Silence is our bond, the no-need to say whatever it is we might be feeling, because we know. I know Kerry is feeling my brush as I paint her, following the folds under her breasts, and I know she doesn’t mind. Her breasts are large and beautiful, even the filigree of lines drawn by their weight and traced, by me, in silver. Perhaps I love them even more, because my breasts are like walnuts, with as many folds.

The sun has moved down below the window behind her, its shadows filling hollows I hadn’t seen before. I want to go on and paint their darkness, but sense her cold. “Let’s take a break,” I say.

“No, I want to see what you’re seeing now.”

The magpie flies in just as I’m opening my mouth to say something in reply. Big and brash on the window sill, snapping his beak.

Kerry turns round to look for the disturbance, a hand on each nipple, which makes me laugh and say she needn’t worry, because, “human breasts probably aren’t his thing”.

Our silence and our laughing, shared and private. Sniggering like hogs, at the beautiful Spanish girl with hairs growing out of her ears, sitting two seats down in the coach from Burgos to Logrono. Both of us thrown out of the amateur opera, for laughing at Carmen, because her singing sounded like my mother’s orgasm. Our love is grounded in moments like these, so now I drop my head to the magpie and thank him. Kerry says I’m following an ancient pagan tradition and that she’d always known I was a witch. I kiss her, and we go to bed.

Him, strange that I never thought of him as anything else. He could have been female, but I never wanted to find out. He should have been she in my world of women, where men are only allowed in on special terms, but he was my boy. The Boy, named by me, just two days later. “Looks like The Boy’s here to stay.”

I remember now, that she didn’t reply. Perhaps our silence had already begun to lose its value, or perhaps I wasn’t listening.

Anyway, the Boy moved in, sitting on the backs of chairs and tilting his head, pointing a black eye at the brush in my hand. “Perhaps he wants to be a painter too,” I say. “I could teach him.”

“Try it,” she said. “He’d probably earn more.”

In the past I would have laughed, but The Boy has taken over, his raking laugh already better than mine.

I’m working on a big commission, a real one that could pay for our flat and probably even a car. Being gay is, for once, an advantage. The husband has said that only another woman, who loves women, could know how to capture the beauty of his wife. Her amputated legs lying bare on the floor, their fleshy ends as soft as cream cheese, flattened against the silk.

“Silk for the reflections,” I tell her. “Do you mind if I move this leg closer?” She shrugs, still angry with her husband, because this is what he wants to see of her.

The Boy is watching, one spiny toe scratching the other.

Today, Kerry has said she has things to do, and might be late getting back. I asked her to help me put this hurting woman at ease, leaving me to work, unseen behind the canvas. But Kerry is too busy, so it’s just The Boy and I, testing each other to see if we can be a team.

“Is he tame?” The woman looks over to where he’s sitting on the back of a chair. Another reason to be tense and not want to be here, on the floor of my studio where, I have told her, the light falls best.

“Tame enough,” I smile back, in a way I hope is reassuring. “Wants to be a painter too.”

The Boy claps his beak.

I see her face change when he flies over to sit on my shoulder. “Incredible,” she whispers, after a while. “He’s following everything you do and then looking at me, as if he’s checking to make sure you’ve got it right.”

That’s it. The Boy has done it, dissolved the knot inside her, and now we can work, the three of us a team.

Ellie, the woman, comes every day for ten weeks, understanding now why the silk is so important for me. How it tells the whole story and why it can’t end with her legs. The Boy hears her coming every time, and beak-taps the uneven rhythm of her steps on each stair.

Kerry drains her cup of coffee. “You don’t need me here. I’ll finish my research in the library.”

I put my hand on hers, wanting to push it down so hard that she can’t move, ever again, but instead my fingers trail like feathers over her white knuckles. “It’s the last day, please stay with us.”

“What for?”

“To see me finish,” I say. “No more painting. She’s just coming to check the final version before her husband sees it.”

“And then?”

The silence drips between us, blood-soft and as dark. When I call her, she says she’s having a drink with some colleagues. When she doesn’t come home, I’m not surprised. In the morning I look at The Boy and want to hate him.

Kerry has gone, every trace, even her smell. I’ve tried to find it, sniffing into the corners of the cupboard where she used to hang her clothes, at the edge of the bed where she always slept, curled like a kitten, when her period pains were bad. The Boy sits on my shoulder, watching while I search my phone for the digitally preserved love that has died in the flesh. It’s the silence I need, but The Boy has taken it, whistling at the back of his throat the way Kerry used to when I got out of the shower, snoring like me, when I’ve got a cold.

Night after night, I lie on our bed, playing our past in my head. The day we first met, both of us blobby and gauche, passing a spliff we didn’t know what do with. Then again, all those years later, when she’d finished her Phd, and told me I had to call her Doctor. I refused and answered that she was too beautiful. She was, by then, especially her breasts.

“What have breasts got to do with intellect?” She’d stuck them out at me like a rude tongue and we laughed for the first time, and then always after that, in a way I thought would be forever. The silence came later, when we both knew who we were and didn’t need to explain anymore. Laughing and silence, the key to our being. She’d written it on the blackboard we used for shopping lists, and I’d coloured in the curves of her letters.

During those first weeks alone, I used to draw her all the time, holding onto her in the only way I could. The parts I remembered most, her eyes and the fold under her chin, but when I’d done that, there was nothing left, so I told The Boy I was leaving and he would have to look after himself. He laughed with her voice, so I left, but when I got to the bottom of the stairs I had to go back up to check that he had really gone. The window was closed, and the sill outside it, empty. The Boy gone and Kerry too. Perhaps one because of the other, but mainly because of me.

When I paint now, I paint the spaces, the white between the black on The Boy’s feathers, the silences between two people who think they are talking. When I see a magpie I always nod and say thank you.

Image via Pixabay

He paints me gliding through spinach soup. Past white picket fences furred with algae. Past fish-flicking mailboxes. Past the coral-encrusted wrecks of our neighbours’ houses. He captures my tippy-toes gait. The golden banner of my hair. My water-distorted smile, its echo on the dugong’s face.

The title curves above my head in bouncy black letters. Drowned Woman with Dugong.

“Your best yet!” I say, kissing his black moustache. We waltz around the studio. The gramophone plays “I Can’t Stop Loving You”.

June 12, 1967. Greek-born artist’s exhibition celebrates Australian alps

My scrapbook, open on the kitchen table, keeps miraculously dry. I leaf through honey-coloured clippings while my hair sets. He loves my corkscrew ’do. “My mermaid,” he murmurs at night as the current combs my curls.

The hydroelectric scheme brought people from all over to the Snowy Mountains. He wandered into Jindabyne not long after my 17th birthday. Worked odd jobs when he had to. Other days, he’d set up his easel at the river bend. I couldn’t keep away. Familiar vistas cancanned across his canvases in fancy dress. Never more themselves.

One day, there I was. Tiara on my head, meat cleaver in hand. Butcher’s Shop Princess.

My parents disapproved.

“He’ll never put meat on the table.”

“I’ll take care of that,” I said.

August 5, 1967. Flooding of Jindabyne valley to begin any day

I wore them down. “Your choice, darl,” Mum said.

“You can work in the shop for a wage. Apart from that, you’re on your own.”

The ring, a hair’s-width gold band from the main street jewellers, emptied his savings sock. We’d live on love, art and T-bone steak.

December 12, 1967. Last wedding at Saint Mary’s

The newspaper photographer was nicknamed “Blur”. He managed to tilt us 45 degrees as well. Our smiles are watery. My eyes ask: “Can you tell I’m wearing a shower curtain?” My brother’s suit, lent for the occasion, is too tight across my husband’s shoulders. Its buttons pincer his belly like tiny black crabs.

We spent our honeymoon in my parents’ squeaky old bed. The lino had just been laid in their new house up the hill. The bedroom suite was their pride and joy: rosewood veneer with real imitation mother-of-pearl inlay.

“You two can squat in the old place till the fish move in,” Dad said.

We whitewashed the walls, hung his paintings everywhere. Pretended we’d lived there forever.

My husband loved painting the creeping lake. “When it’s deep, it’ll be green. Green as spinach soup.”

The day water came snuffling under the front door, we cried. Blew our noses, stowed the paintings in my parents’ shed, pitched a tent on higher ground, near the bridge. Once they blew that up, it’d be curtains for old Jindabyne.

The town council turned it into a gala event. We joked that all we’d need to do was open the tent-flap. Front-row seats. But on the big day I didn’t want to watch. I mooched along the new lake shore, stealing white-faced herons’ eggs.

