The day they announce the draft, Mom starts humming again.

She used to do that a lot—a lingering habit from her musical theatre days. Soft, almost imperceptible tunes and melodies through pursed lips. A low vibration that followed her through the halls, into the kitchen, out the front door, like a perfume or a shadow.

I used to love to hear her hum; now, I hate it.

I know it means she’s entering the draft.

It’s unlikely she’ll be chosen, Dad reminds her. A lot of people are entering, volunteering, to be sent away—wherever they want. Whenever they want.

“Crazier things have happened,” she reminds him. As if we need to be reminded. As if our life isn’t a constant reminder. As if the sudden reappearance of her humming hasn’t already segmented our lives into before and after.

Before: when he was gone.

After: when—if—her name is chosen. He’ll be back with us as soon as she gets the chance to go through.

The announcement of the machine—the flurry of news articles declaring MAJOR SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH – MONUMENTAL LEAP FOR MANKIND, the ribbon cutting ceremony, the human trials, the inevitable backlash from the religious groups—had stirred something within her that we were all sure had died long ago. Yet, there it was—a spark, a smile, and a simple melody lingering behind.

With the promise of the draft looming in front of her, she becomes the mom I knew from years ago. Before the swirl of police lights lulled me to sleep, before the MISSING posters, before the kids at school all knew my name and whispered it like a curse word in the hallways. Before the endless onslaught of nightly news stories about us—about the family left in the wake of tragedy, about a missing boy.

She’d only gone inside for a minute.

That’s what she swore to the police. She never left us outside alone, especially not him—the youngest, only three-years-old. But she’d heard the phone ring, and, thinking it to be my school, or maybe her mother, she ran inside to answer it. She couldn’t have been gone more than a minute. She was sure. She hadn’t wanted to disturb his play. She hadn’t wanted to drag him inside, on such a beautiful day, for nothing.

Life is segmented by moments. Some small. Some not so small.

All—since the invention of this machine—changeable.

When she came back outside, he was gone. Vanished. I’m so fucking sick of hearing the words into thin air.

“When I get chosen,” she tells me late one night, brushing wet hair away from my face. “I won’t go inside. I won’t answer that fucking phone.”

I wonder what it will be like: one moment he won’t be here, the next he will. I wonder if I’ll remember the before.

We will be a family unscarred by the side effects of time, of moments. Of before and after.

But we will be a family again because of time. Because of the mutability of it.

Mom begins to hum again. She drags her fingers through my hair. It hurts, but I don’t tell her. I imagine her nails drawing blood from my scalp. I imagine her tearing me apart.

 

Hannah Gordon is a writer and editor living in Chicago. Her work has appeared in Hypertrophic Literary, Jellyfish Review, WhiskeyPaper, and more. She is the managing editor of CHEAP POP. When she’s not writing, she’s reading or hanging out with her two cats, Luna and Neville. If she could time travel, she’d go back and warn herself about the consequences of waxing your own eyebrows.

My future wife and I sit in adjacent booths in a coffee shop when the internet crashes and we look up from our dating apps like groundhogs discovering our shadows. She lifts her delicate hand, her arched finger like a stamen, and pushes an imaginary button between us. “Bingo,” she says.

Behind her, two people jump up and hurry through the front door, their coffee forgotten on the table.

“I’m Lily,” she says from the seat across from me. In all the commotion, I hadn’t seen her move. She has a face so beautiful it seems almost impossible for her to exist. After the way things ended with my ex, it’s easy to feel like I’d never be able to hold on to that kind of beauty again.

“Tell me something that isn’t on your Bingo profile,” she says.

“I’m not as funny as I think I am,” I say.

“No one is.”

“I guess I’m pretty lonely.”

“The human condition.”

I suddenly want to tell her something she can’t render mundane. “I got a boner once when I was petting a cat.”

She laughs so hard that her dark eyes narrow and her nose wrinkles, and I want to be the only person in the world to ever cause that to happen again.

“Will you marry me?” I ask.

“Let’s start smaller,” she says.

“How about a scone?”

“Deal.”

I go to the counter, but it appears all the employees have walked away. The coffee machine gurgles and the refrigerator whirrs. Then they both stop at the same time. The electricity has gone out.

I turn and watch the ceiling fan above Lily slowly come to a rest. The small group sitting at the back booth begin stuffing croissants and bagels into their bags and then push out into the street.

Lily and I are alone.

