Sometimes I like to draw on my teeth, but not today. I do not like to draw on my teeth today because yesterday Luis ate dirt. The day before Luis was sprayed across my hands and my shirt; I had to dig a hole in my backyard. I said a prayer for Luis, my friend Luis. Today I put my pillows on the top shelf in my closet, I am giving up sleep for him.

My reasons for anything are always temporary, so it doesn’t matter if Luis killed the rabbit, even when he bit him. I miss my old life, when we would skip over rocks on the river, dip our feet in, get a cold. I miss being frozen in our room, unable to move, forgetting what it felt like to feel normal and healthy, wishing for more than anything to be warm and healthy again.

My feet slipped from under me during class while I fell asleep with my head down. looking out the window, my friend Sarah asked me if I was okay. I do not know how to tell her that I do not have time, I gave time up for Luis.

The rain falls all over the place, and my CD keeps skipping in my ears. Today is All Saints Day, I dressed up as, well it doesn’t matter, now that you can’t see it. My mom made me dress up for All Saints Day, I tried really hard not to celebrate it without you, I know it was your favorite. No one really likes All Saints Day. Mom and Dad’s breath comes from the same bed now, they gasp and are curious; I forget how thin the walls are here. I am going to stop crying all the time, I want to be as alive as one could try to be, even if that means doing the bad things. I want to hear people say, “That’s not like you! Luis would be disappointed,” but I know they are lying.

On the underside of a fog you are so lonely. Alone, with dirt sprayed across your face, wedged between your skin. I don’t want to be shot brushing my teeth with you. Alone in the modesty of our gums, waxed with baking soda. It was easier to avoid a greater sadness than whatever this is, I guess that’s why I did it. Why I buried you in the backyard, sliced up, full of juice.

It is still raining and you have stolen the warmth from this earth. But someday secretly, I will work on bringing you back up. That way we can walk into the theater, hand in hand; see the tiny stage hold up the great fools. Their shadows bouncing behind their eyes. And yes, it is all necessary, to see multiples of you through my backyard window.

The leaves are a yellow and it reminds me of you, and even though the road is closed I go down in. taking in the trees, searching for you. It is hard to find you in the dust that fills the air. I wish I could have looked at you a little longer, Luis. I know I must go but my ears hurt from wind blowing. The new is not important to me anymore, how could all of this keep happening when you are gone. You’ve been far from land for too long, just come back.

I could almost see you floating in class today. I didn’t cry, it was an awkward mask I forced myself to wear. Tall people do not seem to understand, Luis, the destruction of moldering at a wooden altar. At the funeral, others laughed. In your towel my knees killed grass, feet were brown and shone through the crack that ran up the wall. I got thrown to the tub, but I leaked out of my knee and made my escape to your grave. But they twisted me back and lives carried on.

My feet hurt from walking across streets for you. I can’t go go home anymore and sleep. I don’t think you would have this Luis, but I can’t keep squinting my eyes just so I can remember you. It is hard Luis, to eat when I think I see you on the kitchen table. It is even worse when I go to Abuela’s house and see multiples of you swaying in the wind. I go drawing on my teeth and smearing my nose on the couch. I don’t miss you anymore, you were just a lemon, Luis.

Fabiola Cepeda is a Mexican-American Writer from San Antonio, Texas. Her work has been published in Gravel, Cargoes, and The Hunger Journal. She is currently pursuing a degree in creative writing and studio art from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. You can find her on Instagram @whatfabifound and @fabiolaleyendolibros.

CW: violence and suicide

All Children Eat Their Mothers

It starts in the womb, then moves to the tit, of course, and only continues from there.

I am constantly taking small bites of my mother. Every time she tucks a loose lock of hair behind my ear, I sink my teeth into the bones of her hand, before pulling the lock loose against my face again.

When she stands at the door with her purse strung over her arm, telling the new babysitter what to feed me and when to tuck me in, I gnaw at the soft flesh of her middle. She smooths back my hair and says, Ok, sweet girl. Be good and eat your supper for the sitter. But I’m already full. I sneak one more nibble before she’s out the door.

