The spring I turned nineteen I took child psych at the local college. It was my second psych class, taught late in the afternoon by a real world psychologist named Norval Dirksen. He wore ill-fitting suits and white stay-press shirts that floated on his two-pack-a-day frame. Between classes, while my friends shuffled data processing cards and crunched differential equations, focusing on the hard stuff, I applied myself in my imagined future. I memorized lists of defense mechanisms, outlined chapters in the textbook, and read Dibs in Search of Self, the story of an emotionally disturbed youngster who, with the help of a compassionate therapist, knits together a unified personality.

“One day,” Dr. Dirkson said, “you’ll meet your Dibs.”

Around this time, we were having a situation at home. One night I woke to a heavy scratching sound on the roof. It sounded like someone walking around up there. But not someone. This was an “it.” The sound of its claws, the hollow thump of the creature’s slow footfalls just above my head filled me with the kind of primordial dread you feel only in the dead of night. I tossed the covers back, reached for pants and a shirt, and padded to the utility room, where I found my father, also partially dressed, standing in the dark testing a flashlight. Raccoon, he said. We opened the back door, stepped out into the muggy night, and stood in the wet grass in our bare feet. When he aimed the light at the roof, I saw he was right. A dark form huddled in one of valleys of the roof. We took a step closer, the light jiggled, and when we stopped, the thing was looking at directly at us. Its yellow eyes glowed. I knew there was no chance of it leaping from the roof and locking its teeth on my throat, but at the moment, it seemed like a real possibility. My father said he could shoot it. I pictured him aiming a rifle while I held the light. But I imagined him missing, or worse, wounding it, and the enraged animal attacking, by mistake, the guy who was holding the light. We settled on a trap, which we put next to the chimney the following morning. The next nights those yellow eyes glowed in my long-term memory. I strained to hear those terrible claws, and every morning I woke up hoping there would be nothing in the trap. I didn’t want to confront it.  I just wanted it to go away.

One day a week that term, I drove to a shuttered school in Saginaw, where a back room had been opened, painted cheerful colors, and dedicated to the care of emotionally disturbed children. This was what the college called “practical experience.” You did it to find out if you really wanted to do it. I worked with a woman named Mrs. Wheeler, who told me she was actually a social worker. She rolled her eyes. “Same thing as a psychologist,” she said, “sort of.”  I saw myself eventually doing couch and notebook work with “clients,” but I knew I needed to start somewhere. I would have to peel a few potatoes, my father said, before I could make a soufflé.

My job was to observe. There were 10 children. I watched Stephen, a round little guy with a red face who sat for hours at one of the tables swinging a wooden mallet, hammering wooden pegs into a block. And Emily, a little girl who drew black crayon swirls on tablets of paper. And Dina, who sat in a yellow beanbag chair with a doll pressed to her chest. It was noisy. The kids cried a lot.

“Stephen says he’s hot,” I said to Mrs. Wheeler.

“He’s working,” she said. She mimed his hammering motion and smiled.

“But he is hot,” I said.  “I touched him.  He’s hot.”

The kids didn’t play together much. They just collided with each other. There were frequent low-level assaults and thefts. Then they had juice.

I asked Mrs. Wheeler, “Does Dina ever leave that chair?”

Mrs. Wheeler shrugged and gave me her you’ll-find-out smile.

The third week I visited there was a new boy. I assumed my point of observation and took out my notebook. This new boy, dressed in blue overalls, lay under one of the tables the whole morning. Every so often, he got up on his hands and knees, turned in circles like he was chasing his tail, then lay back down.  Surrounded by racket and chaos, he seemed nothing if not bored, taking luxurious sucks on his left thumb and stirring the hair on the back of his head with his right index finger. I ran through my list of defense mechanisms and decided to take a stab at sounding clinical.

I pointed him out to Mrs. Wheeler.  “That one,” I said, “seems to exhibit reaction formation.”

“What?”

“Reaction formation?” I said. “His defense?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

I was in it. I thought I might as well formulate a whole psychological thought and put it on the table. “An exaggerated response to his surroundings, the direct opposite…”

“That’s Patrick,” she said. “He’s my son.”

He lay under the table on his side, his back to his mother.

“Is he…?”

One look at her, I didn’t finish this psychological thought. No, young Frankenstein, he is not. She didn’t have to say it. I gave her a tight smile and tapped my pencil a few times on my notebook.

Three more Fridays I went. Each observation was long and uneasy. I never saw Patrick again. Mrs. Wheeler treated me with equal parts respect and new-found skepticism. Those long mornings, I think she heard what I heard, the sound of claws scratching on the roof, the slow progress of a creature on the roof, a beast we didn’t want to catch. We just hoped it would go away.

Rick Bailey’s nonfiction has appeared in Writer’s Workshop Review, Ragazine, Fear of Monkeys, and Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine.

By the time I reach home, the TV has worked itself into a righteous, vigorous anger.

Apparently word has reached it – and I’m not blaming anyone specific here but I do strongly suspect my laptop, a sleek, sexy bit of an appliance who can’t keep her lid closed – that I would no longer be spending time in front of the TV, butt planted, mouth open.

The TV is angry; and for reasons I still don’t understand, smells slightly of stale cigarettes.

“Is it the screen? Huh? What? ‘Cause I’ve got a scratch? ‘Cause I don’t know from HDTV?”

“It’s not that…”

“What? I’m not big enough for you, Miss High-and-Mighty? Is that it? You think because you’ve a bath tub and a shower that you’re too big for the primetime line-up?”

“Hey, I never said…”

“Oh, save your breath, Miss I-Never-Heard-of-Him-Who-Is-This-Maury-Povich-Person! I know what you watch! You hear me? I know what you watch!”

“Hey, now. There’s no need to –“

“Tell it to the Marines, okay? Where’s the thanks, huh? Should I tell all your brainy friends about your Tetris addiction?”

“Wha—what?”

“Ha! You think I don’t remember that? You think I don’t remember you and your Nintendo? Hours and hours of Mario Brothers? Of Tetris? How you’d play until you swore the city’s skyline had gaps in it you thought you could fill in if the right piece ever came down?”

