Charley and Pop lived in a fully realized world, one with every detail nice and sorted, from the smell of a spring morning to the wood grain of their dining table. This was a literary world you see, a world where everything meant something and nothing amounted to anything at all.

You might say Charley and Pop lived in a dream and that wouldn’t be too far from the truth. Dreams seem so real, so vivid in the moment. There’s a magnetism about them that pulls us close, hints at something of incredible importance, then leaves us cold in the dim morning light. No meaning, no theme, just abrupt reality.

Quite a few have had a go at explaining dreams, or literature, or life, but mostly they’re just explaining the little they know of themselves. Exclude yourself from conversation – go ahead, try it – is there anything left? Maybe you are all that exists. Maybe I am. Who’s to say?

Well, anyway, Charlotte Rosemary Perkins, who we called Charley because it was shorter, met my Pop some very specific time ago in a city that may or may not exist where you live. I’m sure it was nice there, a wonderful place to fall in love given the right setting and circumstance. Let’s say a grocery store on the frozen food aisle which is also the center aisle of the quaint non-denominational chapel just outside town. When they had said words that neither would remember later, the faceless assassin priest – because aren’t all assassins a tad bit religious somewhere deep down and probably in need of some legitimate income – spun them around and all of their friends from high school were there, weeping at the indescribable beauty of it all. This was a love like no other. This was a love you wish you had.

Those in the front rows tried to steal some of the beauty for themselves, which was a mistake as they had no place to put it. Their hands were filled with programs and tissues. Their tiny dresses and rented tuxedos had no pockets. Therefore, they made the unfortunate decision to swallow the beauty which quickly swelled until they burst like exploding cantaloupe and honeydew melons. Charley and Pop were showered with melon fragments as they left the chapel. It’s strange, but only if you say it out loud. Most anything can happen on a piece of paper.

Real life set in shortly after the wedding as it often does. Charley and Pop decided to delay their honeymoon because the country was in crisis, the likes of which had never been seen before. This especially took a toll on Pop who, having been the oldest of eight children, had hoped to have a large family of his own. Now he wondered, in that translucent mind of his, whether this was a world he wanted to bring children into. Thus the conflict was simultaneously external and internal.

Everything everywhere was out of balance with everything else – sun and moon, night and day, good and evil, supply and demand. As a result, news and media outlets grew rich off the peoples’ insatiable thirst for things to complain about at their meaningless jobs painting road signs for places that had never existed. There was even a news story about the complaining painters, which obviously painted them in a bad light and gave them even more to complain about. Pop saw the story, which only made him sad. Pop’s pop had died in a tragic backstorical painting accident, a memory that caused him endless trauma and probably foreshadowed thematic content throughout the entirety of the fictional re-telling of this real man’s life.

Pop took up woodworking to take his mind off things, though he mostly liked to buy supplies and materials that never really added up to anything. In the garage at Charley and Pop’s house are boxes of nails, screws, hinges, clamps, and most anything that could be used to put pieces of wood together in an interesting or utilitarian way. Next to that is the wood collection. Redwood, rosewood, cedar, ash, alder, maple, walnut, cherry, olive, buckeye burl, amboyna burl, sitka spruce, red oak, and pine. A whole lot of stuff that added up to nothing.

The one piece Pop did finish was the dining table. Pop made the table top from an improbably large slab of walnut burl, the base from solid rosewood, and he unfurled the finished product at he and Charley’s first or third anniversary. It had to be one of the two, because it was undoubtedly early on in their marriage and every even year they seemed to be financially strained so that they skipped grand gestures in favor of a night in with pizza rolls and old movies.

I may be burly and flatly utilitarian, he had said as he slapped the table top, but Charley Rose, you’re the base that keeps me afloat.

The words dissolved in tears of happiness, later in tears of pain, as well as future glasses of sweet tea, coffee, water, and cherry soda once the kids came along.

Kids, yep. Pop resolved his inner turmoil via a series of inner monologues prompted by observations of the world around him. People were like parking lots. Traffic lights were temporary. Grass was the hair on the head of the earth. Penguins.

