Showing posts with label Curated by Founding Editor Sarah Lynn Knowles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Curated by Founding Editor Sarah Lynn Knowles. Show all posts

Storychord's Full Issue Index, 2010–2017

Posted: Thursday, November 9, 2017 | | Labels:



Storychord published a total of 150 multimedia issues -- each featuring a piece of short fiction, paired with visual art and a one-song soundtrack -- from March 2010 through October 2017. As of November 2017, editors are no longer releasing new issues, but we encourage you to browse our full archives, listed below by year, which will remain available indefinitely.

As always, all featured work remains copyright the respective authors/artists, and contributors should be contacted directly for permissions. Additional questions can be e-mailed to Storychord's founding editor, Sarah Lynn Knowles, at sarahspyblog@gmail.com.

Many thanks to all of Storychord's contributors and readers throughout these seven years! It was a pleasure curating these multi-media storytelling experiences during that time, and we hope you will continue to enjoy and share the offerings below well into the future.


2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

 

ISSUE #145: Janet Frishberg, Andrea Sparacio, University Drive

Posted: Monday, June 19, 2017 | | Labels:


Illustration by Andrea Sparacio

TO KNOW, AT LEAST
​b​y Janet Frishberg

They sat in a therapist’s office on opposite ends of a pale green couch, and the therapist asked Mina, “What would you say to them, your unborn babies? Just imagine. The egg dropping from your ovary this month and being shed, along with the lining. Close your eyes.” The therapist paused a few moments, waiting.

Kevin watched Mina trying to keep her eyes closed, eventually squeezing them shut in a way that looked like a grimace.

“Tell me what you’d say to them if they were sitting in front of you on the floor, between us here.”

Issue #145 soundtrack: University Drive “You Won't See It”


“I’d tell them,” Mina said, flattening straight black bangs over her forehead, “I’m sorry. This is sad, isn’t it? I’d tell them I was just trying—”

“Talk to them directly. Picture them in front of you,” said their therapist.

“I just wanted to bring you into a good environment. Two parents who loved you. If you were going to exist. The right place. That’s all I wanted for you. One where you could totally, really be yourselves.” She was crying in a way Kevin only ever saw her do in this particular room. “I’m sorry I won’t get to know you, I think that’s what I’d say.”

“And you, Kevin? What would you want to say to them?”

He shook his head. Their conversation sounded like a movie script to him, not every week but this week in particular. In twelve days it’d be his thirty seventh birthday. He held his hands out open on his legs; his empty palms looked to him like the opposite of violence. This is your real life, he’d tell himself in the burnt orange waiting room. When he didn’t speak, Mina folded in half and laid her head sideways in his lap, her face staring towards the plant in the corner of the room, her hair spreading out over his knees as a small, dark blanket might.

* * * * *

What they avoided inside the apartment together was most things, except what concerned physical objects: Can you please wipe down the kitchen table/I did the laundry/did you call the plumber/what record tonight/this morning/it’s too loud for me, sweetie/how old is this ketchup anyway? He never knew he would be linked to someone by such banality.

And in Target, at the local hardware store, rare treks to Costco, were the actual arguments about how many spatulas they needed to buy. About what size and color trashcan the bathroom deserved. Mina saying, “I just think a red one would be fun, okay?” and Kevin, twenty minutes later, rolling his eyes at the frivolousness of it while they wheeled their cart through the parking lot, red trashcan inside.

Then he stood, riding the cart towards the lot’s edge with his hands up like a child on a roller coaster, until it locked, and he fell off and laughed. He turned around to smile at Mina, but she was already sitting in the passenger seat of their sun-roasted Toyota, frowning at her phone.

* * * * *

The therapist asked them to talk about their childhoods with each other.

Kevin told Mina about his shaved blond hair, the way the edges of his forehead burned and tanned and burned again in San Diego sun. The light bounced off everything there, but mostly cars. This is where he remembers growing up most: the backseat. He told Mina about his brother David, who always knew what he wanted and what everyone else wanted, too. David set the table; he pointed to where they should each sit. Their parents followed David’s hands towards chairs, smiling like this was a very good thing, to have a child so determined.

Kevin told her about holding his down pillow over one ear at night, to drown out the unremarkable yelling of middle class, assimilated suburbia. There was one other Jew in his grade; they weren’t friends. Kevin swept the kitchen floor in the mornings before school and believed it made a difference. What Kevin kept secret as a child and what he didn’t want to tell Mina as an adult was the fact that he believed in God, like actually believed, and the way he wished with held breath, whenever they drove through tunnels, for everyone to just like each other.

Mina spoke of being a girlchild, this was her word, in the woods of Northern California. He imagined her walking on dirty tiptoes to creeks and sucking small rocks in her mouth while she waded across clean water, the kind that sparkled. She told him she always wondered if this was the recipe to becoming a mermaid. Before Mina studied public policy and refugee camps and the displacement of humans, and became too afraid of the world to be certain she should have children, she ate vegan for days at a time without knowing to call it that and prayed to places not people. She plucked fennel from the edges of dirt trails, chewing the green spindles carefully, until all the flavor was gone, and then spitting it into the bushes like a gooey sac of spider eggs.

He’d seen pictures of little Mina with the exact same straight-across bangs she’d return to twenty-four years later. She said she wore her dead father’s work shirts until they became dirty enough to soften with soil and fog. She grew thick pink scars along the fronts of her calves from sticks and falling, the murmurs of which could still be seen on her legs, and she read supine on the rug in the front hall, under a chandelier whose ornate light bulbs never seemed to need changing.

Before she was instructed to tether herself to the world and cared about things like kitchen utensils and the color of her garbage receptacle, she told Kevin how she held on to nothing but her own firm thighs in bed at night while she fell asleep. Or, by day, the found bones of a wild quail in her sweaty palm. These miniature treasures she said she told no one of then, but kept hidden in a lilac-painted wooden box on her bookshelf.

* * * * *

It was not enough—to try to know each other as children. Mina moved out of their apartment, driving to sun-roasted Phoenix, where her sister lived. Almost eight months after she’d left, when the greasy cupboards and the creaking hallway floor and the slow-draining shower became too noisy with the voices of what he’d lost, Kevin started walking his neighborhood at night, sneaking out of his condo, a reverse burglar. Even just one block north of his street, the landscape surprised with buildings he’d never seen before.

One Thursday night, wandering, he remembered his brother David, dressed as the Hulk. It was the Halloween David was sixteen and Kevin almost thirteen; he knew because he was soon-to-be bar mitzvahed. He helped David apply the green paint to his skin, his nineteen-years-dead brother who could not now verify the facts of the evening or explain why exactly they were home alone one Halloween weekend as teenagers.

Alone, the boys ate deep-dish pizza in David’s bedroom, and Kevin felt on the edge of all kinds of adulthood, this eating of messy foods in forbidden places. Later, but before they left the house, David handed Kevin a bunch of Smarties and then a slightly smaller something, the size of a mint. “What is it?” Kevin asked, holding the tiny white pill between two fingers.

“Just swallow it, pussy,” David said, double-checking the edges of his face paint in the hallway mirror.

In cool, foggy, dark air almost thirty years later, walking his now-unfamiliar neighborhood, Kevin blessed drying concrete, gutter trash, strangers in candlelit restaurant windows: kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, like he once sang as a child, lifting his young heels towards heaven, the way he once prayed as a boy about to become, they told him, a man.

And as he walked the quiet humming streets, he tried to find what evidence could justify this new, absurd lightness in his shoulders, the tingling in his hands. He thought of belated birthday presents sent three months late, arriving in the mail with no expectation or predictability. He hoped, and doubted, and hoped.



Janet Frishberg is a writer who lives and works in San Francisco. She writes fiction and nonfiction and has recently had work published in The Rumpus, WhiskeyPaper, Human Parts, Lunch Ticket, Gigantic Sequins, and The Manifest Station. For more, visit janetfrishberg.com.

