Category: Uncategorized

I’m still trying to figure out if this toucan behind the bar is real, and I’m running out of time to ever know.

When the alarm first went off, there was a pantomime of general panic. I went up to our room in a daze and opened the door to find my wife, naked, surrounded by what looked to be every last hotel cabana boy. Honestly, I admired her for throwing whatever that was together so quickly.

By the time I came back downstairs, a good portion of the guests and staff had spilled onto the beach, faces turned up to the sun and arms outspread as if in ecstasy. I made for the bar.

It was empty except for Mike, the bartender, who was drying the giant margarita glasses. He held each one briefly up to the light, then chucked it at the wall paneled in fake bamboo. Crash.

“Are you still serving?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?” Crash.

“What’s a good last drink?” I ask, taking a seat just outside of the glasses’ trajectory.

“Daiquiri?”

“Hit me.”

He jumped up on the back bar to pull a bottle down from the top shelf, produced two limes and appeared to cut them in midair, shook the drink vigorously for no more than five seconds, then strained the pearlescent liquid into a tiny coupe glass that had materialized in front of me.

“That’s a daiquiri?”

“A real one.” He rinsed the shaker and set it upside down on the edge of the bar, ready for the next customer. “I’m not really sure how it ended up referring to those blended strawberry-pineapple things.”

I took a sip. It was crisp and tart, with an unexpected dry snap from the rum.

“Wow,” I said, and drained the rest. Mike was already shaking me a second one. I thought that despite everything else, there was nothing sadder in that moment than the fact that I had almost died without knowing what a real daiquiri was.

That’s when I noticed the toucan, nestled in a pile of rope on the top shelf behind the bar. It regarded me with an eye like a drop of crude oil.

“You’re not going to join me?” I asked Mike.

“Nah. I’m eleven years sober, as a matter of fact.”

“Well, sure, but you know…” I indicated the herd on the beach, each of whom looked as though they were accepting a hug from an invisible, floating friend. Mike laughed, more to himself than to me, and threw another glass. Crash.

“A promise isn’t worth much if you welch on it as soon as things start to go south. Even a promise to yourself.”

“Well, more power to you.” I raised the glass to him and knocked it back.

The toucan’s feathers look real enough, but I’m still not sure. Assuming it’s real, I feel almost as sad as I did about the daiquiri, thinking of the poor bird ending his existence pickled and stuffed, watching two poor loners cheerlessly await the end of the world.

A nearly subsonic rumbling creeps into the edges of our hearing. Mike and I look at the ceiling and shrug to each other.

“Another one for the road?”

“Coming right up,” he says. A moment later he sets the familiar coupe down with one hand and the toucan down with the other.

“I saw you looking at him, and I think you should have him.”

“You sure?” I pick up the bird like some precious orb and run my thumb over one of his leathery feet. “Hey, do you know if this thing’s real?”

“Course he’s real,” Mike says and tosses another glass. Crash. “For another minute or so, at least.”

I stroke the toucan’s head, bring it very close to my face, and peer into the inky eye. Nothing but blackness. Mike throws the last margarita glass (crash) and flips on the stereo, which starts to play “Iko Iko” by The Dixie Cups. I tuck the bird under my arm and stand up to take the last sip from the bottom of the glass.

Connor Saparoff Ferguson is a writer and translator whose work has appeared in Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Baltimore Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he lives in Boston.

Acey’s parents wanted her to get a job. “For Social Security,” her mother said.

“Anti-social insecurity.” Acey smirked.

“And so your employer can pay your health insurance,” her father added brightly, so brightly Acey had to put on her shades. Her new wraparounds. They wrapped around her face and shielded her from her parents.

“Must you?” Acey’s mother sighed. “You have such a pretty face.”

“Must be that age,” Acey’s father said.

Acey blinked, taking a mental picture she titled “Parents Trap Daughter At Kitchen Table.” She imagined the scene on a postcard she showed to passerby. Out loud she announced, “Six-squared.”

“That right, dear. You’re thirty-six now.” Acey’s mother squeezed her hand. Her mother’s hand felt like a soapy sponge. It was a soapy sponge. Acey laid it on the nice, clean, plastic sunflower tablecloth to give it a rest from dishwashing. Even sponges deserved a vacation.

“You’d look more attractive if you flattened down your hair,” Acey’s mother said, drying her hands on an old gold dishtowel. The towel showed maidens in blue frocks milking cows. If you touched a cow in the right place, it mooed.

Acey touched the cow’s stomach.

“Moo,” the cow responded.

“That’s cow for I like my hair,” Acey said.

“Moo,” said the cow.

“Acey,” Mother warned.

“I didn’t do it. That cow has a life of its own.”

“I hope you’re spelling ‘its’ properly,” Acey’s father Sternly said. His name was Sternly, but his colleagues called him Stern. He turned a page of The Daily Dairy Diary, which the cow community published for milk drinkers.

“Its—no apostrophe,” Acey recited. “May I please be excused?”

