The Stories

Given how long we humans have been making stories, it doesn’t seem like it should be so hard to say what exactly a story is, but definitions tend to fall flat, or veer so far into the technical that they miss that elemental quality that draws us in, has drawn us in, throughout history. More and more, and especially in the course of curating this issue, I’ve come to think of the story as a gift. There’s the gift of time — the hours and weeks and months that have gone into each of the pieces below; not to mention the years before that, time in which the writer honed their craft, became the person who could tell this story. Which makes the story a gift of the self, as well. One self reaching out to another — the reader — affecting us, making us laugh or realize what we already knew, somewhere deep down. And here is where, it seems to me, the story reveals itself as a gift that might best be called transcendent, because while it’s the meeting place of two minds, it's more than that, too — not just where Writer and Reader come together, but a channeling of the zeitgeist, the story at once profoundly individual and completely communal. It’s where we see the world on the page; ourselves in another, despite differences in birth or upbringing; where we are reminded that we are both many and one.

— Carolyn Wilson-Scott
Fiction Editor

After sifting through hundreds and hundreds of submissions, I’ve found this batch of tales to reflect a particular distaste towards complacency. A sentiment that seems to be held across the globe this year. Be it on a micro or macro level, many of these narratives harbor an itch that yearns to be scratched or a stone waiting to be turned. Short vignettes nestled within intimate family dynamics or expansive epics touched by the paranormal activities of magical realism. It is my pleasure to present to you the very spirit of storytelling that has moved me while curating this issue in hopes that it moves mountains for any and everyone else.

— Devin Lewis-Green
Fiction Editorial Intern

Lao Tzu (Chinese philosopher and author of the Tao Te Ching) said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” This is one of my favourite quotes because it is relevant to many situations and rings true especially for a writer. That first word, which soon blossoms into a story, is the basis of every writer’s work. Emerging writers probably feel the importance of this ‘first word’ more acutely. It might be their first word of thousands more, or the first story of a line of future accomplishments. I am grateful they have chosen to take their journey with ORP. This year’s work is varied in theme, but they all speak to the courage of putting words on a blank page and filling it with wonder and imagination. I am, as always, in awe of this and am thankful to be a passenger in their journey.

— Michelle Tanmizi
Editor, Emerging Voices in Fiction

intruder

shayna brown

My favorite photo is here, a portrait of the three of us together on the stoop of Granny’s shack. I can’t tell if it was happiness or sunshine illuminating our smiles. Because of Granny, we got to be kids. We never knew our dad, and Mom was lost to a cunning and baffling disease – too lost to be present for us, popping up only in between rehabs and binges.

dirty water

joshua patterson

Dad’s face and clothes were covered in dirt and dust. On his right knee was a bottle of what Momma called “Dirty Water.” He drank the dirty water all day long, only stopping to eat or open another bottle. He got mean when he drank it a lot, probably because dirty water didn’t taste very good, but Momma said it made him feel better.

a brief and melancholy history

Colton Huelle

In black bubble letters on the crème beige hood of my ‘85 Mercedes, somebody had spray-painted the word FUCKBOY. It could only have been the work of Phoebe Starling, and I went at once to confront her. 

She held a Graduate Assistantship in the Wentworth College Archives, which was where I found her, feeding a handwritten manuscript into a document scanner. 

when i look back, i see anna underwater

adam graham

“What’s that on your lip?” your brother would say, and you’d pull it back like a turtlehead. I always searched for you in the bleachers – when you cupped your hands to yell, when you said my name. It was nothing. You were a girl and I, a boy. We were kids, that’s all. But those moments, those memories. They sat and stuck like morning dew.

falling ashes

Shelonda Montgomery

Badass Larry sit on the windowsill smoking a cigarette like he grown. Some boys way older than him stand beside him smoking too. The plastic, dirty window behind Larry has old cigarette burns that’s been on it for years. Larry in my brother Quentin’s class.

the Gorgoneion

Jennafer D'Alvia

In the middle-school hallway on the second floor, Bobby Gattone’s hanging around. The two of us alone with no one else there. I know it by the time I slam my locker door, squeeze the lock closed. Bobby's waiting for me. He's making a show of it, loitering with his large body curved.

 We’re very good at almost

Kyla stelling

There were, of course, things Arthur had meant to say to Elle. A litany of ‘unsaids’ that had, over time, curled like burnt paper at the edges of his mind. But as anyone with a modicum of self-awareness will admit, intention is rarely an honest currency. And Arthur had spent the better part of a year accruing a wealth of intentions, none of which had been exchanged.

Elle, for her part, was a woman of convictions and half-buttoned oxford shirts, the sort of woman who took her iced coffee black and her intimacies complicated. She wore her contradictions like vintage denim—classic cut, faded in all the right places, and shaped more by wear than design. Arthur, meanwhile, was still somewhere inside a book he hadn’t yet written, narrating his thoughts in cadences that borrowed too heavily from other people’s prose.

Whatever had existed between them resisted easy definition. Calling it a relationship would have been generous, not to mention taxonomically irresponsible. It was a shimmer, a

subplot that refused to resolve, surviving across years and partners and changes of address. They had a habit of resurfacing in each other’s lives just when it was least appropriate. Elle had once said to Arthur, not-quite-smiling, “We’re very good at almost.” He nodded; not in agreement, exactly, but in recognition. He didn’t ask for elaboration. The ache had failed to vanish; it had simply become architectural, part of the way he was built now. A sentence he’d written in his head a hundred times and deleted each time before speaking.

It had started again, recently. The texts. Threads spun from digital cobwebs: a photo of her in a dress, a quip about a themed party, a GIF of a priest emerging in robes that Elle captioned as herself, followed by another of a woman stretching in a cemetery—Arthur. These things were, ostensibly, nothing. They were also everything. Because when Elle wrote, Arthur wrote back. And when she teased, he teased back. And when she asked, What do you want? He didn’t quite answer.

Not completely.

Not honestly.

He’d always loved the way she wrote desire sideways, through metaphor and mischief. One of those French New Wave heroines who only speaks in riddles and lipgloss. But love—albeit in dialects neither could ever fully translate—hadn’t been enough to keep things simple. It gestured at something grand, yes, but failed to contain the mess, the misreads, the emotional overflows. Whatever they’d had, it hadn’t lacked feeling. Just structure. Just timing. Just the necessary grammar.

And now they were here, on the other side of another rupture. Part of their cycle. An estrangement that smelled of shame and sounded like a slow dissolve. The kind that had tilted, quietly, with his engagement.

Arthur had recently proposed to his girlfriend, just as Elle had always known he would. Years ago, she’d asked if he would leave his girlfriend, and he hadn’t said no. He just drifted into speculation, into shared daydreams about a life they both knew would never arrive. It was refusal disguised as existential open-endedness, and Elle had seen it for what it was. She always did.

Elle was the first person he told about his intention to propose. There was no confrontation. No explosion of grief. In their ten-minute phone call, he offered that he wanted to be with Elle in whatever way was still possible. They were in a good place then. He wanted it to remain as such. “Romantic,” he’d called it, vaguely, as if he was naming a genre rather than describing a future.

She took the news the way she took most things—with a kind of elegant realism. Except something in her felt quietly rearranged. Not surprised, not shattered. Just heavy. As if she were losing him, or losing them, in a way that didn’t make sense to mourn—but still asked to be mourned. Elle knew how much this engagement mattered to him. And how final it sounded, even when hedged.

From Arthur, Elle needed something that registered. Marked and meaningful. Not flirtation. Not banter. Something deliberate. If she wasn’t set in his future, she needed to know she wouldn’t simply fade. That she was still visible to him, still named, still held.

And so she asked him to write her an email.

A letter.

Like the ones he used to send in the beginning—pages of lyricism and longing. Back when there was space for indulgence and feeling without consequence. When he could offer the fullness of his thoughts because nothing was fixed yet, and wanting her didn’t cost him anything. Not practical, not performative. Just composition that placed her at the center of something.

But to write to her would mean stirring what he’d fought to keep still.

And he couldn’t do that.

Not because he didn’t care. Only because in order to live the life he’d chosen—with his fiancée, with stability, with clean lines and no shadows—Arthur had to keep his heart in compartments. He couldn’t allow the ache to escape. Even the pang of what Elle still meant to him felt like a threat.

A letter would have made it undeniable.

A text could vanish. A call could blur. But to write it out—carefully, completely—made it solid. Spoken things had weight. Written ones, permanence. 

Underneath it all, he knew Elle deserved the part of him that wasn’t barbed with hesitation. She deserved the man who recognized her through language. Who made words feel like touch. But that man was more echo than presence now. She couldn’t reach him, and neither could he.

So, Arthur didn’t write.

And in not writing he broke trust far more intimate than silence.

His withholding, polished and cowardly, made Elle respond in a way that was eloquent, furious, unrelenting. This had become their pattern.

She asked.

He retreated.

And his quiet had calcified into the core of their undoing.

Months later, her birthday message to him had been warm, unguarded; ending with I love you, the way they’d tentatively started saying it again. He saw it. Heart-reacted. Nothing more. A muted ambivalence he hadn’t quite admitted was resentment; something about her not wanting to watch the short film he was making with his fiancée still clung to him. Petty and bruised. When she asked about it, he said a line about silence being subjective. When she pressed, he spiraled. It wasn’t elegant. His avoidance never was.

