

Ash Magazine, Issue Two, 2011

Copyright Josh Cook 2011

Smashwords edition

Lord Haywire

Publisher

Jenn Waterman

Editor

The Mystery of Statement by Adam Roberts

Art by Anna Palmer

Goat Show by Brett Cihon

Art by Patrick Logon

First Responder by Tony Gill

Jenny Gets a Beater Bike by Will Schmitz

Art by Devon Amato

Addiction by Tammie Painter

Art by Eartha Forest

Constellations by Nicholas Utke

Art by Allison Wilde

Boar and Sow by Andrew Dimitrov

Art by Nikole Klinkhammer

Edited by Colin Marshall

Revolution by Elizabeth J. Sparenberg

Art by JazzMinh Moore

Imaginary by Erin Kassidy

Art by Kayla Himmlerberger

Visit AshMagazine.net for news and how to submit stories and art.
The Mystery of a Statement

By Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts' marvelous short story, The Mystery of a Statement, sits in front of you on your desk. Your teacher has finally realized its greatness and is teaching you to see it, too. He goes to ask a question about the story and you begin to give the "not me" body language, but your plan works in reverse and he aims his eyes in your direction. "Can you tell the class why the ending of Roberts' story is especially interesting?" He laughs as he asks it in the exact wording from the story; some of your classmates chime in with less passion.

You begin to sweat because you haven't read beyond the first sentence. Somehow, you muster up an answer. The class listens to your impromptu analysis and your teacher is even partially impressed by what you say, despite your clueless position. You feel strange because no matter what you say, your teacher nods and laughs. You assume it's that typical "there's no wrong answer" thing teachers are often far too involved in. Luckily, you were just the tool to get the discussion rolling. Your teacher discusses the technical aspects of the story (who is writing the story, how the second person is working, etc.), as any good teacher should, straying from the story's plot and ambiguous ending. This is where the story loses many readers, but not you. You were lost from the beginning.

Once class ends, you rise with the rest of the students and make your way towards the door. On the way out your teacher gives you a weird glance and smiles, so you smile back, like the two of you are sharing a nice joke. He is growing to love teaching with the years, and Roberts' story is a new and wonderful piece that gets some of the lazier students excited.

Your friend Tony is waiting outside the door and you are pleasantly surprised because you don't have your cell phone on you. He is wearing his only pair of jeans and the striped shirt he wore the night before. The two of you walk to a new pizza place that you've seen on campus but have never thought to try; he has something important to tell you but he wants to wait until lunch.

Tony always says everything has an exact purpose, and that it's just hard to pinpoint. Today he has concocted his philosophy into a simple word: SNID. He tells you it stands for, "Something Needing Infinite Dissection."

"Everything's a SNID," he announces coolly as he toys with his thick beard as though he is some type of genius. You let his idea sit for a second. Before you can respond, he continues. "Love, hair color, microbrews, fate," he rants on, "they're all SNID's, and no one can accomplish the ID part. You'd need infinite time, and even then you'd never catch the end of it.

You ask if the ID part relates to the self, the ego, superego, things like that.

"Sure," Tony nonchalantly replies. "Everything relates to everything else when you get to the bottom of it."

"But there's no bottom," you correct him, trying to fit into his crazy idea for the sake of conversation.

"Exactly! No top either, just middles." His eyes light up as he qualifies your statement, but not because you're finally getting it. It's because he smells the pizza and sees the bright neon sign that just popped into view from behind the corner of a building.

You sit down at the first table and order a large pepperoni for the two of you. Once the waitress leaves, Tony tells you without hesitation, "I'm breaking up with my girlfriend."

It's obviously not a simple thing for him so you try not to act overly shocked. You know the topic will be a reoccurring one, but for now you just tell him it's probably best. "She didn't seem like the one for you," you reason, "and everyone's single these days, anyways."

"True, you're always single and happy," he says and brushes it off like it's no big deal and asks how your class was.

"Fine," you reply. "We read this short story called, The Mystery of a Statement, it's really good." You choose to lie because Tony always gets on your case about having no motivation with school. He's the scholastic robot and is able to keep up with any workload his professors may assign. When lying to him you feel closer to his level and it boosts your confidence in a rather unhealthy fashion.

He asks what's so good about the story as the waitress brings over your meal. You both grab a slice and you take a big bite to delay your answer.

"The ending," you say as you finish chewing your bite. The swallow is the kind from cartoons; right after a character lies or says something that might not go over well. Your Adam's apple rises a few inches and hangs there for a couple seconds before plopping back down.

"What about it?" he pressures you like a professor.

"Oh it's just extremely unique and open ended. You gotta read it, it's only ten pages." You avoid having to improvise an ending by putting the task of reading it on him. Unfortunately for you, Tony will buy it and read it soon and then you two will have to talk about it. When he asks if he can see your copy, you tell him you read it at the school bookstore because it was so short. You've gotten a little tense, lying to yourself through Tony. That feels sort of strange, doesn't it? For knowing you so well, Tony really should be able to pick up on it. But you're doing a great job.

You put the pressure back on Tony after finishing your slice, "So, your lady. What happened?"

"Just got bored, you know, fell out of it." Tony's body language says there's more, so you pry it out, as any good friend would.

"And that's it?"

"No," he admits.

"I haven't told her, she thinks everything's fine." He stops eating for a moment and looks out the window. "Man, I hate this," he says after a big breath.

You dig in for another slice. In a way, you're quite proud to not have a similar problem of your own. Tony gets up suddenly.

"I just gotta go do it now, it's killing me," he admits. He is visually less secure than his typical self as he stands there in front of you, so you let him go.

"I'll get the check," you yell as he leaves the restaurant, pointing out his carelessness. He looks back at you with a pale glance as he continues on his way. Money isn't on his mind, and you know he's good for it anyways. You forget to tell him about your phone, which is back at home, almost an hour away.

Your story basically ends there in the pizza place as Tony walks away, but there's one more interesting thing to mention. About a half hour and almost a whole pizza to yourself later, you sit in the booth, too stuffed to move. You paid for it all, so you figured you should put a dent in it. A homeless lady with a tattered pink dress enters the restaurant with her eyes slowly opening and adjusting, like she's just waking up. You assume she's on something because of the jittery manner in which she moves across the tiled floor. A grey ferret, which you took to be her hair, scurries down her face and into her cleavage. Her unkempt hair is revealed and looks and smells like a dead animal of a similar kind. She walks up to your table like a waitress and the ferret burrows down into her dress as if frightened by you.

You can't help but watch its outline bounce around her stomach area as she violently points to the one remaining slice on your plate.

"Can't finish it?" she asks, her arm fat still shaking from when she lifted her hand. A stench is flung in your direction when she tosses down the pointing arm and leaves your table to sit in one of her own.

You assumed she wanted your slice, but were too dumbfounded to offer it before she left to the booth in the corner furthest from you. You leave the restaurant almost as soon as she leaves your table, but you peer through the window towards her booth to see what she's up to. An old homeless woman such as herself is rarely found dining casually. Her back is to you so you can watch without seeming creepy, as if that is prevalent by this point.

After about ten minutes pass, the waitress brings her a large pepperoni pizza and she eats the first slice as hectically as a homeless person might. You see the waitress collect money from the woman sooner than the standard procedure and this makes you smile because you were wondering about that but weren't going to wait around much longer. Just as she finishes the slice and are about to leave, she gets up and shuffles from her booth to the one where you were sitting. You can see the ferret climbing back up to her cleavage to see what all the motion is about.

You hide behind a telephone pole, peeking your head out to watch her secretly. She doesn't look outside though; her head is focused straight towards the one slice you couldn't eat. She grasps it firmly in her fist, seemingly squeezing it, as she jitters back towards her booth. Upon sitting down, she replaces the missing piece of her pizza with yours and throws her arms in the air, the fat visibly shaking even through the window almost twenty feet away. While her hands are still in the air, she snaps her head back towards the window like a deer, as if she knew you were watching all along and she smiles. You can't look away for a second, but you snap out of the daze once the ferret climbs out of her dress and perches on her left shoulder to stare back at you, too. You run from your spot behind the pole towards the bus stop a few blocks away. Tony could be anywhere by this point, but you really want to find him and relay the story. Oddly, you won't have to.

Tony went directly to the school bookstore after leaving the pizza place. Some readers may be thinking, "If you just looked at your copy of Roberts' story, you'd know where to find him!" Of course, that's purely pathetic. These dominos have been toppling since the beginning of time. Maybe you'd run directly to the bookstore or perhaps stop at a payphone. It's impossible to say what you'd do, that's the funny thing with fate. You can't not have done what you did.

It isn't logical to play with what ifs, but for some reason, that's just something the human mind is conditioned to do (If you had read the story, Tony wouldn't be at the bookstore. He'd be sitting with you trying to figure out how Roberts' story had his name right, along with some loose details like his attachment to school and the presence of a girlfriend, let alone the striped shirt and beard). Once again, it's pointless to wonder. You didn't read it, you weren't going to.

Anyways, let's get to that wonderful ending; I'm sure Tony's a flip case by now.

Tony wasn't lying when he said he had to break up with his girlfriend; it's just that he couldn't do it so suddenly. Maybe he should give it a moment and check out the story you turned him on to, he thought. After all, they've been together for years; he owes it to her to let his thoughts cool down.

It took Tony about a half hour to get from the pizza place to the bookstore; the walk was pretty far. He normally wouldn't have made the trek, but he needed to put things together in his mind (some things needed dissection, I guess you could say). Once he got there, he asked one of the clerks where he would find Adam Roberts' brilliant short story, The Mystery of a Statement, and the clerk responded with a chuckle, "It's right this way!"

Tony's appearance was quite fun for the clerk, it added a little bit of spice to the day. Every once in a while, a boy would come into the bookstore around lunchtime with jeans, a beard, and a striped shirt, asking where Robert's story was. It's possible that some were just playing a joke, but Tony seemed the oblivious type. The clerk made some small talk with Tony on the way to the location of Roberts' story. Upon reaching the shelf, the clerk laughed once more, "There it is! Enjoy!" Tony assumed either the clerk was slightly off, or this was a funny story.

When Tony opens the book, you're finishing the second to last slice of pizza. He decides to read it right there, just like he thought you did, so he sits in one of the larger chairs and props his left shoe up on his right knee. At first, he's not impressed. A choose your adventure piece - without the choices essentially? He's always hated second person stories because he's had a hard time pretending he is the "you". Roberts' lovely story, of course, will show him that the "you" is just someone specific that readers should imagine themselves as. The way people sometimes wonder what it would be like to be someone else, perhaps.

As Tony reads on, he begins to panic. The first concern of his comes upon reading the line, "Your friend Tony is waiting outside the door and you are pleasantly surprised because you don't have your cell phone on you." The next line is far worse, "He is wearing his only pair of jeans and the striped shirt he wore the night before." Tony speed-reads a few more lines. The pizza place. Then a paragraph later - SNID!!! That one pushes Tony over the edge and he looks around the store as if Adam Roberts himself is standing behind a stack of books.

He quickly calls you on his phone but you don't pick up. He's so flustered by the story that he forgets he just read the part about you not having your phone. Mostly it's just that he isn't really accepting the text yet. He calls twice and leaves a frightened sounding message. The main themes of his message (you'll hear it later) seem to be fear and a strange woman in the bookstore that he doesn't trust. After reading some of the chilling sentences that basically describe his day so far, Tony has acquired a heightened ability to not trust people. The woman he is most concerned about may have been singled out due to her worn down appearance, which is a shame, but it's in moments like these that stereotyping becomes a bit more justified. You're sitting at the pizza place, stuffed, completely oblivious to it all.

