Emmy White

The Butcher and the Wannabe Journalist

Monday, early morning.

Gloom swallows the park, mist lapping at my ankles as I gaze miserably into the trees. I can never sleep at this hour, mind skipping between thoughts, like bees darting from flower to flower. And Oli snores.

A faint but distinct shuffling pulls me to attention. Fear grabs at my throat as a figure, male, dressed in a dark puffer jacket, trudges down the street towards me, shoes sweeping at the damp leaves. I grip my phone, squeezing it between my frozen fingers, ready to bolt if I need to. 

He doesn’t stop, and the dread inside me dwindles. I walk home the long way, glancing back occasionally, but the street is deserted, faint streetlights flickering in the cold winter air. 

Monday, later.

“Stabbed thirteen times” are the first words I hear as I step out of the rain and into the dimly lit office. I glance at the two journalists curiously then head past them and place my bag down at reception.

“Morning.” Maud greets me flatly, not bothering to look up.

“Morning.” I reply glumly, mimicking her melancholy tone. “There was a murder?”

Maud nods but doesn’t stop what she’s doing. I try again.

“Where was it?”

“Lusk Circuit. This morning at around two thirty. And before you ask, I don’t think it’s a serial killer and no, none of the journalists want to talk to you.” 

I wrack my brain, trying to remember where Luck Circuit is. Maud notices the look on my face and adds.

“First street when you turn off the motorway.”

I shudder.

“I was there.” I say, and Maud looks up for the first time, “Only a few streets away.” 

Maud still looks skeptical. She shrugs and her attention flicks back to her computer as an email comes through. 

“Well,” she says, in that leave me alone tone that seems to be her default these days, “I suppose you could talk to them. For once, you might have actually seen something.”

I think back to the last time I spoke to the journalists, picture their sniggering faces, and grimace. My computer flickers to life.

“I could always knock on a few doors. Maybe – “

“That’s the police’s job.” is Maud’s blunt reply. “Your job?” she motions to a ringing phone, “Is to answer that.”

I sigh, pick up the phone, and spend the remainder of the day mindlessly taking calls, trying, unsuccessfully, to push the murder from my mind.

Monday, evening.

The park is as eerie as ever when I pass it on my way home. It’s the kind of eerie that resonates through the entire neighbourhood, a quiet but ominous force. I spot a jacket and know for a fact it wasn’t there yesterday. It’s a puffer jacket, like the man was wearing last night, a deep navy colour that could easily be mistaken for black. That, paired with a suspicious stain on its right sleeve, just doesn’t sit right in my stomach.

Oli, however, is less than impressed. I pull the jacket out after dinner and inspect it. He stares at me, then at the jacket, face flushed with irritation.

“Ally, that’s your jacket.”

I peer at it again, running my hands over the synthetic material – the kind that makes your fingers twitch – then sigh when I realise that he’s right. 

“Oh.” I frown, “Must have dropped it on the way to work.”

“See? Stop jumping to conclusions. There’s usually a logical explanation.”

He hangs the filthy jacket over the back of a chair and the zipper clangs against it. He climbs into bed, and I lay down beside him. The room goes silent, but my mind continues to race.

“I’m going to look in the park again tomorrow morning.” I say. Oli hums sleepily. “The jacket wasn’t his, but maybe he left something else. Do you think – “

“Go to sleep, Ally. Please.”

“Sorry. I just wonder, what if – “

Oli turns around suddenly.

“Jesus Christ, Al. Can you let it go? You’re not a detective. You’re a receptionist. You’re not going to suddenly solve a murder.”

His fists are balled up, so tightly that the duvet bulges out the sides and his knuckles turn the colour of snow. I stare at him. I’ve seen him angry before, but this is something else. Something far more extreme. Menacing, even. He sighs heavily.

“Sorry, I’m just stressed. Work was a nightmare. One of the new guys ruined an entire batch of rissoles. Utter chaos.” He pushes himself up, off the bed. 

“I’m gonna have a smoke. Please, stop obsessing. It never does you any good.”

But theories won’t stop spinning, twisting through my mind like miniature tornadoes. My eyelids close before Oli returns. I decide, sleepily, to apologise tomorrow. 

Tuesday, morning.

“There’s been another one.” I inform Maud as I settle at the desk the following morning. “They’re saying the killer is a doctor. He removed her kidneys, so he must have known where they were.”

“Then again…” I add thoughtfully, “some are saying he might have no medical knowledge at all.”

Maud ignores me. I want to tell her about the strange man, but Oli’s word’s echo in my mind. Instead, I read through my emails and bite my tongue.

Wednesday, morning.

