Category: Issue 3 Fiction

By Donald Ryan

Pop had already turned to drink long before that one mayor bought the place from the bank. Momma didn’t like it, though she never outright said anything; she also didn’t blame him. The spirits kept his spirit. But that didn’t mean we sons would spend all night at the bar with him. I tried a time or two, each time clear that needed to be Pop’s time. The box store where he managed to scrape up thirty hours a week or so both drained him and gave him no outlet for his wealth of how-to know-how. Pop knew before the second paycheck which aisle every screw, pipe, bit, and hinge was on. Aisles were all anyone ever asked about.

But it was never like Pop lived at the bar. When there was a full bottle and sitting weather, he’d make a night of sitting in the white, plastic porch chair, out there no different than the lightning bugs and cicadas. And once his belly got as warm as the night, he’d start talking about Momma’s inklings, then drift into things my older brothers probably already knew and some things I’m sure they never would. One thing, though, Pop never talked of getting out. So much of what was built up crumbled on his watch, albeit no fault of his own. Like most folk around town, he could blame Uncle Sam, could blame the economy. Still, Pop could only blame himself.

You see, when you and your brothers were just kids, he’d say, I knew nothing more than wanting to build a path of better things than the one I ended up on. And now, here we are in yet another cycle of June bugs, anything with potential worth showing already buried within no sight at all.

He’d catch the nip’s dribble on the back of his hand.

Then he’d say to it, I got to be at work early.

This had less to do with the shift starting around a late-for-him 10 or 11 and more to mean he was done with the subject, that or any. He wouldn’t let the bottle take advantage of him opening up. He was the store, and the store was closed. There was nothing that could come about to change the done that was done.

One night, out alone on the porch, my attention was split between watching heat lightning coil around bruised clouds and a paperback novel mostly spent bookmarked around my finger when headlights cut up the drive belonging to a gray truck that wasn’t Pop’s. The passenger door opened and after a brief pause for concern, knew from the backlit silhouette it was Pop’s graceful stagger traipsing up the beams.

I stood with the intention to help him up the stairs but did not move. Did not want to overstep the pride of the old man. The truck didn’t back out the drive until Pop was up and on the porch. 

That was Elliot, Pop offered, looking towards the front door. Don’t know his last name. Mc-something or O-something. Don’t matter. Nice enough fellow. Pop waited a beat, allowing the unnecessary justification to settle into the point. My truck’s still up at Tally’s, he said. You mind in the morning?   

Shouldn’t be a problem, I said as if there was a schedule to clear.

That’d be appreciated. Gives me a spell to rest my aches.   

Pop chose to rest them out on the porch when what his aches most needed was bed. If he woke Momma she’d make it the night’s mission to plan a hell of a worse morning. Tufts of laughter came from something only Pop knew to find funny. Made the drunk, old man seem buoyant, almost innocent. Sure enough, he’d feel the load come morning. So right then, we didn’t need Momma spoiling his fun.

I snuck in to get Pop a glass of water. Wasn’t sneaking really, just felt like it. If I’d gone in before Pop’s return I would’ve walked on in with no thought other than guiding the screen door to the frame. But although stone-cold sober, the intoxication of the moment dropped me off to late nights with a curfew. Of myself being carried home too late. Of the nights met with Pop and Momma waiting up in the living room, frustration in one chair, disappointment in the other. Of nights thinking I was scot-free only to get a scolding before a breakfast I couldn’t stomach. Then came these last few years. Since graduating there hadn’t been nearly such strict impositions. I was left to set my own limits which, admittedly, were still sometimes met with tacit frustrations and disappointments. Now slinking sober in the shadows, my heart raced in silent excitement louder than the precision tap of closing the cabinet door.

The screen, however, nothing could stop that late-night squeal no matter how softly guided. It’d always been loudest at this hour. 

I set a glass of water on the table next to Pop.

What am I supposed to do with this fish piss? he said. Go get the getting. 

The screen door was sure to wake Momma. 

When I came back out, I’d gotten the wrong get. Pop proceeded to half-describe a location hidden in plain sight I’d never seen. A secret now I was privy to, although I can only assume one of my brothers had surely stumbled upon this cubby in the roll-down desk where Pop used to balance the store’s books. The flask, right where half-described, hidden by a small door. But then again, one never knew with Pop. Might be the only one privy. Our folks were tolerant of a lot of mischief, had to be with three boys as we always heard, but the roll-down desk was an absolute. Even with expressed permission, it still felt unforgivable. As I reached, the old mischief swelled again, a rush far exceeding merely getting a glass of water. If Momma had heard any of this back and forth, she never showed from her bedroom. 

