Contributor: Miles Gough

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We were talking very innocently, one evening, over the preference of man-eating mutant octopi for the flesh of baseball players, when with no connection, the Grand Fiend slammed an angry claw down and stated with hissing insistence, “I just don’t understand why putting human brains into gorillas was ever a popular fad!”

It took me a moment to catch the swing in the conversation and then asked, “I am sorry, but I don’t recall it ever being a fad. Pet rocks, I recall, but not Gorillas with the brains of humans.”

“How could you not recall it? It seemed to be everywhere for a while. You would go in for a kill, hungry and hot, and there distracting your victim was a gorilla wildly genuflecting for freedom from its current predicament. Oh it was an epidemic. Some of the gorilla men were angry and took it out on the population, which ruined the market for us regular monsters. We would go into a new neighborhood and find security heightened due to the gorilla problem. A few gorilla men used their new agility to rob jewelry stores, which seemed like a logical use of their new skill sets, but mostly they tried to round up other apes and take over the world. If we nether creatures cannot seem to dominate the world, do you think a small band of intelligent oversized monkeys can do it. I think not. They would be round up and put into labs or the unfortunate zoo. Even now, if you go to a zoo and marvel at how intelligent the gorilla behind the bars appears to be, it most probably because he has the brain of a man. Less of them are around, this was a fad of the fifties and sixties.”

I had no idea that such a thing was the case and I told the Grand Fiend such.

“Just so. Even the ones that caused havoc should not be seen as a nether creature. They were victims, though highly odorous ones. This was all the faults of those mad dabblers, the scientists with endowments who decided that they should try to be bend nature itself and put a human brain in any old thing they had lying about the laboratory. Why so many of them had spare gorilla carcasses handy is a mystery beyond my capability. My theory is that one mad dabbler created one on a whim and wrote about it in a magazine, something like Popular Vivisectionist Magazine, including plans and schematics and all the subscribers had to do the same. Monkey see, monkey do, if you will forgive the obvious idiom.”

This was all fascinating, but I squashed anymore discussion with my next question, “So would you consider these scientists, these mad dabblers, monsters? Would they be the human equivalent to your nether creatures?”

The Grand Fiend was obviously upset with this question. After a long pause he simply said, “They are not even worthy of being a late night snack and we would have eaten them all long ago if they didn’t have a foul aftertaste.” He grumbled that it was getting late and all my apologies did not change his mood.

As I was leaving, he did seem to regain his regular demeanor. In parting he said, “But speaking of fads, you mentioned pet rocks and if you remind me, I will tell you the true origin of the Pet Rock and the great destruction it left in its way.” I did bring that up to him later and the story was a fine one, which might be told in these pages on another occasion.


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Author: Miles Gough

Contributor: George Sparling

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The Man first entered through my nose after he had waited outside the doctor’s office in his truck. I had seen him from the waiting room’s window for 30 minutes, then had a procedure done, and 60 minutes later, The Man’s truck was still parked outside. Clearly, as I soon found out, he was the culmination of extensive surveillance developments, a thug utilizing advances in neuro-technology. My paranoia proved true.

I walked past his empty truck and found him smoking on the sidewalk. The Man, scrawny, in his mid-fifties, casually sucked nicotine, then blew it my way as I jabbed my four-pronged aluminum cane at him. “Get the hell away from me. I’ve had enough of you working-class chumps thinking you’re civic-minded now that you get paid by the cops to track me.” The Man said, “I’m only doing my job.” I wanted to walk to the bus stop but I couldn’t, and stood still like a frozen computer. I stopped operating and would never go through the steps to restart.

The Man’s proboscis, the olfactory nerves traveled from his nose to mine, and I hadn’t power to stop it, his nose goblins, boogers, thickened mucous crept into my nasal passage. I inhaled the odor of hamburger and onion rings he had eaten behind the wheel of the truck. Call it olfactory memory. I now lost my own sensory neurons, my life’s worth of smell erased, The Man replaced it. I saw him waft fetid sulphur to his nose, like the Devil, meaning my nose also. Bright sunshine, blue skies, yet there stood the Prince of Darkness.