She had told him once, during a fight that left both of them wrung out and speechless, “You treat closeness like it costs you. Like I should be grateful for scraps. I’m not begging, Arthur. I’m just done pretending you're generous.”

Now they were trying this thing—friendship. Platonic in theory, peripherally flirtatious in execution. Elle was good at narrative design; she had proposed a once-a-week exchange of updates. Breezy things. Observations. The texture of their days. And it had mostly worked. Until Elle, ever the curator of subtext, asked if Arthur would give her a blank slate.

He ventured, I think the question I have is, if past context is blanked, what is left for the future?

She responded, I don’t think we’re blanking the past so much as choosing which parts we carry forward. That feels like a kindness to both of us. What’s left for the future? I’m not sure. But I still feel the thread—that connection that’s always been there—even if the shape of us is changing, more consciously now.

Arthur waited to reply. He told himself he was giving the message space, that thoughtful responses took time. But really, he just didn’t want to feel the weight of her words yet. He knew he’d respond later that afternoon, but not days later; a compromised latency that had become typical of him in recent months. There had been stretches, not long ago, when he’d let her messages sit unread for days. Not to punish her. Not consciously. But because opening them was inviting a gravitational force he wasn’t sure he could withstand. He claimed he could handle conflict—welcomed it, even—yet the reality was murkier. He avoided when he felt cornered, deflected when things got too sharp.

Lately, though, his replies had come faster; sometimes within minutes, sometimes hours, if he was busy or pretending to be. It was part of a new equilibrium. He was engaged now, folded into a life that felt like a self-sustaining universe, the kind that forms around you once you commit to permanence in a way the world can recognize. And with that choice came a kind of protective barrier: Elle’s emotional volatility no longer reached him with the same force. He could respond now, casually, calmly. So long as she kept things soft, manageable, just outside the center of impact.

Elle, once the axis of his emotional weather system, had been recast as someone he could correspond with from a higher, drier altitude. It was easier now. Lighter. Or so he told himself.

It was choreography they both knew by heart: Arthur offered just enough presence to stay close, though never enough to feel solid. It was the varietal of inconsistency that made Elle feel both chosen and avoided, depending on the hour. And Arthur knew that.

Elle, for her part, didn’t do well with silence. Not his kind, anyway. The kind that felt intentional, curated, an ellipsis held just long enough to make her question her own tone. He’d seen it before, the way uncertainty made her more expressive, not less. The not-knowing created space she couldn’t help but fill.

While he lingered in his distance, she sent him her usual GIFs—offbeat, wry, disarmingly accurate. Always from Fleabag. The visual metaphors did what script couldn’t: they let her confess I still care and I’m still watching without pressing her face up to the glass.

She sent a GIF of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character gently, yet hesitantly, touching the paw of a guinea pig her friend was holding out.

Guinea pig = our friendship, Elle wrote. Figuring it out doesn’t mean launching into some heady think tank project. It just means petting it, holding it, feeding it carrots and lettuce. Maybe one day you’ll even find it cute.

Arthur smiled when he saw it. Of course she’d find a way to articulate what he couldn’t without sounding like she was trying. Guinea pig = our friendship. It was playful, and gentle, and—infuriatingly—right. It didn’t need to be theorized, just tended to. And that idea, so simple and obvious, made a wire tighten in his chest. There was a resonance in her tone—written, visual, vocal—that always bent him out of shape. She wielded vulnerability as a blade, silken at the edge, sharpened to cut.

What would it mean, really, to be her friend?

Could he sit through stories of her husband with equanimity? Could he answer her questions about Max Minghella—her dream man—without letting jealousy sprout like mold in the dark corners of his gut? Could he offer her the version of himself she deserved—unobligated, unguarded—without imploding?

He wasn’t sure.

But he also knew that when she sent a video of herself singing, he watched it twice. And when she joked about her boobs typing random texts, he laughed in that real, involuntary way. And when she said she still felt the thread between them, he felt it too. Tugging. Always.

Her earlier phrase—a kindness to both of us—stuck. It made him feel, briefly, like someone worth forgiving.

He heart-reacted, of course. That safe, antiseptic placeholder. Then he added: I mean, yes, this is the question I’m wondering :)

It was vague. Evasive. True. Or at least true enough to send.

When she followed up, So, you’re open to figuring it out with me? Slowly but surely? He felt the tug again. And this time, he let himself answer plainly:

Yes, I’m open.

What came was a flurry of texts in the rhythm they used to find without trying. A grin emoji. A one-liner. A pause. Then came the Fleabag GIF—Waller-Bridge cracking open a Bible and inhaling it, as if theology could be taken in through the nose. It was absurd, obviously. Funny, yes.

Also—uncomfortably precise.

It was Elle at her best: irreverent and affectionate, silly and sincere, all in the same breath. Not revering the object so much as testing the feeling behind it. The suggestion was clear, even if she’d never say it in words: I don’t need doctrine, I don’t want intensity masquerading as clarity. I just want to be here with you, in this strange in-between, and let it matter. Even if it’s a little ridiculous. She wasn’t asking for a treatise. She didn’t want theory. She wanted presence.

Small, tactile gestures.

Carrots and lettuce.

A willingness to hold the tiny animal in both hands and not flinch.

Maybe even call it cute.

 repeat and fade

katarina garcia

I am not okay.

The thought haunts Luna like one of those earworm rhythms that slip out from under the rim of her drum snare or Rey’s bass and crawl into her mind during the thick of a band jam session. Between dusty memories of pain that look like joy and joy that now brings her pain, the earworm builds a nest for itself.

It chants in beat with her footsteps after the first of too many black coffees. It croons to her from nine to five when mindless meetings stretch further than chewing gum worn grey. It hums to the pitch of the whirring bus on the scenic Bellevue streets that once seemed like something out of a fairytale. She thinks she sees Rey in a bus that passes hers. She stares, then decides the figure has too wide a smile.

In the shower, the earworm echoes the musical theatre songs she used to sing to the water-streaked walls and steamed glass. She watches her distorted reflection and listens. The earworm’s voice is high and pure, like hers when she first started out, singing in Julie Andrews’ bright soprano before her bathroom mirror. Luna wonders if her voice always sounded so naïve, if that was why Rey hated it.

I am not okay, the earworm sings, bringing a throbbing ache to her head at times and an amused twist to her lips in others. She wonders what the band would say if she told them about it.

Put it in a song, she imagines Varun saying from the keys as he experiments with different tone effects. Alexei would noodle around on his cherry red Epiphone Riviera, and Riku would start improvising lyrics over it. Rey would lock eyes with her, and they’d find the rhythm together.

No, she wouldn’t tell them. The earworm is loud enough just in her head.

As the week wears on, the earworm settles into white noise. Luna hums harmonies to it as she drives to rehearsal, her voice gravelly and raw from the cigarettes Rey gave her that she keeps trying to quit. She twirls one in her fingers now, embracing its warmth as it burns her.

Art is born from pain, Nita, her brother, Santi, once told her in his lecture-voice before she started hitting things just to feel the vibrations. Pain makes you interesting.

When Santi ran off two years later without so much as a note, she condensed her tears into four minutes and thirteen seconds and sung it a cappella to dead-eyed regulars at Eke’s. After not so much as a drunken applause, she stormed over to the bar’s decrepit drum set and poured the rest of her tears into the most blissfully deafening noise she could create until the bartender kicked her out.

Out in the street, she hugged stolen drumsticks against her chest. They still buzzed with warmth, a feeble rebellion against the biting nighttime chill. The light from a streetlamp bounced off something on the grimy sidewalk by her feet. A penny.

Santi had always teased her for gasping when she’d found a coin. Dios mío, it’s the twenty-first century, Nita, he’d tell her. It’s not worth anything. Flushing, she would slip the coin into her pocket anyway. Her brother hadn’t understood that it wasn’t the penny’s worth that made it so precious, but its shine.

Since Santi had left, joy had been a penny on the gum-strewn sidewalk, too dear to do anything with but cradle in her hands and avoid thoughts of the grime. In the bar, rattling the earth with the drums, she’d felt the weight of a coin in her fist beside the drumstick. She resisted the urge to pluck the coin from the sidewalk.

The door swung shut behind her. A boy watched her, his hands in his scuffed jean pockets. He had unforgiving brows and red, red hair bright as a stoplight.

“You’re a shit singer,” he said.

Luna snorted.

They stood there for a few minutes, drinking in passing car lights. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “Drums were good,” he said. “But your rhythm was off.”

“Thanks for the input, jackass,” she said.

“My friend has a drum set, but he can’t play for shit. You’re good, though. Really good.” He looked at her. “You should come try it out.”

“I’ve got places to be,” she said.

She wasn’t fooling anyone. He raised a brow. She wondered what sound his face would make if she hit it.

“I have a bass,” he added. “Alexei—that’s my friend—he can strum a few chords on the guitar.”

“Not interested.”

“Whatever.” He kicked the sidewalk penny from foot to foot and pulled something from his coat pocket. She heard the click of a lighter, caught the glint of a flame as he lit a joint.

He noticed her watching and held it out.

