Melissa Mason

I remember how it was before he left. The sun was shining a brilliant gold, the way that it does in late afternoon on a day somewhere between summer and autumn. The sky was a light shade of blue with those big fluffy clouds that change shape the longer you looked at them, the kind that when they traveled over the sun you could see its rays glimmering through.  We were lying perpendicular to one another underneath a tree whose leafy shadow covered our bodies with a funny speckled pattern. There was a gentle breeze dancing through the treetops and whispering over our bodies. I remember the grass not only being a vibrant green but also soft, not the feeling of being freshly mowed, but more as if it had been mowed two days before. The breeze was telling jokes to the grass, causing the blades to bend over in silent laughter and tickle my bare feet.  My head was resting on his chest and I could hear his slow breathing and beating heart, I couldn’t help but smile whenever there was an irregularity in that beating. The only sound apart from the dancing leaves was the crisp, quick rustle as we turned the pages of our books. We didn’t speak much that day, the majority of our communication was through the quiet smiles we shared and the way his free hand stroked my arm. It wasn’t that we were angry with each other, or that we had nothing to say to one another, it was that we didn’t need to say anything to know what the other was thinking. I closed my eyes and inhaled through my nose as he brought his hand away from his mouth and let the smoke twist up and weave its way through the gentle breeze. He smiled as the last of it escaped his lips; he knew how much I loved the smell.

That was the first time we danced. He stood up abruptly and pulled me to my feet with him. The air had a thick amber glow as the sun inched closer to the horizon. He grabbed my hand and spun me, then pulled me close. We didn’t know the steps to any fancy ballroom dance so he made up his own silly waltz, holding me tight, making sure I never got left behind. He dipped me and I laughed, a full laugh, the kind that makes your whole body shake, the contagious kind that makes anyone within earshot laugh with you. I felt light, like that feeling you get after two glasses of red wine. In fact that’s how I felt, I felt like red wine. I was filled to the brim with warmth and delight. I could feel my cheeks burning, becoming a color that matched the way I felt as the veil of night fell over our made-up waltz. He went to dip me again, but this time I fell, pulling him with me and we both laughed, our faces taken up entirely by the idiotic grins we wore. We lay back down, nuzzling against each other as the stars sparked into existence. He pointed out his favorite constellations; he even dedicated one of the stars to me, the brightest one at the corner of his favorite. We fell asleep in that spot, with the crescent moon promising she would protect us through the night. That was the last time we danced.  

Melissa Mason is a senior English major at UMass Amherst with a specialization in Creative Writing. She plans to enter the world of publishing as an editor but her ultimate goal is to be a fantasy novelist. 

Photo credit: Italy, Latium Region, Tarquinia (Vt), Etruscan Necropolises, Tomb of Lioness, 6th century fresco with couple of dancers, she wears a transparent vest, he’s naked with an olpe of wine, premise of an orgiastic dance. Photopgraphy. Britannica ImageQuest. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 25 May 2016. http://quest.eb.com/search/126_3750512/1/126_3750512/cite. Accessed 17 Oct 2016.

 

Moeko Noda

The asphalt on the street radiated heat, causing beads of sweat to collect on the Magician’s forehead. It was a summer day in central Tokyo. The sweat dripped onto the flags he was pulling out from his mouth. He stood behind a portable table set up on the street. He had been there for an hour, entertaining audiences that came and went, as he kept pulling out flags one after the other.

Once, he had wanted to be an athleter. He remembered the summer of the first Tokyo Olympics a generation before. It was similarly sweltering. Each afternoon the Magician would run to his neighbor’s house, which was the only home with a television, with a small gang of boys. They kicked off their sandals as they hurried to the television, already surrounded by men cheering and women gossiping. He huddled up to sneak through the adults to the front. With knees tightly pressed together, the Magician looked up into the screen where the female volleyball team ran and hit, ran and hit. Though the court must have been boiling with heat, the rough pixels of the television screen did not betray the sweat and the grind of the players, only their steady receives and attacks. Yes, the Magician remembered now: he wanted to be a volleyball player, not a baseball player. The lean female figures in the screen attracted him in ways that were still unknown to him, the stretch of their arms and the bow of their bodies reaching for a spike magical and dazzling. In that Olympic games the Japanese female volleyball team smashed opponents, winning the finals against the Soviet Union after a grueling game as the nation cheered in front of their respective communal TVs. The team was nicknamed the “Witches of the Orient.”

But did I really want to be a volleyball player? The Magician thought again, as he slipped his hands beneath the table to feel the pigeon that he would soon produce and then make disappear. Sure enough, she was there, safely blinded in a black box that confined her beneath the table. Volleyball, he remembered, became a girl’s sport after the gold medal of the Olympics. TV series and comic series featuring starry-eyed girls playing volleyball attracted girls nationwide, creating a huge surge in the popularity of the sport. But the Magician was never a part of it. Throughout elementary school he remained silent about his attraction, secretly dreaming of volleyball but never actually playing it. Baseball was the sport that he played in the open fields after school. 

Baseball was a fine sport, but the Magician never wanted to be a professional like all the other boys. Once in high school, he quit his team and spent most of his time at the library. Sitting alone in the rustic room where dust flew with each touch of a book, the Magician read Dostoyevsky and Stendhal; Mishima and Soseki; he drank them down. He lost his childhood tan from playing baseball, but sunburnt the left side of his face by sitting in the same seat in the library every day. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to be in the future; his only vision was to have a solitary and literary life. So when the time came to go to college, he went where he got in. Magic, the Magician thought as he pulled out the pigeon from the box through his hat on the desk, was nowhere in his life back then. The closest he got to magic was Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

But he did like to watch the college volleyball team. It  was far from the Olympic team that had captured the eyes of the nation; many of the girls were round, healthy, and happy, and none of the stoic sportsmanship that ruled the court that summer was present in the old, sweaty college gym. Laughter bounced on the walls whenever the girls took a break. The Magician, now a tall, lean young man, liked to read on the stands while the team practiced. The toss of the ball, the yells of the girls, their sweats that the television screen never captured, all amidst the philosophical musings of Virginia Woolf, consumed him. Inhaling the stale air of the gym, he felt that he was in two worlds at once: the carnal reality of his childhood dreams and the spiritual realm of the philosophers. Skipping classes, he sat quietly in the back of the empty stands, reading away as the hours ticked by. A slight change occurred to this daily routine when the Magician’s eyes caught a particular girl in the court. She was the tallest and visibly more serious about the game than the other girls who were there for fun. The arch of her body was like a long, lean bow, and the ball her arm hit pierced the empty spot of the opponent’s court with a straight trajectory. The Magician fell in love. The balance between the two worlds shifted; his gaze would lift off the pages and fall on her. They dated for a while, but the girl dumped him after a few months for not paying enough attention to their relationship.  He stopped going to the gym.

