Get up here! I say in my mind.

I don’t actually have the words yet to enunciate that sentiment out loud.
It’s odd. I get the words, I just can’t say them. I think they’ll come
eventually, maybe even soon. But for now, all I’m able to produce is a
strained, “Ehhh.”

Mommy looks at me in the rear view mirror.

“Elmo fall down?”

She talks to me like I’m an idiot but, in fairness, I can’t converse yet.
She takes care of me, feeds me, loves me. She picks Elmo up off the floor,
which is a full-time job because Elmo is a fucking spaz. I don’t have a
daddy, or a brother or sister. It’s just Mommy and me. That’s okay. She’s
all I need.

I let out another pained “Ehhh!” and then, despite my best intentions, I
begin to cry.

“Shhh-shhh,” coos Mommy. She starts to sing, “La-la, la-la…”

I join her. I can’t even say my name but somehow I manage to form the sounds
of “Elmo’s World.” It makes Mommy happy to sing it.

Her eyes are off the mirror and back on the road. The rain is getting
harder. This stretch has no street lights.

I think I liked it better when I rode backwards.

I love Mommy, but she’s kind of a klutz. We’re coming from the supermarket
where she just took out half a Velveeta display with a shopping cart. I’m
not sure how I feel about her steering five-thousand pounds of minivan
through a driving rain in the dark.

“La-la, la-la,” I keep singing and I can tell she’s smiling by the way her
cheek puffs out on the side.

Mommy slows the minivan.

A car is spun out on the road ahead, facing the wrong way.

The front door is open and there’s a figure lying still on the ground.

We’re alone out here.

We should go.

Mommy brings the minivan to a full stop. She looks back at me, big beautiful
almond eyes full of worry, and something else. Guilt? Sorrow? I’m not sure I
know what those things are yet, but I think that’s what I see on her face. I
don’t like the way they look on my mommy.

My eyes drift down to Elmo – useless prick! – flat on his back on the
floor, surrounded by my discarded juice boxes. He looks like he’s just come
off a cranberrylicious bender.

Mommy touches my chin. She lines her eyes up with mine and there’s absolute
reassurance.

“Mommy’ll be right back,” she says.

She opens the door just long enough to slip out. The falling rain is
deafening.

She looks around, like maybe we aren’t alone out here. She flicks her key
fob, locking all the minivan’s doors.

I watch her jog through the driving downpour, across the empty road. As she
moves, her body remembers. Short, choppy strides, become long and graceful.

She squats down to check the silent figure on the ground.

That’s when I see it.

It’s big and moving from behind the other car. It’s not a person. It’s
shadow and darkness. Cold. I get flashes of things I used to know, before I
was with Mommy, things from the beginning, things I’ll forget in a few
years.

I recognize the Cold Thing, or at least what it represents. I don’t think I
could put it into words even if I had them. Instead, I just scream bloody
murder.

Between the rain and the minivan’s soundproofing, there’s no hope in hell
that she’ll hear me. I watch, helpless, terrified, as the Cold Thing
moves around my mommy, stopping with its back to me.

I can’t see her.

There’s nothing worse than not being able to see your mommy.

I scream louder, harder.

The Cold Thing’s head swivels on its neck, facing me at an unholy angle.

It winks.

I think I’m going to pass out.

The Cold Thing rights its head and moves in on my mommy.

I want to pass out.

I flail and kick against the goddamn car seat. It’s useless. I’m useless.
She’s everything in the world to me and it’s going to take her.

There’s movement. A struggle.

Shit.

Did the Cold Thing just explode?

It’s gone, and all I see is my mommy lunging forward, her left fist cocked,
her right arm extended.  She’s holding a short, sharp piece of wood.

Surprise and relief.

Now, terror: the figure that was lying on the ground is standing behind
Mommy. It’s not alive either.

The New Thing lunges. Mommy dodges.

She leaps with the grace of a gymnast and pivots mid-air.

(The woman can’t parallel park!)