The flask I handed to Pop had a tree chiseled into it, guessing an oak, crude and beautiful, dead center, umbrellaing towards the edge of a circle. Fine find, said Pop. He unscrewed and flicked the lid on its hinge. He sniffed the loot inside. This was your Pap’s flask, said Pop, and before Pap, I don’t know; probably used to pay off some man’s debt. And next, it’s probably only right it gets handed down to Ricky, him being the oldest and in line to inherit shit but this old man’s debts. But this, he tapped his finger on the branches, ain’t nothing but a pretty, worn-out piece of tin. In its time, held mostly swill. But what’s in here now, it for sure ain’t swill. 

Pop swigged then clicked his teeth. He stared down at his thumb’s graze across the engraving. Yup, he said. Then he put his attention into the darkness just off the porch and slumped the flask towards me. This is the last batch of Will Hopkins, he said. You know who I mean?

I said, Maybe if I saw him. 

Pop let out a har, single and hearty, from the gut. Ain’t no seeing of ol’ Hops nowadays if he stays where he should in the dirt they put him in. He used to come in town to the store. Probably saw him back when, just never knew it. He’d loiter around like the rest of them, the difference being he’d make a few regular purchases. For his ‘renovations.’ The boys would fire back, ‘What you renovating, Hops?’ and he’d smooth as butter on the wet days and fluster over on the dry say his kitchen or his bathroom, anything with pipes, either way not a dollop of sarcasm as if everyone in town ain’t already know about his ‘renovations.’ Although, he was real particular with who he showed. I’d seen it a time or two. So it was never no bother when he didn’t pay cash-in-hand upfront. I’d full well turn around and return a bit of that cash back to his hand, no how. All was well. All was just as well. 

I put my nose to the lip and breathed in like a sommelier. Out of curiosity, not knowing what I was doing. Or maybe to catch a glimpse of what I had myself in for. There was something sweet in the kerosene. A rush to the forefront. Sasha. And damn it all, when I’d not thought that name in months. The spice, not hot like pepper but sweet like ginger. Sweet like vanilla. The only girl I could say with any confidence I ever loved. The way she broke my heart, probably the last. To think I’d finally got away. Then there it was, memory’s inescapable grand return. There was that hand lotion she’d lather on after she was done washing the brushes in the garage full of paintings I wasn’t allowed to see until she told me they were done, which wasn’t very often. Saw maybe two paintings over that last summer. Saw that one with the owl. It’ll always be my favorite painting, even if I’m the only person ever to see it. 

Don’t be shy, now. It’ll bite, sure, Pop said, but it’ll bite sweet. 

I took one to the head. 

And it did kick. 

And sure enough, a sweetness did sneak in. 

Ol’ Hops boasted running it through magnolias. The flowers? Wood? Never knew. He took that one with him, God help him. All I know is that’s what he called this batch. Magnolia. ‘Holds on for no one,’ he’d say. Pop laughed at this. 

I smiled, not yet grasping what was funny. Truly smiled at the sound of Pop’s laughter. 

I shot back another, a bit more, a bit braver. Let the bite take hold. And Pop laughed again, letting the sweetness mingle without another word into the warm night-song of cicadas and lightning.

Donald Ryan is the author of Don Bronco’s (Working Title) Shell from Malarkey Books. Other works have appeared in Bullshit Lit, Reckon Review, The Daily Drunk, The Lumiere Review, Autofocus’s How to Write a Novel anthology, and elsewhere. Donald Ryan solely exists online dot com and at dryanswords.

By Kevin M. Kearney

Iberia wanted to know if I’d seen a Clean Out. 

In my first two months at The Home, I’d seen plenty of things. Wayne slugging Keno during afternoon meds. Sophia launching her used tampon across the cafeteria. Stephen showing off his enlarged scrotum, a mass of skin I mistook for an overinflated volleyball. 

It was my first real job. I think I liked it. 

The Home was a world away from my quiet life with Mom, who was proud I’d landed a steady gig and amazed by the stories I returned with each night. “Unbelievable!” she’d say, every time, even when, objectively speaking, many of them were believable. These were people who’d lived on the street for years and sometimes skipped their anti-psychosis meds. It’s all relative, I guess. She’d been at Rite Aid for close to two decades. No one showed off their enlarged scrotums there, at least as far as I knew.

But Iberia, who’d been at The Home since its founding, told me everything I’d seen was nothing compared with a Clean Out. “You know Hoarders?”

I nodded, remembering an episode where the crew discovered a freezer full of dead cats. 

“Those people?” She paused, letting the question float in the air between us. “Lightweights.”

