Short Beasts

A month after our twenty-fifth anniversary, Jane looked at me across the breakfast table.

“Kevin,” she said, “I don’t know who I am anymore.” She blinked rapidly and fiddled with her faux pearl necklace. “I feel lost. I—I need something different.”

Recently, she’d told me she’d been trading late-night messages with Jerry, a man ten years her junior, whom she’d met on a dating site. Middle age had softened the contours of her petite figure, and she worried about her fading attractiveness.

“Jerry makes me feel alive again,” she said.

I stared at my buttered toast.

“I decided to move out at the end of the month,” she said, wringing her hands.

Jane’s words shocked and saddened me. We’d often talked about our love for each other. She would proudly show visitors photos of us smiling and hugging, one photo for each year we’d been together. I tried to dissuade her, but eventually resigned myself to the new reality.

*

During the following week, Jane packed items into cardboard boxes but didn’t seal them immediately. I noticed she packed my grandfather’s miniature, hand-crafted wooden angel, an heirloom I cherished.

While Jane was at the hairdresser, I searched her open boxes, my hands trembling, until I found the angel. Its cherrywood wings arched gently behind its tiny back. My grandfather, my favorite family member, had carved the angel for me during a winter in Nova Scotia. I also found and removed an antique sterling silver bell with intricate designs that Jane’s great-grandmother had owned. Jane had told me it reminded her of Christmas during her childhood.

I hid both the angel and the bell until Jane moved out.

Two weeks later, she called, her voice casual. “Kevin, I forgot to take the silver bell that belonged to my great-grandmother. You know how precious it is to me. Can I come over and pick it up?”

I furrowed my brow and scratched the back of my head. “I’ll give it to you if you return the angel my grandfather carved,” I said in a calm voice.

She cleared her throat. “I … I’ll look for it.”

Jane never asked for her heirloom again.

*

The silver bell and wooden angel rest side by side on my marble mantelpiece, silent witnesses to a faded love.

---

Clive Aaron Gill’s stories and poems have been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies. He has shared his tales and engaged audiences at writers’ workshops and at public and private events. Having lived and worked in Southern Africa, North America, and Europe, Clive’s diverse experiences infuse his storytelling with a rich global perspective. He holds a degree in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and lives in San Diego.
—

Chandler was anxious: deck-handing on an illegal crab boat seemed about as sensible as flavored electrical fencing. But he was broke. And he was man enough to admit that poaching crustaceans might pay better than the centaur romance novellas he’d been self-publishing. So he agreed to go crab nabbing – although he fretted about how rough his roughneck crew mates might be.

At five-a.m., he arrived dockside. On the phone, the captain had said, ‘Be early, Chandelier. Early birds don’t catch flukeworms.’ Chandler still didn’t know what that meant.

Seventy-some minutes later, he located his intended vessel: the Lilith. He was greeted by an old breadcrust, surnamed Bishop, who was barnacled everywhere by volcanic-looking moles. ‘Bish’ sported an eyepatch, which reminded Chandler of Polyphemus, in the Odyssey, which in turn reminded him how the nymph Calypso had sworn an oath, promising Odysseus could safely board her raft. The only oaths Chandler received were Bish’s encouragements to hurry up, which sounded like things Odysseus himself might’ve said, right after the witch Circe transformed his crew into hogs.

The Lilith departed at dawn, sneaking past the harbormaster, into a scoopable fog. She scudded alongside the jetty: a long arc of boulders that ramparted Blunt Point Harbor, and was also used as a latrine by the resident pelican colony, who swaggered atop it like some drunk and idle navy. They grunted at the Lilith as it passed, while Chandler cowered between stacks of crab traps, gagging from the guano-reek of those anvil-headed sea turkeys.
The Lilith rounded the jetty, and the fog vanished. The headland of Blunt Point was now visible, and on its peak was a prim little telemetry garden, tended by the Air Force, and the most impressive bloom in that entire array resembled a colossal golf ball. That great white orb leered down at Chandler.

‘Call me Ishmael.’

He hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

Bish’s laughing fit sounded like somebody was brooming a corrugated tin roof. When he recovered, he hacked a chowder-colored-something over the rail, then squared to Chandler.

‘All happy crab boats are alike.’ Bish permitted himself a smirk, or perhaps a transient facial palsy. ‘Each crabby crab boat—’

Chandler was gobsmacked by Bish’s adaptation of Anna Karenina, and surprised that Bish had read Tolstoy at all – or maybe his choice of words was just coincidence, in the same way that a zillion monkeys thwapping away on typewriters will eventually rewrite the glories of Shakespeare. Regardless, Chandler was curious about the Lilith’s prospects for happiness, so he eagerly waited for Bish to continue. But Bish’s attention had already migrated to cracking open a tin of chewing tobacco.

In the next minutes, the early-morning sunlight became strong and honeylike. Chandler rolled his face skyward, and it was anointed by an orbiting seagull.

Bish died laughing.

***

The captain said they’d put it to a vote. And at first, Chandler thought he’d vote against using Bish’s corpse for crab bait. But then he asked himself: What would Hemingway do?

---

Dane Rook is an author of fiction and nonfiction. He is based in Northern California, near Half Moon Bay, which is famous for its pumpkin festival (he has never attended it). Follow him here.

The waves crash at the shore, blurring the line between sand and water. The girl walks towards the sea, shoes in her hands. The sand feels damp underneath her feet. Her black, knee-length skirt flutters with the wind. The sun looks like a giant saffron ball on the horizon as it prepares to sink into the sea. The strands of the girl’s hair fly in every which way. She smoothens them, but when they stray-fly again, she ties them in a bun. Her naval peeks from behind the grey top, showing the tiny hoop-ring she wore on her pierced belly button.

Palm trees lining the shore sway. A small boy in a white t-shirt and tiny shorts, runs with small steps, laughing loudly. A woman in a blue saree hurries behind him.

The girl too was small once. Her father brought her to the shore every Sunday. She smiles, but the curve’s presence on her lips is brief. A sharp pain interrupts her ephemeral joy. She lifts her right foot to examine the heel. A broken half of a small conch shell has pierced it.

She winces and pulls the broken piece out.

“Don’t cry, it will be alright soon.” Dad’s voice echoes in her mind. He had lifted her up and carried her to the car on a similar occasion when she was young. The pain reminds her of him – the man who left the house in the middle of the night to live with another woman. Her heart feels as if it were in a washing machine dryer.

He had called her after five long life-changing years. A random number flashed on her phone screen.