Tony remembers you saying the ending is what's really interesting. Something about the final pages being open ended and interesting. He flips franticly to the second to last page, hoping it will somehow calm him down; though he's almost positive he can't relax by this point (The effect of the mentioning of SNID is sort of irreversible.). He begins reading at, "The suspicious old woman..."

The suspicious old woman seems to lurk towards Tony as though she is going to harm him. She is wearing a pink tattered dress and moves in a jittery fashion. There is something rumbling about under her dress that has Tony frozen like a statue. He glances up and down - at the story, then back to her, hoping to find some sort of solution. He tries to think in ways that the story doesn't predict, but it seems to have him pretty well figured out. He could toss the book violently at the woman, maybe killing whatever beast is rummaging about her stomach. He assumes that adventure isn't covered in the text.

Instead, he just sits, as the old lady approaches him, dragging her feet. A foul stench, similar to that of a dead animal overwhelms Tony's nostrils as the old woman nears him. He is so interested in the end of the story that he risks looking down for a second to catch up. He reads of his failure to take action ("Instead he just sits, as the old lady approaches him") and is frustrated beyond words. Unable to read the final paragraph, Tony looks up to the woman, now standing right over him. She raises her arm to point at the book, and at that moment, a grey ferret climbs up and peeks its head out of her disgusting cleavage.

The ferret startles Tony to the point of dropping the book to the floor, and the woman asks in a wretched tone, "Can't finish it?" Tony runs out of the bookstore, without reading the most important, yet confusing paragraph.

The old woman bends down somehow to pick Roberts' story up off the ground from where it landed. She lethargically maneuvers towards the shelf where it is the only missing copy, and she places it back with the others. She throws her hands in the air and, almost in unison; her ferret climbs out of her cleavage and atop her head. It sits there on her greasy grey hair, blending in. Animal atop animal, the stench is unbearable. If you zoom in just far enough, you can see the ferret's eyes twitching at an ungodly rate. It has fallen asleep and looks quite cute resting there in the tufts of the old woman's hair. Give the little guy a couple seconds and he's in full blown REM sleep. The woman's eyes close and she enters the pizza place.

Goat Show

By Brett Cihon

It was 4:30 in the morning and Gabe was watching a band struggle to catch and kill a loose goat.

How did it come to this? Gabe wondered. So late, and I'm watching a group of morons run all over the stage after a farm animal. Is this what constitutes a good show nowadays? Not the music, not the scene, not even the drinks, but how many animals the band is willing to sacrifice onstage for the purpose of what? Entertainment?

As the goat galloped in every direction, Gabe thought it was the band members who were in peril, not the goat. They'd been chasing him for minutes, and on the few occasions they managed to corral the thing into a corner, the goat would lower his powerful head, charge, break free, and the chase would start all over again. So far, the only item that had been sacrificed was a rather expensive-looking bass guitar, its neck snapped under the weight of a hoof.

Gabe's friend Andrew leaned close. "They're doing it all wrong."

"What do you mean they're doing it wrong? How else do you kill a goat?"

"They really should have given him some tranquilizer first. Drugs or something, you know?" Andrew answered, then returned his eyes to the stage and took a long, slow sip of beer. Gabe puckered his face in disgust, but he agreed. Some tranquilizers might have made this more pleasant, for all parties involved.

For most of the night, the party had matured about how Gabe had expected. Metal bands played indecipherable noise on a stage positioned in a back corner of a warehouse. Young adults lounged around on various shipping containers and abandoned printing presses, watching the bands with little interest. Gabe hadn't talked to any girls, but he hadn't really expected to anyway. A party like this didn't exactly attract Gabe's ideal woman. No, here were the black metal types; complete with dark makeup and daddy issues. Not the kind of girl you brought to a nice sushi restaurant. But Gabe didn't mind. The design of the warehouse, the domestic beer, and the over the top performances were enough to keep his mind occupied for the evening.

"I guess they couldn't find any animal tranquilizer," Andrew whispered, leaning back over. He took another pull from his beer can.

"Find animal tranquilizer? What do you mean they couldn't find animal tranquilizer? They found a goat, didn't they? You'd think some pills would be easier to find than a goat, at least in the city." Andrew contemplated this for a moment, nodded, and then took another swig.

It was around 3am when the party had begun to taper off and Gabe wanted to leave. By then, the mildly normal kids had left and only the real metal heads were staying around to watch the last band, Christ, Christ, the Collegiate Killer, take the stage. Gabe was about out the large bay entry door, but Andrew had convinced him to stay.

"No man, we got to stay for their set," greasy haired, mostly drunk Andrew had explained. "I hear they do some crazy shit." And how crazy it is, Gabe thought. He watched silently as the goat thrashed its head and kicked its way out of a corner, longing for a path off the stage.

About midway through Christ, Christ, the Collegiate Killer's first song, one of the band's two guitarists set down his instrument and disappeared behind a metal door. He stepped out of the door minutes later, struggling to lead a dingy, curly-haired goat by a black collar to the front of the stage. After a few kicks and grunts, the guitarist finally managed to tie the belligerent animal to an amp near the singer - center for the crowd.

The band finished their second song (if you could call it a song, Gabe thought) and waited in silence, letting the absurdity of the goat's presence slip into the crowd. Then the singer, a weak grin on his face, announced, "Hail Goat Satan," kicked at the goat, and screamed off into the third song.

The goat jumped around, called out, and pissed on the floor while the band crunched away. For a while it looked as if this was the act - the crazy shit - a breathing, moaning goat as the centerpiece of the act. But around the time Gabe was pontificating on how the goat's harsh cry may have actually improve the overall sound of the band, the singer unsheathed a butcher's knife attached to a belt on his hip. "Tonight," the singer growled, "tonight, we offer goat blood for Goat Satan. Fuck Satan. Hail Satan."

The singer waved the knife wildly in the air while the band sped through one (or was it two?) more songs. When they were finished, they bowed in unison, the singer muttered another "Hail Satan," and the band descended on the goat, trying to form a circle around the raving animal. The goat, in his terror, spurring an increase of strength, broke free of his shackles, charged headfirst at the bassist, giving him a good shot in the groin, and sought an exit.

"Tranquilizers would have been key," Andrew said, as each individual band mate looked increasingly embarrassed. "I don't know much about goats, but I'd say that goat is pissed."

At first, the band members seemed more enthused with the new development. But after realizing how difficult it was to grab and maintain a struggling goat, the band's hooting had dropped away, and stress began to show on their faces. No one had managed to keep a hand on the goat for more than three seconds. Every tentative touch was met with a ferocious shot from a goat leg. The goat, not to be surrounded, charged randomly at kneecaps. Only by sheer luck did the drummer trip over a loose cord and fall back just in time to avoid a goat head aimed for the stomach.

At first it was funny, but the crowd had grown anxious. They wanted blood. Or peace. Or music. "Pussys!" a girl dressed in back yelled out. Others around her laughed and started to offer insults of their own.

"Kill your drummer, he sucks!" one chubby, younger looking partier yelled.

"What a joke!" someone else yelled out. "Kill the thing!"

The motions of the band became frantic, but the more they rushed towards the goat, the harder the goat fought them off.

"Maybe they could stun it first. With a bat or something?" Andrew suggested.

Gabe didn't want to see the band hit the goat with a bat, but he did sense that crowd unrest and individual shame would spark one of the band members to act; bat, rebar, bass guitar, whatever. And that would get gruesome. Gabe was ready to tell Andrew that he would see him later, that he didn't want to see a goat get smashed with a bat, or decapitated, or whatever the band was planning to do, when a deep voice broke through the crowd.

"Give me the knife," Gabe heard the voice say. The band stopped their chasing and looked around.

"Give me the knife."

A thick, strong man in black clothes and heavy boots lifted himself up onto the stage. He was sweating. He wasn't a tall man, but his wide shoulders and thick torso gave him a presence. He walked towards the singer and the crowd silenced. Even the goat's moans fell away, and he settled himself against an amp in the far corner of the stage.

"Give me the knife," the man repeated.

The singer, disheveled and heartbroken with the way the night was unfolding, handed the man the knife. The man studied it for a second, pushed his long black hair out of his eyes, and moved for the goat. The goat let out a squeal and tried to run. A well-placed leg hit the man hard in the thigh, but the man in black didn't flinch, he kept moving. The man swooped up the goat, one hand on the throat, and held it in his arms. He moved with the animal to the edge of the stage and looked out at the crowd.

"Let's take a vote," the man said. "Whoever wants to see the goat die, raise your hand now."Not a hand went up. The goat struggled, but the man held it tight. "Whoever wants to see the goat live, speak up now." Again silence.

The dusty air of the warehouse settled down on the crowd. Gabe looked around the crowd, who at one time looked tough in their makeup and steel-toed boots, shuffle and shy their eyes to the ground. They were no longer in charge. Someone in the crowd coughed, but the man in black kept still, his eyes shifting over the crowd, the muscles in his arms throbbing against the goat.

Finally, to the side of the man, the singer spoke up. "For Satan," he muttered. The voice sounded confused, saddened.

Without hesitation the man kneeled to the ground and put the knife to the goat's neck. He chuckled. "For Satan then," he said and drew the knife from ear to ear.

A strange ripping broke the silence of the warehouse and dark blood ran down the dirty coat of the goat, collecting there, then falling in large drops onto the stage. The goat's eyes rolled back and his body slumped over, defeated. The man let the goat fall into the blood, rested the knife on the ground, and wiped his stained hands over his black jeans. He stood up, grinned at the crowd, and jumped off stage. The band, white faced and silent, watched the dead carcass of the animal for a moment, before slowly, one by one, returning to their instruments.

Outside the warehouse, Andrew giggled. "I told you they do crazy shit," he said. Gabe shook his head and tried desperately to steady his step. They were south of the city, way south, and they would need all their heads to find their way back.

First Responder

By Tony Gill

Mostly what they call heroes are just those that do, that are called to action when everyone else is standing around. This happens surprisingly often. It happened to me last week. I'm a doer.

She was standing by the curb with the rest of us. I noticed a small break in the traffic in the near right lane. Then, and as I told the paramedics, for no apparent reason she stepped down from the curb as if to cross the street. It made no sense. Even a child would know not to walk across the street when she did. It's like that videogame "Frogger," except whoever had the joystick, because she obviously wasn't working the controls, didn't have her hop front to back, side to side. She just set out in a flat line. My guess was drugs or maybe she was one of those mental patients with a nervous brain that speed-lope wherever they're going. Either way, there she went; and to look at her walking away was to look at someone whose next and last step would have immediate and life-altering consequences.

She wasn't from around here—an Indian I think. And no, not like the baseball team. A Hindu or something. Her hair was braided down her back, and she was wearing this billowy off-white blouse, like a threadbare sheet, down to her feet. She was also wearing tennis shoes, I remember, because one of them flew clean off.

In my peripheral, as she set out to cross the street, I made a move to jump out with her—just one of those numb lemming mentalities—but caught myself in mid-stride. I watched her walk forward without the slightest hesitation—like I said, point A to point B—and then she casually turned her head and stared at the car barreling toward her. I couldn't help but think about the cult leaders that set-fire, poison and hack their followers into tiny pieces. Those starry-eyed sheeple never ever resist, much less question what awaits. How could all those people forget their heads and get tricked into going out like that? Her guru, the bastard with the joystick, must be a real smart sadist marching her across three lanes of traffic like a golem.

