Crack the Spine Literary Magazine

October 4, 2018| ISSUE no 243 Literary Magazine crack the spine poetry Bailey Merlin Danielle Hanson short fiction Jim Cole Amanda DeNatale ISSN 2474-9095 creative non-fiction Mike Nagal flash fiction Kevin Richard White Joaquin Macias cover art Keith Moul micro fiction Candace Hartsuyker Birdsong short fiction by Jim Cole In your city, a beautiful bird appears. It is small, the size of a tight fist. Amidst the glass and cement, it seems fragile, vulnerable. The type of creature that would sing. Perched on a blue awning downtown, this bird catches the attention of a mother driving by. She slows to a crawl, stops in the middle of traffic, and she steps out, leaving her twins buckled in the backseat, to steal a quick glimpse. “Move! Move it!” the rude man behind her in a delivery truck blares. “The songbird has a gold ring in one eye,” she whispers before melting back into her car. Four children crossing the street hear the woman and freeze to study the songbird. Her wings are beige, her tail rust. A cab driver, craning to see, inches toward the curb. But this street is narrow, so other cars cannot pass and traffic jams up. A man and his girlfriend on a motor scooter stop suddenly to listen to the bird. The woman emptying coins from the parking meters turns to gawk, straining to hear, and an entire canister of quarters and dimes gushes out onto the pavement. A bus driver who was distracted veers to avoid the coins and comes to a stop backslashed across both lanes. Shoving and cursing, the passengers trundle off the bus and gather like a chorus on the sidewalk to admire the songbird. Despite the commotion, the bird does not fly off or even flinch. Instead, it glares down at the crowd as though it has brought a message. Those who have congregated wait and listen. The crowd watches her like an oracle. When her beak opens, they lean in, inch closer and strain for an enchanting trill. Instead, a rending silence fills the air. This songbird does not sing. A few days ago, you sat beside Lazlo on a park bench, inanimate, already estranged. A slow rain started – fat drops, like they’d jabbed the sky, again, with an ice pick. Nothing – not the weather, not the gods -- could change what you wanted to say. You had scripted yourself to make what you had to do easier. You and Lazlo weren’t going to make it. “Translation please,” Lazlo asked, playing dumb as usual. He removed his coarse leather gloves. He wore his work clothes – white jumpsuit, white cap. He stared at the ground tapping his nose with his index finger like Morse code. One of those habits of his, mindless and endearing. “Can you just stop that,” you scolded and immediately regretted showing emotion. So irrelevant now. “Stop what?” “I think I’m falling out of love,” you said. “What, like falling overboard, or off a bike? Or falling out of bed? Just let me pull you back on.” You work in an office a block away from the bird. Everybody in Accounts Payable has been talking about the beige songbird with the gold ring in one eye. What does it mean? People keep slipping away for coffee. Several called in sick. Others just didn’t show up today. By late morning, the office is abandoned. At your desk, you battle to close out the books for the month of April. Head down, your glasses slide off your nose, again. You feel it, your boss hovers. “What does your dog catcher think,” he asks. “He’s animal control. He’s not mine. And I don’t know.” “Oh,” he sighs. You feel his thigh press against your armrest, and his fingers drum the back of your chair. You want to scream. “And what does the songstress think?” You don’t answer, so he drifts away and stands at the window, where he whistles softly and pretends to watch the commotion down the street. Finally, at noon, you walk out and vow to never return. Those numbers can add themselves up. Four cops stand in the intersection and muddle traffic. The sidewalks swarm with people enthralled by the bird. Her tawny feathers gleam in the sunlight. Her head twitches from side to side as she studies all the faces. Her tight claws have sliced holes in the canvas. Two couriers in bike shoes sit on the curb near you and unwrap sandwiches. Your phone rings. Lazlo. The conversation in the park wasn’t enough? A school teacher shows up with a platoon of girls dressed in loafers, plaid skirts and gray sweaters. A clutch of businessmen all in blue suits huddle, their attention darting between the bird and their texts. The bird projects a purpose, an aggressive determination – unfathomable to the crowd. All alone, with no friends near, any of them might look the same. Why doesn’t she fly off? Go find her own kind? This is one of the questions. Someone says she has to be naive, or dying. “The songbird will never sing,” you tell a man standing beside you with an ice cream cone. The bird looks misunderstood, doleful. “What do you mean,” the man says. His tongue plows a wide channel through the two scoops. You’re not sure why you’re talking to this stranger or what you want to tell him. How many girls get to say they’re the dog catcher’s ex, anyway? “I think some songbirds may never be heard. Translation: She might have timeless injuries you could never imagine.” Warm vanilla dribbles down the man’s wrist and disappears in his sleeve. People crowd closer to the bird, they take pictures. Some shake fists at her in mock aggression. They caw and chirp. From the intersection, two of the cops alternate short and long blasts from their whistles. She does not move, she does not sing. Like a buffed stone, she may be a vengeful arrowhead set to strike. A symbol of anger, reminder of futility, people laugh. You listen to Lazlo’s message. “I’ll come to you at midnight. Like insomnia, but with a plan.” Now vendors sell plastic flutes shaped like birds, refrigerator magnets, t-shirts, key chains, and red and yellow helium balloons. The balloon man wears a feathered headdress, the ice cream man wears eagle wings. A woman sells crowns made of blue jay feathers; at a long table children color hollowed eggs; a man dressed in a black cape and top hat makes a dove appear from his pant leg over and over. Television news crews laze around playing dominoes in vans equipped with giant satellite dishes and hope to transmit something auspicious. Four Belgian tourists dance in a circle wearing bandanas and red T-shirts: SAVE CLOUD CUCKOO LAND! The exuberant spectators yearn anxiously for a spectacle. At night, you cloister in the blankets, pretending to read, dreading the clock, whispering over and over, Sometimes we hold things we should let go; sometimes we let go of things we long to hold. Lazlo arrives wearing a silly blue skipper’s cap. You fight back a smile. He pretends to walk with a limp and keeps bumping your shoulder. “Can you stop it, please?” He leads you to a lake surrounded by a tall fence. Lazlo has a jangle of keys. He unlocks the fence, then a gate to the dock, he opens the boat house and the metal cabinet inside with all the oars and paddles, he opens the refrigerator and holds up two bottles of root beer, but puts them back when you shake your head. You do want to share one, though, don’t you? Then he unfastens the chain securing all the boats, and steadies you into a small rowboat. There is no wind. The air smells like mud and feels thick, like you could reach out and scoop up luscious handfuls. Frogs croak somewhere along the shore. Lazlo rows to the middle of the lake. He tells you to shine a flashlight on him, and he takes out a book and starts to read to you. “First, she said we were to keep clear of the Sirens, who sit and sing most beautifully in a field of flowers; but she said I might hear them myself so long as no one else did. Therefore, take me and bind me to the crosspiece half way up the mast; bind me as I stand upright, with a bond so fast that I cannot possibly break away, and lash the rope's ends to the mast itself. If I beg and pray you to set me free, then bind me more tightly still…” He pauses and turns the page. You stare in silence while he tries to muster his own words. Sometimes words are like old people, he told you once, and they take their time coming from my attic down to my front door. Closing the book, he drops it beneath his seat, reaches toward your hand – you stiffen – and he clicks the flashlight off. You both stay still for a moment in the calm darkness. “Translation,” he whispers, “welcome to my spaceship.” You follow his gaze up to look at the clear night sky and then out across the black mirror of the lake. Stars fill the water. You feel dizzy, unable to tell up from down. The stars surround you, like you are swimming through space, and you hope you will