“Hey, kiddo.” She recognized the voice in a flash. “How are you?” he asked. Her mind drew a blank. What should she say? I am fine, or no, I am not fine, I miss you like hell. Should she ask why he left them or if he has children with the “other” woman? She touched her belly button. She had gotten it pierced the day he moved out, thinking about what would annoy him the most.

“It’s me, Dad,” he spoke after a brief pause.

Her eyes watered. She was infuriated; she wanted to fight with him, shout at him, throw the vase on the floor, but all she did was shed tears. She disconnected the call without speaking, ashamed at her own vulnerability.

Why did he call? What does he want from me now? She had flung the phone on the bed. But a few sips of water and a broken nail paint bottle later, she picked up the phone again and wondered if she should call back.

What if he is sick? What if this is our last chance to connect?

That weekend, clutching the phone tightly, trying not to think of her mother, she dialed Dad’s number, but disconnected it before the call went through.

“Why did Dad leave?” “Where is he now?” “Does he not love us anymore?” “Does he not love me anymore.” Every question she asked Mum swirled in her mind. She sat on her bed and rocked back and forth for a long time before deleting his number from the call logs. Her belly button bled profusely that night.

Dad never called again.

She has crossed the damp sand and has walked into the sea now. Water touches her feet. The cooling sensation runs through her feet and thence through her entire body. She blinks back the lurking tears and looks for the little boy. The mother-son duo were sitting in a corner now, sharing a cotton candy – pink, woolly, wispy.

Her eyes feel stingy – Dad bought her cotton candies.

She looks away from them and studies the sand. A bigger conch shell, broken into bits probably by the sudden collision with the ground, lay a few steps away. She walks out of the water and puts her left foot on it, applying all the pressure she could summon.

---

Nazia Kamali is a reader, writer, and dreamer, who fell in love with writing at a young age. Her novel, The Woman Who Disappeared, will be released by Readomania Publishers in July 2026. She was a finalist for the Speculative Literature Foundation’s A.C. Bose Grant 2021. Her novella Multicoloured Muffler was published in the Rize Novella Anthology by Running Wild Press. Her shorter works can be found in magazines such as The Tint, FemAsia, Caustic Frolic, Rigorous, Café Lit, Authors Publish Magazine, Juste Literary, and 50-Word Stories.

The wind swept through her pigtail, caressing her ears, drying her eyes. It was the teacher’s whistle in the air, little footprints in the mulch, semi-permanent chalk against brick in the places rain will never hit.

Forty minutes till math, Daisy.

The choices were insurmountable: lonely, shivering swings; chilly, hollow slides; towers in need of ruling. But her eyes sought the candy-red monkey bars. The property has the best view, she’d say if she were selling. She wasn’t.

She smiles and marches through the gate toward them. It wasn’t summer anymore. She wouldn’t sweat and she wouldn’t fall.

She’d flip and flip and flip, but she was getting ahead of herself.

Look at the gate, Daisy. Listen for the teacher’s whistle.

The monkey bars cool her hands painfully as the ghosts of calluses burn. Her palms have been smooth a long time now. Laptop keys don’t grip nearly as hard as markers and playground equipment do.

She hangs, knees bending, limbs locking, teeth grimacing.

Her trials, battles fought, mulch money lost and won, surround her. Echoes of triumphs and hurts and laughter.

It’s why her eyes creep beyond the gate, an instinctive, longing-heavy practice. The field is mighty, the parking lot mightier, but that wasn’t the lively, restless piece of freedom awaiting.

It is the road just beyond it.

The cars move fast. Blink, and they’ve disappeared. One white, one red, then one green. An infinite number of people, countless destinations. Unhindered by lunch times, car rider lines, and bathroom passes.

Drivers don’t have recesses.

Her arms strain, belt a too-tight band at her waist.

Gripping and regripping the lollipop bars, she swings her legs up in one big kick; her boots hit metal, pressing.
She hangs and watches the cars. The freedom road. One white, one red, then one green.

Oh, what bliss. To go anywhere, to do anything.

Daisy flips and feels the prickling sting of tension down her spine. A guilty reminder of a muscle she never felt before. Which is odd.

She does not fall. An ambulance doesn’t come. Her mom doesn’t come running. She doesn’t get to go home.

Freshly righted, with clothes sinking back down her limbs, her eyes find her view again. The freedom road. One white, one red, then one green.

Daisy lets her sore arms slide from the bars’ hold and picks up her keys from the mulch.

---

Molly Collins is a student at the University of Tennessee Knoxville interested in literary fiction, journalism, and screenwriting. Her work explores nostalgia and the emotional tensions between childhood and adulthood.

You will find it in his pocket when you gather up his jeans and socks from the bedroom floor to add to the load of laundry. At first you’ll toss it into the garbage without even looking at it, then consider perhaps it’s a receipt he needs to save and so you’ll double-check. You will smooth the small slip of white paper open to reveal a name—Alys—and a phone number. What will bother you most is the small heart drawn there at the end. And the fact that it’s his handwriting—you’d know it anywhere—not hers, whoever she is.

You will feel like you are standing at a crosswalk or a fork in the metaphorical road of your life. You’ll look both ways, but only quickly, the slip of paper burning hot on your palm. Then you’ll crumple it up and open your hand to let it fall, down into the trash, landing on top of the salmon skin from last night’s dinner – the putrid, oily thing that’s stinking up the whole house.

---

Sarah Robinson is an introspective lover of words. A Canadian writer, her work blends insight from her social work career and family life with a deep interest in mindfulness, compassion, and everyday resilience. She writes to explore the interactions and moments that shape both our inner and outer worlds.

Unable to visit—we live on opposite coasts—I sit before my computer. There, Kay is next to her husband Walt, whom I’ve never met. She appears unchanged, her long hair not yet gray, her oval face only slightly more taut than I recall. But her expression is grim and distant. Since the diagnosis, her decline has been swift. Memory care looms. I want to reach out and close the distance between us. The screen is not the only barrier.

Walt greets me as if this is an ordinary day, while adjusting Kay’s pillows for her comfort. Responding to his cheerfulness with fond recollections, I tell him that in high school, Kay and I transferred together to the same school but then I went back. Better at integrating, she stayed. After I moved east, we talked rarely but when we did, her warmth was always there. When Covid was at its worst in New York, she called to see how I was holding up.

Kay is even unaware of the screen. She wants to turn away or go to sleep. I watch as Walt puts his arm around her shoulders and gently nudges her in my direction. An idea comes to me. Telling Walt I’ll be right back, I return with a letter I just found in a drawer. On stationery bordered with flowers, Kay was writing to me in the summer after we graduated from high school. “I forgot we were in touch then,” I tell Walt, adjusting my monitor as I start to read.