At the doctor’s office, I tell him my stomach aches. He asks me to point to where it hurts. I point to my mother. They both laugh. I don’t.

I Saw A Man Kill Himself

I saw a man jump clear off a building. Make a bright red splatter of himself on the sidewalk below. I should have seen it coming, but still it surprised me.

I was walking my dog down a typically uncrowded street in Chinatown. A private treasure of ours. A secret pleasure. I should have known something was strange when I saw a group of old ladies gathered on the sidewalk, red plastic shopping bags dangling in their hands, their necks all craning upwards at the roof of an apartment building.

Before I had a moment to join their gaze, a man jumped to his end at their feet. The ladies screamed in a high-pitched chorus. I froze with my dog by my side. I should have tried to help him, seen if there was anything that could be done. Instead, I stared at the body. Watched the blood form a slowly expanding, darkening pool. The color grew deeper as the pool grew wider. The ladies backed away, still screaming, some crying.

Later that night, trying to sleep in my bed, my dog curled up by my side, I thought of the man’s blood again. I thought of my own blood the same color, inside my body.  Wondered about the pool it would build around me if I jumped off my own building. Wondered who would take care of my dog.

Born and raised in Palisades, NY, Mea Cohen is a writer based in New York City. Her work has previously appeared in West Trade Review, The Gordon Square Review, OPEN: Journal of Arts and Letters, and more. She earned an MFA in creative writing and literature from Stony Brook University, where she was a Contributing Editor for The Southampton Review. After working in the publishing industry for companies such as the David Black Literary Agency, Trident Media Group, and Audible, she is now Founder and Editor in Chief for The Palisades Review and a Partnership Manager at Stitcher.

Darryl eats eggs for breakfast every day and leaves his crusted plate on the table for someone else to clean. Sometimes the eggs are runny and he sops up the orange runs with toast. Sometimes the eggs are burnt and he feeds them to the dog and doesn’t eat till noon. He wakes up early and goes to bed late, he never gets no sleep. Some people call Darryl the most miserable man in Tennessee. Darryl’s wife steals his money in front of him, shoves it right in her purse. Darryl’s kids hate him, his kids call him “loser” and “fatso” and “gay.” Darryl watches sports on TV and his team always loses. Darryl’s truck breaks down on the way to the job site and he kicks the truck and it hurts his foot. He lays on the side of the highway as the semis plow by and no one stops to help. Fiberglass fills Darryl’s lungs and he hacks them up on the port-a-john floor. Sawdust gets in Darryl’s eyes and Darryl’s coworkers call him a faggot when he looks like he’s crying even though he’s not.

Darryl’s hardhat is too big and his pants fall down, he’s got coffee stains on his shirt. Darryl stares out the window of the job site trailer while his boss screams at him and bangs his fists on the desk for something Darryl didn’t do. Darryl gets threatened with termination, Darryl’s kids are ugly, and Darryl’s dog bites him when he walks in. Darryl’s mom died of cancer, Darryl’s dad’s got dementia, and last winter Darryl’s gallbladder up and quit.

Darryl cherishes the bad and lies awake at night staring at the ceiling hoping more bad things will come while his wife rides his dick and calls him the wrong name. Darryl’s wife fucks the neighbor and cums harder than ever. Darryl’s pastor tells him he’s going to hell. Darryl is missing a finger which he blew off while cleaning his gun. The hospital tells Darryl it wasn’t an accident, the hospital tells Darryl it was actually a “negligent discharge.” A bus crashes into the trees near Darryl’s house and he walks down hoping to see something bad. Darryl’s daughter is killed in the bus crash, all the other children survive. Darryl goes to his dead daughter’s funeral and no one shakes Darryl’s hand. The man who fucks his wife tells him he’s real sorry about losing Darryl’s daughter, that she was a good kid. Darryl scarfs potato salad after his daughter’s funeral while his wife cries on another man’s shoulder. Darryl gets food poisoning from the potato salad and shits his brains out while laughing. Darryl stands in his dead daughter’s room crying and calls himself a waste of breath, a sorry loser, and a faggot. Darryl forgets his surroundings and masturbates on the floor. Darryl slips in the shower and Darryl misses work. He tells his wife that his back is crooked as she leaves the house and Darryl’s wife says “good.” Darryl sits alone in his chair and watches TV. He sees a commercial for the miserable, the sad and the depressed and dials the hotline. The operator calls Darryl a faggot, and Darryl says “thank you” and hangs up the phone.

