There was a drop of my father’s blood on the dashboard. He held up the pinewood car with bandaged fingers; the one wrapped around his right index finger was sopping red. “Best one yet, kiddo.” It really was.

Dad and I had a deal: he’d carve the cars and I’d take care of the rest. Dad kept it simple: he whittled the wood down and shaped it with my granddad’s hand knife. Dad was pretty good with it but occasionally his hands would get shaky and the knife would slip.

Dad said all the other vets from Peru had the same hand tremors. Some kind of gas they breathed in during the war. I never asked for more details; I was little then, but I knew when an adult was pulling the drawbridge up on me.

“What color should we paint it?”

Dad always let me pick the colors. I never picked the right ones: I always wanted to do polka dots, zebra stripes, or neon splatters. Dad loved accuracy; he’d spend hours pouring over repair manuals and photobooks, making sure every inch of the wood car was a mirror image of the original.

“Let’s do blue and silver. That’s how it was in the movie, right?” We were both surprised by my choice. I don’t know why, but I felt like this time getting it 100% right mattered in a way it hadn’t before. Maybe some part of me already sensed the thing growing on my Dad’s brain and was just trying to make him happy in the brief time we had left together.

“Blue and silver it is, kiddo,” he said. He set the car down on his workbench. It was a perfect replica of a 1955 Chevy 150. Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny black strap. “I finished the seatbelt this morning. Black nail polish and a rubber band. Not bad, huh?”

It did look pretty good, but I noticed that something was missing. “How are they going to-”

My Dad smiled and pointed to a pile of safety pins on the bench. “I was going to make the clip last. Hammer it out of a couple of these.” Dad had taken care of everything: it was on me to get the last missing piece.

I left the garage with bait, a small net, and a holding box. I saw a couple of drivers behind Matt’s house the last time I slept over. Matt said he heard his mom complaining that the littles were getting into the pantry and stealing food. We went over the fence after dark and saw a few of them scurry off into a nearby bush.

I knocked on Matt’s front door but nobody answered. I knew where the key was to their garden door; I had seen Matt fish it out of the bottom of a hollow rock by their mailbox. I grabbed the key and snuck into the backyard.

Climbing over the fence, I landed as lightly as I could on the ground. I didn’t want to squash any of the littles. I remembered my scout training and scanned the area, searching for tiny footprints, campfires, shacks.

Near a cluster of mushrooms I saw a pair of thimble-sized tents. I set down the bait and peeled the plastic lid off: instant beef stew with roast vegetables. It wasn’t long before the littles came out of hiding: a male, female, and a pair of younglings.

I struck fast, swinging the net at the male. He and the female dove out of the way. I stepped forward to swing again and felt something crunch beneath my feet. I heard tiny voices wailing incomprehensibly at me and realized that I had stepped on the younglings.

The male and female stood in place, making weird noises that sounded like sobs. My scoutmaster told us we shouldn’t be fooled by these sort of noises. The littles may look and act like us, but they’re not us. They’re soulless.

I scooped up the male and dropped him in the holding box. I hopped back over the fence, leaving the female behind. We only needed one to be our driver. On the way out I stopped back in front of Matt’s door and wiped my feet on the welcome mat. I saw something tiny, stiff, and blue stuck in between the mat bristles. It looked like a pair of bloody blue jeans.

By the time I had come back, Dad had finished the seatbelt. “Look at what your mom made!” Dad held a tiny pair of racing gloves, a crimson red jumpsuit, and a white scarf in the palm of his hands. “He’ll be the most handsome driver in the derby”, Mom said later while we were having dinner.

Dad put the driver under his microscope. “You picked a good one,” Dad said. “He’s healthy, young— good reflexes, too. Look at how he’s wriggling. This one’s going to put up a fight.”

Dad wasn’t kidding. It took us two weeks to train the driver. We had to go so far as to lay down pillows all over the garage floor to keep the driver from jumping off Dad’s work bench.