Reminding me I was in Switzerland, Kay calls me a “jet-set girl” and says I must be “having a blast.” She reports that her family’s driveway looks like a “junkyard” after her parents bought a new car, which turned out to be her “uncle’s old ’68 LTD Ford.” On a visit to Waikiki, her grandparents set her up with a twenty-eight-year-old accountant from Tennessee. He lived in a “swanky” apartment. He was cute but businesslike. “It was horrible,” she wrote. Walt and I laugh together. Kay begins to smile, looking almost like herself.

“She remembers it,” I say. Watching her, Walt says, “I’m not sure.” Then quieter: “read more.”

In the letter, Kay describes the classes in Classical Greek and archaeology she would be taking in college. She asks for my college address. At the end, she wrote, “Have fun, do all you can, I miss you.”

Walt is gazing away from the screen. “I miss you too,” I say.

---

Lisa N. Peters grew up in Portland, Oregon, and lives in New York City. An art historian, she has published extensively on US art, from the colonial era to the present (Lnpeters.com), including her forthcoming book, Reframing Allegory in Work by American Women Painters of the Gilded Age—Six Case Studies (Routledge, 2027). She is currently writing flash and ekphrastic fiction along with a historical novel.

Paul hadn’t expected the end to feel like this; the absence of pain was unexpected. More than anything, a hollowing out, the curt of things had dulled. The distance gains and its softness, the body, delicately seeping back from it source.

Still but not gone, he lay, as if held by a thin, fraying thread. Outside, it was winter. Or, was it, fall? Which he couldn’t remember. Not anymore. The grey light emanated from a crack in the blind, the dust motes, like tiny stars, drifted.

His hands slack against the white of the sheets were once calloused and strong. He is a carpenter, nimble but now his fingers had grown numb. He couldn’t make a fist, not for days, or was it hours?

His blood was retreating. He could feel it but there was not pain, just the gentle withdrawal.

What time is it when time has lost its rhythm? Clocks ticked on, but not for him. Untethered, he floated inside the hours now.

His breathing came stretched apart.

A nurse came and went. A friend. His brother, maybe.

Outside the edge of awareness, voices murmured. Paul could not make out words anymore.

Someone took his hand. A warm palm wrapped around his fingers. He couldn’t return the grip, but he felt it.

Function slowing down. Without panic, the lungs struggled. Even the heart had grown polite in its labor. Each beat was a soft knock on a door, that didn’t expect an answer.

And he saw things, sometimes. Not mirages. Memories. Loose and partial. A class trip, as a child then running with his father. Fishing, the cold water on bare feet. A girlfriend, then his wife’s voice, the edges of her frayed. She wore her hair upswept.

Now, nothing demanded anything of him. Not the body. Not the past.

Not even his breath.

The room was airless.

Inches of him disappeared, as he was reclaimed. A tide came in.

He was in a new world now. A world without words.

A world without the need for words.

Breaths came farther apart.

Wait.

Wait longer.

---

Allison Whittenberg‘s latest novel is Killing the Father of Our Country. Her work has appeared in Columbia Review, Feminist Studies, J Journal, Obsidian, and New Orleans Review. She is the author of the full-length short story collection, Carnival of Reality. Whittenberg is a nine-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

He had been awake inside the coffin for some time. He tried to bend his legs but couldn’t. His arms were cramped and immobile, heavy as lead. And then, like vomit, an incorporeal thing spilled out of the casing, which he realized with horror was his soul. It had no age, no face, no body. It was a specter flying through hazy landscapes, like those vast marshlands shrouded in eternal mist. The morning air’s haze covered a sickly sun, which lingered on the nape of that world.

It drifted uncontrollably in random directions, searching for a Path. Along the way, it panicked, stopped, and heard voices calling. Like a thousand mouths of sighs wailing his name with lamentations: “Anelaos… Anelaos… come close to us… here is your road… come to the land of nonexistence to see the world that seeks you… the world you sought and imagined with fear…”

It shivered. If a soul could shiver. Its enormous eyes widened, unbelieving its own hearing. Then, colossal phantoms began to appear on the horizon, moving toward it like a vast cloud. Their forms filled it with horror. Clouds, clouds of ash and haze, an indeterminate mass of souls enlarging their substance in the eternal and uncreated world of nonexistence.

“Who are you that call me? Am I dreaming or in a nightmare?”

“Come with us, and we will show you your new world. Now that your body begins to dissolve down there on the earth—below or above, it matters not—you shall traverse the path of no return. But see there, is there no one you recognize?”

Then all the memories of his earthly life passed before the dead man’s eyes. He saw the women who had passed like stations through the fleeting course of life, like shadows drifting before him. For a moment, their faces turned and looked at him pleadingly, calling him near, but as he tried to touch them, they disintegrated like clouds of dust. He saw himself intoxicated with pain at times, with joy at others, and at others lost in the lukewarm soup of mediocrity.

A tear rolled from his wintery eyes, and the souls calling him lost their patience. “It is time to leave; we have a journey to complete again, until we reach Absolute Zero, the resolution of every illusion, our Lord, the Infinite.”

Then Anelaos ran with all the strength of his spectral form and rested in the cold of his grave. When dawn broke, his soul was once again inside his lifeless corpse, and though he felt worse than ever, he did not even make a call to offer an excuse. He rose from his damp bed, dressed in his black suit, put on the stiff pink tie, and went straight—without even his morning coffee, for it was half past eight and he was late—to the death office.

Another difficult day awaited him. Stacks of papers to process. But before diving into the world of documents, he took a deep breath and looked out the window. The fog covered everything, and no one could be seen on the opposite sidewalk. A perfect day to die, he thought. He smiled faintly and immediately vanished into the paperwork.

---

Constantinos N. Makris (b. 1982, Limassol, Cyprus) is a Cypriot writer and poet. He is the author of novels, poetry collections, and short story anthologies, including Extracts of Passion, Dominion of Networks, The Vampire’s Colony, Pentadromos, and the Cyprus Government Award-winning The Straw Killer and Other Stories. His work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in Europe and the United States. His latest poetry collection, Helleno-Roman Wrestling, was published in Athens.

Tommy. The bartender. The sweet card he got for me. We listen to the moonlight together, sip each from a flask, hands clasped in wonder this night. This moment. This kiss. Cut-hay scent, worked meadow and warm skin.

Tonight is my last. Last times come before you wish they would, and time curves only forward. I can visit; I cannot stay.

I tally the count; seconds, minutes, years. His fingers pull from me as I enter coordinates, leaving warm pads on my cheek. Will my warmth remain when I depart?

