3 February 2010
Emma's Verruca
It's only when Emma starts talking about verrucas that I begin to sense something's wrong. Sprawled out on my bed, I kick the door closed on my eavesdropping room-mates and switch the receiver to the other ear while I sit up.
"So, you know how it is." she says. "You get a verruca and you know it's there, you can see it, you can feel it, but it doesn't really get in the way too much, doesn't really affect your day-to-day living and it doesn't seem such a big deal, right? It doesn't hurt. Not yet. It will eventually -- probably soon -- but for now it's just there, you know? It's just ... there."
"I dunno," I say. "I guess so."
"But then you realize it's not doing anything for you and you don't actually need the verruca and -- hey, wait a minute -- you can get cream for the verruca. You realise that your foot can be healthy again if you just, you know, get your ass down to the pharmacy, buy some of that cream and kill the verruca. So, that's pretty much where I am right now. That's what I did. I got myself some verruca cream. Is this making any sense?"
"Emma, am I the verruca?"
"No, no, no. No." She pauses for a beat or two, then says, "Our relationship, though. It's our relationship that's the verruca."
"Oh."
She doesn't say sorry. She just applies her cream and hangs up.
by gavin broom
27 January 2010
Pole and Pyramid
He got an erection lasting longer than four hours.
He went to the ER, where unfortunately he waited with cheerleaders -- victims of a pyramid gone bad.
It was obvious. His choice of pants was all wrong.
His wife, thrown suddenly back to her own cheerleader days, pretended not to know him.
“Tentpole!” she shouted. And, “Get that away.”
Luckily the cheerleaders, scraped and sprained and possibly broken, just kept texting, oblivious to the world.
by gary moshimer
20 January 2010
My Moment as a Pickle
I dried the dishes and she put them in the cupboard. She went on and on about cats & dogs & corduroy. After a while I told her I wasn’t going to pretend I knew what she was talking about.
“Instead,” I said, handing her the last dish, “I’m going to pretend I’m a pickle in a jar.”
She made a face and I hopped up on the table, swinging my feet just above the dog’s head as he slept beneath it. She turned away, then poured dry cat food into a dish on the counter.
“I’m a pickle,” I said. “A vinegar pickle. In a jar.”
Binky skittered across my lap as the dry cat food tinked in the dish. His claws pulled threads from my corduroy. As I fingered one of the threads I didn’t see her pack her hands with cookie dough. The wad whapped wet against my cheek and I fell from the table. She laughed. I wanted to laugh too but I knew my jar had shattered, and now I was just a stupidpickle drying out on the tile. So I just lay there, waiting for her to put me away.
by mel bosworth
13 January 2010
The Winter I Was Going to Meetings
Greg honks twice. It was raining all day, but it stopped for a little while. Now everything is silent.
Meetings are at the old strip mall. I never noticed the building before I started. Still don’t know what’s on the first floor. Meetings on the second. The cement stairwell on the side of the building is enclosed by a cinder block wall, but they didn’t put a ceiling on it.
On the second step Greg stops, asks, You hear that?
The gap between each step opens to empty space under the stairwell. He gets on his knees and looks through. Just a baby, he says. Mama didn’t come home.
After the meeting, we get milk from my place. We leave a bowl by the step and wait. The thing is tiny and dull-colored, like dust. Walks lopsided, its leg mangled.
Greg tries to grab it, quick. The thing hisses and almost gets him in the hand. He looks at me and we look at each other. Then we let it be.
It’ll die in there and the stairwell’ll stink for weeks, Greg says in the car. We’re quiet, considering that.
All that week, rain. They start up with Christmas songs on the radio. On the way to work the fog hangs low on the hills, like smoke when it’s in the trees. The stairwell stinks for weeks, exactly like Greg said. It stinks so bad, it gets in your clothes, in your coffee, in your mouth.