The knife is covered in a brownish-red substance that is definitely not rust and, as I lift it cautiously out of the bathtub, I catch he faint but distinct scent of blood. Immediately, dread begins to spread through me.

“It’s a cleaver, Al.” Oli says when I confront him, addressing me as you would a small child, “I got it from work. For the roast we had on Sunday.”

“Oh.” Was all I could reply. As usual, I felt stupid.

“Please stop this, Ally. You’re going to get someone in trouble. Someone innocent. What, you really think I had something to do with those people being killed?” 

The hurt in his eyes makes me want to plunge the dirty cleaver into my chest. Instead, I hang my head and continue getting ready.

Wednesday, evening.

Oli isn’t home when I push the heavy front door open and trudge sullenly inside. I sigh, exhausted and cold from the evening air, gather my sweatpants and dressing gown and head to the bathroom, desperate for a scalding shower. I glance around the room briefly as I turn the shower on and spot the blood knife, still in the bathtub. 

I try to follow his advice and stop the thoughts and theories from racing through my mind. It’s the same knife. Oli must have forgotten to take it with him. 

He still isn’t home when I get out of the shower, and I can’t help but worry that something terrible has happened.

Wednesday, midnight.

Pressure on the mattress beside me sends me into a panicked state. I bolt upright and glance around in terror, then relax when I hear Oli’s calming voice.

“Ally, it’s only me.”

“Why are you so late? I murmur sleepily as I nuzzle into the blankets again.

“I was upset. I went out drinking with the guys. Needed some space. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

I smile absently.

“S’okay. I probably shouldn’t have accused you of murder.” 

Oli laughs.

“Probably not. You go back to sleep. I gotta wash this blood off my clothes.”

“Blood?” I all but screech, sitting bolt upright again, staring at his clothes and gaping in alarm. 

It’s dark, but I can practically hear him roll his eyes.

“From work, not my latest murder victim. Go to sleep, Al.”

I want to press him further, ask him why he hasn’t left his bloody clothes at work and why the knife is still laying in our usually pristine bathroom. Instead, I remember the fight and dive under the covers again.

Thursday, morning.

The following morning, I can’t keep my thoughts to myself. I sit at the table while Oli bustles around making toast and coffee for us both. 

“Hey,” I say, “Why is the knife still in out bathtub?”

Oli pauses in the middle of spreading jam on a slice of sourdough, then rolls his eyes.

“I caught the bus yesterday, Al. I don’t exactly want to take a bloody knife with me on public transport.” 

Yeah, probably not the best idea.

“I wasn’t accusing you of murder again.” I defend, “It’s just that blood stains easily and I’d like to clean the bathroom sometime soon.”

He places the toast and coffee in front of me, then settles down in the seat opposite.

“I’ll get rid of it today. Promise.”

Thursday, midday.

“My husband’s clothes had blood on them last night.” I say, breaking the heavy silence and causing Maud to raise a skeptical eyebrow.

“Ally, your husband is a butcher.”

“I know, but don’t they wear aprons? And shouldn’t he like… change clothes before he leaves? He usually does.”

Maud shrugs.

“I don’t know much about butchers.” She says distractedly, opening another file on her computer, “But if you want your marriage to last, I’d think twice before accusing him of murder. Besides, they’ve already caught the guy.”

“Without your help.” She adds. 

She actually looks up at me as I slump into my chair, and I’m almost sure there’s a hint of a smirk on her face.

Thursday, later.

I return from lunch to see a group of journalists gathered beside the elevator. Their voices are hushed, and I can only just work out what they’re saying.

“It can’t be him.” One says, “Didn’t you hear? There was another one last night.”

“…Might not have extensive knowledge of anatomy.” Says another, “…maybe a slaughterer or a butcher…”

Butcher.

The word bounces through my skull and sends my pulse drumming through the rest of my body. I stare after them as they climb into the elevator, bound for the first floor. I flash back to the fight yesterday, run through everything that was said, remember the blood on his clothes when he returned last night.

I leave work. I don’t tell Maud where I’m going. 

Thursday, afternoon.

The knife isn’t in the bathtub where Oli left it. I scan the room, open a cupboard, and rummage inside. My hand brushes against something cold and sharp hidden behind an old soap dispenser. I scour some more and bring out an unfamiliar wallet and an all-too-familiar apron. I gag, trying my hardest not to vomit as the smell of blood overwhelms me. I flip open the wallet and freeze. Staring back at me is a woman’s license, a credit card that isn’t his, a house key that doesn’t match ours.

