Contributor: Kelly Kusumoto

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“Here they come,” Keiko said. She was peeking through the curtains.

“Oh no.” June whispered, afraid that they might hear her.

“They’re parked in front of Michiko’s house.”

“What are they doing?”

“I can’t see too good,” Keiko said. “Go get my glasses would you?”

June crawled into the kitchen. The linoleum was cold and unforgiving compared to the beige, berber carpet of the living room. On her hands and knees, she could not see the surface of the table. She raised one arm and searched for Keiko’s glasses. As she scanned the table top blindly with her hand, she knocked down a glass of water and it shattered onto the floor.

“What are you doing?” Keiko asked.

June felt a piece of paper and then Keiko’s glasses on top of it. She pulled both of them down in her grip and crawled back to the living room.

“What’s Executive Order Nine-One-Oh-Two?” June asked as she read the heading on the paper.

Keiko put her glasses on. “It’s the law that says they can come and take us away.”

“But I don’t want to go anywhere,” June said.

“Neither do I,” said Keiko. She peeked through the curtains again. The big, green truck was blocking the front of Michiko’s house so that she couldn’t see what was going on. Suddenly, another truck pulled around the corner and was heading towards their house.

“What’s happening, Keiko?”

“Here comes another one,” she said.

“I’m so scared.”

“Me too.”

June dropped the paper and held onto Keiko’s arm. She was shaking.

They heard the sound of screeching tires and men yelling incoherently. Keiko wanted to look out the window but was too afraid. She was unfamiliar with the sound of machine guns being cocked and loaded, but the tools of war were clanking around as the men hopped out of the truck and onto the lawn.

June was petrified. She was stuck to Keiko’s arm like a leech and shaking violently as if in a trance. The hot smell of urine wafted through the room. Just then, Keiko let out a horrific shriek as she involuntarily opened the curtains. A man was standing on the other side of the window, just inches away.

“Japs!” the soldier said. “Over here!”

Two more men carrying a battering ram ran over to the door. A loud crash followed and the muffled cries of the whole neighborhood came rushing into the house. The three soldiers grabbed Keiko and June and carried them to the truck as their futile screams joined the laments of their neighbors.

In the back of the truck, wedged in with the other captives, June and Keiko cried for their mother. How she heard them above the collection of wails and caterwauling, only a mother could say. She inched her way over to them and they embraced.

“They took father and me at work. He is in a truck with all the other men,” she said. “They’re taking us to Heart Mountain. We couldn’t even pack a bag.”

“At least...” Keiko said, shaking with fear, “...we are all together.”

Their mother began to cry. Then all three of them were crying. As the truck drove down the road, their cries mixed in with everyone else’s. They would continue to cry for generations to come.


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Since falling in love with writing at the age of 12, Kelly Kusumoto has written for local entertainment newspapers and magazines and is currently pursuing his Bachelor's at Full Sail University while writing various forms of fiction in the Brooklyn, NY area.

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Author: Kelly Kusumoto

Contributor: Francis Harrison

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If you’ve ever taken Chicago Public Transportation, or any public transportation for that matter, you must know that there are some real characters. People with peculiar colored hair and people that are so interesting they carry conversations with themselves seem to be littered throughout public transportation systems. Now I have nothing against these people and actually enjoy their company; they add something different to life. On the El to the appoet holiday party, I should have noticed the foreshadowing that a blue and green haired elderly woman would give.

The party itself wasn’t so strange. Good friends and colleagues meeting for the first time without a computer screen as a barrier was an uplifting experience. It really made all the team that works so hard to make appoet what it is, realize that we aren’t just doing it for our followers and ourselves, but for each other. Drinks were emptied and stories shared until it came time for myself, TJ Vanek, another staff writer, and a friend of ours to head home to the suburbs.

The El at this time was barren and we shared the entire car with two other individuals who obviously had partaken in certain activities like ourselves. After waiting a short time for the red line traveling north, we got off to transfer lines. Waiting more than twenty minutes is incredibly uncommon and I soon come to the sobering thought that all the trains had stopped running. We were stranded.

We called relatives and called friends but no one answered us at 2 a.m. and we quickly realized we needed a cab. But as the destination was still about a forty minute car journey and we’re all broke college students, it proved an issue. We talked and pleaded with three or four cab drivers to make the trek. Each driver in the taxi rank was to charge us an insane amount or simple denied us any service. That is all the drivers except the last car.

He wore a tattered hat and was scarfing down a subway sandwich that made the three of us drool. He told us he didn’t want to but after some persistent badgering, he relented. Not only did he offer us a much cheaper ride than his counterparts, but offered us one of the best taxi journey’s I’ve had the pleasure of taking. I took my seat in the front and shook the man’s hand. It pains me to see so many people just hop in the back and pretend like the cab driver is robotic, incapable of human interaction.