One night I have a dream where I crawl through and get my hands around the baby raccoon, even though it’s thrashing and clawing me and everything. I clutch it in my hands and with my eyes I make it be still. With my eyes, I tell it, Be still.
by brendan garbee
6 January 2010
Crazy
One night just before my father moved out, my sister was driven away in an ambulance. Sometime after midnight I awoke to voices, male voices, urgent and loud like they had no concern that others might be sleeping. I was eighteen, not frightened of a thing, but these voices were completely wrong and I ran out of my room to see what was happening. My sister was being rushed out the front door on a gurney. My mother was following behind and yelled back to my father, who was standing at the door alone, "Call Fr. Olson, get Fr. Olson on the phone right now, tell him what's happening."
Since Fr. Olson was our parish priest, I immediately concluded that my sister was dying. But when I ran to my father, he put his arm around my shoulders and said, "Relax, relax. She'll be fine."
"But what happened?"
"She thought she saw something," my father said. "She thought the devil was with her in her bed. She just hyperventilated." He gave my shoulders a squeeze. "Naturally, your mother wants her checked out by professionals. But she'll be fine. Like she always is."
I noticed he wasn't in a hurry to get Fr. Olson on the phone. "Are you sure?"
"Positive," my father said. "It's your mother who worries me."
Three months later, he left us for good, moving all his things into an apartment where, he assured us over and over, things would be far less crazy.
by evan schaeffer
16 December 2009
Toad
Her son had his shoes on the carpet again. Mud-caked clots layered thick with slime and wet soil. Worn, but soft and spongy as the ribs of larva curling slowly inside bean-shaped eggs. She wanted to stop his barbaric habits because, That’s what you do with an animal, she told herself.
One day the son began to grow, slowly at first – then exploded. He sprouted whiskers overnight and had a beard to the navel by morning. His arms and legs doubled in size – then tripled – and when his hands began to web, he took to the yard and slept in a grove of pines where he knew the neighborhood children would not play.
That? said the mother days later to the members of her bible study at the sight of her son – now two stories tall. Never mind him, she muttered scrambling eggs at the stove, It’s only a phase.
Ribbut, croaked the son who had become hungry. He sat alone in the yard watching the house, blinking between breaths. When his stomach growled, it sounded like thunder.
by adam moorad
9 December 2009
Solitude Distantly Near
He was once a sentry watching the seas for the mystery of what might lie in other dimensions, the light that signals land is near, but not the land a heart can travel.
by christina murphy
2 December 2009
Diffuse
I opened my window to let the atmosphere diffuse. He wound it back up with the button on his side.
"We have air con for a reason" he said, ending the silence.
I stared out the windscreen and watched the painted lines disappear beneath the car. After a while I started to imagine myself as one of them. Waiting, hoping to be run over and left behind.
by alex thornber
25 November 2009
Thanksgiving
There was a vale that long shied its dismal face from the world, until discovered by a band of dour pilgrims. In thanksgiving they slaughtered turkey upon turkey, until their gobbles became a dark wind that sighed up over gables, and hissed past the church steeple. Thenceforth, each year at the appointed hour the townspeople sealed themselves inside the church. ‘They draw nigh!’ shrieked a small boy, his tender countenance disfigured by a spasm of terror. ‘Speak not!’ shushed the mother, and pressed the trembling child to her bosom. Outside gathered a legion of little shadows, silent as death. Waiting.
by billy cryer
18 November 2009
Kook
They dine by wine and candlelight, his first date in ages. He wants to seal the deal, but always fails in the clutch. Things are different this time.
“You look so pretty,” he says, and she smiles, “from a distance.”
She frowns.
Dammit.
by tom mahony
11 November 2009
Bison Lying Down Afternoon
When I cross the valley north, the west wind through my front wheel makes spoke-song. Fewer than six vehicles the whole ride, and that includes two hay wagons. Pretty easy to see how cow-tipping might seem appealing and revolutionary to the local teens. Widows cutting grass in the heat. Pavement shimmering, the valley rippling a big distance, farm ponds glistening. Little kids on trikes and Big Wheels right in the road, their big brothers buzzing dirt bikes in the turn-rows.