never return. After a few minutes, you hear Lazlo’s voice: “I had hardly finished telling everything to the men before we reached the island of the two Sirens, for the wind had been very favorable. Then all of a sudden it fell dead calm; there was not a breath of wind nor a ripple upon the water, so the men furled the sails and stowed them; then taking to their oars they whitened the water with the foam they raised in rowing.” A few days later, it appears: an arch painted on the pavement in front of the blue awning. A demarcation, it begins at the south corner of the building and runs off the curb into the gutter and out into the street. Its creators must have enjoyed their task. Or was it their prank? They would have worked quickly late at night and laughed beneath the street lamps as they slathered paint, clapped their hands, made dog and owl sounds and dared the bird to do something about it. Drooling yellow paint, their brushes and rollers followed the line of the crosswalk to the middle of the street before they bent their fat line and brought it back toward the north corner of the building. They told jokes, slugged bourbon from a bottle, and flapped their wet brushes at the heavens, dribbled paint on their overalls, squawked and chirped, and tucked their thumbs in their armpits and clucked and pranced in circles until they must have felt foolish, and then they scratched their ears and admired what they had created. They tossed the brushes, rollers and buckets in the bed of their truck, and splashed their hands with turpentine, and bongoed on the hood. People admire the cage. Now the songless bird looks content, still alone but in a defined space. This looks like benevolent confinement. From outside of the painted U, people stare and press in on the edge of the bird’s world. You of all people must have imagined what would happen next. First, someone in the crowd claims to have seen the bird near a school playground. A law student calls the radio station and swears she spotted the bird on a streetlight in a busy intersection, where a songbird has no business. There’s a commotion in a subway station. The owner of a shoe store says the bird darted through an open window across the street and chased an old deaf man around his apartment. The bird menaces the giraffe exhibit at the zoo, cursing visitors with her jaundiced eye; she clings to a city bus forcing the chauffeur to almost crush two cyclists stopped at a crosswalk. When had she has left her sentry’s perch? No one can say. Tumultuous or still – and who can ever know which mood she will choose – her silence disconcerts the city. She taunts a cruise ship until the harbor patrol shoos her away with a water cannon, drenching a reception on the main deck. A diamond earring vanishes from a windowsill in a luxury hotel, and a spate of missing car keys follows, then wedding bands, garden tools, and plush baby toys; a movie theater closes when the cooling system mysteriously shuts off and the projector catches fire; a renowned professor of Greek literature feels dark talons in his thinning hair as he opens his front door returning from the opera. The City raises a shield of green mesh across the avenues on the East Side. But this only snares a legion of pigeons that rain down like damp shoes on car windshields and children walking to school. And so the nets come down. If the City cannot stop the creature, where will this end? “We could keep trying, of course we can,” you tell Lazlo. “But why?” “What’s not working?” “Do you want me to make you a spreadsheet?” You stare at him across the kitchen table. It feels like you’ve amassed a miniature landscape, a diorama, to separate the two of you – your spoon in a bowl of yogurt and strawberries, a glass of water, a coffee cup, ceramic salt and pepper shakers, droopy blue napkins in a plastic stand, a jar of silverware, a deck of Bicycle playing cards for your games of solitaire, a plastic placemat in front of Lazlo with an X he has formed in the middle from a spoon and butter knife. As you speak, his index finger circles round and round this cross. Why have you let him in? His mind is elsewhere. He always pretends everything is simple. You know better. Meaning hides in the silent moments sometimes. When will he understand? “I can’t explain. Sometimes you just know. I mean, sometimes we have to let go of things we’d like to hold onto. Sometimes, they’re just not right. You get it, don’t you? Otherwise, you might end up holding onto something you should have let go of a long time ago,” you say. It is so clear. Why did you let him in? “Sure,” he says, standing up the spoon and the knife. “‘I need to let go of something I want to hold onto, Mr. Knife,’” he continues and makes the spoon dance. “‘Brilliant idea, Ms. Spoon, I will just let you go, then,” Lazlo says moving the knife up and down. “‘Otherwise, you might make the mistake of holding onto something you actually want.’” “‘Oh, Mr. Knife, you’re so sharp,’” he says and leans the spoon forward to give the knife a peck. Is he angry? Hurt? You can’t tell. Of course you can. Both. “Well, let’s see what happens,” you whisper, closing your eyes. You wait for him to mimic you some more, or ask you to explain, or huff. You listen to the chair legs gnash along the floor. Ever so slightly, you feel your body wisp forward anticipating one of those soft kisses of his on your forehead, or on your ear, and this will tell you how Lazlo feels. You inhale the faint scent of strawberries, open your eyes – you are alone. Three men sit in an orange city maintenance truck with the windows down. In the back, a net on a long pole, and a bucket full of leaves and stems and flowers, and the bait – beetles, dragonflies, worms, moths, spiders. Between the two big men in his white jumpsuit, Lazlo slouches and chews his sleeve. The air smells like rain, again. “It’s a silly thing,” the driver says. “A nuisance is more like it,” the other man says. Why is Lazlo here? He has on his small white cap. The three eat sandwiches and study the songbird and the gathering crowd. “I’ve never done birds before,” Lazlo says. “He’s never done birds,” the driver says. “What do you do, then,” the other one asks. “All I do are mammals, rodents.” The other two laugh as if they’ve heard something different. The driver parrots Lazlo’s words. “All you do are mammals,” he says. He calls Lazlo Major Critter. “Why did you paint the cage,” Lazlo asks. “Major Critter wants to know why we painted the cage,” the driver says to the other. “Why don’t you tell him?” “You can’t have a songbird without a cage,” the other says. “You can’t have a songbird without a song, either,” the driver says. “You might escape her singing, but from her silence certainly never,” Lazlo says, but they ignore him. You try to remember the author who wrote those words. Lazlo told you once. “You, Major Critter, have a job to do. We’ve all had enough of its strange fun,” the driver says. “Now it’s just a nuisance. Did I say that already?” “Agreed,” the other one says laughing. “It’s a nuisance.” You move away from the truck, melt into the crowd where Lazlo will not notice you. You open a black umbrella, which makes you feel even more anonymous. Lazlo shuts the door. He tries to hum a song. His boots are untied. You read the green letters across his back: ANIMAL CONTROL. The bucket in his left hand. The net on the long pole in the other. Lazlo has done things like this before. A bleating goat in a subway tunnel, raccoons in a library attic, a rabid squirrel in a hospital. Not counting cats and dogs, forty-three animal incidents. Sometimes, real live things can be in the wrong place, he likes to say. Imaginary things, too. Suddenly, the bird springs from the awning. She swirls two times, three, four in the dizzy rain, five times, higher and higher, and she disappears through the veil of gray. Maybe now she will fly off. “This is just a bird,” he says to the crowd, to nobody in particular. “Sometimes we want to capture things that really should just fly away.” Inside the painted cage, Lazlo sits down on the bucket and props his elbows on his knees. A pail of insects can be a heavy thing. Among the dirt and twigs and wilting flowers, the wingless bugs scrape and try to climb; maybe they want to fly. The moths and beetles rattle in circles against the lid and the sides of the container. Lazlo stares up into the dank gray sky, lost in thought, tapping his nose. “You’re here to take away the bird?” You don’t mean to sound confrontational. You know Lazlo is only here to remove a thing people can’t understand. “From a songless bird, we can’t escape,” he says. “Kafka.” “I can’t tell if you love me,” you whisper so softly only