Darryl wears camouflage and goes hunting alone in the woods and misses every shot. The deer laugh at Darryl and follow him to his house, and the deer fuck Darryl’s wife too. Darryl sleeps in his dead daughter’s bed beneath the pale pink sheets clouded with rings of piss and dreams about fishes. Darryl dreams of standing on the shoreline in the muck of the Pigeon River but every time Darryl’s about to net a mighty bronze back, the fish breaks the line and swims away from Darryl. Darryl don’t catch nothin’, not even in his dreams. Darryl goes back to work and builds a house, Darryl crushes his fingers with his hammer, Darryl hits his head on a wooden beam and the stars laugh at Darryl swirling round his head. Darryl takes pills for his back and drives home pretending he is drunk. Darryl hits a mailbox, just for fun. Sometimes Darryl cooks dinner and burns down the kitchen, sometimes it turns out good and he howls as he eats. 

Darryl loves misery, Darryl loves pain. Darryl goes to his brother’s farm and gets kicked by a mule named Josephine after his mother. Darryl finds himself to be an enemy of all living creatures and eats them with spitefulness. Darryl eats their meat and savors the tissue and grit stuck between his inflamed gums and cuckold cheeks. Darryl loves the idea of perfection. Darryl thinks about death, his gravestone, the inscription reading “Here lays the most miserable man in Tennessee.” Darryl barrels down I-40 going the wrong direction but his truck don’t break down, Darryl don’t wear no seatbelt. Darryl collides head on with a truck bigger than Darryl’s truck because Darryl’s truck is small. The engine comes through the dash, pinning half of Darryl to the floorboard and the other half to the dash, and a li’l bit of Darryl splashes across the back window too. A spider web splinters the windshield and no one stops to help. The police take pictures of Darryl’s body and show them to their friends. No one claims Darryl’s remains as family or friend and there ain’t no funeral and there ain’t no gravestone. Darryl’s wife and dead daughter’s ghost move into the house of the man who fucks Darryl’s wife. Darryl’s body burns in the cremation chamber and his fat burns hotter than his muscles and his bones burn the longest.

Rebekah Morgan is a writer living in good ole Eastern Tennessee. Previous work can be found with Bull Magazine, Fence, Joyland Magazine, Maudlin House, and New York Tyrant, among other places.

It was the memories that did it: My nap-heavy head on an impossibly wide chest. Dark curls—thick as fur—my toddler hand tangled in their sleepy heat. A wild, lumbering voice—a real voice, not a growl or a grunt—almost human. Fresh shampoo—lilac and lavender—and, below that, creek mud and wet leaves. Denim overalls—soft with wear—a poor, if durable, disguise. A steadying palm and a tickle of hair blanketing my back.

I’m not interested in finding Bigfoot; I want him to come back on his own. I want him to come back because he misses me, misses Mom. Isn’t that what any kid would want from their dad? That’s what brought me out here in the middle of the night.

Even if Mom won’t say it right out, I know he’s my dad. She doesn’t want me blabbing, attracting attention. I know better now. I learned my lesson last year—when I was only ten. I told Seth, my (former) best friend. Six months of answering to “Wookie Boy” was more than enough to teach me silence.

