Margaret Elysia Garcia – Chicana Gen-X Horror Story # 2

Margaret Elysia Garcia
Chicana Gen-X Horror Story # 2

You will be the first on your mother’s side to graduate from college. It will sound like an achievement—but your primas will observe that you are broker than they are. Good for you, mi’jita, but can you speak Spanish yet? No. You majored in the other colonial language and now you forget things, like the right word at the right time. Loser. You double downed for a master’s in Creative Writing. But no one told you it would be useless without an ‘F’ in the middle of it.
       In a workshop you forget to identify yourself by your identities; you don’t have trigger warnings on your memoir pieces, and your classmates, (sporting all their identities with consideration), stare across the conference table at you, the ancient leper. Your classmates are writing coming of age stories set in the year 2015 and all the challenges they face with people who are not using the correct words. You remember a world with no TSA and walking right onto planes to visit fathers across the country at age seven; your ex-husband played with balls of mercury as toys in a shack off Revolution Boulevard. You did not warn them. Your life is a trigger. A biohazard. They may have been empathetic had you told them about you: a pansexual Latina, assault survivor, hailing from a gay military working class family, but that will sound like you are checking boxes even though it’s true. You blindsided them. Made them cry and so you are the enemy and now they will have to do an extra zoom therapy session and your own therapist—okay, you don’t actually have one, but if you did, you are sure she would have cancelled on you.
       At least you have new Doc Martens. Boots are the same price as therapy, but you can feel good looking down at your feet for years. You are both ancient and immature.
       You will once again take a gig teaching college freshmen. The students will not take notes unless they think it will be on the quiz. They do not appreciate you reiterating things that happened before they were born. Someone tells the dean that there are too many women authors on your syllabus and they did not sign up for feminism 101; there are also too many brown people on your syllabus. You remark how you sat through many hours of universal literature that were neither literature nor universal. However, the students are looking at their phones and your joke falls flat.
       Only the present is interesting; they live in a world without context. In casual conversation after class about music, you talk about the bands you liked growing up. They find these bands questionable. Yes, there were girls who slept with bands of fully grown men. They correct you and call it rape; you correct them and call it the 70s and 80s, and think of the girls in your high school, you included, who would not date anyone under 21.
       Despite all this, you are voted favourite teacher of the year. You think you might be on the way up to something and keep adjuncting—you’re in too far now to look back, a decade and change to be exact. You juggle commitments on committees. You bend backwards. And for my next trick? Nothing. No health insurance, no retirement— just a kid in your night class threatening to kill you.
       You think about giving up. No mas mierda.
       You think about quitting teaching again. You think of other jobs you might be better suited for. You missed the window on selling both your body and your soul. You have not made enough to retire. You will work odd jobs until you die. Younger, thinner people will train you and speak loudly as if you are deaf. You will catch a glimpse of your shoulders rolled and bent.
       You howl at your choices in your head; you bark at different moons.
       Oh. Is this not scary enough for you? Not a really horror story? Not Latina enough for you either? Aye dios mio. You know what? Fine.
       Here is a vampire waiting for you in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Oh for Christsake. Fine.
       Trigger Warning: despondent gen-xer, vampire, assault, blood, death. Murderer goes free.
       Are you happy now?
       Here is a vampire waiting for you in a Wal-Mart parking lot. He will be the last to see you alive. He is unassuming, not tall, pale or handsome. He can pass for anything. He is wearing bright red basketball and mixed matched socks. This is where it ends for you. You are not looking your best. Your eyeliner and mascara are smeared. You never lost the last thirty pounds. True, your neck is clean, and clearly visible in the v-neck tee shirt some child in Myanmar made. He asks you to sponsor his college education or something equally idiotic like buying a stale off brand chocolate bar. You hear him out, thinking his story is real even as his fangs pierce your skin and blood splurts out everywhere, including on your brand new boots with the red embroidered roses. At least the blood will match. A stray dog sniffs at your torso then lifts its leg. Your lifeless body is found by the pimply guy pulling in the shopping carts. The Wal-Mart manager will argue that you were actually found closer to the Krispy Kreme drive-thru next door. He doesn’t need anymore negative publicity. A couple of Gen Zs stand TikTok-ing themselves a yard from your corpse influencing—something. Your ghost watches seagulls swooping down to the asphalt for stale donut crumbs among the parking lot stick trees. It sounds more plausible to the authorities, given how fat you are, that you met your end at Krispy Kreme. Everything will always be your own fault. And no one will ever look for the vampire.

