Archive for: Fiction

Bitter Pill
by Srinjay Chakravarti

The late afternoon sun was deliciously warm and mellow, and Mrs Lahiri, sitting on the park bench on that cold December day, had almost dozed off. Her head was nodding and the cashmere sweater she was knitting lay on her lap, forgotten.

The sound of sudden raucous laughter, harsh and discordant, roused her from her incipient slumber. She blinked her eyes behind her pince-nez glasses and looked around. There was no one to be seen. She turned around and looked carefully again. She could hear voices from behind the screen of dense foliage. Someone was talking loudly.

She yawned and picked up her knitting again. Suddenly some of the words wafted to her ears and she sat up straight.

“That old fool of a woman, Mrs Chitra Lahiri,” came a deep male voice, “did you look at her face?! It was a picture!”

A young girl’s laughter tinkled in the air. “The idea of the soap lather coming out from my mouth—that was too brilliant. Just wicked! Where did you learn it?”

The young man laughed. “From a friend who was in the army. He had read about it in a book. It’s a trick some young men had used during a war to act out epileptic fits. That way they weren’t drafted into military service in their country.”

Mrs Lahiri was aghast. Not just the mention of her name, but that voice—particularly that young woman’s voice—seemed rather familiar.

She raised her heavy body with difficulty from the park bench—her knees were rather weak—and hobbled around the bushes to see who all were chatting there.

The young couple had come and had sat down behind her while she was feeling drowsy. They hadn’t noticed Mrs Lahiri, screened as she was by the bushes, creepers and a large peepal tree.

They looked up as Mrs Lahiri came into view and stared at her for an instant in horrified shock. They had been smoking, but dropped their half-burnt bidis on the grass and fled. Mrs Lahiri, too, was reeling with shock, now that her worst suspicions had been proved true. Wasn’t that her maid Sabita, who was supposed to be in hospital?

The realisation of what had happened suddenly hit her and she felt quite, quite sick. She felt giddy, her knees gave away, and she fell on the grass in a dead faint.

When she came to, someone was sprinkling water on her face. There was a hubbub of voices and several people had gathered around her. A few elderly gentlemen, who had been walking in the park, some children with their mothers and ayahs, and a few young idlers. These young men were much like the scoundrel she had just seen—thin, swarthy, with scruffy beards or stubble, clad in skin-tight jet black or shiny blue shirts and t-shirts and skinny “butter” denim jeans, in various shades of beige or muddy brown. She looked at them in trepidation, but they helped Mrs Lahiri to her feet kindly.

“Are you all right?” one of them asked solicitously. They helped her to a park bench, where she sat down, fanning her face. Despite the cold, she was sweating.

“Where do you live?” asked a middle-aged man. She replied, “Quite close by. Left turn from this park, then right down Rhododendron Avenue.”

“What happened?”

Mrs Lahiri started to describe her encounter, but then thought better of it. “Oh, it’s nothing, just a spell of giddiness.”

“Shall we take you home?” asked a gangly youth, unctuously. She blinked up at him and was about to refuse, but then she nodded weakly. Two of the young men helped her across the street and took her home. They asked her, “Do you live here alone?”

“Yes, ever since my husband passed away.”

“Is there no one at all at home?” they asked.

“No, both my daughters live abroad, one in Canada, the other in Australia. I had a maid who lived with me all the time, but—” She was about to say Sabita had been hospitalised, but stopped just in time. She felt the tears sting her eyes.

She stopped for breath, then rubbed her eyes. “I’m so sorry, I can’t even offer you a glass of water now,” she said to the young men.

“No, no. It’s perfectly all right,” they replied. “Please take care of yourself,” they said courteously. “We’ll come back tomorrow and ask after you.”

First a dubiety, and then a kernel of suspicion, started to harden in her mind. Mrs Lahiri looked at the youths in trepidation. Now why were they so interested in her well-being? She wondered….

The old lady’s thoughts must have flitted over her face, for the youths looked embarrassed and left quietly soon after.

Mrs Lahiri plopped down on the sofa in her living room. Things were moving too fast for her. Yesterday’s events flashed like a 35mm reel of an old film through her sluggish mind—scratched, disjointed and discoloured.

Last afternoon, after they had had lunch, Sabita had complained of stomach pain, probably caused by indigestion. It was the maid’s wont to ask Mrs Lahiri for medicines for minor ailments. And the old lady often gave her tablets and capsules from her own stock, whenever she could.

This time, however, events had taken a dramatic turn. Mrs Lahiri had taken out an antacid from the medicine cabinet. A few minutes later, her maid’s fiancé—what was his name now? she had clean forgotten—had come running. He often came to visit Sabita.

“Sabita is very ill! She is foaming at the mouth…”

Mrs Lahiri had at once rushed to the kitchen to find Sabita lying on the floor, hands clutched to her abdomen, writhing in agony. Foam had indeed been coming out of her mouth.