Charley, meanwhile, wanted a say in the matter because women are people not property and like to be consulted regarding matters of carrying heavy objects around for nine months straight. She was working a fulfilling, yet underpaid, position on the city board of decisions where she impacted the lives of most everyone and could never be sufficiently replaced. Could she, in good conscience, choose the life of her own hypothetical child over the lives of the everyone in existence?

Oh, easily. Yes, especially Bob Chatway.

Her prized moment, one that she carried with her always in the recesses of her rosewood heart, was her refutation of that ridiculous Bob Chatway and his notion to implement a technology based downloadable note system which would directly deposit knowledge into the minds of the committee, thus saving on paper. Charley had cleverly argued that a thing does not exist unless it exists. Bob Chatway could not deny the logic. Therefore, Charley continued, thought, consciousness, and creativity do not exist. We are all at the whims of some writer somewhere and writers need paper.

Bob Chatway and his silly dalliances were summarily dismissed as fictional science, a fantasy of the worst kind. Before he slunk off in shame, Charley took a mental snapshot of the room. Black leather wheely chairs, thin gray carpet, knock-off abstract drip paintings on the walls, fluorescent lighting that imbued Bob Chatway’s face with an appropriately seasick pallor. There was no room for make believe in a world as firm and grounded as this.

Charley took a victory sip from her stainless steel coffee tumbler. The locally roasted South American blend was smooth. It reminded her of Guatemala and a man she had once known, maybe even loved, named Ernesto Chavez. She had been so young then, her hair so long, flowing down her back in lustrous flaxen waves. As she ran behind Ernesto in the Guatemalan fields, Bob Chatway slammed the door shut behind him. The door was walnut. Charley instantly thought of her husband waiting for her at home, burly and full of grain. That was Pop. He loved bread and no one made bread better than his daughter Jelly Bean Jean. She was round and sweet and died many times in different ways throughout her lifetime.

Jelly Bean first died when she was two and ate most of Charley’s beauty products. If memory serves, the ones tested on animals were especially cruel, as were the fluorocarbons, the ground mammoth tusk, powdered horse hoof, and purified medical waste.

I believe this is the moment Charley set aside her disbelief and began to make room for the supernatural. Now it was personal, emotional. Now it affected her precious little Jelly Bean. How could she condemn Jelly Bean Jean to die over mistakes she had made?

Pop concurred and together they decided to bring Jelly Bean back to life. Turns out it wasn’t all that difficult. A flick of the wrist, a turn of the pen. She died again a year later when a strain of virulent, unvaccinated flu made the rounds.

Jelly Bean eventually reached the age of adolescent agency, in which she was allowed to think and act and make mistakes all her own, injecting Charley and Pop’s lives with brand new batches of yet unmined conflict. But somewhere along the line, Jelly Bean learned to bake bread which mostly made up for the difficulties of raising a daughter who dies often and insists on making decisions.

Charley and Pop lived through it all, learning lessons sometimes, but mostly describing the details of their surroundings. Plywood bookshelves lined the walls of the living room and sagged in the middle as if the books themselves were the only things staving off collapse. A brown leather belt with newly cut holes toward the end lay on top of one of the bookshelves. Dust and cobwebs collected in corners of a living room that has only been written about and never lived in.

And then, one Thursday, Jelly Bean grew up. She moved to Paris at twenty, London at twenty-six. Of course Charley and Pop followed, worried that Jelly Bean would never survive without them. True or not, they enjoyed the time together, soaking up all that Europe had to offer. They also met Sir Lawrence Dashwood of Kirtlington, who proposed to Jelly Bean a month later.

The happy couple married and the following year, Jelly Bean Jean Dashwood had her first child – me. I don’t recall Charley’s reaction, but I know that Pop hoisted me up and tossed me like a pizza dough. He laughed like a giant of a man, then set me down, kissed my wrinkly forehead, and walked away. The room was mortified, but I knew then that I’d turn out just fine. After all, the secret ingredient in any decent pizza is a well executed hand-toss.

