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The 1st Day One day in late May, there lay a plum tree in an orchard beside a small knick knack shop. Suddenly, a plum fell from that tree, and the events that followed would go down in history as the greatest mistake ever made. You see, there was a small possum below that tree, and, with the plum in his mouth, he scurried to the deck of the shop, ate the flesh, and left the pit above the stairs. Directly after this, a young man of an unknown name, walked out of the door with a handful of cheap wines and slipped on the pit, fell, and broke his leg. Now, beside the pit just happened to be a broken floorboard, and noticing that instead, the man blamed the floorboard and the store owners therewith. Having no money to pay for his hospital bills, and filled with anger that all his wine bottles had broken and that he would miss his son’s graduation that night, the man decided to sue the owners. When he got a lawyer, who incidentally happened to be a past carpenter and floor specialist, the lawyer grew very vexed that a store would not be up to code. Going along with coincidences, that afternoon, the lawyer noticed in his office that there were no fire exits. Filled with wrath that the city was lacking in safety regulations, he then decided to visit more stores and shops and they too, strengthened his spite, for half had broken floorboards. Knowing that something had to be done, the lawyer went to the mayor in city hall and demanded that the mayor send inspectors to every store in the small town and hand out fines. A lawful man, the mayor agreed. Now, as it was, the town’s people were exceedingly poor and but humble farmer folk. They had no money to pay fines, and barely made it by themselves on their meager salaries. One store owner in particular, threatened with a $5,000 fine which he could not pay lest he went bankrupt, decided to speak up in the streets and rile up the other store owners. Very quickly, they began to form a de facto coalition and attended regular meetings with one another, discussing their concerns with the city’s codes and conducts. After many talks and deliberations, the owners decided that they would all go on strike and threaten the city with closing all of their stores at once if the mayor didn’t stop sending inspectors. The 2nd Day Hearing the demands of the people, yet being an ardent follower of rules and a former judge, the mayor refused to give into the demands of the people and insisted that city officials continued to hand out fines. Immediately after this, the store owners, keeping their word, closed all of their stores within one hour. Naturally, the town’s people worried and quickly began to panic. Seeing that the owners were serious and concerned of the lay people, the mayor grew worried and pleaded with the owners that he would lower the fines. The owners, however, seeing their impact and power to influence politics and the town overall, decided that they would demand lower taxes while they striked. Knowing not what to do, but that they and all their families were starving for food, the city council grew furious and threatened to send in the national guard and bring in government assistance if the stores were not opened. One must understand that the town was situated in a small valley surrounded by large mountains and at least a hundred miles from the nearest town. There was no option to leave and get food somewhere else close. Meanwhile, the citizens began to rally and riot in the streets that night. Some stores were burned to the ground during this and this only fueled the anger of the store owners, enticing them to stand their ground and refuse service in spite. The meetings became more and more regular, to the point where the owners began to form their own society called the “Society of Store Men”. For the violence against them and their stores, the Society of Store Men declared the lay people terrorists. In retaliation, and believing themselves to be fighters of freedom and choice, Society members sporadically burned down barns to send a message. They wished to be feared and honored for giving the people food and resources. Angry as well, the common people formed their own group bent on fighting the Society and named themselves the “Commonwealth Crusaders”. During their meetings, they proclaimed members of the Society of Store Men terrorists, as they had done. At one point, attending a meeting at a local Buymart, the leader of the Society was assassinated through the window by a Crusader while giving a speech. Directly after this, a horde of Crusaders ambushed the store and made war with the Store Men. This would go down as the first battle in the town, forever called the “Battle of Buymart”. The 3rd Day The following day, desperate and hungry, the mayor sent in the National Guard to restore order. They enforced martial law and set a curfew for the citizens. Seeing the violence, the guards attempted to arrest as many people as possible, but this only enraged them further and fighting continued. Now, rather peculiarly, at the height of the starvation and discord, a small politician who owned a closed-down fast-food joint called the “French Fry Kingdom”, defected from the Society of Store Men and gave a speech in front of city hall. He called himself “Fred” and made a deal with the people: that if he gave them endless amounts of food for free, they should pronounce him mayor instead. Desperate, and thinking it was a good deal, the people agreed and dubbed him “French Fry Fred”. Eventually seeing his power and how dependent the people were on him, French Fry Fred began to slowly ask for more power, and the small politician and owner he used to be began to grow very large. Crazed with his might, he began to show signs of psychosis. He would dress up in a large french fry costume with ketchup on top and wear it every second of the day and night, even as he slept. He vowed to eat only french fries at every meal and created his own food lingo that he’d speak in his grand orations. The National Guardsmen couldn’t help but take notice of the godlike figure of Fred. They saw how easily he could mollify the people and cease the violence. For this reason, they eliminated the curfews and allowed congregations and large gatherings which had for a while been banned. That night, while the people (and even guardsmen and policemen) awed and wondered at the speaking french fry that was Fred, Fred stood upon a large podium and gave a fantastic and flamboyant speech. In his crazed state, he threw cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets into the cheering crowd. Suddenly, for no reason at all during this, save perhaps coincidence alone, as Fred lifted up his hands while saying, “I am the savior sent from the French Fry Kingdom in Heaven!”, a lightning bolt from a storm which had been raging all day, struck the microphone in front of him. The people grew silent, their jaws dropped, they began to cry, they bowed, and they wailed in praise of their newfound Christ. The 4th Day On the next day, the people quickly converted Fred’s restaurant into a church and sanctuary. It was the haven and holy spot of the food saviour who had come down to bring peace and appetites to the world. All were required to pray before entering the establishment and all food that came out of it was blessed beforehand. In the heart of the city, a large throne was built and erected on which Fred sat and said, “Salvation lies with me. All who follow the way of the french fry will earn everlasting food and happiness in the French Fry Kingdom above!”. The National Guard about this time, sat around and ate cheeseburgers from him. Already somewhat on his side, they began to wholeheartedly give themselves over to him after seeing his charisma and charm. Nearly all swore their allegiance to him and vowed to protect him with their weapons. Meanwhile, Fred chose ten of the most gluttonous people in town (one for each of his chicken nuggets in his to-go boxes) and appointed them to be his disciples. With their mouths agape, they were instructed to write the manifesto of French Fry Fred and the doctrine of Fredism. It was soon the norm that any who spoke out against Fredism or fast food in general, would be drowned in a vat of mustard or be tortured with seasonings sprinkled in their eyes. Later that evening, Fred stood from his throne and declared to the people that a new order should be set up–a crusade of sorts. He demanded that the “Republic of Fredists” be established throughout the Pacific Northwest in which they dwelt. To get the remaining guardsmen and policemen on his side, he offered them seven-figure salaries in the new Republic. Before the clock struck midnight, they were all converted and religionized. The 5th Day On the fifth day after the plum fell from the dastard tree, the Fredists and their guards gathered up a convoy with all the town’s vehicles and drove and marched towards Portland, Oregon. On the way, Fred tied himself to a pole atop one of the trucks and sang and danced–still in his costume, of course. After a few hours, singing hymns and raising his hands as though he was in an opera, a bee flew into Fred’s mouth. Quickly, Fred choked and suffocated to death. From that point onwards, one would assume, the era of the holy French Fry and Fredists all around would disappear and slowly evaporate. One would be sorely incorrect. When the convoy finally made it to Portland, they discovered Fred’s lifeless body. Needless to say, all broke down before him, wailing, sobbing, lamenting of their God. Shortly thereafter, the Fredists gathered round, buried and martyred him, and vowed to forever spread his message. This didn’t come without disagreement, however. Some thought Fred preferred cheeseburgers over fries and would have wanted only burgers in churches, while others believed that Fred was not some saviour, but God himself manifested in the flesh. These disputes resulted in the splitting up of the group into factions, and many versions of Fredism were formed. It was about this time, that an extremely wealthy magician in the city began to take notice of Fred after being visited at his home by a Fredist missionary. Seeing the amazement of his influence, he contemplated becoming a saviour himself. He fashioned for himself a large burger costume, walked out into the streets, and proclaimed himself the great and most merciful “Burger Boy”. Burger Boy then, as the Fredists had done, visited people’s homes and performed magic tricks (which people took as miracles). In no time at all, he began to garner a significant quantity of followers, and they began to be called the “Burger Boy Children”; their father, St. Burger Boy. It was obviously inevitable that two major religions could not coexist in the city, so war eventually broke out between the Burger Boy Children and Fredists. Great and violent fighting ensued in the heart of the city, until something even stranger occurred. As this all happened, a small hippy with a bullhorn held up a walnut and said, “I have seen the truth!” The hippy explained that, while eating some wild mushroom in the woods, he saw a walnut and it began to speak with him. The walnut “spoke” to the man and explained its name was “Fred”. The hippy, being a Fredists himself, knew that the only explanation was that the walnut itself was the incarnation of French Fry Fred. The violence instantly halted and all the people surrounded the nut, marveling and drooling over it. The hippy then handed out more wild mushrooms he found. When the people began hearing the voice too, they fell to their knees and prayed. “Hail the walnut! Praise Fred!” They cried. In no time, all sects of Fredism were reunited, and even Burger Boy and his Children started to take notice. Eventually, even they turned into Fredists. The 6th Day As the story of the walnut swept across the country (and later, the world), the new religion, that of post-Fredism, called Walnutism, was established. The sacred nut was painted gold, and a large cathedral was constructed around it. The religion did not come without skepticism, however. There were many who did not have faith in the nut and stuck with their own anti-nutist beliefs. The old disciples of Fred, along with the new priests of Walnutism, began to rile up the people of Portland and swiftly, they vowed to abolish all other religions in the West and form their Republic. Not too long afterwards, part of the National Guard reserves conquered the major cities and capitals of the Western states and the empire of Walnutism was erected. It was about then that the U.S. President started to take notice of the strange phenomenon and civil unrest. Curious of it, he made the decision to visit the Walnut in person. When he entered the cathedral and stared upon the nut, the clouds above incidentally departed from beneath the sun, and the golden nut glowed and radiated with the sun’s light. He, like the others, kneeled before it in penance and cried. He made an oath with himself that he would give his life over to Walnutism and make it the official religion of the nation. As he prayed, a small boy came up to him, also praying, and told the story of how the nut cured his common cold. This only strengthened the President’s newfound faith. From there, the President chose to live in Portland and appointed Walnut priests as his head advisors and cabinet. They too, instructed him to make Walnutism the official religion and have it be taught in every school. The President, then wearing a headdress of walnut leaves and twigs and necklace of french fries, stood up with his chest high, and declared the order that the consumption of all walnuts from thereon would be illegal, and the plants only the priests could grow. The lay people and nonbelievers of the nut grew angrier and angrier as every hour passed. Many began to eat only walnuts as their meals in spite, and dozens of them died of potassium poisoning as a result. A new war started to kick off between the two sides, and very, very suddenly, a walnut revolution commenced. The 7th Day The shrine of the Fredian nut started to become increasingly guarded by soldiers and policemen about this time, but the cathedral still remained vulnerable because of the fighting. In an act of desperation, the President, as Commander-and-Chief, ordered that every last member of the National Guard be sent to protect the shrine. Unable to argue, they agreed. Congress, by this time, was very angry at the President and reluctantly started impeachment proceedings against him. The previous night, the President had a dream about the nut in which it spoke and gave revelations unto him. He came to see that all nuts were a part of one great nut-monarchy, with Fred, the holy Walnut, as the king. Moved by this, he swore to protect and continue to build up the Walnut kingdom. In an act of sanity and retaliation, Congress and the lay people teamed up and established the “Brave Entente Against Nuts” organization, or “B.E.A.N.” for short. The Vice President was appointed its leader. That day, the V.P. held a rally and, with grand speeches and hand gestures, the BEAN people began to even worship him. Soon, all unions across the East coast and South joined the BEAN coalition and encouraged all employees to make BEAN propaganda with Lima beans as their symbol. Even news stations and media outlets began changing their names to things like, “The Daily Bean”, “The New York Beans”, “US Beans Today”. Flags of Lima beans were strung and hung up on every street corner outside of the Western Walnut kingdom. Of course, a civil war erupted eventually when a Walnutist accidentally ran over a BEANist spokesman. This civil war was at least a hundred times as terrible as the first American civil war, and, seeing a chance to strike and take over the West while they were preoccupied with fighting, Eastern countries launched nuclear weapons against the U.S. They would walk through the ashes and take over afterward. The President, however, having the Nuclear Football on his side, and not going down without a fight, put his codes in and sent the U.S.  arsenal of nuclear weapons across the world and to the rest of the U.S. Indeed, as the bombs roared and flashed above and across the planet, there lay the possum in his hole beneath the ground, quietly sleeping with a half-eaten plum beside him. About Joshua (J.R.) Packard J.R. Packard is the lead editor of Aether Avenue Press. He is also a newsletter writer/editor on the side and novelist. He enjoys strange, mind-stretching stories that re-define what it means to think, consider, and feel when one gets immersed into a story.