She lands a kick to the New Thing’s back, sending it sprawling on the wet
asphalt.

Mommy dives, her fist and the stick leading.  She finds her mark. The New
Thing explodes into the rain.

Mommy looks around again and I think this time she knows we’re alone. She
glides across the road, soft, confident loping strides.

She’s inside the van and all is right in the world. Her cheeks are flushed,
but she’s smiling. She picks Elmo up and stuffs the little red monster into
the side of my car seat. She wipes the drool from my chin and tells me it’s
okay.

Her eyes meet mine and her smile fades a little. I see those things again,
the ones I’m not sure I can name yet – sorrow? guilt?

She looks away from me and starts the car. Her eyes get wet.

“La-la, la-la,” I start to sing.

Mommy laughs a little as we pull back out onto the road.

© Mike Sweeney, 2010

[others]

“Rob, I’m dying.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m dying, Rob.
I’ve got bladder cancer.
I’m dying.”

Why’s this guy drinking if he’s got bladder cancer?  Quit the booze, man, don’t give up.
Now where’s Rob going?

“Rob, Rob, wait up!”

Great, now it’s just me and this big guy.  He’s been pretty quiet.  Guess I should say something.  I can’t believe that guy’s dying, that’s nuts, I think he said he was 29.

“Does your friend really have bladder cancer?”

“Yeah.”

“Shouldn’t he quit drinking then?”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t want to.”

“Oh.”

Jeeze.  I wonder how well Rob knows that guy.  The apartment in Angus was what, three years ago?

“I only have half a brain.”

“Oh, really.”

Okay, what’s this guy talking about?

“I’m serious.
I was in a car accident ten years ago
and I lost half my brain.
I have a plate in my head,
– you can hear it; listen.”

Why is this guy telling me this – and tapping his head?  What the fuck?!?

“Can you hear it?”

“Yeah – that sucks.  I would never have known.”

Oh my God. What the hell am I supposed to say to that.  Half a brain?  Sure he seemed a little slow but…sure sounds like there’s a plate in there.  Where does Rob meet these guys?

“Well you’ve certainly come a long way then.”

“Yep.”

“Because you didn’t give up, right, and good for you.  Cheers to that.”

“Right.  Cheers!”

“You should always have hope, right?  I mean, just look at you, – you never gave up hope and here you are, ten years later.  Doing great, right?”

“Yep!”

“That’s why your buddy’s got to quit drinking.  He shouldn’t just give up hope.  He should be strong like you were, right?”

“Right!”

“Alright then.  I’m gonna go and check on Rob and your buddy – see what’s going on.

Well, that was weird.  Now where did they go.  Not over there – must be in the washroom.   I could really go for another beer.  There’s his friend; by the washroom like I thought.  Guess Rob’s inside.

“Hey man, what’s going on?”

“Rob’s upset.”

© Steven Tomlins, 2010

© Len Kuntz, 2010

[others]

© Glen Binger, 2010

I was in my office, squeezing in some last-minute online Texas Hold ‘Em before my ten a.m. Cardio AbBlast.  I sat out a round, much to the chagrin of SmashDatAzz69, so I could give Dana the good news.  She picked up her phone on the first ring, like always.

“Dana, I hope you’re sitting down.”

She laughed.

“Kurt, you know I’m always sitting down!  You do see me outside your office, right?  I’m the redhead in the avocado cardigan?  Hell-oh-ohhhhh?”

Dana was always doing that, stretching out her hello’s in the way that healthy, attractive young women are stretching them out these days.

“Oh, right…  I do remember you from the interview process, now that I think about it.  Tell me: What if I told you to toss your Lean Cuisine into the trash today?”

I could hear Dana spit up her Diet Rite a little because my question was so insane.

“I’d tell you you’re crazy, Kurt!  That’s what I’d do!”

“Well, I want you to do exactly that.  I’m your boss, and I’m ordering you to throw your Grilled Chicken With Roasted Red Peppers into the trash immediately, because today’s Administrative Professionals Day and I’m taking you to Rimrockers.”

