Author: anmly_mpusod

The Polycarpists and their mouths

Was down on old highway 395, they said, a car aflame and just driving along. As much fire as there was Chevrolet. This was after the thing with Claudia Trach, Lisa Trach’s oldest—such a tragedy, there where the white cross still in the dirt and always the bouquet flowers dying, blowing, and becoming part of the brush. So because of that and now this, people think like one-thing-after-another. The word about. Jawing away. But what Mr. Avery reminded them was: no collision. From his place up Via Cantamar, Mr. Avery said he had watched the car wind up 395 blazingly bright, pretty much—on that dark night—the only source of light this side of the freeway. Be hard to say what was wrong besides the car being on fire. Consistent across all accounts was something to the effect of, Engulfed in flame. Not smoking and a little glow, not hot tongues licking from under the hood, no: entire. Wild. A fireball.

A couple boys parked for some midnight chow who saw it roll past the Nessy Burger said the car stopped at a stoplight and then went at the green accelerating slowly the flames large enough to obscure even a glimpse of the driver. If there was a driver, repeated Margaret Godert who had not herself seen the car. I felt it in my teeth, knew it was a fire and thank the lord it was only the car dry as the canyon is this year, there’s nerves you know run from the lungs to the teeth, haven’t you ever heard that? It’s a famous feeling.

The oldest Brae-Landry sister awake with her chronic pins-and-needles witnessed it, she said: as close as you and I are standing, and she was certain there was no driver. Up the hill away, almost to Gopher Canyon, she saw it. And she was just as certain it was teenage Epicureans—as she said: behind it all. Can’t you see—there’s always been talk, small town west. Lips moved by corruption, the things which move in the brush. Things from before.

Naturally, the giggling that followed didn’t slow her down, in fact, naturally, she went on something of a tear positing and spitting and connecting dots as far flung as the collapse of the community center’s roof, the gastrointestinal troubles epicentered at the Greek Chicken, the freeze which uselessly dropped so many avocados from their branches, all those cracked concrete chimneys folks had to have removed at such expense, burst pipes, strange men door-to-door offering to repave your driveway, dead birds floating in bird baths, the coyotes those coyotes, the gas prices, and thirty plus students at Mae Ellis who were pathologically unable to stop crying.

Hearers snickered. Audient to such things as these and saying, how peculiar, without ever setting their minds to wander the paths—the obvious paths!—from one to the next.

Christians! Contagious crying and you laugh, she said, call yourselves Christians and contagious crying makes you laugh. Are you an Epicurean, Hugo? They knew where she went to church and they knew where she went to church before that and why she left that church and vowed never to and so on. Those that knew her, really knew her, laughed along only nervously.

Ivan heard it from Alex Lee about Mrs. Brae-Landry being on the news and thought it would be good for a laugh, but they really let her talk longer than he could recall any one head on the morning or evening local. No footage of the car—just the old bat flapping her kisser, wasn’t it in someone’s power to cut her off anyways, so he changed the channel. Comes the thought he didn’t watch the news much anymore or TV at all. An odd occurrence not to have been texted a link. Did Alex watch the news? Or had she simply passed on a tip that someone had given her? What were these channels—anyways—these channels, what were these movies and commercials, what were these products being hawked, where were the handsome hairdos, and what were these channels on which: for example, a woman who threw oranges at two men on an escalator, an ad for a burger with animated livestock, a student who pulled a knife in shop class on other students grabbing at each other’s testicles and such things, people stretching their mouths behind the reporter for the camera opened wide for the camera. 

Johnny’s older brother told them and told it a little witchy so Gilbert, Johnny’s best friend ignoring Johnny’s texts pleading to come with, he drove alone to where some said the car had later rolled to a stop and burned up. Shaking nerves himself, Gil set his buzzing phone to silent and slowly with reverence walked the boundary lines of a blackly burned rectangle. After mending fences with a gift of dino chicken nuggets, hot plate, he repeated to Johnny that he had not disturbed the square. Johnny tried to fit as many dino chicken nuggets in his mouth as possible, a feat that returned the meal to mush. Gil laughed. They kissed each other’s dino chicken nugget slick lips so quietly in the basement even though things weren’t so secret anymore.