I sit, slumped and shaking on the cold tiles, transfixed, until I hear the front door open. Blood rushes into my ears and every muscle in my body stops working. I hear the hall light flicker on, close my eyes, and prepare for the worst.

---

Bio: Emmy White is a writer and copy editor from Sydney, Australia. Her work can be found in Griffel Magazine, Offspring Magazine, ByMePoetry's 'Poetica II', and Train River Publishing's Spring 2020, Summer 2020, Winter 2020, and Spring 2021 anthologies. You can follow Emmy on Instagram at @poeticallyordinary

Victoria Costello

Can We Talk About Autofiction?

The first time I gathered the courage to let another human being read a deeply personal piece of my writing, I was a married mother of two and the reader was my married lover. When he finished reading it, this man swore he loved what I’d written, and I decided he was my soulmate. It turned out the affair—which ended soon after, as did my marriage—had a larger purpose. It helped me come out as a writer. In fact, the traumatic incident I’d shared in those pages appeared twelve years later in my published memoir, A Lethal Inheritance. It showed up again in my soon-to-be released debut novel, Orchid Child. 

As you might have guessed, my ex-lover didn’t make into either.

As a published writer of memoir and fiction, and as a teacher of writing, I share this episode, of which I’m not proud, for two reasons. First, to shine a light on today’s robust online writing community. Its existence gives aspiring writers many more, and I dare say healthier, outlets for sharing their work than were available a decade or two ago, making this the best of times to be a new writer. By new, I mean writers of any age who, like me, wrote in isolation for years before taking the plunge. Now, nascent authors working in every genre can find beta readers and writing groups with whom to share work in progress. They can also choose from a wide array of classes to hone their craft. 

Just not the same classes. 

That brings me to my second point. The artificial separation between memoir and fiction in the teaching of creative writing. By extension, the same counterproductive wall exists in our larger conversation about autobiographical writing. 

A case in point. In just the few days since the announcement of this year’s exciting winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, I’ve read one of Annie Ernaux’s novels referred to as ‘a thinly veiled memoir,’ and one of her memoirs called ‘a master class in autofiction.’ Such offhanded labeling, which I connect to a deeper void in critical thought, can make these the most confusing of times for new writers who consciously choose to combine elements of autobiography and fiction in their literary output. 

Arguably, it doesn’t do much for readers, either. Not when they receive a daily firehose of self-revelation delivered directly to their personal devices. Whether the medium is the written word, audio, or video or a combination thereof, the authors of these personal missives tend to use the breezy syntax of influencer culture to convey authenticity with varying success, making sorting and interpretation of this deluge a necessary if unthinking habit for those on the receiving end—aka all of us.

But what if the literary community was willing to lend some order to this chaos? By which I mean a more literate context for processing at least the written parts of this flood of content.

In the current don’t ask, don’t tell literary environment, writers and by extension readers of autofiction are left to essentially figure it out on their own. From where I sit as a writer and teacher of writing that falls into this critical void, we need new teaching and workshopping methods to nurture novelists who do more than a little borrowing from real life, and memoirists who freely add flights of fancy to their life stories. 

The theoretical infrastructure to address this void, although dusty, is already there. 

Most creative writing teachers would agree that the craft of narrative storytelling applies equally to both memoir and novels. They would acknowledge that there’s no way to teach either genre without drilling students in character, plot, theme, dialogue, setting, and theme. 

That’s where the consensus about likely ends. Teachers of students writing memoir make clear that they owe it to their readers to hew as close to what happened as humanly possible. If they choose to speculate, these student writers are instructed to say exactly what they’re doing in the text, or risk losing readers’ trust. I made exactly this point in a memoir craft book I published in 2011, and I teach it to this day because it still applies when a writer chooses to stay strictly within the memoir genre. But what if the memoirist doesn’t wish to stick to this one genre? As things stand now, that’s when they enter no man’s land.

The publishing world operates from the premise that if the word memoir is stamped on a book’s cover, a reader processes what she reads differently than if the same book were labeled a novel. We can only guess what would occur differently in readers’ minds if the labels were switched, but we cling to the distinction—as if we knew. As a result, published memoirs are still routinely subjected to purity tests and shaming rituals, with hell to pay if a relative or acquaintance takes issue with the memoirist’s depiction of certain people or events. 

Across the virtual hall, instructors of fiction readily acknowledge that real-life inspires much if not most fiction. But then most quickly make clear that for a work to be a proper novel, the similarity between the author’s life and art should be less than obvious. What if it is obvious? Then the author should play coy or dismiss the question as irrelevant, even insulting. 