After two weeks, the driver began to “rag-doll.” That was the ideal state for a little, according to the pinewood handbook. You could just pick them up, buckle them in, and push them around without complaint. We did a couple of trial runs on the race track my Dad set up in our backyard. No crashes, no casualties. The perfect car.

Perfect car or not, we came in second at the derby. Dad and I didn’t care. We knew we had put together the best car and driver, even if gravity didn’t agree with us.

I still have that car. I keep it on a shelf in my living room. The driver is still in there, too— hands at ten and two. The taxidermist said it was his best one yet.

ASHLEY NAFTULE is a writer and theater artist from Phoenix, AZ. He’s been published in Pitchfork, Ghost City Press, Vice, Popula, Occulum, Rinky Dink Press, Bandcamp, Four Chambers Press, The Outline, Cleveland Review of Books, Longreads, Amethyst Review, Bone & Ink Press, and The Molotov Cocktail. He’s a resident playwright and the Artistic Director at Space55 theatre.

Image via Pixabay 

Mathilde looks at her reflection in a shop window: hair wispy about her ears, bags laden beneath her eyes, a slight kink in her posture. She looks typical enough to blend in with all the other women walking this street in search of intact store fronts, stocked shelves; no one will notice the slight shake of her ankles, the way she leans on the pram’s bar a little too heavily.

She reaches down, tucks the blanket under Henni’s chin. The baby stirs but does not make a sound. Mathilde exhales a fraction louder than she intended, relieved that Henni sleeps. She strokes Henni’s cheek with an index finger, enjoys the smiles of the passersby admiring the propaganda worthy image of mother and infant: a reassuring sight in these uncertain times.

A car horn toots. A horse exhales and stomps its hooves against the ground. Two men walk past, laughing louder than necessary. Mathilde stops stroking Henni’s cheek, gets ready to shush the child’s fretting, but she sleeps on as if she already understands, has already been versed in what to expect, how to act. Mathilde looks around at the cracked facades, the split sandbags, the grey faces of the women around her. Some clutch their grocery bags to their chests as if they were their children and Mathilde wonders what they have lost in this headless war. She allows Johann a spot in her thoughts, allows him to unfurl. Long-limbed and straight-backed. His bottom lip puckers. Mathilde fiddles with her wedding band, tries to distract herself from the words that stamp across every thought she has of him, but they appear black and bold on his chest, arms, forehead: missing in action. She bites her lip, uses the pain as a way back onto this bombed-out Berlin street before she starts thinking of Horst too.

Mathilde carries on walking, the pram rattles over the cobbles. She keeps her eyes on the end of the street, where she has to turn right, look out for the alleyway on her left and walk into it in the manner of a woman who does so every day. She cannot see any obvious obstacles to this endeavour, no men watching her a little too closely over their newspapers, but one can never been too careful. She throws her shoulders back, manoeuvres the pram around a pothole, a pile of bricks, a cracked sink. A boy holds up a toy aeroplane he has discovered in the rubble. His mother tells him to put it back, but he does not and she does not pursue the discussion any further.

A steady rain begins to fall over the city; the cobbles take on an oil paint sheen. Mathilde knows she must watch her step, not be too hasty, and yet appear to be eager to get out of the rain. She does not have an umbrella to put up, could not push the pram with one hand if she tried. The back of her dress dampens.

A man steps out of Mathilde’s way. She apologises, he shrugs and smiles, points to the heavens as if they provide an explanation for her lack of awareness. Yes, she thinks, I am desperate to get home, to take off this dress and hang it up to dry, to gather my baby in my arms and rock her in time with a tune on the wireless. After all, that’s what we woman do, isn’t it? She returns his smile, shakes her head at the rain. Unexpected, like so many things.

Mathilde lifts her face up to the sky, breathes in the cool air. Her arms ache, but she cannot stop, cannot slip into a café and sip something ersatz while the rain eases, the clouds break. Then she wonders whether her determination, the bend of her elbows and knees makes her stand out, and she should cross the street, go into that café with the cracked windowpane, and sit her damp backside on an ill-cushioned chair. She recalls the advice: they spoke of blending in, of complications caused by people but not by the weather. She carries on, pulls the pram’s hood up further, tells the sleeping baby they are nearly home so as to keep up the act, to dispel the potential doubters walking beside her. She pushes the pram harder, tries not to wince at its weight, wonders if she can manage to push hard enough so she can break into a brisker pace, an almost-run.