The Magician fell into deep despair. In his small apartment, he lay down on his futon and wondered about life. He had never known despair like this; none of the masterpieces of literature had taught him how the wounds of love hurt. After two weeks of solitude, he woke up. He decided that books never taught him anything: only hard-earned experience can. He even felt grateful for his girlfriend, for teaching him this truth.The Magician started to work part time jobs. On Mondays he tended bar; on Tuesdays he built houses in the rapidly expanding suburbs; on Fridays he organized rows of fish at the Tsukiji market. The rest of the week he filled in with one-time gigs.

Out of the myriad jobs that he tried, he most liked being a magician’s assistant. The job came to him unexpectedly, one day, on his way home from another one of his part-time jobs. He spotted a handwritten ad on a utility pole that said, “Looking for assistant to magician. Will teach how to do basic magic.”

When he rang up the number on the ad the next day, an old man answered. The man spoke softly and modestly, and the Magician, who had expected something like a pigeon popping up through the phone, checked the number on the note on the desk. But he was talking to the right man. Hearing that the Magician was interested in the assistant position, the old man’s voice brightened: “You are the first one to call!” he said, “I had almost lost hope. I am making an overseas trip to India next month, and I urgently need someone to work in my place while I am gone.”

The training process was much more arduous than the Magician had anticipated. The Master, who preferred to be called Master Ismail, taught him how to handle cards and control the audience’s attention, step by step, in his old apartment that was cluttered with elephant statues. He was a good teacher; he never got irritated by his pupil’s mistakes, and went over the same tricks again and again until the student perfected it. Except for his weird fascination with India, the Magician liked his master very much and trusted in his skills. Sometimes he was tempted to point out that Ismail is an Islamic name rather than Hindu; but out of love and respect, he never did, and sent his master out having surely mastered the basic magic tricks that he were to perform while the master spent six months traveling “forgotten magical tribes” in India.

Now the Magician had truly become a magician. He worked at the  birthday parties of wealthy children, did tricks in the toy sections of department stores, and sometimes performed on the streets to advertise his work. Most of his audiences were children under the age of twelve; they beheld the cards that flew and the pigeons that disappeared in pure wonder, giggling and screaming with joy. As the Magician became more accustomed to his work, he realized he had graduated college. He only noticed this when, receiving an offer to perform at a wedd
ing, he saw that the date conflicted with his graduation ceremony. He didn’t mind too much; the only person from college that he ever really talked to was his volleyball-playing ex-girlfriend, and he did not care to meet her again. He accepted the offer and added a rabbit vanishing trick during the wedding ceremony as a personal celebration of his graduation.  

Months came and passed. Master Ismail never came back; the Magician assumed that he had extended his stay in India, possibly having found his retirement destination in one of the magical tribes. The Magician was not in a hurry to hand back his position anyways. He had become a full-time magician upon graduation, expanding his network of customers. He met many people during his work; he congratulated arrivals of newborns, celebrated the coming-of-age of twenty year olds, and pulled out from his hat smiling photos of the deceased. One of the most surprising encounters during this time was with his ex-girlfriend from college. The Magician was asked to perform at a birthday party of a five-year-old boy for a hefty pay, and when he arrived at the doorsteps of a large western style house, she opened the door. The Magician recognized her right away: the quiet smile, the lean build of her body, the seriousness at the edge of her mouth. She did not recognize him, however, and invited him in with welcoming ease. The husband was not present for his son’s birthday party, but had made sure that the house was handsomely decorated by professional party planners, an uncommon practice. The air of restrained passion that she carried with her in college was gone, her eyes now tinged with fatigue. But the Magician was a professional; he was never to speak about personal matters with his client. As he steadily performed his routine, the Magician’s ex-girlfriend watched his tricks with a curious smile, paying more attention to her son’s reactions rather than the show. After he received the pay and left the house, the Magician never saw her again. Such was the way it was with most customers. People came and went, leaving behind traces of memories, a hint of laughter, a sparkle of the eye, but never a permanent connection – except for one serious eyed girl, who eagerly asked to be the Magician’s assistant one  summer day, soon after the encounter with his ex-girlfriend. She later became his wife.

Years came and passed. Not much changed for the Magician; he performed his tricks in professional solemnity, visited birthday parties, and celebrated marriages. The venue today was on the street. As the drumroll from the CD speaker rolled, the pigeon vanished under the desk, successfully concluding his finale. The drumroll finished with a dramatic thud. The children, after a beat, clapped in wide-eyed wonder.

Moeko Noda is a senior in Swarthmore College, where she studies Comparative Literature. She is from Tokyo, Japan. 

Photo credit: Top hat, magic trick, tap and money purse on black background. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 25 May 2016.
http://quest.eb.com/search/115_3876433/1/115_3876433/cite. Accessed 17 Oct 2016.

Melissa Mason

Nobody knows that I come here at night, every night; nobody even cares enough to notice. I sneak out of my uncle’s cabin before he is even asleep, while he is still sitting like a fat drooling dog in front of the TV drinking his tenth beer. He doesn’t care about me, he barely even knows my name, but he loves my mother and would do anything for her. Uncle Earl adopted me every summer for the past three years while Mother went on “work trips,” which is code for her going on tropical cruises and getting shitfaced with boys who are closer to my age than hers. This summer though she didn’t come back to get me. She sent a text to Earl telling him about her “new young love, we are moving to Greece, tell Amy to study hard.” That was it. No I love you, no goodbyes, just study hard. Fat lot of good that did. Earl forgot to register me for school this year. He messed up his leg a few years ago working construction, and since then he’s been living off disability claiming that his leg never healed right. He sits day in and day out in front of his static-y TV in his tiny three-roomed cabin in the middle of the woods.

Most people my age find the woods  a terrible and forsaken place. I think it’s magical–the soft carpet of the emerald moss that curls around my bare toes as I bound away from Earl’s place, the sweet rainbow leaves that blow all about in the wind and tickle my face

I found this place at the beginning of my third summer dumped at Earl’s. That first day was the only day he was sober, just to impress his sister. As soon as she left he chugged five beers and retreated to his chair, forever imprinted with his walrus butt.