February 1, 1968. Tragic accident: bridge explosion kills newlywed

That one, a front-page story, isn’t in my scrapbook. Unforgettable, unbelievable, it eddies the lake’s surface. A pilotless motorboat, whizzing round and round.

Down here, where the spinach soup is thickest, the aftershocks are blunted. The fish welcomed me back home. The dugong, which came to me in dreams, never leaves my side. Stroking its knobbly head, I watch my husband work. A self-portrait. His best yet.

Smiling Ghost with Paintbrush.

FAYE BRINSMEAD lives in Canberra, Australia. A lawyer by day, she writes flash in all the snippets of time she can find. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in The Cabinet of Heed, Reflex Fiction, MoonPark Review, r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal and The Ekphrastic Review. She tweets @ContesdeFaye.

Image via Pixabay

INT. CLUSTERFUCK. DAY

The foley artist chops a white cabbage in two. The chhkk will be edited with a fast scrape of iron on steel. Something like that. Cutlery, maybe. I forget how those guys do it, but it’s smart. The sound is because I’m playing Lois XIV. Lois was a cool customer. She liked rock music, even though it didn’t even exist in her century, you know? In our movie, it does. It’s called anachronic or something. Hey, that’d be a great name for me if I started a band.

You know I didn’t really die. You got that. You know this is a movie. There’s a prop head in a prop guillotine. A blade falls but it doesn’t hit anything, not really. The rope holds it up. No way is it going to hit my actual neck. That’s not in my contract. They have a bag of fake blood in there, pig blood, I think, sterilized so no one gets pig-AIDS. That wouldn’t be kosher. I think I knew someone once, a Mexican wrestler, who had pig-AIDS he got from a midget whore in Tijuana.

Jenna Brown’s title on the first draft I saw was Liberté, Egalité, Sororité but no one gives a shit what she says although I think it’s a great name. Terence Morton wanted to call it Lois XIV but Jerry Silverberg figured the audience would take it for a sequel. What does he know? Well a week later he said, ‘It’s a feminist movie, so I know, why not call it Lois XIV?’ Asshole. Morton lets Jerry have the credit for the title so he gets to take the credit for the rest of the flick. ‘Choose your battles, Becs,’ he tells me, ‘choose your fuckin’ battles.’

Morton calls a wrap, and I realize it’s me he’s talking about. I’m done. It’s my last shot. Maybe some pickups later or whatnot. Everyone applauds and I make a short speech and Morton screws up his own little ramble in praise of me. Word is he has the speech written down and just changes the name of the actor each time he has to give it.

I move my behind off the set in my Lois XIV costume and it feels like the walk of shame. But I’m telling you I am so proud of this picture, of what we have achieved together these last nine months. That’s what it says in my speech. Am I glad to be done with this hair.

CUT TO:

INT. TRAILER. DAY

Sheila wipes rouge off my cheeks and powder off my forehead and makes me back into Rebecca Wood from Arkansas. I send her away. Sheila, I mean. When she goes, I sit looking at myself in the mirror. Those lights can give you a migraine but I wouldn’t mind having a headache so hard all I can see is stars, like I’ve been fucked good by a pro. I like my head outside itself. If I could make that a permanent state, I wouldn’t have to listen to other people’s crap. Like that vlogger who wrote I wanted to be blonde but didn’t have the bottle. Was that even supposed to be funny? It’s old, is what it is. Old and not original. I stand up. I don’t need help getting out of this costume, I want to do it on my own, to have one last visit with my character before leaving her forever. Then I just need to be by myself, is all. Isn’t that what Garbo said? ‘I just need to be by myself, is all.’

In the light from the mirror bulbs and the windows, like dusk in the afternoon, my body looks expensive. Nature lights me. I am my own stand-in, Robert told me once. He said my body is ethereal, insubstantial, two-dimensional. I think he was saying I have bulimia. He was just being cheap. He’s right though. My body is very adjective. I turn from the mirror and strip off my dress. It’s harder than I expected to get out of. Whalebone. Real actual whalebone from whales, which Fernando in craft services says is a country but it’s really a fish. I tear the dress off. They won’t need it again. In less than a minute I’m baby-photo-naked before the mirror. I’m so money, I want to fuck myself standing up. So, I do, until I fall over.

CUT TO:

INT. TRAILER. NIGHT

I hear the lights. I hear them pop off. They do that: pop! The hollow coughs of those big drums each time sounds like a cannon shot out of a cannon. I should be gone. I should have left hours ago but I’ve been standing nude, looking at me. I am going dark very slowly. It’s pretty awesome. I am pretty awesome. I go to the closet and open the door and see myself nude in the mirror inside there too, behind the clothes. I am so naked. I like it that there are 18th-century dresses and 21st-century tees, jeans, jackets, skirts, all jumbled together like in a fashion show held across time zones. Behind them all is me and I don’t even need to take a selfie to know that I am fucking hot. I don’t need to share this. This is mine. I don’t want to share this. I am dressed, in a way, you know? I am naked under my clothes. I take out a blouse and a pair of jeans and I put them on. I call the driver. He’ll be here in five. Lois XIV is done. She is done. I am here. Now what do I do with all these fucking flowers?

CUT TO:

EXT. A SQUARE IN PARIS, FRANCE. DAY

Two revolutionaries drag Lois into the square where the crowd calls for her head. And it’s a pretty head. Sean Young in Blade Runner pretty – but period. She’s all serene calmness but you can tell in her eyes there’s turmoil. The revolutionaries are putrid in ragged clothes, tricorn hats, big fat guns. (Did they have guns?) Lois walks fearless to the platform in the center of the square where the guillotine waits; an executioner and a representative from the People’s Commune (check this) stand beside it. One guard shoots a look of remorse at his co-worker. A queen to the end, Lois walks up to the scaffold. The executioner, fat and greasy with a blindfold and cummerbund – think Hamburglar but a prototype – he steps away from the guillotine. Lois takes her place in front of it and removes her Grace Kelly headscarf. Silence. Her locks have been shorn so the blade can get a clean lop at her neck. The executioner nods. Lois kneels and places her head in the frame. She doesn’t close her eyes. She wants them to look into her soul before they separate it from her body. The executioner puts his fat hand on the back of Lois’s delicate neck and pushes it down. He steps back and a guard takes out a scroll. He reads out the list of her crimes. Revolution, bad table manners, fucking burglary – they’re making this shit up and she knows it but Lois doesn’t answer. She’s kinda busy. The executioner tugs on the cord to release the blade. Whop!

CUT TO:

INT. CLUSTERFUCK. DAY – LATER

The rope breaks, the blunt guillotine cracks on her head and everyone stares at Rebecca Wood.

Terence Morton yells. ‘That’s a cut!’

‘What did you call her?’ the DP whispers.

Morton grumbles, waves him away. Then he realizes what has happened. Shit! She’s fridged!

Pandemonium breaks out. It takes a minute for someone to call a doctor, by which time Morton is speeding Rebecca to the hospital in his Ferrari.

They tell him later that he shouldn’t have moved her. He says she was gone already and he hoped they could bring her back. He liked Rebecca. She was going to be something.

CUT TO:

REBECCA WOOD DEAD IN PERIOD ACCIDENT

Lois XIV, Terence Morton’s $253m. post-feminist take on the French Revolution—here Louis XIV is Lois, played by Rebecca Wood (22)—hiatused Wednesday when a prop guillotine impacted Wood’s head. The actor later died in St. Mercy’s, Oakland. Morton’s reported to be disappointed but Fox says the flick will release July 19th next year, right on schedule. TMZ reports Wood is not dead, she’s just had radical work done. read more

DISSOLVE TO:

REBECCA’S DIARY

This endless airport departure lounge. It’s very exclusive, populated entirely by celebrities. That’s what they tell me. I have been here forever. They tell me that, too. At least it turns out I was a celebrity. That’s something. But all I can think of is Robert Hermes fucking Jessica Rand. Well she did win Best Supporting Actress for Stringless. Best Film Ever about a paraplegic cellist’s romantic obsession with an artist’s puppet. Being John Malkovich meets Boxing Helena, that was the pitch. Nurse Sheila tells me nothing. I may be in a coma. I hope it’s only a coma, because I hate the thought of meeting Michael Landon. His hair! Nurse Sheila says I have anger issues. What does she mean? But who cares. Robert Hermes. Jessica Rand. Seriously. This corridor goes on forever.