By now, the idea of the burned square held as much intrigue as the inflamed stories of the night of. Kids went out there. Weird part of town, nowhere safe to park. No sidewalks. Bit by a dog while kicking the dirt near the small burned square where some said it, the car, had settled and completed its immolation, Randall Krieger the little shit deserved to be bit by a dog some said. Nobody not even a mother can talk sense into that kid so everybody who had ever tried took pleasure in the nonsense he cried at the dog’s behest. Mutt held on too. Locked on till Clark showed up, but Clark more or less let him split, made a racket and didn’t fire his gun. Drove the bastard Krieger to the hospital, but wasn’t about to wing a local hero, man or beast. When the nurse asked about the look of the animal, Clark hemmed and hawed a little . . . foamy, he said. Rich dark fur but mangy, yeah, mangy. Wild bloodshot eyes and what’s the word: rabid. Earned that Krieger extra time with their instruments.

Thing is, Norma Dover told a friend, I’ve seen that dog again and again there, where the brush is burned to the car’s cold rectangle, and it’s clean and it’s smart and it knows something about it all. I’m thinking I’d want to be dosed up with something somehow spiritual just as much as medical.

Who had told Vincent about the burned square, he couldn’t recall. Car sized; a rectangle burned black on the roadside. He recovered from the scene a hubcap pulled from beneath ashy soil he dusted clean like an archeological find one of those old spokey looking things of a style he’s sure is now considered tacky. It was imperfect. Burned a bit, with spokes fused some at one end or the other of the radius. He told only Joe, oldest pal, and otherwise denied its existence to the folks to whom Joe’s wife had spilled. It leaned for a while against the wall on the mantel, but such a traditional place of pride seemed to diminish the object’s secret powers and after he relocated it to a shelf of no note in a dark closet, he felt a strength in the rundle return.

Jenny Jacobs sorta forgot about the car but the oldest Mrs. Brae-Landry mentioned it in her living room when Jenny Jacobs was visiting. Once they were seated, she set her tea to the side and looked at her notes and stated her premise again: we’re supposed to ask people who’ve lived in the community for a long time, like you, about what you think has changed. In the community.

The woman talked at length. The house was busy, Jenny couldn’t stop seeing while she listened: the wallpaper and its patterned bougainvillea, framed photographs of family members and pet rats as well as postcards with sweet mottos about pet rats, cherubic statues and crystal candy bowls and crystals, stars made of sticks strung together—at one point, a younger Brae-Landry sister, of course also technically elderly, came through dirt-caked mumbling and drooling cursing the critters that consume everything living and green. Might have been the sister that a few years ago got everyone at the First Methodist on Church Row so worked up for prating a whole little cadre of old ladies into utter devotion to that Polycarp who had heard and recorded the accounts of the disciples—a convincing kind of directness maybe, after all: from the mouths of! A saint who, apparently nonflammable, had to be stabbed to death. What a medium, she’d say, what a channel! A little off, if you saw her, the younger, walking to the Ralphs, you might point and say something. Some of Jenny Jacob’s classmates thought this assignment was bottom tier.

But she was inclined to listen to old ladies and was generally inclined toward their accoutrements, their stories, their ceremonial insistence on offering food, inclined to help where she could too. It really wasn’t much—changed a light bulb, removed from the oven cookies of which she was then invited to partake, things such as that. On a visit the following winter, Jenny used a strangely hooked tool to loose the catch on an old fashioned flue in the Brae-Landrys’ chimney. Although the fireplace seemed long out of use, it was a simple turn and a satisfying click. All it took. Unseasonably cold and a bug going around—people were convinced—on the very chill of the wind, or so said the mayor, an unelected volunteer of an unincorporated township. In any case, the oldest Brae-Landry expressed her gratitude again and at length: how nice to sit in that glow again. 