“Shut the fuck up!”

I looked through my office window and saw Dana sitting at her station all dumbfounded, her big Irish mouth making an O.

“Kurt, I’m so sorry…  My language!”

I felt awful about it but I knew I’d have to report her cursing to HR, so I just made a little slash mark on my legal pad to remind me to add a demerit to Dana’s Weekly Report.

“Dana, please.  I was in the Indiana National Guard.  You don’t think I’ve heard worse?”

I could hear Dana sigh in relief.  Another demerit: Demonstrates Lack of Job Ownership.  Another slash mark on the old legal pad.

“You ever had your Drill Sergeant call you a Low-Down, Two-Bit Dicktaster while you’re trying to unload a Humvee full of baked goods?”

“No!  Gosh, no!  He called you that?”

I made a little mmm-hmmm sound.  You have no idea, the stuff I’ve seen.  I really do hate talking about my days in the Service, though.  I’ve never been comfortable with the Hero label.

“Reservation’s at noon-thirty.  I do hope you’ll join me, Miss Shaughnessy.”

Dana squealed with excitement.  She sounded like when I step on my wife’s cat’s tail.

***

I helped Dana take off her peacoat and hang it up on a novelty mini-hoop that doubles as a coat rack.  She knew exactly what she wanted before we sat down, didn’t even need a menu: Slam-Tastic Southwest Tater Skins With Extra Chives.

“Oh my gosh, Kurt…  They’re The.  Best.”

Dana went on and on about how she and Caitlyn in IT ordered them to go on a Friday once, how they took the Skins back to Caitlyn’s and ate them while they watched Patriot Games, but I missed a lot of the details because I started thinking about Anne Archer naked.  I was getting really hard under the table and I thought, Better nip this in the bud, old boy.

“So, Dana?  If I told you there was a position opening up in Legal for an Entry-Level Real Estate Paralegal, would you be interested?”

Her eyes got huge and black, like my nephew Andrew’s when he’s on LSD.

“Kurt, I don’t know what to say…  Of course I would!  When would I…”

Anne Archer still had her top off, in my brain.

“Well, it depends upon whether Larry pulls through or not.  You know Larry Wierczynski, right?”

“Of course!  He’s the guy that fell off the scaffolding, at the Holiday Party.”

Still very, very erect.

“The same.  Looks like he’s about to check out, you know?  And the Express variety, too.  Just leaving his keys on the nightstand and signing that sheet of paper that gets slipped under the door at five a.m.”

“You’re talking about hotels, right?”

The waitress interrupted to take our order and Dana asked for the Skins and a Diet Rite.  I got the Asian Fusion Pizza Fingers and a Manhattan.

“Exactly.  But it’s a metaphor, the whole Express checkout thing.  You know?  Larry’s checking out.  As in, Larry’s gonna die.  Soon.”

“Right, right…”

“Right.  So if, excuse me, when he dies, I’m recommending you for the job.”

Dana’s skin got all pink, and just when I thought I’d finally kicked the whole Anne Archer thing she started kissing Dana on the neck and cupped her big soft tits in her hands.  In my brain.

“Kurt, I…  This is the best thing.  Ever.”

Dana started to cry, just as the waitress came back with our food and drinks.  I held up my hand to the waitress, the international sign for I’m really sorry, I don’t know what’s going on.  She caught my drift and winked, slid our half-Spaldings in front of us and said she’d be back in a bit to check on us.

Dana’s cheeks were all wet as she bit into one of the Skins.  She looked crazy but I didn’t tell her that.

“Delicious…”

I smiled and took a sip of my Manhattan.  I knew Dana wasn’t going to get the Paralegal job; not after Larry dies, not ever.  I mean, two demerits in a day?  Still, it made me feel good to know that I’d at least made Dana think she was being considered, which sometimes is just as important as actually getting a job.  Sometimes.