The model for this wink-wink literary culture comes largely from publishers who take the safe way out and routinely categorize obviously autobiographical work as novels. This practice is reinforced by novelists who protest when readers assume or come right out and ask if their writing is about them. Comically, this same response is heard from prominent authors who name their protagonists after themselves and write plots mirroring their readily apparent real lives. 

Australian author Helen Garner, an early practitioner of auto-fiction in powerful work like The Spare Room, took this stance in a 1985 essay, writing, “This is the worst, most unanswerable, most infuriating question a writer has to confront.” She continues, “The word ‘auto-biographical’ is like a red rag to a bull because it seems to ignore the amount of hard slog we do, the endless work of observation and witnessing and things in our work that are pure invention.” One hopes Garner has gotten over her exasperation in the decades since. I somehow doubt it since you hear the same thing said by speakers at virtually every book festival. 

There have been isolated voices of reason from which writers and teachers of creative writing can take heart and direction. In The Situation and The Story, published in 2001, memoirist and literary critic Vivian Gornick decried the labelling of William Sebald’s books as novels. “We realize that it is the narrator who is the agent, the unifying idea. Not through what he tells us about himself or even through what he sees as he travels, but through the way he sees what he sees.” Seybald himself opined that to be subjected as a reader “to the rules and laws of fiction” had for him become “tedious.” 

This same superseding role for the authorial voice Gornick identified in Sebald’s work, where the narrator serves as both protagonist and as the primary agent for moving the narrative forward, applies to Rachel Cusk’s recent trilogy. In Outline, Transit and Kudos, Cusk’s narrator observes the world of a celebrated author who is obviously herself. Cusk appeared to concede that she is writing autofiction when in an interview she threw a literary grenade, saying, “I’m not interested in character because I don’t think character exists anymore.” 

At that point, until quite recently, the literary conversation stopped.

In his 2022 publication from Columbia University Press, Free Indirect, The Novel in a PostFictional Age, literary theorist Timothy Bewes begins his introduction with this same quote from Cusk and goes on to invoke Seybald, Zadie Smith, and J.M. Coetze, among others, as he makes the case that, unlike novels of the early and mid-twentieth century, the thought or meaning of the modern novel lies largely in what is unsaid. This, he says, along with the meta fictional awareness shown by characters of their own literary or formal quality, ‘renders indeterminate the distinction between reality and fiction.’ 

Bewes’s provocative argument seems to support the argument that since there’s no meaningful difference between fiction and nonfiction in today’s leading edge literary output, the genre conventions that once applied to both no longer apply. But then what? I would argue that precisely because of this blurring of lines, new thinking, and more conversation and clarity about the relevant theory and practice, are needed. Without it, authors are still on their own.

Yiyun Li has dealt devastatingly with the experience of a son’s suicide in both fiction and nonfiction, indeed the two are often indistinguishable, such as in her novel, Where Reasons End, when Li’s narrator communicates with a young man who exists in an undefined space about his decision to end his life. Coinciding with the release of her memoir, Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life, Li told an interviewer, “I always used to say strongly that I was not an autobiographical writer, so strongly it was clearly suspicious. … I can now say that is just a lie.” 

Poet and novelist Ocean Vuong, who in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous portrays the relationship between a young poet and his illiterate mother in the form of an extended letter, described the character of Little Dog as “a more patient, idealized version” of himself. My first thought reading this comment was, wouldn’t it be fascinating to have Vuong sit down with Cusk, perhaps invite Douglas Stuart, Akwaeke Emezi, and Sigrid Nunez, and ask them to break down the creative process of translating their authorial selves to the protagonists of their novels? To explore when and why they let parts of themselves go by the wayside in favor of other traits or careers or narrative circumstances? 

In a 2015 essay, Leslie Jamison asked the provocative question, “Why do we like that space of uncertainty in which we don’t know what’s been invented and what hasn’t?” Her premise, that readers who are not writers give this issue more than a moment’s thought, is debatable. It seems to me that readers assume an author’s life and art overlap to some degree. In asking the question of an author, they’re simply wanting to know how much. Maybe there’s a better answer than zero.

Meanwhile, writers of both memoir and autobiographical fiction continue to struggle with questions which are going largely unaddressed. For example, what does a memoirist owe her readers when she takes sizable liberties with the truth? Do we just assume readers get that pages of dialogue detailing conversations that happened twenty or thirty years ago are largely made up? If an author chooses to provide a caveat for said conversation, how can this information be artfully delivered?

In autofiction, how can authors make creative use of their proximity to (or distance from) themselves as narrators to enhance character and plot? Beyond not pissing off parents or siblings, what problems do fictionalizations of stories drawn from real life most effectively address? How do novelists and memoirists draw on the concept of the unreliability of memory in creating narrators?

