Congratulations on taking the first step toward a better ecological niche, and a better you. I’m naturalist extraordinaire and personal trainer Chuck Darwin, here to welcome you to Evolutionary Fitness! Whether you’re a middle-of-the-food-chain specimen in need of a confidence boost, or an apex predator who’s gone a bit soft, any organism can take advantage of the tips and tricks in this five-DVD box set. So let’s crank it up a few notches, whip you into tip-top shape and attract the partner of your dreams – at least, for this mating season. Just clear out a nice roomy spot in your cave, grassy plain, or lowland swamp, and let’s get moving! Routine 1: The ‘Run-For-Your-Life’ Let’s face it, we’ve all got predator problems. Talons swiping after your hindquarters? Razor-sharp jaws aiming for your jugular? Long, sticky tentacles dragging you down to a deep sea abyss? This first routine is a fresh twist on the classic Flight or Fright response. I don’t care if you’re a lowly rodent or a majestic blue whale – those propellers …

Even here, I’m sat across from another screenwriter sipping his coffee and scrolling through his tablet. The sticky sweet smoke from his pipe wafts over to me. He puffs with his left hand, scrolls and sips with his right. Still, it’s preferable to the clouds of cigarette smoke which choke me on most patios. He’s taunting me with his air of accomplishment. His buttercup yellow button down. His relentless pipe smoking. I think he’s watching dailies. Definitely a director then. And I am the ghost of a screenwriter, haunting him. He hails a waitress without looking up. One slender finger in the air. Another coffee. Yes, I think I’ll have one too. Though I can feel the buzz in my veins already, I cannot bear the thought of sitting here without one. I look to catch her eye, but she has gone back behind the counter. Fine, he’s more important. That’s almost certain. I can tell from his degree of focus, something is being made. That rare result. The world’s cafe bars are our office, …

The evening air had cooled considerably as the sun set over Rome. The brisk breeze floating in through the open door of Il Flagello gave Max chills as he sat at the bar with a cold beer half drank, thinking. He was lost in thought and lost in his beer. He wondered what he was going to do next and how was the outcome going to pay off. A pang hit him in the heart, and he felt lousy again. He drank his beer half-heartedly registering the chatter between the regulars and the bar owner, Sergio. “Did you hear Sergio? Eh, hai sentito?” “Sentito? Heard what?” A man asked. “They’re closing la Lombardia,” Sergio said assessing the thick white foam rising on top of the yellow liquid pouring into the tilted glass, waving like a yellow flag in a desperate wind. “Non e’ posssibile;” another man said with a long hiss from a chipped tooth. “La Lombardia is a region, not a ssstore.” “Cosi ha detto, Mort. They just closed Lazaretto,” Sergio said. All the …

The incandescent lights beam silvery glows in every direction, while the sunlight pierces through windows and bounces from stainless steel machines to clean white walls. You smell the scent of detergent clashing with lavender dryer sheets, rose petal fabric softener and hear the trickling waterfall of coins from the change machine. It’s Saturday. Appliances purr loudly announcing that they’re brimming to capacity. You see the usuals walk in. Andrew gives you his typical head nod while leaving no strand of his clean, tapered mane out of place. You surmise he’s single, working in an office, by the way he hangs up his dress shirts in rows like color-coded file folders. You can’t help but notice Helen, reticent to make eye contact. You know she works or lives nearby as she traipses to and from a neighboring building and hurriedly so. You revere her appearance, always perfectly polished with subtle makeup and beautifully coiffed curls. Mrs. Johnson came by, her round frame moving with short quick steps. She loved when you complemented her on her new …

When winter break came around, Noah and Jeffrey flew back to find their childhood home completely torn up. Boxes of kibble were scattered around the rooms, family photos were flipped over and strategic shits from Pernille, the pug, were everywhere. Jeffrey trudged through the mess while Noah checked the carpet, wondering how much it was going to cost to repair. The biggest change was Mama Z’s half-finished project of turning their old bedroom into her new office. Financial documents intermingled with signed sports star posters; a cherrywood desk was pressed against the old steel bunkbed. Their first warning of these changes was the verbal flurry they received on the drive back from the airport. The passenger seat had been off limits and empty for years, so Mama Z glanced over her shoulder at her now-grown boys squished in the backseat and tried to compress all the parenting she’d missed into rapid-fire life updates: “Never start a business, this ad campaign is going to be a total nightmare,” she said. “But at least the dog treats …