Traffic played discordant death metal on the street inches away from us. The Man then raped my mouth, his tobacco, liquor, cunnilingus stench, chewing gum, foul gases and the like disappeared my tongue, teeth, soft and hard palates as he quickly ground down my nubbins and inserted everything of his mouth into my mine. Worse than replacing my teeth with his was that my tongue began to form the very words he spoke to me. “Bret Trumbo’s shit,” I said, that my name. His digitalized voice, sounding as an owl’s call but it was just another surveillance technique I previously heard that bounced off houses, telephone poles, trees, the air in my town 7 miles north…I had become my worst enemy. “What an ugly puss, take a look at him,” I said, mimicking the mimickers who derided me, even the minutest, trivial things I did within my house these terrorists’ voices harangued me.

The Man smirked, his insolence, contempt and mockery towards me shaped his sneer as it wiped across my lips. Though I tried hard to maintain my wrath towards The Man, I hated myself for miming his lips’ expression, its sphincters shaped just as his.

I heard a loud engine pass me, my bus’s noise so fierce as if I wore headphones with the volume turned to 100%, the blare traveling through my brain. The Man had transferred his nerve impulses from both his ears through a cranial nerve and into the temporal lobe in my cerebral cortex. His hearing was as good as an owl’s. I also heard from The Man’s tiny implanted device, now embed in my ear, receiving another’s words, instructions about how best to complete replacement, technical jargon, instructions to complete the steps. It was the 21st century’s version of hanged, drawn and quartered, the medieval victim disemboweled, watching (I believed the dead can feel pain greater than the living.) his entrails burn.

Next: the infiltration of my eyes. That tiny accessory I now heard signaled my coming destruction. My hazel irises now colored gray, his eyes. “The eye sees more than the heart knows,” wrote William Blake: he was partly right, but my heart knew, too. I saw through The Man’s eyes and penetrated his clothes, finding a small caliber handgun concealed in a shoulder holster. I wanted to grab the machete from my backpack and mutilate him, but that was so old fashioned. “It is the human that is the alien,” wrote Wallace Stevens, literally, not philosophically.

Other points of entry: anus and penis. My rectum’s memory ( Don’t all parts of the body have consciousness, recollection and retention? ), now his. I felt all the butt-shafting by convicts while he did time for child molestation. Damn, it hurt. Blood seeped from my underpants and down my thigh. His cock, smaller than mine but with larger balls, had had intercourse with many females and males. The Man psychically castrated me, replacing my genitalia with his. Quite a few Filipino “psychic surgeons” performed operations. Perhaps The Man trained there and equipped himself with better ways to thwart my life, make it unbearable and impossible, my enemies’ by-any-means-necessary policy of murder. A cleaner death awaited me rather than bullets, surveillers selecting The Man to rid the community and the world of me.

He pushed himself forward and grasped his arms around me, all points of his body touched mine, then the final touch, he scooched closer, tighter, and drove himself into me and my mind nearly clicked off, except for my final utterance, “Cops eat shit”: 3 of the most inconsequential words in the history of language. The Man walloped my skull with a sledgehammer, then, groping until he found my amygdala, squeezed it as I released a screamless scream, and I was gone. The Man entered all the hollows and crevices of my body and brain until I no longer existed.


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Author: George Sparling

Contributor: Justine M Dunn

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I stop off at the little cafe on my way to work, they make the best coffee in town and without doubt always have the best selection of cakes. At that time of the morning you can smell the scones baking, I have to use all my willpower not to take anything away other than a coffee. But I know I will resist buying one today.