I’ve grown up since then: Mom’s doctor visits, selling the house, moving to an apartment across town. We’ve had a hard year. Lately, I can’t stop wondering what would happen if I let something slip and some scientist got to Dad first? What if I was the reason he got caught and caged? Stuck with needles and turned into some experiment? I’d never say anything now. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.

In the first place, I don’t think Mom meant for me to find out about Dad at all. When I asked her, it was supposed to be a joke. I’d gone to the basement for a Freeze Pop and caught her crying on the couch. It was those little choke-sobs, the ones that force their way out no matter how hard you hold them. She was watching “Bigfoot: The Missing Link” (a History Channel miniseries that I’ve now seen nine and a half times, mostly by sneaking the iPad after bedtime). I’d forced a grin, pointed at the screen. “Is that Dad?” Cheering her from her funks was my little-kid job, as I saw it then. I thought she’d laugh—snort through her tears and tell me to quit being a goober.

Instead, she kept wringing the edge of the knit blanket across her lap. She looked away and shut her eyes as if she was afraid of what might spill out. She didn’t make room or pat the open cushion at her side. She turned back to the TV—opened her eyes and fixed them to the screen without saying a word—I realized I’d found what hurt and I knew I’d never have the heart to ask again.

Still, I had to be sure. This wasn’t Santa or the Easter Bunny. I had to do my research. Ms. Knowles let me use the library computer, though I think she knew it wasn’t really for a school project. I found half a dozen sasquatch sightings reported to The Chronicle right around when I was born. One of them was just up the street from our house—in the woods behind Dollar General.

In the end, the research wasn’t what convinced me, what finally brought me out here, clutching my stack of handmade posters in the backwoods moonlight an hour’s walk from the nearest county road.

You can argue facts, but there’s no use arguing with memory. They’re clearest on the restless nights. The ones when Mom goes to bed early, sleeps late. Those nights, it’s like I can grip each memory by the edge, hold it to catch the starry light framed by my bedroom window.

It was the memories on those long nights that got me thinking: What if he’s still out there? What if he had to leave so I didn’t blow his cover? What if I let him know his secret’s safe with me? What if he came back?

“Dad, come home.” That’s what the posters say. It took a whole library afternoon to make them all. By the end, I was dizzy from the fumes off Ms. Knowles’s fat-tipped sharpie. At home, I spent half an hour looking for a staple gun, finally tucked the junk-drawer hammer and half a pack of nails under my pillow.

The night is colder than I thought, too cold for just jeans and my Mothman hoodie. Somewhere along the way, I walked through a burr patch. One pant leg has a string of them scratching through the denim. Still, it’s the quiet that’s most uncomfortable. That country quiet: silence filled with cicada screams and a barn owl in the distance. Son of Bigfoot, I whisper like it’ll help me feel at home. While hammering the first poster, I nearly drop the rest before tucking the stack under one arm. I do drop them when a wide swing misses the nail entirely and bashes my thumb against the pine bark.  From then on, the pages all have one muddy corner.

By the time I finish, the sun is nearly up. I tuck the hammer’s head in a pocket and wrap cold fingers around my still-throbbing thumb. Between the trees, I can glimpse my handiwork: white paper, corners curling over in the damp. I should’ve brought more nails, should’ve used two per poster. Still, it’s something. I think of Mom, tired in her bones. She’ll still be proud of what I’ve done. For a moment, I think it almost doesn’t matter if he sees them, almost doesn’t matter if he comes back.

Mike Keller-Wilson lives, writes, and teaches in Iowa City, Iowa. He is a founder & co-editor-in-chief of the newly-launched Vast Chasm Magazine. In his day job, he teaches writing and dad jokes to a captive audience of 7th graders. Find him on Twitter @Mike3Stars or at mikekellerwilson.com.

Agnes thought Sherisse was the smartest person in her eighth-grade class. The prettiest too, with her shiny yellow hair. Agnes’s own hair was mouse-brown. When she grew older, she figured she would dye it, maybe red, but her mother wouldn’t allow it now, “You’re not a slut.”

“Girls who dye their hair aren’t automatically sluts.”

