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But Jael wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him [Sisera] and drove the peg into his temple. —Judges 4:21 Because it’s about 6 inches but gets sold as 9. No one can live on cardboard soup. Because you can wrap your hand around it, feel ready. No one thought to bring a gun. Because it is hot dog shaped, rocket shaped, shaped like the Washington Monument. Because it is harder than the earth or a temple, or at least it thinks it is. In WWI the commanders, those bombastic fools, sent waves of row-boated yahoos to their death by the bloody thousands. Because it has a point to make. Because it turns a woman into a “phallic murderer.” Sometimes it’s right to disturb the world. Haven’t we all read Bleak House? Someone explodes. Deborah Bacharach is the author of two full length poetry collections Shake & Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in Poetry Ireland Review, New Letters and The Writer’s Chronicle among many others. Find out more about her at DeborahBacharach.com.

By: William Hayward My children are fat, my children are twins, my children are fat twins. They were small when they were born, barely the size of limpets, falling out of me with no pain while I was taking a shower. They slid down the curved walls of the bathtub to rest by the plug, crying like foxes. I hadn’t known I was pregnant. Though they were small and premature looking, their features were perfectly formed, their eyes and mouths wrinkled and open like black holes with two little white teeth, one on the bottom and one on the top. My partner, who’d always considered being a father his God-given profession, heard their cries through the shower’s falling water. His ears pricked up, wiggling like a dog’s at the sight of a perfect furry rump, and didn’t even think about it, running up the stairs with bounds to caress his children. I stared without moving when they fell out of me, stared as they cried under the shower’s heavy flow, little dolls being tossed by a shampoo-tinted hurricane before my partner came to rescue them. My children grew fast, my children grew fat. Two weeks after falling out of me they were the size of normal babies if normal babies weren’t normal babies at all but obese jellyfish. Their skin accommodates them, growing with them like a pair of everlasting pyjamas, stretching and moulding in ways normal skin doesn’t, moving in random directions as they have no concrete bones to hold it all in place. They didn’t feed on me even from the start and ate solid food, craved solid food, as soon as they dropped out of me. I tried to offer them my breast as my partner carried us all from the shower but one of them bit a chunk off my proffered nipple and now it has the shape of a crooked man, so I haven’t offered it again. They drink nothing at all, but eat anything they can get their hands on. Bacon, sausage, egg, fish, cream, expired and curdled milk, cereal, cereal boxes, carrots, pepper (red, green, yellow, and orange), caviar, hummus, pitta bread, crackers, guacamole, popcorn, candy floss, name brand chocolate bars, pencils, half baguettes, cupboard drawers, apples, pears, celluloid and metal dildos, elephants made of wood, whole baguettes, blocks of cheese, jars containing jalapenos or pickles, beans (baked and the other kinds), rice, cucumbers, gumbo, jambolana, soup, celery, courgettes, large screws, small screws, peppers, bottles of wine, bowling skittles, tacos, burritos, every combination of microwave meal, microwave meal packages, any type of package, any type of animal not considered too big to put up a fight, any type of toy, plastic, wood, metal, brick, mortar, tar, parts of the dining room chairs, chunks of the settee, nibbles from our mattress, plates, pretend moustaches, wigs, human hair, animal hair, miscellaneous substances resembling hair, bowls, forks, spoons, knives, mud, the light in a particularly light room, the dark in a particularly dark room, the warmth of a heating, the green of grass, the rainbow sheen of oil and water, bricks, generic aluminium, iron, and plastic. It all goes in their mouth to be devoured, spaces in the world left void from their insatiable hunger. They eat, they grow, they eat and grow fat. At four months they’re the same size as me horizontally and the only noise they make is a shrill cry that forms the word, “Daddy”. I think they are a boy and a girl, but it’s impossible to tell, their features continually change. At one point, that is this point, one has blue eyes and more freckles than skin, the other black eyes and the white face of a mime. They haven’t looked like me or my partner at any point; I’m squat with a fast mind and clear face, my partner tall and skinny with a kind mouth. I like his kind mouth, it’s shaped kind and says kind things. Though since I told him I think sometimes in a negative way about our twin’s fatness, it’s only ever shaped kind towards them, leaving me to stare longingly at it flap. My children have arms and legs, my children are identical twins in this department. My children’s identical arms and legs are oddly proportioned compared to their huge masses- still the size of newborn babies and petite with soft fingernails that refuse to harden no matter how many milk bottles they swallow whole. When their little arms and legs wiggle around it’s like they belong to newborn babies, wiggling as they do without thought, jerking up and down in a constant state of seizure, as if trying to grab flies out of the air, as if trying to kick the skeleton out of some invisible omnipresent god. My children’s heads have sunk into their necks that have sunk further still so their heads are almost level with their torsos and have no shape to them. Their features, so perfectly formed at birth, haven’t grown with their bodies or even heads and look like tiny paintings done on pools of oddly coloured porridge, egg yolks on masses of expanding flesh. The only parts of their features that grow are their mouths, which change shape according to what they are eating. Their mouths are very wet, a line of spittle stretches like a plumber hanging from a pipe from their top tooth to the bottom, and their barely discernible throats swallow almost constantly, regardless of if there is anything to swallow. My children have lived on the living room floor since they were two months old, as picking them up even then was like trying to keep a giant water droplet perfectly formed, or a slug perpetually moist. I try now and then but they slide like ferrets through pinholes from my grasp, re-forming in their usual positions on the floor, mouths screaming until my partner runs in and shouts at me until I cry and punch him in the face. Our family money sits in bundles on the kitchen table, the most desirable coins and notes getting picked off daily like orphans to be spent on things for the children that we can’t steal for free. My partner wants them to have a varied diet and insists they eat at least one new thing a day. Our bundles are like manatees diving beneath a black sea and vanish without warning, quickly, but not as quickly as the things we buy for the children. Standing by the kitchen table, I look at the dwindling like I would a sculpture and tell my partner to go to the shop in the same manner the devout wait at the gates of heaven. My partner, playing with the twin’s feet by letting them kick his chin so hard his head jerks up and down like a malfunctioning cuckoo clock, looks at me, vibrating, and blows a raspberry with his tongue. “You go. I’m playing with the twins.” The gates of heaven slam shut and my anus does what it would do if a probing finger was trying to experiment in there. “Don’t say no to me. Go. Now. Go. One of us needs to go.” “I’m playing. If one of us needs to go, let it be you. The walk will do you some good. I’ve noticed your ankles are getting