The pimply young man had exclaimed, “What’s happened to her? She fell ill right after taking the tablet you gave her. It’s all your bloody fault! You’ve given her the wrong medicine.”

Mrs Lahiri had not known what to say. She had stuttered, “I mean… not I, it isn’t my fault…the medicine… I mean…”

Sabita’s fiancé had snarled, “Shut up! I’m going to take her to the hospital at once. Perhaps we’ll be able to save her!”

Saying that, he had taken Sabita away and put her on a rickshaw.

Mrs Lahiri had stayed back at home, her heart beating a drumbeat in fear and anxiety, waiting for news. After some time—for the life of her, she couldn’t remember his name—he had come back.

“I have admitted Sabita to Oriental Nursing Home.” It was a well-known, expensive nursing home nearby. “Her condition is critical. They have asked for a deposit of ten thousand rupees.”

Mrs Lahiri had stared at him, speechless.

“Where will I get so much money?” he had demanded. “It’s all your fault. You’ll have to pay the deposit.”

Mrs Lahiri had been shaking with fear by now, yet had protested feebly, “It’s not my fault, I never knew that—that—the medicine was wrong…”

The brash young fellow had said, “How dare you? If you don’t give the money for the hospital expenses, I’ll bring a thousand people from my bustee and burn down your house! You old witch—!”

Mrs Lahiri had been terrified. There was no one she could turn to right then. She lived in a secluded stretch of the upscale Rhododendron Avenue and most of the residents were elderly people like her. Next to her was a single-storey house that had been lying vacant for the past few months ever since the tenants had moved away. In the other house next to hers there lived an old couple and the gentleman was ailing. She had not liked to bother them. Opposite her house lived a middle-aged couple, both of whom were doctors, but they were both at hospital at that time of the day and their daughter was at school. Her only relative in the city was her nephew, who lived in another part of Calcutta, several kilometres away.

At that point of time she had been so frightened that she had not known what to do, she had not known whom to turn to. What if something happened to the girl? The very thought had filled Mrs Lahiri with dread.

As it was, she was not sure if she had given her maid the right medicine. She had thought it better not to argue with the young man and, with a trembling hand and tremulous eyes, had made out a bearer’s cheque for fifteen thousand—“to cover all hospital expenses and medicines,” as he had so rightly pointed out—on her savings bank account. Before he had left, the young man—what was his name now, she tried desperately to remember—had threatened her yet again: “If something happens to Sabita, I swear we’ll get even with you…”

There had been no news of Sabita, that day and the next day, too. Mrs Lahiri had feared the worst. Sabita’s fiancé had not come back at all.

The maid used to live with her. She had come to Mrs Lahiri’s home as an orphaned young girl from a remote village in Medinipur district. Sabita had been with her for some ten years now. Mrs Lahiri recalled how the malnourished Sabita had first come to her, frightened, innocent, and alarmingly thin, and under her ministrations, had blossomed into a dusky beauty, doe-eyed and lissom. Mrs Lahiri had done all she could have done for her, and not out of pity either…

Mrs Lahiri didn’t know much about the young man to whom Sabita had recently got engaged. He lived in a slum on the other side of the railway tracks nearby and did odd jobs for a living. But she didn’t have his address.

Mrs Lahiri went to the park only occasionally, but today she had gone out in the evening for some fresh air, having passed a sleepless night. When she saw Sabita and her fiancé, she realised how badly she had been duped. But was there much she could do about it? What information could she give the cops? She didn’t know their whereabouts or even the ruffian’s name.

A sudden thought struck her. She went to Sabita’s little room on top of the empty garage. She was thunderstruck, as they say. All her belongings were gone! Not even her comb or mirror was there, nor even a scrap of her clothing.

Mrs Lahiri came back to the living room on wobbly feet and collapsed into a divan. Her nephew Saikat came in just then.

“So it was all meticulously planned,” Saikat said heavily, after hearing her out. Saikat Bhaduri was her nephew, the only son of her late brother. She had called him up yesterday itself, but he had not been able to come over from Circus Avenue. He had promised to make it that evening, and there he was, as good as his word.

A thought struck him. He picked up the phone and called up Oriental Nursing Home. “Has any patient by the name of Sabita Mondol been admitted to your nursing home yesterday afternoon? Yes, could you please check? I’ll hold on.”

He listened, grim-faced, when the nurse on duty answered at last, then said, “Okay,” and hung up.

Mrs Lahiri knew the answer even before Saikat told her. As she sat on the sofa, talking to her nephew, she felt very weary indeed.

“It’s a pity you can’t recall that scoundrel’s name,” sighed Saikat. “That would’ve made the cops’ jobs a lot easier. Still, I’ll have a word with the officer-in-charge at the local police station. They might be able to trace Sabita somehow, though I fear it is too late—they must be miles away by now.”