It is indeed a magical life. I have known these characters through many lives, good lives that I’d like to explore in further detail. But now I am much too tired to continue so I’m off to bed.

*      *      *

Mom,

You asked for my thoughts, so here goes. You’re a good writer, I guess, but I have no idea what I just read. I mean, stories are supposed to have a point, right? What was the point of all that? Why write about the family if you’re going to jumble it all up? It was all backwards and hardly anything in there was true. Can I just say, for starters, I wish you wouldn’t call me Jelly Bean, at least not in public. I’m twenty-six now, and certainly not “round and sweet.” Also, I never died. Also also, Charley and Pop are my cats, so … I don’t know, I wonder sometimes. And I know you like Kirt, I like him too, but going to Duke doesn’t make someone a duke, and I’d really appreciate it if you slowed down on the whole marriage and kids fantasy. About London, I was thinking maybe me and you should plan a trip soon. How does that sound? We’ve both wanted to go since forever. I’ll look into it and let you know what I find out at Second Sunday Dinner. And yes, I got the hint. I’ll bake some bread. Okay, see you soon. Thanks for the strange story, I guess.

Love,

JB

P.S. – I’m glad you decided to have me, you know, in the beginning, even though you guys had some doubts.

P.P.S. – I miss Dad, too.

 

JEFF BINKLEY is a musician, educator, and author from Huntsville, AL. He enjoys time alone to think and pursue creative projects, but not as much as he enjoys a good cup of coffee with his wife, Amy.

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Ellie brought out the thrift-shop coat on weekends or when the sleet and the urge both got so bad that she just had to drag her feet towards the church. By mid-term exams, she could pass for an old lady even without the make-up. The secret was in the head-wobble and the bent back.

Felix’s condition was severe: his mind was nearly a week ahead. By Tuesday, his mind was already deep in the rain of the following Monday. He often bumped into people and had given up on umbrellas.

‘So do you, like, never get nervous ahead of exams?’ she asked.

It was their first date, but thinking it was their second he told her personal stuff, like, how he’d be sitting on the grass having a coffee, and his mind would be in the exam hall it would get dark and sweaty with the walls falling around him. But there were advantages.

Ellie, giggled and didn’t tell him about her condition. They ordered tiramisu, which is the funniest desert in the world and has a layer of lady’s fingers. She wondered what would happen if he chased his mind all the way through the future weeks. Would he know if they would always order tiramisu and pretend-fight over it?

That Saturday, anyway, everything worked out: Ellie had the house to herself and the heating broke down, so they tried three different strategies to keep warm. And if that mirrored whatever the next week held, that was all just fine. He was in perfect synch with her time-line.

She slept in little squirts of dreams, and every time she woke up, she hugged him. In the yellow light from the window, her coat was an old woman hanging on the wardrobe. With every dream, the woman got stronger, until she left her place and came very close, and that was also fine.

If only Ellie could just skip all the layers of time, go unseen past all the crocodiles, and arrive to the end where no threats could reach.

They dated throughout her treatment, and past the summer exams. They never fought: you can’t fight with a semi-future person. Then one night something bad happened: Felix’s body writhed under the sheet, his eyes bulged, the bed was drenched with his sweat, was the sea, was huge, and as she grabbed onto him, she cried for extra-arms, powers from the future, the strength of an octopus. ‘It’s OK’, he shouted through gritted teeth from the bottom of the ocean. ‘It’s OK’. And then silence, and then slowly, as he opened his eyes: ‘I think I’ve been hit by a bus.’ ‘Are you crazy?’ and she hit him with her hair-brush, and threw stuff, and screamed like a banshee. And Felix was too exhausted to explain that as his mind died in the week that was still to come, he didn’t … it wasn’t … he wasn’t quite sure, and the only word that occurred to him was OK, which doesn’t really explain anything at all.

And Ellie, who had mastered her disguise to cheat time, now faced the possibility of horrible grief. He said he couldn’t feel next Wednesday. He was worryingly fully present. They decided to stay in all week, which was difficult. She still lived with her parents, and his was a mould-infested place two miles outside the city. How would they get enough food? How would she feel at night when she had to leave?