My face burns with shame.

The TV laughs cruelly. “Thought I’d forgotten that, didn’t you?”

“Look, that was a long time ago.”

The TV laughs again, his power indicator fever-red. “I don’t need your crap,” he spits. “I had a life, you hear me? I had a life before you!”

I lose control of myself. “You didn’t! You had no life! I paid for you! I paid for you and I dusted you and I moved you every single time I moved! Do you hear me?”

I turn my back on him and burst into tears. “You think this is easy? You think I don’t still care for you? It’s just gotten dirty! I feel cheap! I have a callus from using the remote! The middle cushion on the couch has a Pearl’s-butt-shaped dent in it! If I’m not careful – oh, God! I’m going to end up watching Fox News!”

The full horror of the situation hits me at that moment; and I fall on to the ground in front of the TV, sobbing.

The TV makes staticky, cooing noises.

“Movies, maybe?  Maybe we could do that? Huh? The Dune movies? What about the Lord of the Ring Trilogy? You like that, don’t you?”

I sit up, nodding dully and wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if we can be friends. We’ll just have to take it slowly.”

The TV begins to hum the theme song from “One Day at a Time”.

I shake my head, repulsed.

He’ll never change.

Pearl blogs at “Pearl, Why You Little…”, discussing commuting via the city bus, corporate cubicle-ism, the abusive nature of her cats, and, infrequently, her laundry.  She has read and spoken at Metro State University, where her chapbook “I Was Raised to be A Lert” has been used as a textbook.

“-but I figure you’re still at school. Thought I should tell you how it all went though. Better than I thought it would after all of these years. There was a group of us down at the quarry like I said. Mallory brought some leftover pork with this incredible cherry glaze that we ate with bread and cheese. Finished a rack of a beer and spent the rest of the day jumping off that ledge and swimming. I thought you were going to be there. You really should have. When you first leap I swear you still think you’re going to count the seconds until you hit the water, but that doesn’t happen. I screamed just like I used to. Everyone did really. Loudly, so that it echoed off the quarry walls. The water was cold and we all lay out on the slab there at the bottom. I remember when we first went there with your brother and Mikhail. We would sit out there on that slab and watch them both jump from way up there. I remember how much we thought they were fearless, even if they screamed too.

I’m just driving down Shoreline right now. It’s a lot different than what I remember. A lot more houses out there. Typical I guess. Someone razed the old Beckett place and built a boxy-thing out of cement and metal. Looks gaudy if you ask me. I followed Mallory and Nathan home and they told me to tell you hello. They’ll be at the funeral too. Anyhow, they brought their daughter with them out to the quarry. She’s nine now, but God did she leap off that ledge without even screaming. I swear she was the bravest one out there. Made me remember all the times we spent out there back in school. Back when I thought I was going to be a rock hound for some oil company. Back when you thought you’d be a teacher. Guess it worked out for you more than it did for me. Anyhow, I thought I should let you know that once everyone was there, I found that I couldn’t get over Mallory. She’s as beautiful as she was then. Her hair is different though. It’s long now, but I like it. I know I’m rambling. Thought your mailbox would beep me by now, but it hasn’t yet, but I’ll finish up anyhow.

I guess I still can’t believe that he’s gone. Up at the quarry I thought he’d show up like he always did. I remember that first time at the quarry when he dove into that blue water so he could find out if there was a bottom. I remember he had that old Kawasaki and would ride those gravel roads after we swam, always disappearing over the fields ahead of us. I also remember he always wanted to leave here. Wanted to go somewhere where there was adventure. When you and Mallory came back here after school, at first I thought I would too, but I wanted to be like him I guess. I still thought then I’d head off to Alaska or somewhere to look for oil, and that would be on par. But look what happened instead. Anyhow, I’m only around for another day or so, but I thought we should go up to the quarry before I leave. When we were all up there it seemed like it was the right place to be. He would have wanted it that way I think. Figure I’d dive in one last time and try not to scream.”

James Stolen was adopted from Calcutta, India and has lived in Alaska and Oregon. A graduate of Carleton College, he also served in the Peace Corps in Lesotho between 2006-2008. He is currently an MFA candidate at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University studying fiction. He has work previously published in Bellevue Literary Review and Shenandoah, and is working on a series of short stories and a novel.

This airport is made of glass and angles which let me see the sun. I am grateful to the airport for that. The airplanes see the sun, they run to it and then rise the way storks do. But jets fight weight with wings that do not beat. Sometimes in landing they come out of the light, which makes them shine. They remind me of stories my grandmother told, of great birds that smashed armies when the desert held more water, and plants, and animals with eyes that reflected light as water does. I liked my grandmother’s stories when I was a child but they make no sense here. I could tell them to the immigration sergeant, tell him the tale about the huge bird of light, I think he’d laugh. The immigration captain would make the face he makes when I tell him anything, as if he’s had to fart for weeks and cannot. I don’t talk much when I’m with them because of this story problem and because I don’t speak their language well. When they wish to speak to me they take me to a place without sun. There I have no idea where direction lies. At home the houses are built to line up with sun and moon, and so are the thorny pens where we keep our goats and cattle. And people, too, you knew where they came from. I knew that Ibrahim came from a village to the southeast that treated animals badly and we did not buy meat from him. We knew his story. But the militias came and we did not know them: they killed Ibrahim from the village to the southeast, they took Raina and Joris from our village. Then the army came and killed the militiamen and we did not know the soldiers either. You are not a refugee, the captain says, there is no war anymore, anyway this stamp is false. In another room I would look to the sun for guidance, for the lurking-place of shadow, but this room has no glass. The only light is blue, it shoots from lamps that are long and thin like rifles. They took Raina and Joris and they killed grandmother; that’s what I told the captain earlier, and he made his expression again. We have herbs at home that might help this man. He leafs through my passport and looks again at the stamp my father sold our milk cows for. I think of that stamp as printed in blood. It represents all the hopes of my grandmother, and Joris and Raina and my father and mother: that someone should fly into the sun and make his way to safety and good water. The captain sighs. He is not a cruel man, I think, but he has digestive problems. Also he has no direction. He too cannot see the sun or moon from here. Two days ago he and the sergeant took me upstairs where travelers go. Coffee came from machines that steamed like locomotives, and everyone touched their cellphones the way men and women touch each other at home. This airport is a city and the upstairs city is built of steel and light. The room where the captain puts me while he talks on the telephone to people who must judge my case is made of glass and air. I think of this airport as my friend. It loves light and sun. Its jetplanes will trade everything for direction.