There is just one lady ahead of me, she is already being served. As I stand in line the sound of a motorbike breaks the silence of the quiet high street. I look out the window to see the rider, dressed in leathers, just swinging his leg over to dismount his huge road machine. He pulls his gloves off and rests them on the seat, then takes off his helmet and shakes his head. His sandy coloured curls spring into life. He runs his fingers through his hair; giving his scalp an invigorating rub. He’s talking to someone out of sight, he picks up his gloves and gestures towards the cafe - and just a moment later, he’s on the same side of the door as me.

There is something familiar about this handsome young man that has just entered the shop, but I can’t put my finger on it. I watch him as he flirts with the girl as she works; clearly, she finds him enchanting. Her cheeks flush as she looks up at him from under her mascara-clad eyelashes. I wish it were me, twenty years younger and standing on that side of the counter.

The lady in front pays up and gathers her things, then it’s my turn to order. I request my usual coffee; no milk or sugar, just a shot of caramel syrup.

The young biker says he is in a hurry, and asks if I mind him being served first; he only wants a can of coke. I say I don’t mind, step aside and suspect that the drink in his hand isn’t the only reason he’s here. The young girl takes his money and gives him his change, their eyes meet and they hold each others gaze for a few seconds. I turn away, slightly embarrassed by the sexual tension in the air.

He says goodbye and leaves the shop, the girl goes about making my coffee. Only when I look up again I notice that he has left his gloves on the counter. Without thinking I pick them up and take them outside, he is just revving up his engine ready to pull away. I call out to him but he doesn’t hear me. Rushing up to him I tap him on the arm. At that precise moment a strange feeling of deja vu washes over me; I have done this before, I feel. Only as we each go about our movements I can predict what is about to happen next. But just one nanosecond in advance, not enough time to change anything.

He will turn and face me, I will speak, but again, the engine will drown out my voice. I will hold up his gloves, he will look at them and turn his front wheel back to centre. All of this I know. He will take them from me and thank me - unsure how he’s managed to leave them behind. I will smile, shrug my shoulders and go back inside the shop feeling pleased with myself for helping. He will put on his gloves, turn his front wheel and accelerate out onto the road. I will turn at this point and look at him through the window of the cafe. Just in time to see him parted from his bike by a large white truck, and thrown fifteen feet through the air like a rag doll. The girl will drop my coffee, scream and run outside. I will stay exactly where I am; pinned to floor, unable to move, wishing I had left him alone.


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Justine Dunn is British and currently living in Slovenia, she writes flash fiction, adult humour, and has recently finished writing her first book, Beach Lanes. She blogs, tweets and generally avoids the real world.

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Author: Justine M Dunn

Contributor: Joyce Chong

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“Slide Brothers Circus Presents: The Great Landon Winnsfield at Blue Valley Falls”

Dmitri Petrovsky adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses as he peeked out from behind the curtain and examined the large banner strung across the fairground entrance. A whispering crowd of onlookers stood before the outdoor stage, clapping as the animal trainers made their exit. Dmitri ducked backstage where Sandra was rushing to and fro, tools in hand. A mechanical vest sat on the table, the secret behind most of Landon's stage performances. Her blonde hair was tied up in a messy bun that jostled each time she shifted her head, Dmitri smiled at the sight of his wife hard at work. She called her husband over, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear.

“Can you tell me where the spring is? I need it for the confetti finale.”

“Bottom pocket in the suitcase.”

“Thanks, honey.” She paused, giving her husband a concerned look,“You don't have to help, I know how to do set-up on my own.”

Dmitri nodded, jaw clenched. Sandra's brow knit in concern and she stepped close to him, whispering.

“We should leave this stupid circus troupe. You can't work for a lowlife like him. We'll find work somewhere else.”

“It's fine.” said Dmitri.

Sandra's voice was low this time, full of danger, “It's not fine. He's a fake! What kind of magician uses another man's work? Look, just go. I'll take care of it.”

Dmitri nodded, stepping outside for a smoke. He watched as mist floated up from the Blue Valley Falls and stiffened when he heard steps behind him. His two seconds of peace were up.