CUT TO:

THE VERY EXPENSIVE ROOM

As her eyes open she sees what’s going on, so she shuts them tight again. She isn’t ready for this. She isn’t ready. Morton was wrong. Rebecca Wood is not dead. Now in her hospital room a news crew waits; St. Mercy’s probably has a deal with the studio. This could even be going out live. If only she’d known, she would have got up weeks ago when they weren’t looking. Nurse Brown welcomes the crew personnel in as Rebecca decides to go with it. She stirs. An eyelid. She moves her lips but no words come out. Nurse Brown says that someone should have called Doctor Hermes by now so why isn’t he here? He might be watching from his office. ‘I’ve got footsteps in my head,’ Rebecca says, then her lips flatline as she dives naked back inside her coma. At least the coma is real.

DISSOLVE TO:

REBECCA’S DIARY

Everything. Everything happens at once. I’m in stage two now. I rise at an hour that could be dawn or dusk, one of those, or morning or night, who knows? This morning, that night. While Nurse Brown applies my face, I find the talcum powder here is cocaine. I developed a habit and am out of detox, both in the same moment. Simultaneously, I’ve never tried the stuff in my life. Drugs are confusing here, but at least I have the mirror. This enormous mirror in the Academy ratio follows me around on motorized castors. In the mirror, I am more beautiful even than Sean Young as Rachael with her hair down. That was a look. In return for all this wonderment, I only have to let John Hughes film me. He’s making a movie of me, all me, sitting paralyzed on a pink couch in the corridor. An homage to Kubrick, he says. Molly Ringwald isn’t dead yet, so she’s not available, so I get the part. Funny how the casting process works. He says the aliens are fascinated by the activities of humans and enthralled by the trivial. What the hell does that mean? Last week they were turned on by a spot for a body modification studio that ran during a musical special about a famine in Yemen. I guess it’s a pity about Robert and Jess, but life goes on. Just deal with it. I’ve already done the course of TM I’m about to embark on. People are all the same. I once stood a producer up on a date and he sent me a dead rabbit in the mail. I was on a strict diet at the time, so that proved he was the wrong guy for me. I will have my revenge on Robert when he turns up. Which he will. This isn’t any old joint. This is the big place they all talk about when they talk about the big place they all talk about. Boy, is he sure going to be pissed to find out the religions all got it wrong. When Robert gets here, he is mine. I can make him write the most beautiful stories in the world then I’ll reject all his scripts. That’s gotta hurt. Or! I can get someone to give him an infinite bout of herpes. Little blisters everywhere, new ones all the time, blisters on top of blisters. I think he has nerve endings so it should be real crusty painful. Or I can turn him into sushi, actual sushi; he’d have to be transformed into fish, which is great because he’s allergic to seafood. It’s possible to keep him conscious through all of it. After I eat him with wasabi and soy sauce and ginger, I’ll vomit him into a bucket for feeding to the angel sharks. Then who has bulimia, Robert? Here I can do anything. ‘Hey, Robert! Culkin says hi. Nurse, can I get a Pepsi? I am so happy. Can I get a Pepsi?’ Hold on a second. Yeah. If everything here happens at once, how come Molly Ringwald isn’t available? Answer me that, Hughes. You must’ve really wanted me for this part.

CUT TO:

‘That’s all you got?’ Jerry Silverberg flung the treatment back across his mahogany desk at Jenna Brown. She is me.

And that was all I got.

‘You don’t like it?’ I shifted in my seat and stared hard at him.

He looked like what he was, an executive. ‘Listen, Jenna, you’re a good kid. A nice kid. You come in asking for a chance, I give you a chance. And what do you give me back in return for my investment in you? My investment of hope that someone in this town can come up with something better, something more, something purer than the fucking robot movie sequels and the – not robots that are fucking, movies that are sequels that have robots in them – and the teen apocalypse crap and the…

Ah shit, Jenna, you give me this. It’s experimental. Jenna, it’s experimental. I mean, who gives a shit about whoever, and how about this? I don’t think the audience is asking is this feminist. They want Boy-meets-Whatever. Sure, the French Revolution, but didn’t we just have one? Les Miser-fucking-ables. Don’t the French have a revolution every year? Throwing sheep at each other? Can’t you write me something about that? You know, with people in it?’

As he spoke, I wondered what tiny insult might push him into spontaneous human combustion.

‘Jerry, listen.’

He flopped down in his seat and his body seemed to deflate like a pierced space-hopper.

‘Jerry,’ I continued, ‘the French didn’t just have a revolution. The last time they got close was sixty years ago.’

Jerry sighed heavily. ‘Why don’t you write that! Put a love story in it. And why don’t you have an ending at least? It makes me look bad if I greenlight this, and I’m not going to, I can tell you that now, thanks for asking.’

I put two fingers on the treatment. It felt cold to the touch. I dragged it into my lap and felt despair flow through me in full 3D with Smell-O-Vision. The room began to fuzz. Maybe it knew something I didn’t.

Well, screw the room. ‘It has an ending, Jerry,’ I said. ‘It has a good ending. I gave it the ending I did, because it’s Kubrickian.’

‘Who’s Kubrickian?’

‘What?’

Jerry took a serious moment before opening his lips again, as if he had to pay Teamsters to move them. ‘Why did you name a character after me?’

‘This happened,’ I said. ‘This story really happened. You were in it. So was I.’

‘Get out of here!’ The words flew from his mouth, a verbal Heimlich maneuver.

I grabbed my case, stuffed the treatment into it then hightailed it out of the room so I could let Jerry simmer. I didn’t wait to hear the inevitable violence to furniture.

He wouldn’t be asking for a script.

At the front gate, I paused to consider the day. It was noon. The palm trees were swaying and the cars growled by. Every day at every hour it always looks like noon. That’s what it looks like, here.

So. I’d blown it with Jerry. Never mind. Artie Mold might take a look. I’d call Laurie and ask her to set it up.

Something. Something would turn up.

I went to a Starbucks and sat with an espresso and a drink of water and then it hit me.

I felt it in my bones.

An inconvenient truth.

I was not a writer.

Not really.

But if I wished on a star that I could be Tina Fey, maybe I would be. I could be someone good. Tina Fey was good. I could be her.

To distract myself I listened to the yadda-yadda. I heard nothing, despite my ear for dialogue.

This failure to sell my script. It was not really my fault. It was the fault of this town. This town was dead. It was time for me to pack up and head home to Arkansas. I could get a job at the university.

Unless Jerry asked for a new draft.

That could happen.

Then something did.

I was about to raise my coffee but saw a distorted face reflected in the black liquid. Then I saw the face wasn’t distorted. For a big man grown fat on success, for a bear of a guy twice my age, Jerry sure could creep up on a girl. Ninja-like.

I turned to face him.

‘Listen kid,’ he said. ‘You’re young. You’re beautiful. I’m going to give you a second chance. How about it?’

I turned and furrowed my brow, which took no effort at all. ‘What the hell do you want?’

Jerry Silverberg grinned back. ‘Nothing!’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.

CUT TO:

INT. CLUSTERFUCK. DAY – A WEEK LATER

I forget which Starbucks we’re in. Jerry is yakking about the movie keeping the feminist angle but could I just kind of make it accessible? Could I give the studio this one and the next one is mine?

‘It’s a French Revolution picture,’ he goes on. ‘Female Louis. Fine. And if Larry can be Lana, what the hell. If Andy can be Lilly too, why not. Hiddleston is perfect for Lois. Come to think of it, Redmayne. Tick. Now, Rebecca. Let’s see. Scarlett? Not Portman. Scarlett. Or Phil Collins’s kid. She can do a British accent, right?’

‘Is this a script talk or a casting talk?’

He smiles. ‘I like to put a face to the character.’

‘Seriously.’

‘It’s all good, kiddo. I myself am a feminist. I marched with Gloria Vanderbilt in the 1970s. Even burnt her bra for her, though she was wearing it at the time.’

‘Seriously?’

‘OK, let’s cut to the chase. Redmayne is Lois. The Collins kid is Rebecca cos I dig the eyebrows.’

‘You said Scarlett.’

‘Careful.’ Jerry’s expression turns icy. ‘Don’t throw it away. You got a nice face and a future. Are you listening to me, Jenna Brown? Don’t throw it all away.’