he can hear. But you couldn’t tell if he does. “You’re missing the point – after she’s gone, people will long to have her back,” he says. He puts his hands on his knees and stars up at you. “Translation: Yes, very much.” The rain makes soft music on the bucket. In front of the awning, he removes the lid. Four brown moths flap dusty wings, then come two wasps, five beetles. The bird circles, rising and falling through the mist. Maybe she does not want to come back. Why would she? When it seems she is set to fly off forever, Lazlo kicks over the bucket of bait. The metal handle rattles. All the winged bugs swarm out – dozens of green beetles pelt the window beneath the awning like marbles. The worms, millipedes, ants spill out, all the critters without wings spread across the sidewalk. What a feast! People laugh and suddenly blow horns and whistles, someone shakes a tambourine, and they let loose a dozen balloons, and cheer. People start to talk about what will happen, and they point at Lazlo. They scan the sky, and raindrops prick their cheeks and eyes, forcing them to blink. The news cameras wrapped in plastic turn on. Lazlo has never done a task in front of an audience. He is not the kind who likes crowds. Once she is trapped, there will be nowhere to keep the songbird. The two who drove him here said he should just wring its neck, leave her in the gutter. They promised people would clap. Lazlo squeezes the pole tight and drags the net back and forth, scratches the sidewalk. When he pauses, everyone looks up, and the songbird has returned. Clinging to the awning, she fixes her gaze on Lazlo. Her throat rises and falls, her breast swells, her beak half parts, her eyes fill with tears. Lazlo stands on the sidewalk littered with insects and debris, and he waits until, finally, the songbird comes for him. She swoops down and plucks the little hat off his head, struggles to fly, wings flailing like clapping hands, and drops the hat in the gutter, then hovers above his head. The crowd hushes. His knuckles turn white on the pole as he slowly raises the net, moving it in tiny threatening circles. Everyone holds their breath. Lazlo aims at the songbird, circling his net, circling, closing in, and then when he is inches from trapping the songbird, he lets go. The metal rod clanks across the pavement. The net empty. Lazlo bends down and retrieves his hat from the gutter. He does not stand. Instead, he bends lower and drops to his knees among the wingless creatures that are escaping into the cracks in the sidewalk. The rain is falling harder and must feel cold on Lazlo’s bare neck. You move. You press forward. You wedge through the crowd, step across into the fading cage, and as the songbird vanishes from your city, you reach out with your umbrella, and you shield Lazlo from the chill. Briar I got a call about a bleeding horse out in the briar patches last week, but when I got out there, I found so much more than that. It was a foggy day, rain about to come. It was there alright - it had seen better days as it whimpered and pawed at muddy turf. I can’t tell you how many of these I’ve had to put down over the years. It was a shame. I was about to walk back to the car for the rifle and that’s when I saw the teenagers. It was the Rowley boy and the Floyd girl - been dating for some time now in a relationship that no one approved of. They were naked as the day they were born and they emerged out from another patch, holding bottles of beer. She had a flower in her hair. In the fog, they almost looked like creatures from some fairy story. “Afternoon,” they said. “Spencer,” I said. “What in hell are you doing out here?” He shuffled his feet and went to take a sip of the beer. I held out my hand for it. “Come on, Sheriff,” he said. “It’s my birthday.” I knew for a fact it wasn’t. I looked over at Amanda, who cradled it like a precious gift. I figured I would drop it. Kids will be kids. “So what’s the deal with the horse?” I said. “What do you mean?” She said. “Did you hurt it?” “Why would we do that?” Spencer said. “Well,” I said and then stopped. It started to drizzle. I took off my hat and sighed, staring at the horse. It wasn’t going to last much longer. I felt a hard pain right in my jaw and I laid down the rifle on a nearby rock. Nothing about this seemed right. “All we’re doing is having a picnic, Sheriff,” Amanda said. “Yeah, a picnic,” I said, walking towards the horse. “What do you think, it’s a nudist beach? Get your goddamn clothes back on.” They didn’t say anything. I heard them giggling and rustling in the growth. I knew why they were out here - when I was their age, I had done the same with my puppy love - but I just didn’t care for how they didn’t care about what was right here in front of them. Like it was all a part of their tryst. I knelt down and pet the animal’s head, but I knew I shouldn’t have. I should have just ended it right there. I heard a cap coming off another bottle and I whirled around. “Right, Spencer,” I said. I walked back towards the rock where I laid the rifle. I heard the horse whimper sharp. I picked it up and handed it to him. “Here you go.” “What are you doing?” “Kill it,” I said. “Don’t let that thing suffer.” Amanda gave a quick, hard laugh and the flower fell out of her hair. “Sheriff, we’ll go,” Spencer said. He grabbed Amanda’s hand and they turned back into the briar for their things. “Fuck that,” I said. “If you can’t care about anything in this world other than yourself, I’m going to teach you.” The horse whimpered again, tried to get up. Amanda went to finish her beer and I knocked it out of her hand. It splattered all over her and the smell of it brought me back to easier days, when I wasn’t concerned about learning or teaching people. Spencer let go of her hand and tried to run. He’s young but he’s not fast. I tripped him quick and helped him back up and put the rifle in his hand. “Do it. There’s a thing called mercy, Spencer,” I said. He shivered from the breeze. The weight of the rifle was too much for him. He couldn’t keep it straight and he started to cry a little bit. The horse peered through the fog at us, trying to talk but not knowing what to say. “Alright, Spencer,” I said when I realized he wasn’t going to do it. I took it out of his hand and walked up to the horse and fired. The sound rang loud, cracked through the field, startled the birds and the bugs. Amanda jumped but Spencer didn’t. I was thinking of all the things I could have done that would have been better than this. Too many animals in the world, I thought. Young or old, blind or not, there’s just too many of them. I looked back at them as they started to gather their things. “Don’t go,” I said. They stopped. I pointed at the horse with the rifle. “You wanted a picnic, there’s your dinner. Go get some rolls. You can have a feast.” They stared. Spencer looked like he had seen a ghost. Maybe he did. Maybe it was me. “Then when you’re done, that’s when you can go,” I said, walking back to the car, leaving them in the fog with the smell of blood. “You can go tell everyone what it’s like to be out here.” I stopped and swallowed hard. “Maybe then, you’ll stay inside. Like I should have.” flash fiction by Kevin Richard White poetry by Bailey Merlin She soaks the bread in cinnamon milk before it rests in a butter-spitting skillet, and I’m waiting for smoke to rise over the ledge of my coffee cup as I try hard to not get dizzy sitting high on a bar stool long enough to eat French toast, and feed parts of my soul that I haven’t let whither. Diligently caramelizing the crust, she talks about the baby boy she left in Sacramento. She named him Daniel and prayed to God that he be eaten by lions. She flips a piece over into sizzling gold. Some people aren’t meant to be parents, I think, then reach out for the cinnamon that sits on the counter. Ceylon, it says, and I like the way it sounds; a prayer I’d want to whisper into the shell of my next lover’s ear just to hear her laugh. A slice chars on the heat and she tosses it out, casual while dipping her fingers in hot syrup, sucking them clean. When I open a window to clear the acrid air, she starts telling me about driving to San Bernardino, but I’m not listening, only nodding along to her rhythm, going to the coda and repeating as needed. When she’s finished, we tuck into our plates and the Ceylon hits, easing the inflammation I’ve carried longer than we’re willing to say. Ceylon, Ceylon The neighborhood cat smells like baby powder and L’Air du Temps. They find her limp body stretched out on a patch of grass as bald and scarred as she is. Around her, the yard a carpet of eyeballs and beaks, a forest of feathered bodies bright as jewels. micro