I will never be strong enough to hate you and your barbed wire arms swathed around my body. You sink splintered shards of sorrow into my asthenic flesh. It would take a love you’ve never had to will the sorry I’ve starved for past your chapped sangria lips. You won’t let me forgive you. I remember our first spring when stars floated around my eyes like lilies as you took my face between your hands and taught me that love was something to borrow. Love was slipping off shirts when you’d ask. Love was staying when you grabbed and threw me against the bathroom door. I’m a bullet casing without a gun to fire back. Your lies like mosquito stings I force myself to forget, tucking that shred of truth in the limbo of space that I wish I could keep between you and I. As we waltz in and out of the lie of forever, I wonder if I have ever been my own. Jia J. Johnson is a high school senior enrolled in …

Hosea came to his truth in March. He was the elder, his legs almost useless, and the farmland hives were dying. “I must be given.” As soon as he spoke, everyone roused from a kind of walking sleep. The community began to feed Hosea a diet of honey and water, bathing him gently and telling him old family stories. The farm’s remaining hives were raided and every last comb taken. The old man ate less and less as the days passed. Most of the gathered honey was stockpiled. The community lived in an old restaurant on the edge of the farm, over the hill from the hives. The members slept in the booths, in the stock room, in the kitchen. After Hosea could no longer walk, a broken freezer in the back was pulled open and cleaned. It was laid down and filled with hot lavender-scented water, then scrubbed again and again. Hosea began to smell of honey. He wept honey and that is what his bowels gave up. He’d been made clean. On the …

The plane began its languid departure down the runway, the whirring of engines abrading his ears. He looked out the window towards the clear path, an empty runaway unencumbered by thunder, rain, or even clouds. “Looks like smooth sailing,” he thought casually to himself. The steady movement was almost hypnotizing in its monotony. Without thinking he pulled out the photo, the last one that he decided to keep, from the back pocket of his wallet and looked—no, glared—at it. He felt fire in his temple, his brows furrowing. The urge to rip it to shreds was as strong and hot as the tears he refrained from shedding. I saw you there, like a whirling firefly against a pitch-black sky. You were dancing above the lilies that hung daintily along the pond as we watched the fireworks shooting from a festival far off in the distance. You floated there like you barely belonged to this earth. I thought that’s what I was searching for; I thought you (and I?) were destined for great things. The routine voice of the pilot thrust him out …

Eight minutes left. You wake. You don’t remember anything. The teary-eyed woman squeezing your hand says the Sun just died. Mere minutes until cosmic dark coldly cloaks everything you can’t recall. Six minutes. She says you were comatose. She says she’s your wife. But, despite a twinkle of familiarity, she seems a beautiful stranger. Four minutes. Your heart swells, a Red Giant. With the same woman you don’t know, you fall in love again. Two minutes. You imagine the marriage you’d like to remember for a few moments more. And connected to her you are a constellation. Eight minutes was enough time. Alex Rafala is an actor-turned-writer based in NYC. His debut short film, “Farewell Old Stringy” (Writer/Director), lauded for its full heart and exemplary performances, screened as an Official Selection at film festivals nationwide, most notably the 2014 Virginia Film Festival. His short horror screenplay “Harvest” placed as a Second Rounder in the 2020 Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition, a Second Rounder in the 2020 ScreenCraft Film Fund, and a Quarterfinalist in the 2020 …

She rushed through the door and strode toward the only open seat at the bar, the stool next to mine. Just like the boss said she would. She was in her mid-twenties. Short hair accenting her oval face. Audrey Hepburn cheekbones. Anya Taylor-Joy eyes. Tiny mole left of her lips. No obvious piercings or tattoos. A kind aura. Some days I hate my job. She waved the bartender over, ordered a cheeseburger and fries with a double Scotch on the rocks. She showed him her ID before he asked, told him she was in a hurry, promised a fat tip for fast service. She tapped her phone to check the time and sighed in exasperation. “What’s the rush?” I asked. “Like it matters to you.” It did matter to me, but I couldn’t tell her why. Couldn’t tell her I’d been thinking about bucking the system. So I said, “This isn’t the kind of place most people run in and out of.” “Yeah, well I’m not most people. Fast-food chains are evil. I like local …