And the driver of the Mercedes coming at her—probably thinking she would get out of the way because there was plenty of time. I don't know. I don't know what he was thinking. Again, he didn't. I would have at least laid on the horn. She had two more lanes of steady traffic left to cross and nowhere to go but back to the curb. I saw the driver look at her and she looked at the driver and they both expected the other to do something. Anything. Except continue doing what it was they were doing...but hey, they didn't do anything. And that was just it.

Tires squawked. Just enough to slow down to about thirty or forty, I imagine, then a loud thud. Her hip, I think, came into contact first with the chrome grill, causing her to double over the hood. Of course the sheer momentum flipped her entire body up on top of the Mercedes, almost to the windshield. Gradually, she slumped off the far side of the car. I noticed one of her shoes had rolled across the street next to mine at the curb. The laces were still tied.

And you know, she never went down. The other lanes were still packed with speeding cars as she braced herself against the side of the Mercedes and continued forward, pure determination.

Shit, I couldn't believe it. I was stunned. Left thinking, a ton of metal just slapped her and she hasn't snapped back to reality? It seemed like I stood there for a good five minutes with the whole world in freeze-frame. Eventually, I dropped my backpack. And when I moved the world started moving again as if it were waiting for my cue to resume its normal spin. I sometimes imagine if I had stayed still would the rest of the world still be stuck in that moment, unable to go forward?

The Mercedes crept past me with the guy inside and a passenger, his girlfriend or wife from the look of it, yelling and swearing what an idiot he was, and how could he hit her when he saw her standing there. The rage in her voice came clearly through their rolled-up windows. But the girl wasn't standing around. She was walking.

I ran over...or, well, I can't really remember, but one moment I was on the curb and the next I was standing over her. She looked at me with full moon eyes and I hesitated to touch her feeling a little embarrassed because she was staring at me like I had a horn sprouting out of my forehead. Actually, she was the one with a large goose egg on the side that bounced off the windshield.

I didn't let go. Instead I asked her if she was alright. It's a dumb question considering what she did to herself. Just the same, she didn't say a thing. I grabbed her arms. She was still staring at me with that ridiculous glare when she grew as soft as a balloon filled with Jell-O. And even a body as small as hers is hard to manage when it goes slack. So I struggled at first as she began to go unconscious right there in the middle of the street with the traffic all around. Her body slid down the side of the Mercedes. I was having trouble propping her up on the car so I could get a better hold of her when a guy came over and barked at me to get her off the damn road. And I was trying but she was a dead weight. So I grabbed her shoulders, motioning to him to do the same with her legs, and we shuffled over to a grassy spot near the curb.

Though she wasn't responding to various voices asking if she was alright, her eyes were open a sliver, which was a good sign I thought. All the folks who just there, dumbfounded now gathered around. I could feel their inquisitive stares as I hovered over her, craning around one another to peer. Someone made the call and before long an ambulance hopped the curb. A female medic, along with the three others she ordered around, asked no one in particular why this woman's pants zipper was unfastened. It was accusatory, and I felt directed at the two of us males who were crouched around her. My face warmed with indignation. I kept silent and let a middle-aged woman like herself inform the medic that we hadn't touched her there.

At this point I stood and backed away. I saved her goddamn life and I'm being questioned over sexual harassment? Not that I was fishing for a "Thank You" from a bunch of strangers for doing what none of them managed to do, but I surely didn't expect accusations like that.

I raised my hand when the female medic asked who the nearest person was to the accident. She wanted the details, details for the record, for the lawyers. I told her everything except for the part about me freezing on the curb and not grabbing her sooner. I'd already been suspected of something I didn't do, why put any more ideas in this lady's head? The Mercedes driver was still sitting in his car, on the phone, un-accused and un-interrogated. Probably talking to the family lawyer, strategizing ways to keep this off his driving record. His female passenger stared out her side window with what in any other situation would be a bored expression. I suspect she was experiencing a much milder version of what the girl her husband or boyfriend dented his hood on will have when she comes to.

After giving out my contact information and answering a few brief legal-sounding questions and after the ambulance was only a noise competing among the resumed traffic, I picked up and went to work. I was late to work, but no one noticed. A few days went by before I called the nearest hospital. I told the receptionist what had happened and the date it happened on, but without a name she snorted when I asked if she recalled the young woman. There were too many patients, I was told. So I asked if anyone had died that day that fit her description. I'd have to identify myself as a family member for that information, she said.

Does it count as a rescue if the person saved is on her deathbed by the time you get there? I was the first responder, and I hesitated. I may have been the closest to her but a few feet away ten others never budged.

Just yesterday, an insurance lawyer called. He wanted to know a few details of what happened before the accident. I told him that the medic wrote everything down I had to say, including the phone number he used to call me. He still wanted to go over what happened:

"Was she in the street"?

"She was in the pedestrian crossing."

"Was the light green?"

"Which light?"

"The one she was crossing against."

"Probably, I think."

"In your opinion, was she crossing the street illegally?"

"I'm not answering that."

"How fast was the car going when it struck her?"

"I don't know."

"How fast do you think?"

"I'm not going to try and guess."

"How far from her were you?"

"Right next to her."

"When she was hit? Why do you think she crossed the street at that time?"

"Maybe she was confused." I asked what her condition was. He didn't know. I asked her name. He said it was confidential. I told him not to call me again. He wished me a good day and ended the call.

I'm sure she's alive and fine. A cast, a broken hip, a few cracked ribs and a concussion. Why did her shoe come off and zipper come undone? That's as much a mystery as to why a receptionist from a hospital with suburban in its name failed to recall anything about a pedestrian hit by a car. And why weren't there any police at the scene? There are those dreams that you confuse with reality for a little while until you remember something strange occurring that seems too implausible to ever have happened. What happened seems like that sometimes.
Jenny Gets a Beater Bike

By Will Schmitz

Jenny woke up thinking that this wasn't going to be the day she was going to find her beater bike. What a rotten dream she'd had - finding herself on a beach where a tidal wave was coming in. The pressure, rush, force, and sound of the water was awesome. Jenny was twelve and dreams about suddenly being crushed out of existence were not common to her. The worst part of the dream was when she lay looking up at the wave (she was on her stomach and had to crane her head up so far to see the top of the wave that it hurt), and it felt like her heart was going to stop. She tried to struggle awake, but was pinned to the beach. The wave was coming down when a voice outside her window came in to save her.

"Jenny. Jenny? You there?" It was Sara.

Jenny's eyes opened. She was on her stomach. Her chin was propped up on the folded-double pillow. Her arms were stretched out to her sides.

"Jenny, wake up. I've been looking through the garage sale ads and I think I've found a beater bike for you."

Jenny was so glad to be alive that the possibility of finding a bike that day wasn't even important for a few minutes. As I said, Jenny thought her bad dream was a sign saying that nothing good was going to happen this day.

It was a Saturday morning in mid-summer, July 24th. Jenny had been looking for a beater bike for over three weeks. She'd even managed to convince her mother, twice, to drive her to neighboring towns on Saturday morning to visit yard sales. No more of that.

"You'll just have to be more patient, dear. One of those kinds of bikes will turn up."

And then her mother asked Jenny what she wanted. "One of those ugly things." But in the case of beater bikes, ugly is beautiful, at least it is to the folks in the know about such things. You can ride a beater bike in any weather. You can ride it hard, too - over curbs, dirt mounds, and on the bumpy trails that wove through the woods nearby.

Sara was Jenny's best friend, but Sara's best friend was The Bishop, Kirk Bishop, also known as The Cork because he was known for liking to tell corkers. Whatever story you told, Kirk would always try, and mostly succeeded, in telling you something even more astounding. He read a lot, especially his mother's Enquirers. There were plenty of corkers in there.

Jenny found Sara in the kitchen where Mrs. Blaustein had forced Sara to sit down and get ready to eat a bowl of cereal with Jenny before the two of them went all over town. It didn't matter that Sara hated breakfast and that eating something in the morning made her feel nauseous.

"Why's Sara want one of those bikes when she's already got a ten-speed?" Mrs. Blaustein was saying when Jenny dragged herself through the kitchen door and carried herself over to the table to plop down in a chair. "Not even a good-morning from you, young lady?"

"I had a bad dream. I still feel asleep."

Mrs. Blaustein bit her lip slightly when she heard Jenny say this. Jenny'd never reported a bad dream before. Mrs. Blaustein told herself that she'd have to consult a child development book about his. She mentally reviewed all the things she had to do that day and made a place for a stop to the library to read up on this phenomenon.

"Where's there a beater bike for sale?" Jenny asked Sara.

Sara, who was looking mournfully into her bowl of cornflakes that were beginning to get soggy, perked up. "Washington and Market Streets. It's supposed to start at nine sharp so we should go as soon as we can."

Jenny turned to her mother. "That's not too far, Mom. We could go over there and come back and have breakfast."

"You eat first," Mrs. Blaustein said firmly. "That bike's not going anywhere in the next ten minutes."Sara looked back down at her bowl of flakes and put her left arm on the table so her unhappy head could have a hand to rest on as she ate. An idea came to her about these uneatable flakes.

Jenny owed her a favor. "Would you mind changing bowls with me?"

Jenny caught on. "I don't like soggy flakes either, Sara."

"Yeah, but you hate them less than me. Who came over to tell you about this great bike? Who woke you up from that nightmare you were having?"

"Okay, pass 'em over."

The corner of Washington and Market was seven blocks from the Blaustein house and Sara and Jenny walked, or rather ran, all the way there, barely being polite to the people that they knew who saw them along the way. Mrs. Oliver, who was working in her flower beds pruning her white roses, is older and was particularly offended when the two girls flashed by. Mrs. Oliver had them in to taste her strawberry jam only three days before. She is a widow, lonely, and had shared some of her most treasured remembrances with the two. Mrs. Oliver felt abused and as she bent back over to continue working, told herself that it wasn't worth the effort to talk to and be kind to young people if these were the results. Only interested in themselves.

Jenny had noticed Mrs. Oliver's dissatisfaction and tried to say something about it to Sara. "I think on our way back from the sale we should stop and talk to Mrs. Oliver for a while. She looked mad at us when we went hurrying by."

"You want that bike, don't you?" Sara said as they rounded the corner of the block.

"I haven't even seen it yet. It might not be the one I want."

"Aw, come on! Whatever that old woman's mad about, we can make it up to her later. My grandma's always getting mad at my dad about something and it's usually no big deal."

As Sara and Jenny approached their destination, they got anxious. There were cars parked on both sides of the usually un-trafficked street. There was quite a crowd assembled on the lawn of the house the girls were heading for. As they reached the edge of the crowd, a fat man in white shorts pushed a beater bike out to the sidewalk. Sara grabbed her hair and moaned. It was a premier beater bike. Its fenders had been painted a bright yellow and the frame was painted sunset purple. The bike's only apparent defect was that its back tire was flat, a $3.67 investment. Sara sat on the grass and continued to stare after what had been lost.

"Maybe I couldn't have ever afforded it," Jenny said as she stood appraising the thing. "I only have fifteen dollars."

"Go and ask him," Sara replied.

The fat man was huffing and puffing as he tried to fit the bike into the trunk of his late model Detroit manufacture. Damned trunk wouldn't hold the suitcases of a trained family of fleas.

"Pardon me," Jenny said. The man stopped fussing with the bike for a second to take a stern look at Jenny.

"Yeah? What can I do for you?"

"Could you tell me how much you paid for that bike?"

"This thing?" he said regarding his treasure without mercy. "Five and a half bucks. Why?"

Jenny kept calm. She didn't want to show either disappointment or excitement. She wanted to outsmart this fellow if she could. "I'm just curious. Did you buy it for yourself?"