Andrea Sparacio is an illustrator based in Brooklyn. Her artwork has appeared in Apartment Therapy, NARAL Pro-Choice America's Gender Cards, Harper's Bazaar en Español, Vogue Pattern Magazine & more. She enjoys painting monstery-weirdos and works under the close watch of a tailless cat. Say hello at artsparrow.com + Instagram.

University Drive is a four-piece based out of Scranton, PA, made up of Edward Cuozzo on lsad vocals/guitar, Steve Martin on drums/vocals, John Husosky on bass, and Mike Flaherty oin opening track from their most recent album, "On/Off:Reset," which released this Spring from Fightless Records. For more, visit the band on Fanlink or follow them on Twitter.



 

ISSUE #142: Rona Simmons, Helena Kvarnström, Will Stratton

Posted: Monday, April 24, 2017 | | Labels:


Photograph by Helena Kvarnström

THE REMAKING OF LILLIAN
by Rona Simmons

Lillian packed everything she owned into the smaller of two suitcases stashed in the back of the closet she shared with Sullivan James. The closet was the only thing they had shared during their one-year marriage. They had his and her sinks in the bathroom, his coffee cups, her teacups, his magazines, her books.

Issue #142 soundtrack: Will Stratton “Some Ride”



Tomorrow Lillian James, no longer Sullivan James’ wife, no longer teacher of eighth graders, would begin life anew. Lillian’s sister, Belinda, had said, “You’re moving on. Turning the page, so to speak. Starting a second career.” After repeating another string of advice she’d pulled from the pages of Oprah magazine, Belinda had added what she thought was a knowing nod. But her sister only knew the half of it. The way Lillian saw it she was escaping the world of Belindas and Sullivans, a world stuffed with clichés and someone else’s expectations. Belinda and Sullivan would never understand. Even Lillian was unsure where she was going. Tomorrow was uncharted—as if she were entering the void at the edge of the known world.

But this morning had been like any other of Lillian and Sullivan’s brief life together. With little more than a nod of recognition, they sat down to breakfast at seven, Sullivan burying his head in the newspaper, Lillian drumming her fingertips beside a bowl of oatmeal. She had pushed her thoughts of the day ahead from her mind and kept her face arranged as she had for the last year, a conforming half smile on her lips, calm brows, and her eyes fixed on her husband. She watched as he drained his cup of coffee, the prominence on his neck squirming with each swallow like a creature trapped under his skin. He folded his napkin, rose, pecked her on the cheek, and then headed for the door. Lillian shivered, waiting for “See you later, alligator,” the phrase Sullivan uttered every morning as he passed through the door.

Lillian hurried to Sullivan’s study. She tore a page from a notepad squirreled away in his desk and penned a note short on details, no forwarding address, no phone number. The last thing she wanted was Sullivan to come after her. She printed her attorney’s name and address, wrote the word “Goodbye” in her teacher-precise script, then signed her name, Lillian James.

At four o’clock, Lillian pulled the front door closed, dropped Sullivan’s spare key through the mail slot, and walked away.

* * * * *

Inside the furnished studio she had secured two weeks earlier, Lillian stretched a florescent orange top over her head and pushed her arms through the sleeves. She squinted at her reflection in the mirror. Sullivan had liked her “just the way she was,” he’d said once; and Lillian had let well enough alone. Her stub of a body appeared less like the forty-year-old self she imagined and more like the glow-in-the-dark fire hydrant in Sullivan’s corner lot.

She turned and sucked in her tummy. From the rear, head twisted over her shoulder, her dimpled buttocks bulged where she had imagined two round, firm cantaloupes.

Lillian sighed. The only thin aspect of Lillian James was her life. She’d grown up in a middle-class family, the second of three girls, in a middle-class neighborhood, in the middle of “fly over” country. She’d graduated from high school, then college, where she achieved an unremarkable fifty-sixth place in her graduating class, and then taken a job as a teacher. Eighth grade was an unremarkable grade, not seventh grade or ninth grade, the promising bookends of middle school.

As a young woman, Lillian had dreamt a very different life. Two years ago, she’d tried to recapture the dream on a Roman holiday. She cringed at the memory. Twenty-five travelers and, of them, twenty were women about her age, most unmarried or, like Lillian, never married. They drifted from site to site in a loose gaggle, accompanied by an olive-skinned man who spoke with his hands, gesturing, pointing, throwing them in the air, and every so often sliding them along a shoulder or the small of a back. Paolo. Fellow travelers Wendy and Irene from Nebraska hung on his every word and jotted in little red notebooks secured by straps around their necks. They twittered when he came close, laughed, and gave him knowing looks when he flirted.

He had flirted once with Lillian, too, after finding her alone on a second floor hotel balcony, the stars overhead, the moon a sliver hugging the rooftops. He pointed out the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, the Victor Emmanuel Monument, and the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, stepping closer with each attraction he named. The heat of his body was palpable, the heavy cologne overwhelming, the wine on his breath sharp. He tried to put his mouth on hers and his hand God knows where. He was in that near embrace when Wendy and Irene stepped onto the balcony. At the twin gasps, Lillian reeled back, bumped a table, and knocked a vase of flowers to the ground. For the rest of the journey, from Rome to Florence to Venice, Lillian walked the fringe of the group, keeping her distance from Paolo and his fluttering hands.

Not long after the trip Lillian met Sullivan. They met by accident at a book signing, or rather at a bookstore where a signing was taking place. Neither had come to hear the obscure author discuss his equally obscure text, but instead collided in the fiction aisle where, as they discovered, they were seeking the same title. A conversation ensued, more on Sullivan’s side than Lillian’s, but he hadn’t tried to paw her or put his mouth on hers and so she agreed to a cup of coffee in the bookstore’s cafe. A month later they married.

He found her exciting, for what reason Lillian never knew, but that’s what he’d said. And the Lillian from before had raised an eyebrow and accepted his words as fact. She’d guessed she was in love with him.

In retrospect his life had been emptier than hers. He would smile and prod her to continue when she told him of her day, listening with rapt attention, whether she said bananas were fifty cents a pound or someone had had a flat tire on the highway.

Sullivan had added nothing to her life. It remained thinner than thin. A big fat zero. White space trapped inside a circle.

But Lillian would not face another day as her former self. She would not watch reruns of Downton Abbey or Brideshead Revisited with Sullivan or hear him say, “Whatever you want to watch is fine with me, dear.” She’d not babysit for Tina Marie, the seventh grade teacher, while Tina and her doting husband went out on a Friday night. She’d not unlock her neighbor’s home to check on Milo, empty his litter box, and change his water bowl while Sandra Foxworth sunned in Cancun. Instead, single again, Lillian would go to the gym and rebuild her body and maybe her life.

* * * * *

The gym was a riot of chrome and steel under bright overhead lights. Between beats of what Lillian presumed was hip hop music, testosterone-infused grunts and groans echoed and metal clanged against metal as weights rose and fell.

Eight treadmills faced her, seven grinding away as three women and four men slapped their feet against the belt like caged hamsters. Lillian approached the empty machine. She could walk, couldn’t she? That required no skill, although the keypad and lighted display panel did. Lillian stared at the buttons and dials. She punched “go” but the belt did not budge. Then a beep sounded and the lights on the dashboard flashed, mocking her.

“You’ve got to push the green button,” a woman’s voice to her right said. “This one.” The woman on the next treadmill pointed to the green button on her own dashboard. She smiled and looked at ease despite the deep V of sweat on the throat of her gray outfit.

Lillian nodded and smiled back. She pushed the button, and the belt crept forward.

“First time?” the gray woman asked, one earbud in her hand as she spoke.

“Yes,” Lillian said. Her feet were moving. It was all she could do to keep her balance and match her pace with the speed of the belt. She dared not look up again, but from the corner of her eye she noticed the gray woman jump off her machine and a flutter of fingers in the air as she left.

“I was married for one month.” A male voice on Lillian’s left. She opened her mouth to speak, but saw the man was speaking to someone to his left. “Yeah, from Argentina. Met her, got engaged, got married. Her green card came in the mail thirty days later. And the next day she was gone. Vanished.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Wish I were. Cost me three hundred dollars to hire an attorney, place ads in the newspaper, and sue for material abandonment.”