Mrs Lahiri’s voice trembled. “And what would the police have done if they had managed to nab him?” she asked.

“Well, they’d have dumped him in the lockup and beaten him up black and blue, of course,” replied Saikat. “You would have got your money back, and both of them would have gone to jail.”

She shook her head, dispiritedly. “That’s no solution at all.”

“Then what to do?”

“I really don’t know… Ten years Sabita had spent in my home, I looked after her like my own daughter, and now this—this—betrayal…”

“I can’t bear the thought of her going to prison,” she went on, with a heavy sigh. “If they come to me and say sorry, and return my money, then I’ll certainly forgive them.”

“That seems hardly likely, does it? They have skedaddled—and I’m sure they won’t return to Calcutta, ever,” Saikat murmured.

The Doctor in Town
by Dennis Sinar

Fate, the mother of us all, guided me here in 1957. I drove a dusty 1950 Powerglide Chevy into town looking for a job. Cars parked at angles studded the four blocks of Main Street and shoppers crowded both sides of the street. Eventually, I found a vacant two-story building at the north end of town, a block beyond the established stores. Negotiations were quick. The owner needed a tenant, and the combination first floor office and second floor apartment were suitable for a businessman tenant who didn’t mind being on the edge of town. Location was not a problem because I knew people would come. It took a day to find a sign maker and hang my shingle above the door. Carl Jordan, M.D. was open for business. I was the only doctor in this small town.

In the late 1950s, a general practitioner was expected to be a caring, gentle, knowledgeable person who listened to his patients and most importantly, was willing to work hard. On the first day, people started coming with the usual illnesses, and in that first year, my practice grew steadily as I established trust. My patients were my neighbors and it was easy to remember all of their illnesses. I treated mostly common diseases in families and sat with other families for comfort when their people died.

My patients were black or white, rich or poor, ornery or not, and I made house calls. If a drunk wandered onto my porch on a Saturday night, he sat there until he was sober, then I saw him first when the office opened. My posted office hours were eight to five, five days a week, but that was only a guideline. If a sick patient knocked after hours, I yelled out the upstairs window for them to sit on the porch and I’d be down shortly.

I learned that the interview was the most important part of the encounter, a time to observe all the clues about what was troubling them. People needed to tell their story on their own terms and it was best to smile, nod, and listen as they talked. I remember a wife who was nervously waiting for my diagnosis of her husband’s illness. As she sat silently beside her husband, looking between us, rubbing her trembling index finger across the hair of her eyebrow and then repeating the motion on the other eyebrow. To hide his embarrassment, he looked straight ahead at the sunset print on the wall, studying the print and the color of the sunset. He was used to facing the setting sun in tobacco fields and his face was lined with crow’s feet. His right foot tapped, tapped on the floor to some rhythm in his head. The wife looked at her husband and then back to me, willing him to talk about his symptoms, to be truthful about his weight loss, lack of appetite, and the pains in his stomach. He was silent, not ready, so she told the story. I watched her hands and her eyes for clues as to what she needed. It was obvious that he had a cancer of some kind, likely terminal. He never looked at me. Before I said the words, she knew her suspicions were true, and her eyes asked what could be done. She wanted my guidance on the path from here to there, but he never stopped looking at the sunset print. Diagnosing cancer was terrible, but not difficult. Someone with a wasting disease, steady pain, or jaundice had the bad disease. Finding where the cancer was located was not important back then. People did not want to know the kind of cancer; they just accepted that it was cancer, an untreatable condition in their mind. Every day they stayed above ground was a blessing, a day to be used to work and provide for their family for as long as they were able.

In those early days, my hands were my greatest asset, warm, smooth, and neatly groomed. Someone told me that people didn’t trust a doctor with dirty hands and so I washed my hands after coming into the room so the patients knew they were clean. In the beginning, it was difficult for me to examine patients because I disliked physical contact, but when people complimented my gentle touch, I became more comfortable.

Examining a patient was like playing a fine instrument, my warm hands started well away from the tender area and slowly worked toward their particular area of discomfort. During the exam, I nodded often to encourage patients to add details to their story. If someone complained of pain in their chest, I’d gently palpate the back and front, feeling for tender spots. If I found tenderness, it was the end of my search and I knew what to do; if not, I’d listen with my scope and decide on something different. If their chest rattled, they went home with pills dispensed by the nurse from our back office supply; if their chest was quiet, they went home with the same pills, but a different colour. The results were the same—patients most often got better. Each of my capsules looked different, large, or medium sized and coloured blue, white, or bright yellow. It was easy to buy coloured double 0 wax capsules out of town and fill them with sugar. Placebo pills were common at the time, and as the nurse handed the patient their envelope of pills, she instructed them to swallow them whole, so they never tasted the sugar. I used simple medicines because they worked.

