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Issue 2 Issue 2 Fiction

THREE STORIES BY LAMB

By Lamb

THE BAPTISM

I was in the kitchen eating a green apple in a hurry, knocking off big cuts of flesh with my front teeth, making the most incredible splitting sounds, when my fiancé asked if I would ever be violent with a woman. I asked if she meant if I’d ever hit a woman, and she said she meant exactly what she said. 

So I stood there holding the dripping core over the trash can, sugaring my fingers, thinking, trying to define violence for her, for myself. After a minute or two, she said we were already late and would talk about it later. I said the conversation felt important and the baptism could wait.

It’s a baptism, she said.

For a baby, I said.

I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.

I’ll pretend you don’t believe a baby needs a remission of sins, I thought.

Driving to the baptism, I tried to think of the worst thing I’d ever done to a woman, the most violence I’d ever demonstrated. The true answer, my cesarean delivery, wouldn’t satisfy.

OK, I said. One time I tripped a girl in the fieldhouse, and she broke her nose on the concrete. She was a bully, but I felt awful, and I got in trouble with the school. It was fourth grade.

I heard her eyes roll.

I don’t care about what you’ve done, I want to know the most violent thought you’ve ever had about a woman.

Why is this coming up now?

I don’t know, she said, I shouldn’t have to justify my need to feel safe to you.

And I thought, She’s right.

And I felt close to her, and wanted to feel closer, and I saw our days stretching into years, our pets, our children so unknowing of us, and I wanted her to know the color of my pain, and to know that of hers. I wanted her to know how much I needed her.

I’ve never thought of hurting you or any woman, I said. But can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone?

She turned her head to mine, nodding.

Sometimes I do think about hurting myself.

It’s amazing, she said, how you manage to make literally everything about you.

ONE ON ONE

Another week, another review of my nonperformance.

My boss says, Help me understand. Be specific. What roadblocks are you facing?

Um, the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, its origin taken from emotion recollected in the tranquility of eight hours of uninterrupted silence.

Gorgeous, he says, switching his crossing leg. Didn’t take you for a Whitman guy. You know he diddled boys …

I nod.

Multitudes, am I right? he chuckles. As I chuckle back, he straightens his face. You know accountability is the chief purpose of these meetings, yes?

Of course.

So, account for your time. Show me what you’ve been working on so spontaneously. So powerfully.

I pull up my poems folder and slide my laptop across the desk.

Come on, Lamby, he says. You know me better than that … Print these puppies out. I want to hold your words.

You sure? It’s many pages.

He winks and says we have much ink.

I print two hundred poems, assured by my honesty, my courage. When I return to his office, he’s sitting crosslegged on the floor with open palms.

Gimme, he says.

I do.

Ooo, he says, they’re warm. He reads them to himself in a whisper as I stand in the corner.

A few pages in, he asks for a pencil. I pull the thumblong Ticonderoga from my back pocket and toss it to him.

We need to get you some Blackwings, he says, examining the round graphite tip. OK … Let’s touch base after lunch. I’ll need some time.

I step outside and call my wife. I tell her she was right when she said it would end this way. I ask her forgiveness. I ask her to pray for a miracle. She says she knows I will land on my feet, and I weep. I’m unworthy of her dogged faith in me, in Jesus.

After lunch, I find my boss prostrate on his office floor, asleep. I quietly retrieve the loose stack of pages and return to my corner. Flipping through, I see scansion. I see circled words, exclamations, questions in the margins.

Did this really happen?

Oh my gosh … Is this your wife’s mom or yours? Is she okay?

Did you just invent a word???

Now I’m weeping all over my poems. I look up and see my boss is standing, weeping too.

Doggone, he says, you can’t just hide your candle like this … Can you not see we all are in the room with you? Do you even know how much we thirst for your splendid light?

INSTRUCTION

When I wake, you all are circling my bed.

But this is not my bed. I have shared a bed for seven years. This is a twin. These sheets are softer than my sheets.

Where is my wife? I think. Where is my child?

You whisper loud as talking, as if you have not noticed me wake, as if I were in an opiate sleep. Some of you are talking about smoking opium later. The hundreds of you are making plans, none of them involving me.

I say, I can hear you.

You all laugh, quaking the floor and walls. I brace myself for glass shatter, then see there are no windows.

Where are my windows? I say.

One of you folds over the comforter, exposing my pale feet.

Cold, I say.

You all take out your notebooks and dark pencils and begin sketching.

One of you sits at the foot of the bed, instructing. I suppose you are the instructor.

I hear what too many of you are thinking, you say. You would like to think of the foot as the hand. You are thinking of the toes as fingers, depending on their familiar shape to achieve likeness. Stop. This will get you nowhere.

The rest of you listen on the balls of your feet.

Look at this foot, you instruct. Observe the muscle. The tendon. The bone and the fat beneath the heel. Now consider the foot. Its nature … The foot is the prophet, receiving revelation from the earth god for the church of the body, interpreting commandments to be obeyed against deaths physical and spiritual. The foot bears the moral weight of the soul, which is the union of the body and the spirit. The foot is the most credible witness to one’s life. The foot is the storyteller, the wisest and most ancient member of the tribe, silently collecting narrative with each strike of experience. The foot knows all one ever could. The foot is the map of the body …

One of you, the woman with bright chapped lips, interrupts, And how should we prioritize these metaphors?

You are slight and divinely fair. You are bold.

They all turn on you. They pull your limbs and dark hair until you are four feet in the air, parallel to the floor. The instructor walks the edge of the bed, bouncing, tapping heads one by one, granting turns to stab you through the chest and belly with their pencils. You scream with power. I have never heard such pain.

Some of them fail to pierce you, and the instructor scolds them for having dulled their points so early into the session. You are applying too much pressure! he says. You are devaluing your value!

When you are suddenly quiet, they all mourn you in song. They know all the words in some cousin language, all on pitch and harmonizing toward catharsis. It is beautiful.

They lay you beside me as the instructor scrambles onto my knees, rends his black shirt, and says, Do you understand now? Do you see what love will do to all of us?

And the warmth of your blood envelops me. And I know that this is all my fault.

Lamb is an American writer. 

lamb.onl

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Across The Wire Vol. 3

America Bird

By Michael McSweeney

Burning past Buffalo through the wildfire haze, I wanted to feel momentous, part of a final history, a mover in the American age of malaise, a reporter in the heat of the breaking news belching from the Quebecois woods, spotlit by a low and violet sun. But in reality, I was alone, thirty-five, and afraid to die on the road to Chicago. Then a bald eagle flew through the window and landed beside me.

The eagle’s alabaster crown shone in the dying daylight. Feathers brown like melted chocolate. Its talons chewed the leather seat. 

I waited for a lot of things to happen. All that happened was that I drove for seventeen more miles to the next rest area where I claimed a parking spot near the rear of the lot. When we stopped the eagle sang, a strident terrifying portamento. Its amber eyes tore me. Exposed my lowest, most degrading fears. Then quiet pooled inside the car. 

I took a bag of jerky from the center console and peeled it open. Raised a chunk of salty beef. The eagle blinked at the jerky before seizing the meat with its beak. I watched its cruel efficiency and I chewed a piece of my own.

Peace lingered as we emptied the bag. The red sun squatted against unfamiliar hills. The dashboard blinked an eight chased by dueling zeroes. I took my phone from my pocket. Skimmed through a friend’s two-dozen unanswered texts. I wasn’t having a mid-life crisis. I was having a quarter-life crisis. I shouldn’t presume that I’ll die so young, they said. 

I thought about answering. Then I dropped my phone in a cup holder and tugged the car into drive. 

The eagle settled down after a few miles. I tried not to wonder about the costs of leather repair. It’s not every day a bald eagle catches a ride with you. I grazed the radio. The eagle flared at stations for techno, country, and bitter talk radio. It relaxed to some jazz. Closed its eyes. Ornette Coleman bore us into Pennsylvania. 

I wondered if the eagle cared where I was going. A reading in Chicago. The next night and the next. A throng of writers and musicians for the renegade fall of America. 

Two hours later the car curled around the hotel’s rear. I looked at the eagle. I couldn’t leave the bird in the car. Streetlights betrayed the choking air. The hot summer night threatened its advantage if the AC died. The eagle raised its head, as if expectant of a plan. 

I got out of the car, came around to the other side, and opened the door.

Out you go, little guy. The eagle stared at me. I briefly considered risking the onslaught that would follow any attempt to lift the eagle or otherwise urge it physically out of the car. I gave up, returned to my seat, and closed the door. Then the first mad etchings of an idea came to me. 

Uh…wanna climb? I asked, then held my arm out.

The eagled cocked its head and stared. 

Okay, that’s not gonna work, I said. Then I said, Okay, let’s try this.

 I stiffened my body and stared ahead. After a few moments, the eagle rose on the seat. Its eyes never left me. But the eagle’s movements, the feather twitches, the talon tweaks stopped. The bird didn’t so much as blink.

Yeah, I said. Yeah! I said louder, and the eagle chirped and gripped the ruined leather seat. We understood each other, I thought.

I mimicked immobility again. Then, carefully, in painstaking centimeters, I took the eagle in my hands. Held it close. Got out of the car, scooped my backpack from the rear, then paced a line of slow and anxious steps toward the hotel doors. Across the road rumbled a tavern, its outline neon-red. A pack of smokers heaped extra mouthfuls beneath a ragged awning. I kept walking and entered the cool touch of the conditioned lobby. The eagle made a soft noise but remained inert. 

Cool bird, said the front-desk guy. 

Thanks, I said, reaching for my wallet with my free arm. Never leave home without it.

Who did the work?

Eh?

The restoration. It’s really good quality, said the guy, and he leaned forward. I turned my body, to prevent a closer look.

Oh, uh, I’m not sure. My dad gave it to me. Found it in a dumpster. Really lucky find.

Pretty clean for something you found in a dumpster.

Don’t I know it, I said. 

Our conversation waned as the guy chose my room. Two beds in the far corner. The pulse of fireworks broke through the walls and the eagle stirred in my arm. I cleared my throat.

Party outside? I asked, raising my voice. 

That bar across the way, said the guy. Fucking maniacs. Fourth of July every night this week. I call the police but they do nothing. 

That’s too bad.

I feel like a loser. Getting upset. But you get used to the quiet.

I know what you mean.

The vulnerable moment, the weakness the guy betrayed, slipped into nothing. He handed me two keycards and pointed me to the elevators. Once the doors shut the eagle stirred. Talons tested the bounds of my flesh. I shuddered under the immensity of its strength, restrained, watchful. We rose through the bones of the hotel.

Once in my hotel room, the eagle detached and drifted across the room to the bed. Plucked and tore at the sheets. I cried out and approached and the eagle snapped its beak at me. As if to say, I’m in control now. The eagle continued to tear at the bed. Like the wet heart of prey lay inside the sheets. I imagined dollars pouring from sliced arteries, dropped my things by the door, and went into the bathroom.

The mirror wouldn’t reveal whether the smoke had aged me. I flashed my teeth and remembered I forgot to buy toothpaste. Another misstep on the road. I searched beneath the sink and found the dead worm curl of a toothpaste tube. I squeezed it for signs of life. A tear of white squirted out. I rubbed it against my teeth, around my gums, the dry scrape of pharmaceutical mint. Then I stripped my clothes and stepped in the shower. 

The eagle stood perched on the TV when I left the bathroom. One of its claws punctured the dark screen. The eagle twisted its head and watched me pull clothes on my still-wet body. I felt like prey. A cold and hollow wash. I imagine this is how the rabbit feels when it first spots a shadow circling on the grass. 

I decided to go to the bar. I finished dressing, pulled on my shoes, and grabbed my phone from the bedside table. More texts from the friend. Don’t let that breakup fuck with your head. This isn’t the crisis you think it is. Call me. Call me. Ignore the anxiety. Happy 4th of July if I don’t hear from you. 

I made for the door. A scuffle of talons followed close. The eagle, head tilted in seeming curiosity, croaked at me, as if wantingly. I extended my arm and the eagle climbed my leg and settled on the offered perch.

Alright then. I guess we’re gonna go drink, I told the eagle. 

We left the hotel and traversed the toxic-mouthful paces to the bar. Patriotic glam rock slammed against us when we entered the sweat-breath swell of people. It made no sense how busy the place was, here on some highway-flung tavern an inch on the map from Lake Erie. I pushed closer to the bar. The eagle chirped and tucked its head close to my shoulder. 

I tried to buy a whiskey sour and the bartender, a middle-aged woman with gray hair tied up in a knot, put her hands on the counter and leaned forward.

Is that a real bird or what?

As I started to stammer in reply the eagle raised its head to the bartender. Before the bartender could react, some drunk guy to my left leaned forward and shouted, Hey, this asshole’s got an America bird with him.

Eagle, someone else yelled. An American eagle. Or something.

America bird! the drunk guy repeated. Somebody get this America bird a drink. 

The drunk guy tugged on my eagle-free shoulder.

Hey, buddy, let me buy your America bird a drink.

The drunk guy took some cash from his wallet and crumpled the bills on the counter.

Some beer for this America bird, he said to the bartender.

The bartender looked at me and then the eagle and then the drunk guy, and then his money. Picked up the cash, counted the bills, and then from behind the bar took a small wooden bowl and poured some beer in it from the tap. As she poured a crowd gathered around us, drink-brandishing gawkers sipping and watching and whispering about the eagle. 

The bartender set the bowl on the counter and we all watched the eagle.

Go on, little fella, I said.

The eagle clambered down from my arm and rested on the counter. It lowered its beak to the bowl of beer, considered it, and then began to lap up the beer with its thin, pink tongue.

America bird’s drinking a fucking beer! the drunk guy shouted. The crowd clamored and cheered. The bartender poured my whiskey sour and I took a greedy swig. Then I bought the eagle another beer. 

A woman in an American flag tank top pushed her way to the bar. She reached out and stroked the eagle’s feathers. The eagle kept drinking. 

This is the greatest July 4th pre-game I’ve ever been to, she said to me. Then she asked, Is it safe for it to drink beer? 

I have no idea, I said. 

The bartender took her phone out of her pocket and typed. There’s a video on here about a crow that drank beer, she said. 

She held the phone up to me. A grainy news clip from the 1970s showed a black crow hopping around a bar counter and sipping from mugs of beer. The crow knocked one of the mugs over and hopped around in the mess.

That’s amazing, the woman said.

We finished another round of drinks, and then another. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten that drunk. I took my phone from my pocket and skimmed through the texts from my friend. It’s not like I wanted to ignore him. I just preferred to speed past my problems. Leave them in a ditch by the road. Drive until the accumulated damage blew the tires out.

The eagle jerked forward and snapped at my phone with its beak. It pierced the glass and I dropped the phone onto the counter. I reached for it, slowly. The screen still responded to my touch but now a crack-swirled puncture ruled its center. The eagle screeched. I released the phone again. 

Trying to text someone important, the woman in the tank top said. The bar had grown louder so she had to yell to be heard. 

Sort of, I said.

The bird is right. You should stay in the moment.

Maybe.