At the very least, I was confident that at the end of the day Dana would tell someone, somewhere, that she had just celebrated the best Administrative Professionals Day ever.

© Thomas Mundt, 2010

She never knows what to expect. The ad says, handsome, discreet. He
smiles and there’s a flash of silver at one side. It gets her hot knowing
this man lost a tooth and replaced it with silver. She leads him to the
kitchen. Here? He asks and she nods. It was used for little else. Afterwards
he asks to see her again and she gestures in a half-hearted way at the
spotless pots and pans.

Delusion – Jessica Otto

The galleon called Delusion swims through the mouse hole and into the
stagnant harbor.  Midnight’s fog rolled with it, weaving a mirage of
nereids; green skinned and draped in ragged sail cloth, dancing up and
down across the bow, swinging from the naked figurehead.   They come
from coral hills peppered with bodies tied to grounded masts, limbs
long pulped by the waves.  A green star falls and smolders in the
waves.  Another ghost, I think.

Socrates Adams

I am sitting in sunlight in a park on a bench. It is a bright day in the
park. The bench underneath me is in the park which I am sitting in. It is
great to have sunlight shining on my face while I am in the park. The park
has a bench in it which I am sitting on. I am shot through the head by a
bullet fired from a powerful sniper rifle.

Shannon Peil

Waking up in a coffin, presumably under layers of dirt, oxygen preservation
became my number one priority. I try to put aside anger at the people
who buried me – despite just being really sleepy and not actually deceased -
and attempt to regulate my breathing. Next, I pull my shirt up over my head
like a bag to keep from breathing in dirt while I punch my way through the
cheap fiberboard. Then, anger.

Our Similarities, Our Differences – Chloe Caldwell

I am sitting in the sun outside of Café Fiore. A woman is sitting next to me
in the same legs crossed position. We both have on jeans and hats with blond
hair underneath them. We both sip out of our paper cups. She’s reading ‘Our
Babies, Our Bodies.’ I’m reading ‘The Diary of A Sex Fiend.’ She’s pregnant.
I have Plan B in my purse. I quickly swallow my pills with my coffee.

© yt sumner, 2010

He looked over, coming round, and pulled himself to his feet, using the brick wall as a crutch. He ignored all my questions as if I wasn’t even there, eventually pulling his jacket collar up high to cover his cheeks, his mouth. Then he simply hobbled away without a word, leaving me still holding the trash bags. I looked down and all there was left of him was a puddle of blood on the floor and in the centre of it, a small, jagged tooth.

I didn’t tell my pa what I saw that day but I came to find out about Candy over the next few weeks as school started up. I had my friends and we kept our part of the ground, walked in tight neat groups. My friend Jules had been told about the fight at lunch and by dusk we all headed down the alley at the far end of the road, by my fathers shop. And there he was, the boy I’d found, his scars just healing, his fingers taped, up against three boys, all older. It wasn’t a fight, it was a massacre. So uneven the fuel of seeing punches and butts fell away almost immediately, until Jules and my other friend Frank actually started catcalling and whistling for it to end. The boys actually looked relieved to stop, embarrassed almost. The crowd broke and I went with my friends to the park, looking back just once, quickly, to find the boy left on his own, lying almost exactly in a mirror image of what went before amongst the dirt and the filth.

We sat in the park, drinking beer. Jules explained the boy was called Candy Bone by the first boy that beat him, a psycho who had been pulled out of school after he knifed a teacher. Said it was the easiest fight he ever had. Ever since Candy had gone out of his way to start something with anyone. Always down the same alley, always the same result. Jules figured I’d probably dumped the trash on his head probably three, four times that year if I hadn’t looked where I’d pitched the bags. I hadn’t. We laughed about it, glad there was someone below us, such a complete loser, to be beneath even our contempt. It made us feel safe and more importantly, not as weak. We broke away that night all of us calling out the name in sissy voices, flinching and doubling over in the shadows as we pitched empty cans at each others feet.