The mechanics of laboratory testing did not interest me; I was concerned only with the mystery and the manifestations of disease. My medical knowledge was refined by trial and error. On a back office shelf was my single reference, the Merck Manual. I consulted it with difficult cases and the pages became worn over the years. In most cases, the manual proved adequate. Most days I was able to puzzle out a patient’s problem using common sense. My treatments reinforced the placebo principle— examine carefully, treat with confidence, and expect a cure.

Surprisingly, their confidence in me was the most effective medicine – if a patient believed I knew how to treat their problem, their belief was enough; patients tried to get better because it was expected. When people heard my diagnosis, they nodded understanding, and symptoms that were unbearable before the visit, with my reassurance, became bearable. I had a nervous tic, rubbing my knuckles back and forth across my lips and teeth as I thought about a difficult case. The tic initially gave patients a start, but then eventually instilled confidence in my diagnostic skills. The tic helped solve a surprising number of vexing problems.

Vaccination of children was not widespread in the South. I learned that childhood diseases, whether in a rich child or a poor child, mostly improved in a day or two, and if the child did not improve, I sent them on to a specialist in the big city. In children, what looked like a cold might actually be a serious disease like polio or meningitis that could get much worse in more than a few days. Those were the times of the most severe cases of polio, widespread tuberculosis, and the worst of a handful of other severe childhood illnesses. Thankfully, those times have passed. When I sent the child to the city, the specialists appreciated the prompt referral and always let me know how things turned out.

Payment for my services was a challenge because few people had readily available cash. Most offered trades or asked for credit until their crops came in. I collected food, dressed farm animals, or canned preserves. Patients saved their best harvest for the doctor. If I took care of all three kids in a family for their colds, I might get a smoked ham; if a farmer’s wife had the vapours, the husband brought a few thick steaks. When I had enough food, I took handmade clothing.

In the practice of general medicine, people came during regular office hours with common ailments: colds, scrapes, arthritis, and fevers. Emergencies and house calls always came in the middle of the night for patients too sick to leave their bed. An emergency for a farmer had the same importance whether it was a cow in labor or his wife’s spells. Often I would see the wife and the cow on the same house call. In both cases, I prescribed the same pills, and more often than not, the wife and the cow got better. I saw joy, grief, and the loss of life, often in the same week.

Toward the end of a long day, I was exhausted and failed in my caring. The best I could do at those times was to follow the thread of their history, but no diagnosis came into my head. I saw the person in front of me as a skeleton stripped of skin or a blob of muscles that talked. When that happened, I asked them to come back in the morning for a fresh look. People saw my foibles and believed my words, either in the office, or when they saw me on the street and stopped to ask about some medical problem.

One morning, a car weaving down Main Street hit a man, and the patrons of the Starlight Grill had an excellent view of the accident. I was sitting at a table in the front window, looked out at the splattered man, and then resumed my breakfast, knowing the man was already dead and beyond my services. None of the patrons questioned my decision.

Through weeks, then years, I learned to appreciate the strength of the human body—the oldest to the youngest bodies—and how they adapted as they aged. It was common to see an old granny and then a newborn baby, one after the other in a morning, and the diversity of life amazed me.

There were many times when I went to a person’s home, often in the middle of the night. On one visit, the spouse opened the front door, nodded, and led me upstairs to their bedroom. It was a clean room, but infused with the smell of sickness. On the wall opposite the window, there was a huge poster bed with a white lace canopy. The patient, a man I had seen only rarely, was propped up in the bed, leaning against large feather pillows, his breathing so laboured that he could barely get more than a few words out without pausing. There was an odour of urine from the bed and damp washed sheets hung out the window to dry. By way of decoration in the room, hanging on a nail in the middle of the wall across from the bed was a crayon drawing of a man. Underneath the drawing in a child’s handwriting was: “To Dear Papa.” This man was Papa.

One hot summer afternoon, a woman sat in the office and told me about her husband: “That man is disturbed, sick you know. He’s never been all there, what with staring into space rather than looking me in the eye like a normal person, talking crazy sentences about the devil or someone following him or trying to poison him. He never tells normal things anymore, and people stay well away from him. I’ve never known for him to hurt anybody, but with crazy people, you never know when they’re just going to snap and go for your throat.” She went on in that vein for some time, and I found that letting her get it out was the best tonic, nodding, looking at her face, and listening with my hands crossed in my lap. Eventually, her tape ran out and she went back into herself. Our conversation continued, but she avoided my eyes and looked down at my hands, as if they would give the diagnosis and tell what she should do.

Then, one week, my routine changed. Odd feelings stirred in me, and I felt something alive moving deep inside my abdomen, tightening and squeezing, not yet pain but becoming pain. The feeling became worse and changed to pain in another week. I had examined enough patients to know the diagnosis, but not how long the disease would take. I knew there was no treatment, even in the big city. My nurse and I decided to close the office gradually over the next two months.

