Tag: across the wire

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

If we make it through December

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By Sheldon Birnie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

Tiny

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By David Williamson

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

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

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

Rosie grew tired. 

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

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

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

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

Daddy, where are you? bounced off the walls. 

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

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

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

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

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

Dearest Rosie,

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

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

Lots of love,

Daddy

He signed the letter in his official-looking signature. 

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

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

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

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

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

I Want to Tell Secrets to the Rhythm in Your Bones

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By Leigh Chadwick

You put your leftover orgasms in a Tupperware container in the back of the fridge while I recycle the night on the futon. I spend the weekend in your weather. It’s good, the sounds you make before breakfast. The sounds after. Outside, snow covers what snow is meant to cover. I dream you dressed in all white on billboards skyscrapers tall. You, all glow. You, a halo covered in snow. You, talking in touch. I always get turned on watching you put the moon to sleep. I’ve got a silly feeling about my silly feelings, so watch me get drunk in your wilderness, fall asleep beneath a blanket of linden, and wake up before my alarm to tell secrets to the rhythm in your bones. I never finish my dinner because your thighs are my favorite dessert. You, the shape of last night’s clothes strewn across the floor of the Comfort Inn. You, the tavern filled with smoke signals. You, the tambourine stuck to my chest while I use my tongue to build a karaoke bar along your ribs. You, the dim lights before last call. You, all hips pointing south as I crawl toward the closest mirage.

Leigh Chadwick‘s most recent poetry collection is Sophomore Slump (Malarkey Books, 2023). 

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

I Ate Around the Loss and Was Still Hungry

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By Joshua Vigil

Gordo pushes a damp kitchen towel into my hands. Shaped like a cylinder, it’s vegan banana bread. He does this every week, ever since we first met. Gordo believes an alien invasion is impending. He says we should eat up. Am I fattening myself for the aliens, or for him? Gordo tosses another bunch of bananas into his shopping cart. Gordo thinks that love is a lie. I tell him friendships are just as deceitful. My pants stop fitting and so I buy new ones. Gordo is a little ghost. A bed sheet draped over his body, thin slits for eyes from which blood drips. I tell Gordo this is the only time I’ve ever enjoyed Halloween, then I have the dentist fix my five cavities—he does this every year now, since the gifts started coming. It’s always the same five cavities. Is he a bad dentist but a good businessman? Once I asked Gordo, Would you still be my friend if I was a capitalist pig? Gordo said he’d marry me right then and there. I was dreaming of squat brownstones in Brooklyn not far from the water. He was dreaming of pigs. I start wearing sweats and only sweats. When I’m not home, Gordo slides the bread through the mail slot. I scoop it, flattened, and eat it watching  the news. The floorboards creak as I hobble past now. The downstairs neighbors say cracks have formed on their ceiling. I tell them mine is water-stained, and what’s the difference? Gordo says the aliens are coming any day. He pushes two loaves through my mail slot. Gordo snaps at me in the car, on the way to the movies, after the movies, in the parking lot, at the potluck. He’s getting evicted. Gordo snapped at me once in bed—this was before, when we were still together. He has anger problems and drops people easily. Will we be friends for the entirety of our lives? Three loaves fall to the floor. I unwrap them, pick at them, leave them for the flies. On the phone, Gordo is terse. He doesn’t know where he’ll live. I ask him if it even matters if the aliens are coming. He snaps—this isn’t a joke, this is my life. I am teaching for the first time this semester. A student kept Mick hostage last year. Another made sexual advances towards Lily. My students look at me with pity. It’s a look I’ve seen in Gordo. His loaves of banana bread pile up and pile up. He says the aliens arrive tomorrow. I should really consider eating more.

Joshua Vigil lives in the Pioneer Valley. His work has appeared in Hobart, HAD, Maudlin House, and elsewhere.