“Excused?” Acey’s mother glanced up from bed sheet folding. She was a sportive bed sheet folder. She didn’t do it professionally. She didn’t do it commercially. Sometimes she practiced on stationery sheets.

“Thank you.” Acey remembered she was six-squared and could do as she pleased. As she got up, her mind’s eye snapped another shot, “The Excused Need No Excuse.”

“No allowance for you this week.” Stern rustled the newsprint.

“Then I’ll get a job,” Acey said.

“Our daughter’s come to her senses,” her parents chorused, beaming.

<>

“And this postcard depicts NuRotic at night,” Acey told the crowd. Tourists loved her tours of the postcard racks.

“Could you please speak up? You have a soft-spoken voice,” said a lady in an embroidered neon pink short-sleeved dress and high heels.

“NuRotic at night.” Acey’s shout made the cards rattle in their perch.

“Why, it looks just like Yew-Ott, our Eastern Seaboard gem.” The lady’s eyelashes tickled the photo of a twinkling star alone in the mist. “Isn’t that right next door?”

Acey didn’t respond. Her picturesque hometown postcards enticed those who, stuck in the usual drawbridge traffic, wanted to stretch their legs and gulp in sea salt air, before climbing back in their cars. She didn’t want to reveal that to the woman and lose her clientele. She wanted to present her hometown as an exotic locale.

“My favorite postcard is this one of the beach,” Acey continued. “See how the rocks kiss the sand and surf?”

“How do you know they’re kissing?” A man in a white tea shirt sneered. The shirt was manufactured from tea leaves and smelled like the earth after a good soaking.

There was one in every crowd, Acey noticed. “This over here,” she said, trying to ignore the man. Her shades were a cool reassurance against her cheekbones. Good thing her wraparounds were still around, since he reminded her of Stern, and she needed protection. “This over here,” she repeated, yelling, in case anyone fell prey to her soft-spoken voice. “This rack has the best deal in NuRotic. Twenty cents a card or six for a dollar.”

“Is that Canadian or U.S.?” the man asked. His skateboard click-clicked when he flipped it. “How do you know it’s the best deal? You do a survey?”

“Serious inquiries only,” Acey said. She picked up an orange megaphone. “As a matter of fact, I did do a survey. The drugstore down the street came in close second with twenty-five cents a postcard. American dollars. I am doing research on worldwide postcard currency.”

“Ooh, exciting,” a woman murmured. “Very exciting.” Her aroma lingered, a familiar guest, in Acey’s nose. Her mother’s lavender dish soap. Acey had left her parents behind, only to find them on her tour.

“Any other questions?” Acey was tired of standing on her feet. Granted, life could be worse and she could be standing on her hands.

A woman jumped up and down. “Can we actually see these picture postcard sights?”

No one was satisfied with a mere glimpse into a snapshot, someone else’s idea of how life should be. They wanted it for themselves: more, more, more.

Eva M. Schlesinger has received the Literal Latte Food Verse Award and is the author of four poetry chapbooks, including three whose covers she designed. Her flash has appeared in Atlas & Alice, Tattoo Highway, Riggwelter, former cactus, and elsewhere. Eva has twice been a Grand Slam contender on The Moth Stage, where she made the audience of 1,400 laugh nonstop.

The first time the county men knock we move east: away from the bedrooms, towards the shabby, sun-fronting den. The dogs follow. The men follow too, on the other side of the walls, their hands moving away the ivy and cupping against the foggy windows. They put an eye and sometimes an ear inside their circled fingers, as if the house were a seashell and we were the churning, restless ocean. The dogs thump and snort, their claws scraping at the murky floorboards. In the east end of the house the ceiling is rotted and blotched. Chunks of it fall down. At night, on our backs, we see the moonlight probing the dry spines of the house, sliding its fingers along the joints.       

Every December the oldest one goes out through the northern door and returns with a Christmas tree. Every April we drag her dead tree through the southern door and leave it on the porch. They make a ghoulish row of pine corpses there, a mortuary of holidays. The county men come again. The dogs bark and snarl. The men rap on the door, stand back at a courteous distance, leave notices. They tape these notices on the front door, next to the dollar bills we have pasted there for good luck.

In the spring of the ninth year the weight of the trees on the porch makes the steps begin to sag and she goes out with a mallet and knocks them down. Now there are five perfect steps that drop off into space, into the yawning gap of the basement. Like a mouth with missing teeth. The county men come and peer down over the rim of the pit, trace its periphery with caution tape, paste more notices on the stairs. The notices flutter bannerlike in the wind. The house is an inverted fortress, with its white flags rustling over the cool dark jaw of the crater. 

In winter we stoke the fire too high. The flames scorch the stones of the fireplace black, send sooty clouds up to the rafters. The rafters waver and split. Chunks of the ceiling fall down. We throw the chunks in the fireplace. Soon there are huge patches of sky where the ceiling used to be. The sun burns its way into the house, casts its tangled nests of light and heat onto the crumbling floorboards. 