But they managed. They fed themselves on beans and pot noodles, watched a few documentaries, revelled in Dutch Gold. A week passed, and another one He became a proper TV addict during that time, said he’d never been able to enjoy it before. She put all her talent into co-watching: how they make bolts, how they drive trucks, how they ice-fish—portents of the unknown they were, scattered atoms of his near-dead being. At night, she thought if she could properly focus, she could keep him safe, and then she grew frightened at the thought. So instead, she learned to stop trying and to match her rhythm to the world around her. And no death bus came. They waited another week and decided they were almost safe.

By Christmas exams, they were both cured. The imagined accident, if that is what it was, grounded him in the present. He stopped bumping into people. As old woman’s clothes stopped working for her, she invested in a lipstick, and a fancy top.

Several years after, Ellie still wonders why they broke up.

Sometimes, on a Thursday, when goes out with her new friends, she suspects that she loved that other guy more, the dead one from that Wednesday that didn’t happen. Or was it just the pressure of that week? There was so much death, TV, worry, and cheap food. He was no longer her guide into a safer future. A small part of her, the Ellie that adored tiramisu and that he loved best of all, wrapped herself in the old woman’s coat and waddled off. Yes, that could explain it. These thoughts make her cry, slurp her beer, and realise that none of them are quite the whole truth. The truth, like the dead guy from Wednesday, and her small part, was elsewhere, for her to hunt down in giant leaps, hurriedly, into the next Friday, and beyond, through a parallel world, the end of life, and time, and the end of all worry.

 

ROPPOTUCHA GREENBERG writes micro-fiction on Twitter (@Roppotucha)
Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Ad Hoc Fiction (winners’ section). The Evening Theatre, Elephants Never, 101 Fiction, Former Cactus, TSS Publishing (The BIFFY50 micro-fiction competition runner up), Ellipsis Zine, Twist in Time, The Mojave Heart Review, Enchanted Zine, and The Forge Literary Magazine. She lives in Ireland.

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Sabrina T. Age: 9

She wishes for school not to be so difficult, for her mommy, daddy and pug-pug to be happy. She wishes for her friends at school to be happy too. Pug-pug is her dog. She got him last year. He’s described as being cute.

*

Katrina V. Age 22

She wishes for an apartment. She’s been working at the same job since high school. She’s saving up her money. She also wishes for a boyfriend.

*

Barry Q. Age 26

He wishes for fewer hours on his job and a raise. He says “Who doesn’t want a raise?”

*

Patty J. Age 65

She wishes for her husband to be in a better place. He died two years ago. She wishes that she could gain the strength to carry on.

*

Victor G. Age 32

He wishes for a promotion. He says he needs it. Says Christmas is coming up and birthdays too. He whispers “promotion” and yells “come on!”

*

Bridget C. Age: 40

She wishes to meet a nice man, also for the quick recovery of Minxy, her cat, one of five. Minxy is described as being all black with white paws and a white stomach. Minxy was a stray like the others. She says Minxy ate something that didn’t agree with her and she’s been sick ever since.

*

Calvin E. Age 46

He wishes for a bite to eat. He says he’s been up and down the streets for way too long. Says that sometimes he can find food from restaurant dumpers because they throw out so much but recently they’ve begun to place locks on the dumpsters.

*

Vikki W. Age: 18

She wishes for a new car. Says she’s graduating soon and she hopes her parents get her one. She hopes the car will be either pink or light blue. Says either is fine but nothing brown or grey. She says her friend has a jeep but it’s all black. It’s cool looking but she doesn’t like jeeps. She says she’s definitely not jealous.

*

Quentin F. Age: 20

He wishes for a girlfriend. Says he thinks Veronica likes him but he really doesn’t know for sure. He wishes he wasn’t so awkward around girls. Says that would make life easier.

*

Lacey P. Age: 24

She wishes for a bigger chest. She laughs about this. Says she’s always hated how they’ve looked. She wonders why she was cursed with a flat chest. Says at least let her come into some money then she could save for an upgrade.