What does it look like for you when I go, is it a fading out? Am I thin now, insubstantial and simultaneous as you are to me, a map of us smeared in probability?

Can you still hear me?

A horn sounds out on the street. I breathe in today, feel the chill from the wind of God’s dice as they tumbled us so far apart, a century in an instant. Your lips still taste on mine.

You can’t hear me now. Goodbye Tom. I’ll be back one day.

---

Chris Grebe grew up in the shadow of the Colorado Rocky Mountains and began publishing fiction and journalism as a teenager. His fiction works have appeared in The Phoenix literary magazine and Dark Horses magazine, among others. Chris was an honorarium reader at the F.R.A.M.E. Literary Salon in Boulder, Colorado. Reach him here.

Her name is Anemoia. Often, she waits for me at my desk, my couch, my bed. She whispers comfort; the histories of places that fascinate me. She talks of games I never played; trinkets that have been warmed by someone else’s hands; hazy memories I never experienced that resonate all the same.

Her name is Anemoia. Sometimes, she follows me wherever I go. Her eyes sparkle at the paintings in the art gallery, jabbering about the artists and their strife. What they suffered to create, circles back to the present day. Old is new and new is old, in her eyes.

Her name is Anemoia. Never does she shut up. As I sleep, she’d sit on the headboard, singing her siren song. In my daze, I’m comforted but not enough to truly rest. I could yell at her, but she’d never forgive me. So, I let her sing on, until my alarm rings.

Her name is Anemoia. My friend. My enemy. My sister. My stranger. My everything.

---

Sarah Kessell is a writer and poet from Wellington, New Zealand. Having completed her online courses in 2024, her poetry has since been published in Neon Origami, Tarot Poetry Journal, and Tay Bridge Press, and her short stories have appeared in Suburban Witchcraft and The Vineyard.

Glossy brochure, smooth to the touch. It isn’t a run-of-the-mill facility, Sarah thinks. It promises peace of mind, dedicated professionals to care for Mother. 5-star accommodation. Season-appropriate air-conditioned comfort. Enrichment programs: crafts to keep minds nimble, gentle calisthenics to keep bodies as supple as arthritis will allow, music and entertainment, massages. Heck, it sounds like a vacation to Sarah. Mother’s last, no doubt. The food? Organic, ethically-sourced fresh ingredients. Mother will get to eat healthy, cholesterol controlled, diabetes disciplined. All credit cards welcome. Flexible payment plans available to select few. They even offer 24/7 personalized online counseling to family—that’ll be Sarah, only child and next-of-kin—to help cope with the change. She almost misses the fine print: an option for pre-planning of deceased estate management via an accredited solicitor, be it rent or sale. And when the inevitable end comes, in-house Life-Cycle Celebrants conduct end-of-life ceremonies and take care of everything: casket, funeral service (all religions, all denominations welcome), burial or cremation.

Sarah sits back. A choice that’s really no choice at all. But she’s put it off too long already. Time to recognize facts, be less indecisive. Once she rationalizes it, she stops shirking.

They’re all courteous, all smiles. Mother’s ambulant, Sarah insists, when they trundle in a gurney. Standard practice, they say and shrug, strapping Mother down.

Outside, before the van’s doors slam, Sarah flinches. She’s seen, shut her eyes too late: Mother’s left ear folded like an envelope on that gurney. No one else notices.

Oh Mum.

The van speeds away. Rooted to the spot, a certain premonition rises like heat from the bitumen up through Sarah’s soles: she’d go, too, without protest, be fed gruel and shit in bedpans until her death.

---

Margaret Suganthy Parker is a Sydney-based writer. Her fiction and poetry appear in Hecate Journal (University of Queensland), Kitaab, Unlost Journal (USA), Microflix (microfiction shortlisted for 2021 Microflix Awards and adapted to film), Grieve Anthology, and elsewhere. Her writing delves into familial relationships, identity, memory and trauma. She holds a masters in creative writing from the University of Sydney.

He woke, animal-like, with the sun and crawled from under the quilt. His mother had made it. He remembered that much. How long ago? Fifty, sixty years? Long enough that the patches were hanging from threads.

He rolled over so he could grab the sofa, his home to things he used to collect from Free Stuff boxes. Dishes and pots and CDs, a transistor radio, a desk lamp, a collection of Barbie dolls and GI Joes. Whatever he managed to move inside before the town sent a crew to clean up his yard. “Fire hazard” the notice said. $5000 the bill said. It was on the table, unpaid, beneath the mail he collected every day so his neighbors wouldn’t call the police to do a wellness check. He was well enough. All he wanted was to be left alone.

He could no longer unbend his spine to stand. “That’s okay,” he said to the bobblehead he slept with. Sylvester, but he called him Stewie. His mother bought it for him when he was eight. Back when she checked his bedroom every day to see that he’d dusted the bobblehead and made his bed.

He stopped at the table where he’d piled more treasures. Vases empty of flowers, a boy scout jackknife, a garden trowel, a ceramic Santa Claus and a clay statue of some long-ago president. He ran his finger along the table, making a long arch. Like his mother used to do. “We don’t mind a little dust, do we, Stewie? Mummy can’t see.”

His legs gave out, so he got onto his knees and crawled through the path of things he intended to fix. A broken bicycle. A dot-matrix printer. A guitar without strings. He remembered the music he played in his head so he could ignore his mother’s voice.

He got to the bathroom and the chamber pot he’d scavenged a long time ago. When he still had water. “You see,” he said to Stewie. “Nothing is junk. Everything has a use.” He pulled down his sweatpants and squatted. “Wonder where that cat got to,” he said when he finished and sprinkled what was left of the litter into the pot.

“Not you,” he growled at a creature staring at him. Gray hair covering its face so only two beady eyes showed. And a mouth. He searched for the word. Wolf? He punched and hit the mirror’s glass and the image of his own fist. He remembered. His name. Louis. He got to his knees and crawled back to his lair. “It’s just us, Stewie,” he said to the bobblehead. He nested into the quilt and fell asleep.

Memories intruded. Miss Burns telling him on Father’s Day that he could make a card for an uncle, a neighbor, any man he felt close to. He drew a picture of a cat and printed Stewie under it. He remembered his lunchbox and how he cleaned it after he ate. He remembered how he put his card in it and walked home, alone. Mummy would be making phone calls. He knew not to interrupt her. Phone calls were her job.