fiction by Candace Hartsuyker The Neighborhood Cat Smells Like Baby Powder and L’Air du Temps I listened closely for the rhythmic beeps of Mrs. Lang’s monitor across the hall. I was sitting cross-legged in her guest bedroom with David. He stretched across the length of the bed and let his feet droop over the end. A patchwork quilt, probably stitched by Mrs. Lang herself, was pooled at the foot of the bed. I felt a twinge of guilt, remembering the tiny Mrs. Lang tucked snugly in her bed across the hall, her gray curls probably spilling onto her sleeping face. “My sister is coming in town this weekend, so I’m not sure when we will be able to see each other again,” I said. The pale light that slid through the slit in the curtains seemed to separate this room from the rest of the world. I stood to pull on my scrub bottoms. “Which sister? The twin or the other one?” The light in David’s green eyes made me smile. Too bad he could never meet my family. When we had first started this thing—whatever it was—we made a deal to avoid the names of spouses and family purposefully—no need to know the details. “The twin. Something happened with her boyfriend. He’s in jail and pissed at her. She’s coming with my nephew.” I retied the elastic of my ponytail, and tucked the remaining blonde hairs behind my ears. Mrs. Lang’s daughters, who lived a few towns over, had hired me as an in-home nurse to stay with their mother during the day, and some nights as needed. She was a late stage Alzheimer’s patient, and required constant medical supervision. David lived next door with his wife, and came by almost every afternoon to read to Mrs. Lang. He had also volunteered to take care of the yard work for the Lang sisters. He owned a small landscaping company, so he worked from home most days. “I’m going to miss you.” David pulled me back onto the bed and kissed me. We lay there for another moment, my head tucked comfortably in the crook of his neck, but my thoughts returned to my sister. Jen had called early this morning and I was worried about her. She always knew what to do and she always got it done, but when she had called this morning her voice sounded broken. She seemed so outside of herself. Jen was crying. I could count on one hand the number of times I had seen my sister cry. I was glad she was coming to stay for a while; we hadn’t seen much of each other in the last few years. “My lady awaits.” David winked at me, and motioned to the new Danielle Steel novel on the bedside table that he brought to read to Mrs. Lang today. I sighed, hopped up, and threw David’s flannel at him, “Get dressed.” What would Jen have to say about all of this? She definitely wouldn’t be thrilled. I also wanted to know what had happened with Chris. Must have been something big for her to finally leave him. My phone beeped on the bedside table. I checked it while David re-made the bed. It was my husband. I had texted Ron earlier asking for a picture of our son. I used to bring Michael with me, but at age four, he was a little too rowdy to be around Mrs. Lang most days. “We had a little accident on the couch earlier, but everyone’s okay.” Below this caption was a picture of Michael with a large purple bruise on his forehead. I sighed, frustrated. Ron never paid enough attention when he was at home with Michael. He was usually too distracted by his work. “What is it?” David wrapped his arms around me from behind. He smelled like fresh cut grass and cologne. “My son had a little accident, I guess.” I clicked my phone off. I wanted to go home to be with Michael, but I was stuck here until Anne Lang relieved me at five—four more hours. I heard Mrs. Lang’s voice call for me across the hall. I sent David in to read to her and went to the kitchen to start some lunch for the three of us. I couldn’t get my conversation with Jen out of my head. “I lost it in front of him, Katie, I just—” Jen bawled into the phone. “Jen, it’s okay. Cade is fine—he will be fine. Just get here, and we’ll figure it out.” “I just feel like—” Her sobs echoed. She was upset that she had broken down in front of her son. Chris had let them both down, though. She had a right to be upset, I told her, but Jen had a long-standing habit of putting her own feelings aside to help others, especially Cade. The bright light from the morning was gone, and the afternoon had cast a shadow down the length of the hallway. Guilt started twisting in my stomach. The sound of David’s deep voice carrying down the hall usually soothed me, but I couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling that the day had taken on. I couldn’t believe Jen was coming home. I walked toward Mrs. Lang’s bedroom carrying three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, her favorite. “Hello Rebecca.” Mrs. Lang had a huge smile plastered on her face. “It’s me Katie, Mrs. Lang,” I reminded her. Sometimes she was a little foggy after her nap. Rebecca was one of her daughter’s names. “Lunchtime.” David smiled at me. “Oh right.” A wave of confusion swept her face for a moment. “David has just been telling me the best story.” She always remembered David’s name. “That’s great,” I said. I adjusted her bed upward, and placed the tray table over her lap. “Well, I better be off.” David rested his hand on my lower back for a moment. I felt an urge to shy away from him. “I’ll show you out.” We stepped out into the hallway, and he kissed me goodbye. “Until next time.” He winked at me. I forced a smile and watched him walk down the hallway, before returning to Mrs. Lang. My stomach was uneasy. “So how are you feeling, Mrs. Lang?” I wanted to gage her awareness after the name slip earlier. It was important to make note of those things. “Oh, just wonderful dear.” She was still smiling brightly. It was a little uncharacteristic of her typical demeanor. I made a note, but I was glad her spirits were up. She loved her reading time with David. “Oh, I just have to tell you something, dear.” Her gray-blue eyes lit up. I nodded for her to continue and took a seat in the tan recliner next to her bed. “David’s going to propose to you.” She raised her hand to cover her mouth. The edges of her smile poked out the sides. She looked at me waiting eagerly for an ecstatic reply. She was acting almost like a teenage girl. “No, no, I’m already married, to Ron, remember?” I tried to assure her, concerned. I showed her the ring that was already on my finger. She was having a very cloudy day. “But he just told me all about it!” Mrs. Lang protested. She crossed her arms and her brow creased. “Maybe you’re just remembering the story, Mrs. Lang?” I held up the book they had been reading to remind her. “I guess,” she said. “Ready for afternoon vitals and meds?” I asked her brightly. Poor Mrs. Lang—it wasn’t recommended for Alzheimer’s patients at her stage to dwell on the inconsistencies of their memory. “And then our stories, right?” Mrs. Lang proposed this carefully. I could tell she was trying hard to place herself in the moment. “That’s right—Days of Our Lives starts in fifteen minutes so we better hurry.” A smile replaced the confusion on Mrs. Lang’s face, and we settled into our afternoon routine. The normalcy was comforting to both of us. At home later, I paced the kitchen thinking about this afternoon. “Michael Thomas, do not jump on the couch, I will not tell you again.” I heard a muffled protest, but saw two legs hanging properly over the front of the couch and was satisfied. “Thank you!” Year four was turning out to be more difficult than year two. My phone buzzed on the counter. It was David. A text from ‘Anne Lang’, “Are you sure I can’t see you tonight ;)”. I felt myself start to smile, but heard the jingle of keys in the door. Ron had to run to the office. He left Michael with a babysitter for a few hours, until I could get home. “Hey babe.” Ron walked over and kissed me on the cheek. “How was your day?” He slid his briefcase into its slot on the shelf in the entryway and loosened the pale blue tie he was wearing. His short dark hair was curling out at the edges from the humidity. “Interesting.” I paused. “Jen called. Something happened with Chris. I told her she could come here until she gets everything sorted.” Ron frowned and walked over to the oak liquor cabinet his parents had bought us for a wedding gift. He poured himself a Glenlevit. “Want anything?” he asked, as the tip of the bottle hesitated over the rim of the glass. “Goose with a twist. At least it will be good for Michael to have a friend to play with. It’s a shame that Jen has lived so far away. We always talked about raising our kids together. It’s strange they’ve never really met.” I could hear myself rambling on in Ron’s silence. I