He ushered me in from the cold and I made sure to stomp the snow from the soles of my shoes on the entry rug. The lobby was dim due to the maroon carpeting and the oak wall paneling fixed with only two sconces. Our voices seemed muffled as we exchanged words about my travels and the beautiful state of the museum. He shook my hand warmly, clasping it in his leather gloved hands before taking my coat and bag from my shoulders in a welcoming gesture and offered me a beverage.

“No, thank you, Mr. Wallace,” I declined, eager to begin my tour.

“Please, just call me Wallace,” he said with a jovial laugh, and I smiled as well, remembering that his full name was Wallace M. Wallace.

My host stopped me by the register to sign my name in the guest book, commenting on my penmanship. He never let the conversation falter, filling every pause before it could turn awkward. He was quite good at entertaining, practice from the long years he spent running his museum. It was open every day of the year except one—a date that didn’t align with any holiday or observation that I knew. Despite being located high in the remote mountains of Askalla, he told me that the museum saw a steady stream of visitors year-round.

“Even in the winter months—like yourself!” my host said and as he let out another of his barking laughs, his teeth flashed white and sharp.

I was the only visitor that day. And despite having year-round visitors, the museum’s reputation was shrouded in mystery. No matter who I talked to, I couldn’t get an exact response of what the museum actually held. The topic was often skirted when I brought it up and I soon found it hard to tell what was fact and what were flying rumors.

He launched into the history of the museum: how his great grandfather built it by hand originally as his mansion before filling it up with oddities from his world travels.

I was surprised that even after traveling to nearly every forgotten corner of the world; deep into jungles on foot, high into platous in a hot air balloon, even the bottom of the ocean in a submarine, he had built his mansion here, where the nearest town wasn’t for hundreds of miles, the sky was always dark, and the air thin and frigid.

I noticed that as he talked he’d lick his lips every few words, like a snake’s flickering tongue. I was transfixed and missed much of his speech until he said “The museum awaits us!” and turned to lead me through an archway, pushing aside the heavy curtain that obscured what lay beyond.

If the lobby was dim, the first exhibition room was positively dark. I squeezed my eyes shut several times hoping to induce better sight but I resorted to squinting and instinctively moving toward the only source of light. A giant tank in the middle of the room emitting a green glow.

“He’s estimated to be 213 years old,” Wallace said proudly. At first I couldn’t find the creature in the tank, my eyes searched the murky water. Then, once I realized that what I was staring at was in fact the creature, it took me another moment to understand what I was looking at.

It was a turtle, or turtlesque. The massive thing had the pointed face and an arched shell of a snapper and was covered in mossy algae that seemed not to be growing on but rather growing from the creature. The specimen’s eyes were clearly gone, replaced with mushy white sockets.

“We start our tour with the aspidochelone^[1] because it was the first of my great grandfather’s live specimens to the museum. Taken from a river deep in the Gyte Jungle^[2]. ”

The turtle creature was definitely alive but watching it float lethargically in the tank, it could be easily mistaken for a piece of decaying kelp.

“I didn’t think these were real,” I said, peering closer. However, the creature didn’t hold my host’s attention long, he had much more left to show. He was just getting started.

I saw more reptiles and fish in tanks, including a yellowing Gharial^[3], in the next room. It was mighty and aggressive, and lashed out at me with the temperament of a crocodile even though it’s slender snout made it look almost comical. Even with the thick glass separating us, I still recoiled back in fright, barely keeping a cry from escaping my throat.

The next tank held two identical purple snakes. And when I say identical I mean not only was every spot on every scale the exact same as on the other, but their movements were perfectly synchronized, despite being two entirely separate creatures. It was as if they shared the same brain. They slid across the sparkling gems that made up the floor of their enclosure. I wondered if the gems were real or simply imitation glass cuts. A silent nod from my host told me he had guessed what I had been thinking.

The twin snakes were nowhere near as disturbing as the exhibit directly to the right, which held a mammoth snake slowly squeezing the life from what looked to be an elk. The beast had stopped thrashing but still wasn’t quite dead. It’s eyes bulged and bled. It was such a slow and grizzly procedure I quickly turned away.

Snakes with six eyes, a toad the size of a frying pan, centipedes thick as my fist.

“Who takes care of all of these? It can’t just be you here?” I ask, examining what looked like a spider with wings.

“Myself and a small but trusted team work round the clock, caring for artifacts, both dead and alive.”

“Dead?”

“Even our unliving displays need special care.”

“Do tell,” my voice revealed my dark intrigue. But Wallace only motioned for me to follow him deeper into the museum. I had no choice but to follow—with the feeling of the eyes of every reptile and creepy crawler on me.

Faint music could be heard drifting through the walls and corridors. The source was an auditorium where mechanical musical instruments were playing themselves in a ghostly orchestra.

I was led down a hallway covered in paintings and masks. We moved quickly and I only saw a few at a glance. A pair of portraits of two blond haired boys, both weeping. Masks with grimaces, merth, and sneers. Their eye sockets black and agape.

We emerged into a large room with tall windows that would have let in significant light if it hadn’t been dark outside. Black skeletons of ancient creatures, or what I assumed were ancient as they were unlike any animals I was familiar with, towered over taxidermied animals. The bones of an enormous whale hung suspended from the ceiling. The exhibit was laid out in two rows down the center of the long room in an organized fashion of skeletons and display cases. Skulls, horns, hooves, teeth and tusks. Mollusks, mushrooms, shells, geodes, and fossils. Specimens pickled in jars and specimens laid out in preserved dissection. A dead zoo.

Off to the left was a bookcase that encompassed a wood door with glass paneling. Wallace opened the door and motioned for me to enter first. I could tell the room was climate controlled because we were met with a cool breath of air and white vapor. I felt certain that the books which lined every inch of the walls on shelves were some of the oldest I’d ever laid eyes on. I tried to catch a few titles but many were written in foreign tongues or only had symbols to distinguish them. These books didn’t hold my attention, as the table at the back of the narrow library was obviously the main attraction. Two heavy leather bound books lay open on stands, side by side.

“These two are some of the very few anthropodermic bibliopegy books in the world^[4]. My grandfather acquired the bigger one and I myself the second one about ten years ago. They are quite fragile, which is why I monitor this room’s temperature and humidity. But if you’d like to hold one, I would allow it.”

“What is anthropodermic bibliopegy?” I asked, striding over to take a closer look.

“The practice of binding books in human flesh.”

My hands stopped short of their destination. I was close enough to see the books in detail. The leather looked normal but I had no reason to disbelieve. I left the two books on their stands. My host just gave a chuckle.

“What are they about?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine what would possess someone to bind a book in such a way, but then what in the world would you write in it?

“Instructions on how to bind books in flesh!” and I had to laugh at this because the idea was so ironic and maybe because the whole thing was so gruesome that laughing about it was the only thing you could do to shug off the shudders.

My tour had only just begun. The more oddities I saw, the more my head reeled: cases of bugs with pins through them, a collection of eggs of various sizes, colors, and patterns, jars of organs, eyes, genitalia, and other preserved human anatomy. Bizarre statues and art, often dipicting scenes of violence, religion, sex, or all three. There was a hat made of barbed wire, rosaries covered in what appeared to be dried blood, a rustic rocking chair which Wallace informed me was called “The Devil’s Rocking Chair” and was reputed to be cursed. Amulets, knives, devices of torture and devices of pleasure, children’s toys, automitons, clocks, busts, and sets of china. At times it felt like I was in an antique shop and at other times a haunted house.