CUT TO:

JENNA’S DIARY

Dinner doesn’t count. That means it’s our one-year anniversary minus two days, because in two days it’s the one-year anniversary of when I first slept with him. Jer says we can celebrate twice if we like. Rewind the film. Jer always says he’s going to leave his wife any day now, but I don’t want him to. I keep telling him no. I don’t want to ruin her life. I don’t want the static. I like what I have with Jer. They did a great job with the script. Redmayne wouldn’t commit, so Cruise signed on. Too old, I think. The picture is a musical now. It’s called Louis, Louis! Jer says we’re going to the Oscars with this one. Jess hates the Oscars and she’s given him carte blanche to take who he wants. She doesn’t know about us. Or maybe she does. Which is why I think Jer should stay with her. As long as he never owns me, I’ll be OK. This one’s for the studio, the next one is for me. But isn’t it exciting? The movie is in prep but what is almost in post, is our child. Jer says he’ll take care of us whatever happens. If it’s a girl, I’m to call her Rebecca, after his mother.

PATRICK CHAPMAN’s latest books are Open Season on the Moon (Salmon Poetry, Co. Clare, 2019); Anhedonia (stories, BlazeVOX Books, NY, 2018); and So Long, Napoleon Solo (novel, BlazeVOX Books, 2017). With Dimitra Xidous he edits The Pickled Body.

Image via Pixabay

Year 0

In the framed photo, a woman in profile—eyes smudged with dark circles, shoulder adorned with an epaulette of spit-up—hugs a newborn tight and high on her chest, resting her cheek on his head. The baby’s eyelids look like closed pistachios. His ears match the monkey’s on his swaddling blanket. Next to her, a laptop displays Google’s homepage.

● How to increase milk supply

● Fenugreek near me

● Fetal microchimerism*

● How to get baby to sleep in crib

● How to put sleeping baby down without waking

● How to sleep when baby sleeps

● How little sleep do adults need

● Hallucinations

*Examples of fetal microchimerism have been found in every type of placental mammal. Although the process is two-way—cells from a fetus transfer into the mother’s body via the placenta and vice versa—far more fetal cells persist in maternal blood and tissue than maternal cells in a fetus. Fetal cells seem to be both beneficial and deleterious to the mother. At times they act like stem cells and swarm C-section incision sites and other wounds. However, high levels of fetal cells are also associated with increased occurrence of many diseases such as Parkinson, Hashimoto, and Graves Disease.

Year 1

In the photo shared online, a woman wears sensible shorts, shirt, and shoes–nothing flimsy or hard to wash. Behind her, park lawns stretch to a river frothing with spring melt. She grips the wrist of a toddler who wears soaking wet white-and-navy-blue train engineer overalls and matching cap. He carries a stuffed monkey and a Superman sneaker; the other sneaker pokes from the pocket of her water-stained shorts. The woman stares into the distance with an expression of resolution. The boy’s limbs are blurry.

● Hey Siri, how do I unlock a door?

● How do I unlock a door from outside?

● How do I unlock a bathroom door from outside?

● Where can I find eyeglass screwdrivers near me?

● Can a toddler drown in a toilet?

● Call the local fire department

● How do I make a whiskey old fashioned?

Fetal microchimerism may play a role in the resource conflict between mother and child. Fetal cells may concentrate in those areas of the mother’s body that best aid the child postpartum in order to manipulate her into providing more resources to the infant than is in her best interest or the interests of her other children, current or future. Those areas are the thyroid (which regulates body temperature), the breast (which regulates lactation), and the brain (which controls emotional attachment).

Year 5

The live photo is one second long. A boy in front of a red brick elementary school wears sensible shorts, shirt, and shoes. He holds a slate that says “1st Day of Kindergarten.” His smile reveals a missing tooth. A woman’s tanned arm reaches into the photograph with a bedraggled stuffed monkey. We never see her body.

● Alexa, order a reusable lunch box

● Order a pencil case

● Order crayons

● Order all the school supplies

● Order How to Listen so Kids will Really Talk

● Play Time after Time

● Play If I Could Turn Back Time

Most fetal cells in the bloodstream are destroyed after birth by the mother’s immune system, although those embedded in tissue fare better. Fetal cells that survive the postpartum culling establish lines that persist for decades by becoming part of the organs that harbor them. Those in the brain become brain cells. Those in the lungs become lungs cells. Those in the heart become woven into the cardiac fibers, mingling with the mother’s own cells and even those from her mother, genetically distinct, pulsing in unison.

KATIE VENIT lives in Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in Volume One Magazine, Wisconsin Public Radio’s Wisconsin Life, 365 Tomorrows, and Neutrons/Protons. She sits on the advisory board for the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild.

Image via Pixabay

“I’ll text you if there’s no change,” he said, and there was no text all evening.

The alarm clock wakes us up at half past five with birdsong, a cuckoo and other distinctive voices I always tell myself I’ll look up but never do. It’s minus three outside, the night sky is a faded black sheet and the moon is eclipsing over our balcony.

I roll over to check my phone and see a message: Call me when you get this.

I can’t call now, especially not with the time difference.

The husband is watching me look at my phone from the foot of the bed as he pulls on his dressing gown. I scroll up and see messages from him to Dad, sent when I was asleep, a hushed private conversation. I hope everything goes without stress. And a reply: Thanks for looking after her.

“Are you okay?”

I nod.

He puts his hand on mine.

I have to remind him to put some slippers on before he opens the balcony door, as though we’re still in a place and time where we can have these normal conversations. This is a grace period. A false vacuum. It’s not real.

The moon is already flushed dark red, dim but clear in the sky, and perfectly framed over the roofs of the flats opposite. We could watch it from here.

The cold night spills in through the balcony door, so I pad to the bedroom and read the messages on my phone again, pull on slippers of my own absently, marvel at this proof that the world continues to exist while I’m asleep. Things are somehow still allowed to happen even when I’m not watching.

I’ll phone at seven. I can’t phone now. There’s nothing I can do about it now. It’s happened already. There’s nothing I can do and the moon is eclipsing.

The husband is screwing pieces of the telescope together. It amazes me every time that he remembers how to do it. I remember listening very earnestly to the man we bought the telescope from, standing in his cluttered cellar in some village at the end of a train line, and immediately forgetting all of his advice and instructions. All of this jumble of things, screws, poles, lenses, cardboard boxes, forgotten advice, belong to the same stratum of time in which she was alive. I’m sitting on the cliff edge of that time now, cheating shamelessly, but when you’re a human being stuck in time’s amber all you can do is cheat. You have to cheat.

I don’t need to phone. I already know.

I go outside for the first time when the telescope is finished. There’s a skin of still frost over everything, stretched out over the open doorway, and when I cross the threshold I shatter it into stinging splinters. I pace the balcony and eye up the old pots and stacked fridge trays that we promise ourselves we’ll deal with but never do.

We take turns squinting into the telescope’s eyepiece. The dim, perfect moon becomes even clearer, each crater close enough to stick a curious fingertip into, coat it with coppery dust. Taste it. Every flaw and meteor scar laid bare. A reminder that far away things are as real as we are.

It’s so cold that it hurts, so I retreat back inside again, having seen all of the moon that I can see, and I carry with me a perfect mantle of winter air pressed between skin and dressing gown. Glance at my phone in the bedroom. The same words waiting. The clock reads 5:59. Can’t phone yet.

Back out to the balcony and the moon’s moving even as we watch, sinking and dimming. It’s going to dip behind the roofs just before it hits the full eclipse. There’s still a fingernail paring of silver cupping one edge.

Another look through the telescope and this time I watch it until it drifts out of the eyepiece altogether, touching the icy body of the telescope with my fingertips. The husband readjusts it and gets out the camera to catch it before it goes.

We could watch it from the sofa. We could sit curled up together, wrapped in a blanket and holding steaming mugs of tea, and get just as good a view of that copper coin in the sky, like a new two pence piece. The kind that as children we’d keep a beady eye out for and our grandparents, yielding to our magpie hearts, would point out for us to pick up.

Yes, I think, we could watch it from inside, but neither of us goes to move. Neither of us closes the door. The cold pours in and twines around us.

DANIELLE JORGENSON-MURRAY is a videogame translator based in Frankfurt, Germany, originally from the North East of England, and can often be found wandering around urban wildernesses.

Image via Pixabay

It was the first time I surfed wearing my little bone surfboard pendant with my mother’s initials carefully carved into the back – MJCCB, the first time I dared enter the cold, fall Rhode Island water alone when the tide roared, and the first time my paddle out didn’t necessarily include a paddle in.