“Hiding again? You always were a worthless performer. That's why I'm the one on stage.”

Landon wore his stage costume, an old tattered hat and a suit thick enough to hide his trick gear underneath. Dmitri took a deep drag of his cigarette, watching with eyes narrowed at the man who had used his inventions for the past six months, propelling him into an absurd spotlight of attention and fame. Landon's grin seemed to grow with the silence.

“I'm just thinking, we don't really need you anymore. Your pretty wife can stay, though, I like having her as my assistant.”

Landon's snide grin was brief because in one movement, Dmitri had punched him in the face. Cigarette still crushed between his fingers, it burned against skin. Landon screamed and clawed at Dmitri. The man's snarl was beastly, grotesque.

“Get out. You're not coming back, tricks or not. Get out of here!”

Dmitri finished his pack, inhaling mist with his bitter smoke as he leaned against the railing, bordering onto the Falls. He would tell Sandra after the show; at least he'd get the opportunity to see his wife on stage. Dmitri laughed to himself when Landon appeared, his left cheek patched up. Sandra wore a sparkling silver dress and had her hair down, smiling to the audience, glaring to Landon's back.

When the grand finale approached. Dmitri knew where to look. Landon tripped mid-show, and sure enough, it was Sandra who stood back up, dressed in a man's suit. She bowed to raucous applause, then the stage lights shut off. A spotlight cut through the dimness, and there was Landon, standing on a platform above the Falls. Dmitri had seen this routine practised, so when the man threw his arms out for the grand finale, the last thing he expected was a gush of blood. The confetti still shot out, though.

Landon was frozen in shock, crimson seeping rapidly down his shirt from the base of his neck. The blood soaked his suit and revealed the mechanical gear beneath, of which a sharp piece had stuck itself into the magician's neck. There was a brief moment where Dmitri saw the man's face, blank with terror, before the coloured paper pieces obscured his view. Landon fell back as the crowd's cheers began to dim, and before the confetti could settle, he was lost to the misty waterfall and the currents below.

On stage, Sandra screamed, but the sound was dulled by everyone's cheering. She was on her knees, and when Dmitri saw her, he sprinted onto the stage and took her away. There was the chaotic sound of shouts and whispers, clashing against each other. Everyone struggled to understand what had happened and brief, discernible bits of conversation cut through to Dmitri from the cacophany.

“Is that for real?.......that thing under his suit.....he's a fraud...........Is he dead?”

Sandra buried her face in Dmitri's shoulder, sobbing quietly. The crew watched with eyes wide as they approached.

“I'm taking her to our trailer,” whispered Dmitri to the crew, who nodded, still in shock.

Sandra sat down as soon as they were back in their trailer. Dmitri sighed, unsure of what to do or what to say. Then she looked him right in the eyes and smiled.

“Honey, that was one of the best shows I've ever seen.”

Dmitri was perplexed. That had hardly been a success. “What are you talking about?”

”I told you I could set up his gear on my own. It's about time you saw one of my tricks.”

Sandra smiled and gave Dmitri a quick kiss on the cheek. He suspected that she really did love him.

“So, what was the trick?”

“Make Landon Winnsfield disappear.”


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Joyce Chong is a hobby writer, currently studying health sciences in Ontario, Canada.

