Author: steve c

Divine Creatures and Monsters Alike by M.M. Kaufman

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It was a strange time for us all. 

My mother, always a confident woman, acted odd her whole pregnancy. Was nervous from noon to night. My father, a nonstop talker, was silent. And I had what they called “sympathy symptoms.”

When she threw up, I threw up. When she gained weight, I gained weight. When her period stopped, my period stopped. I’d only just gotten it a couple months before. 

We craved the same things. We were repelled by the same things. We refused to touch apples. A whiff of one sent us running to the toilet.

I could feel everything she could in her body. I even knew when it was her time before she did.

When the contractions came, I heard her screams a half second behind my own. I felt the drugs they gave her. I was high in the sky. Like I’d climbed a tree that reached into the clouds. I was watching myself as I lay on the ground. 

I was ripped open when I heard my mother scream. 

What seemed like years later, I woke up. I told my mother if this is what I feel, I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling. She told me not to imagine it at all.

I studied the red, wriggling creature in my mother’s arms. During her whole pregnancy, I never heard my mother or father discuss names. Any name they picked would change the way I looked at the baby. Maybe even how I felt towards him. 

That’s when I asked my parents if I could name my brother. 

They looked at each other in alarm, then at me. Like I was a stray dog that might bite them any second if they made the wrong move. It was no stranger than they acted the whole of that year, so I waited until my mother, then father, gave a small nod.

I wanted him to have a name that marked the beginning of his story, so I asked my mother when she first suspected she was pregnant. She cried, which wasn’t weird after giving birth. But it was weird that my father cried too, cried even harder. 

She spoke more slowly than I’d ever heard in my life, asked if I remembered the day I fell from the top of the apple tree. She said don’t try to remember if I didn’t, but I did. That day we’d learned about Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion in school. Important men in history books seemed to have their big ideas alone, so when the school bus dropped me off, before my parents came home, I climbed the tallest tree I could find in the orchard behind our house.

I could never do this when they were home. They never allowed me to go into the old man’s orchard alone, even though he’d encouraged me to come and play in the trees whenever I wanted. Especially if I was bored and alone. 

I sat on the highest branch I could find that day and turned my face to the sun. It worked for sunflowers. I closed my eyes, let the sunshine filter through the tiny veins in my eyelids, and imagined a great red ocean whose depths held kingdoms of new animals to discover. 

An idea was swimming into view, but then a tidal wave came up from the trunk of the tree and shook me loose. As I fell, I dreamed that I not only hit the ground, but sank down into it. The soil folded over me. Sealing me in. 

My mother woke me up with her screaming, held my head in her lap. My father brushed hair and leaves from my face. I touched a hand to my sore abdomen and wondered if I had fallen on my stomach. My father lifted me in his arms and blood ran down my legs.

My body didn’t feel like home after that.

The doctor wrapped my sprained wrist and bandaged my cuts. She took my parents to another room while I was left to my own thoughts on the exam table. 

The only thought I had was that I never got my big important idea. The kind of idea that got its own name—a law of motion, a theory of relativity, a principle of pain, an idea whose name began to answer the question it inspired.

The baby cried. Such a strange sound that made my chest hurt and prickle with sweat. I gazed out of the hospital window into the sun, peering again into my great red ocean. 

I said the first name that fell into my mind. 

We moved after Gravity was born. I’m still trying to have a big idea, but I can’t have them in the orchard anymore. My parents said they’d never liked the old man. It’s time for some space, they said. 

And we had space. From him, from the trees, but also, the natural divide between my mother’s body and my own returned. I felt what I felt now. She felt what she felt. 

I was lonely for a long time.

I didn’t mind the move. There are trees all over the world. Gravity too. Wherever my body goes, there my thoughts go as well, even if there is still an ocean between them.

Sometimes at night when I can’t sleep, and want so badly to talk to someone—but to who, and about what, I don’t know—I close my eyes and hold a flashlight over them. 

I see my great red ocean and imagine myself slipping into the pull of an underwater current. There is still so much to discover there. Divine creatures and monsters alike. I don’t know where it will take me. 

Maybe it’s not a place, but somewhere in time. Sometimes the past pulls at me like seaweed gripping around my ankle, dragging me into a rift in the ocean floor. And if I just look down, look at the face of the sea creature holding me, then some great idea will be illuminated. Maybe.

I turn off the flashlight and open my eyes to my dark bedroom. The present wraps me in a thick blanket of sleep and I am gone. 