"What? Are you trying to be a wise-guy? In the first place, it's a girl's bike and in the second place... But never mind all that, what do you want?"

Jenny stood fidgeting and was uncertain as to what to say. "It looks like it's in good shape."

"Yeah, all it needs is a tube patching and a new paint job. You still haven't said what you want, honey." The man had built up a sweat getting the bike angled so that it would fit in the trunk and it was obvious he wanted to leave. Jenny was forced to make an offer.

"You wouldn't consider selling the bike, would you?"

"I thought that's what it was," the fat man said wiping his brow with the back of his hand and wiping it off on the white Bermudas. "No, not even for twenty bucks. I drove all the way over from Whitebluff at six this morning to be the first one at this sale. The bike's for my niece. She's been nagging me to get her one of these dinosaurs for three weeks. Well, I got one now and I ain't gonna give it up. Sorry."

He turned and walked around the side of the car muttering to himself about nerve and audacity. The seat of the car must have been hot, both Jenny and Sara thought, because the man winced as he slid behind the steering wheel, but it was too early in the morning for a seat to have heated up that much. The man had sat down on the open safety pin he had used to pin the garage sale ad to his shirt the night before. Jenny and Sara considered the punishment just.

"Well, there goes the best lookin' beater bike in town," Sara said as she got up from where she'd been a spectator on the grass.

"Let's go get a malt at Ambrose's. We have to shake this bad luck."

"I don't think even that will do it. I think my dream sort of jinxed me for the day," Jenny sighed as she stared after the bike disappearing around the corner of the street. "I should go home and spend the rest of the day safely indoors."

"We could watch cartoons. What time is it?"

"About nine-thirty."

"Great. The Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner Hour will be on."

"Okay. That might help shade the curse. And we could do some drawing after that. I got a set of pastels the other day that I haven't had a chance to use yet."

"Should we walk past Mrs. Oliver's and talk to her for a bit? I wouldn't want her mad at us."

"Yeah."

The two were about half a block away from Mrs. Oliver's - they could see her bent over as before with a small pair of shears in hand - when Kirk wheeled up behind them on his beater bike and slid to a halt. The girls told him about what had happened to them and what they had planned for the rest of the morning. Jenny's mood went from mild to gray because she knew what was going to occur next: Kirk would be invited along, Kirk would get all of Sara's attention, Kirk and Sara would want to go out and go swimming or something leaving Jen at home to experiment with the pastels by herself. That was the scenario, Jenny decided. She resigned herself to it.

"We have to talk to Mrs. Oliver first, though," Jenny reminded the other two.

Mrs. Oliver was grumpy when they came up to her. It's hard to make up with some people right away. The three of them attuned to the old woman's state of mind and left her after five minutes of simple exchanges about the way the flowers looked and the weather. Mrs. Oliver seemed to take pleasure in contradicting everything either Jenny or Sara said. When Jenny said that the roses seemed prize, Mrs. Oliver soundly asserted the beautiful flowers' ordinariness. When Sara predicted an early and severe winter, Mrs. Oliver disagreed and said a long Indian Summer was on its way to be followed by a moderate winter.

"She sure was ornery," Kirk said as he walked his bike along.

"We made her mad," Sara explained with a shake of her head.

"It's stupid. We should have just come right out and told her about the beater bike and what a hurry we were in."

The cartoon show had one outstanding Tweety and Sylvester.

"That's from the Depression," Mrs. Blaustein said over the kids' shoulders as they ate popcorn out of a big Tupperware bowl.

"How can you tell that, Mrs. Blaustein?" Sara asked.

"By the way they've drawn the cat to look so down-and-out. The bareness of the block they're on says it, too."

The three were puzzled by Mrs. Blaustein's remarks and would have asked more questions about the Depression if the cartoon hadn't started to get so wickedly funny. Tweety's nest was in a tree in the center of the dog pound. The cat would have some trouble getting by the bulldogs to the bird. Mrs. Blaustein had ideas about the satirical implications of what that situation meant too, but she was already behind schedule and had to leave the house.

Jenny got up from in front of the set to go to the kitchen and kiss her mom good-bye. "When's dad coming home? I hate it when he has to work on Saturdays."

"Managers have to put in extra hours when there are changes being made. He should be home by no later than four. I'll see you at six. Goodbye, hon." Mrs. Blaustein had already picked up her purse and keys from the counter top and now put them down again to kiss her daughter. Mrs. Blaustein began to act in a great hurry after the exchange of affection and almost went off without the keys.

When Jenny returned to the living room, the cartoon show was promising to be back in a minute.

"I'll turn it off," said Kirk, rising from his feet and scooping the last handful of popcorn out of the bowl.

"Why?" Sara asked.

"Cause it's not gonna return with anything except a roll of program credits," Jen answered picking up five un-popped widows.

"They just want you to watch an extra minute of commercials."

"Leave it on! I want to see if you two are right."

"Didn't know you were from Missouri, Sara," Kirk cautioned.

"Whatya mean?"

"You're being mule headed."

"We'll see." Jenny and Kirk were right, making Sara feel preyed upon. Jenny decided that she and Kirk could be closer friends if she kept him around the house for the afternoon. She offered to get out the pastels and drawing paper.

But Sara spoke up saying that it would be better to go outside and do something. "Don't you agree, Kirk?"

He agreed. Jenny didn't want to bring up her bad dream or the reason for wanting to hide from the world in front of Kirk. Let Sara tell him, she would. As Sara and Kirk were leaving they invited Jenny to meet them later. "Come out and watch the brigade after supper."

"It's no fun to come out and have to sit and watch," Jenny pouted.

"Don't worry, you'll get a bike before too much longer," Sara said half encouragingly.

Jenny spent the rest of the day doing dishes, reading, doing laundry, and drawing. Anything to stay inside during the day. After the sun started to set, that would be all right. It was the full day that was dangerous.

What to draw? Jenny fussed with the pastels, selected colors, but couldn't start a line. Finally, she collected books and magazines to work from. One of the books was about Carnival and how it was celebrated around the world. She didn't want to use that immediately. She put the book aside to look at completely later on. Jenny opened the other books and magazines at random, until she'd opened to a photograph. The idea was to take a central image out of each photograph and make a composite picture out of it. Instead of drawing a picture of a hippopotamus underwater, he ended up on a house lined street. Egrets took the place of telephone poles and trees became fishing hooks. The sun was purple and the sky was yellow. The picture pleased Jenny and she decided to keep it. She never showed any of her work to her mother and, in fact, hid it in a place where her mother wouldn't find it. Jenny felt that her mother was too careful with her.

Apparently, her mother was trying to avoid the mistakes that had been made with her two sisters. It was better when her two sisters were at home. They were on a trip to France now with their high school class. When Jenny's blue, stay at home days came, at least one of her sisters spent the time with her.

Jenny took up the Carnival book after putting away the drawing materials and hiding the picture. Dancers in Rio marched in a throng with matching costumes on; they seemed to belong to separate clubs or groups. The first photograph that shocked Jenny was of a very pretty girl without legs who was marching in the parade on her stumps. Jen shook her head. The photo was eerie to her. She stopped turning the pages for a second and began to think about the parades that she'd seen: Thanksgiving Day, Rose Bowl, Macy's . . . The people in the Carnival book were less quiet, less stiff, more frenzied, less happy.

Turning more pages, there were many pictures of people dressed like devils or like poorly attired and cheaply adorned princes and princesses. And the fat people - greedily fat, like no fat people she had ever met or seen. Then there were pictures of the New Orleans Mardi Gras, but the pictures were of whores and people drunk or on drugs. The picture that scared her the most reminded her of her dream. A group of people dressed like sea monsters with wood-like skin and draped in green kelp marched down an Icelandic street. So many of the people were dressed like animals. The distinction between animal and human was erased in these Carnival merry-makers. In the American parades, people were people and animals were animals. Jenny put the book back where she'd found it. The questions the book raised, Jenny decided, she would ask her father. He hated to hide things and spoke openly about what his daughters were curious to know, to the chagrin of Mrs. Blaustein, who believed the world should be revealed to children in stages.

The daughter anxiously began to await the arrival of her father home. She'd have two hours to pose questions to him in before her mother returned.

Mr. Blaustein was well over an hour late when he turned into the driveway. Jenny, at first worried, then quailing over the lost opportunity, was resigned by the time her father arrived. He was usually so punctual! He professed tremendous belief in the appropriateness of punctuality, and today, but Jenny told herself that it fit that he'd be late today.

Going out to greet her dad, Jenny could see him smiling broadly at her from behind the windshield. Peering around the side of the car, you could see that the trunk was open. Jenny ran around to the back of the car. There was a beater bike folded into it.

"Stopped at an auction I read about in the paper this morning during a break. This one okay?" Mr. Blaustein asked as he put his hands on the frame to pull it out to show his daughter.

"Okay? It's great!" Jenny said jumping up and putting her hands around her dad's neck to give him a kiss.The bike wasn't as flashy as the one that she'd missed buying that morning, but it was there, and no flat tire. She could ride it right away.

"You want to try 'er out?"

"No," Jenny said shaking her head and running her hand along the handlebars and frame. "Mom will be home soon and I want to help with supper. I'll take it out later."

Taking possession of the bike, Jenny led it into the garage and leaned it against a ladder. The bike was much discussed during supper. Jenny's father had followed her into the garage, turned on the light, and together they'd gone over the bike's strengths and weaknesses.

"Have to get you a new seat for it. The springs are shot under this one," her dad said.

"Oh, Dad, the springs are fine. What it really needs is an ace paint job," Jenny said.

"A paint job, eh?"

"What do you want to paint it?" Jenny's mother asked.

"I was looking through that book on Carnival that you got from the library and there's a peacock man from Brazil whose costume's colors . . ." Jenny continued to explain. Mrs. Blaustein pursed her lips slightly at the thought that she'd allowed her daughter to be exposed to such material. A safer place would have to be found. What the child development books at the library had to say about nightmares had disturbed Jenny's mother.

Supper dishes done, Jenny wheeled the bike out of the garage and oiled and cleaned it. Then she rode the bike towards the woods. Umph; not as easy to pedal as the ten-speed. She put the bike on one of the narrow trails that led to the center of the woods where there was a glide. You could hear the voices cheering and yelling and shouting as you approached the open area. It was the beater brigade engaged in their nightly activity, forming sides and jousting with one another until everyone was gloriously tired. Jenny nudged her bike forward to join sides.

Addiction

By Tammie Painter

The lights are dimming. My coma will begin any second now. I shut my eyes, waiting to be satiated. My addiction finally satisfied. I envy people with easy cravings that can be fed on almost any street corner.

Not so for me. I'm an addict chasing the dragon I thought could never be caught: dreams.

Just as some people are hooked after one drag or ride on the Horse, I can't dream without being left with the hand-shaking, jonesing for just one more. Everyone's had them, those dreams where upon waking you will yourself to fall back to sleep hoping for the dream to continue. I need the dream to continue.

The ones that leave me cursing the rising sun like a modern day Nosferatu are surreal, simple, and, yes, sometimes sexual. An espresso and chat with a long dead author or actor (albeit in a mish mash-only-exists-in-dreams ramshackle house where the owner misplaced her pet ducks); a tour through Rome with no one around except the ghost-hosts of dead gladiators and Caesars; the kiss of a stranger I can't find again; or the espionage dream where I almost save the world (were it not for the real-world cat pawing at my head to be fed). I'm pulled from these by daylight and strain to return. Like the alcoholic barely sobering up for the workday and counting the minutes until happy hour, my life has become a long series of waking hours.

