My Witch

you were sleepwalking under a summer moon

and I followed         

the air filled with violets

when you told me you were mine

I was burning pages and I caught my feet on fire

this traitorous world carries some of us away

a thief of chances promised me the summer sun

and I followed

until I found all there is there

is sand and blood

I was burning a man and I caught my eyes on fire

this sacrifice for a mere glimpse of my fortune  

the incessant tide caught me, faithless,

and I followed

I swallowed memories of your hair in the wind

of wild days entwined like daisies

I was burning my life and 

I was the fire the whole time

I’m coming home

you were my witch

you taught me

there are a thousand moons

and all of them mine

Susan Butler (she/her) is a British-Polish artist and writer born in 1966. First a graphic designer who ran her own design studio, Susan then spent life traveling the world from her home in Germany. She is an aficionado of horror and the gothic. Susan writes fiction and poetry in French, English and Arabic.

A small sample of her work can be found on her website https://www.ouisuzette.com and she is @ouisuzette on social media.

To purchase art: OuiSuzette.redbubble.com

He is the Farmer of My Midnight Garden

We kiss only from dusk to dawn

and let fervent fragrance intoxicate us

Slugs and leeches excreting whitish froths

spiders entangle in resinous webs

Scorpions squirt pre-mixed venom

of sweetened honey and Death Cap’s poison

Because daytime peels our skin

like a tree shedding concentric rings

Twilight moons rain waters on our soils

and warm our moss-laden, loamy bed

I draw him into my leafy embrace

he unfurls like ferns, expelling spores

I’m the Queen of the Night,

sitting on the crown of a virgin cactus

My pistil licks the elixirs of dews

sprinkled from this eternal Aether

Blind moths spray bouts of glinting dust

fireflies staggering their lanterns into the void

A puff of wind scatters our masculine whiffs

and we bloom, cross-pollinate, deflower

Sylvan nectar oils our tendrils and thorns,

hence our touches—slippery, salty, watery, flowery

I bite his teeth, rosy lips bleed like rose petals

we hug like vines, our girthy stems entwine

He is the Farmer of My Midnight Garden

sowing man-seeds, ploughing my man-womb

Often we chant love litany into the shrubs

but our chirps tune into deafening blasts

Our roots dive deep into uterine-shaped earth

our pouches bear berries and melons, sweet and sour

We have never dreamed of all the lights

in the garden, our love is all seven colours

_______________________

About the Author

Ismim Putera (he/him) is a medical officer from Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. As an emerging queer poet, he writes poetry and reads speculative fictions at night. Some of his work can be found in Anak Sastra and Kunyit Squared Zine Vol 1.

friable

trying to come up with my favorite dinosaur

i think it is a jr. or our planet earth

which not many people know is shaped like a dinosaur

can’t really have any children

but maybe one day we find a godzillasaurus egg

there are things like that out among the stars

you wonder how they were created

how birthed and how mutated until

here in this moment and in this form

rogue cells from here and there

enter a black hole and exit a white hole

transform into this monster intent on domination

always found godzilla jr. more interesting than son of godzilla

they both survived or didn’t survive kind of terrible situations

some decisions had to be made that couldn’t be helped

it’s true bad things happen to good people

they turn radioactive or go into meltdown and burn away

man that sucked when destoroyah blasted jr. with micro-oxygen

a world or a dinosaur can only take so much

I bet it was even worse after

like all oxygen everywhere was gone

imagine having atomic blasts directed through your throat

they probably give you something like a sunburn

only it’s on the inside and makes it hard to talk or swallow

is it harder to lose a sibling or a parent or a child? I don’t want to know

there are all these conflicting ideas about what makes a best self

maybe mine is one that wrecks everything to beat a monster

walks triumphantly through the rubble after

not entirely opposed to razing what’s left of it

because that’s how it’s always been done

godzilla dies godzilla raids again

godzilla is frozen godzilla dies again

sometimes the funeral is quiet

sometimes autumn’s violins sob loud

every generation roars its own roar while it’s here

hopes another will hear it and keep roaring

_______________________

About the Author

Giuseppe Manley (they/them) is a queer Black poet from Maine. They have 2 dogs, work in IT, & are fond of making three item lists. They worked as Poetry Editor for The Open Field & reader for Puerto Del Sol. Follow them on Twitter & on IG @gehnmy.

A Brave Heart and a Decent Sword

We are not like them. We were not made for their life. That was what my father always told her. I never knew whether he said it for her sake or his. For most of my childhood, I’d always assumed it was the former, as those who lived the life of an adventurer did not often live to see their hair turn to silver or their skin begin to wrinkle.

Still, it’s no stretch of the imagination to say that most people dreamed of life as an adventurer at one point; what one wouldn’t give to be one of those rescuing damsels, battling ogres, or uncovering hidden civilizations. Not everyone can, though. Some of us are farmers, some of us are merchants, some of us, like myself and the rest of my family, work in the very taverns those adventurers frequent when they need a break from it all. We’re the very people those adventurers are protecting when they face the forces of evil. Most of us rarely, if ever, questioned it. Sure, if you lived far enough away from the big cities, like we did, you had the occasional goblin raid, but the rest of it all seemed so far removed from our lives. Not everyone felt that way, however.

In the short winter months before my sister left, her yearning for adventure had almost entirely swallowed her up. Kastra’s aspirations for greatness had become a cauldron at a rolling boil, overflowing with foam and bubbles that fell into the fire beneath. To then be told those words by our father, though, felt as if he had overturned that cauldron unto her. In a form of silent retaliation, she took to sneaking out of the house in the dead of night with a blade that she’d bought in secrecy. She had to save up nearly a year’s worth of tips she’d earned tending the bar of our family’s tavern.

Every night, she would sneak back in through our window, smelling of sweat and a metallic scent I’d soon learn to be blood. “Y’okay, Kassie?” I’d ask her. “’Course I am,” she’d reply with a devilish grin. I never asked her where she went but I’d willed myself into believing she was off “practicing,” perhaps with one of the neighborhood boys who’d been trained by their fathers. Then, on the last week of winter, she left.

On Lunae, the first day of the week, an adventuring group that would pass through every few weeks came. As was standard for a party like theirs taking up quarters in the tavern, their first night in from the wild saw the bar turn into a raucous celebration. The minstrels played their songs the loudest they could while folks drank and danced through the night. As a server, I ran back and forth from the kitchen, dishing out customers’ orders until my feet felt like they were going to fall off. Towards the end of the night, my job died out with people favoring a drink to food. This meant Kastra was still swamped behind the bar, though you’d never know it by her demeanor. She lived for this. The entire night, she sang along while she poured their drinks and, as the night wore on, she took to a conversation with the elven woman from the adventuring group. I had been told to clean the tables but found myself lingering by the bar, not close enough to be part of their conversation but close enough to listen.

The elf spoke to Kastra about all the far-off places she and her party had gone. They’d even left the country and traveled to the island continent of Ethis where the dragon people lived, something I’d never thought possible without the king’s naval fleet.

“Oh, how I wish I could come with you,” Kastra professed.

“Y’ever thought’a leavin’?” the elven woman asked.

“No,” interjected a stern voice from behind sister. Kastra, startled, jumped while the elf’s warm gaze soured into a look of annoyance as she laid eyes on father, who now stood immediately behind Kastra. In his arms were a tray full of clean, wooden mugs. He set them down roughly onto the countertop beside Kastra and returned a look of disgust to the elf.

“We are not like them. We were not made for their life, child,” he told Kastra, then looked at the elf, “Discuss this with my daughter no further, knife-ear.”. The slur stung but the elf didn’t show it. Most of Shajara was diverse and accepting of others but we lived in Aldder, a small, rural town, where non-human racial intolerance was, unfortunately, not uncommon.

The energy of the bar eventually died, with Kastra and the elven woman companioning each other in the silence of an empty bar. Kastra, leaning her entire upper body on the bar and propping her head in her hand, poured herself a glass of rye whiskey and promptly downed it with only the slightest of a wince.

“I…I’m s-” Kastra began, breaking the silence between them, but the elf spoke over her.

“Don’t be,” she said, reaching out to put her hand over Kastra’s. “That’s hardly the worst I’ been called. And you’re not your father.” Before the quiet could consume them once more, the elf stood up and left for her quarters upstairs.

* * *

For the next couple of days, Kastra seemed present only in body. She was not prone to sulking after one of father’s chastising, so I could tell things were finally coming to a head. It wasn’t until another adventuring group arrived that she started to perk up.

This group, one who I’d never seen before, was much rowdier than most. They barged through our doors and proclaimed that they had slain a dragon. It was a mighty feat indeed if they were to be taken at their word, which no one in the bar did. They didn’t need to be, however, as we learned when the final member of their group entered our tavern. He was a massive half-orc who stood taller than anyone else in the room and in his large hands was the severed head of a blue dragon.

“Let it be known,” the half-orc bellowed, “That I, Arazar Jadhav, have slain the great blue dragon of Lake Cyne!” He marched to a table near the center of the bar and plopped the disembodied head onto the table, which shook and knocked the plates and mugs from its surface. I then wondered if he had carried the head, which was about the size of a merchant’s cart, for the entire five leagues from Lake Cyne to Aldder or if he hauled it by wheelbarrow and only just now picked the thing up for a dramatic entrance.

“You do mean ‘along with these other arseholes also’, don’t you?” asked another from Arazar’s party. He was one of the littlefolk, or a halfling as they were called in the city, and looked like one of the swashbucklers from those romance books the young girls like Kastra liked to read.

The rest of their party found themselves a booth while Arazar and the littlefolk saw to holding up the bar. I’d never seen a half-orc before. I’d heard the stories but never seen the proof until then. Arazar’s tusks were shorter than that of a full-bred orc, his skin only a greenish-tan, and his brow much less pronounced, but he was intimidating all the same.

“Mind if I trouble ya’ll for a drink?” he asked, addressing both Kastra and I. He flashed a charismatic smile and suddenly it wasn’t intimidation that I felt.

Kastra coolly asked his preference and he requested an ale for his friend and himself. She poured them each a large stein with that frothy foam spilling over. As the two took their drinks, the littlefolk made a comment about Arazar’s impoliteness and then told us his name. I can’t quite recall what it was, though I think it started with a “G”.

For the next hour, Kastra schmoozed with Arazar with interspersed moments of actually doing her job. The littlefolk grew increasingly annoyed the more Arazar spoke with Kastra but he paid him no mind. He told us of how he and his group battled this dragon, which had long reigned over the great lake, taking out any who attempted to make it to the island in its center, which was said to hold a great treasure. Even those who fished in the lake were often subject to the dragon’s assault.

“But you didn’t tell them you died,” the littlefolk jeered with the expression of one in the presence of rotten eggs.

“Ah, that I did. Thanks for keeping me honest,” Arazar chuckled but quickly noticed mine and Kastra’s look of horror. “It’s an occupational hazard, but that’s why you always make sure there’s a cleric in your party.” He then unbuttoned the first few buttons of his shirt and exposed his incredibly muscular chest, on which there was a large scar that covered the entirety of his left pec. I didn’t know whether to roll my eyes or swoon but I’m fairly certain I did both.

“Went all the way through,” he told us before rebuttoning his shirt. It must not’ve gone how the littlefolk had planned, as he further sunk into his seat in idle frustration.

“But still. You fought a dragon,” Kastra said in a sigh of longing, once more wishing that tonight’s adventurers would whisk her away. It may have been funny to watch if it weren’t so heart-breaking.

“You don’t sound frightened at the thought of it,” Arazar speculated, cocking his head in intrigue.

“Well, of course not. I’d do anything to do what you do,” Kastra replied.

“You know any jackass with a sword can do that, don’t you?” the littlefolk interrupted. Kastra didn’t answer that question, instead hanging her head in pre-defeat.

“Look, kid, I like you,” Arazar said to Kastra, who raised her head slightly, “I don’t want to see you get hurt or nothin’, but if you think you got what it takes, we’re lookin’ for someone to help with the horses and equipment. Sounds juvenile, I know, but it still requires a brave heart and a decent sword, if ya don’t got any magic blood in those veins a’ yours. Our last kid turned tail and ran when he saw ol’ blue.”

Kastra laughed but she still looked downtrodden, “I’m sorry, ser, but I can’t-”

“Can’t what?” came father’s voice, along with his dreadfully poor timing. Arazar sat up straighter in the bar stool as he addressed father.

“Ser, I was just talking to this young woman and-”

“Well, don’t. You come here to drink or chat up my child?”

“Father, please-” Kastra tried.

“No,” father cut her off, holding up his finger to her sternum, “These people come in here and you start filling your head with nonsense. How many times do I have to tell you-”

“‘We are not like them. We were not made for their life’,” Kastra recited, “Yes, I know the lecture, but did you ever happen to think that maybe I was?” I felt her words strike my chest and I could only imagine father’s anger as his face turned as red as a ruby. Still, he did not yell when he finally spoke.

“Leave. Go to your room, now,” he hissed before turning to me, “That goes for you, too. I will close up the bar tonight.”

Like a mouse when the lamp is lit, I fled as quickly as I could, going to the stairs of my family’s wing of the tavern. Kastra, though, took as long as she could. When she reached me at the foot of the steps, she looked back to see Arazar mouth an “I’m sorry” without father noticing. Kastra only replied with a half-hearted smile, then grabbed my hand and ushered me up to our room.

The rest of the night passed slowly, in silence, until I had fallen asleep, and when I woke up the next morning, Kastra was gone.

I haven’t seen Kastra since that night. She would go on to send me letters every month or so. Turned out, she’d packed her things and fled with Arazar. Their group didn’t last much longer after that, though. One by one, they all went their own way as the months went by. Soon, it was just her and him. They went all across the land, even going to Ethis like that elven woman and her group did.

Often times, I’d think that she had surely met her match. If I recall, the longest she went between letters was a year and a half, but I always wound up receiving a letter when it was most needed. She tried sending father letters, too, but he never replied. He and I ran the tavern until I came of age. I wound up working in a bookshop in the city not far away from home. Then I met a boy. Then he broke my heart. Then I met a girl. She didn’t, and a few years down the road we adopted a little boy. He’s almost a man himself now.

Father passed last week. It still doesn’t even feel real while I sit here and write it. I sent Kastra a letter, but I doubt it’ll find her for a few months or so. While I was cleaning out his room in the tavern, I found a box of journals he had written.

We are not like them. We were not made for their life. That was what my father always told her. I never knew whether he said it for her sake or his. In my childhood, I’d always assumed it was the former. But I’m an adult now. I’ve lived to see my own child reach adulthood, and now here I sit here with one man’s life of regrets contained in one small box. I think that when father told her that because if she left, it meant that he could’ve too.

_______________________

About the Author

Annaelise Montez (she/her) is a disabled, trans, Latina writer that lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she lives with her girlfriend and cat. She is the co-founder of Prismatica Press and heads both the press and its literary magazine, Prismatica Magazine, as Editor-in-Chief and Publisher.

Her work can be found in Selcouth Station Press, Chaparral Press, From the Father Trees, and Theta Wave Magazine.

Twitter: @AnnaeliseMontez

somnambulist

Jeanine awoke gasping. It was the same dream again: coming to during the operation, seeing blood everywhere, her blood, staining the gloved hands and scrubs of the faceless men looming over her. Hearing the beep of the heart monitor pick up pace as she understood that the acidic pain overwhelming the room was part of her body. Crackling that scratched against her eardrums as the screws tightened in her femur. The harsh stench of antiseptic and wet copper mixing into a ghoulish cocktail. The smell was still in her nose as she struggled to her feet, stumbling and half-hopping to the toilet.

She lay on the bathroom floor afterwards, her stomach muscles aching, and ran her hands over the smooth wooden floorboards. She thought it strange when she first saw the apartment; why would someone put unvarnished wood in a bathroom? She felt affectionate towards the old boards now, waxing them weekly and sleeping on them whenever the dream came back.

Dawn crept through the dimpled glass of the shower door and lingered on the tips of her long chestnut hair before driving painfully into her eyes. Jeanine glanced at the alarm clock she kept on the cistern of the toilet and groaned. Grimacing, she grasped the edge of the counter and pulled herself up. She shifted onto her right foot, her left thigh protesting loudly at the mistreatment it had suffered in her hasty retreat to the restroom, and scrubbed the tang of batteries from her tongue.

The dream stayed with her that day, following her onto the bus, lingering over her coffee. She couldn’t bring herself to eat, visions of her blood flooding her mind every time she thought about food. The friction between her hand and the handle of her cane was a welcome distraction, a corporeal reminder that she was awake.

“You look like hell,” Sondra said, leaning over the top of her cubicle into Jeanine’s. “I say that only with love in my heart.”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Jeanine, pushing away from her keyboard and swiveling to face her neighbor. “I had the dream again.”

“Ouch.” Sondra sipped placidly from her coffee mug. “You should really, like, talk to a therapist or something. This is what, the third time this week?”

“I don’t even know anymore,” Jeanine said as she massaged her temples. “I feel like I haven’t slept in a month. There’s got to be a way to make it stop, right?”

“Well…” Sondra’s mug played between her hands. “I don’t know, I probably shouldn’t even tell you. It’s gotta be fake, anyway.”

“At this point, I’d try doing some Wiccan spell where I bury my period blood to stop this, so please, give me your possibly fake solution,” Jeanine said, a tired but wry smile working its way onto her face.

“My thing isn’t that far off,” Sondra said, screwing up her face in embarrassment. “I heard about this from my cousin. There’s this man who runs a bodega on Fourth Street. You go in and ask for a bag of lentils and a box of chalk. Then he takes you into a back room and - I don’t know, my cousin kind of stopped there, but he and his wife are finally pregnant, so he believes in it.”

“And what does this wizard charge for his mysterious services?” Jeanine couldn’t help giggling.

“My cousin wouldn’t tell me, except to say that it cost less than he thought it would,” Sondra said, her voice lifted by her own muted laughter. “Anyway, it’s Fourth and Quince, if you want to try it.”

The walk to catch the bus to Quince Street was twice as long as the one that would take her home. Her leg and face both burned as she limped down Second Avenue, each step second-guessed and hesitant. The day, though, had worn her down; her throat still burned with the memory of bile.

The bodega was unremarkable, compact yet crammed with items ranging from mouse traps to diapers to sandwiches. The thickset man behind the counter watched a small TV beside the register. He held out a finger as Jeanine walked up to him and kept it there until the tinny jingle of a local mattress store plinked over the airwaves.

“What do you want?” He sounded impatient, as though having a customer was an unwanted intrusion on his day.

“Um… a box of… wait, no, a bag of lentils, and, um,” Jeanine looked wildly around the store, trying to remember the other half of the demand. Her gaze fell on the dilapidated and picked-over display of school supplies to the right of the counter. “A box of chalk!”

He sighed and ran a heavy hand over his thinning hair. His muddy gold rings glinted under the buzzing neon letters hanging above the cigarettes.

“Are you sure?”

Jeanine hesitated until headlights cut across her face through the dingy glass and metal bars fronting the building; for a moment, she had seen the bright, disorienting light of the surgical suite. She swallowed hard and nodded.

“Come with me,” he said, turning and sliding out from behind the counter with difficulty. Jeanine followed him past tall stacks of canned foods and a basket full of rubber snakes, and walked through the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.

The room she entered was cramped and dim, with cardboard taped over a broken window and a single, naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. Fragrant violet bundles of Russian sage hung like a garland above the door and dropped tiny dustlike petals onto Jeanine’s hair and shoulders. Candles flickered and oozed on precarious stacks of cardboard boxes and a plank balanced on one side of a massive plastic sink. Shelves mounted on the wall opposite the door showcased tiny creatures, with claws as delicate as needles and bulging eyes that seemed to glow, suspended in amber liquid and bottles of bleach and glass cleaner. In the center of the room, a metal folding chair sat beside a round table that was a scant few inches larger than the glass jar sitting atop it. He gestured towards the chair and she lowered herself onto it, kneading the scars on her left thigh with quivering fingers.

He spoke over his shoulder as he perused the shelves. “I take some of your blood, and I give you what you want. No questions.”

Jeanine’s eyes went wide and her stomach clenched, a familiar bitterness spreading across the back of her tongue. “What are you going to do with my blood?”

“That’s a question. No questions.” The man pulled an ornate knife from one of the shelves. The blade seemed to suck the light and color from the air around it. “What do you want?”

Jeanine swallowed. She had said, hadn’t she, that she was willing to do anything? Fingers trembling, she unbuttoned the cuff of her shirt. “I want the dreams to stop,” she said, her voice more certain than her mind.

“Okay.” The man touched the blade of the knife to Jeanine’s wrist and pulled. Her blood pooled in the glass jar. “No more dreams.”

An honest man. She never dreamed again.

_______________________

About the Author

Carling Mars (she/her) is queer, genderqueer, mentally ill, and disabled (those last two go together). Her book, feeling things in public places, is available now on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com (Eliezer Tristan Publishing). Her two writing/book arts projects, e/x and antihistamine, are available for purchase through carlingmars.com. She helps run the Writers with Mental Illness book club (which you should totally join!). She lives in SLC with a wife, a rabbit, and a cat.

Without the Moon

Things were different after we lost the moon.

The days right afterwards were chaos. People thought the world was ending. The first set of theories sounded straight out of a disaster movie. In the first few hours, we were afraid that the moon had crashed into the earth, somewhere on the other side of the globe. When it became clear that there was no major tragedy anywhere on the planet, some of us figured that an asteroid had crashed into the moon. Perhaps we’d have to deal with the moon debris. Perhaps more asteroids were on their way.