His name was Moses and he asked us what we were doing in Chicago. We explained a bit about appoet and he promised to check it out; so I started asking him questions. I asked him about his life, his marriage and his two children. He was more than happy to talk and tell us how he and his wife met and even shed some of his elderly wisdom on love to a drunken college student talking about how he wanted to text his ex. It was really quite wonderful.

The ride was filled with laughter, jokes and even banter as the three of us felt we had known Moses for years; that he wasn’t just a cab driver but a friend, a colleague. If Moses hasn’t been there to drive us back to the suburbs, we still would be walking back right now. I don’t know whether I enjoyed that ride because I was in high spirits after spirits, whether I was relieved to be going home, or if it was the fact that Moses reminded me that there are good people out there. He saw a group of individuals in need and made it his goal to fix that need. The world needs more people like Moses. I can only hope the three of us entertained him enough so that he was glad he drove us. I think we did.


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Author: Francis Harrison

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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Harry Tompkins hadn't been to church for many years. He still believed in God but going to church didn't interest him. Then on a warm Saturday afternoon in August, he met Jayne, a lovely woman, at a company picnic. He liked Jayne a great deal and he thought he might improve his chances with her if he accepted her invitation to go to church on Sunday morning. Jayne had a way about her that Harry liked. Besides she looked like a woman who would bear good children.

"What time should I pick you up?" he asked her. She told him 9:30 would be fine. "That will give us plenty of time to get to the ten o'clock Mass."

The priest's sermon, it turned out, was about the importance of forgiveness and that was a topic Harry knew something about. He had not made a lot of enemies in life but the ones he had made, he cherished even if their infractions had occurred decades ago. Forgiving them would never enter his mind. Enemies are enemies, Harry thought, but he could understand where the priest was coming from.

Harry had spent many years of a considerable education in Catholic schools. And one of the basic mottoes in those schools was to forgive your enemies as you would want Jesus to forgive you. He didn't want to be disrespectful to the Son of God but Jesus had grown up in Nazareth, after all, which was quite a bit different than Harry's neighborhood in Chicago back in the 1950s. In Harry's youth, fights were not a daily occurrence but a week seldom went by without at least one good fight occurring. Fights were always fair back then because to fight dirty was the lowest thing someone could do. You would be branded for life as a dirty fighter. If you couldn't get the job done with your fists, then don't fight is the way Harry looked at it.

Chief among Harry's enemies from the old neighborhood were Elmer and John. They were two boys, older than Harry by a couple of years. Decades ago they beat the Hades out of him in an alley in Chicago. Harry at that time was in the 8th grade and he was going home from school when he got jumped. The nun had been happy with Harry that day, even if that was a rare occurrence, because he had won the all-school 8th grade spelling bee, no small feat in a class where verbal skills outdistanced math skills. Besides, it was usually a girl who won the spelling bees. But Harry could always spell. He'd look at a word once and it was memorized. This time he won because he could spell "ukulele" and Barbara O'Brien, "Miss Goody Two Shoes," couldn't even come close and had to settle for second.

His enemies Elmer and John were high school sophomores the day they pounded Harry, who though big for his age was still only an 8th grader. Elmer and John were small for sophomores but the two of them together were more than Harry at the time could handle. It was a beating Harry never forgot, perhaps because he had won all the other fights he had ever had in grammar school and would have later on in high school. Besides, it sure wasn't easy explaining to his parents that night how he had managed to get a black eye and split lip coming home from school.

"I pay the nuns at St. Nick's good tuition," his father had said, "to make sure you grow up right." He wanted to go down to the school and discuss the matter with the nuns but Harry somehow talked him out of it. He explained that the kids who beat him up didn't go to St. Nick's. In fact, Harry said, they looked like Lutherans. His father said to tell him if Harry ever saw the boys again.

Two years later, when Harry was a sophomore in high school, Elmer and John were seniors at a different high school. Harry was now 6'1" and about 180 lbs. He'd been lifting weights on a regular basis, hoping to gain weight for the football team. Elmer and John, on the other hand, were still relative runts, perhaps 5'6" or 5'7" and maybe 140 lbs at best. Harry hadn't seen either one of the boys since his throttling. But he had always remembered the beating and he assured himself that if he ever had a chance to make things right, he would do so.

It so happened that around that time Harry met a nice girl at a school dance and it turned out that meeting her led to renewing old acquaintances with Elmer. The girl's name was Margaret Mary and she lived in a wealthy neighborhood. She invited him to a graduation party that her parents had arranged. She didn't know that Harry was only a sophomore.

Harry decided to go to the party because he liked the girl despite her living in a fancy neighborhood, one that he had visited only once before when his high school basketball team had defeated the team from Margaret Mary's school. Besides, Harry remembered that Margaret Mary had said her parents had hired a caterer to provide the food. That sure beat hot dogs, the main fare at any party in his neighborhood.