Mathilde’s cheeks and chest burn with the effort. She looks around, no one seems to be concerned with her, the rumble of the pram wheels over the cobbles. She nears the end of the street. One right turn. Left into an alleyway. Walk it like a resident of the building. Someone will be there smoking a cigarette, will offer her a hand with the pram up the stairs to the third floor where the apartment door will be unlocked at the sound of her footsteps and locked at her back. Then a pleasant face will wait while she collects her slumbering baby from the pram, pulls back the mattress and reveals her cargo of anti-National Socialist leaflets. He will distribute them, make sure they get into the hands of the women she pretends to be right now as she navigates her way down this street.

The rain eases. Mathilde’s ankle wobbles over a cobble loosened by war. Her muscles strain at the unusual angle and she tries to tense them, to regain her footing. She grips the pram’s handle, but worries she might tip it up, might hurt her daughter, spill her secret. Her knees give way; she tries not to cry out as they meet the ground.

As people flock to her, the fallen mother, Mathilde wonders how Henni will remember her, for surely this is the moment everything unravels. She knows the child will go to parents with the right beliefs, the right place in society, knows one day Henni will be reminded of how she was saved from growing up with misguided notions. Will Henni see past all that to the injustice her mother was fighting against? Mathilde cannot fathom the answer. She feels a hand on her arm, pulling her up. She tries to listen over the cacophony of concern, to listen for Henni, for broken sleep. She looks past the people, their eyes on her torn stockings, bloodied shins, waves their concern away. She forces herself to walk despite the stiffness of her limbs, her grazed skin.

Henni’s pram has not rolled far. A man in a long winter coat holds the handle. He mutters words Mathilde cannot comprehend to the child.

‘No need to worry. She’s still sleeping,’ he says, stroking Henni’s cheek.

‘Thank you,’ Mathilde says, reaching out for the pram. Her pulse booms in her ears.

‘You’ve cut your knee pretty badly. Do you need me to help you get somewhere?’

‘That’s awfully kind, but I’m perfectly fine. Thank you, again,’ she says.

A Party badge adorns his lapel and Mathilde finds she cannot take her eyes off it.

‘Are you sure I can’t help in some way?’

‘No, thank you. I really must get the baby home.’

‘At least let me walk some of the way with you,’ he says.

Mathilde looks up at the man’s face – at the slight furrow of his brow, the rain dripping down his nose, the freckle on his upper lip. He cannot be much older than her, something in the tilt of his head reminds her of Horst and she finds herself squinting, seeking more of him within the contours of this stranger. She turns her head, looks down at the pram. Horst would scold her for this, remind her that he was hanged at Plötzensee for such a lapse, remind her that his blood still stains the wall. Don’t get sloppy now, he would say. You’ve got a job to do. Think of your brother another time.

Mathilde smiles as if she did not fall, did not let go of the pram; as if her leg is not throbbing and her heart not raging in her chest.

‘Really, I appreciate your concern, but it isn’t far,’ she says.

He shrugs, steps back. ‘Heil Hitler.’

Mathilde coughs, presses one hand to her mouth and waves her other hand at the gentleman in a gesture she hopes implies annoyance at not being able to return his salutation. She walks the remainder of the street, keeps her eyes on a lamppost ahead. She knows he watches her, knows she must not stop.

The rain resumes, heavier than before; drops bounce off the cobbles and the pram’s hood. Mathilde turns right, casts a glance at the man, but he has moved on in the opposite direction, head bent against the sudden downpour. She looks up at the sky – a thank you to Mother Nature – and quickens her pace.

In the entrance way to the apartment building she nods at the man in the flat cap, smoking a cigarette.

‘Hello,’ she says.