“The next thing they want is tattoos of hearts and motorcycles and skulls. They want their tongues tattooed.”

Agnes swallowed hard. “I’ve never heard of that.”

“Oh, yes. It’s a fact. Now go wash the dinner dishes.”

Agnes slumped to the sink. Outside the window, as the sun was setting, she could see all the signs on the lawns for Nixon and on one lawn a sign for Hubert Humphrey. She wasn’t much for politics.

“Your father and I raised you to be a good girl, a lady, and someday a scientist, or an artist.”

“I don’t even like art.” But she sort of did. She rinsed the plate under the faucet, which hissed when she first turned it on. The remnants of the pigs-in-the-blanket had some of the colors of an Andy Warhol painting. Her mother used Campbell’s tomato soup for the sauce. The cabbage strips slipped off into the strainer. She’d have to clean that later when it became yucky sludge.

“Or a musician.”

“I hate practicing piano.” The lady across the street bent down to pet her dog. “Woof,” Agnes imagined him saying. The trees had lost most of their leaves.

“Look what happened to Mrs. McDonald’s Roxane.”

“What?”

“She broke her arm.”

“So?”

“She won’t be able to play until it heals. But you’re lucky. You can practice right now.”

Agnes glanced toward the living room, where the upright spinet with its battered and peeling veneer sat. “I hate the piano. Hate it. Hate it.”

“People that play the piano live longer. Look at Liberace — he died at the age of one hundred and five.”

“He’s still alive.”

“And Picasso, too, the artist.”

“I would hate to do something I hated for one hundred and five years.”

Her mother put a chipped plate into the dishpan. “Your father works in a factory. Would you like to do that? Breathe hot fumes all day long? He loves you and works hard for you, so you don’t have to work in a factory. You’re lucky you’re a girl. You won’t be sent to Vietnam.”

“And here I thought they needed piano players.”

“Don’t be such a smart-off.”

Agnes smoothed her hair, but her hand was wet. “Someday, I would like to have red hair, or blond hair. Like Sherisse.”

“That girl is not who you want to be.”

“She is, she is.”

“Her mother had an abortion. I heard the baby wasn’t the husband’s.”

“You don’t know that. How do you know that?”

“Mrs. Nilson told me.”

Agnes waved her wet hand. “Mrs. Nilson also believes the world is flat.”

“Even so, she could still be right about some things. A person isn’t one hundred percent one thing. One hundred percent stupid about everything.”

“I wish people wore signs that said what percent they are. Fifty percent honest, twenty-five percent kind, twenty-five percent hardworking.” Agnes rinsed a plate.

“Honey, you’re all those things.”

“But nobody asked me to the Halloween Dance. Some of us girls had to dance with each other. No boy danced with me.”

“They’re shy. They will. You wait and see.”

“Jimmy asked Sherisse to dance.”

“When I was your age…”

“I don’t want to hear about how you didn’t have a car, you cleaned out the stalls, you twisted the heads off the chickens.”

“That’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say I dreamed about having a family, falling in love, and having a baby girl, just like you. Someone kind, pretty, smart.”

“I’m none of those things. I hate myself. Sherisse is beautiful and smart.”

“You are too, honey. You’ll be a famous journalist, or lawyer and deal with facts. You’ll see I was right. You’re our Cinderella.”

A dish slipped from her fingers in the lukewarm water. “I should have never been born.”

“Don’t you dare say that.” Her mother leaned into Agnes and put her cheek on her cheek. “What would your father and I do without you? How could we live?”

“You could get a dog.” Across the street, the neighbor lady walked ahead of her schnauzer.

“Untrue things can be true sometimes.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“The world is flat. But, of course, it’s not. And yet it is. We don’t fly off the planet. But we do fly above it. Although I’ve never been in a plane.” Her mother said this wistfully, took off her apron. “I know you will. Children go farther than their parents. And that’s good.”

“I’ll live here forever in this kitchen. I’ll be an ugly old maid.”