The move has been good to us. Instead of an orchard, we have a lake. Weekends I swim and draw every plant and animal I can find. On this new side of the world, my mother smiles, my father talks, my brother is a wonder.

My body is starting to feel like home again.

The baby is walking and climbing and falling down on his own now. Most people call him Gray. But I’ll always call him by the name I gave him. A beginning as strong as the laws of nature. Somewhere to start and somewhere to end all at once.

M.M. Kaufman is a writer based in Georgia. She is a Fulbright Scholar and earned an MFA in the University of New Orleans’ Creative Writing Workshop. She is currently the Managing Editor at Rejection Letters and team member for Micro Podcast. Her fiction is published with The Normal School, Hobart, Metonym Journal, Sundog Lit, Daily Drunk Mag, (mac)ro(mic), HAD, Olney Magazine, Pine Hills Review, Maudlin House, jmww, Major 7th Magazine, Rejection Letters, JAKE, Icebreakers Lit, and Identity Theory. Read more on mmkaufman.com. Find her on Twitter @mm_kaufman, Blue Sky @mmkaufman.bsky.social, Instagram @mmkaufman, or at the carwash.

Bluffs Surround Us by Brett Biebel

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We watched the movie in Julie’s basement. Back when she had a mansion. Back before her parents got divorced. The plot was convoluted. The runtime was excessive. They’d filmed it like 20 minutes away in La Crosse, and we recognized about a million Wisconsin landmarks, or I did anyway. I was sitting three feet from the screen. Julie fell asleep on Keith’s lap, and I could hear occasional rustling behind me, Keith moving softly, Keith trying not to make things weird. In the movie, there’s like some kind of minorly mutated flu virus, and a bunch of old people refuse a vaccine. What happens is they die. They die, and they do so in enough numbers to constitute like twelve percent of the difference in a real close presidential election that swings to the Democrat, and there are media stories. Academic studies. Outsiders flood this town, and a bunch of kids like us get together and use rose petals to write “STAY STRONG” in front of every single former home of a now dead voter. The roses look all bloody on top of the snow. It’s hard to tell if the movie switches to black and white or if everything’s just so grey that it’s all indistinguishable. I caught Keith in the glare. He was scrunched way to the side of the sofa, Julie snoring away with her hair rolling over his legs.

“I figured you were having some kind of boner situation,” I said, on the way home.

“I was trying to like move her head real gentle on account of I didn’t want her to wake up. It wasn’t supposed to be creepy at all. And then like two clumps of her hair came out in my hand, and I kept daydreaming she had cancer.”

“Fuck,” I said, looking at him. Not wanting it to be true. But also imagining if it were. Watching Keith do the same.

“I’m not good with sickness,” he said, and I told him how the thing about cancer was that people who had it didn’t want to think about it, and you could do a lot by mostly ignoring it. Mostly waiting, which was all we could do. We waited for Julie to show up bald or dead, but the closest we got were wigs. I liked the blonde one. Platinum with bangs and cut tight shoulder-length. Keith was into the same style, only he preferred it jet black. Nobody else seemed to have an opinion. Julie’d walk by, and the hall would kind of tense up, and Keith would give her his math homework. Statistics, it was. I didn’t have much to offer until Julie started sleeping at her mom’s new place. Maxine’s. It was a lot smaller. Two blocks from the high school. We got invited over more often. We invited ourselves. Julie laughed louder. The movies got lighter. We tried to play games. Sometimes, Keith had an early curfew, and before he left, he’d look at me, kind of ambivalent, kind of asking.

“Gonna catch a ride with someone else,” I’d say, and he’d nod and shut the front door real quiet. One time I stayed until 2AM, and we watched music videos while Julie played with her bangs. We talked about the bands you play when no one’s awake to hear and she told me not to tell Keith how late I stayed, “Not because anything happened, but he’s probably not ready to hear it.”

“Okay,” I said, and I never told Keith. Even though I wanted to. Too scared he’d see right through me. 

Julie lost weight, then she put it back on. We didn’t know if she was getting better. Time was passing. It was senior year. Winter. Some weekends she’d spend at her dad’s place, and Keith and I would drive by. Julie drove this yellow Jeep, and sometimes it would be parked there. Sometimes not. Sometimes there was music. Sometimes not. On one of the quiet nights, Keith kept driving in circles. We couldn’t see the Jeep.

“Didn’t you say she’d be here?” said Keith.

I shrugged. “I don’t remember what I said.”