Some of the theories seemed wild to me but I did have to admit that there was a profound feeling, deep in my bones, that tragedy was on the horizon.

After the first few chaotic days came and went devoid of tragedy, people started wondering how it would affect the earth. The seasons, the climate, the magnetic fields. Surely at least the ocean and the tides should be affected. But somehow, everything was eerily the same as it had always been. For a while, the tension of waiting for the other shoe to drop was almost worse than the chaos.

Most people started to believe that the moon was still there after all, we just couldn’t see it anymore. Scientists started trying to come up with theories about what could have caused it to stop reflecting light from the sun. Some people thought that its absence was a mass hallucination, that we were all just imagining that it was gone when it was really right in front of us. A few people maintained that the moon had never existed, that the only hallucination was that we thought we had all seen it before. Two groups who had never been in contact with each other - a tribe of indigenous people in Arizona and a pagan circle in Scotland - came forth simultaneously with the same theory: that the moon was actually the eye of a giant raven who had gotten tired of looking upon mankind and had closed its eye for good.

For most, abject horror of the unknown slowly faded into a sense of normalcy. The moon was gone. We didn’t know why. We just had to accept it and move on with our lives.

Still, it just didn’t feel the same after that. A lot of people started leaving the cities, venturing out into the wilds like they had forgotten how to be human. Or perhaps they suddenly remembered how to be some other sort of beast that had been sleeping inside them all along. There didn’t appear to be any sort of organized movement. It was just an urge that occurred to people after we lost the moon.

Some people described it as an awakening, a sudden realization that we can’t rely on any of the things we had come to let ourselves rely on. And if the universe is really this random and terrifying and chaotic, why are we spending it in office buildings, in traffic, under fluorescent lights?

I quit my job at the restaurant and got a new job at the bookstore. I had always wanted to work there but they were never hiring before. Now they were.

Others described it as an inexorable pull towards the darkness. In a very literal way, the world was darker than it used to be. I didn’t expect to notice it so intensely. It’s not like it was ever any darker than a dark night. Every night was just a dark night now. But I think the human subconscious noticed that something was different, like the whole world was marginally flawed. Some people were intrigued by that. I think some people were almost obsessed with it.

My friend Sasha tried to describe it to me once. We went out for coffee a few months after. I noticed she was taking her coffee black, even though she never did before. I decided to try my coffee black too and it tasted better than I remembered.

“It feels like the night is looking back at me these days,” she explained calmly. That sounded perturbing to me, but she didn’t seem to think so. “Mostly it just doesn’t seem fair that it can see me but I can’t see back into it.” She left the city and headed into the forest soon after that.

For whatever reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about my black coffee and how much more I liked than used to. Not long after that, I stopped using salad dressing on my salad too. It just didn’t seem necessary anymore.

Others described it as a break in reality. Nothing made sense anymore. The world had gone crazy and the only way to keep up was to embrace its brokenness.

Have you ever entered a room that was so dark that you couldn’t see anything but inky blackness? But then as you existed in that room for a while, your eyes adjusted to whatever tiny scraps of light were there and eventually you could see so clearly, it seemed unbelievable that it once had seemed as black as the back of your eyelids? That was how I felt. When the moon disappeared, we thrashed against the change, but once we adjusted to the absence of light, we could see deeper into the dark room than ever before. Without the moon, a whole new layer of the universe suddenly became visible to us.

I started having dreams about a fearsome and beautiful deity.

They were taller than the canopy with powerful legs as thick as old trees, seemingly reaching down farther than the ground, melding into the earth itself. Their skin was the color of earth, in fact, in the best possible way, as if life could be growing within them, ready to sprout out at any moment. Everything about them was big, solid, and imposing. Big legs, big hips, big shoulders, big scars carved across the chest where breasts may have otherwise been. I couldn’t tell if they were male or female, but it was more fundamental than that; “male” and “female” were words that weren’t applicable to this being in any way.

Somehow, no matter what angle I saw them from, the sun was always directly behind their head, shining around them like a perpetual halo made of lens flare. Sometimes it seemed like they were bald, with only the glare of the sun low in the sky framing their face, but other times it seemed like the sun itself was their hair, golden and luminous and flowing all around them like an infinite sea. One of their eyes was brown, but where the other should be, there was just a socket through which I could see the night sky and, in this version of the sky, the moon was still there.

“See,” was the only word they said to me and their voice rumbled like the sound of vibrating mountains, of tectonic plates waking up and shifting reluctantly under my feet. It was a command and a threat and a gift and a promise all at once.

I felt like I had to run. I didn’t know if I should be running towards them or away from them, but on a spherical planet, no matter which direction I chose, I supposed I would be doing both.

And just like that, I journeyed into the forest myself.

I didn’t know how long I would stay. I was wearing a raincoat and I brought with me a blanket, a water bottle, a jar of peanut butter, one loaf of bread, one bag of coffee beans that I wasn’t sure how I intended to grind or brew, a string of battery powered fairy lights and a copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that I couldn’t bear to leave behind for some reason. I had no illusions about being able to fend for myself in the wilderness for long periods, still I just had to go out and... see.

To be completely honest, I’m not sure what I was expecting to find. I almost didn’t expect anything at all. It felt like I was walking through the trees and into a void, a well-worn path where so many had been swallowed up into nothingness, never to be seen again.

It was beyond anything I had imagined.

Civilization had risen anew here. It wasn’t reborn, like a second attempt at the same society that we had before. It was reincarnated out of the ashes, something new and unique and wonderfully organic. Even here, nobody was really able to explain why they’d come, how they knew where to meet, how they decided to put seeds in the ground and build huts around trees with the trunks reaching down through the center and thatch the roofs with leaves. Nobody realized how good they would be at it. Nobody realized what a sense of purpose they would get out of it. It was like ancient instincts were awakening deep in everyone’s souls.

Everyone there was happy to see me, Sasha most of all. She swore up and down that I subconsciously knew I’d meet up with her and that’s why I brought the coffee beans. I think everyone else was a little disappointed that I came so ill-equipped, but I gave them my peanut butter and I hung up the lights around the entranceway to the kitchen area. Harrison, the soft-spoken young man who seemed to oversee the clay oven, confided in me that his kitchen had felt incomplete before and that the lights had been just what was missing.

I decided to stay for a while. Sasha invited me to stay with her. Harrison asked if I wanted to try working with him in the kitchen and he taught me how to make flatbread and the best stew I’d ever had.

I loved the settlement so much. I felt like there was light shining inside of me, but part of me knew that it wasn’t what I had come looking for.

The first time I laid eyes on Celeste, they were working the earth, growing food for the settlement. Their skin was the color of earth, in the best possible way. They were wearing a plain, yellow skirt with no shirt and their powerful back was covered in a thin layer of sweat that shone in the dying light of the evening sun.

The first time they turned to see me, I caught them with the summer sun, warm and low in the sky behind their nearly bald head, the golden light flowing over their shoulders like they had slowly oozing honey instead of hair. And their resemblance to the deity in my dream didn’t end there. They had the same strong legs, reaching down like mighty trunks to feet half-buried in soil and the same aura of growth, the same smell of warm, damp air and fresh earth. They had the same long scars across their chest, like their body was a complicated topography of history and trauma and strength. Their eyes nearly knocked the wind out of me—one was brown and the other was a striking, cloudy pale blue.

Their voice was the only thing I didn’t expect. It felt so strong and forceful in the dream, but when Celeste laughed it was like bells tinkling in the spring breeze. I felt laughter building up inside my chest and I tried to swallow it back down like one would swallow back a sickening rush of anxiety or fear, but then I realized--why? Why else did I even come here? If there was one place on the earth where I should be able to smile without feeling self-conscious, this was it. And so, I laughed with them.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt badly that I couldn’t call the bookstore and tell them that I wasn’t coming back. I suspected they would figure out what happened. I was far from the first one to go missing.

Celeste was a shaman of some sort, but they wouldn’t qualify it any more than that. I’d ask them, are you a witch? A fortune teller? A prophet? And they’d shrug and reply, “I just understand things.”

It wasn’t enough for me, though I didn’t dare bring up the dreams I’d had, even though I knew they’d understand that too. I felt almost like I had cheated somehow, seen wonderful things that I hadn’t been meant to see and part of me feared that if I admitted it, the wonderful things would be taken away from me. “Please, Celeste, you can explain it to me. I promise I’ll believe you.”

“I am explaining it!” They’d laugh and that tinkling laugh made it feel like the answer didn’t matter anymore. “I mean, there’s nothing to explain. Things just mean something to me in a different way.”

And they found meaning in everything—in the pattern of fallen leaves on the field first thing in the morning or the bones at the bottom of the soup pot. They predicted the weather. They always seemed to know what part of the woods the animals would be in. They made tea for people who were sick or even just people who were sad. “Being sad is just like being sick but in your soul,” they’d say. And I don’t know exactly how to describe it but nothing ever seemed so bad afterwards, like the warm feeling in my chest from the tea was a golden light that enveloped and comforted me.

I loved them. I loved them more than I had ever loved anything. Thinking back to how I felt when I first started having the dream was foreign and confusing. How could I have ever considered running away from this?

And the most amazing part is that they loved me too. Not in the way that the Christian God supposedly loved all His children. They loved me like I was the only person in the world. In the past, I would have questioned it. I would have wondered what I did to deserve such happiness. I would have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. But in the forest, things felt simpler. Those kinds of anxious feelings rarely plagued me. When they did, Celeste made me their restorative tea and I had a cup while I listened to the rain gently patter on the leaves above. Hard days always seemed to be accompanied by gentle, soothing rain.

“Doesn’t that seem weird?” I pointed out once. “How the weather matches up to my feelings?” Celeste just smiled knowingly.

Eventually I worked up the courage to ask them the question that had been on my mind since the first time I ever saw them.

It was just after breakfast, before we got started with the day’s labor, and we were laying by the side of the creek between the two biggest roots of one of my favorite trees.

“Celeste,” I said, and the words almost caught in my throat. “What really happened to the moon?”

The question hung in the air like an inexplicable humidity and I could feel a moment of understanding pass through the two of us. I wasn’t asking for a speculation, a personal theory, an intellectual discussion. They knew what really happened. The moon was still there somewhere, inside their cloudy blue eye, just like in my dream.

They wrapped their strong arm tighter around me, cradling the back of my head gently. The breeze off the creek was cool and fresh. I could almost feel sprouts springing into existence from their fingertips, taking root in my thick, unruly hair. They kissed me and looked into my eyes, their expression sincere, compassionate, but deeply serious. “Do you really want to know?”

And in the quiet beauty of that moment, I realized that I actually didn’t.

_______________________

About the Author

Jameson Hampton (they/them) is a nonbinary adventurer from Buffalo, NY who wishes they were immortal so they'd have time to visit every coffee shop in the world. Their writing has been published in Moonchild Mag, Rhythm & Bones Lit, and several comics and tabletop gaming anthologies, including Uncaged. They spend their free time burning art in the woods.

The Sinking of the Jade Rabbit

Perhaps I should have seen the blazing red sky that morning as an even bigger warning than the sailors forecasted such a sky to be. Perhaps. Michael stood at the railing at the bow of the Jade Rabbit, staring out at the choppy surface of the Atlantic Ocean, his curly black hair tousled by the gentle, warm breeze scented with the fragrance of orchids from rainforests hundreds of miles away. His back was to me as I stood at the helm, my hands loosely grasping the wheel, looking at him through a window of the bridge. The slight sound of water tapping against the hull of the boat, like the tiny hands of imagined sea creatures knocking to be allowed aboard, competed with the barely audible flapping of the sails that lacked the wind to make them billow. Perhaps if I hadn't allowed Michael and the others to fish the giant sea tortoise from the calm glassy water a few miles from the coast of Barbados, everything that happened could have been prevented. Perhaps.

* * *

Ten days before the sinking.

The tall palm trees on the island of Dominica stood as sentinels between the isolated white sand beach and the dense forest that lay beyond. Parrots nesting in the palm leaves squawked noisily. Sitting against the trunks of the trees, Michael and I held binoculars to our eyes and watched sperm whales breach the ocean water on their way north followed by pods of bottlenose dolphins. Land crabs scurried about us as Meg and Thomas chased after them, tossing those that they caught in a large tin pot. Everyone else had gone into the jungle in search of a freshwater pool to swim and bathe. The smoke from the campfire that Freddie and Jocelyn built before traipsing into the jungle with Al and Peter, hung like a rain-laden cloud above the crackling wood.

The four crew members of the Jade Rabbit manned the two row boats riding to the island over the rolling waves, bringing with them picnic supplies, baskets full of food, and bottles of wine. The yacht sat with its anchor lowered and its sails tied down within a short distance of the shore. Its jade green trim and the rabbit painted near the bow stood out in dark contrast to the glistening white of the yacht's hull. Seagulls that had suddenly appeared seemingly out of nowhere hovered like balloons filled with helium above the rowboats.

Meg let out a squeal of delight as she tossed a crab into the pot.

Michael lowered his binoculars. “Did we really have to bring them along?” he hissed in a whispered voice.

We had met Meg and Thomas in a bar in Havana. They were recent college grads seeing as much of the world as they could before finding jobs and settling down. She was annoyingly perky, but intelligent. He was hunky, very easy on the eyes, but he talked endlessly, mostly about himself. Everyone had liked them at first because they were different from our crowd and we found them amusing, like being around a different species, but by the time we had reached the British Virgin Islands, no one wanted to be around them, but by then it was too late to just dump them.

“He has his physical charms,” I said.

Michael stood and brushed the sand from the seat of his shorts. “Your tastes get more pedestrian the older you get,” he said. He then walked to the water and stood there, letting the waves wash over his feet.

I raised my binoculars and looked out at the sea. My heart leapt into my throat when I saw a man swimming near the yacht. I was about to scream out when I realized I was seeing a large sea turtle. It then disappeared beneath the water's surface.

* * *

Five days before the sinking.

A light rain fell from silver-colored clouds. My first officer, Jaliendro, the only other person aboard the yacht able to navigate the ship in the open sea, manned the wheel while chewing on the end of an unlit cigar. Although I'd never seen him drunk, he reeked of cheap whiskey, something he would have brought on board since I stocked the yacht with only the best liquors. He was a large man who rarely spoke and when he did it was a mixture of Spanish, French and English that was difficult to understand. He was sleeping on a pier in the marina in Miami where I kept the yacht when I first met him a year before. We had sailed the coast of the United States and the Gulf Of Mexico together and got along well, so when I told him I was taking a group of friends from the Florida Keys to a few of the Caribbean Islands and down the coast of South America, and asked if he wanted to go along as the second-in-command. His only question was, “What about Michael?”

“He'll be going along, of course,” I answered.

He never stated outright his dislike of Michael but it was obvious even in how he said Michael's name, as if he were sucking on a lemon. I had never seen the two of them say more than three words to each other.

I left the bridge, stood on the deck, looked up at the billowing sails, and let the gently falling rain wash my face. The rain was warm and smelled like the sea, salty and slightly fishy. I heard through an open porthole Al's boisterous laughter. He was playing poker in the salon with his partner, Peter, and Freddie and Jocelyn. The four of them had formed an unspoken alliance.

“Eavesdropping?” Michael said, coming up behind me.

I turned, wondering where he had come from and a little alarmed that he had snuck up on me. “I thought maybe you went inside to play cards with the others.”

“If you haven't noticed, I've stopped playing cards and board games. It became tiresome.”

I had noticed and immediately regretted asking something I knew the answer to. Michael didn't like his unhappiness going unnoticed. “What have you been doing?”

“Circling the deck, for exercise,” he said. He brushed his wet hair back with his fingers. “We're being followed.”

“Followed? By who?”

He looked toward the water. “Not a who. A what. A large sea turtle. Its been following us for days. I just saw it from the starboard side deck. Meg and Thomas were trying to lure it closer to the yacht by tossing it handfuls of caviar.”

* * *

Three days before the sinking.

Jocelyn sat on the white grand piano with her legs crossed and her black, sequined gown that was slit up to her hip opened enough to show her shapely legs. She looked much younger than her age of fifty. Her husband, Freddie, also fifty, whose gray hair and bulging belly gave his age away, sat on the piano bench and randomly tapped several keys at once, producing discordant notes. They were my oldest friends and were extravagantly affluent and entertained themselves by traveling the world.

“If only you could really play, my dear,” Jocelyn said to him, “then I could do more than just sit here like a hood ornament.”

“You can't sing anyway if that's what you're suggesting,” he said, “but you do brighten up any piano.”

She held up her glass of bourbon. “You do say the sweetest things. It's a good thing that both of our talents lie in having a good time.” She downed the bourbon and fixed her gaze on Michael who was sitting in a chair and staring out the glass sliding door at the moonlit ocean. She shook the ice in her glass, which made a tinkling sound. “Michael, darling, do you miss dancing?”

He slowly turned his head, facing her. “I should never have left it,” he said. He turned his attention back to the glistening water.

I had met Michael in a bar in New York City the year before. He was twenty-two and a principal dancer in a revival of Oklahoma. It's no exaggeration when I say he took my breath away. When I approached him and we began to talk he didn't seem fazed by our age difference. I was forty-two. We dated for three weeks before I said to him one night while we were lying in bed, “I have a yacht in Miami and plan on sailing on it for a few years. I'd like you to come with me.”

He looked down at his feet as if they were speaking to him. “Once you stop dancing professionally for that long it's hard to return to it,” he said. “I don't know what I would do if I can't dance.”

“I'll buy you your own dance studio when we've grown tired of sailing.”

He rolled over onto his side, facing away from me. “Okay. Sure. Why not?” he mumbled a few moments later.

Freddie slammed his hands down on the piano keys. “Oh, God, I'm so bored!” he exclaimed loudly.

“You're such a drama queen,” Jocelyn said coolly.

Everyone in the salon burst out laughing, except for Michael who jumped up and went to the sliding door. “Did you see that?” he shouted.

“What?” several of us responded simultaneously.

“There's a man swimming out there,” he said, excitedly. “He came to the surface swam a few strokes and then went under again.”

“Oh, darling! Mermen?” Jocelyn squealed mockingly. “I thought that sort of thing was passe.”

“It wasn't a merman,” Michael snapped at her. “But I swear I saw him.”

* * *

Two days before the sinking.

Before breakfast, Al and Peter, were on the lower deck, still dressed in their matching yellow silk pajamas, watching Hess and Marcus, crew members and two brothers I hired while at a port in Norfolk, Virginia who served as housekeepers, waiters and valets on the yacht. They were congenial and good sailors. Their muscles bulged as they stood on the edge of the deck gripping the ends of a large net and slowly pulled the net up the side of the hull.

“It's a big one,” Hess shouted excitedly as he strained to raise the net.

“What's going on here?” I said, standing on the ladder leading from the upper deck.

Peter rushed over to the bottom of the ladder and looked up at me with the wide-eyed expression of a child on Christmas morning. “They did it. We had Hess and Marcus put the net out and they caught that turtle that's been following us all this time.” He and Al found fun and excitement in everything, but usually quickly grew bored with what had interested them. They were both in their early thirties and owned a chain of men's boutique clothing stores in south Florida. For them, the two months they planned on being on the yacht was a vacation.

I jumped from the ladder and ran to the edge of the deck. The turtle – about the same size as me – was entangled in the netting. Its dark eyes fixed on me, penetrating to the core of my soul.

“Why are you bringing it on board?” I asked, quickly turning away from the turtle's gaze and looking at Al.

“Imagine what Cook can do with all that turtle meat,” he said.

I should have spoken up and told them to let the turtle go, but I said nothing. If I had told them to release it maybe things would have turned out differently. No, not maybe. Definitely.

* * *

The day before the sinking.

I stood at the wheel and listened to the sounds of the waves slapping against the sides of the yacht as we stood still in the choppy water. We had lowered the sails the night before to remain anchored near an island that was no larger than a city block, but everyone wanted to spend the night camping on its beach. Only Jaliendro and I spent the night on the yacht.

I laid in my bed listening to the ocean waves through an open porthole. It was pleasant to have the bed to myself, without Michael reminding me through his obvious silences and indifference toward me that I had led him to an unhappy existence. It was those thoughts that pulled me from my bed and to the kitchen, accompanied by feeling vaguely as if I was at fault for the turtle's capture, although I had nothing to do with it.

The turtle lay on the slick, tile floor in the kitchen covered with a wet towel. I sat on a metal stool, which Cook sat on while he peeled and chopped vegetables, and peered at the hapless creature. Its eyes were closed and I thought it was asleep, although uncertain if turtles slept. “What a fix you've gotten yourself into,” I said.

Its eyes suddenly shot open and it locked its glassy stare on my face. “No more than the fix you're in,” it said.

I nearly toppled from the stool and then, to calm myself, quickly decided I had just imagined it. The turtle kept its eyes glued to me. I stared at them, realizing there was something human-like about them, an intelligence, an awareness. I wasn't expecting an answer, but out of curiosity I asked, “What fix?”

In that instant it morphed from the form of a turtle into that of a man with pale green skin. He sat up as if changing from a reptile to a human came as second nature to him. His limbs were long and muscular, and he moved gracefully. He reminded me of Michael.

“This can't be happening,” I said as I rubbed my eyes hoping I could wipe away what felt like a dream.

“You live a life without love,” the man-turtle said.

“That's not true,” I protested, “I have my friends who love me with me now.” Suddenly I felt foolish for responding to a hallucination.