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Author: Joyce Chong

Contributor: Lauren Hoyt

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I see the world through men’s faces. Men with religious beards and carefully acquired wrinkles. I see women and I don’t. Every woman has my mother’s face, my wife’s face, my daughter’s face. Only the eyes change. Black, almond, brown, round, squinted, sometimes painted up like a cheap whore. Masha’Allah, the eyes.
I walk through the streets of Dammam and see women paces behind their husbands. Their eyes are hidden behind their niqab. The men nod to me, Salam, muttawa. I sift through my prayer beads, reciting the Qu’ran. I hear the Salah ring through the streets, and I go to a mosque. We wash our hands and feet in unison, speak in unison, pray in unison, bow to Mecca in unison, in a sea of black eyes. Praise be to Allah. We try to be the same in our piety, a world of uniformity. I do not want this for my sons, my daughter, their sons, their daughters.
I leave the mosque silently, their bodies still posed in worship. I hear the House of Allah moan prayers, shout praises, curl words. I walk down the dusty road, staring at the beads in my hand. I feel the smoothness of them and the soft whisper of the tassel brushes my palm. While walking, I see a man with blue eyes sitting on a bench. I let go of the beads and they drop onto the filth of the street. I hear men leaving the mosque, muttering praise be to Allah.


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Lauren Hoyt is a senior majoring in English with a minor in creative writing from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. She grew up in Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia, but her family is from Baytown, Texas.

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Author: Lauren Hoyt

Contributor: Allie Coker-Schwimmer

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Jeremy tried to hatch eggs by sitting on them and keeping them warm. It’s not funny. He did a lot of things like that- he was just an odd kid. Ok, Jeremy was a weirdo. He invented a time machine which really meant he would lock his “friends” in the closet and flick the lights on and off, then when they got out he would hand them a faded rock from the driveway claiming it came from prehistoric times and show them a black and white postcard of the Queen Mary trying to pass it off as a picture he took of the Titanic in 1912. I don’t know if the Titanic was sunk or not by then, but regardless that was always the year he claimed- 1912. Jeremy often pretended he was a dog. He would lay on all fours mimicking a dog’s position while he lapped water from a bowl and scratched invisible fleas. At night he would curl up into a tight circle and drift off to sleep, truly believing he was of the canine world. Except for the time when he was a human marrying a dog. Back on the blacktop at recess, a group of us gathered to be the witness, flower girls, and chorus for his wedding to Wishbone- the ever famous t.v. dog. The wedding procession was set to Christmas carols. It was April. Another one of Jeremy’s favorite activities was making outrageous claims. He told us he would win the Nobel Prize for writing and that he could be an Olympic ice skater one day if he wanted to. He didn’t know how to ice skate very well though. Then again, anyone can win the Nobel Prize I suppose. I could win it for this eulogy for all I know. Jeremy boycotted the rise of all boy bands. He thought they were cheap and that bands should stay female only. Due to this he had very little to converse about with his peers at snack time. He also loved to keep files on everyone. After snatching a copy of Harriet the Spy from his older sister’s bookshelf, he became enthralled with the idea of spying on people and keeping tabs on them. Jeremy loaded a box full of notecards where he listed each classmate’s name and what was good about them and what wasn’t. Much like Harriet, he got caught. Yes, Jeremy was a strange kid. He’d eat lunch in the bathroom or the hallway early in the morning just to avoid the fear of loneliness and rejection from others. He held block parties in his room like they did on the radio where he was the DJ and the only guest aside from his 50 stuffed animals. It’s all true, but it’s not funny because now he’s dead because of you. All of you. He was 20 and because all of the shit you put him through in college and high school and middle school he killed himself. You had to go all the way back to elementary to even find me- his only true friend- to write his eulogy because you all treated him bad. I used to say it back then when people would laugh at him and I’ll say it again now. It’s not funny.


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Currently, I am obtaining my MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University in Charlotte and live with my husband in Durham, NC. I also wrote a book which is due to be released later this year.