Keith pulled over. The mansion was behind us, built into a bluff. Somewhere below was the river. We couldn’t see it in the dark. “Listen,” he said, “If you want me to, like, stop, you just need to say so, okay?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. I looked at the house and thought about movies and basements and the way people fall asleep.

“Like.” Keith drummed on the dash. “I’m just trying to make her feel better, I guess, is what I’m saying. If it makes you feel weird or whatever. That’s all.”

“I don’t feel weird,” I said.

He nodded a little. I nodded back. He put the car in drive, and we wheeled around town for a while. Stopped at the Hy-Vee. Keith grabbed some roses, and I did too, and we found the Jeep parked outside Maxine’s. The lights inside the house were on. Julie was talking to her mom in the kitchen. Her hair was short and a little patchy.

She didn’t see us write “STAY STRONG” in rose petals on her lawn, but, on Monday, at school, Julie shrieked and hugged the two of us, hugged us like the ship was sinking and here were two logs in a broken life raft, and she went to prom with Keith. He said nothing ever happened, “nothing except some cloudy intense shit I don’t even understand,” but I didn’t know if I should believe him. I didn’t know how much I cared.

But that night with the roses, the moon was on us. We fought a little over the last petal or two, Keith in front of me, me in front of Keith. Laughing. Joking. Then Keith drove us away. Keith was more confident. Keith always drove. And the whole way back to mine we talked about last summer. About this uniform they made Julie wear at the drive-in, this knock-off nostalgia place where the high school girls put on roller skates and shorts that were too long to be sexy and too short to be chaste, and we let that image hang there, whispering. No music. No more talking. The bluffs cast frozen shadows, and the purity of our intentions sat there between us. Its levels were static and jumpy, all of them muddled as leaves beneath the reddened snow.

Brett Biebel is the author of three collections of flash fiction, 48 Blitz, Winter Dance Party, and Gridlock; and A Mason & Dixon Companion. His work has appeared in many magazines and been selected for Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. He lives, writes, and teaches in Illinois.

Two Stories by Linda Drach

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TRAVEL & LEISURE

I’d see them in the cardiology waiting room. Not every time, but often. The man, shuffling behind an aluminum walker, his right foot dragging; the woman, slowing her gait to keep pace. Always, her hand rested lightly on his bicep. That was completely unnecessary. A gesture of tenderness, I guess. He looked like my second husband. She looked like the Starbucks barista my husband shacked up with before divorcing me. I’d stare at them until the woman felt me looking and glanced over to where I’d parked myself near the giant aquarium so I could reap the calming benefits of fish swishing. My eyes were flamethrowers that singed her bangs, burned through her skull, and incinerated the smoking cessation poster that hung on the wall behind her. Satisfied, I’d pretend to turn back to Travel & Leisure or Yacht World. 

That was before my doctor shunted me off to hospice.

It was strange. I hated that waiting room. But when the couple appeared I forgot that I was waiting. Suddenly, I had energy and a sense of control, whereas just moments before, I’d had neither. I liked sketching in the details of their lives, imagining the bank statements and what was parked in the driveway. I liked thinking about her slutty lingerie, long abandoned, the elastic going slack in a bottom dresser drawer. I liked thinking about her bitching to her friends over too many glasses of Sauvignon Blanc about the pill bottles crowding her quartz countertops. About the long, tedious nights building puzzles instead of fucking. 

Those were good afternoons for me.

It’s been months since I was there. But sometimes, as I’m staring down the teddy bear the volunteers insist on staging at the foot of my bed, I think of that couple. I wonder if he’s in a wheelchair now. I wonder if she’s gotten fat. I hope she’s gotten fat. These daydreams are necessary; they counteract all this false cheer. I heard one of the nurses talking about me, the only thing keeping that one alive is spite. I’m still listening for rubber wheels rolling down the hallway. To feel a little surge.

THE FARM

Pat calls on a Monday night to tell me my nephew – his son – is dead. 

He never says dead. He says Joel is gone. But I know what he means right away, like I knew when our mom told us Sparky or Boo or Snowflake went to the farm, so they could run freely instead of eking out their short doggy lives in our cramped backyard. 

Gone. That’s all he says. That’s all he can say. 

When I get to the ER, Pat is slumped on a vinyl couch, yowling through clenched fists, like a cat with its tail stuck in a slammed door. The chaplain patting his back looks glad to see me. Five bug-eyed youth silently circle the room, like a school of guppies – stoic little fish, who spend their short lives sucking lines of shit off the bottom of their tank and then spitting them out to try again. Relentless in their efforts to find something delicious. Each time, it’s shit. These are Joel’s 12-Step friends. His goddamn friends, who watched him die.