“I’m telling you truths to live by. Someday you’ll be thankful.”

“Someday. Someday.” Agnes dried her hands on the towel, patted her damp skirt. Across the street, the schnauzer trotted joyfully. “Someday.”

Cezarija Abartis has published a collection, Nice Girls and Other Stories (New Rivers Press) and stories in Bennington Review, FRiGG, matchbook, and New York Tyrant, among others. Her flash, “The Writer,” was selected by Dan Chaon for Wigleaf’s Top 50 online Fictions of 2012 and “To Kiss a Bear” was selected for Wigleaf’s Longlist 2016. Her flash “Sisters” was selected by Amber Sparks for Best Microfiction 2021. Recently she completed a crime novel.

The scab of the family doesn’t say much, so everyone thinks she’s trouble. In high school, she gets grounded twice a week but only for things she should’ve done rather than things she shouldn’t have. When the scab of the family stays out too late and comes home quiet and jumpy, the mother calls her awful things—traitor, trouble, rat. At holidays, the scab of the family is second in line to hug the grandmother and tell her she loves her, but the only one to really mean it. When the scab leaves for college, she doesn’t pack anything sentimental, but cries on her first night in the dorms when her roommate requests a room change.

The scab of the family only goes to some classes and doesn’t get invited to parties or accepted to any sororities, though she goes through all the hazing. She tries to talk to the warm slouching boys that sit beside her in class, but they turn up their headphones before she can finish saying hello. The scab only flies home for funerals, so the mother marks her “deceased/missing” in the family registry in the back of her black crumbling bible. When the scab graduates, she walks the stage but doesn’t invite anyone to watch. That night she burns her sociology degree over the little tin trashcan she keeps beside her bed—she doesn’t understand people any better now than she did before.

The scab of the family remains in her college town and finds a job in data entry. She buys a whole new wardrobe, pencil skirts and warm sweaters and thin heels that accentuate the sharp bones of her feet. She sits in a cold, blank office besides much older, much colder people who listen to audio books on two-times speed and eat tepid lunches at their desks under the bright glow of their monitors. The scab asks her cubical mate out for drinks who refuses: she already has plans that night to cry in the shower. The scab adds it to the end of her hourly planner, right underneath “bus home” and before “brush teeth,” and likes it so much that she does it every night.

The scab of the family lives and works and never goes home, not even for funerals. She calls the arthritic ornery mother only on days when it hails and tries not to cry as the mother says she is selfish and traitorous and unlovable. On her thirtieth birthday, the scab decides she wants to know what trouble really tastes like so she gets rebel tattooed on the wet inside of her bottom lip. It tastes sweeter than she expected, and she chews it off while she sleeps.

The scab of the family adopts a pet rat, not a fancy rat all fluffy and sweet but a gnarly one, gray and twitchy. She names it Pebbles and after work holds its struggling warm body against her chest while sniffling along to K-Dramas. When she grows bored of subtitles, the scab goes to bars to find someone to take her home. So used to the cubical, she sits in the darkest corner, hides in her hair, and potential suitors miss her when they glance around looking for lonely, frightened women. She drinks Bloody Mary after Bloody Mary until her mouth tingles and her throat scratches and she can’t sleep for the bubbling acidic pain. By thirty-two she has invasive emergency surgery to remove all the horseradish-induced ulcers.

The scab of the family is the only child to return home to take care of the mother when she gets too crotchety to be left alone with waiters and too fragile to walk up stairs. She bathes her and dresses her and sings her lullabies all while the mother spits and calls her awful things, traitor, ungrateful, defector, scab. When the mother dies alone in her bed, the scab notes it in the family registry but tells no one. She carefully leaves the bible where it belongs on the mother’s clean mantelpiece between graying family photos and baby pictures and fake sprigs of fir. She flies back home to her college town and her itchy rat greets her sleepily by the door. While she sits on the cool kitchen tile, she lets her rat lap warm gravy from her finger and feels almost loved. She is not so much like a scab anymore, but the shiny newly woven skin underneath.