There were a lot of kids at the party that Saturday night and they were all from different neighborhoods. At first, Harry saw no one he knew, certainly no one from his blue-collar neighborhood, which was just as well because with him in a suit and tie he would have had to take a lot of razzing if any of his friends spotted him. Later in the evening, however, Elmer walked in, still short and skinny but decked out in a nice seersucker suit.

Harry recognized Elmer immediately but Elmer did not recognize him. When Elmer decided to go outside to have a cigarette, Harry followed him. He let Elmer take a few drags before he walked up and asked Elmer how life was treating him now that graduation was near.

"You going to college, Elmer?"

Elmer still didn't recognize Harry. It was no wonder, then, that he never saw the uppercut coming. Down went Elmer with Harry on top of him. Many punches later, one of Elmer's teeth lay on the sidewalk and he was gushing blood from his left eye. The other kids heard the ruckus and came poring out of the party but Harry, by that time, had taken off. Elmer had gotten his, Harry figured. There was no need to hang around and complicate matters.

Besides, Harry figured the cops would be scouring the neighborhood looking for a kid that fit his description so he spent the five bucks his mother had given him to take a cab home. He had never told Margaret Mary his real name, just that his nickname was "Skip." She wouldn't have been able to tell the cops where to find him. And he didn't think Elmer would remember who he was.

And so that was one reason why in church that Sunday with the lovely Jayne--at least thirty years after pummeling Elmer--Harry found the priest's sermon on forgiveness resonating. At age 46, he had acquired a couple of college degrees, had held a good job for many years, but had never met a woman he wanted to marry. It wasn't that he hadn't met some lovely women over the years. He had met a number of them and enjoyed them all but found them disposable.

"Most women are like Kleenex," he'd once told a friend who had inquired why he had never married. But Jayne seemed different. He thought right way she'd make a good wife.

So Harry listened to the sermon and even prayed a little. He remembered all the words to the Lord's Prayer. Having been raised Catholic, he knew when to kneel, stand and sit which can be confusing to someone not Catholic attending a Mass. He also thought his prayerfulness might impress Jayne, who was obviously a very spiritual person. But he didn't join her in going up the aisle for Holy Communion because he had been living in mortal sin for years and as a Catholic he knew he should not receive Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin. He might be a sinner, Harry thought, but he wasn't about to commit a sacrilege to impress Jayne. A few rules even Harry wouldn't break.

After Mass, Harry and Jayne went to a nice restaurant for brunch. She took the opportunity to ask him how he liked the Mass and the sermon--or as she called it, "the homily."

Harry said he liked the Mass in that it brought back memories of his younger years in Catholic schools but the sermon, he said, had upset him a little.

"Why," Jayne asked.

Harry then told her in great detail the whole story about Elmer and John beating him up when he was in grammar school. He also told her how he had managed two years later to pay Elmer back with a good thrashing at an otherwise nice party.

That's when Jayne asked him if thumping Elmer wasn't enough. Couldn't he now forgive Elmer and John for beating him up?

Harry said that maybe, just maybe, he could forgive Elmer at some point in his life but not now, even though it was 30 years later. Besides he still hadn't found John. He had even thought about hiring a private detective to get his address. Harry didn't care what city John lived in because that's why they have planes and trains. And as he told Jayne over their last cup of coffee, when he did find John he would beat the hell out of him, worse than he had beaten Elmer at that party.

"I'll bounce his filthy skull off the concrete," Harry told Jayne, wiping the corners of his mouth with his napkin, "if the opportunity presents itself. And I'm pretty sure that some day it will. What goes around comes around. Even Hitler found that out."

He wouldn't kill John, Harry assured Jayne, when she finally came back from the lady's room. "But if possible I'll leave the schmuck laying there in a puddle of blood, wishing he were dead."

Schmuck was a Yiddish word, of course, and he wasn't sure if Jayne knew what it meant. It would be just as well if she didn't. Harry seldom used the word but if he started to get riled up about something, it sometimes fell out of his mouth.

If he got the chance to meet John again and settle matters, Harry told Jayne, then afterward it might be time to talk about forgiving him and Elmer but he'd have to give it some thought. He didn't like to make commitments if he wasn't sure he could keep them. Then Harry drove Jayne home and told her he'd like to see her again. Jayne smiled but didn't really say anything except good-bye when she got out of the car.

As time went on, Harry never saw Jayne again even though he continued to call her for several months. She was never at home, it seemed, or maybe she was a hard sleeper.

Finally Harry quit calling her and started going out again with different women.

"The flavor of the month," as he told another friend.

He never found another woman like Jayne but as Harry liked to say, "any port in a storm."