It’s time to see Joel, but Pat says he can’t – he doesn’t want to see him this way, which is dead. When we were kids, I always took care of the lesser burials. Dozens of goldfish, two turtles, three lizards, and a chinchilla. A grim menagerie interred in our mother’s garden, near the concrete statue of Mother Mary. Our household was rough on living things. This is why I never had children. 

The chaplain leads me through a set of double doors, and there’s Joel, wearing the same flannel shirt he was wearing on Saturday. Our boy needs a haircut. His copper locks, the same shade as mine, are shaggy at his neck and fall haphazardly across the petals of his cheeks. His hand is still warm – only a little bit cooler than my brother’s. Where are you, Joel? I whisper in his ear. The chaplain fidgets. He’s certain Joel is strolling through God’s cosmic vivarium. I shoot him a look and he leaves us alone. Can he tell how much I hate him right now? He knows my type. A lapsed Whatever, with my poems and pop songs and coffee can ashes, making half-assed attempts at the everlasting – when what I want is the farm. 

I tell Joel if believing made it so, I’d make myself believe it. I’d send you to a party that goes on forever and never gets out of hand. Where you could play three-handed pinochle with your mother and grandfather and share a bottle of magic bourbon. The kind that won’t lead to black eyes or scarred livers. I’d make sure you’re happy. That you know you’re enough. I’m crying now, with my head on his chest. Bawling, really, like a motherless calf. I picture the floribunda roses framing my mother’s backyard shrine. Vivid red. Heavenly scent. Climbing the chain link, spilling over in its vigor. Back every year, despite our neglect.

Linda Drach is a poet and writer, public health program manager, and volunteer writing group facilitator for the nonprofit Write Around Portland. Her writing has been published in The Bellingham Review, Cagibi, CALYX, Cathexis Northwest, The Timberline Review, and elsewhere. She studies and teaches at The Writers Studio.

Two Stories by Rachel Lastra

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Poor Cheryl

She’s the one we pile it on like a damn donkey on a tourist trek through the Peruvian mountains, opening up her saddle bags and dumping in all that shit, leaving no room for anything but Yes, okay—and But I—and What if we—and I didn’t mean—and I’m sorry I—and Maybe we could—never let her finish a fucking sentence, though each of us blames the others, says we’re not the ring leader of this particular circus, the guide of this donkey ride winding up the mountainside, thinks we see her, thinks we’re kinder, thinks we’d save her if we could, but we can’t, can only save ourselves, can only keep our eyes open wide in sympathy at Cheryl when we’re sure no one’s looking, thinks this makes it okay that she’s a punching bag-scapegoat-doormat-dupe-sap-pushover-pigeon-victim-sacrifice, because that’s what she is, was born to be, that’s what’s needed to feed a prowl of high school pumas in winged eyeliner and platforms, teeth bared, slinking through the grass, scenting blood, ready to pounce before we can be seen as prey.

Love Me Like a Reptile

The salmon has all been eaten. Only a few half-spears of purple asparagus, picked up just this morning from the farmer’s market, litter the otherwise empty dinner plates. The wine bottle is tapped but our glasses are full, golden in the evening light.

“Whoever came up with the word ‘splurge’ must’ve been a great influencer.” Fred leans back in his chair, and I see him. I do. Square-jaw handsome, perfect hair. “They must’ve been a great influencer,” he repeats. “Because splurge is a horrible word.” 

Fred enjoys these kinds of thought exercises. He’s a data analyst—don’t ask me what that means. I know it pays well. Most days Fred has the personality of wet cardboard, but he has his moments. He calls me his statistically significant other.

I wanted him to go with me to the market this morning, pictured us strolling arm in arm through the aisles, woven market bags in hand, pausing to feed each other samples of honey and twenty-dollar artisanal cheese. We’d linger near a fruit stand and I’d feed him something juicy. I’d push the hair off his forehead and he’d kiss me like he wanted to merge with me, consume me. He’d taste like summer and lust and peaches warmed by the sun.

But Fred had given me a peck on the cheek and said, “Babe, I’m too hungover.” 

And we don’t even have any woven market bags. 

I drag my fork through the olive oil coating my white IKEA dinner plate and don’t snap at Fred’s conversational bait. He keeps talking anyway, between swigs of white wine, pink tongue glistening in his open mouth. I lick the fork tines clean and think of other, more horrible words. Slurp. Fester. Sloppy. Flaccid. Needing. Wanting. Solo.