Oh my god this is a sweet road, even with those surprising turns banked and scattered with chat, and the long, steep descents I’d rather take going up than going down.
When I see the bulls, one lying down, I call it a good day’s ride and stop to take a picture, even though it means climbing a little mother of a hill without a rolling start.
by bim angst
4 November 2009
Last Dollar
The week gas hit five dollars a gallon Toby set his car on fire.
He’d been drinking over at the Tip Top in Elmore, Saturday night, was driving home 2 am or so using country roads all the way to avoid the local cops. He ran out of gas about three miles from town. He'd left his last dollar on the bar as a tip because the girl tending bar was hot, so even if he could hitch a ride home he'd have no money to fill the damn thing up. None til payday. Thursday.
He got out of the car and lit a cigarette, regarded the situation, and when he was done just flipped the butt through the window: a whim. Once he saw the upholstery catch some flame he leaned in and gave the flame some help, tossed some candy wrappers at it, blew on it til he figured it had the strength to make it on its own. He swooped the pint of Wild Turkey from the glovebox, backed away to watch the fireworks. One of those big loud explosions would improve his mood. Like on TV.
It never happened, of course.
The car was out of gas.
It took Toby about twenty minutes to realize this. Once he did, he stood up, thinking about how different TV was from real life. He finished off the bottle of Turkey with one pull, lit up his next tolast cigarette, began to walk home.
by jeff wood
28 October 2009
A Whack at Happiness
Carl sits in his locked office, blinds drawn, staring at little naked women on his iPhone.
Finished, he puffs cologne over each hand, sniffs. He thinks about going to the bathroom sink, forgets, remembers, puffs again. He deeply inhales and exhales, halfway expecting to find courage in this, perhaps insight. He grants himself three minutes before marching into his boss's office and declaring he's okay. He's not sure why, but he knows if he doesn't do it now, it won't get done.
Carl tries to hold onto the quietness of his office. He listens to his nose exhale, to the hum of the little fan. He still isn't precisely sure why, three Tuesdays ago, walking from the train to work, he felt himself fall to the ground and then wait for the police, the whole time feeling like he'd been planning this for years.
It was easy, the acting disoriented part. He rubbed the back of his head a few times, asked if the cops thought someone had hit him in the head, asked if he was bleeding. He mumbled, failed to react to their questions, blinked a lot. He did the same at the hospital. Since returning to work, he has received no new assignments and been the recipient of sympathy and avoidance from fellow government drones.
Carl stands, stretches. He needs to open his door, just a crack at least, to make sure he's going to find his boss. Perhaps tomorrow will be better to tell his boss. Yes, first thing in the morning. He locks his door, leans back in his chair.
In 17 years he can retire with full benefits. He will be 59. Maybe his wife will die of ovarian cancer like her mother. He can see himself stepping up, handling the sale of their mansion while executing the distribution of her trust assets. He will live near the Chesapeake, in a bungalow, able to see little waves smacking into each other.
by david erlewine
21 October 2009
The Bloodline of Sissies
As they struggled to salve his bruises with petals, the elders explained to the loser of the brawl that he was as much female as he was male. The restless Androgyne wiped his tears like they were bison piss. The elders assured him his sensitivity was from Highest Spirit, and he possessed a divine intuition that gave him the ability to heal—both himself and those young men who so often provoked him with jeers and pranks.
While the rickety geezers enclosed Androgyne in a circle of whispers, the rest of the young men trotted past in a line of fists and bellows. They pursued the deranged mammoth that regularly menaced the community by turning abodes into cracked stones and families into flat carcasses. Throughout youth, Androgyne had known the reason for the mammoth’s rampage. The animal simply desired to rejoin its herd, which grazed on the flowering side of the mountains. Humans created this rift when they clogged the pass with hulking clan halls and insatiable bonfires. Of course, Androgyne never confessed that he could understand the wants of a mammoth. Weird beasts didn’t need empathy; they required slaughter.