The Clean Out was for Ms. Sandra, whom our Manager said had died in her sleep. It was a turn-of-phrase I hadn’t heard since I was little, one I’d since decided was bullshit. Nobody died in their sleep—they had aneurysms, or choked on their vomit, or suffered massive heart attacks. Maybe something had happened while they’d been in bed, but it wasn’t sleep that got them. “Overdose,” Iberia whispered on our walk to the room and mimed a needle striking her forearm.

The room smelled like sawdust and damp laundry. When Iberia turned on the overhead lights, I heard scuttling along the wall. Mice, I figured, though I prepared myself for something bigger to sprint across the floor. I removed a contractor bag from our cart and whipped it open like a jet-black parachute, hoping the sound might scare off whatever was hiding in the shadows. 

Iberia was at Ms. Sandra’s desk, staring down at something. “Fuck me,” she said, and laughed. I got closer and saw what she meant: it was an open jewelry box with close to a dozen golden bands inside, each of them holding a shimmering rock. “Are these diamonds?” she asked, bringing one of the rings up to the overhead fluorescent.

They all looked like copies of Mom’s engagement ring, the one she still wore even though it’d been years since Dad passed. “I don’t like the look of a naked hand,” she told me once. “I don’t like how people assume.” Dad bought her the ring before he had money for a real one. According to Mom, it was a placeholder, though he never got around to replacing it. I don’t remember if it’s something they talked about before he passed. He’s been gone so long that sometimes I struggle to remember specific details. The color of his eyes, the way he laughed. Small things that feel enormous.

“Could be cubic,” I told Iberia, using the same shorthand Mom had passed on to so many well-meaning admirers, a self-conscious reflex she was never able to kick. “Imitation diamond.”

Iberia slipped the band on her finger and stretched her arm, trying to see how her hand might look to a stranger. “Feels real,” she said. It looked immaculate. “Clean Outs aren’t usually this good.” She took the ring off, then tried on another. 

Our Manager had informed us that any valuables—“sentimental, monetary, or otherwise”—needed to be cataloged and then brought to the Front Office so they could be delivered to the next of kin. “I guess we should tag it,” I said.

Iberia kept admiring her hand. “Did you know Ms. Sandra?”

I didn’t, not in any meaningful way. She’d lived on the Women’s Floor, a part of The Home I avoided at all costs. She ate her meals alone, muttering in front of an open Bible. Our only real interactions were in the meds line. She’d swallow her lithium and Lexapro in silence, then thank me for my work. “You are a nice little boy,” she used to say in high-pitched tone, like something from Sesame Street. When I first told Mom the story, I did the same voice and she laughed and laughed. The next morning, I poured her a cup of coffee and she smiled. “You are a nice little boy,” she said.

“She didn’t have any family, really,” Iberia said. “Maybe a cousin or something. Distant, you know? Practically strangers.”

“So…” I said, hoping Iberia wouldn’t make me ask the question.

“So?” She was smirking, apparently enjoying my discomfort.

I took a deep breath. “So, you’re saying you don’t think we should tag it.”

“I’m saying a distant cousin doesn’t deserve it more than us.” She waved her hand as she spoke, the glittering crystal following her movements. “A distant cousin wasn’t serving dinner. A distant cousin wasn’t giving meds.”

I knew it was wrong, at least legally. It was theft, according to Network protocol, and what our Manager had said, and probably a number of official documents I’d signed without reading. But I didn’t say anything when Iberia handed me one of the rings, didn’t object when she told me we’d be fine so long as we kept our stories straight.

Mom would have questions. Like how I could afford a diamond on $13/hour. Like why I’d buy something so expensive when I was theoretically saving for my own apartment.      

I figured I’d eventually have a plan. 

That night, Mom asked about the shift, and I told her it was slow. I wondered if she could tell that I was lying, if she could somehow see the ring in my pocket. When I got upstairs, I stashed it in my nightstand. That was a year ago. It’s still there. 

Every night before I fall asleep, I tell myself I’ll wake up in the morning, walk downstairs, and finally hand Mom the ring. “It’s mine,” I hear myself saying. I hear myself believing. “And now I want it to be yours.”

Kevin M. Kearney‘s writing has appeared in Slate, Stereogum, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. His novel HOW TO KEEP TIME was released in 2022 by Thirty West. More at kevinmkearney.com.

By Dan Eastman

In the morning, I cram my large body into my car. I drive a maroon 2013 Hyundai Elantra. It’s sun bleached and riddled with dents from teenagers crashing shopping carts into it. Weather’s hot as fuck and my shirt sticks to my back with sweat, which I then lean against the seat. I pray the AC is up to the day’s challenge. 

Heading into the highway, I scream at other drivers to let me merge in front of them. I punch the dashboard when a pair of 18-wheelers box me in behind another 18-wheeler. 