William Cass – Tie Your Own Shoes

William Cass
Tie Your Own Shoes

Tom had finally had enough of the guilt, the self-recrimination, the tortured soul that stared back at him from the mirror. He’d had enough of the deception and lies, the sneaking around, the brittle excuses. And he’d especially had enough of coming home afterwards to his wife, Marcie, and their toddler son whose warm, unconditional embraces left him grimacing with shame. He would end things with Madelyn. Today.
       He didn’t have the courage to tell her face-to-face, and he knew he’d make a shambles of a phone call or even a voicemail. A text had a frigid abruptness to it that felt like a slap. So, he reluctantly decided on email as the least abhorrent choice. Tom drafted and revised his message on his work computer a half-dozen times, then waited for everyone in the office to leave for their lunch break. Alone in his work cubicle, he finally heaved a sigh, impulsively changed the message’s subject line from ‘Hey’ ‘to ‘Important’ and hit ‘Send’ before he could decide otherwise. An immediate combination of repugnance, panic, and relief overwhelmed him. Street traffic whispered twelve floors below and the workroom copier rhythmically spit papers into its tray. He rose quickly and took the elevator down to the lobby kiosk to buy a pre-packaged salad.
       As if in a fog, Tom moved through his purchase’s transaction and the retracing of steps back to his desk. By then, a few of his coworkers had returned and mingled here and there chatting amiably. Mechanically, he sat and forced himself to eat. He’d just swallowed his second bite when his cell phone pinged next to the salad indicating an incoming text, and Madelyn’s name appeared on the screen. He shuddered once before dropping his plastic fork into the container and opening her text.
       It was in response to a string they’d started before their affair had begun several months ago. He’d sent the most recent message after departing her apartment after their last tryst: a pair of romantic GIFs. The reply she’d fashioned a moment earlier included a photo she’d taken of her naked bottom; he’d told her she had the sexiest one he’d ever seen. Her message read: ‘Luv you, too…can’t wait until tomorrow!’ It was followed by several kiss mark emojis.
      Tom felt his forehead furrow into a deep frown. He supposed it was possible she hadn’t yet seen his email, but that seemed unlikely since she received notifications of incoming messages on her own office workstation which she rarely left, even for her own lunch, and her responses were almost always instantaneous. He quickly checked his email on his desk computer and found a reply to his last message. He clicked on it and read: ‘I don’t understand?’ His wife’s familiar signature block perched underneath. It took Tom only a brief second to realize that, in his hurried anxiousness, he’d clicked on her work email address instead of Madelyn’s on his recipient dropdown bar where the two followed each other’s.
       A cold sweat bloomed between his shoulder blades and spread in both directions. He found himself re-reading her reply over and over as if that might make it go away. His temples began to throb. A cluster of co-workers a few cubicles away chuckled together.
       Tom squeezed his eyes shut and lowered his head onto his desk. His father’s stern image appeared to him from when he was a young boy after he’d admitted to carelessly breaking a neighbour’s window throwing rocks.
       ‘You’ve tied your own shoes,’ his father had told him. ‘Now walk in them.’
       His father had been from an era when a few, choice words like that, hushed and harsh, could cut to your core. As they could years later when they reemerged uninvited: the last thing Tom wanted, and the precise thing he needed, to hear.

Zach Keali’i Murphy – The Middle

Zach Keali’i Murphy
The Middle

Dad’s driving. The 1998 Volvo station wagon. Everything is on his mind but the road. My older sister sits up front. She’s going off to college at the University of Minnesota. I’ve never seen her smile this much. She looks thrilled to be leaving Nebraska. I’m stuck in the backseat between my mom and my younger brother, sitting on the grape juice stain and the potato chip crumbs that no one has ever had the time to clean up. My brother always claims the window seat, otherwise he gets motion sickness. He’s puked on me no less than five times since he’s been on this planet. My mom keeps wiping tears from her eyes before they have the opportunity to traverse the freckles of her cheeks. I think she’s afraid my sister will never come home again.
      Mom’s driving. The 2005 Honda Civic. Her jaw is clenched and she’s focused on the road. I’m riding in the passenger seat. My younger brother is in the back. Mom is taking us to my Dad’s apartment for the weekend. My brother doesn’t seem to mind bouncing back and forth between the two places. He’s always in his own universe. I’m having a difficult time picking my frown up from the sandy car mat. My brother points at me and asks, why is he always sad? Mom takes a moment to search for the right response. I can see the wheels spinning. She snaps open her mouth and looks at my brother through the rearview mirror. He’s sad because he’s not happy, she says. It isn’t an inaccurate assessment, I suppose. Mom always does her best. That’s her best quality. Dad? I can’t say the same about him.
       I’m driving. The 1998 Volvo station wagon. The rusted vessel was passed on to me. It runs on oil fumes and hope. There’s no one else in the car but my thoughts, a trunk packed with memories, and a hood full of uncertainty. I’m a middle child in the middle lane of a highway in the middle of America, dashing between two jobs because one just isn’t enough, shifting between medications that may or may not work, and being yanked between two parents who wince at the sound of each other’s names. The term ‘middle-aged’ freaks me out. How do you truly know when you’re middle-aged or not? I could be middle-aged right now. I’m twenty years old and this could be the halfway point of my life. Maybe less than half. You never know. I’m drifting somewhere between being awake and being asleep. The Volvo veers into the left lane, and I quickly swerve back into the dotted lines. I pull over to the shoulder of the highway. It’s the only one I have to lean on right now. I turn on the emergency lights. I climb over the tattered console and sit in the middle of the backseat. The grape juice stain is still there. I close my eyes, then fold in on myself. Traffic speeds by, unbothered.       AQ