George Michelsen Foy (aka GF Michelsen) is the author of twelve published novels and two non-fiction books. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction. His articles and stories have been published by Rolling Stone, Harper’s Magazine, and the New York Times, among others. He was educated at the University of Paris, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Bennington College. He teaches creative writing at New York University.

When someone visits my house for the first time, it comes up, usually not right away but it comes up. The last time someone asked about that photograph was different though because she’d been over for whatever reason at least half a dozen times before. While I can’t say for sure if she’d seen it or not, it’d be hard for me to bet against it having not happened at least once. It’s not that it’s hung in a special place or that the frame is enough of something for it to necessitate a comment. No, to be honest, there’s nothing special about it. It’s just a picture of a pair of glasses sitting on a table. However, when this guest in particular asks why that photo is there it gets harder to answer because I can’t lie to her like I can to everyone else because the glasses belong to her. They’re the glasses she left on the table the first time we met.

Geoffrey Miller’s most recent publications are ‘Masks’ (fiction) Metazen, Nov. 2012, ‘Strand’ & ‘It wasn’t broken’ (fiction) Crack the Spine Issue 39, ‘Ascension’ (fiction) Stepping Stone Magazine May 2012, and ‘Manila’ (fiction) Anok Sastra Vol. 6.

“Tell them what you gave me, sweetheart,” she prompted encouragingly, referring, perhaps, to a pair of earrings, a bouquet of flowers.

“What I gave you?” he replied, puzzled.

Lately she often said and did things that he didn’t understand. At first he’d thought it was merely nerves. She was anxious by nature, becoming agitated in heavy traffic, on dark corners, in crowded shops. When she’d refused to answer the door for the mail carrier, he’d supposed that she’d been spooked by one of those creepy documentary crime shows she liked to watch.

“You know what I mean,” she asserted, her glassy green eyes sliding over his.

“I’m afraid I don’t.” Utterly bewildered now, he leaned over to reach for her quaking hand and then withdrew when she retreated, balking at his touch.

He’d even been entertained when she’d begun naming those who might be after her.

“The president of the PTA wants to kill me,” she’d declared in a deadpan voice.

He’d chuckled. “And why would she want to do that?”

“Several years ago I made fun of a blouse she was wearing. She’s never forgotten it.”

The anecdote seemed less amusing now.

“Please, honey,” she urged. “You won’t get into any trouble. I’m not even angry. I’m sure you didn’t really mean to hurt me. Just please tell them; tell them now, before it’s too late.”

He should have insisted, that day last week when he’d come home from work to find her punching holes in the kitchen ceiling with a tire iron.

“What the hell are you doing?!!” he’d cried, coughing as he inhaled a cloud of dust and insulation.

“My father’s hiding in the crawlspace. I don’t know what he’s planning.”

“Your father’s dead, Sheila.”

“I never saw his body. Did you? You know how he hated me. He always hated me.”

And now they were here, confined to this sparkling white room, surrounded by the infernal flashing and beeping of ominous machinery. The culmination of the nightmare of today. The chest pains, the shortness of breath, the terrible headache, all seemingly without cause. A panic attack, he’d suspected. Had diligently driven her to the hospital, just in case. But this…he hadn’t expected this.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he answered at last, peering sadly into her hollow eyes. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She sighed and let her head droop gently back upon the pillow, her scraggly chestnut hair splayed in disarray about her elongated face and neck.

After the kitchen incident, he’d gently suggested that she seek help. Mental help.

“Lots of people go to psychiatrists, honey,” he’d reassured her. “I just hate to see you so worried all the time.”

“I’ll think it over, Tom,” she’d replied with such sweet reasonableness that he’d let the matter drop, convinced that she’d come around of her own volition.

She was rousing again, as if in response to his thoughts; was leaning towards him, her eyes meeting his, suddenly blinking with tenderness, recognition of the man she called husband. She held out a single shivering hand, palm up and open, in gesture almost of believing, of welcome, of reaching out to him with hands and heart. “Tom,” she said quietly, with feeling, and his heart leapt, and his hand, too, leapt forward to take hold of her, to pull her from the depths over which she was so precariously poised, to cling desperately, intently to her; mind, body and soul.

She jerked suddenly away; tore herself from the proffered handhold; grasped instead the wire secured to her chest. Slowly she turned to face her attendants. “He’s not going to admit it, is he?” she mused dolefully, seeking pity in the eyes of the hovering physician, the wide-eyed nurse, and then lapsing into an exhausted, anguished, waking dream.

Tom gazed longingly at her, the woman he had so lately loved, who had so lately loved him. Wept as she transformed before him, her eyes falling out of focus, no longer seeing the world around them but a hidden, more frightening one within. Watched his wife journey to a place where he could never join her, a place where she would live alone now; a place without him.

Lori Schafer is a part-time tax practitioner and part-time writer residing in Northern California. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Springfield Journal, The Berkeley Undergraduate Journal, Every Day Fiction, The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette, Romance Flash, Every Day Poets, Leodegraunce High End Flash Fiction, E-Romance, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Ducts, and That’s Life! Fast Fiction Quarterly. She is currently at work on her second novel. Her blog may be found at http://lorilschafer.blogspot.com/.