Sea of Tranquility (the Moon) July 20, 1969 “Oh, cool,” she remarked, flatly. “The Moon.” “We need to talk.” “It’s not you,” she said. “It’s me.” “About our situation.” “It’s a situation now? At least you’re acknowledging…baby steps…pun intended.” “Well…I meant the bigger situation.” “I’m listening.” Off on the horizon, a blue marble she recognized as the earth, was slowly rising. “We can’t do both.” “Both what?” They were seated inside the TTU which was littered with tchotchkes and keepsakes such as a muzzleloader from the American Revolution, a lesser-known Van Gogh lifted straight from his Arles studio, and an unhatched Velociraptor egg. He waved his hand and said, “This and that.” “That?” “Your situation.” “Oh, it’s my situation?” “You know what I meant.” “All too clearly.” Above them drifted the Command Module Columbia. Bryce pointed toward it. She ignored him. “Maybe we should make a list of pros and cons for keeping it…” “Why? It’s so clear what side of it your sympathies lie.” “In the spirit of fairness…” “Men from 500 years in the future are even worse than men from now. You’ve de-evolved. How is that even possible?” “1969?” “My time whenever that is… I don’t even know any more.” In the distance, Apollo Lunar Module Eagle slowly descended to the Moon’s surface. “The Eagle has landed,” Bryce said. “Do you have any more of that Crackerjack in your purse?” They’d raided an A&P from 1950’s era Harrisburg when they’d checked in on Lydia’s parents being born. “No,” she said, lying. “Shit.” “Sorry.” “Not you.” As Neil Armstrong tentatively made his way out of the Eagle lander and grasped the ladder, Lydia became aware of another presence on the Moon—a craft, looking suspiciously similar to the one they were in. “What’s that?” she asked, alarmed. “Trouble.” “Trouble? What does that mean, Bryce?” He ignored her. He was frantically typing in coordinates on the keypad. “Bryce? Bryce—” Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (The Present) “So,” he said. “I haven’t been completely honest with you…” “Do tell…” They were in the parking lot of Ye Olde Dauphin Tavern (est. 1820). The modest skyline of the capital city shimmered on the gentle crest of the Susquehanna River. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it. The TTU. It’s stolen. I stole it.” She watched his eyes scan over her features trying to gauge her reaction. “You stole it from those guys on the Moon?” “Biologics,” he said. “Yes—” “Wait. What? Bio—” “Logics. They’re technically not human. They’re manufactured pilots…” “Manufactured?” “Made from organic materials in a lab…they have all the same organs as us, they think like us, I suppose—” “That’s insane.” “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger, okay? I’m no scientist. I’m only repeating what they told us—” “Who?” “Who told you?” “My employer,” he said. “The lab…” She looked out at the city she’d known for most of her life, at the reality she’d known for most of her life—until she’d met Bryce, and she’d stepped into the TTU to humor him. “What do/did you do…besides stealing things?” “Maintenance.” “Maintenance?” “It was a good job.” He recounted how the private lab he worked for was a big player in the industrial military complex servicing his future iteration of the U.S.A., how while working the late shift, he entered the prototype TTU they were currently sitting in and, as a lark, decided to push a few buttons and…here we are. “Prototype? This thing is an experimental craft?” “The time travel part had been perfected for decades,” he said, matter-of-factly. “This was just an upgrade of sorts…supposed to be safe for humans.” “Safe for humans?” “You don’t have to repeat everything I say.” He laughed, nervously. “You’re going to love this part…” “Am I?” “Until this prototype, it wasn’t quite safe for humans to time travel…” She stared blankly at him. “Again, let me reiterate, I am no scientist…” “You’re a janitor.” “Maintenance. Anyway. From what we were told, the time-hopping scrambles your atoms since it essentially disassembles you atom by atom and then reassembles you in whatever locale you choose…” “And that’s the reason for the bio—” “Logics. Yes. They were expendable—disposable life, if you will—until they perfected the technology.” “So you have been scrambling my atoms. Great. You are such an asshole.” “Obviously, it works. We’re alive. I made it here to the 21st Century fully intact.” “What do you think all of this atom scrambling will do to a baby?” He pointed out the portal and said, “Look where we are. Back where it all began. Thirty minutes from now, I will appear over there in the TTU and go inside the bar and meet you. We haven’t met yet. You’re not pregnant yet.” “You think it works that way? You think we can just Ferris Bueller the odometer in reverse and undo all of the centuries, erase a pregnancy?” “I’m not getting the reference…” “Besides, isn’t there a version of me inside the bar now? There can’t be two of us. Doesn’t that create some kind of paradox?” “Mrs. Big Brain here…” “You don’t know?” He shrugged. “We need to leave here now, before you screw things up, even more…” He bit his lip. “Made sense in my head.” “You needed to bring me back like 30 seconds—a minute—after we left.” “Right…” Sigüenza, Guadalajara, Spain 41° 4′ 9″ N, 2° 38′ 21″ W (Some time in the 20th Century) “Where are we?” “Estación de tren Sigüenza,” he said, reading from the display. “Mexico?” “Spain.” She looked around. Above them, there was a cobalt sky dotted with cotton candy clouds. The land around them was bathed in glorious sunlight. From the position of the sun in the sky, she guessed it was around noon. “We’re at a train station.” “Looks like it.” “Why?” He shrugged. “I honestly just keyed in some random coordinates.” “Sure.” “Let’s get a drink,” he said. They found a bar nearby. Bryce ordered two bottles of Mahou after seeing a poster on the wall. It was in Spanish. He pulled out a handful of crumbled euros and dropped them on the bar. The bartender—with his thick mustache, long mutton chops, and butterfly collar—looked suspiciously at the currency. “Wrong money,” Lydia said. “You’re about 20 years too early.” She fished through her purse, through all of the antiquated currencies as well as monies not in use for hundreds of years, and found some pesetas. She handed them to the bartender who tried to make change, but she waved him off. She wasn’t planning on returning to Spain—or the 20th Century—again. They had reached a crossroads of sorts; it was the end of the line. They carried their cold beers outside and sat down at a table beneath an umbrella. “Is it legal here?” he asked. “I doubt it.” “Doesn’t mean we still couldn’t find someone to do it.” It hit harder here for some reason, in the daylight, in a time period so similar to her own. “After all we’ve been through, how can you care so little about me?” He stayed silent. She sipped her Mahou. People around them occupied the other tables. They seemed mostly content with their respective situations, with who they selected to share their lives, as they waited reasonably for their trains. She looked back at Bryce who’d already downed his beer and looked like he was now trying to stifle a burp. Through the eons and lightyears and births, deaths, and rebirths—this was the best she could do? “You’re seriously thinking of keeping it?” he asked, breaking the silence. Whether she did, or didn’t, have the child was irrelevant—at least for the moment; the larger question seemed to be about her and her value. “Why haven’t we ever visited your time?” He squinted into the sky. “It isn’t very nice…it’s not like this.” “How long, before you met me, have you been kicking around history?” He drummed his fingers nervously on the table. “You want to know if there have been other girls?” “Women.” “A few.” And then it was suddenly clear. It wasn’t the admission that there had been other female companions before her; she’d suspected that much. What had become clear was that he was running away—that he had run away—from something. “Shit.” “What?” he asked. She finished her beer. “Take me back.” “Where?” She didn’t answer. “Harrisburg?” She nodded. She thought she might cry. She heard the train whistle signal its approach. “What about—” “I’ll take care of it.” “You’ll—” “Take care of it. Don’t worry about it.” He nodded. “When you mean, you’ll take care of it, what exactly does that mean—” “Stop talking.” “I just want to be clear—” “Stop talking.” He nodded. She stared up at the hills in the distance, these hills in the Ebro Valley that didn’t look like anything to her. “You mean an abortion, right?” “Jesus Christ.” “I’m sorry, but I just need to know—” “What’s her name?” “Huh?” “Your wife,” she said. “The one back in your time.” “I don’t—you’re crazy—I mean, why would you even think—” “Take me back to Pennsylvania...any time will do…” It suddenly occurred to her that she’d been time-traveling her entire life—always looking ahead or living in the past. But the past was just shadow puppets on the walls of our collective minds, and the future was nothing at all but a vague projection of our wants and fears; trying to grasp either was merely a distraction from the present. “Take me home,” she said. There was no guarantee he would do as she asked. It was the risk you took with time travelers. Despite what he thought, she wasn’t trapped. She had options. There were trains going to Barcelona, to Madrid, and elsewhere. After all, she’d once stared into the eyes of Marie Antoinette as she was led stoically to the guillotine. She’d be alright. She saw how it all ends, many times; individual choices had little bearing on a universe indifferent to your existence. In fact, there were no choices to be made. It was all scripted. However it would play out, it was the correct way—the only way. She got up and started to walk away. Alarmed, he asked, “Where are you going?” She paused, her back turned to him. She held the beat a moment longer, found her place in the cosmic script and delivered her line flawlessly, and on cue. “What does it matter?” In a universe so absurd, that the light from a star keeps traveling through the dark long after the star itself has burned out, it was the only question worth asking. About William Bryan Smith: William Bryan Smith is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars and holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Literature. He is the author of five previous novels, the most recent, Free Range Men (Main Street Rag, 2014). His short fiction has appeared in such magazines and journals as Spectrum, The Bennington Review, Marrow, Close to the Bone, and Conte.