I look out the screen door onto our balcony. There’s my neighbor out on his, a mirror of ours. If he looks up, he’ll see me. I will him to, thighs clenched. He leans his elbows on the railing and looks down into the courtyard at the balding trees, the small, sun-bleached climbing structure, the pair of swings sagging like bags under the eyes of a sober drunk.

He’s in his 60s, my neighbor. Bearded, long gray ponytail. Snake tattoo. Strong arms bared by a neon yellow muscle shirt. I bet he could lift me, easy. He’s playing music again: Motorhead.

Fred says: “I mean, listen to this. ‘I splurged on a new computer.’ Sounds gross, right?”

I say: “Uh-huh.”

He reaches for the gold ribbon of the white bakery box on the counter. I stand up. Clear the dinner plates. Grab the white World Market dessert plates. Sit back down.

Outside, my neighbor turns and she emerges behind him. Same age, give or take. Dye-black hair slithering down her back in a tail as long as his. Yin to his yang. She runs a hand up his arm, over the softball of his shoulder, curls her nails in. Then their mouths open, tongues bulging in each other’s cheeks like gumballs. Her other hand grips his ponytail—firmly. His hand snakes up her back to do the same. And then they stand like that, wound around each other, tongue-kissing in the open air.

Fred pulls a cream puff from the bakery box and offers it to me. I decline. Flash of white teeth, jaw wide as if he will swallow it whole. Cream splurges from the end of the puff.

“Fred,” I begin.

The neighbors have gone back inside. They drew the blinds only halfway but I can’t see anything. I bet she’s on top.

Cream dots the corners of Fred’s mouth. I could lick him clean with my forked tongue. 

I open my mouth. Close it. Open.

“I want some.”

Rachel Lastra’s stories have appeared in Tiny Molecules, Barrelhouse, Smokelong Quarterly, Apparition Lit, and other places. Her work was highly commended in the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize and a finalist in the Flash Frog flash fiction contest. She is a student in the graduate writing program at Johns Hopkins University and is working on a novel. Find her at rachellastra.com.

Y2K by Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez

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The world might end in 30 minutes. For months, there’s been speculation on the Chicago news channels about electronics failing, of planes falling out of the sky, of the market crashing, of chaos on the streets because we will run out of food and water.  

My baby bump is enormous, I can’t see my swollen feet. My husband’s in jail for being a pendejo but technically for drinking and driving. I’ve huddled myself and my children in the bedroom to wait for whatever Y2K will bring.

“And if we need to use the bathroom?” my eleven-year-old daughter snarks as she bounces her baby brother on her hip. She’s been mad at me for a while now. But who else can I make help me with these kids?

“Pues ahí está, Sofia,” I point to the bedroom door, letting her know she can go in and out as she pleases. 

Sofia rolls her eyes at me and switches to cradling the baby to try to get him to sleep.

“It’s okay. You’re okay,” Sofia whispers and sticks the bottle in her brother’s mouth.

I wish I could go back in time when I’d cradle her.

Meanwhile, Pao, my middle child, bounces from the love seat to the edge of the bed and back. 

When the doctor said I was for sure pregnant again, I took my daughters to La Michoacana for ice cream, to share the happy news.

“No, the baby’s not here yet. We have to wait 5 months.”

“Five months?! The world’s going to end before then. Sorry, baby!” Pao exclaimed and kept eating her rocky road ice cream. 

Sofia pushed away her vanilla scoops. The slight shadow growing underneath her eyes darkened.

“Ya no quiero.” She glanced at her brother in the stroller. When I was Sofia’s age, I took care of my little sisters whether I wanted to or not. But, yes, I worried, too. How were we going to care for another child?

I placed my hands on my belly, thanking God for this miracle, and praying for the ones I’d lost before. We ate in silence while “Livin’ La Vida Loca” blared from the radio. I craved the charred taste of burnt tortillas.

The phone rings at 11:45 pm and we all flinch at the unexpected noise. The baby stirs and Sofia glares at me like I somehow made the phone ring. 

The answering machine picks up, “This is a collect call from Cook County Jail…”

“Papi!” Pao hops from the love seat to the floor to grab the cordless phone before it’s too late. “I accept!” she yells into the receiver and Sofia shushes her. 

“¡Dámelo!” I lean as far as I can from the bed and pull Pao by the shirt to snatch the phone away. Her little face scrunches as if I had reached into her tiny chest for her beating heart. 