As Jenny sat scraping clean a second bowl of homemade ice cream, the oldest Brae-Landry opposite stroked gently a soft brown and white rat that had scuttled up onto her knee. Do you remember, Jenny, the car aflame and driving down old highway 395? She nodded—of course, she was also aware how the story had changed, how the list of witnesses had grown long improbably including so many of her classmates, how the height of the flames had grown as well as, in some cases, the number of fiery drivers and the number and fierceness of their devilish eyes, some indeterminate shifting colors to the glow cast in the canyon, descriptions of a tentacular being with biting, reaching beaks to nip passing pedestrians, and how dull it became to listen so quietly to all these really identical variations. Nodded, a wandering eye, and a muttered word about the habits of liars. This sister Brae-Landry liked Jenny and said so often, and she wanted to help Jenny and said so often, threatened spells, offered the powers of her speech. 

The woman lowered the cup from her lips, smacking energetically. Any calumners among your peers, Jenny? Or—slanderers. Do you have bullies, Jenny Jacobs? They’ll prey on your sweetness, I’ve seen it. Heard such things when they can’t recognize what’s powerful.

No. The rat closed his eyes and flexed his claws and wriggled in such a way on the fabric of the woman’s skirts that the sound that replaced the silence seemed like the lapping flames. Just an association maybe. No, Jenny insisted.

Mrs. Brae-Landry set the rat on the floor, and it disappeared beneath the furniture, and the woman writhed over to kneel in front of young Jenny Jacobs and say:

If ever you have such foes, little sister: say to me their names and I’ll see to it they live long and talkative lives in this town.

The TV, a newish flatscreen, which Jenny had helped to wire up played an old game show where contestants had to guess someone’s job. An applause sign that hummed neon, maybe. The host was growing frustrated with the obvious. Before long, the township had no mayor at all.

Up the road, a neighbor who mostly kept to themselves had begun to wave at Jenny Jacobs on her way. This neighbor’s hedgerow, obsessively maintained, afforded such a view of comings and goings. To themselves they had begun to note the time, almost accidentally, the regularity of it. Waved to each sister Brae-Landry when she passed too, always solemnly, discretely, day after day—without record.

Jace Brittain is the author of the novel Sorcererer (Schism 2022). Their writing, poetry, and translations appear in Dream Pop Journal, Apartment Poetry, Snail Trail Press, Deluge, dadakuku, and others. In collaboration with the poet and book artist Rachel Zavecz, they run the small press Carrion Bloom Books. Twitter: @jacebrit, Instagram: @ jace_brittain.

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A repetition of longing

In the ocean with my grandmother, who I never met

Do you know what halmoni means? Because I did not. Even as the cold water somehow sealed me in, locking the sun and air away as I sunk. Even as a vague burning began to rise deep within my ribs. Even as I opened my screaming mouth, foam from my lungs mixing with the churned ocean, replacing air with water, eyes straining in their sockets. Her surprisingly strong hand (did I mention how little she was? Even as I was dying, I thought to myself, huh, she is tiny) grabbed my wrist and dragged me to the surface with the determination of a mother leaving a store with a tantrumming child. Suddenly still, I watched the back of her head as her long ponytail trailed her. Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, the clothing surprising me for some reason more than her appearance at that moment, she did not look back at me but tightened her vice around my wrist as the ocean tossed us around. The brine in my mouth turned to barley, the waves became current, my battered lungs letting out the last of the air in perfect bubbles as we approached the surface. I watched the bubbles wobble in tired disinterest. 

Keeping hold of my wrist with one hand, her other hand curled under my chin, delicate and knowing, tilting my head toward the looming sun. As the surface gave way to air, she hooked her finger along the back of my mouth, searching for sea and retirement, and then brought my whole body against hers, her tiny hands patting my back, humming gently as she waited for water to rise from my throat, and I gasped those ragged first breaths of someone who forgot to breathe. As my breath slowed from gasp to rhythm, she let go, her warmth turning into memory on my skin. 

Eyes that looked like mine stared through me through time. You are not done, she whispered in my air in a language I did not know. We have not come this far to lose you now. 

On the earth with my grandmother, who I have never met

I inherited these three dimples from her that only appear when I purse my lips just so (rarely) or force myself to smile (less often these days). Three dimples, a fading ellipse, trail down the side of my chin, pointing us up or down. I inherited these three dimples and the ability to run full steam into a burning house and gather what is precious to me, forthcoming scars and all. 

I was running amid familiar flames, and she grabbed my wrist in her unending way. The now and suddenly familiar ache blooming in my shoulder as I closed my eyes.