When I was sure that he was good and drunk, I went exploring. I was traveling along a path in the woods when I tripped on a root, got caught in indigo vines and crashed into a clearing, smacking my head on the ground. I have no idea how long I was unconscious for, but when I finally awoke, little cobalt lights darted into the trees. I untangled myself from the vines and gasped. How had I never seen this part of the woods before? The leaves on all of the trees surrounding the clearing were a brilliant red, a velvety red sort of like that of blooming roses, but warmer. The tall grass, which was softer than the moss and logically should not have even existed in this shaded space, reached a shade of green to rival a jade stone, the same kind that was on the ring Dad was buried with. All openings in the trees were obscured by the indigo vines I was caught in.

I lie in the middle of this field now, as I have every night since the day I found it. I lay here and I watch the cobalt lights flitter about. Because they are not just lights, they are creatures. They float through the air and live in the red trees. They dance in the grass to the sound of the stars. They have grown accustomed to my presence; in fact I think they have begun to look forward to my visits. They look like fairies but they are not, they may not even be alive. I thought they were until the day three of them floated straight through my stomach. I didn’t even feel them, I just watched them enter from my front and leave out the back. As I lie here they swarm in and around me. One has placed herself on the tip of my nose. She is eerily beautiful. My little lights, that’s what I call them, and they respond to it so they must like it. They have accepted me and care for me and provide me with warmth even on the coldest of nights. Maybe one day I will be able to join them, flitting about without a care in the world, becoming a little cobalt light myself. Until that day comes I will continue to sit here and watch them.

Melissa Mason is a senior English major at UMass Amherst with a specialization in Creative Writing. She plans to enter the world of publishing as an editor but her ultimate goal is to be a fantasy novelist. 

Photo credit: Flowers under blue light. Photograph. Britannica ImageQuest. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 25 May 2016.
http://quest.eb.com/search/132_1185781/1/132_1185781/cite. Accessed 17 Oct 2016.

Tabitha Sanders

 

Olive struck the ground with her foot as she drove her scooter over and over the same patch of sidewalk in front of her house. It was her car, and she was driving it to work; she must take care to stop at all of the stoplights and to never go above the speed limit. Her little sister, Amy, had decided to quit the  game, but the disappointment was only temporary. She had her imaginary friends to play with, and they made good playmates.

When they left, though, things did get a bit lonesome. Worse still was when her friends would withdraw, leaving little Olive with the enemies. She knew that they were only visions, that they weren’t really there. The man with the long white-hair was likely a figment from a dream, and the devil voice a secret sadness within her. The other enemies would often come and go, torture her and then leave forever. But these two stuck around for an awful long time, and Olive knew that they could stay forever if they wanted to.

The two enemies had made the decision, it seemed, to disturb and make miserable every aspect of her life. The white-haired man, who would so often appear in her mind and then flash away just as quickly, was in the habit of whispering things of past that had never happened.

As the white-haired man would confuse and distort the world she lived in, the devil voice would demand of her the payment of every second of her life. Any action she strove to do, be it turning her scooter around, picking a Tupperware cup to drink out of from the cabinet, speaking, was to some extent controlled by the devil voice. She would decide to turn her scooter around clockwise instead of counterclockwise, and the voice would change her action: If you don’t turn it counterclockwise, you will be trapped in a different time continuum. While wanting to choose the large blue cup, the voice would rebuke her: You’d better choose the small green cup, or else I will go into your heart when you drink. If about to say hello to someone: Keep your mouth closed or you’ll go to hell.

The battle, was continual. Perhaps it was made worse by the third enemy, the enemy who was real, her new stepfather.

He was a strange man, strange in his appearance, strange in his manner, and strange most of all in his preference for love from children. His acts shook the ground and broke it apart, leaving the shards of restlessness on which her family stood to drift away from each other.

Olive felt that the situation would have been easier had it not been for the visions that haunted her. But, no, the white-haired man would visit her and fill her waking dreamland with  his version of reality; the devil voice would prohibit any freedom and terrify her beyond belief.

The girls went into a kind of years-long trance. No amount of consolation or screaming and yelling could snap them out of—not a bit of cajoling from their mother or cruel mind games from their stepfather would rescue them from it. It tied the two sisters together, each a source of comfort for the other.

They would talk to each other of the brutishness of their stepfather. Perhaps that was why her sister had left their game today so early on—the conversation had come up again. And with it had come an argument-turned-agreement.

Her sister had asked, “Do you think we need to tell someone?”

Olive felt a surge of panic.

“No, only if it happens again. And then we need to tell each other first.”

“But it did happen again, last night,” said Amy softly.

No, Olive, don’t you dare give in. You know it’s better kept a secret. Don’t tell… or else. The devil voice. You really don’t want to find out what I can do to you.

“Well,” Olive faltered again. Inside, she argued with the voice. Amy was crying. “Well. what if we promise each other something? If it happens even one more time, we will tell each other and then give each other a month to tell someone.”

Amy seemed to follow what she meant. “Is it really a promise?”

“Yes, I promise.”

The two shook hands like adults and looked each other in the eyes. “Okay. Who are we going to tell, then?”

“I don’t know. We should probably tell mom. But remember, only after a month if it happens again.”

Olive wondered if she find the courage to uphold that promise. And over the next few days she noticed that the devil voice was growing quieter, yet gaining strength in anger. Then there came a new voice, softer, clearly feminine.

Olive. Olive stared at the vision that began appearing, similar in ghostlike appearance to the white-haired man. It was a girl though, and much older than Olive. Olive. May we talk?

As much as Olive desired an escapade conversation, she had to decline the offer for fear of a permanent attachment to this potential enemy. “No. Please go away.”

I’ve come a long way to get here, little Olive. There are some things I need to tell you. Think of me as an older sister. The vision was becoming more vivid as the words grew clear.

“Fine, then. Go ahead.” It would be best to get this spiel out of the way before figuring a way to dispel this vision from her life.

The vision gently led her towards the backyard, where the two sat on bulging tree roots in the mossy shade.

I left you years ago. I am Olive.

Olive studied the figure. It certainly looked a bit like her, but it was too old. It was too different. “You aren’t really me.”

I’m you in the future, when you’re eighteen. I know I’m different, and it’s my fault that you came to be this way. When I left you, I found hatred and selfishness. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how much I left you alone to suffer. I thought I had done myself a favor, and therefore done you a favor, but the deeper into life I got I realized it wasn’t true. It seems that for every thing I left you alone to suffer, a reflection of it has shown up in my own life. Now I know your pain, and I am so sorry.