He had not spoken to her since the French Revolution. The spaces between the galaxies were long and dark. On this side of the universe, there were no galaxies and no stars and the craft was teetering on a ripple of spacetime that warped around them; on the other side of the universe there was nothing but black holes, gobbling up everything. When things grew tense between them as they now more frequently did, he liked to come here, to this moment, at the end of time—at the end of everything. It was how he liked to recalibrate, she reasoned. It was his way of centering himself. She felt it was morbid, despite the fact that everyone she knew and loved—every place that she had ever known including earth—had long since been destroyed. She felt it was morbid. She told him so. He told her how irrational she was, as he often did, and it pissed her off, as it often did. “What shall we drink?” he asked, changing the subject (as he also often did). “Take me home.” “The earth is a burnt cinder,” he said. “You know that. The Milky Way is gone, too.” “Take me back to my time.” “It’s my home, too, you know.” “This is your home. Your favorite place. You take a morbid pleasure in seeing it all be destroyed.” “There’s that word again. Morbid. 100 trillion years and you think your lexicon would have expanded to include a few new words, by now…” “Fuck you.” “You can take the girl out of Pennsylvania, but you can’t take Pennsylvania out of the girl…” “You’re from New Jersey…at least that’s what you claim…” “500 years ahead of you…but might as well be 14 billion years in evolution…” And so it went on…beginning with the Storming of the Bastille when an insurgent complimented her frock as the invaders killed the Governor (though she knew the real reason for Bryce’s silent treatment of her, was that her name was ultimately included on the official list of vainqueurs de la Bastille and his wasn’t), through the assassination of Franz Ferdinand—until he briefly grunted at her at Les Deux Magots when she accidentally knocked over a Pastis reaching for a Gauloises and spilled the drink into Sartre’s lap. “You don’t even know how to smoke!” he inexplicably blurted out now, at the end of the universe. “Christ, you can’t let anything go…” He shushed her. “This is my favorite part.” “You’re an insufferable assho—" The fabric of the universe ripped; there was a cataclysmic brilliant flash of light—one last, final release of energy—and the universe was gone. Ordovician Period ca. 444 Ma. “I should have never allowed you to buy me that drink,” she said. They were standing in a mostly barren, craggy, dusty landscape of red rock. “Where are we now?” she asked. “Mars?” He said nothing. He pointed to a vent in the red rock where steam and hot water was bubbling up from the ground. Beside it was a hot spring. She sighed, kicked some rocks around with her foot. She regretted going with him for so many reasons, not the least of them being the one-inch heels she wore from Nine West. In all the millennia of travel, she wasn’t able to find one women’s size 9 suitable for traversing spacetime. She asked, “What are we evening doing here?” “I showed you the end—” “Multiple times…” “Now I want to show you the beginning.” “Big Bang?” “Not that beginning,” he said, annoyed. “If you showed me the end of time, it stands to reason that you’d show me the beginning of it—” He turned sharply to her. “How can I show you the beginning of time using a time machine? We’d have to get there before time. It’s a time machine, Lydia. It moves between points in time…not before it.” “Do you always have to be such a condescending dickhead?” “You’re never happy with anything I show you! Christ. Can you even begin to grasp the key moments in history you’ve witnessed thanks to me?” “I’m the Sherman to your Mr. Peabody…” “You are the worst companion in the history of the universe…” “Oh, don’t start with your ‘But I’m a Timelord, Lydia’ bullshit. You’re from Secaucus.” He turned his back to her and began stalking the perimeter of the hot spring, his gaze cast down toward the water. It was in moments like this, she could push him into the spring and drown him, or knock him in the head with a stone—except for the fact he was the only one who knew how to operate the time machine gizmo. She tried to learn, tried to memorize the series of keystrokes that powered it on, that allowed him to key in coordinates and times. If she had, she’d have left his ass back in the Dark Ages. “Ha!” he exclaimed. “What?” He waved to her and pointed down at the water. “What is it?” “Hurry… you’re going to miss it!” “Damn you,” she said, scrambling for footing in her poorly-equipped yet fashionable shoes. When she finally reached him, she said, “What are you going on about—” He pointed down at the water. What sort of looked like a shrimp-like creature poked its head out tentatively from the water and regarded them suspiciously. It sampled the air and seemingly found it satisfactory because it inched its way from the spring onto the rocky edge of the water. “What is it?” “Us,” he said. “What will become us…will become the human species and pretty much every other terrestrial animal…” “That thing?” She scrunched her nose. “Try not to sound so impressed…” “No… I am… it’s just… it’s kind of ugly…” “You know what?” he said, visibly irritated. “Fuck it!” He raised his booted foot (a better footwear choice, for sure) and stomped on the creature, crushing it to death. “Bryce! You’re… you’re so awful…” She started to sob. “Holy shit,” he said. “I’m sure it wasn’t our common ancestor… I’m sure another, better one will emerge… Why the hell are you so emotional today?” “I’m…late…” she said, between sobs. “For what?” he asked, trying to scrape off prehistoric millipede from the sole of his Doc Marten. “I’m pregnant,” she said. The Vacuum of Space (Somewhere/Nowhere) “You’re so immature,” she said. “Well, I am 500 hundred years younger than you,” he joked. “What if what you did altered the course of—I don’t know—evolution?” “If switching you out that one time for Da Vinci’s model for the Mona Lisa didn’t change anything—it still looked like the Mona Lisa when we went to the Louvre, didn’t it?—then obviously nothing we can do can change history. We’re from the future. Our traveling into the past had to be predicted and anticipated by the universe. All our shenanigans are baked into the temporal cake, so to speak. Also, I thought you were on the pill?” He side-eyed her suspiciously. “Don’t look at me like that. Of course, I’m on the pill.” “Did you remember to take it?” “Yes, Mister Inquisitor, I did.” “Okay…not to sound like a dick…what happened?” She recalled the time they were intimate in Red Square, circa 2049, at what would become the start of World War III and a 20-year nuclear winter when Bryce had her up against the hotel window as he tried to time his climax to the first mushroom cloud on the horizon (He had a strange fetish that seemed tied to complete obliteration). She was pretty certain that was the night they’d conceived. She told him. “I suspect because we were in 2049, the efficacy of the birth control had effectively expired.” “Jesus Christ.” “Still want to marry me?” she asked, recalling another time—this time in the past—at Little Bighorn when he inexplicably dropped to one knee and proposed to her as legions of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes rushed past them on their way to massacre Custer and his 7th Cavalry Regiment. She long-suspected the gesture was prompted by his smoking too much peyote they’d won in an exchange for a (fake) Rolex he’d impulsively bought in 1993 New York. “Of course,” he said, but not sounding so sure of himself. “But hear me out. We can still get married—and not have the baby, if you’re even pregnant. They’re not mutually exclusive.” “If I’m even pregnant? You think this is some kind of ploy?” “That’s totally not how I meant it. I mean, it’s not like you took a pregnancy test. There are no Walgreen’s in the 19th century…” “I know my body…” “Sometimes late is just late—" Stratford-Upon-Avon, England Circa 1601 “How long have we been gone, anyway?” she asked. She initially had tried to keep track of sleeps since days/nights/sunsets were meaningless when time-hopping, and her iPhone battery died at about the time the Knights Templar took up residence in Solomon’s Temple. “Time’s an illusion,” he said, only half-listening. They were situated in the corner of a rather lively inn, circa 17th century England. She wished someone had invented deodorant sooner. “I need to know so I can figure out how late I am.” He nodded toward a paunchy middle-aged guy scribbling away with a quill and paper while the rest of the smelly cohort made merry around him. “Huh?” “It’s Shakespeare,” he whispered. “Him?” she asked, incredulous. “I’ve seen pictures. That’s not him.” “It’s him. The machine says it is.” “He’s chubby.” “Probably too much mead and mutton…or whatever they eat here.” “My friends are probably worried about me,” she said. “They didn’t like the looks of you. Gwen pegged you for a creeper…” “Think he’s writing one of his plays? Maybe a sonnet?” After he’d bought her a drink that first night—a gin and tonic—she excused herself to the bathroom to pee and to make sure there wasn’t any remnants of Thai fusion in her teeth. He’d followed her into the ladies room of the Harrisburg dive bar and told her he was from the future. “Shit,” she’d said. “Gwen’s right. You’re a creeper—” Then there was a flash of light, an unsettling moment of no time where she found herself in a featureless void (later she’d learn it was a common effect of time-hopping), and then she was seated beside him, inside the time machine, or the “Time-Traversing-Unit” (“TTU” for short), which was not dissimilar to the space capsule used by the old Apollo astronauts. “You kidnapped me,” she said. “Shakespeare is 10 feet away writing Hamlet, and you’re dwelling on how we met?” “You don’t know he’s writing that. It could be his grocery list.” Bryce hammered his metal tankard of ale against the wood of the table and called out, “Hey, Billy! Billy Shakespeare…” The man looked up from his work. “Settle a bet for us. What are you writing? Hamlet?” The man’s eyes registered shock. “Ah-ha!” Bryce said, drunkenly. He turned swiftly to Lydia. “See that? I told you!” “You’re causing a scene…” “Hey, Billy Shakespeare,” Bryce said, ignoring her. “How could you not know that Gwyneth Paltrow was not a man?” “I’m leaving,” Lydia said, standing to go. “Yeah? Where?” “What does it matter?” By his reasoning, if all of their actions were predetermined and “baked into the temporal cake” as he put it, it didn’t matter. He couldn’t leave her here even if he threatened to. She was wasn’t from this time. He grabbed her by the wrist and said, “You’re being irrational…” “That’s a good look. Maybe I’m being hysterical, too…” “Hormonal.” “Keep going…you’re on a roll…” About William Bryan Smith: William Bryan Smith is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars and holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Literature. He is the author of five previous novels, the most recent, Free Range Men (Main Street Rag, 2014). His short fiction has appeared in such magazines and journals as Spectrum, The Bennington Review, Marrow, Close to the Bone, and Conte.