‘Do you need a hand getting the pram upstairs?’ he asks.

‘Yes, please. I’m on the third floor,’ she says.

‘No problem,’ he says, throwing his cigarette to the ground.

EMMA VENABLES’ short fiction has previously featured in The Gull, Litro Online, The Lampeter Review, Strix, The Fiction Pool, LossLit, Spelk, FlashBack Fiction, and Normal Deviation: A Weird Fiction Anthology. Her first novel, The Duties of Women, will be published by Stirling Publishing in 2020. She can be found on Twitter: @EmmaMVenables.

Image via Pixabay 

I have put a cashmere blanket across the treatment couch, so she immediately senses she’s in the hands of a sophisticate: someone who understands and appreciates her needs. My uniform is white, with creases in all the right places. The blinds are pulled down, the lighting soft. A candle burns on the windowsill, filling the room with delicate floral top notes. Hidden speakers play the sort of music she listens to during her regular mindfulness sessions: whales burbling, flutes warbling, water dripping from the canopy of a tropical rainforest.

‘Just relax,’ I say, as she lies back. ‘Close your eyes.’

Before she can ask questions, I dab at her face with a wet wipe.

‘This is a special non-alcoholic cleanser,’ I explain. ‘Gentle on the skin, with no harsh, drying effects.’

They always love the mention of ‘non-alcoholic’. Despite the fact that they’re about to put their bodies through a process of artificial cosmetic enhancement, they feel reassured that this initial cleaning stage won’t strip their skin of its natural moisture.

‘Keep your eyes closed and take deep breaths,’ I say, moving away from the couch towards the shelf where I keep my mobile plugged into its charger. ‘In…. then out again. Nice and slowly.’

There’s a text waiting, from a friend who’s away on a training course. Apparently she drank too much vodka last night and ended up having sex with a bloke she fancies from marketing. I send her a smiley face emoji. Then I add a thumbs up and a red heart.

The woman on the couch clears her throat, and I look round to check her eyes are still shut.

‘Nearly ready,’ I say, my voice as soothing as the burbling whales and warbling flutes. ‘I’m just making the final preparations.’

I check my reflection in the wall mirror. There’s something between my front teeth – possibly cashew from this morning’s muesli – and I lever it out with my fingernail.

‘Right,’ I say, moving back to the couch. ‘Let’s make a start. Keep your eyes closed and breathe normally. There may be some discomfort, but the process isn’t painful.’

This is a lie. It will sting, possibly even hurt a lot. But it’s amazing what people will put up with, for the sake of beauty.

I reach for the syringe, lying on a white sheet on the table. I prepare everything before the client arrives, mixing the crystalline substance with saline – the recommended dilution is half a teaspoon for each vial, but I add extra saline because it gives the impression they’re getting more for their money.

‘I’ll start on the right hand side,’ I say, smoothing the area with my forefinger, the papery skin crinkling into waves. Freckles litter her bronzed forehead: she’s probably just back from the Caribbean.

‘The first injection will go here.’

As the needle pricks her skin, she yelps.

‘Well done,’ I soothe. ‘Four more, then we’ll repeat the process on the other side.’

I take my time, it’s important not to rush.

‘Apply some ice when you get home,’ I suggest. ‘There isn’t usually any bruising, but it depends on the sensitivity of your skin.’

I have now finished this side. One of the pin prick holes is bleeding, so I clean away the crimson bubble with a wipe. I’ve actually run out of non-alcoholic ones, so this is a cheap pack from Superdrug. It’s scented with Tea Tree Oil so, to the inexperienced nose, smells suitably medicated.

‘How long should I ice it for?’ she asks, her voice wobbly.

‘Twenty minutes on each side,’ I say.

The ice is worse than useless; applying direct pressure to the area, is more effective in controlling bleeding and bruising. But for some reason they like being told to use ice. I’m never sure how many of them manage twenty minutes: by then they’ll have lost all sensation in their skin and will probably be struggling with the onset of hypothermia.