There are many more questions and, I trust no shortage of solid answers out there in today’s large and generous writing community. Let’s dig in and have the conversation, shall we?

---

Victoria Costello is an Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, science journalist, and an author of memoir and autofiction. Her debut novel, Orchid Child, will be released by Between the Lines Publishing in June of 2023. Victoria teaches creative writing at Southern Oregon University and, online, at Memoir University, where her course When Memoir Becomes Autofiction is offered in January of 2023. See her work at victoriacostelloauthor.com Twitter @vcostelloauthor

Kimberly Diaz

An Offbeat Romance

I met him at a place called The Blue Parrot, a bit of a dive but they do have some good live music there sometimes. I’d gone there with a girlfriend to hear a band and see if we could maybe scrounge up a couple of men and some kind of love lives.  If not, at least we could get blitzed and have a few laughs. 

She spotted him first. He was smoking a cigarette. My friend Maddie always craves cigarettes when she’s tipsy. And she’s tipsy a lot. Still, she always puts Non-Smoker on all her dating profiles. I put Non-Smoker too, but I don’t smoke. I also check the box that says I drink socially but that’s a bit of a stretch.

Maddie waved him over, asked to bum a cigarette. He handed her the pack and pulled a lighter out of his shirt pocket. It was all silver and shiny, a hardcore kind of lighter. Serious smoker, I thought, too bad. On my dating profiles I always said I wouldn’t date a smoker. 

While he tended to Maddie, I gave him the thrice over. He was wearing jeans, and a dress shirt untucked. The cuffs on the long sleeves were turned up, and his boots were properly scuffed up and abused, sticking out from under his jeans. I love boots--another point for the handsome stranger. And his hair was dark, my fave, but it was also sticking up in the front. Kind of punky. He had to do that on purpose. 

I don’t go for vain guys, am totally turned off by weightlifters and bodybuilders and guys that obviously work too hard on their looks. But his hair did look kind of cool, it wasn’t too showy. Almost like he just got caught in a stiff breeze on the way over. 

As they smoked, I rocked out in my seat, enviously eyeing the couples drifting onto the dance floor. Maddie nudged him and said, “My friend here likes to dance.” 

“Is that so?” he said, holding out his hand. 

The band was playing “Call Me” by Blondie. He may have been a little surprised because I don’t follow any prescribed dance routines. I dance freestyle, energetically and kick my long legs up a lot. Sometimes guys are intimidated—or injured— by that, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Afterward, he said his name was Todd, that he was there with friends, and they were heading out to a blues bar. He pointed them out to me. A girl and two guys were standing near the exit gate covered with netting and starfish and all that corny nautical stuff. I wished he wasn’t leaving. I had a feeling I liked this guy. I grabbed the paper menu out of the grimy steel holder on the table and in the margin, next to Grouper Nuggets I think it was, I wrote my name and phone number.

“Call me,” I said. “For real.” 

He smiled. “A couple of buddies of mine are playing at Jimmy’s on Thursday. I’m not sure if you’d be up for it…”

Hell, yes, I’d be up for it. “That sounds fun.”

I agreed to meet him at his place first. I don’t know what I was expecting really but was disappointed when the GPS said I had arrived. There was a big front lawn leading to a small shoebox of a house that looked like it was just dropped onto the property almost as an afterthought. I knocked my usual soft knock that nobody hears but he opened the door right away even though he had loud music playing. It was not the kind I normally listened to, more heavy metal, headbanger stuff. I’m more of a classic rock girl.

“Are you ready to go?” I asked.

He nodded. “I just thought we might have a drink here first.”

I was thinking that wouldn’t be smart--to go inside for a drink. But I did it anyway. My inner voice gets a lot of pushback from me. When I first walked in, I was somewhat horrified. There was an entire wall of boxes stacked floor to ceiling in his foyer. Was he a hoarder? Yikes.

I was a struggling teacher and had hoped to find a lover with a better financial situation than mine. His looked to be worse. I was convinced that he was not going to be anything long-term. Then I noticed one box had Skates scrawled across it and thought maybe I was being a bit hasty. I hadn’t been on my rollerblades in way too long. 

He gestured around the room, “Have a seat.” 

The living room was full of musical equipment. He had a microphone stand, amplifiers, and drum set crowded into his living room, and there were guitars propped up all over the place too. 

I sat on the edge of the couch, “Are you in a band?” 

He shrugged. “We’re still looking for a bass player, but we’ve been auditioning some guys and practicing.”