Patrick held on to the struggling marine biologist, having managed to inject the sedative into his neck, and yearned for his days of white-collar crime. The fourth and fifth elbow strikes, while considerably weaker than the others, still hurt. He braced himself for the sixth, but the man dropped to his knees and Patrick let go. Incoherent babble escaped the biologist’s mouth; he collapsed face down in the inch-thick layer of fake snow. One of the unforeseen additions to Aquatec Industries marine transport brayed loudly in Patrick’s ear, pushing close to investigate. “This doesn’t concern you,” he told the penguin. Several loud thwaps and clangs reverberated around the 26-foot-long trailer, joining the hum of the vehicle’s refrigeration unit. A few penguins investigated Patrick’s open duffel bag, strewing medical supplies, and tossing cans of hallucinatory aerosols around the space. Another, its head wedged inside a scuba flipper, bobbed furiously, banging into the fiberglass walls. The rest waddled on top of the unconscious biologist, formed a huddle, and dismissed Patrick’s attempts to shoo them away. “Fine, have it your way,” he said. Patrick knelt, turning the biologist’s head to the side so he didn’t drown. He wasn’t about to risk any further complications to Ms. Wyld’s meticulously planned heist. She already had him by the short and curlies. He ran a finger over the puckered scars disfiguring his right palm. “Just a reminder, Patrick dear,” Ms. Wyld had whispered, holding his hand firmly onto her elegantly decorated dining table. “You are just a con man who took advantage of my son’s naiveté. The only reason I’m not turning you in is because I can use your special talents to recover my stolen goods. So, again – my name is Miranda -,” she grabbed the silver dessert fork off her napkin and drove it deeply into his flesh, “but ONLY to my friends.” Patrick shivered inside his fleecy staff jacket. Hopefully, the penguins wouldn’t interfere with his two other tasks. He could only imagine what she’d do to them – and him- if they did. Patrick looked at the foam-lined holding tank situated by the loading doors. Ms. Wyld’s prototype for a specialized aeration diffuser hung loosely over the side, dripping water on the floor. He walked over, slipping slightly as the truck maneuvered around another corner of the twisted coastal highway. Removing the screwdriver from his pocket, he disconnected the motor of the aeration unit and placed it on the ground. He lifted the disk-like coarse diffuser gently, put it beside the motor, and piled the snow around both for protection. Another task under his belt, he dropped the tool and pulled another hypodermic from his pocket. He took a deep breath, readying himself to tackle the most complex part of his assignment. A rare mermaid specimen floated on the water’s surface, partially blissed out on the benzodiazepine the biologist administered pre-voyage. Discovered two years ago amongst the rugged estuaries of the sub-Antarctic archipelago, the unusual species became highly coveted (and profitable) aquarium exhibits – but only in conjunction with a heavily enforced code of silence and the hallucinatory aerosols released around their enclosures. The truth was that mermaids resembled more humanoid mudskippers, not the gorgeous mermaids and mermen of multi-media fame. Patrick doubted people would pay such a fortune in admission prices if they knew the stunning exhibits were only a chemically induced, brilliantly marketed fantasy. The mermaid half dozed, one of the creature’s protruding eyeballs closed while the other stared at Patrick. He grabbed her arm and roughly injected the needle. Finger-like projections from her webbed hand seized his elbow, her muscles rigid under layers of placoid scales. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he held his breath and waited until her grip loosened. He watched as the staring eye clouded over and rolled back into her head. He let out a breath and thought about the merits of going straight when this was done. The waterproof X25 watch on Patrick’s wrist vibrated. He leaned against the tank and double-checked the mermaid. Everything now depended on Ms. Wyld’s son in the cab of the truck. “Ok, kid,” he typed into his watch. “Got your mom’s signal. Time to subdue the driver.” # Sure. Easy for Patrick to say – he hadn’t seen the man. The colossal driver overflowed the seat, confining Andrew to a small section against the passenger door. He casually drummed the steering wheel, keeping beat with some 1980’s hair band blasting through the radio. Aside from a brief introduction at the beginning of the trip, there was little conversation between the two. Andrew was sure that John gave up trying to engage him; the physical intimidation factor having dropped Andrew’s speech capacity to a series of monosyllables. Until that moment, Andrew felt prepared. He had done various jobs around Aquatec when his mother worked there so maintaining relationships with the transport drivers was easy. He knew all of them and trained accordingly. Months of karate, MMA, and dance battles honed his petite frame into a deadly machine. But he hadn’t recognized this one. Still, his mother was relying on him, and he didn’t want to disappoint her again. It was now or never. He re-swallowed the rising remnants of his chicken burrito breakfast, then inhaled sharply. He leapt. The seatbelt across Andrew’s chest yanked him back. “Ow…” “Did you say something, son?” Andrew turned his burning face to the passenger window and scanned the side mirror. Distant headlights occasionally illuminated portions of the darkened coastal highway behind them, but with the curves of the road and the canopy of thick old-growth cedars blocking the moonlight, it was difficult to tell how far away they were. Steeling himself one more time, he unbuckled the belt and sprang again. He managed to wrap a sinewy arm around the driver’s neck. The truck briefly wavered over the centerline before John removed a meaty hand from the steering wheel, covered Andrew’s entire face with his palm, and shoved him off, rendering him utterly useless. “So,” John pressed a burly arm against Andrew’s chest, “I feel like there is something we need to discuss. The truck or the contents?” Andrew shrank against the seat and looked at him blankly. “What. Are. You. Stealing? The truck or the contents?” “Oh…,” Andrew shifted uncomfortably against the weight, “contents.” “Hmm. And your job?” “I’m supposed to…subdue you.” Andrew flushed, watching John’s enormous belly undulate with uncontrolled laughter. John placed his hand back on the wheel and wheezed. “Did you…snort…bring a weapon, or was that…mmph…it!?” “There’s no need to be offensive. I know Aquatec’s drivers. YOU weren’t supposed to be here.” “Aw, I fucked up your plans, huh?” John wiped a tear from his eye. “I drive special transports – rare marine animals are a hot commodity on the black market and there are…,” he grinned at Andrew, “lots of small-time criminals looking to hijack the odd truck or two. Easily intimidated though and, frankly, just not that creative about it. Stupid even.” “My MOM is not stupid!” Andrew said, then quickly clamped his mouth. “Your – mom?” John glanced at Andrew, repeating his name under his breath while tapping his fingers on the wheel. “Oh shit, you’re Miranda’s kid! She’s in on this?” “Hells yeah! She’s a sweetheart. Super cute. We’ve gone on a coffee date a time or two. Huh…Aquatec fired her, right?” John turned off the radio. “Care to explain?” Andrew froze. In the side mirror, the distant headlights seemed a little brighter, or at the very least consistent, but he couldn’t focus; his brain seemed unable to process anything other than sweetheart, cute, and date. “Kid?” “Um, right.” Andrew pressed the bridge of his nose, trying to erase all the grotesque imagery forming of his mother and John together. He blew out a breath. “The reasons they gave for her firing weren’t real. They just wanted to trash her reputation so they could steal her side project. You know about the mermaids, right?” John shifted into a lower gear, nodding. “Ok, so Mom had the idea to invent a new filter and diffuser so that the hallucinatory chemicals used around the enclosure could go through the water without hurting the mermaids. She recognized that it wouldn’t be enough for people to just look at the creatures anymore. Her system would allow customers to have interactive experiences without…well, knowing exactly what they were swimming with…” “Basically, every teenage boy’s wet dream fantasy.” “Gross!” Andrew blushed, looking at his feet. “Please! So, Aquatec found out, decided to steal her prototype, run their own little experiments so they could profit off her invention in their own timeline.” John downshifted again, slowing the truck. “Alright, listen up. What happened to your mom was bullshit, so if she wants her invention back she should have it. However, you’re still going to have to…mmph…subdue me. I get paid extremely well for specialized transports and keeping the whole ‘mermaid’ thing a secret. I have no intention of losing that. A chokehold should do. I’ll slow down and keep the wheel steady until you can grab it.” “Um, ok. Thanks.” Andrew leaned forward. “So you and my mom…” “Just go!” Andrew nodded. He pounced, lean arms clasping the man’s neck in a Japanese stranglehold. John sighed, slipping one hand over Andrew’s to change the angle of his fingers. “The baroreceptors are here; you have to push firmly.” “Oh.” Andrew applied more pressure. “That’s bet…” John slackened, his weight slowly slumping to the left. Andrew threw his arms up in victory before realizing the man was still gripping the wheel. # The truck angled sharply, knocking Patrick off his feet. With every abrupt swerve and grinding wobble, his body slid along the floor until it came to a stop against the insulated wall along with a small avalanche of snow, debris, and chattering penguins. Dizzy, he squeezed his eyes shut until the tilt-a-whirl inside his head ceased. He shivered against the cold and tried to sit up, but a weight on his abdomen held him in place. Muffled braying and a thick ridge of hard plastic digging around his belt line caught his attention. “Great,” Patrick muttered, reaching down to grab the edge of the scuba flipper. The penguin on his stomach protested, swinging its stuck head frantically. He pulled the flipper from his belt and held it until the bird unwedged itself. A warm current of urine and excrement rewarded him. The newly freed penguin ruffled its feathers and waddled off. “You’re welcome,” Patrick sat up, a wet streak of pink guano covered his jeans. “Jackass!” He rose slowly, wrinkling his nose as the scent of rotting shrimp and ammonia-soaked tobacco radiated from his pants. I’m going to be a model citizen after this, he thought. His watch vibrated – ALMOST HERE. EVERYTHING READY? No, your kid’s an idiot. YES, he typed back. The inside of the trailer was in disarray. The penguins wandered around, tossing the scattered debris, and stopping only when something piqued their interest. Patrick looked to the holding tank, relieved to see that it hadn’t moved. At least…The fake snow surrounding the tank was mostly gone, lost to the assorted piles caused by Andrew’s erratic driving. He couldn’t see the prototype and the mermaid was no longer floating on the water’s surface. An outside portion of the tank had a sheen of ice, as did the floor underneath it. A wave of water must have carried her out of the tank. Patrick struggled to breathe through his mounting panic and scanned the space. The marine biologist was now on his back, pushed awkwardly against the refrigeration unit. Beside him lay the mermaid. Both still appeared unconscious, but Patrick wasn’t taking any chances. He felt his pocket for an extra hypodermic and found nothing. They must have fallen out during the slide. Biting the inside of his cheek, he staggered to where they both lay. The biologist snored and Patrick knelt to check the man’s pulse. Slow and steady. He watched the mermaid. The creature’s gill slits opened and closed rapidly, her breathing labored. She moaned. He slid his arms underneath her back. “Come on, you slimy fre…” The mermaid shifted, staring at him through bulging bioluminescent eyes, and clutched his throat. Patrick tried to break her grip but to no avail. He clawed at her wrist in desperation, tearing off patches of her scaly armor, and kneed her hip. Her grasp loosened. He tore her hand from his throat and stood up, readying himself to deliver another violent blow. “DON’T YOU DARE!!” Patrick froze, blinded by the brilliant LED lights flooding the interior. The loading doors were wide open, bringing in the salty ocean air and, as his eyes adjusted, he could make out a nondescript grey van. “She isn’t to be harmed,” Ms. Wyld said and stepped on the bumper of the transport truck. “Harmed!? But – she…,” Patrick’s protest died in his throat. Ms. Wyld’s cold gaze surveyed the truck, then fixed on him. He watched as two penguins sauntered over to the doors. “Ewww, is that what they look like?” Andrew said, appearing at his mother’s side. “I mean, I know they aren’t like my posters, but I hoped you might have exaggerated.” Ms. Wyld turned, locking eyes on her son. Patrick gulped. Despite her five foot frame, the woman seemed to tower over Andrew. “Aw, so cute!” Andrew said, casually petting one of the birds. “How did I do, Mom?” “It’s really not the time for validation,” she said, scowling as a flipper-faced penguin leaned against her. “Go open the vehicle so we can get out of here.” “Sure, but should I help Patrick first or…” “ANDREW!” “Right. Sorry. On it.” Andrew jumped down, moving toward the van. Ms. Wyld shook her head and stepped further into the cargo area. “I believe you said everything was ready, Patrick. In what parallel universe, is this,” she held her arms out and spun around, “ready?” Patrick bit back a litany of possible responses. “I had it ready…the driving wasn’t in my control,” he muttered. Ms. Wyld scrutinized him, a slow half-smile forming on her thin lips. “Why don’t you take the mermaid to the van and place her in the small pool. But, before you go, tell me – where’s my prototype?” “I…,” he shrugged, then gestured towards the assorted snow piles. “I don’t know.” Patrick moved cautiously, watching Ms. Wyld while he busied himself looking for a hypodermic. She navigated through the strewn contents, searching the snow. He let out a breath when she pulled the motor unit from a pile but quickly held it again when his hand hit the aeration diffuser. Ms. Wyld glowered in his direction, freezing him mid-bend over a debris pile. “It’s scuffed,” she held out the motor. Patrick stood up; the aeration diffuser lay in his hand, impaled through the filtration system by the screwdriver he carelessly dropped. She walked to him and grabbed the cracked unit, face red. Her breath came out in staccato bursts. A high-pitched shriek filled the space. But not hers. Patrick saw the mermaid move toward them. He startled, frantically scanning for a needle. “Help me find…” The hardened expression on Ms. Wyld’s face stopped his speech. She slipped around him, broken prototype firmly in hand and exited the truck. The mermaid slithered toward him, screeching. The penguins waddled to her as if in response, chattering away, and dropping their assorted treasures within her reach. Including a hypodermic. He steadied himself and lunged. Patrick dropped to his knees and managed to get a light hold on the syringe before the creature crashed into him. They grappled on the floor; her breathing labored as she tried to wriggle out of his grip. He felt her weakening and pinned her to the floor. He poised the needle and aimed for her gills. WHACK! Patrick swayed; starbursts of white danced in front of his eyes. The scuba flipper-obsessed penguin bobbed its head around his face. “Go…away.” The penguin continued to nod madly, landing another blow. Woozily, he pushed the bird away and dropped the needle. The mermaid writhed underneath him, then with a burst of strength, violently knocked him off. His head bounced against the truck floor, and everything went dark. # The mermaid dove one more time into the pool, then scurried past the rocks and burrowed into the soft sedimentary soil encompassing the custom-built enclose. Ms. Wyld smiled, watching through the plexiglass barricade separating the enclose from the patio. “Seems you made her happy, Miranda,” John said, flipping steaks on the barbecue. “Much better environment than Aquatec’s laboratory. Natural.” Miranda walked to the cooking area and slipped an arm around him. “I couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks for getting the penguins home.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “And keeping quiet.” “You’re welcome, gorgeous. Glad to help you get back what was yours to begin with.” Gorgeous? Andrew shuddered. He pulled his chair closer to the patio table and gestured toward the enclosure. “So,” he said, “how long are you punishing Patrick for, Mom?” He watched as a lovesick Patrick lounged on one of the rocks, staring longingly down at the nesting mermaid. “Do you care?” Andrew considered. “Besides,” she said before he could answer, “is it really a punishment? He seems quite content to spend time with his dream girl and I’d like to keep him around until I get my aeration diffuser rebuilt and ready for experimentation again. I think he owes me that.” “Then you’ll let him off the hook?” She pulled out the chair next to her son and ignored the question. “Let’s eat.” About Jenna Calloway: Jenna is a massage therapist, writer, and book coach living in Northern British Columbia with her two beautiful humans and assortment of quirky animals. Her flash fiction has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine and at  www.freedomfiction.com