I started learning how to bring on the best dreams, the blissful escapes from the real world. It didn't take long to notice a glass or two of wine before bed delivered my sleeping mind to a vivid world. It wasn't alcoholism. If it weren't for the dreams the noble rot induced, I could care less about my glass being filled. Still, my spouse became concerned when I began going through my box-o-wine (the cheaper the wine, the better the dreams) in a week.

I then discovered the subconscious wonder world of Nyquil. I remembered the bizarre nightly plays I'd have as a child when my mom would dose me up with the thick unearthly green liquid. Half a dose was enough and I could sneak my sip before hopping into bed where I urged my mind to quiet its waking thoughts and allow me back into my preferred realm. Empty bottles were easily disposed of in my company's recycling bins and a new bottle could be picked up from the drug store on the way home. Problem solved. Lovely dreams and no more nagging about needing to "see someone about my drinking."

With the knowledge of what alcohol could do, it didn't take a great leap of curiosity to wonder what visions stronger drugs could bring. The lab my sister manages studies addiction. She's the only one I've told about my cravings. "You're an addict," her eyes lit up with the diagnosis.

"What? You want to study me?"

"My sibling guinea pig," she cooed and it was tough to tell if she was mocking or serious.

"I just want some of your stuff."

Her research centers on coke and meth. Stimulants wouldn't help me, but over years of waiting for grants to come through, she has concocted some of the best LSD this side of the Willamette. And being around college students meant unlimited access to pot.

"What effects do you expect?" I'd become no better than one of her mice.

"I'll let you know."

I was disappointed. The pot only made me sleep. No dreams, just a strange feeling in my mouth. Not an experience to feed an addiction. The LSD had so much potential but never delivered the coherent and focused dreams I wanted, only a series of swirls and percussions of reality. I suppose it's better that way because if I couldn't even drink a few glasses of wine without being harassed, what would have happened if I was dropping acid each night before tucking in? I reported to my sister and picked up an economy size bottle of Nyquil on the way home.

I can't give it up, the dreams, not the Nyquil. If I could have the subconscious intensity without the green goo, I'd gladly give up that sickening antifreeze-like stuff. But I yearn to get back to that espresso, to my superhero/spy antics, to one more kiss, to explore another alleyway with the gladiators.

After a while, eight hours proved to not be enough.

I started napping in the lounge at work during lunch. A website on power napping worked better than warm milk. A jigger of Nyquil, a few repetitive phrases, and I was out.

Then that hour wasn't enough. I'd wake up angry because the good part of whichever fantasy world I entered had just begun. I took it out on my secretary one day and she reported me. One reprimand was no big deal with my work record, but when my naps started at ten and ran until two my boss took notice. Yet another reprimand, but being a junkie I ignored the negative consequences of my addiction. I had to get back. Someone in the dream needed me there, wanted me there. Who else in the waking world could understand me as well?

There were no further reprimands. I was fired without severance. My job status was easy to hide at first. I'd leave the house in the morning – Nyquil in tote – and head to the park or public library depending on the weather. Librarians and police woke me on occasion, but for the most part I could dream away for up to six wonderful hours.

My unemployment didn't go unnoticed for long. There's only so long you can hide a lack of income when you have a joint checking account and the mortgage is due. For the lie, not for the job loss, I was dumped."I had such great dreams for us," was all my dear one said before closing the door. I didn't mind. I could dream about her anytime I wanted.

The following weeks brought me exceptional visions. I slept great having the bed to myself. I no longer woke up cold from the covers being yanked off or balancing on the mattress edge while someone sprawled across the bed. I could take my wine without guilt or nagging and celebrated the end of my Nyquil consumption.

I dreamt. I slept. I was happy. But it couldn't last. It's not that I had a problem with my sloth. I was content in my dream world, but the mortgage company expected payment I couldn't deliver.

I lost the house. My bed went with me to my sister's.

One night the television aired a program on coma patients. Researchers stated that, despite conventional wisdom, the patients were showing brain wave patterns similar to people in a dream state. I never knew I could be so interested in comas.

"How do people end up in comas?" I asked.

"Usually major trauma to the brain – injuries, infections, overdoses. I think of it as the brain shutting down the body to protect itself." I couldn't imagine darting in front of a car to achieve what I was thinking. There was too much risk for ending up dead. But a coma, a way to always dream; how wonderful.

"They can induce comas, right?"

"Sure, generally to reduce pressure in the brain."

"What if someone wanted to be induced?"

"Your life's not that bad. Besides, no one is going to 'treat' you now that you don't have insurance."

"You have access to hospital resources. You could do it as part of an experiment."

"You're crazy. Why would you do this?"

"You've spent years researching addiction."

"But most people's dreams don't bring about a dopamine surge capable of causing addiction." She spoke sternly, but the glint in her eyes gave away the interest she was trying to hide.

"Exactly, so study me. Take me as a research subject. Knock me out, hook me up, and analyze my brain. Hell, you can even shave my head and stick probes in, like you do with your mice. Whatever. Just let me dream."

She was hooked. The novelty of the concept was too much to resist. She arranged for me to spend three nights in a sleep lab to obtain a baseline reading and then bribed a physician to induce and monitor me. My darling sister padded the grants to fund my care.

Now, everything has been prepared. Today is my last day in the conscious realm. I told her to keep me under until the project couldn't be funded any longer. It could be ten days. It could be ten years. I should want to walk in the park, go to the zoo, bungee jump, something. I don't. I just want to dream.

As the light of my consciousness fades I don't think I've ever been happier.

Constellations

By Nicholas Utke

There was a single tap at the door, followed by an extended pause. Then four quick knocks rattled in the high ceilings of the entry and main hall. They swooped past the portraits and landscapes that hung there, dusty, and hovered over the freshly scrubbed floorboards. The sound mingled with the crackling fire in the drawing room and drifted down, settling like ash into the fibers of the Persian rug at Mother's feet. The door was unlocked. It clicked open but didn't creak. Marianne was the only one who knew how to open it so it wouldn't creak.

"Hello?" She closed the door behind her and took off her boots.

"In here." Her mother didn't speak up. The words were faint but distinct.

Marianne folded up her cane, set it with her boots, and walked down the hall to the drawing room. She knew all the secrets of this house. She knew the place behind the furnace where Dad used to keep an antique snuff box full of cocaine, and how the ringing pipes would harmonize with the sound of water gurgling down the drain in the kitchen sink when the temperature setting was just right. She knew the floor plan as a minefield, where, sneaking out for a glass of water or the security of her little brother's bed after a bad dream, a misstep could send creaks and squeals exploding into the night.

When she was nine, Marianne made Jack swear not to tell their parents that the view of the street from her bedroom window had begun to blur. Jack knew what was happening when Marianne had entered "The Awkward Phase." The furniture began to move around, a few inches left or right, but always in Marianne's way. Coffee mugs appeared on countertops, like the bruises on her hips and arms, only to disappear into the trash, the consequence of a careless elbow. Their mother said the clumsiness would eventually go away, and it did, but not before the truth came out: Marianne was going blind.

It was when Marianne came out of her room wearing her blue dress before Grandpa's funeral that their mother found out. A simple mistake - she could no longer remember which dress had lace around the collar so she chose one at random. Marianne was taken to the doctor the next day, and after a series of tests they explained that there was nothing they could do. She thought of her mother's wails now as she walked down the hall.

Upon entering the room, Marianne was overpowered by the smell of booze, which competed with a heavy perfume that reminded her of pears and lavender. She held out her hand and her mother gave her a curt hug before returning to her usual place, sniffling in the armchair. The furniture was in the same configuration it always had been: two leather couches at a right angle near the fire, end tables here and there, a well-stocked oak bar on the far side of the room and a large bay window. Marianne navigated the room with ease and took her seat nearest the fire, setting her clasped hands in her lap. She listened to her mother's little grunts as she yanked the armchair to face the fire. She must have been sitting, staring out at the snow before Marianne arrived, as she sometimes did when something terrible happened.

"How was your flight?" Mother asked.

"Oh, you know." Ice rattled in a glass.

"Did the turbined man give you a hard time?"

"What?"

"The cab driver," Mother said, "he was wearing a turbine."

"It's called a turban, Mother, and no, he wasn't giving me a hard time."

"Oh. But you must have been sitting out there for fifteen minutes."

"We were talking. His name's Ankur."

"What did you talk about?" The fire popped. "Is school going well?"

"I don't want to talk about school."

"Well, what am I supposed to say, Marianne?"

"I don't know. Just stop pretending to be so chipper."

Her mother lit a cigarette and, exhaling, said, "I have been crying for the past two days, I just... A person can only do that for so long." The smoke coated her vocal chords; the words came out softer, almost wet. Marianne was quiet for a moment. She leaned back and crossed her legs. Her foot began to wiggle and the fire warmed the left side of her face and neck.

"It's good to see you, Mary."

"Then why'd you send me away to school?"

Her mother finished her drink and set her glass too forcefully on the table. "Marianne, we have been through this so many times. Why do you want to talk about it now? You just said––"

"Why'd you send me away?"

"Exeter is one of the best high schools in the country. They can accommodate you better and their reputation will get you into an Ivy League school."

"You just wanted––"

"I cannot see why you are always complaining about it. There are so many girls that will never have the opportunities you do."

Marianne stood up. "You're lying. Stop lying."

"Don't raise your voice at me. Do you have any idea how hard it was to get you in––"

"You just didn't want a blind girl in your perfect family." Her hands were shaking now. "Then Dad left and––"

"Sit down!"

Marianne sat down.

"Now," Mother sighed, "we are not going to talk about this now." She stood up and went to the bar for another drink. The muscles in her calves quivered and she leaned heavily on the bar as she poured a brandy.

"May I have one too?" Marianne scooted away from the fire and traced the patterns in the rug with her big toe. She thought about how Jack used to describe everything for her. He used to tell her about...

"Brandy, alright?"

Used to. The phrase implied a kind of potential that did lacked. As though there were a life afterward in which Jack replaced one action with another. He had. He once did. He died.

"Do you have bourbon?" Marianne asked.

Her mother looked over at the back of her head and raised an eyebrow, "Rocks?"

"Neat, please."

A smirk flickered on her face as she reached for another glass. She heaved a small sigh and her shoulders relaxed. Gazing back down at the glass, she poured a double and set it on the table next to Marianne.

"I'm sorry. I don't know why I said that. It's just..." Marianne trailed off as she reached for her whiskey. She prepared to take a sip and felt a small thud next to her on the couch accompanied by a papery rattle. She discovered there a clean ashtray containing a small box of matches and a fresh package of cigarettes. Her mother flopped down next to her and a splash of whisky spilled out onto the back of her hand; her glass was full to the brim. She took a gulp to make it safer to hold in her lap. She felt her face cool a little now that her mother was sitting between her and the fire.

"I suppose you drink all the time out there on the East coast?"

"Not really. They'll expel you for that. Plus, my roommate's father was an alcoholic, so it's not like we have any wild parties or anything."

"Is she blind, too?"

"Of course not." Marianne faced her. "I'm the only blind girl in the school."

"Oh."

Marianne took another gulp of the whisky and followed the burn as it burrowed its way down her throat. She flicked open her watch and checked the time. "When is the wake tomorrow?"

"Nine-thirty. We should probably go to sleep soon."

"Let's stay up for a while." Marianne said. "I don't want to go to bed yet."

"Alright." Her mother lit a cigarette. She shifted her weight and sat a little closer to Marianne. The cushion dipped toward her mother's side; she must have been only two feet away. "Do you remember that hideous sweatshirt Jack wore the whole year he was in first grade? He lost it at the end of that summer before you left and cried the whole day and refused to eat anything. Remember that?"

"The purple one with the constellations on it?"

