The cowboy-red lipstick pops. She draws over it again leaving a thick impasto line. Repositions the venetian glass baubles dangling mid-chest and snatches a last glance in the hall mirror ‑—spray tan deep antelope-brown— as the doorbell rings. The delivery boy hands her the flat pizza box, piping hot he says. The lady motions for him to come in but he stands firm, toes gripping the transom. Insistent, her fingers coil and uncoil as she smoothes the plunging neckline of her gold lamé silk robe. The ravelling and unravelling of thick epithelial tissue, hypnotic. Her dancing fingers gesture to the long sofa finely upholstered in chintz and rose-pink fringe, velvet pillows from the grand bazaar. She pats the cushions with a little more oomph than is reasonable, and the boy still does not budge. His hands ball up in his pockets, face slack-jawed and parboiled-white. He cringes but only slightly. An invitation? The lady’s index finger is pointy like the tentacle of a giant Humboldt squid, its powerful barbed suckers reach out to grab, grip, and tear apart her prey. Behind the bolting door: a pile of crumpled softshell jackets with high visibility reflective band, pairs of slip-resistant shoes, and red baseball caps emblazoned with delivery company logo. The tall stack of pizza boxes: Neapolitan with extra cheese, untouched. "The Lady in Apartment 2B" was published in Coffin Bell Journal October, 2023
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When the police arrive, the children are already a little calmer. Parents clustering around their offspring like a mother hen. The body draped under a beach towel. No one had noticed the splash, only the tree-swing rocking erratically and empty. A grief-stricken mother, her head bobbing in her hands. The serene Monet setting forever altered. *** Picnic was published in Microfiction Monday Magazine June 2023 The boy sprouts haystack hair above Dobby ears. He leans into every bad decision a nine-year-old can make. A handful they say. On a day like any other, he sends Tanta Sofía’s precious kitten out on a makeshift boat cobbled together with popsicle sticks and Bazooka gum, towards the middle of the lake. By the time the trembling furball is discovered, it is nitro-cold, the light whisper thin like a sweep of fresh-drawn blood. The boy waits for Tanta Sofía’s reaction. When he sees her shoulders cave, thin lips pressed tight, hand clutching her ulcerous belly, he puffs up; job well done. The following morning Tanta Sofía cringes when the boy spears a gecko with a forked twig, its toes splayed shapeless beneath his acid-green gumboots, innards oozing like a sweet meringue filled with pistachio ganache. She yanks the boy by the arm, gives him a swift whiskey-swat. Where’s your sense boy. He shrugs, sheathes his wolverine claws, and stomps off flicking the switch back into the twisted juniper thicket. Later that afternoon, the boy catwalks in low-slung dungarees, baseball cap hitched cocky, skulking around the cottage like a bad omen. The scent of fresh hay in the air. A sudden trickle of smoke, barn mousers scattering, the whiff of kerosene trailing. There is a scuttle of activity hauling buckets to douse the flames. The boy nowhere to be found. Tante Sofía’s goodwill sinking to murky depths. At dinner that evening Tanta Sofía watches not wanting to see, as the boy plunges his knife into pillowy slices of white bread, twisting and gouging. His fingers locked in a sabre grip as if practicing. His crude carving, a primordial totem she cannot decipher. She swallows hard and portions out the peas. Fear nestles, not the kind that comes in silent waves, but a roaring tsunami hell-bent on upending everything. A boy without a father, yoked with grief since the man’s untimely death in the mines. A boy beyond her reach in need of what she doesn’t have to give. She would take the boy to the baker, Tomás. A reformed lout, Tomás’s reputation stuck to him like a prison tattoo. But he would know what to do. Tomás would take the boy under his wing. He would turn him around. In the early light of dawn, Tomás prods the boy with a wooden rolling pin, inspecting his new charge. Tanta Sofía looks on, relieved. Luscious pies and tarts, bombón, flan de nata, churros con chocolate, pastelitos and empanadas, and the boy’s favourite syrupy sponge cake filled with cream and cinnamon rolled up into a cylinder drenched with rum-laced syrup and crowned with toasted cream and sugar, fill the long table and baker’s rack. The boy would learn a respectable trade. By afternoon the boy is schooled. The baker gestures for him to make his way outside to the coop. Tomás is not a patient man. He hollers down the laneway urging the boy to get on with it. Empanadas de pollo require an exact temperature for the crust to turn golden and flaky, not a minute more, not a minute less, he barks. Tomás turns back into the kitchen to spoon the herb and légumes mixture into the puff pastry, waiting for the main ingredient to arrive. The boy repeats the countdown as instructed, Uno, dos, tres, and takes a deep breath. With fists squeezed