Lucrecia Beckert and Yvette Vega are about to die together. It is December. The massive lighthouse was long ago converted into a restaurant, spiraling and precarious with random tables jutting out from the staircase into the middle of the structure, where the tables are balanced upon wooden flats with diagonal poles bracing against the thick and ancient lighthouse walls, an autumnal shade of green for some reason, probably the choice of the former owner prior to the renovation and kept for its mysterious charm, where the waiters delicately climb along the staircase, clambering with hot plates and brimming glasses of the season’s finest beverages to a laughing and always effervescent crowd, and secondly converted to a laundromat in the sub-base levels, swirling clothing in fresh water as the waves swirl and crash along the rocks upon the lighthouse’s exterior, and finally a living quarter not unlike a countryside cottage, but imaginably architecturally quite distinct, at the top of the lighthouse, nestled just below the widow’s walk, lantern room, cupola, and lightning rod. December came quickly. Before then, slowly. Windy winters along this particular coast have quietly hollowed the shores the lighthouse calls home, each day curving the banks just slightly until one day, a million years give or take from now, there will be a barren nothing where once water crawled lovingly to land before falling back from the moon’s beckoning. Erosion, perhaps, or entropy. Something that starts with an e and ends with the receding shoreline. The restaurant is bustling and the noise only so muffled by the deep-set stones and bricks creating the backbone of the beacon. Lucrecia and Yvette have visited the crowds, waving and smiling as glasses clinked in their honor. The crowds, perpetual horrible crowds. In and out the door, up and down the stairs, pissing and shitting their way through meals reconstructed out of pasta that continuously churns and rattles through the rolling machine. An endless starchy möbius strip of food and wine and anniversaries and private birthday parties and dramatic throwings of pinot noir on adulterous lovers and scraping forks to plates and sending food back to the chef. Lucrecia and Yvette preferred to leave all of that below them, comfortable in their dainty tower with the wind and storm their only lullaby, sea spraying their windows leaving a slightly lime-y rust along the edges of things. Everything always becoming a rust with edges. The laundromat is the perfect escape – a cellar for wine and starchy dress shirts. It is cool, only slightly damp, and a thick, full-bodied television runs constantly with daytime soap operas, the favorite of Yvette’s being the one about the recently reunited and estranged family that moved into a deep-space orbiting telescope pointed directly at earth. The family must learn to live together once again while observing earth and piloting their telescope through turbulent asteroids and unknown alien planets abrim with vibrant and strange lifeforms, to warn humans about any harm in their wake. The telescope, a beacon of a kind, the interior so preposterously gigantic, only a dramatic four-season failure television series could have envisioned as the home to the beloved Maratia family. They live on a loop, observing and observed in the laundromat sub-basement of the lighthouse restaurant. This is where they will presently drown. Lucrecia and Yvette begin the great tampering like a ritual to deliver promise. The washing machines give quickly, as an old and forgotten investment in a world not unlike this but with several years between them, where Lucrecia and Yvette began themselves anew in a lighthouse home. The soapy water pours and the soapy operas fizzle and the television begins to swim. Yvette and Lucrecia hold one another under water, never once closing their eyes as the darkness consumes them. It rises upward and they bubble mouth their love to one another. The water consumes all of the tired paintings and expensive cooking equipment and then spirals up the staircase, much more gracefully than any patron ever had, and fills the sealed rubble and mortar home, a statute of signals forewarning us all to the grim will of the waters and wind. The water consumes next the stairs and tables then the little trap door at the top of the stairs through which Yvette and Lucrecia would peak to make their small little tiny appearances to the guests every so often as the restaurant manager so often pulled from them, like the teeth that are now filling with fluid as water bears up and down through lung and cottage, until finally the water seeps up and through the widow's walk, the lantern room bursting until darkness cleans herself across the sanded beach. The light out after a century of bearing out the truths to all who heeded. The light shattered glass scattered to the future of observation, the listlessness of concerned declarations and warnings. The lighthouse swallowed whole by itself, so well insulated only the casted figures within a snow globe of memory and testimony for all that passed through this place. A spectacle of entrance and a compulsory apology between star and sky, sea and land, the way we speak within these passageways of light and sound, a permanent home to Yvette and Lucercia, floating in between space and time, in a darkened tomb only set this December. About m.v. riasanovsky (lowercase): M.v. riasanovsky (they/them) is a nonbinary, queer, disabled, and autistic poet living in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains in central Virginia. They have self-published several zines and have been part of DIY/alt-lit writing communities. They are a grant writer and are passionate about leftist movements. Below, you’ll find m.v. riasanovsky’s past and forthcoming publications: PITH-UNIVERSALITY-BELOVED (poetry) - The Fawn Edition 2024, Antler Velvet Arts Magazine (jan 2024) anatomy of a telescope (fiction) - Aether Avenue Press (feb 2024) bark bodies (poetry) - Dark Reads, Thin Veil Press (feb 2024) stink bugs, if you don’t bury your guns you can’t grow a gun tree [i say this and everyone laughs because they’re drunk] (poetry) - pending publication in Online Features, Bullshit Lit (mar 2024) glasses (poetry/prose) - pending publication in Queer Space, Fruit Journal (may 2024) requiem, the sleepy poem in two parts (poetry) - pending in KIN, DOG TEETH Literary Magazine (2024) LOBOTOMY!, xo confessional, ***heat death of the planet*** (poetry) - pending publication in Bimbo Feminist Anthology, Purple Ink Press (2024)

Oswald Erickson and his nine-year-old granddaughter Cynthia were cruising down the main road of the small town of DeSantis, population: 400, in Oswald’s big, mud-covered pick-up truck. “Alright Cynthia. I think today is the day,” Oswald told his granddaughter. “What do you mean Grandpa?” Cynthia asked curiously. “What have you been curious about since you first heard about it?” It only took Cynthia half a second to realize what her grandfather was talking about, and when she did, she burst with joy and excitement, so much so that she was to the point of squealing and giggling in her revelry. “I thought you’d be excited,” Oswald said, pleased at her enjoyment. Oswald took a right onto Angelea Street. As soon as they started to get a little way away from town, the buildings and houses slowly disappeared, quickly replaced by trees and forest. Cynthia’s boisterous joy was replaced by quiet anticipation. Oswald stared pensively at the road as he drove, also not speaking. It had been a very long time since he had been up this way. After about twelve minutes of driving, the trees started to clear and wide-open fields appeared on both sides of the truck. Cynthia began chewing on her fingernails and fidgeting anxiously. She could tell they were close to their destination, simply by the smile forming on her grandfather’s face. A few moments later, a huge mansion on the top of monstrous hill came into view. Oswald drove on until they were close enough to see the building clearly before he pulled over onto the side of the road and turned off his vehicle. “This is it?” Cynthia whispered, too stunned to use her normal volume. “This is it.” “Tell me the story, Grandpa. Please. You promised.” Oswald exhaled deeply, then paused for a very long time. Just when Cynthia was about to pipe up, he began to speak. “It all started a long time ago, before you were born, even before your daddy was born.” Cynthia stared intently at her grandfather as he spoke. “I was just a boy, right around the age you are now. There was another boy in my class, his name was Billy Icarus. Billy was my best friend; he was also the most unique kid in school. See, Billy had wings.” Cynthia was utterly entranced by her grandfather’s words. “It was very sad what happened with Billy. In truth, I personally loved Billy’s wings. Heck, everyone, even Jo Haggart, Billy’s crush, loved his wings, everyone except for Billy loved them. Instead, Billy absolutely loathed his wings. He thought they were big and cumbersome, and he hated how they made him so different than everyone else, especially Jo. He always talked about getting rid of them somehow. I told him he was crazy, that I would love to have wings, but he seemed dead set on his hatred of them. “It was Billy’s tenth birthday, and I was getting ready for the party when the phone rang. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but I suddenly had a very bad feeling in my gut. My mom, your great grandma, picked up the receiver and I instantly saw in her reactions that something bad had happened, and I knew it had happened to Billy. I was right. My mother went on to tell me that Billy was in the hospital. He cut off his wings and had suffered a massive amount of blood loss. The doctors said he might not make it. I was shocked and frightened. I was in a trance when I finished getting dressed, and then, instead of going to a party, we went to the hospital. “Once we got to the hospital, we waited for six hours for the doctors to tell us that Billy was going to survive. It was another two days until they actually let me see him. I went into his room to find him lying on his stomach with his head facing the door. He had two big, bandaged stumps protruding from his back. He smiled for a second when he realized it was me, then his face turned grim and melancholy. “I walked up to Billy’s bed, looking down at the ground until I was right next to him. “I miss them. I want to fly again,” Billy said in a slurred, medicated voice. “I squeezed his hand gently before he passed out again from the medication,” Oswald said, before pausing again, a tear swelling up in the corner of his eye. “Why did he do it grandpa?” Cynthia asked. “Come outside,” Oswald told the girl as he stepped out of the vehicle and stood in front of the hood, looking longingly up at the house. “What happened next?” Cynthia asked, equally interested and impatient. “Well, after Billy got out of the hospital, he just wasn’t the same. He was always sad, he hardly ate anything, and he always wanted to be alone, no matter how hard we tried to socialize with him. Not even Jo could get through to him. He was wasting away without his wings. That was when I came up with the idea to start a fund-raiser.” “Fundraiser?” Cynthia whispered, not realizing she was doing so. “Me and Jo started collecting money for a fund to get Billy a new set of wings. I knew it was a fool’s errand, but we had to do something, we couldn’t just stand there and watch. Little did we know the true generosity of the town of DeSantis. We had only set up three donation bins: one at Robert’s Burgers, one at the Pump N’ Bump, and one at the school. Amazingly, it only took two weeks to gather the large sum of money needed for the procedure. Other people in town had obviously noticed Billy’s dismay as well, because there were a lot of hundred-dollar bills, the first ones I had ever seen in my entire life. “With help from my mother, we sent away for surgeon and a set of prosthetic wings, modeled to look and function just as Billy’s old wings had. The surgeon was a specialist in such operations and successfully attached Billy’s wings in just a few hours. Billy was happy again, at least for a little while,” Oswald took another deep breath, seeming to pause again. “Grandpa!” Cynthia said through clenched teeth. “I’m getting there,” Oswald replied. “Well, it turns out that plastic surgeon went back to the big city, where he had come from, and told everyone about the boy in DeSantis with his wings on his back. People came from all over America to see the boy with wings. It was horrible. Everyone was a stranger and many of the new people were rude. Then, one day, something terrible happened yet again. Jo Haggart was walking home from a friend’s house when she was mugged and beaten up by four men she had never seen before. They stole four dollars she had on her. Jo died in the hospital later that night.” Oswald stopped for a moment of silence. Tears ran down Cynthia’s eyes, though she didn’t make a sound. Oswald had to regain his composure for a few moments before he could go on. “After that, Billy became a recluse. He blamed himself for Jo’s death. He moved with his family to the mansion at the top of the hill and has lived there ever since. His parents died about thirty years back. I went to their funerals. That was the last time I saw Billy. He has been out here all alone ever since,” Oswald told Cynthia as tears freely rolled down his cheek. “Poor Billy,” Cynthia replied. “Can we go up there and visit him? You can’t just tell me a story like that and then just turn around and go home. He must be so lonely up there. You said he was your best friend.” Oswald looked up at Billy Icarus’s home with longing and nostalgia. “We just might have to do that Cynthia…” About Tom Folske: Tom Folske lives in Minnesota with his wife, four kids, and three black cats. He is just finishing up with his BA in creative writing, and has been passionately either finishing older work, or creating new pieces to publish over the past year. A writer since the age of 12, Tom has had over 20 stories published by multiple publishers, with new work to be featured in upcoming anthologies or magazines by Jersey Pines Ink, Theaker's Quarterly Fiction, Celticfrog Publishing, Critical Blast Publishing, Haute Dish Literary Magazine, and House of Loki Press.