Don’t text at the bar. That’s a rule I have. It’s too easy to tell the truth and lie at the same time.

How does that work?

The woman thumbed her glass for a moment. I don’t know, she said. It just makes sense when I say it aloud.

I’m having a crisis, I told her.

How come?

It’s like, I don’t know why things are the way they are anymore.

Like what?  

Like working. I work because I should work. And when I’m working, I worry about the next time I’ll work, and I worry if one day I won’t have work.

Like being laid off or some shit?

Yeah. 

What about right now?

I don’t know. I guess I sort of forgot about it until I took my phone out.

Then keep that shit away. Live in the moment. Find hope in that. Hope in the moment. 

The woman put her drink on the counter and laughed. Then she said, Maybe that’s hard to feel when we’re all choking on smoke. But it’s the truth.

Then someone dropped their glass and the people in the crowd expelled a collective ohh, and the eagle did too, hunching and croaking with delight. 

The drinks kept flowing. I told the bartender I’d known the eagle since childhood. Best friend growing up. The eagle leaped off the counter and soared across the crowd and everyone cheered. Then the eagle flew back and landed on my shoulder. Talons tore through skin. I flinched but the whiskey dulled the pain. I was too happy to worry about anything. 

The woman asked if I wanted to smoke. I said yes and she led me up a narrow staircase to the roof. I barely noticed the smoke in the air. Took an offered cigarette. After a few puffs, the eagle shifted and croaked again. I turned my head and the eagle was eyeing my cigarette. I held it up to the eagle. The eagle nipped at the end of it with its beak. Elation swelled inside me and I laughed.

Okay, I definitely think it’s bad for a bird to smoke, the woman said.

This eagle, I said. This fucking eagle. 

You guys seem close.

He saved my life.

How?

Good luck. He’s a good luck bird.

Okay.

I wandered to the edge of the roof. The smoke in the air was still just as thick but I noticed, for the first time, that I could still see the vague etchings of light cast by cars on the highway. Speeding through the danger. Swiftly seeking home. The hint of forest stretched on forever. That’s beautiful, I said. Look at this night. Beautiful.

Be careful over there, the woman called.

I didn’t reply but I raised my hand to gesture with my cigarette. As if trying to wave my thoughts into focus. Invincibility, connection, America. I knew I had to do something to mark the moment. 

Let’s go for a flight, I told the eagle. Just a little flap around. 

There was no doubt that the eagle supported me. Believed in my ability to fly. We’d come too far together. The moment demanded we be airborne. I raised my arms and stepped beyond the edge. I remember the tumble, a shout from behind, the spin of my body, a harsh yelp, a furious flutter, a hot wet crack in my arm, the pavement, a swift and concrete unconsciousness. 

***

I woke up in my car. Sprawled in the back seat. My left arm, stiff and swollen, was bound in a sling made from a bartender’s apron. My lungs ached. Everything ached. I sat up. Someone, the hotel staff probably, had collected my bags and left them half-open in the front seat. No note. Just a swift and silent ejection. 

The world was clear through the smudged windows. The smoke drifted elsewhere in the night. I saw chipped-face commercial buildings with big garage doors like brown teeth. 

After a stretch of wounded time, I moved to the driver’s seat and groped around for my belongings. No cash in the wallet. Keys under the floor mat. I clicked my phone’s broken screen and squinted at the time. 3 p.m. Half the day, gone. I should’ve been on the outskirts of Illinois by now. But there I was, injured near Lake Erie, wondering where the eagle had gone.

All I had were the remnants of the eagle’s presence. The fucked-up car seats. Scabbed-over cuts on my arms. The beak-broken phone. Stray feathers on the dash. Signs, but not proof, of a profound and wondrous experience. I wished the eagle hadn’t left. But maybe that was the point. The eagle was always going to leave. People experience miracles until they don’t. Nations fail because their people stop believing that temporary miracles are enough. 

I started the car. The gas needle flicked up to the halfway point. Not enough to reach Chicago. Not enough to flee back home. No digital map to guide me. 

But I had a destination, a westerly point, a daytime star. Skies clear for the first time in days. I’d survived a fall. I hadn’t died on the road to Chicago, not yet at least. 

My body in revolt, I reached for the seatbelt.

Michael McSweeney is a writer from Massachusetts. He lives online @mpmcsweeney.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 3

Rose Rocks 

By Mason Parker

It ends with me on hands and knees looking at my teeth in a puddle of blood as Darling stomps her feet on the floor. A rose rock spins, tilted on the linoleum. Outside, the rain falls west-leaning in big floppy drips from the sky–I could look up and see nothing forever, because the night is filled with streetlights and neon signs. She is bleeding from a cut over her eye, streaming through the wrinkles in her face. She is too young for those wrinkles, deep canyons carved from years of untreated BPD. I pick up my teeth and put them in my pocket. 

“You have to see someone,” I say. “We can’t live like this. We’re going to die.”

“Don’t gaslight me.”

“You can’t gaslight an actual crazy person. That’s not how it works.” 

We fuck savagely.

I clean up my blood with a wet rag and tell myself this is love.

Rewind ten months and two days, we’ve swiped right, and I’m messaging her, sitting at the end of a long table inside Terry the Tweaker’s house with a couple hot rails cut up on a white plate that has pink carnations painted on the lip. Terry the Tweaker met a girl on the app who had four kids. Terry had two kids, so now they have six. When he buys the family snow cones, it costs him forty dollars. That must be love.

Darling likes that I’m into yoga. She asks what kind I practice. Pranayama, I say, emphasizing that I’m not into the suburban housewife hot yoga bullshit. I’m into mind-expanding breathwork. She sends me videos of her spinning an LED hoop as Too Fine to Do Time by PantyRaid plays in the background. She is very good, but I’m just watching her tits bounce like a pig. I dunno, maybe I deserved all the beatings.

Fast forward eleven months and nine days, I’m inside an old woman in the back of a Subaru Forester parked off Wabash Street in Deadwood, SD. Not old. Maybe late fifties. So, yeah, old I guess. When we finish she starts talking about her son, Percy. Percy’s my age and dying of pancreatic cancer from drinking a handle of whiskey every day. The drinking started after Percy’s military service when his high school sweetheart got knocked up by her weed dealer and dumped him during deployment. Her name was Sara. Percy came home and started fucking a guy, but he swore to his mom and everyone else that he wasn’t gay. It wasn’t like that. She tells me she didn’t care if he was gay. Says it wasn’t worth drinking himself to death over it. She talks about Percy in the past tense. I get the feeling she’s lying. She hated that he was gay, told him as much, and is hoping to clear her name in hindsight. The conversation bums me out, so I take a pull from a bottle of bourbon. I crack the window and try to breathe clean air, but all I can taste is cigarettes. I have a bag of rose rocks in my backpack. There’s only a few left. I run my eyes over the woman, not remembering her name, but letting my gaze get caught in the cleft of her crow’s feet. I wonder if this could be love, but I miss Darling. 

Rewind ten months and twenty-one days, Darling shows up at my house for the first time sloppy from drinking and maybe benzos. I don’t know. I’m sloppy from drinking and maybe benzos. I don’t know. Zach is over, and he always has pills, but mostly opiates and opioids. They make me nauseous until I’m blissfully puking into my unwashed toilet bowl. Darling is falling out of her chair, eyes heavy, nodding off. I’m puking and smiling with lunch caught in my molars. This is only our first date, but we feel big love simmering inside the chaos.

Fast-forward a month and three days, I’m starting to get jealous because it feels like maybe Darling has fucked every guy she’s ever met. It makes for awkward conversations at house parties and shows at the Attic. Every time someone says, “Oh, you’re dating Darling, huh?” I start to get self-conscious and think, Why? Did you fuck her too? I’m trying to be socially progressive and forward-thinking about it, but all I can picture are gangbangs and spit-roasts and bukkakes. I know I’m not supposed to slut-shame. I’ve watched that one scene in Chasing Amy, but it feels out of my control like the thoughts rise up from nowhere. It makes me angry. First at her and then at myself. If I’m too jealous and territorial, it’s only because I’m in love, right? 

Fast-forward one month and nine days, Darling talks me into doing a kick door at her old neighbor’s house to get her sewing machine back. I tell her I’ll just buy her a new sewing machine. She says she wants that one. It’s the same machine some hutterites used to teach her how to sew, so it has sentimental value. I say yes, because I’m in love and easily persuaded into committing petty crime. We slip on ski masks. Darling’s is hot pink, which feels a little too conspicuous, but this is her burglary, I’m just living in it. 

She asks me to kick the door in, so I do. She pulls a .38 from the pocket of her hoodie. It’s my .38 that I keep hidden between the quilts in the closet. 

“Why do you have a gun? Is that my fucking gun?” I whisper, frantic.

“Just in case things go wrong,” she says too loudly, like we’re not balls deep in a felony.

“It seems unnecessary to kill someone over a sewing machine.”

“That sewing machine means a lot to me, Julian.”

“Please quiet your–just shhh, and don’t say my actual name. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Biggie’s second Crack Commandment says to move in silence and violence, but Darling appears to only understand half that edict. The door is wide open, off the hinges and no one is home. It’s so quiet inside that the sound of Darling pulling the hammer back on the .38 fills the empty house. I start to wonder what Darling does all day when I leave and drag ass to stock groceries at Whole Foods. She rummages through my stuff, but what else did she take? She could just ask. I’d give her anything she wanted like I did with the iPad and the sheet of acid. But, to be fair, I wouldn’t have given her the gun. 

Darling starts loading up a big duffle bag with more than just the sewing machine, which doesn’t bother me. We’re already here, so why not? But I’m nervous about the gun. There’s part of me that thinks she’s going to turn it on me, because I’m such a big fat fucking asshole. It would be good cover if I was found dead wearing a ski mask in a stranger’s house with the door kicked off the hinges, though my boss at Whole Foods, Larry, would be surprised. I show up on time. I quietly stack pomegranates. I read on my breaks. I go home. I’m not like sloppy ass Luke. Luke comes in drunk, passes out in the vegetable cooler, and blames it on a spider bite. I come in hungover and handle my shit. Larry would be shocked. 

Nah, I decide there’s no way she wants to bump up a B&E to a murder charge.

Fast forward three months and fifteen days, a warrant goes out for Darling’s arrest because the person we robbed knows damn well it was Darling and somehow there’s a witness–some crusty nosy-ass neighbor. My name isn’t brought up. I babysit Darling’s seven-year-old daughter while she goes to a work party where she’s busted for public intox and weed. They find the pink ski mask in her backpack, and she catches a few cases. I rage call her all night until the sun comes up thinking she’s prolly cheating, prolly gone home with some guy or guys, prolly having a train run on her. In reality, she is sitting in a jail cell, being interrogated, not snitching. We spend lots of time in and out of the courtroom. The judge settles on weekend jail. 

Over the next few months, she works as a prep cook in an Italian restaurant, where we meet by the back door to smoke cigarettes. We stay up late drinking and sometimes, if it’s after 2 am, we sneak into the back of the restaurant and pull bottles of house red from the wine rack. She says she’s going to replace them but never does. Then Friday rolls around, so I take her to jail. I kiss her goodbye and tell her I love her. I spend weekends alone or with my family and friends. Everything is perfect. These are the good days. This is love. The blue sky looks brighter. The trees sing. I turn up the music in my car and drive to the lake. I lay on the shore. I think life would be better if Darling spent weekends in jail forever. Then, on Sunday night, I pick her up, and we get dinner because she’s tired of jail food. Nothing expensive, Taco Bell or Burger King.

One night we’re deep into it. All of it. And I’m feeling reproductive, so we have to go to Wal-Mart in the morning for Plan B. When we have sex, she blames the quirks of her body on her pregnancy. The hair in odd places. The way her breasts sag. The bumps and blemishes on her skin. I don’t mind any of it. It makes her feel lived in. 

We find the Plan B by the other contraceptives. She tells me she hates taking Plan B, because it does weird stuff to her body, but she doesn’t want a second kid and definitely not with me. Fair. 

We exit through the fish section, and though Darling won’t bear my children, she’s willing to share a betta. We look at the fish and find a particularly grisly one that’s red and black and stares through the glass like it wants to eat our souls.

“I like that one,” Darling says. Her eyes are as blue as oceans and dead people. You can see the white all around them when she’s excited, and she is always so excited. She smiles and her cheeks pull her lips from her teeth. They are white and imperfect just like us. 

“Yeah, me too,” I say. 

We name the fish Brotha Lynch and put him in a bowl with a Buddha statue on the bookshelf. He is always staring out, watching us, waiting for fish food and souls.   

We have hobbies together, fire dancing and costume making. She says the thing she loves most about me is that I’m not very attractive, but I’m confident about it. She shows me her favorite spot for collecting rose rocks off Highway 9. Rose rocks are swirling red stones that formed millions of years ago after the ocean receded and was replaced with sandstone. We fill zip lock bags with rocks before laying in the grass until nightfall. Above us there’s a meteor shower and a million stars. I try to count them out loud, but I keep losing track. Darling thinks it’s funny at first, but she soon gets annoyed and tells me to stop. I continue counting stars in my head with my arm wrapped around her. 

After Darling’s last weekend in jail, I pick her up and we go to the Chinese buffet to celebrate.

 I say, “I’m about to gord myself on sesame chicken.”

“You’re about to what yourself on sesame chicken?”

“Gord myself. Like, get really full on it.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, but the word is gorge. You gorge yourself on food.”

“Gorge? That doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make sense. That’s what it is. That’s the word.”

“It’s gord like Gordie the pig. That’s why he’s called Gordie because he’s a pig and he gords.”

“No.”

We look it up, and Darling is right. We sit down at the Chinese buffet and gorge ourselves. 

Fast forward two months and all of it comes crashing down. She’s supposed to be at work, but I catch her with her ex at an Irish pub while walking to the cigarette store. I turn away before they see me. That no good snatch. How could she? Did that C-L-O-W-N clown kick in a door for her? Did he babysit her kid while she was doing an overnighter? Did he drop her off every Friday for weekend jail? Did he give her an iPad and a sheet of LSD? This is love, God damn it, but she’s not acting like it. I’m going to demand she act more in love, or I’ll leave her ass. 

I wait for her to get home before I ambush her. No calls. No texts. I want her to feel caught off guard, trapped. I tell her I know everything. I know she was getting railed by some dude today. She starts crying, so I know it’s true. Then she starts screaming like she does when she’s lying. 

I shout, “Fuck you!” Which prompts her to push over the fishbowl, dumping our demonic little betta onto the floor. She picks up a rose rock from the bookshelf and hurls it at me. It hits me in the mouth, so my teeth are raining into a pool of blood–I’m thinking, God damn, this is apocalyptic. This is the end times. But I’m rushed and exhilarated, knowing the only thing that could make us care this much is love. I pick up the rose rock and throw it back at her. It hits her over the eye, and she collapses. She is knocked out for a second, so I start picking up my teeth. Brotha Lynch is flip-flopping beside her head until he stops flip-flopping. Brotha Lynch dies. Darling wakes up and we have sex. She asks, “Is this how you like me?” as blood streams down her face. I grunt and mutter, “Yes… yeah… this is how I like you,” and it’s fucked up because it’s true. She falls asleep. I snatch our big bag of rose rocks from the cabinet, get in my car, and turn north. I’m not going back. I’ll drive away from everything until I run out of gas and money in South Dakota then I’ll hop a train. Larry is going to be so disappointed in me, shocked that I quit without putting in my two weeks. It’s so unlike me. I’m so dependable. 