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Donal Mahoney has had work published in various print and electronic publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/

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Author: Donal Mahoney

Contributor: Kathryn Broussard

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Her house looked like a butterfly.
That was all she could think as she stood in front of the only home she had ever known. Bright, unnaturally blue flames licked the clouds scudding through the night sky overhead. They blackened the stone, burnt the wood paneling, singed the moon. The air was filled with an acrid scent that reminded her faintly of sour milk and campfires. And there was that other scent, that metallic scent which brought to mind visions of dark alleys and shadows, claws and red eyes. The smell of blood.
Normally one would not notice the faint tinge, what with the roaring flames and the campfire smell. But she knew the scent well. It had haunted her life since she was a toddler. It made her stomach churn and her knees tremble. It was a bad smell. It was the smell of despair.
Sparks flew into the sky as a burning wall fell with a giant roar into the glowing wreckage at the center of the fire. She grasped the hem of her shirt as she watched her life burn. Where was the blood? There were no bodies. There was no death, except for the great burning butterfly before her. Her eyes flitted across the dark grass. Nothing. Was she hurt? She couldn't tell. The sight before her and the smells bombarding her nose were combining to form a swirling black pit in her mind, spinning around and around and releasing nothing that passed by. So there was no pain, no emotion, no thought. Just the butterfly, and the blood.


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Kathryn is a college-bound high school senior living in Texas. In her spare time she enjoys reading anything she can get her hands on, and when she runs out of things to read she turns to caring for her small community of hermit crabs.

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Author: Kathryn Broussard

Contributor: Elizabeth Brown

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I couldn’t resist, so we broke the rules. I seduced my wife, and they seized my family.
“We must be cursed,” I said. “It’s the end of us.” In one single moment, my life was teetering downhill, fast, faster— unhinged like a wagon let loose or a bike with no brakes.
“Why do you talk like that, Eliot? We are certainly not cursed.”
“We did it to ourselves and our future generations.” I feigned confidence. Inside I shook with trepidation, sadness—all of it wrapped into one volatile mess. My heart pumped, temples pulsated. Time was short.
“You’re not making sense, Eliot. We have each other, a beautiful baby, food, shelter.”
“We are not free, Mona. Don’t you want your freedom? What good is any of this without freedom? Department of Environmental Factions, DEF, controls us. Don’t you see that?”
She ignored me, kissed my chest, her tongue licking parts that made me forget about freedom. She reached up and put her hand against my mouth. I pushed her away. No, not again. The clock was ticking.
“Let’s do it. Please, Mona. Let’s escape!”
“Just stop, Eliot. You’re scaring me with this kind of talk.”
“I’ve been reading, Mona, I’ve been reading a lot. I found these old magazines from over half a century ago in a box in the attic.”
“Always so full of drama aren’t you? What do you want me to say, Eliot? It’s the past, gone. We have to think of the present. How can you be so foolish? How dare you risk our lives?”
“What lives? What about democracy and freedom? We have no life, no liberty here. We are prisoners. What we just did—it’s the end of us, Mona. Don’t you know that? DEF holds unlimited power; they can seize you at any moment.”
“Stop, Eliot. Stop, please. There’s no point to it. Others have gotten away with it. We’ll be fine.”
“We are not fine. We need to get out of here now, Mona.”
“Are you sure? Maybe you want us to be caught like Shirley’s husband. Maybe that’s it. She knew. She told me he was going to get rid of her. He made sure the devices were on and she was gone the next morning. How convenient. How convenient for all you bored husbands. Now he’s got himself a new wife, ten years his junior. She sank down into the bed, covered her face in her hands. “Help me, Eliot. I feel ill. Is it worth it? Is she worth it? I thought you loved us.”
I loathed the sight of my wife. She was brainwashed; she would never get it. She was the new society, weakened, subjugated, ruled by fear--it knocked us out; we lost our minds, teetered on the edge of insanity.
Not me. Not anymore. I slipped out my shell, had an epiphany. I caught a glimpse in the attic, in the books and magazines. I wanted more.
Ten years since Esther, the big one, the storm that altered our world. The moon, the one constant, cast a blue pall over our bodies.
“What have we done? I love you, Jesus, I love you.” Mona, her nakedness, her breath, finger tips up and down my arm. Elise stirred and whimpered in the bassinet.
“Sh. I love you, too, Eliot. We love each other. That’s all. How could that be a crime? I think you want to leave me. I think you’re tired of me. I don’t know anymore. I can’t trust anyone, not even my husband.”
“We made love, Mona. That’s okay in a normal world. We don’t live in a normal world. They can see us right now. DEF—they are outside the window and on the ceiling and in the fucking walls! Believe me. For God’s sake, Mona, they’re going to seize you and our baby. I don’t know when.” I was sobbing, a pitiful animal. The truth stuck like knives in my chest. She stared at me, blankly—eyes like black dots, unaffected, programmed. Her complexion was ghostly, ashen, her aura a flimsy veil of misty coral—morose, displaced.
“You’re lying. It’s a ploy. You don’t want me anymore. Just say it, damn you. Just tell me the truth, for once. Don’t do this to me, Eliot. Don’t do this to your baby. It makes no sense, no sense at all. You’re a viper—a monster, to do this to your wife and baby.”
She was in a deep, dark denial. She’d never get it until she was seized and our baby was ripped out of her arms. And then it would be too late. I couldn’t reach her—so many were unreachable. Maybe DEF was tainting the food or water supply. Maybe we were all being poisoned.
“Mona, it is a crime. You know it. I know it. Passion is a crime.”
A siren sounded outside. Mona froze.
“What now?” I felt my pulse quicken, my throat tighten. This was it. “What do we do now, Mona?”
“Sh. Keep your voice down. You’ve done it this time. Go ahead. Go to your bitch. I feed Elise, that’s what I do. I’m her mother.”
I watched her pull away, reach for the baby. Her long sleek body stretched across the bed like a sun spreading over the horizon. And it hit me like a rogue wave, pulling me down to the deepest, darkest region, the stygian depths. I gasped, panicked, grabbed her arm like a drowning swimmer, pressed her into me. “I’m sorry, Mona. I’m so sorry.” My voice cracked, pained, broken. I wanted air, death.
Mona cradled my head with one arm and held Elise to her breast with the other. “Please don’t leave me, Eliot.”
I swore I’d never fall asleep. I swore it.
I woke to an empty bed. The last thing I remember was the sound of Elise’s suckling.
They did it— drugged me so I slept.
That’s how they did it.