“No way!”

“Way.”

“Yeah, and how about you? What do you do?” Another man had taken the gray woman’s place on Lillian’s right.

“Well.” A pause. “I’m with the Secret Service,” a man to his right said.

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. I live here but work out of D.C.”

“No kidding? What do you do, that is, if you can say?”

“Yeah. Sure. I’m part of the First Lady’s detail.”

“Sounds pretty interesting.”

“I have a two hundred word Spanish vocabulary now.” It was the man to Lillian’s left again. “Buenos Dias. Como esta? Arbole. Vestido.”

“Could have done Rosetta Stone for less.”

“It’s not actually.” Back to the right. “And besides, she’s a pain in the ass. Nothing’s ever right. She’s had three other agents reassigned. You got to kiss ass and keep your mouth shut. Not my style, but it’s a job.”

“How old are you?” From the left.

“Seventy-eight. Been married three times.”

“No kidding.”

“Twice to the same woman.”

Lillian was growing dizzy. She pressed the red button and prayed for the belt to halt. When it slowed, she stepped off and walked away.

Along the far wall, astride another contraption, the gray woman whooshed back and forth in a rowing motion. Lillian approached the machine next to hers and took a seat. She gave a sideways glance at the gray woman to see where to place her feet and how to grab the pull bar. Then, again, she stared at the dashboard, flummoxed.

“Looks like you need help.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Lillian said.

“No bother.” The woman rose and came to Lillian’s side. “By the way,” the gray woman said, “I’m Stella.”

“Lillian.”

“Nice to meet you,” Stella said, placing one hand on Lillian’s shoulder. “First you set your time. Here. Then your pace. Here.” Stella pointed at the dials on the dashboard, but her eyes stayed on Lillian’s face. “Then, slip your foot in here.”

Lillian slipped her right foot into the stirrup. Stella pulled the strap over Lillian’s instep and tightened it. “How’s that?” she asked, her hand resting on Lillian’s ankle, her fingers warm against Lillian’s skin. Lillian held still, hoping Stella would not move.

“Married?” Stella.

Lillian picked at the florescent orange fabric where it stuck to her collar bone and breasts. “No. That is, I was.” She drew a hand across her forehead, wiping away beads of sweat. “I married a man from Argentina. Met him, got engaged, got married. His green card came in the mail thirty days later. The next day he was gone. Vanished.”

“Really?”

Stella rose and resumed rowing.

“Yes. It cost me three hundred dollars to hire an attorney, place ads in the newspaper, and sue for material abandonment.”

“No way!”

“Way. Say, Stella, what do you do?” Lillian asked as she tugged the pull bar, sending her body in motion, matching Stella’s pace.



Rona Simmons is the author of the contemporary suspense novel The Martyr’s Brother and two works of historical fiction, The Quiet Room and Postcards from Wonderland, published by Deeds Publishing. She is a freelance writer and blogs for The Huffington Post Blog. Her articles have been published in Deep South Magazine, Points North, and The Persimmon Tree. For more, visit ronasimmons.com and follow her on Twitter.

Helena Kvarnström is a writer and photographer currently living in Hamilton, Ontario. Prints of her work and copies of her novella, Violence, can be found on her website: helenakvarnstrom.com

Will Stratton is a New York-based songwriter, composer, and arranger who was previously featured in Storychord as Issue #10's musician and Issue
#78’s guest editor. His most recent album, Gray Lodge Wisdom, is available on Bandcamp, and his sixth album, Rosewood Almanac, will be released on Bella Union on May 12th, 2017. For more, visit Will online at willstratton.com.











 

ISSUE #139: Caralyn Davis, Vrinda Zaveri, Eliot Wilder

Posted: Monday, March 13, 2017 | | Labels:


Illustration by Vrinda Zaveri

THE CASE OF THE ALBINO GORILLA
by ​Caralyn Davis​

Sena is a one-woman production line. She scoops mayonnaise out of a jar with two fingers curved into a makeshift spoon, plops the mayonnaise onto a slice of white bread, and straightens her fingers into a knife to spread an even coating to all four corners. Complaints will be lodged if anyone bites into a glob. Same for a dry spot.


Issue #139 soundtrack: Eliot Wilder “L'Avventura”


“Food!” shouts her 13 year-old stepson, Kase. He flicks her a glance from the living-room sofa where he’s sitting with his twin, Ty, and their father, Sena’s second husband, Luke. The three of them are taking a video game break to kill zombified alien warriors or some such nonsense. Sena’s 15 year-old daughter, Hannah, and her best friend, Bristol, are still outside looking for hot guys as they work on their tans and try to keep their hair dry. The two older kids didn’t make the trip, staying with the respective exes to work summer jobs.

Sena is making lunch at the white laminate table in the adjoining kitchenette of their two-bedroom bungalow. Family vacation. They are at Wond-R-Land, a cut-rate south Georgia water park distinguished by slicks of suntan oil, chlorine haze, and dancing alligators that wear board shorts and gold neck chains. But the faux Cinderella lifeguards are the park’s crowning glory. Those sun-crisped young women, sporting hot pink bikinis and rhinestone tiaras, lounge in packs by the water features and scan the crowds for victims. Their attributes have inspired leers and muttered “Look at those knockers!” and “What an ass!” comments from the less discreet males in the family.

“Not long now,” says Sena. No response. No one’s listening. She uses the edge of her thumb to scratch an itch near her mouth and keeps working. Luke paid for the trip, everything from the gas for the minivan to the accommodations and the park passes. He balked at eating in the main lodge’s dining room — a waste of money since the bungalow has a bar fridge, and an ice machine is positioned halfway down the path to the lodge.

“Sena, the food! I’m hungry from giving these boys an ass-kicking.” Luke echoes his son and laughs like it’s not a demand. Sena has long since realized that Luke believes he never demands anything. He has reasonable expectations, and as an adult male, he has every right to express his concern if those expectations go unmet.

“Eat some chips.” Sena tosses a bag of kettle chips to the sofa, hitting Luke in the shoulder when he won’t release the joystick. She could ask for help from the boys, but how many hands does she really want in the mayonnaise?

“Christ, Sena, cut it out!” Luke picks up the bag with one hand and rips it open with his teeth.

“Sorry,” she says. “Lunch will be ready soon.”

By virtue of twelve pieces of bread for six sandwiches twice a day (lunch and dinner) for three straight days, Sena is close to the middle of the jar. Past the top third, getting mayonnaise on her knuckles and the backs of her fingers has proved unavoidable. Sena feels sure her wrist will be well-greased by the end of this seven-day/six-night excursion. Not necessarily a negative. Mayonnaise has significant moisturizing properties.

* * * * *

From the time she was six until she turned nineteen, Sena spent two weeks of the summer vacation with Mee-Maw, her mother’s grandmother. Mee-Maw lived in an asbestos-clad farmhouse on 25 rolling acres near Cuthbert, Georgia. When Pa-Pa was alive, the homeplace had been a semi-working peanut farm. It returned to that world, swallowed by a peanut conglomerate, after Mee-Maw died.

During the years of Sena’s visits, Mee-Maw’s land was a vast wilderness where Sena and Mee-Maw hacked forts out of the brush and had picnics on chipped china in fields of Queen Anne’s lace, rabbit tobacco, and cornflower. On rainy nights, as the water striking the tin roof filled the house with mesmerizing swells and squalls, they sat at the kitchen table in their robes and had what Mee-Maw called beautifying sessions. They glopped egg-white-and-oatmeal masks, with a vinegar chaser for clarifying purposes, onto their faces. They rolled up their sleeves and painted their hands and arms with buttermilk to fade Sena’s freckles and Mee-Maw’s age spots. And always, always, they slathered their heads with a cup of mayonnaise to make their hair soft and shiny.

“Dippity Do be damned,” said Mee-Maw in one of their sessions. “You don’t need to spend that kind of money on a setting gel if your hair’s in good shape in the first place.”