“What’s that?” I asked. Nearly two hours had passed and my tour was nearly over.

“Pardon?” Wallace asked. I pointed to where a black curtain obscured something hanging on the wall. The bottom left corner peeked out from the curtain and I distinctly saw a pair of eyes reflected in a mirror’s surface as my host hastily yanked the curtain over it.

“This artifact is not on display.”

“Is it a mirror? Why can’t I see it.” My host turned away and didn’t speak for sometime.

Finally he said, quietly and without the normal entertainer’s sparkle in his eye, “Some specimens here are meant to be safeguarded, they are not for us to lay eyes on.” I felt a chill run down my spine and we made our way to the last exhibit in silence.

We had circled back to what Wallace called the part of the museum that “breathed,”  passing by the reptile room before entering the mammal exhibit where a midnight panther napped in the corner of his cage and strange, possum-like creatures burrowed into the ground.

Behind the final glass enclosure was a man. He was doing a sporadic aerobic routine; jogging in place, jumping jacks and that sort. The enclosure looked far too small for a fitness room and slowly what I was looking at registered in my mind.

“He’s part of…?” but I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

“Yes. Amir is the only human in voluntary captivity in Askalla. I have to give that disclaimer because there is one other man, much older than Amir who resides in a museum in Tibitha who is not only the oldest, but the longest human in voluntary confinement in the world.” He seemed a little disgruntled at this but I was still processing the sight before my eyes. Amir was smiling broadly, but his eyes never met ours and he never seemed to register we were there on the other side of the glass much like, well, much like the other animals.

“When you say volunary—what does that mean?”

“Exactly that. Amir wants to be here. We are not holding him against his will. This isn’t a prison. He’s been here since ‘73 and has never once asked to leave.”

Thar meant Amir had spent over 30 years in this small enclosure. He didn’t look much older than 50.

“And he’s not the only one who has chosen this… lifestyle?”

“It may seem strange but volunteer captivity is not illegal, we are not doing anything unsavory here. He is an important part of this museum.”

I’ll admit, it was hard to look at and I didn’t know what to make of it. Strange snakes and alligators were one thing, knick-knacks, collectibles, skeletons, and pickled organs were another, even some of the more gruesome artifacts I could apprehend but a human being in captivity, even if it was voluntary… well, I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

My appointment had come to an unsettling end. My stomach felt a bit sick and I was having a hard time focusing—my mind was still back in the depths of the museum. My host didn’t seem to notice my shift in emotion. We returned to the lobby and he retrieved my coat and bag. I thanked him for his time and he opened the door for me. But before I left, I turned to ask Wallance one final question.

“Why do some call it ‘The Museum of Eyes’?” My host licked his lips, his tongue flickering.

“Because it is the museum that is looking at you, not the other way around.” And with that, he sent me on my way with a firm handshake. Just as our hands we’re parting, I felt something move on his palm underneath his glove. I pulled my hand back quickly and our eyes locked briefly before I hastily and almost clumsily retreated to where I’d parked my locomotive in the frigid night.

I put my bag in the front and when I crossed to the driver side I looked back one last time. The museum’s final specimen stood silhouetted in the doorway, watching me.

---

^[1] The Aspidochelone is a fabled aquatic creature characterized by its exceeding size and spines on the ridge of its back.

^[2] The Gyte Jungle, named after the word “Gtye” meaning crazy, mad, or delirious, is a 350km humid and dense stretch of jungle between Hularia and Yuka. It is known to be very dangerous due to the poisonous animals that inhabit it, guerrilla camps, and the sheer size of the uncharted land.

^[3] The Gharial, also known as the Gavial, is a fish-eating crocodile native to sandy freshwater river banks in the plains of the northern part of the Puth subcontinent.

^[4] There are a total of 18 confirmed anthropodermic bibliopegy books in the word.

Ella Cashman is a creative writer, an avid reader, and a strong believer in the Oxford comma.

It stank. It smelled like cigarettes, marijuana, dirty clothes, and cat piss. The center of the room had a table littered with ash trays, matches, glass and plastic bottles, a grimy bong, and dirty magazines. To the right, down the darkened, trash-ridden hall, was the room in which they practiced sorcery. Scarily enough, it was the cleanest room in the apartment: spotless, sparse, a closet in the corner concealed their black hooded robes; a washing bowl sat on the other side of the room next a large, clean knife and a thick leather book of spells. Back in the living room, she moved the centerpiece table aside and folded out the couch into a bed for us all to sit. We watched some show about housewives, and another about cooking, on Netflix. We had just left a Mac DeMarco concert at the Electric Factory. It was getting really late. We were four hours from home. We all had work the next morning. At 2 AM, we went out to get cheesesteaks. Outside we appeared in the hazy moonlight that creeped around the corners and through the cracks of the huddled squat apartments. We walked the slim empty streets of Philadelphia with the promise of Springsteen’s whisper, Ain’t no angel gonna greet me. We walked past the fruit carts hosted by the somber-eyed Hispanics toward the two famous cheesesteak stands enwreathed in fluorescent lights, our beacon of the witching hour. Our Philly tour guide, my friend’s sister and sorceress, pipes up with, “Don’t go to that one, it’s notoriously racist.” So we went to the one across the street. In line, I explained how to properly order a Philly Cheesesteak, a skill which I learned from an online source: “It’s all about efficiency. You walk up to the window, and say, ‘Whiz to Go, WIT.’ Whiz means cheese whiz, which is how you’re supposed to order a proper Philly Cheesesteak. ‘Wit’ means you want onions.” The sign said to make sure you had money in hand when you came to the order window. Despite my facade as the alpha on this venture, I was nervous. The stony-faced attendant stared at me with cold indifference: “What’ll it be.” I managed to stutter over the information I had just conveyed to the group when I barked “WHIZ TO GO… WIT.” He pulled out an empty sub, loaded in a plethora of thinly-sliced beef, and turned to a great big vat into which he entered a ladle, scooping out gobs of cheese whiz from the steaming cauldron. He poured the ladle across the sub, dashed the cheese with slivers of onion, and handed the Philadelphian staple to me wrapped in flimsy paper quickly soaking with whiz. I paid the ten dollars or whatever it was and began to devour. Just as we all got our cheesesteaks, Mac DeMarco, with his dirty band of troubadours, appeared in a lax stride under the fluorescent light. “MAC!” we all cried, astonished to see our gap-toothed indie rock hero here for some cheesesteaks. He gave us hugs with a warm, amiable smile, and humbly asked how to (properly) order a cheesesteak. I smiled, now erudite in the ways of the Philly Cheesesteak, the incantation to bring it forth still hot on my tongue—I chin up, look sweet Mac in the eye, and chant, “Whiz to go, WIT.” 

JR Rhine is a poet, musician, and educator living in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. His newest collection of poems, “Expired Damages” is now available online. He is married to Naomi and his cat is Lugosi. He tweets @jarjarrhine and is on Instagram @jrrhinepoetry.

