Lost Balloon

The lodge sits in the middle of cornfields, the cornfields sit in the middle of the Midwest, the moose sits on top of the lodge, and Ray and I sit on top of the moose. Ray’s in front, my arms looped around him as if I’m a passenger on a motorcycle. On a motorcycle, the wind would be whipping through our hair, mouths clamped tight against bugs. But the moose is stone still, made of molded plastic, and my mouth is open, licking the back of Ray’s neck.

“See, over there.” Ray points to a small fire in a nearby field.

“Bonfire?” I ask, leaning back to adjust the straps on my lavender taffeta bridesmaid’s gown, third one this year, all of varying pastel colors and equal never-to-be-worn-again hideousness. Ray left his tux jacket in the pickup he drove us in from the reception to the Lodge. We waited long enough for Betsy, my college roommate, and his cousin Ben, to drive off, their car trailing aluminum cans, before making out in his truck.

When we came up for air, he said, “You gotta see the moose,” and with a few shots of tequila in me, I said, “Sure, show me the moose.” And now here we are.

“Not a bonfire,” Ray says as we survey the fields, the first fire burning in a perfect circle, another spot of flames appearing in a neighboring field.

He twists toward me, one hand holding onto the moose’s antler for balance. I lean forward to kiss him, but he grabs my chin with his free thumb and forefinger. “Aliens,” he says, and my tequila haze subsides for a moment as I consider that I’m sitting on a roof with someone I met the night before at a rehearsal dinner, who I know virtually nothing about other than he’s Ben’s cousin and he lives in this town where they grew up and works at the paper mill.

I laugh, but he says, “Really,” and turns my face to purview the fields as small fires sprout around us. “I think they’re aiming for the animals,” he says, “like a game.” I picture the computer game my mom plays obsessively that involves collecting livestock. In the field closest to us, I see what I think is the outline of a cow go up in flames.

“I’ve asked them about it,” Ray continues, “but there’s a language barrier.”

I kicked off my lavender-dyed heels at the bottom of the metal ladder we climbed to get to the roof. I think I could make it down myself if I had to, even though one of the rungs is split in half and Ray had grasped my forearm and pulled me up. I saw a pay phone inside the door of the Lodge, but who to call? Betsy and Ben on their way to the Bahamas?

I lean back, size Ray up. His black hair curls up slightly over his tux shirt collar, his blue eyes shiny from the reflection of the neon 1384 sign. He might be crazy, but I want to kiss his chiseled cheekbones.

“See?” I say. “My married friends can’t do this,” and I rip open the buttons of this almost perfect stranger’s shirt. “Tell me about the aliens,” I say, touching his chest. We rock atop the moose, and he recounts how they only come to him here, in this place. How their forms are pure light. I reach forward and grab an antler, crawl over Ray so that I’m in front, lean forward and hug the moose’s neck. Ray hikes up my dress, whispers in my ear, says that sometimes when they come he goes with them, and I let myself go, watch the burning circles and imagine they’re fireflies.

He drops me off at my hotel that night and I stand on the sidewalk, my heels dangling from my hand, and watch him drive away. There’s a faint scent of smoke in the air.

The next day I help Betsy’s mom with post-wedding activities, fold the wedding dress into a box, offer to drop it at the dry cleaners. Betsy’s mom touches my hand before I leave, says, “It’ll happen for you, too, dear, when you find the right man.” I swallow hard, hug her. I hear my own mom’s words before I left to come to the wedding, when I told her about my latest breakup: Men don’t buy the cow when the milk’s free. My dad: She’ll get married when pigs fly. They’ve never set foot on a farm, yet they throw around farm animal idioms like they’re the McDonald’s.

On my way to the airport that evening, I stop at the Lodge. I don’t see Ray’s truck, but I walk inside and the woman tending bar says, “He’s not here. Disappeared last night. Probably on a bender again.” I nod and walk back outside. I look up and wonder, but the only thing hovering above me in the dusk is the moose head.