“That fire is not for you,” she whispered, her breath skimming only my sweat-soaked ear. 

The fire is now sliding its tongue against a charred knife blade as I begin to slow. The heat pushes the moisture from my body, my slick arms a mirror in which the blaze disintegrates and reorganizes. I look at her, maybe for the first time (though I saw her once before and a thousand times before), and see three dimples, a fading constellation on the side of her chin. My breath settles as I trace lines along her forehead, a repetition of longing, and peer into eyes dark like the ends of time. 

Everywhere with my grandmother, who I have never met

My grandmother plucked at a lone guitar string and sent it shivering into the cool, dark expanse between then and now. She sent a note that only I could hear, a note that sent my spine straight as I sat at my desk and rain pitter-patted on that Friday morning. 

My grandmother speaks to me in a language I cannot understand but feels like home. She wants to tell me about a child left with wolves and a house on fire. She wants to tell me about soft, crying bodies under hard men, something about a space above your body you can go to in order to survive.

Her fingers comb through my unbrushed hair, occasionally touching my shoulder blades where wings used to be, as she gently pulls apart tangles. She tells me about a child that laid in her arms that lit up the sky and a heartbeat free in the wild wind. She begins to braid my hair, a rhythm of closing in and letting go, as she tells me about a land that is warm and curves around her body like a mother’s hand. 

We watch a small, brown bird glide overhead as twilight and dawn tangle through our hair, and she tells a story of forever in a language I do not understand yet but am starting to hear. Her words somehow make their way through and stick, building me a house. Mun is door. Ib is mouth. Ttal is daughter. 보 금 자 리is our home.

Eun Jung Decker was born in Korea, adopted to Minnesota, and found home in Southern California. She is one of those people that believes passionately in our shared humanity, even when, you know, everything that happened in that past 6 years happened. She loves to write in different genres, sometimes at the same time, with wildly varying degrees of success.

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Chrestomathy in Stainless Reduction

Here’s Pap, sweaty and slagged. Back home from another day on the floor, retrieving Grandma’s copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking from the cupboard. His own aching back gives him as hard a time as the language on the pages. “If I’d have known a shallot was just a goddamn fancy onion, I would have pinched a fat one from Nick’s roadside stand rather than drive fifteen miles to the Giant Eagle in Cruikshank,” he says. Spare a thought for the teenaged employees at the Giant Eagle in Cruikshank. Stacking paper towels in the late afternoon, watching a pair of overalls covered in asbestos approach with an ingredients list for quiche Lorraine.

Fifty years of this: Grandma wakes up at 4 a.m. She makes them both breakfast before they leave for work—him at the steel mill, her at the injection clinic. He eats a pan-fried egg then packs his lunch—a ham sandwich, warmed over the arc furnace. “All these recipes up here,” Grandma says, touching her head. “All this talent.” Pap claims the world isn’t any less dangerous when it’s predictable, and change is like a cold breeze blowing through a cracked window. He insists their lives are hard enough without introducing little whirls into them. “Yes, yes, my darling. I understand,” Grandma says. In the evenings Pap presses her feet. Lets her be the patient for a change. He asks her, “left arm or right?”, and kisses the spot where she points. His appetite never wavers, for fried eggs or otherwise. I imagine him hunting the house for cracked windows, slamming shut the mouth of time.

What Death lacks in tenderness, it makes up for in courtesy. It takes Grandma by the hand. It escorts her to work, and when she can no longer work it keeps her company on the living room sofa. It shows up in X-rays, biopsies, and MRIs and says, “I just thought you’d might like to know that this is where I’m headed next.” Death helps her choose the best photos. The one where she and Pap are at the swim club as kids, and her hands are cupped, pouring water over his slick blonde locks. The one where he’s giving her a piggyback through the threshold of their house, her bridal gown cascading onto the empty wooden floor. Death helps assemble the album. When it is complete, Grandma gives it to Pap and says, “Remember it like this.” I imagine him confused at the transparency of Death’s work. Every day he wakes up and there Death is, in bed with him, breathing softly as the day before. Whispering good morning with a wounded voice. Good morning, Death, he thinks. Perhaps if I made you breakfast . . .