A round cheeked girl comes into my box with her father. Awkwardly. They both have their hands full. He’s got a cup of coffee, a lit cigarette, and a racing form folded up and tucked under his arm. She’s carrying a soda and fries and uses her hip and elbow to flip her seat down. He looks like a regular, with his greying curly hair and dark circles under his eyes, but she is an oddity.  A little kid at the racetrack is strange enough, but this one sticks out like orphan Annie with her mismatched clothing and her unruly curly hair. Her father is doing some precise calculations while looking at the form, then with exaggerated generosity, he hands to her a ticket.

“This is for you,” he says.  “Don’t lose it. It means you bet of two dollars—see this dollar sign? And there’s the name of your horse. I told you I would let you bet any horse you wanted—even if it was a longshot.”

“And this one’s a big… long… shot,” she says.

“The biggest,” he says, checking the changing odds on the board.

“Peter Pan!” she says excitedly.

“Yes, it’s a great name—and he’ll never grow up,” he says absently, studying the racing form.

“He can fly,” the little girl says and tugs on his sleeve waiting for him to make eye contact, which he eventually does.

He’s gone to the trouble of backing her low-cost betting, and she’s holding the ticket to her chest. He takes a long inhale from his unfiltered cigarette, then exhales and coughs, his body heaving. The girl looks at him with unmasked concern.

Now the race is on. Her father pulls out his three tickets and grips them in his fist.

“Peter Pan!” she exclaims. “Which one is he?”

Of course, her horse is last. Peter Pan is young, inexperienced, a wildcard, and looked spooked at the paddock. Great jockey on him, though. The father’s bet on the favorite for first, second, and for show. He knows it’s a safe bet that won’t win him much, but there are better bets later in the line-up, and this keeps him in the game.

The favorite is a well-proven horse named Touch of Class, and she is half a dozen lengths ahead as the horses hit the first turn. The crowd is mildly cheering for her; they’ll save the volume for when she closes the deal. At this point most of the horses are grouped together tight, and Peter Pan is dead last. The girl is not discouraged in the least: she is already on her feet shouting his name. She’s put her food on the floor and nearly steps on it as she jumps up and down. She must think that if she yells loud enough, Peter Pan will win, so she’s pouring her heart into it. Her father regards her vacantly. At the next turn the pack has spread, and Peter Pan is in the middle of it. The girl keeps yelling, convinced the animal can hear her, and impossibly, the jockey seems to gaze up at her in the stands. At the last turn, everyone is on their feet, a roar of voices and stomping, and the little thing screams like she’s about to die in a horror movie.

To everyone’s big surprise, Peter Pan beats Touch of Class by a nose.

The girl has done it. She has a winning ticket. Her father is smiling at her. The dark circles under his eyes have faded away. He turns to her empty-handed, no cigarette, coffee, or racing form, and lifts her into his arms with the grace of a ballet dancer.

“I always knew you were a winner,” he says and kisses her on her squishy cheek, and for a moment she feels this is true.

Lael Cassidy has been a writer all her life that didn’t always believe she was. She tried her hand at academia and then rerouted into the healing arts for thirty years. Now she is rediscovering her lost love and writing somewhat feverishly in quarantine, living in Seattle with her two dogs and husband, spending a lot of time looking out at the sea.

Not long after we moved into our home, we added a second bathroom downstairs and chose a small octagon window for that room.  I placed a candlelight in the window to give the room some warm character.   It turns out I wasn’t the only one who liked the character of the window.

An orb-weaver spider quickly took up residence and her large wheel-shaped web encompassed the window.  My once-charming window looked like it was continually decorated for Halloween. I was not impressed, but my husband and the kids loved her and her web. I would often find them staring out the high window inspecting her latest creations.

Since she was not the warm charm I was looking for, a battle ensued.   I was constantly heading outside with the broom to sweep her and her web away.  She was much more tenacious than I, and by the next evening she would be at work weaving a new web.

She won the battle and gone are the days of me running out to sweep her away. In the summer we watch her by the candlelight as she weaves and repairs, making her web ready for its nightly catch.  Watching her weave is a sight to behold, she weaves with deep purpose and executed perfection.

I must admit the placing of her web is brilliant. The candlelight calls to her prey and they fly in as if hypnotized by the light. She waits, glistening in the candlelight, and then gathers her food, preparing for what she is called to do, bring forth life.

As I have been making a home here, so has she. Twenty-five generations of her, since her life span is only one year, and twenty-five years of me.  In the spring she mates and by late summer she is laying her eggs in a mass of golden silk.  She never sees those babies, for she will die soon after laying her eggs.  Life can be like that, we don’t always see the fruit of our labor.

In early autumn the baby orb weavers will burst from her carefully woven sack, we are lucky if we see one or two.  They spin little parachutes and jump into the wind that will carry them to the place they will call home, where they will weave their webs.

For all these years she and I have been doing what we were called to do, making homes and weaving lives side by side.  We have had summer seasons of building and repairing, the making of a place where new life was nurtured. We have had seasons of autumn, when the fallen leaves blow and our children fly away on the wind.  This house, this window, sits quiet waiting for the first snow.

A new hope will rise, as spring awaits the next generation.  New life will begin again.

DeVonne White lives in rural Pennsylvania, where the birds sing and the deer pay daily visits. She works in insurance by day, and enjoys writing poetry and short essay by night.

Knocking on the red front door, number 32 facing number 63, of Diana’s house, Elizabeth recalled a beach she’d been reading about off the west coast of Ireland that disappeared in 1984. A storm came and took it away. Imagine that, she thought.

            From behind one of the bevelled glass panes, curled light-brown hair and off-pink lips drew closer. The totality of Diana’s head then entering all of the panes to loom portentously as Elizabeth waited for contact.

            You must get out of that rain right away, Diana said.

            The tea was drunk in the living room. Artisanal Eccles cakes supplemented the liquid and Diana talked about Laos, only hesitating to continue as she glimpsed Elizabeth’s hands upon the armchair’s arms. But, of course, Elizabeth knew she’d been careful with the pastry grease, wiping the light webs in between her fingers thoroughly. She’d made a show of it.

            What was genuinely surprising about the people there was the depth of their affection, Diana relayed. Because, you know, you go to these places and you don’t know, do you? What with the way different cultures can be. I mean, I suppose they didn’t have to take to Gordon and me. After all, who are we to them?

            Elizabeth’s hands clenched one another on top of her lap. You’re a difficult one to get the measure of, Gordon had told her years and years ago. They were alone outside the women’s toilets in a make-shift club. The lights were up, the night over. A sickly-sweet trail of cider stained Elizabeth’s outer right leg. When Gordon slept, his resting face reminded Elizabeth of the expression on a tortured saint she’d observed in a gallery. Would that still be so now? 

Diana got up to fetch the gift she’d brought back. It’s only a small something, she said as her voice ebbed away up the stairs and round the banister into one of four bedrooms.

            From outside the window, anyone looking in through the drips of the front garden might’ve assumed a life for Elizabeth that had never happened to her. Eying her tasteful top and trouser combination, the restrained red strands framing a serviceable face, they’d perhaps suppose a woman comparable to her surroundings, always meant to be in her 50s, for whom the world of struggle and progress was a constant irrelevancy.