We are blazing the house open to the county men. Soon the walls and ceiling are gone, consumed by the fireplace. We are left adrift on an open plateau. Some of us begin to leave, quietly, at night, slinking off the collapsing boards and out onto the land. But she stays. It’s not theirs, she says. Make them fight. She warms herself by throwing the rest of the house into the fire: the splitting doors and the tattered curtains, the broken knobs and faucets that spit and hiss in the flames. The county men wait a polite interval before they surround the fallen house. They circle us with their gun barrels pointing, their boots shaking dirt over the lip of the crater. 

We are building a plank. We lay the long board over the yawning gap of the crater. A plank for us to crawl along, a plank that will surrender us to the county men. But then she breaks away, unnoticed, and crawls into the fireplace that bears the last ashes of our dead house, the fireplace that spikes up like a rampart into nothing. She strikes a match. We turn away from the guns, away from the waiting faces of the county men, away from the whimpering hounds. Just in time to see her hunch in the tinder, her skirt alight, her hair smoking, her flaming skin merging with the bones of the house. Laughing. 

Barbara Barrow is a fiction writer and literary critic who adores all things feminist, fabulist, and surreal. Her debut novel, The Quelling, will be published by Lanternfish Press in Sep. 2018. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, Cease, Cows, and elsewhere. Follow her online at barbarabarrow.com or on Twitter (https://twitter.com/dustyoldbagz). 

Jane was the ugliest woman in the world. This was whispered into her ear the day she was born and never left her body. When she was barely a few months old, her mother entered her in an ugly baby contest and her picture was printed on the back page of some rag, as her father said. He liked to tell this story with a cigar in one hand and a tumbler of scotch in the other, despite the fact that he did not like hard alcohol.

Her mother was enthused by Jane’s ugliness; she made up t-shirts to sell with Jane’s crying toddler face, littered the walls of their small home with hundreds of framed photos of her. She would stand behind Jane while she got ready for school and beam at her daughter’s reflection, “I don’t know where you get it from, Jane, but God was looking out for this family the day you were born.”

It was only a matter of time before Jane went national with her ugliness and by her sweet sixteen, her features were known worldwide. As editor of her high school newspaper, Jane even had to oversee an article written about the dissymmetry of her own face. She perfected a smile not even her mother could love to combat the curious looks she received on a daily basis. It is okay to be lonely, she told herself. She applied to colleges on the other side of the country and prayed she would wake up plain.

The weekend after she moved into her college dorm, Jane got drunk for the first time. Her roommate sat with her while Jane threw up sunset colored daquiri mix and rum. Jane wept into the cool tile and confessed that she was worried she would never be loved for anything more than her ugliness. Her roommate stroked hair and told her everyone was scared of not being loved. When Jane woke up the next morning, her roommate and two suitemates had made her breakfast to combat her hangover and she thought, perhaps she would not be so lonely after all.

When aliens landed during Jane’s college graduation, they were eager to meet her. They begged her to remove her robe and the bright tassels signifying her many academic accomplishments so they could see every inch of her body. Jane politely declined, blushing at the memory of her hands tracing over her skin in the quiet of that morning. A galactic-wide council was formed to evaluate her and they all concurred; Jane was the ugliest woman in the universe. When her mother got the news, she baked Jane a vanilla cake with congratulations written in pink cursive on the icing. Jane hated vanilla cake, but ate it anyway. She knew other people had it much worse than she did.

Jane was well-read, could make paella from scratch, and was a favorite at trivia night. She loved things. Like the word cacophony and baking her own bread. She had many lovers, although she was wary of starfuckers (her mother’s words, not hers) and never settled down. Her friends teased her that if she kept it up, she would leave a wake of broken hearts across the known galaxy. Jane laughed but did not change her ways; ugly still hummed in her blood, her bones sang out with a longing for beauty that she wasn’t even sure she believed in.

She adopted a three-legged cat and dog who had to wear an eye patch. Her house was cozy and warm and she paid a great deal of money to build a wall to keep away photographers and fans. Similar to her mother, she filled the walls of her home with photos, but Jane’s photos were of her friends, her lovers, her cat and poor-sighted dog, the many corners of the universe she was lucky enough to travel. There were no pictures of Jane anywhere in the house and there were no mirrors. But there were books and there was music.

Jane died at seventy-three of a brain aneurysm. She felt nauseous and complained to her cat that she had a headache and then keeled over on her kitchen floor. Her cat did not have time to respond to Jane’s call for aid but viewed it as her last act of love that she did not eat Jane’s face in the 18 hours it took for her body to be found.

The whole universe mourned her. She had an open casket which traveled around the world and into space and people threw flowers and wept and the aliens cried alien tears and touched her face. The galactic council decided that Jane was to be shot straight into the sun; a burial befitting someone of her importance. But the sun could not contain her and Jane returned as shimmering dust and we were all left gleaming and unbearably sad.