*

Brittany A. Age 12

She wishes to see a movie at the theater with her friends. She says her dad said he would take them but he might not. Says for some reason Jasmine’s mom doesn’t like her dad. She says her dad told her that. She says her dad said that Jasmine’s mom said something that bothered him. She wishes for them to get along. She asks if she could have two wishes.

*

Warren O. Age: 54

He wishes the pain in his side would leave. He says he thought it was cancer but read online that it may be less serious.

*

Sammy H. Age: 47

He wishes the stupid kids next door would stop playing loud music. He says these are the types of people he wishes didn’t move into the neighborhood. He wishes they would leave. He

says the kids aren’t really bad just annoying but all kids are annoying so whatever. He says his wife says he’s too harsh on them but she doesn’t like the noise either. He says she’s just nicer about it.

*

Kevin C. Age: 29

He wishes for his moms’ recovery. He says she smokes and has had a bad cough for a long time. It put her in the hospital. He says if his mom doesn’t make it he doesn’t know what he’d do. He pauses, and says please let her be okay.

*

Bianca E. Age: 24

She wishes she didn’t have to do what her boss wanted. Says she wants to make it. Says she’s a good worker. Says she hopes there’s another way.

*

Naomi S. Age: 16

She wishes she could forget. She says she feels numb around him now. She just wants to forget.

*

Eric V. Age: 11

She wishes her mom and dad would stop fighting. She says Dad broke a glass today. Mom screamed and left. She wishes they would just make up.

*

Patricia F. Age: 36

She wishes for her sons’ safety. Says please keep him out of the streets. Says there’s nothing there for him. Says please protect him. Says let my son come back safe and sound, says a prayer.

*

Christina R. Age: 17

She wishes for a healthy child. Says her parents don’t know yet but she hopes when she tells them they don’t freak out. She pauses. Even if they do, she says, I’m keeping it. She just doesn’t want them to hate her.

*

Devin J. Age: 27

He wishes his parents would accept him. He hasn’t told them yet.

*

Irene D. Age: 26

She wishes for a better tomorrow. She works at the club. She’s a dancer. She says its fine but not what she wants. She likes photography but it doesn’t pay the bills. She says she’s sick of the club. She wishes for a way out.

*

These coins float within me. They are my dreams.

 

RICKEY RIVERS JR was born and raised in Alabama. He is a writer and cancer survivor. His poetry has appeared in various publications and is forthcoming in a Twist in Time Magazine, Dodging the Rain, Elephants Never (among other publications). Twitter.com/storiesyoumight / https://storiesyoumightlike.wordpress.com/

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Although she had three beautiful daughters, Christine also desperately wanted a dog. But her husband resisted.

Because they lived near a field where owners walked their dogs, Christine began to leave out raw meat in her garden – to lure passing pooches. She did this when her husband was at work, even though she was afraid he might return without warning.

She watched from her bedroom as the dogs – and there were many – were attracted into her garden by the smell of the beef, pork or lamb. Christine would take the animals into her lounge, stand them on a glass-topped coffee table and brush their fur with a wooden-handled brush, sometimes so hard that eventually there was more hair on the brush than on the dog. Or she would cover them in talcum powder and paint their toe nails purple.

Sometimes she bathed them in her own pink bath with lilac petals floating on the water. Or dressed them in the children’s clothes – coloured waistcoats, silky empire-line dresses or yellow duffle coats. Often she taught them to perform tricks, some taking many hours of practice – sitting up to beg, sleight of hand card tricks, and cutting a lady in half.

Finally, before her husband returned, she sought out the dog’s fretful owner to return the dog. Sometimes they commented on the dog’s baldness, or fragrance, or ability to perform unusually complex tricks, but more often they were so relieved that they gave Christine a financial reward.

Despite this small income, Christine ran out of money to buy meat, and so, one morning before they woke, she strangled her three daughters. As she tightened her grip on their throats, they made no sound – except, she thought, a kind of muffled bark.

