Two Stories by Linda Drach

On By steve cIn flash fictionLeave a comment

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.

Double Dutch by Jasmine Khaliq

On By okaydonkey7In poetryLeave a comment
It sounds like gibberish, I said. It’s Double Dutch,
they said, and their grandma invented it.

A boy my age, a girl my sister’s. I wasn’t sure;
they lied about plenty—they were royalty

on a faraway island, their father was an astronaut,
their names were not their real names.

But the language I could hear was real as any.
Pattern I could attain. If I listened closely. If

I really tried. A lot of B’s, a lot of I’s. In his voice
my own name like an alien’s. I surprised them

after two weeks, sauntered into conversation
leaning blasé against their house, air

hot as any Western midday, mid-July.
A door unbolted. Talking in plain sight.

Selves and syllables doubling.
Secret language with the boy

across the street. We talked
about everything, nothing.

I wish I had a dog.
My dad is going to Mars.

They fought last night. I don’t want school to begin—
Anything. Just to speak.

We had never been so close
and we would never be so close again.

The differences between our lives closing
soon over our heads. Jordan’s rabbit died.

Summer is coming to an end.
What’s your favorite color, again?

Jasmine Khaliq is a Pakistani Mexican American poet born and raised in Northern California. Her work is found in Poetry Northwest, Poet Lore, The Rumpus, Bennington Review, Best New Poets 2023, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from University of Washington, Seattle. Currently, Jasmine is a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah. She can be found at jasminekhaliq.com.

A Reading List for the End of the World by Julia Rose Greider

On By okaydonkey7In flash fiction1 Comment

Robin and I are coping well with the end of the world, by which I mean we usually wake up by eleven and agree that eleven is not bad at all. We start our day with reading: Robin prefers Plato, while I prefer Garfield. My love, ever the philosophy major, has drawn up a list of essential texts and downloaded as many as our laptops can hold, since the Internet will go out any day now. We argued for weeks over whether Garfield deserved to survive the apocalypse. Robin said everyone would hate a fat cat when they were starving, and I retorted that wrestling with Plato would burn too many calories. Eventually I pointed out that matters would likely snowball too fast anyway for starvation to be our cause of death, and if Robin wanted me to be bearable to live with until the end came in whatever way it did, they’d better stockpile some Garfield. They’ve never been able to resist me.

Once we’ve read our fill, it’s time for a late lunch. Robin insists that we discuss our respective literatures to keep our minds agile. They say we’ll need our problem-solving abilities when things get worse. This is another reason they resent my Garfield: they say it does not stimulate the brain. But I point out that, unlike Plato, Garfield is very good at procuring sustenance. While Robin descends into the cellar to make a selection from our menu of freeze-dried camping food, I go out to the yard and look up. Each day it becomes more difficult to breathe. The sky toys with the hues of an oil spill, sometimes green, or yellow, or purple. Most of the time, though, we are cloaked in a grayish-brown that shimmers vaguely, like some vengeful god changed his desktop to a color named death.

We force down our reconstituted pad thai or bun-less lentil sloppy joes or scrambled eggs which, in their freeze-dried form, are crispy like chips. For now we’re still vegetarians, but the vegetarian meals down in the cellar are getting low, and pretty soon we’ll be reverting to a more primitive carnivorous state. The idea makes Robin anxious, even though I point out that the animals we’ll be eating have already been dead and bagged for years.

After lunch, we have our nature walk. If I were in charge, I would probably take a nap instead. Doom’s approach makes me snoozy. But Robin says we have a responsibility to exist in the world while it lasts. I slip my hand into theirs, and they lead me into the woods and make me look at things. They make me look at trees and mushrooms and birds (if we’re lucky), and they call them immense rough-skinned intelligences and fleshy fruiting bodies of fungi and the ones who could still escape if there was anywhere to go. They exhort me to fix the images in my mind, and I say what good will it do for a dying beast to remember other dying beasts?

But I only say this in my head, otherwise it makes Robin pull their hand away and pat at their eyes. Robin still finds hope useful, and I try to be sympathetic.