bigger.” The surprise of him not doing what I say as soon as I say it makes me do what he says as he says it, leaving and bringing back chutney sandwiches, the smell of an autumn morning, and a collection of two-by-fours for the children to consume. I lower them all slowly into their mouths myself as they scream, “Daddy,” to the ceiling while ‘Daddy’ watches, his kind mouth smiling. My children watch me like I’m a game of dominoes while my partner sits in the tiny diamond shaped space between their spreading masses ripping our pillows into bite-sized pieces, feeding their wet mouths with doting fingers. They’re taking up the whole living room, there’s no room for me. Boulders dash against each other in my stomach and I can’t stop thinking about the living room carpet - it’s been so long since I’ve seen the living room carpet that in my mind it is a penguin waddling into an Icelandic dusk. Sometimes I remember it with a green pattern that always reminded me of the tropics and other times I remember that in another memory it’s completely white with a red smear on it, the remnant of a body painting episode. “I’m out of pillows,” my partner says, throwing his hands up to display their lack of pillow. “Get me the ones from our bed.” “But we sleep on those.” “Now our babies intestines will sleep on them. You bad bad mother. You bad bad woman. You don’t want our babies intestines to sleep comfortably?” My children are fat, my children are twins, my children are fat twins without a single hole for anything they consume to escape from. It’s why they’re growing so large, they hoard what they swallow in their pits and their fleshes simply expand to keep everything inside. Sometimes, when my partner isn’t around, I approach them and press on their colossal bodies, stretching their skin until the shape of some undigested food or object appears. When they do, my mouth becomes as wet as theirs and somewhere discreet I hunger for all of it, my gullet howling, a quality we share. The living room carpet plagues me, changing from green to white to red to blue to black in my mind, rolling over and over again, a kaleidoscope zigzagging like a blind flamingo across my vision as I lie in bed, missing my pillows and my partner who has left our bed for the warmth the bodies of our children provide him, telling me his love for them makes them more comfortable than any mattress shared with me. I punched his face when he first told me this, five times, and was caught off guard when he punched my face back, six times. Fed up with lying in bed, I sneak out of the house for a walk and end up at the canal. Dipping a stick into the water as I walk, watching the marks it leaves on the surface. I take it out of the water and swing it around as I remember doing when I was young and still played, shoving it into monsters and ghouls, puncturing their guts and wriggling it around, giggling. My children never giggle. An old homeless woman sits on the canal walkway wearing a long grey rag dotted with little burn holes. Her face, wrinkled like an elephant’s ass, has a nose that mocks her mouth for being so far behind it, and eyes stitched shut with thick black thread. I decide to play with her, challenging her with my stick, thrusting it under her chin to lightly tickle the hairs there with its nobbled end. She smiles, tilts her head to make it clear she can see despite the thread, and makes me feel noticed. “En garde,” I lunge, lightly stabbing her shoulder before rapping her skull. “You’ll eat your children soon,” she nods, making her smile disappear by spreading her long grey rag out wide and ducking her head beneath it. I stab at the mouth moving beneath her rag and feel her teeth clamp down on my stick’s end, the impact of their calcium vibrating through the wood as she speaks more, her voice echoing. “Eat them quickly. Num num in your tum tum.” Then the grey rag falls to the ground, empty, the body that had been inside gone without leaving a stain. I prod at the rag for a while and then run home, the living room waiting for me, and the sight of my partner lying horizontally across the children’s bodies, his legs sprawled across their jerking infantile limbs and immovable squishy torsos, displayed for me like the scene of some painting to be. There is a bright light in my stomach casting shadows over my innards and a great respect for the elderly arises in me so, falling limply, I slither into the living room and eat my children whole, sucking at their liquid flesh, my mouth stretching as theirs do, pulling them back into me. They don’t scream as I do it. My partner rolls off them and onto the living room carpet, which I’m surprised to see doesn’t exist at all, without waking. As I swallow them, all the parts of the world that once filled them now fills me and my stomach tries to emulate their rapid expansion, a heathen’s hand stretching to the heavens, finally giving me the belly my children never gave me before. My new belly is like a drum, with my children’s features pressed tight against the skin. Their little noses and the hollows of their eyes and mouths peering out from me like a ghost in a sheet. I’m very full with the part of the world the children had consumed inside me. I can barely stand, but do so, stumbling up just as a wave of gas approaches my throat with all the correct permits and papers to demand release. The burp rips out of me, smelling of leather and bubble bath and providing no relief. I stumble against the wall, against a photograph of me and my partner at the beach, my partner with a black eye and holding me timidly. The photograph, deciding to do its image justice, grabs me, the teeny arms of my photographic partner stretching out from the image, growing larger and gripping me as my real partner wakes up, his kind mouth growing progressively unkinder as he searches the floor for the children with fatherly palm pats and looks at me. His eyes fall like stars upon my protruding belly and his head shakes at the children’s features pressed rigidly against the skin. “You’ve eaten our children. Our babies. Our twins.” “Our fat children. Our fat babies. Our fat twins.” My voice is oddly deep from the pressure building in my stomach. My partner’s photographic hands tighten as his real hands gesture weakly at my belly. “Oh hypocrisy, come, come lap on this moment. Look at yourself now fatty. Fatty fatty bum bum. Miss fit to burst. Miss piggy rutting for scraps.” “They were eating the world. What was going to be left for me?” “Motherhood to the children eating the world.” My belly feels like a bubble floating on the eye of a needle and as my partner walks towards me the shape of the children’s hands appear, stretching out for him. My partner bends towards my belly, touches their hands, and then raps on my skin like a door, waiting to be let in with his mouth so kind. I stretch my hand towards his kind mouth in a half fist. “I couldn’t help it. I was hungry.” My partner straightens and pulls out a handful of small, perfectly round stones from his pocket, shaking them, making his fist a maraca, and ignoring my outstretched hand. “You were hungry?” I gag on my fullness as my partner starts placing the stones in my mouth, my jaw a pelican’s beak hanging open as he holds my nose with his free hand. The stones fit in my mouth like little sweets and slide down my throat without swallowing, settling in my belly with the children. The stones seem endless, a grey stream pouring down my throat making me fuller and heavier still, until my partner’s photographic hands can’t or won’t hold me up and I fall, landing with a blowing. I blow, and a part of the world comes back out. William Hayward was born in Birmingham, England. He has been writing for several years, mainly in short fiction. He's previously been published in Ruminate Magazine, Litro Magazine, Something Involving a Mailbox!, and Terrain.org.