Marcus Slingsby – Vanity’s Sanctuary

Marcus Slingsby
Vanity’s Sanctuary

‘A critic’s perception of perfection is indeed short and flawed with his own ambition and envy’, wrote my father in one of his many notebooks. Another talks of horses, rocking and running: ‘Carved it may be in shiny mahogany, the eyes almost staring, a gold embossed saddle and swinging stirrups, it is far from perfect, (argh, for a child maybe…) A carved nose bag is necessary with carved strands of hay and no matter how rare, carved rocking horse shit should be there too! Yet the tired hands of the master craftsman pale in comparison to the reel and turn of brumbies.’
         My father travelled a lot. His notebooks are still. On my apartment table, the candle light illuminates only the spaces between his words, the rest a void of thoughts I have trouble understanding, even with the help of childhood.
         I blow the candles out one by one, the streetlights are beyond me and the spaces again embrace what I don’t see, yet I don’t attempt to stand. The chair was his, the table too. The hands I rest my face in I suppose are also half his. Thoughts are whole I’m finding.
         He was always writing or typing on an old typewriter though it was not his job. A hobby he said, as was reading, both uninteresting when BMX’s and football were about.
         His books (I know that was his dream, you don’t have to be told your father’s dream, you see it as clearly as he does), were notebooks. The bookcase on the other hand was full of other peoples realized dreams, yet if you looked carefully, random spines were black with purple stitching, and always thin—poetry! Nothing scares a dyslexic child more.
         The metallic click of the date-change wakes me. His watch, an old ICW Pilot bought half a life time ago. It always had my name on it—literally. For a moment I’m mesmerized by the mechanism which he knew would always outlast his human condition. One of my first memories is of him taking his watch off and showing me the workings through the sapphire glass back. He said the watch makers had hands my size.
         Have you ever caught a stranger in a mirror that turns into a relative, then turns into you? It’s a trick that’s happened twice and the relative is always the same. The light needs to be dim for a mirror (is too truthful) or bright if the reflection is dark (and deceitful.)
         I leave the table and his notebooks, this is late for me, and head to the hall and for the third time the illusion locks the door. Briefly in the curtained street light before the sideways glance becomes focused; my mother—happy to be haggard, the very essence of Englishness, my wife has been known to say.
         Do you also ever dream you’re awake? Yet not awake in a dream—it’s far too clear and clever and confusing; a false insomnia that seems to stick the very last view you had to the back of your retinas for your soul to watch relentlessly the whole night. Yet with a death you ironically dream of life!
         I wake, again. The notebook is still on the table though the spaces between the words are no longer there. In their place a small voice reads with reason, extracting theory and theme, the two areas of a cold poem which only the author comprehends. I lean in, the voice is of Yorkshire descent. ‘They are just thoughts I write down’, it says. ‘Poetry scares potential poets: it’s like TNT, a tiny word or collection thrown too soon will take off the very hand that throws it. Yet later, aimed with precision it can blow minds’
         Like most he was introduced too soon—the hand of a dead poet, the shake of school. You always remember your first formal handshake, and are intimidated by it for years to come, until you realize introductions are only for beginners.
 
My father once went to a creative writing class held by a strange creature of a man over which lots could be written but nothing is. I remember him coming back from his first night, it was unusual he was away at that time. We all waited up and heard that he’d been taught by a magician, and that only a pen, not a wand, could cast a spell.
         He said he’d enjoyed it but that the fascination came not from the lesson but from the master. He told me directly, ‘He taught your grandfather you know’
         I did not!
          ‘Yes, your grandfather and him were the same age but that is where the resemblance ended. Your grandfather seemed to think he’d seen the world and studied numerous lives in those short years granted him. His face and especially his eyes gave the impression of that impossibility. They became friends but only for the duration of the course, and then he was gone.’
          ‘You have an ability to tell wonderful tales in spaces and at the end of full stops,’ he had once told your grandfather.
         The classroom I enter is old with huge windows and a high ceiling, but the view is of other peoples’ curtainless lives, not a cold sports field with yet colder hills in the distance.
         As I find a wooden desk to sit at, I wonder if it’s for the sunlight that the windows are so large yet coupled always with a consequence for gawping. It’s evening outside, the light’s low, the pace end-of-day slow in the windows I stare while waiting. It’s my first lesson, as it is for everyone here tonight, all people with ideas and ages that span life, yet I still recognize the teacher when he eventually arrives from my father’s (and his father’s) past. The beard is still trying to grow and it might even be the same bowler he’s wearing! And definitely the same leather briefcase full of future grades and his own ideas no doubt. A fine suit sits well on his small frame and his brogues seem to skim this unchallenging surface. Another thirty years sit well on him, though he’d be a better judge of that than me.
         Do they learn to cough at teacher training college? With a rustle we all look up. On the board he’s already chalked ‘Creative Writing Workshop’, and beneath it his name. We begin and soon all our ideas will be out in the open shivering with the fear of criticism and then ridiculed at home for the attempt…
         Introductions and achievements aside, some longer than others, yet the latter always in need of this course, we receive our first assignment.
         The teacher back behind his desk for support tells us—‘Though this classroom is brimming with ideas, ’ (with its high ceilings, I’m not so sure.) ‘I need to formulate an idea of You. The best fiction is always based on truth. Write a short piece. About yourself. Told by another. Create a daughter young or a mother no longer dead, or a brother unwed. Or a son…’          AQ

Elizabeth Rosell – Father

Elizabeth Rosell
Father

The dream is real. It feels so real that I cannot persuade myself that it’s not. Does that make sense? I know it’s not real, but I swear to you it is. I feel the wind in my hair, the earth beneath my bare feet, the sound of the ocean below. It’s a dream, but I’m standing on the edge, looking out, could step forward and fall over forever.
      I see his hands first. Slowly, coming up over the edge. They are withered, dirty. I want to believe they are grimy and muddy from climbing the cliff side, but I know the real reason. He was buried in the ground, but now he is here, coming over the side of the embankment. Of course, his hands are dirty. He had to dig himself out.
      I stand there, watching, frozen in place. I’m so small compared to his hands. Are they giant? Or am I tiny in this world? I don’t know. All I know is that while I desperately want to see him, I don’t want to see him climb up over the cliff. I don’t want to see him at all. I know he’s dead, but this is real after all, and I’m frightened beyond words.
      I think I’m small. The grass seems to be as tall as me, as if I’m a doll. Or maybe it’s just that he was always a giant to me, not only when I was a child, but even as an adult. I looked up to him. I guess in my dream it’s literal. I don’t like this, being small. I feel vulnerable with those giant hands reaching up and grabbing the earth around where I stand. What if they reach me? What if he crushes me, or throws me over? I should move, I tell myself. But I don’t. Just stand there, small, and unable to react. It’s my dad after all.
      Move, run. Must get away. If he gets me, if he finds me, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t want his hands on me, not those giant hands on my small frame. I feel like I will explode into the mist. I will cease to exist. Not die. Dad’s dead, but here he is. I simply won’t be present anymore. The thought stops me in my tracks. Would this be so bad? If I don’t exist, I won’t think. I won’t grieve. I won’t swallow the anger at my father’s existence.
     I startle awake, lying in my bed made of grass. It’s dark in my room, with the stars in the sky providing the only light. There is an engulfing shadow by my bed. Hands, snaking through the grass that I lie in, reaching me. They encompass me, those muddy, dirty hands. I can’t see but smell the salt water at the bottom of the cliff, the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks.   AQ