But she was a terror, wasn’t she? It was never meant for time to equal shrinking perspectives on the concepts she contained. But now she had to occasionally sit in living rooms of detached houses obliging confectionaries as if the way to age was as evident as tables and chairs. Like it was natural to accept a paradox of lived experience as having already come to a stop whilst also having never occurred. Or, at a stretch, everything that had been had happened to someone else who remained on the other side of the border line whilst she was detained, glimpsing the figure only laterally through the blinds, the dullness of her reflected eyes in the window glass a bleak contrast to the shining green irises of the foreigner standing in the bright outdoors.     

Then, the systematic unsticking of her boot soles to the floor, left to right then right to left, inducing gratification, she’d replied to Gordon that his problem was in presuming fixed dimensions. He kissed her. That sufficed instead of words, of reckonings. Though she did wish that he, or indeed anyone, had locked onto her soul and asked: what are you most terrified of?

            When Diana returned, she was holding a wooden carving. It’s Buddhist, she said. Isn’t it lovely? Elizabeth nodded. It’ll go well with all those line drawings you have.

            The ones that John did?

            Yes, those ones. He certainly gave you a lot of them.

            He wanted to.

            Yes, well. Y’know, we were told it’s supposed to bring good luck.

Diana pressed the carving forward. She held it there at arms’ length. If Elizabeth slightly adjusted her position, Diana’s face was blocked by the interlocking patterns of the wooden object. Without eyes, a nose and a mouth, the rest of the woman appeared to be up for grabs, as if any visiting spirit could possess the vessel and put it to other uses.

            Elizabeth took the souvenir, thinking as she did that what was hard to grasp about the vanished beach in Ireland was that one day people had walked along it and left their footprints; they’d watched their dogs dig holes; they’d let grains of sand slip between their fingers as they looked out to the horizon. But the next day they did none of those things.

            A silence took over.

            Diana sat and shifted in her chair. The material of her dress didn’t succumb to the movement. Her body jerked, her hands going out to the sides, keeping her upright. Some bodies seem destined for their fate, Elizabeth thought. Diana’s an incredible physical specimen really. Time’s arrow has nothing on her. But, she consoled herself, whoever you are, the fight against decay is ultimately only ever going to go one way.

If she should find herself in such a position to do so, Diana said, pushing, she really ought to go to Laos. Of course, Elizabeth replied.

It’d do you good, Diana added.

The silence returned, thicker than before.

Perhaps when faced with such a sudden lack some of the villagers were appalled, defiant against the incomparability of their loss. This is our land, they said. We want it back. But maybe others were resigned. This is the way it is, they said. We used to live by a beach. Now we don’t.

Earlier, before the club, they’d been in Gordon’s kitchen. People came in and out. Some of them lived there. Others didn’t. Elizabeth spoke to them all. Gordon had made lunch from the vegetables growing in the garden. He was over by the sink washing up as she was round the table drinking coffee. She gave a light to the guy opposite her. His name something like Kurt or Karl from somewhere like Austria or Switzerland. He inhaled very slowly and, when he spoke, stared to the side of her. You are having the night out? he asked. Yes, she said. He should come along if he wanted. It was a place in the south. Nowhere you’d usually go but we’ve heard good things. She picked up a cigarette, lit it, and turned towards Gordon. A mate said she has a wicked time whenever she goes, he added. The sound system’s mint apparently so may as well give it a look. But we shouldn’t get too leathered, she said. I’ve got that birthday thing of Kate’s tomorrow. Gordon smiled. You say that now, he said returning to the dishes. On his upper left arm an inked band moved as his muscles flexed in response to his wiping. Not objectionable, she thought as she focused on the dark, entwined strands of the band, as she homed in on the intensification of the flesh. Though not perfect. Her judgement was this: it’s a bit esoteric that eastern design. Or, at least, it’s meant to be. What it says about its wearer is that he values the abstract made material. This is absurd. He doesn’t think that one thing can stand for another, but that one thing is another.

The realisation of speaking dawned on Elizabeth. It was her voice. Her words were attempting to explain her situation, the reason she hadn’t seen Diana and Gordon for some time, even before they’d gone away.

What is it, Elizabeth? Diana asked.

It’s that I went to the doctor. I thought it would be nothing because it never is. But this time it is something.

What is it?

It’s in my neck. They say operating would be risky.

Oh, Lizzie. I’m so sorry, Diana’s voice cracked and then her arms were around her friend, their outer angles evoking the points of misshapen fruit.

Unmistakeably, the scent off Diana was of the recently washed. It entered up Elizabeth’s nostrils, violating the structural integrity of the experiential clarity that she liked to think of as pervasive within her walls. There was such kindness in this gesture. Such goodness. A vent of Hell opened up in Elizabeth’s head. All her fury was released. These arms around her were awful, other people abominable, choices terrible. Her nerves strained to completion, forcing themselves against the blockage, and her skin wept with expectant violence. She wanted to harm. Diana’s body could break. Everything she was, all in this room, this house, could be ended and after the tumult there might be peace. It may be possible to rid herself of this rage via a Buddhist carving to the head, eject this rage that crashed against the edges of her organs, that deepened and swelled.

When Diana pulled back, her face was wet. Upon blinking, it appeared to Elizabeth that she was crying too.

There’d been a problem at the door. The guy said it was too full and they’d got here after time. Bollocks, she said. It’s 1am. There’s not supposed to be any security anyway. Fuck it, Gordon said. Let’s just go. Defeat had slid into his tone. It was not becoming, she decided. It was tedious. And then the potential future that occupied a desk drawer in one of her thoughts disappeared. What would be worth hearing that tone more than once?

But there are always options, Diana said. We can look into them together. Her stare was on Elizabeth’s neck as if trying to suss out the dwellings of the tumour. Moved by an impulse, Elizabeth’s hand went up to the area. It was a little raised. When her fingers pressed down against a vein, the lump developed greater prominence. There it took residence under her outer epidermis and grew.

 Obviously, she’d got them in. But once down the stairs and amidst the throng, Elizabeth’s overriding desire was Gordon’s absence. His proximity needled her. The pressure of his good intentions. How he influenced her. It shouldn’t really matter, she thought. His mind is not mine. There is nothing lost from spending time together. And yet, so much is irretrievable.

A notion came to Elizabeth: the actuality of Diana. She’s a real person. Her every attribute indicates it. She has arms and legs, a torso with a head atop it, and using it all she manages words that somehow connect with what must be her. They must be the Diana embodied and sat here, the one whose fingernails are painted sheer pastel nude, here with bones in her thoughts and feelings in her veins. That’s how she lives. As for herself, Elizabeth could barely be called an entity. There was only disconnect. Diana acts. She commits. Elizabeth had her anger, but ask her what she did with it and she’d direct you to the floor.

Over the sound of water passing through pipes, a message tone emanated from a phone. Both women checked their devices. It’s only Archie, Diana informed. Elizabeth hadn’t asked about their son. She presumed he was fine now and out in the world of competitive science. That’s what became of the well-brought up: they prospered and crumpled. Then flourished again, more definitively. The trickling in the walls sped up and slowed down. Elizabeth wasn’t sure if she’d remembered to put her heating on timer. Would it be cold when she got back? Her cheeks were damp but drying. Screen light spread into Diana’s features, her cheeks hollower, forehead overhanging. Sorry, just replying quickly, she said. The sharp, focused fury within Elizabeth had turned into a vague remnant of itself. It was a false memory revealed, displaced and returned, lurking still, yet with no rights to speak its truth. I won’t mention anything to Archie now, Diana said. No, Elizabeth replied, it’s alright. It’s not a secret.