“I’d love to have some. It’s pink and bubbly, and the girls in the ads have such fun,” said Sena. “But Mama says we can’t afford it.”

“That stuff stinks like a chemical dump,” said Mee-Maw. “Wise up, girl. Use it every day at your age, and you’d have babies with flippers for feet when you grow up.”

* * * * *

Now 43, Sena is past child-bearing, and Mee-Maw has been dead for a quarter-century. Sena follows a beauty regimen for her face and hair: lab-created foams, exfoliants, elixirs, serums, primers, oils, and mists filled with parabens, sulfates, and other unpronounceable tidbits that are the modern-day equivalent of using arsenic as face powder.

Mee-Maw would understand, Sena tells herself.

Or maybe not. Mee-Maw liked her lipstick, but she thought wrinkles were a living roadmap of strength and survival, not scars requiring facial reconstruction. Unlike Sena, Mee-Maw had never been found wanting compared to toxin-injected, acid-peeled actresses who subsist on juice cleanses and vinegar-dressed gourmet lettuce mixes. Sena is reasonably certain Pa-Pa would have lost a finger in an unfortunate farming accident had he ever poked Mee-Maw in the stomach and said, “You’re packin’ it on, babe. Time to hit the gym,” or, during movie night, rolled out a “Demi Moore is still hot. Why can’t you pull yourself together like that?” Two years into this marriage, Sena arms herself against Luke’s digs with silence, her growing arsenal of beauty products, and solitary drive-bys for tacos or milkshakes gulped down in the gym parking lot.

Finished with the mayonnaise, Sena wipes her fingers on a washcloth and grabs the squeeze bottle of yellow mustard. She starts drawing squiggly ribbons of mustard across each slice of bread.

Luke’s not trying to hurt her feelings. Sena knows this. He’s just thoughtless and delusional. A runner, he leaves the boys with Sena every Saturday to go on dawn-to-dusk marathons through the swamps and scrublands outside Albany, where they live in suburban comfort thanks to Mee-Maw’s legacy. So Luke is lean and rangy at 46, and he doesn’t realize that his once-lush ponytail has turned seedy with the onset of male pattern baldness. He therefore believes he’s entitled to a wife with the waist size and wrinkle count of an NFL cheerleader.

* * * * *

On the drive over three days earlier, they’d gone to a box store about 20 miles out from Wond-R-Land to pick up groceries. The kids stayed in the car listening to music on their iPods while Luke and Sena went inside.

“Let’s get it done,” said Luke, finding a cart and orienting himself for half a second before he strode toward the deli meats.

“We’re not in a race, Luke. Slow down.”

“What? Are you ready for the nursing home? I didn’t sign up for a little old lady.” He kept his pace steady.

“Your legs are longer.”

“Excuses, babe.” Luke stopped to avoid crushing an old man who sailed around the corner of aisle nine to block their path.

Sena silently thanked the man for his unwitting bravery as they inched forward, then said: “We’ve been in the car for a hundred miles without a break. My hips need to warm up after two kids.”

“I’ve told you, you should start yoga and get bendy. That’d be good for us both.” The cart traffic in the opposite lane cleared. Luke gunned it to move around the old man, at the last second snatching Sena’s hand to pull her along beside him.

“I don’t have time for yoga,” she said mid-jog. Sena works a full-time job and does all the cooking, cleaning, and chauffeuring. Luke has a full-time job and a new pair of premium running shoes every 300 miles. He spends his non-working hours training or reading about new training techniques. Running is his passion; it requires sacrifice.

“Make the time.” Luke stopped the cart and started tossing in packages of roast beef and turkey.

Sena clutched the rail of the cold case. Tried not to gasp for air.

“We need bread, cheese, mustard, mayonnaise... What else, babe?” said Luke.

“Knives and forks, plates, napkins.”

“We’re not having a tea party. We’ll be fine without that hoity-toity crap.”

Luke and Sena circled the store like bicyclists speeding down the banked curves of a velodrome — gravity, centrifugal force, and common sense at their mercy. They picked up sandwich fixings for lunch and dinner and apples and muffins for breakfast. They bypassed every plastic utensil and paper good in the place.

“What about cups? Or knives and paper towels at least.” Sena made a last-ditch appeal for sanity in the soda aisle.

“They’ll have complimentary cups with the ice bucket. Stop with the doom and gloom. Let’s have fun.” Luke headed for the checkout, Sena trailing behind.

* * * * *

Sena’s on the fourth slice of bread with the mustard bottle when the front door slams open. Bristol breezes by. Hannah pauses long enough for a smiling “Hi, Mama!” and a frowning “You’ll spread out that mustard, right?” before she joins Bristol in a flop on the love seat.

“Get the lead out, babe! You’ve got starvin’ people in here,” says Luke. He smiles at Bristol and offers to show her how to play the game.

“We need ice for the drinks. Can you fill the ice bucket please?” says Sena. She adds festive swirls and curlicues to the mustard.

“I thought you did already.” His voice is irritated. His eyes stay on Bristol, who’s taken control of the third joystick and is playing against the boys with help from Hannah.

“The ice from this morning melted,” says Sena. “It’s 101 degrees outside.”

Luke rises with a groan and walks into the kitchenette to grab the ice bucket. “Who knew I’d spend my vacation making love to this thing instead of my wife?” The door slams closed.

Sena doesn’t know how he expected anything else. Their bedroom amounts to a cardboard box, and they are marooned among a tribe of children with nocturnal body clocks.

* * * * *

They’d met at a party thrown by a mutual friend. Dating followed. Middle age wasn’t particularly kind to Luke, giving him leathery skin and outmoded fashion sense in addition to thinning hair. He also droned on about running, but he said Sena was pretty and asked for second helpings of her pot roast, which she served him weekly. Sena wanted adult company, someone to talk to and kiss in the dark. She hadn’t planned to marry him.

Then one Saturday she took her mother to a circle luncheon — a church group for old ladies, not “The Secret Circle” of sylph-like teen witches whose actions Hannah and Bristol spent hundreds of texts decoding before they swore off television forever when cancellation struck. Sena had been sipping iced tea, glancing around the table as the ladies chatted, when she noticed that a luxurious bearded fringe of white hair, fur almost, bordered every face.

White women turn into albino gorillas when they hit 75. I’ll be a gorilla, Sena thought. And alone. A damn albino gorilla with no man in sight.

Less than a week later, Sena and Luke were sprawled on the sofa watching a movie on a rare kid-free Saturday night at her house. To the terse beats of semiautomatic weapon fire, popcorn bowl in his lap, Luke said, “We should get married. We love each other, and we make a good team. Let’s make this legal, babe.” He put the bowl on the coffee table and dusted off his hands before taking hers with a gentle squeeze.

“Married?” Serena heard her voice tremble but couldn’t stop it. The fear of solitary gorilla-hood had festered. In possession of this proof that she was worthy of a life partner, Serena shut down the part of her brain whispering that she’d turned an appreciation of pot roast into true love, that he’d mistaken her willingness to impersonate a 1950s housewife while they were dating as a core characteristic of her personality. “Yes. Oh, yes, Luke.”

Two months and 57 gym sessions later, Sena married Luke at a Mexican beach resort. They celebrated their first anniversary before they finished paying off the wedding package.

* * * * *

Luke returns to the bungalow, setting the ice bucket on the table.

“They’re sandwiches, not cordon bleu,” he says. “Are you trying to take forever? And wipe your face. You’re covered in mayo.”

“Thanks for the ice. Where ..?” Sena stops talking. Luke’s already in the living room, congratulating Bristol on making it to the next level of the game. Sena finds a clean spot on the washcloth she’s been using as a napkin and rubs it over her face.

Sena’s at the twelfth slice of bread. She writes in block letters: ASS- on the first line, HOLE on the second. After the E, she draws a little star and gives it a comet tail that runs down and around the sides of the bread to frame her creation.

“Food!” The roar of the crowd is somewhat garbled by flakes of fried potato, yet the message is clear. Sena slaps turkey and lettuce on six slices of bread and then starts throwing on the top slices to finish the sandwiches. When she reaches the final slice, she pauses.