Olive looked down at the thick grass surrounding them, and kept herself quiet for a time. Without the devil voice here to interject its threats and commentary, she found it difficult to judge the veracity of this conversation. The vision seemed patient in that respect, and her silence brought Olive the encouragement to consider. “I really don’t know if this is real, but I forgive you.”

Thank you. Thank you ve
ry much. Her vision took a moment to examine the yard, as if remembering. May I ask you something?

Olive nodded.
You need to tell someone. It’s hard, but it’s important.

Olive murmured her agreement.

Don’t leave yourself behind. Always stay with yourself; help yourself grow. Don’t hide, and do all you can to keep goodness in your heart.
The vision was fading, and the different volume levels of the voices all mingled again. Her vision was gone, and again the devil voice came and scolded her on her belief of that vision. The white-haired man found evidence against her from his undocumented wealth of knowledge of time.

Upon returning inside, the sound of the swamp cooler overwhelmed her, and the sight of her stepfather slumped on the couch clutching his container of peanuts angered her. She walked quickly, silently, down the hallway into her shared bedroom, where she found Amy curled helplessly onto her bed. The music on the radio was turned low to her sister’s favorite band, and the beats and tunes of emotion mingled with her sobs.

“I just want mommy to come home from the store,” she sniffled. “I’m afraid of daddy.”

Olive climbed up onto the bed with her sister. “I am too. She’ll be back soon.”

Amy looked up at her face. “Do you still promise? Really promise?”

“Yes, I promise. Do you?”

“Yes. But,” Amy sat up, trying to gain composure. “I’m really afraid of telling.”

“I am too, Amy. It’s okay. I promise it’s okay.”

Tabitha Sanders graduated from Chino Valley High School, Arizona, in 2016 with the strong inclination to become a writer. Her dream is to support herself with writing while living in an RV.

Kelly Lett

Miss Denise’s favorite spot was the left corner chair on her front porch.
Most of her life she had sat there watching the neighborhood. Often she would sit well past sundown, giving the breeze time to dry the day’s humidity caught in the creases of her brow. The August sun didn’t set until near 10pm, but the day’s heat stayed caught inside houses where every movement was a battle against the air itself as it licked at exposed skin, causing a feverish chill. It felt as though the air pushed back , stopped you from moving freely, forced youinto stuffed chairs that, while comfortable in the winter, became soggy, sticky traps in the summer. For all these reasons Miss. Denise longed to sit out on her porch tonight. Instead she stood in the doorway, staring at the faded lawn chair, imagining the cool air in her lungs.
But that relief was just out of reach. Working against the moldy screen door were a legion of mosquitos. They buzzed against the door, seeking any small cut or hole that would allow them access to the old woman’s blood filled arms and legs. This was Michigan in the summer.
“The Devil’s own,“ Miss Denise sighed, swatting at a bug that had gained entrance and started feasting on her arm. Its death left a small splatter of blood on the old womans delicate, thin skin.
Forced by nature to seek relief, Miss Denise stood in the doorway, avoiding the bugs, greedy for the cool air. She looked out across the street, staring at what had once been the Freemans’ house. The foundation was still intact, strong and solid as ever. Like all the houses on this block it had been built well. Michigan weather tested houses and humans alike; striking against them with biting winds, freezing rains and thick snow in winter then turning it all around in summer with unrelenting temperatures and humidity so high a person could swim to the store.
Some of the front porch was still there, wooden beams rising up towards a missing roof. The rest of the house was nothing more than broken glass and charred wood. The Freemans had left ten years ago, nobody had wanted their house, so it sat ready to be stripped for saleable scraps, torn up by vandals, and burned to the ground by unknown shadow figures who came and went at night.
The neighborhood turned 100 this year, but it had started dying at 90. Miss Denise had been born and raised in that neighborhood, in the very house whose doorway she now looked out from. She certainly never thought she would be the only person left in the last house standing on a once lively block.
“Blight!” Miss Denise huffed, “An even uglier word for cancer.”
But houses don’t get cancer, so they call it something short and nasty. It spread like cancer though, leaving little behind except shelters, stray cats, and drug addicts.
A breeze picked up. Closing her eyes she heard it moan through the glassless windows. Far back in her memory a child yelled ‘wait up!’ as bikes whizzed by. She smiled.
“You be careful now!”
Catching herself Miss Denise opened her eyes. The memory faded as she stared out at the remains of the Kibber house. Another memory shoved its way up, overwhelming Miss. Denise with the smell of ribs coming off the grill. Sam Kibber and his ribs! It was a two day process of sauce boiling, meat smoking, biscuit baking, and finally wood fire grilling. The Kibbers never sent out party invitations, they just opened their kitchen windows.
The Kibbers had left eight years before. Their house sat empty, another cancerous tumor for all to see. Finally a mysterious fire had burned any hope of a new family filling its rooms.
Fire took the Greens’ house, too. The Greens had arrived in the late 90’s to a block that was still very middle class. Mr. Green mowed that lawn every week, trimming every edge to symmetrical perfection. He planted flowers so early each spring that a late frost shriveled leaves and froze roots more than once. But the next weekend he’d be back with another flat, all those bright reds and yellows.
Once the blight began, nobody wanted a house on this block, so they had emptied, one after another and bit by bit they were taken apart. Thieves always arrived first, pulling copper pipes from walls, carting appliances to scrap metal yards, taking doorknobs, lighting fixtures, stained glass windows; anything.
The thieves were followed by squatters and drug addcts. Fights became common in what had once been a peaceful neighborhood. And Miss Denise was certain that the Greens’ house had last been used for murder. From her front porch she once heard such awful sounds.
Cursing, crashing, flesh smacking against flesh; it bothered her so that she had run inside, slamming and bolting the thick wood door. Still she heard screaming, until very suddenly she heard nothing.
She had called the police, telling what she saw and heard, but they never bothered to show.
“Just a torn down neighborhood with a scared old lady, what they gonna do?” she asked nobody.
And so it was up and down the street, memories tied to the remains of homes in a once proud neighborhood. The only keeper of those precious memories, an old woman standing alone in the doorway of the last house left standing.
Sometimes in her mind she saw the Williams Christmas light display, each year it grew bigger and brighter until it went dark three years ago when the Williams took the twinkly bulbs to Georgia.
Once the cancerous blight took hold, the flights of fear began. One after another they had departed, leaving only an old woman in an old house, paid off by her father long before she took over.
Anger rose in Miss. Denise’s throat, “I told you not to get another mortgage! Factories been closing for 30 years, I said. Interest rates go up, I said. That house is yours! It’s paid for, I said. But you all wouldn’t listen to some dumb old woman. Blue skies and sunshine that’s all you damn fools saw. Well I saw the clouds gathering. Saw the rain a coming, and it came and it fell, like it always does ending good times, like it always does.”
Weii, maybe they all hadn’t taken out second and third mortgages, but enough had. Pensions were squandered trying to fend off foreclosures, but those bright yellow bank notices always ended up tacked on doors.
And if the mortgage man didn’t get you, the tax man did. Nobody cared that when the car parts factory closed it took your dry cleaning customers with it, the city still wants revenue.
“They’re just waiting on me.” Miss Denise shifted her focus back to the frenzy of mosquitoes outside her door. “They’re all just waiting on me. Bloodsuckers.”
She hit out at the screen door causing a small, living cloud to burst away backwards. For a moment they took each other in, the old woman and the buzzing little cloud. The mosquitoes waited, hovering, on the other side of the rotting door. Miss. Denise backed away leaving the cool night breeze for the bugs as the oven-high heat of her living room swallowed her up.