Having dismembered their bodies in the kitchen, she stored them in an old chest freezer at the back of the garage. When he arrived home, she told her husband that they were staying with their aunt. She knew that by the time he grew to disbelieve her he would be ripe for dog food too.

If anything, the human flesh was more attractive to passing dogs than the beef, pork and lamb. And she found that the larger the piece she put out, the larger the dog attracted.

The day she placed her elder daughter’s torso in the garden, she saw the biggest dog she had ever seen. But, as she ran across the lawn towards the beast – to smother it in her love – she was stopped in her tracks by its rapacious shining eyes, and realised it was a wolf. She turned on her heels and fled back into the house, locking the door behind her.

The creature pursued her, opened the front door as if it held a key, walked to the kitchen and took a knife from the drawer, and, at the top of the stairs, plunged the knife into her heart – an unusual form of wolf attack – with the words, “That’s for the children.”

 

JOHN HOLLAND’S short fiction is published all over the shop online, in magazines and anthologies. He is the organiser of the twice-yearly event Stroud Short Stories. John’s website is http://www.johnhollandwrites.com Twitter @JohnHol88897218

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Jackie stands in the yard screaming. Dogs bark. Smoke pours from two chimneys at either end of the barn. Inside, the living room is lit by two fires and two table lamps. At the top of the two stairwells there are bedrooms. John finishes his tea and puts on his coat. He takes Jackie’s coat out with him and drapes it across her shaking shoulders before putting a woolly hat on her head. Her screaming subsides as he props open the back gates. He gets in his red car and reverses on to the old drovers’ road. She gets in her little blue car and slowly backs it out. John manoeuvres past her and parks his little red car back in the yard. He closes the gates as she continues to go backwards up the old drovers’ road.

Back inside, John makes another cup of tea and puts it on the table next to the couch. He puts his hands behind his head, flicks off his slippers and stretches his legs. There are starlings nesting in the bushes just beyond the door and he listens to their curious sounds.

After waking he pours the cold tea into the kitchen sink. The two fires are glowing with coals. He shovels more coal on each of them and smoke billows from both chimneys. Turning on the radio he listens to 70’s music and washes the wine glasses in the sink. A woman sings that she feels she’s made out of gingerbread.

Looking at his watch he turns off the radio and waits. Then he hears the car horn, one, two, three, four beeps. He goes out into the yard, opens the gates, reverses his little red car out and lets the little blue car back in.

‘Did you get them, Jackie?’ he says.

‘Yes, I got them.’

In the living room lit by lamps and fires she opens the Belgian biscuits and begins to eat them.

‘Why don’t you try something else, Jackie?’ he says.

‘I like these.’

‘I know, but don’t they have anything else in Aldi, Jackie?’

‘I like these.’

‘Alright, Jackie.’

Jackie sits on the couch with the empty box of biscuits. John looks up from his copy of the Hexham Courant. ‘Do you want your knitting, Jackie?’

‘Oh fuck. Okay.’

He goes to the drawer and takes out the long black and white scarf with the needles still attached and passes it to Jackie. She resumes the slow clicking and clacking and John goes back to his newspaper.

In the afternoon John looks at his watch and sees that it is time for Countdown. He puts on the TV and Jackie puts down the scarf when she hears the theme music. They watch in silence, relaxing to the considered requests for vowels and consonants. John puzzles over the conundrum, and the contestant, a seventeen-year-old boy, figures it out before him.

In the kitchen, Jackie cooks her speciality of chilli con carne as John attends to the fires. He folds out the tiny dining table and they sit at either end over their steaming plates just as The Simpsons starts. On the screen, Homer strangles his son Bart in a running visual gag. John watches as Homer goes to Moe’s and sits at the bar with Lenny and Carl.

When Jackie comes back downstairs in her dressing gown, John has a glass waiting. The yard is filled with empties and John thinks to go to the bottle bank sometime. At the end of Mrs Brown’s Boys, John turns smiling to Jackie and sees her sleeping on the couch. He finishes his glass of wine and lifts her into his arms before carrying her up the stairwell and putting her in to bed.