He wants the best for us, that’s all. I can’t be alone. Not again. A damn albino gorilla with two ex-husbands. Mee-Maw would understand.

Sena places the slice over the last mound of turkey. This time she is careful. She uses a light touch so her art, her statement, won’t be obliterated — it will soak into the bread and marinate. She picks up the sandwich and holds it aloft.

“Lunch is ready,” she says.


Caralyn Davis lives in Asheville, N.C., and works as a freelance writer/editor for trade publications in the healthcare and technology transfer fields. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Word Riot, Eclectica, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, Superstition Review, Monkeybicycle, and other journals. For more, visit caralyndavis.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter.

Vrinda Zaveri is a San Francisco-based artist who creates mystical illustrations and animations of forests and creatures. Inspired by science fiction and nature documentaries, her GIFs create a visual blend of magical realism and adventure. Her studio practice is about storytelling through motion with humor and observation. With a focus on minimalistic fluid motion and surreal environments, her work relies on vivid colors and fantastical settings to generate mystery, curiosity and delight. For more, visit vrindazaveri.com.

Eliot Wilder is a Boston-based musician and writer. He notably authored DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, part of Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 book series. For more, visit eliotwilder.bandcamp.com.











 

ISSUE #138: Lisa Gordon, Corey Pandolph, Bunk

Posted: Monday, February 27, 2017 | | Labels:


Illustration by Corey Pandolph

HABITS
by ​Lisa Gordon​

I woke up to goblins in my backyard. At first, obviously, I thought I was dreaming. So I went back to sleep, and when I woke up again, there they were. I thought they would have gone back to wherever it is that goblins come from. I had to look it up, what they even were – I could never remember the difference between goblins and vampires and demons and all that. Goblins, technically, are “legendary evil or mischievous creatures, grotesquely evil or evil-like phantoms.”

So I was like, great.


Issue #138 soundtrack: Bunk “Hatch”



I called my sister Maggie, but she didn’t answer. I called James. “There are goblins in my backyard,” I said.

“Cool,” he said. “Do they bite?”

“Like I’m going to stick my hand out the door and find out?”

“Want to come over?”

“I do,” I said, “but what about the goblins?”

“They’ll be fine.”

I went over. When I got back, they were still there. I peeked through the sliding door, timid. It looked like they were just teeming around, moving around each other in empty, patternless circles. They didn’t make any noise. That night I slept with the light on and a baseball bat by my bed. I figured I would have trouble sleeping. But it was the best freaking night sleep of my life.

In the morning, I wanted to thank them. They were the first things on my mind when I woke up. What were they going to look like in daylight? But they looked pretty much like what you’d imagine a grotesquely evil thing would look like. Like a small man-like figure with squat, round shoulders and big, bulbous, ugly features. They didn’t wear clothes and didn’t appear to have private parts. Like the kind of villains you’d see in movies aimed at middle school boys with zits and changing voices.

I called Maggie. “Are demons genderless?”

“Yeah,” she said. I could hear chopping in the background. Maggie watches all those movies about all those things. The vampires and demons and things. She likes being scared. I don’t. She has four kids, two of whom I think she might regret. “Demons are definitely genderless.”

“Shit, no, I mean goblins.”

The chopping stopped.

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“I have some in my backyard,” I said. “I’m looking at them now. I don’t think they make noise.”

“Hmm. What do they eat?”

I stopped. I looked around my kitchen, with its avocado-colored fridge from the 70s and the peeling cupboards. I’d moved in four months ago, and I still had boxes lying around. “I’m supposed to feed them?”

She didn’t say anything. But it was like she was saying, “God, Roxie, everyone knows that.” I was in the slow group in school. Maggie, of course, was not. She was salutatorian, and I think it’s haunted her her whole life.

“Seriously,” I said. “Am I supposed to, like, keep them alive? Is this my responsibility?”

“Jesus, Rox. I don’t have time for this. But for God's sake. Maybe they chose you or something. Ever think of that?” Then I heard her cry out at one of the kids. Then I heard a click.

I hung up the phone wondering why she was defending the goblins. We used to be close, for, like, one month when I was in fifth grade and she was in eighth and someone broke her heart, and she was content to watch cartoons and eat Pop-Tarts with me all day. Once she even went to the mall with me and helped me pick out blue hair dye, which I never used because by the time I was ready to, she’d gotten over her heartbreak. I basically never saw her again until she moved home from college and did a bunch of drugs in the basement and then emerged to announce she was getting married to the man she’s married to now, Gary, who’s actually quite nice. If I’m honest with myself, I guess I moved into this crappy apartment to be near her.

I went to look at the goblins some more. I brought out one of my kitchen stools and sat by the window and just watched from behind a carefully placed curtain. They moved around and around and around my little backyard. Just around and around and around. Small twitches, purposeful steps. There were seven of them. I almost called Maggie again because isn’t seven supposed to be an evil number or something? But I didn’t. I wanted them to look at me, but they didn’t. But I think they knew I was there. I mean, they must have, right? Especially if they like, chose me?

I sat there for a long time. I almost called James again and Maggie twice more, but I thought to myself, no. Be alone (with your goblins). Practice being alone. Maggie was pretty much the reason I’d moved away in the first place – “You spend too much time with me and the kids, and it’s annoying. Get a life; try your own thing” – so I had my company transfer me to Philadelphia. It was either that or Tampa, and I’m not much of a sun person. But being in Philly was just like being here, except even more lonely and in an uglier office with worse food. Plus no James, who, for a fuck buddy, is at least reliable, and sometimes that’s all you need. The traffic was better, though. That’s what everyone said when they talked about whether or not they liked Philly. “At least we’re not on the Goddamn GWB/Zakam/whatever, idling away, wasting our lives!” my co-workers would say on Tuesday happy hours, clinking their sherries and Bud Lights in huddled spaces in cold bars. I looked out the window, waiting for snow, and sipped my Jim Beam quietly, which I told anyone who asked that it was brandy.

Now I poured myself some and decided I would test them. Half a tumbler, three ice cubes from a fancy tray Gary gave me last year, and some dinner zapping away in the microwave, I turned on the TV and opened the curtain, just slightly. I turned off all the other lights in the house so I was illuminated by only that purple, hazy glow. Sometimes nothing else is more comforting than that glow. And as weird as it sounds, with the goblins out there, I felt safe.

I must have fallen asleep because I woke suddenly with a start and thought: The goblins!!! as if something terrible had happened to them, and suddenly I was alone again. I sat up straight and peered out, and what do you know, there was one peering right back at me. We let our gazes settle on each other. I didn’t know what to do, so I raised my hand up slowly, I suppose to say, hi. Or, thank you. Or, are you hungry? Or, what’s your name? It was too dark to see the goblin’s reaction, so I just sat there for a while with my hand stupidly in the air, until I felt the goblin and I had had a meaningful moment, and then I went to bed. All night I dreamt that I was a young Drew Barrymore in a more modernized version of ET.

I woke up the next morning, Saturday, to an expansive, sunny day and nothing to do. I hate weekend days with nothing to do. Especially sunny ones. It’s like everyone else is out having a totally amazing time, riding in cars with the sunroofs open, cracking open beers on brick patios, and I’m all like, bored. The thing is, I’ve never been much for friends. I’ve had a couple here and there, but I don’t seem to get along well with people. I went to a therapist once, at Maggie’s insistence, for two months, and by the end of it he was convinced I was agoraphobic, which I’m not.

“Mags,” I said when she answered the phone. “I’ll come over, and we should have a BBQ. I miss the kids. It’ll be fun.”

“It’s barbeque,” Maggie said. “Pronounce the whole word. I hate it when you do that.”

“Barbeque,” I said. I was still in bed, my legs up against the wall, my mirror leaning against the door, unhung for months now.

“We can’t. Ronald has a soccer game.”

“Can I come?”

“You can,” she said and sighed a little. “But I think you should try to find something else to do, you know? It’s been four months, Rox. And not much has changed.”