The man-turtle stood up and dropped the towel from its body. Heat, like warm ocean currents, radiated from its body. He walked over to me and placed his hand gently on my cheek. “They're not your friends. You own them, like possessions, with no real interest in who they are other than what amusement they provide you.”

I pushed his hand away and instantly regretted doing it. The feel of his hand lingered on my skin, a feeling of comfort and concern that had radiated throughout my entire being. Without knowing why, I wanted to cry. I was suddenly consumed with tiredness. “I'm growing old so fast and I'm afraid of being alone,” I said.

“It's the nature of your species,” he said softly. “You're only accountable for how you use the life that is given to you. I'm here to take care of you if you permit it.”

I hadn't been spoken to with such kindness since I was a child.

“But you're just a turtle,” I said, and then tears began to flow down my cheeks.

He took me in his arms and rocked me back and forth. “And you're just a man.”

“Perhaps it's too late for me to find love,” I said as I sobbed, my face buried in his chest.

“Perhaps,” he replied as he changed back into a turtle. “Perhaps, not,” he stated as he closed his eyes.

* * *

The day of the sinking.

Perhaps I should have seen the blazing red sky that morning as an even bigger warning than sailors forecasted such a sky to be. Jaliendro raised his binoculars to his eyes and looked at the black veil-like curtain of rain that spread across the horizon beneath clouds bathed in blood-red.

“There's a bad storm approaching fast,” he said. “The full force of it might reach us in a couple of hours, maybe sooner.”

“You broadcast our coordinates and make sure our emergency beacon is set,” I instructed. “I'll get Hess and Marcus to help me lower the sails.”

I walked out of the bridge and laid my hand on Michael's back.

He jerked away. “Must you touch me where Jaliendro can see us?” he asked. “He hates me already because it's me and not him who is your lover.”

This was news to me. It never entered my mind that Jaliendro saw me as anything more than his boss. I decided that I would talk to Michael about it later.

“There's a storm coming,” I said. “You should get inside and make sure all of your things are battened down.”

“Battened?” he repeated mockingly. “You're not a real sailor, you know?”

“Please get inside,” I said as I walked away.

Thirty minutes later after we lowered and secured the sails, Michael was still standing at the railing. I followed Hess and Marcus inside where everyone except Meg, Thomas, and Michael were seated at the table in the dining room. Cook was serving them scrambled eggs from a warming pan.

The yacht was swaying wildly on the turbulent water.

“Eat up and then prepare for a few hours of being tossed about. This a storm looks like it might turn out to be a big one,” I said.

Cook handed the pan of eggs to Marcus and went into the kitchen. I walked behind him, calling for Hess to come also. Cook had picked up a butcher knife and was standing over the turtle.

“What are you planning to do with that?” I asked him.

“I thought I'd butcher it now and fix turtle steaks and soup after the storm passes.”

I had hired Cook in Miami where he had been a chef in a popular restaurant known for its exotic cuisine. He ran roughshod over Hess and Marcus who complained about him constantly. He spent most of his time in the kitchen or alone in his cabin on the lowest deck where the other crew cabins were located.

“We're going to dump the turtle back into the sea,” I said to him and Hess.

The two men looked at each other and shrugged. We partly carried and partly pushed the turtle out of the kitchen and across the deck. Just before we shoved it over the side I looked into its eyes and in that moment saw the man who had rocked me in his arms. It made a huge splash when it hit the water and then quickly submerged.

Everyone was still seated at the table when I went back into the dining room. Rain pelted the glass doors that led to the deck with gale wind force.

“Really, darling, all this fuss over a little rain,” Jocelyn said, waving a piece of bacon.

“Need I remind you that we're out in the open sea and anything can happen?” I said.

“Does that include finding more bottles of burgundy white in the wine cellar, because Hess said you were out?” Al asked, followed by a loud guffaw.

“I'll be on the bridge,” I said and left. When I stepped out onto the deck I collided with Thomas and Meg who were dressed in swimwear and headed to the bow of the yacht. She was holding a bottle of champagne.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

Thomas wrapped his arm around Meg's waist and pulled her to him. “Jaliendro said a big storm was coming and we're going to sit on the bow and experience it fully.”

“You should go inside,” I warned.

“That wouldn't be any fun,” Meg said, giggling. “Your friends don't like us around much.”

My face reddened, embarrassed for my friends, and embarrassed that I felt the same way. I didn't know they had noticed. “You're just younger than everyone else, except Michael,” I said.

“He's no fun either,” Thomas said. “He mopes around too much.”

I nodded, knowingly. “Be careful,” I said before we parted ways at the bridge. When I closed the door I looked through the window and watched the couple go to the bow and sit down, their legs dangling over the edge. The rain was falling as if poured from a bucket.

Michael was no longer at the railing.

Jaliendro was turning knobs on the wireless. “We've lost connection,” he said. “The last transmission I got said something about . . .”

The last memories I have about being aboard the Jade Rabbit was hearing Jaliendro scream at that moment and looking out the window as the rogue wave arose and washed over my yacht, sweeping Meg and Thomas from the bow, and then rolling the yacht over as if it were a play thing.

When I opened my eyes I was laying on the turtle's back. “What happened?” I asked as salt water spilled from my lips.

“Fate happened,” the turtle answered. “Those aboard your ship met theirs.”

A lump formed in my throat. The faces of everyone aboard the Jade Rabbit that I had just lost flashed through my mind. I felt robbed that I hadn't been able to see Michael in those last minutes. “What about my fate?” I stammered.

“That's yet to be determined,” the turtle replied. “You have things to do that will benefit mankind and I'm here to help you get it done.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Your guardian angel.”

_______________________

About the Author

Steve Carr (he/him), who lives in Richmond, Virginia, has had over 280 short stories published internationally in print and online magazines, literary journals and anthologies since June, 2016. Four collections of his short stories, Sand, Rain, Heat, and The Tales of Talker Knock, have been published. His plays have been produced in several states in the U.S. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice. His Twitter is @carrsteven960.

His website is https://www.stevecarr960.com/.

We Will Be Fire

There is blue skin in a tin,

painted a la mien, like fire drumming,

like ten tons of blue devil crying, Ah!

Think melanin.

Think, that they pigment was blue.

They was man before.

Then bleeding out from the hills,

in this rusted paramin color, negro birthed;

in the towers of a chant, was a church for the misused.

And this too was a human being.

Crowns of flambeaux weathered a pious road.

“Kiss a flambeau, tell the dead where you bury them,

break a bottle, start a spark on the pitch, mortar, pestle.”

Once for freedom, how the yoke was twice dignified

and men culled the death of freedom with they smiles.

Tell the people justice and they satisfied.

Tell the people justice and they satisfied.

Tell the people justice and they satisfied.

Look a Jab feller dead with kaiso in he breath.

Not one of them fellers could stop morning congregation;

obeah, pulsing, jumbie body tempered for heat like this.

And if you look out you window it have a calling for you too.

You see,

for hands, dancing la dame Kalinda, extended from a blue mass,

crimson tongues beating santimanitay, la voix, kaiso and jab hymns

on the rusty drum of they chest. Guised as beggar,

Dawn sat where the war was fought.

There was a Jab killing in Paramin.

No one took notice.

Of course.

Kwasi Shade is an Auteur Sociologist interested in representing the true myriad of Caribbean dichotomies in their stories and testing the parameters of Creole dialect vernacular. They are interested in communicating the Carnival Aesthetic.

Their poetry, short stories and drawings have appeared in Pree Lit, Moko Magazine, Enby Magazine, Tamarind, Pinkwashed zine, Prismatica, and Culturego Magazine.

They were a 2010 Trinidad and Tobago film festival Ident award recipient. In their spare time they sell pelau crackers, mango chips and RumChow. They are also known as 'A Rainy Weather' the Jab Griot, a carnival character who sings House Rapso and New Wave Kaiso.

Thrilling Bird

One Moko ninja shadowed Douen footsteps

along copper trees of glass leaves

that chimed the sounds of fallen rainbows.

Some moons will sink in where the echo oscillates.

The night was bent grave upon bamboo stems

where the wind drummed fallow let

on ponds of her Cran brulee.

Some too did think it,

it’s here the echo oscillates.

This hell burns like the devil was my skin.

The bay of her back took feeling plums

with the whip of his pallid stalk peeled

as I was indebted negro tallow ground.

A negro mountain fallow landing

or night’s starry plumage

braided in my chest. And

that shame was a night made for ceremony too.

Some moons will sink in where the echo oscillates.

A feathered rain did bower flight

my kind in a vetiver botany lake,

like songs, or a callous road,

or her tears flowered with the rage of the thing

we left unknown. Till black fallow was fey,

her unnamed, died with birth.

Some too did think it.

She is where the echo oscillates.

Kwasi Shade is an Auteur Sociologist interested in representing the true myriad of Caribbean dichotomies in their stories and testing the parameters of Creole dialect vernacular. They are interested in communicating the Carnival Aesthetic.

Their poetry, short stories and drawings have appeared in Pree Lit, Moko Magazine, Enby Magazine, Tamarind, Pinkwashed zine, Prismatica, and Culturego Magazine. 

They were a 2010 Trinidad and Tobago film festival Ident award recipient. In their spare time they sell pelau crackers, mango chips and RumChow. They are also known as 'A Rainy Weather' the Jab Griot, a carnival character who sings House Rapso and New Wave Kaiso.

I Saw the Future Like a Woman

This whole future was your sound,

a grave birth of HA HA HA’s,

a foul, shame, graced by your darling atmos.

You stayed this wieldy ground, dear,

to the rhythms of busted bones,

and hearts wilted with woes;

weathered upon the rock of us

like we were long ago.

We were born crescendos.

Kwasi Shade is an Auteur Sociologist interested in representing the true myriad of Caribbean dichotomies in their stories and testing the parameters of Creole dialect vernacular. They are interested in communicating the Carnival Aesthetic.

Their poetry, short stories and drawings have appeared in Pree Lit, Moko Magazine, Enby Magazine, Tamarind, Pinkwashed zine, Prismatica, and Culturego Magazine. 

They were a 2010 Trinidad and Tobago film festival Ident award recipient. In their spare time they sell pelau crackers, mango chips and RumChow. They are also known as 'A Rainy Weather' the Jab Griot, a carnival character who sings House Rapso and New Wave Kaiso.

Nobody Thinks With Their Liver

It was not something well foreseen

nor thought delivered when with

the contents of this message

came the delayed reprisal

of a ghost, stating:

Please. Return. To sender.

Nobody thinks with their liver.

Any organ would feign disease

or adopt suitable stomach

to tout the claims of such

miscommunication.

A laugh is best met unexpected.

The peak of a haunted mouth

seething

from behind

clouded nightly libation.

The work of ungodly spirits

whisked away by rum distant ships.

The short end of her untimely esophagus

bled my beheaded name

on the master’s sordid whip.

The vestigial intoxication

of overture;

they forgot me

in the drunk bowels of the dead

risked with

long pale turgid dilemma

in coherence of breath, and love, and ribs, and lungs and noses.

Memory was tended to our skeletal curricula.

We who were always possessed

upon the indignancy of foreseen insolvency.

The ghastly clandestine

of the missing negro birth.

Alawo na, ne te femi. Alas,

nobody hires ghosts.

Kwasi Shade is an Auteur Sociologist interested in representing the true myriad of Caribbean dichotomies in their stories and testing the parameters of Creole dialect vernacular. They are interested in communicating the Carnival Aesthetic.

Their poetry, short stories and drawings have appeared in Pree Lit, Moko Magazine, Enby Magazine, Tamarind, Pinkwashed zine, Prismatica, and Culturego Magazine. 

They were a 2010 Trinidad and Tobago film festival Ident award recipient. In their spare time they sell pelau crackers, mango chips and RumChow. They are also known as 'A Rainy Weather' the Jab Griot, a carnival character who sings House Rapso and New Wave Kaiso.

Mantis

A tiny kiss behind the ear—all it takes
to make a grown man melt.

I live in
locker-room susurrations,

blow death kisses
to passerby. Brother

to lamia, we’re partners
in heart-devouring.

A powerful beast,
I’ve heard.

Dani Putney (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, Asian American poet exploring the West. Their poetry most recently appears or is forthcoming in Juke Joint Magazine, Lockjaw Magazine, Mojave Heart Review, and Sons and Daughters, among other publications. Presently, they're infiltrating a small conservative town in the middle of the Nevada desert..

Parasitism

It lands on my knee

to say the wave

is coming but it’s only

a boxelder bug so I flick

—no no lover

time to dance—

and the screen door rips cross

-wise w/ lumberjack force,

a red swarm charges.

The insects grapple my chest hair

like pirates kissing the coastline

but rougher mouth parts scratch

-ing, they’re biting, though I think

I love it as a boy loves

his daddy bears gone wild

on my skin, inside organs

as Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild”

—am I pregnant? yes yes

to the flesh I’m growing,

earth’s little warriors parasitized

my lungs into splendor or maybe

gave me an ovipositor

to dangle below a hairy crack,

don’t deny how much you lust it,

they telepath— and they’re right

to assume this invasion was

anything less than wanted.

Dani Putney (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, Asian American poet exploring the West. Their poetry most recently appears or is forthcoming in Juke Joint Magazine, Lockjaw Magazine, Mojave Heart Review, and Sons and Daughters, among other publications. Presently, they're infiltrating a small conservative town in the middle of the Nevada desert..

Naja Snake

you're crawling on the bedsheets while I seat myself wondering
how can such a slender body
weak my knees and cheap my values
you flatten your head to pick me up
at any dispersion, for leisure
with impressive length, incredible speed

and the lightning strikes in the dark
I metamorphose in between your neurotoxic behavior
I see the patterns in your skin print
the olive color in your whole strong being
the angst, the love

and then I let you in
I ask you kindly,
wrap yourself in my arms like najas
have yourself a bite of my skin
let all my defects align

poison all of my green and purple veins
heart beating to the rhythm of your enchantment
bombing my bloodline with your infectious passion

and since then I’ve made you my pet,
my one desire is to make you my taxidermy
my nervous system still in agonizing excruciation
in fatal destiny and bony awakeness
I sing myself to death to the tone of your dangerous hissing

and I gorgeously love it
I sure do like how that poison feels

_______________________

About the Author

Valium Hippy (birth name Rogério Berardo Filho) (he/him) is a writer and poet born and living in Recife, in northeastern Brazil. He is currently 20 years old, LGBT, a dog dad, and writes to cope with mental health complications.

Happily Ever Raptor

“We’re almost there. I can feel it.”

Drew watched as Adam looked through the lenses of the microscope. “Be gentle.”

Adam chuckled. “Don’t make me laugh. This is sensitive work.” He wore gloves that were connected to a virtual network. He was controlling the nanomachines that were connected to the base of the microscope. Through the scope, he could see them, two tiny arms doing something humans could never do without this kind of technology, technology Drew had designed himself.

“I wasn’t joking. Everything hinges on that embryo. One misstep, and we cost AlphaZinc millions.”

“Not to pressure me or anything, right?”

Drew smiled. He could still remember when Adam had first started at AlphaZinc, four months ago. He had been so jealous at first. He had worked there for over a decade, was in his late thirties, and head of his own department. He had made great strides on his own, and he was insulted when they brought in a twenty-two-year-old hotshot straight out of college.

It only took Adam a week to impress Drew and prove his worth. He was a genius, taking everything Drew had done pushing the research farther than he had ever thought possible. It had only been months, and they were on the brink of something that should have taken years, maybe a decade or two. Drew had the utmost confidence in Adam.

“If I get this embryo knocked up, I get to name it,” Adam said.

“You got a deal,” Drew agreed.

“What kind of parent would I be if I didn’t let the mommy name one of the herd?”

“Herd?” Drew repeated. “Wouldn’t ‘flock’ be a better term?”

“Look it up. A group of dinosaurs is called a ‘herd’. How do you work in dinosaur cloning and not know this?”

“Don’t you need to concentrate?”

Adam smiled. “It’s easier when you’re talking.”

“You’re doing most of it,” Drew said.

“I can’t believe we’re so close,” Adam whispered, the microscopic needle piercing the lab-made embryo. It was what Drew had called a smorgasbord of reptilian and amphibian DNA and stem cells. If his theory was right, the dinosaur DNA that Adam was attempting to inject inside the embryo that was put inside the ostrich egg would combine. If it worked, they’d have a real-life dinosaur egg.

“This is a dream of mine ever since I saw Jurassic Park as a kid,” Adam said. “My dad let me stay up late to watch it. It scared the shit out of me the first time. After that, I was inspired to do the same.”

“I got to see that in theaters when I was a kid,” Drew teased. “It was way better than on TV. The book was better anyway.”

“Yeah. The book is always better, right?”

“Almost always. You realize half the cast of that movie were eaten by dinosaurs, right?”

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take for science.” The needle pierced the embryo, and Adam injected the dinosaur DNA AlphaZinc had provided into the mix, breathing a sigh of relief. “I got it. Take a look.”

Adam stepped aside, and Drew looked through the microscope. “Son of a bitch. We did it.”

“Assuming it fully forms in the egg, grows, and hatches. All those x-factors aside: Son of a bitch. We did it.”

Adam smiled and jumped a step closer to Drew, grabbing him a big hug. “I don’t believe it!” He pulled back and looked into his partner’s smiling face. Without warning, he leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.

“Whoa!” Drew exclaimed, pulling back. “Where’d that come from?”

Adam blushed and turned away. “Sorry. The moment kind of overtook me. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“No,” Drew said. “It was fine. It was just unexpected.”

“Just give me a little warning next time you try to kiss me, OK?”

“OK.” Adam leaned forward again. This time, Drew returned the slow kiss, holding Adam’s arms. They broke apart and looked at each other.

* * *

Eighteen Months Later

A woman sang a rapid-beat pop song from a clock radio in a dark bedroom. Adam groaned and rolled over. “What is with you and this music?”

Drew laughed. “It’s catchy.”

“Not at four-thirty in the morning! Can you at least shut it off, seeing as we’re both awake?”

“I just want to hear the chorus. I’ll go shower after that.”

Adam sat up, yawned, and swung his feet to the floor. “I can always sleep at my own apartment you know.”

Drew came from behind Adam and wrapped his arms around his slender body. It was a stark contrast to his chubbiness, but Adam never seemed to mind it. “Why would you want to do that? You spend every night here anyway. You can always move in.”

Adam sighed. “I am not having this conversation again. You know AlphaZinc frowns upon their employees dating one another. Besides, my roommate likes getting half the rent paid and living alone.”

“You’re the one who brought it up, knowing how much I want you here with me.” Drew groaned, pulling away. “I need to get cleaned up for work.”

“You’re so grumpy in the morning!” Adam tossed a pillow at Drew, who ignored it and let it fall to the bedroom floor. “I’d say we quit AlphaZinc and work somewhere else, but then we won’t get to see our baby boy!”

“You’re the one who’s grumpy in the morning,” Drew muttered, closing the bathroom door behind him.

* * *

Adam took his portable coffee mug from the Keurig and put it on the table next to Drew’s. He grabbed his car keys from the bowl by the door and put them in his coat pocket. “You just about ready to roll?” he called.

“Wait,” Drew said, coming down the stairs. He held a small package in his hand with a red ribbon around it.

“Wait?” Adam asked. “We’re just going to see each other at work anyway.”

“You’re the one who asked if I was ready,” Drew muttered. “If we can admit you usually spend the night here, we could just carpool into work instead of taking separate cas.”

“Again, AlphaZinc -”

“Frowns upon it.” Drew rolled his eyes. “I know you’re oh-so-young, so I’ll spare you the story about my in-the-closet days and how I’m not a fan of reliving them now.”

“I’m not in the closet,” Adam groaned. “It’s just because of work, and you know it. Are you going to tell me what you’re holding?”

“Oh,” Drew said, looking at the thin, six-inch black box in his hand. “This is for you.”

“What is it?”

“A present. You open it.”

Adam sighed. “I know I didn’t forget my birthday. Why’d you get me a present?”

“Because I felt like it. Will you just open it?”

Adam feigned annoyance and untied the ribbon. He opened the box and looked inside. “Why did you buy me a pen? We have a million of them at work.”

“It’s not just a pen!” Drew snapped. He walked over to Adam and took it out of the box and showed held it between them. “This is a silver pen.”

“I can see that.”

“No, you don’t. It’s not colored silver. It is silver.”

“Oh.” Adam took the pen from Drew’s hand and looked at it. “That’s an expensive pen. Am I supposed to chuck it when it runs out of ink?”

“You can refill it.”

“Fancy. You didn’t have to do that. Why’d you buy me such an expensive gift for no reason?”

“I remember my mom giving my dad one when I was a kid,” Drew explained. “He loved it so much, and it was always in the front pocket of his lab coat. And there is a reason for you getting one. I got it for you because I love you.”

Adam smiled. “I love you too, Drew. But you didn’t have buy me this just to let me know.”

“Just say ‘thank you, Drew’ and put it in your pocket.”

“Thank you, Drew.” Adam put the pen in his shirt pocket. “I’m going to need a silver-plated pocket protector to go with this, you know.”

“I’ll remember that,” Drew muttered, picking up his mug of coffee. “We need to get to work. Our baby boy is going to miss us if we don’t visit soon.”

“Right.” Adam grabbed his own mug and walked to the door with Drew. “I know how Lizzie gets lonely when we’re not there.”

Drew sighed. “I can’t believe I let you name him that.”

Adam kissed Drew. “Come on. No time to waste. Let’s get to work.”

* * *

“The possibilities are literally endless!”