Calling this a roomette seems unfair, limiting it to the simulation of a hotel’s four stationary walls, a brief survey of the assigned territory reveals potential hiding in this slice of a train car, it is more than just an insufficient efficiency to sleep in, or a prison where I am sentenced to watch the world roll on by After the door is closed, there is potential to relive the minor spells and adventures of childhood, when I could transform any sufficiently well-lit nook into a portal for places lost or yet to come, conjuring up a passport to get through an afternoon of suburban drudgeries and other powerless situations Though I bought the ticket and chose this ride, I still slip away, drifting as a cosmonaut in a capsule, followed by scenes of the anchorite life, until the blue curtains over the bed become my Bedouin tent, and when it is time to leave for the dining car, I imagine that a phalanstery or kibbutz awaits me About Ben Nardolilli: Ben Nardolilli is a theoretical MFA candidate at Long Island University. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Door Is a Jar, The Delmarva Review, Red Fez, The Oklahoma Review, Quail Bell Magazine, and Slab. Follow his publishing journey at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.

Sandstorms drift through this old utopia of ours, They blanket the gardens and fill in the pools, Our dream of a paradise in the city seems To be receiving a veto from our surroundings It is a rare opportunity to act together at last, We have to come out into the streets for now Because we cannot drive by ourselves Or stay in our homes as our ACs keep coughing Many of us hate this newfound unity, not me, I was among the first to head out when I felt My room begin to return to the desert We all thought had been paved over and forgotten My origin story is no different than the others, I came to live delicately in a fenced-off lot, Never seeking any commune or communication, Here in this vessel of peak Americana But unlike the others, when I saw the orange Clouds of the front moving towards us, I realized the mandate of heaven was lost forever, Time to adapt, to dig up grass and plant cacti The sand is no longer settling down with us, The wind is moving the piles towards the sea, The sun is peeling the clouds to be seen And I am happy, now that we can choke together About Ben Nardolilli: Ben Nardolilli is a theoretical MFA candidate at Long Island University. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Door Is a Jar, The Delmarva Review, Red Fez, The Oklahoma Review, Quail Bell Magazine, and Slab. Follow his publishing journey at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.

Part 9 I looked up hauntings in the area and learned that many folks believe that Duluth’s Enger Tower is haunted. While the park is mostly known for its beauty, hiking trails and flowering plants, it can boast one more notable thing – a ghost. Visitors to the park have reported seeing a man on the fifth level of the tower. But when they climbed to the top, the man was gone. I also read that the Duluth Public Library may be for more than just checking out books. Over the years, staff have reported a few strange incidents, including papers strewn about the floor not long after they’ve cleaned up and books falling off shelves. There have even been reports of apparitions of a man and woman seen throughout the library. The Duluth Depot Cultural Center may be haunted. With nearly 130 years of history, The Depot has several ghost stories told about it. At the height of its operation, The Depot served seven major train lines and thousands of passengers, and now serves as a multi-use cultural center. The ghost sightings, however, span across all uses of the space. Visitors have recorded video of hazy silhouettes and orbs vanishing into thin air. A frequent sighting is that of a little girl dressed all in white. There is even photographic evidence of her. She was spotted in the background of a wedding photo. The bride noticed the little girl because there were no children at the wedding. § Part 10 During one of our get togethers Lea told me of an awful Cornwall family story. “Pearls resentment of her mother progressed to a dreadful incident. On a day when her siblings were getting ready for school, she faked an illness to be able to stay home. After she heard her father and siblings leave the house she came downstairs and found her mother in the kitchen. Pearl asked her, ‘Mom, would you please come with me to the attic. I want to know which old toys we should give to the church jumble sale.’ Tressa said, “You should be in bed my girl. You are ill.” Pearl responded, “I promised the church ladies we would donate to their sale today and I don’t want to let them down,” so her mother agreed. When Tessa went up to the attic, Pearl held her down in a chair and tied her up then put a gag in her mouth so she couldn’t yell for help. Then she went downstairs and locked the door behind her. She didn’t ever want to see her mother again and wished she would die up there. Tessa was locked up there for many days. Pearl would check on her mom once in a while to see if she could hear her at all, but never brought her food or water, hoping that she would soon die. Lea said that when her siblings asked where their mom was Pearl said, “She went to church.” They were busy with school and their friends so didn’t take much notice. Pearl would put food out for her siblings so they wouldn’t notice their mom wasn’t around. When her mother was close to death Pearl brought her down to the big bedroom and got her into bed. She then told James and Franny, “Mom hasn’t been feeling well for a while and they should come to see her. She looks like she’s not long for this world. You know she has missed dad so much that I think she wants to join him.” James sat on the edge of his mom’s bed and held her hand saying, “Please get-well mom, I need you,” But Tessa was delirious and couldn’t respond. The next week Tessa was dead, and James was in shock. “It all happened so fast. I can’t believe she’s gone. And what did she die of? I didn’t know she was ill.” Pearl responded, “She died of a broken heart,” which could have been true, Pearl breaking her mother’s heart with her horrible treatment. Tessa’s funeral was a small one with just the minister, the three siblings and a few neighbors. James sat by her grave and sobbed. He had never felt so alone. Franny tried her best to console him, but nothing helped. James decided he couldn’t stay in the manor any longer. It just reminded him of his mom which was very painful for him. He packed up and left to work on the freighters as a sailor on the great lakes. Franny said, “Please don’t go James. I’ll miss you so.” But he said he had to leave, and he was gone the next day. Pearl and Franny never saw him again. § Part 11 I had my close friends, Barb and Kelly, over and I told them of hauntings that happened at our house. “We have Griffin’s grandparent’s cuckoo clock hanging at the bottom of our stairs. When we first got it we ran it, but the ticking was too loud so we stopped the pendulum from swinging. One day, after work, we saw that the clock was running again. We each thought the other had started it up. Neither of us had and Griff thought that was a bit funny.” “Then we had issues with our phones. We have two extensions upstairs and three downstairs. Sometimes one of the upstairs phones would ring but none of the downstairs lines would and there was nothing on the caller I.D. and no dial tone. The gals loved to hear these stories and asked if there were more. I told them, “One morning I woke up at six a.m. and saw a strange blue light in the TV room. The TV had turned on by itself and the screen was a glowing blue. It continued to turn on by itself once a week for a couple weeks. Griff and I would talk of these hauntings, but they weren’t as upsetting anymore. We were getting used to our visitors.” I told them of a time when Griffin was out of town, and I was home alone upstairs in our bedroom and I heard what sounded like a snowblower or some kind of motor going on and off three or four times. Later when I went into the kitchen, I smelled that metallic burning wire smell. I checked the appliances and found that the coffee grinder was hot to the touch and had that smell. That is what was going on and off until it burned out and died. We wondered if maybe it was the old house wiring, but we had had the kitchen totally gutted and all new wiring put in, so that wasn’t it. I went on. “Griffin had an experience when I was out of town on a trip for work. He noticed that some things on his desk had been moved off the top shelf to the desk below. And before I left town, I had tidied my side of the bedroom with my shoes lined up by the wall. Later in the day when he went into that room, he saw my shoes scattered all over the floor.” I told my friends another story that was a bit scarier than the usual hauntings. “Once again while reading in bed I felt the mattress sink down next to me as if someone was leaning in and looking at me. I jerked upright and was breathing heavily not believing what had just happened. I had to calm down and try to relax hoping to fall asleep, but it took me quite a while to settle down.” I said that “A couple of nights later the same thing happened next to my hip as if someone had sat down next to me. This time I just said hi to the spirit and asked if they would go hang out in the attic so I could get some rest. I told Griff about these hauntings, and he just laughed. Part of him still didn’t believe in the hauntings. Our son Derek had also experienced some strange things that occurred at the manor. One year, when we were traveling and he was house sitting, he heard a noise upstairs. He said it sounded like Griffin’s desk chair on wheels was rolling around his office. When he went up to check, the chair was in its usual spot by the desk, not moving. Two days later, while he was watering plants, he heard what sounded like pans rattling down in the basement but when he checked there were no pans to be found and there was nothing out of place. This freaked him out a bit being alone in the house. I had told him about our experiences with the ghosts, so he was ready for the visitors. He said he had a hard time falling to sleep that night. The next day Derek heard what sounded like a rubber ball bouncing on the bathroom floor. When he went upstairs, he saw a glowing light under the door but when he went in, there was no sign of a ball or a glowing light. He later told us these stories and we said it was becoming the norm. § Part 12 A few weeks later I told my friends another Cornwall chapter. “There was a time when Pearl was irritated with her sister once again. Franny would go on and on about missing their mom and after a few weeks of this Pearl was fed up and confronted Franny in the kitchen.” “I’m sick and tired of listening to you whine about mom. Knock it off or you’ll be sorry.” Franny shot back, “How can you be so cold?! Mom is gone forever, and you don’t seem to care.” “I don’t care if you must know. There I said it. I don’t give a damn. What do you think of that?” “I think you are a horrible person.” With that, Pearl grabbed the cast iron pan off the stove and whacked Franny on the head with it. Franny fell to the floor hitting her head on the sink on her way down. There was a lot of blood and Franny was unconscious. Pearl left her there hoping she would bleed to death, which is exactly what happened. Pearl called the police and said, “My sister had fallen and hit her head and she isn’t moving.” She was told not to touch anything, and they would be there soon. The police arrived and found that Franny was dead, so the coroner was called. As they carried her sister from the manor, Pearl thought to herself, “Good riddance!” I told my friends that the coroner concluded that Franny’s death was an accident. At her funeral people kept telling Pearl how sorry they were for her loss and worried about her living in that big house all alone. Pearl just nodded, smiling inside and not saying much. Pearl finally had the manor to herself. Lea said she was happy on her own which was a good thing because she really didn’t have any friends. § Part 13 Lea and I were out to lunch the following month and I told her of some of our experiences in the manor. “After about a year of a quiet house, Griffin was shocked to see a woman in white standing in the big bedroom. The apparition was a filmy white and it soon evaporated into thin air. He finally believed the house was haunted. I was so glad that now I wasn’t seen to be batty. He said that on the same day there were a lot of strange noises around the house, knocking and what sounded like floorboards squeaking.” I continued, “A year later when Griffin and I were in bed reading, we heard something in the next room, his office. We looked at each other and listened and heard it again. He got up and went into his office to see that the printer had turned on by itself. He checked to see if he had left the computer on, but no he hadn’t. He also checked the wiring and cables, but all seemed normal. Griff was still freaked out by these incidents, but I always said, “I love these visits as long as they aren’t too up close.” One weekend when we had Griffes parents over for dinner we were listening to the radio, and it changed channels in the middle of a song. Griff checked to make sure that the song had not just ended, but no it hadn’t. The radio had changed channels on its own. His parents just