Covered in Neoprene from head to toe; boots, wetsuit and gloves, I made my way over the slippery rocks of my favorite break, Deep Hole, and tried to let the rip currents, the thick fog, and the low bellows of the distant lighthouse, distract me from the fact that my mother was going to die. Surfing had diverted me from the struggles of life before, but this time was different. This time, the water could not wash away my thoughts, cleanse my nightmares, or offer me the peace the waves had brought me before, in happier times.

Belly down on my longboard nicknamed Blue Betty, I made my way through the soupy white froth that tried to push me back to the safety of the shoreline, now just a cloudy, thick gray memory.

Ignoring all the signals of impending danger, I paddled out farther and farther, towards what I knew to exist, the safety of the thin blue line.

Wave after unseen wave would rock me, occasionally dumping me into the blackness of the drink. Resting only briefly, treading water holding onto my board, my mind waged war with the keeper of the tides.

Fuck you. No one would hear me yell. Fuck. You.

Dangling over Deep Hole, clinging to Blue Betty, I thought maybe I could just stay there, or maybe, I could just let go.

I thought of that little pendant tucked safely under my black wetsuit and of Mom, fighting a battle with pancreatic cancer that she would not, that she could not win.

The lighthouse in nearby Snug Harbor now sounded more like Noooo Chris than the groans it had just recently expelled warning sailors of the rocks and surfers of the danger of the thick fog.

My nostrils now filled with gallons of salt water, and my arms noodles from paddling against the incoming tide warned me that it was time to paddle in.

Even though my muscles and lungs begged for rest, my heart still needed time. Time out in the frigid Atlantic Ocean on this late October day to come to terms with what was to be, and my heart knowing it was boss, threw my arms out again and again, over and over, into the liquid darkness.

Farther and farther towards Block Island I went, Blue Betty teetering unsteadily beneath me. I couldn’t see it as I usually could, but I knew it was out there, as well as potentially boats, and other surfers.

If anyone was going to die, I needed to scope out the battlefield first. I needed to know and see, what was already written. Her obituary, carefully worded by her to include everyone, had been written days before, and her new light blue sweat suit from Walmart that she wished to be buried in, was carefully placed in her top drawer, until her death. No doctor could save her, no Whipple surgery to prolong her life was possible, and now, not even chemo was an option.

Cancer was a guest that had come before, but this time it would leave with my mother’s laugh, her smile, and the light in her eyes, and all I could do was paddle harder and farther, not knowing if I could have the strength to paddle back in.

Noooooo Chris. The fog moaned.

Exhaustion had set in. Panic did not.

In the darkness of the heavy fog, I could not see the giant wave building, or have any way to prepare for it, or, let it take me under. Before I could decide, before I even knew, this wave, with a plan and a mind of its own, threw me into the air and left me no choice but to paddle in.

Pmpffff. I landed on my belly and paddled in without the option of breathing. The toss had knocked the wind out of me and left a bump on my head that was already pounding and bleeding profusely.

As I sat on the rocky coast with thoughts of paddling back out, I listened to the lighthouse, to the surf, and the fog that although silent, spoke to me. They whispered what I knew to be true. Four months later she would take her last breath while in my arms, and exhale to the face of God.

It was time to go home.

(Mary Joanne Celina Comeau Brooks February 15, 1941 – February 12, 2011)

http://www.christinebrookswriter.com

Image via Wikimedia Commons, Vicki McKay [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D

I seal liabilities of loneliness
with maud of meter to create
hygge of vicarious happiness.

I peruse from mavens of mortal play
the trick is to transfer emotions.
Marinating in a bleak headset
is to break within.

The way out is to change the gear.
No one can jockey you out of it.
Chauffeur your car.

SANJEEV SETHI is the author of three books of poetry. He is published in more than 25 countries. Recent credits: The Poetry Village, Amethyst Review, Bonnie’s Crew, Selcouth Station, Picaroon Poetry, Laldy Literary Journal, The Sandy River Review, Packingtown Review, Otoliths, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Image via Pixabay

She was trying to be her normal self, invisible. No one ever acknowledged her, spoke to her, looked at her in all her years living here. But today someone would see her. Someone would remember her and she’d be on tomorrow’s six o’clock news. It had to be today! She’d never have the courage again.

“What did you say your name is?”

The old man cupping a hand behind his ear.

She was sitting on a frayed, dirty old armchair sipping Guinness from a chipped mug. At the top of the second set of stairs an arm had shot out of an opened door and she’d been pulled inside. For an old man he was surprisingly strong. He told her about working on the building sites, out in all weathers and how you never saw a rusty man. This had made her smile, well a tiny smile moved across her pale face. The old man noticed.

He thought she was his home help, or the woman from the social, or an angel come to save him from what he’d planned next. He was invisible but today someone would see him. Someone would remember him and he’d be on tomorrow’s six o’clock news.

She felt the knife in her coat pocket. It would be so easy to spill blood here.

He looked at the knife on the kitchen table. It would be so easy to spill blood here.

They talked for hours, visible for once. She felt a bit heady from the Guinness, she told him her name was Collette, from Letterkenny in County Donegal. She wasn’t. He told her he was Joseph from South London. He wasn’t. They hid their secrets well. Future plans and past deeds forgotten. Her visit to flat 6 postponed for ever.

Sitting between the nosy old biddy from flat 10 and the girl with the fabulous figure and the tumbling red hair from flat 6 she looked around the church, two old blokes from the bookies were the only other mourners. The Roman Catholic priest was talking about William Quinney but it was Joseph in the coffin. The solicitor had shown her the copy of the will. A picture of her at the bins with flat 4 scrawled on the back and the words this is the woman I leave my possessions to. Joseph had got the girl from flat 6 to take the photo and to witness the will. Collette was William’s only beneficiary. He’d told the will writer that she’d saved him from a lonely old age. Joseph was shrewd. He knew she wasn’t Collette.

The girl from flat 6 started to sing Ave Maria. Joseph’s final request. Strange choice for a funeral but the girl of course had the voice of an angel. Collette smiled, grateful she hadn’t yet appeared on the 6 o’clock news.

STELLA TURNER was sent to Coventry, England at birth. She loves the rich history of the city, its two cathedrals and its infamous ring road. She writes flash fiction and has been published in several Anthologies. Was joint winner of a competition held by the online literary magazine Deracine.

Image via Pixabay

The first time she saw me, she jumped up and down so much the bedside light flickered and went out. I later discovered that the wiring in her apartment was in need of upgrading.

“You didn’t.” she cried. “You didn’t need to do that!”

They set to work immediately and soon had me wearing the chocolate brown leather jacket I had arrived with. Her face crinkled as she inspected me.

“I do love the feel of real paper. But, I think.…” She stopped.

He smiled. “For me, I sometimes make deeper connections with machines – or in my case, bicycles – than with other humans. Does that sound too crazy?”

Unexpectedly, I was tossed onto the duvet.

“Not this human, I hope,” she reprimanded, pushing her puckered lips hard onto his and forming a tight cordon around his neck with her arms. Then they collapsed, by degrees, like the flat corrugated cartons I had seen knocked over in the factory.

So this was it. I had arrived. But what happened next, immediately to my right, I was unprepared for. I understood it only in terms of him uncovering his USB cord in an effort to establish a connection with her power port. Yet, despite vigorous attempts, no stable connection could be made.

Instead of showing frustration, they lay back on the bed, screeching with laughter. I now know from my education in literature that the activity that had occurred falls within the category of “fornication”, a word I’d been aware of from my two dictionaries. What it entailed, I had never understood. They followed it up with something I later recognised in Fifty Shades of Gray, where it masquerades as “my inner goddess doing the merengue with some salsa moves.”

Afterwards, they concentrated on making me operational. During the registration process I discovered that her name was Judy. She decided that I was to be Algernon, after the character in The Importance of Being Earnest. I loved my new name – it was so me. And within minutes she was referring to me as Algie!

What a period of joy it was that followed! What edification. The delights of discovering with Judy the elegance of Jane Austen and the passion of Charlotte Bronte. The rapture of being held by her as she raced through Great Expectations. Her fingers pulsing nervously on my reverse as she lived and breathed The Tell Tale Heart. Judy carried me everywhere, pride of place in her emerald green Spanish leather handbag.

My early diet of Jane Austen had hardly suggested that people work for a living. But Judy was the diary secretary to a Chief Executive, and on her very first day back at the office I was passed amongst her colleagues and admired. How clever of Dieter to so finely judge his first present. What a catch he must be! I admit to experiencing some regret that my early moment of glory was shared with him. I now also know that their reaction was chiefly because I was a novelty, being an early incarnation (complete with tiny keyboard).

