It occurred to me during our second date that Mike didn’t exist in real time.
When we first met, he was friendly—cruelty-free, like a human-sized rabbit. We ate at a sub shop, but first, he drove us backwards through the drive-thru of a shuttered restaurant. Big, white truck built for long hauls and first impressions. The perfect way to convey unspecified wants.
This story deals with subjects that some readers may find upsetting.
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I’m willing the old lady to take her seat already so the driver can go. Come on, come on, old girl, just pick a seat, any seat.
“Please take mine,” I say and stand. She smiles a paper-thin smile and eases herself onto the damp fabric. I hold onto a pole as the bus shudders onwards and we’re off again. I take out my phone and replay the message. “Miss Hart, Tabitha is unwell again. Please come and pick her up as soon as possible.”
The way Tabby’s teacher lingers on the word “again” sends a painful throb to my stomach.
This story has been removed at the request of the author.
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The Year You Were Born:
Your mother leaned forward in an aluminum lawn chair, scrunched her toes into the grass as the hot wind blew waves through her summer dress. She took another fleshy bite of watermelon and let her eyes slide closed as she savored the cool sweetness that filled her mouth. Your dad sat at the picnic table drinking a can of beer. He cupped a match from the breeze and lit a cigarette, and when your mother leaned forward, he stole a glimpse of her swollen breasts through his exhale.
We stared at the gravestone.
Tess Jones
A bad wife, but an adequate mother and grandmother
How all this got started was there was this guy Lee, I don’t think anybody remembers his last name. He hadn’t been in Springdale long. Quiet guy, late 20s. Decent looking. Beard, muscles, longish hair, bit of a mountain man way about him.
The voices of the three funny men occupy my headphones, and I rub my new, hastily bought gloves together. On a Friday afternoon, in early December, the central train station is naturally pulsating with luggage-burdened passengers. Their conversations are upbeat, their postures eager. I find it a nice change of pace; seeing faces that aren’t marred by frustrated creases. The train times are so far unaffected, and for the time being, civility reigns supreme. We’re all going home. And it is such a wonderful feeling.
I walk to work under a dull gray sky. Last I heard, there was still blue sky somewhere above Alaska. My brother and his wife went there, to live off the grid. I am gridlocked, travelling the same two miles back and forth every day. Work, home, work, home.
Continue reading “A Pill to Love, A Pill to Forget, A Pill to Live Forever by L’Erin Ogle”
Rain is pounding on the cobblestones of Place Luxembourg as people cluster to the bars around the square for an after work drink. Colorful umbrellas alternate with newspapers hastily turned into makeshift headgear and the occasional “Merde!” can be heard when a passing car splashes water on a pedestrian.
It’s three feet farther to hell from New Town Bridge. The city recently installed an eighteen-inch “safety” extension to the pedestrian rail. Since it opened in 1978, at least twenty persons have jumped off the ugly gray span and found death waiting two-hundred feet below in the beckoning Philo Bay Narrows. Northern seas swiftly kill the pain; and when that comforting certainty outweighs the threat of damnation, I don’t see another foot and a half up, and down, getting in the way.
