Contributor: Ray Daley

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A man comes to your house, he is wearing a grey suit. He pulls at his tie nervously as he speaks to your mother. She asks his name, "William Gibson" he replies. You later discover that he calls himself Twelve Bears, he is of the Navaho Nation. It is not a traditional name, he has not been named in the traditional First Nation way.

He was not named for the first thing his mother saw after giving birth to him.
He jokingly says "Otherwise my name would be Hospital Ceiling."

There are many other possible reasons why he calls himself this name. He may have seen twelve bears, he may have killed twelve bears. He may have even owned twelve bears at some point in his life.

You will later discover that none of these reasons are the correct one.

"My mother was a good woman" he tells your mother. He insists on speaking to you in person but you refuse to come down the stairs, he looks very scary, afterwards you can remember telling your mother that. "It doesn't really matter, there will be another day." he says to your mother and excuses himself, leaving your home as quickly as he had entered it.

The following week you see on television that he has been arrested by officers of the Oak Ridge Police Department for the crime of murder. He has killed a boy the same age as you, leaving his mother as the only witness that he "had to kill Baby Bear". He is still being called William Gibson by the news reporters. Only this time he is calling himself Thirteen Bears.

You will remember this forever.


- - -
Ray Daley was born in Coventry & still lives there. He served 6 yrs in the RAF as a clerk & spent most of his time in a Hobbit hole in High Wycombe. He is a published poet & has been writing stories since he was 10. His current dream is to eventually finish the Hitch Hikers fanfic novel he's been writing since 1986.

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Author: Ray Daley

Contributor: Matthew H Emma

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Over the last two years, Tim Emmer had seen 80 short stories and two novels in printed works that sold seven million copies. Success brought him critical notoriety, but also social duties. Eloise Branberry, Tim’s publisher and CEO of Year of the Tiger Books expected him to attend various Upper East Side social events.
Eloise somehow convinced Tim to host a soiree celebrating the signing of author Michael Stevens inside his Manhattan apartment. The gong show took place September 14, 2012. Beginning at seven o’clock, Branberry and her cronies descended. One complained about having to “rough it” by driving her Porsche because the Bentley was being serviced. Another bitched the Brie cheese was too strong for his palette.
He shook hands, pretended to be grateful for their half-assed praise and tried to smile while grinding his teeth. Finally, at a quarter-past eight, Belgian Countess Brigitte Vonyckx walked through the door. Revelers knew her, but not as Tim’s girlfriend. Brigitte was polite, extending her respects to all who approached. Tim waited 20 minutes before texting her.
“Hi,” he wrote.
“Be right there,” Brigitte typed back.
Tim let Brigitte work the room. He got up, went to the bar and downed a couple Heinekens. Ninety minutes later, his phoned beeped.
“Help me,” Brigitte jokingly declared in her message.
He glanced over and saw his better half speaking with Eloise, Michael and a few people he didn’t know. They made eye contact and waved to each other. Tim got an idea and grabbed his phone.
“You look so damn hot tonight,” he texted Brigitte. “I’m going to our room. If you love me, meet me there in 10.”
Tim left the bar and darted towards the master suite. He walked in and began to pace, while nervously hoping Brigitte would follow. Sure enough, exactly 10 minutes later, his wish came true.
“Did anyone see you?” Tim asked her, as she closed the door.
“I don’t think so,” Brigitte answered.
“Shit,” Tim said. “I wanted every last one of them to see you walk in here with me.”
“Tim,” Brigitte said. “We really shouldn’t do this. You’re the host.”
“Hon,” Tim responded. “Not one of them means a thing to me. Only you do. I am so madly in love and want you right now. If anyone notices, who cares? Please, just one hour. They have booze, fancy food and their shallow conversations to keep them entertained.”
“The writer again proves he has a way with words,” Brigitte said. “You persuaded me.”
They undressed quickly and made torrid love for an hour, first on the floor and then in the shower. After completing their tryst, the pair re-emerged.
Jane Litchfield, Tim’s publicist gave him a look and grinned.
“Did you do what I think you did?” she inquired.
“Absolutely,” Tim responded.
“Alright,” Jane said, as she high-fived Tim.
“Jane,” Tim said. “Tell me the truth. Did anyone notice?”
“Everyone saw Brigitte follow you into your bedroom,” she answered. “That is what you’re wondering I take it?”
“That’s all I needed to know,” Tim replied.