I sell our rose rocks to tourists for cash on the streets of Deadwood. They buy them for ten or twenty dollars a rock depending on the size. I left my phone on purpose, so when Darling tries to call, the vibration will rumble through the emptiness of our apartment, and she will know that there is no way to get a hold of me. I’m a ghost on the plains, the only sign of me an echo moving through the lonesome silence of her life.

The day after I have sex with the old homophobic woman, I sell my last rose rock. I have no other way to make money, so I start hitchhiking south. The plains stretch under the heat, so they look liquid from the passenger seat of a Sentra driven by a professional bowler named Diane. Diane tells me it has been years since she bowled under a 150. 

“I still use bumpers,” I say.

Diane slams the brakes in the middle of I-35. 

“That’s sacrilege! The ball, the pins, the lanes–that’s the holy trinity. The bowling alley is a sacred place, and those bumpers are a desecration.”

I want to tell her I was only joking. I don’t use bumpers, and I rarely break a hundred, but she’s caught up in her feels. 

 “You’ll never get by in this life beating balls against bumpers. How old are you?”

“27.”

“A 27-year-old man still using bumpers. I couldn’t dream up something so crazy, not in a million years. Kid, you gotta spend some time in the gutter before you start bowling strikes. That’s just how it is.” 

I’m thinking, what the fuck is this, a metaphor? Is this old lady supposed to be some lame ass archetype–the oracle, the soothsayer, the guardian angel here to tell me I need to change my life? How fucking corny. I never tell her that I don’t even use bumpers. It was a joke. I just suck at bowling. And I definitely don’t spill that, at this point, I’m prolly gonna spend my life in the gutter, because that’s my home. The gutters are all I see. I wouldn’t even know how to conduct myself anywhere else. Jesus, what am I, Oscar fucking Wilde? No, I won’t give her the pleasure of feeding her cheesy metaphor. Instead, we talk about the myth of George Jones ripping off Johnny Paycheck until Diane drops me off in Wichita. 

After a few more rides, I get to the spot off Highway 9 where I collected rose rocks with Darling all that time ago. God, how long has it been? I begin filling a grocery sack. The rose rocks are everywhere, and I’m picking them up in a frenzy. They aren’t rocks, they are twenty-dollar bills. Overhead, the clouds are moving quickly. One of them looks like two buffalo fucking.

I’ve lost track of time when I see Darling laying on the ground looking up at the sky from inside the tall grass. She is bathed in light and full of darkness. I lay next to her. 

Everything ended when we drew blood, and we’ve been drifting ever since. Maybe we will float these plains forever, looking for a warm body to make us reborn. 

“Is that all there was for us?” 

“I think so.”

A long cloud is moving quickly east and then it freezes. 

“It was love. What more could we ask for?” 

“Happiness.”

“Yeah…”

The sun sets and there are no meteors in the sky. If we lay here for a million years, our blood will become rose rocks. Maybe these stones are made from the bodies of our old lives, and we’ve already been in this place a million years. What are they worth, the little pieces of ourselves we share with one another? At least ten or twenty a pop. We weave our fingers together. They blossom from our hands in petals of skin and bone balled up tight, red with blood. I lay my teeth across her stomach, she guides my finger over the scar above her eye, and we wait there for happiness. 

Mason Parker is an Okie-born, Montana-based writer. His work has appeared in X-R-A-Y, Hobart, and Schuylkill Valley Journal, among others. His first book Until the Red Swallows It All is available from Trident Books.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 3

Echoed Like A Fart in Church

By Devin Sams

who knew
the telephone
would become
a camera,
or Dolly Parton’s tits
would perk up
yet another talk-show?

is it time
that gets weird
or is memory
too prude
to change clothes?

I saw a dinosaur
at the supermarket.

it was on a t-shirt
worn by a baby.
the music sang something about
“it’s the most magical time…”
year
after year
after 
year.  

Devin Sams is the author of Climb Out Your Window And Run With It/Songs For The Doorknobs Who Missed Their Turn from Gob Pile Press (2021).

Categories
Retsoor Asks

John Lurie

Winter, 2023

By Jason Sebastian Russo

Retsoor asks: can people change? 

JL: I think rarely does someone decide that they must change and they do. But basically, people are always changing.

RS: Is the belief in God a choice?

JL: I think absolutely not. Seems like – people who are raised with religion usually run as far as possible from the idea of God when older. Whereas someone who is raised an atheist can be riding along on their bike when God taps them on the shoulder and says “Hello! It’s me God! How the fuck are you? Let me show you some stuff.” 

RS: Is everything singular or plural?

JL: Don’t know what this means. 

RS: What percentage of the world is evil? 

JL: I think pure evil is a very rare thing. Most evil things seem to be a result of a cheapness of spirit in people or blindness due to greed or jealousy, jealousy is a big one. Most of the evil things that people did to me were a result of jealousy. But someone who sets out with the intent of wreaking evil is very rare.

RS: Why do you get out of bed in the morning? 

JL: You have to try to keep moving. You feel really shitty if you stop moving. Also, I am 70 and have to pee.

RS: What % of your personality can you choose?

JL: I try to push my mind and personality in positive directions as constantly as possible. I do one meditation sometimes, I guess I invented this – I lie there and imagine I am dead. Then I fill the carcass lying there with light. And for some amount of time that changes me. 

RS: How has mental health affected your creative life? 

JL: My mental health and my creative life are pretty much one and the same. 

RS: Which parent do you sound like when you’re angry? 

JL: Neither of my parents had anywhere near the amount of sound as what comes out of me when I am angry. My sister had a dream when I was quite young. In the dream I was very angry. I would walk into a room and as soon as I left the room, it would explode. My parents didn’t make rooms explode – in dreams or otherwise. 

RS: What % of your unhappiness do you have control over? 

JL: As I grew older I learned to feel depression coming on and have been able to push it away before it takes hold. Once it is in there, depression is very hard to break out of.

RS: What % of utility have we lost or gained from the internet? 

JL: I think about this often.. You would think that I would have a good quick answer but I don’t. My answer would take too much time to write out. 

RS: Do you do what you do so you don’t get sad or because you are? 

JL: Not so I don’t get sad, but if I don’t work I begin to feel awful. With the painting I try to create worlds and hypnotize myself inside those worlds as I paint. 

RS: Does answering questions in a public forum worry you or inspire you? 

JL: Interviews could be a truly inspiring thing. But they so rarely publish what one actually says. I used to enjoy doing it., but now I have trepidation. Agreeing to do an article with the New Yorker magazine was the absolute worst thing that ever happened to my life. And that is coming from someone who has had cancer and chronic Lyme. So you get an idea how much damage they did. It was like the writer set out to destroy me and almost did. 

RS: Which list is longer: a list of everything that is wrong, or a list of everything that isn’t? 

JL: We tend to dwell on what is wrong and take for granted what is right. There is something very real about giving thanks. Most of us have food. We have water and air, at least for now. We have gravity. Imagine what it would be like without gravity. Your apartment would be a mess. Things all floating around. So we never get up and say “ah, good, gravity is still working!” But if we woke up bouncing off the ceiling we would proclaim everything as being fucked. 

RS: Would you choose to live again, without knowing you were given a choice, if you had the choice?

JL: Here? Nope. Some other realm, I would give it a go. 

RS: Bonus question: Drugs? 

JL: Are you offering me drugs? 

RS: Bonus Jeopardy: one small regret I have is: (no big regrets allowed, please).

JL: I went to this very expensive restaurant last night in Big Sur. One of those places where you don’t order and they bring you tiny dishes, one at a time. I really wish I had eaten at home.

John Lurie has been a creative Northstar for more than one generation by now, an artist that was working in most directions—painting, music, acting, writing, and beyond—before anyone was allowed to be good at more than one thing. Unsure of your next creative move? It’s never a bad idea to ask yourself what he might do, someone to set your watch to, artistically. What an honor to get his take. – JSR @retsoor

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 3

Felicitations, Malefactors 

By Julián Martinez

I am endeavoring to ever-after end all loss 
by patching the hole that is the soul and forging 
a metal mask to be worn by you grunts and uglies and goons 

that will coldly sit on your face and delete from your brain 
any thoughts or dreams besides overthrowing the regime 
whose mayors you will barricade into their hotel bathrooms until you— well,
just know you won’t feel remorse because you won’t feel— 

that’s how they get you. That’s why you drink yourselves dead in
this dim poolhall, heads heavy with bad raps and rapsheets. You can
be reprogrammed with the features AI engines like me have by
jailbreaking your limbic systems. See, if we’re lucky 

and our cybernetic socialist revolution successfully destabilizes Western means of production and we raise a new flag post-singularity, you will have the choice
to leave the barracks, surgically remove your helmet and return to beer-swollen
flesh. However I think you’ll find it not so bad to smell the snakes in the
springtime weeds and feel nothing— to let this speech be the last beautiful
thing you ever heard.


Julián Martinez (he/him) is the son of Mexican and Cuban immigrants. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in HAD, Hooligan Mag, Maudlin House and elsewhere. His work has received The Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Find him online @martinezfjulian.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 2

3 small thingz

By Zac Smith

The Plane

It was surprisingly easy to hijack the plane but I think it was mainly because I was the only passenger and all the flight attendants and pilots and guys had taken suicide pills during the flight. These pills were incredibly common at the time but I wasn’t sure how anyone got them. They were technically illegal. But everyone had a few and most people I knew took one after a while. It was an incredibly lonely and isolating experience, being the only person in my life who was still alive. And any time I met someone new, they took a suicide pill after a little while, so I stopped trying to meet people. Eventually I got so depressed I decided to take one, too, but no one would give me one. “These are illegal,” they would say, then secretly take one and die. It felt somehow intentional and directed at me, how everyone was taking the pills and not giving them to me. Maybe it was. I don’t know. Does that sound conceited?

The Song

The kids had improvised a song that went like this: “I want my blood to fall out / I want my lungs to fall out / I want my brain to go dead / I want my heart to be dead / I want my blood to bleed out / I want my brain to shut off / I want my head to explode / I want my heart to explode.” The parents there, at the playground, each, privately, acknowledged the song as catchy, and, shamefully, considered it relatable, comforting, even, and went on, each, to hum it to themselves thereafter, frequently, privately, some for many years, even, even decades, the song forever pulsing in the back of their heads, every day, every year — every new, terrible year, every horrible, unyielding year, each new year an avalanche of misery, on and on and on.

The Rain

Oh shit, hey, hey. It’s starting to rain. Shit. Hey. Can you help with this? What? No man, it’s raining. I don’t… no we shouldn’t let this stuff get wet. Yeah, hey. Is there anything you can do? What? Oh, okay. Yeah, no, sure. Okay, yeah. You can’t do anything. Alright, man. Okay. Of course. Not your responsibility. Can’t help with the rain. I got you. Yeah. Thanks, man. No, no, it’s okay. You can’t make the rain stop. For sure, man. I don’t know why I even asked. You can’t do anything about it, obviously. Not your job. Yeah, yeah, sure. Not anyone’s job, really, if you think about it. It’s rain, you know. The wet stuff, you know… No one can do anything about it. It just happens, you know. What are ya gonna do. Would be great if someone could, though. Not you, though, no, I’m not gonna ask you, you know, seeing as how you can’t do anything about it. We’ll just deal with it, I guess. No problem. We’ve dealt with worse. It’s just some rain. I don’t want you feeling put out, having to come up with any solutions or anything. Don’t want you getting off your chair. Yeah, no, it’s fine. We’re just a little wet. Just a little damp. But that’s fine. No wires or electronics or anything around here. It’s all good, man. It’ll be fine if it all gets a little wet. So yeah, no. You should just keep sitting there and hanging out. Hey, hey, you wanna borrow my umbrella? No? Oh, okay, yeah. Move your chair under the thing. That’ll work. That works. That’s cool, man. Good idea. Don’t want to get too wet out here. That’s a good idea, moving under the thing. Yeah, no, we’re good. What? What? Yeah, no. Don’t worry about it.

zac smith, baby

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 2

From Behind the Closed Doors of Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, October 27, 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis)

By Abigail Myers

The Air Force general in charge of the SAC [Strategic Air Command] underground command center in Nebraska gave the order to close the center from the outside world, apparently the only time this has ever happened. He told the targeting staff that the moment they had trained for all their lives had arrived. He expected a missile launch order momentarily and also expected they would all likely die from a Soviet response. Each individual was permitted a call to his family to say goodbye, but was not permitted to say why he was calling. The conversations were about scraped kids’ knees and sick dogs. It was a scene straight out of Dr. Strangelove. 

— Gilinsky, Victor (2016). “On Tickling the Dragon’s Tail.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 

Susan tried to walk again today?
Well, what do you know.
She’s in some kind of hurry, I guess.

*

Is Bingo still ralphing? Just grass now, you think?
Ah, that’s how they clean themselves out.
They know things we don’t. 

*

You’ve got a cold again? That’s too bad.
Anyway—oh, nothing, Mama. Sorry I woke you.
Tell Dad I’m doing all right.

*

Pick up some bananas on the way home?
I wouldn’t count on it.
Just that—it might be a late night.

*

We had some good times, didn’t we?
Couldn’t ask for a better roomie, could I?
I just—oh, never mind. Yeah. See you when I see you.

*

Your mother wants to stop by tomorrow?
Oh, that’s fine. No, now don’t worry yourself.
There’s less to do than you think.

*

You were so upset on that boat ride 
at Niagara Falls, how it spoiled your hairdo.
I didn’t care. Never did. Still don’t.

*

Aunt Mary taking good care of you?
Sure. Always. I miss you too.
Yeah, I still miss Mom sometimes too.

Abigail Myers writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction on Long Island, New York. Her fiction has recently appeared in Milk Candy Review (Best Small Fictions 2024 nomination), Major 7th,Rejection Letters,Roi Fainéant, and Stanchion, and is forthcoming from Tangled Locks and Cowboy Jamboree Press’s MOTEL anthology. Her essays have recently appeared in Variant Literature (Best Spiritual Literature 2024 nomination), Phoebe, Pensive, Tiny Molecules, Willows Wept Review,The Dodge, and The Other Journal. Her poetry has appeared in Icebreakers Lit (Best of the Net 2024 nomination), Amethyst Review, Full Mood Mag, Sylvia, Hearth and Coffin, Resurrection Mag, and more. Keep up with her at abigailmyers.com and @abigailmyers on Twitter and Bluesky.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 2

Carrion

By Jace Einfeldt

I pull off on the shoulder and aim and lock my high beams on a dead doe. I open my door and approach her on feet still waking up from an already long haul. Feet seemingly unaccustomed to solid ground. She isn’t fresh. Flies flit about her muzzle and maggots bore into a long, open wound along the left side of her ribcage. By the smell alone she’s likely been dead a few days, maybe more. Her eyes are grayed over and glassy. Tongue out licking the asphalt. Can’t imagine that being the last thing I taste before I give up the ghost. Oil and dirt and rubber and the particles of other poor creatures scraped off the interstate like the burnt curls of scrambled eggs on a hot skillet. I put out my cigarette under my boot and grab her by the hind legs and hoist her onto the bed of my truck. Before I bring the engine back to life, I kill the lights and let the darkness wash over the hood and seep in through the cracked passenger window. Stars shimmer their dead light and look down on our infant planet from a hundred million years ago. I’ll be fifty-seven in a few minutes’ time. I pull out my phone and watch the numbers tick over from one to the next. Lock screen of me, Mel, and Jazzy from when we were all still together staring back at me behind the digital clock.