By returning pushes for embraces, Androgyne untangled himself from the elders. He sprinted after the rest of the men, intent on being the first to stab his spear into the monster’s belly. He was also the first to receive a tusk through the chest.
Because there was little room left in the men’s cemetery, the elders buried Androgyne with the women.
by david massengill
15 October 2009
Eureka
Lindsay, bored and lonely as usual on her hour-long commute from her home in Red Wing, MN to her job as a Database Administrator at Best Buy World Headquarters, decided this day to do something rather peculiar. Despite the fear she normally had of walking into her office even a minute past nine AM, she feared the continuance of her daily routine even more this morning. There was no obvious explanation as to why this day of all days became her breaking point, but that mattered little as Lindsay pulled her vehicle over onto the shoulder of Highway 10, opened her door and walked off into the wilderness. Sure, there were electric power transmission lines high above the trees and cookie-cutter houses in a circumferential horizon line, but Lindsay’s shoes were touching dirt and weeds and it felt like a romantic and spiritual thing. As this warm and naturalistic feeling gurgled about her limbic system, Lindsay was struck upside the noggin by the great log of life, which is to say, she was shat on by a bird.
by christopher matthew jensen
7 October 2009
Santa Meets the Tooth Fairy
They meet at a party and the attraction is instant, surprising them as much as anyone – what, with his wide-belted girth and crinkled eyes and her spun-sugar hair and silver wings. Within moments of being introduced, he takes her hand and leads her to a moonlit room, empty except for a bed and a snowy blanket. Softly, he shuts the door, and the floor tilts under her dainty feet.
They share a sense of humor about their situation – with a grin and a gruff whisper, he promises not to take her on his lap and ask her what she wants. She laughs, with music, and touches his cheek, sending small licks of flame through his frost-bitten skin. Then they’re quiet again as her fingertips travel under miles of plush red velvet to feel his heart beating.
Afterwards, he says he'll drive her home, but she straightens an iridescent strap on her slim shoulder and reminds him she still has work to do. One last kiss, and she’s gone so quickly he feels like a boy who’s been dreaming of packages.
Later, as she’s lifting the pillow of a sleeping child, she catches the scent of soot and pine, and she, who always works in silence, hears a sigh escape from her ribs. At the same moment, he’s riding across the sky with a pair of soft leather reins in his hands and is suddenly engulfed by the fragrance of a pure white lily that blooms just one night a year.
by linda ferguson
30 September 2009
Approaching Girls in Dixons
I think she is the kind of girl who likes the smell of electrical fires. Interested in the backs of televisions; excited by too many plugs in a socket. An overheated adapter for a hot water bottle.
Today she's in Dixons, where the warm air holds a possibility.
She's waited for a quiet moment to place her hands over a laptop fan, something like hope on her face.
I should probably go over.
by teresa stenson
16 September 2009
Showtime
“Thanks, asswipe,” he grumbled, clutching the steering wheel and scowling at the driver puttering and weaving ahead of him. “Take two lanes instead of one. Christ.”
“Shh,” his wife said, glancing toward the back seat. “The twins will hear you.”
“They’ve got to learn sometime.”
“Learn what? Impatience? Road rage?”
“Proper driving technique.”
“They’re three.”
“The world’s getting more complicated,” he said. “Technology and the new math are changing everything. Never too young to learn.”
“Or too old?”
He passed the car. The driver yelled obscenities and flipped him the bird.
Showtime.
As he raised his hand to reciprocate, he saw his wife and kids staring at him. His finger had started its inexorable and well-practiced movement into position. The kids munched pretzels and watched him like a cartoon.
He grudgingly retracted his finger, clenched his teeth, and completed the pass. His wife turned on the DVD player. The Wiggles sang about some big red car.