The woods are quiet these days. When we stand still, my ears feel the fuzzy silence of earplugs, like there might be something to hear if only I could take them out. But I can’t. So we don’t stand still very often; instead, we create the illusion of life by cracking twigs under our feet. Today I nearly step on something else: a matchbook. Robin bends to pick it up. The cardboard, still dry, bears the unfamiliar insignia of a bar called Dante’s. Someone has been burning the matches; only two are left. Robin says, Who—? And I say, Don’t think about it. Robin stares at the packet in their palm, and by the time I lead us home, it’s nearly dark. The sun doesn’t set because it’s never there to begin with. The pall just dims and dims.

After dinner, Robin usually tries for something more contemporary: Hegel or Nietzsche, or Foucault if they’re feeling cheeky. But tonight they make me sit while they read Mencius aloud, and for a few minutes I admire the length of their fingers absentmindedly turning the matchbook over and over. They’re looking for answers, but I already have mine. So I excuse myself to the bathroom. They think I have a weak stomach, that the camping food doesn’t agree with me. I let them think this even though it isn’t particularly flattering. In the bathroom, I sit with my back against the tub and grope around in the depths of the cabinet under the sink. From beneath the rolls of toilet paper, I pull out a stack of small square pages that I ripped off years ago from a cartoon-a-day calendar. If we’re still alive when the toilet paper runs out, these pages will see things they never asked to see. But for now, I peruse a few of the cartoons every night. Sometimes I find one that makes me laugh even though it never did before. People used to get that worked up over a family dinner? A fender bender? A fractious boss? Ha-ha. The days are hopelessly out of order, and I never bother rearranging them.

Robin and I go to bed early. I fit myself against the soft curve of their back and nestle my nose into their neck, where the musk of wheat and lilies soothes me just the same as it did when our ends were not so imminent.

In the darkest part of the night, I wake. Robin is sitting up. They’ve lit one of the matches, and it blazes towards their fingertips. Their face is shining with silent tears. Mencius, they say, believed in the fundamental goodness of humans. Shouldn’t we be struggling towards survival like the products of evolution that we are? Shouldn’t we be devoting our time to useful pursuits, figuring out how to hunt and forage and make fire?

I hold my breath as the flame gobbles its own lifeblood. For months this question has hovered between us unspoken. Robin has tried to ask it before, and I’ve stopped them with kisses, eaten the words out of their mouth. Yes, my sage, I want to say. You and I will be the library, and the library must go on.

Just before the flame blisters their fingers, Robin extinguishes it with one sharp hiss of breath. Into the black silence, against the blue memory of fire that twitches before my eyes, I find I can only speak the truth.

I fumble the matchbook out of Robin’s hand and rip off the last match. I fold the book around the nubby tip; from it, I pull a conflagration. And to Robin’s question, I say no. Because survival—isn’t that how we got here in the first place?

Julia Rose Greider lives in New Hampshire and works in Vermont as a public librarian. Her fiction has been published in Nat. Brut, West Trade Review, and CALYX Journal, and she is an alum of the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop.

Bikini Atoll by Rowan Pollard

On By okaydonkey7In poetryLeave a comment
A wild driver, her feather coat flying in the wind,
Cadillac convertible southwards out of town but again
I found her half-sunken into the reservoir.
I’ve had enough, she said, I’ve done everything twice.
I’ve been a storm chaser, I shot Kennedy, twelve years
I spent in Vegas drinking gold and winning. My
velvet’s all worn out and I’m stuck here and I can’t
remember my own name.
I made one up for her, something American, Arizona
Castle, Georgia Crossroads, Mississippi Bravo.
I entertained her for a while until the shock wore off,
and once home a hurricane stuck the tower block and kept us
stuck. Some days, I was sick of tracing a trail of ash. I was sick
of extravagance. Where were my pearls to swallow? My
untruthful movie star carpets and gunshot near-misses?
I didn’t miss a word of lies but I got sick anyway.
Last night, under the low moon, I said I loved her. She told me
I like Mississippi best. Like the river always moving through the land.
The dam burst that morning, and I looked for her in the clear
dull water. I thought I’d find some goodbye note and
more, but beside our front door was her feather coat like a snakeskin.
The Cadillac drove toward the sun.
Mississippi, bravo.

Rowan Pollard is a writer and poet living in a nowhere town somewhere in the UK. He has been published in Apocalypse Confidential.

Two Stories by Rachel Lastra

On By steve cIn flash fictionLeave a comment

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.