by Kaitlin Venneman no matter how much i arrive it is empty. centuries of abandoned dust never touched by skin & a little red pump, sun faded logo drained in some future where no one but me is waiting. no one has ever been here, but i know they have before. i will be the attendant, i already decided in some faint premonition: leaning through the wood wall, drawing the phone when it rings (rings rings) even though the cord only reaches static. what barely exists before me is all i belong to, all i know i cannot return when i do not remember where time chokes my balance on this center of forwards and backwards i can’t find my brother through the wire so i find myself pulling up cracked pavement trying to find a map etched into the miles; i find myself stretching into the concrete like a sunburn; i find myself dissolving aqua into a desert somewhere else i could swear i’ve been. i find myself lingering between the hours, plucking distorted guitars strings on the dash, jumpstarting unlucky horseshoes in a dizzy film recall a house crumbles into the sand as though weighed down by the sky i bear the wood chips as evidence of home home in the way the crash settles across the dust not a collapse but an implode atom returned to atmosphere bones scattered with the weather exit wounds with no entry wounds my tongue caught between the pages of the phone book means nothing here no past, just an infinite present. kaitlin venneman is a poet & creative body most known for her poetry collection, arcadia. risen from the west, she now resides in brooklyn.

By Brittany Ackerman “Do you remember Star Fox?” My brother asks me one morning after another fitful night of sleep. His jet-black hair needs to be cut, but I think he prefers to look like an anime character fresh out of some epic battle. He’s always been thin, but is recently starting to gain some muscle from working out. His arms swell a bit underneath his Mathnasium work shirt as he reaches for a Redbull in the fridge. “The game where the little fox is a pilot?” I ask, still in my makeshift bed on the couch. “Yeah. And there’s Slippy Toad and Peppy Hare.” “The frog and the rabbit?” “Yes! Well, I had a dream I was Star Fox last night. I haven’t played that game in years, but it was crazy. It was the very end of the game, when Star Fox battles Andross...” “The guy who’s just a head?” “He’s actually a monkey tyrant who took over the Lylat system…” “What’s Lylat?” “It’s their solar system. But anyway, yes, he appears as a floating head with hands.” My brother cracks open the Redbull and takes a sip. He begins to pack his knapsack on the kitchen counter, the same navy blue Jansport he’s had since high school. He crams in a stack of yellow legal pads, a Ziploc filled with ballpoint pens, a fresh pack of cigarettes. “In the dream,” he continues, “I was on the last level, trying to kill Andross. And it was going fine, like always. Shoot the eyes so he rubs them with his floating hands. Blow off each hand, left then right. But when I was about to blast his eyes, I realized they were my eyes. I was Andross.” “So you had to kill yourself?” “I don’t know. I just woke up.” “Oh. What do you think it means?” “No fucking clue.” My brother is five years older than me. He started getting high in college and it became a problem after he graduated, when he was trying to find his way in the world. I went to college in the Midwest, trying to find my own way, when he started getting in trouble. Maybe I'm attempting to make it up to him now, the fact of my being far away when he probably could have used a sister close by. My therapist says I'm in “a waiting state,” except she uses the French phrase, “état d’attente.” She also says I shouldn’t date, that I should be going to salt therapy and taking long walks on the beach. We meet to talk about my lack of direction, how I’ve been living on my brother’s couch in Delray for the past three months. Our parents are long gone, the only money they left us sitting in various bonds at the bank. I hadn’t realized bonds were just pieces of paper until my brother showed me the folder where he kept all our documents. I stupidly thought they might actually be stacks of green hundreds bundled up in twine or fancy ribbon. “Even if I was evil,” my brother says now, moving toward the door and slipping on his sneakers, a pair of blue Nikes with no laces, “I could never really hurt myself. Or maybe the dream means that I should forgive myself or something.” He looks past me as he says this, his eyes focussed on the ocean outside our window. Sometimes I wonder if he has thoughts like me of wading into the water and never coming back. Would forgiving himself mean leaving forever? Or is he seeing something promising out there, the sun glinting on the water like a sparkle in God’s eye? I don’t have the nerve to ask about his sobriety, how it’s going and all that. You’re not supposed to ‘check in’ on an addict because then you just make it about yourself. And he never presses me about my troubles, my waywardness. “You’re either ready to know, or you’re not,” my therapist told me once in session. She doesn't encourage me either way, but she brings it up often enough that I reconsider it each time. The truth is I never ask because I don't want to know. I like when my therapist gives me assignments, tasks, things to check off of a list. The more time they take to complete, the less I think about my inability to enjoy life. “I want you to try to smile more,” she tells me. “Even if you don't want to. Just smile. The more you smile, the sooner you will actually become happy. Your body will start to believe it.” I recall some stupid meme I saw online, how it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile. It reminded me of my favorite sweatshirt from childhood, a black hoodie from The Limited Too with a bright yellow smiley face on the chest. I think about sixth grade when I got braces, how my two front teeth bucked out of my face to the point of bullying, how the orthodontist tightened the wires and how painful it was. I think about the perfect