It was a ceasefire, an olive branch. He wasn’t nice, but he was honest, a trait in scarce supply among her friends those days.

She took the joint like a handshake, took a long drag.

He said, “I’m Rey.”

“Luna.”

Seven hours and several joints later, Luna’s hands were blistered from drumming and her ears were ringing. She lay on the floor beside Rey and Alexei as Julian Casablancas screamed “The room is on fire as she’s fixing her hair” from the tower speakers.

“We’re going to be something,” she said.

She pulls the car into the parking garage, takes the keys out of the ignition, and sits there.

I am not okay, the earworm says.

She pushes herself out of the car and takes the elevator down to the basement. The studio is a patchwork quilt of memories. In places on the walls, the freshest coat of muted blue paint has been scraped off to reveal earlier shades of cloying yellow-green and rebellious fuchsia. The corner houses the half-built shelf Varun has procrastinated finishing for two years and the PA system he engineered himself. Beside that stands Rey’s rack of basses, which they call “the graveyard” because once he adds an instrument to it, he decides it’s “shit.” Riku’s box of earplugs and good luck charms sits on a table at the back because if anyone so much as brushes by it, he’ll storm out of the studio. Off to the side, there’s a hole in the wall that Alexei gives a different cover story for each time they ask.

One by one, the others arrive. Varun says an empty salutation, wanders to the keyboard, and starts playing with the controls. Riku comes next, scowling down at them through his designer sunglasses as he crosses the room to the mic. Luna doesn’t notice Alexei slip in, but now he’s in the corner, setting up his pedal board. Last, there’s Rey. He doesn’t meet her eyes.

There was a time when Varun would come into the studio ranting about his latest scientific obsession and launch into cheerful debates about jazz standards; when Riku laughed when he messed up a lyric and let them tease the slogans on his shirts; when Rey and Luna made silly faces at each other as they traded fours and Alexei made concerning jokes instead of just nodding hello and goodbye.

Luna wonders if Santi would have liked them. The brothers who took her in when hers had gone; a headache on the best of days and the only people she would want beside her on a battlefield.

She takes a seat on the drum stool. Everyone’s all set up, but no one is moving.

Riku sighs. “Just count down already, Luna.”

They play the song they’ve used to warm up for years, a cover of a ‘90s track that felt so clever when they first arranged it, when a studio sounded like shiny floors and LED lighting instead of a leak they couldn’t patch up and the faint smell of vinegar. Four years, and they’ve moved two floors down from a view of the sun.

She isn’t old enough to give up hope, but she’s too old to let herself believe wholeheartedly in something. And yet, hope is all she has. Even if it will break her heart.

I am not okay, says the earworm. She tells herself this at concerts, when all the eyes in the world are on her. If she loses the beat, it’s all over. She can’t fail, or she will die. She will die.

She and Rey play off each other, the pulse of the drums and bass two parts of the same whole. They are the sun and the moon, nothing without the other. When they’re playing, nothing else exists but the rhythm they share.

She doesn’t think about the last time they played outside this room. Doesn’t think about the rhythm slipping out of her hands, the deafening silence. The way Rey looked at her.

I am not okay, the earworm sings. She pounds it into submission and buries it somewhere in the rhythm, somewhere the others can’t see it.

They run through the track list they’ve been honing the past few months. In the middle of one, Riku calls for a pause. “We’re missing the mark. It’s not crisp.”

“Fucking Zeppelin wouldn’t sound crisp to you,” Rey says. “And enough with all that ‘we’ shit. You’re the one who’s racing ahead on the choruses.”

“No, you and Varun are taking too long on the chord changes.”

Rey scoffs. “Varun, you hearing this?”

The keyboardist shrugs. “We have room for improvement.”

Luna stiffens as Rey turns his gaze on her. “Back me up here.”

She knows the song’s current state is the best they’re going to get. She bites her tongue, and Alexei says nothing.

At the end of the rehearsal, they each pack up and rush out the door, as if there’s traffic to beat at nine p.m.

As she and Rey take the elevator, she fixes her gaze on the glowing buttons.

Luna feels his eyes on her. He says, “What’s wrong?”

His tone is indifferent, without a trace of his usual anger. That’s warmth, from him. Love she once would have done anything to bask in the flame of, that part of her still wants. She wants to punch him. She wants to hug him. Instead, she exits the elevator and makes a beeline for her car before she gets nauseous.

She doesn’t stop at any streetlights on the drive home. To her swimming vision, they all look green.

I am not okay. I am not okay. IamnotokayIamnotokayIamnotokay…

When she gets home, she can’t move. She can’t breathe. Her body’s emergency control system takes over, and her legs start towards the bathroom of their own volition.

In the shower, she sits on the floor. She can’t hear the earworm’s singing anymore. She doesn’t know if the water bathing her is from her tears or the faucet above.

She blinks, and she is in a memory.

Their last concert. The biggest crowd they’d ever seen. An opportunity, a true chance for success. Big names hid somewhere in the sea of faces, deciding whether to give the musicians a future.

The band started their opening song, ingrained into them like calluses.

There were so many eyes. People Luna hadn’t met, who didn’t know her, or Rey, or the rest of them. People who wouldn’t give them another chance, who didn’t care that this moment was everything to them.

Luna couldn’t breathe. Her hand slipped.

She lost the beat.

The aftermath comes to her now in flashes. The song collapsing into a cacophony until Riku finally lifted a hand and put it out of its misery. Stumbling through the rest of their set, their shoes finding a way into every possible pothole, everything off, like their songs distorted through a wineglass. Backstage, they bickered and bit until their throats were raw.

Before long, they moved on from finger-pointing and started digging deeper, where it hurt, where it scarred.

Luna cried at everyone to stop, stop-stop-stop, and tried to push Riku and Rey apart before anyone’s nose got bloodied. Someone threw a fist. The blow landed on her cheek, sent her stumbling back.

Everyone froze. They were a record everyone had heard too many times, and the needle was caught in a scratch. No one said they were sorry. No one offered to get her ice or asked if she was in pain.

She was always in pain. Art was born from pain, and pain made her interesting.

Riku raked a hand through his hair. “Fuck you, Rey.” He left the room and slammed the door behind him.

Varun shook his head and followed, avoiding everyone’s eyes. Alexei had disappeared long before.

Only Rey and Luna remained. Rey was angry, always angry, but for her, there was a softness to it. He didn’t give her much, but what he gave her, she made it last. She kept the looks he reserved for her in a little filigreed box in her mind and took them out when her heart was hurting. A smile from him filled her with cozy warmth in the cold. A laugh from him changed the season to summer. They were sol y luna, Rey and Luna, inseparable as their instruments. She knew the city through the streets she’d followed him down; the bar where the band they’d built together was in the same room for the first time; the person he’d turned her into.

He never stayed still for long. She was chasing after him, always, longing to earn his smile. Always one step behind, holding on too tightly, afraid that if she didn’t grasp hard enough, he’d leave her behind. She was the only person he let so close to him, she knew, but not close enough. He loved her, trusted her, in every way except the one she wanted.

She wondered if it had been his fist that had struck her. If the guilt would overcome his anger, and he would give her an apology, a remorseful look, pity, anything she could put in her box and hold on to.

Rey, his face as red as his hair, told her, “Sometimes, I can’t stand you. You can’t leave me alone. You’re always there, like some fucking mosquito.”

Her face was burning, but she felt cold. “But… I… you’re my person,” she said. “We’re a team. Sol y luna.”

Rey looked at her like when they’d first met, like she was a child. Like she wasn’t fooling anyone.

He snorted. “To you, maybe. You’re not my person.”

Part of her, a distant one untouched by the shock, wondered if the blow had been an accident at all. If he’d been yearning to hit her as much as she’d yearned to kiss him.

Inanely, she wanted to laugh. Hope was a poison, wasn’t it? Hoping for Rey to stop and see her, for fame to make it all worthwhile. Hope was unrequited love. It made her feel ugly and small, pressed its fingers against her throat and slowly suffocated her, but she couldn’t bear to separate herself from it. On the best days, it was the fantasy that fueled her to keep going; on the worst, it was a reminder of what she couldn’t have.

Always, she felt as if she were living on a precipice—one misstep, and she’d go tumbling down. She’d thought her own thoughtlessness would make her trip. Rey—firebrand, honest Rey, who’d taken a chance on a lonely kid and given her purpose—had gone ahead and given her a shove.

Curled up on the shower floor, she turns off the water.

Since their last concert, she’s been living a slow death. Repeat and fade. The copout ending bands use in recording studios when they don’t know how to end a song. Repeating the good part again and again as it gets further and further away from you, until it loses the magic that once gave it meaning.

She remembers how Rey looked at her after the rehearsal. How he asked her what was wrong.

“What’s wrong?” she says to the shower walls. “You hurt me, and you’re pretending nothing happened. And I am not okay.”

She is not okay. It didn’t start at the concert; it started before rehearsals became a hassle, before they all met at Eke’s and decided to give it a try, before she lay on Rey and Alexei’s floor and listened to the Strokes. It started with Rey outside Eke’s, offering her a joint and honesty that had seemed like salvation.