Mialise Carney (@mialisec) is a writer and MFA student at California State University, Fresno. She is an editor at The Normal School, and her writing has appeared in Hobart, Maudlin House, and The Boiler, among others. Read more of her work at mialisecarney.com.

Yes, you can eat your darling goldfish. He is most likely a form of ornamental carp, and he will taste as you expect: muddy and full of bones.

You can eat all your darlings, once you kill them. Although why you killed Prince Harry the goldfish I cannot understand. Was it all the staring, his bulging eyes? Was it his flashy orange scales, so out of place in your dark, dusty cabin full of your ancestors’ ghosts? Or was it that his beauty faded by the day, in your care, and you could not bear to watch it—how his scales grew dull and his swimming listless, until he mostly stayed put in the middle of the small, round, glass bowl that was his world since you brought him home from that Memorial Day carnival? His translucent fins fanned like the scarves of an old burlesque dancer still going through the motions.

You sure looked like you wanted him when you paid $3.00, six times in a row, tossing rings onto a pole. Prince Harry watched you from the table full of glass goldfish bowls and saw how you labored for him, how you fought against your own shortcomings to win him as a prize. But now it’s August, and you should have set him up with a proper tank by now, some plastic plants and aquarium gravel, at least.

Prince Harry was an $18.00 goldfish, which makes him as expensive as any other freshwater fish on the menu at your local upscale seafood place. But you should know that the diet you fed him of dehydrated fish flakes won’t please your palate, nor your conscience. (Maybe you could have treated him better?)

What’s done is done, I get it. I just hope you killed him with kindness.

Because, you know, Prince Harry the goldfish was miserable in that little glass bowl. He was never going to become the best fish he could be, trapped in there. In the wild—if you had released him, an invasive species—he could have grown far beyond your expectations. (Seriously, he could’ve grown to be a foot long!) But at what cost to the other fish in the lake that butts up to your cabin? Prince Harry would crowd out the others that belong there.

Your darlings can be eaten, and they should be, if they fail to thrive. If you fail them.

But Prince Harry the goldfish will leave a bad taste in your mouth. He watched you toss all those rings at the carnival. For him. He thought you loved him. He thought he was home.

Susan Rukeyser writes and reads in Joshua Tree, California. Her debut novel, Not On Fire, Only Dying, was released by Twisted Road Publications and she recently completed her new novel, The Worst Kind of Girl. In 2018, Susan founded World Split Open Press to publish feminist books, including The Feckless Cunt Anthology. She also hosts the Desert Split Open Mic, Joshua Tree’s feminist, queer, and otherwise radical open mic and occasionally interviews local and visiting authors. Susan’s short fiction, creative nonfiction, and multimedia work appear in numerous places, both online and in print. linktree.com/susanrukeyser

You aren’t scared the night he creeps into your room. You know you should be scared, as he stands in front of your bed—hands on hips as if sizing you up—but there are too many things competing for your terror right now. You have to choose wisely.

I heard you crying, he says.

How’d you hear that? you ask because you’re sure he’s lying. You know how to sob quietly into your pillow so your Daddy can’t hear, how to quit early, so Mum won’t ask the next day why your eyes are puffy. Good girls don’t get puffy eyes or nighttime visitors.

You know how to lie, too, now that you’re turning thirteen. This was the week Mum said you could no longer run outside with your brothers. This was the week your hair was pulled tight and tied back in blue ribbons, while a chemise and corset imprisoned your chest and cinched your waist. This is the week you were to learn how to be a lady.

I heard you, Peter says again while his shadow nods in agreement. You don’t think much of that trick. What good is a delinquent boy and his shadow when doomed to a life you don’t want? Tomorrow you are to be fitted with new shoes that includes a little heel. It will angle your back and shoulders for a more ladylike posture, Mum explained.

Come with me, instead, Peter interjects, as if he had overheard the conversation.

