 
By The Bi [#2]

I Feel Pretty Writer's Collective

Published by Gibson Culbreth and Wyl Villacres

Copyright 2012 I Feel Pretty Writer's Collective

(All Rights Reserved, Individual Authors Retain Ownership)
Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents

FICTION

1. Ocean Graveyard\- Virginia Baker

2. Magic Eight Ball\- Liz Baudler

3. Carnival\- Sayla Blackwood

4. Atrophy\- Shelbie Janocha

5. Lucy and Eleanor\- Ben Kramer

6. Doggy Style\- Amber Ponomar

NON-FICTION

7. How to Write a Research Paper in Less Than 24 Hours\- Brittany Selters

8. Getting Arrested\- Lisa Mrock

9. Casino\- Wyl Villacres

NOVEL EXCERPT:

10. Breathe\- Gibson Culbreth

11. Kaplan Waking Up\- Jazy Jes

Ocean Graveyard

By Virginia Baker

Charlie's boat was a worn down dinghy that he bought from an old fisherman his father knew. It used to be Charlie's pride and joy. He would spend hours onboard, sanding the floor, painting the sides, refitting the old ropes that were holding up the sails. But the boat was beginning to lose the magic it once held. What was once Charlie's escape from reality was now his cage.

The sun was shining as he adjusted the sails and checked the motor before beginning his day. Even at midmorning, the unavoidable promise of a hot afternoon was clear. Only a few other men were out on the dock, some returning from their early morning fishing trips, unloading their catches, showing off to the other men, some getting ready to leave.

He heard the sound of the rattling of wheels as they rolled over the wooden boards of the dock and he looked over his shoulder to spy the two delivery men, Frank and Buster, both of them big, stocky men who were overdressed on this warm day, making their way to where his boat sat at the end of the dock. They were pushing a big, refrigerator sized cooler with _Arnold's Bait Shop_ printed on the side in orange letters. Charlie picked his bucket hat up from the floor of the boat and pulled it over his long, oily hair that he hadn't washed in weeks. He gave his scruffy beard a scratch before climbing out of the boat to meet the men.

"Hey there, Charlie," Buster greeted him as they stopped in front of the boat. He wiped the sweat that was beginning to bead on his forehead. "How ya doing on this beautiful morning?"

"Can't complain. How are you boys doing?" Charlie stood in the boat, looking up at the men on the dock, studying the cooler, trying to determine what kind of day lay within it today.

"Not too shabby." Buster bobbed his head up and down. Frank was looking out beyond the both of them, out into the sea that glimmered in the morning sunlight. "We got a pretty big shipment for you today."

"Well, I better get a big pay for it." Charlie tried to sound hard, but he just sounded tired instead.

"Don't you worry, old man. We'll have your money ready for you when you drop the cooler off at the truck tonight." Charlie didn't like the way they called him "old man." It wasn't even apparent to him whether he was that much older than these two boys.

They began the process of loading the cooler onto the boat. Fastening ropes around the cooler, they began to lift it, using the pulley system installed on the boat. The vessel leaned dangerously to one side as the cooler was suspended into the air and transferred into the boat. It took a few minutes for the boat to stop rocking and settle into the water.

"Alright, Charlie. We'll see you at the usual spot." And with that, the two men left Charlie standing on his boat, the cooler sitting before him, an ugly sore he could never rid himself of.

Things weren't always this way. A few years ago, he was a real fisherman. He had a crew of two young men and he would float atop the water all day, bringing home loads of fish as the sun set. But now he spent long days by himself and he only caught fish when a desire would overcome him. He didn't need the money anymore and he didn't want to spend more time out on that ocean than he needed to.

He was in his mid-forties and had a wife, Josephine, the girl he had for most of his life. Together they had a daughter, Angeline, who was seven now, just beginning to accustom herself to the weight of the world. Her sweet smile and the way she would jump into his arms at the end of the day, screaming "Daddy!" as he walked in the door was the only thing that Charlie looked forward to these days.

His heart had grown heavy. The soft fluttering he once felt in his chest had become lead that pulled at his insides. The world was playing a terrible trick on him, turning him into something he once hated. He stopped caring about Charlie. He let his hair grow long, trickling past his chin. Sometimes he pulled it back, but more often than not it was wild, blowing around violently in the ocean wind. His scraggly beard that grew on his jaw line covered most of his mouth. Josephine hated the salty smell that clung to his facial hair and she would offer to wash him. "I'll be gentle," she would offer, but Charlie shrugged her off. He figured he should be as filthy as he felt inside.

He never wanted to get into this kind of business. Charlie was a completely harmless guy and no one would have figured he'd be mixed up in anything unholy. Which is why he was sought out to partake in this ugly deed. No one would expect it. And he couldn't turn down the price tag that came along with the job. "Besides, they're not really people. Not anymore," he tried to convince himself, day after day, as he opened up the color, tied the weights to the once-living flesh and dropped the empty bodies into the sea, into the ocean graveyard, void of tombstones and epigraphs.

The sea was choppier than usual, the sour waves squealing as they splashed up against the rickety boat. It took longer than normal to reach his spot, right above the Pacific trench that cut through the ocean floor. Charlie could sense when his boat was above the gash in the earth. A musky shiver ran through his bones once he reached the unmarked cemetery, where nameless bodies were forgotten. But he still leaned over the side of the boat to see the deep blue shadow of the abyss snaking beneath him.

He cut the engine and walked over to where the weights rested beside the cooler. The ropes were already tied to them. All he had to do was knot them around the legs and drop the bodies into the water so they could sink down to the bottom, down where all the other bodies sprouted from the ocean floor like balloons. How many bodies were resting there so far? How many half-decaying corpses were hidden beneath the waves, being eating by the fish that swam around them? Lifting the top off of the cooler he moved aside the layer of dead fish that acted as decoys. _Wish those suckers would change these fish every once in a while. Like dead bodies don't smell bad enough already._

As he reached into the cooler to pull out the first victim, his blood sputtered from his heart, igniting in his veins. It had been years, at least twenty, since he had last seen Samuel, but as Charlie studied the body before him, he was certain he was staring into the open eyes of his older brother, his dead older brother. "Oh Sammy, what did you get yourself into this time?"

Magic Eight Ball

By Liz Baudler

I'm a UPS delivery man and it's true, you need four of us to deliver a package, even if it's not a piano. Except today there's just me. You might expect that I go to some pretty interesting places. What no one expects is that all the time I wonder, maybe I'll find out where I'm supposed to go, not that I don't have directions or know the street names. In a way I don't, I'm only trying to get to the place everyone's said I could go to all along. That's one of the reasons I took this job: variety, variety, like that blind guy yells down at the fruit stand. Personally, I want to know how he knows it's an assortment and not all bananas.

The next package and the next address are a real peach. It's huge and it's bound for Reta's Psychic Ron-day-Voo. Whoo-hoo. On the third floor of a brownstone, I can tell from the numbers. Shoo-whee.

You probably would think this if you were a UPS man, what's in all the goddamn packages? Not only what makes them so heavy, but what's important to the person who sent it and why they sent in the first place. I read in the papers about some clairvoyant guy who solves crimes by holding on to someone's old clothes or something. It's a good thing he doesn't work for a shipping company. The label rarely tells you anything on the package, so if you're really interested you have to guess. It keeps you from getting bored and noticing how much the 50th box weighs compared to the first one. When I give it to the person and they sign off on it I always want to ask them to tell me what they got, if they know, sometimes they don't. Sometimes I want to ask them if they know what they really got. Sometimes I've wanted to screw up the routes for a day just to see what someone would say if they ordered silver spoons and got maroon socks.

Damn people who live all alone at the top of city brownstones and still get heavy packages! I kick the bottom of the door. Sounds like knocking to me.

The door flies open with a jingle-jangle-jingle and I nearly fall in with the package in front of me like I'm bowing to her or something. It's a lady who might be ugly, but it could just be the ugly jewelry and the ugly makeup and Christ—she's still got curlers in her hair and it's ten in the morning.

"I predicted that," she tells me, but she sounds happy. "I predicted that you were going to come when I was doing my hair. Of course, I started doing it five minutes ago and the delivery was supposed to be for 10 o 'clock, and it does seems like every time I start doing my hair someone comes to the door or calls me or drops in through the roof, so really, it wasn't that difficult to predict and you shouldn't be too impressed. But come in, come in, kind bearer of packages and have a fresh tea bag with me."

I like burnt coffee better, but after carrying this box up three flights of narrow steps and kicking her door until I almost fell over, I'll take raw sewage.

"You need sugar, right? It does taste like sewage, I agree, bad brand. They hawk it to penniless psychics like yours truly, but I really don't know why they try. My custom mood ring turned a vile shade of pea-soup-green, and that needs no interpretation."

I snort the tea out all over her purple, pink, and green tablecloth, and stand up in disgusted shock to whack a bunch of dead weeds tied to the ceiling with my head.

"Sit down, sit down, I had a napkin ready for your reaction to my little disclaimer. Speaking of disclaimer, it doesn't take much power of prediction to know you'll be late for your next delivery."

"Oh yes, ma'am." I say, throwing the napkin over the tea puddle, "that's right, I gotta go, thanks so much for the tea, it wasn't bad...now if you'll just sign here."

"Ah, but something tells me you're going to be unavoidably detained." she says with a leer.

"And how's that?" I ask, picturing the truck outside idling in a no-parking zone and wondering if she's attempting to seduce me. You'd be surprised at how lonely some ladies get and how good-looking we UPS men are.

"Don't worry, you won't get a ticket. The meter cop's a friend of mine. I did his horoscope last week. I fudged it; he's going to win at bowling tonight and his romantic dinner with his girlfriend tomorrow will go swimmingly. I can park my old bug in front of the garage door now."

"What the hell?" I say and sit down. The stool with the spangled shawl dangled over it splits in half and I end up sitting on the floor.

"This is nice and cozy." She coos, but then straightens up. "Tut tut, a few less donuts, no doubt would have preserved my furniture."

"That's the cops with their donuts." I snarl, forgetting to apologize.

"You have a rare psychic aura that surrounds you." She sticks a match in the mouth of a carved wooden frog.

"I'll be happy to reimburse you any dama-A wha?" I say, totally freaked out by the last sentence and by looking around at all the weird stuff in her joint.

"It is not mere chance that you showed up at my door." She says creepily, and then frowns. "At least, I don't think it is.

"Hey, now." I go, really confused. "Just because I'm some UPS delivery man who shows up at your door doesn't mean I'm stupid."

"Oh, no one who's stupid would wonder what's in the boxes he carries around all day."

OK, maybe this crackpot was psychic after all.

"Magic 8 balls." she says, giving the box a shake.

I started laughing. I couldn't help myself. Whatta kook.

"So all these people..."

"The six." she says.

"The who-what?"

"The six clients I've had in the past 6 six months. One a month. It works out nicely, don't you think? So manageable."

"You shake a magic 8 eight ball in front of them and that's it?"

"Well, it's a special system." she says, drawing back a curtain. There were 51 mouse traps, about half of them set with a magic 8 ball in the spring, arranged in circles on the floor.

OK, I've been some crazy places, back alleys, bars with one bottle of booze, tin shacks and trading card shops, but this time I thought I would I would back out all the way down the stairs and back to the truck, ticket or no ticket, cop's horoscope or no cop's horoscope.

"I spring the mouse traps, which shakes the balls, and they roll out all over the place, pretty intense at times. Then I figure out the actual prediction based on the fractional coefficient of the probability factorial, a ratio of good predictions to bad."

I blinked.

"It's calculus." she said with a smile.

"Calculus?"

"Hey, I'm a math teacher. This is just part-time, a little stress release, a little probability experiment to do in my spare time. Some women sew, I do this. My name's not Reta, it's Cindy. I have an M.A in Mathematical Education and theory. I bet math was your favorite subject in school, right?"