That was the day she gave him his present. “You can be my father,” he’d said to Stewie. He kissed his stuffed cat and carried him to his secret place. Mummy never looked at the treasures in the shoebox in his closet. A Matchbox car, a tennis ball, a broken harmonica. He picked up a cats-eye marble and rubbed it on the place Stewie’s eye used to be. “I’m sorry I didn’t put your eye in my treasure box before Mummy found it.” He put the marble and the card into the box and lined it up neatly before he closed the closet door. “Mummy’s coming.” He kissed Stewie and propped him on his pillow.

She came into the room holding a bobblehead of Sylvester the cat. “This is for you,” she said.

He beamed. His favorite cartoon. On Saturdays, he’d lie on the sofa and watch Tweety Bird outwit Sylvester. He’d hold Stewie and wrap himself in the quilt his mother had made.

“Trade,” she said as she handed him the bobblehead. She grabbed the cat his father had given him before he died from germs. “Now you have Sylvester. He won’t give you germs.” She left him crying and trying to cuddle Sylvester the way he’d cuddled Stewie.

He woke again when he heard a knock on the door. “Groceries here,” a voice called from outside. He went to the window, pulled aside the tattered curtain and watched until the delivery van drove away. He opened the door and dragged in the box before any neighbors could see him. They used to leave him a meal—leftover turkey at Thanksgiving or a plate of Christmas cookies. Now they just checked to make sure he brought in the deliveries. Make sure he was alive. All he wanted was peace.

Crawling, he pushed the box to the kitchen. Bread, peanut butter, bottled water. All he needed to survive. He stayed on the floor as he opened the bread and the jar of peanut butter. He dipped the bread into the jar and drank from the bottle of water. It was enough. He left the jar open and the bread unwrapped.

He crawled back to his lair and cradled the bobblehead in his arms. “It’s okay, Stewie,” he said. “We can feed the rats again. Mummy will never find out.”

The neighbors waited until they noticed the smell. The next week they watched a team wearing hazmat masks pile junk in front of the house. Kids prowled through the debris for treasures. An eight-year-old picked up a bobblehead. “What’s this?” he asked an older boy who wasn’t his friend.

“Don’t be stupid,” the older boy said. “It’s Sylvester the cat.”

He cradled the bobblehead and said, “I don’t like that name. I’ll call him Stewie.”

---

Sharon L. Dean grew up in in New England and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of New Hampshire. Although she has given up writing scholarly books that require footnotes, she incorporates much of her academic research as background in her mysteries. She is the author of three Susan Warner mysteries, three Deborah Strong mysteries, the companion novels Leaving Freedom and Finding Freedom, and a collection of stories called Six Old Women and Other Stories. Her tenth novel, Books Inn, is scheduled for publication in 2026.

The night is cool. The blaze illuminates your face orange. Her vehicle is an inferno. You warm yourself before it.

A minute ago, you set it on fire. Surprised it went up that quick, you think. Gluttonous flames devour her car.

A breeze caresses your back. Hot air singes your face. You step away, flip off the once blue hybrid.

Taking a drag from a cigarette, you cough. It was years since you smoked. Why now? you wonder. You shrug.

The flames sound like a waterfall. A finger flick; the butt shoots into the blaze. It is instantly consumed.

You stroll into the night. Your unhurried footfalls are loud. The heat on your face dissipates.

There are no police, no fire trucks, no ambulances, and no sirens. No one confronts you. Am I petty? you wonder.

That morning: You wake early on your day off, a day for chores. Sighing, you crawl from bed. Lots to do, you think.

#

With an armful of bags you exit the market. You plod to your car. Why didn’t I use a cart? you question.

#

Groceries in the trunk, you climb into the driver’s seat. You start the engine. The car pulls from the spot.

A blue hybrid drives past. The woman inside flips you off. Her vehicle leaves the parking lot.

What did I do? you wonder. You drive home.

A few hours later: It’s beautiful out, you think. The sky is robin’s-egg blue, no clouds. You decide to postpone chores to go for a walk at the local park.

Stepping out the front door, you encounter Brian. The neighborhood asshole, you think. You stare ahead, climb into your vehicle, and drive off.

#

The car arrives at the park. You exit your vehicle. All I want, you think, is a quiet walk alone. Nearby, a man places his little girl in a stroller.

You walk down a path. Sounds from wheels on dirt follow. You pick a different route. He follows still.

#

You needed solitude. You received irritation. The man and his child ruined the walk.

You return to your car. Maybe all I really am is hungry, you postulate. You drive to the supermarket.

Exiting your vehicle, you use a nearby ATM. It does not dispense cash. It keeps the card.

You call the number posted on the machine’s side. “Can you return my card?”

“Sorry, contact your financial institution and get another issued.”

“Thank you.” You hang up. Today sucks, you conclude.

You return to your vehicle. Need to speak with a teller face to face, you think. You drive to your bank.

#

“It’ll be two weeks before you receive the new card in the mail,” explains the woman behind the desk.

You nod; leave the bank frustrated. “Shit.” I’ll have to use my credit card until then, you conclude.

#

Driving home, you are at a stop sign. You look both ways. A blue hybrid rolls past. The woman inside flips you off, again.

You continue on, irritated. “Fuck that bitch.” You say it again: “Fuck that bitch.” You add variety to it: “Fuck that fucking bitch.”

#

Stressed, you buy a pack of cigarettes. You arrive home. Needing to unwind, you decide to walk around the neighborhood.

It is sunset. The sky is red. You randomly stroll along streets.

Then you see it, the blue hybrid. “The bitch’s car.” You light a cigarette; stare at her vehicle.

You shake your head; walk away. “No, better not.” Suddenly changing your mind, you turn toward her car.

---

Every morning, W. M. Pienton meditates, reads; writes. Occasionally he paints. Once a week he hikes (he wishes he had time for more). And recently, he gave up alcohol and tobacco.

She thinks, I could drink the colours of this city until my throat swells like a kaleidoscope. Purple jacarandas. Pink mimosas. Balconies dripping yellow lemons. And azure—a word that sits long and full on the tongue—azure everywhere.

She helps her daughter down the slide. The baby trots and she lets her roam, like the French parents do. They aren’t always cloyed to their children like chicken feet.

There is a woman with long eyelashes, also following her trotting child. She decides: this woman and her would be friends. This would be the park they would come to every day. Their children would play under the fig trees. She wonders what it’s like to grow up here, somewhere with peaches plump as fleshy fists. Not mealy peaches or hard peaches packed on supermarket shelves but soft peaches, jubilant amid the cherries, the fresh-cut watermelon shimmering on the street vendor’s stall.

She also wonders what this woman—her new friend—would think of her home. Of the housing estates that spread and spread until the little white houses fall into the sea like a jumble of teeth. There are colours too but colours aren’t the same when there is no light. Pebble dash everywhere. And stores. Little shitty stores.