Emily Jarred by Toni Leonetti

On By okaydonkey7In poetryLeave a comment
A poet’s X post argued
for art apart from artist.
His example?
We love Dickinson’s verse,
even though she killed kittens,
drowning them in pickle jars.
Look it up, he said.
What?
I checked.
Everyone but me knew.

Hope is the thing with feathers—
Unlike cats who can’t fly away

Because I could not stop for Death—
I tossed him softer fur to hug
Fresh eyes to blind in brine
Purrs to choke

My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—
Until blasted in helpless corners

My letter to the World
Met no reply—
After I tore it into tuna
Crammed down one hungry last meow—

Toni Juliette Leonetti lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and has written short stories, poetry, plays, and a mystery novel. Her work appears in publications including DarkWinter Literary Magazine, Literally Stories, Elegant Literature, and Soul Forte.

Y2K by Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez

On By steve cIn flash fictionLeave a comment

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.

The Signs by Gabe Montesanti

On By okaydonkey7In poetry1 Comment
Backtracking is a rigged poker game, and yet, I still play. I bake backtracking on the top rack of the oven and scatter its crumbs through the forest. Like a bait dog, backtracking still growls at its own reflection. Backtracking and I steal every No U-Turn sign in the city of St. Louis, Missouri. Mounted on the wall like a moose head, backtracking stares at me through empty eyes. I bite into the poisonous pit of a backtracking plum because I’ve survived those juices before. Sometimes, backtracking pitches a tent in the wilderness. What’s the difference between me and nostalgia? backtracking wants to know. Mirrors reflect backtracking like a set of circular footprints in the sand, the hump of a question mark. Backtracking is the frozen tundra in the arctic onto which I can’t help but keep my cheek pressed. Like sandpaper, backtracking wants to use mindless repetition to make smooth what was once rough. Backtracking is disiecta membra, limbs of a scattered poet, Latin from Horace’s Satires. At the 7-Eleven soda machine, between the root beer and the cherry cola, backtracking induces nausea. Extraterrestrials don’t buy into backtracking because their aircrafts only move forward. Beam me up, I scream from a barren field of corn. Don’t let me track back into myself what I have collected by running away.

Gabe Montesanti is the author of BRACE FOR IMPACT: A MEMOIR, which chronicles her time skating for Arch Rival Roller Derby. She earned her MFA at Washington University in St. Louis. Her work has been published in Huff Post, LA Times, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a second memoir. 

Rules for New Girls by Leslie Pietrzyk

On By okaydonkey7In flash fictionLeave a comment

1976

That Bicentennial summer everyone talks about tennis, desperate to be pretty Chrissy Evert, thwacking balls into meteors. We’re tired of being Iowa girls. But tennis rackets cost real money, meaning of us five, only Janelle’s got a racket because she’s got one of everything. Still, no one plays tennis, so Janelle can’t much lord her fancy Head racket over us. Boy, that makes me secretly happy. 

Suzanne and Tracy find a ratty badminton set in their garage, so we agree being Chrissy Evert with badminton rackets counts. One problem solved but there’s another: four rackets, five girls. They had been an easy four until my mom, her boyfriend, and I moved into the neighborhood in March—as Janelle reminds us while we rock-paper-scissors to see who plays and who’s stuck being line judge. It’s Donna, the nicest and fairest. “You’re swapping with Donna first,” Janelle tells me. “That’s the rule for new girls.” 

Suzanne and Tracy’s dad sets up the net: no wobbling. We’re in the front yard because the back’s a hill, only good for sledding. Where I lived before was flat and concrete and no yards and no kids. I didn’t know not to like it. “Ew,” Janelle said.

Playing out front will be exposed, with cars passing, strangers eyeing us swat the birdie like it’s a fly in the kitchen, belly-laughing as we leap and miss, crashing into the scratchy crabgrass. I hate people watching, can’t stand people knowing things about me. “New girl’s got a secret,” Janelle told the others yesterday, smack in front of me.

Suzanne and Tracy team up, leaving me with Janelle. She tugs the top off a dandelion. “Fine,” she says to no one, tossing away the yellow flower. “Fine,” I say right back. The thing is, I might actually be good at badminton. Keefer, our cranky gym teacher, liked me best of the sixth grade girls because I can run forever. “This girl,” Keefer said on the last day of school, handing me the highest presidential fitness certificate with the biggest, goldest seal.