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Elizabeth Brown is a native of Connecticut. Her short fiction is published or forthcoming in BareBack Magazine, Empty Sink Publishing, TreeHouse, Bartleby Snopes, Contraposition, and Sleet Magazine's spring edition (2014). She studied writing at the University of Connecticut under Wally Lamb and Joan Joffe Hall and is a two time recipient of the1997 and 1998 Jennie Hackman Memorial Award for Short Fiction.

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Author: Elizabeth Brown

Contributor: Dov Lieber

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Some start with a light shining ‘round them. Deeply you know this light will dim. Then there are those who earn their light, ‘round whom one day you look upon them expecting the usual grey, and they’re enwrapped with a lovely glow. An unfathomable universe squeezed into a warm body. Whence comes this light? You’ve been a blind fool. Destiny is revealed. Here, within earned light, not of sun but soul, you find her.

Just the image of her dancing shadow, and you’re made dizzy. The outline, it’s rippling curves, the grace of her long auburn hair. You hear her voice, soft like rain. You ache with pain. You feel she will never love you in this way. How could she? You are the coal and she the fire. But you’ve always thought yourself this way: whomever you love must be better than you.

So you sit down in the circle by the fire across from her. You smile to an at-best-acquaintance. You burn with one desire. You look up and see the flame illuminating her face. You ask: How does her beauty ever-increase? It’s a stupid question. It’s not her but you. You turn from the fire to the stars. They twinkle and you shudder. Yes you’re afraid but that doesn’t mean you need to be a coward. Brother, there is time. Stiffen your neck. Walk ‘round the bonfire. Careful not to fall. Now, now is the time. Strike now, while the iron is hot and before the wood is cold wet ash, and while her heart is softened by song and wine. Don’t panic because there is no room next to her. You can move mountains for her, and now all you need to do is move one person. Tell him that he's being asked for by the cute girl in jean overalls standing alone on the other side. Don’t let him question it. Help him up. It happened fast. Now there is a small space by her. The smooth skin of her thigh is exposed and you’re afraid to touch it with your own. Sit. Just don’t sit and say nothing. But don’t start to talk immediately. Open up a small mystery between you. Stay your hand. Fight the gravity of your feelings. I know you want to slip your fingers into hers. For your fingers to click, first your hearts must.

She shuffles her feet and you haven’t said a word yet. Will she leave you to wallow in the dust and heat? You consider sacrificing yourself to any of the 35 fire gods. Out of despair you consider commenting on the moon’s beauty. Don’t say anything about the moon. The moon’s implied. Instead speak of the desert. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know anything about the desert. It contains all.

And with a bowed head as if talking to dirt, you say, ‘Good night for a bonfire, don’t ya think?”


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Dov Lieber was born and raised in Boca Raton, Florida. After studying the history of the Middle East and English literature at the University of Maryland, and a brief stint working as a journalist in New York city, he moved his life to the state of Israel. He currently serves in the Israel Defense Forces.