- - -
Matthew H Emma is a freelance writer currently pursuing a career as a fiction author. His short story "Mutual Satisfaction" was published in the December 2012 issue of Skive Magazine. Mr. Emma resides in Valley Cottage, NY.

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Author: Matthew H Emma

Contributor: Joshua Dobson

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"What do you do?" the bar slut asked in an absurdly affected doll voice.

The question used to make me wince and gnash my teeth, that dismal afternoon in the dingy dive bar it made me giggle dementedly. The sound of my desiccated cackle disturbed even my jaded self, the bar slut was so stunned she stopped prosti-jecting, the flawless porcelain of her carefully controlled facade cracked for the briefest of seconds and she regarded me with utter revulsion in her dead doll eyes. She caught herself slipping and jerked immediately back into "sell" mode, twinkling her dead doll eyes twice as hard.

"I am a waiter," I said hollowly.

"Oh really, that's kewl. Where at?" she asked, back on script, but noticeably creeped out by me.

"Near here . . . the big black glass domes down by the highway."

"I didn't even know that was a restaurant and I love eating out . . . tee hee," she tinkled.

"No," I said, "I am not a restaurant server, I used to be, but now I am a waiter. I made the same mistake when I first read the ad headlined, Waiters Wanted. But when I interviewed with the man who is now my superior, a nondescript black man named Mr. Blackman, I learned that the opening the Black Dome Limited Liability Corporation sought to fill was that of Waiter, whose job description is nothing more nor less than sitting motionless, though an exception is made for blinking, yawning and the occasionally involuntary twitch, in a black chair, in near total darkness under one of the seven identical black domes for seven hours a day. I thought the whole thing sounded absurd, but when Mr. Blackman told me what the Black Dome Limited Liability Corporation paid Waiters, I . . . "

"What does it pay?" she demanded in her real voice, which didn’t sound the least bit like a cartoon bunny.

I told her.

"Wow! That is crazy. So you get paid for doin' nothing?" she asked incredulously.

"Essentially,” I said, “I get paid to wait."

"For what?" she asked.

"I don't know, and I don't think any of the other Waiters know either, though I can't be sure as we aren't allowed to fraternize or even speak to one another, however when I occasionally lock leprous eyes with another Waiter, they seem as clueless as me. But I do know that I will recognize that which we waiters await when it comes," I said.

"Must get pretty boring," she said.

"It gives me time to think." I gulped down my shot of rotgut. "There are things I think about only in my black chair, #327, one of seven-hundred-sixty-five identical black chairs in black Dome #7."

She arched an eyebrow as if intrigued.

"While I wait in the darkness, I have extremely vivid daydreams about faceless grey humanoids with no genitalia building some sort of huge irregular tower of ashy grey volcanic rock, it's getting bigger and bigger, stretching higher and higher into a grey sky that grows slightly darker with every block that is added. There are millions of the faceless grey things crawling all over each other like writhing maggots. They smash themselves between the rocks to make the mortar for their chaotically designless tower. They’re full of grey sludge inside. There’s something inside the crooked tower, something living and horrible, and it’s growing bigger with each second that passes."

"That's pretty weird, but it still sounds better than this," she said wearily in her real voice.

"What is this?" I asked disinterestedly.

"Oh, I'm not supposed to say . . ."

"What is this?" I asked disinterestedly.

"Okay, I guess I can tell you, but don't tell anyone," she said, glancing over both shoulders to see if anyone was listening. "I work here, well, not just here, but all kinds of dives like this. I work for Pine Barrens Vodka; they pay me to flirt with losers . . . no offense, in dumps like this to sell their shitty booze."

As my buzz was sufficient to clock in and start my shift in chair #327 under black Dome #7, I donned my sunglasses and made to take my leave from the gloomy confines of the dingy dive bar, but before I did, I set on the bar before the weary professional bar slut a black business card that read in red:

Mr. Blackman

Server

The Black Dome Limited Liability Corporation

- - -
Joshua Dobson likes to make his own fun.

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Author: Joshua Dobson

Contributor: David Elliott

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‘One year.’ He’d clicked on the link, entering the website for the first time in his life. ‘One year, and it’s come to this.’

Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days ago, Brian had come up with a plan. He’d decided to spend the rest of his life online; no more human interaction, no more disastrous relationships, no more work, no more physical activities. Brian was going to become a fully-fledged virtual person, a cyber-hermit, and how wonderful it might have been, if anything about his plan, his scheme, his anxiety-avoiding blueprint for a better way of life, had actually worked.
     