Quaint as it may sound, I was consumed by my sense of duty. I was now Judy’s. It was my job to store her books and facilitate her choices (displaying the text in her preferred font), define the trickier words and to respond to her natural reading rhythms.

Sometimes, as light and shadows from his lava lamp played on the sloping wall of his bedroom in the attic, she would read aloud to him the stories of Guy de Maupassant, her fingers squeezing me ever more tightly with each turn of the page. How well I understood from that pressure on my buttons, her desire for him to love all that she loved. But Dieter, whilst attentive and complimentary, never quite reached the requisite levels of enthusiasm. And so these occasions were always punctuated with questions from Judy as to what he really thought.

Over time (and this was preferable to me), reading once again became something that she did without him. The classics were now supplemented by a newspaper, The Independent, and also with Dieter’s letters which he sent direct to me (wirelessly) when he was away. I had been pleased to learn that he divided his time equally between the UK and his native Germany.

The letters were long and packed with details about his father’s bicycle company, their new superlight frames and plans to make headway in the American market. Having covered business matters, he would allow himself more informally to focus on Judy and their relationship.

Judy would approach the reading of these letters in a different way to the classics. She was as keen to go back and re-read passages as she was to progress forwards towards completion. Sometimes she would stop reading, a puzzled frown lingering upon her brow. What was she searching for beneath the words? Did they alone not provide her with nourishment enough? Having gleaned a thing or two about communication between lovers, I debated whether her love for Dieter was more like the foliage in the woods – something that would change with each winter – or closer resembled the eternal rocks beneath. Having finished a letter, Judy would usually make a hot drink and return to their living room. I should have mentioned that they had taken the – in my view – unfortunate decision to live together. She was occasionally tearful when alone in the evenings, but it was then that I was most full of hope. I would will her to pick me up so that we could share in the activity that was dearest to our hearts. Sometimes she would run a bath and, holding me carefully above her breasts, would read in steamy silence. I adored it when it was just Judy and me time!

The most dismal days for me were those when I was inexplicably left alone in the apartment. I preferred to believe that Judy had picked up the wrong bag, or had simply forgotten to take me to work. I could not have lived with myself if I had done anything to cause my abandonment; I summarily dismissed such thoughts from my mind. During those days, I hated the silence. I hated the afternoon presenting its passport and, with me still suffering alone, crossing the treacherous border into night. And most of all I hated being apart from Judy.

It was on just such an afternoon when I was alone that a bald man in a cream T-shirt entered the apartment. I had become aware of noises (I had hoped that Judy was back from work early). But then he slapped the bedroom light on, belched, and began carelessly dragging anything he liked the look of into a large hold-all bag. I was on the bedside table, where Judy had left me the previous evening. She had read for thirty five minutes after Dieter had fallen asleep. I had luxuriated in her attention, made all the more pleasurable by being in front of his sleeping frame. But now, in that very same spot, I was faced with an altogether different situation.

I had sufficient knowledge of petty crimes committed by the orphans and pick-pockets of London to know what was going on. I’ll admit that it was my own safety which initially concerned me. What if the man dropped me into that sack along with the designer clothes, jewellery and electronic goods? Worse still was the realisation that he was mad as well as bad. Raising his right leg in front of me and using the base of his foot, he smashed the full length mirror on the wardrobe and kicked the dresser stool, sending it clattering into the door of the en-suite. Then, approaching me, he made as if to grab me, but instead swiped at the bedside table with his bare arm, tipping it over and causing me to perform a neat forward roll on the floor. A torrent of CDs and framed photographs from the shelf above rained down on top of me. I could hear him above me, crunching on the piled up possessions, and I was in fear that he would step directly on me and crush me. But the noise subsided. I heard one or two thuds and he was gone. Oh, the agony of waiting for Judy’s return. The guilt that I hadn’t done more to stop him.

That day, Judy and Dieter came home together. Judy was utterly dismayed by the chaos she encountered; she ran from room to room, spraying expletives wherever she went. Dieter called for her to remain calm, stressing that she must not touch anything: “It is all evidence, Judy!”

But Judy was already in the bedroom, and, in the confusion of the moment did not hear him. She was on her hands and knees sifting the debris, wailing for her Algernon. And then, as she scooped me up and held me aloft, she planted a beautiful, lipsticky, kiss on my screen. I knew in that moment how much she loved me and how much I loved her.

Her delight was cut short. Dieter stormed in behind her, screaming about an open window that he’d discovered – that she, Judy, must have left open – and that would certainly scupper their chances of recovering on their insurance. I’d never seen him subject poor Judy to such a vicious verbal attack. But she was not standing for it. Thank goodness for her strength of character. “Since all you care for is the insurance money,” she told him, “you had better phone the frigging company immediately.”

And with that, she marched past him and out of the flat. In the nearest café, she re-read Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, drinking soya lattes and stroking my leather cover repeatedly.

She was my own heroine that evening and I reflected on our special relationship. We e-readers are created equal and innocent, and we mediate our understanding of the world through the personal choices of our owners. Our personalities are therefore truly shaped by (and become markedly similar to) theirs. The relationship between owner and e-reader might be said to be the very purest form of parenting.

I had plenty of opportunity to develop this thesis, as soon afterwards Judy began devouring a plethora of books on the subject. What to Expect when you’re Expecting and Bringing up Bébé were two of the many titles. It was a worrying development, providing a stark warning that my life would soon be changing forever.

My feelings of insecurity were not helped by a conversation on the subject of names that I overheard from a new fuchsia handbag.

“Dietz,” she began. “I know it’s slightly strange, but if it’s a boy – how about Algernon?”

“But – but, what about…?” I imagined him casting his arm in my general direction.

“I know, but I like that name. PLEASE. Algernon?”

How was I to feel then? How could I not wish that I’d been stolen after all and sold on to a new home where I might be truly appreciated?

Since the burglary the atmosphere in the flat had changed. Security had become a charged topic of conversation. There was less fornication and this led to a confrontation in which I was centre stage. One afternoon, Dieter, alone and restless, picked me up and looked through Judy’s varied collection. He began browsing in the online store. He downloaded a sample of Fifty Shades of Gray. And then purchased the whole thing. I did not enjoy the feel of him reading me. I noticed that he did not do so with sustained attention. He flicked from page to page, then settled on a passage which he read slowly and meticulously. I was then dropped (open and face down) on to the sofa as he hurriedly left the room.

I felt degraded. I knew that it was not a book that Judy would ever have chosen and this was confirmed when she said: “It contaminates Algie – just being on him!”

Dieter’s face darkened to scarlet.

“You clearly need to broaden your horizons, Judy.” And in a voice choked with anger, “Now that you’re pregnant, I would suggest our relationship might actually benefit from your reading it.”

I understood by now that I saw only a small part of Judy and Dieter’s relationship. But I had little doubt that this episode was linked to the thorny subject of fornication.

Perhaps it was no coincidence that when Judy forced herself to read this controversial book, my functions first started to fail me. I forgot where she’d reached in the story and soon afterwards opened up on a book about forgiveness that Judy had finished months earlier. She rolled her eyes and called me a “stupid thing”.

And then came the darkest period. Dieter was away. His letters had told of the family business struggling, so he was spending more time in Germany. That morning, Judy returned to the bedroom looking as grey as a battleship. She stayed there for the rest of the day. And then for several more days: sleeping a lot; hardly eating; frequently crying; and never reading. I was a helpless spectator on the bedside table. I had no idea what had happened. No inkling of what was wrong.

That is until a week later, when she received Dieter’s final letter. Delivered wirelessly as usual, he must have also texted her as she opened it immediately. It read as follows.

Dear Judy

From now on I have decided to make my life in Germany once again. My father cannot cope without me. I have realised in any case that I will be happiest with Heike. I may not have mentioned her before. She is our new marketing manager and we have been spending much time together. It is probably for the best that there will be no Algernon the Second. Like me, he would have struggled to find a place close to your heart bearing in mind your other passion.

Naturally I will arrange a collection of my belongings.

Yours

Dieter

It was then that Judy did a strange thing. She found my text to speech function and made me read the letter aloud. It was the first time I’d done this. Despite the discomfort of voicing those words, I was filled with hope that it would now just be the two of us – that I would remain Judy’s forever. Perhaps the letter was hinting that she’d always loved me more than Dieter?