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

His Heart is Like an Open Turnpike

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By Jon Doughboy

Chris Christie gifts Zelensky handwritten lyrics to Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life” as “inspiration” while inhaling cold borsht at a state dinner surrounded by dour looking-icon paintings of the geniuses of Slavic history framed in glitzy gold, then burrows inward and downward, like the history of 20th century literature, entering the maze-like intestines of memory, wading through layer after layer of performed selves—the attack dog attorney, the lobbyist, the Governor, the scandal-maker shutting down bridges to crush disobedient mayors and making unapologetic rogue picnic trips to shut-down beaches, Romney’s potential bestie, Trump’s plus-sized lapdog, a would-be sportscaster, and the current long-shot candidate campaigning to become the Republican Party’s presidential nominee—Christie is inhaling borsht but yearning in his heart of hearts, brain of brains, gut of guts, for a deep-fried ripper from Rutt’s Hutt, the snap of the crispy hot dog skin, the sun bouncing off dilapidated guardrails and the hot and cracked Clifton pavement, the cool yellow relish, the onion ring grease soaking through the paper plate, the ice bobbing in the red birch beer, and he travels under the Hudson of memory via the ARC Tunnel he aborted but which lives forever in his imagined accomplishments and he’s suddenly a giant, Gargantua astride the Garden State, and he’s bellowing across this armpit of America that he knows and loves and hates and lives and breathes, “It’s my life, it’s now or never,” and who does this Zelensky think he is? Has he ever even heard of Rutt’s? Has he ever swum naked across the Passaic? Has he ever crushed the throats of the Hudson County political bosses? Has he ever won an eating contest against the entire Genovese crime family? “My heart is like an open highway,” he’s singing and all his Jersey brethren join in, a chorus to their beloved big man, from their cars stuck in the Holland Tunnel and idling on the turnpike and speeding on the shoulder of the parkway, and a charm of goldfinches roosts in his cavernous nostrils and violets bloom out of his ears, “Better stand tall when they’re calling you out,” and it’s raining fat beefsteak tomatoes and assorted bagels, “Don’t bend, don’t break, baby, don’t back down,” and with his massive, life-giving hands, he is sowing liberty and prosperity from the Tri-State Rock to Cape May Point, the Delaware River rushing along to his right, the Atlantic eating into the sandy shores on his left, as he marches towards D.C., towards relevancy, the presidency, his destiny—“Mr. Christie, sir, about NATO, as I was saying, are you aware that a single F-16 could…” and the ripper is once again cold beet soup and Bon Jovi isn’t playing and Trenton is 4,700 miles away and Chris isn’t an attorney or a governor or a giant, he’s just a man sweating into his dark suit and getting pricked by his American flag lapel pin under the judgmental eyes of icons he doesn’t recognize, talking about military tactics he doesn’t understand, and singing softly to himself, “I just want to live while I’m alive.”


Jon Doughboy is New Jersey’s Poet Laureate currently completing a writing residency at the Walt Whitman Travel Plaza on the southbound side of the turnpike. Watch him relish his rippers @doughboywrites

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

Drinking At Home

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By Phil Earle

The morning after, I decide it’s over. Making breakfast and doing the dishes at the same time, I say to myself, “Never again.” The baby on the hardwood between my feet pulls a pan from the cabinet and the crash sets my eyes herky jerky. How nice it will be, to be past this eight drink a night prison. How liberating to break the shackles of this routine: drinking and vaping and checking baseball scores, then YouTube NFL highlights, then rearranging my golf clubs. Not Leaving Las Vegas, but Staying in Milwaukee. 

I pick up the baby and hold her. My hand covers her entire back. Middle finger snug between her shoulder blades. A cube of butter collapses in the hot pan. Yesterday I started drinking at 4:37 PM. The headache stabs as feet pomp pomp pomp down the carpeted stairs. One, two, three kids—Where is the juice? Shit. We just ordered groceries but had forgotten the juice. Juice the life blood for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, for smoothies, for everything. The boys amble to the table like it’s a board meeting.