And maybe it could have worked, if circumstances had been different; if he hadn’t accidentally stumbled upon lonelysouls.com.
     

Brian wasn’t a lonely soul, of course. The idea was completely absurd. How could people assume such a thing? Just because Brian happened to have a less stimulating sex life than Pope Benedict the Sixteenth, did that automatically classify him as being a lonely soul? No, it did not. He was insulted by the Google adverts inference that he would be even mildly interested in that kind of service.   

His index finger was still trembling with suppressed rage, as he clicked the link.
     

Why did I ever click that link? Why, God? Why?
     

He’d met a girl on lonely-souls.com. Hot-lips 22. At first, they simply chatted. After a few days, their chatting had developed into laughing-out-loud. Before long, they were rolling-on-the-floor-laughing. Eventually, they were laughing-their-fucking-asses-off, and occasionally, to Brian’s delight, even pissing themselves laughing.
     

It was a match made in cyber-heaven.
     

Despite only knowing each other for a short while, they decided to dispense with the cyber-courting, throw caution to the wind, and become E-man and  E-wife. Hot-lips 22 accepted Brian’s proposal, and after a brief virtual engagement, they were cyber-married. A beautiful old virtual chapel, StAndrews.com, was booked for the big day, and everything went off without a hitch. The cyber-caterers were the very height of professionalism, the virtual band had all of their cyber-friends boogying until the early hours, and the cyber-minister, Reverend Meat Rocket 37, brought a much-needed touch of gravity to the event.
     

For Brian, it was a perfect but unexpected start to his new life. He was thrown out of the library for spilling champagne over their only internet computer, but otherwise, everything went swimmingly.
     

But, as with many modern marriages, after the initial excitement had faded away, things started to unravel.
     

Hot-lips 22 gradually lost interest in cyber-sex, and began filling up her time with various Brian-excluding activities; cyber-shopping, cyber-tupperware parties, cyber-Zumba, anything to avoid online contact with her new virtual spouse. Without the love of his life, Brian went into a downwards spiral. He withdrew from cyber society, sometimes hardly going online at all, and once, during a particularly low month, even started to interact with the real world again; engaging in small talk with other human beings, walking to the local shops, making phone calls, sending letters, a collection of bizarre activities usually only associated with the diseased mind.
     

Rumours of his eccentric behaviour finally made their way to Hot-lips 22, who, after much online soul searching, decided to file for cyber-divorce. It was this that, inevitably, led to Brian’s cyber-depression, cyber-self-loathing, and cyber-eating-disorder. Hotlips 22’s virtual lawyer, Scumbag 52, bled him dry. She gained possession of the cyber-cottage, the cyber-car, and was awarded full custody of the cyber kids.
     

Brian was alone. Within a year, his online life had been completed then destroyed, like the creation of a temperamental artist.
     

And then, one night, this very night, on the anniversary of their first meeting, Brian, in a fit of despair, had logged on to slash-your-wrists.com, with the intention of committing cyber-suicide.
     

‘One year,’ he said. ‘One stupid year.’
     

Brian browsed through the catalogue of virtual destruction, chose an appropriate method for his cyber-execution, clicked the ‘Yes’ tab under the legend: ‘Are you sure?’, and erased himself from the cyber-world.
     

Brian no longer exists …


- - -
David Elliott is a writer and musician, living in Cheshire UK. His short fiction has appeared in Linguistic Erosion, MicroHorror, Flashes in the Dark, Twisted Tongue, Whispers of Wickedness and Delivered.

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Author: David Elliott

Contributor: Marian Brooks

- -
Joyce watched her mother disappear, slowly.

Now she’s doing the same thing. She is certain of it.

When she walks down the street, no one even notices her or nods Sometimes people bump into her without so much as an “excuse me.” At one time her appearance was dramatic. Joyce loved exotic hats, expensive shoes and colorful, tailored clothing, always in good taste. Now she feels invisible. Men stare right through her, eyes like lasers, scanning the field for young, healthy women. Her reproductive equipment is thirty years past providing a viable home for anyone.

When she looks in the mirror, she sees someone who “cannot possibly” be her. She sees a woman with jowls and frown lines. Joyce notices age spots and gray hair and wrinkles at the corners of her blue eyes. Her skin is dry; it flakes and floats in the air when she brushes against it.