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Author: Allie Coker-Schwimmer

Contributor: Regina McMenamin Lloyd

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There was a sound. It was ear piercingly loud. My chest was ripped open. It felt like the warming sting of heartburn, like the time as a girl I swallowed a whole blue mint and waited gasping for the sugars to melt. It was reminiscent of the panic attack I had on a roller coaster when I was a teen, it felt like the first time Pete Gorman, my first boyfriend, made my toes curl between the rumpled sheets of my first dorm room cot. People say at death’s door your life will flash through their eyes. For me it was my brain remembering the feelings of this throbbing anguish and trying to identify the source.
I felt myself float out of my body. Before that moment, I had felt the body that housed me was me. But I knew all of me was still here in this purple plasma jelly. I tried to force my body to pull me down, like the string on my jelly plasma balloon soul. I felt unformed and free. My body is solid, concrete like a stone of unmovable flesh below. My soul is a float in a mass of spilling energy like the hot gas of the sun.
I watched the shooter taken out in handcuffs. I had no idea who he was or why he had shot me. The news reporters will probably say “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
But like trying to read in a dream, I cannot speak. I hear talking but it is murmurs and I can’t make out the words. It makes me angry to listen, like the adult on the phone to my Charlie Brown ears. My body lay against the blacktop in the street. Strangers are circled around me.
I followed my body to the morgue. The undertaker took photographs of my body. His hair was greasy black and combed over the waxy balding spot of his head. He measured the bullet wound. My body was naked and I felt humbled. The gaping hole in my chest looked so shameful I longed to cover it up with newspaper or a paper blanket. I stared at that weird mole below my left breast. I had always thought it was ugly.
The undertaker moved to my breast and flicked my nipple. I watched annoyed. I saw him turn and run his hand over the length of my body. The hair stood up on his forearm. I could see he was aroused. His hands pawed my body in a frantic molestation. I was disgusted at him even though I couldn’t feel his exploitation of my corpse.
When he finished with my body, I lingered. Where would I go now that my carcass had been killed, and violated? The doors opened. A corpse is wheeled in. She is about 9. Her hair hung in 2 long French braid pigtails. Someone had lovingly cleaned the vomit from her angelic face. Her purple jelly plasma balloon wafted in after her body.
The undertaker began taking off her clothes. The hair stood on his arm. I was finally able to move my own purple jelly plasma balloon away from my remains.
“We are done here; I will take you to a playground.” I say.
“Where are we?” She asks.
“I don’t know, but we’ll find out together”
This time, I was in the right place at the right time.


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Regina McMenamin Lloyd is a mother of two young children, a wife, and a Writing Arts Major at Rowan University. Regina recently was an honorable mention winner of the 2012 Denise Gess Literary Awards for poetry. Regina McMenamin Lloyd’s writing has been featured on Smithsonian.com, Your Kind of Town.

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Author: Regina McMenamin Lloyd

Contributor: Allie Coker-Schwimmer

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“I heard it was murder.”

“It wasn’t murder, it was an altercation. Self-defense if anything.”

“Wait, what happened exactly?”

“Well, the Daniel guy was trying to get out of drugs, trouble- you know what I mean. Trying to get his life back together. He never really was the same after his sister passed away.”

“Yeah, I heard about that! That was so shocking and sad.”

“Yeah it really was. So, he had this party and a few of the guys showed up with stuff. They were trying to shoot up in his bathroom or something, and he didn’t want them to. One guy got really upset- said he was “disrespecting” them or something, can you believe that? Just because he didn’t want them doing drugs in his bathroom? So the fight between them just got bigger and bigger.”

“Wow- well, what did the rest of the people at the party do?”

“I don’t know…you would think there would be some interference.”

“Yeah, really. I’d be scared shitless if I were there though.”

“No kidding. So then the guy pulls a gun on the Daniel guy, or there was a gun near them, I’m not sure whose gun it was or where it came from but I just know Daniel shot the other guy first.”

“So it was self-defense. Kill or be killed.”

“Pretty much. The bad part is that the Daniel guy felt so bad and freaked out about shooting this guy that he yelled to his girlfriend to call an ambulance, and then while she did that he went into the other room and shot himself.”

“You mean he’s the one that killed himself?”

“Yeah. What a horrible situation to be in….”

“So he murdered himself.”

“You can’t ‘murder’ yourself.”

“Then he murdered his guilt.”