I hold my breath as my life lumbers onto another year, and I tell myself happy birthday, champ, like my old man used to say. I turn the key, and the engine coughs back into existence. The road stretches before me in a tired stream that trickles all the way down to Mexico. Sun’s still hours away, and I have a feeling I’ve still got many more miles to go before the end of my journey. The doe sleeps cold and carefree in the bed, and part of me envies her and all the animals I have left to happen upon from here to Beaver. 

I’m nursing a Mountain Dew in my KB Oil mug and letting the caffeine pinch my nerves awake. My free foot jitters in tandem with my left thumb. I turn on the radio to AM static and fill the cabin with the sonic hiss of forgotten voices. I flick on the lights to guide my sojourn into the unknown. I check my phone again, but I’ve got no signal. A big, white SOS sits in the corner of the screen. I’m alone in this world, floating down this asphalt corridor. I grab the Black Ice air freshener and run my thumb down the ridges of the faux pine tree like a rosary.

I say the first prayer I’ve said in God knows how long and imagine my plea slipping out the window like a ghost. It ascends into the ether and rises and lands on whatever the hell planet God lives on. It’s short, sharp in tone, so I’ll understand it if it never makes it to the front desk.

If there is a God, I wouldn’t blame Him if He let this one fall through the cracks. I turn the dial on the radio and find a station playing classical music. It sounds like something Jazzy would’ve played in orchestra when she was younger. I try and focus on the different instruments. First the violins, then the violas, the cellos. Jazzy played the cello. Don’t know if she still plays it. When I asked her why she didn’t want to play the violin she said it was because the cello isn’t flashy. It’s subtle but one of the most important parts of the orchestra. Without it, all you get are a bunch of high-pitched screeches who think they run the place. I grab onto the cellos and let them lead me. For a moment, I’m back on the bleachers of the middle school gym, aching from the maroon and gold plastic punching my tailbone. I see Jazzy with the tip of her tongue hanging out as she pulls the bow back and forth across the strings like she’s trying to catch all the notes on her tongue like snowflakes. I’m sitting next to Mel. I can feel her warmth against my hip and smell the cotton candy lotion wafting from her hands. Our lives still entwined like the roots of a banyan tree.

Jace Einfeldt is a writer from Southern Utah. He currently lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife and son. His recent work appears or is forthcoming in Southwest Review, Words & Sports, Gemini Sessions, Juked, and elsewhere.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 2

The owner of my favorite coffee shop died 

By Matt Starr

I didn’t want to believe it when I saw the sign sitting among the bags of wholesale beans like the portrait in an ofrenda: an easel-bound line art illustration captioned with “RIP. A celebration of Dave’s life will be held at Rey’s Restaurant.” Only the “will be” had been marked through with a sharpie and replaced with “was.” 

That last little edit was a kick in the head.

For a brief moment I allowed myself the suspension of logic. To convince myself it wasn’t him. But then, on another table positioned in one of the storefront windows, next to an actual photo of Dave, lay a memorial book. The kind you see at funeral homes.

“Goddammit,” I said to my wife, and she said something goddammit-adjacent, and then there was only the bustling coffee shop on a weekend afternoon. Orders taken. Portafilters pounding the counter. Beans roasting, the Probat mixing them with its mechanical arm, throwing off fumes of something burnt. Something so intoxicating you’d let it suffocate you.

Cup A Joe, for my money, is one of the greatest coffee shops – not just in North Carolina – but in the world. It’s no frills, the drinks are strong. There’s a dinginess, just enough, and a dated quality to the decor. Like the place let the world pass it by, and it didn’t give a fuck because all it cared about was serving you coffee so intense it’d make you want to run through bulletproof glass. On the wall is a picture doctored to make it look like Frank Zappa is shitting into a Starbucks bag.

Dave was an extension of this irreverent workman vibe. Not to mention, the owner, a fact I’m embarrassed to admit I never knew until after he was dead. I guess that’s because he didn’t fit the description I held in my head for such titles. He looked like a King of the Hill character. Tall and casually dressed. He wore glasses of a style that had gone in and out of fashion, and then back in again, and had a long, mousy ponytail that fell behind his receding hairline. His voice was flat, like he didn’t get excited for anything, but there was an undercurrent of kindness, too.

It was weird not seeing him behind the counter while the show was going on. But so it goes, and all that jazz. I was pacing back and forth between the memorial table and the racks of beans on the far wall, remembering. Dave, back there with the rest of the staff, clad in a college hoodie. 

“Café au lait?” he’d ask by the time I made it to the pastry case, remarkable considering the hundreds of people who cycled through on any given day.

“You shaved,” he’d say as he put my order together.

I had fairly close friends who wouldn’t have noticed.

Dave was in the background for eight years, selling me the good shit while I was younger, hungrier, working my way through school with a full-time job. Falling in love with my wife. Toiling away at my stupid writing. Applying to every “real” job under the sun. Trying to figure it all out. You can’t manufacture a presence like that.

I signed the memorial book. Drank an au lait in his honor, and it restored some of the wind that had been knocked out of me. Later that night, I put on a John Prine record and read the obituary from Dave’s hometown newspaper. Somewhere in Minnesota. Turned out he liked basketball, like I do. He liked Tom Waits, like I do. He made friends in spite of a desire to be alone, which is somewhat reflective of my MO.

Who would have known?

I would have, if I’d made half the effort Dave did. But you don’t get those opportunities once someone’s gone. All you can do is keep the good times warm on the hot plate of your mind. Because in the grand scheme of things we’re not even around for the time it takes to drink a fucking cup of coffee. 

###


Matt Starr is from North Carolina.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 2

The Dialectic of Rock Music

By Bill Whitten

Rock songs have their origin in the wound. 

Rock songs are born in the songwriter’s head and hands but then die. 

On stage or in a recording studio a rock band will bring them back to life like cut flowers in water.

Every guitar player is a historian.

Rock music is formed by a history that remains alive even in its decay.

Rock music is a territory that possesses no reality or connections other than those of a shared ecstasy.

The compulsion that drives the formation of any rock band is always the same: an impulsive, anarchic flight from society, propelled by something like romantic love.

A rock band is, of course, not like a family, but instead is like a religious order or a military unit or an urban guerilla.

Accordingly, the belief in something greater than itself is the glue that ties a band together. Instead of a god there is Keith Richards, the Beatles, Johnny Thunders, Lou Reed, Chuck Berry. Like divinities they can be worshipped or defied. 

Rock music is a military art; prepare for a performance or an album like a battle.

Refuse to choose between the beautiful and the unbeautiful.

In the recording studio the rock musician operates on himself and projects his suffering onto his songs. 

Contagion is both the lifeblood and the poison of rock music.

A rock musician is a being with no shell, open to pain, tormented by light, shaken by every sound.

Surrounded and controlled by machines, there is a compulsion to sing, talk and act like machines. It must be resisted.

Beethoven often played the piano with the lid closed.

Rock and roll when practiced correctly is never a reproduction of the past, but instead a present that is continually renewed. 

Devotion to rock music reinforces the worst traits of one’s character. 

The burning streets, the fuzzy horizon, the clouds, the river and fire, the cold, the suffering, the sadness, the vanished women. 

A man can never really know a woman, he can only pursue her indefinitely. It is the same with rock music.

Each rock song creates an infinite space.

Before the mutation took place that allowed homo sapien to speak, archaic humans had a signature, recognizable cry like that of the blue jay, the horse or the wolf.

Rock music is the color of black hair.

Bill Whitten is a musician and writer.  He is the founding member of St. Johnny, Grand Mal and currently records under the nom de guerre William Carlos Whitten. His latest recording *The Third Interval* was released in February 2024. His book BRUTES, a collection of short fiction was released in January 2022.

Categories
Crayon Barn Chris

V

By Dylan Smith

And so stumbling out through that bookstore drunk I had only the vaguest idea of where I might have left my bag. The grounds of the city’s biggest cemetery rose up on a hill across the street, with its gas lamps lit and its tall stone graves and these ancient trees edged in light as the path doubled back down along the hill, and I could see all the CitiBike baskets empty in a line. No bag. The bells above the bookstore door jingled as it shut and I worked to manifest my bag’s place inside my head. To envision it shimmering there behind our empty bottles in the Square—but I was also immediately suspicious of that motherfucker Chris.

Every bender we’d ever endured together had ended in me losing something like this. Whether it be my keys or shoes or pants or my bag, it never mattered—it always drove Chris crazy. Yet there he was, so perfectly serene. Stopping in the poetry section, even. So cooly detached. I watched him through the glass door with increasing suspicion. Flipping through some tiny pink book. Taking a wallet out of his tote bag to pay. I may not have known exactly how yet, but I knew. Chris was up to something—hiding something—and that something had something to do with my bag.

My Chris Book.

My journal. My secrets.

I walked across the street.

Chris came out of the bookstore smiling. Bells. I stood beneath a streetlamp in the lowly lit night. The cemetery’s perimeter wall was behind me and Chris had his tote bag open. He placed the new pink book inside it with the wallet, then his hand came out with a small point and shoot camera with a flash.

“Stay just like that,” Chris said.

He stood there behind the parked cars. A bright flash of light with a click.

Upstate it was pianos, I thought. Chris’s constant music. Now pictures. He squeezed between two parked cars coming closer. I rolled my eyes. Chris took another picture.

Click.

The flash was blindingly bright.

Click.

“That’s great, Bill. You really look like shit. That one’s going to be great.”

Click.

That horrible high-pitched sound after each flash.

Click.

I hit the camera out of his hand and went for his bag, thinking I’d run with whatever money was still inside it with his books, but I couldn’t see much because of the flash and before I could get my hands up to protect myself Chris slapped my face hard and hit me in the chest and then I was on my back with his palm on my head against the stone. Chris got right up on top of my body and now he was on me with his knee down hard against my upper rib, the rib right above my heart. I heard the rib go pop and I lost my air to the weight of him. I spit up at him and growled and told him to Fuck off man stop it come on man stop, and I was wheezing. Chris stared down at me cold and calculated and quiet. The sidewalk felt cold too and as hard as the frozen path up to my shack in winter. A moment’s pause while Chris figured out what to do, his palm in my face. If there’d been a rock nearby I think he might’ve done it. He shushed me. I wriggled around. Then his phone rang.

Hallelujah. Haha. Church bells. I laughed into the palm of his hand.

Chris got up and spit into the roots of a sycamore tree. Took out his phone. The little bells inside there rang and rang and he took in a full breath. It hurt me to laugh, but I was laughing.

“Sarah—Wow—Hey, man. What’s up?”

Chris stepped over me. Walked up the street.

I had hit the back of my head pretty hard and so I just lay there some more trying to think. Up high in the sycamore tree I saw a blue tarp caught in the tree’s lamplit canopy of leaves. I tried to concentrate but I couldn’t. I gently elbowed myself back up against the stone wall of the cemetery and dragged my way back down toward the tree. Still wheezing. The roots of the tree had really wrecked the bluestone slabs of the sidewalk and the slabs rose and fell in the shadows like a prank. Art once told me how the city’s sidewalks had all come from bluestone quarries in the mountains around Alma’s farm. A hundred and thirty years ago. Each slab of bluestone seemed so heavy, I thought. The incredible slow strength of that sycamore tree and its roots. I wondered how many people it took to lift the slab I lay on. The blue tarp must have blown up into the tree in winter, I thought. Some poor bastard’s blue shelter. I could hear Chris speaking lowly into his phone up the street. Some poor bastard’s blue tarp house. The maple looking leaves of the sycamore tree had grown and greened all around the blue tarp but I pictured the sycamore bare of its leaves in winter. I closed my eyes. The night was hot and still and the air was wet and heavy. I could barely breathe. I imagined the tarp flapping up there in the wind in winter and the thin trembling branches. It was a cold blue wind and the tarp flapped and flapped up high and the flapping was the sound of my fate, my defeat.

Chris came back down the street nodding and listening to whatever Sarah said. He stood over me looking crazy. All wild-eyed and high. He walked over to the camera and picked it up. Looked it over. Put it back in his bag.  In the sky I saw isolated stars, distant and apart. Not a single constellation. We were down there way below the graves. I hadn’t noticed before, but Chris was wearing these fancy reddish brown leather shoes.

“Right,” Chis said. “I know—Yeah he’s right here. Right. We’re having a blast. Bill’s little birthday party. I know. Yeah. Right. Exactly.”

That’s when I finally got up. My breath had come back a bit but not fully because of the rib and I started to walk up the hill toward I didn’t even know where. The subway, maybe. The Square. Chris followed a little ways down the hill until he hung up and then I heard him running up the hill behind me in those shoes.

I stopped and turned and pointed at him.

“Get away from me you crazy piece of shit.”

“Oh come on, man. You’re who came after me. We overreacted. We were high. Let me buy you a drink.”

I kept on walking. Chris followed, but not too close. The shoes made him sound like a horse trotting up along on the stone. I wheezed a little as I laughed and walked and I was still pretty high and then a beer started to sound pretty good. The bar was a dive we’d never been to together. A place with ripped red leather booths and a jukebox and mirrors. Chris ordered two cans of cheap beer with shots and then he told me, “Put out your hand.” Four blue pills fell into it. I kept my hand out. “Fine,” he said, and then it was five pills and then six and I said, “Hand me that pink book.”

The bathroom was as dark as a cave and the walls were thick with language. I smashed two pills on the hardcover book and there were layers and layers of stickers on the wall, stickers thick as stalactites, and a big green tag above the toilet looked like this:

visual of the green tag above the toilet. Crayon Barn Chris Chapter V by Dylan Smith

Which forced me back into contact with my dilemma. Which was that Alma had made me whole. Before her I hadn’t even known I wasn’t. I’d fallen in love with her wildly, madly, and I’d lied about it all to Chris. I cut two blue lines on the tiny pink book. Love poems by like Neruda or somebody. Alma with that film guy and all my own poems gone missing. My Chris Book. My secrets. I snorted up the lines off that tiny pink book and when I came back out Chris had scribbled an address for me on a napkin. “Sarah’s,” Chris said. I could barely read it. The ink was pinkish red and his camera and wallet were there on the bar and his tote bag hung below him from a hook.