Where? you ask, as if there are safe options for a thirteen-year-old girl whose room has been invaded by a boy and his shadow.

The Island, another voice answers. Or possibly many voices, as it does not sound like just one. You look at the shadow, which scratches its head. And then you see someone though a dust red haze standing by the window. If anyone says fairies like pink, know they’re lying because Tink hates pastels. Even leaning against the wall, hands in pockets and head tilted to one side, they are taller than Peter who scarcely seems taller than you. You take in their mass of black ringlets that frame a wide jaw and high cheekbones. You envy their maroon pinstripe suit. You can be anyone you want to be there, Tink adds. Not a girl’s voice, yet not a boy’s either. You can’t tell if they’re sixteen or sixty, and don’t care. Your palms are wet and your heart beats so loud you are worried Peter can hear it, but he just smiles as if he understands everything and says, we leave tonight.

 You want to pack your dresses and shoes and ribbons, but Peter keeps asking what for until you leave it all on your bed. Tink keeps close to the window, as if your room were a prison and to venture too far in might jeopardize their own freedom. When they hold out their hand, you lace your fingers through theirs, watch as they fold the moon into a smooth bright road calling you to another place.

Everyone is still up by the time you arrive. Young and old alike wear whatever they want: off the shoulder dress, slitted skirt, breeches with waistcoat and rainbow tie; their hair in braids or cropped short, while others sport wigs in cotton candy colors as if they were crowns. We’ve been waiting for you, Tia says, pointing to a large table filled with food. You and Tink sit side by side, your nightdress hiked up so that your thigh rests against theirs. Mum would never have approved, but you can’t quite remember her face or voice now. Even your old room disappears in the mist. Where can I get a suit like that? you whisper, but Peter overhears you. Hook will take care of it, he says. He can tailor anything.

Peter started the tradition, I help with the transition, Tink explains, as they take off their jacket to reveal a pair of razor-sharp diamond wings. Hook can sew, but no one cuts a pattern as well as I do. A shiver of fear and joy runs through you as Tink leans in, puts their hand on your lower back. Don’t worry. I can wait. 

You change your name from Wendy to Wen to Wendell, as Tink shears off your hair little by little, and the wind at the back of your neck feels like freedom. Peter gives all his future grown-up selves to keep the island invisible. Some days he can’t fly, because magic like that demands balance, courses through his muscles and joints like lightning. Tink makes a special tea to help him sleep through the night. Sometimes he takes too much and pretends he’s Queen Victoria. These are your favorite nights, even though the next morning is rough. Peter remains young and weary and welcomes all those cast out of their houses. Year after year they come to find a banquet awaiting them. Some weep at the sight. Others are surprised into laughter at such tenderness. Hook gives a fashion show every Spring to show his new line and you take up woodworking, surprising Tink with a rocking chair made for two.

One day Peter doesn’t wake up.

You feel the shift in the wind, watch the tides grow stronger and wonder what ships might accidentally find this harbor now. Some take a boat with Hook in hopes of finding a similar haven. Others travel deeper into the forest where Peter said there were caves to build a fortress, if ever the need came for it. Everyone knew Neverland was made on borrowed time. You and Tink remain in the house you built together, a stone’s throw from the green mound where Peter sleeps. Tink’s wings, beating back the tide each night, shrink with each new moon. Their glorious ringlets have started turning gray and shed with each new rain. Every evening you ease Tink out of their clothes, massage each sore muscle with hands, lips, and tongue. They moan with exhausted pleasure and lay curled up between you and Peter’s shadow, sleeping. You take turns holding them as a new storm moves in and the nightmares descend. One day we won’t need an imaginary island, Tink whispers. They kiss you for a second, an hour, an entire year, extending your life with each breath until you are an old man sitting with his shadow on a white sandy beach, dreaming it all true.

Nancy Hightower has had work published in Joyland, Gargoyle, Entropy, Washington Post, HuffPo, NBC News Think, and elsewhere. She is the author of Elementari Rising (2013) and The Acolyte (2015).