Eucalyptus

January 2022 | fiction

A full moon turned the tops of the coastal dunes blue and shone silver off the Pacific. Alex sat next to Sophia, not touching, silent. They stared into the bonfire fueled by creosote bush and sage. Its smoke filled the air with a musky, earthy scent. Sophia’s shoulders shook. With her head bowed, her long blonde hair hid her face.

Alex turned, reached out and raised her chin. He leaned forward and lightly kissed each tear-filled eye, tasting the salt. Her trembling lips felt as soft as he remembered from months before.

“I’ve gotta go,” he said.

“Not yet.”

“It’ll get easier.”

“Easier for whom?”

Alex dropped her hand and struggled to his feet in the deep sand. “Goodbye, Sophia . . . sorry.”

He moved along the trail and into the nearby trees, using his cell phone light to guide the way. The eucalyptus rustled in the onshore breeze, their scimitar leaves rattling. Don’t look back. Whatever you do, don’t look back. Don’t look.

But he did.

Sophia sat cross-legged before the fire, still close enough for Alex to hear her sobs. She beat her legs with her fists and rocked back and forth. A night heron called. Alex stared at his cell phone screen.

With trembling fingers he texted, “Sophia, are you all right?”

Her cell buzzed and she dug into her purse and retrieved the phone. She stared at it for a long time before answering, “No.”

Alex’s cell buzzed when he received her reply. Sophia turned and stared toward the trees where he hid. She struggled to her feet, the curve of her belly mirroring the curve of the moon. She faced him across the darkness, a ghostly silhouette rimmed in soft blue. Alex felt that exquisite pain, that internal compression that can bend iron. He took a step back into the trees and breathed in their fragrance. The eucalyptus rattled even louder.

He moved forward, toward the fire and Sophia.

Terry Sanville

Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and two plump cats (his in-house critics). He writes full-time, producing short stories, essays, and novels. His short stories have been accepted more than 440 times by journals, magazines, and anthologies including The Potomac Review, The Bryant Literary Review, and Shenandoah. He was nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes and once for inclusion in Best of the Net anthology. Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.

Under a White-Hot Sky

January 2022 | fiction

My plane descended from the white-hot sky as slowly as the soufflé I had baked for the dinner at which I planned to celebrate my engagement to Ross.  He canceled, calling to say we should date other people, and hung up without a goodbye, good luck, or farewell kiss.  After several hours, I stopped phoning and texting.  I had my pride.

I tried hanging myself, but the heating pipe did not support my weight.  My life savings went to my landlord and his thieving plumber and carpenter.  Drinking myself to death failed as I passed out before my blood alcohol achieved a fatal level.  I turned to jaywalking, first city streets, then Interstates, but survived every crossing.  God had chosen me to live long and suffer.

Now, under a white sun, my mouth filled with sucking candies to guarantee an ample supply of saliva, I prepared to spit on the white pine coffin mocking me from the bottom of Ross’s grave.  Mourners shunned me as if they knew I was one of the damned. I did not try to hide it.

“I’m Ross’s mom.”  A woman, veiled and wreathed in black, offered a gloved hand.

I steeled myself against syrupy reminiscences.  She would expect some in return and I had none to offer.

“You must be Tomãs,” she said.  “Ross found out the afternoon he called.  He did not want to ruin a second life.”  She lowered her eyes and returned to the arms of her surviving children.

The heat-sealed my tear ducts and cottoned my mouth.  The sun fired my hair.  Shame burned away my skin, exposing my soul to the solar wind.  I hurled myself onto Ross’s coffin, clinging to it with such ferocity it took all eight pallbearers to break my death grip and wrestle my lifeless body from his grave.

Frederic Liss

Liss’s first novel was published in July 2020 and second novel will be published in May 2022. He’s a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Prize, the St. Lawrence Book Award, and the Bakeless Prize. He’s published over 55 short stories in, inter alia, The Saturday Evening Post, The South Dakota Review, The South Carolina Review, H.O.W. Literary Journal, Two Bridges Review, Hunger Mountain, The Florida Review, Carve Magazine, and Fifth Wednesday Journal. He earned an MFA from Emerson College, Boston, MA, and leads a fiction workshop at the St. Botolph Club, Boston, MA. Visit his website at www.sfredericliss.com for more information.