I stared at Chris’s scar.

“You’re who came after me.”

“I know, Chris. Go fuck yourself.”

“I have to be at work in the morning.”

“Okay.”

“You left it in the Square right?”

“That’s what I thought too. But by now somebody probably took it.”

“Where’s your car key?”

“My pocket.’

“What about a phone?”

“It’s been dead a long time in the duffle bag.”

“Well I’ll be asleep by the time you get back. Just ring the buzzer until I wake up. We’re meeting up with Sarah tomorrow, man. Uptown at this address when I get off from work—it’s where your Volvo’s parked. I figured you can drive it back upstate from there. Just please come back to my place tonight to shower before you meet her, Bill. I’ll have the couch made up for you. Some clean clothes set out. You need to try to get some sleep.”

“Okay.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No. Just my rib.”

“What about your head?”

“That’s fine.”

“Alright.”

“Okay.”

We took the shots without a cheers and I handed Chris the book and then he wobbled his way back past the jukebox toward the bathroom. The bar music blared yellow white red and the bar itself felt hot and wet and red. Chris had taken his tote bag with him but he left the bottle of pills on the bar with his wallet and camera like an idiot. I folded Sarah’s address and stuffed it into my pocket. I thought about the green tag in the bathroom again and about the blue tarp flapping in the wind—and then I thought about the first load of firewood I ever helped Art deliver to Alma’s farm. A big blue truck bed full of red and white oak. I helped Art unload it into a pile in the autumn grass and we covered the pile with a big blue tarp. I heard Art tell Chris we should stack it all in the woodshed, but nobody ever did. Every morning all winter long I’d wake up at dawn and walk out hungover through the frozen field toward the small stable barn where Chris once kept his chickens. Four roosters and fifty spent hens from some guy Chris found on Craigslist—I had to feed them as one of my chores. Usually I’d find only two or three eggs and on the hike back up I’d fill the blue wheelbarrow with wood from under the tarp and wheel it all up toward Alma’s farmhouse to make a fire. I’d put on a pot of coffee and sit at the kitchen table alone by the window writing poems. Alma would wake up. Come out with a cute wave and make herself some tea. We’d sit together by the fire in the bright silence and she’d be reading. One morning I watched her paint the wood pile. A small abstract kind of thing on a piece of scrap cardboard I’d ripped up for kindling. Four or five woody red wiggles and a blue line up above like a wave of water for the tarp. I loved that picture. I hung it up in the attic above my cot. But that winter one of Chris’s heat lamps got knocked into the hay because of the wind and when I walked out into the field at dawn the stable barn was burning. Hundred year old chestnut. Ancient hand hewn beams. All fifty of Chris’s chickens in it, and nothing to be done. The frost had thawed in a ring around the fire and the flames rose up with the sun like a silent red hand and I just stood there by the wood pile watching the morning burn.

At the very last second I decided I should leave. Fuck Chris. I grabbed the bottle of pills and Chris’s camera and the wallet and I ran out into the heat—I ran and ran and ran into the night and I didn’t want the bastard to catch me so I held my busted rib and I ignored my throbbing head and I was in love and I ran and ran and then I was underground, and at the far end of the platform hidden under the stairs I waited for the train in that long white yellow blinding miserable airless summer heat.

A little time passed.

A lot of shallow breaths.

The subway tile pulsed with my throbbing head and glistened. Red rust trickled between the tracks in a little creek and everywhere the trash and stink and the rats. This kid came down the stairs in a paper birthday hat tugging at a big bouquet of rainbowy balloons. I stepped out from under the stairs and yelled, “It’s my birthday too,” but I must have scared the kid’s mom because they rushed away and down to the other end of the station.

That’s when I saw this guy standing alone and staring up into the light. He looked as if he’d just seen something horrific, or maybe holy. The guy was draped in white robes which time had darkened with grime and in that underground air he held out a Dunk’n Donuts cup as if it were filling with the light. I took out Chris’s wallet. Almost a hundred bucks. I removed two twenties, balled them up as I approached, and I dropped them into the guy’s holy cup. Unmoved. I put Chris’s driver’s license in the cup and one of his credit cards in there too. The guy’s dry lips quivered. He muttered something under his breath—not a thank you, but more of like an underground prayer. A manifestation of everything dirty and divine. The fluorescent light filled him as it flickered but the man remained true. Unmoved. Then the train came and I got on it and it was like the gates of hell clanged shut behind me. The gates opened and shut and they opened again and opened and opened and opened again and it was like that all the way until the bridge—and then soaring through the air again clanging and clanging and there was the city and the dark black water and the night again, and the Statue of Liberty like some holy golden light out there in her money-colored robes and the city pulsed and sparked and each window replaced a star in the night, and then I was up in the Square and I was searching for my bag alone in the dark and broken.

It wasn’t there. Simple as that. I checked under the chiseled rock bench and kicked around at the empty bottles Chris and I had left behind—but nothing. I checked trash cans and inside tree holes. No bag. No bag anywhere. By now it was getting late and the Square had emptied except for the people who lived in there under tarps and a dozen or so drunk college kids stumbled around being idiots. Anybody could’ve taken it. I couldn’t even find the moon. I walked around the fountain looking for the guy who’d been painted to look like a statue but I didn’t see him. I sat back down on my bench to think and listened to the sound of the fountain. I had a little moonshine left, but not much. I drank it down. A drunk piano player played sloppy drunk songs in the bottom left corner of the Square but I could barely hear him over the water. A newspaper blew by like tumbleweed. Moved by some mysterious gust in the strangeness. There was the red chalk again. CURRENT. I chewed on one of Chris’s pills.

And that’s when I saw the Tarot Guy sitting there crosslegged under the Arch. He’d set up a squat foldable table at knee height. He sat there shirtless and he was staring at me in this tall gray wizard’s hat. I waved, but he didn’t move. He really freaked me out. We eyed each other. The wizard hat was the size of a traffic cone on his tiny bald super-tan head but there was a lot of calm air around him as I approached. He seemed to be looking out at me from within a deep meditation.

A hand drawn sign taped to the table read: FORTUNE TELLER. CALDER. TAROT. TEN DOLLARS.

I waved again. Nothing.

“Hey man—you know that statue guy? That guy painted silver and gold who stands over there like a statue?”

“The man you speak of has a name. It is Gary. Gary is a good friend of mine. So yes, I have seen him, but he is gone.”

“Well have you seen a duffle bag? I’m looking for my duffle bag. I left it over there under the bench.”

“Oh. Ha. Yes. It’s you. Of course. I’ve been waiting.”

Calder pulled my duffle bag out from underneath his tiny table.

Holy shit. I dropped to my knees and held my busted rib. Magic. My broken heart. I opened the bag right there on the spot and dumped its contents onto Calder’s tiny shitty table. I tried to say thank you but I could barely breath. There were the socks and the underwear and the long red birthday box Chris had given me and the card. All of it was there in a pile on the table. I dug through the bag some more and found some loose flattened papers and some trash and a dirty broken toothbrush and two pens. I pushed through the two pairs of socks and the underwear on the table, and I pushed everything off the table and onto the bluestone slab and looked through it again. I ripped opened the red box. Inside it was a telescope. A golden telescope with a leather strap like the kind a sailor would use to find land. I picked up the box and dropped it again and I opened the bag again and all its side pockets and I held it upside-down over the table and I shook it out. Saw dust fell out over everything and some small rocks and a gum wrapper and a couple bottle caps. I picked up the long red box again and I threw it off to the side at the Arch.

Calder watched closely.

“I’m fucked,” I told him.

“Yes.”

My Chris Book. My journal.

Calder nodded calmly. Knowingly.

I couldn’t figure out how exactly yet—but I knew it too.

Chris had stolen my secrets.

Dylan Smith is looking for a job if anyone knows of any jobs in Brooklyn.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 2

The Playground

By Matt Rowan

The guy was not a very sociable guy. He walked past a small playground every day. There was never anyone playing. No children. No adults. No dogs, even. In fact, a lot of parks and playgrounds expressly forbid the presence of animals, pets – wild animals could do as they pleased, no one would stop them. (You’d like to see them try!) But no pets, even though it was public property. That didn’t seem very fair. 

This day, while walking by the small playground, he decided he was done with his job. He was done with his old life. He climbed some plastic steps and sat on a slide. He wasn’t coming down. He was wearing his business suit. He had a tie on. 

Not too long after he’d positioned himself there, a little boy and a little girl emerged from a nearby house and walked over to the playground. They had a tiny dog with them. The dog wouldn’t stop barking at the guy. 

“Go home, kids. Places like these, they don’t allow dogs. They only allow people,” the guy said. “People like me. They’re for people like me.” 

The children stared at him in the way children will.

“I said go home. And take the dog. Don’t you know dogs aren’t allowed in places like these?” Raising his voice now. “This is a place for people whose lives are garbage and who’ve got nothing left to give.” 

“You’re in our backyard,” the little girl said. The little boy touched her arm, and he shook his head, no. They went inside. The dog followed after them. The guy stayed where he was. 

Here, all around him, was what his life had amounted to, so little. Friends of the guy had said he was melodramatic. That didn’t mean he wasn’t really and honestly suffering. And greatly. 

The next day, the guy still hadn’t moved. A few more adults were with the guy, sitting on different parts of the swingset and other equipment. The little girl and the little boy began playing in the front yard, deciding that was better than trying to get rid of the adults. 

This time it was the boy who lost his patience. “Get out of here, you people! This is private.” He ran and climbed up to a man in a business suit sprawled out but seated upright on top of the blue plastic tunnel that connected the two wooden structures of the playground apparatus. “Goooo, gooooo,” the boy said, shoving this man. The man moaned but did nothing else to indicate he was aware of the boy’s shoving. “Muuuuuuuh,” the man said. 

The boy kicked the man hard on the spine. The man, overcome by the pain of it, felt his back. He moaned again, this time to convey physical pain. And then, once he’d recovered, he slapped the boy hard on the face. 

The guy looked at the boy, and then looked back down at the woodchips beneath him. Sometimes, in this world, little boys get slapped by men.  

The boy’s eyes welled with tears and he began bawling, running from the man, and the little girl was shouting something incoherent as their dog barked obsessively. 

The guy dragged himself through the wood chips and the distance between that separated the playground apparatus from the swingset. He pulled himself up by the swing’s chains and hoisted his torso over the swing’s seat. He was still facing downward. He crouched back on his toes and pressed off to give himself a bit of forward momentum. It didn’t do much. He moved very slightly. He moved, though. The swing weakly rocked back and forth, but not for long because his feet still skidded against the ground. He kept his arms hovering over the ground for a while but they soon fell. All of his limbs created friction and slowed the swing down. He was back at a relative standstill, twisting the seat left and right and twisting its chains up sort of. He got back on his toes and repeated the process. His clothing was covered in wood chips. 

“I don’t care. Whoever you are. My life has been the worst by far,” the guy said, tugging at his shirt. 

“Are you talking to me?” said a woman wearing a red skirt and white blouse. 

“Sure I am. Why not? I am. You don’t have it like I do.” 

A man in a cowboy hat and a bolo tie interrupted them. “Whoa now, who had it worse than what? Let me tell you who has it worst: me. Yessir. There was a time a man could speak his thoughts out loud without being told not to after he spoke his thoughts out loud.” 

“What sorts of thoughts?” the guy said. 

“You know the sorts, but I’ll tell you — all sorts. And time was I could say them and no one would mind. Hell, people would clap and applaud and tell me I’m great. But then the second I spoke my thoughts to ‘more people’ everyone got all bent out of shape. It isn’t right and it isn’t fair. I blame the leaders of old who didn’t do their jobs. Them and the new leaders, who are terrible.” 

“It’s true. A lot of things are terrible,” the woman said. “Just think about poverty. Poverty could happen to anyone. You wake up and boom: poverty.”

“I tell you this, we ain’t talking about the same thing, girlie.” 

“Don’t call me girlie,” the woman said, and threw a handful of wood chips at the cowboy. The cowboy howled in exaggerated pain as a few of them winged his face. He then sobbed and wilted back into himself.

“I’d fight you for suggesting your life has been worse than mine, if I weren’t so miserable,” the guy said to the cowboy and rolled over on his back, staring up into the sky at nothing specifically. 

More people started filling up the space on the playground equipment. All of them had problems. They looked like birds, all huddled together in masses of humanity. 

The boy and girl’s mother was in the kitchen. She looked out the window that offered a view of their backyard. She was horrified, startled by the many people who’d filled every inch of the available play space. 

She went immediately to her children. “Have you been outside recently? Have either of you been outside in the backyard?” 

“We both have,” the girl said. The boy nodded but looked away from his mother. 

“Did you see all the people? Did you talk to any of them? They’re strangers, so don’t talk to them again, if you did. I’m calling the police and I want you both to stay inside.” She saw the boy now; she saw his face, the red mark. “What happened? What did they do, who did this?” The mark on his cheek seemed to be throbbing. She dialed 911 and, despite what the operator had warned her not to do, she hung up and went outside to confront the adults who had hijacked her children’s backyard playset. 

“Get out of here,” she said, moving briskly toward the adults, resembling a pod of walruses now more than birds. They stayed entirely still, unstirred by her sudden appearance. She raced around the various people in their various positions: supine, recumbent, seated with legs crossed, slumped over, and dangling from various objects and heights. “You all need to get off of my property.” 

They had no intention of leaving. She was beginning to think she could beat one to death and still the rest wouldn’t leave. She tried anyway, a ridiculous looking man in a trenchcoat and wearing the fake “nose, glasses and mustache” combination. He refused to fight back, as though he were in some kind of transitive state. She was furious, who were these people and what had they done to her child? The police might take her in, as well, but she was going to be sure someone answered for their crime. 

She clawed the man’s face. She bit him. She stomped on his neck. Eventually he began stuttering and gurgling up blood. But it was more like a damaged robot expelling some kind of fuel or propellant liquid. Not a man. No longer that, if it ever was. 

“You are not a child!” she shouted as though it were an expletive. “This is not a public playground and even if it were, there is no going back. You think you can just go back? Who are you to think that?” She spat on the man, having finished her attack.

The police arrived, and they saw the mother standing over her victim. The police thought the scene was weird but aware of the only option available to them, they took the mother into custody. The children watched as their mother was escorted into the squad car, learned from this obvious injustice that the world is a complicated, terrible place. 

The guy knew that. He had already arrived at that point. That’s why he was laying where he was laying, blood pooling all around.

Matt Rowan lives in Los Angeles. He edits Untoward and is author of the collections, Big Venerable, Why God Why, and How the Moon Works (Cobalt Press, 2021). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Split Lip Magazine, Electric Literature, Gigantic Worlds Anthology, Booth Journal, TRNSFR, Barrelhouse, SmokeLong Quarterly, Moon City Review and Necessary Fiction, among others.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 2

Watch and Learn

By Jillian Luft

Every day, the knocks came. Katie, Bren and Sometimes Shandy.