smile of an influencer selling a product online, how I would describe her smile as crisp in my mind, the word sounding exactly as it should. “I loved the little hoops you had to jump through,” I say to my brother. I have no idea what I'm going to do today, only that I need to get off this couch at some point. I should print off copies of my resume, go to restaurants and sell my skills and experience. I think about carrying them around in the Florida heat and it’s all too much. “The aerial rings,” he says. “Yeah, those were always fun.” I want to ask if my brother liked when I would watch him play the game. I want to give him a hug before he leaves, smell the smoke all over him and transfer some of it to my own body. I want to cure him, cure myself, maybe with hours of video games, maybe with some big dialogue about our siblinghood. Maybe he could stay home and we could order takeout, sit on the floor and really hash it out once and for all, get down to the bottom of something and laugh and cry and feel better. But my brother tells me not to wait up for him, he’s got some private lessons after work and won’t be home until late. When the door closes behind him I stare at the flat screen TV that’s switched off. The black screen looks gray in the light. I think about all the math problems my brother will solve today, all those numbers, all those times he’ll have to solve for ‘x’. Brittany Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University. She has led workshops for UCLA’s Extension, The Porch, Catapult, HerStry, Write or Die, and Lighthouse Writers. She currently teaches writing at Vanderbilt University in the English Department. She is a 3x Pushcart Prize Nominee and her work has been featured in Electric Literature, Jewish Book Council, Lit Hub, The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Joyland, and more. Her first collection of essays entitled The Perpetual Motion Machine was published with Red Hen Press in 2018, and her debut novel The Brittanys is out now with Vintage. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

by Yuu Ikeda “Unfair World” most of me is the crescent moon. most of you is the full moon. my uncountable hopes are the most vulnerable in the powdery world. your unchained desire is the brightest in the snowy world. when you shine, i sigh. even when i vanish, you glow. “Immortal” Like snowflakes kiss the ground, you kiss my nape. Like frost decorates the surface of a leaf, I decorate your lips with my touch. Even if cold flows into our lungs, we never stop craving. Even if cruelty resounds through our sanctuary, we never stop wanting. Tattoos thaw on my skin. The scent of my perfume spreads over your skin. Yuu Ikeda is a Japan based poet. She loves writing, reading novels, western art, and sugary coffee. She writes poetry on her website. https://poetryandcoffeedays.wordpress.com/ Her latest poetry collection “Seasons Echoing Around Me” was published from Free Lines Press. Her Twitter and Instagram : @yuunnnn77

by Sean Ennis When asked, she said she wanted to be a surgeon, but then admitted thinking about all the stuff inside of people made her feel weird. This was, of course, at the County College and Career Fair. I said, “But what about software development?'' and she flitted away. I've been nothing but kind to you. I’m two months off Lexapro and I want my erections back. The future is important, but not urgent. At home, there is a note taped to our door, addressed to “Neighbors.” It’s from our new neighbors. We haven’t met them yet, and already, they are bossing us around. Can the tree trimming truck park in our driveway? Can our dogs stay in the house when they are having romantic dinners on their patio? Can we live better since we’re so close to them now? Had my first genuinely psychic experience the other day, and I’m proud of that, always learning. Also, I saw a fox cross our street at night, but surely, it meant nothing. When I locked the facility at 4:30 on Friday, I said to my colleagues, “This is peak weekend, the whole thing is in front of us.” My narc had had nothing for me that day. He walks so slowly to make the day go by faster. That night at the homecoming game, there’s even a cheer for when our team takes a time out. It goes, “Talk it over, Big Blue, talk it over!” My son gets #69 face painted on his cheek, and I wonder, what does the future hold for you? We lost the game, and this is not what I had in mind. Monday at the City College and Career Fair, and where are the culinary schools, the poetry schools, the schools of thought? There are tables for the community college, the Army, the Navy, the Marines and the Air Force. Also, the tire wholesaler who does $1.5 billion in business right here in our past-obsessed state, and you want to design video games? And so nauseous from withdrawal. I’m sitting here with my little bowl of pretzels. I’m drinking an Ensure and smoking a cigarette. I called out of work and realized the house is blessed with so much good morning light. Sean Ennis is the author of CUNNING, BAFFLING< POWERFUL (Thirty West) and his fiction has recently appeared in Pithead Chapel, New World Writing, Maudlin House and Rejection Letters. More of his work can be found at seanennis.net.

by Ed Doerr Put it in my mouth, Daddy: absence, a communion wafer. Daddy, sanctify me. Baptize me in deceit. A hand on the throat, a lip ribboned with blood. Your calloused fingers scrape my teeth— smoke licks the walls in the rooms of my heart. Make me gag on it: a place at the table, dead moths for eyes? Rile me into a bruise— pain is truth, Daddy, & this one bites, cold steel on skin: it’s an empty chair, Daddy. Love is an empty chair. Ed is a teacher and the author of 'Sautéing Spinach With My Aunt' (Desert Willow Press, 2018). He was selected as a featured poet for Cathexis Northwest Press. Other words can be found in Water/Stone Review, Hippocampus Magazine, One Teen Story, Perhappened, Drunk Monkeys, Flypaper Lit, & several more. Readers can follow him on Twitter (@EdDoerrWrites) and visit his website (eddoerr.com).