Back in the living room he puts more coal on both fires to keep the bastle barn warm through the night. He throws the empty box of biscuits in to the flames as the last westbound train passes. There are highlights of the England game on ITV. He has avoided hearing the score and is lifted by news of the 2-1 victory. Hodgson seems to know what he’s doing but neither side is like they used to be during the time of Bobby Moore.

After the football he looks more closely at the leaflets that came through the door while Jackie was out. Under a heading, ‘Quiet Revolution’ there’s details of a plan to put some wind turbines just across the river below Willimoteswick Castle. A meeting has been set up at the newly constructed village hall to organize a petition. The other leaflet details the upcoming production of As You Like It at Henshaw School.

The first eastbound train of the morning passes. As it fades away John hears the young starlings. After the starlings there’s the screaming. Dogs bark. John gets up and comes down his stairwell, sees the front door open and Jackie standing in the yard in her dressing gown, looking up at the blue sky. John starts the fires and then brings her inside. Later, as they go through the routine with the cars, John sees the police van by the side of the old drovers’ road.

 

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Passing by the lily pond in that deep December snow, you glimpse the goldfish, a prisoner below thin ice. I break the surface with the heel of my boot, plunge a hand into the water, then clench my fist for a moment, immobilised by an irrational fear of touching the glint and gleam of the fish.

I picture my childhood pet, Pepper, thrashing on the polished wood of the dining table. I’d forgotten to put the lid on the tank after feeding him, and he leapt to freedom. I screamed for my mother, tentatively holding my hand out towards the fish, already imagining the cold wriggle of him, the possibility that he would slither from my grasp and land on the parquet floor.

Pepper’s body gave a final jerk as my mother arrived in the room. She dropped him back into the tank, but he stayed on his side, floating amongst the flakes of fish food, his mouth open in surprise.

My mother took me into town, we bought new shoes and ate ice cream sundaes, but it didn’t help. Back home, we buried Pepper in the garden, and the following week I chose a new fish from the pet shop. He was silver, and I called him Salt. But he didn’t overwrite the memory of Pepper; instead he was a daily reminder that I’d allowed him to die.

And now, this opportunity to make amends. I reach for the fish, teeth gritted, feel him quivering as I scoop him up with a paper coffee cup. You carry the cup home, so carefully, in your tiny mittened hands, heating it with clouds of chocolatey breath.

The goldfish spends winter in a borrowed bowl, and we admire his shimmer as he circles the pirate ship, weaves through weed in a one-man glittering shoal, makes eyes at the mermaid with the yellow plait.

In April, we carry him back to the pond in a jar, squat down at the edge to watch him explore, but his tail flicks once, and he’s already gone, leaving only a ripple between the lily pads to say he was there: just as though he never knew us.

 

AMANDA HUGGINS is the author of the short story collection, Separated From the Sea, and the flash collection, Brightly Coloured Horses. She was a runner-up in the 2018 Costa Short Story Award, and shortlisted for Bridport and Fish. She is also a published poet and award-winning travel writer.

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The old woman loved the falling snowflakes. They were big and sparkly and kept fluttering around her, distracting her from the police who came into her home while she was laying on the floor. She had no idea how the officers got into the apartment, and why she couldn’t get up. She must have slipped while walking to the kitchen. She must have tripped over one of her son’s roller skates. He’s so careless.

The wet snowflakes on her wrinkled face triggered a memory of her son as a little boy, bundled in a snowsuit with black goulashes and mittens tied to his sleeves. She often pulled him on his Flexible Flyer along the snowy road with the other children. She watched him slide down the big hill on Penny Way as he laughed and played with his rosy-cheeked friends. She prayed that he didn’t hurt himself on the sled; that he would have the presence of mind to be careful. She worried about her husband coming home in such stormy weather. He was a good driver, but the roads were icy and slick.

The policewoman turned to the back of the patrol car. “Everything will be okay, Mrs. Dowling. You’re going to a wonderful nursing home.”

The old woman didn’t know why the policewoman called her Mrs. Dowling; that’s not her name. Maybe she made a mistake. Perhaps it was the elderly lady with the henna red hair that lived on the next block with the same house number.