Even though what she said hurt a little, her voice was comforting. I began to cry a little bit but hid it from her. “Okay,” I said in my most upbeat voice. “No problem.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Maggie said. “We don’t have anything on Sunday night. We’ll come over for dinner. All of us. Okay? And you should cook, Roxie. Or bake. And I hope those boxes are cleared away by now. You know Annie tripped last time.”

I used to cook a lot. My specialties were gruyere and broccoli soufflés in the morning and lamb burgers with homemade tzatziki sauce for lunch. There was a time when Maggie was coming over for lunch every day, and then sometimes for dinner, when she and Gary were going through a rough patch. We drank luxurious cocktails with twists of grapefruit and talked about the world in ways that made it seem more manageable.

“Okay,” I said, looking around at all the boxes. She hadn’t been over practically since I’d moved in. I had a lot of work to do.

Then we hung up, and I realized she hadn’t asked me about the goblins.

I went to the window and watched them. Maybe it was just my angle, but I swore they didn’t look the same. Or maybe just weaker. Their circles were getting smaller, like there was less space between them when they moved around one another. Their movements were twitchier, too. I went downstairs to get a better look, and that’s when I noticed the grass. Small patches of it, circular patches – dried up. They dotted the lawn like the fabric on a girl’s party dress. I didn’t know what it meant, but it had to mean something, and I feared it was bad.

Oh my god, I wondered, am I killing them?

I picked up the phone to call Maggie again and then hung it up before it rang. Instead, I went to my computer and Googled “what to feed goblins,” but all that came up were the rules to a game called Pathfinder.

I was on my own.

I started with the cabinets first, but since I don’t cook much, all I had were a few cans of chili and boxes of stale crackers. In my fridge were some dying carrots, beer cans, leftover pizza, and ketchup.

Fuck, I thought. I was beginning to feel frantic.

I called James. “If you were a goblin,” I said, “what would you eat?”

“Ummmm. Sugar. Like, lots of it.”

“Ohhhh, sugar,” I said. “Right. Thanks!”

“Rox–” he said. “About tonight –”

“I don’t know about tonight,” I said. “I’ll have to see. I’ll call you later.”

Saturday was our night. Sometimes I felt like it was the only thing I needed to get me through the week. But now there were other things on my mind.

I got my clothes on, threw on some flip flops, and opened the curtain. “I’ll be back soon, guys,” I said. “Hang in there.” I was almost out the door when I thought better of it. I put the stale crackers on a plate and put the plate on the inside of the glass door. I was testing them, I guess.

The grocery store is a magical place, is it not? It had been so long since I’d been for the sake of food. Just the remarkable wonder of food. I’d been planning the meal for Maggie and the family on the car ride over. Pork roast with balsamic glaze reduction, frisee salad with homemade cilantro lemon dressing, and scallion biscuits. I held the cold pack of meat in my hands and felt inspired; the bouquet of scallions were more beautiful than ever. And then it was time for sugar. If you’ve ever wondered what kind of sugar to feed a gobin, I’d love to hear what you came up with. Because I wandered those aisles for what felt like hours. I couldn’t decide between packaged, processed sugar like Chips Ahoy and Oreos, or store-bought cake mixes with thick frosting, or just plain sugar from a box. So I bought it all. I bought it all.

At home, the afternoon had spread itself through my apartment in fragile light. I dumped the groceries on the floor. I couldn’t wait to see what had happened to the plate of crackers. Much to my surprise (or, not really – wasn’t I expecting it?), they were gone. Well, almost. One of the goblins was half in my house, half out on the patio. Crumbs hung from his mouth. The others were outside, but closer to the door than before.

“No, no,” I said, shaking my finger toward the goblin’s face. “Not those!”

I watched his face, for what, I’m not sure. Something human? But what I saw, I’ll never know. All I know is that it sparked something in me. I ran back into the kitchen and procured one of the boxes of cookies from the jumble of grocery bags lying about. I walked back in and handed it to him. The goblin didn’t take it. Just stared at it. So I ripped it open and spread them out on the plate, and then went back into the kitchen to keep myself busy. I made a big show of opening cabinets and slamming the fridge door with a force. I unpacked everything as quickly as possible so I could get back out to see what they were up to. But I didn’t need to. Soon I heard a noise behind me, and there they were, two of them this time, standing somewhat timidly in the doorway of the kitchen. The plate wasn’t with them, but I knew the cookies were gone. They stood there, their twitches visible, waiting.

“Hold on!” I cried. “Hold on, guys.”

I tore open the box of Oreos and put them on the floor. They ate whole sleeves at a time. Popped them into their mouths like snakes snoveling a mouse (Maggie would say, snoveling is not a word, but I’d say, so what?). I tried not to look too closely at them. I didn’t want them to be uncomfortable.

They weren’t very good sharers. The Oreos were gone in a matter of moments, and from what I could tell, the other goblins were still outside on the patio, probably starving. I ripped a Sara Lee cake from its packaging and slipped by the goblins to go out and feed the rest. The others had begun approaching the door and were in various stages of coming inside, except for one, who lagged behind considerably. He was inspecting the wooden frame around the door.

“Here,” I said, putting the cake down on the ground right in front of the door. “Help yourselves.”

They stared at it for a moment and then descended upon it like wolves. It was fascinating.

The mistake I had made soon became ever more clear to me because back in the kitchen, it was chaos. The two goblins had torn through nearly everything in the bags and were now taking turns gnawing at the meat I’d gotten for Maggie’s dinner, holding it in their hands, which were really more of claw-hand hybrids.

“HEY!” I cried. “Hey! That’s not for you!”

They looked up but didn’t listen, of course. And then I don’t know where I got the courage, but I stuck my hand in between their mouths and ripped the meat away from them. It was room temperature and fell apart a little in my hands. They stared at it hungrily and then me. One of them snapped at my fingers, but it was over so quickly, I didn’t even realize that’s what was happening. I guess it’s naïve, but it hadn’t occurred to me until then that they might want to eat me. I grabbed up as much food as I could into my arms and threw it out onto the patio. It spilled out into the backyard, where I noticed the circular patches had grown bigger.

“Go!” I cried, sliding open the door as wide as it would go. “Go on!” It didn’t take them long to follow the food, and they filed back outside like dutiful pupils. I stood there and watched, counting them, wide-eyed. I would have scolded them, but how? And maybe I’m crazy, but I swear the last one, the shortest one, hung his head a little as he passed me by, ashamed of what is anyone’s guess.

Back in the kitchen I was a frenzied mess. I hadn’t been gripped by panic like this since my last attack before I moved. But at least now I had things to do. The meat was ruined – I’d have to get something new – but much of the other food that remained in the bags was salvageable. Unfortunately, one of the boxes of sugar had spilled everywhere, and my kitchen floor looked like a bare sandbox, the kind that skinned your knees badly if you skidded and fell, which I did, three times. So by the time the doorbell rang, I was bloody and sweet all over.

“What the fuck is going on in here,” James said, his face alight. “What happened to you!”

“It’s the goblins,” I said. “I’m baking. You were right – they like sugar.”

James inspected me like a doctor. He pulled my hair around, lifted my shirt, and pressed his ear against my chest to hear my heartbeat. He kissed the top of my head, held me close, and whispered, “Did they hurt you?”

“No,” I said, not telling him about the near-bite. I wrangled free of his arms.

“Then why are you all bloody?”

“They tore everything apart in my kitchen. Sugar spilled everywhere. I’m cleaning. And baking so they’ll have more food. And I need to cook. Maggie’s coming over tomorrow, and –”

“This is nuts,” he said. “Let me see them.”

I led him to the back porch. Despite trash from the food lying about, they were back to their normal habits – teeming around each other in circles. Even the grass was back to normal. Plush and green, perhaps even greener than before.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s weird.”

“They look harmless to me. What really happened in here?”

I looked at James. Suddenly he wasn’t good-looking after all, and his eyes, always big and blue and serene, were making me nauseous.

“I have too much to do,” I said. “If you’re going to give me a hard time, you should go. I don’t have time for us tonight.”