At home, I turned to thoughts of God and an afterlife. I became philosophical about the extremes of life, knowing that the boundary between life and death could be measured like the narrow path of a tornado, and like the tornado, my disease was unstoppable. My ego hoped that perhaps medicine might hold back that boundary, and that my will alone could determine the path enough for the storm to miss me. With each day as the pain increased, the division between life and death became more narrow, making me wonder about the next adventure. A week after the office closed, I sat in the sun on the front porch and looked at my hands. I was surprised at how bony they had become, how the flesh had stripped away. The knuckles were prominent, and the skin was stretched tight around every joint, yet my grip was still strong and my gentle touch was the same touch that so many patients recalled.

I had seen life end in suddenness, a merciful transition between living and then not, and I had seen the opposite—a slow, painful process of ending that fostered replaying, regret, and only a few pleasant memories. Which path would I prefer if it were in my power? My preference didn’t matter because the choice was made for me.

Perhaps my legacy will live on, but I doubt it. After I’ve gone, people will forget the good and only remember the bad in their dealings with me. My greatest secret would go with me into the grave. On my scout drive into town in 1957, I was looking for easy money, but instead found my destiny on a path that was irreversible. In the end, if people thought I was a doctor and helped them, then I was their doctor.

Vita
by Susan Lloy

They say when you’re going to die your life flashes before you, yet this isn’t quite so. It’s rather like a film, reedited from scraps on the floor and put back together with the plot and characters all mixed up in one last fusion. At least, that’s what it’s been like for me and even though we’re all taking some train to personalized destinations, now that I’ve nearly reached my own stop, I kind of wish I was still a few stations back.

I’ve managed to remain at home with a nurse checking in on me twice a day and I feel lucky for this. She’ll be here soon and I’m waiting for my big hit of pain medication. My tumor has spread like a burst star and now I wait to die; my neurons still transmit, but more like anarchists or an ambushed Morse code whose sender is tapping some unknown beat that only he can dance to.

 
I look around the space and it’s filled with photographs, mostly my own, yet blended with other admired works of my contemporaries, which hang on the walls and grace the sideboards. I had been a photojournalist, documenting the social imprint of each generation, whether it was political or cultural. That is, until I got sick. In recent years I had cut back the travel and worked on a collection for a book and a documentary. They both got quite a bit of attention with a good payout and this is how I’m able to remain here with additional homecare.

I hear the key in the door and I know it’s Hazel. Hazel is young and hot and has an old-fashioned name for a fresh face and a mod flair. She’s good at this sort of thing and isn’t uneasy. She doesn’t show up in a uniform. She appears in casual, non-provocative clothing. But, sometimes I get a glimpse. A peek at her arm through her sleeveless shirt and what lies beyond; a firm breast, the hardness of the clavicle, the long ballerina neck.

“Hi, hi Arthur.”

“Hi, Hazel.”

She bursts into my living room with a bouquet of just picked flowers and tells me about her night out. Some guy had pursued her at a bar, not taking no for an answer and she ended up getting the bouncer to pitch him out. He had waited for her in his car when she spilt a couple of hours later. Fortunately, she hadn’t been alone and her male companion gave the guy a stern talking to, but now she is fearful of her favourite watering hole and is leery of going back.

 
I like these little stories and listen intently while she prepares my hit. Her hair is tied back and she rubs my vein, her lovely green eyes taking in all of me as the needle finds its trail. I feel the heat and then see the classic tunnel. It’s dark and there’s warm light at the far end. I want to enter and I guess this is it for me, but when I reach it I hear hard music and see punks drenched in colour dancing in some hip club that perhaps I had once frequented in New York or Berlin. It has the sense of the familiar, something I innately know. The energy is frenzied and I feel at home, cozy, as if this is my heaven. Or is it hell? I always imagined hell would be some cool scene like this, with the doorman picking out the hipsters from the sidewalk creating a fine collection of skin and sweat. I hear the old songs of my youth and they make me feel bulletproof. Pumped.

 
An edgy girl comes to me and whispers in my ear. I feel her warm breath and the cold of her nose chain against my face. The music makes her words unrecognizable and she takes my arm, leading me to an outside corridor. It has long glass walls on each side with installations of living, exotic animals. In a blue hued room off to the side there is a wall with two sharks. I feel sorry for them as they bang into the side of the huge tank, their sonar corrupted by percussion and screaming guitars. She indicates that she wants me to follow her, and I do, although I don’t know why. She shows me a prehistoric bird pecking at the glass. Its huge tongue licks the barrier. I turn to her, but she’s gone and I hear the glass shatter into a thousand fragments.

I awake and the vase of flowers has fallen from the coffee table. Daisies and brown-eyed Susan’s are scattered on the floor. I’m not immobile yet and slowly rise from my hospital bed, as I don’t want to leave this mess for Hazel. She’s left me some soup in a thermos and I drink it wishing I were back in my dream or flashback, which is becoming harder to differentiate.