thought that there was something wrong with the radio, but Griff and I knew it was the spirits greeting them. I told his mom that I had another spooky episode while I was reading in bed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a light blink. A TV and DVR player were across the room on a table and turned off. As I watched, two words flashed on the DVR front panel. First, “rewind” and then “play.” I just laughed and said, “Hi guys. Thanks for not sitting on the bed.” She thought the story was interesting but didn’t believe in ghosts and changed the subject. A few weeks later we had a funny experience. Griffin and I were sitting in the sunroom reading, when the stereo receiver went on by itself. It was on a radio station we never listen to and the song playing was “Hit me with your best shot.” We looked at each other and laughed out loud. It was the first time something happened right in front of the both of us. I bought a little light-up tree at Christmas time and had it on the kitchen counter. On New Year’s Eve I had it on during the day and that night I turned it off before we went to bed. I saw in the morning it was back on. I guess the spirits must like the tree lit up. § Part 14 Lea continued her story of the Cornwall’s. “Years after Franny’s death, Pearl was talking to a woman in the neighborhood who she considered a friend. This turned out not to be the case. Her neighbor lady Lois said, “You must be lonely in that big old house. Don’t you miss your sister?” Pearl stupidly told her, “No I don’t miss her at all. In fact, I made her go away by myself. Best thing that I’ve ever done.” Lois was shocked to say the least and said, “But she didn’t go away. She died.” She got no reply from Pearl, just a smile. She quickly went home and told her husband, Ron, what Pearl had admitted to. Over the years Lois and Ron had seen Pearl and Franny arguing on many occasions in their yard or on their front porch. Lois remembers seeing Pearl slap Franny during one of their heated arguments. They knew that Franny was a very nice woman who gave their kids art supplies, and they knew that Pearl could be quite difficult and cranky. Ron called the police and reported what Pearl had admitted to. The police opened an investigation and brought Pearl in for questioning. She lied and said, “My sister fell and hit her head, but I did nothing to harm her.” § Part 15 Lea told me that Pearl decided she wanted to have a family of her own. She was tired of living alone and thought it would be nice to have a child to raise in the manor. She wanted to have this child take care of her in her old age. She started the process to adopt. Pearl went ahead and adopted a little girl with brown braids and skinny legs. The girl looked malnourished and very sad. She named the little girl Grace after her grandma. Lea told me about the life of Pearl and Grace. They lived in Oakwood Manor for many years. When Grace was small Pearl hired help to raise her so she could avoid the day-to-day child rearing issues. Pearl had inherited some money from her parents so could afford to have people come in to do work on the manor. The two went on with their lives, Grace going to school and Pearl taking care of the manor. She hired contractors to deal with the aging homes repairs and upkeep and had a cleaning lady come in twice a month so she wouldn’t have to clean the house. Leas said, “When Grace was in her twenties she moved to an apartment of her own. She wanted to get away from her crabby mother who complained about everything every day. It got to be too much, so she left. Pearl was livid with her and didn’t understand why Grace would leave her alone in the manor. She didn’t speak to her daughter for months and carried on with her lonely life.” Whenever she heard from Grace, she would demand that she move back in to the manor but Grace always had an answer about her busy job and full social life and not having the time to move. She didn’t say she just didn’t want to live with her. § Part 16 During coffee one afternoon, Lea went on with her tales of the Cornwall’s. “When Pearl was turning 80 her daughter said, ‘We must sell the manor now Mom. The stairs are too dangerous for you. I want to find you an assisted living place because you are having a hard time getting around.’” “I’m not leaving my home,” Pearl snapped back. “Well, it has become a dangerous place for you mom. I’m worried you’ll fall and hurt yourself on the stairs,” said Grace. Pearl fought her daughter on this for weeks until the day she had a fall that bruised her hip. Grace said, “If you had broken your hip, you could have died.” So, Pearl gave up the fight and was moved into St. Ann’s Home for the Elderly. Grace put the manor up for sale and then went back to her job and rarely visited her cranky mother. § Part 17 Sometime during our 5th year in the manor, we heard from Lea’s mom that Pearl had died. We wondered if something had happened because we started to have trouble with the phones again. Then the electrical outlets in the kitchen stopped working on and off so no toaster, no microwave, and no coffee maker for a time. They each would stop working for a bit then start again. We thought that maybe Pearl's spirit had moved back to the manor and wanted us to know she was there. I notice that strange electrical things happen after I’ve been writing about the Cornwalls or even if we are just talking about them. I think they may be stopping by to check on us and see what’s new at the manor. We enjoy most of their visits and will greet them and say, “You are always welcome. After all, it's your house.” About Cathy Tonkin: Cathy LaForge Tonkin is an award-winning graphic designer and artist, who worked in that field for thirty years. She enjoys watercolor painting, pottery and writing. She has written 3 previous books, ‘Leave ‘er Lay,’ ‘Kids on the Porch,’ and ‘Upside Down and Backwards’ and many short stories. Cathy lives in beautiful Minnesota with her husband Gary.

Part 1 We bought Oakwood Manor in September of 1997 from Pearl Cornwall, and we moved in on Thanksgiving weekend. Our 12-year-old son, Derek, was excited about his new big bedroom and Griffin and I were thrilled to own this historic house. We Thompsons had a new home. Pearl’s father had built the manor in 1914 and she had lived there most of her life and was very sad that no one in her family wanted to keep the house. She was at the closing when the house was signed over to us. Pearl was in her 80s but looked even older. She was obviously upset about having to move out of her home. We first saw the manor when a friend in real estate called saying, “Colette, I’m standing in your dream house!” I said, “I already have a great house.” Carolyn said, “Not like this one. Come here right now!” I was surprised because Carolyn had been to our house, so she knew we had a great old home. Curious to see this place, I left work and went up the hill to a large house on a dead-end street in a nice neighborhood. Carolyn met me on the front porch. She said while she was waiting in the foyer, she heard noises upstairs. We went in and listened but didn’t hear anything. It was spring so we couldn’t blame the radiators for the noise. I was so excited to tour this house I quickly forgot that incident. We walked through the manor and when I saw the beautiful woodwork, I called my husband Griffin and said, “I think I’m standing in our future dream house. Come up here right now!” After he arrived Carolyn took us on a tour, and we thought that this place had great potential and the price was good because it was in pretty bad shape. We talked it over thinking that after a renovation this home would be amazing and told Carolyn we would buy the manor and then we wrote out a check for the down payment. We had lived in the Newsom Park area of Duluth since we married in 1984. We love vintage houses and had bought our 1920 house after seeing it on a drive through town. We both grew up in Duluth and live not far from our parents. We enjoyed family get-togethers except for the occasional sibling rivalry issues. We put our house up for sale and started working on the Manor. We were able to have work done on the manor while we still lived at the 1920s home. § Part 2 We learned from the realtor that Pearl tried to get in touch with her brother, James, but they hadn’t stayed in contact after he left town so she couldn’t find him. She had hoped that, perhaps, someone in his family would want to have the manor. She pleaded with her daughter to take over the house, but Grace said, “I am single and don’t want to live in that big house alone. It would be different if I was married with a family.” She signed the purchase agreement with a shaky hand and a tear in her eye. Pearl never saw Oakwood Manor again. The home was now ours. Little did we know what we were in for. After owning the manor for a couple of months we learned some history of the place from a neighbor. We were glad that Lea was a nosey neighbor, or we wouldn’t have learned that two deaths took place in the home. The wife of the owner, Tessa, died in the big bedroom and her daughter, Franny, died in the kitchen. The first few months in our new house we had problems with the phones. They would stop working on and off for a couple weeks. Finally, we had the phone company out to check them, but they found nothing wrong inside the house and out. All the extensions were working well while he was here. After he left the phones quit working consistently. It seemed very strange to us but we were busy and carried on with work and home life. The whole house needed paint and the kitchen and bathroom needed a total refurbishing. § Part 3 I heard from Lea that Oliver Cornwall had built the manor, had it furnished and then surprised his wife, Tessa, with her new home. Oliver was a wealthy landowner who had made his millions in the oil industry so could well afford to live in a mansion. Oliver could be described as portly having somewhat of a pot belly and a bald pate. He was known to be a good neighbor and a kind friend. He often said he was proud to be wed to Tessa Chamberlin whose family was well known in the state and quite wealthy. He was also extremely proud of his children, James, Pearl and Francis and happy to show them their new home. The manor was built in the ‘Arts & Crafts’ style that was popular in the beginning of the 1900s and sometimes called Mission Style. It is a stucco structure that was painted a rust color with warm brown trim. It had a good size front porch, a large foyer with an oak stairway straight ahead and oak French doors going into the living room on the left and another set of French doors on the right leading into the sunroom. The sunroom had large windows on 3 sides of its 12’ X 12’ room. The living room, foyer and dining room had oak hardwood floors that Oliver had finished in a light oak stain. He said, “The floors creak like my knees do when it rains.” The beamed ceilings and woodwork were quarter sawn white oak in a dark stain as were the built in bookcases on either side of the brick fireplace. Lea said that the dining room had a big oak table and chairs to seat ten guests. A swinging door lead into the kitchen. Oliver had the living and dining rooms furnished with the popular furniture of the day made by the Stickley company of Upstate New York. There was a piano in one corner of the dining room that all three of the women in the family could play and where their daughter, Franny, gave piano lessons to the neighborhood children. (Lea took lessons from Franny and told us of a horrible ordeal that Tessa suffered through.) The upstairs had four bedrooms and a bathroom with another set of stairs leading up to the very large attic. Lea said, “The largest bedroom had a huge oak bedstead with matching dresser and chest of drawers. It was a corner room, so it had three large windows that let in the cheerful sunshine and two good size closets. Oliver’s three children were each thrilled to have their own good size bedroom. Their son, James, had the green room, Pearl had the bright yellow room and Franny’s room was light blue. The bathroom had also been painted baby blue and had a blue sink, toilet and tub. Tessa’s nearest neighbor, Gladys Kent, was a good friend and someone she could go to for help with childrearing questions and helpful household hints. Tessa loved her new home and thrived there. She wanted to get to know some of her neighbor ladies, so she asked Gladys to help her have a tea party for these women. During these get togethers Tessa would rave about her children and especially her son. She would tell them of his latest accomplishment in school or sports. Her pride in him was never ending. § Part 4 Lea said she heard from her mom that Mr. Cornwall would host dinner parties for work associates. Tessa would plan the menu and have their maid, Alice, help with the cooking and serving of the meal. I think Oliver liked to serve fish to his guests saying, “This fish is so fresh it was swimming in Lake Superior just this morning.” I know that there was a button in the floor under Tessa’s left foot that she would press to call the maid in to bring in the next course, clear plates or to pour wine. She said that after the meal the gentlemen would adjourn to the sunroom for a smoke, a pipe or a bit of snuff.  