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Author: Dov Lieber

Contributor: Kristina England

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Darlene looked up at the bird house, then at the ground.

Ten very dead birds were piled at its base.

Her mouth stayed downward drawn as her husband joined her.

"Honey, he didn't know," Sam said, pulling his gardening gloves on.

"He's fifteen. How the heck didn't he know?"

"No one ever told him."

"It's common knowledge."

"Oh please. Remember that story you told me?" Sam said with a wry smile.

"What story?"

"About your attempt at making chocolate pudding at sixteen."

Darlene bit her lip.

"Remind me again what happened?"

"I used water instead of milk. But I didn't kill anything."

"Yeah, but you had instructions on the back of the box. Rice doesn't come with a label that says, 'Warning: Kills birds.'"

"Why do you have to be so... so..."

"Logical?"

"Yes."

"Well, someone has to," he said with a wink. "Now how about you put on some gloves and help me bury these poor things?"


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Kristina England is a Virgo residing in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her poetry and fiction is published or forthcoming in Extract(s), Gargoyle, New Verse News, The Story Shack, The Quotable, Tipton Poetry Journal, and other magazines.

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Author: Kristina England

Contributor: Samantha Eaton

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It’s something you say thousands of times in the course of your life, but most of the time you don’t really mean it.

You didn’t mean it when you spilt your coffee all over the nice white table cloth at lunch. You didn’t mean it when you ran into that lady with her arms full of files. You didn’t mean it when you stepped on your friend’s foot.

However, you do mean it when you say it now. You look to your right and you look back behind you at the three sets of wide eyes that belong to your friends.

You all brace yourselves as you feel the car move on its own accord, or maybe the ice beneath was pushing the car off the road. The slim shoulder isn’t enough to stop you, your friends, and your car from tipping over the edge. Then you are in free fall, and you have never felt so trapped in all your life. Through the windshield, you watch the sky and the icy mountain stuck in an endless spin-cycle.

It could have been hours or it could have been seconds that you were tumbling, but it doesn’t matter because, though it really isn’t your fault, it is.

Are the lives’ of your friends replaying before their eyes? Did you remember to check if everyone was securely fastened in their seats before you took the car out of park?

Suddenly, the car crashes to a stop, tire-side down. You don’t yet feel the cold slowly seeping into the car because you are still wondering if you are alive.

You turn and check for the well-being of your friends before you check yourself. You can’t hear anything but a slow ringing in your ears. Or maybe you cannot hear because someone was screaming too loud.

Through the newly broken windshield, you look out and notice that the snow is still gently falling, as if nothing had happened at all.


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I am an undergraduate student at the University of Northern Iowa. I love both reading and writing. I like sharing my work with others in hopes that they enjoy it as much as I do.

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Author: Samantha Eaton

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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Tim Ryan was the smartest kid in the room--in his classroom, that is--in 8th grade back in 1952. And that was no small feat because that classroom was full of girls who studied hard all the time. The boys were less diligent and didn't normally score as high as the girls on tests. But Tim Ryan usually scored 100% on tests. He had already won an academic scholarship to one of the finest private high schools in Chicago. His only flaw was poor handwriting.

The nuns who taught at St. Nicholas were hard on students with poor penmanship. It was invariably the boys who had this problem. And the remedy, which seldom worked, was to have those with poor handwriting sit for an hour after school and practice an approach called the Palmer Method.

But there was a much bigger problem in 1952 than poor penmanship. It was a near epidemic of polio and tuberculosis that hit more than a few children in Chicago. St. Nicholas School was no exception. Out of roughly 500 students, at least one child ended up in an iron lung for life and others had a chronic limp or a withered arm as a result of polio.

Tim Ryan didn't get polio but he did get tuberculosis. In 1952 there was no cure or vaccination for polio, and treatment for tuberculosis wasn't always effective.

Kids who had polio shuffled back and forth from doctor's offices to hospitals. That was not the case with tuberculosis. Kids who caught TB were sent immediately to a large public sanitarium to be treated with others who had the same disease. It was a mandatory quarantine. That's what happened to Tim Ryan, the smartest kid in his 8th grade.

"I don't know what we'll do without Timmy," Mrs. Ryan said. "We can't even visit him."

Tim Ryan had no visitors for the months he was in the infectious stage. Eventually his quarantine was lifted and his family went to see him. His brother came to school the next day and said Tim was okay but very thin. The doctors had no idea how long he would be in the sanitarium but his classmates could now visit him without risk of contracting the disease.

The sanitarium was many miles away--at least two long bus rides lasting more than an hour and a half. Back then, most fathers worked all day and usually took the family car to work, provided the family could afford a car.

Not too many mothers drove cars back then, at least not in that lower-middle-class blue collar neighborhood of mostly immigrant families. Buses were the transportation of choice if you had to go out of the neighborhood.