That night there was an encounter with a stranger in a toilet stall. His chest spartan, a glow stick around his ankle; this is fine, she thought, not sure if a life goal had been reached or ruined. Towards the end, when the glitter on her face had already been transferred to the unknown’s abdomen and below, a woman seemingly uninvested in gender entered to tell them men couldn’t be in the ladies’. On the dancefloor, she found Gordon again. Her fingers ran down his arm and secured themselves around his biceps, covering up the esoteric band and squeezing. In the early afternoon of the next day, she survived and took herself out of his house and onto the bus to the party. After only maybe an hour or two of unconsciousness before she left his bed, she could’ve been in much worse shape for the daytime. Conversing in this state was a thing unto itself. Processing and producing sound happened out of her head, at a point above it, automatically, releasing her from all responsibility of the content. The push towards slumber mounting and overcoming the amphetamines and hallucinogens travelling through her regulating systems. Tonight she would close her eyes and nothing would come. It would completely vanish her. As Diana ordered a round, small groups cheered for one of the teams playing on the tv over the bar, and the pleasure of controlled sleeplessness followed by inevitable sleep bled across all the territories of Elizabeth. She wouldn’t call Gordon. Maybe she’d get back to him if he called first, though. Kate was helping out with the round, bringing Elizabeth a pint, the following touch of the foam to her lips a reward for persistence.

Lizzie, y’know Diana, don’t you? Kate asked.

I don’t think so, Elizabeth said.

She smiled at Diana and introduced herself. The thing with Gordon, she thought, is that there just isn’t any point in forcing something to be what it’s not.

I should put the lights on, Diana said. The darkness had nested around them. Whenever it was dark and the room illuminated, Elizabeth had noticed that Diana never drew the curtains. It was a hostile act, she thought. They were vulnerable as the view inside was clear, the one outside obscure.

What is it? Diana asked.

Nothing. Just the feeling of someone out there, Elizabeth said.

There’s nothing to fear. Would you like anything?

No thanks.

I could start the hot pot now.

I was thinking, Diana. There’s this beach in Ireland that disappeared. Have you heard about it?

No.

A storm took it away in 1984 and everyone thought it was just gone. They all would’ve had to adapt to life without it, thinking that it’d never return because why would it? Things don’t go and come back like that.

I suppose they don’t. But what of it?

Well, it came back last week. Out of nowhere, there it was again, thirty-three years later. Isn’t that incredible?

Yes. Everybody wants to live by the beach.

But… Y’know I…, Elizabeth stalled. Diana’s gaze was fixed as it dug out the bones in Elizabeth’s spine. The pipes cranked, the water flowed. Why?, Elizabeth wanted to know. How often does the boiler come on and off? Should she continue speaking?

Headlights entered through the window brightening the floorspace between the two figures of friends. The engine stopped. A car door opened and closed. Footsteps scraped the tarmac, moving away from the vehicle towards the house. It was raining still. Into the lock of the red front door, a key was inserted and turned.

Cassandra Moss was born in Manchester and grew up just outside the city. She studied English with Film at King’s College, London and subsequently worked in the film industry for Sister Films, Working Title, and Vertigo. Since 2009, she’s been an EFL teacher. After moving to Ireland, she recently completed an MPhil in Linguistics at Trinity College, Dublin. Her short fiction has been published in Succour, 3am Magazine, Cricket Online Review, Squawk Back, And/Or, The Passage Between, Posit and is forthcoming in Sunspot Lit and Beyond Words.

There the poor pitiful thing lies,
  A lifeless corpse, drawing flies.
It’s been laying for so long there,
  No longer feeling, no longer breathing air.
But despite this pitiful state,
  There’s a bunch of idiots that think it’s not too late,
They are committed to ride it inspite it’s deceased state.
  They continue with great fervor to strike and beat,
In this created fantasy of theirs of course.
  They cannot give up on a bad idea and accept defeat,
Some people call it a “Dead Horse”.
  We hear their cries, their screams and their curses,
As they beat upon their imaginary horses.
  And after so many tries,
Still that dead horse will not rise.
  (some will realise)
But some will continue to beat on,
  Beating with all they have until the hide is gone.
When they beat through the meat and get to the bone,
  They won’t leave the dead horse alone.
Still some may want to keep beating away-
  Even in the horse’s sorry state of decay,
But hopefully, soon they won’t be able,
  Too exhausted from beating it all day.
Maybe to finally give up their dead end fable,
  Waking up to reality,
That DEAD is what their horse will stay,
  No matter how hard they don’t want it to be.

After a long and successful career as a Senior Engineering Designer and Manager working with international mining companies, William David recently retired. Now living in Tucson, Az. after raising two great kids, he now has time to devote to a great passion of his: writing poetry. William writes for his pleasure and for the pleasure of those who might read his poems.

“This?” Tim asked, slowing at an intersection.

“Next right.”

He flicked on the blinker and turned, his hands steady on the wheel. 

He was sober.

At the end of the stable middle class suburban houses where I’d failed to live a stable middle class suburban life was a steep downhill drive with a few bigger, pricier houses built into the slope.  Justin’s house was the nicest, at the bottom of the hill where the road looped back around on itself.

            Tim neatly backed into the driveway.

Right before our divorce, my wife called me an ‘opportunistic bottom feeder,’ like one of those fish content to wallow in the shit at the bottom of a lake, lazily waiting for a tasty turd to float past.  It was her most literary moment; that, and because I was past the fighting stage and onto the acceptance phase, kept me from arguing the point.

            Today’s little venture would have proved her right.

            Robbing a client.

            But Justin’s abandoned house at the edge of my neighborhood was too good to be true.

The deck I’d- we’d- built in the back of the house wrapped around one of the sides.  An ornate herringbone structure that looked modular but was actually custom, each jigsaw piece cut and finished by us, by hand.

Now it needed a power washing.  At least.

I’d done a good job.

Justin had invited me and my family for barbecues and I’d felt a sense of satisfaction when one of our other neighbors had leaned his full weight against the railing and there hadn’t been the slightest creak or give from the wood.

Never would have thought about robbing him, back then.

But alimony, child support, a mortgage bubble, bad investments, poor business acumen and a worsening attitude took a year to change my mind.

Justin had gotten arrested for some kind of financial misconduct crime.  I’d never found out exactly what, all I knew was that the arresting officers wore nice suits and cuffed his hands in front, not behind his back before helping him into an unmarked sedan, the white collar fraudster still above being thrown in the back of a police car by the local cops.

No one saw him again, all we saw was his wife and kids, about three, four weeks ago loading their stuff into a moving van. 

            The house had been sitting empty ever since.  And since I’d been unemployed, I’d been sitting in my kitchen with a decent view of their street and hadn’t seen anyone else go inside for anything.

            Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, that house was overflowing with scavengeable riches, going to waste.  Bottom feeder.

            Copper pipes in the walls, stainless fixtures, convection microwave… everything. 

            This morning I’d hooked up with Tim, who had a work van of his own and an easy, trustable manner.  I left my own work truck in my driveway and shaved my beard, but my neighborhood was half deserted and no one would be suspicious, especially with my own truck still in front of my house.