Rose Andersen received her MFA at CalArts. She is a writer of strange fiction and stranger non-fiction. She writes to the dulcimer snores of her Boston Terrier Charlotte, and completes her stories despite the endless barrage of puns from her partner, Josh. She is currently editing her memoir, The Heart and Other Monsters which was awarded the Emi Kuriyama Thesis Prize. She is published in Gone Lawn, Ghost Parachute, Jellyfish Review and forthcoming in Forge Lit Magazine. She can be found on twitter @roseandersen.

It happened between photographs sixteen and seventeen. Now, the number on the top of the disposable camera reads: twenty five. Michael holds it up to his face and looks through the eyepiece, framing Snowdonia. The camera is weightless in his hands, hardly there at all. He has the thought it’s a toy, made of cardboard and plastic, nothing more. How does film work anyway — does anyone know? Yesterday, he told Andrea how photography is like magnetism, a mystery to almost everyone, and she laughed. He lowers the camera, tries to imagine her laughing; but because of the angle of her head, the stiffness in her shoulders, the adamant positioning of her hands on her knees, it’s impossible.

‘Wait until we reach the top,’ Andrea says, resting against a huge rock below, breathless. ‘Save it for when we reach the top.’

Again, he checks the number inside the plastic window on top of the camera. He recalls boarding the train three days earlier and taking the first photograph. Andrea took two miniature bottles of wine and two plastic wine glasses from her bag. She held the two bottles to her mouth, pretending to drink. He saw through the eyepiece, her cheeks flushed, her teeth glistening through newly applied lipstick, her eyes creased with smiles. There was the hollow plastic click when he took the photograph, followed by the scratching sound as he turned the wheel, ready for photograph two.

He holds the camera to his face and looks through the eyepiece.

‘I said, wait until we reach the top.’

‘Didn’t take one,’ he says, looking up at the path ahead.

She mumbles something about him looking through the eyepiece for no reason.

In a week’s time, Michael will look through the photographs. Photograph sixteen: Andrea on the opposite side of the dining table, black dress, eyes closed tight, head thrown back, mouth open wide revealing pink gums and white teeth. Then he will shuffle this photograph to the back of the pile. Then photograph seventeen: Andrea’s profile as she looks to her left, her face slightly downturned, her brow furrowed, her gaze looking, not at, but through the floor. When he sees this photograph, he’ll remember again what he’d said.

He’s the first to reach the summit and touch the cairn at the top of a set of stone steps. There’s the sensation of winning, of beating Andrea. He shakes his head, listens to his breathing, concentrates on taking in the view because this is what is important. To the west, the view is covered in cloud. But to the east, the sun is still high enough to fire shards of light through grey, revealing shades of green and bronze and silver. There is too much to take in. But this is the point. When he turns on the spot, he sees the horizon in every direction. There was a time he would have been eager to vocalise his thinking for Andrea, to make mental notes about how it made him feel, so he could tell her.

Andrea climbs the steps behind him. Without looking at the view, she stands next to the cairn, leaning against it with her feet crossed at the ankles. ‘Can you?’ she asks, flicking hair away from her shoulders. He takes the camera from his pocket and holds it to his face. He considers the composition, with Andrea on the left, the cairn in the middle, Wales on the right. He waits for the clouds to move, for the light to increase. And there it is, the final photograph. He pretends to press the button.

‘You take it?’ she asks, climbing down the steps.

He turns away, pretending to see to the camera.

‘Let’s go. It’s freezing up here.’ She makes hard work of the steps and walks into the visitors’ centre to catch the train for the descent.

Turning back to the view, he scans the horizon, looking for the right shot. In a week’s time, after he’s recalled what he’d said between photographs sixteen and seventeen, he will reach the last photograph. Looking at this photograph, he will recall how he’d waited for the light to change, how he’d tested countless views through the viewfinder, and how his finger trembled when he pressed the button.

He reaches the bottom of the steps and sees Andrea looking through the window of the visitors’ centre. She’d watched him take the last photograph. He looks down at the camera, turning it in his hands, then back to Andrea. Photography has something to do with a chemical reaction, something to do with photons hitting film. Maybe memories worked in the same way.
It happened between photographs sixteen and seventeen. He was looking at the menu, and said, ‘I’m not sure, Abby.’ He waited, the air cooler, the restaurant receding about him. Andrea had always been, ‘Andy.’

‘Abby?’ she said, closing her menu, placing it on the table beneath a slow-moving hand.
He waited, his eyes scanning the menu without reading a word. ‘Andy,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure what I want.’

‘You called me, Abby.’ She glanced at the couples on the tables either side of them.
Andrea has the same hurt expression now as she had in the restaurant. He imagines her expression as photons etching themselves onto his memory like a photograph.

On the other side of the glass, and in its reflection, he sees both Andrea and himself raise a hand to say goodbye. They’d given it a go at least. He takes one final look at the view from the top of Snowdon, before setting off down the mountain alone.