As soon as I’d completed the letter, she made me read it again. And then again! And as I did so, her expression changed. No longer my beautiful Judy, she was now a wild woman whose face was filled with loathing and anger! I wanted to cry out loud that I was not responsible, that I wished only to make her happy. After the fourth reading she looked at me with piercing intensity and screamed a long wordless scream, her mouth hideous and contorted. And then she snapped me shut. Putting me to one side, she left the room. I did not see her for two months after that.

In fact, it may have been less. Or perhaps more. How could I tell, being without hope? I had certainly been abandoned. I could feel the dust gathering on top of me, as if I were a bad memory that needed burying. I lay alone in my sarcophagus of depression.

I was brought to by the voices of Dieter and Judy. I wondered if it had all been a fantasy. Maybe they were still together. And yes, here they both were, in the bedroom, talking about who would keep the clock radio. And a fancy speaker that tuned into mobile devices. Then Dieter picked me up.

“Our old friend Algernon,” he said with a tense smile.

“Yes, your very first present to me.”

“How could I have forgotten? It seems so long ago.”

“Have it. I never use it now. Besides, I’d rather not be reminded of you.”

There was a pause. Dieter put me down again.

“It’s an outdated model,” he said. “If I get one, it’ll be the whizz-bang latest.”

“It was on its last legs anyway,” she agreed. “Let’s recycle it.”

“Yes. Or they can be reconditioned. Better for the environment.”

It was a shock, let me tell you, to hear of myself referred to in this way; a mere object, well past its shelf-life, ripe for recycling or reconditioning. Both the dreaded R words sent shockwaves through my system. They meant me being slated – a whitewash of everything that made me, me. My preference, by a small margin, was for reconditioning. That at least promised a rebirth of sorts, with the possibility of a new owner who might show me loyalty and not cast me so brutally aside.

“I’m not bothered either way,” Judy said. “Leave it with me. I’ll sort it.”

They then moved into the kitchen where they argued heatedly about the silver cutlery set they’d been given as an engagement present. They both wanted that!

The flat went quiet again and another few hours went by before Judy returned to the bedroom, this time alone. She sat down on the stool in front of the dressing table, where I had so often seen her applying her make up before work. She reached across, picked me up and placed me carefully on the dressing table. And then she opened me. She began browsing in the online shop and quickly settled on Cold Comfort Farm. It was about Flora Poste, making a new life following the death of her parents in the Spanish plague. As she read, Judy started laughing – that high pitched cackle of a laugh I’d first heard those many long months ago. Judy suddenly looked at her watch, and, swearing quietly to herself, rose from her chair. She put on her gloves, dropped me into a new burgundy handbag and left the flat.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I used to fear her dying. Now I fear her living.

The paramedics find her on the kitchen floor this time, unresponsive and chilled like a popsicle.

“A couple more hours and she wouldn’t have made it,” they tell me.

I’m still the emergency contact, but no matter how powerful my love remains, I’ve never won a round with The Monster. For years, the denizen of addiction held us both captive. I’d had to save myself.

When I get to the hospital, the nurse glares at me suspiciously. Pulling back the warming blanket intended to unthaw Molly, the nurse points to multiple bruises on every extremity.

“What’s going on here?” she demands.

I’d seen this before, knew about the drunken falls and collisions with sharp-edged furniture. “This is the fourth time this year she’s been hospitalized. She does this to herself.”

Two days later Molly wakes up, the same haunted defeat in her eyes I’ve seen a hundred times before. I hold her hand as we silently mourn our lost dreams.

The Monster cackles as I look away. Molly lets go of my hand.

TRACI MULLINS writes short fiction and has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine, Dime Show Review, Spelk, Ellipsis Zine, Palm-Sized Press, Fantasia Divinity, CafeLit, CommuterLit, and others. She was named a Highly Recommended Writer in the London Independent Story Prize competition.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Mark Jackson
47 years old
Electrician
Likes football and climbing
Seeks 30-40 year old female for adventure.

After three months of chatting online, this will be all you know about Mark. You will arrange to meet at Waterloo station on Saturday morning for coffee. It is half way between Stevenage and Horsham, and in a public place. Always meet in a public space, you never know, Stacey will tell you. Stacey will tell you lots of things, wade in on a lot of your internet dating with opinions and advice, some of it will be unwarranted. There will not be anything in particular that might give you cause for concern from your ‘chats’ with Mark, nothing that will ring any alarm bells. He will be polite and interested, will ask questions about your life.

But, you will know little about him, except that he will have a teenage daughter, Kate, who wants to be a nurse, and he will go climbing in Scotland and sleep out in the wild without a tent. He will tell you a story about putting up some tarpaulin between his motorbike and a friend’s bike on a recent trip to France, hoping neither of the bikes will collapse on either of them, crushing them in their sleep. He will be funny, charming and less invasive than Tom, a thirty year old chef, who will ask you about your underwear and ex boyfriends, or Henry, a thirty-six year old plumber who will ask for your number in the first message and ask to chat ‘offline.’ You will not be sure whether to decline or ignore, eventually choosing the latter.

Your mother will ask why you can’t meet people the ‘old fashioned’ way, you know, face to face. You will fob her off with the excuse that no one meets like that these days and that no one actually has time to meet face to face — long work hours and modern living. Your mother will roll her eyes and tell you about how she met your father at school, and how he was the only man for her. You will hear the story more times than you will ride your bike to the office, and listen to your mother complaining about plummeting marriage rates and sky rocketing divorces. She will always exaggerate. Face to face meetings will consist of blind dates with oily business men, organised by well meaning friends, and recouping with ex boyfriends at parties, or at the pub, after one too many.

The truth will be that you are afraid of men. All your friends will be married and you will not want to be alone, despite your fears, or childless, by the time you are forty. That is Mark’s dating cut-off point’ so there must be some truth in the matter. Internet dating will be easy. You will log on, late at night with a glass of Pinot Grigio, in your flannel pyjamas, and chat to men without leaving the house. The idea of meeting up will be less appealing, but you will want to see what Mark looks like in the flesh, find out if there is any chemistry between you. He looks warm and friendly in his profile picture. The light makes you think it is summer. He is crouched down in a garden with a brown and white collie — intense, brown eyes, tongue hanging loose.

Can’t wait to meet you, he will say in his last message. Looking forward to seeing that pretty face. It will be Wednesday and your stomach will flutter.

Saturday morning will bring with it a cool, fresh start. You will pull on a polo necked sweater and jeans — not wanting to look too smart — followed by your white Nike trainers. Waterloo will take an hour and nineteen minutes from Horsham via Clapham Junction. You will leave the flat at nine twenty, allowing for a ten minute walk to the station and time to buy a ticket. You will take a book for the journey, Girl on the Train, and understand the irony. It will be an intense read and there will be an absence of commuters. The carriage will be empty, apart from a man at the other end, reading a paper. You will remember to text Stacey to tell her where you are meeting, will have fed the cat and told your mother you are going for a job interview. Two of these things will be true.

An announcement will crackle across the tannoy: something about not leaving belongs on the train and Vauxhall being the end of the line. You will slide the book into your bag and glance across at the man at the other end of the carriage. He will already be waiting by the door. The cafe will be located in the atrium of the station and you will wonder whether Mark might already have arrived. As you reach the door, you will realise you arrived first and will take a place at a table near the door, just in case. He will arrive five minutes later, dressed in smart trousers and a pressed shirt. It might as well be starched at the collar. He will smell of cologne as he leans in to kiss you on the cheek. Your stomach will lurch as he touches your skin.

“Excuse me, could we have two coffees?” he will ask the waitress.

“Certainly, Sir. What would you both like?” She will look at you.

“I’ll have a cappuccino, thank you,” you will say with a smile, but it will be forced.

“And I’ll have an espresso.” The waitress will watch Mark intently. You imagine most women linger; he is good looking and toned, dark hair, blue eyes, long lashes. He will take your hand. “I’ve been wanting to meet you since we started messaging, but I didn’t want to seem too keen.”

“It’s good to take things slowly.” He will not respond.

“So how was your journey?” he will ask.

“Smooth, no problems. I’ve almost finished my book. How about you?” You will imagine that he might ask about the book.

“It was fine. I’ve been here for a while.” You will wonder what he did before he met you.

“Your job must keep you busy.”

“Yes, but it earns me good money.”