            We got out of the van.  Tim opened the double set of doors in the back.

            “Boss.”

            “What?”

            He pointed at the living room picture window.

            I shielded my eyes against the glare.  “Couch is still there.”  A rich brown leather sectional with cushions that farted and sighed as you sank into it.

            “Above that.  Middle of the window.”

            I saw it.  Dull whitish smears, all in the same place on the glass, some thicker than others. 

Were there red brown streaks mixed in?  Blood?

            No.  Just my eyes fighting the glare.

            A shiver ran up my back.  Just wintertime cold.

            “We doing this?” Tim asked, seeing my hesitation.

            “Yeah.  Got it?”

            “Yup.”  He leaned into the back of the van and unlatched a metal, old school tool box he’d told me had been his grandfather’s, and took out an electric lock pick.  It looked like a cordless drill.

            We walked to the front door.

            “No alarm?”

            “Power’s been out too long for the backup battery to still work.”

            “Well, it’s a safe neighborhood, right?” Tim asked, grinning over his shoulder at me.

            One of his teeth, toward the back, was brown and disappearing.  How much shit was he doing?

            Tim fitted the pick into the lock, frowned, made some kind of an adjustment, and squeezed the trigger.  There was a grinding noise, his frown widened, and he stopped, wiggling the pick.

            “You went all the way to Montreal for this thing?”

            “I won, that night, and I saw it in a hardware store while I was waiting for the bus, so I had the dough.”

            “The casinos up there are nice?”

            “Yeah, and the girls in the bars are all 18 because that’s the drinking age.”  He drilled again, and again the grinding noise.  “Plus, they all have that sexy accent.  Got it!”

            The lock opened with a crunch, and Tim pulled his drill out.

            He moved aside when I grabbed the doorknob.  The brass might still be worth scrapping now that the lock was ruined.

            “Breaking—” I shouldered open the door “—and entering.”

            I stumbled and nearly fell into the businessman’s house, Tim right behind me.

            The fuck?

Trade school, some college, decent books read and The fuck?  The fuck? was all that went through my mind.

            The house was trashed.  More than from people moving out.

            The couch had taken a lot of abuse, the cushions ripped up, stuffing everywhere like cotton candy, and the smear we’d seen on the window was definitely bloody snot. 

I was thinking… I don’t even know what I was thinking, recognizing that.  A rape/ murder sado thing?  Had someone smashed Justin’s wife’s nose into that window while fucking her against her will?  Something like that? 

I didn’t want to know.

            No.

            She and the kids had left, physically, if not emotionally or financially, safe.

            The kitchen, right off the living room had been ransacked, one pantry door hanging askew, another splintered.  The refrigerator door hung open, chewed plastic strewn around it.

            “Stinks in here,” Tim said, walking into a hallway.

            I went the other way, further into the living room, following spots of blood, long since dried into the expensive, cream colored pile carpet. 

            “Where’s it coming from?” he asked.

            “I don’t know.”

            We continued looking.

            “What happened in here?”

            I shrugged.  “What’s in those other rooms?”

            Now he shrugged.  “The kid’s rooms, or maybe an office.  Nothing worth much, less you want to grab a desk chair or two.”

            “Nope.”

            Back in the hall, around another corner, past a bathroom we found the basement door.  It had been cracked open, claw mark all around the doorknob.

            Bloody claw marks.

            “Wait a second—” Tim called out behind me, but I’d already pushed the door open with my elbow.

            The stench slapped me like jumping into an icy lake; my eyes popped and I gagged, folding over.  I grabbed the handrail for support.

            “Let’s get out of here.”

            I shook my head, breathing into my sleeve and feeling my way down the next step.

            The basement was warmer than the rest of the house, and decently well-lit from windows set in at ground floor level. 

At the bottom I followed bloody footprints into the main room.

The family room.  Justin’s regulation sized pool table, covered with kid’s toys and dusty boardgames.

At the other end was a small door that led to the oil burner and the water heater.  This door was also bloody and clawed.

Heaped before it was a white shape.

“Jesus,” I said, coming up on it.

“Shit,” Tim whispered behind me.

Sullivan.  Their dog. 

A big white fluffy guy who weighed at least 100 pounds.  A purebred Pyrennes.  I remembered him in the middle of the kitchen, drooling, Justin’s kids crawling all over him while he tried to sleep.  He’d barked just the right amount when I- we- had built the deck out back.  Justin’s wife tied him up while we stained the deck the first time, telling us that if any of the stain dripped on his hair it would never come out.

I crouched beside him.

The dog had died with no dignity, if there was such a thing.  His patchy hair was matted with dirt and blood, his paws also bloody and dirty, some of his nails torn out.  He was too skinny, ribs and collar bones visible.

“What the fuck happened?” I stroked the back of his head, ignoring my revulsion.  There was no give, no fleshiness to Sullivan anymore, just furry leather loosely lying over hard skull.

“Let’s get out of here?”

“What.  Happened.  Here?”

“He starved to death.” Gently, but I wouldn’t have said gently enough, Tim nudged one of the dog’s legs with his work boot.  It was stiff and stuck to the cement floor.  “Or dehydrated.”  He shook his head.  “Poor fucker went wild through the whole house looking for something to eat.  Smashed his nose into the window trying to break out, ripped open the couch cushions, tried to eat the stuffing.  Probably came down here because the boiler room was warmer than the rest of the house.”

“How’d he end up here like this?” I choked up.  “Alone?”

“What the fuck happened?” I asked for probably the tenth time.

            Two hours had passed.  We’d fled, and were now seated at a rickety table in a poorly lit bar, both of us drinking beers, a big pile of uneaten chicken wings in front of us. Tim had excused himself to the bathroom and returned snuffling, his eyes too wide and shiny, face sweaty.

            “There’s no mystery here, man,” he proclaimed, too loudly.

            “I know these people.”

            “I met them when I helped out with that deck, a couple days.”

            “Maybe someone forgot the dog?”

            “Maybe.”

            “Or maybe they made arrangements that fell through.”

            “Maybe.”

            “Or maybe—”

            “—maybe the dog was really Mr. Businessman’s and the missus left him to starve to death to spite her husband for getting busted and ruining her life.”

            Reluctantly, I nodded.  “Maybe.”  I recalled her sweeping, shaking her head, sneering at a hairball. 

            “Probably.”  Tim drank.  “Like, how tough is it to just leave the dog at a shelter?  Or just let him out to play and drive away and leave him to fend for himself?  Someone had to do that deliberately, and you said the husband’s been locked up since he got arrested.  Had to be the wife, then.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Like I said, there’s no mystery here.”

            “I… Our kids went to school together.  They’ve been in my home.  I know these people.”

            “Well, now you know them even better.”

            “Should I…”

            Tim’s eyebrows raised.

            “…tell him?  It shouldn’t be hard to find out where he’s, you know, which jail—”

            “Don’t.”

            “I mean, something this next level psycho, what if there’s a custody case, or—”

            “How did you find the dog, unless you broke into his house?”

            “I could say it was the smell or something.  Make an anonymous call, maybe—”

            “Look,” Tim said, too loud again, “You’re, like, my boss and all but—”

            “What?”

            “Maybe, since you been using that word all day, maybe this is bothering you because of your own shit.”