It’s almost dark by the time my plane takes off. I’m alone in my row, in the window seat. I slouch, look toward the ground. Bright circles light up the fields, perfect circles of flames. I sit up straight, lean forward for a better view. Could it be? Off to the side of one of the circles, there’s a smaller fire, an organic shape. I press my face against the window, stare at the misshapen spot. A campfire? We inch higher into the sky. Streaks of color emanate from the smaller fire, liquid lavender fingers bleeding orange. I imagine starch-stiff taffeta melting into earth. From this height, a membrane-thin rim of pink lines the horizon, and I reach toward it, but my hand meets glass. On the other side, blackness. But further off, just beyond, white light beams.

Lisa Ferranti’s fiction has been a Top 25 finalist in a Glimmer Train Family Matters contest, twice short-listed for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, a Reflex Fiction contest finalist, and highly commended in the 2018 Hemingway Shorts contest and National Flash Fiction Day 2018 micro competition. Recent stories have appeared in Literary Mama, FlashFlood Journal, Hemingway Shorts, the 2018 NFFD Ripenings Anthology, and Reflex Fiction. She lives with her husband, son and daughter near Akron, Ohio.

Didi Wood’s stories appear in Smokelong Quarterly, Cotton Xenomorph, Vestal Review, Jellyfish Review, and elsewhere. She’s fond of the serial comma, board games, and creepy dolls. Often she is festooned with cats. Find her on Twitter @DidiWood.

She couldn’t choose between one balloon planet or two. Saturn with its lush rings beckoned to her like a siren in the sea, but she pitied Uranus a bit because it wasn’t much to look at and had an unfortunate name. In the end she settled on Jupiter. The size almost made her capsize, but the eye of the storm hypnotized her. She held on tight. In some small way she imagined it would take her to the outer depths of space, although she did not know how it would do such a thing.

Skipping down the New York City sidewalk, she gripped her Jupiter balloon. It bashed into other people’s heads, a planet far too large to keep on a string. She failed to notice the disgruntled looks of those whose days had been disrupted by her round joy. Jupiter and her, a team uncaring and unbeatable.

Most thieves think to steal purses, but this city slicker with his callous lean and his sideways stare saw gold in the Jupiter balloon. He swiped at the string as she skipped on by, causing the girl to scream and scramble to reconnect with her planet. The thief’s satisfied sneer came a moment too soon, for they both lost in the end.

On that New York City corner, they each watched with regret as Jupiter flew back into the sky. They both felt the weight of having touched something of immense value release, though they would later disagree on what that value was. As they watched it float away, the girl wished she had selected the Uranus balloon after all. At least then it would have felt a little love for a little while. Plus the pain of loss would have been less acute, for Jupiter’s size meant she had to watch it disappear into the sky for that much longer.

Kristen Seikaly is a Michigan native discovering the culture of city-living in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in Thrice Fiction. With two degrees in music, she now works as a freelance writer and voice teacher. Find her at www.KristenSeikaly.com or @KristenSeikaly.

Whenever I see her skunk-streaked hair and black eyes, I
feel broken eggshells under my feet. Oh fidget. I smile in
a pinch, that’s what my momma taught me, to be polite while
waiting in the line outside the old Flame movie theatre. She
yammers like we never left off, and I listen like I’m keeping
my lips just above rising water. I look up into the dull night
sky & see the red pulse of the weather satellite passing over. I
interrupt her spew. Sure feels like rain, I mutter, my clenched
fists shoved into my tight jean’s pockets.

M.J. Iuppa lives on a small farm near Lake Ontario’s shores. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

E, my 15-year-old daughter, has invited me to her therapy session. We sit side-by-side on a couch across from her psychiatrist. Her doctor stands and billows a sun yellow yarn blanket overhead, letting it fall on E’s lap where it’s tucked securely around her legs. Their comfort ritual.

I am a guest here.

 E talks about her drive for perfection, how the gap between what-she-is and what-she-wants-to-be is vast. How her depression takes root there. Her eyes on her therapist, never on me. She reveals her fear of being abandoned and suddenly I am on guard, tallying up the ten thousand hours.

“Don’t you know I would never leave you?” I say. “I’ve always been right here.” I slap the couch cushion space between us. She looks at me now and where I expect fight I see despair.

The gap between what-she-thinks-I-am and what-I-think-I-am is vast.