When a driver in another lane passes me, it’s personal, a competition. I floor it to 80. He still passes me. 

How anyone stays sober through this I don’t know. 

There is a direct relationship between my grip on the wheel and my detachment from reality. At a stoplight, I look over into the opposite lane and do not envy the herd of cars backed up to the horizon. I see a twisted abstraction of motorcycle and flesh and I curse the irresponsibility of the assholes that caused the accident bringing us to a crawl. Stupid assholes. 

I remember the comedy podcast I have playing. I imagine the Elantra in a ditch, cops coming upon my corpse, and Bert Kreischer’s stupid fucking laugh still playing out of the speakers. I turn it off. 

I’m running late. I must become more car than man. We are all vehicles. Our pleather and beige interiors marked with coffee stains and smoke break ash. All of us racing to jobs we hate. 

Arriving with minutes to spare, I let the relief and reliable air conditioning wash over me. I let the cortisol and blood pressure drop. I thank the mercy of managers I’ve never met that view me as an asset, an abstraction.

Somewhere on Earth, a zen monk meditates on the beauty of all sentient beings. I envy him. I want what he has but no. I am inflexible. My foot will never touch the gas pedal from the lotus position. 

Dan Eastman is a father, husband, and all around chill dude. He lives in Allentown.

By Kirsti MacKenzie

Jess says the Australian couple has a crush on me. We’re eating lunch on Naxos in the blistering sun. The square is quiet but for tourists buzzing past on motorbikes. Says it around a mouthful of chicken gyro. I can’t tell if she’s pissed or amused because her eyes are hidden behind knockoff RayBans she bought at a gift shop in Athens. 

“How do you know?”

She tilts her head, chewing. “They laugh too hard at your jokes.”

“I’m funny.”

“Not that funny.”

We spent the first night before the trip fucking because we agreed: no fucking on the boat. Day broke over Santorini and we sipped coffee stupidly, watching cruise ships idle in the Aegean. When it was time to go to the south port we were sunburnt and met an older couple on the boat. Thought maybe it was just the four of us until more showed. One American, who announced that she was newly divorced. One tour guide, a handsome middle-aged Spaniard. And one last couple: Tom and Amanda from Australia.

“They’re always inviting you places,” she says. “But not me.”

“You’re implied.”

She squinches her nose like nah.

The guide tried to teach us to sail ‘til he realized we were all useless. Everyone promptly got sea sick except for us and the divorcee. We stuck these scopolamine patches behind our ears. Magic. The Australians sat in the galley, playing crazy eights and taking turns throwing up. I waited to use the john while Tom yakked. Amanda dealt me in. I was gone half an hour and Jess came looking. Took two islands for her to bring it up.

“They’re Australian,” I say. “Friendly.”

“Don’t play dumb, Ben,” she says. “It’s not a good look.”

~*~

On Paros we go for a group dinner. In the harbor, fishing boats knock together. Locals drink espresso under the rippling cafe awnings. Octopus hang over wooden railings, drying in the late sun. Jess takes pictures with her phone. Tom and Amanda stray from the group onto a stone breakwall. Tom catches my eye, waves me over. 

“See,” gloats Jess.

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Oh, am I?”

I don’t want to give her the satisfaction but when she trails after me onto the breakwall Tom frowns, says something to Amanda.

“Coincidence,” I say.

“Sure,” says Jess. 

Jess wanders toward a little stone tower at the end of the breakwall, leveling her camera phone at different angles.

“What’d you get up to today,” asks Amanda. 

“Swimming,” I say. 

“We’re going to rent four-wheelers tomorrow,” says Tom. “You should come.”

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll ask Jess.”

Tom cuts Amanda a look, then turns back to me. “You two been together long?”

“Two years.”

Tom whistles. 

“She’s quite,” says Amanda, “something.”

“Sure is,” says Tom. “Something, alright.”

“Gonna pop the question?” asks Amanda.

“Like what do you want for dinner?” I joke.

Big, open-mouthed laughs. A little too loud, a little too long. 

~*~

The restaurant tables slope toward the harbor wall. String lights hang above us. Servers bustle past with flaming platters of saganaki and jugs of sangria. Across the table, Jess sits next to the divorcee and our Spanish guide. The Australians sit on my side of the table. Stray cats wait underfoot for scraps. The older couple never joins us for dinner. 

“Well,” says the divorcee, squeezing the Spaniard’s arm. “Look at us.”

The Spaniard signals for another ouzo. He orders for the table. Squid breaded and fried, head and all. Whole sea bass spread wide on beds of rice with strings of lemons trailing from their insides. Grilled octopus arms crowning salads. Chewy, boiled tentacles and whole, unshelled shrimp on beds of linguine, nestled next to calamari and open mussels.

