Investigation

I traced the kid to the city but couldn’t find her. Next day she was blue in the morgue. Fentanyl. Why I really, really don’t like missing persons work. A week later, one of my contacts asked if the kid was still on my list, and passed me an address. She’d rented a room in a house. Small room. No one there knew her. The single bed was loosely made, and clothes were stacked up in a suitcase. A ticket stub from a concert was pinned to a bulletin board on the wall, up in the corner. That detail stuck with me. It was like she’d been taking care to save space for other pinnable items.

Go

She used to cut through to this place where there was construction. They were building a street. And if you went further, there was a meadow used by deer; she followed their paths. And if you went further, there was a crooked hill you could climb. She walked its spine. She drew her palms through larkspur and brome. And if someone texted, it was a pulse on the breeze that wrote its brightly vanishing lines all through the russet spikelets.

UFO

It would be cool if the people whose house this was got lifted right out of their lives, with no warning, so they didn’t have to feel depressed about failing to get anything in return for the ‘80s Pontiac in the yard, or the house itself, with its stain of flood. It would be nice. They’re flying, who knows where. They’re gone. They’re getting a chance to try and be people in some new way. 

Rainbow Rocket Head

I had a friend named Rainbow Rocket Head. He left town a while ago. He’d cover a shift for you, if you asked, which was cool, and no one disliked him. But no one expected to miss him, either, since he was a kind of non-factor, I mean socially. He just blended in. But we do miss Rainbow Rocket Head. I believe what we miss is bouncing stuff off him in companionable quiet. Like, Hey there, Rainbow Rocket Head. Or, That really sucks, doesn’t it, Rainbow Rocket Head. Stuff like that. With Rainbow Rocket Head in the mix, we felt like there might always be some batshit wrinkle in our day. The page could always be turned. If Rainbow Rocket Head comes back, we’ll act as if his being gone has seasoned our relationship, letting us feel a love and joy which was probably always there. Rainbow Rocket Head! we’ll be like. It will set off a whole new phase.

Scott Garson is the author of STORIES OF LIFE AND DEATH, which is forthcoming from Cornerstone. His fiction has appeared via North American Review, Story, Electric Literature, Conjunctions, American Short Fiction, Threepenny Review, Kenyon Review, and others. He edits Wigleaf.