I remember E when she was a few days old. We are back from the hospital: me, E, and her Dad. We have this bed called a co-sleeper, it’s a small crib attached to our bed so E can sleep close to us, and I can easily reach over to nurse in the night. We used it with her older sister M, and it worked very well. But E isn’t like M–she’s fussy. Doesn’t like to be out of my arms. Even being swaddled in the blanket won’t do. And of course it wouldn’t. After nine months of womb dark and warm, how could a blanket help? Her tiny body contains only one cup of blood.

Her Dad is different this time too. Easier to irritate. Tired, all the time. He’s deeper into his medical training than he was when M was born. Medical Board exams are coming up and we have to decide where he will pursue his fellowship. A big move away from our city with two young children. It’s daunting.

E cries a lot. She doesn’t like being separated from me. Our pediatrician is old school, been practicing for over forty years. “Let her cry it out,” he says. “Don’t breast feed her too much.”

So this time, the co-sleeper won’t work. E senses me so close and wants to be in my arms all night. It makes her Dad do this silent rage thing, an anger that needs no sound to go noticed. We move her to a big crib in a small room on the other side of our apartment. I can’t put anything in with her because she might suffocate so she’s just in pajamas. In the dark. So far away from me that we can’t even smell each other.

And she cries. Wails. Endlessly.

It turns my bones inside out. My breasts swell, dribbling milk.

I look forward to the nights her Dad is on call and has to stay over at the hospital. On those nights, E is in bed with me. She slips into my shell, our eyes lock, her lips purse against my nipple. We drift to sleep and stay that way for hours.

But most nights she is alone. Eyes wide to the dark, tiny balled up fists flailing. Her throat cried raw as breath becomes whimpers becomes silence which can mean anything but all of it is a kind of death.

Now, in her therapist’s office, I share this memory with E a few weeks shy of her Sweet Sixteenth birthday. The therapist—skilled, professional—even I can see her eyes widen a bit. “It’s no wonder.” We all agree. No wonder.

I ask E, “Can I hug you?” And she nods. I scoot across the cushions and cradle her in my arms. I pull back so she can look at me, I want her to see how deep this runs. “I am so sorry,” I say. She cries and I cry. In this moment, I’m not good mother, not bad mother. I’m witness. You did live these things and they are as you remember.

And there is time. Her face still fits in my hands.

Lisa Mecham is a writer living in Los Angeles and she finds bios boring. Instead, please read the work of Jayy Dodd, Jasmine Sanders, Colette Arrand, Joyce Chong, b: william bearhart and María Isabel Álvarez.

May and Tom were an attractively odd-looking couple. May wore suits she bought in thrift stores and fedoras she decorated herself, and Tom liked stripes. Both of them thought Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl got a bad rap. May could whistle with her fingers and make sounds like an owl with her cupped palms, and Tom could burp the alphabet but didn’t. He did, though, make bubbles on his tongue that floated a foot toward the sky before bursting. She read the dialogue in books out loud, even on the train. He had done ballet until he was seventeen and could still stand on his tippy toes.

They met at the housewarming party of mutual friends. Both of them gravitated fast to the kitchen and spent the night talking there over under and around people coming in to get beer or dip or glasses or a dustpan and brush. Their conversation wasn’t deep but it flowed well. They spent ten minutes keeping track of how many people entered the kitchen wearing something green vs something red. Red won. Another ten minutes inviting everyone who opened the fridge to take a swig from the tabasco sauce. If they did, May would take a swig with them. If they didn’t, Tom would take a swig alone. They went to a coffeeshop for ice-cream, then to May’s place. They listened to Kid Koala’s version of Moon River and watched on YouTube the English National Ballet perform to Queen songs. Tom stayed the night and in the morning while she took a shower he made the bed neatly and brewed her a cup of tea. More dates followed, then space cleared in each other’s cupboards, then a move to an apartment all of their own and tomato plants and fresh herbs growing on the fire escape.

“What do you think about children?” May asked.

“Not a fan,” said Tom. “Smelly, expensive, and a fifty-fifty chance you get a monster.”

“I’m pregnant.”

“That’s great! I always wanted children!”

May knew Tom was lying, and knew too he was lying because he loved her, and she felt a surge of love for him on account of this that was so strong it demanded a physical manifestation. She squee-ed!

(At the same time, she wondered if his decision to lie about wanting children would one day be a spike between them, the root of resentment, and so after she squee-ed she searched his face for the future, and squee-ed again until he squee-ed too.)