Janelle’s terrible at badminton but criticizes me left and right. I’m in her way, she complains, or she shouts, “Stop your dumb, weird breathing.” I whack my racket hard, making air whistle between the strings. Suzanne’s good, and we whoosh the birdie between us.

Then Janelle pushes in front of me so I can’t swing without hitting her, meaning Suzanne wins the point as the birdie arrows feathers-up into the grass. She and Tracy high-five. “You’re hogging,” Janelle says.

“That doesn’t count.” I don’t know why I say that because I don’t care.

“Ask the line judge,” Janelle says.

“You guys,” Donna says.

Janelle arcs her racket through empty space, and I step back. She might never like me, even if I wait forever. We’re not moving back, and those old friends are gone. “No way,” my mom says. Her creepy boyfriend has his important new job. I hate him.

Right then, a station wagon with wood paneling pulls curb-close, and a woman wearing too-big sunglasses rolls down the window and calls, “Can one of you girls pretty-please help me for a sec?” A checkered scarf covers her hair, is knotted tight at her throat. Like she’s the wolf waiting in Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s bed.

Suzanne and Tracy stare at the grass. Donna’s face reddens. Only Janelle watches me, a strange, hard, unfriendly smile distorting her face. Like a painted clown who’s not funny. Like she wants me to cry. Like she knows what happened in my old neighborhood though I’ve told no one.

I remind myself to breathe, because Stranger Danger is the scary man with handfuls of candy. He’s a troll, an ogre, the witch in the forest. He’s not real. This is a lady like our moms driving a car with a bicentennial license plate from Michigan.

My own mother worries about strange men, about boys demanding to see my underwear, about the priest. “Tell me if anything happens,” she says, “promise.” I promise. But when it did, I didn’t know any words she wanted to hear. Like, what if he’s not a stranger?

Janelle points at me. “Go see what she wants. You’re the new girl.”

“Are you afraid?” I ask.

“Never.” She tosses her racket way high in the sky and starts sauntering toward the car even before the racket crashes to the ground.

It’s not a game. I despise Janelle, but it’s not like I truly want her to disappear. I pick up her racket, curving my fingers into the grip, touching the warm, worn leather where Janelle’s fingers were.

“Wait,” Donna says, not to Janelle but to me.

Suzanne and Tracy poke their fingertips against the taut strings of their rackets, maybe testing them. What if no one likes Janelle? Maybe the rule’s that the new girl says it. Say it, I think. Give them what they want and they’ll like you.

I say, “Let her go. She’s fine.”

We watch Janelle talk to the woman then slide into the front seat of the car. The door slams, and the car drives off. “She didn’t even wave goodbye,” Tracy says.

“How come dumb Iowa doesn’t have special red, white, and blue license plates for the Bicentennial?” Suzanne asks.

“Great question,” Donna says.

So we four wonder about that for a while, and other stuff, until our mothers call us in for dinner, Janelle’s mother’s voice coming hoarse and wretched through the screened window of my bedroom late into the night.

Leslie Pietrzyk’s collection of linked stories set in Washington, D.C., Admit This to No One, was published in 2021 by Unnamed Press. Her first collection of stories, This Angel on My Chest, won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Short fiction and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Story Magazine, Southern Review, Iowa Review, The Sun, and Cincinnati Review, among others. Her awards include a Pushcart Prize in 2020.

Animal Relief by Rachel Becker

On By okaydonkey7In poetryLeave a comment
We’re sitting on our first adult couch
to which the cat has already done his worst,
fabric pilling. It’s from Jordan’s.
We spent real money.

From here, the crooked chandelier jangles
on its chain. Mismatched bulbs flicker
like filmstrips, our dinner table,
paint-stained, pocked—again, the cat.

Sometimes I clear plates too soon.
Evil waitress, my husband jokes, fork raised.

So different from how my father ate,
hunched over and full of complaint,
the meat, too dry, and beans, over-boiled.

He left the table, still chewing,
like a child, who had soiled himself.

Rachel Becker’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in journals including North American Review, Post Road, Crab Orchard Review, Poetry South, and RHINO. She is also an assistant poetry editor for Porcupine Literary: A journal by and for teachers. She lives in Boston.