She wonders too, how this woman has weathered the lonesomeness of motherhood? Perhaps it hasn’t been lonely for her. Perhaps it’s a singular thing, this lonesomeness. Maybe her friends think she’s busy. Or maybe it’s because no matter what she does, she can’t help bringing the conversation back to her joy, her little patch of light on this dark earth. So maybe she’s boring, out of touch. She tries to keep up with news at least but then they show Palestine and the dead children’s bodies and she feels the cry welling and oh God turn it off turn it off turn it off

please
turn it off
I can’t look any more.

She imagines this woman still has all her friends. They invite her places and gather around at hers for wine. Or limoncello—yes, there’s a lemon tree on her balcony. There’s a lemon tree just where the pink bougainvillea cascades to the balcony below. She makes her own limoncello. Fermented lemons. Lips crusted with sugar

sugar
sugar
sugar

It must be so nice to live here, for this to be your life. Someone else. Somewhere else. Somewhere with colours, where there’s no need for jackets in the summer. Warm air pregnant with magnolia and lavender.

The woman with the long eyelashes leaves the park, her child’s hands in hers. They close the gate. It whines. The light is growing peaky. She notices she’s alone in the park. The sound of cars, honking, cursing. Somewhere in the distance, the clatter of silverware.

Her daughter runs at her, arms spread, pumpkin face smiling, and she realises she has—

everything.

---

Cassie Smith-Christmas lives in Galway, Ireland. Her unpublished novel The Huguenot’s Chest was a winner in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair and the Blue Pencil Agency’s Pitch Prize. It has also been recently shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society’s Competition in the Twentieth Century category. She holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow, and her writing has appeared in Ireland, the UK, and US, including Southword, Crannóg, Gutter, The Wild Word, and Frazzled Lit. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a Forward Prize for Poetry, and shortlisted in The Best of Rural Writing 2023.

It was definitely a rat. They couldn’t actually see it, only heard it scrabbling and scratching in the bathroom ceiling.

The mother heard it first. She said nothing, hoping it would go away. She lay awake for an hour, praying for it to stop. She could see the rat clearly in her mind’s eye. It looked like the one she saw most workday mornings at the downtown garage, skittering past her feet into the storm drain.

The children heard it next. They wandered into the bathroom, one at a time, wondering if it was about to jump out at them. They could see the rat clearly in their mind’s eye. It looked like the dead one that had lain under the stairs in the courtyard for weeks before someone, a maintenance person probably, had picked it up with a shovel and put it in the dumpster.

The boyfriend heard it last, when the mother roused him from his sleep. The scrabbling and scratching had stopped for a moment then, so he told the children to go back to bed, they had all just been dreaming. But then the sound resumed. He could see the rat clearly in his mind’s eye. It looked like the ones that would sometimes run around all night inside the walls and then spring onto the roof of the rundown apartment he had once lived in.

The boyfriend rose from the mother’s bed, donned his pants, and cried, “Fetch me a screwdriver!” The children obeyed. “Fetch me a pot with a lid!” The mother obeyed.

One by one he removed the screws from the screen on the vent in the bathroom ceiling. The mother and the children hid, expecting any moment to hear him tangling with the dangerous creature. The minutes went by.

“Fetch me another screwdriver!” the boyfriend cried. “A Philips head!” The children obeyed, then hovered at a distance. The mother cowered in her room, praying for it to all be over. More minutes went by. It was more complicated, apparently, than he had thought. It always was.

Finally, there was a loud “plop,” followed by the clanging of the pot lid. The boyfriend didn’t look at what had fallen out of the vent. He didn’t have to. It was a rat all right.

“Open the front door!” he cried. The children obeyed. The mother emerged. They all stood around the doorway and watched him set the pot on the sidewalk, remove the lid, and hop back into the house.

Lo! A dove flew out of the pot. They watched it fly away until it was just a tiny dot in the sky.

Then it was out of sight.

Except in the mind’s eye.

They stood in silence. Then the mother spoke. “Who wants pancakes?”

---

Deborah Ross retired from her position as Professor of English at Hawaii Pacific University four years ago and began a sort of afterlife in Ashland, Oregon. This may account for the otherworldly atmosphere of her recent writings. Over the past several decades she has published academic work on narratives from Jane Austen to soap operas to Disney features, as well as creative non-fiction and short stories. A partial list of her publications may be seen here.

It was so hot even the birds quit singing. I sat in front of the window fan drinking iced ginger ale and watching the bubbles rise while my dear Doyle thrashed around his old trunk in the spare room.

Ugly, God, he was ugly. He ranted about Alan being the liar supreme and cursed Alan so bad I knew he feared him.

“I hate that bastard, Annie,” Doyle said. “I hate everything about him from his pointy toed boots to his goddamned hat.”

I set my glass on the maple table, heedless of the water ring it would leave and went to Doyle and closed his trunk.

“The shotgun’s not in there,” I said. “You’ve got yourself all worked up.” I lay a quiet hand on his, but with his other he yanked open the trunk.

“Why isn’t it?” he yelled.

Alan and his big hat barged in and yelled just as loud as Doyle. “Thief!” He brandished a bayonet.

I slipped through the doorway to the porch and peeked through the window above the spinning fan blades. Alan waved his bayonet in the thick air while Doyle danced his hands to keep Alan from cutting him. Neither spoke, until Doyle swore and screamed when Alan cut his left wrist deep.

I pulled the 12 gauge from where I’d hid it behind the glider and sent a deer slug into the side of Alan’s face.

Dear Doyle bled all over my truck’s seat on the way to the E.R., and I’ve been two days getting it out of the upholstery.

---

Merle Drown is a freelance writer and editor. He has published three novels, Plowing Up a Snake (The Dial Press), The Suburbs of Heaven (Soho Press), which was chosen by Barnes and Noble for its Discover Great New Writers series, and Lighting the World (Whitepoint Press). He has also published over 40 short pieces of fiction and received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Hampshire Arts Council. He is working on a collection titled Shrunken Heads: Miniature Portraits of the Famous Among Us.

The rusted-out pickup rumbles down Main Street. A girl, all of five and all smiles, rides shotgun. The air is warm, the summer sun bright. The girl leans out the window the way her golden retriever, Lottie, often does. The wind twists and tangles the girl’s long, sandy hair and—

The passenger door flies open. The girl drops to the asphalt and tumbles to a stop.

Faulty door latch.

No seatbelt.

No broken bones!

No stitches!

The girl is lucky to be alive. Had she landed on her head and not the backside of her corduroys, she surely would have died.