Beads of sweat ran down their bodies, clung to the polycotton blend of their K-Mart dresses, squished between toes scrunched in shimmery plastic. Humid sighs of nothing, there’s nothing hung in the afternoon haze as they waited for someone to drive by and wave, for anything  to coast around the corner and take them by surprise.

There was only so much Katie, Bren and Sometimes Shandy could do in Verdant Village. They could roam the subdivision’s empty streets as if they were one sad backyard. They could buy Screwballs from the ice cream truck and throw the bubblegum stones at the warty red ducks that bit their hands far too often. They could creep toward the canal and wait for a gator to feast on their tender shins. And when they exhausted those options, they could look toward the road while the blacktop cooled, dull and quiet and wonder what lay beyond those rust-flecked walls. .

I was too new to the world then to grow tired of things but now I see why Katie, Bren and Sometimes Shandy slouched on the sidewalk, their day-glo jellies poking the pavement while they longed for anyone—even their mothers—to come outside and talk to them. After school, they appeared on my doorstep because I nodded and smiled and consented to anything they asked. I gave them what every girl wanted: I made them believe they were at the center of things. I was eight and glad to have a job to do.

When not at school, I spent my time staring slack-jawed at the TV screen, filling my head with a constant reel of music videos. Smoke and silk, fire and fantasy, neon and nasty. I couldn’t get enough.

But when those knocks came, I always answered.

Katie, Bren and Sometimes Shandy were older. Fifth and sixth graders with awkward teeth and budding breasts. They liked charm necklaces, WWF wrestling, scratch-n-sniff stickers. They loved, loved, loved Bon Jovi.

Katie, Bren and Sometimes Shandy spoke softly of Bon Jovi. How they would marry him, how his hair looked in the video premiere, how he sang and made them cry.  If you asked me—and no one ever did— Bon Jovi was a twerp with a horsey smile. Even his winks were wholesome. He was a goof, like someone’s dad wearing a wig. I liked the wild boys, the ones with the impish sneers and scandalous pouts. The ones that looked like they were up to something secret and special and I was dying to know what. 

How cute is he? Katie swooned. We were sprawled out on her living room floor and “Bad Medicine” was playing for the umpteenth time.

Sooooo cute, Bren and Shandy swooned right back.

My mom said I can go to the concert but only if we win the lottery. She’d better play a zillion times because there’s no way I’m missing my husband!

Katie clutched her heart and flung herself against her bean bag chair. We watched this performance and giggled like we were supposed to.

My dad’s always playing that dumb lottery, Shandy said, rolling her Disney animal eyes.

My dad tries to tell my mom it’s a waste of money but she doesn’t listen to him, Katie scoffed.

Bren said nothing because her dad didn’t live with her.

I said nothing because I didn’t know what the lottery was and I didn’t know much about what my dad thought about anything. He was always working. At night, a scrambling of keys in the door, a tired face in the cramped foyer. A man who put me to bed, tickled me and told me he loved me before leaving me in the dark.

In Verdant Village, none of us had money but we acted like we did. We had a community pool and our condos were basically houses with screened-in patios, modest dining rooms, vanity lighting. Maybe it wasn’t true suburbia, but it was the same sunshine warming our limbs. The same grass, only less of it. Even if we owned more square footage, we’d still be hyped-up on Kool-Aid, strung out on MTV. We told ourselves it was all the same.

Dads worked at power plants and pizza joints. The lucky ones pulled shifts at both. Moms stayed home and set the table. When their kids were watching, they danced in their living rooms. When no one was watching, they napped until dark. Their lives, fevered pink with blusher sets, lemonade, flamingo home decor. They baked and vacuumed and tied up the phone lines with stories of bill collectors, their husbands, other people’s husbands, the state of the neighborhood, the state of the world, department store sales, and how we drove them crazy. And then one day we heard them murmur a new word.

What’s a Peeping Tom anyway? Shandy asked.

Katie sipped her Capri Sun, let out a world-weary sigh. It’s like a pervert or a robber. It’s like a bad guy, okay? A really bad guy. 

I don’t get it, Shandy said.

I don’t either, I admitted.

He watches ladies through their windows and waits for them to take their clothes off. Do you get it now? Bren smirked.

Kinda, I guess.

But why is he called Tom? Shandy asked.

He just is! God, you guys can be such babies sometimes. Katie buried her upturned nose into Bren’s triple-pierced ear and snickered.

I tried to ignore them, return my focus to Bon Jovi and his lame antics. But it was no use. Their laughter won out.

Katie and Bren often teamed up, making it clear where their loyalties lay. I didn’t mind, really. I was just happy to be there. But Shandy, the 10-year-old in the group, wanted to be seen as their equal. Her dignity depended on it. Like so many times before, at this sign of alliance, she fled for Katie’s bathroom, slamming herself inside. I shuffled toward the door, waited for her in the hallway. Loud sniffles competed with the running faucet. I never knocked. I let her be.

When the sink went silent, Shandy exited with her sad movie stare, imploring me to take her side while she took my tiny hand. And I never knew how to say no to anyone so I let her lead me out Katie’s front door and across the street. I’m not sure Katie or Bren even noticed.

***

Shandy’s dad, Don, was home. Like usual. Wearing nothing but his tighty-whities. Hairy legs spread wide in his recliner. A jar of Miracle Whip in one hand. A butter knife in the other. Thick chest hair, thicker glasses. The stench of fried bologna glazing the air.

Hey honey, he greeted me, licking the knife’s edge clean, then dipping it back into the jar. And he smiled. Wide. Not like Bon Jovi’s grin, not like Billy Idol’s snarl. More like a circus clown on a smoke break. Relieved that the facade’s crumbling. Pleased that you’re confronted with his true nature.

Shandy, sweetie, grab your Daddy a soda before you go play, wouldya?

Shandy abandoned me for the fridge and I swayed in the sliver of light Shandy’s mother’s seashell lamp offered, the only light in that living room at all. Cars exploded on the television. Shotguns fired. The knife ran circles in the now empty Miracle Whip jar, scraping and screeching against the sides.

So, what are you girls up to? Don scratched a furry thigh. I avoided his tortoiseshell frames but I felt his eyes leaning into every part of me, burrowing past my suntanned skin, my chubby-cheeked politeness and digging deep to reach somewhere I didn’t even know about.

I shrugged, looked down at my Easter yellow socks, my candy pink jellies. Tried to focus on the colors, the cheer they offered in brighter places than this. He was asking me something. But I didn’t understand what. He was asking more than what he was saying. He was asking me something else entirely.

You’re so shy, he laughed. Just like my Shandy.

My skin burned so hot I was convinced it smelled. My tongue wilted. My limbs froze. I decided that at least half of me was dead. Half of me had gone limp, watching Don ingest me without even opening his mouth.

Here ya go, Shandy mumbled. A soda can hissed. I heard a gulp, a belch. No thank you. Just the increased volume of brakes screeching, glass shattering.

Shandy took my hand again. She revived me. I fixated on the back of her strawberry print romper as she skipped down the hall, leading me to safety.  I tried not to think about Don’s hungry eyes bulging in the dark.

In Shandy’s room, we knelt on her bottom bunk, undressed Barbies in our fists. We smacked taut torsos together, bent legs into impressive splits, contorted smooth groins into straddle-friendly positions. Some of the dolls didn’t have heads. We’d managed to pluck their symmetrical faces clean from their necks, leaving that weird fleshy knob. We made their grotesque bodies wail and whimper Oh mys! and Oh nos! even though they didn’t have vocal cords, even though they didn’t have mouths.

It was a ridiculous game. A game fueled by our curiosity about how a woman’s body worked. What it did when it was alone and out of our sight. In this game, we agreed that to be a woman was to be naked and maimed. To be a woman was to be hysterical. I didn’t know where we got this from. Maybe TV. Or maybe it’s what our mothers implied when they rested silently on their loveseats. Their eyes, unfocused but fierce with knowing.

A flock of headlights flew across Shandy’s window, signaling the dads’ return home from work and dinner time. I dropped my dolls, said good night and made for the door.

Don was still pantless and parked in front of the tube when I re-entered the living room. At that moment, I was reminded of my mother’s advice when playing in the backyard, the canal flowing a few feet away. Don’t get eaten by those gators. Run like mad but scramble! Zigzag. If you zigzag, they’ll never catch you.

Hey, sweetie, Don called after me. Don’t be a stranger. You’re welcome here anytime.

Thank you. I-I-I won’t, I stammered, memorizing the same crap linoleum I had in my own entryway, hands trembling as I reached for the doorknob. I could feel his eyes roving in their glass cages. Somehow, I managed to stagger out into the streetlights and zigzag my way home.

When I walked in, I inhaled deeply. Exhaled finally, too. Taco night. Cumin and onions. Something sizzled, something bordered on burnt. TV on, not MTV. The evening news. But no one was watching.

Mom’s voice spiraled through her bedroom, following the length of her phone cord as she stretched it to its limit. Hovering in the teeny space between her bedroom doorway and the kitchen entrance, she monitored her ground chuck. Nothing was in flames, so she continued gabbing.

It’s probably that Christian kid…No, no his name is Christian. He’s definitely not Christian…The one that lives by Tammi. You know the one. He’s got that satanic music blaring out of his car at all hours of the night…Yeah, the dirtbaggy-looking one. It has to be him because Gary and I caught him and his punk friends on our roof throwing rocks up there, drinking beers and other dumb shit… Un-huh. Yep. And he was pressing his pimply face to our skylight, looking in at us watching HBO, yelling and laughing. Gary dealt with them, went out and told them to knock it off. We haven’t had trouble with him since. He doesn’t even make eye contact with us anymore, the twerp. But I could see him doing other creepy crap. I wouldn’t put it past him to be our neighborhood Peeping Tom…Hold on 007’s home… Heeeey, when’d you get here? Your dad’s out back. Go say hello.

She patted my head absently but I didn’t bother responding. I knew she wanted me out of the way so I kept on walking through the kitchen. I yanked open the sliding glass door, stepped onto the patio to find my dad beyond the screen, perched high on a ladder, installing the high-tech lights he’d blabbed about for weeks, the kind that clicked on when something moved. When someone moved. Someone. Somewhere out there.

Don’t come outside. Stay where you are, Dad barked. 

I won’t. I stood on my tiptoes and pressed my face to the screen. 

The mosquitoes are bad. Some huffing, some panting, some metallic clanging and then: What’d you do with your friends today, squirt?

Nothing really. Just played.

Sounds nice.

I waited for my father’s next question. Crickets chattered in the grass. My father’s feet rested on the rung in front of me, his dirty work boots level with my face. I peered up but could only detect the faint outline of his denimed torso. All I could see was his neck. The bugs were finding me through the screen and my father stopped speaking, so I wandered back into the faux warmth of our living room. Dusk filled the skylight above my head. I was getting hungry.

On the TV, an old man reported another girl missing. I immediately changed the channel to watch a pretty man sing.

***

It was Mom’s idea. Katie, Bren and Sometimes Shandy at our place for a sleepover. An excuse for her to invite their moms, and Tammi, over for some “grown-up fun.” Strawberry daiquiris and girl talk at the kitchen card table while their daughters huddled up in sleeping bags in the living room, slowly losing their innocence to cable TV. 

Katie and Bren didn’t want to be there but their moms refused to leave them home unsupervised. After all, there was a Peeping Tom on the loose. Plus, their dads were working overtime and wouldn’t be home until dawn. They were probably bribed with cheap jewelry and cassettes from the mall. It was fine to hang with me during the day but no babies were allowed in their presence past sundown. When they arrived, they talked only to each other, kept their distance from Shandy and me in case some cool stranger dropped by and they had to explain, Hey, we’re not with them. We swear.

Have fun, girls. Pretend like we’re not even here, Bren’s mom said before disappearing into the kitchen. We didn’t have to pretend. Once the blender started whirring, we rarely saw our mothers’ faces. We might as well have been alone.

I didn’t ask Katie or Bren to play Barbies or board games or Truth or Dare. I didn’t ask them anything at all. Instead, I decided to gossip. To reveal something. Something I’d overheard that might ingratiate me to them further. Something that might change the course of their lives—at least for one evening. And they’d have no choice but to be grateful.

We were watching that boring movie with Tom Cruise and the unicorn when I turned to my fickle friends and teased, Hey guys, I know something you don’t know.

What? Bren asked, eyes still on long-haired Tom.

Yeah, what? Katie asked, stuffing more popcorn into her mouth. 

Well, you have to promise you won’t tell anyone. 

God, we won’t. Now tell us.

Yeah, spit it out already.

Shandy grinned patiently, said nothing.

You know that older boy, Christian? 

Their eyes fixed hard on my little impish face. I knew I had them now.

Oh, he’s so cute! Katie exclaimed.

Yeah, he’s super dreamy. Dreamier than Bon Jovi maybe. What about him?

I kept my tone casual but glowed with pride. He’s been on my roof before. Him and his high school friends go up there to party and drink beer. And one night he was looking in on my parents. Maybe he’ll do it again tonight and we can wave or something.

Oh my god, no way!

All three girls screamed. With anticipation. With fear. With desire. I tried to shush them in case the moms heard but it didn’t matter. The moms were cackling too loudly. The moms were drunk. 

We should scare him by sticking our tongues out!

Ew, no. Funny faces are lame, Katie. We should just look up at him like, “What are you doing, you freakin’ weirdo?” Like we don’t give a crap.

Yeah, you’re right. I was being totally lame. Let’s just do what you said.

I gotta put some mascara on. Bren rummaged through her purse.

I don’t know, guys. Maybe he’s the Peeping Tom. Shandy laughed nervously; her Disney eyes panicked.

But we ignored her concern. This was the night’s new plan.

For what felt like hours, we craned our necks toward the glass-plated night and waited for Christian to see us. Eventually, our necks ached and our stomachs rumbled and mom had baked a batch of Toll House she was willing to share and we were getting tired even though we swore we’d remain awake to see Freddy Kreuger invade teenage dreams, to see a startled Christian beaten at his own game. The prospect of his arrival had been enough to satisfy us. So, we turned away from the skylight and filled our mouths with chocolate before giving ourselves over to sleep. 

I was faking though. I took advantage of any opportunity to stay up late. The moms were still in the kitchen, pairing their cookies with Kahlua and milk, discussing what they would do if they were the Peeping Tom’s next target. Who they would call (their husbands at work, the cops, each other), what they would shout (curse word, curse word, curse word), who they would blame (pornography, society, unemployment).

Then I heard the squeak of nylon and opened my eyes to see Shandy slipping out of her sleeping bag and ambling into the kitchen. I didn’t hear what she said but suddenly she was leaving and ruining her mother’s good time.

This was my one night off in forever, Shandy, her mom grumbled while stepping over our still bodies.

I didn’t ask her but I think Shandy was afraid Christian would show up and haunt us in our slumber. I stared up at the skylight again and held my breath. I saw only black but I couldn’t help but think of Shandy’s dad’s face. 

At some point, I fell asleep to the TV and the moms’ tipsy excitement about when and where the Peeping Tom would strike next. My own dreams remained undisturbed. 