When I grow up I’m going to be an astronaut and I’m going to fly into space and around the earth and visit the moon and the planets and the stars and maybe the sun. I’m going to fly in a great big ship with my friends Johnny and Mickey and we’re going to have lots of amazing adventures and meet fairies and elves and fight dragons and monsters and demons. We’re going to fly and we’re never going to stop. We’re going to see great moons and shooting stars and deserts and forests and mountains where there are animals with four wings and sixteen eyes and five mouths. We’re going to find new friends, maybe girlfriends, because Johnny likes girls though Mickey doesn’t because he’s fat and they laugh at him, and we’re going to have sworn enemies too who we’re going to fight and defeat. We’re going to save planets from destruction and rescue princesses and kill baddies. We’re going to fly and we’re never going to die because we’re going to find a drink, an elixir, somewhere that is going to give us eternal youth, and we’re never going to work like our parents. There is going to be just me and Johnny and Mickey and anyone else who wants to join us on our adventures, even if they’re no good – because they’re no good – and can’t help us because they need permission from their mum or still wet the bed.

But I’m not going to, am I. Not at all.

I’m not going to be an astronaut and I’m not going to go to space, visit strange planets, have adventures, kill monsters, rescue princesses and live on a space ship, because I’m a blacksmith’s son and it’s 1368, and if I told anyone any of this I’d be burnt at the stake like my mother’s cousin, who was a witch, God rest her soul.

Stephen Mander is originally from Liverpool in the UK, but has lived and worked in Japan, Australia, Hungary, Slovakia, Syria. He currently lives in Vietnam.

We planned the house ourselves, glad to have our own project after the maternal pressure system of our wedding. We saw the rocks one afternoon on vacation — one of the many weekend trips we took so we could truthfully say, Sorry, I have plans.

The rocks faced the water’s endless expanse, which fills the horizon with endless midpoints. It was the perfect spot to build a house, linear and strong. We would have separate halves of the house, live on our own sides of the petri dish.

It’s not that Steven and I don’t love each other. We’re asexual, you see, which means that we only cuddle. And I have OCD too, which means I like to have things just right. I’m only calm when things are symmetrical, when there’s a midline, or midlines, to divide.

Steven understands. We met online, on a website for asexuals. I had my profile private, but I found him one night, sitting at my desk with a glass of wine beside my elbow. I don’t drink, but I like to pour it and see it swoosh up the side and leave a translucent red film.

I found his profile because he also said that he doesn’t like animals, human contact, cheese, and grass. There are many other things that I don’t like, but no one else had that many matches.

We went out on a date and I knew by how he arranged his plate and silverware — silently, compulsively sliding it in line with the frizzy floral centerpiece — that he would be it. I had never felt so strongly attracted to touch someone in my life.

We like to brush the tips of our fingers together, because our middle fingers make a midline and his fingers are all almost exactly an inch longer than mine.

One day when I held my hand out to him, he slid a ring on my finger.

So we married, and lived in an efficiency while we built our house. Steven went out every weekend, to see the frame rise out of the ground. I don’t like dust, so I didn’t go, but he would tell me: the bare beams rising out of the ground like breadsticks, the sweet sighs of the waves — like the ones I make in my sleep, he said.

We moved in the fall after our wedding, into a house filled with dust. Steven gave me a slim new broom and I raised clouds that floated out over the lake and dissipated. We settled in: Steven cooked, I washed. I made the bed, he vacuumed the windowsills, hung the white curtains.

Our neighbors Jan and Kent came by one day, after gardening. They eyed us eyeing their smudged knees, their clasped hands. They asked us if we were thinking about a baby, and I smiled. Steven did his head jerks, five times, which is less serious than 10 but more serious than none.

“Babies aren’t really for us,” I said.

“Is it because of your um,” Jan tilted her head, “disorders?”

I tilted my head to mirror her, smiled thinly.

“What disorders?”

She smiled back, her face framed by the embarrassed blotches staining her neck and face, and they backed away.

That night in my bed I thought of the powdery saliva smell that emanated from my sister’s baby. I thought of how she gripped my mother’s hand until their fingertips were purple on the way to the hospital. I slid my hands out from under the cover and gripped them together. My fingertips began to tingle.

Klarissa Fitzpatrick has been writing stories since she was seven. She has won multiple awards for her work and is currently working toward a degree in English Literature. She lives in Texas.

The family brings out its dead child, wrapped in a blanket not so old it makes the family look poor, nor so new its potential loss would make the family poorer.  It is the eighth child this month.  In a village this small, with each new child brought lifeless to the street we can feel our future drying up: we can imagine the history that we would have been dreamed into, turning instead warily into something like fish not caught, but dying on the beach anyway.

The nine or ten of us who have so far been useless are summoned to do our repentance dance.  Whoever shows up will dance; whoever cannot be found could be weary of dancing, or already this morning on to practical magics, or hiding for rest in an outhouse.  We leap and snarl and make faces at the bereft family, adjust our rhythm to the number we have gathered.   There is a wondrous flash of elbows and a cascade of knees, and our haunches quiver like young couples mating by chance in a common field.   We make a sound in the air like an over-burdening of insects and we shimmy like fish too spry to candle in our nets.   The dust is conquered by our bare feet and those who would be happier sleeping through this broken morning nonetheless rise at our noise and slanders, lean to peer out of their windows and curse something:  be it us or death or fate or the fact that breakfast is not yet done.

This spiteful dance is supposed to tell our Gods that we have had enough of death, and that they should leave our spindly children alone: we are trying to do whatever it is we are supposed to do.  I am not so sure we have the syntax down properly.

Nonetheless, the family waits for us to complete our entire paragraph of dancing.  They lean forward reverently, no matter how disinterested in heart they may be.  Then they take their package over to the forest edge, far enough away that the dead will not be disturbed by the noise of the living, and dig deep enough that the work of scavengers will go unnoticed until at least there is no need to make remedy.  Many of us follow at a respectful distance, largely to see whether they will prosperously bury the blanket as well; or keep it to be washed, mixed anonymously in with the rest of the family’s clothes, and secretly returned to useful service.

Only a few hours of anyone’s morning are devoted to the whole of it.  There are still cattle to be tended; the vegetable garden worried over, our lack of water now making it shrivel up like an old woman long, long no longer a wife; and there are fences that contain nothing and which must be made strong enough to contain all that we wish we had.  I do not have so much to do, so I idle at river’s edge, pretending I am fishing, the whole of me stretched elliptically out and my naked line, as slack as the unchallenged rump of the village scold, disappearing into the funnel of the river’s turgid water.