He gives her less than she would accept from anyone else, but it’s more than he gives anyone else, and she thought that made it okay. She knows he’s always caused her pain, but he didn’t ask for her to love him. He isn’t kind, has never been kind, so she doesn’t blame him for how he treats her. What they had was beautiful because it hurt, and art was born from pain.

But there are moments of joy, too. When everyone in the studio collaborates on a new song, shouts out ideas and experiments until they stumble upon something good, and everyone cries out, Again! Do that again!

Maybe art could be something else, something more than pain. Maybe life could mean something without the band. Without Rey.

She dries off and finds the phone she left on her kitchen counter. She opens the band group chat. Years ago, they would send memes to each other and clips of crazy guitar solos. When she scrolls up, all she sees are rehearsal time suggestions and thumbs ups.

She’s never liked to repeat and fade. She prefers a decisive ending, a crash of cymbals and then silence. She knows when a song has gone on for too long, when it’s time to let go.

She sends a text to the band: Eke’s, 8pm tomorrow. We need to talk.

Before she sets her phone down, it starts vibrating. Rey is calling her.

She takes a deep breath and doesn’t pick up.

In another season, another city, Luna drives her car out to a place she hasn’t been before. She rolls the windows down, breathes in the fresh autumn air, finds peace in the changing leaves. The earworm in her head today just hums, doesn’t say a word.

She sings as she drives. Her voice isn’t as strong as it once was, but it’s lost the gravel from the cigarettes, and after months of practice, she can hold a note, high and clear. The car’s passenger seat houses a stack of fliers with a smiling picture of her drumming on the front, advertising Thursday night jam sessions at a jazz club. Other musicians drift in and out of the jams like ships at a port, but she remains like a lighthouse. When they have a good rhythm going, they’re electric.

Outside the car window, she sees a line of trees in autumn blaze. She parks and gets out of the car. The sidewalk has been worn by a thousand shoes, and she joins their chorus.

Up ahead, the sun glints on something on the path. A penny on the sidewalk.

She kneels to pick it up.

 EASILY OBTAINABLE SELF DESTRUCTION

OLIVER ROSEN

Mark Fisher is a lot of things: recruitment chair, player, king in his court. He is a man everyone knows, a hard thing to be on a campus this large. His presence turns the nastiness of the moldy Pike basement into a place worth being. Around him, the party expands and contracts, in for a dab and then out of his way, leaving space for the next waiting hand and overflowing cup. An ocean of boys, and none of us matter, not when a real man like Fisher is in the room. In his midst, we are nothing.

“Dude!” he shouts, spotting someone from across the room. He ambles in my direction, stepping over the twisted body of a fallen freshman without even a glance. He’s used to such navigation, of course he is.

And then, in his loose-limbed pursuit of someone more worthy, his eyes land on me.

Shifting, I try to manufacture a cooler stance, something unclenched. My smile pulls to attention, stretched sideways across my face in a way I hope is charming but is just as likely to be creepy or cringy or any swirling combination in an endless list of terrible things. Yet, by some miracle, I am searched in the awesome fire of his gaze and found worthy, rewritten in gold with a casual “so fucking good to see you, man,” and a firm pat on the back. In his presence, I forget that I’m not very funny, that I’m freckled and kind of stretched looking in a way that Becky, my roommate’s hot girlfriend, once described as “slenderman-esque.” That I’m here, not at the invite of the friends I don’t have, but at the request of my father, a man who says he is worried I’m not doing anything in college and that video games don’t count. Instead, I become a treasured-but-silent guest, the jester a king loves too much to let suffer alone.

Fisher sways slightly, beer sloshing over the lip of his cup and forming a sticky trail down his forearm. I can’t stand that kind of texture, the way my wet arm hairs clump together, but Fisher is unphased. There are names for people like him—names like GOAT and badass—and there are names for people like me; names that don’t bear repeating. I didn’t even know that Fisher knew me. I’m not sure how he could. I tend to hang back at parties, talk to a couple of friends, and then get bored and leave before anything is really over. I try to catalogue what might be different, daring to hope it may be my new haircut: a mullet just like Fisher’s.

“This music,” says Fisher, swallowing heavily, “is shit.” And he’s totally right because it totally is. It’s more of a series of sounds than any sort of melody. The backbeat pounds in my head, taking up space between my eyes, and pulses there.

I don’t really speak. I’m too busy maintaining my casual smile. But he must sense my agreement because he grabs my arm with an extended cry of “partyyy” and manhandles me to a fold-out table arrayed with shot glasses and bottles. There’s jagger, gin, vodka, a mostly empty tequila that strays pretty heavily from the Oktoberfest theme. Fisher takes eight plastic shot glasses and pours us each four. I have never been as close to greatness as I am at this moment.

He lines up the shots, looks me in the eye, and then they’re gone, swallowed away like they’re fresh water and he’s dying of thirst. I eye my own shots distrustfully. I’m not much for hard liquor, but he tells me to just fucking do it, man, and to not be a pussy, and I’ve spent too long surviving without living. So, before I can think, I’ve put back all four and I’m coughing. My eyes water, but he’s cheering, and when Fisher cheers the world cheers. I may be no king of the party but, in his midst, I am for the first time within the court.

Fisher introduces me to a girl whose name is Cindy. She’s pretty, really pretty, and I fumble as I tell her that, but she seems to find it charming. She’s exactly the kind of reason my father, so concerned about my missing out on life, wanted me to go to this party: classically gorgeous and wearing a tube top.

“I like your costume,” she says. “Phineas, right? From the cartoon?”

I look down, confused, at the stripey orange shirt my mother bought me at Target.

“Exactly,” yells Fisher. “My boy, Steve’s a man of culture.”

It becomes clear, in this moment, that Fisher thinks I’m someone else. I do consider telling him that my name isn’t Steve—it’s Garren, after my mother’s second least favorite Uncle—but Steve is a good name. A better name even. Steve is the kind of guy who gets to be Fisher’s boy. He’s a part of something bigger than a nothing-dork like Garren could ever dream.

Steve is, apparently, wearing a costume at a completely costumeless party, but I shrug, real cool, and pretend it’s intentional. At her request I say, “I know what we’re gonna do today,” in my best impression of a show I’ve never seen. It’s totally working, and she’s totally feeling me.

Fisher hands us each a shot, downing three more himself as Cindy giggles. I hold the room temperature liquid in my sweaty palm, putting it down and to the side when they get distracted in an effortless conversation about something I can’t really follow. Fisher talks like he’s underwater, and he’s practically glowing, just like he always is, so I don’t care that I can’t tell what he’s saying. Not many men can have this much presence this many shots in.

The song cuts off midline, harshly switching to something loud and Mr. Worldwide, and then another guy is calling for Fish Man, and Fisher slips away from us and out the door, taking the easiness of the conversation with him.

There is a moment of silence. Cindy looks at me. I search the room for something to talk about. In the corner, the sound of a girl retching is just loud enough to be heard over the music.

“So,” I ask Cindy, stilted. “What’s your major?”

In my mind I calculate how long it will take me to fumble this girl.

We talk for a little while longer. She’s undecided in her major, and from just outside of Philly. She seems increasingly eager to get away from this conversation, but her friends ditched her for another party, and they forgot to tell her where they’re going. Apparently, they do that a lot. Apparently, her friend Jessica is, what she calls, a total bitch.

She asks if she can borrow a cigarette, and it goes against every fiber of my being to tell her I don’t smoke, thinking of the videos my mom likes to send about lung cancer and the fentanyl crisis.

“I don’t either,” she says. “Drunk cigarettes don’t count.”

She walks up to some other guy, giggling, and places her arm on his bicep. I look away. Check my phone. I haven’t been here nearly long enough to leave without facing the despondence of my father, who so badly wants the type of son who posts pictures in backwards baseball hats, six friends and a girl under each arm.

I am deciding if the light mockery is worth withstanding when there’s a tap on my shoulder, and there’s Cindy. She holds her closed fist out to me, and says, “guess what I found,” before opening to reveal two cigarettes. She takes me by the arm and pulls me up and through the door. I laugh a little uncomfortably as I follow, but I know better than to let an opportunity like this slide.

I’m through the door, and then outside, swaddled and hidden by the surrounding fence, and there’s a cigarette in her palm that I don’t want to smoke. There is a beautiful girl in front of me, and all I’m thinking about is charred, blackened lungs. I wonder if I’ll end up coughing out tar. I see my life stretched out in front of me, cut short by lung cancer at 38.

“I’ve always liked dorky guys,” she whispers like a secret, like she’s seeing some pathetic piece of me and liking it anyway, holding my clammy hand in her pretty one as she passes me a mistake I know I’ll make for her.

Her lighter is a piece of shit, and it takes three tries for her to get the flame steady. In the struggling light I see a beautiful future, a friendship with Fisher that last decades, that pulls me into his glorious world. In the beautiful future, Fisher gives a speech at my wedding, bragging how he set us up, how he always knew Cindy and I were meant to be. My father thumps me on the back and tells me I’m a good man, a lucky man, and he always knew I could do it. In the future everyone calls me Steve, and I don’t even care because I know I deserve the title.