tight, the boy grips the head behind the skull with his thumb under its beak, stretches the neck downwards, at the same time pressing his knuckles into the neck vertebrae, and pulls the bird’s head back, shaking until it yields. Its limp neck hangs, thin strings of sticky-dark-red dripping on top of blue suede Nike’s. The stink immediate. The boy’s hand rushes to his nose pinching nostrils closed before nausea sets in. He did not hear the snap, he thinks to himself. Usually, the snap is the telltale sign. He would try again with the next one. Eyes gleam mixed metal. My beefy neighbour Axl who I both avoid like the plague and watch obsessively through my dining room curtains has a new ditzy blond waltzing up the front steps with him into his dingy puce-green linoleum foyer. That’s where the spectacle ends. It stops for Bruno too, the massive Cane Corso who is once again left behind in the cargo bed of his jacked-up 4×4 black-scratch pickup truck, the one with monster off-road tires that only gets driven around town and makes that god-awful racket. He is to wait. A paragon of patience. And forgiveness. And loyalty. Loyalty undeserved. OH! how I feel for that dog. The brute left standing on all fours, rooted to the corrugated metal bed steaming in the hot hot Louisiana sun, his paws near blistering; no water, no food, no indication of when the lout will return, will even remember what he left behind. The dog, although not tethered to the flatbed, never jumps ship. He just waits. In stay position. For that bastard to return. I have been on the verge of calling animal rescue many times. But self-preservation stops me cold. He would know it was me. The sun beats down hard. Long slobbery strands of coagulated saliva hang like stalactites, formed over centuries, centuries of waiting; the dog never moving. Scumble-edged clouds painted Naples yellow do not offer sufficient shade. It is sweltering out there. I fumble in the kitchen filling a wide plastic tub with cold water and ice cubes, refreshment that I fail to deliver, and go back to watching for movement from behind thick brocade curtains in my darkened empty dining room, kept dusty and ghosty like a tomb, never any dinner guests allowed not even a ditzy blond. The dog and I have a lot in common. The cruel irony; me not leaving my house, me frozen in place. Not given permission to leave. Never knowing when it will come. If it will come. — I’m rooting for Bruno. One of us should be free. *** Cane Corso was published in Halfway Down The Stairs Literary Magazine June 2023 My childhood best friend Gloria always had the inside track. One day she told me a secret that I had to promise never to tell anyone. This is the first time I have shared this privileged information. When watching My Favorite Martian, just as the program was coming to an end, but not quite when the last few commercials came on—the timing had to be perfect—you could pull the plug out from the back of the TV set, and the program would rewind and be available to play again. This was not possible with any other program, just My Favorite Martian, something to do with the celestial outer space radio waves, Gloria said. I tried several times, my parents becoming overly perturbed, but I never managed to capture that elusive recording for a repeat viewing. It never occurred to me that Gloria was mistaken, or teasing. She was always cool as a cucumber. Being six years young, what neither she nor I realized was that her instructions had been ineffective because of the inversion. The planetary inversion, I would later find out. But Gloria persisted, kept trying different combinations, until one day, in-between Brylcream’s a little dab’ll do you and Topo Gigio’s Eddie, Keesa me goo'night!, she found the right frequency and poof!, disappeared. My mother tried to convince me that Gloria’s family had unexpectedly moved across the country to Milwaukee. But I knew better. I knew exactly what had happened. And thereafter, every Sunday night when I turned on the black and white to watch My Favorite Martian, I’d wait for Uncle Martin to raise those two retractable antennae from the back of his head and become invisible. This was my cue to close my eyes wide shut and send a message telepathically to Gloria, knowing she was sure to receive it right then and there. My mother frowned, even whimpered. But some things were just beyond an adult’s capacity to understand. So I didn’t mention it again; until My Favorite Martian went off the air, and the hospital began playing reruns. It just didn’t seem right. So now, with a whirly motion of my index finger, I freeze the nurses in their spot and levitate pharmaceuticals from their rolling carts to speed myself up, landing on just the right frequency. Gloria and me forever in sync. My eyes wide shut. *** "My Favourite Martian" was published in Granfalloon: Speculative Fiction & Poetry Zine April 2023 We did not reach the water’s edge before Billy slipped beneath the surly waves. We did not watch instead of wading, stand quiet instead of yelling. There was no final tiny bob poking up through the watery veneer that we rushed to retrieve. Our hearts did not pound in our chests, did not explode with panic, regret, shame. We did not drink the elixir together, did not lose perspective, see things that did not exist. We didn’t board the plane the following day leaving our childhood friend floating up a tributary of the mighty Amazon River. Ayahuasca adventure behind us. "Dream Vacation" was published in Impspired April 2023