“They’re so—” says Tom.

“—whole,” finishes Amanda. 

We tuck into the meal, taking a bit of everything. The Spaniard cracks his shrimp and sucks the meat from his fingers. The divorcee asks him what part of the squid she should start with. Tom and Amanda take turns spearing tentacle bits from the pasta, giggling.

“Ben,” says Amanda. “You have to try this.”

She spears a boiled tentacle chunk and rotates her fork in the linguine, then holds it up to my face. Tom watches us. Across the fork I see Jess’ eyebrows jump. 

“That’s cool,” I say.

“Just try it,” says Tom.

“Chewy,” says Amanda. “Won’t kill you.”

She holds the fork closer to my mouth. The Spaniard drains his wine, looking pained. The divorcee has her nails and fork dug into a mussel. Her mouth hangs open. Jess puts her cutlery down, tents her fingers over her dinner plate.

“C’mon,” says Amanda.

When I open my mouth to protest, she shoves the fork toward my lips. I splutter and the food falls to my lap, leaving a greasy patch on my pant leg. Stray cats dart to pick up the fallen treat. 

“Fumbled that one, mate,” says Tom. 

~*~

We pick a beach on Mykonos that’s only kind-of nude. EDM thumps from the beach clubs behind us as we settle on reclining beds under a thatched umbrella. About half the sunbathing women are topless. Old Greek men stand naked in the surf, gold chained and pot-bellied, hands braced against their lower backs like pregnant women. Jess lies on her stomach, paperback spread under her chin. I reach across and unhook her bikini top. 

“Should ask Tom and Amanda first,” she says. 

“Don’t start.”

“They tried to spoon feed you.”

“Jesus. You’re jealous.”

We should be laughing, but she gets like this sometimes. Notices someone, stews about it, goads me into a fight. She props herself on her elbows, rests her chin on her palms. 

“It’s not like that,” she says finally.

“Then explain it to me.”

“Did they invite you to do anything today?”

I clamp my mouth shut, fuming. I could lie to her, but lying would make it worse. 

“Four-wheeling.” 

Sea wind whips past us. She brushes strands of her hair out of her face, re-ties her ponytail. When she sits up, her bikini top falls. I want to take it back now. Want to tell her to cover up. Her nipples perk in the breeze. Two women next to us smile and whisper to each other. 

“They like you,” she says. 

“So?” I explode. “I’m not going to fuck—”

“No,” she says. “It’s not about that. This happens everywhere we go. You’re quiet and you’re serious and you come off—I don’t know—scholarly, maybe. But then something happens. You crack a joke. Something small, a surprise. This little gift. They laugh and laugh and laugh and all of a sudden, you’ve got them. People just—like you. You don’t even have to try.”

I suck my cheeks and bite down. “You said I wasn’t funny.”

“I lied.” 

The lifeguard, a young Greek guy, climbs the stand next to us. I can see him peeking down at Jess’ boobs and I want to punch him.

“People like you, too,” I say.

“They didn’t ask me to go.”

“You hate ATVs.”

“Still,” she says.

~*~

When we get back to the boat Tom and Amanda are passing a magnum of bubbles back and forth. Chug chug. I ask them how it went with the ATVs. Amanda holds her left hand out. 

“He asked me what I want for dinner,” she says. “For the rest of our lives.”

“What?” whispers Jess. 

Tom gives her a strange look. And it pops out of her: one brief, damning hah. He takes a big swig, stares her down. And I see it now: her blurt, her guileless reactivity, her lack of poker face, choking on her foot always. Strange, to see her this way. To have the things I love made charmless in the eyes of another. The way I’ll never be able to unsee it. 

“It’s not—” Jess sputters, gesturing at me. “—I just mean—you invited—”

“She means congrats,” I say. 

“Headed for dinner, to celebrate,” says Tom. “Should come, mate.”

Jess purses her lips, expels a bunch of air. Pushes past me, headed for our cabin.

“Windmills,” I say. “We’re going to see them.”

I find her perched on the bottom bunk, flexing her toes. Her ponytail is falling out, thick and wavy from the salty breeze. I climb the top bunk, lean my head and shoulders over the edge. Dull thumping sounds from Tom and Amanda’s cabin. She looks up at me. 

“Don’t ever.”

“What.” 

“While four-wheeling,” she says. “And for the love of god, don’t invite anyone.”