Todd remembered I had been drinking pink wine at the bar and had a bottle of it chilling in his refrigerator. He was so gentlemanly. I decided to trust him. 

We had a great night. We went to the bar, chatted with his band friends between sets, drank and danced and I ended up spending the night. You could say we slept together but passed out in each other’s presence would be more accurate. I woke up early, tapped him on the shoulder and told him I was going home. It was still so dark out.

“What time is it?” he asked, in a painfully groggy voice.

When I said it was a little after four, he seemed surprised, but gallantly roused himself, threw a shirt over his boxers and walked me to my car.

For the next few months, the scenario played on repeat, night after night. We barhopped all over town seeing his friends in various bands, drinking, dancing, and crashing. This was not my usual lifestyle. He and his musician friends always stayed up late. I always got up early, but he was so charming, handsome, and fun, I found myself falling for him hard. 

On his birthday, I invited him to my place for dinner. My usual cooking style was lift film to vent, microwave on high for four minutes, but for him, I practically channeled Julia Child. After a shockingly tasty steak dinner, we stood on my tiny apartment balcony looking at the stars. He was into astrology, philosophy, things you couldn’t really get ahold of but could speculate on endlessly. He pointed out Orion’s Belt, claiming it followed him everywhere. I have spatial issues, still it seemed to me that the sky was where the stars hung out and the sky was always everywhere. But later that night when we danced in my bedroom we were in complete agreement.

The next day was Super Bowl Sunday and Todd invited me to something called an Empowerment Ceremony at a Buddhist Retreat. I’d never been to anything like that but was happy that for once he wanted to do something with just me and not with his friends. I guess you could say it was interesting. The lama was smiling and talking about kindness and thankfulness and compassion which was nice but kind of got old after a few hours. The one bright spot for me was the naming ceremony where everyone took turns kneeling and chanting and then touching heads with the lama. After he touched heads with you, he would give you a Buddhist name and you would scoot over to his secretary to find out what it meant. He gave me the name Zangmo, and I was so happy to find out it meant noble, meaningful jewel. The woman in front of me got a name that meant impatient. 

We were there all day, and I was looking forward to getting back to his place, where we could be alone and maybe hit the hay awake again. Instead, when we got there, he said we were invited to a Super Bowl party.

I frowned. I thought we’d dodged that bullet. “Isn’t the Super Bowl over by now?” 

“No,” he said, “it starts at 7. Don’t you want to go?”

I didn’t think I needed to explain all the reasons why that would be a NO. I hated football, had already been a good sport about the Buddhist retreat and we’d recently gone to that infamous next level. Weren’t we supposed to be closer now or something? 

“I don’t want to go to a stupid Super Bowl party!”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” 

“So that’s it, you’re just going?” I snarled. 

“I spent the whole day with you. I want to see my other friends too.”                                 

I couldn’t believe he was being this way. “We’re always with your friends. Why can’t we just be alone sometimes?” 

He ran a hand through his ridiculous hair. “You know I can’t commit.” 

“Who asked you to?” I screamed, storming out.

The noble and meaningful jewel was pissed! 

I started the car. I never asked for any kind of freaking commitment! I just wanted a replay.

“Please come back inside,” he said, holding onto the roof of the car.

The way he looked then, pleading with me, being his usual polite self, I was tempted. I almost opened the door. But my inner voice told me it was hopeless and for once I listened. I put the car in reverse. 

He would always put his friends, his band, first. I was doomed to just tag along.

As I was driving home, it occurred to me that maybe I had been empowered in that ceremony, and sadly, that we never had gotten around to skating.

---

Kimberly Diaz is a teacher and writer in Gulfport, Florida. Her work appears in Another Chicago Magazine, Entropy, Montana Mouthful, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and other lit mags and anthologies. She is currently working on an essay collection and an autobiographical novel.

Sadee Bee

Forty-Two Tiles

There are forty-two tiles on this ceiling. I have counted them over a dozen times. Isn’t the answer forty-two? I am here because I fear I have questioned the meaning of life too much. At least now I know the answer is not in fact, forty-two pills. Their bitter taste still lingers on the back of my tongue as endless apple juice containers litter the table. Sugar helps the medicine go down. 

Such a miracle that I did not swallow them, or perhaps a more divine intervention. No, not God or anything of the sort, but something more ethereal. It was as though intangible hands of someone who has been here before scooped the pills from my mouth. Frigid whispers in my ear said I only need to call someone. How convenient, considering my phone is playing the soundtrack to my demise. When the abyss speaks, I listen. 