Tessa and the wives stayed in the dining room enjoying their dessert and coffee. Their children, James, Pearl and Franny spent these evenings in Pearl’s room listening to her radio. They loved the radio shows of the day, especially “Amos ‘n Andy.” Tessa had their maid, Alice, help with the children. She would always be there when their parents were out and made sure they had their three-square meals a day. Besides cooking and cleaning, Alice was a tutor so would help the kids with their schoolwork. Alice was invaluable to Tessa because she had many community events and meetings to attend each week and so she had Alice watch the children. Lea’s mother Gladys was a good friend of Tessa’s and so she heard all the stories of the Cornwall’s. She learned that Pearl was Oliver’s favorite child. At one time when she asked for a radio, he came home the next day with one for her that she put in her room. Franny and James were livid. James said, “I don’t understand why dad didn’t put the radio in the parlor for the whole family to enjoy.” There was no end to the sibling rivalry in this family. § Part 5 The next week, when I had Lea over for coffee, I asked her to tell me more about the Cornwall’s. She said, “Franny gave piano lessons and some of the neighbors sent their children to the manor for these sessions and Franny also taught painting at a nearby grade school.” Lea told me that Pearl was jealous that Franny was making her own money with these lessons. She had no way to make extra cash and just received the weekly allowance from her father. It was generous but not as much as her sister was making so at times Pearl would sneak into Franny’s closet where she kept her money and she’d take a few of her sister’s dollars. “The following year Pearl tried to earn money by selling candy and greeting cards door to door. This didn’t go well because most of her neighbors knew who she was and knew her father was wealthy so they didn’t think she should have any of their hard-earned wages,” said Lea. § Part 6 There had been many strange things that happened around the Manor. Our piano had a small lamp on it that sometimes went on by itself. We would go to work in the morning, having turned off all the lights in the house, but when we’d get home the lamp on the piano would be on. This happened most days for a couple of weeks. We were surprised by this happening but just thought that there was something wrong with the lamp. We furnished the home with many Stickley pieces. The living, dining and master bedroom all had Arts and Crafts Style furniture. We wanted to keep the home in the mission style. § Part 7 Lea told me that, “Pearl was also jealous of her brother James. He was their mother’s favorite and Pearl felt this slight on many occasions. She tried to get her mom’s attention with pictures she’d drawn at school or new dance steps she’d learned. Her mom would smile and nod but never compliment her on these achievements. Pearl never stopped trying to impress her mom but rarely felt much love from her. She said to herself, ‘I know Pa loves me best so I’ll just spend more time with him.’ Her resentment of her mother never went away.” Lea told me of the death of Mr. Cornwall. “Life for Pearl went well until she was 17 years old. Her father had a spell one evening where he had pain in his neck and shoulders. Pearl got the heating pad for him, but it didn’t seem to help much.” “The next day when the family was waking up Pearl heard her mother scream, ‘No, No, oh no!’ Pearl ran into her parent’s room to find her father cold in death. She slumped to the floor and sobbed for what seemed like hours. Her mother tried to shush her and get her out of the room but there was no moving Pearl. She stayed in that room until the undertaker came and took her dear father away.” Lea said she was inconsolable. Her sister tried to calm her but that didn’t work either. She slept in the bed her dad had died in for many nights. Her mother never slept in that room again; instead sleeping in Pearl’s unused room, alone. § Part 8 I told Lea of a scary incident that happened one night. “I read before I go to sleep and one night, while doing so, the bed spread started to move towards the foot of the bed.  I looked to see if Griffin had moved it or rolled over but no, he hadn’t. I saw that the spread was still moving so I grabbed it and pulled it back up. I looked and listened around the room but there was nothing that could explain this very strange episode.” Lea said, “Well Tessa died in that room so it makes sense that her spirit may still be there.” I told Griff about it in the morning but of course he just explained it away saying, “One of us rolled over and the quilt moved.”  I just didn’t believe that. I told Lea of another strange incidence. “We have a blood pressure cuff on a side table in the living room. Griffin’s doctor had him get one after a few bad readings. At a time when I was sitting in the living room that cuff started to blow up on it’s own. It was shocking but also a bit funny. These hauntings were getting ridiculous.” With no explanation for these problems I wondered if perhaps the Olivers’ spirits were stopping by to check on us and how we were taking care of the Manor. Griffin never really believed we had ghosts until one day he saw something that he couldn’t explain. He was sitting in the living room, and he looked out the French doors and thought he saw someone walk up the stairs. Then he heard me in the kitchen. “Collette, did you just go upstairs?” I said no, and he said, “Oh my God.” I came into the living room and saw the shocked look on his face. I was thrilled. Finally, he saw something he couldn’t explain away. At last he considered that the house could be haunted. To me it was about time. I was out to lunch with my close friends Mary Ann and Katie and was telling them about our new house. “Our home is referred to as a “stigmatized property.” This is real estate speak for a haunted house. That’s a home that may be displeasing to buyers for other reasons besides its physical condition.” I had researched hauntings and read about stigmatized buildings. They weren’t sure if they believed in ghosts but had heard stories from other folks about hauntings. I said, “The sellers didn’t tell us of this at the closing.” I said, “Common occurrences of hauntings are cold spots, creaking or knocking sounds, items being moved out of place and seeing apparitions. Historically, since most people died in their homes, these places became natural spots for ghosts to haunt, with bedrooms being the most common rooms to be haunted.” I told them that I’d read of hauntings being one of the most common paranormal beliefs around the world. “Almost every town and city has at least one ‘haunted’ place. A gallop poll stated 37% of Americans believed that houses could be haunted.” Katie said she read that “The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California is considered one of the most haunted houses in America, although there are no primary sources for the many ghost stories about it. They were most likely inspired by Sarah Winchester, who had her strange, complex, often illogical designs incorporated into the house for almost four decades. They believe that after she died, she returned to the house and is still there.” Casa Loma in Toronto, Canada was completed in 1914 and there have been rumors of ghosts there for many years. Mary Ann said she had heard that one of the most prominent books about a haunted house is “The Haunting of Hill House.” Other books on hauntings include Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw.” Stephen King’s “The Shining”, and Anne Rivers Siddons’ “The House Next Door”. I had read that some of the haunted places in Minnesota are First Avenue, a club in Downtown Minneapolis which used to be a bus depot which is said to be haunted by a woman who hung herself there during World War II. The Palmer House Hotel in Sauk Centre was featured on an episode of Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures and is said to be haunted. I heard of a building in Mantorville, Minnesota, the Opera House, has hosted a variety of ventures throughout its history. From being rumored to have an illegal speakeasy in the basement during Prohibition, to being a silent movie theater, roller rink and city hall and to finally reclaiming its status as playhouse by the 1970s, the building has most certainly had its cast of characters throughout the years. And some of those characters never left. About Cathy Tonkin: Cathy LaForge Tonkin is an award-winning graphic designer and artist, who worked in that field for thirty years. She enjoys watercolor painting, pottery and writing. She has written 3 previous books, ‘Leave ‘er Lay,’ ‘Kids on the Porch,’ and ‘Upside Down and Backwards’ and many short stories. Cathy lives in beautiful Minnesota with her husband Gary.

"No, we don't agree on this." I sigh and let go of his elbow. Fine. Do whatever. I don't care. You can turn it into a crystal if you want. I'm giving up. "Don't be like that, I mean, I'll be fine." I look at him. He's still a bit shaky. Maybe the stone will do him good. Who the fuck knows, they're testing it as we speak. "Okay." "For real?" "Yeah." "Tess, you're the best." No, I'm an idiot. I sit down and get my pouch out. I drop some pebbles into the mortar and start grinding. He looks at me gratefully. I avoid his gaze and focus on my task. We sit in silence, the grinding of the stones permeating the atmosphere with a hypnotic beat. It's powder now. I stare at the mortar for a bit, hesitating for a second. Then I bring it up to eye level and blow. The dust flows up in a cloud around us both. "Breathe," I instruct. The stone flows into our lungs and the fireflies appear. He looks mesmerized. I observe him closely. The fireflies start forming connections and I can see the intricate netting of the world. Much was tangled around him. He goes to tug at a string uncomfortably pressing against his throat. I stop him. "You can't just pull, you don't know what it is." He stops short and pales a bit. He didn't think this far. Great. "Look, how about I detangle some for you?" He nods. I observe the net closely. I pull one of my strings and tie it to the one on his neck. The world splits. A kidney falls at my feet. An uncomfortable squelching sound as flesh hits the ground. A foot stamps on it. Crushes it to mere mush. I wrinkle my nose at the stench. Kidneys do not smell good. Especially squashed ones. I look up at him and he's shaking. Cold sweat forms on his forehead. "What is this?" "I have no clue." "Came out of your head, so you do have a clue. What is it?" "My father." "Your father is a kidney." "...Yes." "And the foot?" "...Mine." "Well. Your father's not a kidney and you didn't squash him into paste." "Uh huh." "Are you here?" "No." This is why newbies are just a pain. He's gone off somewhere. His eyes are crystal. I smack him in the face and he looks at me. Still crystal. Son of a bitch. Okay. I catch a firefly and smoosh it into his mouth. We're in a field. We're running after a butterfly. The sun warms our skin. The world is simple. The sky is blue. The grass is green. Nothing matters but the butterfly. We laugh gleefully as we run after the poor thing. Our mother calls out to us for supper. We turn and see our house, warm, inviting, home. The best feeling in the world. "Are you blind?" "Not completely..." "You're an idiot." About Valerie Valdez (in her own eloquent words): "At my core, I’m a goat singer, the Greek name for a story-teller. Curiosity is my alter ego. Born on a US Army base in Germany, my life revolves around words. Due to autism, I didn't speak until the age of five. Two years ago, I retired to pursue writing full-time. The best decision of my life! After forty years working for the US Army, NBC, and PBS stations, and teaching theatre, film, and TV college classes, plus as an office manager for architects and engineers, I just want to write. So far, I’ve published half a dozen poems and stories in various online magazines: Goodcompanylit.com, Northwind Writing Award by Raw Earth Ink Books, and CultureCult Press Anthology. Recently, I completed a six-month online course in writing a musical. My topic - life of Madame Marie Tussaud, of the wax museum, during the French Revolution."

The window crunches to its final destination Not opened, in disuse, guarding the unholy Indiscriminate foliage wafts down below Signature coffee wipes the patio clean Secondary problems not a cause to bitch. A history written by losers stands erect Breaking volumes a favour unheard. A hook being cheap, time travel, slightest and lost True leaders cost nothing to stay in shape Apposite lesson comes when the teachers appear. Online gaming feeding procrastination The wide-angle screen encumbers the fantasy An irrelevant dialect nicely folds the blanket Being spoken for spite, by an enemy citizen Detecting lies from an unknown caller Saving death through song and a little alcohol. Remembering bygones from dismembered memory Excavating memories to sicken the party Stalling to refresh, poisoning the aura Focusing on retribution s sure slow burn. Walk away and count your blessings, end of. Bloodied apologies declared on the quiet Reinstating camaraderie for future reference Regaling thoughts of suicide, speaking out of turn. About Patricia Walsh: Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland.  She has previously published a range of poetry in publications across Ireland, the UK, and the US, and one collection of poetry, Continuity Errors, with Lapwing, and two novels, The Quest For Lost Éire, and In The Days of Ford Cortina, in 2013 and 2021 respectively.  She lives in Cork City. A further novel, Hell for Beginners, is scheduled for release in 2024.