“You don’t have time for us tonight?” he said. “Because there are goblins in your backyard?”

I looked from him to the goblins. “Yes,” I said matter-of-factly. “And Maggie. I have to get ready for Maggie tomorrow.”

“Saturday is our night,” he said.

“You can help me bake!” I said, getting excited again. I went back into the kitchen and drew open some of the cake packages I’d purchased. “You could make the icing! We did that once before, remember? And you liked it, remember?” I began pulling out my mixing bowls and measurers. When I turned back, he was gone.

* * * * *
I stayed up all night baking. Every time I put something in the oven, they’d smell it and come to the patio door, banging their big foreheads against it. The noise was like a lot of things I’d heard before, yet hard to describe. Dull and consistent. At first it scared me, and then it just egged me on, like some kind of Pavlov symptom. My hands became raw from squeezing the wooden mixing spoon. My face was covered in powder. It became difficult to breathe, and my brain was moving so fast I don’t know how I got it all done. But I did. Come late morning, the goblins were full. They laid about the grass with bellies protruding and mouths hanging open, their teeth exposed. I thought it interesting they never once touched each other.

I had even cleaned up the house. All the boxes were unpacked and everything was in its right place. I dusted and vacuumed and re-arranged. I swept and wiped and bleached. I even ran out to the store again, after feeling confident that the goblins were finally asleep, to get another pork roast. It was the right decision, for when I returned, nothing had changed.

Then Maggie called in the morning. “Fuck, Rox, I forgot,” she said. “I forgot about the goblins.”

“No, it’s fine!” I said, my voice frantic. “They’re fine!”

“I can’t bring four kids over to play with goblins. Gary won’t allow it.”

“It’s fine!” I said, peering through the curtain, keeping my voice low so as not to disturb them. “They’re placid. They’re placid like a sea.” When she didn’t say anything, I went on. “Please,” I said, “just come.”

I took a quick nap and then took to the kitchen again, preparing the most elaborate, gorgeous meal I’d prepared in years. Even my fancy china, freshly unpacked from my night of chaos, was ready for use, and I set out the seven plates carefully. Everything was coming together, and after artfully arranging a vase of tulips on the table and setting out tumblers for the kids’ milk, I allowed myself a glass of wine and sunk into the couch, my goblins sated and idle, and settled in to wait.


Lisa Gordon is a writer and editor from the Boston area. She has been published or has work forthcoming in Paper Darts, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Hypertext, SideReal Magazine, Eleven Eleven, the Rumpus, BelleSF, and others. For more, visit gordonlisa.com.

Corey Pandolph is a former Minor League Baseball mascot and NYC-based cartoonist/illustrator for the New Yorker, MAD Magazine and Adirondack Life. His work has been internationally syndicated in newspapers, featured on screen for Comedy Central and graced fine cocktail napkins across Manhattan. Currently, he is trying to write his first comic book based on his first unfinished crime novel. Mr. Pandolph lives with his wife, Kristen and one white husky, Lulu. He also plays mediocre blues guitar and enjoys building things out of trees when he can. Visit him online at coreypandolph.com.

Bunk's recently-released sophomore album, Citrus Sucker, was written and recorded bi-coastally by David Skelly and Michael Sokol (in Northampton, MA) and Brett Long (in Los Angeles, CA), who have been creating music together since middle school. For more, follow the band on Facebook and Bandcamp or visit bunktheband.com.












 

ISSUE #131: Nada Alic, Andrea Nakhla, Avid Dancer

Posted: Monday, October 10, 2016 | | Labels:


Illustration by Andrea Nakhla

FRANCIS FOREVER
by Nada Alic

Sleep had forgotten me. Each night, I laid on my back waiting for it to come, but it would not come. I would say things like “I’m so tired!” to will it into existence, but it was an ancient thing and not so easily fooled. This was because I’d been in love-- but only for a few weeks so my body was still adjusting. It wanted so badly to attach itself to that other body, the one shaped long and lean, with the right amount of softs and hards. But that body wasn’t around; it was down the hall and tired from its own day. And I was committed to letting it breathe, not consuming it as I usually do. Just taking polite little bites here and there and stopping when I was full.


Issue #131 soundtrack: Avid Dancer “Stop Playing With My Heart”


His name was Francis. He had a ponytail and wore a vintage jacket with the words Sports Suck hand-embroidered on the back. He was the only person in my apartment complex who didn’t recycle. If you asked him about it, he would tell you about his sources on the inside that know the truth. One day I just started taking his recyclables out of the trash and placing them in the recycling bin when he wasn’t looking. He would then take them out of the recycling bin and put them back in the trash. This sort of became our thing. After a while, it was like a call and response. Some might call it romance. And as romance goes, it was mysterious and exciting. Each time I went to the communal garbage area, I felt like I was being watched, and it gave me a full body rush. We never discussed it because we didn’t need to. What we had didn’t require labels because it existed on higher planes of consciousness. Describing these planes to you would be pointless. Dangerous, even.

Francis had only ever addressed me twice. Once to tell me it was a “free country” and another time to ask me if he’d said anything stupid to me in the hallway that one time because he was drunk, and he didn’t mean it. I told him it was a free country! We laughed, but he didn’t know why.

Once I showed him my easy-going side, he was hooked-- because soon after, he asked me to keep an eye out for a package for him while he was away on vacation. He gave me his number and told me to text him when it arrived. He told me not to open it or tell anyone that I had it, that it would just be our little secret. This was his funny way of asking me to be his girlfriend. I nodded with not just my neck, but with my whole being. When his package arrived, I wrapped it in a towel and hid it underneath my bed until he came to pick it up. And when he did, he stood in my doorway and asked me if I smoked and I said “n-yes.” We sat on my fire escape, and he told me about his trip to Miami with a woman named Carla, but I couldn’t hear him over the sound of his lips kissing his cigarette and sucking in, which sounded like music to me.

As the days went on, my want for him felt like a burden, dragging me along with it into very elaborate fantasy scenarios. I was a maid, he: a middle-aged hotel guest. I: a seahorse, he: another seahorse. I: a scrunchie, he: an endless ponytail. But my greatest fantasy of all was the feeling that I was being watched. I thought that if I just believed he was always watching me, I’d be forced to act like the kind of woman he could marry, until I really was that woman. So I made sure to create an aura of sexiness all over my apartment. There are only two ways to create sexiness: perfume and dancing, and I am allergic to perfume.

No one knows this about me, but I am basically a professional in-front-of-the-mirror dancer. This is the kind of dance that no one sees. The secret kind. You’ve done this dance. Maybe it even took you a moment to remember that you’ve done it, but you have. You played a song, faced the mirror, and started moving your body. Maybe you mouthed all of the words to a song and impressed yourself with this. Maybe you turned yourself on by rounding your hips over and over again until you thought to yourself: what if I’m sexier than I even know? You are. Don’t be ashamed. How do you think that those people in nightclubs know how to dance so well? Do you think it just happened one day? No, they spent years in front of the mirror quietly thinking: does this make me look like I am having sex with my clothes on?

I have found reasons to press all of the numbers that make up his number in succession and hit “call.” This is often followed by “end call” but not always. I space out all of these calls as if I were eating popcorn one kernel at a time, pausing to breathe between each bite. Have you ever tried this? It is hard. There is something within all of us that wants more popcorn than our mouths allow, but it is a spiritual practice to chew and swallow each one at a time. One kernel at a time I say:

“Hello.”

“Hi.”

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That sound; it sounded like an animal.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Must have been the wind.”

One at a time. I hold one of his empty beer cans and, swallow. I hear his voice and, swallow. I see a baby that looks like it could be ours and, swallow.

* * * * *

I have to go to the post office today, which is the kind of thing I’d tell Francis about since our thing really got going because of a package-- or date, was it technically a date? He’d probably take care of it for me if I asked, but I haven’t seen him in a few weeks and this really can’t wait. I am returning a pair of pants because I accidentally hit “small” when I meant to hit “medium,” and I only realized this after checkout, so I had to wait for an entire system to run its course so that I could hit “medium” again. As I tracked my package on UPS, I saw it being dispatched from a warehouse in New Mexico, placed onto a truck headed to Tucson, then to another warehouse in Anaheim, and finally to my doorstep in Los Feliz. When the package arrived, I held it in my hands and felt the hands of every person that touched it, and I felt ashamed. I wanted to call them all and explain what happened. They held up their end of this, and I just watched my mistake move through the country in real time.