The rough yet booming voice came from Stan, head of the science division at AlphaZinc. He wore a dark brown suit with a bright red tie. Drew tried to look away, as the clashing colors made something lurch inside him. Adam had a theory that his wife hated him and didn’t tell him he looked like a clown heading for a funeral before he left the house. A man as old and successful as Stan Girard should know how to dress himself.

“Think about all the species we could bring back from extinction!”

Stan was giving a presentation to a group of people in suits and brand new AlphaZinc hardhats. Drew knew what that meant: Investors.

“Our client is only interested in your most current success,” one of the men said, adjusting his glasses.

Drew perked up and stopped writing his notes on his clipboard. He was talking, of course, about Lizzie, and Lizzie’s existence was not supposed to be public yet. It meant the board had been talking about it.

“Right, right,” Stan muttered, ushering the small group out of Drew’s lab. “We can talk about that later. Let me show you what we’ve got planned for the near future. Maybe your client can play a pivotal role in bringing back a species that should have never been wiped off the planet.”

Adam walked in from the other entrance. “Is it safe? Is Stan and his admirers gone?”

“They’re gone,” Drew said, making one last note. He looked up and noticed the new pen in Adam’s white lab coat. “That pen looks good on you.”

“It does,” Adam agreed. “And I have something to stab a werewolf with if I ever get attacked by one.”

Drew shook his head and looked back to his notes. “You won’t be joking if one really did attack you.”

Adam sighed and leaned on the table, propping his head up with his elbows down and his face in his hands.

“Yes?” Drew asked.

“You gonna come with me to see him or what?”

Drew looked up. “I can put off these calculations until after lunch. Math isn’t going anywhere.”

“Yes!” Adam said.

They grabbed their white hardhats from the rack by the door. Drew used his keycard to get into the restricted area of the AlphaZinc labs. They made their way to the paddock near the back of the compound, the one that had been built for their baby boy: Lizzie.

“How is he today?” Drew asked Sandy, a middle-aged woman with light-brown hair. She was in charge of guarding the paddock during the day and noting any odd behavior from Lizzie.

“He’s playing hide-and-seek,” Sandy replied. “I’m not sure he likes me.”

“I’m sure he likes you fine,” Adam reassured.

“He’d like me as a snack maybe,” Sandy muttered.

“Speaking of which,” Drew said, “has he eaten?”

“Just had himself a hell of a time with a hog for breakfast. You’re lucky you didn’t have to hear it. One of the perks of this job is the amount of weight I’ve lost because of my loss of appetite. I’m one more death-squeal away from becoming a full-blown vegetarian.”

Drew nodded. “Alright, Sandy. We’re going in.”

Sandy nodded. She pulled a high-powered stun gun from the wall. “No worries. I’ll be right behind you.”

Drew used his keycard to open the gate that led into the paddock. The visitor area was cut off from the rest of it by titanium bars. Sandy carried her stun gun at the ready, just in case one of them got close enough to the bars for the resident dinosaur to try and take a bite.

“Lizzie!” Adam called, rushing up to the bars. “Where’s my baby boy?!”

“Stand back a step,” Sandy said. “I know he’s used to you guys, but it still makes me nervous when he -”

There was a rustle from the brush, and Lizzie trotted toward them. He was longer than he was tall, his tail making him almost ten feet at the longest. He was over two feet tall too, making him big for his young age. There were a lot of variables Drew hadn’t worked out from the DNA smorgasbord they had used to grow Lizzie in the ostrich egg, so there was no telling how big he would get when he was fully grown.

Lizzie stopped just short of the fence, turning its head to look at Adam through the gate. It purred, an odd sound coming from the raptor. His lips curled, and his teeth showed. They were still tinged with blood from his breakfast.

“Look at you, Lizzie,” Adam said, crouching. “Look at his coloring, Drew. He’s getting darker. Remember when he was a baby and he was almost all green and blue? He’s losing that stripe along his back.”

“I noticed,” Drew said, crouching next to Adam. Lizzie moved to look at him next, bouncing as he changed his footing. “Look at the area under his arms an along his back. He’s going to grow feathers!”

“I knew it!” Adam said, laughing. “I need to get a closer look to take some notes.” He moved toward the door that separated them from Lizzie’s area.

“Nope!” Sandie snapped. “You know the rules.”

“But he just ate!” Adam whined. “We’re allowed to go in right after.”

“Not without the chain-suit,” Sandy retorted.

“Oh, come on!” Adam groaned. “Lizzie’s a good boy!”

“I’ve seen Jurassic Park,” Sandy said. “I know what these velociraptors can do.”

“Lizzie isn’t a velociraptor,” Drew explained. “He’s a deinonychus. Jurassic Park used deinonychuses as models for the velociraptors in the movie, but an actual velociraptor is about the size of a turkey. Lizzie is the bigger version. He’s in the raptor family, though, so to speak.”

“You’re such a nerd,,” Sandy muttered. “Still, you should have cloned a cuter dinosaur. Even if you had, though, you need a chain-suit if you want to go through that door.”

“Fine,” Adam groaned. “I’ll put on that heavy-ass suit just to say hello to my little boy.”

Drew sighed while Adam went in the next room to get his custom-fitted suit of raptor-armor. It was steel mesh inside tough fabric with a chainmail-like outer shell. They called them chain-suits as a joke, and the name stuck. It was heavy, but Drew agreed with the rule that any of Lizzie’s handlers or AlphaZinc staff of them get near Lizzie without one, as friendly as the raptor may have been.

“How are the two of you, by the way?” Sandy asked. “You guys seem happy.”

Drew smiled. Sandy was one of the few people who knew of Adam and his relationship. “It’s going really well, actually. I didn’t think he’d stick around too long with an older guy, but it’s been a year and a half.”

“Good for you,” Sandy said. “I’m glad work doesn’t get in the way. I used to date Mark in security, and things got weird, seeing him here every day.”

“It gets like that sometimes,” Drew added, “but we’re not sick of each other yet.”

Sandy smiled. “I hope you guys don’t get to that point any time soon.”

Drew laughed. “Me neither.”

“Alright!” Adam exclaimed, announcing his return. He was wearing the full chain-suit, and he was putting on a waddle so Sandy and Drew knew what a pain it was to be forced to wear it. “I’m ready to give Lizzie a good morning.”

“Not without the helmet and mask,” Sandy retorted.

“Dammit, Sandy! Let me see my baby boy!”

* * *

Adam walked through the door. He had to look ahead of himself through the plexiglass mask and heavy helmet of his chain-suit. “Hey, baby boy,” he said, offering a smile to Lizzie as he approached.

Sandy was on the other side of the bars, the end of her stun gun aimed at Lizzie. There were two other guards on the upper corners above the visitor area. One had a tranquilizer rifle ready, and the other had one that fired a net. It was all a precaution, and Adam was sure it wasn’t going to be needed.

Lizzie stopped in front of Adam and looked at him. The human’s whole body was covered in the suit, but there was an unmistakable look of recognition on his face.

“I’m just going to take a close look at you,” Adam said in a calm voice. “Is that OK?”

A small whine came from Lizzie’s throat. It was an unthreatening sound. Adam had no intention on petting the raptor like a dog or trying to rub its belly. He knew Lizzie was a good boy, but he wasn’t a pet.

“You’re going to grow feathers. I can tell now. You’re going to be so beautiful when your full coat comes in.”

Lizzie move forward a step, and Adam could hear Sandy move too, ready to fire a shock that would put the raptor down for the count. He’d be OK after an hour or so, but his trust in humans would be damaged. So far, everything had gone well.

“You’re a good boy, Lizzie. You’re the best boy!”

* * *

“The lizard’s really taken to humans, hasn’t he?” Stan asked. He had come into the visitor area of the paddock unannounced. Drew had been watching Adam interact with Lizzie. They often went together, but he liked watching Adam. He almost glowed when he was with Lizzie.

“He’s used to Adam and me,” Drew replied. He turned back to watch. He had been startled by Stan’s sudden appearance, but Sandy hadn’t taken her aim off Lizzie. She was well-suited for her post.

“Do you think it’ll do well with others?” Stan asked.

“Lizzie stays clear of his feeders, and security doesn’t go in there often. His handlers haven’t been attacked, but Lizzie gets a little anxious with them. When he gets older, he may become more of a danger than he is right now.”

Stan nodded. “Ah.”

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” Stan walked up to the bars and watched Adam inspect Lizzie. “It really is a beauty, isn’t it? You guys did better than expected when you brought that thing to life.”

“He brought himself to life,” Drew said. “We’re not gods. All we did was give him the means to be born.”

“You’re a goddamn poet. You know that?”

Drew sighed. “Sure. I’m a poet.”

“I need to know soon if your pet there is ready for the next step, Doctor Waters.” Stan only called Drew “Doctor Waters” when he wanted to be taken seriously.

Drew turned away from Adam, who was checking the skin behind Lizzie’s ears for evidence of more future feather growth. “We’re still studying him,” he replied. “Besides, Lizzie isn’t even fully grown yet. There’s so much we can learn from this whole experience. It’s too soon.”

“Walk with me, Doctor Waters.”

Drew looked to Sandy for a moment. She gave him a nod, not taking her eyes off Lizzie for a single millisecond. “I got this. He’ll be OK.”

Stan left the paddock area, Drew walking beside him. “I don’t want to be a hard-ass, but the investors are clawing at the door, looking for a profit from our division.”

“We cloned a dinosaur,” Drew replied. “Can they not see the scientific and historical merit in what we’ve done?”

“A lot of money was dumped into this project, and they just want to see their return. How ready is your specimen for transport?”

Drew sighed. He hated Lizzie being called a specimen, but it was better than “Property of AlphaZinc”, which is what Stan would call him if he got cross enough.

“Lizzie is young, but he can live away from the paddock. He hasn’t needed humans to feed him for some time now. If you send his lunch to him, he’ll kill and eat on his own. He can live and thrive with little human interference, but…”

“But what?”

“I want you to try to urge the board to keep him here a little longer. As I said: We’re still studying him, and we discover something new just about every day.”

“You have his DNA, right?” San asked.

“Yeah,” Drew admitted.

“Then make more. I’ll get you authorization to make two next time. You can breed the ugly bastards and publish our papers on the findings. You’ll be a science superstar! We’ll have people lining up to clone endangered species. Do you have any idea how much the liberals in congress will dish out for something like that? We’ll all be millionaires or better.”

“But Lizzie…”

“Right,” Stan groaned. “I’m getting ahead of myself. Get as much blood as you from your specimen to grow a new one. Let your assistant know too.”

“Adam is my partner.”

“Whatever.” Stan walked away toward his office. The chuckle he failed to suppress jiggled his multiple chins.

Drew watched him go, wondering how he was going to break the news to Adam.

* * *

The table of the lab was covered in notebooks, and Drew had two laptops opened. He was going over everything they had researched since he and Adam first fertilized a dinosaur embryo inside an ostrich egg. It was an overwhelming amount of data, but there wasn’t enough missing for him to make a proper counter-argument for him to keep Lizzie, especially when the promise to clone two more raptors was on the table.

“Wow,” Adam said, entering the lab. “Are you studying for midterms?”

Drew took his glasses off and pinched his nose. The headache that had been threatening to come to the surface had made its appearance. “It’s nothing. I just needed to verify some old information.”

“What’s wrong?” Adam asked.

“Nothing,” Drew replied. “I already told you.”

“Don’t make me force it out of you.”

There was no point in lying to Adam or putting off the conversation about Lizzie’s departure from the AlphaZinc compound. Adam knew something was wrong, and he’d harp on Drew until he spit it out.

“Sit down, Adam,” Drew said.

Adam did as Drew requested, taking the seat next to him. “What’s up. Are you OK?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. I wanted to wait to tell you this, but… dammit.”

“What? Just tell me.”

“I had a conversation with Stan. The board made a decision about Lizzie. They’re going to ship him away.”

Adam looked like he had been punched in the gut. “No. It’s too soon!”

“Please don’t yell.”

“But it’s too soon, Drew!”

Drew sighed. “I know. I argued that with Stan, but he won’t listen. The board wants profits from Lizzie’s cloning, and they’re not going to get it with him in the paddock.”

Adam stood. “And you’re just letting him do it?!”

“That’s why I’ve been going over all these notes and files. If I can find a reason for us to keep him, then we can make our case to the board.”

“Good.” Adam took a breath and sat back down. “What did you find?”

“I found that you and I are very good at our jobs.”

Adam blinked a few times. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that there’s nothing concrete I can use to argue our point. Stan doesn’t care that Lizzie isn’t fully grown. The board wants their profits, and they’re giving us the green light to clone two more deinonychuses, a male and a female.”

“So AlphaZinc can give them away too?”

Drew showed his exasperation. “Look, Adam. The fact of the matter is that Lizzie is theirs. We cloned him, but they sign the paychecks. We both knew this day would come. I wish we could have longer too, but that’s just how it is.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m ten fucking years old, Drew.”

“Don’t swear at me.”

“Don’t be a shit.”

Drew stood this time. “Lizzie isn’t a pet, Adam. He’s not a puppy. He’s a science experiment, albeit a successful one. AlphaZinc holds all the cards here. If they say Lizzie has to go, then he has to go.”

Adam gave one short huff of a sarcastic laugh and pushed his chair away, knocking it over as he got to his feet. “I never pegged you as a company man, Drew. Now I know your true colors.”

“You’re brilliant, but you need to show some common sense here.”

Adam walked away. “That’s the last time you patronize me, Doctor Waters.”

“Where are you going?” Drew asked.

“I’m going to find a way to keep Lizzie until he’s ready. Maybe you’ve given up, but I sure as hell haven’t.”

“If there was a way -”

“I’ll find it!” Adam left the lab, slamming the door behind him. Drew watched the door, expecting him to return, but he didn’t.

* * *

Drew sat at the desk in his office. He hadn’t done much with the rest of his workday since his fight with Adam. It was all he could think about. He kept thinking Adam would return and talk through what had happened, but he didn’t. It was five-thirty. He had stayed late without realizing it. He groaned when he got up from his chair. His computer had been off for some time. He had accomplished nothing since the argument, not for AlphaZinc, not for himself, and not for Adam. He felt guilty and wanted to extend an olive branch.

Adam was in his own office, burying himself in notes like Drew had done earlier in the lab. He didn’t even look up from his desperate attempt to save Lizzie from being sold.

Drew knocked on the door.

“What?” Adam asked, still refusing to look away from his work.

“I’m heading home,” Drew replied.

“Good for you.”

“Will I see you there?”

“I don’t know, Drew. I have a lot to do here.”

Drew’s fist clenched. He wanted to launch into another tirade about how foolish Adam was being. He wanted to remind him that nothing he could find would stop AlphaZinc from doing what they want to do with Lizzie. It was hopeless.

But he knew Adam wouldn’t believe it unless he came to that conclusion on his own.

“Don’t burn yourself out,” Drew said. “I hope you find something I missed.” He left.

The drive home felt lonely, even though he and Adam never drove home together. His home, the one he had felt was their home now, felt empty. He had made it over a year and a half without an epic fight with Adam, and he felt shitty that the first fight was over what had brought them together in the first place.

Drew waited. He got himself ready for bed, peeking out the window often, hoping Adam’s car would bless the driveway like always. But he didn’t come home. Drew was reminded that Adam still had his old apartment and a roommate across town. He had probably gone there after work instead of home. That thought made Drew wonder if Adam even considered this place his home.

At ten o’clock, Drew decided to call an end to the charade of waiting for Adam like he hadn’t gone back to his old apartment. He turned out the lights and went to bed, alone.

* * *

Drew woke up exhausted from a night of tossing and turning. His mind wouldn’t drop the thoughts of Adam and the empty space on the left side of the bed. He got ready for work like normal, but the morning was off. Adam wasn’t there to complain about the pop music on the alarm clock at four-thirty or make the coffee while Drew finished getting dressed.

There were no calls or texts from Adam. Drew had hoped there’d at least be a text. He held his phone, thinking about sending something to Adam, an apology, anything. He decided against it. Adam needed to cool down on his own.

Drew looked for Adam at AlphaZinc too, but he wasn’t in his office. He wasn’t in the lab either. He walked to the paddock and found Sandy. “Hey, Sandy. This might sound weird, but has Adam been by here this morning?”

Sandy shook her head. “I haven’t. You guys OK?”

“No,” Drew admitted. “We got in a fight yesterday, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

“Sorry, dear. If I see him, I’ll let him know you’re looking for him.”

“He probably called out.” Drew couldn’t believe it. With Lizzie facing the last of his days at the AlphaZinc compound, there wasn’t a minute to waste with a sick day. Adam could have given up hope, though.

That thought broke Drew’s heart.

Drew went to Stan’s office, finding him on his computer. “Hey, Stan. You got a minute?”

Stan closed his laptop with a snap. He looked startled to see Drew. “Sure, but I may only have a minute. What’s up?”

“Do you know if Adam’s called out today?” Drew asked.

“No,” Stan sighed. “Adam quit last night.”

“He quit?!”

Stan stood and walked to his office door, closing it. “Sit down, Doctor Waters.”

Drew sat in one of the chairs as Stan went back to his side of the desk. He couldn’t believe it. In a fit of disappointment, Adam had left his job and left Lizzie too. It wasn’t like him to do something like that. The pressure of what AlphaZinc wanted to do had gotten to him.

“Adam was upset last night,” Stan explained. “He stormed in here, making all kinds of demands about what he thinks we’re supposed to do with the raptor. He quit on the spot.”

Drew couldn’t wrap his head around it. “Impossible.”

“He was passionate about that dinosaur. It’s tragic, I know, but we’ll have to move on without him.”

“I can’t. I need Adam.”

“We have his notes. If need be, we can recreate the experiment with another scientist.”

Drew looked into Stan’s face. He didn’t understand Drew’s meaning, but that was for the better. He didn’t know if he’d be able to create another raptor without Adam either way. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

“We’ll get through this,” Stan continued. “I know the two of you were colleagues and friends, but they come and go. We’ll get you a new partner, you’ll clone two more raptors, and you’ll forget all about Adam.”

Drew stood. “I need to go.”

“OK. Take it easy today. We’re going to post the job by Monday and start the interview process. We’d like to include you.”

Drew didn’t want to talk anymore. He left Stan’s office and went back to his own. He closed the door and sat behind his desk. He grabbed his cellphone and sent a text to Adam: “Call me ASAP.”

The text was sent. The tiny message under it said it was delivered, but it didn’t change to “read”. Drew sat in his chair, watching his phone. It didn’t change. After a few minutes, he got impatient and called the phone. After a single ring, Adam’s voicemail picked up. “Dammit, Adam!” he exclaimed to his empty office.

His desk phone rang, and he picked it up. “Hello?”

“Doctor Waters!” It wasn’t Adam.

“Sandy? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Lizzie. He’s sick. They told me to call you and ask you to come down.”

Drew stared at his wall. After a moment, his paralysis broke. “I’ll be right there.”

* * *

Lizzie way lying on the ground, panting. His eye moved, focusing on Drew as he entered his paddock in his chain-suit. Sandy had her stun gun aimed at the sick raptor, ready to fire on him if it jumped on the two handlers who were with him. “What’s wrong?”

One of the handlers, a young zoologist named Carl, looked up. “He’s had a rough morning. He didn’t eat much, and he’s been like this since he tried.”

Drew made a mental note of the hog that had been mauled and only partially eaten. It’s carcass lay in a pool of blood just outside the brush. “Have that cleaned up and tested for anything that could make Lizzie sick. Is he sedated?”

“We had to,” the other handler, a middle-aged woman named Diane replied. “We couldn’t rule out him faking to get us in here.”

Drew knelt next to Lizzie. His head moved toward him, and he heard the stun gun move against the metal hole. But Lizzie wasn’t going to snap or bite. He was nervous, and he recognized Drew as a friend, maybe even as a parent. He and Adam had been present when he was hatched for this reason.

“He’s not faking it,” Drew said. His hand was on Lizzie’s side. He felt his breathes, more labored than usual, as his ribs rose and fell. “Other than not eating, is there anything else wrong with him? Has he defecated like normal?”

“No,” Carl replied. “We believe he’s constipated. Can we give him some Pepto-Bismol?”

“You can’t give a dinosaur Pepto!” Diane said.

“Why not? My vet said I can give my dog Dramamine for car sickness.”

“A dinosaur isn’t a puppy!”

“Enough!” Drew snapped. He wished Adam hadn’t decided to quit his job in a fit of righteous passion. Lizzie looked around. “You miss him too, boy?”

“What?” Carl asked.

Drew sighed and stood. “Nothing. I’m not sure if we can give him anything for the upset stomach. Reptiles don’t take well to medicines like that. Maybe it’ll pass. If it doesn’t, bathe him in some warm water and rub his stomach.”

“OK,” Carl said, nodding at the request.

“Let me know how the test results from the pig come back, and make sure I’m kept abreast of Lizzie’s behavior. For now, we’ll have to wait and see unfortunately.”

Drew left Lizzie to his handlers. He took one last look. The raptor looked like he wanted to move toward him, a look of something odd in its face. Though it could have been the sedatives or the illness. Drew turned back toward Lizzie and knelt down again. He put his hand on the raptor’s snout, doing what he thought Adam would do.

“It’s OK, baby boy. You’re going to be alright.”

Lizzie moved his head, nuzzling Drew’s hand. He wondered if the raptor could sense something, if he somehow sensed the tension between his human parents and Adam’s disappearance.

The thought of Adam hit Drew again. He gave Lizzie one last rub and left. Sandy was standing at the fence, her stun gun still aimed inside while the handlers finished.