He will run his finger around the rim of the sugar pot. You will watch the waitress making the coffees, willing her to join you, but you will not be able to explain why the thought enters your mind. You won’t feel comfortable with him in person. There will be no real reason, but something won’t feel right. Trust your gut, one of your friends will tell you. Maybe there will be something in it. The coffees will arrive, but Mark won’t look up. You will want to grab the waitress’s arm, stop her leaving. Your reaction will make you question whether or not there is something wrong with you. Trust your gut.

“Tell me about Kate. How is she doing?”

“My daughter? She’s good, gone to see a friend today. She’s studying for her mock GCSEs. It’s a stressful time.”

“I can imagine.”

“What about you? How was your week?”

“We had a big project to deal with, lots of meetings.” You will not be able to remember any further details, and won’t feel comfortable elaborating.

He will raise his eyebrows and take another sip of coffee. He will be cooler in the flesh than the warm and interesting online version of himself. Always meet in a public space, Stacey will say. “Tell me about your relationships. Any bad stories?” he will ask.

“Nothing I can think of. Why?”

“It’s always interesting to find out who people have been out with in the past. What luck they’ve had.” He will smirk.

“It’s not something I feel comfortable talking about.”

You will get up to pay for the coffees and walk towards the counter at the back of the cafe. Always meet in a public space. The waitress will give you the bill as you will pull out a crisp ten pound note. It will have been newly printed. You’ll feel nauseous, won’t want to return to the table.

“Were the coffees okay?” the waitress will ask.

“Hmm? Yes. Lovely, thanks.”

“Are you all right, Madam? You look pale,” she will say.

“I think so. The man I’m with, what do you make of him? I know it’s an odd question, but it’s a blind date and I don’t feel comfortable.”

“I don’t think you need to worry.”

“Why?” you will ask, and you’ll lock eyes with her. The waitress will nod in the direction of the table by the door. You’ll turn to find it has been vacated. Mark will no longer be there. “Is he in the men’s toilets?” you will ask.

The waitress will shake her head. “No, he left through the front door just as you got to the counter. I did think it was a bit odd. If you don’t mind me asking, what made you get up? You’ve only just arrived.”

“I needed to get away. I feel a bit sick. Can I have a glass of water?”

“Yes, of course. Do you want me to call someone for you?”

“No, I’m fine. I’ll head home. Thank you.”

You will leave and catch the next train back. You will not be able to bring yourself to read the rest of the book. Your nerves will overtake your desire to discover the ending. The carriage will almost be empty again. You’ll watched the trees pull away into the fields as the train picks up pace, and wrestle with questions about the date, about him; and you’ll wonder. Always meet in a public space.

At Horsham, you’ll pick up a Gazette. You will walk the ten minutes to your flat, turn the key in the lock and climb the stairs. You will kick off your shoes and flick on the kettle, find a corner of the sofa and pull out the paper. Flipping through the first few pages, you’ll glance at the weather on the back page, then scan the crossword. It will be a tough one this weekend. You will hear the kettle switch flick up and you will get up to make a coffee, then settled back down and turn to the middle section. He will be there. Mark’s face will be in the paper.

Jeffrey Richards (56), wanted for the murder of Kaylee Williams (16). There will be a picture of the bloodied face of a teenage girl next to his. The words, ‘violent sexual assault,’ will begin to blur as you try to read the detail. You will want to vomit, want to scream. Always meet in a public space.

You will contemplate emailing the dating app, calling the police, calling Stacey or your mother, but you will be unable to move; instead, you will drop your coffee, watch it spill across the sofa and across your lap, watch the brown liquid bleed into the fabric. Always meet in a public space.

F C MALBY is a contributor to Unthology 8 and Hearing Voices: The Litro Anthology of New Fiction. Her debut short story collection, My Brother Was a Kangaroo includes award-winning stories, and her debut novel, Take Me to the Castle, won The People’s Book Awards. Her stories have been widely published both online.

Image by Primrose from Pixabay

Lucy!

That textured patch in the gap between liquidambar leaves is the crown of her head. Coarse-weave brown, with silver wisps like glow-worms. They remind me how long we’ve been doing this. Our nightly performance has changed over time. She no longer bawls my name, she stage-whispers it. Soft, but intensely audible.

I don’t usually lower my voice. Bugger what the neighbours think. But tonight it’s a tiny sound carried on the breeze, fluttering past her ear like a dead leaf.

Don’t want any.

The glow-worms hesitate. Should she insist? She’s tried threats, cajoling. Bottom line is she can’t climb up here and get me. Or force spaghetti-bolognese-boiled-carrots-and-brussels-sprouts down my throat.

Molecules of night hang in suspension. Stars delay their rising. Gnats tread air.

Lucy, this has gone too far. I want you inside in twenty minutes. Your father and I …

I listen to her vinyl sandals scrumpf through wet grass, prepare to step down, land heavily on the concrete path. Like a conductor, I could wave in the skreek of the sliding door, waggle a finger for each heel-fall, welcome silence with a levelled baton.

Instead, I lie back in my nest, staring up at leaf-blotted stars and mouthing her name. Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.

Three years ago, when Emily, my only friend, moved interstate, I took to spending recess and lunch in the library. At the back of the main room, spiral stairs led to a loft where old magazines sprawled on dusty shelves. In the gum tree whose lemon-scented leaves pressed against the loft window, a magpie was raising her brood. As I watched them that first day, a National Geographic slid off its shelf, landed near my toe. Was Lucy a Tree-Climber, After All?

That’s how we met. I, crouching on green shagpile; she, staring at me through the polymer clay eyeballs of her reconstructed face. We were both eleven. We didn’t look alike, except for the brown eyes. But something made me feel I was gazing at my reflection in a brackish pool. After I found Lucy, I didn’t try to make any other friends.

Her skeleton, a broken necklace on black velvet cloth, didn’t have any feet, just a single ankle bone. By contrast, the toddler Australopithecus afarensis whose discovery had prompted the National Geographic article had a large, curving, wiggle-able big toe. So she could shinny up the home-tree if a leopard slunk by, crawl into her family’s nest at sunset.

Nest? Yes. After dark, our ancestors became wingless birds who folded up their bipedal bravado in the hair of trees.

That afternoon, a hail of Bunnykins cups, bowls and plates dispersed Sal, Prue and Mattie. Psycho! Sal shouted over her shoulder as they fled inside to tell on me. The tree-house was mine. I swept the rest of the girly rubbish over the edge. With my brother’s help, I moved the pine platform about 10 feet higher, covered it with earth and dead leaves. The scents of growth and rot creep down to meet me as I scale the trunk after school every day.

My nest – our nest – contains nothing but an Arnott’s biscuit tin of clippings about Lucy culled from magazines and newspapers. I’ve grown quite a bit since the day I evicted my sisters. When I’m up here now I have to crouch in a way that pulls me back three years, and three million. Side by side, we gather fruits, dig for plants, suckle our babies. Our people live in a range of habitats, but I’ve always known that our home-tree grows beside a lake, its roots slipping among strange shapes of ancient fish.

I’m not allowed to sleep up here. Come down by dinner-time is the rule. Recently, I’ve been bending it more and more, testing the give of its fibres. Tonight I don’t care if it breaks. I’m not coming down. Lucy’s fall hurts less up here, even though, squinting through the swirl of autumn leaves, I can plot every micro-second of her trajectory.

I saw it at breakfast time, on the front page of the newspaper fortress Dad hides behind.

Lucy fell from tree, new CT scan suggests

The skeleton of Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old hominid, shows injuries best explained by a fall from a tree, a team of scientists claim. Full story page 10.

Braving Dad’s outrage, I snatched the paper, ran out of the house, scrambled up here. It wasn’t easy in my school dress, which I tore on a forked twig. Through a smear of tears I read the article over and over. Bits of it have lodged in my head like shivers of glass.

We wanted to piece together the story of her life. We had no idea we’d find the clues to her death … She landed feet-first, probably at the edge of a lake … Almost certainly, death came quickly … quickly …

Twenty minutes must have passed. Another coat of dark blue has deepened the sky. I’m ready to face them. Heels tensed, hands gripping branches, eyes trained on the outside light. If Dad brings out the ladder –.

These are the fractures we see when a modern human falls from a great height.

FAYE BRINSMEAD lives in Canberra, Australia. A lawyer by day, she writes short fictions in all the snippets of time she can find. Her work appears in Reflex Fiction, MoonPark Review, Twist in Time Literary Magazine, formercactus and Vamp Cat Magazine, among others. Say hello on Twitter @theslithytoves.

Image by Michael Gaida from Pixabay