            “Like?”

            “First, no one likes to think someone crazy fooled them, and she obviously did.  Him, too, a fucking crook.  And… you got divorced, not long ago.  That’s got to be bothering you.  Not seeing your kids enough.”

            “Tim, look—”

            “So when it all falls apart so bad that his purebred, custom preordered dog ends up dead, you’re wondering if that’s you.”

            “Maybe.”

“I can tell you one thing.”

            “What?”

“You were grateful that we didn’t steal anything.”

“True.”

“Maybe,” savoring that word, “you think stealing is wrong.  Or maybe just stealing from one of your equals.”

“One of my clients.  And it’s illegal, don’t forget.”

He waved his hand dismissively.  “That house is going to sit empty for so long that it’ll end up with homeless squatters in it and all its stuff is ruined, unless some fucking wannabe developer knocks it down.”

“We should have just helped ourselves?”

“Just like we’d planned to.”

            He got up, rocking the table and shaking all the silverware, paced to the bathroom.  I drank the rest of my beer and refilled it from the pitcher.  When he came back, his eyes were almost all pupil.

            “Didn’t he steal?  From his clients?”

            “Something like that.”

            “He’s a businessman, you’re a carpenter.  Maybe you wanted things to work out for him because—”

            “I’m jealous?”

            He shrugged.  “You wanted to have what he had and it doesn’t look all that great now.  Does it?”

            “No.”  I shook my head.  “Poor fucking dog.”

            “Yeah.”

            “What the fuck is wrong with us?”

            “People, you mean?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I don’t know.  There’s kids in India starving to death, just like that dog did.” Smiling behind his beer.

            “I guess.  I don’t want to think about that right now.”

            “Nobody does.”

            “I don’t want to think about that dead dog, or my fucking divorce, or how I’m gonna pay this month’s child support, or this month’s mortgage, or—”

            “How I’m gonna pay for my little habit?” snuffling his nose deliberately.

            “It is what it is, Tim.  I’m not judging.”

            “No, you’re cool.”

            “I just want to get to sleep tonight, you know?”

            “Have a couple more beers.”  Gulping his own and wiping his mouth on the napkin.  Then he got serious again.  “You did a good job on the deck?  Sincerely?”

            “Yes.”

            “And you didn’t steal anything.  You’re halfway to sainthood, compared to your… peer.”

            “We didn’t steal anything because of the… not because I had an attack of conscience or something.”

            “Whatever.  Point is… I don’t know what the point is.  That your friend’s a crook who married a psycho.  Not people you want to copy.”

            “They had… they had this automatic dog biscuit thing.  You know, gives the dog a biscuit when you trigger it, it’s even synced up to your phone.”

            “And?”

            “And they went from that, to this.”

            Laughing he said, “We could have stolen it.”

            “The dog smashed it.  And probably licked every crumb inside.”

            “All this perfect…” Groping.

            “Symbolism.”

            “Symbolism.”  Nodding.  “You know, maybe the dog was like a… sacrifice?”

            “What?”

            “Not a sacrifice, that’s a little too harsh.  A wakeup call.  Want my advice?”

            “Sure.”

            “Go home and get online and find some legit work.  You said you were going to do a… a big email campaign or something, and I bet you didn’t.  Go do that.  Even if it’s a waste of time, you’ll feel better, at least.”

            I waited a little while and finally nodded.  “Maybe.”

            “Maybe you even get some work lined up.  And then get me on as your helper.”

            I laughed.  “Maybe.”

            “Definitely.”

Alexander Jones has a BA in English/ Creative Writing and is currently pursuing a second BA in History. He works as both a metal fabricator and freelance writer. He lives with his family in New Jersey.

Life as we believe it to be

sitting in the carpark
in a parked car
on the malahide road.
sipping our sodas
and trying a new burger
released for limited period
from a fast food place we like.
this is something; this
could be something –
life as it is,
as we believe it to be.

tearing open salt packets
to spill on the dashboard
and pour whatever’s left
into our salty food. we trade sides
and bites of sandwich,
slug back sugar
and open our windows
to toss chips
out at the heads of seagulls
which strut in circles
and stomp about the tarmac,
big as small dogs
and begging by the wheelwell. we chew,
think about it, and belch
(we’re comfortable).

I tell you I think
that you got the better burger.
you agree.
you’re finishing your fries
while I gun and stall the engine.
the noise makes seagulls scatter,
graceless as panicked donkeys.
I still don’t really know
quite how to drive
this thing. I try again
and get it started. as we move
they gain some height, swooping,
becoming beautiful.

The faucet

sometimes life soared
as a monstrous seabird
and sometimes it landed
as a bird yet
again. and the poems came
either way, steady as the drip
of a faucet
at night near the bedroom,
driving him mad
with its constantly dropping,
keeping him awake
like an ear on a rustling
pillow. and he tried
at his novels and even
short stories, and he tried
at just living
a full and happy life. still
they came out of him,
pumping unserious,
bleeding from skin
instead of arteries.

Sugar

white apartments
stacked on the river,
like ice
or block sugar
dripping
from a grey
lip.

toppling
the rotten houses
like black
and perfect
teeth.

DS Maolalai has been nominated four times for Best of the Net and three times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019)

I understand the way
I seem, soft to your firm
youth, thin to your new
and swaggering expertise
in things I used to know
but lost. Like you,
I didn’t expect to find
me here, stooping
from the weight
of things you have yet
to acquire. But let me
rest here a minute,
savor your beauty that blinds
raw and brazen like a sharp
burst of flavor, sweet
and salty on my tongue.

A published author of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, she works in university administration. She has two sons, a husband, and a new Scottish Terrier, Maggie that is helping her through the coronavirus lockdown. After a short move to Los Angeles, she is back home in Tampa, Florida where she currently is working on a short story collection, a collection of poems about her time in LA, and a novel set in Tampa. Connect with her on Twitter @sharonleesnow

From the cavernous depths of the Earth. Clawing their way to strike and kill in frenzy.” For weeks afterward, I slept fearing I’d be pulled down under the earth.

            An eight-year old only-child as 1957 dawned, I had gone with friends to movies, even Mission Street matinees charging three soda bottle caps for admission. I had always been accompanied by an adult, often my grandma. That Sunday, a friend and I planned to meet, sans adults, at the Castro Theater to confront The Mole People.

            My post-WWII San Francisco neighborhood, then called Eureka Valley and now the Castro, thrived on connections. I grew up on Hartford Street, one block from the heart of today’s gay mecca. My just-married mother fell in love with a brick-bottomed house. Unannounced, she knocked on its door to ask Mr. Thomas if he might sell. He had custom built it for his wife. Persistent, my mom insisted he keep contact information. Later, after miscarrying once and undergoing a rough pregnancy with me, my mom heard from Mr. Thomas saying his wife had passed.

            We moved in with a cash infusion from my grandmother, who also bought a smaller house up the block with money from selling the corner grocery she owned and operated in the adjacent Noe Valley for decades while raising my mother alone. Marie Richter had migrated to America from between Prague and Vienna after S.F.’s ’06 earthquake. She first cooked for the family whose name affixed two notable city landmarks, Fleishhacker Pool and Zoo.

            Rich memories of growing up in the neighborhood, with a sense of community and vibrancy still apparent today, abound.