It is open speculation whether there will be another child lost to this sickness spread over us like a fertilizer too strong for delicate crops.  Families are named as candidates, and the ages of children remembered and projected and some suspects dismissed for reasons that often make no sense to anyone.  Patterns are seen predictably in the positions of houses, and in the times of death; or are contrasted with the size of families or the wealth of families or the marriages two or three or four generations back, the scandals of relations too close or of husbands casually cuckolded or of wives who brought no joy to wickedly stale couplings.  One man develops a number for each child and says he can draw in the dirt with a stick what child is to be next, calculating from those who have already gone.  His mathematics are tired and his drawing in the dirt is aimless and he sputters numbers that are the same forward and back.  He predicts there is no end until there is no future.

I listen with the best of intentions, drifting in and out of the fog of his reason.  Rhythm in the thinking, rhythm in the thought.   I do like to dance.

Ken Poyner lives in the lower right-hand corner of Virginia, with his power lifter wife, four rescue cats, and two attitude-challenged fish (in their separate but similar bowls).  His 2013 e-book, Constant Animals, 42 unruly fictions, is available at the usual e-book vendor web sites.  Recent work has appeared in My Favorite Bullet, The Legendary, Conte, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Rattle, and a host of other places.

My husband Alan was broiling. Home for the month of August after teaching summer courses, he’d been watching our neighbors’ yard like he was paid security. For days, he’d been giving me play by play. “They’ve taken down the lilacs that ran here and there along our driveway.”

“I noticed that,” I said.

“I wonder what’s up.”

“Yvette mentioned they might be putting in a fence,” I told him.

“What kind of fence?”

“She didn’t say.”

When the truck came from the fencing company and three young men smoking cigarettes and scratching tattoos unloaded the materials, Alan got even hotter.

“What am I seeing here? Is that vinyl?”

When the same young men returned to start the work, they were greeted by Justin, Yvette and Lou Henderson’s college-age son. Apparently he was house-sitting while his parents and much younger siblings vacationed somewhere comfortably beyond the scrutiny of my husband.

Justin seemed to know one of the crew because when they met, they performed a complicated handshake that made them smile. I thought that was kind of cute. Soon after, they started digging the post holes and blasting their Green Day and Blink with the numbers, and other stuff I know from my own kids.

“Oh we can do better than that,” Alan said.

I kept an eye on him as he dragged two speaker columns into the backyard, fixed himself a gin and tonic, lit a cigar, lay back on the hammock under the mimosa and signaled me that he was calling on his cell phone.

“Yes,” I answered. “Who is this?”

“It’s the culture vulture,” he said. “What are you wearing?”

I climbed up on a chair in the dining room, waving to him from the window where I had watched his activities. I didn’t know where I was with this protest. Up till now, he hadn’t let his displeasure show in any public way.

Alan was disturbed that Lou Henderson would chose to put up a vinyl fence and not stay around to tell anybody why. But I thought maybe Lou didn’t owe anybody an explanation, even though his fence would clash terribly with the clapboard and the gingerbread around it.

I stood on the chair and waved to him through the window screen. The heat had obliged me to wear little more than a tank top and my underpants when the kids weren’t around.

“I see London,” he said. “Now honey, although I’m tempted to come inside and ravage you on the spot, do you think you can do me a favor and throw that Sammy Davis Jr. CD into the box? The one I placed next to it? “

“That I can do for you, dear, because the sound of Sammy Davis Jr. is not unreasonable in our backyard, but it’s going to end there, right?”

“We should start with “On a Clear Day;” what do you say? Join me for a cocktail?”

I agreed and threw on a pair of shorts. As we sat in the shade, sipping our gin and tonics, Alan swaying to the music, the boys next store continued to raise the fence.

Perhaps in moving materials from one end of the job to another, they had walked out of earshot of Hoobastank or Aerosmith and into the range of Sammy or Frank because at some point the station that played “all the hard rock hits,” got a decibel boost. Alan finished the last of his drink and frowned.

When the job was done, he looked sad and bewildered, as if he had expected some power beyond his own negative will to intervene and alter the composition of the fence or halt the project before completion.

“Vinyl stockade! Nobody does vinyl in this neighborhood. Lilac hedges he could have had. Nice, cool, breathing shrubs. A corral type fence maybe.”

I said what I knew to be true. “He’s put the fence up for the little ones. A corral just wouldn’t work.”

“They want a fortress,” said Alan, “a shiny, vanilla fortress.”

So I put it out there, an idea. Something to make us all happy. I would paint murals, maybe sea life, maybe tarot archetypes. I’d been designing my own deck of tarot cards. The heat and Alan’s despair had inspired several renderings of the Tower already. With these I was trying to suggest he cool it. When he didn’t, I tried a different tact. I started playing with the Fool. Alan loved him and said he resembled Jerry Lewis.

“I was thinking of you,” I said.

“You fascinate me,” he said.

Anyway, I told him I’d paint some large murals of tarot figures and we’d install them along the fence.

Alan said, ‘That’s good. No, I correct myself, that’s great! We’ll just blot out their wall of bland, stay in the Technicolor garden. That’s what we’ll do. I can see them now, pretty, billowy canvases, flapping behind the rhododendron and the azalea. It will be magic.”

He was oozing sweat and raring to go.

“Let’s get started,” he said. ‘What can I do to help?’

“Procurement,” I said.

So I sent him off to buy canvas sheets, rope and grommets.

“Grommets?  He asked. “What on earth for?”

I explained.

“I’m going to need grommets for the corners of the canvas, to thread rope through. We’ll tie the rope to stakes in the ground, to anchor the murals.”

“Anchors? Right. Oh baby,” he said, and hurried out the door.

Wayne Cresser’s fiction has been nominated for awards and prizes at New Letters, the Tennessee Writer’s Alliance and the Newport Review, published in the print anthologies Motif 1: Writing by Ear, Motif 2: Come What May and Motif 3:  All the Livelong Day, An Anthology of Writings about Work (Motes Books), online at Wandering Army, The Written Wardrobe (@ModCloth),The Oklahoma Review, and The Journal of Microliterature, and in such print journals as The Ocean State Review and The Sound  and Literary Art Book (SLAB). 

She stood facing the jungle gym, her thin body casting a skinny shadow onto the blue bars and the red plastic pieces that connected them. They stood there for several minutes: the young girl, breathing hard, clenching her fists, and the terrible jungle gym, so tall and horrible that it represented a rite of passage. Climb to its top, which towered so high that one of the teachers could stand under it without ducking, and earn a playground nickname. The few who had conquered the feat were known as Monkey, Climber and Gym. She hoped to add her name to that list soon. Four-eyes wanted to be rebranded.

Four-eyes pushed back the bright purple glasses that were sliding against her sweaty skin, traveling to the end of her nose. Other kids were watching now. Tattler had seen Four-eyes’ showdown with the jungle gym and had spread word of an attempted climb. Most of the kickball and foursquare games were now on hold as everyone gathered to see Four-eyes try to make history. Four-eyes could feel scores of eyes watching her. She took a deep breath and moved toward the bars. Reaching up, she clasped a warm blue bar in her hand and stepped up onto the twisted steel. She reached again. Stepped again. Reached again. Stepped again. Each reach was a little harder, each step was a little trickier, but Four-eyes pulled herself up and up. Soon she passed the half-way point. Then she was three quarters of the way there. Only one more reach. Only one more step. The children watching held their breath. Her own breath came in gasps. Her small hands sweat. She reached and grasped the last bar. She stepped—

And fell through the open air, into the cage of the jungle gym. She tumbled face first, crushing her glasses against the ground. The cracking sound made by the breaking frames was audible to all of the watching children.

The next day, Four-eyes had bandages on her head and tape on her glasses. She also had a new name—Crack. And Crack was happy. She had succeeded.

Autumn Keiss has published several poems in County Line Magazine and her poems can be found in The National Gallery of Writing and on Times Live website. Her feature articles have appeared in County Line Magazine and The Sulphur Springs News Telegram. She has also she has managed several blogs including citygirlinsd.blogspot.com and capitolhillgang.com.

Lila picked up the onesie, but then let it fall back on the table with the rest of the unfolded laundry.  Then she decided to walk through the door again.  She’d been in fifteen minutes before, saw her baby ashen and dead, and backed out. Now she braced herself, and stepped up to the crib rail, her gut a clenched fist.

They’d never believe it was an accident.  That pinched-faced woman from family services would be back.  Last time, she’d refused to sit on the couch, instead pointing to the hard-backed kitchen chairs.  “On home visits I never sit on upholstered furniture.  They hide roaches and fleas.”

“I don’t have —”

The caseworker cut her off, “The kitchen table, please.”

Lila’d sat an hour explaining how Jeremy had unbuckled himself, pulled the door handle, and then toppled onto the driveway.  Her car was old. It had no child locks.  Innocent scrapes and bruises: that’s what the daycare had seen—gruesome, but accidental.  She’d said “accident” many times with increasing desperation.  By the end of the conversation, even to her own ear, it had sounded like a brittle lie.

The caseworker had then gone to the neighbors.  Lila had watched through the curtains, burning with humiliation.

The caseworker had stayed for 20 minutes.  I bet she sat on their couch.

Lila leaned forward. She brushed her finger across her baby’s cheek.  It was yielding and tender, like dough left on the counter to rise. She inhaled his musky scent.  He was smaller than Jeremy had been at that age, and his cries were different.  She’d explained at the clinic, but they had dismissed her with a coupon for a different brand of formula.

When she’d found out she was pregnant again she’d been thrilled, even though she knew Marcus wouldn’t see her through to the end.

Lila glanced at the clock; Jeremy would be home from school soon.

The neighbors never spoke to her again after the caseworker’s visit.  Their eyes followed Jeremy when they saw him playing, but when they caught her watching, their gazes dropped. They’d wave nervously, then turn their backs.

“Being a single mother can be overwhelming,” the caseworker had said, scribbling notes, “Did you know that St. Sebastian’s has parenting classes every Wednesday night with free daycare?”

“I work Wednesday nights.”

“Still—if you can make the time.”  She looked up from her notes, her expression weary.

Lila nodded.  “I’ll talk to my boss.”

The caseworker nodded, “Do that.”

It had ended, not with exoneration, but a form letter stamped “UNFOUNDED” and her first name misspelled as “Layla.”

It had taken her a year to scrape together enough money to move to this new house with its fenced backyard.

Lila straightened the baby’s blanket.  There were dishes in the sink, laundry piled on the table, Jeremy’s Tonkas everywhere.  She sighed and tip-toed away from the crib, the way she always did when the baby slept.  So much undone, and Jeremy would be home any minute.

Shawna Mayer has a Masters degree in English from the University of Illinois at Springfield.  Her flash fiction has been featured in the Illinois Times, Six Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak, Everydayfiction.com, and Fine Lines Literary Journal.

It had been unbearably hot for days, even with the fans on and the windows wide open. No sign of it letting up. We played cards in the bunk house, drinking warm beer, complaining about the heat, and then complaining about one another. The open windows brought the mosquitoes at night, but there was no alternative. We left the door open, too.

A flare went up about 3 o’clock. Foreman walked in and said matter-of-factly, “Boxcar’s burning out on the back ‘Y’ junction, over by the circus trains.”

“Shit,” said one of the crew, putting down his hand, taking a last hit from a cigarette and grinding it into the tray. We all walked out onto the porch, then toward the ‘Y’, out of obligation more than anything. There was nothing to be done. It would be at least 30 minutes before the fire trucks came, and there was no water to the back of the yard.

“Damn it but it’s hot,” said one of the crew, kicking the dust as he walked.

Two of the boxcars were burning by the time we got there, and the flames were burning south, toward the circus cars nearby.

There were murals on the sides of the cars, “Wells Bros. Shows”, read the legend at the top of one. “Son of Kong,” said another, with a picture of a huge gorilla, baring his teeth. There were depicted trapeze artists, elephants, monkeys and women in can-can dresses with fishnet stockings. The flames were licking the corner of one car, “Exotic Bird Show,” it read, and showed a parrot on a bicycle with a tiny umbrella.

Ashes were falling on the gravel by the tracks. There was nothing to be done. We watched it burn.

I went to a circus once, when I was a boy. The man on the trapeze did a double somersault, and the people screamed. I fed peanuts to the elephants.

My Uncle took me to the burlesque show, in a separate tent, far off the midway. I was all of 12, in rapt fascination. I did not know a woman could move in that way. I worried what my Mother might think. I washed my body in soap and shampoo afterward, and prayed to Jesus not to consign my soul to hell.

They tell me the Wells Bros. Circus had gone defunct by 1969. Who knows how long the cars had been parked there? The last Wells brother had been an alcoholic, an elephant went mad, and the parrots died.

We watched the fire until it burned out, in the middle of the night, along with the ghosts of can-can dancers, trapeze artists, and the Son of Kong, under the stars.

Al Lyons spent two years as a creative writing major at the University of Tampa, before earning a BA in English from the University of Florida, and an MA in Counselor Education from the University of South Florida. He is a licensed counseling therapist and has worked for several years in a hospital ER. He serves on the faculties of both AB Tech Community College and St. Petersburg College, where he teaches counseling. When he is not writing, he enjoys playing music, camping, wandering in the mountains and spending family time with his wonderful wife and three children.

The pickup pulls into the rural gas station as I top off my tank.

The driver steps from the truck, his Stetson tipped back to better study the fuel prices. The passenger side swings wide to reveal a woman dressed in full Florida ranch wear– belted work jeans with a tucked long-sleeved calico blouse buttoned to the throat, her hair swept back in a no nonsense sort of way, as if to say I’ve been up since before dawn, don’t mess with me.

Her boots hit the pavement, but in afterthought, she turns back to pull something off the dash. Turning back my way, she shades her eyes with a pair of Chanel sunglasses, the iconic gold CC’s winking a detail much unexpected.

I watch her sashay into the convenience store, struck by how this rancher wife with an affinity for fine eyewear so typifies Florida, a state juxtaposed in a constant clash of opposition.

Sheree Shatsky has called Florida home for fifty years.  Her work as an opinion writer has appeared in print and online. She writes flash fiction believing much can be conveyed with a few simple words. 

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A couple of used baby clothes with no rips. An unworn pair of green boots made of shining fake leather, with incredibly high heels. An old fur hat with flaps that buttoned under the chin. The girl rummaged through the dumpster unfazed by the smell. With a wooden stick, she pulled the bags apart, fished out her findings, and sorted them. She put the hat on right away. In the biggest pile, a scattering of jars that even the stingy wives who scrimped and saved found too dirty to rinse. On the side, she filed up a small mound of bread.

Despite the weather, before Christmas, she was wearing a shirt over her long dress, orange faded to drab beige. The fake fur hat came in handy, for it started to drizzle. She loaded up the two bags made of flowered fabric, large enough to keep all her findings, starting with the bread on the bottom and ending with the green boots like a trophy. At the sight of the pile of bread, a couple of stray dogs came close and sniffed it, then snubbed their noses at it and started barking at her. With her wooden stick, she tried to fight them off, at the same time loading up the last of the jars.

A couple of tall boys drawn by the commotion came close to see what the ruckus was all about. “Look what we have here,” the first one whistled, and walked up to her. He picked a chunk of bread and threw it at the dogs to chase them away. He laughed at the sight of her hat and pulled at the flaps, except that the girl had buttoned it carefully under her chin, so pulling at the hat choked her. She struggled to escape, crying for help in a muffled voice. The dogs barked even louder, circling them, attracted by the scuffle.

“Leave her alone. Don’t you see she’s dirty?” The other boy drew closer and pulled out the things in her bags with a stick, till everything came back out, green boots and all. The first boy, encouraged, pulled her by her long braids and started to spin her around, and the girl whimpered, startled. When they gripped at her shirt, she looked around frantic and screamed. Within twenty yards, dozens of five-floor apartment buildings were lined up, glued back to back.

When they heard the taunts of the boys, some people came out on their balconies to see what was going on. Used to stray dogs’ scuffles at night, one man who lived closer, on the second floor, stepped out barefoot, but on making out the girl’s long skirts he turned around and grinned,

“Nothing. Some boys have cornered a Gypsy girl.”

Lucia Cherciu is a Professor of English at SUNY Dutchess in Poughkeepsie, NY. Her poetry appeared in “Connecticut Review,” “Connotation Press,” “Cortland Review,” “ISLE,” “Memoir,” “Paterson Literary Review,” “The Prose-Poem Project,” and she is the author of two books of poetry: “Lepădarea de Limbă” (“The Abandonment of Language”), Vinea 2009, and “Altoiul Râsului” (“Grafted Laughter”), Brumar 2010.

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I’m eating at this crummy cafe, wondering about the age of the mushrooms in my omelet, when I see this waitress who looks remarkably like… whatshername?  The woman from the bar at the hotel I stayed at last year when I was stuck in this godforsaken town.  Eileen?  Arlene?

I remember her because she really surprised me in bed.  When we were done and she left, I didn’t even mind that my watch went missing.  It was a knockoff anyway.

She doesn’t look as good as in my memory, but who does?  Of course, the cheap florescent lighting in this place would make Angelina Jolie look haggard.

Anyway, she’s bending and reaching to clean off a table in a short skirt, so I get a good look at her legs.  Last time I saw them, they were wrapped around me tight as a bandage.  I remember how she wouldn’t let loose until she climaxed.

She cried afterwards, like this wasn’t something she did all the time.  I felt bad and held her for a while.  I remember her telling me about her ex-husband, a real loser.  Ran up her credit cards and left her.  An old story, I know.  I expected her to ask me for a loan.  Of course I was ready to say no, but she didn’t ask.

She seemed determined to get out of town and make a life for herself.  That’s another reason I didn’t mind her taking my watch.  Maybe stealing left her with more self-respect than asking for money after sex?

I wonder if I should call her over and say hi, show her there are no hard feelings.  No hard feelings?  That’s funny, especially remembering that night.