After that night I kept an eye out for him whenever I took out the trash. I didn’t see him but I took to walking the alleyways, looking for evidence of him, which I usually found. A blood patch, a scrap of torn clothing. Bloodied penny coins I knew they slipped between their fingers before they threw their first punch. Then one day I found a small thing, rumpled against the rotted vegetable palate of the grocers next door; a small notepad, curled and water-stained but still useable. I crouched down, scooped it into my pocket as my father called out for me. I went inside, the pad damp against my ribs, the copper spine prodding against my shirt and into my skin.

I looked through it that night as I lay in bed. It was scuffed and a lot of the ink had run like the women who rushed into the bakers from the rain, whose mascara had begun to slip. But even so I could make out sketches, tight sentences in the corners of some of the pages. The sketches were of some far off places I didn’t recognise that were exotic and beautiful. The words were extravagant and drawn out into long rambling sentences that I could never imagine hearing anyone around here speaking. I stuffed the pad under my pillow and went to sleep and in the night I dreamt of some of the things I’d seen in the notebook, sometimes interrupted by a spurt of blood or the sound of a knuckle popping against something soft.

A few days later I found him in the alleyway. Except this time he wasn’t bleeding or battered, but on his haunches looking between all the bags, the rubbish. I dropped the bags and stood in the doorway until he finally acknowledged me.

“I’m looking for something. Notepad. Think I might have dropped it.” His voice was quiet but quite light. Finally he looked up to me.

“I’ve got it.” I pulled it out of the pouch of my apron, held it up. Immediately his eyes went from dully looking to me to lighting up with the notepad.

“How’d you come up with all the sentences? The sketches? It’s like a comic book or something.” I half smiled. It was true. Since I’d looked at it, I’d compared it to other comics, newspaper dailies and it was better than anything in any one of them.

“Dunno.” Was all he said as he raised up, stuffing one hand in his pocket and reaching for it with the other.

“I’d like you to tell me. Or I could keep it.” I drew it back, out of his hand. I don’t know why I did that. I wasn’t meaning to be cruel; I genuinely wanted to know his secret. But as soon as he brushed, I felt pissed, superior, remembering what my friends had told me about him getting whipped over and over. Me; who’d never even thrown a punch.

“You wanna give that back or we can go in the alley right now.” He said, mechanical and low, having said it so many times. It wasn’t even a threat it sounded so tired, more of an excuse to just not have to talk anymore.

“Yeah, Candy Bone’s gonna kick my ass? I don’t think so.” And it was then I noticed it; saying his nickname made him flinch worse than the time I’d seen him sprawled in the gutter, when I saw the three boys tear him to pieces. It was the shame of it that made him ache right there in front of me in the rain.

“Look…I don’t want to fight you. Hell I don’t even know you, man. I just wanna figure out how you drew all these cool things, came up with all those neat words…I don’t know, so maybe  I could try it out sometime, buy myself a sketchbook, or something.” It was true; I liked English best in classes, all the crazy tales, twice as good when the smart girls read them out loud in the class. Even the way the words laid themselves out on the page, ready to be taken in and devoured or something. My dad started calling my name out. I started to shake the pad impatiently, just out of his reach.

“Okay. Meet me in the tyre yard on Saturday at noon.” He said, flexing his hands until I tossed him the pad. He turned and walked away. I knew I should have held onto it, that he could have double crossed me, but he sounded so desperate, so honest, I knew he wasn’t going to back down. I turned and called back to my pa and made my way inside as the rain broke.

I met him on the dot of twelve. It was sunny and I sat on a pile of three tyres that felt like they were almost melting in the heat below my legs. I’d made excuses to back out of seeing my friends, reversed it to my pa. He walked up, still with the same scuffed jacket on, still with both hands in his pockets. He didn’t raise his head when I called out, didn’t acknowledge my wave, neither. He pulled up, and leant against another pile of tyres, like he wasn’t used to sitting unless he got knocked down.

“You wanna know about the book? Okay I’ll tell ya; but you can’t tell no-one else after okay?” His voice was hurried like he’d thought it through.