"That's the one. I can't believe you remember what it looked like."

"I don't. I just remember that he scratched out the Cancer stars because he thought it was their fault Grandpa was sick." A color flickered in Marianne's mind, but she could not name it. She took another gulp.

"Mary," her mother paused. "I can't believe he's gone." She took Marianne's hand and squeezed it. Marianne squeezed back, but returned her hand to the drink in her lap.

"How did it happen?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"What do you mean, you don't want to––"

"He fell down the stairs, alright?"

"––talk about it? I have every right to know."

"You couldn't tell me on the phone like everyone else?"

"This is not about you, Marianne." Her mother got up stomped out of the room.

"You're right," Marianne shouted, "it's you who hurts."

"Fine." Marianne kicked her bedroom door shut behind her. She drained her glass and set it on her old dresser. Her mother's heels thumped overhead, beating out a distressed rhythm between the master bedroom and the bathroom. The water started running. Marianne shook her head and began to feel around the room. This was something she picked up when her parents started taking Jack out to the movies and leaving her home. These outings frequently included dinner, and after a few hours of memorizing the smallest details of her surroundings, Marianne welcomed the lukewarm consolation of reheated restaurant food.

She now ran her hands along the humongous wardrobe they used to keep in the attic and the walls, now cool and smooth like an eggshell, having shed their wallpaper skins. Nightstands flanked the head of the bed and in the corner various tables and hardwood chairs sat legs up around a heap of old blankets. She smacked her chin against a wayward chair back and the musty smell that rose from the blankets, combined with the ugly sound that preceded it made her think of the chaos of a giant set of bagpipes. How soon after she left for school her room had become a guest room? How long had it been a guest room before it was used for storage? What hid in the stacked boxes that now filled the closet, and did she care? She heard a strange noise from the bathroom upstairs.

The shower masked it at first. A light moan nestled in the static of spraying water and the rustling curtain. Then it grew louder. The hot pipes screamed like a wave washing out the echo of pleasure.

By the time Marianne realized what it was, she had tunneled down through the layers of quilts, beneath the fine cotton sheets in her bed. There was a lump there, on the side where she always slept. She pulled the lump close and examined it, realizing instantly that it was a child's sweatshirt. The sound had changed. Her mother's moans had twisted into a low animal howl, and no matter how hard she pressed the sweatshirt to her ear, that mournful cry reverberated in her head. When she finally untangled her hair and hands from the sweatshirt, she found the house completely silent. She decided to return the sweatshirt to Jack's room.

Marianne stood in the doorway and fingered the plastisol stars screen printed on the boy's sweatshirt. Her science teacher had told her that the whole astrology deal was a sham. It was off by a couple thousand years and the characteristics of the signs were vague anyway. How could a few specks of light, in reality orbs of exploding gas, unfathomable in magnitude, have any bearing on each other, or us? How could those stars, infinitely distant and cold, resemble an archer, a crab? It didn't look anything like a crab. She began to count.

Three steps out into the hall, twelve to the grandfather clock that stood in the corner near the front door, a hop over a band of creaky floorboards, two steps left and then came the stairs. The third and the seventh had to be skipped completely, but the ninth stair groaned only on the right side. At the top of the stairs she was greeted by a cloud of steam, soap and cigarette smoke. She turned her ear to her mother's room and listened for any sign of life. She thought she heard breathing, not in that room, but in the hallway, maybe ten paces away.

There had never been a reason for Marianne to believe that a spirit inhabited the house, but she found herself searching for any memory that might justify this belief. But everything was different now, wasn't it? She scrambled into her little brother's bedroom, panting.

Her mother had cleaned the room, Marianne knew right away, because the floor was completely uncluttered. It hardly seemed like boy's room at all without the mess. It smelled strange, too. The absence of odor: sweaty socks and grass stained clothes, hoards of candy stashed on holidays and quickly forgotten–– any trace scent of these things had been eradicated by cleaning chemicals. Smoke thickened the air. Marianne made to sit down on the bed, but it too had been moved since she went away to school. He had slid it back toward the far window, and put his desk beside it. She lay down on the bed and sighed. His pillow was missing, so she rolled up the sweatshirt and put it under her head. She wondered if Jack could ever see the moon from his bed at night, and whether it was out there now. She decided it must be. She was beginning to get sleepy when, again, Marianne thought she heard breathing.

"Hello?" she whispered, "Jacky?" Nothing. She could hear her own heart pounding."Mom?" She sat up. "Mom, are you here?"

Marianne got up and put her arm out in front of her as she took small steps toward the other side of the room. She stopped. She put her arm down, and changed direction, avoiding where the desk chair might be. She would see what was in his closet, she decided.

All his toys had been put into two large trunks, and she sat down and began to root through them, trying to find the only thing that had ever been "handed down" in the family, one of those dolls with a soft body and a hard plastic head. It was a boy, and Jack had liked it because when it was laid on its back, its eyes closed. If their mother had ever found out Jack was playing with a doll, she would have accidentally tossed it out with Dad's favorite tennis shoes, and then feigned ignorance or sympathy while helping them find the missing item. Marianne wondered where he could have hidden that thing.

She pulled a tennis ball from the trunk and tossed it over her shoulder toward the desk. It bounced a few times, and disappeared. Marianne cocked her ear to some kind of movement. As though in response, the ball rolled back, tapping her on the base of her spine.

She felt like she had been struck by lightning.

Paper crinkled and a match was struck.

Marianne huffed, stood up and turned around. She put her hands on her hips and faced the direction of the desk chair. She wanted to say something, but when she sought words, the room expanded and all air was sucked out. The floor began to vibrate and she could feel the vacuum of space simultaneously compressing her and pulling her apart. She grabbed the lid of the old chest and yanked at it with all the strength she had. Toys cascaded over her ankles and across the floor in a sharp plastic wave. The crashing seemed ceaseless, like enormous television snow. Marianne envisioned game pieces and miniature cars scattered like constellations at her feet. How could such distant points of light resemble anything like a family? And then there was only silence.

She had to escape. She paused at the door, but the silence persisted. She made for the stairs but, having misjudged the distance, she gasped, finding herself already precariously balanced with her feet halfway off the top step. She curled her toes and flailed for the banister. In an instant, she felt diffused warmth wrap around her waist; she felt the ghost of an arm make a faint impression in the fabric there, never touching her, as if to stop her if she fell.
Boar and Sow

By Andrew Dimitrov

I. Office, Exigencies

Each keystroke's dull thump echoes like a gong in John Henry's head. Sweat beads on his forehead as he seeks, voraciously, to lose himself in the labyrinth of words and numbers. Ones and zeroes amalgamate into disparate symbols, animating from the fount of his desktop monitor. The phone, sleek modern juggernaut of his disgrace, sits dormant.

With effort, he locks his gaze onto the screen. He whimsies his ghost into the lattice of data, hoping for absolution from his fear. Ones and zeroes. One: the burst of the divine, the source of life. Single celled organisms, axons, sperm, god, existence, childbirth, obelisks, mountains, galaxies, ecstasy. Zero: the absence of existence. Demons, viruses, dendrites, death, caves, black holes, existential chasms.

If John Henry concentrates, his reality reduces to this amalgamation of ones and zeroes. As the tectonic plates mash, so he will spawn endless matrices with the simple duality of one and zero. Thus he does, with fervor. If he could lose himself entirely — if he could become a spirit of his industry — he would align with the machine and evaporate. The phone would never ring. He would vanish from the office, perhaps never having been there. His cubicle would become a void amid the bureaucratic frenzy. Dapper heels would thud past his workspace, and it would be nowhere. This is John Henry's relentless fantasy.

The phone rings.

He had expected it. Though as inevitable as death itself, the monotone screech tears through John Henry like a disease, rendering him frail. His hallucinatory ode to his work, his feverish attempt at escape, crashes in an instant. For a moment distorted into an age, he stares at the crimson beep of the active, waiting line. A chill festers in his gut. Machinelike, he reaches for the phone. He is canine now, capable only of acknowledging the putrescent rectum thrust to his face. John Henry, the nonhuman, puts receiver to ear.

"Yes."

Heather, the nubile slut receptionist: "Your wife on line one, Mr. Henry."

"Please tell her I am indisposed."

"Oh, you'll have to do better than that, Mr. Henry. She's already called twice today."

"Please... just tell her... tell her...."

Giggling, "What, Mr. Henry?"

A cold edict sinks through John Henry's temperament. He will do this. As Christ — as something greater than Christ — he will carry out his assignment, though it leads only to Inferno. Fate has exercised her cruel machinations; he is the Boar. Tonight he will mount the Sow.

"Put her on the line."

"Trouble in paradise, Mr. Henry?" Glee.

"Put her on the line." The things he could do to Heather in the dark.

An unsettling calm before the storm; a black oasis. John Henry channels his violence, his being, into this moment. In this chrysalis, an indescribable nihilism, a blank torment, can be felt but not understood. The world stops. John Henry accepts his demise, his skin reddening as he mashes the phone to his ear. He is a vessel, concave now. Through the machinations of inexorable doom he metamorphoses: he is a slate and will bear his wife's imprint. He will bear it.

"Hello."

"Hi, honey." The Sow's voice is purposefully, detestably saccharine. John Henry hallucinates a brief musical accompaniment to her voice: a grotesque declension of discordant violins, an orchestra of the undead. His face pales.

"Late night?"

"You... betcha."

"Well. Don't work too hard."

"Sure. I'll be coming."

"You'll need to save some of that famous Henry energy."

Click.

The sow's lips dripped murder. He could see her — hear her — glistening on a bevy of plush beige, a symphony of crevices. A gelatinous empire of folds in which to drown in mammon. His doom. Inevitability.

There is a fight. He must protest. He will not be enveloped. There is an escape. There is a God. John Henry scatters the mechanistic aura of trifles that lie on his desk: papers, notes, clips, reminders, nothing. A flurry of nothings. He curses, grunts, tears at the chains of mediocrity pinning him to his station.

Yet he relents as quickly as his rage swelled. Memos, clips, and falderal fall gently about his head and upon his desk. His exertions, his pains — meaningless. There is no meaning save that most feral union which will take place this night under the hiss of blankets, a crime so vile no man dares comprehend.

You'll need to save some of that famous Henry energy.

Laughable, John Henry whispers to himself. Laughable "Henry energy," the sow's christening of his awkward thrusts on their hair-raising honeymoon. It is called love. Lovemaking. A grin formulates as he absconds the cubicle. For once, it is not forced, though his visage is an aberration, a supposed human face. His legs, steel poles, clippety-clop to the men's room. The chirrup of fluorescent lights bathes John Henry with realization. This is reality. The grin melts.

He is forty-one years old. He is not in shape. He is not beautiful. He has been balding since his college years. Sweat blooms in his underarms. He is a flesh artifact serving a triumvirate of purposes, equally weighted: a manipulator and prognosticator of numbers and symbols for a colorless, pedestrian organization. This is his calling. This gives him meaning in a society of like flesh-machines. This is his job.

A sentient being, capable of ecstasies and torments, yet unable to objectively relegate or classify them. He exists in a shell of black unknowing. This is his person.

A deliverer of coding material in the most base process, at once man's greatest aspiration and undying shame. A husband to the Sow, a sallow genetic banshee shrieking for fulfillment, a concavity which must be filled once a year, on this, the darkest of days. This is his hell.

John Henry watches the water's crystalline flow into the polished matte of the drain. The tiny droplets coalesce into a miniature torrent, whisked to sudden darkness past the grill. Sudden, sweet, amniotic black. Forever. A liquid stream in which to sleep, to die. Perhaps to revivify as another tiny droplet, expunged from the gaseous heavens to fetter the horizon in amorphous, lubricious wet?