"Oh." I said, because there was nothing else I could say and I had already blinked.

"The more equations, the merrier."

"Ah."

"Life's one great gigantic equation, probability where everyone's numbers are different, there's so many ways to solve it, you might never solve, or worst comes to worst you get the wrong answer. But," she ripped open the box and poured the whole thing out onto the red and blue flowered carpet.

"Good, seems to be 25. I had to get this order because I didn't have enough. 51's my old class rank. I love the mystery and total insignificance of that number. I used to think of it as football jerseys. And you know, it could have easily been 42. 42, the meaning of life?"

"Is it now," I said uneasily.

The balls spread all over the trap-covered floor, looking like little black mice waiting to be caught.

They rolled only to the unset traps. I couldn't believe it. It had to be a trick.

One ball didn't roll with the other ones, but like it was on a mission of its own, it rolled toward us. She instinctively jumped out of the way like it was a set bomb.

"I have to let them find their own directions." she told me.

I didn't move. That one ball kept rolling, rolling towards me, its little black head pointed my way. It hit the steel-toed boots I wear to work every day with a little click. It stopped. I still didn't move.

Neither did she for a little bit. She had her eyes closed. Then she opened them and said, "Wow."

"Yeah, I know." I said, still not moving. " Do you want your ball back?"

"It has chosen you." She said.

"Um...it has?"

"Pick it up."

So I did. I realized its smoothness, and how little it was. I rolled it beneath my fingers. It came to rest on "You lucky dog."

"I am?" I said.

"Use it well. She seemed to snap out of the fog she'd been in, and with the ugly harlequin specs I could tell she was a math teacher. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a pile of geometry tests to grade and you probably have missed 5 deliveries if you don't have a ticket by now. And now I need to get another magic 8 ball before I can do this again." she sighed.

"How do I use it?" I asked

"It all depends on whether you believe in destiny or free will." She said, grabbing the tests and a red pen and throwing them on the rug.

I decided to push my luck. "Okay, do you want to meet for dinner tonight after I'm done with my shift?"

"Nice try, Free Willy. Not gonna happen." She said, shoving me towards the door. "Now look at you, I have to make do with only 50, out!"

"Maybe you'll get another shipment." I said.

She wagged a finger at me. "I expect great things from you, you hear?" Definitely a math teacher.

"But—" I don't know whether I was going to say she could have her damn stinkin' ball back for all I cared since I didn't know what do with it or that I knew Free Willy was a whale, but she slammed the door.

Now I'm sitting in my truck, and maybe I am lucky and I have that psychic hour thingy because I didn't get a parking ticket. Maybe the guy did win at bowling, who knows how. I shake the eight ball again and it says, "you're on a roll." And it's right. Somehow or other the emergency brake got released and off I go down the street. Good thing I can steer with one hand. I swear to God I can see a third floor curtain go up on a brownstone right before I hit the old Volkswagen that's not supposed to be parked in front of the delivery garage door. Have you ever heard the expression, "You are driving the bus?" Maybe I ain't. Maybe I ain't driving this freakin' bus no more.

I sure hope that cop had a sweet horoscope.

Carnival

By Sayla Blackwood

At first, I couldn't tell whether Sammy was a man or a woman. The first time I saw her I noticed that she had this cropped black hair that hung low over the center of her forehead and these wet, violet eyes that were at once both startling and soft. She was wearing this shapeless clothing that made her look like a big, wooly lump and had a foam hammer slung over her right shoulder, which she handed every so often to the people lined up in front of her carnival game stand. It was more than pretty.

The State Fair only came around once a year and though it was only a couple of blocks away from my house, this was my first time going. Before this, I'd always thought of state fairs as these dust specked places where brown and white spotted cows moaned and whined from their pens and balloon-like people paraded around, stuffing their faces with greasy elephant ears, sipping plastic cups full of watered down beer. But I was wrong.

My parents had coaxed me into going after my high school counselor insisted that I didn't get out enough. My parents and I found herself in her office one afternoon, after receiving my latest report card, and when she mouthed the words "extracurricular activities," her lips bunching up like a bundle of berries beneath her nose, they were sold. Soon enough, they were stuffing me, their seventeen year old daughter, into a horrible red, polka-dotted dress and dropping me at the gates of the state fair with false smiles and words that sounded less than encouraging.

As soon as I was there I felt uncomfortable. The twilight heat of August was making my thighs stick together so that the skin between them felt rubbery and thick and my hair was frizzing out like it always did, flouncing up around my face in one squirreling mass of auburn fuzz. The dress was stretched too tightly against my waist and I gasped for air as if there was nothing clean to breathe though the hot, heavy scent of buttered popcorn was already flooding through my nostrils, making my stomach lurch and growl with hunger.

I walked in and as soon as I saw the snow cone stand I knew I had to buy one. I could already feel those blue, shaved slivers of ice sliding down my throat as I looked longingly toward the small, white cart where a beefy man was shoveling out tufts of the stuff by the dozens. I marched to the cart, ignoring the throngs of people that bustled noisily around me, and motioned to the blue syrup.

"That'll be five dollars," the man grunted and stuck out an oven mitt palm.

"Five dollars? You've gotta be joking."

"Does it look like I'm joking?" The man's caterpillar mustache quivered a little over his upper lip and my arm hairs stood on end. I plopped the money into his extended hand and turned away, snow cone in hand, already hating the stupid state fair and everything it stood for. To this day I'm not even sure how they can charge you five dollars for a chunk of ice with some syrup spilled over it, but I figure it doesn't matter anyway since everyone's drunk and doesn't really care where their money goes. The blue juice spilled over the sides of the paper cone and a few drops dribbled onto the front of my dress, turning the white polka dots blue in the process.

"Well, there goes the Barbie doll façade," I murmured while spreading a pink, fleshy hand over the juice. I could feel the blue goo rub off into my palm and I opened and closed my fingers a few times, feeling the sticky juice against my skin.

I looked at my watch and began calculating the minutes until my parents would be back to pick me up. Two hours left. Not bad.

I started moving again, ignoring the blue stain on the front of my dress, and crunched the snow cone sap between my teeth while I looked around at the various fairgoers. They were mostly families, the kids all dressed up in t-shirts with animals on them and the parents cradling neon bright stuffed toys and paper plates full of pretzels and French fries in their arms. The rest of the people were middle and high schoolers – kids my age who didn't even know me because I pretended not to notice them in the hallways at school, choosing instead to hunch my shoulders and dart around the building as if I were invisible. Their faces were smeared with lemon colored flakes of light from the fair rides and their cheekbones were brushed with the rosy air of summer. I was suddenly aware of how silly I must have looked compared to them – a frizzball teenager wearing an outfit plastered with dried snow cone juice standing in front of a group of girls who already had the perfect, willowy limbs of models and hair that shone like starlight and flashed and moved whenever they did. It felt like the world's worst joke.

I was just about to turn away and wait for my parents back at the gate of the fair when I saw her. Sammy was standing next to one of those hit-this-platform-with-a-hammer-and-if-you-hit-the-bell-you'll-win-a-prize type of games and she looked completely uninterested in her surroundings. Whenever she'd hand the hammer to a new person, her violet eyes would stare unblinkingly at them, transfixed on some point near their forehead or hairline. She moved around in all these fluid movements, almost like she was constantly dancing or swimming around inside her game stand. I was standing almost a hundred feet away, but even from that distance I could see there was something graceful and languid in the way her arms swung the hammer on and off her shoulder. Intrigued, I moved closer, ambling forward on clumsy feet until I could feel her hot, cotton candy breath on my cheeks.

"Can I play?" I murmured, instinctively rounding my shoulders to try and hide myself. I wasn't even sure why I'd gone over there in the first place except for the fact that I was lonely and bored and there was nothing else to do. Yet here I was, standing next to a carnival worker, suddenly embarrassed about the state of my dress and the fact that I had come alone to the fair.

She didn't say anything at first, just removed the hammer from her shoulder and held it out in front of me. When I grabbed it, the foam handle collapsed limply in my upturned palms.

"Go for it," she fanned a hand towards the metal platform.

I paused and turned to her. Her hair looked like a sleek mass of black wax and it was cascading over her left eyebrow. Beautiful. "I'm Charlie, by the way." Stupid. A boy name for a girl trying to finagle her way through the cruel world of high school. Sometimes I wondered if my parents really were idiots or if they were just that clueless.

She grinned and I noticed that two of her teeth had fallen out, leaving purple gaping holes in their place. "Name's Sammy," she answered.

I frantically tried to smooth my puffs of hair into place by sliding my hands through the thick, unmanageable curls.

"You gonna hit the damn thing or just sit there primping yourself?" she asked, still smiling. Her voice was smooth and elongated but with a rougher edge to it, a sort of gritty undertone that you noticed only if you paid close attention to the slurs between her vowels and consonants.

Embarrassed, I tucked my chin forward and raised the hammer upwards. My bony arms snapped and cracked as I reached the foamy hammer high over my auburn afro. My arm muscles tensed and readied themselves to bring the hammer singing onto the silver platform when Sammy's voice came at me from the left.

"Can't you do anything right?"

I stopped moving, my hands still raised overhead, refusing to look upwards or to the sides. I could feel a swift gust of wind lift the curls from the back of my neck and my dress swayed against my knobby knees. Then, she was behind me.

She pulled a pair of rough hands from the confines of her wooly overcoat and pushed my elbows together so that they were parallel with one another. "Like this," she murmured.

Her callused hands steadied themselves against my bones and I felt the foam hammer wobbling warily over my head. "Is this good?" I asked and my voice shrunk to a whisper. The crowd around us seemed to have quieted down and I could hear only a baby squealing somewhere far away and the impatient grunt of an old man waiting in line to play the game. He was tapping his foot and the click, click, click of his shoes matched the pulse beating in my neck.

"Perfect," she smiled and I swung the hammer forward until it smacked sharply against the platform. The bell at the top dinged loudly and the sound squished around us in a blow of tinny sounding air.

"You won," Sammy observed, cocking her hip to one side and pushing her black hair back from her eyes with a sweep of her right hand.

"I won," I repeated and I stepped nearer to her. I could smell her candy breath and musky, wool coat as I leaned forward, the two of us breathing heavily with our noses only inches apart.

Atrophy

By Shelbie Janocha

Every time I looked at her, my insides would coil in on themselves, wrenching and twisting into a pain that would make my brain swell and eyes water. My tongue would become thick and dry, bile threatening to push past my tight-lipped grimace. I would swallow repeatedly; my throat aching for any relief. My knuckles would whiten as they gripped my skin; forcing half-moon indents into the delicate flesh of my arm.

She was always oblivious to this. To the way my body reacted each and every time. She never looked at me, or even in my direction, her gaze never lifted from the floor. Every Thursday evening from six to seven, we would sit and stare, never making eye contact.

I can't tell you what color her eyes are, or what shape, not even what her voice sounded like, what her vocabulary was. I don't know her hopes and dreams, her fears and nightmares; I probably wouldn't even be able to tell you her name if it wasn't written in large block letters on this manila folder.

What I could tell you is that she's barely out of her teens, she's from a well-off middle class family. I could tell you that her mother is distant and her father more than likely absent. I could tell you that her blond hair was lank and lifeless, her pale skin-which had the potential to be rich and creamy-is tinged with yellow. I could tell you how the yellow skin clings to her emaciated figure, how the skeletal appendages poked at a bony thigh. I could tell you how she managed to pull a millimeter of flesh from the femur and her mouth-the only part of her face I could see-twisted in frustration.

I sat there, trying to calm the discomfort my body was constantly in around this young girl. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, the movement oddly comforting. I placed her folder, my notebook and pen on my lap and forced my legs to stop moving.