In the morning the window has been thrown open, last night’s storm upending the terracotta pots and herbs on the ledge. Rain has soaked the flowered banquette cushions inside. I pull the latch closed and wrap a pashmina tight around my shoulders, light the fire in the pot belly, assembling bits of kindling like Jenga. My head swimming like vichyssoise after a night of drinking—I never learn. I fill the cast iron pot and take down the steel-cut oats for a hearty warming breakfast. Lots of debris to clean up outside. I hear the crunch before I see them. A blur of mottled brown shells scuttles across the floor. My feet recoil but where to step next. More snap crackle pop underfoot. I don’t dare move. My toes crimp in their slippers. I call out to Geoffrey, but my voice is raspy, thin, hardly audible. The horde already advancing like a parade, a marching band, hissing, chirping, trilling, two-by-two around the legs of the gabled table, a constant tempo over the transom and with precision on toward the pantry door. I look for the leader, intent on extermination, follow hundreds of tiny sets of legs tippy-toeing up onto the countertop. The thick viscous trail marking the territory through a wide thoroughfare, boulevard, streets, and backroads; changing lanes and traffic patterns like Google mapping. I reach for the broom, crushing exoskeletons as I lurch. I hear Geoffrey thumping up the staircase, watch his terry bathrobe billowing, he’s running, he heard me. I gesture to the swarming infestation, Wait, Watch it. He's seen this before, he says, reminds me I should stick to a two-glass limit. **** "Horde" was published at DarkWinter Literary Magazine April, 2023 When Perry said he didn’t love her anymore, Wilhelmina moved herself into the small apartment above the garage, walled herself off and had the stairs removed. She did not want to see anyone. She was going to shut Perry out, with no opportunity to worm his way back in. She would paint, she told herself, but after the first few days, landed up sitting by the window overlooking the grey rubble in the front driveway. When the mailman came pedaling by on his 3-wheel cargo bike, Wilhelmina poked her head out of the dormer window, and in her cheeriest sing-song voice issued a hellooo-oo. When he looked up, she gave the queen’s wave. Being friendly took effort. Wilhelmina reeled up the wicker basket and retrieved the clutch of envelopes, flyers, bills, postcards, Good Housekeeping and her trusted Woman’s Day Magazine. Sinking back into the tired wingback chair, she leafed through the batch of letters, bills and adverts looking for something to perk up her mood. A single postcard bulged. She flipped it over - no message, no signature, no return address. The eye on the front though, so pretty. She tacked it to the fridge. When she passed by, it stared back. Two weeks later the mailman deposited a second postcard in the basket with the usual bits and bobs. The eye was pale, iridescent, with gossamer rings like Jupiter. She tried to get a fix on the person behind the lens. Her finger traced the tiny crow's feet, its odd feline shape, hues that changed from olive-green to burnt auburn to metallic gold. A him she decided, someone of great stature, intelligent, most definitely prosperous. A keepsake for sure. A third eye arrived weeks later, this one, radiating ultraviolet waves. The gravitational pull left her breathless. She studied the squiggly spider veins, pupil, and macula, searching for its essence. She was certain she was being courted. What else could it be. In the mirror, Wilhelmina examined her own eye—lacklustre and murky, like a joyless winter day. When was the last time she fancied herself a suitor? Her hands rushed up to adjust her pompadour, corralling stray hairs, their texture dry like cigar ash. She fingered the buttonhole on the front of her mushroom-coloured cardigan once embellished with seed pearls and fine embroidery, now frumpy and frayed. It had been so long. She could not imagine reciprocating. She yanked the postcards from the fridge, tossing them into the trash, finished with the whole affair. Within days another arrived. A burning steely-eye, angry and unforgiving. How cruel and hurtful she conceded; her lover scorned. Days passed. The afternoons, long and full of regret. She rifled through the small packages and perishables piling up in the basket, looking for a card, a message, sign, a small gesture. Her wingback chair becoming threadbare. On the night of the storm, a violent thunderclap threw open the dormer window. She watched, astonished, as a flurry of postcards swooped in like a flock of doves; a peace offering. Wilhelmina