I was born on December 14, 1946, and raised in the bucolic village of Lansing, Iowa, which then and now has a population of around one thousand hardy souls. Before air conditioners and television, everyone stayed outdoors as much as possible during the summer months. We all knew those residing near us, and being considered a good neighbor was important. Lansing had no police officer (or traffic light for that matter), and no government social nets existed. But more vulnerable citizens were closely watched, and even those who had little shared their meager lot with others in acute need. Despite many being hardworking, highly motivated WWII veterans, everyone struggled financially, yet somehow managed to get by. However, there were rare exceptions to this latter situation, and I believe one such anomaly at least partially explains the core of my story. When I completed seventh grade, my 11 schoolmates and I had been together since kindergarten. But at the beginning of eighth grade, a new student, Joyce T., joined our ranks. None of us knew her …

We are all deathly quiet but mum, at least, has an excuse. She’s got the machines to make noise on her behalf – the beeps and the breathing – and the doctors are kind of her spokespersons. Dad says nothing, seems lost, and I hate him for it. Say something, you pussy! If he doesn’t say anything, I can’t; and if I can’t then neither can my brother. It’s like this back in the house. Everything’s quiet there; everything’s wrong; everything’s out of balance. Only dad’s voice is heard, that is when he does speak. We eat only his choice of food and what he decides he can cook, even if what he decides is beyond him; we watch only his choice of telly, at least until he falls asleep drunk in his chair. The night it happened, I remember hearing him through the bedroom wall, asking mum if she’s all right over and over before finally calling the ambulance and then, when it arrived, him trying to explain and just messing the whole thing …

“It’s third gin, third vermouth. You can’t do anything right!” she says with a smile more precious than diamonds, pushing me away from the kitchen island to perform her witchcraft with bitters and gin. I don’t protest, and quietly sink back into the couch. Proportions don’t matter to me. Nothing does. She’ll be gone in an hour and never return again. I’ve been living this life of a silent observer for the past three years. They come and go, telling me I can’t do anything right, asking where I keep the frying pan, or if there’s a takeaway nearby. It’s a beautiful prison I’ve locked myself in, and I pay a handsome amount in cash every month to a man named Miguello. She brings me the glass and sits beside me, looking for the remote. I just hope we’ll watch something longer than life. But we never do. Nick Struutinsky is an art history explorer, producer, and writer based in Serbia. When he’s not working on a new script, he publishes short stories on Medium. …

My older brother and I lived on opposite coasts and saw little of each other. Two weeks ago, I was visiting his home because I had heard that his health was failing. I wanted to see him before he passed. Initially, I was going to tease him about his discourse having been reduced to MAGA talking points. But as my travel date approached, a violent wrenching within my chest and stomach compelled me to focus solely on thanking him. He had let me live in his home while I was in college. Moreover, after I finished school, he and his wife took care of our mother while I was in San Francisco running my life into the ground. To thank him sincerely, I had to weed out resentment over our political differences. I know I succeeded in conveying that gratitude even before I arrived at his death bed, because as soon as I referred to my years living under his roof, he said “I was always looking for ways to throw you out; it’s your …

They warned me about the orchard. They said the ground remembers. They said things grow from more than seed. Still, I went. I buried him deep beneath the old apple tree, where no one goes anymore since the frost came early three winters ago. He followed me there willingly. Laughing. As though pain were a kind of currency and he’d already made a profit from it. One push. That was all. It wasn’t premeditated. It was… instinct. Like swatting away a wasp halfway through the sting. His head struck a root. He didn’t laugh after that. I covered him with soil, my hands shaking, my heart beating like a drum from some darker hymn. I told myself it was justice, that no one would miss him. But justice doesn’t keep you awake at night replaying the angle, the sound, the silence. Now the apples taste sweeter. Too sweet. People talk about how the fruit has returned redder than ever — a miraculous harvest. I watch them bite into it, juice running down their chins, and …

The mulberries were black and bursting when I opened the door for the first time in seven weeks. Mornings brought the most temptation, when my stomach whined like the siren in the center of town on the day the hushworms fell. There were twelve windows in the house, but I could only watch the berries ripen out of ten of them. Daddy’s room was off limits since the morning I heard his window screech open and his strangled yell. He had the best view of the mulberry tree. The branches nearly brushed the window. The berries were milky white and hard as stones then, but they must’ve looked tasty enough for him to try. I snuck to his door and listened to his gurgling. The hushworm slurped across the floor inside and jiggled the door. I found a belt and tied the doorknob to the staircase railing, tight as I could pull. After a while, the jiggling stopped and Daddy started to stink. The second-best view of the mulberry tree was by the living room …

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. …

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 …

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 …

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. …

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 …

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 …

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. …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …