‘Notes from an NPC at the Hotel Morton’

Vivian Calderón Bogoslavsky is a Colombia Native. She holds a bachelors in anthropology with a minor in history and a postgraduate degree in Journalism from Universidad of Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. She has studied art for over 13 years with a well know Argentinian art master as well as studies in Florence, Italy, and Fine Arts & Design in USA.

Notes from an NPC at the Hotel Morton

“If Buc-ee’s can be known across the world for clean restrooms, so can this hotel,” said Marvin, our facilities manager at the Hotel Morton. He looked at me and then at one of my longtime co-workers. “Jeffrey and Melena, we have hired two people to backfill your previous duties, and your job now is to ensure that our common-area restrooms in the lobby, the conference room floor, and the roof restaurant are not just clean, not just sanitized, but worthy of praise in reviews and on social media.”

This gave me three restrooms to manage over my shift. I could watch over them scrupulously and I learned to position myself nearby during busy times—check-in and checkout for the lobby, late mornings and after lunch for the conference level, evenings for the rooftop restaurant. I also came to know who offended most in the restrooms. Take, for instance, the rooftop and a bleach-blond young man, age twenty-two, staying with his parents. They were down from Newport Beach, RI. Father had been a producer in Hollywood and a financier of several billion-dollar movies. 

The son? Well, some men won’t wash their hands, some won’t clean drips off toilet seats, some just can’t put the hand towel in the bin after use. This young man? Clogged the handicap toilet with paper towels, left a used condom on the sink, carved his initials into a stall door. How could I know he did these things? When I can police a restroom so closely, I can be there to erase the traces of individual guests. Except when they make carvings and I need maintenance.

Staff, his family, and friends across the country were shocked and heartbroken when, somehow, he went out a tenth-floor window and splatted on the pavement below, narrowly missing a baby in a stroller. Many were shaken, though I was not. We do not mourn when hyenas die.

Melena alerted me to a female guest she was struggling with. Said guest was a regular, in her fifties with short platinum hair. She visited from a manse in the Shenandoah Valley. “It is good to surround myself with people from time to time,” she told Melena during one visit. I don’t think she liked surrounding herself with people so much as she liked a discreet meeting place for her many liaisons. 

Melena had suspicions about her, had to clean up vomit more than once after our lady was found day-drinking in the restaurant. Carmela was her name. “Like Tony Soprano’s wife,” she would say. “I’m a hot-blooded Italian,” she would tell men she met up with. “And I was a high-frequency trader. I have a high, high risk tolerance.”

Indeed. Shortly after Melena and I had that conversation, there was an, uh, incident in the conference restroom. It seems that Carmela High Risk enjoyed many high-risk behaviors and was found in the restroom, in the open, fully exposed and in the throes with one of her paramours. “We thought no one would be around,” she confided in Melena with a giggle later in the evening. Granted, the “incident” occurred at 6:45 am, and on some days, they might have gotten away with it. But the fame of the incident went across social media to Melena’s and my everlasting humiliation. Buc-ee’s may have famously clean restrooms, but upscale hotels are not likely to be praised online for them no matter what Marvin says. We could not have imagined our restrooms hitting social media for this reason, though.

Poor Carmela. A few months later, she returned for a three-day stay. On day two, her flavor-of-the-moment returned from an errand to discover her nude body in the bathtub, blood streaming from a blunt-force injury to her head that may or may not have come from a fall (according to the medical examiner). Naturally, the married-man paramour was outed for his escapades while he was investigated (then cleared). It was very Sopranos-like, if the Sopranos were written by the team behind Days of Our Lives. Melena was horrified, said she admired Carmela’s “spirit.” I felt modestly relieved that we could admire her “spirit” in heaven.

Perhaps you have seen the second season of White Lotus? The, uh, female “entrepreneurs” selling their “wares” to male guests are a real thing, and for a time, we had one in particular who caught the attention of both Melena and me. Of course, she was on no guest register, but she had a tendency to wreck the restaurant restroom. And by “wreck,” I do not mean in a scatologically humorous way. No, she overstuffed the repository for sanitary napkins and left unflushed bloody and brown messes. Melena finally confronted her with gritted teeth. Sometime later, I found her emerging from the men’s conference restroom of all places. I did not feign courtesy.

“You do not belong in there. What are you doing?”

“Who are you to say I do not?” she said. “Have you inspected me?”

“I think we both know full well you could not ply your trade so well otherwise,” I said.

She half smiled. “I was told to stop wrecking the ladies’ room,” she said. She moved by me with a pat of my arm and a brush of her lips on my cheek.

She had indeed wrecked the men’s room, leaving sanitary products in almost all toilets, water overflowing in one, and a brown and bloody mess in another.

A week later, very tragically, in the early morning hours, our airport shuttle driver was about to turn into the driveway when a form pitched forward from the bushes and fell under the tires. Our own Lucia Greco had met her end. 

“You must live in despair to be in that line of work,” Melena said to me. “It must have become too much. What a tragedy.”

Tragedy? She made a life of creating wrecks everywhere she went, so her passing in a wreck seems fitting.

We recently had a man who approached me somewhat apologetically. He had gone to the lobby restroom and taken his toddler son with him.

“Ricky unlocked the stall door while I was doing my business and ran out. I thought he was just running around, but he climbed up into the urinal and, uh, dropped a deuce there.”

“Dropped a deuce,” I repeated.

“Yes. In the urinal itself.”

“A deuce in the urinal,” I said.

“Yes. I’m really sorry. I would help you clean it up, but I don’t know where to start.”

At least this man confessed, though his poor effort in not bothering even to try with some hand towels hardly indicates remorse and repentance. I will spare you the graphic details of the clean up.

The next morning, very early, while the child slept, the man was forcibly escorted from his room by a masked assailant who brought him, at the point of some weapon, to the restroom his son had fouled. The assailant knew enough to put a maintenance sign in front of the door, whereupon he led the man to the urinal, stuffed his head in it, and proceeded to water board him with flushes for somewhere between five and ten minutes. It was, of course, barbaric, and when the man was at last set free, he called police first and then hotel management. Naturally, I was interviewed in due course. Who but an employee could have gotten into his room? Who but an employee could have used a maintenance sign? But it was my off day and my cellphone affirmed I had been at home exercising in the basement, as did my wife who had no reason to assume otherwise.

The officer who interviewed me was a plainspoken ruffian who affected the air of having seen it all. “You have had a number of tragedies here,” he said.

“It is a large hotel with many people visiting in different stages of life,” I said. “I suppose we should expect some dark clouds now and again.”

“Dark clouds,” he said with a smirk.

“And it seems to me that people frequently do violent and untidy things in hotels. After all, an NPC working at the hotel will just clean it up after.”

“NPC?”

“A non-player character,” I said. “It’s what the kids say these days to refer to background people.”

“Background people, huh,” said the officer. He liked to repeat things I said.

“Unfortunately, you, too, are an NPC,” I said.

“Tell me,” he said. “Can you think of any common theme that runs through these incidents? Any thread that ties them together?”

I shook my head. “Aside from people staying at our hotel, not a thing in the world.”

Gordon Laws has recently published in Irreantum, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, and the Line of Advance. He oversees course development at Coursera.

‘The Marksman and the Mark’

Rosemary Kimble

The Marksman and the Mark 

What kind of man needs a blessing to do as he wills? With God at your back, all things are possible. When the Father of the Bride-to-Be answered a knock at his door, in darkness, before the vagitus of morning birdsong, he saw the Groom. He suspected the question he was asked. About time. He almost disliked the Groom. He understood, full well, that they were cut from different cloth. The Groom was made from paper and ink. The Father was made from the bark of the tree and the blood of the hare. 

“As you are, I cannot give you my blessing to enter my family. Though if I forbid it entirely, my daughter won’t be happy. There is a way for you to get my approval. But,” he said, for wherever there is love there is often a but, “First you must do something. Look at yourself. Your nails are too clean. The only scars you’ve endured have been given to you by papercuts. A man needs to be able to protect the people he loves. And to provide. Have you ever fired a gun?” The Groom shook his head. 

“Nothing like it. There are those who act like a gun is a bad thing, like not knowing how to use one is a good thing. Bull, plain and simple. You can’t use a gun, and the bagman comes to collect: You’re done for.” 

The Father led the Groom into his basement workshop. A disemboweled rifle lay on his table, mechanical entrails carefully organized, and a safe sat against the wall. He opened it, revealing a collection of firearms dated from antiquity to the present. The Groom could not tell them apart. The Father handed him a rifle. 

“If you wish to marry my daughter, learn to hunt.”

The Father escorted the Groom outside the forest complex he called home. The ancestral grounds, miles from any city, included a manse, two guest homes, a few cabins dotted along the hunting grounds, and a processing facility. The Father processed the meat and the animal hides himself. His family, God willing, would never go cold or hungry. He showed the Groom the facilities, the Groom who winced at the smell of blood and the sight of stainless steel tainted with viscera. He took him outside, and showed him how to load, cock, and fire the rifle. Their pale faces glowed under the setting moon. 

“This land is old. Do not forget that.” 

And the Father told him the story of Kuno. 

Kuno was the first steward of the land. He arrived nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, and possessing no education and no connections, he strove for a career in hunting, ultimately serving in the War of Independence. He had to his name when he settled in Ohio only a rifle, a musket purportedly taken from the body of a British soldier, a one-bedroom hut, and one hundred acres of land given to him as reward for military service. Kuno was cunning, however, and whenever he heard that a neighbor was moving or in dire financial straits, there he would be with a pouchful of money, chewing up the land like strips of carrion, such that one hundred years later his family had the largest unadulterated parcel for miles. When old Kuno finally died, he left in his will only three stipulations. First, that his descendents should similarly seek to expand their land holdings as much as is practical. Secondly, that the land should pass through the family line, unsplit, to the children of Kuno. They need not be a huntsman by trade, but each inheritor should be a hunter by practice. 

His will also stipulated that primogeniture reigned supreme, in no uncertain terms. Upon the death of a master of the hunting land, the ownership of the grounds should go to his first-born son, or in the absence of a first-born son, the next-born son, or in the absence of any son, to the husband of the eldest daughter, and so on, and in any case only on the provision that he hunt. If no suitable heir should present himself, then upon the death of the last master of the woods the land and everything in it should be razed. 

A suitable heir must pass a marksmanship challenge to seal his inheritance in stone. This was to dispel rumors that plagued Kuno from his earliest days: That he was too good a shot, that he hit impossible moving targets at impossible distances. That he used magic bullets, blessed through witchcraft. But we are a family that loves, fears, and lives with God. Do you hear that? The marksmanship challenge, surpassed only through skilled gunplay, proves our moral righteousness. And so, on the day of your wedding, if you wish to marry my daughter, we will release a flock of doves. You must eye the one with red ribbon attached to its wings, and shoot it dead. And that shall be your second-most valued prize, after your wife. 

Surely when Kuno created this will he must have been of sound mind and body, and capable of such moral foresight that his verdict could withstand the revolutions of the Earth around the sun as well as the revolutions of the people around the moral center of the universe. While many in hindsight regret decisions they have made, surely there are some that shall never be regretted. Surely this is one such decision. 

The Groom nodded. He had his compunctions. He did not agree with everything his someday Father said, but he knew that he was living under another man’s house, and who was he to challenge the status quo? He bristled at the chill as the sun began to rise, and the two wandered into the forest. 

The Groom could be given a map and dropped off at any point in any city, and within an hour he would ascertain his location, the nearest bus stop, and the best cafe to take lunch in, but in the forest he was lost in its variegated beauty. With his sense of natural geography warped by an upbringing of stone and skyscrapers, concrete and cars, he could hear the rivers and see the hills but not be able to say what they meant. He could pass underneath a hanging widowmaker and not see it because he had only been trained by life to look in front of him, but neither above nor below. In fact, he only knew to stop when he walked into the butt of the Father’s rifle. The Father locked eyes with the Groom, then stared ahead, and it took a moment for the Groom to realize he should follow with his eyes. When he did, he spotted it: A buck with 12-pointed antlers, what the Father would call a Royal Stag. He had never seen a deer in his life. The muscular, haughty torso, four thighs and legs like matchsticks, the brown fur atop it, white underbelly below, and the coal-black snout awed him. The buck, still a hundred yards away, jerked its head to face him, and jerked away to bolt. In that moment the Groom did the only thing he could, turn and fire, and learned two facts in an instant. First, that the recoil of a rifle is far greater in the heat of the moment. Second, that deer scream like men. 

The stag roiled up on its haunches, landing on the back legs first, and then the front right leg. The left had been hit by the bullet, and it bounded into the woods, splintered leg dragging like a second tail. 

“I struck it!” The Groom cheered. “Now what do we do?” 

The Father scowled and charged off into the forest, following the trail of blood. By the time the Groom caught up with him, the deer was dead, a second round penetrating the heart. The Groom watched him take a knife along the underside of the deer, and remove the vital organs. He handed the Groom a rope, and simply said “Around the neck.” The Groom had to ask for assistance with the knot. As they walked back, he murmured his good fortunes as having caught his first deer.

“Your first deer? Not at all. My deer. After firing, you did not know what to do. You did not give chase. If it had been you alone in the forest and not me with you, you would not have caught and killed it. It would be limping in the woods with a shattered leg, living with a permanent debilitation, or dying from a slow, painful infection. The life of the animal wasted for it, the meat ruined for us. What you did today was worse than if you had missed. You should not be happy.” 

They spent the rest of the day in silence. The following day, the Bride joined the Groom in the hunting grounds. 

“I just don’t know how to talk to your Father.” 

“He’s a pretty simple guy. He likes guns, meat, men that aren’t trying to marry his daughter.” 

“Has he always been this way?” 

“He’s gotten worse since Daniel, but he won’t really talk about it. My dad is very good at talking at people, if you haven’t noticed.” 

“Right. I just need to get better at hunting.” 

The Bride touched the Groom on the shoulder as a hush escaped her lips. 

“Is it a deer?” 

“No, better. Look.” 

She gestured towards a nearby riverbed, and waited for him to notice. By instinct, he trained his rifle, at which she blanched. 

“Put that away. You aren’t going to want to shoot this.” 

And then he saw it. Movement. The glint of a loricated shell. The dry, pliant neck. A tortoise.

“He’s beautiful,” the Groom whispered, dropping everything to squat beside the creature. He held a finger a few inches in front of the tortoise’s face as it approached and smelled the unfamiliar object, lightly biting it. 

“We should get a pet,” The Bride said. 

“Why not? Like, a cat or a dog?” 

The Bride knelt beside him. “Why not a tortoise? Not this one, obviously. It belongs in its natural environment. But like, one from a pet store.” 

The Groom paused. “I’m not sure. Most pets live, what, 20 years at most? But a tortoise could outlive us all. That’s a long commitment to make right now.” 

At that moment, they both heard the sound of a single gunshot echoing to the south, shaking the trees like artillery fire. 

“Just the scare cannon,” The Bride states. “Though my father tries not to use it when people are hunting. Sometimes he has to, if bears get too curious. There are things in these woods not even he dares to hunt.” 

Unlike her Father, who told him how to hunt, the Bride showed him how to hunt. She overlaid her hands on top of his, melding his form to the gun, tracing her fingers along his knuckles to show her approval. She stepped back, allowing the Groom to fend for himself, but whenever he had to make a shot, he missed. Twilight approached, and as much as the Bride admired her fiance's perseverance, she grew tired at his lack of skill. She wanted to continue the family lineage. If she could be the one to take the marksmanship challenge, she thought, they would not be in this mess. 

She would be right. She wore out before he did, and returned home, while the Groom remained in the forest.

The Groom thought he could hunt on his own and be perfectly fine, because he was an educated man and could acclimate to the terrain. Education comes in many forms, however, and just as one may spend decades learning to be a surgeon or lawyer, so too is the pursuit of the forest a lifelong endeavor. He did not realize that he was attempting to grow a new organ. He missed shot after shot, and with each shot he missed he grew dispirited until he became unable to spot any animals at all, whether mammal or bird. The Groom was kneeling on the ground, cursing his gun, weeping for the love between himself and the Bride, when a figure came upon him from the direction of the setting sun. 

“Bad luck shooting today, is that so?” 

I wore crisp slacks the color of the earth, with a beige, long-sleeved button-down shirt. I had a similarly earthen tie, affixed to my chest with a ruby pin in the center. For his sake, I wore sunglasses. The Groom could not see my face, as to do so would require him to look directly into the sun. 

“Who are you?” 

“Why, I’m the Warden.” I bowed at the waist, and for once he could see my face: A row of unnervingly straight teeth, and rough skin with rivulets of wrinkles. Behind the glasses, my eyes were an impenetrably deep blue, blue you could drown in. 

“Do you know whose land you are on?” 

“Yes. I’m engaged to the daughter of the owner, sir.” 

“Friend of the family, hm? Well, any family of Kuno is a friend of mine. Do you have your permits?” 

The Groom balked.

“I’m kidding, of course. We have an arrangement, you see. I’m paid handsomely to turn the other cheek. But you have nothing to offer, do you? Learning to hunt, are you?” The Groom nodded. 

“Here, stand up. Look in the trees. That bird. Try and shoot it.” 

“I’m not a good shot.” 

“You don’t have to be. Just shoot it.” 

The Groom took aim, fired, and missed. He wasted a dozen cartridges in this manner. The bird, strangely enough, did not fly away. A better hunter would have asked why, but the groom merely continued with his folly. 

“What’s the matter?” 

“I’m not a good enough shot. And if I can’t shoot, then I–then I won’t be able to–” The Groom started to choke up. 

“Hush. I know all about that family’s old superstitions–which is why I’ll help you. It’s not your fault at all. It’s your gun. You’ve been feeding it the wrong bullets, that’s all. Here–try this.” 

I produced from my pocket a single, silvery bullet, and handed it to the Groom. “Go ahead. Fire.” 

The Groom loaded the chilling bullet into his rifle. The world was spinning. He had become delirious over the course of the day and had to pace his breathing to calm himself. His palms were sweating, clammy over the metal. He took aim at the bird with what he felt to be the same rigor he had been applying the entire time, and pulled the trigger. 

A hit! With a single clean shot, the bird fell to the ground, dead. Even I could not resist cheering.

“Do you see what I mean? The bullets, yes, make all the difference. Here, I have some more for you.” 

I rolled up my sleeve, revealing an impossibly smooth forearm lined with splotches the color of wood grain. I pressed my thumb into the underside of the wrist and there was an audible click as the flesh gave way, revealing a compartment in the prosthetic arm which held a small box. I handed it to the Groom, grinning all the while. 

“Only two more here, I’m afraid. But as a parting gift: a bag of supplies to help you make your own. There is a crossroads among the paths in these woods–make your way to them on the next moonless night, and cast your bullets there and then. You must finish by midnight, or else–or else I dare not say. May good fortune always bless you.” 

I spent some time explaining in detail how to cast the bullets, what to be aware of, what to be wary of, and then I departed. The Groom suspected a trick. But when he returned to The Father’s complex with three fat pheasants for him, his Bride, and himself, he thought the joy on their faces mitigated any trickery that was afoot. 

He thought to himself, well, I shot three big birds yesterday. I can make do without the bullets. But after his initial success, days passed without him being able to even take feathers off a grouse with his shots. He remembered the story of Kuno, and rumors of magic bullets, as he let the pouch gifted by the Warden gather dust in his guest house. One night, he bluntly came out and asked the Father what he knew about such bullets. 

“Magic bullets! Keep away from them if you have any care for your name and life. It’s thanks to rumors of this dark magic that the marksmanship test exists to begin with. Every hunter I know that has come into contact with magic bullets has come to a bad end.”

The Groom winced, and almost held his tongue, but he knew he had to have his next question answered. 

“But what happens if one should unknowingly use them?” 

The Father looked long at the Groom, unblinking, nearly unbreathing. Finally, he got up, and left the room, rubbing the Groom’s shoulder as he left. When he returned, he brought a lantern, a bottle of scotch, and two glasses, which he filled to the brim. 

“Fortify yourself. I’ve got something to show you.” 

The Groom did not habitually drink, so after downing the scotch he felt nauseous. The two put on their coats, left the manse, and walked along the forest edge by lamplight, deprived of the light of the moon. The Father continued, 

“It seems a simple thing, to take a magic bullet or two. You need to ensure a shot is perfect so you take a shortcut. You’ve had a bad day hunting, so you load a bullet in your chamber, to give yourself a victory. To take the edge off. Nobody needs a bullet, but every bullet needs a man, a target. And once you get into magic bullets, you can’t get out of them. You start to need the bullets the way the bullets need you. And one day, you will take aim, and your gun will miss. Or you will wish it had.” 

The Father paused. They had wandered into the forest, and the wetted ground was loamy underneath. In front of them was a pile of disturbed earth, marked with a cross. “Becoming a father changes you, psychologically. You will do things and think things you never thought possible before, all in the name of protecting and supporting your family. Your instinct says to do anything, but not all instincts can be trusted. Do you understand? Some bullets are fated to hit where they will hit, ricocheting outward, transforming the world around them. Like true love’s kiss.”

The Groom waited for a further explanation from the Father, but no such explanation was forthcoming. The Father walked him back to the guest house, then departed for the night. The Groom did not heed the Father’s words, much like someone who asks for advice on some personal matter when they only seek reinforcement of their intended action. Everything he was doing, he was doing for his Bride. I’ll only use what I need, he thought, and then be done with them. 

He gathered the pouch, and a lamp for light, and made his way into the moonless night. The Groom could only make his way by keeping his eyes level, to see the trees blazed with color to form the huntsman's trails. Every sound set him on edge, the flap of wings becoming a harbinger of doom, the snapping of twigs becoming the breaking of bones. But with courage he persevered through fear, and made his way to the crossroads. Once there, he put a cast-iron pot in the center of it, and set at once to gather wood to make a fire underneath. Contrary to the difficulty he had doing anything else in the forest, wood was easy to come by, and once gathered, sparked to life at once. To ensure a healthy pour, he took the mold for the bullets and held it over the fire, until gunmetal gray turned black with soot. He never realized how hot an open fire could be. 

When the pot was sufficiently heated, he placed lead ingots inside of it, watching as they lost their shape within the crucible. Entranced by the sight, he leaned in, inhaling deeply, but to his surprise the mixture was totally scentless. 

Time to flux the metal. He would not have thought it possible without the Warden’s earlier guidance, but by adding impurity to the concoction he could in fact make the metal more pure, and make it flow smoothly. He was to purify the molten lead with wax from a blood red candle. He tried to light the candle with the flame from the bonfire, but two successive times the candle ignited, then was snuffed by a gust of wind. The third time, he lit the candle, but as he neared the fire the flame reached out towards him, scalding his hand. He let out a primordial scream, and looked at his skin: His hand appeared calcified, with orange bubbles emerging from the flesh. He had no choice but to press onward. He could get medical attention later, but if he failed to cast these bullets, here and now, he might never have another chance. 

He gripped the candle, feeling a painful popping sensation on his palm, and held it over the mixture. With each drop of wax that pierced the meniscus of the lead, smoke emerged from the cauldron, at first in thin, ashen lines, then as a black, obfuscating cloud. The Groom fell backwards as his vision was blocked, and found himself unable to move. He could hear approaching footsteps, and felt their reverberations in his bones. As the dark cloud cleared, he bore witness to a creature only recognizable as a stag from its torso and legs, as the head was missing. Blood and muscle pumped within the bisected neck, pulsing from the force of hooves on the forest floor. The creature circled him, and as it circled again he noticed a front leg dangling, as if held in place, which proceeded to wrap around his neck. From the black cloud emerged a horde of birds, multicolored, whose cries reached a fever pitch. No sooner did he raise a hand to cover his ears then the birds descended on his burned limb, pecking at the skin, tearing it cleanly from the muscle. He crawled to the mold for the bullets, strangled by the stag and beset by the birds. He struggled with the leg until it slipped off his neck and around his mouth, at which point he bit into it. His teeth tore flesh, and the stag bounded off into the night. He grabbed a ladle made for the material, and proceeded to cast the bullets. The birds grew closer around him, and he grew dizzy from the fumes and force of them. The black cloud, it seemed, was parted, with illumination growing with each pour. He looked into the sky, and saw a yellow moon sagging. He could not be mistaken in thinking there was no moon before. Could he? But he would not be deterred. He continued pouring, thinking of his Bride, praying for safety. It seemed to him that he was lighter, as if the moon itself were trying to lift him from the earth. He poured the last of the lead into the bullet mold, and the world quieted. The howling was silenced. The light from the bonfire died out, leaving him with only the meager illumination of his lantern. No moon in the sky. He sat, and waited, watching the glimmer of soft metal hardening into something special. He glanced at his wrist–his hand appeared healed yet scarred, but his watch had broken, the crystal cracked, the time stuck at 11:47. He was supposed to finish casting by midnight. How long ago did his watch break? He took the locking pins out of the mold, and pried it open. Sixty bullets, like marbles, like teeth, came clattering out, and the Groom got down on his knees in the dirt to gather his bounty. He was mesmerized by the sound of them, the chittering they made as he placed 59 pieces of cool metal in an ammo bag. When he grasped the last of these, however, he heard a rustle in the trees beside him. He could barely make out the shape of the beast by lamplight, but he saw glistening fur, like a wave of oil crashing down against him, felt the hot, dry breath on his throat, as he came face to face with the bear. 

In times of great need, one fails to act with conscious thought. Your movements, actions, words, become not your own, and you operate as if possessed by something greater than yourself. It was with this motion that the Groom shielded himself from the gnashing teeth of the great demon with one arm, and fumbled for his pistol with the other. He scrambled backwards, trying to place a single newly-cast bullet in the chamber, hand still mutilated, the creature slashing at his back. He slotted one in and closed the chamber, then turned and, not daring to look the creature in the eyes, fired. The weight of the bear fell upon him, and for a long while he did not move. He wondered if he had fallen asleep, so long did he lay under the weight of his bear. Suddenly, the weight felt lighter. He tried to push the beast off, but his hands found only soft cotton, and long hair. He rolled the weight off of him, and shone his lantern. He was staring at his bride, pierced through the neck. Surely this wasn’t her? Surely it was just another vision. 

Perhaps, but as his pulse slowed and he came to his senses he became only more certain that he had done a terrible thing. It occurred to him that he had to get out of the forest, and to make amends. The Groom gathered his bullets, and supplies, to hide any trace of his ever having gone to the crossroads. He was too weak to carry the Bride atop his shoulders, so he was forced to tie her limbs with rope and drag her behind him. By the time he emerged from the woods, the sun had started to rise, and the Father screamed at the sight of the Groom dragging a massive bear behind him. He was now a true hunter. A date was set for the wedding. 

With the bullets guiding him, no prey was too dangerous, too nimble, or too cunning for his gun. Even if the family ate meat every day, at every meal, there would be no way to eat it all themselves. The Father thought it a bountiful sign, that the next generation would have a hunter who had been truly blessed, the second coming of Kuno. The Groom told himself, all things in moderation. He will only use the bullets as necessary. But the more he used them, the more necessary they became. He told himself he would stop, and he did not stop. So he told himself again. A poor sailor does not realize a ship's hull needs to be repaired until the floors feel wet. So when a poor man tries to mend his soul he may not notice that the devil has already taken root, that he has taken on water, that he has been hollowed out and the demon made a home in his bones. 

The Groom stopped sleeping well at night. His Bride was normally a sound sleeper, but she would awaken some evenings to find only sweat-soaked sheets beside her in bed where once her love had laid. The Groom had retreated to the cold confines of the butchery. The night before their wedding was one such time. Normally the Bride would allow him some privacy, a hidden spot in his soul, but on this occurrence she thought perhaps it was time to offer him solace. The Groom sat at the base of a meat locker, his head resting against the door, fingering a small pouch which jingled at his touch. 

The Bride approached him, and as she placed her hand on his shoulders he flinched. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.” 

He looked up at her, his eyes tinged ruby at the corners and purple below. He remained clutching at the pouch. 

“What have you been doing? Why can’t you sleep at night?” 

He handed her the pouch. It had inside a single bullet. 

“I can’t do this anymore.” 

In some ways, his admission shocked and comforted her. She assumed he meant hunting. Though she was proud of the hard work her Groom had undertaken to satisfy an absurd tradition, it galled her that he should suddenly become such a skilled hunter. If he did not have the temperament for the trade, then perhaps he was not as skilled as he appeared. 

“It’s okay. You only need to be a hunter for one more day. Then our inheritance will be secured. I’ll provide for us, and you can keep the books in order. You won’t have to kill another animal. You won’t even have to hold a gun.” 

He embraced her. 

“I’ve done a terrible thing.” 

“I know. I know. It will all be okay after tomorrow.” 

What a place the world would be if it were not for misunderstandings! Neither party in this exchange said what the other one had heard, nor heard what the other one had said. The Groom thought he had wordlessly confessed and been given absolution. The Bride thought he had bared his animal-loving heart, and that she had given comfort to his fears. The two went to bed happy, but only because they had failed to communicate to one another. 

On the day of their wedding, the Groom only had one bullet left–the bullet needed to hit the dove, and then he would be done with magic forever. He wanted to stop himself from using the magic bullet to pass the test, however, and so he brought two more bullets with him. Ordinary bullets. When the time came for the doves to be released, his bride and father-in-law standing behind him, he shuffled them in his pocket, picked one at random, and loaded his gun without glancing at the bullet. 

He aimed his rifle, and waited for the birds to be released. His Bride did the honor of tying a ribbon to a dove, then at her Father’s signal, the flock was released. He only had a moment to see them, but by now his marksman’s eyes had been trained. He spied a ribbon on a leg, aimed for where the bird was going to be, adjusted for the force gravity has on the trajectory–and fired! And hit! With a burst of red the dove was arrested in midair, and plummeted to the ground. Everyone hushed, and when the Groom recovered the bird and presented it, they cheered. One voice, from among the group, called for an encore. The Groom thought for a moment he saw the gleam of a ruby tie tack, but assumed he was mistaken. Then I stepped out from the group, holding an apple. 

“Lightning doesn’t strike twice, but your aim is so true it might as well. When you struck your dove, it hit a tree on the way down. Wouldn’t it be appropriate, then, if you made this apple which fell to earth your next target?” 

There were sounds of disapproval. After such an impressive shot, to hit an apple? Absurd and obscene. Not a worthy follow-up at all.

“Let me clarify. I propose not just that you strike this apple, but that you strike it from the head of your beloved.” 

Almost everyone turned to the Groom. The Groom and the Father turned to the Bride. She approached her betrothed. 

“William. If you want to take this shot, I’ll trust you. But you don’t have to wield a gun anymore, for as long as you live.” 

He held his soon-to-be-wife, and asked her to walk to the other end of the clearing. As she passed, I handed her an apple. 

“And for you, dear Groom. A blindfold.” 

And thus the Groom was given his most dire missive: Perform an impossible shot, with only the devil’s chance to save him. With two bullets in his pocket, he picked the one that felt warm to the touch. He trained his rifle on his bride, the sight tracing along the white train of her dress, her wrung hands, her tense smile, her eyes, open one moment and closed the next, her flowing hair, to the apple atop her. He inhaled, and he exhaled, noting how each movement adjusted his aim. 

“Place the blindfold.” 

And the Father placed the blindfold on dear Williams’ head, and many in attendance looked away. Many of the children, not understanding the implication, attempted to look but were blinded by the opaque hands of their parents latticed in front of their eyes. One man who was a true believer wondered if Kuno, once known as the Scourge of the Scioto for his prowess, was watching.

I hope you will forgive me for what is about to happen. The Groom forswore temptation, but what value does that have if he is not tempted? What good is virtue if one is not called upon to practice it? 

The Groom could not see anything, so he did all he could and focused on his breathing. In, out, in, out. If his aim did not stray, then he could hit the apple. If his aim lingered downward, his bride would be dead. He needed to fire at the apex of an inward breath. And he did. And he heard a woman scream. 

When the Groom removed his blindfold he saw what he had wrought: An apple, cleaved in two from the shot, on the ground. His Bride, untouched. He had made the shot. He ran to her and kissed her, vowing never to touch a gun as long as he lived. For the rest of the ceremony, he felt like a revenant, as if he had not been himself for a long time. He felt like he was finally free. 

At the reception, the Bride and Groom gleefully cut into a cake the shape of a lamb. Easter would not be for another six months, but the cake–and the choice of red velvet–was to their particular tastes. 

The two sat at ease, and ate their pieces of cake, when the Bride began choking. The Groom placed himself behind her, to hold her and unblock her clotted passageway, but he turned her around when he felt liquid trailing down his scarred hand and saw the Bride’s dress stained red. Still choking, only crimson froth emerged from her mouth. Her gaze looked frightened, then softened into one of peace. She kissed the Groom on his forehead, leaving the red impression of lips behind, as she sat down, motionless save for a periodic movement of her irises, silent except for a low, guttural gurgle. 

Who is to blame? Myself, for offering the magic bullets? The Groom, for using them? For casting the bullets in the first place? The Father, whose desire to see tradition followed led to the Groom’s desperation? Kuno, whose centuries-old decree is still followed to the letter it was initially inscribed in? When all is dead and buried, I do not see the point in blame. Instead, I beg you to ask how, along any step of the way, this could have been avoided. Without the magic bullets, how could there have been both a marriage and an inheritance? When was the moment everything was lost? Was it when the Groom cast the bullets? Or had this moment been coming, ever since the decision was made not to challenge the will of a man dead two centuries past? I do not have the answer, so at this juncture I will leave you with an epilogue: 

The autopsy revealed a bullet lodged in the Bride’s throat. At this discovery, the Groom checked his pocket. The third bullet was missing. When she died, he took his rifle, and ran from the chapel to the forest. A search was conducted, but all the party came across was a patch of scorched earth at a wooded crossroads. Her Father wept, and bereft of daughter and yet another son, retreated to the confines of his home. He died before the year was out, and when he did finally pass, miles of forest were razed in accordance to Kuno’s will.

Jack Douglas Riter

‘The Graffito’

Future Focus Photography by NATALIE PARDUE extends an invitation to see robots as not just machines, but as beings capable of evoking feelings, reflections, and stories.

The Graffito

I had been driving for twenty-six hours straight when I first laid eyes on it. The deep hours had long settled in, and it would be some time still before the slow groan of dawn began to light my way, but the building’s variegated neons spiked out into the empty interstate darkness just the same. It was a gas station, but not any kind of chain, at least not one that I had ever heard of. The sign featured a neon white skeleton character kicking one leg in and out, probably meant to suggest a can-can style dance, but whoever molded the neon tubes must have been pretty new to the craft, or just did not care much. Beside the pose-alternating mascot stood blue neon lettering of a similarly dubious construction: JACK-A-BONES’S GETTIN’ PLACE.

My gas tank was not in dire need of refilling and would most likely hold out until I reached the nearest town, whichever that might be. I hadn’t been keeping track of where I was going, only the sheer distance from where I had left. But the thought of continuing without ample caffeination sent a jag down the back of my neck, so I decided that it was I who needed the refill. I veered into the small parking lot without a second glance for other cars, as is my way. Of course there were no cars around, nor had there been any for the last several hours. In that state of mind, you could have climbed into my passenger seat and told me cars had gone extinct, and I probably would have believed you. I came to a screeching stop, parked diagonally between two and a half spaces. This is also my way.

As I approached the full glass-pane exterior, it became immediately clear that, despite the lack of cars as far as I could see, I was not alone in this place. Two figures occupied the building, one behind the checkout counter, the other in the midst of the convenience store. The latter was a strikingly small man, perhaps only a head over five feet. He was deathly pale and wore bedraggled clothing, and was gesticulating wildly, angrily. He had the look of someone who lived in a gas station at the apex of night, so to speak.

“You don’t understand, J.B.!” he shouted. “How’m I supposed to get stuff at the Gettin’ Place if I don’t got cash to get stuff?”

The individual behind the counter was even more striking than his interlocutor, albeit for far more unusual reasons. For one, he was wearing a vintage Badfinger concert tee. A brave choice, especially given how well preserved the thing was. For two, he seemed to be a fully ambulatory human skeleton, bones in all the right places. Normally this would have been a red flag, but as I have mentioned, I was in an altered state at the time. Additionally, the creature sported a name tag at the end of a lanyard: JACK-A-BONES, Manager.

“I appreciate your struggle, brother,” he said calmly in an accent I couldn’t place. My fault, not his. “But a Gettin’ Place can’t get stuff for people to get if the people ain’t gettin’ it with tender, you dig? ‘Sides, there’s more currencies in this world than just cash.”

Fully aggravated, the small man began to reach for something tucked into the back of his pants, but was halted when Jack-a-Bones raised a dusty hand in rejection.

“Hold on. I’ve come to anticipate and even appreciate your repeated attempts to rob me, I really have. But it seems I’ve a new customer to tend to.” He shifted the bony, palm-out hand to point in my direction, then curled that same ivory finger to beckon me inside. He then turned his attention back to the would-be robber and said, “‘Sides, you know well as I do that this isn’t the kind of place you can rob. It’s the Gettin’ Place, not the Takin’ Place.”

I didn’t get a good look at what kind of implement the little man was about to arm himself with, but he seemed persuaded by the manager’s apparent lack of concern.

“Ahhhh, hell with it all,” he grumbled. He turned in my direction to leave and, in passing, spit on my damn shoe. It took me a second to even process how the slight made me feel, but when I jerked my head up to give the guy a piece of my mind, he was gone. The bastardry of it, I thought.

“Got a napkin for that,” Jack-a-Bones said, calling my attention back into the shop. “That one’s a sorry sort, but I mostly feel bad for him. Comes in here more often than I’d like, never buys anything. Gets a bit violent sometimes, but he’s easy enough to see off.”

The inside of the Gettin’ Place wasn’t far from what might be expected of a convenience store. The interior lights were neon like the outer sign, but in a sort of putrid white-green-yellow hue. It contained the typical rows of candy, snacks, a few simple groceries and toiletries, as well as fridges and freezers filled with all manner of drinks and ice creams. Many of these products were recognizable at a glance, but on closer examination, their logos were smeared and illegible, as if conjured from a memory of a dream of a memory. Music played dimly over the shop speakers, but it too seemed sludgy and misremembered. It was in this melange of unreality that I approached Jack-a-Bones and accepted his napkin.

I watched his non-face move as I wiped the saliva off my shoe. Despite lacking any and all muscle or skin, he seemed to have no problem with speaking, and while I couldn’t perceive any rise or fall in his chest, he occasionally preceded or punctuated his statements with a deep inhale or sighing exhale when the conversation called for it. Interacting with him felt unusually mundane, such that I’m not sure I’d notice anything strange about him if I were blindfolded. And yet, the experience of hearing speech emerge from an animate skull did not react well with my addled state.

I suppose he must have been observing me as I did him, for he then asked, “You seem a mite out of sorts. Get you a drink?”

Before I could respond, Jack-a-Bones drew two shot glasses from somewhere under his counter, accompanied by a large, swishing bottle of indeterminate brown liquid. As he filled the tiny vessels to their brims, I finally managed to collect the presence of mind to ask my host a question.

“Do you have a liquor license?”

Jack-a-Bones slid one glass over to me, then knocked back his own. The brown liquid poured through his jaw and a faint splash sounded from the floor beneath him. “A what?”

I briefly considered refusing, but maybe that was what I needed. Tying one on and passing out in the back seat of my car wouldn’t put any more miles behind me, but maybe that momentary blackness, that discontinuity of consciousness, would ease the pain. So I followed suit.

“There’s a good man,” Jack-a-Bones said. “Now come, we’ve some things to discuss.”

He swung his legs over the counter and vaulted into the store proper with ease. As he righted himself, he produced an overburdened keyring from his shorts pocket and locked the front door. He then beckoned me to the door marked “Employees Only,” wherein lay a set of rusted metal stairs.

Even with the added clarity of hindsight, I can’t fathom why I simply acquiesced to these instructions. Certainly my judgment was impaired to some extent, but to follow a stranger to a dark backroom of a locked building? I’d like to give myself some more credit than that. But something about Jack-a-Bones was so utterly disarming, so perplexingly reasonable, that not a single part of me spoke up in protest.

The stairs led only to a second door on an upper floor, which the skeleton opened without embellishment or bravado. We found ourselves then on the roof of the building, under a black spill of starless night. In the nearest reaches that meshed with the glow of the station, it seemed to bend into faint iridescent ripples like sunlight in a pool of gasoline.

Jack-a-Bones led me to the edge of the rooftop, where we proceeded to sit, our legs dangling over the lip of the front overhang. He reached into another shorts pocket and offered me a cigarette. I declined, at which he shrugged and lit his own with a white disposable lighter.

“I’ll be straight with you, brother, and I’ll hope you’ll do the same for me,” Jack-a-Bones said, taking a short drag on his cigarette. He didn’t look at me as he spoke, instead allowing his empty head to track the gentle curls of smoke. “This is a psychopomp-type situation, and it’s my job to help folks like you sort some things out before you take your next steps.” Another drag, longer this time. “Let’s start at the top. Why are you here?”

I felt my heart sink at that moment. I had hoped that this was some kind of dream. It still could have been, I suppose. But the strangeness of the place made some sense in this new light.

“I had to get away,” I said. The liquor was starting to warm my face, but it felt closer to a wash of shame. “I couldn’t be in that place anymore. Losing my job was one thing. I could cope with that. But then my partner and I started fighting. Constantly, bitterly.”

“Right. But that’s not the only reason, is it?”

I felt stupid explaining it, as if he already knew what had happened. There was no way to sugarcoat any of it, to make it sound understandable to anyone who hadn’t already experienced it. We were just two stupid people doing stupid things to each other until it went beyond us.

“Someone called child services on us. Our situation was deemed unfit to provide sufficient care. A week later, it was just the two of us, trapped in that house with each other. But I guess that was just a few days ago.”

“And now you’re here,” Jack-a-Bones said, finally facing me. “How do you feel?”

“Like it was all for nothing. Was it?”

“Not my place to say, brother. S’not my purview to make value judgments on folk that pass through here. The Gettin’ Place is more of a quasi-spiritual cognitive metaphor, dig? Anything you get from this experience is as valuable as you make it.” He rifled around in another pocket and withdrew a miniature flashlight. “Here, take a look at this.”

Jack-a-Bones shined his light on the concrete canopy that stood above the gas pumps. Evidently, someone had managed to climb onto the platform and had engaged in a bit of creative vandalism, leaving behind a piece of graffiti.

“That bit’s been there longer than I have, I reckon. But I’ve found it makes for a nice reflective exercise. What does it look like to you?”

I strained my eyes to see the image in the low lighting. It initially appeared to be a garbled mess, much like the products in the convenience store, but I soon realized that the image’s appearance changed relative to my position, as if produced by lenticular printing. Training my gaze on the picture from the left, it appeared to be a human hand with two fingers (index and middle) raised, accompanied by the text, “nd CHANCE.” When viewed from the right, it appeared as a game of hangman wherein the player had expended all of their guesses, leaving the little man dead on the noose, eyes turned to Xs; accompanying the doodle was the unfinished puzzle: S  _  R  R  Y. I described the graffiti to Jack-a-Bones as best I could.

“I see,” he said, smoke rolling into his mouth and out through his eye sockets. “I don’t think I need to spell out what you should be picking up from that, yeah? It looks different to everyone, but it all says the same thing in the end.”

“I understand, but I don’t see what I’m supposed to do with it. I destroyed my life, and my family’s. There’s no undoing that.” I watched Jack-a-Bones turn off his light and stow it once again, taking in the true absurdity of it all. “Is any of this even real?”

He laughed a sudden, grinding laugh, as if he hadn’t expected the question. “Mate, it doesn’t matter if it’s real if it affects your life or changes the way you think. This could be a bad trip, for all I’m concerned, and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.” He snuffed his cigarette on the cold concrete roof. “Point being, you have a choice here. You can either get up and get on with it, or you can cut your losses and take the L right here and now. I’m just here to give you that choice. Your decisions led you here, and it’s your decision that’ll lead you out.”

“And what if I don’t choose?” I said. “What if I just get back in my car and keep driving? Or what if I just stay here?”

“You’re well within your right to do so, brother, but there’s no guarantee that the choice will come back ‘round. That’s how you end up like the guy what tried to rob me earlier.”

A darkness passed over my heart. I couldn’t blame Jack-a-Bones, but his words were cold comfort. I didn’t want this decision; this was all to avoid decisions, to avoid anything that would make it all real. But perhaps it wouldn’t have to be real for much longer.

“I can tell what you’re thinking,” Jack-a-Bones said at length. “I’m supposed to remain ultimately impartial, but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a part of me that wants to see people keep going. So before you make your decision, let me say this.” He rose to his sandaled feet and tugged on my shoulder that I might join him. We stood facing each other in the night’s oily blackness. He spoke thusly: “You asked me earlier if your life was all for nothing. And as I said, I can’t be the judge of that. But you can. And so what appears to be a complex decision ultimately boils down to whether you want to go back out there and prove yourself wrong, or if you’re content to let it actually be for nothing. You can break it down into as many moral gradations as you like, but that’s the real core of it all. Get it?”

Jack-a-Bones made a deep inhale, then slowly let the breath out. He clapped me softly on the arm with his skeletal palm and turned to retreat back into the station. As he slipped out of sight, his voice echoed once more out of the stairwell. “I’ll be unlocking the front door now, so exit at your leisure. My break’s over, so I must get to stocking.”

Dazed, I ambled back to my car without a word. Something in Jack-a-Bones’ words had touched me, but still I felt lost and, above all, afraid. To take up the burden of finding purpose amid a sea of mistakes and heartache, he made it all sound so simple, so easy. My mind raced until it far outpaced my ability to keep track of my own thoughts, so deep had my exhaustion grown. I had completely forgotten my initial reason for stopping, to reinvigorate myself, and was now suffering the consequences.

Unable to carry out this ultimate decision with a clarity of mind, I instead laid my head on the steering wheel and closed my eyes, hoping that I might awake in a better place.

Alexander Forston (he/him) is an Indiana-based writer. His work often explores the fuzzy edges of the real and the unreal, yet never abandons the core of the human heart. He holds an MFA in fiction writing from Lindenwood University, and teaches composition at the University of Southern Indiana.

‘Immerensis’

Elizabeth Agre lives in northern mn with her husband alongside the bears, wolves and bobcats.

immerensis

n. the maddening inability to understand the reasons why someone loves you—almost as if
you’re selling them a used car that you know has a ton of problems and requires daily tinkering
just to get it to run normally, but no matter how much you try to warn them, they seem all the
more eager to hop behind the wheel and see where this puppy can go.

after all of the stars have been outshone by the burning sun I lie still
when you hold my hand in the quiet dark i am overwhelmed by immerensis

i’ll always wait for you to change your mind because rust is never nice
once i'm home, whist i lay in bed, i text you because i’m consumed by immerensis

and i wonder how it is possible for someone like you to like me
when the room is quiet, alone in my thoughts, i’m surrounded by the immerensis

people like run their mouths and they like to whisper that you’re beautiful
when i hear them all i can do is agree but it always fills me with immerensis

when you leave me in the restaurant and i get scared of being alone
and when you come back i’m surprised because voices in my mind sound like immerensis

you take my hand and for that singular moment i question all my fears when you hold me close in your heart i feel it dull, the immerensis day after day i give you a

way out as the clock ticks to the next morning
i hear your voice calming on the other side i forget the impending immerensis

Linhly Harwell is a junior at a liberal arts high school specializing in creative writing. From a young age, Harwell displayed an interest in writing which led to her pursuing writing seriously. Over the years, she has been able to dabble in different fields of writing such as poetry, short stories, nonfiction, screenwriting, and more!

‘Ode to Frankendick’

Aaron Beck is a poet and pianist.

‘Leviticus 18:22’

Ners Neonlumberjack was born in a tiny town in central Indiana in 1986. Having lived throughout the Midwest, Southern, and Western United States, the variety of landscapes in which they have lived informs a wealth of variety and interest in plants and animals in imagery as well as material choice. After graduating Herron School of Art and Design with degrees in Painting, Sculpture, and Art History in 2009 the longing for a sense of place and being conscious of the fragile nature of mortality has been a current within the works.

Leviticus 18:22

“The Aftons got a new scarecrow today,” I announce at dinner over a table of mashed potatoes I had been pushing around for the past five minutes, refusing to put the last clump of the under salted vegetable in my mouth. My father looks up from where he had been flipping through the sermon he has written up for this Sunday, focusing on Corinthians, and the dangers of temptation. 

“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” That’s his go-to for whenever he suspects I might be having fun. His tanned face, wrinkled from years in the sun, is pretending to be interested, but I can see the pull of his eyes to the paper, finding Mathew, Mark, Luke, or John more interesting than me. 

“Mm?” he asks, unsubtly sliding his eyes back to the stapled-together papers. 

“Real creepy-lookin’ thing,” I exaggerate, trying to capture his attention once more. Of course, the scarecrow I had seen had been barely more than a flash in my peripheral on my bike-ride back from Katie’s house after school. It was nothing more than a set of straw-stuffed clothes on a pole in the distance. But the kitchen had been quiet for far too long, and I can’t stand the quiet sloshing of my mother washing dishes in the background being the only noise. 

“Mm,” my father responds, deciding that the conversation was thoroughly complete, going back to the sermon and muttering something underneath his breath as he flicks to Psalms. Deciding I will get nowhere with him, I pick up my plate, smearing the last bit of mashed potatoes across it to make the mass smaller before he can see I haven’t finished my plate and make me sit back down. When I enter the yellow-tiled kitchen, my mother spots me subtly trying to slide my dish into the full sink she’s working in, the steaming water going up to her elbows as she scrubs the pot the forbidden potatoes were cooked in. My futile mission is halted as she raises an eyebrow, and I’m already walking to her right with a towel before she even gets the word out to tell me to. 

“Saw a creepy scarecrow today,” I tell her as she passes me a soaking wet plate and I swipe the towel once, twice, across the plates edged with a checkered pattern. We’d had them for years, given as a gift to my parents for their wedding. These plates were nothing compared to the china my mother received from my grandmother’s house after she’d passed away, because these were chipped at the edges while the others were trimmed with silver. Of course we only brought them out for the holidays when family visited, but I liked that we did that, because there was something about watching the fragile edges of the China catch the light of the candles in the center of the coming table that made it feel magical. With the China on the table, anything in the world can happen. 

“Hm?” she asks, but in a much more interested grunt than my father’s, but still not particularly. I hope my story is more interesting than the dishes. 

“In the Afton’s field,” I explain, taking a glass she hands me, still dripping with watered-down milk from where she didn’t get it washed all the way. I say nothing, not wanting to have to be handed a dish twice. “Was real creepy lookin’.” 

“It was really creepy looking,” she repeats back to me, forever exhausted with my failing grammar, a forever plight of my generation. I fight back a sigh, knowing it will be taken as a sign of disrespect, rather than frustration that they seem to be missing the point, that the scarecrow was creepy. It wasn’t really, but that wasn’t the point either. 

“It was really creepy looking,” I follow her lead, but in a town that makes her raise a side-eyebrow at me that I knew what it meant, and so did she, but after our incident at the mall last week, we were both on thin ice around each other. 

“The Mall Incident”, as I had recently dubbed it over an angry phone call to Katie, was where my mother and I had fought so loudly on whether or not I could wear a halter tank top that “Myrtle” the attendant at the mall politely asked us to leave. What was the most disappointing was that it had taken us forty-five minutes to drive to the mall, and we were only there for about thirty. 

“I didn’t even get a soft pretzel!” I had cried to Katie over the phone in the hallway, aware my mother could hear me after the return drive that seemed to last longer than forty-five minutes. Katie, I had known, would understand the tragedy of the lack of a soft pretzel better than any other friends at school, who lived closer to town, so the idea of a mall trip for them was an average weekend, as opposed to a shining pillar of hope that only appeared once a month. After my declaration, I heard a sigh from down the hall, and I knew that despite my indignation, my mother would not see the tragedy that lied in a soft pretzel. 

It’s getting to the point of the year where it’s too dark for me to walk to Katie’s after dinner, so I shut my door gently after dinner, so it doesn’t seem like I’m slamming it, and I pull out a copy of some teen magazine Katie had given to me that I smuggled in my backpack before I left her house, and go back to the quiz we were working on. 

Earlier that day, the two of us had been lying side-by-side on her bed, giggling over the quiz as she crossed off A, B, C, or D, each answer depending on fake scenarios on what she expected Devin, the only guy who had skipped out on a summer growth spurt, would do. 

“Do you think if I’d drop my books he’d help me pick them up?” she asked me, gnawing on the tip of her pen, “Or do you think that he would just step over them?” 

A or D. I had tried to picture shy Devin being the devil air hero she wanted, swooping in from the back of class to pick up Katie’s books her for, but I couldn’t still, in order not to burst her Devin-bubble, I nodded enthusiastically, saying, “He’d pick them up for sure.” 

I flip through the questions, trying to figure if my crush would A: Notice if I’d changed my hair and compliment it, B: Notice if I’d changed my hair and not say anything, or C: Not notice it at all. This is suppose to tell me if my crush likes me back, and I flip and desperately wish I actually have a crush to answer the questions. As my classmate’s faces click through my mind I try to pick one--not Trey, who I remembered being the slowest person in kickball from gym glass, not Ryan, who I had overheard his ex Samatha telling her friends that he’d tried to open-mouth kiss her on the first date, and absolutely not Caleb, who always smelled like egg-salad. 

Far away, in the faint sliver of darkness that comes through my pulled curtains, there’s a movement. So imperceptible that I’m not even sure it’s happened, and I almost count it up to being nothing more than my curtains moving from the faint wind that comes through the top of my windows that aren’t fully able to close. Then again, something flicks in the darkness, on the faint shadows of where my parent’s land is cut off by a row of trees before we hit the Afton’s field, is interrupted by movement. Knowing that anything would be more interesting than the inapplicable quiz, I toss the magazine to the side, hearing it crinkle as it hits the floor, and with a wince I make a mental note to apologize to Katie if any of the pages are wrinkled. The carpet below me muffles my steps, and my room is turning cold with the changing of the months, so I regret getting off of my warmed spot on the bed. But, I’m halfway there already, so I lean onto the ledge of my windowsill, and pull the polka-dotted curtains that my grandmother made for me years ago out of fabric scraps to the side. Air bubbles showing age pucker the glass, making it hard to see. 

As I press my eye as close as I can, I can still see the tipple of the movement in the trees far away, as someone pushes their way through the Afton’s field to ours. 

“Abso-fucking-lutley not!” Izzy says with a punctuated slam of her hand into the lunch table, appalled by the idea of a potential pop quiz after lunch. 

“Yeah, no way in hell,” I add on, and I hate hate the way that my voice automatically dips down to a whisper on the final word. I’m not suppose to swear, because my father says it's considered a sin. But I’d rather sin than be the last in my friend group to say “hell” without fear. I never say the lord’s name in vain though, because I figure that God will be more willin’ to turn a blind eye to the sinning if his name isn’t involved in it. Still, the word hushes itself as it leaves my lips, and I can see Izzy give me a side eye as I don’t match her energy. 

“I haven’t even fucking studied,” Izzy continues, and I resist the urge to tell her that none of us did, it’s a pop quiz. But I agree with her--the idea of a pop quiz is dreadful. I spent most of last night posed on the edge of my bed, leaning out to the window with the curtains fully pulled to either side, watching for movement. For five minutes from when I had first noticed it, there was something constantly crashing through the trees, brushing the undergrowth to the side before it fully appeared on the very edge of our property, a far off spot that meant something was there. There it stayed. I had moved to the bed because when I first spotted it, I felt like not being on my bed was unsafe. I hated that feeling. It was the same one of being eight years old, and convinced there was a monster in my closet, and that being underneath my covers would protect me from whatever imaginary claws it had. When I felt it, I pressed my bare toes into the cold carpet and crept back into bed, staring at the window as whatever was on the edge of the trees stared back at me. 

“I failed a pop quiz today,” I blurt out over the dinner table. The words had took up so much room inside of me for the entire length of dinner that I wasn’t able to take a  single bite of the cornbread my mother had made for fear I would explode. So I eventually took the trade, and I spit the words out as fast as I can before shoveling in a butter-soaked bite. It goes stale immediately as I see disappointment flood my parent’s eyes, and I attempt to swallow the cornbread chunk that has absorbed all the moisture in my mouth, and it goes down in a solid lump. My mother’s fork pauses from whether it was about to stab the last bite of green beans off her plate, poised like a dagger about to fall. Silence sits for a moment as I watch my parents lock eyes, each of them deciding what my punishment should be. 

“It’s not my fault!” I follow up, taking the beat of quiet I get to try to explain, knowing that those are the wrong words to say, but not sure what would be better, “There was something outside last night-” 

My father looks over at me, and my mouth shuts like a fish on a hook. 

“Go on to your room,” he says in the tone that I know means not to argue, because it's the same one he used whenever I was disrespectful as a child and got my bottom spanked. I swallow the last dried-up crumbs of cornbread as shame fills me, lapping at my insides and turning them soft and warm as if they’re melting. I start to pick up my mostly filled plate, but my mother shoots me a look before shaking her head. Go right on to your room, it means, and I leave it on the table. The smell of the slice of ham on it turns my stomach sour, and I know that even if I wanted to, if I took a bite of the glimmering edge coated with honey it would taste rotten. 

In my room, even with the door closed, I can still hear the murmurs of my parent’s “talk” building into a fight as they debate on what to do with me. Tears sit at the edges of my eyes, and I try to tune out the varying punishments they’re thinking of (Grounded for a week, extra chores this weekend, having to help Grandpa with cleaning out his garage tomorrow) as I crawl onto the floor to under the bed, which is more disorganized than my mother would like, and grab a stuffed bunny I tucked down there last year before I turned thirteen. Its eyes are two sewn on mismatched buttons that stick out above a pink nose, and it's right ear is fraying on the inner panel. The insides of me, already hot with shame, grow hotter, burning me internally, but I ignore that, pressing the baby-powder scented toy to my face and let its fur absorb the tears that finally fell over the lip of my eyelids. 

As I curl up underneath my covers and wait for my father, he’s always the one they decide to send, to come yell at me, I stare out the window through the curtains I never closed and watch far in the distance. Where the tree line separating properties is, I can see a faint glimmer of movement from underneath the setting sun.

I’m not sure what it is at first. All I can see is a rumbling figure pushing its way through the back to back trunks, weaving in and out of the undergrowth, and ignoring the branches as they spring back and smack it across the face. From a distance, I try to see if it’s a bear or a particularly stubborn deer, but start to make out how human it is. Two arms, two legs, something of a head pushes its way under the bleeding sun that has started to fall beneath the leaves, and as the red halo of light crests over the world, I can see the Afton’s new scarecrow push onto our field. 

My mouth goes dry with fear, and subconsciously, the stuffed bunny is crushed in my hand. My lips open and close themselves to scream, but no sound comes out. 

It stumbles across the edge of the trees onto the field, and the light turns its burlap body fiery orange. The straw stuffing makes it awkward and uneven, and it sags on the right side from where it was over-filled. Its face is a burlap sack, still tan instead of being bleached from the sun, and its mouth is a crossed line of string that’s been stitched into a permanent smile. 

I am cleaved in two: the part of me that sees the Afton’s scarecrow, and the part that doesn’t. The part that doesn’t says that these things don’t exist, they don’t happen, and that it isn’t real. That part of me is blinded with fear. The other part sees it--I see its shambling form picking its way over the field, trampling the shorn corn stalks. I see it's emotionless eyes finding me through my window. I see its legs picking up high so it's torso is thrown back in a loose march, flinging straw out of its tattered overalls. Blankly, somewhere in the back of my mind that isn’t blacking out, my lips finally manage to move, and in a cracked and very small voice, I start to sing what I used to when I was very young and had a nightmare. 

“...all day all night,” I whisper to myself, and I feel that tears that froze for a moment come back with twice as much fevor as the Afton’s scarecrow takes another massive step through the fields, headed toward my window, “Angels watchin’ over me, my Lord.” 

It takes another step, and its head lulls to the side slowly. 

“Well its all day all night,” I keep going, and it steps forward again, reaching halfway down the field, “Angels watchin’ over me, my Lord.” 

A scream tears through me as my door suddenly opens with a thunk that my father decides was too harsh. I see the apology in his eyes as he catches the door from where it bounces back toward him. There’s a beat of confusion as he looks at me, a furrow on top of his glasses, unsure if he should comfort me. Then his back straightens as he decides he was sent to be the bad cop for a reason. I glance toward the window and see an empty field. My father puffs a breath of air underneath his mustache, and it’s so strange to see how normal he is after my world has been shattered. 

“So kiddo,” he says in a voice that tells me he really doesn’t want to have this conversation, and would rather be in his office working, “what happened with the test?” 

How can he be asking me about tests? 

“I failed it,” I say dumbly, and in a moment of dissociation, I realize it is just me who has changed in the world, and everyone else will go about the rest of their days as they always have forever. My father’s eyebrows creep higher on his face, and I wonder if he sees the change in me. If he knows I am different forever. 

“Would you like to explain yourself?” he asks, and I can see the line he is giving me. So I take it and try to drag him with me. 

“I saw the Afton’s scarecrow come to life last night and I couldn’t sleep as I failed my test,” I blurt out, and the words float for a moment, fresh as clouds, and I want to grab onto them and travel all the way to heaven to demand answers from God. As I had known, and as I feared, I watch my father’s face fall, and I know he is running through the lectures he can give me on the sins of lying. “It’s outside if you wanna see, go look!” 

I know, of course. In the same way that you know you can never tell someone the exact dream you’ve had, and any chance you try to explain it it’ll make the dream drip through your cupped fingers like water, I know I can not make him understand the scarecrow. It wouldn’t be there. Even if it was, part of me doubted he could see it. With a sign, he steps around my bed up to my window, and around his disappointed form, I look through the window to see an empty field and feel an emptier heart. 

I wonder if it will appear once more, the second my father leaves, or if it will wait until I’ve gone to sleep to peer at me through my curtains. I wonder if it’s there at all, or if my mind is breaking like my grandmother’s I never got to meet. But that matters so much less than the lecture my father is giving me. He tells me I’m grounded for the next week. He tells me if I fail another test I’m grounded till Christmas (I don’t bother to correct him that it was a quiz). He tells me that he and my mother are both very disappointed in me, and that stings the most, just slightly less than the indignity of telling the truth and not being believed. 

When my father leaves, and my heart stings from the scolding, and my eyes sting from the tears I can’t stop from coming, I turn back to the window, glaring out at the field as if it made me fail that quiz. In a way, it did. I stare out into the darkness, trying to find the leaning, pointed tip of the scarecrow’s hat in the nooks and crannies of the darkness. But whether or not the scarecrow was here, it disappeared. But I don’t move. I stare out the window, and wait for it to come back. 

Finally, when the edges of my vision start to go white with exhaustion, I find myself too tired to care, and in a quick movement, I pull the bunny tight to my stiff body, and flip over on the bed, turning my back to the window. I wait for a terrible second. I imagine the shatter of the glass and the racking of claws I never saw across my back, even though I know that my sight wasn’t what was keeping it from appearing. I breathe once. Twice. No claws come. No class. No scratching of straw or the resp of burlap. The scarecrow has either disappeared completely or stayed hidden, and I sit up all night on my side. In the morning when the sun slips into my room, I see a faint shadow narrowing as something moves back into the field. 

“I’m grounded for a week,” I announce at the lunch table, and Katie is the only one whose head turns to me with the motions of a pout on her lips. 

“But we were going to hang out after school!” she whines, and I want to frown but can’t. The muscles on my face have atrophied in the hours lying on my side in bed, and fear has frozen on my features. Stiffly, forcing each movement, I make my shoulders move up and down in a shrug. “I had something to tell you.” 

I feel myself stare at her, and I’m so tired I do not know what expression I am supposed to make. Something inside of me has changed irreparable, and I am forever separate from Katie. When I don’t egg her on to continue, she does anyway. 

“Devin and I are going to the mall tonight!” she says, and the edges of her voice tilt up in a squeal of excitement. I try to picture Devin’s face, but am too tired to do so. Still, a part of my heart hurts at the distance that grows between me and Katie, and I see the rope between us tighten with tension as we are stretched in different directions. Katie peers at me with unperceptive eyes, and I see a flicker of hurt cross her face. “Isn't…that exciting?” 

Not as exciting as a scarecrow coming to life. “Yeah.” 

“So you’re gonna have to help me pick out my outfit and I’m deciding between these two skirts, and my mom’s gonna drop us off…” Katie’s rabble drowns out to a fair roar as she details every detail of how Devin has asked her the day before after she dropped her books (apparently he did pick them up) when she’s done, all I can do is lift my head from where it had fallen to the table. 

“I can’t help you pick your outfit, I’m grounded.” My voice sounds dull and flat, but I can’t figure out how to fix it. From my numbness, I feel a beat of my heart breaking, as the news of Katie not being just my own hits me. She stares at me, and the confusion and concern in her eyes changes to something more malicious. 

“What is wrong with you?” she asks me, and it has the bite that tells me she isn’t actually concerned for my well-being. 

“My neighbor’s scarecrow is coming to life and haunting me.” 

“Well,” she says, and scoots slightly further away from me on the lunch table, pointing her nose up in the air, “you don’t have tell me if you don’t want to.” 

I’m staring out the window and watching the scarecrow through the glass. Earlier, I had watched it push unsteadily through the brush. It's head had twisted unnaturally, and it's sewn eyes stared at me. I saw that there was a mistake on the left one that was making the thread slowly fray and come undone. Its forever smiling mouth gleamed at me as it pushed forward until its body was pressed against my window, and with its straw hand it tapped slowly against the glass. 

A scream squeezed through my throat and came out as a wheezy whimper. I was disappointed in myself. When discussion fire drills in school, or watching the news, I always had this idea that I would have full, fat lungs, and be able to scream fire if I was being abducted. I knew I had enough rage within me, and expected it to all come pouring out the moment I needed it. It didn’t. Instead the rage in me has pressed down, closing my throat and courage, and turned me into the one thing I never wanted to be--a teenage girl. 

Now, with hand that seem to move better than word, I reach forward, and my fingers tremble like leaves in the wind. 

“Well?” I ask it, pretending to be brave. “Are you going to do anything?” 

It doesn’t respond to me, obviously. It might not have been that oblivious, because it obviously wasn’t supposed to walk either. 

“You made me fail my quiz,” I tell it through the glass and it looks on silently, and rage bubbles inside of me, “I don’t suppose that you’re going to retake it for me. Oh and I’m grounded for a week. And Katie…” 

The scarecrow stares at me, and its head twitches ever so slightly. Then it disappears as my hands swipe the curtains to the middle once more, but it shadow continues to glare at me, relentless as a nightmare. I wait for a long moment, wanting the shadow to disappear and it never does. It waits for me to open up the blinds. I wonder if it can see me just as well with them closed. As both of us refuse to relent, hours pass. The stuffed bunny remains squeezed tightly in my hands, and tears pour and dry, pour and dry on my face over and over again. I don’t think I blink in that time, waiting for it to fade away. 

I sit through dinner with my parents where conversation is replaced by the scraping of forks on nearly empty plates. My parents occasionally make eye contact over the table, each one raising their eyebrows in turn to egg the other on. Neither did, always waiting on the other. Cowards, I think through the meal. I’m facing a monster. They can’t even give me a lecture. When I’ve spread all the mushy peas across my plate to make it look as though I’ve already taken a few bites, I stand up, and see my father’s head shoot up, ready to tell me to put my plate in the sink. I hold his gaze through his glasses, and my reflection looks much taller than him. So I turn around, leaving my plate, and march off to my room. 

The phone rings in the hall, making me jump a foot out of my bed, and as I let my soul settle into my skin, I glare out the covered window to the shadow of the already-appeared scarecrow as if it personally was making my phone ring. I’m not supposed to answer the phone right now, because I’m grounded, but the fact that there’s a living scarecrow at my window puts things slightly in perspective. With my shoes kicked off so I don’t creak the hardwood, I tip-toe out of my room, turning my back to the scarecrow. 

My father has disappeared to his study, and my mother is in the kitchen, so no one spies me as I lift the phone gently, pressing it to my ear. “Hello?” 

My voice comes out in a creak, fear stealing almost all of the volume from my throat. 

“You have to come over!” Katie peals into my ear. “I wanna go over the whole date with you! We went and got pretzels, then went to the arcade, and at the end of it-” 

“I’m grounded,” I repeat for the third time, and I know that even if I wasn’t I couldn’t bear to hear about Katie’s date. 

“Oh whatever, come over, sneak out!” Kaite convinces me, and I worry about the effect Devin is having on her. The idea sounds preposterous, and I can already hear my father’s lecture for when I would get caught, telling me that one of the ten commandments is to head one’s father and mother, and that by not obeying their rules I’m direction disobeying God (even if they’ve never technically told me not to sneak out). That technically it what I hinge on, and the idea of disobeying God sounds incredibly appealing right now. I breathe a sigh out into Katie’s side of the conversation, and I realize I desperately want to sneak out. I cannot spend another night staring at the scarecrow. Even if I’m about to head outside, where it is. Without a goodbye, I place the phone down onto the receiver, and without even putting my shoes on, I creep down the hallway past the living room, keeping my eyes trained on the kitchen where my mother is washing the dishes. Swish swish, clink, each one goes, and I can hear the wet pile of dishes building up without me to dry them. Slowly, but with no fear battering my throat, I slink into the living room. I know better things to be afraid of than my mother. 

She doesn’t spy me as I pass through the living room like a ghost, and pull open the front door while I wait with a breath for the clinking of dishes to stop. They don’t, so I pull it open a little more, and dart out into the night. 

It’s come down after the cusp of fall, and it’s too dark to walk out after dinner. I walk out anyway, and for a moment, I close my eyes and let the hum of the porch lamps turn the world to white noise. The air is crisp against my skin, and I can feel pebbles stabbing into my bare feet and hear insects singing in the distance. I know that when I open my eyes the scarecrow will be there. So I keep them closed, fighting against the fear inside of me to do so, trying to cling to the seconds of darkness I have. 

One. 

Two. 

Three. 

I peel them open, and I wasn't wrong. Next to the path that leads from the door is the scarecrow, four feet away. The first side of our property stretches far in front of me in a moon-lit field that turns the shorn corn to a watery illusion. The waiting scarecrow is the only dark spot. I take a step onto the path, and its head twists slightly to the side, watching me take the path down to the gravel road that leads to Katie’s. I hear swishing me, and I see the scarecrow marching behind like an escort. Every step of mine it matches, and I watch as its weight swings from side to side, somehow balanced enough on the straw so it doesn’t fall over. 

“What, are you coming too?” I fire at it, and it says nothing, just matches my increasingly speeding gait. When I reach the gravel road, I pray that the moon gives enough light to walk. The field is briefly cut off by a line of trees before it's the Afton’s field, and the scarecrow is right next to me again, both of us taking the way to Katie’s house. 

For a moment, it’s peaceful. Somehow the most peaceful it’s been. The air is cold, and every swallow makes it feel like water, and when I peer up the moon is clear and bright. The animals of the night creak and whistle and hoot around me, and up in the sky there are thousands upon thousands of stars. I think about Devin and Katie, and how three years ago, Katie and I wrapped our pinkies around each others and promised to never get a boyfriend. Too tired to have felt much when she first told me of the date, under the waking night I feel the sting of betrayal, and wonder why I still felt like boys have cooties when she did not. I feel the pressure of my parents, and the eyes of their God versus the eyes of mine. I thought that seeing the scarecrow was the break between me and the rest of the world, the fissure that I could never cross to be normal. But underneath the moon, I realize that I had been splitting off long ago, right when I was told it was a sin to be lustful, and me and Katie sat up that night, her giggling over the modeling pics in the magazine, and me not finding anything particularly interesting other than the way her hair smelled like strawberries. 

I didn’t want to go to Katie’s house tonight, I realize. I don’t want to go and listen to her giggle over the date with Devin and talk about how he gave her a kiss at the end of the night, and how she tasted like peppermint without knowing it myself. I don’t want to go home and look into my mother’s face as I open the front door and see the realization that I had disobeyed them. I pause on the road, feel the sting of gravel underneath my feet, and breathe in the sweet smell of corn before turning to the ever-present scarecrow. 

Slowly, as if it was afraid that if it moved too fast I would run away, it raises a burlap, straw-stuffed arm, and holds it out to me. When I touch it, it’s cold from the night, and the straw pricks my fingers. The scarecrow turns around, taking a step further into the field, and I hesitate on the road for a minute, behind the safety of the gravel. Then I follow, crushing the broken stalks beneath my feet, and disappear into the field. 

Holly Jones (she/her) is a student studying Creative Writing at Missouri State University. She is a volunteer editor for University magazines Moon City Review and Logos. She is currently an unpublished author and the host of The Not Natural Podcast.

‘Confessions of a Scammer’

Katie Pippel is a resident of the Pacific Northwest and is an English Language Arts teacher, writer, and dancer. She began embroidering at her mother's side in 1996. This meditative piece is a reflection on the adversities of life. The proliferating knots evoke her experience with chronic pain from endometriosis and the way traumas and victories blend together. We are inherently a composite of experiences and relationships knotted together, helplessly entangled in our interconnected lives.

Confessions of a Scammer

I came to Manila in 2016 by the urging of my mother, having just graduated from college a year before that and having spent a good part of that year being in a rut in our house just playing video games. My mother—I can understand her—felt like she had wasted all her money and effort in my education only for it to be as fruitless and hollow as a bad coconut, its tree only waiting to be rid of it because it has no use. My mother too wanted to be rid of me, if only in secret, because we didn’t really talk much even as we ate dinner, we just let this silence grow in on us, fueling the hate in her of me, and the anxiety in me of becoming like the person she had always expected of me to be, a person who does not amount to much, exacerbated as a response. 

And so, one evening, I found myself at the doorstep of my uncle in the slums of Manila, away from the province I grew up in, away from my mother. Their house stood beside a road where a lot of vehicles were parked—tricycles mainly where most families in the area’s source of income came from. They busied the side of the road so that a large vehicle such as a car could not freely move through the road without the smaller vehicles making space to some extent. Not to mention, there were always people on the side of the road, talking or selling something, and children flipping coins on the only concrete they could find. It was a close-knit neighborhood, everybody knew each other, but at the same time, they were also used to strangers passing through so that when I first stepped here, I had not attracted all eyes, or if I had, it was because of the number of bags I was holding (three)—I had brought all my clothes; my mother was not expecting me to go back any sooner, or I looked like a wet kitten, shivering from the anticipation that I was going to live in a shanty of some sort, sleeping on hard bed, all the comforts I had known left in the bygone era of the past.

But I was greeted with a warm welcome. My aunt, my mother’s sister-in-law, immediately dispatched for her pre-teen daughter to buy her cousin some snacks. A bottle of coke and some biscuits. And it was as warm a welcome that you could give to an unemployed nothing. (They did not know that of course. I looked like someone respectable in their eyes because I had graduated college. But at this point in my life, I had already anticipated everything. And I knew what I was going to turn out.)

The inside of their house looked as I had expected of an average-income household. There were bamboo chairs and a table. An off-brand flat-screen TV by the wall in their sala. And their sala too and the kitchen were not separate. — I don’t know how to describe it. Just imagine a cube and you have to cram the sala, kitchen, CR, and a bed in it, the bed being on the loft above us. 

They were renting the house, I noticed, not just because I imagined they weren’t happy with the small space and that they could’ve chosen differently had they got the money, but because the exterior of the house looked similar as the other ones beside it, as if they were owned by one man, a mogul, who was here before everybody else and built all these houses to rent them (and he built them all identically for convenience).

My aunt made me sit down at the sala and entertain myself with the TV while we waited for my uncle, who was going home from his IT job. She said he would be here any sooner and that he was stuck in traffic. She was also cooking “bulalo,” a type of soup with beef and vegetables in it. Her back was to me as she was cooking, a woman with a small frame. She was in her late-thirties—she and my uncle.

“Gosh, I didn’t know you would arrive this early,” she said, stirring the pot. “Your mother said you would arrive later in the night. Now you are a witness to our filth.” Then she ordered her daughter, Niña, to put her uniform and skirt, which presently lay on a chair, to the laundry basket upstairs.

I felt complicit somehow with Niña, as if I too were being ordered, and I imagined being ordered like that someday because I would be living here and was scared by the idea.

Niña picked her clothes and went upstairs, all while her head was glued to her phone.

“I thought so too, auntie,” I said, chuckling, “but the plane was very quick. It was my first time on a plane too.”

“Oh, really? Me, I haven’t been on a plane. … Was always too scared.”

That was all she said and I thought: we’re off to a good start, though I was still anxious that sooner or later my true nature would be unveiled—that I am lazy—and what my mother found tolerable she would find not only intolerable but disgusting, and no sooner would I be thrown out than die in the streets.

My uncle arrived several minutes later. He was happy to see me. He arrived by motorcycle—his motorcycle—and left it outside before he went in and set his helmet on the table.

“My nephew,” he said as we hugged each other, “you’ve grown. How about we have a drink later, huh?” 

I was smiling. “Of course.”

“Niña, get your cousin’s bags upstairs. He will be sleeping there.”

After dinner, we did drink. We had placed a table outside in front of the house and bought two big bottles of beer. 

At first, I thought there were just the two of us drinking, but then my uncle called a neighbor. This neighbor was about the same age as me, had more or less an attractive face than I had, and was taller than I’d care admit. Because he advantaged me in every respect that I cared most about myself, I found his thinness (he was so thin his neck looked like that of a camel’s) and poverty something that could offset the advantages, that way I could stop myself from showing my hostility towards him, and even regard him with fake-pity. 

We shook hands and introduced ourselves. He said his name was Harold; I said my name was James. After that, we seldom spoke to each other. 

My uncle took most of steering the wheel of our conversation, and drunkenly so. He said he was happy to see me, patting me on the shoulders, and then to Harold (re: me): “You know this motherfucker graduated top of their class.”

“Not top of our class, uncle. I was from the bottom rung.”

“I was only kidding, of course,” he said, laughing.

Harold only looked at me with a well-meaning look of his, not even understanding that he was supposed to be jealous or insecure, or to at least cower from the achievement that was to open a lot of doors for money to come in for me and my family.

It was a one-sided conversation, and only when my uncle had a bathroom break that Harold and I were forced to speak to each other, to break the silence that was encroaching upon us bit by bit. And of course, he was the first to pick at it:

“So, are you like, living here or something?”

“That’s about right.”

It was moments like that: he would ask me a question and I would answer it as meekly as possible, that much pervaded the first night I was there. And my uncle going to the CR every few minutes because of the onset of something in his prostate.

We soon called it a night as we all got drunk, and as much as I would like to continue for reasons I could not yet name, I also became stinking drunk at the point of passing out, and the lights, as me and my uncle went inside the house, hurt my eyes.   

My aunt had to be the one to get the folding table outside while also supporting her husband to not fall, and they were to just sleep at the sala using a cot while I take the bed upstairs. She even asked me if I could manage to walk the steps going upstairs. I said I could, though I wanted nothing more than to continue drinking outside just to see what could happen.

The next several days or so, I helped my aunt sell barbecues at her barbecue stand. It was a way of hers, with Niña being in school and my uncle at work, to pass the time or use it to her benefit. The stand stood just outside the house where people walking on the road might see it, and she said (even though she did not say this, this is just my speculation) that ever since I helped her sell, her sales had increased, as the “newcomer” who’s helping her at the stand is very approachable by women. I did notice that most of the people buying were girls, and often if not always, they were forcing a conversation with me, which I did not like not because I found them ugly, but because I just did not like girls in general. And so, after about a month of doing that, I stopped altogether and retreated to my room upstairs to play video games. 

There was another thing occupying my mind at this time: Harold. There, I confess it. I liked him, and every time he passed by my sight, going inside their house and out, I would not fail to sneak a glance. Their house stood beside my uncle’s and it was my dream to get inside it someday, if only to confirm that it was indeed built similarly as my uncle’s. (I’m lying of course—who wants to check out a house?) 

He's got a mother and a sister. His mother sold “pagpag” and various other goods from a small store jutting out of their house. It was here, sitting on the bench under its forecourt, sipping soda or playing video games, that I hoped he would speak to me about what I found so interesting with the game I was playing, and perhaps that would be the start of a friendship. But I soon gave up with the effort, owing to the fact that I seldom saw him near their house—he was driving my uncle’s tricycle, or renting it, out of mutual dependency that neighbors have with each other, and because my uncle was at work anyway, and this was his way of earning money. 

I soon got the feeling that I was competing for my uncle’s apprenticeship (esteem, reverence) against him, Harold, and I realized that even before the feeling came to me, I had already lost. They’d had years of being dependable with each other and I imagined my uncle treated Harold like his own son too. 

One day, he and my uncle worked on a wreck in my uncle’s motorcycle, and he helped hand him the tools while my uncle did the repairs. I was at the stand at the time so you can imagine the jealousy I was feeling of not being included in their little bonding (I wasn’t). I suppose I’d still be useless even if I was included, but they could’ve at least asked me to bring them water, some small thing that would make me feel like I was doing a man’s job, not at the stand where I was doing what my aunt was supposed to be doing while she watched TV inside. She seemed to be relying on me, on my submission to her and perhaps my own fear of being thrown out of the house and into the streets, to run her store. And so, bit by bit, I stopped helping her. That translated into a false belief among her and my uncle that I hated them, hated the own hand that fed me. But that was not so: I just felt stuck, I was unhappy, with only Harold to save me. 

Accordingly, I felt like a stranger in my own uncle’s house, so much so that I found comfort—too much comfort—in retreating inside my head and into my phone that I was slowly alienating the very family I was depending my own survival onto. And the shame, of still not having found a job after a month (because it’s the reason why I came there in the first place), was just too much to bear. I didn’t even know what to say to a recruiter if he asked me what my strengths and weaknesses are; I didn’t even know what papers were needed (I only bought my birth certificate and diploma). And so, one day, my worst fears finally came true. Lying in bed after waking up one morning, I overheard my aunt and uncle talk about what they were going to do with me, having been established among them already that I was lazy and hopeless. My uncle suggested I work at a car repair shop; he said he knew someone there.

“Cars?” my aunt said. “What does he know about cars? Would you look at him? He looks like a twig; he couldn’t even be bothered to pick up a wheel.”

“Well, what are we going to do with him? We can’t just send him back.”

That very morning too, out of a need to prove myself, I set out to get the papers. I went to an internet café to build a resume, then to a photography studio to get my picture taken. After that, I went to the police station to get a clearance. It was at that evening—I was going home from the internet café—that Harold’s sister, Jacqueline, made a move on me. She had been pestering me for weeks now, flirting with me at the stand, so that I stayed inside the house more. One thing led to another; we had sex, in a weed-ridden plot of land, shaded by banana trees. I didn’t like the sex on my part; it was forced and I did not find her attractive, but I figured it was the only way to get me close to him. — I was content to throw it away too, a person’s first sex and all its pleasure, for the possibility of a second even better, more delectable kind.

One day, Harold talked to us about where he could’ve found me a job. I figured my uncle probably conferred to him that he was fed up with me still not having found one. We had just finished replacing the front wheel of my uncle’s motorcycle and I helped them anchor it so it wouldn’t topple over while they retrofitted the wheel.

“Do you have your papers?” Harold asked.

“Yeah.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Why not?”

“Just dress yourself so we can go.”

I took a bath to remove the grease out of my hand and put on my uncle’s formal shirt—because I did not have one—and Harold and I went to the job site, which was a run-down, abandoned convenience store that did not look like there were people inside it. Harold told me to get inside and I would meet people there, and to tell them I needed a job. 

“Are you sure there’s people there?” I asked him.

“Pretty sure. And go at the back.”

With my envelope in one hand, I went at the back—because the glass front and the old entrance door were covered in newspapers anyway—and I soon found a door. There was cold air emanating out of it and when I peeked inside, there were indeed people there, hitting keyboards on rows and rows of computers and answering calls. When they looked up to see me, it looked like I had woken a horde of zombies. One woman in a formal attire went up to me and said hi. I said hi back.

“Please follow me.”

I followed her to a glass-enclosed room where we could see all the employees answering calls from their headphones. Then she made me sit down on the seat in front of her desk while she took up the seat behind it. She had a friendly face which I imagined could turn on you without you noticing it.

“What’s your name?”

“I’m James, ma’am. James Balagtas.”

“Is that your credentials?” she asked, noticing the envelope in my hand.

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“Let me see.”

After she had a look at my credentials, she said: “Wow. Impressive.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” was all I could say.

She gave me a long hard look. “Well then, you’re hired,” she said, smiling.

I could hardly conceal my joy; I shook her hand repeatedly.

“You know how to speak English, right?”

“Yes ma’am.”

That night, we celebrated by drinking ourselves to excess. Both of the families also knew of my going to marry Jacqueline in the future and it was also a cause to celebrate. I recounted them my feat that was the world’s fastest hiring of an employee ever and they enjoyed every second of it.

“You know I didn’t even have to go through all that ‘what’s your strengths and weaknesses’ kind of questions,” I told them. “She just hired me on the spot.”

“Wait, what job is it again?” asked my uncle.

“Call center.”

“Wow, baby,” said Jacky.

“I thought at first she was going to make me eat her pussy because of how fast she hired me…”

“I’m glad you did not, baby.”

That night too, I got to eat dinner with the three of them—Harold, Jacqueline, and their mother. I was a part of their family now; I was Jacqueline’s husband. And even much later that evening, I was on the cot beside the three of them, trying to sleep, a wide grin on my face.

For the next month or so, I worked night shift at my job answering calls from foreigners. The callers were mostly old people—elderly—and I was instructed to “fool” them into giving me the money they had in their gift cards. One caller, Bessie, from America, called to ask how to repair her “Microsoft.” I tell her: give me your security number; she obeys. One of us even swindled 500 dollars from a man named “Frank” in Chicago, but our boss says we do not work by commission. 

I dress up at 9, 9:30, because work begins at 10, then Harold drives me there in my uncle’s tricycle and I work until 6 in the morning, after which, he drives me home again. Jacqueline goes with us in these excursions, and I wished she wouldn’t do that as often so he and I could have a chance to talk. She would always say how proud she was of me and would kiss me goodbye before I went to work. It was tiring; my mother had suddenly contacted me to ask for money and my aunt was trying to get close to me only at the last second to beg for a loan. I could not refuse her, lest she would turn it on me the time that I was living with them, eating with them, and call me ungrateful. I had without realizing gotten myself in a position in which there was no possibility of getting out in sight.

One night, noticing me tired, Harold offered me a cigarette—or at least that’s what it looked like at first until when I held it in my hand and realized it was marijuana. I hit it and that jolted me awake. I soon made the connection: 

“Oh, that’s how you found me the job! You sell marijuana to these people!”

“Yep.”

We sat there at the curb outside the office for a long time not saying anything; I’d asked for a bathroom break but had instead gone there and Harold seemed to not want to go home and go to sleep. It was an exhilarating feeling: the marijuana and just being with him. And I did not want it to end. 

Eventually, I asked him (I had to): “What other attractions does this city have? I’m tired of going to the same place.”

“I know one.” 

“Will you show me?” I said, hoping to god he would say yes.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Sure.”

We left work as it was hopeless anyway and it wasn’t worth the effort of doing it for so small a salary. We drove using my uncle’s motorcycle to this hill overlooking the city and it was amazing. There was a bay next to the city and it was my first time, ever since I left the province, seeing a body of water that was not a puddle or a ditch. 

From the hilltop, the city sprawled before us like something from a movie. There was the cold night air, fresh, but not biting in its coldness. We sat on the grass, passing a joint, and left the motorcycle just behind us, parked in a level piece of land so it wouldn’t slide down the slope. 

“Wow, this is amazing,” I said. “Do you come here often?”

“Not so much lately but if I wanna hit a joint, then yes.”

“Alone? At night?”

“No. I can’t borrow your uncle’s motorcycle whenever it suits me, can I?”

“That makes sense. … Well, how’d you find this place?”

“I didn’t. This place is pretty well-known. So many people camp here; they have sex there. You see that small area there? The one with the bush? That’s where they do it.”

“Ah…” 

We sat in silence; I passed him the joint. He rubbed his arms, clearly cold. I offered him my jacket. “No thanks.” We sat in silence for more.

 I wondered if he was thinking what I was thinking, that both of us were not what we were pretending to be and that we were both longing for each other’s arms. And besides, if the question were to be asked, the question of whether he liked me or not, there was my handsomeness to answer for, and it’s not like people had an apparent reason not to like me, not even him. As we sat there, my heart was pounding.

Finally, I broke it; I broke the silence: I did not care if, once he knew who I was, who I really was, he was going to make it known with everybody. I’d just change places.

“You know I’m gay, right,” I said, “and that I like you?”

A smile crossed his face. “I didn’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. You just don’t look like it.”

“Fair enough. How about you?”

Without looking at me, he nodded; took a puff, then exhaled. It was all I needed to hear—or see—from him; my heart burst with joy. I kissed him, and no sooner were we sprawling on the ground than were tearing off each other’s clothes. 

“I love you,” I said, feeling his skin at last.

“I love you too,” came his answer.

We had spent the night on a different spot away from where we had first planted the seeds of our love. Once we woke up, I teased him: 

“I knew you were gay once I met you. How could a handsome guy like you not have a girl?”

“Please don’t say that word.”

“Which word?”

“You know which. Don’t let me hear you say that word again.”

“Okay.”

The sun was coming up from the horizon; we brushed the dirt off our clothes. Then we got on our motorcycle. But as soon as Harold kick started it, it wouldn’t start. Then he tried kicking it again, to no avail. “Ah, shit.” 

It was already close to noon when we got home. We had left the motorcycle to a repair shop and just walked home. My uncle too just commuted to work, seeing as his motorcycle was in disrepair again.

In the days following since, we tried to keep our affair between ourselves. We would only meet after work, at the top of the hill, then relieve each other of our desires. It did not occur to us to despair on our situation, having only a sliver of a time between work and home to ourselves. If it dawned on us that we were stuck having to do that forever, with no freedom in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel, the pleasure we had shared with each other and would share for more days to come gave us the strength to continue walking in the dark, and we deemed ourselves victorious. We had created a world on top of the hill, one in which all our troubles could never catch ahold us. 

But, as was the fashion of most love stories of that era, our relationship was not smooth-sailing. There was Jacqueline to mind for, for one. We were still together. And when, after dinner, all of us were gathered in the sala watching TV, she would hint, by a poke to the side of my belly, that she wanted to have sex upstairs while her brother and mother were immersing themselves. Of course, on our climbing upstairs, Harold would catch notice of this, but all I could do was swallow my spit and let it get over with. Harold understood this; if he was jealous, he never spoke of it.

There were instances when it seemed there were only the two of us in a room, and before I could hold his hand or pretend to hump him, Jacqueline or his mother would barge in and we would pretend to be doing something other than show affection. Those were the moments that gave us such a fright.  

One day, having lunch at an eatery, Jacqueline and I talked about Harold. We had just a stroll around the city, and I bought her a new pair of sandals.

“Why don’t you like my brother?” she asked.

“Who says I don’t like your brother?” I said.

“You. I mean I could tell it by your actions.”

“What do you mean you could tell it by my actions?”

“Well, for one, I haven’t seen you talk to each other. You don’t talk to each other. It’s like you secretly hate each other.”

“I don’t hate him,” I said. “I really don’t. And besides, we talk. Yes, we do. You just haven’t seen it.”

“Promise you don’t hate him?”

“I promise,” I said, holding her hand.

She smiled; went on eating.

Later that night, before work, Harold and I talked about it. 

“Jacky says we secretly hate each other,” I told him.

“What do you mean?”

“That because she hasn’t seen us talk to each other, that means we secretly hate each other.”

“Well, what did you say?”

“That we don’t. Still she does not believe it.”

“What do you propose we do?”

“You have to talk to me. You have to talk to me first.”

“Why I gotta talk to you first?”

“Because it’s natural. Because you’re older than me.”

“I’m not older than you.”

“Yes, you are.”

“When were you born?”

“December 1997. You?”

“January. … Fair enough. … Well, what are we going to talk about?”

“About work or something. Ask me about work.”

“About work? What am I, your father?”

“Well, what do you propose we talk about? Basketball?”

“Even better.”

“Well, I don’t watch basketball. How about we just talk about this game I’m playing on my phone?”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“You have to play it first. You have to install it on your phone.”

“Okay.”

At dinner the next day, we talked about the game we were always playing on our phones. We talked about which heroes were stronger than which heroes, or I told him I played better than him. We kept it subtle; we never made a show. And even afterwards, outside the house, we played an actual match and even enjoyed it.

We had kept our relationship low-profile for a while and successfully so. It was also during this time that the city was implementing crackdowns on drug abuse among its citizens. I told Harold to stop peddling the thing and gain some weight. He said he had, but you couldn’t trust the motherfucker especially when you barely saw him during the day.

I was now many months in the city and I had come to share its cynicism. I constantly had dark circles under my eyes and my aunt no longer tried to borrow money from me, sorry as she was that whatever ounce of innocence had I brought with me when I first arrived here, it was already gone. I had also come to learn how the gears inside her were turning as she faked a smile all those times that she was borrowing money from me.

I was only myself when I was with him, on top of that hill, and it was our little refuge from all the hustle and bustle and turning of the world around us. I loved every inch of his skin, and it was my dream that we leave the city behind and start a new life somewhere, near the sea or deep in the woods, just me and him, indulging every second in the fruit of our love.

I tried to communicate to him my idea; he met it with apathy:

“What do you mean we leave? Where do we go? Do we even have the money?”

I confess he was more realistic than me at these daytime reveries and so I trusted his judgement. We put it on the back burner for a while and just continued to live as properly as we could. Still, there was, in the back of my mind, a nagging suspicion that he only refused because he did not fully perceive the extent of my struggle; that he did not have to work at night and sleep by day; that he did not have to pretend to love a girl just to prove he’s not of a certain sexuality.

It became even more difficult when we found out that Jacqueline was a few weeks pregnant. She had started retching and avoided certain foods which had a strong smell. 

I explained to Harold that we had always used protection, and at times we could not, I would always pull out.

“Then why did she get pregnant?” he asked. “How do you explain it?”

As absurd as the question might be, there was only one explanation, and I tried to remember when I could have failed to pull it out. It did not matter now. The deed had been done; a baby was coming. It gave us such a headache, and our solution was to lay off for a while in fucking each other, fearing that we might reveal ourselves at so bad a time. 

As for the baby, I kept nagging Jacqueline to abort it, but she was against it. And I suspected her mother had something to do with her decision, as she always kept saying at the dinner table:

“Why do you want to abort the baby? It’s a blessing that you two must raise each other.”

I liked her; she had been nothing to me but kind. She had always agreed of me marrying Jacqueline. But in her own old-fashioned way she could be dumb and dangerous. 

I worked neatly and with dispassion at my job, only looking forward to the day I get paid and have a tub of ice cream to myself. Then soon, if the pain I was feeling still wasn’t enough, Harold started seeing someone, a girl, jealous as he was that I was having a baby and in need to compensate for his own lack of masculinity. His girl was a pretty girl too; I got to eat with her at dinner one time, when Harold introduced her to us. Somehow also, they had the regard of my uncle: whenever Harold wanted to take the girl to places, my uncle did not once hesitate to lend him his motorcycle. Contrast that with his disdain at me, sneering at me whenever he met my eyes, for having made a girl pregnant at so young an age. 

I did not have to imagine where Harold was taking the girl. I hated him, okay. And I wished the motorcycle they were riding skidded off the road and they both die. I did not mean that of course, and anyway, that wish sort of came true:

It was just a normal day for all of us. It was a Sunday. I was outside at the time, sitting in front my mother-in-law’s store under the forecourt, playing a video game. My aunt was at her stand, grilling barbecues, talking to people. Jacqueline was inside, watching TV and resting. Her mother too was with her, in case she felt sick and nauseous and needed to go to the CR. I didn’t know where my uncle was at the time, but I did know that Niña was inside, using her phone as always. 

At the road in front our house just a few feet away from me was Harold, sitting on the driver’s seat of my uncle’s tricycle, waiting for passengers. 

It was a mildly hot day. The sky all morning was sunny, then it was overcast by noon. It was afternoon now, but it was still overcast. We had just had a big lunch. Pig’s blood stew, sun-dried fish, and rice. We were all groggy, tired, and sweating. 

A crowd had formed in front of my aunt’s barbecue stand, a group of middle-aged women. They were probably talking about us, me and Jacky, being the newest pregnancy in town. There was also a group of teenage boys at the store on the opposite side of the road, playing the same hit video game I was playing on my phone. It was a busy neighborhood, the people were busy with buzz, busy with rumors; the road was busy with people walking and tricycles passing. There was the constant noise of vehicle engine, murmur of people, TV show audiences clapping and cheering, and from afar, someone singing at a karaoke. It was a normal day for us all; nobody could have expected a tragedy to happen, no word such as “tragedy” in our minds.

I kept looking up my phone to see if I could meet Harold’s eyes, because then at least I’d know that whatever had gone on between us, it wasn’t all for naught, that he remembered, if not wittingly then instinctively, everything that happened; as if I had left him something, a taste on the lips, a handkerchief, that he needed to return, that he would want to return, and ultimately, to be in my arms again. 

But he wasn’t looking. He wasn’t looking. Not even a glimpse, a side-glance, a peep, a quick-look. 

I muttered a “fuck you too” to myself; thought: If you don’t want my dick, then I hope you can stand it, before returning to my phone. Until, without warning, I just heard a gunshot. It rang inside my ears then was gone. And who should I see when I looked up: Harold! He was clutching his neck as if he was being choked. And blood was coming out of his hands. 

The first, second, seventh cries reverberated from people. Some were running away, some stood on their places, ducking. 

It was the two people on a motorcycle wearing ski masks, one driving and one holding the gun, who shot him. We saw them rev up their motorcycle, speed away, and disappear at the distance. 

Harold got off the tricycle and staggered towards me. His eyes were bulging, pooling as they were with blood; the muscles of his face were twitching. He had a look of horror on his face, as if it was his end and he knew it. He was about to fall when I caught him, but he was heavy so I laid him on the ground with me, placing his head on my thighs. 

I might have shouted to call an ambulance; I must have cried. I must have frozen in shock. Then Jacqueline and his mother got out and on seeing Harold, screamed the most piercing cry I have ever heard in my life. 

They kept calling his name, tried waking him up. They kept telling everybody to call an ambulance. But it soon proved to be futile. He was losing—had lost—so much blood. The ambulance arrived several minutes later, at which point Harold was already gone, dead.

The next day, there was set up, in front of our house, a canopy to accommodate people who would want to view Harold’s body or to gamble. Many people came to visit us and some of them held a vigil in front of the casket. There were talks among them as to who could have killed Harold, or that they said his death was inevitable, if not deserved, because he had been peddling drugs. His mother—and I had come to call her my mother also—emptied all her life savings and I went penniless too. She was crying for many days that there was nothing we could do to console her. 

We buried Harold on the 12th of July, nine days after his death, on a cemetery outside town. And when we got home and all the people had left, there was a kind of painful silence about the house. My uncle was the one who drove me to work that night and he had also come to learn that my job was not legitimate, but I didn’t care. I was also thinking of leaving, of getting away.

I didn’t care about Jacqueline; I didn’t care about the baby. The only person I cared about was dead, gone, never to be seen again. I had no reason to be there, to be in that city, to live.

It’s funny: before I met him, I’d kind of given up on living but also didn’t want to die. I was just a piece of garbage floating in the river, just letting life take me by its current. If a bus had rammed me while crossing the road, I would have been ready to end it all there, I would have said to the person trying to get me into an ambulance: “No, I’m fine. I’m okay. Just leave me alone,” as my blood rushes to the pavement. And now that I found myself in the exact same position, I kind of surprisingly wanted to live. I wanted to get away, maybe love someone like him again.

Instead of going to work that night, I walked the highway towards the hill. I had packed a few clothes on my bag and was ready to take the midnight bus. But first, I wanted to see the hill.

The night was cold as big trucks carrying canned sardines passed by me. I had a few bills on my pocket, and would just ask some money from my mother the second I’d reach my destination, preferably a town I knew nothing about with people who did not know me. 

I walked for about twenty-five minutes before I reached the foot of the hill, at which there were no houses but a big acacia tree near the entrance of it. 

I had not trekked it before; Harold and I always drove uphill using a motorcycle. So a minute on at the slope, I was heaving for breath. 

Halfway through, I realized how dumb it was what I was doing trying to climb it I almost cried. I did cry, but not for that reason. 

Thankfully, the moon was bright enough to lit up my path.

When I was close to the summit, I noticed a motorcycle being parked on the spot where Harold had always parked ours. I thought I was hallucinating for a second and imagined Harold was waiting for me at the top. 

He wasn’t there. Instead, a girl and a boy less than a few years my age looked up from their kissing and was a bit surprised to see me come out from the shadows. 

I muttered a sorry and walked back down the slope again. 

I spent the night at a bus terminal, slept on the seat trying to wait for the bus. It did not come. I had missed it. 

When I woke up it was already 3 a.m. and I asked the officer there if there was another bus coming. He said there wasn’t. Then I walked back home again.

When I reached the house, it was already five; the sun hadn’t come up yet. My mother, though, was up and at the kitchen trying to get this big sack of leftover meat and bones into a large pot. 

“You’re home already?” she asked when she saw me.

“Uh, yeah, our boss made us go home early,” I lied. 

I noticed she gave up in trying to pour the bones all at once and just grabbed what she could by her hands and putting them in piecemeal. “You need help with that?” I asked her.

“No, no,” she refused, “you might stain your jacket.”

“I’m okay with that.”

I grabbed the sack which was not so heavy and poured the bones in while she held the handle of the pot to steady it. 

“You’re a good kid,” she said. “You’re going to become a great father.”

“Thanks,” was all I could say.

Derek Go

‘The Ears of Spring’, ‘On the Village Green’, ‘A Tangible Sum That Doesn’t Add Up’ & ‘It Used to be so Easy, Back in School–’

Breanna Martins

The Ears of Spring

Around the Ides of March 

a flock of swooping

fleet-wing-sheen’d 

Violet-

green 

swallows

roller-coaster-in

glimmering

aerialists 

from Guatemala

ever-far away

returning to the eaves

above the back/front door

of our Hodeo

facing the brow-mind 

of the wilds 

of White’s 

Hill 

now & then they will alight 

& cock their heads 

& listen––

with the poise of one 

wholly

present

Buddha’s

Ear

buddies 

I call them

half in 

jest.

On the Village Green

Apple tree leaves are tongued-under with spring down. 

Not yet blotched with aphid mould or cobbled by moths.

On the town diamond, the pitcher winds up and cranks 

the grass-stained ball––thwack! into the catcher’s mitt. Full 

count! In the stands, sweaty-T Joe pumps two meaty fists,

(his kid’s in the game). How can Joe know that each pitch is a wind-up 

for the consumptions of  full, fat, endless summer? 

In the Big Leagues, boardrooms of the Fortune 5—, 

there aren’t any seasons, just business quarters. 

The field isn’t game with townies, it’s global. 

Between Big Leagues and the bush leagues, 

there’s no contest––Junk Bonds eat corndogs alive, 

Scorched Earth torches burgers, Shark Repellents 

bite beer. The Big Board keeps score. Maybe we should 

grandstand-it. Picnic in the bleachers above the deficit-

littered field. But heck … show me a VIP who wouldn’t risk 

a crypto’s bit of hit for leaving his rot in the Big/ly Apple. 

Come fiscal/fire or legal/flood or bank/ruptcy,

they’ll jet-out on golden parachute & scoop up a mega-yacht…

On that day, baseball’s more ballsy fans will spit tobacco and jeer.

A Tangible Sum That Doesn’t Add Up

Over coffee at Malvina’s, Joshua and I 

deliberated on whether petty death or daft 

allegiance to blobfish-faced kleptocrats

were all they were cracked-up to be; 

and whether hoary power player dicta 

like seeking ‘just and moral retribution’ 

could be more than green screen window dressing 

behind which craggy-cheek magnates 

settled accounts. (No way did we resolve it), 

but when I saw him next, all hell had broken 

loose; from husky blocks of Klamath granite 

he’d been sculpting bold, fetching monoliths, 

obelisks and gravid funerary monuments, 

in a raw, no-holds-barred, neo-Palladian 

style. They made me quite queasy, to be honest. 

On packed fairgrounds at CAL EXPO, Josh said, 

The orders, like fools, rushed in. Money talks–– 

nobody walks. Success could be due to his moral 

critique on (yet sensual indulgence of) the zero-sum. 

Death is good for business, I thought––always will be 

when you know how. The pom-pom’d Walmart

casket with Dear Deceased, primped and proper;

epitaph in purple prose laser’d into marble, 

copycat Clydesdales to bear the coffin.

For the ilk of Undertakers––these temporary sums, 

these quiet, buried profits, are bulwarks 

against fear, scarcity, against the mute cries 

and stasis of death, the indifference

of an eternity without premium pick-ups, 

buxom babes, gold vaults––or, maybe, 

without even God! But the bad/good news is––

they’ll be none the wiser for the lack of Bud. 

Betelgeuse! Oh Betelgeuse!

Tonight––star light, star bright, 

said Hank––up there’s Betelgeuse!––

(falling star) I see tonight, 

on Orion’s eastern, blue, wise ‘shoulder’ 

of the fair hunter … 

        and should I say this––

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”––

then we who play 

faire 

will be seen by villagers of Mormon Bar

as standing on the shoulders of giants, 

against men with cudgels 

who promise us kernels 

of the -isms of capital––

  which works now as it always has–– 

(By Beetlejuice’d rules:

“These aren’t my rules. Come to think of it, I don’t have any rules!”) 

To the mad, shrill voices of M.A.G.A., we say:

Muck-thistle, muck-thistle, muck-thistle!––you

M/aniacal A/ntagonists––G/ulag’s A/nus.

We swat-away your thought-gremlins, troll-speak 

and gizz of toxic-bubbling Weasel-mousse.

It Used to be so Easy, Back in School––

Just rock it:  “I wanna be your back door man!”

But there is no back door in the labyrinth–– 

in the feral maze of life choices, there is 

only one entrance, the way we came in … 

and now … I could be lost between 

the center, where the Minotaur hunkers, 

he who is my forbidden self, he

whom I fear to find yet irresistibly seek–– 

and the outside, beyond the labyrinth, 

where the world is evidential, existential, 

where the world is a chaos of quasi-

sentient surfaces that don’t reflect me, 

and chicanery gaming to devalue me

just to enrich the gotchas ever more…

There must be an allée trouvé, a path 

of doing well by doing good, a way 

of trailing by the thread of my breath 

through the labyrinth of noesis, 

slipping the noose of strictures, shaking-off 

the taint of grappling hands that once slapped, 

belted and hair-brushed me, my wounded 

child. There must be a way of speaking 

I can find to trick, by acts of ventriloquism, 

that voice that issues from my face, that voice 

that reasons away childhood’s end.

William Binzen's expressive medium of choice is words. The elements in this poetic process include: narrative invention, emergent theme, intentional structure and sound crafting. He tries to make every line a meaningful moment and one that corresponds to how both individual words and whole lines unfold across a page. His poetry and photography were featured in the anthology, Beside the Sleeping Maiden, and are forthcoming in the winter issue of the Banyan Review.