Although the old woman was annoyed by the police, she smiled anyway, grinning without teeth, only her gums showing. Her false teeth were floating in a coffee cup on the bedroom dresser. She didn’t think of taking them when the police picked her up from the floor and carried her away. She put up a fight, but the officers were persistent. They kept saying that she couldn’t live by herself anymore; that it was too dangerous, and that she would fare much better with around-the-clock nursing care.

The old woman watched the snowflakes fall and thought that she should have left a note for her husband. She hoped that he would be home soon and that he doesn’t worry about where she is. She worried about her son dressing warm enough and remembering to wear the woolen sweater that she bought for Christmas.

“My son is off from school today, and we’re going sledding,” the old woman said. “My son loves being out in the snow with me.”

The female police officer smiled at Mrs. Dowling. “Your son must be thrilled to have a mother like you,” she said.

“He is,” replied Mrs. Dowling, “he’s with his father now.”

Mrs. Dowling looked out the patrol car window at the falling snowflakes, feeling comforted by the policewoman’s kind words, somehow knowing that her son was all right; that he would slide down the hill like the other kids and reach the bottom safely. She knew that his father, who was off from work, would make sure that their son was okay.

 

MARK TULIN is a former family therapist who lives in Santa Barbara, California. His poetry often finds richness in the lives of the neglected and disenfranchised. He has a poetry chapbook, Magical Yogis, published by Prolific Press (2017), and upcoming poetry book entitled, Awkward Grace. His work appears in Page and Spine, Fiction on the Web, Amethyst Magazine, Vita Brevis, The Drabble, smokebox, and others. His website is Crow On The Wire.

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“Real freedom is discipline,” she said as she slipped another pin into the linen.

I stared at my hands as they pleated another line in the evening dress. She was always saying things like that to us. I don’t mean to imply that she talked much, or that she was the chatty sort – she was, after all, a serious woman – but there was a gaiety about her when she paid us a visit. Somehow she felt that these visits must always involve imparting nuggets of knowledge that she had gleaned on her travels.

It was said in the newspapers and whispered amongst us that she was the best travelled and most international Irishwoman in the world. There was a strong hope that the First Lady Jackie Kennedy would wear one of the dresses our hands had pleated – and perhaps even pose for a portrait!

“I have to feel what’s being made,” she said later that same day.

I watched her fingers caress the material she said was inspired by the ground beneath our feet – the colour of peat – and saw the beginnings of a frown on her forehead.

“Is it that you don’t trust us?” My stomach plummeted at my speaking out.

In the silence a tremor crossed her face; her body seemed to deflate a little. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, suddenly desperately wishing she would raise her voice, shout at us, and exclaim that we were ungrateful country girls. Tell us that they – the naysayers – were right all along, that there was no reason to employ local girls as seamstresses, for they always betray you. I willed her to say it aloud. That our combined jealousy – for that was all we girls had in common – would be the ruin of her. The woman modelling the sample dress wobbled in shoes that were a size too big, hardly daring to breathe. The air itself seemed to pause.

“It is that I don’t trust myself,” she said calmly, “without having touched the fabric.”

She didn’t look at the model, or the dress, or even the material. She looked beyond us, beyond everything. And then she smiled. Her full lips, pink with lipstick, stretched over her straight white teeth and I thought then that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I felt an urge to embrace her.

“But of course you must know that we trust you,” I said, looking around. Though my lips were bare and cracked and my teeth crooked, I too smiled. “All of us girls trust you…” – I paused, my throat going dry – “and even love you.”

A sound of satisfaction escaped her lips. I watched her let the fabric slide from her hand and with a swing of her green skirt walk towards the bare wall at the back of the room. She slipped gracefully through the door that led into the yard where the rain was falling heavily.

 

SHAUNA GILLIGAN is a novelist and short story writer from Dublin. Shauna is interested in exploring the crossover of art and literature, the depiction of historical events in fiction, and creative processes. The Sunday Independent declared her novel Happiness Comes from Nowhere to be “thoroughly enjoyable and refreshingly challenging.”

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