“Showtime,” he muttered.
by tom mahony
9 September 2009
Moving Day
We’re in mom’s Cherokee with a full-sized mattress strapped to the roof with kite string because that’s all my dad could find, and dad can’t be bothered to go to the store for proper rope or bungee straps, nor does he want to drive an extra 20 miles to borrow Uncle Flip’s pickup truck for the job. Nope, that’s what he’s got three boys for. Dad drives, and my brother and I are on either side of the backseat with an arm out the window, holding onto the mattress. My other brother? He’s lying spread-eagle on top of the thing to weigh it down as dad drives 15 mph in a 45 zone, backing up traffic for miles. Next, we move the La-Z-Boy.
by kelly stapleton
2 September 2009
A Noble Profession
I didn't recognize the e-mail address at first, having been retired for nearly five years. But once I saw the name "lfoote," and the "edu" address, I opened the message, looking forward to hearing from Lois, my old teaching colleague.
The message was chatty and catty, a Lois Foote trademark. She talked of exams to be read, her hatred of me for abandoning the ship before her, and offered her deadpan descriptions of colleagues: "Gilda still waxes prosaic." "Richard continues loathing everything published since 1900, except his novel."
Then came the real reason for writing. "Angus is quitting at the end of spring semester."
"Angus is quitting?" I typed. "I thought they have to remove him with a crane. I smell gossip."
"No crane. A cutie," was all her follow up email said.
"Full disclosure at one," I wrote back, "Or I'll tell everyone about your tattoo."
She waited more than twenty minutes before posting another e-mail. She hadn't been teaching drama since Ibsin wore diapers without appreciating the value of the dramatic pause.
Lois proceeded to tell a sordid story of Angus, our white-haired, Harley-riding poet from Scotland, caught by Dr. M in the photography lab practicing his dark room techniques with a freshman.
There are times I miss my former profession.
by wayne scheer
28 August 2009
Just the Cup
Mornings I get coffee in the building cafeteria. I get a Medium Fair Trade with room for dairy, non-fat. Before applying the lid, I breathe in the aroma, a pleasure. I pay with the change I've prepared, and my day as a junior accounts manager begins.
This morning, a woman ahead of me grabbed an Extra Large cup, took it, empty, to the line. She was wide of hip, dressed well, jacket and skirt of muted maroon, an elegant necklace-bracelet ensemble, expensive-looking heels. I'd seen her before, around the lobby, in the local paper. She was CEO at McDonald-Loewy, a big financial firm in the building.
When it was time, she strode forward and, without pausing, said to Marla, the cashier, "Just the cup." Marla waved her through. I handed Marla my change - five quarters, four dimes, two nickels - and slipped the receipt into my wallet.
At the condiment stand, the CEO reached past a small man, picked up the Cream canister and poured, poured until her cup was full, then topped it off with a splash of Non-Fat. I looked once at Marla, then back at her.
She raised her head, beamed. I saw in her eyes the same satisfaction I feel each morning. I returned her smile, then got my own dairy. My cup cost a dollar seventy five, hers nothing. We'd soon both be at our desks doing our jobs. Mine? To account for all payables and receivables, make sure they are exactly right.
by alan girling
26 August 2009
Parking Lot
The gentle humming of the power windows being lowered was not a comforting feeling. Even the cavernous backseat of a Monte Carlo couldn’t provide enough shelter from the approaching storm. “Fat ass!” he would bark. The heat of the words adding to the already hot Missouri day. Stifling, but he would rarely sweat. He would sometimes mumble after that, keeping his voice low and his words fast. It was a sad addiction. He was on a mission to ruin everyone’s day. I sat there, a quiet soldier of his “hotheaded regime.”
Parking a few spots away from the store was usually no big deal. But when it’s hot, people run low on kindness. “You need the exercise,” he shouted as he circled around like a shark. The second punch stung the worst. He wasn’t playing. His eyes stopped dancing and remained suspended as if they were in boiling liquid. His jowls became tight, like a Doberman on the hunt. No one ever returned the jabs.
