Tag: across the wire

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 3

America Bird

  • Post author By
  • Post date

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 

  • Post author By
  • Post date

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

  • Post author By
  • Post date

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
Across The Wire Vol. 3

Felicitations, Malefactors 

  • Post author By
  • Post date

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

  • Post author By
  • Post date

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)

  • Post author By
  • Post date

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

  • Post author By
  • Post date

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 

  • Post author By
  • Post date

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

  • Post author By
  • Post date

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
Across The Wire Vol. 2

The Playground

  • Post author By
  • Post date

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.