Eileen Stelter – Holiday Cover

Eileen Stelter
Holiday Cover

His work-life balance had gone out the window since that damned poker game a week ago. He was so sure about his hand until the Grim Reaper had pulled not only aces but clubs too.
       The stakes: cover for the Grim Reaper while he went off on a holiday to the Western Cape of the galaxy. The perks: he could winnow anywhere he wanted to—temporarily. The downside (besides all the death, the itchy cloak and constantly being called away on a whim): that awfully impractical scythe. He never knew where to put it or what to do with it.
      Halfway through another poker game with a bunch of Drivvoid, his pager went off: Soul in need of collection at the antique store, district 24. He sighed in annoyance and excused himself from the table, earning a few disapproving looks from the Drivvoid. Called away on a whim, indeed. He barely had time to gather himself, before the shadows summoned him and he walked right through the front door of the antique store, a little bell announcing his presence.
      Maybe the dramatic entrances cloaked in shadows could be counted as a perk, he thought, as he saw the human woman hunched over a lifeless, green-skinned Ethelian, startled by his sudden appearance. When her head whipped around to face him, he almost dropped the scythe.
      ‘Lilith?!’
      ‘Aidas?!’ The shadows whirled around him, reminding him to close his fist around the wooden shaft of the scythe.
      ‘You’re the Grim Reaper?!’
      ‘You killed somebody?!’
      Lilith shied away from the body. ‘It was an accident with one of the old crossbows. I knew I should have never bought those.’
      Aidas looked down at the body, green blood oozing out of it in several places.
      ‘Look at her blood, that’s not normal.’ Lilith nervously raked through her hair. “We need to call the guards.”
      ‘Are you nuts? They’ll take one look at this and arrest you on the spot.’ Lilith let out a sob and her hand flew to her mouth. ‘What am I going to do?’
      ‘Don’t you have a “good friend” who’s a detective?’ His words flew at her like glass shards.
      ‘Really, Aidas?’ Lilith looked up at him, anger now shining in her silver lined eyes. ‘Now’s the time? Newsflash: Memory lane’s closed right now.’
      Aidas held up his hands in defence. ‘Look, Lilith. I’m just here to collect the soul, that’s all.’
      ‘You can’t’, she screeched, ‘the soul is the only witness.’
The Ethelian appeared next to him as a milky version of herself, her four black eyes as wide as saucers.
‘You’re’ , she gulped, ‘the Grim Reaper?’
      Aidas awkwardly adjusted the scythe on his hip. ‘I’m the holiday cover. But don’t worry, he gave me a good rundown of things.’ He winked at her. ‘Now please follow me, I have a poker game to finish.’
      ‘You’re unbelievable.’ Lilith muttered and shook her head. ‘Let’s call the guards, give her time to adjust’, she pointed at the Ethelian, ‘and think this through.’
      ‘Alright’, Aidas hissed at her, ‘Call the guards. See if they believe your accident story. Your fingerprints are all over her body, there’s no witnesses, the place of murder is your private property. You’re going to have some convincing to do. But you’re very good at that, aren’t you?’
      Lilith’s nostrils flared. ‘Why are you being such an asshole, Aidas?’
      Aidas came face to face with her. ‘You took the dog.’
      Lilith held his gaze and spat, ‘You never remembered to feed him anyways.’
      The Ethelian jumped. ‘My… body?!’ Her gaze went down to where she lay lifelessly on the floor, an arrow through her chest and she gasped. ‘No, no, no, no.’
      ‘Miss, no need to panic. I will help you cross over.’ Aidas awkwardly grabbed her shoulder. ‘But we need to leave now, before it’s too late.’
      ‘Too late?’, the Ethelian sobbed. ‘How much time do I have?’
      ‘Every soul has a few minutes, but after that, they might not be able to pass at all.’ A white lie to get back to his game of poker. They did have a bit more time than that but to what use anyhow. Why drag out the inevitable?
      The Ethelian grabbed the reaper’s cloak in an iron grasp, as she kept staring at her body, then Lilith, then her body once more. ‘Oh my god’, she sobbed again and her grip on Aidas tightened.
      The Ethelian grabbing him didn’t help in his continuous struggle to wave the scythe. The scythe didn’t really do much except initiate the passing over the Thin Place to the River Styx. Which wasn’t a river technically speaking, as Aidas found out on his first day on the job. It was a city. And the Thin Place was a wormhole between this galaxy and the next. A shortcut to the underworld, if you will.
      He eventually managed to do something that vaguely resembled a cutting motion. The shadows that had brought Aidas here, enveloped himself and the Ethelian. From the corner of his eye, he could see Lilith still staring at them, as he kept cutting or rather clumsily ploughing through the time space continuum.
      ‘No!’ erupted a scream from Lilith at his next movement and she escaped her shock trance. Before Aidas could make his last and defining movement undone, he felt Lilith’s arm loop through his. He only had time for his head to whip around to face her in shock, before the shadows swirled around them and he felt himself being sucked through the wormhole, Lilith and the Ethelian holding onto him for dear life. Or death, he guessed.
 
