January 2012 | back-issues, fiction
By D. Trunick
Eyes wide, legs quivering, sweat glistening, she feels ready to heave. The thick dusty red curtain brushes against her hands but provides no relief. “Why can’t I do this?” rolls from her dry parched lips. Panic and desperation enter her heart like a flash flood. She longingly watches from the side. Her conflicted soul jolts alive with the increasing brilliance of the lights above. Never stepping into view, her shadow begins to spin and sway to the music. Behind the curtain she stands dreaming of the day she too will be the one in the spotlight.
January 2012 | back-issues, fiction
By Sara Shah
And so She was created from the dust, She who was Beauty, Compassion, and Love. The Creator placed her under the foliage of the dark forest, with an abundance of berries and seeds. She lived, alone.
The Creator viewed her solitary state with sadness and sent beasts of the forest to accompany her. The beasts, although friendly, were not the proper companions to such a creature as She. However, the Creator quickly formed a new thought. The Creator impelled She’s eyes to close, and She’s being to fall into the state of Dream. While She surrendered to this new and peaceful state, the Creator took from her being and created a companion for She. For the Creator, with knowledge of everything in the sphere of all that is and has been, created.
From She, came He.
Slowly She opened her eyes and viewed the new creature beside her. He was so much like her; He did not look like any of the beasts from the depths of the dark forest. He who was Strength, Security, and Companionship, He was hers. She caressed his head and felt only love. He opened his eyes carefully, for the light of the forest was powerful, and his young eyes were not accustomed to such brightness. He looked into She’s eyes deeply and across his lips formed a sign of happiness. She could not help but notice his beauty, so like hers. She took He by the hand and showed him the ways of the dark forest, She fed him berries, She introduced him to the beasts, and She warned him of the forbidden fruit…
October 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Pavelle Wesser
I enter the elevator, watching the blinking red lights as I descend to lower level number nine, where I exit to face my interviewer. His gaze is so fathomless it fills me with a coldness that is absolute in its sense of…
“Zero,” he informs me, “is the sum total of your life, yet I believe that everyone has the right to calculate his or her own loss.”
He points me toward a cubicle, empty but for a desk, chair and adding machine. I sit and begin tapping out senseless strings of numbers. I look up hours later, as a shadow falls across my desk.
“Who’s there?” I ask.
“Please be advised that tomorrow has been eliminated by default,” a voice echoes from an undetermined location. Just then, the adding machine screen goes blank, and I yell.
“The sum total is zero.”
This hardly matters, I realize, as the past has washed away, the future will never and the now is not happening. I consider the elements of zero even as my mind goes blank and there is no longer anything, not even this.
October 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Gina Douglas
My maternal grandmother and my father both told related stories about me when I was a child first learning to talk. I don’t think my Baba and my dad ever heard the other one’s story, nor did they ever put their stories together into the real story.
My ol’ man used to proudly tell about the first two-word combination I put together. He thought it was real clever. We were in the grocery store, I was seated in the buggy. I pointed at what I wanted and said the words. The item was animal crackers, the kind that used to come in a small rectangular box, with pictures of circus animals in cages on the side of the box; and a piece of rope to make a carrying handle. I referred to this as a “cookie-purse”.
On the Jewish side of my family, Baba used to tell how she was too clever by half. I liked animal crackers, but the little boxes from the drug store across the street were not a good value; compared to buying a big bag of the same brand animal crackers at the grocery store. But kids will do the darndest things, and when she offered me a plate of animal crackers from the big bag, I wouldn’t eat them. Go figure?
They never put their stories together and realized that, in regards to the cookie-purse, I didn’t care about the cookies, I wanted the purse.
July 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Jake DeHaai
His bright blue eyes provided the only color to the barren wasteland. The deep creases around his mouth told tales of violence, love, and loss. He walked across the decrepit highway, the realization had set in, he was alone. He was isolated. His past had hardened him, taught him to show no emotion. Yet his internal sadness had broken out of his hardened shell and was plastered on his face permanently. The emptiness of this land constantly reminded him that everyone he had ever loved, spoke to, or even glanced at—were dead.
Screaming. Buildings engulfed in fire. People burning, trying to run from imminent death.
He used to walk the path of God; but after seeing what man could do to each other, he had decided that there was no God, for no God could let its creation do this to one another.
All the man had done was walk. He was constantly on the move, on the run from his pain, sleeping wherever he could, but never for more than a few hours. The soldiers would find him if he did. Every day was just like the last, wandering, trying to survive as the pale gray sky loomed over him.
Eyes blinded by the bright light, which followed the ear shattering boom. The concussion knocked over buildings, uprooted trees.
Pieces of his past came to him, but only in snippets. His conscious was in turmoil, plaguing him with despair. But then he saw the town. It was like a distant desert oasis, luring him with food and safety. But soon skepticism took a hold of him. The soldiers patrolled the towns, looking for him. He gathered up his courage and decided to take his chances, for he needed food.
Upon approaching the town, with one hand on his pistol, he gazed out at the ramshackled buildings, lifeless and ruined, and his inner feeling of hope dispersed. He wandered the streets of the ghost town. The cracked pavement of the road and the dilapidated facades of the buildings set off an eery tone. The ruins of rundown park caught his eye. He could still see the frame of the rusted over swing-set. The metal merry-go-round was turning slowly in the breeze, creaking with each movement. He made his way toward a faded bench. Sitting on it he opened up his rucksack. It was littered with .44 bullets and empty tin cans. As he noticed the bullets, the realization of his situation started to set in. An idea expanded across his face. It was appealing, for he had no food, no water, no friends, no shelter, and no hope.
He took the pistol out of his belt, pressed the catch on the side. He sat there and watched as the clip fell to the ground. The ringing of the metal hitting the street filled the town with noise. He didn’t care. He slowly picked it up, feeling its weight in his hands. He sorted through his array of bullets and chose one. He brought it to eye level and gazed at it. It was weathered and scratched with age. He brought it back down and pushed it into the clip. He put the clip back in the gun and pulled back the slide. He felt the cold hard steel in his mouth as he was preparing to pull the trigger. He squeezed.
July 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Charles Rafferty
He stole the stars above her house, pulling them out with a claw hammer. She wouldn’t love him anymore, so he left her with a blue-black vault of night — the color of the grackles he used to throw rocks at as they crowded out the other birds around their backyard feeder.
He wanted her to see that the sky had been looted. She never noticed though, because already she had taken a lover, and why would she need the sky and its Rorschach of light when she had a man to pin her to the bed each night?
Meanwhile, the stars were back at his place. It was hard to sleep with the glow of them leaking out of his dresser drawers and the bed too big without her. So off he’d go to the couch, which at least reminded him of the times when she had lived there.
Some nights, he’d get up, walk across town, and climb into the crook of her backyard maple — the one with a view of her curtains and the shadow play of bodies.
One night he waited for the other man’s car to leave. Then he reached into his pocket for the pebbles. The first one hit the window and the light came on. She peered into the night, and didn’t seem to notice it was a tiny bit darker. He tried to order his loneliness, to give it a shape so it could fit upon his tongue, but it only slid back and choked him. Then the window came down with a decisive thud, and the light went off again.
He knew he’d be up in her tree forever, and for the first time since taking them, he wanted to return the stars, to make beautiful the sky he would wait beneath.
Charles Rafferty is primarily a poet. Recent poems appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker and The Literary Review. In 2009, he received an NEA fellowship. His most recent book is A Less Fabulous Infinity. Currently, Charles directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College.