Adam was recently placed third in the Cambridge Short Story Prize 2017 and was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award 2018. He’s had stories appear in various publications such as Fictive Dream, Spelk, STORGY, Reflex, Retreat West, Fiction Pool, Ellipsis Zine, Syntax & Salt, Occulum, and many others. Website: adamlock.net. Twitter: @dazedcharacter.

In the half bath Joni is watching Sofia applying lipstick, jam colored, butter smooth and brand new, applying with ginger fingers to not crush the fresh angled plane of the stick. Joni’s on the toilet, skirt hiked, back of crossed legs pressed into yellow carpeted toilet lid cover. She’s wiping under her thighs in hopes that red stippling doesn’t bloom. The fan circulates nothing, buzzes under the light, a fly crypt that casts a sallow haze over the narrow room.

“Oh my god, how much was it?”

“Eighteen.”

“Oh my god.”

“I know, right? My mom’s buying me whatever I want right now. Like, anything. You can try it but it’s really not your color.”

“I’m good.” Joni’s phone pings, a video of disembodied hands holding chopsticks feeding vegan sushi to a capybara on a turquoise sofa. For days her dad has sent her every cute animal video he can find. Ping: hamster picnic. Ping: husky puppies howling while a girl plays the flute. Ping: yawning hedgehog.

<>

At the end of the parking lot surrounding Sofia’s apartment complex they slip into a path torn through a wall of honeysuckle. Down the pitch they skirt the edge of the bog preserve, stick to the wide, crushed limestone trail. It is the fullest, greenest time. Reeds and moss tremble and the peepers trill. Joni has 911 dialed and her thumb ready to send. Sofia holds her keyring in her closed fist with her sharpest key sticking out from between her pointer and middle fingers. Sofia topples off a sandal as the limestone shifts beneath her.

“That’s why I wear Chucks. Just take them off.”

“I just had a pedi. I am not walking barefoot on this.”

They reach the edge, the short but steep incline. Joni plants herself at the top and leans down to pull Sof up. They grasp forearms, Joni’s ash and Sof’s olive. Joni overperforms, more hoist than needed, and Sof falls into her. They topple uphill, legs entwined.

“Oh my god. Sorry.”

“Oh my god. Hilarious.”

“I’m, like, the clumsiest. I’m like a baby. Holy shit. What a dork.”

They laugh together, reclined on the peat, wipe their eyes and fix one another’s make up. Sofia reapplies lipstick. The dusk is honey.

<>

Cresting the grade, they emerge in a lot behind an oil change place. They snake between cars, the metal and asphalt release the day’s heat. They dash across to the turn lane and wait for traffic to clear. The current from passing cars lifts their hair, cools their damp legs and napes. A beige minivan with GO GREEN CLASS OF ‘18 painted on the tinted windows passes, the last vehicle in sight, and they skip toward the berm. The marquis at roadside heralds GREEN SPIRIT FOREVER and is flanked by yards of browning flower sprays, lethargic Mylar balloons, laminated letters, and art.

Under the pierce of the tended ends — perennial ryegrass daggers in gooseflesh triceps — the turf is full and wet on their backs.

“Your boobs look hot.” Joni is talking loudly enough to be heard over the marching band playing “What’s Going On” but is trying not to be seen turning her head or moving her lips.

“Demi balconette. I made my brother wait 45 minutes while I tried a bunch on. I had to lie on the floor of the fitting room to see how they’d look lying down. You know, just in case this goes viral.”

Joni doesn’t anticipate a rest at the key change and is caught in a cackle. Señora Thompson, the Spanish teacher who had to eat half of a peach flavored cannabis gummy (bought for her by her nanny who has a med card) in order to leave the house shushes them for too long, listening to her own breath as it escapes her. “Sshhhh. Sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

Joni and Sof scoff at her, heads turned slightly toward one another, mouth what the fuck.
Brooke Seits tells them to shut up. She’s wearing bracelets from wrist to elbow, a gilded snake around her bicep, a plain white tank top, and fatigue pants. She has been quoted in almost every piece about the school, a senior who quite suddenly had fertile college application essay material and took full advantage.

Eduard is looking up the skirt of the girl lying behind him, that cute, tiny freshman who looks tough enough to eat you. Jack Bostov’s sister. Joni. He’s looking both because she is there and available and because he is hoping to give himself something to fixate on to remove the image of Jordan’s body dead and bleeding on the floor of the chemistry lab. Jordan’s body spent most nights at Eddie’s in the summer before junior year. Jordan’s hands always beat Eddie’s at Mario Kart. Jordan’s mouth sucked down countless cans of beer supplied to them by Eddie’s brother Dominic. Jordan’s feet had the freshest, whitest sneaks in school. Jordan’s face told the whole junior class at the drunk driving assembly that alcoholism had ruined his relationship with his best friend when his best friend’s mom tried to “get with” him during the previous summer. Jordan’s brain knew everyone in school would make an immediate connection to Eddie.

“Oh my god, J, he’s totally looking up your skirt.”