Sometimes she thinks her own children forget who she is. In their defense, she’s not the mother they once knew who could jump out of a chair in a fraction of a second to catch them before they fell. She’s perplexed when it comes to electronic correspondence. Joyce neither tweets nor twerps nor texts. She does have a Facebook account to keep track of the children’s comings and goings and to see photos of her grandchildren, Ben and Sally, along with their menagerie of dogs, cats and birds. She doesn’t think her cellular phone has any “aps” at all.

Sometimes Joyce and her husband, Bradley, don’t exchange more than four hundred words in a day. They lead parallel lives, reading, walking and sleeping. She does the laundry. He vacuums. She wonders if they really see each other after all of this time. She asks Brad about this. He’s half asleep in the recliner and waves his hand dismissively. “You worry too much, Joyce. We love each other, the kids are fine and we’re healthy. Isn’t that enough?” He drops his bifocals from the top of his head, grabs a pencil and turns his attention to the daily crossword puzzle.

They watch the talking heads on CNN and disagree about politics. On those days, their total word count might be five hundred, some of those words, heated for a change.

Her friends are disappearing too. Some have died. Others have too many doctors’ appointments to schedule lunch or husbands with broken hips and heart attacks to care for. When they do meet, their discussions revolve around diabetes, cholesterol and back surgeries. It’s been some time since they talked about men and sex and career aspirations. They’re not even sure what the “glass ceiling” is all about. It sounds like something that might be striking but difficult to clean.

Joyce is disappearing, melting like an ice sculpture, but slowly. It’s OK because no one’s watching.


- - -
Marian Brooks lives in Pennsylvania with her husband. Her work has appeared in Curly Red Stories, Short Humour, Linnet's Wings and elsewhere.

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Author: Marian Brooks

Contributor: Rohini Gupta

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He is late at the supermarket and almost all the fruit is gone. Many trays are empty, leaving only out-of-season mangoes and a few sad pears. At the end are apples: the small, orange ones, and the green, imported ones. In the last tray he finds what he seeks. On the dark red paper are six golden apples, round, shiny and polished, reflecting the ceiling lights.

A big woman is bearing down on them, followed by a small boy. She is heading for the last tray, but he is ahead of her and scoops them quickly up.

“Surely you don’t have to take them all,” she says.

“They are mine,” he snaps at her so fiercely that she steps back. She looks at his face and leaves hurriedly, dragging the child by the arm. Other people turn to look at him, but he ignores them all and makes off down the aisle with his prize. He will not give up his apples for any price – why can’t they just understand that?

There is a line at the counter but they let him go past, stepping nervously out of his way. He lays the six apples on the cashier’s counter and adds a banana. He has no other shopping.

“You must really like apples,” says the cashier who has seen him before, and always seen them in his basket.

“My wife loves them,” he says. Then he avoids any more questions by insisting she pack them carefully, separately, so that their waxed perfection will not be bruised. It’s a slow procedure and the people in the line behind him are shifting their feet and murmuring but they do not protest.

--

He leaves the supermarket carrying his groceries.

He has been doing all the shopping for quite a while, ever since his wife, Sita, became too weak to get out of bed. He always buys her apples. Even when she cannot eat, when only the tubes feed her, even then she craves the golden apples. She grew up among them, in her family orchard high up in Manali, under the Himalayan snows.

“My favourite tree,” she always told him, “Every year it grew the sweetest apples.” Her face is gaunt from her long illness, but her eyes are still bright when she remembers those happy years.

“There is no misery in the orchard,” she says.

The orchard is long gone. Her father gambled and drank it all away. After he died her mother was forced to sell more and more of the land, but she kept the apple trees. Every year she put the first fruit in her daughter’s hands, “A special apple for my golden girl,” she said with a special smile.

In the end it was Sita who had to sell the orchard. The debts had to be paid, and she did what she had to, but she has never forgotten. The orchard is still home and sometimes, when the pain is a dark shadow in her eyes, she forgets “Take me home,” she whispers, “Take me to the apple trees.”

He opens her hand and puts a golden apple into it. She smiles. Her fingers close, her breathing eases and she sleeps. He had plans once of taking her back to the hills but she is too weak to travel. So all he can do is sit by her bedside and remember.