Walking around the neighborhood and hearing people talk this way, I know they have it all wrong. Sure, they may have the story down more or less- but not the details. Nobody living knows the exact details. They may know the story, but they don’t know a damn thing about my cousin Daniel or the reasons why he probably shot himself. And they never will. For some reason it makes me bristle to hear people conjecturing, discussing things in such a calm manner. And every time I hear someone proclaim that suicides go to hell, I go red and think, “So will you.”


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Currently, I am obtaining my MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University in Charlotte and live with my husband in Durham, NC. I also wrote a book which is due to be released later this year.

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Author: Allie Coker-Schwimmer

Contributor: George Sparling

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Smoking black hashish with Mary as we sit on a foam mattress upon plywood held up with cement blocks in a one-room shack at the edge of a hacienda, bathroom in an adjacent white concrete building. I saved money from my American job and then quit. I fled bosses, alcoholic DTs, a woman who may or may not have told cops I raped her, collection agencies, jail time for two bad checks, my infant son taken away by my ex-wife, hiding from loan sharks I owed money.

1968: the army massacred students in the Tlateloco housing project in Mexico City. Mary and I know some of the students but not what happened to them. Who knows the fate of our bones or how many times we’ll be buried.

Shit, I was high. Mary stares at my reflection in the window, hashish made from female flowers of cannabis plants, females stronger than males. I stare at her glassy image too. Mary says, “Take a look at yourself,” and I took my hands off her breasts.

Have I got uglier since we first met? She deflects my potential to verbally or physically attack her, and says, “I know a drummer in San Antonio, let’s hitch there, it’s over 800 miles, here’s the last of my Dexedrine.” I put up no resistance.

We each swallow two tablets and finally make it to a main highway headed north. The truck driver evicts his partner from the cab and he must hang on to exposed cargo. Shaky life being odd man out. Mary chatted a bit in Spanish, the driver pleased to have a nice-looking gringo so near and sometimes he touched her thigh after shifting gears. He pulls over and we get out, the helper climbs up and assumes his rightful place.

Nearer the border, I try conversation but she turns her back. Mary will not have sex with me across the road in well-concealed foliage; we could, and she knows it and looks peeved, her face serious. What’s a reflection mean?

Mary’s stern face, her eyebrows bent low over bright green eyes, her smooth arms hug me out of comradeship, and she spits a thick wad of mango into the dirt and says, “Not ripe.” Fatigued, I want to quit and sleep by the side of the road, hoping some peasants will feed me when I awake and take care of me forever.

Yet it isn’t that bad hitching, especially when we talk about the students and revolution. Mary reads headlines at a nearby newspaper stand and tries to learn more about the students.

“Sometimes I think those students should give up,” she says, “Don’t you ever get that feeling?”

“I don’t think real revolutionaries ever give up. Do you?”

“They should save their lives if they know they’ll lose.”

She gives me $50 so when we cross the border, agents will not consider me a bum.

Neal Cassidy, close friend of Kerouac’s, died on Mexican railroad tracks earlier this year. We talk about the psychedelic bus’s name “Further,” what it means, and how Cassidy threw a 4-pound hammer in the air ad infinitum, catching the handle every time, and Mary tells me her drummer boyfriend had dark skin beneath hollowed out eyes like Neal. A small herd of goats crosses the street with a bearded goatherd.

I see her as she walks fifty feet ahead, standing on a road in position for a ride to the border, while I lag behind watching her black hair blow around her head, and remember sitting in a dark theater and saw Kim Novak in the movie about “The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders” on our first date, my first time with a young Italian woman, how I stroked her hair, its black, lustrous strands in affectionate darkness.

I nicknamed her Moll but she never came up one for me.

Three rides later, we were so near the border that we walk across a bridge at Nuevo Laredo, then into Laredo and at customs border guards separate us, Mary led away and I enter a room with five uniformed guards and show them my passport. They strip search me. For drugs? For guns? For intimidation? For political suspicion? Cannabis aroma? I grab my balls, and one checks my rectum with a flashlight, jokes about my girlfriend, Did I sleep with her? Mary tells me they did the same with her, but brave enough to curse the guard when her rough gloved fingers were abusive.