Out the picture window, Beth kneels in the garden. She planted corn and squash and beans and lettuce and strawberries and a wall of tomatoes outside of the garage. Every day the vegetables seem to multiply. The sunflowers grew fifteen feet tall and bowed so far into the neighbor’s yard, Beth had to tie them to the fence with twine. She likes to talk to me about her garden, usually when I am on my phone, ordering vintage band t-shirts or Super Nintendo games, checking the scores. 

I make eggs like every morning: scrambled for the children, fried for Beth, and Diet Coke for myself. Then I am holding the baby in the crook of my arm and bending over to pick up toys in the long grass of the yard. I am up and down the stairs doing laundry. I am taking all the children to the park while Beth works in her office with the door shut. I am up the steps, down the slide. I count to ten thousand, check baseball scores. Check my high school friends on social media. Some have become fascists. A black butterfly flutters up and away across the playground. I walk around the jungle gym to make sure my kids didn’t get their necks caught in the monkey bars. I count to five hundred and watch them swing sticks at each other. They wear the jeans and sneakers and haircuts of older boys now. A strong slow breeze moves around my face. The baby grabs at it. There are cigarette butts below the bench by the playground, and I imagine hitting that smoker so hard that they shit themselves. There are still two Coors Tall Boys in the fridge, I think.

By 4:50 PM, the van is parked for the night, and I drink White Claws in the shadow of the garage door. A ghoul with a stomach like a Chevy rusting and forgotten in a riverbed. Alone for a moment with the heat and the gardening supplies and ripped inflatable pool toys, I commune with the smell of gasoline and my sweat. Then I vape weed, and then the Juul, and then I reset the sprinkler out in the stiff, blanched grass of our yard.  

The boys are busy in the basement and Beth is inside breast feeding the baby when a rabbit hops under the swings, and stops between the lawn chair and the fire pit. I hit the Juul and record the bunny on my phone. It’s big marble eye records me back to infinity. A black butterfly, like the black butterfly from the park, swoops down and lights on me, walks down my arms until my trembling hand sends the butterfly skyward, tottering upward, along the garage gutter, between the power lines, up and up, racing the airplanes to heaven.

“I have to grab a couple things for dinner,” I tell Beth. She wants me to go, and knows how much I like riding my bike, knows how I need my privacy, though it worries her.

On the hill overlooking the airport, a plane comes in, and a plane goes out. What looks like a death ray rotates on the top of the control tower. The panorama is inspiring, then uninspiring as I watch the traffic move down Layton, the smoke billowing from the power plant in the distance. Notice the small plane tooling, remember the Hardee’s I cannot see. The Great Lake I cannot see. I drink one of the White Claws I’ve just purchased but hold it close to my bag, in case a cop is around. 

I have written down inside myself a disappointed prayer: a summation of desperately low bar hopes. I thank whatever god that I will soon be over this, one day. Then Don from work texts me, asking me to cover for him tomorrow, and I fill my belly with White Claw, crush the can and quick open another. A plane comes in. A plane goes out.

Chicken sizzles in the pan with yellow, red, and green peppers. I chop a handful of mushrooms. Then an onion. All for curry. Beth comes down and kisses me. The baby is sleeping. My gut is rotten but I still eat chips and pretzels and dip and sour gummy watermelons at the sink while the chicken fries. I listen to my football podcast. I have another drink in my hand, twin to the one on the workbench in the garage. I move back and forth between them. 

After dinner, I am tired. Beth and the boys play piano in the living room. I lay on the floor and my legs ache from all the standing. I take the boys up for bed and they fight me. I yell at them, want to cry but don’t. Their pajamas are getting too small. Lightning fills the sky outside their window, illuminating the tin Jurassic Park Raptor Containment Area poster I ordered for them off Amazon. I fall into a short narcotic sleep with my arm around one. Then I stumble down the stairs an hour later, or maybe years. 

I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, older now, hair messy in a ponytail, a scribbled self portrait. Then I try to brush away that sick-sweet White Claw smell for Beth until my gums start to bleed. 