Or so the story goes.

The bank teller, the barber, and the barmaid of Main Street will recount it for years to come, along with every eyewitness at Auchenbach’s Laundromat and Vi’s five and dime. Always they will tell the tale in the astonished, reverent tone reserved for the proclamations of miracles—the boy who walked away from the plane crash! the face of Jesus that appeared in a bowl of chowder!

“Happened right in front of the Glen Rose Tavern. Never seen old Scotty so torn up,” the bank teller said.

“That poor man! The way he carried on you’da thought his little girl had died after all,” the barber said.

“I’ve never seen a grown man cry like that. He was just a sobbin’ and a sobbin’ as he held her. And his little one? Not a single tear,” the barmaid said.

Six years old. Seven years old. Eight. Then nine.

The girl has come to cherish the story despite a diminished interest in herself as its protagonist. The truck’s driver is the character of her fascination. She has elevated her gentle father to hero status, despite her mother’s increasingly frequent and increasingly furious objections.

Ten years old. Eleven years old. Twelve. Then thirteen.

The story of the girl has changed as narratives do with time and retelling. That she survived, that she is a miracle, this part remains the same. (Unless the girl’s mother, a chronically unreliable narrator, tells the story.) The girl listens close, always, to the bank teller, the barber, the barmaid. She must bite her tongue to keep from interjecting, Tell me again how he sobbed as he held me! Had her story been recorded on a cassette tape, she’d have worn this part thin. She has never, to her recollection, seen her hero cry.

Nineteen.

The girl, now a young woman, has become the storyteller. Chasing lemon drop shots with ice-cold cheap beer, she holds forth at the college bar on Friday nights. A practiced raconteur, her version of her fall is comical. (She has honed a habit of costuming anecdotes from her childhood in humor.) It was the 70s! Who wore seatbelts back then? By this time the woman knows she’s not special, so she omits the bit about the miracle. She also omits how the grown man had cried when he held her. The passing of time has rendered this detail too precious to share. She saw him cry once when she was fifteen. It had terrified her and made her hate her mother more. Her hero had fallen.

Twenty-one.

The woman returns to Main Street, summoned home by a 3 a.m. call from her mother. All around the woman disembodied faces bob on a sea of black fabric. Behind them a supine and stony replica of her father anchors a bed of pale blue satin. The barmaid, now a waitress at the local diner, totters through the crowd and tentatively approaches the woman. The barmaid (the characters in the woman’s script are immutable) smooths invisible wrinkles from her black dress and hugs the woman. The woman hears the words “I’m so sorry” for the millionth time and bites her cheek to keep from screaming. Does she remember that day, the barmaid asks the woman when their hug breaks apart, the day she fell out of her daddy’s truck? The barmaid points in the direction of the door, in the direction of Main Street. (The event occurred directly across from the funeral home, a detail that until now had never seemed relevant to the woman’s story.) The woman nods. She’s come to understand that her memory is only a collage crafted from other people’s memories, a distinction that doesn’t trouble her. The woman listens, rapt, while the barmaid unspools her version of the event. The barmaid omits nothing.

“To this day, I’ve never seen a grown man cry the way your daddy did when he held you,” the barmaid says.

Fresh tears bloom in the woman’s eyes. She looks past the barmaid and out across the black sea to her father cast in stone, her hero again and irrevocably for all time.

---

 
R.L. Marstellar is a writer and live storyteller. Her career path is a circuitous one: structural engineer—marketing specialist—finance hack—personal chef—entrepreneur. Writing is the one endeavor she has faithfully pursued. Her work has appeared in Under the Gum Tree, Midway Journal, and Evening Street Review and earned Bacopa Literary Review’s 2018 prize for creative nonfiction. She is currently working on a novel based on her experience hiking the Appalachian Trail. When she’s not writing about bad mothers and the minefields of middle age, you’ll find her at a Chicago dive bar open mic channeling her inner rockstar.

Instead of circling the rows of parked cars by the entrance, Wren settled for a spot near the back of the lot. When she began running errands, the early spring sun was just above the horizon; presently, it cast short shadows. She slipped off her jacket and tossed it onto the passenger seat before stepping out of her vehicle and walking toward the big-box retailer.

From inside the store, an elderly gentleman watched the automatic doors pull apart and recognized the change in Wren’s expression as she entered. In his line of work, he had grown accustomed to this phenomenon. He greeted her, but his words failed to register.

She stood perplexed, partially blocking the store’s entrance. Other customers politely slipped around her, like water in a stream, redirected by a protruding rock.

“Something I can help with, ma’am?” the old man tried.

She looked at him, nonplussed by his question. “No, thanks. I, uh—sorry,” she sputtered.

“Forget why you’re here?” His close-lipped smile revealed a hint of satisfaction.

Wren’s mouth opened, then closed again. She looked behind her at the automatic doors, as if the answer was on the other side.

“It’s called the doorway effect,” he said. “You walk through those doors, and your mind loses its place. Something about the transition.” His explanation sounded practiced, like he had given it a hundred times before. “They say if you carry something across the threshold, it helps you remember.”

Wren remembered her last errand.

A spattering of raindrops clunked against Wren’s windshield as she returned to Tony’s apartment. Tony’s apartment, she thought—not their apartment. Wren put on her jacket, grabbed a brown paper gift bag from the backseat, and attempted to open her door, but a gust of wind thwarted her initial effort. She tried again, this time shoving with enough force. She hurried toward the entrance, head down, the brown bag tucked within her jacket. Sheets of rain now smacked the sidewalk.

Wren expected the apartment to still be a mess, and she was right. She slid off her shoes, hung up her wet jacket, and placed the birthday gift she had bought for Tony’s mother on the entryway table. “Tony?” she called out. There was no response.

She walked down the hallway, nudged his bedroom door open, and peeked inside. Amidst a pile of unfolded laundry, Tony had fallen asleep.

Wren had left once before, but second-guessed herself after driving several hours lacking an obvious destination. She thought she must have been overreacting, lost sight of why she had left.
Tony called, she listened, he said all the right things, and she deceived herself into believing he would change.

She couldn’t let that happen again.

Wren retreated down the hallway back toward the apartment door. She put on her wet shoes and slipped back into her jacket.

On the entryway table sat the birthday present she had bought Tony’s mother. She reached in the bag and pulled out a lemon-scented candle.

Wren closed her eyes, brought the candle up to her nose, and breathed in deeply. Tucking it under her jacket, she turned the doorknob, pushed through, and returned to the rain.

---

Chris Cochran is a high school English teacher who writes first drafts on an old typewriter in a small nook beneath his basement steps. He lives in Michigan with his wife and son, where he spends most evenings drinking tea and falling asleep to comedy podcasts.