 
My dreams are laced with memories, and often I can’t tell what is real or not. The disease has ambushed my brain and now things are scrambled like a great break on a pool table with all the balls diverged to the four corners of the earth. I can still do a few things; but mostly I lie here, dreaming and watching television.

Hazel gets me all the movies and series that I like and currently I’m on a run of Berlin Alexanderplatz. It’s the Berlin I once knew, the many times I visited, weaved within that particular slice of time shadowed by the Wall. Driving in a fat, square Mercedes down wide boulevards, drinking and sniffing the evenings away in alternative cafes, engaging with the cool nocturnal creatures that roamed the Berlin nights. Following this dark tale I plan to watch I, Claudius and all the Cassavetes’ films, with sagas of murder, poison and treachery; and to remember New York when it was down and dirty. When garbage drifted throughout the streets like urban angles and when one didn’t get ticketed for drinking a beer on a stoop. I guess by now you realize that I’m no spring chicken, just a guy who lived amongst the wild ones when disorder prevailed. I miss those days.

Rita, my housekeeper, comes three times a week to freshen up and prepare meals, mostly soups and light dishes. She’s a good cook and isn’t offended when often they’re left untouched. This concoction is a mix of varied greens, garlic and minced chicken. It’s good and I sip it slowly watching the white linen curtains sway in the afternoon breeze. I see the hollyhocks swaying in the garden.

It’s summer and the weather remains warm. As I close my eyes I’m startled by a loud bang from a backfiring truck. Afghanistan. I’m here because there’s been a kill, the accidental bombing of a small village. Silhouetted against a mountain and feet set firmly on the ground, my shutter snaps at the speed of light. A woman and four children lay severed in multiple directions. The husband is too shocked to cry, but cannot take his eyes away from his family who just minutes ago took their steps and breaths along with him. I record the misery and carnage. I feel like a voyeur, still someone has to do it. Black helicopters approach off the horizon. A small doll smiles at me from the rubble. A dog cries in the distance.

 
I’ve always been a bachelor; never creating enough time to stay in one place and put my feet up or gather a partner. There were a few serious loves in my life, though for one reason or another, none sustained and time has made them fussy in my mind like a long, dead someone. I bought this house not so long ago as a sort of beacon, somewhere to hang my lens in this tireless world. I ended back to where I started from, in a little town on the wild Atlantic coast where I summer vacationed as a small boy.

I feel a shiver run my spine and I see myself jumping the broken ice on the shoreline, step-stoning to reach the solid mass. I miss my mark and my foot gets wet, but there’s an extra woolen sock in my skate. I’m free and travel with my shadow on the cold crystal. The sun sparkling off my blade.

“Arthur…hi Arthur. You look peaceful seems like a crime to wake you.”
Hazel lets herself in and tidies up the area around my bed. I used to sleep upstairs under the peaked ceiling and miss the pounding of the rain on the roof, the wind banging on the window, the coziness of the enclosed space. It reminds me of a tent, which was often my home on assignment. Down here I feel vulnerable. Exposed.

 
I’m not afraid to die and now that I can’t do much except lie here and attempt to hold on to a slice of reality between injections, I’m sort of looking forward to it. I imagine it to be a deep sleep without interruptions or dreams.

“Arthur. Let’s transfer you to the chair so that I can change your sheets. The change in position will be good for you.”
Hazel assists me, adjusting my legs to the side of the bed and pivots me to the chair, fluffing the pillow behind my back. She examines my skin for breakdown and so far it’s holding out.

“You know, Arthur, that guy that was stalking me at the bar showed up again. I went right up to him and told him to stay out of my face. He said he thought I was someone he knew. Not sure if I believe him, nevertheless I feel relieved.”

“That’s good, Hazel. I’m sure it was just an honest misunderstanding.”
Hazel runs around like someone on the clock and I guess she is, as she has other patients to visit on her rounds. She heats up some soup and pours it in a thermos along with a few fresh-baked tea biscuits that Rita made. She sets it on the bedside table.

Sometimes Hazel discusses her other patients. She delivers little jokes and anecdotes and I’m sure her reasoning is to let me know that I’m not alone with my condition. She tells me about a young mother, an older woman and a fisherman who’s on his last catch. She puts the tourniquet on my arm and my vein swells. I’m back in bed now and my thoughts melt into each other.

 
It’s Daleighla. She’s in a field dotted with red poppies. I loved her in my youth. I think I still do… She’s running and I want to catch her. She calls my name, “Arthur, come!” I try, but I can’t catch up and she dissolves into the forest up ahead. I fall into the long grass the colour of wheat and close my eyes, feeling every little piece of me make a break to parts unknown.

The Other Side
by Ariel Beller

So you want a report from the other side and I’m saying I’ll give you one. I mean no one else knows about this. And I’m going to tell you because I am here and you are there.