The bathroom door crashes open, tearing John Henry from his futile whimsy. In stumbles Andy, a loathsome obelisk of a man — if it can be called a man. A grinning, intrinsically doglike dilapidated shell in a corduroy suit that clashes hideously with his face's wan palette. A bloodless grin of primordial origin. Gently wallowing slabs of base white normality attempting to veil the freak show of animalism within.

"Working hard or hardly working, Johnny old boy?"

"Working... Andy." John Henry grimaces, fractures his face into a thousand globules so that Andy might see in the mirror a visage so hateful, so full of pestilence, that he will depart. John Henry would laugh as the colossus lumbers away in ague disgrace, but instead his horror multiplies: a hand, corpulent and jaundiced, slithers from the bog of Andy's person and alights on his shoulder.

"Rough day there, buddy?"

Ice cracks in John Henry's veins. A gentle minuet, then a stream, then a gush, and finally a torrent of dark, feculent rage bursts from his core. It ricochets through his nerves, paralyzing him. Andy's hand is childishly, morbidly flocculent; a plush glacier. It gently smoothes the flannel wasteland of John Henry's shoulder.

Millennia pass. Hot blood gorges the capillaries in John Henry's maw at his rage, his shame, his inability to strike at the child-leviathan behind him — or at himself. An inferno of malice roils in John Henry's core, hisses through his pores. This crevice of Building Six, Municipal Office Park B assumes a celestial chill, yet the glacier does not retreat. John Henry blinks back tears, so repellent is the absurdity of his nightmare, so putrid the mephitis of his thoughts.

Eons pass. Andy's canine intellect may perceive a certain vacuity, an emotive dissonance in response to his mediocre attempt at bailing the sinking ship of John Henry's psyche. Much more likely, the simpleton detects only the deranged twitch of John Henry's tendons. His snout reels at the foul pheromone of John Henry's enmity. He instinctively senses danger. Miraculously, the meaty paw retracts. The behemoth retreats. A murmur of banal consolation — "Keep on truckin', buddy" — and a maladroit apology bumble from some estuary within the gelatinous slab of face. He averts penitently and, with remarkable celerity for a body so encumbered by gross, disproportionate anatomy, wheels about. The disgraceful pageant of co-workerly commiseration is broken. The steely pall of normalcy resumes when the behemoth shambles from the bathroom, tiles squeaking beneath the cheap loafers upon which his gaze is deservedly fixed. The door hisses and clicks shut.

John Henry exhales. The universe's cosmological clockwork briefly aligns to a state of mercy. Evanescence.In mediocrity, there is a certain peace. Yes. John Henry presses his palms to his face, and all is aglow. The men's room effervesces, undulates, and effervesces. It synchronizes with the beat of John Henry's heart, the tick of his watch, the drip of the faucet, the steady uncoiling of his fibroid nerves.

The dull croon of fluorescence at last illumes not perdition but a mathematically congruous vestibule where John Henry is comfortably alone. No demons tear at the foundation. A gentle swell overtakes his nervous system. At first he protests; his protestations are liquid soothed. John Henry is dulcified. He starts to think of cream, pinwheels: pleasant things, infantile things. He dares not suppress the simper that wells from his throat, leaks from his lips. A sweet absurdity. He smiles, gibbers to himself, to nobody.

In the aether of his mind's seraphic ocean, John Henry can meditate, cerebrate. He has time. It is meaningless, but it is time. A blinking delirium enters John Henry's peripheral vision. Egrets eclipse the mordant sun in timid flickers. Oscillating penumbrae dance in swoops and folds, yet always return, tethered to the smooth plank of oak upon which slumbers our John Henry. The susurrations of the endless, torpid ocean rock and cradle him. Sound and sky converge into a scintillating nocturne.

A slow enervation overcomes John Henry. He embraces it, glistening, smiling. The soft lamentations of the egrets are eclipsed by the sound of John Henry's hand slipping viscously along the plank. He slips into the sweet delirium of the majestic abyss. The fractured umbrella of the outer world falls away, gracefully.

The tide rips him away in its perfect pendulous regularity. The evaporating panorama of ebullient Solaris herding the egrets, the plank, the waves, are replaced by velveteen gloom. John Henry is perfectly naked, alone yet surrounded by a chorus of spectral familiars. They tenderly perforate the cast of his skin, glittering through his veins, filling him once more. John Henry is a bubble in this ocean; he bursts.

I want you to save some of that famous Henry energy.

Doom. John Henry's beauteous empyrean rapture miscarries. He finds the amniotic ocean a mockery. His glittering familiars shatter into infinitesimal shrapnel, piercing his veins, their cruelty exacting. The felicitous velvet black inverts itself. The Sow must be pleased. The Sow demands genetic coding material. The egrets, in a reverse cavalcade of shimmering white noise, become vultures.

Egrets become vultures.

John Henry hits himself, abusing his person in front of the mirror. With the elongated talon of his one hand which he has allowed to pullulate for just this purpose, he serrates the skin of his other palm. It is futile, of course. His pain fails to assuage his grief, or to depreciate his acute receptivity for elective morbidity. He is appalled at his own philosophic fragility, daunted by his own frailty. Tendrils of red spread across his face.

John Henry awakens. He is not the diviner, nor the architect of this delirious circumstance. He is a cog. He is not nothing, no matter how hard his febrile neurons scurry to compute nothing. He is something. There is something. Machines must execute their functions before joining their discarded brethren in the scrap yard. Stars must explode, subtracting themselves. Concavities must be filled.

It is simple math: he must fill the Sow with seed. Females of certain arachnid genera devour the male, post-coitus. In other species, more execrably evolved, the logical male will circumnavigate the abdomen of the massive female after insemination and dutifully insert his head into her mouth, condemning himself before the chopping block so that she may more easily devour. It is fitting; she must feed the children that will soon rent the walls of their egg sac, clamoring for blood.

Divested of emotion, this mathematical fugue takes on a perverse beauty. John Henry accepts this. No need for histrionics. No breakdown. John Henry wraps his fires, his emotions, his ecstasies, and his torments into parcels and tosses them into the chasm of his subconscious. He is blank. He will deliver these base materials. Slowly, without thought, he soaps his self-imposed stigmata, watching his sanguinary particles sluice into the drain. No turning back.

John Henry snaps his head upwards and straightens himself. The figure in the mirror is macerated, undone. Taking a comb from his pocket, he rakes it through his pate's remaining wisps of cilium. He rotates the faucet's handle until its dripping ceases. His muscles tense. He can feel the handle dissociate, almost, with the stem. The revenant in the mirror blurs. John Henry's faculty swarms with crimson; he is at the breaking point. Yet he relents, releasing the handle. He looks at his mirrored visage and counts, slowly, to fifty, and the blurring lessens. John Henry is human enough to take tentative steps towards the bathroom door.

For only a moment, he hesitates, one foot on cold symmetrical tile, the other sinking into sodden gray carpeting. The office. Adrift, he is finally able to mobilize. He resumes the role of prognosticator/manipulator without thought. The bathroom door shuts behind him, and he is struck by the mechanistic halo of the office, the universe of physical information which composes the illusion of sanity and meaning.

Sunlight — streamed across ninety three million miles of black nothing from a great nuclear orb, fragmented by ozone, rivened by chlorophyll of the oak sheltering Building Six, dithered by glass — ignites dust particles, confuses with fluorescence, and finally illumes the cubical labyrinth of which John Henry is an inextricable part. He perambulates the office, slowly. He pays careful attention to the grey-white ornamentation, the incessant keyboard taps mingling with subdued laughter, the light pabulum which makes bureaucracy tolerable.

These banalities distract from the crude reality: a cabal of advanced primates related not by blood but by the shared symbolic idolatry of finance, of power. They cower in workspaces in communion with electricity, compiling maps of an immaterial landscape that exists only in dreams mediated by television and computers and words. Their personhood is reduced in order to transcend the indefinable, ineffable plane of success — tranquility. The images refract back to them.

John Henry convolutes his lips into a grin and gives Andy an eagerly reciprocated thumbs-up. John Henry's nightmare is absorbed by his fixation on process, reduced to a thin strand of wire taut in the back of his brain. He resumes a businesslike veneer at his desk. Balance at last.

It is now five twenty. John Henry sits as the apotheosis of neutral solemnity, of bureaucratic indifference. Start menu. Time card. Papers back in folders. As if blind, he elongates his limbs, distends his cirri upon the desk, recollecting and reassembling the minutiae of clerical dross which mottle his workspace, his miniature, meaningless outburst a distant memory now. His movements so cursory that they are involuntary, John Henry does not command his own body but merely watches. It is soothing. Click, click go the mouse-parts, scurrying into their holes. The wire in his head remains taut. It is now five twenty five.

John Henry jerks, elongates his form in a dance: the closing ritual. Jacket on. Start menu. Shut down. Computer off. When he passes the reception desk, he will be assuaged. Another button on the coat. Another ant upon the mound. The wire is in the back of his head.

A stream of flannel, corduroy, and beige flows to the elevator. Heather chats nimbly with an intern, lifts her leg to gesticulate. The baboons moan with subdued ardor. Undeterred by their eroticism, John Henry passes wordlessly.

"Oh, Mr. Henry?"

"Heather? What." The elevator door begins to close. John Henry does not hold it.

"Happy Valentine's Day."

Within the shrinking aperture, Heather's smile widens, producing the fangs of the arachnid mother in John Henry's whimsy. Her laughter becomes vicious, slurping at his wan visage. He knows she sees his sudden loss of constitution, his horror. He knows she knows he knows; it gives the slut caustic buoyancy as she touches the intern. Her cruelty becomes lust. The wire snaps. The door closes.
Revolution

By Elizabeth Sparenberg

I stepped into the bitter sunlight of a new morning, myself bitter from waking. My miscarried dreams still clung to me. I dragged myself and them across my building's parking lot until the damp and bitter sunlight corroded the film of fantasy on which they fed, and they dropped off me like old moths, and I was alone in the brass reality of morning.

My car looked dirtier than it had last night. It was covered with an unfamiliar film. I remembered, suddenly, with the jarring force of nostalgia, that the wind last night had been so strong it had entered my dreams and tossed me from year to year of my life, so that instead of the usual linear nonsense, I dreamt a howling puzzle of memories. The dirt on my car then must have blown there from the construction site down the street.

I got into the car, turned it on. It also found this commute too early, but with heaving sighs and grunts, it conceded to back out of the parking lot and amble onto the road. We passed the culprit construction site, the thrift store, the pet shop with the doleful, short-lived exotics, then met the curve onto the freeway, where we joined other sleepy cars and bitter workers herded by traffic signs to the metropolis ahead. I imagined, with the guiltless certainty that others imagined with me, breaking suddenly and screeching horizontal across two lanes, causing a massive, bloody pileup, and stopping so many days abruptly in their tracks. I buzzed with the thrill of the idea, but there was always the fear of the questions that would certainly be asked of me if I survived. I reached my exit and left the traffic behind me unmarred.

Then I could see the Serenity Inn, my daily destination, where I earned my rent by catering to preoccupied guests who would not offer any serenity to the inn, but expected the other guests to do so.

Having connected parking lot to parking lot, I left my car, a smutty smirk between the expensive, freshly washed rentals the guests brought in. The sunlight was voluptuous now, and almost incarnate in its intensity. It swarmed the concrete of the parking lot and encrusted the northeastern half of the building. I swallowed the sunshine in the manner of the shadows, whom fatten with the day and become lean when the sun wanes. I gulped it in until I nearly drowned in the heavy, unrelenting luminance. Only then, when I had to escape or be transformed into a brittle shadow-thing, could I bring myself into the inn and position myself behind the front desk.