stopped and sipped the drink he handed to me, but my stomach was still queasy. Ron took a seat at the kitchen island. His work phone beeped. “So Michael’s going to have a playmate this weekend?” His dark brow furrowed as he checked his message. He swirled the three square ice cubes that floated atop his single malt scotch. I felt my phone buzz in the back pocket of my jeans. My breath caught in my chest. “Everything okay with that?” I asked. “They’re finally considering adding me as a full partner at the firm. I have a meeting with them Saturday afternoon.” A small smile crept across Ron’s face. “Wow. Babe, that’s great.” This was big news. I knew he had been trying for this promotion for a long time. More money for us, but more work for him. I firmly believe that Ron would work every hour of the day if he could muster it. I remember loving his ambition when we first met, but becoming the wife of a workaholic was something different. I was happy for him, though. “So I’ll be pretty swamped this weekend preparing.” He looked down at his phone again. I smiled and nodded. At least Jen and I would have time to talk if he was out of the house. It’s not like Ron could have watched two four year olds anyway. There were too many accidents when it was just Michael alone. Ron glanced behind him at the stairs. “More to do tonight?” I asked. My phone buzzed again, and the vibration seemed to shiver right up my spine. I tried to pass it off as a shrug. I knew his answer already. “Just a little bit.” It was always just a little bit. He slid his glass off the counter and wandered toward the stairs. He stopped and turned. “Chris is not just going to show up or anything, is he?” “No, no, he’s in jail I guess.” I shrugged. Ron’s face relaxed and he paused in the living room. He patted Michael on the head and silently walked up the stairs. I watched his shoe disappear off the last step before yanking my phone out of my pocket. “I promise you it will be worth it Katie-bug,” followed by, “Can’t get you out of my head tonight,” appeared on the screen. I smiled and hit delete on the messages. I walked into the living room, and sat down next to Michael who immediately stopped jumping on the couch. “Hey bud, do you want to help me make dinner tonight?” I asked. He scooted onto my lap. “Sure, Mommy.” He flashed his toothy smile up at me. I brushed my finger lightly over the bruise on his forehead. His brown curls wound around it like a frame. “How about spaghetti?” “And meatballs?” “Of course.” I smiled, squeezing him tight. This little boy was the best thing that had ever happened to me. “That’s my favorite!” Michael jumped onto his own couch cushion, then onto the floor, and ran into the kitchen. He loved to squish the juicy red meat strings into little meatballs, and to crank the handle of the pasta maker that spit out little white snakes. He painted the garlic rub on the long loaf of Italian bread with the pastry brush enthusiastically, accidentally splashing some on my face. He cackled with real laughter. He was growing up so fast. I was setting the table when I heard Ron walk down the stairs. “Good timing, dinner’s just about ready. Can you grab the garlic bread out of the oven?” I tossed him the oven mitt I had been holding. Ron awkwardly lifted the tray from the oven rack. Michael was jumping at his feet. “Daddy, we made everything all by ourselves!” “Looks great, kiddo, let’s eat.” Ron took his seat at the table, quickly, and scooped a heap of pasta onto his plate. I walked over and scooped some out for Michael and myself, and took a seat. Ron already had spaghetti in his mouth. “Good.” He nodded, and gave Michael a thumbs up. “I don’t know what I’d do without you guys.” I smiled. You would probably never eat, I thought. His passion for his work was admirable, though. He was a good role model for Michael. “That good?” I asked, laughing a little. He was shoveling food in his mouth at high speed. “Delicious.” Ron gave Michael a high-five before sweeping the last bit of pasta sauce onto his garlic bread. His plate was clear. “I just have a little more, work to get to.” I smiled and nodded. Typical Ron. “That okay, bud?” he added to Michael, who was staring at him. “I guess.” Michael crossed his arms and pouted a little. “Well maybe you and Mommy can go get some ice cream later?” He suggested, looking at me nervously. “That sounds great,” I confirmed. “But, only if you eat everything.” I eyed Michael sternly. “Okay! I’ll eat quick like Daddy.” Michael began stuffing as much pasta as he could in his mouth. “Slow down,” I reminded him. “You don’t want to get a tummy ache.” Ron retreated to his office upstairs. Michael huffed and puffed out his chest, but returned to eating at a normal pace. We drove to the local ice cream shop, Dairy Heaven, right after dinner. “Katie,” a man called my name from behind us. I jumped a little, and turned—it was David. He was walking a yellow labrador. I didn’t even know he had a dog. “Oh hey, David.” I remembered I had never responded to his text messages earlier. “What’re you guys doing down here?” He waved down at Michael who was hiding behind my legs. The dog halted and sat next to David, looking up at him adoringly. “Just getting some ice cream,” I said. A nervous laugh escaped me. I felt like a teenage girl. At twenty-eight years old, I should not be blabbering like an idiot. I cleared my throat, and added, “How about you?” Turns out, I didn’t know how to talk to David outside of the little world we had created in Mrs. Lang’s spare bedroom. Michael tugged my arm toward Dairy Heaven. “Same here, just took Mabel on a walk at the park around the corner,” he said. I nodded smiling. I still couldn’t think of a single thing to say. The festive town banner that hung on the light post above us cast a shadow over half of David’s face. It made him seem even more unreal. “Mind if I join you?” His smile curled to the side. “Well.” I paused and looked down at Michael. I thought I would have loved the idea of running into David outside of Mrs. Lang’s, but the thought of how awkward it would be to sit in the pale fluorescence of Dairy Heaven and eat ice cream with David—after we had hooked up earlier that day—made me cringe. It made what we were doing feel slimy, and it wasn’t slimy, but I really couldn’t figure out what else it was anymore. Michael was starting to get cranky. David’s dog was named Mabel. “Do you mind if I join you and your mommy for ice cream?” David asked, taking a knee to talk to him. Michael shuffled his feet, and peeked out from behind my legs and asked, “Who are you?” Who was he anyway? My heart was pounding. I wished Ron had never suggested this. I opened my mouth, but no words came out. “I’m a friend of your mommy’s from work,” he said, winking at me. “That okay?” “I need ice cream, now,” Michael demanded. He pointed, again, at the yellow windows of the Dairy Heaven. “Michael,” I said, warning him. Shit, I had said his name. David looked up at me and smiled. Dairy Heaven loomed in front of us. David held the door open, as we all filed in. One of the cashiers, a female with outstandingly curly hair, squealed, “Mabel” and ran over, taking the leash from David. “I come here a lot,” he said, sheepishly, wringing his hands once. I had never considered that there might be someone else other than myself and the wife. I guess it didn’t matter—we had agreed to no personal details after all. This was starting to feel pretty personal, though. “Welcome to Dairy Heaven, what can I get for you?” the other cashier, a pimply boy with rusty hair, recited mechanically. The curly haired brunette was still shoving her face next to a very excited Mabel, and fawning over David. “Chocolate!” Michael yelled. “One scoop of chocolate, please,” I corrected him. “And one scoop of mint chip.” I reached for my wallet. “And one scoop of butter pecan,” David added. He had stepped away from the girl and was handing the boy a crisp twenty over my shoulder. What was the protocol in this situation? I dropped my wallet back into my purse. Okay, I guess. The curly haired cashier handed Mabel’s leash back to David. “Oh this is your family? What a nice family!” she squealed adoringly. Okay, so maybe they weren’t sleeping together. Did we look like a family? David put his arm around me and said, “No, no, just and old friend.” The feeling of his arm around me made me flinch. This was terrible. I could feel that his hand was clammy where it rested on my arm, and was thankful that he seemed a little uncomfortable too. He was playing it well, much better than I was. The male cashier handed over a brown tray with our three ice cream scoops, unsmiling. I reached out to grab it, and realized how