“Who I’m going to tell? Who’d want to listen?” I shrugged. I realised then he didn’t have anybody; wasn’t used to kidding around, batting insults the way grown ups talked about the weather. I held my hands out, palms up and decided to just him go with it. He pulled out the book, rolled back the cover. It was flat now, like he must have used weights to smooth out the water crinkles.

“I take the mail.” He said quietly. He looked up from the paper, looked me straight in the eye. His nose was swollen on the bridge, broken. I looked down to his fingers and saw they weren’t that bad, the scabs healing. Like he’d taken a beating and hadn’t fought back.

“I…intercept it. That’s a good way of saying stealing, my ma used to say.” He smiled briefly, his lips parting, then closing quickly.

“The postman’s walk up to the gate and I head straight for it too. Say it’s my house; make a joke about not waking the baby sister or setting off the dog. You say dog to a postie and they’ll throw the mail to you. Make jokes about it; show you the scars on their shins, like they’d been attacked by a shark or something.” He stopped briefly, pulled out a carton of cigarettes. Not cigarettes, rolled joints. He shook one out, pulled it from the package with his mouth; I could tell he’d practised in front of a mirror a thousand times. He lit it, offered me one. I took it, never having smoked before; tried it once at the park, coughed before I’d inhaled.

“I take the post. I don’t bother with the bills, or the adverts, just the handwritten letters. I run them open; steam them if a can…and I read them. After I do, I take them all back, wait until dark, early morning and slip them back through the right slots. Always a day later, so it’s no big deal.”

“So you copy the lines out of the letters.” I drew on the cigarette, felt the smoke rise through me.

“And draw what I read on the sketches. It’s no big gift.” He blew a stream of smoke through his nose, looking like he was deciding something. Then he walked over, taking the pad in both hands, letting the fag hang in the corner of his mouth.

“See, here; a man whose a travelling salesman writing to his wife. He went to Bermuda on a tin can plane that he thought was gonna crash.” He pulled the cigarette from his mouth, used it as a rod to point out the details, so it made the smoke from the engine come alive, though he didn’t realise it. I half laughed and he jolted back, coiled. I shook my head and explained myself and he looked at me for a long moment.

“You enjoying that cigarette, huh?” Was all he said and went on.

I don’t know how long we sat there for but I remember each page he showed me; there were helicopters, farms, dragons, a page of flags from every country in Europe, a picture of a sweetheart and her faraway soldier man. Each of them was detailed and broad, simple and defined. The more high we got, the more his voice seemed to slink inside the sketches, like they were part of them. After a while I pointed things out I saw. He listened, sometimes laughing, sometimes shaking his head and explaining how that couldn’t be true. By the time we reached the end of the book, the sun was in full tilt and we had lit another joint, a third. We sat below the tyres in the dirt, so it gave us some shade and let us rest our backs.

“So I’ll bite, man. Why the hell you get into all those fights? You’re smart; you sketch the hell off of everyone else in school? Why do it?” I was smiling as I asked him, feeling the hit of the smoke, the low warm energy of the sun. I looked over, expecting him to feel the same. But in an instant he had returned to himself; shrouded, hunched, back in the shadows. I raised my hands to cool it, but he was already locked.

“I told you about the book. That’s it.” He started to pull himself up off the floor, his hands returning to his pockets, jamming the pad down the front of his jeans. He marched away as I called after him. I tried to start running, but my legs gave way after a few steps. So instead I watched him disappear in the middle of all that heat, a black spot amongst the sun.

I never told anyone about that afternoon. I didn’t see him in school, I didn’t chance upon him in the alleyway. My friends found other things to trash talk about and Candy seemed to fade away; other fights were going on, girls were becoming centre stage. But I never forgot about him, the sketches. I walked the alley, looking for evidence, but there was no blood, no teeth, and no sketches. Just the trash rotting in the rain.