There’s power in saying what you want and getting away with it. Like a “ring and run” for adults. “Hussy,” he would let the “u” and “s” linger on his lips. Sexy and foul at the same time. We would eventually park and get out of the car. The whole scene unfolded in slow motion: the sun was blazing, we took confident strides towards the store, his eyes settled on whoever dared to stare, the cool rush of air conditioning and sound of the electric powered doors welcomed us in. Victory.
He was a dangerous man. I like danger, I like it a lot.
by heather calomese
21 August 2009
Cherry Bye Blues
As the train alpined its way through Switzerland he delighted in hovering about the caboose platform, waving back to young Swiss girls riding their bicycles on the outskirts of another picturesque village, steeples and shops with hiding places galore. Oh, it was great to be alive and young, young, healthy and in demand. Nineteen years old and really living now, a tempest rushing to Barcelona to lose his cherry. Several guys on Herzo Base had been to Barcelona and they told him all about the friendly whores to be found and enjoyed along the Ramblas, the greatest street in the world.
Why not? Now was the right time. During the summer of 1958, a week in the great city of Barcelona, where winsome whores awaited him, and he was really going to let them have it, his first fucks something they would never forget. Getting laid!
Unfortunately, he had always been extremely shy around girls and totally unprepared to confront a naked woman. He reveled with American sailors at the Montparnasse Bar where he picked up the very willing Conchita who took him to a beautiful room of sensual lighting and soft music. Getting laid!
Unfortunately, he drank too much, or maybe not enough, and cowering from the bed he watched the naked woman finger fuck herself over the bidet his last two nights in Barcelona. A train carried him and his cherry safely back to Germany.
by kalman gayler
19 August 2009
Despair
In the weeks after Gregory's wife left him, sadness would suddenly drench him, like a sneaker wave. The times he¹d expected to feel heartbroken, alone at the end of the day before their favorite television show, for instance, he felt only the dull pain of vacancy. It was unanticipated sweetness that allowed despair to rush in, as when the child next door poked her head over the fence, pointed to her mouth, and announced that she'd lost a tooth and he could only nod before he fled inside, certain that he might burst into tears.
When the cat, a furry odalisque, rolled on her back on a soft April morning as he stood in the sandy garden bed where he'd planted carrots, an enormous wave reared up and toppled him to the ground, smashing his face into the feathery green tops, the sorrow receding only when the dog next door began barking frantically and he lifted his head and saw the child with her head over the fence, observing him.
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
“Tending the carrots,” he said. Dirt fell from him in clumps and he flushed, after which the sadness began to diminish and finally evaporate, embarrassment being a hot, calming emotion.
by rosaleen bertolino
14 August 2009
Kill
When the child saw what his shot did, he forced himself not to look away, aware of Bobby, Tommy, and Little Davy grinning and yucking. With three fingers, his father gripped the squirrel by the scruff. The animal thrashed blood across the snow in fine, bright sprays. His father offered the squirrel and the knife for the boy to slit it vent-to-throat, as he’d seen his father do with other game. But instead, the boy wrapped one hand around the squirrel’s soft, heaving belly, the other under the neck. The uncles opened metal thermoses, poured steaming chocolate for the boys. The child twisted his hands, heard something like pretzels crunch, felt something like glass shards grind. He raised one hand over his eyes as if to shield them from the sun, leaned against the tree, and swallowed. Then, he feigned a cough and spit bitter.
For months, he chewed and chewed, unable to swallow meat, tonguing it into his palm surreptitiously, pretending to wipe his dry mouth, then slipping the flesh under the table to the dogs.
by bim angst
12 August 2009
The Monster
I first met the monster when he had the bloody needle sticking out of his arm hunched over on the mattress in an awkward position, eyes wide open. That maniac chased me out of the trailer for no reason at all, and he would have killed me happily too. He actually chased me around that depressing kitchen a few times before I decided on pressing my luck, jumping out that front door, and running for my life. I ran across that trailer park like it was the Olympics, nineteen years old and sprinting between hurdles, and all because this insipid heroine addict thought I was interested in the beautiful fourteen year old daughter of his cocaine injecting ex-convict girlfriend. I had brought her cocaine many times for free because she was my friend and she was an addict, her mother that is, never the girl. My relationship with the girl, Brandy, was mostly innocuous--having denied her multiple precocious attempts at seduction as Lolita-esque and gotten drunk in front of her face instead of even kissing her on the cheek--and a monster was two steps away from killing me over nothing.