Maybe she should be jealous of them. She’s always wanted to elope. If I had a ring, this would be the time to give it to her. Not on the beach. Not under the windmills. Not at a restaurant while the sunset explodes across the sea. Now. But I don’t have a ring. We’ll go on like this for seven more years. Nine days on a boat with six other people will be the closest thing we ever get to a honeymoon. I want to tell her, to explain, but all I do is agree: Never ever.

“They broke the rule.”

“Rule?”

Jess looks toward the thumping sounds. “No fucking on the boat.”

“People like you,” I say. “I like you.”

“You have to.”

“No,” I say. “I really don’t.”

And she laughs then, so loud and so long that the thumping stops.

Kirsti MacKenzie (@KeersteeMack) is a writer and editor in chief of Major 7th Magazine. Her writing has been published in X-R-A-Y, Rejection Letters, trampset, Autofocus, Identity Theory and elsewhere. Her best work can be found in dive bar bathroom stalls. You can read the rest here.

By Jess Gallerie

browsing for a new lower L5 disc, we catch each other’s tired eyes as a mistaken love you! spills from another customer’s mouth, directed at the woman behind the front desk. Maybe the customer meant to say thank you. The front desk woman who is I-shaped—beautifully upright—doesn’t respond. We stifle our laughter while thumbing through a catalog of bones, and you mouth something to me that I don’t understand. We’re here to pick out spinal discs like tiles for a kitchen backsplash. I want to renovate my life. I want a full cord reconstruction. I secretly hope to improve my communication skills. The underwater sounds of an MRI machine thump overhead, a reminder that we could all drown tomorrow. Saltwater dribbles down my chin when I try asking if the C7 comes in more colors. You smile and nod and pretend to follow along. Somehow, wordlessly, we decide on a beautiful and expensive L3 lumbar. I feel new for a moment, but my parting words to the front desk woman still come out gurgled and wrong—they sound a lot like love you! when what I meant to say was thank you and love my new spine.

Jess Gallerie is a writer from New York, living in South Florida. More of their short fiction is published or forthcoming in Bodega, Hunger Mountain Review, BRUISER, and HAD, among others. They’re currently writing a novel about a grocery store worker at the so-called end of the world.

By Sheldon Birnie

The sun cut through the clouds over the lake, lighting up the water like a goddamn miracle. Like how they painted them, back whenever they gave a damn about oil paintings of majestic landscapes. My son, out frolicking as the waves lapped gently ashore. He moved like a sea otter, whenever he got in the water and really got going. 

That magic hour before bedtime and sunset, mosquitos and darkness, he just played and played and played while I sat on the white sand, strewn with mayfly husks and zebra mussel shells, drinking navy strength gin and a half a lime. Three pelicans flew in from beyond the point, hovering just above the water, waiting on a fish to dummy up to the surface. I swear I remember every splash, every ripple, though I know that can’t be true. Not after all this time.

The other day a friend caught me unawares, staring out at that same spot of water of an evening. A spot I return to again and again, summer after summer. I’d been dozing, buddy claims. I’d lost track of time, I’ll admit. May have hit my limit on gin. I shot up in a panic, empty cup tumbling from my fingers to the sand, stumbling into the water, calling, calling out for my boy. I thought I’d lost him, out there in the waves. Thought he’d been there, only moments ago, splashing as he had that July evening, decades earlier. 

Of course he hadn’t been. I’d lost him long ago, years after that evening in the waves. But it’s that evening I come back to. My little sea otter splashing, and those three pelicans flying low.

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, dad, and beer league hockey player from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and the author of Where the Pavement Turns to Sand, a collection of short stories (Makarkey, 2023)