I look at the darkened ceiling above our bed. Beth and the baby are asleep beside me. A twist of blanket keeps my bad right foot elevated. I listen to the noise machine hum, the cars ghosting through our neighborhood. I already feel hungover.

Phil Earle works as a fry cook down by the port. His writing has been published at Fence, Post Road, Beloit Fiction Journal, Juked, Hobart and The Millions.

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

The Blur of Things

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By Sophia Popovska

Sophia Popovska is a poet and translator currently living in Germany. She works as an Editor-at-Large for Asymptote Journal, and her work can be found in Circumference Magazine, GROTTO Journal, and Farewell Transmission, among others

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

Two Poems

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By Michael Gerard

Spikes on Your Lapel

Spikes on your lapel
Rocks popping 
Trucks stopped
Slugs draped in 
Vinegar finesse 
Limbs trudging
Across outhouse
Doorways 
Snake oils of 
Reputable sources
Heaven sent critical
Acclaim dropped in
Your lap, slit from my
Decrepit gums and rotting
Cortex,
Can you smell the bile?
Till the filth?
Carcass stains on the 
Living room floor
And all over the 
Entrance rug
Look at me and my
Jumpy nouns
What a party 
For you
Edgy types 

****

Indeed

I’m a fucking loser and a bozo
Indeed
Hanging from the dry cleaner
Rack sipping winner’s champagne
Of beers like a broke ass painter
Of houses in the suburban desert
Stuffing dry snuff up his nostril
Puffing through the apple pipe he found
Behind the Texaco station
I’m a fucking charlatan and a fraud
Indeed
No sense in dropping in tonight
I won’t be home and neither will my
Bitterness, as I bring it with me everywhere 
I go

Michael Gerard is the author of Rust on the Water Tower, Rust as a Constant, a poetry booklet published through Gob Pile Press. His poetry has also been featured in publications such as The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts and Literary Yard and he is the author of books of fiction such as Switchboard Rot (Anxiety Press) and After All (Sweat Drenched Press). Michael currently resides in Kansas City.

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Across The Wire

Pothole Eyes

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By Jon Berger

Valentine’s Day

Pothole emergence time

Miles Teller drives down to Detroit

Miles Teller refers to Detroit as NPC land

An NPC 

Driving an NPC car 

Ass packs an asphalt truck

You know the type

The road crew who shovels asphalt into the potholes on the highway

The asphalt is hot and steaming and molten and black

They take up a lane of traffic and have a giant blinking arrow sign on the back of the truck 

But the NPC people cannot see the Asphalt truck

Miles Teller keeps driving on I 96

Because this happens all the time in Detroit

Miles Teller Hates Detroit

Miles Teller Hates Traverse City

Miles Teller lived in Traverse City when he was too young to remember

He moved because a bunch of Detroit people bought second homes in Traverse City 

And Miles Teller’s family could not afford to live there anymore

Now

Driving in Traverse City

Is just like driving in Detroit

Miles Teller drives everywhere in Michigan

In every condition

Miles Teller can feel the curvature of the earth when he drives

Miles Teller drives a delivery van with over 300,000 miles on it

With brakes that go to the floor

Miles Teller delivers tools or parts or some bullshit to machine shops

Miles Teller does not know what he is delivering

Ever

Miles Teller’s boss 

Sits in his office and watches

Right wing conspiracy theory videos

On YouTube 

Miles Teller’s boss owns a bunch of tactical guns 

Miles Teller’s boss doesn’t know anything about tactical guns

Miles Teller had to tell his boss which caliber of bullet each gun shoots

Miles Teller only owns two old hunting rifles

That were given to him by family

Miles Teller’s boss is an NPC

Miles Teller’s existence is an unbearable burden on the world

Just ask everyone in the world

Everyone yells at Miles Teller and tells him what to do 

All the time

Miles Teller gets yelled at everyday

When Miles Teller gets back from Detroit, he has to figure out what all this paperwork from Detroit means

Nobody else knows what the paperwork means and the order for the tools is always wrong and Nobody knows why