stiff I had been standing. “Could I actually get these two to go?” I asked. “I’m sorry.” The boy said nothing, pulled the chocolate and mint chip scoops off of the tray and took them into the back. David was kneeling and adjusting Mabel’s collar. Michael was whining for his ice cream. “We’ll eat them in the car,” I whispered to him, giving him the warning look he knew meant he had to listen. The pimply boy returned and handed me a brown to go bag over the counter. David stood. “Need to head home?” “Yea we were only supposed to make a quick run,” I lied. I had to get out of there. I could barely breathe. “Okie dokie.” I could hear the disappointment in David’s voice. “Well I’ll see you at work tomorrow, then?” he asked. His half melted scoop of butter pecan was dripping down the sides of its plastic container. “Uh, yeah.” I walked toward the door, pulling Michael behind me. “Bye then! Bye Michael!” He yelled after us, but we were already out the door. When we were buckled in the car, I handed Michael his ice cream. I took a few deep breaths and rested my forehead lightly on the steering wheel. What had I gotten myself into? “Mommy, why aren’t you eating your ice cream?” I turned around to find melted chocolate dripping all over his face and onto his shirt, and laughed a little. I started the car, and we drove home silently. I tossed the brown paper bag that still held my scoop of mint chip ice cream into the garbage outside the back door before we walked inside. Thank god Jen was coming. I texted the real Anne Lang in the morning and told her that Michael was sick, so I would not be able to make it today. Truth was, Ron was upstairs in his office, and Michael was watching cartoons on the couch. I paced the kitchen over and over, thinking about what to do about David. I couldn’t face him today, or chance running into him at the Lang’s. Not after last night. I would certainly have to break it off with him. I wiped down the countertop for the third time, and pulled out my phone. I also wanted to take care of this, whatever that meant, before Jen got here. She needed me this time, and I didn’t want to distract her with my problems. I patted my mouth nervously with my fingertips. Would David show up at the Lang’s looking for me? I had to text him. I typed about fifteen different messages before sending, “Not at work today, Michael’s sick”. Discreet, to-the-point, nothing flirty. Perfect. I set my phone down on the counter, and turned to wipe down the sink again, when it buzzed. He had replied immediately, “Let’s meet up tonight and talk. Can you make it out? :)”. My stomach bubbled nervously. I guess it would be an opportunity to end it for good, maybe one last time together? Ron could watch Michael, so that would be— —there was a crash of glass in the living room. “Michael!” I yelled. I ran into the living room to see Michael curled in a ball in the corner of the couch. The blue lamp from the side table was in pieces at his feet. He started to wail. “Michael, are you okay?” I scooped him into my arms and stretched out each limb, checking for abrasions. There was nothing—no new scratches on his fair skin. “I’m sorry, it was an accident.” He expelled the words between snivels. “Now Michael, we don’t jump on the couch because something like this could happen.” I stroked his dark brown curls. “Stop crying, we’re going to clean this up, and apologize to Daddy. He bought me this lamp a long time ago.” It was the first gift I had received from Ron when we were dating. He had thought I needed more light in my old, dingy apartment. “I’m sorry, Mommy.” Michael rubbed his nose a final time on my shirt. “I just love you a lot.” He looked up at me with wide, tear-lined blue eyes. “I love you too, buddy.” I felt a notch tighten in my chest. I pulled him close and kissed him on the cheek. This shouldn’t have happened on my watch. I was distracted. I felt tears tickle the bridge of my nose. After we cleaned up the mess, I decided to tell Ron that Anne Lang had texted me to ask if I could come monitor their mother for a few hours while she ran some errands. I had told him this morning that she had given me the day off. I was really meeting David at the hotel three towns over. It was our go-to spot away from Mrs. Lang’s spare bedroom, although we had only met there a couple of times before. It was just far enough away to keep our secret, and not too far as though to raise suspicion. I loved the way that the ivy had grown like shingles over the brick wall of the hotel exterior, nature’s siding. I felt nervous about meeting David here today. It was definitely time to end things, but the bright, crispy sunlight made it seem like maybe things didn’t have to be over. I tried to shake it away—it was time. “Text message from Anne Lang. Meet in room number 134,” the automated voice of the car’s bluetooth announced. I shuddered. I hated when my phone synced to the SUV’s Bluetooth. Luckily no one else was in the car. I knocked three short raps on the door, and David appeared. He was holding a bouquet of roses. My heart was bobbing at the top of my chest, oh no. I paused and slid into David’s embrace. “Oh they’re just beautiful, David.” “I’m sorry about last night,” he said. “I know it was a little awkward.” He brushed my hair behind my ears. I kissed him deeply and pushed him onto the bed. Maybe just once more, I thought, when I noticed a red blur to the right of David’s head. Nothing serious, we had agreed. He had scattered rose petals all over the bed, a first. Usually, we just screwed and went home. Something felt off. I dismounted David, and rolled to the side of him. I looked into his eyes, and their deep green was lighter today. They were so full of something that he seemed about to explode. “I’m getting divorced, Katie,” David said, pulling me close. “Last night was just—” I pushed him away and went to sit on the side of the bed. What? I pulled my unbuttoned blouse tighter around myself. What could he possibly be thinking? I could hardly breathe, but when I did— “I’m not,” I said. “But, I love you. I know you love me too. What we have had over these past few months—I’ve felt more for you than in the last three years with Mary. Mrs. Lang thought it was a great idea.” He grabbed at my arm to try to pull me back to him, but I yanked it away. He got down on one knee and pulled out a small, green, velvet box. Mary. Her name was Mary. We had avoided specific names for a reason, no need for details. Last night had just been a crack in the dam, but his wife was Mary. Mary and David. And Mrs. Lang knew. I was shaking. “I’m not. I’m not.” These were the only words that I was able to say. He started to open the box. I slapped it out of his hands, and it flew across the room. I had a family. I had a life. “I have to go.” I ran out of the room and into the car. My shirt was still unbuttoned. My sobs were unreasonable. I looked at myself in the mirror—pathetic, red eyes, blotchy skin, and an unbuttoned blouse. How did this happen? I drove slowly back home. I stopped for some eye drops and a six pack of Ron’s favorite craft beer. Ron, he cared about stupid things like having enough light to read by. It was best to pretend that none of this had ever happened. I had been going there to end it anyway. It was time to move on. Jen was coming. The house was silent when I crept through the door. I decided to head upstairs and bring Ron one of the beers I’d bought him. I tapped quietly once on his office door that was cracked an inch. I heard a mumble within, and entered. “I brought you something,” I said. I tried to add some pep to my voice, but it just sounded sad. “Mmm?” Ron turned around. His eyes were glazed over, probably from hours of staring at the computer screen. “Oh, thanks.” He took a sip of the dark beer. I had poured it in his special bell-shaped glass. “Oh-Nutman’s Ale, what’s the occasion?” “I –uh just felt bad about the lamp earlier. You know?” I said leaning on the edge of Ron’s desk. “Memories.” “You okay?” Ron asked. He patted my fingers that were curled over the edge of his desk. “Oh, Mrs. Lang’s not doing so well. Might be time for hospice soon.” Ron’s eyes shifted to his computer screen, and then back to me. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He rested his hand on my knee for a moment before returning to his typing. “I just have a few more things left to finish here, but then I’ll be in to bed.” I was aching. I wandered into our bedroom, and slid, fully clothed, between the beige covers of our large four-poster. I kicked off my shoes and heard them thud on the carpet. I felt numb. I turned my head to the side, and hugged my knees. Tears slipped down my cheek and made a pool on the pillowcase. Thank god Jen was coming tomorrow. “She looks just like my mommy,” Michael yelled. “No, she looks just like my mommy!” Cade said back. Both boys curled over in laughter on the couch. Jen and I were mirror twins, but a few things had changed with time. Jen’s right arm was covered in a tattoo sleeve of azaleas and other foliage, and her face seemed a little slim and sunken. Stress seemed like it had been working on her for some time now. “Let’s go to the kitchen.” I smiled at our boys and rolled my eyes. “Well, I didn’t expect that to happen.” Jen pointed her thumb over her shoulder at our kids who were still amazed at how their mommies looked exactly the same. There was a silence between us. “So, should we have a drink?” I motioned to the liquor cabinet. “Or two,” Jen said. Her smiled curved sideways, the way it always had. “Still the same?” I asked, sliding a slice of lemon around the rim of the Goose I had poured myself. “Glen on the rocks?” “Oh Glen, the real man of my heart,” Jen said. She placed one hand over the other on her chest mockingly. I laughed. Some things were still the same. “So,” I started. It felt like there was so much to say. Between Chris and David, I didn’t know where to start. The doorbell rang. “I wonder who that is,” I said. Ron was upstairs in his office working, and I was not expecting anyone else. Jen shrugged and sipped her Glen. I walked to open the front door, and it was David. His eyes were sunken, and he reeked of stale vodka. “Katie-bug!” “You need to leave right now, David. My sister is here. Ron is here. You need to go.” My voice sounded winded. I stepped out and closed the door. “I’m not leaving,” he said, grabbing me by the shoulders. “We belong together. We really do—I know it.” “You need to leave right now,” I stated, frozen. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t move. “Katie!” He yelled my name, and collapsed into uncontrollable sobs on the front porch slab. “Shut the hell up, David. Shut your fucking mouth, and let-me-be!” I bent down and whispered sharply in his ear. I heard the door creak behind me. It was Jen. She slipped out and clicked it closed quietly behind her. “Who’s this?” “He-he needs to go—” I stared at her wide-eyed, wishing we had talked sooner. I let out a dry sob. “Whoa, you guys are twins right? There’s not just two of you.” David was looking up at Jen and me, his head shifting from left to right, quickly. “Okay bud, it’s time—” Jen started. Her hands mounted her hips, just like our mother used to stand when she was gearing for a fight. “David. MY NAME IS DAVID,” he interrupted, before sobbing again. I was motionless. I felt like I was watching everything happen from above. “Okay Dav-id.” Jen emphasized the syllable just has he had. “Get the fuck up and out of my sister’s yard. I’m going to ask you one time.” David looked at her blankly and crossed his arms. A smile crept across his unshaven face that said make me. Jen jerked him up from the concrete with one quick pinch and grab of his arm. She was locked on. I could see the muscles crease underneath the tree branch that was tattooed across her bicep. “Ouch, ow!” David wailed. Jen slapped her hand over his mouth and kept pulling. She threw him onto the curb in front of the house. I followed them halfway down the sidewalk, but Jen held her hand back for me to stay put. I retreated to the porch, and saw Jen bend and whisper something into David’s ear. He scrambled to his feet, ran to his car that was parked down the street, and sped off. Jen walked matter-of-factly back up the sidewalk, and nodded at me with a curious smile. “So who’s David?” She raised her eyebrows in a familiar way. “What did you say to him?” I was still shaking. I bit my lip. “I told him that I would call the police if he was anywhere near this house in thirty seconds.” Jen shrugged. “I wasn’t sure if it would work, but looks like it.” I looked into my sister’s eyes, a radiant blue. I sank into her arms, and she gripped me tightly. “It’s going to be okay, sis.” Jen pulled on the end of my ponytail. She weaved her arm around my waist and escorted me back inside. The Arrival short fiction by Amanda DeNatale Beacons We were the communists of smoking. No one ever went without a light. No one ever went without a cigarette. If sacrificing our lucky cig meant someone else could get their fix, then we didn’t mind. We flew our flags in our pockets; red Winstons and Marlboro reds. Our little circle led its own uprising. The humble smoker would be silent no longer! We smoked to survive. We smoked down filters trying to catch one last touch of nicotine before coming back to reality. We were dependent. ‘Addicts in all but title’ as Maria liked to say. We got short with each other. When we snapped, a slow smoke always soothed the room. When we snapped, we knew how to soothe the storm. The world didn’t. We were confined to little benches spread sparse across our campus. They stood in the open as our beacons, our stocks. We declared to the world that we smoked, that we sinned. Beacons we could see in the distance. We etched maps in our minds. We drew our routes led by the beacons. Johnny always complained. He could never work out a route. He smoked slow when the world didn’t rush him. It always soothed him. We were outspoken, especially Maria. Maria, who dreamt of law school, fought back. Petitions were passed around to extinguish our beacons. They wanted to burn our maps. We were outnumbered. We had to speak louder. Maria kept us informed whenever a petition popped up. They couldn’t tell the sinners from the saints, so the petitioners always approached us. We called upon each other to be the benches’ attorneys. Some of us avoided the petitioners altogether. Some of us sought them out. We gave them headache and heartache but not one drop of ink. We had a community, until it happened. It happened to Johnny. He hadn’t been able to sneak away that day. We don’t know who threw it at him. Johnny, with his large frame and larger knife, had grabbed some poor kid in the wrong place. Johnny terrified him. Johnny had said something, but he doesn’t remember. He couldn’t tell you anything. He just remembers a flash of colors, a knife, someone running, someone screaming. He didn’t hurt him, but he scared the whole room. Someone recognized him from the benches. Someone told someone else that the Knife-Swinger was a smoker. Someone told someone else that we knew Johnny was dangerous. Someone told someone else that we could’ve stopped him. Someone told someone else that we were all like that. Someone told someone else that the benches weren’t dangerous, but we were. They didn’t have room for all the signatures. Maria hated it. “It’s slander!” she said. “Legally, they can’t do anything to us.” This isn’t a court, Maria. “Fucking right it isn’t. That’s why these fuckers can get away with this! If it were a court-” But it wasn’t. So, we were scattered. We tried to find hidden spots, but they found them too. Soon, we were all forced to quit. Soon, we lost our community. Soon, there was no ‘we’. flash fiction by Joaquin Macias I have to tell you of the sound of barred owl just at bedtime, how it seeps through the walls as ghost, how it hangs from ceiling in drips, waiting for a mate’s reply. How the whoo seeps into walls, how it stains. I have to tell you about chard in the beds, how it reaches upward with such intensity on rainbow legs. How it scares me with its desires. I have to tell you about the chick inside egg, inside henhouse, inside fence, and how with no rooster it is only half chicken, how it suffers to think of missing wing, how it dreams of seeds that are whole. I have to tell you there is a creeping through the field—waiting to attach to a possum, a raccoon, a fox, a you. I Need to Talk to You poetry by Danielle Hanson Causes for Concern (Meditation at a Korean Day Spa) The earth, I noticed, was opening up and swallowing us whole. It was cause for concern. Every day the parking garage sank deeper into the ground. Well what did we think was going to happen. It was full of cars. Cars are heavy. Cars weigh a thousand pounds. The walkways around the office were being re-leveled with chunks of industrial strength cardboard. We had to trust that the workers knew what they were doing with cardboard. It seemed a particularly temporary temporary-solution but what did we know about reconstructing the face of the earth. They took the sidewalks apart and put them back together again, flatter this time. They smoothed out the lumps and filled in the holes. They used the lumps to fill in the holes. That was convenient. Still though. There were holes. It was a hazard. People fell into them. Not all the way but