That album is on my lap now and I’m flipping, flipping. There’s a photo of Pap and Grandma dancing at the Lion’s Club for a church fundraiser. He’s dipping her impossibly low, verve bursting from the Kodachrome. There’s another one clipped from the local paper—she’s kissing his cheek outside the Giant Eagle in Cruikshank, and he’s dressed as Santa, ringing the bell for the Salvation Army. Here’s one of him alone, wearing work overalls outside his house, hands behind his back and smiling. Looking like borrowed peace.

I imagine Pap retired, pricing out trailers in the classifieds. Looking for something a few hammer swings away from a chicken coop. He cooks his own eggs now, after all. Scrambled, shirred, over easy—why pay for them anymore? Every Sunday he invites me over to try something new, something he wishes he’d have let Grandma try when he could. But more than anything I imagine him happy, covered in scale on his last day at the mill. Right before the rollers jammed and shot a white-hot cobble into his chest, into his wrought iron heart, a French omelet recipe sealed in his pocket. Finally free of change, Death, and this slaughterhouse country.

I flip to the last photo in the album. There’s Pap and Grandma, young again, sitting on the front stoop of their house at night. Snow shovels in hand. A stolen moment between digging out their cars for work the next day. His arm is around her and she’s tilting her head back, marveling at something right above them. The quiet, or the falling sky, or how the sky was accumulating ceaselessly beneath their feet. This is the coveted world. The one he sees when he closes his eyes, the storm in the gears building up behind him. Thinking about how nice the eggs poached in red wine were settling in his belly, right where they belonged. Returning to the stoop on that night, and how her breath felt so warm in the raw atmosphere. How eternity was big, but it had a shape he could just make out on the road. How, through his mittens and her coat and their layers and layers of sweaters, he could still feel her pulse humming in her waist, going on and on without end, like the gentle white earth unfolding all around them.

Dan Shields is from Middletown, Pennsylvania, home of the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown of 1979. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cleaver, WAS, Sky Island, and others. Find him on Twitter @DanDotShields.

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Death’s Gambit

I.      The Pawn

They called us the Golden Hour 7. They said we were the forgotten youth with wasted potential. So, we lined up like ducks in a row ready to prove we were worthy of glory. They gave us grey wool with seven gold-plated buttons, a uniform sewn just as hastily as the war began. Seven buttons for seven men. A sense of pride would uplift our posture adorned in the scratchy uniform. The gold-plated buttons stitched down the middle used to glint when the sun hit them just right. Now, we barely had any left. The empty spaces where they once sat only elicited a reminder of all the ways we lost them. 

The sky was weeping the day Alden showed up to camp, like the Earth knew it would soon fold him into its arms. Alden was fourteen. The youngest of us. We all still remembered his mother’s grief-stricken face as she dropped him off at camp because he was too young to drive. Her face, sunken with hunger and years, had haunted us all. But her face has been replaced in our nightmares. Now all we saw was Alden’s face, frozen in agony. What used to be a round, youthful face filled with wonder was now but a husk of a human being with eyes dead to this world. His face so covered in dirt we could trace the path of his tears all the way down his neck. There was no time for us to mourn the boy who met death too soon, who shouldn’t have even been there in the first place. We continued on. Alden added to a long list of people that would join our nightmares. 

They told us we would be respected—tunnelers always were—but we were the lowborns. They put us where we couldn’t be seen, ashamed that the likes of us could win them a war. We crawled beneath the Earth, where they thought we belonged. The wails and thudding of shovels could still be heard, waking and dreaming. The walls of our manhole-sized tunnel glistened with promises of blue skies and fresh air, but they never seemed to come. We entered as the Golden Hour 7, but left as four—and soon after, even fewer. The voices in our head and obsidian Tether in our soul were rooted deep. At first, the tether was small, breakable even, but the more we disobeyed the more it grew. The obsidian splintered off, taking control of everything. Not just our arms and legs, but our lungs and stomachs too. We fought the tug and the sharp pull of the instructions from Command, but the Tether would just dig deeper causing our vision to black out from the pain. It wasn’t the only thing we fought. The grey wool started killing us all on its own, suffocating us with heat and mud. We started counting the hours, the days, the weeks until they would allow us to claw our way out into the sunlight. Scratching tally marks into our skin like prison walls. At golden hour on the eve of New Year’s, the voices urged us forward, the timers were set, and the explosives went off. The Tether pulled our puppet bodies through the motions of our final attack. 