This room is an echo chamber and colder than a cave. With the double-paned windows, it is more like an empty fishbowl. Ever present eyes on my prone body and half-dead mind; I am too numb to think. A curse and a blessing really. In the absence of thought, time becomes less linear. I travel in and out of consciousness amid the battery of questions from faceless figures that say they only want to help. 

I have no choice but to let them. Much like a fish, I am unable to leave this place; nor do I possess the will. Instead, I dream fitfully during my bouts of slumber, about those that have laid in this bed before me, and those that never made it here. I even dream of those that will come after, because there will be an after. Perhaps those ethereal hands in my bathroom carried me here as they know something I do not. No person is ever so broken that they cannot be healed but there is no miraculous return from death.

So, here I lay, waiting to be carted off to another place to espouse my woes to complete strangers. Sure, I am lucky. Though what is luck when nothing feels real? What is luck but fate actualized? There I go, thinking again, letting my mind go round and round. At least the ceiling tiles have not disappeared. Yes, the answer is in fact forty-two.

---

Sadee Bee is ever-evolving, as living with mental illness is never a straight line. She hopes to be a voice and advocate for those like her. She is inspired by strange dreams, magic, and creepy vibes. Sadee has been published by Alien Buddha Press, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, Wishbone Words, and The Hyacinth Review. Website: https://sadeebeeauthor.com/ Twitter: @SadeeBee

Sahar Fathi

What's In a Name

My name

Defines me.

It means

I got bullied growing up,

Cried all the way home 

More than once,

That grown-ass people

Still give me that

Pained look when I tell them

“It’s not Sarah,”

It means that

I don’t order Starbucks

Without a fake name

In my back pocket 

(I have two).

It is stubborn

Like I was when

I told my immigrant parents

Not to change it 

To something easier

Because they worried

Someday something bad

Might happen

It means

The ‘Dawn of Victory’

And when I tell

Someone born Persian

Their eyes light up

Repeating it and savoring 

The feeling of the poetry

In their mouths and

It means

That if I tell you-

If I whisper to you-

My real name,

That I am winning

In this war against all that is

Brown and different in America,

That truly,

I have already won.

---

Sahar Fathi graduated from the University of Washington Law School and is a member of the New York bar. She has served as adjunct faculty at Seattle University and the University of Washington School of Law. Her poetry has been printed in Writers Resist and the Writers Resist: Anthology (2018), as well as featured in the Feelings' Journal, Not Your Mother's Breastmilk, and in ARTS by the People and Swimming with Elephants.

Nam Tran

Strata

My fascination with Geology began in 5th grade when Bill Nye taught me about rocks and soil during S03E04, which was aptly titled "Rocks & Soil." I'll admit I didn't give two hoots about either one up until that point, viewing them as nothing more than parts of the Earth. It wasn't until Bill Nye gave me the whole spiel in his fancy goggles and clay tarnished lab coat did I realize he was onto something when he exclaimed to no-one in particular, "Rocks rock!" The collage above is one of several creative byproducts of attempting to channel the wonder Bill Nye instilled in me years ago. While abstract in nature, "Strata" aims to mimic ways in which various layers of sediment are compacted over time to form a unified entity. 

Nam Hoang Tran writes and makes things from a small home in Orlando, FL. You can find more of his work online at www.namhtran.com. He enjoys scones.

Austin Gilmore

We Buy Houses

His sleep regressed when he started Kindergarten. That was four years ago, and I’m still stuck sleeping with him in his twin bed every night.

“Where are you going!?” he screams when I take my first step out of his bed, attempting an escape.

He’ll never let me go. I’m stuck here. 

We Buy Houses.

At least, that’s what my signs claim, hammered in the ground by every intersection in town. The “We” was as a trick, creating the illusion of a legit company full of real estate agents and house flippers. But it was just me.  

I drag him to every open house. What else can I do? Hire a babysitter or drop him off at his grandparents’ every time one became available? A big part of this business is timing. Even the most dilapidated houses get snatched up in the blink of an eye. I never have time to hand him off.

So, I guess it is “We.” 

Early on, he thought every house we bought was ours to keep. The concept of flipping is hard to explain to a child. There were houses he loved and wanted for himself, and some he hated. And then there was 617 Sycamore Ave. The house he wouldn’t enter.

Every parenting book says the same thing: trust your kid’s intuition. Listen to them. Make it clear they are being heard.

I didn’t do any of that. 617 Sycamore was a beautiful house hidden beneath overgrown everything, in the middle of the most sought-after neighborhood in town. A house no one would buy because it was deemed “unfixable.” Some even used the word “haunted.” But the price, oh my God the price was so cheap, and the neighborhood…

I begged him to come in and have a quick look. And to his credit, even though I could see the fear in his eyes, he took my hand, and we stepped inside together. But after one step he was running away, screaming, “I’ll just wait in the car!”

