonight,” he said.
 
They fell into silence for several minutes, with only the sound of a draft attempting to come in underneath the rotting door to make them feel like they weren’t alone.  Grace cleared her throat, knowing that she wasn’t going to be able to get out of explaining why she had stumbled into the woods to begin with.  That and she needed someone to talk to.  It didn’t matter that she had absolutely no idea who he was, or what had brought him into the woods that night.  She could feel him studying her as she stumbled over the details.  She was beginning to feel dizzy, her eyelids heavy.  The air around them seemed to thin as she finished, still unable to look over.
 
“Let me get this straight,” he said, holding a hand up and folding his fingers as he counted off everything Grace had told him.  “Drunken quarterback douchebag tried to rape you, mom left, dad blames you, you didn’t get into Ivy League, and this is somehow your fault?”
 
“It’s more complicated than that,” she said, her voice almost breaking.
 
“I’m listening,” he said.
 
“It doesn’t matter.  I’m going to die out here, anyway,” she said.
 
“What makes you so sure you’re going to die?”
 
His question was a reminder of why she had wandered out there to begin with.  She removed her jacket, uncovering the bloodstains that had seeped into the fabric, covering her wrists with dark red.  She had told herself the unforgiving razor she had selected was sharp enough that she would barely feel anything as she tore it across her wrist, slicing her skin and allowing blood to flow down her arm like a painting.  Her teeth grasped her bottom lip, her eyes narrowed into slits. With the drops that landed beneath her, she had counted off every point that brought her to the decision as she turned to the opposite wrist. 
 
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
 
“Guess it’s worse than I thought,” she said, forcing a laugh.
 
Without asking, he tore the bottom of her jacket, quickly tying the shredded fabric around her wrists.  She allowed herself to relax a touch as the pressure took some of the pain away.  She could feel blood escaping from underneath it, and took a few breaths to steady herself.  As if fate had accepted her decision, a slight drizzle, the remnants of an earlier rainstorm, had kept her wrists from clotting.  The cuts weren’t as deep as she had intended; otherwise she would’ve blacked out already.  Still, Grace knew it was possible to bleed for hours before it even became life threatening.  She shifted on the bench underneath her, preparing to settle in for a while.
 
“Why didn’t you ask someone for help?” he asked.
 
“No one would understand,” she said.
 
She could feel his eyes burning into her, but couldn’t bring herself to look over.  Instead, she wiped her hand off on her jeans, leaving a streak of dark red blood from her thigh to just above her knee.
 
“So you decided that dying would be the better option?” it didn’t sound like a question.
 
“No,” she said. “Not better. Just easier.”
 
“What could possibly make you say that? Life isn’t supposed to be easy,” he said.
 
“Don’t lecture me.”
 
Even though she hadn’t meant to snap, Grace felt a sort of satisfaction when he flinched. 
 
“I wasn’t trying to. I’m just saying you’re not alone,” he said.
 
“Do you have a name?” she asked.
 
“Call me John.”
 
The name struck her for a second.  When she was younger, her father had taken her to church.  The book of John reminded her of love, something she didn’t want to think about.  Once her mother had left, her father ignored her as if she was a constant reminder of the woman that had abandoned them.  She looked back over at him, noticing he looked older than she expected him to be; like life had worn away at him without giving time a chance to.  Still, she figured early twenties was probably accurate.
 
“John. Are you some type of saint or something?” she asked.
 
He laughed without humor. “Not even close.”
 
“Good. Because I wouldn’t believe you if you were,” she said. “Even if you are here to help me figure things out.”
 
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
 
“Why else would you be out here?” she asked.
 
“Maybe because I own the land, remember? So, I take it you’re not religious.”
 
Grace shook her head, shifting on the bench underneath her.  A sliver caught onto her shirt, and she pulled it loose before it slipped into her skin.  She looked back towards the altar, at the candles that had somehow managed to stay lit as they burned down to their bases.  In between them, pushed back against the wall and draped in intricate cobwebs and dust, stood a tarnished cross.  She turned back towards him, feeling a chill creep down her spine.
 
“What do you believe in?”
 
John seemed to consider her question for a second.  His brow creased and he looked over at the cross before turning his attention back to her.
 
“There must be something else out there that’s bigger than you and me,” he started.
 
Grace gritted her teeth.  “Oh come on. Enough with the cosmic bullshit.” 
 
“Fine. I believe in God,” John said.
 
“That’s not what I was expecting,” she responded.
 
“Why? You’re so desperate to believe in hell because you think it’ll serve you justice. You’re forgetting something.  It’s not the devil that makes the judgments, sweetheart. That’s up to someone else.”
 
“Fuck you.”
 
His dark eyes sliced hers.
 
“You’re only saying that because you know I’m right,” he said.
 
“What’s your point in telling me this?” she asked.
 
“I wasn’t finished. If there’s truth to what we’ve been taught…” he said before pausing, obviously trying to figure out what he wanted to say.
 
Grace thought about his words for a second.  She was suddenly conscious of the angel statue that stood in the corner of the mausoleum, holding something.  She couldn’t quite remember what it was, but found herself unable to turn around.  She figured it was probably a bible, and decided to leave it at that.
 
“Hell is exactly where I’m heading,” she finished for him.
 
“Not necessarily,” he said.
 
“What makes you so sure?” Grace asked.
 
She looked over at the cross and fought the urge to approach the altar long enough to brush the filth from it.  For some reason, it bothered her that it wasn’t clean.
 
“Forgiveness is a hell of a concept.”
 
“I swear if you tell me to repent-” she started.
 
“I’m not telling you to do anything. I’m saying God forgives,” John said.
 
“After tonight it won’t make a difference, will it?” she asked.
 
“That’s for you to decide,” he said. “For what it’s worth, you deserve better.”
 
John pulled up his sleeve, checking a silver watch that was clasped around his wrist.  Candlelight reflected off of it, but she couldn’t make out what it said. He seemed to let out a breath before looking back over at her.
 
“It’s almost midnight,” John said.
 
“You have somewhere to be?” she asked.
 
He shook his head. “No. I just can’t stay for much longer.”
 
John stood up from the bench, wrapping the duster tighter around him before making his way towards the exit, his footsteps almost silent.  Grace made to follow him, unsure of whether or not she should.  When he reached the door, John looked back over at her, the ghost of a smile on his lips.
 
“For the record, it’s not easier,” he said.
 
“What’s not easier?”  Grace asked.
 
“Dying,” John said. “Go home, Grace. Forgive yourself.”
 
She waited several minutes after his footsteps had faded away before changing her mind.  She needed to know more about what had brought him there, if she would ever see him again.
 
“Wait,” she said.
 
Grace stumbled to the entrance of the mausoleum, leaning against the cold cement for support.  The fire outside had somehow gone out, but the lingering smoke still burned her throat.  She considered calling for him, but from what she could tell, he had disappeared through the fog that surrounded what she now thought of as the entrance to hell. She could see nothing from the railroad.  Nothing but the dust and rubble of echoes that had long been forgotten along the old, rusted tracks.

Amy Jarvis currently resides in South Carolina. She is a Master of Arts in Writing candidate at Coastal Carolina University. Her work has appeared in Cahoots Magazine.

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