“Everyone’s gone,” I say. A dozen people run past the front window, car horns blaring at them. “Should we go?”

Lily glances around the empty coffee shop. “I want to finish my coffee first. I’m tired of running away.”

I return to my chair. “I don’t want this moment to end either,” I say.

She laughs again, but this one is different. It’s a defense mechanism. “Here’s something I don’t write on my profile,” she says. “I’m uncomfortable outside the noise of the world. If I’m seen in any way, I run.”

And in that moment, I feel I can truly see her in a way I hadn’t before. She’s a bird, wings extending, testing the wind before launching into the air.

“If it makes you feel any better, no one ever notices me,” I say.

She nods. “Not until all the distractions are gone. And then…”

We lapse into a perfect silence where we drink coffee and spiritually lean into each other. The coffee shop is so quiet now that I can hear my nervous system buzzing in my ears.

“Why did your last girlfriend leave you?” she asks.

“Who said she left me?”

“You did. When you said you were lonely and you weren’t funny. Like you’d been spending a lot of time wondering what went wrong.”

I can’t argue. “My ex left me because she said I didn’t fight for her. Which I didn’t. But I would’ve also had to fight this really huge guy from her work.”

“You have to choose your battles.”

Plates rattle in the kitchen and silverware clatters to the floor. I look to the counter hoping an employee has returned, and maybe I’ll be able to order more coffee and drag this moment out for as long as possible. No one is there.

“I haven’t given a Bingo to anyone in the app for weeks,” she says. “But I keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. And I never look up.”

“I Bingo everyone,” I say.

She shakes her head with a smile. “Sounds pathetic.”

“Didn’t I mention that? I’m pathetic too.”

We lock eyes as she takes her last sip of coffee. “Yes,” she says.

“What?”

“I’ll marry you.”

“I don’t think I was kidding,” I say.

Her eyes close and her lips part enough for me to catch a glimpse of her top teeth. “I don’t think I am either. Life is a risk, and I stopped taking risks for some reason.”

Then someone rams into my back and I lunge forward, my coffee spilling across the table. A guy moves toward Lily in a shirt that says DON’T HAVE A COW across the back.

The guy staggers and then falls onto her lap. She tries to push him away, but he clutches her around the waist. I grab a fistful of his hair and it peels off, scalp and all, and ends up as a clump of goo in my hand.

The man lifts himself up until he and Lily are face to face and takes a hold of the back of her chair with both hands.

“That’s my fiancée!” I yell and it feels good to say it. Then the man gurgles a wet inhuman sound and Lily punches him in the forehead.

That’s when it becomes clear. Something has shut down the internet and all the power, and with it, the zombie alarm must have been disabled too. Here I am with most interesting girl I’ve ever met, probably will ever meet, and she is about to be eaten right in front of me while my ex and her massive bald protector are still alive and well somewhere across town.

I leap forward and grab the zombie’s shoulders. His flesh bunches in my hands like slices of bologna, but I hold tight as Lily lifts her knees and pushes against his chest with her feet. He has an iron grip on the back of her chair, his mouth spitting and spraying as he snaps at her face. I widen my stance and yank, but even combined with the pressure Lily is exerting, we are all locked in this position.

I look over the zombie’s shoulder and there is Lily looking back at me.

“Bingo!” I yell.

“Bingo!” she yells back.

I have chosen my battle.

 

Josh Denslow’s debut collection NOT EVERYONE IS SPECIAL will be published in 2019 by 7.13 Books. He plays the drums in the band Borrisokane and edits at SmokeLong Quarterly.

Zarina was as gold as the Colombian sun and intended on staying that way. Her body like wax, shining hot beneath the heat. Beetles and ants trembled in her wake, long tongue unsheathed at her command. Princess. Warrior. Black eyes like the moon at totality. The floor of the rainforest damp and sweet beneath her toes.

When it was announced that King Midas was in search of his true love, taken from him by the curse of some Warlock, the amphibians of the forest gathered in panicked whispers. They always think it’s us, one said, black speckled body shimmering with moisture, blue skin sharp against the deep brown of the rainforest’s earth. I am not waiting to be changed. There is no better body to be had. The red-bodied frog with blue limbs raised herself in agreement. I do not want to be handled, she said. I do not want to be kissed by human men.