In the hospital she was giving birth in one room and another family were giving birth in the room across the way. “Are you filming it?” asked the father of the other family to Tom as they both grabbed coffees from the vending machine. “You’ve got to film it.”

“I don’t have a camera,” said Tom.

“Not even on your phone?”

“I don’t have a phone.”

“I’m sure you can find a camera somewhere. That’ll be with you forever.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” agreed Tom, still no intention of filming it.

“I’d love to see your wife give birth,” said the man.

It took a thousand years between Tom putting the coin in the coffee machine and the coffee coming out.

“If I film it,” he said, “I’ll let you take a peek.”

Their daughter was gorgeous. Her eyes enormous and jet-black, like they belonged to a teddy bear instead of a baby girl. Tom thought he’d been in love with May, but holding his daughter he knew he could never love anyone as much as he loved this child, this girl he’d made all by himself. He told this to May, who said she felt the same way. But she couldn’t feel the same way – nobody could feel the same way Tom felt. Nobody ever had or ever would.

They called her Max.

She was deaf and they all learnt sign language. Sometimes Tom dreamt about him and Max making up their own sign language, that May wouldn’t know. If you combine our names, he said, you get Mom. Or Tax. She liked vegetables more than fruit. She’s a dancer, he said. She can be anything she wants to be, said May. She wants to be a dancer, said Tom. He held her with one arm and manipulated her feet into pointe with the other. You shouldn’t do that, said May. Tom didn’t say anything, but when May wasn’t around he didn’t stop.

May and Max were badly hurt in a car crash and Max’s legs would never be the same again. She’d never dance. Tom realized, belatedly, that the hospital had made a terrible mistake, mixing up his child with the daughter of that other family, the one who’d given birth across the room. He wrote to the hospital, email after email after email, and called them day and night, night and day. He refused a paternity test. He stopped going out. He saw families from the fire escape with daughters that could be his, daughters with two normal legs. It was some time before he realized May and Max had gone.

He got a fish he called Unconditional Love and forgot to feed it so it died.

He missed his dad so he called him, but the number was disconnected. It took him a week to find out he’d moved house a year ago and had a new number. He called the new number but when someone answered he remembered why he’d stopped talking to his dad, and he hung up without saying anything. When the phone rang back several times throughout the evening he ignored it. He’d never be able to answer the phone again.

He didn’t like his shoes anymore, so he threw them away, from the fire escape.

Then his pants.

His shirt, his tie, his socks, his glasses.

All he kept was the tomato plant, which had one sole cherry tomato, or one normal tomato that hadn’t yet grown the whole way.

Christopher James lives, works, and writes in Jakarta, Indonesia. He has previously been published online in many venues, including Tin House, Fanzine, McSweeney’s, SmokeLong, and Wigleaf. He is the editor of Jellyfish Review.

She lifted up the card from the plastic case and saw “think of a reason to keep smiling” in glossy gold print with a bouquet of multicolored, unidentifiable flowers sketched beneath it. She thought she had only rolled her eyes, but it was clear that she had audibly huffed when the woman behind her stopped to peer at the card and when, as she whipped her head around, the woman pushed her cart along quickly, past the produce, away from her.

She gripped the card trying to sort out why she was so angry. She reasoned at first that she wasn’t genuinely irritated, just scoffing at something cheesy in a way that was small, calm, composed. But she felt the outrage swelling, and she knew it was more than that. She looked down at the dainty shimmering letters, and she wanted to crumple the card in her hands. She took a deep breath in a way that would make her therapist proud and when she opened her eyes, the feeling struck her in a dull, disappointing way—the feeling wasn’t small and composed, and it wasn’t really anger either. It was ostracization, a sense of distance between her and all these people around her, an incredulity at the thought that this simple saying could be deep or meaningful to anyone. Shards of memory began slicing their way through as she realized she’d felt this way once, before she’d lost her son. In a burst of energy, she shoved through the mass of cheerful Sunday shoppers and plopped the card down on the conveyer belt.

She generally made a habit of avoiding eye contact in grocery store checkout lines because she knew it encouraged conversation, and this kind of small talk was one of the worst for her anxiety, but she also knew that at this particular grocery store it was unavoidable. She smiled vaguely at the cashier who practically chirped in response and whose greeting wave was so enthusiastic that all of the little pins on their vest began shaking.