Kelly Lett recently moved from Los Angeles to Detroit to pursue her writing career. Thanks to the internet she is able to tell stories while enjoying a much lower cost of living.

Photo credit: House. . Photography. Britannica ImageQuest. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 25 May 2016. http://quest.eb.com/search/142_2303727/1/142_2303727/cite. Accessed 12 Aug 2016.

Grace Imbesi

Maude Mabel was particular. Maude always kept her room spotless and her fur clean. Her clothes were all folded neatly in her dresser drawers, and her coats and dresses remained hanging in her closet with the hangers all facing in the same direction. Her closet shelves were neatly lined with boxes of crafts and other storage bins. Maude always brushes her teeth for the recommended three minutes, and makes sure to floss every time. She only uses eight squares of toilet paper in the bathroom. Never seven, never nine; Maude felt more comfortable with even numbers.

Maude went about every morning in the same way: she made her bed, put on the day’s favorite dress (unless it happened to be a Friday, and then she put on her favorite purple, polka-dotted shirt), ate a hearty breakfast of cheesy scrambled eggs and toast with strawberry jam — never letting the two mingle, gathered her school things in her old backpack with the flower patches sewn into it, and left the house for school at 8 o’clock sharp.

Her schooldays remained almost the same from day-to-day. She started the day with a simple social studies, and continued on with math- she liked math, because everything had a right answer, unlike her next class: English. After English her class took a snack break, and then had gym. Gym was followed by lunch and then recess, which was spent mostly on the swings, where she would swing no more and no less than sixty times. She then had Spanish, music, and finally, her favorite class: art.

Maude liked that art was her last class of the day, so she always had something to look forward to. Whenever her teacher gave them some free time to work on whatever they pleased, she always chose her favorite way of expressing herself: painting. All of her paintings included her three favorite things: the bright yellow sun, a tall, lush tree- always with an owl hole, and herself wearing, of course, her favorite purple polka-dotted shirt. Every time, though, she would change something about the painting. Sometimes there wouldn’t be an owl in the owl hole, or sometimes, depending on the season, the leaves would be orange and red, or not there at all. Some paintings would have more flowers than others, and she often painted herself with blue or pink ribbons in her fur.

One rainy Friday afternoon, there she was, painting her same painting with the purple polka-dotted shirt and her pretty pink ribbons, when the clumsiest boy in class, Jackson Spivey (who Maude Mabel tried to avoid as often as possible) swung his arm around and accidentally knocked over a bottle of green paint, making one large splat right on top of her artwork, landing right where she had just painted her perfect, purple, polka-dotted shirt. Jackson Spivey froze in embarrassment as Maude Mabel froze in frustration. Her stomach started filling up with thunder and lightning that was just as anxious as the storm brewing outside, just as it always does when she’s forced to stray from her routines, but then something funny happened… The rain outside started calming down, and so did her stomach…

Maude stood staring at the painting, confused. She couldn’t explain why, but she actually sort of liked the way the green splat looked on her purple shirt. Maybe it was the way the two colors looked together, or maybe it was how the splat was so simple that it added just enough crazy to actually look cool. Whatever it was, it changed Maude Mabel’s perspective and she hugged and thanked the messy boy who she had hated all year.

After this art class phenomenon, Jackson and Maude became best friends, and he showed her how to live life in a more fun, carefree way. At recess, he showed her that you don’t have to stop swinging once you reach sixty, because seventy, or even eighty, can also be fun, and you don’t even have to count at all!

At home, during dinner time, Maude saw her brother mixing his mashed potatoes with his meatloaf. At first, she was disgusted at the thought of food touching, but he seemed to enjoy it, and so she thought she would give it a try. She took her fork, mixed away, and threw a heaping mouthful of mash onto her tongue. She was delighted by how it tasted and could not believe she hadn’t discovered this sooner.
After these little discoveries, Maude wondered what other little secrets to happiness were hiding behind the routines she had spent so long perfecting, and she decided to get a little crazy… Maude took all the arts and crafts boxes out of her closet and spilled its contents all over her desk, hoping that she would in time become more creative. She opened up her sock drawer and tossed around rainbow handfuls until striped socks rested with polka-dotted socks and pink socks hung around with orange socks, because who doesn’t like a little mixin’ and matchin’? She tore up all of her gel-pen lists, neglecting any and all routines she had planned for the night, the next day, and all the days after that. Maude went back to her closet and mixed everything up, no longer feeling the need for her dresses to be color coordinated. After tiring herself out from all the excitement of new experiences, Maude decided to go to sleep early, at 8 o’clock instead of 9 o’clock. She changed into mismatched pajamas, climbed into bed, and, soon,  Maude Mabel was resting soundly with hangers pointing every which way.

 

Grace Imbesi, aspiring poet and children’s author. English major at Russell Sage College of Troy. New York.

Photo credit: Studio shot of mixture of paints. Photography. Britannica ImageQuest. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 25 May 2016. http://quest.eb.com/search/115_3959718/1/115_3959718/cite. Accessed 11 Aug 2016

Michael Colbert

We used to stay up late, sitting on the campus quad and talking about friendship, the direction of America, or film. We’d sit there for hours, talking and listening until her feet felt numb from the cold.

We first met at orchestra auditions. She wore glasses she didn’t need and her hair was long and curly, something she always complained about to curly-haired friends like my floormate Fanny. I sat on my saxophone case. She asked, “Why are you auditioning for orchestra on the saxophone?” She doesn’t remember that this was the first time we met.