At least one attempt, I thought. At least one time, there needed to be an outreach from me to her.

I cleared my still dry throat, trying to get her attention. She continued to poke at what she saw as an obese skin fold.

"How are you feeling today?" Even, I could sense the lack of care in the words.

She gave no response.

"Ah. Well, that sounds lovely." I knew it was rude. I knew that it wasn't the way I should have started this session, but after weeks of silence, I was allowing my disgust to run my tongue.

Her hands had stopped prodding her thighs for the first time since she had sat down. She was hunched over; tiny hands tight on bony knees. Something dropped from the hood of hair and trickled down her minuscule calf. It was clear.

And, it hit me.

The tiny, clear wet trickle, was a tear.

A tear signified crying, which signified sadness, and sadness was emotion!

This was the first time she had ever showed anything besides impassiveness.

It filled me with joy, but then regret.

How dare I find happiness in her private suffering? I have no idea what this girl has been through. What the tear could possibly signify. I couldn't possibly put myself in her shoes. I don't know what struck me as more sad; that she had shed a tear, or that she had only shed one?

At that moment, I did something I had never done before. I allowed myself to become invested in this girl. In the girl who had taken two months to shed one tear.

That tear held so much.

I set my belongings on the floor, lowered myself and paused. What was I doing? I shook it off. This was beyond my choice. She needed this. On hands and knees, I crawled to her. Upon arrival, I kneeled, resting one of my healthy hands over her spare ones. She didn't react.

We sat there for what could have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes; time had no meaning at this point.

"Why do you do this?" My whisper was thunderous in the quiet air.

I don't know what I was expecting. An answer? A confession? A lie? I wasn't expecting what happened, but that's what made it all the more miraculous.

She exhaled; a heavy sound filled with more mourning then that of a mother who has lost a child.

My heart tore; no little girl should ever make a sound filled with that much pain.

I felt her fingers squirm under my own. My eyes roamed to her bent head and I squeezed, reassuring her through my touch. Another sigh flushed the hair hanging in the way.

In what seemed to be a Herculean effort, her face slowly rose until her eyes were boring into mine. I was too stunned to breathe.

Her cheeks were gaunt, the bones jutting out sharp and smooth, the skin stretching, dangerously close to breaking open. Broken blood vessels left the delicate under-eye skin dark and bruised, making her eyes sink deeper than they actually did.

They say that the eyes are the window to the soul, if that is true, then this is a soul desperate and hungry for forgiveness, for approval, for acceptance. Her eyelashes were thick with tears, threatening to spill over and drown both of us.

Her orbs wouldn't let mine go. I was mesmerized by the visible pain in her face and I now understood why she never looked at me before. She knew, and I knew, that the moment we made contact, I would see everything that she had been desperately hiding from everyone else.

As the second tear slipped from her eyelashes, I saw in her pain my own. I saw all the comments that I had ever endured, the looks and body language that made me doubt myself. In the third and fourth tear, I saw how weak I had been my entire life. In the unruly sobs that racked her cadaverous frame, I saw how jaded I had become to the pain of others. How I used to be so compassionate, the one that would heal anyone's sufferings with the kindness of a listening ear and tender words. How for the past few years, I had found it difficult to feign an interest in the stories of these broken people.

In her distress, I found who I once was and who I wanted to be again.

She sobbed like that for the rest of the hour and then some. I was fine with it. I sat there and held her hand, caressing it at times that seemed appropriate. When the sun had set and her tears had dried, she stood up and surveyed me.

In that moment, she was the most beautiful creature I had ever beheld. She didn't smile, or say thank you, but she didn't need too. I had been in this long enough to know that her weeping in front of me was the most intimate experience she could have shared with anyone and that was enough for me.

She turned and walked out of the office without a look over her shoulder or a falter in her step.

I found myself admiring her.

I could tell you that I sat on the floor until the sun rose the next day. I could tell you that I whispered thank you as she left because she had done more for me than I had for her.

I could tell you what color her eyes are, how the tears illuminated the green flecked hazel. I could tell you that the agonizing breakdown made the bumps of her spine protrude, a faint promise to cause harm. I could tell you how long we sat there, staring into each other's eyes with salt water streaming. I could tell you that she didn't come for the rest of her hospital mandated sessions.

I could tell you that I wonder everyday about her; wondering if she ever did start eating again. I could tell you that this was the only time I ever truly felt like I had helped someone.

I would like to tell you all these things, but if I did, that would break doctor-patient confidentiality.

Lucy and Eleanor

By Ben Kramer

When Lucy graduated she didn't immediately go to college. She opted to work for a year and get enough cash for community college. She was no longer on speaking terms with her Father who wanted nothing to do with her. The consequences of being procreated through the seed of another man damaged any sort of bond between the two and with her Mother being dead for so many years the bond had come down to a transparent thread.

She moved out the day after graduation. She decided not to walk and didn't want to meet with her principal to get her diploma. It didn't seem worth her while.

Her Father had left for vacation and had no idea that Lucy was leaving so soon but could only hope that she'd lock the door behind her when she left. She did and through the generosity of her friend Eleanor she now had a new place to stay.

Eleanor had been her friend since she was seventeen, the first girl she met who did not ridicule her for her weight but accept her as a friend. She was a Goth girl and being such she introduced Lucy to her new wardrobe of black and black and the fantaboulous whines of Robert Smith and Morrissey (Though in all fairness I couldn't consider Morrissey Goth, just miserable).

She was taller than a corn stalk and tossed back more frequently than a shot glass. Her breasts non-existent along with her ass, which was nothing more than a slight lump of flesh that rippled in the wind when exposed. While not the prettiest girl around Eleanor was by far the most open, willing to give any man a chance in the bedroom to prove his worth. Rarely did she ever come out with a boyfriend in these encounters, or even numbers, and when she did most phone calls ended at her voicemail.

She knew a bunch of people, older people, mostly freaks and vagabonds in their late twenties, some of them as old as their forties, and she was always given a phone call every weekend to come and party with these eerie Peter Pan's, who at some point unofficially declared, "I don wanna grow up."

Lucy had started the summer of her eighteenth year unpacking shirts and panties out of her backpack at an apartment that bordered the north of the city. It was a cheap buy, which was really meant for only one person to live in. It was a studio, with Eleanor's room and a small T.V room that had only a couch, T.V, and windows. The kitchen connected the two rooms and ran alongside the small hallway with a sink crowded with greasy, buttered up pots and pans with bread crumbs intermingled with old dust particles that were branded in the plastic counter tops long ago.

Lucy's room, the guest room, was actually the furnace room, though this one was in a unique place. It was seven feet above the ground, from Eleanor's bed, and the only way in was going by ladder. Once up the ladder you would tug open a little door only three feet in height and have to launch yourself up to get inside. It was cramped and by far the dustiest room in the whole place. It wasn't meant to be a living space so Eleanor had to keep Lucy a secret from the landlord. The furnace and water heater made noise every night, something Lucy would have to get used to. The constant banging had Lucy believe a man was trapped inside there, knocking around, his way of calling for help. This man was in her dreams the first couple of nights with some dreams having him be peaceful and on his way out after he'd escape. Other dreams had him angry at Lucy, shouting, "Didn't you hear my God damn banging you whore! I been in there for threeeee fucking years now and you ignore me? I'll kill you, you fucking cunt," and then he'd reach for Lucy's throat and she'd awake trembling in sweat.

They lived in a crack part of the neighborhood, an almost ghost town with bordered up brick buildings, the graves of failed business's that used to live before the recession. Blue police box cameras on top of every telephone pole, flashing a neon blue light to let you know that the police were watching. Every step being recorded and not just by law enforcement but also by the weirdo's who wandered through the night without a place to go. Bus stops used as restrooms with city maps torn up with fecal matter and heroin induced vomit soaked in the pages. Glistening beneath street lights broken glass of Miller light bottles are beached up on the urine enriched sidewalks, the cracks and crevasses agricultural breeding canals of septic parasites and microscopic vermin.

Eleanor made it clear to Lucy that they should not walk alone at night, unless they wanted to be pestered by crack heads scratching their balls and begging her for a few bucks for "gas". If she had her choice she'd live elsewhere, on her own, but this was the best Lucy could do at the moment. Her Father left her with no money, no trust fund, no nothing to build or spring off of. To support herself she got a job not far from the apartment, a 24/7 Burger King where tips were allowed, though not by corporate but by management that turned a blind eye.

For months she worked six days a week, taking in eight-hour shifts, and on some occasions working twelve hour shifts. She was making money, enough to pay Eleanor rent and to save up for college and some place of her own, but the work was tiring. Her depression remained constant, but her overeating was on a decline. After eating nothing but Burger King for a month she decided she could do better, but with money low for both Eleanor and Lucy they kept to making pasta and eggs.

Loneliness became a regular companion to Lucy. She had Eleanor, but she only saw her sometimes through out the week. Either she was off at work or Eleanor was at a party with her friends. Occasionally she'd come home with one of them and keep Lucy up at night with her moaning and groaning, and all out vocal unloading. Some nights had Lucy opening the door and coming down the ladder, in her Burger King uniform, while Eleanor was in the middle of being fucked by another man. The first few encounters were awful awkward, with Eleanor and her man stopping and waiting for Lucy to leave while she would turn red and cover her eyes with her hand and say, "Sorry," as she'd speed walk to the door. After a while these nights became so frequent that when Lucy would come down Eleanor wouldn't even pay notice to it and when her man would ask her, "Should we stop," she'd say, "Oh don't mind her, she's only going to work."

Lucy envied Eleanor in that she could constantly be with a man, though she didn't care for the way Eleanor went about it. She wanted one man, a boyfriend, who would love her everyday and tell her he loved her everyday and that nothing shined brighter than her, not the sun, not a spotlight, not even the blinding light after the drop of an atomic bomb. But she knew that wasn't for her, or that no one wanted her. Her weight had dropped down from 223 to 198 due to the poorer conditions she lived in now but she still held onto that fat girl mentality that mass is morose and that fat girls are only practice girls, if they're even lucky enough to find someone who'd risk losing the respect of their friends by fucking a whale.

The summer ended and soon came the fall, Halloween passed and then her first Thanksgiving away from home. Thanksgivings were an ok time with her Father, as happy as they could get. His girlfriend would prepare a decent Thanksgiving meal, with a turkey that had been already chopped and prepared for earlier at the local grocery store. Stuffing that was only half done with some croutons still uncooked and crunchy, and mashed potatoes that were always cold because she'd make them first and wouldn't bother to throw them in the microwave to heat them up. The best part of the meal was the pumpkin pie, mainly because it was from Baker Square.

Her Father would take a small amount of interest in her life, asking how school was and how her friends were. She'd normally answer in the yes or no format and then the family would commence eating, the slooping and slopping of potatoes being spun around on forks with turkey slices to make a pilgrim shish kebab. Water being slurped down, gulps seen with Mr. Marr's Adams apple bouncing up like it was giving an uppercut to the water. And they would continue to eat, speechless, and when the meal was down Lucy would go to her room and listen to Siouxsie and the Banshees or the Cure or whatever band she was into at the time.

This Thanksgiving was to be different than the rest though. For once she had a day off from work, and not just a day but also two in a row, and finally had a chance to sleep. She finished her final day for the week and returned to the apartment where she planned on not even falling asleep in her bed but on the couch in the living room. When she opened the door she saw Eleanor on the phone, her hand on her hip, looking at some photo they clipped from the newspaper of Newt Gingrich making a funny face he did not mean to make. Lucy knew she was on the phone with one of her older friends, probably some guy, and probably going to meet up with them at a party and she prayed that if Eleanor got fucked tonight that it wouldn't be here.