“Sandy,” Drew said. “I need to ask you a favor.”

“What do you need?” Sandy asked.

“Can you look into the paddock’s security feed from last night?”

“Sure. I’d just be doing my job. What am I looking for?”

Drew thought for a moment. “Anything odd that would cause Lizzie to get sick. I also need to know if Adam was in there after you left for the day.”

“Why would he be?”

“I can’t say. He may have wanted to do some research after hours.” Drew left out the part where Adam was desperate to save Lizzie from being sold. He may have wanted to visit his “baby boy” one last time before quitting AlphaZinc too.

“Alright. I may be able to get it tomorrow of the day after, though. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”

“Thanks.” Drew left, heading back toward his office. He tried his best to push Adam from his mind so he could concentrate on figuring out what was wrong with Lizzie. He hoped he’d have some time to himself in order to work it out.

* * *

“Any luck with the big lizard?”

Drew looked up to see Stan in the lab, staring at him. He was so engrossed in his notes and research that he hadn’t noticed him enter.

“I got nothing,” Drew admitted. “It might be a passing thing, or it might be a virus.”

“How bad?”

Drew shrugged. “If it’s something that was in his ancient DNA, there’s no way to tell. There’s so much we don’t know. That’s why it’s a bad idea to move him while he’s still young.”

“Not this again.” Stan rolled his eyes and took one of the stools. “I need you to make sure the specimen is healthy and ready to be relocated. This isn’t an argument.”

“I can’t help it if he’s sick.” A thought occurred to Drew. “I need Adam back.”

Stan looked as if the request had slapped him across the face. “That’s not happening.”

“Adam knows Lizzie better than I do, Stan. If anyone could help him get better, it’s him. Can you call him and try to talk some sense into him? I really need him on this.”

Stan shook his head and got up. “We are not having this conversation.”

“Why not? I’m sure whatever he said to you was a misunderstanding. If you reached out -”

“I will not!” Stan’s face was red. Drew could tell he had pushed too far. Whatever happened the night before was worse than he thought. Adam must have told off Stan in a bad way. “This will not be up for discussion again. I will replace Doctor Young. In the meantime, you will do your best to get that raptor healthy as quickly as possible. Is that clear, Doctor Waters?”

Drew nodded. “It’s clear.”

“Good.” Stan left, the conversation at its abrupt end.

Drew sighed. Maybe Stan wasn’t going to do anything to get Adam back after his quitting, but Adam had a charisma about him that few did. If he called or returned, he’d be sure to charm Stan Girard into offering him his old job back. He may not do it for Drew, but he might do it for Lizzie.

Drew took his phone from his pocket and opened his text messages. The text he sent earlier was still ignored, but he typed a new one anyway. “You need to call or text me. Lizzie is sick. Even if you hate me, your baby boy needs you.”

It was low, but it would work. He was sure. He read it again, hesitating on sending it. He was playing with Adam’s heartstrings, but he’d want to know if Lizzie was sick. He sighed and hit send. He left his phone on the table, studying dinosaur and lizard illnesses while he waited for it to buzz.

It didn’t.

* * *

Drew was distraught by the time he left work. Lizzie’s condition hadn’t improved, but it hadn’t gotten worse either. His handlers had given him a warm bath, but he still wasn’t eating. During his visit at the end of the day, Drew could swear he saw something akin to sadness in the raptor’s face. He shook the thoughts from his head as he walked to his car. Lizzie was a dinosaur, and he was projecting his own feelings onto him.

The text still hadn’t been received or read. Drew sent one more text before he drove, saying he really needed to talk to him about Lizzie. He called too, but he was once again put straight to voicemail. He was sure his number was blocked at this point, but there was still a chance he’d unblock it and read his messages at some point. Adam couldn’t stay mad forever.

Drew was halfway home when he decided he wasn’t going to play these phone games. He pulled over and got his address book app on his phone open. He had the address for Adam’s old apartment there. Adam may not have wanted to have this argument, but he needed to have it as much as he needed to know what was happening with Lizzie.

Adam’s old apartment building was on the other side of town. It started to rain on the drive. Drew parked and jogged to the front of the building. A kind old woman held the door for him to help him out of the rain. It worked on in his favor, stopping Adam from refusing to buzz the door open.

Drew stepped to the apartment door and knocked. He was nervous. He had no idea what to say when Adam found him standing in the hall, wet from the rain. He waited. He knocked again, hoping he wouldn’t be ignored in person. He heard someone moving from the inside and took a breath. A moment later, the door opened.

Drew’s heart dropped when he saw it wasn’t Adam on the other side.

“Hello?” It was Adam’s roommate. He was chubby with a thick beard and glasses. He held the door open only a crack and peered outside. “Can I help you?”

“Sorry,” Drew sighed. “I’m looking for Adam.”

“Adam who? Adam Young?”

“Yeah. Is he here?”

Adam’s roommate opened the door all the way. “He’s not here right now. Wanna come in?”

“OK.” Drew followed Adam’s roommate. The apartment was a mess. Clothes were strewn all over, and there were bowls and dishes stacked in the sink. He didn’t know how he’d put up with a messy roommate, being as neat as he was. It made sense that he had stayed at Drew’s as much as he did. “Look… Uh… I’m sorry. I don’t remember if Adam ever told me your name.”

“Call me Thor.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Honest to God. My folks named me Thor.”

“OK, Thor. When’s the last time you saw Adam?”

“You’re not a cop, are you? You gotta tell me if you are.”

Drew sighed. “I’m not a cop. I’m Adam’s boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?” Thor asked. “I thought Adam was shacked up with a chick named Drew.”

“I’m Drew.”

“Oh. I thought you were a woman, like Drew Barrymore.”

“What? Did you not know that Adam’s gay?”

“I know that. That’s why I thought it was weird he was dating a woman named Drew. Makes sense now.”

Drew noticed the bong on the end table, and things made sense to him too. “Adam and I got into a fight yesterday, and I haven’t seen him since. I thought maybe he came here for the night. Have you seen him?”

Thor shook his head. “No. He comes by once a week or so to check his mail, but I haven’t seen him this week.”

“That’s weird. Where could he be?”

“Did you try your house?”

“Yeah. I live there.”

“And he wasn’t there?”

Drew sighed again. “No. He wasn’t there.”

Thor shrugged. “Wish I could help you, man.”

“Yeah,” Drew said. “I wish you could have too. Thanks anyway.”

“You want me to tell him anything if he does show up?” Thor asked.

“Tell him Drew was here. Let him know I’m worried about him and we really need to talk.”

“OK. I’ll let him know.”

Drew nodded. “Thanks again, Thor.” He turned and left, dejected and disappointed with the short adventure to Adam’s old apartment. As he drove home, he hoped Thor was right about Adam’s whereabouts, and he’d be there, waiting for Drew with open arms and an apology.

* * *

The rain poured, hitting the windows of Drew’s house with loud clicks. Drew ate a small dinner alone. His mind raced about Adam. How could he just quit his job and leave no trace of himself like this? If it was over between them, he just wanted to know at this point. He had heard that the younger generation was into “ghosting” their former lovers after a break-up, but it was ridiculous for Adam to go this far.

Then a dark thought circled Drew’s mind. He had finished his dinner, throwing almost half of it into the garbage. What if Adam was actually missing? It was one thing to break up with your boyfriend, but to quit your job and go completely off the grid was insane.

Drew decided to give Adam another day. He remembered hearing somewhere you need forty-eight hours before you could get the police involved with a missing person, but that may have been a TV thing. Either way, they would suggest that Adam was staying at a hotel or something, a thought that occurred to Drew as well. He’d be going in as an upset boyfriend, nothing more. If Adam had moved in, he could at least make a case they were more than how they appeared on paper.

The drive to work the following morning was dreary. The rain continued through the morning, pelting Drew’s car. It lighted enough for him to not get drenched as he rushed through the front doors of the AlphaZinc building. He scanned his badge hung his coat up in his locker, trading it for his white lab coat.

Once he was ready to work, he made a beeline to Lizzie’s paddock. He wanted to check on the raptor and see if Sandy had found anything on the security footage. To his surprise, Sandy wasn’t there. A burly, bald-headed security guard had been stationed there instead.

“Where’s Sandy?” Drew asked, not caring how rude he sounded.

“She’s out,” the replacement said.

“Doctor Waters!” Stan said, coming into the room as well. He looked out of breath, like he had been running through the compound. Though a man of his size would have to catch his breath after a brisk walk. “Can I see you?”

“What’s it about?” Drew asked. “Is Lizzie OK?”

“It’s fine. I hear it’s doing much better, actually. I just want to see you in my office.”

Drew took a look in the paddock, but he didn’t see Lizzie. All he saw where his two handlers, Carl and Diane inside wearing their chain-suits. “Alright. Your office?”

Stan nodded and led the way to the elevator and up to his office. He sat behind his desk. “I wanted to see you first thing this morning. I expected to find you in the lab.”

“What’s wrong?” Drew asked, sitting across from his boss.

“We need to move the timetable for the raptor’s departure,” Stan replied. “There will be a board meeting this afternoon to go over the particulars.”

“Lizzie’s just getting over an illness!” Drew argued. “I understand the situation, but I want to make sure he’s healthy enough for the change.”

“If you want to plead your case to the board, I’ll give you that chance.”

Drew was taken aback. He hadn’t expected that. He knew, though, that the board wouldn’t be swayed when it came to issues of money and profit. He also knew that this was the best he was going to get out of Stan.

“Thanks, Stan. I mean that.”

“It’s the least I can do. Maybe you can sway them from selling the raptor to Candice Cole.”

“Candace Cole?” Drew asked. “The woman who made herself an uber-celebrity with those awful sex tapes? She’s buying Lizzie?”

Stan looked at Drew. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No. You shouldn’t have sold Lizzie to a bubble-headed celebrity. What the hell were you thinking?!”

“We need to get paid here, Drew! The board needs to get paid! If they’re not happy, you can’t work on coddling your baby dinosaurs. Oh, and you won’t get paid for it either. You remember we’re your employer, right?”

Drew sighed. Stan was furious, and he figured it was as good a time as any to open another wound. “Is that what Adam found out the day he left?”

“He quit. What does it matter why?”

“But did he say where he was going?”

“Home.”

Drew sighed. “He wasn’t there.”

“You went looking for him?”

Drew looked into Stan’s face, realizing he was entering more territory he should be avoiding. Even if Adam was no longer an AlphaZinc employee, he may still be chastised for hiding his relationship. “I needed some info on his notes,” he lied, “for Lizzie’s sake. For AlphaZinc’s sake if you want to avoid a lawsuit for selling off a sick dinosaur.”

“He just said he was going home,” Stan said.

Realization came to Drew. “Home? Like back to Ohio?”

Stan nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure he said something like that. It’s best to just let it go and move on. You were the brains behind the operation, right? You invented the technology that created a dinosaur, and you can do it again. That’s what I’m telling the board anyway.”

It was no use arguing. “Sure. Whatever you say, Stan.”

“Good.” Stan opened his laptop and booted it up.

Drew’s phone buzzed, and his heart leapt. He thought Adam had finally come around to returning a message. It was from Sandy, though, urging Drew not to ask about her.

“The meeting with the board is at two,” Stan said, clicking away on his computer. “See you then.”

“Yeah.” Drew turned off his phone and left Stan’s office. “See you then.”

* * *

Drew was worried. He acted like he forgot something from his car and went back to the parking lot. He went in his car and called Sandy. She picked up on the first ring.

“Where are you?” Sandy asked without saying hello.

“I’m in my car. What happened?”

“What I tell you stays between us,” Sandy replied. “OK?”

“OK. Just tell me.”

“I dug into what happened the other night. I found the security tapes had been erased. It was weird, so I asked if there had been a malfunction. I was told to stop asking. This morning, some AlphaZinc security thugs came to my house, telling me to stay home or they’d have to detain me.”

“Holy shit.”

“That’s not all. I had their lawyers calling me too, telling me to keep my mouth shut or I risk my retirement funds. I’ve been there for twenty-one years, Drew!”

“What about the guys in the turrets? Did they see anything?”

“I don’t know.” Sandy sounded exhausted. Drew didn’t blame her. She was having a rough morning.

“I’m sorry. I hate to be cruel, but did you find out anything else?”

There was a moment of silence from the other side of the phone. “Whatever happened, Adam is involved.”

Drew felt like his heart was going to spring from his chest.

“He went to the paddock after hours,” Sandy continued. “I don’t know what he found, but it couldn’t have been good.”

Drew thought about everything Sandy had said, what Stan had told him, and all of the events over the course of the last couple of days. It was some equation he just couldn’t grasp. Had Adam found out where Lizzie was going and try to stop it? Was he so scared of whatever AlphaZinc had said to him that he went all the way back to his parents’ house in Ohio? Why did they erase the security tapes? The only thing he knew for sure was that AlphaZinc was up to something sinister.

“Are you there, Drew?”

“Sorry. I’m here.” He needed more information. “You don’t know where Adam went after he visited the paddock?”

“That’s all I know, Drew, honest.”

Drew sighed. “Thanks. Stay safe and keep out of trouble.”

“Funny,” Sandy said. “I was gonna tell you the same thing.”

Sandy ended the call, and Drew sat in his car, looking at the AlphaZinc building with the dark clouds behind it. It looked ominous, and it felt that way too. What else were they hiding?

* * *

Drew returned to Lizzie’s paddock once he was back inside the AlphaZinc compound. “I’m going in,” he told Sandy’s replacement. He didn’t waste time with small talk. He had been kept from Lizzie so far today, and he wanted to see if there was anything odd that Adam could have found on the last day he’d been employed by AlphaZinc.

Once he was in his chain-suit, Drew entered Lizzie’s area of the paddock. The raptor sprinted from his bushes, stopping ten feet or so from Drew. The new security guard wasted no time aiming the stun-gun.

“You’re looking better,” Drew said. He had come in with a bucket of treats. He took the top off and held the deboned rabbit carcass for Lizzie to see.

Lizzie’s feet patted the ground, and his mouth opened. Drew smiled as he tossed the rabbit. It was caught in the air, and Lizzie chomped away at it.

“Good boy. Mind if I look around?”

Lizzie swallowed his snack and looked at Drew, his head tilted. He got one more carcass for his agreeable nature, and Drew left the bucket with the top off so he could eat to his heart’s content.

If Lizzie was his old self again, it meant he had emptied his bowels and expelled whatever was causing the blockage in the first place, assuming that’s what made him sick. The only way to be sure was to examine his feces.

Even with the mystery of Adam’s disappearance, Drew still had a duty to Lizzie and AlphaZinc. He pulled a long plastic glove over his hand and looked around the paddock. He found the pile of raptor droppings in the usual spot. He knelt next to it and dug through it. It was the usual raptor leavings, maybe a bit runny from Lizzie’s sickness. Drew was ready to give up the search when his hand hit something hard.

Drew picked it up with a groan. He was going to make sure someone had their ass handed to them for it. Of all the things they’re told, leaving any items in the paddock was close to the top of the list. That’s why Lizzie was constipated. Someone had dropped a pen.

Through the brown disgustingness on the pen, a hint of something shiny came through. Drew wiped it way with his gloved hand to see it was silver.

“Holy shit.”

Upon closer inspection, Drew found shreds of cloth too. “Adam, what happened to you?”

“Doctor Waters?!”

It was the security guard. When Drew turned to see what he needed, he saw Lizzie standing by him, just a few feet away, pouncing distance.

“He’s OK!” Drew called in return. He saw Lizzie’s face. He didn’t look like he was ready to attack. Why would he? He just ate a bucket of bloody rabbit carcasses. Drew had projected feelings onto the raptor’s face, and he could swear he saw something resembling remorse on it.

“Lizzie,” he said. “What did you do to Adam?”

Lizzie tilted his head, showing that he heard what Drew was saying, but he didn’t understand. He knew something though. Whatever happened to Adam in the paddock, Lizzie knew.

* * *

Drew sat in his office. The pen was on his desk, sitting in a petri dish with a plastic cover over it. He had washed it off in the lab’s sink with antibacterial soap, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch it. Not because it had passed through Lizzie’s intestines, but because it was his. It was Adam’s.

And Drew was now sure Adam was dead.

There was no other explanation. But why had Adam been foolish enough to enter Lizzie’s paddock without his chain-suit? He had expressed his feelings in the past that he didn’t need it. He had done so that morning. But why did he go in after Sandy had booked off? And why was AlphaZinc covering it all up?

“Candice Cole,” Drew muttered. They didn’t want Lizzie’s sale to sour if word got out that he had killed a human being. So, the tape was deleted, and they staged Adam’s disappearance.

Drew felt sick. He turned and vomited into his trashcan. He couldn’t believe it. Lizzie had killed and eaten Adam, and AlphaZinc was covering it up. There was no proof other than the pen though, and that wasn’t enough.

Drew left his office around lunch time. He wanted more proof, needed it. He didn’t want everyone to think Adam just left and went into some black hole somewhere. He wanted people to know the truth, and he wanted AlphaZinc to take the blame for hiding what had happened.

He peeked into Stan’s office. He was in there, typing away on his computer. He had a slick smile on his face. Drew wondered if he was planning on spending the money he was going to be making from Lizzie’s sale. There was a fire alarm box two doors down. Without thinking too much about it, Drew pulled it down, sounding the sirens.

Stan rushed from his office. “What the hell is this?!” he exclaimed. Others were coming from their offices, and Stan got pushed down the hall. With the chaos, Drew slipped into Stan’s office. He was pleased to see his gamble paid off. Stan had left his office without logging out of his computer.

Drew clicked through Stan’s emails. He saw the chain of conversation between him and the rest of the board. They were going to move forward with Lizzie’s sale, despite allowing Drew to speak on the raptor’s behalf. He then found a file that was sent to him from the head of security. With a shaking hand, he opened it.

A video played. It showed Lizzie’s paddock. The time was just after seven o’clock at night. Lizzie was restless. Running about and making noise. Drew had seen that before. He was asking for food.

“No! Don’t throw me in there with him!” It was Adam. He was off camera, pleading with someone. He came into the frame, stumbling into th enclosure. “Let me out!”

“It’s feeding time, lizard boy!” someone shouted. Drew tried to place the voice, but he couldn’t recognize it.

“My God,” Drew whispered. He didn’t want to see what happened next, but he couldn’t look away. He needed to see it. He needed to know.

“Hi, Lizzie,” Adam crooned, turning to Lizzie, who was approaching slowly. His head was low, and he was sniffing the air. He was hungry, and they had kept his dinner from him to make sure he was famished when they finally fed him. They wanted to ensure Lizzie would devour his meal, all of it.

“I don’t blame you, baby boy,” Adam said. It was his last words. Lizzie pounced on him, bringing him to the ground, gouging his prey with the claws on his feet. Drew covered his mouth as he watched. He retched and vomited again, this time in Stan’s trashcan. The file ended a moment later with Lizzie tearing the flesh from Adam’s corpse.

“Adam,” Drew said, tears spilling from his eyes. “How could they have done this to you?”

And he knew. He had found out what AlphaZinc had planned. Stan had a big mouth and had probably told him during their argument. Only Adam hadn’t played along like Drew had. He would have threatened to go public, made threats against the company and the board. In a fit of rage, they decided the best way to shut him up was to have their best asset take care of their dirty work.

Two fire engines pulled into the parking lot. Drew didn’t have much more time with Stan’s unlocked computer. He foraged through Stan’s drawers and found an old flash drive in the back of one. He popped it in the side of the computer and made a copy of the file. He dragged over all the recent emails from the board too, saving them all. When it was loaded, he took it and put it in his shirt pocket. He was going to make everything AlphaZinc had done public.

But there was still Lizzie, the perpetual victim in all this. They had made him kill one of his fathers. Drew had seen the remorse in his face, the tears in his reptilian eye.

And Drew wanted to make sure Lizzie had his own version of revenge.

* * *

It was ten minutes till two when Drew walked into the paddock again. Sandy’s replacement was reading a magazine at his desk. “You goin’ back in?” he asked.

“I just want to look is all,” Drew said. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he? We called him our ‘baby boy’, Adam and I. Did you know that?”

The security guard rolled his eyes and went back to his magazine. That suited Drew fine. He counted on it, in fact. Lizzie saw him through the bars, his head tilted in a silent question. Drew moved slow, picking up the stun-gun from its wall mount. “Were you involved?”

“What?” the guard asked. He looked up from the magazine to see the stun-gun aimed at him.

“Were you involved with what they did to Adam? Did you help them drag him in there? Did you help them kill him?”

“Look, pal,” the guard replied. “If I did anything, I was just doin’ my -”

The shock hit him dead-on in the chest. His body convulsed and fell to the floor. He shook twice before he stopped moving. Drew didn’t take the time to find out if the shock killed him.

Drew went into Lizzie’s side of the paddock next. He didn’t bother putting on a chain-suit. He didn’t want one. He left the stun-gun behind too. It was discharged and useless anyway. Lizzie approached with the same questioning look.

“Adam forgave you,” Drew said. “I forgive you too. You can’t deny your own nature.”

Lizzie took a cautious step forward. He wasn’t ready to pounce or snap. He was just curious. If he hadn’t been so well fed that day, Drew may have been on the menu.

“Come on, baby boy. We have a meeting, and we’re going to be late.”

People leapt into their offices and locked the doors at the sight of Drew walking through the halls of AlphaZinc with Lizzie in stride. They took the elevator to the top floor, where the board was having their final meeting on Lizzie’s sale. Drew walked past the horrified receptionist and into the board room. They all went silent when they saw a man and a raptor standing at the end of the table.