by Kim Suhr Isabelle turns the business card over and over. Blank. APrayer4You.com. Blank. APrayer4You.com. The card is glossy, the words superimposed over a sepia photograph of praying hands. Blank. APrayer4You.com. Blank. APrayer4You.com. Blank. Like a sign flipper at the Liberty Tax place. No liberty for her new husband staring ahead, his head hooked up to electrodes that remind her of those pictures of women getting a perm in the old days. His hair has been shorn to optimize contact with the electrodes. The door opens and the nurse, Ashley, walks in rubbing sanitizer into her hands. Her smile adds a glimmer of illumination to the dim room. “They told me you stayed overnight,” she says to Isabelle. “I don’t know how you do it.” The other nurses always go straight for the computer before talking to either Isabelle or Blake, but not Ashley. She takes hold of Blake’s right ankle, bends down so her eyes are level with his, raises her voice slightly. “How are you feeling today, Blake?” Even though he has not answered this question—or any others—since he came in, she waits as if a response is on its way. She grasps his feet and asks him to push against her hands. Isabelle can see there is obviously no pushing on Blake’s part, but Ashley responds as if there was. “Great! Let’s try that with your hands.” Isabelle doesn’t know how much more of this she can take. The uncertainty. The possibility of his needing ongoing care. No. She can’t go there yet. Blank. APrayer4You.com. Blank. APrayer4You.com. Blank. Ashley finishes taking Blake’s vitals, hanging his IV, emptying his urine bag. Isabelle can’t imagine doing any of these tasks. That’s why she got a job as far from taking care of people as possible. Computers. Logical machines that do only what you tell them to, nothing more. She doesn’t have to put on a happy face to write code, no cheery small talk or holding someone’s hand. “Can I get you anything?” Ashley asks Isabelle. “I can order you some breakfast at least.” “Thanks,” Isabelle forces a smile. “Maybe later.” “Okay.” She holds her hands under the sanitizer dispenser again. “I’ll be back. Let’s get you better, Blake, so you can finish your honeymoon.” Out she goes. Blank. APrayer4You.com. Blank. APrayer4You.com. Blank. Eventually, Isabelle allows herself quick trips to the vending machines at the end of the hall for scalding, weak coffee and cellophane-wrapped danishes. The physical therapist insists she get herself something that’ll “stick to her ribs” in the cafeteria but she can bear only soup and a few crackers. In between, she half-watches back to back episodes of Friends, until she finds herself awash in tears when Rachel tells Ross she’s pregnant. She surfs through home makeover and cooking shows and finally lands on a home shopping channel that doesn’t make her want to weep. Each day a repeat of the one before. When it becomes clear that Isabelle has no intention of leaving the hospital until Blake does, Ashley brings in a package of underwear, another of socks. “You’ll be amazed how much better you’ll feel.” She lets Isabelle use Blake’s shower even though a sign says the bathroom is for patients only. “It’s not like he’ll be using it today anyway.” Ashley emphasizes the word “today,” making it seem almost possible that he’ll get up tomorrow and walk right into that shower. Through all of this, Blake stares straight ahead. He blinks regularly. He sleeps. He doesn’t respond one way or the other when the aides change his sheets. Was it really just a week ago they were drinking margaritas on the beach? Seven days since he strapped on the parasailing gear and floated up, up, up as the old Blake? Blank. APrayer4You.com. Blank. APrayer4You.com. Blank. Prayers: Ha! Isabelle rejected the idea of God years ago when her minister-father first found out Blake was not a Christian—not an anything really. “An atheist.” Her father spat the word as if it was a bitter root. At the time, Isabelle didn’t have the heart to confess that she had her own doubts about God and his healing powers. Sure, there was talk of a healer up near Antigo who had cured a woman with early-onset Alzheimer’s. What could explain such a thing besides God’s intervention? Isabelle did agree that there was mystery. She just had a hard time attributing it to God. The day her father dismissed Blake out of hand—Blake who was so good, good to her, good to his parents when his sister lost her battle with Cystic Fibrosis, good to the kids at the center where he volunteered—that was the day Isabelle gave up any notion of God once and for all. Blank. APrayer4You.com. Blank. APrayer4You.com. Blank. Where did the card come from? Did someone hand it to her in the ER waiting room? It doesn’t matter. Maybe this is some kind of sign. She saw enough of them when she was a kid like whenMrs. Albright came into an inheritance just when the church needed a new boiler. “A sign from God,” her father said. “Praise be!” Or when little Jesse Draper got his foot stuck in the train track with the Hiawatha bearing down on its way to Milwaukee. Isabelle was there, a huge panic rushing through her as his cloddy tennis shoe became lodged ever more solidly between the top of the track and the ground. “God, help me!” Jesse screamed just before the horn blast drowned out his cries. The children joined Jesse’s prayer at the top of their lungs, gave one last tug, and Jesse’s foot slid out of the shoe. They all fell backwards in a heap. It didn’t occur to Isabelle until much later that night, as she tried in vain to fall asleep, that God could have just planted in one of their little brains to remove the shoe long before it became a life or death situation. Or, better yet, prevented the shoe from getting stuck at all. Maybe that was the moment the seeds of doubt had taken root. Still, God could have been behind Jesse’s rescue. She had no proof He wasn’t, and that was the crux of the whole thing. Now she sits with Blake, the only other person who has ever really understood her, who recognizes and respects her love of computer code, its elegance—divinity even. Blake knows how to reach across the chasm that separates her from others. He knows her. Or rather, knew. She pulls a hand across her cheek and kisses his forehead. “I’ll be right back.” Down the hall, she finds the family waiting room and slides into a chair, turns on her phone. Text after text pops up, and, from their tone, she realizes she has neglected to convey the severity of Blake’s condition. Her mother-in-law: “Hoping Blake has turned the corner and you’re back on the beach!” Her sister, Angel: “Speedy recovery to Blake!” The neighbor: “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of Kipper. You just get Blake better and get home safe!” Maybe she has minimized the situation to avoid people’s “thoughts and prayers.” Ever since she parted ways with her father, she has balked at the idea of people interceding with God on her behalf—at times, telling them so in no uncertain terms. But what of this? Blank. APrayer4You.com. Blank. APrayer4You.com. Maybe God has put Blake into this mysterious condition to bring her back to Him. Stories like this abounded in her father’s homilies. It wouldn’t be the first time He had tested one of His children. Right? Once she has opened that door, the language returns easily to mind. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and the door shall open. Ask and it shall be given. What does she have to lose? She takes a deep breath and prepares to turn back her years of disbelief. She’ll go to the website and put in a request for the prayer chain. An intercession on Blake’s behalf. When he is better, she’ll convince him of God’s healing power. She readies herself to make amends with her father. Anything to get Blake back. She opens the browser on her phone and types APrayer4You.com. Internet service here is ridiculously slow. She watches the palm trees sway outside the window and imagines this nightmare over, re-starting her honeymoon with her husband—her husband!