She ducked down past Eleanor who she gave a quick wave to without looking and then headed towards the couch. She flopped face first onto the it and closed her eyes, ready to be immobile for the next seventeen hours, motionless lovingly trapped in a state of REM where she'd dream and dream of being free from monotonous constraints and living somewhere further south where crack heads and toothless bums didn't ask her for quarters in the name of Jesus, gumming curses when she'd pass them. She heard Eleanor wrapping up conversation on the phone, her saying, "Yeah I'll definitely be there tonight. Yeah, for sure. Hey do you think I could bring a friend...great, cool, I'll see you then." She hung up and Lucy heard it all, including if she could bring a friend, which was sweet, but she really didn't want to get up and waste her money on the Miller Highlife.

The floor cracked and the squeak of Eleanor's socks squeegeed there way to Lucy's ears. She knew Eleanor was coming to ask her if she wanted to go to the party or whatever and she already had her answer planned out for her.

No.

Eleanor creaked her way and stopped just a foot short from Lucy. Lucy imagined her with both hands on her hips, eying her up and down until she'd get caught at the sight of her fat that was loose and peeping out of her uniform. She didn't care either because in sleep you don't have to look respectable. A crack bended near her and a high tea kettle voice nearly had her flinch but in her exhaustion she remained still and listening.

"Hey, so I talked to Marc, he's throwing a Thanksgiving party. You should come! Marc said I could bring a friend."

Breathing in couch cushion Lucy was annoyed that she'd have to flip her face just to answer Eleanor. The cushion rubbed against her cheek, which gave her a light burn and reddened it too. Her eyes still closed she mumbled out an answer, but it didn't get to Eleanor because her voice was too meek to be heard, so again she spoke, raising a grunt that said, "No."

"Oh come on Lucy! You don't do anything! Why don't you do something fun for once?"

"immitredd."

"What?"

Chewing on her words (she didn't want to make the effort in creating coherent sentences) she managed to do the work of getting up by opening her eyes and swinging her legs around, nearly swiping Eleanor's calves, so she could sit up and actually talk to her. It was the best form of action to get rid of Eleanor so she could doze off into oblivion and not have to hear customized orders of, "Can I get a Whopper with no lettuce, but triple the onions, patty done medium rare, and two dabbles of salt on the side of the bun."

Eleanor was just as she pictured her, hands on her dainty, baby hips, with that open mouth expression on her face, the one where her eyes were half looking at you and half looking at the ceiling with her eyebrows arched like a shrieking black cat. Lucy frowned as Eleanor smiled, her eyes wrinkly and stretched, breaking the stamp of the crow's foot beneath them, which Lucy thought was so strange for a young woman to have.

While talking nice before Eleanor dropped her charm as she said, "Come on don't be such a bitch. It'll be lots of fun."

"Eleanor, I appreciate it but I'm tired. I really just want to get some sleep."

She lifted her uniform shirt off, to get some of the heat, and smell off of her, and threw it at the feet of Eleanor, with it missing and scurrying across the floor to the kitchen.

In the few months they had been living together not once had Eleanor gone out with Lucy. They both worked so it couldn't always be done, but Lucy worked far more hours a week then she did. And Eleanor thought it silly that she broke her back over burgers just to save up for community college. She was making money, had a nice place to live, and had even lost some weight. Why bother working all of the time just to invest in some college that won't do her shit? But that wasn't the matter at hand. She observed a freckle on Lucy's left boob that was bigger than most she'd seen, this one the size of a pinhead, and continued on with her badgering and said, "You can sleep everyday Lucy! Just come to this party with me, please! There'll be a ton of guys there and I'm sure you'll meet someone nice."

Fat chance. Lucy had never met a man in her life, at least one that wasn't appalled and disgusted by her enormous figure. And besides...how was anyone to like her, let alone fuck her? Really, she thought of herself as a scaly, old elephant, and even that wasn't low enough because at least elephants had ivory to show off. All she had was an appetite.

The only man she saw going after her would be some living dead loser with a syringe hanging out of his arm with a dried, crusty blood trail running down to his hand ridden with polyps. He'd probably ask her if he could, "Tinsel her tonsils," to which she'd reply, "NO," which would be followed by a smack against his scruffy, junkie cheek. The prospects of the party seemed bleak, miserable at best.

"I'm tired El, I really don't feel like going."

Eleanor felt a vibration in her pocket and assumed it was a text from her friend Rex who was fifteen years older than her, making him 33. She slid her boney fingertips down her pocket to retrieve her phone and as she did she kept up her persistence with Lucy.

"Come on. It's only a half-mile away from here. If you don't like it then you can take a quick bus ride home."

How reassuring, a midnight bus ride filled with schizophrenic bums and creeps knee deep in their ear buds who'd nod their heads and give her the stink eye as she'd take a seat. The lights would flicker and a sinus symphony of hacking phlegm would move her stomach to tears. And best of all Eleanor would probably abandon her minutes in for be some pseudo-pedophile who secretly wished she'd be fifteen instead of eighteen but whatever, he'd take it cause pussy is pussy.

"So...are you coming?"

If she went she knew she'd only be there for an hour and then dash back home. If it was bad she could do the exact same thing, even leave sooner. As un-fun as things could potentially be, going there and back, she decided it couldn't hurt. Plus she was pretty much up now.

"Fine, I'll go with you."

"Yay," Eleanor said with half raised celebration in her voice. Her eyes were crossed on her phone, nearly finished with her text, and with only a few characters left she gave Lucy a suggestion.

"You should change and take a shower. That uniform makes you smell like re-heated french-fries."

She finished her texting and slid her phone back into her pocket with those boney fingers. She looked down at Lucy and smiled a smile so big you could cover it front to end with a banana, which Lucy thought was funny cause Eleanor was no stranger to putting bananas to her lips, front to end. Little slut, but she loved her because she was her friend and got up from the couch to go and wash the whopper out of her hair.

Doggy Style

By Amber Ponomar

I got nothing against dogs, just grody little half-terrier mutt things. When Chin-Chin (in his stolen revolutionary war coat) and me got to my house, it was all Sparky, my sister's idiot dog, all over us. I swear that dog was always caked in some sort of condiment. Today it was mayonnaise.

Sparky made a beeline for Chin's red-coat, up on his hind legs before even getting there, like a circus dog. Chin shrieked a little and I jumped in front of him, getting the brunt of the attack. True, Chin-Chin and I were sandwiched between the door and a mayonnaise-covered mutt, but at least Chin's coat wasn't ruined. It was the kind of coat that would only look good ruined if you were dead, or at least no longer a virgin.

"Jamie!" I screamed upstairs. "Call your fucking dog!"

But my sister was dumber than her dog and pretended she couldn't hear me through her closed door. She probably had a boy over; Jen and Dad didn't get home for another hour or so. Sparky started licking my mouth.

"Fu—no, Sparky!" I pushed him off my chest and he went for Chin's coat again. I grabbed a rubber hot dog off the floor, squeezed it a few times, and instantly the dog was silent and looking at me.

"You want this, stupid?" He wagged his tail. Little flecks of mayonnaise dotted the front windows. "Get it!" And I chucked it at my sister's door. The dog barreled up the stairs, dragging his butt against the wall, crashing into my sister's door. The door burst open. Jamie screamed. A boy yelled, "What the fuck?" The dog leapt into the bed behind the two naked teenagers (who'd of _course_ been doing it doggy style) and rolled around with his prize, mixing mayonnaise with other white stuff that I don't want to talk about.

"Don't look, Chin!" I yelled, turning around to shield his eyes. But of course it was too late. The little red-coated motherfucker was standing there, looking at my sister on her hands and knees, mouth wide open, obvious tent in his pants. " _Seriously?"_ I smacked him. "That's Jamie! Fucking, it's _Jamie_!"

He kind of shook his head and came to, though his mouth was still a little bit open and his dick was still a lotta bit way too excited.

"What the _fuck_ , Ryan!?" Jamie yelled into her pillow. Her boyfriend or whatever was stuffing himself into his jeans as fast as he could. The dog was still in the bed, standing on Jamie's back, licking her.

I turned to Chin-Chin, looked down at his crotch, smacked him again, and then whispered: "Open the door." And one by one, me, Chin, and my sister's latest mistake escaped.

The dude ran to his car parked down the street and Chin and I were blasting off running in the other direction, back toward the el. Where else could we go but Johnny's? My phone was dead so Chin gave me his and I called Johnny as we ran to the Brown line. He didn't answer so I called him again. Johnny answered his phone all hazy.

"Dude, _what?_ Kinda busy." I could hear Lassie giggling in the background.

"God dammit, Johnny. Nevermind." I hung up. I jerked to a stop. Chin-Chin didn't catch on. He ran on in front of me, his frozen sweaty hair swinging back and forth. "Stop!"

He came back to me. His hands were on his head like this was gym class. "What?" He huffed.

"Guess what Johnny and Lassie are doing?"

" _Seriously?"_ He was sighing like crazy and just kept scraping his spindly hands over his hard-hat hair.

"I know, dude. It's like, everyone in this fucking town is getting laid but us."

Chin's tasseled shoulders sagged. He looked about ready to plop down in the snow.

"We need some fucking _girls,"_ I joked. I immediately regretted it.

Chin's little toothpick hands were poking at his eyes like he was considering taking them out.

" _Chill,_ dude," I said. He probed at his eyes harder, like he was a moon buggy. Oh, God. I really thought that moon buggy thing. _I will never gain street cred._ I thought. I wanted to leave. This was getting depressing. Maybe I'd go to the park, if it was empty, and just swing a little.

But yeah, there were more pressing matters at hand. People were starting to walk real wide around us.

I jutted my head out and yelled at the wide-walkers. "We aren't homeless. Look at us! We aren't. We aren't."

Chin stopped attacking his eyelids and just looked out at the street, slowly shaking his head. His frozen hair stuck out at me like a girl with too much mascara. He really wasn't _that_ fat or _that_ unattractive. (For a dude. Not like my dick sprung to life around him or anything. Jesus Christ.) I don't know why he was getting so fucking emotional today.

"I need to get outta here," he murmured. He lurched like Frankenstein into the turnstile, leaving me standing like a bastard in the middle of the sidewalk. Sometimes that's all it takes to activate the good-friend-stuff in you.

"Ga-dammit, Chin," I sighed, shaking my head, and ran after the kid.

Mommy's Marble

By Samantha Traina

Ya know when teachers say you need a six inch voice? Daddy thinks six inches is a whole lot bigger. Mommy would always just smile at him before pushing a big imaginary button that starts at her head and ends at her elbows. She does it with her whole hand slowly and always smiling.

Daddy yells a lot now. Sometimes I think even knows he's yelling and he just doesn't stop. I used to plug my ears and then listen since his voice would be fine after going through my fingers but I got a spanking after that.

There have been a lot of people coming into my house lately. They all have really nice clothes like the ones mommy would make me and daddy put on before we went to church, but they are all black. They always try to talk to me and smile. I think they're scary, and mommy always said don't talk to strangers. They come in with their big words like intershernace and obittimanary. No one ever explains what they mean. Daddy always just grunts back till he starts talking and I can tell all the people want to cover their ears too. Their noses scrunch up and their lips start to look a lot like fishes, then they just leave.

Later though two men came in who had really scary faces. They didn't wear black. They had those big overalls like daddy does when he goes to work with pretty t-shirts underneath. They grunted around with daddy for a bit before leaving, but they came back with a biiiiiiig table, huge ya know? It's one that all the adults would always get to sit at when all of mommy's family comes over. The big men carried it all the way into the dinner room. I watched from the stairs after daddy told me to stay out of the way, but once they were gone I was able to creep down.

Daddy stood over the table with his legs set apart and each hand on his hips. Mommy stands the same way only with her booty out a bit. They would always stand that way when they looked at something they liked. So even when daddy wasn't smiling I could tell he was happy. Daddy then suddenly left the room and I moved closer to the new table. Something told me I wasn't able to touch it but I still reached to anyway.