It’s when the cigarette finally lights that we hear him: Fisher, singing a stretched and wobbly Pledge of Allegiance. We walk around the fence and there he is, on hands and knees on the rough pavement of the quad. We watch as Fisher crawls forward, shredding his own knees on the coarse ground. Behind him is a trail of blood that extends in a circle around the whole quad. As we watch, he pauses to hack up a wet splatter of bile, before continuing, crawling right over the vibrant, orangish liquid. Dotted around the circle, we see more such splotches, and watch as a salsa-like chunkiness is slowly replaced by just an outpouring of liquid, remnants of a body turning itself inside out.

It's almost mythical. One must imagine heroes of old. Bruce Willis, battered and broken and bleeding, glass wounds and gashes on both feet, and yet unwilling, unable to surrender. Mel Gibson, despite all his years of military training, tortured and dripping, but only more heroic for his pain. It’s glorious.

Cindy, unable to understand the beauty before her, drops both lighter and cigarette to run to Fisher. I follow.

She steps in front of Fisher, earning a wet noise of frustration when she blocks his path. The singing goes quiet. She leans down toward him, then sinks onto her knees in front of him on the cold concrete. It looks nearly religious, a beautiful angel kneeling in front of a triumphant king, both faintly haloed by the streetlight and the light of the party, a night so awake, it’s almost day. If I could paint them, I would. But I’ve always been shit at art.

“Are you alright?” she demands. Fisher replies in only sounds.

“He’s fine,” I tell her because he is. “He’s just a little drunk. He’s fine.”

“Are you fucking stupid?” She whirls around. “This is your fucking friend. And he’s bleeding.”

“Yeah,” I admit. “But in, like, a cool way.”

She just looks at me.

“Like Iron Man.”

She doesn’t understand, of course she doesn’t. She’s effortlessly cool. She hasn’t had to spend time watching like I have, standing in corners and nursing a single beer. She doesn’t know Fisher like I do, months spent trying to be just like him. She doesn’t know that this is normal for him, that blackouts just make cool stories to tell your kids. That he’s having fun, that fun isn’t a crime, that he needs to be fun because if even Fisher can’t make it then we’re all absolutely screwed. Even the idea of Fisher as anything other than magnificent sets the entire world off-balanced and angled. It rushes through me and spins away with what’s left of my drunken composure.

“He’s just fun,” I try to explain, tongue heavy and unwieldy in my mouth. “He’s just like this. It’s normal. It’s cool, he’s cool. Everything is cool.”

She rolls her eyes, big and annoyed like she wants me to really feel it, then turns back to Fisher with a, “Hey, Mark, I’m gonna make sure you’re alright, okay?”

“He’s fine, Cindy. Don’t be a buzzkill. He’s Fisher.” She isn’t listening to me, no one ever does. I pull on her arm, growing desperate. “He’s always going to be fine. He’s a fucking god, Cindy. Come smoke with me.” I’m pulling her arm, dragging her up and away, and she turns, and she backhands me, every finger and ring connecting with the side of my face.

It hurts.

“Get the fuck away from me,” she says.

And with that, I’m dismissed. Unimportant. Ignored. Relegated back to a nothing, away from the glory and the action.

In the light of the porch, the world seems far away. From the ground, I pick up one of the cigarettes, craving some easily obtainable self-destruction, but, finding myself obviously lighterless, I just put it in my pocket. Emptiness consumes me, every piece of my body weighed down with the wet sloshing of my stomach. In my mind, I am already retconning the details, preparing what I’ll tell my father. How I spent the night with a girl on my arm, a pretty girl who gave me her number. I might take her on a date. How I might rush or bed a thousand women or drop out or go to every party and get so fucked up that I forget what happened and what didn’t. How Fisher—heroic, godlike Fisher—became my friend.

I turn around, walking towards the party, stumbling against the pushing crowd, squeezing out the door.

And then, just like that, I’m through. 

 INTRUDER

SHAYNA BROWN

It’s normally seven hours from my doorstep in Austin to hers in Baton Rouge, but I’m on course to make it in six with only a warning from a cop to slow down. Billboards litter both sides of the highway – advertisements for drive-through boudin and gumbo, alligator museums, and a handful of “Geaux Tigers!” I try not to think of the divorce papers buried at the bottom of my bag, papers Adam shoved in my hands as I was trying to leave town. The thought of my shattering life in the rearview mirror puts lead in my foot. As I drive, I play with the ring on my fourth finger; a gold band etched with fleur-de-lis that ties me to this state, and to her. 

When I reach the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, I can almost smell Granny’s small, musty house – one of the few still standing along the channels of the marsh below. Its dust and stale air mixed with melted grease bubbling in a cast iron skillet, just waiting to bathe bacon, or catfish, or whatever it is Granny’s frying up today. The house has eroded so much, a passerby might assume no one could possibly be living in it, and maybe they’re right, because she’s been dying in it for almost a year. 

When I arrive at Granny’s house, the smell eagerly awaits me but Granny does not. She’s probably napping, as she does so often now. As I shut the front door, a cold breeze surprises me. A winter storm has snuck in and I don’t think I brought a sweater. My sister and I are taking shifts every other weekend, leaving a home-care nurse to handle the weekdays, so I never bring much with me.

The house is dark even though it’s afternoon. The windows are locked shut and covered by thick drapes that keep all light out and all sickness and decay in. I’d open the blinds if I could get to the windows, but old cardboard boxes scattered throughout the house block my way. They’re stacked high and shrink the living room to a narrow path. I have to move a large box holding small kitchen appliances, fabric strips, and an antique shotgun from my path. Who has left this mess here? Even before she got sick, I suggested Granny get rid of some of the piles, but she wouldn’t budge. More recently, I tried to talk Becca into helping me discreetly take some of the stuff to the Goodwill, but she sided with Granny.

“I’m not taking her blenders. And it’s not like a couple boxes is gonna make any difference,” Becca had said when I called with a plan to clear out the house, get some houseplants, let in some fresh air.

“But they’re everywhere. This is no place to get better.” I kept my voice low, careful not to wake Granny, shifting the phone from one ear to the other.

“Uh, Granny’s not going to get better,” Becca said, and I felt my face flush.

“That’s not what I meant. I just… I just want to make the place brighter. More conducive to…” I trailed off, feeling stupid.

“The doctor said she doesn’t have long. Let her keep her crap,” Becca said. I wondered where she’d buried her heart.

“The doctor doesn’t know. People outlive doctors’ predictions all the time. It’s totally normal to beat the odds now.”

“I don’t think that’s how odds work,” my sister said, a new gentleness in her voice that irritated me. “But regardless, she likes knowing her stuff is there. It’s like a security blanket. Just give her that.”

“I’ll clean out the fridge, at least,” I surrendered.

“Fine, but the freezer is filled with actual useful, edible stuff, so don’t go crazy in there. I had a popsicle last weekend and it didn’t seem to be toxic. I highly recommend ‘em.”

Becca is younger than me but wiser, which bugged me when we were kids, but now it feels like a gift. I’m not expected to have it all together. She is. While I was off failing in school and marriage, somehow Becca got a nursing degree and met a nice lawyer with a full set of aggressive, white teeth and Popeye muscles, and together they built a full life. My life is full too – full of failures. I barely graduated from college, my paralegal job is a soul-sucking grind, and my marriage-turned-in-process-of-divorce never should have happened. It’s been five years of combat and bringing out the worst in each other and still, I can’t let him go. I let out a frustrated growl as I toss my duffle on the couch, aware of the divorce papers buried inside it. Then, I look around the rest of Granny’s house. 

Photos hang on the only wall that isn’t blocked by piles of boxes. There’s a wedding photo of Granny and Pawpaw but the rest are of my sister and me as kids. Here we were at my piano recital, two sisters smiling at Granny behind the camera. And there’s one from Easter twenty years ago, where we were wearing new fleur-de-lis rings Granny had tucked in a plastic egg. The rings were too big for our little hands, swallowing even our thumbs, so Granny gave us each a long, thin chain necklace to hold the rings until our fingers could. My fingers find the ring and I fidget, running my thumb along the etching of the lily’s three leaves emerging from a central point, engraved in a repeating pattern.

My favorite photo is here, a portrait of the three of us together on the stoop of Granny’s shack. I can’t tell if it was happiness or sunshine illuminating our smiles. Because of Granny, we got to be kids. We never knew our dad, and Mom was lost to a cunning and baffling disease – too lost to be present for us, popping up only in between rehabs and binges.

“We don’t talk about that in this house, Anna Lynne,” Granny used to say. Instead, she stepped in to provide the parenting and support we needed.

I hear her stirring. Slowly, she shuffles out of her bedroom. She’s paler than I remember, all five-foot-nine of her hunched in her nightgown, worn down from almost eighty years of living. She’s a blurred version of herself, stooped and trembling. The house is drafty, and I want to wrap her in warmth.

“Hiya, Granny,” I say.

“Anna Lynne!” Hers is the joy of a child on Christmas morning. Even though I was just here two weeks ago, even though she barely has the energy to hold herself upright, her love rushes over me like a rainstorm and I’m a thirsty flower.

I kiss her on the cheek and smell talc powder and something strong and medicinal. “Let me look at you.” I pretend to examine her and she bats me away.

“You’re too skinny,” I tell her. Becca had warned me it had been a bad couple weeks but I’d hoped she was exaggerating. She lives only an hour away in New Orleans, so she has a more constant finger on Granny’s pulse.