Sofia kicks Eduard’s face, sandal to cheekbone. Fire rushes his skull and he doesn’t feel himself say, “do it again,” but he says it.

“Fucking perv. Freak.” Joni crosses her ankles.

The band quiets and lies down still in formation, joining the demonstrators. Brooke stands, approaches a preset microphone, says “The worst thing about this is that because we weren’t shot, everyone thinks we’re OK.”

Brooke’s words ring. She does not immediately continue. From the stands a young male voice breaks, “Go Vikings!”

The crowd in the bleachers is silent but the field lights moan. (Ping: kitten sleeping on mastiff. Ping: jumping baby goats in flannel pajamas.) Joni sees the bugs above her flooding the glare, gnats and mosquitoes spasming, no apparent intention.

Anne Hensley (left) is a writer, musician, and co-founder of Read and Write Kalamazoo (RAWK), a literacy nonprofit that celebrates and amplifies youth voice by forging avenues for collaboration, creativity, and joy. Anne’s work has been published in Smokelong Quarterly. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her family of humans and dogs. Find her online at https://weirderwonderland.com/.

Everyone fails the first time. It’s what Tucker told you, morning after morning, as you and he sipped coffee from the same old mugs, preparing for another day of training. A flight pattern would be a little crooked, or your x-ray vision wouldn’t permeate that particular thickness of steel, or the simulated baby rescued from the fire would have a have a slight cough. If being a hero were easy, he’d say, everyone would do it.

Packing the mug was dumb. It was fragile, breakable. It wasn’t a stowed bag kind of thing. But you told yourself you couldn’t be your best on Styrofoam coffee. You told yourself that it’d done its time, and it was already chipped anyway, and you didn’t care if it smashed. You told yourself a lot of things.

The truth is, you never intended to fail. Your training group spent the summer clearing pines, tossing them into the back of the rig with a flick of your fingers. You and Tucker raced farm kids in their souped-up trucks, letting them eat your dust on those hot gravel roads. With the strong track records of Gotham and Metropolis, no one looked to Idaho for heroes, but you were determined to show them why they should. Tucker suggested you rethink that, adopt a fake city, sharpen your look. You insisted, hometown was your brand.

Tucker had already tried out twice and refused to believe that the third time held any kind of charm. Sure, he could go freelance, but then you were reliant on tips for daring dos. Go through the show, and you were in the union making union wages. You’d watched each of Tucker’s seasons umpteen times, recorded off NBC, trying to understand why they hadn’t taken him. Lean as he was, he faded perfectly into his alter ego look. Glasses on, and he was a nerd, a wimp, a background guy no one noticed slipping into the phone booth. He was someone out of Queer Eye or the Jeopardy contestant everyone forgot the instant he’d won his hundred thousand. Loosen the tie, though, and he was a lean, mean, ass-kicking machine. The panel of heroes had to have seen that.

You wonder now, as you sip and sip, if he was too alter ego, too middle America. No one wants a hero who’s relatable, Tucker said. In hind sight, you could have ordered custom tights, had your hair done at a salon, consulted with a graphic designer on a logo, or Christ, even had your artsy sister mock something up, but honestly, this was supposed to be about skill. You chose to wear that summer’s faded yoga pants and over-sized cotton tee, pit-stained and rank, under a worn flannel.

You don’t know if you are more aggravated at your lack of vision (super-powered in every sense but the figurative) or at theirs. You saw it in the women’s looks from the moment you entered: disgust. The men (super-, bat-, aqua-, spider-) were merely bemused. The women, though? Their faces said it all. They’d worked too hard to get any kind of respect, and here you were, a mockery. It didn’t matter that you’d aced every test they threw your way. You would be judged by the same standards they’d had to pass. Diana Prince asked your cup size. Natalia Romanova ran a tape around your hips and frowned at the number under her thumb.

Who exactly do you think you are? Did she speak the words, or was it her thoughts you heard? Sometimes, it is hard to know, particularly with that kind of proximity. You thought you’d be Cougra or the Mountain Lioness, something lithe, something inspired by the big cats that slunk from the woods blending with the tawny color of ripened wheat. You were to be the one they never saw coming. Now, you have no idea who you are.

You think of Tucker and his endless reps, bench-pressing semi trucks, flexing afterward, hoping this time the muscles would bulge enough to tear his shirt. You reminded him about scrawny Peter Parker. Tucker said he was the exception that proved the rule. You shot back with Dare Devil, the old rules were shifting, the old prejudices were breaking down. Tucker: Keep telling yourself that.

“We’ll let you know your results in six to eight weeks,” Bruce said, but his eyes and the camera were already on the next candidate. The next candidate’s legs.