The wood was dark and smooth against my fingers. The big legs were almost bigger than me and I could barely see the top of the table. The legs had all the bumps and patterns in them like a big maze and I followed it with my fingers always making sure to check over my shoulder to see if Daddy was coming back. I wanted to see what was on top.

It was blue. Not sky blue or blue like a marker but very bright blue. It stood out against the dark wood. It looked like someone took a blanket and stretched it out across the table and tucked it in real tight. I had no idea why a table needed a blanket I didn't think they got cold. After I checked over my shoulder once more I pushed up on my tippy toes and let me arm reach over the table. I froze, afraid that right when I would get to feel the blanket that daddy would be back and catch me. Daddy would be mad.

I stood like that, toes as high as they would go, my mouth barely over the top, my neck strained, my arm hovering over the table. So close just so close. My ears pushed to hear where ever daddy was. Then I touched it. It wasn't exactly like a puppy, nowhere near as soft, but it was still nice. The odd blue blanket tickled my fingers as I petted it. My arm moving side to side so that almost my whole arm could feel how soft.

I could feel myself smiling as I relaxed again. My fingers back on the wood and my nose barely resting on top on the smooth top of the table. Right then I heard daddy stomping his way back into the dinner room. Mommy never liked it when daddy was so loud with his feet.

His boots were still on, mommy wouldn't like that either. I think that is why his feet are always so loud cause daddy's boots are really heavy. Mommy let me try them on once and I couldn't even pick up my feet. Daddy was strong. Just like the two men who brought the table he had big arms that could give the best hugs. His legs were almost as wide as me and he always had a furry chest even though he had no hair on his head. I thought it was funny but mommy told me never to tell daddy 'cause it would hurt his feelings.

He stomped in with his heavy boots right past me to stand at the front of the big table where he normally sat. Daddy is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay bigger than the table. He could easily see the blue blanket. He was just looking at the blue, tilting his head one way then the other. I did it too but I didn't see anything different. Then Daddy opened his hand and there was a little rock that looked really smooth like ball.

Mommy always wore pretty rocks. Her favorite were little white ones that she called pearls. She would wear one in each ear and were a bunch in a necklace. They were always so smooth and a little cold when she let me touch them. One day she said that when I was a big girl I would get some too. Only ladies wear pearls she said. Mommy is a true lady.

Mommy wore her pretty rocks when with anything and mommy had a lot of clothes. Daddy thinks too much but he always had either a t-shirt or his overalls on. The only time daddy ever dressed up was when we went to church, or that one time. Daddy dressed all nice but in black like the scary people and he gave me black clothes too. We went where a bunch of people dressed in black too. Some were scary other were mommy's friends like Ms. Blaine and Ms. Jackson. They all looked really sad like they need one hundred ice creams and big bear hugs that daddy gives.

There were a bunch of pictures of mommy on a table. Some had me as a baby and some just had mommy and daddy. One was just of mommy and she looked beautiful. She had a big smile and she had on her pretty pink shirt.

Mommy really likes pink. I never got why. She had so many pink clothes that all looked the same to me, but they were different. She always wears her pretty rock pearls when she wears pink. Her nails are even pink some times, and her toes, and her lips. I used to think pink was too bright. Mommy would try to dress me in pink dresses or pink shirt and I never wanted too, I wanted to wear overalls like daddy. Mommy said little girls wore pink.

There were always pink flowers in the house too. Even though they were really bright I didn't mind them. They always smelled really good and mommy would put them everywhere. The house now just smells like the cleany stuff mommy would clean the sink with. I miss the flowers and I don't really mind pink any more.

Daddy then placed the rock right on the table with his big thumb and pointer finger. I watched it too as it just sat there till daddy picked it up again. This time he dropped it on to the blanket and the little rock rolled like a ball all the way to the other end. I just watched it roll down the blue till it hit the end of the table.

The table had a weird part that went up all around it. It wasn't flat like the old dinner table so the rock couldn't roll off the table. It just sat there against the blue side. It looked trapped. The blue completely surrounded it until daddy picked it up again out of the table cage.

He walked all the way back over to the other side and dropped it again. Again the little rock rolled all the way to the end. That's when daddy cursed. I'm sure his face was all red and his cheeks were bigger cause daddy always held his breath for a bit when he was mad. I didn't see though cause I was watching the pretty rock.

"Daddy is it a pearly rock?"

"No it's a marble."

Marble is a funny word but I said it in a whisper so daddy could hear again and again as he picked it up. The marble rock was so pretty with its swirls and foggyness. I really liked it but daddy right now was playing with it. Again it rolled all the way to the end and daddy now was yelling at the table.

"Stupid piece of shit you cost me a thousand bucks and fuckin thing isn't even level!" I scrunched my nose at daddy's words. Mommy would wash his mouth out with soap if he heard that. So many bad words Daddy never used to talk like that before, like a bad kid. I wanted to tell him to say sorry but I know he would just get madder and redder.

He continued to whisper probably more bad words crossing his arms and giving the table a mean look, but he didn't touch the marble. I looked at the little rock then back and daddy's face. He wasn't so red and he hadn't picked it up in a long while. He was probably done with it. Daddy always forgot to put his stuff away and mommy had to do it for him. All his plates were everywhere right now and his t-shirts were all over his room. Mommy wouldn't like it if he didn't put the marble back. So I walked to the end of the table looked once more at daddy and then picked up the marble rock.

"Don't touch that!" Daddy bellowed and scared me till I dropped it. Daddy always looked so scary now and I wasn't going to cry I was gunna be a big girl. I was gunna be a big girl like mommy.

"Daddy _sniff_ you have to _sniff_ put back _sniff_ Mommy's marble _sniff._ " He just stared at me eyes wide as I felt the tears coming out. I tried really hard to be a big girl.

"Honey that's not mommy's." He said as he walked around the table and kneeled down so he was as big as me.

"But _sniff_ it's pink." Daddy looked back at the marble then back at me, he wasn't red any more.

"Mommy always did like pink huh?" I nodded and I couldn't stop crying any more even though I so wanted to be a big girl. Daddy just handed me the marble rock and then hugged me. I looked at it as the tears kept making things cloudy. It had perfect pink swirls in it mixed with white. I knew mommy would love it whenever she came home.

How To: Write an 8 Page Research Paper in Less Than 24 Hours

By Brittany Selters

I know you're busy. You have work, a social life, and about a thousand things you'd rather be doing than homework. But you gotta pass your classes, right? And I'm not talking that "squeak by with a C" bullshit. No, that's for losers. You want a high B. Maybe even an A. And you want to be able to do it and still be able to do whatever you want this weekend.

Well, if you just follow these simple tips, you can have everything you want: your paper will be done, and done well, and you'll be able to go to that party everyone's been talking about.

Here's what you do. You know that eight page research paper that's worth half of your final grade? The one your teacher just assigned. The one you "Ought to start on now because it's not as easy as it sounds"? It's not due for another three weeks, right? Don't even worry about it. Set it aside, go to that party, kill a few brain cells. I'll see you in two weeks and 6 days.

Oh, hey, what's up? Have a good time? Ready to get down to business? Good. I hope you made some money during that time, cause the 12-24 hour research paper is not a cheap endeavor. No, I'm not saying buy a paper off someone. Do your own work, asshole. There are ways for teachers to detect that shit. What I'm saying is, you're gonna need snacks.

Your best bet is probably CVS or Walgreens, but that sketchy convenience store with all the ads in the window by the train station will do in a pinch. You're going to be buying snacks and highly caffeinated beverages, so really you can go anywhere.

Now, I'm not much of a coffee or energy drink girl; they taste disgusting and I always feel like I'm having a heart attack. Usually a twelve pack of coke or mountain dew will do it for me for the night. If you're on a diet, you can get diet drinks, but regular soda will have both caffeine and sugar, which means more kick in each can. Also, I've heard some sketchy shit about what they put in those diet drinks. You want to pass your classes, not die of cancer. But that's your choice.

On to the food aisle. You're probably going to want carbs, and lots of them. Get some chips—if you want to keep up your pace, you probably shouldn't get the kind that leave any kind of cheesy residue on your fingers, because that'll just be hell on your keyboard. Chex mix is also a good option for the more health-conscious out there. Get the big bag, not the snack size, of whatever you get, cause you're gonna need it. You'll also probably want to get some microwave meals, or those little Totino's party pizzas that say will feed three or four people but are really only enough for one—but only if you have access to an oven. If you don't, get microwave food and call it a day. Oh, and don't forget the pint of cookie dough ice cream for your four am mental breakdown. Trust me, you'll need it, emotions are huge fans of sweets.

Now that you've spent your entire paycheck on food, it's time to get to work. Put on your comfiest sweatpants—wear your school gear if you have it, it will encourage you—turn on some music, crack open a drink, and get on the internet. Don't forget to open your Word Document!

Check Facebook, and your email, and any other sites you deem necessary. Oh, God, I hope you don't still have a Myspace. Keep these tabs open, you'll be back. Now find your school's library homepage and find the database links. You don't have time to actually go to the library, and it's so much easier to find information in the "scholarly journals" your teachers are always harping on about. Pick your favorite search engine and start looking for sources.

If this becomes a struggle, you can always start writing your introduction paragraph. Make sure there's a thesis and three key points—that basic five paragraph essay structure you learned in sixth grade is still pretty handy here in college—and forget about organization for now. We'll deal with that when we get to the editing.

Alright, have you written it? Good. Now, see if you can plug a source into it. Not yet? Damn, that sucks. Here, have another soda. Make sure to update your Facebook status if you're particularly frustrated. There's probably someone out there that will commiserate with you via the comments feature.

Keep writing! If you get stuck, look over your assignment sheet; maybe you've missed something. Otherwise, bullshit it. Type words that go together in a sentence that maybe talk about your topic. Repeat yourself. Be creative with it. If you're talking about a person, throw in a little more of their biography. If you're talking about an event, throw in some stuff from your class notes.

You have been going to class, right? I know I said go party, but I didn't mean just blow that shit off. You are taking out thousands of dollars in loans for these classes, remember?

Just keep going. If you start to feel tired, have another drink and eat something. Take a food break, get up and stretch, go to the bathroom. Wander around your room or apartment "thinking" while the pizza's in the microwave. Maybe something will come to you. If you're really desperate, or you just need a quick fact that you know from class, Wikipedia is your friend. But don't, for the love of God, cite it as a source. Your teacher will murder you, and no one wants that.

Still writing? I hope you're at least five pages in, because it's time for the 4am breakdown! Hooray!

The 4am breakdown is inevitable. You have been awake for too long, your blood is 90% caffeine, and this paper just won't end. Is that how you're feeling? Ok. Have you started crying because you're just not good enough, and you're never going to finish college, and you're life will suck forever if you don't, and your boyfriend's being a dick and your roommate's yelling at you to go to sleep because she has class at eight in the morning and everything's just crashing down around you omg?

Told you. It's ok, ice cream will fix it. Grab your pint and a spoon, step away from the computer for a few minutes, and eat. Eat all of it. It will make you feel like a fatty, but that's ok, surely you'll work it off next time you go out dancing. Feel it melt on your tongue, leaving just that chuck of cookie dough. Bite down and savor the sweetness.

Done? Feel better? Good. Wipe your face, wash your spoon, and get back to work.

Now you should be entering the home stretch. You have just a few more pages, you've got an idea or two that will take up some space. Write it! Get it all down on paper. I'm assuming you've written a paper before, with proper timing and research practices, but there's no time for that. Write it, shove in some of your internet sources, and be done.

Oh no. Are you half a page short? That's ok, there's a way to fix that, don't even worry about it. It's going to take some time, though, are you ready?