—Thanks be to God! The search is nearly over. Her screen blinks once, twice. She checks the charge on the battery. Twelve percent. The blinking stops. She can taste the margarita, feel the warm sea air on her face, Blake’s warm breath on her neck. A surge of cold washes through her as she sees, once again, his limp body’s return to the turquoise water, the boat driver’s assistant struggling to pull him over the side. What in the hell happened up there? A mostly white screen stares back at her. Where she expected to see a graphic of praying hands or a button for a prayer request, she finds fluorescent green text and a cartoon drawing of an astronaut: “Oops! It seems aliens have stolen content from this page. But you can create your own website and fill it with the best content on Earth!” “Some sign.” Isabelle powers down her phone, tosses the card in the trash, and heads back to Blake’s room. Kim Suhr is author of the story collection Nothing to Lose (Cornerstone Press, 2018), Maybe I’ll Learn: Snapshots of a Novice Mom (2012) and co-author of the as-told-to memoir, Ramon: An Immigrant’s Journey. She holds an MFA in fiction from the Solstice Program where she was the Dennis Lehane Fellow. Her writing has appeared in various publications. Kim is Director of Red Oak Writing where she leads Writers’ Roundtable critique groups, provides manuscript critiques and coaching, and leads the summer Creative Writing Camps for youth. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys gardening, time outdoors with her family and being a fan-girl for her grown children in their various pursuits.

by Caitlin Striff-Cave I shovel the remnants of yesterday and last year and three seconds ago between each of my ribs, clutching as much as I can until I burst and they spill into my lap and onto the floor. I must hold all of them: the rusted necklace, the ink-dried pens, every birthday card and guitar string; they must be tucked in my palm, behind my ear, and beneath my tongue. But I cannot swallow the fleeting moments when I am the most alive, when I am grieving the moment before it has passed; the thought fills my lungs with syrup as I collapse on the kitchen floor. Still I waste my time thinking of how to hold on to each minute, each second, and if I cannot hold my life in my hands, then I must keep a tangible, pitiful reflection of what once was. Let me have these shards of the broken sugar bowl and the minute hand from every clock in your house, take my buttons and window frames and we will go dancing. There are memories under my fingernails, behind my eyes, lining my stomach; there is no more room but I’ve barely been alive; must I forget so as to grow older? One day, my pockets full of nostalgia and paperclips will be all I have, but for now I am in love with the mundane and the beautiful. Caitlin Striff-Cave lives in West Hartford, Connecticut. Her poetry is forthcoming in Loud Coffee Press and Scapegoat Review. She loves every month but March, has a bright orange water bottle with her at all times and will race you to finish the New York Times Mini Crossword. She hosts a storytelling podcast called “The Staircase: One Story at a Time.”

By Tim Frank Alexa, show me Daryl Hannah movies, I mumble wearily into my phone, and then six films from the eighties flutter onto my flatscreen, gleaming. But before I can start my movie binge, I need a coffee to clear away the cobwebs. At my local café, a plastic sign warns me of a floor slick with water, but I ignore it. I nearly break my neck. Neil Young wafts through the shop, caressing the walls. My barista is a tall blonde woman, and when she turns to hand me my latte, I realize she is Daryl Hannah. Her long spindly fingers edged with bloody cuticles. Her face is a flawless Greek sculpture. This is not the drink I wanted, I say. Maybe not, but it’s what you ordered, Daryl says with the smile of a world-class actor. I pay for my coffee and drink it. Daryl was right — it is delicious. I can’t face going home to watch the movies, so I catch a cab to nowhere. The driver turns around. It’s Daryl.I tell her, Take me somewhere you are not. It’s not like I want this either, she says. Let’s go to the lake. By the water, Daryl and I watch actors standing on a giant fallen tree discussing their lines and the nature of subtext. I see their confusion, so I step forward and share my thoughts. Listen, I say, this film has potential but it needs a little glamour. We have Daryl Hannah here; I suggest you use her. I take a seat in the director’s chair and bark orders from a megaphone. I tell Daryl to swish her luxurious mane of hair and then I bully her to serve me hotdogs from the foyer that is floating on the lake. After the filming wraps for the day, I’m a spent force. At home, Daryl is waiting for me in the kitchen, fighting back tears. She shouts at me if I want eggs – or tea? She demands to know if the torture will ever end. She waves a spatula over her head and splashes bacon fat onto the walls. I’ll let you know soon enough, I say as I wipe some dust from the coffee table with my finger. Because, I might need you… to clean. Daryl throws an empty coffee cup at my head and then sits cross-legged on the floor. I say nothing.With her quiet, it feels only natural to lounge on the couch. I reach for the popcorn and blast each of Daryl’s films until my head feels like it will explode. Play, Alexa, I say. Play. Daryl leaves her fried eggs bubbling in the pan, rushes over, and starts jogging in front of me. When Tom Hanks appears on the screen, looking all innocent and naive, she blathers on about what a clean freak he is — how he killed the vibe on set. As the movies play, Daryl begins to age rapidly. Her neck forms jowls and mutates into a turkey neck. Her hands become prunes. She doesn’t seem to notice her shocking transformation. She doesn’t see how I’m hiding behind a cushion, recoiling in disgust. She presses her cheek against the screen and kisses her own image. When Steve Martin appears on screen Daryl shouts, Perpetrator, perpetrator! Daryl, please control yourself, I say. Neighbors are knocking on my front door. Is there something wrong with Daryl Hannah?, one of them calls in Daryl is completely drained now but has just enough strength to escape my grasp and let the neighbours in. As they poke around my flat, gossiping about my choice of wallpaper and reading material, the fire alarm sounds off.The frying pan has caught fire. What a horror show. Daryl goes blue in the face and collapses like a bag of cement, but I’ve had enough — of Daryl, her films and all the pretense. I’m only mildly concerned. I kneel over her and say casually, Daryl? Daryl? I’m sure she’s quite dead. Shame. My neighbours are no help at all either, they just remove plants from my windowsill and lay them by her side like wreaths. Others take snaps.Some cry. One pious soul plans a funeral online. As the crowd utter prayers, they obscure my view of the TV. I try to get them to move by loudly clearing my throat, but they’re on another plane of existence. I’m searching for something new to watch now, something inspirational hopefully, because it’s easy to spot a movie that will pass the time, but nigh on impossible to find a film that will change your life. Tim Frank’s short stories have been published in Wrongdoing Magazine, Eunoia Review, The Metaworker, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Maudlin House and elsewhere. He was runner-up in The Forge Literary Flash Fiction competition ‘22. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions ’22.He is the associate fiction editor for Able Muse Literary Journal and lives with his wife in North London, England.