“Oh look at how cute this card is!” The cashier lifted the card off the belt and slid it across the scanner. When that was met with only a silent nod, they pushed: “I’ll bet this is for someone really special?”

She knew it had been inflected as a question, so she managed a soft “Oh. Yes.”

“That is so sweet—” and then the cashier was telling some elaborate story about a Valentine’s Day date, and as she slid her debit card into the chip reader and smiled politely along with the story, her mind went blank trying to remember her last Valentine’s Day, a Valentine’s Day, any Valentine’s Day in the last few years, and she knew she couldn’t remember because no matter which Valentine’s Day her brain landed on, the memory would be the same: she’d been alone.

In the car, she balanced the card carefully on her lap before she pulled out of the parking lot. She had declined a bag when the cashier offered her one because she didn’t want to pay the bag fee—she was embarrassed enough already having spent a few dollars on the card considering every time she looked at it she felt a bit sick and, worse, despite what she’d said to the chipper cashier, she didn’t have a “someone special” to give the card to. She supposed she could send it to her sister, maybe draw something like a smile with some of its teeth knocked out, but in her haste to purchase the card, she’d forgotten to grab the matching envelope. And anyway, even that felt like a pretty pathetic plan.

As she climbed the stairs, her apartment was silent, the same way it was always silent when she got home. There was a slight electrical hum she could pick up on when she really focused, but there was nothing else—no laughter, no greeting, no feet shuffling across the wood floors toward her. When she reached the top, she looked up to see a framed picture of her son. She stayed still for a few minutes, just absorbing the details: this picture was several years old, so his hair was thin and wispy and his teeth were small and round and she could spot where drool was just beginning to collect in the corners of his smile. She knew that anyone else would probably miss these tiny details, not knowing that as a baby he always drooled a bit this way, not noting the way his teeth had almost magically transformed from circular little nubs to fully formed incisors, canines, molars.

Suddenly, all in a rush, she grabbed the photo down off the wall and, still grasping the card firmly in her hand, she began moving into the living room, pulling down each of the framed photos as she went. She continued this way through every room of her home: the kitchen, the bedroom, her son’s old room, collecting every picture she’d framed and hung over the years into her arms until she was scared she would collapse and smash them all. She returned to her bedroom and set them all, a massive pile, down on the floor. Carefully, she placed the card down next to them and then slowly, methodically, she began to arrange the photos around it.

When she was done, she stared hard at the strange collage in front of her. Folding the cover of the card back, she found the blank page inside. After another quick survey of the photos around her, she uncapped a nearby pen and began writing:

I am forever, perpetually smiling. And yet, see my teeth? Forced. Here in these   photographs, these faces, these selves. I don’t recognize these photographs. The faces of strangers.

And with that she grabbed the card, jammed it into the drawer of her nightstand, and began returning each of the photographs to their proper spots along the walls.

Liz Howard is a queer single mom living in Philadelphia with her troublesome three-year-old & very loud beagle. She has work in: Split Lip Magazine, FIVE:2:ONE, bedfellows magazine, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @Mother_Faulkner.

When you play Monopoly with your brothers, let them win, she says. Boys don’t like to lose, especially not to girls. She’s patting her face with a powder pad, as though her features will fall off if they’re not pressed in place. When she’s out at a dance, I sneak into her room and play at being her, being beautiful, being good with make-up. When a boy asks you out, always say yes. It doesn’t matter if he’s not the best looking, the cleverest, the funniest – it takes a lot of courage for a boy to ask a girl out, so be grateful and always, always say yes to boys. I take her lipstick and pout as I smear the scarlet grease over my too-thin lips on my too-fat face with its barely-there eyes. I can never look like her, but I can do as I’m told.  And so, I did. I said yes to boys. All the boys. The ugly boys, the short boys, the boys who smell like sewers and the boys with urgency mapped out in spots on their red faces. When your brothers get up in the morning, draw their curtains, make their beds – be useful. The liquid eyeliner almost makes me have eyes. Not eyes like hers – not violet, not startling, but at least existing. My mother made me easy – a thing she never was to me. I’m sure it wasn’t her intention, but I was nothing if not obedient, so I said yes over and over again. Until I finally got it, finally realised what I’d become. I used her cold cream to erase the face I’d painted. Then I said no. I said no over and over again. But the boys told me they’d heard about me and no really meant yes, and did what they wanted anyway. That hurt more, so I went back to being the girl my mother made me – the yes-girl, the old-before-her-years girl, the never-as-pretty-as-her-mother-so-beggars-can’t-be-choosers girl. Now she complains that I never gave her grandchildren. Oh, but I did, Mother Dear. So many half-formed girls that neither of us got to hold or mould.  Small mercies, Mother. Be grateful.