Go to the beginning of your essay. Highlight the first period or comma. Right click. Make the font fourteen instead of twelve. Do this for every small punctuation mark in your paper. What this does is make the space between the lines bigger. A double spaced paper will still technically be double spaced, but if you've plugged in the bigger punctuation marks, it'll take up more space on the page. This is also a good time to edit; maybe you'll be able to throw in some extra thoughts that will get you that extra half-page of writing and then you won't need the punctuation trick. There's also the "change the margin size" trick, but I find that that looks far too obvious. Teachers don't like it when you're obvious about it, and they won't grade well if you do things like that. And, in the end, you want a good grade. You should also use this time to make sure that your essay is somewhat organized and that your actual use of the punctuation marks you are enlarging is correct.

You're almost there. All you need is a killer closing paragraph. This doesn't even need to be a real paragraph. It can be two sentences. Sum up your paper. Say how this person, thing, or event has changed the world. You can repeat yourself a little if you want or need to.

And you're done! Go to a website that will create citations for you, cite your sources (did you do them within the paper as well?), and copy and paste them into your works cited page. I hope you have ink and paper for your printer; otherwise you're going to have another breakdown that we didn't buy ice cream for. Print it all out, staple it together, put it in your backpack, and set your alarm for ten minutes before class. If it takes you longer to get to class, adjust accordingly.

You've done it! Crawl into bed, watch the sun rise, and hope that your tiredness from writing that paper in such a short amount of time will override the caffeine once your head hits the pillow. Sleep well, knowing that you will be getting at least a B.

Getting Arrested

By Lisa Mrock

I thought about movies where people who are in bad situations close their eyes and imagine themselves in another place. But I knew better. I was in the police office in my school getting arrested. If I closed my eyes, I'd just be a girl in a police office getting arrested with her eyes closed.

I was fidgeting, shaking, and crying. My eyes felt puffy and my hands were clammy. I looked around the room to find something that could take my mind off the fact that my life had taken a sudden downturn. The room was small, about the size of a college dorm room. The desk ten feet in front of me where the blonde cop sat was cluttered with papers. There were posters around the room of kids who were being watched for their second or third violations. Then, there was a poster of the Chicago Bears football team taped onto the door. I liked football. I liked the Bears. "Let's go with that," I thought.

I looked at the cop with the bushy brown hair and glasses sitting against the side of the room between me and the blonde. She was reading a newspaper.

I asked through gasps and tears, "Do you like the Bears?" The cop responded without taking her eyes off the newspaper. "No. I don't like any sports teams. They only do it for the money."

Because of my emotional state, I was heartbroken by this statement. More tears came streaming down my face as I dramatically declared, "Not _all_ of them do it for the money!"

I was depressed, miserable, and even worse, I had to pee really badly, but I didn't want to ask. The whole reason for me being there was because I'd written on a bathroom stall with pens and markers. If I were to ask them for a bathroom break, they'd want to punch me in the gut. On the other hand, I had to go _bad_.

I pulled the sleeves of my hoodie over my hands and wiped my face. Through a quivering voice, I asked, "Can I go to the bathroom?"

The blonde cop swivelled her seat around and the bushy-haired cop let the top half of her newspaper fall backwards in her hands. Both of them cocked an eyebrow, probably thinking, "Did she ask what we _think_ she just asked?"

I tried to explain myself. "Whenever I get really excited or nervous I have to pee."

The blonde cop puffed up her cheeks. "Do you have a problem?"

What was she getting at? "Yeah, I have to pee."

" _No_. I mean, do you have a medical problem? Do you have to pee a lot so you spend a lot of time in bathrooms? Is _that_ why you like to write on bathroom stalls? Is bringing markers to bathrooms a habit because of that?" I wanted to scream. I just had to go to the bathroom and she was trying to find some deeper meaning to it, but there wasn't. I simply had to _go_.

I said, "No, I don't have any medical problems."

She wouldn't let go of her brilliant theory. "If you do, you can say it. According to the school guards, you would go to the bathroom around the same time every day, always during lunch. Do you have to go on a schedule?"

My first thought was, "Do the guards really have nothing better to do than keep track of when I go to the bathroom every day?" My second thought was to attempt a coherent answer. I could've explained to her why I went to the bathroom around the same time every day, how I thought it was practical to go during lunch so I wouldn't have to go later and miss class time. Unfortunately, my mind was inept at thinking about anything other than being arrested, leaving me unable to articulate a response. So I said, "No. I just gotta go _now_."

The two cops gave each other a look which said, "I can't believe this," and the bushy-haired cop set her newspaper down next to her seat and stood up. "I'll take her." She went over by me and stood there until I got up.

Here's where I did something that still gets me looks of disappointment today. At the time, I didn't know why I did it, but I'd always had a knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. I knew saying it would make me look like the biggest asshole, but it was too good to pass up. I knew I'd regret it if I didn't go through with it.

I stood up, wiping my face with my sleeves and tightening my pony tail. Looking at both of them, I said, "Don't worry, no pens and markers this time!" I held up my thumbs and gave them a goofy, toothy smile.

The bushy-haired cop's face froze in a death glare. I didn't even have to look at the blonde to know she wanted to shoot me.

When I realized they didn't find my joke as funny as I did, I went into hysterics, announcing to the small room, "It was supposed to be funny! I swear!"

I was dragged out into the hallway and walked to the bathroom. I went in, went out (without writing on a stall) and was walked on the way back to the police office. Right when we turned the corner, she tightly gripped my arm and pulled me back. "Wait. Walk slowly." I was confused but decided it would be best to follow her orders. We slowed to a small pace. "You know," she began, "I heard you earlier. Heard you saying how you're never gonna live this down. Your parents will always be disappointed in you. I heard _everything_." I wondered where she was going with this and kept listening. "But you know? Six months from now, this could all be blown over." Now she had me hooked. "Maybe even _three_ months from now. It could be blown over and everything could be back to normal. Actually, I _know_ everything will be back to normal."

Suddenly, I forgot I was being arrested and the only thing running through my head was, "Holy-shit-holy-shit-this-is-awesome-holy-shit." I sputtered out, "So my life won't be over?"

She was unsympathetic behind her glasses, but her voice gave her away. "No, it won't be. But don't tell _anybody_ I told you this." I smiled despite feeling like my insides had been beaten with a sledgehammer. When she noticed me walking with a bounce and skip in my steps, she gave my arm another heavy grip. "No! Look sad!"

"Oh, yeah." I stopped smiling and brought on the tears, an easy thing to do since I knew I'd inadvertently start up again anyway once I went back into the police office. Sitting back down in that seat, I still had the feel that joke from earlier had given me. It made me calmer. It reassured me to know that even though I'd temporarily lost the ability to articulate myself, my sense of humor was still intact. It was nice to know that if I could joke about the situation while being in the middle of it, I could joke about it months from now without any visible scars.

I held onto the feeling until the disciplinarian entered the room and sat down near the phone. "We're calling your parents now." I tried to keep the feeling, but it was impossible to do when I heard my mother crying over the phone.

Casino

By Wyl Villacres

I felt like I was lied to. There was supposed to be excitement and winnings, flashing lights and free drinks from attractive waitresses, and a buffet. A buffet with food from every corner of the earth, all you can eat, ribs, chicken, egg rolls, whatever. Instead, I wasted $200 in an hour, watching as my bets got swept away by a middle aged Asian man named Kenny in a white shirt. I guess there was the buffet though, but it was expensive.

In Elgin there is an old river boat that is permanently docked, attached to a building with guards at the gate, checking IDs, making sure everyone is over twenty one years old so that the cocktail waitresses don't have any extra work to do. Inside, I wanted people to be buzzing around, to be yelling and cheering and winning lots of money, but instead all I saw were old men, sweaty and with comb overs, breathing through their mouths over tucked in plaid shirts and faded blue jeans. They all wore glasses, some prescription, some sun. Those who didn't look like farmers wore silk button down shirts, usually black or dark blue, the top three buttons undone, their chest hair spongy and thick, gold crosses on gold chains tucked under their cologne soaked fur. The silk shirts still had comb overs.

There were women there too. Mostly pushing fifty, with thick hair spotted with greys and straight bangs that hung a little too close to their sunken eyes and leather skin. They wore nice blouses, coral or other earth tones, and jeans that clung to their waists, unflatteringly forcing them into pear shapes. Younger women would graduate to that standard soon, wearing black shirts made for going to clubs, too much support in the chest. They hung onto their boyfriends or husbands or bachelorette party participants shoulders, waiting with baited breath for the roulette wheel to stop on their number, begging God and man alike for the 35:1 payout, and pouting when 00 hits, but they had played it last turn.

The cocktail waitresses, they were there too, but attractive wasn't a term to be used anymore. Sure, maybe when they were the captain of the cheer squad twenty, twenty five years ago. Now, their luster had dulled, their radiant blonde muddled by years of worry and strife and alcoholism or meth addiction. Their eyes are hollow, looking over the vast sea of old folks losing their retirement money one bad hand of three card poker at a time. They work for tips, the extra dollar thrown their way for the two dollar cocktail ordered by the alcoholic sitting by the blackjack table. Or they weave in and out of the slot machines, lost in a sea of 8-bit music playing out of themed machines, zombie eyes glued to the screens as buttons are pushed, dollars are inserted, one winner, ten losers, the winner doesn't walk away, the losers put more money in.

The pit bosses roam through the table games, eyeing anyone not playing, watching for mistakes, slip-ups, overpayments, underpayments, anything that would involve money going to the wrong person, especially to a player from the house. Their suits are all oversized, enveloping their bodies in a mess of fabric; the long suit coats a style not seen since the 20s anywhere else. They look like they should be biting a cigar at all times, like they have a Beretta under their jackets, like they know where you can get a drink, but you need to know the password, and if the coppers come expect a gunfight. Sometimes, they look like they don't want to be there. That they were just a few credits shy of that accounting degree.

The games are lack luster. There was no one shooting craps, holding a beautiful woman while wearing a tuxedo, no throngs of people cheering him on, all with money on the pass line. The roulette table is a flurry of limbs, chips flying around, people layering theirs on top of another player's, the dealer fighting off the hands with a wave, the ball landing on the only number without a chip on it. Three card poker a collection of losers, all losing twenty dollars at a time. Down the stairs, into the hull of the ship, the high stakes poker tables sit crowded with men, and one woman who kinda looks like a man from most angles. They are all silent, wearing hats and sunglasses because their natural poker face is weak. One of them will win money, the rest go home without their five hundred dollar buy in.

Leaving the casino, downtown Elgin stands looming, dark. Half of the buildings are empty, the other half are hidden on the winding, narrow streets. People don't tend to walk around, there is nothing to walk around for, except if they need a breather from the casino. The parking lot is full, free, the last free thing that there is. The first time you walk through the doors, they feel light, welcoming you, calling you. The second time through, and suddenly they are lead, boiling lead that you don't want to put your hands on, and push through with as much force as your tired body can muster. Your wallet feels lighter now, and your stomach starts to turn in strange ways. Stop. Don't go back in. Just go. Run.

Breathe

By Gibson Culbreth

\- "Hello Tyler, thank you so much for being here." (He sits down in the overstuffed chair and takes a drink from a clear glass of water sitting in front of him, smiling afterwards at the hair sprayed and starched entertainment reporter across from him. He could see her wrinkles through her foundation. He looks freshly touched up himself, makeup erasing the careless grey circles hiding under his eyes. He stretches out in the chair, his long legs unfolding onto the floor, his boots coming to rest a few inches away from the reporters crossed ankles. She shifts in her position, uncomfortable already with her subject who she had encountered at a party a few years back. She takes in his sandy blonde hair, now shorn close to his skull, his depthless brown eyes intently glued to her face. )

\- "As always, it's my pleasure Mary." (His tan makes his teeth gleam. She notices little imperfections in the new cut of his hair, as if he had shaved it himself in jagged stripes and someone else had tried to cover it up. Mary notices that he is fidgeting, constantly in motion. She is quick to link this behavior to drugs. He is one of the stars known for using cocaine. In fact, when she ran into him three years prior he had confessed his growing problem to her in a moment of desperation. She remembered his cracked glass eyes pleading with her to help him. He promised her his soul; his success would carry her along as if on a parade float if only she would get him some good blow.)