“¿Q’vole? How are things over there?” I can barely hear Manny over the yelling happening behind him. 

“They’re doing lights out in 5 minutes. Everyone in their cells before midnight. Se nota que los guards are all tense and shit at the thought of their fancy locks not working when the clock strikes twelve.” 

“Whatever, Manny. If you miss the birth of this baby, I swear to God!”

On the screen, the news switches between people in bedazzled “2000” glasses and images of people looting a Wal-Mart in the Southside, running out with giant TVs. Food is what I’d take. A lot of diapers. Formula for sure. Clothes for the girls. Oooh, maybe a new winter coat. Some lipstick. Hoops that don’t turn my ears green.

“Te habla tu padre,” I hand the phone to Pao, who leaps for the cordless. The sound of Manny’s voice makes the baby inside me kick and vomit rise in my throat.

“Papi, I can jump from the couch to the bed without falling!”

I try to hand the phone to Sofia, but she refuses. I motion for her to place the phone near her brother so Manny can talk to him, but Sofia turns her back.

“Si, si, we love you, too!” I begin to cry because if the world is ending, I wish my husband was at home with us. If the world is ending, I wish I had had a chance to see my mother. The last time I saw her was 5 years ago when we left Mexico. But if the world is ending, I might finally get some rest. 

Sofia yanks the phone and quickly says, “Bye, papi. Happy New Year,” before she hangs up.

I look out the window and see that soft white petal snow is falling—my favorite. I pray this storm isn’t like the one that hit us at the beginning of the year. We were snowed in for days. The snowplows didn’t come through our street. There was no way to drive anywhere. We stocked up on food when the news reported that we should expect the worst blizzard “the windy city” had seen since the late 60s. We got all the formula and whole milk WIC would let us. We didn’t know how long we would be trapped, but at least then we were together.

Sofia gently sits on the loveseat still holding her sleeping brother. I struggle to get myself off the bed and Pao comes from behind to push me up. I scoot in next to Sofia and feel her inching away from me. I pull Pao next to me and she dozes off on my lap.

Someone on TV announces it’s almost time for the countdown. Behind them, someone holds a large poster with the words, “We ❤ robots!”

I take Sofia’s hand, and she presses her sweaty palm into mine so tightly I can feel the intensity of her pulse. I kiss the top of her head.

The announcer counts down: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6… 

My heart pounds and my throat tightens. The baby inside me kicks, their little leg protruding from my stomach. The kick lands near Pao’s head and Sofia bursts out laughing. Soon I’m laughing and shushing at the same time, trying to keep the younger children asleep. 

On the TV, confetti fills the screen. Fireworks and gunshots echo outside. 

“Diosito santo, protégenos.” I hold my children close when the lights go off. 

Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez (they/she) is a writer and educator living in Queens, New York. They’ve participated in writing workshops at Tin House, VONA, and Kweli. Their stories have been published in Latino Book Review Magazine, Kweli Journal, Variant Lit, Strange Horizons, The Acentos Review, Longreads, Okay Donkey, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. Sonia Alejandra’s writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fiction, and Best Microfiction. Follow them on Instagram at @soniaalejandrawrites.

Two Stories by Lavina Blossom

On By steve cIn flash fiction1 Comment

Slow Leak

She mounts the first step up from the driveway, hand on the rail. She forgot to leave the front light on but her aging eyes can see well enough from the neighbors’ lights. Wait, had she locked the car door? She depresses the button on the device in her hand, hears the faint unsatisfying click, pushes the button again, a louder click this time. She brings the device up to her face, hits lock and the click is faint, so it’s locked already, right?

But does she have her phone? She rummages in her purse. She can’t feel it in there. Returning to her car, she hits the unlock button. Good, she had locked it. She gets into the driver’s seat and looks in the console. 

She stares out the windshield a moment, weary, then dumps her purse on the passenger seat, shakes it. The phone lands on the pile and she tucks it back into her purse, then adds her wallet, comb, pack of tissues, lipstick, gum, nail file, clippers, the tiny notepad, pencil and pen, a sales slip, her small address book. 

She needs to enter numbers into her phone if she can remember how her grandson said to do it. Every number but Rhonda’s, although yes, she will add that too, and call Jeff, ask how his health has been, although she never cared much for Rhonda’s husband. A pity her friend went first. Up to a year ago, she was full of fun.