by matthew dexter
7 August 2009
What Girl
It being Saturday and all, and Saturday being when teenagers are supposed to go to the mall, my friend Sam and I took the bus to the Mazza Gallerie downtown, even though we probably would have fit in better somewhere plainer and closer to Sam’s house in Bethesda (where I used to live years ago), but we went, maybe for no reason other than that, like most fifteen-year-olds, even ones who hadn’t seen each other in years, we couldn’t think of anything to do, but maybe it was fate, because between Sam Goody and Chess King with us wondering if maybe we had run out of things to say, I suddenly saw the girl that three years earlier I very nearly maybe almost could have kissed when my family was in Aspen at some smarty-pants retreat that both my father and hers were attending, but point being, here she was and not entirely surprisingly because I knew her family lived in Silver Springs and she was walking right past me and all I could do was watch her go, her face more grown-up, leaner, her body still long, still lean, her long, soft brown hair falling straight down her back, and her flip-flops softly flip-flopping past me and I turn to Sam and say, “That girl that just walked by: that was that girl that I told you about—the girl from Colorado,” and Sam says, like an idiot, “What girl?”
Sometimes I wonder if anyone knows me.
by steve mcpherson
5 August 2009
Unlike a Horror Movie
On our honeymoon we became lost in the mountains. Far from any town, we pulled off at a tiny gas station to ask directions.
“It looks,” my wife said, “like the kind of gas station where people in a horror movie stop for directions. You know, just before they’re picked off by a psycho killer.”
We laughed and walked inside.
The place was old but well-lit, and it smelled of fresh coffee. Steel guitar from an old country song swelled in the air, comforting even if I couldn’t place the tune.
The man behind the register was clean, pleasant and helpful. He didn’t wear filthy coveralls, spit and curse like the station attendants in horror movies.
“Well, that wasn’t like a horror movie after all,” I said as we walked back to the car.
We drove off, following the directions the attendant gave us. They led not to a sudden death at the hands of a killer but to a long road of petty cruelty and tiny atrocities.
by sanford allen
31 July 2009
Hook, Line & Sinker
Summer after the accident my parents began insisting they could get to heaven without waiting in line. Six months before Christmas, in the guts of June, they invited an incorrigible band of nerds into our living room. Neighborhood parents shook their hands and hightailed SUVs straight out of town. Mom made homemade eggnog, dad chiseled away at a giant block of ice. I sat smoking in garage rafters, seeing how far I could dangle spit before sucking it back into my mouth. Inside they played games and sang songs about life everlasting. In an effort to appease the few popular girls that couldn’t tantrum their way out of attending, I told Leroy Hinklefuss that if he spread peanut butter on his genitals and let our black Labrador Leviticus (nee Duke) lick it off, that I would recreate the favor in my upstairs bedroom. Some people believe anything. We laughed hysterically behind cupped hands. My parents walked in on Leroy frosting his scrotum like a cupcake. After the celebration, after everyone had gone, my parents said we needed to getaway. They said there would be roller coasters and water rides. They said it would be heaven on earth. Excited, I got in the car.
by brendan o'brien
29 July 2009
Dematerialized
The engine in the cab of Stuart’s 1965 Dodge truck started spitting steam in a traffic jam on Highway 1 towards Santa Cruz. Stuart never wanted to pull over for anything so he put an old t-shirt over his hand and removed the radiator cap between us. A geyser of antifreeze and boiling water exploded and drenched us in a Hell’s rain.
He pulled over. We tumbled out, our backs steaming.
“I’m so sorry about this. I should’ve known,” Stuart said.
We sat on the rail separating the road from the cliff. I looked down at a group of hippie nude sunbathers on the beach. I’d heard that in tropical hurricanes, a person on the beach could be dematerialized by sand. I wondered what kind of asshole would hang out on a beach in a hurricane.
My back stung where my bikini cut into my boiled skin. This was as good a time as any to break up and I thought about how I was going to say it so he wouldn’t think the radiator was the main reason when I noticed that on the beach a man and woman lay on their backs holding hands. They were so happy and perfect like Adam and Eve and my resistance slid away like loose gravel on a steep sandstone bluff.
I pressed the side of my face against Stuart’s chest. I heard his heartbeat and it was racing.
by maureen o'leary wanket
24 July 2009
Bread Route
The nursing home called. My father and one of his cronies had stolen the idling bread truck from outside the delivery door. “This is tragic,” she apologized. “I don’t know how it could have happened!” But I did. They’d probably been scheming for weeks. They were senile, but not stupid. “I don’t know if he can drive it,” the head nurse continued. “We’ve alerted the police.” “He can drive it with his eyes closed,” I said. “That used to be his route.” I got on my little scooter and puttered across town, weaving around pedestrians, light posts. I spotted the bright yellow truck in the Turkey Hill parking lot, tilted back, front tires resting on a concrete divider. Country music blasted from the open door. My father in his pajamas was loading plastic trays of bread on a dolly. He nodded to me. “Do you believe the prices on this shit? When did that happen?” Buddy was teetering near the open back door. He was naked and his blue plastic diaper was ripped open from one side. He was fitting a baby bagel over his penis. “When does anything happen?” he said.
by gary moshimer
21 July 2009
Mornings
Around here there are times when early summer mornings are right still, when all us farmers can hear each other’s tractors starting, just after sun-up, especially if you’re late getting out to yours. Tractor motors popping and snorting, from there, then there, then over that away, the whole county warming up its motors.
Always reminds me of a time outside of some little French town. We’d been crawling on our bellies for two whole days, finally got some armored support in the late afternoon, stopped for the night. Next day at sun-up, all those tanks begun to run their motors. I said then to this New York boy I used to pal around with some–I still remember his name, Guido di Barco–I said to Guido that those tank motors reminded of tractors starting up on all the farms around home.
That day we moved into that little town. Guido got killed–only we never said “killed.” We used some other words.In our outfit it was “bought the farm.” So now of a quiet summer morning if I hang around talking with the old woman over coffee and get out late to start my motor, I hear all the others starting theirs, and it reminds of that time outside that little French town just before Guido di Barco bought the farm.
by brad field
16 July 2009
Claw
I’m raking leaves when three little boys run by, kicking up one of my piles. Piggies, that’s what my wife calls the kids. Inside the house, my son sits on the entry room floor, looking at alphabet flash cards. The boys run to the end of the cul-de-sac and disappear down the hill, no doubt looking for soggy tennis balls or quarters in the little creek.
I hold open the trash bag with my left hand and stuff leaves into it. Once I get enough in the bottom, the bag will be easier to control. Even the year my wife helped, starting each bag was the worst part. She stood there, yelling back at me that she was holding it open.
Next year my son will help, whether his stomach hurts or not. He won’t be like her, always claiming headaches and stomach viruses and exhaustion.
One of the little boys’ moms calls out “Jamie!”. She walks past me, not waving or saying hello. My wife hated her from the day we moved in. I think the woman’s name is Janet. She travels a lot. She’s some hot shit attorney whose husband is more like the wife.
Janet runs to the edge of my yard and looks up past my house, at the wooded area beyond my backyard. “Jamie, come here!”
Serves her right, not knowing where her child hangs out. You can drown in less than 2.5 centimeters of water.
She circles back, walks right up to me. “Where did he go? Where is Jamie?”
My son watches us through the window. I shake my head and claw leaves into the bag to make it still.
by david erlewine