Miles Teller is standing in the warehouse and all these people start crawling out of their cubicles To yell at Miles Teller as a group crucifixion activity

Miles Teller gets accused of stealing parts for CNC and Mills and Lathe Machines

Miles Teller doesn’t know what CNC, Mills and Lathe Machines are

Miles Teller did not steal the parts 

And even if he did, he would not know what to do with them

Miles Teller imagines that if he did steal the machinist parts, he would try to create a giant mech Robot in his basement and use the robot to gain freedom

When Miles Teller gets yelled at, he doesn’t do anything

He just stands there motionless and without expression

But his eyes change

Miles Teller’s eyes sink in and become pot holes

They don’t see anything in front of them

Instead

They see tentacles reaching up from the dark below

They see a beast sunk so far down it has intertwined with the core of the earth and the earth can’t get rid of this beast and overtime the earth has learned to rely on the beast for survival

The tentacles shoot up from the core of the earth and through Miles Teller’s feet and then out of Miles Teller’s eyes and the end of the two tentacles have mouths and inside the tentacle’s mouths Are serrated teeth. The mouths open and hiss and venom drools down to the floor and one of the tentacles chomps off the head of a sales person and another tentacle chomps off the head of someone who works in the billing department

This makes everyone feel uncomfortable around Miles Teller

Miles Teller’s boss calls him into his office and tells him that he can’t shoot evil tentacles out of his eyes and bite people’s heads off anymore. If he keeps doing it, he will be fired

Miles Teller reminds his boss that he makes the same amount of money as unemployment benefits provide

The eyes of Miles Teller’s boss are not connected to the beast at the center of the earth. Instead, they’re connected to a cotton candy machine at a community center downtown

Hot Pink and Baby Blue cotton candy blooms out of Miles Teller’s bosses’ eyes. His boss screams in terror and tries to keep the cotton candy from spilling out

While this is happening Miles Teller begins to tell his boss how a junkie has recently stolen sentimental belongings from his mother, who is sick

Miles Teller’s boss is sobbing now and the cotton candy is coming out of his eyes and is getting wet and deflating kinda like how cotton candy does when you eat it. But instead of saliva its tears

Miles Teller tells his boss he needs to take a couple days off work to locate the junkie and get the stolen items back or get revenge

Miles Teller is good at locating people like this

Miles Teller still has lawyers call him and ask him to locate people for them but Miles Teller hates lawyers

Miles Teller is owed favors by the most bellicose spirits in the cosmos

Miles Teller’s boss wretches his head back, holds the sides of his head and screams in agony as more cotton candy comes out of his eyes and melts from his tears and runs down his stupid face

Miles Teller’s boss shoos him out of his office and tells him to do whatever he wants

Miles Teller leaves work

It is a blizzard outside

Miles Teller’s Ford Fiesta is stuck in the snow

Miles Teller furiously shovels snow out from around his piece of shit car

Once unstuck, Miles Teller drives down the decrepit and abandoned and snowy streets

The icy shovel is in the back seat of his car. Ice is melting off the shovel and getting the seats
Wet

Miles Teller has thoughts of taking the shovel and digging all the way down to the core of the Earth and untangling the beast and bringing it up to the surface

___

Jon Berger lives in Saginaw, MI. His short story collection GOON DOG is available at Gob Pile Press. His poetry collection SAINT LIZARD is forthcoming at Gob Pile Press. He tweets @bergerbomb44.

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Across The Wire

I Came to a Place of Rough Neglect and Left Myself There  

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By Scott Mitchel May

Notes From The Scene

We found a pear.

We found it near the lobby’s desk and it was chewed.

Chewed and also rotten. 

By the time we found it.

She was behind the lobby’s desk.

She had a gunshot wound to the head and the bullet was lodged in the wall behind the desk, behind where she was standing.

Unclear if she was given a chance.

Supine.

Peaceful.

I’m so sick of this shit, this cocked-up shit; the whole world is full of this cocked-up shit.