The radio announcer at school made us all gather in the hall. The headmaster shuffled on into centre stage and leaned into the microphone; it was set a little taller than him and one of the other teachers had to come over and re-adjust it for him, letting us laugh quietly in a low wave. He coughed to still us, which we did and he announced the death of the student, Paul McGillis. It said something that no-one even knew who he was until the photo was put up on the stand next to the head teacher. And even then most of us had to squint, imagine layers of cuts and bruises over the top of the black and white photo of the awkward boy unwilling to pose for the shot. Most of us saw him in red, after all. There was a silence, then a quiet muttering between us. There was to be a memorial and the councillor was to be made available. His photo was to be placed in a corner of the school in remembrance.

The memorial was poorly attended, the councillor returned to locking her door for the day at noon after a week. Inevitably someone defaced the picture, drawing in black eyes, cuts, bruises. There was the threat of expulsion but too many suspects. Finally someone scrawled ‘Candy-bone’ over the photo and it was retired with the talk of a memorial bench plaque which never materialised. Soon boys would brag how’d they beaten Candy, brought about his demise, been party to it, so soon there was a gang of twelve who called themselves the Part Piece Killers, though they all knew it was fake.

The killer was his father, a florist who lived a block from us. My pa knew the mother, had known the man was a bad seed all along. Turned out the fights he lost in the alley weren’t as bad as the beatings he took at home when he didn’t raise his hands. He was sent down for life and it was simply the mother now, waiting for the house to be sold, wearing black and scorned by the neighbours for her seeming inaction. One day my father prepared a tray of food for her, was readying to take it round to her. I offered to do it for him, explained I’d knew her boy, had talked to him. My pa looked at me and saw something in me that let me take on the responsibility. He didn’t say anything to me about how to act, just patted my arm and let me go.

I knocked on the door and explained myself when she finally opened the door. She almost flinched, like she was waiting for more accusations. I walked inside, laid the tray down on the table. She spoke of my pa, said what a good man he was. It was strange hearing him being described by someone outside of how I saw him, but I matched up what she said as pretty close. I listened and said what I thought I was supposed to say.

Then, without thinking, I mentioned the day at the tyre yard, the sketchbook. I don’t know why, or maybe I did; she disappeared for a moment, then reappeared clutching the notepad. She hadn’t understood it, so I sat next to her, explaining the sketches I didn’t say how he’d come across them, said it was imagination. By the end of the book she was crying and I felt tears in my eyes too until she wiped them out of my eyes. I wanted to do the same for her, but knew I couldn’t. It looked like the tears had settled in her, had worn a path that she’d grown sued to. I stood and patted her shoulder the same way my pa had done, thinking how good that had made me feel and hoped that a little would rub off on her.

A week later the pad came through the post to me. My pa handed it to me without any questions. It was the first piece of mail I ever got. I even saved the envelope for a long time after. I took it to my room, looked it back over again. I took to keeping the pad near me, in my jeans pushed down by the belt like he did.

The alley came to be called Candy Bone lane. It was the place you went to dump your girlfriend or spike up. There were very few fights there now, like that part was done, but it was just as evil and hated. The name even got sprayed on the walls. It stood there until my pa got bored of waiting for the authorities and the two of us wiped it off. It even hurt my pa’s business for a while, being that close to the alley, but not for long. Like everything else; people forgot or moved on to hate something else instead.

But I never forgot. Every chance I could, I’d scour the papers, the school newsletters, looking for competitions, ads. Every chance I got I carefully removed a page from the pad and submitted it to the addresses, signed it with my name. When they didn’t win they were placed. When the letters of recommendations and small cash prizes arrived addressed to me my pa didn’t have to ask because I told him the truth. When I saved enough I bought a sketch book and pencil and put them all in a ruck sack and set out on a Saturday.

On that Saturday I hiked up to the tyre yard, telling my friends one thing, my pa another. I stood in the sun and I sketched what I saw and other things that I remembered. When I was done I signed it with both our names, full names this time; his first, then mine. And when it was done I turned over the page and tried to ready myself for the next one.