Damn, she meant to stop at the gas station. Her son had that gadget to measure air in the tire, but no air pump. Probably a slow leak, he said. But doesn’t that mean she needs a new tire? And which tire was it? She’ll call her son tomorrow, or hell, just look at the tires. It ought to be obvious. Or maybe she will call, talk to the kids if they’ll get on the phone. No, too soon. She has just seen them, only about five minutes before they went to their rooms. 

She rocks herself out of the car, straightens her skirt. Now where are her keys? She leans in and bumps her head on the door frame, sucks her teeth, plucks the keys off the dash. Standing straight, she swipes at her hair that has fallen forward, catching the key ring in a curl. She deep breathes and slowly untangles it. She would get her hair cut really short, but her husband likes it longer. Liked it. Still, when she visits him, she does not want to look different, unfamiliar. He still has some recognition. He seems to know her even if he can’t say who she is.

With the car door closed, she starts up the steps. Did she lock the car? She depresses that doodad thing. A faint click, so unsatisfying. She hits the other button, likes that sound better, being clearer and sharper. She depresses the buttons one after the other, louder click, softer click, louder click, softer click. She decides the final louder click locks.

She wishes she was in bed, but now she can’t recall if she took her umbrella when she left the house. Nearly at her front door, she looks up into the sky. No stars.

There’s a light on her phone, but she can’t remember how to turn it on. She must not fall. Better to live here alone than take one of her grandsons’ bedrooms. They would resent her. It simply cannot happen.

She turns around, looks at the car, shakes her head, turns toward the three remaining steps to the stoop, turns toward the car. She starts to walk down, hating to leave the umbrella in there in case she needs it in the morning. She presses a button, but no click. She’s too far away. Does she have a fresh battery? She walks down farther, testing as she goes, pressing the button with her thumb until she hears a click. She stands a while locking, unlocking, locking, unlocking, matching rhythm to the labored pulse in her throat.

We Wear Suits

They are gray and tailored. We look professional. We look expensive. The women have gray purses, the men, gray wallets. Our shoes match, and our hair. Our teeth are white and straight. I wore braces for a year, but no one here knows this.

We never hurry when walking between our cubicles to speak to one another. We enunciate. We are smart and know where jokes are going, so we don’t need to finish telling them. I used to laugh. Then I smiled. More recently, I grimace.

The curtains are kept closed. I opened them once. I learned that beyond is ripe color. I wonder if our eyes are a betrayal. None are gray. 

I look into the other’s faces. I drop a pencil. No one reacts. I drop a stapler. One person nearby flinches, doesn’t look.

Tomorrow, when I deliver a document, I will touch someone’s hand.

Lavina Blossom is a visual artist and writer. She grew up in rural Michigan and now lives in Southern California. She has written articles on the writing process for the Inlandia Institute and was a poetry editor for the Inlandia Institute’s online journal. Her poems have appeared in various publications, including 3Elements Review, The Paris Review, Poemeleon, Common Ground Review, Gyroscope Review, and Ekphrastic Review.

I Found a Stone Under My Skin by Amanda Parrack

On By steve cIn flash fiction1 Comment

May 10th 9:58 pm

I was brushing my hair when I noticed the top part of my head was tender. When I put my fingers through my hair searching for the tender spot, I stopped and felt the bump the size of a dime. For some reason I had an urge to pop it, like a pimple, so I did. When I squeezed the bump, blood ran a straight line down my neck and what was left was a small stone in my hand. I took a shower of course. I am hoping to schedule a doctor’s appointment tomorrow.

Before that, I was having one of my depressive episodes. Thank God I live alone even though I have my cat, because who in the world would keep up with the messes I leave around the house? I fed Salem in the morning and laid around all day watching reruns of Community. I don’t know what I am doing with my life, and graduation is around the corner. I hate that Sammy broke up with me only two months in. I was hoping she would be my future or at least I would have her a part of that.

May 11th 5:58 pm

I scheduled a doctor’s appointment and was able to get something at 3pm. When I checked in, I sat in the waiting area by a TV with sounds from a recent episode of SpongeBob. I glared at past text messages from Sammy and decided to shoot her an update. I know she said she doesn’t have feelings, but there’s always a chance. Wouldn’t she want to know about the part-time job I got? In all honesty I shouldn’t have sent it, but I did.

The doctor had my blood taken and is supposed to call tomorrow if there is a chance I have cancer or something. She asked if I did drugs or alcohol to which I said no, but then she asked if I drank caffeine, and I said I did. She looked at me like I murdered someone even though tea and coffee are the one joy I have in life. She suggested I cut back on so much caffeine and said that the hole in my head should heal up soon. She also was in much disbelief when I said a stone came out of my head. Perhaps she thinks I do LSD. She did ask very carefully if I did drugs.