“I believe you’ve been expecting me,” Drew said, locking the door.

“Have you gone insane?!” Stan exclaimed.

“This company hired me to toy with nature,” Drew replied, keeping his calm. “I think it’s time nature toyed with you.”

The board, all thirteen men, stepped away. Lizzie watched, his eyes moving toward each of them in turn. His lips parted, and he growled. He could smell the fear of the men in the room.

“Lizzie,” Drew said. The raptor turned to look at him. “It’s feeding time.”

Lizzie leapt, jumping on the table, lunging to the throat of its nearest victim, taking him to the floor. He didn’t waste time with the flesh and meat. He moved onto his next prey, tearing at the robust man with his claws. He went on like that, from man to man, tearing and biting. The boardroom was a bloodbath. The air was filled with screams. AlphaZinc security was sure to be on its way, but it was too late. They weren’t faster than a raptor with revenge on his mind.

“Why?” Stan pleaded, as a blood-covered Lizzie made his way to him, his teeth bared in a macabre grin.

“Don’t blame me,” Drew said. “I’m not the one who gave him a taste for human flesh.”

Stan’s eyes opened wide. He was going to say something, but Lizzie was on him before he could. Teeth clamped around his neck and head, and he fell to the ground. He gurgled as Lizzie tore him apart.

Someone was pounding on the door. It was sure to be AlphaZinc security. Police cruisers pulled into the parking lot. Lizzie looked up, his face and snout covered in a crimson mask.

“Good boy,” Drew said, smiling. “You’re a good baby boy.”

Lizzie walked across the board room, sat on the floor, and put his head on Drew’s lap. Drew stroked his scaly head while he waited for the police to find them and accept their surrender.

About the Author

Daniel Aegan (he/him) lives outside New Haven, working full time and writing in the spaces in between his busy life. He began writing in his mid-teens, influenced by Stephen King.

Years past with no movement on the paper. Daniel didn't pick up the pen again until he was in his thirties. He's been writing ever since, honing his craft, and self-publishing his work. He enjoys helping other independent authors whenever and however he can.

When he's not writing or working, Daniel is embarrassing his family in public, being chased by his dogs, or relaxing by the firepit with a cold beer. He also hates writing about himself.

The Tale of the Costume Maker

His fingers are long and slender, pale as chalk dust, thin as icicles hanging from the bare branches of a dying bush. They move with certainty and speed as if they possess a life of their own, making stitch after stitch, sewing on endless numbers of sequins, threading through button holes, hemming, fastening, designing. When he sews, he is proud of his hands, of their strength, shape and their dexterity.

He sits in the attic. It has been turned into a sewing room and reeks of dampness from minute leaks in the shingles. It also smells of stored clothes and old books, yellowed newspapers from World War II, old issues of Variety and Vanity Fair, rotting dolls, and stuffed animals, dirty and dusty from years of abandonment among the clutter. A bulb on a single wire hangs from the ceiling above where he sits, dangling just above his head. He can feel the heat of it on his scalp. A small square window that overlooks the alley is the only source of light. When he enters the attic, he turns the light switch on at the bottom of the attic stairs.

The chair on which he sits is very old – an antique. It is made of dark wood, with carvings on the legs of vines and grapes, hares and foxes. The back of the chair is solid, not upholstered or padded, with the last remains of a painting: a Disneyland-like castle atop a hill and horses parading on an open field. The painting is slowly fading, disappearing, being rubbed away by the slight movement of his back as he sews.

Each item he sews hangs on a hook and on the attic beams there are many hooks, each one strained with the weight of his creations: satin dresses, silk blouses, cotton shirts, scarves, tunics, skirts, jackets, capes and hats. There are boas made of ostrich feathers, arm-length gloves encrusted with fallalery, and embroidered masks of stiff linens. On some hooks there are ties made of dyed cloth from India, cummerbunds of colors of red, black and green, and vests with fringes and beads.

Boxes of cloth are stacked on top of old trunks, and Tupperware bowls filled with different colored rhinestones are neatly arranged on wood shelves. Bolts of cloth preserved in plastic are lined up along the railing at the top of the stairs. Feathers, zippers, decorative pins, medallions and belt buckles are spread out on a table, each in piles of their own. Beside his chair is the sewing basket. It is a small wicker basket, originally white, but turned gray with dust and age.

Beside the chair is the sewing machine, covered and not used since the winter of 2004. On a small table next to the chair where he sits is the pin cushion, a large stuffed felt tomato with needles of many sizes sticking from it. His threads are arranged in rows in a steamer trunk behind the chair. There are thousands of spools of threads of many colors, hues and thicknesses.

He only sews by hand. He is a maker of costumes and does nothing else.

* * *

Luis has been in the downstairs parlor waiting for the costume maker. He looks at himself in the full length mirror and temporarily sees what he wants to see: a handsome young man of twenty-four with night-black hair, even teeth with the whiteness of moonlight, and skin as smooth as a calm pond's surface. But the image in the mirror fades before his eyes. There he is, nearing seventy, hair of china white, plastic-yellow teeth and skin wrinkled with lines from too many excesses: sun, alcohol, smoking, drugs, emotions.

Luis can only look at himself for a few seconds, then he turns away, disheartened and disgusted. He looks about the room and traces each object with his eyes, recalling that he had seen the faces of the porcelain figurines that fill the room. They are everywhere: on table tops, shelves and in glass cases and peeking from their perches on window sills between pulled back thick floral drapes. They are dead movie stars. Bela Lugosi, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power. Rudolph Valentino. Clara Bow. Lillian Gish. Mary Pickford. Theda Bara. Luis does not like them at first. The figurines have painted eyes, and each set of eyes stare at him, watching him as he waits. They give him the creeps, reminding him of a cemetery, adding to his discomfort.

When Mr. Shertzer comes into the room, Luis nearly jumps from the chair.

Mr. Shertzer is older than Luis – much older – but his age is hard to determine. His liquid eyes are penetrating and they look at Luis with an intensity that discomforts Luis even more. Mr. Shertzer is carrying a small tea set; a round porcelain tray decorated with small blue flowers and a matching teapot with two cups on saucers. He moves about preparing the tea on the small tray, pouring the tea into the cups, then sits opposite of Luis in one of the red velvet overstuffed armchairs. All this he does without taking his eyes from Luis, asking in rapid succession “sugar, milk, honey, a scone, butter?”

“When will he come down?” Luis sighs accepting a scone.

“My son is very busy,” Mr. Shertzer comments.

Luis nods in understanding. He knows of the costume maker's skill and demand for his costumes. He bites into the scone and wishes he had asked for butter, but is too intimidated to do so. The scone draws the moisture from his mouth and he half-chokes as he swallows a piece of it. He quickly sips some tea and can feel the redness of his cheeks.

Mr. Shertzer silently gums his scone, the pieces rolling about on his tongue like pebbles. Luis watches, a little fascinated, a little sickened. He turns his eyes again to the figurines. They are still watching him. Johnny Weissmuller. Ethel Barrymore. Norma Shearer. Rita Hayworth. Ruby Keeler. Luis scans the room, the figurines. He is looking for something, someone.

“So you're going to a fancy ball?” Mr. Shertzer asks.

“Yes,” Luis Answers. “A costume ball.”

Mr. Shertzer nods. He covers the same ground as before. “My son is very busy.”

“Yes, I understand,” Luis replies. “I'm hoping he can fit me in. I've come well in advance.”

“Yes, I saw your letter. You have come well in advance,” Mr. Shertzer agrees. “We'll see what my son can do for you.”

“Thank you,” Luis says as he again looks at the figurines as they look at him.

* * *

The window is but a small square, no bigger than a cereal box, offering a view onto the brick alleyway beside the house. On the other side of the alley is a tall fence and beyond that a yard that is not easy to see because of the trees along the fence. The house in that yard is hidden by tree trunks and branches, except in winter.

The costume maker stands at the window and watches as a cat moves across the alley. He watches the tiny white paws treading stealthily on the sun-heated red bricks. The cat seems to be in search of something, or stalking something – a bug, a string on a breeze, a sound from behind the fence. The cat goes around the fence and out of sight.

Holding the cloth in his hands, not looking at it, he continues to sew. Watching the alley, watching a piece of plastic garbage bag float down the bricks his hands move deftly, surely, along the seam he is mending. The cat appears again, attacks the plastic and holds it to the ground with two front paws, looks to see if there are any challengers to this kill. When the cat sees he is the lone victor it tires of the quarry and lets it go. Still watching the cat, the costume maker accidentally pricks his finger with the needle. He looks down at his right forefinger with surprise that there is a little drop of blood forming at its tip. The blood rises like a bubble and sits there forming a miniature red dome. The prick has him concerned. He has not done this for some time. He cannot remember the last time he pricked his finger. He looks out the window again and follows with half interest as both bag and cat disappear from viewing range.

He leaves the window and returns to his chair and unknowingly rubs against the back of the chair and wipes off the last of a horse's mane, a wisp of brownish paint, forever erasing another horse from the pasture scene. The costume maker sits in the chair and watches as blood drips slowly from his finger onto the floor littered with scraps of material.

Placing the piece of cloth he was sewing beneath the chair, he then leans back and looks up at the bulb dangling above him. It is only inches away from his face but not bright enough to hurt his eyes as he reads the fine print on its convex bottom: General Electric, 40W. He has not slept for several days, and now the weariness of wakefulness begins to overcome him. He closes his eyes and there, at the rim of his eyes, is the pain that has mostly been a simple ache. He reaches up with his right hand to rub his eyes, then remembers the pin prick, and lets his left hand do the rubbing.

Up through the floor, up from the ceiling beneath the floor, the three thuds of a broomstick vibrate through his feet, up his legs, his upper body and into his eyes. He opens his eyes and they return to the previous aching. He rises from the chair and goes to the stairs and descends.

* * *

“My son will be right down,” Mr. Shertzer says to Luis as he puts the broom back in the corner.

Luis looks up and sees the marks in the ceiling, red broom-handle paint particles, scratches in the ceiling paint, hairline cracks in the plaster. With unease Luis smiles at Mr. Shertzer, takes a sip of tea, and waits.

The door leading to the attic opens and Mr. Shertzer's son emerges.

In the normal light of day, in this room with light streaming through the window, the costume maker is exceedingly handsome. His pale face is as clear as an unpainted porcelain figurine. He resembles Montgomery Clift or Paul Newman or Louis Jordan or none of them, or all of them all at once. His eyes react slowly to the light, as if he is waking from a dream – a dream of lazy, ethereal lovemaking.

Luis rises, the teacup in hand, and smiles warmly.

“This is my son,” Mr. Shertzer announces.

* * *

Luis puts the teacup down on the tray and steps forward to shake the costume maker's hand and grasps the offered right hand, looking at the handsome face, then staring at the hand he is holding. A small spot of blood transfers from the costume maker's finger to Luis' palm. Luis pulls away and stares at the spot of blood. It is shaped like a heart, a crimson bordered heart with no center.

“I'm sorry,” the costume maker states.

“It's no problem,” Luis replies as he reluctantly wipes his hand on his expensive pants and removes the heart. In his hand is the remaining sensation of having shaken the costume maker's hand: a strong, cold, thin hand, but strongly pulsing with life.

“You wanted a costume?”

Luis looks into the eyes of the costume maker and sees the strain, the weariness of a sheltered animal.

“If this is not a good time I can come back,” Luis says hesitantly, immediately regretting the offer.

“This is the only time,” Mr. Shertzer states. “My son is very busy.”

The costume maker moves about the room, his pale hands gliding over the figurines, touching their faces, lifting them, admiring them, setting them down with infinite gentleness. He holds them up to the light for Luis to see: Bette Davis as Jezebel. Douglas Fairbanks as Zorro. Mae West as Diamond Lil. Harpo Marx.

Luis does not really see the figurines, he only sees the costume maker.

“Do you see one you like?” Mr. Shertzer asks.

Luis shakes his head as Mr. Shertzer's son lifts more figurines, one after another. Lovingly he holds them up: Greta Garbo as Camille, Charles Laughton as Quasimodo, Humphrey Bogart as Rick, Carmen Miranda . . .

“That's it,” Luis laughs. “I'd like a costume like that one.”

“That a difficult and costly one to make,” Mr. Shertzer says. “Wouldn't you like this one instead?” He holds up a Laurence Olivier as Hamlet.

“No, I like that one.” Luis points to the figurine being held by the costume maker. “It would be so much fun, don't you think?”

The costume maker smiles and nods his head. “I will hand make every piece of fruit to go on the head dress.”

“You must go upstairs for a fitting,” says Mr. Shertzer. “My son will take you to the attic where he works.”

* * *

In the heat of the afternoon, the attic's aromas are intensified and Luis feels himself becoming intoxicated by the myriad of scents. He stands in front of a mirror while the costume maker retrieves his tape measure, pad and pencil. Luis looks into the mirror and there again, the young Luis looks back at him, smiling broadly.

“Here it is,” the costume maker announces, returning to Luis, and unrolls the cloth measuring tape. He begins measuring Luis: shoulder to floor, wrist to wrist, waist to floor, outside legs, ankles to hips. “I'll need you to take off your shirt and pants in order to measure your chest and inseams correctly.”

Luis looks into the mirror and the young Luis returns a pleased glance. He removes his shoes, pants and shirt, and stands in front of the mirror admiring his youthful physique, the definition of his muscles, the smoothness of his skin. He raises his arms and allows the tape measure to be put around his narrow waist, then around his muscled chest. As if it was expected of him, he impulsively turns and puts his arms around the costume maker and pulls him to him and kisses the costume maker hard and passionately.

There is no yielding by the costume maker, but neither is there resistance. He stands and accepts Luis' kisses, Luis' touch, without responding or denying Luis' increasingly hungry searching with his mouth and hands. He looks over Luis' shoulder, out the small window, and watches as a squirrel runs across the bricks in the alley being chased by the cat.

In the attic, naked among articles of clothing that fell from the hooks, Luis' sweat mixes with the odors of decayed wood and yellow-paged magazines. He envelops and devours Mr. Shertzer's son, making love to him, tracing every accessible inch of him with his hands and lips, wondering that any body of any man, young or old, should be so perfect in its smoothness. When he ejaculates he collapses alongside the still costume maker and cries.

* * *

The costume maker stands in the window and watches as the cat steps carefully as it makes its way across the top of the fence. The cat does not waver, or hesitate, but looks forward, moving slowly. He watches the cat while he sews another sequin on a small strawberry made for Carmen's fruit-salad headdress.

About the attic, Carmen's costume pieces – dress, cape, bananas, pineapple, turban, sashes, shoes – hang from different hooks. He has worked steadily for many days and nights on the costume without resting, without sleep. As he looks out the window he sees Luis walking up the alley. He knows that Luis will quietly enter through the back door and come up to the attic without disturbing Mr. Shertzer. Luis will want to make love, as he always does, and will collapse on the floor afterward, and cry.

The cat jumps from the fence onto the bricks and runs up to Luis. Luis picks up the cat and holds it close against his chest, rubbing its ears, stroking its sleek body.

The costume maker turns away from the window, away from the simple act of gentleness between Luis and the cat. He walks across the attic, thinking about Luis' wrinkled face, and accidentally bumps against a steamer trunk. At his feet a chip of porcelain falls from his under his pants leg. He bends down and picks it up and holds it in his hand, examining it. There is no blood. He opens up a small wooden box and takes out a small bottle of glue, rolls up his pants leg, and glues the porcelain chip back onto his leg. He rolls down his pants leg as Luis walks up the attic stairs.

* * *

Luis walks the stairs slowly and tries to remember a time when climbing stairs didn't cause his chest to hurt, his legs to ache, his breathing to change to a pattern of half-breaths and quarter-breaths. He was conscious of the fact he was walking, stepping upward, as if his body could no longer perform the stair climbing without his mind reminding him what to do next. He enters the dim light of the attic and stops to rest, his eyes adjusting, searching for the costume maker. He half expects to hear voices of actors and actress, all passed on from this life, but not passed on at all. There are the voices of Olivia DeHaviland and William Holden. And also the voices of Jean Arthur and Lionel Barrymore. Luis sighs and with the sigh regains the steadiness of normal breathing. “Are you up here?” His own voice is tentative, whispery.

“I'm over here,” the costume maker answers. “I'm sewing your costume.”

Luis walks toward the voice, around the wicker baskets full of cloth pieces, by the stacks of books on dress making and costume design, past a photograph of Edith Head tacked onto a column holding up a portion of the roof. On an old vanity dresser are stacks of photographs of film stars that he walks past, although the top one of a very young Joan Crawford momentarily catches his eye. He goes to the costume maker who is sitting in the rocker and kneels in front of him and places his head on the costume maker's knees.

“Your costume is almost finished,” the costume maker states.

Luis turns his head and sees his own reflection in a large tin used for holding buttons. In the reflection, he is young, and his wavy hair is being stroked by the competent, caring hands of Mr. Shertzer's son.

“Go to the ball with me,” Luis says. “We will be the most handsome, the most fun of them all, you and I.” He looks up at the costume maker who is busily sewing. “I'm in love with you, so madly in love,” Luis says.

* * *

Mr. Shertzer is angry, so very angry that he walks back and forth across the room and can barely talk. He raises his very old hands and clasps them in front of him, above him, heavenward, and shakes his fists.

“My son is very happy making costumes,” he yells. “He doesn't need to go to balls and parties. He has no need for all that frivolity.”

“It will be good for him,” Luis says calmly. “Besides, shouldn't this be your son's decision?”

Mr. Shertzer groans, a low guttural animal groan, and turns away, his hands now waving about in near rage, his right hand accidentally sweeping a figurine from a table top. Judy Garland, Dorothy, falls to the floor and shatters into little pieces. Dorothy's hand painted head rolls beneath the sofa.

“I'm sorry,” Luis says, bending down to pick up the destroyed object. He finds it hard to move in the Carmen Miranda costume. Sequined bananas and apple sized strawberries are hanging in front of his eyes.

“Get up!” Mr. Shertzer shouts.

Luis stands as the attic door opens. The costume maker is dressed as Steve Reeves' Hercules, a simple piece of cloth around his waist and thrown back over one shoulder. He is wearing leather sandals with straps that criss-cross around his legs up to his knees. Around his head is a circle of laurel leaves made of gold leaf and wire.

“Perfect,” Luis says gleefully clapping. “You'll be the most beautiful man at the costume ball, and your costume is so simple.”

“We don't match,” the costume maker says. “There is no connection between Carmen Miranda and Hercules.”

“I don't care,” Luis says. “We don't have to match.”

Mr. Shertzer wrings his hands and sits on the sofa holding a piece of Judy Garland. “Why are you doing this?” He says to his son. “Why go out now? You have so much work to do. So much is being left undone.”

His son looks back up the attic steps as if hearing something, or remembering something in a fleeting moment of recall. “I need to be out in the world just this once.”

“My car is out front,” Luis says. “We shouldn't hesitate any longer or we'll be late.”

Luis turns and sees his aged face staring back at him from a mirror with a golden frame decorated with carved putti and swans. He turns away and notices the figurines, all of them, are watching him, or seem to be.

Mr. Shertzer says nothing as his son and Luis leave the house, but sits in the overstuffed chair rolling Judy's head around in the palm of his hand.

* * *

“I'm sorry, so very sorry,” Luis cries as he lays another porcelain fragment on the rug at Mr. Shertzer's feet. “He was so beautiful, so very beautiful.”

Mr. Shertzer bends over and picks up a piece, his son's right shoulder. “How could you let this happen?” He puts his son's shoulder to his lips and gently, lovingly kisses it.

“I didn't know he was so fragile,” Luis sobs. “I was up on the stage accepting the winning costume trophy. I looked down at the dance floor and your son was surrounded, being smothered by beautiful men, but none as beautiful as he was.”

“This is your fault,” Mr. Shertzer snaps angrily. “If you would have left him alone, he would still be upstairs sewing.”

Luis puts the costume maker's hands on the floor at Mr. Shertzer's feet. “I was able to save these.”

“Where is his head? His torso? His genitals?” Mr. Shertzer whispers in grief, staring at the lifeless hands.

“They broke him up and took him, the rest of him. I jumped from the stage, tearing my beautiful costume, and by the time I got to him, these parts – shoulder, hands – were all that was left.”

“Sweet Jesus!” Mr. Shertzer covers his eyes and weeps.

Luis sees a drop of blood on the carpet at Mr. Shertzer's feet, beside the right hand of the costume maker. It is a simple drop of blood, heart shaped with a crimson border around a bright red center.

_______________________

About the Author

Steve Carr (he/him), who lives in Richmond, Virginia, has had over 280 short stories published internationally in print and online magazines, literary journals and anthologies since June, 2016. Four collections of his short stories, Sand, Rain, Heat, and The Tales of Talker Knock, have been published. His plays have been produced in several states in the U.S. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice. His Twitter is @carrsteven960.

His website is https://www.stevecarr960.com/. He is on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steven.carr.35977

The Eternal Life of the Cottonmouth Kid

I.

It was 1880 or thereabouts when I happened upon the Fountain of Youth somewhere along the Oregon and California border. I can't remember which side I was on. I don't care too much about the cartographer's lines and neither did the posse with me. It’s called the Fountain of Youth but I liken it more to a fountain of muck. We had not come looking for it, but the California patrolman had come looking for us, and so we all ended up in that same little knoll.