We met again later freshman year, and she was Fanny’s cool friend. My only friends were my roommates and some people who lived on my floor like Fanny, so Fanny bringing a girl from the outside conferred some sort of status upon them both. Well, at least to me it did.

She and Fanny would come back from orchestra rehearsals together and talk on Fanny’s bed. I’d come by the room to say hi to Fanny and there she was. I recognized her by those cool, transparent, circular glasses.

And then she was part of our floormate group. She started as a novelty. Somebody that everybody tried to lay claim to so that they had friends from another dorm. She fueled it, organically, by always showing funny videos to different people or talking about that cover she’d heard. Then I’d hear my floormate, one of the random ones, blasting it in the shower after I’d just stopped listening to it.

Soon she wasn’t just a novelty but our friend. All of us knew her, and she made us all laugh. I started listening to her music and making her jokes.

“I just assumed that everyone’s high school English teachers were Canadian because mine was,” she said.

Nothing made sense except for that feeling that she made you feel. But that didn’t make sense either. She had us watch The Talented Mr. Ripley and I thought that movie nailed it until Matt Damon killed Jude Law and then I knew I still couldn’t explain it. Magnetism? Longing? Obsession? MPDG?

I decided to name the feeling a crush. She made out with other guys at parties and hid her hickies with turtlenecks.

                  ***

We made out. We were drunk. I grabbed her ass on the dance floor. A redhead girl grumbled next to us. The night ended with everyone in the girls’ bathroom on my floor, holding back our Other Film Friend’s hair as Other Film Friend thought she might vomit. Her floormate Chuck–she was bringing her external friends into our insular, floormate group– was there too, texting.

“I had a lot of fun,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Do you want me to walk you home?”

“I’m okay.”

We said we’d go on a date but we didn’t. She disappeared for a bit and I made out with someone else, and I thought she got jealous and weird. Now I know when she said, “I’m happy for you,” she’d been looking for an undamaging way out. The other girl and I ended the next weekend. I realized I couldn’t be into another girl if I was still after her even though that door had been closed.

                  ***

Summer came. The last night of the semester we all went to a concert. Iron & Wine. Burlington. We called for him to play “Upward Over the Mountain,” but he didn’t. When Other Film Friend and I were leaving to drive back to campus for the night and she was staying in the city, she chased after the car like in the movies. But it was a quiet neighborhood, so it was different. Other Film Friend and I laughed and she laughed and we didn’t see her until the fall.

That summer I told her how I’d gotten really into Iron & Wine.

“That’s a really intense thing to get really into.”

I started talking about film as art. Philly, where she was from, was suddenly a cool city I wanted to live in after graduating.

We saw her back at school. She lived with Fanny and Other Film Friend, and I lived with Chuck. Chuck and I would walk from campus through the cemetery to their apartment, drinking coffee brandy I’d gotten older friends to buy us.

She made out with my old roommate. Other Film Friend’s semi-boyfriend from the year before. We all stopped seeing her, and she felt alone. I forgave her quickly but decided to let my old roommate fall away. He’d been my best friend, and he knew how I felt. How I didn’t know how to feel about her.

                  ***

She went abroad for a year alone in Copenhagen. We all met up. A weekend in Barcelona to do a college-friends-in-Europe weekend. She told stories about the summer program she did in Cape Town making movies and the Italian friend that she’d met there. She played with a bouncy ball and took pictures, asking Other Film Friend if she wanted to use her camera. Other Film Friend still felt weird about her since last fall’s makeout incident, but Other Film Friend also had the same kind of feelings about her as I did, so I watched as she explained all she learned in South Africa while Other Film Friend had been working at an ice cream shop in Burlington.

We meant to go out to a club our last night in Barcelona, but Chuck had to Skype his mom because his dog died, and she and Other Film Friend disappeared for an hour or two in the bedroom to talk. I talked to Fanny who was studying biology at the Budapest program. Fanny laughed and played bad music and told me stories about times she got drunk. I did the same. Other Film Friend came out of the room, eyebrows high and eyes big. Then she followed behind, one of her subdued moods, eyes looking kind of high and cheeks blotchy. “Hi,” she exhaled.

Our group tried to go to the club but we couldn’t get in because not everyone was twenty-one. Were those the rules? Wasn’t that why college juniors went abroad? We went back to our rented apartment but missed the first subway back because she got crepes from a drunk-food stand with a tall Spanish girl. We didn’t get back until five in the morning, and I told her to wake me before she left for her eight o’clock flight.

     &
nbsp;            **

I was back at school in the spring. She wasn’t. I got over her. I got over the girl I was seeing while I was studying in Italy. When I got drunk, I’d say I missed either of them. The name I said depended on the night.

                  ***

She came back. She came out. She’d been dating a Danish girl since September, since before I saw her in Barcelona. She talked about all her bad experiences with men. We talked about Hitchcock in our American Film class together.

American Film was good. It was just the two of us again for or the first time since it was just the two of us on the dance floor. But it was different. We were less distant, better, and older. And there was no grumbling redhead next to us.

I’d never been in love, but what did this feeling count for? Isn’t yearning a kind of love? Doesn’t longing count?

She got a new girlfriend after the Danish girl cheated on her. They were always together. I lost her again and watched through the library window as they studied. I shared the dinner table with her and her girlfriend, and I watched as they talked and said things without talking. She was in love. We didn’t see her, and she saw her girlfriend’s friends.

But one day the rest of us saw her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s friends. We were all in her apartment, all ready to go to a concert. We were on the couch as the girlfriend’s friends whirled through. They laughed at things, cards she had kept from her mom, found when a dark-haired friend looked for clothes to “style” her for the concert. She came out, sleek and cool and vintage and sad.

The dark-haired girl opened a jar next to a picture of her with her late dog. She was in high school then and looked like she did when I first met her, except without the glasses. She was an only child, and I understood dog mourning.

“What are these?” The dark-haired girl asked.

I’d never seen them, but I knew she shouldn’t have asked.

“Her dog’s ashes,” her girlfriend said. She took a shot of tequila and went into the bathroom to adjust her backwards hat.

“Oh my God.”

“Why do you have these?”

“That’s gross.”

“And we were going to play with that Ouija board here?”

“I feel so gross now.”

“Are you coming?”

“I’ll meet you outside.”

They were gone. They didn’t come looking for her. The five of us from the hotel in Barcelona, Other Film Friend, Fanny, Chuck, she, and I sat. We all felt the need to say something to her but didn’t. Her face was blotchy and her eyebrows high but eyes tired. We’d later fantasize confrontations with the Dog Ashes Asshole, but those never went through.