Zarina sat inside her new flesh. Listened. The most poisonous of all the dart frogs, the Warlock had told her. He had not hesitated when she called for him, came quickly without question to her aid. Your new body will have enough toxins to kill up to twenty men. She had not intended on putting that power to use, planned only to stay deep within the rainforest, surrounded by her new people. But it was time, that much had made itself clear. It was her duty. It was justice. It was the only way she knew how to end it. If and when King Midas arrives, Zarina said, let him think I am his lost lover. I will handle it from there. They argued for a while. Protested. They didn’t want to see Zarina hurt. But she reminded them of her poison, the toxins flowing inside her like small rivers, and so they eventually agreed.

When King Midas came, it was all show. Charm. Thick blonde hair combed back in waves. White pants, white jacket, white cape, white steed: gold harness, gold belt, gold buttons, gold hungry. Zarina felt her tongue curl back inside her throat at the sight of him, felt his open palm cover her once human mouth, his teeth clenched together in anger as he thrust forcefully inside of her, hissing, Be quiet, someone will hear. Zarina’s cries not of pleasure but of pleading, of her wanting him off her, of his refusal. The cold and the dark. The immediate end to everything Zarina thought she knew.

Now, Zarina sat at six centimeters in length. Waited. King Midas noticed her almost immediately, a nugget of gold in the forest. “Zarina?” he asked. He propelled himself off his horse with a flourish so practiced it almost made her laugh. “Zarina my angel, my porcelain dove. What has he done to you? That Warlock. There were rumors, Zarina, horrible rumors in the castle, rumors that you asked for this, rumors that you summoned him. But I told them, I told them my perfect girl wouldn’t do that, not to me.” Then his eyes dripped from panicked to dark, simmering cauldrons beneath the surface. “I told them Zarina knows better, knows what would happen if she ever tried to leave me again.”

King Midas moved forward. Reached down. Pushed Zarina onto his open palm. It took everything in her not to turn away, but she could feel it—sweet, sweet poison, the curdling of her new flesh—knew that she would never find another moment of peace if she didn’t do this now.

Zarina sat, landlocked on his skin, as his lips came crashing into hers. “In order to save you,” he said, and, “You’ll respect me now, won’t you, Zarina?” When his lips pulled away—puckered and chapped—Zarina felt herself smile, could hear only the Warlock’s voice in the back of her head: They will die, those who touch you. They will die in three minutes flat.

Zarina watched, eyes black and unmoving, as the body of King Midas began to tremble, turned cold, dropped Zarina when the shaking became too much. She landed perfectly on padded feet, stayed quiet in the cool earth as King Midas thrashed and kicked, his skin pale then blue then pale again. He reached out to her, fingernails scraping and clawing the dirt, until finally he exhaled one last time. Zarina had been counting: two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Oh, Warlock, she thought. The only human being I will miss.

Around her, the soft hum of her sisters, the song of the dart frogs. Zarina’s body shimmered. The only gold she ever wanted. The only gold she’d ever need.

 

Samuel Clark is an elephant enthusiast and has received his MFA in Fiction from UNCW. He has a special love for LGBTQIA+ literature, magical realism, and sci-fi. His work has appeared in Crab Fat Magazine, Peach Mag, The Passed Note, Heavy Feather Review, Longleaf Review, and more. In 2015, his piece “Singed” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. You can find him reading about pirates in Wilmington, North Carolina.

There’s this wolf outside my house. He’s tearing up trees. Throwing them over his shoulder. Making a mess.

He’s banging on the door. When I don’t answer, he pulls the sidewalk up like it’s tape on a cardboard box. He uses the mailbox post like a toothpick. He’s tearing this house apart piece by piece. From the right angle, it still has the façade of something whole, but there are holes. The roof is collapsing, the stairs are gone, rubble where there used to be flowers, music, a home. And now, I don’t know where I’d even begin rebuilding. My neighbors have all moved away. He ate their roofs, their lawns, their porches. It’s just the two of us now. Me and him.

He’s pressed up against the front door, his tongue licking the lock. I’m pressed up against the other side, holding everything together. I listen to him breathe. Listen to his dripping teeth and gums. The slurping saliva. The wheezing breath. I can smell it. Then he starts the scraping. That one claw at the door. Scraping in the same space over and over. Going deeper. Never speeding up, never slowing down. Just a consistent, slow scrape at the wood between us. I can hear his breath, his hair, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. I manage enough breath to say, “What do you want?”

“I just want you to be okay,” he says, as that one claw breaks through the last of it.

 

Mary Hamilton’s work has appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, and the Indiana Review. She lives in Minnesota.