‘Lilith!’, he exclaimed as they landed and he shook off both her and the Ethelian’s hands. ‘Are you out of your mind?!’ Lilith bent over, breathing heavily. Aidas blinked.
      ‘That was one hell of a ride.’ Lilith murmured, her hands braced on her knees. She looked up at Aidas.
      ‘You just died, Lilith.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘And you took your body with you.’ He inhaled shakily. ‘And you weren’t supposed to be collected, so there’s no place for you here. Oh my God.’ Now Aidas bent over, the hood of the reaper cloak falling over his face, as he tried to calm his breathing.
      ‘You left me alone with a dead body!’ Lilith yelled. ‘And took the only witness to my innocence in a potential murder case! I panicked!’ The Ethelian sat down on the bed, staring off into the distance—or rather at the beige apartment wall across from her.
      ‘Surely there’s some way to reverse this, isn’t there?’ Lilith grabbed Aidas’ shoulders. ‘You can send me back once we have sorted this and spoken to the guards, right?’ When he didn’t answer, she shook him. ‘Aidas!’
      ‘Only the Grim Reaper knows. I’m gonna have to call him.’ Aidas sighed and closed his eyes. ‘Lilith, you’re impulsive as shit, do you know that? Do you ever think before you do anything?’
      Lilith huffed. ‘You know I don’t. Otherwise you and I would’ve never gotten married.’ Aidas snarled at her, then walked over to a phone mounted to the wall on the far side of the apartment. Lilith looked around.
      ‘Where are we anyway?’ The studio apartment was rank. The furniture looked like it barely kept its shape and the wallpaper came off in all four corners. Lilith sniffed at the take out boxes on the coffee table, and grimaced. ‘Your place?’
      ‘It’s Grim’s apartment.’
      ‘The Grim Reaper lives in a studio apartment?’
      Aidas rolled his eyes and took the phone from the cradle. ‘He only makes two pence per person. And the cost of living on this side of Styx is insane.’ He started dialling the number he had been given for absolute emergencies only: 111. Emergencies not including regular death, the Grim Reaper had specified.
      ‘Hey Aidas, what’s cooking?’ Aidas nearly dropped the phone, when the Grim Reaper picked up before it had even started ringing.
      ‘Grim Reaper, we have a bit of a problem here.’
      ‘Oh I know, you got two for one, didn’t you.’
      ‘Yes.’ Aidas, looked over his shoulder toward where Lilith sat down on the bed next to the Ethelian.
      ‘I thought I felt a little something extra when y’all crossed over.’
      ‘What do I do?’
      ‘Change your mindset first of all. That’s not a problem, that’s a success. Keep the lady here. Show her a good time.’
      ‘No, she really can’t stay. She was not supposed to be here.’
      ‘Not forever, just until I’m back to fix it. Make yourselves at home, as a thank you for covering for me.’
      ‘You want me to stay with her here?’ Aidas glanced at the bed again. At Lilith, carefully rubbing the Ethelian’s back to soothe her. Lilith and him hadn’t slept in the same bed since way before he had filed for divorce.
It was then that the background noise on the other end of the line brought him back to the conversation with the Reaper. ‘Grim, are you in a bar?’
      ‘They serve something called a “coco loco” inside a pineapple, Aidas. I never knew what I was missing out on.’
      ‘Grim, can you focus please? This is serious!’
      Grim clicked his tongue. ‘You can’t leave a living soul unattended in Styx.’
      ‘Why can I not leave her unattended?’
      ‘They always see this light they want to go towards. But that’s the wormhole. You can’t let her go anywhere near that, you understand? Humans can’t cross over without proper guidance. They will be torn apart by the pressure.’
      ‘Grim, I need to take her back. She’s not dead and I have a life to get back to.’
      ‘Oh, your life? You mean playing poker in dive bars and getting ripped off every time?’ Aidas ignored his pointed words.
      ‘It’s too much of a hassle to describe over the phone. Just stay with her and keep an eye on her, I’ll sort it out when I’m back.’
      Someone on the other end shouted ‘Last orders, folks!’
      ‘I gotta go. You’ll manage. Just wait for me at the house.’
      ‘Grim!’
      ‘Sorry, brother. That’s all I can do from here.’
      Aidas growled and went to hang up, but Grim called out his name.
      ‘Wait, one more thing.’
      Aidas snapped, ‘What?’
      ‘There’s only one bed.’
      ‘I am aware.’ The line went dead. And Aidas just stared at the phone.
      ‘So’, Lilith raised an eyebrow at him, ‘what’s the sitch?’
      ‘Oh you’re going to hate this as much as I do, Lilith.’   AQ

Stephen Lunn – Set Out Running

Stephen Lunn
Set Out Running

He’s not in bed, snugged up into Sophie’s warm back. He’s downstairs, on the sofa. Last night comes back to him in a lump. It was no ordinary row. He can still taste its bitterness.
      The dog whiffles under the dining table, curled in sleep. Over the fireplace, the Little Ben clock says quarter to four. Dawn’s early light creeps through the curtains. He’s had enough: of the job, of the city. Enough of their friends, who were all her friends anyway. Enough of being a family man, in this sort of family.
      He dresses from the tumble dryer. Puts a change of clothes in a shoulder bag. Finds his jacket in the hall, checks his wallet: £120 in notes, some Euros. Driving licence, EHIC, debit card. Gets into the bank app on his phone, moves one third of their savings to his personal account.
      What else? Passport, middle drawer of the dresser. He crosses out Sophie as Emergency Contact, writes in his cousin in Stockport. In the same drawer, there’s a document wallet, with ‘CERTS’ in her big black capitals on the front: he takes his HND Mech Eng., RYA Yachtmaster Offshore, Level 5 Dip of Ed & Training, St Johns First Aid At Work, with CPR and Fire Marshal endorsements. Picks up his half-read book from the floor. Phone charger, notebook, pen. Toothbrush and toothpaste, from the downstairs bathroom. That’s enough stuff.
      He calls AZB taxis, for a pick-up by the Spar on Manchester Road in ten minutes. Puts on well-worn boots: cherry red, steel toecaps. Writes a note:
          I’ve taken £2K from Lloyds to get started. Everything else is yours.
          You’ll be happier without me. Loved you once. Good luck.