Across the lobby, I saw the breakfasting business men, and tourists, disillusioned with travel, who would soon become an onslaught of guests checking out and disputing bills.

My first interaction of the day was with a man, mid-50s, who had a bristled face and scorched voice. He slapped his blue plastic room key on the desk. "I'm in room 303." Though he worded a statement, he voiced a command.

I cocked my head slightly, hoped I was smiling, and asked, "How may I help you?"

"I'm in room 303." I typed his room number into the database to pull up his information. There was a note. I clicked it open. It was a frown-face.

"Mr.Warrell?"  
"That's me."

"How may I help you?"

"You haven't heard about my problem?"

"No, I'm sorry."He banged his fist on the counter. The couple checking out with my co-worker turned their hungry faces to us and inhaled the drama, eyes gleaming.

"I reserved a smoking room!" Mr.Warrell shouted. "I reserved a smoking room, but I did not receive a smoking room. I need a smoking room. I am staying here for a week and I need to smoke in my bed."

"I apologize, Mr. Warrell." I had stopped masking my apathy months ago, after realizing that sincerity was too strikingly alien in the commerce of this inn. He flicked his hand at me.

"Find me a smoking room."

"Let me see what I can do." I scanned the database. The management, attempting to conform to the new national green trend, had eradicated most of the rooms designated for smoking, and only five remained. None were available. "I'm sorry, sir," I said in the vacant, placating tone necessary in customer service. "We don't have any smoking rooms available during your stay."

"I reserved..."

"I'm going to go ahead and upgrade you to a balcony suite. You are welcome to smoke on the balcony."

"I don't need no, damn balcony suite! I need to smoke in my bed!"

"I'm sorry, sir."

"This is your fault. I reserved a smoking room." He yanked a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and slipped one into his mouth, gripping it between his teeth as he spat, "This place is a shit hole."

He sulked to the automated front door. It slid open. Before stomping outside, he lit the cigarette, turned, and swung his head as he exhaled so the smoke swept across the lobby. I watched the trails of smoke curl around the browning fruit left over for late risers, then dissipate into the shafts of sunlight weaving through the tree branches outside the lobby windows. I was working a ten hour shift.

After breakfast, I watched the front desk manager, a stocky man with sharp features and deceptively benign eyes, strut across the lobby. The previous year, he had been bestowed with the responsibility of choosing the new lobby design from a set of corporate templates. He decided on an earthy green and brown color scheme, with curve-backed wooden chairs in the dining area, and, to his delight, pink lights, which offered a diffused, sleepy quality.

He allowed the large lobby windows to remain uncovered during breakfast; he believed the morning light was invigorating, but after 10:30, when the graying breakfast buffet was carted off to be re-heated and eaten by the housekeeping staff, and the tree branches outside were skipping with contented birds, he pulled closed the thick lobby curtains to block out the increasing daze of sunlight.

Throughout the day, satiated guests tumbled in from the dizzy outdoors and, sighing out their happy exhaustion, settled gratefully into my boss' constructed ambiance. For them, it was a relief from the duties of enjoying their vacations. For me, the unchanging, calm lighting blurred the hours so that my shift became long and timeless. If I did not arrive early to work to stand outside and gorge myself on morning, I would succumb to a delirious waking slumber. As it was, by the end of my shift, my temples burned, my visual track slurred, and my thoughts crawled. I did not even have the energy to change out of my uniform. I simply clocked out and walked outside.

The day was already slipping away. Long shadows, like fingers, clutched the light. I felt the coolness of a day in decline. The sunlight had ripened while I was inside, and now, thick and sweet and lazy, it was giving in to evening. I ducked into my car. It was hot, but I left the windows up so I could experience, vicariously, the moods of light my parked car had collected. I backed it out of the spot, and steered us back down the route we had taken that morning. Watching the same cars as the previous evening drive past the same streets populated by the same pedestrians, all of us united by our private routines, I realized it had become superfluous to observe my surroundings. I turned onto the freeway, knowing the green Honda would merge before me; I would pause for the silver Toyota truck, then merge and glide home.

The impact left me no room for breath or thought. I was solely feeling: The weight of my own car crumpling onto me, the lightness of spinning out of control, the aggressive burn in my left side, the painful itching on my neck, the jolt of a second impact. After my car crashed to stillness on the guard rail, my instincts rushed back. I dragged air into my mouth, but it squeezed through my lungs and there was not enough. I began drifting. My left arm was searing; heavy, immobile. My right arm tingled with an uncontrollable levity. But there was someone else. Between a medley of neon splotches, I saw hands unclipping my seatbelt and maneuvering my body out of the crushed vehicle. It hurt. Maybe I screamed.

There was a period of chaos when my eyes tried to manipulate the light into comprehensive images. Then clarity. The pain and commotion became background as my focus shifted away from the influx of light. To my horror, I saw what I had unconsciously been avoiding seeing my entire life. The vision weighted me with an awesome, hollow gravity. Between the pictures built of light, pinpoints of darkness shaped a different image. A giant form towered over me. Like a sheet of night sky, it flickered with the little specks of light left over from life. The longer I looked, the dimmer became those familiar lights, until I saw the complete image this darkness was presenting.

The form was almost human, but sexless and larger than any man or any monument of man. It had no face, but when I looked where it should have had eyes, I felt a vacuum expand from my chest. Before I lost myself completely, I looked away from the empty face to marvel at its enormous antlers. They twisted and undulated like silent, dark flames, and reached forth a distance I imagined surpassed the sky. Hopping along them, gripping and uncurling their claws as they skittered on the great horns, were several vultures. They snapped their beaks greedily, staring down at me. I squirmed under their gaze. I sensed that they were waiting for me to die. These, however, were not the flesh-vultures to whom the Tibetans submit their beloved corpses. They were not interested in the haggard, blood filled mass of my body. They were waiting to make piecemeal the ineffable substance between my flesh, for love of which my earthbound heartbeat and my brain tirelessly transmitted its impulses. The vultures' desire was stronger than my damaged, feeble organs; my mind began to wind down, and my own darkness began to unstitch from my frame.

One of the vultures jumped off the antler to come closer to me. I looked directly into its eyes. They were absolute darkness, unable to even reflect my decades of days. In those true black eyes, I saw an exhilarating freedom. If I gave myself to the vultures, never again would I be bound to sunlight, never again would I ache at the perimeter of an idyllic day. I would be void. The other vultures jumped from their perches. Their beaks clapped with such force that I felt myself quake further and further from life. They surrounded me.

Something tickled my skin. Pricks of light broke through the darkness. At that sight, I felt the exhausting longing to live and see and feel the warm, persistent sun; to breathe. The light conglomerated into an image of a face. It took me a moment to recognize the man looking at me, and then to realize that his tears were falling on my cheek. It was Derek, the man I lived with. The man I told I loved. He was smiling and crying and looking down at my injured body. Half of his face was harsh with stubble. Although I had little control of my muscles, I smiled inwardly.

When he had gotten the news about the accident, he had been shaving. He always shaved his face just before I came home so that the bristles wouldn't bother me when he kissed me hello. He had been thinking of my lips, and that kiss, when the phone rang and unexpectedly halted his evening custom.

Suddenly, I was angry. So angry that my heart jumped, causing Derek, startled, to look at the heart monitor that had just changed tempo. Who was he to be my last image? Each night, his face ended my day. Each morning, before I even saw my home, it was him I looked upon, that face that now hovered over me. His features were too familiar, that line of stubble that halved his face too easily explained; part of the unremarkable clockwork of my existence. Anyone, anything else to be my last experience of light, but not Derek! Not commonplace, inescapable Derek! I wanted to reach out my hand to push his face away, or to turn my head so I could see, instead, the hospital room with its foreign furnishings and strange devices whose uses I could end my life guessing. But I couldn't. Whether by permanent damage, or by constraint, I was paralyzed. Derek was fixed in my visual plane. I glared at him with a silent, unforgiving intensity, until the darkness began again to push out the light

My breathing shallowed; the darkness became complete. In the abysmal vulture eyes, I saw the same ultimate relief, but my anger persisted, roaring and binding me to my painfully crippled body. The vultures skipped along the expansive antlers, darkened eyes tracking my struggle, still hoping, but no longer certain, that they would feast on me that night.
Imaginary

By Erin Kassidy

Just fuck it.

Spend however many years coddling the bitch, and for what? To have her turn around and tell me that I'm not wanted anymore? To be sent out into the cold like some homeless freak? Best years of her life I gave her, and this is the return I get for it?

I drag on the cigarette, retrieved from the ground where someone had snuffed it out before its time. It still has the taste of the other person's lips on it, the telltale taste of alcohol. Beer and ciggs. Only thing left for them is a gun, and we're in ATF territory.

The rain's coming down. It's been raining since she left me. Since she kicked me out, cast me down. It always rains in this city, dripping off the skyscrapers, wind channeled between them until they're little more than the howling gusts of Hell itself; hot and humid as the fetid breath of some forgotten horror, and in the play of the eddies among the trash left on the streets, I can almost see her still, on her hands and knees, digging through the dirt, tending her garden, the whirl of papers about reminding me of the fluttering of her skirts in a sharp breeze.

Growling under my breath, I stalk down the street. Nobody sees me; or at least, they pretend they don't, carefully averting their gaze to not look at me. What must they see, if they do? The hairy look of a man who hasn't had a decent night's sleep in forever? The fire of rejection burning brightly in my eyes, warning those who happen to meet my gaze of atrocities which have not yet been committed, giving them no recourse but to scurry away for safety? I don't know. I can't look in the mirror; I can't stand to meet my own gaze, can't stand to see whatever it was that caused her to reject me in the first place

.

Dropping onto a bench, I rest my head in my hands. It won't be long now until I'm turned away, the authorities come to ensure that the likes of me don't foul the look of their lovely city - though the words burn in my mind, as little remains around but bits of refuse tumbling like ash through the sky. My thoughts turn back, as they have, as they always do, to that last conversation.

She was packing. Her image would be forever in my mind; the long raven hair, the fair skin, her eyes, which could never decide if they were going to be blue or green, and everyone had a different opinion of her who saw her. She saw herself differently still, though she'd never submit to telling me what she thought. Even packing, she could evoke memories of the years we'd spent together, of her laughter, of her sadness and joy.

"Look, I need..." she'd said, searching for the words to somehow make it easier on herself, on me. "I need space. I'm going off to school, see? And you can't come along." She placed her clothes, folded so perfectly, into the suitcase, the only imperfection I could find caused only by the stress of this conversation. Always too perfect by half, I held her. "You can't come where I'm going," she repeated, as if convincing herself.

"I've always been here for you," I told her, stepping forward to embrace her in my arms, to hold her tight. The arms she'd retreated to in safety for so many years, when her father had come home drunk, or her mother was too absent to care, lost in her own world of medication and insanity.

"I'll always be with you, no matter what."

Her tears came as she gave up her fight, or so it seemed, her arms wrapping around me, her small frame almost trying to crush the life out of me, hanging on to what had previously been the only sane, stable source in a life so very short. For a long time she cried, and I held her, keeping the terrors of change at bay, but she knew and I knew that this was the end. That she mourned not for what she'd tried to do, but for what she must do.

"I'm so sorry," she'd said to me, sliding out of my embrace afterwards. Cleaning her face before finally zipping up her suitcase to leave, she gave me one last, sorrowful look. "I love you, Richard, with all my heart... but you're not real."