He remembers how they met, at a party. He was new to Mumbai. No job, no money for food, but he had friends so he attended their parties and lingered by the food tables. She was there for the food too, a starving actress. He saw her joyous smile from across the room and then there was no looking back.

They married and found a house. He got a job, she got a part. They both worked hard and met late in the evenings eagerly, as if for the first time. They had three happy years together until that terrible day at the doctor’s office.

Malignant, the doctor said, and growing.

After that, it had become a nightmare. He hardly sleeps or eats.

He lives from day to day, moment to moment.

No one eats the apples. She cannot, and he will not.

--


He walks home with the bag of apples and one banana.

The house is in darkness as he puts his key in the door. He sits in the dark sitting room and eats the banana.

He looks out at the streets outside, at all the passing people and he wonders where they are going and why they are so cheerful, what they can possibly have to laugh about. Laughter is extinct in his world, for more than a month now, since that terrible day when he lit her funeral pyre.

The black moods, which she had dispelled for him, claim him again. He feels like a straw in the ocean, lost in a tidal wave of darkness. His heart begins a painful thumping, his throat tightens and he suffocates.

But, from somewhere deep, resolve comes. No, he thinks firmly. He has promised her that he will never go to that black place again. He intends to keep his promise.

He holds a golden apple in each hand, clutching them desperately, as if they could save his life. Holding them he feels her close. Is she walking in her bright leaved summer orchards again? Is she laughing under the fruit laden trees? He likes to think that, from wherever she is, she is looking down at him sitting here, and she is smiling.

The suffocation eases and he relaxes a little. For tonight he has won the battle. He will fight it again, but for now, he can sleep sitting in the dark, holding the fruit.

He has nothing else, nothing but that one thing which is left to him now, and for that he will always buy the golden apples.

For her smile.


- - -
I am a writer from Mumbai, India. I have published non fiction and poetry books. Writing flash fiction is keeping me happy while I work on longer stories. My story Dream Keeper was published in Yesteryear fiction in November 2012.

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Author: Rohini Gupta

Contributor: Michael Plesset

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He lay in the hospital bed, not in pain, but knowing that the time he had left was short. “What can we say with our last breath,” he thought, “when we have to say it all, when it really matters what we say. We can let go and drown in sadness and fear and let out a scream of anguish. That would give everybody a scare they’d always remember, but that’s not enough. Or we can say things that we should have said to people before. Or we could talk about the big things that happened over the years.”

Then a nurse came in, the one with the pretty face and great body. He felt his heart beat stronger, he could always see his pulse rate and blood pressure go up on the monitor when she was in the room.

He watched her move around, straightening things and checking the IV bottle with its tube leading into his arm. When she started to leave he made a sound and pointed to the tube that was in his mouth. She asked him “Do you want to say something?” He nodded. She took the tube out, and he had to swallow a couple of times before he could speak, slowly, but with a clear, strong voice, “I’ve been wanting to say, you have the most gorgeous ass in the world,” then, smiling broadly, he died.

A little while later a group of relatives arrived, to take a last look at him. They stood quietly for a few minutes. “Did he just pass away in his sleep?” the older lady asked. “No he was awake and we spoke.” “What did he say?” one of the women asked. “He said `Tell my family I love them all very much.’”

They looked surprised, looking at each other. “Wow,” the older lady said, “that’s the nicest thing he ever said.”

As they were leaving a younger man stayed behind and asked her “Are you sure, he said the whole family?” “Yes, I’m sure.” she said. He nodded slowly, smiled, and looked as though a great weight had been lifted from him, ”Thank you so much” he said.


- - -
Michael Plesset has published poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, and wrote material for a stand-up comedian. He did graduate work in mathematics and philosophy, worked in high technology, and teaches English to Chinese students.

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Author: Michael Plesset

Contributor: MARK SLADE

- -
I was lying face down on the beach tasting the sand mixed with salt water in my mouth from the ocean's waves repeatedly smashing me in the face. I opened my eyes to a blurred spiraling sun in the damning sky, sending shock waves to my brain.

When my eyes finally focused correctly, I saw Alban lying beside me, dead. A puddle of crimson forming around a black hollow chasm that was once where his left eye had been. His otherwise smooth golden skin on his face had not a scar nor a blemish. He had a dark, ludicrous smile on his face.

I started to rise and discovered the WW1 Colt .45 revolver firmly in my hand.

I jumped up, dropping the gun. “No!” I screamed.