On my drive to the post office, I started noticing signs everywhere. This is common. Signs most often appear when you are looking for them. Try it for yourself next time; almost anything can be a sign. Now that I’m in love, all of my signs are love-shaped. The license plate in front of me at a stop sign spelled out FEELNIT, a plastic bag that read Thank You, Thank You, Thank You blew from a branch like a flag, and two goth teens made out aggressively at a bus stop. I kissed my fingers, gently pressed them up against the windshield, and whispered, “Bless you.” Most people don’t know that blessings are free and you can give them away as often as you want, even if you are not religious.

When I walked into the post office, I noticed a long line of people in a kind of snake formation edging towards the exit. None of us chose each other, but there we were. We had all left our special somebody-ness in the car, or at home; none of it would be required of us here. All that was required was to move the line along, and some of us were failing. There were gaps between us. Deep valleys of open space. Some bodies too close, others too far. This is because most people don’t care. Most people don’t do the work; they don’t even show up. They turn up right at the end, all out of breath, and ask, “Did I miss it?” And we say: “Yes, we handled it. It’s over, go home.”

I looked around at the mess we had created and felt anxious. I let out an audible sigh which is like saying, “Unbelievable!” with your breath. Then, I looked up at the fluorescent lights above me and remembered: I am in love. I nearly burst out in laughter that I had almost forgot about this very important thing. Most people in the world right now, at this moment, are not in love. They are out of love or over love or under-loved. They are nowhere near the in part. They are typing online profiles that say “Looking for Love” and refreshing the page. I suddenly became self-conscious that maybe I was feeling so much love that it was making people feel uncomfortable. But I looked around, and no one seemed to notice-- that’s how rare love has become.

In front of me was a large, elderly man. He was both tall and wide, a real bottleneck for our slow moving conga line. His shape demanded all of the space that this great earth would give him, and as I entered his orbit, I feared being swallowed whole by whatever magnetic force sucks you into large, dark masses.

“We’re going to be here for a while,” he said. “Yes,” I laughed.

I thought about pretending I didn’t understand English but remembered I didn’t know any other languages.

“What do you have there?”

“Oh, it’s – I made a mistake, I’m returning something.”

Something about the soft look on his face said he was somebody’s father and he could tell that I was somebody’s daughter, and because of this, he chose me as his temporary surrogate. Like a reclining chair, I relaxed into it.

“Me, too. I never heard the mailman ring the bell.” He held up a note that said, Sorry We Missed You!

“I hate when that happens.”

“I don’t mind it. It’s fun not to know.”

“Yeah, but then you get stuck here on a Saturday.”

“It’s not so bad if you know you’ll get a present in the end.”

“What kind of present?”

“I’m picking up a package from my girlfriend.”

The way he said the word “girlfriend” suggested this was a new arrangement. He hadn’t worn out the word yet, so it felt like a surprise every time the word exited his mouth, and every time, he was pleased by it.

“Oh, that’s nice! What do you think it could be?”

“I’m not sure. It’s for our anniversary.”

Then it came pouring out of him like a faucet. “It’s a crazy story, you know? I met her in an online chat room for sufferers of IBS. Irritable Bowel Syndrome.”

I nodded slowly, as if I had just learned something new.

“It’s a very common ailment, and no one really knows what it is, if you can believe it. But millions of people have it. I’d been to the doctor all my life, and all he told me was to stop eating spicy foods. That didn’t work. So, sometime last year I decided to do some research, and I came across this online forum and started reading all of these stories. That’s when I realized I wasn’t alone. I started chatting with this lady who called herself Barb_63. She told me I should try hypnosis, and you know, I don’t believe in any of that stuff, but she said it worked for her.”

In this time, the line had moved several feet, but he did not. I had become a part of the problem, but it didn’t bother me as much. Love is patient!

“And it worked! The mind is so powerful, you know. Anyway, we kept on chatting. She gave me her e-mail address and that’s when it really started-- I’m talking every day. She lives in Rochester, New York, which is why we can’t be together, but one day I would very much like to see her in person. I just don’t have the money right now.”

A small part of me worried that Barb_63 was another lonely old man or a hacker from some unpronounceable Slavic region. I wondered if she ever asked for his social security number or if he gave it to her before she even thought to ask. I wondered if any of this even mattered to him, or if it was all enough to get him through his day.

“That is a real modern-day love story,” I said.

As we neared the front of the line, I learned several things about Barb_63, as if with each new piece of information, her face came into focus. She used to be a hairdresser. She’s allergic to cashews, but almonds are fine. She’s fluent in Spanish. She loves to dance. I could see why he liked her. I began to like her, too.

I imagined Barb_63 at her kitchen table, slowly curating herself for him via email. I imagined her as shy to start, then over time, unlocking a thousand- year-old desire within her. Something she thought had died long ago. She’d describe what she was doing, what she’d like to do, and what she hasn’t tried but would be open to. This would surprise her, how natural it felt. This is because there is always want for romance, even when it is distant and electronic: it is ancient. The need to consume and be consumed lives outside of time itself.

I imagined their love as two magnets held together through satellites and wires, ones and zeros. I imagined her unbuttoning her blouse and uncrossing her legs. I imagined his want growing for her, typing and erasing the words “I love you” before hitting send. I imagined them both forgiving each other for their soft and unlovable bodies and loving them anyway.

Her long life held so many pieces of herself, and she chose which to reveal and which to bury. A small part of me envied this ability as I was getting tired of constantly being watched. There was so much that I didn’t want Francis to see, but I knew that on some higher plane saw everything, like an all-seeing god. I straightened my posture at the thought of this.

“Next.”

It was his turn. He walked to the front and handed the woman at the counter a yellow slip of paper. She walked to the back and returned with a large blue box. It is from Barb_63. And Barb_63 is real. As he turned to leave he said:

“Here it is.”

“It looks big!” I said.

He proceeded to walk past me and towards his future where there was probably an e-mail waiting for him from Barb_63, asking if he got the package and if he did, what did he think? I turned around and he was gone.

When I reached the counter, I looked at the woman behind it and told her everything. I don’t know why I did this, but I did. I explained my mistake and how I’d pressed “small” even though I was a “medium” and I kept going; I told her about the signs and the swallowing and my profound want for sleep. That it had been so long since I’d slept that kind of dead sleep.

I did not stop. I even told her about Barb_63 and the large dark mass that loved her. I told her how their love was distant and absurd, but how love does not bend in the direction of our desires. It does not look the way it’s supposed to but neither do we, and because of that we are always let down.

“Next!” she shouted.

I looked down at my hands and they were empty. The package was gone and it was over. I heard a sneeze and whispered “bless you” to no one in particular.


Nada Alic is a fiction writer originally from Toronto who now lives in Los Angeles. She is the editorial director for the art platform Society6, a print-on-demand marketplace for 200k artists. For more of her work, visit nadaalic.com.

Andrea Nakhla is an Los Angeles-based painter and designer. Her debut show entitled “Little Joy” at New Image Art was featured in Live FAST Magazine. Andrea and Nada have been collaborating on art books since 2014, when the pair produced the first installment of Future You (2014). Since then, they've also realized I Saw It In You (2016) and Future You 2 (2016). For more, visit andreanakhla.com and follow the artist on Instagram.

Avid Dancer is the moniker of Los Angeles-based musician and artist Jacob Dillan Summers. Summers began as a drummer, winning top honors for rudimental snare at United Corps International’s prestigious annual bugle-and-drum corps competition. He created the album artwork for his latest release, 1st Bath, by writing the album’s title in his own blood over a collage of photos from his early childhood. For more, visit aviddancerband.com/ or follow Summers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.







 

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