We had heard the stories of units pushed to the brink of exhaustion with the sole purpose of making it harder for them to fight Command when they sent them into the enemy’s hands. The enemies that remain faceless and nameless, so when we look them in the eyes, we don’t see their families when they’re finally embraced by the Earth once more. We were sacrificial pawns, unable to even move without their okay. So, as we rushed forward against our will, we were bathed in mud, blood, and the last rays of a violent sunset. We never allowed ourselves the comforts of being grateful we were alive. We knew we were all already dead. 

*

Sara used to say, “It’s a necessary evil.” At least that’s what they told everyone. The streets of our town were littered with posters telling us our country needed us. The posters were always colorful with catchy slogans that pulled us in, like the promise of a good warm meal. They lied. And it wasn’t just a simple white lie that rolled off the tongue. This wasn’t a lie told between friends to keep the balance neutral, or one told from mother to daughter to preserve her dreams about how the world could be. No, this lie was heavy. It burned the tongue and throat of the speaker and swirled around in their gut, churning unpleasantly. It clung to the speaker like an oily second skin. They swallowed it down and spun their straw into golden words that were whispered into the ears of the vulnerable, into the ears of the powerful, into the ears of the masses. And soon enough, the lie became the truth. It started to burn less coming out, and just like snakes, they eventually shed their oily second skin. We were told what we were doing was honorable. We came from the home of the brave, didn’t we? The brave and free. That’s what we were, but they lied. They took us away, broke us down, and whispered, “It’s all for the greater good.” We preemptively strike, thinking we’re in charge of this chess game, except we weren’t even playing. We were just the pawns and they were making war for fun. 

They spoke through a personification, trying to disguise themselves as one of us. “We want you!” They wanted bodies in the field to wield destruction. No responsibility, no consequences in this life. Men sat lavishly, equating lives to green dollar signs, leaving the role of dying to the poor. Our blood was made of diamonds to be sold. Everything slow and heavy, made ready for extraction. Shuttled like cattle onto the kill floor. Whether it was jungles, deserts, beaches, the field always ended up shining red. Once our bodies were no longer of use to the lavish men, we were thrown out. Our blood no longer precious. We went from invaluable to expendable. Our lives were valued by how well we could die. How well we could kill. There was no after, only before. Whether dead or not, we were ghosts either way. They lied to us and we paid the price.

II.    The King

We lied. It was a simple lie, really. One to keep the cogs oiled and moving. It used to keep him up at night until he realized how simple it really was.

Knowledge isn’t power.

Money is power.

Supply and demand is power.

Power is in resources.

We advertise, and it’s distributed to the brainwashed masses in the form of motivational slogans. It’s a fair exchange, preferable. He used to want the credit, the glory that was brought to kings and emperors when they won a war, but times were different. So, we hid our work in plain sight. We targeted the weak within our own country, telling them exactly what they needed to hear. They were the most loyal when their will was finally broken. It was simple really.

The grandfather clock struck midnight. Four dings boomed through the room, bouncing off each mahogany-covered wall and landing in his lap. His tailor-made suit and crystal glass full of Pappy Van Winkle were illuminated by the yellow lamplight that dimly shone on a table in the middle of the room. It cast shadows on the walls that curled inwards, threatening to swallow him whole. It wasn’t an unpleasant thought. The only thing properly lit in the room was the ivory carved chess board in the middle of the table, the Smith-Morra Gambit set up in full view. He always played white. It brought him a sense of comfort; after all, he was playing for the greater good. Black could set a Siberian Trap, he thought, but he knew they wouldn’t. They were weak and unskilled. The opening had begun and it would succeed. All he needed was his blood diamonds, his soldiers, his pawns. Invaluable pieces of a war machine. White must make sacrifices to open up the playing field. His tunnelers would set the stage, and their offering would ensure a successful attack. He picked up his white pawn, slowly moving it forward, feeling a Tether deep within his soul go taut. Once the ivory hit the board, he felt the Command go down the line to his tunnelers. And now, all he had to do was wait. He had all the time in the world to play. 