by Ruth Towne On the bathroom floor, dark clothes over white tiles. Behind a gold curtain, a plastic one; translucent, it transmutes the steam that rises to skylight. The mirror frames my form, waits for fog. I avert my eyes. A towel for sheepskin, I model Eve in this bathroom, my private Eden, embarrassed by my own breasts. A shower scene in impressionist style: I look through my nudity not at it, distort what form I recognize in outline of pelvic bone or line of shoulder to shoulder art unattainable. Unclean, unclean, unclean, calls the water stream. Penitence—in my confessional, the porcelain walls force a certain discourse, exact from the body a holiness the body cannot bare. Honey, or the synthetic scent of something sweet, in humid air drifts. Just once, couldn’t I be Venus with her distant stare? Our emotional reticence presents as emptiness. Gentle as it is, my gentle conditioner teases my eyes, but no tears. I stand in the half-shell of my tub, face to the porcelain, place the spout to my back. Between what’s in, what’s out, one strikes a careful balance. Conditioner retreats with shampoo, coils the drain eventually. I share the sin of all women: nudity signifies divinity. If I approve my bare reflection, I cast own idol. Here acceptance, my own golden calf, grows from what I am willing to sacrifice, my modesty, an heirloom from my mother and her mother too. I melt it down in this crucible, my comfort rises as dross. I, the idolater, know the price exacted of the one who tolerates her own bare body: in a cup she receives back that acceptance ground to powder. Punished, she drinks until that cup is clean, clean, clean. Long light lavender strokes conceal blank body. No artist paints me. I paint myself. The canvas lays stiff, a corpse, but the mirror remains ever animate. Nudity demands divinity not dignity. Venus uncovers her other bare breast to wave a hand at the emperor who commissioned the scene. He stands clothed in invisible robes. I bend to shave my legs, imitate the upright shave’s unstable pose, propaganda’s flat affect. Adolescent, I am a girl unprepared for razor. It carves long red lines behind the crease of my knee and into my shin. Still, the razor cuts me. Naked, I bleed and bleed. I am oil and acrylic on fabric, I am marble, and I am a feeble old woman, who prays not to fall in her shower, not to die, unclothed, alone. Clean, I emerge and swaddle myself in cotton to dry. Ruth Towne is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program. Her poetry has recently appeared in Grim & Gilded, Plainsongs Poetry Magazine, New Feathers Anthology, The Orchard Poetry Review, The Decadent Review, Inlandia Literary Journal, and Beyond Words Literary Magazine. She has a forthcoming publication in Mantis Poetry Journal. She hopes someday to become a respected gardener.

by David Osgood James and Sophie have an obligation to love each other, and they do so with complacent, predictable comfortability. They married at twenty, even younger than either of their parents did. He wasn’t shipping off to war, no shotgun wedding; just plain, old-fashioned immaturity and Christianity. Eighteen years later, she complains about his teeth grinding, and he hates when she clips her toenails in bed. Life is a hamster wheel in slow motion. “I’m going to go watch TV in the bedroom,” Sophie says as she walks out of the den. James looks up from his book. “What are you watching?” “Madame X,” she replies. “Oh, I hate that show.” “I know. That’s why I’m going to the other room.” James’ laptop is open, the light from the screen reflecting off his glasses like a mirrored confessional. The anonymous online chat group is buzzing with anticipation. Howdy Fellow Critters! We are excited to announce the theme of Midwest Furfest this year: Home on the Range! Join over 11,000 furries – deer and antelope welcome - for two days of furry fun, including dealer’s rooms, deejays, and guest speakers. See you in Rosemount, IL on December 16 for MFF! He asked her to act like a doe once in bed. He pretended to be a bear. Another time she put a bunny tail on at Easter for a work party. When she returned home, he told her to keep it on and carried her to the bedroom. They haven’t made love in thirteen months. James checks into the Rosemount Grand Hotel at 5:10 PM, alone. He calls Sophie from the hotel bar while eating dinner by himself. Sophie watches him from the lobby. She tells him she is in bed watching her show, and he tells the truth about his overcooked ribeye, pomme frites, and hefeweizen. She wishes him a good accounting convention, and he tells her to get some sleep. There is hesitation in his voice. She walks out of the lobby to go check in at her own hotel a safe distance away, and he sits alone with his beer. Sophie spreads out like a starfish on the hotel bed. She wonders how she got here: from eighteen years of passively eating slightly burnt toast to tracking her lying husband to a furry convention. She likens James to a wolf in auditor’s clothes, or vice versa. She falls asleep and dreams about her favorite penny candy store she frequented as a kid. She carries a bag full of Bull’s Eye caramels to the register and realizes she has only a penny. She looks at the cashier. It’s James. He says to her, that’s not enough. You’ll have to put some back. She wakes up crying. They decided early on they weren’t going to have kids. James wanted to focus on his career and Sophie was happy being young and free. She painted and freelanced for everything from ad agencies to calligraphy stationery. Sitting in an unfamiliar room, a sliver of light from the impossible gap of hotel curtains, she wonders how things would have been different if she asked more questions, if he was more open with her, if they made love more often. She can’t remember the last