By Brooke Segarra

When I told my mom that my dad touched me once, I might have said, “I think dad touched me once. On my vagina.” I can’t remember the exact wording. Things never come out the way you want to say them, but what was clear is that my father touched me in a way that I can’t hold safely in my memory and I can’t put down. But why should this awkwardly worded declaration have given my mom alarm when it did not fit in with her reality? She just said, oh, your father, facetiously, and divulged to me for the first time that my great uncle touched her as a little girl repeatedly. I guess her telling me that was her version of walking out of the room like I had done to my grandmother with Dementia when she thought I was her dead husband and our realities did not align. For my mom, there was no way that the man she married, had sex with, had us with, and did laundry for could be a pervert. It was not in her reality that she could be living in conditions where something like that happened to her daughter. Not necessarily me, just ‘her daughter.’ The mysterious ‘daughter’ that she knew she’d have one day when she was five dreaming of a home and a white picket fence. The daughter she hoped to have when she became an adult and had me, the daughter who could never live up to this fictitious daughter who she knew so well. This daughter was like her imaginary friend who would stand next to me, and she would talk to. Maybe she would have noticed me, her real daughter, if I had teared up when I told her, “I think dad touched me once. On my vagina.” But, I couldn’t tear up about this incident with my dad, because I wasn’t sad about it. I wasn’t sad that he touched me. I guess my mom and I were both unable to be in that reality. The reality in which my father touched me. But somehow, the conditions were just right that night and I glitched the Matrix because, for a brief moment, she had heard me. If she hadn’t, she never would have told me about her experience with her uncle. I know because, before that night, her and I had never talked about sex before. We never talked about changing bodies or puberty. When I got my first period I didn’t tell her, and it’s only now that I realize why she was on the verge of hysterics when she found my Tinkerbell underwear in my closet with droplets of blood on the panty lining. For a fleeting moment, she had come face to face with the very real possibility that she had raised some pervert’s fucking wet dream.
Mom, do you think that just because dad always gave you the last spring roll when we ordered takeout that he was softer when touching me than your molester? Do you think because I just woke up to blood and pain that I have the privilege of doubt about my college rapist? The privilege of second-guessing? The college nurse would not buy it. I had to point out to her the purity ring on my finger that I was still fucking wearing because, to me, until I met my partner Russell, sex, regardless of how much I wanted it, was the most terrifying thing. But why should it have been? I was scared to have my first sexual experience, not realizing that the worst had already happened. I had already had it. But because it was with my father, I was unable to recognize it. 

Sometimes I feel like half an abuse victim. Like a Frankenstein. Someone who doesn’t know or feel pain like she should. Like the rest of you do. Like someone who only got half abused. Someone never finished the job. And now I’m stuck in this weird purgatory. 

Maybe because I can’t walk in this narrative with conviction, my brother Danny can’t believe me. When I tell him about the leering, the comments, and the touches, they are either not quite recognizable as abuse or not abusive enough, you paranoid bitch. I thought he was old enough that I could talk to him about it. I thought we had enough distance from it, with neither of us being under our parents’ roof anymore, that we could talk about it. But I was wrong, and the only reason I brought it up, paranoid bitch that I am, is because I wanted to know if he noticed any of these tensions. If he sensed what I sensed from dad. But he didn’t and mom didn’t. So if this only exists in my brain, does this reality exist at all? I’m sorry I keep bringing up the one moment in high school my dad walked into my bedroom when I was pretending to be asleep and put his hand on my pussy. It’s not usually something I think about. I spend much more of my waking time counting and making meaningless lists.  

When I think of my father I think of the pungent scent of his breath, the knots in my stomach, and the wanting him to feel good. I wanted to make him feel good. So I never bothered him with me. I was a good girl. My problems would never be big enough that they couldn’t just be solved by mom. I would never ask for anything. Everything he could give was enough, and all was okay. Even every one of his mistakes. Being okay with cruelty doesn’t mean that you are okay. It’s all so emotionally rough, I think I keep using the touching thing to just smooth things out. For there to be something truly awful. If there is something truly awful then I would have a right to speak. To speak on everything. And I guess it’s not right. I’m giving him a lot of credit. Maybe it’s unfair of me to write all these scenes of violence. It’s not like they happened all the time. Or even most of the time? Most of the time, he was just sitting in that recliner in the basement drinking a generic brand of Coke and watching TV. Sometimes reading a book. Most of the time doing both at once which always confused me. He spent a lot of time in that basement. Looking back on it now it was kind of like a luxurious prison cell. He could have gone out with his friends, but he kept flipping through the channels because there’s so little to see on the TV which was easier than seeing the house that needed to get fixed, mom’s two bowls of ice cream every night, the blood pad stain on my wall-to-wall bedroom carpet because the sticky side of the Always pad got stuck to my foot, and the neighborhood he placed us in that had two break-ins on our street. Once, I asked dad to make sure he locked our back door when he came into the house after his cigarette at dusk. He was amused. Maybe because I never made many demands of him. He assured me that if someone broke in he would kill them. I knew there were some knives in his nightstand. He never had a gun fearing that, if he did, he might one day become a guy on the six o’clock news. He would be that guy on the news for me though. I knew that. He would kill for me — if he had to. Kill because of me — if he had to. I’m the last person he would want to hurt, which is why, if he ever read this, I fear he’d lose his temper, and kill me. 