So here you sit, back in the humming hotel room with the old coffee mug you’d packed for luck because sometimes all the superpowers in the world are not enough, though, as it turns out, neither are lucky mugs. Your mother bought it as a gift when you were five, filled it with cinnamon Jelly Bellies. A little sweet, a little spicy: your favorite. You cradle it, hot in your hands, plain and white except for your initial, a single S in large block font, like might appear on a football uniform (a man’s sport, but it never felt off limits before). The ceramic is chipped on the lip, exposed and unglazed where it touches you. Objects, you tell yourself, have the right to expose their vulnerabilities, just as people do, and if those vulnerabilities cause inconvenience or discomfort, whose right was it to label the thing flawed?

If you get the job, if they’ll only give you a chance, you’ll emblazon the old mug’s S on your chest, pair it with ring-striped sleeves, lycra knee pants, and sneakers because you never could bear running in boots. So much about heroism needed a rethink.

You glance at your phone, not quite ready to text Tucker back, though you’ve watched it lighting to life every few minutes for the past few hours.

Six to eight weeks, you tell yourself, as if they haven’t already given their answer, as if there’s enough time for the world to change.

Siân Griffiths lives in Ogden, Utah, where she directs the graduate program in English at Weber State University. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Cincinnati Review, American Short Fiction (online), Ninth Letter, Indiana Review, and The Rumpus, among other publications. Her debut novel, Borrowed Horses (New Rivers Press), was a semi-finalist for the 2014 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Currently, she reads fiction as part of the editorial team at Barrelhouse. For more information, please visit sbgriffiths.com.

Down south, just over the threshold of the tropics, winter is marked by raising of tasteful stringlights. They spiral up the neutered Coconut palms and light the Spanish Revival shopping malls, where tidy women with manicures buy whatever they want from spacious and well decorated stores. Their faces are casual and unconcerned. The modern snap of plastic has pushed the leathery smell of cash into a half remembered past. Caye is extra nice to the cashiers and tries not to quip to them about the cost of her new sandals. They were worked into the budget, after all.

Caye spends most of her time wandering around, avoiding her family, searching for silence and solitude. She gets a frosted drink and floats in a tube on the fake river. She peeks at the palm trees passing overhead, checks the soulless blue of the sky beyond. The musak gets loud and soft again as she drifts by the speakers hidden in the landscaping. She knows the average person would be very relaxed here.

Hunger guides her obliquely back to the hotel room.

She sees a rusty beater of a car leaving the resort and it stops for her at the crosswalk. It reminds her of her own car, gathering leaves on its hood back home. It stands out here, daring to be damaged in this bubble of fake beauty. One of the hotel maids is driving, heading back out into the real world. Caye is envious. She crosses quickly, carrying her sandals, the hot asphalt less painful than her fresh blister.

The inside of the room is in a disarray. She straightens up everything so the staff doesn’t trip or have to clean under the family mess. The girls and their father are already out to eat. Caye sighs. She is both offended and relieved that they didn’t wait for her.

Sitting on the balcony, hungry and idle, there are heavy bodies making the occasional splash in the golf course pond. There is a rustle of palmettos, and the occasional caw of a startled bird. Out there, the primordial dark waits at the edge of the resort like a predator.  It waits for a little part of civilization to stray off into the wild. It waits for a tear in the fabric, a vacuum of space to leak into. Caye pictures ink bleeding into water, or blood from her blistered ankle bleeding into gauze.

Her girls and their father return late, and Caye can hear them changing into swimsuits as she dozes. She is too tired to get up, but rouses herself in the silence that follows the click of the hotel room door. She knows she can catch up to them at the hot tub, having their night swim under the palms. The empty resort grounds will echo with the sounds of laughter, and that canned reggae will be off, finally. She might hear sounds from beyond, an evening chorus of insects, the mysterious splashes of Florida’s lake life.

Caye feels pulled by the possibility of nature smearing the edges of this world of landscaped perfection. She puts a jacket over her swimsuit and heads to the pool but on a whim, she passes the gate and heads off to the golf course which is bejeweled with disks of black, murky lakes nestled in hollows and trimmed by ribbons of sidewalk that flirt dangerously with the edge. The sounds of her girls are far away now. No one would ever know if they were calling out, inviting her to swim, or if they were screaming for help. Likewise, they would never know if Caye met with some kind of trouble. How would anyone back at the pool know the difference between screams of terror or joy, fear or esctasy, the violent teeth or the blessed ones? Distance can subdue the ugliest wail to nothing more than a night bird’s call.

After the dark of night, only the whirling emergency lights and the quick disappearance of an egret hint at the reality beneath the lake. Feathers float away and disappear among the reeds. The red stain could easily be the magnificent sunrise, reflecting on the water, promising a harrowing day for some, and a beautiful new one for others.

Shawn McClure  is a visual artist and writer who lives in New Jersey. Her writing has appeared in Noble/Gas Qtrly, Jellyfish Review, and other places around the web and in print.

Saturday afternoons Claude and I watch old horror movies in bed and drink bourbon, I know the first thing he’s gonna ask me for is the oral.

“Okay,” I say, “but did you clean it?”

“I just did.”

“’Cause I’m not going near it unless it’s clean.”