Karen Jones is from Glasgow. Her stories have appeared in numerous magazines and e-zines and have been included in print anthologies including Discovering a Comet and more micro fiction, The Wonderful World of Worders, An Earthless Melting Pot, City Smells, 10 Red, HISSAC 10^th Anniversary, Bath Short Story Anthology, Ellipses: One, Bath Flash Fiction Volume Two and Flash Fiction Festival One. She’s been successful in short story and flash competitions including Mslexia, Flash 500, Writers Bureau, The New Writer, HISSAC and Words with Jam. Her story collection, The Upside-Down Jesus and other stories, is available from Amazon.

When the house lamps got to talking, they talked about the sun. They whispered so no one would hear. What have you have seen? What have you heard? What does it mean? They marked the rising and setting of the sun. They kept a record of shadows—of figures passing windows, tree limbs crooking along tabletops, branches and ladders and lampposts falling slowly across their brass laps. The house lamps with their screwed in bulbs, had never cast shadows like these. What light is this? Who can contain it? Who would dare try? What manner of light brandishes even darkness, sharpening the edges of shade, gashing boundless space at will?

News and observations were dispatched regularly. Like sentries, the lamps in the living room sent word to the front hall. Tell the lamps in the master bedroom what we have seen from these, the largest windows. Announce it to the second bedroom, proclaim it in the guest bedroom, read it aloud in the study, discuss it in the den, lay it out in the laundry room. News of even fluctuations in brightness caused by clouds eclipsing the sun broke through the house like prophecy. Each message was relayed down the line until it reached the last and least of the lights, a chipped ceramic table lamp on a workbench down in the cold, dark basement.

The lamps contemplated the mysteries of the sun in the form of fabulous tales. In some of the tales, the sun ruled over the world of lamps with intimidation. In some of the tales, the sun bestowed the warmth of a great glory. In some tales the sun burned with a desire to destroy. In some tales, the lamps were being readied to one day inherit the throne room of the sky.

As time went by, the lamps grew accustomed to sunshine and their regard for mystery slowly fell away. They grew even to loathe the sun as a bore and an intrusion and a showoff. Their story-making continued, but only as an inside joke, a cruel game aimed at the one lamp who was naïve enough to still believe the stories—that chipped ceramic table lamp down in the basement. They told all manner of fictions about the Great Light—as if it was a person, as if it was coming to one day permanently erase all shadows, as if it was on the lookout for chipped basement lamps drowning in darkness, so that it might usher them into the throne room of the sky. The house lamps all laughed behind the back of the chipped lamp.

One day the homeowners moved out. The carpets were rolled up and hauled off. The furniture was sold. The floors and walls were stripped. Only the lamps were left behind. But even so, the electricity in the house was disconnected. Finally, on the sunniest day of summer, a crane with a wrecking ball moved into position in the yard. It all was going to be knocked down to make room for condos. This was the end. The lamps were so beside themselves with despair, they had not passed any of this news to the basement.

The chipped lamp in the basement had sat in an all-consuming darkness of many days wondering what was happening, having heard only sobs from upstairs,. Even the little night light above the workbench had gone out. Don’t worry, little night light, the lamp said. I have it on good authority that there is a great light called daylight, a gift from the brightest of all lights the sun, which shines like ten thousand lamps. We will see the great light someday, you and I both. The great light will peel away the ceiling and take down the walls and light like we have never known, it will come flooding in. And where there is no ceiling, my friend there is nothing to separate us from the throne room of the sky.

David Drury lives in Seattle, Washington. His fiction has been published in Best American Nonrequired Reading, broadcast on National Public Radio, and is forthcoming in Jellyfish Review and Zyzzyva. He has been kicked out of every casino in Las Vegas.