I wasn't the first to fall and I shoulda brought ol' Tutti Frutti to a halt all the quicker. Sometimes I wonder iffin it was best of me to hit her as hard as I did. I was sending my whip back and forth more rapid than any metronome you've ever seen, running her raw across the cascades. The knoll was obscured by a right thick canopy; it looked as the ground, but when the fastest of our group disappeared into the would-be-ground, I shoulda had the good sense to stop my horse.

But I didn't: and into the treetops we went, the snow-patched ground suddenly out from beneath us. By sheer luck we landed in that ancient thing; the rest of my posse didn't have the good Lord on their sides that day. That is not to say they have not been the subject of my ungodly envy on more than many occasions, but their ends were not a pretty sight to any but the four officers followin' us keen. That is, of course, not to say that any of my posse deserved any mercy. They didn't, and they didn't receive it.

First it was ol' Ryan "Viper of Valencia" Vanderpool, then Darrell "Big Witless" Whitner, and Katherine "Cold Kitty" Wakefield, then me, then following me was Oral "Ol' Dogger" Poynter. Names were good, then. Back in those times we had people called with good names, names that means what they says. Now we got great names like that but they are no longer in service to character but to currency. They call themselves like "Wheeling Dealing Darrell of Ford's Honda" and so forth. I was very fond a' mine.

Two of my posse died direct upon diving their horses nose-and-spine first into the stone below. The other two fell on their horses' sides. I think Wakefield's leg got crushed, but I couldn't be sure. The most notable of these fellows, and the best with a horse, was furthest back.

She was a special leader, that Lorena Ross. I can't choose even one layman name for 'er cause she had so many: The Queen of California, Boss Ross, the Mexican Tiger, but perhaps the one I most enjoyed was La Llorona de Oro. Did she wail like a wolf for her cubs? Course. Did we join her? You bet your hat; we howled and hooted cross the desert till she decided to take us up to Portland to settle our debts. Were her wails for her children and their ilk, the little ones lost to us? Not a chance: we hollered for gold and wherever we went we got it.

She spoke of her debts as one does the sacrosanct prayers, mumbled with a pinch of God-induced collywobbles, but never to us. It was always into a tin cup or her last round of drinks. "Coldwell's gonna pay for everythin' one of these days. We're gonna show up in Portland and we're gonna take what was taken away. Then we'll take more." None of us could ever reckon what rightfully she was talkin' about; but it sounded liked Coldwell owed her some massive sum, and for massive sums we'd ride damn well anywhere.

Boss had a habit of running us from the back; she liked having all her eyes on us when we was riding. "Y'all are finnickier than cats," she'd say, "but y'all don't got the instinct to land on your feet." She proved correct. These lawmen been pursuing us for days and we already killed a few of 'em, but a hidden crevice where the plains begin to become mountains? Count us all dead. Another reason she'd take up the back—and I remember her stature, bold and noble, as she squared her shoulders and spake, "Besides, if I ain't close to our pursuers, how's I going to go about shootin' 'em for ya?"

She carried with her a pair of six shooters she used to good effect; I heard them goin' off as I collapsed into the hidden alcove, and I heard too the thunder of the horses as she changed direction and took the rest a' the lawmen with 'er. Then I heard nothing but water. I wanted more than anything to follow her, but my attention was right booked out with all that drownin' business.

When your mouth is open and it fills with water, you drink it as you attempt to breathe. It creates a natural animal-panic, and in that way, me an' Tutti-Frutti were doin' just the same, flounderin'.

I do not know the lawmen's names but one. Three of them was wise enough to turn their horses and get oriented toward my boss in flight. The other one, though, was too young to know any better.

The lawman thought to take a jump with his horse down below but the horse mislanded and its front leg was twisted and mangled where it fell over the rank fount, splashing him in with me along its way. I will admit, before I knew the man, that there was some anger within me: Everyone says you'll be dying alone, thought I, and yet even now I don't know peace from the law.

It was a foolish thought, to be frank, but you ain't worrying about how your thoughts sound when you think you're dying.

That fountain's got hundreds of little viney plants all growing haphazard and waywardly. A damn good chunk of them decided to insert themselves where they don't right belong, in my mouth and my nose. They felt near to my lungs.

It should come as fairly obvious that I ain't never drowned before then, so I wasn't quite sure when it was supposed to stop.I kept drowning and drowning and never dying when I thought the last bit of air was sapped from my lungs. Then I pushed up, and took air. It was the most violent baptism ever taken in church or out.

After a time I managed to grab hold a' Tutti's mane and she pulled me out. Stubborn, but loyal, that old horse. 'Cept she wasn't looking so old; she looked more energetic than the day I stole her some 11 years previous. I immediately fell by the wayside, waterlogged, but when I finally stood I felt downright spunky, like I could run a million miles and never stop. But I wasn't happy then, cause I found that the young lawman had sprung from the water and was shootin' at corpses.

With a rattle of my skull I'd pulled out my gun, but it was wet and wouldn't ignite. Tossing it aside, I grabbed the lawman and shoved him away. He had already left holes in my posse, but it looked the bullets didn't bother 'em and the fall had done the hangman's job.

When he stood and finally I got a good look at 'im, he was not but a youngster, barely a man. His hair was curled and rich with color like the soil and horse's manes, and his eyes seemed almost too fine for his position; their grey-and-green seemed better suited to an actor or a showman. As it trembled, his lip betrayed its raw-skinned warmth, pink and peach in equal parts.

"What the hell you doin' out here playing lawmen?" said I. "You ain't but a sprout."

He unloaded a bullet into me in a panic, the little trail of smoke leadin' into my chest. It hit and it hurt; that metal burned right through me. Yet I stood. I like to think I got a solid stature, and when that stature ain't affected by a bullet, I imagine it gave the young man good reason to turn to fear.

"Jesus and Mary!" cried he.

"Ain't neither of 'em here, it's clear to me. Why don't we—"

He discharged the gun again and through my gut it went. "Damn it! Stop!"

"What's wrong with you?!" His accent was like the ones from the bay. "Why aren't you dying? Why aren't I dying? I broke my whole back, I felt it!" He dropped his gun and sobbed into his hands. It was a bad habit 'a his. "I ain't never died before," wept he.

"Neither I, lawman. Regrow yourself a spine right quick or I'll give you one." I went to checkin' my posse, but they were already offerin' coins to the riverman. I hear the riverman don't cost much so I took what coins they had. I harvested from them for a while, while the lawmen wept aside.

"Well," finally muttered he, "which one were ya?”

"Outta what?"

"Outta the ones in your gang. I know all your names. One of your's ransom was to be my meal ticket."

I took a rare opportunity. "Which one do ya think I was, then?" I sat beside him at the base of the crevice. His uniform was just startin' to dry along the cut of his shoulders.

"I know the one's still riding's Ross," the lawman recites, "and there were five others, you included. Hmm. You were a smidge taller than your average, so you… you Darrel Whittaker?"

"A smidge? That all? I ain't Darrell. That's him." I pointed to a monstrous man half-crushed beneath his dead horse. I had taken his bed roll for its width.

The young lawmen nodded his response. "Yeah, alright. Then you—you ain't Vanderpool, are ya? You don't look like you can draw a gun quick."

"First ya tell me I look like someone called Big Witless, then you tell me I look like I can't draw a gun quick?"

"Should I be concerned with how you're feelin'? What risk runs I of offending you? If ever you did get around to shootin' me it wouldn't do nothing. Sir, offending you's the least of my worries." He gave me a smile, then I realized how I was feeling. His disregard charmed me.

"Pff. Fine. No, I ain't Ryan Vanderpool, though I admire the cut of his jaw and thanks you for relating us in terms of aesthetics. That's him o'er that way." I pointed out a lovely corpse strangled in the vines and a hole in his chest.

After a moment of keen eyein', the lawmen says, "He's got the wild hair and clean face all the best outlaws got. He's better lookin' than you."

"Nah, he ain't. Death ain't flattering on any outlaw no matter how rugged the face."

"Suppose that's true. Give me a better look at you." I turned to face him, and tracked his eyes with mine. My ego still swells when I think a’ his reaction.

Wide-mouthed, he said, "I know you right well! You're Simon Cottonwood! The one they call the Cottonmouth Kid!"

"That's I. Now I hope you'll forgive me, but I don't get to talk to lawmen too often. What am I known for nowadays?"

"Well, I figured it's right where you got the name." He shook his head and narrowed his eyes. I had watched him grow increasingly vibrant, more life-fond, cleaner and stronger. That fount was doing a number on us both. Spake him, "You poisoned the well in Virginia City ten some years ago, didn't ya?"

"Hmm. That was a good one," said I.

"Ignoble, that."

"Ignoble, but effective. Would've been more effective iffin I knew their water systems more thorough."

"Effective?" asked he. "You count it effective killin' children and their mothers? Their fathers and the soldiers? People who had nothin' to do with you?"

"Not my concern. Boss told me to do it so I did it, and the goods a’ that town were ours. Now you'll have to forgive me, but I don't think I know your name from sight."

"I ain't been a lawman for very long," spake he, "but I think I'll have a proper name for myself in the next two years or so. Bellamy Norlander, Officer of Mendecino County." He reached out his palm and shook mine. His warmth gave me a start.

"I always find that the amiability of a person comes disproportionate to the amount of time they've been enforcing the law," said I. "There's hope for you yet, I'd say. What bounty has Mendecino got for me, Mr. Norlander?"

"400. Most of your posse's was round 300 or abouts. Vanderpool, 600. Ross? 1200."

I stood and completed fillin' up Tutti with the goods of the fallen. "That price is low for Ross. But well," I looked to the top of the crevice, "now you know how your other officers feel about ya, suppose."

"Suppose so. They didn't like me much. You woulda been my first bounty, my first proper meal ticket."

"Shame you died, then."

He rolled his shoulders. "Shame."

I felt around and fingered for the holes he blew in my chest, but they'd closed up. The clothes, though, revealed the mark of the minutes-old injuries. He was off starin' at nothin', hoping to get some sorta meaning from the detail of soil. Indeed, he was polite to me, and indeed, he was quick comin' to terms with his newfound immortality. I'd call his look winsome.

Takin' a lean against Tutti, I tells him, "Listen, Bellamy. You mind if I call you by your Christian name?"

He still was lookin' away, the gears in his head turnin' hard. "Most friends call me Bells."

"How old're you?"

"23, sir."

"You're right polite for a bay kid."

He shrugged. "What choice has I of being anything but amiable? Seems we'll have quite the overabundance of time together. Depending…" Turnin' his eyes toward the fountain, he took a swallow. "You don't suppose there are others what drank from this?"

"I don't do much supposin' any days. It imperils the future."

He bent his brow. "You don't look too much a thinker."

"Weren't you just sayin' you had no choice but t' lean toward amiable?"

"Look, Mr. Cottonmouth, I haven't got the slightest idea how to make my way out of here. I ain't from here. This's the furthest north I ever been, so you must forgive the chill in my heart."

I should've given the possibility more thought, then, but the insidious warmth of infatuation in my gut dominated what little figurin' I allow myself. "I'll still be your meal ticket, if it ain't too offensive to ya."

"What you plannin'?"

"I'm meetin' up with Ross. She ain't a leader you just leave, and I hear this Coldwell had done our boss and our posse mighty wrong. I was just figurin' it'd perhaps be best for us to stick together, figure out limits 'n all that. I'll get ya to Portland. Turn me in, if ya like, but Ross'll break me out. Besides," I fastened the last of my material bounty to Tutti, "we've got enough to last us a season. Find us some fur trappers before winter and we can charge any price we like for this gear. And these unfortunate others, well, they ain't needing their heads anymore. The winter'll keep 'em recognizable till you make it to an office and you can get as much cash as y'need."

The thoughts churned behind his eyes as he looked over the dearly deceased. Then he blinked. "If I brought in all these outlaws… I bet I'd even get my name in the paper."

This whole arrangement would be easier than I thought. "I bet you would, boy."

II.

In all matters of business and pleasure and thought, Bells was a vigorous man. When he made love he made it fierce, when he made discussion he made it deep, when he made work he made it fruitful. As I waited outside, he took the heads of my posse to the Marshall of the Eugene Police Department and made a claim so bombastic—that he had killed and caught all of them with the help of his lawmen's posse, and they required additional fees—that he came out with enough funds to buy us more than a few fine horses.

Once he'd settled into the front spot on ol' Tuttie, we joked and laughed our way outta Eugene. I says to him, "Half that's mine, ain't it, Moneybags?"

"Half of everything I got is yours," spake he, over-affectionate as oft as he was standing.

I had seen a lot a' things, and seen a lot a' scary things, but a shock like that takes time to settle. Never had I shared anything with anyone. Never had anyone shared anything with me. Too quickly he'd taken to me. I had expected more reluctance, more impureness, more conniving conflict-mongering. It's what I'd been used to, anyway, and this man, in his pureness and joy, left me blindsided in more ways than one. I came to wonder, that fall and winter, if he hadn't been playing me from the moment he knew my name. But I have yet to see signs of his enthusiasm fading. In the cold mornings he kept me close, and he made me coffees from stolen beans. Never had I thought such joy and playfulness could be contained in one person. We took our travel toward Portland as a meandry joyride. He almost made me forget all about Ross and her efforts in pursuing Coldwell.

But for a while, it was me, Tutti, and Bells. He reckoned up names for the ol' mare like Rooty-Tooty Tutti Frutti and more as we went along: Tuttankhamun Fruttankhamun, Lady Tuttie of House Frutti, and Two Fruit Suit. He'd call her somethin' different every time he referred to her good name. To this day his wit keeps me right amused.

We were so close those days letting him sleep was a chore; we were driven to each other in such a way that being without one another lent itself to a frothing impatience. Yet we knew, we both knew, deep in our hearts and in the front of our heads that we'd have an awe-inspiring and terror-inducin' amount of time together across the cascading cosmos that only age alone can render. We were locked together forever, we felt, our minds questioning the reality we had entered. When there are no more people, what then? When there is no more earth, what then? When even galaxies fold and collapse what left will there be for us? Me, Bells, and Tutti Frutti? A horse and two men in nothingness for the rest of nothingness? Seems mighty lonely.

At the time I hid my thoughts. What'll happen when this all burns and there is nothing but cosmos and more stardust of the dark beyond? And when that, too, folds up, where shall I be then?

I asked Bells all these things one morning in a cabin roundabouts Eugene. He kept his attention on a frying pan spittin' with the grease from our breakfast. Quiet lawmen always unnerved me.

Finally, he spoke. "Reckons I that's best a thought for another time."

* * *

When I first arrived in Portland, there were no bridges along the Willamette and no firs in the valley. There were no trams and no downtown to speak of, and Washington Park was little more than a wide pack of trees. The city—barely born—was caught between several forces: its police (still a might tightly-curled what with the automated officers here in 2097, if you ask me), its populace—a hearty folk—and the underbelly types. I fit us in well among the underbelly types, makin' sure Bells didn't go stickin' out his pinky too often and Bells fit me in well among the populace types, making sure I didn't go stickin' out my gun too often.

Findin' Ross was my first priority, but the grip of affection does funny things even to the most logical-minded of outlaws. Between a fresh city and a fresh lover, I had my schedulebook right packed. If patience is a virtue then I am a saint. I got all the time in all the world and nothin' to do with it. We kept to our task diligent-like, but Ross had a lotta rumor and myth spread about her. It took us several months of talkin' and eatin' to find 'er trail.

We weren't runnin' low on cash cause Bells enforced a strict use a "his" "hard-earned" "honest" money. I mocked him for it on more than one occasion.

"And why can't I go gamblin'?" I'd ask in the evenings on our porch. Northwest Marshall street was a bastion of peace and it has remained that way for two hundred years.

The lawman had a habit of readin' these little artsy pamphlets. "It's against the law."

"It's just poker, Bells."

He set down his little pink papers with a slap. "It's my money, Simon."

"Yeah, that you got cause a me."

"Receipts are under my name fair and square. I can produce the paperwork for you."

"I can't read the paperwork so it don't count. Besides, the day I recognize paperwork's the day I walk into the Pacific. I'm stealin' your money and goin' gamblin' with it, Bells. I'm gonna break every law I can. Maybe someone'll call the police and they'll show up and you'll be there."

"People in Portland ain't gonna call the Mendocino police." He didn't move as I reached into his bag.

"You underestimate the Portlanders."

I eventually lured him into comin' drinking with me, but he was much too soft for the whole endeavor. Insteada gettin' rowdy, he started singin'. He was much too good at it, leading a song and movin' the entire place to chorallin' and dancin' and drinkin'. Made me feel like the worst drinker in the world, but also a happy man. Life's a balance between being a happy drinker and a happy man, after all.

I did not feel a particularly happy man the next morning, where I woke with too much poison in me still and too bright a’ sun outside the saloon. There was a little note in my waistcoat with familiar handwriting. I could tell it was Bells without even bein' able to read the words.

I paid the old bartender to read it to me. "I heard a rumor about your girl. Investigating outside of town along the track. Estimates I it's the 9:43 that your girl's on."

I took Tutti and rode to the train stop—it was nothin' more than a bundle of tripcocks and scaffolds at the time. Ridin' further on, it was not an hour before I encountered one of the long, steep plains of Shadowood. Trees there flanked the open yellow meadows and the railroad striped through it clean and straight. As the sun rose, I followed the glimmer of the polished steel all the way toward a flies-thick meadow overlooked by a little ridge, no taller than I.

On that ridge was a good-lookin' man with a better-lookin' breakfast and a fine camp. When I dismounted, leaving Tutti to go wherever the hell she'd like, he smiled up at me. "You're just in time. Come give me a mornin' kiss."

"What in the hell are you doin' out here?"

"I found Ross. I gotcha coffee." He offered me a tin cup filled with sludge. He treated the entire endeavor as though it were some casual outing on a Sunday afternoon.

The man never fails to surprise me. "Where's she?! How'd you find 'er?!"

"I heard a man talkin' about her after you'd passed out and paid him handsomely for his rumors. Anyway, she's out there." He motioned with his own cup toward the vast plain a' wildflowers interrupted by a cut of train track. A woman stood between the tracks. It overwhelmed my heart to see her again. Only then realized I; last I saw her I looked a good decade older than I do now. Would she even recognize me?

She wasn't lookin' toward me at all; she watched the sun and the tracks.

"What's all this'?" I asked Bells. "You campin' and eatin' here?"

"We had breakfast." He sipped from his coffee.

I looked over the scene. A bedroll, a doused fire with still a heavy fryin' pan above it, a few cups and aged cutlery. "Did you."

Bells had a bad habit a' given me some kitten-mouthed face that encouraged in me both affection and discontent. "You're not jealous, are you?"

"Course not." I took a seat beside him and took bread and beans from the pan. "What in the world's her plan?"

"The train's comin'." Indeed, in the distance a tar-spewin' engine approached.

"Doesn't answer anything I asked."

He bit into stale toast, then pointed with his elbow toward the mighty engine. "She plans to pull a gun on that train."

"It's goin' full-speed. How's she plannin' to get on it?" asks I.

He narrowed his brow. "That ain't what I mean."

The metal beast rushed along its trail, spewing charcoal smog in twining cumuli. We watched Ross meander over to the tracks and stand on them squarely, disturbing the cut of the horizon. Sideward came the train; approaching no quicker than my heartbeat.

Proclaims I, "Of all the lousy ideas, this is the one that'll kill 'er."

The train let blow its monstrous whistle, but still Ross did not move. She tugged from her pants a long, fat revolver. Along the earth's curve came the train; her shot fired and a long twine of smoke followed it. She brought up a languid arm and shot another line of smoke across the sky.

The smoke crisscrossed from her dark form toward heaven. Now I know rightly that trains ain't capable of thought, but this train was as frightened a jackrabbit as I ever seen. It came to a sluggish halt with a great metallic squealin' that split the meadow's soundscape to burstin' like a ripe pomegranate.

Our boss stood on them jangling tracks nice and relaxed. She didn't have to go anywhere—she let her prey approach. The train came to rest ten feet or abouts away from her, and as the engine lay hissin', her voice rang out o'er the plains. "Get off the train, Coldwell! Let me see your pretty face!"

A United States Federal Officer popped out his head. "Ain't no Coldwell here. You're delusional."

"That what you been paid to say, hmm?"

The officer cleared his throat and slipped back in. All was silent for a time. Then a posse of officers popped out their heads, and their guns. "Coldwell ain't comin' out! Be on your way, outlaw, or we'll bring you in!"

She kept both her guns pointed toward the sky for the same reason a cat arches its back. "You can tell Coldwell I'll be real nice."

"Move out a' the way or the train'll run you over! We won't hesitate!"

Ross stayed her ground. "Real nice." The train whistle blew unexpectedly and it gave Bells a start. Ross didn't move. "I ain't spooked a' loud noises, gentlemen. Bring me Coldwell."

The stand-off remained silent for nearly two minutes, everyone's guns pointed every which way.

"Should I help her?" asked I to Bells.

He watched the scenario as one does a theatre show. "Does it looks like she needs help?"

The officers returned to their steel turtle-shell. Nothing could be heard from within over the hiss a coal. The door from the first train car opened. One of the officers jumped out and held out his hand to a debutant a’ the laciest caliber, who balanced her high-heeled boots along the rusted iron ladder. She wore a purple n' gold dress that puffed along the sleeves and a corset laced so tight Ross coulda put her hands all the way round her waist. The lady looked like she coulda' stepped straight out of havin' tea with the Queen.

Bells elbowed my side. "When's Coldwell gonna come out?"

"That there is Coldwell. You've been with too many men for too long."

He stirred his coffee. "... Hm."

Ross called out, "I think we got some debts, sweetheart!"