But we sat, we five and her dog’s ashes. She got up and left to find her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s friends at the concert.

                  ***

In the last weeks of school, how much did she think about the dog ashes? Did her girlfriend’s friends make fun of her for them? Was she still thinking about them as much as I was? Were there even dog ashes in there? I sneaked into their apartment to see for myself. She surprised me there. I’d opened the jar when she came out of the bathroom.

“It’s not what it looks like. I just had to know.”

The lid was in my hand.

“You take them,” she said.

“But I never knew your dog.”

“You did in spirit.”

“Have I met his ghost?”

“Don’t be dumb.”

“But I couldn’t,” I said.

“Now they’re yours.”

I imagined the ashes in my house. I’d put the pieces of her I’d collected into the jar. The keychain she gave me for my birthday and the Iron and Wine CD I bought after freshman year would crumble into the jar. Dog soot would fill the crevices until they were unrecognizable, and they too became ashes.

Neither of us did anything. We just stood there, she and I and her dog’s ashes.

Born and raised in Westborough, Massachusetts, Michael is a recent graduate of Bowdoin College, where he studied Italian and Spanish. He’s written his own travel blog, Misadventures with Michael, for over three years. Currently, he is teaching English at a high school in Japan.

 

 

Photo credit: Otto F.T. von Moeller, This Kiss.. Photo. Britannica ImageQuest. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 25 May 2016. http://quest.eb.com/search/109_227958/1/109_227958/cite. Accessed 11 Aug 2016.

Kacper Niburski

 

 

 

“Knock, knock.”

“I’ve heard this one a million times, Bob.”

“No, not this one. It’s different. Come on.”

“Alright. Fine. Who’s there?”

“Banana.”

“Why would a banana be at my door?”

“Because it’s part of the joke.”

“But how would a banana knock?”

“Well, I guess the same way we do, by bobbing back and forth.”

“Sure, but what would make the banana bob?”

“I don’t know.”

“This is important stuff to know. If there’s a banana at my door that somehow knocked, I’d be more interested in the banana itself. Like, for example, how big is it?”

“It’s a regular banana.”

“Yellow, green, black—is it rotten?”

“It’s just a simple, fresh banana. Imagine a banana and then that’s it.”

“I usually eat tiny bananas, so I’m imagining them.”

“That’s not the banana in the joke.”

“So there is a specific banana, then. How can I get the joke if we are imaging different things?”

“Come on, Frank, just go along with it.”

“Okay, sure, but again—how did the banana knock?”

“It just did.”

“What is the door made of?”

“I don’t know, man.”

“Well, how thick is it?”

“Why does this matter?”

“Because if you’re saying a banana—a regular, handheld yellow banana—produced enough of a force to be heard, then the least I should know is the type of door I have.”

“Fine. Hardwood. About the same thickness of a two-by-four.”

“And the banana made an audible knocking noise?”

“Exactly.”

“See, I don’t understand. Did someone throw the banana?”

“No. I’ve told you three times already—it just knocked.”

“But things don’t just happen. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t have to. It’s a joke.”

“No, no. It does or else I won’t get it and then it won’t be funny and isn’t that a joke’s point?”

“Fine. Sure. I guess.”

“So you’re going to tell me how a regular banana knock-knocked then?”

“Ya. Let’s just say it was standing up—”

“The banana?”

“Yes, the banana. It was standing up—”

“By itself?”

“Yes, by itself.”

“Who put it there?”

“No one.”

“So the banana got there by itself?”

“Sure.”

“You’re telling me the banana made it to my door by its own means?”

“Why not?”

“So, Bob, this is a motile banana.”

“What?”

“This is an evolutionary wunderkind. It’s a self-moving banana that can balance and stand erect.”

“Okay …”

“And with its mushy, moving interior, it somehow also evolved the ability to forcefully knock.”

“I guess.”

“This makes much more sense now.”

“Okay, sure, can I continue now?”

“Wait, Bob, wait. Didn’t it also answer ‘Banana’?”

“I guess …”

“Oh my god.”

“What is it, Frank?”

“This is a sentient banana.”

“Excuse me?”

“This inexplicably moving banana can also speak. That means it has some cognitive ability as it not only uses a door with all the common societal expectations of it—knocking politely, waiting until an answer is given—but it can mimic speech. It can form words, and more importantly, recognize what it is: a banana. No more. No less. A banana that walks, talks, and knocks.”

“Uhm.”

“Bob, I wouldn’t want a conversation. I would have the responsibility of calling NASA, universities, everyone and everything. Who knows? This banana may be the first alien.”

“Frank, it’s just a banana.”

“That does everything we do, if not better. A little thing can make such a loud noise. Imagine what else it could do. Do you think it can dance?”

“It’s a banana, Frank.”

“Can it dance, Bob?”

“No.”

“Yet it has mastered our social constructions, hearing my answer and developing a response.”

“Okay …”

“So, maybe it can also hear rhythm in music. I wouldn’t put it past the banana.”

“A dancing banana?”

“Exactly. It would put a new meaning to the phrase banana split.”

“Isn’t that a dessert?”

“It is, but you bring up an important point, Bob.”

“I did?”

“The most important, I’d say. I can’t believe I’m so stupid.”

“What do you mean?”

“Here I am answering the door when it could …”

“It could what?”

“Want revenge.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“I mean if it is really as smart as you seem to suggest …”

“I didn’t suggest anything, Frank. You have this whole time.”

“No, no, you told the joke. I’m just extrapolating.”

“Fine. Sure. Go ahead.”

“And if it is as smart as you say, with its penchant for abstract thoughts, social norms, and speaking patterns, it might realize what we have been doing to all the other bananas on Earth.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Bob, we eat them whole. We eat the banana’s people. We put them on our damn ice cream.”

“Ya, but—”

“But nothing. This banana might strike against us and I might be its first target.”

“No. It’s just knocking.”

“How do I know?”

“Because it’s knocking on your door.”

“But robbers can knock too before they plan to jump me in my own home.”

“It’s a banana. Not a robber.”

“And yet, it’s so much more than any banana before.”

“So what then?”

“Well, I’m at my door, right?”

“Ya.”

“And the banana has already knocked, right?”

“Ya.”

“And I’ve answered?”

“Get to the point already, Frank.”

“Well I’d be incredibly cautious. I’d look through the eyehole and seeing nothing—because it is a regular, small banana at the base of my door—I’d be immediately suspicious. Scared even.”