One kid in the class had traveled often on the buses that went past Tim's sanitarium. Billy Gallagher had to go see his orthodontist once a month to make certain the braces on his teeth were intact and were doing some good.

Billy's teeth stuck out so far that one of the nuns got tired of looking at him and made arrangements for him to get care. It was a large expense for Billy's family but the care was a relief to his mother who figured no one would marry him unless something was done about his teeth. But as far as his little sister was concerned, Billy's teeth were a big help to him when the family had corn on the cob for supper.

It fell to Billy Gallagher to organize a group of classmates to take the bus trip to see Tim. The group, all boys, went on All Saints Day, when the public schools had classes but Catholic schools did not.

"Billy, what are we going to say to Tim after we ask how he's doing," said Larry Moore.

Larry spoke for all the boys in the sense that Tim was not one of the regulars, so to speak. Tim studied all the time while the other boys were out playing sports and engaging in simple mischief on occasion.

"Well, we can tell him how things are going at school," Billy said. "He wouldn't be surprised to learn that a girl has won all the Friday spelling bees since he got sick. And we can ask him to name the capitals of all the states in America. That will take him a few minutes at least. And then maybe we can ask him to name the capital of Bulgaria. Stuff like that. He'll probably have all the answers but it will give him a chance to talk. Make him feel better."

Although Tim was quick with an answer to almost anything, his specialty was to ask esoteric questions that sometimes would stump the nuns and give his classmates a quiet chuckle.

Tim liked to examine the quirks of life and try to figure them out. Once he was sent home from school for submitting a question in writing that he didn't think his classmates were old enough to hear.

"That's a disgusting question, Timothy," Sister Mary William said. "Take your books and go home for the day. We'll see you again tomorrow, young man, and there better be no more foolishness or I'll call your parents."

It was a sunny morning when the 12 boys paid their 25 cent bus fare and got on the 59th Street bus and rode it for half an hour. Then they transferred to the Pulaski Street bus and rode that for another hour till they got off at Belmont Avenue on the far north side. They could see the huge sanitarium but it took them at least five minutes to walk to the building.

The nuns had insisted they wear their blue shirts and school ties so they would look presentable. The receptionist was surprised to see them since no one had called to say they were coming. But in light of their long trip, she got permission for the boys to see Tim even though he supposed to be taking his afternoon nap.

"How you guys doin'," Tim shouted from his bed as soon as he saw his classmates. He felt a far greater affinity for them than they did for him since he knew he was the odd boy out in that he preferred books to sports and movies.

It wasn't easy being the smartest kid in the room and maybe only Tim knew that. He tried his best to interact with the others but it only seemed to work when he'd ask one of the nuns an odd question during class.

Billy Gallagher told Tim the boys had a bet as to whether he could name the capitals of all the states. Tim rattled them off in about a minute. He also named the capitals of several European countries before the kids could think of no more countries to ask him about.

"C'mon, you have to have more questions than that. I've been out of school for two months and I'm a little rusty. If you can't think of anything else to quiz me on, I'll quiz you guys. I been saving a question till I got home to look it up in the encyclopedia because Sister Mary William got so mad about it she made me leave school early the day I asked it. I even put it in writing in a sealed envelope. Maybe one of you guys will know the answer."

There wasn't a boy in the group who thought any of them could answer a question Tim couldn't answer. But he was clearly in charge of the visit now and it was too early to leave and go home. So one of them said, "Go ahead, Tim. What's the question. Maybe one of us will know the answer."

Tim asked them to gather in a circle around his bed because he didn't want the nurses to hear him. This was not a question you would ask a nurse any more than a nun. Tim said that he couldn't even ask his parents.

When all the boys had gathered around, Tim took a final look around the room and saw no nurses in sight. So he let the question fly.

"Fellas, why is it every time you take a crap you also pee but every time you pee you don't always take a crap. Answer me that, will you? I've been trying to figure that out for years. I thought Sister would know the answer. Instead she threw me out of class."

The boys were puzzled by the question but had to admit Tim had made a valid point. This had been their experience as well in life although they had never analyzed the phenomenon the way Tim had. He was a deep thinker.

None of them had an answer but Ralphie promised to let Tim know if he ever crapped without peeing at the same time. Then the other boys chimed in and said they would keep an eye out for any exception to the rule as well, although they didn't use those words exactly.

That was pretty much how the visit ended. The boys shook hands with Tim and said they hoped he would come back to school soon.

Tim did, in fact, return to school two months later and even graduated on time. But he wasn't able to start high school the following September. Eventually he did go to high school and graduate. But he was too weak, his parents said a few years later at his wake, to go to college despite full scholarships awarded by two universities.