Smell
He draws me closer; I take a breath. I love his earthy smell and want to store more of it deep inside my lungs, for nostalgia and motivation. I linger. I smell foliage. It is soothing and relaxing. No wonder he is falling asleep.

Hearing
He yawns, and a quiet huff escapes into the air. I want to kiss him, so I bring my lips to his, but he is so peaceful, I freeze and listen to his calm, steady exhales. Like wind whispering through tall grass.

Sight
He is handsome; it is getting harder to suppress the urge to kiss. His face is expressive, powerful and strong, and I am curious if he is already seeing the dreams. Or if he ever does. He lies still, then hugs me. It is warm here, and soft.

Taste
I cannot resist anymore – I peck his nose, not sure if he notices. It is salty; now, my mouth is too. I lick my lips and swallow; I can taste the waters of a brine lake. He is my lake. Mysterious, precious, tranquil.

Touch
His coarse hair tickles my chin, my cheeks. I giggle but do not back away. Tight and soft, he is hugging me gently, and I tremble with love.

Us
We met when I started this job seventeen months ago. Feels like yesterday, really. I’m glad I am with him. It is our last night together.

Tomorrow, he is leaving for Africa. Starting a brand-new life. A long way away. I am excited for him, but I will miss our cuddling, fooling around and sprawling on the grass, his grunts and sighs and stretches.

I open my eyes. I hold my breath when he yawns—my majestic, rewilded, ready-to-be-released lion.

---

Tatiana Samokhina lives in the beautiful suburb of Surry Hills and works in the bustling City of Sydney. She is an English teacher and fiction translator, in love with literature. Her work has been published in 3 Elements Review, Jokes Review, Australian Writers’ Centre, Indignor House, Ironclad Creative and Little Old Lady.

It began as a hobby over lockdown. The sourdough starter was a gift from his watchful neighbour, Marge. Before that, David had no interest in baking. He’d always been perfectly content with his shop bought pan. But soon he found himself setting four-a.m. alarms, getting up to feed the culture with the attentiveness of a new father.

He liked that the starter needed him. A living being under the same roof. He could talk to it, like you might a dog or a houseplant.

The starter was pallid and frothy, like cottage cheese that had got a little too excited. Its smell: acerbic, eye-watering if he leaned in too close. Soon David found he was making more bread than he could eat. He gave fresh loaves to neighbours and visited soup kitchens and shelters with his surplus goods.

The more he fed the starter, the greedier it got. He couldn’t say exactly when it happened, but soon he was up four or five times a night, sleepwalking to the kitchen to feed his growing charge.

Then one day there was no space left for his other food. So David got rid of the jams and pickles, the tins of tomatoes, sweetcorn and beans that had once benignly shared the cupboard shelves. Eventually he had to get rid of the shelves altogether to make room for the starter, which bubbled contentedly like a yeasty cauldron.

They missed David at the soup kitchen and the shelter, when he stopped coming by, but life continued on. Everyone thought he must have given up the baking, gone back to the office like everyone else.

It was a warm day in June when Marge called round. Finding David’s door unlocked she pushed inside, curious to see the decor-choices of her unassuming neighbour.

Marge heard the sound before reaching the kitchen, the gentle hiss and slop of something wet moving. The smell was powerfully organic, like a forgotten rabbit’s hutch or week-old sweat. She stopped in the doorway when she saw him. David’s torso lay on the tiles, but his legs had been dragged to the open door of the press. Open mouthed Marge wanted to scream but in the warm kitchen no sound came out. The colour of David’s skin matched the grey hue of the bubbling monstrosity that surged towards her from the tiled floor.

---

Jennifer Lindsay Gray is a Scottish writer living in County Clare. Her writing has featured in journals such as Neon, Gutter, and Glasgow Women Poets. Her work has been shortlisted for competitions including The Mslexia Women’s Novel Competition, The Scottish Mental Health Awards Writing Competition and The Cheshire Prize for Literature. Her short story “A Green Glass Heart” was featured on RTÉ Radio 1’s The Prompt. Jennifer works as a Copywriter and holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from The University of Edinburgh. She is a member of the Clare Poetry Collective and the darkly-inspired Nocturne Writers.

Dad called people of a certain strain bullshitter. I listened carefully, but something was off. Bullshitters were always men over six feet tall with hair and confidence. Dad was five six, wore cowboy boots and a big buckle.

As a boy, looking around, figuring stuff out, I saw keeping up with the neighbors required smoke and mirrors. I felt uneasy about this dupery, like a grey cloud following me around.

Dad only ever had one friend, and he was shorter than Dad. That bothered me, not the height, but the fact that everybody has friends. Mom had friends, I had friends, the neighbor guys had friends. Those guys sat around in lawn chairs in the garage sharing a twelve pack and laughing at their own jokes. Dad never came around. How could they possibly be bullshitters? They weren’t hiding anything from anybody.

White lies became the norm in our household; we became a collection of parrots. Mom kept quiet. Her opinions were cut short, contradicted, eventually Mom stopped speaking up, too tired to push it. It’s a family tragedy because Mom could read the room. Mom had instincts, she had what they call emotional intelligence. Us kids eventually withdrew under the weight of untruths, hiding a closet of falsehoods. We marched on like good soldiers in Dads army, holding on to a self-branding that fronted a hidden person inside. Hell, we were only kids.

This dynamic played out and became a wound, a burden. Even today, sitting around the kitchen table, speaking half-truths out loud, we quietly accept them as full truth. Over time, we gave in like Mom, to uneasy silence. No longer parrots.

Anxiety now seeps into my dreams where a battle is waged and often lost to a murky presence, an undefined form that chases me through the treetops. A subconscious depression? A lingering malaise? Unfinished business? A grown man with uncertainty instead of hope. A melancholic, stuck in a place where the sun doesn’t shine through the canopy, tethered to a pharmacy prescription.

Dad is sitting in his tattered recliner, should I talk? Do I burden a dying bullshitter with a mirror? Hold up his carnival of misdirection when his clock is ticking down? Will it bring me relief from the Jungian shadow? When do I self-actualize? I want to share; I want a clean truth. I’m six foot one.

---

Rhett Arens is a writer/photographer living in Pasadena who loves travel. He appreciates how it connects strangers and deflates xenophobia. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Travel + Leisure, Taproot, Fifty Grande, Boundary Waters Journal, Whitefish Review, Islands, ROVA and more. His fiction often addresses the negative effects of isolation and resulting self-delusion. He likes to say, travel is a peacemaker.