swooned. Beautiful and intensely personal, each eye more individual than any fingerprint…each imploring. Wilhelmina took a close-up with her Polaroid. Mixed-metal eyes, once pale and rheumy, sizzled. The game afoot. *** "Eye See You" was published in JAKE: The Anti-Literary Magazine, February 2023. When I get home from school the police are already parked in front of my house, amber lights screaming. My brother has pulled a knife on the housekeeper. This time she has found girlie magazines hidden under his mattress and outed him to our mother. It’s a revolving joust of humiliation and retribution. Orthodox Christian revulsion vs nonchalant pubescent privacy. She thinks she’s winning. He’s going to kill her. When the police interview me thirty years later I flash back to that day those times and Zora; my mother in her quilted housecoat and bunny-ear slippers running interference, flirting with the officers insisting it was a silly misunderstanding. Her giggles zippering up my spine. I go silent with an imperceptible moan, knowing then what was going to happen at some point down the line. I didn’t think it would take this long for them to nail him. I reply with a sober blank stare mono-syllabic words and fidget with my aching hand rubbing the space where he took my two digits. *** "Mono-syllabic Words" was published in Sage Cigarettes Magazine January 2023
A sabayon-yellow sun dangles low in the bleached-blue sky as we push through waves of goldenrod and yarrow, down onto the secluded stretch of beach. Tank top, camisole, flip-flops and espadrilles scatter on the slope of pebble and scrub brush behind us. Theo, tugging at my cut-offs while I fumble with his cargos. We lie with abandon — pleasuring, laughing, and remembering — until the shifting sun sails on through the west, leaving us to cool in the shade of the cathedral grove of giant Douglas Fir. Not since teenagers, did we savour one another in this ancient traditional territory. The tide slips back to reveal tiny fragments of petal-pink shell, black sea fan, and lace coral; forgotten secrets where sea meets sand. We don discarded clothing and wander on exploring the bedazzled, winding coastline. Stepping over intertidal pools teeming with microscopic creatures, mussels, periwinkles, urchin, and clams, and taking care to not disturb sessile purple sea stars and burrowing hermit crabs, we hold hands cherishing this spur-of-the-moment tryst. Twenty meters out from shore, two shiny black heads bob, eyes wide, whiskers-thick, displaying the distinctive v-shaped nostrils of young harbour seals. Their playful caterpillar-like hitching movements in and out of the surf; enchanting and absorbing. Reminding us of who we once were. Theo glances at me, wistful, sweet. We pause for a while to watch the pups, our backs leaning against a lattice of driftwood and timber, the assembly balancing like a Calder mobile. The moment elastic and dreamy. And then we hear it — an explosive whoosh; a huffing — the release of a burden. Then nothing. Before we dismiss the intrusion as an obscure anomaly, there is another unsettling rush. The sound echoing from west to east. We look for a lightning fissure. But the sky remains clear. Again, the sound knifes the air. Our fingers intertwine, clutch tight. And now we see it. A plume of spray discharging far in the distance. The air is impregnated thick with brine, and angst. The two seals dive, leaving us to confront the ghostly spectre alone. I twist around to charge up the embankment toward the headwaters. Theo grabs my wrist and whispers, Wait. My chest pounding. The light, spectral, thinning, eerie; everything signals we should go. It has been a decade since we last meant something to one another; now this brief sublime lingering passion tugging at us. But there is nothing calling me to follow him here. Yet I once again feel his pull, trust his practiced instinct. We trudge atop the sand in silence, traversing like hopscotch over rocks, driftwood, Japanese glass float, and felled beached timber. Fair winds rustle the brush like witches’ broom. The sky, morphing into a sober Payne’s grey draws us farther away from safe harbour. The formidable whoosh a steady refrain. As we round the rocky coastline, we see it. There, in the shallows, a colossal vantablack hulk of a leviathan, inert, save for its last drawn-out gasps of air. Anaemic and exhausted, its eye turned seaward, fate decided. Its desperate struggle and resignation over. We stand like sentries, suspended in time, helpless, as it slowly collapses under its own weight. A low sonorous wail, its last lament. It is over all too quickly. The moment thin like parchment. The beach, a silent requiem. We lose everything we love, Theo mouths. A temporary opening in the lining of the universe. The great cetacean but a memory. Our blissful afternoon as if it never happened. In the distance, whistles, clicks, low-frequency pops, and jaw claps; the light folding like origami. "The Salish Sea" was published in The Journal of Radical Wonder December, 2022. |
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