Once the other side of her forehead is done, I move to the eye area. This woman has a raggedy network of crow’s feet, the result of a lifetime’s excessive exposure to the sun, during one expensive holiday after another.

She’s trying to be stoic: it’s heart warming. I dig the needle a little deeper on the last injection.

‘All done!’ I say, putting the syringe on the table and covering it with the white cloth. ‘You were terribly brave! Some of my ladies have a little weep, but you’re clearly made of stronger stuff.’

She has opened her eyes now, and they’re brimming with tears. But she is swallowing hard: pleased to have been more resilient than others who have lain on this couch before her.

‘Goodness,’ she whispers. ‘It was worse than I’d expected!’

‘Take your time getting up,’ I say. ‘Avoid exercise for the rest of the day, and take painkillers if it feels sore.’

I’m guessing she has a bathroom cupboard full of Tramadol in her en-suite at home, which is good because she’ll need it.

‘Don’t expect instant results,’ I say. ‘It may be up to ten days before you notice any change.’

Her mouth falls open.

‘But… I thought I’d see the difference immediately?’

‘I’m afraid not. A common misconception. This treatment isn’t a quick fix. You may also need to pop back to have a chat about that crease, between your eyes.’

I tap my finger onto the area in question.

‘There’s a deep line there, and one session won’t make an impression. But we could think about using a filler?’

Beneath the bleeding dots at the edge of her face, she’s looking concerned.

‘But I hoped this would be all I’d need?’

I smile, resting my hand on her arm. People are so naïve about botulinum toxin. They hear their friends rave about it, and read testimonials from middle aged celebrities. They think it’s a miraculous cure-all, and presume that, when they walk out of my little room, the crevices decorating their elderly skin will have disappeared.

What they don’t realise is that Botox doesn’t erase wrinkles, it just relaxes them. Some of the superficial lines may disappear, but the deeper ones will still be there, and they’ll pay a price for attempting to turn back time. Right now, the bleeding and bruising are minimal. When this woman returns to lie on my couch for the third or fourth session, her face will have become bloated and shiny. The wrinkles will no longer be as visible, but only because the skin around them has swollen.

The puffer fish look, I call it.

I hold out her expensive coat.

‘So, you’d recommend some filler… for this bit?’ she says, tentatively.

‘I think it may be the only option.’

She smiles, reassured that something can be done.

I don’t worry her with the fact that there is controversy about using filler in the area between the eyes; research has suggested it can block facial veins, and the resulting loss of blood turns the skin white and lifeless. Patients have been left scarred.

That’s not as bad as the droopy eyelids though, which may eventually require surgery. Or the double vision, headaches and flu-like symptoms, which can be a sign that the toxin has worked its way into the central nervous system.

I’d never dream of using this stuff myself.

I pop her Gold Amex into my card machine and her shaky hand types in the PIN.

‘It has been lovely to meet you,’ I say, opening the door. ‘Take it easy for the next few hours.’

She smiles at me, lower lip quivering. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s already feeling nauseous. The skin around her eyes is very red.

She slides on an outsized pair of designer sunglasses.

‘Thank you so much,’ she whispers.

I close the door, and listen as her Jimmy Choos click down the stairs towards the street.

Over the next few weeks she’ll convince herself that the poison in that little vial of botulinum toxin, has indeed lessened her wrinkles. She will examine herself in every mirror she passes, glance at her reflection in shop windows, looking for signs that this procedure has succeeded. Her brow is surely less furrowed! Her crow’s feet are less deep!

Whatever happens, she won’t complain. However swollen and sore her face becomes, she will never admit this was a mistake, that vanity was her downfall.

Walking away down the high street, she is probably already coming up with excuses; for a start, she’ll need to justify the £450 that has just zipped into my bank account. She will also be working out how to explain away the inflammation and bruising. An allergy perhaps? A reaction to an insect bite?

But I’m sure she’s worrying unnecessarily. I doubt she’ll need to do any explaining, when she gets home to her equally wizened husband. He won’t notice there’s anything wrong with her face, because the sad truth is that he hasn’t looked at her properly for years.

Image via Pixabay