She’s carrying two pots of coffee.  I wave to her.

“Decaf or hi test?” she asks, showing no sign of remembering me.

I flash my best smile. “Decaf, please.”

She fills my cup from the orange pot without changing her expression and walks away before I can say anything.

I’m sure it’s her, but I guess I wasn’t as memorable as she was.  I feel a little let down, like losing an old friend.   If it weren’t so crazy, I’d say I’m half falling in love with her.

I call over the waitress who served me and ask for the bill.  The coffee’s cold and the omelet isn’t worth eating.

The waitress comes back and says Ellen covered my check.  “Something about a watch.”

I look for Ellen, but she’s no where to be found.

Wayne Scheer has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net. He’s published hundred of stories, poems and essays in print and online, including Revealing Moments, a collection of flash stories, available at http://issuu.com/pearnoir/docs/revealing_moments. A short film has also been produced based on his short story, “Zen and the Art of House Painting.”
Wayne lives in Atlanta with his wife and can be contacted at wvscheer@aol.com.

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Though she rushed out the door as quietly as possible, he had caught a glimpse of her. So he wailed. The few seconds of her departure stretched into minutes in his mind, and his loud cry found her scurrying back. She placed her implements on the tray, wiped the tears off with a soft cloth, and wrapped the apron around his neck. It had been over a year now with this one, she thought while she stirred the contents in the bowl, and a total of twenty years with children from other families. Yet, her sixty year old hands hadn’t lost their caressing touch. She held the Cerelac-laden spoon patiently in front of his red wet lips, till he opened his tiny orifice. Once he was full, he reached out his arms to her, and she held him up on one arm while wiping the drool off his face with the other. He plonked his head on her shoulder, smiled and let out a fresh drool on her blouse. She chuckled and kissed his forehead. That would have to do, she told herself, as she had before, many times in her line of work. There were no postcards for drifting addresses; certainly not from clients who couldn’t write.

Siddhartha Choudhury is the author of numerous stories and abstract ruminations that lie placid in his hard drive. He made his first publishing appearance in Apocrypha and Abstractions in April this year. He lives and writes from Mumbai.

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On their first bikes without training wheels, my twin granddaughters raced each other down the street, shouting, pedaling like maniacs, their hair and fluorescent handlebar streamers alive and flying in the turbulence. They’d already learned how to slam on the coaster brakes, lock the rear wheels, and slew their tail ends just about one-eighty on sandy asphalt. Not particularly durable, the made-in-China knobby tires didn’t waste any time wearing down to bald, then through the fabric skeleton to the inner tube. I had Hunter’s bike upside down on the driveway, my tools deployed, tightening nuts after fixing the flat. She approached me quietly, wide eyed, this slightest labor of love an unexpected miracle that she could hardly believe: “You did all that for me?” As if I’d have it any other way. As if watching her and her siblings grow and thrive were not my joy, as if I could ever find a better measure of my life. I smiled at her. “Yes.”

Ray Scanlon. Massachusetts boy. Has grandchildren. Extraordinarily lucky. No MFA. No novel. No extrovert. His work has been published recently in Stymie, land that I live, and Camroc Press Review. On the web: http://read.oldmanscanlon.com/.

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There is a straw – a girl, really – that I grasp at vainly. Very vainly. I stare in the mirror and think I’m beautiful as I grasp. She’s a straw that I know I’ll never wrap my lips around and suck on. She’s not that kind of straw anyway. She’s the kind that’s meant to be piled on top of other girls, or straws, on the back of the beast of burden until that final, glorious one that causes the entire spinal column of the poor animal to snap like a twig and send it crashing, screaming in agony, to the ground. And my question is: when did I become a fucking camel?

Michael’s first novel, The Zoo, was published in March, 2009 by Cacoethes Publishing House. His short story, “Kiss of Death,” was a winner of the 2008 Coffee House Fiction Contest and other short stories have been published in Fat City Review, The Uptown Observer and The Writer’s Eye literary journals. A staged reading of his first play Digging Up John Barrymore was presented by Dreamcatcher Entertainment in 2012.

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This is Andy, his cousin, though you don’t know that. You can only see the gelled up hair he’s had since he was fourteen, because he still thinks he’s fourteen, even though he’s at university, failing his degree and spending all his time in his tatty dressing gown drinking Dr Pepper and playing Call of Duty.

Next to him is his dad and step-mum, Geoff and Anna, though your boyfriend doesn’t know them that well apart from the fact that Geoff married his first wife because he liked her breasts, only her breasts, and convinced himself that that was a good enough place to start a long lasting relationship.

That one’s John, another uncle. He always misses hair when he shaves, leaving random downy tufts on his cheeks, miniscule bristles in his septum, and then has trouble dressing smart even though he looks good when he does. He’s been a kitchen porter, a waiter, a factory worker, a bricklayer, a fruit picker, an attendant at a nursing home, an office temp, a fisherman and anything else you can think of. He constantly changes his glasses, not because he breaks them or loses them or because his eyesight is deteriorating as quickly as he changes jobs, but because he likes the way it changes the shape of his face, sometimes square, sometimes oval, sometimes triangular.

At the bottom’s Olive, lovely quiet Olive, whose constantly apologising, even in text messages, for bothering you. She has passions, whispering passions, and wants to be a scholar, though the rest of her practical family can’t see the point in living in penury for a dream, so she doesn’t. She’s a PA and speaks Spanish and French and gets paid well for it, though her boss smells faintly of raisins.

Opposite her’s Lisa. She’s a temp who hides in the toilet to send sexy texts to her boyfriend. That’s Ian who everyone knows is doing something in Japan, though no one knows what. That’s great uncle Gordon who puts shards of glass on his windowsills to keep away the pigeons. That’s Alice, a triathlon champ who can’t understand how to hit a shuttlecock. And that’s Pete, yes, Pete, chasing your naked boyfriend on the beach that time when he refused to get dressed.

But no one talks about Pete. No. Best not to mention him.

Stephen Mander is originally from Liverpool in the UK, but has lived and worked in Japan, Australia, Hungary, Slovakia, Syria. He currently lives in Vietnam.

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