May 13th 6:45 pm

Sammy didn’t reply to my texts for a while. I kept saying that we should talk and asking why she was pushing me away. When she finally did respond, she sent something short and simple. That she is sticking to our agreement of not talking for a while until she gets her shit figured out. I should probably get my shit figured out.

The doctors called and said there is no sign of cancer in my bloodstream but I am low on iron. I am not sure what that means or why a rock came out of my head. Just yesterday, I found another tender lump in my armpit. This morning I popped it and this time the stone was as big as a quarter. The doctor suggested I take iron pills, so maybe there is some correlation? Who knows, I am not a doctor. I am just a music major.

Speaking of which, I haven’t been doing good at being a music major. I haven’t been practicing much and I haven’t been inspired to write music. With graduation around the corner, sometimes I wonder if it was a terrible idea to do music. The job outlook isn’t too great. I guess I could be a teacher. Backup jobs are always teaching at some middle school, because the world will always need more teachers. People keep asking me my plans after graduation. If these stones don’t stop coming and I die from them magically, perhaps there won’t be any future.

There is this guy Brian I work with at the gas station. He’s a smoker and always knows what each regular prefers when they check out. Brian used to also be a music major but ended up as the manager of the gas station which worries me.

Working at the gas station, you see a lot of people that are reflections of the broken systems in society. You start to feel pretty terrible handing a forty-year-old man his tenth lottery ticket for the day around lunchtime. Or the woman who just bought a whole box of cigarettes.

Anyways, these stones that keep coming from my body feel like a relief.

May 14th 9:00 pm

There’s a handful of repeat customers who buy lottery tickets. They go and scratch off and come back with less money than they had and start the process all over again. They don’t even say hi at this point like some normal human would. They just go to the lottery board and point at the numbers they want me to grab.

But it turns out I handed out a winning ticket that ended up becoming $141,000. The lottery guy came in and told me. I was nervous since there were rumors I was going to receive a $1,000 tip. That would definitely help. I had a stone at the tip of my thumb, just a small one that’s all, but I could feel it was ready to pop. The guy ended up giving me 50 dollars. When he did, I gripped the money too hard and the stone popped out right into the lottery guy’s hands. We both just looked at each other.

May 20th 11:45 pm

Wow, it’s been a while since I have updated. I usually jot something down every day or two.

The problem is that I have been busy. The stones have been growing from my body at an astounding rate, and I probably look pretty ugly from them. Sammy would never take me back. I have a little bucket in the corner of my room full of them. Salem tends to keep away from them and always hisses when she gets near. I have wondered if there is some correlation to kidney stones, but the last two appointments have found no correlation. The doctors left me with no answers and a huge hospital bill, so I have decided not to go back and to deal with this problem on my own.

Maybe the stones are growing because I want them to.

I don’t smoke or anything nor have I ever bought lottery tickets, but these stones, although they might sound scary to you, are a way for me to cope sometimes. It’s almost out of compulsion, the way people pop a zit and find it satisfying. There is no pain and little blood from my scars. One time after an angry customer argued with me, I went to the bathroom to pop a stone from my elbow and it felt so good.

I guess you could say I wanted this to happen.

I want something, anything, to happen.

Amanda Parrack is an undergraduate at Missouri State University and works at the writing center as a writing consultant. She lives in Springfield and spends her free time out in nature.

After His Mother Throws Him Out, Nicky Spends the Night on the High School Roof by Kathryn Kulpa

On By steve cIn flash fictionLeave a comment

This was 1997, before everything sucked. You could wander off school grounds, or back onto them. Life was fluid. It could expand. “A FIDDLER ON A ROOF!” Nicky shouted. His tenth-grade girlfriend had been in that play. She played a grandmother in a babushka: still looked hot. And now, like he’d psychic summoned her, his old girlfriend came walking by. He gave her a hand up. They shared a smoke. Nicky watched moths masquerade as fireflies against the moon. He watched the moon turn shy and hide behind a cloud. Like his ex-girlfriend, it went away sometimes. Sometimes, it came back.

Kathryn Kulpa is the author of For Every Tower, a Princess, just released by Porkbelly Press, and A Map of Lost Places, forthcoming from Gold Line Press. Her stories can be found in Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, BULL, Moon City Review, trampset, and other journals. Find out more at kathrynkulpa.com