Should we stick to the facts? The undeniable realities? We could start there I suppose. But to be honest the undeniable realities seem pretty goddamn basic to me. So I won’t go into them. I won’t tell you about people or places. I’m not going to bore you with a bunch of shit I already know. What a lot of people won’t tell you is, they are just a little man or a little woman sitting alone in a room. Maybe it is winter. Maybe they have their socks draped over the heater and a tiny radio going on the freezing windowsill. The radio plays the music of a dead Russian composer. Etc.

But don’t go thinking there’s a person here. I am just a bunch of words. I have a mother but she’s not a person either. She’s 5,000 miles away and that makes her just an image, a sound. I have a friend named M – who lives in Oregon. Every now and then he sends me a bunch of words telling me about his life, as if he were a person. But M – is just an image, a sound. I have another friend named G – and she has a baby inside her. The baby is an image. The baby is almost a feeling. For G – it’s inevitable. The baby will come out and try to be a person but it will fail. Just like the rest of us.

To be honest there isn’t too much going on over here, on the other side. There are a lot of things I could do if I wanted. I could re-arrange my books. I could relieve myself in the sink which is where I usually go because the bathroom is so cold and I’m always up so late and I don’t want to wake my neighbours with so many trips to the bathroom. I’m drinking beer, you see. That’s one thing that’s going on. I’m also stopping every now and then to roll a cigarette. Stravinsky. Something in B-flat. That’s what the radio is about to play. That’s another thing that’s going on. It’s not really a cause and effect sort of thing, if you believe in that. It’s more just a thing that’s happening right now, something that’s being played out, and I can’t really think of any consequence in that.

Whenever I relieve myself at the sink I let the cold water run, to wash it down, and I look at myself in the mirror. I can tell you right now I don’t like what I see. It’s always a pale face with imploring eyes. A face that has forgotten what it wanted to say. And I never shake it right so there’s a drip down the legs and I feel slightly ashamed about letting that happen. Maybe I was in a hurry. I’m trying to tell you about my impotence, my incapability, and the impossibility really, of me ever being a real person.

~

I could introduce you to the Pinocchio salesman.
You might say, ‘Who the fuck is the Pinocchio salesman?’
You might use that kind of language.
I might say, ‘He’s this Italian guy down the street who sells Pinocchio dolls.’

But I will know and you will know that the Pinocchio salesman is not a real person either so, why should I bother? In fact he’s not Italian at all but Russian. I went down there the other day and there were no dolls. Only electronics like stereos and cassette tapes and VCR’s. There was an old soiled pink bunny. And some slippers. I had no need of these things.

~

There was a time I suppose when I was crazy. There was a time. But now I’m just like you. A bunch of words trying to be a person. I don’t think it’s fair really, how we ended up. I’m being a little nostalgic. I just can’t see another way of doing things. I might have a disease. I might be dead in three weeks. You just can’t know. It’s the most important things you just can’t know about. That’s why there are no people left. There are certain and numerous appearances that seem like people. But you never really know. No one really talks to each other. There’s just a bunch of words and images and sounds and sometimes when you’re alone, a rumour. On rare occasions a taste in the mouth. Fear tastes like alkaline, like putting your tongue to a 9-volt battery. I know because I was once hit by a car and attacked by a dog. Not at the same time. They were years apart.

Sometimes you can feel great about things. You can feel great about the person you think you are. You can get off on this, if you want. Most of us do. But it’s a reflex, just so you know. You can hit your knee if you want to. Beautiful feeling. Watch your leg lurch in response. That’s cause and effect I suppose. But that’s not what I’m interested in. What I’m interested in is what happens when we say nothing. Because people who think they’re people, they expect certain responses. And what happens when they don’t receive, oh that’s the funniest shit in the world. To set a person who thinks they’re a person, to set them completely off balance well, it happens every day. People who think they are people are very predictable. They’re like advertisements for their personality. Listen to them speak. You’ll know what I mean. Don’t let them see chaos unless upsetting people is what you really like to do.

I’m afraid I like upsetting people. Perverse enjoyment yes. Deliberate yes. The only thing that bugs me is it’s far too easy. That seems to be the problem with people. As if I fucking mattered. Me. Just a person who thinks he’s a person, with warm socks and a radio. You’d think anyone who expends so much effort forging such a precious identity would have a bit more self-respect. This alone is to me the finest example of how hollow you are. Even non-people can be sincere. If they really want to. If that’s what they feel like doing. Though it often turns out funny. Like a person you thought you loved. For some reason. But it turned out different. More like confusion. You get on with it. You accept it, eventually. Or you don’t. Self-hatred is fine too. Just a bi-product of being a person. Even though you can’t. A cello can’t be a person. But it tries. There is hatred in the cello. Sublime hatred maybe. But hatred all the same. Hatred is nothing but a sound and sometimes a pit between the lungs. A wooden vibration. Nothing more. Nothing to worry about. Just a certain tickling sound. Off-key. Picture everyone you know. Non-people reverberate. They have a certain sound. An undying sound. You cannot drown it out.