In the stream I could see his heart flowing, touching a multitude of other hearts that went numb either by colliding or by choosing to stay so. Sameer cared too much for the skies that went wild with rage sometimes, shackling the scudding clouds, sending spears of lightning aiming to fracture the earth. He listened to the ache of the aging Banyan too. He said “When I die I want to be close to a water body. I want the susurration of the stream to keep me alive, which I know is a way of claiming a part of something that is moving and yet holding breath, the air in the breath, and the life in the breath.” I didn’t quite understand him but I knew someday I would. In a world that’s divided between good and bad, I want to keep faith, hold my tongue from moving too much, and reclaim my thoughts that go astray. The day was nearing. I counted every little blade of grass as if that were a testimony to …

Joe brings us sandwiches of cured ham on Portuguese bread. He takes us for a cruise at lunch hour in his mom’s green Grand Am. He tells us he just likes the way the losers watch him as he slows down by smoker’s corner—two hot chicks in the front seat eating blue plums he snuck fresh outta the fridge just a half hour before picking us up. Joe’s twenty and has dark hair across his forearms. I’ve studied it carefully as he places his veiny hand on your thigh as he drives the car. Hair like that means business. Hair like that is up front and coarse for a reason. Joe is all there. He’d bring you flowers if you just mentioned it one day. You don’t care about Joe because you’re not thinking of going away. I don’t care for Joe either because—because. I just like Joe ‘cause he’s so New York. He says sheer hose with strap heels are what’s missing from this town and I agree. He appreciates my acid mouth, says …

Nurses come and go like ghosts, checking vitals, updating charts. The sheets and walls are white. My brother lies in bed in a white gown. His skin is onion white, a shade darker than the paste-white bracelet on his wrist. The bracelet reads: Alex Parks, 12/10/65. My sister sits with him, reading Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” “Cam,” I say, “We need to go.” “A few more minutes,” she says. If Alex wakes, Camille will praise the almighty, call the ordeal part of God’s master plan, and Alex will tell her it was he who opened his eyes and besides, if God is responsible for waking him then God’s responsible for hurting him and that’s a pretty shitty thing, isn’t it? And what about all the other poor souls in St. Vincent Medical Center on a Tuesday night in Toledo? The glasses, the mischievous grin, are gone. He’s never …

The fishers watch her, but they’d never admit that, even if they were caught in the act. It’s too extraordinary for a girl to fish for a living; it’s uncomely and bad luck to fish with a woman so near, especially an unwed girl of twenty. To men diminished and brittle from long days and sore bones, her presence is a nuisance, so her abundant catches and exquisitely hand-crafted lures are hastily dismissed. Hints of witchcraft flit across their lips in whispers; suspicious good fortune and uncanny knowing of where and when to fish, especially by a girl-fisher, must have other-worldly explanations. It’s a good thing men are brave; otherwise, they’d be frightened by the wild, free, careless, fearless, cunning creature they saw in Magda. “Nobody’s gonna help you out here,” one said. “When ya gonna settle down and become a proper wife?” asked another. “If anybody’d have her,” said a third, thinking she was out of earshot. But Magda noticed and heard and felt every admonition, scolding, sideways glance, and furrowed brow. Any dangers …

There’s a dead pigeon in the gutter. It makes me sadder than it should. It’s not the death that’s most upsetting, or even the gutter of it all. It’s the mere fact of the pigeon, if you want to know the truth. “Watch your step,” I say to Marky, tugging his little forearm like I could swing his whole body up and over the curb. His sneaker grazes a smear of viscera, but he misses the bulk of the bird. “Oh,” Marky says. Squints. Shudders. They’re seemingly infinite, pigeons. One goes down, a swarm flocks in to fill the gap. Gray, blue-gray, purple-grayish-gray, evoking soot and ash, the remnants of things you clean out of a flue. My father used to forget to do that, every time he made a fire. “Goddamn flue!” he’d shout, pigeon-colored smoke choking the room. “It makes my elbows tingle,” says Marky. “What?” “Dead things.” We trot south, skirting slow walkers to make the light. My eyes keep dragging to Marky’s left shoe. The laces aren’t untied, not fully, it’s …