By Steve Gergley
On Friday night, I drove out to the Wickens family farm to listen to my wife’s hardcore band play a show inside the barn at the edge of the woods. The barn stood sheathed in a thick crust of shimmering obsidian paint. A common nighthawk wearing a tiny leather jacket perched on a post just outside the door. It was April. I had quit my job at Wal-Mart over a year ago. My wife said she was fine with this, but I wasn’t sure. She had never been very good at expressing her true emotions.
Inside, the barn was empty of animals and people and fences and hay. A carpet of soft dirt covered the cool floor. My wife slammed on her drum set in a rapturous thrall. The sound of her drumming was deafening. The concussive force of her kick drum rammed into my ribs like a right hook. Runnels of gleaming sweat forked down my wife’s luxurious neck. She wore nothing but the expensive purple lingerie I had purchased for her thirty-sixth birthday last month. Stepping into her line of sight, I held up my hand and waved to her in adoration. She stared at my shins for thirty-one seconds. She did not smile at me or acknowledge my presence. She played her 9/8 drum patterns and stared at the lead singer’s ass for the next hour. So I peeled off my clothes and lay on my back in the nude. I grabbed fistfuls of loose dirt and smeared brown streaks of mud across my thighs. I stared at the mossy cobwebs clinging to the corners of the gambrel roof. I pushed my pinkies into my ears until forks of sticky blood began to flow.
Steve Gergley is the author of four books. His most recent novel, Episode 3328: Ian Sharp, was published in January of 2025 by Translucent Eyes Press. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Wigleaf, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, Passages North, Always Crashing, and others. He tweets @GergleySteve. His fiction can be found at: https://stevegergleyauthor.wordpress.com/. In addition to his own writing, he is also the editor of scaffold literary magazine.