Sticks it under the tea caddy, and takes a last look round, at what was his life. Feels nothing except a need to be moving.
      The taxi drops him outside Hallam University at four fifty. He crosses the road and walks to the railway station, Sheffield Victoria, through curvy steel panels and sparkling fountains, feet so light he could skip. Buys tobacco, Rizlas and lighter from a newsagent, in case he takes up smoking again. Walks onto the station concourse. It’s hot and humid and busy already: students with rucksacks, business people with laptops. The departures board refreshes and a crowd rushes to Platform 8. The London train. He’s not going there.
      So many places. Birmingham, Southampton, Cardiff, going south. Leeds, Newcastle, Edinburgh, going north. All too obvious. West looks better: Manchester, Liverpool. Or east. Lincoln, Hull. He’s never been to Hull. He buys a one-way ticket.
      Not many people going there this morning. He has a table to himself, all the way. He talks to a ticket inspector from Rotherham who used to drive buses. Reads his book. Loves the muddy ooze of the Humber, the arc of the suspension bridge. He doesn’t look back once.
      At half eight he’s out of Hull Paragon station, on a wide street called Ferensway. It’s full of small bikes and scooters delivering takeaway food. Who for? Who gets take-aways delivered at this time of day? He stops at the kerb. Cool easterly drizzle, sea salt in the air, two short fat Spidermen advertising pizzas.
      He walks towards the brightest patch of sky, passes a Norwegian Church, an ice rink boarded up, another fat Spiderman. A sign on a post says Trans-Pennine Long-Distance Footpath, which sounds unlikely, here by the sea. He follows where it points, down a narrow alley between high chain-link fences, onto a deserted dockside. A board swinging loose on a gate says ‘Albert Dock’.
      To his right, five big cargo boats lie alongside in a floating harbour: orange hulls, grey superstructure. No people. To the left, the biggest lock he’s ever seen, and a Portakabin. Beyond them, the Humber estuary and the North Sea. It’s peaceful here. He stops and breathes deep, thinks about what he’s done, whether he had a choice. And what he’s going to do. Plenty of choices there. Take art seriously. Go back to engineering or teaching. Write something. Join a band. Starve in a garret. Work in a factory, shop, distribution centre. Advertise pizzas. No rush though. He set out running but can take his time.
      He leans on a post by the Portakabin, trying to feel the sun, smelling fish, watching gulls clean up. He wishes he still smoked, realises he can. Rolls up, sucks it down, his head instantly spinning. He flicks the half-smoked butt into the lock, making a ripple in still water. Mullet cruise over. One sucks the butt in, blows it out again. And another. It must look like food to them.
      You can’t trust looks. Everyone knows that. But little Patrick, two weeks old, fit as a fiddle, with orange hair and freckles: the child doesn’t look like him at all. Never will. You can’t trust looks, but you can trust a DNA test.
      A stubby bloke crops up behind him, asks for a light.
      ‘My pleasure,’ he says. The bloke hangs around, standing back a foot or two, like he’s waiting for something. More people come, stand in line behind the stubby one. Men with bags over their shoulders, papers in their hands.
      He’s in a queue. In fact, he’s the front of a queue, and looking the part, with his bag and his boots.
      A man half-way back looks at his watch. They all do. He does: it’s nine o’clock. A door opens in the Portakabin, a man looks out, beckons. Grey stubble, tanned, white shirt with black epaulettes. Beckons him, as the man at the front of the queue. He walks over. He can’t help smiling.
      At ten past nine he’s out on the dock with three pieces of paper, grinning like a loon. What a nice bloke that was, Robbie Suggett. Robbie gave him the papers, three small black and white miracles. A room for a week, in the seaman’s hostel. Enrolment for a four-day course, ABS Deck Certificate. And a contract. Trainee deckhand, on the SS Tijndrum, one of those orange-hulled freighters in Albert Dock. Sailing next Friday.
      He’s never been to the Baltic.      AQ

Susan E. Lloy – She

Susan E. Lloy
She

She’s uncertain when she left her country as the entire process has been a blur. There had been too much unquenchable sorrow, stress, and unknowns, still they were fortunate compared to others. Others who had never set foot on dry land again wishing for something better. It was in the summer when the winds were strong and currents manic, but the precise date has now escaped her. They straddled the high seas against the wind and wild currents, which tossed their craft around like a cork in a swimming pool. Her child was one of a clutch of frightened children. A girl of six with wide open eyes and long, dark hair. A sweet and prepared face for such a young thing with all the dangers that greeted them with hungry open arms.
      Now she is in a camp, and the shelters that house her and her neighbours touch each other like a parade of soldiers, arm to arm. Her child went missing within a month of their arrival. No one saw a thing. Snatched up and taken by a gang or traffickers like so many others here. Three went missing that day while kicking a ball or playing some child’s game. The UN are interviewing with the help of the police, probing the disappearance of these three children as well as countless others in scattered camps across the country. And each time they visit they provide the same answer. No updates at this time.
      The opportunists, that plague these camps, prey on the unsuspecting. Rana waits and cries and, on occasion, has to be apprehended by others when she attempts to drown herself in the sea that is blue and inviting and constantly calling her name. And, if she just swam until she no longer could, then it would be done. But Rana can’t give in. She must be here if her daughter returns, so this exit is something she can’t consider, at least for now.
      She looks at every one with suspicion, save for her neighbours on either side. A tattered doll lies on the cot of her missing child. It stares back at her, forlorn and distant. Its round, blue eyes seem to be frozen in a shock-like state. Very much like herself. Every breath is already an accomplishment considering the misfortune and misery that has a strangle hold on her, which is unrelenting and merciless. Every day she, and the other parents whose children are also missing, get together and discuss their heartache and what can be done. They must rely on the police as they’re not permitted to walk around outside the camp. Feet and souls are confined to this place. This that has become home, yet has nothing of familiarity or comfort.
      She tries to imagine her child eating nutritious food and playing in the open air, the sun smiling down while she eats an ice cream under the shade of a tree. She wears a pretty, patterned dress with cute animals, or watches a cartoon series on television. But Rana knows this isn’t true. She’s heard the stories and whispers from people who have known such tragedies and realizes the darkness that awaits outside this enclosure. Yet couldn’t this end differently?
 