“You’re one to talk, Anna Lynne. Have you had any supper? The aide left fried cornbread on the stove.” 

“Let’s check it out,” I say.

 After dinner, we stay seated at the small, metal kitchen table and I deal us a hand of Gin Rummy. Granny is reclined in her chair, slight in body, and known for her sleight of hand. We’ve been sitting at this table playing cards my entire life. Even our discomfort is comfortable here.

“Well, you must not like me very much if you dealt me this hand,” she says, her laugh interrupted with a violent cough.

“I just know you’ll play any hand well, Granny,” I reply. An exchange we’ve had a million times.

We play for almost an hour. She moves slowly but still beats me. The scrape of card against card is rhythmic, soothing, blending with the only other sound in the room, the tick tick tick of an antique clock on the wall.

“You hold on too tight, Anna Lynne,” Granny says, looking past her cards to me.

“Ma’am?” I look at my hand, at the cards gently nestled there.

“Not the cards,” Granny says. A sharpness in her tone cuts the air between us. “In life. You understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I lie, looking down.

“Head up, young lady. Head up,” she wheezes, and I lift my eyes. “We’re strong women. You hear me? Let go.”

I give her a confused look before realizing Becca must have told her about my divorce. I feel the heat of shame on my shoulders, melting between my shoulder blades, warming my sides like an unwanted hug.

“I’ll let go of some of these boxes for you,” I joke, forgetting where I am, who I’m with. She gives me a look I haven’t seen since I was a teenager sneaking out of the house on a school night and, always, getting caught. “Sorry, Granny, sorry. Just kidding. Yes, ma’am. I will.”  Her eyes slice through me but I’m saved when she starts coughing and turns away. I wait a beat and then slowly, carefully, continue with the game.

We play in silence for a few more rounds. I’m looking at my hand when I hear her breathing get deeper, more ragged, and I look up. She’s fallen asleep. Her chest rises and falls. Her mouth is slightly open as her head tilts back and balances between her bony shoulders. I sit across from her, and we are surrounded by looming piles of boxes. As her head rests on her chair, she leans dangerously close to a stack of toaster oven boxes. I stand and push the whole pile away. Becca’s right. The choice to hoard is Granny’s, but I wish I could clear out some space and give her some room to breathe. I just want her to breathe.

Ages ago, before I went to Becca, Granny shooed my questions away with her hand. “Honey child, they were marked down eighty percent! Eighty percent! Never know when you’re gonna need a toaster oven. And I could give them as Christmas gifts. Stop picking on me about my boxes.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” was all I have ever answered.

Watching Granny doze, I wrap a thin blanket around my shoulders and listen to the tick tick tick of the old clock. Her cancer is inches from me and I believe I can see it eating away at her insides, its outline visible through the thin fabric of her nightgown. I imagine reaching in and grabbing it, ripping it out of her body and throwing it out of this house.

I’m bending the cards in my tightened fingers, so I set them down on the table. Granny’s hand has dropped to the table too, her fingers relaxed so her cards are half held, half fallen to the side. I avert my gaze, refuse to cheat, even though I’ve never been able to beat her at Gin honestly. 

She falls asleep in her chair a lot lately. The cancer, the treatment, the exacting toll of existing so long, they just wear her out. I think falling asleep is the only way she can outrun thinking about where she’s going.  Normally, her frequent naps would have alarmed me, but the doctor told us it was normal.

“Normal,” he’d said. Normal to have a tumor the size of a plum poking out of your chest. Normal to poison your body in hopes of poisoning the protruding tumor. Normal to be saying your goodbye in a way that is a forever-goodbye. At thirty-five years old, this is my first encounter with death up close, and I still don't know why “normal” is a reassurance. I just know that it is.

Tonight, I tuck her in, laying an extra blanket over her, shivering as I curse the ineffective radiator. The house is so run-down; maybe the piles of boxes are actually structural, holding up the roof. I make myself some tea and bring a book to the couch where I sleep when I visit. The couch is in the kitchen by the metal table, right by the entrance to the house. The living room is too small for a couch, so this has been the setup since we were kids. The only other room in Granny’s house is jam-packed with boxes of things Granny has dreamt of using, gifting, or selling at a profit. They’re things she’s spent so much of her life wanting, needing, and not having, and now they surround her: mixers, skillets, homemade jarred vegetables and jam, waffle makers, ice cream makers, decks of cards, that weird antique gun. This room, like all of Granny’s home, is swollen with piles stretching higher than my head. I know one day soon my sister and I will have to clear out the room, and it will take weeks of work before it’s emptied. This is a good lesson for me, and I tuck this information away to use later, when I am older, when I do not want to burden my loved ones with things.   

I get comfortable on my couch-bed and fidget with my fleur-de-lis ring, which slips from my finger and rolls away. I imagine it’s rolled into a puff of dust, and I’m a little desperate as I get on my hands and knees and start to search. As I sweep my hands around the edge of the couch, I hear a commotion behind me. I push myself up and Granny is standing in the kitchen doorway in her thin nightgown with house slippers on her feet.

Her eyes are blazing, and she has the old shotgun propped in her arms. 

“Granny!” I yell but regret it immediately. Yelling at someone with a gun, even a gun that has been sitting around collecting dust for years, is never a good idea. I stagger, jumping to my feet. She trains the gun on me and snarls.

“Granny, it’s me,” I say, quivering hands lifted above my head. The winter storm rattles the house and whistles loudly. The antique clock continues its relentless ticking.

“I heard somethin’,” she says to me, and I can’t tell if she knows it’s me she’s talking to. “Intruder.” Her eyes are wild, and it scares me. She’s erratic as she whips the gun around to the other side of the room. 

“Granny, no one’s here, it’s just the wind outside. Just the wind.” I try to control my breathing and approach her carefully, reassuring her as I go. But when I reach for the gun, she shrieks and thrusts us both to the side with a violent turn.

“There!” she screams and points toward the stove. I jump to look, goosebumps on my skin. Now she’s got me spooked, but I see nothing out of the ordinary. She shivers with a whimpering cry.

“Granny, it’s the stove! No one’s there.” I put a hand on her arm and slowly trace my fingers along the stock of the gun until we are holding it together. Without warning, the gun fires, rearing back like a wild horse. The recoil jabs Granny and she falls backward into me. I slam against the wall, landing hard on my hip. The gun drops to the ground where it lies motionless, playing dead. I gently kick it away from us and keep a steadying hand on Granny. I survey the room for damage but find none.

“It’s okay,” I say, breathless, ears ringing. Not a single box seems out of place. Granny is staring into the distance, eyes wide but empty. As I hold her, I anchor us both.

“It’s okay,” I repeat. “You’re okay.” I steer her toward her bedroom.

“There?” her voice breaks.

Once she’s back in bed, I sit by her side quietly, trembling but hoping to be of comfort. As she gets settled, she is shaky and uncertain, confusion seems to be overtaking her. My breath catches. Granny looks like a sketched drawing of herself, not the formidable spitfire grandmother I know, and the contrast makes my stomach tighten. Tucked in like a child, she is shrunken, betrayed by the body that has been her lifelong companion. 

Once she seems to have drifted off, I rise to leave. Her eyes jump open and she grabs my arm with both her hands.

“Anna Lynne, I’m scared,” she says, her voice an urgent whisper.

“Granny, it’s okay, I’m here.” My stomach is twisting like it’s host to a family of squirrels.

“Is this going to hurt?” she asks. It takes me a minute to understand what she’s asking, and I feel my skin on fire as I stumble to process it.

I don’t know anything about death; I barely know about life. My fallibility is on full display and I know I’m letting her down. I remember being nine or ten, going to the dentist for the first time. Is it gonna hurt, Granny? I’d asked, shaking and ready to make a run for it. I don’t think so. But I’ll be right here no matter what, she’d said.

Her grey-white hair is swirling around her head now, hovering above her like a halo.

“No,” I say, trying to project a certainty I don’t have. “And I’ll be right here with you no matter what.”

I hold my eyes firmly on her face.

We sit in silence for a few minutes. I am frozen, not daring to move. Her eyes are closed but she keeps a strong grip on me. Then her eyes are open again.

“Will Pawpaw be waiting for me where I’m going?”

This question surprises me even more. Granny has always been a fervent atheist, singing that gospel to anyone who’ll listen. Now that she’s on hospice, though, she seems to be more open-minded. God has been dancing on her lips lately.

“Yes,” I tell her, not because I believe it or have thought it through, but because it seems like the only kind response. “Pawpaw is waiting for you.”

“Oh, that is so good, Baby. So good,” she murmurs, closing her eyes again. She seems to be drifting away from me. I hold her hand in silence until she falls asleep and lets me go. Her strength seems completely drained away, a human husk where a powerful force used to be. Instead of sympathy or compassion I feel a rush of anger at nature for giving and then taking away. 

I walk back to the kitchen, still shaking, and take the old, dusty gun from where it had fallen. I run my hand along the tarnished steel neck and smooth wooden stock, its shine faded but its form unyielding. It’s like Granny, I think, old but still strong.