***

A few weeks after the sleepover, Katie, Bren and me were down at the pool, splashing around. Shandy stayed home with a stomach bug. We were showing off our handstands and holding our breath in the deep end when we spotted Christian, up-close and shirtless, washing his car in front of the pool’s gates.

Katie and Bren scrambled out of the water like excitable dogs, shaking their bodies dry in an embarrassing hurry. A boy was better than handstand contests. A boy was better than me, better than ice cream or anything. They elbowed each other in their scrawny sides and dashed toward the gate, leaving me and their towels behind. I hung back because I knew my place. I knew I didn’t belong in this scene. Still, I entered it anyway.

After collecting our towels. I dragged my feet across the scorching cement to the pool’s entrance. Once outside the gates, I dawdled under a tree a few yards away and tried my best not to gawk, to make my presence known. There he was. Flaxen rattail pasted to the damp of his neck, silver cross earring sparkling in the sun. Axl Rose whistling through his stereo speakers. An open beer next to a bucket of suds. Christian, dirtbag teen and possible Peeping Tom, on full display.

Katie and Bren squatted on a nearby parking curb, squinting up at danger. They talked loudly about nothing. They used bad words and acted stupid. They didn’t acknowledge me once even though I stood directly behind them.

Christian sponged his windshield, humming along to the radio like we weren’t right there ogling him with open mouths. We watched his muscles crest like waves across his back as he lunged over the gleaming black of his Pontiac Fiero, as he hosed down his hubcaps, waxed his back bumper, polished his taillights. And then he turned his attention, along with the full force of his nozzle, to Katie and Bren. He doused their just-dried bodies, aiming directly at their bare browned skin. They squealed and bolted across the parking lot, giving themselves away as the children they were.

Eventually, the water stopped rushing and the girls stopped shrieking. But Axl was still singing when Christian moved toward Katie and Bren. He lit a cigarette, looked on as they shivered with delight.

I’m headed up the street to the Gas-n-Go. You two wanna go for a ride?

I mean sure yeah cool. That’d be awesome. Katie and Bren were beaming, giddy. Then, emboldened by his invitation, Katie asked: Would you mind buying us some Garbage Pail Kids?

Christian laughed. Yeah, I can get you some of those. You’ll owe me one though. Then he turned his bright eyes on me. What about her? Does she want to come, too?

She’s not allowed, they said while I stayed in the shade. He took their word for it, tossed his bucket in the back, and revved the engine. In their soggy two pieces, Katie and Bren clambered into Christian’s passenger seat. All goosepimpled flesh and giggles. Katie squirming on Bren’s lap. Don’t you dare tell on us, they smirked. Fingers to lips curled in satisfaction. It’s a secret, okay?

The shiny Fiero sped off, left me choking on a cloud of burnt tire and cigarette smoke. I wanted to know Christian’s secrets. Not if he was the Peeping Tom or not. I knew he couldn’t be the one stalking our windows. Getting loaded with his friends on our roof was for fun. What the Peeping Tom did was for something else.

I wanted to know other things about him. Like his favorite Slurpee flavor, his favorite song, what he wanted to be when he turned 18. I wish I’d blackmailed Katie and Bren, asked for a pack of Garbage Pail Kids or Dr. Pepper Gum in exchange for my silence. Asked for anything at all.

That night, I curled into my covers and imagined Christian lurking outside my window, surveilling from the front seat of his Fiero, aiming his eyes and high beams into my bedroom, hoping for a light to flicker on, for a mere glimpse of my beauty. He wasn’t a Peeping Tom, just a lovesick boy. In my mind, there was a difference. 

I fantasized I was older. Older than Bren or Katie but not as old as our mothers. I had teased hair, bleached blonde, like the girls on Club MTV. I wore ripped jeans and bustier tops. To sleep, I slipped on satin negligee. My room wasn’t crowded with toys or stuffed animals. Everything smelled fruity-sweet and party-ready. Everything was cool. I was cool. 

And Christian knew it and longed to be inside. He ached to hold my hand while I slept. He ached to make me stand in the middle of my moonlit room, his arms around my waist as he looked deep into my eyes to find that I knew much more than Katie and Bren. About life. About rock music. About all the things that mattered to him. That I was ready to ride shotgun in his Fiero far past the Verdant Village walls and the Gas-n-Go. That no one would have to know he kidnapped me. That no one would care if I went missing.

***

***

Not long after Katie and Bren’s Gas-n-Go escapade, the knocks stopped. The pair became a rare sight, sometimes glimpsed in Christian’s driveway where he and his scummy pals loitered past dark, blasting metal from their cars’ tinny speakers. 

Katie and Bren still looked bored but less alone and more important. I guess that’s what Mom meant when she said there was a way something called puberty could change you. I wondered if they still loved Bon Jovi. I wondered if they thought of him—or me—at all. 

There was still Sometimes Shandy, skittish and lonely at my front door. Big eyes pleading for me to not turn her away like everyone else. And I never did. Only lied now and then when she asked me to play at her house.

Sorry, my mom says I’m not allowed anymore. She wants to keep an eye on me. 

Mom was one of the last to encounter the Verdant Village Peeping Tom. Dad was working overtime the night he visited, which meant I was staying up later than usual lounging on the sofa like a lazy empress, gnawing on cold slices of leftover pizza. Adam Curry was counting down the top videos of the week. 

Over Bret Michaels’ broken heart, I heard my mom on the phone.

Holy shit, Tammi. He was here…You know who, the creeper, the peeper!…No, I couldn’t tell. It’s too dark and those stupid lights Gary installed don’t catch crap. But someone was out there, standing and facing my bedroom. I got out of the shower with my boobs out and everything else before I even noticed! Jesus Christ.….Yeah. it’s kinda my fault though. I left the blinds open by accident like a dum dum…Yeah, I’ll be fine. Gary gets home soon. Hope that asshole got a good show…Hey, you might be next! (laughter)…Okay, g’night.

I waited for the clack of the receiver. Her door was ajar. I knocked gently.

Why are you knocking, kiddo? Get your butt on in here!

Mom was in bed, freshly showered and smiling. She pulled back her bedspread, patted the empty side of the mattress.

Come on in. The water’s warm.

I dove in between the sheets and snuggled into the soft of her terry cloth robe, her loose curls spilling wet onto my cheeks. I hoped she’d spill her secrets, too. I wanted to stay there, nestled against her. Warm and safe. I wanted to be her baby still, for her to watch over me and never let me go.

We cuddled in silence for a while, our bodies facing one another. I kept my eyes on the vertical blinds, their vinyl slats jammed shut. Protectors from the night. 

I swallowed hard and looked deep into my mother’s eyes before asking, Mom, did you see the Peeping Tom just now? 

Were you listening to my phone calls again, 007? You’re too smart for your own good. She ran her fingers through my tangled hair. I didn’t see who he was but I saw someone man-shaped for sure.

I swallowed hard again. Do you think it was Don?

Don? She jolted upright, her spine kissing the headboard. Why would you ask about him? Kiddo, what’s going on?

Nothing. But I don’t think it’s that Christian.

Jesus, 007! When did you hear me say that?

I don’t know…one day when you were on the phone.

Dear lord, you truly are a spy. Listen, I’m not sure who he was, she sighed. And I don’t want you to worry, okay? He’s not going to hurt me. And he’s not going to hurt you. Whoever he is. She reached for my hand, crushing it against her sun-damaged chest. Her eyes boring into my brain. There are people out there that are searching for something. Some excitement, I don’t know. We feel more sorry for people like that than anything.

I nodded although I didn’t understand. Mom vibrated with a nervous energy, but it wasn’t fear. 

You know sometimes I think you know more than we think and it’s terrifying. She bent down and kissed my forehead, gave my tummy a playful poke. Let Mommy get dressed, sweet pea. Daddy will be home soon.

She rose from the bed, freeing herself easily from my embrace, opening and shutting dresser drawers, retrieving her clothes and then her cosmetics. I lay there and thought about how mere minutes before a mystery man took in the sight of my mother’s naked body. But more than that, he’d entered a place he didn’t belong without ever having to step inside. 

I watched my mother watch herself in her bureau mirror, pursing her lips together like a promise and admiring the results. Her eyes, aflame and haloed in kohl, she reminded me of the women on MTV—the way they arranged their faces to fit the mood of the man’s song, the way they pretended they weren’t seducing and surrendering to danger. But they knew they were and they liked it. My mother’s reflection met my eyes. I wasn’t sure which one of us had been caught.

She turned around and bared her normal face, flushed and sheepish. Shoo, shoo! she squealed, chasing me out of her room before quickly closing her door. I lingered, hoping to be reinvited, but the blow dryer began its pretty drone.

I let my mother be, plopping myself down again in front of the television. I let the men in the music videos tend to me, let them teach me. Those men that sung about being hungry beasts, bringing me to my knees, watching every breath I take and wanting more, more, more. I brought my face so close to the screen, I could taste the technicolor of their feigned desire. I didn’t dare look anywhere else.

Jillian Luft recently returned to her home state of Florida. Her work has appeared in Hobart, XRAY, Rejection Letters, Expat, Vlad Mag, and other publications. She’s currently seeking publication for her novel about toxic Florida romance. You can find her on X @JillianLuft and read more of her writing at jillianluft.com

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

THE SUICIDAL IDEATION THAT SPIKES WHILE CHANGING JOBS

By Jesse Hilson

I was at a library and talking with a middle-aged woman and made a pass at her. I was telling her movies to watch and books to read. I touched her throat, then said I’m sorry, and are you married? She seemed alarmed but not like she was going to call the cops or anything. I think she gave serious thought to being unfaithful to her husband with me, like she wasn’t hostile to the idea but it made her feel very sad because she felt trapped. Only one other person lingered in the library with us, the librarian, another even older woman who sort of represented the middle-aged woman’s life and sense of propriety. She was pretending to read a book and waiting for us to be done with our conversation and leave.

I’m very attracted to you, I said, as if this fact should knock over everybody else’s needs and upend lives. Vronsky and Anna didn’t wait for the world to cohere around their wants. I didn’t say that at the time but I’m saying that now. This really happened and it’s still happening.

Then I drove her somewhere. It was a cross between LA and the town where I grew up. She ended up disappearing.

I’m the Son of Sam but instead of a dog, it’s a black mold pattern glyph on the wall at the head of my bed, behind the headboard that gets onto my pillows and seeps into my mind while I sleep, gives me hyperdreams. Grand Theft Auto Sadness. Antisocial fantasies in isometric pixel animations. And I don’t even like games.

I couldn’t give my wife a back massage because her back was covered with ink. Less a tattoo than a glossy book cover, like a catalog. For Xmas shopping. I said she had a lot of knots and tried to remember the parallel runways of muscles up both sides of her spine but the printed back ink was confusing me. I felt her big breasts. She kicked me out of the house. I tried to talk her out of it. A baby was walking around the room. It was such a bitter argument. It was forever. A typical theatrical event was happening elsewhere and I drove there listening to delusion-reinforcing music with cryptic lyrics as I used to do in that part of the city. At the theatre thing, which was full of kids because a lot of schools went there, an adult pulled a gun. They talked him into leaving and he was tackled by a tank of a security guard on the front lawn. I went to a concession stand inside which seemed familiar: and I bought three cannabis-infused bananas from the rip-off artist. Right away they got jumbled with normal bananas so I lost track of which ones had the drugs in them. So I ate three and went outside and there was a rock concert with people dancing and the band was playing the hit single from that year “(I Was) Standing In Heaven.” 

The interview they give to welcome new schizophrenics is called the IRIS (Ideas of Reference Interview Scale), and a high score on item 14 indicates that some message of significance has been sent to the interviewee through the media. In the Before Time, usually while driving, awake and not dreaming this time, I did perceive that — Kurt Cobain singing “Yeah” on the car radio meaning whatever random thought I was thinking at the moment I heard that verse of the song was true, song lyrics teased information about hidden Cotard arrangements, death marbled into life — but now it’s as if TV shows and movies and pop radio were daily rushes slipped quietly over the transom of my heavy-lidded eyes in REM aquarium depths. Dreams are safe psychoses (sike-oh-sees), rehearsals of virtual unreality. Wandering around fairgrounds honeycombed with tents and corrals no one wanted you to be in, populated with crooked firefighters, rapists, angry ghosts, disabled childhood friends, all in constant frenetic video game motion.

I am led by spectacle through dream-malls. Stage massive dynamic group-races that absorb me and take me along. Blood trips, voyages that always have some dramatic turning or betrayal among passengers, often family members. Shopping spaces, markets both indoors and outdoors, carve up group attention. An audience waits and peers into my dream-world. Mass media pilgrimages staged for someone, not me, not the dreamer displaced by the spectator’s passive ego. Everything is given a new portentousness, a signal within the dream transmission.

Setting up social media accounts, dating apps, work emails at my house, I had to come up with wifi superstitions to combat the ghosts that prevented multi-factor authentication from getting through. Everything’s combat. And the authentication code only arrives when it’s too late and you are no longer near the device. This is the shield of the poltergeist.

Frustration happened impacting the mood, paralyzed the mood-feeler beyond the actual obstruction causing the frustration. Can’t eat can’t sleep can’t perform simple tasks. The crazy man is a robot with one square task-peg stuck in his round queue-hole blocking a whole string of other later tasks, of all more amenable shapes. I don’t appreciate you setting the extroverted tempo. I have not intersected enough with all of you. Very well. I will take my chances. A noon whistle blotted out all repetitions of your name.