© Chris Castle, 2010

[others]

I jog past my wife every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. Three thirty sharp. I’ve been doing so for three years now. She married a doctor, an oral surgeon, and they live in Cabo San Lucas during the winter. She lets me see the kids, but not since the restraining order–so I have to jog fast and across the street in case she catches me between passing cars through the tint of her Dior glasses, as she eats arrachera tacos at the taquería with her husband while the kids are playing at the beach.

I rented one of the apartments downtown. I live in the same building as my wife’s maid, up the street from that over-priced nightclub Cabo Wabo Cantina. There are always beer bottles on my street and vomit in the mornings, ancient aromas alongside the plastic empty cups and the debaucheries of predawn charades. The maid tells me, “Ellos están locos,” and I smile and hold the gate to our fence open as she motions for me to eat, and I dig my hand into her plastic container full of toasty tortas, tacos, tamales, and for once I feel closer to my wife than I have in years.

The doctor drinks a Pacifico. Sometimes I catch him squeezing the lime into the bottle. I smile when he drops the fluorescent fruit into the liquid. He splashes himself in the eyes sometimes. This makes me laugh. Loving the madness of the taquería, I keep one eye on the table, the other on the dusty side of the road where I jog. I’ve lost twenty pounds, started sleeping with a sombrero on my head, dreaming of clouds in my bed that takes up half the space in my one room apartment.

They live in a big, beautiful house on the side of a mountain overlooking the Pacific Ocean; my wife wearing a bikini with her feet on the rail of the patio, her shadow blocking out the clouds, her breasts merge with the waves. The doctor lies in the infinity pool all day on an inflatable raft dreaming about the future. I sit in the shadows of blood-red bougainvillea and think about the past, listening to the waves crash against the shoreline and the rocks.

Everything is going fine until I run into a car on Valentine’s Day. Damn doctor ran across the street and recognized my face through the blood-covered teeth. My mouth took the brunt of the impact as the red ATV sped down the road in a cloud of dust. The wind was knocked out of me as the tropical breeze blew dirt into my contacts.

“Tom,” my ex-wife says, “what the hell are you doing here?”

My first thought it to make sure I’m at least 200 yards from the children; they are nowhere to be found. The doctor asks for more napkins. I’m missing a couple teeth. They decide to carry me across the street to sit down at their plastic table at the taquería. The doctor orders more napkins and two Pacificos. My ex-wife asks for a margarita. Three more tacos–one for me. I smile. Wait till they’re both in the bathroom washing their hands–talking about me–before I grab the fattest habenero on the table and break it in half with my broken teeth. One piece for the doctor, one for the wifey. That’s when the aneurysm happens.

© Matthew Dexter, 2010

I could go back while mom and dad rolled around in the backseat of his 1987
rust white Toyota Corolla, the tape deck chewing on some *NSYNC.  I would
watch my father’s brow and cheeks like a volcano and then startle him so he
seeds the upholstery.  He’d yell “It’s a stain!” and not in that circle of
life way, either.

But my father was such a skeetapotamus so I’d wait a few months and then
kick mom in the stomach.  Even if that didn’t work, I’d end up in jail for
awhile, long enough to meet younger me while he’s on a field trip for
at-risk youth at the county jail.  I’d shake him so hard, I’d break his bad
habits like a mason jar but I didn’t listen either when I was his age.

I’d probably go back as a Jehovah’s Witness since I knew my mom was always
nice to them, even let them pitch their brand of salvation.  When she opened
the copy of *The Watchtower* I left behind, she’d find a letter with some
photos (little sister wearing a steering wheel around her neck, her older
self wearing bruises like eyeshadow), three-hundred dollars.

How would I know it worked?  I’d feel my skeleton crack, my stomach chew
itself from the inside, my shoulders touch my sternum and brow, like the
hand of God was crumpling me up like a wad of paper, before throwing what’s
left of me and my name somewhere forgotten.

© J. Bradley, 2010

[others]