Do you think my murderer will think twice about killing me because him and I could stand next to one another and smile in a family photo at Christmas? Which was really for you, mom. Because we weren’t facing one another. We were facing you. We were smiling for you.
I do not like writing this down. It feels powerful and uncomfortable. I wish you would have listened to me, mom. Heard what I said, so you could have handled it. But I guess now I have to handle it, because the daughter I hope I have — I think I know her too well.
Like you, at the end of the day, I don’t know what to believe, and I don’t know what I want, but I believe that the bar will never run out of alcohol and I will have another drink. I will have another drink if Russell and I go out, so I’m not left alone to drink alone and count. I’d rather listen to someone else’s problems than count to myself. Counting to myself gives me headaches after a few hours. At the bar, Russell will talk to me about work and some drama with a co-worker and his new desk seat, and I will be a good listener as I swallow the beer, and in the aftertaste of wheat, simultaneously feel all these emotional things he doesn’t want to know about me that I swallow, at the bar, sitting pretty.

Brooke Segarra is a fiction writer in Brooklyn, NY. Her stories have appeared in Hobart Pulp, Maudlin House, Grimoire Magazine, Wyldcraft Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a novel. You can find her online at brookesegarra.com

By Lamb

The goal was to round the four halls of the home alone. Just once. No walker, no nurse, supported only by my will. I’d hardly made it to the kitchen when my left thumb tendon spasmed, then my whole hand, brittling in pain, and I felt myself unsteady, and I said, Help, she’s falling! And there was Geri with a chair, an almond blanket folded squarely in the seat, which she opened large and tucked behind my calves as I sat. Like Alma, the other Filipino, she is different from the others. She does her job in the style of divine employment. I’m never unsurprised by her care. She wheeled me through the hallway to my requested spot outside the room of two residents named Franklin, whose door is usually kept open for the steady flow of medications, allowing a plane of morning sun past the threshold into the hallway for a few hours. My room gets light only in the afternoon, and not without a punishing heat. Alone and warm, I closed my eyes and began to bend the real about me, to wrap myself in a more persuasive fabric. Surrendering one power, another entered, and I grew, and the goal was now to rove San Bernardino, to dance what landscapes roll beyond this place for what might make my blood run quick again. Tall, I rise, breaking through the layers overhead into the day, greedy for the freshness ushered by my giant lungs, staring at the world in miniature, looking down on the way I used to live, spitefully forgetting every odor, every slap and hurtful word. From up here, I appreciate the beauty of the facility. The flat and graveled roof, wires curling faintly on its surface, the suggestion of parched grass in the courtyard, sliding glass and patios alight and lining the perimeter, door mats made of braided rags. What does it say about a person, to imagine herself tall as a chapel? Probably nothing, I hear John say, by which he always meant, Something, probably. And leaving thoughts of John for my new form, I am tall again, vigorous and standing like a myth above the nursing home, long as to retire the horizon with one stride, strong as to go again, again, however many times I’d like. My legs are steely in this reverie, unloosed from time and swelling, their movements streaked with lusty shine from my Italian loafers, oiled and in cherry leather. I skip the cold mountain crown, swishing my skirt over suburban clumps of houses, schools and groceries. I spend a week sleeping on the shore, in the soft contour of sand, licked awake on the sabbath by the waxing tide, my skin glowing. And now I’m hungry as a child for something from a tree, and so I drag my wooden heels ten miles inland, devastating every hillside in my drowsiness until I’m back in Bonsall, and as I slip into the avocado grove behind my childhood home, I assume my normal, sorry shape, though still walking unimpaired and with an even coloring. How familiar here. I remove my loafers, my stockings. By the dizzy, melancholic smell, the way I press into the soil, I know hot rain has flooded these trees, causing roots to rot, and, yes, I see, the leaves are yellow at the tips. There is dieback in the canopies, which are thinning like bouquets at the end of honeymoon. The boughs bowing morosely with their loads. The flush has borne too much fruit too soon. And I hear them murmuring, the trees. Another season’s work to pests, they say, to pot. Our babies scabbed like stones by feeding thrips. I walk between the rows, listening. More than once I feel a fledgling branch run its fingers through my hair. And when I stop to rest, my weakness returning, I see how time would have these trees: more bugs come to feed, mother borers and their eggs, limbs weak with holes and dropping as if with stricken hearts. A young man, handsome as a Christian, buys the grove at discount, teaching himself and his sons to rouse life from the roots. He bellies all around the trunks, spreading black mulch with his hands. The boys hide from the chore behind the trees, kicking skins, throwing pits to barely miss each other’s heads. I laugh and laugh, and as I feel time pass again as minutes, I decide I’ve met the limit of my fantasy, trying to open my eyes, failing to return to the home, to my chair in my spot of light in the hallway outside the Franklin room, and I fear I will remain here alone to haunt the happy promise of this family, jealous for my own son, for myself, of all that could have been ours, and I open my eyes again and scream to no effect, and wonder if I’ve bent things far enough this time to break. And I begin to understand how joyless death would be if a forever resignation to our imagined Edens.

Lamb is an American writer.