Slowly, carefully, I push the gun deep under the couch, planning to have my Popeye brother-in-law handle it next weekend. As I climb into my couch-bed, I notice a small hole just above my head. The damned thing really shot a bullet. I run my fingers along the jagged, chalky gash left behind, and start to laugh. Granny was never one to go quietly, and I guess neither was her gun. Are there other dangerous items in these boxes? The idea of purging grabs hold. I jump from the couch and start looking through boxes. Slowly at first but then with frenzied energy, weeding through box after box, consolidating, culling, and then sneaking bags of stuff I’ve deemed expendable into my car to donate on my way out of town. I manage to fill the back of my car in under an hour. Afterward, when I scan the kitchen, it looks almost inviting. I feel like I can breathe. Moonlight trickles through a window that’s been covered by boxes for years, and my heart thuds. Granny will be angry, but in this moment it feels worth it.

I sit on the couch and reach into my bag and grab hold of my divorce papers. Granny’s words tickle at my stomach. She’s right – we are strong. She and I are spun from the same yarn, and I lift my head with the power of that knowledge. The divorce papers feel lighter here, smooth and inviting, and I’m not sure why I’ve been afraid of them. I find a pen in my bag and without hesitation, sign here and here. I stuff the signed documents back in my bag, and burrow into my sheets. I am drained of everything and feel lighter than I have in ages. I don’t even remember falling asleep. 

“Normal,” the doctor says when I call him the next day. “Hallucinations at this stage are normal. It means she’s progressing. You’ll want to let the hospice know.”

When Granny wakes up, there is no sign she remembers anything of the previous night’s excitement. She hobbles into the kitchen, and I make her instant coffee with sugar and heavy cream, the way I’ve watched her drink it my whole life. She sits at the table and doesn’t even seem to notice the mug. She also doesn’t seem to notice the clearing out I’ve done.

“How you feeling today?” I shuffle cards and deal ten to each of us.

“Pretty good for a dyin’ old gal,” she answers with a scraping gasp of breath that turns into a cough. I tell myself not to worry; the coughing is normal. I want to tell her not to say the word dying, but I know she’d want me to be tougher than that, so I don’t.

“Is there anything special I can make us for dinner tonight?” I ask.

“My appetite isn’t so much, honey. You just do what you’d like.”

There are times when taking care of the people you love doesn’t look like what you wish it looked like. But that’s okay. That’s normal.

I go to the freezer in the shed and find some chicken, and a bag of frozen trinity – onion, celery, peppers. I make chicken and dumplings because it’s easy on the stomach and it’s one of the first things Granny ever taught me to cook, so I think the sentimental value may outweigh the nutritional.

She takes a single nibble of dumpling and pushes her bowl aside. I’m still working on my bowl and Granny catches me staring at the tumor protruding violently from her chest, just above the hem of her shirt. The radiation marks around it boast angry shades of black and dark purple, like a vibrant orchid bloom.

“It’s not nice to stare, Anna Lynne.”

“Yes ma’am. I’m sorry.”  I lift my eyes, and this makes her smile.

“I named it,” she says and touches her chest. “His name is Robert Pattinson.”

“What?” I stare at her, thinking I’ve misheard.

“The actor. The vampire. I named it after him.”

Now the confused, old woman has confused me. How does the actor Robert Pattinson’s name belong in this space, floating among the boxes and chicken and dumplings and purple tumors?

“Do you know who Robert Pattinson is?” My words tumble out.

“Of course I do! You think I’m a fool?” There’s an energy and a return to the old grandmother I remember, and my heart beats hard, happy. She’s getting better, coming back to us instead of walking away. Clearing out the boxes did help. I will call Becca tonight to tell her.

“Well, I’ll be darned, Granny.”

“I’ve seen all the Twilight movies a dozen times.” She is smug now, and I am at a loss. “He is one very good-looking young man,” she says, and I can’t help but laugh.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Anna Lynne,” she says, turning to me with a look of clarity.

“What’s up?” I say with too much perk.

“You moved my boxes.” My stomach drops to my feet.

“Hm?” I put my hand down.

“I’m no fool. I see—” she interrupts herself with gasping coughs. I get up to pat her back and inch her water cup away from the edge of the table.

“It’s okay, Granny. It’s okay.” I pat her back and realize I was wrong. I love the boxes. I love the smell. I love everything about the house. I don’t want anything to change. 

“I can put it all back, I haven’t donated it yet.” I start to say. Her coughing slows to a raspy breath, and she turns in her chair and leans her head against my side.

“Thank you,” she says, staring out the newly unobstructed window. “Thank you, Baby,” she says again, keeping her head against me. I hold one hand on her shoulder and with the other I swipe tears from my eyes. The moon is nearly full, and its shine brings a new brightness to the room. We sit in this light, silent except for the tick tick tick of the clock.

 dirty water

joshua patterson

The day I hit my dad started like any other. I woke up that morning to the familiar creak of the rocking chair on the front porch. The sun burst through the wooden planks nailed to my window. Worn newspapers lined the creases of the windowsill. I got up to peek through the boards and saw him sitting there.

Dad’s face and clothes were covered in dirt and dust. On his right knee was a bottle of what Momma called “Dirty Water.” He drank the dirty water all day long, only stopping to eat or open another bottle. He got mean when he drank it a lot, probably because dirty water didn’t taste very good, but Momma said it made him feel better.

When the Dust Monster came, Dad couldn’t work on the farm. Our house sat on a large wheat farm that flowed with rows of amber grain. When the wind blew, it sounded like a rushing river. He and I would sit for hours outside on our rocking chairs and listen to the rustling. He used to make me go with him and help cut down the wheat during the harvest. Even though it was hard, I still miss it. He used to joke with me and play hide and seek in the field. After the dust monster came for the first time, everything changed. The wheat died, then the grass, and eventually it all became covered in dust. It was an empty brown desert.

I watched him rock and look out into the nothing. Wind flowed through his stringy hair, making dust and dirt stream off like a cloud. Suddenly, he looked over, then came inside.

“Mary Anne, Jed, dust’s coming!”  Dad said.

I came out of my room, just as Momma came out of hers. We sat in the middle of the house, away from all the windows, so the dust monster couldn’t see us. Momma pulled me close and spoke softly into my ear.

“It’s gonna be okay, Baby. The dust monster can’t hurt us while we’re in here.”

“Woman, stop babyin’ that boy. He’s eight years old,” Dad said.

“Don’t worry about him, Jed. Momma’s gonna protect you,” she said.

Before long, I heard the screams of the monster. It pushed and shook the house, trying to get inside. Dad was up against the door, holding it shut. Dust swirled as it came in from the exposed cracks in the doorframe. The windows rattled and creaked like someone banging and scratching to get in. I put my face into Momma’s chest and closed my eyes, waiting for it to go away. She pulled me close to her and rubbed my head. A few minutes later, the rattling stopped. Except for the sound of our breaths, it was quiet. Dad didn’t say a word. He got up and walked out of the door. I heard his feet stomp across the wooden porch, then out into the dirt, and back across the wood. A thud. Then the rocking started back up.

“You want some breakfast, Baby?”

“Yes, Momma,” I said, heart still pounding.

I clung to her side as she cracked an egg onto a pan on the stove.

“Momma?”

“Yes, Baby?”

“Is Daddy going to town today?”

“Not today, honey”

My heart sank and I sighed. She rolled up the sleeves of her milk-colored nightgown so she didn’t get them dirty while she cooked. A few large bruises colored her arms.

“What happened?”

She turned and looked at me and then at her arm. She rolled her sleeve back down to her wrists.

“Can you go tell your father that breakfast is almost ready?”

“Yes, Momma,” I said.

I’d seen my dad hit Momma once when he thought I wasn’t looking. Momma didn’t yell or hit him back. She just cried. I walked over to the front door. When I got there, I took a deep breath, and twisted the rusty, brass knob. He was still rocking. The bottle of dirty water sat on the planks beside him. His head was firmly resting on the palms of his dusty hands. He sniffled and wiped his face. I took a step out. The wood creaked underfoot. His head snapped violently towards me. He inhaled hard through his congested nose, coughed, then spit a glob onto the dirt. His eyes were red and swollen like a bee had stung him. I couldn’t tell if he was crying or if the dust was just in his eyes.

“What is it, Jed?” he asked softly.

“Momma told me to come get you for breakfast.”

“Gimme a minute,” he said, clearing his throat.

I ran back inside to Momma’s hip. She told me to sit at the table. After a couple of minutes, I heard Dad come in. His boots thudded like thunder as he walked through the house. The smell of the dirty water followed him. I looked at his face as he sat down opposite me. His pale skin was so dirty, his lips were almost black. His face was skinny and bony. The whites of his eyes shone with a red glisten. His pupils were dark; black that burned like fire when the sun hit them. His hair was thin and messy. A cloud of dust puffed off him whenever he moved, leaving the trail of a shadow behind him.

Momma made each of us a plate of eggs and bread, then fixed one for herself. Once she sat down, Dad bowed his head. They both closed their eyes. I never closed my eyes. In the darkness, the monsters and bad people came. Instead, I sat and stared at him.

“Let’s bow our heads,” he said. “Lord God, we pray for this food, and the hands that made it. We pray that the dust would come to an end, but the liquor wouldn’t. Amen,” He chuckled. Momma hit him softly on the arm.

“Harvey Hunch, you quit that right now.”