I backed away, cursing at everything and everyone. It was happening again. This time, it was my turn. And I can't understand why God and the universe hates me so.

Alban and I had met a few days ago in the local cafe in Madrid. Stephanie had put us together, she was my contact in the states. Hooking me up to different thieves around the world, all of us apart of the Raven syndicate, providing rare items to the rich and often obsessive people one could meet. Alban was known as the Magical Arab with sticky digits, one of the best thieves from Palestine.

Alban knew where this WW1 Colt revolver resided, It belonged to one Humus Titus. Another of the rich the Ravens had done a service for. But this particular item we had not acquired for him. It seemed Titus stolen this item from the British museum. An item they were not ready to part with.

The revolver has a bit of history to it. Apparently this revolver had belonged to an English officer who who needed medical attention. The officer and a German soldier were lost in the outland of the battle of the Rhine. Caught in the barbed wires that were among ghostly trenches of ill-fated dead, the German soldier cut him loose and as a thanks, the English officer shot the German dead. As Alban relayed it to me, those who fire the weapon is doomed to be killed by the one that had just been killed. And the cycle can not be broken.

Words we should have paid heed to.

It's not the death part that worries me so....

No.

It's the rebirth that I hate so much.

We did as the job required. We broke into Titus castle on this very beach. No problems whatsoever. No guards, no guard dogs, no homeowner, no troubles. In and out like it was nothing. We had rowed over from the island to the north in a small boat. It was only five miles to the beach and Titus castle. We were not taking our lives in the ocean's hands.

At least I didn't think so until the storm came. The storm turned everything inside out and we lost the oars. We were adrift in the ocean with a violent storm swirling around us. Alban had a terrible idea running through his head. He no longer needed me, alive or dead. He drew the .45 revolver on me.

“I can sell this to the Raven syndicate on my own. I don't need you to take my share of the profit.” He said.

The skies behind him were split in two by flashes of yellow-orange lightning and Alban's face was completely drenched by torrential downpour.

Anger had filled me up. I dove upon him and grabbed hold of his hand that held the gun. It fired twice.

As I pushed his hand up to the dark sky with bright slashes across it. That bullet was torn from the barrel and had disappeared into the darkness. He pulled his hand back down, the barrel of the gun facing me. Just as he squeezed the trigger, I jerked his hand backwards. The bullet exploded from the thin barrel and entered Alban's left eye.

I took the gun from his limp hand. Just as I sat on my side of the boat, a strong wind lift the boat into the air....

And here I am, on the beach with a dead Arab.

Oh, God!

I feel it happening.

My skin on my body has become irritated. A burning sensation was inside my chest. The skin was slowly torn right above my heart and lungs. A hand has shown through a bloody mess....golden skinned hands....then arms.....

Just before a dark veil drapes across my eyes and I slip away, I see the same thing is happening to Alban's dead body. As his chest splits open a pair of pale,white hands appear...

The rebirth has begun.

The rebirth of both of us.....


- - -
MARK SLADE LIVES IN WILLIAMSBURG, VA WITH HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER.
HE HAS APPEARED IN BURIAL DAY, WEIRDYEAR, WORDHAUS AND OTHERS.
HE RUNS THE SHORT STORY PODCAST DARK DREAMS.

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Author: Mark Slade

Contributor: Chelsea Resnick

- -
We walk through the drip-drip gloom of Pike’s Market, Lena in an electric-purple windbreaker and Marc in a gray wool coat. We’ve never matched in outward appearances, Marc so handsomely tailored, and Lena so quirkily adorned in handmade creations, but we move in step, trusting in the silent communication we’ve always shared. We move past rows of watermelons, carrots, and kumquats. Somewhere off to our right is the Sound, a salty sheet of steel that we can’t see around the frozen stacks of halibut at a fish stall.

Marc speaks openly first. “I thought you were gone for good. I assumed you were married by now. Probably selling your stuff at craft fairs if you weren’t pinned down with kids or something.”

To fill the uncomfortable pause, we each take a haricot from a vendor, a stocky man in overalls and a knitted cap, offering samples. “The sweetest green beans you’ll ever taste!” His voice is like sandpaper, rubbing us smooth.

Our footsteps slow as we crunch into the green haricot stalks. When a group of tourists roar past, they jostle our shoulders and twist our postures. Lena says, “God, we can’t stand still here. Let’s keep moving.” We both understand that these words refer to more than the disruption of tourists.