time she did anything creative. Small resentments lead to miscommunication, miscommunication to none at all. He begins to harbor secrets; she punishes him with intentional acts of emotional and physical retreat. Distance becomes a persuasive friend. Sophie sneaks over to the empty convention center and ducks into a pop-up costume shop. “Morning,” greets the shop owner. “Oh, good morning,” Sophie replies, scaling the costumes and peering out the shop window. “Are you hiding from someone?” he asks. “Uh, no. Well, yes and no. My husband is here,” she replies. She immediately regrets her candor. “Well, you came to the right place. Convention doesn’t open for about an hour, so we’ve got time. What’s your husband’s avatar?” “Excuse me?” “His animal,” he replies. “What does he dress up as?” “I’m not sure. Maybe a bear, I think?” “And you want to be predator, or prey?” Sophie ponders the idea. She had always been prey: shy, safe, reserved. “Predator,” she replies confidently. “I’m a predator.” “Well, watch out, world,” he says, smiling. “We got a cheetah on the loose. Last rack on the right, orange and black and ready to attack.” Sophie slips on the costume, wild and fast. She looks in the long mirror and caresses her cheetah fur, running her hands over her breasts and midsection. She feels euphoric and transformative, her anxiety replaced with a surge of empowerment. Sophie joins the herd filing in through the convention center doors. She scans the place, watching how the male animals walk: a bear moves his neck the way James does, a wolf walks like him. She sends James a tame text and watches for figures checking phones. She wrestles between being curious and being angry. The day turns nocturnal with no hint of the accountant. The party moves off the convention floor and into a large ballroom with bars and a deejay. Sophie throws back a shot to take the edge off, chasing it with a strong gin and tonic. The lights tinsel in slow motion as she sways her hips to a song about stars. Her head is light. She scans the round tables and watches as sweaty animals pop off their costume heads to breathe stale air. There, sitting alone, is James, a fox head perched on the table in front of him like taxidermy. He takes out his phone and texts, and she feels a vibration beneath her fur. “I miss you,” he writes. “I miss you a lot.” His head hangs longer than his text, his face a sullen hibernation. He puts on his fox head and gets up to leave, so she sets on a collision course to bump into him. “I’m so sorry, excuse me,” fox says to cheetah. “My fault,” cheetah replies. “I was trying to shortcut my way out of here, but cheetahs never prosper.” Fox laughs: cheetah breathes. “Not much of a graceful gazelle, I guess.” “That could be next year’s costume,” fox says politely, and walks out into the hall. Cheetah follows him out. Her movements are fluid and satisfying, like a hard yawn with outstretched arms. “Hold on, wait up. What’s your name, Mr. Fox?” Cheetah says in a low tone, smoky but still feminine. “Uh, I’m married,” fox replies. “Oh, me too,” cheetah says. “I don’t mean to pry, but why is your wife not here?” “She wouldn’t get it. She’d freak out.” “Mine too. He’s not one of us,” cheetah replies. “Isn’t it hard to keep it up, though? I feel dirty,” says fox. “Have you strayed? Sorry if that’s too personal.” “Oh, no. I love my wife and I’d never. But I just wish I could share this with her.” “Have you tried talking to her about it? You might be surprised.” “I don’t know. I worry I’ll lose her.” “Or maybe you’ll lose her if you don’t tell her,” cheetah says. “What about you?” Fox asks. “I decided to tell him when I get back. I hope it will save our marriage, but it might be too late.” “Something to think about,” fox says. “I don’t want to lie anymore.” “Then don’t. Later, Fox,” cheetah says, sassy and confident. “My song’s on.” “Have fun. I don’t dance,” replies fox. “I know,” cheetah says, then catches herself. “Foxes are terrible dancers.” Sophie’s hangover breaks sometime during hotel breakfast after she realizes the damp eggs are inedible. She thinks about her marriage and uncloaks the reality of a transactional partnership built on lies. She packs up, checks out, and hangs up her cheetah costume on the grab handle in the back seat. Instead of heading home, she hugs the coast: route 32 toward Milwaukee. She gets as far as Racine and parks her car at the Windpoint Lighthouse. She ignores the texts from James as they come through in rapid fashion. The where are you’s and I’m worried and please call me feel hollow. Sophie wonders what it would be like to start a new life. She looks out in the direction of the Kate Kelly shipwreck that she scuba dove with James in less tumultuous times. Though she cannot see it from the shore, she knows it’s there, scattered and broken on the lake’s murky bottom. She knew he’d come, eventually. From afar she can tell he is still a fox, at least from the neck down. He holds his phone up and points to it like an exaggerated gesture of a sworn oath. He yells something to her from afar. Sophie puts her hand up to her ear and shakes her head in confusion. James tries again. “Is it too late?” Sophie pictures what the Kate Kelly might look like if all the pieces were sifted from the lake bottom and glued back together, one by one. She wonders how long it would take, if it would resemble what it once was, and if it would float again. David Osgood is a short story writer who believes life to be an evolution of diverse connections, and his writing is a conduit. David has been published in O:JA&L, Crack the Spine, Firewords, Treehouse, Glassworks, Eastern Iowa Review, Peregrine Journal, tiny journal, X-Ray, and won the Microfiction Honorable Mention Award from San Antonio Writer's Guild. Visit him at www.davidsosgood.com.