The shadows seemed poised to strike him as he stared and stared at the endless possibilities carved into pieces of ivory. Not a single thought except the construction of destruction. The man in the tailor-made suit sat and pondered. He may have seen the ever-lumbering shadows surrounding him, but he didn’t feel their hunger. Didn’t feel the cloaked figure patiently waiting for him. As he moved his pawns around, no consequences befell him, making war just for fun. But the figure waited their turn to see him eternally burn.

III.     The Queen

Good and evil aren’t black and white. What people don’t understand is that evil gathers in masses. Like bloodhounds on a scent, it gravitates towards people that sing its praises. But no one is born evil, I should know. The occasions I saw pure evil, it came in through the mind. It spread like rot, contaminating the mind first, then the heart. And when it finally stopped spreading, there was nothing left. The eyes of its vessels are always vacant and cold. Apathy written in permanent red marker across their faces. They morph their features into those of empathy, mimicking the behaviors of others to hide in plain sight. Through these experiences, I have come to understand that man is the cruelest of animals. Evil swirls around them without any interference. It infects, spreads, and triumphs while men sit and watch.

I drift through the world, noticed and unnoticed. Many wail and scream in my presence. Some are relieved, and some feel nothing at all. My job is an unpleasant one, but necessary. There isn’t one soul in this world that I don’t meet in the end. Some days I hesitate allowing them as much time as possible. On a few rare occasions, I rejoice because they deserve it—the agony that will follow. I clean up mess after mess of theirs, waiting in the shadows to finally claim them. Savoring the day when terror floods their veins.

I grant as many wishes as I can to their victims, knowing it will never make up for the pain they felt in life. Many strangled hopes whispered in my ear following the tune of, “Take them instead of me.”

“Spare me.”

“Help me.”

This is often accompanied by a chorus of loud gunshots or explosions in the background. Sometimes there’s screaming and sometimes there’s just silence, the darkness already doing their job and clocking out before I get there. I sit on the sidelines, listening, trying my best, but it isn’t my job to help them. All I can do is grant them a little more time, but even that is never enough. War is a craven, fickle thing brought upon by craven, fickle men. If given a decision between war and compromise, they will always pick war. Never ones to pass up the easier option. So, I sit in the shadows that curl inward, ready to devour, watching the man in the tailor-made suit move his ivory pawns across his playing field. He always plays white to make himself feel better, but he knows full well that those pawns are people. People that I have had to collect. I see him pretend, playing at being me. And never have I felt hunger so consuming. 

I remember the boy buried deep beneath the Earth. Tick marks carved into his arm. His blue eyes, once bright with love for the world, are now dull and decades older than they should be. His mud-splattered face interrupted by his trail of tears. He feels me coming and he turns to me with a smile that shouldn’t be as bright as it is.

“Will it stop hurting?”

I nod. His shoulders sag with relief.

“I thought I was already dead. In hell, or maybe purgatory,” he swallows, his breathing becoming shallow. “You’re less scary than I thought you’d be.” Time is up, and I do something I’ve never done. Like the cooling breeze of a fall afternoon, I whisper, “You already lived through the punishment of this life; now, it’s time for after.” His eyes close with the ghost of a smile still on his lips. The pain eases out of his body as I snap the obsidian Tether, allowing the boy to be collected in peace. Many millennia have passed and I collect without word or complaint, but even I can be haunted. And when he is finally laid to rest, I take the steps two at a time, spiraling down into my rage.

*

I have all the time in the world to wait. And I don’t have to wait long. The man in the tailor-made suit brings his last sip of bourbon to his lips. Not even a second later, his left arm starts to shake as he clutches at his chest, trying to suck in a shaky breath. Beads of sweat start to form on his temple as he gasps like a fish out of water. The man struggles, unable to call for help. I soak in his pain, savoring it like the last crumb of food. The terror in his black eyes like rays of sunshine poking through the clouds on a rainy day. I glance towards the grandfather clock: four past twelve. I begin to step forward, morphing myself into a depraved nightmare, wanting to taste his fear. My rage charging forward with teeth yearning to cause him the same pain he caused that boy. The shadows follow me, humming in my wake.