I bought the house for so cheap it felt like robbery. I laid in his bed that night dreaming of a plan for 617 Sycamore. Blast the wall in the dining room. Rip out the carpet on the stairs. Replace the light fixtures in the main bathroom---

“That’s where I died.”

A freezing wave of fear rushed through me. I looked down at my sleeping son, arms cuddled around his haggard teddy bear, and watched as the raspy sound of an older woman’s voice escaped from his barely moving mouth.

“I cracked my head open on the counter. My husband found what was left of me a week later, after he got back from a trip with his not-so-secret girlfriend.” 

She went on for hours, describing her death in gruesome detail, going so far as to tell me what her cat did to her after so many days. The voice finally petered out and slept. I, on the other hand, did not. I sat in the dark the rest of the night in a petrified shock.

The next morning he didn’t wake up. He slept through my alarm and as the sun invaded his room. Even when I got out of his bed and went downstairs to make breakfast, he didn’t stir.  

My wish had come true. He was finally sleeping alone, but now with a visible shiver and deep cough. I yearned for what I once had. Him screaming for me, “Where are you going! Where have you been?!” 

The silence was as terrifying as her smoker’s voice.

Not knowing what else to do I laid back down with him. I put his head on my chest and, as I usually do as a fly-from-the-seat-of-my-pants single father, went through all my options. Hours passed and I realized, realistically, I only had one. 

I asked him a question, hoping she‘d answer.

“What do you want?”

“Get me to my husband and I’ll release your boy.”

“The one who cheated on you?”

“I want to haunt him until the day he dies and for an eternity after. If not, this body will do.”

“Gimme his address.”

I rang the bell with my son by my side. Not awake but standing, his ice-cold hand in mine. When the sixty-year-old man in a flowing Tommy Bahama shirt opened the door, I introduced myself and told him I had a client who would be willing to pay top dollar for his house and asked if he’d ever consider selling. 

He let me in because, as I’ve learned through the years, everyone has a price. And as my sleeping child took one step into the house his skin warmed, his eyes fluttered, and I heard his sweet 10-year-old voice ask, “Where are we, Dad?”

We stayed long enough to see something unseen bump into the mirror hanging behind the man. She was there. She got where she needed to be. It was his problem now.

“Wanna check out 617 on our way home?” I asked as we walked back to our car.

Not only did he want to, but he ran inside and explored the house as if it were any other. I watched him, now knowing my son was different. He sensed her presence; he took her where she wanted to go. He was a vessel.

Now we hunt those houses down. The ones where tragedy looms. Where spirits are trapped. Most are pissed off, vindictive, and downwright evil, but they always leave him when we take them to where they want to go.  

“What if one doesn’t want to leave me?” he asked me one time, his voice trembling.

“I’ll never let that happen.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Trust your kid’s intuition. Listen to them. Make it clear they are being heard.

But the houses are so cheap, and we are the only ones who can fix them.

I can do this.

He’ll be fine.

We buy houses. 

---

Austin Gilmore is an Art Director and Gallery Artist based in Kansas City. Before that, he was co-ran Kevin Costner's production company for 7 years. His work has previously appeared in Tangled Locks Journal and his various personal hard drives, filled with American Pie and American Gladiator fan-fiction.

Kathryn Temple

Sister Sister

Last night I dreamt you opened doors for me.
A door to a castle; a door to a garden.

Not much to interpret I laughed still dreaming.

When we were small, we told stories all night.
Just one more thing one more thing I have to say, we said.

The doors were wide open, we were our own village,
We ran wild in the woods, we rushed through the rushes, oh.

Picked our way through barbed wire,
Feared snakes in trees not.
Feared our mother who was not, not.

Sometimes you were so kind.

Sometimes you were so mean.
Doors closed. Letters like spears came thrust through their drops,
we read them not.

We rammed those doors shut with those spears.

We never talked, we never told stories, we lauded our silence,
Heart blood was shed, red wine stained on a white shirt, loss, rage, secrets

blurted

slurs, ugly, ugly again, ugly as sin. You wrote it on a paper.

It was a sin.

Last night I dreamt you opened doors for me.
White light streamed in; you stood and smiled

Your warm arm curved out to me, come right through, come here, you said.

---

Kathryn Temple teaches at Georgetown University. Her poems, personal essays, and academic essays all derive from powerful images that incite complex emotional reactions. You can find some short personal essays and some writing advice here: https://medium.com/@templek and some of her academic work here: https://georgetown.academia.edu/KathrynTemple