Along with polio, tuberculosis took a terrible toll on a number of students in the class of 1952 at St. Nicholas School. Today doctors have a solid medical response to both diseases. But in some parts of the world both diseases are prominent again and for one reason or another, effective medications and treatment are not made available to those in need.

If he were still alive, Tim Ryan might have a question or two about that.


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Donal Mahoney has had work published in various print and electronic publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/

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Author: Donal Mahoney

Contributor: Chris Sharp

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When U.S. Marine Sergeant Ozzie Oldfield and his ruined leg came back from Afghanistan, he thought of the wounded limb as a little stranger on the plane. The little stranger wasn’t there for good times or fine conversation or entertainment, though. In Ozzie’s younger years, his legs working together earned him years of pure pleasure in most of the running sports. But now he felt stopped from even running toward a tennis ball.
The IED came out of nowhere and turned into pain the second it got into the right leg. Three men with Ozzie had been less wounded as their reinforced Cougar armored monster was determined to stay intact no matter what. Everyone inside was lucky, just extremely fortunate young guys. Ozzie was simply happy for all of them,
After being discharged and moving back into his father’s duplex, Ozzie settled into walking around with a cane. A new life followed with nearly a year of taking operations and physical therapy. In the end of all that, his black cane became “my most reliable helpmate.” When Ozzie articulated such thoughts to himself, he brought his cane into bed with him, and started sleeping with his hand on it. It was one of those things he could do now that “no one was watching.”
Ozzie found himself sharing almost exactly the bachelorhood of his father. The two were left alone after Ozzie’s brother moved out into a new life. Years before, the mother moved to Heaven on the momentum of cancer spreading from her chest. Now the father called Ozzie “Sarge” and was clinging to a son as the last hope of a family life.
“I can help you into a good workout club, Sarge, to stay enriched during days when not much else is happening here. I’ll get a three-month membership for you.”
“You don’t have to do that, Dad.”
“Get some new nourishment into your life,” the old man went on, oblivious to any idea but his own as he went out again.
Then, whenever Ozzie had the place to himself, he started with his daily walking exercises. He practiced lining his right leg up with his cane when he stepped, to minimize both the weight and the pain on the leg. He would rather practice inside than in the town, after he had been such a two-legged sports star at one time.
But there was too much quietness in the old duplex since Ozzie got back. That was corrected to a degree when he struck up his old friendship with the guitar of his high school days. The guitar had always put music in the center of quietness.
His goal was still to use three strings to create good, silvery chords. The pick couldn’t do it, so he threw it into the garbage and used his fingers. The fingers also fell short, but they came closer. He came a little nearer every week to creating true silvery chords.
He was happy enough with his progress to keep his cane off his bed, to be replaced at night with the guitar.
One Sunday morning the father asked Ozzie if he wanted to attend church with him. Ozzie hadn’t even heard of his father ever attending church.
“That’s all right, Dad. No thanks.”
“The reason I ask, this church has put together a group of guitar singers for its music.”
“No, Dad. I’m good.”
The next morning, Ozzie decided to walk off the feeling that his isolation was driving his father into even accepting God.
He walked for nearly a mile, hobbling on his cane with every step. He arrived at the shopping mall where his neighborhood bought practically everything it used.
Even with a cane, after a time he would begin walking with the full weight of his pain going through his right leg. People looked at him as if discovering a celebrity, staring right at the pain in his face, the grimaces and winces that he wondered could be turned into practiced rock ‘n roll snickers.
A young woman who could have been a high school classmate in flip-flops and bright-tempered ready-to-wear walked right at him, as if stepping through her bedroom, like the cars around her were just bedroom furniture.
“Good morning,” he said to her.
He stopped.
“Could you please accept on faith my taking you to lunch today?” he asked.
“Just out of nowhere, huh? I don’t think so.”
“I just have a hunkering to go to a good restaurant today, that one there.” He pointed to a place that looked good.
“Have you by chance been in the service?”
“Yes. Why?”
She pushed her hand to him, away from his cane. “Thank you,” she said, “for your service to our country.”
He shook her hand. “My service is over,” he said. “Today I’m out and about to organize a band.” He was telling her the most current truth he knew. He was already forming his most serious thoughts about organizing a musical group. It would use all the VA money the government sent him while he started making an income from live-action performances and thoughts of beauty.
She looked straight into his eyes. At the same moment he felt something happen like a pack of paparazzi at an Ozzie Oldfield rock concert trying to capture her expression for future editions.
Some years later, when a fellow jammer asked how he had met his wife, Ozzie said she was like an IED that came out of nowhere and then she got stuck to him.


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Chris Sharp has several short stories in the archives of Linguistic Erosion, Yesteryear Fiction and Weirdyear. His most popular Internet fiction is listed in Google: Short stories by Chris Sharp

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Author: Chris Sharp