 
      She’s here now. After decades of living in another space. Territory that inhabited her every pore and memory. Her home of what seemed a thousand years. Her children said she can call this home now. Mavis looks around the single, solitary room with a bathroom off to one side and recognizes some familiar items. Her favourite recliner, framed photographs of loved ones. Some confined within squares she doesn’t quite know anymore, but they look at her with smiles and reassurances. There isn’t a stove to cook on. Just a bare counter with dying flowers in a vase and some snacks. Someone she doesn’t know asked her if she would like her to throw them away, but she replied–no leave them.
      She does remember when she was a young girl moving from one base to another. Never staying in one place long enough to plant roots, make good friends or have any degree of nostalgia to hitch a ride with the next. Yet, the flowers, she does remember. From one country to another all the lovely flowers that grew on the outskirts of the bases. How she loved to bring them home to her mother who always acted surprised and arranged them in a prominent place in different windows for everyone to see.
      There aren’t fields of flowers outside her windows. Just concrete and a parking lot. It wasn’t her children’s choice when they placed her here, but it was the only available spot. They try to make light of it when she asks why she is here. Oh, Mom, it’s nice here. Don’t you think? You don’t have to do anything. Everything is done for you here. Don’t you deserve this after all your years of doing for us?
      She stares off to unknown horizons imagining herself as a young girl again. How time has sped. Now she is here in a space she doesn’t like or understand why exactly. Everything aches and is increasingly more difficult. They won’t even let her out the front door on her own. This prison. This cage that is now hers. How life has become so small. She can’t even make a cup of tea. If she could only move around a bit. Pick flowers, go for a coffee, enjoy a glass of good wine after the cinema. Meet a man.
 
 
      It will take time to adjust to this space, but Lizzy expected this. How else could it be after so many years of cohabitation? She let him keep the house as she was the one who wanted a fresh start. Every crevice in that dwelling reminded her of him. Her new homestead is compact, but what more does she need? Lizzy won’t be inviting another in. Storing his socks and hobbies in her closets. Her friends say she can’t possibly know this at this juncture, yet she does. That part of her life is over and a singular one has begun.
      She looks out at the expanse of the sea where it all began for her, her childhood turf. It’s limitless horizon and soothing rhythm. This is something she will never leave again. Her migration days are over. She must stay anchored to this place on this shore for the remainder of her days. Even though the fog layers this stretch of land with force and a relentless grip. Footsteps must be taken with care. But Lizzy feels safe here with the cold Atlantic winds and hard, blue water. All familiar markers of her youth. Especially when she reads about the misfortunes of others. The migrants who take such peril-filled escape routes on waters such as this and the hard realities of the ones who make it. Homes where no hats are hung and lives that become absorbed into the unknown.
 
 
      Rana looks out from the refugee camp and sees a flock of gulls flying overhead and wants to leave with them. To where, she doesn’t care. Still, she is imprisoned here indefinitely with no freedom but a hope. Perhaps she will have news of her daughter soon and this keeps her feet solid on this foreign soil. A land where one is not easily welcomed. She looks out across the stretch of land that borders the east side of the camp. A grove of olive trees stands quietly in the field. She imagines picking olives and preparing simple fresh cooked meals. It’s so close she can imagine plucking one from a tree. Yet her feet are bound here. To this place that’s home now, but grasps none of its liberty. At this moment she knows it’s a good thing, for one step in any direction and her child is farther from her too.   AQ

Monique van Maare – Engulfed

Monique van Maare
Engulfed

I built a shelter on the island’s highest point. It’s not much for comfort, but it keeps me dry. When I moved up here, I could still see the reefs and the other atolls in the distance. Gulls would screech and brace against the strong East winds, swooping in to forage in the scattered bays. Now, there’s just water everywhere.
           I am the last one here. When the tourists stayed away, the young and adventurous among us packed their bags and sought out the cities. Then, when the first terraces flooded with sand and seashells, families gathered up their young and headed for the mainland, too. Slowly, the frothing white web lines connecting our little islets faded, as one by one the fishing boats and water taxis were left behind at their wooden docks.
           I stayed, out of a deep love for the turquoise of our waters, and the giant sea turtles that stop here every year on their long journeys to nest. Perhaps, too, out of love for the wind-beaten shape of her palms, the long empty stretches of her windswept dunes.
           She was always our provider. Pine, coconut and figs featured richly on our plates, and hollow coves protected the crops of hatching fish. Even now, there are hibiscus flowers growing up here that I can braid into wreaths, like we used to do on festive days. We’d dance on the stony beaches, and honour all her winged, leafed and finned species. I made one yesterday, but it unraveled from my head with my first sway, translucent yellow petals raining softly on my leathered skin. I can sense the day getting closer. I must remember to collect those nervine herbs I saved.
           The day the water reached the old graveyard, I cried until the purple dawn. I thought of the bones of our great-grandfathers and -mothers, our uncles and nieces and the little ones that died too young, roused roughly by the incoming waves, their spirits roaming the outstretched peninsulas and lifting angrily into the sky. Will they find peace again? Will the wind remember their stories, and strew them to our scattered hearths?
           Soon, porpoises and dolphins will nibble in her valleys. Sharks will mate in the shallow hollows of her ponds, which will no longer fill with lilies. The waters will get darker and wider, and the fierce pull of the currents will be deeply foreign to her soil. The nereids, with their bleached coral crowns and white silk robes, will swarm in and laugh at her discomfort, and at our hubris, our folly, our devastation.
           I feel I owe her this, to be with her as she is consumed by the waves. When the time comes, and my last sanctuary here disappears in the waves, I will grind my feet into the shifting sand of her last dune, and hold on to her with my curled-in toes as long as I can.
           When the cold water reaches my knees, and the gales pick up, the bones of our ancestors will call my name, tell me it is time to let go. I will remember how Perseus came for his sweet Andromeda, perched on her rock in the sea, but I know that he never held such promise here. My body will be thrown off the sand by the bashing current, and she and I will become one. Even if, against all odds, the wind guides his winged Pegasus to these waters, what else will he see but an endless blue-grey expanse of deeply heaving sea?     AQ