Dad looked at her and laughed. Even Momma let out a giggle.

Dad ate loudly, slurping up the egg yolk, and dipping his bread in it. I took little bites at a time. I didn’t really like eggs, but it was all we had. As soon as he finished his food he went back to the porch. That was where he would be until it got dark. While he was outside, Momma would teach me. Unlike Dad, Momma could read and write. She was smart. She taught me my letters and numbers and was teaching me how to write.

I loved to write stories. I wrote about knights in great, big castles, overlooking bright green fields of grass. When the dark came, the knights would fight the monsters attacking their home. They rescued the princesses from the bad men and took care of them. I wished I could be like the knights. Before the dust, Dad whittled me my very own knight’s sword out of an old broom handle. I practiced with it every day. I hit fence posts and chair legs, and sometimes Momma even let me smash Dad’s empty bottles of dirty water. I loved my sword. It made me feel safe. It sat right by my bed just in case the monsters came, so I could protect Momma.

I learned and played until it was time for dinner. I brought my sword to the table. I heard Dad open the door and come inside. He couldn’t walk straight, and used the walls to keep him balanced. I smelled the dirty water as soon as he came into the kitchen. It was so strong I almost threw up. He dropped into his seat and rested his head on the table. He looked up and his eyes met mine.

“Get the stick off the table, boy. Now.”

“Daddy, it’s my sword.”

“Don’t make me come over there, boy! Get it off my table now.”

“Yes, Daddy,” I said.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir.”

He took a large gulp of the dirty water. His face squished like he ate a lemon. He slammed the bottle on the table and I jumped out of my seat. He rested his head in his hands. No one said anything the entire time we ate dinner. Momma made pork and beans, which was his favorite. He didn’t even say thank you. When we finished, they sent me off to bed.

“Momma, I’m scared. Can you sleep with me tonight?”

“Your Momma’s with me tonight,” Dad said

“Maybe tomorrow night,” Momma said quietly. “Goodnight, my sweet baby boy.”

“Goodnight, Momma.”

I walked slowly to my room and slid under the covers, still clutching my sword. My heart was beating out of my chest. It was already pitch black in my room, but it was made even darker when the light from the kitchen that peeked under my doorframe went out. I never liked closing my eyes to sleep. I stayed perfectly still and stared, unblinking, into the black. After my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I saw a shadow move across the room from right to left. It happened again. I bit my lip and stayed quiet. The wind picked up outside, whistling. Breathing heavily, I put my blanket over my head. My eyelids were heavy and before long, they closed as if someone pulled them down.

Dad was sitting out on the porch. It was sunny and warm. The smell of a fresh baked cherry pie filled my nose. He had a stick in one hand and his knife in the other. He whittled while he rocked in the chair. I couldn’t tell what he was making. He looked up at me and smiled, a smile I hadn’t seen in years. Then he nodded at me to come closer, picked me up from under my arms, and sat me on his lap. He gently placed the knife in my hand and then held my wrists. He moved with me as if we were whittling the stick together. After a while, he let go and I kept going. He placed his hand on my shoulder. Then, there was a bang and a crash.

I shot up and rubbed my eyes. The noise came from Momma and Daddy’s room. I crept out of bed with my sword gripped tightly in my hand. Pushing the door open, I tip-toed across the creaky, dark wood floor. The rooms looked different in the dark. Shadows moved over the walls. They danced through the kitchen and played in the dining room. Moonlight lit parts of the house I normally missed; corners full of dangling cobwebs, and walls covered in dirt. The dust was clearer in the moonlight. It floated across windows and stuck to the ceiling, my clothes—anything it could find.

A dim light shone from underneath their bedroom door. I walked towards it. Muffled voices interrupted the silence of the night. I heard her crying.

“Momma,” I whispered.

There was no reply. I touched the tip of my sword to the door and pushed softly. It inched open and the light from the room flooded the house. They were lying on the floor. Dad was on top of Momma, pressing her arms into the hard, wood floor. As he pushed harder, the floor creaked and cracked. The light from the lantern by their side, cast unnatural shadows on the walls. Dad looked up at me. His pupils were coal black, except for the orange glow of the flame.

“Out!” he yelled.

“Jed, go,” Momma said.

My heart raced; sweat dripped off the tip of my nose. My breath felt heavy and slow. I clenched the sword in my right hand and charged towards them. Nothing was more important than protecting Momma. Dad let go of her arms and sat up straight, his eyes on me, unblinking. I reeled back my arms and swung with all my strength. With a booming crack, the sword smashed into Dad’s face. My sword splintered, throwing chunks of wood across the room. A puff of dirt, sweat, and dust flew off him. He fell to the side and thudded to the floor. Momma got up and put herself in front of me. She struggled to catch her breath.

Dad was on the floor holding his head. Blood dripped through his fingers. He sat up, looked at Momma, then his eyes drifted to me. He tried to stand but stumbled and fell onto one knee. A trickle of blood ran down his brow. His breath was heavy. His eyes never left us. Momma held me behind her with one arm. With the other, she picked up the broken pieces of my sword and threw them to the side.

I stood stiff as a statue, unable to move. Dad got to his feet. He stumbled a bit, then Momma stepped up to make sure he didn’t fall. She barely had time to grasp his arm before he pulled sharply away.

“No,” he said.

He looked dazed as if the world was spinning around him. He held the edge of the bed for support. His red eyes met mine. With one hand, he held onto the bed, and with the other he softly pulled Momma aside. His gaze never left me as he approached. I wanted to run but couldn’t. I stood, unblinking, until he was a foot in front of me. The smell of the dirty water lingered on his breath. His dusty hand reached out and gripped my shoulder. I winced at the pain. He pulled me to his right, out of the way.

He walked past me out the door into the hall. I heard the front door open and close. The rocking chair creaked. Momma walked over and sat on the bed, cupping her face in her hands. I walked to her and rubbed her arms gently. She looked up at me and gave me a weak smile.

Then, she ushered me to bed. I was scared Dad would come back inside and get angry about what happened, but I went to bed anyway. When I got to my room, I pulled the heavy, old, wooden chair to my door and blocked it, just in case. I stood by my window and peeped through the slit in the wooden planks, watching him. He rocked back and forth, holding his head. Small splotches of blood on his shirt shone under the lantern light. On the other side of him stood a half-full bottle of dirty water. After a while of rocking, he opened it, got up, and leaned against the railing. He looked down at the bottle, sloshed the dark liquid around, and took a sip. Suddenly, he reeled back and threw the bottle across the field into the darkness.

He clenched his fists and his jaw quivered. He sniffled and his breathing shook for a while. Then, he turned around towards the chair, and I ducked. When I looked back up, he was gone. He walked into the night with the lantern; a single star lighting up the darkness. I pulled the heavy chair away from the door, opened it, and walked through the hallway to the front door. I took a scarf off the coat rack and wrapped it around my face in case the dust started up. My hand rested on the cold doorknob, and I hesitated. Then, I took a deep breath and turned it.

The night air bit my skin. It was dark, but I could still see Dad with the light not too far ahead. I walked down the stairs and stepped out into the dirt. It crunched beneath my feet. That morning’s attack from the dust monster left remnants floating in the air, whipping with the wind. With the light from Dad’s lantern, I saw the barn ahead of him. When he entered the barn, I was left in the pitch black. I walked towards where I knew the barn to be, heart pounding. The wind whistled as it swirled around my head, pelting any exposed skin with dust. I ran, thinking I wasn’t going to make it to the barn.

As I ran, my foot caught something heavy, and I tumbled to the ground. Dirt puffed up all around me, entering my eyes, nose, and mouth, making me cough and spit. Reaching out, I felt for what had tripped me. My hand brushed the side of it. It was cold and hard. I knew immediately it was the tire of Dad’s big tractor. I moved my hand higher and felt the rusted steel. Paint chipped off with every stroke of my hand. I hadn’t ridden it since the Dust Monster came. When it was new, the tractor was painted a vibrant red that shone in the sunlight. Dad used to take me out when he harvested the wheat. As I sat on his lap, he held me tight with one arm and drove with the other. One time, the last harvest before the dust, he even let me drive. Instead of wrapping his arm around me to hold me in place, he took my hands and placed them on the wheel. Terrified, I looked back at him. He gave me a soft smile and nodded. I took a deep breath then drove. I watched as the stalks of wheat fell behind the tractor, chopped by the harvester.

I used the top of the tire to pull myself up off the ground, then brushed my clothes off. I knew the tractor was near the barn, so I figured I was close. With my hands out in front of me, I walked slowly to avoid running into anything else. Before long, my fingertips touched the wooden exterior of the barn. I slid my hand to the left until it met the door, then pushed it open, and went inside.

It was as dark inside as out. A faint light shone in the loft above me. I heard what sounded like scraping and chopping. I climbed the ladder carefully, afraid of what I might find. Dad sat in the corner, surrounded by a pile of wood. His lantern sat next to him. The fire from it lit one side of his worn face. Sweat covered his brow and cheeks. The droplets slid down his face, carrying dirt and dust, weaving in and out of his wrinkles. With every movement he made, dust flew off, each speck caught by the lantern light. Sawdust and shavings covered his lap and arms.

In his right hand was a knife. In his left, an old broom handle.

I watched him whittle the wood.