enough to break their heels. We needed our heels. We had a business meeting to be in. This was out by the airport where I was working as a copywriter for a big fat rich credit card company. All the buildings were low and getting lower. The planes didn't seem to be flying fast enough. Not fast enough to stay airborne I didn't think. The planes were flying twenty miles an hour. Some trick of scale. There are hardly any points of reference. It was hard for me to believe the planes were full of people. Hundreds of them. They were drinking ginger ale. Our lives were happening to us while we made other plans. It wasn't clear why we had to bother making the other plans. I drove to work early to beat the traffic on 635. I'd read that a person's happiness was directly and inversely related to the amount of time they spent in traffic on 635. (“You’re not in traffic,” John reminded me. “You are traffic.”) I avoided traffic as an act of self-care. "Every city has the 635 it deserves," Matt said. Matt lives in L.A. — home of the 605, the 404, the 101, the 10 — so when he said that about 635 I believed him. I drove to work at 5am. I sat in Starbucks for two hours, hung over, watching planes land at DFW, trying to feel better. I was trying to feel better. It was one of the three or four things I was doing. None of them very successfully. I didn't know if I was setting the bar too high or too low. I didn't know if I was the one setting the bar. One morning in Starbucks I heard an old man tell another old man that someone they knew had cancer. The second old man said, "How much cancer?" It seems there's an acceptable and an unacceptable amount. I had a friend whose wife had an unacceptable amount. She died last November at 29. They dug a hole and put her in it. Some people don't get old. After she died, I thought, Okay I guess we're dying for no reason now. Before that we'd been dying but it was our own fault. Not anymore. At the funeral, my friend read a self-deprecating passage from his wife's diary. She was annoyed with him about something petty during what would turn out to be the late stages of her illness. While he read what she'd written, I got this eerie feeling, not that my friend's wife was dead, but that she had been going to die. It's been a long time since I've believed in anything like fate but everything becomes inevitable the moment after it happens and that's starting to feel like the same thing. I wasn't in my body. I was my body. It was something to worry about. Just to be on the safe side I was checking it for lumps. I found some. I tried not to worry about them. Some lumps are OK. Some kinds I mean. I did not have a primary care physician to tell me which lumps were which. I'd gone with the silver plan not the gold plan. With the silver plan they still take care of you just not that well. With the silver plan they say let's keep an eye on it. As a preventative measure, I was fondling my own balls. It was one of the ways I was taking care of myself. There weren't any others. When I was in Africa, years ago, people asked me, "How da body?" What they meant was, "How are you?" I was fine. I was digging a hole. It took us a month to dig it. We dug a hole twelve feet deep. There was nothing good down there. Just more dirt under all the dirt. c.f. the KOLA SUPERDEEP BOREHOLE, begun in 1970, abandoned in 1995, having barely scratched the surface. When we were done digging our hole they thanked us and put a toilet on top of it. That's what we were digging. A shit hole. I'm not sure there's any other kind. In June, the parking garage split in half. We were entering the late stages of being swallowed whole. There was some talk of setting up a time-lapse. We were living at 24 frames a second like we were in some goddamn motion picture or something. It had very little to do with anything else. The common housefly was experiencing life 7 times slower than we were. The majestic leatherback sea turtle was experiencing life 2.5 times faster. I looked it up on Quora. The phenomenon responsible for our perception of time is called CRITICAL FLICKER, a concept I made no attempt to understand but fell deeply in love with the name of. c.f. "How much cancer?" c.f. THE KOLA SUPERDEEP BOREHOLE. Some things stick with you. You don't know why. If you knew why, I bet you would understand something very deep about yourself. It might be something you didn't want yourself to know. It was June 2018 and Saturn was finally coming around the horn. It was too late for me to turn out to be a prodigious cellist. I wore light blue button-up dress shirts to my job at the credit card company where the buildings were all sinking into the ground. I didn’t have cancer. I was a Cancer. In Sunday school, where I learned my ins and ofs, they told me that the flood waters receded and pushed up the mountains. That's where mountains came from. Somewhere in the world a mound was rising the shape and size of a North American parking garage. What goes in comes back out. A little different this time, and somewhere else. Nothing is exactly 1:1. You’ll drive yourself crazy worrying about it. In 1995, when the Kola Superdeep Borehole was abandoned, the foreman gave a statement. "Well," he said, "it looks like there's no getting to the bottom of it." They'd given it the old Soviet try. They'd put their backs into it. And besides, it's not like we couldn't guess what was down there anyway. The same thing that's always down there. At the bottom of every hole there's just more hole. I understand if you need to check for yourself. creative non-fiction by Mike Nagal Jim Cole Jim Cole is a writer living on the Russian River in Northern California. He received a 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. His story The Asphodel Meadow was published in the anthology PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2017. He has an MFA from the University of San Francisco, where the faculty nominated his novel ffrrfr for the AWP Intro Journals Project. When he’s not writing, he’s running trails on the Sonoma Coast and building his coffee roasting business Freezeout Coffee, which donates 50% of profits to preserving the environment. Amanda DeNatale Amanda DeNatale is an alumna of Creighton University’s MFA program. Her work has appeared in Toasted Cheese, and is forthcoming in CALYX. She is currently a junior editor for F(r)iction. Amanda is a writer by day and a waitress by night. She is a St. Louis native, currently residing in Omaha, Nebraska. Danielle Hanson Danielle Hanson is the author of Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press Poetry Prize, 2018) and Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017). Her work won the Vi Gale Award from Hubbub, was Finalist for 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award and was nominated for several Pushcarts. She is Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books, and is on the staff of the Atlanta Review. Candace Hartsuyker Candace Hartsuyker is a first-year fiction student in McNeese State University’s MFA Program. She has been published in Foliate Oak, Foxglove Journal, Former Cactus, Bending Genres and others. Joaquin Macias Joaquin Macias was born in Sumter, South Carolina to a military brat and Californian expatriate. He attended Catholic School, which convinced him the best way to beat the system was from the inside. He is a student of English and Theater at Winthrop University. Bailey Merlin Bailey Merlin holds an MFA in fiction from Butler University. Her work has been featured by Not Your Mother’s Breast Milk, The Indianapolis Review, lipstickparty magazine, among others. She lives and writes in Boston with 2 dogs, 2 cats, and 7-9 other people (depending on the day). Check more of her stuff out at baileymerlin.com Keith Moul Keith Moul is now 72. He’s written poetry for more than 50 years; taken photos for 10 years or so. He’s widely published in both genres. He hails from the central plains, but is ecstatic in the pacific northwest. Mike Nagel Mike Nagel’s essays have appeared in Hobart, Salt Hill, DIAGRAM, and The Paris Review Daily. His essay Beached Whales was a Best American Essays 2017 notable essay. Read more at michaelscottnagel.com. Or follow on Twitter @misternagel. Kevin Richard White Kevin Richard White is the author of the novels The Face Of A Monster and Patch Of Sunlight. His work has been previously published by Akashic Books, Sundog Lit, Grub Street, Hypertext, The Hunger, Crack The Spine, Dime Show Review, Lunch Ticket, Digging Through The Fat and Ghost Parachute among others. He lives in Pennsylvania.     Contributors WWW.CRACKTHESPINE.COM BECOME A MEMBER OF CRACK THE SPINE CRACK THE SPINE LITERARY MAGAZINE