“So what would you do?”

“I’d have to play it smart. I’d cough and puff my chest and before I opened the door—who knows if I would anyways—I would say, ‘Banana who?’”

“And the banana?”

“I’m not sure. If it’s harmless, it may repeat its name because that answers the question.”

“I see. And if it’s not?”

“If redemption is in its blood, or glucose, or whatever, then it may employ the same tactic. ‘Banana,’ it’ll say in a cold, hard manner. The banana may be a master of subterfuge after all.”

“And if it said that then?”

“I’d keep sharp, keep the banana on edge. Show them the human spirit with a, ‘Banana who?’”

“Smart, Frank.”

“I think so too, Bob.”

“So, what then?”

“It’s the banana’s move. Either it can peel away, or keep going.”

“I see.”

“Exactly. Who knows—it could very well knock again and we’d be back at the beginning.”

“So, Frank, you’re saying it’s the banana’s show and we’re just monkeys in the middle.”

“Yeah, Bob.”

“Well.”

“Well is right. Good we got that out of the way.”

“Ya.”

“So what was the joke anyway?”

“I don’t remember exactly.”

“Oh.”

“That’s alright. It’s over now.”

“I’ll say.”

“Well after it all, I’m glad at least it wasn’t an orange. Imagine that.”

 

Kacper Niburski is a twenty something year old pretending he’s thirty who writes like he’s fifty about things that happened when he was ten. He’s been published in Stoneboat Poetry, Ars Medica, and others.

 

hoto credit: Banana. Clip Art. Britannica ImageQuest. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 25 May 2016.
http://quest.eb.com/search/186_1626436/1/186_1626436/cite. Accessed 17 Oct 2016.

James Prenatt

 

“Are you excited?” Mom asks.

Mandy won’t show it, but she is.

Her mom drops her off at Lee’s Airpark, just off Route 2, where she’d seen planes take off and land almost every day, but never dreamed of seeing up close. It was bigger and more intimidating than expected.

Her mom walks with her across the tarmact. It’s a sunny day, perfect and blue, like her eyes, He says. He’s leaning up against the white plane, almost as tall as it, that short dark hair blowing in the wind, aviators on, and no one could be as cool, as sexy. He waves to Mom and Mandy holds back her smile until it hurts. He hugs her, but does not kiss her.

The takeoff is the hardest to stand. She’d flown before, but you feel it more in light aircraft. She’s scared, almost pees herself, but once they’re in the air, He puts his hand on her knee and she calms down. He soars, swoops like she never knew a plane could move so quick. Beats model rockets in Dad’s backyard. Look at that sky. Look at this man next to me who loves Mom better than anything. Will he say he loves me too? It’s so bright. I’m so high.

                    ***

Euphoric, after days of waiting for Him to come back from his most recent flight, she watches the kite glide through the humid August breeze and wants to go up in the air again. Only next time she wants to be in control.

He walks through the yard, finally back and she wishes she was wearing something sexier than too-big jeans and His worn out Katastrophe t-shirt she took from the laundry when Mom wasn’t watching. What if he gets upset she stole it? Oh, I hope he says I look good in it. He doesn’t say anything though.

Instead, without words, He reaches his arms around her from behind and puts His hands on hers in order to show her how to do it right. The kite twists involuntarily, free but controlled. She likes it this way, him holding her close and showing her the way through the wind.

In that calm time as the sun sets orange, almost vermillion over the River Lethe, Mandy, Mom and Him eat dinner on the back porch as he tells stories of his journeys. He once flew to Venezuela just for the hell of it and stayed there for some time, living out of a rental van and learning to cook Tequenos and serenading pretty girls (an eyebrow raise at Mom). Maybe he’ll fly me and Mom there sometime, or the Caribbean or Europe or why not Canada or California? She was told to help put away dishes and when Mom sees how entranced Mandy is, she lets it go. They get along and that’s a blessing. He has a politician’s way of looking at no one and everyone as he tells a story about almost crashing his first time in the air and having to do his first landing by himself because the man teaching him had a stroke.

He could teach me guitar, too, Mandy thinks. He and Me and Mom and can get out of this. She makes a request, Katastrophe, please and he chuckles a bit. He plays the opening riff of “Trazodone” and sings the chorus as Mandy tries hard not to smile. Once he gets to the end he doesn’t really sing it, but whispers in a way: I like it, I’m not gonna leave. I like it, I’m not gonna leave…

                    ***

She’s adult and normal and bored now like everybody else, off duty and going back up in the air soon. She’s in the grocery store, trying to decide which bag of chips to buy, a thousand flavors and brands in front of her. What was once so simple an affair now seems an overwhelming duty.

Across from the snack aisle, she spots Him placing ground beef in his cart. His dark hair now a salt and pepper white, His high and taut face, now sagging a bit, the crows feet more noticeable from so much glinting in the sun, but still as handsome as the day He took her up in the plane. She positions herself next to him, too scared because what if it isn’t him?

He makes eye contact and smiles. She smiles back, a middle school girl again.

“They really charge you an arm and a leg nowadays, huh?”

As if it’s her first time being flirted with, she’s not sure what to say and instead shrugs.

“Quiet one.” He looks at her uniform. “Naval Academy?”

She nods.  

“I’m a pilot myself, actually,” he says, like it’s a question and even though she knows He’s still the cocky man He used to be, comfortable with His cool, but unimportant station in life. She still loves that sly humility. “Small cargo and personal passengers mostly. Amateur stuff, really. It’s not the same as The Blue Angels, but I have a good time. Hey, you look familiar.”

That’s when he’s greeted by a woman ten years younger than Him and prettier than Leah, now going by her middle name instead of that childish first name. With the woman is a child, a girl of maybe seven.

She does not remember her response, but she gets out of the conversation and leaves Him to hurt someone else. How dare you leave mom and me. How dare you not remember me. You flew away and never came back. It takes time to admit it, but more than anger, she’s flattered and glad He saw her make it in the air.

Up there it’s just blue. Up there, you’re a god. The takeoff used to be the hardest part, but now it’s just the landing she struggles with. A few more months and she’ll have it down perfect. If only they’d let her go where she wanted. If only they’d let her fly until she’s out of oxygen. She once thought I could die up here, His hands around hers, guiding the way. High. Bright. High.  

James Prenatt has published in Crab Fat Magazine, Cactus Heart Magazine, and 34th Parallel. He lives in  Baltimore with his dog, his thing, and a little human. He graduated from Towson University with a degree in English and an OK GPA.