\- "So I hear you have a new movie coming out next week! Are you excited about it?" (These reporters were paid to look like knock offs of the girls Tyler was fucking in club bathrooms. They were also paid to be excited, their laugh lines were canyons but not from a life well lived.)

\- "I'm so excited Mary!" (Mary looks vaguely familiar to Tyler, like an unfortunate dream. Usually when Tyler feels plagued by a hazy sense of recognition it doesn't go over well. He feels the raw, open wound with his fingers. He pries in for a few seconds, his fingers worming their way into the flesh, watching it pound with his heartbeat. Aurora's face comes across clearly and deliberately. Why had she gone and left this gaping wound? Why would she not return? Did she not understand that Mary and all the others hadn't meant anything? Focus Tyler, focus. You cannot afford to lose your mind on tv.) "God, isn't this a spectacular country? I can make films I really believe in and people will watch them."

\- "So you've gained quite a flashy reputation the past few years for your directorial adventures, tell me about your new work." (Tyler shifts in his chair, hooking his right leg over his left in a pose that means to Mary that she is about to hear an ego maniac spew bullshit for the next twenty minutes with minor interruptions. It is a mechanical movement. Mary had interviewed enough people to understand that Tyler was giving her these signals on purpose. He was off-kilter but putting on a brave face. Mary begins planning her assault.)

\- "Well my new film is called Breathe and it's about the anxiety that accompanies fame and how that can culminate."

\- "This is the first film you've done in a while. Some say you've lost your muse..." (Hearing his previous, obviously rehearsed turns of phrase makes this question far more enjoyable to ask. He moves in his seat when her phrase trails off, glancing away for a second to organize his thoughts. They are a jumbled mess under his preened exterior.)

\- "I didn't lose my muse, I have no muse." (He tries to be confident. Maybe if he says it he will start believing it. The wound under his skin rips a little more and he can feel the air on it, like maggots twisting and turning under his skin.)

\- "Aurora Matlock is not in the cast of this film is she? Most people find her to be the most intriguing aspect of your filmmaking and she is your girlfriend as well. Some have speculated recently that she has left your compound in Venice. Is that true?" (Mary feels a wave of satisfaction at the precarious placement of her question, her smile suddenly warms up, becomes more genuine. She remembers why she enjoys this job. It's because she was always the popular girls' sidekick and all she ever wanted was to take down her empire. Now she topples fame for a living. Three years ago when Tyler was trying to get Mary to buy him blow she'd met Aurora as well. She had been a quiet unassuming beauty with a bleached exterior. She hadn't said much, only taken Tyler's shaky arm and led him away from Mary after they had shared lines. She feels guilty, but she isn't sure why.)

\- (Tyler's eyes grow sharp, his gaze slants at the glass of water on the table. His smile still hangs hollowly on his face like an afterthought.) "Aurora wasn't right for this role. It's true that usually I write for her abilities, but I found that it was limiting to write for only one person. Breathe is a completely different film with a completely different feel. Aurora is not what makes my pictures great."

\- (Typical Hollywood monster, avoiding the real questions.) "A few days ago photos were taken in Chicago, IL of Aurora and her co-star from your last film, Michael McDunn. They were photographed holding hands and even stealing a quick kiss." (Mary tries to think of a question, but really she is looking for a physical response; a choke.)

\- "Why do I care what she does with her life? Aurora left my compound a while back; she's a little crazy. It was too much for me to handle." (Classic, she's crazy... They'll all hate her now. She'll be ostracized, like Britney Spears once she shaved her head.)

\- "Are you hurt that she chose her co-star over yourself?" (Tyler snorts a laugh, but she can tell he's breaking under the surface of his laid back, cocky attitude. She almost feels a little bad, because this is so good.)

\- "Can we talk about Breathe again please? I gave you what you wanted."

\- "Tyler, no one really cares about your piece of shit movie. And no one is going to care once they learn that Aurora is not in it."

\- "I don't understand why she is so important to these films...."

\- "You are a good team artistically, do you think you'll ever work together again?"

\- "No, I think she's getting out of the business."

\- "What a shame, she's still so young and so beautiful." (There are a few moments of pounding silence, Mary cannot think of a follow-up question. She looks at the ones prepared on her lap and she dismisses them quickly.)

\- "Breathe is about Aurora, and all the nervous ticks she developed after her breakout hit." (Tyler begins suddenly, as if he has resolved to come clean.) "The movie opens with the main character standing in front of her dryer, completely naked, watching the clothes go round and round, and she begins to dance as if she's under a spell. She spins, her white blonde hair sailing around her, and it becomes almost an Indian dance, a dance that would bring rain or luck. And then it cuts to the rest of the living room, because she's living in this tiny apartment in the middle of LA, and her television is on, and the guy star who is playing an off brand of me I guess, is giving an interview much like this one, and she stops spinning when he speaks, and she gives him her full attention. When I met Aurora she used to do that, she used to dance naked in her apartment when she did laundry, in attempt to launder everything all at once." (Tyler is giving way to the wrecked feeling fleeting under his skin. It is monstrous and Mary almost feels bad loosing such a beast from its iron grip.)

\- "When I met Aurora it was... I was drawn to her immediately. She was at this release party for my first film, which was an art piece of sorts. She was standing, leaning against a corner and watching people. She was so blatantly watching them, observing in a removed sort of way." (Tyler is in a trance now, immersed in memory.) "She looked like an actress, and when I went to talk to her she was scared. It took her a while to warm up to me actually. She was intimidated by the business and I had to beg her to be in the first film she was in for me, the one that made both of us famous."

\- "What drew you to her?"

\- "She has this magnetic draw to her, and I was right in assuming it would span to film as well. It's something about the way she's vulnerable all the time, and you can see straight through her like well water. But even though those things appear to be true she alludes to so much pain. She's so distant, and yet... There were moments when I felt her love for me, I felt it like I was wearing it. She would look at me and it felt like an electric blanket had been wrapped tight around my heart. But then other times I would reach for her and she almost seemed ghostly. In the end I assume she didn't love me." (This is hard for Tyler to admit. It had been living in his brain for almost a month, and he had waged war with this philosophy by increasing his outward egotism. He had called Aurora just a week ago. When she picked up his throat went dry, his eyes wide and hollow. He had said "do you miss my cock?" And then he hated himself. He hated himself so much that it eclipsed everything. He is still looking at Mary, now with an odd expression plastered across his handsome face.)

\- "What happened to break you up?" (Mary was actually immersed, as if watching a particularly exciting or dramatic television show. Tyler is bearing all, she is scoring entertainment reporter gold.)

\- "She just left."

Cut, back to the day when he entered the house now oddly cold. The A/C cranked to an infinite high, so cold you could see your breath while looking outside, the smoldering coastal atmosphere that winter never groped.

"Aurora," Tyler called, his voice bouncing down the wooden hallways. He could tell even there that her soft presence was missing. The house seemed like granite, the walls standing united against him in his quest for happiness and contentment. He ran to his room to find hangers sprawled across the floor, pillows gone and Aurora's vanity completely gutted. He pounded on the walls, his fists losing feeling after a few seconds until he just felt like he was beating nubs against the structure of his life with Aurora.

Recalling the moment makes his eyes water. He looks away from the lights. He can feel the camera lens focusing on the telltale gleam in his eye. The microphone for the camera leans in and he betrays the magical sealing of the interview by looking at it, a quick flick of his eyes before looking back to the floor. He can sense Mary's muscles tensing, her biceps twitching uncomfortably as he betrays entertainment interview etiquette. He runs his hand over his newly shaved head, reminding himself of that night when he had done it to try and cut everything about Aurora away. He is ok, he can finish this, pull it together.

\- "Breathe is going to be an amazing movie, Mary. I'm truly honored to have directed the amazing talent starring in it, and I think it will give everyone a little something to think about this movie season." (Flashy smile back in place, like it never happened, a nice plug at the end. Tyler comes back to himself.)

Tyler leaves the studio as soon as they remove the microphones, bolting for the doors and passing his driver on the hot concrete. He takes off, running alone down the street, his head pounding with the ghost of his life with Aurora.

Kaplan Waking Up

By Jazy Jes

The late afternoon sun hit the westward window of the second story bedroom raising the heat so high Kaplan couldn't sweat fast enough to remain comfortably asleep. His eyelids open a fraction and closed again for a moment, and opened again and closed again, until finally opening the whole way when he realized the sheetless mattress beneath him was slippery with his own moisture, intensifying his discomfort. He sat up, the effort confirmed apparently was still drunk. In a deep breath, he let himself rock back prone and pulled his knees past his torso with a stretching exhale. He closed his eyes for the last time since the swimming feeling intensified behind his red lit lids. He rolled to his stomach and surveyed the room for anything that could cover his naked ass. No boxers in sight, his thick black Carhart workpants would be in rotation four days running, not that it was a new record or anything. After stepping in one leg at a time he rolled the sturdy fabric up just below the knees. The thighs of each leg were slashed with grey dirt marks and fresh speckles of yellow, to go along with the old blue, red, silver, and most of all white paint marks. In the back pocket he found his cell phone, and was surprised to find seventeen missed calls.

Outside his room it was undetermined if the rest of his housemates were around. To the right of his door the hardwood hallway branched off to the four other rooms of the house, every door partially or all the way closed. No stereos playing, no sound of heavy sleeping, no noise at all. He went left for the bathroom. He set his stance before the seatless bowl, the seat having been broken off and tossed out over a year ago. He pulled out his phone from his pocket and set it on the porcelain cover, then dropped his pants, and began scrolling through the list of numbers as the beer and booze diluted stream jingled and bubbled. It was strange, two different numbers with the same area code and the exact first three numbers had made several calls but neither was familiar. No messages were left. He set his phone on the basin again and pulled up his pants. Then it came to him like trigger that instantly set off a memory of a dream from the night before, only this actually happened. He'd barely escaped getting arrested last night.

Downstairs in the house no one was around. He climbed back upstairs to knock on doors and peek inside his housemates' rooms but they were all empty. He remembered biking home with Curt after they'd waited out MPD fury in an alley behind the piled remains of a dismembered oak tree. It was entirely possible that Dom, Lewis, and Marco never got away. More than likely that was them trying to get a hold him. More than likely from jail.

Kaplan went back downstairs and walked out to the front porch where he knew Curt would be. Curt was asleep on the sunken old sofa, fully clothed down to his tawny laced up boots, the intense heat that scorching through every street-facing window in the house at this hour having no effect. But then Curt spent most nights sleeping out on this porch, no matter the time of year. One time a contributing benefactor to the house, Curt had an issue with the "contributing" aspect of things. Favors and drugs never compensated for his inability to pay legitimate cash every month. Still that didn't stop him from breaking into the porch through the faulty side window to crash on the davenport most nights; or his former roommate from kicking him out. This arrangement better suited them all.

Curt was even snoring a little. Air slowly filling up his unshaven cheeks, then poofing out his lips with little drum roll of breath. Kaplan left him there and went outside and down the block to the newspaper stand in front of the corner liquor store, hoping the fresh air would sober him up. Outside the heat was less intense. A cicada chirr beat out the early evening rush hour commotion up until he reached the busy corner. He checked his pockets but the deteriorating fishing license he used as a wallet was gone. No matter, it was falling apart and he remembered spending his last twenty dollars on a case of High Life, a fifth of Old Crow, and two hot dogs around this time yesterday. He looked for the security officer that worked the door at the liquor store, who never gave Kaplan more than a disclaiming expression. Kaplan never looted the corner liquor store, didn't matter how broke he was. He took pride in thinking himself a valued customer. The newspaper box in front of the store didn't count. He yanked down on the handle, jammed it back, and yanked again. The door snapped down. He helped himself, rolled the paper in a tube, stuck it in his back pocket and walked back to the house.