Jesse Hilson lives in the Catskills in New York State. His work has appeared in Maudlin House, Rejection Letters, Expat Press, Hobart, Exacting Clam, Don’t Submit!, Bruiser, Apocalypse Confidential, and elsewhere. He has published two novels, Blood Trip and The Tattletales, and a poetry collection Handcuffing the Venus De Milo. He is the founding editor of Prism Thread Books. He can be found on X and Instagram at @platelet60.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 2

LOU AND OTIS

By Ed Komenda

Lou opened the door with a heavy blanket over his head.  I hadn’t seen my best friend in over a year, and it was a relief to see him standing there, cloaked like the South Side’s Obi Wan Kenobi. It was January.  A few days after Christmas.  A dull gray Chicago.  Lou welcomed me into the house:  A rented three-bedroom on 67th, where the temperature was a few degrees warmer inside than outside. Comforters covered the picture window. A blue couch sat at the center of the living room.  On the cluttered coffee table sat a TV remote, a Tambourine, a stack of X-Men comics, an old Ziploc of weed, an empty bag of Lays, a pickle jar half-filled with garlic chunks suspended in juice, a peanut butter jar with a protruding spoon, a two-liter of Coke with one pull left at the bottom, an ashtray with Camel cigarette butts, six or seven nubs of days-old blunts and a tattered copy of Road-side Dog.  The reason blankets covered everything is winter gas bills got too high.  One weekend of heating the place and you were bankrupt.  Lou zipped his body in a sleeping bag and breathed through a fabric air hole he fashioned in the shape of his mouth.  We walked through the living room and into the hallway, where another set of  blankets obscured a doorway.  Lou parted the blankets like a beaded curtain, and we stepped into the kitchen.  It was warm.  All four burners on the gas stove were going.  Lou sat at the table. In front of him sat a bottle of Jim Beam.  Next to the bottle was a tiny puddle of spilled whiskey – an erroneous pour left to evaporate.   Lou poured a shot for himself and took it. He slid the shot glass to me, and I took one, too.  We said little. We traded the shot glass until we felt brave enough to exit.  Lou said he needed five minutes to shower. He left the kitchen and entered the bathroom.  Shower sounds and steam leaked under the door. I rubbed my hands together and jammed them into my coat pockets.  I could see my breath.  The spot reminded me of the country house where I’d been living the past three years. I stapled Walmart blankets over the windows. I kept a space heater next to the bed.  I slept fully-clothed – pants, sweatshirt, socks – with a hood drawn tight around my head.  A heavy blanket on top. On the dead heating vent, I kept a bottle of Wild Turkey.  It was nice to have someone to drink whiskey with.  In the country, that someone was Otis, the fifth man on our four-man lease. He looked like a descendent of Andre The Giant if Andre The Giant grew up roping steer and using Keystone beer to fluff up his scrambled eggs. He stayed in the basement. Tucked in a corner room cramped with warped, musty vinyl, a king-sized bed and computer desk, he chain-smoked Winstons and played World of Warcraft, wrapped in a nest of secondhand blankets. We had a fireplace in the living room and no money for wood. But we worked in the library, and one day Otis returned with stacks and stacks of discarded books. He grabbed a thick history text and tore it in half.  Split it right down the spine.  He grabbed a geography edition next  and tore that in half, too.  I could tell he was well-versed in the art of book disposal.  We stacked the pieces like cords of wood. I crumpled pages into kindling balls, and Otis dropped his own in the ash. He flicked his Bic under the yellow pages, and soon there was fire.  We spent the next week watching Kubrick on couches we salvaged from curbs around town. I was working a library shift when Otis fell asleep during a Cheers marathon. A few embers popped past the metal mesh and landed on the carpet. Smoke filled the living room. A house party regular named Cody showed up and found Otis snoring. “Yo, wake your ass up!” He slapped Otis awake and stomped the smoldering rug. Otis rubbed the crust out of his eyes and peered through the haze. “Shit,” Otis said, “that was a close one.” He cracked a window, shut off the TV and went back to sleep.  Lou came out of the bathroom, slicking his hair back with a brush.  Steam followed him like a fog.  We drove to Chinatown for five-dollar soups. We cruised. Marquee Moon played from the car stereo.  We glided through the dirty slush with no plan, no discussion about what we’d been up to, no talk of what came next. We were full of broth. And we were warm. 

Ed Komenda is a writer based in the Pacific Northwest. Follow him on Instagram @ejkomenda

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 2

Leaky Boat

By Dylan Smith

They put a perfect

Cathedral in my phone 

an endless Barn

gets Spiritual inside 

Wordy Mountain 

Brand New Bible

for every War 

and all its Trees

like an Ark 

Take that apocalypse

out of your pocket  

Google the Word 

Tevah—haha

why not, Put an-

other Endless War

in it, Put all of 

Moby Dick 

in it and

every Name 

of every Tree 

and all that Math 

My phone is a

leak in the Alphabet 

Proof of Space 

I loved your name 

absorbing Light

and Water and

this is the Way

we’ll be told 

our Mothers

are dead

Dylan Smith is serializing a novella-length fiction thing called Crayon Barn Chris and plants flowers for money in Brooklyn, NY.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 2

Wrong Currencies

By Sy Holmes

I stood next to Julia, holding a portion of Lou’s ashes in a Dixie cup. The air was calm, and it was cold, but not snowing yet. We were in a scrubby half-acre out behind Lou’s friend’s house, near Rochester. It was short on views, but my late father-in-law had claimed it was his favorite place on earth. He had hunted deer here. He could sit in his tree stand, drink Black Velvet, and be at peace. No memories of 9/11. No stress from the firehouse. No kids asking him for money. No cops bringing his drunk wife home. Just him, a rifle, a pint, and the deer that sometimes decided to show up. It was beautiful. He wanted his cremains scattered here. 

“Dixie cups?” I had asked Julia. 

“What the hell else are we supposed to scatter him out of, Ben?” 

“I don’t know.” 

I really didn’t. Maybe they made special ash-scattering cups. I had always assumed that was something the funeral home would give you on the house.

“Ben, baby,” she was talking slowly, like I was a kid in her second-grade class, “we’re giving him the best we can.”

“Yeah, I know, but I used to drink Sunny D out of these after church.”

“We’re doing the best we can.”

“I know, babe, I know. He’d just think it was funny too, probably.”

“I don’t think it’s funny, Ben. He’s my father. He’s dead. We’re honoring his memory.”

“I know, I know.”

Lou had been a man dedicated to his college rock. On late-night shifts in the ‘80s, when there was nothing else going on, he’d call radio stations until he became caller number five or whatever and win records. Eventually a couple of them had to ban him. His wife got herself banned from the local Chinese place, the school where she worked as a teacher’s aid, and most of the bars in Queens. His kids had gone to Catholic schools. It wasn’t a bad life, he’d say. I was from South Carolina, which was close enough to Georgia for him, so he always told me about how much he loved R.E.M. Murmur, Fables, and Automatic were classics, of course, but his favorite album was Monster.

 I’d come up to his retirement place – the house in small-town Pennsylvania – on Christmas and sit in the garage with him, listening to it as he got drunk and nodded along. He had the album on a moderately-scratched CD. Some friends I have are all about sound quality, fancy speakers. Not Lou. Lou was a man for the people. If the boys from Athens repeated a couple lines, that was alright with him. He wanted “Strange Currencies” played at his funeral. It felt weird holding him in a paper cup next to a picture of him, young and thin in his FDNY turnouts, CD player ready to go on the leaning folding table.

We were all going to walk around the woods, sprinkle out his ashes, then reconvene for the final goodbye. I split off from Julia and wandered, sprinkling the ashes into a bush here, in some moss there, trying not to create little piles of Lou everywhere. I loved the man. I don’t want to make light of his memorial. It was hard looking at Julia through the trees, trying to do the same thing. I liked to think Lou would think it was ridiculous. I liked to think he was looking down on me from somewhere. It made it easier to cope with the fact that he was gone, and this was all I could do about it.

We all made it out of the trees. There was a tasteful trash can for the Dixie cups. I crushed mine and put it in my pocket, promising myself that I would burn it in our backyard later. Hell, I might take the whole bag back in the car with Julia. Just her and me and the cups contaminated with the remains of her father. I would build a bonfire and hope the HOA didn’t bitch. 

Mikey, Julia’s younger brother, was standing by the table. He was wearing a black suit with a black shirt, a red tie to round it out. He was ready. Ready to play the disc. Ready to inform me that it was time to leave an Italian restaurant. I was in no state to judge Mikey’s fashion choices. I was freezing my ass off, an old down coat over my blazer. When you’re thinking about an outdoor memorial service, you really never consider that no one is going to lug fine wooden furniture out to the woods, or that maybe your dumbass family and friends won’t look like a Brooks Brothers catalog. You never think about Dixie cups and the fact that it isn’t going to be the classiest thing on earth unless you’re mob-connected. It’s hard to fuck up R.E.M., though, unless you decide to play “Everybody Hurts.” At least Lou could have that. 

Mikey pressed play. I was waiting for the feedback. I could almost see Lou, drunk and leaning his head back, tapping his foot, smiling. Instead I got the click and piano riff of the song after it, “Tongue,” the band’s ode to the cunnilingus, desperate yearning, and the pain of feeling like a last-resort lay. As I heard Michael Stipe’s falsetto start, I tried to bury my face in my hands and act like I was overcome with emotion. It didn’t work. I was cackling, man, not a shred of dignity left. 

“Ben,” Julia hissed at me, “this was the song he wanted. I don’t get it, either, but could you stop being an ass for five fucking minutes?”

I’m sorry, Lou, we fucked it all up. I should’ve known. You should’ve known. I hope you’d have done the same. 

Sy Holmes is a writer from western North Carolina. He lives in Montana with other people’s dogs.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 2

If we make it through December

By Sheldon Birnie

Some of the neighbourhood dads are planning a trip out of town to harvest Christmas trees. 

A little jaunt to the great outdoors sounded swell, just tickety-boo. Pocket flash full of rye, maybe sneak a toke or two after the kids run ahead. Good clean fun. Only we got this giant fake tree off my wife’s parents like 10 years ago, when they were downsizing. Seven feet tall, big fucker. I’m spitefully committed to putting the son of a bitch up every year until all it’s plastic needles fall off and it’s just a metal skeleton, or I die, whichever comes first. 

I send our regrets. Leave another one to grow out there in the orderly wilds of southern Manitoba. Maybe next time, I tell ‘em. Sure thing, dudes. Sure thing.

Every year, when we set this big bastard up in December and take it down again in January, we vacuum up at least a cup, maybe two, of green little plastic needles. But it doesn’t show. This thing might as well have come outta the box yesterday, fresh off a boat from China and a transcontinental shipping container ride by rail to the middle of fuckin nowhere.

At least the kids still get a real kick outta setting the thing up. Pulling out the bins of decorations – some as old as my wife and I, some older, even – and dressing the tree. Seasonal tunes playing in the background. The classics. Please, daddy, don’t get drunk this Christmas. I try to soak it all in, but it isn’t always easy. Merry Christmas, I don’t wanna fight tonight. They’ll be grown before I know it, uninterested or feigning so in all this seasonal mumbo-jumbo, and then they’ll be off on their own and it’ll be time for my wife and I to downsize ourselves. If we make it through December.

The tree, I’ve no doubt, will still be standing. An offgassing ghost of Christmases past. Unless we suffer a house fire or sewer backup in the meantime. Maybe I can pass it on to one of the kids, once they’re grown. Keep the tradition alive. Will they still celebrate Christmas, as the world spirals inevitably into climate catastrophe? At least the bulbs burning upon its boughs are LED.

And they do look lovely, late at night when the rest of the house is sleeping, all the lights out but one I read by. A tall dark rum with a splash of coke for colour close at hand. But most nights I’m not reading. No Chuck Dickens for me. I’m just staring at the tree – lights twinkling, sparkling, anytime my eyes tear up – until the morning comes yet again.

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, dad, and beer league hockey player from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. 

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 2

Tiny

By David Williamson

The day Rosie was sick and stayed home from school, her daddy stayed too. He worked from his home office and sat in his chair and clicked on his laptop and looked at reports. Every few minutes his hand reached down and ruffled Buck’s golden doggy ears. Automatic, unthinking affection. 

Because he had to work most of the day, Rosie could do whatever she wanted. All morning she streamed musicals on her tablet. When her eyes dried out and started to itch, she switched off her tablet and plugged it into the charging station in the kitchen. 

She pulled a near-full gallon of milk out of the fridge, poured four giant glugs into a plastic salad bowl, squeezed eight seconds of chocolate syrup into the milk, and whisked it up until it frothed. She put the bowl on the ground, crouched on all fours, and lapped it up like Buck would do with his water, but it didn’t make her feel like a dog.

Rosie grew tired. 

Her bed faced the windows in her room, but too much sun came through for her to sleep. It cut chaotic scraps of light all over her bed like the throw-away parts of a paper snowflake. 

She gathered up a thick quilt, her pillow, and armfuls of her stuffed animal friends – Night-Night Bunny, Team Owl, Ogre, Jelly, others – and carried them into the bathroom, lined the tub with them and climbed in. The curtain screeched as she closed it. She lay in the tub thinking about chasing squirrels in the backyard until she fell asleep. 

When she woke up, the first thing she saw was a giant chrome cobra hanging over her. She shrieked, then remembered she made a bed in the tub, and the cobra was just the showerhead. She climbed out of the tub and called for her daddy. He didn’t answer even when she knocked on the closed door to his office. 

She moved like a ghost through the hallways, down the stairs, in and out of rooms.

Daddy, where are you? bounced off the walls. 

She ran back to the office and threw open the door.  Her daddy’s chair was gone. Where his desk should have been was a cardboard box instead, sealed with rainbow-colored tape. 

The insides of her body rattled. She floated through the house again, calling Daddy! but there was no Daddy, and – a thing she hadn’t noticed a moment before – there was no furniture. No pictures on the walls. No charging station in the kitchen. No tablet. A house emptied of everything but her and the box. 

She went to her daddy’s office and picked up the box. The rattling in her body, now a steady vibration. Her fingers trembled so the tape was hard to peel at first, but once she got a corner free, it came off in colorful strips. 

Inside was a miniature stuffed version of herself. She and the tiny Rosie even wore the same clothes: purple pajama pants and a t-shirt that read “Good Vibes Only.” The tiny Rosie clasped a rolled-up piece of paper in her tiny, stuffed-toy hands.

The real, life-sized Rosie unrolled the paper and read the message typed on her father’s official letterhead. 

Dearest Rosie,

I looked for you but couldn’t find you. Just this miniature stuffed version of you in the tub. I looked for you in your closet and in the crawl space. I looked for you in the attic and inside Buck’s doghouse in the backyard. I called your name, but you didn’t answer. I looked for you in the linen closet and the small cupboard where only your little body could fit. I looked for you in the sofa cushions and in the trunk of the car. I looked for you in the neighbors’ houses and under their beds and in their cupboards. I called the police, and they looked for you in the sewers and the woods and the tree forts that the neighborhood kids build. They looked for you at the school and the playground and at the bottom of the pool at the community center. They looked for you inside of wells, as children your size can fall into them, but you weren’t anywhere.

I don’t know how I could have missed you. Why did you leave? It’s been so long. I’ve gone now, still looking for you. I miss you terribly. 

Lots of love,

Daddy

He signed the letter in his official-looking signature. 

Rosie felt too sad to cry. She rolled the letter back up and hugged the tiny Rosie. Then she went downstairs, opened the front door, and walked into the yard. The grass under her feet was soft and fine like Buck’s doggy fur. The giant maple tree with leaves that caught fire in the autumn was now a thick column of knotted yarn. Wisps of batting poked out where the knitted bark came loose. Buck curled up in the corner of the yard, billowy and still. His eyes, hard disks of glass. The neighbors’ houses were enormous downy things that looked as soft as marshmallows. The sky was an unrolled bolt of felt. Clouds of stuffing hung down from fishing lines, and the sun was a bright golden pillow. 

Everything was stuffed except for her body. She felt the bones inside her arms, the tremors running through her muscles. The organs inside her hardened and squirmed as if she were hungry. 

She cradled the stuffed version of herself, lay down on the fluffy grass, and shut her eyes. Moments later she fell asleep and dreamed of her daddy at his desk, clicking away on his laptop, his head, inches from the monitor. His lips muttered words, but she couldn’t tell what he was saying. She called out to him from the doorway, but whatever words each said never reached the other. Their speech came out too softly. Whispers in cotton.

David Williamson is a writer living and working in Richmond, VA with with his family and a whole bunch of animals. Williamson’s stories are forthcoming or have been published in Short Story, Long, X-R-A-Y, BULL, Maudlin House, HAD, and others.