We wander around the U.S. side, uncertain of the unaccustomed noise. We finally make it to San Antonio, and Mary phones her friend who picks us up. He has an apartment and looks at me as suspiciously as the guards had, and he and Mary talk about old friends, what happened to them. Had they intercourse or just talked, I didn’t care. I flop on thick coats, using a few shirts as a pillow. They stood in the next room as drummer talked about making it someday. “You gotta keep the band together, otherwise the band breaks up faster than one night of quickie sex.”

Later, around noon, Mary tells me she’s not going back, she wants to stay in San Antonio with drummer. Mary gives me another $50 and we hug, bonk fists like revolutionaries do. Too tired and winded for my 26-year-old body, I’m vulnerable and afraid I’ll get busted. Suddenly, it’s like a four-pound hammer hitting my head---we no longer are a couple.

I hitch back to the shack, smoke hashish on the mattress, and see my double stare back at me in the windowpane. After more hits, I see Mary’s face, but it slowly dissolves.


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Author: George Sparling

Contributor: Allie Coker-Schwimmer

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Gray sky, cars honking, and a homeless man sitting against a doorway with a brown-bagged wine bottle behind him - another day in the city. He was almost your typical homeless man, with a withered face and ratty gray dreadlocks, his black skin creased by the sharp chilly fall weather of at least a decade. Now it was hot and sticky in the midsummer heat. He had an unusually cheery demeanor though, talking to all who surrounded him and not asking for anything though a hat with money sat in front of him. His left pant leg was torn, faded, and rolled up to the upper thigh revealing his prosthetic. People passed- a lady with a chic leather trench coat, a man carrying a bouquet of flowers, several youth covered in headphones or talking on cell phones. And then there was a twelve year old boy passing through slowly on his red ten-speed bicycle. He was almost your typical boy, with an LA Dodgers baseball cap and a backpack carrying what little math homework he had been assigned. He stopped in front of the vendor situated a few feet from the homeless man and ordered a blue popsicle. As he pushed the change on the counter towards the vendor, he turned to hop back onto his bike, when he noticed the man sitting in the doorway smiling despite his rotten luck. He looked at the popsicle, then at the man, and then rode his bike up in front of him.
“Hi! My name’s Manny. Like Manny Ramirez,” the boy said in a friendly and unafraid tone. He may as well have been talking to anyone he just met.
“Really? You don’t say,” the homeless man rasped. “I’m Billy.”
“Like Billy Joel!”
“Yeah, yeah! That’s not bad.”
“Would you like a popsicle, Billy?”
“Oh, thank you, thank you! That’s so nice.”
Manny handed the popsicle over to Billy who gratefully took a lick and smiled back at the boy with the few teeth he had left.
Just then a different nearby vendor came over and present Billy with a hot dog, then walked back to his stand. Apparently they were old friends.
“I love you, man!” Billy yelled. The vendor laughed.
Manny eyed Billy’s prosthetic leg but knew he shouldn’t ask.
A female cop walked up and Manny got nervous she would be angry.
“Hey Billy, how are ya?” she asked with a small smile.
“I’m alright, I’m alright. Got this young man here and that clown over there being all nice to me. It’s great.”
“Making new friends, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Well, good. I’ll be back to check on you later.” The woman walked off slowly and calmly.
Manny drank the man in through his eyes.
“It was really good to meet you, Billy,” Manny said.
“You too, you too. Thanks for the pop! You too.”
Then Manny hopped back on his bike and pedaled back to his home near the tracks.


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Currently, I am obtaining my MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University in Charlotte and live with my husband in Durham, NC. I also wrote a book that is due to be released later this year.

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Author: Allie Coker-Schwimmer