“It’s fine.”

“And if I do that, you need to do something for me.”

“I know.” He puts down his glass. “Anyways, I’ve done it before. I ain’t afraid of it.”

Still, when he starts in it’s like a bird pecking at a tree. Stab, stab, stab. Fumbles to find my clit with his stubby fingers.

“Treat it like a kiss, Claude. Put some softness into it.”

“I am.”

“Start with the clit.”

“You don’t have to tell me what a clit is.”

When I pull down his boxers it smells all freshly soapy down there. I build it up, a breath at a time—pull his whole prick in slow, let it all out. Lips, tongue, two fingers around the base of the shaft, gently with my thumbnail, a few kisses between the wiry hairs on his balls. Trace the vein on the side of his prick with the tip of my tongue; tap it lightly like I’m dabbing a spot of jelly off the back of a spoon.

When he’s about to come, I back out and let it shoot onto the bedsheets. I’m fifty-eight—I’m not swallowing nothing. When we’re done I relax in bed and he fixes us grilled cheese sandwiches. Afterward we wipe our hands on the sheets and he falls asleep in his underwear. I’m wrapped in a nightgown already, my silver hair up. I watch him snoring, his rolls and folds, dyed bronze goatee and pinky rings, and imagine what we’d be like together in our prime, young and beautiful, the whole town jealous when they saw us out together.

<>

When we take our walks Sunday mornings, Claude dresses up just like we’re going out for dinner. We must make quite a sight: him in slacks and suspenders, big belly buttoned under a plaid dress shirt, and chunky me in my purple sweat suit and pink high-tops, shades, hair tied up in a bandana like I’m a retired biker mama.

Sometimes as we walk through the trailer park he puts his arm around my waist like he’s proud to be out with me. “You look like a million bucks,” he says.

“You look like at least a thousand,” I tell him. I look. “Well, maybe eight-fifty.”

It’s been a couple months now since he started spending time at my place. Beth Simpson lives two trailers from us; when she catches me out alone, she starts asking questions.

“Who’s this new guy I seen you with Berta?” She wrinkles her nose. “He’s not a bad-looking man.”

“His name’s Claude.”

“Where’d you meet him?”

“Redi-Mart.”

“Is he from around here?”

“He was staying with a friend.” I pretend to cough. “Well I’ll be seeing you around,” I say.

I don’t tell her the rest of it: “His wife threw him out. He likes the way I go down on him. Right now he’s got nowhere else to go.”

<>

His wife doesn’t want him back, that’s been pretty well established. One day we make our way down I-93 to pick up his stuff at her place in Meriden. Not the best neighborhood, but a nice house with a couple of apple trees in front.

They’ve already got his stuff on the lawn under a tarp—nine or ten boxes and some plaid shirts on hangers draped over the top.

“She’s keeping the furniture,” his daughter Daphne says, as Claude looks over his pile. She’s short and sturdy, like Claude, and has his wet sparkling blue eyes.

“Okay.”

“She says you still owe her for the overdrafts.”

“I’m working on that.”

“That’s fifteen hundred. She says cash only, no more checks.”

“I know.”

“She just wanted me to tell you.” She comes over to kiss his forehead before we leave. “I’ll call you, okay Dad?” she says. “Be good.”

We load everything in and drive off without looking back. When we’re back in town he says, “If the dump’s open let’s get rid of this shit.” Which we do: boxes, shirts, hangers and all whoop! into the landfill, except for a shoebox of family pictures he brings home and slides under his side of the bed.

<>

“There’s only one reason these guys are interested in you, Roberta,” my mother used to say, and my grandmother, and even my sisters, before we stopped speaking to each other. So thanks to them I have that in mind every morning when I wake up beside him, which I have to ignore, because who has time when I have to do my makeup, blow out my hair, iron an outfit, get myself to work, live my life?

At night in bed if he’s drunk enough he’ll start some deep relationship talk, like that’s what he’s been thinking about all day.

“It’s not gonna be all drama you know.”

“I know.”

“You’re not always gonna need to pay for everything.”

“Don’t worry about it Claude.”

“I got some other things to offer.”

I’m leaning my head into his chest, looking across the bedroom, and he’s stroking my shoulder. “We’ll get there Claude,” I tell him. And what do I mean by that? “We’ll figure things out.”

His hand is resting on my hip; sometimes I feel it go limp as he drifts in and out. Just before he falls asleep he says, “You’re a special lady, Berta.” His tone is all bourbon and sleepiness, as if he’s half-dreaming already, though I don’t know him well enough to imagine what he dreams about. “Never seen anyone do it like you do,” he tells me, letting his voice go husky and loving, and I don’t have the heart to let him know I’ve heard it all before.

Timothy Boudreau’s work appears or is forthcoming at Fiction Southeast, Small Print Press, The Fictional Café, and Typishly, among others. His collection Saturday Night and other Short Stories is available through Hobblebush Books. Find him on Twitter @tcboudreau or at timothyboudreau.com.