"I own this train, chikorita! Best get out its way!" I liken Coldwell's voice to church bells both for their beauty and their strength.

"Half of all you've got belongs to me. We can make this easy and quick; give me half your goods legally with our lawyers' involvements or I'll take it from you illegal." She waved her guns.

Coldwell approached, flanked by several officers. "Come now, is that all you want?"

"Sweetheart, I welcome you into my bed any day."

"Stop sleeping outside like a damn animal and I may consider it."

Ross pointed the side a' her gun toward the officers. "You tell these fine working men that you stole half of my loot from the Virginia City job? Didya tell them that you lied to me in perfumey letters for years and years, makin' me think you'd share the wealth between us?"

Coldwell brushed the wayward thistles from the frill a her skirt. "These fine gentlemen don't care what I've done. They care that I pay them."

"You owe me half your little business empire and I'm here to take it. No matter how much time you spend in or outside a' Portland you're gonna find my wrath waiting for you."

"Admit it," Coldwell replied, "you were too head-over-heels for me to realize that I never promised you anything. There was plenty of warmth between us for a few years, then I moved on. You've lost too many years to me already, and outlaws like you don't have very long lives. I have a world of wealth laid before me. Now quit doggin' me and do somethin' better with your short life."

"Doggin'?!" Ross responded. "You dogged me for years! You wanted me back with your pequeñas tea parties estúpidas y tus vestidos incómodos, y tus familia mas torpe!"

Coldwell scoffed. "You are in no position to smear my family, pendeja!"

"When Ross speaks Spanish," tells I to Bells, "you know she's real worked up."

The two got into a shoutin' match that carried over the plains. All the yellin' made me want to holler along with them. "The two a' you ain't fit to share a horizon!" I called out. "One of ya's a thief and the other… " I didn't know what to say. "... A nobler thief!"

The two kept at their shouting. Bells shook his head. "You sound like a clod."

"I got caught up," mumbled I.

Eventually Coldwell threw her handkerchief on the ground and got back up in her train, Ross yellin' after her. Coldwell let Ross climb the ladder to the door then shoved her off with her heeled boot. She slipped the door shut and immediately the train hissed and the massive couplin' rods began to spin the wheels below. I heard Ross cursin' all the way to our little camp.

I watched the entire scenario dumbly. "This has got to be a ruse," said I to Bells.

He shrugged. "Women got them deep emotions. Real deep emotions. When they love each other it's even deeper than the sea."

"So she came all this way so she could fight her lover?"

"As I tells you, oceany emotions."

Rollin' my shoulders, said I, "She was a fool for fallin' in love with some rich prick. The rich'll always take from you even though they got enough."

His hand twitched a bit as he awkwardly cleared his throat. "The rich ain't all bad."

"Some of 'em are philanthropisten' up and down the coast but it's all just for looks. I'm sure you're familiar what with your parentage." I'd never heard direct about his family, but his face n' demeanor showed all the symptoms of a costly upbringin'.

"Suppose I am." He steered us toward a different topic. "Judgin' by Coldwell's dress, she seems to have done good with whatever she stole."

I understood the words but not the sentiment. "What?"

With his coffee still in his grip, he circled his hand toward the departing train. "That dress is silk and taffeta. It's custom-made. That don't come cheap out here."

"How do ya know? You had a lady before?"

"Nah. Those emotions get too oceany for me." He waved his riding gloves. "I just got hobbies more interestin' than yours."

I recall few moments of such offense. "What! I don't think so!"

As he watched Ross return to our perch, he did one of them upper-class sneers. "What're yours, then, bucko? Drinking and smoking and shooting? Mine's seamstery and poetry and law enforcement. You tell me which is more interesting."

He thought he was smarter than me. "Seamstery ain't a word. It's seamstressery cause it's a woman's job."

"That's where you're getting confused. Women's jobs can be men's hobbies and everyone's nonetheless impressed."

Lookin' tired an' displeased from the hike up, Ross set herself down beside us as she spake, "The term you gentlemen are looking for is tailoring."

"Right, tailoring," spake Bells, "haven't had much time for it these days. I was just telling your comrade here, Miss Ross, that Miss Coldwell's dress is right costly."

"That it is. Her pride's gonna cost her more though. I'll make certain of it. You still in, Simon?" She eyed me close, and I saw in 'er a growin' suspicion. Her show was subtle, but she knew there was somein' dubious about my look.

"Course I am. I'll follow you to the ends of the Earth."

Finally laying herself down and tossing her belt aside, she says to me, "You're a loyal outlaw. Ain't enough of you out here. Where's the others?"

"They died in the fall," said I, too fast-like.

"Certainly a tragedy," added Bells. We both failed to mention what we did with their bodies and their gear.

She licked her lips in thought. "... Is that Vanderpool's scarf?" She referred to the silk rag around my neck, a fine specimen of black and gold paisley. I saw her transfer her anger from Coldwell t' me, an' I cleared my throat.

"I couldn't tell ya where I got it," lied I. Bells kept his nose in his coffee.

She narrowed her dark eyes. My entire time in the gang was spent avoiding that glare. "And them's Darrell's boots?"

I cleared my throat again, a tad too loud-like. "Last we bought shoes we did it together. Perhaps a similar cut."

"You always were a vulture." She brought a pipe from her bag and started packin' both of 'em in turn. "They'll be plenty a' monetary pickins for you after we find where Coldwell is keepin' her loot. I'll be needin' you and Tutti—is that really ol' Tutti? She's lookin' spry. What've you been feeding her?"

Bells looked to me as he bit his lip. I told her only the truth. "... Carrots, apples… hay..."

"Anyway!" announces Bells, "I've got a question for you, Miss. As I understand it, and I ain't an outlaw so don't go judgin' me too harsh, but didn't a lot of things happen to you since you last seen Simon?"

She let smoke twine from her nose and lips. By the bend of her brow, I judged her right discontent with my actions and Bell's distraction. "Nothin' different than tryin' to find her. I'm more concerned with what happened to you. Dios no hace a los ángeles más hermoso que tú." Though it was a kind statement, she rendered it with a bit a harshness.

"Tampoco los hace con tan poco cerebro," Bells spake in the way they call gringo.

"I didn't know you were a man of two languages, Mr. Norlander." She smiled at him. Now they was smilin' at each other, but she was angry at me? I should've given them both a proper piece a my mind, but at least according to Bells, I didn't have much mind to spare.

"All my family's servants speak Spanish. I figured it was nice to talk with them," spake Bells.

The statement roused in Ross a new flush a' discontent. "That's what I forgot to punish you over, Simon! Don't think you're just gettin' away with cannablizin' our group and then this one. He's right amiable, but what're you doin' going and getting cozy with policemen? I didn't expect you to misinterpret my teachin' so thoroughly."

Bells put in, "For what it's worth, I haven't showed up to my job in months. I'd be surprised if I was still on the ledger. Besides, I have no reason to bring anyone in."

"You had breakfast with him. You know he's a charmer," muttered I. "Besides, we've got… something of a special circumstance. One that I think you'll wanna hear about. Something that'll make my scavagin' seem a little more noble."

She took off her gloves. "You're tellin' me you got a fair excuse for stealin' gear from your dead gangmates, leavin' em to rot, then going an' fuckin' around with the law and not in the way you're suppose to?"

"It's…" Bell started, not quite sure where he was goin', "... actually much bigger than alla that."

"It really is. We, uhm…" I cleared my throat. "We… found this fountain, y'see… well, fell into it is closer to the truth…"

III.

The fountain fascinated Ross. We took her to it once, twice, thrice, over the next year, then once a' summer for the next two decades. She watched herself reflected in the muck-thick water for hours at a time, thinkin'. Sometimes she braided n' rebraided her black hair over an' over as Bells and I explored the area. We found no pipes in the soft dirt, no means a' the fount refilling itself.

We always let Ross to her ponderin' no matter how long it took. On those long trips Bells would bring a little chalkboard in his pack and he'd make me write out them letters. He told me how to pronounce each a' them, makin' me move my mouth in all the peculiar ways this miscreant language demands. It seemed a mite unnecessary. What good was it to my brain to look along the Willamette and see the reeds? Or to know that Tutti needed beeswax for her saddle? What good did it do me to look across the land and see the word horizon in my mind? I asked him as such over the gurgle a' the rank fount.

Bells kept one a' his hands on my little lesson book. "Y'know that building on Stark out 'twixt Park and Broadway?"

"Aye. It's a bank."

He looked like his patience was runnin' low. "Nah, think about it. What does it say above the door?"

"... Bank."

"Don't go makin' up lies."

"I really reckon it's a bank," said I, "I was plannin' on robbin' it."

Bells sighed and closed his little ABCs book. "It's a library, Simon, you don't gotta rob it. You just go ask 'em for books and they give 'em to you."

This information set me to ponderin' almost as hard as Ross. "That don't sound like how it works in this here country."

"Well, you gotta give the books back. Otherwise you can take them whenever you want."

Bells reckoned I had learned to read quick. He said it'd take my brain a while to catch up with the words, but I know my mother tongue better than he thought. The Portland Public Library proved to be, in fact, not a bank. Bells lent me his card an' I took glances at the proper books while I read through the children's endeavors. I'll always thank the likes of Alice and the foolish Mr. Rabbit for their help. I read alla' Black Beauty to Tutti, who snorted along whenever I got to a part that talked about her kind's sufferin'.

I read all the ol' books between jobs with Ross. She never made a new posse; she stayed in Portland, robbin' banks and payin' off the police every which way. I figured she was tryin' to build an empire to rival Coldwell, but she lacked the demeanor for it. She met with Coldwell more oft than I woulda; it was clear to me the two a' them were troublesome toward one another, but I figured it was somethin' about them oceany emotions I didn't quite know. The two a' them almost seemed to be playin' a round of sport; one would fill up the banks or a rich merchant, and Ross would empty the bank or capture the merchant, and together for years they tugged Portland back an' forth.

She asked us to see the fountain at least once a month, an' we always went, though she never drank from it. She got more polite as she got up in years. Said she on more than one occasion, "I hope you don't mind me keepin' you fellas goin' back. Your predicament has left me plenty to think about." I expected I'd be watchin' her fade, but with every year she seemed to turn more toward her own preferences than those a' others. She had always been that way, but her resolution sharpened with every iron year that struck her.

"Don't you mind us," Bells would say. He was just as pristine as the first day I saw 'im. "It's not like we're gonna run outta time."

Ross ran out of time; she got sick. She got rock fever, which nowadays is called somein' different. I can't remember how it's called. Somethin' or other pasta-soundin' typa name all the diseases got nowadays. Ah, brucellosis. I don't know how doctors keep tracka all them names nowadays. I'd have a much easier time rememberin' the likes of lisinopril or metformin if doctors named themselves after their most bountiful perscriptin'. I ain't never seen a doctor 'sides bein' born but I'd respect the hell outta one if he was called Dr. Victor "Vicodin" Frankenstein. I have realized I know the names of no real doctors.

Brucellosis left Ross constantly sweatin', feverish and angry, which was like she normally was, but with more sweat. The old lady knew her time was comin'. As with everythin' she had, she knew how to render it inta a weapon. "As a leech draws out the sick," spake she, "so shall the sick draw out the leech."

She made a show a' her sickness to the old maid Coldwell, whose attitude turned from prissy to perturbed, and she offered the most expensive doctors you could conjure for the old outlaw. The year was 1918; she pulled even from the East Coast the finest doctors they had, but they all were insufficient in the face of Ross's stubbornness. The illness wasn't even the matter; Ross refused to ever let a man touch her, even to heal her.

"She's gonna die a' stubbornness," spake Bells one fine mornin' after providin' me with breakfast.

I rarely disagreed with the man. "If she's gotta die somehow, then that'll probaly be it."

"'Cept she don't gotta die. She doesn't have to. Why don't we just, on one of our fountain trips—"

Somethin' in the idea offended me deep. Ain't never thought I of makin' Ross do somein' she didn't want to do herself. "Are you sayin' we force Ross inta drinkin''? The work that water does lasts longer than God."

"Well, it'd be for her own good, y'see, her own health…"

"That's the problem with you rich types," spake I, "you always go 'round thinkin' you know best for everyone." Though my instict soured me to the idea, I couldn't deny that it compelled me.

"You ain't in a position to criticize the rich anymore, Simon." Bells waved with his silver plate butter knife all inlaid with patterns a' grapes and vines toward our porch, attached to a fine house made a' 3 floors and an attic, attached to the Alphabet District.

I took the butter knife from him and scraped it along my toast. "That's cause we've gone about unfairly accumulatin' wealth with our unnaturally long lives."

Bells considered me as 'e might some exotic statue. "What've you been readin'?"

I heard Tutti scrapin' at the dirt. Along Marshall came a sputterin' automobile operated by a silent chauffeur.

The old Miss Coldwell, herself faded, and a jaundice-skinned Ross sat in the back. Somehow Boss carried herself with more strength than the other lady, who looked downright depressed. "Simon, Bells, we got business," spake Ross. "Miss Coldwell here has agreed to accompany us to our favorite waterin' hole. Care to guide us along?"

"Aye," said I, pointin' to the machine, "but I don't trust that thing. We're takin' the horses."

* * *

With the ol' maids, the four of rode slow. Ross refused to believe she was too sick to ride, so she got a' couple a' Coldwell's fine horses and led Coldwell's horse. As usual, Bells and I used ol' Tutti's strength to carry both of us along.

We returned to the fount an' the ladies got to talkin' quick as Bells and I took care a' the horses. "I've known about this fountain for a long time now," Ross told Coldwell. "It's what's made these two gentleman maintain their look for as long as they have. I think this here's the Fountain of Youth. I was gonna drink from it myself, but I… well, I think you've noticed I got a certain fondness for ya."

Coldwell took a long look at us, then at the rancid water. "You're telling me you knew about this the entire time and never told me?" Impatience and bitterness brimmed in her speech.

Ross smiled a smile I knew not to trust. "We'll do it together. I wanted it to be special, t' be ours." She approached the fountain, pullin' along Coldwell by the hand.

"Well…" Coldwell took off her lace gloves. "Who am I to say no? This sorta thing's priceless. No harm in givin' it a try." She leaned down and dipped her hands in the water, watchin' as Ross did the same.

Together, they pulled up their palms. Ross lifted 'er head to watch Coldwell drink, then spake in near silence. "Your world will fade from you. Already we see it happening. Already our world is gone; it's only going to get worse from here, you dumb bitch." I noticed a trickle of water leavin' her hand and back into the fountain. "You thought I was an idiot this entire time. You always thought me crude and stupid. But you're the one who's fooled. Pendeja."

Coldwell stared at her reflection in the water. Her lipstick had smeared against her palm.

"You goddamn fool," Ross went on, stepping away from the fountain. "You got all caught up in us. In us! Old women. Old problems. Old fools. You've bound yourself to this heavy bitch of the earth that lays with untold horror in its belly; that's what you've done." She laughed again loud and hard. There was never a happier person beneath god's grey sky. Starin' at the basin, Coldwell trembled at the frizzle of her hair fading, her skin smoothin' and her eyes growin' bright.

"Think of these coming wars," continued Ross, "and the wars before 'em. The Great War ain't gonna end. Think of the death people have wrought by their own hands! And think that you'll never escape it. This here is Hell. You'll be here to suffer forever and ever until at last… until at last nothin'! The same! Every day until the end of time! And even then, if time comes to an end, where will you be?"

Coldwell's eyes went glassy. "You didn't drink." She was, by then, young; her back straightened.

"I didn't. But you did. This is the final thing I'll let you steal from me: a curse. I curse you now to an eternity of pain and suffering. And worst of all?" Ross pulled up one of her six shooters from her belt in a smooth motion and set it square beneath her jaw. "You're goin' to have to do it all without me. Happy trails, fuckers."

She squeezed the trigger.

* * *

Bells, Coldwell, an' I all set to burying Ross. Coldwell took her horse and left. She wept the long way home.

We walked and talked for a while down the crevice, to the light of the fadin' sun just over the trees and plains above. I took up a stalk of a heavy weed and munched it, chewin' and ponderin'. The Pacific couldn't'a been too far from us. Bells set 'imself beside me in the soft dirt.

He always had a way of knowin' when I was plottin'. Keepin' his eyes on mine, asks he, "What's got you knotted?"

"After all that's happened… I'm thinkin' of Virgina City."

He leaned his shoulder on mine. He still does it. "Most ignoble thing anyone ever did."

"And you still love me?" asked I.

"Against my higher judgement." He seemed to 'ave misunderstood my curiosity for playfulness.

I churned my hand in the air to demonstrate the revolvin' nature a' my thoughts. "Would you love me if I did something like it again?"

"I'll admit I don't like all the robbin' and scavengin' you do. A host a' things I don't like." The man shrugged.

"I'm thinkin' of doin' a follow up to Virginia City. Somein' bigger. Somein' bold. Somein' worth the decades a' wait. I think I can get it to alla' Oregon and California. Maybe the entire world if what I'm thinkin' works."

"You think poisonin' the entire world's gonna make me love you more?"

"Aye." I took him by the chin with a firm touch. But instead of pulling him toward me, I tilted his head toward the fountain. The water burbled up and splattered against the earth.

As he realized my plot, he smiled wide. "... Noble, that."

_______________________

About the Author

Sydney Meeker (he/him) is a Portland, Oregon-based writer of interactive fiction, short stories, and poetry. His work has appeared in Zoetic Press, Entropy Mag, and others. His interactive fiction novel, Academy of Secrets, is forthcoming from Choice of Games. When he's not writing, he can be found playing video games, getting lost in the woods, or sometimes doing both at the same time. You can find him on Twitter @SydMeeker.

Goddess Body Becomes Glass

I.

Mortality devours my body as I descend

where once sky offered endless possibilities
a vista unhinged
all that remains is to
fall

gravity’s grasp relentless
pure authority
such forces that used to part like
river water to my mere fingernail
now dictate

conductor’s baton ripped from hazel limbs
creation once a chime from my sapphire tongue
is but a memory ever lingering

I fall into creation’s embrace now
here, a child neglected
here, a planet forsaken
scabs of desert rushing up
expanding like fresh wounds
jagged rock teeth eager to consume

there’s enough divinity left in me to survive the impact

II.

I was once light and aether
body an auric wholeness
starshine teeth and nebula lips

biology is carnivorous
form consumed
crystalline skin once translucent
body once melodic in
ruby harmonics
emerald arpeggios
is now choked
surface opaque
myself shrouded
parasite processes tunnel underneath
staccato heartbeat usurps
cellular slush weeds forth
chandelier bones take shape

a corpse in animation

III.

mortality is a virus

an infinite mirror sea of curses
body plots against me
such destruction is mercurial
such destruction is binary
this maleness plagues form
stubbles of hair bloom malignant
relentless upon once smooth skin
face cracks until angular, harsh
chest flattens, voice deepens
body alters beyond my control
I do not accept this reversal
I do not want this unblooming

only my words remain
only my tears remain
I shed them all until the desert
shimmers a stained-glass reflection of the sky above

my fingers dip into constellations that were once mine

IV.

I walk through sunset and sunrise
before desert facades breaks

ahead the earth yawns open
a fissure scarred upon its surface
from the heavens a mere line
yet here it is a canyon mid gasp

below
a stripe of colours that go indefinitely deep
a cross section
the planet’s past selves exposed
history unsheathed

I imitate earth
fingernails dig into my own skin
hoping for history
searching for truefemmeself

and find nothing
but blood and bone

V.

And yet I know it is elsewhere

if not within bone
then within soul

more ethereal
and yet always more
tangible

deeper
eternal
a stellar core adrift

and so I will search

_______________________

About the Author

Sam Jowett (they/them) is a queer, non-binary writer living in Toronto. They are known for haunting taco bars, frequenting discount cosmetic stores and trying to glam up all the little things in life. You can find their poems and stories in Room Magazine, Hypertrophic Magazine, Moonchild Magazine, and the occasional retro pinball machine. The poem above is the opening piece from their forthcoming Chapbook "Goddess Unbloomed," which can best be described as Paradise Lost meets Ru Paul's Drag Race, and will be published by Bone & Ink Press. You can follow them on Twitter @samuel_jowett.

Sweaters

Don it before you step in the door.
Given with love, that's no strong comfort.
It was made for you, it's Maddening.
It's itchy, but you won't cause a scene.

You don it all the time now, wonder,
Think how it never used to bother.
You wonder why, but then it was new.
It hurts now in ways you never knew.

When you find yourself at home again.
The pain you'll accept, worth it, your pains
to not cause scenes. worth it you have found,
when you can put it down, nurses new wounds.

You found something to relieve that itch,
You can almost ask your secret wish.
It brings you comfort, makes you happy,
to have a reprieve from agony.

They wonder, question why on this day
you would reject that gift, how its pain
had driven you near mad in hiding.
But they missed it, all the glaring signs.

All they see is the new “it,” don't see
how long the scratch marks have come to be.
Sometimes literal, the scratches mark
Where words cut deep, this transforming art.

Such a beautiful tapestry
they say. Unaware it came not free.
They marvel, remark how the canvas
came to them, beautiful uncut glass.

_______________________

About the Author

Elizabeth Anders (she/her) is a transgender mtf author and artist who lives in Maryland, spending her time writing and drawing. Much of her poetry touches on themes of love and gender and occasionally, death.

Light Down Below

Whiskeyjack (they/them) is a South-East Asian, nonbinary illustrator living in Australia. They currently work a full-time job and draw comics in their free time. You can find more of their work at https://www.whiskeyjack.net