Waking up is different here. You don’t rub your head in the morning. You just lie there, thinking what to do. You don’t think what could be worse than now. In the morning, everything is the same. The world is a face is a blanket is a person. Sometimes you get lucky. Brush your teeth. Hum the star spangled banner. Drown out the person you were yesterday. Say yes to vague questions. Take the knives they hand you and go to work. Like a real person. Capable. Full of action. No one knows you. You are, after all, a nothing with a face. A frozen picture of yourself. Happy. Misunderstood. Grateful. Belligerent. Wise. Idiotic. Precious and full of fear. It’s a brand new sun shiny day. And you are alive.
              Don’t forget to breathe.

Is there a chill in here or is mom home?
by Meg Tuite

I kept hearing about global warming. The problem with that theory was that the hotter it got outside the more glacial it became inside. Whenever Mom opened the door mounds of ice covered my sisters, the dog, and all the plastic furniture in the living room steamed out its breath when we sat on it.

Mom complained of the heat wave as she tugged off her heels. She headed for the freezer, ice cubes tinkled into a glass and out came the bourbon while her hazy blonde wig turned into an ice sculpture. Antarctica blasted out of her mouth.

“What are you looking at?” she’d ask one of us as she pulled out a Kool, lit up, throwing her head back as frozen rings drifted up into the stifled atmosphere.

“Hey, hey, hey,” she’d yell. “Get your asses out here. I want to see some rosy cheeks.”

The coated furniture blustered, farted as all four of us lined up on the couch, trembling together to stay warm.

“You know the drill. Don’t tell me I wasted my eggs for nothing.”

I was the oldest, so they all stared at me. Mom sucked down her frosty drink and asked someone to refresh it every few minutes. “Don’t forget the ice,” she’d yell. Mom didn’t want to hear that we made friends or joined the girl scouts or got on some baseball team.

“I went to Marshall Fields today,” I said.

“And?” she countered.

We all clutched our bags in our laps.

“Well, lay it out on the table. Last week there was nothing. You want to eat? You’ve got to produce. This is home schooling, people. Learning how to make it in this shit economy.” Smoke slithered around words.

“Got some necklaces, rings, and a whole rack of bracelets,” I said.

Mom leaned forward and looked the pile over, pushing each jewel with her finger while her face cracked.

She leaned back in her chair, grimaced and lit up another Kool. “You kidding me? A rack of beads and cubic zirconium? What are you? Twelve, thirteen? You’re hitting the age when hundreds of eyes watch you from every two-way mirror. A few more years and they’ll put you behind bars for this? Mother’s taught you better than that.”

“Next?”

The kid’s rifled through their bags and lined up the goods. Jenny was in charge of breaking into houses around the neighborhood. She usually came home with electronics, cash and real jewelry. Mom’s favourite, small enough to get in anywhere, fearless or stupid as a mouse.

Betsy was ten. She rode subways all day, memorized her script about lack of food and Mom out of work, neither that strayed from the truth. She came home with a hefty stash of cash she laid on the table.

“How much?” Mom asked.

Betsy was good at math. “Four hundred twenty eight dollars and eighty-two cents.”

“Nice. You’ll be getting dessert tonight. Now pour Mom another drink. Monica?” The cubes danced as Mom swirled her empty glass.

Monica was eight. The youngest always had the toughest task. Mom dropped her off in one of the rich suburbs and had her go door-to-door hawking cheap jewelry Mom couldn’t sell to her contacts. “Now remember, kid,” she’d say. “Innocence and a few dimples will get you everything. I didn’t spend the whole morning whipping up those Shirley Temple curls for nothing.”

Monica pulled out a wad of cash. She wasn’t as good at math as her sister.

Mom licked her finger and counted out the bundle. “Not bad, baby, not bad. Your father would be proud. He was one cold ass turkey without the ass,” she said and laughed. We stared.

Stalactites hung like earrings from the sides of Mom’s face. She shook her head at me, slush trailing down my cheeks. “Let’s go,” she flurried to the others. I didn’t pretend to follow the group. “Hey,” she slurred at me. Eyebrows raised and her cigarette voice erupted hailstones. “Good news is one day you’ll be buying Mom her bourbon and cigarettes. Now go practice picking some locks.”

I put on the smoldering face, stomped up to my room and slammed the door. But Momma was one sloshed fool for believing her posse was anything but piercing. There was always one kid shut out. So we’d taken some of the cash years ago and had a mini-fridge delivered. Stocked it with sandwiches and desserts stashed in the back of our closet. Also procured a case of brandy sent via eBay. You could get anything if you had the cash and a credit card. I’d eat the best meal of the night and the sisters knew it. Though we always made sure to have ice cream with brandy together with all the lights off after Mom was passed out and the freeze started to melt.