As we resume our stroll, there is another silent beat in conversation, and we wonder when such awkwardness began. Finally Lena chimes in: “You look taller than I remember.”

“I don’t see how. Last you saw me, I was--what?--twenty-two? People don’t get taller after that age.”

“Still. You look taller.”

For a moment, we lock eyes. Then just as quickly, we look away again. The reflected weight of our stares tells us what we’d rather not know.

“So when is the wedding?” Lena asks.

“End of May. Hopefully the rainy season will be over. Victoria wants to have the reception in the park.”

We stop to buy coffee, ordering two small cups. “Just black, please.” Lena buys a croissant, too. As we pull money from our pockets to pay the cashier, we are careful that our arms don’t brush. Lena’s cash is a crumpled wad from a back pocket. Marc’s is a crisp stack straight from a billfold.

“How long are you in town for?” Marc asks.

“Three more days. The festival is tomorrow and Sunday. I’ll head back to Austin on Monday.”

We don’t address what will happen over the coming days--or even the coming months. Instead, we turn, and Lena asks, “Would you mind if we walked down to the water?”

At each pier, there is a landmark of varying interest. The aquarium. An information booth. An ice cream shop. A boat for touring the Sound. We see these things the way we notice our hands and legs--as matters of fact, easily taken for granted.

At different moments, we are tempted to remark on how each of us has changed--the creases in our faces that weren’t there before--but such words might sound critical, and they never make it off our tongues. Instead, we pass the time with talk of houses, jobs, and weather. Eventually we sit on a bench facing the water. Lena feeds the last bits of croissant to the gulls pacing at our feet.

Neither of us is sure when it happens. Or whose hand inches out first. But after a long while, we look down and see that somehow our palms have found one another, fingers thoroughly entwined.

“I always thought...” Marc starts.

It doesn’t matter that our fingers are knitted together, for we both sense the great unraveling that is happening.

We press our hands tighter.

The permanence of loss absorbs later, when we each ride in airplanes and cars, our bodies molded to chairs that carry us away. Our spheres disconnect and drift, but our thoughts are together still, sitting at that bench in front of the Sound.


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Chelsea Resnick is a Texas-born, Kansas-bred writer with works published by Hallmark Gift Books, Every Day Fiction, and StressFree Living Magazine, among others. She currently lives in North Carolina.

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Author: Chelsea Resnick

Contributor: David Macpherson

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My father was beside himself over the dirt bikes. A bunch of the neighborhood teenagers had dirt bikes and they rode through our subdivision late at night, every night. Because our house was on the corner of Hemlock Lane and Elm Street, they cut through our lawn, tearing up the grass every time.

His first course of action was talking to the dirt biker’s parents. Did he really think that was going to help? It seemed that the ruts in the lawn got deeper.

Next, my father reasoned that he should make the lawn less appealing to the dirt bikers. He bought a large landscaping rock and placed it in the middle of the lawn, the place that the bikes always appeared to go through. In the morning, we woke to see that this large half ton rock was rolled up right next to the house. Like a giant Easter egg roll, they pushed the offending lawn obstruction away from their preferred bike path.

My father had the rock returned to its place and planted pricker bushes all around it. The bikers responded. The bushes were pruned down to the roots and the rock was now just gone, never to be seen again.

It was here that he stopped seeing them as annoying kids with dirt bikes and only as the enemy. He taught my sister and I a new word, proliferation.

From a Korean War buddy, he scored a half dozen or so landmines and as a family activity, we planted them in the lawn. It was similar to our gardening chores, if the geranium bulbs were hollowed out and filled with nitro glycerine.

We were awoken by two shattering explosions and pleas for help. No one was killed, but two of the kids were without dirt bikes and one was missing a pinky finger. That was the last time they tore through our yard.

The only thing, my father was not in ordinance back in Korea; he was a desk jockey. His ability to retrieve unused armaments probably was a tad underdeveloped. My sister discovered this fact as she ran through the yard for the school bus. She heard the distinct click of a landmine being stepped on.

She stopped and and cried for help. She stood there for seven hours. They had to call the bomb squad from Chicago to deal with it. When she was finally taken off the mine, she had no more tears to weep. She was haggard and exhausted.

My father swept her into his arms and bombarded her with apologies. He was so sorry. How can he prove to her he was sorry? What can he get for her so she will forgive him?

My sister looked at him and said, “I want a dirt bike.”


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Author: David Macpherson