We found a tooth.

In a drawer.

Of the desk.

Renaud says it’s a baby tooth.

Bagged and logged into evidence; file #46568.

Other than that, nothing of note.

I hate

The Doins’ Within the Room

“He said he was comin’, so he is comin’. Watch cable and chill the fuck out.”

“My momma says don’t trust nothin’ you can hold and I can’t hold HBO and I can’t hold happy-horse-shit.”

“Your mama was an ignorant Gypsy whore.”

“Be that as it may…”

“He’s comin’”

“When?”

“When what?”

“When he gets back from the place.”

“What place?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“What place?”

“The gettin’…”

A knock at the door snags his attention and eases her mind. There is a green-yellow light outside and the shadow it casts against the cement looks about right for who they are expecting. They hold still. Quiet. The rate is $7.50/hr. They are running low on time.

“Get it, damn you!”

“Well, now how do we know it’s him back from the place?”

“How do we know? Who the fuck else is it gonna be?”

“Intruders.”

“What do we got so good that intruders would want to intrude upon it?”

“We got the stuff; when he gets back.”

“He ain’t back. Or, he is but we ain’t let him in. Either way, we ain’t got the stuff.”

“They could know we gettin’ the stuff. They could be knocking and anticipatin’ us gettin’ the stuff. We answer, they hit us, we wait with them, then, when he shows, they kill us and him and take the stuff.”

“You are a dumb-fuck.”

“Ok.”

“Yeah, ok.”

He answers the door and when it opens wide enough he is hit on his head with the butt end of a Maglite Flashlight that takes four D Cell batteries and is knocked unconscious and They come through the room’s door with guns drawn which they use to glue her to the bed and they yell “Don’t move a fuckin’ hair or I’ll…” and the rest she misses because she’s watching him bleed and she’s thinking that this is the stupidest time for him to be fucking be right about something he speculated on.

Notes from the Scene

Her dress is hiked up and she’s not wearing underwear.

They never tell you how you’ll feel in the academy about such things.

Roderick finds a shed pubic hair three feet away but it’s brown and hers are yellow.

Fuckin’ hourly rate shit-hole.

A casing is found.

.22.

Varmint round.

Must’ve put it right to her forehead.

No explaining it otherwise.

A chill to the air.

Her face is pocked with a lifetime’s regret.

Her teeth are a shattered ruin.

No witnesses.

No one left around.

The no vacancy light is on.

The rats know when to do their thing and go.

Rm 465 has been swept.

A bowl of pears was found.

More  Doins’ Within The Room

“I keep tellin’ everyone he ain’t back! He took the money and he left.”

“That he did.”

“You got money! You got dope!”

“We ain’t got shit!”

“He’s right.”

“Don’t you motherfuck to me!”

“I ain’t motherfuckin’ to nobody! If I was high, you’d know it.”

“We wait.”

“I told you…”

“Shut the fuck up, Leonard!”

“All I’m sayin’ is I never get credit for when I’m right.”

“I tell you plenty!”

“You never tell me squat!”

“I tell you all the damn time, you just ain’t listen!”

“Never say you’re sorry neither…”

“Well, I’m sorry you got us hogtied, that’s for sure.”

“I hate you so much.”

A knock at the door. He is back from the place from which things are gotten. One of them bites a pear. They answer.

Notes from the Scene

Three bodies upstairs.

All shot in the head.

Three .22 casings

Looks like four coffee mugs.

They were waiting a while.

No clue who did this.

Three males.

Drug-related.

Coke, likely.

Three out of state Drivers Licenses.

God damn it.

Nothing left to do but the paperwork.

See you down the road a piece, Scumbags.

___

Scott is the author of the short story collection DeKalb Illinois is a Paradise What Eats Its Own (Alien Buddha 22), the novels Breakneck: or it happened once in America (Anxiety Press 23) and Awful People (Death of Print Feb 24), and the novelette All Burn Down (Emerge Press Oct 23). His short stories and essays have appeared in many magazines across the internet.