And when the clock strikes five past midnight, I smile. Only on rare occasions are the deserving’s time cut short, served to me on a golden platter. So, yes, I smile. Because this is one of those few rare occasions.

Meara Carlin is a second-generation Muslim American. She grew up in a small town in Virginia and recently received her B.S. degree in Geology from The College of William and Mary. Although a science major, writing was always a passion that accompanied her throughout her life, including everything from journaling, to scientific writing, to screenplays. She hopes to continue her journey into the world of creative writing.

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Hierro

Enrique woke to a scraping, pounding, and a sigh. Even with his eyes closed, he recognized the sound of the mortar and pestle. He recognized the sound of Dolores’ desperation, too, even from another room. He sat up in bed, moved his legs over the edge, and was still for a moment. Then, despite the ache in his groin, he went into the kitchen to find her.

On the kitchen table were an assortment of things; honey, annatto seeds, wine, and molasses. And the mortar and pestle. And, of course, Dolores, looking as pained as her name. He knew she was bleeding again. He could always smell it before it happened: the ripening of her ovaries, the thickening of her empty womb. He never told her when she was ovulating, but he didn’t need to; she knew her body better than any other woman he’d ever been with. For those few days of her cycle, she was pregnant with possibility and so happy. But she was rarely pregnant with anything else. The bleeding would come, and the annatto seeds would be back on the table. It was a recipe she called ancient, though she didn’t know how old it was. He knew she got it from her grandmother, who likely got it from hers. Did the Taino crush annatto seeds beneath rocks for what ailed them? Enrique thought they must have.

Before turning to Dolores, he poured himself some juice and offered her a sip. She shook her head.

“Is the bleeding that bad?” he asked, gesturing to the items on the table.

“No. But I’m still anemic, and that won’t help…” Having a baby. She didn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t have to. Their entire life had been about babies for the past two years. And they had one, a baby, for a while. For what felt like a second. Then the bleeding.

Once, early on in their relationship, Enrique found a spot of blood on the bathroom floor. He pointed it out to Dolores so she would mop. Instead, she laughed at him and rolled her eyes. “You’re bothering me over a spot? Boy, that’s nothing. I’ve got an ocean inside of me.”

Dolores wasn’t sassy like that anymore.

Enrique sat across from her, spinning the bottles of honey and molasses. “What’s the difference between these anyway?”

“The sweets?” Dolores paused her crushing motions. “Molasses has a lot of iron, but it’s thick. Busy.”

“Busy?”

“Complicated.” Dolores scrunched up her face. Enrique could tell she was trying to find the right word in English. “Complex.”  She smirked, pleased with herself. “It’s complex.”

“And the honey?”

“Just sweet. Thinner.”

“Are you going to do this forever?”

Dolores looked at him through her bangs. He wanted to push them out of her face but feared she might bare her teeth if he got too close. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s good for me.”

It’s futile, Enrique wanted to say. Instead: “What does the wine do?”

“It’s fortified. Plus, it helps with the taste.”

“We could be getting drunk with this, you know?”

“Is getting drunk going to help?”

Carlos had been conceived while they were drunk. It wasn’t the time to bring that up. Enrique pointed to the mortar and motioned for Dolores to hand it to him. “Let me help with that.” He had never made an iron treatment or ground anything but weed, but he wanted to help. Dolores smiled—a genuine smile—then pushed the mortar across the table. With every roll of the pestle, he thought of ways to tell her.

I was so worried.

The doctor said another pregnancy could kill you.

It was a quick outpatient procedure.

The vasectomy can be reversed.

Enrique knew he’d never say that last one, even if he said the ones before it. He kept crushing and pounding until the annatto seeds were powdered and stained his hands a delicate, translucent red.

Jess Silfa is an Afro-Latinx, disabled, nonbinary writer from the South Bronx, currently living in Nashville. They have received a Displaced Artist Fellowship from Vermont Studio Center, a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Ricardo Salinas Scholarship. They are working on a novel about a community rocked by the war on drugs and a chapbook about the sterilization of Puerto Rican women and infertility.

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