Mandira Pattnaik – Somewhere in Subliminal Spaces

Mandira Pattnaik
Somewhere in Subliminal Spaces

was Zoev. Strung like a taut wire. In the dirty unapologetic puddle, Sun got poached. Howls of people they addressed as Leftovers — separated from those that left for a permanent exile — rung in his ears. Skies above, as clear as mirror, held no promise of rain. Light reflected from everything except the blackened-out mounds of earth. Zoev stood on the causeway next to the sludge of toxic chemicals, to his right were weeds shrouded under soot.
      Things had precipitated fast. Way too fast. How many days ago was he in the cockpit of a fighter jet bombing the land below? A mere switch of the button had rained gamma rays; everything got decimated; wildly circling vultures were all that there was left to show for life. Lastly, the prized land—barren, a chemical dump—had meant nothing. Hours later, they had ordered an emergency evacuation to the edge of the planet. Beyond the boundaries of known homes.
      Suicidal shame it was—the waiting ships’ crew had body-scanned the passengers for microbes. Deaths and diseases on the journey were unaffordable—they had scanned people inside out. Passengers had buckled onto seats, five in a numbered chamber, packed from floor to ceiling with fuel and food.
      Amidst bursts of confetti, people had thrown wads of currency, rejoicing because they’d been allowed into the journey. As a final unshackling.
      Little did they know: money was ash. Money, dust.
      Zoev had scrambled to get onto the ship. Far too many here—everyone murmured under their breaths. People got squished; there was a stampede. The problem needs trouble shooting—someone had suggested. There was a shower of bullets; people had fallen like game animals—bloodied and maimed in a heap, but nobody could care less.
      Alas! Zoev was stopped at the final passage—a trace of the ordinary flu!
      Zoev decided to run along the causeway, turning back spitefully to see the glistening tip of ships leaving for another street, an away home, pointing to the skies, looming over the burnt out stumps of Cedars.
      He ran as fast as he could—dejected, hungry and thirsty. He thought he’d die of thirst. Finally, he sneaked into the humble roads of the town he once lived in. He stood outside his childhood home, taken over by a family of overgrown plants, black nightshade, pink water speedwell, water plantain and dwarf spurge, all dying, or just tethered to life.
      He looked around: Once the pride of the Mediterranean, now a ghostly town of half-eaten buildings, the crowns all smoked black. Yawning windows screamed—shrieks which none heard. They had bombed the town before it was too late. The ships wouldn’t have room for everybody.
      Zoev, a prisoner of the Sun and skies and whatever became of its clouded amalgamation, trudged through the ashen blocks, the smell of death was overpowering. His tongue hung loose.
      Evening descended. He watched the crepuscular skies sliced by white and black fumes rising from the destroyed precincts. Insignia of stupidity!
      Zoev thought of the calm turquoise planet it once was; and saw only tufts of amber dead grass. He remembered Jane, his wife. He thought of his mom. I’ll fall back on lives and afterlives; I’ll own you forever. His eyes welled up.
      Further down the street, he saw a Rottweiler at the bend—black and mahogany, its forehead arched. It was hungry; narrowed its eyes to measure the domain challenger. Zoev aimed his pocket knife like a spear at the animal. He stood like a Greek statue and threw. At lightning speed, the Rottweiler charged, an arrow off a bow. The spear had no chance. The dog struck the man to the ground and with its paws held him to the dust till his head threatened to burst. Zoev lay like dead. The animal paused and circled him.
      Tired Zoev wanted death; he did not beg for mercy. But the animal gave him pardon and crouched. The night they spent face to face. Nothing moved, only the ships leaving, one after another.
      When the sun emerged, all fire and fury, Zoev rose to his feet. He wasn’t sure if he was grateful to be alive. He ignored the Rottweiler but it followed as they paced together across the once-charmed cobbled walkways, down to the river, east of town.
      They saw traffic frozen in time; cars mangled; cycles twisted in a heap when the people tried to escape like mad.
      The river lay dead. Zoev walked over its broken bed, and reached its dried middle. He began to dig furiously—in its depths may lie the native element that could quench his thirst.
      The Rottweiler watched him surreptitiously, afraid of the fanatic man. From the core of its being rose a voice—ingenuity of man is matched only by his unwise actions! Zoev kept on digging deeper. No trace of water. Mounds of dry sand piled; blood oozed from his fingers.
      Now a dust storm rose, obscured the definitiveness of day or night. Winds came in from every side. Man and animal, unguarded, were like offerings to the elements. Zoev screamed —not a wise thing to do—sand entered his mouth, blinded his eyes. He was beginning to give up when the Rottweiler darted towards the stone banks, led, the man ran behind.
      They reached a dark cavern, the corners of which were lit by a feeble ethereal light. Zoev did not know where he was; he stood numb and drained. In that light, the Rottweiler marked out—clear water seeping by the rock sides, like a melting heart. The dog watched the man lick, like a return to the native element after the apocalypse.   AQ