This time Curt was awake, sitting up, padding a wad of tobacco on a paper. "Kap Man," he said as Kaplan stepped through the spring loaded plastic door. He offered Kaplan a limp high five and jerked his body to the right corner of the sofa to make room.

Kaplan took his seat shaking his head."How'd the fuck we make it out of there last night?"

"Marco's a fuckin' idiot man. Tryin' to bulldoze through four cops on the stairwell. Man, even if he had, there were like six cars, seven cars parked on the loading dock." Curt wet his finger on his lips and smoothed over the creases where the adhesive didn't take to the paper. "Cops thought they could surprise us coming up the back. Next time don't roll up with your cherries on fuckers."

"We got lucky, you and me." Kaplan said. He thought about it. The six of them on the roof top of the old church, yelling and passing around the bottle around, getting rowdier and drunker, and the madness that ensued leading to the fireworks. One or two would have been fine, but setting them off inside, more and more at a time now seemed like an obvious mistake. Then how the second the five of them heard the sirens getting close enough they all broke out in opposite directions.

"Fuck it. You and me had the right idea," Curt said, and dragged his cigarette, taking a quick sip of air at the end, and blowing out hard. "Besides I can't out run cops anymore."

It was true. Five years ago Curt hopped freight train back to the Midwest from a bender in Bellingham. It was the later stage of dusk nearing Glasgow. He had his feet dangling out of the side of a boxcar, the boxcar itself a rare occurrence of luxury when tramping freights. Half way into his flask, he didn't notice wood post coming up in the way of his left foot. He shattered every metatarsal and the conjoining ankle bones, waited two hours in agony before the train slowed enough for him to make the jump. By the time he made it to the nearest county road he was trying to hitch a ride from his hands and knees. They stuck several pins in his ankle and a screw in his heel, but that and the way his foot mended, he'd never avoid walking with jolting left step.

The 6:00 PM sun was coming to a crescendo, lighting the room with a dim, hard, amber glow. The layer of dust and ash that coated the side set at the center of the sofa looked like dead sparkles. The sour smell of old cigarettes put out with spit lit the room like a Glade plug in. It was finally cooling down. Kaplan's eyes followed the trail of a few cases worth of empty High Life bottles across the porch to the pile of warped bicycle rims and the neighboring mess of chain parts and deflated black tubes. "Did you see them actually getting anybody?" he asked.

"Lewis went down the fire escape. He would have had to jump 15 feet to the ground. The way Marco lodged that rod into the drop spring I'm sure he got nabbed trying to pull it loose. He fucked that thing up!"

"Like a fucking mouse trap," Kaplan shook his head. "Well shit. I need coffee." He got up, but felt the paper against his ass cheek as he stood. "Oh yeah, I grabbed the paper," pulled it out from behind him and dropped it on the table shaking an ashy cloud into the air. Curt took to unrolling and unfolding it to the local news section.

"All those fireworks we let off," he snickered, "bet the neighbors thought Alcida was having target practice." He set the paper down and leaned forward, combating the weakened sofa cushion absorbing his lower half almost to the ground and traced the page from left to right. "Oh hell no," he pointed at a section of the lower right hand corner.

Just then the spring on the screen door yawned, and the two of them looked up to see a red nails on a fair hand, a wrist of black and silver bangles and a sleeveless arm. Then one case of beer was almost tossed inside, and another. Then Tara's rich merlot red hair and dark matching lips popped in, looking at the stack. Then the rest of her climbed in and around them with two brown grocery bags in each hand. Curt and Kaplan watched her quizzically. She was the last person they expected to see. Tara was Marco's volatile, on and off girlfriend of two years. Last either of them knew, they weren't speaking.

"Tara Seaman," Curt recited with a tone like greeting an arch nemesis.

It gave her a spook, and she looked at them just realizing they were there. "Whoa, hey there..." She walked the bags in their direction and setting them next to the door to the house.

"What's all this?" Curt said, " It's not my birthday but I'll take it anyways."

"I know it's not your birthday. It's Marcos. Is he here? I've been calling andTara was not going to let them keep her in the dark. She stood in front of the brown bags, containing a dozen ears of sweet corn, yellow squash and zucchini, a few packs of brats and buns, and the nicest cut of steak the co-op had, plus all the ingredients to marinade it just the way Marco liked.

Tara had taken her time choosing just what cut of meat she should buy, and went with the butcher's recommendation. "Harold" his name tag said, leaned over the meat case to explain that the cow had been grass fed and was from a farm under an hour away in River Falls. He even told her the cow's name was Daisy, and looking deep into her boosted bosom, the line between her breasts just slightly visible at the angled collar of her tight black V-neck, that if she ever wanted to go there and see the way the farmers cared for their livestock, really truly cared, he'd take her. He could do that. "Yeah, maybe," she told him, and he wrapped the tenderloin with an exaggerated slowness as if demonstrating the tender way he would handle those breasts if given the opportunity. He handed it over with the same look most men brave enough to flirt with her did, like somehow he knew exactly what she wanted. She returned it with the same look she always gave, a girl who raised her hand in math class and gave the right answer. It was only not to seem rude, even though Tara learned early on that men's eyes are always enthused but none ever really have a clue what she wants—a total marketing scam.

True there were things about Marco that were just as, if not more, devious and untrustworthy. But he easily felt overwhelmed with by her pressuring him. He usually never meant it. Still she would hold him to the blame he deserved every time he blew her off, left her waiting for him. Those were the nights he'd call her around midnight, just after she'd brushed her teeth and washed her face for bed. He'd call and ask her to let him come over, promising he was only twenty minutes out. She'd climb in bed and start to read.

The last time they broke up, she thought about how at least now maybe she'd be able to finish a damn book. Whenever she was waiting for Marco the same thing happened if he didn't show. A half hour would pass before she began the ritual of reading a sentence or two, then lose her place to look over at the clock on her bedside nightstand. Then finger her way to the place she left in the book, and start to read a little more, except now she couldn't focus, and she'd look away again to look at the clock, till finally she was so frustrated with him and the wonder of if he was coming or not that she'd stop. She'd turn off the light at try to sleep. But even if sleep did come, every few hours she'd be awake again, eyes open in the dark and check her caller id to find no missed calls.

Enough time had gone by to know what had most likely happened. Marco never made it out of his house because one of his roommates, or anybody with a case of beer or bottle of liquor came through the front door. If it was Curt, he probably wasted his night snorting line after line of cocaine and talking graff politics, like which crew did what to who in some other city like KC or St. Louis. Or rehash old drinking stories or old beefs with people they hadn't actually seen in years. Or worse, Marco had left the house. Left the house with enough paint to pull off a felony in one night, one tag after another, upgrading the charge from minor offence to felony. That's what kept her up at night, the thought of him getting caught.

"I'm I supposed to bail you out?" she asked one time. It wasn't a loaded question, she really wanted to know. That was when they first got together. Marco had told her the first time they made out at a party that he was an artist. He waited till they had had sex more than twice to tell her his artwork involved trespassing and destruction of property. Tara didn't think of it as a problem yet. Cops were always making bogus ass arrests when they should be hunting down rapists and child molesters.

The first several months were intense, in a good way. Marco practically moved in to her studio apartment where she lived with her cat. They'd get lost in each other for days, with brief intermissions for work, or school (Tara was two thirds into an esthetician certificate). Marco talked about his roommates, whom Tara knew of from having all grown up in nearby neighborhoods, but at the time they were obsolete to their relationship, to who Marco was when he was with Tara.

Eventually the guys began bustin' on Marco for abandoning them for pussy. Tara didn't understand when he started coming over but only staying for an hour. She agreed with them that all the time they were spending together was a bit of a distraction. She's been late to her Monday morning class four times, and a fifth would dock her grade a whole letter. But she didn't like the secrecy. Why did he never know where he was going or what he'd be doing later? She'd get upset and hold her to his chest, and say, "I think I love you, Tara, but I'm not ready to be tied down."

The uncertainty was more than she could handle, and eight months into their relationship, she broke up with him. But Marco wouldn't stay away. Every time she told him it was over she'd find him, a week or two later, throwing pebbles or snowballs depending on the time of year, up at the window of her third story walkup, drunk and howling like a hound dog. She'd let him in but make him sleep on the couch. But by morning he had crawled into bed with her, just like she truthfully wanted.

It was after Marco started standing her up that she made enemies with the guys at the house. The second time it happened Marco had told her he'd meet her at the Rustler Room, Tara's favorite bar because the wall were decked with old photographs of cowboy, both Hollywood and real, and served the best chicken wings with BBQ sauce so good she claimed she'd drink the stuff if you dared her to, though most people thought that was disgusting and never did. She had got her grades back for that quarter and decided they were worth celebrating with some classmates. She called Marco at his house, who said he'd be there before last call, but he never made it.

She got the idea to show up at his house and give him a piece of her mind. No one home. So she waited on the front porch, and smoked the last of someone's pack of cigarettes that were sitting on the coffee table. At some point Curt came in and startled her awake.

"Hey, go home," he said kicking her feet, one swiping motion at a time.

Tara faded out of dreamland and into reality, realizing some guy was kicking her out at her own boyfriend's house. She shifted out of her scrunched huddle on the corner of the couch to a puffed upright chest.

"Is Marco home yet?"

"Girl, I don't where Marco is," he was slurring much worse than she was. "Take you're skank ass on, obviously you aint getting' any Marco tonight."

"No." She crossed her arms and pulled her legs back up on the couch, and settled back into her position. "I'm not going anywhere till I say what I need to say."

The darkness outside was softening and Tara could hear the first birdsongs of the day. She recognized this guy, Curt, and remembered that he was the one roommate who didn't have a key to the house, but slept on the porch. She realized she was in his bed.

"Really honey, you can't stay here."

She tried to explain herself, "Your name's Curt, right? I'm Tara, Marco's girlfriend."

"Ooh god!" Curt moaned, and came around and collapsed into a sitting position in the corner opposite her and let out a deep sigh and closed his eyes. "Look," he tossed his head back against the couch, "I," and took an exasperated pause, "don't," clasped his hand together, "care." His words were quiet, and Tara wondered if she should just give the guy his bed.

"Do you know where he is?" she decided to ask.

"No!" He roared, opening his eyes and turning to her with a death stare.

Now Tara was embarrassed. She had clearly pissed Curt off. Still, she was drunk enough to believe she was being challenged to stand her ground with the fact that Curt had no regard for her as Marco's girlfriend or her overall concern for his ware bouts.

"Well, I'm not moving till I talk to him."

Which sent Curt into a huffing march out the screen door and he diapered around the house. Marco never did appear. Tara fell back asleep, but then woke up again at 9:30. She tried knocking on the door. She even went out to look for Curt but he was no where around the house or in the back yard.

The next time she talked to him on the phone, Marco was angry with her for showing up and causing a scene. She argued her side, it didn't feel good being forgotten about, she was worried, why couldn't he have called. He explained to her that he'd forgot he'd agreed to drive a friend to Detroit and he totally forgot to call until after he'd left the house.

"What about a pay phone, or asking to borrow someone's phone to call me?"

"Booboo, when's the last time you've seen a pay phone? Besides it was late, I didn't want to wake you just to be mad at me."

She didn't talk to him for four months after that one.

"You guys had better tell me where the fuck he is." Tara said to Kaplan and Curt. 