I remember my Murphy bed-up bedroom, fashioned off the kitchen to be a dining room, as the venue for holiday feasts. The lavish dinners always included Charlie Miles, a Filipino “adopted son” of my grandmother’s and his “lady friend,” Bee Kottinger. Moreover, my mom invariably invited newcomers “who had no place else to go,” just so she didn’t  try to seat thirteen at the table, something my Grandmother wouldn’t abide.

            I remember the shocked look on my mother’s friend’s face at our front door when my mom shouted “Kenny,” a nickname that thankfully ran its course, and found me trailing my African American playmate from across the street named Penny, who though she was calling him.

            I remember playmates suddenly appearing with virtually no English skills, like my friends up the street, Jaime and Alberto, with their thick Portuguese accents.

            I remember my Kindergarten classmate Danny Wynn’s mother singing “Danny Boy,” with nary a dry eye, in our Parish hall just before she died of cancer.

            I remember countless games of touch football, baseball, softball and strikeouts at Eureka Valley, especially those football games when rain – yes, it rained then — had turned the field into a quagmire. After tippy-toeing around for a while to avoid getting the pegged white pants my Grandmother had fashioned dirty, it was liberating to give in and slide through the mud as if on a contemporary Slip ‘N Slide. Back then, I would have said on a Flexi Flyer, the eventually outlawed head-first bobsleds on little wheels on which kids launched themselves downhill from 19^th Street, though drivers had little chance of seeing vehicle or rider if momentum carried the bobsled on wheels into busy 18^th Street traffic.     

            With a different mid-1950’s mindset, I had previously ventured alone to Most Holy Redeemer, my grammar school, and adjacent Eureka Valley Playground. The Parish, before Irish, Italian and German families moved in droves to affordable housing in the Richmond or Sunset Districts, cast the culture of the neighborhood: relational, service-oriented, narrative-rich and joyful. Those values permeated my upbringing, reiterated that Sunday as a marker for me later as a teacher and principal at the same Sacred Heart High School I attended as a student.

            I learned the neighborhood and its people intimately. My mom, suspecting my dad, who would disappear for hours, must be stopping at one of the eight bars within three blocks, sent me with him. Eliciting my mom’s vexation, I testified that my dad took as long as he did because he was chatting everyone up, from Angelo, the addled paper hawker at 18^th and Castro, to Little Joe, the barber with the eight kids who’d blithely nick customers while waving to fellow parishioners exiting the Hibernia Bank.

Years later, after the ’67 Summer of Love changed seasons, Joe spread thumbtacks on the sidewalk outside the laundromat next to his shop to protest the long hair of “invading hippies.” On our walks, we often did yell a hello into Gene & Frank’s, the tavern which, a couple of years later, thrilled me by offering Sunday Giants’ baseball excursions, with breakfast and dinner served in the bar, first to Seals Stadium and then the ‘Stick.

Speaking of sports, my dad, who never owned a car, took the 33 Haight-Ashbury daily to his job as a warehouseman at Floor Styles on Mission Street. There, I enjoyed a yearly delight, riding rolled Karastans down chutes from upper floors. In ’67, I would take the same bus line the opposite direction to watch the 49ers play at Kezar Stadium. Then, red-clad fans on the bus pointed mockingly to the hippies once we turned onto Haight Street. Simultaneously, resplendent street people, nearer my age, rocked the bus, maligning game-goers onboard.

Torn, I empathized with both.

            Sun exploded through my Bay window that Mole People ’57 Sunday, jolting me awake. Five Octobers later, even while inhaling and exhaling the ’62 World Series and attending oft-postponed game six with Dad before his being struck by the cancer sentence that would bury him in 1968 at the age of 51, similar flashes of first light evoked fear of a nuclear cataclysm during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

            Adventure time arrived at the Castro, but my friend didn’t.

Not wanting to spoil my rite-of-passage, I entered the venerable theater under the Spanish Colonial Baroque façade that paid homage to the rebuilt Mission Dolores Basilica six blocks away alone.

            The Mole People, starring Beaver Cleaver’s father (Hugh Beaumont) and Shirley Temple’s husband (John Agar) as archeologists in the cheesiest film ever, began with an ersatz USC professor trying to legitimize the outlandish plot in which the mole people turned out to be the good guys forced to – I kid you not — raise mushrooms to feed the bad Albino colonizers under the earth’s surface amidst a mishmash of Sumerian, Egyptian, Babylonian and Judaic connections. Made credible for me by contemporary news reports spotlighting archeologists providing background about the Dead Sea Scrolls and Suez Canal region, the first twenty minutes of the movie scared the bejesus out of me.

I ran home.

            Mom, dad and grandma, freed, had gone out. I banged the front door across the street. Ernie was my age. The grandson of the founder, he would eventually take over the iconic Cliff’s Variety Store. The Asten’s garage came alive annually with the “fleshing out” of the papier-mache Dinosaur which would lead Cliff’s Halloween Parade past Littleman’s Market, Fred & Roland’s butcher shop which I cleaned six nights a week during high school, Gertie Guernsey’s best-in-the-world ice creamery, and other neighborhood haunts. That children’s parade morphed into today’s raucous Halloween celebrations in the Castro.

Nobody answered.

            I lurched up the street to the door of Jack and Laura Powers. Gail and Kathy, each a striking meld of Jack’s Irish and Laura’s Italian, had baby-sat me when my grandmother couldn’t. Jackie, the middle sibling, came to the door before getting his mom. Laura glided into the hallway looking beatific, radiant in white like a Blessed Virgin Mary.

She had just given birth two weeks before. 

            The milk and chocolate chip cookies she sat me down for soothed me, but it was her nurturing that still resonates.  Later, I realized the magnitude of my frenzied drop-in. Jimmy, who incredibly lived to 55 and earned plaudits as the “Mayor of Noe Street,” had been born with Down Syndrome. So, while reconciling changes from this change-of-life baby and anticipating difficulties (Jimmy’s 2012 obit noted how people advised Jack and Laura to place him in the state hospital at Napa, a system later crippled by austerity cuts), Laura treated me as if my silly fears took precedence, an amazing act of love.

I tried to emulate her warmth and empathy in my vocation whenever a student or teacher voiced qualms even when they might not have been as important as other things in flux.

            Jimmy, who couldn’t pronounce “Mrs. Richter,” instead calling my grandma “Mickey Rickey” after his Disney favorite, lived a wonderful life. After the family relocated to a hill-top house filmed in a couple “Streets of San Francisco” episodes, Jimmy eventually moved out on his own, working at S.F. State, Goodwill Industries and Harvey Milk Restaurant.  Mayors Alioto and Feinstein awarded him accommodations for his goodwill, greeting neighbors and visitors atop Noe Street with a hand wave and a good day wish. He took up the collection on Sundays at St. Phillip the Apostle, the same church in which my parents had married in 1946.

May he, Jack and Laura, my parents and Mickey Rickey, and even the Mole People rest in peace, buried but not forgotten.

Ken Hogarty served for 46 years as a high school teacher/principal and part-time college teacher. A St. Mary’s College grad, Ken earned an MA from Cal State, Hayward, and an Ed.D. from USF. His wife Sally is a journalist and actress. He also adores his daughter Erin and granddaughter Melissa.